"Sit down," he said, "I want to talk to you," and then he seated himself opposite her.

For awhile he did not speak; somehow the words he had come to say stuck in his throat; it was so cold-blooded for them, husband and wife, to sit there beside their own hearth and discuss their final separation.

A log, which had burned in half, fell and rolled forward on the marble hearth, sending little puffs of gray smoke into the room. He reached past her for the tongs and laid the log back in its place, and the little action seemed to seal his lips more closely. The tiny clock on the carved oak mantle chimed the hour in soft, low tones; he counted the strokes as they fell, one, two, and so on up to twelve. The winter sunshine streamed in between the parting of the curtains and made a glory of his wife's golden hair.

Ethel was the first to speak. "You got my letter?" she questioned, keeping her eyes fixed on the fire.

"Yes; that is the reason I'm here."

The broken log was blazing again quite merrily, the two ends far apart.

"Why not have written instead of coming?" she demanded, as one who protested against some grievous injury; "it would have been far pleasanter for both. There's no sense in our hara.s.sing ourselves with personal interviews."

"I preferred a personal interview."

Ethel lapsed into silence; the man was a hopeless brute, and it was useless to expect courtesy from him. She tapped her foot against the fender, and a look of obstinacy and temper disfigured the soft outlines of her face. The silence might remain unbroken until the crack of doom for any further effort she would make.

Thorne broke it himself. He was determined to carry his point, and in order to do so strove to establish ascendency over his wife from the start.

"What's the meaning of this new move, Ethel?" he demanded, authoritatively. "I want to understand the matter thoroughly. Why do you want a divorce?"

Mrs. Thorne turned her face toward him defiantly.

"Because I'm tired of my present life, and I want to change it. I'm sick of being pointed at, and whispered about, as a deserted wife--a woman whose husband never comes near her."

"Whose fault is that?" he retorted sharply; "this separation is none of my doing, and you know it. Bad as things had become, I was willing to worry along for the sake of respectability and the child; but you wouldn't have it so. You insisted on my leaving you--said the very sight of me made your chains more intolerable. Had I been a viper, you could scarcely have signified your desire for my absence in more unmeasured terms."

"I know I desired the separation," Mrs. Thorne replied calmly, "I desire it still. My life with you was miserable, and my wish to live apart has only increased in intensity. You never understood me."

Thorne might have retorted that the misunderstanding had been mutual, and also that _all_ the wretchedness had not fallen to her share; but he would not stoop to reproaches and vituperation. It was a natural peculiarity of her shallow nature to demand exhaustive comprehension for quite commonplace emotions.

"It's useless debating the past, Ethel. We've both been too much to blame to afford the luxury of stone-throwing. What we must consider now is the future. Is your mind quite made up? Are you determined on the divorce?"

"Quite determined. I've given the matter careful consideration, and am convinced that entire separation, legal as well as nominal, is absolutely necessary to my happiness."

"And your reasons?"

"Haven't I told you, Nesbit?" using his name, for the first time, in her anger. "Why do you insist on my repeating the same thing over and over, eternally? I'm sick of my life, and want to change it."

"But how?" he persisted. "Your life will be the same as now, and your position not so a.s.sured. The alimony allowed by law won't any thing like cover your present expenditures, and you can hardly expect me to be more generous than the law compels. The divorce can make little difference, save to diminish your income and deprive you of the protection of my name. You will not care to marry again, and the divorce will be a restricted one." Thorne was forcing his adversary's hand.

"Why will it be restricted?" she demanded, her color and her temper rising. "It shall _not_ be restricted, or hampered in any way, I tell you, Nesbit Thorne! Am I to be fettered, and bound, and trammeled by you forever? I will _not_ be. The divorce shall give me unlimited power to do what I please with my life. It shall make me as free as air--as free as I was before I married you."

"You would not wish to marry again?" he repeated.

"Why not?" rising to her feet and confronting him in angry excitement.

