Lifted Masks | Page 7

had. I had just sense enough to
make the most of it; one thing led to another--well, you're not interested
in that end of it. But the fact is that now we're rich. Now she could have
all the things that these women have--Lord A'mighty she could lay
abed every day till noon if she wanted to! But--you see?--it got
her--those hard, lonely, grinding years took her. She's"--he shrunk from
the terrible word and faltered out--"her mind's not--"
There was a sobbing little flutter in Virginia's throat. In a dim way she

was glad to see that the girls were going. She could not have them
laughing at him--now.
"Well, you can about figure out how it makes me feel," he continued,
and looking into his face now it was as though the spirit redeemed the
flesh. "You're smart. You can see it without my callin' your attention to
it. Last time I went to see her I had just made fifty thousand on a deal.
And I found her down on her knees thinking she was scrubbing the
floor!"
Unconsciously Virginia's hand went out, following the rush of
sympathy and understanding. "But can't they--restrain her?" she
murmured.
"Makes her worse. Says she's got it to do--frets her to think she's not
getting it done."
"But isn't there some _way_?" she whispered. "Some way to make her
_know_?"
He pointed to the large boxes. "That," he said simply, "is the meaning
of those. It's been seven years--but I keep on trying."
She was silent, the tears too close for words. And she had thought it
cheap ambition!--vulgar aspiration--silly show--vanity!
"Suppose you thought I was a queer one, talking about lively looking
things. But you see now? Thought it might attract her attention, thought
something real gorgeous like this might impress money on her. Though
I don't know,"--he seemed to grow weary as he told it; "I got her a lot
of diamonds, thinking they might interest her, and she thought she'd
stolen 'em, and they had to take them away."
Still the girl did not speak. Her hand was shading her eyes.
"But there's nothing like trying. Nothing like keeping right on trying.
And anyhow--a fellow likes to think he's taking his wife something
from Paris."

They passed before her in their heartbreaking folly, their tragic
uselessness, their lovable absurdity and stinging irony--those things
they had bought that afternoon: an _opera cloak_--a _velvet
dress_--_those hats_--red silk stockings.
The mockery of them wrung her heart. Right there in the tea-shop
Virginia was softly crying.
"Oh, now that's too bad," he expostulated clumsily. "Why, look here,
Young Lady, I didn't mean you to take it so hard."
When she had recovered herself he told her much of the story. And the
thing which revealed him--glorified him--was less the grief he gave to
it than the way he saw it. "It's the cursed unfairness of it," he concluded.
"When you consider it's all because she did those things--when you
think of her bein' bound to 'em for life just because she was _too
faithful doin' 'em_--when you think that now--when I could give her
everything these women have got!--she's got to go right on worrying
about baking the bread and washing the dishes--did it for me when I
was poor--and now with me rich she can't get out of it--and I _can't
reach_ her--oh, it's _rotten!_ I tell you it's _rotten!_ Sometimes I can
just hear my money laugh at me! Sometimes I get to going round and
round in a circle about it till it seems I'm going crazy myself."
"I think you are a--a noble man," choked Virginia.
That disconcerted him. "Oh Lord--don't think that. No, Young Lady,
don't try to make any plaster saint out of me. My life goes on. I've got
to eat, drink and be merry. I'm built that way. But just the same my
heart on the inside's pretty sore, Young Lady. I want to tell you that the
whole inside of my heart is sore as a boil!"
They were returning for the hats. Suddenly Virginia stopped, and it was
a soft-eyed and gentle Virginia who turned to him after the pause.
"There are lovely things to be bought in Paris for women who aren't
well. Such soft, lovely things to wear in your room. Not but what I
think these other things are all right. As you say, they may--interest her.
But they aren't things she can use just now, and wouldn't you like her to

have some of those soft lovely things she could actually wear? They
might help most of all. To wake in the morning and find herself in
something so beautiful--"
"Where do you get 'em?" he demanded promptly.
And so they went to one of those shops which have, more than all