A Woman's Burden: A Novel

"Did he, indeed? I thought he was more discreet. I must speak to him. Well, and suppose I do wish to have Jabez arrested, what then?"

"I forbid you to!"

He could scarcely believe his ears.

"You forbid me– well, really," he sneered. "So far I cannot congratulate you on the object of your visit. And pray may I ask how do you intend to enforce this prohibition, for I take it you are prepared – or rather, think you are – to enforce it?"

"By exposing you to the parish – to the world. I know Mother Mandarin, sir; therefore I know you. You are an opium smoker – and worse!" she said.

Then she waited.

CHAPTER XI.

UNMASKED

Miriam's accusation came on Barton like a bolt from the blue. For a moment he seemed utterly incapable of speech – while of emotion he showed not a trace. Casting a terrible look on the woman who at once defied and threatened him, he rapidly counted his chances against her. A very brief survey of the existing circumstances sufficed to assure him that the power to coerce her was his. Then an ironical smile broke over his withered face. He glanced at door and windows to assure himself that they were closed. The subject under discussion was too dangerous a one for him to run any risks in that direction. When he spoke it was with all calmness and some irrelevance.

"Won't you sit down, my dear?" he said. "We can talk as easily sitting as standing – more easily perhaps."

As composed as himself, Miriam took a chair, and prepared for the encounter.

"I won't have Jabez harmed," she repeated, "especially by you, who are every wit as bad, if not worse than he is. In a moment of weakness you extorted from me his real name, and thereby you learned more about him than I intended you should learn. But why you should desire to have arrested a man who, whatever his sins, has never harmed you, I do not know. But, understand, I shall stand between you and Jabez – I will protect him. I know too much about you, Mr. Barton, for you to treat me with impunity, and I think you know it."

"And this is gratitude," said Barton, casting up his eyes. "I drag you from the gutter, feed you, clothe you, introduce you to respectable society, and you turn on me!"

"What you did, you did for your own ends," retorted Miriam coldly, "and you know well that I am not from the gutter. There can be no question of philanthropy on your part, or of gratitude on mine."

"Do you think I counted on your gratitude, you jade! If you did, you were wrong. I know that you, like the rest of your sex, would turn on me the first time your uneasy virtue touched your conscience. However, enough of this. As you say, you gave me sufficient information to enable me to obtain more, and I did. So you may as well realise that I am in the position to talk of force, and not you!"

"Not if you harm Jabez, for it is only through him you have any hold over me."

Barton stroked his chin, and looked at her strangely. She was unpleasantly concise – for a woman. He changed his tone.

"Miriam, Miriam, you are but a child after all; you believe all that is told you. Why this man should have informed you that I meant to harm Jabez I cannot say, unless it was to make bad blood between us, and to thwart my scheme in which you are concerned. But I shall find out his reason, and make him pay – as I can make him pay – for his interference. But you may set your mind at rest, you silly child. I have no intention of molesting Jabez, if only because by doing so, as you say, I should lose my hold over you. So long as you do my bidding, Jabez is safe; of course, if you don't – well, we won't talk about that for the present. As to your threatening to disclose my secret vice – I am not afraid of that threat. To tell every one here about me would do you no good – and it certainly would not do me much harm. But if you were to do anything so spiteful, I may tell you that I should have Jabez under lock and key in a week."

"So long as you do not harm him I will be – as I have been hitherto," replied the woman wearily. "It was only from what your Shadow Man gave me to understand that I spoke as I did. I will do all I can to meet your wishes."

"Marry Gerald then!"

Miriam shook her head.

"I said I was prepared to do what I could," she observed, "but so far as Mr. Arkel is concerned, I can do nothing. I may as well tell you at once that he is engaged to Hilda Marsh."

"Damn her!" said Barton, without moving a muscle. "How do you know?"

"I saw them sitting together on the stile near Farmer Bell's. One glance at them was quite sufficient for me. They are engaged, Mr. Barton. You will find that I am right."

Barton mused.

"I am not surprised," he said, after a pause. "I have no doubt you are right. I fancy I know, too, what has brought it about. Last night I told Gerald that I intended to make him my heir; he has, of course, gone straight to her, the hussy, with it, and she – by Heaven, what fools men are! – well, she's lost no time in bringing him to the point. Well," Barton chuckled, "it is not too late to remedy my little mistake. I shall just contrive to let Miss Marsh know that I have changed my mind – that for Gerald I intend to substitute John Dundas, and I fancy you'll see that she'll change hers pretty quickly too."

"Even if she does, it can make no difference so far as I am concerned. As I told you before, I tell you again, there is no chance of my marrying Mr. Arkel."

"But I thought you said – your feelings – !"

"Yes, I know that to my cost, but he does not love me, and will never, never ask me to be his wife. He respects me, he admires me – I am sure he likes me very much. But I must have more than that, Mr. Barton – or less. Let me go, please. I have tried to win Gerald; but he is not for me."

