EDITH MORRISTON'S STORY
Next morning Gifford was in good time at the rendezvous, a sequestered
corner of the park, and Edith Morriston soon joined him. "Let us come
into the summer-house," she suggested; "it will be more convenient for my
long story."
"First of all, tell me," Gifford said, "has anything happened since last
night? Has Henshaw made any move?"
She took out a note and handed it to him. "Only that," she said with an
uneasy laugh.
"There must have been some misunderstanding last evening," Gifford read.
"I cannot think that your not keeping the appointment was intentional.
Anyhow I can wait till to-night, then I shall be at the lane just beyond
the church at 7.30. That you may not repent I hope you have not
repented." That was all.
"A thinly veiled threat," Gifford observed. "The man in his way seems as
great a bully as his brother. May I keep this? I am going to see Mr.
Henshaw presently, and have a serious talk with him. After which I shall
hope to be able to convince you that your troubles are at an end."
"If you can do that--" she said.
"The knowledge that I have been of service to you will be my great
reward. I hope I am sufficiently a gentleman not to ask or expect
any other."
She made no reply. They had entered the little rustic summer-house,
and sat down.
"Dick has driven into Branchester," Edith Morriston said, perhaps to end
an embarrassing pause. "He will not be back till luncheon, so we are not
likely to be interrupted."
"That's well," Gifford answered. "Now please begin what I am most
anxious to hear."
"The story I have to tell you, Mr. Gifford," Edith Morriston began, "is
not a pleasant one and is as humiliating to me to relate as was the
experience, the terrible experience, I had to go through. But to be fair
to myself I must be quite frank with you, and am sure you will never
give me cause to repent speaking unreservedly."
"You can rely upon my honour to respect your confidence," Gifford
responded warmly.
"I know I may," the girl answered. "Well, then, you must know first of
all, that my father married a second time, and he unfortunately chose a
woman well connected enough, but heartless and an utter snob. I suppose
men are often blind to these hateful qualities before marriage; doubtless
a clever, unscrupulous woman is able to hide her faults when she has the
main chance in view. My stepmother was a good deal younger than my
father, and I dare say on the whole made him, socially at any rate, a
fairly good wife. Her one idea was social aggrandizement at any cost, and
I unhappily was to fall a victim to it.
"I suppose we ought not to blame her for determining that I ought to
marry well; she wanted to do the best for the family and was
constitutionally incapable of making allowance for or considering any
one's private feelings. To make a long story short, my stepmother, in
pursuance of her policy, determined that I should marry a certain peer
whose name I need not mention. He was altogether a bad lot, and I soon
came to know it. I received certain warnings, but without them I could
see that the man was all wrong, and I told my stepmother what I
thought of him.
"She scoffed at the idea that he was any worse than the average man. All
I had to concern myself with was the fact that he was a peer of ancient
lineage, of large property, and there wasn't another girl in the kingdom
who wouldn't jump at him. I might well chance his making me unhappy since
he could make me a countess, and to refuse him would be absolute madness;
Mrs. Morriston's face grew black at the very thought of it. She soon got
my father on to her side, and between them I had a hateful time of it.
It's the old story, which will be told as long as there are worldly,
selfish women on the earth, but it was none the less fresh and poignant
to me who had to live through the experience.
"Things got so bad through my continued refusal to fall in with my
stepmother's wishes that I was reduced to a state bordering on despair.
My father, whom I loved, was turned against me; his mind was so
prejudiced in favour of the man whom I was being gradually forced to take
as a husband that he could see no good reason, only sheer obstinacy, in
my refusal. Altogether my life was becoming a perfect hell. Dick, who
might have stood by me, and made things less unbearable, was away on a
two years' tour for big game shooting; I had no one to confide in, no one
to help me.
"Just as things were at their worst and I was getting quite desperate, I
met at a dance a man named Archie Jolliffe. He had been a sailor, but
having come into money had given up the Service and settled down to enjoy
himself. He and I got on very well together from the first; he was a
breezy, genial, young fellow, fond of fun and adventure and a pleasant
contrast in every way to the man who was threatening to ruin my life. I
don't know that in happier circumstances I should have cared for
Jolliffe; there wasn't much in him beyond his capacity for fun; he was
inclined to be fast in a foolish sort of way; a man's man rather than one
for whom a woman could feel much respect. Still he was not vicious like
the other, for whom my dislike increased every time I saw him.
"Well, Archie Jolliffe fell in love with me and in his impetuous way made
no secret of it. I need not say it did not take long for my step-mother
to become aware of it, and with the idea that I was encouraging him she
became furious. Except that poor Archie was a welcome change from the
atmosphere of my home and the hateful attentions of the man who was
always being left alone with me, I did not really care for him, and but
for Mrs. Morriston's attitude I should have told him it was no use his
thinking of me. Considering the sequel, I wish I had done so; but it is
too late now for regrets. His love-making gave me a chance of defying my
stepmother, and I rather enjoyed baulking her plans to keep Archie and me
apart. If I did not encourage him--indeed, I refused him every time he
proposed--I did not dismiss him as I ought to have done, and he evidently
had an idea that perseverance would win the day. And so, after a
fashion, it did.
"Matters reached such a pitch at last that it became plain that I must
either consent to marry the man I loathed or leave my home for good.
Goaded on by my apparent encouragement of Archie Jolliffe, my stepmother
resolved to bring matters to a crisis. She started a terrific row with me
one day, my father was brought into it, and I stood up against them both.
