Ainslee's Magazine/The Woman With a Past/Gray Cats
XVI.—GRAY CATS.
No mere mortal has the right
To carry that exalted air;
Best people are not angels quite:
While—not the worst of people's doings scare
The devil. ... Pippa Passes
JACK RIVERS nearly dropped his cocktail glass. And then he betrayed—not to say outraged—his excellent antecedents and upbringing by staring with all his eyes across the crowded hotel dining room.
“My dear Jack!” said his wife, in that mild tone with which a certain type of woman can flick the nerves as with a whip.
“I—I beg your pardon, Clarisse!” he exclaimed, hastily gulping down the Martini, olive and all. His comely, uncomplex face was deeply flushed, and he rattled his spoon in his soup plate.
“Awfully hot in here, isn't it?” he remarked, in a hopeful tone.
But Mrs. Rivers was regarding him with a perplexed and speculative frown. She was a cool, gentle, well-dressed woman, with possibilities that she did not take the trouble to advertise. She looked casually around and saw a peculiarly lovely woman, in a misty-gray dress, sweeping down the room between the little tables. As soon as she had inventoried the woman, she turned swiftly back to her husband. He was looking at the beautiful woman in gray, and the woman was looking at him. Only for a moment, however. She sailed calmly on, and Rivers choked into his tumbler. Neither had bowed; it was, however, obvious that they had known each other. One might even go a step farther, and surmise that they had known each other rather well.
The wonderful gray gown swept slowly to a table not far distant. Against an accidentally effective background of potted palm trees, the woman's clear, pearl-white profile was traced as if in chalk.
“What an unusual-looking woman!” said Mrs. Rivers gently. She was now gazing steadily at her husband.
He gave up his futile efforts at dissembling. “Yes,” he said. “She's supposed to be a bit of a beauty.”
“Curious coloring—that deep-red hair,” remarked Clarisse. “When did you know her, Jack?”
“Oh, years and years ago—before I met you. She hasn't changed much, though”
Clarisse Rivers smiled at the singularly male naïveté of that “before I met you.” It admitted so many things!
“An early affair?” she commented sweetly. “I quite understand.”
He flushed even more darkly. “Hang it—you don't!” he blurted. “She's not a bit what you think she is. She's a charming woman, and she's done more good in her life than—than”
“Than I, for instance!” suggested Clarisse, with no touch of malice. “Very likely! I never did care for philanthropy. It's nearly always the last resort for—women with pasts Oh, here is Mr. Morrill!”
Rivers scowled and frowned.
“Confounded young brute!” he grumbled. “Oh—er—how are you, Morrill? Have a drink?”
“Thanks; just had one with that cracked globe-trotter over there. Forget his name, but he seems to have known some of my people in the Dark Ages. Don't mind if I smoke, Mrs. Rivers?”
She shook her head, looking at him through lazy, half-shut eyes. Her brown hair was satin smooth and exquisitely dressed. Her gray gown fitted perfectly; her lips, a trifle thinly cut, but warmly red, were smiling very slightly. She was a perfect specimen of her type—the sort of woman who takes for amusement the chances that a richer nature takes for great emotions.
It is a curious, though veritable, fact—De Kock made it immortal in a paragraph—that the more profoundly a woman feels, the less effective she is, emotionally. It is your experimentalist who scores. If a woman's ardor be thoroughly awakened, she may well be sapped of outward demonstration; but if she remain calm herself, there are almost no lengths to which her exploratory instinct may not lead her.
Rivers, though he trusted his wife, had a queer qualm of discomfort as he saw the look on her face as she glanced at Ralph Morrill between her half-closed lids. The qualm was so acute that he rose abruptly, and, acting on some wild impulse, said:
“I'm going over to speak to Mrs. Carpenter. See you later.”
Clarisse permitted her brown eyes to open a little wider; then, with her characteristically inscrutable little smile, she looked back to Morrill.
“A pretty woman, isn't she?” she remarked softly.
“Is she?” he said. He could not take his eyes from her face.
Meanwhile, Rivers, with a deference that was close to being exaggerated, was bowing over Pippa Carpenter's slim hand.
“It's been a long time.”
