Part 35 (1/2)

She was still in the pa.s.sive stage of defeat, when Thayer entered the room, hours later. Struggling to her through the storm, he had been urged on by a fierce pa.s.sion of anxiety for the woman he loved. A strange fire had flashed up within him, and, had he found Beatrix in her usual mood, he might have lost his power to quench it. Met by a pa.s.sion equal to his own, he instinctively pulled himself together. Two such storms must inevitably have landed them upon hidden rocks and wrecked them pitilessly and in mid-career. He realized the danger. It took all his manhood to face it; but two lives were trembling in the balance, with nothing but his own past character and half of his inherited tendencies to act as a fulcrum.

”I am afraid I don't quite understand you,” he said.

”Then what are you doing here?” she returned sharply.

Thayer faltered. Then,--

”I thought perhaps you might be in need of help,” he said quietly.

Her lip curled, and her slender wrists grew tense with the strain upon them.

”For what? John and Patrick can take care of my husband. Mr. Lorimer is--very ill; but we are quite capable of taking care of him. Why should I need help?” She watched him in silent hostility. Then, as she saw the sudden drawing of his lips, her mood changed. This was her friend, the only friend who was near her and loyal to her. She must not hurt him with her bitterness, lest he too should fail her, just as Lorimer already had done. For months, she had unconsciously depended upon his loyalty. Now she sought it consciously. ”What is the use of keeping up the pretence any longer?” she went on drearily. ”You have been with us day after day; you know how things are going; you know how my husband has--that he has not always been himself.” Even in her desperation, she still chose her words guardedly. ”Do you think I ever could have held him?”

Slowly Thayer shook his head.

”No,” he said in a low voice. ”No; you never could have held him. It was impossible.”

”Then why didn't you warn me?” she burst out hotly.

He looked her straight in the eye.

”How could I?”

Her face flushed with the sudden understanding. Then the old dreary note came back into her voice.

”And you have known from the first that it was all a mistake?”

”Yes.”

”And you have let me suffer for it?”

”You are not the only one,” he said, almost involuntarily.

Their eyes met, held each other, then dropped apart. Thayer drew a long, slow breath.

”Mrs. Lorimer--Beatrix--”

She checked him with a gesture.

”Wait! You don't know it all, you can't know. You never knew Sidney Lorimer as I did, for my Sidney Lorimer never really existed. I idealized him, half-deified him. The Sidney Lorimer to whom I gave my love, my very life, was one man; the Sidney Lorimer I married was quite another. A woman can't love two men totally unlike each other, and yet I am bound to him, bound down to the day of my death, or of his. We both come of a long-lived race, and this must go on for years. I have tried to prevent it, this gradual change in him; but it was impossible. Then I tried not to see it; but I had to see it. It insisted on itself and on being seen. I have been watching it, dreading the time when I must admit it in so many words. I have tried to be loyal to him, G.o.d knows!” She spoke rapidly. Then she checked herself, and the dreary note came again.

”But what is done, is done. I loved one man; I am married to another.

Nothing now can bring back to me the man I used to know, the man I used to imagine him. Then what will the future amount to? We shall go on together to the end, two prisoners bound by a chain which only holds us the tighter and galls us the more, the looser it grows between us. One doesn't mind the dying; it's the limitless, unchanging years ahead, the black, blank years that frighten me. How can I escape them?”

In presence of a woman's pa.s.sionate pain, every man must stand back, baffled and powerless to help. Thayer had supposed he understood Beatrix Lorimer as no other man had ever understood her. To his eyes, her character seemed crystal clear; yet now, in her supreme crisis, the crystal grew cloudy before his eyes. For long hours, she had gone into the deep places of her life, had stirred up from its very source the spring of her being, and the superficial clearness had grown turgid with the dregs that had lain undisturbed and unsuspected there. Hatred and black despair were boiling in the heart which Thayer had thought so calm and cool, so peaceful in its dainty whiteness. Before it, he stood silent. Was this the true Beatrix Lorimer? The woman he had fancied her was a spotless white lily. The heart of this one was banded with bars of flame and gold. The other grew colorless and cold by comparison, and his hands twitched to pluck this fiery, vivid thing before him and carry it away out of reach of Lorimer's sodden, defiling touch. What had Sidney Lorimer, drunkard, profligate that he was, to do with this high-bred, high-spirited, heart-broken woman? Why not rather he, Cotton Mather Thayer--He thrust his hands into his pockets and lowered his eyes to hide the light burning in them.

It seemed to him hours since he had entered the house. In reality, the time was short. As he had crossed the threshold, Beatrix had raised her head and looked at him dully. Then her reaction had come. Like the ebb and flow of the waves, excitement had followed apathy; and, as she had met his eyes, the wave had risen again and swept her away upon its tossing crest. Thayer was here at last. He never forgot her, never forsook her. He had come to her in this moment of her bitterest need, even as he had come to her many a time in the past. With him, there could be no need for explanation or preface. Straight from the heart of her reverie, Beatrix Lorimer had cast her words at him,--

”It has all been a hideous mistake!”