For Woman's Love Part 58

"Oh! how merciless you are to me!" Rose said, beginning to weep.

"No; I am not. I have never been unkind to you--as yet. I don't know what I may be! My course toward you will depend very much upon yourself.

Have I not always. .h.i.therto been your best friend? Ungrateful, unresponsive though you were at that time, did I not procure for you an invitation from my mother to accompany her party on that long, delightful summer trip?"

"I had an impression at the time that I owed the invitation to your father, who suggested to your mother to write and ask me to accompany them."

Mr. Fabian looked surprised, and said--for he never hesitated to tell a fib:

"Oh! that was quite a mistake. It was I myself who suggested the invitation. I thought it would be agreeable to you. Was it not I myself who sent you forward in advance to the Wirt House, Baltimore, there to await the arrival of our party, and join us in our summer travel? And didn't you have a long, delightful tour with us through the most sublime scenery in the most salubrious climates on earth? Didn't you return a perfect Hebe in health and bloom?"

"I acknowledge all that. I acknowledge all my obligations to your family; but at the same time I declare that I also did my part. I was as a white slave to your parents. I was lady's maid to your mother, foot boy to your father. I don't know, indeed, what the old people would have done without me, for no hired servant could have served them as faithfully as I did."

"Oh, yes; you were grateful and devoted to all the family except to me, your best friend--to me, who gave you the use of a lovely home, and a liberal income, and a faithful friends.h.i.+p; and then trusted in your sense of justice for my reward."

"I would have given you all I possessed in the world--my own poor self in marriage--and you led me on to believe that you wished to marry me, but, finally, you would not have me. You went off and married another woman."

"Bah! we are talking around in a circle, and getting back to where we began. Let us come to the point."

"Very well; come to the point," said Rose, sulkily.

"Listen, then: It is not for your reckless elopement with your step-father's pupil, when you were driven from home by cruelty; it is not for your false marriage with Stillwater, when you yourself were deceived; but because with all these antecedents against you--antecedents which const.i.tuted you, however unjustly, a pariah, who should have lived quietly and obscurely, but who, instead of doing so, took advantage of kindness shown her, and betrayed the family who sheltered her by luring into a disgraceful marriage its revered father, and bringing to deep dishonor the gray head of Aaron Rockharrt, a man of stern integrity and unblemished reputation--you should be denounced and punished."

"Oh, Fabian, have mercy! have mercy! You would not now, after years of friends.h.i.+p, you would not now ruin me?"

"Listen to me! You checkmated me in that matter of the cottage and the income. Yes, simple as you seem, and sharp as I may appear, you certainly managed to take all and give nothing. And when you found but that you could not take my hand and my name, you waylaid me at the railway station, when I was on my wedding tour, and you swore to be revenged. I laughed at you. I advised you to be anything rather than dramatic. I never imagined the possibility of your threatened revenge taking the form of your marriage. Well, my dear, you have your revenge, I admit; but in your blindness, you could not see that revenge itself might be met by retribution! One man kills another for revenge, and does not, in his blind fury, see the gallows looming in the distance."

"What do you mean? You cannot hang me for marrying your father,"

exclaimed Rose.

"No; don't raise your voice, or you may be heard. No, Rose, I cannot hang you for treachery; but, my dear, there are worse fates than neat and tidy hanging, which is over in a few minutes. I could expose your past life to my father. You know him, and you know that he would show no ruth, no mercy to deception and treachery such as yours. You know that he would turn you out of the house without money or character, dest.i.tute and degraded. What then would be your fate at your age--a fading rose past thirty-seven years old? Sooner or later, and very little later, the poor-house or the hospital. Better a sweet, tidy little hanging and be done with it, if possible."

"You are a fiend to talk to me so! a fiend! Fabian Rockharrt," exclaimed Rose, bursting into hysterical sobs and tears.

"Now, be quiet, my child; you'll raise the house, and then there will be an explosion."

"I don't care if there will be. You are cruel, savage, barbarous! I never meant to do any harm by marrying Mr. Rockharrt. I never meant to be revenged on you or anybody. I only said so because I was so excited by your desertion of me. I married the old gentleman for a refuge from the world. I meant to do my duty by him, though he is as cross as a bear with a bruised head. But do your worst; I don't care. I would just as lief die as live. I am tired of trying to be good; tired of trying to please people; tired, oh, very tired of living!"

"Come, come," said soft-hearted Mr. Fabian; "none of that nonsense.

Place yourself in my hands, to be guided by me and to work for my interests, and none of these evils shall happen to you. You shall live and die in wealth and luxury, my father's honored wife, the mistress of Rockhold."

He spoke slowly, tenderly, caressingly, and as she listened to him her sobs and tears subsided and she grew calmer.

"What is it you want me to do for you? What can I do for you, indeed, powerless as I am?" she inquired at last.

"You must use all your influence with my father in my interests, and use it discreetly and perseveringly," he whispered.

"But I have no influence. Never was the young wife of an old man--and I am young in comparison to him--treated so harshly. I am not his pet; I am his slave!" she complained.

"But you must obtain influence over him. You can do that. You are with him night and day when he is not at his business. You are his shadow--beg pardon, I ought to have said his suns.h.i.+ne."

"I am his slave, I tell you."

