ng laugh, she ran
out of the room.
"Well, from that time Sarah hated me with her whole heart and soul, and
she is a woman who can hate, too. I was a fool to let her go on biding
with us--a besotted fool--but I never said a word to Mary, for I knew it
would grieve her. Things went on much as before, but after a time I
began to find that there was a bit of a change in Mary herself. She had
always been so trusting and so innocent, but now she became queer and
suspicious, wanting to know where I had been and what I had been doing,
and whom my letters were from, and what I had in my pockets, and a
thousand such follies. Day by day she grew queerer and more irritable,
and we had causeless rows about nothing. I was fairly puzzled by it all.
Sarah avoided me now, but she and Mary were just inseparable. I can see
now how she was plotting and scheming and poisoning my wife's mind
against me, but I was such a blind beetle that I could not understand it
at the time. Then I broke my blue ribbon and began to drink again, but I
think I should not have done it if Mary had been the same as ever. She
had some reason to be disgusted with me now, and the gap between us
began to be wider and wider. And then this Alec Fairbairn chipped in,
and things became a thousand times blacker.
[Illustration: "THAT'S ALL RIGHT, MY LASS, SAID I."]
"It was to see Sarah that he came to my house first, but soon it was to
see us, for he was a man with winning ways, and he made friends wherever
he went. He was a dashing, swaggering chap, smart and curled, who had
seen half the world, and could talk of what he had seen. He was good
company, I won't deny it, and he had wonderful polite ways with him for
a sailor man, so that I think there must have been a time when he knew
more of the poop than the forecastle. For a month he was in and out of
my house, and never once did it cross my mind that harm might come of
his soft, tricky ways. And then at last something made me suspect, and
from that day my peace was gone for ever.
"It was only a little thing, too. I had come into the parlour
unexpected, and as I walked in at the door I saw a light of welcome on
my wife's face. But as she saw who it was it faded again, and she
turned away with a look of disappointment. That was enough for me. There
was no one but Alec Fairbairn whose step she could have mistaken for
mine. If I could have seen him then I should have killed him, for I have
always been like a madman
|