The Ancient Law

"You're always right," he admitted despondently, "but do you think, then, that I'd better not see Alice to-day?"

"Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until to-morrow. Geoffrey is in a very difficult humour, she says, more brutally indifferent to her than he has been since her marriage."

"Isn't that all the more reason she ought to have her family about her?"

"She says not. It's easier to deal with him, she feels, alone – and any way Uncle Richard will call there this afternoon."

"Oh, Uncle Richard!" he groaned, as he went out.

In the evening there was no news beyond a reassuring visit from Richard Ordway, who stopped by, for ten minutes, on his way from an interview with Geoffrey Heath. "To tell the truth I found him less obstinate than I had expected," he said, "and there's no doubt, I fear, that he has some show of justice upon his side. He has agreed now to make Alice a very liberal allowance from the first of April, provided she will promise to make no more bills, and to live until then within her own income. He told me that he was obliged to retrench for the next six months in order to meet his obligations without touching his investments. It seems that he had bought very largely on margin, and the shrinkages in stocks has forced him to pay out a great deal of money recently."

"I knew you would manage it, Uncle, I relied on you absolutely," said Lydia, sweetly.

"I did only my duty, my child," he responded, as he held out his hand.

The one good result of the anxiety of the last twenty-four hours – the fact that it had brought Lydia and himself into a kind of human connection – had departed, Daniel observed, when he sat down to dinner, separated from her by six yellow candle shades and a bowl of gorgeous chrysanthemums. After a casual comment upon the soup, and the pleasant reminder that Dick would be home for Thanksgiving, the old uncomfortable silence fell between them. She had just remarked that the roast was a little overdone, and he had agreed with her from sheer politeness, when a sharp ring at the bell sent the old Negro butler hurrying out into the hall. An instant later there was a sound of rapid footsteps, and Alice, wearing a long coat, which slipped from her bare shoulders as she entered, came rapidly forward and threw herself into Ordway's arms, with an uncontrollable burst of tears.

"My child, my child, what is it?" he questioned, while Lydia, rising from the table with a disturbed face, but an unruffled manner, remarked to the butler that he need not serve the dessert.

"Come into the library, Alice, it is quieter there," she said, putting her arm about her daughter, with an authoritative pressure.

"O, papa, I will never see him again! You must tell him that. I shall never see him again," she cried, regardless alike of Lydia's entreaties and the restraining presence of the butler. "Go to him to-night and tell him that I will never – never go back."

"I'll tell him, Alice, and I'll do it with a great deal of pleasure," he answered soothingly, as he led her into the library and closed the door.

"But you must go at once. I want him to know it at once."

"I'll go this very hour – I'll go this very minute, if you honestly mean it."

"Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow, Alice?" suggested Lydia. "Then you will have time to quiet down and to see things rationally."

"I don't want to quiet down," sobbed Alice, angrily, "I want him to know now – this very instant – that he has gone too far – that I will not stand it. He told me a minute ago – the beast! – that he'd like to see the man who would be fool enough to keep me – that if I went he'd find a handsomer woman within a week!"

"Well, I'll see him, darling," said Ordway. "Sit here with your mother, and have a good cry and talk things over."

As he spoke he opened the door and went out into the hall, where he got into his overcoat.

"Remember last night and don't say too much, Daniel," urged Lydia in a warning whisper, coming after him, "she is quite hysterical now and does not realise what she is saying."

"Oh, I'll remember," he returned, and a minute later, he closed the front door behind him.

On his way to the Heath house in Henry Street, he planned dispassionately his part in the coming interview, and he resolved that he would state Alice's position with as little show of feeling as it was possible for him to express. He would tell Heath candidly that, with his consent, Alice should never return to him, but he would say this in a perfectly quiet and inoffensive manner. If there was to be a scene, he concluded calmly, it should be made entirely by Geoffrey. Then, as he went on, he said to himself, that he had grown tired and old, and that he lacked now the decision which should carry one triumphantly over a step like this. Even his anger against Alice's husband had given way to a dragging weariness, which seemed to hold him back as he ascended the brown-stone steps and laid his hand on the door bell. When the door was opened, and he followed the servant through the long hall, ornamented by marble statues, to the smoking-room at the end, he was conscious again of that sense of utter incapacity which had been bred in him by his life in Botetourt.

