According to the Pattern (8 page)

A certain shame rolled over him that he did not have the courage to knock this woman down for speaking in such terms of his wife, or at least to condemn her with words, as she was a woman and could not for that reason be knocked down. But he was silenced by the thought that he had given her ground for speech of this kind. Had he not dishonored Miriam by admiring this woman, another man’s wife, nay by visiting her often and making sweetly turned speeches to her, amusing himself by writing bits of poems about her eyes, likening them to all the stars and jewels of the universe, when his own Miriam’s eyes held depths unknown to Mrs. Sylvester? For very shame’s sake his tongue was tied.

“I have been abroad for eight weeks,” he replied weakly, and instantly saw that he was making apologies for not having been to see Mrs. Sylvester. Also he knew that he had felt called upon to make this apology, and he further added: “I have not yet been to the city office, as I just returned today, and therefore I suppose the mail you sent there is still awaiting me.”

Then he could have kicked himself for having made the explanation as he saw the light come into Mrs. Sylvester’s eyes.

“Truly I am glad there is some such reason. I thought you had grown weary of—” she paused and added “us.” Then she laughed lightly and looked into his face as if to make it plain that she meant herself by the pronoun.

To Claude Winthrop this intimacy had suddenly become hateful. He longed for courage to tell the woman by his side so, but his dissembling heart said, “Wait, treat her pleasantly and show her that you have meant nothing by your former actions but mere friendship. You can gradually make her see that you love your own wife.”

But even as he thought this, the memory of a certain night—when, as it seemed to him now, he must have lost his senses, he had bent over the woman beside him and kissed her lips, letting his arm linger about her waist as he did so—brought the waves of red blood over his face.

He had not gone long or far in the treacherous way or he would not so suddenly have been brought to see himself in this light. The absence from home, the changed aspect of everything, Miriam’s beautiful appearance and the contrast between these two women brought thus unexpectedly together before him had combined to affect it. And yet he had not the courage to do anything. He despised himself even while he answered Mrs. Sylvester’s low-spoken questions in a distraught way. He was thankful when she made her adieus, and was only half aware that his last word had been a promise to come to her home the next evening.

‘
Tis not to cry God mercy, or sit

And droop, or to confess that thou hast failed;

‘Tis to bewail the sins thou didst commit,

And not commit those sins thou hast bewailed.

He that bewails and not forsakes them too,

Confesses rather what he means to do.

—Francis Quarles

Claude Winthrop noticed with relief as he turned back to the parlor that most of the guests had departed. He would now get a chance to speak to Miriam. And yet he was not half so sure that he wished to see her alone as he had been a little while before. Her mention of that ride of his with Mrs. Sylvester had made him uneasy in her presence. How much did she know? How did she know anything?

He was almost relieved to find that the end was not yet, and that Miss Lyman and a friend of hers were to remain to dinner. His wife took no more notice of him than if she had seen him but the hour before and arranged the whole programme with him. Indeed, now that he began to observe carefully he saw that she skillfully avoided saying anything to him except in the most general way.

He began to notice the changes in the rooms. How exquisitely everything was arranged! What a difference had been made. How had it been accomplished? All these years with Miriam he had not known that she possessed such capabilities. There positively had been nothing that even Mrs. Sylvester could have sneered at, though of course there was not such a display of wealth as one beheld in her house. But everything was in keeping. It did not suggest unlimited income, but it must have cost something and where had the money come from? He frowned and wondered if Miriam had been running into debt. But a glance at her graceful form made him forget possible bills.

With the inconsistency of a man who has long indulged himself-in selfishness he forgot that he had been anxious to see Miriam during the whole latter part of his journey that he might find fault with her for not answering some of his important business questions, and indeed for not writing him at all during his absence. He had gone about so much that at first he had not noticed it, laying it to failure of mails, but as the time drew near to get home and some business questions still remained unanswered he began to feel the grievance of her unwifely action. He had intended giving her a sound going over for allowing him to be so anxious concerning her health and the children’s all that time, and he actually thought, poor blind fellow, that he had been anxious about her, even while he was preparing some wounding sentences for her ear on the subject.

