Buch lesen: «Belford's Magazine, Vol 2, December 1888»

A CHRISTMAS ROUND-ROBIN

I.
THE MORNING BEFORE CHRISTMAS

When Malcolm Rutherford entered the library, on the morning of a certain day before Christmas, he was surprised to find his wife in tears. This was all the more vexatious because he knew that she possessed everything to make a reasonable woman happy; but Mrs. Rutherford was not always a reasonable woman, being prone to causeless jealousy and impulsive to rashness. They lived about five miles from Winchester, Va., in which city Rutherford had a fine legal practice.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Have any of our guests disappointed us?"

"No," she replied, drying her eyes. "They have all arrived and are in their rooms; and" – here she assumed an air of mystery – "in addition to the house-party, I have invited a couple of strangers to dine with us to-day."

"Indeed! Isn't it just a little extraordinary to invite strangers?" he interrupted.

"Strangers they are to me, but not to you. The woman claimed to be a friend of yours."

"Well, I have some friends whom you do not know."

"Miss Emily Tillinghurst, for example."

Rutherford started and turned red.

"Ah!" continued his wife, in a tone of triumph, "I think I have at last detected you. The woman who called upon me this morning – she has but just gone – was a Mrs. Honey. She had a letter of introduction from Lydia Wildfen; and what do you think her business was?"

"How should I know?"

"To solicit our patronage for a school she is going to open in Winchester. She says that you can recommend her because you once personally placed a young girl-pupil under her charge. Though dying of mortification at your having such a secret from me, I pretended to know all about it, and as your friend I asked her to dine with us to-day and to bring her husband."

"Very good," was Rutherford's comment.

"It is not very good; it is very bad. I demand an immediate explanation of all the circumstances."

"I cannot give it," Rutherford replied, meditatively; "not, at least, until after Christmas."

"A pretty Christmas I shall pass with these dreadful suspicions of you gnawing at my very heart. You must – you shall explain it all to me."

"I neither can nor will," said Rutherford, angrily; and he abruptly terminated the conversation by turning on his heel and leaving her to suffer the tortures of what she believed to be well-founded jealousy.

Rutherford strode down the one street of the suburban village in such blind haste that he ran full tilt against old Mr. Robert Plowden, who was taking a stroll, and who, with his young wife, was a guest of the Rutherfords that Christmas.

"Dear me!" he exclaimed, "you almost knocked me over, Rutherford."

"Excuse me. I'm in an awful hurry to get to the telegraph office. It's fortunate I've met you here, as I've something to say to you which I would sooner not say indoors."

"You surprise me," said Plowden, falling into step with Rutherford. "Is it anything serious?"

"Extremely."

"And concerns me?"

"Yes. I will come to the point, so as not to keep you in suspense. Although so long settled in Virginia, you are an Englishman?"

Plowden nodded, and Rutherford continued: "And although, before you married your present wife, always supposed to be a bachelor, in reality you left a wife in England."

"Merciful heavens!" exclaimed Plowden, half-falling against Rutherford in his surprise.

He was a physically weak old man. "It is all true. I can explain everything satisfactorily, however. But how came you to know all this?"

"I learned it from an elderly Englishwoman who came to my office yesterday. She called herself Maria Plowden – "

Plowden uttered a groan.

"I see you know the name."

"Yes," returned Plowden; "it is that of my first wife, who died in England shortly after I came to this country."

"Are you sure she died?"

"Bless my soul! of course I'm sure."

"Can you prove it?" persisted the lawyer. "How do you know that she is dead?"

"I had a letter from a friend telling me so."

"Have you that letter?"

"I do not know; I may have. But one doesn't keep letters for twenty years. Why do you ask me all these questions?"

Rutherford replied gravely: "Because the elderly woman claimed to be your wife, and desired to retain me as her counsel in the prosecution she contemplated of her alleged husband, Robert Plowden, for bigamy."

"She's an impostor!" cried Plowden.

"She says she has a bundle of letters which will establish her identity," said Rutherford; "and she was so anxious to begin her suit that I could hardly persuade her that she would have to wait at least until after the holidays."

