A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


As he was always watching her face--a practice he carried further than
any person living--he divined that sentiment, and wrought upon it so,
that at last he tormented her into saying she would marry him SOME DAY.

When he had brought her to that, he raged inwardly to think he had not
two years to work in; for it was evident she would marry him in time.
But no, it had taken him more than four months, close siege, to bring
her to that. No word from Phoebe. An ominous dread hung over his own
soul. His wife would be upon him, or, worse still, her brother Dick,
who he knew would beat him to a mummy on the spot; or, worst of all, the
husband of Rosa Staines, who would kill him, or fling him into a prison.
He MUST make a push.

In this emergency he used his ally, Mr. Lusignan; he told him Mrs.
Staines had promised to marry him, but at some distant date. This would
not do; he must look after his enormous interests in the colony, and he
was so much in love he could not leave her.

The old gentleman was desperately fond of Falcon, and bent on the match,
and he actually consented to give his daughter what Falcon called a
little push.

The little push was a very great one, I think.

It consisted in directing the clergyman to call in church the banns of
marriage between Reginald Falcon and Rosa Staines.

They were both in church together when this was done. Rosa all but
screamed, and then turned red as fire and white as a ghost, by turns.
She never stood up again all the service; and in going home refused
Falcon's arm, and walked swiftly home by herself. Not that she had the
slightest intention of passing this monstrous thing by in silence. On
the contrary, her wrath was boiling over, and so hot that she knew she
should make a scene in the street if she said a word there.

Once inside the house she turned on Falcon, with a white cheek and a
flashing eye, and said, "Follow me, sir, if you please." She led the
way to her father's study. "Papa," said she, "I throw myself on your
protection. Mr. Falcon has affronted me."

"Oh, Rosa!" cried Falcon, affecting utter dismay.

"Publicly--publicly: he has had the banns of marriage cried in the
church, without my permission."

"Don't raise your voice so loud, child. All the house will hear you."

"I choose all the house to hear me. I will not endure it. I will never
marry you now--never!"

"Rosa, my child," said Lusignan, "you need not scold poor Falcon, for I
am the culprit. It was I who ordered the banns to be cried."

"Oh! papa, you had no right to do such a thing as that."

"I think I had. I exercised parental authority for once, and for your
good, and for the good of a true and faithful lover of yours, whom you
jilted once, and now you trifle with his affection and his interests.
He loves you too well to leave you; yet you know his vast estates and
interests require supervision."

"That for his vast estates!" said Rosa contemptuously. "I am not to be
driven to the altar like this, when my heart is in the grave. Don't
you do it again, papa, or I'll get up and forbid the banns; affront for
affront."

"I should like to see that," said the old gentleman dryly.

Rosa vouchsafed no reply, but swept out of the room, with burning cheeks
and glittering eyes, and was not seen all day, would not dine with them,
in spite of three humble, deprecating notes Falcon sent her.

"Let the spiteful cat alone," said old Lusignan. "You and I will dine
together in peace and quiet."

It was a dull dinner; but Falcon took advantage of the opportunity,
impregnated the father with his views, and got him to promise to have
the banns cried next Sunday. He consented.

Rosa learned next Sunday morning that this was to be done, and her
courage failed her. She did not go to church at all.

She cried a great deal, and submitted to violence, as your true women
are too apt to do. They had compromised her, and so conquered her. The
permanent feelings of gratitude and esteem caused a reaction after her
passion, and she gave up open resistance as hopeless.

Falcon renewed his visits, and was received with the mere sullen languor
of a woman who has given in.

The banns were cried a third time.

Then the patient Rosa bought laudanum enough to reunite her to her
Christopher, in spite of them all; and having provided herself with this
resource, became more cheerful, and even kind and caressing.

She declined to name the day at present, and that was awkward.
Nevertheless the conspirators felt sure they should tire her out into
doing that, before long; for they saw their way clear, and she was
perplexed in the extreme.

In her perplexity, she used to talk to a certain beautiful star she
called her Christopher. She loved to fancy he was now an inhabitant of
that bright star; and often on a clear night she would look up, and beg
for guidance from this star. This I consider foolish: but then I am old
and sceptical; she was still young and innocent, and sorely puzzled to
know her husband's real will.

