Читать книгу The Substitute Prisoner - Max Marcin - Страница 6

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The domestic life of George Collins and his wife was a daily lie which fooled no one. For five years they had lived completely estranged beneath the single roof that sheltered both, yet trying desperately to conceal their conjugal infelicity from the world. But the eyes of the world are too keen and penetrating when it comes to other people's affairs, and such painful efforts as the Collinses made to appear reconciled to each other were measured and appraised at their true worth.

Marriage is a common institution and the symptoms of its discontent are familiar to all. They appeared early in the married life of the Collinses, were faithfully diagnosed by the members of their immediate circle, and the prognostication based on them called for the early appearance of Mrs. Collins as plaintiff in the divorce court.

But religious scruples and a natural abhorrence of such a proceeding combined to keep the wife from making the one essential move necessary for her freedom.

Rather than do violence to the tenets of her religious faith and to the rigid principles of her upbringing, she chose to bear the burden of unhappiness that was imposed on her. Occasionally she and her husband even appeared in public together, and on such occasions they tried to give the impression of entertaining for each other all the affection of a happily married couple. But in their own home they lived continuously in a state of mutual aversion and estrangement, occupying separate apartments and holding only the most formal communications with each other.

The house which they occupied was a stately stucco structure, situated on top of a terraced lawn and approached by a gravel walk banked with flowers and shrubs. A sloping roof, painted a dull red and pierced by a huge chimney, gave a warm and picturesque tone to the place, which otherwise might have appeared coldly severe and uninviting.

The luxurious seclusion which the Collinses enjoyed was shared by about sixty neighbors who formed the wealthy colony of Delmore Park, a small suburb within easy motoring and commuting distance of New York. The park itself was an attractive inclosure of some three hundred acres, surrounded by a fence of high iron palings and laid out so as to give the impression from within of a natural forest, while, as a matter of fact, the place was a triumph of the consummate skill of expert gardeners. In this deliberately fashioned woodland it was possible to combine all the pomp and extravagance of city life with the rustic attractiveness and simplicity of the country—a combination toward which the wealthy are turning in increasing numbers each year.

On the morning following Whitmore's strange nocturnal excursion, Collins's alarm clock set up an ear-splitting din at a most unwonted hour. On retiring the previous night Collins had set the alarm for seven-thirty, an hour at which he usually attained his deepest sleep. Only on rare occasions was he known to retire before two A. M., and still rarer were the occasions when he relinquished his bed before eleven.

A product of the gay night life of the city, he required the mornings for slumber. Nor did he on this particular morning rouse himself into immediate activity. Stretching himself languorously, he permitted the alarm to exhaust itself, then buried his head in his pillow.

But he did not close his eyes. With a painful effort he prevented his tired eyelids from falling and for half an hour remained stretched between the sheets, lost in gloomy reflection.

There had been a purpose in setting the alarm at this early hour; the same purpose now held him awake, absorbed in thought, yet alert to every sound about the house. He heard the butler unlock the storm doors and the servants prepare for the morning work. An occasional delivery wagon ground through the gravel walk, the grating noise of the wheels rasping his quivering nerves.

Through the open window a stream of sunshine flooded the floor and distributed itself impartially about the room. The fresh arena of spring blossoms softened the crisp morning air with a pleasant perfume; feathered throats chirped happily in pursuit of the early worm.

The swelling chorus of happiness without aroused no responsive quiver in Collins's heart. It hung within him, a leaden weight coiled with bitterness and hate. His mind was a blazing furnace of furious resentment, emitting sparks of rage that kindled other fires in the storehouse of his emotions, until his temper seemed to reflect the conflict of all tempers.

The shrill call of a letter-carrier's whistle banished the silent fury into which he had worked himself. A thrill of expectancy shot down his frame. Donning his bathrobe and slippers he stepped into the hallway and listened. The butler and the mail man exchanged a word of greeting, then the former closed the door. Collins descended the stairs, blinking, with sleepy dissipated eyes.

"Give me all the mail," he said, extending a tremulous hand.

"There's a letter for madam—"

"Give it to me!"

Reluctantly the butler delivered the letter to him.

"You needn't mention my having received all the mail," Collins growled. "If madam asks whether there was any mail for her tell her there wasn't any. And don't forget what I say!"

The butler stared after him as he climbed up the stairs and disappeared into his own room.

Seated on the edge of his bed, Collins glanced through his personal mail then tore open the letter to his wife. It was in a familiar handwriting and the contents brought no look of surprise to his face. But he read it through half a dozen times, as if to sear it into his memory.

Presently he dressed and went out for a stroll, drinking copious draughts of the bracing morning air. But the tormenting presence of the intercepted letter in his pocket drew him back to the house. He encountered his wife in the hallway.

"There was some mail for me—where is it?" she said, extending a hand confidently.

He produced the letter from his pocket, poising it tantalizingly between his fingers. She recognized the handwriting and a wave of red mounted to her forehead. Also, she observed the ragged slit at the top of the envelope and the painful realization that he had read the contents rushed on her.

"How dared you?" She tried to seize the letter, but he, anticipating her move, withdrew his arm and thrust the missive into his pocket. "I didn't believe it possible you could sink so low," she murmured. "But this is the end," she added with sudden vehemence. "I shall leave this house to-day."

