“Yes, Imelda. Listen. I will now tell you the story of my life. Or, more properly speaking, that of my mother; but which has nevertheless influenced mine to such an extent that all my life, I suppose, the results of it must walk by my side, follow me wherever I go. To begin with, my mother has been what the world calls ‘a divorced woman’.”
“Divorced!” Imelda exclaimed in a startled manner.
“Yes, divorced! Married at the tender age of sixteen, she thought all that was needed to make earth a heaven was the complete union with the man she loved. A few week’s she lived in a fool’s paradise. She was young, inexperienced, with character undeveloped, else even in that short time she must have seen and understood the innate coarseness of the man who was her husband, whom she had promised to love, honor and obey, and who is my——father! In a very short time it dawned upon her that they had no tastes whatever in common. A brutal coarseness soon became manifest that caused her to shrink at his every touch. He soon came to understand this and it roused the very devil in him. He delighted in torturing her in every conceivable way. He did not even stop at blows.”
“Blows! Oh,—” gasped Imelda. A bitter smile for a moment curled Margaret’s lips, and then she proceeded:
“And that man is my father. Oh, why must I say it!” It cost her a great struggle to proceed. Imelda asked her to refrain, but Margaret insisted that she must tell her all, saying, “I would have to tell you some time that we may fully understand each other,” and in a few moments she continued:
“The thought of separation never entered her mind in those days. She worked; a slave could scarcely have been more driven. A slave! Can it be possible there ever has been a worse slave than my mother was? And then the babies came. All through the time of gestation she had to work, to perform the hardest labor, and often my——father would come home intoxicated and, if it was possible for him to descend a step lower than was his wont, that was the time. I myself know little or nothing of those days, but my mother has made me her confidante, and every word she has told me is engraven on my heart. Oh, how she must have suffered in those awful, awful times! She was helpless under his brute power, and the relations that should only be the expression of a pure and holy love, that should, in my opinion, be fraught with divinest bliss, became to her the tortures of hell. Many a night sleep was a stranger to her eyes, and, other nights again, sleep came only after her pillow had been drenched with tears. Under such circumstances her children were born. Is it any wonder that the world is filled with criminals and idiots?
“How it was ever possible for me to be what I am is more than I can comprehend. I know I am far from perfect. I am terribly self-willed and can never bear being crossed. My mother was proud and self-willed also, and though she learned to hate and loathe the man whom according to law she was in duty bound to love, and though she suffered untold agonies I think her pride, her self-respect, would never permit her to stoop to anything that would degrade her, if we except the fact that she was forced to live in marriage with a man who was in every way a brute. It is to this pride and self-respect, I think, that I owe it that I am able to lay claim to a higher and better nature than it could otherwise have been possible for me to possess.
“Oh, the disgust that I feel when I hear matters pertaining to sex made light of. These relations to my mind are something sacred and pure. But the sensual man who believes that woman was made for his use only—the man who commits continual outrages upon the woman who is legally bound to him, upon her who bears the name of wife—such men defile the air with their very breath.
“If under such circumstances a woman in her own soul, through her superior mind, can create and hold a world of her own, making it possible to ward off many evils that would naturally be the inheritance of her children, what may she not do under conditions that are favorable? Thus I think it was that mother stood above my father as the stars are above the earth.
“But I have deviated. The years passed, and three times she had become a mother. Always for a short time after the advent of a little one my father seemed to show some marks of humanity, treating mother with some show of kindness, but not for long. It would soon wear away and when the trying season of gestation was upon her again he would be tenfold worse. My mother thinks the reason for this was that during those seasons she was more averse than ever to sex relations, which relations on his part meant neither more nor less than debauchery of what should have been an act personifying and realizing holy love. She would shrink from his touch as from a reptile. Not being able to understand her, as he was not possessed of a single refined instinct, it had the effect to infuriate him.