She felt no temptation to glance over them, though her lip curled in a grimace of sardonic disgust to consider how much Peter Cheever had been to her and how little he was to her now. The first parcels she burned were addressed to "Miss Charity Coe." How far off it seemed since she had been called "Miss"!

She had been a girl when Cheever's written and spoken words inflamed her. They blazed now as she had blazed. Into that holocaust had gone her youth, her illusions, her virginity, her bridehood, her wifely trust.

And all that was left was a black char.

She came upon letters from Jim Dyckman, also, a few. She flung them into the fire with the rest. He had had nothing from her except friendship and girlish romance and a gra.s.s-widow's belated affection. Crimson thoughts stole through her dark heart like the lithe blazes interlacing the letters; she wondered if she would have done better to have followed desire and taken love instead of solitude.

She knew that she could have made Jim hers long ago with a little less severity, a less harsh rebuff. The Church condemned her for openly divorcing her husband. She might have kept him on the leash and carried on the affair with Jim that Cheever accused her of if Jim had been complacent and stealthy. Or, she might have kept Jim at her heels till she was rid of Cheever and then have married him. She would have saved him at least from floundering through the marsh where that Kedzie-o'-the-wisp had led him to ultimate disaster.

And now that she had taken stock of her past and put it into the fire, she felt strangely exiled. She had no past, no present, and a future all hazy. Her loneliness was complete. She had to talk to some one, and she telephoned to Jim Dyckman, making her good-bys an excuse.

It was the first time he had been permitted to hear her voice for weeks, and the lonely joy that cried out in his greeting brought warm tears to her dull, dry eyes.

He heard her weeping and he demanded the right to come to see her. She refused him and cut off his plea, hoping that he would come, anyway, and waiting tremulously till the door-bell rang with a forgotten thrill of a caller, a lover calling.

Her maid, who brought her Jim's name, begged with her eyes that he should not be turned away again. Charity nodded and prinked a little and went down-stairs into Jim's arms.

He took her there as if she belonged there and she felt that she did, though she protested, feebly:

"You are not unmarried yet."

They were in that No-Man's-Land. She was neither maid, wife, nor widow, but divorcee. He was neither bachelor, husband, nor widower; he was not even a divorce. He was a _Nisi Prius_.

CHAPTER XV

The childish old fates played one of their cheapest jokes on Jim Dyckman when, after they had dangled Charity Coe just out of his reach for a lifetime, they flung her at his head. They do those things. They waken the Juliets just a moment too late to save the Romeos and themselves.

Jim had revered Charity as far too good for him, and now everybody wondered if he would do the right thing by her. Prissy Atterbury in a burst of chivalry said it when he said:

"Jim's no gentleman if he doesn't marry Charity."

Pet put it in a more womanly way:

"Unless he's mighty spry she'll nab him. Trust her!"

Among the few people who had caught a glimpse of Charity, no one had been quite cruel enough to say those things to her face, but Charity imagined them. Housed with her sick and terrified imagination for companion, she had imagined nearly everything dismal.

And now, when, by the mere laws of gravitation, she had floated into Jim Dyckman's arms for a moment, she heard the popular doom of them both in the joke he attempted:

"Charity, I've got to marry you to make you an honest woman."

She wrenched free of his embrace with a violence that staggered him.

He saw that she was taking his effort at playfulness seriously, even tragically.

"No, no, Jim!" she gasped. "I've brought you enough trouble and enough disgrace. I won't let you ruin your life by marrying me out of pity."

"Pity! Good G.o.d!" Jim groaned. "Why, you don't think I meant that, do you? I was just trying to be funny, because I was so happy. I'll promise never to try to be funny again. It was like saying to Venus, 'You're a homely old thing, but I'll let you cook for me'; or saying to--whoever it was was the G.o.ddess of Wisdom, 'You don't know much, but'--Why, Charity Coe, you're Venus and Minerva and all the G.o.ddesses rolled into one."

Charity shook her head.

He roared: "If it's pity you're talking about, isn't it about time you had a little for me? Life won't be worth a single continental d.a.m.n to me if I don't get you."

Charity had needed something of this sort for a long time. It sounded to her like a serenade by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her acknowledgment was a tearful, smileful giggle-sob:

"Honestly?"

"Honest-to-G.o.d-ly!"

"All right, as soon as you're a free man fetch the parson, for I'm pretty tired of being a free woman."

Jim had learned from McNiven that a part of his freedom, when he got it, would be a judicial denial of the right to surrender it for five years.

He had learned that if he wanted to marry Charity he must persuade her over into New Jersey. It did not please Jim to have to follow the example of Zada and Cheever, and it hit him as a peculiar cruelty that he and Charity had to accept not only an unearned increment of scandal in the verdict of divorce, but also a marriage contrary to the laws of New York.

New York would respect the ceremonies of New Jersey, but there would be a shadow on the t.i.tle. Still, such marriages were recognized by the public with little question, just as in the countries where divorce is almost or quite impossible society of all grades has always countenanced unions not too lightly entered into or continued. In such countries words like "mistress," "concubine," and "morganatic wife" take on a decided respectability with a touch of pathos rather than reproach.

Jim had come to beg Charity to accept a marriage with an impediment. He had expected a scene when he proposed a flight across the river and a return to Father Knickerbocker with a request for pardon. But her light suggestion of a religious ceremony threw him into confusion. He mumbled:

"Is a parson absolutely necessary?"

Charity's lips set into a grim line.

"I'll be married by a parson or I'll not be married at all. The Church has enough against me on account of my divorce and this last ghastly thing. To get married outside the Church would cut me off entirely from everything that's sacred. There won't be any difficulty about getting a parson, will there?"

"Oh no, not at all!" Jim protested, "only--oh no, not at all, except--"

"Only what? Except what?"

"You'll have to go to New Jersey to be married."

"Why should I?"

"Entirely on my account, honey. It's because I'm in disgrace."

This way of putting it brought her over that sill with a rush. To be able to endure something for him was a precious ability. She hugged him devoutly, then put his arms away.

When he left her he had a brilliant inspiration. He thought how soothing it would be to her bruised heart, what carron-oil to her blistered reputation, if he got Doctor Mosely to perform the ceremony. Jim was so delighted with the stroke of genius that he went immediately to the pastor's house. The dear old man greeted him with a subdued warmth.

"This is an unusual privilege, dear boy. I haven't seen you for--oh, ever so long. Of course, I have read of you--er--that is--what--to what am I indebted for--"

"You perform marriages, don't you?"

"That is one of my perilous prerogatives. But, of course, I can't guarantee how well my marriages will wear in these restless times."

Jim braved a flippancy: "Then, being an honest dealer, you replace any damaged article, of course?"