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Philiberta: A Novel

Chapter L. The Trouble of Yoanderruk

Chapter L. The Trouble of Yoanderruk.

The house was very silent for a time. Then were there sounds as of some one making hasty departure. Presently a discussion between Edgar Paget and Miss Wilks, carried on in a hoarse undertone on one side, in a high shrill key on the other. Only part of a sentence of Paget's reached Philiberta's ears—'And I will ask your brother to have you locked up as a dangerous lunatic if ever I catch you near Yoanderruk again.'

Miss Wilks's farewell volley rang back clearly on the night wind as she rode off under escort of one of Paget's men.

'When your wife is dead—as she soon will be, poor thing—there shall be an inquest, Edgar Paget, mark my words, and if you don't swing for her murder, it will not be my fault, nor yours either, far of course it will be you who will have killed her.'

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Then the faint sound of hoofs dying away upon the soft turf, and that was the very last of Miss Wilks at Yoanderruk.

Presently came a knock at Philiberta's door.

'Yes,' she said, 'what is it?'

'May I come in, Tempest?' said Paget, entering even as he spoke. He flung himself into a chair by the bedside and turned his dear dark face to where she stood. The grim settled despairing misery of it smote her so that she moaned and involuntarily stretched out her hands to him. Then after a moment she asked him if she should go away.

'That is what I came to speak about,' he said drearily. 'Do you want to go, Tempest?'

'Not if you would have me stay,' she answered.

'Then stay,' he said. 'If I had foreseen all this, I should never have brought you here, far less have asked Fairweather to visit me. It is not likely that I would have willingly given anyone the chance of witnessing my trouble, such a trouble as it is. But now you have seen it, you know the worst. There are worse phases to come, but they are all part of the thing you have seen. I have borne it alone, except for Janet, for a very long time; now I am getting cowardly over it. It seems so hard to go back to it when one has had hope of better things for a year. Will you stay, Tempest?'

'Yes.'

'Thanks.'

He shut his eyes, and drew his breath deeply, like one in pain.

'Tell me what I can do for you?' said Philiberta, suffering with him and for him. 'Tell me what I can do?'

'Nothing, Tempest, except not to notice my weakness. I can't help giving in a little. Just now the feeling I have here,' smiting his breast, 'is one of sheer physical pain.'

'I know that pain,' said Philiberta.

'Do you? I am sorry. It would not be so hard for me,' he continued, talking hurriedly, as if for relief, 'but for this year of respite, I think. I had grown so sure of the continuance of good. I had grown almost happy, God help me!'

'Perhaps all will go well again after this,' said Philiberta, page 327feeling in her sorrowful love for him that if her life could buy him free of this ban, she would hold the price cheaply now.

'Perhaps all will go well again.'

'It may. But the hope is gone.'

'Don't say that. If the evil could be staved off for one year, surely there is hope for others.'

'Yes, but you don't understand it all quite, Tempest. The year's respite we have had was the result of a long illness following upon many years of—what you saw to-night. Now she is strong again—comparatively; it is like starting afresh. I know nothing that can stop it.'

'But surely there must be some way. You can keep the temptation locked up out of sight.'

'That has to be done in any case, else she would soon end her misery by drinking herself to death. I have thought, Tempest—by God! I have thought at times that it would scarcely be sin to let her.'

'Oh, hush! That is a terrible thing to say.'

'I don't know. For seven years it was like this almost without intermission.'

'Since ever you were married, then?' said Philiberta unthinkingly, but he did not seem to notice the implication of her knowledge of how long he had been married.

'Yes, ever since. But I did not know what it really was for a long time. I thought at first it was illness—afterwards mania.'

'Surely both those terms apply even now,' said Philiberta.

'I suppose they do. And Heaven knows I pity her, though I feel often so bitter against her. You have seen my child, Tempest?'—'Yes.'

'Well, she did that. Every feeling I had for her, save pity and bitterness, died the day I picked up that little crushed heap from where she had thrown it. She was no more responsible for that than for all else she has done, I suppose, but—poor little Teddy! poor little lad! I wish she was dead!?

'Oh, don't say that!'

'But I do. And if the wish is a sin, I have expiated it a thousand times in what I have borne from her. Not that I page 328have always borne it patiently, Tempest. I cannot help speaking of all this to you; my soul is so full to-night that I must speak. It hurts a man to be shut in upon himself eternally, and until now I never breathed a word of this to anyone. Nor would I now if you had not seen it. Well, at one time, as I was telling you, I did not bear it so meekly. I used to clear out of town or to the other colonies, anywhere for oblivion, and I used to pray for news that she had set the place on fire and burnt herself to death in it. At that time I used to wish for the boy's death too. Better for him death than his present painful crooked existence. I think that even now, when God knows it would be very hard to lose him. He has grown into me somehow, though I know he cares less for me than for the old shepherd and his dog. Are you tired of listening?'