"My God!" groaned Plowden, "could there have been any mistake about her death?"

"All things are possible, you know; your passing as a single man was hardly wise."

"That may be, Rutherford; but my married life had been so full of pain and shame that I wished with her death to bury all remembrance and reminder of it. When quite young I married for her beauty a girl greatly beneath me in social station, and very ignorant. That I could have borne uncomplainingly, even after my infatuation was over, but her terrible temper and, worse than all, her intemperate habits made my life a burden, and, divorce being then next to impossibility of attainment in England, I determined to leave her. In fact, I was obliged to do so. I placed her in a private Home for Inebriates, and with my little Anna, aged six, I came to this country. Shortly after my arrival here I was informed of her death."

"By the proper authorities?"

"No; for it seems she made her escape from the Home and died elsewhere. You can understand that these sad facts made me disinclined to speak of my married life; and as people seemed to take it for granted that I was a bachelor – well, I simply did not contradict them."

"And what became of little Anna?"

"She died on the vessel which brought us over," said Plowden with emotion. Quickly recovering himself, he inquired of Rutherford what he should do in the matter.

The lawyer reflected a moment and then replied: "I too am in trouble. It has just occurred to me that you can help me, and in return I will do my best to help you."

Plowden assured him that he would do anything he could, and Rutherford proceeded to explain himself.

"I too have a secret," he said; "not so bad a one as bigamy, thank Heaven! but bad enough."

Plowden groaned, while the lawyer, with a surreptitious smile, continued: "It concerns a young girl whom I placed at a boarding-school in New York years ago. Now, my wife – whose infernally jealous disposition everybody knows – has been told of this by the very woman in whose charge I put the girl. I saw her, though she did not see me, as she came from my house half-an-hour ago."

"The girl?"

"No: the schoolmistress."

"Who is she?"

"She was a Miss Archer – an old maid; a Winchester woman who lost all her people and her money during the war. She then went to New York and opened a young ladies' school. Mrs. Wildfen was one of her pupils. She was doing very well until she committed the folly of marrying her servant, a man named Honey, an extremely handsome but ignorant cockney, and young enough to be her son."

"Dear me!" ejaculated Plowden.

"This naturally caused a scandal. Her pupils were withdrawn in a body, and the school was closed for want of patronage. And now my wife tells me she has returned to open a school in Winchester. You will meet them at dinner to-day; my wife asked them."

"That's strange, isn't it?"

"Yes, a most unfortunate complication for me, their being where my wife can – and she will – pump Mrs. Honey. It was to get the chance to do that, I fully believe, which made my wife invite them; hence the absolute need of my having some plausible story with which to satisfy Edna. You, by reason of your age and respectability, can better do this than anyone else."

"But, 'pon my soul, Rutherford," expostulated Plowden, "much as I would like to serve you, I'm afraid I can't. What can I say to your wife?"

"You can tell her that the girl was yours; that to hide her from your wife I secretly put her into the school, for you, under an assumed name."

"But what will my wife say – she who never suspected that I had a wife before her, much less a child?"

"Oh, it will be all right after Christmas. I can then square myself with my wife, and you can make a clean breast of it to yours."

"Why don't you make a clean breast of it at once? It happened before your marriage, you know."

"Oh, as for that, it would be all the same to Edna, if it had happened in a previous existence. But that isn't the question. It is a professional secret. I am under a pledge to an old client of mine for whom I acted. He is now in Boston, and I'm going to telegraph him that domestic peace demands my release from my pledge. So you see, Plowden, that if you can stave off my wife's suspicions until after Christmas, I will – "

"What?"

"Stave off Mrs. Plowden Number One."

"I'll do my best," groaned Plowden, "though the Lord has not gifted me with the art of deception."

"Inspiration will spring from necessity. Remember, it will bring us a peaceful Christmas and you – relief from Number One."

Together they entered the telegraph office, and Rutherford sent off his message to Boston.