But now as he sat at his own well-appointed table with the sort of guests about it he had always craved, and his beautiful wife opposite, he told himself that he had been eager for days to see her once more, to have her to himself, and here he was being kept from her for hours by strangers. He forgot Mrs. Sylvester for a time, forgot everything save the latest impressions of his wife. He watched her constantly and admiringly, comparing her favorably with a certain famous actress he had seen in
Paris. There was something fresh and unsullied about the purity of his wife’s face that reached his better self and touched the feelings that had first attracted him to her. Some men need always to have their best joys kept constantly at a distance in order that they may appreciate them at anything like their full value.

Claude Winthrop began to grow anxious for the dinner guests to depart, and turned from the door as he bade them good evening with a sigh of relief and antic
ipation.

He turned, intending to clasp his wife in his arms. He expected to find her blushing shyly and smiling behind him, as had been her wont in their early married days when guests had broken in upon their close companion
ship. But he found empty air behind him. He took a step forward into the little reception room, thinking she had coyly stepped in there lest some lingering servant should witness their glad meeting. But she was not there. He peered into the little music room beyond, and came back into the hall blankly looking for her. Above, in the distance he heard the cry of a child and the quick stir of rustling, and then a door closed, and subdued voices murmured at intervals.

He called but there came no answer, until he called again. He was becoming angry. It was no way to treat him on his home-coming. Other women did not treat their husbands so—at least other women did not treat him coldly. He was about to mount the stairs when the maid appeared at the head of the stairs, and said, in a low tone, that Mrs. Winthrop had been obliged to go to the baby who had cried for her.

He frowned slightly that she was delayed again, but doubtless the guests had kept her from the baby a long time and she would soon be able to soothe Celia to sleep and would come to him. He stepped back to the parlor and looked about him. Miriam certainly had good taste. He walked from one end of the room to the other, touched a cushion here, smoothed the broad cool leaf of a palm that stood near him and then glancing down, a prism of light caught his eye. He stooped and picked up the glittering object. It was a slender hoop of jewels, and as he looked at it there seemed something familiar about the setting of it. Where had he seen it before? Ah! it was Mrs. Sylvester’s, for he had seen it upon her wrist again and again. He could seem to remember its gleam in his eyes as he came to himself after that guilty kiss. A coldness came into his fingers, a horror at himself and the shadow of wrong that he was beginning to realize in his life. He dropped the bracelet from his nerveless fingers, and then as quickly picked it up. Miriam must not see it. It seemed to him the pretty jeweled thing would tell his secrets to her by the light of its piercing gems that could reveal only the truth. He turned the bracelet over and saw engraved initials inside, S. S. for Sylvia Sylvester from—those were Senator Bradenberg’s initials, but of course it was not likely; still—and a feeling of loathing came over him for the woman in whose company he had stood in that very spot but three hours before. With sudden resolve he hid the bracelet in his inner pocket. Miriam must not see it. He must return it. He saw at once that the call he promised would have to be made. It never occurred to him that it would be decidedly better for Miriam to send the bracelet herself. He dreaded to speak to her of that other woman, and how else would Miriam know to whom the bauble belonged? How indeed! and what would she think of him for knowing so exactly to whom it belonged with only initials to guide him?

He sat down to wait for Miriam, resting his head against the sharp back of a chair and feeling as if the bracelet pressed against his heart and hurt it as the chair did his head.

Upstairs he could hear a low murmur of a lullaby interspersed with the wail of a baby in protest. The soft tapping of a trotting foot came regularly. This went on for a long time. Claude Winthrop was impatient. He had waited already long enough.

A
t last the maid came downstairs.

“Mrs. Winthrop says please not to wait for her. Little Miss Celia is not well and she must stay by her,” she said with respectful tone, and was gone. He remembered afterward that she had been carrying a hot-water bottle. The baby must be unusually out of sorts. He yawned impatiently and went upstairs to his room. It certainly was very awkward and disagreeable in Miriam not to give him a chance to even kiss her on his return. She might have slipped away from the baby for a minute. But no, women always thought of their children first before their husbands. It made no difference how much they slighted the one whom they had professed to love above every other earthly creature, if only a baby cried. It was the old grievance he had had before he went abroad. By use of it he managed to forget the bracelet and its uncomfortable reminders for a little while.

