According to the Pattern (15 page)

“Have you seen her yet? She is magnificent. That
gown of hers must have been a fabulous price. It is
perfect. Only the greatest artist could have turned it out.
And right there lies her trouble. She is so constantly with Senator Bradenberg—”

Claude’s icy voice broke in upon her voluble talk:

“
You will be kind enough to leave my wife’s name
out of the conversation.”

She had never heard him speak like that. She looked up at him half-frightened and was not reassured by the
angry eyes that met hers. Her scheme was in danger of
failure, and there was nothing in the world that she hated
worse than failure; besides she had found this flirtation
so altogether interesting and so hard to pursue that her
heart—as much of a heart as she possessed—was affected
by it, and when a heart is involved, and there is no
conscience behind it, there is nothing a woman will not
do. She dashed in boldly:

“But I must speak of your wife. Don’t you see she will
bring a scandal upon you? You surely are not blind. I feel
it my duty to warn you. I did not dream her innocent baby-face covered so wise and old ahead. It has not
taken her long to learn the ways of the world. She has
cast aside the last vestige of her country prudery to-night,
and her gown is irreproachable—”

At that moment there was a stir among the throng
near them, and the music burst forth loudly. Instinctively
Claude leaned forward to catch her words, though they
were making his soul rage within him. Encouraged by
this Mrs. Sylvester went on:

“She has made a wonderful success with nothing to
start on, but she should be warned to go a little slower.
There are other men with whom she might amuse
herself, but she is all taken up with the senator and does not understand. She ought to know that when Senator Bradenberg plays, he plays to kill!”

Trembling with rage, white with horror and fury,
Claude essayed to stop her and bent low to speak the
words. He felt so angry he would have liked to throttle
the white neck in its setting of diamonds.

“Take care what you are saying of my wife, Mrs. Syl
vester!” He said the words so quietly that she scarcely
realized how intensely he was feeling until she looked
into his face and he met her eyes steadily.

What it was just then that made them both look up at
the people passing near them neither knew. There was nothing in their coming to attract attention, more than
in those that had passed before, but Claude found himself
face to face with his wife coming calmly toward him on
the arm of the senator, the senator’s orchids on her
breast, and the senator’s glances for her face.

For a moment he looked without knowing what he
saw. It seemed to him that she had died and this was her
white angel come to reproach him. The filmy robe
which he knew not, seemed some angel garment. The
bare neck and arms to which he was so unaccustomed,
all made her seem unreal. He gazed and gazed as she
came nearer, lost in admiration of her beauty, until she
was near enough to touch him, and then she looked up
unconsciously, took in coolly the situation, nodded to
Mrs. Sylvester, passed by her husband’s searching gaze as though he had been a stranger, and with slightly height
ened color, her small white hand resting confidently
upon the soft broadcloth of the senator’s arm, passed on into the conservatory.

I took my power in my hand

And went against the world;

‘Twas not so much as David
had,

But I was twice as bold.

I aimed my pebble, but myself

Was all the one that fell.

Was it Goliath was too large,

Or only I too small?

—Emily Dickinson

WHEN Miriam had felt herself shut into the carriage on the way to the Washburns’ two hours before, she leaned
back against the cushions and closed her eyes in a
momentary relief. She had been under so intense a strain for so many hours that she was glad of the minute’s relief from glaring light and necessity for action.

It was before she had opened her eyes that the senator bent over her with his tender: “You are very weary, poor
child!” and the carriage passed Claude in the uncertain lamplight.

She roused herself to be an interested listener to her
companion, wishing all the time it had been possible for
her to take this ride without an escort. What a relief it
would have been to just shut her eyes and rest without
even trying to think, all the way. For she felt instinctively
that the evening was to be an ordeal.

“I am tired,” she said smiling and trying to rally her
forces to seem gay. “I have been having a full day.”

“Well, lean back and rest. You need not mind me.
Don’t feel that you must keep up now to hide your
feelings. I know through what a strain you are passing.
You arc a brave woman.”

