CHAPTER II.
Mary spent many weary hours trying to settle in her own mind what course to pursue, whilst Roger was confined to his bed, cursing the blisters which prevented him from walking, cursing Mary, her grandfather, and all her ancestors in the same breath. She felt nothing but disgust toward the man whom she had promised to love, honor and obey. What was there in such a man to honor? He had told her in horrible language that the first use which he should make of his feet would be to go on a protracted spree, and she would see no more of him for a month. He added with an oath “that he knew better than to come back for a second dose of mustard.”
She had written several letters to her grandfather, asking his advice as to what she had better do, but as yet she had received no reply. By his wise decision she would abide, feeling sure that he would point out the right way. She had not changed in her general bearing toward Roger. She waited on his every whim with wifely solicitude, but without the endearing words or loving caresses, which she would have bestowed one week ago. He was still her husband, and would remain so until death claimed either. She could not forget that. She owed him a certain amount of obedience, further than that he could not force her to do his will.
“Why don’t you talk once in a while, or tell me a good story?” he said to her one day. “You are like a death’s head at a feast, and about as cheerful as one would be, I should judge.”
“I have nothing to talk about,” she answered, wearily.
“Then invent something. If Bella were only here now, she’d make things lively for me. Not a dull hour in the day. She can dance, she can sing, she can do anything.”
Mary compressed her lips for a moment, and then said calmly:
“Then you intend to keep that slave girl?”
“Ain’t at all likely that I shall part with her, Mrs. Willing. She is too valuable. She’s only twenty-six. Look at the family she’s likely to raise. Every pickaninny will be worth a hundred to five. Part with Bella? Well, I reckon not.”
Mary shuddered. To hear her husband talk so coldbloodedly of traffic in human souls, made her heart sick. Was he devoid of all human feeling? She would try him and see.
“How much money would you want for all your slaves, if you were going to sell them?” she asked quietly.
“Oh about five thousand, I rec’on. I haven’t many now. I sold a good many last Spring, but I’ll buy a good lot more when I go back.”
She knelt by his chair, and clasped his arm with her hands, looking pleadingly up into his face. “Roger, I have never asked a favor of you since our marriage. You know how I abhor slavery. I cannot understand it, and never shall. I cannot imagine one human being selling others as if they were cattle without soul or feeling. Let me buy them of you, Roger. I will free them, and hire them to work on your plantation. Then, parents would not be torn away from their children, as you say is often the case now, and God would bless us for doing right in his eyes.”
Roger burst into a loud guffaw. “That’s rich. By thunder! if it ain’t. You would take my money to purchase my slaves, then liberate them. What do I make by the deal?”
“But I am speaking of my money, Roger. Surely I have a right to do as I please with my own.”
“With mine own,” mimicked Roger. “And pray tell me what is your own? Look at your marriage contract, madam, and see what that tells you. Everything belonging you became mine when I married you. Do you think I would have married you else? You can’t touch a farthing of it without my consent.”
“And do you mean to say that you would refuse to give me a paltry thousand pounds of my own money to do as I please with it?”
“You have understood my meaning fully, my lady. Not a sixpence do you get out of me for the purpose of liberating my slaves. I’d give you any amount you wanted for any other purpose.”
Mary rose in indignation, and raised her hand warningly. “Then beware, Roger Willing, of what is coming. I saw it as I knelt beside you, I see it now. God will send a terrible calamity upon you.” She bent forward as if she saw some awful vision before her, and Roger watched her, fascinated. “Be warned in time, miserable man, and repent ere God’s wrath overtakes you.”
Roger placed his hands before his eyes, and tried in vain to steady his voice as he shouted: “Cease your idle croaking, woman; you are enough to drive one mad. Have you not seen and heard of the Willing temper which stops at nothing when once aroused? Shall I give you a specimen of it now; now, I say?” His voice rose almost to a shriek, while his face became purple with rage.
It was now Mary’s turn to become frightened, for he had every appearance of a mad man. “Roger, Roger,” she cried, “constrain yourself. I will say no more. You shall have your will in everything, and if evil befalls you, do not say that you had no warning.”
For many days after this, comparative quiet reigned between Mary and Roger. She maintained a dignified silence, and spoke only when spoken to, while Roger spent his time mostly in grumbling at everybody, and everything that came near enough to him to cause him displeasure, but this forced peace was rudely broken one day by a message to Mary. Her grandfather was dead, and had been buried several days. She was needed in England, being sole heir to all his wealth. Roger smiled and congratulated himself as being a most fortunate fellow, while Mary in tears—for she had truly loved her grandparent—prepared for her sad journey.
Upon reaching England and meeting with old Mr. Willing’s lawyer, Roger’s feelings can better be imagined than described, when he found that Mary’s grandfather had died from the effects of her letter, telling of her unhappiness, but he had lived long enough to curse his nephew, and to add a codicil to his will, tying up everything so securely in Mary’s favor, that Roger could never hope for a shilling of it, even in the event of his wife’s death, for then it was to go to found a home for aged men, if she died without issue. Roger flew into a towering passion, and swore by all the gods that he would break the will, but he found that the old man knew well what he was doing, and that now Mary was independent of him, and could leave him if she chose, but she did not choose. He was still her husband, for better or for worse. She had chosen her lot. She must abide by the choosing. Divorce was something unheard of in those days, and even if it had been, Mary had too high a sense of honor to have availed herself of so questionable a mode of becoming free from a distasteful marriage. She uncomplainingly bowed her shoulders to the burden placed upon them, and after all business connected with her grandfather’s estates was settled, followed her husband on board an American vessel, and set sail for a new and untried land, to meet she knew not what.
