She gave me another long look. “You—you’re generous. I’m grateful. But you can’t marry Kate Spain,” she said, with a little smile like the grimace on a dying face.
I had no doubt in my own mind that I could; the first sight of her had carried that conviction home, and I answered: “Can’t I, though? That’s what we’ll see.”
“You don’t know what my life is. How would you like, wherever you went, to have some one suddenly whisper behind you: ‘Look. That’s Kate Spain’?”
I looked at her, and for a moment found no answer. My first impulse of passionate pity had swept me past the shock of her confession; as long as she was herself, I seemed to feel, it mattered nothing to me that she was also Kate Spain. But her last words called up a sudden vision of the life she must have led since her acquittal; the life I was asking to share with her. I recalled my helpless wrath when Shreve had told me who she was; and now I seemed to hear the ugly whisper—”Kate Spain, Kate Spain”—following us from place to place, from house to house; following my wife and me.
She took my hesitation for an answer. “You hadn’t thought of that, had you? But I think of nothing else, day and night. For three years now I’ve been running away from the sound of my name. I tried California first; it was at the other end of the country, and some of my mother’s relations lived there. They were kind to me, everybody was kind; but wherever I went I heard my name: Kate Spain—Kate Spain! I couldn’t go to church, or to the theatre, or into a shop to buy a spool of thread, without hearing it. What was the use of calling myself Mrs. Ingram, when, wherever I went, I heard Kate Spain? The very school-children knew who I was, and rushed out to see me when I passed, I used to get letters from people who collected autographs, and wanted my signature: ‘Kate Spain, you know.’ And when I tried shutting myself up, people said: ‘What’s she afraid of? Has she got something to hide, after all?’ and I saw that it made my cousins uncomfortable, and shy with me, because I couldn’t lead a normal life like theirs… After a year I couldn’t stand it, and so we came away, and went round the world… But wherever we go it begins again: and I know now I can never get away from it.” She broke down, and hid her face for a moment. Then she looked up at me and said: “And so you must go away, you see.”
I continued to look at her without speaking: I wanted the full strength of my will to go out to her in my answer. “I see, on the contrary, that I must stay.”
She gave me a startled glance. “No—no.”
“Yes, yes. Because all you say is a nervous dream; natural enough, after what you’ve been through, but quite unrelated to reality. You say you’ve thought of nothing else, day and night; but why think of it at all—in that way? Your real name is Kate Spain. Well—what of it? Why try to disguise it? You’ve never done anything to disgrace it. You’ve suffered through it, but never been abased. If you want to get rid of it there’s a much simpler way; and that is to take mine instead. But meanwhile, if people ask you if you’re Kate Spain, try saying yes, you are, instead of running away from them.”
She listened with bent head and interlocked hands, and I saw a softness creep about her lips. But after I had ceased she looked up at me sadly. “You’ve never been tried for your life,” she said.
The words struck to the roots of my optimism. I remembered in a flash that when I had first seen her I had thought there was a look about her mouth and eyes unlike that of any other woman I had known; as if she had had a different experience from theirs. Now I knew what that experience was: the black shadow of the criminal court, and the long lonely fight to save her neck. And I’d been trying to talk reason to a woman who’d been through that!
“My poor girl—my poor child!” I held out my arms, and she fell into them and wept out her agony. There were no more words to be said; no words could help her. Only the sense of human nearness, human pity, of a man’s arms about her, and his heart against hers, could draw her out of her icy hell into the common warmth of day.
Perhaps it was the thought of that healing warmth which made me suddenly want to take her away from the Nottingham lace curtains and the Swiss water-fall. For a while we sat silent, and I held her close; then I said: “Come out for a walk with me. There are beautiful walks close by, up through the beechwoods.”
She looked at me with a timid smile. I knew now that she would do all I told her to; but before we started out I must rid my mind of another load. “I want to have you all to myself for the rest of the day. Where’s Miss Wilpert?” I asked.
