MARGARET'S RESOLVE
While Mrs. Pennybacker was thus effectively wielding the battle-ax that
common sense and observation had laid ready at her hand, Margaret,
bleeding on the field, was well-nigh ready to give up the fight. An
ambushed foe had fallen upon her and borne her down, and before she
could recover herself, Courage, who had been through it all her strong
support and chiefest counselor, had turned craven and fled.
While this fitly, though inadequately, describes the girl's condition of
mind as she sat in the car swiftly traversing the short distance between
Elmhurst and Washington, there was nothing in her outward appearance to
indicate that it was so.
The occupants in that parlor-car saw in Margaret a well-dressed,
quiet-appearing young woman, remarkable for nothing perhaps but the
pronounced beauty of her face and her rather queenly carriage. It was a
mild surprise to see a woman of this type get on at a way station. As
she sat intently looking out of the window at the moving panorama of
winter trees seen now to best advantage stripped of their summer
garments, one might have thought her a devotee of Nature, with an eye
and heart single to that alone.
But the oaks and the elms and the lesser folk of the tree-world were in
reality making an impression on a retina as unseeing as though back of
it there were no brain. This quiet, self-contained looking lady looking
out at the wintry landscape with such apparent appreciation was saying
to herself in the abandon of despair, "Is it true? Can it be true?"
A phantom shape had been pursuing Margaret De Jarnette for months--a
specter of evil form and visage. It had given her just a glimpse of
itself now and then; it was quick to hide behind more agreeable forms
and she was always glad to lose it; then she would forget it until some
day it would start up before her like a grinning death's head for a
brief second and again disappear. She had eluded it. She had denied its
existence even to herself, but she knew now that she had feared it from
the first and refused to face it. To-day it had taken bodily shape and
grappled with her.
It was through Mammy Cely that the incarnation came. Margaret had been
talking to the old woman as she often did about the case in court, its
long delay, and finally the bill and the relief which that promised even
if the case in court failed.
"Miss Margaret," said Mammy Cely, not looking at her, but speaking in a
voice of great compassionateness, "is you sho' that bill gwineter he'p
you?"
"Why, certainly!" Margaret answered as she had answered Mrs. Pennybacker
when she had asked the same foolish question (it was at such times that
the specter rose before her), "It will give me Philip."
Mammy Cely still looked away.
"Marse Richard 'low that bill don't have nothin' 't all to do with
Philip. Maybe he don't know," she added, but rather doubtfully, for she
had boundless confidence in Richard's knowledge.
"He certainly does not know," said Margaret sharply. "How did you happen
to be talking to him about it?"
"I jes' accidently mentioned that you was layin' off to take Philip as
soon as the bill passed, and he 'low the bill didn't have no bearin' on
the case. He say it can't ondo a thing that was done years ago."
Margaret felt that she had received a blow. A sudden recollection of
Senator Black's words flashed upon her and she grew so white that Mammy
Cely prudently refrained from any more discussion of the subject. She
might have told her how in the goodness of her heart she had gone to Mr.
De Jarnette, hoping to stir pity in his breast, and said, "Marse
Richard, do you reckon that po' chile gwineter live ef this here bill
givin' her Philip don't pass?" and how he had answered her in shocked
amazement, "Giving her Philip! Great heavens, you don't tell me she is
expecting that?"
He really looked so concerned that it seemed to Mammy Cely as if the
emotion she had been trying to fan into flame flared up for a moment,
but it and her hope went out together as he added coldly, "If that is
what she is working for, she might as well give it up. That bill
couldn't undo what was done years ago." She did not tell Margaret all
this, however, contenting herself with repeating, "No 'm, he say it
don't have no bearin' on the case."
"It is false!" cried Margaret, with vehement iteration. "He'll find that
it will have some bearing on the case before we are through."
Her anger sustained her until she reached the station. Then when she had
kissed Philip good-bye and settled back weakly in her seat, a horrible
sinking of soul came over her. What if it were true? Looking out at the
shivering trees and the leaden sky impassively, she was telling herself
in a transport of feeling and of fear that it was not true! It couldn't
be true!
But thinking of Senator Black's strange look of pity and his stranger
words, "I wish this bill could do as much for you, Mrs. De Jarnette, as
you can do for it," doubt began to clutch at her heart. Was this what he
meant? Going over her interviews with this one and that in these weeks
it seemed to her that she could recall traces of compassion in their
words, their looks, as they talked with her. She had thought then it was
pity for her wrongs. Was it for her blindness?... Why had nobody told
her? Had she no friend that it must be left for her enemy to enlighten
her? Why had they let her go on working for this thing as though her
soul's salvation had depended upon it--only to find out when all was
done, that it was but an abstract law--something that would be useful to
humanity perhaps, but left her desolate as before.... Humanity! What was
humanity to a mother robbed?
