The Price She Paid Part 15

"So I thought. In fact he was buying ME nothing." And she went on to explain the general's system.

Her mother listened impatiently. She would have interrupted the long and angry recital many times had not Mildred insisted on a full hearing of her grievances, of the outrages that had been heaped upon her.

"And," she ended, "I suppose he's got it so arranged that he could have me arrested as a thief for taking the gold bag."

"Yes, it's terrible and all that," said her mother. "But I should have thought living with me here when Presbury was carrying on so dreadfully would have taught you something. Your case isn't an exception, any more than mine is. That's the sort of thing we women have to put up with from men, when we're in their power."

"Not I," said Mildred loftily.

"Yes, you," retorted her mother. "ANY woman. EVERY woman. Unless we have money of our own, we all have trouble with the men about money, sooner or later, in one way or another. And rich men!--why, it's notorious that they're always more or less mean about money. A wife has got to use tact. Why, I even had to use some tact with your father, and he was as generous a man as ever lived. Tact--that's a woman's whole life. You ought to have used tact. You'll go back to him and use tact."

"You don't know him, mamma!" cried Mildred. "He's a monster. He isn't human."

Mrs. Presbury drew a long face and said in a sad, soothing voice: "Yes, I know, dear. Men are very, very awful, in some ways, to a nice woman--with refined, ladylike instincts. It's a great shock to a pure--"

"Oh, gammon!" interrupted Mildred. "Don't be silly, mother. It isn't worth while for one woman to talk that kind of thing to another. I didn't fully know what I was doing when I married a man I didn't love--a man who was almost repulsive to me. But I knew enough. And I was getting along well enough, as any woman does, no matter what she may say--yes, you needn't look shocked, for that's hypocrisy, and I know it now-- But, as I was saying, I didn't begin to HATE him until he tried to make a slave of me. A slave!" she shuddered. "He's a monster!"

"A little tact, and you can get everything you want," insisted her mother.

"I tell you, you don't know the man," cried Mildred. "By tact I suppose you mean I could have sold things behind his back--and all that." She laughed. "He hasn't got any back. He had it so arranged that those cold, wicked eyes of his were always watching me. His second wife tried 'tact.' He caught her and drove her into the streets. I'd have had no chance to get a cent, and if I had gotten it I'd not have dared spend it. Do you imagine I ran away from him without having THOUGHT?

If there'd been any way of staying on, any way of making things even endurable, I'd have stayed."

"But you've got to go back, Milly," cried her mother, in tears.

"You mean that you can't support me?"

"And your brother Frank--" Mrs. Presbury's eyes flashed and her rather stout cheeks quivered. "I never thought I'd tell anybody, but I'll tell you. I never liked your brother Frank, and he never liked me.

That sounds dreadful, doesn't it?"

"No, mother dear," said Mildred gently. "I've learned that life isn't at all as--as everybody pretends."

"Indeed it isn't," said her mother. "Mothers always have favorites among their children, and very often a mother dislikes one of her children. Of course she hides her feeling and does her duty. But all the same she can't help the feeling that is down in her heart. I had a presentiment before he was born that I wouldn't like him, and sure enough, I didn't. And he didn't like me, or his father, or any of us."

"It would never occur to me to turn to him," said Mildred.

"Then you see that you've got to go back to the general. You can't get a divorce and alimony, for it was you that left him--and for no cause.

He was within his rights."

Mildred hesitated, confessed: "I had thought of going back to him and acting in such a way that he'd be glad to give me a divorce and an allowance."

"Yes, you might do that," said her mother. "A great many women do.

And, after all, haven't they a right to? A lady has got to have proper support, and is it just to ask her to live with a man she loathes?"

"I haven't thought of the right or wrong of it," said Mildred. "It looks to me as though right and wrong have very little to do with life as it's lived. They're for hypocrites--and fools."

"Mildred!" exclaimed her mother, deeply shocked.

Mildred was not a little shocked at her own thoughts as she inspected them in the full light into which speech had dragged them. "Anyhow,"

she went on, "I soon saw that such a plan was hopeless. He's not the man to be trifled with. Long before I could drive him to give me a living and let me go he would have driven me to flight or suicide."

Her mother had now had time to reflect upon Mildred's revelations.

Aided by the impressions she herself had gotten of the little general, she began to understand why her daughter had fled and why she would not return. She felt that the situation was one which time alone could solve. Said she: "Well, the best thing is for you to stay on here and wait until he makes some move."

