Kitabı oku: «An Old Man's Darling», sayfa 4

CHAPTER VIII

When Bonnibel arrived in New York the day after her rencontre with the sibyl, she found her uncle's fine carriage in waiting for her at the depot. Mrs. Arnold, though she would gladly have cast the girl off, was too much afraid of the world's dictum to carry her wishes into effect. She determined, therefore, that society should have no cause to accuse her of failing in kindness to her husband's orphan niece. She knew well what disapprobation and censure a contrary course would have created, for the beautiful daughter of the famous General Vere, though she had not yet been formally introduced to society, was widely celebrated for her grace and beauty, and her debut, while she had been considered her uncle's heiress, had been anticipated with much interest. Of course her penniless condition now would make a great difference in the eyes of the fickle world of fashion, but still Mrs. Arnold knew that nothing could deprive Bonnibel of the prestige of birth and rank. The young mother who had died in giving her birth, had been one of the proud and well-born Arnolds. Her father, a gay and gallant soldier, though he had quickly dissipated her mother's fortune, had yet left her a prouder heritage than wealth—a fame that would live forever in the annals of his country, perpetuating in history the name of the chivalrous soldier who had gallantly fallen at the head of his command while engaged in one of the most gallant actions on record.

So Bonnibel found a welcome, albeit a chilling one, waiting for her in Mrs. Arnold's grand drawing-room when she arrived there cold and weary. The mother and daughter touched her fingers carelessly, and offered frigid congratulations upon her recovery. Mrs. Arnold then dismissed her to her own apartments to rest and refresh her toilet under the care of her maid.

"You need not be jealous of her youth and beauty any more, Felise," said Mrs. Arnold complacently to her daughter. "She has changed almost beyond recognition. Did you ever see such a fright?"

Felise Herbert, hovering over the bright fire that burned on the marble hearth, looked up angrily.

"Mother, you talk like a fool," she said, roughly. "How can you fail to see that she is more beautiful than ever? She only looked like a great wax doll before with her pink cheeks and long curls. Now with that new expression that has come into her face she looks like a haunting picture. One could not forget such a face. And mourning is perfectly becoming to her blonde complexion, while my olive skin is rendered perfectly hideous by it. I see no reason why I should spoil my looks by wearing black for a man that was no relation of mine, and whom I cordially hated!"

Mrs. Arnold saw that Felise was in a passion, and she began to grow nervous accordingly. Felise, if that were possible, was a worse woman than her mother, and possessed an iron will. She was the power behind the throne before whom Mrs. Arnold trembled in fear and bowed in adoration.

She hastened to console the angry girl.

"I think you are mistaken, my dear," she said. "I cannot see a vestige of prettiness left. Her hair is gone, her color has faded, and she never smiles now to show the dimples that people used to call so distracting. There are few that would give her a second glance. Besides, what is beauty without wealth? You know in our world it simply counts for nothing. She can never rival you a second now that it is known that she has no money and that you will be my heiress."

The sullen countenance of Felise began to grow brighter at the latter consolatory clause.

"As to the black," pursued Mrs. Arnold, "of course you and I know that it is a mere sham; but then, Felise, it is necessary to make that much concession to the opinion of the world. How they would cavil if you failed in that mark of respect to the memory of your step-father."

"There is one consolation," said Felise, brightening up, "I can lay it aside within a year."

"And then, no doubt, you will don the bridal robe as the wife of the millionaire, Colonel Carlyle," Mrs. Arnold rejoined, with an air of great satisfaction.

"Perhaps so," said her daughter, clouding over again; "but you need not be so sure. He has not proposed yet."

"But he will soon," asserted the widow, confidently.

"I expected he would do so, until now," said Felise, sharply. "The old dotard appeared to admire me very much; but since Bonnibel Vere has returned to flaunt her baby-beauty before him, his fickle fancy may turn to her. A pretty face can make a fool of an old man, you know."

"We must keep her in the background, then," said Mrs. Arnold, reassuringly. "Not that I am the least apprehensive of danger, my dear, but since your fears take that direction he shall not see her until all is secure, and you must bring him to the point as soon as possible."

