A Woman's Burden: A Novel

by Fergus Hume

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.