CHAPTER XXX.A STARTLING RECOGNITION.
Reaching the public house where he had left Jack, Geoffrey quietly drew Margery into the small parlor, where he made her lay aside her bonnet and cloak, put her into a comfortable rocker to rest, and then went out to break the glad tidings of her existence and return to her husband.
He found him sitting alone on the porch outside the bar-room—nothing ever tempted him inside such a place nowadays—looking wistfully out toward the east, where the full August moon was just rising above the horizon in all its splendor.
“Well, Jack, has the time seemed very long to you?” Geoffrey asked, in a cheerful tone, as he sat down beside him.
“It has, sir; I’ve had hard work to wait. I’ve a strange hankerin’ after the old home to-night. If I could only wake up and find I’d been dreamin’ all these years, and the old place just as it was, with my girl waitin’ at the door for me, I’d almost be willin’ to give up my hope o’ heaven. But when I think it’s only an empty house—a cold hearth-stone, and—a grave somewhere nigh, that I’m goin’ to find, I feel a’most like givin’ up the battle.”
The man’s head sank upon his breast in a disconsolateway, while it seemed as if he had no heart to ask Geoffrey anything about the trip from which he had just returned.
The young man waited a few moments, hoping he would question him; but as he still remained absorbed in his own sad thoughts, he at length remarked:
“Well, Jack, I found Farmer Bruce.”
“Ay! then he’s alive yet; he must be nigh on to sixty,” the man replied, looking up now with a gleam of interest.
“I should judge him to be about that; but he’s hale and hearty, and seems like a very kind-hearted man, too.”
“A better never lived!” Jack affirmed; “many’s the good turn he and his wife has done me, and—ah!——”
A shiver completed the sentence, as if those by-gone days were too painful to dwell upon.
Geoffrey pitied the poor fellow from the depths of his heart, and yet he hardly knew where to begin, or how to break his good news to him.
“Shall I tell you what Mr. Bruce told me, Jack?” he at length asked.
The man nodded, and, by the light of the moon, his companion saw a gray pallor settle over his face, which seemed to have grown almost rigid in its outlines.
Geoffrey began by telling him how Mrs. Bruce had gone over to borrow some tea of Mrs. Henly, the day following Jack’s flight; how she knocked and there came no response, when she stepped into the kitchen and found Margery lying on the floor, and becoming so frightened at the sight, she had turned and fled back to her home, with hardly more than a glance at the prostrate woman.
“Farmer Bruce,” he went on, “at once went back to your house, taking his son and a hired man with him. They lifted Margery and laid her on her bed, and then John Bruce rode off with all his might after a doctor——”
“Doctor! What could they want of a doctor?—a coroner, ye mean,” interrupted Jack, in a thick, hoarse voice.
“No, a doctor, Jack—she needed one; she didn’t need a coroner.”
“Ha!”
The man started wildly to his feet as the hoarse cry burst from him; then he sank back again, pressing his hands hard against his temples and staring about him in a half-dazed way, as if he had not comprehended what he had heard.
“Master Geoffrey, don’t—don’t tell me no more,” he pleaded, in an agonized tone. “I can’t bear it; they didn’t need any doctor to tell them that she was dead—just tell me where to find her grave. I’ll go and take one look at it; then I’ll make tracks again for Australia; I can’t stop here.”
The man’s tone was so despairing, his attitude so hopeless, and his words so heart-broken, that Geoffrey had hard work to preserve his own composure.
“But, Jack, there—there isn’t any grave,” he said at last.
Jack lifted another vacant look to the young man’s face.
“No grave! no coroner! a doctor!” he muttered, then suddenly he seemed to comprehend, and was galvanized into life.
He sprang up; he seized Geoffrey by the shoulder.
“Boy! boy!” he cried, in a strained, unnatural voice, “ye can’t mean it! ye can’t mean that she didn’t die! that—that I didn’t kill her after all! Tell me—tell me quick! if ye’ve brought me such blessed truth as that, I’m yer slave as long as I live.”
He was terribly agitated. He shook as if he had suddenly been attacked with violent ague, and Geoffrey could see his broad chest rise and fall with the heavy throbbing of his startled heart.
“Sit down, Jack,” he commanded, rising and putting him back into his chair; “you must be more calm, or I cannot tell you anything. Margery was not dead, but she was dreadfully hurt, and was ill for a long time, so ill that for more than a month they thought every day that she must die.”
