One morning, a week or so later, Mostyn found a note from Marie Winship in his mail. It was brief and to the point. It ran:
DEAR DICK,-I am going to leave Atlanta for good and all, never to bother you again (believe me, this is the truth), but I want to see you to explain in full. I shall be at my dressmaker's in the morning after ten. Please walk out that way. I shall see you from the window, and you won't have to come in. Don't refuse this last request. This is not a "hold-up"; I don't intend to ask for money. I only want to say good-by and tell you something. My last effort to get you to come to see me proved to me how altered you are. MARIE.
Mostyn turned the matter over in his mind deliberately, and finally decided that he would comply with the request. It rang true, and there was comfort in the assurance that she was about to leave Atlanta, for her presence and instability of mood had long been a menace to his peace of mind.
At the hour mentioned he found himself somewhat nervously nearing the cottage in question. She was prompt; he saw her standing at a window, and a moment later she came out and joined him.
"Let's walk down toward the woods," she suggested, with a smile which lay strangely on her piquant features. "It will look better than standing like posts on the sidewalk."
He agreed, wondering now, more than ever, what she had to say. She had barely touched his hand in salutation, and bore herself in a sedate manner that was all but awkward. They soon reached a shaded spot quite out of sight of any of the scattered residences in the vicinity, and she sat down on the grass, leaving him the option of standing or seating himself by her.
"You are wondering what on earth I've got up my sleeve"—she forced a little laugh—"and well you may wonder, Dick, for I am as big a mystery to myself as I could possibly be to any one else."
"I was wondering if you really do intend to leave Atlanta," he answered, sitting down beside her. "You seemed very positive about it in your note."
"Yes, I am going, Dick; but that is not the main thing. Dick, I'm going to be married."
"Married!" he exclaimed. "Are you joking?"
"I suppose you do regard it as a joke," she said, listlessly, and with a little sigh. "Such a serious step would seem funny in me, wouldn't it? But I am not what I used to be, Dick. I have been quite upset for a long time—in fact, ever since you married. Then again, your life, your ways, your constant brooding has had a depressing effect on me. Dick, it seems to me that you have been trying to—well, to be good ever since you married."
He shrugged his shoulders. "What is the use of talking about that, Marie?" he asked, avoiding her probing stare.
"It affected me a lot," she returned, thoughtfully. "I tried to keep up the old pace and care for the old things, but your turn about was always before me. Dick, you have puzzled me all along. You do not care a snap for your wife; what is it that makes you look like a ghost of your old jolly self?"
He shrank from her sensitively. "I really don't like to talk about such things," he faltered. "Tell me about your marriage."
"Not yet; one thing at a time." She dropped her sunshade at her feet and locked her white hands over her knee. "I shall never see you again after to-day, Dick, and I do want to understand you a little better, so that when I look back on our friendship you won't be such a tantalizing mystery. Dick, you never loved me; you never loved your wife; but you have loved some one."
He lowered his startled glance to the ground. She saw a quiver pass over him and a slow flush rise in his face.
"What are you driving at?" he suddenly demanded. "All this is leading nowhere."
She smiled in a kindly, even sympathetic way. "It can't do any harm, Dick, for, really, what I have found out has made me sorry for you for the first time in my life—genuinely and sincerely sorry."
"What you have found out?" he faltered, half fearfully.
"Yes, and it doesn't matter how I discovered it, but I did. I happened to stay for a week at a little hotel in Ridgeyille last month, and a slight thing I picked up about your stay up there five years ago gradually led me on to the whole thing. Dick, I saw Dolly Drake one day on one of my walks. One look at her and the whole thing became plain. You loved her. You came back here with the intention of marrying her and leading a different life. You would have done it, too, but for my threats and your partial engagement to your wife. You went against your true self when you married, and you have never gotten over it."
He was unable to combat her assertions, and simply sat in silence, an expression of keen inner pain showing itself in his drawn lips.
"See how well I have read you!" she sighed. "I always knew there was something unexplained. You would have been more congenial with your wife but for that experience. You are to blame for her dissatisfaction. Not having love from you, she is leaning on the love of an old sweetheart. Dick, that pretty girl in the mountains would have made you happy. I read the article about her in the paper the other day. From all accounts, she is a remarkable woman, and genuine."
Mostyn nodded. "She is genuine," he admitted. "Well, now you know the truth. But all that is past and gone. You forget something else."
"No, I don't," she took him up, confidently. "You are thinking of your boy."
Again he nodded. "Love for a woman is one thing, Marie, but the love for one's own child passes beyond anything else on earth."
