“Adam,” he called petulantly, “what is all this noise about? How do you suppose I can sleep? Tell all those people to go away? Oh, my head, my poor head. It’s buzzing again, Adam, buz, buz, buzzing.” He raised his hands and placed them to his temples.
Victoria softly kissed his forehead. “Roger, your loving wife, from whom you have been cruelly separated for so long, is here, right here by your side. Can you not understand what I am saying?”
“Go away,” cried Roger, pushing her from him. “I want Adam.” He began to whimper like a child. “I want Adam, I tell you.”
Victoria shrank from him in horror. Was he mad? Ah, no, God would not have restored him to her only to have her find him an imbecile.
The mulatto now approached the bedside, and laid his hand upon the sick man’s forehead, while he made a gutteral humming sound in his throat. Roger’s cries subsided, and his face resumed its former placid expression.
“That’s a good Adam,” he said, after a while. “A very good Adam. Such a kind Adam.”
Victoria stood in silence gazing upon the mental wreck before her. A thousand thoughts flashed through her brain, most of them wild, vague, and full of terror. “Roger was alive, without a doubt, but that was all. In all things pertaining to the past he was as dead as though he were indeed within his grave; but the fact remained that he was her husband. Then what was the wretched man waiting for her below?” She glanced at Mary, who had sobbed herself asleep upon the floor—“and what was her child, her innocent child who had never harmed anybody?” With the cry of a wounded tigress, she snatched up the child and swiftly descended the stairs, forgetful of Roger lying helpless in that other room. All her thoughts were centered on the man who had wrecked her life, and that of her child. “He shall confess,” she whispered, pressing her lips to those of the sleeping child. “I will strangle him; yes, I will even commit murder, but he shall account to me for every day of that wretched time when I supposed Roger to be dead!”
She stepped into the study. Andrew lay on the spot where he had fallen. She placed Mary upon the couch and approached the prostrate figure. She touched it with her foot. Her face was hard and resolute. Not an atom of mercy would she show him. Was he not deserving of the most withering scorn? “Wretch!” she said, “I have discovered your secret. At last the truth has been made known. Get up and let me see your miserable guilty face. Come, confess your sin.”
There was no answer, not even a muscle moved under her foot. She caught sight of the half-finished letter lying upon the desk, the revolver beside it. She devined at once what had been his intention. She caught up the letter and read it. The erased words, “My Darling Wife,” touched her deeply. The significance of the erasure was fully understood by her. She groaned as she read it, but the next words brought the tears to her eyes. “No woman on this earth was ever loved with the worship and adoration, which I have lavished upon you.” When she had finished reading the few remaining words Victoria knelt in tender pity beside the guilty man, whom she had just cause for hating. There was no hatred in her heart now. Nothing but sorrow, and a desire to shield and forgive his sin. She turned his face toward her. It was ashen pale and cold as one dead, and bore marks of great suffering. Indeed, for a moment she thought his soul had forever fled, and perhaps even now was being judged by Him who never errs.
“God is just,” she murmured, as she placed her ear at his heart. “He will judge Andrew rightly. What right have I to pass judgment upon this man who has gone to meet his Maker?”