A Modern Madonna

by Caroline Abbot Stanley

She asked Richard De Jarnette only once if he had ever heard. No, he said, he had not. He had written and would let her know when the answer came. He did not tell her that his letter had been a bitter arraignment of Victor for his want of manliness in deserting his wife as he had done, and a stern demand that he should, for the sake of the De Jarnette name, if for no better reason, return or give some adequate explanation of his conduct—there could be no excuse. He had not spared him.

Failing to hear from this, he wrote again, this time adding the virile argument that in case of Victor's failure to explain his conduct, he should at once revise his will and name his (Victor's) apparently forgotten child as his heir, instead of himself. He felt that he had an elder brother's prerogative to counsel, and also the right of an outraged De Jarnette to protest against the dishonoring of his name. As child and man, Richard De Jarnette had been slow to wrath, but, once roused, there was a bull-dog tenacity about him that was hard to shake off. Perhaps that last clause was the most powerful argument he used. The younger De Jarnette had a great abundance of money of his own, but Richard had more, and Victor had always expected to inherit it. Moreover, he knew that his brother never made an idle threat. So he wrote.

When this answer to his peremptory letter was read by Richard De Jarnette, it put a somewhat different face upon the matter. He had been forced to this, Victor said, by Margaret's action. It was virtually she that had deserted him. She had laid upon him such restrictions as no man would for a moment submit to. She had been unreasonable, exacting, and jealous to a degree that was intolerable. "If you only knew all, you would retract your harsh words," Victor wrote. "I have always found you just, and certainly now that the greatest trouble of my life has overtaken me, I cannot believe that I will find you lacking in either sympathy or understanding," and thus and thus and thus. Victor was always a ready letter writer.

Richard De Jarnette read this letter very thoroughly. And as he read, a wave of pity swept over him for the misguided boy—he was little more than a boy—always impulsive, passionate, and full-blooded, but to the brother who was his judge to-day always warm-hearted and affectionate. The letter had its effect. The world had judged Victor harshly, Richard thought, he with the rest, he more than all the rest perhaps. It might be, as he said, that had they known—But then the damning fact remained that he had deserted her, his young wife, in her time of need. No! Nothing could palliate that—nothing!

He took up the letter at that, and read further. Margaret had virtually driven him forth, Victor went on, and Richard remembered that the house was hers, built by money her father had left in trust for this very purpose. He had warned Victor that trouble would come from that some day. Women could not be trusted to refrain from taunting their husbands with "mine" and "thine," when the test came, he said, contemptuously. They were all alike. And where was the man that would stand humiliation like that? Certainly his name was not De Jarnette. This doubtless lay at the root of the matter, and was perhaps the reason that Margaret was so reticent about the cause of the trouble.

Perhaps—oh, curse the thing! It wasn't a matter for him to meddle with—of course not. But it needed somebody—and whom else did they have? It ended in his reaching the deliberate and most unwelcome conclusion, after much struggle with himself, that it was his duty to go to his sister-in-law's house and enter upon the delicate and perilous office of peacemaker. Which he did.

Margaret met him distantly. They froze each other.

He had heard from Victor, he told her bluntly, feeling his poverty of phrases suited to womankind.

Her lips straightened. She held out her hand. Could she see the letter?

He reflected a moment. The letter as he thought of it did not seem particularly pacific, viewed from the stand-point of a deserted wife, so he answered no. Then he began awkwardly and without preliminaries to explain. He had come to see if things could not be arranged between them—patched up for a while with the hope that time would bring them right. They were both young, and doubtless both had been somewhat in fault.