IT was a peculiarity of Winston Aylett that he was never discomposed in
seeming, however embarrassing or distressing might be his position. In
his childhood he was one to whom, to use the common phrase, dirt would
not stick. His face was clean and fair, his hands smooth, and his hair
in order after rough and tumble experiences that sent his companions
home begrimed, ragged, and unkempt frights. To-night, he had ridden
a dozen miles in the teeth of the storm, and made no pause before
appearing before his wife and sister, except to lay off his hat and
overcoat in the hall. But had he expected to encounter a roomful of
ladies, his costume could not have been more unexceptionable.
His linen was pure and fresh, even to the narrow line of wristband
edging his coat sleeve; his clearly cut patrician features were tranquil
in every line and tint; his step was the light, yet deliberate stride of
an athlete without passion or bravado. Conscious power, inexorable will,
and thorough self-command were stamped upon him from crown to foot,
and his salutation to the small family party accompanied a smile as
mirthless and cold as were his eyes.
Mrs. Aylett advanced a step, not more, and returned the bow that
comprehended all present, with a pleased, not rapturous welcome.
“We were beginning to fear lest you might be wet,” she said, emulating
his polite equanimity. Genuine tact is always chameleon-like in quality.
“It rains quite fast, does it not?”
“The storm is increasing, but I experienced no inconvenience from it,
thank you.”
He sat down in his favorite arm-chair, and spread his fingers before the
fire.
“I am happy to see you so very much better”--to Herbert. “There were
many kind inquiries for you at the court-house to-day. Dr. Ritchie
wanted to know if you had ever taken nux vomica for these neuralgic
turns. I invited him to come in with me and prescribe for you, but he
said he must push on home, so we parted at the outer gate.”
So affable as almost to put others at their ease in his company,
he chatted until supper was announced; regretted civilly Herbert's
inability to go to the table, and gave his sister his arm into the
dining-room, Mrs. Aylett following in their wake. If he did not eat
heartily, he praised, in gentlemanly moderation, the viands selected by
his consort for his delectation after his wet ride, and pleaded a late
dinner as the reason of his present abstinence. Then they adjourned to
the apartment where they had left Mr. Dorrance, and the host produced
his cigar-case.
“Mabel says that smoke never offends your olfactories, or affects your
head unpleasantly, when you are suffering from this nervous affection,”
he said to Herbert.
“On the contrary, it often acts as a sedative,” was the reply.
Winston lighted a cigar with an allumette from a bronze taper-stand--a
Christmas gift from his wife, which she kept supplied with fanciful
spiles twisted and fringed into a variety of shapes; drew several long
breaths to be certain that the fire had taken hold of the heart of the
Havana, tossed the pretty paper into the embers, and resumed his seat in
the chimney corner.
“A sedative is a good thing for people who allow their nerves to get out
of gear,” he remarked, dryly and leisurely, puffing contentedly in the
middle and at the end of the sentence. “But he who does this subverts
the order of the ruler and the ruled. I supposed I had nerves once,
but it is an age since they have dared molest me. I know that I had my
impulses when I was younger.”
He stopped to fillip the ash forming upon the ignited end of his cigar,
performing the operation with nicety, using the extreme tip of his
middle-finger nail over the salver attached for the purpose to the
bronze smoking-set.
“I obeyed one, above a dozen years ago. I learned only to-day that it
was rash and unwise, and to how much evil it may lead.”
“Not a very active evil, if you have just discovered it to be such.”
The speaker was his sister. Herbert was motionless upon his couch. Mrs.
Aylett, in the lounging-chair at the opposite side of the hearth from
her husband, was cutting the leaves of a new magazine he had brought
from the post-office, and did not seem to hear his remark.
“You reason upon the assumption that ignorance is bliss,” said Mr.