Miss Wilpert was away in Milan, she said, and would not be back till late. She had gone to see about passport visas and passages on a cruising liner which was sailing from Genoa to the Aegean in a few days. The ladies thought of taking the cruise. I made no answer, and we walked out through the pension garden, and mounted the path to the beechwoods.
We wandered on for a long time, saying hardly anything to each other; then we sat down on the mossy steps of one of the little pilgrimage chapels among the trees. It is a place full of sweet solitude, and gradually it laid its quieting touch on the tormented creature at my side.
As we sat there the day slipped down the sky, and we watched, through the great branches, the lake turning golden and then fading, and the moon rising above the mountains. I put my hand on hers. “And now let’s make some plans,” I said.
I saw the apprehensive look come back to her eyes. “Plans—oh, why, today?”
“Isn’t it natural that two people who’ve decided to live together should want to talk over their future? When are we going to be married—to begin with?”
She hesitated for a long time, clasping and unclasping her unhappy hands. She had passed the stage of resistance, and I was almost sure she would not return to it again. I waited, and at length she said, looking away from me: “But you don’t like Cassie.”
The words were a shock, though I suppose I must have expected them. On the whole, I was glad they had been spoken; I had not known how to bring the subject up, and it was better she should do it for me.
“Let’s say, dear, that Cassie and I don’t like each other. Isn’t that nearer the truth?”
“Well, perhaps; but—”
“Well, that being so, Cassie will certainly be quite as anxious to strike out for herself as I shall be to—”
She interrupted me with a sudden exclamation. “No, no! She’ll never leave me—never.”
“Never leave you? Not when you’re my wife?”
She hung her head, and began her miserable finger-weaving again. “No; not even if she lets me—”
“Lets you—?”
“Marry you,” she said in a whisper.
I mastered her hands, and forced her to turn around to me. “Kate—look at me; straight at me. Shall I tell you something? Your worst enemy’s not Kate Spain; it’s Cassie Wilpert.”
She freed herself from my hold and drew back. “My worst enemy? Cassie—she’s been my only friend!”
“At the time of the trial, yes. I understand that; I understand your boundless gratitude for the help she gave you. I think I feel about that as you’d want me to. But there are other ways of showing your gratitude than by sharing the rest of your life with her.”
She listened, drooping again. “I’ve tried every other way,” she said at length, below her breath.
“What other ways?”
“Oh, everything. I’m rich you know, now,” she interrupted herself, her colour rising. “I offered her the house at Cayuga—it’s a good house; they say it’s very valuable. She could have sold it if she didn’t want to live there. And of course I would have continued the allowance I’m giving her—I would have doubled it. But what she wanted was to stay with me; the new life she was leading amused her. She was a poor servant-girl, you know; and she had a dread-fill time when—when my father was alive. She was our only help… I suppose you read about it all … and even then she was good to me… She dared to speak to him as I didn’t… And then, at the trial… The trial lasted a whole month; and it
was a month with thirty-one days… Oh, don’t make me go back to it—for God’s sake don’t!” she burst out, sobbing.
It was impossible to carry on the discussion. All I thought of was to comfort her. I helped her to her feet, whispering to her as if she had been a frightened child, and putting my arm about her to guide her down the path. She leaned on me, pressing her arm against mine. At length she said: “You see it can’t be; I always told you it could never be.”
“I see more and more that it must be; but we won’t talk about that now,” I answered.
We dined quietly in a corner of the pension dining-room, which was filled by a colony of British old maids and retired army officers and civil servants—all so remote from the world of the “Ezra Spain case” that, if Shreve had been there to proclaim Mrs. Ingram’s identity, the hated syllables would have waked no echo. I pointed this out to Mrs. Ingram, and reminded her that in a few years all memory of the trial would have died out, even in her own country, and she would be able to come and go unobserved and undisturbed. She shook her head and murmured: “Cassie doesn’t think so”; but when I suggested that Miss Wilpert might have her own reasons for cultivating this illusion, she did not take up the remark, and let me turn to pleasanter topics.
