Part 4

With the blessed elasticity of childhood she had already partly recovered from the distress of the morning, and was able to entertain charming visions of the pleasure before her. But although there is in a child a superficial light-heartedness, so that we are led to flatter ourselves that its woes are soon over, it is certain that injuries inflicted in the spirit of injustice, sink deeply into the soul, and not through inability to forgive, but through inability to forget, the young heart once wounded in the tender spot of confidence, never again can put forth vigorous shoots of affection toward the person who has affronted it. Strange as it seemed to the world that in after years Vivian Thomas' fondness for his daughter never evoked in her any corresponding demonstration, valid reason might have been found by one acquainted with the experience of this and other mornings, why Nellie always listened to the praises bestowed upon her popular parent with a pensive smile, and why, in her dutiful attention to him, there was a reserve and hesitancy widely different from the cordiality of a relation free from doubt and fear.

Mrs. Powell met them on the front porch. She had on her sun-bonnet and gardening-gloves, and behind her stalked Alex, armed with her rake and hoe, his features expressing the contempt of his stronger nature for the woman's tools he carried, tempered with a respectful sort of indulgence toward the fancies of the best woman in the world.

Ten years had passed lightly over Mrs. Powell's fair countenance. At sixty she was a handsome and vigorous old lady, the wear and tear of life, felt only through sympathy with the troubles of others, showing mainly in a thinning of the silver curls over her temples, and a few lines about her true, mild, blue eyes.

Her first look told her that something was wrong with Amanda, and without any great strain upon her reasoning powers she understood that the trouble had reference to little Nellie. Nothing else brought that tense expression to the mouth of her beautiful daughter, nor kindled deep in her black eyes the glare that told of unendurable suffering and unquenchable resentment.

"I wuz jes' goin' to pot a few roses afore frost gits 'em," she said, after affectionate greetings had been exchanged. "Will ye set out hyar on the bench awhile, honey, an' we kin talk whilst I wurk?"

She hoped that in the course of a little quiet talk Amanda's fierce mood would give way to soothing influences, and that the injudicious things the impulsive woman was apt to utter when excited might remain upon this occasion unsaid. But now, as always, the conservative policy of the good woman only modified, but could not repress the burning indignation of a spirit that could easier pardon great injuries to itself, than the slightest wrong done to one who was incapable of self-defense.

Leaning her head back against the trunk of the ancient magnolia tree her grandfather had planted here, Amanda watched her mother dig and fuss among the roses and listened with slight response to her cheerful sentences, biding her time.

Nellie flitted about like a humming bird, coming every now and then to lay her little head against her mother's arm with a caressing touch that spoke well for the relation between the two. She stayed to carry water in her own tiny watering pot, when at last her grandmother could no longer make excuse to stop out of doors, and with a secret sigh, led her daughter into the house.

"Well, honey," she said, with an attempt at treating matters lightly. "You're not feeling jes' right to-day. Now, try to forgit all about whatever's been plaguin' you, and res' yo'self on the sofa, whilst I go an' see about somethin' nice fur dinner."

"No, no, mother. You know well enough Aunt Liza don't need any suggestions about her dinner. And I want to talk to you. I _must_. You'll be sorry if you don't listen to me."

"Don't I always listen to you, Mandy?"

"Yes, mother, but you don't always listen willingly. You seem to think that if things are not spoken about that it's the same as if they didn't exist. You think I'll stand things better if I'm quiet about them."

"No, my dear child; dear knows I'm ready an' willin' to hyar all you want to say if it eases yo' mind any. But, honey, I do hate to hyar yo' say sech hard things about yo' husband as you've said to me before when you wuz put out."

"Put out!" repeated Amanda, with scornful emphasis. "Oh, mother, why won't you see the thing as it is? A wife may bear with her husband and not let anybody know what she goes through, but a mother with a helpless little child to defend, will be up in arms against a brute, and if anybody says she is wrong to take her child away from a father that abuses her, why, they can _say_ it. I know in my own heart what's right, and I'll not take it out in talk. I'll act."

