 | CHAPTER VII.
G. GUEST, ESQ. A woman in armor |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
G. GUEST, ESQ.
ON a late October afternoon Rikka was
covering the grate with a fresh layer of
coal; for October, that royal month of
the year—month of purples and scarlets and the
fine linens of sheeted haze—lays down its sceptre
with chill dignity.
George suspended coasting down the sofa-arm
to superinted this business, with his hands
folded behind him and a meditative look on his
chubby face. Nina, up-stairs, was searching
her bureau for such of Georgie's little garments
as needed mending, and humming softly under
her breath because mother-love lightened her
heart.
While at the door, surveying the house keenly
and ready to break its inward quiet, there stood
a man. He had a rosy face, somewhat puffy
about the eyes, and with fleshy, sensual lips,
but on the whole a handsome face, ornamented
by that soft, tawny, waxed mustache so much
figure was attired in a dusky suit. He
wore the very latest hat, and carried such a cane
as would have moved your heart to envy.
He put his large, exquisitely gloved hand on
the bell-knob and rung.
The bold clang brought Rikka immediately
with the poker held upright in her hand, but on
her face the blandest of smiles, very composing
to the person thus confronted.
“Mrs. Guest resides here, I am told?” he
begun, swelling his bosom pompously.
“Yah,” assented Rikka, seeing no reason for
disputing the assertion, She shifted the poker
to an easier position and smiled.
“Is she in?”
“Yah!”
“Tell her, if you please,” advancing a foot
and signifying that he desired to enter, “that a
gentleman wishes to see her.”
“Komm in!” cried Rikka, throwing the
door wide, as if the idea had suddenly struck
her. She marshalled him in like a sheriff conducting
a prisoner, hurled an easy-chair at him,
and tramped up-stairs to inform Mrs. Guest that
“dere vos a man!”
The stranger placed his hat upon a table,
glanced keenly around, seated himself, and
crossed his graceful legs.
George gazed respectfully at him.
The stranger raised his eyebrows; an unpleasant
one!” he murmured, stroking his waxed mustache.
Thus he and George continued taking impressions
of each other until Nina's feet and garments,
still as snow-fall, floated down the stairs.
Her mother-song still echoed on her lips. She
opened the parlor-door supposing she should
find the gas collector, or some other individual
with a quarterly bill to present. But as this
“Man” drew up his handsome length to meet
her, she gasped and staggered and clutched the
bodice over her strangling heart.
“Oh, George!”
“My little wife!” cried G. Guest, Esq.,
extending his arms with a dramatic flourish.
“How do you do!”
Then, because the habit of loving him was
still strong within her, and because in the absence
of his daily meanness she had glorified his
better traits and lain in the ashes of her own
faults, Nina flew to him, clung to him, poured
her broken heart at his feet.
“Oh, where had he been! Oh, she had
almost died! Nearly four years, George!
Oh, did he love her? What had she done to
deserve this, love? Oh, George!” with her
calla-face dropping against his arm.
G. Guest, Esq., took out the best of hem-stitched
cambric and wiped his nose and eyes.
He was very sympathetic. Then he sat down
his unaccustomed matrimonial burden.
He snuffled affectingly.
While considering how he should answer her
questions, G. Guest, Esq., remarked that this
was indeed a happy meeting.
Nina recoiled from him. In an instant his
whole nature stamped itself on her knowledge.
He was grosser, and emphasized himself. She
saw the utter hopelessness of her lot. The
roughest boor's wife in the swamps was happier
than she. A rough man has the quick of tenderness
somewhere within him, but it was not
in this man to love. He had burnt all that was
good and natural out of himself. He could admire
the reflection of G. Guest, Esq., in another
person, but utter forgetfulness of one's self in
a beloved object he believed an impossibility.
His was one of those great minds sceptical of all
things beyond their own experience.
I suppose that instant was worse than death
to Nina Guest. She had tried to keep faith
in her husband. She and Helen rarely spoke
of him. They never railed about George's
father.
Her soul was so bitter within her she begged
her God to blot her out. She wondered how
she could endure eternity with this misery fastened
upon her.
He, like a big animated mass of putty, patted
her with his cool hands, and smiled down into
placid nightmare. All her old landmarks were
swept away. This the man who had seemed
grandest of all men in her eyes!
She crept out of his arms and buried her eyes
in the sofa that she might lose for a moment
that face so dead to her, yet so full of an easy
possessor's complacence.
“And isn't this the youngster?” inquired G.
Guest, Esq., agreeably. “Hi! how do? Kit-chee!
kit-chee!” facetiously poking Georgie in
the ribs with the point of his cane. “Been a
long time since you saw your Pa, hasn't it?
Nice little fellow!”
George slunk back, strangely frightened and
humbled.
“How old is he?” inquired G. Guest, Esq.,
incidentally of Nina.
She dragged her black garments to a window,
and leaned heavily against the sash, to be near
some air—some light—some natural creature.
George instinctively took refuge by her; she
held his little hand. G. Guest, Esq., tapped
his cane on the floor and watched her indulgently.
When she gathered power she turned and talked
to the man. He saw the revulsion in her, but
he felt master of the position. An oily smile lubricated
his large face. To hold the vantage-ground
in any affair was all that G. Guest, Esq.,
asked of life.
“Where had he been?” she asked, seeking
of him even now.
G. Guest, Esq., spread his shoulders and his
rhetoric. He had been here and there, up and
down, in city and town, in every spot on this
verdant earth, seeking his little wife.
