Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (14 page)

 
          
“I’ve
got it now! Cassie Donovan—that was the servant’s name,” Shreve suddenly
exclaimed. “Don’t you remember?”

 
          
“No,
I don’t. But this woman’s name, as I’ve told you, isn’t Donovan—it’s Wilpert,
Miss Wilpert.”

 
          
“Her
new name, you mean? Yes. And Kate Spain’s new name, you say, is Mrs. Ingram.
Can’t you see that the first thing they’d do, when they left Cayuga, would be
to change their names?”

 
          
“Why
should they, when nothing was proved against them? And you say yourself you
didn’t recognize Miss Wilpert,” I insisted, struggling to maintain my
incredulity.

 
          
“No;
I didn’t remember that she might have got fat and dyed her hair. I guess they
do themselves like fighting cocks now, to make up for past privations. They say
the old man cut up even fatter than people expected. But prosperity hasn’t
changed Kate Spain. I knew her at once; I’d have known her anywhere. And she
knew me.”

 
          
“She
didn’t know you,” I broke out; “she said she was mistaken.”

 
          
Shreve
pounced on this in a flash. “Ah—so at first she thought she did?” He laughed.
“I don’t wonder she said afterward she was mistaken. I don’t dye my hair yet,
but I’m afraid I’ve put on nearly as much weight as Cassie Donovan.” He paused
again, and then added: “All the same, Severance, she did know me.”

 
          
I
looked at the little journalist and laughed back at him.

 
          
“What
are you laughing at?”

 
          
“At you.
At such a perfect case of
professional deformation.
Wherever you go you’re bound to spot a
criminal; but I should have thought even Mont Soleil could have produced a
likelier specimen than my friend Mrs. Ingram.”

 
          
He
looked a little startled at my tone. “Oh, see here; if she’s such a friend I’m
sorry I said anything.”

 
          
I
rose to heights of tolerance. “Nothing you can say can harm her, my dear
fellow.”

 
          
“Harm
her? Why on earth should it? I don’t want to harm her.”

 
          
“Then
don’t go about spreading such ridiculous gossip. I don’t suppose any one cares
to be mistaken for a woman who’s been tried for her life; and if I were a
relation of Mrs. Ingram’s I’m bound to tell you I should feel obliged to put a
stop to your talk.”

 
          
He
stared in surprise, and I thought he was going to retort in the same tone; but
he was a fair-minded little fellow, and after a moment I could see he’d
understood. “All right, Severance; of course I don’t want to do anything
that’ll bother her…”

 
          
“Then
don’t go on talking as if you still thought she was Kate Spain.”

 
          
He
gave a hopeless shrug.
“All right.
I won’t. Only she
is,
you know; what’ll you bet on it, old
man?”

 
          
“Good
night,” I said with a nod, and turned away. It was obviously a fixed idea with
him; and what harm could such a crank do to me, much less to a woman like Mrs.
Ingram?

 
          
As
I left him he called after me: “If she ain’t, who is she? Tell me that, and
I’ll believe you.”

 
          
I
walked away without answering.

 
          
  

 
          
I
went up to bed laughing inwardly at poor Jimmy Shreve. His craving for the
sensational had certainly deformed his critical faculty. How it would amuse
Mrs. Ingram to hear that he had identified her with the wretched Kate Spain!
Well, she should hear it; we’d laugh over it together the next day. For she had
said, in bidding me goodnight: “You’ll tell me the rest in the morning.” And
that meant—could only mean—that she was going to listen to me, and if she were
going to listen, she must be going to answer as I wished her to…

 
          
Those
were my thoughts as I went up to my room. They were scarcely less confident
while I was undressing. I had the hope, the promise almost, of what, at the
moment, I most wished for—the only thing I wished for, in fact. I was amazed at
the intensity with which I wished it. From the first I had tried to explain
away my passion by regarding it as the idle man’s tendency to fall into
sentimental traps; but I had always known that what I felt was not of that
nature. This quiet woman with the wide pale eyes and melancholy mouth had taken
possession of me; she seemed always to have inhabited my mind and heart; and as
I lay down to sleep I tried to analyze what it was in her that made her seem
already a part of me.

 
          
But
as soon as my light was out I knew I was going to lie awake all night; and all
sorts of unsought problems instantly crowded out my sentimental musings. I had
laughed at Shreve’s inept question: “If she ain’t Kate Spain, who
is she
?” But now an insistent voice within me echoed: Who is
she? What, in short, did I know of her? Not one single fact which would have
permitted me to disprove his preposterous assertion. Who was she? Was she
married, unmarried, divorced, a widow? Had she children, parents, relations
distant or near? Where had she lived before going to
California
, and when had she gone there? I knew
neither her birthplace, nor her maiden name, or indeed any fact about her
except the all-dominating fact of herself.

 
          
In
rehearsing our many talks with the pitiless lucidity of sleeplessness I saw
that she had the rare gift of being a perfect listener; the kind whose silence
supplies the inaudible questions and answers most qualified to draw one on. And
I had been drawn on; ridiculously, fatuously, drawn on. She was in possession
of all the chief facts of my modest history. She knew who I was, where I came
from, who were my friends, my family, my antecedents; she was fully informed as
to my plans, my hopes, my preferences, my tastes and hobbies. I had even
confided to her my passion for Brahms and for book-collecting, and my dislike
for the wireless, and for one of my brothers-in-law. And in return for these
confidences she had given me—what? An understanding
smile,
and the occasional murmur: “Oh, do you feel that too? I’ve always felt it.”

