Chapter XL: Dick’s News

If Sorrow has taught me anything,
She has taught me to weep for you,
If falsehood has left me a tear to shed
For Truth, those tears are true.—OWEN MEREDITH.

The greenness of the grass, the freshness of the flowers, and the splendor of the sunshine, still lingered; the glorious Indian summer still lived on through the gorgeous month of October, and even staid to welcome the arrival of sad November.

At high noon, one day about this time, Drusilla was sauntering slowly through her garden, trying to gather strength and comfort from the beauty and refulgence of the scene and hour, when she suddenly heard the outer gate open.

She looked up to see the cause, and she started violently and changed color; for she saw—

Mr. Richard Hammond!

He was now walking up the avenue towards the house.

On seeing him, her first natural emotion was that of astonishment; her first clear impression was that he came from her husband on some errand to herself. All in a tumult of delight, she hastened to meet him.

“Mrs. Alexander Lyon, I believe,” said Dick, at a hazard, and respectfully raising his hat as he came on to greet her.

“Yes, that is my now name,” answered the young matron, with a smile and a blush of happiness, not of confusion, as the questioner particularly noticed.

“I knew it!” he exclaimed, emphatically and involuntarily.

“Knew what? knew me?” she inquired, pleasantly. “Of course you did. Why should you not? It has been but two years since we met. And I knew YOU at a glance.”

“Very likely; for an old fellow like myself does not change in two years, while a young lady like you grows up and gets married in the meantime, which makes _some_ little difference,” answered Dick, archly, partly to cover his confusion at having spoken his thoughts aloud, and partly to procure her confirmation of what he firmly believed—namely, that she truly or falsely imagined herself to be a wife.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, still blushing and smiling, “I am married; and as you know that fact, which you could have learned only from my husband, of course you come from him. He is well?” she inquired, anxiety now betraying itself in her look and tone.

“Quite well,” said Dick, who was now beginning to feel the embarrassment of the duty he had taken upon himself to do.

“And you bring me a letter from him? I have been looking for one by the mail; but I am glad he sent it by you?”

Dick hesitated and looked confused.

“Give me my letter, please,” she said, holding out her hand with a smile.

“My dear Mrs. Lyon, I regret to say I have no letter for you,” he answered, as calmly as he could.

“No letter!” she repeated, with a look of disappointment; and she sank down in the garden seat, because from excess of emotion she was unable to stand. Then, soon brightening up with new hope, she exclaimed—“Oh, then, he has charged you with a message for me! Sit down here and tell me all he says.”

Dick took the offered seat, but remained silent.

“How, then, Mr. Hammond, tell me! tell me quickly what does Alick say? And, oh, forgive my impatience! but it has been so long since I have heard from my husband, and I have been so uneasy about him!” she said, and her hurried tones, her eager face and trembling frame, all betrayed the excess of anxiety that agitated her.

But Dick Hammond sat silent and immovable, cursing the fate that had thrust upon him a duty he found so hard to perform.

“Why don’t you answer me? Why are you silent? Why do you look so strangely, avoiding my eyes? What is the matter? Oh, Heaven, what has happened?” she cried, turning pale and beginning to twist her fingers.

“Mrs. Lyon,” said Dick, with an effort, “I have neither letter nor message from Alexander.”

“Neither letter nor message from my husband? I thought you came from him! I thought you came with his sanction. Else why are you here at all?” she asked, shivering with a vague alarm.

“Madam!” cried Dick, jumping up, flushing red, and, between his pity for her and his rage at Alick, losing all his self-command; “Madam, I came here to tell you that Alexander Lyon is a reproach to his name and to manhood! and totally unworthy of your regard, or of the notice of any honest woman!”

Drusilla was struck dumb.

For a few moments she gazed at him in blank wonder, while he strode up and down the garden walk before her, wiping his brows and trying to subdue his excitement. Then she arose slowly, stretched out her arm, and pointing to the outer gate said, quietly:

“Leave this place, sir.”

He stopped in his furious walk and looked at her. She had ceased to speak, but was still standing pale and grim and pointing his way out.

He felt that he must keep his ground, and do his duty at any cost. He was sorry that his own rashness had raised obstacles in his path. He approached her and said:

“Madam, I take back my words. I beg your pardon for having uttered them. I will beg it on my bent knee to content you. Forgive me, and consider my rash words unsaid.”

“Indeed, I know not how to forgive you.”

“But when penitence is professed and forgiveness asked, it is a Christian’s duty to extend it,” said Dick, appealing to her conscience.

“Admit, then, that your words—the injurious epithets you dared to apply to my husband—were untrue.”

