MR. LISTON'S STORY
Another autumnal twilight, ghostly and gray is creeping over the Chelsea
shore. In her pleasant chamber in the Chelsea cottage, Norine lies on
her white bed and looks out upon it. Looks out, but sees nothing. The
dark, burning, brilliant eyes might be stone blind for all they see of
the windy, fast drifting sky, of the strip of wet and slippery sands, of
the white-capped sea beyond. She might be stone deaf for all she hears
of the wintry soughing of the wind, of the dull, ceaseless boom of the
sea on the shore, or the light patter of the chill rain on the glass.
She lies here as she has lain from the first--rigid--stricken soul and
body.
Last evening, a little later than this, the Misses Waddle had sprung
from their seats with two shrill little shrieks at the apparition of Mr.
Liston entering hastily with Mrs. Laurence lying dead in his arms. Dead
to all outward semblance, at first, but when they had placed her in bed,
and applied the usual restoratives, the eyelids quivered, the dusk eyes
opened, and with a strange, shuddering sob, she came back to life. For
one instant she gazed up into the kindly, anxious faces of the spinster
sisters; then memory came back with a rush. She was not Laurence's wife;
he had betrayed and cast her off; she would never look upon his face
again in this world. With a low moan of agony the sisters never forgot,
she turned her face to the wall and lay still. So she had lain since.
A night and a day had passed. She had neither slept nor eaten--she had
scarcely moved--she lay like a stone. All night long the light had
burned, all night long the sisters stole softly in and out, always to
find the small, rigid figure, as they had left it; the white face
gleaming like marble in the dusk; the sleepless black eyes, wild and
wide. They spoke to her in fear and trembling. She did not heed, it is
doubtful if she heard. In a dull, dumb trance she lay, curiously
conscious of the figures flitting to and fro; of whispered words and
frightened faces; of the beat of the rain on the glass; of the black
night lying on the black sea, her heart like a stone in her bosom. She
was not Laurence's wife--Laurence had left her for ever. These two
thoughts kept beating, beating, in heart, and brain, and soul, like the
ceaseless torment of the lost.
The new day came and went. With it came Mr. Liston--pale, quiet,
anxious. The Misses Waddle, angry and curious, at once plied him with
questions. What was it all about? What had he said to Mrs. Laurence?
Where was Mr. Laurence? Was it ill news of him? And little Mr. Liston,
with a face of real pain and distress, had made answer "Yes, it was ill
news of Mr. Laurence. Would they please not ask him questions? He
couldn't really tell. For Heaven's sake let them try and bring that poor
suffering child round. He would pay every cent due them, and take her
away the moment she was able to travel."
He sits in the little parlor now, his head on his hand, gazing out at
the gloomy evening prospect, with a very downcast and gloomy face. He is
alone, a bit of fire flickers and falls in the grate. Miss Waddle the
elder is not yet at home from her Chelsea school. Miss Waddle the
younger, in a glow of inky inspiration, is skurrying through a thrilling
chapter of "The Mystery of the Double Tooth," and within that inner
room, at which he gazes with such troubled eyes, "one more unfortunate"
lies battling with woman's utter despair.
"Poor soul," Mr. Liston says inwardly. "Will she perish as Lucy West
perished, while he lives and marries, is rich, courted, and happy? No, I
will tell her the truth sooner, that she is his wife, that the marriage
was legal, though he does not suspect it, and when Helen Holmes is his
wife she shall come forward and convict him of bigamy, and my lordly Mr.
Laurence, how will it be with you then!"
"Mr. Liston."
He had literally leaped to his feet with a nervous cry. He had heard no
sound, but the chamber door had opened and she had come forth. Her soft
French accented voice spoke his name, in the shadowy gloaming she stood
before him, her face white and still, and awfully death-like. As she
came forward in her white dressing gown, her loose black hair falling,
her great black eyes shining she was so unearthly, so like a spirit,
that involuntarily he recoiled.
"I have startled you," she said. "I beg your pardon. I did not know you
were here, but I am glad you are. To-morrow I will leave this
house--to-night I should like to say a few words to you."
She was very quiet, ominously quiet. She sat down as she spoke, close
to the fire; her hands folded in her lap, her weird looking eyes fixed
on his face. Nervously Mr. Liston got up and looked around for a bell.
"Shall I ring, I mean call, for lights. I am very glad to see you up,
Miss Bour--I mean Mrs. Laurence."
"Thank you" she answered gently "and no, please--don't ask for a lamp.
Such a wretch as I am naturally prefers the dark. Mr. Liston," with
strange, swift abruptness, "I have lain in there, and within the last
few hours I have been able to think. I believe all that you have told
me. I know what I am--as utterly lost and forlorn a sinner as the wide
earth holds. I know what _he_ is--a greater villain than if, on the
night I saw him first, he had stabbed me to the heart. All this I know.
Mr. Liston, will you tell me something more. Are you Laurence
Thorndyke's friend or enemy?"
In the course of his forty years of life, Mr. Liston had come across a
good many incomprehensible women, but perhaps, he had never been quite
so completely taken aback before. She spoke the name of her betrayer, of
the man she had loved so passionately, and in one moment had lost for
ever, without one tremor or falter. The sombre eyes were looking at him
full. He drew nearer to her--a great exultation in his soul. This girl
was made of sterner stuff than Lucy West. Laurence Thorndyke's hour had
come.
"Am I Laurence Thorndyke's friend or enemy? His enemy, Miss Bourdon--his
bitterest enemy on earth for the last five years."
"I thought so. I don't know why, but I thought so. Mr. Liston, what has
he done to you?"
"Blighted and darkened my life, as he has blighted and darkened yours.
