THE FORSAKEN WIFE'S STORY
Having given her last instructions, Miss Meeke returned to the drawing
room, where she found the new guest, extended at length on the blue,
velvet sofa, with her chubby hands clasped under her head on one end and
her stoutly booted feet elevated on the other. She was fast asleep and
snoring sonorously.
Wynnette and Elva were standing gazing on her, with their faces full of
guilty fear.
"What is the matter here?" inquired the governess.
"Oh, Miss Meeke," exclaimed Wynnette, "I'm afraid she's half seas over! I
mean--I mean----"
"Elva, do you tell me what is all this--if you know," said the governess,
seeing that Wynnette had broken down in her attempt to explain.
"Oh, Miss Meeke," said Elva, taking up the thread of the discourse, "when
we finished playing the duet, she there on the sofa asked for a glass of
wine, and Wynnette and I went ourselves to get it for her, and we went
into the dining room, where the beautiful wedding table is set out and all
the wines in cut-glass decanters on the sideboard. And--and--I am
afraid--I know--we made a mistake and poured out a claret glass full of
cognac brandy and brought it to her."
"And did she drink it?"
"Every drop! And she said it was proof brandy, and worth a bottle of
common stuff! And then she talked a good deal, and then she lay down on
the sofa, and went to sleep."
"I am very sorry. My dears, you should never meddle with the decanters.
You should have called Jacob, who would have known what to bring."
"But Jake was not in reach. He was away down in the stable yard, talking
to a crowd of grooms and other men and boys. I saw him through the back
windows, and I knew he was telling them all about what happened in the
church. Oh, Miss Meeke, do you think she will die? Oh, just hear how she
snores! Will she wake up in fits?" cried Elva, in fright.
"No, my dear," said the governess, looking attentively upon the woman.
"No; don't be alarmed. I think her condition is as much the effect of
reaction from fatigue and excitement as of the brandy. Besides, she is
wearing a tight dress, and lying in a cramped position, all of which
obstructs her breathing. We must wake her up."
But at this moment Mr. Force and Leonidas came in, talking eagerly, and
their abrupt entrance startled the woman out of her slumber. She sat up,
rubbed her eyes, yawned loudly, asked where she was, and expressed a
suspicion that she had been asleep.
Wynnette gave her Mrs. Force's bottle of sal ammonia that stood, by
chance, on the sofa table.
Elva ran out and brought a glass of ice water.
She sniffed the salts strongly, with an:
"Ah! Ah-h! That's the sort!"
She drank the water audibly, and handed back the goblet, with a loudly
drawn breath and an:
"Ah! Ah-h! Lord, Lord, what a day this has been!"
"I hope you have rested, ma'am," said Mr. Force, politely.
"Oh, yes; I'm all right now, thanky'! Where's your old 'oman and the gal?
I hope they have taken no harm from that there rumpus?"
"None whatever. Mrs. Force will be down in a few moments."
The lady entered the room while he was speaking.
She still wore the rich purple velvet dress that she had put on for the
wedding. In fact, no one had made any change in their costumes, except to
lay off bonnets, wraps and gloves.
Dinner was now announced.
Mr. Force gave the stranger his arm, and led the way to the dining room,
followed by the other members of the party.
As the dinner went on, each member of the family felt more and more wonder
that Col. Anglesea should ever have thought of marrying the woman who
claimed him. Handsome, good-humored and sensible she certainly was;
but--she talked and laughed loudly, called the master and mistress of the
house the old man and the old 'oman; loudly praised the dishes she
preferred, asking to be helped to them three or four times; ate with her
knife, dipping the same knife into the saltcellar or the butter dish; and,
indeed, she shocked good taste in many ways.
How, indeed, could Angus Anglesea ever have married such a woman?
It was not until after tea, when the family party were assembled in the
drawing room, and Mrs. Force had sent away the two little girls, in charge
of their governess, that the story of that marriage was told.
There were present Mr. and Mrs. Force, Leonidas and Mrs. Anglesea.
They were gathered around the open grate, where a glowing fire of sea coal
burned.
"Yes," said the woman, putting her feet upon the low, brass fender and
drawing up the edge of her dress, to toast her ankles, "this is just as
good a time to tell you all about it as any other, now that the young uns
are gone to roost. I hate to talk about the wickedness of the world before
the young uns; they will find it out quick enough for themselves, poor
things! Well, you want to know what in the name o' sense ever possessed me
to marry that beat, don't you?" she inquired of Mrs. Force.
It was not exactly the way in which the lady had put the question of the
marriage to herself, but she bowed her head in assent.
"Well, then, my late husband, Zeb Wright, made a big fortune in the mines.
Him and me was one of the very first that went out to the diggings. And he
made his big pile by real hard hand work--and by none o' your blasting and
crushing and lifting machines and things.
"And the year he died he had put away a hundred and twenty-three thousand,
four hundred and fifty dollars in the Californy Miners' Saving Bank.
"And we might 'a' retired on that, but we was still in the prime o' life,
nyther of us forty years old then--and I'm not now--and so he said we
could go on for another ten year and make another hundred thousand, and
then go back to the East and live offen it in grand style.
"But, Lord! who can tell what a day may bring forth, let alone ten year?
One autumn day he came home to me, in our shanty at Wild Cats' Gulch, with
a hard chill, and in two hours, just as the turn of the cold fit into the
hot one, he had a little spasm and went right off.