“Do _you_, who have so much trust in him, need to be assured that they were untrue?” inquired Dick, evasively.

“No, indeed, I do not. I know that Alexander Lyon is the very soul of honor.”

Dick bowed deeply and a little ironically, saying:

“But you require a fuller apology than I have yet made?”

“I do.”

“Well, I make it. I feel very sorry that I forgot myself so far as to use those terms in respect to the gentleman in question. I take them back unreservedly, and I beg you, as you are a Christian, to forgive me.”

She bowed, still a little coldly, and then said:

“Sir, I know that you have come here this morning, if not directly from my husband, at least in his interests, or upon his affairs. If you are an authorized agent, pray explain the nature of the business that has brought you here.”

Under the forced calmness of her words he perceived that a terrible anxiety was torturing her soul. He answered gently:

“Madam, yes, I come here on his affairs and in his interests, since it is certainly important to him that he be prevented from taking a certain step that he contemplates.”

“What step is that?” she breathlessly inquired.

“Will you permit me first to see you into the house? The explanation I have to make is not a pleasant one, and you are already something overcome by what has passed. You had better hear the rest of what I have to say in your own parlor.”

Drusilla hesitated. She still resented the words he had used in reference to her husband, although he had recanted and begged pardon; and for this reason she shrank from taking him across the threshold of her house. But she reflected that, as he had assured her he came upon Alexander’s affairs and in his interests, she could do no less than open her doors to his entrance.

“Come, then,” she said, rising and leading the way into the cottage.

She walked very fast, her impatience overcoming her weariness.

She showed him into the drawing-room and signed him into a seat, and sank herself down on a corner of the sofa, for she was quite out of breath.

“Now, now, Mr. Hammond,” she exclaimed, as soon as she could articulate the words. “Explain yourself! I know well, I knew from the first, that you did not come here for the sole purpose of making me a call. I feel now that the nature of your errand is painful. Tell it at once. You must know that anything is better than suspense.”

Dick attempted to answer, but looked in her face and failed. It was as hard to obey her as it would have been to gaze in the eyes of a lamb and slay it.

“Still silent?” she said, clasping her hands. “Ah, Heaven, do not torture me so! I have suffered so much already! so much, just Lord! I can bear no more! Tell me your worst news at once, and kill me with it. It would be mercy.”

Still, still, Dick’s answer, like Macbeth’s amen, “stuck in his throat.”

“Oh, Heaven, what is this? Why don’t you speak? Alick! Alick! my husband! You said that he was well! Yes, you said so! But they say of the _dead_ that they are well!” she cried, clasping her hands, and in her excessive alarm forgetting that Dick had certainly, in the early part of their interview, spoken of Alick as a living man about to take an objectionable step.

Her complexion curdled into white and livid spots, her features quivered with the intense agony of suspense, as she stretched out her hands and gasped forth the word:

“Tell—tell—is Alick—DEAD?”

“No!” thundered Dick, emphatically, as he found his voice, “he is not! No such good luck. The rope is not ready for him yet,” he added, under his breath.

She heard only the first words of his reply.

“Thank Heaven for that, at least. It is well to know that. I think now I can bear everything else,” she sighed, as the tension of her nerves relaxed, and she sank down among the cushions and closed her eyes. This reaction from her illogical but deadly terror was so great, that she nearly swooned. And now to feel certain that he was alive and well seemed all sufficient for her satisfaction.

Dick did not disturb her by a word, look, or gesture. He was pleased to put off the evil hour of explanation as long as possible, even if it were to be forever; and he mentally bemoaned the hardship of the duty he felt compelled to do, and he wished himself anywhere else but where he was.

In a few minutes Drusilla recovered herself, and with an effort sat up and said:

“Mr. Hammond, you assure me that my husband is alive and well; as indeed I ought to have known from your previous conversation; only that in my sudden alarm I did not remember it. I am not very rational, I think. But now that my fears for his safety are set at rest, I do not dread to hear any other ill news that you may have to tell me. So speak out freely and without fear for me. I am strong enough to sustain the shock of common calamities,” she added, with a smile.

And in saying these words, she only thought of Mr. Lyon’s supposed lawsuit, “connected with his late father’s will,” and she fancied that Dick had come to tell her of its failure.

“Then I will do so, Mrs. Lyon—Drusilla! I wish you would let me call you so, as I used to do when you were a little child,” said Dick, gently and gravely.

“You may call me anything that my husband will permit, Mr. Hammond. But until you have his sanction, you must call me Mrs. Lyon.”

“Ah, my dear child,” said Dick, mournfully, “I fear that is the very last name he will be willing to accord you.”

