CHAPTER XXVIII
HORACE WYLIE’S PHILOSOPHY
Let us now make a flying trip to the Pacific slope and go back to that hour of parting at San Francisco to learn more of the motives that prompted the tragedy in Elinor Wylie’s life.
Passenger train No. 9, eastward bound, pulled slowly out of the great depot building of the Oakland Mole, and the hurrying and excited throng of people pressed forward, jostling elbows and crowding one another after the manner of travelers, who sometimes leave their politeness and good breeding behind them when they take up their valises.
The coaches were fast becoming filled, when a gentleman entered one of them, accompanied by a child and two ladies, one a pretty blonde, whom he helped to a seat and bent over in tender leave-taking.
“Good-by, Nellie! Write me when you get through, or better, wire me from Denver, so I may know all is well. Tibby is with you, so I need not worry if the trains run right.”
The little lady smiled through tear-moistened eyelids as she replied, and kissing her again, and the child, and shaking hands with her companion, he sprang from the train as it began to move.
Horace Wylie stood watching the long line of coaches as they moved away from him, biting the ends of his mustache in an absent, absorbed inattention, then turned slowly back within the gates, a strange mixture of emotions controlling him.
The inward monitor, conscience, was not yet stifled, and it was holding a mental mirror before his vision. He caught a flitting glimpse of his real self, stripped of all the sophistries and delusions under which he loved to hide. Was he not a traitor, double-dyed? For a moment he felt an impulse to rush after the departing train and seek to stop it in its flight. A vision of his wife, looking trim and attractive in her fashionable costume, remained and upbraided him with her trusting blue eyes.
It was but a moment, however. Another face superseded it—a dark, brilliant face, with passionate southern eyes, and red, full lips; a face more sensuous, more bewilderingly intoxicating to him in its voluptuous beauty and piquancy.
Horace Wylie shrugged his shoulders and shook himself as if to shake off the oppression of self-reproach. He had made his decision and would abide by it. After all, what mattered it? He had but one life to live. It was right to get all the enjoyment out of it within his reach.
He had not confessed to himself before why he had been so willing, and more than willing, that his wife should make a visit of three months at her old home. It had been her wish to go, and he had magnanimously granted her permission. Thus he told himself. But he knew he concealed, under a pretense of self-denial, the secret joy he felt that her own voluntary act should lend aid to the furtherance of his half-formed designs. He had not told the better part of himself what these designs were. It is doubtful whether at this time he had faced the fact that they were designs at all. They were mere desires. At least they were vague, shadowy, evanescent creations, taking form from his desires, and developing slowly in the secret, dark chambers of his bosom.
He felt now, rather than thought consciously, that the barrier which had restrained the current of his impulses was washed away and he might sink in the lethal waters or be drifted away from prudence and engulfed in the maelstrom of pleasure. He could not say vice, but a guilty consciousness oppressed him now as he stood upon the platform watching the last curling waves of smoke float backward.
Wylie boasted of being a man of progressive ideas, a modern philosopher, who had outgrown the old-fogyism of the past generation and arisen to a plane where he could sit and lay down laws unto himself—mark out a plan of life for this world and the hereafter. He was well-read in modern sciences and a student of mental philosophy. He confessed himself infidel in that he denied the Divine origin of the Scriptures, laughed at what he called the pretty fables that bound the conscience of the orthodox Christian, and felt himself superior in his latter-day wisdom. He claimed to be a free-thinker and a liberalist, who read Huxley and venerated Ingersoll, but had adopted a modern creed more in accordance with modern requirements. He confessed to a decided leaning toward spiritism. In fact, if his ideas were really expressed, he believed a man had a right to do about as he pleased in this world, despite moral and civil law. Not that he would have confessed as much to himself. That was another of his self-delusions. But he had outgrown in theory, with the fables taught him in his youth, his boyish code of morality. He had also outgrown, so he believed, his love for his wife, whom he had married many years ago, when he was but twenty-one, a mere boy, incapable of judging or choosing wisely. So he argued with the better self. Not that he found serious fault with her. He secretly wished he might do so, but she had been faithful to him, he believed, and upheld the family honor; was pretty, stylish, domestic, social, and a kind mother to his son. All this he was forced to acknowledge. But she was one ideaed, commonplace, he told himself, and she was not his spiritual affinity. Ah, there was a reason furnished by his lately adopted creed. She was not his affinity.
He could remember a time when she was all in all to him. But he had outgrown that time too. Of course he loved his boy, and if,—if certain imaginings and fancies should materialize,—well, he needn’t consult his better self about that yet.
“Hello, have you fallen asleep, watching that train off?” A friendly hand slapped him upon the shoulder.
Wylie started as though his thoughts were patent to all observers.
“I—I have just sent off Elinor and the boy,” he said with confusion.
“Ah, that is—shall I say fortunate or unfortunate? Fortunate for them perhaps—bad for you. And you were following them with your mind. Are they to remain away long?”
“Three months. They will go to the Atlantic coast before they return.” Wylie spoke with an effort.
“And what will you do while they are gone? Board at the club, I suppose.”
“Yes, at the Bohemian. I am at the office all day, and most of the nights, so shall have little time to miss my family.”
“I see. Well, come to the club oftener, when you can get away. By the way, have you attended any of Mrs. Mount’s receptions lately?”
“Yes, I go often. They are enjoyable, which is saying much.”
Wylie spoke with enthusiasm. His companion shrugged his shoulders suggestively.
“I suppose that depends whether you are in sympathy or not with the very liberal ideas discussed there.”
“Are you not in sympathy?”
“I don’t like some of the people who go there.”
“Did you ever find a society every individual of which you deemed companionable?”
“Possibly not, but I have reference to two or three conspicuous persons who are notorious for their immorality.”
“To whom do you refer? Not Mr. Falkner?”
“Yes, Mr. Falkner for one. He is much married and divorced.”
“I am sure all was legal, so far as I know. He separated from number one, and was again married. When number two ran away and left him, he obtained a second divorce, and—married again.”
Wylie’s companion looked at him with curious eyes.
“I am surprised that you approve of him. From his conduct last evening I should judge there will be a chance for a third divorce. I cannot like the man.”
“His conduct? How?” Wylie inquired, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, nervously. His companion gave him a scrutinizing look.
“With Mrs. Hartner,” he replied in a dry tone.
Horace Wylie winced, but he said in a tone of affected indifference, “I consider Mrs. Hartner a lady.”
“Yes? Do you know where her husband is?”
“No.”
“It is rumored that he has been hired to leave the country.”
“For what reason?”
“To enable her to get a divorce.”
“So? Well, it’s none of my affairs,” and Wylie laughed a mirthless laugh.
“Nor mine, but if I were interested in the lady I should keep her away from Mrs. Mount’s. Ta, ta, Wylie. This is my corner.”
Young Holden sauntered around it slowly, out of sight.
“Confound the fellow! Why did he say that to me? It can’t be that he suspects—but no, that is impossible. There is something confoundedly disreputable about a divorce, that’s a fact. But this double life is risky, especially with such a keen-witted wife as Elinor, and Berenice is so determined, and insists—well, time enough to think of this later. It’s a relief to know that Elinor is where she need not hear all the gossip of the clubs.”