II.
THE AFTERNOON BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Miss Helen Fithian, a poor, elderly relative of Edna's, was spending the season – much more than the holidays – with the Rutherfords. She and Edna were sitting together in the library that afternoon, while the perturbed Plowden was learning his hard lesson of enforced duplicity. Mrs. Rutherford was in no humor for conversation. Miss Fithian nestled into the depths of a big arm-chair in a shadowy corner, clutched her lank red fingers over the tidy she was eternally crocheting and never finishing, dropped the eye-glasses from her bony nose into her lap, and went to sleep.

"Can I speak with you alone, Mrs. Rutherford?" tremulously asked Plowden, stopping at the threshold.

"Certainly, Mr. Plowden; come in," Edna replied, trying her best to speak pleasantly. Plowden glanced at Miss Fithian. "Oh, I am as good as alone," continued Edna, following his look. "Helen is asleep; and even if she were awake, she could not hear you if you spoke in an undertone."

"True," assented Plowden. "I forgot that she's as deaf as a post. Well, the trouble is just this. Your husband has confided to me that a little difference has arisen between you, owing to a slight misunderstanding – "

"Ah, indeed! 'A slight misunderstanding,' eh? Well?" interpolated Mrs. Rutherford, icily, but with fire in her eye.

Plowden was very nervous, but he struggled on bravely: "As I alone can set the matter right, he appealed to me to do so."

"Ah! You think you can. I am curious to know how. I presume I shall understand as you go on."

He shuddered, but continued: "In order that you may do so, I must reveal to you my secret – one that I have locked up for many years. When I came to this country, I left a wife in England."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Edna, drawing away from him in surprise, and saying to herself, "Ah! is he too a villain?"

Involuntarily he raised his voice a little, to span the distance that now separated them, and went on: "Yes; but I had some excuse, I assure you." He then related the story of his married life as he had told it to Rutherford, carefully omitting, however, to mention the age of his daughter.

When he had finished, Edna remarked: "Well, I am surprised, Mr. Plowden. But still I do not see what all this has to do with me and my husband."

"I am coming to that. You will see. Fearing that my wife might follow, trace, and reclaim my daughter if she remained with me, I prevailed upon your husband to place her in a boarding-school in New York, where she remained, under a false name, until, upon the death of her mother, I removed her. Now, do you see?"

"I do, I do!" exclaimed Mrs. Rutherford, her clouded face clearing. "How simple it all is, in the light of this explanation! What a weight you have lifted from my heart! I was looking forward to a wretched Christmas, but now I shall have such a happy one. How can I ever repay you, Mr. Plowden, for your noble frankness?"

"By keeping my secret, as your husband has done all these years."

"I will; I promise you that. Only, I do not see the necessity for secrecy, since your trouble is over and done for, and you are happily married to another woman."

"That's just the reason, dear friend. You see, I allowed people to think I was a bachelor, if I did not actually tell them so. Gertrude became my wife under that belief."

"Why did you not tell her the truth before marriage?"

"I tried to; but my dear, sweet, young Gertrude was so romantic that, while she could and did overlook the disparity in our ages, she never would have done the fact that I had been married before and was a father. It would have disenchanted her completely, and I should have lost her. So, you will keep my secret, my dear madam, will you not?"

"That I will. Oh, how shall I ever forgive myself for wronging my own dear, innocent, faithful, self-sacrificing love by my cruel suspicions and hateful jealousy?"

"Freely confess to him your fault."

"That I will. I will fly to him and ask his forgiveness."

And "fly" she did, as literally as she could, but in the wrong direction. As the last whisk of her skirts was heard in the direction of Mr. Rutherford's study den, that wily gentleman emerged from a door on the opposite side of the library.

"Well?" he demanded anxiously. "Don't keep me on thorns. Have you made it all right with her?"

"I have," replied Mr. Plowden.

"You don't mean to say she swallowed it all!"

Plowden nodded.

"And didn't even drop on the weak point in the story – that when I was supposed to be placing in school your little girl, aged six years, I was not much older myself?"

"No."

The two gentlemen exchanged a smile; then the elder, becoming serious, said:

"But of course you will keep faith with me, Rutherford, and as soon as you obtain your telegraphic release you will tell her the whole truth, whatever that may be?"

