Stephen Archer, and Other Tales

  CHAPTER III. ANOTHER ASTONISHMENT.

  But a second and very different astonishment awaited Mr. Dempster.Again one evening, on his return from the City, he saw a strange lookon the face of the girl who opened the door--but this time it was alook of fear.

  "Well?" he said, in a tone at once alarmed and peremptory.

  She made no answer, but turned whiter than before.

  "Where is your mistress?" he demanded.

  "Nobody knows, sir," she answered.

  "Nobody knows! What would you have me understand by such an answer?"

  "It's the bare truth, sir. Nobody knows where she is."

  "God bless me!" cried the husband. "What does it all mean?"

  And again he sunk down upon a chair--this time in the hall, and staredat the girl as if waiting further enlightenment.

  But there was little enough to be had. Only one point was clear: hiswife was nowhere to be found. He sent for every one in the house, andcross-questioned each to discover the last occasion on which she hadbeen seen. It was some time since she had been missed; how long beforethat she had been seen there was no certainty to be had. He ran to thedoctor, then from one to another of her acquaintance, then to hermother, who lived on the opposite side of London. She, like the rest,could tell him nothing. In her anxiety she would have gone back withhim, but he was surly, and would not allow her. It was getting towardsmorning before he reached home, but no relieving news awaited him.What to think was as much a perplexity to him as what to do. He wasnot in the agony in which a man would have been who thoroughly lovedhis wife, but he cared enough about her to feel uncomfortable; and thecries of the child, who was suffering from some ailment, made himmiserable: in his perplexity and dull sense of helplessness hewondered whether she might not have given the baby poison before shewent. Then the thing would make such a talk! and, of all things,Duncan Dempster hated being talked about. How busy people's brainswould be with all his affairs! How many explanations of the mysterywould be suggested on 'Change! Some would say, "What business had aman like him with a fine lady for a wife? one so much younger thanhimself too!" He could remember making the same remark of another,before he was married. "Served him right!" they would say. And withthat the first movement of suspicion awoke in him--purely and solelyfrom his own mind's reflection of the imagined minds of others. Whilein his mind's ear he heard them talking, almost before he knew whatthey meant the words came to him: "There was that Major Strong, youknow!"

  "She's gone to him!" he cried aloud, and, springing from the bed onwhich he had thrown himself, he paced the chamber in a fury. He had noword for it but hers that he was now in India! They had only beenwaiting till--By heaven, that child was none of his! And therewithrushed into his mind the conviction that everything was thusexplained. No man ever yet entertained an unhappy suspicion, butstraightway an army of proofs positive came crowding to the service ofthe lie. It is astounding with what manifest probability everythingwill fall in to prove that a fact which has no foundation whatever!There is no end to the perfection with which a man may fool himselfwhile taking absolute precautions against being fooled by others.Every fact, being a living fact, has endless sides and relations; butof all these, the man whose being hangs upon one thought, will seeonly those sides and relations which fall in with that thought.Dempster even recalled the words of the maid, "It's mis'ess's," asembodying the girl's belief that it was not master's. Where a man,whether by nature jealous or not, is in a jealous condition, there isno need of an Iago to parade before him the proofs of his wrong. Itwas because Shakespere would neither have Desdemona less than perfect,nor Othello other than the most trusting and least suspicious of men,that he had to invent an all but incredible villain to effect theneedful catastrophe.

  But why should a man, who has cared so little for his wife, becomeinstantly, upon the bare suspicion, so utter a prey to consumingmisery? There was a character in his suffering which could not beattributed to any degree of anger, shame, or dread of ridicule. Thetruth was, there lay in his being a possibility of love to his wifefar beyond anything his miserably stunted consciousness had an ideaof; and the conviction of her faithlessness now wrought upon him inthe office of Death, to let him know what he had lost. It magnifiedher beauty in his eyes, her gentleness, her grace; and he thought witha pang how little he had made of her or it.

