Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series. Henry Wood
you know where she is?”
“No, I don’t sir. I wish I did. It was said that she came up to take a situation in London, and perhaps she is still in it. But London’s a large place, I don’t know what part of it she was in, and one might as well look for a needle in a bundle of hay. The Valentines have never heard of her at all since she was at Saltwater.”
How strange it seemed;—that she and they were living so near one another, and yet not to be aware of it. Should I tell Owen? Only for half a moment did the question cross me. No: most certainly not. It might be as he suspected; and, with it all, I could only pity Matilda. Of all unhappy women, she seemed the unhappiest.
Miss Deveen’s carriage bowled past the door to take her up at the linendraper’s. Wishing Owen good-day, I was going out, but drew back to make room for two people who were entering: an elderly woman in a close bonnet, and a young one with a fair, pretty and laughing face.
“My mother and Fanny, sir,” he whispered.
“She is very pretty, very nice, Owen,” I said, impulsively. “You’ll be sure to be happy with her.”
“Thank you, sir; I think I shall. I wish you had spoken a word or two to her, Mr. Johnny: you’d have seen how nice she is.”
“I can’t stay now, Owen. I’ll come again.”
Not even to Miss Deveen did I speak of what I had heard. I kept thinking of it as we drove round Hyde Park, and she told me I was unusually silent.
The thread was unwinding itself more and more. Once it had begun to lengthen, I suppose it had to go on. Accident led to an encounter between Matilda and Thomas Owen. Accident? No, it was this same thread of destiny. There’s no such thing as accident in the world.
During the visit to the linendraper’s, above spoken of, Miss Deveen bought a gown for Matilda. Feeling in her own heart sorry for the girl, thinking she had been somewhat hardly done by in her house, what with Hall and the rest of them, she wished to make her a present on leaving, as a token of her good-will. But the quantity of stuff bought proved not to be sufficient: Miss Deveen had doubted the point when it was cut off, and told Matilda to go herself and get two yards more. This it was, this simple incident, that led to the meeting with Owen. And I was present at it.
The money-order office of the district was situated amidst this colony of shops. In going down there one afternoon to cash an order, I overtook Matilda. She was on her way to buy the additional yards of stuff.
“I suppose I am going right, sir?” she said to me. “I don’t know much about this neighbourhood.”
“Not know much about it! What, after having lived in it more than a year!”
“I have hardly ever gone out; except to church on a Sunday,” she answered. “And what few articles I’ve wanted in the dress line, I have mostly bought at the little draper’s shop round the corner.”
Hardly had the words left her lips, when we came face to face with Thomas Owen. Matilda gave a sort of smothered cry, and stood still, gazing at him. What they said to one another in that first moment, I did not hear. Matilda had a frightened look, and was whiter than death. Presently we were all walking together towards Thomas Owen’s, he having invited Matilda to go and see his home.
But there was another encounter first. Standing at the grocer’s door was pretty Fanny Valentine. She and Matilda recognized each other, and clasped hands. It appeared to me that Matilda did it with reluctance, as though it gave her no pleasure to meet her relatives. She must have known how near they lived to Miss Deveen’s, and yet she had never sought them out. Perhaps the very fact of not wishing to see them had kept her from the spot.
They all sat down in the parlour behind the shop—a neat room. Mrs. Owen was out; her son produced some wine. I stood up by the bookcase, telling them I must be off the next minute to the post-office. But the minutes passed, and I stayed on.
How he led up to it, I hardly know; but, before I was prepared for anything of the kind, Thomas Owen had plunged wholesale into the subject of Jane Cross, recounting the history of that night, in all its minute details, to Fanny Valentine. Matilda, sitting back on the far side of the room in an armchair, looked terror-stricken: her face seemed to be turning into stone.
“Why do you begin about that, Thomas Owen?” she demanded, when words at length came to her. “It can have nothing to do with Fanny.”
“I have been wishing to tell it her for some little time, and this seems to be a fitting opportunity,” he answered, coolly resolute. “You, being better acquainted with the matter than I, can correct me if I make any blunders. I don’t care to keep secrets from Fanny: she is going to be my wife.”
Matilda’s hands lifted themselves with a convulsive movement and fell again. Her eyes flashed fire.
“Your wife?”
“If you have no objection,” he replied. “My dear old mother goes into Wales next month, and Fanny comes here in her place.”
With a cry, faint and mournful as that of a wounded dove, Matilda put her hands before her face and leaned back in her chair. If she had in truth loved Thomas Owen, if she loved him still, the announcement must have caused her cruel pain.
He resumed his narrative; assuming as facts what he had in his own mind conceived to have been the case, and by implication, but not directly, charging Matilda with the crime. It had a dreadful effect upon her; her agitation increased with every word. Suddenly she rose up in the chair, her arms lifted, her face distorted. One of those fits of passion had come on.
We had a dreadful scene. Owen was powerful, I of not much good, but we could not hold her. Fanny ran sobbing into her own door and sent in two of the shopmen.
It was the climax in Matilda Valentine’s life. One that perhaps might have been always looked for. From that hour she was an insane woman, her ravings interspersed with lucid intervals. During one of these, she disclosed the truth.
She had loved Thomas Owen with a passionate love. Mistaking the gossip and the nonsense that the young man was fond of chattering to her and Jane Cross, she believed her love was returned. On the day preceding the tragedy, when talking with him after morning service, she had taxed him with paying more attention to Jane Cross than to herself. Not a bit of it, he had lightly answered; he would take her for a walk by the seashore that evening if she liked to go. But, whether he had meant it, or not, he never came, though Matilda dressed herself in readiness. On the contrary, he went to church, met Jane there, and walked the best part of the way home with her. Matilda jealously resented this; her mind was in a chaos; she began to suspect that it was Jane Cross he liked, not herself. She said a word or two upon the subject to Jane Cross the next day, Monday; but Jane made sport of it—laughed it off. So the time went on to evening, when they were upstairs together, Jane sewing, Matilda writing. Suddenly Jane Cross said that Thomas Owen was coming along, and Matilda ran to the window. They spoke to him as he passed, and he said he would look in as he returned from Munpler. After Matilda’s letter to her brother was finished, she began a note to Thomas Owen, intending to reproach him with not keeping his promise to her and for joining Jane Cross instead. It was the first time she had ever attempted to write to him; and she stuck her work-box with the lid open behind the sheet of paper that Jane Cross might not see what she was doing. When it grew dusk, Jane Cross remarked that it was blind man’s holiday and she would go on down and lay the supper. In crossing the room, work-basket in hand, she passed behind Matilda, glanced at her letter, and saw the first words of it, “Dearest Thomas Owen.” In sport, she snatched it up, read the rest where her own name was mentioned, and laughingly began, probably out of pure fun, to teaze Matilda. “Thomas Owen your sweetheart!” she cried, running out on to the landing. “Why, he is mine. He cares more for my little finger than for–” Poor girl! She never finished her sentence. Matilda, fallen into one of those desperate fits of passion, had caught her up and was clutching her like a tiger-cat, tearing her hair, tearing pieces out of her gown. The scuffle was brief: almost in an instant Jane Cross was falling headlong down the well of the staircase, pushed over the very low balustrades by Matilda, who threw the work-basket after her.
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