"Yes, when the child is loved as you love yours, and when you fancy that he is being neglected, and that you are partly responsible for it. Oh, Dick, you and I both are queer mixtures! I may as well be frank. Your struggles to make amends have had their effect on me. For a long time I have not been satisfied with myself. I used to be able to quiet my conscience by plunging into pleasure, but the old things no longer amuse. That is why I am turning over a new leaf. Dick, the man I am to marry knows my life from beginning to end. He is a good fellow—a stranger here, and well-to-do. My brother sent him to me with a letter of introduction. He has had trouble. He was suspected of serious defalcation, and the citizens of his native town turned against him. All his old ties are cut. He likes me, and I like him. I shall make him a true wife, and he knows it. I am going to my brother in Texas and will be married out there. Dick, I shall, perhaps, never see you again, but, frankly, I shall not care. I want to forget you as completely as you will forget me. I only wish I were leaving you in a happier frame of mind. You are miserable, Dick, and you are so constituted that you can't throw it off."
"No, I can't throw it off!" His voice was low and husky. "I won't mince words about it. Marie, I am in hell. I know how men feel who kill themselves. But I shall not do that."
"No, that would do no good, Dick. I have faced that proposition several times, and conquered it. The only thing to do is to hope—and, Dick, I sometimes think there is something—a little something, you know—in praying. I believe there is a God over us—a God of some sort, who loves even the wrong-doers He has created and listens to their cries for help now and then. But I don't know; half the time I doubt everything. There is one thing certain. The humdrum church-people, whom we used to laugh at for their long faces and childish faith, have the best of the game of life in the long run. They have—they really have."
He tried to blend his cold smile with hers, but failed. He stood up, and, extending his hand, he aided her to rise. "This is good-by, then, forever," he said. "Marie, I think you are going to be happy."
"I don't know, but I am going to try at least for contentment," she said, simply. "There is always hope, and you may see some way out of your troubles."
Quite in silence they walked back to the cottage gate, and there, with a hand-shake that was all but awkward, they parted. He tipped his hat formally as he turned away. Ahead of him lay the city, a dun stretch of roofs and walls, with here and there a splotch of green beneath a blue sky strewn with snowy clouds.
He had gone only a few paces when he heard the whirring sound of an automobile, which was approaching from the direction of the city. It was driven by a single occupant. It was Andrew Buckton. Mostyn saw the expression of exultant surprise that he swept from him to Marie, and knew by Buckton's raised hat that he had seen them together. The car sped on and vanished amid the trees at the end of the road. Looking back, Mostyn saw that Marie was lingering at the gate. He knew from the regretful look in her face that she was deploring the incident; but, simply raising his hat again, he strode on.
All the remainder of the morning he worked at his desk. He tried to make himself feel that, now that Marie was leaving, his future would be less clouded; but with all the effort made, he could not shake off a certain clinging sense of approaching disaster. Was he afraid that Buckton would gossip about what he had just seen, and that the public would brand him afresh with the discarded habits of the past? He could not have answered the question. He was sure of nothing. He lunched at his club, smoked a dismal cigar with Delbridge and some other men, and heard them chatting about the rise and fall of stocks as if they and he were in a turbulent dream. They appeared as marvels to him in their unstumbling blindness under the overbrooding horrors of life, in their ignorance of the dark, psychic current against which he alone was battling.
All the afternoon he toiled at the bank, and at dusk he walked home. No one was about the front of the house, and he went up to his room. He had bathed his face and hands, changed his suit, and was about to descend the stairs when his father-in-law came tottering along the corridor and paused at the open door of the room.
"This is a pretty come-off," he scowled in at Mostyn. "Here you come like this as if nothing out of the way had happened, when your wife has packed up and gone off for another trip. She said she was going to write you—did you get a note?"
"No; where has she gone?" Mostyn inquired. "She didn't even mention it to me."
"One of her sudden notions. The Hardys at Knoxville are having a big house-party, and wrote her to come. I tried to get her to listen to reason, but she wouldn't hear a word. She is actually crazy for excitement—women all get that way if you give them plenty of rein, and Irene has been spoiled to death. I have never seen her act as strange as she did to-day. She cried when I talked to her, and almost went into hysterics. She gave the servants a lot of her clothes, and kept coming to me and throwing her arms around me and telling me to forgive her for this and that thing I forgot long ago. When she started for the train I wanted to go with her or telephone you, but she wouldn't let me do either—said I was too feeble, and she did not want to bother you. Say, do you know I'm to blame? I had no right to influence you and her to marry, nohow. You have never suited each other—you don't act like man and wife. You might as well be two strangers hitched together. Something is wrong, awfully wrong, but I can't tell what it is."
Mostyn made no reply. He heard little Dick's voice in the hall below, and had a sudden impulse to take him up. Leaving him, old Mitchell passed on to his own room, and Mostyn went down the stairs to the child, who was playing on the veranda.
"Poor child! Poor child!" he said to himself.
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