Eden: An Episode

"I mean this, that when pride gets the upper hand, love is bound to be throttled. In some, pride is a screen; behind it they rage at their ease: in others it is a bag of wind; prick it and behold, a tempest. With you, just at present, it is a screen; haven't I seen you torment your rings ever since I came in? Well, torment them, but for goodness sake don't change the screen into a balloon. There is nothing as bad form as that, and nothing as ineffectual. My dear, if you want to keep your husband, think of yourself not first, but last, or, if you can't think in that way, act as though you did."

"And be a hypocrite."

"Eden, you are impossible. Be a hypocrite? Why, of course you must be a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is Christianity's most admirable invention. Banish it, and what do you find? Not skeletons in the closet, but catacombs of distasteful things. No, Eden, be a hypocrite. We all are; everyone prefers it. There was a man once who got up in the morning with the idea of telling everybody the truth. By sunset he was safe in an asylum. People don't want the truth; they content themselves with sighing for it; they know very well that when they get in its way, it bites. It is vicious, truth is. It makes us froth at the mouth. If you haven't had the forethought to cuirass yourself with indifference, truth can cause a hydrophobia for which the only Pasteur is time. No, hypocrisy has had the sanction of pope and prelate. Let us hold to it; let us hold to what we may and not try to prove anything."

"What are you talking about then?"

"How irritating you are, Eden! I am talking about you. I am trying to give you some advice. No one gave me any. I had to gather it on the way. I come here, and finding you melancholy as a comic paper, I try to offer the fruit of two decades of worldly experience, and instead of thanking me, you ask what I am talking about." Mrs. Manhattan sank back in her ample folds and laughed. "Don't you have any tea in this house?"

"You are right, Laura; I am irritating, I am absurd." As she spoke, she left the lounge. The tragedy-air had departed. She rang the bell, gave the order for tea, and during the remainder of Mrs. Manhattan's visit, comported herself so sagaciously that she succeeded in casting dust in that lady's eyes in a manner which would have thrown that lady's husband into stupors of admiration.

When her friend at last decided to take herself and her experience away, Eden remained in the drawing-room. Down the adjacent corner she saw the sun decline. On the horizon it left an aigrette of gold. Then that disappeared. Day closed its window, and Night, that queen who reigns only when she falls, shook out the shroud she wears for gown.

How long Eden sat alone with her thoughts she could not afterwards recall. For some time she was conscious only of a speck of dust which Mrs. Manhattan had brought from the outer world and forgotten to remove. It was such a little speck that at first Eden had pretended not to see it, but when Mrs. Manhattan had been gone a few minutes it insisted on her attention. She could not help eying it, and the more closely she eyed it, the larger it grew. From dust it turned to dirt, from minim into mountain. And presently it obscured her sight and veiled her mind with shadows.

Strive as she might, she could not argue it away. She tried to reason with herself, as a neurosthene, aware of his infirmity, may reason with the phantasm which he himself has evoked. But this was a phantasm that no argument could coerce. Did she say, You are unreal, it answered, I am Doubt. At each effort she made to rout it, it loomed to greater heights.

In the tremor that beset her she groped in memory for a talisman. She recalled her husband's wooing of her, his attitude and indulgent strength. Yet had not Mrs. Manhattan implied that men are double-faced? She thought of his laborious days, yet had not Mrs. Manhattan defined business as often synonymous with other men's wives? She recalled his excuse and was mindful of Mrs. Manhattan's interpretation.

At each new effort the doubt increased, and still she kept arguing with herself, until suddenly she perceived that she had stopped thinking. Doubt was pushing her down into an abyss where all was dark, and still she struggled, and still she struggled in vain; she was sinking; strength was leaving her, for doubt is masterful, till with a start she felt that she was safe. It was not in memory she found a talisman, but in her heart. It was her love that worked the spell. Love, and confidence in him whose name she bore. The mountain dissolved into minim, the dirt into dust, and she took the speck and blew it back into the shadows from which it had come.

VII

That evening Eden and her husband dined alone. But it was not till coffee was served and the servants left the room that either of them had an opportunity of exchanging speech on matters other than such as were of passing interest. For the rout which both were to attend that night Eden had already prepared. It was the initial Matriarch's of the season, and rumor had it that it was to be a very smart affair. On this occasion the waiters, it was understood, were to be in livery; and an attempt had been made to give the rooms something of the aspect and aroma which appertains to a private house. As a consequence those of the gentler sex who were bidden had given some thought to their frocks, while those who were not had garmented themselves in their stoutest mantles of indifference.

On receiving the large bit of cardboard on which the invitation was engraved, Eden had at first determined to word and dispatch a regret. Entertainments of that kind had ceased to appeal to her. At gatherings of similar nature which she attended she had long since divided the male element into the youths who wished to seem older than they looked, and the mature individuals who wished to appear younger than they were; while as for the women, they reminded her of Diogenes looking for a man. On receiving the invitation she had, therefore, determined to send a regret, but on mentioning the circumstance to her husband he had expressed the desire that she should accept. He liked to have her admired, and moreover, though the function itself might be tiresome, still she owed some duty to society, and there were few easier ways in which that duty could be performed. Accordingly an acceptance was sent, and as a reward of that heroism Usselex had brought her a plastron of opals.