"Mandy, darlin'," pleaded her mother. "Shorely you're exaggeratin'. Vivian's got his faults, and fur be it frum me to defend 'em. I said to Jane Thomas, only last week, at the Bush Meetin', that if Vivian could only be persuaded to come up to the bench then an' thar an' promise to leave off it'd make me happier'n I've been since you wuz married. And she said--I ain't tellin' you to rile you 'gainst Vivian's ma; yo' know she feels fur him, same's I feel most fur you--says Jane; 'If Mandy'd ashow'd a leetle more fondness Vivian he'd a been different. He always wuz dependent on affection, an' a lovin' woman could hev done anythin' with him. Mandy's been cold as a stun, an' it's no wonder'--I mean t'say she said it wuz a wonder 't he _didn't_ go after other women."

A hot color rushed into Amanda's cheeks, and she spread her hands widely, with a gesture of repulsion. "Don't take the trouble to try to hide it," she said in a low tone. "Do you think I don't know what he races down to Richmond for every month or two--and where all the money goes to? Benvenew falling to pieces, Nellie and I with no clothes excepting what you give us, and he--gambler and libertine!"

"Mandy, Mandy, hush!" begged Mrs. Powell, alarmed at a much more forcible expression than Amanda had ever yet permitted herself.

"You know it's true, mother," Amanda answered in a softer manner. "You and I and his mother know all about it. Of course Mrs. Thomas blames me, and upholds him. If it hadn't been for her interference and continually taking his part, I might have made him behave himself better. I know all Fauquier County believes he's the injured innocent. I'm outspoken and he's deceitful. With his soft, smooth manner outside it's not surprising people think as they do; that my temper drove him to drink. And then he never gets so far gone in public as he does at home."

"Honey, that's somethin' to be thankful fur, shorely?"

"Oh, yes," said Amanda with a strange look. "Appearances are so much. Why, even our own minister took it upon himself, not long ago, to read me a sort of veiled lecture about the beauty of meekness in a woman. I'm tired--tired, tired of being eternally misunderstood, and of this sort of 'devil and angel' game--such as the children play--where he's the angel and I'm the devil."

Mrs. Powell rocked back and forth softly, her placid face expressing more concern than had ever appeared there before. There was a sustained earnestness about Amanda's bitter outpouring different from the hysterical anger she was used to show upon the occasions when she and her child appeared with their traveling bag at the Powell homestead.

"Dearie," she said hesitatingly, "do you pray about it?"

"We had better let that subject alone," Amanda answered quietly. "I might hurt your feelings, and I don't want to do that, mother dear. Poor ma! It isn't your fault. You didn't want me to have him."

"No, honey, but now you're married thar ain't nothin' else to do but to b'ar it. Fur the child's sake, Mandy, live as peaceable as you kin. Think how dretful it is fur her to see you two on bad terms with one another."

"The child! Yes, I should think--for her sake," cried Amanda, her wrath flashing forth again. "It is of _her_ I'm thinking more than anything. Vivian Thomas hasn't any more love for his child than he has for anything outside of his own pleasure. He even abuses her!" And then she told of the scene of the morning.

"Poor little thing--poor little darling," said the grandmother indignantly; but adding in a soothing tone: "After all, Mandy, you know he is the child's father, and he maybe didn't hurt her much."

"What right had he to even go near her when he was in that condition? But, mother, I tell you, it's not only when he's the worse for liquor. I've known him strike her at other times. He's cruel. There was always a streak of cruelty in his nature. You won't believe it--nobody'd think it to see him, but I tell you he is born to impose on weaker people. Nellie is afraid of him, and he makes her little life miserable. I can't stand it. People have no right to bring a child into this world and make it miserable. It's my duty to take her away from such a father."

"Yo' can't do that," said Mrs. Powell.

"I can. I can go away and take her with me."

"Dearie, now yo're talkin' wild. Leave yo' husband?"

"Yes," said Amanda, vehemently. She got up and began to pace the floor. It was almost impossible for her to sit still, when excited, and her mother had long since accustomed herself to seeing her daughter moving back and forth with hurried yet measured steps, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, while she talked in tones always growing lower and clearer as her mind became more energetic.