"Because, in that case, you would lose your child. I neither could nor would permit my son to be brought up in the house of a man who stood to him in the relationship you propose."

"You cannot take him from me," Mrs. Thorne retorted in defiant contradiction; her ideas of the power of men and lawyers hopelessly vague and bewildered. "No court on earth would take so small a child from his mother."

"Ah! you propose having the case come into court then? I misunderstood you. I thought you wished the affair managed quietly, to avoid publicity and comment. Of course, if the case comes into court, I shall contest it, and try to obtain possession of the boy, even for the time the law allows the mother, on the ground of being better able to support and educate him."

"I do not want the case to come into court here, Nesbit, and you know that I do not! Why do you delight in tormenting me?"

"Listen to me, Ethel. I've no wish to torment you. I simply wished to show you that I would abide by my rights, and that I have some power--all the power which money can give--on my side. Our marriage has been a miserable mistake from the first; we rushed into it without knowledge of each other's characters and dispositions, and, like most couples who take matrimony like a five-barred gate, we've come horribly to grief. I shall not stand in your way; if you wish to go, I shall not hinder you. This is what I propose: I'll help you in the matter, will take all the trouble, make the arrangements, bear all the expense.

It will be necessary for one of us to go to Illinois, and see these lawyers, if the divorce is to be gotten there. It may be necessary to undergo a short residence in the state in order to simulate citizenship, and make the divorce legal. I'll find out about this, and if it's necessary I will do it. After the divorce, I'll allow you the use of this house, and a sufficient income to support it; and also the custody of our son as long as you remain unmarried. In return, you must waive all right to the boy for the years you can legally claim him, and must bind yourself to surrender him to me, or any person I appoint, at least a month before any such marriage, and never, by word or act, to interfere in his future life, or any disposition I may think best to make of him. I should also strongly object to any future marriage taking place from my house, and should expect legal notice in ample time to make arrangements about the boy."

"Would you allow me to see the child whenever I wished?"

"Certainly. I'm no brute, and you are his mother. I shall only stipulate that the meetings take place in some other house than yours.

You are at liberty to visit him as often as you like, so long as you are faithful to our agreement and leave his mind unbiased. I will never mention you unkindly to him, and shall expect the same consideration from you. When he is old enough to judge between us, he will decide as he thinks right."

"Suppose you marry again, yourself. What about the child then? You are very hard and uncompromising in your dictation to me, Nesbit, but I can have feelings and scruples as well as you."

Thorne was startled. He considered that he was behaving well to his wife. He wanted to behave well to her; to let the past go generously, so that no shadow of reproach from it might fall upon the future. Her tart suggestion set the affair in a new light. It was an unpleasant light, and he turned his back on it, thinking that by so doing he disposed of it. There was the distance of the two poles between Pocahontas Mason and Cecil c.u.mberland. _He_ surely was the best judge of what would conduce to the welfare of his son.

"We were discussing the probability of your re-marriage, not mine," he responded coldly; "the reports in circulation have reached even me at last."

"What reports?" with defiant inquiry.

"That you are seeking freedom from your allegiance to one man, in order to swear fealty to another. That your vows to me are irksome because they prevent your taking other vows to Cecil c.u.mberland. I pa.s.s over the moral aspect of the affair; that must rest with your own conscience," (it is astonishing how exemplary Thorne felt in administering the rebuke); "that rests with your conscience," he repeated, "and with that I've nothing to do. The existence of such reports--which lays your conduct as a married woman open to censure--gives me the right to dictate the terms of our legal separation. I'm obliged to speak plainly, Ethel. You brought about the issue, and must abide by the consequences. I've stated my terms and it's for you to accept or decline them."

Thorne leaned back in his chair and watched the flames eat into the heart of the hickory logs. He had no doubt of her decision, but he awaited it courteously. The broken log had burned completely away, and a little heap of whity-gray ashes lay on each side of the hearth.

