The Desired Woman

by Will N. Harben

Mostyn made some inarticulate response of no import in particular, and dropped back, allowing Buckton to stride on to the veranda, his hat jauntily swinging at his side. Irene was now in the doorway, poised like a picture in a frame.

Slinking farther away beneath the trees and behind shrubbery, Mostyn heard the greetings between the two, and saw them shaking hands, standing face to face. Irene looked so young, so different from the calculating woman who had just asserted her financial and marital rights in her chamber. No wonder that her escort was fascinated when she had so long been withheld from him! Mostyn told himself that he well knew the "stolen-sweets" sensation. He peered above a clump of boxwood like a thief, upon grounds to which he was unaccustomed, and watched them as they got into the trap. Irene's rippling laugh, and Buckton's satisfied response as he tucked the robes about her, seemed things of Satanic design. They were off. The restive pair, with high-reined, arching necks, trotted down the drive to the street, and a moment later were out of sight.

Mostyn went into the house, back to the desolate dining-room, and sat down in his chair at the head of the table. The maid who came to receive his order and turn on a fuller light had a look in her eyes which indicated that she was aware of his mood. He would have resented it had he dared, but it was only one of many things which had of late grated on him but could not be prevented.

"Has Mr. Mitchell had his supper?" Mostyn asked, applying himself reluctantly to the simple repast before him.

"Yes, sir, and gone up to his room," the girl answered. "He is out of sorts to-day. I have never seen him so troublesome. He has threatened to discharge us all."

"Don't mind him." Mostyn's voice sounded to him as if uttered by some tongue other than his own. He half fancied that the maid, for reasons peculiar to her class, had a sort of contempt for him. She, as well as the other servants, no doubt thought of him as having married for money, Mitchell's fortune being so much larger than his own diminished and ever-lessening capital.

Supper over, he went back to the veranda. Should he go to the club, as he sometimes did to pass an evening? He had a feeling against it. He did not care for cards or drinking, and they were the chief amusements indulged in by the habitual loungers about the rooms. There might be some summer play on at one of the theaters, but as a rule they were very poor at that season of the year, and he knew he had a frame of mind which could not be diverted. At this juncture he became conscious of something of an almost startling nature. It was an undefinable, even maternal feeling that he ought to stay with his child. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the sheer absurdity of the idea, yet it clung to him persistently. He tried to analyze it; it eluded analysis. It had haunted him before, and the time had always been when Irene was away. Was it some strange psychic sympathy or bond of blood between his motherless offspring and himself? Was his guilty soul whispering to him that he was responsible for the deserted human bud, and that he, man though he was, should give it the care and love denied it?

Obeying an impulse he could not put down, he turned into the house and softly ascended the stairs. The door of the nursery was open. A low-turned light was burning in a night-lamp on the bureau. The nurse was below eating with the other servants. He was alone and unobserved. The child was asleep in its little white bed, and he crept forward and looked down upon it. The night being warm, little Richard was not covered, and, with his shapely legs and fair breast exposed, he lay asleep. There was a suggestion of a smile on the beautiful face, the pink lips were parted, the dainty fingers were clutched as if holding some dream-object tight in their clasp.

With a sigh that was almost audible the father turned away. At the door he glanced back, having noted the intense warmth of the room. The nurse, as many of her tropical race are apt to do, had forgotten to ventilate the chamber. The two windows were closed. Angrily he crept across the carpeted floor and noiselessly raised the sashes as high as they would go, feeling the fresh air stream in. With a parting glance at the sleeper he withdrew.

Descending the stairs, he went out on the lawn again. Even that scrap of Nature's realm had a tendency to soothe his snarled sensibilities. It might have been the dew which was rising and cooling his feet, or the pale, blinking stars, the sedative rays of which seemed to penetrate to his seething brain. He remembered John Leach's sermon that day in the mountains at the cross-roads store. The fellow had found something. He had found the way of the life spiritual, and it had come to him through sin, suffering, humiliation, and final self-immolation. Mostyn recalled the resolutions he had made under the influence of the man's compelling eloquence; he recalled the breaking of the resolutions. He thought of Dolly Drake, and groaned in actual pain of body and soul. He told himself that he had then deliberately trampled under foot his last spiritual opportunity. "Dolly Drake, Dolly Drake!" the words, unuttered though they were by lips which he felt were too profane for such use, seemed to float like notes of accusing music. Saunders had said she was more beautiful than ever. She might have been his but for his weakness. Perhaps she still thought of him now and then. If she could know of this unconquerable despair, she would pity him. How sweet such pity as hers would be! A sob struggled up within him and threatened to burst; he felt the sharp pain of suppression in his breast. It was as if his soul was urging his too-callous body to weep. Dolly was as unobtainable as the heaven of the tramp preacher's vision. For Mostyn only protracted evil was now available, and that was sickening to his very thought.