Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine
this hole of pestilence and crime; but she never answered my letter."
She stops, then says, with a peevish querulous gesture, "Thomas
Armstrong, why don't you say something to me, instead of staring as if
I were a ghost, a ghoul?"
"What can I say, woman?" he answers roughly. "What words are needed to
emphasize the retribution of your sin to me? If you want money I will
give it to you as freely as I would to any needy sufferer, as freely as
I will give you pity and pardon; but why should I seek to moralize on
your pitiful fate, to reproach you when Heaven has so terribly avenged
my wrongs?"
"Heaven?" she interrupted, with a touch of the old fire in her thin
wailing voice. "Where is Heaven? Heaven exists only when one is young
and happy and healthy, free from care and sorrow when the sun is
shining and the blood warm with hope and youth and love; with a body
worn with disease, gnawed with want, and a soul sick with the sight
of pain and misery and sin that never can be relieved, who can feel
that there is a heaven? Ah, who can believe in heaven then, I ask?
Come to my bedside every day Thomas Armstrong, with Bible, bell, and
candle, whisper words of hope, of promise in my dying ears, and yet,
if you speak with the tongue of an angel, and not of a man, you will
not be able to lift the shroud from my soul, nor kindle one spark of
heaven-born fire in my breaking heart. I defy you--I defy you!"
"Yet I will try."
"Too late, too late--you come too late!" she murmurs, her voice dying
away in a dry choking sob.
He tries to utter some hackneyed refutation, but the commonplace words
die on his lips, and a heavy silence follows as his eyes, in which all
wrath and repugnance have now made way for pain and pity infinite, rest
on the cowering wreck of womanhood whom he has loved with a love that
comes to men of his metal only once in a life.
An angry curse, followed by a woman's coarse laugh, breaks the
stillness. There is the sound of stumbling footsteps on the stairs, and
the next moment the door is burst open, and a tall, gaunt-looking man,
past the prime life, with dark gleaming eyes, and a thin chiseled face
scarred with the ravages of fast living and squalid dissipation, stands
on the threshold.
"Adelaide"--he speaks in a sweet thrilling voice that sounds so
incongruous coming from the hard sensual mouth--"are you here? Quick,
my girl--give me those deeds I left behind. I'm off to Antwerp in half
an hour. Infernal run of luck throughout! I'll write for you when--Eh,
whom have you here? Who is this?"--starting back with lowering brow
when he catches sight of Armstrong's flaming face.
"I'll introduce you," says Addie rising quickly and turning to her
husband. "This is, I believe, the only member of our estimable
family whose acquaintance you have not yet made. My father, Colonel
Lefroy--Mr. Armstrong of Kelvick."
But, before the words have left her mouth, Colonel Lefroy, with an
angry oath, has disappeared, and is stumbling frantically down the
stairs.
For fully two minutes Armstrong, with dazed face, remains staring at
the spot where he stood; then he turns slowly to Addie.
"Is that--that man your father?" he asks.
She nods bitterly.
"You have been living with him lately?"
"I have lived with him ever since I left you--four years ago."
"Since you left me--since you left me!" he repeats stupidly. "And--and
your lover--where is he? What did you do with him?
"My lover?"--a faint flush stealing into her own cheek. "What do you
mean, Thomas Armstrong? Something insulting, I--I suppose. Well, I do
not care; I have not much feeling left now--not enough blood in my
veins to resent a sting, a blow from you as I once did. My lover!"
"Yes, I repeat, your lover--the man you loved before you knew me, with
whom you sailed to Melbourne in the 'Chimborazo' four years ago--your
cousin, Teddy Lefroy."
To this statement she makes no reply whatever; her head sinks forward
on her outstretched arm. After waiting a moment, his blood on fire, his
every nerve quivering, he leans over her, thinking she has fainted; but
he sees that her eyes are wide open and tearless, and that there is a
strange smile on her pinched mouth.
"Go away, go away!" she cries querulously. "Can't you let me die in
peace? I am so tired--so tired of you all--of husbands, lovers, father,
brothers, sisters. Oh, go away--go away, all of you! I want peace."
"Adelaide," he says sharply, using her name for the first time, "you
must answer me--you must speak. Did you sail to Melbourne with your
cousin as his wife?"
"How--how dare you ask me such a question?"
"I have dared, and I will dare again and again, until you answer me."
"No," she says fiercely, "I did not! How could I do such a thing when
I was your wife? I have not seen my Cousin Teddy Lefroy since I was a
girl of sixteen. I heard he married, four years ago, a barmaid of some
theater-restaurant, and went to Australia with her--that is all I know
about him. And now--now will you go? You have done your worst, have
offered me the grossest insult a husband could offer a wife. Will you
follow my father?"
Armstrong draws a mighty breath, and passes his hand over his brow with
a scared helpless gesture. He walks to the window, which he pulls open,
thrusts his hot head out into the night, and then comes back to the
table, and, leaning over the sick girl, asks, in a choking whisper:
"Why did you do it--why did you do it, Adelaide, my wife? Why did
you make me, your brothers and sisters, believe that you--you were
worthless--oh, why--in Heaven's name, why?"
"I don't know--I can't remember; it was so long ago! What does it
matter now?" she answers wearily, her eyes closing. "I feel so ill, so
tired. I can't talk any more."