After dinner it was warm enough to wander down to the shore in the moonlight, and there, sitting in the little square along the lakeside, she seemed at last to cast off her haunting torment, and abandon herself to the strange new sense of happiness and safety. But presently the church bell rang the hour, and she started up, insisting that we must get back to the pension before Miss Wilpert’s arrival. She would be there soon now, and Mrs. Ingram did not wish her to know of my presence till the next day.
I agreed to this, but stipulated that the next morning the news of our approaching marriage should be broken to Miss Wilpert, and that as soon as possible afterward I should be told of the result. I wanted to make sure of seeing Kate the moment her talk with Miss Wilpert was over, so that I could explain away—and above all, laugh away—the inevitable threats and menaces before they grew to giants in her tormented imagination. She promised to meet me between eleven and twelve in the deserted writing-room, which we were fairly sure of having to ourselves at that hour; and from there I could take her up the hillside to have our talk out undisturbed.
VII.
I did not get much sleep that night, and the next morning before the pension was up I went out for a short row on the lake. The exercise braced my nerves, and when I got back I was prepared to face with composure whatever further disturbances were in store. I did not think they would be as bad as they appeared to my poor friend’s distracted mind, and was convinced that if I could keep a firm hold on her will the worst would soon be over. It was not much past nine, and I was just finishing the café au lait I had ordered on returning from my row, when there was a knock at my door. It was not the casual knock of a tired servant coming to remove a tray, but a sharp nervous rap immediately followed by a second; and, before I could answer, the door opened and Miss Wilpert appeared. She came directly in, shut the door behind her, and stood looking at me with a flushed and lowering stare. But it was a look I was fairly used to seeing when her face was turned to mine, and my first thought was one of relief. If there was a scene ahead, it was best that I should bear the brunt of it; I was not half so much afraid of Miss Wilpert as of the Miss Wilpert of Kate’s imagination.
I stood up and pushed forward my only armchair. “Do you want to see me, Miss Wilpert? Do sit down.”
My visitor ignored the suggestion. “Want to see you? God knows I don’t… I wish we’d never laid eyes on you, either of us,” she retorted in a thick passionate voice. If the hour had not been so early I should have suspected her of having already fortified herself for the encounter.
“Then, if you won’t sit down, and don’t want to see me—” I began affably; but she interrupted me.
“I don’t want to see you; but I’ve got to. You don’t suppose I’d be here if I didn’t have something to say to you?”
“Then you’d better sit down, after all.”
She shook her head, and remained leaning in the window-jamb, one elbow propped on the sill. “What I want to know is: what business has a dandified gentleman like you to go round worming women’s secrets out of them?”
Now we were coming to the point. “If I’ve laid myself open to the charge,” I said quietly, “at least it’s not because I’ve tried to worm out yours.”
The retort took her by surprise. Her flush darkened, and she fixed her small suspicious eyes on mine.
“Afy secrets?” she flamed out. “What do you know about my secrets?” She pulled herself together with a nervous laugh. “What an old fool I am! You’re only trying to get out of answering my question. What I want to know is what call you have to pry into my friend’s private affairs?”
I hesitated, struggling again with my anger. “If I’ve pried into them, as you call it, I did so, as you probably know, only after I’d asked Mrs. Ingram to be my wife.”
Miss Wilpert’s laugh became an angry whinny. “Exactly! If indeed you didn’t ask her to be your wife to get her secret out of her. She’s so unsuspicious that the idea never crossed her mind till I told her what I thought of the trick you’d played on her.”
“Ah, you suggested it was a trick? And how did she take the suggestion?”
Miss Wilpert stood for a moment without speaking; then she came up to the table and brought her red fist down on it with a bang. “I tell you she’ll never marry you!” she shouted.
