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A Modern Instance

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Halleck assented with a slight nod to each point that the lawyer made.
"You're right," he said, "but a man of your subtlety can't pretend that he
doesn't know what the trouble is in such a simple case as mine."

"I don't know anything certainly," returned Atherton, "and as far as I can
I refuse to imagine anything. If your trouble concerns some one besides
yourself,--and no great trouble can concern one man alone,--you've no right
to tell it."

"Another Daniel come to judgment!"

"You must trust to your principles, your self-respect, to keep you right--"

Halleck burst into a harsh laugh, and rose from his chair: "Ah, there you
abdicate the judicial function! Principles, self-respect! Against
_that_? Don't you suppose I was approached _through_ my principles and
self-respect? Why, the Devil always takes a man on the very highest plane.
He knows all about our principles and self-respect, and what they're made
of. How the noblest and purest attributes of our nature, with which we trap
each other so easily, must amuse him! Pity, rectitude, moral indignation, a
blameless life,--he knows that they're all instruments for him. No, sir! No
more principles and self-respect for me,--I've had enough of them; there's
nothing for me but to run, and that's what I'm going to do. But you're
quite right about the other thing, Atherton, and I give you a beggar's
thanks for telling me that my trouble isn't mine alone, and I've no right
to confide it to you. It is mine in the sense that no other soul is defiled
with the knowledge of it, and I'm glad you saved me from the ghastly
profanation, the sacrilege, of telling it. I was sneaking round for your
sympathy; I did want somehow to shift the responsibility on to you; to get
you--God help me!--to flatter me out of my wholesome fear and contempt of
myself. Well! That's past, now, and--Good night!" He abruptly turned away
from Atherton and swung himself on his cane toward the door.

Atherton took up his hat and coat. "I'll walk home with you," he said.

"All right," returned Halleck, listlessly.

"How soon shall you go?" asked the lawyer, when they were in the street.

"Oh, there's a ship sailing from New York next week," said Halleck, in the
same tone of weary indifference. "I shall go in that."

They talked desultorily of other things.

When they came to the foot of Clover Street, Halleck plucked his hand
out of Atherton's arm. "I'm going up through here!" he said, with sullen
obstinacy.

"Better not," returned his friend, quietly.

"Will it hurt her if I stop to look at the outside of the house where she
lives?"

"It will hurt you," said Atherton.

"I don't wish to spare myself!" retorted Halleck. He shook off the touch
that Atherton had laid upon his shoulder, and started up the hill; the
other overtook him, and, like a man who has attempted to rule a drunkard by
thwarting his freak, and then hopes to accomplish his end by humoring it,
he passed his arm through Halleck's again, and went with him. But when they
came to the house, Halleck did not stop; he did not even look at it; but
Atherton felt the deep shudder that passed through him.

In the week that followed, they met daily, and Halleck's broken pride no
longer stayed him from the shame of open self-pity and wavering purpose.
Atherton found it easier to persuade the clinging reluctance of the father
and mother, than to keep Halleck's resolution for him: Halleck could no
longer keep it for himself. "Not much like the behavior of people we read
of in similar circumstances," he said once. "_They_ never falter when they
see the path of duty: they push forward without looking to either hand; or
else," he added, with a hollow laugh at his own satire, "they turn their
backs on it,--like men! Well!"

He grew gaunt and visibly feeble. In this struggle the two men changed
places. The plan for Halleck's flight was no longer his own, but
Atherton's; and when he did not rebel against it, he only passively
acquiesced. The decent pretence of ignorance on Atherton's part necessarily
disappeared: in all but words the trouble stood openly confessed between
them, and it came to Atherton's saying, in one of Halleck's lapses of
purpose, from which it had required all the other's strength to lift him:
"Don't come to me any more, Halleck, with the hope that I shall somehow
justify your evil against your good. I pitied you at first; but I blame you
now."

"You're atrocious," said Halleck, with a puzzled, baffled look. "What do
you mean?"

