The Woman Who Vowed Part 27

That evening Chairo left us to dine with a few of his followers, who, feeling the situation desperate, advised a conference with Peleas, Masters, and Arkles, with a view to suggesting an amendment to the amnesty bill that would secure a majority without going to the extremes demanded by the irreconcilables.

CHAPTER XXVIII

LYDIA TO THE RESCUE

Political offenses, such as the one with which Chairo was charged, were punished not by confinement in farm colonies but by imprisonment in a fortress, and had this disadvantage that, whereas the term in the former case could be diminished by good conduct, in the latter case it was fixed for a number of years and was generally of inordinate length. This was the remnant of a code prepared at a time when social crimes were not much feared, whereas political crimes were regarded as of utmost danger to the commonwealth. The maximum term of imprisonment was fifty years, and this for Chairo would be practically equivalent to imprisonment for life. The irreconcilables clamored for nothing less than this. It was no small credit to Chairo's character in the community that with so heavy a sentence impending over him, it occurred to no one--not even his worst enemies--to ask that special precautions be made to prevent his escape.

That he would keep his parole was never for a moment doubted.

The difficulty attending any conclusion arose from the heterogeneous and unorganized character of the irreconcilables; they were split up into a number of factions, agreed only upon one thing--the "full measure of the law" for Chairo; in every other respect they differed, some demanding what they called justice, on grounds which they could not explain, but the reasonableness of which they made a matter of conscience and morality; others declared themselves to be vindicating "principles"

which, upon examination, turned out to be pure a.s.sumptions built upon prejudice and temper; others professed to be acting as champions of the cult, too helpless to be able to defend itself, and although willing and anxious to discuss and explain their att.i.tude, could never be brought to any other conclusion than the "full measure of the law"--a phrase which had obtained as complete a mastery over them as the "sleep" of a hypnotizing doctor over a hypnotic subject.

The third day of the session opened in as great uncertainty as before.

Peleas had not spoken, and was unwilling to speak, until some amendment could be hit upon which had a reasonable chance of uniting a majority.

The debate was, therefore, left almost entirely in the hands of the irreconcilables, who vied with one another in the application to Chairo of epithets that were picturesque and vituperative. Toward the close of the session, however, an incident occurred that was unexpected and startling: Arkles arose and asked that the courtesy of the floor be extended to Lydia Second. Chairo half rose in protest, but Masters, who sat beside him, whispered a word in his ear and he resumed his seat, burying his chin in his breast. A loud murmur of excitement filled the chamber; the motion was put, and it was carried without a dissenting voice; the house sat wrapt in silence awaiting the entrance of the speaker. Soon Irene was seen coming down a side aisle, and by her side, shrouded by a veil, a figure, which all immediately recognized as Lydia's. When they reached a point half way down the aisle they paused; Irene said a word to Lydia, and Lydia removed her veil.

I had not seen her since we parted at Tyringham; as I looked at her preparing herself to speak I experienced a conflict of emotion that brought beads of perspiration to my forehead; my love for her now kindled into admiration, the hopelessness of it, the fate of Chairo, an undoubted admiration for him and yet a jealousy of him that tortured me, willingness, nay, almost a burning desire to effect Lydia's happiness at any cost--all these things struggled within me for mastery, as with compressed lips I sat waiting to hear her speak. She was obviously suffering from an emotion that made her eyes water and her throat dry; she lifted her hand to her bosom once or twice in futile agitation, but mastering herself, she stiffened, and, at last, as it were by a supreme effort, lifting her head high, began:

"I do not presume, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the legislature, to present myself before you trusting in my strength. I depend rather on my weakness, for I am a woman, and because I am a woman who has faltered"--she corrected herself--"who has suffered, you will hear me."

She spoke very low but very distinctly, and there was in the chamber a silence so complete that she could be heard at the utmost corner of it.

"For him who has joined with me in this misadventure I do not presume to speak at all. He is a man, and among men, able to hold his own. But you cannot strike him without striking me, and it is for myself I plead."

Chairo's chin buried itself deeper in his breast, but he controlled the impulse to protest. Indeed, there was a note in Lydia's voice that brought a lump into his throat. He could not have protested had he dared.

Irene had sent for a gla.s.s of water; Lydia partook of it, and then, raising her voice, proceeded:

"Ever since I was restored to my home I have kept silence, because I felt--and I was so advised--that a moment would come when I should be better understood than at a time when the public mind was inflamed by revolution and bloodshed. As to these things, I have cruelly felt the extent to which I was the occasion of them, but I ask you to consider whether indeed I was the cause. And I ask you, too, not to confuse the question raised by the cult of Demeter with those other questions for which the rebels stood. In these last I have had no share and to them I shall not again refer. They have no part in the question you have to decide. To give them a part would be to do me a great wrong.

