Then,—
“But Reginald’s mother died,” said Alitza, in a singularly half-muffled tone, as if she had been long going forward with the story, and now but made an addition. “Then Uncle George (as I called old Grove) sent me to a good school. It was thought by some to be very good of him; but there was much more back of all that, you must know. I was a thin ghost of a girl then; thinner than I have now become, and I had cross-eyes (as people call it), and I was sallow. But little Reg was used to me; so to come to it at once, the summer I was seventeen I came home from school to the old Grove place. There was no one there but one old servant and Reg, who had been suspended from the academy on some charge; so there we were together two months, as good as in a wilderness.
“The first thing I knew we were engaged to be married, and then nothing would do for Reg but a drive to Hartford, to the minister’s; but I knew the minister would not marry us if he knew we were both under age. So as quick as he asked how old we were, I said I was eighteen and Reg was twenty-one. And then came the trouble; for truth, of a sort, was always Reg’s strong point. And as we rode away together, married tight enough by the minister, he looked at me with absolute dislike, and wanted to know what I told that story for.
“I told him that as he had been teasing me for six weeks to marry him, and as I had at last said I would, some one had got to tell the lie; and as he hated to, I did it for him out of kindness. I felt bad about it myself. And then the minister had looked at us in a queer way; and Ethel, I was such a simple, ignorant little child, that I did not even know then what disagreeable thing the minister might have been thinking, other than that I was telling a lie. And I knew I was, and that made me color up; and that had made Reginald mad. And so the outcome of his haste to tie me to him by that ceremony was that he had called me a liar, and I had told him I hated him. Then I would do nothing other but drive straight to the old home, half frightened to death at what I had done.
“Then you must know, as we drove up to the house up came a common sort of a fellow on horseback; and the first thing he did was to joke Reg for riding with me, when he was suspended for a flirtation, at least, with a common sort of a girl who lived in the academy town. I was as mad as a lunatic at that; for though I understood nothing about such sort of talk, I loathed the least breath of it as badly as Reg hated lying. And while I was in a frenzy of wrath, and tearing away at both of the impossible rowdy boys, up came old Grove, driving in from somewhere with ‘friends’ to whom he was going to sell the so-called Grove place. The sight of me there made him mad anyway, for a reason that I can now understand; and in a minute the other young boor had let out all about our foolish work at the minister’s house; and, too, Reg’s affair with the other girl; all this—imagine it—was blazed out before those four men; mixing me, Reginald’s good straight maiden wife, up with things which I simply felt sure were very detestable.
“Well, I went to my old nurse’s room (she had always staid there in the family for my sake), and I got from her papers which auntie had gotten from old Grove before she died, and had made nurse keep privately for me, though he had hunted for them everywhere. For you must know that they were legal documents which showed that the estate we lived on and every cent of money on which he had been speculating was my money, which he, as one guardian, held in trust for me, and was bound to invest for me. So the more successfully he turned it over, the richer I was growing. Well, you see? But the point with me was, I knew the possession of this paper gave me a jack-wrench to put on old Grove, whenever I got ready. But I loved Reg then in a way, and could not disgrace his father without disgracing him. And I didn’t see how I could go to my other guardian without letting him know how bad old Grove was. My nurse had talked a good deal to me about it, and I had made up my mind the week before, romantically, that I would marry Reg and turn my property all over to him, and save his feelings, and keep him as rich as he thought himself to be, and give him a surprise the day after we should be married, by telling him all about it.
“What I did do was to take all those papers and my wedding certificate and get away, carrying with me a look as if I would just as lief kill anyone who spoke to me disrespectfully, like old Grove had done. I was hateful enough looking to get on quite well. I got a good place to do housework under the name of Jane Collins. I stayed there two years, saving money, and terribly frightened lest Grove or Reg should find me. Next, the lady I worked for recommended me as housekeeper for a half-paralyzed old man, because I was good, and as ugly looking as gloomy sin. I was a good nurse, and he said my touch made him stronger. He was kind, but rather romantic; and finally I had to tell him my story, because he wanted to marry me. I showed him my certificate, and then I showed him my other papers; and because I could trust him, I told him I had a plan of my own. I wanted a very fine education, and I wanted to put my other guardian on old Grove’s track, so as to get my money all into my own hands clear and fair, and then make it all over to Reg, who wasn’t fit to rough it, somehow. But that I had got to do carefully, for I was legally his wife, and so the money was his in a way; but that I would never be Reg’s wife any longer than till the day I could find myself in a condition to be divorced, and could make him marry the girl who had been a good girl till he ruined her. My idea was that she really was (law or no law) his wife more than I was. Heaven knows I didn’t want ever to see him again. Yet I had that romantic, real, dispassionate sort of principle which made me determined to keep my vow to do him good and not evil, all the days of his life. So, as I say, I was bound he should have the money, and marry the girl of whom I have told you, but whom I never could find.
