“It is God’s holy ordinance; you cannot deny that, however blasphemous you may become in your words.”
“Do you tell me that it is God’s holy ordinance that I should worship with my body a swindler—a man who only wanted to get me into his power to prevent his swindling from sending him to the gaol that he deserved? Do you think that it would be in keeping with the holy ordinance of God for me to live with a wretch who made his scurrilous joke about the ring he had just put on my finger a few minutes before the handcuffs were put on his wrists?—a blackguard who went straight from the gaol to a woman in America—who allowed the report of his heroic death—oh, how you laid stress upon that heroic death of his, and called me indecent because I was sincere enough to thank God for having delivered me from him!—he allowed the report of his death to be published in order that he might have a chance of blackmailing my husband.”
“Your husband! Your—I tell you, girl, that Marcus Blaydon is your husband, and that so long as you remain under this roof John Wingfield is your paramour. I warned you of him long ago. I did my duty as a father by you in warning you that he did not mean to wed you; and didn’t my words come true?”
Her face was scarlet and her eyes were blazing. She took a couple of rapid steps toward the door; but when about to fling it open, she managed to restrain herself. She stood there, breathing in short gasps, looking at him but unable to speak for indignation.
“You are my father,” she managed to say at last; “I do not wish to turn you out of this house; but if you utter such an accusation again in my hearing, out of this house you will go—straight—straight! You have made some horrible—some vile accusations against me—me, your daughter, whom you placed in the power of that wretch, though I told you that I never could love him—that I almost loathed him; but instead of showing my poor mother the cruelty of which she was guilty, you backed her up and compelled me to utter lies—-lies that you knew were lies—in the church. He uttered lies too; and yet, knowing all that you know, you are still not afraid to call this duet of Ananias and Sapphira God’s holy ordinance! I don’t know what your ideas of blasphemy are, but I know that you have provided me with a very good example of what I should call blasphemy.”
He gazed at her as he had never before gazed even when she had also amazed him by the ease with which she got the better of him. He gazed at her for some minutes, and then his head fell till his chin was on his breast.
“Oh, God, my God! how have I sinned that my girl should turn out like this?” he said in a firm voice, as if uttering a challenge to his God to lay a finger upon a single weakness in his life that demanded so drastic a punishment.
She watched him, and she had a great pity for him, knowing him to be sincere in his belief in his own integrity and in the infallibility of the ordinances of the Church.
“Father,” she said, “have you not read in the Bible that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind? I do not profess to know much about the ways of God toward men—there are people who, while they tell me one minute that His ways are past finding out, will, the next, interpret with absolute confidence the most incomprehensible of His acts. But I have taken note of some things that I have seen, and that is one of them—the whirlwind harvest. Here we are to-day in this horrible position—why? Because you compelled me to go to the church and make promises, and utter falsehoods by the side of that man for whom I had no feeling of love. If I had ever loved him, would the fact of his going to gaol have made any difference to me? Not the least. It would only have made me love him more dearly, knowing that my love would mitigate his suffering. If I had loved him, would I not have been by his side the moment he got his freedom? If I had loved him, would I have been capable of loving someone else and of marrying that one within three months of his death? The seed was sown, and this is the harvest. I feel for you with all my heart; but I see the justice of it all—I even see that, like every other woman, I have to pay dearly for my one hour of weakness—for my one hour of falsehood to myself.”
He had not raised his head all the time that she was speaking, nor did he do so until several moments had passed. He seemed to be considering her words and to be finding that there was something in them, after all. But when he looked up there was not much sign of contrition in his face.