"I've been thinking of this for a long time. I took a resolution last time it--it happened, that the next time he did anything to Nellie, I'd shake the dust of his place from my feet. It's not so much his drinking, mother--though I believe any woman has a right to leave a man that drinks, and that if there's danger of having children by him, it's her _duty_ to leave him--but it's what he is altogether. I despise Vivian Thomas."

"I wish I knowed what to say to you. I know you ain't right, Mandy. It's a woman's place to stay by the man she marries, through thick and thin. 'Fur better or worse,' reck'lect."

"That was the old idea--the idea of people who made up the form for the marriage ceremony. It's a dead letter in our law to-day, and it's a dead letter in society, too. Does anybody expect men and women to stay tied all their lives to what's horrible? These are modern times, mother."

"I'm afeared this comes o' that visit o' yo'n to Chicago, to Cousin Lois' folks," lamented her good mother. "I dunno nothin' 'bout sech notions. But I do know somethin' 'bout what people think in Fauquier County. A woman that leaves her husband puts herself in the wrong, and no matter if she's innocent as the driven snow there's always a shadow hangin' to her. Jes' stop and think what folks'd say, my dear!"

"Aye," assented Amanda, bitterly. "I know what they'd say well enough. But Fauquier County isn't the world. Why, mother, out beyond these narrow boundaries of Virginia there's free territory where women own their own souls, and can think for themselves. They can even obey their own conscience if it leads them to go against the minister and the church."

Mrs. Powell raised a hand that trembled and put it up to her temple with a despairing gesture. Tears, almost strangers to her gentle, serene eyes, gathered and rolled down her cheeks.

"Pore Mandy," she said in a choking voice. "You's fur and away from any ground whar I kin meet up with you. I've knowed fur a spell back you ain't took no interest in the church, and I'm gre'tly afeared that's at the bottom o' your troubles. If you desert the Lord He'll desert you, honey. It's shore as I'm settin' hyar."

Amanda had kneeled down and pressed her mother's head against her shoulder; but as the good woman regarded her sadly, somewhat as she might have regarded a sinner about to be prayed for in her congregation, a melancholy, half-mocking smile succeeded to the concern on the worn, handsome face upon a level with her own.

"Do you think if I had worked for the fair last month, and had gone regularly to the sewing society all this while that it might have helped to make a different man of Vivian?"

"Maybe not, dearie; though the Lord wurks by means, an' we can't tell," answered her mother, naïvely.

"Well, mother," Amanda said, "we can't think just alike about some things. You're good. You'd be good whether you were in the Second Baptist Church or in Egypt squatting before a hideous image. And I must be myself. I must do what I think right, no matter what other people think or say. And I think it right to take my child away from a father that ill-treats her, and who sets her a frightful example in every way."

"Why, you wouldn't want to cast such a slur as that on yo' daughter. People'd throw it up to her always--that her father an' mother didn't live together!"

"But if she was so much happier in other ways that she could afford to stand the talk, mother?"

"No, Mandy, no. Thar ain't no woman that's come uv a good family and been raised proper, an' to feel like a nice woman nat'rally does feel, but what'd ruther suffer anything else'n creation than to hev the finger o' scorn pointed at her an' know she or any o' her family'd done anything to desarve it."

Mrs. Powell had been wrought up to a point where her feelings demanded expression, and she continued with an earnestness and sincerity that had the effect of the finest eloquence.

"Even if thar air what yo' call 'extenuatin' circumstances,' you couldn't do this thing without bringin' 'pon yo'self the very hardest trial you could be set to endure. You couldn't be in any company without thinkin' uneasily, 'Would these people be willin' I sh'd be amongst 'em if they knowed how 'twas with me?' In church you'd fancy every wurd the preacher utters p'inted straight at you. And let alone yo'self, what wouldn't you go through thinkin' people wuz slightin' Nellie because o' you?"

"Mother, mother!" Amanda cried, "you mistake me. You're exaggerating the thing. I--I didn't mean _divorce_!"

"No, you don't mean it now, but it'd come to that. I feel it in my bones," said Mrs. Powell, solemnly.

"Well, now, dear, dear mother, listen to me," her daughter pleaded. "Suppose that--finally, that was the only way to save myself--to--to protect myself from--suppose we were in another place, in a northern city, where nobody knows me?"

