According to the Pattern (18 page)

Celia looked up at the glowing face as he walked
beside her, and thought that she knew how the face of a
saint looked. And yet he was only a plain young man
doing his Master’s work with the fervor of a consecrated spirit.

Celia Lyman took no account of the length of the
walk as she listened with absorbing interest to the story
of the young man’s work in the slums, and of the
Christian work that a band of his college men were
carrying on. It opened a new world to her, a world that
appealed to her and invited her, while it yet repulsed her.

Long after the others were asleep in the Lyman home
that night Celia sat by her window looking up at the stars
and thinking. And the still stars answered her with their
unerring steadiness that there was another world than the
one of laughter and pleasure in which she had been
living, and there might be more earnest living yet, even
for her.

Then she knelt beside her bed and tried to pray, but
the only words that would come were, “O Lord, don’t
let me die—not till I’m good.”

And thus
.
the task she had performed for another that
day was bringing its good to her own soul, for Celia
Lyman’s prayers had of late been few and far between.

A worthless woman, mere cold clay,

As all false things are; but so fair,

She takes the breath of men away

Who gaze upon her unaware.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

THE almost solemn hush that pervaded the pretty re
ception room of the Winthrop home where even the
palms seemed to hold up warning fingers to be still,
affected the beautiful woman who entered with almost
a chill of dread.

Just why Mrs. Sylvester had finally decided to call and
inquire concerning Mrs. Winthrop it is not easy to say.
First of all, it was because she never liked to be balked in
anything she undertook, and she had sense enough to see that the situation as it stood at present was against her. It
was not altogether that she disliked to lose an admirer.
That was unpleasant, certainly, and she knew she had all
but lost. But to lose him and know that he held her in
light esteem was worse. Her pride was involved and her pride was her main virtue. She had lost many an admirer
by quietly turning him down when he became trouble
some, and had not felt discomfort thereby, because she
was assured that he would go off in some corner and
dream for a little while of her beauty and grace, and sigh over the impossibility of ever possessing her, and then forget gradually; but always she would remain a pleasant
picture to be thought of when alone, smoking, or when
by and by the wife of his choice should annoy him in
any way, as inevitably she would.

But Claude Winthrop had by no means reached the
point when he was troublesome. To tell the truth he had
been hard to win. From amusing herself with him one evening as a business acquaintance of her husband’s she
had gone on to admire and then to try to win his
admiration. It had played no small part in the affair that
Claude Winthrop had taken her for a pure and true
woman. She had played well the part of innocence, had
used her lovely eyes to advantage, and felt a thrill of
exultation the first time when she succeeded in catching his eyes upon her in admiration. Her own had dropped modestly at first and then been raised shyly with a lovely sweep of color over face and neck as she had let him see a little, just a very little, of an answering admiration in them.

Of course he was not rich nor great, but then what did
that matter for a married woman? She was not after
position, and she was not afraid of hurting her own
because she knew well how to plan her campaign so that her meetings with him would not be under any prying eyes.

It had been a long time before she had been able to
win more from him than that look of admiration, but all
the more earnestly had she tried, because that fact gave
the affair the nature of a young, forbidden, first love, and
it was worthwhile to win when the odds were great.

If she had made the advances they had been so deli
cately and naturally made that he had not suspected, and
in his private conferences with his conscience during
those first days when it had not been lulled to sleep, he had blamed himself, not her.

Gradually she had let him suspect what was really the truth, that her marriage was not one of love, but this was
done in such a way as to leave him free to suppose that she
was very unhappy over it, whereas it had been a marriage
of her own planning, and in whose achievement she had
secretly exulted much. It was a marriage that gave her all
she wanted and left her free to be admired by whom she would. And then the pity that is akin to love and put her hands over the eyes of his conscience while he had given that kiss of comfort—that kiss that now he would have given worlds to call back to him. The kiss that was his wife’s and that he had thrown away.

The beauty of his wife and her grace and success had maddened Mrs. Sylvester into vowing she would win in spite of everything. But strongest of all now was the fact that she was at the point where, if she could have won
Claude Winthrop, she would be willing to leave her
husband and home and everything she counted worthw
hile in this world, for with what heart she had she
loved him better than she had ever loved any man
before. His touches upon her fingers had been all too
few, his one kiss she treasured beyond the many she had received from others.

And now it seemed that even as her rival was fallen
she was going to lose. If she would save the situation it must be done before the enemy died, if die she did. Mrs.
Sylvester, riding toward the Winthrop home had al
lowed herself for one moment to think of the possibility of what might be if Miriam should die, and her face had softened, but only with selfishness.

And she sat down in all her elegance in the carefully wrought reception room while she waited for Claude to come down, as she had requested.

With cold, critical look she let her eyes rove from one object to another, and admitted to herself that it had all been well done though there had evidently been a pitiful lack of money to carry out the plan.

Then she heard heavy footsteps and collected her
faculties for the next act in the tragedy which she had willed to play.