 
          
Such
was the actual extent of my acquaintance with Mrs. Ingram; and I perceived
that, though I had laughed at Jimmy Shreve’s inept assertion, I should have
been utterly unable to disprove it. I did not know who Mrs. Ingram was, or even
one single fact about her.

 
          
From
that point to supposing that she could be Kate Spain was obviously a long way.
She might be—well, let’s say almost anything; but not a woman accused of
murder, and acquitted only because the circumstantial evidence was insufficient
to hang her. I dismissed the grotesque supposition at once; there were problems
enough to keep me awake without that.

 
          
When
I said that I knew nothing of Mrs. Ingram I was mistaken. I knew one fact about
her; that she could put up with Cassie Wilpert. It was only a clue, but I had
felt from the first that it was a vital one. What conceivable interest or
obligation could make a woman like Mrs. Ingram endure such an intimacy? If I
knew that, I should know all I cared to know about her; not only about her
outward circumstances but her inmost self.

 
          
Hitherto,
in indulging my feeling for her, I had been disposed to slip past the awkward
obstacle of Cassie Wilpert; but now I was resolved to face it. I meant to ask
Kate Ingram to marry me. If she refused, her private affairs were obviously no
business of mine; but if she accepted I meant to have the Wilpert question out
with her at once.

 
          
It
seemed a long time before daylight came; and then there were more hours to be
passed before I could reasonably present myself to Mrs. Ingram. But at nine I
sent a line to ask when she would see me; and a few minutes later my note was
returned to me by the floor-waiter.

 
          
“But
this isn’t an answer; it’s my own note,” I exclaimed.

 
          
Yes;
it was my own note. He had brought it back because the lady had already left
the hotel.

 
          
“Left?
Gone out, you mean?”

 
          
“No;
left with all her luggage. The two ladies went an hour ago.”

 
          
In
a few minutes I was dressed and had hurried down to the
concierges
. It was a mistake, I was sure; of course Mrs. Ingram had
not left. The floor-waiter, whom I had long since classed as an idiot, had
simply gone to the wrong door. But no; the
concierges
shook his head. It was not a mistake. Mrs. Ingram and Miss Wilpert had gone
away suddenly that morning by motor. The chauffeur’s orders were to take them
to
Italy
; to Baveno or Stresa, he thought; but he wasn’t sure, and the ladies
had left no address. The hotel servants said they had been up all night
packing. The heavy luggage was to be sent to
Milan
; the
concierges
had orders to direct it to the station. That was all the information he could
give—and I thought he looked at me queerly as he gave it.

 
          
  

 
          
I
did not see Jimmy Shreve again before leaving Mont Soleil that day; indeed I
exercised all my ingenuity in keeping out of his way. If I were to ask any
further explanations, it was of Mrs. Ingram that I meant to ask them. Either
she was Kate Spain, or she was not; and either way, she was the woman to whom I
had declared my love. I should have thought nothing of Shreve’s insinuations if
I had not recalled Mrs. Ingram’s start when she first saw him. She herself had
owned that she had taken him for some one she knew; but even this would not
have meant much if she and her companion had not disappeared from the hotel a
few hours later, without leaving a message for me, or an address with the
hall-porter.

 
          
I
did not for a moment suppose that this disappearance was connected with my talk
of the previous evening with Mrs. Ingram. She herself had expressed the wish to
prolong that talk when Miss Wilpert interrupted it; and failing that, she had
spontaneously suggested that we should meet again the next morning. It would
have been less painful to think that she had fled before the ardour of my wooing
than before the dread of what Shreve might reveal about her; but I knew the
latter reason was the more likely.

 
          
The
discovery stunned me. It took me some hours to get beyond the incredible idea
that this woman, whose ways were so gentle, with whose whole nature I felt
myself in such delightful harmony, had stood her trial as a murderess—and the
murderess of her own father. But the more I revolved this possibility the less
I believed in it. There might have been other—and perhaps not very creditable—reasons
for her abrupt flight; but that she should be flying because she knew that
Shreve had recognized her seemed, on further thought, impossible.

 
          
Then
I began to look at the question from another angle.
Supposing
she
were
Kate Spain?
Well, her
father had been assassinated by a passing tramp; so the jury had decided.
Probably suspicion would never have rested on her if it had not been notorious
in Cayuga that the old man was a selfish miser, who for years had made his
daughter’s life intolerable. To those who knew the circumstances it had seemed
conceivable, seemed almost natural, that the poor creature should finally turn
against him. Yet she had had no difficulty in proving her innocence; it was
clearly established that she was out of the house when the crime was committed.
Her having been suspected, and tried, was simply one of those horrible blunders
of which innocent persons have so often been the victims. Do what she would to
live it down, her name would always remain associated with that sordid tragedy;
and wasn’t it natural that she should flee from any reminder of it, any
suspicion that she had been recognized, and her identity proclaimed by a
scandal-mongering journalist? If she were Kate Spain, the dread of having the
fact made known to every one in that crowded hotel was enough to drive her out
of it. But if her departure had another cause, in no way connected with
Shreve’s arrival, might it not have been inspired by a sudden whim of Cassie
Wilpert’s? Mrs. Ingram had told me that Cassie was bored and wanted to get
away; and it was all too clear that, however loudly she proclaimed her
independence, she always ended by obeying Miss Wilpert.