"Thar ain't no place on the face of the 'arth so remote but what talk'd find you out."

"Shall we be martyrs, then, to a few old women's tongues? Am I to take the risk of"--Amanda bent and finished her sentence in her mother's ear.

"Honey, shorely ye kin leave _that_ in the good Lord's hands!"

"I'd have been in a nice fix if I'd have left it in his hands all these years," said Amanda Thomas, with a look so skeptical and full of accusation against something seen only in her mind's eye, that her mother's pink color faded and left her pretty cheeks white. "That's where our creeds differ, mother. I believe in not leaving things to chance."

"I said leavin' 'em to the Lord," the old lady amended.

"It's the same thing," said Amanda, recklessly.

"Oh, Mandy, Mandy, it gives me a cold chill fur to hear you talk so."

"I won't talk so, then. Heaven knows I don't want to worry you any more than can be helped. But let's look at this thing reasonably. First, about Nellie. The child must and shall have a chance for a happy, peaceful life. She mustn't be tyrannized over, and hampered, and kept down; she ought to be well educated and have a fair chance in the world. And for that she must be away from here--and away from her father."

"Why, I sh'd think her pa wuz the ve'y one to help her to an eddication. Vivian's smart enough, an' ain't he been to college?"

"Yes, he's been to college, and he can sing sweetly, the girls say, and play the flute, and read Horace's odes in the original, and dance better than any other man in the county," said Amanda, despairingly. "But does all that make him a good father, or fit him to supervise Nellie's education?"

"I dunno what more you kin want, dear," answered her perplexed parent.

"Well! There are certain moral qualities. We needn't go into it. To come to myself. I'm a young woman yet, mother, only twenty-eight. Is my whole life to be ruined for this one mistake, made when I was a mere child, and ignorant of the world as a baby?"

"You forgit. A woman's life's sp'iled if she leaves her husband. Thar ain't no sech thing as takin' a fresh start with a livin' husband in the background o' your life. He'd be croppin' up yar an' thar an' ev'ywhar, wors'n a field o' nettles. Do you reckon Vivian's goin' to lose sight o' you? And, moreover, Mandy, if you sh'd go to the dretful pass o' seekin' a divorce, wouldn't the law give him the child?"

Amanda started, and bent her black brows fiercely. This was the first argument her mother had used that she was unable to answer.

"Of course the laws are all in favor of the men. Yes, they would give my innocent darling--my baby that is part of my own flesh and blood, that I've nourished at my breast, that I've suffered for and lived for these nine years--to a besotted, selfish, immoral man who would never fulfill one duty toward her, and who doesn't care for her the worth of his little finger. The only thing is that I don't believe he'd want her."

Mrs. Powell shook her head. "You can't depend on that. Men always want the last thing you might s'pose'd be any use to 'em. They want their own way, you see."

"Then the only thing I can do is to keep it a secret where I go. There are places enough."

"An' how'd ye git along, poor child? How'd ye do cooped up'n some mean leetle place without no run fur Nellie, an' without horses, nor anybody to do a han's turn fur ye? And, dearie, you know, even though I'd ruther you'd stay hyar by yo' duty, wharever you go my lov'd foller you, an' I'd always do all in my power. But money's the one thing we don't hev. If you're somewhar 't you hev to put yo' han' in yo' pocket fur ev'y livin' thing, even to an egg, or a slip o' parsley, how 'pon 'arth'll you do?"

"I mean to work, dear mother. I can sew, and embroider, and do lots of things," said Amanda, spreading her white hands and looking at them meditatively; not dreaming, poor, thing, of the thousands and thousands of other defter and more experienced hands stretched forth in the localities she thought abounding in lucrative work, for the merest shadow of employment, and the paltriest sort of recompense.

In Mrs. Powell's imagination Amanda was a rarely talented and capable woman, able to perform wonders, yet her shrewd common sense suggested difficulties that Amanda could not but recognize when they were pointed out, averse as she was to consider any details made against her plan.

They talked over the matter from every point of view, the elder woman reiterating the same arguments she had used already, and the younger one meeting them continually with that free, liberal interpretation of the gospel of individuality which youth has always flourished in the face of age and conservatism.

