XV
TWO days later Mrs. Allestree rang the bell at Margaret’s door with a sudden sensation of panic. She had felt it her duty to go, in spite of Robert’s protests, for the morning newspaper had printed a scarcely veiled account of the scandal in the Cabinet. White, it appeared, had openly quarrelled with his wife and abruptly left her the day before, publishing his private affairs by going to a large hotel which was crowded with fashionable guests. Society caught its breath and waited—with the relish that it usually waits—for acause célèbre.
“It’s a cowardly thing to do, Robert,” Mrs. Allestree declared hotly; “no man should expose a woman to such a scandal. I shall go to see Margaret to-day, it’s my duty!”
“Oh, Lord, mother!” groaned Allestree, “can’t you let it alone? What in the world can you do?”
“Do? Robert!” the old lady’s bright eyesflashed, “I’m ashamed of you! Do you think I’ll let people imagine that I believe my own nephew is a scamp? Not a bit of it! And Margaret—the child’s heart-broken, that’s all; I’ll never believe a word against her! Of course he’ll marry that Osborne woman.”
“Mother, mother! You know what Gerty told us; Margaret herself is going to get the divorce, she’s forced the situation.”
“Gerty’s a fool!” said his mother promptly and unreservedly.
Then she put on her bonnet and went, but as she approached the imposing house with its great porte-cochère and its long row of fluted white pillars, its upper balcony and its conservatory, its flagrant and ostentatious wealth, her heart sank drearily. Experience had taught her that the very wealthy have their own way; moreover, what could she say? What had she a right to say? But she was a courageous old woman and strong in her convictions; she rang the bell. A tardy but irreproachable footman opened the door and regarded her with a carefully impersonal stare.
“Wonders who the old party is in an 1830 bonnet!” thought Mrs. Allestree amusedly, but she inquired for Margaret and was admittedafter an instant of hesitation which involved the inspection of her card.
She waited a long while, it seemed to her, in the dim drawing-room, and looked about her at its luxuries and the long vista of the ballroom beyond with a new interest. She had never been a frequent visitor at the house and its aspect was new and unnatural, its spacious and imposing vacancy seemed to be accentuated by every touch of the golden talisman; there was no atmosphere of home. “Splendid misery,” she thought, and sighed; there was not much to bind the heart of a woman—a natural woman—here! She listened, hoping to hear a child’s voice, even the baby’s cry, but the stillness was perfect; it was evidently a well ordered household even if Margaret held the reins with a lax hand. Gerty must be a tolerably good manager, Mrs. Allestree thought with a prick of conscience, remembering that Margaret put everything on Gerty’s shoulders.
It was all dazzling enough, there were gold nuggets in the very ceiling, fifteen carat, the old woman recollected with a secret smile, and even the pictures suggested great wealth; on the wall opposite was “The Angelus” and beyond a Reynolds which had cost White a fabulous sum.He knew as little of art as he did of the kingdom of heaven, but Margaret had married him for money, and she seemed to have been inspired with a grim contempt for it afterwards and loved to scatter his wealth to the four winds of heaven.
After awhile a French maid came down and asked Mrs. Allestree to come up stairs. Margaret, it appeared, was only half recovered from her attack at Mrs. O’Neal’s.
She was lying on a lounge by the open window of her bedroom when the old woman entered, and she greeted her with a languid smile. Her white morning gown made her look paler than usual, but she was the picture of indifference and she had been viewing a new hat of a very pronounced size and startling effect.
She held out a hand to Mrs. Allestree with an odd little laugh. “Oh, how do you do?” she said calmly; “you know Wicklow has gone off and left me! I’m ordering a new hat to keep up my spirits.”
Mrs. Allestree sat down weakly in the nearest chair. “Margaret!” she protested faintly.
Margaret looked at her from under her drooping lashes. “Did you expect to find me in tears?” she asked coolly.
