A Woman's Burden: A Novel

"Yes," she said, confronting her husband, "here in our flat. It was I who took the will!"

CHAPTER VII.

MRS. DARROW SYMPATHISES

"I said it, I said it – I always said it. How well I knew what that woman was!"

A veritable feu-de-joie this on the part of the triumphant Mrs. Darrow, for needless to say "that woman" referred particularly in this instance to Miriam, though as a rule with her the term was generic, to be applied alike to anyone of the numerous and unfortunate females who happened to be in her black books. And her triumph at this moment was the more sweet in that her audience consisted of no less a person than the husband of the delinquent herself.

There he sat, Gerald Arkel, no longer clothed in the humble sartorial products of the Strand, such as in truth had befitted a young man whose daily walk of life lay between Leadenhall Street and Water Lane; but in riding-breeches and gaiters, both of cunning and of wondrous design, and bearing on the face of them the unmistakable hall-mark of the West, for which so much is paid (or is promised to be paid) by certain young gentlemen of means ample or otherwise. From his "Quorn" scarf to his Russia leather boots, Gerald was immaculate. He was lord of the manor now, and monarch of all he surveyed – that is to say outside of Pine Cottage where for the moment he was.

Three weeks had passed since that eventful night when Miriam had confessed to having taken Barton's will – three weeks passed by her in misery and alone, for on that night her husband had left her. In vain had she pleaded the innocence of her act – in vain she had tried to show him that what she had done, she had done for love of him, by sacrifice of self, in charity, and not in depredation – a pure great act of love, wholly for him, and counting not the cost to herself. Evil that good might come if you will, but evil only so. But all explanation had been futile; he had been deaf to all her pleading, and to her entreaty too. And not that alone, but worse. Without the strong arm of John Dundas to defend her, assuredly he would have struck her. For his puny brain could picture only the material deprivations of the past two years, and the thought of what his body had been denied roused all the brute in him. He refused altogether to believe what she, amid her tears, tried so earnestly to explain – his uncle's mad scheme of revenge. He had railed at her, and stormed, had stamped his feet and sworn, and finally, having exhausted his pitiable rage, had left the house with the coarsest insult on his lips. Since then she had not seen him.

Upon John Dundas it had all come with overwhelming force. When the confession fell from her lips he could hardly believe his ears. Was it really she who stood there speaking, out of her own lips condemned – in the words of his wife, a common thief? It could not be. He would have staked his life that if ever honour breathed, it breathed in her. And as he listened there that night to what she had to say his faith in her was justified, nay, intensified a thousand-fold. More than ever – a thousand times more – did she call for admiration in his eyes, for love, aye, and for reverence. She had sacrificed all for her love – for the welfare of the soul of him with whom some strange fate had ordained she should be joined. Strange! more than strange, incomprehensible that such a man should have touched the spring of love in such a woman! With her, love signified self-sacrifice. For it, for him she loved, she must immolate herself – for him, a worthless reprobate, whose only claim to leniency was through pity; while he who would have lived for her and her alone, could only serve her now by leaving her.

It was all very terrible to the Major, and taxed sorely his unpretentious little stock of philosophy. For he had a big heart and a single mind, and his life had to be spent beside a woman who had neither. He felt he had a right to growl at fate, and for the past three weeks he had been taking full advantage of that right.

For himself he wished fervently that Miriam had chosen any manner of self-immolation rather than this. He wished it had been as Shorty had said, that Mrs. Darrow had been the guilty party. With her it would have been sheer sinfulness inspired no doubt by cupidity equally as sheer. But one black mark more or less was insignificant in the dim total of Julia Darrow's score. As it was, Shorty must have been mistaken, or have lied to him. Altogether this, the more practical part of the affair, puzzled the Major greatly. In nowise could he make the boy's story coincide with Miriam's. She had related straightforwardly and simply how it had all come about. She had gone in search of Dicky, and had found him lying insensible on the floor – insensible she concluded from shock at seeing Mr. Barton dead, for she had realised in an instant that the old man had been murdered. In the desk beside him lay the will. At once she had recognised it, and with it her chance of saving Gerald. She had not stopped to think. Her instinct had impelled her. At all costs, to him, to her, to any one, she must save him. The whole thing had been a matter of two minutes – the result was one spreading alas, not merely over two years, but over a lifetime. He was obliged to confess that strictly speaking she had been, or, as he preferred to put it, her judgment had been wrong – very wrong.

True to his word, he had lost no time in placing Gerald formally in possession of the Manor House, and Miriam of her income under the will. Then he had betaken himself and his wife back to Brampton where his regiment was stationed, and tried to throw himself with renewed energy into his profession.

On his part Gerald's first visit had been to the tailor's, with the wondrous result already described. His presence now at the abode of Mrs. Darrow was due solely to that lady's very considerable proficiency in the arts of flattery, and to the young man's even more considerable susceptibility to them. For, as we know, he was supposed to hold no love for Mrs. Darrow. But she had seen her chance and had taken it.

