A Mad Marriage, May Agnes Fleming [best big ereader .TXT] 📗

faint!” screamed Jessie.

 

Sure enough! whether the heat of the fire had overcome her, or the

“dreadful trouble” of which she spoke had broken her down, she swayed

unsteadily to and fro, the words dying on her lips, and I caught her as

she fell.

 

So it was that the first tenant of the House to Let came into my home,

and into my life, to change it utterly from that hour.

 

CHAPTER II.

 

A WOMAN WITH A SECRET.

 

Mrs. Gordon did not leave our cottage that night—did not leave it for

two whole weeks, and then the house that wouldn’t let was let at last,

and Saltmarsh had a tenant.

 

It would be of little use at this late day to detail all the arguments

she used to win me for her attendant and companion—the most

irresistible argument of all was wages, treble, fourfold what I had ever

earned before, and paid in advance. Of her and her story I had very

serious doubts, but beggars must not be choosers. I took her money and

became her paid companion.

 

For hours that night, after mother and Jessie were in bed, I sat beside

Mrs. Gordon, listening to the story she told of herself. Brief, vague,

and unsatisfactory to a degree, that story was. She had been an orphan

from childhood. She was not wealthy, but she had sufficient; great

trouble had suddenly come upon her, and she had lost her husband after

four months of wedded life. That was all.

 

“Lost your husband!” I repeated, curiously, looking at her. “Do you mean

that your husband is dead?”

 

A simple and natural question, surely; but her face, pale before, turned

of a dead whiteness from brow to chin.

 

“Dead of course,” she answered, huskily; “for pity’s sake, don’t ask me

questions. It is only a week ago, and I cannot bear it. Only a week, and

it seems like a century. And to think—to think of all the long, lonely,

empty years that are to come! Never to hear his voice, never to see his

face more!”

 

And then she broke down again and wept—oh, how she wept! My heart was

full of compassion, and yet—only dead one week, and running away like

this, not in mourning, not a friend in the world, rich, young and

beautiful. A queer story on the face of it—a very queer story indeed.

 

Who is to gauge the power of woman’s beauty? If she had been a plain

young person, I believe ten pounds a week would not have tempted me to

take up with her and bury myself alive at Saltmarsh. But her wonderful

beauty fairly fascinated me, her lovely face won me, even against my

better judgment.

 

“And if that face can make a fool of you, Joan, my dear,” I said to

myself, as I went to bed, “what awful havoc it must make among mankind!

How very unpleasant for poor Mr. Gordon to die and leave it, and how

desperately fond she must have been of him, to be sure!”

 

“You will let me stay here until the house yonder is ready,” she said

next morning, with the air of one not used to being refused. “I dislike

hotels—people stare so. I will make you no trouble, and I want to be

perfectly quiet, and quite alone.”

 

It was curious to see her with her lovely face, her elegant dress, her

diamond rings, and her dark flowing hair, so strangely out of place in

our small, bare, homely house. I hardly know whether she should have

stayed or not, but our poverty pleaded for her, and I consented to all

she proposed. To take the house for her, to see it furnished, to attend

to everything, while she herself kept absolutely out of sight.

 

My new duties began at once. I went to Mr. Barteaux, and abruptly

informed him I had a tenant for the House to Let.

 

“A widow lady, sir,” I said; “a Mrs. Gordon. Any reasonable rent she is

willing to pay, and I am engaged to live with her.”

 

“Bless my soul!” said Mr. Barteaux. “You don’t say so! A tenant at last.

A widow lady, eh? How many in family, Joan?”

 

I knew the vision before Mr. Barteaux’s mind’s eye. A florid matron of

fifty, with half-a-dozen strapping boys and girls.

 

“No family, sir. Quite a young widow. You must close the bargain with

me, Mr. Barteaux; her loss is recent, she is in trouble, and doesn’t

feel like transacting business herself. There are no references;

instead, she will pay in advance if you choose.”

 

We closed the bargain there and then; and that very day Saltmarsh was

thrown open to the sunshine and free winds of Heaven. What an odd,

awesome feeling it gave me to go with my mysterious new mistress through

the gruesome apartments, silent and forsaken so long. Four, out of the

ten rooms the house contained, were chosen to be furnished and fitted

up, papered, painted, whitewashed, carpeted, curtained. All fell to me,

and all was done in two brief weeks, and well done, though I say it, and

Mrs. Gordon and Joan Kennedy, it was known to all Quebec, were

domesticated at Saltmarsh.

 

I wonder now, as I sit here and look back at that strange time, that

even poverty could have tempted me to endure the life I led all those

dreary months. The listless, lonely days spent in reading or rambling

through the empty, echoing rooms, the long awesome nights when the winds

held high carnival without and the rats high jinks within. No one ever

came to the house, except a stout Frenchwoman, who did our washing and

general drudgery, coming every morning and going every night. For me, my

position was a sinecure, nothing to do, and treble wages for doing it,

but the hardest work for all, that I ever did in my life.

