Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine
on her own account to a solitary part of the shore, where she can
plunge her free hands and hot face into the rippling water. Alas, woman
proposes, but man disposes! She has just cleared the last step of the
terrace, when she meets her husband face to face.
"Addie, I just ran back to see that you did not remain standing in that
draught. Where are you going, child?"--and in an accent of intense
surprise.
"Oh, nowhere in particular--at least, only to the edge of the sea for a
moment!" she answers, a little hurriedly.
"To the shore at eleven o'clock at night, alone! You must have lost
your senses, my dear. You must learn to understand that things of that
sort cannot be done, and particularly in a place of this kind. Go up to
your room at once, please, or you will grieve me very much."
For an instant she stands irresolute, trying to repress a wild instinct
of rebellion, for there is a ring of authority in his voice which stirs
the haughty Lefroy blood.
"I do not see what harm there is; I have been out at all hours of the
night at home, and nobody said anything," she persists sullenly.
"It is of no use," he says almost sternly--at least it sounds so to
her--"drawing parallels between your past life and your present; they
are meaningless. If you wish to return to the shore, I will accompany
you, and tell my friend not to wait for me."
"It is not necessary," she answers, in a low voice. "I am going in."
He follows her a few steps and lays his heavy hand on her shoulder.
"Addie darling, forgive me; I do not make allowance for your youth and
the habits of your past life, and--and--I'm so accustomed to be obeyed,
to command inferiors, that I--I forgot I was speaking to a lady, to one
dearer to me than my life. Forgive me, sweetheart, forgive me!"
"Yes--oh, yes!" she says, slowly withdrawing herself from his detaining
hand.
She walks listlessly up the stairs, stands panting heavily in her
flower-scented room, looking to right and left with the quick, restless
movement of an animal newly caged. She takes off her hat and cumbrous
wrapping, removes the diamonds from her ears, the heavy gold bands from
her fingers, and throws them from her; her arms drop to her sides.
She remains thus, erect, motionless, rigid, for nearly half an hour,
fighting against the sultry storm that sways her young soul; then
she sinks quivering into a chair by the table, her head falls on her
outstretched hands, and her passion finds vent in a storm of sobs and
wild complaints.
At last she is alone; the long _tête-à-tête_ is broken. A stranger's
voice had broken the spell; she can be herself again--can wake Addie
Lefroy from her maiden grave for a few short moments, and bid her live
and suffer; she can throw the suffocating mask aside, let the hot tears
rain from her weary eyes; the quick word, petulant, peevish, fall from
her quivering lips--can be herself again, can seek to find the problem
of her troubled life, can ask herself if it was a lie, a fraud, a
base sequence of hypocrisy, or a glorious martyrdom, an heroic act of
self-sacrifice. But nothing answers her, the problem remains unsolved,
all before her is blurred with passion, misty with thunderous clouds
that veil the transient gleams of a sunshine sweet and tender which
she has dimly felt struggling to reach her path during the most trying
fortnight of her life. But they do not touch her now; black night
shrouds her everywhere.
"He is too good, too generous, too kind, too--too fond of me!" she
wails, not conscious that her grief has found articulate sound. "His
care, his affection, his watchfulness stifle me. I am not accustomed
to them. It is like being transplanted to a hothouse after living all
one's life on the top of a breezy hill. I feel I cannot breathe--that
is it; I want breath, I want air. Only a fortnight, only a fortnight,
and it must go on--I must keep it up to the end! Oh, it is too
much--too much! I cannot bear it--I cannot bear it; it will kill me!"
Her voice sinks into a dry sob; there is a faint sound in the room,
as if a door was being softly closed, a sound which rouses her with a
start from her absorbed passion. She looks up quickly, and glances at
the closed door leading into her husband's dressing-room. A horrible
suspicion flashes across her mind, changing the heat of her blood to an
icy chill. She passes noiselessly into the dressing-room; but there is
no one there.
"An unnecessary alarm, a trick of the imagination!" she breathes with a
sigh of relief.
The distraction has the effect of quieting her excited nerves, soothing
the storm of her mind. She wipes her eyes briskly, tidies her hair,
replaces her wedding-ring.
"I have been a fool! I wonder what set me off like that so suddenly!
Such a strange feeling it was--as if I were choking; but I think it has
done me good. I feel quite cool, light, and refreshed now, ready for a
cup of tea."
She passes into her bedroom to replace her hat and wrap; then, drawing
aside the blind, she peers out of the window, which is in the front of
the hotel, facing the station.
"What a lovely night! No wonder one is tempted to remain out. Still he
ought to be soon in now; it's past eleven some time, and I should like
a cup--Oh, great Heaven!"
With a cry she falls back from the window, cowering, for at that
moment forth from the gloom of the porch underneath, his brave head
hanging low on his breast, her husband moves into the moonlight, where
he stands motionless for a moment, then lifts his arms with a weary,
bewildered gesture, and stumbles forward heavily toward the sleeping
sea.
She knows that her sacrifice has been in vain, that she has blighted
the prime of him who has enriched her and hers with his best, who has
loved her more than his own life.
CHAPTER X.
