“Yes, my name is Nowell. But I have really not the honour to — —”
“You do not know me,” answered John Saltram. “No, but it is time you did so. I am your daughter’s husband, John Holbrook.”
“Indeed. I have heard that she has been persecuted by the messages of some person calling himself her husband. You are that person, I presume.”
“I have tried to persuade my wife to see me. Yes; and I mean to see her before this vessel arrives in port.”
“But if the lady in question refuses to have anything to say to you?”
“We shall soon put that to the test. I have been too ill to stir ever since I came on board, or you would have heard of me before this, Mr. Nowell. Now that I can move about once more, I shall find a way to assert my claims, you may be sure. But in the first place, I want to know by what right you stole my wife away from her home — by what right you brought her on this voyage?”
“Before I answer that question, Mr. — Mr. Holbrook, as you choose to call yourself, I’ll ask you another. By what right do you call yourself my daughter’s husband? what evidence have you to produce to prove that you are not a bare-faced impostor? You don’t carry your marriage-certificate about with you, I daresay; and in the absence of some kind of documentary evidence, what is to convince me that you are what you pretend to be — my daughter’s husband?”
“The evidence of your daughter’s own senses. Place me face to face with her; she will not deny my identity.”
“But how, if my daughter declines to see you, as she does most positively? She has suffered enough at your hands, and is only too glad to be released from you.”
“She has suffered — she is glad to be released! Why, you most consummate scoundrel!” cried John Saltram, “there never was an unkind word spoken between my wife and me! She was the best, most devoted of women; and nothing but the vilest treachery could have separated us. I know not what villanous slander you have made her believe, or by what means you lured her away from me; but I know that a few words between us would let in the light upon your plot. You had better make the best of a bad position, Mr. Nowell. As my wife’s father, you know, you are pretty sure to escape. Whatever my inclination might be, my regard for her would make me indulgent to you. You’ll find candour avail you best in this case, depend upon it. Your daughter has inherited a fortune, and you want to put your hand upon it altogether. It would be wiser to moderate your desires, and be content with a fair share of the inheritance. Your daughter is not the woman to treat you ungenerously, nor am I the man to create any hindrance to her generosity.”
“I can make no bargain with you, sir,” replied Mr. Nowell, with the same cool audacity of manner that had distinguished him throughout the interview; “nor am I prepared to admit your claim to the position you assume. But if my daughter is your wife, she left you of her own free will, under no coercion of mine; and she must return to you in the same manner, or you must put the machinery of the law in force to compel her. And that, I flatter myself, in a free country like America, will be rather a difficult business.”
It was hard for John Saltram to hear any man talk like this, and not be able to knock him down. But in his present condition Marian’s husband could not have grappled a child, and he knew it.
“You are an outrageous scoundrel!” he said between his set teeth, tortured by that most ardent desire to dash his clenched fist into Mr. Nowell’s handsome dissolute-looking face. “You are a most consummate villain, and you know it!”
“Hard words mean so little,” returned Mr. Nowell coolly, “and go for so little. That kind of language before witnesses would be actionable; but, upon my word, it would be mere child’s play on my part to notice it, especially to a man in your condition. You’d better claim your wife from the captain, and see what he will say to you. I have told him that there’s some semi-lunatic on board, who pretends to be Mrs. Holbrook’s husband; so he’ll be quite prepared to hear your statement.”
John Saltram left the saloon in silence. It was worse than useless talking to this man, who presumed upon his helpless state, and openly defied him. His next effort must be to see Marian.
This he found impossible, for the time being at any rate. The state-room number 7 was an apartment a little bigger than a rabbit-hutch, opening out of a larger cabin, and in that cabin there reposed a ponderous matron who had suffered from sea-sickness throughout the voyage, and who could in no wise permit a masculine intruder to invade the scene of her retirement.
