第40章

Frederick Prendergast was unacquainted with the popular pictures Ihave mentioned, having a very reasonable preference for the illustrated papers of his own country; otherwise--there is no telling--he might have observed the resemblance and escaped the State prison, whither he assuredly never would have gone had he married Madeline Anderson--as he fully intended to do when Miss Forde came over.He was worth at that time a great deal of money, besides being more personable than any one would have believed who knew him as '1596.' His fiancee was never too obtrusively in evidence, and if Miss Forde thought of Miss Anderson with any scruple, it was probably to reflect that if she could not take care of these things she did not deserve to have them.This at all events was how her attitude expressed itself practically; and the upshot was that Miss Anderson lost them.There came a day when Frederick Prendergast, in much discomfort of mind, took to Violet the news that Madeline had brought their engagement to an end.She, Violet, gave him some tea, and they talked frankly of the absurd misconception of the relations between them upon which his dismissal was founded; and Prendergast went away much comforted and wholly disposed to respect Miss Anderson's startling wishes.She, with what both the others thought excellent taste, persuaded her mother and sister to move to Brooklyn; and so far as the thoroughfares and social theatres of New York were concerned, the city over the river might have been a nunnery which had closed its gates upon her.It was only in imagination that she heard Frederick Prendergast's wedding-bells when, two months later, he was united to Miss Forde in Grace Church, and that after the fact, their melody being brought to her inner sense next day by the marriage notice in the 'Tribune'.

It would be painful, in view of what we know of Frederick Prendergast, to dwell upon what Madeline Anderson undeniably felt.

Besides her emotions were not destructively acute, they only lasted longer than any one could have either expected or approved.She suffered for him as well; she saw as plainly as he did the first sordid consequences of his mistake the afternoon he came to solicit her friendship, having lost other claims; and it was then perhaps, that her responsibility in allowing Violet Forde to spoil his life for him began to suggest itself to her.Up to that time she had thought of the matter differently, as she would have said, selfishly.He was not permitted to come again; but he went away lightened, inasmuch as he had added his burden to hers.

When a year later the national credit involved that of Prendergast's firm, Madeline read financial articles in the newspapers with heavy concern, surprising her family with views on 'sound money'; and when, shortly afterward, his partners brought that unhappy young man before the criminal courts for an irregular use of the firm's signature, which further involved it beyond hope of extrication, there was no moment of the day which did not find her, in spirit, beside him there.

The case dragged on through appeal, and the decision of the lower courts was not reversed.The day this became known the fact also transpired that poor Prendergast would never live to complete his ten years' term of imprisonment.He went to prison with hardly more than one lung, and in the most favourable physical condition to get rid of the other.Mrs.Prendergast wept a little over the installation, and assured Frederick that it was perfectly absurd;they were certain to get him out again; people always got people out again in America.She took him grapes and flowers once a week for about a month, and then she sailed for Europe.She put it about that her stay was to be as brief as was consistent with the transaction of certain necessary business in London; but she never came back, and Madeline Anderson had taken her place, in so far as the grapes and flowers were concerned, for many months, when the announcement of his wife's death reached Prendergast in an English paper published in Paris.About a year after that it began to be thought singular how he picked up in health, and Madeline's mother and sister occasionally romanced about the possibility of his recovering and marrying her after all--they had an enormous opinion of the artistic virtue of forgiveness--but it was not a contingency ever seriously contemplated by Miss Anderson herself.Her affection, pricked on by remorse, had long satisfied itself with the duties of her ministry.If she would not leave him until he died, it was because there was no one but herself to brighten the long day in the prison hospital for him, because she had thrown him into the arms of the woman who had deserted him, because he represented in her fancy her life's only budding towards the sun.Her patience lasted through six years, which was four years longer than any doctor had given Frederick Prendergast to live; but when one last morning she found an empty bed, and learned that Number 1596 had been discharged in his coffin, she rose from the shock with the sense of a task fully performed and a well-developed desire to see what else there might be in the world.

She announced her intention of travelling for a year or two with a maid, and her family expressed the usual acquiescence.It would help her, they said, to 'shake it off'; but they said that to one another.They were not aware--and it would have spoiled an ideal for them if they had been--that she had shaken it off, quite completely, into Prendergast's grave.

This was the curious reason why Miss Anderson's travels were so long postponed.