"And as regards the cult of Demeter, there is no devouter daughter of the cult than I; and that I should stand to-day, arrayed in the eyes of some of you against the cult, chokes my utterance and fills my eyes with tears. Nor should I have had strength to plead my cause with you to-day had I not come to you leaning on one of Demeter's worthiest votaries."

Here Lydia put her hand on Irene's shoulder, and Irene looked into her face and smiled.

"For in my heart there is a reverence for Demeter so profound that when the mission was tendered to me, I felt that a cubit had been added to my stature; I felt a strength grow in me to make what sacrifice was needful, and as day pa.s.sed day the sacrifice grew less and my strength grew more.

"But oh, fellow-wors.h.i.+ppers of Demeter," and she looked here at the part of the hall where the irreconcilables had grouped themselves, "do not frown on me when I say that there was also in my heart another reverence, another strength, of which I was not sufficiently aware; and in your faith in the cult you serve, do not blind yourself to that other cult to which, whether we will or no, we are all--yes, all--subject. We may harden our hearts to it, we may bring it as a sacrifice upon your altar, but if it has once grown deep enough, it overpowers all the rest--I am not ashamed to say it here--before you who ask mercy for Chairo and you who ask for his destruction, I am not ashamed to publish it to all the world--stronger than reverence for Demeter, stronger than the unutterable honor of the Demetrian mission--is the love of a woman for a man."

She paused; there was no applause, but the breathless silence that reigned bore a higher tribute to the impression made than any spoken word or gesture.

"And when love came it brought with it a sense of duty to another, so that I no longer stood merely between Demeter and my love, I stood also between Demeter and Chairo"--a loud murmur of disapproval greeted these words. Lydia, however, went bravely on. "But I looked with suspicion upon an argument that so favored my own inclination, and believing duty to lie in resistance to inclination rather than in consent to it, I strangled my love, and with a pride in my own sacrifice that was false and bad I accepted the mission."

Again a murmur of disapproval filled the hall. This time Lydia acknowledged it by turning to the corner whence it came.

"Yes, I repeat it--with a pride in my own sacrifice that was false and bad--for it gave me strength to do a thing that was wrong! What is heroic in one is vanity in another. And I thank you for that expression of disapproval that reminds me to distinguish those to whom it is an ugly hypocrisy. There are women--and may their names be blessed--who, before their hearts have been kindled by love, bear within them a capacity for sacrifice and a longing for maternity which makes of them fitting subjects for the Demetrian mission; but when a woman has once harbored the young G.o.d Eros, when she has by implication, if not by express promise, sanctioned the harboring of him in another, then the strength that can disown her love and break that promise is drawn from a vanity that is foolish, or a conceit that is contemptible; and as I look back to the day when, after weeks of weakening struggle, I arose from the bed of torment strangely endowed with a strength that enabled me to make unmoved my final vows, I see that my strength came not from Demeter but from self-righteousness and self-conceit. And I make this bitter confession before you all that the fault may rest where it should, not upon you, priests and priestesses of Demeter"--and here she looked up at the gallery where they sat--"not upon him"--and she turned almost imperceptibly to Chairo--"but upon me."

Her voice sank as she said these words, and there broke from many of us a murmur of sympathy.

"But these things," she continued in a louder voice, "are of little importance by the side of what I have yet to say. Pardon me, if I have had to speak of myself; it is not often--and, indeed, it is distressful that so private a thing as this should become matter of public concern.

But you have to decide an issue in which the conduct of one least worthy of your attention has become set up, as it were, before you as the conduct of all my s.e.x. It is not I that am judged, but all who are unworthy of the mission--or shall I not rather say--unfitted for it. For though I am willing--nay, desire--to accept my full share of blame, yet am I not willing that my s.e.x shall in my person be judged less worthy than it is. Believe me, that n.o.ble as is the mission of Demeter, n.o.ble also is the love of a woman for a man, and though I bow my head as I confess my unfitness for the one, in vindication of the other I hold my head erect."