"I have done my best," said Felise, "but he hovers on the brink apparently afraid to take the leap. I cannot understand such dawdling on the part of one who has already buried two wives. He cannot be afflicted with timidity."

"We must give him a hint that I shall settle fifty thousand dollars on you the day you marry," said her mother. "I have heard that he is very avaricious. It is a common vice of age and infirmity. He fears you will spend his wealth too freely."

"And so I will, if I get a chance," said Felise, coarsely. "I have been stinted all my life by the stepfather who hated me. Let me but become Mrs. Colonel Carlyle, and I assure you I will queen it right royally."

"You would become the position very much," said the admiring mother, "and I should be very proud of my daughter's graceful ease in spending her husband's millions."

Miss Herbert's proud lips curled in triumph. She arose and began to pace the floor restlessly, her eyes shining with pleased anticipation of the day which she hoped was not far distant when she would marry the rich man whose wealth she coveted, and become a queen in society. She looked around her at the splendor and elegance of her mother's drawing-room with dissatisfaction, and resolved that her own should be far more fine and costly, her attire more extravagant, and her diamonds more splendid. She was tired of reigning with her mother. She wanted to rule over a kingdom of her own.

Felise had no more heart than a stone. Her only god was wealth, and her ambition was towering. She thought only of self, and felt not the first emotion of gratitude to the mother who had schemed and planned for her all her life. All she desired was unbounded wealth and the power to rule in her own right.

"Miss Felise has caught a beau at last," said Bonnibel's maid to her as she brushed the soft locks of her mistress. She had been having a hasty chat with Miss Herbert's maid since her arrival that day, and had gathered a good deal of gossip in the servants' hall.

"Indeed?" asked Bonnibel, languidly, "what is his name, Lucy?"

"He is a Colonel Carlyle, miss; a very old man Janet do say, but worth his millions. He have buried his two wives already, I hear, and Miss Herbert is like to be a third one. I wish him joy of her; Janet knows what her temper is."

"You need not speak so, Lucy," said Bonnibel, reprovingly, to the maid whose loquacity was far ahead of her grammar. "I daresay Janet gives her cause to indulge in temper sometimes."

"Lor! Miss Bonnibel," said Lucy, "Janet is as mild as a dove; but Miss Felise, she have slapped Janet's mouth twice, and scolds her day in and day out. Janet says that Colonel Carlyle will catch a Tartar when he gets her."

"Be quiet, Lucy; my head aches," said Bonnibel, thinking it very improper for the girl to discuss her superior's affairs so freely; she therefore dismissed the subject and thought no more about it, little dreaming that it was one portentous of evil to herself.

Felise need not have troubled herself with the fear of Bonnibel's rivalry. The young girl was only too willing to be kept in the background. In the seclusion which Mrs. Arnold deemed it proper to observe after their dreadful and tragic bereavement they received but few visitors and Bonnibel was glad that her recent illness was considered a sufficient pretext for denying herself to even these few. Some there were—a few old friends and one or two loving schoolmates—who refused to be denied and whom Bonnibel reluctantly admitted, but these few found her so changed in appearance and broken in spirit that they went away marveling at her persistent grief for the uncle whom the world blamed very much because he had failed to provide for her as became her birth and position.

But while the world censured Mr. Arnold's neglect of her, Bonnibel never blamed her uncle by word or thought. She believed what he had told her on the memorable evening of his death. He had provided for her, she knew, and the will, perhaps, had been lost. What had become of it she could not conjecture, but she was far from imputing foul play to anyone. The thought never entered her mind. She was too pure and innocent herself to suspect evil in others, and the overwhelming horror of her uncle's tragic death still brooded over her spirit to the utter exclusion of all other cares save one, and that one a sore, sore trial that it needed all her energies to endure, the silence of Leslie Dane and her anxieties regarding his fate; for still the days waned and faded and no tidings came to the sick heart that waited in passionate suspense for a sign from the loved and lost one.