Her visitor colored deeply; after all, Roberthad been right, she had no justification, her well meant sympathy was fruitless, her coming an intrusion. “I suppose I shouldn’t have come here at all,” she admitted reluctantly, her fine old hands trembling a little in her lap, “but I came to tell you that I had always loved you, Margaret.”
The younger woman looked at her strangely, her face changing rapidly from defiance to a shamed affection, the unlooked for tenderness touched her sore heart; her stormy nature had been passing through one of its eclipses, when the light itself seemed to go out and leave her groping blindly for relief, for hope, for an escape from the intolerable situation which her own folly and infatuation had created, and which kept closing in upon her like the narrowing walls of the inquisition dungeon. “I think it lovely of you to say it,” she murmured, a little break in her voice, her lip quivering as she averted her face.
Mrs. Allestree’s eyes softened; she gave a hasty glance about her, partly to assure herself that they were alone and partly because she was just realizing the fanciful splendor of Margaret’s surroundings. The room was white and gold and every article on her toilet-table was gold mounted, every detail suggesting the height of luxurioussybaritism. “Margaret,” she began gently, “it is never too late, can’t I do something to—to bridge it over?”
Margaret’s lips stiffened, her momentary emotion passing at the mere suggestion of a continuance in the old intolerable relation. She shook her head impatiently. “I wouldn’t bridge it over if I could!” she exclaimed with passion.
But the old lady, foreseeing troubles which would involve those near and dear to her, could not give up so easily. “My dear child, it’s dreadful! The woman always suffers—and your husband’s high position, the publicity of it!”
Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t help that!” she said scornfully, “I’ve borne it long enough. Haven’t I a right to be happy? A nursemaid might expect that, a cook! Why shouldn’t I have a little happiness in my life?”
“You have so much!” Mrs. Allestree looked about her, “everything wealth can purchase—and the children! God has been good to you; hasn’t He a right to chasten you a little?”
Her glance at the material comforts of the room, her evident consideration of the wealth, the worldly as well as the religious side of the question, irritated Margaret anew, for she had no tolerance for compromise, she had bought all thesethings at too dear a cost, and knew it in the overwhelming bitterness of her soul.
“What in the world do I care for all this if I haven’t happiness?” she demanded bitterly, “and I’ve never had it, never for a moment! Besides, it’s all nonsense to argue about it; it’s over and done with, thank God! We quarrelled irrevocably; Wicklow wouldn’t forgive me if I’d forgive him—and I never will!”
“Oh, Margaret, Margaret!” Mrs. Allestree shook her head; “there are your children, you must think of them, you’re bound to, my heart aches for them!”
“Well, it needn’t! Mrs. White will bring them up beautifully; she adores them, I don’t!” Margaret’s thin cheeks were burning and her eyes glowed dangerously; the children had been held over her head too often, she was in no mood to hear of them again.
“That’s the most wicked thing you’ve said!” exclaimed her visitor with indignation; “you’ve lost your mind, Margaret; you can’t expect happiness feeling as you do! There, I know you’ll despise me, but I’m an old woman, and I had to speak my mind!”
Margaret raised herself on her elbow and pointed an accusing finger. “Speak it,” she exclaimedwith bitterness, “but—were you ever in my place? Were you ever married to a man like my husband, a man who was openly unfaithful to you—who was the talk and the jest of the town because of another woman? Were you ever made to feel that you were bought, a mere chattel?”
Mrs. Allestree looked at her in silence, her fine old face grew pale, her lips trembled. Margaret sank down again, her hand on her heart.
“You never were!” she said scornfully.
Mrs. Allestree wiped away her tears. “I meant well,” she said, “but despise me, Margaret, I deserve it!”
“I don’t despise you, I think you a dear,” Margaret retorted, softening; “only you do not in the least understand. It’s all right for you to be so good and so pious, but I can’t be!”
“You’ve made me a wretched old hypocrite!” said Mrs. Allestree; “oh, Margaret, you can be just what you want to be, you are so clever, so beautiful, so charming!”
Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “I’m a miserable sinner, dear heart, it’s no use to try to reform me.”
“You are wilful! Oh, child, it’s for you I speak, you’ll regret it!” She bent forward and patted the limp white hand that hung over the sideof the lounge. From the bottom of her heart she wished she knew how to reach her, but she had been curiously defeated. “You’ll regret it all your life; we women never can break the bonds. Marriage is an incident in a man’s life; God didn’t mean that women should feel the same about it.”
“A great many do break the bonds,” said Margaret eagerly, “and begin all over again; why shouldn’t I?” she spoke with the force of longing; hour after hour she had argued thus with herself, yet at a word her soul leaped up unconvinced and the battle began all over again; that inexorable law which binds a woman’s life and fixes it in the orbit of eternity had laid hold upon her.
“A great many do?” Mrs. Allestree’s thin lips tightened and she looked away. Then she rose and gathered up her gloves and her parasol and her spectacles. “Too many, and what do people say of most of them?” she added severely, regaining a hold upon her shaken convictions.
Margaret bit her lip, there was a little spot of color in each cheek, her heavy eyes shone with feverish defiance. “I wish I were like you, I wish I had lived your life, I should like to be good if I could!” she said slowly, without mockery.
Mrs. Allestree turned red. “Don’t, Margaret!I’m really not the Pharisee or the Levite, only I wanted to help you!”
“I meant just what I said,” Margaret retorted quietly; “but I can’t be religious, I—I must be loved, I must be happy, I should die just being good!”
The old lady stooped and kissed her impetuously. “You’re ill, child, and weak; wouldn’t it do any good if I—I should go to see Mr. White?”
“And bring him back here?” Margaret shuddered. “My dear friend, I’m going to get out of here to-morrow, I shall never come into this house again!”
Mrs. Allestree stood up shocked, the force of Margaret’s hatred of White bit through all reserves. The old woman felt her impotence, how could she fight this will, this unscrupulous will to be happy, happy at any price? “Where will you go?” she asked helplessly.
“To Omaha. Of course I could get a divorce anywhere, every one knows that! Oh, you wouldn’t have borne all I’ve borne! But I shall go to Omaha; I want to have it over soon and I can stay there until I get it.”
“And the children?”
“I sent them over to Wicklow’s mother thismorning; she was nearly in spasms for fear I’d want the custody!”
Mrs. Allestree stood looking at her a moment in speechless amazement; then she surrendered. “Good-bye, Margaret,” she said quietly; “I’m a useless old fogy and busybody, I see it, but I couldn’t help coming; I remember you running about in short skirts with your hair in a pigtail. Heaven knows I wish you were a child still and as happy as you were then!”
Margaret sighed. “I wish I were!” she said.
Mrs. Allestree tightened her bonnet ribbons under her chin with shaking fingers, her heart swelling with anger and disgust. A woman, the mother of children, to behave like this! It was monstrous! Behave like it herself? Never! Her stern lips parted once to utter a word of rebuke, but her courage failed her; she remembered Robert’s remonstrances. After all, what right had she to speak? “I wish you were, indeed!” she repeated stiffly.
Her tone, something in her offended gesture, reached Margaret’s heart. She rose, rose with a visible effort, and went to her with an unsteady step, throwing her arms around her neck, disarranging the astonished old woman’s bonnet as she did it. “Love me!” she sobbed, with the abandonof a child who has been punished, “love me—I’m starving to be loved, to be taken care of, oh, don’t you understand? I want to be happy!”
There was a moment of suspended indignation, of doubt, then the old arms clasped her; if she could but save this brand from the burning! “Poor child!” she murmured, “you poor, unhappy, misguided child! Let me be the peace-maker.”
It was a woeful mistake; Margaret raised her head with a wild little laugh, pushing her away again almost with force. “Oh, you’ll never understand me!” she cried, with a finality which was a sharp shock to her listener, “never! You can never change me—I’d sell my soul to be free!”