MRS. MAYO’S SECOND HUSBAND.

BY MRS. ALEX. M’VEIGH MILLER.

Mrs. Mayo’s first husband was stretched upon his dying bed.

The doctor had told him so kindly but frankly, and advised him to make his will.

He lay thinking how he should divide his small fortune, between his wife and their two pretty children, when suddenly it occurred to him that his young wife might marry again, might have a second husband.

He gasped, and looked at her sitting close by the bed, her fair face worn with watching and grief, the tender tears in her dark blue eyes. The blood that had been coursing so sluggishly through his veins suddenly bounded forward in a burning tide.

He had realized more forcibly than ever before the noble beauty of his wife. He had carried her off seven years before from a score of lovers, and she was still young, still charming. History might repeat itself.

You would not have thought that a dying man could feel jealous, and yet a pang of cruel envy tore Hunter Mayo’s heart.

Elinor’s small white hand—the one that wore his wedding ring—was nestled in his own. He pressed it feebly.

“Darling, you have been a good wife to me,” he murmured, and her soft eyes beamed through her tears.

“Oh, Hunter, I’ve tried to be. I’m glad you realize it at last,” she sighed, in a plaintive tone.

He continued, tenderly:

“You have been so faithful—you have never refused any wish of mine. And now, Elinor, I have one dying request to make.”

His glance was so eager, his tone so pleading that she gazed into his thin, worn face in surprise.

“I know you will grant me your promise, dear heart, for it is only this—when I am dead, that you will always be true to my memory—that you will never marry again!”

A little startled cry came from Elinor’s lips, the color rushed into her cheeks, her eyes turned on him with a gentle reproach that touched his heart.

“Have I grieved you, my dear, by even hinting at a second marriage? Forgive me. I know you can never forget me, but I can die easier with your promise. Oh, my Elinor, I cannot bear that any other man should possess you, ever have the chance to ill-treat my darling, whom I have so fondly cherished!”

His voice was quite strong and impassioned for a dying man, and his large gray eyes searched her fair face eagerly. Was it fancy, or did her lip curl, ever so slightly, at his last words.

He repeated, anxiously:

“I cannot die in peace without your promise never to marry again!”

Why did those burning tears sparkle out upon her pale cheeks beneath the drooping lashes? She murmured, plaintively:

“Oh, Hunter, you are cruel!”

“Cruel, Elinor! Do you mean that—that—you will refuse?”

And the most cruel blow his egotism had ever received came with her faltering answer:

“Forgive me, dear, but I cannot promise.”

The shock was so great that he closed his eyes and gasped feebly, believing that his last hour was at hand. In a moment Elinor was on her knees by his side, bathing his face with her warm tears.

“Oh, Hunter, do not die! I love you, I love you!”

The blood leaped quickly through his veins again. His eyes unclosed languidly.

“Then you will promise me?” he pleaded.

“Oh, Hunter, I cannot, must not! How can you wish me to blight my whole future?”

“And you really wish, then, to have a second husband?”

The dying man’s voice was strong with scorn of her inconstancy.

“I—I—perhaps so, Hunter—but only after a long, long time,” and Elinor kissed him and clung to him lovingly; a strange proceeding when she had just wrung his heart by her declaration that she would not live out her days a widow.

He pushed her away in a sudden gust of jealous anger.

“You have never loved me, Elinor?”

“I loved you always, love you still,” she sobbed. “But, Hunter—it—is—just the other way! You have never loved me!”

He was speechless with surprise at this strange charge. “Never loved her!” Why, then, had he made her his wife and the mother of his beautiful children?

Elinor went on speaking, low, but clearly, like one under the stress of some overmastering emotion:

“God knows I do not wish to pain you, Hunter, but yet I would like to justify myself. They say that dying eyes see clearly, because the dying are already beyond the reach of earthly prejudice and passion. So, dear, will you let me speak out plainly now what has been in my heart for years.”

“Go on,” he answered, in feeble wonder at the fire and passion of her lovely, tear-stained face.