The idea of any blockade of Marian’s door was therefore futile. He must needs wait as patiently as he might, till she appeared of her own free will. He could not have to wait very long; something less than a day and a night, the steward had told him, would bring them to the end of the voyage.
Mr. Saltram went on deck, still assisted by the friendly steward, and seated himself in a sheltered corner of the vessel, hoping that the sea-breeze might bring him back some remnant of his lost strength. The ship’s surgeon had advised him to get a little fresh air as soon as he felt himself able to bear it; so he sat in his obscure nook, very helpless and very feeble, meditating upon what he should do when the final moment came and he had to claim his wife.
He had no idea of making his wrongs known to the captain, unless as a last desperate resource. He could not bring himself to make Marian the subject of a vulgar squabble. No, it was to herself alone he would appeal; it was in the natural instinct of her own heart that he would trust.
Very long and weary seemed the remaining hours of that joyless voyage. Mr. Saltram was fain to go back to his cabin after an hour on deck, there to lie and await the morrow. He had need to husband his strength for the coming encounter. The steward told him in the evening that Mrs. Holbrook had not dined in the saloon that day, as usual. She had kept her cabin closely, and complained of illness.
The morning dawned at last, after what had seemed an endless night to John Saltram, lying awake in his narrow berth — a bleak blusterous morning, with the cold gray light staring in at the port-hole, like an unfriendly face. There was no promise in such a daybreak; it was only light, and nothing more.
Mr. Saltram, having duly deliberated the matter during the long hours of that weary night, had decided that his wisest course was to lie perdu until the last moment, the very moment of landing, and then to come boldly forward and make his claim. It was useless to waste his strength in any futile endeavour to baffle so hardy a scoundrel as Percival Nowell. At the last, when Marian was leaving the ship, it would be time for him to assert his right as her husband, and to defy the wretch who had beguiled her away from him.
Having once arrived at this decision, he was able to await the issue of events with some degree of tranquility. He had no doubt, even now, of his wife’s affection for him, no fear as to the ultimate triumph of her love over all the lies and artifices of that scheming scoundrel, her father.
It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon when the steward came to tell him that they were on the point of arriving at their destination. The wharf where they were to land was within sight. The man had promised to give him due warning of this event, and John Saltram had therefore contrived to keep himself quiet amidst all the feverish impatience and confusion of mind prevailing amongst the other passengers. He was rewarded for his prudence; for when he rose to go on deck, he found himself stronger than he had felt yet. He went up the companion-ladder, took his place close to the spot at which the passengers must all leave the vessel, and waited.
New York was very near. The day had been cold and showery, but the sun was shining now, and the whole scene looked bright and gay. Every one seemed in high spirits, as if the new world they were about to touch contained for them a certainty of Elysium. It was such a delicious relief to arrive at the great lively Yankee city, after the tedium of a ten-day’s voyage, pleasant and easy as the transit had been.
John Saltram looked eagerly among the faces of the crowd, but neither Percival Nowell nor his daughter were to be
seen amongst them. Presently the vessel touched the wharf, and the travellers began to move towards the gangway. He watched them, one by one, breathlessly. At the very last, Mr. Nowell stepped quickly forward, with a veiled figure on his arm.
She was closely veiled, her face quite hidden by thick black lace, and she was clinging with something of a frightened air to her companion’s arm.
John Saltram sprang up from his post of observation, and confronted the two before they could leave the vessel.
“Marian,” he said, in slow decided tone, “let go that man’s arm. You will leave this vessel with me, and with no one else.”
“Stand out of the way, fellow,” cried Percival Nowell; “my daughter can have nothing to say to you.”
“Marian, for God’s sake, obey me! There is the vilest treachery in this man’s conduct. Let go his arm. My love, my darling, come with me!”
There was a passionate appeal in his tone, but it produced no answer.
“Marian!” he cried, still interposing himself between these two and the passage to the landing wharf. “Marian, I will have some answer!”
