How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
"You are, then, not even a gentleman!"
The ungracious words came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as
husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could
not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the
mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the
strength of her control to sit quietly by when Mr. Stewart was also
affronted.
Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her
first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had
discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered,
acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the
burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have
been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her
nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young
Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her
tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her
the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance.
He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the
instinct of combat in his scowl.
"Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for
folly."
"Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You
should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and
done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the
moment pierced even his thick skin.
"He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for
his interest. I intended no offence."
"Will you follow him, and say so?"
"Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of
mine."
"Then _I_ will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!"
The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the
position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined
and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom,
was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough
countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay.
"Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is
not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer."
The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence,
you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives,
and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you
like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer
whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your
tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman
in Albany!"
The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words
did not come readily with which to repel it.
"I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I
have been badly reared for such purposes."
She felt her calmness deserting her as she spoke; her eyes began to burn
with the starting tears. This crisis in her life had sprung into being
with such terrible swiftness, and yawned before her now, as reflection
came, with such blackness of unknown consequences, that her woman's
strength quaked and wavered. The tears found their way to her cheeks now,
and through them she saw, not the heavy, half-drunken young husband, but
the handsome, slender, soft-voiced younger lover of three years ago. And
then the softness came to her voice too.
"How _can_ you be so cruel and coarse, Philip, so unworthy of your real
self?" She spoke despairingly, not able wholly to believe that the old
self was the true self, yet clinging, woman-like, to the hope that she
was mistaken.
"Ha! So my lady has thought better of going, has she?"
"Why should you find pleasure in seeking to make this home impossible for
me, Philip?" she asked, in grave gentleness of appeal.
"I thought you would change your tune," he sneered back at her, throwing
himself into a chair. "I have a bit of counsel for you. Do not venture
upon that tone with me again. It serves with Dutch husbands, no doubt; but
I am not Dutch, and I don't like it."
She stood for what seemed to be a long time, unoccupied and irresolute, in
the centre of the room. It was almost impossible for her to think clearly
or to see what she ought to do. She had spoken in haste about leaving the
house, and felt now that that would be an unwise and wrongful step to
take. Yet her husband had deliberately insulted her, and had coldly
interpreted as weak withdrawals her conciliatory words, and it was very
hard to let this state of affairs stand without some attempt at its
improvement. Her pride tugged bitterly against the notion of addressing
him again, yet was it not right that she should do so?
The idea occurred to her of ringing for a servant and directing him to
draw off his master's boots. The slave-boy who came in was informed by a
motion of her finger, and, kneeling to the task, essayed to lift one of
the heavy boots from the tiled hearth. The amiable Mr. Cross allowed the
foot to be raised into the boy's lap. Then he kicked the lad backward,
head over heels, with it, and snapped out angrily:
"Get away! When I want you, I'll call!"
The slave scrambled to his feet and slunk out of the room. The master sat
in silence, moodily sprawled out before the fire. At last the wife
approached him, and stood at the back of his chair.
"You are no happier than I am, Philip," she said. "Surely there must be
some better way to live than this. Can we not find it, and spare ourselves
all this misery?"
"What misery?" he growled. "There is none that I know, save the misery of
having a wife who hates everything her husband does. The weather-cock on
the roof has more sympathy with my purposes and aims than you have. At
least once in a while he points my way."
"Wherein have I failed? When have you ever temperately tried to set me
aright, seeing my errors?"
"There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or
that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but
ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money,
position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house
of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead?
Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans,
gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty
face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins
gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and
distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of
mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and
chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit
me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the glass.
She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on
the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be
the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by God! Like
a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I
might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission
in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure
and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'"
"You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if
only you had started with more heart and less appetite for pleasure. It is
not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame."
"Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as
temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it."
"What folly!"
"Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--"
"Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly
again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain
fashion long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years
has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the
same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body
into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you
really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you
accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but
please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you
could drink no more. Noble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy
of a wife!"
Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at
her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it.
"There is one point on which I agree with you," he said, slowly: "I am not
like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are
thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing
to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in
my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal
and my wife is a rebel."
"Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech.
Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only
wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more
than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me
I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers
and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood;
but as to my having ever spoken--"
"Yes, I know what you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words.
"I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a
Dutch foundling!"
She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it
had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That
it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he
the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished
sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing.
While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the
bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth
papers from its recesses with angry haste.
"Send Rab to me on the instant!" he called out to the slave who appeared.
The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons
was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half
trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the
cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most
trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his
black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored
hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance
at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool--
"What is it?"
"There is much to be done to-night, Rab," said the master, assorting
papers still as he spoke. "I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be
a long one; it may not."
"It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant," said the familiar.
"Oh, you know, then," said Philip. "So much the better, when one deals
with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things
I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have
the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like,
properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in
the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be.
When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters
which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of
the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when
the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them
saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead
Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be
ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then."
The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers.
"Will you take my lady's jewels?" he asked.
"Damnation! No!" growled Philip.
"_If you do not, they shall be thrown after you_!"
It was Daisy who spoke--Daisy, who leaned heavily upon the chair-back to
keep erect in the whirling dream of bewilderment which enveloped her. The
words when they had been uttered seemed from some other lips than hers.
There was no thought in her mind which they reflected. She was too near
upon swooning to think at all.
Only dimly could she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory
was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and
of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and
fainting, managed to creep away and reach her chamber.
* * * * *
The wakeful June sun had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the
self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry,
motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about
her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already
dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the lace and velvet
hangings were gone, and that the apartment had been despoiled of much else
besides, and gave this hardly a passing thought.
Mechanically she took from the wardrobe a hooded cloak, put it about her,
and left the room. The hallways were strewn with straw and the litter of
packing. Doors of half-denuded rooms hung open. In the corridor below two
negroes lay asleep, snoring grotesquely, beside some chests at which they
had worked. There was no one to speak to her or bar her passage. The door
was unbolted. She passed listlessly out, and down the path toward
the gulf.
It was more like sleep-walking than waking, conscious progress--this
melancholy journey. The dry, parched grass, the leaves depending wilted
and sapless, the leaden air, the hot, red globe of dull light hanging
before her in the eastern heavens--all seemed a part of the lifeless,
hopeless pall which weighed from every point upon her, deadening thought
and senses. The difficult descent of the steep western hill, the passage
across the damp bottom and over the tumbling, shouting waters, the milder
ascent, the cooler, smoother forest walk toward the Cedars beyond--these
vaguely reflected themselves as stages of the crisis through which she had
passed: the heart-aching quarrel, the separation, the swoon, and now the
approaching rest.
Thus at last she stood before her old home, and opened the familiar gate.
The perfume of the flowers, heavily surcharging the dewless air, seemed to
awaken and impress her. There was less order in the garden than before,
but the plants and shrubs were of her own setting. A breath of rising
zephyr stirred their blossoms as she regarded them in passing.
"They nod to me in welcome," her dry lips murmured.
A low, reverberating mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a
swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting
from the lilac-leaves clustered thick about her.
The door opened at her approach, and she saw Mr. Stewart standing there on
the threshold, awaiting her. It seemed natural enough that he should be up
at this hour, and expecting her. She did not note the uncommon whiteness
of his face, or the ceaseless twitching of his fallen lips.
"I have come home to you, father," she said, calmly, wearily.
He gazed at her without seeming to apprehend her meaning.
"I have no longer any other home," she added.
She saw the pallid face before her turn to wax shot over with green and
brazen tints. The old hands stretched out as if to clutch hers--then
fell inert.
Something had dropped shapeless, bulky at her feet and she could not see
Mr. Stewart. Instead here was a reeling vision of running slaves of a form
lifted and borne in, and then nothing but a sinking away of self amid the
world-shaking roar of thunder and blazing lightning streaks.