The Strand Magazine/Volume 5/Issue 26/A Wedding Gift
(A Wife's Story.) By Leonard Outram.
WILL have you! I will have you! I will! I will! I will!!" I can see his see his dark face now as he looked when he spoke those words. I remember noticing how pale his lips were as he hissed out through his clenched teeth: "Though I had to fight with a hundred men for you—though I had to do murder for your sake, you should be mine. In spite of your love for him, in spite of your hate for me, in spite of all your struggles, your tears, your prayers, you shall be mine, mine, only mine!"
I had known Kenneth Moore ever since I was a little child. He had made love to me nearly as long. People spoke of us as sweethearts, and Kenneth was so confident and persevering that when my mother died and I found myself without a relative, without a single friend that I really cared for, I did promise him that I would one day be his wife. But that had scarcely happened, when Phillip Rutley came to the village and—and everybody knows I fell in love with him.
It seemed like Providence that brought Phillip to me just as I had given a half-consent to marry a man I had no love for, and with whom I could never have been happy.
I had parted from Kenneth at the front gate, and he had gone off to his home crazy with delight because at last I had given way.
It was Sunday evening late in November, very dark, very cold, and very foggy. He had brought me home from church, and he kept me there at the gate pierced through and through by the frost, and half choked by the stifling river mist, holding my hand in his own and refusing to leave me until I promised to marry him.
Home was very lonely since mother died. The farm had gone quite wrong since we lost father. My near friends advised me to wed with Kenneth Moore, and all the village people looked upon it as a settled thing. It was horribly cold, too, out there at the gate—and—and that was how it came about that I consented.
I went into the house as miserable as Kenneth had gone away happy. I hated myself for having been so weak, and I hated Kenneth because I could not love him. The door was on the latch; I went in and flung it to behind me, with a petulant violence that made old Hagar, who was rheumatic and had stayed at home that evening on account of the fog, come out of the kitchen to see what was the matter.
"It's settled at last," I cried, tearing off my bonnet and shawl; "I'm to be Mrs. Kenneth Moore. Now are you satisfied?"
"It's best so—I'm sure it's much best so," exclaimed the old woman; "but, deary-dear!" she added as I burst into a fit of sobbing, "how can I be satisfied if you don't be?"
I wouldn't talk to her about it. What was the good? She'd forgotten long ago how the heart of a girl like me hungers for its true mate, and how frightful is the thought of giving oneself to a man one does not love!
Hagar offered condolence and supper, but I would partake of neither; and I went up to bed at once, prepared to cry myself to sleep, as other girls would have done in such a plight as mine.
As I entered my room with a lighted candle in my hand, there came an awful crash at the window—the glass and framework were shivered to atoms, and in the current of air that rushed through the room, my light went out. Then there came a crackling, breaking sound from the branches of the old apple tree beneath my window; then a scraping on the bricks and window-ledge; then more splintering of glass and window-frame: the blind broke away at the top, and my toilet table was overturned—the looking-glass smashing to pieces on the floor, and I was conscious that someone had stepped into the room.
At the same moment the door behind me was pushed open, and Hagar, frightened out of her wits, peered in with a lamp in her hand.
By its light I first saw Phillip Rutley.
"It's only my balloon."
A well-built, manly, handsome young fellow, with bright eyes and light, close-cropped curly hair, he seemed like a merry boy who had just popped over a wall in search of a cricket ball rather than an intruder who had broke into the house of two lone women in so alarming a manner.
My fear yielded to indignation when I realized that it was a strange man who had made his way into my room with so little ceremony, but his first words—or rather the way in which he spoke them—disarmed me.
"I beg ten thousand pardons. Pay for all the damage. It's only my balloon!"
"Good gracious!" ejaculated Hagar.
My curiosity was aroused. I went forward to the shattered window.
"Your balloon! Did you come down in a balloon? Where is it?"