The upshot was that when the interview was over I went out of the house
boiling with indignation and for the time utterly reckless. Chance caught
the psychological moment and threw me in the way of Archie Jolliffe. He
saw something was wrong and pressed me to tell him what had happened. He
was so chivalrous and sympathetic that I was led in my turbulent state of
mind to become confidential, the more so when he told me he had known for
some time how I was being treated.
"'You must not marry that man,' he said 'It is an outrage for your people
to suggest such a thing. He is a big swell and all that, with heaps of
money, but any man in town who knows anything will tell you he is quite
impossible,'
"I had heard that, and had told my stepmother, but of course it did not
suit her to heed me. She cared for nothing beyond the fact that I should
be a countess, and said so.
"Archie and I talked together for a long time and with the result that in
my longing for protection from the powers against me and my indignation
at the way I was being treated I had promised when we parted to marry
him, and we had planned to elope together that very night.
"At that time we were living at Haynthorpe Hall--you know it?--about ten
miles from here. That evening I slipped out of the house after dinner and
met Archie, who was waiting for me at a quiet spot outside the village.
His plan was to drive across country to Branchester Junction, where it
was not likely we should be noticed or recognized, catch the night train
up to town and be married there next morning. You may imagine the state
of desperation--utter desperation and recklessness--I was in to have
consented to such a thing, but I could see no help for it, and of two
evils I seemed to be choosing the least. The future looked hideously
vague and dark; still Jolliffe was capable of being transformed into a
decent husband, while the other man assuredly was not.
"Archie seemed overjoyed, poor fellow, as I mounted into the dog-cart; he
had hardly expected that I should not repent. Once we were fairly off and
bowling along the dark road, a sense of relief came to me, and whatever
qualms I may have felt soon vanished. However wrong my conduct was I had
been driven to it and my father, for whom I was sorry, by taking part
against me, deserved to lose me.
"My companion had the tact not to talk much, and I was glad to think he
could realize the seriousness of the step he had persuaded me to take.
But the little he did say was affectionately sympathetic and, now that
the die was cast, it comforted me to indulge hopes of him.
"All went well till we were about three miles from Branchester; then an
awful thing happened. Our horse was a fast trotter, and Archie let him
have his head, knowing that it would never do for us to miss the train.
As we turned a blind corner we came into collision with another dog-cart
which we had neither seen nor heard. The force of the impact was so
great that our off-wheel was smashed; the cart went over, we were both
flung out, and as I fell I realized horribly that my desperate expedient
was a failure.
"I was not much hurt, for my fall was broken, and I soon scrambled to my
feet. But Archie lay there motionless. The man who was the only occupant
of the other dog-cart had pulled into the hedge and alighted. He came up
to offer his help, and to express his sorrow at the accident, which he
said, doubtless with truth, was not his fault. I dare say you will have
guessed that the man was Clement Henshaw. Between us we raised Archie and
carried him to the side of the road. He was quite insensible, and
breathing heavily.
"'I am afraid he is rather seriously hurt,' the man said sympathetically.
'We ought to get him to Branchester Hospital as soon as possible.'
"I was so overwhelmed by the sudden and terrible end to our adventure
that I could think of nothing. By a great piece of luck a belated dray
came along on its way to Branchester. Into this, with the driver's help,
we lifted poor Archie; and then Henshaw and I drove on in his trap to
prepare the hospital authorities for the patient's arrival. The doctor
after a cursory examination gave very little hope, and I left the
hospital in a most wretched state of mind, feeling more than indirectly
responsible for the end of that bright young life. Henshaw arranged for
the horse and smashed dogcart to be fetched from the scene of the
accident, and then he asked where in the town he should escort me.
"I thanked him and said, a good deal to his surprise, that I was not
going to stop in Branchester, but would hire a fly and drive to my
destination. I stood, of course, in a hideously false position, and that
he very soon began to divine; he would not hear of my getting a fly at
that hour of the night, but insisted on driving me in his trap to
wherever I wished to go.
"Unhappily I had no idea of the man's character, or I should never have
dreamt of accepting his offer; but I was then in no state of mind to
judge his nature or question his motives; he had proved himself
infinitely kind and resourceful, so in my lonely and agitated condition I
consented, little imagining what the dire result to me would be.
"On the drive back to my home I was naturally in a horribly distressed
state of mind, and hardly dared think of the future. My companion
tactfully refrained from much talking, although I had an idea that his
curiosity was greatly excited to learn the explanation of the affair; he
put occasionally a leading question which I always evaded, when he took
the hint and did not press his inquiries. So far as every one else was
concerned there had been no idea of connecting me with poor Archie
Jolliffe. The hospital people believed that he had been driving alone,
and that I had been in the trap with Henshaw. I dare say they took me for
his sister or his wife.
"At last, after one of the most wretched hours I ever spent--and I have
had more than my fair share of trouble--we reached Haynthorpe, and on
the outskirts of the village I asked Henshaw to set me down. He stopped
and looked at me curiously.
"'Can't you trust me to drive you to your home?'" he said insinuatingly.
"I replied that I preferred to get down where we were, and thanked him as
warmly as I was able for all his services.
"'You haven't even told me your name,' he protested, 'Mine is Clement
Henshaw; I am staying at Flinton for hunting.'
"My answer was that he must not think me ungrateful, but that I would
rather not tell him my name. It could be of no consequence to him.
"'I should like at least,' he urged, 'to be allowed to drive over and
report how your--friend--or was it your brother?--is getting on.'
"I thanked him, made the best excuse I could for refusing, got down from
the trap and hurried off through the dark village street, thankful to get
away from those awkward questions.
"But if I thought I had finally got rid of Mr. Clement Henshaw I was, in
my ignorance of the man, woefully mistaken."