A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill

Volume 7. 

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH IT IS ALL DONE OVER AGAIN

All morning she had gazed on the shining reaches of the Hudson, theircolour deepening to blue as she neared the sea. A gold-bound volume ofShelley, with his name on the fly-leaf, lay in her lap. And two lines sherepeated softly to herself--two lines that held a vision:

 "He was as the sun in his fierce youth, As terrible and lovely as a tempest;"

She summoned him out of the chaos of the past, and the past became thepresent, and he stood before her as though in the flesh. Nay, she heardhis voice, his laugh, she even recognized again the smouldering flames inhis eyes as he glanced into hers, and his characteristic manners andgestures. Honora wondered. In vain, during those long months of exile hadshe tried to reconstruct him thus the vision in its entirety would notcome: rare, fleeting, partial, and tantalizing glimpses she had beenvouchsafed, it is true. The whole of him had been withheld until thisbreathless hour before the dawn of her happiness. 

Yet, though his own impatient spirit had fared forth to meet her withthis premature gift of his attributes, she had to fight the growing fearwithin her. Now that the days of suffering were as they had not been, insistent questions dinned in her ears: was she entitled to the joys tocome? What had she done to earn them? Had hers not been an attempt, on agigantic scale, to cheat the fates? Nor could she say whether thisfeeling were a wholly natural failure to grasp a future too big, or theold sense of the unreality of events that had followed her sopersistently. 

The Hudson disappeared. Factories, bridges, beflagged week-end resorts, ramshackle houses, and blocks of new buildings were scattered here andthere. The train was running on a causeway between miles of tenementswhere women and children, overtaken by lassitude, hung out of thewindows: then the blackness of the tunnel, and Honora closed her eyes. Four minutes, three minutes, two minutes . . . . The motion ceased. Atthe steps of the car a uniformed station porter seized her bag; and shestarted to walk down the long, narrow platform. Suddenly she halted. 

"Drop anything, Miss?" inquired the porter. 

"No, " answered Honora, faintly. He looked at her in concern, and shebegan to walk on again, more slowly. 

It had suddenly come over her that the man she was going to meet shescarcely knew! Shyness seized her, a shyness that bordered on panic. Andwhat was he really like, that she should put her whole trust in him? Sheglanced behind her: that way was closed: she had a mad desire to getaway, to hide, to think. It must have been an obsession that hadpossessed her all these months. The porter was looking again, and hevoiced her predicament. 

"There's only one way out, Miss. "

And then, amongst the figures massed behind the exit in the grill, shesaw him, his face red-bronze with the sea tan, his crisp, curly headbared, his eyes alight with a terrifying welcome; and a tremor of a fearakin to ecstasy ran through her: the fear of the women of days gone bywhose courage carried them to the postern or the strand, and faintedthere. She could have taken no step farther--and there was no need. Newstrength flowed from the hand she held that was to carry her on and on. 

He spoke her name. He led her passive, obedient, through the press to theside street, and then he paused and looked into her burning face. 

"I have you at last, " he said. "Are you happy?"

"I don't know, " she faltered. "Oh, Hugh, it all seems so strange! I don'tknow what I have done. "

"I know, " he said exultantly; "but to save my soul I can't believe it. "

She watched him, bewildered, while he put her maid into a cab, and by aneffort roused herself. 

"Where are you going, Hugh?"

"To get married, " he replied promptly. 

She pulled down her veil. 

"Please be sensible, " she implored. "I've arranged to go to a hotel. "

"What hotel?"

"The--the Barnstable, " she said. The place had come to her memory on thetrain. "It's very nice and--and quiet--so I've been told. And I'vetelegraphed for my rooms. "

"I'll humour you this once, " he answered, and gave the order. 

She got into the carriage. It had blue cushions with the familiar smellof carriage upholstery, and the people in the street still hurried abouttheir business as though nothing in particular were happening. The horsesstarted, and some forgotten key in her brain was touched as Chilternraised her veil again. 

"You'll tear it, Hugh, " she said, and perforce lifted it herself. Hereyes met his--and she awoke. Not to memories or regrets, but to thefuture, for the recording angel had mercifully destroyed his book. 

"Did you miss me?" she said. 

"Miss you! My God, Honora, how can you ask? When I look back upon theselast months, I don't see how I ever passed through them. And you arechanged, " he said. "I could not have believed it possible, but you are. You are--you are finer. "

He had chosen his word exquisitely. And then, as they trotted sedatelythrough Madison Avenue, he strained her in his arms and kissed her. 

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried, scarlet, as she disengaged, herself, "you mustn't--here!"

"You're free!" he exclaimed. "You're mine at last! I can't believe it!Look at me, and tell me so. "

She tried. 

"Yes, " she faltered. 

"Yes--what?"

"Yes. I--I am yours. "

She looked out of the window to avoid those eyes. Was this New York, orJerusalem? Were these the streets through which she had driven and trodin her former life? Her whole soul cried out denial. No episode, noaccusing reminiscences stood out--not one: the very corners were changed. Would it all change back again if he were to lessen the insistentpressure on the hand in her lap. 

"Honora?"

"Yes?" she answered, with a start. 

"You missed me? Look at me and tell me the truth. "

"The truth!" she faltered, and shuddered. The contrast was too great--the horror of it too great for her to speak of. The pen of Dante hadnot been adequate. "Don't ask me, Hugh, " she begged, "I can't talk aboutit--I never shall be able to talk about it. If I had not loved you, Ishould have died. "

How deeply he felt and understood and sympathized she knew by thequivering pressure on her hand. Ah, if he had not! If he had failed tograsp the meaning of her purgatory. 

"You are wonderful, Honora, " was what he said in a voice broken byemotion. 

She thanked him with one fleeting, tearful glance that was as a grant ofall her priceless possessions. The carriage stopped, but it was somemoments before they realized it. 

"You may come up in a little while, " she whispered, "and lunch with me--if you like. "

"If I like!" he repeated. 

But she was on the sidewalk, following the bell boy into the cool, marble-lined area of the hotel. A smiling clerk handed her a pen, and setthe new universe to rocking. 

"Mrs. Leffingwell, I presume? We have your telegram. "

Mrs. Leffingwell! Who was that person? For an instant she stood blanklyholding the pen, and then she wrote rapidly, if a trifle unsteadily:"Mrs. Leffingwell and maid. " A pause. Where was her home? Then she addedthe words, "St. Louis. "

Her rooms were above the narrow canon of the side street, looking overthe roofs of the inevitable brownstone fronts opposite. While Mathilde, in the adjoining chamber, unpacked her bag, Honora stood gazing out ofthe sitting-room windows, trying to collect her thoughts. Her spirits hadunaccountably fallen, the sense of homelessness that had pursued her allthese months overtaken her once more. Never, never, she told herself, would she enter a hotel again alone; and when at last he came she clungto him with a passion that thrilled him the more because he could notunderstand it. 

"Hugh--you will care for me?" she cried. 

He kissed away her tears. He could not follow her; he only knew that whathe held to him was a woman such as he had never known before. Tender, andagain strangely and fiercely tender: an instrument of such miraculousdelicacy as to respond, quivering, to the lightest touch; an harmoniousand perfect blending of strength and weakness, of joy and sorrow, --of allthe warring elements in the world. What he felt was the supreme masculinejoy of possession. 

At last they sat down on either side of the white cloth the waiter hadlaid, for even the gods must eat. Not that our deified mortals ate muchon this occasion. Vesta presided once more, and after the feast was overgently led them down the slopes until certain practical affairs began totake shape in the mind of the man. Presently he looked at his watch, andthen at the woman, and made a suggestion. 

"Marry you now--this of afternoon!" she cried, aghast. "Hugh, are you inyour right senses?"

"Yes, " he said, "I'm reasonable for the first time in my life. "

She laughed, and immediately became serious. But when she sought tomarshal her arguments, she found that they had fled. 

"Oh, but I couldn't, " she answered. "And besides, there are so manythings I ought to do. I--I haven't any clothes. "

But this was a plea he could not be expected to recognize. He saw noreason why she could not buy as many as she wanted after the ceremony. 

"Is that all?" he demanded. 

"No--that isn't all. Can't you see that--that we ought to wait, Hugh?"

"No, " he exclaimed, "No I can't see it. I can only see that every momentof waiting would be a misery for us both. I can only see that thesituation, as it is to-day, is an intolerable one for you. "

She had not expected him to see this. 

"There are others to be thought of, " she said, after a moment'shesitation. 

"What others?"

The answer she should have made died on her lips. 

"It seems so-indecorous, Hugh. "

"Indecorous!" he cried, and pushed back his chair and rose. "What'sindecorous about it? To leave you here alone in a hotel in New York wouldnot only be indecorous, but senseless. How long would you put it off? aweek--a month--a year? Where would you go in the meantime, and what wouldyou do?"

"But your friends, Hugh--and mine?"

"Friends! What have they got to do with it?"

It was the woman, now, who for a moment turned practical--and for theman's sake. She loved, and the fair fabric of the future which they wereto weave together, and the plans with which his letters had been filledand of which she had dreamed in exile, had become to-day as the stuff ofwhich moonbeams are made. As she looked up at him, eternity itself didnot seem long enough for the fulfilment of that love. But he? Would thetime not come when he would demand something more? and suppose thatsomething were denied? She tried to rouse herself, to think, to considera situation in which her instinct had whispered just once--there must besome hidden danger: but the electric touch of his hand destroyed theprocess, and made her incapable of reason. 

"What should we gain by a week's or a fortnight's delay, " he was saying, "except so much misery?"

She looked around the hotel sitting-room, and tried to imagine thedesolation of it, stripped of his presence. Why not? There was reason inwhat he said. And yet, if she had known it, it was not to reason sheyielded, but to the touch of his hand. 

"We will be married to-day, " he decreed. "I have planned it all. I havebought the 'Adhemar', the yacht which I chartered last winter. She ishere. We'll go off on her together, away from the world, for as long asyou like. And then, " he ended triumphantly, "then we'll go back toGrenoble and begin our life. "

"And begin our life!" she repeated. But it was not to him that she spoke. "Hugh, I positively have to have some clothes. "

"Clothes!" His voice expressed his contempt for the mundane thought. 

"Yes, clothes, " she repeated resolutely. 

He looked at his watch once more. 

"Very well, " he said, "we'll get 'em on the way. "

"On the way?" she asked. 

"We'll have to have a marriage license, I'm afraid, " he explainedapologetically. 

Honora grew crimson. A marriage license!

She yielded, of course. Who could resist him? Nor need the details ofthat interminable journey down the crowded artery of Broadway to theCentre of Things be entered into. An ignoble errand, Honora thought; andshe sat very still, with flushed cheeks, in the corner of the carriage. Chiltern's finer feelings came to her rescue. He, too, resented thissenseless demand of civilization as an indignity to their Olympian loves. And he was a man to chafe at all restraints. But at last the odious thingwas over, grim and implacable Law satisfied after he had compelled themto stand in line for an interminable period before his grill, and minglewith those whom he chose, in his ignorance, to call their peers. Honorafelt degraded as they emerged with the hateful paper, bought at such aprice. The City Hall Park, with its moving streams of people, etcheditself in her memory. 

"Leave me, Hugh, " she said; "I will take this carriage--you must getanother one. "

For once, he accepted his dismissal with comparative meekness. 

"When shall I come?" he asked. 

"She smiled a little, in spite of herself. 

"You may come for me at six o'clock, " she replied. 

"Six o'clock!" he exclaimed; but accepted with resignation and closed thecarriage door. Enigmatical sex!

