He Fell In Love With His Wife - Edward Payson Roe (the speed reading book .txt) 📗

seemingly to see if anyone

was about. Jane had associated with men and boys too long to have any

childlike timidity, and she also had just confidence in her skulking and

running powers. “After all, he don’t want nothin’ of me and won’t hurt me,”

she reasoned. “He acts mighty queer though and I’m goin’ to hear what he

says.”

 

The moment he passed the angle of the house she dodged around to its rear and

stole into the dairy room, being well aware that from this position she could

overhear words spoken in ordinary conversational tones in the apartment above.

She had barely gained her ambush when she heard Alida half shriek, “Henry

Ferguson!”

 

It was indeed the man who had deceived her that had stolen upon her solitude.

His somewhat stealthy approach had been due to the wish and expectation of

finding her alone, and he had about convinced himself that she was so by

exploring the barn and observing the absence of the horses and wagon. Cunning

and unscrupulous, it was his plan to appear before the woman who had thought

herself his wife, without any warning whatever, believing that in the tumult

of her surprise and shock she would be off her guard and that her old

affection would reassert itself. He passed through the kitchen to the parlor

door. Alida, in her deep, painful abstraction, did not hear him until he

stood in the doorway, and, with outstretched arms, breathed her name. Then,

as if struck a blow, she had sprung to her feet, half shrieked his name and

stood panting, regarding him as if he were a specter.

 

“Your surprise is natural, Alida, dear,” he said gently, “but I’ve a right to

come to you, for my wife is dead,” and he advanced toward her.

 

“Stand back!” she cried sternly. “You’ve no right, and never can have.”

 

“Oh, yes, I have!” he replied in a wheedling tone. “Come, come! Your nerves

are shaken. Sit down, for I’ve much to tell you.”

 

“No, I won’t sit down, and I tell you to leave me instantly. You’ve no right

here and I no right to listen to you.”

 

“I can soon prove that you have a better right to listen to me than to anyone

else. Were we not married by a minister?”

 

“Yes, but that made no difference. You deceived both him and me.”

 

“It made no difference, perhaps, in the eye of the law, while that woman you

saw was living, but she’s dead, as I can easily prove. How were you married

to this man Holcroft?”

 

Alida grew dizzy; everything whirled and grew black before her eyes as she

sank into a chair. He came to her and took her hand, but his touch was a most

effectual restorative. She threw his hand away and said hoarsely, “Do you—do

you mean that you have any claim on me?”

 

“Who has a better claim?” he asked cunningly. “I loved you when I married you

and I love you now. Do you think I rested a moment after I was free from the

woman I detested? No, indeed; nor did I rest till I found out who took you

from the almshouse to be his household drudge, not wife. I’ve seen the

justice who aided in the wedding farce, and learned how this man Holcroft made

him cut down even the ceremony of a civil marriage to one sentence. It was

positively heathenish, and he only took you because he couldn’t get a decent

servant to live with him.”

 

“O God!” murmured the stricken woman. “Can such a horrible thing be?”

 

“So it seems,” he resumed, misinterpreting her. “Come now!” he said

confidently, and sitting down, “Don’t look so broken up about it. Even while

that woman was living I felt that I was married to you and you only; now that

I’m free—”

 

“But I’m not free and don’t wish to be.”

 

“Don’t be foolish, Alida. You know this farmer don’t care a rap for you. Own

up now, does he?”

 

The answer was a low, half-despairing cry.

 

“There, I knew it was so. What else could you expect? Don’t you see I’m your

true refuge and not this hard-hearted, money-grasping farmer?”

 

“Stop speaking against him!” she cried. “O God!” she wailed, “can the law give

this man any claim on me, now his wife is dead?”

 

“Yes, and one I mean to enforce,” he replied doggedly.

 

“I don’t believe she’s dead, I don’t believe anything you say! You deceived

me once.

 

“I’m not deceiving you now, Alida,” he said with much solemnity. “She IS dead.

If you were calmer, I have proofs to convince you in these papers. Here’s the

newspaper, too, containing the notice of her death,” and he handed it to her.

 

She read it with her frightened eyes, and then the paper dropped from her

half-paralyzed hands to the floor. She was so unsophisticated, and her brain

was in such a whirl of confusion and terror, that she was led to believe at

the moment that he had a legal claim upon her which he could enforce.

 

“Oh, that Mr. Holcroft were here!” she cried desperately. “He wouldn’t deceive

me; he never deceived me.”

 

“It is well for him that he isn’t here,” said Ferguson, assuming a dark look.

 

“What do you mean?” she gasped.

 

“Come, come, Alida!” he said, smiling reassuringly. “You are frightened and

nervous, and I don’t wish to make you any more so. You know how I would

naturally regard the man who I feel has my wife; but let us forget about him.

