Felix O'Day's runaway wife, despite the many quiet hours spent in
Martha's room, near St. Mark's Place, had not told her old nurse all her
story. She had wept her heart out on the dear woman's shoulder and had
cuddled close in her arms, giving her scraps and bits of her unfortunate
history, with side-lights here and there on a misery so abject and
so terrifying that the dear nurse had hugged the frail figure all the
tighter, seeing only the wound and knowing nothing of the steps that had
led up to the final blow or the anger that hastened it.
Martha had known, of course, that there had been bankruptcy and ruin;
that Oakdale, the ancestral estate of the O'Days--theirs for two
centuries, with all its priceless old furniture, tapestries, pictures,
and porcelains--had, after the owner's death, been sold at public
auction; that Fernlodge, Mr. Felix's own home, had gone in the same way;
that Lady Barbara, for some reason, had returned to her father, Lord
Carnavon; that the girl baby had died; and that “Mr. Felix,” as she
always called him, had gone to London where he had taken up his abode
at his club. Lady Barbara herself had given these details in a letter
written a couple of weeks after the death of the child, Martha being in
Toronto at the time.
Martha had also learned, through a letter from the head gardener's wife,
that after a few months' stay, Lady Barbara had left her father's house
because of a fierce scene with Lord Carnavon, who had sent for his
carriage, conducted her into it, and given directions to his coachman
either to set his daughter down on the main road, outside his gates, or
to take her to the nearest public house.
She had learned, too, that her former charge, after having eloped
with Dalton, had dropped entirely out of sight and, so far as her own
knowledge was concerned, had never come to light again until, with a cry
of joy, Lady Barbara sank sobbing on her shoulder in that Third Avenue
car.
Much of this information had been gathered from newspaper clippings that
her old uncle, living in London, had mailed to her. More particulars had
come in a letter from James Muldoon, one of the grooms at Oakdale, who
gave a most pitiful and graphic account of the way the London dealers
crowded about the old porcelains in the ebony cabinets, and of the
prices paid by the Earl of Brinsmore, who bought most of the pictures,
half of the old Spanish furniture, as well as the largest but one of
the great tapestries, to enrich the new mansion he was then building in
London and in which James Muldoon was happy to say he had been promised
a place.
In still other letters, open references had also been made to a much
discussed speculation, entangling many of those whom Martha had formerly
known, followed by a grand financial explosion in which some of the
same people had been badly injured. In connection with these disasters
mention was likewise made of a certain Mr. Dalton, who had disappeared
shortly after, leaving rather a bad name behind him, altogether
undeserved, according to many of the papers, he always having been a
“financier of the highest standing.” This last ball of gossip was rolled
Martha's way by her nephew, who was a clerk in a solicitor's office off
the Strand and who had mailed an editorial on the matter to his uncle,
who promptly forwarded it to Martha. She had read it carefully to the
end and had put it in her drawer without at first grasping the full
meaning of the fact that, but for the activities of this same Mr.
Dalton, her dear mistress and her dear mistress's husband, Felix O'Day,
and her dear mistress's father-in-law, the late Sir Carroll O'Day, would
still be in possession of their ancestral estates and in undisturbed
enjoyment of whatever happiness they, individually and collectively,
could get out of life.
What the dear woman never knew, and it was just as well that she
did not, were the special happenings which ended in the overwhelming
catastrophe.
It really began with a tea basket, holding enough for two, which was
opened one lovely afternoon under the big willows skirting that little
strip of land bordering the backwater at Cookham-on-Thames. My lady at
the time was wearing a wide leghorn hat with blue ribbons that matched
her eyes and set off the roses in her fair English cheeks. Her companion
was in white flannels--a muscular, well-set-up young man of thirty,
fifteen years younger than her husband and with twice his charm--one of
those delightful companions who possess the rare quality of making an
hour seem but five minutes. A gay party had dropped down the river in
her father's launch, which had been tied up at Ferry Inn, and Dalton
had insisted on taking my lady for just a half-hour's poling in a punt,
Felix and the others preferring to take their tea at the Inn--plans
readily agreed to and carried out, except that the half-hour prolonged
itself into two whole ones.
Then there had come a week-end at Glenmore Castle and a garden party
outside London, and then five-o'clock teas at half a dozen private
houses, including one or two meetings a trifle more secluded. And all
quite as it should be, for a most desirable and valuable guest was this
same Mr. Guy Dalton, a man received everywhere with open arms, as “one
of the rising men of the time, my dear sir,” a financier of distinction,
indeed, and a promoter of such skill that he had only to issue a
prospectus, or wink knowingly on the street, or take you aside at the
club and whisper confidentially to you, when everything he had issued,
winked at, or whispered about would go up with a rush, and countless men
and women--a goodly number were women--would be hundreds, nay, thousands
of pounds the richer before the week was out.
