detail of the scene was as clear cut in her mind as a hideous cameo, every word he had uttered, the accusations, the insinuations he had made. Even the room, with its simple furnishings, its neatness, its air of care—her care—stood out sharply in her memory. She remembered it all so well. She was in the midst of preparing Charles Stanmore’s supper, and Joan, only a couple of weeks old, was fast asleep in an adjoining bedroom. He had chosen this time to call, because he knew that she, Mercy, would be alone.
She remembered his handsome face clouded with sullen anger and jealousy when she let him in at the door of the apartment. And then his first words when he took up his position before the hard-coal stove in the parlor—
“So you’ve pitched everything to the devil, and taken up your abode with Charlie,” he began, in tones of jealous fury. “And he—he is your brother-in-law.”
There was no mistaking his meaning. He intended that she should make no mistake, for he added a laugh—a hateful laugh—to his words.
This was the man who had asked her to marry him almost numberless times. This was the man whom she had refused time and again, making it plain that, however hopelessly, her love was given to another. This was the man who knew that she had come at her sister’s death to care for the little, new-born, motherless, baby girl, and help the man whom she had always loved out of the hopeless dilemma in which he found himself. This was the man who was the lifelong friend of Charles Stanmore, whose mistress he was accusing her of having become.
She remembered the sudden anger which leapt to her brain. She remembered, too, the thought which came in its midst, and formulated her instant retort.
“Yes,” she said coldly. “I have.”
Then she saw the real man as she had now come to regard him. She remembered the sudden blaze of his eyes, the ghastly pallor of his face, the look of almost insane jealousy which he turned upon her. And then came that never-to-be-forgotten insult, those words which had seared themselves upon her woman’s heart as though branded thereon with red-hot irons.
“And you are the woman I have loved. Woman?” He laughed. “It’s too good for you. Do you know what we men call such creatures as you? All this time you have waited—waited, and the moment your poor sister is in her grave, almost before the blood in her veins is cold, you seize your opportunity to fulfil your mad desire. Taking advantage of Charlie’s wretchedness and trouble, you force yourself upon him. You force a position upon him from which there is no escape. The world will accept the position at the value you intend, and he is powerless to do anything but accept it too. You meant to have him, and I suppose he is yours by now. And all this time I have wasted an honest love on you—you——”
And she had answered him, calmly and deliberately, before he could utter the filthy epithet she knew he intended.
“Please keep your voice down, or—or you’ll wake little Joan.”
Even now she could never quite understand her own attitude at the moment. Something inside her was urging her to fly at his throat and tear the foul words from it. Yet there was something gripping her, something compelling her to a calmness she was powerless to resist.
Then, as swiftly as he had blazed into fury, had come a miraculous change in the man. Perhaps it was the effect of her calm, perhaps it was something in the man himself. Anyway the madness abruptly died out of his eyes and left him shaking. He strove to speak, but no words came. He passed his hand across his forehead as though to remove something that was clouding his brain. He turned from her fixed stare as though he could no longer support it. He moved across the room. He hesitated. He turned to her. She did not see the movement, for her back was now turned, but somehow she felt it.
Then she heard his footsteps again, and, finally, the rattle of the door handle as he clutched it. After that came his voice. All the anger, the jealousy, had gone out of it. It was low, gentle, imploring. But she did not move.
“Mercy, Mercy! For—forgive me. I——”
“Never!”
Oh, the scorn, the hatred she had flung into the word!
The next she remembered was that he passed swiftly and silently from the room. Then, then at last her woman’s weakness, a weakness she now so cordially despised, overcame her, and she fell into a chair and wept.
But her weakness was short-lived. Her spirit rose in rebellion, and her tears ceased to flow as the cruel iron entered her soul. She pondered long and deeply, and presently she went on with her preparations for Charles Stanmore’s supper as though nothing unusual had occurred.
Nor, when he came home, did she tell him, nor did she ever by word or act permit the secret of that interview to pass out of her keeping. But the memory of it was forever with her. Day and night she hugged it to herself, she nursed it, and fostered it for all those twenty years, the bitterness, the cruel injustice of the insult, grinding its way till it became a part of the very essence of her being.
Suddenly a cry broke in upon her reverie. She started, and her eyes lit with a gleam of satisfaction. Her mind had returned to the present, and she called out—
“Joan!”
Without waiting for an answer she left her seat, and, crossing swiftly to the door, flung it wide open.
Joan staggered in, and, dropping into the welcoming arms of a rocking-chair, she buried her face in her hands.
Mercy Lascelles stood silently contemplating the bowed head. There was no sympathy in her attitude. Her heart was cold and hard as steel. But she was interested in the cause rather than the effect.
After a while the storm of grief slackened. The racking sobs came at longer intervals. Then it was that Mercy Lascelles broke the silence.
“Well?” she demanded sharply.
The tear-stained face was slowly lifted, and the sight of the girl’s distress was heart-breaking.
“He is dead,” Joan said in a choking voice. Then, with something like resentment—“Are—are you satisfied?”
Mercy went back to her chair and her beloved crystal. And after a moment she began to speak in a low, even tone, as though reciting a well-learnt lesson.
“It was at the crossing of 36th Street and Lisson Avenue, here the street cars cross, here some also turn off. It was the fault of his horse. The creature shied at a heavy truck. Two cars were approaching from east and west. The shying horse slipped on the granite paving, fell, and was caught between the two meeting cars before they could pull up. The horse was killed on the spot, and—the rider was——”
“Don’t, auntie! Don’t say it! Yes, yes, he was taken to the hospital, and died of his injuries. But don’t speak of his terrible mutilations. I—I can’t bear it.”
Again Joan buried her face in her hands as though to shut out the horror of it all. But the elder woman had no such scruples.
“Why harrow yourself with the picture?” she demanded brusquely. “Imagination can add nothing to the fact. Tears will not change one detail. They will only add to your distress. Dick Sorley left your side to go to certain death. Nothing could have averted that. Such was his fate—through you.”
CHAPTER III
