The Affair Next Door (38 page)

I do not attend weddings in general, but great as my suspense was in
reference to Miss Oliver, I felt that I could not miss seeing Miss
Althorpe married.

I had ordered a new dress for the occasion, and was in the best of
spirits as I rode to the church in which the ceremony was to be
performed. The excitement of a great social occasion was for once not
disagreeable to me, nor did I mind the crowd, though it pushed me about
rather uncomfortably till an usher came to my assistance and seated me
in a pew, which I was happy to see commanded a fine view of the chancel.

I was early, but then I always am early, and having ample opportunity
for observation, I noted every fine detail of ornamentation with
approval, Miss Althorpe's taste being of that fine order which always
falls short of ostentation. Her friends are in very many instances my
friends, and it was no small part of my pleasure to note their
well-known faces among the crowd of those that were strange to me. That
the scene was brilliant, and that silks, satins, and diamonds abounded,
goes without saying.

At last the church was full, and the hush which usually precedes the
coming of the bride was settling over the whole assemblage, when I
suddenly observed, in the person of a respectable-looking gentleman
seated in a side pew, the form and features of Mr. Gryce, the detective.
This was a shock to me, yet what was there in his presence there to
alarm me? Might not Miss Althorpe have accorded him this pleasure out of
the pure goodness of her heart? I did not look at anybody else, however,
after once my eyes fell upon him, but continued to watch his expression,
which was non-commital, though a little anxious for one engaged in a
purely social function.

The entrance of the clergyman and the sudden peal of the organ in the
well-known wedding march recalled my attention to the occasion itself,
and as at that moment the bridegroom stepped from the vestry to await
his bride at the altar, I was absorbed by his fine appearance and the
air of mingled pride and happiness with which he watched the stately
approach of the bridal procession.

But suddenly there was a stir through the whole glittering assemblage,
and the clergyman made a move and the bridegroom gave a start, and the
sound, slight as it was, of moving feet grew still, and I saw advancing
from the door on the opposite side of the altar a second bride, clad in
white and surrounded by a long veil which completely hid her face. A
second bride! and the first was half-way up the aisle, and only one
bridegroom stood ready!

The clergyman, who seemed to have as little command of his faculties as
the rest of us, tried to speak; but the approaching woman, upon whom
every regard was fixed, forestalled him by an authoritative gesture.

Advancing towards the chancel, she took her place on the spot reserved
for Miss Althorpe.

Silence had filled the church up to this moment; but at this audacious
move, a solitary wailing cry of mingled astonishment and despair went up
behind us; but before any of us could turn, and while my own heart stood
still, for I thought I recognized this veiled figure, the woman at the
altar raised her hand and pointed towards the bridegroom.

"Why does he hesitate?" she cried. "Does he not recognize the only woman
with whom he dare face God and man at the altar? Because I am already
his wedded wife, and have been so for five long years, does that make my
wearing of this veil amiss when he a husband, unreleased by the law,
dares enter this sacred place with the hope and expectation of a
bridegroom?"

It was Ruth Oliver who spoke. I recognized her voice as I had recognized
her apparel; but the emotions aroused in me by her presence and the
almost incredible claims she advanced were lost in the horror inspired
by the man she thus vehemently accused. No lost spirit from the pit
could have shown a more hideous commingling of the most terrible
passions known to man than he did in the face of this terrible
arraignment; and if Ella Althorpe, cowering in her shame and misery
half-way up the aisle, saw him in all his depravity at that instant as I
did, nothing could have saved her long-cherished love from immediate
death.

Yet he tried to speak.

"It is false!" he cried; "all false! The woman I once called wife is
dead."

"Dead, Olive Randolph? Murderer!" she exclaimed. "The blow struck in the
dark found another victim!" And pulling the veil from her face, Ruth
Oliver advanced to his side and laid her trembling hand with a firm and
decisive movement on his arm.

Was it her words, her touch, or the sound of the clock striking eight in
the great tower over our heads, which so totally overwhelmed him? As the
last stroke of the hour which was to have seen him united with Miss
Althorpe died out in the awed spaces above him, he gave a cry such as I
am sure never resounded between those sacred walls before, and sank in a
heap on the spot where but a few minutes previous he had lifted his head
in all the glow and pride of a prospective bridegroom.

It was hours before I found myself able to realize that the scene I had
just witnessed had a deeper and much more dreadful significance than
appeared to the general eye, and that Ruth Oliver, in her desperate
interruption of these treacherous nuptials, had not only made good her
prior claim to Randolph Stone as her husband, but had pointed him out to
all the world as the villainous author of that crime which for so long a
time had occupied my own and the public's attention.

Thinking that you may find the same difficulty in grasping this terrible
fact, and being anxious to save you from the suspense under which I
myself labored for so many hours, I here subjoin a written statement
made by this woman some weeks later, in which the whole mystery is
explained. It is signed Olive Randolph; the name to which she evidently
feels herself best entitled.

"The man known in New York City as Randolph Stone was first seen by me
in Michigan five years ago. His name then was John Randolph, and how he
has since come to add to this the further appellation of Stone, I must
leave to himself to explain.

"I was born in Michigan myself, and till my eighteenth year I lived
with my father, who was a widower without any other child, in a little
low cottage amid the sand mounds that border the eastern side of the
lake.

"I was not pretty, but every man who passed me on the beach or in the
streets of the little town where we went to market and to church,
stopped to look at me, and this I noticed, and from this perhaps my
unhappiness arose.

