Part 2
Candis turned, and with unseeing eyes, walked out of the restaurant, got into a cab, gave the address, drove home.
Ronald was out. She went to his room, opened his desk, searched it coldly, mechanically. It yielded nothing. But in his old leather dressing-case she found it--found the letter that had come their first week in America, addressed boldly on the thin, violet envelope--“Ronald Carlton, Esquire”--and postmarked Monte Carlo.
The morning it had come, Ronnie had opened it impatiently, read it swiftly, put it carelessly into his coat pocket. She had pretended to ignore it, recognizing his embarrassment and sensing his distaste for the writer.
But now--
In her own room she read it, standing by the open window. “Of course, it’s all over, Ron darling, but it was so sweet while it lasted. I know now I should never have followed you--such an anticlimax was unforgivable, in rotten taste. But I thought you might still care a little--for you did care a little that sweet, short month, didn’t you, Ronnie? I did appease your loneliness, even though I always knew you loved your wife. But this time you ran away from me deliberately. Surely not because you were afraid of me, afraid I’d give you away to your pretty little Candis--”
The letter fluttered to the floor. Candis was cold--deathly cold and deathly sick.
She thought remotely that she had always known this, ever since Ronnie, away from her, neither came nor sent for her. But even as she admitted this thought, her heart cried out: “He couldn’t--Ronnie couldn’t do this ghastly thing to me. Even _she_ said he loved only me.”
But Ronnie had. No use to ask him to deny it--no need of a scene and vulgar recriminations. Just to go away, quietly, leaving behind a little note--and he would know, would understand.
She thought of Trent, hating him for giving her this bitter knowledge. Then thought of him suddenly, wonderingly, in regard to herself. Blaming Ronald, was she herself entirely inculpable? Unsuspicious of Ronald, she had indulged a rather dangerous interest in a rather dangerous man. Loving Ronald, she had permitted herself to become involved in, at best, a lukewarm flirtation. For at no time had her regard for Trent been other than in the nature of a mild salve applied to the smart of Ronnie’s neglect. For her, there was no excuse. At that time, not even the excuse of an injured wife. Merely a deliberate playing with fire, a conscious feeding of her wounded vanity. Where was the Candis of those dim Sola days? What had happened to that Candis? Perhaps Perella Santes could have answered her daughter’s question. A certain wild strain of pride, a certain reckless tendency, the definite need of not only being loved, but the constant demonstration of that love--
Candis sat down by the window. She tried to think, but could only feel. The dreadful ache within her was so sharp at times, she wanted to cry out. But even the relief of tears was denied her. Once she thought: “Our enchanted kingdom! Oh, God, the travesty of it! Ronnie unfaithful, and I irretrievably cheapened.”
It was after six o’clock when she finally rose, changed her frock, packed a dressingbag and left the apartment.
Behind her, on the top of Ronnie’s desk and beside the thin violet note, she left a second note:
“Our enchanted kingdom was a mirage, Ronnie. And in its horrible desert we have become lost to each other. Good-by, my dear. And forgive me--as I want some day to forgive you.--Candis.”
* * * * *
Ronnie stared at those two notes with a queer wonder. Then with a violent shudder he tore the tinted one into shreds without even a passing thought, save one of savage hatred, for the writer. He had kept that note as an instrument of flagellation, loathing himself whenever he thought of it, loathing its writer. For him, she did not exist--had never really existed save for a brief, bitterly regretted moment of loneliness, in a world that held only Candis and himself.
Candis! What had she done? What might she do? That passionate pride of hers--where would it carry her? Away from him certainly--but where? Where to look for her? Not back in Kingscombe, certainly.
It was after daybreak, that the thought came so swiftly, so terribly surely, that he could not tolerate it at first. Trent, of course. Trent was back. Trent was in love with Candis. He had seen _that_ in Cannes--and Candis had read him Trent’s letters, some of them--not all, perhaps.
An hour later Ronnie had located Stephen Trent in his hotel overlooking Central Park. The lift shot violently to the fifteenth floor. “To your right,” said its operator.
Before the number Ronnie paused a brief moment. Then he knocked swiftly.
Trent opened the door almost immediately. He was in dressing-robe and slippers, and he said without surprise: “Hullo, Carlton.”
Ronnie said briefly, but evenly: “I beg your pardon for the intrusion, Trent. But Candis has disappeared and I felt you might know of her whereabouts. Do you?”
Trent smiled faintly. “I’m sorry--but I haven’t the slightest idea.”
Ronald looked at him: the man was telling the truth.
He said: “In that case, I’ll not keep you longer. I regret having disturbed you so early.”
“Not at all,” said Trent courteously, and held open the door.
But as Ronnie stepped into the hall, he called to him, as an afterthought: “Oh, I say, Carlton--”
Ronnie turned abruptly. Trent had gone to the front of the room. He came back, bearing in his hand a small dressing-case. He held it out to Ronnie.
He said: “By the way, here is something you may wish to take with you.”
And staring down at it, Ronnie recognized the bag--read the small initials C. C.--then he looked up and met squarely the taunting eyes of the man opposite him....
* * * * *
Trent dropped without a sound. And Ronnie, taking Candis’ bag from his relaxed grip, closed the door behind him, walked quietly down the long corridor, and rang for the lift.
It was a scant month later that Ronald Carlton descended from a train at Sola, Texas.
Sola and August. That had been the combination six years ago when he and Candis-- He closed his eyes swiftly, as if to shut out an entering pain.
Everywhere that he could look for, he had searched--a battalion of clever men had searched; but from that moment wherein she had walked out of Trent’s apartment, leaving that mute evidence behind her, she had disappeared as though actually swallowed by that black gulf which lay between them.
The shack beyond Devil’s Horn was more sun-scorched and desolate than ever. But there was life within it. Some one had rented it, for its kitchen door stood open and there were three pots of oleanders blooming palely on its blistered veranda.
Ronnie stood just beyond the veranda steps, staring unseeingly at those waxy oleanders. He had come back--for here lay their real enchanted kingdom, their years of enchanted happiness. But strangers dwelt in it now--had found the wonder and beauty of it.
She came suddenly out of the open kitchen door. She wore a pink-checked gingham dress, and her arms were bare and brown.
She looked at Ronnie and said very slowly, almost dreamily: “I knew--I always knew--you’d come back--just as I came back--to our enchanted kingdom.”
But he did not move toward her.
He said, a little catch in his voice: “Candis, I’ve--I’ve been so wretched.”
And only then, when he saw her eyes, did he go to her.
She said swiftly, “Oh, I know, I know.... But it was all just a dream, dearest. I found that out the night I ran away--ran away from one horrible dream into another. I thought I’d go away with Trent--to make you suffer as you had made me. But when I saw him, when I realized the _cheapness_ of my motive--I woke suddenly, woke to the knowledge that our real enchanted kingdom was just ourselves, Ronnie--just you and I.”
She broke off and for a long moment their eyes held. Then Ronnie dropped to his knees, buried his face against her side.
“Oh, Candis--forgive me,” he whispered, “--and love me--love me!”
Candis did not answer. But she pressed the dark head closer to her heart--for that dark head _was_ her heart--would always be her heart.
[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the April, 1929 issue of _The Red Book_ magazine.]