"All safe outside," replied the aeronaut consolingly. "Not a bad descent, considering this confounded—I beg pardon—this confound-ing fog. Thought I was half a mile up in the air. Opened the valve a little to drop through the cloud and discover my location. Ran against your house and anchored in your apple tree. Have you any men about the place to help me get the gas out?"
We fetched one of our farm labourers, and managed things so well, in spite of the darkness, that about midnight we had the great clumsy thing lying upon the lawn in a state of collapse. Instead of leaving it there with the car safely wedged into the apple-tree, until the morning light would let him work more easily, Rutley must needs "finish the job right off," as he said, and the result of this was that while he was standing in the car a bough suddenly broke and he was thrown to the ground, sustaining such injuries that we found him senseless when we ran to help him.
We carried him into the drawing-room, by the window of which he had fallen, and when we got the doctor to him, it was considered best that he should remain with us that night. How could we refuse him a shelter? The nearest inn was a long way off; and how could he be moved there among people who would not care for him, when the doctor said it was probable that the poor fellow was seriously hurt internally?
We kept him with us that night; yes, and for weeks after. By Heaven's mercy he will be with me all the rest of my life.
"I nursed him well and strong again."
It was this unexpected visit of Phillip's, and the feeling that grew between us as I nursed him well and strong again, that brought it about that I told Kenneth Moore, who had become so repugnant to me that I could not bear to see him or hear him speak, that I wanted to be released from the promise he had wrung from me that night at the garden gate.
His rage was terrible to witness. He saw at once that my heart was given to someone else, and guessed who it must be; for, of course, everybody knew about our visitor from the clouds. He refused to release me from my pledge to him, and uttered such wild threats against poor Phillip, whom he had not seen, and who, indeed, had not spoken of love to me at that time, that it precipitated my union with his rival. One insult that he was base enough to level at Phillip and me stung me so deeply, that I went at once to Mr. Rutley and told him how it was possible for evil minds to misconstrue his continuing to reside at the farm.
When I next met Kenneth Moore I was leaving the registrar's office upon the arm of my husband. Kenneth did not know what had happened, but when he saw us walking openly together, his face assumed an expression of such intense malignity, that a great fear for Phillip came like a chill upon my heart, and when we were alone together under the roof that might henceforth harmlessly cover us both, I had but one thought, one intense desire—to quit it for ever in secret with the man I loved, and leave no foot-print behind for our enemy to track us by.
It was now that Phillip told me that he possessed an independent fortune, by virtue of which the world lay spread out before us for our choice of a home.
"Sweet as have been the hours that I have passed here—precious and hallowed as this little spot on the wide earth's surface must ever be to me," said my husband, "I want to take you away from it and show you many goodly things you have as yet hardly dreamed of. We will not abandon your dear old home, but we will find someone to take care of it for us, and see what other paradise we can discover in which to spend our life-long honeymoon."
I had never mentioned to Phillip the name of Kenneth Moore, and so he thought it a mere playful caprice that made me say:—
"Let us go, Phillip, no one knows where—not even ourselves. Let Heaven guide us in our choice of a resting-place. Let us vanish from this village as if we had never lived in it. Let us go and be forgotten."
He looked at me in astonishment, and replied in a joking way:—
"The only means I know of to carry out your wishes to the letter, would be a nocturnal departure, as I arrived—that is to say, in my balloon."
"Yes, Phillip, yes!" I exclaimed eagerly, "in your balloon, to-night, in your balloon!"
That night, in a field by the reservoir of the gas-works of Nettledene, the balloon was inflated, and the car loaded with stores for our journey to unknown lands. The great fabric swayed and struggled in the strong breeze that blew over the hills, and it was with some difficulty that Phillip and I took our seats. All was in readiness, when Phillip, searching the car with a lantern, discovered that we had not with us the bundle of rugs and wraps which I had got ready for carrying off.
"Keep her steady, boys!" he cried. "I must run back to the house." And he leapt from the car and disappeared in the darkness.
