V
She stood before them in her bright evening dress, with an arrested
brilliancy of aspect like the sparkle of a fountain suddenly caught
in ice. Her look moved rapidly from one to the other; then she came
forward, while Shackwell slipped behind her to close the door.
"What has happened?" she said.
Shackwell began to speak, but the Governor interposed calmly:
"Fleetwood has come to tell me that he does not wish to remain in
office."
"Ah!" she murmured.
There was another silence. Fleetwood broke it by saying: "It is
getting late. If you want to see me to-morrow--"
The Governor looked from his face to Ella's. "Yes; go now," he said.
Shackwell moved in Fleetwood's wake to the door. Mrs. Mornway stood
with her head high, smiling slightly. She shook hands with each of
the men in turn; then she moved toward the sofa and laid aside her
shining cloak. All her gestures were calm and noble, but as she
raised her hand to unclasp the cloak her husband uttered a sudden
exclamation.
"Where did you get that bracelet? I don't remember it."
"This?" She looked at him with astonishment. "It belonged to my
mother. I don't often wear it."
"Ah--I shall suspect everything now," he groaned.
He turned away and flung himself with bowed head in the chair behind
his writing-table. He wanted to collect himself, to question her, to
get to the bottom of the hideous abyss over which his imagination
hung. But what was the use? What did the facts matter? He had only
to put his memories together--they led him straight to the truth.
Every incident of the day seemed to point a leering finger in the
same direction, from Mrs. Nimick's allusion to the imported damask
curtains to Gregg's confident appeal for rehabilitation.
"If you imagine that my wife distributes patronage--" he heard
himself repeating inanely, and the walls seemed to reverberate with
the laughter which his sister and Gregg had suppressed. He heard
Ella rise from the sofa and lifted his head sharply.
"Sit still!" he commanded. She sank back without speaking, and he
hid his face again. The past months, the past years, were dancing a
witches' dance about him. He remembered a hundred significant
things. . . . _Oh, God_, he cried to himself, _if only she does not
lie about it!_Suddenly he recalled having pitied Mrs. Nimick because
she could not penetrate to the essence of his happiness. Those were
the very words he had used! He heard himself laugh aloud. The clock
struck--it went on striking interminably. At length he heard his
wife rise again and say with sudden authority: "John, you must
speak."
Authority--she spoke to him with authority! He laughed again, and
through his laugh he heard the senseless rattle of the words, "If
you imagine that my wife distributes patronage . . ."
He looked up haggardly and saw her standing before him. If only she
would not lie about it! He said: "You see what has happened."
"I suppose some one has told you about the 'Spy.'"
"Who told you? Gregg?" he interposed.
"Yes," she said quietly.
"That was why you wanted--?"
"Why I wanted you to help him? Yes."
"Oh, God! . . . He wouldn't take money?"
"No, he wouldn't take money."
He sat silent, looking at her, noting with a morbid minuteness the
exquisite finish of her dress, that finish which seemed so much a
part of herself that it had never before struck him as a merely
purchasable accessory. He knew so little what a woman's dresses
cost! For a moment he lost himself in vague calculations; finally,
he said: "What did you do it for?"
"Do what?"
"Take money from Fleetwood."
She paused a moment and then said: "If you will let me explain--"
And then he saw that, all along, he had thought she would be able to
disprove it! A smothering blackness closed in on him, and he had a
physical struggle for breath. Then he forced himself to his feet and
said: "He was your lover?"
"Oh, no, no, _no!_" she cried with conviction. He hardly knew
whether the shadow lifted or deepened; the fact that he instantly
believed her seemed only to increase his bewilderment. Presently he
found that she was still speaking, and he began to listen to her,
catching a phrase now and then through the deafening clamor of his
thoughts.
It amounted to this--that just after her husband's first election,
when Fleetwood's claims for the Attorney-Generalship were being
vainly pressed by a group of his political backers, Mrs. Mornway had
chanced to sit next to him once or twice at dinner. One day, on the
strength of these meetings, he had called and asked her frankly if
she would not help him with her husband. He had made a clean breast
of his past, but had said that, under a man like Mornway, he felt he
could wipe out his political sins and purify himself while he served
the party. She knew the party needed his brains, and she believed in
him--she was sure he would keep his word. She would have spoken in
his favor in any case--she would have used all her influence to
overcome her husband's prejudice--and it was by a mere accident
that, in the course of one of their talks, he happened to give her a
"tip" (his past connections were still useful for such purposes), a
"tip" which, in the first invading pressure of debt after Mornway's
election, she had not had the courage to refuse. Fleetwood had made
some money for her--yes, about thirty thousand dollars. She had
repaid what he had lent her, and there had been no further
transactions of the kind between them. But it appeared that Gregg,
before his dismissal, had got hold of an old check-book which gave a
hint of the story, and had pieced the rest together with the help of
a clerk in Fleetwood's office. The "Spy" was in possession of the
facts, but did not mean to use them if Fleetwood was not
reappointed, the Lead Trust having no personal grudge against
Mornway.
Her story ended there, and she sat silent while he continued to look
at her. So much had perished in the wreck of his faith that he did
not attach much value to what remained. It scarcely mattered that he
believed her when the truth was so sordid. There had been, after
all, nothing to envy him for but what Mrs. Nimick had seen; the core
of his life was as mean and miserable as his sister's. . . .
His wife rose at length, pale but still calm. She had a kind of
external dignity which she wore like one of her rich dresses. It
seemed as little a part of her now as the finery of which his gaze
contemptuously reckoned the cost.
"John--" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder.
He looked up wearily. "You had better go to bed," he interjected.
"Don't look at me in that way. I am prepared for your being angry
with me--I made a dreadful mistake and must bear my punishment: any
punishment you choose to inflict. But you must think of yourself
first--you must spare yourself. Why should you be so horribly
unhappy? Don't you see that since Mr. Fleetwood has behaved so well
we are quite safe? And I swear to you I have paid back every penny
of the money."