“You have had your answer, sir,” said Percival Nowell, trying to push him aside. “This lady does not know you. Do you want to make a scene, and render yourself ridiculous to every one here? There are plenty of lunatic asylums in New York that will accommodate you, if you are determined to make yourself eligible for them.”
“Marian!” repeated John Saltram, without vouchsafing the faintest notice of this speech. “Marian, speak to me!”
And then, as there came no answer from that shrinking clinging figure, with a sudden spring forward, that brought him quite close to her, John Saltram tore the veil away from the hidden face.
“This must be some impostor,” he said; “this is not my wife.”
He was right. The creature clinging to Percival Nowell’s arm was a pretty woman enough, with rather red hair, and a common face. She was about Marian’s height; and that was the only likeness between them.
The spectators of this brief fracas crowded round the actors in it, seeing nothing but the insult offered to a lady, and highly indignant with John Saltram; and amidst their murmurs Percival Nowell pushed his way to the shore, with the woman still clinging to his arm.
* * *
CHAPTER XLII
THE PLEASURES OF WYNCOMB
That shrill anguish-stricken cry which Ellen Whitelaw had heard on the night of the stranger’s visit to Wyncomb Farm haunted her afterwards with a wearisome persistence. She could not forget that wild unearthly sound; she could not help continually trying to find some solution for the mystery, until her brain was tired with the perpetual effort.
Ponder upon this matter as she might, she could find no reasonable explanation of the enigma; and in spite of her common sense — a quality of which she possessed a very fair share — she was fain to believe at last that this grim bare-looking old house was haunted, and that the agonised shriek she and Mrs. Tadman had heard that night was only the ghostly sound of some cry wrung from a bleeding heart in days gone by, the echo of an anguish that had been in the far past.
She even went so far as to ask her husband one day if he had ever heard that the house was haunted, and whether there was any record of crime or wrong that had been done in it in the past. Mr. Whitelaw seemed scarcely to relish the question; but after one of his meditative pauses laughed his wife’s inquiry to scorn, and told her that there were no ghosts at Wyncomb except the ghosts of dead rats that had ravaged the granaries — and certainly they seemed to rise from their graves in spite of poison and traps, cats and ferrets — and that, as to anything that had been done in the house in days gone by, he had never heard tell that his ancestors had ever done anything but eat and drink and sleep, and save money from year’s end to year’s end; and a hard time they’d had of it to pay their way and put something by, in the face of all the difficulties that surround the path of a farmer.
If Ellen Whitelaw’s life had been as the lives of happier women, full of small daily cares and all-engrossing domestic interests, the memory of that unearthly scream would no doubt have faded out of her mind ere long, instead of remaining, as it did, a source of constant perplexity to her. But there was no interest, no single charm in her life. There was nothing in the world left for her to care for. The fertile flats around Wyncomb Farmhouse bounded her universe. Day by day she rose to perform the same monotonous duties, sustained by no lofty aim, cheered by neither friendship nor affection; for she could not teach herself to feel anything warmer than toleration for her daily companion, Mrs. Tadman — only working laboriously because existence was more endurable to her when she was busy than when she was idle. It was scarcely strange, then, that she brooded upon the memory of that night when the nameless stranger had come to Wyncomb, and that she tried to put the fact of his coming and that other incident of the cry together, and to make something out of the two events by that means; but put them together as she might, she was no nearer any solution of the mystery. That her husband and the stranger could have failed to hear that piercing shriek seemed almost impossible: yet both had denied hearing it. The story of the stranger having knocked his shin and cried out on doing so, appeared like a feeble attempt to account for that wild cry. Vain and hopeless were all her endeavours to arrive at any reasonable explanation, and her attempts to get anything like an opinion out of Mrs. Tadman were utterly useless. Mr. Whitelaw’s cousin was still inclined to take a gloomy view of the stranger’s visit, in spite of her kinsman’s assurance that the transaction between himself and the unknown was a profitable one. Horse-racing — if not parting with a farm — Mrs. Tadman opined was at the bottom of the business; and when did horse-racing ever fail to lead to ruin sooner or later? It was only a question of time. Ellen sighed, remembering how her father had squandered his employer’s money on the race-course, and how, for that folly of his, she had been doomed to become Stephen Whitelaw’s wife. But there did not seem to her to be anything of the horsey element in her husband’s composition. He was never away from home, except to attend to his business at market; and she had never seen him spelling over the sporting-papers, as her father had been wont to do, night after night, with a perplexed brow and an anxious face, making calculations upon the margin of the print every now and then with a stump of lead pencil, and chewing the end of it meditatively in the intervals of his lection.
