Читать книгу Deadman's - Mary Gaunt - Страница 7

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'Waste not your hour, nor in the vain pursuit

Of this and that endeavour and dispute.'

COMMISSIONER NICHOLSON looked down tenderly at the blushing little woman who opened the door to him, then held out his hand to his hostess.

'Good-morning, Mrs. Ruthven, good-morning, Miss Parkin. I was passing, so I thought I might come in. I wanted to see your husband,' he added, turning to Nellie, and seating himself in a comfortable easy-chair. 'Do you think he's anywhere about?'

'I dunno where he is,' said Nellie sullenly.

She always seemed at her very worst before her husband, but she did not show to advantage before his friend.

'Oh, well, I expect he'll be round presently,' said Tom Nicholson cheerfully, wiping the dust out of his eyes with his pocket-handkerchief. 'Whew, it's an awful day! Take pity on me, Mrs. Ruthven, and let me stop in this nice cool room till he does. I want to see him about that gray horse of his. I may stop, mayn't I? I'm not interrupting, am I?'

'Oh, you ain't interrupting,' said Nellie with a giggle; 'I'm jack of books; I ain't agoin' to do no more lessons. You stop along with Mary as long as you like. I ain't a spoil-sport; you stop an' have lunch. I'm off to mother's. Two's company, you know.'

Poor Mary Parkin grew crimson to the tips of her ears.

'Mrs. Ruthven—Nellie!' she began imploringly. 'Don't go away, please. What will Mr. Ruthven think? And you know—indeed, I want——'

'Oh, dry up,' said Nellie, at the door that led to her own bedroom. 'I know well enough what you want, and what Mr. Nicholson wants. It ain't me. I'm off to mother's. It's a free country, an' I'll do as I like. You can tell Mr. Ruthven to put that in his pipe an' smoke it;' and she banged the door behind her, leaving poor little Mary Parkin standing the very image of dismayed propriety in the middle of the room.

Commissioner Nicholson smiled behind his fair beard, and, rising to his feet, came and stood beside her.

'Poor Ruthven!' he said softly. 'He has made a jolly mess of things. A sweet young person that must be to live with. I thought he didn't let her go down to her mother's.'

'He doesn't,' said Miss Parkin, on the verge of tears; 'I'm supposed to see that she doesn't—but—but——'

'But as she would make two of you, and nothing short of physical force will stop her, I don't see how you are to carry out that part of the contract. Never mind; come and sit down and talk to me. Were you giving her lessons? Give me some instead. I'll be a much more tractable pupil.'

'Of course,' said Mary Parkin, who was a very direct young person and scorned any pretence, 'I'd much rather talk to you—that goes without saying—but I'm supposed to teach her; and since the first week or two she has scarcely made a pretence of learning, and now she declares she won't try any more—won't even pretend to try. Whatever will become of them both? Poor Mr. Ruthven!'

'He doesn't care a snap of his fingers for her.'

'Of course he doesn't. I think it's a shame of him; at least, you couldn't expect him to, could you? but it makes it all the worse. It's quite painful to see him trying to take an interest in her. He can't talk to her. It seems as if he can't. I believe he hates the sight of her. She says he does, and I believe it's true. I don't know which it is hardest for. It is hard for her, you know. Oh dear! why ever did they get married?'

'That little cat of a Langdon woman!' said Nicholson with fervour.

'Oh,' said Mary Parkin demurely, 'do you say that? She told me Mrs. Langdon made him marry her, and she doesn't thank her for it now, either.'

'Mrs. Langdon may be a good enough woman in her way,' said Nicholson, 'but Ruthven was certainly very gone on her. I don't believe he knew it himself, though; thought her a sort of superior angel, don't you know, and would have done anything she thought right. I wonder what he thinks of her now.'

'He doesn't think much of her at all. He has just as much as he can manage on his hands. I wonder,' she added hesitatingly, 'if I ought to tell Mr. Ruthven about her going down to her mother's. She only just told me, and I always thought she was with Mr. Ruthven, and that it was best to leave them to themselves.'

And she blushed, because though, doubtless, she had begun by being thoughtful for the Ruthvens, most certainly since Commissioner Nicholson had got into the habit of strolling down that way every evening that he could get away, she had not remembered much else but her own pleasure, and she really did not know that shorter and shorter had grown the evenings that Ruthven had spent with his wife.

Nicholson noted the blush, and smiled a little satisfied smile to himself.

'It's not much good telling Ruthven, I'm afraid. I don't suppose he wants you to be a spy on his wife. Besides, if a man can't look after his own wife, it's not much good anyone else trying to help him. She meets her mother, does she? Where?'

'Out on the ranges behind the house, I suppose. She'd never dare go down to her mother's place.'

'On the ranges at night? I'm afraid—I'm afraid——'

'What are you afraid of?'

'Well, now I come to think of it, several times lately I have seen Fraser up on the ranges there with a woman. Now, who could it be but Mrs. Ruthven?'

'Oh!' sighed Mary Parkin. 'She surely wouldn't do such a dreadful thing! Who is Fraser?'

'Fraser is a blackguard, pure and simple. He's a man of some education, that's the worst of it, and he's drifted here to be a thorn in the side of the Commissioners. There isn't a bit of villainy done but Fraser's sure to be at the bottom of it. He's quite clever enough to use the others as his tools; and, yes—I shouldn't wonder—the Commissioner's wife—it would be just his little game. Good Lord!'

