COMPAGNONS DU VOYAGE.
And so Talbot Strangemore’s home-coming, long-deferred, had ended in a
tragedy. The two women who had loved him were both dead. Both had died
wretched and tragical deaths, and he felt dimly in his soul that he was
to blame for it all.
Only a few days ago he had deemed himself wretched because he was bound
to one woman while loving another one. What a mockery those foolish
pangs seemed to him now in the light of the real grief and deep remorse
that came to him when he realized that Sibyl St. Alban and Nina, his
wife, had both gone out of the world in their youth and beauty for his
sake.
He had a conscience although it had spoken but seldom in the years
while he had been away, neglecting his simple child-bride, and hating
the bonds that held them together. It wakened to active life now and
almost maddened him with its stinging reproaches and accusations.
It appeared to him now as if his Aunt Drusilla, Kitty, his dead wife’s
maid, and the servants generally, at Selwyn Heights, hated the very
sight of him. The story of Nina’s wrongs and sorrows had become known
to all, and every one seemed to resent his part in it. Cold looks and
averted faces met him everywhere. No one felt any kindness or pity for
the fickle husband whose folly had driven the fair young mistress of
Selwyn Heights to her dreadful death.
“I cannot bear my life here. I shall go mad with shame and sorrow and
remorse, if I go on like this,” he said to Miss Strangemore soon. “Can
you bear it to stay here and let me go abroad again?”
She answered, “yes,” and he took her at her word. The day after Mrs.
St. Alban’s funeral he quitted Selwyn Heights, saying to himself that
he would never return there, never claim the place as his, although,
since Nina’s death there was no owner for it but him. Miss Drusilla’s
broad hints that his mother had married him to Nina from mercenary
motives still rankled bitterly in his heart. He would show her that
she was mistaken. He would never touch one penny of all the vast Selwyn
wealth. His own narrow income should suffice for his wanderings.
He went to Baltimore and had an interview with the drug clerk who had
sold Nina the fatal poison. When he left him he had not a doubt that
it was his wife who had thus recklessly precipitated herself into
eternity. He carried with him in his exile the dainty handkerchief
that bore her name. It lay always upon his breast. But it brought him
no peace. Rather it was like the shirt of mail that Nessus wore for an
everlasting torture.
* * * * *
“I will go abroad with you, Strangemore, if you will have my company,”
said Oswald Ferris.
He had been one of Duke Cameron’s yachting friends, and later one of
the guests at Selwyn Heights, a tall, dark, taciturn man whom every
one voted a good fellow, but no one quite understood. Duke Cameron had
admired him for his handsome looks and his superior intellect, but the
ladies had declared that they were afraid of him, although they never
could explain the reason why.
“It is just because”--Virgie Mason would say, vaguely, and with this
highly satisfactory reason the subject would fall through.
Talbot Strangemore stared in surprise at the offer of Ferris.
“I warn you that I shall be a dull companion,” he said, hoarsely, “I am
steeped to the lips in misery.”
“We shall be companions in despair then,” Oswald Ferris answered,
drawing his heavy brows darkly together, “I too am going abroad to seek
Nepenthe from maddening memory.”
“_You!_”
They gazed at each other a moment, then Ferris said, with bitter
emphasis:
“Yes, even I! Have you never guessed my painful secret, Strangemore?
I, too, loved Sibyl St. Alban. She, the cruel little coquette, made a
victim of me, then threw me aside like a broken toy, when she met you.
We are fellow-companions in misery. I know she was fickle, light, and
unworthy, yet since she died I seem to be going mad, I shall lose my
senses unless I find
“Respite, respite, and Nepenthe
From my memories of Lenore.”
So the two men with their shadowed lives sailed away from the American
shores together.