HER LORD AND MASTER.
The wintery sunlight stole in at the windows of the breakfast-room at
Senator Van Alstyne’s sumptuous mansion. It paved a shining pathway
over the pretty crimson carpet, over the round damask-covered table,
glittering with silver and crystal and delicate Sèvres china. A bird
sung in a gilded cage amid the flowering plants in the bay-window, and
the sunlight shone over all with a soft mellow glow which even the
sparkling wood fire upon the marble hearth could not outshine. That
same sunshine danced in irreverent glee upon the top of Senator Van
Alstyne’s iron-gray head, as he sat with the morning paper before him,
absorbed in the news. But all the same there was a frown upon his brow,
and an unpleasant expression hovered about his coarse red face which
betrayed inward annoyance or trouble. And so you will perceive that
even riches can not keep trouble away, and that a man may be a senator
and a millionaire, but still know what it is to be annoyed.
He glanced up from his paper at last, and turned toward the ormolu
clock ticking musically upon the marble mantel, and the scowl upon his
face grew deeper.
“In the name of Heaven, why does not she come down?” he exploded at
length; “half past ten o’clock! Why on earth a woman wishes to remain
all day in her room is more than I can tell. I will endure her airs and
graces no longer. When I married Lenore Vane I intended--”
The click of high heels, the sweeping of silken skirts, and the door of
the breakfast-room opened and Mrs. Van Alstyne appeared.
She wore a pink surah morning-dress garnitured with yellow lace, and
her beautiful face looked like chiseled marble, as with a cold, proud,
weary manner she swept to her place at the breakfast-table.
“Good-morning, Van!” nodding slightly toward him. “Really, I am
unconscionably late! Why did you wait all this time for me?”
“Why?”
It was as though the one word had been fired off like a cannon-ball, so
sudden and sharp was the expletive.
“Simply because I have always told you, madame, that I will never take
my meals alone as long as my wife is able to come to them. If you were
ill it would be different; but as it is I demand obedience, and I shall
exact it hereafter!”
She shut her white teeth hard together, and the white hand that poured
the steaming coffee from the silver urn shook a little. But she
compressed her lips over the sharp retort which trembled for utterance,
and went on with her occupation. At last:
“Here is a letter that came for you this morning,” he snarled, as he
tossed a square white envelope across the table, where it fell beside
her plate. “By the way,” he demanded, harshly, his small eyes upon her
face with a look of menace, “who is ‘C. F.’?”
“‘C. F.’?” And the blood forsook her white face; the cup of delicate
egg-shell china which she was about lifting to her lips fell from her
grasp and was shivered into fragments. “You startled me, Van,” she
observed, apologetically.
His eyes snapped.
“But that is not answering my question,” he persisted. “There’s no use
in your trying to keep all your past to yourself, Lenore Van Alstyne.
When I married you, you acknowledged that there was something in your
past of which I was in ignorance--deuced disagreeable to have a wife
with secrets in her life--and I agreed to ask no questions; and it was
also settled upon the day”--emphatically, with his ugly eyes staring
full into her own--“that I honored you with my name, my hand and
fortune, that all your past was to be dropped forever with the name of
Vane. You remember that that was the agreement, Lenore?”
She bowed coldly.
“Heaven knows I have small chance to forget,” she returned, wearily,
“since you remind me of it every day of my life--every weary, endless
day of my wretched life!” she moaned, stopping short in a spasm of
terror at sight of the thunder-cloud upon his face.
“See here, madame”--he brought his big, fat hand down upon the table
with a force which made the china jump--“if all these heroics are
intended to act as a means of diverting me from getting at the truth,
let me tell you, my lady, that you are failing in your attempt. Once
more I ask--nay, demand of you, Mrs. Van Alstyne--_who is ‘C. F.’?_”
“I do not know what you mean,” she faltered.
“Well, are you never going to open that letter? You will see by
glancing at it that it is sealed with the monogram ‘C. F.’”
For the first time she glanced at the letter. It was lying face
uppermost, addressed in a bold, legible hand to Mrs. Lenore Van
Alstyne. Surely that handwriting was familiar to her? A strange pang
shot through her heart, an awful pallor overspread her cheek; she
crushed her teeth into her under lip with savage ferocity as she took
the letter from the table and turned it over. It was sealed with a drop
of wax, red and glistening, which bore the monogram “C. F.” She knew
then why her husband had awaited her appearance at the breakfast-table.