Before he undressed he listened at the door. All seemed quiet in the hall. He tiptoed softly toward the nursery door. The light was turned down and only the rays from the street electric light outside showed the dim outline of his wife sitting at the farther end of the room. She had slipped off the reception gown and wore a soft loose pink garment with little frills of white. In the dusk it took on the softness of a cloud at evening. The little curly head nestled in the hollow of her arm gave the touch of a madonna to the picture. Miriam’s head was turned away. He could only see the profile, against the flaring light outside, sweet and pure and sad. What had she to be sad about? His ever-ready anger rose, even while his conscience reproached him. Yes, she was lovely. She was lovelier even than in the promise of her youth when he had first loved her. He would go in softly and stoop over and kiss her as he used to do long ago, so softly that the sleeping baby would not wake, kiss that sad look away and bring her lovely loving smile. He half made a movement to start and then the baby stirred and gave a hoarse cry. He recognized at once the croupy cough, and saw Miriam’s strong white hands move quickly as she replaced the cold wet compress from a dish of water at her side.

The maid was coming too with hot water to make steam in the room. It was an all-night job he knew at once. But it was not serious. He could see that already the worst barking roughness of the cough was checked. They knew what to do and he was better out of the way. He tiptoed silently back to his room and closed the door just as the maid reached the top landing of the stairs. It was just as well for him to go to bed at once. Miriam could not get away.

And Miriam sat the long night through and thought.

Even after the baby was breathing naturally again and tucked in her little warm crib, and could as well have been left to the experienced nurse, she sat with her head bent over the rail of the crib and did not sleep.

The die had been cast. She had made her first entrance into society! And it had not been altogether a failure, though she was not sure how much of a success it had been. Time only could tell that.

She forced herself to go over the details of the after
noon and evening. She felt again her heart freeze at sight of the graceful, dreadful woman who entered her home in bodily presence—who had entered it in spirit as a serpent sometime before. She shrank once more from meeting her husband’s gaze. She knew she had not done so yet. She wondered if he knew it. She had felt the surprise in his face ever since he had come. She knew that he was pleased with her appearance and the house. She recognized a change of tone toward herself. She might if she chose be on a more intimate footing now than she had been for some months back. The coldness and harshness that had characterized him were gone. That she knew intuitively. So far she had scored a point. Her longing, loving heart had told her this even without looking him clearly in the eyes. But the great gulf that was fixed between their hearts was kept there at her command, not his, now. He might be willing to bridge it, for a while at least—her heart winced as she bravely added that last clause; but for her it could never be bridged until all possibility of his ever crossing it away from her again was removed, if it ever could be removed.

She wondered at herself that could love and yearn, and long to lay her sick child down and go to him and lay her head upon his breast and tell all her aching heart-full to him and let him comfort her as he used to do; and this while she knew that his friendship with that graceful, unprincipled woman with the steel eyes was as yet unreckoned for. And yet her pride and her poor hurt love would never let her yield to all her yearnings till the fight was fought clear through to the end and she had won, if win she might. And she was weary, weary unto death, she thought. Life looked very black at best. What good was she to accomplish by all this worldly panorama in which she had become a puppet? And then her aching heart cried out against the husband who could be so weak as to bring all this suffering and distress upon her he had professed to love. What was love anyway but a passing phase of the emotions? She thought with a shudder of a bit of rhyme; where had she read it? a scrap at the head of a chapter of some book. It had grated on her when she read it, and she had thought with pity of the one who would write it, and contrasted his circum
stances with hers. That had not been her happy experience of love, but that was before—

Oh, love’s but a dance

Where Time plays the fiddle!

See the couples advance,

Oh, love’s but a dance!

A whisper, a glance—

“Shall we twirl down the middle?” Oh, love’s but a dance,

Where Time plays the fiddle!

Was is true? Was love but that? Was there nothing real nor lasting?

And then what strange absurdity of the mind brought
back the text of that sermon she had heard, the only
sermon or text she seemed ever to have heard in her life
as she thought of it now: “See that thou make all things
according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.”

If one did things according to that pattern, would it
make a difference? Would love be true while life lasted?

And at last with the burden of all she must do pressing
heavily upon her, and with the dread of the morrow and what it might bring forth hanging over her, she fell asleep, one hand upon the baby’s hand and her cheek resting uncomfortably on a little flannel double-gown folded against the crib rail.