MRS. GODDARD BECOMES AN EAVESDROPPER.
When, after her interview with Edith, Mrs. Goddard went out to make
her call, leaving her brother to keep watch and ward over their fair
captive, she proceeded with all possible speed to the Copley Square
Hotel, where she inquired for Mrs. Stewart.
The elevator bore her to the second floor, and the pretty maid, who
answered her ring at the door of the elegant suite to which she had
been directed, told her that her mistress was engaged just at present,
but, if madam would walk into the reception-room and wait a while, she
had no doubt that Mrs. Stewart would soon be at liberty. "Would madam
be kind enough to give her a card to take in?"
Mrs. Goddard pretended to look for her card-case, first in one pocket
of her wrap, then in another.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, "I must have left my cards at home! How
unfortunate! But it does not matter," she added, with one of her
brilliant smiles; "I am an old acquaintance, and you can simply
announce me when I am admitted."
The girl bowed and went away, leaving the visitor by herself in the
pretty reception-room, for she had been told not to disturb her
mistress until she should ring for her.
Mrs. Goddard looked curiously around her, and was impressed with the
elegance of everything in the apartment.
Exquisite paintings and engravings graced the delicately tinted walls;
choice statuettes, bric-a-brac, and old-world curios of every
description, which she knew must have cost a small fortune even in the
countries where they were produced, were artistically arranged about
the room.
There was also an air of refinement and rare taste in the draperies,
carpets, and blending of color, which proclaimed the occupant of the
place to be above the average lady in point of culture and
appreciation of all that was beautiful.
Impressed with all this, and looking back to her meeting with Mrs.
Stewart, on the evening of the ball at Wyoming--remembering her beauty
and grace, and the elegance of her costume, madam's heart sank within
her, and she seemed to age with every passing moment.
"Oh, to think of it!--to think of it, after all these years! I will
not believe it!" she murmured, with white, trembling lips, as she
arose and nervously paced the room.
Presently the sound of muffled voices in a room beyond attracted her
attention.
She started and bent her ear to listen.
She could catch no word that was spoken, although she could
distinguish now a man's and then a woman's tones.
With stealthy movements she glided into the next room, which was even
more luxuriously furnished than the one she had left, when she
observed that the portieres, draping an arch leading into still
another apartment, were closely drawn.
And now, although she could not hear what was being said, she suddenly
recognized, with a pang of agony that made her gasp for breath, the
voice of her husband in earnest conversation with the woman who had
been her guest two nights previous.
As noiselessly as a cat creeps after her prey, Anna Goddard stole
across that spacious apartment and concealed herself among the
voluminous folds of the draperies, where she found that she could
easily hear all that was said.
"You are very hard, Isabel," she heard Gerald Goddard remark, in a
reproachful voice.
"I grant you that," responded the liquid tones of his companion, "as
far as you and--that woman are concerned, I have no more feeling than
a stone."
At those words, "that woman," spoken in accents of supreme contempt,
the eyes of Anna Goddard began to blaze with a baneful gleam.
"And you will never forgive me for the wrong I did you so long ago?"
pleaded the man, with a sigh.
"What do you mean by that word 'forgive?'" coldly inquired Mrs.
Stewart.
"Pardon, remission--as Shakespeare has it, 'forgive and quite forget
old faults,'" returned Gerald Goddard, in a voice tremulous with
repressed emotion.
"Forget!" repeated the beautiful woman, in a wondering tone.
"Ah, if you could," eagerly cried her visitor; then, as if he could
control himself no longer, he went on, with passionate vehemence: "Oh,
Isabel! when you burst upon me, so like a radiant star, the other
night, and I realized that you were still in the flesh, instead of
lying in that lonely grave in far-off-Italy--when I saw you so grandly
beautiful--saw how wonderfully you had developed in every way, all the
old love came back to me, and I realized my foolish mistake of that
by-gone time as I had never realized it before."
