Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (13 page)

 
          
The
words had rushed out, lighting up the depths of my feeling as much to myself as
to Mrs. Ingram. Only then did I remember how little I knew of the woman to whom
they were addressed—not even her maiden name,
nor
as
much as one fact of her past history. I did not even know if she were married,
widowed or divorced. All I did know was that I had fallen in love with her—and
had told her so.

 
          
She
sat motionless, without a word. But suddenly her eyes filled, and I saw that
her lips were trembling too much for her to speak.

 
          
“Kate—”
I entreated; but she drew back, shaking her head.

 
          
“No—”

 
          
“Why ‘no’?
Because I’ve made you angry—?”

 
          
She
shook her head again. “I feel that you’re a true friend—’“

 
          
“I
want you to feel much more than that.”

 
          
“It’s
all I can ever feel—for any one. I shall never—never …” She broke down, and sat
struggling with her tears.

 
          
“Do
you say that because you’re not free?”

 
          
“Oh,
no—oh, no—”

 
          
“Then
is it because you don’t like me? Tell me that, and I won’t trouble you again.”

 
          
We
were sitting alone in a deserted corner of the lounge. The diners had scattered
to the wide verandahs, the card-room or the bar. Miss Wilpert was safely
engaged with a party of bridge-players in the farthest room of the suite, and I
had imagined that at last I should be able to have my talk out with Mrs.
Ingram. I had hardly meant it to take so grave a turn; but now that I had
spoken I knew my choice was made.

 
          
“If
you tell me you don’t like me, I won’t trouble you any more,” I repeated,
trying to keep her eyes on mine. Her lids quivered, and she looked down at her
uneasy hands. I had often noticed that her hands were the only unquiet things
about her, and now she sat clasping and unclasping them without ceasing.

 
          
“I
can’t tell you that I don’t like you,” she said, very low. I leaned over to
capture those restless fingers, and quiet them in mine; but at the same moment
she gave a start, and I saw that she was not looking at me, but over my
shoulder at some one who must have crossed the lounge behind me. I turned and
saw a man I had not noticed before in the hotel, but whose short
square-shouldered figure struck me as vaguely familiar.

 
          
“Is
that some one you know?” I asked, surprised by the look in her face.

 
          
“N-no.
I thought it was… I must have been mistaken …” I saw
that she was struggling to recover her self-control, and I looked again at the
newcomer, who had stopped on his way to the bar to speak to one of the
hall-porters.

 
          
“Why,
I believe
it’s
Jimmy Shreve—Shreve of the
New York
Evening
Star”
I said. “It looks like him. Do you know him?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Then,
please—won’t you answer the question I was just asking you?”

 
          
She
had grown very pale, and was twisting her long fingers distressfully. “Oh, not
now; not now…”

 
          
“Why not now?
After what you’ve told me, do you suppose I’m
going to be put off without a reason?”

 
          
“There’s
my reason!” she exclaimed with a nervous laugh. I looked around, and saw Miss
Wilpert approaching. She looked unusually large and flushed, and her elaborate
evening dress showed a displeasing expanse of too-white skin.

 
          
“Ah,
that’s your reason? I thought so!” I broke out bitterly.

 
          
One
of Mrs. Ingram’s quick blushes overswept her. “I didn’t mean that—you’ve no
right to say so. I only meant that I’d promised to go with her…”

 
          
Miss
Wilpert was already towering over us, loud-breathing and crimson. I suspected
that in the intervals of bridge she had more than once sought refreshment at
the bar. “Well, so this is where you’ve hidden yourself away, is it? I’ve
hunted for you all over the place; but I didn’t suppose you’d choose a dark
corner under the stairs. I presume you’ve forgotten that you asked them to
reserve seats for us for those Javanese dances. They won’t keep our places much
longer; the ballroom’s packed already.”

 
          
I
sat still, almost holding my breath, and watched the two women. I guessed that
a crucial point in the struggle between them had been reached, and that a word
from me might wreck my chances. Mrs. Ingram’s colour faded quickly, as it
always did, but she forced a nervous smile. “I’d no idea it was so late.”

 
          
“Well,
if your watch has stopped, there’s the hall clock right in front of you,” said
Miss Wilpert, with quick panting breaths between the words. She waited a
moment. “Are you coming?”

 
          
Mrs.
Ingram leaned back in her deep armchair. “Well, no—I don’t believe I am.”

 
          
“You’re
not!”

 
          
“No.
I think I like it better here.”

 
          
“But
you must be crazy! You asked that Italian Countess to keep us two seats next to
hers—”

 
          
“Well,
you can go and ask her to excuse me—say I’m tired. The ball-room’s always so
hot.”

 
          
“Land’s sake!
How’m I going to tell her all that in Italian?
You know she don’t speak a word of English. She’ll think it’s pretty funny if
you don’t come; and so will the others. You always say you hate to have people
talk about you; and yet here you sit, stowed away in this dark corner, like a
school-girl with her boy friend at a Commencement dance—”

 
          
Mrs.
Ingram stood up quickly. “Cassie, I’m afraid you must have been losing at
bridge. I never heard you talk so foolishly. But of course I’ll come if you
think the Countess expects us.” She turned to me with a little smile, and
suddenly, shyly, held out her hand. “You’ll tell me the rest tomorrow morning,”
she said, looking straight at me for an instant; then she turned and followed
Cassie Wilpert.