Strange to say, she had never learned the fatal truth that Leslie Dane stood charged with her uncle's murder, and that justice was still on the alert to discover his whereabouts. During her severe and nearly fatal illness all approach to the subject of the murder had been prohibited by the careful physician, and on her convalescence the newspapers had been excluded from her sight and the subject tabooed in her presence. She had forgotten the solemn charge of Felise Herbert and her mother that fatal night which she had so indignantly refuted. Now she was spared the knowledge that the malignity of the two women had succeeded in fixing the crime on the innocent head of the man she loved. Had Bonnibel known that fact she would have left Mrs. Arnold's roof although starvation and death had been the inevitable consequence. But she did not know, and so moped and pined in her chamber, tearful and utterly despairing, oblivious to the fact that she was doing what Felise most desired in thus secluding herself.

CHAPTER IX

A blind chance at last brought about the fatal meeting between Bonnibel Vere and Colonel Carlyle which Felise Herbert so greatly dreaded and deprecated.

As the autumn months merged into winter Bonnibel had developed a new phase of her trouble. A great and exceeding restlessness took possession of her.

She no longer moped in her chamber, thinking and thinking on the one subject that began to obscure even the memory of her Uncle Francis. She had brooded over Leslie's strange silence until her brain reeled with agony—now a strange longing for oblivion and forgetfulness took hold upon her.

"Oh! for that fabled Lethean draught which men drink and straightway all the past is forgotten!" she would murmur wildly as she paced the floor, wringing her beautiful hands and weeping. "Either Leslie has deserted me or he is dead. In either case it is wretchedness to remember him! Oh! that I could forget!"

Shrouded in her thick veil and long cloak she began to take long rambling walks every day, returning weary and fatigued, so that sleep, which for awhile had deserted her pillow, began to return, and in long and heavy slumbers she would lose for a little while the memory of the handsome artist so deeply loved in that brief and beautiful summer. Those days were gone forever. Her brief spring of happiness was over. It seemed to her that the only solace that remained to her weary heart was forgetfulness.

Once, rendered desperate by her suspense, she had written a letter to Leslie—a long and loving letter, full of tender reproaches for his silence, and containing the whole story of her uncle's tragic death. She had begged him to send her just one little line to assure her that she was not forgotten, and this beautiful little letter, filled with the pure thoughts of her innocent heart, she had directed to Rome, Italy.

No answer came to that yearning cry from the aching heart of the little wife. She waited until hope became a hideous mockery. She began to think how strange it was that she, little Bonnibel Vere, who looked so much like a child, with her short hair, and baby-blue eyes, was really a wife. But for the shining opal ring with its pretty inscription, "Mizpah," which Leslie had placed upon her finger that night, she would have begun to believe that it was all a fevered dream.

She was thinking of that ring one day as she walked along the crowded street, filled with eager shoppers, for Christmas was drawing near, and people were busy providing holiday gifts for their dear ones.

"Mizpah!" she repeated to herself, walking heedlessly along the wet and sleety pavement. "That means 'the Lord watch between thee and me while we are absent one from another.' Oh, Leslie, Leslie!"

Absorbed in painful thoughts she began to quicken her steps, quite forgetful of the thin sheet of ice that covered the pavement, and which required very careful walking. How it happened she could not think, but the next moment she felt one ankle twisting suddenly beneath her with a dreadful pain in it, and found herself falling to the ground. With an exclamation of terror she tried to recover her balance, but vainly. She lay extended on the ground, her hat and veil falling off and exposing her beautiful pale face with its clustering locks of sunny hair.

People crowded around her immediately, but the first to reach her was a gentleman who was coming out of a jewelry store in front of which she had slipped and fallen.

He lifted her up tenderly, and a woman restored her hat and veil.

Bonnibel tried to stand upon her feet and thank them both for their timely aid.

To her terror a sharp twinge of pain in her ankle warned her that she could not stand upon it. She uttered a cry of pain and her blue eyes filled with quick tears.

