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Read Ebook: The Beggar Man by Ayres Ruby M Ruby Mildred
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Ebook has 1178 lines and 31264 words, and 24 pages
y husband," she said.
Faith had hardly spoken during the whole interview, but now she started up from her chair with a little stifled cry.
Ever since her father's death, though she had never heard the name of the man who had brought about his ruin, she had been encouraged always to think of him with hatred.
Even the twins, in their play, frightened each other with an imaginary bogey of him, whom they called for want of a better name "The Bad Man," and sometimes Mrs. Ledley herself, tired and worried to death, would quiet them and force them to settle down to sleep by telling them that unless they did the "bad man" would come and carry them away.
And now Faith had married him!
She was still child enough to feel a nameless fear of the imaginary bogey, as well as suffocating shame and dread of the thing she had unwittingly done.
After a moment she broke out hysterically:
"It's not true! I won't believe it! You're all against me, all of you! His name is Nicholas Forrester! I tell you his name is Nicholas Forrester!" She broke into violent sobbing.
Mr. Shawyer looked greatly distressed.
"No doubt it is all a misapprehension," he said. "There is some mistake in the name. It is not such a very uncommon name," he suggested. But he knew that it was.
"There is no mistake," Faith's mother insisted flintily. "If my daughter has married that man I will never forgive her to my dying day."
"Mother!" The word came from Faith in a heart-broken cry, and once more Mr. Shawyer rushed gallantly into the breach.
"It is very unjust to my client to take this premature view," he said reprovingly. "Naturally, I know nothing of the circumstances of which you are now speaking, and we can only wait until Mr. Forrester comes home before they are proved or disproved. I speak of him as I have always found him, and I can truthfully say that your daughter will be perfectly safe and happy with him."
But for all notice Mrs. Ledley took he might have spared himself the trouble of speech. Disappointment and sorrow had hardened her, and she could see nothing beyond the fact that her own child had married the man whom she herself most hated in all the world.
Almost before Mr. Shawyer had finished speaking she rose and took up her shabby little handbag.
"There is nothing more we need stay for," she said harshly. "Faith, dry your eyes and come home."
But Faith could only sob on in the bitterness of her heart: "It isn't true--I know it isn't true! And if it is--how did I know--how could I have known?"
Mrs. Ledley looked at her with hard eyes.
"If you had cared for me at all," she said dully, "you would not have married him without my consent. I've been a good mother to you, and this is the reward I get. It was only of yourself you thought when you married him. You never thought of me at all."
Faith looked up, her face all flushed and quivering.
"It was only of you I thought," she sobbed, "you and the twins. I wanted you to be rich--I wanted them to go to a good school and he promised and I knew he was rich!..."
Mrs. Ledley clenched her hand.
"I would rather die than take a penny of his money," she said passionately. "Money made dishonestly--from the ruin of other men's lives."
Mr. Shawyer made another attempt.
"All this may or may not be true," he said smoothly; "but at any rate no fault can be attached to this child here." He laid a kind hand on Faith's arm. "And if you will forgive my saying so, Mrs. Ledley, it is very cruel to her to speak in this way."
Mrs. Ledley turned and faced him proudly across the table.
"I loved my husband," she said, "and if you think--even for my daughter's sake--I shall ever receive Ralph Scammel into my house, you make a very great mistake! Faith has married him, and she can do as she pleases, of course, but it will mean a choice between her husband and me. That is my last word," and she turned and walked out of the room, leaving Faith sobbing in her chair.
Mr. Shawyer rose to his feet and began pacing the room. He hated scenes, and during his lifetime he had been forced into a great many. He was unutterably relieved when Faith stopped crying and put her handkerchief away. Something of the childishness in her face seemed to have deepened to womanhood as, for a moment, she raised her brown eyes to him.
"And what am I to do now?" she asked.
Mr. Shawyer spread his hands.
"My dear young lady, how can I advise you beyond saying that the only thing to do is to wait until Nicholas Forrester comes home. He is your husband and rightful guardian, and if you love him you know what course to adopt. Even if--if what your mother says is a fact, he has not injured you knowingly, at all events. You say he has been all that is kind and good. Well, that is all that concerns you! A man's past is his own."
It was an easy and comfortable doctrine from his point of view, and he went on:
"After all, he is a business man. I never met a keener! And if in the course of business he unfortunately bettered your father in some transaction, well, how can he be blamed?"
Faith had been listening attentively, but now she broke in vehemently:
"If he is Ralph Scammel, he is a bad man! Peg says so, and Peg is always right!" And then again, with renewed anguish: "Oh, but it can't be true, I know it can't."
"If you have that much faith in him," said Mr. Shawyer quickly, "you must be content to wait till he comes back and ask him yourself. Now, take my advice and go home, and you will find that already your mother has repented of her hasty words."
Faith shook her head.
"I don't think so," she said slowly. She knew her mother well in many ways, and she knew the bitter and relentless hatred with which Mrs. Ledley had always regarded the "bad man," as the twins called him.
He had robbed her of all happiness. He had brought her and her children down to poverty. Faith did not think that her mother would ever relent or forgive.
She went home with dragging steps. Before she entered the house she slipped off her wedding ring and put it into a pocket. She felt more free without it, could almost imagine that the whole thing was nothing more, than a bad dream.
She was afraid to face her mother. She went up to her own little room on the top floor and sat down at the window.
There was not much to be seen from it but roofs and telegraph poles and wires, but the sky was blue beyond them all, and against her will Faith thought of the sea, which she had only seen once, years ago, and of Nicholas Forrester, who was even then being carried away from her across its blueness.
Since he said good-bye to her she had many times wished him back again, but now the thought of him made her shiver. She wished never to see him any more.
In her childishness she somehow fancied that she had only to say she regretted her marriage and give back everything he had ever given her to wipe the episode out of her life. She was thankful now that she had not spent a shilling of his money. She took it all from its hiding place and made a little parcel of it, with her wedding ring, and addressed it to the flat where he had taken her for lunch after their marriage.
He would find it when he came back and understand, she thought. She slipped out and posted it at once, for fear she should be tempted to change her mind by the sight of the twins' shabby frocks and the memory of all she could have bought them with the Beggar Man's money.
Then she went into the kitchen to her mother and held out her trembling bare left hand.
"I've sent it back," she said in a whisper. "And the money--I never want to see him any more."
Mrs. Ledley stared at her helplessly, then something in the girl's face, its immature look and innocent eyes, swept the anger and bitterness from her heart.
She took Faith on to her lap as if she had still been a child, and the two kissed and cried together.
Mrs. Ledley did not believe Faith would ever see the Beggar Man again. She thought she knew only too well the type of man he was. She sobbed out that she was only too thankful to have her daughter safely with her.
"I didn't mean to be hard and cruel," she said over and over again. "It would have broken my heart if he had taken you away from me."
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