The Cost [78]
"I'll go there," said Pauline. "Won't you bring him when he's ready?"
She never entered the garden that the ghosts of her childhood--how far, far it seemed!--did not join her, brushing against her, or rustling in tree and bush and leafy trellis. She paused at the end of the long arbor and sat on the rustic bench there. A few feet away was the bed of lilies-of-the-valley. Every spring of her childhood she used to run from the house on the first warm morning and hurry to it; and if her glance raised her hopes she would kneel upon the young grass and lower her head until her long golden hair touched the black ground; and the soil that had been hard and cold all winter would be cracked open this way and that; and from the cracks would issue an odor--the odor of life. And as she would peer into each crack in turn she would see, down, away down, the pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shooting slender shaft. And her heart would thrill with joy, for she knew that the shafts would presently rise green above the black earth, would unfold, would blossom, would bloom, would fling from tremulous bells a perfumed proclamation of the arrival of spring.
As she sat waiting, it seemed to her that through the black earth of her life she could see and feel the backward heralds of her spring--"after the long winter," she said to herself.
She glanced up--her father coming toward her. He was alone, was holding a folded letter uncertainly in his hand. He looked at her, his eyes full of pity and grief. "Pauline," he began, "has everything been--been well--of late between you and--your husband?"
She started. "No, father," she replied. Then, looking at him with clear directness: "I've not been showing you and mother the truth about John and me--not for a long time."
She saw that her answer relieved him. He hesitated, held out the letter.
"The best way is for you to read it," he said. It was a letter to him from Fanshaw. He was writing, he explained, because the discharge of a painful duty to himself would compel him "to give pain to your daughter whom I esteem highly," and he thought it only right "to prepare her and her family for what was coming, in order that they might be ready to take the action that would suggest itself." And he went on to relate his domestic troubles and his impending suit.
"Poor Leonora!" murmured Pauline, as she finished and sat thinking of all that Fanshaw's letter involved.
"Is it true, Polly?" asked her father.
She gave a great sigh of relief. How easy this letter had made all that she had been dreading! "Yes--it's true," she replied. "I've known about--about it ever since the time I came back from the East and didn't return."
The habitual pallor of her father's face changed to gray.
"I left him, father." She lifted her head, impatient of her stammering. A bright flush was in her face as she went on rapidly: "And I came to-day to tell you the whole story--to be truthful and honest again. I'm sick of deception and evasion. I can't stand it any longer--I mustn't. I--you don't know how I've shrunk from wounding mother and you. But I've no choice now. Father, I must be free--free!"
"And you shall be," replied her father. "He shall not wreck your life and Gardiner's."
Pauline stared at him. "Father!" she exclaimed.
He put his arm round her and drew her gently to him.
"I know the idea is repellent," he said, as if he were trying to persuade a child. "But it's right, Pauline. There are cases in which not to divorce would be a sin. I hope my daughter sees that this is one."
"I don't understand," she said confusedly. "I thought you and mother believed divorce was dreadful--no matter what might happen."
"We did, Pauline. But we--that is, I--had never had it brought home. A hint of this story was published just after you came last year. I thought it false, but it set me to thinking. `If your daughter's husband had turned out to be as you once thought him, would it be right for her to live on with him? To live a lie, to pretend to keep