He pulled himself up suddenly, and thought to himself, 'I must speak to Ruthven; it's a nasty job, but I can't see a comrade come to such awful grief as that if I can help it.'

'Poor Mr. Ruthven!' said Mary Parkin; and the door opened and in he came, covering her with confusion.

Of course they were doing no harm, either of them, and it was not their fault that the mistress of the house had run away; but it was awkward to be caught pitying the master to his comrade and superior officer when you were supposed to be teaching his wife. He had heard Miss Parkin's remark, there was no doubt, and for just a second there was an uncomfortable pause.

Ruthven recovered himself first.

'Glad to see you, Nicholson,' he said. 'Are you going to stop to lunch?'

'Well, your wife asked me,' hesitated Nicholson.

'And it's nearly one o'clock,' said Mary Parkin; 'I must go and see about the salad;' and she made her escape, leaving the two men looking at one another rather foolishly.

'You mustn't be flirting with that little girl, old man,' said Ruthven, with a poor attempt at jocularity.

'I'm not flirting with her,' said the other man, rather savagely. 'I came to speak to you about that gray horse, and your wife said something about not spoiling sport, and incontinently fled. What could I do? What could either of us do? I—Miss Parkin——'

'Never mind, man—never mind. I didn't mean to say anything against Miss Parkin. She is a very good little girl, and does her best under exceedingly difficult circumstances. Do you think I don't know that?'

Nicholson saw his opening, and seized it.

'Yes, she is a good girl,' he said. 'And now she is troubled. You don't mind me telling you, old man; but it appears you don't want your wife to go down to old Phillips, or to have anything to do with her mother, and now Mary Parkin has discovered that she sees her mother every night. She doesn't know whether to tell you or not.'

'And so she tells you, eh? Pleasant for me.'

'Oh, it's no affair of mine or Mary Parkin's,' said Nicholson airily. 'We are not likely to talk about it. I just thought I'd mention it to you, because that blackguard Fraser is always hanging round Phillips' place. He's always there, the sergeant tells me. Sergeant O'Connor is great on the iniquity of Fraser, and I thought perhaps you wouldn't like your wife to—— But, there, it's no matter. Very likely she only goes to see her mother, and sees nothing of the people who go there.'

Ruthven took two turns up and down the room, and laughed a little bitterly.

'In a three-roomed shanty! With a woman like Mrs. Phillips! It's very likely, isn't it? She sees her mother in one room, and Phillips and Fraser and all the rest of them drink in the next room, with a canvas partition between them. She doesn't speak to them, does she, Nicholson?'

'She mayn't, you know, Ruthven,' said Nicholson lamely, heartily wishing he had let the thing alone. What business had he poking his nose into another man's family affairs? 'I've only heard of her out on the ranges. And her mother—— Hang it all! you've got to make allowance for filial affection.'

'Filial affection be d——d!' said Ruthven between his teeth.

'By all means,' said Nicholson politely; 'but you'll have to take it into consideration, nevertheless.'

'It's rather late in the day to be taking things into consideration, I'm afraid,' said Ruthven grimly; and he marched up and down the room, and finally came to a stop before the empty fireplace, which Mary Parkin had filled with fern and bracken.

He looked down at it thoughtfully, and somehow it brought back to his memory the day at Karouda when he had looked out of the window at the wintry landscape, and listened to Ben Langdon's well-meant attempt to save him from the life he was now condemned to.

He had said he would repent. Repent? He had repented in sackcloth and ashes before the first month was over, and yet it seemed there were greater depths still for him to sound. What had he married her for? For her good? Or his? For the whim of a woman? Exactly, just to please a woman. Just because she thought it right. Because she had said if he did not she would never speak to him again, and now—he neither saw nor did he want to see her. He muttered a curse beneath his breath, and whether he felt most bitter towards the woman he had married or towards the woman who had made his marriage he could hardly have told. His life was spoiled between them; at least—he was very honest—he had laid the foundations of his woe with his own hands when he so carelessly met Nellie Phillips on the ranges behind her mother's house.

'It's my own fault,' he said aloud, hardly conscious of Nicholson's presence as he followed out his line of reasoning. 'A man in my position ought to have known better than to have had anything to do with a daughter of Mat Phillips.'

'Anyhow, you oughtn't to have mended matters by marrying her,' said his listener, almost involuntarily. 'I don't suppose she is having a rosy time.'

'Poor child! poor child! Nicholson, who are you going to marry?'

'Mary Parkin, if she'll have me,' said Nicholson promptly.

'She's a good girl, and you'll be a happy man if you do. All the comfort in this house is due to her. I wonder what it would be like if my wife managed it.'

'In time perhaps——' began Nicholson, and then paused.

He did not think that in time Ruthven's wife would manage all right; he only wondered how long the menage could last as it was. It would collapse entirely, he thought, once Mary Parkin was gone.

'In time,' repeated Ruthven bitterly. 'Nicholson, what am I to do? What can I do? Things can't go on like this, and I am at my wits' end. Who can help us?'

And, as if in answer to his question, the door was pushed open and Nellie Ruthven, hot, flushed, and defiant, stood in the doorway.

'Here's mother,' she said. 'She's come to stop.'