SQUIRE HERITAGE HAS A BAD ATTACK.
On the morning after the attempted murder and the rescue of Josh
Heckett in Hyde Park, Mrs. Heritage rose early and came downstairs.
She had not slept all night, and she was thoroughly miserable. Her
husband had been up in town several days, and she had never had a line
from him.
She invented a story to tell her mother and Gertie when they asked
where the squire was; but she was terribly distressed by his
extraordinary conduct, and his cruelty in leaving her without any news
of him.
She was terrified lest there was something in the old life which he had
kept from her and which was now troubling him. A thousand nameless
fears floated across her brain and caused her the most terrible mental
torture.
She remembered his wild youth, their long separation, and the tales
that she had heard from time to time. But their married life hitherto
had given the lie to calumny. He had been a tender and devoted husband,
and there had been nothing to show that he had anything to trouble him,
save those occasional fits of depression which he assured her were
constitutional.
Suddenly all had changed. He had broken out fiercely, spoken cruelly to
her, and gone away without giving her the slightest clue to his
whereabouts.
What could it mean?
This morning she went into the breakfast-room to feed her birds—to do
anything to divert her mind from painful thoughts—and there she found
her husband.
He must have come back by the first train and entered the house
directly the servants were up, for she had heard no bell ring.
When she entered the room he was sitting by the fire, his head bent
down and his hands clasped.
He raised his head at the sound of her approach, and she started back
and gave a little cry of terror.
His face was ashy white, his eyes were bloodshot, and a strange hunted
look in them that she had never seen before.
‘Edward!’ she cried, running to him and falling on her knees beside
him—‘Edward, you are ill!’
He raised her gently.
‘No, Ruth,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing. Don’t make a fuss, there’s a good
girl. Give me the brandy out of the cellaret.’
Ruth took her keys from the little basket she carried, and gave him the
brandy.
He half filled a glass and swallowed it at a draught.
‘I’m better now,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me any questions, there’s a good
girl. I’m going to bed for an hour or two. I shall be all right
directly.’
He seemed to avoid her gaze. He wanted to get away from her, and, with
a woman’s quick instinct, she saw it. She let him go, and then she fell
on her knees, and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she sobbed out
a prayer to God to watch over and protect her husband, and to let no
black shadows come to mar their lives—lives that had been so happy
until now.
The squire came down to luncheon, but he was still white and restless.
He answered Gertie and his wife haphazard, and evidently did not know
what he said.
That afternoon, for the first time in their married life, Ruth saw her
husband drunk. He had stupified himself with brandy, and had fallen
into a drunken sleep.
She had gone to him in his study to ask him a question, and there she
found him dozing fitfully, with the empty bottle by his side.
He heard her footsteps, but did not recognize her. Without opening his
eyes, he addressed her as though she was some one else.
He cursed her and called her horrible names. Then suddenly he leapt up,
his bloodshot eyes starting from his head, and struggled with an
imaginary foe.
‘It’s your own fault, curse you!’ he cried. ‘Drown, like the dog that
you are!’ Then he fell back heavily into his chair, and Ruth, alarmed,
rushed out and called for help.
He was in a fit.
The doctor came, and was astonished. ‘The brain is affected,’ he said.
‘Some terrible shock has unnerved him. He must be kept quite quiet and
watched.’
That night Ruth sat and watched by the bedside of a delirious husband.
And in his delirium the horrible secrets of his life were told. Secrets
so horrible, things so vile and unholy, that the woman who bore his
name raised her despairing eyes to heaven, and cried to God
passionately to close the madman’s self-condemning lips.
It was a fortnight before the squire came round again, and then he was
the wreck of his former self.
Weak and ill, he would wander about in the air for an hour or two a
day, leaning on his wife’s arm, and uttering never a sound.
Ruth, too, had changed. Her beautiful face was deeply lined, and her
eyes were sunken. ‘She’s fretting about the master,’ said the servants.
They did not know that she was crushing down in her heart the ghastly
secret that chance had revealed to her.
Under that awful knowledge, slowly but surely her heart was breaking.
And yet knowing all—having heard every awful word that had fallen from
this man in his delirium—she loved him still, loved him as fondly as
ever, and would have laid down her life to save him from one moment’s
pain.
Slowly the squire mended. He grew less feeble, and could get about
alone again. He seemed like a man recovering from a terrible dream. But
the doctors were very careful with him. They had heard a good deal that
he had said, and put it down to some terrible story in a book or a
newspaper having made a great impression on him when he was in a low,
nervous state. So he was forbidden on any account to see a paper yet
and none were brought into the house. He was glad of the prohibition.
Had he seen a newspaper, the first thing he would have done would have
been to search for a paragraph among the old ones in which there was
something about the dead body of an old man being found in the
Serpentine.