The Ancient Law

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Upon reaching Washington he found that a shower had come up, and the pavements were already wet when he left the station. He had brought no umbrella, but he hardly heeded this in the eagerness which drove him from street to street in his search for his child. After making vain inquiries at several of the larger hotels, he had begun to feel almost hopeless, when going into the newest and most fashionable of them all, he discovered that "Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Heath" had been assigned an apartment there an hour before. In answer to his question the clerk informed him that the lady had ordered her dinner served upstairs, leaving at the same time explicit instructions that she was "not at home" to anyone who should call. But in spite of this rebuff, he drew out his card, and sat down in a chair in the brilliantly lighted lobby. He had selected a seat near a radiator in the hope of drying his damp clothes, and presently a little cloud of steam rose from his shoulders and drifted out into the shining space. As he watched the gorgeous, over-dressed women who swept by him, he remembered as one remembers a distant dream, the years when his life had been spent among such crowds in just such a dazzling glare of electric light. It appeared false and artificial to him now, but in the meantime, he reflected, while he looked on, he had been in prison.

A voice at his elbow interrupted his thoughts, and turning in response to an invitation from a buttoned sleeve, he entered an elevator and was borne rapidly aloft among a tightly wedged group of women who were loudly bewailing their absence from the theatre. It was with difficulty that he released himself at the given signal from his escort, and stepped out upon the red velvet carpet which led to Alice's rooms. In response to a knock from the boy who had accompanied him, the door flew open with a jerk, and Alice appeared before him in a bewildering effect of lace and pink satin.

"O papa, papa, you naughty darling!" she exclaimed, and was in his arms before he had time to utter the reproach on his lips.

With her head on his breast, he was conscious at first only of an irresponsible joy, like the joy of the angels for whom evil no longer exists. To know that she was alive, that she was safe, that she was in his arms, seemed sufficient delight, not only unto the day, but unto his whole future as well. Then the thought of what it meant to find her thus in her lace and satin came over him, and drawing slightly away he looked for the first time into her face.

"Alice, what does it mean?" he asked, as he kissed her.

Pushing the loosened hair back from her forehead, she met his question with a protesting pout.

"It means that you're a wicked boy to run away from home like this and be all by yourself in a bad city," she responded with a playful shake of her finger. Then she caught his hand and drew him down on the sofa beside her in the midst of the filmy train of her tea-gown. "If you promise never to do it again, I shan't tell mamma on you," she added, with a burst of light-hearted merriment.

"Where were you married, Alice? and who did it?" he asked sternly.

At his tone a ripple of laughter broke from her lips, and reaching for her little red leather bag on the table, she opened it and tossed a folded paper upon his knees. "I didn't ask his name," she responded, "but you can find it all written on that, I suppose."

"And you cared nothing for me?—nothing for my anxiety, my distress?"