“And—she—didn’t——”
The words were almost inarticulate, but Geoffrey understood him by the motion of his lips.
“Don’t tell me,” he continued, catching his breath in a spasmodic way, a look of horror in his eyes, “don’t tell me that she lived to be—like as you was.”
“No, no, Jack, she got well,” Geoffrey replied, but his own voice shook over the words.
“O-h! my girl!”
Jack Henly slipped from his chair, falling upon his knees beside his companion, while his head dropped a dead weight against his arm.
“Look here, my man,” Geoffrey now said, with gruff kindness, though he was nearly unmanned himself, “thisisn’t going to do at all. You must brace up, for there is a long story to be told yet.”
He lifted him to his feet by main force, drew his arm within his own, and compelled him to walk up and down the porch two or three times. Then he seated him again, and began at once to tell poor Margery’s story.
The man listened as if spell-bound; he scarcely seemed to breathe, so intent was he to catch every word. He did not move, even, until Geoffrey mentioned meeting the strange woman in the wood, when he looked up, a wild gleam in his eye, a cry of joy on his lips.
When Geoffrey repeated what she had told him about her traveling from city to city, searching for her husband, working at whatever her hand could find to do, to earn the money necessary to keep up her tireless quest, he could control himself no longer. Great sobs broke from him.
“My girl! my girl! I never deserved it of her! Where is she, Master Geoffrey? tell me and I’ll creep on my knees to her feet and ask her forgiveness!” he wildly cried.
“Jack, she is here!”
“Here! Where?” and he glanced about him in fear and awe.
“Here, in this very house! waiting, longing to see you! to ease your conscience of its burden, and tell you that she freely forgives everything!”
“Can she?” the trembling husband breathed in an awed tone.
“Come and see,” Geoffrey returned, and taking him by the arm, he led him toward the parlor where Margery was anxiously awaiting him, her patience nearly exhausted by the long delay.
Reaching the door Geoffrey opened it, pushed Jack inside the room, then shut the two in together.
“Jack!”
“Madge! my girl!”
The glad, fond cry of the wife, restored at last to her long-sought loved one, the pleading, repentant intonation of the erring husband, were the only sounds that he caught, as he turned away, and with tears in his eyes, went out alone into the quiet summer night leaving them in their joy.
Two hours later, Jack came to seek him, but he walked like a drunken man, weakly and unsteadily.
His unexpected happiness was almost more than hehad strength to bear, and he seemed weak and shaken as if from a long illness; but on his rough and weather-beaten face there was a look of peace and joy that Geoffrey never forgot.
“Master Geoffrey,” he said, in an humble tone, though there was a ring of gratitude and gladness in it; “it’s all right at last, thank God! I’ll never say there ain’t a God again. I can face the whole world, now that my Madge lives and loves me the same as ever. I can breathe free once more, since I know her blood ain’t on my hands—oh! it’s too good a’most to be true!” he continued, drawing a long, full breath, “and bless ye, sir, all I’ve got in the world wouldn’t pay ye what I owe ye.”
“Jack, you owe me nothing,” Geoffrey responded, grasping him heartily by the hand. “I do not forget who cared for me during the first few years of my life, and if I have helped in any way to restore peace to you and happiness to Margery, I am more than paid already.”
“Thank ye, sir; but won’t ye come in and sup with us—that is if ye haven’t had something already.”
Jack pleaded with an air of humility.
“No. I’ve been too busy with my thoughts to care anything for eating, and I’ll join you with pleasure,” Geoffrey answered, cordially.
He returned to the parlor with Jack, where he found Margery with a beaming face, and the landlady laying the table for three.
It was two hours later before they separated for the night, and during that time many plans for the future were discussed by the reunited couple.
Neither Jack nor Margery felt inclined to remain in the West, where they had suffered so much, and where there would be constant reminders of the painful past, and it was finally decided that they should proceed at once to the farm which Jack still owned in New Jersey, and if Margery was pleased with the place they would settle there and spend the remainder of their lives upon it. The next morning they went to pay Farmer Bruce a visit, and inform him of the happy ending to all their trouble.
