Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine
is enjoying herself in town, while Pauline, in deserted Nutsgrove,
pores greedily over the accounts of her gay doings, and valiantly
determines that her sister shall have a comfortable _pied-à-terre_ in
the neighborhood of Eaton Square or Park Lane next season.
Meanwhile Addie is working briskly at clearing the study-table. The
waste-paper bag is filling rapidly with the fluent literature of
professional beggary, when suddenly a long sheet of paper bearing
Madame Armine's address on the top, closely covered with scratchy
French writing, drops in dismay from her hands. It is Miss Lefroy's
account for goods supplied from the sixteenth of January to the first
of May, and three figures represent the total. Poor Addie stares at
them stupidly, rubs her eyes, even goes to the window for a moment to
take breath and clear the cobwebs from her brain; but when she comes
back they confront her still. One hundred and eighty-four pounds!
Pounds--not pence, not shillings even, but pounds, sterling pounds!
"What do they mean?" she asks aloud. "It must--it must be a stupendous
mistake. How could any girl wear or order one hundred and eighty-four
pounds' worth of clothes in less than six months? Impossible! She
has been remarkably well-dressed of late, I have noticed, and--and
I remember Lady Crawford telling me that she is considered one of
the best got-up girls in Nutshire. Her last ball-dress was very
handsome; but--but, all the same, this bill is simply incredible. It's
a mistake--of course it's a mistake! It's an account of some large
family--the Douglases or the Hawksbys probably--and they have got hers;
that's it, of course. I'll just run my eyes down the items to make
sure. How hard they are to make out! Let me see--let me see. Costume
of white satin _merveilleuse_, and gauze and flounces of Cluny lace,
sixteenth of January--forty-five pounds. That sounds like the dress
she got for the Arkwrights'--satin gauze and Cluny lace; but--but
forty-five pounds! I thought it would be ten at the outside. To be
sure, I never ordered a dress for myself, so--so I don't know; but
forty-five pounds! It's awful, awful!"
With head down-bent she goes slowly and laboriously through each
item; when she reaches the total, her face is crimson with shame and
bewilderment. She pushes the document from her, walks feverishly up and
down the room, then takes up the account again.
"_Sortie du bal_ of silver plush trimmed in blue fox-fur--twenty-eight
pounds ten shillings. That can't--can't mean that simple little dolman
she wore going to the theatricals the other night? Impossible! I'll go
and ask her about this at once."
She rushes off, scared and excited, calling her sister's name loudly.
No answer comes to her in the house. She passes out, the ominous
document trembling in her hands.
"Here I am, under the ash in the tennis-ground! What's the matter? What
has happened? Any one hurt?"
"No," pants Addie, "no; it's a bill of yours, an awful bill, from
Armine--since last January. I can't make it out; it must be wrong. I
got such a shock when I saw the total."
She parts the drooping boughs of the ash, and finds herself confronted
by her sister, crimson with confusion and anger, and Sir Arthur
Saunderson, caressing his tawny mustache, an amused smile stealing over
his insolent dissipated face.
"Oh, is that you, Sir Arthur?" she exclaims, with scant courtesy,
knowing that her husband has a strong personal objection to that
gentleman. "I did not know you were here."
"Came half-hour 'go. Pleasure a-finding Miss Lefroy in the grounds; did
not go the house," he answers languidly. "Lovely aft'noon, ain't it?"
"Lovely," she answers shortly, sitting down beside Pauline, with an
irritated gesture that says as plainly as words could say, "You're in
the way, sir; your departure would be acceptable."
But he takes not the slightest notice; and presently, after a few half
whispered sentences, he and Pauline rise together for the ostensible
purpose of examining some early rose-blooms in the pleasure-ground,
leaving her alone.
"Horrid man!" she mutters indignantly. "How can Pauline stand him? She
knows perfectly well too that Tom objects to his coming here. If his
morals are as bad as his manners, I don't wonder he does, I'm sure!
And, oh dear me, I remember the days when I used to imagine a Guardsman
an angel of fascination and manly grace, something every girl must fall
down before and worship at the first glance, not an insolent goat-faced
clown like--Well, I am getting bitter! I hope he'll go soon, in time
for me to go over that bill with Pauline before Tom returns. I wonder
has he seen it yet? If he has, I shall not be able to look him in the
face. One hundred and eighty-four pounds! More than the whole six of us
had to live on for two years! One hundred and eighty-four pounds! It
grows bigger every time I think of it. One--"
"Addie, Addie, my love!"
She starts, and then leans forward in an attitude of breathless,
puzzled expectancy, her hands clasped. Was she dreaming? Did her senses
deceive her? Surely a voice whispered her name, a voice that takes her
back with a thrill of reluctant pain to a summer night four years ago.
She turns and finds herself clasped in a man's arms, feels a shower of
kisses falling on her scared and shrinking face.
CHAPTER XXII.
Armstrong is detained at his office until late this evening. Feeling
inclined for exercise after his long sedentary day, he gets out of
the trap near the place where he found Addie lying under the tree,
and, walking across the grove, enters the shrubbery path bordering the
tennis-ground, where the sound of voices at the further end attracts
his attention. Dusk has already fallen, but he can clearly distinguish
the figures of a man and woman walking arm-in-arm in front of him. His
face darkens.
