A VOYAGE OF UNKNOWN LENGTH
There will always be a certain number of respectable, but inexperienced
and unattractive men whose wives will prefer others more attractive
than their husbands, even to the point of infidelity. The wronged
husband, who is often not destitute of embryonic manliness, inquires
what he is to do, when he is true and his wife is false?
“Look you, stranger! There is only one thing to do. You must shoot!”
Mr. Budlong did not seem any more like a withered De Flournoy in the
pursuit of the fugitives. He was strangely alert, keen, skilful in
seizing every clew, but totally indifferent to all other interests. In
their long and dismal journeys by day and night, he and Ira Waddy sat
side by side; stern, self-possessed, silent save on one single topic,
and on that speaking only rarely and of necessity. Travellers for
autumn pleasure, travellers returning gaily from gay summerings, saw
these two grave, iron men, and were awed by their look of inflexible,
deadly purpose. There was a watchful meaning in all their actions.
Their monosyllables with each other struck like thrusts of a dagger.
At Providence, the fugitives had disappeared. There are many honest
couples journeying at that season, and it was impossible to distinguish
the dishonest one. Then, too, Belden’s dangerous facility of
handwriting made the various names they assumed unrecognisable. He took
this precaution before he was aware of pursuit. He became aware of it
only by a chance. It was at one of the great railroad centres, where
lines of rail interlace each other like a network of nerves. The train
with Belden and his companion was just quickening on to speed when a
coming train rumbled slowly into the station. Belden was looking from
a window and divined why these stern men were leashed together. He saw
them and they him: it was a view of a moment and roused them afresh to
retrace their steps in unflagging pursuit.
Belden grew very shaky after this. Fear is a terribly wearing thing.
With prostration of his morale, physical feebleness began also to come.
He felt the consequences of his exhausting life. His hand trembled.
You would not have bet upon his snuffing a candle with the pistol
he carried. In fact, you would have thought it quite unsafe that he
should have a pistol. He might shoot a bystander or himself, as well
as an assailant. He played too much with that weapon with his nervous,
trembling fingers.
It was very soon discovered between him and his partner that their
flight was not a necessity of passion. Each had made a convenience of
the other, and it was not long before they knew it with mutual disgust.
The _intriguante_, to give her the benefit of all euphemism, found
out what a ruined villain she had hired for an escort: and she, in
revenge, made him understand her own good reasons for absence before
exposure. No very pleasant feeling, then, between this pair--certainly
not love--passion exhausted--contempt, disgust, hatred growing--only
between them the cohesion of guilt, and now of common terror. Chasing
him was the punishment of his last and of his first villainy and most
he dreaded the older vengeance of the younger man--that had a black,
looming weight of long accumulation, and if it fell upon him, would
fall with the vigorous force of youth. Chasing her was love changed,
as she thought, to hate; trust to contempt; faith outraged; pride
shattered; a man bitterly pursuing a woman who had been false to him;
a worthy husband, an unworthy wife: and besides this, the companion of
this pursuit was the person whom she would least wish to encounter as
the representative of that public scorn she had desperately fled to
escape. All this stole the bloom and freshness from the cheeks of the
late wife of Mr. Budlong; her flourishing days were past; her withering
days had come; and, alas! for her there would be no second spring to
follow winter.
Flight is fleet by night and day. Ways of dashing speed traverse half
the continent. Flight is independent and baffling with labyrinthine
choices. Pursuit must slowly seize its clew and follow cautiously.
In the early confidences of their departure, Belden had learnt the
extent of his partner’s resources--the twenty-three thousand dollars,
profits of Mr. Budlong’s summer toils.
“A neat capital,” thought Belden, “for a new country. When I get hold
of it, I’ll let her slide, and after this blows over, I can buy back
into society.”
So he made for the West, hiding his trail and covering his campfires.
But a coward dread permanently overcame him, and he often felt with
trembling fingers for his pistol and started when coachmen pointed at
him with threatening whips of would-be invitation, or hotel clerks
asked his name.
