Читать книгу A Mad Marriage - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 9

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ife won. Days passed, two weeks went by, and the struggle was at an end. Pale and shadowy that marvellously fair face lay among the pillows, but all doubt was at an end. Mrs. Gordon would live.

Saltmarsh was a deserted house no longer. A ponderous nurse had come from Quebec, the doctor was a daily visitor, and old Bettine spent her nights as well as her days with us. There was nothing to fear any more; the man she had longed for and feared had come and gone, to come no more forever. The baby fell almost entirely to me—a charge as pleasant as novel, for I must own, spinster that I am, to a tender weakness for babies. It lay in my arms all day; it slept in its crib by my bedside at night.

"The smallest mite of a baby I ever see," observed Mrs. Watters, the fat nurse; "and I've seen a regiment of 'em, little and big, in my day. I should say now it wouldn't weigh five pounds."

It was small. A tiny, black-haired, black-eyed speck, its pink dot of a face looking weird, lit by those black, blinking eyes.

One thing was strange—was unnatural. From its birth its mother had never seen it, never asked to see it. One evening, when Bettine had called nurse down to supper, and I sat watching in her room, she spoke of it for the first time.

It was a lovely July night, under the brilliant summer moon, the St. Lawrence ran between its green slopes like a belt of silver light. The white, misty moonlight filled the chamber, the lamp had not yet been lit, and the pale glory illumined the face, whiter than the lace and linen against which it lay. She sat partly up in bed, propped by pillows, gazing with dark, sombre eyes out at that radiance in Heaven and on earth—that glory from the skies upon river and shore. For more than an hour she had been sitting motionless, her dark, brooding eyes never leaving the fairy scene, as though she saw her own future life over there beyond that shining river. In the dim distance, baby lay in its crib fast asleep; deepest silence reigned within and without. That silence was suddenly and sharply broken by the shrilly, feeble wail of the child as it awoke. As I rose and crossed the room to take it, she spoke: "Joan, bring it here."

"H'm! high time for you to say it," I thought, but in silence I obeyed. There had been something revolting to me in her utter want of mother-love; in her unnatural indifference; I carried it to the bedside and stooped to place it beside her.

"No, no," she said with a quick, petulant gesture of repulsion; "not there; I don't want it. I always hated babies. I only want to look at it."

"Shall I bring in the lamp?" I asked.

"No; the moonlight will do. What a dot of a baby! Joan, who is it like?"

"It has your eyes," I answered; "beyond that it is impossible to tell. Mrs. Watters says, though, it is your very 'moral.' It is certainly the tiniest baby that ever was born."

"My very moral," she repeated, with a feeble laugh. "I hope so! I hope it may be like me. I hope it may never resemble him, in any way. I hope it may live to help avenge its mother yet!"

I was silent—shocked and scandalized beyond power of replying. Here was a Christian woman and mother, just saved from death, talking like some heathen, of revenge!

"Is it a girl or a boy?" she inquired next, after a pause.

"Girl," I answered, shortly. "It is time you asked."

She glanced at me in surprise, but in no displeasure.

"Why should I ask? It didn't matter much. A girl! If it had only been a boy; and yet, who can tell, if she is like me, and is pretty, she may do great things yet. She may help me. That will do, Joan. Take it away."

She turned her face from the light, and lay for a long time still, brooding over her own thoughts—dark and wicked thoughts I well knew. Whoever or whatever this Mrs. Gordon might be, she was not a proper or virtuous woman, that seemed pretty clear—a wife whose husband had been forced to put her away—a mother who only looked forward to the future of her child as an instrument of vengeance on its father. There are some services that no wages can repay—to my mind this was one. The moment Mrs. Gordon was well enough to be left, that moment I would leave her.

"And what will become of you with such a mother, Providence only knows," I apostrophized the little one on my lap. "You poor, little, spectral, black-eyed mite! I wish you belonged to me altogether."

From that evening Mrs. Gordon rallied, and asserted her power once more as mistress of the house. Her first act of sovereignty was to dismiss the nurse.

"All danger is over, the doctor tells me," she said to Mrs. Watters a few days after. "Joan Kennedy can take care of me now. I shall not require you any more. Joan, pay Mrs. Watters her due. She leaves to-night."

