The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales by John Charles Dent (easy to read books for adults list .TXT) 📕

tremulous, and it was evident that his health had completely broken down. He was in fact in a state bordering on collapse, and was hardly fit to be going about. His financial condition was on a par with his bodily state. He had expended his last dime in the purchase of his railway ticket, and at the moment of reaching his father-in-law's door he had been well-nigh famished for want of food. When a loaf of bread and some slices of cold meat had been set before him, he had fallen to with the voracity of a jungle tiger. He had vouchsafed no explanation of his presence, except that he felt he was going to die, and that he wanted to see his wife and child. As he was tired out and sorely in need of rest, he had been put to bed, and his father-in-law, after seeing him snugly stowed away between the sheets, had set out to bear the news to his wife.
There could be no doubt as to what was the proper thing to be done. Mrs. Savareen made the fire safe, put on her bonnet and shawl and locked up the house. Then, taking her little boy by the hand, she accompanied her father to the old house where, six or seven years before, the handsome young farmer had been in the habit of visiting and paying court to her. On arriving she found the invalid buried in the deep, profound sleep of exhaustion. Consigning her boy to the care of her stepmother, she took her place by the bedside and waited. Her vigil was a protracted one, for the tired-out sleeper did not awaken until the small hours of the next morning. Then with a long drawn respiration, he opened his eyes, and fixed them upon the watcher with a weak, wandering expression, as though he was unable to fully grasp the situation.
The truth found its way to him by degrees. He shifted himself uneasily, as though he would have been glad to smother himself beneath the bedclothes, was it not for lack of resolution. A whipped hound never presented a more abject appearance.
His wife was the first to speak. "Do you feel rested?" she asked in a gentle tone.
"Rested? O, yes, I remember now. We are at your father's."
"Yes; but don't talk any more just now, if it tires you. Try to go to sleep again."
"You are good to me; better than I deserve," he responded, after a pause. Then great tears welled up to his eyes, and coursed one after another down his thin, worn face. It was easy to see that he was weak as water. His long journey by rail without food had been too much for him, and in his state of health it was just possible he might never rally.
The womanly nature of the outraged wife came uppermost, as it always does under such circumstances. Her love for the miserable creature lying there before her had been killed and crucified long ago, never to be revived. But she could not forget that she had once loved him, and that he was the father of her child. No matter how deeply he had wronged her, he was ill and suffering--perhaps dying. His punishment had come upon him without any act of hers. She contrasted his present bearing with that of other days. He was bent, broken, crushed. Nothing there to remind her of the stalwart, manly young fellow whose voice had once stirred her pulse to admiration and love. All the more reason why she should be good to him now, all undeserving as he might be. Our British Homer showed a true appreciation of the best side of feminine nature when he wrote--
"O woman, in our hour of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please;
When pain and anguish wring thy brow,
A ministering angel thou!"
She rose and approached the bed, while her gaze rested mildly upon his face. Drawing forth her handkerchief, she wiped the salt tears from his cheeks with a caressing hand. To him lying there in his helplessness, she seemed no unfit earthly representative of that Divine Beneficence "whose blessed task," says Thackeray, "it will one day be to wipe the tear from every eye." Her gentleness caused the springs to well forth afresh, and the prostrate form was convulsed by sobs. She sat by his side on the bed, and staunched the miniature flood with a tender touch. By-and-by calm returned, and he sank into a profound and apparently dreamless sleep.
When he again awoke it was broad daylight. The first object on which his eyes rested was the patient watcher who had never left her post the whole night long, and who still sat in an armchair at his bedside, ready to minister to his comfort. As soon as she perceived that he was awake she approached and took his wasted hand in her own. He gazed steadily in her face, but could find no words to speak.
"You are rested now, are you not?" she murmured, scarcely above her breath.
After a while he found his voice and asked how long he had slept. Being enlightened on the point, he expressed his belief that it was time for him to rise.
"Not yet," was the response; "you shall have your breakfast first, and then it will be time enough to think about getting up. I forbid you to talk until you have had something to eat," she added, playfully. "Lie still for a few minutes, while I go and see about a cup of tea." And so saying she left him to himself.