I don't suppose the star had anything to do with it, except as a
focus of her thoughts; but one fine night, after a long inspection
of Christopher's star, she dreamed a dream. She thought that a lovely
wedding-dress hung over a chair, that a crown of diamonds as large
as almonds sparkled ready for her on the dressing-table, and she was
undoing her black gown, and about to take it off, when suddenly the
diamonds began to pale, and the white satin dress to melt away, and
in its place there rose a pale face and a long beard, and Christopher
Staines stood before her, and said quietly, "Is this how you keep
your vow?" Then he sank slowly, and the white dress was black, and the
diamonds were jet; and she awoke, with his gentle words of remonstrance
and his very tones ringing in her ear.

This dream, co-operating with her previous agitation and misgivings,
shook her very much; she did not come down-stairs till near dinner-time;
and both her father and Falcon, who came as a matter of course to spend
his Sunday, were struck with her appearance. She was pale, gloomy,
morose, and had an air of desperation about her.

Falcon would not see it; he knew that it is safest to let her sex alone
when they look like that; and then the storm sometimes subsides of
itself.

After dinner, Rosa retired early; and soon she was heard walking rapidly
up and down the dressing-room.

This was quite unusual, and made a noise.

Papa Lusignan thought it inconsiderate; and after a while, remarking
gently that he was not particularly fond of sound, he proposed they
should smoke the pipe of peace on the lawn.

They did so; but after a while, finding that Falcon was not smoking, he
said, "Don't let me detain you. Rosa is alone."

Falcon took the hint, and went to the drawing-room. Rosa met him on the
stairs, with a scarf over her shoulders. "I must speak to papa," said
she. "Where is he?"

"He is on the lawn, dear Rosa," said Falcon, in his most dulcet tones.
He was sure of his ally, and very glad to use him as a buffer to receive
the first shock.

So he went into the drawing-room, where all the lights were burning, and
quietly took up a book. But he did not read a line; he was too occupied
in trying to read his own future.

The mean villain, who is incapable of remorse, is, of all men, most
capable of fear. His villany had, to all appearance, reached the goal;
for he felt sure that all Rosa's struggles would, sooner or later,
succumb to her sense of gratitude and his strong will and patient
temper. But when the victory was won, what a life! He must fly with
her to some foreign country, pursued from pillar to post by an enraged
husband, and by the offended law. And if he escaped the vindictive foe
a year or two, how could he escape that other enemy he knew, and
dreaded--poverty? He foresaw he should come to hate the woman he was
about to wrong, and she would instantly revenge herself, by making him
an exile and, soon or late, a prisoner, or a pauper.

While these misgivings battled with his base but ardent passion, strange
things were going on out of doors--but they will be best related in
another sequence of events, to which indeed they fairly belong.




CHAPTER XXIX.


Staines and Mrs. Falcon landed at Plymouth, and went up to town by the
same train. They parted in London, Staines to go down to Gravesend, Mrs.
Falcon to visit her husband's old haunts, and see if she could find him.

She did not find him; but she heard of him, and learned that he always
went down to Gravesend from Saturday till Monday.

Notwithstanding all she had said to Staines, the actual information
startled her, and gave her a turn. She was obliged to sit down, for her
knees seemed to give way. It was but a momentary weakness. She was now
a wife and a mother, and had her rights. She said to herself, "My rogue
has turned that poor woman's head long before this, no doubt. But I
shall go down and just bring him away by the ear."

For once her bitter indignation overpowered every other sentiment, and
she lost no time, but late as it was went down to Gravesend, ordered a
private sitting-room and bedroom for the night, and took a fly to Kent
Villa.

But Christopher Staines had the start of her. He had already gone down
to Gravesend with his carpet-bag, left it at the inn, and walked to Kent
Villa that lovely summer night, the happiest husband in England.

His heart had never for one instant been disturbed by Mrs. Falcon's
monstrous suspicion; he looked on her as a monomaniac; a sensible woman
insane on one point, her husband.

When he reached the villa, however, he thought it prudent to make sure
that Falcon had come to England at all, and discharged his commission.
He would not run the risk, small as he thought it, of pouncing
unexpected on his Rosa, being taken for a ghost, and terrifying her, or
exciting her to madness.

Now the premises of Kent Villa were admirably adapted to what they call
in war a reconnaissance. The lawn was studded with laurestinas and other
shrubs that had grown magnificently in that Kentish air.

Staines had no sooner set his foot on the lawn, than he heard voices;
he crept towards them from bush to bush; and standing in impenetrable
shade, he saw in the clear moonlight two figures--Mr. Lusignan and
Reginald Falcon.