Aylett. “Allow me to express the opinion that the adage embodying
that idea is the refuge of cowards and fools. No matter how grievous a
bankrupt a man may be financially in spirit, he is craven or a
blockhead to shrink the investigation of his accounts. Which allusion
to bankruptcy brings me to the recital of a choicely offensive bit of
scandal I heard to-day. It is seldom that I give heed to the like, but
the delicious rottenness revealed by this tale enforced my hearing, and
fixed the details in my mind. I could not but think, as I rode home,
of the accessories which would add effectiveness, to-night, to my
second-hand narrative. I had the whole scene, which is now before me,
in my mind's eye--the warm firelight and the shaded lamp brightening all
within, while the rain pattered without; the interesting invalid over
there gradually stirring into interest as the story progressed; you,
Mabel, calmly and critically attentive; and my Lady Aylett, too proud to
look the desire she really feels to handle the lovely carrion.”
“Your figures are not provocative of insatiable appetite,” returned his
wife, with inimitable sang-froid, staying her paper knife that she might
examine an engraving.
“Your appetite needs further excitants, then? So did mine until I began
to suspect that the history might be authentic, and not a figment of
the raconteur's imagination. The hero's name at first disposed me to set
down the entire relation as a fiction. It is romantic enough to perfume
a three-volume novel--Julius Lennox!”
Mabel's instinctive thought was for her husband, but, in turning to
him she could not but notice that Mrs. Aylett sat motionless, the
paper-cutter between two leaves, and her left hand pressed hard upon the
upper, but without attempting to sever them.
Herbert twisted his head upon the pillow until he faced the back of the
sofa, and a convulsion went through him, hardly quelled by the clasp of
Mabel's hand upon his.
“Julius Lennox!” reiterated Mr. Aylett, between the fragrant puffs, “A
lieutenant in the navy--the good-looking, but, as the sequel proved,
not over-steady, spouse of a lady who was the daughter of another naval
officer of similar rank. The latter was compelled to leave the service
on account of incipient idiocy, and retired, upon half-pay, to an
unfashionable quarter of a certain great city, where his wife, a smart
Yankee, opened a boarding-house for law and medical students, and
contrived not only to keep the souls and bodies of her family together,
but to marry off her two still single daughters--the one to a
barrister, the other to a physician. The lovely Louise Lennox--a pretty
alliteration, is it not?--remained meanwhile under the paternal roof,
her husband's ship being absent most of the time, and the handsome
Julius having unlimited privileges in the line condemned by “Black-eyed
Susan” in her parting interview with her sailor lover--finding a
mistress in every port. It is woman's nature and wisdom to seek
consolation for such afflictions as the deprivation of the beloved one's
society, and the almost certainty that he is basking his faithless self
in the sunlight of another's eyes. Our heroine, being at once ardent and
philosophical, put the lex talionis into force by falling in love
with one of her mother's lodgers, a sprig of the legal profession.
The favored youth--so says my edition of the romance--remained
preternaturally unconscious of the sentiment he had inspired,
attributing her manifestations of partiality to platonic regard, until
she opened his modest eyes by proposing an elopement. He had completed
his professional studies, taken out a license to practise law, was about
to quit her and the city, and the no-longer-adored Julius was coming
home--a wreck in health and purse--upon a six months' leave of absence.
It must be owned the Lady Louise had some excuse for a measure that
seemed to have amazed and horrified her cicisbeo. Recoiling from the
proposition and herself with the virtuous indignation that is ever
aroused in the manly bosom by similar advances, he packed up his trunk,
double-locked it and his heart, paid his bill, and decamped from the
dangerous precincts.
“Ignoble conclusion to a tender affair; but not so devoid of tragicality
as would seem. Infuriated at the desertion of this modern Joseph,
Louise, the lorn, avenged the slight offered her charms by declaring
to her youngest brother, the only one who resided in the same city
with herself, that Joseph had made dishonorable proposals to her--a
proceeding which demonstrates that the feminine character has withstood
the proverbially changing effects of time from age to age. My narrative
is but a later and a Gentile version of the Jewish novelette to which
I have referred. The role of Potiphar was cast for the unsophisticated
brother, who, being unable to immure the unimpressible Joseph in the
Tombs, attempted the only means of redress that remained to him, to wit:
Personal chastisement.