"Well, I was all alone, having of no child'en. But the boys they was very
good to me, and seen to the funeral and all that. And, after it was all
over, I stayed on in the shanty, partly because I hated to leave it, and
partly because the equinoctial storms had ris' the rivers and carried away
the bridges, and made the travel between Wild Cats and St. Sebastian awful
hard and risky.
"In that first year of my widdyhood, I had a heap of offers from one and
another of the boys, for there wa'n't many wimmin there; but I snubbed 'em
all.
"It wasn't till the next summer that I went to St. Sebastian to see about
drawing out my money, or a part of it, to go East.
"Well, there at the Hidalgo Inn, I met with Col. Anglesea, and sorter got
acquainted long of him. He had been out on the plains with a lot of
English officers, a-hunting of the buffalo, or pretending to do it, and
now he was on his way home, so he said--gwine to sail from 'Frisco to
York, and then to Liverpool. He said as he had inwested half a million o'
money in Californy. Lord sakes, how that man lied!
"Then, like a plagued fool as I was, with nobody to advise me--don't tell
me about wimmen having any sense! They always get coaxed, or swindled, or
scared out o' their money!--I goes and tells that blamed beat and cheat
about my hundred and twenty-three thousand four hundred and fifty dollars,
and asks his opinion how I ought to inwest it.
"And he tells me cock-and-bull stories about companies, and shares, and
per cents. and things that I knew nothing about. And he wanted me to give
him the money to inwest for me, and save me the trouble and 'noyance.
"But I wasn't quite such a donkey as that, nyther! I just wouldn't trust
him with a dollar! No more would I sign any paper that he brought me. No,
not one! Yet I did like the insiniwating creetur' to such an extent, even
then, that I couldn't bear to hurt his feelings by seeming to distrust
him, and so I always made some excuse for not doing what he recommended.
"After that he changed his course and began to make love to me! Lord, how
that man could make love! Ask that gal of your'n! I reckon she could tell
you!
"Well, I don't know how it was to this day! I must 'a' been bewitched! But
I was such a cornsarned fool that I went and married him! And two weeks
after that he levanted, with all my money! Leastways, all to a trifle of
about twenty dollars, which I had about me in my room, and which just was
enough to take me back to Wild Cats' Gulch. And, if ever you did see a
chop-fallen cuss going home, that was me! The hotel people had even kept
my boxes for my board!
"Oh, but the boys was mad when they heard all about it! They was 'most as
mad with me for being such a fool as they was with him for robbing me. But
they put me up to following of him, telling me if any one could run a man
to earth, it would be an injured woman. And they put up a pile for me, and
took my boxes out of quod, at the Hidalgo, and started me on my way to
'Frisco, for I knowed he had made for that port.
"And there I found out he had sailed in the _Eglea_ for New Orleans, and I
took the first steamer to that port. There I learned that he had stopped
at the St. Charles Hotel for a few days, and had then gone to Savannah.
Lord, what a chase I had! From Savannah to Mobile; from Mobile to Havana;
from Havana back to St. Francisco. And there I heard that he had sailed
for Baltimore!
"Well, I took passage on the _Blue Bird_, bound for Baltimore. There I
made the acquaintance of young Roland Bayard, the third mate, who was very
good to me. Well, we got to be such good friends that at last, one day, I
up and told him all my troubles. And when he heard the name of my rascally
husband:
"'Anglesea,' says he--'Angus Anglesea!' says he. 'Why, that's the man who
is staying with a neighbor of ours down in Maryland. My old aunt wrote to
me about him in the very last letter, which met me at 'Frisco.'
"And he took the letter out of his pocket and gave it to me to read, and,
sure as a gun, it was my fine colonel as the old aunty was writing about!
And I said to the young man as I must have been put on a false scent to be
running about among Southern ports, when he had gone North. And he said
there was no doubt in the world that the man himself had put me on the
false scent.
"Whether or no that was so, I thought it was very providential I had fell
in long o' this young mate, and we got to be fast friends. And we laid a
plot that we should say nothing about it, and he would take me to his
aunty's, and I should go by the name of my first husband, Wright, and lay
low and say nothing, for fear my colonel should find me out and run away
again before I could nab him.
"Well, we reached Baltimore early in this month, you know, and young
Bayard got leave and came home, fetching me along of him. And the fust
news as we heard when we got here was as my fine gentleman was gwine to be
married to a fine heiress.
"But Roland and I, we winked at each other, and never let on to a single
soul as I was the colonel's lawful wife. We thought we'd just have lots of
fun out of the game, anyways, and wait till the wedding day, when all the
people should be in the church, and then--in the midst of his
triumph--pull him down and disgrace him before all the world.
"Lord, we didn't mean to wait for the last minnit, when the ceremony was
over, but to stop it at the very beginning, where the parson asks, 'if any
one knows just cause,' you know. But that consarned beast of an old mule
of Miss Sibby's wouldn't make time. There, that's all!"
At this moment a note was brought in and handed to Mrs. Force.
She opened it, and read:
"Notwithstanding all seeming proof, I solemnly swear to you that I
never was married to the woman Wright; that I was free to contract
matrimony when I married your daughter, and that she is my lawful wife.
I must see you alone, when I will prove this to your satisfaction.
A. A."