"I—I fear my ankle is sprained," she said, "I cannot stand upon it."

"Never mind," said the gentleman, melted by the tears and the beauty of the sufferer. "Here is my carriage at the curbstone. Give me your address and I will take you home immediately."

Bonnibel was growing so faint from the pain of her sprained ankle that she could scarcely speak, but she murmured brokenly: "Fifth Avenue, number –," and with a slight exclamation of surprise he lifted her into the carriage and gave the order to the driver.

She leaned her head back against the satin cushions of the carriage and closed her eyes wearily!

"I beg your pardon," said her companion's voice, arousing her suddenly from the deathly faintness that was stealing over her, "but I think you must be Miss Bonnibel Vere, Mrs. Arnold's niece. Perhaps you have heard her mention me. I am Colonel Carlyle."

Bonnibel opened her eyes with a start, and looked at him, instantly recalling the gossip of her maid, Lucy. So this was Colonel Carlyle, Felise Herbert's elderly lover. She gave him a quick, curious glance.

He was an old man, certainly, and apparently made no attempt to disguise the fact, for the curling locks that still clustered abundantly on his head were silvered by time, as well as the long beard that flowed down upon his breast.

His features were aristocratic in contour, his mouth rather stern, his eyes still dark and piercing, though he could not have been less than seventy years old. He was dressed with taste and elegance, and his stately form was quite erect and stately.

"Yes, I have heard of you, Colonel Carlyle," Bonnibel answered, quietly, "but I cannot imagine how you could know who I am. We have never met before."

"No," he answered, with a gallant bow and smile, "we have not, I have never had the happiness of meeting you, though I have frequently visited at your home. But the fame of Miss Vere's beauty has gone forth into the land, and when you named your address I knew you could be no other."

Bonnibel bowed silently. Something in the graceful flattery of his words or tone jarred upon her. Besides, she was in such pain from her ankle that she felt it an effort to speak.

He observed the whiteness of her face, and said quickly:

"Pardon me, but I fear you are suffering from your sprain."

"Somewhat," she admitted, through her white lips.

"Bear it as bravely as you can," he said. "In a few minutes you will be at home, and can have medical attention. Sprains are quite serious things sometimes, though I hope yours may not result that way."

"I hope not," she echoed, growing paler and paler, and biting her lips to repress the moan of pain that trembled on them. She was really suffering acute pain from the twisted ankle.

He was silent a minute, studying the beautiful, pale face with admiring eyes.

She looked up and met a world of deep sympathy shining on her from his keen, dark eyes.

"I was very fortunate in meeting you, Colonel Carlyle," she said, gently. "Believe me, I am much indebted for your timely aid."

"I am glad to have been of service to your father's daughter," said the colonel, bowing. "I knew your father intimately in the army, Miss Vere. We were friends, though the general was my junior in age and my superior in rank. I have often wondered what poor Harry's daughter was like. He was so frank, so handsome, so chivalrous, so daring."

The girl's blue eyes lit up with pleasure at his praise of the father who had died in her infancy, but whose memory she loved and revered. She put out her hand, saying proudly:

"I thank you for your praise of him, Colonel Carlyle. Let my father's friend be mine also."

And the wealthy colonel gave the little hand a fervent pressure, feeling that those timely words of his had gained him a great advantage—one of which he would not be slow to avail himself.

He was about to express his pride and satisfaction at her words in glowing terms when, with a faint cry, she sank back against the cushions and closed her eyes. She had succumbed to her pain in spite of herself and fainted.

Fortunately they were within a block of the house. The colonel seated himself beside her and supported her helpless head on his arm until the carriage stopped in front of Mrs. Arnold's splendid brown-stone mansion. Then he carefully lifted the fair burden in his arms and carried her across the pavement and up the steps, where he rang the bell.

The obsequious servant who opened the door to him stared in surprise and alarm at his burden, but silently threw open the drawing-room door, where Felise and her mother sat in company with a few visitors.

