It was a drizzling, chilly, cheerless day—one of those relapses into winter into which early spring sometimes falls.
Not one of the family had been able to sleep well after such a harassing evening as they had passed.
They assembled around the breakfast table with pale faces and careworn looks.
The table was full, and even crowded, with family and guests—sixteen in all.
Odalite was the last to come in. Her face was deathly white, and showed signs of an anxious and sleepless night. Yet she greeted the whole party with a wan smile and a slight bow as she took her seat.
Not one word was said of the ordeal soon to be passed through. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Force would allude to it, and no one else durst.
The conversation went on, or, rather, failed to go on, in abortive jets.
Subjects were started, but fell.
Some one said it was a horrid day, so different from yesterday, and more like November than April.
And several others said yes, or some word to the same effect, and that subject dropped dead.
Some one mentioned that the “English Opera Troupe” would perform the “Bride of Lammermoor” that evening.
No one answered that venture except Mr. Force, who, as a mere matter of form and politeness, said he believed so.
Ned Grandiere said it was good growing weather for the crops.
But no one complimented him by a reply.
And at length the dull repast was over, and all arose from the table.
It was now nine o’clock, and raining hard. At ten Mr. Force and Odalite were required to arrive before the judge.
As the party left the breakfast room, the guests dispersed to parlor, library, or chambers, as their inclinations led them.
Mrs. Force called Odalite, and went upstairs, followed by all her daughters, to prepare for her drive to the courthouse.
Le followed his uncle into a little smoking room at the back of the hall. Neither of the men went there to smoke. Mr. Force went there to be alone while he waited for his wife and daughter, and Le to speak to his uncle.
“Uncle Abel, can I have a word with you?”
“As many as you please, or as time will permit, my boy. Come in.”
They entered the room, and took seats at the little round table, on which stood pipes of every description, cigar cases, tobacco pots, tapers, ash saucers and all the paraphernalia of smoking.
“Uncle Abel,” inquired Le, as soon as they were seated, “have you secured counsel?”
“No, Le, nor shall I do so. To engage counsel would be to give the case more importance than I choose to give it. It is a simple habeas corpus. A very informal matter, and, in this instance, a very impertinent one—an abuse of the privilege of habeas corpus. I do not need counsel, and shall not have any. I shall tell my story to the judge. I do not even know that I shall call a witness. That is all that will be necessary. I have no fears of the result.”
“Uncle Abel, I must go with you before the judge this morning.”
“No, Le!” emphatically objected Mr. Force. “No, Le! I cannot have my daughter, my young and innocent child, exposed to the ignominy of standing between two men, each of whom claims her as his wife.”
The young man was shocked at the presentation of the case from a point of view he had never contemplated before, and too greatly confused for a moment to make any reply. At length he said:
“But, Uncle Abel, we know who has the right to her! We know that she is my wife!”
“No, Le, we do not know that. We only think we know it. We thought we knew that Angus Anglesea was dead and in Hades. But you see he is alive, and in Washington.”
“That is a nuisance; but his being here gives him no claim on Odalite.”
“None as you and I think. But we do not know what the law may decide, Le. It is of no use going over the whole situation again. You know it, as well as I do. Angus Anglesea married Ann Maria Wright, August 1, 18—. Of that transaction we have abundant proof. If Anglesea were then free to contract that marriage, then is he the lawful husband of Ann Maria Anglesea, his second wife. But, on the other hand, if his first wife, Lady Mary Anglesea, did not die until the twenty-fifth of that same August, then his marriage with Ann Maria Wright, on the first of the said month, is null and void, and he was free to contract marriage at the time that he married my daughter, and Odalite Force is his legal second wife.”
“Oh, Heaven! oh, Heaven! oh, Heaven! What shall I do?” exclaimed the youth, starting up in a frenzy.
“‘We must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves,’” said Mr. Force; “for, Le, we have to deal with one who has the malice and subtlety of a demon from the deepest abyss. He is absolutely unscrupulous. I do not know, mind you, but I firmly believe he has falsified dates to suit his own base purposes. I believe also that he designedly laid a trap for us by which he could satiate his vengeance.”
“I—I shall kill him, and hang for it!” burst forth the boy.
“No, you won’t, Le. You came of Christian parents, and have had a Christian training. You will do nothing unworthy of your race and education,” calmly replied Mr. Force.
“Uncle!” exclaimed the youth, “how came that false publication of his death, with time, place and circumstances all complete, in the newspaper of his own village? It is amazing. It is incredible that such a fraud could have been perpetrated.”
“Yes, it is amazing and incredible. And yet we know that it is a fraud, since the man is alive and well. How it was done I do not know. Why it was done I can well understand. It was done as a trap to catch us, and place us in a false and humiliating position. I have no doubt that, from the hour of his ejection from our house and his ignominious retreat from the neighborhood, he meditated vengeance. I have no doubt he lay in wait, watching us for these three years past, giving no sign of his existence, leaving us to suppose that we were finally rid of him, but all the while watching and waiting for your return, Le, to see what would come of it. I believe that he knew the course of your ship as well as you did yourself—knew where she went and when she was ordered home. Then he manufactured this false evidence of his death, with time, place and circumstances all complete, as you said, with obituary eulogy, sketch of his life and career, and including his marriage with Lady Mary Merland, the date of her death, August 25, 18—, and his second marriage with Odalite Force——”
“I—I—uncle, I am quite anxious to hang for that man!” panted the youth.