"Yes; but I can't get that, you know, until the day after Christmas. I had to wire to my client's business address, so it was too late to connect to-day. To-morrow is a holiday. It will be the day after before I can hear."

"And what about my affair?"

"That is not so easily managed. Still, I have a suspicion that – but I'll say nothing about that at present. The woman is very determined. I told her I could do nothing in the matter until after the holidays. She said she didn't care 'three ha'pence for holidays,' and if I wouldn't take her case and push it, there were plenty of lawyers who would jump at the chance of prosecuting the rich Robert Plowden for bigamy."

"Hush! for heaven's sake!" gasped Plowden, in a hoarse whisper, as, with an expression of terror in his countenance, he pointed at the old maid. Rutherford also looked frightened as, wheeling round, he for the first time descried her; but seeing who it was, and that she was asleep, he was reassured, and replied indifferently:

"Oh, it's all right – nobody but that mischief-making old cat who foists herself upon us six months out of every twelve. You gave me an awful scare. But she's as deaf as an adder when awake, and can't hear thunder when asleep. Come, let's go to the billiard-room and have a game. I feel like a new man, now that I've got a respite from this business until after Christmas."

"Well, I can't forget that it's only a respite, and my anxiety will spoil Christmas for me."

"And so will mine, I suppose, but we must not show it."

"Oh, what a pair of reprobates we are!" groaned Plowden, as his host led him away to the billiard-room, which, as is frequently seen in the South, was a detached structure, at a little distance from the main building.

No sooner had the front door closed behind the gentlemen than Miss Fithian sprang up. Pallid and quivering with wrath, she muttered half audibly:

"So I'm 'a mischief-making old cat,' am I? and I 'foist myself on' you, you villain! do I? and I'm 'deaf as a post and an adder,' am I? Well, I'm not so deaf but what I heard the whole of your vile plot to conceal your crimes; and if I am deaf – you hypocrites! you conspirators! you bigamists! – you shall find that I'm not dumb!"

III.
CHRISTMAS EVE

Not until she was dressing for dinner did Edna Rutherford find herself alone with her husband. Then, between sobs and buttoning her shoes, broken sentences and doing up her hair, she, metaphorically speaking, smote her breast and cried, "Mea culpa! mea culpa! I have sinned against thee! Forgive me!"

Rutherford was not only a shrewd lawyer, but a natural diplomat; and finding himself master of the situation, he took advantage of it to exact a promise – which she passionately and penitently gave – that she would "never again suspect him; no, not even on the evidence of her own eyes and ears." This signal victory and the extreme comprehensiveness of the articles of capitulation thus agreed upon enabled Mr. Rutherford to meet Mr. and Mrs. Honey with that calm, clear conscience which finds its strength in the certainty of the impossibility of detection. He greeted them with the unruffled mien and courteous ease of the polished gentleman – a manner that fairly overwhelmed the ex-man-servant, and made him feel that to possess it he would willingly have bartered his remote future to the arch-fiend. None but Honey himself knew how unhappy he was made by his dress-suit, which seemed to persistently inspire him with the idea that he was still a waiter; or how wretched he was in the constant fear that he would be betrayed by that inspiration into the doing of something for which Mrs. Honey would pounce upon him. In vain he had implored his inexorable partner to be allowed to stay at home, impressing those considerations upon her with all the eloquence of which he was possessed; and indeed she saw for herself that he could not refrain, when he wore his dress-coat, from laying his handkerchief over his left arm like a waiter's napkin. Mrs. Honey replied, however, that he must meet people on a footing of equality or he would never learn how to conduct himself properly in society; an argument which finally induced him to accompany her, shamefacedly.

Only the persons already mentioned in this narration sat down that afternoon to what was destined to be a fateful Christmas Eve dinner. Smiling faces masked anxious hearts, all round the board. The Wildfens had had a more than usually spirited battle of words just before coming down from their room. Mr. Honey endured the misery of constant effort for the maintenance of a correct deportment, to insure which his wife seemed to fix her gray eyes steadily upon him with a stony glare, while she held an iron-shod heel ever ready to crunch his corns as a silent monition. Edna was still afraid that her husband had not really forgiven her in his heart; and Rutherford's mind was far from easy. Plowden felt that he might just as well be a murderer as a mere bigamist, so conscience-stricken and care-ridden was he. Miss Fithian, osseous, grim, and scowling, looked like "the skeleton at the feast," and felt like "the dread Avenger." The only undisturbed soul present was that of pretty, gentle Mrs. Plowden.

