May Agnes Fleming
Norine's Revenge, and, Sir Noel's Heir
FOR BETTER FOR WORSE
"And all is gone?"
"Why, no, sir; no, Mr. Fletcher – not all. There's that six hundred a year, and that little place down at Dover, that you settled on your wife; you will save that out of the wreck. A trifle – a mere nothing, I am aware, out of such a noble inheritance as yours, Mr. Fletcher – but still something. Half a loaf you know, sir, is – "
He stopped abruptly at a motion of Richard Fletcher's hand. He was a lawyer, and used to this sort of thing; and not much effected by the story, he had run down from New York to tell Mr. Fletcher; his rich client had speculated rashly, and lost – a common case enough. A week ago he was worth half a million; to-night he is not worth a sixpence – that was all. There were his wife's settlements, of course; but they were his wife's – and Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher were two.
"I thought I had better let you know at once, Mr. Fletcher," the lawyer said; "it's sure to be in everybody's mouth to-morrow. And now, if I'm to catch the nine-fifty up-train, I had better be starting. Good-night, sir. Worse luck now, better next time."
"Good-night," Richard Fletcher said, mechanically. He was leaning against the low, iron gateway, his folded arms lying on its carved top, and the black shadows of the beeches shutting him in like a pall. Up the avenue colored lamps gleamed along the chestnut walks, blue, red, and green, turning the dark November night to fairy-land. The wide front of the stately mansion was all aglow with illumination, with music, and flowers, and fair women; and fairest, where all were fair, its proud young mistress, Marian Fletcher.
Two men, stragglers from the ball-room, with their cigars lighted, came down through the gloom, close to the motionless figure against the iron gate – only another shadow among the shadows – so close that he heard every word.
"Rather superb style of thing, all this," one said. "When Dick Fletcher does this sort of thing, he does do it. Wonderful luck he's had, for a poor devil, who five years ago hadn't a rap; and that wife of his – magnificent Marian – most lovely thing the sun shines on."
"Too lovely, my friend, for – she's ice."
"Ah! To her husband? Married him for his fortune, didn't she? The old story, very poor, very proud; and sold to the highest bidder. Craymore stood to win there once, didn't he?"
"It was a desperate flirtation – an engagement, the knowing ones do say; but Capt. Craymore knows better than to indulge in such a luxury as a penniless wife. So Fletcher came along, made rich by a sudden windfall, and she's Mrs. Fletcher to-night; and more beautiful and queenly than ever. I watched her dancing with Craymore half an hour ago, and – Well, I didn't envy Fletcher, if he is worth half a million. Let's go back to the house, it's beginning to rain."
"Suppose Fletcher were to lose his fortune – what then?"
"My good fellow, he would lose his wife in the same hour. Some women there are who would go with their husbands to beggary – and he's a fine fellow, too, is Fletcher; but not the lovely Marian. There, the rain begins!"
The shadow among the beeches stood stiller than stone. A long, low wind worried the trees, and the rain beat its melancholy drip, drip. Half an hour, an hour, two, passed, but the figure leaning against the iron-gate was as still as the iron itself. But slowly he stirred at last, became conscious he was dripping, and passed slowly out of the rainy gloom, and up the lamplit-avenue, and into the stately home, that, after to-night, would be his no more.
Another half-hour, and he was back in the glitter and dazzle and music of the brilliant suit of drawing-rooms, his wet garments changed, the fixed whiteness of his face telling but little of his sudden blow. He had not been missed; his radiant three months' bride shone there in diamonds, and laces, and roses resplendent – and who was to think of the rich Fletcher! "Only a clod," whom she had honored by marrying. Capt. Craymore was by her side, more fascinating than ever. How could she find time to think of any one so plebeian as the underbred rich man she had married, by his entrancing side?
But it was all over at last. The "lights were fled, the garlands dead," and Mrs. Fletcher up in her dressing-room, in the raw morning light, was under the hands of her maid. She lay back among the violet-velvet cushions, languid and lovely, being disrobed, and looked round with an irritated flush at the abrupt entrance of the master of the house. He did not often intrude; since the first few weeks of their marriage he had been a model husband, and kept his place. Therefore, Mrs. Fletcher looked surprised, as well as annoyed now.
"Do you wish to speak to me, Mr. Fletcher?" she asked, coldly; for after an evening with Capt. Craymore she was always less tolerant of her bourgeois husband.