Although Mrs. Whitelaw did not, like Mrs. Tadman, associate the idea of the stranger’s visit with any apprehension of her husband’s impending ruin, she could not deny that some kind of change had arisen in him since that event. He had always drunk a good deal, in his slow quiet manner, which impressed people unacquainted with his habits with a notion of his sobriety, even when he was steadily emptying the bottle before him; but he drank more now, and sat longer over his drink, and there was an aspect of trouble and uneasiness about him at times which fairly puzzled his wife. Of course the most natural solution for all this was the one offered by the dismally prophetic Tadman. Stephen Whitelaw had been speculating or gambling, and his affairs were in disorder. He was not a man to be affected by anything but the most sordid considerations, one would suppose. Say that he had lost money, and there you had a key to the whole.
He got into a habit of sitting up at night, after the rest of the household had gone to bed. He had done this more or less from the time of his marriage; and Mrs. Tadman had told Ellen that the habit was one which had arisen within the last few months.
“He would always see to the fastenings of the house with his own eyes,” Mrs. Tadman said; “but up to last autumn he used to go upstairs with me and the servants. It’s a new thing for him to sit up drinking his glass of grog in the parlour by himself.”
The new habit seemed to grow upon Mr. Whitelaw more rapidly after that visit of the stranger’s. He took to sitting up till midnight — an awful hour in a farm-house; and Ellen generally found the spirit-bottle empty in the morning. Night after night, he went to bed soddened w
ith drink. Once, when his kinswoman made some feeble remonstrance with him about this change in his habits, he told her savagely to hold her tongue — he could afford to drink as much as he pleased — he wasn’t likely to come upon her to pay for what he took. As for his wife, she unhappily cared nothing what he did. He could not become more obnoxious to her than he had been from the first hour of her acquaintance with him, let him do what he would.
Little by little, finding no other explanation possible, Mrs. Whitelaw grew to believe quite firmly in the supernatural nature of that unforgotten cry. She remembered the unexplainable footstep which she had heard in the padlocked room in the early dusk of that new-year’s-day, when Mrs. Tadman and she explored the old house; and she associated these two sounds in her mind as of a like ghostly character. From this time forward she shrank with a nervous terror from that darksome passage leading to the padlocked door at the end of the house. She had never any occasion to go in this direction. The rooms in this wing were low, dark, and small, and had been unused for years. It was scarcely any wonder if rats had congregated behind the worm-eaten wainscot, to scare nervous listeners with their weird scratchings and scramblings. But no one could convince Ellen Whitelaw that the sounds she had heard on new-year’s-day were produced by anything so earthly as a rat. With that willingness to believe in a romantic impossibility, rather than in a commonplace improbability so natural to the human mind, she was more ready to conceive the existence of a ghost than that her own sense of hearing might have been less powerful than her fancy. About the footsteps she was quite as positive as she was about the scream; and in the last instance she had the evidence of Mrs. Tadman’s senses to support her.
She was surprised to find one day, when the household drudge, Martha Holden, had been cleaning the passage and rooms in that deserted wing — a task very seldom performed — that the girl had the same aversion to that part of the house which she felt herself, but of which she had never spoken in the presence of the servants.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 521