Enigmatical sex indeed! Honora spent a feverish afternoon, rest andreflection being things she feared. An afternoon in familiar places; and(strangest of all facts to be recorded!) memories and regrets troubledher not at all. Her old dressmakers, her old milliners, welcomed her asone risen, radiant, from the grave; risen, in their estimation, to ahigher life. Honora knew this, and was indifferent to the wealth ofmeaning that lay behind their discretion. Milliners and dressmakers readthe newspapers and periodicals--certain periodicals. Well they knew thatthe lady they flattered was the future Mrs. Hugh Chiltern. 

Nothing whatever of an indelicate nature happened. There was no mentionof where to send the bill, or of whom to send it to. Such things as shebought on the spot were placed in her carriage. And happiest of allomissions, she met no one she knew. The praise that Madame Barrierelavished on Honora's figure was not flattery, because the Paris modelsfitted her to perfection. A little after five she returned to her hotel, to a Mathilde in a high state of suppressed excitement. And at six, theappointed fateful hour, arrayed in a new street gown of dark green cloth, she stood awaiting him. 

He was no laggard. The bell on the church near by was still singing fromthe last stroke when he knocked, flung open the door, and stood for amoment staring at her. Not that she had been shabby when he had wished tomarry her at noon: no self-respecting woman is ever shabby; not that herpresent costume had any of the elements of overdress; far from it. Beinga woman, she had her thrill of triumph at his exclamation. Diana had noneed, perhaps, of a French dressmaker, but it is an open question whethershe would have scorned them. Honora stood motionless, but her smile forhim was like the first quivering shaft of day. He opened a box, and witha strange mixture of impetuosity and reverence came forward. And she sawthat he held in his hand a string of great, glistening pearls. 

"They were my mother's, " he said. "I have had them restrung--for you. "

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried. She could find no words to express the tremorwithin. And she stood passively, her eyes half closed, while he claspedthe string around the lace collar that pressed the slender column of herneck and kissed her. 

Even the humble beings who work in hotels are responsive to unusualdisturbances in the ether. At the Barnstable, a gala note prevailed: bellboys, porters, clerk, and cashier, proud of their sudden wisdom, werewreathed in smiles. A new automobile, in Chiltern's colours, with hiscrest on the panel, was panting beside the curb. 

"I meant to have had it this morning, " he apologized as he handed her in, "but it wasn't ready in time. "

Honora heard him, and said something in reply. She tried in vain to rouseherself from the lethargy into which she had fallen, to cast off thespell. Up Fifth Avenue they sped, past meaningless houses, to the Park. The crystal air of evening was suffused with the level evening light; andas they wound in and out under the spreading trees she caught glimpsesacross the shrubbery of the deepening blue of waters. Pools of mysterywere her eyes. 

The upper West Side is a definite place on the map, and full, undoubtedly, of palpitating human joys and sorrows. So far as Honora wasconcerned, it might have been Bagdad. The automobile had stopped before aresidence, and she found herself mounting the steps at Chiltern's side. ASwedish maid opened the door. 

"Is Mr. White at home?" Chiltern asked. 

It seemed that "the Reverend Mr. White" was. He appeared, a portlygentleman with frock coat and lawn tie who resembled the man in the moon. His head, like polished ivory, increased the beaming effect of hiswelcome, and the hand that pressed Honora's was large and soft and warm. But dreams are queer things, in which no events surprise us. 

The reverend gentleman, as he greeted Chiltern, pronounced his name withunction. His air of hospitality, of good-fellowship, of taking the worldas he found it, could not have been improved upon. He made it apparent atonce that nothing could surprise him. It was the most naturalcircumstance in life that two people should arrive at his house in anautomobile at half-past six in the evening and wish to get married: ifthey chose this method instead of the one involving awnings and policemenand uncomfortably-arrayed relations and friends, it was none of Mr. White's affair. He led them into the Gothic sanctum at the rear of thehouse where the famous sermons were written that shook the sounding-boardof the temple where the gentleman preached, --the sermons that sometimesgot into the newspapers. Mr. White cleared his throat. 

"I am--very familiar with your name, Mr. Chiltern, " he said, "and it is apleasure to be able to serve you, and the lady who is so shortly to beyour wife. Your servant arrived with your note at four o'clock. Tenminutes later, and I should have missed him. "

And then Honora heard Chiltern saying somewhat coldly:--"In order tosave time, Mr. White, I wish to tell you that Mrs. Leffingwell has beendivorced--"

The Reverend Mr. White put up a hand before him, and looked down at thecarpet, as one who would not dwell upon painful things. 

"Unfortunate--ahem--mistakes will occur in life, Mr. Chiltern--in thebest of lives, " he replied. "Say no more about it. I am sure, looking atyou both--"

"Very well then, " said Chiltern brusquely, "I knew you would have toknow. And here, " he added, "is an essential paper. "

A few minutes later, in continuation of the same strange dream, Honorawas standing at Chiltern's side and the Reverend Mr. White was addressingthem: What he said--apart of it at least--seemed curiously familiar. Chiltern put a ring on a finger of her ungloved hand. It was a suprememoment in her destiny--this she knew. Between her responses she repeatedit to herself, but the mighty fact refused to be registered. And then, suddenly, rang out the words:

 "Those whom God hath joined together let no man Put asunder. "

Those whom God hath joined together! Mr. White was congratulating her. Other people were in the room--the minister's son, his wife, hisbrother-in-law. She was in the street again, in the automobile, withoutknowing how she got there, and Chiltern close beside her in thelimousine. 

"My wife!" he whispered. 

Was she? Could it be true, be lasting, be binding for ever and ever? Herhand pressed his convulsively. 

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried, "care for me--stay by me forever. Will youpromise?"

"I promise, Honora, " he repeated. "Henceforth we are one. "

Honora would have prolonged forever that honeymoon on summer seas. Inthose blissful days she was content to sit by the hour watching him as, bareheaded in the damp salt breeze, he sailed the great schooner and gavesharp orders to the crew. He was a man who would be obeyed, and even hisflashes of temper pleased her. He was her master, too, and she gloried inthe fact. By the aid of the precious light within her, she studied him. 

He loved her mightily, fiercely, but withal tenderly. With her alone hewas infinitely tender, and it seemed that something in him cried out forbattle against the rest of the world. He had his way, in port and out ofit. He brooked no opposition, and delighted to carry, against hiscaptain's advice, more canvas than was wise when it blew heavily. But theyacht, like a woman, seemed a creature of his will; to know no fear whenshe felt his guiding hand, even though the green water ran in thescuppers. 

And every day anew she scanned his face, even as he scanned the face ofthe waters. What was she searching for? To have so much is to becomemiserly, to fear lest a grain of the precious store be lost. On thesecond day they had anchored, for an hour or two, between the sandyheadlands of a small New England port, and she had stood on the deckwatching his receding figure under the flag of the gasoline launch as itmade its way towards the deserted wharves. Beyond the wharves was anelm-arched village street, and above the verdure rose the white cupola ofthe house of some prosperous sea-captain of bygone times. Honora had notwished to go ashore. First he had begged, and then he had laughed as hehad leaped into the launch. She lay in a chaise longue, watching itswinging idly at the dock. 

The night before he had written letters and telegrams. Once he had lookedup at her as she sat with a book in her hand across the saloon, andcaught her eyes. She had been pretending not to watch him. 

"Wedding announcements, " he said. 

And she had smiled back at him bravely. Such was the first acknowledgmentbetween them that the world existed. 

"A little late, " he observed, smiling in his turn as he changed his pen, "but they'll have to make allowances for the exigencies of the situation. And they've been after me to settle down for so many years that theyought to be thankful to get them at all. I've told them that after adecent period they may come to Grenoble--in the late autumn. We don'twant anybody before then, do we, Honora?"

"No, " she said faintly; and added, "I shall always be satisfied with youalone, Hugh. "

He laughed happily, and presently she went up on deck and stood with herface to the breeze. There were no sounds save the musical beat of thewater against the strakes, and the low hum of wind on the toweringvibrant sails. One moulten silver star stood out above all others. To thenorthward, somewhere beyond the spot where sea and sky met in the hiddenkiss of night, was Newport, --were his relations and her friends. What didthey think? He, at least, had no anxieties about the world, why shouldshe? Their defiance of it had been no greater than that of an hundredothers on whom it had smiled benignly. But had not the others truckledmore to its conventions? Little she cared about it, indeed, and if he hadturned the prow of the 'Adhemar' towards the unpeopled places of theearth, her joy would have been untroubled. 

One after another the days glided by, while with the sharpened senses ofa great love she watched for a sign of the thing that slept in him--ofthe thing that had driven him home from his wanderings to re-create hislife. When it awoke, she would have to share him; now he was hers alone. Her feelings towards this thing did not assume the proportions ofjealousy or fear; they were merely alert, vaguely disquieting. Thesleeping thing was not a monster. No, but it might grow into one, if itsappetite were not satisfied, and blame her. 

She told herself that, had he lacked ambition, she could not have lovedhim, and did not stop to reflect upon the completeness of hersatisfaction with the Viking. He seemed, indeed, in these weeks, one whomthe sea has marked for its own, and her delight in watching him as hemoved about the boat never palled. His nose reminded her of the prow of aship of war, and his deep-set eyes were continually searching the horizonfor an enemy. Such were her fancies. In the early morning when he donnedhis sleeveless bathing suit, she could never resist the temptation tofollow him on deck to see him plunge into the cold ocean: it gave her adelightful little shiver--and he was made like one of the gods ofValhalla. 

She had discovered, too, in these intimate days, that he had theNorthman's temperament; she both loved and dreaded his moods. Andsometimes, when the yacht glided over smoother seas, it was his pleasureto read to her, even poetry and the great epics. That he should be fondof the cruel Scotch ballads she was not surprised; but his familiaritywith the book of Job, and his love for it, astonished her. It was asingular library that he had put on board the 'Adhemar'. 

One evening when the sails flapped idly and the blocks rattled, when theyhad been watching in silence the flaming orange of the sunset above theamethystine Camden hills, he spoke the words for which she had beenwaiting. 

"Honora, what do you say to going back to Grenoble?"

She succeeded in smiling at him. 

"Whenever you like, Hugh, " she said. 

So the bowsprit of the 'Adhemar' was turned homewards; and with everyleague of water they left behind them his excitement and impatienceseemed to grow. 

"I can't wait to show it to you, Honora--to see you in it, " he exclaimed. "I have so long pictured you there, and our life as it will be. "

CHAPTER XII

THE ENTRANCE INTO EDEN

They had travelled through the night, and in the early morning left theexpress at a junction. Honora sat in the straight-backed seat of thesmaller train with parted lips and beating heart, gazing now and again atthe pearly mists rising from the little river valley they were climbing. Chiltern was like a schoolboy. 

"We'll soon be there, " he cried, but it was nearly nine o'clock when theyreached the Gothic station that marked the end of the line. It was aChiltern line, he told her, and she was already within the feudal domain. Time indeed that she awoke! She reached the platform to confront a groupof upturned, staring faces, and for the moment her courage failed her. Somehow, with Chiltern's help, she made her way to a waiting omnibusbacked up against the boards. The footman touched his hat, thegrey-headed coachman saluted, and they got in. As the horses started offat a quick trot, Honora saw that the group on the station platform hadwith one consent swung about to stare after them. 