All penal laws are founded upon vengeance. The passion of revenge is
necessary for protection. But it is ugly, like the crimes and wrongs
that awake it. Mr. Waddy, sternly intent upon the punishment of a
scoundrel, whom society could not fully punish, repelled all softer
thoughts. He concentrated the whole ire of his nature on this one
object. He would not think tenderly of his old love, perhaps still
his faithful love. He forgave her for the wrong of his exile, for
her imagined falseness: it was inevitable. But what she had become;
whether she still remembered him with loving bitterness, with sorrowful
despair of disappointed love like his own--this he knew not, would not
think of. He would not perplex himself with tender uncertainties.
“Vengeance, vengeance,” said his fifteen dreary years. But would she,
if she still remembered him kindly, receive him to the old friendship
if he came with blood on his hands? He swept away the thought; he saw
before him a duty to society.
On, on, silent pair! wronged husband, wronged lover. On, deadly
thoughts! voiceless purposes! Fate goes with you and Vengeance and
Death!
* * * * *
An ugly muddy ditch, the Mississippi, divides our continent with its
perpendicular line of utility. It is not a stream that one used to
vivifying seaside waters, or the clear sparkle of New England brooks,
would wish to drown in, if drowning was his choice.
The vehicles that run upon this muddy pathway are worthy of its
ugliness. At night, majestical moving illuminations, by day they
are structures of many-tiered deformity. One of these monsters, a
favourite, _Spitfire No. 5_, was to start one sultry afternoon of
this same September for up the river. _Spitfire No. 5_ wore over her
pilot-house the gilded elk-horns of victory; all the passengers were
sure of being speedily borne to their destination.
As the boat backed out into the stream and hung there a moment
motionless, two men, who had been a little belated in searching for
someone they wished to find at the different hotels, pushed off in a
row-boat and overtook the steamer. The strong current drifted them out
of their course and they boarded the boat unobserved, on her starboard
side, away from the town.
Mr. Saunders and his lady, a handsome but rather faded person, had
remained in their stateroom until the _Spitfire_ was fairly out in the
stream. The rail was not yet put up at the forward gangway, and Mr.
Saunders stood there, looking at the crowded levee and its hundred
monster steamboats, including _Spitfires_ from 1 to 10. He was in a
moment’s pause between two journeys. One long journey was over; another
was about to begin. How long he could not say; voyages on Mississippi
steamboats may be short, may be lingering. All voyages are uncertain.
Fatal accidents often happen. Mr. Saunders, so he entered his name on
the books, was just beginning a journey of unknown length.
A greenish gardener from near Boston, emigrating to Iowa, who thought
he had seen Mr. Saunders somewhere before, was a little frightened at
that gentleman’s brutal reply to an innocent question, and observing
him nervously fingering at something like a cocked pistol in his breast
pocket, shrank back.
“A border ruffian,--perhaps Atchison or Titus,” he said to himself, and
thanked his stars for his fortunate escape.
The two belated passengers had tumbled in astern and now came forward,
with carpet-bag in hand, to ascend the staircase to the saloon. As they
passed the gangway, still open, the man with the cocked pistol turned,
and they met face to face.
They dropped their luggage and stepped toward him. But he was too quick
for them. The nervous, trembling fingers clutched at the cocked pistol;
there was a report; he staggered back with his hand at his breast and
fell through the open gangway. The great wheel smote upon the muddy
current and tossed up carelessly in the turbid foam behind a dead man,
with forehead mangled by a paddle-stroke--a dead man, going on a voyage
of unknown length along the busy river.
Among the people who rushed aft at the cry of horror that arose was the
woman registered as the lady of Mr. Saunders. She saw the body come
whirling slowly by and lazily drown away. She sank upon a seat, and was
there still in stony, speechless dread, when she felt a hand laid not
unkindly on her shoulder.
“Betty, we meant to kill him,” said Mr. Budlong; “perhaps it would have
been murder. We were spared the final crime. I’m sorry for you, Betty,
and forgive you from my heart,” and the poor old gentleman, worn out,
heartbroken, his life no longer sustained by the tense vigour of a
single purpose--poor old Bud drooped and fell blasted, a paralytic, at
the feet of his unfaithful wife.