I was on the verge of shouting back at her; but I controlled myself, conscious that we had reached the danger-point in our struggle. I said nothing, and waited.
“Don’t you hear what I say?” she challenged me.
“Yes; but I refuse to take what you say from any one but Mrs. Ingram.” My composure seemed to steady Miss Wilpert. She looked at me dubiously, and then dropped into the chair I had pushed forward. “You mean you want her to tell you herself?”
“Yes.” I sat down also, and again waited.
Miss Wilpert drew a crumpled handkerchief across her lips. “Well, I can get her to tell you—easy enough. She’ll do anything I tell her. Only I thought you’d want to act like a gentleman, and spare her another painful scene—”
“Not if she’s unwilling to spare me one.”
Miss Wilpert considered this with a puzzled stare. “She’ll tell you just what I’m telling you—you can take my word for that.”
“I don’t want anybody’s word but hers.”
“If you think such a lot of her I’d have thought you’d rather have gone away quietly, instead of tormenting her any more.” Still I was silent, and she pulled her chair up to the table, and stretched her thick arms across it. “See here, Mr. Severance—now you listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“You know I love Kate so that I wouldn’t harm a hair of her head,” she whimpered. I made no comment, and she went on, in a voice grown oddly low and unsteady: “But I don’t want to quarrel with you. What’s the use?”
“None whatever. I’m glad you realize it.”
“Well, then, let’s you and me talk it over like old friends. Kate can’t marry you, Mr. Severance. Is that plain? She can’t marry you, and she can’t marry anybody else. All I want is to spare her more scenes. Won’t you take my word for it, and just slip off quietly if I promise you I’ll make it all right, so she’ll bear you no ill-will?”
I listened to this extraordinary proposal as composedly as I could; but it was impossible to repress a slight laugh. Miss Wilpert took my laugh for an answer, and her discoloured face crimsoned furiously. “Well?”
“Nonsense, Miss Wilpert. Of course I won’t take your orders to go away.”
She rested her elbows on the table, and her chin on her crossed hands. I saw she was making an immense effort to control herself. “See here, young man, now you listen…”
Still
I sat silent, and she sat looking at me, her thick lower lip groping queerly, as if it were feeling for words she could not find.
“I tell you—” she stammered.
I stood up. “If vague threats are all you have to tell me, perhaps we’d better bring our talk to an end.”
She rose also. “To an end? Any minute, if you’ll agree to go away.”
“Can’t you see that such arguments are wasted on me?”
“You mean to see her?”
“Of course I do—at once, if you’ll excuse me.”
She drew back unsteadily, and put herself between me and the door. “You’re going to her now? But I tell you, you can’t! You’ll half kill her. Is that what you’re after?”
“What I’m after, first of all, is to put an end to this useless talk,” I said, moving toward the door. She flung herself heavily backward, and stood against it, stretching out her two arms to block my way. “She can’t marry—she can’t marry you!” she screamed.
I stood silent, my hands in my pockets. “You—you don’t believe me?” she repeated.
“I’ve nothing more to say to you, Miss Wilpert.”
“Ah, you’ve nothing more to say to me? Is that the tune? Then I’ll tell you that I’ve something more to say to you; and you’re not going out of this room till you’ve heard it. And you’ll wish you were dead when you have.”
“If it’s anything about Mrs. Ingram, I refuse to hear it; and if you force me to, it will be exactly as if you were speaking to a man who’s stone deaf. So you’d better ask yourself if it’s worth while.”
She leaned against the door, her heavy head dropped queerly forward. “Worth while—worth while? It’ll be worth your while not to hear it—I’ll give you a last chance,” she said.
“I should be much obliged if you’d leave my room, Miss Wilpert.”
“‘Much obliged’?” she simpered, mimicking me. “You’d be much obliged, would you? Hear him, girls—ain’t he stylish? Well, I’m going to leave your room in a minute, young gentleman; but not till you’ve heard your death-sentence.”
Edith Wharton - SSC 10 Page 10
