A Reconstructed Marriage Part 56

"Then you expect me to give up my family, my business, my country--everything."

"I will have everything, or nothing."

She rose as she said these words, and stood looking into his face with eyes full of love and trouble.

"Then G.o.d help me, Theodora," he faltered, "for this hour I die to every hope of happiness in this life!" He lifted her hand, and his tears dropped on it as he kissed it. "Farewell! Farewell!"

He was standing before her the image of despairing Love, and she lifted her eyes, and they met the pa.s.sionate grief in his. She could not bear it. "Oh, Robert!" she sobbed, "Oh, Robert, I do love you. I have loved none but you. I never shall love any other." She laid her head against his shoulder, and he silently kissed her many times, and then went slowly away.

He went straight to his brother with his sorrow, and David listened in grave silence, until the story of the interview was over. Then he said softly:

"_Poor Theodora!_"

Robert was astonished, even hurt by the exclamation. "Why do you pity Theodora?" he asked. "It is I you ought to pity."

"You ought to have had pity on yourself, Robert. Of course, you are miserable, and you will be far more miserable. How could you bear to give your wife such a cowardly disappointment; how could you do it?"

"I do not understand you, David--cowardly----"

"Yes, that is the word for it. You have been persuading her for a month, that you loved her before, and above, all earthly things. As you noticed, she did not at first believe this, but I am sure the last two weeks she has taken all your protestations into her heart."

"I told her nothing but the truth."

"And as soon as you think she loves you----"

"She does love me--she says so."

"You take advantage of her love, and ask her to go back to a life that almost killed her, before she fled from it. Poor Theodora! And I call your act a selfish, cowardly one."

"What did you expect me to do?"

"To give up everything for her."

"To give up the works--the Campbell Iron Works! To give them up! Sell them perhaps at a loss! Did you expect I would do this?"

"I did. I supposed you wished her to be again your wife."

"You know I wished it."

"I do not believe you. I think as your holiday was over, you wished to back out of your promise, and you knew the easiest way to do so was to require her to go back to Glasgow."

"Back out! What do you mean, David?"

"Your mother orders you home, and rather than offend her, or meet her sarcasms, you ask Theodora to do what you well know she will never do.

Having taught her to love you again, you make her an offer that it is impossible for her to accept; then you leave her to suffer once more the pang of wrong and despairing love. Cowardly is too mild a word; your conduct is that of a scoundrel."

"My G.o.d, David, are you turning against me?"

"Robert, Robert! I am ashamed of you. Suppose Theodora went back to Glasgow with you, what would be her position, and what would people--especially women--say about it? She would be a wife who ran away from her husband, but whom her husband discovered, and brought back to her duties. Upon this text, what cutting, cruel speeches mother and all the women in your set would make. The position would be a triumph for you--some men would envy and admire you, all would praise you for standing up so persistently for the authority of the male. But poor Theodora, who would stand by her?"

"I would."

"And your defence of your wife would be counted as a thing chivalrous and magnanimous in you, but it would be disgraceful in her to require it. She, the poor innocent one, would get all the blame and the shame, you, the guilty one----"

"Stop, David! I never thought of her return in this light."

"I can imagine mother and the rest of the women chortling and glorying over the runaway wife brought back."

"I tell you, I would stand by her through thick and thin."

"But you could not prevent the women hounding her, and upon my honor, Robert, she would deserve it."

"No, David. She would not deserve it."

"I say she would."

"What for?"

"For coming back with you. Every woman with a particle of self-respect would feel that she had betrayed her s.e.x, and dishonored her wifehood, and they would despise, and speak ill of her for doing so. And she would deserve it."

"Then all this month you have been expecting me to come here to live?"

"There was no other manly and gentlemanly way out of your dilemma; and your coming at all authorized the expectation."

"The iron works are not all, David. Do you think I care nothing for my family, and my country?"

"Do you think you are the only person who cares for their family? What about Theodora's feelings? Her father gave up his ministry, and taking his wife and the savings of his whole life, he came here to the ends of the earth with his child, because you had treated her and her son cruelly. Now you ask her to leave them here, in a new country, where they have not one relative--in their old age----"

"I forgot their claim. I will pay all their expenses back to England."

"Mrs. Newton could not bear the journey back. Mr. Newton has lost all his interests in England; what money they have is invested here. Oh, if you do not instantly see their pitiful condition without their daughter, it is useless to explain it to you. Then there is their grandchild. He is the light of their life. If their grandchild was taken away, they would be bereft indeed."

"Their grandchild is my son. My claim is paramount. I must have my boy at all hazards. I want him educated in Scotland, and brought up a Scotchman, not an American. He will be heir to the works, and must understand the people, and the conditions he has to live with, and work with."

"You will never make a Scotchman of Davie. You will never get him out of this country, or this state. You will never make an iron-worker of David, he loves too well the free, and open-air life; and the blue skies, and suns.h.i.+ne."

"He is under authority, and must come."

"Under his mother's authority yet, and mind this, Robert, _you will not be permitted_ to take him from her; _not be permitted_, I say."

"My G.o.d, what am I to do?"

"Do right. There is no other way to be happy."

"There are two rights here, my mother and my sisters have claims as well as my wife and my son."

"Then for G.o.d's sake go to your mother and your sisters! Why did you come to me for advice, when you are still tied to your mother's ap.r.o.n-strings."