Listen to my plan. All I ask of you is to go with me to some distant place

where neither of us are known, and—”

 

“Never!” she interrupted.

 

“Don’t say that,” he replied coolly. “Do you think I’m a man to be trifled

with after what I’ve been through?”

 

“You can’t compel me to go against my will,” and there was an accent of terror

in her words which made them a question.

 

He saw his vantage more clearly and said quietly, “I don’t want to compel you

if it can be helped. You know how true I was to you—”

 

“No, no! You deceived me. I won’t believe you now.”

 

“You may have to. At any rate, you know how fond I was of you, and I tell you

plainly, I won’t give you up now. This man doesn’t love you, nor do you love

him—”

 

“I DO love him, I’d die for him! There now, you know the truth. You wouldn’t

compel a woman to follow you who shrinks from you in horror, even if you had

the right. Although the ceremony was brief it WAS a ceremony; and he was not

married then, as you were when you deceived me. He has ever been truth

itself, and I won’t believe you have any rights till he tells me so himself.”

 

“So you shrink from me with horror, do you?” asked Ferguson, rising, his face

growing black with passion.

 

“Yes, I do. Now leave me and let me never see you again.”

 

“And you are going to ask this stupid old farmer about my rights?”

 

“Yes. I’ll take proof of them from no other, and even if he confirmed your

words I’d never live with you again. I would live alone till I died!”

 

“That’s all very foolish high tragedy, but if you’re not careful there may be

some real tragedy. If you care for this Holcroft, as you say, you had better

go quietly away with me.”

 

“What do you mean?” she faltered tremblingly.

 

“I mean I’m a desperate man whom the world has wronged too much already. You

know the old saying, ‘Beware of the quiet man!’ You know how quiet,

contented, and happy I was with you, and so I would be again to the end of my

days. You are the only one who can save me from becoming a criminal, a

vagabond, for with you only have I known happiness. Why should I live or care

to live? If this farmer clod keeps you from me, woe betide him! My one

object in living will be his destruction. I shall hate him only as a man

robbed as I am can hate.”

 

“What would you do?” she could only ask in a horrified whisper.

 

“I can only tell you that he’d never be safe a moment. I’m not afraid of him.

You see I’m armed,” and he showed her a revolver. “He can’t quietly keep from

me what I feel is my own.”

 

“Merciful Heaven! This is terrible,” she gasped.

 

“Of course it’s terrible—I mean it to be so. You can’t order me off as if I

were a tramp. Your best course for his safety is to go quietly with me at

once. I have a carriage waiting near at hand.”

 

“No, no! I’d rather die than do that, and though he cannot feel as I do, I

believe he’d rather die than have me do it.”

 

“Oh, well! If you think he’s so ready to die—”

 

“No, I don’t mean that! Kill me! I want to die.”

 

“Why should I kill you?” he asked with a contemptuous laugh. “That wouldn’t do

me a particle of good. It will be your own fault if anyone is hurt.”

 

“Was ever a woman put in such a cruel position?”

 

“Oh, yes! Many and many a time. As a rule, though, they are too sensible and

kind-hearted to make so much trouble.”

 

“If you have legal rights, why don’t you quietly enforce them instead of

threatening?”

 

For a moment he was confused and then said recklessly, “It would come to the

same thing in the end. Holcroft would never give you up.”

 

“He’d have to. I wouldn’t stay here a moment if I had no right.”

 

“But you said you would not live with me again?”

 

“Nor would I. I’d go back to the poorhouse and die there, for do you think I

could live after another such experience? But my mind has grown clearer. You

are deceiving me again, and Mr. Holcroft is incapable of deceiving me. He

would never have called me his wife unless I was his wife before God and man.”

 

“I’m not deceiving you in regard to one thing!” he said tragically.

 

“O God, what shall I do?”

 

“If you won’t go with me you must leave him,” he replied, believing that, if

this step were taken, others would follow.

 

“If I leave him—if I go away and live alone, will you promise to do him no

harm?”

 

“I’d have no motive to harm him then, which will be better security than a

promise. At the same time I do promise.”

 

“And you will also promise to leave me utterly alone?”

 

“If I can.”

 

“You must promise never even to tempt me to think of going away. I’d rather

you’d shot me than ask it. I’m not a weak, timid girl. I’m a broken-hearted

woman who fears some things far more than death.”

 

“If you have any fears for Holcroft, they are very rational ones.”

 

“It is for his sake that I would act. I would rather suffer anything and lose

everything than have harm come to him.”

 

“All I can say is that, if you will leave him completely and finally, I will

let him alone. But you must do it promptly. Everything depends upon this.

I’m in too reckless and bitter a mood to be trifled with. Besides, I’ve

plenty of money and could