Part 25

"I'll think about it."

"You must let me do it, Mildred. It's the sensible thing--and you know me well enough to know that my friendship can be counted on."

"I'll think about it," was all she would concede.

They discussed the singing career all that and the succeeding days--the possibilities, the hopes, the dangers--but the hopes a great deal more than the dangers. He became more and more interested in her and in the project, as her beauty shone out with the tranquillizing sea and as her old charm of cleverness at saying things that amused him reasserted itself. She, dubious and lukewarm at first, soon was trying to curb her own excited optimism; but long before they sighted Sandy Hook she was merely pretending to hang back. He felt discouraged by her parting! "If I decide to go on, I'll write you in a few days." But he need not have felt so. She had made up her mind to accept his offer. As for the complications involved in such curiously intimate relations with a man of his temperament, habits, and inclinations, she saw them very vaguely indeed--refused to permit herself to see them any less vaguely. Time enough to deal with complications when and as they arose; why needlessly and foolishly annoy herself and hamper herself? Said she to herself, "I must begin to be practical."

AT the pier Mildred sent her mother a telegram, giving the train by which she would arrive--that and nothing more. As she descended from the parlor-car there stood Mrs. Presbury upon the platform, face wreathed in the most joyous of welcoming smiles, not a surface trace of the curiosity and alarm storming within. After they had kissed and embraced with a genuine emotion which they did not try to hide, because both suddenly became unconscious of that world whereof ordinarily they were constantly mindful--after caresses and tears Mrs. Presbury said:

"It's all very well to dress plain, when everyone knows you can afford the best. But don't you think you're overdoing it a little?"

Mildred laughed somewhat nervously. "Wait till we're safe at home," said she.

On the way up from the station in the carriage they chattered away in the liveliest fashion, to make the proper impression upon any observing Hanging-Rockers. "Luckily, Presbury's gone to town to-day," said his wife. "But really he's quite livable--hasn't gone back to his old ways. He doesn't know it, but he's rapidly growing deaf. He imagines that everyone is speaking more and more indistinctly, and he has lost interest in conversation. Then, too, he has done well in Wall Street, and that has put him in a good humor."

"He'll not be surprised to see me--alone," said Mildred.

"Wait till we're home," said her mother nervously.

At the house Mrs. Presbury carried on a foolish, false-sounding conversation for the benefit of the servants, and finally conducted Mildred to her bedroom and shut doors and drew portieres and glanced into closets before saying: "Now, what IS the matter, Millie? WHERE is your husband?"

"In Paris, I suppose," replied Mildred. "I have left him, and I shall never go back."

"Presbury said you would!" cried her mother. "But I didn't believe it. I don't believe it. I brought you up to do your duty, and I know you will."

This was Mildred's first opportunity for frank and plain speaking; and that is highly conducive to frank and plain thinking. She now began to see clearly why she had quit the general. Said she: "Mamma, to be honest and not mince words, I've left him because there's nothing in it."

"Isn't he rich?" inquired her mother. "I've always had a kind of present--"

"Oh, he's rich, all right," interrupted the girl. "But he saw to it that I got no benefit from that."

"But you wrote me how he was buying you everything!"

"So I thought. In fact he was buying ME nothing." And she went on to explain the general's system.

Her mother listened impatiently. She would have interrupted the long and angry recital many times had not Mildred insisted on a full hearing of her grievances, of the outrages that had been heaped upon her. "And," she ended, "I suppose he's got it so arranged that he could have me arrested as a thief for taking the gold bag."

"Yes, it's terrible and all that," said her mother. "But I should have thought living with me here when Presbury was carrying on so dreadfully would have taught you something. Your case isn't an exception, any more than mine is. That's the sort of thing we women have to put up with from men, when we're in their power."

"Not I," said Mildred loftily.

"Yes, you," retorted her mother. "ANY woman. EVERY woman. Unless we have money of our own, we all have trouble with the men about money, sooner or later, in one way or another. And rich men!--why, it's notorious that they're always more or less mean about money. A wife has got to use tact. Why, I even had to use some tact with your father, and he was as generous a man as ever lived. Tact--that's a woman's whole life. You ought to have used tact. You'll go back to him and use tact."

"You don't know him, mamma!" cried Mildred. "He's a monster. He isn't human."

Mrs. Presbury drew a long face and said in a sad, soothing voice: "Yes, I know, dear. Men are very, very awful, in some ways, to a nice woman--with refined, ladylike instincts. It's a great shock to a pure--"

"Oh, gammon!" interrupted Mildred. "Don't be silly, mother. It isn't worth while for one woman to talk that kind of thing to another. I didn't fully know what I was doing when I married a man I didn't love--a man who was almost repulsive to me. But I knew enough. And I was getting along well enough, as any woman does, no matter what she may say--yes, you needn't look shocked, for that's hypocrisy, and I know it now-- But, as I was saying, I didn't begin to HATE him until he tried to make a slave of me. A slave!" she shuddered. "He's a monster!"

"A little tact, and you can get everything you want," insisted her mother.

"I tell you, you don't know the man," cried Mildred. "By tact I suppose you mean I could have sold things behind his back--and all that." She laughed. "He hasn't got any back. He had it so arranged that those cold, wicked eyes of his were always watching me. His second wife tried 'tact.' He caught her and drove her into the streets. I'd have had no chance to get a cent, and if I had gotten it I'd not have dared spend it. Do you imagine I ran away from him without having THOUGHT? If there'd been any way of staying on, any way of making things even endurable, I'd have stayed."

"But you've got to go back, Milly," cried her mother, in tears.