 
          
I
stood watching them with a thumping heart. I didn’t know what held these women
together, but I felt that in the last few minutes a link of the chain between
them had been loosened, and I could hardly wait to see it snap.

 
          
I
was still standing there when the man who had attracted Mrs. Ingram’s notice
came out of the bar, and walked toward me; and I saw that it was in fact my old
acquaintance Jimmy Shreve, the bright particular ornament of the
Evening Star.
We had not met for a year
or more, and his surprise at the encounter was as great as mine.
“Funny, coming across you in this jazz crowd.
I’m here to
get away from my newspaper; but what has brought you?”

 
          
I
explained that I had been ill the previous year, and, by the doctor’s orders,
was working out in the
Alps
the
last months of my convalescence; and he listened with the absent-minded
sympathy which one’s friends give to one’s ailments, particularly when they are
on the mend.

 
          
“Well—well—too
bad you’ve had such a mean time. Glad you’re out of it now, anyway,” he
muttered, snapping a reluctant cigarette-lighter, and finally having recourse
to mine. As he bent over it he said suddenly: “Well, what about Kate Spain?”

 
          
I
looked at him in bewilderment. For a moment the question was so unintelligible
that I wondered if he too were a sufferer, and had been sent to the heights for
medical reasons; but his sharp little professional eyes burned with a steady
spark of curiosity as he took a close-up of me across the lighter. And then I
understood; at least I understood the allusion, though its relevance escaped
me.

 
          
“Kate
Spain? Oh, you mean that murder trial at Cayuga? You got me a card for it,
didn’t you? But I wasn’t able to go.”

 
          
“I
remember. But you’ve made up for it since, I see.” He continued to twinkle at
me meaningly; but I was still groping. “What do you think of her?” he repeated.

 
          
“Think
of her? Why on earth should I think of her at all?”

 
          
He
drew back and squared his sturdy shoulders in evident enjoyment. “Why, because
you’ve been talking to her as hard as you could for the last two hours,” he
chuckled.

 
          
I
stood looking at him blankly. Again it occurred to me that under his tight
journalistic mask something had loosened and gone adrift. But I looked at the
steadiness of the stumpy fingers which held his cigarette. The man had himself
under perfect control.

 
          
“Kate
Spain?” I said, collecting myself. “Does that lady I was talking to really look
to you like a murderess?”

 
          
Shreve
made a dubious gesture. “I’m not so sure what murderesses look like. But, as it
happens, Kate Spain was acquitted.”

 
          
“So
she was. Still, I don’t think I’ll tell Mrs. Ingram that she looks like her.”

 
          
Shreve
smiled incredulously. “Mrs. Ingram? Is that what you call her?”

 
          
“It’s
her name. I was with Mrs. Ingram, of
California
.”

 
          
“No,
you weren’t. You were with Kate Spain. She knows me well enough—
ask
her. I met her face to face just now, going into the
ball-room. She was with a red-headed Jezebel that I don’t know.”

 
          
“Ah,
you don’t know the red-headed lady? Well, that shows you’re mistaken. For Miss
Cassie Wilpert has lived with Mrs. Ingram as her companion for several years.
They’re inseparable.”

 
          
Shreve
tossed away his cigarette and stood staring at me. “Cassie Wilpert? Is that
what that great dressed-up prizefighter with all the jewelry calls herself?
Why, see here, Severance, Cassie was the servant girl’s name, sure enough:
Cassie—don’t you remember? It was her evidence that got Kate Spain off. But at
the trial she was a thin haggard Irish girl in dirty calico. To be sure, I
suppose old Ezra
Spain
starved his servant as thoroughly as he starved his daughter. You
remember Cassie’s description of the daily fare: Sunday, boiled mutton; Monday,
cold mutton; Tuesday, mutton hash; Wednesday, mutton stew—and I forget what day
the dog got the mutton bone. Why, it was Cassie who knocked the prosecution all
to pieces. At first it was doubtful how the case would go; but she testified
that she and Kate Spain were out shopping together when the old man was
murdered; and the prosecution was never able to shake her evidence.”

 
          
Remember
it? Of course I remembered every detail of it, with a precision which startled
me, considering I had never, to my knowledge, given the Kate Spain trial a
thought since the talk about it had died out with the woman’s acquittal. Now it
all came back to me, every scrap of evidence, all the sordid and sinister
gossip let loose by the trial: the tale of Ezra Spain, the wealthy miser and
tyrant, of whom no one in his native town had a good word to say, who was
reported to have let his wife die of neglect because he would not send for a doctor
till it was too late, and who had been too mean to supply her with food and
medicines, or to provide a trained nurse for her. After his wife’s death his
daughter had continued to live with him, brow-beaten and starved in her turn,
and apparently lacking the courage to cast
herself
penniless and inexperienced upon the world. It had been almost with a sense of
relief that Cayuga had learned of the old man’s murder by a wandering
tramp
who had found him alone in the house, and had killed
him in his sleep, and got away with what little money there was. Now at last,
people said, that poor persecuted daughter with the wistful eyes and the
frightened smile would be free, would be rich,
would
be able to come out of her prison, and marry and enjoy her life, instead of
wasting and dying as her mother had died. And then came the incredible rumour
that, instead of coming out of prison—the prison of her father’s house—she was
to go into another, the kind one entered in hand-cuffs, between two jailers:
was to go there accused of her father’s murder.