With bursting brain, stunned with unanalyzed pain and bewilderment, as
yet but half comprehending the wild words he has unwittingly heard,
Armstrong strides blindly onward, trying to fly, to escape from the
fever of his heart, from the sound of the wailing childish voice that
has tolled the death-knell of his peace.
He does not care, does not know whither he goes, for the path before
him is misty and blurred in the gleaming moonlight, his eyes are dim
with fury and anguish. He rolls heavily against an old seaman tottering
home from the public-house, and with an oath closes on him; they
struggle for a moment, until Armstrong, staggering backward, loses
his footing, and falls from the elevated edge of the esplanade to the
soft sand skirting the sea, some ten feet below. The physical shock
sobers him; he remains where he has fallen, crouching on the shore,
his haggard face buried in his hands. Presently he bursts into a low
discordant laugh and homely disjointed soliloquy:
"Tom Armstrong, Tom Armstrong, my man, you've made a mess of it at
last! It has been pretty plain sailing with you all your life; but now
you must take in your canvas, for you've come to grief at last--you've
come to grief--to grief--to grief! Oh, fool--fool--fool that I have
been! Pip-headed idiot, I deserve my fate!"
And then he falls into silence again, and goes over, day by day, hour
by hour, the short sunny spell of his one love-dream. Every look, every
word, every smile, every kiss he lives through again with the lurid
lamp of truth and disillusion hanging overhead. A fierce brute-like
passion seizes him, he springs to his feet with flaming eyes and
distorted face.
"Confusion seize her for a hypocrite," he shouts--"a consummate, lying
hypocrite! How dare she blind me as she has done? How dare she debase
me in my own eyes, and make my life unbearable? What had I done to
her, the jade? Only loved her--only loved her better than my life! Oh,
how can such women be? Have they no soul, no heart, no conscience? How
could she look me in the face with those clear pure eyes, black perjury
lodging in her breast all the time, as she has done every day since I
married her? How she has lied to me--how she has lied with her lips,
with her eyes, with her smile, with every motion of her body, morning,
noon, and night! Confusion seize her!"
He dashes on again for miles and miles along the sleeping coast,
muttering and gasping, trying to stanch the gaping wound of his love
and pride, until the fading moonlight meets the rosy glow of dawn
and dies in her embrace; and then, at last thoroughly worn out, he
sinks again to rest, his face white and set, the storm of his passion
stilled forever, all wrath and bitterness gone from his breast, only
pity, remorse, and infinite melancholy dwellers therein. Reason has
reasserted her sway, and many dark things are light to him now.
The problem which Addie weakly tried to solve some hours before is
clear as day to him she has wronged, and he pities her as sincerely as
he pities himself.
"Poor little soul!" he thinks drearily. "Heaven help her, how she must
have suffered! And what pluck she must have! Poor little Addie! What
chance had she against us all--against my brutish obstinacy and desire,
against her greedy, selfish kindred, her miserable surroundings--what
chance had she? Not one to stand by her, to save her from me--not
even the memory of a lover, I feel sure--not even that! And I called
her a hypocrite, a liar, instead of a martyr, a heroine! I have wished
her ill because she made her sacrifice without a murmur, nobly,
unselfishly; because she sought to build my happiness on the wreck
of her own; because she smiled in my face when her heart was perhaps
breaking! Oh, forgive me, forgive me, dear; and Heaven teach me how to
deal with you gently, unselfishly, tenderly to the end!"
He sits for a full hour without moving, buried in deep thought, mapping
out his life and hers, which, alas, is still bound to his till death!
And then he rises, undresses, takes a plunge off the rock against which
he has been leaning, swims out half a mile to sea, returns, and, much
refreshed and quite composed, dresses and walks back to the town, from
which he has wandered many miles due west.
He finds his wife, who has evidently not been to bed all night, in
her sitting-room, with pale wan face and eyes strained with tears and
frightened watching.
"Oh, here you are!" she sobs hysterically, when he enters at last.
"Where have you been? I thought you were never coming home again.
You--you should not have frightened me so!"
"I am sorry I frightened you, Addie," he says gently. "I walked on to
Sandyfort last night, had a swim there, and then came back; the morning
was so lovely, I couldn't take to the train. Why did you sit up? That
was wrong."
She makes no reply, but presently creeps up to him and lays her hand on
his shoulder, stammering out--
"You--you came to the door of the dressing-room? You--you heard me last
night?"
He assents mutely.
"Then, Tom," she cries, clinging to him feverishly, "you must forget
every word I said; they meant nothing--nothing! I don't know what came
over me. I was not myself; I think I was mad. You--you--"
"Don't, dear, don't," he says, with a still cold gentleness, putting
her from him; "it is of no use. You can never deceive me again,
Addie--never! Give up the effort; it would be only useless pain to me
and to you."
"I can not--I can not!" she answers, with a quiver in her voice; for
something in his face, in his tone, chills her to the heart and tells
her, even more powerfully than his words have done, that he will never
believe her again; that smiles or tears, protest or prayer, will
fall on his ear in vain meaningless sound. "I can not," she repeats,
"because you are mistaken. You must--oh, you must listen to me! I tell
you it is not fair to judge; I was not myself at the moment, I was--"
"You were not the 'self' who sacrificed your youth and your liberty so