RS. BARLOW, the prettiest and the happiest and the best dressed of the young wives of Summerfield, was walking toward the Catholic church. She was going to consult the old priest as to her duty to an unsatisfactory servant; for Agnes Barlow was a conscientious as well as a pretty and a happy woman.
Foolish people are fond of quoting a foolish gibe: “Be good, and you may be happy; but you will not have a good time.” The wise, however, soon become aware that if, in the course of life's journey, you achieve goodness and happiness, you will almost certainly have a good time too.
So, at least, Agnes Barlow had found in her own short life. Her excellent parents had built one of the first new houses in what had then been the pretty, old-fashioned village of Summerfield, some fifteen miles from London. There she had been born; there she had spent delightful years at the big convent school over the hill; there she had grown up into a singularly pretty girl; and there, finally,—it had seemed quite final to Agnes,—she had met the clever, fascinating young lawyer, Frank Barlow.
Frank had soon become the lover all her friends had envied her, and then the husband whose income was becoming steadily larger and larger, and who was still—so he was fond of saying and of proving in a dozen dear little daily ways—as much in love with her as on the day they were married. They lived in a charming house called the Haven, and they were the proud parents of a fine little boy, named Francis after his father, who never had any of the tiresome ailments which afflict other children.
But strange, dreadful things do happen, even in this delightful world! So thought Agnes Barlow on this pleasant May afternoon; for, as she walked to church, this pretty, happy, good woman found her thoughts dwelling uncomfortably on another woman, her sometime intimate friend and contemporary, who was neither good nor happy.
This was Teresa Maldo, the lovely half-Spanish girl who had been her favorite school-mate at the convent over the hill.
Poor, foolish, unhappy, wicked Teresa! Only ten days ago Teresa had-done a thing so extraordinary, so awful, so unprecedented, that Agnes Barlow had thought of little else ever since. She had eloped, gone right away from her home and her husband, and with a married man!
Teresa and Agnes were the same age; they had had the same upbringing; they were both—in a very different way, however—beautiful; and they had each been married, six years before, on the same day of the month. But how different had been their subsequent fates!
Teresa had at once discovered that her husband drank. But she loved him, and for a while it seemed as if marriage would reform Maldo. Unfortunately, this happy state of things did not last: he again began to drink; and people soon had reason to shake their heads over the way Teresa Maldo flirted.
Men, you see, were so sorry for this lovely young woman, blessed (or cursed) with what old-fashioned folk call “the come-hither eye,” that they made it their business to console her for such a worthless husband as was Maldo! No wonder Teresa and Agnes drifted apart; no wonder Frank Barlow soon forbade Agnes to go on accepting Mrs. Maldo's invitations.
But an odd thing had happened about a fortnight ago. And it was to this odd happening that Agnes Barlow's mind persistently recurred each time she found herself alone.
About three days before Teresa Maldo had done the mad and wicked thing of which al! Summerfield was still talking, she had paid a long call on Agnes Barlow.
The unwelcome guest had stayed a very long time; she had talked wildly and rather strangely; and Agnes, looking back, was glad to remember that no one else had come in while her old school-fellow was there.
When, at last, Teresa Maldo had made up her mind to go (luckily, some minutes before Frank was due home from town), Agnes accompanied her to the gate of the Haven, and there the other had turned round and said such odd things.
“I came to tell you something!” she had exclaimed. “But, now that I see you looking so happy, so pretty, and—forgive me for saying so, Agnes—so horribly good, I feel that I can't tell you! But, Agnes, whatever happens, you must pity, and-—and, if you can, understand me”
Yes, it was now painfully clear to Agnes Barlow that Teresa had come that day to tell her once devoted friend of the wicked thing she meant to do; and more than once pretty Mrs. Barlow had asked herself uneasily whether she had been wanting in sympathy during those two long hours—whether she could have done anything to stop Teresa on her downward course.