That his own buoyant imagination, as well as that of those who followed
his lead, should have been stretched to the utmost was quite within the
possibilities when one recollects that the basis of all this wealth was
crude rubber, a substance of pronounced elasticity. This, too, accounts
for the vim and suddenness of the final recoil attending the final
collapse--a recoil which smashed everything and everybody within its
reach.
There were “words,” of course, between Dalton and some of his victims.
There always are “words” when the ball bounces back and you catch it
full in the eye. And for salves and soothing plasters there were the
customary explanations regarding the state of the market, the tightness
of money, the non-arrival of important details, the delaying of
despatches owing to a break in the cable, together with offers of heavy
discounts, and increased allotments of stock for renewed subscriptions.
But the end came, just as it always does.
And so did the aftermath, as was shown by the advertisements in the
auction columns of the daily papers and the motley mob of hungry,
perspiring dealers, pawing over the household gods; and, more disastrous
still, because of its rarity, Felix's brave fight to save his father's
name, the whole struggle ending in his own ruin.
As for the very pretty young woman who had been wearing the hat with
blue ribbons, it may be as well to remark that when the milk in the
heart of a woman has become slightly curdled, it is to be expected that,
under certain exciting influences, the whole will turn sour. When to
this curdling process is added the loss of her child and her fortune,
calamities made all the more insupportable by reason of an interview
lasting an hour in which her two hot hands were held in those of a
sympathetic man of thirty, her cheeks within an inch of his lips, the
quickest--in fact, the only way--yes, really the only way, to
prevent any further calamity is to put your best gown in your best
dressing-case, catch up your jewels, and exchange your husband's roof
for that of your father's. And this is precisely what my lady did do,
and there in her father's house she stayed, despite the entreaties of
her own and her father's friends.
“And why not?” she had argued, with flashing eyes: “I am without a
shilling of my own, owing to the Quixotic ideas of my husband, who,
without thinking of me, has beggared himself to pay his father's debts.
And that, too, just when I need to be comforted most. He does not care
how I suffer; and now that my father has offered me a home, I will lead
my own life, surrounded by the few friends who have loved me for myself
alone.”
That the eminent financier--it might be better perhaps to say the LATE
eminent financier--was one of those same unselfish beings who had “loved
her for herself alone,” and that he had, at once and without the delay
of an hour, flown to her side followed as a matter of course, as did the
gossip, men and women in and about the clubs and drawing-rooms nodding
meaningly or hinting behind their hands.
“Rather rough on O'Day,” the men had agreed. “That comes of marrying
a woman young enough to be your daughter.” “She ought to have known
better,” was the verdict of the women. “So many other ways of getting
what you want without making a scandal,” this from a duchess from
behind her fan to a divorcee. But few words of sympathy for the deserted
husband escaped any of them and, except from his old servants, Felix
allowed himself to receive none.
He had made no move to win her back. To him she was, at the worst, only
the same wilful and spoiled child she had always been, while he was over
twenty years her senior. What he hoped for was that her common sense,
her breeding, and her pride would come to the rescue, and that after her
pique had spent itself, she would become once more the loving wife.
And it is quite possible that this hope might have been realized had
it not been for one of those unfortunate and greatly to be regretted
concurrences which so often precede if they do not precipitate many of
life's catastrophes.
One of Lord Carnavon's grooms was the unfortunate match that caused this
explosion. He had been sent down to Dorsetshire for a horse and, in an
out-of-the-way inn in one corner of the county, had stumbled--early
the next morning--into a cosey little sitting-room. When he came to his
senses--he never recovered the whole of them until he was safe once
more inside his lordship's stables--he told, with bulging eyes and bated
breath, what he had seen. Whereupon the head coachman forthwith informed
his wife, who at once poured it into the ears of the housekeeper,
who, being jealous of my lady, fearing her dominance, lost no time in
amplifying the details to Lord Carnavon. That gentleman had walked his
library the rest of the night and, on my lady's return from Scotland,
two mornings later (she had “spent the night with her aunt”), had
denounced her in tones so shrill that every word was heard at the end
of the long gallery; the tirade, to his lordship's amazement, being cut
short by his daughter's defiant answer: “And why not, if I love him?”
All of which accounts for the infamous order roared five minutes later
by the distinguished nobleman to his coachman, who, having known her
ladyship from a child and loved her accordingly, had not set her down
on the main road, but had taken her to a cottage on an adjoining
estate--her second change of roofs--from whence Dalton carried her off
next day to Ostend, a refuge she had herself selected, the season there
being then at its height.
