“What in Heaven’s name brought Evelyn Strangway to be a lodge-keeper at the entrance of the house where she was born?” he asked, at last. “How could you permit such a life-long humiliation?”
“It was her own desire—it was at her insistence I allowed her to come here. I opposed her fancy with all my power of argument, with all the strength of opposition. I offered to provide her with a home in town or country—at home or abroad—near at hand or at the Antipodes. I offered to settle four hundred a year upon her—to sink capital to that amount—to make her future and that of—our child—secure against the chances of fate.”
“Your child—Mercy!” exclaimed Theodore.
“Yes, Mercy. My daughter and hers. You understand now why she refused my help. She would take nothing from her father. There was a like perversity in mother and daughter, a determination to make me drink the cup of remorse to the dregs. Oh, Theodore, it is a long and shameful story. To you—for the first time in my life—to you only among mankind these lips have spoken of it. I have kept my secret. I have brooded upon it in the slow hours of many and many a wakeful night. I have never forgotten—I have not been allowed to forget. If time could have erased or softened that bitter memory under other conditions I know not; but for me the case was hopeless. My victim was there, at my gates, a perpetual memento of my folly and my wrong-doing.”
“Strange that a woman of refinement and education should elect to fill so degrading a position!”
“Perhaps only a refined and highly educated woman could have devised so refined a punishment. ‘Let me live near you,’ she pleaded; ‘let me live at the gate of the park I loved so well when I was a child—let me see you pass sometimes—open the gate for you and just see you go by—without a word, without a look even upon your part. It will be some consolation for me in my lonely, loveless life. I shall know that at least I am not forgotten.’ Forgotten? as if it had been possible for me to forget, in the happiest circumstances, even if she had made for herself a home at the farthest extremity of Europe, or in the remotest of our colonies. As it was, her presence embittered the place I loved—the great reward and aim of my life. Her shadow fell across my young wife’s pathway—her influence darkened all my days.”
He began to pace up and down the little room with a feverish air. He seemed to find a sort of relief in talking of this burden which he had borne so long in secret—borne with a smile upon his lips, suffering that silent agony which strong men have borne again and again in the history of mankind, carrying their silent punishment upon them till the grave revealed the hidden canker, and laid bare the festering wound which had rankled unsuspected by the world.
“She was cruelly treated by her husband, Theodore. A young and beautiful woman, married to a profligate and a sot. It had been a love-match, as the world calls it—that is to say, a marriage brought about by a schoolgirl’s impatience to break her bonds, and a woman’s first delight in hearing herself called beautiful. She had flung herself away upon a handsome reprobate; and three or four years after marriage she found herself alone and neglected in a shabby lodging in one of the squalidest streets off the Strand. I can see the wretched rooms she lived in, to-day, as I stand here—the lodging-house furniture, the dingy curtains darkening the dirty windows looking into the dirty street. What a home for youth and beauty!”
He paused, with an impatient sigh, took another turn across the narrow space, and then resumed:
“Our acquaintance began by accident—under an umbrella. I met them together one night, husband and wife, leaving the little Strand Theatre in the rain. I heard him tell her that it was not worth while to take a cab, they were so near home; and something in her proud, handsome face and her contemptuous way of replying to him caught my attention and interested me in her. I offered my umbrella, and we all three walked to Essex Street together. Just in that fortuitous way began the alliance which was to give its colour to all my life. The husband cultivated my acquaintance—was glad to meet me at my club—and dined with me as often as I cared to asked him. We used to go to Essex Street after dining together, and finish the evening with her, and so by degrees I came to know all about her—that she was the only daughter of the owner of Cheriton Chase; that she was very handsome, and very clever, though only half-educated; that she had offended her father by her marriage, and that she had not brought her husband a penny; that he neglected her, and that he drank; and that she was miserable. I came to know this very soon; I came very soon to love her. She was the first woman I had ever cared for, and I loved her passionately.”