“Then you never went back to the hotel
where you left me to inquire?”
Yes, he did! He stirred up the whole place.
His mental anxiety was so great at the time that
he sweat great drops of sweat—a thing unusual
to him! He got the proprietor by a button—
in fact by the whole coat!—and so nagged
clerks and waiters that they finally fled before
him like wild grouse, without eliciting a bit of
information. Nobody could tell him anything
about his wife. She was gone. That was all
they knew, excepting that a woman took her
away! Ah! how cruelly she deserted him!
took the little one—(“Kit-chee! kit-chee!”
with another attempt to reach George's ribs)—
and disappeared, leaving him no clue to her
whereabouts!
“Then your leaving me months and months
among strangers to wait in vain for some sign
from you was not intended for desertion?”
Desertion? Certainly not! Preposterous
idea! Why, he was sick. Yellow fever down
in Mobile. Wonder he hadn't died! Sick
among strangers, with no little wife to smooth
his pillow or cool his saffron-colored brow!
Nina clenched her slight hands. She would
not let herself look at his impudent face. She
begged a great many times inwardly for God to
help her; to help her, for this man was her husband!
It must be the very agony of the lost—
this consciousness of having poured your best
before them that trample and rend!
“Whew-t, little fellow!” whistled G. Guest,
Esq., condescending to George as he would
have condescended to a dog. “Come here!”
But the “little fellow,” with his hands behind
him, and darkening face bent on G. Guest,
Esq., refused to “come here.”
“Dimmock—Dimmock—Helen, is it?” pursued
the gentleman, taking up a paper-cutter to
amuse himself with in lieu of George. “Helen
Dimmock. Is that the name of the person who
brought you here?”
“My sister's name is Helen Dimmock.”
“Ah, yes! Now I remember hearing you
speak of her. Well, sister or no sister, she had
her mercenary designs! I can see through
them clearly. But we'll frustrate them yet!”
Nina's eyes blazed.
“She's shrewd person,” tapping the paper-cutter
on his thumb-nail, with the smile of a
shrewder person drawing down his face. “Of
course, she knew of circumstances which were
to your advantage, and so she pretended to
shelter you in order to reap a harvest!”
Nina stood up before him with her boy in her
arms.
“I could bear your insulting me,” she panted,
“but I cannot bear your insulting the one who
is more to me than myself!”
G. Guest, Esq., stood up also, with his back
against the door. He smiled a smile of impudent
superiority in her face, and showed her
how simple-minded she was—how unversed in the
lore of the world. He could show up this sister in
her true colors! He could see through Miss Dimmock's
game from beginning to end! (Then,
changing his rôle, he swelled his bosom and
enacted the injured husband.) More than this,
Miss Dimmock had interfered between him and
his wife. Had turned his wife utterly against
him. He supposed his wife even now meant to
intimate that she wanted him to leave the houseuh!
(When G. Guest, Esq., was injured he assumed
a drawling, petulant tone infinitely becoming
to him.)
Nina's humbled face was hidden in her boy's
hair. She clenched her mouth and endured
without any sign.
“Very well!” (Another change of the
stops, which brought out a hard, clear tone.)
“Now I'd like to inquire”—expanding his shirt-front—“if
you know you are my wife, Mrs.
Guest?”
Yes, she knew it. Lifting her head to look
at him with wide, hunted eyes, she acknowledged
was his wife. She would have loved him that
moment had there been any point in him on
which to fasten love. “For better, for worse,”
and this was worst, yet she would be as true to
her vow as she could be! He had taken her
from a luxurious home when she was a child in
experience, had made it impossible for her to
find happiness in any one else by making her
his wife;—but though she lay before him a
trampled woof—a torn woof—a woof in which
the sweet home pattern was never to appear,
she was still his—woof for his home-web alone!
He did not see the loyal soul in her fine body,
but continued stating her position in order to
show her the steel claws of his power. “Now,
I am well aware that appearances will give you a
divorce! I came here to take you away with me.
Of course! But you have been prejudiced
against me. Now, let me tell you, I came,
principally, for that child. That child is mine
in any case! The law gives him to me unless
special provision is made by a court, and this is
not a case for special provision. You can go
with me and have the child, or stay with Miss
Dimmock and do without the child! I have my
reasons for wanting him, as she has her reasons
for wishing to retain him and you.”
He showed her his hard, villanous face for
one instant without any mask. The child-hearted
woman thought she was going mad.
Presto! Douce and debonnair again, he
reached out a soft finger to pat her cheek, as a
playful cat cuffs its mouse!
“Child or no child, which is it to be, eh?
I'll give you one day to decide! By-by till to-morrow
evening. Don't be an obstinate little
wifie!”
Then G. Guest, Esq., took up hat and cane,
blew a kiss from his glove tips to the woman,
who crouched midway of the stairs with her
child in her arms and her wild eyes turned
toward him;—and, closing the street door carefully
after him, he gracefully swung along the
pavement, humming a love-tune in his full,
smooth throat.
“How things do turn about!” soliloquized
G. Guest, Esq., shining on passers like the sun.
“To think that that nuisance of a baby, whom
I really wanted to drown, should turn up to be
such a trump card! What a mistake it would
have been,” he continued, smoothing his waxed
mustache and smiling humorously, “if I had
drowned him!”
| CHAPTER VII.
G. GUEST, ESQ. A woman in armor | |