Chambers Robert William
The Business of Life
Neither the physician nor the trained nurse who came in at his summons seemed to be very greatly worried. As they eased the young wife and quietly set about reviving her, they chatted carelessly. Later Elena opened her eyes. Later still the nurse went home with her in her limousine.
CHAPTER XVII
About midday Clydesdale, who had returned to his house from a morning visit to his attorney in Liberty Street, was summoned to the telephone.
"Is that you, Desboro?" he asked.
"Yes. I stopped this morning to speak to your wife a moment, but very naturally she was not at home to me at such an hour in the morning. I have just called her on the telephone, but her maid says she has gone out."
"Yes. She is not very well. I understand she has gone to see Dr. Allen. But she ought to be back pretty soon. Won't you come up to the house, Desboro?"
There was a short pause, then Desboro's voice again, in reply:
"I believe I will come up, Clydesdale. And I think I'll talk to you instead of to your wife."
"Just as it suits you. Very glad to see you anyway. I'll be in the rear extension fussing about among the porcelains."
"I'll be with you in ten minutes."
In less time than that Desboro arrived, and was piloted through the house and into the gallery by an active maid. At the end of one of the aisles lined by glass cases, the huge bulk of Cary Clydesdale loomed, his red face creased with his eternal grin.
"Hello, Desboro!" he called. "Come this way. I've one or two things here which will match any of yours at Silverwood, I think."
And, as Desboro approached, Clydesdale strode forward, offering him an enormous hand.
"Glad to see you," he grinned. "Congratulations on your marriage! Fine girl, that! I don't know any to match her." He waved a comprehensive arm. "All this stuff is her arrangement. Gad! But I had it rottenly displayed. And the collection was full of fakes, too. But she came floating in here one morning, and what she did to my junk-heap was a plenty, believe me!" And the huge fellow grinned and grinned until Desboro's sombre face altered and became less rigid.
A maid appeared with a table and a frosted cocktail shaker.
"You'll stop and lunch with us," said Clydesdale, filling two glasses. "Elena won't be very long. Don't know just what ails her, but she's nervous and run down. I guess it's the spring that's coming. Well, here's to all bad men; they need the boost and we don't. Prosit!"
He emptied his glass, set it aside, and from the open case beside him extracted an exquisite jar of the Kang-He, famille noire, done in five colours during the best period of the work.
"God knows I'm not proud," he said, "but can you beat it, Desboro?"
Desboro took the beautiful jar, and, carefully guarding the cover, turned it slowly. Birds, roses, pear blossoms, lilies, exquisite in composition and colour, passed under his troubled eyes. He caressed the paste mechanically.
"It is very fine," he said.
"Have you anything to beat it?"
"I don't think so."
"How are yours marked?" inquired the big man, taking the jar into his own enormous paws as lovingly as a Kadiak bear embraces her progeny. "This magnificent damn thing is a forgery. Look! Here's the mark of the Emperor Ching-hwa! Isn't that the limit? And the forgery is every bit as fine as the originals made before 1660 – only it happened to be the fashion in China in 1660 to collect Ching-hwa jars, so the maker of this piece deliberately forged an earlier date. Can you beat it?"
Desboro smiled as though he were listening; and Clydesdale gingerly replaced the jar and as carefully produced another.
"Ming!" he said. "Seventeenth century Manchu Tartar. I've some earlier Ming ranging between 1400 A.D. and 1600; but it can't touch this, Desboro. In fact, I think the eighteenth century Ming is even finer; and, as far as that goes, there is magnificent work being done now – although the occidental markets seldom see it. But – Ming for mine, every time! How do you feel about it, old top?"
Desboro looked at the vase. The soft beauty of the blue underglaze, the silvery thickets of magnolia bloom amid which a magnificent, pheasant-hued phœnix stepped daintily, meant at the moment absolutely nothing to him.
Nor did the poudre-bleu jar, triumphantly exhibited by the infatuated owner – a splendid specimen painted on the overglaze. And the weeds and shells and fiery golden fishes swimming had been dimmed a little by rubbing, so that the dusky aquatic depths loomed more convincingly.
"Clydesdale," said Desboro in a low voice, "I want to say one or two things to you. Another time it would give me pleasure to go over these porcelains with you. Do you mind my interrupting you?"
The big man grinned.
"Shoot," he said, replacing the "powder-blue" and carefully closing and locking the case. Then, dropping the keys into his pocket, he came over to where Desboro was seated beside the flimsy folding card-table, shook the cocktail shaker, offered to fill Desboro's glass, and at a gesture of refusal refilled his own.
"This won't do a thing to my appetite," he remarked genially. "Go ahead, Desboro." And he settled himself to listen, with occasional furtive, sidelong glances at his beloved porcelains.