These two dropped out only a word or two at intervals; but what they did
say struck Staines as odd. For one thing, Lusignan remarked, "I suppose
you will want to go back to the Cape. Such enormous estates as yours
will want looking after."

"Enormous estates!" said Staines to himself. "Then they must have grown
very fast in a few months."

"Oh, yes," said Falcon; "but I think of showing her a little of Europe
first."

Staines thought this still more mysterious; he waited to hear more, but
the succeeding remarks were of an ordinary kind.

He noticed, however, that Falcon spoke of his wife by her Christian
name, and that neither party mentioned Christopher Staines. He seemed
quite out of their little world.

He began to feel a strange chill creep down him.

Presently Falcon went off to join Rosa; and Staines thought it was
quite time to ask the old gentleman whether Falcon had executed his
commission, or not.

He was only hesitating how to do it, not liking to pounce in the dark
on a man who abhorred everything like excitement, when Rosa herself came
flying out in great agitation.

Oh! the thrill he felt at the sight of her! With all his
self-possession, he would have sprung forward and taken her in his arms
with a mighty cry of love, if she had not immediately spoken words that
rooted him to the spot with horror. But she came with the words in her
very mouth; "Papa, I am come to tell you I cannot, and will not, marry
Mr. Falcon."

"Oh, yes, you will, my dear."

"Never! I'll die sooner. Not that you will care for that. I tell you
I saw my Christopher last night--in a dream. He had a beard; but I saw
him, oh, so plain; and he said, 'Is this the way you keep your promise?'
That is enough for me. I have prayed, again and again, to his star,
for light. I am so perplexed and harassed by you all, and you make me
believe what you like. Well, I have had a revelation. It is not my poor
lost darling's wish I should wed again. I don't believe Mr. Falcon any
more. I hear nothing but lies by day. The truth comes to my bedside at
night. I will not marry this man."

"Consider, Rosa, your credit is pledged. You must not be always jilting
him heartlessly. Dreams! nonsense. There--I love peace. It is no use
your storming at me; rave to the moon and the stars, if you like, and
when you have done, do pray come in, and behave like a rational woman,
who has pledged her faith to an honorable man, and a man of vast
estates--a man that nursed your husband in his last illness, found your
child, at a great expense, when you had lost him, and merits eternal
gratitude, not eternal jilting. I have no patience with you."

The old gentleman retired in high dudgeon.

Staines stood in the black shade of his cedar-tree, rooted to the ground
by this revelation of male villany and female credulity.

He did not know what on earth to do. He wanted to kill Falcon, but not
to terrify his own wife to death. It was now too clear she thought he
was dead.

Rosa watched her father's retiring figure out of sight. "Very well,"
said she, clenching her teeth; then suddenly she turned, and looked up
to heaven. "Do you hear?" said she, "my Christie's star? I am a poor
perplexed creature. I asked you for a sign, and that very night I saw
him in a dream. Why should I marry out of gratitude? Why should I marry
one man, when I love another? What does it matter his being dead? I love
him too well to be wife to any living man. They persuade me, they coax
me, they pull me, they push me. I see they will make me. But I will
outwit them. See--see!" and she held up a little phial in the moonlight.
"This shall cut the knot for me; this shall keep me true to my Christie,
and save me from breaking promises I ought never to have made. This
shall unite me once more with him I killed, and loved."

She meant she would kill herself the night before the wedding, which
perhaps she would not, and perhaps she would. Who can tell? The weak
are violent. But Christopher, seeing the poison so near her lips, was
perplexed, took two strides, wrenched it out of her hand, with a snarl
of rage, and instantly plunged into the shade again.

Rosa uttered a shriek, and flew into the house.

The farther she got, the more terrified she became, and soon Christopher
heard her screaming in the drawing-room in an alarming way. They were
like the screams of the insane.

He got terribly anxious, and followed her. All the doors were open.

As he went up-stairs, he heard her cry, "His ghost! his ghost! I have
seen his ghost! No, no. I feel his hand upon my arm now. A beard! and so
he had in the dream! He is alive. My darling is alive. You have deceived
me. You are an impostor--a villain. Out of the house this moment, or he
shall kill you."

"Are you mad?" cried Falcon. "How can he be alive, when I saw him dead?"

This was too much. Staines gave the door a blow with his arm, and strode
into the apartment, looking white and tremendous.