They passed through the main street of the town, lined with plate-glasswindows and lively signs, and already bustling with the business of theday, through humbler thoroughfares, and presently rumbled over a bridgethat spanned a rushing stream confined between the foundation walls ofmills. Hundreds of yards of mills stretched away on either side; millswith windows wide open, and within them Honora heard the clicking androaring of machinery, and saw the men and women at their daily tasks. Life was a strange thing that they should be doing this while she shouldbe going to live in luxury at a great country place. On one of the wallsshe read the legend Chiltern and Company. 

"They still keep our name, " said Hugh, "although they are in the trust. "

He pointed out to her, with an air of pride, every landmark by theroadside. In future they were to have a new meaning--they were to beshared with her. And he spoke of the times--as child and youth, home fromthe seashore or college, he had driven over the same road. It wound tothe left, behind the mills, threaded a village of neat wooden houseswhere the better class of operatives lived, reached the river again, andturned at last through a brick gateway, past a lodge in the dense shadeof sheltering boughs, into a wooded drive that climbed, by gentledegrees, a slope. Human care for generations had given to the place atradition. People had lived here and loved those trees--his people. Andcould it be that she was to inherit all this, with him? Was her namereally Chiltern?

The beating of her heart became a pain when in the distance through thespreading branches she caught a glimpse of the long, low outline of thehouse, a vision at once familiar and unreal. How often in the months goneby had she called up the memory of the photograph she had once seen, onlyto doubt the more that she should ever behold that house and these treeswith him by her side! They drew up before the door, and a venerable, ruddy-faced butler stood gravely on the steps to welcome them. Hughleaped out. He was still the schoolboy. 

"Starling, " he said, "this is Mrs. Chiltern. "

Honora smiled tremulously. 

"How do you do, Starling?" she said. 

"Starling's an old friend, Honora. He's been here ever since I canremember. "

The blue eyes of the old servant were fixed on her with a strange, searching expression. Was it compassion she read in them, on this thatshould be the happiest of her days? In that instant, unaccountably, herheart went out to the old man; and something of what he had seen, andsomething of what was even now passing within him, came to herintuitively. It was as though, unexpectedly, she had found a friend--anda friend who had had no previous intentions of friendship. 

"I'm sure I wish you happiness, madame, --and Mr. Hugh, he said in a voicenot altogether firm. 

"Happiness!" cried Hugh. "I've never known what it was before now, Starling. "

The old man's eyes glistened. 

"And you've come to stay, sir?"

"All my life, Starling, " said Hugh. 

They entered the hall. It was wide and cool, white panelled to theceiling, with a dark oak floor. At the back of it was aneighteenth-century stairway, with a band of red carpet running up thesteps, and a wrought-iron guard with a velvet-covered rail. Halfway up, the stairway divided at a landing, lighted by great triple windows ofsmall panes. 

"You may have breakfast in half an hour, Starling, " said Chiltern, andled Honora up the stairs into the east wing, where he flung open one ofthe high mahogany doors on the south side. "These are your rooms, Honora. I have had Keller do them all over for you, and I hope you'll like them. If you don't, we'll change them again. "

Her answer was an exclamation of delight. There was a bedroom in pink, with brocaded satin on the walls, and an oriel window thrust out over thegarden; a panelled boudoir at the corner of the house, with a marblemantel before which one of Marie Antoinette's duchesses had warmed herfeet; and shelves lined with gold-lettered books. From its windows, across the flowering shrubbery and through the trees, she saw thegleaming waters of a lake, and the hills beyond. From this view sheturned, and caught her breath, and threw her arms about her husband'sneck. He was astonished to see that her eyes were filled with tears. 

"Oh, Hugh, " she cried, "it's too perfect! It almost makes me afraid. "

"We will be very happy, dearest, " he said, and as he kissed her helaughed at the fates. 

"I hope so--I pray so, " she said, as she clung to him. "But--don'tlaugh, --I can't bear it. "

He patted her cheek. 

"What a strange little girl you are!" he said. "I suppose I shouldn't bemad about you if you weren't that way. Sometimes I wonder how many womenI have married. "

She smiled at him through her tears. 

"Isn't that polygamy, Hugh?" she asked. 

It was all like a breathless tale out of one of the wonder books ofyouth. So, at least, it seemed to Honora as she stood, refreshed with anew white linen gown, hesitating on the threshold of her door beforedescending. Some time the bell must ring, or the cock crow, or the fairybeckon with a wand, and she would have to go back. Back where? She didnot know--she could not remember. Cinderella dreaming by the embers, perhaps. 

He was awaiting her in the little breakfast room, its glass casementsopen to the garden with the wall and the round stone seat. The simmeringurn, the white cloth, the shining silver, the big green melons that thehot summer sun had ripened for them alone, and Hugh's eyes as they restedon her--such was her illusion. Nor was it quite dispelled when he lighteda pipe and they started to explore their Eden, wandering through chamberswith, low ceilings in the old part of the house, and larger, higherapartments in the portion that was called new. In the great darkenedlibrary, side by side against the Spanish leather on the walls, hung theportraits of his father and mother in heavy frames of gilt. 

Her husband was pleased that she should remain so long before them. Andfor a while, as she stood lost in contemplation, he did not speak. Onceshe glanced at him, and then back at the stern face of the General, --stern, yet kindly. The eyes, deep-set under bushy brows, like Hugh's, were full of fire; and yet the artist had made them human, too. A dark, reddish brown, close-trimmed mustache and beard hid the mouth and chin. Hugh had inherited the nose, but the father's forehead was wider andfuller. Hugh was at once a newer type, and an older. The face and figureof the General were characteristic of the mid-century American of thenorthern states, a mixture of boldness and caution and Puritanism, whohad won his battles in war and commerce by a certain native quality ofmind. 

"I never appreciated him, " said Hugh at length, "until after he died--long after. Until now, in fact. At times we were good friends, and thensomething he would say or do would infuriate me, and I would purposelymake him angry. He had a time and a rule for everything, and I could notbear rules. Breakfast was on the minute, an hour in his study to attendto affairs about the place, so many hours in his office at the mills, inthe president's room at the bank, vestry and charity meetings at regularintervals. No movement in all this country round about was ever set onfoot without him. He was one to be finally reckoned with. And since hisdeath, many proofs have come to me of the things he did for people ofwhich the world was ignorant. I have found out at last that his way oflife was, in the main, the right way. But I know now, Honora, " he addedsoberly, slipping his hand within her arm, "I know now that without you Inever could do all I intend to do. "

"Oh, don't say that!" she cried. "Don't say that!"

"Why not?" he asked, smiling at her vehemence. "It is not a confession ofweakness. I had the determination, it is true. I could--I should havedone something, but my deeds would have lacked the one thing needful tolift them above the commonplace--at least for me. You are theinspiration. With you here beside me, I feel that I can take up this workwith joy. Do you understand?"

She pressed his hand with her arm. 

"Hugh, " she said slowly, "I hope that I shall be a help, and not--not ahindrance. "

"A hindrance!" he exclaimed. "You don't know, you can't realize, what youare to me. "

She was silent, and when she lifted her eyes it was to rest them on theportrait of his mother. And she seemed to read in the sweet, sad eyes aquestion--a question not to be put into words. Chiltern, following hergaze, did not speak: for a space they looked at the portrait together, and in silence . . . . 

From one end of the house to the other they went, Hugh reviving at thesight of familiar objects a hundred memories of his childhood; and shetrying to imagine that childhood, so different from her own, passed inthis wonderful place. In the glass cases of the gun room, among theshining, blue barrels which he had used in all parts of the world, wasthe little shotgun his father had had made for him when he was twelveyears old. Hugh locked the door after them when they came out, and smiledas he put the key in his pocket. 

"My destroying days are over, " he declared. 

Honora put on a linen hat and they took the gravelled path to thestables, where the horses, one by one, were brought out into thecourtyard for their inspection. In anticipation of this hour there was ablood bay for Honora, which Chiltern had bought in New York. She gave alittle cry of delight when she saw the horse shining in the sunlight, hisnostrils in the air, his brown eyes clear, his tapering neck patternedwith veins. And then there was the dairy, with the fawn-coloured cows andcalves; and the hillside pastures that ran down to the river, and thefarm lands where the stubbled grain was yellowing. They came back by thepath that wound through the trees and shrubbery bordering the lake to thewalled garden, ablaze in the mellow sunlight with reds and purples, salvias and zinnias, dahlias, gladioli, and asters. 

Here he left her for a while, sitting dreamily on the stone bench. Mrs. Hugh Chiltern, of Grenoble! Over and over she repeated that name toherself, and it refused somehow to merge with her identity. Yet was shemistress of this fair domain; of that house which had sheltered them racefor a century, and the lines of which her eye caressed with a lovingreverence; and the Chiltern pearls even then lay hidden around herthroat. 

Her thoughts went back, at this, to the gentle lady to whom they hadbelonged, and whose look began again to haunt her. Honora's superstitionstartled her. What did it mean, that look? She tried to recall where shehad seen it before, and suddenly remembered that the eyes of the oldbutler had held something not unlike it. Compassionate--this was the onlyword that would describe it. No, it had not proclaimed her an intruder, though it may have been ready to do so the moment before her appearance;for there was a note of surprise in it--surprise and compassion. 

This was the lady in whose footsteps she was to walk, whose charities andhousehold cares she was to assume! Tradition, order, observance, responsibility, authority it was difficult to imagine these as a logicalpart of the natural sequence of her life. She would begin to-day, if Godwould only grant her these things she had once contemned, and that seemednow so precious. Her life--her real life would begin to-day. Why not? Howhard she would strive to be worthy of this incomparable gift! It washers, hers! She listened, but the only answer was the humming of the beesin the still September morning. 

Chiltern's voice aroused her. He was standing in the breakfast roomtalking to the old butler. 

"You're sure there were no other letters, Starling, besides these bills?"

Honora became tense. 

"No, sir, " she heard the butler say, and she seemed to detect in hisdeferential voice the note of anxiety suppressed in the other's. "I'mmost particular about letters, sir, as one who lived so many years withyour father would be. All that came were put in your study, Mr. Hugh. "

"It doesn't matter, " answered Chiltern, carelessly, and stepped out intothe garden. He caught sight of her, hesitated the fraction of a moment, and as he came forward again the cloud in his eyes vanished. And yet shewas aware that he was regarding her curiously. 

"What, " he said gayly, "still here?"

"It is too beautiful!" she cried. "I could sit here forever. "

She lifted her face trustfully, smilingly, to his, and he stooped downand kissed it . . . . 

To give the jealous fates not the least chance to take offence, thehigher life they were to lead began at once. And yet it seemed at timesto Honora as though this higher life were the gift the fates would mostbegrudge: a gift reserved for others, the pretensions to which were akind of knavery. Merriment, forgetfulness, music, the dance; the cup ofpleasure and the feast of Babylon--these might more readily have beenvouchsafed; even deemed to have been bargained for. But to take thatwhich supposedly had been renounced--virtue, sobriety, security, respect--would this be endured? She went about it breathlessly, like a thief. 

Never was there a more exemplary household. They rose at half-past seven, they breakfasted at a quarter after eight; at nine, young Mr. Manning, the farm superintendent, was in waiting, and Hugh spent two or more hoursin his company, inspecting, correcting, planning; for two thousand acresof the original Chiltern estate still remained. Two thousand acres which, since the General's death, had been at sixes and sevens. The General'sstudy, which was Hugh's now, was piled high with new and bulky books oncattle and cultivation of the soil. Government and state and privateexperts came and made tests and went away again; new machinery arrived, and Hugh passed hours in the sun, often with Honora by his side, installing it. General Chiltern had been president and founder of theGrenoble National Bank, and Hugh took up his duties as a director. 