As Roger neared his birthplace, he began to feel that pride in his possessions which is characteristic of us all to feel, no matter how humble may be the object which is our very own, and he pointed out to Mary with more real feeling in his manner than she had ever seen him manifest, the old house standing on the bluff, and as they entered the door he turned and kissed her, saying: “Welcome home, Mary. This is yours as well as mine,” and the thought came to her, that perhaps from this time on, they might live happier, and learn to love again.
Roger anticipated a stormy scene with Bella, but he had always been master in his own house, and it would not take long, he felt sure, to convince her that discretion was the better part of valor, and that she must again become slave where she had reigned mistress. After removing their wraps, he began at once to show Mary the quaint house in which she must now make her home. Through long crooked passages ending in unexpected octagon rooms, or perhaps in a high-ceilinged picture-gallery, they wandered, laughing and chatting pleasantly, and Mary felt nearer to and more at ease with Roger, than at any time since that terrible night in Paris. The shadow seemed lifting, and she gaily placed her arm within that of her husband’s, saying: “How delightful all this is, dear Roger. You have not told me half the beauties of this old place.”
“There is one more room, Mary, which will delight you, I know. We call it the gable room. There is not another like it in the whole world. If you wish it, it shall be yours. We can reach it best through my study. Come and I will show it you.”
They passed through the study, and Roger opened a panel in the wall most cunningly concealed, and began to ascend the narrow spiral staircase. Mary followed close behind.
“There is a grand staircase leading from the other side,” said Roger. “We will descend by that.” He had reached the top, when suddenly with a stealthly spring, a beautiful creature barred his further progress. Was it a woman? For a moment Mary could hardly have told. She was held spell-bound, fascinated by the panther-like grace of the creature, who threw back her magnificent head, and at the same time raised a faultless arm, bare to the shoulder of any covering, except many and curiously-wrought bracelets. “Halt, Roger Willing!” she cried in the rich, peculiar voice of her race. “You cannot enter here, and bring that woman. These are my apartments. If you wish to see me, come alone.”
Roger for a moment was startled, but quickly regaining his composure, he laughed lightly, saying: “Don’t be a fool, Bella. This lady is my wife, and your mistress.”
“Never!” cried Bella, passionately. “Never will I acknowledge any person as my mistress. Give me my freedom papers as you promised to do, and I will go away; me and my child.”
Roger laughed scornfully. “Your freedom papers, girl? Not I. Why, you have grown ten per cent. more valuable than you were a year ago. Your freedom papers! Well, I guess not, my beautiful tigress.”
“Then may your death be on your own head,” she said, solemnly, as she drew one hand from her pocket, and aimed a revolver at his breast. “With my freedom papers I would have gone; without them, neither you or I shall live!”
Before Roger could draw back she had fired, and the aim had been sure and true. With a cry Roger placed his hand to his heart, and fell backward, down the stairs, at the feet of Mary, who stood too horrified to move or speak. Another shot rang out, and Bella, her beautiful face covered with her life’s blood, fell across the threshold of the room she had so jealously guarded.
Mary covered her eyes from the awful sight, and stood trembling beside the still form of her husband. She dared not move, and when she essayed to scream no sound issued from her parched lips. Her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. A delicious sense of repose stole gradually over her, and as she sank upon her knees and rested her head on Roger’s quiet body, she thought “This then is death. Thank God.”
Not until the second supper-bell had sounded were they discovered. The living and the dead; and for many weeks after the sad tragedy, Mary’s life was despaired of, but her fine English constitution carried her through her severe trial, and four months after Roger Willing was laid at rest, there came a pair of sturdy boys to comfort Mary, and they in time helped her to partly forget the heavy shadow resting upon her home. As the years passed the twins grew, and were the pride of Mary’s heart, and also an ever-increasing care.
Roger the eldest by an hour was fair like Mary, with frank, fearless blue eyes, and flaxen curls. Andrew was swarthy skinned, dark browed, and had a somewhat forbidding countenance. Mary tried hard to show no partiality between them, but her heart would lean toward Roger, with his winning, courtly manner, and sunny disposition. Andrew saw it and rebelled, but not to his mother. His nature was too secretive to openly accuse her of having a fonder love for his twin brother, but every sweet endearing word, or tender look, bestowed upon Roger was carefully noted by Andrew, and pondered over in secret.
Mary carefully kept from them the manner of their father’s death, until their twenty-first birthday, then, taking them to the study she showed them the unused door, cunningly concealed behind tapestries, and sliding it back, revealed the secret staircase which had never echoed to the sound of footsteps since that fatal day.
Mary stood between her stalwart sons, and with an arm about each, told them of the tragedy enacted there twenty-one years before, and warned them of their father’s fate. She told them how, as soon as she was able, she had caused the front portion of the house leading to the gabled room to be walled up, and having changed her servants there was no one but herself who knew aught of the secret staircase leading from the study.
“Let us go up,” said Roger eagerly, placing his foot on the stairs, but his mother stayed him by a gentle touch.
“No, my son, the dust of twenty-one years rests upon the cursed things above. It is my will that no one shall ever enter there. If I could have kept the knowledge of your father’s fate from you, I would never have told you this, but I knew that sooner or later some evil tongue would whisper it to you, and I preferred to tell you the truth, although it has opened a wound that will never heal.”
Roger placed an arm about her waist, and kissed her white hair. “Your wish shall be sacred to me, mother mine. Much as I long to explore the gable room, I shall never enter it except with your permission.”
Andrew said nothing, but brushed a cobweb carelessly from the corner of the lower stair. A great black spider darted across his foot, another followed. Mary drew back, a startled look in her eyes. “Come away,” she cried, “come away. Black spiders are evil omens. No good will come I fear, from my showing you this ill-fated staircase.”
Andrew smiled and turned on his heel. “Superstition thy name is dear to woman. Where thou leadest she will follow,” he said sneeringly.