"He'll have me watched--that's all he'll do," said Mildred. "When he gets ready he'll divorce me for deserting him."

Mrs. Presbury felt that she was right. But, concealing her despondency, she said: "All we can do is to wait and see. You must send for your luggage."

"I've nothing but a large bag," said Mildred. "I checked it in the parcel-room of the New York station."

Mrs. Presbury was overwhelmed. How account to Hanging Rock for the reappearance of a baggageless and husbandless bride? But she held up bravely. With a cheerfulness that did credit to her heart and showed how well she loved her daughter she said: "We must do the best we can.

We'll get up some story."

"No," said Mildred. "I'm going back to New York. You can tell people here what you please--that I've gone to rejoin him or to wait for him--any old thing."

"At least you'll wait and talk with Presbury," pleaded her mother. "He is VERY sensible."

"If he has anything to suggest," said Mildred, "he can write it. I'll send you my address."

"Milly," cried her mother, agitated to the depths, "where ARE you going? WHAT are you going to do? You look so strange--not at all like yourself."

"I'm going to a hotel to-night--probably to a boarding-house to-morrow," said Mildred. "In a few days I shall begin to--" she hesitated, decided against confidence--"begin to support myself at something or other."

"You must be crazy!" cried her mother. "You wouldn't do anything--and you couldn't."

"Let's not discuss it, mamma," said the girl tranquilly.

The mother looked at her with eyes full of the suspicion one lady cannot but have as to the projects of another lady in such circ.u.mstances.

"Mildred," she said pleadingly, "you must be careful. You'll find yourself involved in a dreadful scandal. I know you wouldn't DO anything WRONG no matter how you were driven. But--"

"I'll not do anything FOOLISH, mamma," interrupted the girl. "You are thinking about men, aren't you?"

"Men are always ready to destroy a woman," said her mother. "You must be careful--"

Mildred was laughing. "Oh, mamma," she cried, "do be sensible and do give me credit for a little sense. I've got a very clear idea of what a woman ought to do about men, and I a.s.sure you I'm not going to be FOOLISH. And you know a woman who isn't foolish can be trusted where a woman who's only protected by her principles would yield to the first temptation--or hunt round for a temptation."

"But you simply can't go to New York and live there all alone--and with nothing!"

"Can I stay here--for more than a few days?"

"But maybe, after a few days--" stammered her mother.

"You see, I've got to begin," said Mildred. "So why delay? I'd gain nothing. I'd simply start Hanging Rock to gossiping--and start Mr.

Presbury to acting like a fiend again."

Her mother refused to be convinced--was the firmer, perhaps, because she saw that Mildred was unshakable in her resolve to leave forthwith--the obviously sensible and less troublesome course. They employed the rest of Mildred's three hours' stop in arguing--when Mildred was not raging against the little general. Her mother was more than willing to a.s.sist her in this denunciation, but Mildred preferred to do it all herself. She had--perhaps by unconsciously absorbed training from her lawyer father--an unusual degree of ability to see both sides of a question. When she a.s.sailed her husband, she saw only her own side; but somehow when her mother railed and raved, she began to see another side--and the sight was not agreeable. She wished to feel that her husband was altogether in the wrong; she did not wish to have intruded upon her such facts as that she had sold herself to him--quite in the customary way of ladies, but nevertheless quite shamelessly--or that in strict justice she had done nothing for him to ent.i.tle her to a liberal money allowance or any allowance at all.

On the train, going back to New York, she admitted to herself that the repulsive little general had held strictly to the terms of the bargain--"but only a devil and one with not a single gentlemanly instinct would insist on such a bargain." It took away much of the shame, and all of the sting, of despising herself to feel that she was looking still lower when she turned to despising him.

To edge out the little general she began to think of her mother, but as she pa.s.sed in review what her mother had said and how she had said it she saw that for all the protests and arguings her mother was more than resigned to her departure. Mildred felt no bitterness; ever since she could remember her mother had been a s.h.i.+fter of responsibility. Still, to stare into the face of so disagreeable a fact as that one had no place on earth to go to, no one on earth to turn to, not even one's own mother--to stare on at that grimacing ugliness did not tend to cheerfulness. Mildred tried to think of the future--but how could she think of something that was nothing? She knew that she would go on, somehow, in some direction, but by no effort of her imagination could she picture it. She was so impressed by the necessity of considering the future that, to rouse herself, she tried to frighten herself with pictures of poverty and misery, of herself a derelict in the vast and cold desert of New York--perhaps in rags, hungry, ill, but all in vain.