It was weird to crouch there alone, with the great balloon swaying over my head, each plunge threatening to dislodge me from the seat to which I clung, the cords and the wicker-work straining and creaking, and the swish of the silk sounding like the hiss of a hundred snakes. It was alarming in no small degree to know how little prevented me from shooting up solitarily to take an indefinite place among the stars. I confess that I was nervous, but I only called to the men who were holding the car to please take care and not let me go without Mr. Rutley.
The words were scarcely out of my mouth when a man, whom we all thought was he, climbed into the car and hoarsely told them to let go. The order was obeyed and the earth seemed to drop away slowly beneath us as the balloon rose and drifted away before the wind.
"You haven't the rugs, after all!" I exclaimed to my companion. He turned and flung his arms about me, and the voice of Kenneth Moore it was that replied to me:—
"I have you. I swore I would have you, and I've got you at last!"
In an instant, as I perceived that I was being carried off from my husband by the very man I had been trying to escape, I seized the grapnel that lay handy and flung it over the side. It was attached to a long stout cord which was fastened to the body of the car, and by the violent jerks that ensued I knew that I was not too late to snatch at an anchorage and the chance of a rescue. The balloon, heavily ballasted, was drifting along near the ground with the grappling-iron tearing through hedges and fences and trees, right in the direction of our farm. How I prayed that it might again strike against the house as it did with Phillip, and that he might be near to succour me!
As we swept along the fields the grapnel, taking here and there a secure hold for a moment or so, would bring the car side down to the earth, nearly jerking us out, but we both clung fast to the cordage, and then the grapnel would tear its way through and the balloon would rise like a great bird into the air.
It was in the moment that one of these checks occurred, when the balloon had heeled over in the wind until it lay almost horizontally upon the surface of the ground, that I saw Phillip Rutley standing in the meadow beneath me. He cried to me as the car descended to him with me clinging to the ropes and framework for my life:—
"Courage, dearest! You're anchored. Hold on tight. You won't be hurt."
Down came the car sideways, and struck the ground violently, almost crushing him. As it rebounded he clung to the edge and held it down, shouting for help. I did not dare let go my hold, as the balloon was struggling furiously, but I shrieked to Phillip that Kenneth Moore had tried to carry me off, and implored him to save me from that man. But before I could make myself understood, Kenneth, who like myself had been holding on for dear life, threw himself suddenly upon Phillip, who, to ward off a shower of savage blows, let go of the car.
There was a heavy gust of wind, a tearing sound, the car rose out of Phillip's reach, and we dragged our anchor once more. The ground flew beneath us, and my husband was gone.
I screamed with all my might, and prepared to fling myself out when we came to the earth again, but my captor, seizing each article that lay on the floor of the car, hurled forth, with the frenzy of a madman, ballast, stores, waterkeg, cooking apparatus, everything, indiscriminately. For a moment this unburdening of the balloon did not have the effect one would suppose—that of making us shoot swiftly up into the sky, and I trusted that Phillip and the men who had helped us at the gas-works had got hold of the grapnel line, and would haul us down; but, looking over the side, I perceived that we were flying along unfettered, and increasing each minute our distance from the earth.
We were off, then, Heaven alone could tell whither! I had lost the protection of my husband, and fallen utterly into the power of a lover who was terrifying and hateful to me.
Away we sped in the darkness, higher and higher, faster and faster; and I crouched, half-fainting, in the bottom of the car, while Kenneth Moore, bending over me, poured his horrible love into my ear:—
"Minnie! My Minnie! Why did you try to play me false? Didn't you know your old playmate better than to suppose he would give you up? Thank your stars, girl, you are now quit of that scoundrel, and that the very steps he took to ruin you have put it in my power to save you from him and from your wilful self."
I forgot that he did not know Phillip and I had been married that morning, and, indignant that he should speak so of my husband, I accused him in turn of seeking to destroy me. How dared he interfere with me? How dared he speak ill of a man who was worth a thousand of himself—who had not persecuted me all my life, who loved me honestly and truly, and whom I loved with all my soul? I called Kenneth Moore a coward, a cruel, cowardly villain, and commanded him to stop the balloon, to let me go back to my home—back to Phillip Rutley, who was the only man I could ever love in the whole wide world!
