The Ancient Law

"Emily," he said, "tell me that you understand."

For a moment she gazed down on him in silence. Then, as he raised his eyes, she kissed him so softly that it seemed as if a spirit had touched his lips.

"I understand – forever," she answered.

At her words he straightened himself, as though a burden had fallen from him, and turning slowly away he went out of the house and back in the direction of Tappahannock.

CHAPTER III

Alice's Marriage

IT was after ten o'clock when he returned to Botetourt, and he found upon reaching home that Lydia had already gone to bed, though a bottle of cough syrup, placed conspicuously upon his bureau, bore mute witness to the continuance of her solicitude. After so marked a consideration it seemed to him only decent that he should swallow a portion of the liquid; and he was in the act of filling the tablespoon she had left, when a ring at the door caused him to start until the medicine spilled from his hand. A moment later the ring was repeated more violently, and as he was aware that the servants had already left the house, he threw on his coat, and lighting a candle, went hurriedly out into the hall and down the dark staircase. The sound of a hand beating on the panels of the door quickened his steps almost into a run, and he was hardly surprised, when he had withdrawn the bolts, to find Alice's face looking at him from the darkness outside. She was pale and thin, he saw at the first glance, and there was an angry look in her eyes, which appeared unnaturally large in their violent circles.

"I thought you would never open to me, papa," she said fretfully as she crossed the threshold. "Oh, I am so glad to see you again! Feel how cold my hands are, I am half frozen."

Taking her into his arms, he kissed her face passionately as it rested for an instant against his shoulder.

"Are you alone, Alice? Where is your husband?"

Without answering, she raised her head, shivering slightly, and then turning away, entered the library where a log fire was smouldering to ashes. As he threw on more wood, she came over to the hearth, and stretched out her hands to the warmth with a nervous gesture. Then the flame shot up and he saw that her beauty had gained rather than lost by the change in her features. She appeared taller, slenderer, more distinguished, and the vivid black and white of her colouring was intensified by the perfect simplicity of the light cloth gown and dark furs she wore.

"Oh, he's at home," she answered, breaking the long silence. "I mean he's in the house in Henry Street, but we had a quarrel an hour after we got back, so I put on my hat again and came away. I'm not going back – not unless he makes it bearable for me to live with him. He's such – such a brute that it's as much as one can do to put up with it, and it's been killing me by inches for the last months. I meant to write you about it, but somehow I couldn't, and yet I knew that I couldn't write at all without letting you see it. Oh, he's unbearable!" she exclaimed, with a tremor of disgust. "You will never know – you will never be able to imagine all that I've been through!"

"But is he unkind to you, Alice? Is he cruel?"

She bared her arm with a superb disdainful gesture, and he saw three rapidly discolouring bruises on her delicate flesh. The sight filled him with loathing rather than anger, and he caught her to him almost fiercely as if he would hold her not only against Geoffrey Heath, but against herself.

"You shall not go back to him," he said, "I will not permit it!"

"The worst part is," she went on vehemently, as if he had not spoken, "that it is about money – money – always money. He has millions, his lawyers told me so, and yet he makes me give an account to him of every penny that I spend. I married him because I thought I should be rich and free, but he's been hardly better than a miser since the day of the wedding. He wants me to dress like a dowdy, for all his wealth, and I can't buy a ring that he doesn't raise a terrible fuss. I hate him more and more every day I live, but it makes no difference to him as long as he has me around to look at whenever he pleases. I have to pay him back for every dollar that he gives me, and if I keep away from him and get cross, he holds back my allowance. Oh, it's a dog's life!" she exclaimed wildly, "and it is killing me!"

"You shan't bear it, Alice. As long as I'm alive you are safe with me."

"For a time I could endure it because of the travelling and the strange countries," she resumed, ignoring the tenderness in his voice, "but Geoffrey was so frightfully jealous that if I so much as spoke to a man, he immediately flew into a rage. He even made me leave the opera one night in Paris because a Russian Grand Duke in the next box looked at me so hard."

