CHAPTER XXII
A WIFE’S APPEAL
Mr. George Sumner was agreeably entertaining a few of his friends in his handsome lodgings in London one raw, dismal night in January.
But there was no suspicion of either cold or gloom in the luxurious rooms where these boon companions were making merry.
A cheerful fire burned brightly in the polished grate; the candelabra were filled with waxen tapers, which, shedding their light over the closely drawn crimson curtains, cast a rosy glow over the whole apartment.
Pictures hung upon the walls, some fine and beautiful, while others were not of the most chaste character imaginable; flowers bloomed and shed their fragrance from various costly vases; busts of marble and figures in bronze were scattered here and there, and the whole apartment bespoke extravagance and luxurious living.
A table was spread in the center of the room, glittering with cut glass and silver, and heaped with a profusion of viands, fruits, and wines of a quality to tempt the daintiest epicurean taste.
Four young men sat around this table, but for the moment suspending their operations upon the good things set before them, while they listened to a bacchanalian song from one of their number.
A knock at this moment interrupted the singer, and Mr. Sumner, arising, went to answer the summons.
A servant handed him a card and waited for orders, a look of curious interest upon his face.
A scowl of anger clouded George Sumner’s face as he read the name that Marion had written with trembling fingers upon its smooth surface.
He passed out into the corridor, shutting the door after him.
“Where is the lady?” he asked of the servant, in a low tone.
“In the anteroom at the end of the passage,” he answered, with a peculiar grin.
It was not considered just the thing for a young lady to call, unattended, upon a gentleman at his lodgings, particularly at so late an hour of the night.
“Very well; tell her I will be there in a few minutes,” George Sumner said, feeling exceedingly uncomfortable.
The servant bowed and retired, while he returned to his company.
As soon as he could make it come right, he said:
“Boys, I’m in a troublesome fix; I’ve just received a summons upon important business, and shall be obliged to leave you.”
Mr. Sumner, it seems, was in the habit of receiving “summons upon important business,” and there was now a noisy protest against his leaving them.
“I must,” he said, with some show of impatience; “but you can stay and finish the feast; and, if I can possibly put off the unpleasant affair, or get excused, I’ll return right away.”
Not staying to listen to their repeated regrets, George Sumner hurried from the room and bent his steps to the little reception room at the end of the corridor.
As he opened the door the first object that met his eyes was a forlorn figure seated upon the sofa, her golden head bowed in an attitude of weariness and misery upon its arm.
As he expected, it was Marion.
At the first sound of his footsteps upon the threshold she started wildly up and threw herself, weeping, into his arms.
“Oh, George, I am so miserable! Why did you not come to me? Why did you not write to me?” she cried excitedly.
“I did not come to you because I could not. I did not write because I was too busy. You should have had patience,” he said, coldly; and, releasing himself from her embrace, he seated her again upon the sofa, and then stood waiting before her.
His coolness, almost amounting to disgust, calmed her more effectually than any words could have done.
She caught her breath back in a sob of pain and regarded him with wondering eyes.
“And if I had ‘patience,’ how soon would you have come to me?” she asked, with a note of scorn in her voice.
“I don’t know,” he answered, moodily.
“You don’t know! after what I wrote you!” she cried, in breathless astonishment, and with quivering lips.
“Marion,” he said, after a moment’s thought, and with sudden resolution, “I could not have come at all!”
“You—could—not—have—come—at—all!” she repeated, every bit of color forsaking her face at the dreadful words.
“That was what I said,” he replied, sullenly, and feeling as he had never in his life felt before, with those eyes, so full of horrible anguish, fixed upon him.
“George, what do you mean? Surely not what you say?”
The hollow tones in which these words were uttered were fearfully calm now, and the little hands that he had so often held and kissed were clenched until the nails were purple.
“Yes, Marion,” he said, firmly, and with a cold, merciless glitter in his eyes—he might as well finish this business first as last—“I do mean just what I have said, and it was very imprudent in you to come here to-night; it will subject me to very unpleasant and annoying remarks.”
“I do not understand you,” the white lips uttered, in the same tone as before, though Marion’s blue eyes glittered as he had never seen them, and her small head was lifted in sudden though bitter pride. “I cannot understand how the coming of your wife can subject you to ‘unpleasant and annoying remarks,’” she added when he did not reply.
“Can you not, when it is not known that I have a wife?” he asked, a little smile that she could not interpret curving his lips.
His coldness and indifference were nearly killing her.
“True! I have forgotten; I am bewildered; I am nearly crazed with my misery. But, George, that fact can be no longer concealed; you must return with me to Richmond and confess our marriage to Papa. I must be owned as a lawful wife before another day passes,” she said, wearily, yet with decision.
“Impossible, Marion!”