Horror froze Miriam’s veins. Her heart almost
stopped beating for the moment. A numbness crept up from her finger tips tingling through her whole being.
She started upright in her seat and her face grew white
in the dim darkness of the carriage so that her companion wondered if perhaps he might have gone too far.

He knew? He has seen her trouble? Then the whole
world must know. Then her secret was out, and her
defeat was an accomplished thing already, without the
evening’s test. Claude was fallen and her heart was
desolate! And yet she found that she had still been
clinging to that poor dead hope that she had declared
gone forever so many, many times.

For the instant she longed to return home and hide
her heart where no eye might look upon her defeat, no
scornful lips speak to others of her shame. Then the
steady control into which she had been schooling herself
for weeks took command and she rallied. Not for the
world would she give sign that she recognized her
defeat. She would go through this one evening with her
head held as bravely as though her heart were crowned
with happiness. She would not give a sign or quiver,
though the knife went twisting through her heart again
and again. So would she at least make glorious her defeat.

“Oh, ‘tis not so bad as that!” she laughed gayly, and
wondered at herself that her voice could assume so
much; “but I have been accepting too many invitations
perhaps, and the sudden change from my quiet life with
my children during the last few years has been a little
hard.”

The worldly wisdom that covered all the meaning of
her companion’s pity had not been acquired for nothing.
It. was better after all that she should spend her time in
mental fencing With the senator than that she should
have time to rest and think, as think she must, however
much she might wish to cease.

Senator Bradenberg admired her bravery, wondered if
it were wholly brave or wholly innocent, and pleased
himself all the more with the prospect of the conquest of
this charming woman in the near future.

He had but to play his cards well, and she would be
won—all the more interesting that she was not easy to
conquer. Once she found out that her husband was on
intimate terms with a woman like Mrs. Sylvester she
would turn to him for comfort. Then he would have it
all his own way. In his long career there had been few
that he had cared to smile upon who had been able to
resist him.

He saw that she did not intend to give him her
confidence at present, and gracefully led the conversa
tion from the dangerous point, yet always keeping in it
that tender personal note, whose main impression was
that he was ready to do anything in her service.

He told her how it had touched his heart that she had
chosen him to take her out to-night, that he had felt from the first moment of meeting her that there was
something drawing them toward one another, she re
minded him so strikingly of a dear lost sister. Oh, that
dear lost sister who had never existed except in his fertile
brain, and oh, the long list of beautiful woman who were
like her! He told her how he had been watching her, and
how beautiful she was, and what a success in society, and
how pleased he was that she had chosen to wear his poor
flowers on her heart---”as a shield, my dear, use them as
a shield, if you please, against anything that might
trouble you,” and then, as she murmured her thanks for words she had only half heard because her .mind was traveling on ahead of the carriage and she was planning the last scene of the conflict, he took her little hand and
pressed it gently and stroked it with his well-tended
fingers and told her she was to turn to him when
anything arose to give her any trouble, that he could
always be relied upon. And could he have known that
Miriam was thinking much more about how she could
get her hand away without hurting the kind old man’s feelings than she was of his words, he would not have
smiled so confidently as he handed her from the carriage,
nor would his sensual eyes have looked at her with half
the light of triumph that they held.

He was kindness itself during the evening. He did not keep her entirely to himself for it was not his way to call
too much attention when he was in the way of a
conquest. There were people who delighted to warn
young innocents against bad wolves. He had no desire
to have anything interfere with his plans. Therefore he
kept them to himself, and played the quiet, elderly escort
to perfection. He so managed that Mrs. Winthrop was
always the center of a group of people worth knowing;
he seemed to be not too much in evidence, and yet he
was on hand at the right moment to serve her. He sent
her down to supper with another man on purpose, and watched her from afar with gloating
eyes.
When she had
appeared from the dressing room and he saw that she had
modified her way of dress to suit the most exacting laws
of society his heart had leaped in something like the way
it did in youthful days. She was learning fast. One more barrier was broken down. How lovely she was, and what
incomparable arms and what finely modeled shoulders.
Could Claude have seen his evil gaze just then he would certainly have knocked him down.