“All this seemed just fun to old Mr. Mancredo, and he took so much interest in the ‘joke of the thing,’ as he called it, putting a lawyer on Grove’s track, and fixing things up a little, while getting at facts, that he grew better in health under it; and he had my eyes straightened, and gave me the best of teachers, of which he was chief. And with kindness, approbation, good treatment and all, by the time I was twenty-four I was not only quite handsome, but had everything all about my business in my own hands. But the poor little girl had died,—so somebody said, but I’m not sure,—and that took my courage down. And Reg was at West Point, ‘swinging round on my money,’ Mr. Mancredo said. But you see Reg had called me a liar, and I loathed the whole mess. But you see I had a woman’s pride in being, myself, intrinsic wealth of a finer sort than that thing called ‘money’ can fully represent. I wanted to know how to do well (and in a way which would be of marketable value) every sort of thing which could be needed in the economics of a broad social-system. It made me sick to see men, who inherently had nothing worth exchanging, quarreling so much to get their clutch on the ‘medium of exchange’ called money. But not to stop about all that now, I can only tell you that old Mr. Mancredo laughed so much, and had such a good time over my theories, that he legally adopted me as his heiress and daughter, and then got so well that we travelled all over Europe and the Nile country, and he made my guardian stop bothering about the laws of the matter, and appearances, and the rest of it. For why should I go back to Reginald, who hated me, and force on him my money as a gift, which he now was enjoying much better under the supposition that it was his of right? Besides, I was really punishing old John Grove most deliciously; and I relished that. For he was a singularly offensive old animal; and besides, ‘if your enemy thirst, give him drink,’ and he was awful on the money-thirst. And I was helping him to pour gold down his own throat, with just enough of a scare with every gulp to make life a terror to the old animal; and it was fun to me. But just before we sailed for the Mediterranean I did send Reg one ringing slap. For I was angry that he was such a coward as not to have fought for me against his father. But then he was afraid as death of his ‘old dad,’ as he called him; just as his mother had been. I wrote to him that his mother in heaven would never forgive him for his treatment of me; for that she had left me in his care, as a younger sister. And that now, however low he sunk, he might look about him in the sloughs there, for any woman whom he met might be the sister to whom he had betrayed his trust. I did not mean to give him a chance to take much comfort in his badness. But I meant to do more than to merely put a ‘death’s head’ at the feast of life which he had spoiled for me. I knew that this letter would put him on the wrong track, so that he would never look for me among the cultivated, scholarly, useful women, whom I intended to lead before I was forty. And besides, I felt it would give him an idea of the fact that all women are the sisters of all men, and that a man is a felon if he betrays their trust. So I thought this letter hit off all these things pretty well; don’t you see that it did?
“Well, we travelled everywhere, Mr. Mancredo and I, and I cultivated a leisurely, haughty manner, and grew high-colored, with magnificent eyes, they said, and then I knew how to dress. And people commonly called me ‘Mrs. Mancredo.’ Sometimes I corrected it and sometimes I did not. The world was so full of tangles that I scorned to bother myself about names. I knew how staunch I was. And besides, I had such an innate passion for chastity and continence, that the other sort of life seemed as idiotic to me as to have dashed my brains out a little every day would have seemed. Dear old Mancredo called me a very brainy woman, and I valued that, and I enjoyed being good without letting anybody know it, if you can imagine such a notion. But then, always, Miss Ethel, I have devotedly loved my guardian angel.”
She became silent, and the silence was preserved. Then—