Ethel sat and pondered, weighing at full value all the advantages and disadvantages of the proposal and deciding that the former outweighed the latter. The object on which she was bent--the thing which appeared the greatest earthly good, was the divorce. At any cost, she would obtain _that_, and obtain it as quickly and quietly as possible; no talk, no exposure, no disagreeable comments. This was the main point, and to carry it, Ethel Thorne felt herself capable of more than the surrender of one small child. The separation at worst would only be partial; she could see the boy every day if she wished--even after her marriage with Cecil c.u.mberland. Nesbit had promised, and in all her experience of him she had never known him break his word. Then she could retain the little fellow until all these troublesome affairs should be settled, which would disarm criticism and save appearances, and appearances _must_ be preserved on account of the c.u.mberlands.

That a divorced daughter-in-law would be none too welcome in that stately, old-fashioned family, Mrs. Thorne was well aware. Perhaps it would be as well to be unhampered by such a forcible reminder of her former state as the child, while she was winning the c.u.mberland heart and softening the c.u.mberland prejudice. Cecil, she knew already, regarded the baby with scant favor, and would be unfeignedly rejoiced to be quit of him. On the whole, Nesbit was behaving well to her. She had expected far more difficulty, infinitely more bitterness, for, like the world, she gave her husband credit for the scruples of his father's faith. Her heart softened toward him a little for the first time in years--or would have softened, but for the blow he had dealt her egregious self-love in letting her go so easily.

She signified her acceptance of his proposal in a few brusque, ungracious words, for she considered it due to her dignity to be disagreeable, in that she was acceding to terms, not dictating them.

Thorne rose from his chair with a deep breath of relief. The interview had been intolerable to him, and although he had carried his point and acquitted himself well, his prominent feeling was one of unqualified disgust. What a lie his married life had been! What a sepulcher filled with dead, dry bones! For the moment all womanhood was lowered in his eyes because of his wife's heartless selfishness. Had she shown any feeling about the boy--any ruth, or mother-love, Thorne knew that he would not have driven so hard a bargain; felt that he might even have let his compa.s.sion rule his judgment. But she had shown none; all her thought and care had been for herself, and herself alone. And for her, and such as her, men wrecked their lives. A flood of anger at his past folly, of resentful bitterness at the price he had been forced to pay for it, pa.s.sed over Thorne. He could scarcely constrain himself to the formal bow which courtesy required.

As he left the room, the sound of a child's wailing came down to him, mingled with the sound of a woman's voice soothing it. He glanced back at his wife; she had moved nearer the fire, her fair head with its golden glory of hair was thrown back against the dark velvet of the chair; she was smiling and the sound of the child's grief fell on heedless ears.

CHAPTER XV.

Thorne had even less difficulty with his legal arrangements than he had antic.i.p.ated. He had, hitherto, relegated the subject of divorce to the limbo of things as little thought and spoken of as possible by well-bred people. He knew nothing of the _modus operandi_, and was surprised at the ease and celerity with which the legal machine moved.

"I'll have to prove my ident.i.ty, and the truth of my statements to the men out there, I suppose," he remarked to the lawyer, from whom he obtained all necessary information.

The lawyer laughed; he was a Southerner by birth, and his voice was gentle, his manner courteous.

"Of your ident.i.ty, Mr. Thorne, these men will take excellent care to inform themselves, and of your responsibility also," he answered. "For the truth of your statements, they are apt to take your word, and the depositions of your witnesses, without troubling themselves about substantiating the facts. The soundness of your evidence is your lookout, not theirs. If the case were to be contested, it would be different, but, in this instance, there is consent of both parties, which simplifies matters. This case is reduced to a matter of mere form and business."

"Apparently, then, my statements may be a tissue of lies from beginning to end, for all the difference it makes," observed Thorne, curious to discover how small a penknife could now cut the bond which once the scythe of death alone was held to be able to sever.