A Modern Madonna. Caroline Abbot Stanley
to him as he read it. With Margaret's cold eyes upon him it seemed less so.
Victor was anxious for a reconciliation—he told her—and she bowed.
He was tired of his expatriation and longed for home—She smiled.
—and for a sight of his child.
"He is long remembering his child," she said.
Richard De Jarnette bit his lip, cursing himself for having come on this errand. But he had come at Victor's earnest request, and he would not abandon the case.
"I recognize the justice of what you imply," he returned. "I can hardly ask for him any leniency on your part, but, after all, the child is Victor's as well as yours, and is his heir. It is but natural that he should wish to see him. For Philip's sake I trust that in some way your differences may be arranged."
"I may as well tell you that they will never be," she said. "As long as there was a shadow of a hope that I had misjudged him I held my peace. Not even to you would I say aught against him. Now that my faith in him is dead I tell you plainly I shall never be Victor De Jarnette's wife again. You asked me once what we quarreled about. I will tell you now, for this is the last conversation we will have on the subject. He was untrue to me." Her eyes blazed. "The night we quarreled I had found it out and I told him he must choose between us. He chose the woman who was not his wife. So far as I am concerned that choice is irrevocable. … This was enough. Surely this was enough. But it was not all, as you know. By his cruel desertion of me and his unborn child he made me a target for the arrows of gossip and slander. Do you ask me to forget all this?"
"Do you mean that you intend to secure a divorce?" he asked her plainly.
"No. I shall make no effort to secure a divorce. People get divorces because they want to marry again. I have had enough of marriage."
"And if he should want one?"
"I shall not oppose it. All that I want now is to live out my own life, what is left of it, in my own way, with my child."
He sat a moment in thought. Then he felt constrained to say,
"I trust there may never be any trouble about the child. Victor is reckless and determined. If he should take it into his head to lay claim to it, or try to take it from you—"
"If Victor De Jarnette should lay a finger of his hand upon the child he deserted," she said at white heat, "I should kill him."
He knew, of course, that this was mere passionate talk. She was justified in having strong feeling. He thought no more about it. But that night in going over the interview, what she had said that other time came back to him. "It is a thing that must be settled without a go-between," she had said. "And some day it will be."
What did she mean by that? A mere separation settled nothing. He feared that Victor might give her trouble about the child.
CHAPTER IX
THE REAPING OF THE CROP
"Oh, Mammy Cely, look! look! he is standing alone!" Margaret was sitting on the floor, her lips parted in rapturous delight at the temerity of her infant son, who was rather shakily making his little experiment with the center of gravity. Unfortunately for its success, he became aware at the critical moment of the sensation he was creating, tottered, and sank in a heap, a victim—like many another who essays the trial of his powers—to self-consciousness.
To partial mother eyes, however, it had been a triumph new in the annals of the world, and Margaret caught him up, smothering him with kisses, and pouring into his ears the most extravagant encomiums. Ah! if only we—the children of a larger growth—could have our feeble efforts to stand upon our feet; to make some progress, however slight, along the way, to utter, though imperfectly, the thoughts that cry for speech; if we—in all this—could have a tithe of the wealth of sympathy and stimulating praise that mothers give, what might we not become?
Mammy Cely looked on with equal pride. "He certainly is mighty servigrous on his laigs," she remarked with pride. "He's gwineter be walkin' befo' long, that chile is! He's like his Uncle Richard. He gwineter git his strengt early."
Margaret made no reply to this. The truth was, she got rather tired of hearing about Philip's Uncle Richard.
To her the weeks were becoming mere pegs on which to hang some new phase of the child's development. There was such an astonishing succession of "first things,"—yesterday the first tooth—a pearl such as nobody had ever seen before; to-day the wonderful feat of standing alone; to-morrow the blissful anticipation of the first step; the next day perhaps the first word—and then, oh, what a world of companionship that would let her into! Life was closing up behind her, but opening in front.
"Now get him ready, Mammy Cely, for his ride. I want him to be out all he can this fine weather. A little later, you know—well, what is it?" she interrupted herself to ask of the man who now stood at the door. He had a scared look.
"Mr. De Jarnette is down stairs, Miss."
"Mr. De Jarnette? What in the world has he come for at this time of day?" wondered Margaret. "Tell him I will be down at once."
"It a—ain't Mr. R—r—richard De Jarnette, Miss," said the man, stammering in his excitement, "it's Mr. Victor."
Victor! and announced like a stranger in his own home! She hardly knew the sound of her own voice as she answered, "Tell him I will be down at once."
At the door of the parlor she stopped. Her heart was beating so tumultuously it seemed to her that she would suffocate. She threw her head back as one who struggles for breath. Then she went in, closing the door behind her.
What passed in that interview nobody ever knew. The air was rife the next day with what it might have been; but the only thing ever reported was a fragment overheard by the mulatto who answered the bell, and who at that particular time was alert to do his duty. He related to Richard De Jarnette the next day that as Mr. Victor opened the door to leave the parlor he heard him say. "Whatever you do, you may as well understand now that I shall never relinquish my claim to—" here the man said he missed something because it was spoken in a lower tone, but he was sure it must have been something about money, for he distinctly heard him use the word claim.
From that interview Margaret went to her room, and later from the house, with a face so white and haggard that as Mammy Cely related to Richard De Jarnette, who called, enquiring for Victor, a half hour after she was gone, she was actually afraid of what she might do to herself.
"She seemed sorter desprit, Marse Richard," she concluded, with the freedom of an old family servant, "and sorter wild-like. No, sir, I didn't know what she was goin' to do. I don't know now! … When she come up stairs she tuk that chile—we had done come back fum the Circle, 'cause Mr. Victor was here some right smart while—she tuk it, she did, and set down and helt it so tight the little thing cried. Yaas, sir, it did! And look lak she didn' even know it was frettin'. She jes' set there, holdin' it clost, and weavin' back and fo'th, back and fo'th, tell I got right fidgity. After a while she got up and give him to me, and say she was goin' down to see Jedge Kirtley. And she says, 'Mammy Cely,' she says, 'don't you let anybody even see Philip while I am gone. Don't you let him out of yo' sight,' she says. Look lak she was takin' somethin' mighty hard."
"She was naturally excited over Mr. De Jarnette's return," said Richard. But he left the house abruptly and called a passing cab to take him to his office. He was more disturbed at what he had heard than he would admit to Mammy Cely.
Victor had had a long talk with him before going to Margaret. In fact, he had gone directly to Richard upon reaching the city the night before, a fact that had appealed insensibly to Richard's heart. He had not seen him since, and feeling vaguely uneasy, he had at last gone to the Massachusetts Avenue house, hoping to find him there and hoping also that by that time things might have been satisfactorily arranged. Mammy Cely's account of Margaret's