The Breton Mills — Chapter XXVI, XXVII

THE BRETON MILLS

BY CHARLES J. BELLAMY.

copyrighted by the Author, and published by arrangement with him.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ONE SHORT HOUR.

It was a week later that the Breton barouche came over the brow of the hill toward Mr. Ellingsworth's house. The bay span never stepped so proudly, and certainly the gold plated trimmings on their harness never glittered so brightly before. As the carriage had passed through the lower village the factory girls had all rushed to the windows to see the master and his bride, and for the moment the laborers on the foundations of the new mill stopped their work in one accord, and were all eyes till the bridal couple were out of sight. Philip's face was fairly radiant with hope and love, and he could not teach his eyes to look anywhere but at Bertha. She glanced idly on either side, at the white gloved coachman on his high seat or at the prancing horses, anywhere but into the earnest, tender face, which might have been a constant reproach to her calm indifference.

Clearly enough, the clouds that had settled so gloomily about his wedding night had lifted; his love and the sweet reality of his present life and his new sense of duty toward the woman who now called him husband, all helped him to put away her past, even to its most terrible incident, and his healthful mental nature was rapidly building up a new life which should have no taint in it. Philip Breton made a noble lover. Perhaps it was because he was not a great man. He was not so wise but that he believed in the reality of the sunbeams poets made their love songs of. He had many holy aspirations; he caught now and then glimpses of ideal beauty and truth. In some vague way he fancied all these were realized in Bertha. In her he loved all the harmonies. In her he worshiped purity and charity and all the graces.

As for Bertha, she continually found new surprises in his gentleness and in his devotion - surprises partly because she forgot them each time. She really wished he were not so devoted. She wished he did not make her feel as if she were forever posing in tableaux. She thought him inclined to be foolish, because he did not seem keen eyed enough to see her most obvious faults- not magnanimous enough herself to understand that he looked at her through a halo of glory his love had put about her. In spite of herself he could see something beautiful and good in everything she could do or say. "We are just passing my home," she said, a little petulantly; "can't you see anything but me?"

"This is not your home now, my dear." He corrected her very gently. As he glanced Into the windows of the parlor where they had been married, Jane Ellingsworth's dark face looked out at them, cruel and malevolent. Philip started forward in his seat. Why, no, he must have been wrong, the face in the window was wreathed in the most charming smiles. She even kissed her fingers to the bridal pair, and let a sheet of paper she had been holding flutter to the floor in her childlike enthusiasm. Bertha nodded coldly; Philip lifted his silk hat, and the carriage passed out of sight.

Philip was too wise to weary his wife just now by showing her all the changes in his home, which would delight her so much later. He knew by her drooping step, as she walked along the hall, that she was tired and would appreciate rest above all things. So he took her first to her own little sitting room, which he called her boudoir. He had rather expected a little lighting up of her eyes, perhaps some pretty exclamation of pleasure. Possibly he had made an absurd artistic blunder. Could it be he had got the wrong shade of blue after all; She only threw off her bonnet and sat down in the least inviting of the chairs without seeming to care to look about her at all.

"You must be tired, Bertha," said Philip at last, trying to hide the disappointment that made his heart swell so painfully. "Won't you sit in the easy chair? I am sure you will like it, though perhaps you would rather lie down."

"Oh, no, I am not tired," she said, carelessly, without turning her eyes to look at him where he stood, restlessly playing with the window curtains. He pulled roughly at them, he longed that moment to ruin the beauty that had failed to please her. He could not see where the fault was; the carpet was as thick and soft as a bed of violets, the light seemed delicate almost as some perfume, but Bertha did not seem to care for anything he had devised for her. She was going to speak; if she would only criticize, he would change everything again to win a smile of approval from her. She might at least understand how much he had tried to please her.

"Where doos that door open?" "I will show you if you are not tired," yet he dreaded to take her in that room, and see her as cold and indifferent as she was now. He felt it would break his heart.

She rose to her feet and looked in curiosity at him as he took a key from his breast pocket and turned it in the lock. ''Is it your treasure chamber?"

"Yes," he whispered, and threw open the door, and stood back for her to enter. The room seemed as pure and white as if a thousand angels brooded over it with their snowy wings. Peace and holy rapture seemed breathing from the very walls, and the young bride felt a new timidity steal over her heart. She was awed indescribably in the temple of love he had made for her. Poor soul! would there be but one true worshiper? "Come," she said, and she smiled more sweetly than he had ever seen her. She held her hand out toward him, as he lingered on the threshold.