Honora sought, with an energy that had in it an element of desperation, to keep pace with her husband. For she was determined that he should haveno interests in which she did not share. In those first days it was herdread that he might grow away from her, and instinct told her that now ornever must the effort be made. She, too, studied farming; not from books, but from him. In their afternoon ride along the shady river road, whichwas the event of her day, she encouraged him to talk of his plans andproblems, that he might thus early form the habit of bringing them toher. And the unsuspecting male in him responded, innocent of the simplesubterfuge. After an exhaustive discourse on the elements lacking in thevalley soil, to which she had listened in silent intensity, he wouldexclaim:

"By George, Honora, you're a continual surprise to me. I had no idea awoman would take an interest in these things, or grasp them the way youdo. "

Lordly commendations these, and she would receive them with a flush ofgratitude. 

Nor was it ever too hot, or she too busy with household cares, for her tofollow him to the scene of his operations, whatever these might be: shewould gladly stand for an hour listening to a consultation with theveterinary about an ailing cow. Her fear was lest some matter of likeimportance should escape her. She had private conversations with Mr. Manning, that she might surprise her husband by an unsuspected knowledge. Such were her ruses. 

The housekeeper who had come up from New York was the subject of aconjugal conversation. 

"I am going to send her away, Hugh, " Honora announced. "I don't believe---your mother had one. "

The housekeeper's departure was the beginning of Honora's real intimacywith Starling. Complicity, perhaps, would be a better word for thecommencement of this relationship. First of all, there was an inspectionof the family treasures: the table-linen, the silver, and the china--Sevres, Royal Worcester, and Minton, and the priceless dinner-set, ofLowestoft which had belonged to Alexander Chiltern, reserved, for greatoccasions only: occasions that Starling knew by heart; their dates, andthe guests the Lowestoft had honoured. His air was ceremonial as he laid, reverently, the sample pieces on the table before her, but it seemed toHonora that he spoke as one who recalls departed glories, who held aconviction that the Lowestoft would never be used again. 

Although by unalterable custom he submitted, at breakfast, the menus ofthe day to Hugh, the old butler came afterwards to Honora's boudoirduring her struggle with the account books. Sometimes she would look upand surprise his eyes fixed upon her, and one day she found at her elbowa long list made out in a painstaking hand. 

"What's this, Starling?" she asked. 

"If you please, madame, " he answered, "they're the current prices in themarkets--here. "

She thanked him. Nor was his exquisite delicacy in laying stress upon thelocality lost upon her. That he realized the magnitude--for her--of thetask to which she had set herself; that he sympathized deeply with thespirit which had undertaken it, she was as sure as though he had said so. He helped her thus in a dozen unobtrusive ways, never once recognizingher ignorance; but he made her feel the more that that ignorance was ashameful thing not to be spoken of. Speculations upon him wereirresistible. She was continually forgetting the nature of his situation, and he grew gradually to typify in her mind the Grenoble of the past. Sheknew his principles as well as though he had spoken them--which he neverdid. For him, the world had become awry; he abhorred divorce, and thatthis modern abomination had touched the house of Chiltern was a calamitythat had shaken the very foundations of his soul. In spite of this, hehad remained. Why? Perhaps from habit, perhaps from love of the familyand Hugh, --perhaps to see!

And having stayed, fascination had laid hold of him, --of that she wassure, --and his affections had incomprehensibly become involved. He was asone assisting at a high tragedy not unworthy of him, the outcome of whichhe never for an instant doubted. And he gave Honora the impression thathe alone, inscrutable, could have pulled aside the curtain and revealedthe end. 

CHAPTER XIII

OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE GATES

Honora paused in her toilet, and contemplated for a moment the whiteskirt that her maid presented. 

"I think I'll wear the blue pongee to-day, Mathilde, " she said. 

The decision for the blue pongee was the culmination of a struggle begunwith the opening of her eyes that morning. It was Sunday, and the timewas at hand when she must face the world. Might it not be delayed alittle while--a week longer? For the remembrance of the staring eyeswhich had greeted her on her arrival at the station at Grenoble troubledher. It seemed to her a cruel thing that the house of God should holdsuch terrors for her: to-day she had a longing for it that she had neverfelt in her life before. 

Chiltern was walking in the garden, waiting for her to breakfast withhim, and her pose must have had in it an element of the self-consciouswhen she appeared, smilingly, at the door. 

"Why, you're all dressed up, " he said. 

"It's Sunday, Hugh. "

"So it is, " he agreed, with what may have been a studied lightness--shecould not tell. 

"I'm going to church, " she said bravely. 

"I can't say much for old Stopford, " declared her husband. "His sermonsused to arouse all the original sin in me, when I had to listen to them. "

She poured out his coffee. 

"I suppose one has to take one's clergyman as one does the weather, " shesaid. "We go to church for something else besides the sermon--don't we?"

"I suppose so, if we go at all, " he replied. "Old Stopford imposes apretty heavy penalty. "

"Too heavy for you?" she asked, and smiled at him as she handed him thecup. 

"Too heavy for me, " he said, returning her smile. "To tell you the truth, Honora, I had an overdose of church in my youth, here and at school, andI've been trying to even up ever since. "

"You'd like me to go, wouldn't you, Hugh?" she ventured, after a silence. 

"Indeed I should, " he answered, and again she wondered to what extent hiscordiality was studied, or whether it were studied at all. "I'm very fondof that church, in spite of the fact that--that I may be said todissemble my fondness. " She laughed with him, and he became serious. "Istill contribute--the family's share toward its support. My father wasvery proud of it, but it is really my mother's church. It was due to herthat it was built. "

Thus was comedy played--and Honora by no the means sure that it was acomedy. Even her alert instinct had not been able to detect the acting, and the intervening hours were spent in speculating whether her fears hadnot been overdone. Nevertheless, under the eyes of Starling, at twentyminutes to eleven she stepped into the victoria with an outward courage, and drove down the shady avenue towards the gates. Sweet-toned bells wereringing as she reached the residence portion of the town, and subduedpedestrians in groups and couples made their way along the sidewalks. They stared at her; and she in turn, with heightened colour, stared ather coachman's back. After all, this first Sunday would be the mostdifficult. 

The carriage turned into a street arched by old elms, and flanked by thehouses of the most prosperous townspeople. Some of these were of theold-fashioned, classic type, and others new examples of a nationalarchitecture seeking to find itself, --white and yellow colonial, roughcast modifications of the Shakespearian period, and nondescriptmixtures of cobblestones and shingles. Each was surrounded by trim lawnsand shrubbery. The church itself was set back from the street. It was ofbluish stone, and half covered with Virginia creeper. 

At this point, had the opportunity for a secret retreat presented itself, Honora would have embraced it, for until now she had not realized thefull extent of the ordeal. Had her arrival been heralded by soundingtrumpets, the sensation it caused could not have been greater. In herEden, the world had been forgotten; the hum of gossip beyond the gateshad not reached her. But now, as the horses approached the curb, theirrestive feet clattering on the hard pavement, in the darkened interior ofthe church she saw faces turned, and entering worshippers pausing in thedoorway. Something of what the event meant for Grenoble dawned upon her:something, not all; but all that she could bear. 

If it be true that there is no courage equal to that which a great lovebegets in a woman, Honora's at that moment was sublime. Her cheekstingled, and her knees weakened under her as she ran the gantlet to thechurch door, where she was met by a gentleman on whose face she readastonishment unalloyed: amazement, perhaps, is not too strong a word forthe sensation it conveyed to her, and it occurred to her afterwards thatthere was an element in it of outrage. It was a countenance peculiarlyadapted to such an expression--yellow, smooth-shaven, heavy-jowled, withone drooping eye; and she needed not to be told that she had encountered, at the outset, the very pillar of pillars. The frock coat, the heavywatch chain, the square-toed boots, all combined to make a Presence. 

An instinctive sense of drama amongst the onlookers seemed to create ahush, as though these had been the unwilling witnesses to an approachingcollision and were awaiting the crash. The gentleman stood planted in theinner doorway, his drooping eye fixed on hers. 

"I am Mrs. Chiltern, " she faltered. 

He hesitated the fraction of an instant, but he somehow managed to makeit plain that the information was superfluous. He turned without a wordand marched majestically up the aisle before her to the fourth pew fromthe front on the right. There he faced about and laid a protesting handon the carved walnut, as though absolving himself in the sight of his Godand his fellow-citizens. Honora fell on her knees. 

She strove to calm herself by prayer: but the glances of a congregationfocussed between her shoulder-blades seemed to burn her back, and thethought of the concentration of so many minds upon her distracted herown. She could think of no definite prayer. Was this God's tabernacle? orthe market-place, and she at the tail of a cart? And was she not HughChiltern's wife, entitled to his seat in the place of worship of hisfathers? She rose from her knees, and her eyes fell on the softly glowingcolours of a stained-glass window: In memoriam--Alicia Reyburn Chiltern. Hugh's mother, the lady in whose seat she sat. 

The organist, a sprightly young man, came in and began turning over hismusic, and the choir took their-places, in the old-fashioned' manner. Then came the clergyman. His beard was white, his face long and narrowand shrivelled, his forehead protruding, his eyes of the cold blue of awinter's sky. The service began, and Honora repeated the familiar prayerswhich she had learned by heart in childhood--until her attention wasarrested by the words she spoke: "We have offended against Thy holylaws. " Had she? Would not God bless her marriage? It was not until thenthat she began to pray with an intensity that blotted out the world thatHe would not punish her if she had done wrong in His sight. Surely, ifshe lived henceforth in fear of Him, He would let her keep this pricelesslove which had come to her! And it was impossible that He should regardit as an inordinate and sinful affection--since it had filled her lifewith light. As the wife of Hugh Chiltern she sought a blessing. Would Godwithhold it? He would not, she was sure, if they lived a sober and arighteous life. He would take that into account, for He was just. 

Then she grew calmer, and it was not until after the doctrinal sermonwhich Hugh had predicted that her heart began to beat painfully oncemore, when the gentleman who had conducted her to her seat passed her theplate. He inspired her with an instinctive fear; and she tried toimagine, in contrast, the erect and soldierly figure of General Chilternperforming the same office. Would he have looked on her more kindly?

When the benediction was pronounced, she made her way out of the churchwith downcast eyes. The people parted at the door to let her pass, andshe quickened her step, gained the carriage at last, and drove away--seemingly leaving at her back a buzz of comment. Would she ever havethe courage to do it again?

The old butler, as he flung open the doors at her approach, seemed to bescrutinizing her. 

"Where's Mr. Chiltern, Starling?" she asked. 

"He's gone for a ride, madame. "

Hugh had gone for a ride!

She did not see him until lunch was announced, when he came to the tablein his riding clothes. It may have been that he began to talk a littleeagerly about the excursion he had made to an outlying farm and theconversation he had had with the farmer who leased it. 

"His lease is out in April, " said Chiltern, "and when I told him Ithought I'd turn the land into the rest of the estate he tried to bribeme into a renewal. "

"Bribe you?"

Chiltern laughed. 

"Only in joke, of course. The man's a character, and he's something of apolitician in these parts. He intimated that there would be a vacancy inthis congressional district next year, that Grierson was going to resign, and that a man with a long purse who belonged to the soil might have achance. I suppose he thinks I would buy it. "

"And--would you like to go to Congress, Hugh?"

