VII Her Big Trump
One day she got a big letter with the American postmark. She laughed, made a certain mystery of it, and kept it from him.
“And this is my nurse!” he joyed.
“Yes!” she admitted.
He was opening a letter of his own which he was keeping from her.
“But there must be no secrets between chums.”
She tried to take the letter, but he withheld it.
“Ah, I must first confess? Well—how much do you love me?”
“As much as I can,” said her husband, seriously.
“I know that to be a great deal. How much can you forgive?”
Now she was in his arms.
“As much as I love,” said Ravant.
“Then I am quite safe.”
She crept a little deeper into his arms and opened her letter.
“Dearest, I married you under an assumed name.”
“Thank God!” laughed Ravant—“unless it is a worse one than Brown.”
“I could have been very happy as Mrs. Brown—as happy as I am as Mrs. Ravant.”
She ignored the rest and withdrew the contents of the letter. They appeared to be a deed.
“Dearest, I have a house. Are you angry that I am so rich? Part of an inheritance. But now it must be sold. This is from my lawyer. He tells me that I must sign the deed both with my proper maiden name and as your wife”—she stooped there to kiss him, and repeated the word—“and you must join in it as my husband. It is a bore to own a house, isn’t it, dearest?”
But her lightness found him full of terror. She heard him breathe:
“What was your maiden name?”
“Ruth Fenton,” smiled his wife.
Again that exclamation.
“What is it?” she begged.
“No,” he said. “There must be no secret between chums. My punishment has come. And it is greater than I could possibly have conceived. I must read you this, and then if you wish—go away from you.”
“Not while I am here,” she laughed, beginning to understand. “Whither thou goest, I will go. You can’t—cannot lose me—me, your lawful wife!”
Though she laughed with tremendous happiness, he read the letter through with no abatement of his terror.
“As you know, I have been all these two years finding the person who shot you. At last I have her—yes, her! It is a woman. Her name is Ruth Fenton. Her large fortune has been exhausted by your world-renowned extravagances, and she is now selling the last thing she owns—her house. I hope you feel as mean as I do—for you!
Gast.”
“Yes, I am the old man,” laughed Ravant’s happy wife into her husband’s face.
“Yes,” he said, and then again, “yes—you are—the—old—man! The old man! You! Me!”
“We!” cooed his wife.
“All those things I said about him were about you! To you!”
“Yes! Wasn’t it funny?”
A long time they sat there, she looking up, he down—eye to eye. But she never ceased to smile.
He tried to go.
“Not while I am here!” she laughed, and, slipping down, held him by the knees.
“No, beloved, after this there shall be, indeed, no secrets between us. I was so unhappy and alone that night that I meant to kill myself. No one cared for me, and I had to have some one care for me or die! My hand must have slipped, or, perhaps, I grew afraid. But God himself directed that bullet! You were mine and you were passing—going away from me! If you had gone on, we would never have met. It was the only way to stop you and give you to me, me to you. I went to the hospital and paid to nurse you. They said you needed no nursing, only care and quiet. And when they knew how important it was to me, for I told them all, they broke their rules all to pieces, and let me do it. And, now, dear one, you must keep what I have given you, what the good God has! You shall keep it!” (as he tried to dislodge her) “and you shall keep me! For I will not go! There, I am a beggar!” She laughed gloriously. “But the happiest beggar on earth, and you have got to support your happy beggar wife forever hereafter. That is to be your punishment.”
“Happy punishment!” was the thought which flashed through Ravant.
But he grimly put it out, and for one more last moment the old, brutal Ravant tried to come back. Alas! she was on the floor there before him, her elbows on his knees, her face, halting between smiles and tears, upraised to his, looking out of its glory of living hair, watching the portents there.
And when they did not develop fast enough toward joy, she locked her hands behind his neck suddenly and drew his head down, to the peril of a dislocation.
“You must stay to support your beggar wife; don’t you see?—won’t you understand?—and perhaps her beggar—child!”
“What!” cried Ravant, everything else out of his head in an instant.
“I always keep my biggest trump for the last, dearest. All women do, don’t they? It’s so lovely to play it then—when every one thinks all is lost. Oh, beloved! smile, laugh, shout with me! How can you go away now when you have a beggar wife to support, and a beggar—ch—! Ah! ha! ha!”
How could the old, brutal Ravant come back? He never did. How could he go? He did not.
“But we will not sell your house. We will go back, even if it must be in the steerage, and work together, live together, happily ever after!”
“Dominus vobiscum!” cried Ravant’s happy wife, leaping into his arms.
And all this, save the steerage, they did. And at this very moment they are living as happily as they planned.