Claude Winthrop stood before her, the dull, agonized expression of the sick room not yet faded from his face. His eyes were heavy with loss of sleep, his collar was
awry, and he wore no tie. His hair was tumbled carelessly
as though it had been smoothed with his fingers on the
way down. His caller wondered if he had not seen her
card nor known who it was that wished to see him. She had never seem him careless in his dress before, but
somehow, so perverse is human nature, he seemed all the
more interesting to her because he made a sight so
unfamiliar. And yet, with her cool consideration, she
decided that it would not be pleasant to have a man
around the house looking like that, if one were married to him

He stood looking at her bewildered for a moment as
she advanced to meet him, her delicately gloved hand outstretched to greet him, her voice sweet and sympathetic. But his hands were in his pockets, and he gripped to the lining and kept them there. The delicate little rose
leaf of a hand, clad in gloves so soft as to be like a baby’s
skin, and so exquisitely perfumed as to leave the impression of the warm touch of a flower, that she had counted so much upon, was held out in vain. Claude looked at it
as though it had been a poisonous reptile, and as she
spoke the scorn grew in his eyes.

“Claude, poor fellow, I have been so sorry for you,”
she murmured. “I have waited from day to day in
breathless eagerness to hear news. At last I could stand it
no longer and came to see. How is she? She was so
beautiful; I know how hard it has been for you; I do not
blame you for the cruel things you said to me that night. I had a hard task and an unnecessary one, but I have felt
it, oh, I have felt it these days—” There were tears in her
eyes now, she had those weapons-well trained and could
call them ever at a moment’s notice, and Claude’s atti
tude showed her that if she would keep any influence for
herself in future she must act well her part now. “I want
you to forgive me for what I felt I ought to tell you about
her that night. I felt I could not stand it if she should die
—
”.

She paused to bury a well-suppressed sob in her fine
handkerchief, and Claude spoke in cold deliberate tones.
He was looking at her as he might have looked at the
devil who had come to take him to the place of eternal Punishment.

“And so it is you!” he said, scorn in his voice, “and
you have dared to follow here, and at this time! Well, I
have been a fool and worse, I know, and my punishment
has begun, and is perhaps none too great for me, but so
long as it is in my power to prevent, it shall not include
further friendship with such as you!”

Then he turned and walked out of the room and up
the stairs with head erect and eyes shining with a desper
ate flame of anger.

Mrs. Sylvester had been prepared for almost anything,
but not for this. She had never seen Mr. Winthrop any
other than a perfect gentleman. She had presumed much
upon this fact. She felt sure she could make him hear her
out, and was reasonably certain of the final impression
she would leave. But to have him go in this way was
baffling beyond endurance. She bit her lip at his inso
lence and with rising anger declared that if she could not
bring him to his senses she would at least have her
revenge. Was not his position in the business world
dependent upon her husband’s word? How easy it
would be to give a hint, a suggestion, a mere shadow of
what had been this man’s attentions to herself—and too,
without in the least implicating herself—and her hus
band would fly into a mighty passion. The gleam of
revenge, the malicious gleam, grew in her eyes as she
looked about for some means of conquering this embar
rassing situation. She must call him back for a moment
if it were but to suggest this thought to him. Quickly she
stepped outside the door and closing it, rang the street
bell.

“Will you say to Mr. Winthrop that I have forgotten
one most important thing and have come back to tell
him? I will detain him but a moment.” This was the
message she sent by the servant when she appeared, and
once more this persistent woman seated herself in the
parlor.

If she had not been so wrapped about with a sense of
self and her own purposes she would have felt that a hush
of expectancy was pervading the very house itself, the
hush of solemn crisis.

Into the chamber above, where death waited to claim
his victim, where the eyes of the watchers were turned
in quiet sorrow upon that white face on the pillow, and where the only sound that could be heard was the faint
breathing that had come to have so portentous a sound,
came her message, borne by the troubled, reluctant maid
who hesitated at the door.

Claude, kneeling in his old place at the foot of the bed, his head dropped upon his folded arms, did not see the maid at the door, nor hear her half-whispered, “Mr.
Winthrop, please sir—”

His mother-in-law, who had come but a few hours
before, motioned the maid to her and listened to the
message. She glanced at Claude, saw the agony of his very attitude, and set her determined lips. He should not be disturbed now. Her own sorrow was a thing to be
expected and accepted. Claude’s was different. She
knew what it would be, for had she not lost her husband in her youth?

She left the place beside her daughter’s pillow and
went with swift, determined step out of the door and
down the stairs.

Her prim black silk and soft lace, her fine silver hair
and cameo face, lit by eyes that needed no spectacles to see the minutest detail in the face of the woman she had come to cow, dawned upon Mrs. Sylvester in wonder.

“You surely cannot know that you are calling my son from the bedside of his dying wife?” she said in clear unflinching tones and fixing her piercing eyes upon the visitor fearlessly.

“Oh, I beg pardon, it was merely a matter of busi
ness,” said Mrs. Sylvester sweetly, the while her soul
raged within her at the way things were going after all. “
I did not mean to intrude, of course. I had not heard
that Mrs. Winthrop was so ill.”

Mrs. Hammond’s fine patrician face trembled with dignity as she cut short the voluble words.

“You will do us a favor by leaving us to ourselves at present.”

And there was nothing left for Mrs. Sylvester but
retreat, but as she rode away in her luxurious carriage she
planned a revenge as cruel as it was sweet to her baffled heart.