At Last Part 20

Confused, partly by his numerous aliases, more by incapacity to conceive of such depth and complication of horror as were revealed by the idea, the perplexed thinker did not, for a while, admit to herself the possibility that the nameless vagabond may have been Clara's living husband, instead of a mercenary villain who had secured surrept.i.tiously the proofs of a marriage she wished the world to forget. Having learned that she had wedded, a second time, in her maiden name, and that her antecedents were unsuspected in her present home, the thought of extorting a bribe to continued silence, from the wealthy lady of Ridgeley, would have occurred to any common rascal with more audacity than principle. It was but a spark--the merest point of light that showed her the verge of the precipice toward which one link after another of the chain of circ.u.mstantial evidence was dragging her.

Groping dizzily among her recollections of that Christmas night, there gleamed luridly upon her the vision of Mrs. Aylett's strange smile, as she said, "It may be that his wife, if she were cognizant of his condition, would not lift a finger or take a step to save his life, or to prolong it for an hour!"

Then, in response to Mabel's indignant reply--the momentary pa.s.sion darting from her hitherto languorous...o...b.., and vibrating in her accents, in adding--"There are women in whose hearts the monument to departed affection is a hatred that can never die."

If this man were a stranger, from whom she had nothing to fear, why her extraordinary agitation at seeing him, even imperfectly, through the window? She must have known him well to recognize him in the darkness and at that fleeting glimpse. Perhaps she had believed him dead, until then! This would account for her clandestine visit to his chamber, to which Mrs. Sutton and her niece had gone, without effort at concealment; explain the rigid examination of his clothing ensuing upon her scrutiny of his features.

"I must be mad!" Mabel said, here, pressing her hand to her head. "There does not live the woman, however wicked and hypocritical, who could sit at ease in the midst of ill-gotten luxury, on an inclement night, and talk smilingly of other things, if she suspected that one she had known, much less loved, lay dying in wretchedness and solitude so near her."

The vagrant was some evil-disposed spy, whose person Clara knew, and whose intentions she had reason to dread were unfriendly. Had she dared--for she was daring--to attempt this nefarious plot against the fair fame and happiness of an honorable gentleman, her family would not have become her accomplices. They could not have blinded themselves to the perils of the enterprise, the extreme probabilities of detection, the consequences of Winston's anger. Herbert, at least, would have forbidden the unlawful deceit. When his sister was wedded to Winston, he believed that her first husband was no longer in the land of the living--as she must also have done.

"For he is a good--an upright man!" thought the wife. "But he was privy to the fact of her previous marriage! Why have I never heard of it? He has invariably spoken of Clara as having lived single in her mother's house up to the date of her union with my brother."

She could not but remember, likewise, that there was a certain tone about the Dorrance connection she had never quite comprehended or liked--a reticence with respect to details of family history, while they were voluble upon generalities, over-fond of lauding one another's exploits, virtues, and accomplishments; referring in wonderful pride to "our beloved father," and extolling "our precious mother," who, by the way, was so little in request among the children, that she had, since Clara's marriage, occupied apartments in a second-rate boarding-house in Boston. Mabel, when convinced of the futility of her hope of having Aunt Rachel with her, had proposed to offer Mrs. Dorrance a house in the commodious mansion of her youngest son; but Herbert, with no show of gratification at what he must have known was a sacrifice of her inclinations, had coolly reasoned down the suggestion. The whole tribe--if she excepted her husband, and perhaps Clara--had, to her perception, a tinge of Bohemianism, although all were in comfortable circ.u.mstances, and lived showily. Mabel had often chided herself for uncharitable judgment and groundless prejudice, in admitting these impressions of her relatives-in-law; but they returned upon her in this twilight reverie with the force of convictions she was, each moment, less able to combat. What darker secret lay back of the concealment her rect.i.tude of principle and sense of justice declared to be unjustifiable? and might not this concerted and persistent reserve imply others yet more culpable?

It showed her correct estimate of her brother's character, that she never for a second accused him of connivance in the deceit practised upon his relations and neighbors. He would not have scrupled to wed a widow, knowing and acknowledging her to be such. Nothing--not love, tenfold more ardent and irrational than that he felt for his siren wife--could have wrought upon him to introduce to the world, as Mrs.