"Yes – but alone. I will wait in your sitting-room until you dismiss your maid."
Something in his colorless face – something in the sound of his voice startled her; but he was gone while yet speaking, and the maid went on. "Hurry, Louise," her mistress said, briefly; and Louise coiled up the shining hair, arranged the white dressing-gown, and left her.
Marian Fletcher arose and swept into the next room. It was the daintiest bijou of boudoirs, all rose-silk, and silver, and filigree-work, and delicious Greuze paintings, smiling down from the fluted panels. A bright wood-fire burned on the hearth, and her husband stood against the low chimney-piece, whiter and colder than the marble itself.
"Well," she said, "what is it?"
He looked up. She stood before him in her beauty and her pride, jewels flashed on her fairy hands – a queen by right divine of her azure eyes and tinselled hair – his, yet not his; "so near, and yet so far." He loved her, how well his own wrung heart only knew.
"What is it?" she repeated, impatiently. "I am tired and sleepy. Tell me in a word."
"I can – ruin!"
"What?"
"I am ruined. All is gone. I am a beggar."
She started back, turning whiter than her dress, and leaned heavily against a chair.
"Ruined!" she repeated. "A beggar!"
"Ugly words, are they not? but quite true. I did not know it until last night; Kearstall came from town to tell me. My last grand speculation has failed, and in its failure engulfed everything. I am as poor as the poorest laborer on this estate; poorer than I was five years ago, before this fortune was left me."
There was a sort of savage pleasure in thus hideously putting things in their ugliest light. Rich or poor, she despised him alike. What need was there for him to mince matters?
"There are your settlements, your six hundred a-year and the Dover farm, that crumb of the loaf is left, and remains yours. I am sorry for you, Mrs. Fletcher – sorry that your sacrifice of youth and loveliness, on the altar of Mammon, has been in vain. I had hoped, when I married you, of winning some return for the limitless love I gave you. I know to-night how futile that hope has been. Once again, for your sake, I am sorry; for myself I do not care. The world is a wide place, and I can win my way. I give you your freedom, the only reparation for marrying you in my power to make. I leave here to-night, New York to-morrow; and so – farewell!"
She stood like a stone; he turned and left her. Once she had made a movement, seeing the white anguish of his face, as though to go to him – but she did not. He was gone, and she dropped down in the rose-and-silver glitter of her fairy-room, as miserable a woman as day ever dawned on.
A month later, and she was far away, buried alive in the Dover Cottage. All had gone; the nine days wonder was at an end; the "rich Fletcher" and his handsome wife had disappeared out of the magic whirl of society; and society got on very well without them. They had been, and they were not – and the story was told. Of all who had broken bread with the ruined man, there were not two who cared a fillip whether he were living or dead.
The December wind wailed over the stormy sea, and the wintry rain lashed the windows of the Dover Cottage. Marian Fletcher sat before the blazing fire in a long, low, gloomy parlor, and Capt. Craymore stood before her. He had but just found her out, and he had run down to see how she bore her altered fortunes. She bore them as an uncrowned queen might, with regal pride and cold endurance. The exquisite face had lost its rose-leaf bloom; the deep, still eyes looked larger and more fathomless; the mouth was set in patient pain – that was all. The man felt his heart burn as he looked at her, she was so lovely, so lovely. He leaned over, and the passionate words came that he could not check. He loved her. She loved him; she was forsaken and alone – why need they part?
She listened, growing whiter than a dead woman. Then she came and faced him, until the cowered soul within him shrank and quailed.
"I have fallen very low," she said. "I am poor, and alone, and a deserted wife. But Capt. Craymore, I have not fallen low enough to be your mistress. Go!"
Her unflickering finger pointed to the door. There was that in her face no man dare disobey, and he slunk forth like a whipped hound. Then as on that night when she had parted from her husband, she slipped down in her misery to the ground, and hid her face in her hands. Now she knew the man she had loved, now she was learning to know the man who had loved her. The one would drag her down to bottomless depths of blackness and infamy; the other had given up all for her – even herself – and gone forth a homeless, penniless wanderer, to fight the battle of life.
"Oh! truest and noblest!" her heart cried, in its passionate pain, "how I have wronged you! Bravest and best heart that ever beat in man's breast – am I only to know your worth when it is too late?"