Mrs. Powell held out as stanchly as only a good, bigoted Christian woman, devoutly living up to the public opinion of an insular, mountain village, can hold out against modern heresies striking at the very foundation of her social system, and her religious beliefs. But Amanda had been for a very long time working herself up to her present resolution, and she stuck to her purpose with unflinching steadfastness, and had by supper-time succeeded in convincing her mother that she was in deadly earnest and not to be dissuaded. And after she had put Nellie into the great old-fashioned bed and tucked the coverlet about her soft, warm little throat, she only stayed by her long enough to be sure that the child was sound asleep, then kissing the curls floating out over the pillow, with a fervent affection such as no man had ever known from this woman with a genius for motherhood, she stole away softly, leaving the door ajar, and went back to the sitting-room to talk to her mother more definitely about the plans she had formed for the future.

But hardly had the two settled down before the fire when, with a rattle and a bang, very unlike her old-time timidity, Jane Thomas flung herself into the room.

"Sh--h!" said Amanda, as the heavy door slammed shut. "You'll wake Nellie!" She got up and set the door partly open again, then resumed her seat, pushing the chair away from the hearth to make room for her mother-in-law, but saying no word of welcome, for she felt that this visit was made with some special disciplinary intention toward herself.

If ever a woman's face and mien conveyed indignation and resentment of the splenetic sort, Mrs. Thomas' meager visage and thin figure manifested these sentiments as she fell into the chair drawn forward for her, and turned her watery-blue eyes upon her son's wife.

"Nellie!--to be shore!" she uttered in a spiteful whimper. "Pity but what yo'd hev a leetle consideration for other folks 'sides that child. Hyar yo've done pitched onter Vivian and attackted him with hammers an' druv him out'n his own house, an' made a scandal that'll ring through Fauquier County, and the saints above knows what it's all about. I thank the Lord I ain't got yo' disposition!"

"You've a great deal to be thankful for in the way of disposition," observed Amanda. She had closed her lips tightly, resolving to maintain absolute silence; but what woman can suppress the witty retort when her antagonist exposes a vulnerable point?

"Seems ter me I'd be a leetle mo' humble, consider'n' what yo've done. It'd become you ter be thankful 't yo' awful temper didn't do no mo' harm 'n it done. Not but what it done 'nuff an' mo'n I shu'd like ter hev 'pon my conscience."

"If you'd take a few of your son's sins upon your conscience it might give you something to do."

"Oh, I don't look fur nothin' but sass from you, 'Mandy Powell. Yo've a tongue the devil hisself 'd fly frum."

"If Vivian Thomas has run from it you must be right," answered Amanda.

Mrs. Thomas rocked back and forth till her chair creaked with a spiteful sound that seemed to her hearers to be an echo of her whining voice. She expatiated upon the deplorable effects of her daughter-in-law's fearful outbreak of the morning, and warned her that no man on earth was called on to put up with such tantrums, and that if she was locked up in the lunatic asylum it would be no more than she had a right to expect.

Amanda put a severe break upon her imperious spirit and said no more words in reply until at last Mrs. Thomas brought out her final taunt, that she had only run away for the purpose of getting Vivian to come after her and bring her back; and for this time she was mistaken. She would have to stay away a mighty long while if she waited for him to fetch her, and she'd be glad to creep home again by the time everybody cried shame upon her.

Then Amanda arose and stood before her adversary, tall and majestic, with her arms folded across her swelling chest, and her black brows bent in such a frown as made Jane Thomas' cowardly heart flutter, until she thought of the impossibility of a personal encounter with this woman, whom she would have given half her possessions to conquer and humiliate.

"I say to you here and now," said Amanda, using unconsciously an orotund quality of voice that, together with her pose, rendered her delivery so forceful that her words stamped themselves upon the memory of both her hearers: "I have left Vivian Thomas' roof forever. Spread the fact as fast as you please; gloat upon the scandal it will create in this gossiping little place, and tear my reputation to pieces as fast as you want to. No power under Heaven can make me look upon that man's face again, or pass a moment in his company!"