"I mean that you secretly think you have somehow come by your evil
virtuously; and you want me to persuade you that it is different from
other evils of exactly the same kind,--that it is beautiful and sweet and
pitiable, and not ugly as hell and bitter as death, to be torn out of you
mercilessly and flung from you with abhorrence. Well, I tell you that you
are suffering guiltily, for no man suffers innocently from such a cause.
You must _go_, and you can't go too soon. Don't suppose that I find
anything noble in your position. I should do you a great wrong if I didn't
do all I could to help you realize that you're in disgrace, and that you're
only making a choice of shames in running away. Suppose the truth was
known,--suppose that those who hold you dear could be persuaded of
it,--could you hold up your head?"

"Do I hold up my head as it is?" asked Halleck. "Did you ever see a more
abject dog than I am at this moment? Your wounds are faithful, Atherton;
but perhaps you might have spared me this last stab. If you want to know,
I can assure you that I don't feel any melodramatic vainglory. I know that
I'm running away because I'm beaten, but no other man can know the battle
I've fought. Don't you suppose I know how hideous this thing is? No one
else can know it in all its ugliness!" He covered his face with his hands.
"You are right," he said, when he could find his voice. "I suffer guiltily.
I must have known it when I seemed to be suffering for pity's sake; I knew
it before, and when you said that love without marriage was a worse hell
than any marriage without love, you left me without refuge: I had been
trying not to face the truth, but I had to face it then. I came away in
hell, and I have lived in hell ever since. I had tried to think it was a
crazy fancy, and put it on my failing health; I used to make believe that
some morning I should wake and find the illusion gone. I abhorred it from
the beginning as I do now; it has been torment to me; and yet somewhere
in my lost soul--the blackest depth, I dare say!--this shame has been so
sweet,--it is so sweet,--the one sweetness of life--Ah!" He dashed the weak
tears from his eyes, and rose and buttoned his coat about him. "Well, I
shall go. And I hope I shall never come back. Though you needn't mention
this to my father as an argument for my going when you talk me over with
him," he added, with a glimmer of his wonted irony. He waited a moment, and
then turned upon his friend, in sad upbraiding: "When I came to you a year
and a half ago, after I had taken that ruffian home drunk to her--Why
didn't you warn me then, Atherton? Did you see any danger?"

Atherton hesitated: "I knew that, with your habit of suffering for other
people, it would make you miserable; but I couldn't have dreamed this would
come of it. But you've never been out of your own keeping for a moment. You
are responsible, and you are to blame if you are suffering now, and can
find no safety for yourself but in running away."

"That's true," said Halleck, very humbly, "and I won't trouble you any
more. I can't go on sinning against her belief in me here, and live. I
shall go on sinning against it there, as long as I live; but it seems to me
the harm will be a little less. Yes, I will go."

But the night before he went, he came to Atherton's lodging to tell him
that he should not go; Atherton was not at home, and Halleck was spared
this last dishonor. He returned to his father's house through the rain
that was beginning to fall lightly, and as he let himself in with his key
Olive's voice said, "It's Ben!" and at the same time she laid her hand upon
his arm with a nervous, warning clutch. "Hush! Come in here!" She drew him
from the dimly lighted hall into the little reception-room near the door.
The gas was burning brighter there, and in the light he saw Marcia white
and still, where she sat holding her baby in her arms. They exchanged no
greeting: it was apparent that her being there transcended all usage, and
that they need observe none.

"Ben will go home with you," said Olive, soothingly. "Is it raining?" she
asked, looking at her brother's coat. "I will get my water-proof."

She left them a moment. "I have been--been walking--walking about," Marcia
panted. "It has got so dark--I'm--afraid to go home. I hate to--take you
from them--the last--night."

Halleck answered nothing; he sat staring at her till Olive came back with
the water-proof and an umbrella. Then, while his sister was putting the
waterproof over Marcia's shoulders, he said, "Let me take the little one,"
and gathered it, with or without her consent, from her arms into his. The
baby was sleeping; it nestled warmly against him with a luxurious quiver
under the shawl that Olive threw round it. "You can carry the umbrella," he
said to Marcia.

They walked fast, when they got out into the rainy dark, and it was hard to
shelter Halleck as he limped rapidly on. Marcia ran forward once, to see
if her baby were safely kept from the wet, and found that Halleck had its
little face pressed close between his neck and cheek. "Don't be afraid," he
said. "I'm looking out for it."

His voice sounded broken and strange, and neither of them spoke again till
they came in sight of Marcia's door. Then she tried to stop him. She put
her hand on his shoulder. "Oh, I'm afraid--afraid to go in," she pleaded.

