Part 3 (1/2)
”Oh, she's gone--if that's the only reason.”
Turning, Edith saw the woman with the rose-colored parasol rapidly descending the path by which she had come.
[Ill.u.s.tration: He turned from the girl to his wife. ”I'm willing to explain anything you like--as far as I can.”]
”I'd still rather stay out here,” she said. ”If I were to go in, I think it would--”
”Yes? What?”
”I think it would kill me.”
”Oh, come, Edith. Let's face the thing calmly. Don't let us become hysterical.”
”_Am_ I hysterical, Chip?”
”In your own way, yes. Where another woman would make a fuss, you're unnaturally frozen; but it comes to the same thing. I know that your heart--”
”Is breaking. Oh, I don't deny that. But I'd rather it broke here than indoors. I don't know why, but I can stand it here, with people going by; whereas in there--”
”Oh, cut it, Edith, for G.o.d's sake! Can't you see that my heart's breaking, too?”
She looked him in the face, shaking her head sadly. ”No, Chip, I can't see that. If there had been any danger of it you wouldn't have--”
”But I couldn't help it. That's what you don't seem to understand.”
”No; I'm afraid I don't.”
”Would you _try_ to understand--if I were to tell you?”
”I think I know already most of what you'd have to say. She's a woman whom you knew long before you knew me--and from whom you've never been able--”
”She was the daughter of a Swedish Lutheran pastor--dead now--established in New Jersey. In some way she drifted to the stage.
Her name was Margarethe Kastenskjold. When she went on the stage she made it Maggie Clare. She had about as much talent for the theater as a paper doll. When I first knew her she was still getting odd jobs in third and fourth rate companies. Since then she hasn't played at all.”
”I understand. There's been no need of it. She's quite well dressed.”
”Let me go on, will you, Edith? I was about two or three and twenty then. She may have been a year or two older. She was living at that time with Billy c.u.mmings. And somehow it happened--after Billy died--and she was stranded--”
She made an appealing gesture. ”_Please!_ I know how those things come about--or I can easily imagine. In your case--I'd--I'd rather not try.”
She got the words out somehow without breaking down.
”All the same, Edith,” he went on, ”you'll _have_ to try--if you're going to do me anything like justice. If she hadn't been a refined, educated sort of girl, entirely at sea in her surroundings, and stranded--stranded for money, mind you, next door to going to starve--and no chance of getting a job, because she couldn't act a little bit--if it hadn't been for all that--”
”Oh, I know how you'd be generous!”
”Yes; but you don't know how I came to be a fool.”
”Is there any reason why I _should_ know--now that the fact is there?”
He looked at her steadily. ”Edith! What are you made of?”