Ah! if the man could have seen the white, set face concealed among the
draperies so near him--if he could have caught the deadly gleam that
shone with tiger-like fury in Anna Goddard's dusky eyes--he never
would have dared to face her again after giving utterance to those
maddening words.
"It strikes me, Mr. Goddard, that it is rather late--after twenty
years--to make such an acknowledgment to me," Isabel Stewart retorted,
with quiet irony.
"I know it--I feel it now," he responded, in accents of despair. "I
know that I forfeited both your love and respect when I began to yield
to the charms and flatteries of Anna Correlli. She was handsome, as
you know; she began to be fond of me from the moment of our
introduction; and when, in an unguarded moment, I revealed the--the
fact that you were not my wife, she resolved that she would supplant
you--"
"Yes, 'the woman--she gavest me and I did eat,'" interposed his
companion, with a scathing ring of scorn in the words. "That is always
the cry of cowards like you, when they find themselves worsted by
their own folly," she went on, indignantly. "Woman must always bear
the scorpion lash of blame from her betrayer while the world also
awards her only shame and ostracism from society, if she yields to the
persuasive voice of her charmer, admiring and believing in him and
allowing him to go unsmirched by the venomous breath of scandal. It is
only his victim--his innocent victim oftentimes, as in my case--who
suffers; he is greeted everywhere with open arms and flattering
smiles, even though he repeats his offenses again and again."
"Isabel! spare me!"
"No, I will not spare you," she continued, sternly. "You know, Gerald
Goddard, that I was a pure and innocent girl when you tempted me to
leave my father's house and flee with you to Italy. You were older
than I, by eight years; you had seen much of the world, and you knew
your power. You cunningly planned that secret marriage, which you
intended from the first should be only a farce, but which, I have
learned since, was in every respect a legal ceremony--"
"Ha! I thought so!" cried her companion, with a sudden shock. "When
did you hear?--who told you?"
"I met your friend, Will Forsyth, only two years ago--just before my
return to this country--and when I took him to task for the shameful
part which he had played to assist you in carrying out your
ignominious plot, telling him that you had owned to his being
disguised as an aged minister to perform the sacrilegious ceremony, he
confessed to me that, at the last moment, his heart had failed him,
whereupon he went to an old clergyman, a friend of his father,
revealed everything, and persuaded him to perform the marriage in a
legal manner; and thus, Gerald Goddard, I became your lawful wife
instead of your victim, as you supposed."
"Yes, I know it. Forsyth afterward sent me the certificate and
explained everything to me," the man admitted, with a guilty flush. "I
received the paper about a year after the report of your death."
"Ah! that could not have been very gratifying to--your other--victim,"
remarked Mrs. Stewart, with quiet sarcasm.
"Isabel! you are merciless!" cried the man, writhing under her scorn.
"But since you have learned so much, I may as well tell you
everything. Of course Anna was furious when she discovered that she
was no wife, for I had sworn to her that there was no legal tie
between you and me--"
"Ah! then she also learned the truth!" interposed his companion. "I
almost wonder you did not try to keep the knowledge from her."
"I could not--she was present when the document arrived, and the shock
to me was so great I betrayed it, and she insisted upon knowing what
had caused it, when she raved like an insane person, for a time."
"But I suppose you packed her by being married over again, since you
have lived with her for nearly twenty years," remarked Mrs. Stewart.
"No, I did not," returned her visitor, hotly. "To tell the truth, I
had begun to tire of her even then--she was so furiously jealous,
passionate, and unreasonable upon the slightest pretext that at times
she made life wretched for me. So I told myself that so long as I held
that certificate as proof that she had no legal hold upon me, I should
have it in my power to manage her and cow her into submission when she
became ungovernable by other means. I represented to her that, to all
intents and purposes, we were man and wife, and if we should have the
ceremony repeated, after having lived together so long, it would
create a scandal, for some one would be sure to find it out, sooner or
later. For a time this appeared to pacify her; but one day, during my
absence from home, she stole the certificate, although I thought I had
concealed it where no one would think of looking for it. It has been
in her possession ever since. I have tried many times to recover it;
but she was more clever than I, and I never could find it, while she
has always told me that she would never relinquish it, except upon one
condition--"
"And that was--what?"
