CHAPTER XX.

THE SECRET OF HER LIFE.

She moved to a chair close beside him, and, leaning back, closed her eyes so that he could the more easily make his confession.

There was a long silence, then she opened her eyes with a jerk. To her disappointment, he sat quietly smoking.

“You are a secretive, unkind, cruel husband,” she said, warmly. “Aren’t you ever going to tell me all your secrets?”

“Perhaps,--when you fall in love with me,” he said, teasingly. “It wouldn’t be proper now.”

Nina, too, became animated by a spirit of mischief. “Tell me about that rich widow,” she said, aggravatingly, “who had a nice place on the Hudson, and wanted you to go visit her with a thought of marriage in her mind.”

“You little witch,” said the man, abruptly and wonderingly; “how did you find that out?”

“Ah! you are as red as fire,” said Nina, triumphantly; “she asked you to marry her.”

He suppressed an ejaculation, and stared helplessly at her.

“Women are cleverer than men,” breathed the girl. “You thought I knew nothing about that affair. My dear sir, if I were interested in a man,--as I hope to be in you some day,” she interpolated, modestly,--“I would find out what he was thinking about.”

“You young ferret,--you have been reading letters.”

“Not a letter; I have put together things, though,--a word, a look, a hint, a photograph with shaky writing on the back. Regular heartstrokes,--my dear ’Steban, I really believe you have been quite in demand. Seasick and grateful lady passengers, _et cætera_;” and she burst into a peal of laughter.

The man looked sheepish, and concentrated his attention on his tobacco pouch.

“I won’t tease you any more,” she said, subduing her merriment. “Tell me something else I want to know. You haven’t wanted to marry me all these years. You couldn’t have fixed a matrimonial eye on me when I was an imp of a baby. Come now, confess the hour that your thoughts first went to me with the idea of appropriation.”

He became dreamy and reminiscent. One summer evening six years ago, when the shades of night were beginning to fall thickly and heavily over Rubicon Meadows, he was approaching the old-fashioned house on foot. He could see himself now, swinging along the road, his object a hasty visit to assure himself of the well-being of the child committed to his care. He had known children abused by guardians, and he had made up his mind that the one in his charge should never be for any length of time without his personal supervision. And the people with whom she lived should never know when he was coming. That was another resolution to which he should hold firmly. On this particular evening a troop of children ran across his path as he neared the house. They were playing and also quarrelling, and the soft summer air was alive with the sound of their dispute. Tired and cross, and about to be sent to their beds, snappish young tempers had uprisen, and some one was being struck. He could hear the brisk sound ahead; then, to his surprise, his little girl ran toward him. The small warrior was usually able to take her own part, but this time she was set upon and punished by the others.

She had seen him coming and had run to him rather than to her mother; and at this moment he could see the dishevelled hair, the twisted face, the torn cotton frock. He could feel the pressure of those childish arms about his neck, and the tremor of her lip against his ear, as she sobbed out a wrathful story of those mean, hateful children who had trooped over from the village for a last delightful game of cross-tag, and then had set upon her and beaten her.

She was in the wrong of it. She had cheated, the other children told him; but she was his own and they were aliens; and as he good-naturedly sent them home and led her into the house, comforting her with candy and cakes hidden in his pockets, the swift and sudden conviction came upon him that this charge of his youth was to be the wife of his manhood.

The conviction had grown and deepened, but he would not tell her about it just now. It was a story that would keep. He would rather make sure of a time when she would not laugh at him, and just now a doubt hung over her conduct.

Therefore he would not answer her, and her volatile mind went off to another subject. “’Steban, do you look most like your father or your mother?”

“My mother,” he said, briefly.

“I should like to have seen her,” said Nina, gazing pensively at the lamp. “She was a fair, no, a dark young thing, that an English skipper fell in love with when his vessel was in a Spanish port. He did not even know her language. They made signs, I suppose. After three short weeks’ acquaintance they were married, and she ran away to sea with him. He brought her to England to a dear little cottage by the sea. There they lived, and there one son was born to them.”

“Whom the foreign mother used to thrash within an inch of his life,” interposed Captain Fordyce, grimly.

Nina tried to suppress a laugh. In vain,--it broke out clear and distinct. “Oh, ’Steban,” she gasped, “it is too absurd! Whenever I hear any one talking of that exquisite thing, mother-love, I think of you. But”--and she became grave again--“perhaps she could not help it. I can imagine that you might have been--well, just a trifle provoking at times.”