"Miss Pauline and one of her admirers," he mutters contemptuously.
"She is carrying matters a little too far. I will let her know that
these twilight rambles are not to my taste, and that as long as she
remains an inmate of my house she must restrict her flirtations to more
decorous hours--at least, out of doors."
He walks quickly after the pair along the mossy sward, then suddenly,
when within thirty yards of them, he stops short and shrinks
instinctively behind the sheltering ash-boughs, for he sees that the
girl is not Pauline, but his own wife, and that her hands are clasped
with an appearance of affectionate _abandon_ on the arms of a man who,
as well as he can make out in the gloom, is a perfect stranger.
Too astonished either to advance or recede, he stands motionless,
thinking painfully and confusedly, then comes to the conclusion that he
has made a mistake, that his fancy has tricked him. He is on the point
of starting forward, when Addie's voice, low, troubled, eager, yet with
a ring of unrestraint, of familiarity even, that makes his pulse throb
with jealous pain, reaches him distinctly on the breathless night-air.
"Oh, no, no--not that--not that! You do not know what you ask--what it
would cost me. He is good, generous, kind, unselfish even--not that,
not that!"
There is a slight pause before the answer comes, in a voice so pure,
sweet, and infinitely sad as to strike musically on the listener's
tortured ear--a voice that Armstrong has never heard before, and yet
that thrills through him with a strange vague sense of familiarity.
"Be it so--be it so. I will not ask what would cost you so much. Why
should I, why should I, my dear, my dear? What hold have I on your
life? Ah, none--none! You belong to another now, to another who you say
is good, generous, kind, unselfish even, which I am not. Go back to
your husband, your home, my girl, and forget that I darkened your path
again--go back; I want nothing from you."
"And you," she asks wistfully--"you? What will you do? Where will you
go?"
"I?" he questions drearily, passing his hand over her downcast head.
"Do not ask, _ma mie_, do not ask."
"Yes, yes, you must tell me; I must know."
He stoops and puts his lips close to her ear. With a shrill cry she
pushes him from her.
"You are trying to frighten me--to win me over. How cruel you are! You
do not mean that?"
"No, no," he answers soothingly, "of course I don't. I can't imagine
what made me blurt out such nonsense. Give me a kiss, a little one, a
last kiss, and let me go."
"And let you go!" she echoes wildly. "How can I do that with such a
threat ringing in my ears? Do you think I have no heart, no feeling
left, because I am married--no memory?"
"You have a husband, good, kind, and--what is it?--generous and
unselfish. Keep your heart, your feelings for him; cast out the memory
of me from your life, for I will never cross your path again; forget me
from this hour--let my fate not trouble you henceforth; do you hear?
This is my last, my only request. Forget me; go back to your husband,
Adelaide, and sleep out your life in peace and--and happiness by his
side."
"Sleep out my life in peace and happiness," she echoes bitterly. "Vain
request! You have murdered sleep for me to-night--destroyed happiness.
Why did you come? Could you not have let me be? Oh, I have suffered
since I saw you last--suffered, suffered! And now--now, when a glimpse
of rest, of happiness even, was coming to me with the summer, you step
in and take it from me. Heaven pity me, Heaven pity me!"
"Hush, hush!" he cries, his voice tremulous with pathos. "I will not
have you say that. I want nothing from you--nothing, I tell you, but
forgetfulness--nothing; blot out the memory of this hour, the memory of
that cowardly unmeaning whisper--forget it--forget, my Adelaide!"
"I can not, I can not, for something tells me that it was not without
meaning. And I loved you once--oh, yes, I loved you once! I was only
a child, I know; but I loved you. Can I now live and feel myself your
murderess? I can not."
Crying bitterly, she buries her face on his breast. He leans over her,
murmuring tender, soothing words; while Armstrong, whose presence they
are too absorbed, too agitated to notice, stands beside them, his hot
breath almost fanning their averted faces, beads of perspiration
standing out on his forehead at the mighty effort he is making to
restrain the instinct that urges him to hurl them asunder, trample
to death the shapely sweet-voiced lover, and overwhelm her with the
discovery of her treachery and deceit. But he restrains himself. After
all, what is she to him, or he to her, his wife in name only? Her past
he entered not into--their future will be spent apart. What have they
in common? Nothing but the memory of two short weeks of union, which
to him and her alike were clouded with bitterness, repulsion, and
torturing recollection. Why then should he make himself ridiculous,
pose as an outraged husband? He does not value her compassionate
appreciation of his worth, does not want her tears, her kisses, her
love. Why, then, in Heaven's name, should he interfere with her lover's
enjoyment of them, the lover whom she jilted for his gold?
"Let her and him go to the dogs!" he mutters, striding away
contemptuously. "Let the chapter of my married bliss close as it may, I
care not a jot!"
He goes without one backward glance, and thus seals the fate of his
life and hers.
The echo of his footsteps startles them; they move apart, look
apprehensively around, but no further movement is to be heard.
Addie's face is white and still; she stands erect before her companion,
and says slowly--
"You have conquered; I will do what you want. Let me go now."
He opens his arms rapturously, with an exclamation of delight, while
she flies away, wringing her hands, and muttering piteously--"Heaven
help me, Heaven help me!"