Part 10 (1/2)
”Sit down,” he said, ”I want to talk to you,” and then he seated himself opposite her.
For awhile he did not speak; somehow the words he had come to say stuck in his throat; it was so cold-blooded for them, husband and wife, to sit there beside their own hearth and discuss their final separation.
A log, which had burned in half, fell and rolled forward on the marble hearth, sending little puffs of gray smoke into the room. He reached past her for the tongs and laid the log back in its place, and the little action seemed to seal his lips more closely. The tiny clock on the carved oak mantle chimed the hour in soft, low tones; he counted the strokes as they fell, one, two, and so on up to twelve. The winter suns.h.i.+ne streamed in between the parting of the curtains and made a glory of his wife's golden hair.
Ethel was the first to speak. ”You got my letter?” she questioned, keeping her eyes fixed on the fire.
”Yes; that is the reason I'm here.”
The broken log was blazing again quite merrily, the two ends far apart.
”Why not have written instead of coming?” she demanded, as one who protested against some grievous injury; ”it would have been far pleasanter for both. There's no sense in our hara.s.sing ourselves with personal interviews.”
”I preferred a personal interview.”
Ethel lapsed into silence; the man was a hopeless brute, and it was useless to expect courtesy from him. She tapped her foot against the fender, and a look of obstinacy and temper disfigured the soft outlines of her face. The silence might remain unbroken until the crack of doom for any further effort she would make.
Thorne broke it himself. He was determined to carry his point, and in order to do so strove to establish ascendency over his wife from the start.
”What's the meaning of this new move, Ethel?” he demanded, authoritatively. ”I want to understand the matter thoroughly. Why do you want a divorce?”
Mrs. Thorne turned her face toward him defiantly.
”Because I'm tired of my present life, and I want to change it. I'm sick of being pointed at, and whispered about, as a deserted wife--a woman whose husband never comes near her.”
”Whose fault is that?” he retorted sharply; ”this separation is none of my doing, and you know it. Bad as things had become, I was willing to worry along for the sake of respectability and the child; but you wouldn't have it so. You insisted on my leaving you--said the very sight of me made your chains more intolerable. Had I been a viper, you could scarcely have signified your desire for my absence in more unmeasured terms.”
”I know I desired the separation,” Mrs. Thorne replied calmly, ”I desire it still. My life with you was miserable, and my wish to live apart has only increased in intensity. You never understood me.”
Thorne might have retorted that the misunderstanding had been mutual, and also that _all_ the wretchedness had not fallen to her share; but he would not stoop to reproaches and vituperation. It was a natural peculiarity of her shallow nature to demand exhaustive comprehension for quite commonplace emotions.
”It's useless debating the past, Ethel. We've both been too much to blame to afford the luxury of stone-throwing. What we must consider now is the future. Is your mind quite made up? Are you determined on the divorce?”
”Quite determined. I've given the matter careful consideration, and am convinced that entire separation, legal as well as nominal, is absolutely necessary to my happiness.”
”And your reasons?”
”Haven't I told you, Nesbit?” using his name, for the first time, in her anger. ”Why do you insist on my repeating the same thing over and over, eternally? I'm sick of my life, and want to change it.”
”But how?” he persisted. ”Your life will be the same as now, and your position not so a.s.sured. The alimony allowed by law won't any thing like cover your present expenditures, and you can hardly expect me to be more generous than the law compels. The divorce can make little difference, save to diminish your income and deprive you of the protection of my name. You will not care to marry again, and the divorce will be a restricted one.” Thorne was forcing his adversary's hand.
”Why will it be restricted?” she demanded, her color and her temper rising. ”It shall _not_ be restricted, or hampered in any way, I tell you, Nesbit Thorne! Am I to be fettered, and bound, and trammeled by you forever? I will _not_ be. The divorce shall give me unlimited power to do what I please with my life. It shall make me as free as air--as free as I was before I married you.”
”You would not wish to marry again?” he repeated.
”Why not?” rising to her feet and confronting him in angry excitement.
”Because, in that case, you would lose your child. I neither could nor would permit my son to be brought up in the house of a man who stood to him in the relations.h.i.+p you propose.”
”You cannot take him from me,” Mrs. Thorne retorted in defiant contradiction; her ideas of the power of men and lawyers hopelessly vague and bewildered. ”No court on earth would take so small a child from his mother.”