"You are out of your senses, Minnie," he answered, and he clasped me tightly in his arms, while the balloon mounted higher and higher. "You are angry with me now, but when you realize that you are mine for ever and cannot escape, you will forgive me, and be grateful to me—yes, and love me, for loving you so well."
"Never!" I cried, "never! You are a thief! You have stolen me, and I hate you! I shall always hate you. Rather than endure you, I will make the balloon fall right down, down, and we will both be dashed to pieces."
I was so furious with him that I seized the valve-line that swung near me at the moment, and tugged at it with all my might. He grasped my hand, but I wound the cord about my arms, held on to it with my teeth, and he could not drag it from me. In the struggle we nearly overturned the car. I did not care. I would gladly have fallen out and lost my life now that I had lost Phillip.
Then Kenneth took from his pocket a large knife and unclasped it. I laughed aloud, for I thought he meant to frighten me into submission. But I soon saw what he meant to do. He climbed up the cordage and cut the valve-line through.
"Now you are conquered!" he cried, "and we will voyage together to the world's end."
I had risen to my feet and watched him, listened to him with a thrill of despair; but even as his triumphant words appalled me the car swayed down upon the side opposite to where I stood—the side where still hung the long line with the grapnel—and I saw the hands of a man upon the ledge; the arms, the head, and the shoulders of a man, of a man who the next minute was standing in the car, I fast in his embrace: Phillip Rutley, my true love, my husband!
Then it seemed to me that the balloon collapsed, and all things melted, and I was whirling away—down, down, down!
"I lay in Phillip's arms."
How long I was unconscious I do not know, but it was daylight when I opened my eyes. It was piercingly cold—snow was falling, and although I lay in Phillip's arms with his coat over me, while he sat in his shirt-sleeves holding me. On the other side stood Kenneth Moore. He also was in his shirt-sleeves. His coat also had been devoted to covering me. Both those men were freezing there for my sake, and I was ungrateful enough to shiver.
I need not tell you that I gave them no peace until they had put their coats on again. Then we all crouched together in the bottom of the car to keep each other warm. I shrank from Kenneth a little, but not much, for it was kind of him—so kind and generous—to suffer that awful cold for me. What surprised me was that he made no opposition to my resting in Phillip's arms, and Phillip did not seem to mind his drawing close to me.
But Kenneth explained:—
"Mr. Rutley has told me you are already his wife, Minnie. Is that true?"
I confirmed it, and asked him to pardon my choosing where my heart inclined me.
"If that is so," he said, "I have little to forgive and much to be forgiven. Had I known how things stood, I loved you too well to imperil your happiness and your life, and the life of the man you prefer to me."
"But the danger is all over now," said I; "let us be good friends for the future."
"We may at least be friends," replied Kenneth; and I caught a glance of some mysterious import that passed between the men. The question it would have led me to ask was postponed by the account Phillip gave of his presence in the balloon-car—how by springing into the air as the grapnel swung past him, dragged clear by the rising balloon, he had caught the irons and then the rope, climbing up foot by foot, swinging to and fro in the darkness, up, up, until the whole length of the rope was accomplished and he reached my side. Brave, strong, dear Phillip!
And, now, once more he would have it that I must wear his coat.
"The sun's up, Minnie, and he'll soon put warmth into our bones. I'm going to have some exercise. My coat will be best over you."
Had it not been so excruciatingly cold we might have enjoyed the grandeur of our sail through the bright, clear heavens, the big brown balloon swelling broadly above us. Phillip tried to keep up our spirits by calling attention to these things, but Kenneth said little or nothing, and looked so despondent that, wishing to divert his thoughts from his disappointment concerning myself, which I supposed was his trouble, I heedlessly blurted out that I was starving, and asked him to give me some breakfast.
Then it transpired that he had thrown out of the car all the provisions with which we had been supplied for our journey.