"Ever the same old demand--that I would make her legally my wife."
"But she never could have been that so long as I lived," objected Mrs.
Stewart.
"True; but she would have been satisfied with a repetition of the
ceremony, as we did not know that you were living."
"If you have been so unhappy, why have you lived with her all these
years?"
The man hesitated for a moment before replying to this question. At
length he said, although he flushed scarlet over the confession:
"There have been several reasons. In spite of her variable moods and
many faults, Anna is a handsome and accomplished woman. She entertains
magnificently, and has made an elegant mistress for our establishment.
We have been over the world together several times, and are known in
many cities both in this country and abroad, consequently it would
have occasioned no end of scandal if there had been a separation.
Thus, though she has tried my patience sorely at times, we have
perhaps, on the whole, got along as amicably as hundreds of other
couples. Besides--ahem!--"
The man abruptly ceased, as if, unwittingly, he had been about to say
something that had better be left unsaid.
"Well--besides what?" queried his listener.
"Doubtless you will think it rather a humiliating confession to make,"
said Gerald Goddard, with a crestfallen air, "but during the last few
years I have lost a great deal of money in unfortunate speculation,
so--I have been somewhat dependent upon Anna in a financial way."
"Ah! I understand," remarked Mrs. Stewart, her delicate nostrils
dilating scornfully at this evidence of a weak, ease-loving nature,
that would be content to lean upon a rich wife, rather than be up and
doing for himself, and making his own way in the world. "Are you not
engaged with your profession?"
"No; Anna has not been willing, for a long time, that I should paint
for money."
"And so your talents are deteriorating for want of use."
The scorn in her tones stung him keenly, and he flushed to his
temples.
"You do not appear to lack for the luxuries of life," he retorted,
glancing about the elegant apartment, with a sullen air, but ignoring
her thrust.
"No, I have an abundance," she quietly replied; but evidently she did
not deem it necessary to explain how she happened to be so favored.
"Will you explain to me the mystery of your existence, Isabel?" Mr.
Goddard inquired, after an awkward silence. "I cannot understand it--I
am sometimes tempted to believe that you are not Isabel, after all,
but some one else who--"
"Pray disabuse yourself of all such doubts," she quickly interposed,
"for I assure you that I am none other than that confiding but
misguided girl whom you sought to lure to her destruction twenty years
ago. If it were necessary, I could give you every detail of our life
from the time I left my home until that fatal day when you deserted me
for Anna Correlli."
"But Anna claims that she saw you dead in your casket."
A slight shiver shook the beautiful woman from head to foot at this
reference to the ghastly subject.
"Yes, I know it--"
"You know it!" exclaimed the man, amazed.
"Exactly; but I will tell you the whole story, and then you will no
longer have any doubt regarding my identity," Mrs. Stewart remarked.
"After you left Rome with Anna Correlli, and I realized that I had
been abandoned, and my child left to the tender mercies of a world
that would not hesitate to brand her with a terrible stigma, for which
her father alone was to blame, I resolved that I would not live.
Grief, shame, and despair for the time rendered me insane, else I, who
had been religiously reared, with a feeling of horror for the
suicide's end, would never have dared to meditate taking the life that
belonged to God. I was not so bereft of sense, however, but that my
motherhood inspired me to make an effort to provide for my little one,
and I wrote an earnest appeal to my old schoolmate and friend, Edith
Allandale, who, I knew, would shortly be in Rome, asking her to take
the child and rear her as her own--"
"What! Then you did not try to drown the child as well as yourself!"
gasped Gerald Goddard, in an excited tone.