"Well, " he said, smiling, "a man never can tell when he may have to eathis words. I don't say I shouldn't--in the distant future. It would havepleased the General. But if I go, " he added with characteristic vigour, "it will be in spite of the politicians, not because of them. If I go Ishan't go bound, and I'll fight for it. I should enjoy that. "

And she was able to accord him the smile of encouragement he expected. 

"I am sure you would, " she replied. "I think you might have waited untilthis afternoon and taken me, " she reproached him. "You know how I enjoygoing with you to those places. "

It was not until later in the meal that he anticipated, in an admirablyaccidental manner, the casual remark she had intended to make aboutchurch. 

"Your predictions were fulfilled, " she answered; "the sermon wasn'tthrilling. "

He glanced at her. And instead of avoiding his eyes, she smiled intothem. 

"Did you see the First Citizen of Grenoble?" he inquired. 

"I am sure of it, " she laughed, "if he's yellow, with a drooping eye anda presence; he was kind enough to conduct me to the pew. "

"Yes, " he exclaimed, "that's Israel Simpson--you couldn't miss him. How Iused to hate him when I was a boy! I haven't quite got over it yet. Iused to outdo myself to make things uncomfortable for him when he came uphere--I think it was because he always seemed to be truckling. He wasridiculously servile and polite in those days. He's changed since, " addedHugh, dryly. "He must quite have forgotten by this time that the Generalmade him. "

"Is--is he so much?" said Honora. 

Her husband laughed. 

"Is it possible that you have seen him and still ask that?" said he. "Heis Grenoble. Once the Chilterns were. He is the head of the honoured firmof Israel Simpson and Sons, the president of the Grenoble National Bank, the senior warden of the church, a director in the railway. Twice a year, in the columns of the New York newspapers dedicated to the prominentarrivals at the hotels, you may read the name of Israel Simpson ofGrenoble. Three times has he been abroad, respectably accompanied byMaria, who invariably returns to read a paper on the cathedrals and artbefore the Woman's Club. "

Maria is his wife, I suppose. "

"Yes. Didn't you run across Maria? She's quite as pronounced, in her way, as Israel. A very tower of virtue. "

"I didn't meet anybody, Hugh, " said Honora. "I'll--I'll look for her nextSunday. I hurried out. It was a little embarrassing the first time, " sheadded, "your family being so prominent in Grenoble. "

Upon this framework, the prominence of his family, she built up duringthe coning week a new structure of hope. It was strange she had neverthought before of this quite obvious explanation for the curiosity ofGrenoble. Perhaps--perhaps it was not prejudice, after all--or not all ofit. The wife of the Chiltern heir would naturally inspire a considerableinterest in any event, and Mrs. Hugh Chiltern in particular. And thesepeople would shortly understand, if they did not now understand, thatHugh had come back voluntarily and from a sense of duty to assume theburdens and responsibilities that so many of his generation and class hadshirked. This would tell in their favour, surely. At this point in hermeditations she consulted the mirror, to behold a modest, slim-waistedyoung woman becomingly arrayed in white linen, whose cheeks were aglowwith health, whose eyes seemingly reflected the fire of a distant highvision. Not a Poppaea, certainly, nor a Delila. No, it was unbelievablethat this, the very field itself of their future labours, should bedenied them. Her heart, at the mere conjecture, turned to stone. 

During the cruise of the Adhemar she had often watched, in the gatheringdarkness, those revolving lights on headland or shoal that spread now abright band across the sea, and again left the waters desolate in thenight. Thus, ceaselessly revolving from white hope to darker doubt, wereher thoughts, until sometimes she feared to be alone with them, andsurprised him by her presence in his busiest moments. For he was goingahead on the path they had marked out with a faith in which she couldperceive no flaw. If faint and shadowy forms had already come betweenthem, he gave no evidence of having as yet discerned these. There was theabsence of news from his family, for instance, --the Graingers, theStranger, the Shorters, and the Pendletons, whom she had never seen; hehad never spoken to her of this, and he seemed to hold it as of noaccount. Her instinct whispered that it had left its mark, a hidden mark. And while she knew that consideration for her prompted him to hold hispeace, she told herself that she would have been happier had he spoken ofit. 

Always she was brought back to Grenoble when she saw him thus, manlike, with his gaze steadily fixed on the task. If New York itself withheldrecognition, could Grenoble--provincial and conservative Grenoble, preserving still the ideas of the last century for which his family hadso unflinchingly stood--be expected to accord it? New York! New York wasmany, many things, she knew. The great house could have been filled fromweekend to week-end from New York; but not with Graingers and Pendletonsand Stranger; not with those around the walls of whose fortresses thecurrents of modernity still swept impotently; not with those who, whilenot contemning pleasure, still acknowledged duty; not with those whoseassured future was that for which she might have sold her soul itself. Social free lances, undoubtedly, and unattached men; those who lived inthe world of fashion but were not squeamish--Mrs. Kame, for example; andladies like Mrs. Eustace Rindge, who had tried a second throw forhappiness, --such votaries of excitement would undoubtedly have been morethan glad to avail themselves of the secluded hospitality of Grenoble forthat which they would have been pleased to designate as "a lively time. "Honora shuddered at the thought: And, as though the shudder had beenprophetic, one morning the mail contained a letter from Mrs. Kameherself. 

Mercifully Hugh had not noticed it. Honora did not recognize thehandwriting, but she slipped the envelope into her lap, fearful of whatit might contain, and, when she gained the privacy of her rooms, read itwith quickening breath. Mrs. Kame's touch was light and her imaginationsympathetic; she was the most adaptable of the feminine portion of hernation, and since the demise of her husband she had lived, abroad and athome, among men and women of a world that does not dot its i's or crossits t's. Nevertheless, the letter filled Honora with a deep apprehensionand a deeper resentment. Plainly and clearly stamped between itsdelicately worded lines was the claim of a comradeship born of Honora'srecent act. She tore the paper into strips and threw it into the flamesand opened the window to the cool air of the autumn morning. She had afeeling of contamination that was intolerable. 

Mrs. Kame had proposed herself--again the word "delicately" must be used--for one of Honora's first house-parties. Only an acute perception couldhave read in the lady's praise of Hugh a masterly avoidance of that partof his career already registered on the social slate. Mrs. Kame hadthought about them and their wonderful happiness in these autumn days atGrenoble; to intrude on that happiness yet awhile would be a sacrilege. Later, perhaps, they would relent and see something of their friends, andthrow open again the gates of a beautiful place long closed to the world. And--without the air of having picked the single instance, but of havingchosen from many--Mrs. Kame added that she had only lately seen ElsieShorter, whose admiration for Honora was greater than ever. A sentiment, Honora reflected a little bitterly, that Mrs. Shorter herself had nottaken the pains to convey. Consistency was not Elsie's jewel. 

It must perhaps be added for the sake of enlightenment that since goingto Newport Honora's view of the writer of this letter had changed. Inother words, enlarging ideals had dwarfed her somewhat; it was strictlytrue that the lady was a boon companion of everybody. Her Catholicism hadtwo limitations only: that she must be amused, and that she must not--inwhat she deemed the vulgar sense--be shocked. 

Honora made several attempts at an answer before she succeeded in saying, simply, that Hugh was too absorbed in his work of reconstruction of theestate for them to have house-parties this autumn. And even this was aconcession hard for her pride to swallow. She would have preferred not toreply at all, and this slightest of references to his work--and hers--seemed to degrade it. Before she folded the sheet she looked again atthat word "reconstruction" and thought of eliminating it. It was tooobviously allied to "redemption"; and she felt that Mrs. Kame could notunderstand redemption, and would ridicule it. Honora went downstairs anddropped her reply guiltily into the mail-bag. It was for Hugh's sake shewas sending it, and from his eyes she was hiding it. 

And, while we are dealing with letters, one, or part of one, fromHonora's aunt, may perhaps be inserted here. It was an answer to one thatHonora had written a few days after her installation at Grenoble, thecontents of which need not be gone into: we, who know her, would neitherlaugh nor weep at reading it, and its purport may be more or lessaccurately surmised from her aunt's reply. 

 "As I wrote you at the time, my dear, "--so it ran "the shock which your sudden marriage with Mr. Chiltern caused us was great--so great that I cannot express it in words. I realize that I am growing old, and perhaps the world is changing faster than I imagine. And I wrote you, too, that I would not be true to myself if I told you that what you have done was right in my eyes. I have asked myself whether my horror of divorce and remarriage may not in some degree be due to the happiness of my life with your uncle. I am, undoubtedly, an exceptionally fortunate woman; and as I look backwards I see that the struggles and trials which we have shared together were really blessings. 

 "Nevertheless, dear Honora, you are, as your uncle wrote you, our child, and nothing can alter that fact in our hearts. We can only pray with all our strength that you may find happiness and peace in your new life. I try to imagine, as I think of you and what has happened to you in the few years since you have left us--how long they seem!--I try to imagine some of the temptations that have assailed you in that world of which I know nothing. If I cannot, it is because God made us different. I know what you have suffered, and my heart aches for you. 

 "You say that experience has taught you much that you could not have--learned in any other way. I do not doubt it. You tell me that your new life, just begun, will be a dutiful one. Let me repeat that it is my anxious prayer that you have not builded upon sand, that regrets may not come. I cannot say more. I cannot dissemble. Perhaps I have already said too much. 

 "Your loving

 "AUNT MARY. "

An autumn wind was blowing, and Honora gazed out of the window at thesteel-blue, ruffled waters of the lake. Unconsciously she repeated thewords to herself:

"Builded upon sand!"

CHAPTER XIV

CONTAINING PHILOSOPHY FROM MR. GRAINGER

Swiftly came the autumn days, and swiftly went. A bewildering, everchanging, and glorious panorama presented itself, green hillsides struckfirst with flaming crimsons and yellows, and later mellowing into awondrous blending of gentler, tenderer hues; lavender, and wine, and thefaintest of rose colours where the bare beeches massed. Thus the slopeswere spread as with priceless carpets for a festival. Sometimes Honora, watching, beheld from her window the russet dawn on the eastern ridge, and the white mists crouching in strange, ghostly shapes abode the lakeand the rushing river: and she saw these same mists gather again, shivering, at nightfall. In the afternoon they threaded valleys, silentsave for the talk between them and the stirring of the leaves under theirhorses' feet. 

So the Indian summer passed--that breathless season when even happinesshas its premonitions and its pangs. The umber fields, all ploughed andharrowed, lay patiently awaiting the coming again of the quickeningspring. Then fell the rain, the first, cold winter rain that shrouded thevalley and beat down upon the defenceless, dismantled garden and madepools in the hollows of the stone seat: that flung itself againstHonora's window as though begrudging her the warmth and comfort within. Sometimes she listened to it in the night. 

She was watching. How intent was that vigil, how alert and sharpened hersenses, a woman who has watched alone may answer. Now, she felt, was thecrisis at hand: the moment when her future, and his was to hang in thebalance. The work on the farms, which had hitherto left Chiltern butlittle time for thought, had relaxed. In these wet days had he begun tobrood a little? Did he show signs of a reversion to that otherpersonality, the Chiltern she had not known, yet glimpses of whom she hadhad? She recalled the third time she had seen him, the morning at theLilacs in Newport, that had left upon her the curious sense of havinglooked on a superimposed portrait. That Chiltern which she called herViking, and which, with a woman's perversity, she had perhaps loved mostof all, was but one expression of the other man of days gone by. The lifeof that man was a closed book she had never wished to open. Was he dead, or sleeping? And if sleeping, would he awake? How softly she tread!

