I CANNOT enter into the feelings of this dreadful time. I do not know
if I loved or hated the man I had undertaken to save. I only know I was
determined to bring light out of darkness in a way that would compromise
nobody, possibly not even myself. But to do this I must dazzle him
into giving me a great pleasure. A crowd in the ------ Street house was
necessary to the quiet escape of Mrs. Ransome and her daughter; so a
crowd we must have, and how have a crowd without giving a grand party?
I knew that this would be a shocking proposition to him, but I was
prepared to meet all objections; and when, with every nerve alert and
every charm exerted to its utmost, I sat down at his side that evening
to plead my cause, I knew by the sparkle of his eye and the softening of
the bitter lines that sometimes hardened his mouth, that the battle was
half won before I spoke, and that I should have my party whatever it
might cost him in mental stress and worry.
Perhaps he was glad to find me given over to folly at a time when he was
waiting for a miracle to release him from the net of crime in which he
had involved himself; perhaps he merely thought it would please me,
and aid him to thus strengthen our position in the social world before
taking our flight to a foreign land; but whatever lay at the bottom of
his amenity, he gave me _carte blanche_ that night for an entertainment
that should embrace all his friends and mine and some of Mrs. Vandyke’s.
So I saw that doubt removed.
The next thing I did was to procure a _facsimile_ of his key from the
wax impression I had taken of it in accordance with my promise to Mrs.
Ransome. Then I wrote her a letter, in which I gave her the minutest
directions as to her own movements on that important evening. After
which I gave myself up entirely to the business of the party. Certain
things I had insisted on. All the rooms were to be opened, even those
on the third floor; and I was to have a band to play in the hall. He did
not deny me anything. I think his judgment was asleep, or else he was so
taken up with the horrible problem presented by his desire to leave
the city and the existence of those obligations which made departure an
impossibility, that he failed to place due stress on matters which, at
another time, might very well seem to threaten the disclosure of his
dangerous secret.
At last the night came.
An entertainment given in this great house had aroused much interest.
Most of our invitations had been accepted, and the affair promised to
be brilliant. As a bride, I wore white, and when, at the moment of going
downstairs, my husband suddenly clasped about my neck a rich necklace
of diamonds, I was seized by such a bitter sense of the contrast between
appearances and the awful reality underlying these festivities, that I
reeled in his arms, and had to employ all the arts which my dangerous
position had taught me, to quiet his alarm, and convince him that my
emotion sprang entirely from pleasure.
Meantime the band was playing and the carriages were rolling up in
front. What he thought as the music filled the house and rose in
piercing melody to the very roof, I cannot say. _I_ thought how it was
a message of release to those weary and abused ones above; and, filled
with the sense of support which the presence of so many people in
the house gave me, I drew up my girlish figure in glad excitement and
prepared myself for the ordeal, visible and invisible, which awaited me.
The next two hours form a blank in my memory. Standing under
Mrs. Ransome’s picture (I _would_ stand there), I received the
congratulations of the hundred or more people who were anxious to see
Mr. Allison’s bride, and of the whole glittering pageant I remember only
the whispered words of Mrs. Vandyke as she passed with the rest: “My
dear, I take back what I said the other day about the effect of marriage
upon you. You are the most brilliant woman here, and Mr. Allison the
happiest of men.” This was an indication that all was going well. But
what of the awful morning-hour that awaited us! Would that show him a
happy man?
At last our guests were assembled, and I had an instant to myself.
Murmuring a prayer for courage, I slid from the room and ran up-stairs.
Here all was bustle also--a bustle I delighted in, for, with so many
people moving about, Mrs. Ransome and her daughter could pass out
without attracting more than a momentary attention. Securing a bundle
I had myself prepared, I glided up the second staircase, and, after a
moment’s delay, succeeded in unlocking the door and disappearing with my
bundle into the fourth story. When I came down, the key I had carried up
was left behind me. The way for Mrs. Ransome’s escape lay open.
I do not think I had been gone ten minutes from the drawing-room. When
I returned there, it was to find the festivities at their height, and
my husband just on the point of missing me. The look which he directed
to-wards me pierced me to the heart; not that I was playing him false,
for I was risking life, love and the loss of everything I prized, to
save him from himself; but that his love for me should be so strong
he could forget the two tortured hearts above, in the admiration I had
awakened in the shallow people about us. But I smiled, as a woman on
the rack might smile if the safety of her loved ones depended on her
courage, and, nerving myself for the suspense of such a waiting as few
of my inexperience have ever been called upon to endure, I turned to a
group of ladies I saw near me and began to talk.
Happily, I did not have to chatter long; happily, Mrs. Ransome was quick
in her movements and exact in all she did, and, sooner than I expected,
sooner, perhaps, than I was prepared for it, the man who attended the
front door came to my side and informed me that a lady wished to see
me--a lady who had just arrived from the steamer, and who said she was
the mistress of the house, Mrs. Ransome.
Mrs. Ransome! The name spread like wildfire, but before any movement was
made, I had bounded, in laughing confusion, to my husband’s side, and,
grasping him merrily by the arm, cried:
“Your expectations have come true. Mrs. Ransome has returned without
warning, and tonight she will partake of the supper you have always had
served for her.”
