HUSBAND AND WIFE
To John Clare’s wife the world of late had become a greatly-changed
place. She was alone in London, without a single creature of her own
sex whom she could call an acquaintance, much less a friend. She had
broken both with her uncle and Luigi. For the latter she had never
cared. He had impressed her from the first as being not only morally
unscrupulous—that was a defect which she might not have experienced
much difficulty in condoning—but as being sly and deceitful into the
bargain, and, in short, one of those people who are almost as dangerous
to, and as little to be trusted by, those whom they call their friends
as by those to whom they owe a grudge which they would gladly wipe off.
Captain Verinder she had learnt to like after a fashion. He was her
mother’s brother, and that of itself was enough to create a tie between
them which, under ordinary circumstances, she would have been one of
the last people to ignore. She had liked him for his _bonhomie_, for
his persistent good-humour and his half-quizzical, half-cynical way of
looking at men and things, and last, but not least, for the frequent
doses of flattery he had been in the habit of administering to her,
which, even while conscious that it was nothing more than flattery, had
possessed the delightful property of raising her in her own estimation,
and of causing her to think more highly of herself than she had ever
done before.
But this was a state of things which had now come wholly to an end.
Giovanna’s feelings were very bitter against her uncle. She blamed him
and him alone for everything that had happened to her; at his door she
laid the entire load of her misfortunes.
It was quite true—and the fact was never lost sight of by her, for she
rarely argued crookedly, as Luigi habitually did—that, but for the
interest taken by Verinder in her case, in all probability she would
never have become aware that she was daughter-in-law to Sir Gilbert
Clare. Yet, granting that point to the full, it was impossible for her
to forget that it was wholly owing to his influence and persuasions
that she had been lured into that career of fraud and double-dealing
which, in her case, had ended in irremediable disaster. From her
present knowledge of Sir Gilbert Clare she felt convinced that, had she
have gone to him at first, as she had proposed to do, and told him the
simple truth, far from turning his back upon her, he would have
welcomed her as his son’s widow, and have settled on her a liberal
allowance, which would have been hers to the last day of her life. It
made her hate her uncle when she thought of all that she had lost
through weakly yielding to the glittering temptation he had so
persistently dangled before her. Little by little she had wormed out of
Luigi all the particulars of the Brussels episode, and she rightly
argued that if Verinder had never introduced his nephew to the
gaming-table the series of unfortunate events which resulted therefrom,
and culminated in the discovery of Luigi in the strong-room, would
never have come to pass. It was clearly the Captain and he alone who
was to blame.
He had called upon her twice since their return to town, but her
reception of him had been of the coldest; and when, on the occasion of
his second visit, his request for a trifling loan of ten pounds was met
by a distinct refusal, he perceived that his wisest course would be to
keep away from his niece till time should in some measure have softened
her rancour against him.
Giovanna had found a temporary home in one of those boardinghouses
which abound in the neighbourhood of the west-central squares. But
already she had begun to meditate a change. The demands on her purse
were too many and, as it seemed to her, too exorbitant. Should she
decide to stay in London, she must find cheaper rooms and make up her
mind to live more economically in many ways. But just then she could
not make up her mind to anything. She was a very lonely and a very
miserable woman; indeed, the loneliness of her life sometimes appalled
her. There were a number of other boarders in the house, and in the
general drawing-room of an evening there was no lack of company of both
sexes and of nearly all ages. But Giovanna, who had always been of a
reserved and retiring disposition, had an utter distaste for
associating with a mixed lot of people, with not one of whom she had
anything in common, and, as soon as dinner was over, invariably went
upstairs to her own sitting-room on the third floor. In the forenoons,
when the weather was fine, she took long, solitary walks, sometimes in
the Regents Park, sometimes through the miles of West End shops, but
rarely pausing to glance into a window. Invariably dressed in black,
and with the upper half of her face closely veiled, but leaving visible
the firm and beautiful contours of the mouth and chin, her tall and
stately form drew many eyes to it as she slowly threaded her way
through the crowd of promenaders, so obviously indifferent to everyone
and everything around her. There was about her, or so it seemed, an air
of mystery, of romance even, which many of those who turned to gaze
after her would have given something to be able to penetrate.