Both sprang up in bewilderment as Colonel Carlyle entered with a bow and laid the insensible Bonnibel down upon the sofa. She looked like one dead as she lay there with her closed eyes and deathly-white face, and limp hands hanging down helplessly.

"What has happened, Colonel Carlyle?" demanded Felise, stepping forward, as he bent over Bonnibel, while her mother and the guests echoed her words: "What has happened?"

"Miss Vere slipped and fell upon the ice," he answered, "and has sustained some serious injury. She has suffered much pain. Let her have medical attendance at once."

"But you," said Felise, abruptly, and almost rudely. "How came you with her?"

Colonel Carlyle looked at her in slight surprise.

"I was about crossing the pavement to enter my carriage," he explained, rather coolly, "when the accident occurred, and I had the happiness to be of service in bringing her home."

And Felise, as she watched him bending anxiously over the girl she hated, wished in her heart that Bonnibel Vere might never recover from the swoon that looked so much like death.

CHAPTER X

"A merry Christmas, Bonnibel, and many happy returns of the day."

Bonnibel Vere, lying helplessly on the sofa in her dressing-room, looked up with a start of surprise.

Felise Herbert was entering with her cat-like steps and a deceitful smile wreathing her thin lips.

"Thank you, Felise," she answered wearily, "though your wishes can scarcely bear fruit to-day."

"Are you suffering so much pain to-day?" asked Felise, dropping into an easy-chair and resting her head with its crown of dark braids against its violet velvet lining.

"My ankle is rather painful."

"We are going to have a few friends to dine with us to-day—Colonel Carlyle is among them—and we thought—mother and I—that you might be well enough to come down into the drawing-room," said the visitor, watching the invalid keenly under her drooping lashes.

But the feverish flush on the girl's cheek did not deepen under the jealous scrutiny of the watcher. She watched with a sigh of positive relief.

"Many thanks, but it is not possible for me to do so, Felise; Doctor Graham said that I must remain closely confined to my sofa at least two weeks. And indeed I could not leave it if I tried. My foot is much swollen and I cannot stand at all."

She pushed out the little member from under the skirt of her warm white wrapper, and Felise saw that she spoke truly.

She rose and came nearer under pretense of examining it.

"Why, what a pretty little ring you wear—is it a new one?" said she suddenly, and in an instant she had dexterously slipped it off Bonnibel's finger, and, holding it up, read the inscription within, "Mizpah!" "Why, how romantic! Is it a love token, Bonnibel?"

Bonnibel's lips were quivering like a grieved child's, and quick tears sprang into her eyes.

"Felise," she said, reproachfully, "you should not have taken it off. I never meant for that ring to leave my finger while I lived, never!"

Felise laughed—a low, sneering laugh—and tossed her jetty braids.

"Here, take your ring," she said scornfully; "I did not know you were going to be such a baby over it. It must have been the gift of a lover to be so highly prized—perhaps it was given you by Leslie Dane."

Bonnibel slipped the ring back on her tapering third finger, while a hot flush mounted to her brow.

"You seem very curious over my ring, Felise," she said, angrily. "I do not suppose it can matter to you at all who the giver may be."

"Oh! not in the least," said Felise, airily. "I beg your pardon for teasing you about it. But if someone should give me a prettier ring than that soon I should not mind telling you the donor. And by the way," said she, walking to the window and peering out through the lace curtains, "you must tell me, Bonnibel, how you liked Colonel Carlyle the other day."

"I should be very ungrateful if I did not like him very well," said the girl, simply. "He was very good to me."

"That is an evasive answer," said Felise, laughing. "Should you have liked him if you had not been prompted thereto by gratitude?"

"I am sure I do not know. I was suffering such acute pain I hardly thought of him until he told me he had been an intimate friend of my papa while in the army. And he praised papa so highly I could not choose but like him for his words."

"The cunning old fox," said Felise to herself, while she drew her black brows angrily together. "Already he has been trying to find the way to her heart."

"He is rather fine-looking for one who is certainly no longer young—don't you think so, Bonnibel?" pursued the wily girl.

