Part 15 (1/2)

”So I thought. In fact he was buying ME nothing.” And she went on to explain the general's system.

Her mother listened impatiently. She would have interrupted the long and angry recital many times had not Mildred insisted on a full hearing of her grievances, of the outrages that had been heaped upon her.

”And,” she ended, ”I suppose he's got it so arranged that he could have me arrested as a thief for taking the gold bag.”

”Yes, it's terrible and all that,” said her mother. ”But I should have thought living with me here when Presbury was carrying on so dreadfully would have taught you something. Your case isn't an exception, any more than mine is. That's the sort of thing we women have to put up with from men, when we're in their power.”

”Not I,” said Mildred loftily.

”Yes, you,” retorted her mother. ”ANY woman. EVERY woman. Unless we have money of our own, we all have trouble with the men about money, sooner or later, in one way or another. And rich men!--why, it's notorious that they're always more or less mean about money. A wife has got to use tact. Why, I even had to use some tact with your father, and he was as generous a man as ever lived. Tact--that's a woman's whole life. You ought to have used tact. You'll go back to him and use tact.”

”You don't know him, mamma!” cried Mildred. ”He's a monster. He isn't human.”

Mrs. Presbury drew a long face and said in a sad, soothing voice: ”Yes, I know, dear. Men are very, very awful, in some ways, to a nice woman--with refined, ladylike instincts. It's a great shock to a pure--”

”Oh, gammon!” interrupted Mildred. ”Don't be silly, mother. It isn't worth while for one woman to talk that kind of thing to another. I didn't fully know what I was doing when I married a man I didn't love--a man who was almost repulsive to me. But I knew enough. And I was getting along well enough, as any woman does, no matter what she may say--yes, you needn't look shocked, for that's hypocrisy, and I know it now-- But, as I was saying, I didn't begin to HATE him until he tried to make a slave of me. A slave!” she shuddered. ”He's a monster!”

”A little tact, and you can get everything you want,” insisted her mother.

”I tell you, you don't know the man,” cried Mildred. ”By tact I suppose you mean I could have sold things behind his back--and all that.” She laughed. ”He hasn't got any back. He had it so arranged that those cold, wicked eyes of his were always watching me. His second wife tried 'tact.' He caught her and drove her into the streets. I'd have had no chance to get a cent, and if I had gotten it I'd not have dared spend it. Do you imagine I ran away from him without having THOUGHT?

If there'd been any way of staying on, any way of making things even endurable, I'd have stayed.”

”But you've got to go back, Milly,” cried her mother, in tears.

”You mean that you can't support me?”

”And your brother Frank--” Mrs. Presbury's eyes flashed and her rather stout cheeks quivered. ”I never thought I'd tell anybody, but I'll tell you. I never liked your brother Frank, and he never liked me.

That sounds dreadful, doesn't it?”

”No, mother dear,” said Mildred gently. ”I've learned that life isn't at all as--as everybody pretends.”

”Indeed it isn't,” said her mother. ”Mothers always have favorites among their children, and very often a mother dislikes one of her children. Of course she hides her feeling and does her duty. But all the same she can't help the feeling that is down in her heart. I had a presentiment before he was born that I wouldn't like him, and sure enough, I didn't. And he didn't like me, or his father, or any of us.”

”It would never occur to me to turn to him,” said Mildred.

”Then you see that you've got to go back to the general. You can't get a divorce and alimony, for it was you that left him--and for no cause.

He was within his rights.”

Mildred hesitated, confessed: ”I had thought of going back to him and acting in such a way that he'd be glad to give me a divorce and an allowance.”

”Yes, you might do that,” said her mother. ”A great many women do.

And, after all, haven't they a right to? A lady has got to have proper support, and is it just to ask her to live with a man she loathes?”

”I haven't thought of the right or wrong of it,” said Mildred. ”It looks to me as though right and wrong have very little to do with life as it's lived. They're for hypocrites--and fools.”

”Mildred!” exclaimed her mother, deeply shocked.

Mildred was not a little shocked at her own thoughts as she inspected them in the full light into which speech had dragged them. ”Anyhow,”

she went on, ”I soon saw that such a plan was hopeless. He's not the man to be trifled with. Long before I could drive him to give me a living and let me go he would have driven me to flight or suicide.”