Presently she returned, bearing a tray and eatables. She quietly raised him to a sitting posture, and placed a large soft pillow at his back. He submitted to her ministrations like a child. It was long since he had been tended with such care, and the position doubtless seemed a little strange to him. After drinking a cup of tea and eating several morsels of the good things set before him he evidently felt refreshed. His eyes lost somewhat of their lack-lustre air of confirmed invalidism, and his voice regained a measure of its natural tone. When he attempted to rise and dress himself, however, he betrayed such a degree of bodily feebleness that his wife forbade him to make further exertions. He yielded to her importunities, and remained in bed, which was manifestly the best place for him. He was pestered by no unnecessary questions to account for his presence, Mrs. Savareen rightly considering that it was for him to volunteer any explanations he might have to make whenever he felt equal to the task.
After a while his little boy was brought in to see the father of whom he dimly remembered to have heard. His presence moved the sick man to further exhibitions of tearful sensibility, but seemed, on the whole, to have a salutary effect. Long absence and a vagabond life had not quenched the paternal instinct, and the little fellow was caressed with a fervor too genuine to admit of the possibility of its being assumed. Master Reggie received these ebullitions of affection without much corresponding demonstrativeness. He could not be expected to feel any vehement adoration for one whom he had never seen since his earliest babyhood, and whose very name for some months past had been permitted to sink out of sight. His artless prattle, however, was grateful in the ears of his father, who looked and listened as if entranced by sweet strains of music. His wasted--worse than wasted--past seemed to rise before him, as the child's accents fell softly upon his ear, and he seemed to realize more than ever how much he had thrown away.
In the course of the forenoon Mrs. Savareen's stepmother took her place in the sick chamber, and she herself withdrew to another room to take the rest of which she was by this time sorely in need. The invalid would not assent to the proposal to call in a physician. He declared that he was only dead tired, and that rest and quiet would soon restore him without medicine, in so far as any restoration was possible. And so the day passed by.
In the evening the wife again took her place at the bedside, and she had not been there long ere her husband voluntarily began his chapter of explanations. His story was a strange one, but there was no room to doubt the truth of any portion of it.


CHAPTER XIV.
THE BAD HALF CROWN.
He began by comparing himself to the bad half-crown, which always finds its way back, but which has no right to expect a warm welcome on its return. "Were it not," said he, "that I feel myself to be pretty near the end of my earth's journey, I could not have the face to tell you my story at all. But I feel that I am worn out, and don't think it likely that I shall ever leave this room except for the grave. You shall know everything, even more fully than I have ever known it myself until within the last few hours. They say that when a man is nearing his end he sees more clearly than at any other time of his life. For my part I now see for the first time that I have never been anything but a worthless lout from my cradle. I have never been fit to walk alone, and if health and strength were to come back to me I should not be one whit better than I have hitherto been. I don't know whether I ever told you that I have a streak of gipsy blood in my veins. My grandmother was a Romany, picked up by my grandfather on Wandsworth Common. I don't offer this fact as any excuse for my conduct, but I have sometimes thought that it may have something to do with the pronounced vagabondism which has always been one of my most distinctive features. So long as I was at home in my father's house he kept me from doing anything very outrageous, but I was always a creature of impulse, ready to enter into any hair-brained scheme without counting the cost. I never looked a week ahead in my life. It was sufficient for me if the present was endurable, and if the general outlook for the future promised something new. My coming to this country in the first place was a mere impulse, inspired by a senseless liking for adventure and a wish to see strange faces and scenes. My taking Squire Harrington's farm was an impulse, very largely due to its proximity to Lapierre's, who is a jolly landlord and knows how to make his guests comfortable. I had no special aptitude for farm life; no special desire to get on in the world; no special desire to do anything except pass the time as pleasantly as I could, without thought or care for the future. And as I have fully made up my mind to make a clean breast of it, I am going to tell you something which will make you despise me more than you ever despised me yet. When I married you I did so from impulse. Don't mistake me. I liked you better than any other woman I had ever seen. I liked your pretty face, and your gentle, girlish ways. I knew that you were good, and would make an excellent wife. But I well knew that I had no such feeling towards you as a