"How is Miss de Barryos?"
Manuel Meriaz was standing facing Mrs. Chalmers who had risen to
greet him, endeavoring to conceal her expression of repugnance, and
succeeding poorly, a smile upon his coarse lips which was far from
attractive, though he endeavored to make his voice gentle, even human.
"All right again, I fancy," replied Mrs. Chalmers, wearily.
"Still a prisoner?"
She made a gesture of deprecation.
"Jessica seems to have gone mad these last few days," she answered.
"She must realize how impossible it is for this to go on longer, but
she will listen to no reason, hear no argument. She will confide
nothing to me, but is like a wild creature if I attempt to speak to
her."
"Let her alone," advised Meriaz, indifferently. "Stolliker will be
here tomorrow, and it will all come to an end quickly enough then."
"Stolliker here tomorrow? Who told you?"
"Jessica."
"Then she has talked to you?"
"No; nothing further than that. He telegraphed from Washington
yesterday that he would stop off in New York while the Mexican officer,
with an interpreter from the office here, would go on to Albany for the
signature of the governor to those papers. By tomorrow night, or the
next at furthest their bird will be landed, and then I fancy Jessica
will let your beautiful ward take her own course."
"Shall you return to Mexico with them?"
"Certainly. That is necessary in order to pocket the rest of the money."
Mrs. Chalmers could not quite control the sigh of relief that bubbled
through her lips in spite of effort.
Meriaz smiled.
"You will go with me, Louise?"
"I?" she stammered.
"Yes. You have always told me that it was a question of money that kept
us apart. With the start I shall have when this trial is over I should
have to be a poor financier indeed, if I could not make my fortune."
"But you will--wait until you have made it?
"Ah, no! You will give me the encouragement of your presence."
She looked up at him helplessly, like a bird under the influence of
a serpent, and saw the expression of his countenance. It was almost
diabolical in its fiendish intent.
She shrank backward, and he sat down opposite her.
"My dear Louise," he said slowly "you and I have played at this game
long enough. There was a time when I was fool enough to believe in
you. There was a time when you led me on, inducing me to do your
bidding, let that be what it might, merely for a word in recompense,
flung at me like a bone to a starving dog; but I have learned something
different now. I am grateful to you for my education. No one to look
at me would believe that there was a time when I was a gentleman, when
people called me handsome, when I was a dashing man of the world,
who might have captured the richest senorita in all Mexico. You are
responsible that I did not, my dear Louise. I loved you then, and there
is nothing under heaven that you might have commanded which I would not
do. You knew your power, and you used it. Well, Louise, the tables have
turned. I don't love you now. Perhaps I have grown too old to love.
Perhaps I have forgotten how; but I know my power over you now, and I
mean to use it."
"What are you going--to do?" she stammered, hoarsely.
He leaned toward her, fixing her with his beady eyes, and answered
calmly:
"Marry you--and give my daughter her honest name!"
"For God's sake, hush!" she exclaimed, springing up and glancing about
her in alarm.
He put his hand upon her arm, and forced her gently into her seat again.
"Any one would think I had proposed a crime," he said, quietly, "from
your frightened tone and exclamation. I don't call it a very bitter
revenge, do you, that I propose to make you my wife? I don't call it a
great hardship, that for the first time in all your life you will be
able to face yourself and the world as a legal wife, bearing the name
of a husband that is willing to claim you before all the world!"
"What do--you mean?" she gasped, her voice almost uncontrollable in its
tremulousness.
"Don't imagine that you can deceive me!" he exclaimed, contemptuously.
"I am quite aware that Bertram Chalmers was a myth. I know your life,
Louise, year by year, day by day, almost hour by hour, from the time
you were a school-girl, and even before. There is not an incident
that I could not repeat to you with such exactitude as to be almost
startling. I doubt if you could recite it so well yourself. But
there are only a few years with which I have to do. You were young,
beautiful, when you came to Mexico, where your little one was born. It
was in your way, poor little morsel, and you abandoned it. What did you
care whether it was brought up in the hut of a peon, or left to die in
the sun-scorched swamps? I saw you then and loved you, in spite of your
heartlessness, for we know little of sin in Mexico. It is only love
that affects us. I was the only person about that attracted you then,
and you yielded to me your smiles for the time, only, as I afterward
discovered, to make me your tool, to force me to do that which you
could not do yourself. I became your dupe, your accomplice at cards--no
matter what. I do not regret a single sin that I ever committed for
you, a single folly. If you had loved me, you would have found that I
knew better than most men how to be a devoted slave, but you didn't.
And after a time you returned to America. What became of your abandoned
little one? I know, Louise!"
"You--know?"
"Yes."
"She lives?"
"It can't be that you are interested after all these years!" he cried,
mockingly. "Yes, she lives."
"Where? For Heaven's sake, tell me!
"In Mexico, known as--my daughter. Ah! you see I loved you better even
than you thought. She has grown to be a beautiful woman, but not like
her mother. Your hair in those days was dark, Louise, though your eyes
were blue. Her eyes are dark. Her hair black as night. Brought up in
that tropical climate, she possesses all the attributes of a Mexican,
even to the hot, ungovernable temper--tender and impulsive as a child
under love's direction, but a fury, a very fiend, when opposition
comes. She wants to know her mother, Louise."
"You--you have--told her?" the dry, stiff lips questioned.
"Everything! She even knows the secret of Jessica's birth, the--"
"Ah!"
"Did you think I did not know that?" he questioned calmly in answer
to her little, inarticulate cry of horror. "I thought I told you that
everything was an open page to me? Shall I tell you what it was I told
her, Louise?"
No answer came, only the anguish in the burning eyes. He went on
pitilessly:
"I told her that Jessica is--my daughter. Great God, woman! did you
really think you could deceive me? Did you really believe I did not
know? I have only bided my time, waiting, waiting, because, as you said
neither of us had a sou with which to bless ourselves. With all your
swindling and lying and cheating you did not make enough even for your
own support, and I had nothing to add to it to speak of. But now things
are different. I shall have a start. It will enable me to work the
mines, which are of great promise, and I want my daughter to bear her
proper name."
"You mean to tell Jessica this story?"
Meriaz shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
"You are an expert at manufacturing stories. If you can invent one that
will deceive her and still induce her to do my will, I shall have no
objection to you telling it. Otherwise, she must know the truth."
"Have you no mercy?" moaned the woman, wringing her hands together
helplessly.
"What mercy had you upon me? What mercy had you upon that poor little
helpless child whom you abandoned? Why is it that it is always the
person who has done most harm in the world that is always crying out
for mercy? Did you think you should be allowed to go through the world
scot-free, you who have worked so much harm, you who have driven so
many men to desperation, and broken the hearts of countless wives? I am
not taunting you with your sins; why should I? Heaven knows I have no
stones to cast; but when my time comes I shall face my punishment with
as much indifference as I have committed crime. And, after all, what
is it that I am offering you? Is it so great a shame to be the wife of
any man, you who have borne no name that was justly yours since you
wilfully dropped the one your father gave you? Louise, when will you be
my wife?"
"You must give me time!" she groaned.
He bowed.
"I have already given you twenty years in which to consider it," he
returned, lightly. "I suppose another day will make no difference.
I give you, then, until tomorrow, when Stolliker returns. I go as a
member of that party, remember, and you must accompany me. We shall
be a happy family; you united to your long-neglected child, I to my
daughter whom I have allowed you to keep during all these years. I
shall expect your answer when Stolliker returns to take his prisoner."