Desboro said: "Clydesdale, you and I have known each other for a number of years. We haven't seen much of each other, except at the club, or meeting casually here and there. It merely happened so; if accident had thrown us together, the chances are that we would have liked each other – perhaps sought each other's company now and then – as much as men do in this haphazard town, anyway. Don't you think so?"
Clydesdale nodded.
"But we have been on perfectly friendly terms, always – with one exception," said Desboro.
"Yes – with one exception. But that is all over now – "
"I am afraid it isn't."
Clydesdale's grin remained unaltered when he said: "Well, what the hell – " and stopped abruptly.
"It's about that one exception of which I wish to speak," continued Desboro, after a moment's thought. "I don't want to say very much – just one or two things which I hope you already know and believe. And all I have to say is this, Clydesdale; whatever I may have been – whatever I may be now, that sort of treachery is not in me. I make no merit of it – it may be mere fastidiousness on my part which would prevent me from meditating treachery toward an acquaintance or a friend."
Clydesdale scrutinised him in silence.
"Never, since Elena was your wife, have I thought of her except as your wife."
Clydesdale only grinned.
"I want to be as clear as I can on this subject," continued the other, "because – and I must say it to you – there have been rumours concerning – me."
"And concerning her," said Clydesdale simply. "Don't blink matters, Desboro."
"No, I won't. The rumours have included her, of course. But what those rumours hint, Clydesdale, is an absolute lie. I blame myself in a measure; I should not have come here so often – should not have continued to see Elena so informally. I was in love with her once; I did ask her to marry me. She took you. Try to believe me, Clydesdale, when I tell you that though for me there did still linger about her that inexplicable charm which attracted me, which makes your wife so attractive to everybody, never for a moment did it occur to me not to acquiesce in the finality of her choice. Never did I meditate any wrong toward you or toward her. I did dangle. That was where I blame myself. Because where a better man might have done it uncriticised, I was, it seems, open to suspicion."
"You're no worse than the next," said Clydesdale in a deep growl. "Hell's bells! I don't blame you! And there would have been nothing to it anyway if Elena had not lost her head that night and bolted. I was rough with you all right; but you behaved handsomely; and I knew where the trouble was. Because, Desboro, my wife dislikes me."
"I thought – "
"No! Let's have the truth, damn it! That's the truth! My wife dislikes me. It may be that she is crazy about you; I don't know. But I am inclined to think – after these months of hell, Desboro – that she really is not crazy about you, or about any man; that it is only her dislike of me that possesses her to – to deal with me as she has done."
He was still grinning, but his heavy lower lip twitched, and suddenly the horror of it broke on Desboro – that this great, gross, red-faced creature was suffering in every atom of his unwieldy bulk; that the fixed grin was covering anguish; that the man's heart was breaking there, now, where he sat, the rictus mortis stamped on his quivering face.
"Clydesdale," he said, unsteadily, "I came here meaning to say only what I have said – that you never had anything to doubt in me – but that rumours still coupled my name with Elena's. That was all I meant to say. But I'll say more. I'm sorry that things are not going well with you and Elena. I would do anything in the world that lay within my power to help make yours a happy marriage. But – marriages all seem to go wrong. For years – witnessing what I have – what everybody among our sort of people cannot choose but witness – I made up my mind that marriage was no good."
He passed his hand slowly over his eyes; waited a moment, then:
"But I was wrong. That's what the matter is – that is how the matter lies between the sort of people we are and marriage. It is we who are wrong; there's nothing wrong about marriage, absolutely nothing. Only many of us are not fit for it. And some of us take it as a preventive, as a moral medicine – as though anybody could endure an eternal dosing! And some of us seek it as a refuge – a refuge from every ill, every discomfort, every annoyance and apprehension that assails the human race – as though the institution of marriage were a vast and fortified storehouse in which everything we have ever lacked and desired were lying about loose for us to pick up and pocket."
He bent forward across the table and began to play absently with his empty glass.
"Marriage is all right," he said. "But only those fit to enter possess the keys to the magic institution. And they find there what they expected. The rest of us jimmy our way in, and find ourselves in an empty mansion, Clydesdale."
For a long while they sat there in silence; Desboro fiddling with his empty glass, the other, motionless, his ponderous hands clasped on his knees. At length, Desboro spoke again: "I do not know how it is with you, but I am not escaping anything that I have ever done."
"I'm getting mine," said Clydesdale heavily.
After a few moments, what Desboro had said filtered into his brain; and he turned and looked at the younger man.
"Have these rumours – " he began. And Desboro nodded:
"These rumours – or others. These happen not to have been true."
"That's tough on her," said Clydesdale gravely.
