That Mainwaring Affair - A. Maynard Barbour (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📗

direction than he?" Harold questioned, sternly. "Within six months after your marriage to my father, you admitted that you married him only that you might have Hugh Mainwaring for your lover."

She neither flushed nor quailed under the burning indignation of his gaze, but her eyes were fastened upon him intently as the eyes of the charmer upon his victim.

"Half truths are ever harder to refute than falsehood," she replied, softly. "I said that once under great provocation, but if I sought to make Hugh Mainwaring my lover, it was not that I loved him, but through revenge for his having trifled with me only to deceive and desert me. Before I married your father, both he and his brother were among my most ardent admirers. The younger brother seemed to me far more congenial, and had he possessed one-half the chivalry and devotion which the elder brother afterwards manifested, he would have completely won my love. The rivalry between the two brothers led to bitter estrangement, which soon became known to their father, who lost no time in ascertaining its cause. His anger on learning the facts in the case was extreme; he wrote me an insulting letter, and threatened to disown either or both of his sons unless they discontinued their attentions to a 'disreputable adventuress,' as he chose to style me. Hugh Mainwaring at once deserted me, without even a word of explanation or of farewell, and, as if that were not enough, on more than one occasion he openly insulted me in the presence of his father, on the streets of London. I realized then for the first time that I cared for him, coward that he was, though I did not love him as he thought,—had I loved him, I would have killed him, then and there. Mad with chagrin and rage, I married your father, partly for the position he could give me—for I did not believe that he, the elder son and his father's favorite, would be disowned—and partly to show his brother and their father that I still held, as I supposed, the winning hand. On my wedding-day I vowed that I would yet bring Hugh Mainwaring to my feet as my lover, and when, shortly afterwards, your father was disinherited in his favor, my desire for revenge was only intensified. I redoubled my efforts to win him, and I found it no difficult task; he was even more willing to play the lover to his brother's wife than to the penniless girl whom he had known, with no possessions but her beauty and wit. At first, our meetings were clandestine; but we soon grew reckless, and in one or two instances I openly boasted of my conquest, hoping thereby to arouse his father's displeasure against him also. But in that I reckoned wrong. He disinherited and disowned his son for having honorably married a woman whom he considered below him in station, but for an open affaire d'amour with that son's wife, he had not even a word of censure.

"Your father discovered the situation and decided upon a life in Australia. If he had then shown me some consideration, the future might have been vastly different; but he grew morose and taciturn, and I, accustomed to gay society and the admiration of crowds, was left to mope alone in a strange country, with no companionship whatever. What wonder that I hungered for the old life, or that a casual admiring glance, or a few words even of flattery, were like cold water to one perishing with thirst! Then new hope came into my lonely life, and I spent months in dreamy, happy anticipations of the future love and companionship of my child. But even that boon was denied me. It was hard enough, believing, as I did, that my child had died, but to find that I was robbed of that which would have been not only my joy and happiness, but my salvation from the life which followed!" She paused, apparently unable to proceed, and buried her eyes in a dainty handkerchief, while Harold Mainwaring watched her, the hard lines deepening about his mouth.

"After that," she resumed, in trembling tones, "all hope was gone. Your father deserted me soon afterwards, leaving me nearly penniless, and a flew years later I returned to England."

"To find Hugh Mainwaring?" he queried.

"Not at the first," she answered, but her eyes fell before the cynicism of his glance. "I had no thought of him then, but I learned through Richard Hobson, whom I met in London at that time, of the will which had been made in my husband's favor, but which he told me had been destroyed by Hugh Mainwaring. He said nothing of the clause forbidding that any of the property should pass to me, and I immediately sailed for America in search of Hugh Mainwaring, believing that, with my knowledge of the will, I, as his brother's widow, could get some hold upon him by which I could compel him either to share the property with me or to marry me."

"Then you were not married to Hugh Mainwaring in England, as you testified at the inquest?"

"No," she replied, passionately; "I was never married to him. I have made many men my dupes and slaves, but he was the one man who made a dupe of me, and I hating him all the time!"

"And Walter!" he exclaimed, "you stated that he was the son of Hugh Mainwaring."

"He is Hugh Mainwaring's son and mine," she answered, with bitter emphasis; "that was another of my schemes which failed. I found I had little hold upon Hugh Mainwaring, while he had the same power over me as in the days before I had learned to despise him. When Walter was born, I hoped he would then fulfil his promises of marriage; but instead, he would have turned me adrift had I not threatened that I would then disclose everything which I knew concerning the will. He sneered at me, but offered me a place as servant in his home, and support and education for his child on condition that the relationship should never be known, and that I would remain silent regarding the will. I could do nothing then but accept his conditions, but they were galling,—too galling at last to be longer endured!"