The shock was as great, perhaps, as ever man received. I knew what it
was likely to be, and held him upright, with the seeming merriment in my
eyes which I did not allow to stray from his. He thought I was mad, then
he thought he was--then I recalled him to the dangers and exigencies of
the moment by saying, with forced _naïveté_: “Shall I go and welcome her
to this gathering in her own house, or will you do the honors? She may
not know _me_.”
He moved, but as a statue might move, shot through and through with an
electric spark. I saw that I must act, rather than he, so uttering some
girlish sentence about the mice and cat, I glided away into the hall,
where Mrs. Ransome stood in the nondescript black cloak and bonnet I
had provided her from her own wardrobe. She had slipped a few moments
before from the house with her daughter, whom she had placed in a
carriage, which I had ordered to wait for them directly in front of the
lamppost, and had now re-entered as the mistress returning unexpectedly
after a departure of five years. All had been done as I had planned, and
it only remained to carry on the farce and prevent its developing into a
tragedy.
Rushing up to her, I told her who I was, and, as we were literally
surrounded in a moment, added such apologies for the merrymaking in
which she found us indulging as my wit suggested and the occasion seemed
to demand. Then I allowed her to speak. Instantly she was the mistress
of the house. Old-fashioned as her dress was, and changed as her figure
must have been, she had that imposing bearing which great misfortune,
nobly borne, gives to some natures, and feeling the eyes of many of
her old friends upon her, she graciously smiled and said that she was
delighted to receive so public a welcome. Then she took me by the hand.
“Do not worry, child,” she said, “I have a daughter about your age,
which in itself would make me lenient towards one so young and pretty.
Where is your husband, dear? He has served me well in my absence, and I
should like to shake hands with him before I withdraw with my daughter,
to a hotel for the night.”
I looked up; he was standing in the open doorway leading into the
drawing-room. He had recovered a semblance of composure, but the hand
fingering the inner pocket, where he kept his keys, showed in what a
tumult of surprise and doubt he had been thrown by this unaccountable
appearance of his prisoner in the open hall; and if to other eyes he
showed no more than the natural confusion of the moment, to me he had
the look of a secretly desperate man, alive to his danger, and only
holding himself in check in order to measure it.
At the mention she made of his name, he came mechanically forward, and,
taking her proffered hand, bowed over it. “Welcome.” he murmured, in
strained tones; then, startled by the pressure of her fingers on his, he
glanced doubtfully up while she said:
“We will have no talk to-night, my faithful and careful friend, but
to-morrow you may come and see me at the Fifth Avenue. You will find
that my return will not lessen your manifest happiness.” Then, as
he began to tremble, she laid her hand on his arm, and I heard her
smilingly whisper: “You have too pretty a wife for me not to wish my
return to be a benefaction to her.” And, with a smile to the crowd and
an admonition to those about her not to let the little bride suffer from
this interruption, she disappeared through the great front door on
the arm of the man who for five years had held her prisoner in her own
house. I went back into the drawing-room, and the five minutes which
elapsed between that moment and that of his return were the most awful
of my life. When he came back I had aged ten years, yet all that time I
was laughing and talking.
He did not rejoin me immediately; he went up-stairs. I knew why; he had
gone to see if the door to the fourth floor had been unlocked or simply
broken down. When he came back he gave me one look. Did he suspect me? I
could not tell. After that, there was another blank in my memory to the
hour when the guests were all gone, the house all silent, and we stood
together in a little room, where I had at last discovered him, withdrawn
by himself, writing. There was a loaded pistol on the table. The paper
he had been writing was his will.
“Humphrey,” said I, placing a finger on the pistol, “why is this?”
He gave me a look, a hungry, passionate look, then he grew as white as
the paper he had just subscribed with his name.
“I am ruined,” he murmured. “I have made unwarrantable use of Mrs.
Ransome’s money; her return has undone me. Delight, I love you, but I
cannot face the future. You will be provided for----”
“Will I?” I put in softly, very softly, for my way was strewn with
pitfalls and precipices. “I do not think so, Humphrey. If the money you
have put away is not yours, my first care would be to restore it. Then
what would I have left? A dowry of odium and despair, and I am scarcely
eighteen.”
“But--but--you do not understand, Delight. I have been a villain, a
worse villain than you think. The only thing in my life I have not to
blush for is my love for you. This is pure, even if it has been selfish.
I know it is pure, because I have begun to suffer. If I could tell
you----
“Mrs. Ransome has already told me,” said I. “Who do you think unlocked
the door of her retreat? I, Humphrey. I wanted to save you from
yourself, and _she_ understands me. She will never reveal the secret of
the years she has passed overhead.”
Would he hate me? Would he love me? Would he turn that fatal weapon on
me, or level it again towards his own breast? For a moment I could not
tell; then the white horror in his face broke up, and, giving me a look
I shall never forget till I die, he fell prostrate on his knees and
lowered his proud head before me.
I did not touch it, but from that moment the schooling of our two hearts
began, and, though I can never look upon my husband with the frank joy
I see in other women’s faces, I have learned not to look upon him with
distrust, and to thank God I did not forsake him when desertion might
have meant the destruction of the one small seed of goodness which had
developed in his heart with the advent of a love for which nothing in
his whole previous life had prepared him.