The discovery took the smiles out of Phillip's merry face.
"You'll have to hold on a bit, little woman," said he. "When we get to a waystation or an hotel, we'll show the refreshment contractors what sort of appetites are to be found up above."
Then I asked them where we were going; whereabouts we had got to; and why we did not descend. Which elicited the fact that Kenneth had thrown away the instruments by which the aeronaut informs himself of his location and the direction of his course. For a long time Phillip playfully put me off in my petition to be restored to terra firma, but at last it came out that the valve-line being cut we could not descend, and that the balloon must speed on, mounting higher and higher, until it would probably burst in the extreme tension of the air.
"Soon after that," said Phillip, with a grim, hard laugh, "we shall be back on the earth again."
We found it difficult to enjoy the trip after this prospect was made clear. Nor did conversation flow very freely. The hours dragged slowly on, and our sufferings increased.
At last Phillip made up his mind to attempt a desperate remedy. What it was he would not tell me, but, kissing me tenderly, he made me lie down and covered my head with his coat.
Then he took off his boots, and then the car creaked and swayed, and suddenly I felt he was gone out of it. He had told me not to look out from under his coat; but how could I obey him? I did look, and I saw him climbing like a cat up the round, hard side of the balloon, clinging with hands and feet to the netting that covered it.
As he mounted, the balloon swayed over with his weight until it was right above him and he could hardly hold on to the cords with his toes and his fingers. Still he crept on, and still the great silken fabric heeled over, as if it resented his boldness and would crush him.
Once his foothold gave way, and he dropped to his full length, retaining only his hand-grip of the thin cords, which nearly cut his fingers in two under the strain of his whole weight. I thought he was gone; I thought I had lost him for ever. It seemed impossible he could keep his hold, and even if he did the weak netting must give way. It stretched down where he grasped it into a bag form and increased his distance from the balloon, so that he could not reach with his feet, although he drew his body up and made many a desperate effort to do so.
"Clinging with hands and feet ot the netting."
But while I watched him in an agony of powerlessness to help, the balloon slowly regained the perpendicular, and just as Phillip seemed at the point of exhaustion his feet caught once more in the netting, and, with his arms thrust through the meshes and twisted in and out for security, while his strong teeth also gripped the cord, I saw my husband in comparative safety once more. I turned to relieve my pent-up feelings to Kenneth, but he was not in the car—only his boots. He had seen Phillip's peril, and climbed up on the other side of the balloon to restore the balance.
But now the wicked thing served them another trick; it slowly lay over on its side under the weight of the two men, who were now poised like panniers upon the extreme convexity of the silk. This was very perilous for both, but the change of position gave them a little rest, and Phillip shouted instructions round to Kenneth to slowly work his way back to the car, while he (Phillip) would mount to the top of the balloon, the surface of which would be brought under him by Kenneth's weight. It was my part to make them balance each other. This I did by watching the tendency of the balloon, and telling Kenneth to move to right or left as I saw it become necessary. It was very difficult for us all. The great fabric wobbled about most capriciously, sometimes with a sudden turn that took us all by surprise, and would have jerked every one of us into space, had we not all been clinging fast to the cordage.
At last Phillip shouted:—
"Get ready to slip down steadily into the car."
"I am ready," replied Kenneth.
"Then go!" came from Phillip. "Easy does it! Steady! Don't hurry! Get right down into the middle of the car, both of you, and keep quite still."
We did as he told us, and as Kenneth joined me, we heard a faint cheer from above, and the message:—
"Safe on the top of the balloon!"
"Look, Minnie, look!" cried Kenneth; and on a cloud-bank we saw the image of our balloon with a figure sitting on the summit, which could only be Phillip Rutley.
"Take care, my dearest! take care!" I besought him.
"I'm all right as long as you two keep still," he declared; but it was not so.
