Mr Bazalgette’s Agent
Page 9
This illness of the companion I am deceiving served as a pretext; I told him I was frightened to remain. At my request he agreed to abandon his work here, and to forsake the place. He will soon be secure in another country, without even surmising the danger he has run.
I mean to restore to Mr. Bazalgette the accumulation of the salary I have drawn, with an enclosure simply bearing my name; I have considered everything, I do not think there is anything else!
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February 16th
Five mornings more to drag themselves away; I count the hours! Dunstan’s departure has removed the only obstacle to my design; when I shook hands with her at the station I felt ashamed. The dust is hissing along the streets, and darkening the windows; my very diary is gritty. I have been glancing through its pages, back to the first line of all; what a change since the evening in London when I scribbled it!
I can see the narrow room where I sat, as plainly as if I were in it now; I can remember myself nibbling the pen, and staring out at the opposite houses, wondering if I should ever find anything to do. It is funny that renewing the acquaintance of one’s old self, and yet it is melancholy.
Ours will be a curious marriage, as it has been a strange betrothal; we shall leave the hotel together and unaccompanied. What do we want of friends when each of us can bring sufficience to the other? On the 21st, the anniversary of my birth, I commence a new existence dedicated to my husband; our hearts will hide their bitterness, but everything save two secrets that are pain we give and share. I do not dread the prospect: dread! Were my deserts as infinite as the bounty of Heaven it could vouchsafe no greater blessing than this which crowns a crime!
I wish I had not said that; it sounds like a boast! It makes me tremble lest on the verge of fulfilment I should be reminded of it. What has Heaven to do with me,—with us? To beg its aid, would be a blasphemy;—I cannot see to write, I am crying.—Oh, how helpless is a woman deprived of the resource of prayer!
* * * * *
February 20th.
(Midnight.)
He left me an hour ago, and I am alone. It is my wedding-eve; the bare hooks, the strapped trunk, the gaping dressing-bag, everything in the apartment appears to announce it. There is nobody to congratulate me, not a voice to say a kind word, yet in twelve hours I shall be a wife.
It is curious I should feel the loneliness of my position more acutely this evening, when it is nearly over, than I have done at any other period of my life; hut I seem to be bestowing so worthless a gift in going to him as a woman whom no one will miss.
I suppose most girls on such a night whisper their thoughts into a mother’s ear: I have no mother, or I should like to forget my girlhood is past, and to kneel to her now as I used when I was a child!—I had better shut the window, and undress,—how quiet it is!—The breeze blows as softly .as your kisses, dear,—I stretch my hands towards you through the mist!—If the spirits of the dead can listen, if they can intercede for the beings they cherished upon Earth, mother, oh, my dead mother up there amongst the stars, ask the Creator you behold to protect the man I love!
* * * * *
February 21st.
I am ready,—absurdly early, but I was restless. Three attempts to read the “Independent” have resulted in failure. I am too unsettled to concentrate my attention on a newspaper, and my diary is the sole occupation available.
There has been a letter from Dunstan; she writes she is already a great deal stronger, and trusts to be back in time ‘to witness Mr. Vining’s arrest.’ I tore the epistle into fifty pieces,—why did it not get lost in the post! I have forwarded his money to Mr. Bazalgette, retaining only twenty - five pounds; I cannot decide why I kept that; I do not fancy I am avaricious, however bad I may be otherwise, nevertheless some motive I could not analyse impelled me to pause before I determined to make myself quite a pauper.
The chambermaid has wished me happiness, I am so glad; somebody has said something pleasant at last. I had rung for a cup of tea, and in removing the tray she loitered to such an extent that I glanced round; she turned very red, and murmured:
“I hope it isn’t a liberty, ma’am, but what I’ve got to say is, may you be happy, ma’am, you and the gentleman too!”
I could have hugged that girl, smudges and all! And we shall be happy, he and I; remorse has ceased to oppress me, I have flung it from me with the fragments of that hateful letter; I am merely terrified at the magnitude of my joy. I could scarcely pin my bonnet on, my fingers shook so; and to persuade myself it is later than the clock will allow I have buttoned my gloves. My costume is not much like a bride’s. I wonder if he will think I look nice!—I hope he will think I look nice,—the veil does not come far down if he wants to!
