The Lifting of a Finger/Chapter 18

ON the following day Margaret returned from a drive to find the house quiet; Bellamy's guests had departed, bag and baggage.

"I sent them away," he said in answer to her inquiry. "I should never have asked them here had I not——" He broke off abruptly and added, "They are a noisy lot and I was tired of them."

During the month that followed Bellamy was seldom at home, and when he did come down from the city was not his usual self. He had never before, except on rare occasions, been ungracious to his subordinates, but now the servants trembled at his approach, so ​sure were they that he would find an excuse for a torrent of angry words.

To his wife he was never impatient, but he took little notice of her, and the attentions she had felt he bestowed to annoy her were a thing of the past.

Margaret's life went on as usual. Of her husband's absences or his changed manner she apparently took no heed, treating him with her accustomed calm courtesy, but avoiding him almost as persistently as he tried to keep out of her way. At the close of the summer, however, there crept into her manner towards him a trace of pitying kindness, he looked so worried and unhappy, and once when he came home with a white, haggard face she asked gently, "Is anything troubling you?"

"Yes," returned Bellamy shortly, and ​without saying more held out a package he had in his hand.

Margaret stood irresolute. "What is it?" she questioned.

With a muttered exclamation Bellamy tossed the parcel on a table. "It's only a book, but I was a fool to hope you would take even a book from me," he cried angrily. "I happened to see the story on a news-stand, and I thought you might enjoy it. Everyone is talking about it; it's the book of the year."

"What is the name?" Margaret asked. When Bellamy had told her, she went to the table and took up the package.

"Have you read it?" she asked.

"No," Bellamy said in answer to her question. "I was intending to get ​another copy for myself, but since you do not want this one——" He held out his hand for the book, but Margaret kept it.

"I have changed my mind," she said; "I will keep this."

Not long afterwards, on a stormy evening, Margaret was writing in her sitting-room when a knock sounded on the door leading to the hall.

In response to a "Come in" her husband entered. He did not look towards her as he said abruptly, "I have bad news for you: I have lost every dollar I possessed."

Margaret did not answer, and after the silence had lasted some moments Bellamy raised his head and looked at his wife. "I wish you would say something," he jerked out angrily. "Read ​me a lecture; upbraid me for squandering the money you married me for."

"I did not marry you for money," Margaret said quietly.

Bellamy made an impatient gesture.

"It's all the same," he muttered. "How is your brilliant social career to be kept up without money?"

"What you call a brilliant social career is not among my ambitions and never was," Margaret retorted quickly. "I married you to save my father from failure, as you know. If for a time I appeared to be engrossed in social pleasures, it was only because of my pride. It is a long while since I have gone into society, in the accepted sense of the term, and it is my wish to spend the winter here instead of going back to the city."

​"Here! In this dead-and-alive place!" ejaculated Francis. "How would you amuse yourself? How do you spend your time, anyway? What do you do to make the days pass?"

Margaret waived these questions with a smile. "Sometime perhaps I may tell you," she said; "just now we have more important matters to talk about. When I married you," she went on, speaking slowly and choosing her words, "you gave me half your fortune. I have used little of the money, and now I shall be glad to divide what is left with you. I think I told you that my father has repaid me what I let him have."

There was an odd look in Bellamy's black eyes as they stared at his wife. "I won't take your money," he said roughly. "Anyway, it would be only ​a drop in the bucket. Half of what you have wouldn't even pay my debts."

"Then take it all." Margaret's tone was eager.

"And leave you penniless? I'm likely to."

"I shall not be penniless," returned Margaret quickly. "Do you remember the book you brought me not long ago?"

"The only gift you ever took from me? Yes."

"I wrote that book." Margaret tried to speak calmly, but her voice was not quite steady nor was it free from pride.

"You wrote that!" Bellamy repeated in a dazed way, as he recalled the popularity of the book and the world's wonder as to who the unknown author ​could be. "So that was why you never seemed lonely?" he continued. "You must have made a pretty penny out of it."

"I did," replied Margaret, and I want to share the pretty penny with you."

"It is impossible," retorted Bellamy sharply. "You might do me the justice of not believing me capable of taking your money."

"Why is it impossible?" questioned Margaret. "When I needed it, I took the money you offered me and was glad to get it. Why should you refuse to let me help you now? In whatever else our feelings for each other have been wanting, at least they have not been lacking in kindliness or justice."

"Yes?" said Bellamy. "It was both ​just and kind, I suppose, to thrust upon you the rabble I had here early in the summer?"

"It was not pleasant for me to have them here, certainly," replied Margaret. "Still, they were your friends and this is your house. And I might have gone away had I chosen."

"Right or wrong, I did it. And now you want me to take your money? Well, I suppose rather than have the roof over your head sold I'd better do it. But have you considered where your money will perhaps go? That it may follow mine?"

At these words the light and eagerness died out of Margaret's face and left her looking like a woman carved in marble.

"I consider that half of whatever money I may have belongs to you," ​she said coldly. "What you choose to do with it is not my affair."

Bellamy rose and began to pace the room. "I shall choose to buy this house for you for one thing," he said. Presently he paused in front of his wife. "Margaret, have you ever been sorry you married me?" he asked. "But what a question! I ought rather to ask if there has been a moment in which you have not been sorry."

Margaret's reply came quickly, as if it were a speech she must make, but wished to have over with. "I have never been sorry I married you, not even for a moment," she said.

Her husband looked at her wildly.

"My God! Am I beneath even your contempt?" he cried, and then, without waiting for an answer, pulled ​himself together sharply and went on in an unimpassioned tone: "If I am to take that money, I should like to have it as soon as possible."

Margaret went to her desk and wrote out a check. "This is all I happen to have in the bank just at this moment," she explained, "but I will go to the city to-morrow and make arrangements to have the rest transferred to your name."

Bellamy looked at the check his wife handed him and saw that it was drawn for one thousand dollars, the amount of his wager with Hatfield.

"The opportunity for revenge seems always to come to those who do not seek it, and yours is complete," he said as he folded the bit of paper and put it in his pocket. "Have you a copy of—your book here?" he asked.

​Margaret took the volume from a book-case and Bellamy carried it to his room, there to read until the gray dawn entered at the windows and paled the lights already there.

As he read he understood why Margaret had published her book anonymously. In its pages he found the key to the enigma she had always been to him. The book was a revelation of Margaret's inner nature, and taught him how little of her real self she had permitted him or anyone to see.

Pride had caused her to hide her suffering behind a barrier of reserve. Without the barrier was cold calmness; within was a wealth of nobility such as Francis, in his experience with lesser women, had not dreamed existed.

In her book Margaret had poured ​out her heart, had revealed all that she had hidden from the world, and Bellamy, reading between the lines, realized for the first time the strength and sweetness of character of the woman he had married. The book not only showed him what she had suffered, but gave him evanescent glimpses of the woman she might have been had happiness been hers. It did more: It revealed to him the state of his own feelings towards his wife.

With the last words resounding in his brain Bellamy threw his hands forward upon his desk and buried his face in them, his heart echoing and reëchoing one bitter cry, that was like the wail of a lost soul for the paradise beyond its reach.

"Madge! Madge! Madge!"