And in these days, with what exquisite, yet tremulous skill and couragedid she bring up the subject of that other labour they were to undertaketogether--the life and letters of his father. In the early dusk, whenthey had returned from their long rides, she contrived to draw Chilterninto his study. The cheerfulness, the hopefulness, the delight with whichshe approached the task, the increasing enthusiasm she displayed for thecharacter of the General as she read and sorted the letters anddocuments, and the traits of his she lovingly traced in Hugh, were notwithout their effect. It was thus she fanned, ceaselessly and with asmile, and with an art the rarest women possess, the drooping flame. Andthe flame responded. 

How feverishly she worked, unknown to him, he never guessed; so carefullyand unobtrusively planted her suggestions that they were born again inglory as his inspiration. The mist had lifted a little, and she beheldthe next stage beyond. To reach that stage was to keep him intent on thiswork--and--after that, to publish! Ah, if he would only have patience, orif she could keep him distracted through this winter and their night, shemight save him. Love such as hers can even summon genius to its aid, andshe took fire herself at the thought of a book worthy of that love, of abook--though signed by him that would redeem them, and bring a scoffingworld to its knees in praise. She spent hours in the big librarypreparing for Chiltern's coming, with volumes in her lap and a note-bookby her side. 

One night, as they sat by the blazing logs in his study, which had beenthe General's, Chiltern arose impulsively, opened the big safe in thecorner, and took out a leather-bound book and laid it on her lap. Honorastared at it: it was marked: Highlawns, Visitors' Book. "

"It's curious I never thought of it before, " he said, "but my father, hada habit of jotting down notes in it on important occasions. It may be ofsome use to us Honora. "

She opened it at random and read: "July 5, 1893, Picnic at Psalter'sFalls. Temperature 71 at 9 A. M. Bar. 30. Weather clear. Charles left forWashington, summons from President, in the midst of it. Agatha and Victoragain look at the Farrar property. Hugh has a ducking. P. S. At dinnernight Bessie announces her engagement to Cecil Grainger. Present Sarahand George Grenfell, Agatha and Victor Strange, Gerald Shorter, LordKylie--"

Honora looked up. Hugh was at her shoulder, with his eyes on the page. 

"Psalter's Falls!" he exclaimed. "How well I remember that day! I wasjust home from my junior year at Harvard. "

"Who was 'Charles'?" inquired Honora. 

"Senator Pendleton--Bessie's father. Just after I jumped into themill-pond the telegram came for him to go to Washington, and I drove himhome in my wet clothes. The old man had a terrible tongue, a whip-lashkind of humour, and he scored me for being a fool. But he rather likedme, on the whole. He told me if I'd only straighten out I could beanything, in reason. "

"What made you jump in the mill-pond?" Honora asked, laughing. 

"Bessie Grainger. She had a devil in her, too, in those days, but shealways kept her head, and I didn't. " He smiled. "I'm willing to admitthat I was madly in love with her, and she treated me outrageously. Wewere standing on the bridge--I remember it as though it were yesterday--and the water was about eight feet deep, with a clear sand bottom. Shetook off a gold bracelet and bet me I wouldn't get it if she threw it in. That night, right in the middle of dinner, when there was a pause in theconversation, she told us she was engaged to Cecil Grainger. It turnedout, by the way, to have been his bracelet I rescued. I could have wrunghis neck, and I didn't speak to her for a month. "

Honora repressed an impulse to comment on this incident. With his armover her shoulder, he turned the pages idly, and the long lists of guestswhich bore witness to the former life and importance of Highlawns passedbefore her eyes. Distinguished foreigners, peers of England, churchmen, and men renowned in literature: famous American statesmen, scientists, and names that represented more than one generation of wealth andachievement--all were here. There were his school and college friends, five and six at a time, and besides them those of young girls who werenow women, some of whom Honora had met and known in New York or Newport. 

Presently he closed the book abruptly and returned it to the safe. To hersharpened senses, the very act itself was significant. There were otherand blank pages in it for future years; and under different circumstanceshe might have laid it in its time-honoured place, on the great table inthe library. 

It was not until some weeks later that Honora was seated one afternoon inthe study waiting for him to come in, and sorting over some of theletters that they had not yet examined, when she came across a new lotthrust carelessly at the bottom of the older pile. She undid the elastic. Tucked away in one of the envelopes she was surprised to find a letter ofrecent date--October. She glanced at it, read involuntarily the firstlines, and then, with a little cry, turned it over. It was from CecilGrainger. She put it back into the envelope whence it came, and satstill. 

After a while, she could not tell how long, she heard Hugh stamping thesnow from his feet in the little entry beside the study. And in a fewmoments he entered, rubbing his hands and holding them out to the blaze. 

"Hello, Honora, " he said; "are you still at it? What's the matter--ahitch?"

She reached mechanically into the envelope, took out the letter, andhanded it to him. 

"I found it just now, Hugh. I didn't read much of it--I didn't mean toread any. It's from Mr. Grainger, and you must have overlooked it. "

He took it. 

"From Cecil?" he said, in an odd voice. "I wasn't aware that he had sentme anything-recently. "

As he read, she felt the anger rise within him, she saw it in his eyesfixed upon the sheet, and the sense of fear, of irreparable loss, thathad come over her as she had sat alone awaiting him, deepened. And yet, long expected verdicts are sometimes received in a spirit ofrecklessness: He finished the letter, and flung it in her lap. 

"Read it, " he said. 

"Oh, Hugh!" she protested tremulously. "Perhaps--perhaps I'd better not. "He laughed, and that frightened her the more. It was the laugh, she wassure, of the other man she had not known. 

"I've always suspected that Cecil was a fool--now I'm sure of it. Readit!" he repeated, in a note of command that went oddly with his nextsentence; "You will find that it is only ridiculous. "

This assurance of the comedy it contained, however, did not serve tofortify her misgivings. It was written from a club. 

 "DEAR HUGH: Herewith a few letters for the magnum opus which I have extracted from Aunt Agatha, Judge Gaines, and others, and to send you my humble congratulations. By George, my boy, you have dashed off with a prize, and no mistake. I've never made any secret, you know, of my admiration for Honora--I hope I may call her so now. And I just thought I'd tell you you could count on me for a friend at court. Not that I'm any use now, old boy. I'll have to be frank with you--I always was. Discreet silence, and all that sort of thing: as much as my head is worth to open my mouth. But I had an idea it would be an act of friendship to let you know how things stand. Let time and works speak, and Cecil will give the thing a push at the proper moment. I understand from one of the intellectual journals I read that you have gone in for simple life and scientific farming. A deuced canny move. And for the love of heaven, old man, keep it up for a while, anyhow. I know it's difficult, but keep it up. I speak as a friend. 

 "They received your letters all right, announcing your marriage. You always enjoyed a row--I wish you could have been on hand to see and hear this one. It was no place for a man of peace, and I spent two nights at the club. I've never made any secret, you know, of the fact that I think the Pendleton connection hide-bound. And you understand Bessie--there's no good of my explaining her. You'd have thought divorce a brand-new invention of the devil, instead of a comparatively old institution. And if you don't mind my saying so, my boy, you took this fence a bit on the run, the way you do everything. 

 "The fact is, divorce is going out of fashion. Maybe it's because the Pendleton-Grenfell element have always set their patrician faces against it; maybe its been a bit overdone. Most people who have tried it have discovered that the fire is no better than the frying- pan--both hot as soon as they warm up. Of course, old boy, there's nothing personal in this. Sit tight, and stick to the simple life-- that's your game as I see it. No news--I've never known things to be so quiet. Jerry won over two thousand night before last--he made it no trumps in his own hand four times running. 

 "Yours, "CECIL. "

Honora returned this somewhat unique epistle to her husband, and hecrushed it. There was an ill-repressed, terrifying savagery in the act, and her heart was torn between fear and pity for this lone message ofgood-will. Whatever its wording, such it was. A dark red flush hadmounted his forehead to the roots of his short curly hair. 

"Well?" he said. 

She was fighting for her presence of mind. Flashes of his temper she hadknown, but she had never seen the cruel, fiendish thing--his anger. Nothis anger, but the anger of the destroyer that she beheld waking nowafter its long sleep, and taking possession of him, and transforming himbefore her very eyes. She had been able to cope with the new man, but shefelt numb and powerless before the resuscitated demon of the old. 

"What do you expect me to say, Hugh?" she faltered, with a queer feelingthat she was not addressing him. 

"Anything you like, " he replied. 

"Defend Cecil. "

"Why should I defend him?" she said dully. 

"Because you have no pride. "

A few seconds elapsed before the full import and brutality of this insultreached her intelligence, and she cried out his name in a voice shrillwith anguish. But he seemed to delight in the pain he had caused. 

"You couldn't be expected, I suppose, to see that this letter is a d--dimpertinence, filled with an outrageous flippancy, a deliberate affront, an implication that our marriage does not exist. "

She sat stunned, knowing that the real pain would come later. That whichslowly awoke in her now, as he paced the room, was a high sense ofdanger, and a persistent inability to regard the man who had insulted heras her husband. He was rather an enemy to them both, and he wouldoverturn, if he could, the frail craft of their happiness in the storm. She cried out to Hugh as across the waters. 

"No, --I have no pride, Hugh, --it is gone. I have thought of you only. Thefear that I might separate you from your family, from your friends, andruin your future has killed my pride. He--Mr. Grainger meant to be kind. He is always like that--it's his way of saying things. He wishes to showthat he is friendly to you--to me--"

"In spite of my relations, " cried Chiltern, stopping in the middle of theroom. "They cease to be my relations from this day. I disown them. I sayit deliberately. So long as I live, not one of them shall come into thishouse. All my life they have begged me to settle down, to come up hereand live the life my father did. Very well, now I've done it. And I wroteto them and told them that I intended to live henceforth like a gentlemanand a decent citizen--more than some of them do. No, I wash my hands ofthem. If they were to crawl up here from the gate on their knees, I'dturn them out. "

Although he could not hear her, she continued to plead. 

"Hugh, try to think of how--how our marriage must have appeared to them. Not that I blame you for being angry. We only thought of one thing--ourlove--" her voice broke at the word, "and our own happiness. We did notconsider others. It is that which sometimes has made me afraid, that webelieved ourselves above the law. And now that we have--begun so well, don't spoil it, Hugh! Give them time, let them see by our works that weare in earnest, that we intend to live useful lives. 

"I don't mean to beg them, " she cried, at sight of his eyes. "Oh, I don'tmean that. I don't mean to entreat them, or even to communicate withthem. But they are your flesh and blood--you must remember that. Let usprove that we are--not--like the others, " she said, lifting her head, "and then it cannot matter to us what any one thinks. We shall havejustified our act to ourselves. "

But he was striding up and down the room again. It was as she feared--her plea--had fallen on unheeding ears. A sudden convulsive leaping ofthe inner fires sent him to his desk, and he seized some note-paper fromthe rack. Honora rose to her feet, and took a step towards him. 

"Hugh--what are you going to do?"

"Do!" he cried, swinging in his chair and facing her, "I'm going to dowhat any man with an ounce of self-respect would do under thecircumstances. I'm going to do what I was a fool not to have done threemonths ago--what I should have done if it hadn't been for you. If intheir contemptible, pharisaical notions of morality they choose to forgetwhat my mother and father were to them, they cease to exist for me. Ifit's the last act of my life I'm going to tell them so. "

She stood gazing at him, but she was as one of whom he took no account. He turned to the desk and began to write with a deliberation all the moreterrible to her because of the white anger he felt. And still she stood. He pressed the button on his desk, and Starling responded. 