It seemed so. Richard Fletcher had disappeared out of the world – the world she knew – as utterly as though he had never been in it. The slow months dragged drearily by; but he never came. The piteous advertisement in the Herald newspaper stood unanswered when the spring-buds burst; and she was alone in her worse than widowhood, in the Dover Cottage still.
With the glory of the brilliant new summer, new hope dawned for her. A tiny messenger, with Richard Fletcher's great brown eyes, smiled up in her face, and a baby head nestled against her lonely heart. Ah! she knew now how she loved baby's father, when the brown eyes, of which these were the counterpart, were lost to her forever.
So, with the great world shut out, and with only baby Richard and her two servants, life went on in the solitary cottage. The winds of winter had five times swept over the ceaseless sea, and little Richard could toddle and lisp; and in Marian Fletcher's heart hope slowly died out. She had lost him through her own fault; he, to whom she had been bound in the mysterious tie of marriage, would never look upon her cruel face again.
She sat one stormy November night, thinking very sadly of the true heart and strong love she had cast away. Her boy lay asleep before the ruddy fire; the rain and wind beat like human things against the glass. She sat looking seaward, with weary, empty eyes, so desolate – so desolate, her soul crying out with unutterable yearning for the wanderer to come back.
As she stood there gazing sadly out at the wild night falling over the wild sea, her one servant came hurriedly into the room with startled affright in her eyes.
"Oh, ma'am," she cried, "such a dreadful thing! The up-train from New York has had an accident, has fell over the embankment just below here and half the passengers are killed and wounded. The screams as I came past was awful to hear. But surely, ma'am," the woman broke off in dismay as her mistress seized her hat and shawl, "you won't go out and it raining and a blowing fit to take you off your feet. You can't do nothing, and you'll get your death."
But Mrs. Fletcher was out already, heedless of wind or rain, and making her way to the scene of the accident. "Poor souls," she was thinking, "so sudden and frightful a fate. Perhaps I can be of help to some one." For her life trouble had done this for her; made her tender of heart, and pitiful of soul to all who suffered.
A great crowd were there from Dover village as she drew near, beginning to bear away the wounded, the dying and the dead. Groans and cries of infinite misery made the rainy twilight hideous. Mrs. Fletcher shuddered, but she stooped resolutely over a man who lay almost at her feet, a man whom she might have thought dead but for the low moan that now and then came from his lips.
She bent above him timidly, her heart fluttering at something vaguely familiar in his look.
"Can I do anything for you?" she asked, "I fear you are very very badly hurt."
The eyes opened; in the dim light he half arose on his elbow. "Marian," he said, and fell back and fainted wholly away.
And so her prayers were answered after many days, and death itself seemed to have given back her husband to Marian Fletcher's arms. Over his pillow life and Death fought their sharp battle, for many long weeks, while she watched over him, and prayed beside him in what agony of remorse, and terror and passionate tenderness only Heaven and herself ever knew.
Those ceaseless, agonized prayers prevailed. In the pale dawn of a Christmas morning, the heavy brown eyes opened and fixed upon her face, no longer in delirium, but with the kindling light of recognition, and great and sudden joy.
"Marian," he said faintly, "my wife."
She was on her knees beside him, his weak head lying in her caressing arms.
"My dearest, my dearest, thank God; my own, my cherished husband, forgive your erring wife."
His face lit with a rare smile, as he looked up into the pale, tear wet, passionately earnest face.
"It is true then what I heard, what has brought me home. You have sought me. But Marian, what if I must tell you I am still poor, poor as when we parted." She shrunk away as though he had hurt her.
"I have deserved that you should say this to me," she said in a stifled voice, "I have been the basest of the base in the past – why should you think me other than heartless and mercenary still. But oh, Richard, don't you see – I love you now, so dearly and truly, my husband, that I can never have any life apart from you more. Do not talk to me of poverty – only tell me you will never leave me again." "Never again," he answered, "till death us do part. But Marian, though I am no longer the millionaire you married, I do not return to you quite a beggar. More or less I have retrieved the past, and we can begin life anew almost as luxuriously as we left it off." Her face clouded for a moment.
"Ah! I am sorry. I wanted to atone: how can I now? I have been your wife in the sunshine. I thought to show you what I could be in the shadow, and now all that is at an end. I can never show you how I have repented for – that night."
But Richard Fletcher only smiles a smile of great content. And in the silence that ensues, there comes over the snowy fields the joyful bells of the blessed Christmas morning, and in their hearts both bless God for the new life, that dawns with this holy day.
