CHAPTER XVI.
Imelda had seen Margaret in similar moods before, and she knew of the intensity that sometimes lurked beneath the smiling exterior. She knew Margaret’s most dearly cherished desire was some day to be a mother. To press the rosy dimpled infant, the child of the man her heart owned king—to her jubilant heart was her dream of dreams. But with this gift that she so craved she demanded no common conditions and environments. To call into being a perfect child she must be a perfect mother, and she understood, only too well, that she could not be that, surrounded with imperfect conditions.
Something had vividly portrayed this dream before her eyes today. Imelda understood the fierce storm of emotions that sometimes shook the nature of the proud girl to its very foundations. But Alice did not understand. She was rather frightened than otherwise at the storm that had so suddenly burst from the lips that had but a short time previously been overflowing with gayest merriment. The depths of feelings thus exhibited was a revelation to her. She had never heard such wild, such passionate words from any one, much less from the lips of a woman. In a helpless manner she turned to Imelda for explanation. But Imelda appeared to have forgotten the presence of Alice, as she sat blankly staring after the receding form and at the door through which she had passed, and only after Alice had twice spoken her name was she recalled to herself. With a deep heart-felt sigh she arose and began arranging her simple toilet, but never a word did she say of the queer manner of her friend, until again the voice of Alice aroused her.
“What was it you said? O, the meaning of this strange outburst. I don’t know if I would be able to explain the moods of Margaret. I doubt if anyone could explain them, but she is the dearest, sweetest, noblest woman that ever lived. Her life, like mine, has been overshadowed by those of her parents. She understands the meaning of the finger of scorn, and her proud spirit rebels against it.”
“The finger of scorn? What do you mean? Explain yourself.”
“Margaret’s mother is a divorced woman.”
“A divorced woman!” broke, in a surprised cry, from the lips of the young woman. Another question seemed to hover on them, but checking herself she waited an answer. Imelda smiled. She understood what was going on in the other’s mind. When, in all the past, had a woman gone through the dread ordeal of the divorce court that the world in general and women in particular did not believe that she was not in some way to blame for all the shame that had been heaped upon her? She who had the strength to dare to go through the calumny of the divorce court was, in the minds of many, composed of some grosser material than that was used in the composition of women in general, and little Alice Westcot was by no means above the common.
How could she be? Had she ever been taught otherwise? She had yet to learn that the divorced woman, instead of being a coarse-grained creature of the slums is more often possessed of a nature most refined, and far superior to her surroundings. She had yet to learn that it was for that very reason, often, that the divorced woman bears the shame, the disgrace and the calumny heaped upon her by the cruel process of the law, in order to escape a state so distasteful to her sensitive soul that death itself is preferable to the continued endurance of bondage. Imelda knowing this could only smile, but she hastened to say:
“Yes! her mother was married to a man that Margaret is anything but proud to acknowledge as a father. He was coarse and brutal; often descending to so low a level as to strike the woman who was the mother of his children. Margaret’s mother was a woman very sensitive and refined. The only wonder to me is that she ever could have made the selection that she did, unless the fact that she was little more than a child could be considered an explanation. He drank, he cursed her, he struck her. He did not provide. The more she worked the less did he do, and the more he depended upon her efforts to gain a livelihood, until finally one day she took her babes (she had two of them) in her arms and left the man who had made of her life such a miserable ruin.
“As time passed he sought to induce her, by every effort in his power, to return to him; but his efforts were unavailing. She would rather, she says, have thrown herself with a babe clasped in either arm into the cold waves of the darkly flowing river than again return to the bondage from which she had escaped. For, added to all the other indignities she had been forced to bear, were the constant outrages perpetrated upon her womanhood, and which she could no longer endure.”