Part 23 (2/2)
”So there we are.”
The Doctor patted his foot in silence, then replied:
”My poor, poor child--my poor little girl,” and added with a heavy sigh: ”And poor Tom--Laura--poor, foolish, devil-ridden Tom.” She a.s.sented with her eyes. At the end of a pause she said with anguish in her voice:
”And when we began it was all so beautiful--so beautiful--so wonderful.
Of course I've known for a long time--ever since before Lila came that it was slipping. Oh, father--I've known; I've seen every little giving of the tie that bound us, and in my heart deep down, I've known all--all--everything--all the whole awful truth--even if I have not had the facts as you've had them--you and mother--I suppose.”
”You're my fine, brave girl,” cried her father, patting her trembling hand. But he could speak no further.
”Oh, no, I'm not brave--I'm not brave,” she answered. ”I'm a coward. I have sat by and watched it all slip away, watched him getting further and further from me, saw my hold slipping--slipping--slipping, and saw him getting restless. I've seen one awful--” she paused, shuddered, and cried, ”Oh, you know, father, that other dreadful affair. I saw that rise, burn itself out and then this one--” she turned away and her body shook.
In a minute she was herself: ”I'm foolish I suppose, but I've never talked it out before. I won't do it again. I'm all right now.” She took his hands and continued:
”Now, then, tell me--is there any way out? What shall we do to be saved--Tom and Lila and I?” She hesitated. ”I'm afraid--Oh, I know, I know I don't love Tom any more. How could I--how could I? But some way I want to mother him. I don't want to see him get clear down. I know this woman. I know what she means. Let me tell you, father. For two years she's been playing with Tom like a cat. I knew it when she began. I can't say how I knew it; but I felt it--felt it reflected in his moods, saw him nervous and feverish. She's been torturing him, father--she's strong. Also she's--she's hard. Tom hasn't--well, I mean she's always kept the upper hand. I know that in my soul. And he's stark, raving mad somewhere within him.” A storm of emotion shook her and then she cried pa.s.sionately, ”And, oh, father, I want to rescue him--not for myself.
Oh, I don't love him any more. That's all gone. At least not in the old way, I don't, but he's so sensitive--so easy to hurt. And she's slowly burning him alive. It's awful.”
The little pink face of the Doctor began to harden. His big blue eyes began to look through narrow slits in his eyelids, and the pudgy, white-clad figure stood erect. The daughter's voice broke and as she gripped herself the father reached his bristling pompadour and cried in wrath, ”Let him burn--let him burn, girl--h.e.l.l's too good for him!”
His voice was high and harsh and merciless. It restored the woman's poise and she shook her head sorrowfully as she resumed:
”I can't bear to see it; I--I want to s.h.i.+eld him--I must--if I can.” A tremor ran through her again. She caught hold of herself, then went on more calmly. ”But things can't go on this way. Here is this box--”
”Child--child,” cried the Doctor angrily, ”you come right home--right home,” he piped with rising wrath. ”Right home to mother and me.”
The wife shook her head and replied: ”No, father, that's the easy road.
I must take the hard road.” Her father's mobile face showed his pain and the daughter cried: ”I know, father--I know how you would have stopped me before I chose this way. But I did choose and now here is Lila, and here is a home--a home--our home, father, and I mustn't leave it. Here is my duty, here in this home, and I must not ran away. I must work out my life as it is--as before G.o.d and Lila--and Tom--yes, Tom, father, as before all three, I have my responsibility. I must not put away Tom--no matter--no matter how I feel--no matter what he has done. I won't,” she repeated. ”I won't.”
The father turned an impatient face to his daughter, and retorted, ”You won't--you won't leave that miserable cur--that--that woman hunting dog--won't leave--”
The father's rage sputtered on his lips, but the daughter caught his hand as it was beating his cane on the floor. ”Stop, father,” she said gently, ”it's something more than women that's wrong with Tom. Women are merely an outward and visible sign--it's what he believes--and what he does, living his creed--always following the material thing. As a judge I thought he would see his way--must see his way to bring justice here--” She looked into the fume stained sky above South Harvey, and Foley and Magnus, far down the valley, and tightened her grip on her father's hands. ”But no--no,” she cried, ”Tom doesn't know justice--he only sees the law, the law and profits, and prosperity--only the eternal material. He sits by and sees the company settle for four and five hundred dollars for the lives of the men it wasted in the mine--yes, more than sits by--he stands at the door of justice and drives the widows and children into a settlement like an overseer. And he and Joe Calvin have some sort of real estate partners.h.i.+p--Oh--I know it's dishonest, though I don't know how. But it branches so secretly into the law and it all reaches down into politics. And the whole order here, father--Daniel Sands paying for politics, paying for government that makes the laws, paying for mayors and governors that enforce the laws and paying the judges to back them up--and all that poverty and wretchedness and wickedness down there and all this beauty and luxury and material happiness up here. It's all, all wrong, father.” Her voice broke again in sobs, and tears were running down her cheeks as she continued. ”How can we blame Tom for violating his vows to me? Where are all our vows to G.o.d to deal justly with His people--the widows and orphans and helpless ones, father?” She looked at her father through her tears, at her father, whose face was agape! He was staring into the wistaria vines as one who saw his world quaking. A quick bolt of sympathy shot through the daughter's heart. She patted his limp hands and said softly, ”So--father--I mustn't leave Tom. He's a poor, weak creature--a rotten stick--and because I know it--I must stay with him!”
Behind the screen of matter, the l.u.s.ty fates were pulling at the screws of the rack. ”Pull harder,” cried the first fate; ”the little old pot-bellied rascal--make him see it: make him see how he warned her against the symptoms, but not the disease that was festering her lover's soul!”
”Turn yourself,” cried the second, ”make the forehead sweat as he sees how he has been delivering laws in a basket to grind iniquity through Tom Van Dorn's mill! Turn--turn, turn you lout!”
”And you,” cried the third fate at the screw to the first, ”twist that heart-string, twist it hard when he sees his daughter's broken face and hears her sobbing!”
But the angels, the pitying angels, loosened the cords of the rack with their gentle tears.
As the taut threads of the rack slackened, he heard the soft voice of his daughter saying: ”But of course, the most important thing is Lila--not that she means a great deal to him now. He doesn't care much for children. He doesn't want them--children.”
She turned upon her father and with anguished voice and with all her denied motherhood, she cried: ”O, father--I want them--lots of them--arms full of them all the time.”
She stretched out her arms. ”Oh, it's been so hard, to feel my youth pa.s.sing, and only one child--I wanted a whole house full. I'm strong; I could bear them. I don't mind anything--I just want my babies--my babies that never have come.”
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