Mrs. Watters left. Next morning Mrs. Gordon asserted herself still further—she insisted upon being dressed and allowed to sit up. She had her way, of course, and I wish I could tell you how fair and youthful and lovely she looked. Youthful! I declare, whatever her age really was, she did not look a day over sixteen. But there was that in her quick, black eyes, in her colorless face, in those latter days, not pleasant to see—something I could not define, and that confirmed me in my resolution to leave her very soon. Of her child, from the evening of which I have spoken, she took not the slightest notice. I truly believe she never once looked at it again; when it cried she had it impatiently removed out of hearing. She sat thinking—thinking steadfastly, with bent brows and compressed lips, of what—who could tell?

"I'll give her warning to-morrow," I said resolutely to myself; "my month is up in a week. I'll never live another with you, my pretty, mysterious little mistress."

Her eyes lifted suddenly, and fixed themselves on my face as I thought it. Did she divine my very thoughts? The faint smile that was on her lips almost made me think so.

"Joan," she said, in her pretty, imperious way, "come here, child; I want to talk to you. You have been a good and faithful companion in all these dreary, miserable months, to a most miserable and lonely woman. Let me thank you now while I think of it, and before we say good-by."

"Good-by!" I repeated, completely taken aback. "Then you are going away?"

"Going away, Joan; high time, is it not? All is over now—there is nothing to fear or hope any more. One chapter of my life is read and done with forever. The day after to-morrow I go out into the world once more, to begin all over again. Up to the present my life has been a most miserable failure—all but four short months." She paused suddenly; the dreary, lovely face lit up with a sort of rapture. "All but four short months—oh, let me always except that—when he made me his wife, and I was happy, happy, happy! Joan, if I had died three weeks ago when that was born, you might have had engraven on my tombstone the epitaph that was once inscribed over another lost woman; 'I have been most happy—and most miserable.'"

I listened silently, touched, in spite of myself, by the unspeakable pathos of her look and tone.

"All that is over and done with," she said, after a little. "I am not to die, it seems. I am going to begin my life, as I say, all over again. Nothing that befalls me in the future can be any worse than what lies behind. It does not fall to the lot of all women to be divorced wives at the age of eighteen."

She laughed drearily. She sat by the window in her favorite easy-chair, looking out while she talked, with the rosy after-glow of the sunset fading away beyond the feathery tamarac trees and the low Canadian hills.

"I feel something as a felon must," she dreamily went on, half to herself, half to me, "who has served out his sentence and whose order of release has come, almost afraid to face the world I have left so long. I did not come to this house a very good woman, Joan—that, I suppose, you know; but I quit it a thousand times worse. I came here with a human heart, at least, a heart that could love and feel remorse; but love and remorse are at an end. I told him I loved him and had been faithful to him, and he laughed in my face. Women can forgive a great deal, but they do not forgive that. If he had only left me—if he had not got that divorce, I would never have troubled him—never, I swear. I would have gone away and loved him, and been faithful to him to the end. Now—now—" she paused, her hands clenched, her yellow eyes gleaming catlike in the dusk. "Now, I will pay him back, sooner or later, if I lose my life for it. I will be revenged—that I swear."

I shrank away from her, from the sight of her wicked face, from the hearing of her wicked words,—the horror I felt, showing, I suppose, in my face.

"It all sounds very horrible, very shocking, does it not?" she asked, bitterly. "You are one of the pious and proper sort, my good Joan, who walk stiffly along the smooth-beaten path of propriety, from your cradle to your grave. Well, I won't shock you much longer, let that be your comfort. The day after to-morrow I go, and as a souvenir I mean to leave that behind me."

She pointed coolly to the crib in the corner.

"You—you mean to leave the baby?" I gasped.

"I—I mean to leave the baby," she answered, with a half laugh, parodying my tone of consternation; "you didn't suppose I meant to take it with me, did you? I start in two days to begin a new life, as a perfectly proper young lady—young lady, you understand, Joan? and you may be very sure I shall carry no such land-mark with me as that of the old one. Yes, Joan, I shall leave the baby with you, if you will keep it, with Mrs. Watters if you will not."

