After the body of her mother had been laid away, by the side of that of
her dead husband, with the youngest of eight children clasped in her
arms, Imelda changed her home to a little attic room. When all was over
she returned to the store where she had now been employed three years.
In the early days of her engagement there she had become acquainted with
a bright cheery little girl, Alice Day by name, with whom she had become
fast friends, although a greater contrast one could scarcely imagine
than existed between the personalities of the two girls. The one, small,
bright, saucy, sparkling; the other, tall, stately, sad. Although Alice
did not have that high order of intelligence that Imelda was the
possessor of, yet she was so purely child-like and frank, that they at
once attracted each other; each supplying to the other that which she
did not possess. Their friendship, however, was of short duration.
Pretty Alice had a lover, a traveling salesman at the time, whose home
was in the east. He was about to establish a business of his own and so
would no longer have opportunities of seeing his little lady-love; a
state of affairs that did not meet the approval of either the young
gentleman in question or that of the fair Alice. So he proposed to take
her with him as his wife.
Alice was married and Imelda saw no more of her friend. Now and then a
letter came and she knew that the husband was prospering; that Alice
lived in a beautiful home, and that two sweet babies, girl babies, had
come to make music in that stately home.
About the time that Alice left the store to become a wife another girl
found employment with the same firm; a tall, stately girl whom to
describe would be extremely difficult. Fair as a lily, ruddy as a rose,
with a bearing almost haughty. One moment a laughing, rollicking sprite,
the next if some unlucky individual dared to address her with a freedom
she thought uncalled for her blue eyes would emit such scornful flashes
that you almost felt their scorching heat. The color would rise in her
cheeks until they were stained a dark hue; her lips would be compressed
so firmly that they appeared almost white.
Sometimes it appeared as though two distinct and separate spirits
inhabited the body of this girl, so utterly would the different moods
change her from one to the other. We might go still farther, and say
there were three spirits. Three in one, for there was still another
phase of her character. In the first, she was the rollicking, teasing,
mirth-provoking sprite, the next, she was soft, melting, a child of
dreams, and in the last a proud, scornful, haughty woman. Talented and
gifted by nature, her character was as yet unformed. Future events would
determine which phase would predominate.
Such was Margaret Leland when first Imelda knew her. The two girls were
soon strongly attached to each other. Margaret was very sympathetic and
Imelda was in need of sympathy. Misery loves company, it is said. So
when Imelda one evening told her the story of her life, with all its
trials and shadows,—which revelation was made after the death of her
father, Margaret reciprocated by giving a history that was fully as sad
as her own. Interwoven with her life were just as bitter tears, and if
Margaret had not stood above an open grave her life had nevertheless
been overshadowed by such tragic events that it took all the innate
pride of her nature to enable her to hold up her head. Probably to this
very cause was due the fact that she sometimes let this pride carry her
to extremes.
It was on a fine summer evening not long before wayward Cora had
deserted them that Imelda and Margaret had been walking together and
found a seat in beautiful Lincoln Park. Imelda had just finished
relating her story, omitting nothing of the mistakes that had been so
fatal to the happiness of her parents. “I cannot understand,” she
concluded, “why it was they were so utterly unhappy. It often appeared
to me that my mother almost hated my father, although he was far above
her mentally, possessed of remarkable intelligence, having had the
benefit of an education so thorough that often I have wondered how a
match so unsuited was ever made. I have never known my father to be
really unkind, although often impatient, as my mother could be very
trying. However, I have often sought to excuse her for that; her health
for years had not been of the best and the babies would come oh, so
close! Poor mother! I suppose almost any woman would have broken down
under it.”
“I should think so,” replied Margaret’s low sweet voice. “Only think!
eight children in how many years?”
“Fifteen,” answered Imelda, “and you must remember, too, she had three
miscarriages in that time. Yes, it was too much. Do you know,” she
continued musingly, “that the thought often comes to me, that while
lover’s love must be great, it is not great enough, not strong enough to
withstand the storm of married woes. I have never had a lover, but have
often dreamed of lover’s joys. But tell me, where do you see lovers
among married people?”
