The Redemption of Anthony/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
MRS. MARTIN sat on the couch, the chapters of Tony's book about her. Drake himself walked nervously about the room. She had been silently tearing out the heart of it for hours, and he had been on the rack, awaiting judgment.
Priscilla came in and out, watching them curiously, but they paid no attention to her. She felt the atmosphere charged with the same excitement that had surrounded Anthony that day she watched him put the finishing touches to the book. Indeed, there was the same strain in her mother's quick breathing, and the way she tossed aside page after page as she read them. Priscilla stood at the door, like a child shut out.
Mrs. Martin read the last word and sat like one in a dream, and Anthony came and stood before her, waiting. She rose slowly and looked at him, her eyes shining, her heart in her face, her hands outstretched.
"Oh, Anthony, Anthony!" she said softly, "you are redeemed!"
He took her hands and bent his forehead on them, and drew in his breath sharply in a sob of relief. Then he turned and went past Priscilla swiftly.
She stood a moment, tottering, like one dazzled by a sudden stroke of lightning, then she walked to the couch and faced her mother. The glory still rested on Mrs. Martin's face.
"Mother, mother!" Priscilla whispered in horror.
Mrs. Martin looked at her absently.
"Mother—you love Anthony!"
Mrs. Martin started as if struck.
"You do—I saw it then, a moment ago, in your face!"
"Well?"
"You don't deny it?"
Mrs. Martin looked her daughter squarely in the eye, measuring her.
"No, Priscilla, I don't deny it."
"And you have loved him all along?"
"Yes, I've loved him all along."
Priscilla blazed out in a fury of rage.
"How dared you? How dared you?" she said. "You gave me to him. I never would have thought of marrying him if you had not wanted me to. I didn't love him at all when you married me to him."
"Well?"
"And now I've grown to love him as I never loved anything in my life, not even you, our love is the—the most wonderful thing in the world—and now you—you—"
"Well?"
"I can't give him up to you, mother; I can't, I can't!"
"There is no need of any such talk between us. If you will listen to me—"
"I can't—my heart is broken. Why, all my love for you is just a sword to stab you with, and my love for him is—"
Mrs. Martin put her hand on Priscilla's arm and drew her down beside her. "Now, listen. It seems best that there should be truth between us at last. Years ago, when Tony first began to monopolize my life, I knew that I loved him, and after a year of bitter suffering I realized that he did not love me. After awhile I grew to believe that even a love that is unreturned was better than no love at all. Then you came, and battered down the ramparts I had so carefully built around my heart, and crept inside. There was only room for you and Tony.
"It was fate, I suppose, that decreed that Tony should fall in love with you. I had given him all there was in me, mentally and emotionally, and now it was left me to give him—you. I knew he had come to the time when he needed this tardy awakening. You were young, impressionable, fond of him. I was not sure that you could fill his life alone, but I could help you, always hiding my secret. There was no sacrifice of you, Priscilla."
"No, there was not," she admitted; "but you loved him then—why didn't you marry him?"
"Because he didn't love me, and he needed love to make him what he is to-day—what you have made him."
"But what of us, mother?"
"We loved him, and what is loving but giving?"
"He asked you to be his wife, mother?"
"Yes.”
"And you let me, when you loved him so?"
"Yes."
"Did you think of my happiness, mother?"
"Yes. I knew you would grow to be—what you are, dear. I knew what your power of love could do for him, and what it would do for you. You have been happy, Priscilla?"
"Happy? Oh, mother, there is no word—"
"I know—I am so glad."
"But now what are we going to do?"
"To do? Need we do anything? I ask only for whatever place in your lives you can spare me—you and Tony, you two people whom I love dearest and best."
"But, dear, doesn't Tony know?"
"No, and he must never know."
"Perhaps if I had never come home at all you might have had this happiness."
"Priscilla, don't make me regret that I have laid my soul bare to you."
Priscilla touched her mother's hand with her cheek. "You gave your happiness to me! I'd like to give mine all to you."
"It was not meant for me. Some of us grow to our full height through joy and fulfilment, some through suffering and renunciation."
"But does growth count without the joy?"
"Can you ask me that, dear, when you see the serenity of my life, now grown big with loving?"
"I wonder if my joy will bring me to the height you've reached!"
"You should go farther, with your husband's help, and as for him, you've brought him to his own—"
"Not I, mother, but you and I—we've done it together."
"Yes, the redemption of Anthony has come through love, and since his greatness means so much to the world, perhaps we were put here just for that."
"What's that about Anthony?" Drake asked, coming in and throwing himself down beside them.
"It's mostly love—about Anthony," Priscilla said.
THE END