“And here,” continued the narrator, yet more slowly, “I find myself
perplexed by the discrepancy between the statement I have had to-day and
one of this section of the story furnished me several years since.
In the latter the indignant fraternal relative flogged the would-be
betrayer within a quarter of an inch of his life. The other account
reverses the position of the parties, and makes Joseph the incorruptible
also the invincible. However this may have been, the adventure seems to
have quenched the loving Louise's brilliancy for a season. We hear no
more of her until after her father's decease, when she re-enters the
lists of Cupid in another State, as the blushing and still beautiful
virgin-betrothed of a man of birth and means, who woos and weds her
under her maiden cognomen--the entire family, including the valiant
brother who figured as whippee or whipper, in the castigation
exploit--being accomplices in the righteous fraud. I might, did I not
fear being prolix, tell of sundry side-issues growing out of the main
stalk of this plot, such as the ingenious manoeuvres by which the
promising couple of conspirators averted, upon the eve of the sister's
bridal, the threatened expose of their machinations to entrap the
wealthy lover. Suffice it to say that the duped husband (by brevet)
lived for a decade and a half in the placid enjoyment of the ignorance
which my sagacious sister here is disposed to confound with rational
bliss--nor is he quite sure, to this day, whether spouse No. 1 of the
partner of his bosom still lives, or by clearance in what court of
infamy or justice she managed to shuffle off her real name, and win a
right to resume the title of spinster.”
He lighted a fresh cigar, and for the space of perhaps a minute, a dead
and ominous silence prevailed. Mabel, pallid and faint at heart, could
not take her eyes from his countenance, with its cruel smile, frozen,
shallow eyes, and the deep white dints coming and going in his nostrils.
He had judged without partiality. He would condemn without mercy. He
would punish without remorse.
Herbert still faced the back of the lounge, but he had slipped his hand
from the relaxing hold of hers, and pressed it over his eyes. She could
not seek to possess herself of it again. Winston was not the only dupe
of the nefarious fraud, the betrayal of which had overtaken the guilty
pair thus late in their career of duplicity. Yet, however severely
she had suffered in heart from their falsehood and her brother's
intolerance, no stain would rest upon her name, while, terminate as the
affair might, the disgraceful revelation would shipwreck her brother's
happiness for life, if not bring upon the old homestead a storm of
scandal that would leave no more trace of the honorable reputation
heretofore borne by its owners than remained of the smiling plenty of
the cities of the plain after the fiery wrath of the Lord had overthrown
them.
Mrs. Aylett resumed the suspended operation of cutting the leaves of
her new monthly; fluttered them to be certain that none were overlooked;
laid down the periodical; brushed the scattered bits of paper from
her silken skirt, and retaining the paper-knife--a costly toy of
mother-of-pearl and silver--changed her position so as to look her
husband directly in the eye.
“I believe I can give you the information you lack,” she said, in
curiously constrained accents, the concentration of some feeling to
which she could or would not grant other vent. “Clara Louise Lennox
obtained a divorce from her first husband on the grounds of drunkenness,
failure to maintain her, infidelity, and personal ill-usage. He came
home from sea, as you have said, the battered ruin of a MAN, fallen
beyond hope of redemption. There was no law, written or moral, which
obliged her, when once freed from it, to carry about with her and thrust
upon the notice of others the loathsome body of death typified by his
name and her matronly title. She commenced life anew at her father's
death, contrary, let me say to the advice of all her friends, if I
except the mother, who could refuse nothing to her favorite daughter.
The scheme was boldly conceived. You have admitted that it was
successfully carried out. In New York the family were not known beyond
the circle with which they disdained to associate when the lodging-house
business was abandoned. There were a thousand chances to one that in her
new abode Miss Dorrance would be identified by some busybody with the
divorced Mrs. Lennox. She risked her fortunes upon the one chance, and
won. I do not expect you to believe that the impostor was moved by any
other consideration in contracting her second marriage than the wish
to seek the more exalted sphere of society and influence which Fate had
hitherto denied her. You would sneer were I to hint, however remotely,
at a regard for her high-born suitor the dashing, but dissipated officer
had never awakened--”
Mr. Aylett lifted his hand, smiling more evilly than before.