Geoffrey, after a full dinner, was lounging, with a cigar and a decanter of brandy, over a wood fire, and as his visitor entered he rose from his chair with a lazy shake of his whole person.

"I don't believe I've ever met you before, Mr. Ordway," he remarked, as he held out his hand, "though I've known you by sight for several years. Won't you sit down?" With a single gesture he motioned to a chair and indicated the cigars and the brandy on a little table at his right hand.

At his first glance Ordway had observed that he had been in a rage or drinking heavily – probably both; and he was seized by a sudden terror at the thought that Alice had been so lately at the mercy of this large red and black male animal. Yet, in spite of the disgust with which the man inspired him, he was forced to admit that as far as a mere physical specimen went, he had rarely seen his equal. His body was superbly built, and but for his sullen and brutal expression, his face would have been remarkable for its masculine beauty.

"No, I won't sit down, thank you," replied Ordway, after a short pause. "What I have to say can be said better standing, I think."

"Then fire away!" returned Geoffrey, with a coarse laugh. "It's about Alice, I suppose, and it's most likely some darn rot she's sent you with."

"It's probably less rot than you imagine. I have taken it upon myself to forbid her returning to you. Your treatment of her has made it impossible that she should remain in your house."

"Well, I've treated her a damned sight better than she deserved," rejoined Geoffrey, scowling, while his face, inflamed by the brandy he had drunk, burned to a dull red; "it isn't her fault, I can tell you, that she hasn't put me into the poorhouse in six months."

"I admit that she has been very extravagant, and so does she."

"Extravagant? So that is what you call it, is it? Well, she spent more in three weeks in Paris than my father did in his whole lifetime. I paid out a hundred thousand for her, and even then I could hardly get her away. But I won't pay the bills any longer, I've told her that. They may go into court about it and get their money however they can."

"In the future there will be no question of that."

"You think so, do you? Now I'll bet you whatever you please that she's back here in this house again before the week is up. She knows on which side her bread is buttered, and she won't stay in that dull old place, not for all you're worth."

"She shall never return to you with my consent."

"Did she wait for that to marry me?" demanded Geoffrey, laughing uproariously at his wit, "though I can tell you now, that it makes precious little difference to me whether she comes or stays."

"She shall never do it," said Ordway, losing his temper. Then as he uttered the words, he remembered Lydia's warning and added more quietly, "she shall never do it if I can help it."

"It makes precious little difference to me," repeated Geoffrey, "but she'll be a blamed fool if she doesn't, and for all her foolishness, she isn't so big a fool as you think her."

"She has been wrong in her extravagance, as I said before, but she is very young, and her childishness is no excuse for your brutality."

Rage, or the brandy, or both together, flamed up hotly in Geoffrey's face.

"I'd like to know what right you have to talk about brutality?" he sneered.

"I've the right of any man to keep another from ill-treating his daughter."

"Well, you're a nice one with your history to put on these highfaluting, righteous airs, aren't you?"

For an instant the unutterable disgust in Ordway's mind was like physical nausea. What use was it, after all, to bandy speeches, he questioned, with a mere drunken animal? His revulsion of feeling had moved him to take a step toward the door, when the sound of the words Geoffrey uttered caused him to stop abruptly and stand listening.

"Much good you'll do her when she hears about that woman you've been keeping down at Tappahannock. As if I didn't know that you'd been running back there again after that Brooke girl – "

The words were choked back in his throat, for before they had passed his lips Ordway had swung quickly round and struck him full in the mouth.

With the blow it seemed to Daniel that all the violence in his nature was loosened. A sensation that was like the joy of health, of youth, of manhood, rushed through his veins, and in the single exalted instant when he looked down on Geoffrey's prostrate figure, he felt himself to be not only triumphant, but immortal. All that his years of self-sacrifice had not done for him was accomplished by that explosive rush of energy through his arm.