She straightened herself at these words, and her stature helped to give to this vindication both dignity and strength. There was something splendid in the gesture, the emphasis, and the inflection with which these words were said. For the first time Lydia's speech was here interrupted by applause; it began far away from her and was soon caught up by others, it swelled through the building, and feelings long pent up in hushed attention to her now found relief in an expression of triumphant approval; a few in their excitement rose to their feet, then more, till all, except Chairo, who remained resolutely seated, stood wildly gesticulating their admiration for the girl who had the courage to face them in vindication of a love upon which some had wished to throw disgrace, but which now she held up to universal honor.

The applause lasted several minutes; if it died away in one corner it was vociferously renewed in another, and when at last, out of very weariness, it came to an end, Lydia resumed:

"But all I have said is but a preface to what I have still to say: I have spoken to you of myself, but what shall I say to you of Chairo? I have told you of a duty I felt to him, but to every duty is there not a corresponding right? And if Chairo had rights does he not stand, too, for the rights of all his s.e.x?"

Once more the chamber rang with renewed applause, and Chairo for the first time raised his head and looked at Lydia. Now at last she had lifted the subject to a level which eliminated him. He was no longer the issue; she was speaking for all men, for the rights universal of manhood, which the cult had, in his case, ignored and must at last be vindicated.

"I have told you that by implication, if not by express words, Chairo had reason to know I loved him; was he to stand by and see the rights I had given him denied, rights for which he has stood, not for himself alone, but for all men long before his own became involved? He stands charged here with sacrilege and with violence. Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the legislature, so far as I am concerned, he is guilty of neither the one nor the other."

A deep murmur pa.s.sed through the chamber as Lydia's voice impressively lowered on these final words.

"Had the woman he s.n.a.t.c.hed from Demeter's sanctuary been indeed fitted for it, then he would have been guilty of both. But he knew I was not fitted for it, he knew that I belonged to him, he knew that once I felt his presence in my room I would consent--_and I consented_."

Chairo, whose eyes had remained riveted on Lydia ever since he raised them, now lowered them again, and he covered his face with his hands.

That so sacred a thing to him as Lydia and his love for her should be dragged into a public discussion was cruel to him, but that the story should be told as Lydia told it, filled his heart with a mixture of triumph and bitterness he could not endure to show.

"And so, Mr. Speaker, with my confession of consent, the charge against Chairo of sacrilege and violence falls to the ground. As to those who against his bidding sought to rescue their leader from his bonds I have this to say: When there shall have disappeared from the hearts of men the loyalty, devotion, and sacrifice that prompted an act of violence forever to be deplored, then let this world and all that is in it disappear from the constellations of G.o.d. They erred, but they erred in a cause they believed to be righteous, and I protest--I plead the state is strong enough to grant them pardon.

"Every inst.i.tution, human and divine, has to pay a price for the blessings it bestows--_dura lex sed lex_. Eventually, perhaps, wisdom may so increase among us that the price all pay shall grow less and less; eventually, the mission may be neither offered to nor accepted by those unfit for it; perhaps, indeed, the events of last month may contribute to this wisdom, but to-day, O priests and priestesses of Demeter, join with me in the prayer to our legislators that they do not, by visiting on these men too severely the consequences of their errors, bring discredit upon a cult so precious and so n.o.ble as that of the G.o.ddess you serve. Great is Demeter! But great also is Eros. May wisdom so guide your counsels that Eros, no longer tempted to destroy the altars of Demeter, may strengthen them and build them up, and so, through continence and sacrifice, remain for us as beautiful as he is strong!"

Lydia bowed her head over these words and gave her hand to Irene. We all sat motionless; not a sound was heard as they slowly turned and proceeded to leave the chamber. Then, with one accord, we rose, and in a breathless silence the two women pa.s.sed out.

We resumed our seats, and for some minutes no one spoke. At last Arkles moved that, in view of the remarkable and touching words they had just heard, the joint session adjourn for the day. "For," he added, "neither I, nor apparently any of my colleagues, are able or willing by any word of our own to efface or modify the impression they have left upon us."

"You have heard the motion," said the speaker. "In the absence of a dissenting voice the session will adjourn for the day." Not a voice was heard; we rose and left the chamber in silence.

CONCLUSION

My narrative has now come to a close: an amnesty bill was pa.s.sed that included every person charged, except Neaera, and deprived Chairo of his political rights until the legislature should by a joint resolution restore them; the editor arrested for libel was found guilty and committed to a penal colony.

Lydia married Chairo. And Anna of Ann did not visit on Ariston his indifference too heavily, but her nuptials were darkened by the absence of Harmes. Out of a bold and crooked game Neaera had secured this one small satisfaction.