Falcon saw death in his face; gave a shriek, drew his revolver, and
fired at him with as little aim as he had at the lioness; then made for
the open window. Staines seized a chair, followed him, and hurled it
at him; and the chair and the man went through the window together, and
then there was a strange thud heard outside.

Rosa gave a loud scream, and swooned away.

Staines laid his wife flat on the floor, got the women about her, and at
last she began to give the usual signs of returning life.

Staines said to the oldest woman there, "If she sees me, she will go
off again. Carry her to her room; and tell her, by degrees, that I am
alive."

All this time Papa Lusignan had sat trembling and whimpering in a chair,
moaning, "This is a painful scene--very painful." But at last an idea
struck him--"WHY, YOU HAVE ROBBED THE OFFICE!"

Scarcely was Mrs. Staines out of the room, when a fly drove up, and this
was immediately followed by violent and continuous screaming close under
the window.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Papa Lusignan.

They ran down, and found Falcon impaled at full length on the spikes of
the villa, and Phoebe screaming over him, and trying in vain to lift
him off them. He had struggled a little, in silent terror, but had then
fainted from fear and loss of blood, and lying rather inside the rails,
which were high, he could not be extricated from the outside.

As soon as his miserable condition was discovered, the servants ran down
into the kitchen, and so up to the rails by the area steps. These
rails had caught him; one had gone clean through his arm, the other had
penetrated the fleshy part of the thigh, and a third pierced his ear.

They got him off; but he was insensible, and the place drenched with his
blood.

Phoebe clutched Staines by the arm. "Let me know the worst," said she.
"Is he dead?"

Staines examined him, and said "No."

"Can you save him?"

"I?"

"Yes. Who can, if you cannot? Oh, have mercy on me!" and she went on her
knees to him, and put her forehead on his knees.

He was touched by her simple faith; and the noble traditions of his
profession sided with his gratitude to this injured woman. "My poor
friend," said he, "I will do my best, for YOUR sake."

He took immediate steps for stanching the blood; and the fly carried
Phoebe and her villain to the inn at Gravesend.

Falcon came to on the road; but finding himself alone with Phoebe,
shammed unconsciousness of everything but pain.

Staines, being thoroughly enraged with Rosa, yet remembering his solemn
vow never to abuse her again, saw her father, and told him to tell her
he should think over her conduct quietly, not wishing to be harder upon
her than she deserved.

Rosa, who had been screaming, and crying for joy, ever since she came to
her senses, was not so much afflicted at this message as one might have
expected. He was alive, and all things else were trifles.

Nevertheless, when day after day went by, and not even a line from
Christopher, she began to fear he would cast her off entirely; the more
so as she heard he was now and then at Gravesend to visit Mrs. Falcon at
the inn.

While matters were thus, Uncle Philip burst on her like a bomb. "He is
alive! he is alive! he is alive!" And they had a cuddle over it.

"Oh, Uncle Philip! Have you seen him?"

"Seen him? Yes. He caught me on the hop, just as I came in from Italy. I
took him for a ghost."

"Oh, weren't you frightened?"

"Not a bit. I don't mind ghosts. I'd have half a dozen to dinner every
day, if I might choose 'em. I couldn't stand stupid ones. But I say,
his temper isn't improved by all this dying: he is in an awful rage with
you; and what for?"

"O uncle! what for? Because I'm the vilest of women!"

"Vilest of fiddlesticks! It's his fault, not yours. Shouldn't have died.
It's always a dangerous experiment."

"I shall die if he will not forgive me. He keeps away from me and from
his child."

"I'll tell you. He heard, in Gravesend, your banns had been cried: that
has moved the peevish fellow's bile."

"It was done without my consent. Papa will tell you so; and, O uncle,
if you knew the arts, the forged letter in my darling's hand, the way he
wrought on me! O villain! villain! Uncle, forgive your poor silly niece,
that the world is too wicked and too clever for her to live in."

"Because you are too good and innocent," said Uncle Philip. "There,
don't you be down-hearted. I'll soon bring you two together again--a
couple of ninnies. I'll tell you what is the first thing: you must come
and live with me. Come at once, bag and baggage. He won't show here, the
sulky brute."

Philip Staines had a large house in Cavendish Square, a crusty old
patient, like himself, had left him. It was his humor to live in a
corner of this mansion, though the whole was capitally furnished by his
judicious purchases at auctions.