After he had been up there about ten minutes trying to mend the escape-valve, so that we could control it from the car, a puff of wind came and overturned the balloon completely. In a moment the aspect of the monster was transformed into a crude resemblance to the badge of the Golden Fleece—the car with Kenneth and me in it at one end, and Phillip Rutley hanging from the other, the huge gas-bag like the body of the sheep of Colchis in the middle.
And now the balloon twisted round and round as if resolved to wrench itself from Phillip's grasp, but he held on as a brave man always does when the alternative is fight or die. The terrible difficulty he had in getting back I shudder to think of. It is needless to recount it now. Many times I thought that both men must lose their lives, and I should finish this awful voyage alone. But in the end I had my arms around Phillip's neck once more, and was thanking God for giving him back to me.
I don't think I half expressed my gratitude to poor Kenneth, who had so bravely and generously helped to save him. I wish I had said more when I look back at that time now. But my love for Phillip made me blind to everything.
Phillip was very much done up, and greatly dissatisfied with the result of his exertions; but he soon began to make the best of things, as he always did.
"I'm a selfish duffer, Minnie," said he. "All the good I've done by frightening you like this is to get myself splendidly warm."
"What, have you done nothing to the valve?"
"Didn't have time. No, Moore and I must try to get at it from below, though from what I saw before I started to go aloft, it seemed impossible."
"But we are descending."
"Eh?"
"Descending rapidly. See how fast we are diving into that cloud below!"
"It's true! We're dropping. What can it mean?"
As he spoke we were immersed in a dense white mist, which wetted us through as if we had been plunged in water. Then suddenly the car was filled with whirling snow—thick masses of snow that covered us so that we could not see each other; choked us so that we could hardly speak or breathe.
And the cold! the cold! It cut us like knives; it beat the life out of us as if with hammers.
This sudden, overwhelming horror struck us dumb. We could only cling together and pray. It was plain that there must be a rent in the silk, a large one, caused probably by the climbing of the men, a rent that might widen at any moment and reduce the balloon to ribbons.
We were being dashed along in a wild storm of wind and snow, the headlong force of which alone delayed the fate which seemed surely to await us. Where should we fall? The world beneath us was near and palpable, yet we could not distinguish any object upon it. But we fell lower and lower, until our eyes informed us all in an instant, and we exclaimed together:—
"We are falling into the sea!" Yes, there it was beneath us, raging and leaping like a beast of prey. We should be drowned! We must be drowned! There was no hope, none!
Down we came slantwise to the water. The foam from the top of a mountain-wave scudded through the ropes of the car. Then the hurricane bore us up again on its fierce breast, and—yes, it was bearing us to the shore!
We saw the coast-line, the high, red cliffs—saw the cruel rocks at their base! Horrible! Better far to fall into the water and drown, if die we must.
The balloon flew over the rugged boulders, the snow and the foam of the sea indistinguishable around us, and made straight for the high, towering precipice.
We should dash against the jagged front! The balloon was plunging down like a maddened bull, when suddenly, within 12ft. of the rock, there was a thrilling cry from Kenneth Moore, and up we shot, almost clearing the projecting summit. Almost—not quite—sufficiently to escape death; but the car, tripping against the very verge, hurled Phillip and myself, clasped in each other's arms, far over the level snow.
We rose unhurt, to find ourselves alone.
What had become of our comrade—my childhood's playfellow, the man who had loved me so well, and whom I had cast away?
He was found later by some fishermen—a shapeless corpse upon the beach.
I stood awe-stricken in an outbuilding of a little inn that gave us shelter, whither they had borne the poor shattered body, and I wept over it as it lay there covered with the fragment of a sail.
My husband was by my side, and his voice was hushed and broken, as he said to me:—
"Minnie, I believe that, under God, our lives were saved by Kenneth Moore. Did you not hear that cry of his when we were about to crash into the face of the cliff?"
"Yes, Phillip," I answered, sobbing, "and I missed him suddenly as the balloon rose."
"You heard the words of that parting cry?"
"Yes, oh, yes! He said: 'A Wedding Gift! Minnie! A Wedding Gift!'"
"And then?"
"He left us together."