Tales from Bohemia Part 8

The voice ceased. There was a convulsion at her throat. Nothing stirred in the room. From the street below came the sound of a pa.s.sing car and a boy's voice, "Morning papers." Mogley was weeping.

The dead woman's hand clutched the paper. Her face wore a smile.

V. -- OUT OF HIS PAST

This is no fable; it is the hardest kind of fact. I met Craddock not more than a week ago. His inebriety prevented his recognizing me.

What a joyous, hopeful man he was upon the day of his marriage! He looked toward the future as upon a cloudless spring dawn one looks forward to the day.

He had sown his wild oats and had already reaped a crop of knowledge.

"I have put the past behind me," he said. And he thought it would stay there.

He married one of the sweetest and best of women. The match was an ideal one--exceptionally so. His wife's mother objected to it and moved away on account of it. "That's a detail," said Craddock.

There are details and details. The importance of any one of them depends on circ.u.mstances.

Craddock had all the qualities and attributes requisite to make him a son-in-law to the liking of his mother-in-law--lack of money.

So she went to live in Boston, maintained a chilly correspondence with her daughter, and bided her time.

Craddock had had his old loves, a fact that he did not attempt to conceal from his wife. She insisted upon his telling her about them, although the narration put her into manifest vexation of mind. Such is the way of young wives.

There was one love about which Craddock said less than about any of the others, because it had encroached more upon his life than any of them.

It had nearly approached being a serious affair. He had a delicacy concerning the mention of it, too, for he flattered himself that the flame, although entirely extinguished upon his own side, yet smouldered deep in the heart of the woman. Therefore, he spoke of that episode in vague and general terms.

Strange as it seemed to Craddock, clear as it is to any student of men and women, it was this amour that excited the most curiosity in the mind of his wife.

"What was her name?" asked the latter.

"Agnes Darrell."

"I don't think she has a pretty name, at all events."

"Oh, that was only her stage name. I really don't remember what her real name was."

This was a judicious falsehood.

"Well, I'm sorry that you ever made love to actresses. I'm afraid I can't think as much of you after knowing--"

"After knowing that the first sight of you drove the memory of all actresses and other women in the world out of my head," cried Craddock, with a merry fervour that made his speech irresistible.

So they persisted in being extremely happy together for three years, to the grinding chagrin of Craddock's mother-in-law in Boston.

One July Friday, Craddock's wife was at the seash.o.r.e, while Craddock, who ran down each Sat.u.r.day to remain with her until Monday, was battling with his work and the heat and the summer insects, in his office in the city. Mrs. Craddock received her mail, two letters addressed to her at the seaside, two forwarded from the city whither they had first come.

Of the latter one was a milliner's announcement of removal. The other was in a large envelope, and the address was in a chirography unknown to her. The large envelope contained a smaller one.

This second envelope was addressed to Miss Agnes Darrell, ---- Hotel, Chicago, in the handwriting of Craddock.

The feelings of Craddock's wife are imaginable. She took from this already opened second envelope the letter that it contained. It also was in Craddock's penmans.h.i.+p. She succeeded in a semistupefied condition in reading it to the end.

"May 13.

"My Dearest Agnes:--I have just a moment in which to tell you the old story that one heart, thousands of miles east of you, beats for you alone. With what joy do I antic.i.p.ate the early ending of the season, when, like young Lochinvar, you will come out of the West. I shall contrive to be with you as often as possible this summer. With renewed vows of my unalterable devotion, I must hastily say good night.

"Yours always,

"Jack."

Any who seek a new emotion would ask for nothing more than Craddock's wife then experienced. It was not until the first shock had given away to a calm, stupendous indignation that she began to comment upon the epistle in detail.

"May 13th--at that very time Jack was sighing at the thought of my being away from him during the hot weather and telling me how he would miss me. All deception! His heart at that very time was beating for her alone. And he would contrive to see her as often as possible this summer--during my absence!"

It was then that Craddock's wife learned the great value of pride and anger as a compound antidote to overwhelming grief in certain circ.u.mstances.

When Craddock, quite unarmed, rushed to meet her at the seash.o.r.e upon the next evening, she was en route for Boston.

In several ensuing years, Craddock's wife's mother took care that every communication from him, every demand for an explanation, every piteous plea for enlightenment, for one interview, should be ignored. The mother sent the girl to relatives in Europe; and after Craddock had spent three years and all the money that he had saved toward the buying of a house for his wife and himself, in trying to cross her path that he might have a moment's hearing, he came back home and went to the dogs.

He would have killed himself had not hope remained--the hope that some chance turn of events would bring him face to face with her, that he might know wherefore his punishment. He would have proudly resolved to forget her, and he would have striven day and night to make a name that some day would reach her ears whereever she might go, had he not felt that some terrible mistake had taken her from him; time would eventually rectify matters. As hope bade him live and as his inability to forget her made it impossible for him to put his thoughts upon work, he became a drunkard.

He might not have done so had he been you or I; but he was only Craddock, and whether or not you find his offence beyond the extent of palliation, the fact is that he drank himself penniless and entirely beyond the power of his own will to resume respectability.

Naturally his friends abandoned him.

"Craddock is making a beast of himself," said one who had formerly sat at his table. "To give him money merely accelerates the process."

"When a man loses all self-respect, how can he expect to retain the sympathy of other people?" queried a second.

"I never thought much of a man who would go to the gutter on account of a woman. It shows a lack of stamina," observed a third.

All of which was true. But particular cases have exceptionally aggravating circ.u.mstances. Special combinations may produce results which, although seemingly under human control, are almost, if not quite, inevitable.

One day Craddock's wife came back to him. In Paris she had made a discovery. She had kept the letter from Jack to the actress in a box that always accompanied her. Opening this box suddenly, her eye fell upon the postmark, stamped upon the envelope. She had never noticed this before. She knew that the date written above the letter itself was incomplete, the year not being indicated. According to the postmark, the year was 1875.

That was four years before Jack married her; two years before he first saw her.

She had always supposed the sending of the letter to her to be the act of some jealous rival of Jack's for the actress's affection. Now she knew not to what it might have been attributable.

When she arrived at the hospital where Craddock was recovering from the effects of an unconscious attempt at suicide, she was ten years older, in fact, than when she had left him; twenty years older in appearance.

She took him home and has been trying to make a man of him. She manifests toward him limitless patience and tenderness, and she tolerates uncomplainingly his bi-weekly carousals. But she can afford to, having come into possession of a small fortune at her mother's recent death.

Craddock is amiably content with her. He cannot bring himself to regard her as the beautiful young bride of his youth. So little remains of her former charm, her former vivacity and girlishness, that it seems as if Craddock's wife of other times had died.

A few days ago, I met at the Sheepshead Races a _pa.s.see_ actress who was telling about the conquests of her early career.