“MAN MAKES HARD LAWS.”
“Does justice exist? Oh, where is it?
Still the heart of the tyrant is stone;
Still his victims are toiling, despairing,
Still he heeds not, he hears not their moan.”
Madame Orne, tempted by the beauty of the incense breathing summer
night, catches up a white shawl, and throwing it over her shoulders,
glides down the stairs to the dim piazza.
Then she pauses abruptly, for Judge Leigh, who has been meditating
there alone, rises immediately, and placing a chair for her, observes
kindly:
“I am very, very glad you are better.”
She accepts the chair and they glide into conversation. The judge is
a good talker, and is probably glad to have a listener so cultured as
his daughter’s governess. She is a favorite with him--has been from
the first day, now three long years ago, since she first came to Leigh
Place.
They talk of courts and laws, especially of those laws that prevent the
severance of the marriage tie--she has drawn him into the subject with
such fine tact that he does not even realize that it was not he who
began it.
“_Apropos_ of the subject, Judge Leigh, I would like to ask you if
drunkenness in a man is a legal cause for divorce, if the wife desires
it.”
“My dear madam, no. The sanctity of the marriage tie may not be trifled
with thus lightly.”
The delicate lip curls in actual scorn.
“Lightly,” she repeats with keen sarcasm. “Why, Judge Leigh, it seems
to me that no greater blow can be struck at the sanctity of marriage
than when a man habitually and determinedly addicts himself to the vice
of immoderate drinking. Nature herself weakens the tie at so palpable
a violation of the promise to love and cherish. No true woman can
continue loving a man who lowers himself to the level of the brute,
groveling in the dust, and spurning the plea of an agonized wife, while
he grossly indulges his vile appetite at the expense of every good
thing human or divine.”
She paused, her eyes sparkling with excitement, and he answers slowly:
“You speak strongly, but there is much truth in what you advance. It is
a sad existence for a woman to be bound for life to a man who carries
his appetite for strong drink to brutal excess. But you must remember
the marriage vow is for better or worse; and lightly as the present age
esteems the sanctity of wedded ties, there are few things that justify
divorce, and drunkenness is not one of them.”
“That is a man’s opinion. Oh, that I might help to make the laws----”
She pauses, biting her lips to keep back the impatient words.
Judge Leigh actually laughs at her excitement, little dreaming of her
terrible earnestness.
“I fear you have imbibed some woman’s rights notions,” he exclaims. “Be
calm, my child. _Your_ happiness, at least, is not at stake.”
“I often interest myself in feminine questions that do not personally
concern me,” she replies with assumed carelessness. “I would gladly
reform some of man’s laws if I could; and, Judge Leigh, I do think that
when a man proves false to a woman’s faith--a noble woman whose soul
is stung to madness by her husband’s fall into the fearful vortex of
strong drink--I do think that such a woman should deliberately separate
herself from such a death in life, and go her way in peace, leaving him
to his folly.”
“Perhaps so. I do not gainsay your emotional view of the subject.
Women’s hearts sometimes decide these questions better than men’s
heads. But still the law would not justify her in her action, and her
husband could compel her to return if he chose.”
“Against her will?”
“Undoubtedly. You see, Madame Orne, a man’s wife belongs to him so
wholly, that there are few limits to his power if he chooses to
exercise it, and if she runs away he may force her to return and no one
can lift a finger to prevent it.”
“Men make hard laws,” she answers bitterly, and, rising abruptly, flits
down the steps and out into the moonlighted grounds. She must escape
and let that choking sob have its way.
Spirit-like in her white draperies, she glides along the graveled
path, following its winding curve, and losing herself in the odorous
thickets of the old-fashioned garden. Ordinarily, she is afraid of the
loneliness of the night and the soft sigh of the river passing near,
but the fear is lost in a greater dread.
She heeds not the dark, grotesque shadows of the shrubbery that
spring out across the moonlighted path waving weird arms as if in
threatening--she only hurries on as though driven by some invisible
power, till, spent by her hasty flight, she drops down on a rustic seat
close to the marble basin of a little fountain.
Summer is at her sweetest here. Lilies bloom whitely in the marble
basin of the fountain, roses drop their petals in odorous showers along
the path, the almost oppressive fragrance of a night-blooming jessamine
just unclosing its pale petals, fills the air with exquisite perfume.
Over all the summer moon, a great luminous globe of splendor, shines
with up-clouded glory, silvering every leaf and flower, and turning the
delicate spray of the fountain into showers of diamonds. Nature is so
full of peace, so heavenly calm and still, it jars on her pained sense
of human unrest and fear with a sense of helplessness and wrong. Why
should she be so unhappy, when God’s peace seems shining down upon the
world with such radiant completeness?
She is feverish and wild, her heart throbs tumultuously, she has a
raging headache. Half-unconsciously she pulls the comb from the thick
coils of hair and lets the dark mass fall heavily over her shoulders,
while the fountain spray blows coolly over her face and hands.
