University of Virginia Library

HENRY RANDOLPH shook his white head in an impatient gesture of dissent, and continued the discussions with a tenderly exasperated disregard of his cousin's scruples. "No, no, Alice, dear, this is no time to split hairs on what it's proper to speak about. It's infamous, I know, that I should be talking to you about it — nobody but a woman should; but, my dear child, how can I go and leave you so? And there's nobody else to speak. You might as well have no brother at all as one in the navy."

Mrs. Smithers's resigned, though unpeaceful, drooping attitude changed at this to a sudden nervous tension. She clasped and unclasped her thin hands, and spoke with a little rush of eagerness. "Ah! that's it, Cousin Henry. If I could only see my brother oftener, he might be able to do something." She relapsed again into listless despondency and continued dully: "But I don't suppose he would ever see anything at all the matter. My husband would be so different with him — you know how Will is to outsiders."

Randolph struck one hand into the other fiercely. "I do! I do! But what's the use of knowing him now, when you've been married ten years? Oh, if I'd only been here instead of on the other side of the globe when he first went to Washington and met you! Why, in Heaven's name, your parents —" He checked himself abruptly. "No, I can't blame them — poor, simple souls! They never had any worldly discernment. You're just like them."

Mrs. Smithers spoke in a naively solemn and hesitant way. "I hope it's not wicked, Cousin Henry, but I'm some-times glad they died so soon after my marriage — and that Tom is always away on his vessel. They couldn't help any, and I'm glad they don't have to suffer with me. I'm sorry it makes you so sad, cousin, on your first visit home in so many years. I'm afraid I've not been able to make you very happy."

At this Randolph roared out in indignant tenderness: "Good Heavens, Alice, don't be such a perfectly angelic idiot! If you endure it day after day, and have for ten years, and will as long as he or you live, don't you suppose a great hulking brute of a man like me can bear just to hear about it?"

The woman stirred uneasily in her chair. "Oh, please, dear cousin, don't speak so. I know I've done very wrong to let you know it all, but, seeing somebody who belongs to me after all this long, lonely life in New York — I'm afraid I haven't been very brave. I may not have so much more to bear than other women. Will, you know, is never brutally unkind, as so many husbands are — he has never struck me — we live in this expensive apartment; the children go to the best schools; I always have plenty of money to spend —"

She ended, quavering off into silence before the gathering wrath in the old man's eyes. He caught her up grimly: "Yes, you have plenty of money to spend, but I notice you do your own work most of the time. Your husband makes the apartment such a hell on earth with his devilish ingenuity that you couldn't keep a maid for a week — not for any price."

Alice interrupted him eagerly: "But, no — I have old Belle, the scrubwoman, you know. She's been with me almost ever since I was married — ever since we came to this house to live. She cleans the halls and stairways of this building, and so she's always on hand to come in

and help me out. She does all the rough work, and she won't let me do anything she can manage to prevent. She's so faithful and strong, and so kind to me, I forget all about her dreadful looks and profanity; and you couldn't drive her away. She never seems even to hear the things Will says to her."

The man's voice was bitter as he answered gloomily: "Actually the best friend — the only friend you are allowed to have is that frightful old harridan I see around here. I wonder you allow her to be with the children. I've never heard her speak without an oath, and little Jack is so —"

The mention of the child was like an electric shock to the mother. She sprang to her feet, and running to the tall old man, she caught one of his hands in hers with a gesture of distraction. "Oh, Cousin Henry, every time I hear Jack's name it makes me remember Will's threat to send him away. It's only because of that I spoke to you at all. I could not bear to have him go from me to a strange school. It would kill him."

The man suddenly gave a deep sob of pity, and gathered the frail, weeping woman into his arms. The silence which followed was broken by the entrance from the dining-room of a small woman of uncertain age, in dingy attire, carrying a pail of water in one bony hand and a large cleaning-cloth in the other. Without noticing the silent couple by the window, she dropped heavily to her knees and began to wipe up the edge of bare floor showing about the carpet. Randolph spoke, and she turned, startled, showing a face blurred and battered by hardship, but instantly alive in the keenest interest in the conversation.

"Alice, dear, unless you'll simply drop everything and come away with me to my home, I don't see any way out."

Mrs. Smithers recoiled at this and spoke with a passionate denial: "Why, how can you think of my doing that! How could I leave the children? They're all I live for — all that keeps me from going crazy!"

"You could bring the children along. They'd do well in Buenos Ayres."

"He'd come and take them from me. I've been all over that so many times with myself. And I've read that the children are never allowed to stay with the mother if she has run away. If I could only just snatch them up and hide from him — all of us; but he's so clever and I'm so stupid he'd find us out right away, and then I — he'd never let me see them again."

The old man drew a long breath, in an evident attempt to control himself, but vainly, for he broke out so fiercely that the scrubwoman sat up on her heels electrified. "Damnation! I beg your pardon, Allie, dear, but it just tears me in pieces to see you so. Confound the fellow! Why doesn't he just once go a step too far and give some ground for divorce? The hellish cunning of him! — to care so well for your outward wants and to murder inch by inch your self-respect, your love for your children, your pride — your very soul!"

He stopped her feeble gesture of protest with a furious torrent of words. "No, don't talk to me. I've seen it, and I know. Tom may be fooled by his smooth ways, but I've seen Mexican half-breeds before now. Sometimes I think it a mistake, his having had an American father — he's all greaser, every inch of him! I heard stories about him as a boy when I was in Bocas del Toro. When he was ten years old he was caught burning a cat over a slow fire — half-breed Injun and Spaniard, just like his mother. No, he gets his business sense from old Smithers, all right. And, good Lord! he gets those cold, pale eyes from him!"

He shuddered at the picture and went on in a mounting fury: "Allie, unless you give up the children or divide them, there's nothing anybody can do to help. It's incredible there should be such a situation in a civilized country, but it's so. The mere fact that you are tortured day by day in a thousand subtle ways no decent man could even think of is as nothing, because he doesn't strike you. A jury or judge would take no more cognizance of your mental agony than — your old scrubwoman!"

At this mention of her the woman started guiltily from her position of strained and intent eavesdropping and let her cloth fall into the pail with a

splash. The two turned, and, seeing her, lowered their voices, Mrs. Smithers trying in vain to repress her sobbing.

Randolph went over to her and laid one hand tenderly on her shoulder. Oh, I know you won't think of leaving the children. You couldn't, of course. But, Allie, do this for me, at least: promise me that the next time you see Tom — and may it be soon, or you won't keep your reason — tell him! Tell him what your married life is. He's your big brother, and I feel that he'll be able to help you somehow. Promise me that! Don't send me away quite hopeless over your future."

In a confused murmur of sobs and broken sentences the promise came: "Yes, yes, I promise. I somehow feel, too, that if he really knows — he can help — but there's so much even he can't know. Oh, I wish I had a mother! If my mother had only lived!"