AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
The sun had long since gone down, and darkness was rapidly settling over
the country, as Geoffrey pursued his way, grateful indeed that he had
such good news to take back to Jack, but well-nigh discouraged on his
own account.
It had been agreed that he should learn all he could about Henly’s old
home, and where Margery was buried, and that Jack should himself revisit
the place after nightfall, upon his return, since he did not dare to
make his appearance there by daylight.
The road to the town lay through a heavy growth of timber, and, as
Geoffrey came into it, the darkness was so intensified that at first he
could hardly distinguish the way, when, suddenly, his horse gave a
startled snort and shied one side, nearly throwing his rider from the
saddle.
“Gently, gently, sir,” he said, reassuringly, as he quickly recovered
himself. “What is the trouble, my boy?”
He glanced searchingly about him, and saw a muffled figure sitting upon
a rock under the shadow of a great tree.
Geoffrey’s hand instinctively caught the handle of the revolver that he
always carried when traveling, and then he rode directly up to the
figure.
“Who are you?” he demanded, “and why are you sitting here alone in the
darkness?”
“Do not fear, sir,” responded a quiet, honest voice. “I am only a woman
on my way home from town, and sat down here to rest for a moment.”
“I beg your pardon, madame, for accosting you as I did,” Geoffrey
returned, apologetically, “but I confess I was startled, as well as my
horse, for a moment. Are you not afraid to be traveling this lonely way
at this time of the evening?”
“No, sir, I am not afraid. I know every step of the road, but I am not
so young as I was once, and it tires me to walk,” the woman replied,
with a weary note in her voice, accompanied by a heavy sigh.
“Have you far to go?” the young man asked.
“No, only to the second house from here—to Farmer Bruce’s.”
“Ah! You are going to Mr. Bruce’s. I have just come from there. I will
turn about and see you safely to the house; or, if you could manage to
sit on a man’s saddle, you shall ride, and I will lead my horse,”
Geoffrey said, kindly; for now that he had been accustomed to the dim
light he could discern that the woman looked worn and weary, and his
sympathies were enlisted for her.
“No, no; thank you, sir, I will not trouble you,” the woman returned.
“But tell me,” she continued, rising and coming toward his side, “is
Farmer Bruce still alive? Is the family well?”
Something in her anxious tone and her agitated manner, as well as these
questions, sent a sudden thrill through the young man’s heart.
He bent and looked searchingly into her face, which was upraised to his.
“Yes, Farmer Bruce is living. You said you were on your way home. Do you
belong to the family?” he asked.
“No—I—I used to live near them; I have come for a visit,” was the
confused reply.
Geoffrey bent still nearer to her, when the woman suddenly uttered a
startled cry, and laid her hand upon his arm.
“Oh, sir! who are you?” she cried. “I am sure you must be Master
Geoffrey. You are so like your father. I should know you anywhere, and I
never could forget the boy I loved. You are Geoffrey, aren’t you? and
don’t you remember—Margery?”
She ended with a sob, and her hold tightened on his arm as if she feared
to lose him.
Geoffrey had half-suspected her identity when she had inquired so
eagerly about Farmer Bruce; but it was a shock to him, nevertheless, to
find his suspicions thus verified, and he felt that, if he should never
learn anything more definite regarding his father, he should feel more
than repaid for his journey hither, just to have found Jack and Margery,
seen them restored to each other, and the shadow removed from their
lives.
He seized the trembling hand that lay upon his arm, and shook it
heartily.
“Yes, I am Geoffrey, and I do remember Margery,” he said, in a glad,
earnest tone.
The poor, long-suffering, wandering creature dropped her head against
his horse’s neck, and burst into a passion of tears.
“Heaven bless you, Master Geoffrey, for owning it at last—my heart’s
been well-nigh crushed since you denied it, and ran away from me in New
York,” she said, brokenly, between her sobs.
“Denied it, and ran away from you in New York!” repeated the young man,
astonished.
“Yes, sir; sure you haven’t forgotten that day when you bought the roses
of me, and I asked you if you wasn’t Geoffrey Dale? You told me no—your
name was Everet, and you didn’t know anything about Jack, nor about any
of the other things I talked of.”
A light broke upon Geoffrey’s mind.
She had seen Everet Mapleson, and made a very natural mistake; she had
believed him to be the child she had loved and cared for, and it was no
wonder she was pained by his refusal to recognize her.
“I never bought any roses of you in New York, Margery,” he said, kindly.
