to john clare's wife the world of late had become a greatly-changed place. she was alone in london, without a single creature of her own sex whom she could call an acquaintance, much less a friend. she had broken both with her uncle and luigi. for the latter she had never cared. he had impressed her from the first as being not only morally unscrupulous--that was a defect which she might not have experienced much difficulty in condoning--but as being sly and deceitful into the bargain, and, in short, one of those people who are almost as dangerous to, and as little to be trusted by, those whom they call their friends as by those to whom they owe a grudge which they would gladly wipe off.
captain verinder she had learnt to like after a fashion. he was her mother's brother, and that of itself was enough to create a tie between them which, under ordinary circumstances, she would have been one of the last people to ignore. she had liked him for his bonhomie, for his persistent good-humour and his half-quizzical, half-cynical way of looking at men and things, and last, but not least, for the frequent doses of flattery he had been in the habit of administering to her, which, even while conscious that it was nothing more than flattery, had possessed the delightful property of raising her in her own estimation, and of causing her to think more highly of herself than she had ever done before.
but this was a state of things which had now come wholly to an end. giovanna's feelings were very bitter against her uncle. she blamed him and him alone for everything that had happened to her; at his door she laid the entire load of her misfortunes.
it was quite true--and the fact was never lost sight of by her, for she rarely argued crookedly, as luigi habitually did--that, but for the interest taken by verinder in her case, in all probability she would never have become aware that she was daughter-in-law to sir gilbert clare. yet, granting that point to the full, it was impossible for her to forget that it was wholly owing to his influence and persuasions that she had been lured into that career of fraud and double-dealing which, in her case, had ended in irremediable disaster. from her present knowledge of sir gilbert clare she felt convinced that, had she have gone to him at first, as she had proposed to do, and told him the simple truth, far from turning his back upon her, he would have welcomed her as his son's widow, and have settled on her a liberal allowance, which would have been hers to the last day of her life. it made her hate her uncle when she thought of all that she had lost through weakly yielding to the glittering temptation he had so persistently dangled before her. little by little she had wormed out of luigi all the particulars of the brussels episode, and she rightly argued that if verinder had never introduced his nephew to the gaming-table the series of unfortunate events which resulted therefrom, and culminated in the discovery of luigi in the strong-room, would never have come to pass. it was clearly the captain and he alone who was to blame.
he had called upon her twice since their return to town, but her reception of him had been of the coldest; and when, on the occasion of his second visit, his request for a trifling loan of ten pounds was met by a distinct refusal, he perceived that his wisest course would be to keep away from his niece till time should in some measure have softened her rancour against him.
giovanna had found a temporary home in one of those boardinghouses which abound in the neighbourhood of the west-central squares. but already she had begun to meditate a change. the demands on her purse were too many and, as it seemed to her, too exorbitant. should she decide to stay in london, she must find cheaper rooms and make up her mind to live more economically in many ways. but just then she could not make up her mind to anything. she was a very lonely and a very miserable woman; indeed, the loneliness of her life sometimes appalled her. there were a number of other boarders in the house, and in the general drawing-room of an evening there was no lack of company of both sexes and of nearly all ages. but giovanna, who had always been of a reserved and retiring disposition, had an utter distaste for associating with a mixed lot of people, with not one of whom she had anything in common, and, as soon as dinner was over, invariably went upstairs to her own sitting-room on the third floor. in the forenoons, when the weather was fine, she took long, solitary walks, sometimes in the regents park, sometimes through the miles of west end shops, but rarely pausing to glance into a window. invariably dressed in black, and with the upper half of her face closely veiled, but leaving visible the firm and beautiful contours of the mouth and chin, her tall and stately form drew many eyes to it as she slowly threaded her way through the crowd of promenaders, so obviously indifferent to everyone and everything around her. there was about her, or so it seemed, an air of mystery, of romance even, which many of those who turned to gaze after her would have given something to be able to penetrate.
on a certain morning, just as giovanna was getting ready to go for her usual walk, a message was brought her that there was a gentleman below who was desirous of seeing her. in the belief that it must be either her uncle or luigi, they being the only visitors she had, she requested the servant to show him upstairs.
a minute later john clare walked into the room.
despite the changes which years had wrought in him, giovanna knew him again the moment she set eyes on him, and the same instant a great fear took possession of her. an inarticulate cry broke from her lips; she shrank away from him with averting hands and terror-fraught eyes, and, when she could go no farther, she crouched trembling in a corner of the room. her face wore the ghastly hue of death. she had never fainted in her life, and she did not now; but all the fibres of her being were stretched to that point of tension which touches the verge of madness. a little more and her brain would have given way. it was a strange mixture of terror that held her powerless, for, although she had at once recognised that this was no shadowy visitant from the tomb, there was about the affair an undoubted element of the supernatural. that her husband had come in the guise of an avenger one glance at his face had been enough to tell her, and surely it could be nothing less than a miracle which had brought him back to life! to giovanna miracles were far from being the impossibilities which many of us deem them to be. she had grown up in an atmosphere of superstition, and not all the experience of after-life had quite served to eradicate the noxious weeds thus early implanted within her.
in the look with which john clare regarded his wife there was an icy sternness such as might well strike with dread the heart of the unhappy woman. at that moment he bore a striking resemblance to his father, as sir gilbert had been before years and trouble had broken him down. for some moments he confronted his wife in silence as she cowered before him like some hunted creature driven to bay.
"at last we meet again!" he said, after a time. "you believed that i had died long years ago, but i am here, a living proof to the contrary. from me you have nothing to fear. i come neither to accuse nor to condemn. as you have dealt with the past, so will it deal with you; but certainly it is not for a fallible being such as i to set myself up as your judge."
he spoke slowly and unemotionally, without a trace of passion or the faintest tinge of invective.
