“You see what they are doing, Miss Ellersly,” said I.
She passed her hands over her eyes, let her face appear again. In it there
was an energy of repulsion that ought to have seemed exaggerated to me
then, knowing really nothing of the true situation. “I understand now!”
said she. “Oh--it is--loathsome!” And her eyes blazed upon her mother.
“Loathsome,” I echoed, dashing at my opportunity. “If you are not merely a
chattel and a decoy, if there is any womanhood, any self-respect in you,
you will keep faith with me.”
“Anita!” cried Mrs. Ellersly. “Go to your room!”
I had, once or twice before, heard a tone as repulsive--a female
dive-keeper hectoring her wretched white slaves. I looked at Anita. I
expected to see her erect, defiant. Instead, she was again wearing that
cowed look.
“Don't judge me too harshly,” she said pleadingly to me. “I know what is
right and decent--God planted that too deep in me for them to be able to
uproot it. But--oh, they have broken my will! They have broken my will!
They have made me a coward, a thing!” And she hid her face in her hands and
sobbed.
Mrs. Ellersly was about to speak. I could not offer better proof of my own
strength of will than the fact that I, with a look and a gesture, put her
down. Then I said to the girl:
“You must choose now! Woman or thing--which shall it be? If it is woman,
then you have me behind you and in front of you and around you. If it is
thing--God have mercy on you! Your self-respect, your pride are gone--for
ever. You will be like the carpet under his feet to the man whose creature
you become.”
She came and stood by me, with her back to them.
“If you will take me with you now,” she said, “I will go. If I delay, I am
lost. I shall not have the courage. And I am sick, sick to death of this
life here, of this hideous wait for the highest bidder.”
Her voice gained strength and her manner courage as she spoke; at the end
she was meeting her mother's gaze without flinching. My eyes had followed
hers, and my look was taking in both her mother and her father. I had long
since measured them, yet I could scarcely credit the confirmation of my
judgment. Had life been smooth and comfortable for that old couple, as it
was for most of their acquaintances and friends, they would have lived and
died regarding themselves, and regarded, as well-bred, kindly people, of
the finest instincts and tastes. But calamity was putting to the test the
system on which they had molded their apparently elegant, graceful lives.
The storm had ripped off the attractive covering; the framework, the
reality of that system, was revealed, naked and frightful.
“Anita, go to your room!” almost screamed the old woman, her fury tearing
away the last shreds of her cloak of manners.
“Your daughter is of age, madam,” said I. “She will go where she pleases.
And I warn you that you are deceived by the Langdons. I am not powerless,
and”--here I let her have a full look into my red-hot furnaces of wrath--“I
stop at nothing in pursuing those who oppose me--at nothing!”
Anita, staring at her mother's awful face, was shrinking and trembling
as if before the wicked, pale-yellow eyes and quivering, outstretched
tentacles of a devil-fish. Clinging to my arm, she let me guide her to the
door. Her mother recovered speech. “Anita!” she cried. “What are you doing?
Are you mad?”
“I think I must be out of my mind,” said Anita. “But, if you try to keep me
here, I shall tell him all--_all_.”
Her voice suggested that she was about to go into hysterics. I gently urged
her forward. There was some sort of woman's wrap in the hall. I put it
round her. Before she--or I--realized it, she was in my waiting electric.
“Up town,” I said to my man.
She tried to get out.
“Oh, what have I done! What am I doing!” she cried, her courage oozing
away. “Let me out--please!”
“You are going with me,” said I, entering and closing the door. I saw the
door of the Ellersly mansion opening, saw old Ellersly, bareheaded and
distracted, scuttling down the steps.
“Go ahead--fast!” I called to my man.
And the electric was rushing up the avenue, with the bell ringing for
crossings incessantly. She huddled away from me into the corner of the
seat, sobbing hysterically. I knew that to touch her would be fatal--or
to speak. So I waited.