"Oh, I will keep the baby and welcome," I said; "poor little soul!" and as it lay in its sleep, so small and helpless, so worse than orphaned at its very birth, I stooped and kissed it, with tears in my eyes.

"You are a good woman, Joan," she said, more softly; "I wish—yes, with all my soul, I wish I were like you. But it is late in the day for wishing—what is done is done. You will keep the child?"

"I will keep the child."

"I am glad of that. It will be well with you. One day or other I will come and claim it. Don't let it die, Joan; it has its work to do in the world, and must do it. I will pay you, of course, and well. The money I had with me when I came here is almost gone, but out yonder, beyond your Canadian woods and river, there is always more for busy brains and hands. The furniture of these rooms I leave with you to sell or keep, as you see fit. Wherever I may be, I will give you an address, whence letters will reach me."

"And you will never return—never come to see your child?" I asked.

"Never, Joan,—until I come to claim it for good. Why should I? I don't care for it—not a straw—in the way you mean. One day, if we both live, I will claim it; one day its father shall learn, to his cost and his sorrow, that he has a child."

That evil light flashed up into her great eyes for an instant, then slowly died out: but she spoke no more—her folded hands lay idly on her lap, her moody gaze turned upon the rapidly darkening river and hills. The rose light had all faded away—the gray, creeping, July twilight was shrouding all things in a sombre haze. The baby awoke and cried; I had its bottle ready—I lit the lamp and lifted it. As it lay in my lap, placidly pulling at its feeding-bottle, its big black eyes fixed vacantly upon the ceiling, its mother turned from the window and stared at it silently.

With its little white face, and large black eyes, and profusion of long black hair, it looked more like some elfish changeling in a fairy tale than a healthy human child.

"It's a hideous little object," was Mrs. Gordon's motherly remark, after that prolonged stare; "but ugly babies they say sometimes grow up pretty. I want it to be pretty—It must be pretty. Will it, do you think, Joan? Will it really look like me?"

"I think so, madame—very like you. More's the pity," I added, under my breath.

"Ah!" still thoughtfully staring at it, "is there any birthmark? The proverbial strawberry on the arm, or mole on the neck, you know? that sort of thing?"

"It has no mark of any kind, from head to foot."

"What a pity; we must give it one, then. Art must supply the deficiencies of nature. It shall be done to-morrow."

"What must be done? Mrs. Gordon, you don't surely mean—"

"I mean to mark that child so that I shall know it again, fifty years from now, if need be. Don't look so horrified Joan,—I won't do anything very dreadful. One marks one's pocket-handkerchiefs—why not one's babies? You may die; she may grow up and run away—oh, yes, she may! If she takes after her mother, you won't find it a bed of roses bringing her up. We may cross paths and never know each other. I want to guard against that possibility. I want to know my daughter when we meet."

"For pity's sake, madame, what is it you intend to do?"

"You have seen tattooing, Joan, done in India ink? Yes. Well, that is what I mean. I shall mark her initials on her arm to-morrow, exactly as I mark them on my handkerchief, and you shall help me."

"No, madame," I cried out in horror, "I will not. Oh, you poor little helpless babe! Madame! I beg of you—don't do this cruel thing."

"Cruel? Silly girl! I shall give it a sleeping cordial, and it will feel nothing. So you will not help me?"

"Most assuredly I will not."

"Very well—Bettine will. And lest your tender feelings should be lacerated by being in the house, you may go and pay your mother and sister a visit. By the by, you don't ask me what its name is to be, Joan."

"As I am to keep it, though, supposing you don't kill it to-morrow, I shall be glad to know, Mrs. Gordon."

"I don't mean to kill it—never fear; I don't want it to die. If it had been a boy, I always meant—in the days that are gone, mind you—to have called it for its father."

She paused a moment, and turned her face far away. On this point, even she could feel yet.

"It is a girl, unluckily," she went on again, steadily, "but I will still call it for him. Gordon Caryll—a pretty name, is it not, Joan? an odd one too, for a girl. Until I claim it, however, and the proper time comes, we will sink the Caryll, and call it Kennedy. Kennedy's a good old Scotch, respectable name—Gordon Kennedy will do. As I said, to-morrow I will mark the initials 'G. C.' upon its arm; and whatever happens, years and years from now, if my daughter and I ever meet, I shall know her always, and in all places, by the mark on her arm."

