As the hours wore on after Rufus Black’s departure from the dingy
little lodging he had called home, poor Lally became anxious and
troubled. Her young husband had inspired her with a great awe for his
father, as well as terror of him, but she was a brave little soul and
prayed with all her heart that Rufus would have courage to confess his
marriage, let the consequences of that confession be what they would.
She had a horror of concealment or deception, and she believed that
Craven Black would relent toward his son when he should discover that
he was really married.
As the afternoon of that first day of solitude wore on, and the hour
for Rufus’ return drew near, she swept and dusted and garnished the
dreary little room as well as she could, put the shining tin kettle on
the grate, and made her simple toilet, putting on her best dress, a
cheap pink lawn that contrasted well with her berry-brown complexion,
and winding a pink ribbon in her hair. She looked very pretty and fresh
and bright when she had finished, and she stood by the window, her
face pressed to the glass, all hopefulness and expectancy, and looked
out upon the opposite side of the crescent until long after the hour
appointed for her husband’s return. But when evening came on and the
gas lamps were lighted in the streets, her expectancy was changed to a
terrible anxiety and she put on her shabby little hat and hurried out
to a little newsstand, investing a penny in an evening paper, with a
vague idea that there must have been an accident on the line and that
her husband had perhaps been killed.
But no accident being reported, she returned to her poor little home,
and waited for him with what patience she could summon. But he came
not, and no message, letter, or telegram came to allay her fears. She
waited for him until midnight, hearkening to every step in the street,
and then lay down without undressing, consoling herself with the
thought that Rufus would be home in the morning.
But morning came, and Rufus did not come. Poor Lally was too anxious
to prepare her breakfast, and sustained her strength by eating a piece
of bread while she watched from the window. She assured herself that
it was all right, that Rufus’ prolonged absence was a sign that he had
reconciled himself with his father, and that probably he would return
in company with his parent. This idea prompted her to brush her tangled
waves of hair, and to press out her tumbled dress and otherwise make
herself presentable.
As the day deepened a conviction that something had happened that was
adverse to her happiness dawned upon her. It was not like Rufus to
leave her in such suspense, and she was sure that some harm had come to
him.
“Perhaps he has been murdered and thrown out of the railway coach,” she
thought, her round eyes growing big with horror. “I will go to Wyndham
by the next train.”
She was about to put on her hat when her landlady, a coarse, ill-bred
woman, opened the door unceremoniously, and entered her presence.
“Going out, Mrs. Black?” she demanded, with a sniff of suspicion. “I
hope you are not going off, like the last lodger I had in this ’ere
blessed room, without paying of the rent? I hope you don’t intend to
give me the slip, Mrs. Black, which you’ve got no clothes nor furniture
to pay the rent, and you owing ten and sixpence!”
“I have the money for the rent, Mrs. McKellar,” answered Lally,
producing her pocket-book, while her childish face flushed. “I have no
intention of giving you the slip, as you call it. I--I am going down
into the country to look for my husband. Here is your pay.”
The landlady took her money with an air of relief. Her greed satisfied,
her curiosity became ascendant.
“Where is Mr. Black, if I may be so bold?” she inquired. “It’s not like
him to be away over night. But young men will be young men, Mrs. Black,
whether they are young gentlemen or otherwise, and they will have their
sprees, you know, Mrs. Black, although I _would_ say that Mr. Black
seemed as steady a young gentlemen as one could wish to see.”
“He _is_ steady,” asserted the young wife, half indignantly. “He never
goes on a spree. He--he went to see his father, and said he would be
back last night. And, oh, I am so anxious!” she cried, her terrors
getting the better of her reserve. “I am sure he would never have
stayed away like this if something had not happened to him.”
“Perhaps he’s deserted you?” suggested her Job’s comforter. “Men desert
their wives every day. Lawks! What is that?” the landlady ejaculated,
as a loud double knock was heard on the street door. “It’s not the
postman. Perhaps Mr. Black has been killed, and they’re bringing home
his body.”
The poor young wife uttered a wild shriek and flew to the head of
the stairs, the ponderous landlady hurrying after her, and reaching
her side just as the slipshod maid-servant opened the door, giving
admittance to Craven Black.
The landlady descended the stairs noisily, and Lally retreated to her
room. She had hardly gained it when Mr. Black came up the stairs alone
and knocked at the door. She gave him admittance, her big round eyes
full of questioning terror, her pale lips framing the words:
“My husband?”
Mr. Black, holding his hat in his hand, closed the door behind him. He
bowed politely to the scared young creature, and demanded:
“You are Miss Lally Bird?”
The slight, childish figure drew itself up proudly, and the quivering
voice tried to answer calmly:
“No, sir; I am Mrs. Rufus Black. My name used to be Lally Bird. Do--do
you come from my husband?”