"How is it that you and Walter bear the name of LaGrange?" he asked.

She hesitated a moment, then replied: "I married a man by that name soon after leaving Australia."

"Before or after the tidings of my father's death?" he questioned, sternly.

"We heard the news of his death soon after our marriage, but he had deserted me years before, so it made little difference. I met Captain LaGrange in Sydney, and we sailed together for Paris and were married there, but we soon grew tired of each other. I left him in about two years and went to Vienna, and from there returned to England. In some way, Hugh Mainwaring learned of the marriage, and when I came to Fair Oaks, he insisted on my taking that name for myself and child."

She spoke wearily and with an air of dejection, for it was plainly evident that Harold Mainwaring was not to be deceived by misstatements, however plausible, nor were his sympathies to be aroused by simulated grief. A few moments of silence followed, while she watched him intently, her face again falling into the pinched and haggard outlines which he had observed on entering the room.

When he at last spoke, his voice was calm, without a trace of anger or bitterness.

"Mrs. LaGrange, I have been informed that in the days before you ruined my father's life you were an actress in a second-class London playhouse, and I see you have not yet lost some little tricks of the stage; but we are not now before the footlights, and it will be much better to lay aside everything pertaining to them. Nothing that you have said has awakened my pity or touched my sympathies for you; in fact, what you have told me has only steeled my heart against you because of its utter falsity. It is unnecessary to go over the ground again, but if you could not reciprocate the love and devotion bestowed upon you by my father, you should never have accepted it; but accepting it as you did, you were bound by every consideration to be true and loyal to that love and to him. Instead, from beginning to end, you have been false to him, false to his memory, false to your own wifehood and motherhood, false to yourself! I have not come here to reproach you, however. I will only say that I do not believe the capacity—the capability even—of love exists, or has ever existed, within you. But," he continued, in gentler tones, "the capacity for suffering does exist, and I can see without any simulation on your part that you have suffered."

Before the look of pity which now for the first time softened the stern features, she broke down, and genuine tears coursed down her pallid cheeks as she cried, "Suffered! what have I not suffered! I am homeless, penniless, degraded, an outcast! There is no hope, no help for me unless you will help me. I know what you must think of me, how even you, my son, must despise me, but as a drowning man catches at a straw, I sent for you, hoping that you would in mercy pity me and help me."

"Do you wish me to help you pecuniarily? I will willingly do that."

"Pecuniarily!" she exclaimed, almost in scorn. "Cannot you understand what I need most? It is pity, sympathy, love! I want the love and support of my first-born son, and I am willing to beg for it," and, rising from her chair, she threw herself upon her knees beside him, "only be my son, forget the past and let me be to you, as I am, your mother! No, let me be!" she exclaimed, as he would have raised her from her kneeling posture. "I have no son but you, for Walter, like his father, has deserted me, with taunts and sneers. I can help you, too," she added, eagerly, but in low tones, "help you in a way of which you little dream. Do you know what Ralph Mainwaring will attempt next? He will try to implicate you in the murder of Hugh Mainwaring!"

"That will be no more than you yourself attempted at the inquest," he answered.

"Ah, but his motive is different; in my case it was but the resort of a weak woman to divert suspicion from herself; but he will seek to fasten this crime upon you to defeat you, to crush and ruin you, because he fears you as his opponent, and it is within my power to clear you from any charges he may bring against you."

Her voice sank nearly to a whisper, her eyes were dilated, and she was trembling with excitement.

He watched her intently for a moment, then spoke in a tone of calm command. "Tell me how you could help me. What do you know of that affair?"

"Listen, and I will tell you," and leaning towards him, she whispered a few words in his ears.

Only a few words, but Harold Mainwaring started as from a shock, while his face grew as pale as her own, and it was with difficulty he could control his voice, as he demanded in quick, excited tones,—

"Do you know what you are saying? Are you speaking the truth?"

"Yes, before Heaven, it is the truth, and the horror of it has haunted me day and night; the thought of it has driven me nearly mad, but I dared not breathe it to any living human being."

"You have told no one else what you have just told me?"

"No, I dared not."

He asked a few more questions which she answered, and from her manner he was convinced that she spoke the truth.