"That's where it is toughest on us. I think we could stand anything except that they should suffer through us. And the horrible part of it is that we never meant to – never dreamed that we should ever be held responsible for the days we lived so lightly – gay, careless, irresponsible days – God! Is there any punishment to compare with it, Clydesdale?"
"None."
Desboro rose and stood with his hand across his forehead, as though it ached.
"You and Elena and I are products of the same kind of civilisation. Jacqueline – my wife – is the result of a different training in a very different civilisation."
"And the rottenness of ours is making her ill."
Desboro nodded. After a moment he stirred restlessly.
"Well," he said, "I must go to the office. I haven't been there yet."
Clydesdale got onto his feet.
"Won't you stay?"
"No."
"As you wish. And – I'm sorry, Desboro. However, you have a better chance than I – to make good. My wife – dislikes me."
He went as far as the door with his guest, and when Desboro had departed he wandered aimlessly back into the house and ultimately found himself among his porcelains once more – his only refuge from a grief and care that never ceased, never even for a moment eased those massive shoulders of their dreadful weight.
From where he stood, he heard the doorbell sounding distantly. Doubtless his wife had returned. Doubtless, too, as long as there was no guest, Elena would prefer to lunch alone in her own quarters, unless she had an engagement to lunch at the Ritz or elsewhere.
He had no illusion that she desired to see him, or that she cared whether or not he inquired what her physician had said; but he closed and locked his glass cases once more and walked heavily into the main body of the house and descended to the door.
To the man on duty there he said: "Did Mrs. Clydesdale come in?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thank you."
He hesitated, turned irresolutely, and remounted the stairs. To a maid passing he said:
"Is Mrs. Clydesdale lunching at home?"
"Yes, sir. Mrs. Clydesdale is not well, sir."
"Has she gone to her room?"
"Yes, sir."
"Please go to her and say that I am sorry and – and inquire if there is anything I can do."
The maid departed and the master of the house wandered into the music-room – perhaps because Elena's tall, gilded harp was there – the only thing in the place that ever reminded him of her, or held for him anything of her personality.
Now, in the rose dusk of the drawn curtains, he stood beside it, not touching it – never dreaming of touching it without permission, any more than he would have touched his wife.
Somebody knocked; he turned, and the maid came forward.
"Mrs. Clydesdale desires to see you, sir."
He stared for a second, then his heart beat heavily with alarm.
"Where is Mrs. Clydesdale?"
"In her bedroom, sir."
"Unwell?"
"Yes, sir."
"In bed?"
"I think so, sir. Mrs. Clydesdale's maid spoke to me."
"Very well. Thank you."
He went out and mounted the stairs, striding up silently to the hall above, where his wife's maid quietly opened the door for him, then went away to her own little chintz-lined den.
Elena was lying on her bed in a frilly, lacy, clinging thing of rose tint. The silk curtains had been drawn, but squares of sunlight quartered them, turning the dusk of the pretty room to a golden gloom.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him as he advanced.
"I'm terribly sorry," he said; and his heavy voice shook in spite of him.
She motioned toward the only armchair – an ivory-covered affair, the cane bottom covered by a rose cushion.
"Bring it here – nearer," she said.
He did so, and seated himself beside the bed cautiously.
She lay silent after that; once or twice she pressed the palms of both hands over her eyes as though they pained her, but when he ventured to inquire, she shook her head. It was only when he spoke of calling up Dr. Allen again that she detained him in his chair with a gesture:
"Wait! I've got to tell you something! I don't know what you will do about it. You've had trouble enough – with me. But this is – is – unspeakable – "
"What on earth is the matter? Aren't you ill?" he began.
"Yes; that, too. But – there is something else. I thought it had made me ill – but – " She began to shiver, and he laid his hand on hers and found it burning.
"I tell you Allen ought to come at once – " he began again.
"No, no, no! You don't know what you're talking about. I – I'm frightened – that's what is the matter! That's one of the things that's the matter. Wait a moment. I'll tell you. I'll have to tell you, now. I suppose you'll – divorce me."
There was a silence; then:
"Go on," he said, in his heavy, hopeless voice.
She moistened her lips with her tongue:
"It's – my fault. I – I did not care for you – that is how it – began. No; it began before that – before I knew you. And there were two men. You remember them. They were the rage with our sort – like other fads, for a while – such as marmosets, and – things. One of these things was the poet, Orrin Munger. He called himself a Cubist – whatever that may be. The other was the writer, Adalbert Waudle."
Clydesdale's grin was terrible.
"No," she said wearily, "I was only a more venturesome fool than other women who petted them – nothing worse. They went about kissing women's hands and reading verses to them. Some women let them have the run of their boudoirs – like any poodle. Then there came that literary and semi-bohemian bal-masque in Philadelphia. It was the day before the Assembly. I was going on for that, but mother wouldn't let me go on away earlier for the bal-masque. So – I went."