"For before I was old enough to know the difference between poverty and
riches, I began to lose all interest in my simple home duties, and to
cast longing looks at the great school building where girls like myself
learned to speak like ladies and play the piano. Yet these ambitious
promptings might have come to nothing if I had never met
him
. I might
have settled down in my own sphere and lived a useful if unsatisfied
life like my mother and my mother's mother before her.

"But fate had reserved me for wretchedness, and one day just as I was on
the verge of my eighteenth year, I saw John Randolph.

"I was coming out of church when our eyes first met, and I noticed after
the first shock my simple heart received from his handsome face and
elegant appearance, that he was surveying me with that strange look of
admiration I had seen before on so many faces; and the joy this gave me,
and the certainty which came with it of my seeing him again, made that
moment quite unlike any other in my whole life, and was the beginning of
that passion which has undone me, ruined him, and brought death and
sorrow to many others of more worth than either of us.

"He was not a resident of the town, but a passing visitor; and his
intention had been, as he has since told me, to leave the place on the
following day. But the dart which had pierced my breast had not glanced
entirely aside from his, and he remained, as he declared, to see what
there was in this little country-girl's face to make it so
unforgettable. We met first on the beach and afterwards under the strip
of pines which separate our cottage from the sand mounds, and though I
have no reason to believe he came to these interviews with any honest
purpose or deep sincerity of feeling, it is certain he exerted all his
powers to make them memorable to me, and that, in doing so, he awoke
some of the fire in his own breast which he took such wicked pleasure in
arousing in mine.

"In fact he soon showed that this was so, for I could take no step from
the house without encountering him; and the one indelible impression
remaining to me from those days is the expression his face wore as, one
sunny afternoon, he laid my hand on his arm and drew me away to have a
look at the lake booming on the beach below us. There was no love in it
as I understand love now, but the passion which informed it almost
amounted to intoxication, and if such a passion can be understood
between a man already cultivated and a girl who hardly knew how to read,
it may, in a measure, account for what followed.

"My father, who was no fool, and who saw the selfish quality in this
attractive lover of mine, was alarmed by our growing intimacy. Taking an
opportunity when we were both in a more sensible mood than common, he
put the case before Mr. Randolph in a very decided way. He told him that
either he must marry me at once or quit seeing me altogether. No delay
was to be considered and no compromise allowed.

"As my father was a man with whom no one ever disputed, John Randolph
prepared to leave the town, declaring that he could marry no one at that
stage of his career. But before he could carry out his intention, the
old intoxication returned, and he came back in a fever of love and
impatience to marry me.

"Had I been older or more experienced in the ways of the world, I would
have known that such passion as this evinced was short-lived; that there
is no witchery in a smile lasting enough to make men like him forget the
lack of those social graces to which they are accustomed. But I was mad
with happiness, and was unconscious of any cloud lowering upon our
future till the day of our first separation came, when an event occurred
which showed me what I might expect if I could not speedily raise myself
to his level.

"We were out walking, and we met a lady who had known Mr. Randolph
elsewhere. She was well dressed, which I was not, though I had not
realized it till I saw how attractive she looked in quiet colors and
with only a simple ribbon on her hat; and she had, besides, a way of
speaking which made my tones sound harsh, and robbed me of that feeling
of superiority with which I had hitherto regarded all the girls of my
acquaintance.

"But it was not her possession of these advantages, keenly as I felt
them, which awakened me to the sense of my position. It was the surprise
she showed (a surprise the source of which was not to be mistaken) when
he introduced me to her as his wife; and though she recovered herself in
a moment, and tried to be kind and gracious, I felt the sting of it and
saw that he felt it too, and consequently was not at all astonished
when, after she had passed us, he turned and looked at me critically for
the first time.

"But his way of showing his dissatisfaction gave me a shock it took me
years to recover from. 'Take off that hat,' he cried, and when I had
obeyed him, he tore out the spray which to my eyes had been its chief
adornment, and threw it into some bushes near by; then he gave me back
the hat and asked for the silk neckerchief which I had regarded as the
glory of my bridal costume. Giving it to him I saw him put it in his
pocket, and understanding now that he was trying to make me look more
like the lady we had passed, I cried out passionately: 'It is not these
things that make the difference, John, but my voice and way of walking
and speaking. Give me money and let me be educated, and then we will see
if any other woman can draw your eyes away from me.'

"But he had received a shock that made him cruel. 'You cannot make a
silk purse out of a sow's ear,' he sneered, and was silent all the rest
of the way home. I was silent too, for I never talk when I am angry, but
when we arrived in our own little room I confronted him.

"'Are you going to say any more such cruel things to me?' I asked, 'for
if you are, I should like you to say them now and be done with it.'

"He looked desperately angry, but there was yet a little love left in
his heart for me, for he laughed after he had looked at me for a minute,
and took me in his arms and said some of the fine things with which he
had previously won my heart, but not with the old fire and not with the
old effect upon me. Yet my love had not grown cold, it had only changed
from the unthinking stage to the thinking one, and I was quite in
earnest when I said: 'I know I am not as pretty or as nice as the ladies
you are accustomed to. But I have a heart that has never known any other
passion than its love for you, and from such a heart you ought to expect
a lady to grow, and there will. Only give me the chance, John; only let
me learn to read and write.'

"But he was in an incredulous state of mind, and it ended in his going
away without making any arrangements for my education. He was bound for
San Francisco, where he had business to transact, and he promised to be
back in four weeks, but before the four weeks elapsed, he wrote me that
it would be five, and later on that it would be six, and afterwards that
it would be when he had finished a big piece of work he was engaged
upon, and which would bring him a large amount of money. I believed him
and I doubted him at the same time, but I was not altogether sorry he
delayed his return for I had begun school on my own account and was fast
laying the foundation of a solid education.