Shadows of Flames Part 110

The Judge cleared his throat. Sophy had her hands clasped about her knee, one slim, brown-shod foot was dangling. It was a disconcertingly "unmatronly" att.i.tude. The Judge glanced nervously at Charlotte. Her eyebrows said: "Go on." He cleared his throat a second time:

"_A-rrrum!_"

Sophy turned her head and looked inquiringly at him.

"Yes?" she said.

The Judge flushed as his eyes met hers. Good man ... it embarra.s.sed him to meet the eyes of one of his own womenkind whose wedded husband had actually embraced an "abandoned minx" under their own roof. Charlotte had termed Belinda Horton an "abandoned minx." The Judge considered the term apposite. So Belinda figured thus in their thoughts from that moment. But all this came too perilously near to mentioning the seventh commandment in "the presence of a lady" not to cause the dear, old-fashioned man acute discomfort.

"Well, Joe?" said Sophy again, as he hesitated.

"It's ... it's all ... mighty involved, Sophy," he stammered, looking down at the snowstorm paper-weight which he had picked up and was turning nervously round and round.

"Yes, Joe. I know that," she said gravely. "That's what I want you to help me about."

"Divorce is a mighty serious--er--ugly thing...."

"But not as ugly as marriage that is no marriage, Joe."

The Judge rumpled his smoky wreath the wrong way.

"Yes ... I know how you must feel...." he admitted unhappily.

"No, Joe. n.o.body but a woman can know how she feels," put in Charlotte, reddening in her turn.

"Well ... I reckon I can give a mighty shrewd guess at it," said the Judge.

"It's very simple," Sophy said. "I want to be free. I don't think I've any false vanity about it. I did have at first. But then, you see, _I_ was mistaken, as well as Morris. I don't feel hard to Morris. It really isn't all his fault...."

"Oh!" said Charlotte. She was quite crimson now.

"No, Chartie, it is not," Sophy persisted. "But I can't enter into all that...."

"I should think not!"

"I only want to get free and to set him free, as soon as possible."

"_He_ oughtn't to be free--the idea!" cried Charlotte indignantly.

Sophy shook her head at her, smiling.

"Oh, Chartie," she said, "we aren't in the 'dark backward' of the Victorian era! Why shouldn't he be free to live his life as he wants to, as well as I?"

"That's downright irreligious, Sophy!" cried her sister with pa.s.sion.

"I don't think so," said Sophy mildly.

The Judge intervened.

"Come," he said nervously, "don't let's squabble over side-issues."

"'Side-issues'! _Joe!_" exclaimed his wife.

"Oh, well ... don't let's squabble, at any rate," he said huntedly. "The main point, what we're here to discuss, is Sophy's wish to be divorced."

"And I think she's perfectly justified!" snapped Charlotte.

The Judge resumed, addressing Sophy:

"Now, the question is, what will be ... er ... Mr. Loring's att.i.tude in the matter?"

"I think he'll oppose it ... at first," said Sophy.

The Judge looked curious.

"Why only 'at first'?" he asked.

Sophy said quietly and rather sadly:

"Because it isn't in his nature to keep up anything for long."

"Mh!" said the Judge.

He took up the paper-weight which he had laid aside and turned it so vigorously that the little cottage and figures within the gla.s.s-ball were almost blotted from sight by the mimic snowstorm.

"Divorce is a slow affair in Virginia," he said at last.

"Then I'd rather get mine in the West," said Sophy.

Charlotte looked at her in horror.

"Oh, Sophy!" she cried. "No! ... you _wouldn't_!... It's ... it's so _vulgar_!"

"Life is vulgar," said Sophy.

"Oh, my _dear_!"

"I mean it in the big sense. Vulgar means common to all--to all people.

So I say life is vulgar ... and the longing for freedom is vulgar. No one has ever longed for freedom as slaves have, I suppose. Well, I am a slave ... and I long for freedom. I long for it so that I want it quickly. I want it as one wants water when one's famishing, and bread when one's starving. I'm not so aristocratic in my hunger and thirst that I prefer to wait through dignified years for a bit of stale bread.

I want my loaf _now_ ... and I want the whole loaf ... not half...."

Sophy was indeed speaking with "vulgar" intensity. She "let herself go"

because she wanted Joe and Charlotte to understand once for all that there was no use in trying to make her behave "reasonably."

Charlotte's small mouth was tight shut. The Judge looked rather pale.

Just as he had thought, Sophy was evincing rashness in its most aggravated form.