The Law of the Land, Emerson Hough [best beach reads of all time TXT] 📗

As Colonel Blount passed from the gallery into the house he came under the gaze of a close observer. Mrs. Ellison, for reasons of her own watchful and suspicious, had heard these agitated voices on the gallery, and, had it been possible without detection, would not have been in the least above eavesdropping. This being impossible, she was forced to draw her own conclusions, based in part upon her own suspicions. The droop of this man’s shoulders, the drawn look of his face, spoke plainly enough for her. Hardly had the sound of his footsteps died away before she was out of the door of her room and by the side of Miss Lady, who still sat, pensive and downcast, in her rocking-chair on the gallery.

Miss Lady was not prepared for the spectacle which thus met her gaze, this woman with clenched hands and distorted face, and attitude which spoke only of antagonism and threat. There came a swift catch at her heart, for this was the woman to whom of natural right she should now have fled in search of consolation. It seemed to her now as though all her world had known a sudden change. It was as when some tender creature, fresh risen from the earth, ventures into the strange, new world of the air, to flutter its brief day. Eternity seems to stretch before it, an eternity of joy hinted in the first glance at this new universe which it attains. Yet comes the sun, the sudden, blighting sun, the same influence which has broken the brooding envelope of another world and brought this gentle being into its new life, and this cruel sun withers at once the tender creature in all its hope and youthfulness and beauty, ending its bright day ere it as yet is noon. Thus seemed the universe to Miss Lady, no longer young, care-free, joyous, but now suddenly grown old. One look, one sudden flash of her inner comprehension, and she knew it to be for ever established that this woman, her mother, was her mother no more! Why, she knew not, yet this was sure, she was not her mother, but her enemy. How dubiously swam all the world about poor Miss Lady at that instant! She knew, even before the enraged woman at her side had formulated her emotion into speech.

“So now, you treacherous little cat,” said Mrs. Ellison, between her shut teeth, “you’ve been at work, have you? Oh, I might have known it all along. You’ve been trying to undermine me, have you? Why, do you think I’ll let a little minx, a little half-baked brat like you, keep me out of getting the man I want? I’ll show you, Miss Lady girl!”

“Stop! Wait! What are you saying?” cried Miss Lady.

“You’ll listen to what I am saying,” cried Mrs. Ellison. “You’ve been leading him on, and now you presume to reject him—to reject the roof over your head and the bread in your mouth. Why, I never thought of him seriously for you! You’ve ruined us both in every way, yourself and me. Why, can’t you see that if we stayed here he had to be for one or the other of us? And could you not know that I wanted him for myself? Oh, don’t say ‘wait’—don’t speak to me! I know it all as well as if I had seen it. Now, you’ve got to walk, that’s all.”

“Oh, mamma, mamma,” cried Miss Lady, “do not!”

“‘Oh, mamma, mamma!’” mocked the other; “stop your tongue, girl, and don’t you dare to call me ‘mamma’ again. I am not your mother, and never was!”

Miss Lady gasped and went pale, but the cruel voice went on. “You don’t know what you are, or who you are. You’re nothing, you’re nobody! You had no chance except what I could give you, and you’ll never know now what a chance that was! I would have made you, girl. I would have done something with you, something for us both—but not now, ah, no, not now! You, to cut me out from the only man I ever really did want!”

Miss Lady rose, suddenly aflame with resentment, and feeling a courage which came she knew not whence.

“Madam,” said she, with calmness in spite of her anger, “I don’t know what you mean by this, but I am certain you are telling the truth. I will not talk to you at all. You degrade us both. As to Colonel Blount, I never said a word, I never did the first thing—I didn’t—I didn’t tell him anything—I could not help—”

“You could not help! You could not help! Of course you could not help! Neither can I help. But the main thing, after all, is that you have thrown away a home for both of us—”

“Madam,” said Miss Lady, now very quiet and calm, “there is only one thing certain in all the world to me at this moment, and that is that you do not love me, that you never will, and that I don’t feel toward you as I should. It is as you say. I could not stay here now; I shall have to go somewhere. Colonel Blount himself knows that. He said so.”

“Your mother!” resumed Mrs. Ellison, laughing shrilly, “I am about as much your mother”—she began, but caught herself up; “you are nobody, I say, and you’ll have to go take care of yourself as best you can. You don’t know what you’re throwing away, young woman. If you had left things to me there would have been none of this trouble. Now I shall have to go too, for I would die rather than stay here now. I hate that man!”

Miss Lady for a moment saw the naked soul of this woman whom she had called her mother, even as at that moment she saw her own soul; and between this which she saw and that which remained in her own bosom, she recognized no kinship. Problems there were for her, but this was not one of them.

“Madam,” said she at length, with a dignity beyond her years, “you are right. We must go, both of us; but we shall not go together.”

She turned to leave the gallery, and as she passed, gazed straight into the face of Mrs. Ellison. She saw there a swift change. The red rage, the anger, the jealousy were gone. Haggard, with eyes shifting as though in search of refuge, the woman showed now nothing so much as a pale terror! Miss Lady unconsciously followed her gaze. There, near a door at the farther end of the gallery, quiet, impassive, stood the girl Delphine. She did not speak, but gazed at Mrs. Ellison with eyes wherein there might have been seen a certain somber fire.

“I—I did not call, Delphine,” stammered Mrs. Ellison. “No, no, I did not call.”

Silent as before, Delphine turned back. With swift intuition Miss Lady caught the conviction that some relationship existed between these two which she herself did not understand. A sudden sense of insecurity possessed her, mingled with the reflection that the master of the Big House was ignorant of what arrested drama was here going on under his own roof. If she dared but tell the master what she suspected—ah! then perhaps this comfortable landscape, which but lately she had found monotonous, might again enfold her sweetly and safely; and never again would she call it aught but satisfying. Yet every instinct told her that to the master of the Big House she could go no more. Thus she pondered, and as she pondered her panic fear increased to a blind terror, overwhelming every other emotion. But one resolve remained—as soon as might be, she must fly, and find a hiding spot unknown to any of those who had been her associates in this place which for a time she had called home.