"Then be his humble, submissive, obedient slave; betray no disappointment, discontent, or impatience at your lot. The harsher he is, the humbler must you be; the more despotic he becomes, the more subservient you must seem. Make yourself so perfectly complying in all his moods that he shall believe you to be the very 'perfect rose of womanhood,' more excellent even than he thought when he married you, and so as he grows older and weaker in mind as well as body you will gain not only influence but ascendency over him, and these you must use in my interest."

"But how? I don't understand."

"Pay attention, then, and you will understand Mr. Rockharrt is aged. In the course of nature he must soon pa.s.s away. Fie has made no will.

Should he die intestate, the whole property, by the laws of this commonwealth, would fall to pieces; that is to say, it would be divided into three parts--one-third would go to you--"

Rose started, caught her breath, and stared at the speaker; the greed of gain dilating her great blue eyes. The third of the Rockharrt's fabulous wealth to be hers at her husband's death! Amazing! How many millions or tens of millions would that be? Incredible! And all for her, and she with, perhaps, half a century of life to live and enjoy it! What a vista!

"Why do you stare at me so?" demanded Mr. Fabian.

"Because I was so surprised. That is not the law in England. In England there are usually what are called marriage settlements, which make a suitable provision for the wife, but leave the bulk of the property to go to the children--generally to the oldest son."

"And such should be the law here, but it isn't; and so if my father should die without having made a will, the great estate would break, as I said, into three parts--one part would be yours, the other two parts would be divided into three shares, to me, to my brother, and to the heirs of my sister. The business at North End would probably be carried on by Aaron Rockharrt's sons."

"But would not that be equitable?" inquired Rose, who had no mind to have her third interfered with.

"It would not be expedient, nor is such a disposition of his property the intention of Aaron Rockharrt. I know, from what he has occasionally hinted, that he means to bequeath the Great North End Works to me and my brother Clarence, share and share alike; but he puts off making this will, which indeed must never be made. The North End Works should not be a monster with two heads, but a colossus with one head with my head. So that I wish my father to make a will leaving the North End Works to me exclusively--to me alone as the one head."

"I think if I dared to suggest such a thing to him, he would take off my head!" said Rose, with grim humor.

"I think he would if you should do so suddenly or clumsily. But you must insinuate the idea very slowly and subtlely. Clarence is not for the works; Clarence is too good for this world--at least for the business of this world. I think him half an imbecile! My father does not hesitate to call him a perfect idiot. Do you begin to see your way now? Clarence can be moderately provided for, but should have no share in the North End Works."

"The North End Works to be left to you solely; Clarence to be moderately provided for; and what of the two children of the late Mrs. Haught?"

"Oh! my father never intends to leave them more than a modest legacy.

They have each inherited money from their father. No; understand me once for all, Rose. I must be the sole heir of all my father's wealth, with the exceptions I have named, and the sole successor to his business, without any exception whatever. You must live, serve him and bear with him only to obtain such an ascendency over him as to induce him to make such a will as I have dictated to you. You can do this. You can insinuate it so subtlely that he will never suspect the suggestion came from you. I say you can do this, and you must do it. The woman who could deceive and entrap old Aaron Rockharrt, the Iron King, into matrimony, can do anything else in the world that she pleases to do with him if only she will be as subtle, as patient, and as complacent to him after marriage as she had been before marriage."

"If Clarence is to be so provided for, Cora and Sylvan to have modest legacies, and you to have the huge bulk of the estate--where is my third to come from?"

"Why, my dear, I could never let you have so vast a slice out of the mammoth fortune! Your third of the estate must follow Clarence's share of the business--into nothingness. You must play magnanimity, sacrifice your third, and content yourself with a suitable provision," said Fabian, equably.

"I will never do that! I would not do it to save your life, Fabian Rockharrt!"

"Oh, yes, you will, my darling. Not to save my life, but to save yourself from being denounced to Mr. Rockharrt, and turned out of this house, dest.i.tute and degraded."

"I don't care if I should be! Do you think me quite a baby in your hands? I have been reflecting since you have been talking to me. I have been remembering that you told me that the law gives the widow one third of her late husband's property when he dies intestate, and ent.i.tles her to it, no matter what sort of a will he makes."

"Unless there has been a settlement, my angel," said Mr. Fabian, composedly.

"Well, there has been no settlement in my case. So whether Aaron Rockharrt should die intestate, or whether he should make a will, I am sure of my lawful third. So I defy you, Mr. Fabian Rockharrt. You may denounce me to your father He may turn me out of doors without a penny, and 'without a character,' as the servants say, but he cannot divorce me, because I have been faithful to him ever since our marriage. I could compel him by law to support me, even though he might not let me share his home. He would be obliged by law to give me alimony in proportion to his income, and, oh! what a magnificent revenue that would be for me--with freedom from his tyranny into the bargain! And at his death, which could not be long coming at his age, and after such a shock as his dutiful son proposes to give him, I should come in for my third. And, oh, where so rich a widow as I should be! With forty or fifty years of life before me in which to enjoy my fortune! Ah, you see, my clever Mr.

Fabian Rockharrt, though you frightened me out of self-possession at first, when I come to think over the situation, I find that you can do me no great harm. If you should put your threats in execution and bring about a violent separation between myself and my husband, you would do me a signal favor, for I should gain my personal freedom, with a handsome alimony during his life, and at his death a third of his vast estate," she concluded, snapping her fingers in his face.

"I think not."

"Yes; I would."