Читать книгу A Mad Marriage - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 6

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rs. Gordon did not leave our cottage that night—did not leave it for two whole weeks, and then the house that wouldn't let was let at last, and Saltmarsh had a tenant.

It would be of little use at this late day to detail all the arguments she used to win me for her attendant and companion—the most irresistible argument of all was wages, treble, fourfold what I had ever earned before, and paid in advance. Of her and her story I had very serious doubts, but beggars must not be choosers. I took her money and became her paid companion.

For hours that night, after mother and Jessie were in bed, I sat beside Mrs. Gordon, listening to the story she told of herself. Brief, vague, and unsatisfactory to a degree, that story was. She had been an orphan from childhood. She was not wealthy, but she had sufficient; great trouble had suddenly come upon her, and she had lost her husband after four months of wedded life. That was all.

"Lost your husband!" I repeated, curiously, looking at her. "Do you mean that your husband is dead?"

A simple and natural question, surely; but her face, pale before, turned of a dead whiteness from brow to chin.

"Dead of course," she answered, huskily; "for pity's sake, don't ask me questions. It is only a week ago, and I cannot bear it. Only a week, and it seems like a century. And to think—to think of all the long, lonely, empty years that are to come! Never to hear his voice, never to see his face more!"

And then she broke down again and wept—oh, how she wept! My heart was full of compassion, and yet—only dead one week, and running away like this, not in mourning, not a friend in the world, rich, young and beautiful. A queer story on the face of it—a very queer story indeed.

Who is to gauge the power of woman's beauty? If she had been a plain young person, I believe ten pounds a week would not have tempted me to take up with her and bury myself alive at Saltmarsh. But her wonderful beauty fairly fascinated me, her lovely face won me, even against my better judgment.

"And if that face can make a fool of you, Joan, my dear," I said to myself, as I went to bed, "what awful havoc it must make among mankind! How very unpleasant for poor Mr. Gordon to die and leave it, and how desperately fond she must have been of him, to be sure!"

"You will let me stay here until the house yonder is ready," she said next morning, with the air of one not used to being refused. "I dislike hotels—people stare so. I will make you no trouble, and I want to be perfectly quiet, and quite alone."

It was curious to see her with her lovely face, her elegant dress, her diamond rings, and her dark flowing hair, so strangely out of place in our small, bare, homely house. I hardly know whether she should have stayed or not, but our poverty pleaded for her, and I consented to all she proposed. To take the house for her, to see it furnished, to attend to everything, while she herself kept absolutely out of sight.

My new duties began at once. I went to Mr. Barteaux, and abruptly informed him I had a tenant for the House to Let.

"A widow lady, sir," I said; "a Mrs. Gordon. Any reasonable rent she is willing to pay, and I am engaged to live with her."

"Bless my soul!" said Mr. Barteaux. "You don't say so! A tenant at last. A widow lady, eh? How many in family, Joan?"

I knew the vision before Mr. Barteaux's mind's eye. A florid matron of fifty, with half-a-dozen strapping boys and girls.

"No family, sir. Quite a young widow. You must close the bargain with me, Mr. Barteaux; her loss is recent, she is in trouble, and doesn't feel like transacting business herself. There are no references; instead, she will pay in advance if you choose."

We closed the bargain there and then; and that very day Saltmarsh was thrown open to the sunshine and free winds of Heaven. What an odd, awesome feeling it gave me to go with my mysterious new mistress through the gruesome apartments, silent and forsaken so long. Four, out of the ten rooms the house contained, were chosen to be furnished and fitted up, papered, painted, whitewashed, carpeted, curtained. All fell to me, and all was done in two brief weeks, and well done, though I say it, and Mrs. Gordon and Joan Kennedy, it was known to all Quebec, were domesticated at Saltmarsh.

I wonder now, as I sit here and look back at that strange time, that even poverty could have tempted me to endure the life I led all those dreary months. The listless, lonely days spent in reading or rambling through the empty, echoing rooms, the long awesome nights when the winds held high carnival without and the rats high jinks within. No one ever came to the house, except a stout Frenchwoman, who did our washing and general drudgery, coming every morning and going every night. For me, my position was a sinecure, nothing to do, and treble wages for doing it, but the hardest work for all, that I ever did in my life.

And my mistress! Well, the days, and the weeks, and the months went by, and she was as great a mystery as ever. Where she had come from, how long she meant to remain, whither she intended going, were all sealed secrets to me. She never wrote letters, she never received any. She could not have been much more dead to all the world outside our wooden walls if she had been in her shroud and coffin.

She spent the heavy, aimless days sitting mostly at her chamber window—a dark-draped, slender figure, a dreary, lovely face, two great, hopeless eyes, a total wreck of life. The story of her life, whatever it had been, no common one be sure, was ended for the time; the play was over, the lights out, and nothing left but to sit and look at the curtain. A woman young as she was, of the wrong sort, of the silent, secret sort, a woman with something on her mind, a woman with a secret.

Two things I discovered—only two. One, that her husband was not dead, but deserted; that she had run away from him and was hiding here, in horrible dread of his ever finding her out. Secondly, that in spite of this running away and this constant terror, she still loved him, with a passionate and most despairing love.

I had gone into her room one night, and found her sitting holding a picture before her, and gazing on it as if entranced. It was her principal occupation. I had often found her so before, but the picture itself I had never seen. To-night, however, she called me to her in her abrupt way.

"Joan," she said, "come here."