' No—no.'

'Well, Janet kept her out of mischief during my absences. Janet is devoted to her—nursed her when a baby. So nothing went wrong, except the station, through my recklessness. The poor old woman did her best to keep that straight too, but it was beyond her power. Well, on one of those trips, when I had left everything here in about the worst possible state, I met a woman—Heaven help me! I cannot bear the memory of it even yet. I did love her, Tempest, I did love her as I never loved anything on earth before; but there is no redemption in that for the wrong I did her. I deceived her—was going to marry her and get away to America; and then she found me out. Well, here am I, as you see, with years of life and prosperity before me probably; there is my wife living still, to her own misery and mine; but the woman I loved and wronged is dead—drowned in the sea that I hunted her into. Curious dispensation, is it not?'

The bitterness in his voice found echo in her heart. Yet—

'Did the dead woman leave no better memory or influence with you?' she said. 'Was your life made harder for having known her?'

'I cannot say. The wrong I did her is a black blot in my heart. When I come to die it will be the darkest, cruelest page 329thing I have to look back upon. But knowing her made a better man of me in one way. Losing her brought me a new experience of despair. I felt as a man might who has slain in sudden passion some loving innocent thing that has grown dearer to him than his own life. And I felt, too, that all things mattered alike to me when she was gone—that one place was the same as the other for a broken man to hide in, and so I came home, and as a mere relief from pain, I went to work to remedy the muddle here. All my work would have availed me nothing, though, but for the unexpected help I told you and Fairweather about. That saved me; and afterwards I worked on because I felt in honour bound to, for the sake of those who sent the help. Then Florence fell ill and was very nigh to death; and somehow the near presence of death softens a man. I put all she had done out of my mind like a bad dream, and so the last year was at least a pleasant and peaceful one to us both. Now it is over and the old trouble back in all its hideousness. By Heaven, I hope that Tarragut woman will have her neck broken this night!' he said, striking the wall savagely with his clenched hand, and Philiberta could not even think a rebuke.

'Did you never have a doctor to——'

'To Florence? Yes. The only relief they could suggest was a lunatic asylum. I couldn't send her there, Tempest.'

'No, you couldn't do that.'

'I have wished many a time that I had. But once I visited a madhouse, and somehow I could not condemn her to what I saw there. I am going now, Tempest. I am glad you have decided to stay here. Good-night.'

He pushed past her somewhat abruptly, and she saw him no more until next day.

'Fairweather is gone—did you know?' he asked her at breakfast.

'No. I did not know. When did he leave?'

'Last night. I had no idea myself until I got this,' tossing a wisp of note-paper across the table to her. It was a note from Fairweather.

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'Paget, old boy, don't be offended at my unceremonious clearing out I've just remembered something I've got to see to in town on the 15th, and that gives me barely time to get down, you know. I'll look you up again one of these days, my dear old fellow. Meantime, if there's anything I can do for you, you know my address, and that you can depend your life on—

'Fairweather. 'P.S.—I've taken your horse. You won't mind sending your man in to Eominda for it to-morrow, will you?'

'It was good of him to clear out like that,' remarked Paget.

'Yes, but it is just what one would expect from him,' said Philiberta.

'Tempest—one word. If you repent saying you would stop, you have only to tell me, you know.'

'Why do you say that? Have I given any sign of repenting?'

'No, but you well might There's a good deal to do here sometimes, for I don't keep anyone much about the homestead. There's work for two overseers, but I do not have them, because I could not put them altogether with the hands, and I could not have them in the house for the reason you know of.'

'I dare say I can manage all you will give me to do, Mr. Paget And as long as I can be of even a little use to you I shall be content.'

He looked at her curiously for a few seconds.

'There's something in your face and voice, Tempest,' he said, 'that touches me strangely. If that woman I told you of had had relations living, I should fancy you were one of them. But she had not. She was utterly alone, poor soul; and so that I should be her worst enemy was only in accordance with the eternal fitness of things, I suppose. I am glad you are going to stop, Tempest, if only because I have shown up my weakest places to you. It is a relief to do that occasionally.'

'I suppose you will show me some of my duties about the station to-day?' said Philiberta, crossing to a window and looking out, that he might not scrutinize her face too closely.

'Yes. We will ride over the country a bit this morning. I will order the horses now.'