Throwing herself into a chair, she let her furs slip from her shoulders, and sat staring moodily into the fire. "I've sworn a hundred times that I'd leave him," she said, "and yet I've never done it until to-night."

While she talked on feverishly, he untied her veil, which she had tossed back, and taking off her hat, pressed her gently against the cushions he had placed in her chair.

"You look so tired, darling, you must rest," he said.

"Rest! You may as well tell me to sleep!" she exclaimed. Then her tone altered abruptly, and for the first time, she seemed able to penetrate beyond her own selfish absorption. "Oh, you poor papa, how very old you look!" she said.

Taking his head in her arms, she pressed it to her bosom and cried softly for a minute. "It's all my fault – everything is my fault, but I can't help it. I'm made that way." Then pushing him from her suddenly, she sprang to her feet and began walking up and down in her restless excited manner.

"Let me get you a glass of wine, Alice," he said, "you are trembling all over."

She shook her head. "It isn't that – it isn't that. It's the awful – awful money. If it wasn't for the money I could go on. Oh, I wish I'd never spent a single dollar! I wish I'd always gone in rags!"

Again he forced her back into her chair and again, after a minute of quiet, she rose to her feet and broke into hysterical sobs.

"All that I have is yours, Alice, you know that," he said in the effort to soothe her, "and, besides, your own property is hardly less than two hundred thousand."

"But Uncle Richard won't give it to me," she returned angrily. "I wrote and begged him on my knees and he still refused to let me have a penny more than my regular income. It's all tied up, he says, in investments, and that until I am twenty-one it must remain in his hands."

With a frantic movement, she reached for her muff, and drew from it a handful of crumpled papers, which she held out to him. "Geoffrey found these to-night and they brought on the quarrel," she said. "Yesterday he gave me this bracelet and he seems to think I could live on it for a month!" She stretched out her arm, as she spoke, and showed him a glittering circle of diamonds immediately below the blue finger marks. "There's a sable coat still that he doesn't know a thing of," she finished with a moan.

Bending under the lamp, he glanced hurriedly over the papers she had given him, and then rose to his feet still holding them in his hand.

"These alone come to twenty thousand dollars, Alice," he said with a gentle sternness.

"And there are others, too," she cried, making no effort to control her convulsive sobs. "There are others which I didn't dare even to let him see."

For a moment he let her weep without seeking to arrest her tears.

"Are you sure this will be a lesson to you?" he asked at last. "Will you be careful – very careful from this time?"

"Oh, I'll never spend a penny again. I'll stay in Botetourt forever," she promised desperately, eager to retrieve the immediate instant by the pledge of a more or less uncertain future.

"Then we must help you," he said. "Among us all – Uncle Richard, your mother and I – it will surely be possible."

Pacified at once by his assurance, she sat down again and dried her eyes in her muff.

"It seems a thousand years since I went away," she observed, glancing about her for the first time. "Nothing is changed and yet everything appears to be different."

"And are you different also?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm older and I've seen a great deal more," she responded, with a laugh which came almost as a shock to him after her recent tears, "but I still want to go everywhere and have everything just as I used to."

"But I thought you were determined to stay in Botetourt for the future?" he suggested.

"Well, so I am, I suppose," she returned dismally, "there's nothing else for me to do, is there?"

"Nothing that I see."

"Then I may as well make up my mind to be miserable forever. It's so frightfully gloomy in this old house, isn't it? How is mamma?"

"She's just as you left her, neither very well nor very sick."

"So it's exactly what it always was, I suppose, and will drive me to distraction in a few weeks. Is Dick away?"

"He's at college, and he's doing finely."

"Of course he is – that's why he's such a bore."

"Let Dick alone, Alice, and tell me about yourself. So you went to Europe immediately after I saw you in Washington?"

"Two days later. I was dreadfully seasick, and Geoffrey was as disagreeable as he could be, and made all kinds of horrid jokes about me."