She spoke first. Her purple-blue eyes were a little wistful. Pippa had never been able to dismiss an old love affair as she threw away old clothes. Some glamour, some essence of romance, seemed forever to cling to her memories of it. Jack Rivers had once held a place in her life; it was from that remote corner of things that he seemed to speak to her now, clothed in an ancient robe of sentiment.
“Pippa” he said. “Oh, I dare say I sound like an awful rotter when I dare to call you that—now! But—do you know what I mean?—I always believed in you, somehow.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Carpenter simply, meeting his eyes without embarrassment.
In an odd way, her very simplicity seemed to put Rivers less at his ease. He was not a clever man, or a particularly good one, but he was honest, in his way. His thick mouth tightened to a hard line, even as his eyes paid Pippa his tribute in gentle homage.
“Please don't take it nastily,” he pleaded. “It—it means an awful lot to me—the way I mean it—only—I haven't the hang of saying it right! Look here!” He paused, while he seemed to be gathering courage. “My—my wife's a no-end good sport—for a woman. I—want you to meet her.”
“Thank you,” Philippa said again. “Do you mind telling me why you are doing this?”
“I—don't know,” said Rivers, rather blankly. “I—don't know. But Oh, darn it all! A woman ought to be judged by what she is! And I guess you'll stack up to anybody's class—I—I mean about meeting my wife”
“Thank you—for the third time,” said Pippa. Suddenly she straightened up, with her odd little quick breath; every one knew that half gasp of Pippa's—it came only when she was excited and deeply moved. “I should like to meet your wife—now!” she said.
Rivers paused just a moment; he knew that he must make good, and he was not sure that he would be able to. With a boy's awkwardness, he nodded, without looking at her.
“Sure!” he said, and turned away.
“Wait! said Mrs. Carpenter. She was determined to give him time. “After dinner I shall be in the music room just off the conservatory. If your—wife—cares to meet me, she will find me there.”
Half an hour later, Pippa, sitting in the music room, and listening to the Viennese waltzes from the stringed band at the farther end, saw a curious and significant little comedy. It took place in the corner of the room that was devoted to small tables, laden with coffee and liqueurs. She, could almost have transcribed what Mrs. Rivers was saying: “Why should I care to meet one of your old—friends?”
Rather than meet Rivers on so ignominious a return, Philippa rose hastily, and moved to an obscure alcove near a window, where he would not be likely to find her soon.
She sat quite motionless, with all sensation, all thought blotted out except a vague gratitude for the fresh night air that came so softly in through the open window. A woman who had outlived a thousand emotions, she was yet a prey to them; living as intensely as ever, suffering perhaps a trifle more because of her augmented capacity for pain. It seemed to her that in Clarisse Rivers' slight she had died a dozen deaths. Not that she valued the social recognition of Jack Rivers' wife—but as woman to woman! Ah, there was where it hurt! Mrs. Rivers was in a position to draw her skirts aside; and Mrs. Carpenter was not in a position to resent it, except in her own sore heart.
She started suddenly, as if she had been called, though no one near her had spoken.
A tall man was standing beside her, with a small cup of black coffee in one hand, and a liqueur glass of cognac in the other. He was smiling down at her in a kindly, humorous way.
“Take the demi-tasse first,” he said conversationally. “And the brandy is really worth while. I couldn't get the proper sort of punch cup to serve it in, but I went to the bar and picked out the brand myself.”
Philippa stared at him. He was broad-shouldered and sparely built, with a strong, deeply lined face, and wonderfully clear, gray eyes.
His simple and entirely courteous informality disarmed her. With a directness that matched his own, she said, as she took the cup: “Thanks. Who are you?”
“A world wanderer,” he returned; “interested in the game of life, as lived both by myself and others. Ready for the cognac?”
Pippa emptied the tiny glass and handed both that and the cup back to him. He stood looking down at them.
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged his big shoulders, “I was interested,” he said.
For an instant some keener feeling flashed into his eyes; then he looked away quickly, as if afraid she would notice it.
On the other side of the room, Mrs. Rivers was leaning languidly back in an armchair. At her side sat a clean-shaven, good-looking, young fellow with close-cropped yellow hair. He was fanning her, as he gazed at her intently. Clarisse was looking her best.