“But we are not willing to let you, Le. Your execution would be of no sort of comfort to Odalite, or any of us. Now let me go on. All these concocted and published falsehoods had but one end—to entrap us all into a false sense of security, and to allow you and Odalite to contract marriage on your return from sea. I have no doubt that within ten days after your ship sailed from Rio de Janeiro, homeward bound, he sailed from Liverpool to New York, under an assumed name, and that he has been in the country ever since, and lately in the city, watching for your wedding day, so that he might turn the tables, and snatch your bride from your possession at the very altar, as it were, and so humiliate us all in retaliation for his exposure at All Faith Church.”
“Oh, the demon! the demon! Any fate would be cheaply bought at the cost of sending him to——”
“Le! Le! control yourself! Remember your Christian parentage and training, and do not speak and act like any border ruffian. Remember also that we do not know the man has falsified the date of his wife’s death. We only think so.”
“Uncle, suppose the judge to-day should decide against us—should adjudge Odalite to be the wife of that devil, and give her to him—what then?”
“I do not for a moment anticipate any such decision,” said Mr. Force.
“Yet, it is possible,” muttered Le.
“But most improbable. The case, I think, from every point of view, is too clearly in our favor.”
“You think, but you do not know. Our thoughts have misled us up to this moment, and may be misleading us now. But admitting the possibility that the decision may be against us—that Odalite may be given into the custody of Anglesea——”
The father’s face darkened and flushed.
“I would not give my child up to the scoundrel!”
“But suppose the court were to order you to do so?”
“I would resist, and take the consequences. I would never give my child to that devil! I would sooner—Heaven knows that I would sooner throw her alive into that lion’s cage in the circus at the Smithsonian Park over there!”
“But, uncle, suppose, in case of your resistance, the officers were ordered to do their duty and take the woman from you by force, to give her to the man. You know such might be the effect of your resistance. What then?”
The father’s face darkened like a thundercloud. His eyes, under their black brows, flashed like lightning.
“Le,” he said, “why do you torture me by such improbable suppositions? In such a case I should—I could be another Virginius, and give my child instant death to save her.”
“No, uncle, you would not. You came of Christian parents, and you have had a Christian training. You would do nothing unworthy of your race and your education. Uncle, remember your Christian parentage and training, and do not speak and act like a heathen Roman,” said Le, solemnly.
The two men looked at each other in comic embarrassment almost approaching laughter, had not the matter been so serious.
“We have been letting imagination run away with us, Le. You and I have been getting ourselves into unnecessary heroics. There will be nothing to justify it. It is true that we have the most infernal villain to deal with that ever disgraced the human form, but he must be dealt with by law, and not by violence. All will be well,” said the elder man.
“Uncle, it was I who got into heroics first, and then stung you into the same state. But really now, I do not think that I shall have any occasion to murder Anglesea and swing for it, or that you will have any cause to enact the Roman father and slay your daughter to save her. Wait for my coup.”
“If I had been that same Roman father, it would not have been my own kid I’d have killed, you bet. It would have been t’other I’d have gone for. I mean, I never could see the sense of Virginius slaying his own daughter, and running amuck through the streets of Rome, instead of doing execution on the minion of Appius Claudius in the first place. It was wrong end foremost, like most of the heroic dodges.”
Of course it was Wynnette who spoke. She was standing within the open door.
“What do you want, my dear?” inquired her father.
“Mamma sent me to look for you, and tell you that it is half-past nine. She and Odalite are ready, and the carriage is at the door.”
“Thank you, dear. Tell mamma that I will be with her in a moment,” said Mr. Force, as he arose from his seat.
Wynnette ran off with her message.
“So, uncle, you will not allow me to go with you to the examination?” inquired Le.
“By no means! On no account, dear boy! You yourself should not wish it under the circumstances.”
“All right. Who is going with Odalite besides yourself?”
“Her mother, her two sisters, Rosemary Hedge, and the four Misses Grandiere.”
“They can’t all go in one carriage.”
“No; no one but Odalite, her mother and the eldest Miss Grandiere will go in our carriage; the others will go by the street cars, under the escort of Roland Bayard. I take a crowd of ladies with me not only as witnesses to the broken marriage at All Faith Church—for the young men could have answered that purpose—but as the most fitting, proper and delicate support to my daughter. I take only one man, Roland Bayard, not only as the most important witness, who brought Anglesea’s Californian wife from San Francisco to St. Mary’s, but also as a proper escort for the young ladies in the street car. But you, Le, should, in delicacy, absent yourself.”
“At least, I will not press my company on you, uncle. But perhaps I may be there later. Don’t let anything discourage you, no matter how the case seems to be going. Wait for my coup,” said Le.
Mr. Force was drawing on his light overcoat in the hall, to which they had walked during this conversation, and he scarcely heard or heeded the youth’s last words, which seemed to be so significant.
They met Mrs. Force and Odalite at the front door.
“The girls have gone on in the cars before. Roland is with them. I told them to wait in the vestibule of the City Hall until we should join them,” said the elder lady.
Odalite said nothing. She was white and still, as she had been at the breakfast table.
It was pouring rain.
When the front door was opened Mr. Force and Leonidas both took large umbrellas from the hall rack and held them over the heads of the two ladies as they passed from the house to the carriage.
When the two latter had entered and taken their seats, Mr. Force followed them, and Le closed the door.
“I shall bring her back with me,” said the elder man.
“I am sure that you will,” replied the younger.
The carriage drove off, and Le re-entered the house, muttering to himself:
“Let them wait for my coup!”