How incomprehensible it is a man should have the power of altering the whole current of my ideas as he has done; I am as pliable under his influence as if I were sixteen! The hardest attendant upon matureness, it strikes me, is to love deeply, and be conscious the while that the display of your subjection must always have the appearance of aping juvenility.
It is a problem, also, what attributes, imperceptible to herself, a woman possesses to exert so subtle a dominion over the man. What does he see in me? perhaps——
There is a knock at the door, can it be—? No, it is the servant again; she has brought me a telegram. A telegram! Who can have—. Oh, why did I not take this contingency into account? What a fool I was not to remember they might wire! It must be a cablegram from London, the answer I had calculated to avoid. My tones are tremulous as I thank her: does she notice my agitation? She stares, I fancy, and leaves it on the table. I have not the nerve to open it; it chills me as though it had come to part us even now; Mr. Bazalgette himself seems near; that orange-coloured missive denotes danger,—I will throw it away!
What cowardice, am I mad! My weakness may be imperilling him; suppose duplicate instructions have been cabled to the Kimberley police. I must break the seal, and quickly. My darling, I need all my courage now, for you;—the enclosure lies before me!
I struggle to understand it, and I cannot, the cipher has escaped my memory. I am going cold as ice,—wait! The signs grow clear, the sense steals over me. Word for word I translate it; word for word the message handed to me on my wedding morning means:
“Jasper Vining was arrested by Scotland Yard people yesterday in New York. Return. You have been following the wrong man!”
CHAPTER XV.
FOR minutes I sit gazing at it numbed. I keep repeating the sentence mechanically aloud; I hardly master its significance.
“I have been following the wrong man?” That is to say I have been misled by a chance resemblance to a photograph? I do not know Jasper Vining at all? I have never seen him?—I cannot grasp it! “He was arrested in Hew York yesterday?” Then I have met a man whose name is what he states it to be; whose only fault is the venial folly he candidly admitted, the squandering of an inheritance which might have been a competency. Is it a dream?
But the bonds?—Again how absolutely I have been blinded by my own convictions! why did I leap at the conclusion they must be the stolen bonds when I did not even hear they were Egyptian? He is sinless; stupefaction fades, and the full import of the revelation crowds upon me at length. Danger does not threaten either him or me. Heaven be praised, his innocence removes every cause for fear, the path is open before us. Stop! First I must proclaim the truth. My concealment of the circumstances which brought us together has been practised, from the time I abjured my mission and its claims, as much for his sake as my own; whatever my offence towards my employers, I have since then at least been staunch to him; but that is over now. He is not Jasper Vining; he is a gentleman; and reticence after this would not be delicacy any more, it would be guilt.
My exultance is transient; it ebbs from me, and is succeeded by a sensation of blank dismay. I have been “staunch,”—to whom? To Mr. Jack Vane: what will that avail me? I feel suddenly as if I were betrothed to a stranger; I shall be more
degraded in his sight by that very treachery than if I had been just. I have only been his equal while I imagined him a thief, and he will refuse to marry me.
Acknowledgment will deal the death-blow to my own future; confession is equivalent to telling the man I love I am no longer fit to be his wife; I will not do this thing, I cannot, no woman could!
Why should I not keep silence still? It would be a safe course; Dunstan must be apprized of the intelligence, and she will return to England; exposure could never overtake me, and I can be his wife in spite of all,—Jack’s wife! Ah, have I no honour left? Have I sunk low enough to be disloyal to him? No! Ten thousand “noes.”—Hot that! I will make the avowal, and I will go away; only I can not speak it! I am going to be honest; I am going to do what is right; —hut it must be a letter! I am no heroine, I am flesh and blood, and with all the capabilities of flesh and blood I am suffering now; to make the declaration with my own lips, and to watch the disgust upon his face would kill me.
It is fortunate I reserved some money, it will take me from him. What is the time? There is no room for delay; the note must be written at once. Let me collect my thoughts!—Hark, there are steps in the passage,—they are stopping; I am too late, the ordeal I wanted to shun is at hand. I close my diary; he is outside; I shall not look at it again. It might have finished better, but I shall never pen another entry while I live. He is calling to me,—oh, my heart—
Come in!
* * * * *
* * * * *
God is very good: Jack kissed me!
THE END.