He drops upon his knees by her side, and brings his head on a level
with hers.
"Adelaide, Adelaide, by the love I once bore you, by all the pain, the
trouble you brought into my life, I implore you to answer me!"
The quivering earnestness of the appeal rouses her. She rubs her eyes
and struggles into an upright position.
"Let me think--let me think--it is so long ago. I did not let them
believe anything but the truth. I wrote almost at once--before I went
to America--and told them whom I was with and why I was going. I wrote
many times to Robert and to Pauline, with letters inclosed for Aunt Jo
and the others; but they never answered me."
"They burned them unread. Oh, Heaven forgive them, Heaven forgive them,
for I can not!" he mutters hoarsely.
But Addie betrays no indignation, no surprise, no regret.
"Did they?" she murmurs indifferently. "That would explain."
"Addie, Addie, why did you leave me--my love, my love?"
A flush spreads over her face and a sparkle comes to her eye which
almost brings back her youth again.
"Why did I leave you? Because you had learned to hate, to despise me,
because I--we were all making your life unbearable, and I saw no other
means by which I could free your home, give you back peace; and I left
you because I loved you--loved you, oh, a thousand times better than
you ever loved me!"
"Oh, child, child!"
"I saw you had learned to hate, to loathe me--I saw it in your eyes
when--when--I asked you for that wretched money."
"The money--the money," he says eagerly, "you wanted for your father?"
"Yes; he had forged a check for that amount, hoping to be able to
refund the money before his crime should be discovered; but, finding
he could not, and seeing ruin staring him in the face, he came to me,
having heard that I had married a rich man, and asked me to get it
from you. I promised, and for a whole week I tried--tried to ask you;
but I found I couldn't; and when at the end of the week I told him
so, he held a loaded revolver to his temple and was about to blow his
brains out on the spot. But I wrenched the weapon from his hand, ran
straight into the house, and got the money from you. I got the money;
but--but it cost me home--home, happiness, youth and life. I knew that
we two could carry on the farce no longer, that the same roof could not
shelter us again. I told my father that you had discarded me forever
and that he must keep me with him. We sailed for America, and lived
a hand-to-mouth existence there in the lowest haunts of Bohemianism
among gamblers, sharpers, reprobates of all nations and classes until
two months ago when we came home. What a life--what a life! I--I tried
to get away many times, to support myself free from him; but my health
was against me from the start, so I had to stay with him or starve,
though he tried to shake me off often enough. I--I could have taken
a--a husband before my looks went; but I didn't--I didn't because I
thought the husband I had left would come to rescue me. I lived on this
hope for two years; every morning when I woke I said, 'He will come
to-day; he must come to-day!' I longed for you, Tom, I hungered for
you, and I hoped--always hoped--for every night you used to whisper
to me in my sleep that you were coming to take me home again. But you
never came--ah, you never came! And then the great longing for you died
in me; disease was wasting me. I became torpid, callous, and I thought
no more of you or--Tom, Tom, what is the matter? Why, you are crying!
How funny to see a man cry! You are sorry for me? Don't, please,
don't--I--I don't like it."
He is kneeling on the ground before her, sobbing wildly, kissing her
feet, the hem of her dress, moaning forth inarticulate cries of love,
remorse, pain, and pity infinite.
She leans forward, and looks at him for a few moments with cold
sparkling eyes; then her better nature reasserts itself, and, after
making several unsuccessful efforts to rouse him, she lays her hot thin
fingers on his swelling neck and whispers in his ear--
"Tom, listen! I--I am hungry, dear. I have not eaten anything to-day."
He rises to his feet, stares at her with filmy eyes, then seizes her
in his arms, with her pale face strained to his breast, and carries
her down the rotting stairway, away from darkness, pain, and want, to
warmth, peace, care, and love unsleeping, that are to be her lot while
her days are yet of earth.
* * * * *
Armstrong wants at first to carry off his wife to Madeira, Nice,
Algiers; but the doctors are of unanimous opinion that her strength is
not sufficient to bear the fatigue of such a journey, but that later on
in the season, after a few months' rest and care, she may be moved to a
warmer climate.
"Then tell me--tell me," he asks feverishly, "what I am to do for her
in the meantime. I--I want to cure her quickly; what am I to do?"
"Take her where she wishes to go, within moderate distance; give her
whatever she fancies, keep up her spirits, keep her mind undisturbed,
and do not leave her much alone."
"But medicine--what medicine is she to get? Surely you will give her
something to strengthen her?" pleads Armstrong, an icy chill creeping
over him at the vagueness of the prescription.
"Certainly, certainly," says Dr. Gibson, one of the greatest
authorities on lung disease in the United Kingdom, seizing a sheet of
paper and writing hurriedly; "but remember, Mr. Armstrong, that good
nutriment, complete rest of mind and body, and cheerful companionship
will do more to restore your wife's health than all the medicine in an
apothecary's shop."
With despair in his heart and a smile on his lips Armstrong kneels by
his wife's chair, tells her that he has medical leave to take her away
from the close crowded city, and asks whither she would like to go--to
Brighton, Bournemouth, Cheltenham, the Isle of Wight?
Addie shakes her listless head--she has no wish, no fancy in the
matter--wherever Tom wishes; she does not mind--it is all the same to