“What is it that you say, sir? What do you mean?” questioned Drusilla, in a low, breathless, hurried tone, as with his words there rushed upon her mind the recollection of her husband’s cruel letter, in which he had declared his union with her to be illegal, null and void, and to have always been so. And now she instantly connected Hammond’s visit and his untold news with that letter and its cruel communications. And she wondered if Dick knew anything about Alick’s supposed monomania; and if so, whether he rightly understood it, or whether he was misled by it.

As Dick did not immediately answer her questions, she spoke to him again.

“Why do you not reply to me, Mr. Hammond?”

“Ah, my poor child! my dear child! you readily surmised that I had painful matters to communicate, but you never divined how painful,” said Dick, sorrowfully.

“You alarm me again. For Heaven’s sake, speak and shorten this torture,” she pleaded.

“You believe yourself to be the wife of Alexander Lyon?” said Dick, modulating his voice to a tone of the deepest and most respectful sympathy.

“‘_Believe_,’ sir? I am so,” answered Drusilla, drawing herself up with a proud and confident smile.

“I feel assured that you think as you say. My long knowledge of you, my earnest esteem for you will not permit me to question your good faith. But my poor Drusilla, my dear girl, I fear, I greatly fear that you are mistaken.”

“I am not, sir. I cannot be mistaken on such a subject,” answered Drusilla. And as all the deep dishonor implied in the doubt rushed over her mind, her face and neck were suffused with the crimson flush of wounded delicacy and offended pride, and she added, “You must know, sir, that to question my wifehood is to insult me.”

“Heaven is my witness, how far from my heart is the wish to offend you, how profound and respectful is my sympathy for you, and how deeply it pains me to give you pain. But I must do my duty. Most willingly would I have avoided this task, if I could have done so; but I could not. And I come to serve and to save you, and one who is dearer to me than all others besides,” said Dick, earnestly.

“I think I know why you speak to me in this manner. You have suffered yourself to be misled by the transient imaginings of a monomaniac, who is so sane on all other subjects, and with one exception so strong and clear in judgment and understanding, that you have failed to discover his hallucination to be what it is. But I will soon convince you that it is _you_ who are mistaken, and not I,” replied Drusilla, with much dignity.

And she drew from her bosom the little black silk bag:, took from it the small piece of paper and placed it in the hands of her visitor, saying:

“There, Mr. Hammond, read that, and confess that you have alarmed yourself for nothing.”

Dick, who had been listening to her and watching her in wonder and curiosity, took the paper, and with a bow, began to examine it. As he read it slowly and attentively, he gathered his brows into a thoughtful and troubled frown, and as he finished it, he looked at her with a compassionate expression and inquired:

“My dear child, how came this little document into your keeping?”

“I found it while clearing out Alick’s dressing-glass drawer. And as it was as much mine as his, and as he did not seem to set much value on it, judging by the place in which he left it, I took possession of it. And I am very glad now that I have it to show you,” she answered, smiling confidently.

“Because you consider it a proof positive of your marriage?” he inquired, gravely.

“Why, of course. And so it is,” she exclaimed, triumphantly. “Why, look at it! Read it! It is quite plain and conclusive! A child could comprehend it! Don’t you see for yourself that this is the most positive proof of my marriage that could possibly be produced?”

“No, Drusilla,” he answered, mournfully, “I see nothing of the sort. Quite the contrary.”

“Then you don’t understand English when you see it!” retorted the sorely tried young creature, losing a little of her saintly patience.

“I understand _this_, but too well!” replied Dick, grimly regarding the document that he still held in his hand.

“In mercy’s name, what do you mean now?”

“I mean that this piece of paper proves no marriage. It only indicates that at the time of its being filled out, Lyon probably had sincere intention to marry you. But so far from its being a proof of your marriage, as it lies here before us, it affords an incontrovertible evidence that no such marriage ever took place!”

“Come! what next, I wonder? Are you also a monomaniac on this subject? And is madness infectious? If so, pray leave my presence before you inoculate me with the same mania!”

“I would to Heaven that you were right and that I were talking at random! But it is not so, Drusilla! ‘I speak the words of truth and soberness.’ This document proves that you were never married,” said Hammond, with as much earnestness as sadness.

“You are raving! In the name of reason how can you talk so frantically? _That_ paper, of all things in the world, proves I never was married? Can _any_ thing in the universe prove that I was never married, when I know I was? I am not a fool, or a lunatic, or a visionary, to imagine things that never happened. I saw and heard myself married to Alick by a regularly ordained minister, with a special license, and in the presence of a dozen witnesses. You talk wildly, Mr. Hammond! Yes, and very offensively!” she added.