There was blood on his hand and as he glanced down, he saw that Geoffrey, with a bleeding mouth, was struggling, dazed and half drunk, to his feet. Ordway looked at him and laughed – the laugh of the boastful and victorious brute. Then turning quickly, he took up his hat and went out of the house and down into the street.

The physical exhilaration produced by the muscular effort was still tingling through his body, and while it lasted he felt younger, stronger, and possessed of a courage that was almost sublime. When he reached home and entered the library where Lydia and Alice were sitting together, there was a boyish lightness and confidence in his step.

"Oh, papa!" cried Alice, standing up, "tell me about it. What did he do?"

Ordway laughed again, the same laugh with which he had looked down on Geoffrey lying half stunned at his feet.

"I didn't wait to see," he answered, "but I rather think he got up off the floor."

"You mean you knocked him down?" asked Lydia, in an astonishment that left her breathless.

"I cut his mouth, I'm sure," he replied, wiping his hand from which the blood ran, "and I hope I knocked out one or two of his teeth."

Then the exhilaration faded as quickly as it had come, for as Lydia looked up at him, while he stood there wiping the blood from his bruised knuckles, he saw, for the first time since his return to Botetourt, that there was admiration in her eyes. So it was the brute, after all, and not the spirit that had triumphed over her.

CHAPTER V

The House of Dreams

From that night there was a new element in Lydia's relation to him, an increased consideration, almost a deference, as if, for the first time, he had shown himself capable of commanding her respect. This change, which would have pleased him, doubtless, twenty years before, had only the effect now of adding to his depression, for he saw in it a tribute from his wife not to his higher, but to his lower nature. All his patient ideals, all his daily self-sacrifice, had not touched her as had that one instant's violence; and it occurred to him, with a growing recognition of the hopeless inconsistency of life, that if he had treated her with less delicacy, less generosity, if he had walked roughshod over her feminine scruples, instead of yielding to them, she might have entertained for him by this time quite a wholesome wifely regard. Then the mere possibility disgusted him, and he saw that to have compromised with her upon any lower plane would have been always morally repugnant to him. After all, the dominion of the brute was not what he was seeking.

On the morning after his scene with Geoffrey, Alice came to him and begged for the minutest particulars of the quarrel. She wanted to know how it had begun? If Geoffrey had been really horrible? And if he had noticed the new bronze dragon she had bought for the hall? Upon his replying that he had not, she seemed disappointed, he thought, for a minute.

"It's very fine," she said, "I bought it from what's-his-name, that famous man in Paris? If I ever have money enough I shall get the match to it, so there'll be the pair of them." Then seeing his look of astonishment, she hastened to correct the impression she had made. "Of course, I mean that I'd like to have done it, if I had been going to live there."

"It would take more than a bronze dragon, or a pair of them, to make that house a home, dear," was his only comment.

"But it's very handsome," she remarked after a moment, "everything in it is so much more costly than the things here." He made no rejoinder, and she added with vehemence, "but of course, I wouldn't go back, not even if it were a palace!"

Then a charming merriment seized her, and she clung to him and kissed him and called him a dozen silly pet names. "No, she won't ever, ever play in that horrid old house again," she sang gaily between her kisses.

For several days these exuberant spirits lasted, and then he prepared himself to meet the inevitable reaction. Her looks drooped, she lost her colour and grew obviously bored, and in the end she complained openly that there was nothing for her to do in the house, and that she couldn't go out of doors because she hadn't the proper clothes. To his reminder that it was she herself who had prevented his sending for her trunks, she replied that there was plenty of time, and that "besides nobody could pack them unless she was there to overlook it."

"If anybody is obliged to go back there, for heaven's sake, let me be the one," he urged desperately at last.

"To knock out more of poor Geoffrey's teeth? Oh, you naughty, naughty, papa!" – she cried, lifting a reproving finger. The next instant her laughter bubbled out at the delightful picture of "papa in the midst of her Paris gowns. I'd be so afraid you'd roll up Geoffrey in my precious laces," she protested, half seriously.