I could do nothing. My heart sickened and revolted against this cruelty, but she was mother and mistress, and could do as she pleased. I would not stay to see the torture; Bettine might help her or not, as she pleased; I would go.

Next morning, immediately after breakfast, I quitted the house, and spent the day at mother's. In the gray of the summer evening I returned, to find the deed done, the babe drugged and still asleep, lying in its crib, the arm bound up, Bettine excited, Mrs. Gordon composed and cool.

"Did it cry?" I asked, kissing the pale little face.

"Ah, but yes, mademoiselle!" Bettine cried, in her shrill, high French voice; "cried fit to break the heart, until madame double drugged it, and it lay still. The arm—the poor infant—will be sore and inflamed for many a day to come. It is a heart of stone. Mam'selle Jeanne—the pretty little madame."

That was our last evening in Saltmarsh—a long, quiet, lonesome evening enough. I distrusted her—in some way I feared and disliked her; and yet I felt a strange sort of compassion for the quiet little creature, sitting there so utterly desolated in her youth and beauty—wrecked and adrift on the world at eighteen.

She sat in her old place by the window so still—so still—the fair face gleaming like marble in the dusk, the dark, mournful eyes fixed on the creeping darkness shrouding the fair Canadian river and landscape. It all ended to-night—the peace, the safety, dreary though it may have been—and to-morrow she must go forth out into the great, pitiless world, with only her beautiful face and her wicked heart to make her way. What dark story lay behind her? I wondered; and was this fair, forsaken wife most to be pitied or blamed?

The hours of the evening crept on—ten, eleven; she never stirred. And when, sometime before midnight, I crept away with my baby to my room, the motionless little figure was there at the window still.

Next morning dawned cloudless and fair. Bettine was up betimes to prepare breakfast—for the last time I served my little mistress. She was dead silent through it all, and ate it in her travelling suit of dark gray, all ready to depart. There was a train at nine; it was half-past eight now, and the cabriolet ordered from Quebec was at the door. She stooped for a moment over her babe; but even in this parting hour she never kissed it, and my heart hardened against her once more.

"It is as Bettine says," I thought; "she has the face of an angel and the heart of a stone."

Even as I thought it, she arose and looked at me—that charming smile upon her charming face, that had bewitched me against my will the very first time we met, that bewitched me out of my hot anger once again. She held out her hand.

"Good-by, my solemn Joan. Don't think too badly or me when I am gone—a poor little woman with whom life has gone hard. You are a good girl, and I shall always keep a grateful remembrance of you in my none too tender heart. Take good care of my baby—you shall be amply rewarded. I may come back years from now to look at it—who knows? At all events you will hear from me monthly. And, if we never meet again, let me thank you once more for your faithful and patient companionship all these months."

They were the last words she ever spoke in Saltmarsh. In the yellow sunshine of the soft summer day Mrs. Gordon passed out of the House to Let, and out of my life forever. I watched her enter the cab, caught one last glimpse of a pale, lovely face, of a little gloved hand waving from the window, then the driver cracked his whip, and they were whirling away in a cloud of dust to where quaint, gray, silent old Quebec slept in morning quiet, the golden sunshine flooding its steep streets, its tin roofs, its lofty spires, its high stone walls. Mrs. Gordon was gone.

Before nightfall I had taken the baby home and dismissed Bettine. Part of the furniture I kept, part I sent into Quebec and sold. Late in the evening I carried the key to Mr. Barteaux, with his rent, and on my return my own hands replaced the placard over the gate. Saltmarsh was once more a "House to Let."

She had come among us a mystery—she left us a greater mystery still. I write this record for the child's sake—one day it may need it. I feel that the story I have told does not end here, that it is but the prelude to what is to come. So surely as that woman and this child live and meet, trouble—sad and deep trouble to that man Gordon Caryll—will come of it. I say again I write this for the child's sake. One day, even what I have set down here may be of use to her. If I die I will place it in safe hands, to be given to her, and so I sign myself

Joan Kennedy.