"It has all been a hideous mistake!" Abruptly, defiantly Beatrix threw out the words at Thayer, as he entered. Then her head dropped on her arms which rested on the table before her. Breathless from his struggle with the storm and astounded at her greeting, Thayer halted just across the threshold and looked at her in silence. The silence grew irksome to her. She changed the form of her words. "I couldn't help it. I have tried." The defiance in her voice suddenly gave place to desperation. She pushed back her chair, rose and crossed the room to the fire. There she turned and stood facing Thayer, her head erect, her cheeks scarlet, her hands, palms downward, tightly clasped. "I have tried my best and failed. It is a total, absolute failure," she went on fiercely. "I know it, and you know it, too. You have watched it coming on, growing and overpowering me. We may as well admit it; I made a mistake when I married Sidney Lorimer." Thayer met her eyes steadily, rallying all his forces to face her in this new mood. This sudden change in her baffled his powers of comprehension. Weakened and torn and shaken by her endless hours alone in the whistling, roaring storm, listening moment by moment to the hideous noises of delirium coming from the next room, the level nerves of Beatrix had at last given way completely. The noises had stopped now, and an ominous stillness lay over the room; but in Beatrix's ears they still were ringing, beating a terrible accompaniment to the crowding measures of her thoughts. Hour after hour as she had sat alone, her fingers in her ears, her eyes fixed on the snow-draped landscape outside the window, her mind had worked ceaselessly, arbitrarily. For the time being, she had felt herself unable to control the direction of her thoughts, and the direction had been fraught with danger. She went back to her first meeting with Lorimer. She went over each detail of their friendship and of their married life. She tried in vain to connect the genial, fascinating man she had first known with the man whose ravings found their way under her fingers pressed against her ears. She recalled his old-time devotion and chivalry; she contrasted it with his moodiness Now and then she rose and went to the window in the hope of seeing Thayer's familiar figure coming towards her through the storm. Each time she did so, her thoughts lingered a little upon him, upon his power to hold Lorimer, upon his constant thoughtfulness for her. Each time she thought of him, her mind rested there longer, until she found herself going over their acquaintance much as, a few hours earlier, she had gone over her life with Lorimer. Then, all at once, she dropped her head on the table with a little moan. Her will was powerless longer to blind her to the truth. Her loyalty to Lorimer, her traditions, her training had made her fight for months, a fight no less bitter because it was subconscious. Now her fighting strength was gone. The truth had asserted itself at the instant when her nervous force was at its weakest. It had asserted itself, and it had mastered her. She was still in the passive stage of defeat, when Thayer entered the room, hours later. Struggling to her through the storm, he had been "I am afraid I don't quite understand you," he said. "Then what are you doing here?" she returned sharply. Thayer faltered. Then,— "I thought perhaps you might be in need of help," he said quietly. Her lip curled, and her slender wrists grew tense with the strain upon them. "For what? John and Patrick can take care of my husband. Mr. Lorimer is—very ill; but we are quite capable of taking care of him. Why should I need help?" She watched him in silent hostility. Then, as she saw the sudden drawing Slowly Thayer shook his head. "No," he said in a low voice. "No; you never could have held him. It was impossible." "Then why didn't you warn me?" she burst out hotly. He looked her straight in the eye. "How could I?" Her face flushed with the sudden understanding. Then the old dreary note came back into her voice. "And you have known from the first that it was all a mistake?" "Yes." "And you have let me suffer for it?" "You are not the only one," he said, almost involuntarily. Their eyes met, held each other, then dropped apart. Thayer drew a long, slow breath. "Mrs. Lorimer—Beatrix—" She checked him with a gesture. "Wait! You don't know it all, you can't know. You never knew Sidney Lorimer as I did, for my Sidney Lorimer never really existed. I idealized him, half-deified him. The Sidney Lorimer to whom I gave my love, my very life, was one man; the Sidney Lorimer I married was quite another. A woman can't love two men totally unlike each other, and yet I am bound to him, bound down to the day of my death, or of his. We both come of a long-lived race, and this must go on for years. I have tried to prevent it, this gradual change in him; but it was impossible. Then I tried not to see it; but I had to see it. It insisted on itself and on being seen. I have been watching it, dreading the time when I must admit it in so many words. I have tried to be loyal to him, God knows!" She spoke rapidly. Then she checked herself, and the dreary note came again. "But what is done, is done. I loved one man; I am married to another. Nothing now In presence of a woman's passionate pain, every man must stand back, baffled and powerless to help. Thayer had supposed he understood Beatrix Lorimer as no other man had ever understood her. To his eyes, her character seemed crystal clear; yet now, in her supreme crisis, the crystal grew cloudy before his eyes. For long hours, she had gone into the deep places of her life, had stirred up from its very source the spring of her being, and the superficial