Part 43 (1/2)
”Ha! I thought so!” cried her companion, with a sudden shock. ”When did you hear?--who told you?”
”I met your friend, Will Forsyth, only two years ago--just before my return to this country--and when I took him to task for the shameful part which he had played to a.s.sist you in carrying out your ignominious plot, telling him that you had owned to his being disguised as an aged minister to perform the sacrilegious ceremony, he confessed to me that, at the last moment, his heart had failed him, whereupon he went to an old clergyman, a friend of his father, revealed everything, and persuaded him to perform the marriage in a legal manner; and thus, Gerald G.o.ddard, I became your lawful wife instead of your victim, as you supposed.”
”Yes, I know it. Forsyth afterward sent me the certificate and explained everything to me,” the man admitted, with a guilty flush. ”I received the paper about a year after the report of your death.”
”Ah! that could not have been very gratifying to--your other--victim,”
remarked Mrs. Stewart, with quiet sarcasm.
”Isabel! you are merciless!” cried the man, writhing under her scorn.
”But since you have learned so much, I may as well tell you everything. Of course Anna was furious when she discovered that she was no wife, for I had sworn to her that there was no legal tie between you and me--”
”Ah! then she also learned the truth!” interposed his companion. ”I almost wonder you did not try to keep the knowledge from her.”
”I could not--she was present when the doc.u.ment arrived, and the shock to me was so great I betrayed it, and she insisted upon knowing what had caused it, when she raved like an insane person, for a time.”
”But I suppose you packed her by being married over again, since you have lived with her for nearly twenty years,” remarked Mrs. Stewart.
”No, I did not,” returned her visitor, hotly. ”To tell the truth, I had begun to tire of her even then--she was so furiously jealous, pa.s.sionate, and unreasonable upon the slightest pretext that at times she made life wretched for me. So I told myself that so long as I held that certificate as proof that she had no legal hold upon me, I should have it in my power to manage her and cow her into submission when she became ungovernable by other means. I represented to her that, to all intents and purposes, we were man and wife, and if we should have the ceremony repeated, after having lived together so long, it would create a scandal, for some one would be sure to find it out, sooner or later. For a time this appeared to pacify her; but one day, during my absence from home, she stole the certificate, although I thought I had concealed it where no one would think of looking for it. It has been in her possession ever since. I have tried many times to recover it; but she was more clever than I, and I never could find it, while she has always told me that she would never relinquish it, except upon one condition--”
”And that was--what?”
”Ever the same old demand--that I would make her legally my wife.”
”But she never could have been that so long as I lived,” objected Mrs.
Stewart.
”True; but she would have been satisfied with a repet.i.tion of the ceremony, as we did not know that you were living.”
”If you have been so unhappy, why have you lived with her all these years?”
The man hesitated for a moment before replying to this question. At length he said, although he flushed scarlet over the confession:
”There have been several reasons. In spite of her variable moods and many faults, Anna is a handsome and accomplished woman. She entertains magnificently, and has made an elegant mistress for our establishment.
We have been over the world together several times, and are known in many cities both in this country and abroad, consequently it would have occasioned no end of scandal if there had been a separation.
Thus, though she has tried my patience sorely at times, we have perhaps, on the whole, got along as amicably as hundreds of other couples. Besides--ahem!--”
The man abruptly ceased, as if, unwittingly, he had been about to say something that had better be left unsaid.
”Well--besides what?” queried his listener.
”Doubtless you will think it rather a humiliating confession to make,”
said Gerald G.o.ddard, with a crestfallen air, ”but during the last few years I have lost a great deal of money in unfortunate speculation, so--I have been somewhat dependent upon Anna in a financial way.”
”Ah! I understand,” remarked Mrs. Stewart, her delicate nostrils dilating scornfully at this evidence of a weak, ease-loving nature, that would be content to lean upon a rich wife, rather than be up and doing for himself, and making his own way in the world. ”Are you not engaged with your profession?”
”No; Anna has not been willing, for a long time, that I should paint for money.”
”And so your talents are deteriorating for want of use.”
The scorn in her tones stung him keenly, and he flushed to his temples.