“And why impossible?” she demanded, with flashing eyes. “Do you understand that the secret cannot be kept any longer—that it must be confessed at once?”
“Nevertheless it is impossible! I—I regret that there should be anything unpleasant about the matter; but I cannot go with you to Mr. Vance and tell him that you are my wife, simply because, Marion, you are not my wife!” he concluded, with a sigh of relief that the truth was at last out.
“George! why will you jest thus when I am so miserable?” shrieked the unhappy girl, throwing up her arms with a gesture of despair.
She could not believe that he spoke the truth, and yet there was something horribly real about it all.
George Sumner looked uneasily around at that outburst. It would not do to have the whole house know that a young and beautiful girl had sought him there at that time of night.
He went to her side and seized her firmly by the wrists.
“Be still, Marion,” he said, angrily, “and listen to me, and do not make another sound while you are here unless you intend to ruin us both.”
She looked at him with hollow, bewildered eyes, too miserable and stunned by his words and manner to hardly comprehend what he was saying.
“When I went down to Rye last summer,” he resumed, coldly, and with a determined air, “I went merely to have a jolly good time. I found a lot of pretty girls there, and I joined their set and met you, and had not then the slightest intention of doing you any wrong. You were young, gay, and pretty, and I made love to you, as I have done to a dozen others before. On the impulse of the moment I proposed a secret marriage, not having the least idea that you would consent to it; but you did, and I found myself in a fix. I could not marry you in good faith, for the girl whom I marry must have plenty of money and an established position in the world; you had neither, and I had to get out of the scrape I was in as best I could.”
Marion Vance here opened her lips with sudden eagerness, as if to speak, then as suddenly closed them again, and a strange look of fire and scorn mingled with the bitterness and pain in her eyes.
“But,” he went on, not noticing it, too intent upon getting the scene over with as soon as possible, “when you accepted my proposal I had to do something; so I got a friend of mine to disguise himself to look like the old rector of St. John’s chapel, and, by bribing the sexton, he allowed us to go into the church for the ceremony to be performed.”
“And that was the way you married me—me!” she whispered, in suppressed tones, never once having taken her eyes from his during the horrible recital.
“I could not help it, Marion—you gave yourself away to me so readily, you adopted so eagerly my proposals,” he said, excusing himself by blaming her.
Her lips curled.
“Have you nothing better than that to say for yourself? Have you no reparation to offer me?” she asked.
And he answered, coldly:
“None!”
“George,” she cried, in agony, “think how I have loved you, how I have trusted you! Can you let me suffer thus and show me no pity?”
“My pity could do you no practical good now,” he answered, carelessly.
“And you will not right the wrong—you will not cover my shame?”
“I cannot,” he still repeated.
“George Sumner, you do not know the bitter, cruel wrong that you are doing. Ah, Heaven! why was I so blind, so mad that I did not see and realize it myself? You do not once dream of the misery you are entailing upon future generations,” she cried, with clasped hands upraised in agony, as she remembered her father in his pride, and the will of the previous marquis, and knew that unless she became a lawful wife the entail would be cut off from that branch of their family, her father’s hopes forever destroyed, and herself irretrievably disgraced; and yet with a strange perversity she would not tell the man who had betrayed her of her position, when she knew it was that alone he desired, and not herself or her love.
She would rather die than marry him and lift him to the position he craved, and know all the time that she was an unloved wife, a despised stepping-stone to his ambition.
If he would but show the least sign of relenting, or of his bygone affection for her, she would have told him joyfully.
But he did not, he had none to show, and his next words extinguished every hope.
“Marion, there is no use in prolonging this interview; what you wish cannot be.”
Reader, did you ever see anyone grow instantly old—the light, and life, and joy fade forever out of a face that had been fresh and lovely in one moment of time; and lines of age, misery, and care settle where there had been nothing but beauty before? If so, you may know something of how Marion Vance looked as she listened to what George Sumner told her on that dismal night in January, as she sat in that little reception room at the end of the passage.
“Can I believe you?” she said. “Can I believe anyone would ruin a young and trusting girl like that? You mean to tell me that it was only a mock marriage—that ceremony and certificate that the pretended old man gave me only a sham?”
“That was all,” George Sumner confessed, feeling strangely uneasy with those unearthly eyes fixed so steadily upon him.
“That was all!” she repeated, with bitter emphasis. “I have but one more question to ask you,” she continued, still unnaturally calm, but looking like a dead person, all but her burning, restless eyes. “Once and for all, will you marry me now, legally and honorably?”
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
“Because, as I told you, it is absolutely necessary that the woman I marry should have plenty of money and an established position in the world,” he said, flushing beneath her look.
Marion smiled that strange smile again.
