Читать книгу Up the Hill and Over - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay - Страница 9

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"In order to make you understand, I'll have to go back," said the doctor musingly, "a long way back. Some of the story you already know, but now I want you to know it all. But first—when you found me in that hospital, a useless bit of human wreckage, and forced me back into life with your scorn of a coward and your cutting words, what did you think? What did I tell you? It is all hazy to me."

"You told me very little. It was plain enough. You had come a bad cropper. Some girl, I gathered. You had lost her, you blamed yourself. You talked a great deal of nonsense. I inferred—the usual thing!"

"You were mistaken. It was at once better and worse than that. But let's begin at the beginning. My father was a fairly wealthy man—but a dreamer. He made his money by a clever invention and lost it by an investment little short of idiotic. Like many unpractical men he had rather fancied himself as a man of business and the disillusion killed him. He—shot himself. My mother, my sister and myself were left, with nothing save a small sum in the bank and the deed of the modest house we lived in. Adela was twenty-one and I was nineteen. We sold the house, moved into rooms; Adela learned shorthand and went into an office. I wanted to do the same. But mother was adamant. I must finish my college course and take my degree; she and Adela could manage until I could make it up to them later. It was hard, but it seemed the only sensible thing to do—

"I faced the task of working my way through college with a thankful heart, for though I pretended that I did not care, it would have been a terrible thing to have given up my life's ambition. The thought of Adela trudging to the office hurt—it was the touch of the spur. I needn't tell you, you can guess how I worked! People were kind. One summer, old Doctor Inglis, whose amiable hobby it was to help young medical students, engaged me for the holidays as his chauffeur and general helper at a wage which would see me through my next term. It seemed an unusual piece of luck, for he lived only twenty miles from my mother's home and an electric tram connected the towns. One night I went with Adela to a Church Social—of all places—and that is where the story really begins, for it was at the Social that I met Molly Weston. It seemed the most casual of all accidents, for you can imagine that I did not frequent churches in those days, and Molly, too, had come there by chance. She was dressed in pink, her cheeks were pink, she wore a pink rose in her hair. She was the prettiest little fairy that ever smiled and pouted her way into a boy's heart. Before I left her I was madly in love—a boy's first headlong passion. Adela was amazed, teased me in her elderly sister way but never for a moment took it seriously. Molly was a mere bird of passage, an American girl staying with friends for a brief time, therefore my infatuation was a humorous thing. But it was not so simple as that. Molly stayed on, Dr. Inglis was indulgent, we met continually. If her friends knew of it they did not care. It was just a flirtation of their pretty guest's. As a serious factor I was quite beneath the horizon, a young fellow working his way through college, and with, later on, a mother and sister to support.

"Molly understood the situation. At least she knew all the facts. I doubt if she ever understood them. She was one of those helpless, clinging girls who never seem to understand anything clearly. I remember well how I used to agonise in explanation, trying to make her see our difficulties and to face them with me. But when I had talked myself into helpless silence she would ruffle my hair and say, 'But you really do love me, don't you, Harry?' or 'I don't care what we have to do, so long as mother doesn't know.'

"I soon found out that her one strong emotion was fear of her mother. She was fond of her but she feared her as weak natures fear the strong, especially when bound to them by ties of blood. I was allowed to see her photograph—the picture of a grim hard face instinct with an almost terrible strength. No wonder my pretty Molly was her slave. One would have deemed it impossible that they were mother and daughter. Molly, it appears, was like her father, and he, poor man, had been long dead. Molly would do anything, promise anything, if only her mother might not know. She had not the faintest scruple in deceiving her, but this I laid, and still lay, to the strength of her love for me.

"She did love me. She must have loved me—else how could her timid nature have taken the risk it did?

"Summer fled by like a flash. Molly stayed with her friends as long as she could find an excuse and then went on for a brief week in Toronto. It was the week, of course, that I returned to college. We hoped that she could extend her stay, but her mother wrote 'Come home,' and there was no appeal from that. Then I did a desperate thing. Without Molly's knowledge I wrote to her mother telling her that I loved her daughter and begging, as a man begs for his life, to be allowed to ask her to wait for me. The letter was a lie in that it concealed the fact that my love was already confessed but I felt it necessary to shield Molly. I received no answer to the letter, but Molly received a telegram, 'Come home at once.'

"I can leave you to imagine the scene—my despair, Molly's tears! Never for an instant did she dream of disobeying and I—I felt that if she went I should lose her forever.

"Willits, there is something in me, devil or angel, which will not give up. Nothing has ever conquered it yet and Molly was like wax in my hands—so long as 'Mother' need not know. I do not attempt to excuse myself; what I did was dastardly, but it did not seem so then. The night before she left, she stole away from home. I had a license and we were married by a Methodist minister. He knew neither of us and probably forgot the whole incident immediately. It was a marriage only in name for we said good-bye at Molly's door. She left next morning. I never saw her again."

Into the silence which followed, the professor's words dropped dryly.

"What was your idea in forcing a meaningless marriage?"