That plastron she now wore. Her gown, which was cut a trifle lower on the back than on the neck, was of a hue that suggested the blending of sulphur and of salmon. Her arms were cased in Suède, into which she had rolled that part of the glove which covers the hand. Save for the wedding-token her fingers were ringless. She had nothing about her throat. But from shoulder to shoulder, from breast to girdle, was a cuirass of gems, flecked with absinthe and oscillant with flame. It was barbaric in splendor, Roman in beauty; it startled and captivated. And in it Eden looked the personified spirit of Bysance, a dream that had taken form. Her husband let his eyes have all their will of her. Even the butler was dazzled.

During the progress of the meal the presence of that person and of his underlings prevented any conversation of reportable interest. But while the courses were being served Eden noticed that her husband was in an unusually sprightly mood. He touched on one topic of the day, presently on another, and left that for a third. To each he gave a new aspect. It was as though he were tossing crystal balls. Now, when an educated man is not a pedant he can in discoursing about nothing at all exert a very palpable influence. Mr. Usselex talked like a philosopher who has seen the world. To many a woman there is nothing more wearisome than the conversation of a man who has nothing to desire and nothing to fear. That man is usually her husband. But with Eden it was different. She listened with the pleasure of a convalescent. She was just issuing from the little nightmare of the afternoon, and as he spoke, now and then she interrupted with some fancy of her own; but all the while deep down in the fibres of her being she felt a smart of self-reproach that mingled with exultation. Her suspicions had vanished. They had been born of the dusk and creatures of it. And she looked down through the opals into her heart and over at her husband and smiled.

The butler and his underlings had departed. The meal was done. Usselex smiled too. He left his seat and went behind her. He drew her head back, bent over, and kissed her on the lips; then mirroring his eyes in hers, he kissed her again, drew a chair to her side, and took her hand in his.

"Look at me, Eden," he said. "I love your eyes. Speak to me. I love your voice. They say that at twenty a man loves best. They are wrong. Youth is inconstant. It is with age a man learns what love can be. Do you not think I know? Look at me and tell me. Eden, joy frightens. Sometimes I wonder that I had the courage to ask you to be my wife. Sometimes I fear you think me too old. Sometimes I fear you may regret. But you must never regret. Any man you might have met could be more attractive than I, but no one could care for you more; no one. Tell me; you believe that, do you not?"

And Eden, turning her head with the motion of a swan, answered, "I know it."

"Eden," he continued, "my life has not been pleasant. I have told you little of it. In the lives of everyone there are incidents that are best left buried. If I have been reticent it has not been from lack of confidence; it has been because I feared to distress you. For years I did not understand; the reason of pain is seldom clear. At times I thought my strength overtaxed. I accused fate; it had been wilful to me. It had beckoned me to pleasant places; when I reached them the meadows disappeared, the intervales were quagmires, and the palace I had espied was a prison, with a sword for bolt. I accused justice as I had accused fate. Eden, men are not always sincere. There are people who do wrong, who injure, wantonly, in sport. And so I accused justice: I had expected it to be human; but justice is straight as a bayonet, and her breasts are of stone. It was long before I understood, but when I saw you I did. What I had suffered was needful; it was a preparation for you. No, justice is never human, but sometimes it is divine."

He had been speaking in a monotone, his voice sinking at times into a whisper, as though he feared some other than herself might hear his words. Eden's hand still lay within his own, and now he stood up and led her, waist-encircled, to the outer room. There they found other seats, and for a moment both were silent.

"If I have not questioned you," Eden said, at last, "it has been for a woman's reason. I am content. Had you a grief, I would demand to share it with you. It would be my right, would it not? But of what has gone before I prefer to remain in ignorance. It is not that I am incurious. It is that I prefer to think of your life as I think of my own, that its beginning was our wedding-day. I too am some times afraid. There are things of which I also have been reticent. I remember once thinking that to be happy was a verb that had no present tense. I do not think so now," she added, after a moment; and to her exquisite lips the smile returned. "There are so many things I want to tell," she continued. "Before I met you I thought myself in love. Oh, but I did, though. And it was not until after I had known you that I found that which I had taken for love was not love at all. How did I know? Well – you see, because that is not love which goes. And that went. It was for the man I cared, not the individual. At the time I did not understand, nor did I until you came. Truly I don't see why I should speak of this. Every girl, I fancy, experiences the same thing. But when you came life seemed larger. You brought with you new currents. Do you know what I thought? People said I married you for money. I married you because – what do you suppose, now? Because I loved you? But at that time I told myself I had done with love. No, it was not so much for that as because I was ambitious for us both. It was because I thought Wall Street too small for such as you. It was because I discerned in you that power which coerces men. It was because I believed in the future; it was because I trusted you. Yes, it was for that, and yet this afternoon – What is it, Harris?"