Immediately on hearing the momentous news, she had hurried back from Bournemouth, where she was staying, and had succeeded in being the first, not only to congratulate the new lord of the manor on his succession to his own, but to condole with him over his maltreatment in the past. And this had gone straight home with that young gentleman, who, truth to tell, was beginning to feel the need of a little moral support so far as his action in having left his wife was concerned. So seeing that from Mrs. Darrow he would be sure to get it, he had accepted with avidity her invitation to partake of tea at Pine Cottage. There he poured out to her his weak story while she poured out for him tea even weaker, with the result that both were comforted for the time, he being content to put up with the tea in return for the quieting of his already uneasy conscience.

"Well, if you had taken my advice, you would never have married the creature," she said, handing him his third cup. "You'll never be far out if you trust to me. I saw what she was the moment Uncle Barton brought her here."

"Then why did you take her as governess to Dicky?"

"What could I do?" Here Julia's handkerchief went to her eyes. "You know I was absolutely dependent on Uncle Barton; but you don't know how brutally he treated me. But for my spirit I should have died. He threatened to deprive me of every penny if I didn't keep her. I protested and protested, but it was no use."

"Yes, yes, I can quite imagine all you had to go through," said Gerald, getting restive. He had no fancy for a scene.

The widow resenting thus being cut short became more than ever spiteful.

"Perhaps you can imagine, too, the pretty little meetings that used to take place down here between your wife and her lover!"

"Lover! – what lover?"

"A man rejoicing in the very unromantic name of Jabez! – the name's as ugly as himself."

"Jabez? – why, he was her brother. Hilda told me so."

"I gave Hilda credit for more sense – and who told her, pray?"

"Her husband. He had it from Miriam herself. Funny part of it is she never told me."

"Bah – lies, lies – all lies. The woman's a thorough bad lot, Gerald, and you did the wisest day's work you ever did when you left her. The man was her lover I tell you – a part of her former slum life. Don't you tell me. Left her? I should think you did leave her!"

"Well, then, Julia, let's be content with that. You've thoroughly upheld my action – very thoroughly I must say, which is of course quite right."

"Oh, you men, what fools you are! At all events I did give you credit for some taste – "

"Yes, I'm generally considered a man of taste. Hitherto I've not had much money to indulge it; but that's not my fault."

"Carroty hair and freckles, and a figure bobbing out where it should go in, and sinking into a great hole where it should bob out, and feet! Well – "

"Oh, come, that'll do, Julia – that'll do. I ought to be well posted in my wife's points by this time. I've left her I tell you for good and all, and she's got her own income, and – "

"Got – her – own – income! What in the name of common-sense do you mean, boy?"

It was so naïve of Julia to invoke common-sense.

"Exactly what I say. She has three hundred a year under this will."

"Three hundred – !" she gasped.

For the moment it was all she could do. A whiff at her ammonia brought her round.

"You mean to tell me that Uncle Barton left this woman an income equal to mine – equal – to – mine?"

"Certainly."

It is difficult to say what would eventually have happened to Mrs. Darrow if a knock at the front door had not then brought her face to face with another and even more stern reality. She gave a hasty peep through the window. What she saw had an effect homœopathic in principle, though it certainly was not so in dose. It was surprise upon surprise – like curing like. What she had seen was the figure of Mrs. Parsley, and with the sight had come a great calm over her. For she hated Mrs. Parsley more than she hated anyone at the present moment.

"Oh, my dear," she said, as the vicar's wife entered the room, "I am so delighted – this is a surprise. How are you?"

"It's easy to see there's not much the matter with you," returned her visitor, in her most aggressive manner.

"Indeed I am very ill," said Mrs. Darrow, in the faintest of faint voices, "if you only felt my pulse. I can hardly speak, it is so weak."

"Rubbish —that day'll never dawn. It's liver that's the matter with you. Liver, my dear – torpid liver. Too much to eat and too little to do!"

Mrs. Darrow felt that something within her must give if this kind of thing went on.

"I don't know how you can speak like that," she said. "I don't know I have a liver."

"Of course you don't – if you did you'd be more careful of it. But here, you– " She placed both of her sinewy hands upon her enormous green umbrella, and brought it down with a thud in front of Gerald. "It's you I really came to see. I heard that you were here. Nothing escapes me in this village. Where is your wife?"

"She appears to have escaped you, Mrs. Parsley – she is in town!"

"Then she oughtn't to be. Why haven't you brought her down here to share your good fortune? She should be at the Manor House beside you."

"I am shutting up the Manor House. I'm going abroad in a week."

"Is that her doing or yours?"

"Mine. Perhaps I had better tell you at once that my wife and I have agreed to differ. We are not living together for the present."