On a certain morning, just as Giovanna was getting ready to go for her
usual walk, a message was brought her that there was a gentleman below
who was desirous of seeing her. In the belief that it must be either
her uncle or Luigi, they being the only visitors she had, she requested
the servant to show him upstairs.
A minute later John Clare walked into the room.
Despite the changes which years had wrought in him, Giovanna knew him
again the moment she set eyes on him, and the same instant a great fear
took possession of her. An inarticulate cry broke from her lips; she
shrank away from him with averting hands and terror-fraught eyes, and,
when she could go no farther, she crouched trembling in a corner of the
room. Her face wore the ghastly hue of death. She had never fainted in
her life, and she did not now; but all the fibres of her being were
stretched to that point of tension which touches the verge of madness.
A little more and her brain would have given way. It was a strange
mixture of terror that held her powerless, for, although she had at
once recognised that this was no shadowy visitant from the tomb, there
was about the affair an undoubted element of the supernatural. That her
husband had come in the guise of an avenger one glance at his face had
been enough to tell her, and surely it could be nothing less than a
miracle which had brought him back to life! To Giovanna miracles were
far from being the impossibilities which many of us deem them to be.
She had grown up in an atmosphere of superstition, and not all the
experience of after-life had quite served to eradicate the noxious
weeds thus early implanted within her.
In the look with which John Clare regarded his wife there was an icy
sternness such as might well strike with dread the heart of the unhappy
woman. At that moment he bore a striking resemblance to his father, as
Sir Gilbert had been before years and trouble had broken him down. For
some moments he confronted his wife in silence as she cowered before
him like some hunted creature driven to bay.
“At last we meet again!” he said, after a time. “You believed that I
had died long years ago, but I am here, a living proof to the contrary.
From me you have nothing to fear. I come neither to accuse nor to
condemn. As you have dealt with the past, so will it deal with you; but
certainly it is not for a fallible being such as I to set myself up as
your judge.”
He spoke slowly and unemotionally, without a trace of passion or the
faintest tinge of invective.
“I am here on purpose to ask you certain questions,” he resumed, “which
I can but trust that you will answer truthfully and to the best of your
ability. Will you not be seated?”
She did not answer him in words, but drew herself together as it were,
and crossing to the opposite side of the room sat down. By this she had
recovered from her fright, and her features had settled into a sort of
stony hardness which effectually masked whatever emotions might be at
work below.
John too sat down, but there was nearly the entire width of the room
between them.
“I want you,” he went on, “to carry your mind back to that letter,
written by you nearly twenty years ago, in which you told me that our
child was dead, that you had come to the conclusion you and I would be
happier apart, and that you were on the eve of returning to your
friends in Italy. You have not forgotten the letter of which I speak?”
“I have not forgotten it.”
“After you had left Barrytown and started on your journey, what
happened to you? Did you go direct to New York and at once take ship
there?”
“I went direct to New York, but a few hours before the vessel sailed by
which I had booked my passage I was seized with a fever and conveyed to
a hospital, where I lay for weeks, part of the time out of my mind, and
the other part so weak that speech was an impossibility.”
“And when you came back to health and strength, it was to find that
while you had been in the hospital your maid, a woman of the name of
Martha Griggs, had absconded with all your belongings.”
It was a bold guess on John Clare’s part, but it told.
Giovanna half started to her feet and then sat down again. The mask of
apathy fell from her face and a great wonder and curiosity took the
place of it. “How did you discover that?” she gasped.
“I have discovered more than that,” was John’s unmoved reply.
“And the woman—Martha Griggs—is she still living? do you know where to
find her?” demanded Giovanna with an eagerness she made no attempt to
conceal.
“Martha Griggs was lost overboard on the voyage between New York and
London.”
“Lost overboard! And my child—what became of her?” She had again risen.
Voice, eyes, hands—all asked the question.
On the instant a great light of gladness, the source of which Giovanna
was at a loss to comprehend, flamed out of John Clare’s eyes.