The following day they went to San Francisco, where they drew Margery’s money from the bank, in which it had remained so long, and a snug little sum it was, too, having accumulated for so many years. A week later they all turned their backs upon the Pacific coast and set their faces toward the East. Geoffrey accompanied themas far as Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he took leave of them, as he was going southward into New Mexico again. But he promised to pay them an early visit when he should return to Brooklyn.
While these events were transpiring in the far West, an interesting incident occurred in the far East—in no other city than Boston—which has its bearing on our story and properly belongs here.
On a bright, beautiful summer morning, in the month of July, a lady entered a handsome drug store on Washington street, and asked permission to look at a city directory.
She was a finely formed, brilliant-looking woman, elegantly dressed, and bearing herself with the ease and self-possession of one accustomed to the most cultured circles of society.
A portly gentleman, with a wealth of white hair crowning his shapely head, and wearing gold-bowed spectacles, stepped from behind his desk as the lady made her request, and politely laid the book before her. As he did so, and his keen glance fell upon her face, he started slightly, but was far too well-bred to betray his surprise at her appearance, if he experienced any, and immediately returned to his post at his desk.
But he managed to place himself where he could see his visitor, without being himself observed.
The woman turned to the D’s in the directory, and ran her neatly gloved finger slowly down the line, pausing here and there as a name appeared to attract her special attention.
After carefully searching several pages, she turned back and began to go over the same ground again, while a faint line of perplexity and annoyance appeared between her finely-arched brows.
This second search seemed to be as unsuccessful as the previous one had been, and for the third time she reviewed the list of names under the letter D. It was useless, however; the name she sought was not there. She stood musing for a few moments, then opening her pocket-book—an elegant affair of Russia leather with clasps of gold—she took from it a card to which she referred.
“The name is surely not in the directory,” she murmured.
There was a moment of silence, then the distinguished-looking gentleman behind the desk stepped forward again.
“Did you speak to me, madame?” he inquired, blandly.
The lady started and looked up quickly, the color on her cheek deepening a trifle at his query.
“I did not know that I spoke at all,” she replied, with a brilliant smile, which revealed two rows of white, handsome teeth, every one of them her own.
“I beg your pardon,” said the druggist, with a bow and a backward step, as if to beat a retreat again.
Madame made a motion with her faultlessly gloved hand to detain him.
“I was looking for the name of August Damon,” she said, her eyes wandering again to the directory; “but I do not find it there.”
“Ah! some one whose residence you wished to find in the city?” the gentleman remarked.
“Yes. I imagined I should find him here,” said the lady, thoughtfully.
The druggist drew the book toward him, ran his eyes through the names under the D’s.
“The name is not here,” he said at last, as he raised his glance and fixed it with keen scrutiny upon that beautiful face before him.
Madame tapped her foot impatiently and somewhat nervously on the floor.
“I am greatly disappointed,” she said.
“You are sure that you have the correct name—you have made no mistake?” the gentleman inquired, glancing at the card in her hand.
“Yes: but you can see for yourself,” and she passed it to him, with a smile.
It was a common visiting card, yellow, and defaced with age and handling, and it bore the name of “August Damon,” written with ink in a fine, gentlemanly hand.
“Do you know that your friend resides in Boston, madame?” the pharmacist asked, as his keen eyes fixed themselves again upon her countenance.
“They—used to; it—is some years since I last visited the city, and it is possible they have removed to some other place. They must have done so,” she concluded, with a sigh, “or I should surely have found their name in the directory.”
“Were Mr. and Mrs. Damon the parties to whom you gave your child, Mrs. Marston?”
The question was very quietly, very politely put, but it was like the application of a powerful galvanic battery to the woman on the other side of the counter.
A shock—a shiver ran through her entire frame.
She grew deadly white, and for a moment seemed ready to drop to the floor.
Then she rallied.
“Sir!” she said, with a haughty uplifting of her proud head.
“Madame!”
“I do not understand you.”
“Did you not? Shall I repeat my question?” was the quiet query.
She made a gesture of impatience.
“You have made a mistake,” the lady returned, but her eyes were searching the druggist’s face with a lightning glance, while that deadly paleness again overspread her own.
“Nay, madame,” was the bland rejoinder; “I am one of the few men in the world who never forget either a face or a name! Mrs. Marston, surely you have not forgotten Doctor Thomas Turner who waited upon you at the —— House one bitter night in the winter of 18—.”