“A subtle woman!” commented the world wanderer, following Philippa's eyes. “More dangerous than if she were what the world calls bad. She has poor Morrill hard and fast!”
“The boy with her now?”
“Yes. Don't you know him?”
She shook her head.
“Want to?”
“Not particularly.” She turned wearily to the window, and the soft night outside. “I am tired of men!”
He laughed very gently. “Am I dismissed?”
“Why—no!” rejoined Mrs. Carpenter, with a start. “I hadn't thought of you in that way!”
The world wanderer raised his thick, black eyebrows. The echo of his laughter was still in his voice as he said: “So you don't think of me as a man! Then I am dismissed!” All at once a curiously grave, intimate look came into his eyes. “Life is a battle,” he said. “But the battle is to the strong. Good night. You are not angry with me for speaking to you?”
“No.”
He hesitated a moment, then said: “I wish you would save Morrill. I think he's worth it. His people are the right sort.”
“Save him! From what?”
He glanced across the room.
“Oh, is she that sort of woman!” exclaimed Philippa, enlightened. “No—wanderer—-I don't think it is my particular obligation to save Mr.—Morrill, isn't it?”
“Good night again,” said the world wanderer.
“You're going? Good-by!”
“Not good-by. We are going to meet again.”
“Who knows?” she said, smiling faintly.
“I do!” And with the briefest of bows, he turned and left her.
At one end of the long music room was a conservatory, stocked with exotic plants. More than once Pippa had taken refuge there from garrulous old ladies and the eternal stringed band. Now, with an odd and inexplicable sense of loss and desolation in her heart, she rose and made her way to the green, and quiet, and fragrance of the retreat. She noticed, idly enough, as she crossed the ten feet between her chair and the conservatory door, that Mrs. Rivers and Morrill had disappeared. Rivers she had not seen for twenty minutes.
Inside the hothouse the air was faint and sickly sweet. The dampness was the dampness of the mist that rises from marshes. In that warm, moist dimness, lighted only by a low-burning Chinese lantern, it was difficult to see at first. Then—she saw!
And, seeing, she retreated with soft steps. For a man and a woman were sitting on the rustic bench that an æsthetic proprietor had placed there. All about were palms, and roses, and lilies. Wrapped in perfume and dusk, the two were clasped close in an embrace that evidently had deafened them to the opening door.
Pippa Carpenter, with her instant instinct to shield love and lovers, shrank toward the wall and averted her eyes. But even in that moment, the door from the music room opened once more, less gently, and the big frame of Jack Rivers loomed there.
The broad bar of light streamed sharply on to the two figures on the bench. The clean-cut features of young Ralph Morrill flashed into view; the woman, with a smothered cry, hid her face against his shoulder. There was nothing to be seen of her but a wave of silver-gray chiffon.
“I'll talk to you in five minutes, Morrill,” Rivers said harshly, and left the conservatory. He had not seen Philippa.
When the door had closed again, she walked quietly toward the two, who sat trembling before the alternatives that confronted them. Clarisse Rivers raised her white face, and Pippa's very soul shook before the revelation there. Morrill got up from the bench, and, with his hands in his pockets, turned his back. For a full moment no one spoke or moved.
The two women looked at each other—one of those deep and candid looks that are unusual between women except in moments when unexpected crises tear away their masks. In that moment the reputable and respected wife knew Mrs. Carpenter to be a better woman than herself. And Pippa, seeing the weakness that lay beneath that cool and self-contained exterior, felt a rush of pity that carried away upon its generous flood all thought either of resentment or of blame.
“What—what are you going to do?” asked Mrs. Rivers, with the piteous simplicity of a child. Her hands were hanging limply at her sides. She seemed too broken even for the tenseness of a great emotion. Violent desperation had gone out of her, with dignity. She looked, as she felt, as if she were past caring; as if her ignominy were too complete to admit of the torment of effort or appeal.
Gently Philippa lifted her hands and held them in her own.
“Sit down,” she said, drawing the drooping figure quietly to the rustic bench from which the woman had risen. Mrs. Rivers shuddered once, and then sat still. Her eyes, wide and hopeless, never left Pippa's. The scent of the flowers was almost overpowering; the air, heavy and damp, pressed upon the senses. In the rosy, artificial twilight of the conservatory, Pippa could just see the other woman's white face and those waiting eyes.