"Certainly," said Bonnibel, willing to praise Colonel Carlyle because she thought it would please Felise; "he does not seem so very old, and he is quite handsome and stately-looking."

Whatever Felise might have replied to this was interrupted by the entrance of Lucy, Bonnibel's maid. A broad smile lighted her comely, good-natured features at the sight of the visitor.

"For you, miss," said she, going up to Bonnibel and putting in her hand a small volume of splendidly-bound poems and a rare hot-house bouquet, whose fragrance filled the room, and turning to Miss Herbert she added: "Colonel Carlyle is waiting in the drawing-room, Miss Herbert."

Felise made no answer to the maid. She swept forward and looked at the flowers in Bonnibel's hand.

It was a lovely bouquet, composed almost entirely of white flowers. A lily filled the center, surrounded by exquisite rose-buds and waxen tube-roses and azalias. The border of the lovely floral tribute was a delicate fringe of blue forget-me-nots. On a small white card depending from the bouquet was written these words:

"Miss Vere, with the compliments of the day from her father's friend."

"Her father's friend," said Felise, reading it aloud. "That must mean Colonel Carlyle."

"I suppose so," said Bonnibel, simply. "He is very kind to remember me to-day. You will thank him for me, Felise."

"Certainly," Felise answered.

She took up the book—a handsome copy of one of the modern poets—and glanced rapidly through it, but found no writing or underscoring within it, as her jealous fancy had expected.

"I must go," she said, putting it down and trailing her silken skirts hurriedly from the room.

Lucy looked after her with a slight smile. She, in common with all the domestics, hated the overbearing Felise and it pleased her to see what her innocent young mistress never dreamed of—that Mrs. Arnold's daughter was furiously jealous and angry because of her suitor's tribute to Bonnibel.

The colonel's tribute to Miss Herbert was a much more pretentious one than that which had been the cause of arousing her jealousy up-stairs. He brought her a bracelet of gold, set with glowing rubies, and a bouquet that was a perfect triumph of the floral art. Its central flower was a white japonica, and sprigs of scarlet salvia blazed around it; but Felise remembered the modest white lily up-stairs, with its suggestive circle of forget-me-nots, and her eyes blazed with scarcely concealed anger as she thanked the colonel for his gifts.

Colonel Carlyle was in brilliant spirits to-day. Always a fine talker, he surpassed himself on this occasion, and the guests exchanged significant glances, thinking that surely he had proposed to Miss Herbert and been accepted, for she, too, appeared more fascinating than usual, and exerted herself to please her elderly suitor. She had laid aside the more cumbrous appendages of mourning, such as crape and bombazine, and appeared in a handsome black silk, with filmy white laces at throat and wrists. A single spray of the scarlet salvia, carelessly broken and fastened in her dark hair, brightened her whole appearance, and made her creamy, olive complexion beautiful by the contrast. She was looking her best, as she wanted to do, for she felt that she was about to lose her slight hold upon the millionaire's heart and she meant to do her best to win back her lost ground.

Alas for Felise's prospects! A pair of tearful, violet eyes, a little, white face, a quivering baby mouth, drawn with pain, had totally obscured the image of her bright, dark beauty in the colonel's heart. He was as foolishly in love with Bonnibel's dainty loveliness as any boy of twenty, and through all his brilliant talk to-day his heart was bounding with the thought of her, and he was revolving plans in his mind to free himself from what had almost become an entanglement with Miss Herbert, that he might spread his net to catch the beautiful little white dove that had fluttered across his path.

"Miss Vere is better, I trust," he found courage to ask of Mrs. Arnold before he left that evening. His guilty conscience made him shrink from asking Felise even that simple question. He knew that he had paid her sufficient attention to warrant her in expecting a proposal, and now he began to feel just a little afraid of the flash of her great dark eyes.

"She is better," Mrs. Arnold answered, coldly; "but not able to leave her sofa. Doctor Graham thinks it will be several weeks before she is well."

"So," the enamored colonel thought to himself, "it will be several weeks before I can see her again. That seems like an eternity."