Part 60 (1/2)
All of pleading was in her eyes and voice; her hands were clasped in the intensity of her anxiety. But he only shook his head as he looked down in the beautiful, beseeching face.
”For your sake I shall remain,” he said, coldly.
”Kenneth!”
”Your anxiety that I leave shows that the plots you confessed are not the only ones you are aware of,” he said, controlling his voice with an effort, and speaking quietly. ”You are my wife; for the plots of the future I must take the responsibility, prevent them if I can; s.h.i.+eld you if I cannot.”
”No, no!” and she clasped his arm, pleadingly; ”believe me, Kenneth, there will be no more plots, not after today--”
”Ah!” and he drew back from her touch; ”not after today! then there _is_ some further use you have for my house as a rendezvous? Do you suppose I will go at once and leave my mother and sister to the danger of your intrigues?”
”No! there shall be no danger for any one if you will only go,” she promised, wildly; ”Kenneth, it is you I want to save; it is the last thing I shall ever ask of you. Go, go! no more harm shall come to your people, I promise you, I--”
”You promise!” and he turned on her with a fury from which she shrank.
”The promise of a woman who allowed a loyal friend to suffer disgrace for her fault!--the promise of one who has abused the affection and hospitality of the women you a.s.sure protection for! A spy! A traitor!
_You_, the woman I wors.h.i.+pped! G.o.d! What cursed fancy led you to risk life, love, honor, everything worth having, for a fanatical fight against one of two political factions?”
He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. As he did so a handkerchief in his pocket caught in the fastening of his cuff, as he let his hand fall the 'kerchief was dragged from the pocket, and with it the little oval frame over which he had been jealous for an hour, and concerning which he had not yet had an explanation.
It rolled towards her, and with a sudden movement she caught it, and the next instant the dark, girlish face lay uncovered in her hand.
She uttered a low cry, and then something of strength seemed to come to her as she looked at it. Her eyes dilated, and she drew a long breath, as she turned and faced him again with both hands clasped over her bosom, and the open picture pressed there. All the tears and pleading were gone from her face and voice, as she answered:
”Because to that political question there is a background, shadowed, shameful, awful! Through the shadows of it one can hear the clang of chains; can see the dumb misery of fettered women packed in the holds of your slave s.h.i.+ps, carried in chains to the land of your free! From the day the first slave was burned at the stake on Manhattan Island by your Christian forefathers, until now, when they are meeting your men in battle, fighting you to the death, there is an unwritten record that is full of horror, generations of dumb servitude! Did you think they would keep silence forever?”
He arose from the chair, staring at her in amazement; those arguments were so foreign to all he had known of the dainty woman, patrician, apparently, to her finger tips. How had she ever been led to sympathize with those rabid, mistaken theories of the North?
”You have been misled by extravagant lies!” he said, sternly; ”abuses such as you denounce no longer exist; if they ever did it was when the temper of the times was rude--half savage if you will--when men were rough and harsh with each other, therefore, with their belongings.”
”Therefore, with their belongings!” she repeated, bitterly, ”and in your own age all that is changed?”
”Certainly.”
”Certainly!” she agreed. ”Slaves are no longer burned for insubordination, because masters have grown too wise to burn money!
But they have some laws they use now instead of the torch and the whip of those old crude days. From their book of laws they read the commandment: _'Go you out then, and of the heathen about you, buy bondmen and bondmaids that they be servants of your household;'_ and again it is commanded: _'Servants be obedient unto your masters!'_ The torch is no longer needed when those fettered souls are taught G.o.d has decreed their servitude. G.o.d has cursed them before they were born, and under that curse they must bend forever!”
”You doubt even the religion of my people?” he demanded.
”Yes!”
”You doubt the divinity of those laws?”
”Yes!”
”Judithe!”
”Yes!” she repeated, a certain dauntless courage in her voice and bearing. She was no longer the girl he had loved and married; she was a strange, wild, beautiful creature, whose tones he seemed to hear for the first time. ”A thousand times--yes! I doubt any law and every law shackling liberty of thought and freedom of people! And the poison of that accursed system has crept into your own blood until, even to me, you pretend, and deny the infamy that exists today, and of which you are aware!”
”Infamy! How dare you use that word?” and his eyes flamed with anger at the accusation, but she raised her hand, and spoke more quietly.