“I come from Mr. Rufus Black,” replied Craven Black politely. “I am
the bearer of a note from him, but must precede its delivery with an
explanation. Mr. Black is now in Kent, and will remain there for the
summer.”
“I--I don’t understand you, sir,” said poor Lally, bewildered.
There was a rustling outside the door, as the landlady settled herself
at the keyhole, in an attitude to listen to the conversation between
Lally and her visitor. Mrs. McKellar was convinced that there was some
mystery connected with her fourth floor lodgers, and she deemed this a
favorable opportunity of solving it.
“Permit me to introduce myself to you, Miss Bird,” said her visitor,
still courteously. “I am Craven Black, the father of Rufus.”
The young wife gasped with surprise, and her face whitened suddenly.
She sat down abruptly, with her hand upon her heart.
“His father?” she murmured.
Craven Black bowed, while he regarded her and her surroundings
curiously. The dingy, poverty-stricken little room, with its meagre
plenishing and no luxuries, struck him as being but one remove from an
alms-house. The young wife, in her wretchedly poor attire, with her
big black eyes and brown face, from which all color had been stricken
by his announcement, seemed to him a very commonplace young person,
quite of the lower orders, and he wondered that his university bred son
could have loved her, and that he still desired to cling to her and his
poverty, rather than to leave her and wed an heiress.
For a moment or more Lally remained motionless and stupefied, and then
the color flashed back to her cheeks and lips, and the brightness to
her eyes. She could interpret the visit of Craven Black in but one
manner--as a token of his reconciliation with his son.
“Ah, sir, I beg your pardon,” she said, arising to her feet, “but I was
sorely frightened. I have been so anxious about Rufus. I expected him
home last night. And I could not dream that you would come to our poor
home.”
She placed a chair for him, but he continued standing, hat in hand, and
leaned carelessly upon the chair back. He was the picture of elegance
and cool serenity, while Lally, flushed and excited, glanced down at
her own attire in dismay.
“I understand that Rufus has remained in Kent,” she said, all
breathless and joyous, “and I suppose you have been kind enough to
come to take me to him. I fear I am hardly fit to accompany you, Mr.
Black. We have been so poor, so terribly poor. But I will be ready in
a moment. Oh, I am so grateful to you, sir, for your goodness to us.
Poor Rufus feared your anger more than all things else. I know I am no
fit match for your son, but--but I love him so,” and the bright face
drooped shyly. “I will be a good wife to him, sir, and a good daughter
to you.”
“Stay,” said Mr. Black, in a cold, metallic voice. “You are laboring
under a misapprehension, Miss Bird. I am not come to take you down into
Kent. You will never look upon the face of Rufus Black again.”
“_Sir!_”
“I mean it, madam. I pity you from my soul; I do, indeed. It were
better for you if you had never seen Rufus Black. You fancy yourself
his wife. You are not so.”
“Not his wife? Oh, sir, then you do not know? Why, we were married
at St. Mary’s Church, in the parish of Newington. Our marriage is
registered there, and Rufus has a certificate of the marriage.”
“But still you are not married,” said the pitiless visitor, his keen
eyes lancing the soul of the tortured girl. “Permit me to explain. My
son procured a marriage license, and he made oath that you and he were
both of age, and legally your own masters. He swore to a lie. Now that
is perjury. A marriage of minors without consent of parents is null and
void, and my consent was not given. Your marriage is illegal, is no
marriage at all. You are as free and Rufus is as free as if this little
episode had not been.”
“Oh, Heaven!” moaned the young girl, in a wild strained voice, sinking
back into a chair. “Not married--not his wife!”
“You are not his wife,” declared Craven Black mercilessly. “I cannot
comprehend by what fascination you lured my son into this connection
with you, but no doubt he was equally to blame. He is well born and
well connected. You are neither. A marriage between you and him is
something preposterous. I have no fancy for an alliance with the family
of a tallow-chandler. I speak plainly, because delicacy is out of
place in handling this affair. You are of one grade in life, we of
another. I recognize your ambition and desire to rise in the world, but
it must not be done at my expense.”
“Ambition?” repeated poor Lally, putting her hand to her forehead. “I
never thought of rising in the world when I married Rufus. I loved
him, and he loved me. And we meant to work together, and we have been
so happy. Oh, I am married to him! Do not say that I am not. I am his
wife, Mr. Black--I am his own wife!”
“And I repeat that you are not,” said Mr. Black harshly. “The law will
not recognize such a marriage. And if you persist in clinging to the
prize you fancy you have hooked, I will have Rufus arrested on the
charge of perjury and sent to prison.”
Lally uttered a cry of horror. Her eyes dilated, her thin chest heaved,
her black eyes burned with the fires that raged in her young soul.