For a week nothing more was said on the subject, and then she remarked irritably that her room was cold and she hadn't her quilted silk dressing-gown. When he asked her to ride with him, she declared that her old habit was too tight for her and her new one was at the other house. When he suggested driving instead, she replied that she hadn't her fur coat and she would certainly freeze without it. At last one bright, cold day, when he came up to luncheon, Lydia told him, with her strange calmness, that Alice had gone back to her husband.

"I knew it would come in time," she said, and he bowed again before her unerring prescience.

"Do you mean to tell me that she's willing to put up with Heath for the sake of a little extra luxury?" he demanded.

"Oh, that's a part of it. She likes the newness of the house and the air of costliness about it, but most of all, she feels that she could never settle down to our monotonous way of living. Geoffrey promised her to take her to Europe again in the summer and I think she began to grow restless when it appeared that she might have to give it up."

"But one of us could have taken her to Europe, if that's all she wanted. You could have gone with her."

"Not in Alice's way, we could never have afforded it. She told me this when I offered to go with her if she would definitely separate from Geoffrey."

"Then you didn't want her to go back? You didn't encourage it?"

"I encouraged her to behave with decency – and this isn't decent."

"No, I admit that. It decidedly is not."

"Yet we have no assurance that she won't fly in upon us at dinner to-night, with all the servants about," she reflected mournfully.

His awful levity broke out as it always did whenever she invoked the sanctity of convention.

"In that case hadn't we better serve ourselves until she has made up her mind?" he inquired.

But the submission of the martyr is proof even against caustic wit, and she looked at him, after a minute, with a smile of infinite patience.

"For myself I can bear anything," she answered, "but I feel that for her it is shocking to make things so public."

It was shocking. In spite of his flippancy he felt the vulgarity of it as acutely as she felt it; and he was conscious of something closely akin to relief, when Richard Ordway dropped in after dinner to tell them that Alice and Geoffrey had come to a complete reconciliation.

"But will it last?" Lydia questioned, in an uneasy voice.

"We'll hope so at all events," replied the old man, "they appeared certainly to be very friendly when I came away. Whatever happens it is surely to Alice's interest that she should be kept out of a public scandal."

They were still discussing the matter, after Richard had gone, when the girl herself ran in, bringing Geoffrey, and fairly brilliant with life and spirits.

"We've decided to forget everything disagreeable," she said, "we're going to begin over again and be nice and jolly, and if I don't spend too much money, we are going to Egypt in April."

"If you're happy, then I'm satisfied," returned Ordway, and he held out his hand to Geoffrey by way of apology.

To do the young man justice, he appeared to cherish no resentment for the blow, though he still bore a scar on his upper lip. He looked heavy and handsome, and rather amiable in a dull way, and the one discovery Daniel made about him was that he entertained a profound admiration for Richard Ordway. Still, when everybody in Botetourt shared his sentiment, this was hardly deserving of notice.

As the weeks went on it looked as if peace were really restored, and even Lydia's face lost its anxious foreboding, when she gazed on the assembled family at Thanksgiving. Dick had grown into a quiet, distinguished looking young fellow, more than ever like his Uncle Richard, and it was touching to watch his devotion to his delicate mother. At least Lydia possessed one enduring consolation in life, Ordway reflected, with a rush of gratitude.

In the afternoon Alice drove with him out into the country, along the pale brown November roads, and he felt, while he sat beside her, with her hand clasped tightly in his under the fur robe, that she was again the daughter of his dreams, who had flown to his arms in the terrible day of his homecoming. She was in one of her rare moods of seriousness, and when she lifted her eyes to his, it seemed to him that they held a new softness, a deeper blueness. Something in her face brought back to him the memory of Emily as she had looked down at him when he knelt before her; and again he was aware of some subtle link which bound together in his thoughts the two women whom he loved.

