"I _will_ have you! I _will_ have you! I will! I will! I will!!" I can
see his dark face now as he spoke those words.
I remember noticing how pale his lips were as he hissed out through his
clenched teeth: "Though I had to fight with a hundred men for
you--though I had to do murder for your sake, you should be mine. In
spite of your love for him, in spite of your hate for me, in spite of
all your struggles, your tears, your prayers, you shall be mine, mine,
only mine!"
I had known Kenneth Moore ever since I was a little child. He had made
love to me nearly as long. People spoke of us as sweethearts, and
Kenneth was so confident and persevering that when my mother died and I
found myself without a relative, without a single friend that I really
cared for, I did promise him that I would one day be his wife. But that
had scarcely happened, when Phillip Rutley came to the village and--and
everybody knows I fell in love with _him_.
It seemed like Providence that brought Phillip to me just as I had given
a half-consent to marry a man I had no love for, and with whom I could
never have been happy.
I had parted from Kenneth at the front gate, and he had gone off to his
home crazy with delight because at last I had given way.
It was Sunday evening late in November, very dark, very cold, and very
foggy. He had brought me home from church, and he kept me there at the
gate pierced through and through by the frost, and half choked by the
stifling river mist, holding my hand in his own and refusing to leave me
until I promised to marry him.
Home was very lonely since mother died. The farm had gone quite wrong
since we lost father. My near friends advised me to wed with Kenneth
Moore, and all the village people looked upon it as a settled thing. It
was horribly cold, too, out there at the gate--and--and that was how it
came about that I consented.
I went into the house as miserable as Kenneth had gone away happy. I
hated myself for having been so weak, and I hated Kenneth because I
could not love him. The door was on the latch; I went in and flung it to
behind me, with a petulant violence that made old Hagar, who was
rheumatic and had stayed at home that evening on account of the fog,
come out of the kitchen to see what was the matter.
"It's settled at last," I cried, tearing off my bonnet and shawl; "I'm
to be Mrs. Kenneth Moore. Now are you satisfied?"
"It's best so--I'm sure it's much best so," exclaimed the old woman;
"but, deary-dear!" she added as I burst into a fit of sobbing, "how can
I be satisfied if you don't be?"
I wouldn't talk to her about it. What was the good? She'd forgotten long
ago how the heart of a girl like me hungers for its true mate, and how
frightful is the thought of giving oneself to a man one does not love!
Hagar offered condolence and supper, but I would partake of neither; and
I went up to bed at once, prepared to cry myself to sleep, as other
girls would have done in such a plight as mine.
As I entered my room with a lighted candle in my hand, there came an
awful crash at the window--the glass and framework were shivered to
atoms, and in the current of air that rushed through the room, my light
went out. Then there came a crackling, breaking sound from the branches
of the old apple tree beneath my window; then a scraping on the bricks
and window-ledge; then more splintering of glass and window-frame: the
blind broke away at the top, and my toilet table was overturned--the
looking-glass smashing to pieces on the floor, and I was conscious that
someone had stepped into the room.
At the same moment the door behind me was pushed open, and Hagar,
frightened out of her wits, peered in with a lamp in her hand.
By its light I first saw Phillip Rutley.
A well-built, manly, handsome young fellow, with bright eyes and light,
close-cropped curly hair, he seemed like a merry boy who had just popped
over a wall in search of a cricket ball rather than an intruder who had
broke into the house of two lone women in so alarming a manner.
My fear yielded to indignation when I realized that it was a strange man
who had made his way into my room with so little ceremony, but his first
words--or rather the way in which he spoke them--disarmed me.
[Illustration: "IT'S ONLY MY BALLOON"]
"I beg ten thousand pardons. Pay for all the damage. It's only my
balloon!"
"Good gracious!" ejaculated Hagar.
My curiosity was aroused. I went forward to the shattered window.
"Your balloon! Did you come down in a balloon? Where is it?"
"All safe outside," replied the aeronaut consolingly. "Not a bad
descent, considering this confounded--I beg pardon--this confound-_ing_
fog. Thought I was half a mile up in the air. Opened the valve a little
to drop through the cloud and discover my location. Ran against your
house and anchored in your apple tree. Have you any men about the place
to help me get the gas out?"
We fetched one of our farm labourers, and managed things so well, in
spite of the darkness, that about midnight we had the great clumsy thing
lying upon the lawn in a state of collapse. Instead of leaving it there
with the car safely wedged into the apple-tree, until the morning light
would let him work more easily, Rutley must needs "finish the job right
off," as he said, and the result of this was that while he was standing
in the car a bough suddenly broke and he was thrown to the ground,
sustaining such injuries that we found him senseless when we ran to help
him.
We carried him into the drawing-room, by the window of which he had
fallen, and when we got the doctor to him, it was considered best that
he should remain with us that night How could we refuse him a shelter?
The nearest inn was a long way off; and how could he be moved there
among people who would not care for him, when the doctor said it was
probable that the poor fellow was seriously hurt internally?
We kept him with us that night; yes, and for weeks after. By Heaven's
mercy he will be with me all the rest of my life.
[Illustration: "I NURSED HIM WELL AND STRONG AGAIN."]
It was this unexpected visit of Phillip's, and the feeling that grew
between us as I nursed him well and strong again, that brought it about
that I told Kenneth Moore, who had become so repugnant to me that I
could not bear to see him or hear him speak, that I wanted to be
released from the promise he had wrung from me that night at the garden
gate.
His rage was terrible to witness. He saw at once that my heart was given
to someone else, and guessed who it must be; for, of course, everybody
knew about our visitor from the clouds. He refused to release me from my
pledge to him, and uttered such wild threats against poor Phillip, whom
he had not seen, and who, indeed, had not spoken of love to me at that
time, that it precipitated my union with his rival. One insult that he
was base enough to level at Phillip and me stung me so deeply, that I
went at once to Mr. Rutley and told him how it was possible for evil
minds to misconstrue his continuing to reside at the farm.
When I next met Kenneth Moore I was leaving the registrar's office upon
the arm of my husband. Kenneth did not know what had happened, but when
he saw us walking openly together, his face assumed an expression of
such intense malignity, that a great fear for Phillip came like a chill
upon my heart, and when we were alone together under the roof that might
henceforth harmlessly cover us both, I had but one thought, one intense
desire--to quit it for ever in secret with the man I loved, and leave no
foot-print behind for our enemy to track us by.
It was now that Phillip told me that he possessed an independent
fortune, by virtue of which the world lay spread out before us for our
choice of a home.
"Sweet as have been the hours that I have passed here--precious and
hallowed as this little spot on the wide earth's surface must ever be to
me," said my husband, "I want to take you away from it and show you many
goodly things you have as yet hardly dreamed of. We will not abandon
your dear old home, but we will find someone to take care of it for us,
and see what other paradise we can discover in which to spend our
life-long honeymoon."
I had never mentioned to Phillip the name of Kenneth Moore, and so he
thought it a mere playful caprice that made me say:--
"Let us go, Phillip, no one knows where--not even ourselves. Let Heaven
guide us in our choice of a resting-place. Let us vanish from this
village as if we had never lived in it. Let us go and be forgotten."