Had either of them kept a diary, it is safe to say that the delirious
hours which filled that first week at Ostend would have been checked off
in gold letters. Neither of them had ever been so blissfully happy, nor
so passionately enamoured of the other, nor so overjoyed that the dreary
past, with all its misunderstandings, calumnies, and injustice, had been
wiped out forever.
There had, of course, been a few colorless moments. On a certain
Saturday, for instance, the eminent ex-financier, having lost his head
after the manner of some born gamblers, had, at the Casino, played
the wrong number--a series of wrong numbers, in fact--an error which
resulted in his pushing a crisp bundle of Bank of England notes--almost
all he had with him--toward the spidery hands of a suave gentleman with
rat eyes and bloodless face, who gathered them up with a furtive, deadly
smile.
The gold Letters might have been omitted here, and, in their stead, my
lady could have made a common pinhole to remind her, if she ever cared
to remember, that it was on that very night that her passionately
enamoured lover had helped her unfasten from her throat a string of
pearls which O'Day had given her, and which, strange to say, for a
woman so injured, so maligned, and so misunderstood, she, with Dalton's
advice, had carried off when she deserted both her husband and her
husband's bed and board. And she might have inserted just below the
pinhole the illuminating note that, after unfastening the string, Dalton
had forgotten to return it.
And then there had come an August morning--the following Monday, to be
exact--when, his coffee untasted, he had sat staring at a paragraph in
the financial column of a London paper, not daring to lay it down for
fear she would pick it up. It gave a full and detailed account of the
discovery of a series of certificates bearing duplicate numbers, said
duplicates claiming to be the genuine shares of the Bawhadder Rubber
Co., Ltd. It also hinted at a searching investigation about to be made
by a financial committee of the highest standing at its next regular
meeting, but a few days off. More important still was a crisp editorial,
charging the directors of the aforesaid company, and particularly its
promoter--name withheld--with irregularities of the gravest import.
And it was on this same Monday morning--another pinhole, made with a big
black pin would serve best here--before the stone-cold coffee and the
dry, uneaten toast had been sent away, that there had arrived a most
important telegram (that is, Dalton had SAID it had arrived) ordering
him back to London on business of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE. So urgent were
the summons that he was forced to leave at once--so he explained to the
manager of the hotel--and as madame wished to avoid the night journey
by way of Ostend--the channel being almost always rough, even in summer,
and she easily disturbed--he had decided to take the shorter and more
comfortable route, and would the urbane and obliging gentleman please
secure two tickets to London by way of Calais and Dover? This would give
them a day in Paris at the house of a friend, and the next morning would
see them safely landed in London, in ample time for the business in
question.
The pins can be dispensed with now; so can the pencil and so can any
special entries. Henceforth life for these two exiles was to be one long
toboggan slide, with every post they passed marking a lower level. The
sled with its occupants made no stop at Paris nor did it go by way of
Calais nor did it reach Dover. It swooped on down to Havre, the steamer
sailing an hour after the train arrived, crossed the ocean at full
speed, and dumped its two passengers one hot August night in front of a
cheap and inconspicuous hotel on the East Side, New York, where Mr. and
Mrs. Stanton, from Toronto, Canada, would he at home, should anybody
call--which, it is quite safe to say, nobody ever did.
No, nothing of all this did the heart-broken woman tell the tender old
nurse, who had carried her in her arms many a night, and who was now
willing to sacrifice everything she possessed to give her mistress one
hour of peace.
Nor did she tell of the shock which she, a woman of quality, had
received when she entered the two cheaply furnished rooms, her only
shelter for months, and which, to a woman accustomed from babyhood to
a luxurious home and the care of attentive and loyal servants, had
affected her more keenly than anything that had yet happened.
Neither did she confide into the willing ears of the sympathetic
woman the details of her gradual awakening from Dalton's spell as his
irritability, cowardice, and selfishness became more and more apparent.
Nor yet of her growing anxiety as their resources declined; an anxiety
which had so weighed upon her mind that she could neither sleep nor
rest, despite his continued promises of daily remittances that never
came and his rose-colored schemes for raising money which never
materialized.
Neither did she uncover the secret places of her own heart, and tell the
old nurse of the fight she had made in those earlier days when she had
faced the situation without flinching; nor of her stubborn determination
to still fight on to the end. She had even at one time sought to defend
him against herself. All men had their weaknesses, she had reasoned;
Guy had his. Moreover, the crash had been none of his doing. He had been
deceived by false reports instigated by his enemies, including her own
father-in-law and--yes, her husband as well, who could have avoided
the catastrophe had he followed Guy's advice, and persuaded Sir Carroll
O'Day to hold on to his shares. How, then, could she desert him, poor as
he was and with the world against him? She had been untrue to everything
else. Could she not redeem herself by being at least true to her sin?
