“No, sweetheart,” replied Ben with a duplicate of the same wintery heartbreaking mirth in his tone.
“Then never mind, my darling, love will find a way out of the difficulty. My poor, poor dear, to think that you have been bearing this burden all alone for these long, miserable months while I was so blindly, so foolishly happy. And, oh me! to think of a note falling due on Christmas eve; that must have been Mr. Strangely’s doing that, to spoil our Christmas, now wasn’t it dear?”
“Well, I tried to put it off till January, but he said he could not make the note for more than six months, although he could renew it. Now, of course, he says he cannot renew it.”
“Just so, Ben, dear; do you not remember it was last Christmas eve Mr. Strangely proposed, and I declined his suit? Does not this seem like what you call getting even with us, darling, just a little like that, eh? He is a vindictive, jealous man, and he has tried to ruin you, that is all, love; that mine was a complete fraud, just his way of wrecking you. Depend on it, I am right. Did you send anyone to examine the mine? Do you know positively that he put $15,000 into it? No, my own honest, unsuspicious husband, I see you did not. Well, be assured it is as I say, and although he has spoilt our Christmas eve, he will not spoil our lives or our love. A woman always gets a keen insight into the character of the man who loves her; that is, provided she does not love him. When she returns his love, she is blind and can see none of his faults. I saw a good deal of Mr. Strangely, and I always disliked him, even when he was expressing the greatest devotion to myself; he is a bad, unprincipled man. That is probably not just what the commercial agencies say about him, but I know I am nearer the truth than they are.”
At this moment a ring was heard at the outer bell, and Mrs. Cargill rose hastily to her feet exclaiming—“Oh, that must be my brother Wilfred. I forgot to tell you that I had a dispatch from him this afternoon saying that he had arrived in New York from Denver, and would be here by this evening to spend his Christmas with us. I have not seen Wilfred for more than five years, and am so glad he is come. He is awfully cheerful, and will keep us from moping, and he is so lucky to everybody but himself, poor boy. He is quite poor, and yet he has been the means of making many people rich. He always seems to bring me good luck; and have you not seen people, dear, who were, on the contrary, what is called ‘ill-fated,’ who were always trying to do people good, and always harming them quite badly. No!—oh I have, time and again; and don’t you remember, in Bulwer Lytton’s ‘Harold,’ the ill-fated Haco, who is always trying to do the king good with the most disastrous results, and is finally the means of his death? Oh, I am so glad Will has come, and he is such a good hypnotizer too;” and so the dear little wife rattled on inconsequently, as if eager to drive out all miserable thoughts from her husband’s mind. But with all her semblance of cheerfulness there was a certain hardness of outline about the rounded cheek and chin which was not noticeable before, and seemed out of place in one so young.
Presently her brother Wilfred was ushered into the room, and introduced to her husband. When the first hearty welcomes were over and the evening meal had been discussed, Wilfred entertained his host and hostess with a graphic account of his experiences in the far West. These exhausted, his sister inquired of him how he had prospered in his affairs.
“About the same as usual,” was his response. “Still a bachelor and likely so to remain, for I am never more than $500 ahead of the world. I take my pleasure as it comes, and don’t hoard up so that I may have it when I am older and less able to enjoy it.”
The new-comer was a man of the most acute perceptions, and he soon became aware of a heaviness or constraint in the social atmosphere which pained him more almost than words could tell. “Great heavens,” he murmured to himself, “I hope my sister Nell has not made an unhappy match; yet I cannot imagine Ben to be an unkind man. There is more here than meets the eye. I must get it out of him; it won’t do to receive any confidences from her, if I am to make any use of them.” He looked so abstracted in his musings that his sister, brightening up forcibly, said, “Why, Will, you are positively dull; are you busy hypnotizing someone now in the distance?”
“No,” replied the brother with a smile, “the fact is I am a kind of wild, unregenerate creature whose habits get away with him at times, having no wife to regulate them, and I am craving for a cigar with all the force of a weak and vicious nature. If you have a den where I can tame this wild beast within me—for I smoke weeds of the vilest strength—I will come back in an hour clothed and in my right mind.”
This was but a ruse to enable him to be alone with his brother-in-law, so that he might, if possible, induce or force a confession from him as to the cause of the domestic cloud. “Give me an hour with Auld Nick,” growled Wilfred to himself, “and I would wring the inside combination of the doors of Hades out of him.”