“I have never seen you until now since I was a small boy of five years.”
The woman looked up at him amazed.
Geoffrey smiled frankly into her upturned face.
“The young man whom you met was a Mr. Everet Mapleson; we were in
college together, and we look so much alike that we are often mistaken
for each other,” he explained.
“Ah! dearie, my heart is lighter now you’ve told me this,” Margery said,
with a long-drawn sigh. “I was cruelly hurt when I thought you wouldn’t
own me, and I was so sure, too, that you could tell me something about
Jack—can’t you tell me where he is? Where, where have you been all these
years, Master Geoffrey. Ah, I feared that cruel blow that Jack gave you
had killed you, and I’d never see you again; but poor man! he’d never
have lifted his hand against you if he’d been himself. Heaven pity him!
wherever he is, if he’s living at all.”
She had rambled on in this disconnected way without even waiting for a
reply to any of her questions, and Geoffrey felt the tears rise to his
eyes, as he realized something of the burden that lay so heavy on her
heart, and had made the long, long years so dreary and oppressive to
her.
He dismounted from his horse, and taking her by the arm, said, gently:
“Come back to the rock, Margery, where you were sitting, and I will tell
you all you wish to know. It is a long story, and you will be weary with
standing.”
She looked up appealingly.
“One word, Master Geoffrey. Jack——”
Her trembling lips refused to utter another word, and the young man
thought he might as well tell her at once about her husband and set her
heart at rest.
“Jack is living and well, and—within a mile of you at this very moment,”
he said, in a cheerful tone.
“Oh, dearie! Heaven reward you for those blessed words,” Margery
murmured; then her head sank upon her breast, and, tottering weakly
forward, she dropped upon the rock where Geoffrey had first seen her,
and fell to sobbing like a tired child.
Geoffrey waited until she had grown somewhat calmer, and then told her,
as briefly as he could, something of his own and Jack’s history during
the last eighteen years.
She never interrupted him during the recital, but seemed to drink in
every word, as one perishing from thirst would drink in pure,
life-giving water.
When at last he had told her all, she lifted her face, and, while she
wiped the streaming tears from her eyes, she exclaimed:
“Ah! Master Geoffrey, I feel almost as if I was drawing nigh to heaven,
after all the waiting, the wandering, the loneliness, and misery, to
find my Jack again, and know that he has been true to his love for me
all the time. Poor fellow! his fate has been harder than mine, after
all, for he’s had to carry a burden of guilt with him; but it is all
over now, thank Heaven! You will take me straight to him?” she
concluded, eagerly.
“Of course I will,” Geoffrey replied, heartily, “he is waiting at the
public house in the town for me; waiting for me to come and tell him
about his old home, from which he fled so many years ago, and about a
certain grave, which he has imagined has lain lonely and neglected all
that time, and which he was to go to visit, under cover of the darkness,
upon my return.”
“Poor man! poor man!” sobbed Margery, all unmindful of her own long
suffering, in her sympathy for her erring husband, “but, praise the
Lord, there’s no grave for him to weep over, and he can walk the earth
once more and fear no man.”
She arose and drew her cloak about her preparatory to going back to the
town with her companion.
Geoffrey insisted that she should ride, while he walked beside her and
guided the horse.
He saw that she was very weary, as well as weak, from her recent
agitation, and not fit to walk the long distance.
She demurred at first, but he would listen to no objections, and she
permitted him to put her into the saddle, and then they started on their
way.
Geoffrey questioned her about her life during the past eighteen years,
and he marveled, as he listened to her story, at the woman’s unwavering
devotion and love for the man whose hand so nearly deprived her of life.
She told him, as Mr. Bruce had already done, that, as soon as she was
able, she had sold off all her household goods and the farm-stock, and
realized over a thousand dollars. She deposited all but enough for her
immediate needs in a bank of San Francisco, where she already had some
money laid by, and instructed a lawyer there to use it as a reward for
the discovery of her husband.
She then began her own tiresome pilgrimage to search for him herself.
She roved from one large city to another, stopping some time in each,
now taking in washing and ironing to support herself and earn money to
continue her search in the next place where she should go; going out as
a servant in other places, or selling flowers or confectionery upon the
corners of the streets for the same purpose, while she eagerly scanned
every face she saw in the hope of somewhere and sometime coming across
either Jack or the boy; she had never believed, as others did, that the
latter was dead. She felt sure that Jack must have discovered some sign
of life about him, and taken him away with the hope of having him
restored.