"Oh, no, you won't!" An angry scowl contorted his face. "You've flaunted your superior virtues in my face—accused me of cruelty and neglect and selfishness. Everybody, including your brother, believes you to be the long-suffering, patient little angel. You've been the woman with the noble soul—I've been the unworthy rascal. Now you stand there, your feelings outraged, because I had the foresight to intercept an incriminating letter. You calmly tell me it's the end. You're going to leave. It makes no difference how much scandal you bring on my name. You—"

She checked him with a contemptuous toss of the head. All the suffering which she had endured through the years of their married life now resolved itself into a fury of resentment.

"Your name!" she exclaimed with cutting irony. "As if anything which I might do could add to the weight of dishonor that you have imposed upon it! I don't know the contents of that letter, but it's from Herbert Whitmore and he's as incapable of a dishonorable act as you are incapable of anything honorable. And you had the audacity to open and read that letter!"

She paused, fixing him with her eyes, her lips curled into a disdainful smile. But the fire of her scorn left him unseared. His calloused sensibilities had long ago lost their capability of appreciating a nature such as hers. For his wife to have a letter addressed to her such as he had intercepted, spelled guilt. The debasing environment into which he had plunged on inheriting the fortune which his father had accumulated, had undermined all his faith in womanhood. He could not see beyond the Tenderloin purview.

But pride and selfishness were screamingly alive within him. To these was added the inordinate conceit of the habitual libertine, a combination than which there is nothing more sensitive in the entire human composition.

But as Collins gazed on the graceful lines of her full figure and on the almost classic beauty of her marmoreal features, he could not stifle a pang of anxiety at thought of losing her. The fact that he had discarded her in all but name, for the dubious pleasures of a life of dissipation, did not occur to him. He believed in the established moral code that excuses the offenses of the man and eternally condemns the woman. Yet, ready as he was to attribute culpability to her conduct, it was hard even for him to reconcile her smooth, artless brow, her frank, limpid eyes, her delicate, sensitive lips, with any act that savored of unworthiness or deceit.

"It's hard to look at you and believe you guilty of wrong," he said resentfully.

"It makes no difference to me what you believe," she snapped. "I'm through with you! I shall obtain a divorce."

The storm which had been gathering force within him all morning now broke in all its fury.

"You're going to get a divorce!" he cried ironically. "You still pretend to be the injured one. You and Whitmore have it all framed up—eh! But I tell you you've miscalculated this time! No man can wreck my home with impunity! No man can enter my house to steal my wife—and get away with it. I've been blind a long time, but my eyes are wide open now."

He walked to the telephone at the rear of the hall and lifted the receiver off the hook.

"What are you going to do?" she demanded.

"Call up your brother. We'll see what he has to say about it."

Lester Ward, the brother of Mrs. Collins, also lived in Delmore Park. He had succeeded to his father's banking business and occupied the house which his parents had left. Fifteen minutes after Collins summoned him over the telephone, he was seated in his sister's library, prepared to mediate in what he guessed to be another quarrel between her and her husband.

"This letter will explain itself," Collins opened the conversation. Lifting the note out of the envelope, he read:

"My Dear Grace:

"Since I communicated with you last, additional reasons have developed to justify your leaving him immediately. Your belief that with all his faults he has adhered to his marriage vows is but a delusion born of your own pure nature. I have the proof, if you care to hear it. Grace, you told me you loved me. My love for you is undiminished. Why sacrifice yourself longer—why sacrifice me? I cannot endure to be parted from you. Start for Reno at once—to-morrow is not too soon. Our love is too holy to be smitten and made to suffer by one entirely unworthy of your slightest consideration. Leave him, Grace, and come to me.

"Yours devotedly,

Herbert."

"Well, what do you think of that?" Collins asked, turning toward his brother-in-law. "My wife loves another man. And he's urging her to wreck her home!"

Ward's eyes alternated between his sister and her husband.

"Of course, she's not going to do it," he said as if expressing an inevitable conclusion.

"I'm going to leave here this very day," she declared firmly.

"And plunge into the scandal of a divorce proceeding?" Her brother bestowed a reproachful glance upon her. "Grace, you know how I feel toward your husband. Long ago I urged you to divorce him, but you refused. Now you must consider me. Think of the notoriety! My approaching marriage must not be overcast by the awful scandal that will follow your trip to Reno. Were we less prominent socially, it might be different. But the newspapers will be full of it. No, Grace, don't do anything hasty—not just now."

"You counsel me to continue living with him?" she inquired.

"I simply ask you to continue as you're doing."

She bent forward in her chair, her face set in an expression of unalterable determination.

"I love Herbert," she declared calmly, unmindful of the amazement which her avowal produced. "I have loved him a long while," she continued undismayed. "I crave him—I loathe the man to whom I am wedded."

"I sympathize with you," the brother hastened to assure her, "and, were it not for my marriage, I should urge you to leave him at once. He's a cad—"

"I'm not the sort of cad that permits another man to destroy his home," blurted Collins.

The others ignored his interruption.

"Lester," said the wife, "I shall leave this house to-day. Regardless of your marriage, I shall apply for a divorce and marry Herbert Whitmore."

The strained silence which followed was broken by Collins. He arose and walked to the door.

"You'll never marry Whitmore," he said. "There is a higher law that protects the home."

"Why—what do you mean?" the wife inquired in a tone of alarm. Something in her husband's face, something she had never seen there before, frightened her.

"I'm going to kill Whitmore," he said, leaving the room.