He gave Rosa and her boy and his nurse the entire first floor, and told
her she was there for life. "Look here," said he, "this last affair has
opened my eyes. Such women as you are the sweeteners of existence. You
leave my roof no more. Your husband will make the same discovery. Let
him run about, and be miserable a bit. He will have to come to book."

She shook her head sadly.

"My Christopher will never say a harsh word to me. All the worse for me.
He will quietly abandon a creature so inferior to him."

"Stuff!"

Now, she was always running to the window, in hope that Christopher
would call on his uncle, and that she might see him; and one day she
gave a scream so eloquent, Philip knew what it meant. "Get you behind
that screen, you and your boy," said he, "and be as still as mice. Stop!
give me that letter the scoundrel forged, and the ring."

This was hardly done, and Rosa out of sight, and trembling from head
to foot, when Christopher was announced. Philip received him very
affectionately, but wasted no time.

"Been to Kent Villa yet?"

"No," was the grim reply.

"Why not?"

"Because I have sworn never to say an angry word to her again; and, if
I was to go there, I should say a good many angry ones. Oh, when I think
that her folly drove me to sea, to do my best for her, and that I was
nearer death for that woman than ever man was, and lost my reason for
her, and went through toil and privations, hunger, exile, mainly
for her, and then to find the banns cried in open church, with that
scoundrel!--say no more, uncle. I shall never reproach her, and never
forgive her."

"She was deceived."

"I don't doubt that; but nobody has a right to be so great a fool as all
that."

"It was not her folly, but her innocence, that was imposed on. You a
philosopher, and not know that wisdom itself is sometimes imposed on,
and deceived by cunning folly! Have you forgotten your Milton?--

"'At Wisdom's gate, Suspicion sleeps,
And deems no ill where no ill seems.'

"Come, come! are you sure you are not a little to blame? Did you write
home the moment you found you were not dead?"

Christopher colored high.

"Evidently not," said the keen old man. "Ah, my fine fellow! have I
found the flaw in your own armor?"

"I did wrong, but it was for her. I sinned for her. I could not bear her
to be without money, and I knew the insurance--I sinned for her. She has
sinned AGAINST me."

"And she had much better have sinned against God, hadn't she? He is more
forgiving than we perfect creatures that cheat insurance companies. And
so, my fine fellow, you hid the truth from her for two or three months."

No answer.

"Strike off those two or three months; would the banns have ever been
cried?"

"Well, uncle," said Christopher, hard pressed, "I am glad she has got a
champion; and I hope you will always keep your eye on her."

"I mean to."

"Good-morning."

"No; don't be in a hurry. I have something else to say, not so
provoking. Do you know the arts by which she was made to believe you
wished her to marry again?"

"I wished her to marry again! Are you mad, uncle?"

"Whose handwriting is on this envelope?"

"Mine, to be sure."

"Now, read the letter."

Christopher read the forged letter.

"Oh, monstrous!"

"This was given her with your ruby ring, and a tale so artful that
nothing we read about the devil comes near it. This was what did it. The
Earl of Tadcaster brought her title, and wealth, and love."

"What, he too! The little cub I saved, and lost myself for--blank him!
blank him!"

"Why, you stupid ninny! you forget you were dead; and he could not help
loving her. How could he? Well, but you see she refused him. And why?
because he came without a forged letter from YOU. Do you doubt her love
for you?"

"Of course I do. She never loved me as I loved her."

"Christopher, don't you say that before me, or you and I shall quarrel.
Poor girl! she lay, in my sight, as near death for you as you were for
her. I'll show you something."

He went to a cabinet, and took out a silver paper; he unpinned it, and
laid Rosa's beautiful black hair upon her husband's knees. "Look at
that, you hard-hearted brute!" he roared to Christopher, who sat,
anything but hard-hearted, his eyes filling fast, at the sad proof of
his wife's love and suffering.

Rosa could bear no more. She came out with her boy in her hand. "O
uncle, do not speak harshly to him, or you will kill me quite!"

She came across the room, a picture of timidity and penitence, with her
whole eloquent body bent forward at an angle. She kneeled at his knees,
with streaming eyes, and held her boy up to him: "Plead for your poor
mother, my darling. She mourns her fault, and will never excuse it."

The cause was soon decided. All Philip's logic was nothing, compared
with mighty nature. Christopher gave one great sob, and took his darling
to his heart, without one word; and he and Rosa clung together, and
cried over each other. Philip slipped out of the room, and left the
restored ones together.