In this way she had visited every large city in the United States. She
had been in different mining districts also, thinking that perhaps her
husband might have gone back to his old business, hoping thus to hide
himself more securely. She had even been in Canada and other British
provinces, but had never met with the least encouragement in her search,
until that day when she had seen Everet Mapleson in New York and
believed him to be Geoffrey. Her disappointment and grief, at his
persistent denial of all knowledge of her, had actually prostrated her
for the first time during all her tireless search, and she had not been
able to leave her bed for several weeks, which accounts for young
Mapleson’s inability to find her.
At length, during the last few months, she had relinquished all hope;
but an insatiable longing seized her to visit her old home once more,
and the kind family who had befriended her in the hour of her sore need.
After that, she meant to draw her money from the bank in San Francisco,
and with it purchase a right in some home for the aged, where she could
peacefully spend the remainder of her life.
The woman was not old, being only about forty-five years of age, but her
sorrow and the laborious existence she had led had aged her far more
than even another decade could have done.
She could tell Geoffrey nothing more regarding the identity of his
father than he already knew. She had never seen him since his last visit
to her home, more than a year previous to the tragedy, and she had never
known any other address than the one of which Mr. Bruce had spoken. He
had told her to send a letter to “Lock Box 43, Santa Fe,” if anything
should ever happen to his boy, and she wished to summon him.
But she had gone away without communicating with him; she had been eager
to get away before he could come again, for she had not courage to meet
him and tell him the dreadful story about his child, which she alone
knew.
“Margery,” Geoffrey said, gravely, after she had concluded her account,
“have you never thought that there was something very strange in the
fact that my father should have been so reserved about himself, and kept
his only child so remote and concealed from all his friends?”
“Yes, Master Geoffrey, it did strike me as queer, at times; but I
reasoned that perhaps he hadn’t any very near friends, for he talked of
putting you to some school as soon as you were old enough to go away
from me.”
“Do you think that everything was all right between him and my mother?”
“How right, sir?” the woman asked, with surprise.
“Do you think that they were legally married? Did you never see or hear
anything while you lived with them, to make you suspect that they might
not be husband and wife? It is a hard question for a son to ask, but the
secrecy, with which my father has seemed to hedge himself about, has led
me to fear that there was some grave reason why he could not, or would
not, have me with him and openly recognize me. Why was he unwilling to
have you use his name if you had occasion to write to him, but instead
gave you a blind address, which no one could recognize, and to which,
doubtless, he alone had the key?”
“Good lord, Master Geoffrey, never have any such thoughts entered my
head before!” Margery exclaimed, in a tone of startled amazement. “I
never saw a man fonder of his wife than Captain Dale was of your mother;
and he had reason to be fond of her, too, for she worshiped the very air
he breathed, and was always so sweet and merry that a man would have
been a brute not to have loved her. But——”
“Well?” queried Geoffrey, eagerly, the hot blood surging to his brow,
with a feeling of dread, as she stopped, a note of sudden conviction in
her tone.
“Well, I do remember, once, that she did not seem quite happy, but I
have never given it a second thought until now,” Margery said,
reflectively.
“Tell me about it,” the young man commanded, briefly.
“They had been out for a walk one night after tea, and it was quite dark
when they returned. They stopped a moment on the steps, before coming
in, and I was at an open window up stairs just above them. Your mother
had been crying—I could tell by the sound of her voice—all at once she
turned and threw her arms around the captain’s neck and sobbed:
“‘Oh, Will, I wish you would, for my sake and—for our baby’s sake.’
“‘I will, my darling,’ the captain told her, ‘it shall be done just as
soon as I can turn myself, but it would ruin me to do it now. Have
patience, my pet, and it will be all right in a few months more, at the
furthest.’
“She didn’t say another word, only uttered a tired kind of sigh, kissed
him softly, and then they went in. But I never thought much about it
afterward. I didn’t know but what she had been coaxing him to leave the
mines and go back to where they came from, for I’m sure it couldn’t have
been nice for her to live there where there wasn’t hardly another woman
fit to associate with her,” Margery concluded, thoughtfully.
But Geoffrey believed his gentle mother had been asking for something
far more important than a change of residence; that would have been of
comparatively little consequence to her, loving his father as she did.
He imagined that she had been pleading to be recognized as Captain
Dale’s lawful wife, so that her child might have honorable birth.
He sighed heavily, for the farther he went in his search the darker and
more perplexing grew the way.