"I want a man from the stable to be ready to take some letters to town inhalf an hour, " he said. 

It was not until then that she turned and slowly left the room. A mortalsickness seemed to invade her vitals, and she went to her own chamber andflung herself, face downward, on the lace covering of the bed: and thesobs that shook her were the totterings of the foundations of heruniverse. For a while, in the intensity of her anguish, all thought wasexcluded. Presently, however, when the body was spent, the mind began topractise its subtle and intolerable torture, and she was invaded by asense of loneliness colder than the space between the worlds. 

Where was she to go, whither flee, now that his wrath was turned againsther? On the strength of his love alone she had pinned her faith, discarded and scorned all other help. And at the first contact with thatgreater power which he had taught her so confidently to despise, thatstrength had broken!

Slowly, she gazed back over the path she had trod; where roses once hadheld up smiling heads. It was choked now by brambles that scratched hernakedness at every step. Ah, how easily she had been persuaded to enterit! "We have the right to happiness, " he had said, and she had lookedinto his eyes and believed him. What was this strange, elusive happiness, that she had so pantingly pursued and never overtaken? that essence pureand unalloyed with baser things? Ecstasy, perhaps, she had found--for wasit delirium? Fear was the boon companion of these; or better, thepestilence that stalked behind them, ever ready to strike. 

Then, as though some one had turned on a light--a sickening, yetpenetrating blue light--she looked at Hugh Chiltern. She did not wish tolook, but that which had turned on the light and bade her was strongerthan she. She beheld, as it were, the elements of his being, the verysources of the ceaseless, restless energy that was driving him on. Andscan as she would, no traces of the vaunted illimitable power that iscalled love could she discern. Love he possessed; that she had notdoubted, and did not doubt, even now. But it had been given her to seethat these springs had existed before love had come, and would flow, perchance, after it had departed. Now she understood his anger; it waslike the anger of a fiercely rushing river striving to break a dam andinvade the lands below with devastating floods. All these months thewaters had been mounting . . . . 

Turning at length from the consideration of this figure, she askedherself whether, if with her present knowledge she had her choice to makeover again, she would have chosen differently. The answer was a startlingnegative. She loved him. Incomprehensible, unreasonable, and un reasoningsentiment! That she had received a wound, she knew; whether it weremortal, or whether it would heal and leave a scar, she could not say. Onesalient, awful fact she began gradually to realize, that if she sank backupon the pillows she was lost. Little it would profit her to save herbody. She had no choice between her present precarious foothold and theabyss, and wounded as she was she would have to fight. There was noretreat:

She sat up, and presently got to her feet and went to the window andstared through the panes until she distinguished the blue whiteness ofthe fallen snow on her little balcony. The night, despite the clouds, hada certain luminous quality. Then she drew the curtains, searched for theswitch, and flooded the room with a soft glow--that beautiful room inwhich he had so proudly installed her four months before. She smoothedthe bed, and walking to the mirror gazed intently at her face, and thenshe bathed it. Afterwards she opened her window again, admitting a flurryof snow, and stood for some minutes breathing in the sharp air. 

Three quarters of an hour later she was dressed and descending thestairs, and as she entered the library dinner was announced. Let us spareHonora the account of that repast or rather a recital of the conversationthat accompanied it. What she found to say under the eyes of the servantsis of little value, although the fact itself deserves to be commended asa high accomplishment; and while she talked, she studied the broodingmystery that he presented, and could make nothing of it. His mood wasnew. It was not sullenness, nor repressed rage; and his answers werebrief, but he was not taciturn. It struck her that in spite of aconcentration such as she had never in her life bestowed on any othersubject, her knowledge of him of the Chiltern she had married--was stillwofully incomplete, and that in proportion to the lack of perfection ofthat knowledge her danger was great. Perhaps the Chiltern she had marriedwas as yet in a formative state. Be this as it may, what she saw depictedon his face to-night corresponded to no former experience. 

They went back to the library. Coffee was brought and carried off, andHonora was standing before the fire. Suddenly he rose from his chair, crossed the room, and before she could draw away seized and crushed herin his arms without a word. She lay there, inert, bewildered as in thegrip of an unknown force, until presently she was aware of the beating ofhis heart, and a glimmering of what he felt came to her. Nor was it anunderstandable thing, except to the woman who loved him. And yet and yetshe feared it even in that instant of glory. 

When at last she dared to look up, he kissed away the tears from hercheeks. 

"I love you, " he said. "You must never doubt it--do you understand?"

"Yes, Hugh. "

"You must never doubt it, " he repeated roughly. 

His contrition was a strange thing--if it were contrition. And love--woman's love--is sometimes the counsellor of wisdom. Her sole reproachwas to return his kiss. 

Presently she chose a book, and he read to her. 

CHAPTER XV

THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY

One morning, as he gathered up his mail, Chiltern left lying on thebreakfast table a printed circular, an appeal from the trustees of theGrenoble Hospital. As Honora read it she remembered that this institutionhad been the favourite charity of his mother; and that Mrs. Chiltern, ather death, had bequeathed an endowment which at the time had been ample. But Grenoble having grown since then, the deficit for this year wassomething under two thousand dollars, and in a lower corner was a requestthat contributions be sent to Mrs. Israel Simpson. 

With the circular in her hand, Honora went thoughtfully up the stairs toher sitting-room. The month was February, the day overcast and muggy, andshe stood for a while apparently watching the holes made in the snow bythe steady drip from the cap of the garden wall. What she really saw wasthe face of Mrs. Israel Simpson, a face that had haunted her these manymonths. For Mrs. Simpson had gradually grown, in Honora's mind, to typifythe hardness of heart of Grenoble. With Grenoble obdurate, what wouldbecome of the larger ambitions of Hugh Chiltern?

Mrs. Simpson was indeed a redoubtable lady, whose virtue shone with aparticular high brightness on the Sabbath. Her lamp was brimming with oilagainst the judgment day, and she was as one divinely appointed to be thechastener of the unrighteous. So, at least, Honora beheld her. Her attirewas rich but not gaudy, and had the air of proclaiming the prosperity ofIsrael Simpson alone as its unimpeachable source: her nose was long, herlip slightly marked by a masculine and masterful emblem, and her eyesprotruded in such a manner as to give the impression of watchfulness onall sides. 

It was this watchfulness that our heroine grew to regard as a salientcharacteristic. It never slept--even during Mr. Stopford's sermons. Shewas aware of it when she entered the church, and she was sure that itescorted her as far as the carriage on her departure. It seemed tooppress the congregation. And Honora had an idea that if it could havebeen withdrawn, her cruel proscription would have ended. For at times shethought that she read in the eyes of some of those who made way for her, friendliness and even compassion. 

It was but natural, perhaps, in the situation in which our heroine foundherself, that she should have lost her sense of proportion to the extentof regarding this lady in the light of a remorseless dragon barring heronly path to peace. And those who might have helped her--if any therewere--feared the dragon as much as she. Mrs. Simpson undoubtedly wouldnot have relished this characterization, and she is not to have theopportunity of presenting her side of the case. We are looking at it fromHonora's view, and Honora beheld chimeras. The woman changed, for Honora, the very aspect of the house of God; it was she who appeared to presidethere, or rather to rule by terror. And Honora, as she glanced at herduring the lessons, often wondered if she realized the appalling extentof her cruelty. Was this woman, who begged so audibly to be deliveredfrom pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy, in reality a Christian? Honorahated her, and yet she prayed that God would soften her heart. Was thereno way in which she could be propitiated, appeased? For the sake of thething desired, and which it was given this woman to withhold, she waswilling to humble herself in the dust. 

Honora laid the hospital circular on the desk beside her account book. She had an ample allowance from Hugh; but lying in a New York bank waswhat remained of the unexpected legacy she had received from her father, and it was from this that she presently drew a cheque for five hundreddollars, --a little sacrifice that warmed her blood as she wrote. Not forthe unfortunate in the hospital was she making it, but for him: and thatshe could do this from the little store that was her very own gave her athrill of pride. She would never need it again. If he deserted her, itmattered little what became of her. If he deserted her!

She sat gazing out of the window over the snow, and a new question was inher heart. Was it as a husband--that he loved her? Did their intercoursehave that intangible quality of safety that belonged to married life? Andwas it not as a mistress rather than a wife that, in their isolation, shewatched his moods so jealously? A mistress! Her lips parted, and sherepeated the word aloud, for self-torture is human. 

Her mind dwelt upon their intercourse. There were the days they spenttogether, and the evenings, working or reading. Ah, but had the time everbeen when, in the depths of her being, she had felt the real security ofa wife? When she had not always been dimly conscious of a desire toplease him, of a struggle to keep him interested and contented? And therewere the days when he rode alone, the nights when he read or wrote alone, when her joy was turned to misery; there were the alternating periods ofpassion and alienation. Alienation, perhaps, was too strong a word. Nevertheless, at such times, her feeling was one of desolation. 

His heart, she knew, was bent upon success at Grenoble, and one of thebooks which they had recently read together was a masterly treatise, byan Englishman, on the life-work of an American statesman. The vast widthof the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was stirred withpolitics: a better era was coming, the pulse of the nation beating withrenewed life; a stronger generation was arising to take the Republic intoits own hands. A campaign was in progress in the State, and twice herhusband had gone some distance to hear the man who embodied the newideas, and had come back moody and restless, like a warrior condemned tostep aside. Suppose his hopes were blighted--what would happen? Would thespirit of reckless adventure seize him again? Would the wilds call him?or the city? She did not dare to think. 

It was not until two mornings later that Hugh tossed her across thebreakfast table a pink envelope with a wide flap and rough edges. Itssender had taken advantage of the law that permits one-cent stamps forlocal use. 

"Who's your friend, Honora?" he asked. 

She tried to look calmly at the envelope that contained her fate. 

"It's probably a dressmaker's advertisement, " she answered, and went onwith the pretence of eating her breakfast. 

"Or an invitation to dine with Mrs. Simpson, " he suggested, laughingly, as he rose. "It's just the stationery she would choose. "

Honora dropped her spoon in her egg-cup. It instantly became evident, however, that his remark was casual and not serious, for he gathered uphis mail and departed. Her hand trembled a little as she opened theletter, and for a moment the large gold monogram of its sender dancedbefore her eyes. 

 "Dear Madam, Permit me to thank you in the name of the Trustees of the Grenoble Hospital for your generous contribution, and believe me, Sincerely yours, "MARIA W. SIMPSON. "

The sheet fluttered to the floor. 

When Sunday came, for the first time her courage failed her. She hadheard the wind complaining in the night, and the day dawned wild and wet. She got so far as to put on a hat and veil and waterproof coat; Starlinghad opened the doors, and through the frame of the doorway, on the wetsteps, she saw the footman in his long mackintosh, his umbrella raised toescort her to the carriage. Then she halted, irresolute. The impassiveold butler stood on the sill, a silent witness, she knew, to the strugglegoing on within her. It seemed ridiculous indeed to play out the comedywith him, who could have recited the lines. And yet she turned to him. 

