CHAPTER XXI.
THE week passed. No cable came from Mr. Forbes. His wife did not admit further disquiet. She knew his pride. He would come, but not with the appearance of hastening to her at the first excuse.
She went out as much as she could—filled every moment. A part of the trousseau arrived, and there were many things to be bought in London.
She needed all the distraction she could devise. Impatience and longing, regret and loneliness crouched at the four corners of her mind, ready to spring the moment her will relaxed. The gloomy skies contributed their quota. She was home-sick for the blue and white, the electric atmosphere of New York. Nevertheless, when she was surrounded by admirers, during the hours wherein she was reminded that her haughty little head was among the stars, she was content, and had no thought of retreat.
The letter had left England on a Saturday. She reckoned that her husband would not receive it until the following Monday week. Making allowance for all delays, he could take the steamer that left New York on Wednesday.
On the Wednesday of the week succeeding she remained in her rooms all day. The time came and passed for the arrival of passengers by the “Cunard” line; but her husband had a strong preference for the “American,” and she had made up her mind not to expect him before a quarter to nine in the evening—a slight break in the St. Paul’s machinery had delayed its arrival several hours.
She was nervous and excited. Augusta left the hotel and declared that she should not return until the “meeting was quite over.” For the last week Mrs. Forbes had been haunted by visions of shipwreck, fire at sea, and sudden death. In these last hours she walked the floor torn by doubts of another nature. Suppose her husband would not forgive her, was disgusted, embittered? She had every reason to think that she had deep and intimate knowledge of him; but she knew that people had lived together for forty years before some crook of Circumstance had revealed the dormant but virile poison of their natures. Was bitter pride her husband’s? For the first time she wished that she had never seen the Duke of Bosworth—retreated before the ambitions of a lifetime in detestation and terror. Every part of her concentrated into longing for the man who had made the happiness of her life. She even wished passionately that she had never had a daughter to come between them, and with curious feminism loved the baby that was coming the more.
She went to the mirror and regarded herself anxiously. When in society, excitement gave her all her old rich vital beauty, but the reaction left her pale and dull. Would he find her faded? He had worshipped her beauty, and she would rather have walked out from wealth into poverty than have discovered a wrinkle or a grey hair. But she looked very lovely. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling. Her warm soft hair when hanging always enriched her beauty. She wore an Empire gown of pale pink satin cut in a high square about the throat.
“Oh, I look pretty enough,” she thought. “If he would only come!”
For the twentieth time she went to the clock. It was a few minutes to eight The train was due at twenty minutes past. He should be at the hotel by a quarter to nine at latest.
The next hour was the longest of her life. She assured herself that if there was such a result as retributive justice in this world it beat upon her in a fiery rain during those crab-like moments. There was nothing to momentarily relieve the tension, no seconds of expectation, of hope. The roll of cabs in the street was incessant. The corridors of the hotel were so thickly carpeted that she could not hear a foot-fall. Her very hands shook, but she dared not take an anodyne lest she should not be herself when he came.
She tried to recall the few quarrels of her engagement and their perturbing effect. They were such pale wraiths before this agitation, following years of intense living, and quicked with the full knowledge of the great possession she may have tossed to Memory, that they dissolved upon evocation. She sprang to her feet again to pace the room. At that moment the door opened and her husband entered.
She had purposed to captivate him anew with her beauty, to shed several tears, perhaps, but not enough to blister and inflame. She flew across the room and flung herself about his neck and deluged his face with tears, as she sobbed, and kissed him, and protested, and besought forgiveness.
His face had been stern as he entered. Although the appeal of her letter was irresistible, he had no intention of capitulating without reserves; but no man that loved a woman could be proof against such an outburst of feeling and affection, and in a moment he was pressing her in his arms and kissing her.