Jack had almost finished his breakfast when Betty entered the
dining-room. He looked beyond her with the surprised and sulky frown of
the neglected husband.
"Where on earth is Harriet?" he asked. "Her natural inclination is to
lie in bed all day. What induced her--"
"She wanted to go to the camp-meeting," said Betty, not without
apprehension. "You know she always went with her adopted father, who
was a Methodist clergyman--"
"Great heaven!" Her apprehension was justified. His face was convulsed
with disgust. "My wife at a camp-meeting! And you let her go?"
"Harriet is not sixteen. And when a person has been brought up to a
thing, you cannot expect her to change completely in a few months. Poor
Harriet lived in a forsaken village where she had no sort of society; I
suppose the camp-meeting was her only excitement. And you know how
emotionally religious the--the Methodists are--You glare at me so I
scalded my throat."
"I am sorry, and I am afraid I have been rude. But you must--you must
know how distasteful it is for me to think of my wife at a
camp-meeting. Great heaven!"
"It is even worse than my going over to politics, isn't it? Don't take
it so tragically, my dear. The truth is, I suspect, Harriet worries
about having deceived Molly and me, and the camp-meeting is probably to
the Methodist what the confessional is to the Catholic. Both must ease
one's mind a lot."
"Harriet will have to ease her mind in some other way in the future.
And it will be some time before I can forget this." "Thank heaven I am
not married. Are you going after her? Shall you march her home by the
ear?"
"I certainly shall not go after her--that is, if she is in no danger.
Where is this camp-meeting?"
"Oh, there are five hundred or so of them, and it is near a farmhouse."
It was evident that he had forgotten the colour of the camp.
"Seriously, I would let her alone for to-day. That form of hysteria has
to wear itself out. I did not like the idea of her going, and told her
so, but I saw what it meant to her, and took her. When you get her over
to Europe, settle in some old town with a beautiful cathedral and a
dozen churches, where the choir boys are ducky little things in scarlet
habits and white lace capes, and there are mediaeval religious
processions with gorgeous costumes and solemn chants, and the bells
ring all day long, and there is a service every five minutes with
music, and a blessed relic to kiss in every church. She will be a
Catholic in less than no time, and look back upon the camp-meeting with
a shudder of aristocratic disgust."
"I hope so. If you will excuse me I will go out and smoke a cigarette."
She said to Senator North as they approached the head of the lake that
evening, "A tempest is brewing in our matrimonial teapot. He looked
ready to divorce her when I told him where she had gone."
"I hope he won't divorce her when she gets home. Keep them apart if you
can. She has developed more than one characteristic of the race to
which she is as surely forged as if her fetters were visible. If she
has all its religious fanaticism in her, she is quite likely to work up
to that point of hysteria where she will proclaim the truth to the
world."
"Ah!" cried Betty, sharply. "Why did I not think of that? What a poor
guardian I am! If I had warned her, she never would have gone--but
probably she won't, as we have thought of it. The expected so seldom
happens."
"Don't count too much on that when great crises threaten," he said
grimly. "The law of cause and effect does not hide in the realm of the
unexpected when intelligent beings go looking for it. To tell you the
truth, I have been apprehensive ever since I saw her face this morning.
All the intelligence had gone out of it. With her race, religion means
the periodical necessity to relapse into barbarism, to act like
shouting savages after the year of civilized restraints. I will venture
to guess that Harriet has forgotten to-day everything she has learned
since she entered your family. Within that sad, calm, high-bred
envelope is--I am afraid--a mind which has the taint of the blood that
feeds it."
"I have thought that for a long while. Poor thing, why was she ever
born?"
"Because sin has a habit of persisting, and is remorseless in its
choice of vehicles. I do not see anything of her."
They waited almost an hour before she came hurrying down the path. She
barely recognized them, but dropped on her seat in the bow and crouched
there, sobbing and groaning.
It was a cheerless journey through the forest and down the lake, and
the element of the grotesque did nothing to relieve it. Betty,
distracted at first, soon realized that upon her lay the responsibility
of averting a tragedy, and she ordered her brain to action. She leaned
forward finally and whispered to Senator North:
"Row me to my boat-house and I will ask Jack to row you home. He is too
courteous to suggest sending a servant if I make a point of his taking
you."
He nodded. She saw the confidence in his eyes, and even in that hour of
supreme anxiety her mind leapt forward to the winning of his approval
as the ultimate of her struggle to save the happiness of two human
beings who were almost at her mercy.
Jack was walking on the terrace. Betty called to him, and he consented
with no marked grace to be boatman. He had taken the oars before he
noticed that his wife, whom he was not yet ready to forgive, was being
hurried off by his cousin.
"Mrs. Emory is very tired and her head aches," said Senator North.
"Miss Madison is anxious to get her into bed. Can't you dine with me
to-night? It would give me great pleasure, and men are superfluous, I
have observed, when women have headaches."
And Jack, who was not sorry to punish his wife, accepted the invitation
and did not return home till midnight.