REGINALD BOURCHIER SAVAREEN DISCOVERS THE GREAT SECRET.
Thus far Savareen had been permitted to tell his own story. I do not,
of course, pretend that it came from his lips in the precise words set
down in the foregoing chapter, but for the sake of brevity and
clearness, I have deemed it best to present the most salient portion of
the narrative in the first person. It was related to me years
afterwards by Mrs. Savareen herself, and I think I am warranted in
saying that I have given the purport of her relation with tolerable
accuracy. There is no need to present the sequel in the same fashion,
nor with anything like the same fulness of detail. The man unburdened
himself with all the appearance of absolute sincerity, and made no
attempt to palliate or tone down anything that told against himself. He
admitted that upon reaching New York he had entered upon a career of
wild dissipation. He drank, gambled and indulged in debauchery to such
an extent that in less than six weeks he had got pretty nearly to the
end of his four hundred pounds. He assumed a false name and carefully
abstained from ever looking at the newspapers, so that he remained in
ignorance of all that had taken place in the neighborhood of his home
after his departure. Becoming tired of the life he was leading in the
great city, he proceeded southward, and spent some months wandering
about through the Southern States. His knowledge of horse-flesh enabled
him to pick up a livelihood, and even at times to make money; but his
drinking propensities steadily gained the mastery over him and stood in
the way of his permanent success in any pursuit. During a sojourn at a
tavern in Lexington, Kentucky, he had formed an attachment for the
daughter of his landlord. She was a good girl in her way, and knew how
to take care of herself; but Mr. Jack Randall passed for a bachelor,
and seemed to be several grades above the ordinary frequenters of her
father's place. Their marriage and subsequent adventures have been
sufficiently detailed by the unhappy woman herself, during her
conference with Mrs. Savareen at No. 77 Amity street.
The _soi-disant_ Randall had gone on from bad to worse, until he
had become the degraded creature of whom his wife had caught a
momentary glimpse under the glare of gas lamp on her departure from the
Amity street lodgings. The woman who supposed herself to be his wife
had informed him that a strange lady had called and been very kind to
her, but she had told him nothing about the lady having come from
Canada. Why she was thus reticent I am unable to say with certainty.
Perhaps it was because she attached no importance to the circumstance,
after the lady's declaration that the daguerreotype did not represent
the man whom she wished to find. Perhaps she had some inkling of the
truth, and dreaded to have her suspicions confirmed. She knew that she
had but a short time to live, and may very well have desired to sleep
her last sleep without making any discovery detrimental to her peace of
mind. Whatever the cause may have been, she kept silent to everything
but the main fact that a kind lady had called and supplied her with a
small store of money to provide for herself and the child. Savareen
never learned or even suspected, that the lady who ministered to the
wants of his victims was his own wife, until the truth was told to him
by the wife herself. Small difference to him however, where the money
came from. He had no scruples about taking a part of it to buy drink
for himself and one or two loafers he numbered among his personal
acquaintances. But there was sufficient left to provide for all the
earthly needs of the dying woman and her child. The little one breathed
its last within two days of Mrs. Savareen's visit, and the mother
followed it to the grave a week later.
Since then "Jack Randall" had dragged on a solitary existence in New
York, and had been on the very brink of starvation. Every half dime he
could lay hold of, by hook or by brook--and I fear it was sometimes by
both--was spent in the old way. Then his health suddenly broke down,
and for the first time he knew what it was to be weak and ill. Finally
he had been compelled to admit to himself that he was utterly beaten in
the race of life; and with a profound depth of meanness which
transcended any of his former acts, he had made up his mind to return
in his want and despair, to the wife whom he had so basely deserted.
Since leaving Westchester he had heard nothing of her, direct or
indirect; but he doubted not that she was supplied with the necessaries
of life, and that she would yield him her forgiveness.
It is possible to sympathize with the prodigal son, but whose heart is
wide enough to find sympathy for such a prodigal husband as this?
His wife heard him patiently out to the very end. Then she told him of
the arrival of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Haskins at the Royal Oak, and the
consequent visit to New York. The recital did not greatly move him. The
telling of his own story had again reduced him to a state of extreme
exhaustion, and he was for the time being incapable of further emotion.
He soon after dropped asleep, and as he was tolerably certain not to
awake until next morning, there was no occasion for further attendance
upon him. Mrs. Savareen drew to another apartment to ponder a while,
before retiring to rest, on the strange tale which she had heard.
Next morning it was apparent that Savareen was alarmingly ill, and that
his illness did not arise solely from exhaustion. A doctor was called
in, and soon pronounced his verdict. The patient was suffering from
congestion of the lungs. The malady ran a rapid course, and in another
week he lay white and cold in his coffin, the scar on his cheek,
showing like a great pale ridge on a patch of hoar-frost.
* * * * *
My story is told. The young widow donned the conventional weeds--"the
trappings and the suits of woe"--prescribed by custom under such
circumstances. It is only reasonable to believe that she sincerely
mourned the loss of her girlhood's ideal, but it was surely too much to
expect that she should be overwhelmed by grief at the death of one who
had been practically dead to her for years, and whose unworthiness had
recently been so unmistakably brought home to her. With her subsequent
fortunes the reader has no concern; but it can be no harm to inform him
that she remains a widow still, and that she at this moment resides
with her son--a prosperous lawyer--in one of the chief towns of Western
Canada.