XXV. "MY WIFE MUST!"
As I drove away, I was proud of myself. I had listened to my death sentencewith a face so smiling that he must almost have believed me unconscious;and also, it had not even entered my head, as I listened, to beg for mercy.Not that there would have been the least use in begging; as well try topray a statue into life, as try to soften that set will and purpose. Still,many a man would have weakened--and I had not weakened. But when I wasonce more in my apartment--in our apartment--perhaps I did show that therewas a weak streak through me. I fought against the impulse to see heronce more that night; but I fought in vain. I knocked at the door of hersitting-room--a timid knock, for me. No answer. I knocked again, moreloudly--then a third time, still more loudly. The door opened and she stoodthere, like one of the angels that guarded the gates of Eden after thefall. Only, instead of a flaming sword, hers was of ice. She was in adressing-gown or tea-gown, white and clinging and full of intoxicatinghints and glimpses of all the beauties of her figure. Her face softened asshe continued to look at me, and I entered.
"No--please don't turn on any more lights," I said, as she moved toward theelectric buttons. "I just came in to--to see if I could do anything foryou." In fact, I had come, longing for her to do something for me, to showin look or tone or act some sympathy for me in my loneliness and trouble.
"No, thank you," she said. Her voice seemed that of a stranger who wishedto remain a stranger. And she was evidently waiting for me to go. You willsee what a mood I was in when I say I felt as I had not since I, a verysmall boy indeed, ran away from home; I came back through the chilly nightto take one last glimpse of the family that would soon be realizing howfoolishly and wickedly unappreciative they had been of such a treasureas I; and when I saw them sitting about the big fire in the lamp-light,heartlessly comfortable and unconcerned, it was all I could do to keep backthe tears of strong self-pity--and I never saw them again.
"I've seen Roebuck," said I to Anita, because I must say something, if Iwas to stay on.
"Roebuck?" she inquired. Her tone reminded me that his name conveyednothing to her.
"He and I are in an enterprise together," I explained. "He is the one manwho could seriously cripple me."
"Oh," she said, and her indifference, forced though I thought it, wounded.
"Well," said I, "your mother was right."
She turned full toward me, and even in the dimness I saw her quicksympathy--an impulsive flash instantly gone. But it had been there!
"I came in here," I went on, "to say that--Anita, it doesn't in the leastmatter. No one in this world, no one and nothing, could hurt me exceptthrough you. So long as I have _you_, they--the rest--all of themtogether--can't touch me."
We were both silent for several minutes. Then she said, and her voice waslike the smooth surface of the river where the boiling rapids run deep:"But you _haven't_ me--and never _shall_ have. I've told youthat. I warned you long ago. No doubt you will pretend, and people willsay, that I left you because you lost your money. But it won't be so."
I was beside her instantly, was looking into her face. "What do you mean?"I asked, and I did not speak gently.
She gazed at me without flinching. "And I suppose," she said satirically,"you wonder why I--why you are repellent to me. Haven't you learned that,though I may have been made into a moral coward, I'm not a physical coward?Don't bully and threaten. It's useless."
I put my hand strongly on her shoulder--taunts and jeers do not turn measide. "What did you mean?" I repeated.
"Take your hand off me," she commanded.
"What did you mean?" I repeated sternly. "Don't be afraid to answer."
She was very young--so the taunt stung her. "I was about to tell you," saidshe, "when you began to make it impossible."
I took advantage of this to extricate myself from the awkward position inwhich she had put me--I took my hand from her shoulder.
"I am going to leave you," she announced.
"You forget that you are my wife," said I.
"I am not your wife," was her answer, and if she had not looked sochildlike, there in the moonlight all in white, I could not have heldmyself in check, so insolent was the tone and so helpless of ever beingable to win her did she make me feel.
"You are my wife and you will stay here with me," I reiterated, my brain onfire.
"I am my own, and I shall go where I please, and do what I please," was hercontemptuous retort. "Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't you see howutterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a gentleman--but just a man,and be ashamed even to wish to detain a woman against her will."
I drew up a chair so close to her that to retreat, she was forced to sitin the broad window-seat. Then I seated myself. "By all means, let us bereasonable," said I. "Now, let me explain my position. I have heard you andyour friends discussing the views of marriage you've just been expressing.Their views may be right, may be more civilized, more 'advanced' than mine.No matter. They are not mine. I hold by the old standards--and you aremy wife--mine. Do you understand?" All this as tranquilly as if we werediscussing fair weather. "And you will live up to the obligation which themarriage service has put upon you."
She might have been a marble statue pedestaled in that window seat.
"You married me of your own free will--for you could have protested tothe preacher and he would have sustained you. You tacitly put certainconditions on our marriage. I assented to them. I have respected them.I shall continue to respect them. But--when you married me, you didn'tmarry a dawdling dude chattering 'advanced ideas' with his head full oflibertinism. You married a man. And that man is your husband."
I waited, but she made no comment--not even by gesture or movement. Shesimply sat, her hands interlaced in her lap, her eyes straight upon mine.
"You say let us be reasonable," I went on. "Well, let us be reasonable.There may come a time when woman can be free and independent, but that timeis a long way off yet. The world is organized on the basis of every woman'shaving a protector--of every decent woman's having a husband, unless sheremains in the home of some of her blood-relations. There may be womenstrong enough to set the world at defiance. But you are not one ofthem--and you know it. You have shown it to yourself again and again inthe last forty-eight hours. Your bringing-up has kept you a child in realknowledge of real life, as distinguished from the life in that fashionablehothouse. If you tried to assert your so-called independence, you would bethe easy prey of a scoundrel or scoundrels. When I, who have lived in thethick of the fight all my life, who have learned by many a surprise anddefeat never to sleep except with the sword and gun in hand, and one eyeopen--when I have been trapped as Roebuck and Langdon have just trappedme--what chance would a woman like you have?"
She did not answer or change expression.
"Is what I say reasonable or unreasonable?" I asked gently.
"Reasonable--from _your_ standpoint," she said.
She gazed out into the moonlight, up into the sky. And at the look in herface, the primeval savage in me strained to close round that slender whitethroat of hers and crush and crush until it had killed in her the thoughtof that other man which was transforming her from marble to flesh thatglowed and blood that surged. I pushed back my chair with a sudden noise;by the way she trembled I gaged how tense her nerves must be. I rose and,in a fairly calm tone, said: "We understand each other?"
"Yes," she answered. "As before."
I ignored this. "Think it over, Anita," I urged--she seemed to me so like asweet, spoiled child again. I longed to go straight at her about that otherman. I stood for a moment with Tom Langdon's name on my lips, but I couldnot trust myself. I went away to my own rooms.
I thrust thoughts of her from my mind. I spent the night gnawing upon theropes with which Mowbray Langdon and Roebuck had bound me, hand and foot. Inow saw they were ropes of steel--and it had long been broad day before Ifound that weak strand which is in every rope of human make.