Part 36 (2/2)

You have your choice, sir! Either your promise, or I return by the next packet to Albany.”

But Hamilton, always considerate of women, and despising the weakness and brutality which permits a man to slink out of an amour, would not retreat, and Betsey finally settled herself in her chair, and said, with unmistakable determination:--

”Very well, go now. I shall not move from this room--this chair--until you return.”

Hamilton caught his hat and left the house. Although he was possessed by the one absorbing desire to win back his wife, who had never been so dear as to-day, when for the first time she had placed him at arm's length and given him a thorough fright, still his brain, accustomed to see all sides of every question at once, and far into the future, spoke plainly of the hour when he would regret the loss of Mrs. Croix. He might forget her for weeks at a time, but he always reawakened to a sense of her being with a glowing impression that the world was more alive and fair. The secret romance had been very dear and pleasant. The end was come, however, and he was eager to pa.s.s it.

His eye was attracted to a chemist's window, and entering the shop hastily, he purchased a bottle of smelling salts. The act reminded him of Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l, and that he had not heard from her for several months.

He resolved to write that night, and permitted his mind to wander to the green Island which was almost lost among his memories. The respite was brief, however.

To his relief he found Mrs. Croix in her intellectual habit. The lady, who was reading in the door of her boudoir above the garden steps, exclaimed, without formal greeting:--

”I am transported, sir. Such descriptions never were written before.

Listen!”

Hamilton, who hated descriptions of scenery at any time, and was in his most direct and imperative temper, stood the infliction but a moment, then asked her attention. She closed the book over her finger and smiled charmingly.

”Forgive me for boring you,” she said graciously. ”But you know my pa.s.sion for letters; and if truth must be told, I am a little piqued. I have not laid eyes on you for a fortnight. Not but that I am used to your lapses of memory by this time,” she added, with a sigh.

Hamilton went straight to the point. He told her the exact reason for the necessary breach, omitting nothing but the episode of Mrs. Reynolds; one cause of reproach was as much as a man could be expected to furnish an angry woman.

For Mrs. Croix was very angry. At first she had pressed her hand against her heart as if about to faint, and Hamilton had hastily extracted the salts; but the next moment she was on her feet, towering and expanding like an avenging queen about to order in her slaves with scimitars and chargers.

”Do you mean,” she cried, ”that I am flouted, flung aside like an old cravat? I? With half the men in America in love with me? Good G.o.d, sir!

I have known from the beginning that you would tire, but I thought to be on the watch and save my pride. How dare you come like this? Why could you not give me warning? It is an outrage. I would rather you had killed me.”

”I am sorry I have blundered,” said Hamilton, humbly. ”But how in Heaven's name can a man know how a woman will take anything? I had such respect for your great intelligence that I thought it due you to treat you as I would a man--”

”A man?” exclaimed Mrs. Croix. ”Treat me like a man! Of all the supremely silly things I ever heard one of your s.e.x say, that is the silliest. I am not a man, and you know it.”

Hamilton hastened to a.s.sure her that she was deliberately averting her intelligence from his true meaning. ”You have never doubted my sincerity for a moment,” he added. ”You surely know what it will cost me never to see you again. There is but one cause under heaven that could have brought me to you with this decision. You may believe in my regret--to use a plain word--when you reflect upon all that you have been to me.”

He was desperately afraid that her anger would dissolve in tears, and he be placed in a position from which he was not sure of emerging with a clear conscience,--and he dared take home nothing less. But Mrs. Croix, however she might feel on the morrow, was too outraged in her pride and vanity to be susceptible either to grief or the pa.s.sion of love. She stormed up and down the room in increasing fury, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng blue lightning, her strong hands smas.h.i.+ng whatever costly offering they encountered. ”Wives! Wives! Wives!” she screamed. ”The little fools!

What are wives for but to keep house and bring up babies? They are a cla.s.s apart. I have suffered enough from their impertinent interference.

Am I not a woman apart? Will you a.s.sert that there is a 'wife' in America who can hold her own with me for a moment in anything? Was I not created to reveal to men--and only the ablest, for I waste no time on fools--the very sublimation of my s.e.x--a companions.h.i.+p they will find in no silly little fool, stupid with domesticity? Am I to submit, then, to be baulked by a s.e.x I despise--and in the greatest pa.s.sion that ever possessed a woman?” She stopped and laughed, bringing her lashes together and moving forward her beautiful lips. ”What a fool I am!” she said. ”You will come back when the humour seizes you. I had forgot that your family returned to-day. You are in your most domestic mood--and I have been inflicted with that before. But there will come an hour when neither your wife nor any other mortal power will keep you away from me.

Is it not true?”

Hamilton had turned pale; his ready imagination had responded with a presentiment of many desperate struggles. He rose, and took her hand forcibly.

”No,” he said. ”I shall not return. Believe me, that is the hardest sentence I have ever p.r.o.nounced upon myself. And forgive me if I have been rude and inconsiderate. It was the result of the desire to have the agony over as quickly as possible. I should have found the antic.i.p.ation unbearable, and I do not believe it would have been more soothing to you. There is no reason why your pride should be wounded, for this is not the result of satiety on my part, but of an imperative necessity.

Shake hands with me.”

She wrenched her hand free and, seizing a vase, flung it into a mirror.

Hamilton retreated.

x.x.xVI

<script>