"But perhaps you wish me to understand that this man whom I was so
foolish as to invite to my house abused my hospitality and betrayed my
wife. Is that what you mean?"
"No," I said. "He observed the laws of hospitality much better than you
did, and if I am betrayed I betrayed myself."
I shall never forget the look with which my husband received this
confession. He drew himself up with the air of an injured man and said:
"What? You mean that you yourself . . . deliberately . . . Good God!"
He stopped for a moment and then said with a rush:
"I suppose you've not forgotten what happened at the time of our
marriage . . . your resistance and the ridiculous compact I submitted
to? Why did I submit? Because I thought your innocence, your
convent-bred ideas, and your ignorance of the first conditions of
matrimony. . . . But I've been fooled, for you now tell me . . . after
all my complacency . . . that you have deliberately. . . . In the name
of God do you know what you are? There's only one name for a woman who
does what you've done. Do you want me to tell you what that name is?"
I was quivering with shame, but my mind, which was going at lightning
speed, was thinking of London, of Cairo, of Rome, and of Paris.
"Why don't you speak?" he cried, lifting his voice in his rage. "Don't
you understand what a letter like this is calling you?"
My heart choked. But the thought that came to me--that, bad as his own
life had been, he considered he had a right to treat me in this way
because he was a man and I was a woman--brought strength out of my
weakness, so that when he went on to curse my Church and my religion,
saying this was all that had come of "the mummery of my masses," I fired
up for a moment and said:
"You can spare yourself these blasphemies. If I have done wrong, it is
I, and not my Church, that is to blame for it."
"_If_ you have done wrong!" he cried. "Damn it, have you lost all sense
of a woman's duty to her husband? While you have been married to me and
I have been fool enough not to claim you as a wife because I thought you
were only fit company for the saints and angels, you have been
prostituting yourself to this blusterer, this . . ."
"That is a lie," I said, stepping up to him in the middle of the floor.
"It's true that I am married to you, but _he_ is my real husband and you
. . . you are nothing to me at all."
My husband stood for a moment with his mouth agape. Then he began to
laugh--loudly, derisively, mockingly.
"Nothing to you, am I? You don't mind bearing my name, though, and when
your time comes you'll expect it to cover your disgrace."
His face had become shockingly distorted. He was quivering with fury.
"That's not the worst, either," he cried. "It's not enough that you
should tell me to my face that somebody else is your real husband, but
you must shunt your spurious offspring into my house. Isn't that what it
all comes to . . . all this damnable fuss of your father's . . . that
you are going to palm off on me and my name and family your own and this
man's . . . bastard?"
And with the last word, in the drunkenness of his rage, he lifted his
arm and struck me with the back of his hand across the cheek.
The physical shock was fearful, but the moral infamy was a hundred-fold
worse. I can truly say that not alone for myself did I suffer. When my
mind, still going at lightning speed, thought of Martin, who loved me so
tenderly, I felt crushed by my husband's blow to the lowest depths of
shame.
I must have screamed, though I did not know it, for at the next moment
Price was in the room and I saw that the housekeeper (drawn perhaps, as
before, by my husband's loud voice) was on the landing outside the door.
But even that did not serve to restrain him.
"No matter," he said. "After what has passed you may not enjoy
to-morrow's ceremony. But you shall go through it! By heaven, you shall!
And when it is over, I shall have something to say to your father."
And with that he swung out of the room and went lunging down the stairs.
I was still standing in the middle of the floor, with the blow from my
husband's hand tingling on my cheek, when Price, after clashing the door
in the face of the housekeeper, said, with her black eyes ablaze:
"Well, if ever I wanted to be a man before to-day!"
News of the scene went like wildfire through the house, and Alma's
mother came to comfort me. In her crude and blundering way she told me
of a similar insult she had suffered at the hands of the "bad Lord Raa,"
and how it had been the real reason of her going to America.
"Us married ladies have much to put up with. But cheer up, dearie. I
guess you'll have gotten over it by to-morrow morning."
When she was gone I sat down before the fire. I did not cry. I felt as
if I had reached a depth of suffering that was a thousand fathoms too
deep for tears. I do not think I wept again for many months afterwards,
and then it was a great joy, not a great grief, that brought me a burst
of blessed tears.
But I could hear my dear good Price crying behind me, and when I said:
"Now you see for yourself that I cannot remain in this house any
longer," she answered, in a low voice:
"Yes, my lady."
"I must go at once--to-night if possible."
"You shall. Leave everything to me, my lady."