Perch of the Devil

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

ON the morning following the departure of the geologists Gregory took the bit between his teeth and went in to Butte to see his wife. In his first moment of shock and confusion it had seemed to him best that Ora, whose subtlety he recognised, was the one to manipulate Ida’s still too formalistic mind toward the divorce court; but he was unaccustomed to relegate any part of his affairs to others, least of all to a woman. Nor did he think it necessary to inform Ora of his sudden decision. He might work almost double shift to keep her out of his thoughts and diminish temptation, and he might marry her and continue to love her passionately; but she would obtain little ascendency over him. He knew what he wanted; he had trained his will until at times it appeared formidable even to himself, and he was as nearly the complete male that regards woman, however wonderful, as the supplementary female as still survives.

He had few illusions about himself, and it had crossed his mind more than once, since the hope of divorce had dazzled both of them, that for a year or two or least there must be a certain amount of friction between a nature like his and a complex, super-civilised, overgrown feminine ego like Ora Blake. While he had sat with his legs stretched out to the fire and his eyes half closed, his body weary, but mentally alert, he had received certain definite impressions of an independent almost anarchical mind, contemptuous of the world and its midges save as they might be of use to herself; of a mind too well-bred ever to be managing and exacting in any vulgar sense, but inexorable in its desires and as unscrupulous in their pursuit as her father had been; of a superlative refinement coupled with a power of intense and reckless passion found only in women possessing that quality of imagination that exalts and idealises the common mortal attributes. Moreover, it was a mind that, the first joy of submission and surrender diminished, would think for itself.

Until that night when both had dropped the mask for a moment he had never thought of her as a complicated ego, merely as one from whom he felt temporarily separated after a union of centuries; and it had been the reluctant admission that he knew her very little, save as a gracious woman and his own companion, that had enabled him to school himself to spend long hours with her alone as before. He had tumbled blindly into matrimony once, and no matter how much he might love this woman, to whom he had seemed from the first to be united by a secret and ancient bond, he was determined none the less to marry the second time with his eyes wide open.

But although his glimpses of Ora’s winding depths gave him moments of uneasiness he always fell back upon the complacent reflection that he was a man, a man, moreover, with a cast-iron will, and that the woman did not live who would not have to adapt herself to him did he take her to wife.

Until the day before the party at the mines he had been content to drift, but a certain moment down in his own mine had given a new and abrupt turn to both thoughts and purpose. Ida might have spared herself her agonies of shame: she had not betrayed her love, but she had given him a distinct impression that she was employing her redoubtable feminine weapons to reduce him to his old allegiance. He had remembered for a poignant moment that he once had loved this woman to distraction, and during that moment he saw her again as the most beautiful and distracting of her sex. His brief surrender had filled him with fury. He had no intention of despising himself. From boyhood up he had had nothing but contempt for the man that did not know his own mind. If it had not been for this serene confidence in himself, he, who was constitutionally wary in spite of the secret and wistful springs of romance in his nature and the apparent suddenness of his bold plunges, never would have married Ida Hook, nor any woman, until he had sounded her thoroughly. But he had behaved like any hot-headed and conceited young fool, and, much as he now admired Ida, it both infuriated him and appalled him to feel even for a moment toward her as he had in his raw inexperienced youth.

He therefore made up his mind to go to her like a rational being and ask her to give him his freedom. They had made a mistake. They were reasonable members of an advanced civilisation, where mistakes were recognised and rectified whenever possible. He did not doubt for a moment that reason and logic must appeal as forcibly to a woman as to himself.

The door of his wife’s house was opened after the usual delay, and the maid told him that Mrs. Compton was upstairs in the billiard room “or somewheres.” He took the stairs three steps at a time lest his courage evaporate; but drew a long breath of relief when he entered the large square hall and saw nothing of Ida. He would have rung for the maid, but reflected that no doubt he had already provided enough gossip for the republic below stairs without admitting that he did not know his way round his wife’s house. He was about to knock on each door in turn when he noticed that one in a corner at the end of the hall was open and that it led into a narrow passageway. Beyond there was light, possibly in one of those boudoirs of which he had heard. Mrs. Murphy would have been sure to have a boudoir, and no doubt Ida, little disposed as she was to indolence, spent some part of her mornings in it.

He adventured down the passageway that terminated in a large room full of sunlight. He saw his wife standing in the middle of this room looking about her with a curious expression of wistfulness. The little hall was carpeted, but she heard him almost as soon as he saw her; she would have known those light swift footsteps in a marching army. He was inside the room before she could reach the doorway and close it behind her and astonished to see a deep blush suffuse her face. His quick darting glance took in his surroundings as he shook hands with her. The room was a nursery.

“I had two beds put in here and have just seen that they were taken out,” stammered Ida.

Her embarrassment was communicable, but he said gruffly as he walked to the window, “Didn’t know the Murphys had children.”