"There's something I've wanted to tell you, papa, first of all," said Alice, pressing his hand, "I want you to know it before anybody else because you've always loved me and stood by me from the beginning. Now shut your eyes while I tell you, and hold fast to my hand. O papa, there's to be really and truly a baby in the spring, and even if it's a boy – I hope it will be a girl – you'll promise to love it and be good to it, won't you?"

"Love your child? Alice, my darling!" he cried, and his voice broke.

She raised her hand to his cheek with a little caressing gesture, which had always been characteristic of her, and as he opened his eyes upon her, her beauty shone, he thought, with a light that blinded him.

"I hope it will be a little girl with blue eyes and fair hair like mamma's," she resumed softly. "It will be better than playing with dolls, won't it? I always loved dolls, you know. Do you remember the big wax doll you gave me when I was six years old, and how her voice got out of order and she used to crow instead of talking? Well, I kept her for years and years, and even after I was a big girl, and wore long dresses, and did up my hair, I used to take her out sometimes and put on her clothes. Only I was ashamed of it and used to lock the door so no one could see me. But this little girl will be real, you know, and that's ever so much more fun, isn't it? And you shall help teach her to walk, and to ride when she's big enough; and I'll dress her in the loveliest dresses, with French embroidered ruffles, and a little blue bonnet with bunches of feathers, like one in Paris. Only she can't wear that until she's five years old, can she?"

"And now you will have something to think of, Alice, you will be bored no longer?"

"I shall enjoy buying the little things so much, but it's too soon yet to plan about them. Papa, do you think Geoffrey will fuss about money when he hears this?"

"I hope not, dear, but you must be careful. The baby won't need to be extravagant, just at first."

"But she must have pretty clothes, of course, papa. It wouldn't be kind to the little thing to make her look ugly, would it?"

"Are simple things always ugly?"

"Oh, but they cost just as much if they're fine – and I had beautiful clothes when I came. Mamma has told me about them."

She ran on breathlessly, radiant with the promise of motherhood, dwelling in fancy upon the small blond ideal her imagination had conjured into life.

It was dark when they returned to town, and when Daniel entered his door, after leaving Alice in Henry Street, he found that the lamps were already lit in the library. As he passed up the staircase, he glanced into the room, and saw that Lydia and Dick were sitting together before the fire, the boy resting his head on her knees, while her fragile hand played caressingly with his hair. They did not look up at his footsteps, and his heart was so warm with happiness that even the picture of mother and son in the firelit room appeared dim beside it.

When he opened his door he found a bright fire in his grate, and throwing off his coat, he sat down in an easy chair with his eyes on the glowing coals. The beneficent vision that he had brought home with him was reflected now in the red heart of the fire, and while he gazed on it, he told himself that the years of his loneliness, and his inner impoverishment, were ended forever. The path of age showed to him no longer as hard and destitute, but as a peaceful road along which he might travel hopefully with young feet to keep him company. With a longing, which no excess of the imagination could exhaust, he saw Alice's child as she had seen it in her maternal rapture – as something immortally young and fair and innocent. He thought of the moment so long ago, when they had first placed Alice in his arms, and it seemed to him that this unborn child was only a renewal of the one he had held that day – that he would reach out his arms to it with that same half human, half mystic passion. Even to-day he could almost feel the soft pressure of her little body, and he hardly knew whether it was the body of Alice or of her child. Then suddenly it seemed to him that the reality faded from his consciousness and the dream began, for while he sat there he heard the patter of the little feet across his floor, and felt the little hands creep softly over his lips and brow. Oh, the little hands that would bring healing and love in their touch!

And he understood as he looked forward now into the dreaded future, that the age to which he was travelling was only an immortal youth.

CHAPTER VI

The Ultimate Choice

ON Christmas Eve a heavy snowstorm set in, and as there was but little work in the office that day, he took a long walk into the country before going home to luncheon. By the time he came back to town the ground was already covered with snow, which was blown by a high wind into deep drifts against the houses. Through the thick, whirling flakes the poplars stood out like white ghosts of trees, each branch outlined in a delicate tracery, and where the skeletons of last spring's flowers still clung to the boughs, the tiny cups were crowned with clusters of frozen blossoms.