“Married lovers are indeed a rare sight,” Margaret answered, “and,” she
continued, startling the ear of the listening Imelda, “love certainly is
a beautiful dream. I know of what I am speaking, for it has come to me,
e’en that; but ‘_marriage is a failure_,’ and, as I think now, I do not
believe I shall ever trust myself to its deceiving, cruel fetters.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Remain as I am, free as the birds of the air. No man shall ever say to
me, ‘thou shalt’ or ‘thou shalt not’!”
Imelda stared at her friend in open-eyed wonder.
“What then will become of your love?” she asked.
Margaret’s lips trembled as a sigh escaped them. “Ah, Love, sweet
entrancing Love! Imelda, he is a fickle boy; promising you heavenly
bliss to entice you into his meshes. They sound so fair, these promises,
so bewitching in the rosy hue he weaves about them, until——”
“Until what?”
“Until you permit his alluring voice to entice you into those rose-woven
and satin-covered fetters called marriage bonds. Then, in a most
tantalizing manner, after all loopholes of escape have been closed, he
takes his departure with mocking laughter and leaves you only the
blackness of despair. Your weak hands are not powerful enough to hold
him with all the man-made laws of the land. He comes to us all unsought,
in rose-strewn dreams. If you would retain his blissful presence you
must meet him full of trust and confidence. Fetter this laughing, happy
boy and he will slip from between your clinging, clutching fingers. In
spite of yourself he is gone. You are alone, bound to a loathsome
corpse. Never again will the sweet little cajoler walk by your side, in
the old form, to soothe your aching heart with his warm perfumed breath.
And if ever, in very pity for you, he shall make the attempt to draw
near in another form, to warm your frozen heart, you are forced by the
cruel laws of a cruel society with your own trembling hands to murder
him.
“Marry? No! I may enjoy a lover’s love, may mount with him to realms of
bliss, and when the time comes that we have outgrown each other, the
time when one may be mounting too fast for the other to keep up, as when
one becomes a weight, clogging the footsteps of the other, then at
least, no unnatural fetters will have bound us. We can still follow our
own sweet wills, and should Love again with his winsome wiles approach
me with his golden dreams, I shall then be free to clasp him in my
embrace. I may once again be happy in the sunshine he is sure to bring
with him, and shed around him.”
Awestruck Imelda listened. Margaret’s cheeks were glowing with
excitement. Her eyes shone with a splendor Imelda had never noted there
before, while the look in them seemed far-away. Where were her thoughts?
What visions floated before her mind? Was it the lover she spoke of,
with whom she was mounting to unknown heights of bliss, or was she
looking into the far-away future where he was the same, and yet not the
same? When Love shall have taken upon himself a different guise than he
at present wears? Who knows? Imelda listened spellbound to this dreaming
girl, almost fearing to break the silence that ensued.
“Margaret, who taught you that? Where did you learn to hold such views
of love and marriage?”
Almost instantly the entranced look faded from the face of the beautiful
blonde. That most holy glow gave way to a sickly pallor. The lips
quivered like those of a grieved child, and the eyes filled with tears.
“Experience,” she faltered.
“Experience? You?”
“Yes, Imelda. Listen. I will now tell you the story of _my_ life. Or,
more properly speaking, that of my mother; but which has nevertheless
influenced mine to such an extent that all my life, I suppose, the
results of it must walk by my side, follow me wherever I go. To begin
with, my mother has been what the world calls ‘a divorced woman’.”
“Divorced!” Imelda exclaimed in a startled manner.
“Yes, divorced! Married at the tender age of sixteen, she thought all
that was needed to make earth a heaven was the complete union with the
man she loved. A few week’s she lived in a fool’s paradise. She was
young, inexperienced, with character undeveloped, else even in that
short time she must have seen and understood the innate coarseness of
the man who was her husband, whom she had promised to love, honor and
_obey_, and who is my——father! In a very short time it dawned upon her
that they had no tastes whatever in common. A brutal coarseness soon
became manifest that caused her to shrink at his every touch. He soon
came to understand this and it roused the very devil in him. He
delighted in torturing her in every conceivable way. He did not even
stop at blows.”