Walnuts and wine were reached at last. Then Mrs. Wildfen remembered how fond Mrs. Honey used to be of making speeches, wherever she might air her oratorical gifts, and in an unlucky moment called upon her to make a speech.

Mrs. Honey was in the act of rising to respond, when Miss Fithian, rudely pushing her down upon her chair, took precedence and demanded of Mrs. Wildfen:

"You want a speech, do you? I'll make you one that will make certain persons here tremble."

There was no doubt about that. Two of them – the conspirators – were trembling already. They felt instinctively that the hour of trouble for them had arrived.

"Cousin Edna," continued the spinster, "I regret the pain I feel it my duty to inflict upon you, but that false husband of yours has again deceived you."

Mrs. Rutherford sprang to her feet, instantly armed cap-à-pie with her never-failing jealousy: "What do you mean?" she gasped.

"Silence!" cried Rutherford in a commanding tone to Miss Fithian.

Plowden, who had been struggling with a sudden faintness, suddenly succumbed to it and fell against his wife, who cried out in alarm, "Rob! Rob! what's the matter?"

"I will not silence, sir," retorted the old maid, "for I consider it my duty to publicly expose and denounce you – 'deaf as a post' though I may be" (here Plowden gave such an agonized groan that his wife forcibly poured a glass of wine down his throat, choking but reviving him), "and 'deaf as an adder,' Mr. Rutherford, I overheard you confess the foul plot you and that monster had concocted to deceive my poor cousin, your long-suffering, unsuspecting wife. Oh! I'm not afraid of you," she cried, as Rutherford arose with a dangerous look in his eyes. "The girl you placed at school was the creature of your villainy, and not Plowden's daughter."

"What!" cried Mrs. Rutherford, as Mrs. Plowden at the same moment exclaimed: "His daughter! Of course not. He never had a daughter. Had you, ducky?"

"Ducky" was unable to quack a negative, or even to respond when Mr. Rutherford in a stentorian voice called: "Give this woman the lie, Plowden."

"And what if he should," retorted Miss Fithian; "who would believe the word of a bigamist?"

"A bigamist!" cried a chorus of voices.

"Do you mean that my husband is a bigamist?" demanded Mrs. Plowden, jumping to her feet, her eyes flashing.

"I do mean it. Ask him."

"Deny it, Rob, love! Mr. Plowden! Deny it, darling," urged Gertrude, seizing his collar and giving him a shake.

The movement disturbed the doubtful balance of his limp form; he slid from his chair and disappeared under the table, almost unconscious. Surprise at his sudden vanishing-act so startled everybody that a momentary silence ensued, in which sounded sharply the ringing of the front-door bell. Honey instinctively jumped up to answer the summons, but was promptly recalled by his quick-witted wife to a proper realization of his altered social condition. That poised heel came down with such vigor on his toes that he howled with pain.

"Do that 'ere just once more," he yelled, savagely, "han' I'll cut loose from you for good."

"You never can hear a bell ring but you want to run and answer it," she retorted, in an undertone.

At this juncture, Sam, the old darkey factotum, shambled in with a card, for which Honey, in his pain and confusion, unthinkingly stretched out his hand. Sam gave it to him and left the room.

"Who is it? Who is it?" demanded several voices.

"Read it out, Mr. Honey," called Mrs. Wildfen.

"I cawn't, ma'am; hit's writin', an' I cawn't read writin'."

"William!" cried Mrs. Honey, in an awful voice, snatching the card from him and again bringing down that merciless heel upon his already aching toes. Honey sprang to his feet with a cry of anger and pain, half-threatening and half-whining – the vocal outcome of his divided emotions – proclaiming:

"That settles it. I told you I would if you did it wunst more. 'Arriet, I said I would, and I will. I'm a-goin', for wunst and hallways."