He was hardly one-and-twenty then, but the devil was uppermost in him
from his cradle. _Her_ name was Lucy West, I had known her from
babyhood, was almost double her age, but when I asked her to marry me
she consented. I loved her well, she knew that I could take her to the
city to live, that was the desire of her heart. I know now she never
cared for me, but they were poor and pinched at home, and she was vain
of her rose-and-milk skin, of her bright eyes and sparkling teeth.
"I was old, and small, and plain, but I could give her silk dresses and
a house in town, a servant to wait upon her, and she was ready to marry
me. I was then what I am now, Mr. Darcy's land steward, agent,
confidential valet, all in one. Young Mr. Laurence came home from
Harvard for his vacation; and full of admiration for this bright young
beauty, proud and fond beyond all telling of her, I took him down with
me to show him the charming little wife I was going to marry. No thought
of distrusting either ever entered my mind, in my way I loved and
admired both, with my whole heart. Miss Bourdon, you know this story
before I tell it, one of the oldest stories the world has to tell.
"We remained a fortnight. Then I had to go back to New York. It was
August, and we were to be married in October. He returned with me,
stayed a week with his adopted uncle, then returned to Boston, so he
said. One week later, while I was busily furnishing the pretty house I
had hired for my little Lucy, came a letter from Lucy's mother. I see at
this moment, Mrs. Laurence, the sunny, busy street at which I sat
stupidly staring, for hours after I read that letter. I hear the shouts
of the children at play, the hot, white quiver of the blazing August
noon-day.
"Lucy had gone, run away from home with a young man, nobody knew who for
certain, but everybody thought with the young gentleman I had brought
there, Mr. Thorndyke. I had trusted her, Mrs. Laurence, as I tell you I
had loved and trusted them both entirely. I sat there stupefied, I need
not tell you what I suffered. Next day I went down to the village. Her
mother was nearly crazed, the whole village was gossiping the shameful
story. He--or some one like him, had been seen haunting the outskirts of
the village, she had stolen, evening after evening, to some secret
tryst.
"She had left a note--'she couldn't marry old Liston,' she said; 'she
had gone away with somebody she liked ten thousand times better. They
needn't look for her. If he made her a lady she would come back of
herself, if not--but it was no use their looking for her. Tell Mr.
Liston she was sorry, and she hoped mother wouldn't make a fuss, and she
was her affectionate daughter, Lucy.'
"I sat and read the curiously heartless words, and I knew just as well
as if she had said so, that it was with young Laurence she had gone. I
knew, too, for the first time, how altogether heartless, base, and
worthless was this girl. But there was nothing to be said or done. I
went back to New York, to my old life, in a stupid, plodding sort of
way. I said nothing to Mr. Darcy. I sold off the pretty furniture. I
waited for young Mr. Laurence to return; he did return at
Christmas--handsome, high-spirited, and dashing as ever. But he rather
shrank from me, and I saw it. I went up to him on the night of his
arrival, and calmly asked him the question:
"'Mr. Laurence, what have you done with Lucy West?
"He turned red to his temples, he wasn't too old or too hardened to
blush then, but he denied everything. Lying,--cold, barefaced lying, is
one of Mr. Thorndyke's principal accomplishments.
"'He knew nothing of Lucy West--how dared I insinuate such a thing.'
Straightening himself up haughtily. 'If she had run away from me, with
some younger, better looking fellow, it was only what I might have
expected. But fools of forty will never be wise;' and then, with a
sneering laugh, and his hands in his pockets, my young pasha strolls
away, and we spoke of Lucy West no more.
"That was five years ago. One winter night, a year after, walking up
Grand street about ten o'clock, three young women came laughing and
talking loudly towards me. It needed no second look at their painted
faces, their tawdry silks, and gaudy 'jewelry,' to tell what they were.
But one face--ah! I had seen it last fresh and innocent, down among the
peaceful fields. Our eyes met; the loud laugh, the loud words, seemed to
freeze on her lips--she grew white under all the paint she wore. She
turned like a flash and tried to run--I followed and caught her in five
seconds. I grasped her arm and held her fast, savagely, I suppose, for
she trembled as she looked at me.
"'Let me go, Mr. Liston,' she said, in a shaking voice; 'you hurt me!'
"'No, by Heaven,' I said, 'not until you answer me half a dozen
questions. The first is: 'Was it Laurence Thorndyke with whom you ran
away?'
"Her eyes flashed fire, the color came back to her face, her hands
clenched. She burst forth into such a torrent of words, choked with
rage, interlarded with oaths, that my blood ran cold, that my passion
cooled before it. She had been inveigled away by Thorndyke, there was no
sham marriage here--no promise of marriage even; I will do him that
justice, and in six months, friendless and penniless, she was adrift in
the streets of New York. She was looking for him night and day, if ever
she met him she would tear the very eyes out of his head!
"Would she go home? I asked her. I would pay her way--her mother would
receive and pardon her.
"She laughed in my face. What! take _my_ money--of all men! go back to
the village where once she had queened it over all the girls--like this!
She broke from me, and her shrill, mocking laugh came back as she ran
and joined her companions. I have never seen her since.
"That is my story, Miss Bourdon. Two years have passed since that
night--my dull life goes on--I serve Mr. Darcy--I watch Mr. Thorndyke. I
have come to his aid more than once, I have screened his evil deeds from
his uncle as I have screened this. He is to be married the first week of
December to Miss Helen Holmes, a beautiful girl and an heiress. The last
duty I am to perform for him is to hush up this story of yours, to
restore you to your friends like a bale of damaged goods. But I think
his time has come; I think it should be our turn now. It is for you and
me to say whether he shall inherit his uncle's fortune--whether he shall
marry Helen Holmes or not."