"i am here on purpose to ask you certain questions," he resumed, "which i can but trust that you will answer truthfully and to the best of your ability. will you not be seated?"
she did not answer him in words, but drew herself together as it were, and crossing to the opposite side of the room sat down. by this she had recovered from her fright, and her features had settled into a sort of stony hardness which effectually masked whatever emotions might be at work below.
john too sat down, but there was nearly the entire width of the room between them.
"i want you," he went on, "to carry your mind back to that letter, written by you nearly twenty years ago, in which you told me that our child was dead, that you had come to the conclusion you and i would be happier apart, and that you were on the eve of returning to your friends in italy. you have not forgotten the letter of which i speak?"
"i have not forgotten it."
"after you had left barrytown and started on your journey, what happened to you? did you go direct to new york and at once take ship there?"
"i went direct to new york, but a few hours before the vessel sailed by which i had booked my passage i was seized with a fever and conveyed to a hospital, where i lay for weeks, part of the time out of my mind, and the other part so weak that speech was an impossibility."
"and when you came back to health and strength, it was to find that while you had been in the hospital your maid, a woman of the name of martha griggs, had absconded with all your belongings."
it was a bold guess on john clare's part, but it told.
giovanna half started to her feet and then sat down again. the mask of apathy fell from her face and a great wonder and curiosity took the place of it. "how did you discover that?" she gasped.
"i have discovered more than that," was john's unmoved reply.
"and the woman--martha griggs--is she still living? do you know where to find her?" demanded giovanna with an eagerness she made no attempt to conceal.
"martha griggs was lost overboard on the voyage between new york and london."
"lost overboard! and my child--what became of her?" she had again risen. voice, eyes, hands--all asked the question.
on the instant a great light of gladness, the source of which giovanna was at a loss to comprehend, flamed out of john clare's eyes.
"so i have surprised your secret, have i?" he said, speaking very slowly.
for a few seconds she stared at him with bewildered eyes; then the truth dawned on her.
"yes," she replied, "you have surprised my secret, if that is the way you choose to put it. but the child----"
"a child no longer, is alive and well, and at the present moment under her grandfather's roof at withington chase."
"at withington chase--she! how strange! how wonderful! but i am very glad--oh yes, you may believe me when i tell you that i am very glad! for, whatever you may think, i am not all bad." she crossed quickly to the window and stood there with her back towards him for fully three minutes.
not till she had resumed her seat did john clare speak again. "what you wrote me about the child was a lie?" he said presently. it might be taken either as a question or an assertion.
"yes--a lie," she replied with a little shrug. "it is as well at times to call things by their right names."
"and the certificate you sent me?"
"a forgery. five dollars was the price i paid for it."
"but what was your object, if i may ask, or what was to be gained by inducing me to believe that the child was dead?"
"after i had made up my mind to leave you and go back to italy, my one fear was that you would come after me and rob me of the child. to keep you from doing that i invented the story of its death. myself alone, after the letter i had written you, i knew you would not trouble yourself to come after."
"never was there a more heartless and cruel fraud perpetrated on anyone!" for the first time his voice vibrated with a suppressed emotion. not for a little while would he trust himself to say more. giovanna's only reply was a slight lifting of her brows.
"when you grew better and left the hospital did you make no effort to recover your child?" demanded john as soon as he felt that he could command himself sufficiently to speak again.
"i made every effort a woman in my position could make. you must remember that i had been robbed of money, clothes, everything. i was utterly destitute. some charitable people interested themselves in my case and the police were communicated with, but nothing came of their inquiries. then a wild notion took hold of me that the woman, in the belief that i was past recovery, might have made her way to italy with the child, and that i should find it under my father's roof when i got back to catanzaro. the same charitable people found me enough money to take me home; but as you know, neither the woman nor my child was there. after that, rather than be called upon to tell and tell again the history of that time, i preferred to give it out that my child was dead. to my father alone was the truth known."
she ceased, and to john clare it seemed that there was nothing more to be said. he had learnt all that he had come to learn. the missing links had been found; not one was wanting; the chain was complete.
"there is no reason why i should intrude myself any longer upon you," he said as he rose and pushed back his chair. "you have been frankness itself with me, and so far i thank you. i know not what your pecuniary resources are, nor do i seek to know, but i do not forget that you are still my wife and that, as such, a monetary arrangement of some kind will have to be come to with you. i will take my father's opinion in the matter, and in the course of a few days my lawyer shall be instructed to communicate with you."
"and my child--the child of whom i was robbed!" it was like the cry of some animal despoiled of its young made articulate.
she had started to her feet as it broke from her lips, and she now confronted him with heaving bosom and extended hands, her face marble-white and her great black eyes glowing with intense fire.
john had taken up his hat and had reached the door, when her cry caused him to turn.
"your child!" he said with a quiet concentrated scorn that made each word seem a stab. "my child, you mean. you long ago forfeited all right to call her yours. what! would you dare to stain her spotlessness with your guilt? would you, with such a past as yours, dare to claim her for your daughter, and look to her to call you mother? is it your wish that she should be told the story of your life? or would you prefer to pose before her as the innocent victim of circumstances which you could not control? no, i will not believe you are quite so depraved as that. as you cannot but know, her way and yours lie wide apart. you did your utmost to rob me of her when she was a child, and now that i have found her she belongs to me alone."
as he went out and shut the door behind him, all the strength seemed to go out of giovanna's limbs. she sank to the floor and there crouched with clasped hands and bowed head. "he is right--he is right," she moaned. "i am not fit to tie the latchets of her shoes."