As he dashed out of the room, with a ludicrous limp, there was a general cry of "Come back, Honey! come back!" But Mrs. Honey arose and, though very pale, said with much dignity:

"Oblige me, ladies and gentlemen, by letting him go. I deserve this public desertion for my folly in marrying my inferior. The name on the card is 'Mrs. Plowden.'"

A blood-curdling groan nearly froze the blood in the veins of the guests. It came from under the table, whence, simultaneously with it, emerged Plowden, to whom terror lent instant animation and activity.

"My wife!" he breathed, huskily.

"Your wife!" exclaimed Gertrude. "Then it is true! You are a bigamist!"

"Yes! No! She's dead! Save me from her!" he cried incoherently, rushing to the French window overlooking the lawn and throwing it open. "You will forgive me, Gertrude," he declaimed, with his foot upon the window-sill, "when the black waters are surging over my head. Farewell! Farewell forever!" And leaping out into the darkness, he was gone.

"Stop him! stop him, someone!" pleaded Gertrude. "He will drown himself!"

"He can't," sneered Miss Fithian; "the fish-pond is frozen over."

"I would advise you, sir," now remarked Mrs. Rutherford to her husband, in a voice of suppressed passion, "to follow your fellow-criminal."

"I will, madam," he retorted, in a like tone of restrained fury; "and since you actually presume to order me from my own house, I go – never to return." As he spoke, he too passed out through the window.

A momentary awe seemed to oppress those remaining at the table. The silence was soon broken, however, by Wildfen saying to his wife:

"A pretty row you've made all around, haven't you?"

"I!" exclaimed Lydia, in amazement.

"Yes, you."

"How?"

"Why, by giving Mrs. Honey a letter of introduction to Mrs. Rutherford – as you confessed to me you did."

"I'm sure I didn't mean any harm by it."

"You did," persisted the quarrelsome Wildfen. "You're always making mischief and pretending you don't mean to."

"I'm not."

"You are. And I want to tell you, once for all, that I'm tired of your eternally contradicting me. Do it once more, just once, and I'll follow the other gentlemen."

"Who cares if you do?"

"You do."

"I don't."

"What! already! Now I am off;" and he sprang up and started for the window.

"Good-bye, and good riddance," Lydia called out, as his form vanished in the darkness without, and the window closed behind him with a slam; then sank back in her chair, laughing hysterically. This roused Mrs. Rutherford from the semi-stupor into which she had sunk.

"Laugh," she said bitterly, rousing herself; "laugh while my heart is breaking. No, do not speak. I want no sympathy, no pity. I know his perfidy now, and shall know how to act."

"Why! what's happened to Mrs. Plowden?" exclaimed Lydia.

"She has been in a faint since her villain escaped," replied Miss Fithian, who was supporting the unconscious form, "and I've been trying to revive her."

"Open the window," suggested Edna.

"No, don't," cried the contradictory Lydia. "If you do, I'll catch my death of cold."

"She's coming to," said Mrs. Honey. "Oh, here's the punch coming in. Give her a drink of that and she will be all right."

Sam, who brought in the steaming punch-bowl and placed it upon the table, stared about him in amazement, unable to comprehend the mysterious disappearance of all the gentlemen. He knew that Mr. Honey had gone out by the front door, but, the window being closed, the idea of the others having made their exit by that way did not occur to him.

"Where's the woman who brought that card, Sam?" spoke up Miss Fithian. "Ask her in. She will bear evidence to the truth of my charge."

"Why, miss," replied Sam, "dat a' woman acted de mos' curusest you ebber see. She done come to de do' an' stan' dah, till she see dat a' Mistah Honey come a-shootin' out de dinin'-room do' an' fro' de front do' like he done gone mad. She scrunch herself clus agin de wall fo' to let him pahs, an' he go by like de bird an' nebber see her. Den she scoot out an' scuttle off, like de debble he after her, in jes' de udder way what he didn't took."

"Strange!" commented Mrs. Wildfen, and looked disappointed when no familiar voice responded, "No, it isn't." The silence and the empty chair beside her quickly reminded her that her contradictor was gone – perhaps forever.