He halted, and they stood confronted in the light of a street lamp; her
face was twisted with weeping. "Why are you afraid?" he demanded, harshly.

"We had a quarrel, and I--I ran away--I said that I would never come back.
I left him--"

"You must go back to him," said Halleck. "He's your husband!" He pushed on
again, saying over and over, as if the words were some spell in which he
found safety, "You must go back, you must go back, you must go back!"

He dragged her with him now, for she hung helpless on his arm, which she
had seized, and moaned to herself. At the threshold, "I can't go in!" she
broke out. "I'm afraid to go in! What will he say? What will he do? Oh,
come in with me! You are good,--and then I shall not be afraid!"

"You must go in alone! No man can be your refuge from your husband! Here!"
He released himself, and, kissing the warm little face of the sleeping
child, he pressed it into her arms. His fingers touched hers under the
shawl; he tore his hand away with a shiver.

She stood a moment looking at the closed door; then she flung it open, and,
pausing as if to gather her strength, vanished into the brightness within.

He turned, and ran crookedly down the street, wavering from side to side in
his lameness, and flinging up his arms to save himself from falling as he
ran, with a gesture that was like a wild and hopeless appeal.




XXXIV.


Marcia pushed into the room where she had left Bartley. She had no escape
from her fate; she must meet it, whatever it was. The room was empty,
and she began doggedly to search the house for him, up stairs and down,
carrying the child with her. She would not have been afraid now to call
him; but she had no voice, and she could not ask the servant anything when
she looked into the kitchen. She saw the traces of the meal he had made in
the dining-room, and when she went a second time to their chamber to lay
the little girl down in her crib, she saw the drawers pulled open, and the
things as he had tossed them about in packing his bag. She looked at the
clock on the mantel--an extravagance of Bartley's, for which she had
scolded him--and it was only half past eight; she had thought it must be
midnight.

She sat all night in a chair beside the bed; in the morning she drowsed and
dreamed that she was weeping on Bartley's shoulder, and he was joking her
and trying to comfort her, as he used to do when they were first married;
but it was the little girl, sitting up in her crib, and crying loudly for
her breakfast. She put on the child a pretty frock that Bartley liked, and
when she had dressed her own tumbled hair she went down stairs, feigning to
herself that they should find him in the parlor. The servant was setting
the table for breakfast, and the little one ran forward: "Baby's chair;
mamma's chair; papa's chair!"

"Yes," answered Marcia, so that the servant might hear too. "Papa will soon
be home."

She persuaded herself that he had gone as before for the night, and in this
pretence she talked with the child at the table, and she put aside some of
the breakfast to be kept warm for Bartley. "I don't know just when he may
be in," she explained to the girl. The utterance of her pretence that she
expected him encouraged her, and she went about her work almost cheerfully.

At dinner she said, "Mr. Hubbard must have been called away, somewhere.
We must get his dinner for him when he comes: the things dry up so in the
oven."

She put Flavia to bed early, and then trimmed the fire, and made the parlor
cosey against Bartley's coming. She did not blame him for staying away the
night before; it was a just punishment for her wickedness, and she should
tell him so, and tell him that she knew he never was to blame for anything
about Hannah Morrison. She enacted over and over in her mind the scene of
their reconciliation. In every step on the pavement he approached the door;
at last all the steps died away, and the second night passed.

Her head was light, and her brain confused with loss of sleep. When the
child called her from above, and woke her out of her morning drowse, she
went to the kitchen and begged the servant to give the little one its
breakfast, saying that she was sick and wanted nothing herself. She did not
say anything about Bartley's breakfast, and she would not think anything;
the girl took the child into the kitchen with her, and kept it there all
day.

Olive Halleck came during the forenoon, and Marcia told her that Bartley
had been unexpectedly called away. "To New York," she added, without
knowing why.

"Ben sailed from there to-day," said Olive sadly.

"Yes," assented Marcia.

"We want you to come and take tea with us this evening," Olive began.

"Oh, I can't," Marcia broke in. "I mustn't be away when Bartley gets back."
The thought was something definite in the sea of uncertainty on which she
was cast away; she never afterwards lost her hold of it; she confirmed
herself in it by other inventions; she pretended that he had told her where
he was going, and then that he had written to her. She almost believed
these childish fictions as she uttered them. At the same time, in all her
longing for his return, she had a sickening fear that when he came back he
would keep his parting threat and drive her away: she did not know how he
could do it, but this was what she feared.