Aylett of Ridgeley, one who had been before married, and was ashamed, for any cause whatever, to avow this. The blemish left by the acrid breath of common scandal upon a woman's fame was to him ineffaceable by any process yet discovered by pitying man or angels. The maligned one may not have erred from the straitest road of virtue and discretion, but she had been "talked about," and was no consort for him. In his State and caste, private marriages were things disallowed, and but one shade more respectable than liasons that did not pretend to the sanct.i.ty of wedlock. What would he say when the contents of this dingy pocket-book were spread before him? Ought his sister to do this?

COULD she? He had not earned compa.s.sionate consideration from her by any act of gentleness and forbearance. He had handled the lopping-knife without ruth, and let the gaping wounds bleed as long as the bitter ichor would ooze from her heart. She had learned hardness and self-control from the lesson, but not vindictiveness. Now that the power was hers to visit upon his haughty spirit something of the humiliation and distress he had not spared her; that it was her turn to harangue upon mesalliances and love-matches, and want of circ.u.mspect investigation into early records before committing one's self to a contract of marriage--she recoiled at the thought; felt, in her exceeding pity for the trustful husband, a stirring of the love she had herself once borne him in the days when the changed homestead was her world, and its master a king among men.

And yet--and yet--was it the truest friends.h.i.+p--the most prudent course to prolong the ignorance which left him liable at any moment to be shocked into the perpetration of some desperate deed by the discovery, through some other channel, of his wife's perfidy, and the abominable snare that bad been woven about him!

CHAPTER XIV. -- "BORN DEAD."

MABEL was still turning the vexed question of right and expediency over in her fast-heating brain, the next evening, as she sat in the parlor, and feigned to hearken to the diligent duett-practising going on at the piano, her husband and Mrs. Aylett being the performers.

Mrs. Sutton had gone home that afternoon, engaging to return for a longer sojourn in the course of a month. Mr. Aylett read his newspaper at one side of the centre table, and his sister employed her fingers and eyes at the other with a trifle of fancy-work---an antimaca.s.sar she was crocheting for her hostess. Her industrious or fidgetty habits were chronic and inveterate, and people, in remarking upon them, did not reflect that this species of restlessness is in itself a disease, seldom a.n.a.lyzed, more seldom cured. There are few students or physicians of human nature, in this world of superficial observers, who go deep enough into the springs of man's action to distinguish the external symptoms of heart-cancer from ossification, or to learn the difference between satiety and atrophy. A night of nervous sleeplessness, a day of irresolution and dread, had aggravated almost beyond her control the restlessness which in Mabel was the unerring indication of unhealthiness of mind and body. To sit still was impracticable; to talk connectedly and easily would soon be as difficult. She was glad to see Aunt Rachel go--immeasurably relieved when a musical evening was proposed by the brother and sister, seconding the motion with alacrity that called forth a pleased smile from the one, and a look of surprised inquisitiveness from the other.

"You have grown more fond of instrumental music," said Mrs. Aylett, half interrogatively. "You used always to prefer vocal."

"Try me and see what an appreciative listener I am," rejoined Mabel, with a sickly smile, and the concert commenced.

Overmuch thought upon the revelation of the preceding day had begotten in her, fears of the imminence of the dangers to Winston's peace of mind--a persuasion that the birds of the air and the restless air itself might bear to him the news she still withheld. Mammy had averred, upon her cross-examination, that "not a living soul had ever seen the wallet"

since it fell from the dying man's pocket--an affirmation Mabel could not decide whether to believe or discredit. If she could but be certain that the secret was all hers!

She trembled guiltily when her brother folded his last paper, and sauntered around to the back of her chair, leaning upon it, while he affected to be interested in her work, and the too-ready scarlet blood pulsed now hotly in her cheeks with each moment of his mute observation.

"I heard a piece of news to-day," he said, presently, in his most even tone; but Mabel's start upon her seat was almost a leap, while her fingers moved faster and more irregularly.

"I suspect, from your unsettled demeanor this evening, that it reached you before it did me," continued he. "I can attribute your badly suppressed pertubation to no other cause. Mrs. Sutton is such an indefatigable gossip, that this item could hardly have pa.s.sed her by.

Has she told you that Rosa Tazewell is shortly to become Mrs. Chilton?"

"She has."

He thought she was nerving herself to a simulation of hardihood, and the long-indulged habit of censors.h.i.+p was strong upon him.

"I had trusted, until to-day, Mabel, that you had conquered that disgraceful weakness," he resumed, yet more pitilessly.

