Armstrong is detained at his office until late this evening. Feeling
inclined for exercise after his long sedentary day, he gets out of
the trap near the place where he found Addie lying under the tree,
and, walking across the grove, enters the shrubbery path bordering the
tennis-ground, where the sound of voices at the further end attracts
his attention. Dusk has already fallen, but he can clearly distinguish
the figures of a man and woman walking arm-in-arm in front of him. His
face darkens.
"Miss Pauline and one of her admirers," he mutters contemptuously.
"She is carrying matters a little too far. I will let her know that
these twilight rambles are not to my taste, and that as long as she
remains an inmate of my house she must restrict her flirtations to more
decorous hours--at least, out of doors."
He walks quickly after the pair along the mossy sward, then suddenly,
when within thirty yards of them, he stops short and shrinks
instinctively behind the sheltering ash-boughs, for he sees that the
girl is not Pauline, but his own wife, and that her hands are clasped
with an appearance of affectionate _abandon_ on the arms of a man who,
as well as he can make out in the gloom, is a perfect stranger.
Too astonished either to advance or recede, he stands motionless,
thinking painfully and confusedly, then comes to the conclusion that he
has made a mistake, that his fancy has tricked him. He is on the point
of starting forward, when Addie's voice, low, troubled, eager, yet with
a ring of unrestraint, of familiarity even, that makes his pulse throb
with jealous pain, reaches him distinctly on the breathless night-air.
"Oh, no, no--not that--not that! You do not know what you ask--what it
would cost me. He is good, generous, kind, unselfish even--not that,
not that!"
There is a slight pause before the answer comes, in a voice so pure,
sweet, and infinitely sad as to strike musically on the listener's
tortured ear--a voice that Armstrong has never heard before, and yet
that thrills through him with a strange vague sense of familiarity.
"Be it so--be it so. I will not ask what would cost you so much. Why
should I, why should I, my dear, my dear? What hold have I on your
life? Ah, none--none! You belong to another now, to another who you say
is good, generous, kind, unselfish even, which I am not. Go back to
your husband, your home, my girl, and forget that I darkened your path
again--go back; I want nothing from you."
"And you," she asks wistfully--"you? What will you do? Where will you
go?"
"I?" he questions drearily, passing his hand over her downcast head.
"Do not ask, _ma mie_, do not ask."
"Yes, yes, you must tell me; I must know."
He stoops and puts his lips close to her ear. With a shrill cry she
pushes him from her.
"You are trying to frighten me--to win me over. How cruel you are! You
do not mean that?"
"No, no," he answers soothingly, "of course I don't. I can't imagine
what made me blurt out such nonsense. Give me a kiss, a little one, a
last kiss, and let me go."
"And let you go!" she echoes wildly. "How can I do that with such a
threat ringing in my ears? Do you think I have no heart, no feeling
left, because I am married--no memory?"
"You have a husband, good, kind, and--what is it?--generous and
unselfish. Keep your heart, your feelings for him; cast out the memory
of me from your life, for I will never cross your path again; forget me
from this hour--let my fate not trouble you henceforth; do you hear?
This is my last, my only request. Forget me; go back to your husband,
Adelaide, and sleep out your life in peace and--and happiness by his
side."
"Sleep out my life in peace and happiness," she echoes bitterly. "Vain
request! You have murdered sleep for me to-night--destroyed happiness.
Why did you come? Could you not have let me be? Oh, I have suffered
since I saw you last--suffered, suffered! And now--now, when a glimpse
of rest, of happiness even, was coming to me with the summer, you step
in and take it from me. Heaven pity me, Heaven pity me!"
"Hush, hush!" he cries, his voice tremulous with pathos. "I will not
have you say that. I want nothing from you--nothing, I tell you, but
forgetfulness--nothing; blot out the memory of this hour, the memory of
that cowardly unmeaning whisper--forget it--forget, my Adelaide!"
"I can not, I can not, for something tells me that it was not without
meaning. And I loved you once--oh, yes, I loved you once! I was only
a child, I know; but I loved you. Can I now live and feel myself your
murderess? I can not."
Crying bitterly, she buries her face on his breast. He leans over her,
murmuring tender, soothing words; while Armstrong, whose presence they
are too absorbed, too agitated to notice, stands beside them, his hot
breath almost fanning their averted faces, beads of perspiration
standing out on his forehead at the mighty effort he is making to
restrain the instinct that urges him to hurl them asunder, trample
to death the shapely sweet-voiced lover, and overwhelm her with the
discovery of her treachery and deceit. But he restrains himself. After
all, what is she to him, or he to her, his wife in name only? Her past
he entered not into--their future will be spent apart. What have they
in common? Nothing but the memory of two short weeks of union, which
to him and her alike were clouded with bitterness, repulsion, and
torturing recollection. Why then should he make himself ridiculous,
pose as an outraged husband? He does not value her compassionate
appreciation of his worth, does not want her tears, her kisses, her
love. Why, then, in Heaven's name, should he interfere with her lover's
enjoyment of them, the lover whom she jilted for his gold?
"Let her and him go to the dogs!" he mutters, striding away
contemptuously. "Let the chapter of my married bliss close as it may, I
care not a jot!"
He goes without one backward glance, and thus seals the fate of his
life and hers.
The echo of his footsteps startles them; they move apart, look
apprehensively around, but no further movement is to be heard.
Addie's face is white and still; she stands erect before her companion,
and says slowly--
"You have conquered; I will do what you want. Let me go now."
He opens his arms rapturously, with an exclamation of delight, while
she flies away, wringing her hands, and muttering piteously--"Heaven
help me, Heaven help me!"
"And so," thinks Armstrong, as he walks blindly round and round the
silent park, "it has ended like every commonplace three-volume novel,
after all! My fate is in no wise different from that of the ponderous
middle-aged husband of domestic drama. The lover has turned up at last;
Jamie has come back from sea, as I might have guessed he would sooner
or later, and his sweetheart tells him, almost in the words of the old
song, that 'Auld Robin Gray's been a good man to me.' Generous, kind,
unselfish I have been, she tells him. Well, so I have, I think; but
the _rôle_ of Auld Gray begins to pall. I'll throw it up soon. I'll
just give her a week clear from to-day to make what reparation she can,
to confess all; and, if she does not, I will tell her what I know,
what she hid from me so artlessly, then shut up Nutsgrove, take up my
quartets in Kelvick--which I ought never to have left--and pack off my
incumbrances--my precious wife and family--to old Jo at Leamington.
Old Jo! I wonder was she in the plot, too? But of course she was; she
did the 'pressin' sair' with a firm motherly hand! By Heaven, how
cleverly they hid it all between them! How well Jamie was kept in the
background--not the faintest suggestion of his existence! Even now I
have not the least idea who he is; but I'll soon find out. As well as
I could see in the gloaming, my rival is an uncommonly good-looking
shapely fellow, and his voice--ah, well, his voice could win its way to
any woman's heart! I wonder are they sighing out their sweet farewells
still! It was a touching interview; but my poor little wife was not
quite as temperate in her caresses as the young lady in the ballad.
Jamie got more than one kiss to-night. Not that it matters to me
whether it was one or a hundred--not a jot!"
"'If she be not fair to me,
What care I how fair she be?'
"Not a jot--not a jot now!"