“I must tell you some of my inmost thoughts, and perhaps you will laugh at them,” breathed the plaintive voice. “But, Hunter, I believe that God creates men and women as soul-mates for each other, but they—they do not always find each other, and then—blindly—they wed as chance or fancy dictates, and disunion and lack of harmony result. This has been our fate, my poor husband. We were not intended for each other, and each has failed to realize the other’s ideal.”

“Speak for yourself,” he answered, with unnecessary curtness; “I never had an ideal.”

“Oh, yes, you did, dear, though perhaps you did not realize it. Every one has an unconscious ideal, I think. You had yours, Hunter, but you did not find it in me,” she answered, in that sweet, plaintive voice that always touched an echoing chord in the hearer’s heart. “When the honey-moon glamour wore off you wearied of me. Do not think I did not see it, dear, even though my eyes were full of tears when I found how far you fell short of my ideal.”

“What was your ideal?” he asked, sneeringly.

Although he was dying, he could still sneer at a woman’s romantic fancies, derived, he thought, from novels.

She sighed wearily, and answered:

“It was very simple. Just a loving, appreciative companion. I have somewhere read that men and women are created the perfect complement of each other, fulfilling in their wedded life the qualities separately lacking in each. I expected that my husband and I would be much together, so contented in our mutual love, so interested in the same things, so tenderly united, that we could never feel quite happy apart. That was my fancy, and I know I was not wrong, for I have seen a few wedded lovers like that, and they were happy—happy as I had hoped to be, as I might have been, only—I married the wrong man!”

“Elinor!” he cried, in angry remonstrance, but she had the courage of her convictions; she would not pause.

“It is God’s truth!” she said. “We are not soul-mates, or we should have found more happiness together, dear. I call you dear, for I love you, Hunter, in spite of the mistake of our marriage.”

“It was no mistake,” he muttered, with angry resentment.

“You are good to say so, but you flatter me;” her exquisite lips curled in spite of the dew on her long lashes. “But, Hunter, I have not been blind, and I have seen how little you cared for my companionship, how eagerly you sought pretexts for leaving my side and joining your male companions, in whose company you took such keen delight. Business, you always said, when I complained of loneliness, and yet I knew that it was only a subterfuge, for you were well-to-do, and lived a life of elegant leisure. My society was irksome to you, and you released yourself from it all that you could. Why, I wondered, for other men always seemed to find my company agreeable, and I could have played the role of the married flirt if I had wished. But I did not choose, for I loved you well, in spite of your neglect. But it grew worse and worse. You ceased going out with me at all, until, in very shame, I remained closely at home that the world might not observe and censure your indifference. Desperate with misery, I reproached you, appealed to you, and—you grew angry, called me unreasonable and hysterical, and grew colder and more indifferent than ever. Then I turned for solace to my two little ones, but I could not find the comfort that I sought. I grew hopeless and bitterly resentful, but suffered on in silence, realizing that I had missed my soul-mate, and could expect no joy in my life.”

He had listened in resentful silence to the passionate arraignment of a tortured woman’s heart. Now he cried out, impatiently:

“Elinor, I was always true to you. I never had a thought of another woman!”

“I know that, Hunter. I was jealous of men, not women. You were so fond of your own sex, you spent all your time with them, you enjoyed their society more than mine, and so—I was left alone, the gladness went out of my life, I grew bitter and rebellious. I wanted to get full measure of joy out of this life of mine, but my ill-judged marriage had wrecked it—eternally, I thought. But now—oh, Hunter, do not think me hard and cruel, for I am but just to myself and you. Now it seems to me that when you are gone, and I am over my grieving, I may yet retrieve the past, may yet find my twin-soul, the one God created for me, and be happy. And so I cannot promise what you ask me, for it would be a wrong to myself and to my ideal, who may yet be mine. I have a right to some happiness in my life, Hunter, and why should I sacrifice all my future to you, who would not give me the past years that were rightfully mine?” and her cheeks burned and her eyes gleamed with the truth of her words as she arraigned her selfish, egotistical husband.