“Excuse the interruption! but after your statement of the fact that
such sentimental asseverations would be futile, you waste time in
recapitulating the loves of the lady aforementioned, and we in hearing
them. I think I express the opinion of the audience--fit, but few--when
I say that we require no other evidence than that afforded by the story
I have told of Mrs. Lennox's susceptibility and capacity for affection.
We are willing to take for granted that the latter was illimitable.”
“As you like!” idly tapping the nails of her left hand with the knife.
“Is there anything else pertaining to this history into which you would
like to inquire?”
It was a sight to curdle the blood about one's heart, this duel between
husband and wife, with double-edged blades, wreathed with flowers. Mr.
Aylett's attitude of lazy indifference was not exceeded by Clara's proud
languor. He laughed a little at the last question.
“I have speculated somewhat--having nothing else in particular to engage
my mind on my way home--upon the point I named just now, and upon one
other akin to it. All that the novel needs to round it off neatly is an
encounter between the real and the quasi consorts. I cannot specify them
by name, in consequence of the uncertainty I have mentioned. One was a
bona-fide husband--the other a bogus article, let New York divorce laws
decide what they will, provided always that the fallen Julius had not
bidden farewell to this lower earth before his loyal Louise plighted her
faith to her Southern gallant. Death is the Alexander of the universe.
There is no retying the knots he has cut.”
From the pertinacity with which he returned to the question one could
discern his actual anxiety to have it settled. Mabel understood that the
only salve of possible application to his outraged pride and love was
the discovery that Clara had been really a widow when he wedded her. The
divorce and subsequent deception were sins of heinous dye against his
ideas of respectability and unspotted honor, but he would never forgive
the woman who had had two living husbands, freed from the former though
she was by a legal fiction.
No one saw this more clearly than did she whose fate trembled upon the
next words she should utter. With all her hardihood, she hesitated to
reply. Luxury, wealth, and station were on one side; degradation
and poverty on the other. The solitary hope of reinstatement in the
affection, if not the esteem, of him she loved truly as it was in her
to love anything beside herself, was arrayed against the certainty of
alienation and the tearful odds of ignominious banishment.
Her answer, under the pressure of the warring emotions, was a semitone
lower, and less distinctly enunciated than those that had gone before
it.
“The denouement you propose for your romance is impracticable. Julius
Lennox died before the date of the second marriage.”
Herbert drew himself to a sitting posture by clutching the back of the
lounge. His red eyes and tumbled hair made him look more like a mad than
a sick man.
“In the name of Heaven,” he demanded hoarsely, “have we not had enough
lies, every one of which has been a blunder, and a fatal one? I told
you, years ago, that the scene of this evening was a mere question of
time; that, without a miracle, an edifice founded upon iniquity and
cemented by falsehood must crush you before you could lay the top-stone.
You would not be warned--you held on your way without hesitation or
compunction, and now you would add to sin fatuity. Do you suppose that
after what your husband has learned of your untruthfulness he will
accept your assertion on any subject without inquiry? And, how many in
your own family and out of it--although these may not know you by the
name you now bear--are cognizant of the fact that Julius Lennox was
alive for almost fifteen months after you became Mrs. Aylett?”
Mabel's arm was about his neck, her hand upon his mouth.
“No more! no more! if you love me!” she whispered in an agony. “Should
he guess all, he would murder her!”
“You are prepared to certify that he is dead NOW, are you, Mr.
Dorrance?” queried Winston, suspicious of this by-play.
“I am!” sulkily.
“It is a pity!” was the ambiguous rejoinder.
Something clicked upon the hearth. It was the fragments of the toy
stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the small fingers that
held it.
Then Mrs. Aylett arose, pale as a ghost, but unquailing in eye or mien.
“May I know your lordship's pleasure respecting your cast-off minion?”
“In the morning, yes!” glancing up disdainfully. “Meantime, let me wish
you 'good-night' and happy dreams.”