THE FATE OF PAULIE.
It is a curious fact that when Paula’s mind had recovered the first
stunning shock of encountering Carl Bjornsën she began to try and
persuade herself that she had been mistaken, that the vagrant in
Haltham High Street had only borne a remarkable resemblance to her
late husband, and that her nerves were in such an excited condition
after the accident that she had exaggerated a passing likeness into
a reality. All that night she lay awake upon her bed thinking over
the assurances she had received of his death, and the improbability
of their being untrue, until she had almost persuaded herself she was
alarmed without cause. It was a fact that the tramp was very like Carl
Bjornsën, but then he might be a Swede, and she knew from experience
how much the men of that nation resemble each other. She fancied his
eyes had lighted on her with a malevolent glance, but the man was
intoxicated, and, doubtless, felt vicious at having been so nearly
run over. How _could_ he be Carl Bjornsën, she questioned herself
pitifully, when he had died in the workhouse at Paddington? She went
over Seth Brunt’s information, and her mother’s undoubted assurance,
again and again, until she had decided that she had been frightened by
a chimera, and she had only to look upon the man again to be convinced
she was mistaken. By the morning she had come to the resolution that
she would do so. She could not live a life of doubt and uncertainty.
It would poison her whole existence. She would know the best or the
worst before another night came round. When she rose, she was naturally
looking pale and haggard. She was the sort of woman who loses all her
delicate bloom from the want of one night’s sleep. Hal was concerned
at her appearance, and wanted her to stay at home and rest, whilst she
was madly impatient to be free from his scrutiny, and able to follow
out her plan.
‘I shall not let you drive the new mare again, darling, until I have
tried my persuasive powers over her,’ he said at breakfast. ‘I shall
ride her round the farm to-day, and take her for a good bucketing over
the hills afterwards. That will teach her not to rear at everything.
And you had better stay at home, or go for a little walk. You are
looking ghastly pale still. I don’t like to see my pink rose turned
into a white one again.’
His wife did not know what to answer him. She intended to go into
Haltham that afternoon, but she dared not hint at such a thing for fear
lest he should offer to accompany her.
‘What do you say yourself, Paula? What do you wish to do?’
‘I don’t feel like going out this morning,’ she answered after a while.
‘I would rather you stayed at home with me (if you don’t mind), and
took the mare for her bucketing in the afternoon. There are those
stable accounts to go through, you know, and you said yesterday you
wanted my assistance in writing some business letters.’
‘All right, my darling. So let it be. I think, as you forgot all about
Ellis yesterday, that we’ll write straight to the manufacturers, as I
proposed. And Walton must be advised about that cistern leaking. We’ll
give an hour or two to business, and then you must rest on the sofa
till luncheon. I cannot bear to see you look so ill.’
After luncheon he said to her, as his horse was waiting at the door,--
‘I suppose you feel hardly equal to riding round the farm with me,
Paula? The fresh air would do you good.’
He saw her colour as she replied,--
‘No, thank you, Hal. I have a dozen things to attend to yet. I should
only keep you waiting, and I would prefer a walk.’
‘Don’t go too far and overtire yourself.’
‘Oh, dear, no! I may walk round to see Mary; she has a coral necklace
for Edie.’
‘Very well, my dearest. Only, take care of yourself,’ he replied, as he
kissed and left her.
As soon as he was fairly gone, Paula ordered the pony chaise to be made
ready. This was a little basket-carriage that only held two people,
and was drawn by a fat little animal called ‘Tubby,’ who went at the
rate of about four miles an hour. When it came round, she desired her
nurse to accompany her with little Edith. She was determined not to
have another eye-witness of her doings. She started as though for an
hour’s drive along the highroad, but as she reached the outskirts of
the village she said suddenly,--
‘By-the-way, Maria, I never got any rusks for baby in Haltham
yesterday. We must be nearly out of them. I think I had better drop you
here, and you can walk home with her, and I will go and get them. It
will never do to run short. Poor baby would be starved.’
‘I don’t think there’s any hurry, ma’am,’ replied Maria; ‘she must have
enough to last her for some days.’