“Then, if I could bring you plenty of money, and assure of my undisputed right to a good position in society, you would perhaps do me the honor to make me your wife?”
“Yes—I suppose I might,” he replied, hesitatingly.
“And you will not do that act of justice to save the woman you have professed to love ‘better than your own life’ from the shame and disgrace that must surely come upon her without?”
“I cannot; I—”
“What hinders you?” she interrupted, with an imperative gesture.
His face assumed a dogged expression.
“The determination to be rich and move in the highest circles,” he said, his tone assuming something of defiance.
“Then you are not rich now—you do not rightly belong to the high sphere that is accredited to you—you are only a poor, miserable fortune-hunter after all—a sham and impostor!” she cried, with biting sarcasm and indignation.
He flushed even more hotly than before; his gaze wavered and fell beneath the scorn in her eye, and he stood revealed in his real character before her.
“You cannot, therefore, be hampered with a poor wife; she would be a miserable clog upon your laudable ambition. Love, pure and holy though it might be, weighs as nothing compared with the treasures you seek,” she went on, until, goaded to desperation by her scorn, he turned upon her with a snarl.
“You have learned the truth at last—what more do you want?”
“I want to know, George Sumner—and I charge you speak the truth—did you ever love me as I understand the word? Is there anything of that feeling still in your heart for me? Is there a particle of feeling in your heart that would prompt you to sacrifice a single interest to save me from my impending ruin? Do not dare to speak falsely—tell me, have you any love for me?” she concluded, with a solemnity that made his flesh creep, bold and bad as he was.
With his eyes fixed upon the carpet, as though they had been weighted and held there, he answered:
“No; I do not love you, Marion.”
“Is there one in all the world whom you do love thus?”
“Not one,” he said.
“Not even among the ‘dozen’ with whom you have flirted?” she said, with a hard laugh.
He cringed uneasily. He was showing himself up in a way that was not at all agreeable to him.
“Enough!” she cried, sternly, without waiting for him to reply; and she arose and stood before him, confronting him like an avenging angel. “George Sumner, you are a heartless wretch, selfish to the core, and bent upon your own sensual enjoyment alone. You stand there and seek to cast the blame of my misery all upon me. You say ‘you’ could not help it. I ‘gave myself away to you so readily,’ and ‘adopted your proposals too eagerly.’ Who was it that begged and pleaded for my love, who could not live without me, who would be willing to share a crust, so that he might but be blessed with my presence? Who was it that swore life-long devotion to me, and tempted me with blissful pictures of ‘love in a cottage,’ and whose heart would break if separated from me for but a day? It does not sound so well repeated under existing circumstances, does it, my aspiring knight?” she continued, even more bitterly: “the heart of the sentiment is gone, and it becomes but an empty, mocking sound. But do you realize how young I was, George Sumner?” she said, speaking sternly now—“sixteen! with no mother to guide me, no dear, wise friend in whom to confide, or of whom to seek counsel. You were twenty-two and had flirted with a dozen before me. Did you ruin them all, traitor, coward that you are? Did you lure them all into secret marriages, and then cast them off in their misery, as you are tonight casting me? Or were they wiser than I—not so eager to give themselves away, or to adopt your proposals?
“You need not speak,” she cried, bitterly, as he opened his lips as if to defend himself. “I never wish to hear your voice again, and if I could paralyze your tongue so that you could never cheat a trusting woman again, I would do it; but it is not for me to avenge—your punishment is coming; it is nearer even than you dream. You are ambitious, but that very ambition has overreached itself, as you will find before you are a great deal older. You are a cheat, a liar, and a coward; and now let me tell you that I would not marry you if my doing so would save both your life and mine. I will bear my shame alone, and someday your eyes will be opened, and you will curse yourself with the bitterest curses that you have dared to do the thing that you have done. I was a young and inexperienced girl; you won my fresh, pure love, and ruined me, to pass away a dull hour and have a ‘jolly good time.’ A day, an hour will come when you will turn sick with remorse, and be willing to give the best years of your life to undo the foul wrong which you have so heartlessly wrought; but you will never see Marion Vance, the girl with neither ‘name,’ nor ‘wealth,’ nor ‘position,’ again.”
She turned and walked, with a quick, firm tread, from the room, before he could recover his almost stupefied senses.
He had never dreamed that the simple, trusting, loving girl, whom he had hitherto been able to mold to his lightest wish, possessed so much spirit and reserve power, and her burning, blighting words had fallen upon him like flashes of lightning, blinding and bewildering him with their vividness.
But she was gone—that farce was played out to the end, and though the end had been anything but agreeable, yet it was over at last; and, smoothing his ruffled brow and calling a smile to his false lips, he went back to his boon companions, and tried to drown the heart-broken words of a ruined girl in copious draughts of sparkling champagne.
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