"I loved her. I knew that it was the only way. Madly as I loved her, I knew that Molly was weak as water. I could not, would not, run the risk of letting her leave me without the legal tie. But I justified it to myself—I could have justified anything, I fear! I vowed a vow that she would be repaid for the waiting as never woman yet was paid. She wept on my shoulder and said, 'And you really do love me, Harry—and you'll swear mother need never know?'

"I swore it. There were to be no letters. Molly was too terrified to write and still more terrified of receiving a letter. She would live in constant dread, she said, if there were a possibility of such a thing. Weak in everything else she was adamant in this.

"I went back to work. I worked with the strength of ten. Health, comfort, pleasure, all were subordinated to the fever of work. I hoped that I might steal a glimpse of her sometimes. She promised to try to return to Toronto. But my letter must have alarmed the mother. I found out, indirectly, that shortly after her return, Mrs. Weston whisked her off to Europe. They were gone a year. When they returned I was in the far west with a government surveying party, earning something to help me with my last year's college expenses. When I was again in Toronto she had vanished. Gone, as I afterward learned, to stay with an aunt in California. Her mother, alive to danger, was not going to risk a meeting, and my vow to Molly left me helpless. But how I worked!

"That last year things began to come my way. Adela married a fine young fellow, wealthy and generous. My mother went to live with them in their western home, Calgary, where they still are. Then Thomas Callandar, my mother's brother, who had never bothered about any of us living, died, and left me a handsome property, adding, as you already know, the condition that I take the family name. You remember that my father's name, the name under which I married Molly, was Chedridge.

"Nothing now held me from Molly—in another month I would have my degree, and free and rich I could go to claim her. It seemed like a fairy tale! In my great happiness I broke my promise and wrote to her, to the California address, hoping to catch her there. In three weeks' time the letter came back from the dead letter office. I wrote again, this time to the Cleveland address, a short note only, telling her I was free at last. Then, next day, I followed the letter to Cleveland, wealth in one hand, the assurance of an honourable degree in the other.

"I had no trouble in finding the house. It was one of a row of houses, nondescript but comfortable, in a pleasant street. It seemed familiar—I had seen Molly's snapshots of it often. I cannot tell you what it felt like to be really there—to walk down the street, up the path, up the steps to the veranda. I was trembling as with ague, I was chalk-white I knew—was I not in another moment to see my wife!

"I could hear the electric bell tingle somewhere inside. Then an awful pause. What if they were not at home? What if they lived there no longer? I knew with a pang of fear that I could not bear another disappointment.

"There was a sound in the hall, the door knob moved—the door opened. I gasped in the greatness of my relief for the face in the opening was undoubtedly the face of Molly's mother. They were at home. They must have had my letter—they must be expecting me—

"Something in the woman's face daunted me. It was deathly and strained. Surely she did not intend to continue her opposition? Yet it confused me. I forgot all that I had intended to say, I stammered:

"'I am Henry Chedridge. I want to see Molly. I am rich, I have my degree—'

"'You cannot see her!' she said. Just that! The door began to close. But I had myself in hand now. I laid hold of the door and spoke in a different tone. The tone of a master.

"'This is foolish, Mrs. Weston. I thought you understood. I can and I will see your daughter. Molly is my wife!'

"She gave way at that. The door opened wide, showing a long empty hall. The woman stood aside, made no effort to stop me, but looking me in the eyes she said: 'You come too late. Your wife is not here. Molly is dead!'

"Then, in one second, it seemed that all the years of overwork, of mental strain and bodily deprivation rose up and took their due. I tried to speak, stuttered foolishly, and fell like dead over the door-sill of the house I was never to enter.

"You know the rest, for you saved me. When I struggled back to life, without the will to live, you shamed and stung me into effort. You brought the new master-influence into my life, taught me that the old ambition, the old work-ardour was not dead. Those months with you in Paris, in Germany, in London at the feet of great men saw a veritable new birth. I ceased to be Henry Chedridge, lover, and became Henry Callandar, scientist. All this I owe to you."

The other raised his hand.

"No, not that. Some impulse I may have given you, but you have made yourself what you are. But—you have not told me all yet?"

"No." Again the doctor began his uneasy pacing of the room. "The rest is harder to tell. It is not so clear. It has nothing to do with facts at all. It is just that when I first began to show signs of overwork this last time I became troubled with an idea, an obsession. It had no foundation. It persisted without reason. It was fast becoming unbearable!"

He paused in his restless pacing and Willits' keen eyes noticed the look of strain which had aroused his alarm some months ago. Nevertheless he asked in his most matter-of-fact tone, "And the idea was—?"

Callandar hesitated. "I can hardly speak of it yet in the past tense.

The idea is—that Molly is not dead!"

"Good Heavens!" ejaculated the professor, startled out of his calm. "But have you any reason to doubt? To—to base—"

"None whatever. No enquiries which I have made cast doubt upon the mother's words. But on the other hand I have been unable to confirm them. I cannot find where my wife died—except that there is no record of her death in the Cleveland registries. She did not die in Cleveland."

"But you have told me that they were seldom at home. That the mother was a great traveller."

"Yes. The want of evidence in Cleveland proves nothing."

"Did you feel any doubt at first?"

