Kitabı oku: «Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XL
Irene sat still where her angry lover had left her, lost in a trance-like maze of troubled thought. With her small, white hands folded in her lap, and her dreamy blue eyes fixed on vacancy, she remained there, statue-like and unheeding, and time, albeit its wings were clogged with sorrow, flew past unnoted, until the noon-day sun rode high in the heavens.
A step, a voice, startled her from her dreamy revery.
"Ah, Miss Berlin, you see I have discovered your charming retreat," said Guy Kenmore. "Will you permit me to share it?"
The swift color flew to her brow, as she looked up into the handsome face, with the slightly wistful smile about the firm lips.
"This spot is free to all Mr. Stuart's guests," she replied, coldly. "I have no right to forbid you to come here."
"Would you, if you had?" he asked, throwing himself down in the grass at her feet, and lifting to her face his slightly quizzical brown eyes.
"Why should I?" she retorted, gazing down into his face with an air of the most serene indifference.
"Why, indeed?" he asked himself, with sudden bitterness. "Serene, in her fancied incognito, she cares not whether I go or stay. I am no more to her than the earth beneath her feet," and aloud, he answered calmly as he could speak, and in a slight tone of banter:
"I fancied you might prefer to share this lovely solitude with some more favored friend—for instance, Mr. Revington."
The hot flush deepened on the beautiful face, and she answered with an impulse of passionate willfulness:
"That would be natural, would it not? I suppose you have heard that I am to marry, Mr. Kenmore?"
His brown eyes flashed beneath their shady lashes.
"She dares to twit me with her preference for that puppy," he said, angrily to himself. "Does she indeed believe that I am blinded by her borrowed name, and that I am unaware of her real identity? Will she attempt to carry the farce through to the end?"
An impulse came over him to claim her then and there as his own; to take the slight young figure in his arms and press it to his beating heart; to kiss the beautiful, proud face and the defiant eyes, and to say, jealously: "You are my own wife, Irene, and whether you love me or not, no one shall take you from me."
Ah, if only he had obeyed the prompting of his heart, how much sooner happiness would have come home to them to crown their lives with bliss; but their mutual pride stood like a wall between. He shook off the tempting impulse to claim his own, and believed that he was but obeying the command of chivalry and honor in keeping stern silence.
"What, claim an unwilling, reluctant bride?" he thought to himself, sadly. "No, no! never! I must wait until of her own free will she owns her fealty to me. I must woo and win her before I claim her."
Perhaps the struggle in his heart betrayed itself on his face, for the resentment died out of her blue eyes and they were filled with a mute, pathetic longing.
"Ah, if he would only love me, if he would only claim me," she thought. "I would tell him how I hate and despise Julius Revington! He might help me to right my mother's wrongs!"
At that moment his downcast gaze fell on Julius Revington's guitar which that worthy had forgotten in his hurried and angry exit from Irene's presence. A jealous gleam lightened in his brown eyes.
"Ah, I see that Mr. Revington has already been with you this morning," he said frigidly.
"Yes," she replied, with coldness equal to his own.
"Are you fond of music?" he inquired, taking up the instrument, and striking a few chords, softly.
"Passionately," she replied.
Obeying a sudden impulse he played a soft, sweet symphony and began to sing in a mellow baritone. He had chosen the beautiful song, "My Queen," and the girl's heart vibrated painfully to the sweetness of the strain.
"Who will be his queen?" she asked herself, with a jealous pang at her heart. "He is so grand and handsome, he will only love some one gifted beyond her sex with beauty and genius. Ah, why did I come between him and his future?"
She looked at him wistfully when he had finished.
"I did not know you could sing like that," she said.
"Is it equal to Revington's performances?" he inquired, smiling at her implied compliment.
To his dismay she sprang up crimson with anger and resentment.
"Revington, Revington! It is always Revington with you," she cried, and flung away disdainfully from him.