“So I have surprised your secret, have I?” he said, speaking very
slowly.
For a few seconds she stared at him with bewildered eyes; then the
truth dawned on her.
“Yes,” she replied, “you have surprised my secret, if that is the way
you choose to put it. But the child——”
“A child no longer, is alive and well, and at the present moment under
her grandfather’s roof at Withington Chase.”
“At Withington Chase—she! How strange! How wonderful! But I am very
glad—oh yes, you may believe me when I tell you that I am very glad!
For, whatever you may think, I am not all bad.” She crossed quickly to
the window and stood there with her back towards him for fully three
minutes.
Not till she had resumed her seat did John Clare speak again. “What you
wrote me about the child was a lie?” he said presently. It might be
taken either as a question or an assertion.
“Yes—a lie,” she replied with a little shrug. “It is as well at times
to call things by their right names.”
“And the certificate you sent me?”
“A forgery. Five dollars was the price I paid for it.”
“But what was your object, if I may ask, or what was to be gained by
inducing me to believe that the child was dead?”
“After I had made up my mind to leave you and go back to Italy, my one
fear was that you would come after me and rob me of the child. To keep
you from doing that I invented the story of its death. Myself alone,
after the letter I had written you, I knew you would not trouble
yourself to come after.”
“Never was there a more heartless and cruel fraud perpetrated on
anyone!” For the first time his voice vibrated with a suppressed
emotion. Not for a little while would he trust himself to say more.
Giovanna’s only reply was a slight lifting of her brows.
“When you grew better and left the hospital did you make no effort to
recover your child?” demanded John as soon as he felt that he could
command himself sufficiently to speak again.
“I made every effort a woman in my position could make. You must
remember that I had been robbed of money, clothes, everything. I was
utterly destitute. Some charitable people interested themselves in my
case and the police were communicated with, but nothing came of their
inquiries. Then a wild notion took hold of me that the woman, in the
belief that I was past recovery, might have made her way to Italy with
the child, and that I should find it under my father’s roof when I got
back to Catanzaro. The same charitable people found me enough money to
take me home; but as you know, neither the woman nor my child was
there. After that, rather than be called upon to tell and tell again
the history of that time, I preferred to give it out that my child was
dead. To my father alone was the truth known.”
She ceased, and to John Clare it seemed that there was nothing more to
be said. He had learnt all that he had come to learn. The missing links
had been found; not one was wanting; the chain was complete.
“There is no reason why I should intrude myself any longer upon you,”
he said as he rose and pushed back his chair. “You have been frankness
itself with me, and so far I thank you. I know not what your pecuniary
resources are, nor do I seek to know, but I do not forget that you are
still my wife and that, as such, a monetary arrangement of some kind
will have to be come to with you. I will take my father’s opinion in
the matter, and in the course of a few days my lawyer shall be
instructed to communicate with you.”
“And my child—the child of whom I was robbed!” It was like the cry of
some animal despoiled of its young made articulate.
She had started to her feet as it broke from her lips, and she now
confronted him with heaving bosom and extended hands, her face
marble-white and her great black eyes glowing with intense fire.
John had taken up his hat and had reached the door, when her cry caused
him to turn.
“_Your_ child!” he said with a quiet concentrated scorn that made each
word seem a stab. “_My_ child, you mean. You long ago forfeited all
right to call her yours. What! would you dare to stain her spotlessness
with your guilt? Would you, with such a past as yours, dare to claim
her for your daughter, and look to her to call you mother? Is it your
wish that she should be told the story of your life? Or would you
prefer to pose before her as the innocent victim of circumstances which
you could not control? No, I will not believe you are quite so depraved
as that. As you cannot but know, her way and yours lie wide apart. You
did your utmost to rob me of her when she was a child, and now that I
have found her she belongs to me alone.”
As he went out and shut the door behind him, all the strength seemed to
go out of Giovanna’s limbs. She sank to the floor and there crouched
with clasped hands and bowed head. “He is right—he is right,” she
moaned. “I am not fit to tie the latchets of her shoes.”