She herself did not sit down, but stood between Clarisse and the door into the music room.
Morrill took a step nearer the two women. He was looking almost as uncomfortable as he felt.
“I say, you know” he began heavily.
Mrs. Carpenter cut him short. “Don't talk,” she said. “You may be heard by—some one.” Then she bent over Mrs. Rivers, and said, gently and steadily: “If I save you, will you—give it up?”
She heard the faintest, gasping sob.
“Oh, God, yes!” whispered Clarisse. “But you can't—you can't! He—saw!”
Philippa drew a long breath. “He saw,” she repeated. “But it is quite dark in here. -And—we are both wearing gray gowns.”
Mrs. Rivers clutched violently at her hands. “Wh—what do you mean?” she breathed.
“'In the dusk all cats are gray,'” quoted Philippa, smiling gently, if a trifle bitterly; neither man nor woman saw the smile, for her back was toward the Chinese lantern, “Mrs. Rivers, you have everything to lose—your husband's love, your friends' respect, you own future. I, on the contrary, have—nothing. Your husband is in that room waiting for you to come out. You must not come out—not for a long time. The woman who comes out must come out with Mr. Morrill. And—never forget this—it is that woman whom Mr. Rivers saw!”
Clarisse was crying quietly.
“Don't!” said Pippa, and stooped to kiss her. “Don't, my dear! You've got what so very, very few women get—another chance. Most of us, if we make mistakes, must live and die with them, or go on struggling, and drifting, and choking, in the whirlpools, and the tidal waves, finding no islands, no shoal places—nothing except fresh mistakes! But you've the one big chance that can be given to any one—a new beginning. By and by, when you walk out of here, walk out a free woman, with the past blotted out. And don't repent! That way madness lies—not the madness of the brain, but the madness of the heart, the madness of the soul” She checked herself, and laughed a little, very softly, and very sadly. “Good-by,” she said. “I'll be leaving here by the late train. Mr. Morrill?”
The man moved forward with lowered head.
“Look here,” he muttered. “I'm game to take my share of this”
“Speak lower!” said Mrs. Carpenter sharply.
“I mean,” he bungled on, “it isn't fair to let”
Without further words, she flung open the door.
After the quiet and half light of the hothouse, the music room looked exaggeratedly brilliant.
Directly in front of them stood Jack Rivers. He was dead white, but a light leaped into his eyes when he saw the woman who was with Morrill.
Mrs. Carpenter turned to her escort. “Good night,” she said, simply; and, flushing darkly, he walked away.
With an indefinable sense of defiance, she met the eyes of Jack Rivers.
“Well?” she said.
He looked at her. “I was sorry that my wife didn't care to meet you,” he said. “But now I am—glad.”
Holding her head high, and walking with a firm step, Pippa crossed the bright and crowded room. Just as she was leaving it, on her way to the stairway leading to her own quarters, she encountered the world wanderer. As if he could speak with her soul in a language that did not need to be transmuted into words, he said at once:
“You are going away?”
She lifted her eyes to meet his. Something of her disconsolate mood must have showed there, for his look was almost tender.
“Do you remember Kipling's Gray Wolf?” she asked, and quoted:
“Where shall we lair to-day”
He caught her up:
“For to-morrow we follow new trails!
“We shall meet again soon; I am not afraid of that. I only ask: Do you go west or east?”
“West!” she said. “West—west—to new worlds! So far west that”
“That you reach the East!” he supplemented. “That's enough. I shall follow you, and I'll find you. And never forget, meanwhile, that the battle is to the strong!”
They faced each other in the ornate commonplace hotel corridor.
“I don't feel—strong!” she murmured.
“Dear lady, you are!” he said.
It seemed to her that his gray eyes blazed with a fire more fervent and more clear than that of the stars themselves.
“What does it all mean?” she whispered.
He smiled down at her. It was as if he were caressing her with his heart and spirit. She seemed to feel his hand upon her, lightly, lovingly—though he had never touched her.
“What does it mean?” she asked again, beneath her breath.
He caught her between his hands, but held her three inches away from him.
“I'll let you—guess!” he said.
She went upstairs in a mist of moonbeams.