‘But we can’t risk it. Suppose anything were to happen to prevent our
sending over. I could not be easy if they were not in the house, when
the child lives on nothing else.’
‘Mr Gribble’s cart goes in most every day,’ suggested the nurse, with a
view to solving the problem.
‘Oh, nonsense, as if I would trust to that man. He would bring us
Abernethys, or Thorley’s Food for Cattle, or something equally
appropriate. Get down, Maria, and take baby home. You might call in at
the vicarage on your way. Mrs Measures was complaining the other day
how seldom she saw her godchild.’
‘Very good, ma’am,’ replied the servant, who was rather disappointed,
nevertheless, at losing the promised drive.
As soon as she had disposed of her companions, Paula turned all her
attention to persuading ‘Tubby’ to step out a little more briskly than
usual on his way to Haltham. Her heart was beating fast under the doubt
whether she would be able to accomplish her design, and what awaited
her if she did so, and a dozen times she felt as if she must get out of
the pony chaise and run into the town, so soberly and unconcernedly did
‘Tubby’ go upon his way. The application of the whip, however smart,
seemed to make no impression on him. He only shook his fat sides, as if
a fly had tickled him, but did not quicken his footsteps for a moment.
Haltham lay seven miles from Deepdale. Would she ever get there and
back before dark was Paula’s despairing thought. At last, however, by
dint of whipping, chirruping, and jerking the reins, ‘Tubby’ managed to
crawl into the town about a hour and a half after she had started, and
Paula breathed quickly as she felt her time for action had arrived. She
was particularly anxious not to encounter Dr Brown, or the policeman
Jones, and yet she did not know how she should find where the vagrant
lived without the help of either of them.
‘In mother Sims’ attic,’ some lad had shouted out that the man resided.
‘_Mother Sims._’ There might be dozens of Mother Sims in Haltham. Who
would direct her to the right one? She drove her pony chaise round to
an obscure inn in the empty market-place where she often put up when in
Haltham--the ‘Black Horse’--the landlady of which knew her well.
‘Well, here’s a surprise, to see you again so soon,’ she exclaimed, as
Paula descended and the ostler led the pony away. ‘We ’eard you was in
’Altham yesterday, and had a sad haccident, but no ’arm done, thank the
Lord, though you was a bit shook, doubtless, ma’am?’
‘Oh, no! Only a little frightened,’ replied Paula, as she followed the
landlady into the little parlour.
Here, she thought, might be an opportunity to ascertain the address
she was looking for. She must ask _somebody_, she argued, why not Mrs
Spriggins as well as another?
‘I’m glad it was no wuss, ma’am,’ continued the woman; ‘but them ’orses
of yours are very spirity.’
‘Not at all, as a rule, Mrs Spriggins. It was the boys shouting and a
man playing the cornopean that frightened them. But I’m afraid the poor
tipsy man must have been bruised. Have you heard anything about him?’
‘Not a word, ma’am, so I don’t think he can have come to no ’arm.’
‘One of the lads said he was lodging at Mother Sims’. Do you know where
she lives, Mrs Spriggins?’
‘No, I don’t, ma’am, unless it’s up Blind Alley, across the
market-place. There _is_ a Sims there, I know; but there are several of
the name in ’Altham.’
‘I suppose so. But Mr Rushton thinks it only right that we should make
the man some compensation in money, which I was too flurried to think
of yesterday. So I am trying to find him out to-day. I have to get some
rusks for my baby at Moon’s, and I will make a few inquiries at the
same time. Good afternoon, Mrs Spriggins. I shall require the chaise
about five.’
‘The doctor could tell you ’is address, ma’am,’ screamed the landlady
after her, as she descended the steps, ‘for my Joe told me as ’e’d been
good enough to attend the man at ’is own ’ouse.’