clearness had grown turgid with the dregs that had lain undisturbed and unsuspected there. Hatred and black despair were boiling in the heart which Thayer had thought so calm and cool, so peaceful in its dainty whiteness. Before it, he stood silent. Was this the true Beatrix Lorimer? The woman he had fancied her was a spotless white lily. The heart of this one was banded with bars It seemed to him hours since he had entered the house. In reality, the time was short. As he had crossed the threshold, Beatrix had raised her head and looked at him dully. Then her reaction had come. Like the ebb and flow of the waves, excitement had followed apathy; and, as she had met his eyes, the wave had risen again and swept her away upon its tossing crest. Thayer was here at last. He never forgot her, never forsook her. He had come to her in this moment of her bitterest need, even as he had come to her many a time in the past. With him, there could be no need for explanation or preface. Straight from the heart of her reverie, Beatrix Lorimer had cast her words at him,— "It has all been a hideous mistake!" And now she was following them up with the "The black, blank years, how can I escape them?" For the second time in his life, Thayer grew dizzy with the tingle of his nerves answering to the shock to his brain. The blood was pounding across his temples, and his ears rang loudly. Then he lifted his eyes deliberately and looked Beatrix full in the face. For an instant, he held her eyes; then she drew away from him. This was not the quiet, self-contained man upon whom she had leaned for months. This man's eyes were glowing, his lips quivering, his hands outstretched to meet her own. No need to tell her what flame had kindled him into such fierce and burning life. Their eyes met. She drew away; but her glance never wavered. Without a spoken word, they had come to the pitiless, naked truth. Wish had answered to wish, and henceforth there could be no concealments between them. She took a step forward, and for a moment her fingers rested in the hot hollow of his hand. It was only for a moment. However, for Thayer that moment had sufficed to review a "It's not necessarily a question of years," he said, after a silence in which it seemed to him that she must be able to count his heart-throbs. "Dane told me what the doctor said. He hopes this place will work a complete cure, and it may not be long before your husband pulls himself together again." He had turned a little away from her; but he knew she was still looking at him. He could feel With an effort, she steadied herself. "I am afraid it is impossible. He has gone too far; the pull now is all downward." "What about your hold on him?" Thayer asked quietly. Beatrix started, as if he had laid a clumsy thumb on an exposed nerve. "My hold!" she said, with a sudden fierceness. "Do you think that there is no limit to the help which I must give him?" Then her voice dropped. "No; I have let go. It is no use. I have done all I can, and now I can only wait till the play is over and the curtain drops. Perhaps it may not be so very long, after all. It spoils any tragedy, if the last acts drag." He had been fired by her passion; but he had resisted it. Now her despair unmanned him. It was only the old, old situation: the guiltless one must suffer for the guilty. The fact in general terms he accepted as a necessary evil; the particular instance was unbearable. Once more, and for the last time, the balance wavered; then slowly, steadily it dipped into position. The The seconds passed and lengthened into minutes. Little by little, the cold, gray light of the snowy morning was creeping into the room, dimming the lamplight to pale yellow streaks and filling the place with a chill, forbidding gloom. The stillness was so absolute that Thayer could hear his watch ticking in his pocket, could hear the beating of his own heart. Neither one of them moved, or spoke. In the next room, there was a faint sound; but they never heeded it. Beatrix's face was hidden in her arms; Thayer's eyes, turned now to the window, were fixed upon the pitiless storm outside, while mechanically he sought to adjust the regular ticking of his watch to the broken rhythm of the Famine Theme which once more was haunting his brain. Neither one of them faced the open door; neither one of them saw the crawling, slinking figure, the pale, fear-stricken face, and the staring eyes which appeared in the doorway, clung there for a moment and then vanished again as noise The stir in the next room came again. Then it increased until the cottage echoed with the tumult of struggle and of inarticulate crying. Above it all, Lorimer's maddened voice rang out in piteous terror,— "Let me go! I saw him! It's Thayer, and he will kill Beatrix! She is afraid of him, and she is begging for mercy! He is killing my wife, my Beatrix! Let me go! Beatrix! Beatrix! Dear girl, I'm coming!" Beatrix sprang to her feet, as Thayer rushed to the inner room where the words had ended in a fury of inarticulate shrieks. There was the sound of a heavy struggle, when it seemed to her that the cottage rocked with the rocking, writhing bodies of the men just beyond her sight. She dared not face the scene in all its horror. She stood, erect and alone, in the middle of the floor, while the struggle slowly died away and the shrieks sank to the piteous low whimpering of an animal in pain. Then all was still. Weak by inheritance, weaker still by dissipation, Lorimer's heart had yielded to the shock of In the gray, cold light, through the silent cottage, the old butler came to Beatrix's side and gently touched her arm. "It is over, Miss Beatrix," he said gravely; "and may the good God be pitiful to us all!" |