All the evening the senator watched for his moment,
not sure yet that it would come to-night or even in many
nights—watched until he saw the weary look coming
more and more into the beautiful dark eyes; watched
until the pitiful, white quiver became more distinct
about the firm, sweet mouth; watched until he saw
Claude enter, and saw Mrs. Sylvester’s maneuvers, and until those two went to the alcove by tile conservatory entrance. Then he felt that his time had come.

Slowly and with careful calculation he made his way
to Miriam’s side and murmured low to her that there
were some beautiful orchids, rarer even than those she
wore, in the conservatory, and as she looked tired would
she like to come and see them? And she assented eagerly.
She had caught glimpses of Mrs. Sylvester on one side of
the room and her husband on the other a few minutes before, and every instant since had been of agonizing
expectation. The crisis, she felt, was just at hand. Almost
she felt her heart fail her. She fain would get a minute
away from all this glare and noise before it came. And
then they passed the alcove and she saw her husband
apparently in deep conversation with her enemy.

The senator, watching her closely, saw the magnifi
cent way in which she passed the ordeal, and then saw
the white stealing about her mouth in deadly, haggard
lines. Almost he thought she would fall and he led her to a seat behind some palms in a turn of the walk, out of the way of most of the guests.

It was a true lover’s retreat where he had placed her,
in a chair of many soft cushions, and he took the delicate fan from her hand and wafted it gently till she seemed to gain a little courage to look up, a piteous appeal in her eyes.

He did not quite understand that appeal. He took it as
.a signal for his own plans to begin.

“My dear,” he said placing an arm on the back of her
chair and letting his fingers touch the white shoulder
near them, “don’t look so pitiful. There are other loves
in this world, even if one has failed. I told you might
turn to me and I have felt from the first that you would
do so. My dear, I love you as he, whose name you bear,
could never do. Will you come with me and let me
comfort you?” and then he leaned over her and pressed
a kiss upon her horrified lips.

If all the terror of all the women in this world who
have been sinned against could have been concentrated
in one look, that look was Miriam Winthrop’s. Consternation, dismay, loathing, and alarm were mingled in one
mighty, fascinated gaze. It was the look of one who,
having fled from pursuing terror, encounters a beast of
prey more fearful than anything that could have gone before.

Miriam had shuddered as his evil fingers touched her cold shoulder. It was a liberty which even an old man
should not have taken, she thought; and then as the
meaning of his words became clear at last to her she
watched him with horrified, wild gaze, seeming to see
the very glare of the lower regions in his wicked eyes. Noticing as one will the details of insignificant things at such a time, she saw a miniature, reflected in the crystal discs of his eyeglasses, the ballroom beyond, with its
gayly moving throngs, the dancers, the flutter of fans, the
turning of heads, the slow walk of couples near the
entrance of the conservatory, the sharp-pointed palms towering all about, and two tall figures in black coming toward them. All the time she saw these things she felt
that the minute for this human tiger to spring was
coming, and her life would depend upon whether she
was able to evade his horrid clutch.

She was utterly unprepared for the kiss, but her senses were on the alert. All these months of agony and silent
self-control had been, as it were, schooling her to meet
this awful minute. All the sorrow she had suffered as she came up, step by step, this long dark way of trouble had
been as nothing to the torture of the present develop
ment. Just where she had trusted the most had she found treachery the basest.

One instant she crouched in the chair after that
shameful touch of his lips and then, darting upward with all the litheness of her girlhood days, she raised her firm
hand and struck the elegant and ardent senator in the
face; struck him full in the eyes where the two fragile
discs balanced on their slender nose-piece of gold across his aristocratic nose, and sent the glasses shivering in a myriad pieces on the marble floor, and a trickle of blood down the senator’s baffled, astonished face showed that the glass had done its work before it reached the floor.

Then Miriam turned and, panting, wildly fled.

The senator, wiping his blinded eyes and stinging
cheeks in bewilderment, looked up to see two people standing at the entrance to their retreat. And one was fair
and tall and clad in black velvet and wore a devilish smile
of amusement on her face, but the other had angry eyes that blazed from a face as white as death.