"But think of him– you would not see the boy ruined? With Hilda for wife and my fortune his ruin will be very complete. As his wife you could save him – you know you could! And you have three times the brains of that minx. Surely you could manage – "

"Enough, Mr. Barton. I will not hear what you are going to say. I could save him. Yes, I know I could," cried Miriam, and the tears rose in her eyes. "But, much as I love him, and God alone knows how much that is – I cannot lower myself in his eyes and in my own. I cannot do more, Mr. Barton. The salvation of Gerald is in your hands, not in mine. If you hated his mother, who wronged you, that is no reason you should ruin him, a young man, who has done you no harm. It is a villainous, mad, horrible thing to do!"

"You think so? Well, it must suffice for you that I know what I am doing. If Gerald, after all my kindness and care, had shown any love for me – if he had been even ordinarily grateful, I might have spared him. But he is a brainless, selfish, cold-hearted fop, who abuses me even while he eats my meat. He is useless to man, ruinous to woman, so the sooner he drinks and debauches himself into an early grave, the better it will be for humanity in general. I brought you down here thinking to give him a chance, but he has thrown that away. I have no pity for him!"

"Let your will in favour of Major Dundas stand," urged Miriam, "and Gerald will not lose his chance. Hilda is a mere fortune-hunter. She will throw him over as soon as ever she hears that he is poor."

"I shall do nothing of the sort," replied Barton coldly. "He shall have my money, and, since he is so blind, he can marry Hilda. You – since you refuse to save him – can stand aside and watch his downfall."

"I tell you it is beyond my power to marry him, even if I wished to. I cannot achieve the impossible. Gerald's future cannot depend upon me."

"Then, if it is to depend upon me, a cruel future it will be for him. By a new will I am leaving everything to him."

"Mr. Barton, you are an incarnate devil!"

"Nothing of the kind – only very much a man."

"A coward, since you revenge yourself on a dead woman."

At this Barton was seized with a sudden fury.

"I revenge myself on the son of a woman who ruined me," he almost shouted. "I would have lived and died a decent man but for her. Within me I had the seeds of a wicked heredity, which drove me, if not to crime, at least into contact with crime. The woman I loved would have saved me from myself, and my sister stepped in to prevent my salvation. I hated her for it, I hate her son, and the knowledge that he will go headlong to ruin after my death, will be the sweetest of my dying thoughts."

Miriam looked at the old man with amazement, as he shook with fury and impotent rage. His face became positively brutish, his eyes glittered with insane light, and he shook from head to foot, as though seized with a palsy.

"You say that I am an opium-eater," he continued wrathfully. "I am – I am! For years I was possessed of seven devils which tore at me, and, in despair, I took to the drug. Mother Mandarin! you know her well, and she knows me. Many a time have I crept down that foul lane in Lambeth to the foul den of that old hag, and there with many a pipe have I sought to smoke myself into oblivion – into an imaginary paradise where at least I might hope to dream of her who was lost to me. But did oblivion come – was Paradise opened? No, no! I was taken into hell – to suffer the tortures of the damned. My waking life was agony – my sleeping, pain everlasting; yet I could not tear myself away from the thing. It gained too strong a hold on me, and I am a slave to it even now – I confess it, a slave to Satan, to Apollyon, to Beelzebub. You know now why I go to London, and seek to deliver myself into the grip of those things which lie in darkness."

In his agitation he rose and paced the floor, rent and torn by the devils which, as he said, and which Miriam, with the spectacle before her, was constrained to believe, possessed him.

She remained silent, stunned almost by the outburst of this terrible nature – brutish, animal, horrible. It was as though the cold ground underfoot had opened to spout fire and destruction. Barton went on,

"Do you know my fear, Miriam? It is that some day I shall kill some one. That is the gift that I inherit from my ancestors. A thousand times the impulse has seized me, but, so far, I have had the strength to hold me back. A wife – a good, fond, loving, tender wife, could have saved me from the tortures which that bloody instinct inflicts. She would have exorcised the devil within me. Of that, my only salvation, I was robbed by my sister. I hate her!" he hissed.

"Flora, dead or alive, I curse you! I will ruin your son, as you ruined me, and when he dies a drunkard and an outcast, I shall laugh – yes, even though I am in hell, I shall laugh."

Shaking his fists, the old man dropped into his chair, and burying his face in his hands, burst into tears. His paroxysm of anger had exhausted him, and he was now weak as a child.

Miriam was amazed and terrified by what she had heard. Here was a man with the awful instinct of murder in his blood, possessed of a hideous love of crime. Within him lurked a monster ravenous as a tiger – a source of danger to all around him, although they knew it not. Miriam wondered whether in truth he might not already have followed the promptings of his mania – whether his hands were not even now stained with blood. Or, perchance, he had watched others do this devil's work at his bidding, while he had stood aside, and thus kept himself within the limits of the law. She could not say, she could not guess; but, silent and aghast, she looked at the sobbing man. Filled with the instincts of terrible crime, what a life he must have led! What tortures he must have experienced! Was he really sane or insane? Should he be allowed to go free or not? She could not decide. She could only sit there fascinated as it were by the sight of him – a human being abject and impotent from abandonment to the vile instincts which had clamoured for expression. She could almost find it in her heart to pity him!

CHAPTER XII.