East Angels: A Novel

"It's because I spoke as I did – this is my punishment. But if I promise never to speak in that way again?"

"You must not come."

"Tell me just what it is you intend to do – we'll have it out now. Tell me the whole, you needn't spare."

"After to-day, I wish – I intend – never to see you again – that is, alone. It is hard that you should make me speak it out in this way."

"Oh – make; you are capable of saying whatever you please without being made; whatever will do me the most good and hurt me the most – the two are synonymous in your opinion – that is what you delight in."

She had turned away with bent head.

"You are not as strong as you thought you were; it does hurt you, Margaret, after all, to say such things to me."

There was an old stone seat, with a high back, near the pillar; she sank down upon it.

"What you wish is to have me leave you – tire you and vex you no more. But I cannot go quite yet. I tell you that I will accept Lanse, as well as I can; I promise never again to open my lips as I did that last day; and still you are going to shut your door in my face, and keep it shut; and you assure me it is forever. This is unreasonable – a woman's unreason. Why shouldn't I come occasionally? – what are you afraid of? You will be surrounded by all your safeguards, your husband at the head. But your own will is a safeguard no human power could break; you are unassailable, taken quite by yourself, Mrs. Lansing Harold."

She did not look up.

"And you wouldn't be able, either, to carry it out – any such system of blockade," he went on. "Aunt Katrina would send for me; leaving that aside, Lanse himself would send; Lanse doesn't care a straw what my real opinion of him may be, so long as he can get some talk, some entertainment out of me, and it will be more than ever so now that he is permanently laid up. And if you should tell him of my avowal even, what would he say? 'Of course you know how to take rubbish of that sort' – that is what he would say! And he would laugh delightedly to think of my being caught."

Still she did not move.

He walked off a few paces, then came back. "And here, again, Margaret, even if you should be able to influence both Aunt Katrina and Lanse against me, do you think that would prevent my seeing you – I don't mean constantly, of course, but occasionally? Do you suppose I should obey your rules – even your wishes? Not the least in the world! I should always see you, now and then, in some way. I shouldn't make myself a public annoyance; but – I give you warning – I shall never lose sight of you as long as I breathe, as long as I am alive."

She stirred at last, she looked up at him.

"Yes, I see you are frightened; you wish to go – escape, go back to the house and shut yourself up out of my reach, as you usually do. But this time I'm merciless, I feel that it's my last chance; you cannot go (you needn't try to pass me) until you have told me why it is that you wish not to see me again, never again, in spite of the safety, the absolute unapproachableness of your position."

She sat there, her eyes on his hard, insistent face.

"Why do you make me more wretched than I am?" she asked.

"Because I can't help it! There is a reason, then?"

"Yes." She had bent her head down again.

"I thought so. And I am prepared to hear it," he went on.

His voice had altered so as he brought this out that she looked up. "What is it you expect to hear?" she asked in a whisper.

"It's a new idea, I admit – something that has just come to me; but it explains everything – your whole course, conduct, which have been such a mystery to me. You love Lanse, you have always loved him; that is the solution! In spite of the insult of his long neglect of you, his second desertion, you are glad to go back to him; there have been such cases of miserable infatuation among women, yours is one of them. But you do not wish me to see the process of your winning him over, or trying to; so I am to be sent away."

She got up. "And if I should say yes to this, acknowledge it, that would be the end? You would wish to see me no more?"

"Don't flatter yourself. Nothing of the kind. Recollect, if you please, that I love you; with me, unfortunately, it's for life. You may be weak enough – depraved enough, I might almost call it – to adore Lanse, – do you suppose that makes any difference in my adoring you? Do you think it's a matter of choice with me, my caring for you as I do? That I enjoy being mastered in this way by a feeling I can't overcome?"

"I am going to tell you my life," she said, abruptly.

"I know it already. – How beautiful you look!"

"I ought to look hideous." She walked about for a moment or two, and finally stopped, facing him, behind the old stone seat.

"It will make no difference what you say, I can tell you that now," he said, warningly.

"I think it will make a difference. You are not cruel."

"Yes, I am."

"I never loved Lanse," she began, hurriedly. "In one way it was not my fault; I was too young to appreciate what love meant, I was peculiarly immature in my feelings – I see that now.

"When the blow came, the blow of my discovering – what Lanse has already told you, I was crushed by it, – I had never known anything of actual evil.

"He told me to 'take it as a lady should.' I didn't know what he meant.

"I had no mother to go to. I felt even then that Aunt Katrina wouldn't be kind. In the overthrow of everything, the best I could think of to do was to hold on to one or two ideas that were left – that seemed to me right, and one of these was silence; I determined to tell nobody what had really happened; I would be loyal to my husband, as far as I could be, no matter what my husband was to me.

"So I went back to Aunt Katrina (as Lanse preferred). And I told nothing.

"I have no doubt I appeared cold enough. In the beginning there was a good deal of coldness, though there was always suffering underneath; but later it wasn't coldness, it was the constant effort to hide – I had thought my life difficult. But I had yet to learn that there was something more difficult still. I had not loved Lanse – no; but now I was finding out what love meant, for – for I began to love – you."

Winthrop started, the color rushed up and covered his face in a flood; in his eyes shone the transforming light of a happiness which had never been there before. For this man, in spite of his successes, had never attained much positive happiness for himself in life; Lanse, Lucian, many another idler, attained more. Happiness is an inconsistent goddess, by no means has she always a crown for strenuous effort; very often she seems to dwell longest with those who do not think beyond the morrow; there she sits and basks. However, she had come to Winthrop now, and royally, bringing him that which he cared the most for. He thanked her by his glowing face, his ardent eyes.

"It's nothing to be glad about," Margaret had said, quickly, when she saw the change in his face. "I tell you because I cannot endure that you should believe of me what you thought – about Lanse. And also because I am weak – yes, I confess it. You said you intended to see me, follow me; but now that you know how it is with me, you won't do that."

Winthrop's face remained triumphant. "Odd reasoning, Margaret."

"The best reasoning. So long as it was only you, you could do as you pleased. But now that you know that – that others will suffer too – " She paused. "I am sure I have not trusted you in vain?" she said, appealingly.

But he shook his head, the triumph still animated him. "You can trust me in one way; I won't take advantage, that is, not now. But you needn't try to make me think, Margaret, that it's not something to be glad about – to know that you care for me." He laughed a little from his sheer satisfaction; then, in his old way, he put his hands compactly down in the pockets of his coat, and stood there looking at her.

"Is it anything to be glad about – my wretchedness?" she asked, strengthening herself for the contest.

"It makes you wretched? Strange!"

"I am so wretched – I have been wretched so long – that only my firm belief that my Creator knows best has enabled me to live on, has kept me from ending it."

"Why should you be more unhappy than I am? Nothing could make me end my life now."

She looked at him in silence.

"If you look at me in that way – " Winthrop began.

She left her place. He stood where he was, watching her, but he was not paying much heed to what she was saying, now. He had the great fact, man-like, he was enjoying it; it was enough for the present – after all these years.

She seemed to see how little impression she had made. She came back to the old stone a second time to complete her story. "I tried so hard – I was so glad when I saw how you disliked me," she began.

"It wasn't dislike."