He came and took her hand and then put his arm about her as she stood in exquisite pensiveness, struggling to take in the meaning of the place. She had cast her eyes down on the carpet, which seemed like the driven snow, sparkling with hail drops. The solemn beauty of her chamber subdued her like a child.

"You would not dare to kiss me here, Philip," she said at last in a voice so gentle and thrilling, it seemed to his throbbing heart as if a new soul had been born within her. "It is so pure and"---

But he drew her unresisting form into his his, and kissed her full cool lips again and again, and she did not stir on his shoulder, but her great blue eyes look a startled reproach at his ardor.

"There is no place too pure for the kisses I have for you."

There never will be an hour in Philip Breton's after life, when he shall not look back to this moment as worth all his agony, as the acme of his being, when the cup of his happiness was full. And who should overturn it? Why should he not hold it to his ever thirsty lips forever, the well spring of his love bubbling and sparkling forever within? Might not the world stand still awhile? Must it jostle him from his unwearying rapture, and push him on and on into the barren desert of failure which awaits all mankind at last!

The dinner bell tinkled invitingly, and the master and mistress of the house came down together. At the door of the dining room stood the man servant, salver in hand, and the silk skirts of the lady of the house swept against him as she passed in. Philip frowned fiercely at him, for the usually most well behaved and respectful waiter seemed to forget all his duties in staring with brazen impudence in the beautiful face of his master's wife. Philip grew pale with anger, but Bertha only gave a glance of lofty contempt at the fellow's smooth face and white apron.

"Your servants are not well behaved, my dear Philip."

In a moment more they were alone, and Philip forgot his wrath in the new picture of his wife across his table. His old lonely days were ended. No more solitary feastings. Bertha was always to brighten his house and his table for him. The satyr of bronze on the mantel that had scowled on his desolation, seemed actually smiling now. The portraits around the green tinted walls had seemed to his imagination, as he had sat down so many times to his richly furnished table, like guests at a funeral, or again, as if morosely curious how a man could violate all the principles of hospitality by dining alone. Now, he fancied, they had taken on a more genial, companionable expression. To be sure the sun poured in through the open blinds in unusual brightness, but it was the light in Bertha's blue eyes that changed everything for him. It was the beginning of his own home. This woman, who seemed too lovely to be other than a caller for an hour, had come to stay, to sit with him as she did now, whenever he breakfasted or dined or supped - always. The world might heap wrongs and outrage on him, his factories might burn and his wealth dissolve - she whose presence in itself was a perfect existence to him, had come to him to stay forever.

Bertha's face was bent over the table studying the odd device on her napkin ring. The sunlight flickered in her golden hair as tenderly as if it were giving her kisses of welcome. So she would sit before him always. But the sudden creaking of a man's boot made him look up. The waiter had come in almost noiselessly and stood at the sideboard carving a bird for their second course. Philip was glad he had not said one of the hundred caressing words that had come to his lips. But how slow he was at his carving; was the canvas back so tough, then?

Ugh! There was a glass on the sideboard, and Philip happened to glance into it. The man held the knife and fork in his hands, yet he was not carving at all, but was still staring at Bertha's bent beautiful face in the mirror, with his evil, swine-like eyes. He seemed to be studying her features, as if to recall some association. Oh, he had succeeded. A hideous grin distorted his mouth and whole face. Then Philip rose and pushed back his chair. His servant recognized his master's wife. Apparently she had played some very inharmonious part in some previous scene he had witnessed. And he was but one of the world she had disgraced herself before. What could his evil eyes have seen? Which miserable page in this lovely woman's history that her husband was trying to blot out of memory? If he could forgive her, might not the rest? Must she be subject to insult in her own home? Was he not powerful enough to protect her against the shame of such looks as this fellow gave her?

He stepped to the sideboard and touched his servant on the shoulder and beckoned him to the door. The malicious grin had hardly time to vanish from the frightened face.

"Go!" the words came hissing from his master's lips, "and if I ever see your face again, or if you ever breathe a word against the woman I have made my wife" - The man slunk up stairs like a whipped dog.

"Why, I didn't notice you had been out," said Bertha in mild surprise as Philip re-entered the dining room. "Were you ill? How pale you are."

But she did not rise in her solicitude and come to him. Instead he came to her, and bending very gently over her tried to kiss away the lines of care on her white forehead which he had never caused. He did his best to smile gayly, and succeeded well enough to deceive her.