“Rufus has recognized the stern necessity of the case, and full of
fears for his own safety he has given you up,” continued Lally’s
persecutor. “He will never see you again, and desires you, if you have
any regard for him and his safety, to quietly give him up, and glide
back into your own proper sphere.”
“I will not give him up!” cried Lally--“never! never! Not until his own
lips tell me so! You are cruel, but you cannot deceive me. I am his own
wife, and I will never give him up!”
“Read that!” said Mr. Black, producing the note his son had written. “I
presume you know his handwriting?”
He tossed to Lally the folded paper. She seized it and read it eagerly,
her face growing white and rigid like stone. She knew the handwriting
only too well. And in this letter Rufus confirmed his father’s words,
and utterly renounced her. A conviction of the truth settled down like
a funeral pall upon her young soul.
“You begin to believe me, I see,” said Mr. Black, growing uncomfortable
under the awful stare of her horrified eyes. “You comprehend at last
that you are no wife?”
“What am I then?” the pale lips whispered.
“Don’t look at me in that way, Miss Bird. Really you frighten me. Don’t
take this thing too much to heart. Of course it’s a disappointment and
all that, but the affair won’t hurt you as if you belonged to a higher
class in life. It’s a mere episode, and people will forget it. You can
resume your maiden name and occupations and marry some one in your own
class, and some day you will smile at this adventure!”
“Smile? Ah, God!”
Poor Lally cowered in her chair, her small wan face so full of woe and
despair that even Craven Black, villain as he was, grew uneasy. There
was an appalled look in her eyes, too, that scared him.
“You take the thing too hardly, Miss Bird,” he said. “I will provide
for you. Rufus must not see you again, and I must have your promise to
leave him unmolested. Give me that promise and I will deal liberally
with you. You must not follow him into Kent. Should you meet him in the
street or elsewhere, you must not speak to him. Do you understand? If
you do, he will suffer in prison for your contumacy!”
“Oh, Heaven be merciful to me!” wailed the poor disowned young wife.
“See him, and not speak to him? Meet him and pass him by, when I love
him better than my life? Oh, Mr. Black, in the name of Heaven, I beg
you to have pity upon us. I know I am poor and humble. But I love your
son. We are of equal station in the sight of God, and my love for
Rufus makes me his equal. He loves me still--he loves me--”
“Do not deceive yourself with false hopes,” interposed Craven Black.
“My son recognizes the invalidity of his marriage, and has succumbed to
my will. If you know him well, you know his weak, cowardly nature. He
has agreed never to speak to you again, and, moreover, he has promised
to marry a young lady for whom I have long intended him--”
A sharp, shrill cry of doubt and horror broke from poor, wronged Lally.
“It is true,” affirmed Craven Black.
The girl uttered no further moan, nor sob. Her wild eyes were tearless;
her white lips were set in a rigid and awful smile.
“I--I feel as if I were going mad!” she murmured.
“You will not go mad,” said Craven Black, with an attempt at airiness.
“You are not the first woman who has tried to rise above her proper
sphere and fallen back to her own detriment. But, Miss Bird, I must
have your promise to leave Rufus alone. You must resume your maiden
name, and let this episode be as if it had not been.”
“I shall not trouble Rufus,” the poor girl said, her voice quivering.
“If I am not his wife, and he cannot marry me, why should I?”
“That is right and sensible. Here are fifty pounds which may prove
serviceable if you should ever marry,” and Mr. Black handed her a crisp
new Bank of England note.
The girl crumpled it in her hand and flung it back to him, her eyes
flashing.
“You have taken away my husband--my love--my good name!” she panted.
“How dare you offer me money? I will not take it if I starve!”
Mr. Black coolly picked up the note and restored it to his pocket.
He was about to speak further when the door was burst violently open,
and the landlady, flushed with excitement, came rushing in like an
incarnate tornado. The rejection of the money by Lally had incensed her
beyond all that had gone before.
“I keep a respectable house, I hope, Miss,” snapped the woman. “I’ve
heard all that’s been said here, as is right I should, being a lone
widow and a dependent upon the reputation of my lodging-’us for a
living. And being as you an’t married, though a pretending of it, I
can’t shelter you no longer. Out you go, without a minute’s warning.
There’s your hat, and there’s your sack. Take ’em, and start!”
Lally obeyed the words literally. She caught up her out-door apparel,
and with one wild, wailing cry, dashed out of the room, down the stairs
and into the street.
Mr. Black and the landlady regarded each other in a mutual alarm.
“You have driven her to her death, Madam,” said Craven Black excitedly.
“She has gone out to destroy herself, and you have murdered her.”
He put on his hat and left the house. The girl’s flying figure had
already disappeared, and the villain’s conscience cried out to him that
she would perish, and that it was _he_, and none other, who had killed
her.