He was afraid to open the letter and seal it again, as he had been
guilty of doing before now, for the wax could not be broken and
resealed without betraying the truth. Her lip curled with disdain as
she slowly opened the letter. One glance--one swift, eager glance--and
she started to her feet with a low moan. One hand was pressed against
her heart as though to still its awful tumult, the other clutched the
letter in a most despairing grasp.
“Heaven help me!” she whispered low under her breath. And all the time
those basilisk eyes were upon her with an eager, devouring gaze, and
Senator Van Alstyne watched his wife as a cat watches the mouse upon
which it is about to spring. At last:
“Well, Mrs. Van Alstyne, you seem inclined to be tragical this
morning!” he sneered. “Here, give me the letter.”
She drew back with a gesture of horror in her beautiful dark eyes--a
look that was bad to see.
“No! no! no!” she panted, hoarsely; “you must not! I--I mean that it is
nothing. My heart hurts me this morning, and I was a little startled! I
shall be all right soon, and--”
“Mrs. Van Alstyne!”
He darted forward and clutched her white arm in a grasp of steel.
“Give me that letter, I say!” he panted, glaring down into her
terrified face with his cruel eyes. “How dare you have secrets from
me--I, your husband, your lord and master? Give me that letter at once,
I command you, or by the Heaven above us I will force it from you!”
Her head was crested like the head of some beautiful wild creature
brought to bay by the cruel hounds, and her starry eyes flashed fire.
“Unhand me, sir!” she commanded, in a low, ominous voice. “Let go my
arm, Van Van Alstyne, or I will ring for the servants, and throw myself
upon their protection!”
“Will you give me that letter?” he hissed once more.
“No! I will not! You have no more right to demand my letters of me in
this brutal way than I have to see yours--if I care to--from the pretty
ballet-dancer who wrote to you yesterday!”
He fell back a little, and his ruddy face grew pale.
“Nonsense! A man and a woman are different in the eyes of society. It
would be a pretty thing if a woman were allowed the same privileges
that a man is permitted.”
Her lip curled with haughty scorn.
“We agree to disagree upon that subject, Senator Van Alstyne,” she
returned, quietly; “and now I will finish my breakfast.”
“You will do nothing of the sort! By Jove! madame, I will have you to
know that I am master of this house, and that you--curse you!--are my
wife! You belong to me, just the same as my horses and dogs, my plate
and furniture! Give me that letter or I will take it.”
She flashed him one look--a look of mingled scorn and defiance--then,
with a swift gesture, she wheeled about and tossed the letter into the
fire. It flamed up red and glowing--flared and flickered and died down
into a heap of feathery ashes. Whatever secret the letter contained, it
was safe from Van Van Alstyne.
For just a moment he stood there, glaring down into her face, his
own so distorted by rage that it had lost all semblance to a human
countenance. His eyes scintillated, his burly form shook with wordless
wrath. He wheeled about, and lifting his hand, brought it down--oh,
shame to his manhood!--upon the white face of the woman before him.
No sound escaped her--no cry, no moan. Awful silence fell over the
room; she neither spoke nor moved. The clock ticked away. One, two,
three, four moments had come and gone; then, with a swift gesture
of unutterable contempt, she lifted her scornful eyes to his face
and--laughed. It was a bad thing to hear--that laugh. He grew pale, and
shivered slightly as he heard it.
“Ah, what a glorious country this must be!” she sneered, in a low,
cutting voice, “whose senate is honored by such creatures as you!
Wife-beater, falsifier, base, perjured villain! How I loathe the name I
bear!”
“Take care that you do not dishonor it!” he sneered.
She lifted her cold eyes to his face.
“Dishonor?”--she laughed once more. “Look to yourself, Van Van Alstyne.”
She swept past him from the room up to her own chamber ere he could
detain her.
Once alone in her room, with the door locked securely, she threw
herself face downward upon the floor with a storm of bitter sobs.
“He lives! he lives!” she murmured; “after all these years he lives
and is true! How horribly I have suffered, how bitter my punishment,
how fearfully I must atone! Yet it was an unintentional sin--it was
my mistake; this is my punishment! God pity me and let me die, for my
heart is broken.”