"I will be your servant to-day," he said, "with no profane eyes to look on."

Then he shook off his unhappiness by sheer force of will, and began to talk lover's nonsense to the cold mistress of his home in more perfect abandon than ever, even in the exuberance of his youth. He must be happy while he could, he dared not stop talking, lest he should think too much. But she only looked at him in far off surprise, with now and then a curious, not quite pleased smile, at his absurdities. At last, all too soon, she arose.

"I must go and dress and try and look a little prettier, for today at least." She touched his shoulder kindly as she passed out into the hall, leaving him sitting still at table.

It was only then that he discovered a letter that had been concealed by a plate. What did he care for business today? Still it might serve to pass a little of the time till his wife should return. How the thought of her warmed his heart. In a few moments the door behind him would open, and he would turn to see her graceful form on the threshold. She would be dressed in some now color, or perhaps in the black that gave her the air of a dethroned queen. By this time she must have thought of some kind thing to say to him, but first it would be:

"Sitting at table yet?" Then he would rise and draw her jeweled hand through his arm and show her through her whole home. She would be so delighted with the library; he was sure everything there would please her exquisite taste. He had never enjoyed the room, though it was so perfect; there, had been something dreary to him in its classic simplicity. But now everything would be changed. Then he would lead her to the drawing room, and would make her sit down again before the long silent piano, which had given out not one tone of music since her white fingers had last caressed its glistening keys. And she would play and sing for him while he dreamed of the new rare life of beauty and peace that was to be his henceforth.

He glanced at the face of the envelope; but it was not for a moment more that the mist of joy cleared from before his eyes enough to read the words stamped on its upper corner.

"John T. Giddings, attorney at law," and beneath in smaller type, "Divorces procured without trouble or publicity for any cause desired." What was he or his business to Philip Breton? He tore open the envelope patiently; probably a begging letter. He unfolded the sheet he found within. At the top in big letters the attorney's name and address; and below the advertisement about divorces again. Philip frowned and began to read what the man had written to him.

"Dear Sir: I understand you will have just returned from your wedding journey when this reaches you. I am sorry to interrupt your bliss but it will be very important for you to call upon me immediately upon your receipt of this communication. You may wonder how my advertisement about divorces which your observant eyes will have detected at the top of this page can concern you. If you call on me at once I will be able to explain that and several other points of interest to you. Very truly yours, John T. Giddings.

Philip spread the letter open on the tablecloth before him, and read it again and more carefully. He seemed very slow to take its meaning. Then he folded it very accurately and put it in his pocketbook. He rose to his feet and rang the bell for the maid. How cool he was. He showed no sign of having received a terrible blow, unless it was by passing his hand wearily across his forehead once or twice.

The clearest feeling he was conscious of was a nervous anxiety lest Bertha should come in upon him just now; and when the door opened he started violently. But it was only the maid, who had answered his summons.

"Tell your mistress," his voice was very low, but it sounded firm enough, "tell your mistress I am called away to Lockout. I shall be back by tea time- at 6, I suppose. Can you find my hat for me Jane - I mean Annie. Thank you." He pulled it well over his eyes, and walked along the hall and opened the door. He did not like to glance up the open staircase for fear he might see Bertha He dreaded to look in her face just now. The maid stood waiting.

"Tell your mistress that I am called - oh, I told you, did I?"

CHAPTER XXVII.

A LEGAL DISTINCTION.

"Ah, Mr. Breton, yes, yes, I was sure you would come."

The lawyer pulled two chairs together near his office table. John T. Giddings had changed a great deal since the time when he undertook to engineer the corporation scheme. Apparently he was going down hill very fast, without brakes. His eyes wore a glassy look, as if he had just waked from a drunken sleep. The smooth roundness of his cheeks was gone, his lower jaw was strongly marked, and his nose seemed drawn out and sharpened to give the effect of a bird of prey. Philip glanced significantly about the room. The lawyer followed his eyes and laughed.

"Changed some, aren't we - all lack of money. Actually, you have no idea how $10 even would furbish this old table and polish this floor. Times ain't as they were, Mr. Breton, in the old days, when I used to get fat fees out of men like your father. Nice man, your father. But,"and he leered meaningly at his visitor, "when we do get a chance for a dollar I tell you we jump at it." He tipped back his chair against his half filled book shelves and peered familiarly into Philip's stern face. "Why, look at those dirty fellows back by the door. Time was I wouldn't notice a client unless he wore white collar and cuffs. But now for business. I suppose you were a little astonished to get my letter?"

