A Modern Madonna. Caroline Abbot Stanley
long with hopeless eyes staring into the blackness of the morrow, saying now and then brokenly, "Father! … Father!"
White now with anger, furious at Margaret's discovery of his falseness, and yet more furious at the necessity which her ultimatum laid upon him to amend his ways or lose his wife; unholy passion for her rival hot within him, and the vengeful blood of his race coursing tumultuously through his veins, Victor De Jarnette strode down Massachusetts Avenue almost a madman. Not for him was the soft beauty of the night—the breath of flowers, the light of stars, the play of summer breezes among the leaves. His heart was closed to the sweet influences of the Pleiades. That heart, alas! out of which are the issues of life had become a seething cauldron of fierce passions.
He did not go immediately to his office. In fact, it was hours before he did. When at last he reached the place he began tearing up letters and clearing up his desk with one eye on the clock as if in preparation for departure or a new incumbent. His blood was still at fever heat, and his thoughts did not tend to cool it. Besides, the law of heredity was against him. What he was doing, his mother before him had done. She, too, had felt this hot surging in the veins and had given it free course. A fearful heritage is ungoverned blood.
As he opened a drawer to put away some papers his eye fell on a folded document. He looked at it absently at first, hardly aware that he saw it. Then, as the innocent looking thing forced itself upon his consciousness, he took it up and read it. How well he remembered the day it was written. A sneer curved his lips at the thought of his ecstatic state of mind at that time. Fool! Then as he looked at the paper, there suddenly leaped into his mind a cruel thought, and into his face the quick reflection of its malevolence.
He stared at the thing he held.
"I'll do it!" he cried, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table with an oath. "I'll show her!"
"Don't do it, Victor!" pleaded John Jarvis, the lawyer, a half hour later, when his angry client had made his wishes known. "Don't do it! My God, man, it would be too cruel! too brutally cruel!"
"Brutal or not," swore Victor De Jarnette, "according to the laws of this District I can do it, and, by God! I will!"
"Wait till to-morrow," urged the lawyer. "You will think better of it in the morning."
"There may never be a to-morrow," Victor answered, recklessly. "I'll make sure of it now. If you won't do it I can get somebody that will."
Before he left the attorney's office it was done, and done, alas! in due and proper form.
CHAPTER VI
A FRIEND IN NEED
When Margaret woke next morning it was with a bewildered sense of something wrong—the dull ache we have in the gray dawn before returning consciousness brings it all back to us, and makes it a sharp pain. Then, as the events of the night before came back, and the dread of to-day forced itself upon her, she closed her eyes in a sick longing to go to sleep and never wake.
This was the end! They had had words, bitter words, before—but never like this. How could she forget his cruel thrusts, his broken faith, which he had even flaunted in her face? How could the barrier between them which her passionate challenge had raised be broken down? "She must be all or nothing." Yes, and it was true! as true to-day as it was yesterday and would be for all time. Only his hand could break that barrier down. And suppose he would not. … Well! so be it. It seemed to her that her heart was numbed and could never be warmed into life again. There rose before her a picture she had seen one day—a man with wretched face, a woman who had cast herself on a couch in an attitude suggesting the abandon of despair, and between them on the table a still form that she thought at first glance was their dead baby, only that she saw the wings and knew that it was Love—dead Love.
It was very late when she had gone to bed the night before, and still Victor had not come. She had fallen immediately into the deep sleep of exhaustion which comes to us sometimes when a crisis is past, even though it has brought the worst. Women who hang sleepless and wide-eyed over a sick-bed have been known to fall into a sleep like that of death, when all is over, their wild grief swallowed up in nature's merciful oblivion. So it had been with Margaret.
Had he come in while she slept? She stepped to her husband's door and peeped cautiously in. The bed was undisturbed. She went back to her own room and stood there shaking as with an ague. What did it mean?
Then she sat down and thought—thought deeply—going over all the wretched quarrel—trying to judge between them, to see where—if anywhere—he was right and she was wrong. She had been passionate—yes, and had said bitter things. But they were true! And, she told herself despairingly, it was not the things they said! The trouble lay back of that. … If only it had been something else! But this! … oh, how could she compromise? The words of that odious Mrs. Bomprey came to her—"Men are naughty creatures, my dear. Wise women learn to shut their eyes!"
"Why must they shut their eyes?" she asked, fiercely. The very insinuation was dishonoring to both. But—was the woman right?
Were all men like this? … Her soul grew sick. Then—no! no! no! she told herself in passionate protest—it was not true! She would not believe this withering, blasting thing. There was her father! Though all the world should rise up and say there was no truth in men, she still would know—there was her father!
At breakfast she said, quietly, "Mr. De Jarnette is not at home this morning. We will not wait. He has been called away and may not be home for several days." All this with no surprise at her own power to lie without compunction.
When the meal was over she waited to give directions to the servants, as usual, speaking cheerfully to all. She could not bear the pity of her servants. Her maid, a faithful girl, came to her in her room. Could she let her go home for a while? Her mother was very ill and needed her—she hated to leave just now, and wouldn't, only—it was her mother. Yes, Margaret said hastily, feeling with a throb of loneliness that the ties of blood were to be nourished, not denied. Then when the girl was gone she felt bereft.
Through that long morning Margaret waited. The air she breathed was dead and deadening; she gasped sometimes for breath. It was the close, oppressive air that presages a storm. It seemed to press upon her so. She went once to the window, expecting, without knowing why, to see the lightning and to hear the thunder's roll, and felt vague surprise to see the leaves stirred by the breeze, and over all the sunlight. There was no storm.
She moved restlessly about her room, putting her drawers to rights with a strange feeling unformulated even to herself, but pressing hard, that she must put her house in order, for the end was near.
In the upper hall near her door was the telephone. She went once to it, took the receiver down, and then returned it to the hook, turning afterwards resolutely to it and telling herself, "He is my husband. It certainly is my right to know." Then to the one who answered, she said, brightly, "Will you please ask Mr. De Jarnette to come to the 'phone?"
She would not ask if he was there. To her excited imagination that would seem to imply that she did not know of his whereabouts.
The answer came.
"Is that you, Mrs. De Jarnette? Good morning, madam. … Why, … Mr. De Jarnette hasn't come in yet. Probably somebody stopped him on the way down. … Yes. … Well, I will tell him when he comes in. Good-by."
Margaret looked at the clock. It was after eleven. She sat down faint and trembling. He had not been to the office.
Soon after this Judge Kirtley called to see her on some matter of business. He asked her casually about Victor, and she answered with a smile and a steady voice, feeling all the time that if he said another word she must go to him and fall upon his breast and cry aloud. Then—was she pretty well? Ah, that was good. … No, Mrs. Kirtley was in bed with grippe. The doctor said he should keep her there a good while. … Well, she must take good care of herself—patting her cheek—and—good-by.
When