"What?"
"I lied. I pretended to be stopping with the Hammertons in Westchester. And I bribed my maid to lie, too. But I went."
"Alone?"
"No. Waudle went with me."
"Good God, Elena!"
"I know. I was simply insane. I went with him to that ball and left before the unmasking. Nobody knew me. So I went to the Bellevue-Stratford for the night. I – I never dreamed that he would go there, too."
"Did he?"
"Yes. He had the rooms adjoining. I only knew it when – when I awoke in the dark and heard him tapping on the door and calling in that thick, soft voice – " She shuddered and clenched her hands, closing her feverish eyes for a moment.
Her husband stared at her, motionless in his chair.
She unclosed her eyes wearily: "That was all – except – the other one – the little one with the frizzy hair – Munger. He saw me there. He knew that Waudle had the adjoining rooms. So then, very early, I came back to New York, badly scared, and met my maid at the station and pretended to mother that I had just arrived from Westchester. And that night I went back to the Assembly. But – ever since that night I – I have been – paying money to Adalbert Waudle. Not much before I married you, because I had very little to pay. But all my allowance has gone that way – and now – now he wants more. And I haven't it. And I'm sick – "
The terrible expression on her husband's face frightened her, and, for a moment, she faltered. But there was more to tell, and she must tell it though his unchained wrath destroy her.
"You'll have to wait until I finish," she muttered. "There's more – and worse. Because he came here the night I – went to Silverwood. He saw me leave the house; he unsealed and read the note I left on the library table for you. He knows what I said – about Jim Desboro. He knows I went to him. And he is trying to make me pay him – to keep it out of the – the Tattler."
Clydesdale's congested face was awful; she looked into it, thought that she read her doom. But the courage of despair forced her on.
"There is worse – far worse," she said with dry lips. "I had no money to give; he wished to keep the seven thousand which was his share of what you paid for the forged porcelains. He came to me and made me understand that if you insisted on his returning that money he would write me up for the Tattler and disgrace me so that you would divorce me. I – I must be honest with you at such a time as this, Cary. I wouldn't have cared if – if Jim Desboro would have married me afterward. But he had ceased to care for me. He – was in love with – Miss Nevers; or she was with him. And I disliked her. But – I was low enough to go to her in my dire extremity and – and ask her to pronounce those forged porcelains genuine – so that you would keep them. And I did it – meaning to bribe her."
Clydesdale's expression was frightful.
"Yes – I did this thing. And worse. I – I wish you'd kill me after I tell you! I – something she said – in the midst of my anguish and terror – something about Jim Desboro, I think – I am not sure – seemed to drive me insane. And she was married to him all the while, and I didn't know it. And – to drive her away from him, I – I made her understand that – that I was – his – mistress – "
"Good God!"
"Wait – for God's sake, wait! I don't care what you do to me afterward. Only – only tell that woman I wasn't – tell her I never was. Promise me that, whatever you are going to do to me – promise me you'll tell her that I never was any man's mistress! Because – because – I am – ill. And they say – Dr. Allen says I – I am going to – to have a baby."
The man reared upright and stood swaying there, ashy faced, his visage distorted. Suddenly the features were flooded with rushing crimson; he dropped on his knees and caught her in his arms with a groan; and she shut her eyes, thinking the world was ending.
After a long while she opened them, still half stunned with terror; saw his quivering lips resting on her tightly locked hands; stared for a while, striving to comprehend his wet face and his caress.
And, after a while, timidly, uncertainly, wondering, she ventured to withdraw one hand, still watching him with fascinated eyes.
She had always feared him physically – feared his bulk, and his massive strength, and his grin. Otherwise, she had held him in intellectual contempt.
Very cautiously, very gently, she withdrew her hand, watching him all the while. He had not annihilated her. What did he mean to do with this woman who had hated him and who now was about to disgrace him? What did he mean to do? What was he doing now – with his lips quivering against her other hand, all wet with his tears?
"Cary?" she said.
He lifted a passion-marred visage; and there seemed for a moment something noble in the high poise of his ugly head. And, without knowing what she was doing, or why, she slowly lifted her free hand and let it rest lightly on his massive shoulder. And, as she looked into his eyes, a strange expression began to dawn in her own – and it became stranger and stranger – something he had never before seen there – something so bewildering, so wonderful, that his heart seemed to cease.
Suddenly her eyes filled and her face flushed from throat to hair and the next instant she swayed forward, was caught, and crushed to his breast.
"Oh!" she wept ceaselessly. "Oh, oh, Cary! I didn't know – I didn't know. I – I want to be a – a good mother. I'll try to be better; I'll try to be better. You are so good – you are so good to me – so kind – so kind – to protect me – after what I've done – after what I've done!"