What she did tell Martha, and there was the old ring in her voice as she
spoke, was of her refusal to yield to Dalton's presistent entreaties
to write to her father for sufficient money to start him in a new
enterprise which, with “even his limited means”--thus ran the letter
she was to copy and sign--“was already exceeding his most sanguine
expectations, and which, with a few thousand pounds of additional
capital, would yield enormous returns.” And she might have added that
so emphatic had been her refusal that, for the first time in all their
intercourse, Dalton's eyes had been opened to something he had never
realized in her before, the quality of the blood that runs in some
Englishwomen's veins--this time the blood of the Carnavons, who for two
centuries had been noted for their indomitable will.
Her defiance had seemed all the more remarkable to him because as he
well knew their combined resources were dwindling. She had, in fact,
only a few finger-rings left, together with some cheap trinkets; among
them a pair of sleeve-buttons then in her cuff's, a pair which she had
given Felix and which she found in her jewel-box the day after she left
him, and which she had determined to return until she realized how small
was their value.
The rest of her sad story came by fits and starts.
With her head on Martha's shoulder she told of the horror of that rainy
April night when, with agonized hands against her hot cheeks, she had
heard him stumbling up the narrow stairs staggering drunk, lunging
through the door, and falling headlong at her feet. Of the deadly fear
born in her, for the first time in her life, she, helpless and alone,
without a human being to whom she could appeal, not daring to disclose
her own identity lest graver results might follow; he, prostrate before
her, naked to his inmost bone, with all his perfidy exposed. Of his
cursing her conscientious scruples and family pride, her milk-and-water
principles, demanding again that she should write her father and that
very night, ending his entreaties with a blow of his fiat hand on her
cheek which sent her reeling toward her narrow bed.
She had watched her chance, caught up her hat and cloak, and had slipped
down-stairs, avoiding the crowd about the side-door, and had then fled
as if for her life, to be found an hour later by an expressman's wife,
who had put her to bed with a kindness and tenderness she had not known
since she left her husband's roof.
Then there had followed a long, weary day's search for work, ending at
last in defeat when, disheartened and footsore, she had dragged herself
once more up the hotel stairs, with another tightening of her resolution
to fight it out to the end.
Greatly to her surprise, Dalton had received her with marked politeness.
He had begged her forgiveness, pleading that his nerves had been upset
by his financial troubles. With his arm around her, he had told her how
young and pretty she still was, and how sad it made him when he thought
he had ruined her life and brought her all these weary miles from home,
his contrition being apparently so genuine, that she had determined to
trust him once more, and would have told him so had she not gone into
her room to change her dress, only to find that he had pawned the few
remaining trinkets and articles of wearing-apparel she possessed, in
order to try his luck in a neighboring pool-room.
She had realized, then, where she stood. There was but one thing for
her to do and that was to hunt again for work. She had been an expert
needlewoman in her better days and this knowledge might earn her their
board.
With this in her mind, she had consulted a woman, living on the floor
above, who had often spoken to her when they passed each other on the
stairs, and who was employed in a department store on 14th Street
near Broadway, the result being that Stiger & Company had given “Mrs.
Stanton” a place in the repair shop, her wages being equal to her own
and Dalton's board. This had continued all through the summer, her
earnings keeping the roof over their heads, Dalton leaving her for
days at a time, his invariable excuse for his absence being that he was
“trying to get employment.”
Finally--and again her eyes burned, and the color mounted to her hot
cheeks as she reached this part of her story--there had come that last
awful, unforgettable December night.
She had come home from work and had put on a thin silk wrapper, too well
worn for pawning, when the door of their little sitting-room was opened
and Dalton entered, bringing two men with him. One of them kept his hat
on as he talked, the other slouched his from his head after he had taken
a seat and had had a chance to look her over. The three had come upon
her suddenly, and she, realizing her dishabille, had risen hastily,
excusing herself, when Dalton, who was half tipsy, stepped between her
and her bedroom door.
“No, you'll stay here,” he had cried; “you're prettier as you are. I
never saw you so fetching. Don't mind them, they're friends of mine.
We've ordered up something to drink.”
She had stood trembling, looking from one to the other, her heart
hammering wildly. No man had ever addressed her with such insolence and
before such company. What she feared was that something would snap in
her and she fall fainting to the floor.
“I will change my dress,” she had answered firmly, speaking slowly to
hide her terror. She was Lord Carnavon's daughter now.
“No, I tell you, Barbara--I--”
There was something in her eyes that told him he had reached the limit
of her forbearance. Beyond that there was danger.
She had glided past him, shut and locked her bedroom door, struggled
with bungling fingers into her walking-dress, pinned on her hat, thrown
an old silk waterproof around her shoulders, had slid back the bolt of
her chamber opening into the hall, crept down the steps, and fled.
Ten minutes later Martha's arms were about her, and she sobbing on her
old nurse's shoulder.