“She should not have beaten me so much,” he said, stubbornly.

“My dear boy,” said Nina, caressingly, “don’t forget that her husband’s death and being among strangers soured her temper: and you must have liked her a little. You were sorry when she died, were you not?”

To her surprise, he vouchsafed no answer to this question. “You have the real John Bull prejudice against ‘furriners,’” she said, jestingly. “How is it that you endure me? I am virtually an American.”

His lips formed the word, “No.”

“I am,” she said, “and it is your own doing. You took me away from England, from my mother,--my poor darling mother whom I never knew,--and she died of a broken heart. Why did she marry that man?”

“Heaven only knows,” he said, gruffly. “He never was anything but an oily sneak.”

“Would you have married her if she had waited?” asked Nina.

For the second time she saw one of the longed-for blushes on the face of her husband,--a fiery, violent colour that worked itself over his sunburnt cheeks and down his brown neck.

“She was not very much older than you,” she went on, sweetly, “and you must have been very fond of her.”

“As fond of her as if she had been my sister, and no fonder,” he said, impatiently. “Don’t suggest that other relationship. I can’t tell you how it annoys me.”

“Some things that you mind I shouldn’t think you would,” said Nina, wonderingly; “and others that you don’t mind I should think would drive you crazy. You are queerer than I am.”

He was deliberately putting away his pipe, and she knew what was coming. After the fashion of mankind, he was going to swear that he had never loved any woman but herself, that even to mention another was an insult to him.

“Oh, yes,” she said, hastily, “I know. I beg your pardon, and do sit down. You have adored me all your life. All other women have been walking shadows.”

“There you are quoting Miss Marsden,” he said, disapprovingly. “I don’t admire that cynical vein.”

“That reminds me,--I have a letter from her somewhere,” cried Nina, springing up. “Where did I put it? Merdyce gave it to me here at noon and I forgot to read it. Where, oh, where?” and she began ransacking the table, chairs, shelves, brackets, and even the nautical instruments.

At last she found it under the scrap-basket beside the table, and sat down on the floor for its perusal, uttering presently a joyful scream.

“What’s the matter?” asked her husband.

“They’re engaged, they’re engaged,--it was a case of love at first sight. Just what I wished and expected!”

“Who are engaged?”

“Miss Marsden and Captain Eversleigh. Oh, the darlings! What a fine couple they will make!”

“Everybody is falling in love but yourself, little Nina,” he remarked. “What a misfortune you can’t follow suit!”

“Don’t bother me--I want to finish this,” she responded, shaking off his hand from the top of her head.

As he continued to stroke her hair she bestowed a frown upon him. “You detestable Spaniard!”

“Nina,” he said, irritably reseating himself, “I belong to my father’s nation.”

She stuffed the letter in her pocket, and jumped up. “Now how can you? If one of your parents was English and the other was Spanish, you must be half and half.”

“Very well, I am Spanish and you are English.”

“I am not English,” she said, resolutely. “I hate English people.”

“Come, come, Nina.”

“Well, I don’t hate them as much as I did, but I am American. I was brought up in America; and that is my home.”

“With your veins full of English blood.”

“The country where I played as a child, the country where my friends are, the country where I went to school, the country where everything is familiar,--that is my country. I feel as if I were at a party all the time I am in England. It is not home.”

“All right,” he said, agreeably and absently.

“’Steban,” said the girl, solemnly, “let us not occupy ourselves with the present. Let us talk about the past. I can’t get out of my head that short bit of history of my mother’s life and yours. I wrote it down just the way you told it to me,” and she drew a crumpled paper from her breast. “Wouldn’t you like to hear it?”

“Very much.”

She again curled herself up on the rug at his feet, and began: “‘Once, many years ago, there lived in a small seaside town a very lovely girl, who had for guardian an old grandmother. They had a little money,--enough to keep them in comfort,--and their lives would have been quite happy, but for one thing that vexed their tender hearts. In the cottage next them lived an unhappy child, a miserable, ill-used boy, whose mother, being poor and among foreigners, took occasion to vent her spite thereat on the head of her offspring.

