Chapter XXIII: Compagnons Du Voyage

And so Talbot Strangemore’s home-coming, long-deferred, had ended in a tragedy. The two women who had loved him were both dead. Both had died wretched and tragical deaths, and he felt dimly in his soul that he was to blame for it all.

Only a few days ago he had deemed himself wretched because he was bound to one woman while loving another one. What a mockery those foolish pangs seemed to him now in the light of the real grief and deep remorse that came to him when he realized that Sibyl St. Alban and Nina, his wife, had both gone out of the world in their youth and beauty for his sake.

He had a conscience although it had spoken but seldom in the years while he had been away, neglecting his simple child-bride, and hating the bonds that held them together. It wakened to active life now and almost maddened him with its stinging reproaches and accusations.

It appeared to him now as if his Aunt Drusilla, Kitty, his dead wife’s maid, and the servants generally, at Selwyn Heights, hated the very sight of him. The story of Nina’s wrongs and sorrows had become known to all, and every one seemed to resent his part in it. Cold looks and averted faces met him everywhere. No one felt any kindness or pity for the fickle husband whose folly had driven the fair young mistress of Selwyn Heights to her dreadful death.

“I cannot bear my life here. I shall go mad with shame and sorrow and remorse, if I go on like this,” he said to Miss Strangemore soon. “Can you bear it to stay here and let me go abroad again?”

She answered, “yes,” and he took her at her word. The day after Mrs. St. Alban’s funeral he quitted Selwyn Heights, saying to himself that he would never return there, never claim the place as his, although, since Nina’s death there was no owner for it but him. Miss Drusilla’s broad hints that his mother had married him to Nina from mercenary motives still rankled bitterly in his heart. He would show her that she was mistaken. He would never touch one penny of all the vast Selwyn wealth. His own narrow income should suffice for his wanderings.

He went to Baltimore and had an interview with the drug clerk who had sold Nina the fatal poison. When he left him he had not a doubt that it was his wife who had thus recklessly precipitated herself into eternity. He carried with him in his exile the dainty handkerchief that bore her name. It lay always upon his breast. But it brought him no peace. Rather it was like the shirt of mail that Nessus wore for an everlasting torture.

* * * * *

“I will go abroad with you, Strangemore, if you will have my company,” said Oswald Ferris.

He had been one of Duke Cameron’s yachting friends, and later one of the guests at Selwyn Heights, a tall, dark, taciturn man whom every one voted a good fellow, but no one quite understood. Duke Cameron had admired him for his handsome looks and his superior intellect, but the ladies had declared that they were afraid of him, although they never could explain the reason why.

“It is just because”--Virgie Mason would say, vaguely, and with this highly satisfactory reason the subject would fall through.

Talbot Strangemore stared in surprise at the offer of Ferris.

“I warn you that I shall be a dull companion,” he said, hoarsely, “I am steeped to the lips in misery.”

“We shall be companions in despair then,” Oswald Ferris answered, drawing his heavy brows darkly together, “I too am going abroad to seek Nepenthe from maddening memory.”

“_You!_”

They gazed at each other a moment, then Ferris said, with bitter emphasis:

“Yes, even I! Have you never guessed my painful secret, Strangemore? I, too, loved Sibyl St. Alban. She, the cruel little coquette, made a victim of me, then threw me aside like a broken toy, when she met you. We are fellow-companions in misery. I know she was fickle, light, and unworthy, yet since she died I seem to be going mad, I shall lose my senses unless I find

“Respite, respite, and Nepenthe
From my memories of Lenore.”

So the two men with their shadowed lives sailed away from the American shores together.