She had been crying, I could see—silently and miserably. I went and looked over her shoulder at the picture.

Photography was in its infancy in those days—every family had not its picture gallery. This was a daguerreotype—the portrait of a young, dashing-looking and rather handsome man. A beardless and boyish face, yet a very manly one, looking up at you with frankly smiling eyes.

"It is all I have left," she said, with tremulous lips. "I will never see him again. I loved him and I have spoiled his whole life. It would have been better for him he had died than ever looked in my face."

"Indeed," was my rather stupid answer. But I was used to her extravagant talk and not much affected by it. "He is a friend of yours, madame?"

She looked at her picture, and over her face there dawned a light that made her beauty radiant.

"He is my husband!" she answered.

I drew back and looked at her—aghast, I must confess.

"Your husband!" I repeated. "Oh—was your husband, you mean? You told me he was dead."

"Dead to me. Oh, Joan! dead to me, but alive and well. Alive and well; and though I should live to be a hundred, I may never see his face again. Never again; and there are times when I would lay down my very life only to look upon him once more."

"You love him and—he has left you?" I ventured.

"I love him—and I left him. I love him with all my heart, and I have fled from him, and buried myself here for fear of him. I wonder I don't go mad, or die. Once I thought I would without him; but somehow life drags on and on, and one is a coward, and afraid to end it one's self. He loved me once, Joan—ah, dear Heaven, yes! he loved me and made me his wife; and now, and now, Joan, if ever he finds me, I believe he will take my life."

I looked back at the frank, fair, boyish face.

"He take your life!" I said; "that bright-faced boy! No, Mrs. Gordon, murderers don't look like that."

"He is the truest, the noblest, the bravest of men, a loyal friend and a gallant gentleman."

"And yet his wife runs away from him, and says if ever they meet he will take her life."

She scarcely seemed to heed me. She laid her head on her folded arms as though she never cared to lift it again.

"Ah! let me alone," she said. "You know nothing about it. If I could but die and make an end of it all! Only this, Joan," she looked up suddenly, swift, dark terror in her eyes; "I dreamed last night he was searching for me—that he was here. He came and stood before me, stern and terrible, holding my death-warrant in his hand! Don't let him come! don't let anyone come! If ever we meet, I believe in my soul he will kill me."

Was Mrs. Gordon going mad? that was the very serious question uppermost in my thoughts when I went to bed that night, and for many nights after. It was a very queer and uncomfortable affair altogether, and the sooner I got out of it the better; and just as I was beginning to think of tendering my resignation, behold the climax all at once came of itself.

March, April and May had passed—it was the close of June. I had gone into the city one afternoon for our weekly store of groceries, finished my purchases, and, basket on arm, was going home. My way led up St. Louis Street; and passing the office of Mr. Barteaux, I saw him in his own doorway, deep in conversation with a stranger. A look at that stranger, and with one great jump my heart was in my mouth. For it was the original of the picture—it was Mrs. Gordon's husband. "The hour and the man were come!"

Neither saw me. I paused a second and looked again. The same, beyond doubt; the same, with a difference—worn and haggard, set and stern—the same, yet that was the face of a frank, happy boy, this of a reckless, desperate man. A straw hat was pulled over his eyes, a gray summer overcoat was buttoned up—a soldier and a gentleman, that was evident at a glance.

I turned up a side street and hastened breathlessly on. My first duty was to my mistress. I must tell her that what she dreaded had come—that the husband from whom she had fled, was here. I walked at my utmost speed, and in half an hour was at Saltmarsh.

"She said he would kill her!" I thought, turning hot and cold; "and who knows that he will not? He would not be the first husband that has killed a runaway wife."

I ran through the rooms, all flurried and breathless, calling out her name.

She was not in any of them. Of late, since June had come, the fine weather at times had tempted her out. This, most unfortunately, was one of the times. I knew pretty well where to find her—on the river bank below there was a strip of yellow sand, where she was fond of walking up and down in the sunshine. She was sure to be there now.

I rushed out, looking wildly around. Yes, there was the tall, soldierly figure in the straw hat and summery overcoat, coming rapidly toward me at a swinging pace.

I declare I almost screamed, so nervous and overwrought had I become.

If he was before me—if he came upon her suddenly, the shock alone might kill her, for she was far from strong of late. I turned and fled headlong down the steep hillside path, still calling her name. Yes, there, quite alone, pacing slowly up and down the sandy riverside path, looking at the fast-flowing water, Mrs. Gordon walked.

She paused in her slow walk, and turned to me in wonder at my break-neck descent.

How beautiful she was! even in that supreme moment, I remember that was my first thought.

"For pity's sake, fly!" I cried out; "fly at once. He is here!"

She laid both her hands suddenly over her heart. Across her face there flashed the electric light of a great and sudden joy.

"Who?" she said, almost in a whisper.

"Your husband, the man whose picture you showed me. Fly at once if you are afraid of him. I saw him, I tell you he is coming. Oh, Heaven!—he is here!"

I fell back in consternation. Yes, he had followed me; he was coming down the path, he was here.

I turned to my mistress. Would she faint? would she fly? Neither.

Who is to understand men's wives! Terror was there, in that wild, white face, it is true, but over and above it all, such rapture as I never before saw in the face of man or woman. She loved him and she saw him again—all was said in that.

He walked down the path. She came a step forward, with that transfigured face, and held out to him both arms with an eloquent cry:

"Gordon! Gordon!"