"Absolutely none. The gloomy house, the empty hall, the white face and black dress of the woman in the door, the look of horror and anger in her eyes—yes, and a kind of grim triumph too—all served to drive the fatal message home. Dead!—There was death in the air of that house, death in the ghastly face—in the cruel, toneless words!—After my tedious recovery I made an effort to see Mrs. Weston, although I had conceived a horror of the woman, but she was gone. The house had been sold. I tried to trace her without result. She seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth."

"And how long ago did the whole thing happen?"

"Twelve years. I was twenty-three when I went to claim my bride. I am thirty-five now."

"Dear me!" said the little man sincerely, "I have always thought you older than that! But twelve years is—twelve years! And you say this doubt is a very recent thing?"

"Yes. I have told you the thing is absurd. But I can't help it."

"Have you made any further enquiries?"

"Yes, uselessly. There is a rumour that Mrs. Weston, too, is dead. A lady who used to know them tells me that she is certain she heard of her death—in England, she thinks, but upon being questioned was quite at sea as to where or when or even as to the original source of her information. She remembers 'hearing it' and that's all. Then I sought for the aunts, the maiden ladies whom Molly visited in California. They too are gone, the older died during the time I lay ill in the hospital. The younger one was not quite bright, I believe, and was taken away to live with some relatives in the East. It was not Molly's mother who fetched her. It was a man, a very kind man whom the old lady, my informant, had never seen before. She said he had a queer name. She could not remember it, but thought he was a physician. I imagine that the kind friend was an asylum doctor."

"Very likely. And could your informant tell you nothing of the niece—if

Molly had visited there?"

"She remembered her last visit very well but her memories were of no value. She was a sweet, pretty child, she said, and she often wondered how she came to have such a homely mother. She evidently disliked Mrs. Weston very much, and when I asked her if she had ever heard of Molly's death she said no, but that she was not a bit surprised as she had always predicted that the pretty, little, white thing would be worried into an early grave. I noticed the word 'white' and asked her about it, for the Molly I knew had a lovely colour. Her memory became confused when I pressed her, but she seemed quite sure that the girl who came that winter with her mother was a very pale girl—looked as if she might have come south for her health."

"All of which goes to prove—"

"Yes—I know. Poor Molly! Poor little girl! I believe in my heart that our mad marriage killed her. Without me constantly with her, the fear of her mother, perhaps the doubt of me, the burden of the whole disastrous secret was too much. And it was my fault, Willits—all my fault!" He turned to the window to hide his working face. "Do you wonder," he added softly, "that her poor little wraith comes back to trouble me?"

"Come, come, no need to be morbid! You made a mistake, but you have paid. As for the doubt which troubles you—it is but the figment of a tired brain. The mother could have had no possible reason for deceiving you. You were no longer an ineligible student—and the girl loved you. Besides, there was the legal tie. Would any woman condemn her daughter to a false position for life? And without reason? The idea is preposterous. Come now, admit it!"

"Oh, I admit it! My reasoning powers are still unimpaired. But reason has nothing to do with that kind of mental torture. It is my soul that has been sick; it is my soul that must be cured. And to come back to the very point from which we started, I believe I shall find that cure here—in Coombe."

"With Mrs. Sykes?" dryly.

"Certainly. Mrs. Sykes is part of the cure."

"And the other part?"

"Oh—just everything. I hardly know why I like the place. But I do. Why analyse? I can sleep here. I wake in the morning like a man with the right to live, and for the first time in a year, Willits, a long torturing year, I am beginning to feel free of that oppression, that haunting sense that somewhere Molly is alive, that she needs me and that I cannot get to her. I had begun to fear that it would drive me mad. But, here, it is going. Yesterday I was walking down a country road and suddenly I felt free—exquisitely, gloriously free—the past wiped out! That—that was why I almost feared to see you, Elliott, you bring the past so close."

The hands of the friends met in a firm handclasp.

"Have it your own way," said the professor, smiling his grim smile.

"Consider me silenced."

The doctor's answer was cut off by the jingling entrance of Mrs. Sykes bearing before her a large tray upon which stood tall glasses, a beaded pitcher of ice cold lemonade and some cake with white frosting.

"Seeing as it's so hot," said she amiably, "I thought a cold drink might cool you off some. Especially as breakfast will be five minutes late owing to the chicken. I thought maybe as you had a friend, doctor, a chicken—"

"A chicken will be delicious," said the doctor, answering the question in her voice. "Mrs. Sykes, let me present Professor Willits; Willits, Mrs. Sykes! Let me take the tray."

Mrs. Sykes shook hands cordially. "Land sakes!" she said. "I thought you were a priest! Not that I really suspicioned that the doctor, good Presbyterian as he is, would know any such. But priests is terrible wily. They deceive the very elect—and it's best to be prepared. As it is, any friend of the doctor's is a friend of mine. You're kindly welcome, I'm sure."

"Thank you," said the professor limply.

The doctor handed them each a glass and raised his own.

"Let us drink," he said, "to Coombe. 'Coombe and the Soul cure!'"

"Amen!" said Willits.

"Land sakes!" said Mrs. Sykes. "I thought it was his spine!"