"I should prefer not to have listeners," remarked Philip, coldly.

"Oh, well, I will finish with these fellows first, then. I thought you might be impatient."

"Not at all, sir."

The lawyer's clothes were threadbare and soiled, and the black felt hat that he wore, indoors and out, well slouched over his eyes, was torn in the crown. Philip compared him with his shabby looking callers, and could not see but the clients looked as well as their patron. But at every sign of poverty and degradation his heart sank lower and lower, for the man must be reckless and hungry as a man eating shark. If it lay in his power to rack the life out of a victim - the man could have no restraint of character or decency to hold back his hand. Could there be anything he knew about Bertha'a past, that terrible gap Philip had not tried to look into? He dared not think. Impatient! he dreaded the moment when the lawyer should send away his soiled clients. Philip started each time he half turned as if to come back. But when Giddings closed the door after the poor wretches, which was not until a little roll of bills had passed from their hands to his, and came back to his seat, the young mill owner did not seem to observe him until the lawyer said:

"I have filled out a complaint, but have not signed it yet."

Philip looked at him blankly. "What is a complaint !"

"Well, my dear sir, a man of your position might pass a lifetime and never know. Ahem! It is a form of procedure that is generally understood to be applicable only to the poor. When a wretch has committed a burglary, for instance, some friend of justice, as I for example, goes before a magistrate and makes certain charges. Then the poor devil is arrested, dragged before the court and tried."

"Well, sir, what are your complaints to me?"

The lawyer smiled. "Strictly, nothing, unless you identify yourself with a woman calling herself Bertha Breton." He paused to notice the effect of his words.

"My wife," gasped Philip. "Oh, for God's sake, speak quick!"

"You have been lately married?"

"A week ago."

"The woman you have married has a husband already. By remarrying as she has done she has committed a felony by our laws. Some rather inaccurately call her crime bigamy. A state prison offense, I suppose you know- I mean for her. The law of our state does not touch you."

"But she told me she was free to marry." How far off his voice sounded. Was it he, indeed, in a low attorney's office, discussing his wife, whether she were a felon or no. It was like a horrible dream; too horrible to be anything but a dream; but he could not awake from it.

"No doubt she thought so," said the lawyer, charitably; "but let me show you." He opened a drawer in front of him, and took out a long paper. Isn't it odd, women have no notion of folding a legal document correctly. Did you ever notice it?"

"No, I never noticed it," answered Philip, mechanically. He felt as if he were standing still, while the world was flying from under his feet.

"This is the marriage certificate. It is proper in form, you will see."

Yes; it seemed correct. Bertha's name was there, and Curran's. They seemed to leap out of the parchment as he read. And there were two witnesses. He rubbed his eyes. "Thomas Bailes" - that was the name of the servant he had turned away. Yes; it was not an hour ago he turned him away.

"Who is this Thomas Bailes?"

"He was a waiter at the 'Lockout house' where the happy couple were made one."

The paper fluttered to the floor, the walls of the room seemed rushing in upon him, while the grinning face of the lawyer danced in hideous measure before his eyes. Was God, in his mercy, sending him death? When his brain cleared again the lawyer was talking still.

"You will wonder how I happen to possess this paper, but you will recollect my advertisement at the top of my letter head? Well it seemed Mrs. Curran, excuse me, grew tired of her uncongenial husband, quite outside her sphere of course. A fine fellow that Curran was too. But the young lady naturally sighed for her old, more refined associations. Her husband does nothing but shock her. She becomes wretched, her craze is over, the reality is not to her delicate taste at all. What next? She leaves him. Fortune throws my advertisement in her way and I receive a letter from her address, then at Vineboro. Here was a short way out of it all, a divorce without trouble or publicity, for any cause desired. She would be free as air again, free to end her life, as she no doubt intended, in conventual retirement."

Giddings threw his feet upon the table and smiled very slyly. "I undertook her suit. What better cause could there be than incompatibility. Oh, no; she need not come to Lockout, so there was no trouble; and as to publicity, why, will you 'believe it"- and the lawyer winked horribly at his visitor; "Curran himself was within twenty miles of Lockout during the pendency of the suit, and he never guessed his wife was being divorced from him; and I don't believe he knows it to this day. Ha, ha!" And he laid his head back on his chair and laughed till the tears ran down his face.