"Starling, you may send the coachman back to the stable. "

"Very good, madam. "

As she climbed the stairs she saw him gravely closing the doors. Shepaused on the landing, her sense of relief overborne by a greater senseof defeat. There was still time! She heard the wheels of the carriage onthe circle--yet she listened to them die away. Starling softly caught thelatch, and glanced up. For an instant their looks crossed, and shehurried on with palpitating breast, reached her boudoir, and closed thedoor. The walls seemed to frown on her, and she remembered that thesitting-room in St. Louis had worn that same look when, as a child, shehad feigned illness in order to miss a day at school. With a leaden heartshe gazed out on the waste of melting snow, and then tried in vain toread a novel that a review had declared amusing. But a question alwayscame between her and the pages: was this the turning point of that silentbut terrible struggle, when she must acknowledge to herself that theworld had been too strong for her? After a while her loneliness becameunbearable. Chiltern was in the library. 

"Home from church?" he inquired. 

"I didn't go, Hugh. "

He looked up in surprise. 

"Why, I thought I saw you start, " he said. 

"It's such a dreary day, Hugh. "

"But that has never prevented you before. "

"Don't you think I'm entitled to one holiday?" she asked. 

But it was by a supreme effort she kept back the tears. He looked at herattentively, and got up suddenly and put his hands upon her shoulders. She could not meet his eyes, and trembled under his touch. 

"Honora, " he said, "why don't you tell me the truth?"

"What do you mean, Hugh?"

"I have been wondering how long you'd stand it. I mean that these women, who call themselves Christians, have been brutal to you. They haven't somuch as spoken to you in church, and not one of them has been to thishouse to call. Isn't that so?"

"Don't let us judge them yet, Hugh, " she begged, a little wildly, feelingagain the gathering of another destroying storm in him that might nowsweep the last vestige of hope away. And she seized the arguments as theycame. "Some of them may be prejudiced, I know. But others--others I amsure are kind, and they have had no reason to believe I should like toknow them--to work among them. I--I could not go to see them first, I amglad to wait patiently until some accident brings me near them. Andremember, Hugh, the atmosphere in which we both lived before we camehere--an atmosphere they regard as frivolous and pleasure-loving. Peoplewho are accustomed to it are not usually supposed to care to make friendsin a village, or to bother their heads about the improvement of acommunity. Society is not what it was in your mother's day, who knewthese people or their mothers, and took an interest in what they weredoing. Perhaps they think me--haughty. " She tried to smile. "I have neverhad an opportunity to show them that I am not. "

She paused, breathless, and saw that he was unconvinced. 

"Do you believe that, Honora?" he demanded. 

"I--I want to believe it. And I am sure, that if it is not true now, itwill become so, if we only wait. "

He shook his head. 

"Never, " he said, and dropped his hands and walked over to the fire. Shestood where he had left her. 

"I understand, " she heard him say, "I understand that you sent Mrs. Simpson five hundred dollars for the hospital. Simpson told me soyesterday, at the bank. "

"I had a little money of my own--from my father and I was glad to do it, Hugh. That was your mother's charity. "

Her self-control was taxed to the utmost by the fact that he was moved. She could not see his face, but his voice betrayed it. 

"And Mrs. Simpson?" he asked, after a moment. 

"Mrs. Simpson?"

"She thanked you?"

"She acknowledged the cheque, as president. I was not giving it to her, but to the hospital. "

"Let me see the letter. "

"I--I have destroyed it. "

He brought his hands together forcibly, and swung about and faced her. 

"Damn them!" he cried, "from this day I forbid you to have anything to dowith them, do you hear. I forbid you! They're a set of confounded, self-righteous hypocrites. Give them time! In all conscience they havehad time enough, and opportunity enough to know what our intentions are. How long do they expect us to fawn at their feet for a word ofrecognition? What have we done that we should be outlawed in this way bythe very people who may thank my family for their prosperity? Where wouldIsrael Simpson be to-day if my father had not set him up in business?Without knowing anything of our lives they pretend to sit in judgment onus. Why? Because you have been divorced, and I married you. I'll makethem pay for this!"

"No!" she begged, taking a step towards him. "You don't know what you'resaying, Hugh. I implore you not to do anything. Wait a little while! Oh, it is worth trying!" So far the effort carried her, and no farther. Perhaps, at sight of the relentlessness in his eyes, hope left her, andshe sank down on a chair and buried her face in her hands, her voicebroken by sobs. "It is my fault, and I am justly punished. I have noright to you--I was wicked, I was selfish to marry you. I have ruinedyour life. "

He went to her, and lifted her up, but she was like a child whompassionate weeping has carried beyond the reach of words. He could saynothing to console her, plead as he might, assume the blame, and sweareternal fealty. One fearful, supreme fact possessed her, the wreck ofChiltern breaking against the rocks, driven there by her . . . . 

That she eventually grew calm again deserves to be set down as a tributeto the organism of the human body. 

That she was able to breathe, to move, to talk, to go through thepretence of eating, was to her in the nature of a mild surprise. Lifewent on, but it seemed to Honora in the hours following this scene thatit was life only. Of the ability to feel she was utterly bereft. Hercalmness must have been appalling: her own indifference to what mighthappen now, --if she could have realized it, --even more so. And in theafternoon, wandering about the house, she found herself in theconservatory. It had been built on against the library, and sometimes, onstormy afternoons, she had tea there with Hugh in the red-cushionedchairs beside the trickling fountain, the flowers giving them an illusionof summer. 

Under ordinary circumstances the sound of wheels on the gravel would havearoused her, for Hugh scarcely ever drove. And it was not until sheglanced through the open doors into the library that she knew that avisitor had come to Highlawns. He stood beside the rack for the magazinesand reviews, somewhat nervously fingering a heavy watch charm, his largesilk hat bottom upward on the chair behind him. It was Mr. IsraelSimpson. She could see him plainly, and she was by no means hidden fromhim by the leaves, and yet she did not move. He had come to see Hugh, sheunderstood; and she was probably going to stay where she was and listen. It seemed of no use repeating to herself that this conversation would beof vital importance; for the mechanism that formerly had recorded thesealarms and spread them, refused to work. She saw Chiltern enter, and sheread on his face that he meant to destroy. It was no news to her. She hadknown it for a long, long time--in fact, ever since she had came toGrenoble. Her curiosity, strangely enough--or so it seemedafterwards--was centred on Mr. Simpson, as though he were an actor shehad been very curious to see. 

It was this man, and not her husband, whom she perceived from the firstwas master of the situation. His geniality was that of the commander ofan overwhelming besieging force who could afford to be generous. Sheseemed to discern the cloudy ranks of the legions behind him, and theyencircled the world. He was aware of these legions, and their presencecompletely annihilated the ancient habit of subserviency with which informer years he had been wont to enter this room and listen to theinstructions of that formidable old lion, the General: so much was plainfrom the orchestra. He went forward with a cheerful, if ponderousbonhomie. 

"Ah, Hugh, " said he, "I got your message just in time. I was on the pointof going over to see old Murdock. Seriously ill--you know--last time, I'mafraid, " and Mr. Simpson shook his head. He held out his hand. Hugh didnot appear to notice it. 

"Sit down, Mr. Simpson, " he said. 

Mr. Simpson sat down. Chiltern took a stand before him. 

"You asked me the other day whether I would take a certain amount of thestock and bonds of the Grenoble Light and Power Company, in which you areinterested, and which is, I believe, to supply the town with electriclight, the present source being inadequate. "

"So I did, " replied Mr. Simpson, urbanely, "and I believe the investmentto be a good one. There is no better power in this part of the countrythan Psalter's Falls. "

"I wished to inform you that I do not intend to go into the Light andPower Company, " said Chiltern. 

"I am sorry to hear it, " Mr. Simpson declared. "In my opinion, if yousearched the state for a more profitable or safer thing, you could notfind it. "

"I have no doubt the investment is all that could be desired, Mr. Simpson. I merely wished you to know, as soon as possible, that I did notintend to put my money into it. There are one or two other little matterswhich you have mentioned during the week. You pointed out that it wouldbe an advantage to Grenoble to revive the county fair, and you asked meto subscribe five thousand dollars to the Fair Association. "

This time Mr. Simpson remained silent. 

"I have come to the conclusion, to-day, not to subscribe a cent. I alsointend to notify the church treasurer that I will not any longer rent apew, or take any further interest in the affairs of St. John's church. Mywife was kind enough, I believe, to send five hundred dollars to theGrenoble hospital. That will be the last subscription from any member ofmy family. I will resign as a director of the Grenoble Bank to-morrow, and my stock will be put on the market. And finally I wished to tell youthat henceforth I do not mean to aid in any way any enterprise inGrenoble. "

During this announcement, which had been made with an ominous calmness, Mr. Simpson had gazed steadily at the brass andirons. He cleared histhroat. 

"My dear Hugh, " said he, "what you have said pains meexcessively-excessively. I--ahem--fail to grasp it. As an old friend ofyour family--of your father--I take the liberty of begging you toreconsider your words. "

Chiltern's eyes blazed. 

"Since you have mentioned my father, Mr. Simpson, " he exclaimed, "I mayremind you that his son might reasonably have expected at your hands adifferent treatment than that you have accorded him. You have asked me toreconsider my decision, but I notice that you have failed to inquire intomy reasons for making it. I came back here to Grenoble with everyintention of devoting the best efforts of my life in aiding to build upthe community, as my father had done. It was natural, perhaps, that Ishould expect a little tolerance, a little friendliness, a littlerecognition in return. My wife was prepared to help me. We did not askmuch. But you have treated us like outcasts. Neither you nor Mrs. Simpson, from whom in all conscience I looked for consideration andfriendship, have as much as spoken to Mrs. Chiltern in church. You havemade it clear that, while you are willing to accept our contributions, you cared to have nothing to do with us whatever. If I have overstatedthe case, please correct me. "

Mr. Simpson rose protestingly. 

"My dear Hugh, " he said. "This is very painful. I beg that you will spareme. "

"My name is Chiltern, " answered Hugh, shortly. "Will you kindly explain, if you can, why the town of Grenoble has ignored us?"

Israel Simpson hesitated a moment. He seemed older when he looked atChiltern again, and in his face commiseration and indignation were oddlyintermingled. His hand sought his watch chain. 

"Yes, I will tell you, " he replied slowly, "although in all my life nocrueller duty has fallen on me. It is because we in Grenoble areold-fashioned in our views of morality, and I thank God we are so. It isbecause you have married a divorced woman under circumstances that haveshocked us. The Church to which I belong, and whose teachings I respect, does not recognize such a marriage. And you have, in my opinion, committed an offence against society. To recognize you by socialintercourse would be to condone that offence, to open the door topractices that would lead, in a short time, to the decay of our people. "

Israel Simpson turned, and pointed a shaking forefinger at the portraitof General Augus Chiltern. 

"And I affirm here, fearlessly before you, that he, your father, wouldhave been the last to recognize such a marriage. "

Chiltern took a step forward, and his fingers tightened. 

"You will oblige me by leaving my father's name out of this discussion, "he said. 

But Israel Simpson did not recoil. 

"If we learn anything by example in this world, Mr. Chiltern, " hecontinued, "and it is my notion that we do, I am indebted to your fatherfor more than my start in life. Through many years of intercourse withhim, and contemplation of his character, I have gained more than riches. --You have forced me to say this thing. I am sorry if I have pained you. But I should not be true to the principles to which he himself wasconsistent in life, and which he taught by example so many others, if Iventured to hope that social recognition in Grenoble would be accordedyou, or to aid in any way such recognition. As long as I live I willoppose it. There are, apparently, larger places in the world and lesshumble people who will be glad to receive you. I can only hope, as an oldfriend and well-wisher of your family, that you may find happiness. "

Israel Simpson fumbled for his hat, picked it up, and left the room. Fora moment Chiltern stood like a man turned to stone, and then he pressedthe button on the wall behind him.