“‘He was a provoking boy, bad-tempered, wilful, and ungovernable, so every one said but the young girl and her foolish old grandmother. They spoiled him, gave him kind words whenever he was permitted to cross their threshold, mended his torn garments, and exercised their ingenuity in conveying food to him when he was locked up in starving solitude. When the boy got older, matters improved. His Spanish mother found it was easier to knock about a helpless child than a strong, sturdy lad; so she sent him to school to a fair, apple-cheeked young schoolmaster, as good and wholesome to look at as the boy was ill-favoured and unwholesome.

“‘He had only one fault, this young schoolmaster. He was madly jealous of any one who came between him and the object of his affections,--the lovely young girl with whom he was, or fancied he was, in love. For a long time he had vexed himself over the knowledge that her sisterly interest in the young friendless lad, her neighbour, was so much affection stolen from him. So one can imagine that at the start he was not prejudiced in favour of his new pupil. The boy’s school life was a stormy one. Worried, held up to derision, and punished on the slightest provocation, he at last ignobly determined that he would do without an education, and ran away to sea.

“‘For years he never visited his old home. Then one day he came back. The cottages were both empty; his mother and the old grandmother were dead, and the young girl had married the schoolmaster and had gone to live in London. A strong desire to see the person who had once been kind to him led him to follow her. After some trouble, he found her in an untidy, uncomfortable lodging-house, ill and alone.

“‘She was very much changed. Her face was thin and worn, her beauty had all slipped away from her. Still, she said she was well and perfectly happy. Her husband was kind to her, so very kind, she repeated over and over again, but he could not be with her all the time. Now that he was in London there were sights to be seen, and acquaintances to be made, and she did not expect him to sit by her pillow. Still, though her husband was so attentive, the sailor said that he would not leave London for a time, and would take a room near her in case there might be something for him to do. And one day the dying woman took his hand, and made him promise solemnly that he would fulfil a request she had to make.

“‘He gave her a blind assent, having perfect faith in her. Then she took her tiny child from the cradle beside her, and, putting it in his arms, told him to go at once and hide it in some safe, far-away place, and never, never let its father know where it was. He was a good husband, she said, a good, true husband,--she would never allow any one to say a word against him. But he knew nothing about children; and though she was sure he would make a good father, she would not for the world have him left sole guardian of her little girl.

“‘The young sailor got a release from a part of his promise. He could not take the child himself, he did not wish to leave London just then; but he would send it by safe hands to a place where he could find it again. So the child went and the sailor remained, and bore the abuse of the affectionate father, who, enraged at the loss of his little daughter, accused the sailor of having stolen it. Still, wicked and depraved, the young man refused to admit the charge, and even when arrested and brought to the bar of justice managed to clear himself; so cleverly had he covered up the traces of his guilt.

“‘Well, time went by, and when the news of the baby’s safe arrival in a distant part reached the mother, she too set out on an unknown journey. The sailor saw her laid in the grave; then, he, amidst the maledictions of the man he had robbed, took his departure.

“‘His little _protégée_ was where he could see her occasionally in his voyages to and fro over the earth’s surface. She was quite happy, for the people who had taken her treated her as if she were their own child. This was by command of the wicked sailor, who wished the little girl to have a perfect childhood. But at last his villainy cropped out. He stole the child again--a woman now--away from her loving, adopted parents, put her in his ship, and sailed away with her as his father did with his mother, and’”--she concluded, dropping the paper and her stilted tone of narration at the same time--“‘he was actually foolish enough to imagine she was the sort of person who would stay where she was put.’”

“So she would,” he said, contentedly. “She would have stayed where she was put till the time came for the sailor to leave England; then she would have begged to be taken with him.”

“No, she would not; she would have gone to London.”

Captain Fordyce brought his hand down energetically on the table. “Nina, I would give a hundred pounds to have something startle you into saying, ‘I love you.’”

She made a hasty effort to change the subject.

“Tell me again how you happened to know papa and mama.”

“I was sent to them once to recuperate after having fever in a hospital,” he said, indulgently. “They lived on a farm in New York State then, and took boarders. Just after you were sent to them they moved to New Hampshire.”

“And that enabled them to keep up the fiction of being my parents,” said the girl, thoughtfully. “I want to go right back and see them. The others are only dream parents. Yet, I should like, oh, how I should like, to have one glimpse of my real, my very own mother. It seems to me that she is standing by me every night when I go to sleep. I never, never thought of this explanation of myself and my affairs.”