He lay gasping and soul-stricken before the fire of those vivid home-truths. His self-love had received a cruel wound.

Despite his selfishness, he had loved Elinor well, after his own fashion, and he was not willing to admit that she had any cause of complaint.

In a way, it enraged him that his fair, gentle young wife had dared to think out a problem of life for herself, had so individualized herself as to claim for herself a future of bliss in which he could have no part.

And just then she murmured, pathetically:

“All this would have been different, Hunter, had you but loved me truly, and sought my happiness instead of your own. It was my right and your duty. And you can see, now that you have been ill for so many weeks, how little you were cared for by the men in whose society you took your chief delight. Have they been near you to comfort or console? No, they scarcely give you a thought. It is I, your neglected wife, who have been your devoted nurse! And, Hunter, had you been as devoted to me these past years, I would have remained your inconsolable widow to my life’s end; but, as I have said, it—is—different.”

Anger flashed from his eyes as he cried out:

“I am glad you have been so frank before I made my will. I shall not leave you one penny more than you can claim under the law. The rest shall all go to my children. I will not leave my money to be squandered by your second husband.”

She smiled patiently, but she answered, firmly:

“Nor would I sacrifice my hopes of the future for so poor a price as your gold!”

Then, as if realizing suddenly that she had wounded him in his helplessness, she threw her arms about him, sobbing, tenderly:

“Oh, forgive my wild words, for I am starving for a love as warm and tender as my own. My days have been so lonely while you staid away from me by day, and pored over your papers by night. I have been so jealous of everybody and everything that could interest you more than I could! Perhaps I was selfish. Do you think so, dear?”

He only answered, bitterly:

“I hope your second husband may realize all your ambitions.”

“But I have no ambitions. I do not want my husband to be great, only good and loving, and always loth to leave my side. Yes, and to tell me sometimes that he loves me. You have forgotten for so long to tell me that, dear; but perhaps you did not guess how a woman’s heart hungers for affection. I have often wished you were quite poor, Hunter. Then you would not be so popular, and you would appreciate the true hearts at home more. We would work hard for our little children, and have a simple love-life, finding our greatest joy in each other’s company.”

He put out his weak hand entreatingly.

“No more. I cannot bear it,” he said, in a subdued voice. “It is time for my lawyer now. Do not mind my jealous ravings, dearest. You shall have a fair share of the money, even if you give it to my rival, your second husband.”

The lawyer thought that Mr. Mayo’s voice was quite strong for that of a dying man, but the doctor, who happened in soon after the will was made, and the patient seemed asleep, ascribed it to the effect of excitement.

They talked a few minutes softly, and Dr. Gray whispered, undreaming that he was overheard by the patient:

“I’m glad that he provided so well for that noble little wife. He has had a hard struggle with fever these six weeks, and if anything could have saved him, it would have been her devoted nursing. I’m certain he did not deserve it, either, for he was one of those namby-pamby husbands who don’t know how to appreciate a good wife, and only go home to eat and sleep, and this fellow, they say, more often than not took dinner and supper at his club in town, leaving poor Elinor alone in their country home.”

But life lingered on strangely in that wasted frame, and at last the doctor said the invalid was improving, and must go off very soon to the mountains.

“It will do you and the children good, too, my darling,” he said, tenderly, to his wife.

And she looked at him in honest surprise.

“You do not mean that you wish to take us? You know you would enjoy it better alone, or with some gentleman friend.”

The shamed crimson flushed into his cheek as he kissed her little hand.

“Elinor, forgive me all the past, and let me try to make it up to you,” he cried. “I never knew how well I loved you until I began to grow jealous of your probable second husband. It was that awful jealousy, I think, that snatched me back from the very grave. I am going to live, dear, but I’ve done a lot of thinking, and become a changed man. I want to realize your ideal, to be my own successor in your heart, to fulfill all the promise of your second husband. Will you let me try, my darling? Come with me, you and the babies, and let us begin our new sweet love-life now!”

“Gladly,” smiled the tender, forgiving wife.