"But you procured her a divorce?" It is almost worth pain to have the exquisite delight that comes with relief.

Philip felt ashamed that he had distrusted God so much. How much more joyfully he could cherish his wife than before. There was no blot of shame on her sweet name. There was no page in her life the whole world might not look at then. And this man wanted a reward for what he had done, aye, and he should have it. There was no gift too great for him who had turned this young husband's bitterest memories sweet, who had made his life and his love like that of other men. He reached forward and grasped the lawyer's oily hand in hearty good will.

Gidding's stared at him in silence a moment. Then he moved uneasily in his chair and released his hand.

"I guess you don't understand," he had enough of his manhood left to hesitate. It was actually a more disagreeable business than he had counted on. "Such secret convenient divorces as I get don't stand in our courts. The whole thing is bogus, my dear sir." Philip's face had become like a dead man's. "Issued by the supreme judicial court of Utah, it says on them; but there is no such court, and as for the seal, I keep it in this little drawer. Besides, if there were such a court, and its genuine seal were stamped on a decree of divorce, it would amount to nothing when both parties live in this state. Our state makes its own decrees. Utah decrees or the decrees of any foreign state or territory are void here. Your wife is Curran's wife yet. She is as much married to him today as she ever was."

"How am I to know but that you are lying to me?"

The attorney handed him over a file of letters with a shrug of his shoulders. "You need not wade through them all, the last is conclusive, I think you will agree with me."

Mr. Giddings- Dear Sir- I received this morning the divorce from the supreme judicial court of Utah, and you will find inclosed a draft for the second half of the $300 agreed upon. Of course I have to rely wholly on your assurance that my divorce is complete, and that I have a right to resume my maiden name. I thank you for the quiet way in which you have have managed it. I did not suppose it could be done so easily. I only wonder Mr. Curran has taken it so calmly, he seemed almost wild when I first left him. Yours gratefully, Bertha Ellingsworth.

Yes, there was no doubt about it. It was Bertha's handwriting; no forgery could have deceived her lover's eyes. How little she fancied he would ever be reading it over, and cursing the first hour he ever looked on her dear face. He watched the attorney put it back on file again. It seemed a desecration to lay one of her notes in the stained, tin box, with the ignoble company of lying and suppliant letters.

"She seems to have relied completely on some assurance of yours that her divorce would be good. Philip tried to speak calmly to this man, who held his darling's fate in the hollow of his hand, but his voice trembled, and almost broke.

"You are not well," exclaimed the lawyer, and he opened another drawer in his desk and drew out a square shaped, yellow colored bottle. "Take a swallow of this."

Philip clutched it eagerly. He thought now he could understand how a man might want to drown all pride and sense in drunkenness. He poured the crude stuff down his parched throat as if it were water. One swallow was not enough, nor were two, but when he set the bottle upon the table at last, the lawyer resumed:

"And so it would have been good, nine times out of ten, good enough to make all parties concerned comfortable. A document is a document to most people, a seal is a seal. As a man thinketh, so is he. Parties divorced by my fiat alone, remarry and raise children, and are as happy and clear of conscience as if they were not committing a sin every hour of their lives, unless it happens to come out."

"This has come out, I suppose, and Lockout is all agog with it." Philip's heart stopped beating while he waited for his answer.

"No, my dear sir, another mistake; no one under heaven knows of it but me, and you now." Breton must have taken him for a fool.

Philip started from his chair like lightning. "Thank God, then Bertha is safe yet."

But Giddings attempted to look very stern. "Did you suppose I made out that complaint for nothing? She is rich and beautiful and proud, no doubt, but the same law hangs over her as the rest of us. No one knows of her crime yet, but before the sun sets," the attorney rose, and cautiously put the table between himself and his guest, whose eyes seemed to him to gleam dangerously, "but before the sun sets," he continued, watching the other closely, "an officer with a warrant will call at your front door."

Philip lifted his chair high in air, and brought it down like a trip hammer where Giddings had stood. But the agile attorney had dodged aside and left the chair to break into splinters over the table.

"Scoundrel! Will you come with handcuffs and billets to take away my wife from my arms for following your lying counsels. Is that your law? Does it choose such ministers as you to break up peaceful homes and shut behind bars a woman as innocent as an angel?"

Philip was advancing toward him, when Giddings suddenly threw up the window and leaned out to shout to a policeman. Then he looked back to Philip.