The Letter of the Contract Part 19

Edith looked mystified. "I don't know what you mean. Which are the two who must be unhappy in any case?"

Chip answered quietly, without turning his head: "He's one; my--my wife is the other."

"Oh!" With something between a sigh and a gasp she fell back against a pillar of the rotunda.

"It's the sort of economy of human material," Chip went on, his eye following the lines of the Wetterhorn up and down, "that a man achieves in saving himself from a sinking s.h.i.+p and leaving his wife and children to drown--a.s.suming that he can't rescue them."

"The comparison isn't quite exact," Lacon replied, courteously.

"Wouldn't it rather be that if a man can save only one of two women, he nevertheless does what he can?"

Edith still looked bewildered. "I don't know what you're talking about, either of you. What is it? Why are we here? Am I one of the two women to be saved?"

"The suggestion is," Chip said, dryly, "that Mr. Lacon wouldn't oppose your divorcing him, while my--my present wife might divorce me; after which you and I could marry again. Isn't that it, sir?"

The older man nodded a.s.sent. "It's well to use plain English when we can."

Chip continued to measure the Wetterhorn with his eye. "Rather comic the whole thing would be, wouldn't it?"

"Possibly," Lacon replied, imperturbably. "But we've accepted the comic in the inst.i.tution of marriage, we Americans. It's too late for us to attempt to take it without its possibilities of opera bouffe."

"But aren't there laws?" Edith asked.

Again Lacon's lips glimmered with the ghost of a smile. "Yes; but they're very complacent laws. They reduce marriage to the legal permission for two persons to live together as man and wife as long as mutually agreeable; but the license is easily rescinded--and renewed."

"But surely marriage is more than that," she protested.

Lacon's ghost of a smile persisted. "Haven't we proved that it isn't?--for us, at any rate. Hesitation to use our freedom in the future would only stultify our action in the past. If we go in for an inst.i.tution with qualities of opera bouffe isn't it well to do it light-heartedly?--or as light-heartedly as we can."

Edith looked at him reproachfully. "Should you be doing it light-heartedly?"

"I said as light-heartedly as we can."

"What makes you think that Chip and I--I mean," she corrected, with some confusion, "Mr. Walker and I--want to do it at all?"

"Isn't that rather evident?"

"I didn't know it was."

Chip glanced at them over his shoulder. It seemed to him that Lacon's look was one of pity.

"You met in England," the latter said, displaying a hesitation unusual in him, "with something--something more than pleasure, as I judge; and--and Mr. Walker is here."

"Yes, by accident," she declared, hurriedly. "It was by accident in England, too."

He lifted his fine white hand in protest. "Oh, I'm not blaming you. On the contrary, nothing could be more natural than that you should both feel as I--I imagine you do. You're the wife of his youth--he's the husband of yours. The best things you've ever had in your two lives are those you've had in common. That you should want to bridge over the past, and, if possible, go back--"

"We've burned our bridges," she interrupted, quickly.

"Even burned bridges can be rebuilt if there's the will to do it. The whole question turns on the will. If you have that I want you to understand that I shall not be--be an obstacle to the--to the reconstruction."

"Don't you _care_?"

"That's not the question. We've already a.s.sumed the fact that my caring--as well as that of a certain other person whom Mr. Walker would have to consider--is secondary. It's too late to do anything for us--a.s.suming that she understands, or may come to understand, the position as I do. Your refusing happiness for yourselves in order to stand by us, or even to stand by the children--the younger children, I mean--wouldn't do us any good. On the contrary, as far as I'm concerned, if there could be any such thing as mitigation--"

He broke off. Seeing the immobile features swept as by convulsion, Chip took up the sentence: "It would be that Edith should feel free."

"Precisely."

"And her not feeling free would involve the continuance of--the penalty."

"In its extreme form." He regained control of himself. "That the penalty should be abrogated altogether is out of the question. Some of us must go on paying it--all four of us, indeed, to some degree. And yet, any relief for one would be some relief for all. Do you see what I mean?"

The question was addressed to Edith specially.

"I'm not sure that I do," she replied, looking at him wistfully. "Is it this?--that, a.s.suming what you do a.s.sume, it would be easier for you if I--I went away?"

"I shouldn't put it in just those words, I only mean that what's hardest for you is hardest for me. I couldn't hold you to the letter of one contract if you were keeping the spirit of another. Do you see now?"

She didn't answer at once, so that Chip intervened: "Hasn't some one said--Shakespeare or some one--that the letter killeth? It seems to me I've heard that."

"You probably have. Some one has said it. But He also added, as a balancing clause, 'The Spirit giveth life.' That's the vital part of it.

To find out where the spirit is in our present situation is the question now."

She looked at him tearfully. "Well, _where_ is it?"

He rose quietly. "That's for you and Mr. Walker to discover for yourselves. I've gone as far as I dare."

"You're not going away?" she asked, hastily.

He smiled at them both. For the first time in Chip's acquaintance with him it was a positive smile. "I think you'll most easily find your way alone."

"Oh no. Wait!" she begged; but he had already lifted his hat in his stately way and begun to walk back toward the hotel.

Then came the bliss of being alone together. In spite of everything, they felt that. Edith leaned across the rude table, her hands clasped upon it. She spoke rapidly, as if to make full use of the time.

"Oh, Chip, what are we to do?"

He too leaned across the table, his arms folded upon it, the extinct cigar still between his fingers. He gazed deep into her eyes. "It's a chance. It will never come again. Shall we take it?--or let it go?"

"Could you take it, if I did?"

"Could you--if I did?"

She tried to reflect. "It's the spirit," she said, haltingly, after a minute. "Oughtn't we to get at that?--just as he said. We've had so much of--of the letter."

"Ah, but what _is_ the spirit? How _do_ you get at it? That's the point."

She tried to reflect further--further and harder and faster. "Wouldn't it be--what we _feel_?"