She seldom left the house, which at first she kept neat and pretty, and
then let fall into slatternly neglect. She ceased to care for her dress or
the child's; the time came when it seemed as if she could scarcely move in
the mystery that beset her life, and she yielded to a deadly lethargy which
paralyzed all her faculties but the instinct of concealment.

She repelled the kindly approaches of the Hallecks, sometimes sending word
to the door when they came, that she was sick and could not see them;
or when she saw any of them, repeating those hopeless lies concerning
Bartley's whereabouts, and her expectations of his return.

For the time she was safe against all kindly misgivings; but there were
some of Bartley's creditors who grew impatient of his long absence, and
refused to be satisfied with her fables. She had a few dollars left from
some money that her father had given her at home, and she paid these all
out upon the demand of the first-comer. Afterwards, as other bills were
pressed, she could only answer with incoherent promises and evasions that
scarcely served for the moment. The pursuit of these people dismayed her.
It was nothing that certain of them refused further credit; she would have
known, both for herself and her child, how to go hungry and cold; but there
was one of them who threatened her with the law if she did not pay. She did
not know what he could do; she had read somewhere that people who did not
pay their debts were imprisoned, and if that disgrace were all she would
not care. But if the law were enforced against her, the truth would come
out; she would be put to shame before the world as a deserted wife; and
this when Bartley had _not_ deserted her. The pride that had bidden her
heart break in secret rather than suffer this shame even before itself, was
baffled: her one blind device had been concealment, and this poor refuge
was possible no longer. If all were not to know, some one must know.

The law with which she had been threatened might be instant in its
operation; she could not tell. Her mind wavered from fear to fear. Even
while the man stood before her, she perceived the necessity that was upon
her, and when he left her she would not allow herself a moment's delay.

She reached the Events building, in which Mr. Atherton had his office, just
as a lady drove away in her coupé. It was Miss Kingsbury, who made a point
of transacting all business matters with her lawyer at his office, and of
keeping her social relations with him entirely distinct, as she fancied,
by this means. She was only partially successful, but at least she never
talked business with him at her house, and doubtless she would not have
talked anything else with him at his office, but for that increasing
dependence upon him in everything which she certainly would not have
permitted herself if she had realized it. As it was, she had now come to
him in a state of nervous exaltation, which was not business-like. She had
been greatly shocked by Ben Halleck's sudden freak; she had sympathized
with his family till she herself felt the need of some sort of condolence,
and she had promised herself this consolation from Atherton's habitual
serenity. She did not know what to do when he received her with what she
considered an impatient manner, and did not seem at all glad to see
her. There was no reason why he should be glad to see a lady calling on
business, and no doubt he often found her troublesome, but he had never
shown it before. She felt like crying at first; then she passed through an
epoch of resentment, and then through a period of compassion for him. She
ended by telling him with dignified severity that she wanted some money:
they usually made some jokes about her destitution when she came upon that
errand. He looked surprised and vexed, and "I have spent what you gave me
last month," she explained.

"Then you wish to anticipate the interest on your bonds?"

"Certainly not," said Clara, rather sharply. "I wish to have the interest
up to the present time."

"But I told you," said Atherton, and he could not, in spite of himself,
help treating her somewhat as a child, "I told you then that I was paying
you the interest up to the first of November. There is none due now. Didn't
you understand that?"

"No, I didn't understand," answered Clara. She allowed herself to add,
"It is very strange!" Atherton struggled with his irritation, and made no
reply. "I can't be left without money," she continued. "What am I to do
without it?" she demanded with an air of unanswerable argument. "Why, I
_must_ have it!"

"I felt that I ought to understand you fully," said Atherton, with cold
politeness. "It's only necessary to know what sum you require."

Clara flung up her veil and confronted him with an excited face. "Mr.
Atherton, I don't wish a _loan_; I can't _permit_ it; and you know that my
principles are entirely against anticipating interest."

Atherton, from stooping over his table, pencil in hand, leaned back in his
chair, and looked at her with a smile that provoked her: "Then may I ask
what you wish me to do?"