Paula felt her cheeks burn as she hurried across the market-place. What
had the ‘man’ told the doctor? How much might not be known in Haltham
of her former history at that very moment? She drew down her spotted
net veil closely over her hat, as though that could hide her agitated
features, and walked rapidly over the narrow sidepath until she had
reached Blind Alley. Calling a little girl out of the gutter, she gave
her a penny to tell her which of the houses belonged to ‘Mother Sims,’
and was directed in consequence to the fifth door in the row, which
was next to a fish shop, at the upper window of which sat a young man
smoking a clay pipe. They were country-built houses, without bells or
knockers--only latched doors that opened on to the living room. Paula
rapped against Mother Sims’ with her knuckles first, and then timidly
lifted the latch.
‘Does Mother Sims live here?’ she inquired, in a low voice.
A woman answered to the name.
‘I’m Mrs Sims, mum, if it’s me as you’re hasking for.’
‘Have you a lodger here--a very poor man--a sort of tramp--I don’t know
his name--’
‘_Me_ keep tramps in _my_ ’ouse!’ cried the woman shrilly. ‘I should
’ope not, indeed. What do you take me for?’
‘I did not mean to offend you, indeed,’ replied Paula earnestly. ‘I am
looking for the man. He is an object of charity, and I came to relieve
him.’
‘Well, he ain’t ’ere,’ said the woman rudely, as she closed the door
again.
Paula stood perplexed on the pathway for a minute, whilst the young man
at the window over the fish shop eyed her movements keenly.
‘Mother,’ he said, turning towards someone in the room, ‘I’ll be blowed
if there ain’t Mrs ’Al a-talking to the woman next door.’
‘_Mrs ’Al!_’ cried his mother, hurrying to his side and peering over
his shoulder. ‘Lor’, Ted, and so it is. Now, what may _she_ be wanting
in these parts?’
‘Don’t ’ang so far out of the winder or she’ll twig yer,’ said Ted
Snaley. ‘It’s ’er, an’ no mistake, and after no good, I’ll warrant. She
don’t seem to know what she’d be at. Now she’s ’as the market-place
again.’
‘Ted, my lad, you slip on your coat and foller ’er at a distance like,
and find out where she’s agoing. Don’t let ’er catch a sight of you,
for the Lord’s sake. And I’ll jest step into Mrs Sims and ’ear what she
wanted of ’er. She’s a deep ’un, Ted, you mark my words.’
Meanwhile Paula, baffled in her first attempt to find the man whom she
had almost persuaded herself by this time was _not_ Carl Bjornsën, had
remembered Mrs Spriggins’ advice, and was wondering if she could make
up her mind to call upon the doctor. After all (she argued), it was
the vagrant she was in search of, and it was the most natural thing
that she should wish to compensate him for the effects of her careless
driving, and no one need know anything more. As she was debating the
matter in her mind, she caught sight of Dr Brown’s boy, who had helped
to attend on her in the surgery, going his rounds, with a basket of
medicine on his arm. In a moment she had sprung after and detained him.
‘I want you to tell me something,’ she said, panting. ‘You are Dr
Brown’s errand lad, are you not?’
‘Yes, mum,’ replied the boy wonderingly.
‘I want to know where that man lives that I ran over yesterday. Do you
know his address? I hear Dr Brown has attended him.’
‘Yes, mum. I took a bottle of medicine there last night. He lodges at
John Sims’, in Barefoot Lane. It’s just round by Saint Mark’s Church,
mum--runs alongside it like--and Sims he lives at number fifteen.’
‘Thank you. Can you keep a secret?’
‘Yes, mum.’
‘I am going to give the poor man a little money, but I don’t want all
the world to know it. Will you promise me not to tell the doctor, or
anyone, that I asked for his address?’
‘Yes, mum,’ repeated the boy, with open eyes.
He opened them still more when the lady in furs and a silk gown put
five shillings in his hand before she went on her way. He had never
had so much money at one time in his life before, and Paula was out
of sight before he had left off gazing at it, whilst Ted Snaley, who
had watched the little transaction from the opposite side of the way,
followed cautiously in her wake. Haltham considered itself an important
town but in reality it was very small, and except on market days very
empty. Its streets were easily traversed, and Paula’s light feet had
soon found Barefoot Lane, that ran alongside of Saint Mark’s Church.
