"Well, I can't forget that it's only a respite, and my anxiety will spoil Christmas for me."
"And so will mine, I suppose, but we must not show it."
"Oh, what a pair of reprobates we are!" groaned Plowden, as his host led him away to the billiard-room, which, as is frequently seen in the South, was a detached structure, at a little distance from the main building.
No sooner had the front door closed behind the gentlemen than Miss Fithian sprang up. Pallid and quivering with wrath, she muttered half audibly:
"So I'm 'a mischief-making old cat,' am I? and I 'foist myself on' you, you villain! do I? and I'm 'deaf as a post and an adder,' am I? Well, I'm not so deaf but what I heard the whole of your vile plot to conceal your crimes; and if I am deaf – you hypocrites! you conspirators! you bigamists! – you shall find that I'm not dumb!"
III.
CHRISTMAS EVE
Not until she was dressing for dinner did Edna Rutherford find herself alone with her husband. Then, between sobs and buttoning her shoes, broken sentences and doing up her hair, she, metaphorically speaking, smote her breast and cried, "Mea culpa! mea culpa! I have sinned against thee! Forgive me!"
Rutherford was not only a shrewd lawyer, but a natural diplomat; and finding himself master of the situation, he took advantage of it to exact a promise – which she passionately and penitently gave – that she would "never again suspect him; no, not even on the evidence of her own eyes and ears." This signal victory and the extreme comprehensiveness of the articles of capitulation thus agreed upon enabled Mr. Rutherford to meet Mr. and Mrs. Honey with that calm, clear conscience which finds its strength in the certainty of the impossibility of detection. He greeted them with the unruffled mien and courteous ease of the polished gentleman – a manner that fairly overwhelmed the ex-man-servant, and made him feel that to possess it he would willingly have bartered his remote future to the arch-fiend. None but Honey himself knew how unhappy he was made by his dress-suit, which seemed to persistently inspire him with the idea that he was still a waiter; or how wretched he was in the constant fear that he would be betrayed by that inspiration into the doing of something for which Mrs. Honey would pounce upon him. In vain he had implored his inexorable partner to be allowed to stay at home, impressing those considerations upon her with all the eloquence of which he was possessed; and indeed she saw for herself that he could not refrain, when he wore his dress-coat, from laying his handkerchief over his left arm like a waiter's napkin. Mrs. Honey replied, however, that he must meet people on a footing of equality or he would never learn how to conduct himself properly in society; an argument which finally induced him to accompany her, shamefacedly.
Only the persons already mentioned in this narration sat down that afternoon to what was destined to be a fateful Christmas Eve dinner. Smiling faces masked anxious hearts, all round the board. The Wildfens had had a more than usually spirited battle of words just before coming down from their room. Mr. Honey endured the misery of constant effort for the maintenance of a correct deportment, to insure which his wife seemed to fix her gray eyes steadily upon him with a stony glare, while she held an iron-shod heel ever ready to crunch his corns as a silent monition. Edna was still afraid that her husband had not really forgiven her in his heart; and Rutherford's mind was far from easy. Plowden felt that he might just as well be a murderer as a mere bigamist, so conscience-stricken and care-ridden was he. Miss Fithian, osseous, grim, and scowling, looked like "the skeleton at the feast," and felt like "the dread Avenger." The only undisturbed soul present was that of pretty, gentle Mrs. Plowden.
Walnuts and wine were reached at last. Then Mrs. Wildfen remembered how fond Mrs. Honey used to be of making speeches, wherever she might air her oratorical gifts, and in an unlucky moment called upon her to make a speech.
Mrs. Honey was in the act of rising to respond, when Miss Fithian, rudely pushing her down upon her chair, took precedence and demanded of Mrs. Wildfen:
"You want a speech, do you? I'll make you one that will make certain persons here tremble."
There was no doubt about that. Two of them – the conspirators – were trembling already. They felt instinctively that the hour of trouble for them had arrived.
"Cousin Edna," continued the spinster, "I regret the pain I feel it my duty to inflict upon you, but that false husband of yours has again deceived you."
Mrs. Rutherford sprang to her feet, instantly armed cap-à-pie with her never-failing jealousy: "What do you mean?" she gasped.
"Silence!" cried Rutherford in a commanding tone to Miss Fithian.
Plowden, who had been struggling with a sudden faintness, suddenly succumbed to it and fell against his wife, who cried out in alarm, "Rob! Rob! what's the matter?"
"I will not silence, sir," retorted the old maid, "for I consider it my duty to publicly expose and denounce you – 'deaf as a post' though I may be" (here Plowden gave such an agonized groan that his wife forcibly poured a glass of wine down his throat, choking but reviving him), "and 'deaf as an adder,' Mr. Rutherford, I overheard you confess the foul plot you and that monster had concocted to deceive my poor cousin, your long-suffering, unsuspecting wife. Oh! I'm not afraid of you," she cried, as Rutherford arose with a dangerous look in his eyes. "The girl you placed at school was the creature of your villainy, and not Plowden's daughter."
"What!" cried Mrs. Rutherford, as Mrs. Plowden at the same moment exclaimed: "His daughter! Of course not. He never had a daughter. Had you, ducky?"
"Ducky" was unable to quack a negative, or even to respond when Mr. Rutherford in a stentorian voice called: "Give this woman the lie, Plowden."
"And what if he should," retorted Miss Fithian; "who would believe the word of a bigamist?"
"A bigamist!" cried a chorus of voices.
"Do you mean that my husband is a bigamist?" demanded Mrs. Plowden, jumping to her feet, her eyes flashing.
"I do mean it. Ask him."
"Deny it, Rob, love! Mr. Plowden! Deny it, darling," urged Gertrude, seizing his collar and giving him a shake.
The movement disturbed the doubtful balance of his limp form; he slid from his chair and disappeared under the table, almost unconscious. Surprise at his sudden vanishing-act so startled everybody that a momentary silence ensued, in which sounded sharply the ringing of the front-door bell. Honey instinctively jumped up to answer the summons, but was promptly recalled by his quick-witted wife to a proper realization of his altered social condition. That poised heel came down with such vigor on his toes that he howled with pain.
"Do that 'ere just once more," he yelled, savagely, "han' I'll cut loose from you for good."
"You never can hear a bell ring but you want to run and answer it," she retorted, in an undertone.
At this juncture, Sam, the old darkey factotum, shambled in with a card, for which Honey, in his pain and confusion, unthinkingly stretched out his hand. Sam gave it to him and left the room.
"Who is it? Who is it?" demanded several voices.
"Read it out, Mr. Honey," called Mrs. Wildfen.
"I cawn't, ma'am; hit's writin', an' I cawn't read writin'."
"William!" cried Mrs. Honey, in an awful voice, snatching the card from him and again bringing down that merciless heel upon his already aching toes. Honey sprang to his feet with a cry of anger and pain, half-threatening and half-whining – the vocal outcome of his divided emotions – proclaiming:
"That settles it. I told you I would if you did it wunst more. 'Arriet, I said I would, and I will. I'm a-goin', for wunst and hallways."
As he dashed out of the room, with a ludicrous limp, there was a general cry of "Come back, Honey! come back!" But Mrs. Honey arose and, though very pale, said with much dignity:
"Oblige me, ladies and gentlemen, by letting him go. I deserve this