TALBOT’S SUSPICIONS.
All unconscious of the portentous events happening at home, Talbot
Strangemore pursued his wanderings from city to city, from clime to
clime, in restless search after that fabled Lethean stream in whose
waves one may bury all the woeful memories found too heavy to carry
through the pilgrimage of life. Oswald Ferris bore him indefatigable
company in his strange pursuit.
He was a very peculiar man, this Oswald Ferris with his tall,
proud form, and dark, corsair like beauty. He was a brilliant
conversationalist, and shone in society, although after all, men liked
him best. Women like Virgie Mason shrunk from him without a reason
why, but Sibyl St. Alban had been hand-and-glove with him for a brief
season. She had taught him
“All the cruel madness of love,
The honey of poison-flowers,
And all the measureless ill.”
The little coquette had scarcely understood the nature of the man she
had fooled with such charming grace in the early days of her widowhood,
when, having been debarred from the pastime for some months, she
entered upon it with new zest and pleasure. Ferris had been a splendid
subject, too, for he seemed so ignorant of womanly coquetry and was so
jealous, passionate, and intense, that he was a constant amusement to
Sibyl. She greatly enjoyed “playing this big fish” as Cameron and the
others phrased it, enjoyed it, systematically, until Strangemore joined
them, then as her slighted lover said, she threw him over.
She was tired of him, and here was another subject, that was all
Sibyl thought about it. She did not think about the adoring heart,
the fiery temper, the passionate, undisciplined nature of the man she
had wronged, nor of the fiery desire and longing for vengeance that
rose from the ashes of his dead love. He had served her purpose, and
she was done with him. She bent herself to the delightful task of
winning Talbot Strangemore from his child-bride at home, and forgot all
about Oswald Ferris, save when she was reminded of his existence by
the reproachful glances he flashed at her, and by words he sometimes
uttered whose barbed point had seemed to be aimed at her heart, and
which stung her by their truth, but did not move her to repentance,
because she was entirely cruel and heartless.
So now this man whose heart and soul she had wrecked so heartlessly,
was an exile for her sake, hating all women because this Circe born
without a soul, had made a plaything of his heart and flung it back
to him when weary, broken, ruined and worthless from the pastime of an
hour.
He was not a pleasant companion for Talbot Strangemore now. All his
old brilliant gifts of talk and manner had deserted him. He had grown
moody, dull, distrait and restless beyond measure. Once he had loved
books, but he never opened one now. He spent hours and hours in long
solitary walks. Strangemore rallied him a little drearily on his deep
depression.
“Do not give yourself up so wholly to your sorrow,” he said. “It is
wrong to speak ill of the dead, but after all, Mrs. St. Alban was not
worthy of the feeling we both wasted on her. That truth has come home
to me although too late for my happiness.”
They looked deep into each other’s eyes, those two men whose lives had
been ruined to please the vanity of a beautiful, heartless butterfly.
“That is the bitterest part of it,” said Oswald Ferris, low and
bitterly. “I have lost myself for her sake, and after all she was not
worth it. Oh, how I fooled myself with the thought of making that
dainty creature my bride. She promised it. She took my ring, my gifts,
she let me hold her in my arms, she suffered me to kiss her face, and
to toy with her soft gold hair, and after all she was false. She was
only feeding her vanity with my admiration, and by and by when a new
victim came, she dropped me as coolly as if I had been a soulless clod,
instead of a man mad for love and thirsting for vengeance. Was it any
wonder I was wrought to frenzy when she lavished her love and her
smiles on you, when she even dared try to divorce you from your fair,
sweet bride? Oh, my God”--he paused, abruptly, with a startled look, as
if in his passion he had uttered too much.
“Why did you not tell me how she had wronged you then, while she was
making a fool of me?--doubly a fool, for I had known her wiles before,”
said Talbot, with biting self-contempt.
“Did you think I wore my heart on my sleeve for daws to peck at?”
demanded Ferris. “No, I was too proud. I bore all in silence, save
that now and then I reproached her with bitter looks and barbed words,
which she received with tacit defiance. I wondered then why she had no
conscience. I often wonder now why she had no fear. Did she think she
could drive a great, strong powerful animal mad with impunity?”
“She knew that the animal in this case had a soul,” said Strangemore,
with a rather dreary smile. “Women expect men to bear such wrongs as
yours, _mon ami_, with meekness and equanimity. You would not have
harmed that gilded butterfly, would you? Nay,” he added, springing to
his feet while a terrible suspicion smote his brain, “_You_ did not
hurt her, did you? You whose wrongs were so deep that your brain was
half distraught with rage and resentment, you did not strike the dagger
into her white breast, did you?”
The suspicion and the words were born together, and with such
suddenness that Ferris was for a moment staggered by them.
He recoiled before the excited speaker with a marble-white face and a
startled hunted look that was almost like guilt itself in his blazing
eyes. Strangemore believed that he had detected the murderer of Sibyl
St. Alban.
“My God, Ferris, then it was you that committed that dastardly deed!”
he cried.
Ferris had recovered himself now. He turned upon his accuser with
passionate defiance.
“How dare you, oh, how dare you accuse me of the heinous crime
committed by your own wife?” he exclaimed, hoarsely, “Have you
forgotten that she, too, was maddened by her wrongs?--wrongs that you
had inflicted upon her in your mad worship of her rival! Have you
forgotten that Sibyl St. Alban’s dying deposition laid her death at the
door of Nina Strangemore? Have you forgotten the letter dropped by your
wife in the room of the murdered woman? Have you forgotten her flight
that was a tacit admission of her guilt?”
He hurled the angry words one after another thick and fast at
his accuser and each charge fell upon Strangemore’s heart like a
hail-stone. He recoiled with an exceeding bitter cry:
“Oh, God, to think that my folly and madness brought all this upon my
poor young wife! Would to God, I had died before my return home!”
Ferris regarded him cynically, with a dark and lowering expression
between his brows.
“If your wife had only killed herself instead of sending her rival
out of the world, too, how pleasant it would have been for you,” he
observed. “You could have married Sibyl and been happy after all.”
He shrunk from the lightning flash in the eyes of his companion.
“Hush,” Strangemore said, hoarsely. “Do not throw my folly and sin into
my face. I cannot bear it. No, I could never have married Sibyl even if
Nina’s desperate suicide had left me free to do so. I loved my young
wife from the first moment we met after my return. At the first sight
of her pure young face the wicked infatuation that Sibyl had fostered
died within me, and a pure and holy love for my neglected bride took
its place. If Sibyl had not formed that mad scheme for coming to Selwyn
Heights and ruining my wedded happiness all would have gone well with
me. I should not have been caught in the trap she set for me, Nina
would not have been driven desperate, nothing would have happened as it
did!”
And then he added, hoarsely:
“But, so help me God, Ferris, in spite of all the awful evidence
against her, I cannot believe that Nina, my wife, was guilty of that
terrible crime. Some dreadful mystery hangs around that murder--a
mystery that Sibyl St. Alban hid behind her false declaration that Nina
had killed her. It was some other hand that drove that dagger home in
her breast.”
And looking steadily at the downcast face of Ferris, he said within
himself: “Thou art the man!”
But he did not again charge him with the crime. Some instinct told him
to be wary. He said to himself that he would watch Ferris closely, but
in silence, for some token that should convict him of his sin.