 

And my mistress! Well, the days, and the weeks, and the months went by,

and she was as great a mystery as ever. Where she had come from, how

long she meant to remain, whither she intended going, were all sealed

secrets to me. She never wrote letters, she never received any. She

could not have been much more dead to all the world outside our wooden

walls if she had been in her shroud and coffin.

 

She spent the heavy, aimless days sitting mostly at her chamber

window—a dark-draped, slender figure, a dreary, lovely face, two great,

hopeless eyes, a total wreck of life. The story of her life, whatever it

had been, no common one be sure, was ended for the time; the play was

over, the lights out, and nothing left but to sit and look at the

curtain. A woman young as she was, of the wrong sort, of the silent,

secret sort, a woman with something on her mind, a woman with a secret.

 

Two things I discovered—only two. One, that her husband was not dead,

but deserted; that she had run away from him and was hiding here, in

horrible dread of his ever finding her out. Secondly, that in spite of

this running away and this constant terror, she still loved him, with a

passionate and most despairing love.

 

I had gone into her room one night, and found her sitting holding a

picture before her, and gazing on it as if entranced. It was her

principal occupation. I had often found her so before, but the picture

itself I had never seen. To-night, however, she called me to her in her

abrupt way.

 

“Joan,” she said, “come here.”

 

She had been crying, I could see—silently and miserably. I went and

looked over her shoulder at the picture.

 

Photography was in its infancy in those days—every family had not its

picture gallery. This was a daguerreotype—the portrait of a young,

dashing-looking and rather handsome man. A beardless and boyish face,

yet a very manly one, looking up at you with frankly smiling eyes.

 

“It is all I have left,” she said, with tremulous lips. “I will never

see him again. I loved him and I have spoiled his whole life. It would

have been better for him he had died than ever looked in my face.”

 

“Indeed,” was my rather stupid answer. But I was used to her extravagant

talk and not much affected by it. “He is a friend of yours, madame?”

 

She looked at her picture, and over her face there dawned a light that

made her beauty radiant.

 

“He is my husband!” she answered.

 

I drew back and looked at her—aghast, I must confess.

 

“Your husband!” I repeated. “Oh—was your husband, you mean? You told

me he was dead.”

 

“Dead to me. Oh, Joan! dead to me, but alive and well. Alive and well;

and though I should live to be a hundred, I may never see his face

again. Never again; and there are times when I would lay down my very

life only to look upon him once more.”

 

“You love him and—he has left you?” I ventured.

 

“I love him—and I left him. I love him with all my heart, and I have

fled from him, and buried myself here for fear of him. I wonder I don’t

go mad, or die. Once I thought I would without him; but somehow life

drags on and on, and one is a coward, and afraid to end it one’s self.

He loved me once, Joan—ah, dear Heaven, yes! he loved me and made me

his wife; and now, and now, Joan, if ever he finds me, I believe he will

take my life.”

 

I looked back at the frank, fair, boyish face.

 

“He take your life!” I said; “that bright-faced boy! No, Mrs. Gordon,

murderers don’t look like that.”

 

“He is the truest, the noblest, the bravest of men, a loyal friend and a

gallant gentleman.”

 

“And yet his wife runs away from him, and says if ever they meet he will

take her life.”

 

She scarcely seemed to heed me. She laid her head on her folded arms as

though she never cared to lift it again.

 

“Ah! let me alone,” she said. “You know nothing about it. If I could

but die and make an end of it all! Only this, Joan,” she looked up

suddenly, swift, dark terror in her eyes; “I dreamed last night he was

searching for me—that he was here. He came and stood before me, stern

and terrible, holding my death-warrant in his hand! Don’t let him come!

don’t let anyone come! If ever we meet, I believe in my soul he will

kill me.”

 

Was Mrs. Gordon going mad? that was the very serious question uppermost

in my thoughts when I went to bed that night, and for many nights after.

It was a very queer and uncomfortable affair altogether, and the sooner

I got out of it the better; and just as I was beginning to think of

tendering my resignation, behold the climax all at once came of itself.

 

March, April and May had passed—it was the close of June. I had gone

into the city one afternoon for our weekly store of groceries, finished

my purchases, and, basket on arm, was going home. My way led up St.

Louis Street; and passing the office of Mr. Barteaux, I saw him in his

own doorway, deep in conversation with a stranger. A look at that

stranger, and with one great jump my heart was in my mouth. For it was

the original of the picture—it was Mrs. Gordon’s husband. “The hour and

the man were come!”

 

Neither saw me.