A servant had entered the room, bearing a letter on a tray.

"A letter for you, sir," he said.

Usselex took the note, opened the envelope, which he tossed on the table, and possessed himself of the contents.

"Is the messenger waiting?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Very good. Say I will be there immediately."

The man bowed and left the room.

"I am sorry, Eden – "

"What is it?"

"Nothing of any moment – a matter of business to which I must attend." He glanced at the clock. "It is after ten," he added. "You will not want to leave for Delmonico's before half-past eleven, will you? Very good; I will be back long before then." He had risen from his seat, and now he bent over and took her hand in his. "I am sorry I have to go. It is so seldom we have an evening together. And I had counted on this."

Eden raised a finger warningly. "If you are not back in time," she said, "I will send for Arnswald and go with him."

"I can trust him with you," he answered, and left the room. In a moment he returned, hat in hand. "By the way, Eden, I forgot to ask – you have sent out cards, have you not?"

"Yes, the world is informed that Mrs. John Usselex is at home on Saturdays."

"Would you mind sending that announcement to some one whom you don't know? It's just for the civility of the thing."

"Certainly. Who is it?"

"A Mrs. Feverill."

"Feverill? Mrs. Feverill." Eden contracted her eyebrows. "Where have I heard that name before?"

"I don't think you have ever heard it."

Eden laughed. "She wears blue velvet, I am sure; but I will send the card. Where does she live?"

Usselex bent over and touched her forehead with his lips. "That is good of you," he said. "She will take it very kindly." And with that he moved to the door.

"But what is the address?" Eden called after him.

"The Ranleigh," he answered; and from the hall he added, in a louder tone, "I will be back in less than an hour."

"The Ranleigh," she repeated to herself. "The Ranleigh!" And then suddenly the wall of the room parted like a curtain; to her ears came a cry of violins, dominated and accentuated by a blare of brass. Mrs. Manhattan was at her elbow. Behind her was Jones; beneath was a woman, her face turned to hers. She caught the motion of Mrs. Manhattan's fan. Beyond, in a canvas forest, stood a man, open-mouthed, raising and lowering his right arm at regular intervals. And between the shiver of violins and the shudder of trumpets, she heard some one saying, "Mrs. Feverill, that is – rather fly. Stops at the Ranleigh." At once the music swooned. The opera-house dissolved into mist, and Eden was in a carriage, eying through the open window the cut of a passer's gown. In her lap were some flowers; she raised them to her face, and as she put them down again, a cab drove past, bearing her husband and the woman who was considered fly. And this was the woman he wished her to receive! She caught and pinioned her forehead in her hands. In the distance the shadow of the afternoon loomed again, but this time more monstrous and potent than before. And nearer and nearer it came – blacker than hate and more appalling than shame; in a moment it would be on her; she would be shrouded in it for evermore, and no defense – not one.

"No, no," she murmured. Her hands left her forehead. She clutched her throat as though to tear some invisible grasp away. "No, no," she murmured, "it cannot be."

"Look at me, Eden," some one was saying; "look at me; I love your eyes. Youth is inconstant. It is with age – "

It was her husband reassuring her even in his absence. "Speak to me; I love your voice." And memory, continuing its office of mercy, served as ægis and exorcised advancing night. In her nervousness at the parried attack, she left her seat and paced the room, the opals glittering on her waist. "But he told me," she mused, "he told me that the woman's husband was in trouble – that he was endeavoring to aid them both. What did I hear when I first met him? There was a clerk or someone in his office, a man whom he trusted who deceived him, who was imprisoned, and to whose people he then furnished means for support. It is criminal for me to doubt him as I have. Do I not know him to be generous? have I not found him sincere?"

She shook out a fold of her frock impatiently. "A child frightened at momentary solitude was never more absurd than I." For a little space she continued her promenade up and down the room, leaving at each turn some fringe of suspicion behind. And presently the entire fabric seemed to leave her. To the corners of her mouth the smile returned. She went back to the sofa and was about to resume her former seat when her eyes fell on the envelope which her husband had tossed on the table. Mechanically she picked it up and glanced at the superscription. The writing was thin as hair, but the lettering was larger than is usual, abrupt and angular. To anyone else it would have suggested nothing particular, save, perhaps, the idea that it had been formed with the point of a tack; but to Eden it was luminous with intimations. Into the palms of her hands came a sudden moisture, the color left her cheeks, for a second she stood irresolute, the envelope in her trembling hold, then, as though coerced by another than herself, she ran to a bell and rang it.

In a moment the butler appeared. To conceal her agitation Eden had gone to the piano. There were some loose sheets of music on the lid and these she pretended to examine. "Is that you, Harris?" she asked, without turning her head. "Harris, that man that brought the note for Mr. Usselex this evening was the one that came on Monday with the note for Mr. Arnswald, was it not?"