The Long Lane's Turning

by Hallie Erminie Rives

Beneath his voice now there was a kind of subterranean compassion, a note almost of entreaty, as though in this trouble that touched them both he could have wished to comfort her, if, indeed, she had made that possible.

She made an involuntary movement—not a sign that a chord had been touched, but rather a mark of agitation. Chilly was the one subject upon which she could not bring to bear the tempered reason which otherwise marshalled her even life. It seemed to her now that she was being thrust aside, in the interest of some new plan of discipline and coertion. She turned swiftly on her husband.

"I suppose you think it should make no difference to me!" Her eyes blazed. "You are so sure you understand Chilly! You—his father—have you ever really known him all his life? Does he ever come to you when he is in trouble or needs advice?"

Her voice held a bitter sarcasm and again the flush swept up the Judge's pale face. But his voice was emotionless as he said, "Chilly never felt the need of advice from any one. He goes his own sweet way."

"That is just it!" she said. "You set yourself so far above him. You have such a contempt for his pleasures and so thoroughly despise the company he keeps. Suppose he has a taste for liquor. He is still a gentleman, I believe. But you, with your solemn rectitude and your touch-me-not self-righteousness—you would drive him to the very people and places he ought to keep away from!"

He stared at her. "I have never regarded my repugnance to his habits as inducing him to further excesses," he said slowly. "Nor have I set myself up as preacher. Perhaps I have never understood him as—you do. I only know that his ways are not my ways. He has had every advantage that education and environment can confer. He is older than I was when I began practice. But what is he making of his life? He thinks of nothing but playing fast and loose at country-houses and loafing at the club and acting the fop and the fool generally!"

Her shaking hand was plucking at the lace at her throat. His every word had been a live coal laid to her resentment. "Is that the worst you can say of him?" she asked. "Can't you call him sot or black-leg?"

"Not yet." He was feeling now a dull anger at her scorn, at her persistent disapproval. The throb of sympathy he had first felt had been frozen by her icy reproach. "There are other things I wish to be able to say of my son. I want him to be more than a decorative philanderer. I want him to be a man—one to whom men may look for manliness, and women for honour!"

She had grown pale to the lips. "'And women for honour!'" she repeated. "As I looked to—you!"

He had flung out his arm with a characteristic gesture, but at her last words it suddenly stiffened and remained, as if it had been frozen in the air. Slowly it dropped at his side as he stared at her with ashen face—a look of shocked and disconcerted inquiry. For the exclamation, as at the swift slash of a blade, had torn away a veil, woven of time and habit, that covered an old wound. For twenty years by tacit consent this hidden thing of the past had never been acknowledged by any word or deed between them. Now a single sentence had laid it bare, quick and quivering and mutually confessed. They had been married twenty-two years, and if in that early period he had discerned any lack in her, he had given her no reproaches. On her part, she had fulfilled what she esteemed her whole duty, and in her own mind stood blameless. And he had had his profession. But in the end starved nature had reasserted itself. There had come to him a passion, swift and terrible while it lasted, to which he had surrendered wholly—till death swept it from him. The gall and wormwood had been sweetened then by the birth, in merciful coincidence with that loss, of his twin children. He had thought the episode buried forever from sight and hearing, but a later chance had discovered it to his wife, and in her own immaculateness she had been able neither to forget nor to forgive. It had made no difference in her life before their world. Cold and perfect and correct, she had held her way, but from the day when she had faced him with his secret in her hand, their hearts had been strangers to one another. He had climbed high and she had risen with him. And in twenty years no word had fallen from her lips to open that old tomb—till to-night when the heavy doors swung ajar at the echo of that one exclamation.