“_Blows!_ Oh,—” gasped Imelda. A bitter smile for a moment curled
Margaret’s lips, and then she proceeded:
“And that man is my father. Oh, why must I say it!” It cost her a great
struggle to proceed. Imelda asked her to refrain, but Margaret insisted
that she must tell her all, saying, “I would have to tell you some time
that we may fully understand each other,” and in a few moments she
continued:
“The thought of separation never entered her mind in those days. She
worked; a slave could scarcely have been more driven. A slave! Can it be
possible there ever has been a worse slave than my mother was? And then
the babies came. All through the time of gestation she had to work, to
perform the hardest labor, and often my——father would come home
intoxicated and, if it was possible for him to descend a step lower than
was his wont, that was the time. I myself know little or nothing of
those days, but my mother has made me her confidante, and every word she
has told me is engraven on my heart. Oh, how she must have suffered in
those awful, awful times! She was helpless under his brute power, and
the relations that should only be the expression of a pure and holy
love, that should, in my opinion, be fraught with divinest bliss, became
to her the tortures of hell. Many a night sleep was a stranger to her
eyes, and, other nights again, sleep came only after her pillow had been
drenched with tears. Under such circumstances her children were born. Is
it any wonder that the world is filled with criminals and idiots?
“How it was ever possible for me to be what I am is more than I can
comprehend. I know I am far from perfect. I am terribly self-willed and
can never bear being crossed. My mother was proud and self-willed also,
and though she learned to hate and loathe the man whom according to law
she was in duty bound to love, and though she suffered untold agonies I
think her pride, her self-respect, would never permit her to stoop to
anything that would degrade her, if we except the fact that she was
forced to live in marriage with a man who was in every way a brute. It
is to this pride and self-respect, I think, that I owe it that I am able
to lay claim to a higher and better nature than it could otherwise have
been possible for me to possess.
“Oh, the disgust that I feel when I hear matters pertaining to sex made
light of. These relations to my mind are something sacred and pure. But
the sensual man who believes that woman was made for his use only—the
man who commits continual outrages upon the woman who is legally bound
to him, upon her who bears the name of wife—such men defile the air with
their very breath.
“If under such circumstances a woman in her own soul, through her
superior mind, can create and hold a world of her own, making it
possible to ward off many evils that would naturally be the inheritance
of her children, what may she not do under conditions that are
favorable? Thus I think it was that mother stood above my father as the
stars are above the earth.
“But I have deviated. The years passed, and three times she had become a
mother. Always for a short time after the advent of a little one my
father seemed to show some marks of humanity, treating mother with some
show of kindness, but not for long. It would soon wear away and when the
trying season of gestation was upon her again he would be tenfold worse.
My mother thinks the reason for this was that during those seasons she
was more averse than ever to sex relations, which relations on his part
meant neither more nor less than debauchery of what should have been an
act personifying and realizing holy love. She would shrink from his
touch as from a reptile. Not being able to understand her, as he was not
possessed of a single refined instinct, it had the effect to infuriate
him.
“Seven years my mother led this life. Her first born, a boy, died when
he was a little more than a year old. Then I was born. After that came
another boy. When Osmond was two years old and I four, my mother one
day, with both of us left my father’s house forever. During the last
year or two matters had been growing worse and still worse, until
finally they had become unendurable.
“My mother being a well-developed woman and possessing strong attractive
powers would unconsciously draw the passing glances of men wherever she
might chance to be. In spite of all she had been compelled to pass
through, feeling was not yet dead within her. An intelligent and
attractive man always had the power to move her to animation and life.
This, again, my father could not understand, and to his many other
faults was added that of an insane jealousy. It was the last straw that
broke the camel’s back. Having been subjected to his indignities until
she was able to bear them no longer she resolved to submit to no more.
So one wet, cold evening in the early autumn she returned to her
childhood’s home.”