Domination was one of his besetting sins. He never saw a helpless or cowering thing without feeling the inclination to set his foot upon it, and the least show of resistance in such, piqued him into despotism.

"I was aware that it was not dead when you married a man worth a thousand such scoundrels as that fellow in Philadelphia. I believed that the sentiment was powerful in impelling you to that marriage, and that this irrevocable measure would be an antidote to the evil. It was a wise course, and I commended you for pursuing it. But I am too well read in your countenance and moods not to see that there is something far amiss with you. You have been playing a part for twenty-four hours, and you have played it wretchedly. Your nervous flutters and laugh, your sudden changes of complexion, and the incoherence of your language, would betray you to the least penetrating observer. I caution you to be on your guard lest your husband should take just offence at all this. The need of dissimulation is the evidence that something is radically wrong in your moral nature, and is derogatory to your lawful partner. I am ashamed to remind you of the golden maxim of wedded life--that without perfect and mutual confidence there can be no substantial happiness.

Does Dorrance know of your escapade at the Springs?"

"If you refer to my engagement to Mr. Chilton, I told him of it before our marriage."

"I rejoice to hear it--am pleased at this one proof of good sense and right feeling," in lofty patronage. "You owed him no less. You have, without doubt been informed long since how I obtained the most important proof against that villain?"

"I have not heard Mr. Chilton's name in a year until yesterday," said Mabel, the scarlet spots ceasing to flicker, and her voice hard as was his own.

Unable to interpret her sudden steadiness of demeanor and accent, Winston leaped to the irritating conclusion that she was sullen, and meditated a defiant retreat from this untimely usurpation of his olden authority.

"It was injudicious--miserably ill-judged in Dorrance not to acquaint you with this. I have always feared lest his indulgence might not be the most salutary method of repressing your self-will and pride of opinion.

You, more than any other woman I know, require the tight rein of vigilant discipline. I intimated as much to Dorrance when he asked my consent to your engagement. But this is his lookout, not mine. What I began to say was that, in MY opinion, he would have acted more sensibly had he not encouraged your squeamish repugnance to talking of your early fault and its mortifying consequences."

"Fortunately for me, my husband is a man of feeling and delicacy!" Mabel was goaded to boast. "I said to him, the evening of our betrothal, that the subject you have chosen to revive to-night was painful to me, and he has respected the reluctance you condemn."

"He would have overcome it more quickly and thoroughly had he informed you that he had had the honor of horse-whipping your ci-devant betrothed!" sneered Winston, with white dinted nostrils. "That he was the author of the letter, a portion of which I copied for your perusal, when I announced the dissolution of your provisional engagement--the main agent, in effect, of the rupture, since but for him I should have had much difficulty in proving what I had believed from the beginning--that the rascal ought to be shot for presuming to think of you in any other light than as the merest acquaintance. And he should never have been that, had I been with you that unlucky summer."

"We have been over that ground so often, Winston, that both of us should be tolerably familiar with it," rejoined Mabel, decidedly. "I prefer that, instead of reviewing the circ.u.mstances of what you term my 'early fault,' you should show me the evidence of your singular a.s.sertion respecting Mr. Dorrance's agency in a matter in which he could not at that time have had the slightest personal interest. Or, shall I ask him?

It is an enigma to me."

Without other answer than a contemptuous laugh, Winston left the room, unnoticed by the musicians. But before she could form a conjecture as to the meaning of his abrupt movement, he was back with a letter in his hand.

"Doc.u.mentary testimony!" he said, shortly, pa.s.sing it to her. "I should have forwarded it entire, instead of transcribing an extract, but for Clara's fear lest you should be led thereby to dislike her brother before you had ever seen him. I take it there is no danger of prejudicing you against him now!"

The letter was from Herbert Dorrance, and began thus:

"Mr. Aylett:

"Dear Sir,--Your favor of the 15th, enclosed in one from my sister, reached me this morning."

Then followed the expose of Frederic Chilton's misdeeds, which Winston had transferred to his own epistle to Mabel, as the leading argument in his refusal to sanction her engagement.

Mabel read it through without flinching; then turned over to the first page and put her finger upon a paragraph.

"Who was the lady here mentioned?"

Mr. Aylett shrugged his fine shoulders.

"I have never interested myself to inquire. Beyond the statement of your friend's rascality, the story was nothing to me."

"Herbert!"

The ringing call--sharp and clear--checked the pianists in the middle of a bar.

"Step here a moment, if you please!"