“I beg you to forgive me and to bear with me, Drusilla,” he answered sadly, “but——”

“Call me by my husband’s name! I have a right to it!” interrupted the young matron, proudly, but mournfully.

“Yes, Heaven knows that you _have_ a right to it! The holiest, if not the most lawful right, and I cannot refuse it to you. But, Mrs. Lyon, as I told you, I came here to serve and to save _you_ if possible, and also one who is dearest of all to me; so in her service and in yours, I must convince you of the truth of what I have just said, however distressing it may be for me to press, or for you to believe,” said Dick, solemnly.

The earnestness and solemnity of his words deeply impressed her. A new terror struck all the color from her face—doubt, like the iron, entered her soul. She gazed at him transfixed.

“It is so,” said Hammond, turning away his eyes that he might not meet the agonizing appeal in hers. “It is so.

“You _ought_ to be, but you are _not_ the wife of Alexander Lyon.”

“Not his wife—not Alick’s wife! Oh, Alick, Alick! my own! my dear! my love! my husband! I _am_ your wife! I am—I am!” cried the wronged and wretched young creature, with a sob and a gasp, as she sank back among her cushions.

Dick could have wept for company, but he only cursed Alick and pitied her, while he watched and waited for her to recover herself.

Ah! how many tears she had shed in her short married life of less than a year!

Presently her anguish broke forth in a sharp and bitter cry:

“Why, oh why, do you say such terrible things to me, Mr. Hammond?”

“Because it is absolutely necessary that you should know them,” he answered, kindly.

“Have you no pity—_none_—that you drive this sorrow-like a sword into my heart?” she cried.

“Heaven knows how much pity and how much respect I have for you,” he said.

“Oh, what—oh what,” she sobbed, wringing her hands in her agony, “oh, what makes you say that I am not his wife—not my dear Alick’s wife? When I told you—_I told you_ how I was married; with a special license, by a regularly ordained minister, and in the presence of a dozen witnesses? How _can_ you say, in the face of all this, that I am not Alick’s wife?”

“My dear Drusilla, on my honor as a gentleman, by my knowledge as a lawyer, and on my faith as a Christian, I assure you, that though your nuptial ceremony had been pronounced by a bishop, and in the presence of a thousand witnesses, the very existence of this little document as it lies before us proves that ceremony to have been illegal and of no effect.”

She clasped her hands and gazed on him with such a look of unutterable woe in her voice, that he could no more bear to meet her eyes than could the heroes of old endure Medusa’s glance and live. Yet withal she was now very calm, though with a calmness that was but a restrained frenzy; but it must have deceived Dick as to her powers of endurance, or he would not have driven the spear home to her heart as in a few moments he did.

“And Alick knew this?” she asked.

“I am not sure he knew it or thought of it on the wedding-day. But I am sure that he knows it now,” sighed Dick.

“And so his fancy was a fact after all; and he was no monomaniac?”

“No, he was no monomaniac,” said Dick. “He was only a scoundrel,” he added, under his breath.

“Alick knows this! Then this is the discovery he made in March?”

“Probably, if he made any.”

“He told me he had discovered then our marriage was not legal. He has absented himself from me ever since. Heaven help me! I thought he was suffering from a hallucination that would pass away. And it was a reality!”

“Yes, it was,” said Dick, wondering at her apparent composure and misled by it.

“But Alick will remedy the evil now. He will marry me over again. You know he will, Mr. Hammond?”

“I know he ought to do so; I know he is bound by the holiest obligations that can bind a man to do so; I know if he had one spark of honor in him he _would_ do so; but I do not believe he will,” growled Dick.

“How dare you say that?”

“Because if he had the slightest intention of doing you justice, he would never even dream of the step he is now actually about to take, and of which I came here on purpose to warn you.”

“What step? You said something of this when you first arrived. What is it?”

“A step which, (were you his wife, as you ought in justice to be) would take him across the threshold of a state’s prison, for it would be a felony,” answered Hammond, speaking distinctly and emphatically, and hoping that she would understand him, and save him the pain of a more particular explanation.

But she did not even suspect his meaning. She only clasped her hands, and gazed at him with piteous and beseeching eyes, and murmured:

“What is it? Speak plainly.”

He turned away his head that he might not witness her despair, as he replied:

“He is about to take advantage of the discovery he has made by marrying Miss Anna Ly——”

His words were cut short by a piercing shriek that rang like the cry of a lost soul through the air. He started up and confronted Drusilla.

She was standing before him, in motionless, speechless anguish. Her face was blanched to the hue of death, her eyes were dilated and strained, her hands were extended, her form rigid. As one struck with catalepsy, for a moment she stood thus, and then fell.

