"Please don't move.Stay on--you really must."The other man--Shenstone--helped her and Millicent with their wraps and accompanied them to their carriage.When she had set Millicent down she drew a long breath of relief.For the first time in seven years her course lay straight before her."I must be free!" she said."I must be ENTIRELY free--free before the whole world--I and my boy."The next morning, in the midst of her preparations to take the ten-o'clock limited for the West, her maid brought a note to her--a copy of a National Woolens Company circular to the trade, setting forth that "owing to a gratifying easing in the prices for raw wool, the Company are able to announce and take great pleasure in announcing a ten per cent.reduction." On the margin Dumont had scrawled "To go out to-morrow and to be followed in ten days by fifteen per cent.more.Couldn't resist your appeal." Thus by the sheer luck that had so often supplemented his skill and mitigated his mistakes, he had yielded to her plea just in time to confuse the issue between her and him.
She read the circular and the scrawl with a sinking heart.
"Nevertheless, I shall go!" she tried to protest."True, he won't send out this circular if I do.But what does it matter, one infamy more or less in him? Besides, he will accomplish his purpose in some other way of which I shall not know." But this was only the beginning of the battle.Punishment on punishment for an act which seemed right at the time had made her morbid, distrustful of herself.And she could not conquer the dread lest her longing to be free was blinding her, was luring her on to fresh calamities, involving all whom she cared for, all who cared for her.Whichever way she looked she could see only a choice between wrongs.To stay under the same roof with him or at Dawn Hill--self-respect put that out of the question.To free herself--how could she, when it meant sacrificing her parents and also the thousands shivering under the extortions of his monopoly?
In the end she chose the course that seemed to combine the least evil with the most good.She would go to the Eyrie, and the world and her father and mother would think she was absenting herself from her husband to attend to the bringing up of her boy.
She would see even less of Scarborough than she saw when she was last at Saint X.
That afternoon she wrote to Dumont:
Since we had our talk I have found out about Leonora.It is impossible for me to stay here.I shall go West to-morrow.But I shall not go to my father's; because of your circular I shall go to the Eyrie, instead--at least for the present.
PAULINE DUMONT.
Two weeks after she was again settled at the Eyrie, Langdon appeared in Saint X, alleging business at the National Woolens'
factories there.He accepted her invitation to stay with her, and devoted himself to Gladys, who took up her flirtation with him precisely where she had dropped it when they bade each the other a mock-mournful good-by five months before.They were so realistic that Pauline came to the satisfying conclusion that her sister-in-law was either in earnest with Langdon or not in earnest with anybody.If she had not been avoiding Scarborough, she would probably have seen Gladys' real game--to use Langdon as a stalking horse for him.
"No doubt Scarborough, like all men, imagines he's above jealousy," Gladys had said to herself, casting her keen eyes over the situation."But there never was a man who didn't race better with a pace-maker than on an empty track."Toward the end of Langdon's first week Pauline's suspicions as to one of the objects of his winter trip West were confirmed by his saying quite casually: "Dumont's dropped Fanshaw, and Leonora's talking of the stage.In fact, she's gone abroad to study."When he was leaving, after nearly three weeks, he asked her when she was coming back East.
"Never--I hope," she said, her fingers playing with the close-cropped curls of her boy standing beside her.
"I fancied so--I fancied so," replied Langdon, his eyes showing that he understood her and that he knew she understood for whom he had asked.
"You are going to stay on--at the Eyrie?""I think so, unless something--disquieting--occurs.I've not made up my mind.Fate plays such queer tricks that I've stopped guessing at to-morrow.""What was it Miss Dumont's friend, Scarborough, quoted from Spinoza at Atwater's the other night? `If a stone, on its way from the sling through the air, could speak, it would say, "How free I am!'" Is that the way you feel?"There came into Pauline's eyes a look of pain so intense that he glanced away.
"We choose a path blindfold," she said, her tone as light as her look was dark, "and we must go where it goes--there's no other ever afterward.""But if it leads down?"
"All the PATHS lead up," she replied with a sad smile."It's the precipices that lead down."Gladys joined them and Langdon said to her:
"Well, good-by, Miss Dumont--don't get married till you see me." He patted the boy on the shoulder."Good-by, Gardiner--remember, we men must always be brave, and gentle with the ladies.Good-by, Mrs.Dumont--keep away from the precipices.
And if you should want to come back to us you'll have no trouble in finding us.We're a lot of slow old rotters, and we'll be just where you left us--yawning, and shying at new people and at all new ideas except about clothes, and gossiping about each other." And he was in the auto and off for the station.