"No; had I done so, I should never have lived to tell you this story,"
said the woman, tremulously. "But wait--you shall learn everything, as
far as I know, just as it happened. Having written my appeal, which I
felt sure would be heeded, I took my baby to the woman who had nursed
me, told her that I had been suddenly called away, and asked her to
care for her until my return. She readily promised, not once
suspecting that a stranger would come for her in my place, and that it
was my purpose never to see her again. From the moment of my leaving
the woman's house--that last straw of surrendering my baby was more
than my heart and brain could bear--everything, with one exception,
was a blank to me until I awoke to consciousness, five weeks later, to
find myself being tenderly cared for in the home of a young man, who
was spending the winter in Rome for his health. His sister--a lovely
girl, a few years his senior--was with him, acting both as his nurse
and physician, she having taken her degree in a Philadelphia medical
college, just out of love for the profession. And she it was who had
cared for me during my long illness. She told me that her brother was
in the habit of spending a great deal of his time upon the Tiber; that
one evening, just at dusk, as he was upon the point of passing under a
bridge, a little way out of the city, he was startled to see some one
leap from it into the water and immediately sink. He shot his boat to
the spot, and when the figure arose to the surface, he was ready to
grasp it. It was no easy matter to lift it into his boat, but he
succeeded at last, when he rowed with all possible speed back to the
city, where, instead of notifying the police and giving me into their
hands to be taken either to a hospital or to the morgue, as the case
might demand, he procured a carriage and took me directly to his home,
where he felt that his sister could do more for me than any one else."
"Who was this young man?" Gerald Goddard here interposed, while he
searched his companion's face curiously.
"Willard Livermore," calmly replied Mrs. Stewart, as she steadily met
his glance, although the color in her cheeks deepened visibly.
"Ha! the man who accompanied you to Wyoming night before last?"
"Yes."
"I have heard that he has long wanted to marry you--that he is your
lover," said Mr. Goddard, flashing a jealous look at her.
"He is my friend, stanch and true; a man whom I honor above all men,"
was the composed reply; but the woman's voice was vibrant with an
earnestness which betrayed how much the words meant to her.
"Then why have you not married him?"
"Because I was already bound."
"But you have told me that you did not know you were legally bound
until within the last two years."
Isabel Stewart lifted a grave glance to her companion's face.
"When, as a girl, I left my home to go with you to Italy," she said,
solemnly, "I took upon myself vows which only death could cancel--they
were as binding upon me as if you had always been true to me; and so,
while you lived, I could never become the wife of another. I have
lived my life as a pure and faithful wife should live. Although my
youth was marred by an irrevocable mistake, which resulted in an act
of frenzy for which I was not accountable, no willful wrong has ever
cast a blight upon my character since the day that Willard Livermore
rescued me from a watery grave in the depths of the yellow Tiber."
And Gerald Goddard, looking into the beautiful and noble face before
him, knew that she spoke only the truth, while a blush of shame surged
over his own, and caused his head to droop before the purity of her
steadfast eyes.
"All efforts upon the part of Miss Livermore and her brother to
resuscitate me," Mrs. Stewart resumed, going on with her story from
the point where she had been interrupted, "were unavailing. Another
physician was called to their assistance; but he at once pronounced
life to be extinct, and their efforts were reluctantly abandoned. Even
then that noble brother and sister would not allow me to be sent to
the morgue. They advertised in all the papers, giving a careful
description of me, and begging my friends--if there were such in
Rome--to come to claim me. Among the many curious gazers
who--attracted by the air of mystery which enveloped me--came to look
upon me, only one person seemed to betray the slightest evidence of
ever having seen me before. That person was Anna Correlli--Ah! what
was that?"
This sudden break and startled query was caused by the rattling of the
rings which held the portieres upon the pole across the archway
between the two rooms, and by the gentle swaying of the draperies to
and fro.