Shame smote her then. She heard the voice of Mrs. Greuze saying of a
fellow worker: "She has a heart big enough to take in the world and all
its woes." But then Mrs. Belden was childless. Perhaps God had given her
empty hands that she might work for weak ones too weighted down with
cares to help themselves. Well! He had emptied her arms too. Was it thus
that the great heart of humanity was brought to throb in unison?
She felt suddenly strengthless as if some spring of life were broken....
How she had labored for this thing, sparing not herself in any way,
giving time and strength and travail of soul to the furtherance of this
bill. And to what purpose? Only an hour ago she was planning what she
would say to Senator Blanton when she went to see him. She had been so
successful that she was eager to try her powers of persuasion again. It
was a joy to work in a great cause like this. Now the zest had faded out
of life as the color out of an evening cloud. Everything was stale, flat
and unprofitable. "What profit hath a man of all his labor which he
taketh under the sun?" came suddenly to her mind with a force never felt
before. Who was it said that?... Oh, yes, the Wise Man of course. She
had often heard Mrs. Pennybacker quote the words. Well! he _was_ wise,
she told herself scornfully. There _was_ no profit. And the Wise Man had
found it out. She wondered weakly, feeling very tired all at once, if he
had discovered it before he had worn himself out.
The train moved steadily on. The scene constantly shifted, but she did
not see.
Mr. De Jarnette--had said--that--the bill would not give her Philip. She
must think it out before she got there--what to do--now.
At the station her carriage was waiting for her.
"To Judge Kirtley's office."
On the way, looking absently from the carriage window, she saw a lady
with a little boy about Philip's age holding to her hand and skipping by
her side. It was strange, but all the children seemed to be about
Philip's age. The boy was telling something eagerly and she could catch
his childish treble and see the mother smile. A pang shot through her to
see the sweet comradeship between the two. Did the woman know how blest
she was?
On the street in full view of the Capitol they passed the entrance to
one of the blind alleys that still disgrace Washington. A drunken man
piloted by a woman with a baby in her arms and another clinging to her
skirts was making toward the alley. The man, insecure of footing,
lurched forward almost under the horses' feet. The coachman reined them
in suddenly and the woman jerked the man back. With an oath he turned
and struck her, kicking the child when it cried with fright.
Margaret drew a quick breath. Here--here under the very shadow of the
Dome, a drunken, brutish man who could neither protect his children nor
take care of himself, was given rights to those children that the mother
could not share--could not share and could not shake off! Unless--unless
the bill should pass! She leaned back in the carriage and closed her
eyes.
In the office she lost no time in circumlocution.
"Judge Kirtley," she asked, cutting short his protestations of surprise
at seeing her, "is it true that if this joint guardianship bill passes
it will not give me Philip?"
"Give you Philip? Why, child--my _dear_ child, you haven't supposed--God
bless my soul," he broke off abruptly. The idea that her ignorance of
the law should have misled her into supposing that the bill would help
her personally, except so far as it might influence the decision of the
court when her case came up, had never occurred to him. She had thrown
herself headlong into this movement without asking advice from anybody,
but he had supposed that it was from her rather natural sympathy for
womankind, and he had welcomed it as a diversion to her in the trying
time of awaiting action by the court. In fact, he had encouraged her
efforts. He was wondering now blankly if that encouragement had not been
ill-judged.
"It would not help me in any way?" she persisted, reading the answer in
his disturbed face. He answered her plainly then, though with a lawyer's
caution.
"The fact that such a bill had been passed after much agitation might
have its effect upon the decision of the court when your case comes up.
I should not say that that would be impossible, nor even improbable. But
that is the only way in which it could affect it. A law like that would
not be retroactive. It is better for you to know this now, Margaret."
She sat so long without speaking that he began nervously to dread a
break-down or an outburst such as she used to give way to. He had no
need to fear. The woman before him was not the girl of those tempestuous
days. No school develops us so swiftly as sorrow's school. With the
little nunnery maid who talked with Guinevere, she had learned
"to cry her cry in silence, and have done."
"But it would help other women, in years to come," she said at last in a
voice that thrilled with feeling--"women who cannot fight for
themselves--" the woman of the street was before her--"who do not have a
friend like you to fight for them?"
"Unquestionably. If that bill becomes a law no other woman in this
District will ever stand where you do to-day pleading for her child."
She stood up then with eyes shining and head thrown back.
"Then let me do what I can," she cried. "This is not for one woman but
for many."
Oddly enough, as he looked at her, there came into his mind two pictures
he had seen on her own walls,--one, the old familiar one of the sitting
mother clasping to her heart the Divine Child as if she would keep Him
forever within her sheltering arms; the other, with face illumined and a
larger vision that took in the whole world's needs, holding the
Christ-child up, an offering to humanity.
The woman before him might have been a "chair madonna" yesterday; to-day
she was a "Sistine."