“I would pray if I thought God would listen to my prayers,” she
exclaims despairingly. “Does He really care for us, I wonder? Does
he even listen to the feeble cry of one poor atom struggling in this
distant world that is itself but an atom in the myriad worlds whirling
ceaselessly through space?”
“There shall not a sparrow fall to the ground without His knowledge,”
answers a low, impressive voice close to her side, and she glances
around with a startled cry.
A gentleman has come along the path unheard, and stops now, looking
down at her with wondering eyes.
It is Charlton Leigh, tall, stately, handsome, in full evening dress,
holding a lighted cigar between his fingers, its red tip gleaming in
the soft light. He has an odd, almost irreverent habit of quoting
scriptural texts on slight occasions, and just now the careless smile
on his face belies the appropriate response of his lips.
“I thought you went to the ball,” she says coldly.
“The carriage only holds four, you know, so I sent Essex with the girls
and ordered it to return for me. Meanwhile I have been smoking my cigar
in the moonlight.”
“I did not know,” she begins confusedly.
“Of course you did not--neither did I. This is a mutual surprise. You
are the last person I suspected of being romantic. It was a shock to
me when I came upon you just now doing tragedy in the regular heroine
style, with flowing hair and clasped hands.”
Madame Orne shrinks sensitively beneath the vailed sarcasm of the words
and gathers up the silken waves, winding them about her head with
nervous hands. One long tress escapes from the mass and Charlton takes
it up, gently winding it around with the rest. By a swift turn of her
head his hand comes in contact with her forehead. It is burning hot.
In a moment he has pulled the comb from the hair and shaken it loosely
over her shoulders again.
“No, let it flow. Your head is burning hot. You are ill. What are you
doing out here in defiance of the doctor’s dictum?”
“I wanted the fresh air, and I am well enough to be out,” coldly.
“You are not. Will you not let me take you back to the house?”
“I prefer remaining here,” perversely.
“As you please,” he answers stiffly, and there is a moment’s silence.
He is piqued that she is so indifferent to his kindness. He forgets
that he has always seemed indifferent to her, that he has never sought
her friendship, has always let her remain an outsider to his heart.
He stands still, watching her moodily, some new emotion at work within
him that he does not try to analyze; but how lovely and how sad she
looks! A sense of the pathos of her lonely life strikes in on his heart
suddenly and keenly.
“Madame Orne, you are ill, you are in trouble,” he exclaims tenderly.
“Some sorrow has come into your life. You are a lonely woman, and women
are so weak. Can I help you in any way, and make it easier for you to
bear?”
She looks up at him in wonder, it is so strange to see sarcastic,
indifferent Charlton Leigh, in sober earnest, he who has scarcely ever
seemed conscious of her existence. She likes this new phase in him
better, and answers less coldly:
“You are right. A great trouble has come to me, but I must bear it
alone. No one can help me.”
“But let me try. Men are so much stronger than women, you know.”
To his surprise she replies with bitter emphasis:
“You are right. Men are much stronger than women, and that is why I
must suffer.”
“That is a strange reason,” he remonstrates. “Men are the natural
protectors of women.”
Something like a low and mocking laugh answers him, and just then they
catch the sound of carriage wheels.
She looks up at him and murmurs gratefully:
“I thank you for your sympathy.”
“Then do let me take you back to the house.”
She shakes her head in silent negation.
“Good-night, then.”
He breaks a white lily from the basin of the fountain, lays it in her
lap, and is turning away, when she arrests him with an odd question:
“Mr. Leigh, will you tell me at what hour the express train from
Richmond is due at Fair View station?”
“Certainly--at eleven o’clock precisely.”
Something flits across her white face--a shadow of fear and dread--and
the violet eyes have the pitiful look of a hunted deer.
“What is it?” he queries, taking her hand in his kindly. “Is any one
coming?”
“No, no,” she answers, and he drops her hand with another good-night.
“Good-by,” she answers, and he goes to the gay revel that awaits him,
but take a picture in his memory--a face that haunts him in troubled
after days as if it had been the last look at a face in its coffin.
For her, she sinks back in her seat and sits passively a long, long
time, like one spent with weariness or emotion. She rises by and by and
glides down the path toward the river that seems to woo her with its
soft, silvery murmur.
How beautiful it is beneath the summer moon. Feathery willows fringe
its banks, and mirror themselves in its bosom. The light breeze dimples
the water, the moon and stars look down and find themselves faithfully
reflected there. A restless whip-poor-will is swinging on a willow
bough, fretfully complaining to the night. Sitting down on the bank she
looks down with fascinated eyes into the water.
Hark! Over the stillness of the night shrills the warning shriek of
the locomotive whistle! It is eleven o’clock, and the night express
from Richmond is slowing into the Fair View station. She springs up,
wringing her white hands helplessly.
“He is come!” she moans, “he is come! Oh, where shall I hide myself
from this fiend, and his terrible oath of vengeance?”