She glanced from side to side before she entered it, and then, with a
rush, she made for number fifteen and rapped upon the door. This time
it was a man who answered her--John Sims himself, just home from work,
and sitting down to tea with his wife and family.
‘May I come in?’ said Paula nervously, as she entered the doorway. ‘Are
you Mr Sims? I hear you have a lodger here--I don’t know his name--a
man who met with an accident in the High Street yesterday?’
‘Oh, yes, he’s here, worse luck, and I don’t know when we’ll get rid of
’im,’ replied John Sims surlily. ‘I meant to ’ave given ’im the sack
to-day, but the doctor he’s forbid it.’
‘Was--was he hurt?’ inquired Paula, with her purse in her hand. ‘I was
afraid he might be, and so I wanted--I wished to--’
‘If you’re agoing to give ’im money, mum, I should say as you might
find them as was more deservin’ of it--’owever, that’s no business o’
mine,’ replied John Sims. ‘Do you want to go up to his hattic?’
‘Yes--I think so--’ stammered Paula. ‘I--I--should like to speak to him
if I can.’
‘Oh, it’s heasy enough, mum, if you fancies it,’ rejoined the man,
moving to the bottom of the stair and bawling out, ‘Moosoo! Moosoo
Bonson! ’Ere’s some ’un as wants to speak with you.’
All the answer that was elicited from the unseen lodger was conveyed by
a curse that came echoing down the staircase.
‘’E’s at ’ome, at all events,’ remarked John Sims, with a look of
disgust, as he resumed his place at the tea-table; ‘you can go up when
you likes, mum, but all I ’ope is ’e won’t insult you.’
‘Oh, I am used to it--I am not afraid--I often visit sick people,’
replied Paula, with a catching in her breath as she commenced to mount
the creaking stairs.
The name by which Mr Sims had addressed his lodger, although so
uncouthly spoken, roused her worst fears again, and as she climbed to
the room which held him she felt as if she were going to her death.
It was at the very top of the house--a bare and dirty attic. As soon
as she tapped at the door and heard the voice, which replied ‘Come
in,’ she knew who she should see when she entered it. Calling all
her courage to her assistance, she passed the threshold, and there,
lying in bed, with his hollow eyes glaring from beneath his matted
yellow hair, she saw--without the shadow of a doubt--_Carl Bjornsën_.
Paula had so often assured herself during the last twelve hours that
her eyes must have played her false that meeting her former husband
thus was almost as great a blow as if she had looked upon him for the
first time. But it was the truth, and she was forced to accept it. She
staggered back against the white-washed wall, and stood there, with
fixed eyes and heaving breast, fighting against an irresistible desire
to scream.
Carl Bjornsën, on his part, sat up and stared at her. His shirt was
ragged and dirty, and falling off his naked chest. There were no sheets
upon his filthy mattress, but a brown blanket covered the lower part
of his body--a most inadequate protection against the cold in a room
devoid of fire. The man’s whole appearance betokened the utmost poverty
and discomfort, and even in the midst of her horror Paula could not
help feeling compassion for him.
‘And so--and so,’ at last she panted, ‘it is really _you_?’
‘It is really _me_,’ replied Carl Bjornsën, in the rasping guttural
voice that usually accompanies the last stage of consumption. ‘Who else
should it be? You thought you had got rid of me for ever, I suppose.
You hoped I was dead, and rotting in my grave.’
‘I heard that you were dead. I was told so. Have you been in league
with anybody to deceive me?’
‘Not I,’ he rejoined recklessly. ‘What would have been the use of it?
You had kicked me off like a dog. It was nothing to you what became of
me, and so I took my own course, and went to the devil.’
‘That was not _my_ fault,’ she answered.
‘Not _your_ fault! That is what you women always say. We love you, and
trust you, and give ourselves up to you, body and soul, and in return
you deceive us.’
‘I _never_ deceived you,’ she said proudly.
‘Yes, you did. I thought I had married a girl who loved and understood
me. But you set yourselves above me and my companions. You despised me
for my weakness. You openly showed your disgust at my way of living,
when sympathy might have weaned me from it, and in return you made me
hate you--_you_, who once I had so much loved.’