Captain Fordyce threw her a pitying glance.

“How you must have laughed when I suggested that I was an heiress,” said the girl, vehemently, “how you must have laughed! Didn’t you now?”

“I did do some snickering,” he admitted, reluctantly.

“It was always so in books,” said Nina, warmly, “always money at stake when there was a mystery; but in this case mystery was a precaution. You didn’t want my father to know where I was.”

“No,” he said, bluntly.

“And he set spies to watch you, but you were equal to them, and he couldn’t find out whether you had me in England or America.”

Her husband muttered an unintelligible response.

“And when he sent you news of his death, you were so sure it was a trick preparatory to his making a desperate effort to obtain possession of me, that you decided to marry me?”

“Yes, I married you,” he said, shortly; “don’t talk about him.”

“How much did you tell Lady Forrest about me?”

“Only that you had an undesirable relative in England whom I did not wish you to meet.”

“Would he have kidnapped me?” she inquired, in an awestruck voice.

“I don’t know.”

“But he is related to me,--that man,” she said, passionately. “You must look out for him. I dare say he would like some money.”

“He will gamble away precious few of my hard-earned shillings.”

“He may get ill.”

“In that case we will look after him. You need not fear that I shall forget the relationship he bears to you. While he is in health he is able to look out for himself.”

“What does he do for a living?” asked Nina, with a shudder. “That is one thing you did not tell me the other day.”

Her husband hesitated, then said, unwillingly: “He is a jack-of-all-trades. His forte used to be gambling; but I believe now he hangs about theatres,--he manages to exist.”

“Would he have been unkind to me if I had gone with him?” asked Nina, nervously.

Her husband scowled. “Don’t talk about him,--he is a brute. He cares no more for you than for a dog in the streets. Put him out of your thoughts.”

Nina leaned her head against a chair seat, closed her eyes, and gave herself up to meditation. In three minutes she scrambled to her feet, and flung her hands out before her. “It’s gone!”

“What has gone?”

“My worry. It has flown away, vanished. I shall be happy again.”

“Are you not always happy now?” he asked, curiously.

“The last few days--yes. I can scarcely keep my feet on the ground. I wish to fly, but I shall soon be dull. Always it is like that. For a few days I could embrace every one, then I wish to slap the whole world in the face.”

“Don’t do it, you will get slapped back.”

“I am getting old,” said the girl, seriously. “An old, old lady told me this afternoon that a day will come when I will see nothing good in life, and will want to die. Do you feel like that, ’Steban?”

“All the time.”

“Story-teller, you do not. You are not hateful and cynical.”

“Yes, I am. You don’t know me yet.”

“You sha’n’t be cynical,” she said, energetically. “I will not have it,” and, rolling her handkerchief in a ball, she threw it at him.

This was a challenge to a frolic, and he rose agreeably. Nina was surveying the door and her chances of getting to it without interruption. They were few, but still she could try. She made a feint of going around one side of a chair, when, in reality, she was going the other, but her ruse was unsuccessful. Her husband was watching her with the attentive eyes of a cat amused at, and bent on capturing, an unfortunate mouse, delivered into his claws by destiny. Rising, he laid his arm across the door,--an effectual barrier to her outward progress.

“It is getting late,” she said, dancing a frantic _pas seul_ about the chair that she had not been able to clear with sufficient speed, “do let me out.”

He brought all his powers of fascination to bear on her. She never caressed him. It was he who bestowed all the endearments. Would she not give him one, just one kiss? His tone, though firm, was despairing, and she knew he had not the faintest hope of getting what he wanted. It would really be amusing to disappoint him.

“You--you corsair,” she said, with an imperious stamp of her foot. “Take your arm away from that door and come here.”

He silently obeyed her.

“Sit down in that chair,” she said, with a flourish of her hand; “now fold your arms. I don’t want them twining around me like the tentacles of an octopus.”

He complied submissively, and then she made a pretence at bashfulness and shyness. For some time she apparently could not approach him; then her will triumphed over her scruples, and he felt a warm breathing against his ear.

“As men go,” she whispered, “you are passable. I can never love you, but I like you passionately.”

The breathing became a ripple of laughter. She suddenly choked him in a childish embrace, then leaving him sitting like a statue, his arms closely pressed together, she darted away.