Hammond caught her before she struck the floor, and laid her tenderly on the sofa, and then in great alarm, he rang for assistance.

Her servants were at that hour gathered around the kitchen table eating their dinner, and talking of the strange visitor whom they had all seen enter the house in company with their mistress. They heard the shriek that rang through the air, followed by the loud peals of the parlor-bell, and they started up in a body and ran to see what the matter could be.

They found their mistress in a swoon on the sofa, and a strange gentleman standing over her, beside himself with fear and grief.

“For Heaven’s sake do something. I fear Mrs. Lyon is dying or dead!” he exclaimed.

“What caused it, sir?” demanded “mammy,” putting aside the intruder, and kneeling down to examine her patient.

“I was so unhappy as to be the bearer of bad news to her,” Dick confessed.

“Then, sir, you ought to a-knowed better than for to a-told it to her in her state of health. It may a-killed her,” said the nurse severely, as is the custom of her class in rebuking the common enemy.

Dick looked guilty and wretched.

Pina pitied him.

“No, mammy, it aint killed her—she aint dead; ’deed she aint, mammy. She’s only in one of her fainty fits. She’s subject to ’em, mammy,” said the girl.

“You hold your tongue, gal. What do you know? Come here and help me to rub her hands. And Mr. Leo, you go ’bout your business. What call you go to be poking ’round where there’s a lady sick? And _you_, sir,” said mammy, turning to the unhappy Dick, “now you’s done all the harm you can do, you go ’way too.”

Dick turned a long, lingering look to the inanimate form on the sofa, and then reluctantly followed his companion in banishment from the room.

When they reached the hall, Leo politely opened the front door for the exit of the visitor.

But Dick loitered.

“Come here, boy,” he said, beckoning Leo close to his side. “Is your mistress realty subject to these swooning fits?”

“Yes sir; and so has been ever since master took to his ways,” answered the boy, sulkily, because for the time being he hated all mankind, and, most of all, his master, for his mistress’s sake.

“What ways?” asked Dick.

“Gentlemen’s ways, sir,” growled Leo.

“But—she gets over these attacks?” asked Dick, anxiously.

The boy looked at the questioner askance, and answered, ironically:

“No, Sir; slight as they is, she allus dies of ’em.”

Dick smiled, even in the midst of his trouble, and said:

“Come, I pardon your impertinence for the sake of the regard that I see you bear your mistress. Don’t mock me again, but answer me truly—these swoons are not dangerous, are they?”

“Well, sir, I don’t think they is. The women allus gets her out of ’em in an hour or so,” said Leo, somewhat mollified by the sincere interest this stranger took in his mistress.

“Well, my boy, when your mistress is quite well, say to-morrow morning, if she is well enough to be up, I wish you to give her this packet,” said Dick offering Leo a large, long, well-filled yellow envelope.

Leo backed several paces, and put his hands behind him.

“What’s that for?” inquired the visitor. “Why don’t you take this?”

“Is it a writ?” asked the boy.

Dick laughed now.

“No, stupid! I have been more used to having writs served upon _me_, than to serving them upon _others_. Do I look like a bum baillie?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, then, take this and give it to your mistress when she gets better.”

But the boy backed farther, and kept his hands behind him.

“Are you crazy?” asked Dick, impatiently.

“No, sir; but I want to know what is in that there yaller hang-wallop, before I tetches of it to take it to my mist’ess, ’cause she’s been put upon bad enough a’ready, the dear knows,” said Leo, stubbornly.

Mr. Hammond good-humoredly opened the yellow envelope, and for the boy’s satisfaction displayed its contents, which consisted of two open letters, one sealed letter and a newspaper.

“There,” he said, as he replaced them, “you see there is nothing very dangerous in the packet. It is for your mistress’s benefit that I wish to send it.”

“Well, sir, I’ll take it to her; and I hope, sir, you’ll ’scuse me for hanging back and doubting,” said Leo.

“Certainly; I respect your scruples, and I like you all the better for your fidelity to your mistress. And now, listen. I want you to do something else for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know the ‘Drovers’ Rest?’”

“Is it that little shady inn on the road, just before you turn into our woods, sir?”

“The very same; it is the only inn within half a mile. I shall wait there until evening to hear how your mistress is. Do you think you can slip across there to bring me news of her this afternoon?”

“I’ll try, sir—yes, sir, I’ll come, sir,” said the boy, first hesitating, and then consenting.

“Thank you. Don’t forget to do so,” said Mr. Hammond, dropping a small gold coin into Leo’s hand, and then hurrying from the house.