  But the next moment wrath at the idea of another man's child beingimposed upon him as his, with the consequent loss of his preciousmoney, swept every other feeling before it. For by law the child washis, whoever might be the father of it. During a whole minute he felton the point of tying a stone about its neck, carrying it out, andthrowing it into the river Lea. Then, with the laugh of a hyena, heset about arranging in his mind the proofs of her guilt. First cameeight childless years with himself; next the concealment of hercondition, and the absurd pretence that she had known nothing of it;then the trouble of mind into which she had fallen; then her strangeunnatural aversion to her own child; and now, last of all, conclusiveof a guilty conscience, her flight from his house. He would givehimself no trouble to find her; why should he search after his ownshame! He would neither attempt to conceal nor to explain the factthat she had left him--people might say what they pleased--try him formurder if they liked! As to the child she had so kindly left toconsole him for her absence, he would not drown him, neither would hebring him up in his house; he would give him an ordinary education,and apprentice him to a trade. For his money, he would leave it to ahospital--a rich one, able to defend his will if disputed. For whatwas the child? A monster--a creature that had no right to existence!

  Not one of those who knew him best would have believed him capable ofbeing so moved, nor did one of them now know it, for he hid hissuffering with the success of a man not unaccustomed to make a mask ofhis face. There are not a few men who, except something of the natureof a catastrophe befall them, will pass through life without having oraffording a suspicion of what is in them. Everything hitherto hadtended to suppress the live elements of Duncan Dempster; but now, likethe fire of a volcano in a land of ice, the vitality in him had begunto show itself.

  Sheer weariness drove him, as the morning began to break, to lie downagain; but he neither undressed nor slept, and rose at his usual hour.When he entered the dining-room, where breakfast was laid asusual--only for one instead of two--he found by his plate, amongletters addressed to his wife, a packet directed to himself. It hadnot been through the post, and the address was in his wife's hand. Heopened it. A sheet of paper was wrapped around a roll of unpaidbutcher's bills, amounting to something like eighty pounds, and a notefrom the butcher craving immediate settlement. On the sheet of paperwas written, also in his wife's hand, these words: "I am quiteunworthy of being your wife any longer;" that was all.

  Now here, to a man who had loved her enough to understand her, was aclue to the whole--to Dempster it was the strongest possibleconfirmation of what he had already concluded. To him it appeared ascertain as anything he called truth, that for years, while keeping afair face to her husband--a man who had never refused her anything--hedid not recall the fact that almost never had she asked or he offeredanything--she had been deceiving him, spending money she would notaccount for, pretending to pay everything when she had been ruininghis credit with the neighbourhood, making him, a far richer man thanany but himself knew, appear to be living beyond his means, when hewas every month investing far more than he spent. It was injury uponinjury! Then, as a last mark of her contempt, she had taken pains thatthese beggarly butcher's bills should reach him from her own hand! Hewould trouble himself about such a woman not a moment longer!

  He went from breakfast to his omnibus as usual, walked straight to hisoffice, and spent the day according to custom. I need hardly say thatthe first thing he did was to write a cheque for the butcher. He madeno further inquiry after her whatever, nor was any made of him there,for scarcely one of the people with whom he did business had been tohis house, or had even seen his wife.

  In the
suburb where he lived it was different; but he paid no heed toany inquiry, beyond saying he knew nothing about her. To her relativeshe said that if they wanted her they might find her for themselves.She had gone to please herself, and he was not going to ruin himselfby running about the world after her.

  Night after night he came home to his desolate house; took no comfortfrom his child; made no confession that he stood in need of comfort.But he had a dull sensation as if the sun had forsaken the world, andan endless night had begun. The simile, of course, is mine--thesensation only was his; _he_ could never have expressed anything thatwent on in the region wherein men suffer.

  A few days made a marked difference in his appearance. He was a hardman; but not so hard as people had thought him; and besides, _no_ mancan rule his own spirit except he has the spirit of right on his side;neither is any man proof against the inroads of good. Even LadyMacbeth was defeated by the imagination she had braved. Add to this,that no man can, even by those who understand him best, be labelled asa box containing such and such elements, for the humanity in him isdeeper than any individuality, and may manifest itself at some crisisin a way altogether beside expectation.

  His feeling was not at first of an elevated kind. After the grindingwrath had abated, self-pity came largely to the surface--not by anymeans a grand emotion, though very dear to boys and girls in theirfirst consciousness of self, and in them pardonable enough. On thesame ground it must be pardoned in a man who, with all his experienceof the world, was more ignorant of the region of emotion, and moreundeveloped morally, than multitudes of children: in him it was anindication that the shell was beginning to break. He said to himselfthat he was old beside her, and that she had begun to weary of him,and despise him. Gradually upon this, however, supervened at intervalsa faint shadow of pity for her who could not have been happy or shewould not have left him.

  Days and weeks passed, and there was no sign of Mrs. Dempster. Thechild was not sent out to nurse, and throve well enough. His fathernever took the least notice of him.