"No! I can't instruct you. My affairs are in your hands. But I must
_say_--" She bit her lip, however, and did not say it. On the contrary she
asked, rather feebly, "Is there nothing due on anything?"

"I went over it with you, last month," said Atherton patiently, "and
explained all the investments. I could sell some stocks, but this election
trouble has disordered everything, and I should have to sell at a heavy
loss. There are your mortgages, and there are your bonds. You can have any
amount of money you want, but you will have to borrow it."

"And that you know I won't do. There should always be a sum of money in the
bank," said Clara decidedly.

"I do my very best to keep a sum there, knowing your theory; but your
practice is against me. You draw too many checks," said Atherton, laughing.

"Very well!" cried the lady, pulling down her veil. "Then I'm to have
nothing?"

"You won't allow yourself to have anything," Atherton began. But she
interrupted him haughtily.

"It is certainly very odd that my affairs should be in such a state that I
can't have all the money of my own that I want, whenever I want it."

Atherton's thin face paled a little more than usual. "I shall be glad to
resign the charge of your affair Miss Kingsbury."

"And I shall accept your resignation," cried Clara, magnificently,
"whenever you offer it." She swept out of the office, and descended to her
coupé like an incensed goddess. She drew the curtains and began to cry.
At her door, she bade the servant deny her to everybody, and went to
bed, where she was visited a little later by Olive Halleck, whom no ban
excluded. Clara lavishly confessed her sin and sorrow. "Why, I _went_
there, more than half, to sympathize with him about Ben; I don't need
any money, just yet; and the first thing I knew, I was accusing him of
neglecting my interests, and I don't know what all! Of course he had to say
he wouldn't have anything more to do with them, and I should have despised
him if he hadn't. And now I don't care what becomes of the property: it's
never been anything but misery to me ever since I had it, and I always knew
it would get me into trouble sooner or later." She whirled her face over
into her pillow, and sobbed, "But I _didn't_ suppose it would ever make me
insult and outrage the best friend I ever had,--and the truest man,--and
the noblest gentleman! Oh, _what_ will he think of me?"

Olive remained sadly quiet, as if but superficially interested in these
transports, and Clara lifted her face again to say in her handkerchief,
"It's a shame, Olive, to burden you with all this at a time when you've
care enough of your own."

"Oh, I'm rather glad of somebody else's care; it helps to take my mind
off," said Olive.

"Then what would you do?" asked Clara, tempted by the apparent sympathy
with her in the effect of her naughtiness.

"You might make a party for him, Clara," suggested Olive, with lack-lustre
irony.

Clara gave way to a loud burst of grief. "Oh, Olive Halleck! I didn't
suppose you could be so cruel!"

Olive rose impatiently. "Then write to him, or go to him and tell him that
you're ashamed of yourself, and ask him to take your property back again."

"Never!" cried Clara, who had listened with fascination. "What would he
think of me?"

"Why need you care? It's purely a matter of business!"

"Yes."

"And you needn't mind what he thinks."

"Of course," admitted Clara, thoughtfully.

"He will naturally despise you," added Olive, "but I suppose he does that,
now."

Clara gave her friend as piercing a glance as her soft blue eyes could
emit, and, detecting no sign of jesting in Olive's sober face, she answered
haughtily, "I don't see what right Mr. Atherton has to despise me!"

"Oh, no! He must admire a girl who has behaved to him as you've done."

Clara's hauteur collapsed, and she began to truckle to Olive. "If he were
_merely_ a business man, I shouldn't mind it; but knowing him socially, as
I do, and as a--friend, and--an acquaintance, that way, I don't see how I
can do it."

"I wonder you didn't think of that before you accused him of fraud and
peculation, and all those things."

"I _didn't_ accuse him of fraud and peculation!" cried Clara, indignantly.

"You said you didn't know what all you'd called him," said Olive, with her
hand on the door.

Clara followed her down stairs. "Well, I shall never do it in the world,"
she said, with reviving hope in her voice.

"Oh, I don't expect you to go to him this morning," said Olive dryly. "That
would be a little _too_ barefaced."

Her friend kissed, her. "Olive Halleck, you're the strangest girl that ever
was. I do believe you'd joke at the point of death! But I'm _so_ glad you
have been perfectly frank with me, and of course it's worth worlds to know
that you think I've behaved horridly, and ought to make _some_ reparation."

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