‘Oh, Carl,’ cried Paula, ‘I daresay I was wrong. I was so young, and
you tried to make me submit to you through violence. I don’t want to
reproach you with it now, but you know you nearly killed me.’
‘I wish I had killed you altogether. You’ve killed me, body and soul,
by your desertion. If you’d stayed with me, I would have reformed. But
so long as you were safe, and living in comfort, what did you care. And
now, you’ve got a fine new husband, with a carriage and horses, and you
can run over my dying body as you’ve run over and crushed my soul.’
‘You do me an injustice,’ she cried indignantly; ‘but you always were
unjust. I left you, not for my own sake, but to save the life of my
child--the poor infant whom your cruel blows made imbecile. It was for
my bodily safety, and his, that you forced me to seek a shelter in the
law. You would have ended by hanging for murder if I had not divorced
you.’
‘And a good job too,’ he answered sullenly. ‘It would have been a
quicker and more painless ending than this. Look at me now. I have
nothing. I have lost my ship, my position, my health, my money. I am
starving, and all through you.’
‘It is not so,’ she replied with spirit; ‘you may have lost
everything, but it is through your own fault.’
‘Well, I am punished for it, as much as even _your_ heart could
desire,’ he replied. ‘I am dying, and without the bare necessaries of
life, whilst you are living in luxury at Highbridge Hall.’
‘Who told you of me or my doings? Why did you come here?’ she asked.
‘Seth Brunt--the only true friend I ever had--saw you at Deepdale last
year, and wrote me word of it. I came as soon as I had the money, to
appeal to you--to your compassion, if you will--to spare me a few
shillings in my need.’
At this her woman’s heart melted.
‘Oh, Carl, you cannot have thought so badly of me as to imagine I would
refuse. Only, it must be on one condition, that you do not disclose our
former connection to the people around you.’
‘You are ashamed of having been my wife,’ he said bitterly.
‘I am ashamed that, _having been_ your wife, I am so no longer. It is
the divorce that shames me, Carl. I am the wife of a good man, and the
mother of his child, and I should bring disgrace on both of them if
your identity were known.’
‘You have not told the man you call your husband, then?’
‘He _is_ my husband--by law and love--as sacredly as any man could be,
and I _have_ told him _everything_. Only, he thinks you dead (as I
did), and if he discovered the contrary it might cause great trouble
between us, for he does not believe in the morality of divorce.’
‘And suppose _I_ don’t believe in it either,’ exclaimed Bjornsën,
‘suppose I choose to assert my former claim on you, what then?’
‘Then I should put the matter into the hands of the police, and ask
my husband to take me away from Deepdale until it was settled. Don’t
try to threaten me, Carl. You have no hold on me except that which is
evoked by the memory of the past.’
‘I am not so sure of that,’ said Bjornsën, in the hoarse weak voice
which was so often interrupted by coughing. ‘You have a child, you
say, by this man. Where is your other child--_my_ son--whom you stole
from me?’
‘Poor little Paulie! He is gone,’ replied the mother, with quivering
lips, ‘but his fate is a mystery. We think he was lost over the
Grassdene cliffs.’
‘Oh, you think _that_, do you? And you mourned his death, of course,’
he said sneeringly.
‘I did. I _do_ mourn it to this day,’ replied Paula, with the tears in
her eyes.
‘Would you be glad to have him back again?’
She hesitated a moment. Would she be glad to receive back the poor
imbecile child whose existence had been a trouble to himself and
others, and whose presence she could never ask Hal to endure at
Highbridge Hall?
‘Why ask me such a question?’ she returned. ‘He is safe in Heaven. Who
would wish to draw him thence again?’
‘That’s all you know about it,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s all you care to
know about it. But you asked me just now why I had come to Haltham.
_This_ is my reason. Look here.’
And drawing down the dirty blanket, he showed her the face of a child
sleeping by his side. She pressed forward, curious and yet incredulous
as to what she should see there.
God in Heaven! It was the face of Paulie!