CHAPTER XLI
Irene preserved a dignified reserve toward Mr. Kenmore after that day when he had so angered her by his allusions to Julius Revington. She never spoke to him when she could avoid it, she never looked at him, she never seemed to know that he was in the room. She froze him by her coldness and indifference. He did not even dare speak to her unless courtesy strictly required it. Yet all the while her heart was aching with its doubt and pain, while as for him, his love for his beautiful, willful girl-bride grew stronger every hour, though in his pride and resentment at her coldness and scorn he would have died rather than avow it.
A few days after his arrival at the villa some of the gentlemen rode into Florence, and when they returned they brought tickets for a grand concert to be given that night. They reported that the music-loving Italians were in ecstasies over it.
It appeared that one of their countrymen, a musician, had gone to America twenty years before, where he had remained until two months ago, when he had returned to Florence, bringing with him a beautiful young lady whose voice he designed to cultivate for the operatic stage. The curiosity of the volatile Italians had run high over this pupil of the great musician, and unable to resist the importunities of his countrymen, Professor Bozzaotra had promised a public concert in which the American singer would make her debut. Her name was down on the programme as Miss Brooke. Strange to say, not one of the villa inhabitants to whom that name was so sadly familiar, were struck by its similarity to Clarence Stuart's first wife's. It failed to suggest any probabilities to their minds. One and all were eager to attend the promised feast of music.
But at the very last moment Irene declined to accompany the merry, expectant party to the concert.
A headache was the alleged feminine excuse for her refusal.
In vain Mr. Revington pleaded and Mrs. Leslie added her protests. They could not persuade Irene that the ride in the fresh air would benefit her head, or that the music would cause her to forget indisposition.
"I do not wish to go," she reiterated, firmly, and Mrs. Leslie wondered a little at the tears in the girl's blue eyes, as she kissed her good-night, and the more than usual fervency of her embrace.
When they were all gone, and the villa was left to the occupancy of herself and the servants, Irene retired to her room. She sat down and wrote a hasty letter to Mrs. Leslie, which, after sealing and addressing, she placed in a conspicuous place on the toilet table.
"She will think me unkind and ungrateful," she sighed to herself; "but what can I do?"
She removed her pretty blue dinner dress, and substituted a plain, black cashmere. Then, with trembling fingers and nervous haste, she packed a change of clothing into a small hand-bag. Lastly she took out her little shell purse, and counted its contents. There was something more than a hundred dollars, the gift of her munificent friend, Mrs. Leslie.
"She little thought for what purpose I would use it," sighed poor Irene. "But I have no other refuge left me!"
She put the purse into her pocket, drew on a dark gray travelling ulster, and a little cap with a thick veil. Then taking the hand-bag in her little trembling hands, she stole silently as a ghost from the great house, and did not draw a free breath until she stood alone in the moonlighted garden.
Then she paused and lifted her white face and tear-wet eyes to the starry sky.
"If only he had loved me I need not have gone," she sighed. "Ah, my husband, my darling, farewell!"
Without another word she was gone, flitting away, a small, dark shadow, to mingle with the shadows of the night.
Meanwhile the party from the villa were seated in the great concert hall awaiting the appearance of the lovely American debutante.
They occupied two boxes, and conspicuous in the foremost one was Mrs. Stuart, with her daughter and her husband.
Mrs. Stuart was elegantly dressed in rose-colored satin and point lace, with magnificent diamonds. With the aid of pearl powder and rouge she had been made up by her maid into quite a beauty for this occasion.
Lilia wore soft white mull and pearls. As she sat by the side of her handsome, dark-eyed father her likeness to him was marked and conspicuous. No one could have failed to see that they were father and child.
Impatience was at its hight. The orchestra had rendered its overture, and been vociferously applauded by the enthusiastic Italians. Professor Bozzaotra himself had executed a magnificent violin solo, and responded twice to encores that could not be suppressed. The curtain had fallen, to rise the next time on the lovely debutante whom Rumor credited with the beauty of an angel and the voice of a siren.
It rose at last, and the hundreds of curious eyes fell on her, standing there with modestly drooping head, yet quiet, calm, and self-possessed, and so lovely, withal, that before she opened her lips for a single note a thunder of applause shook the building. Silently and by the mere force of her peerless beauty she had carried all their hearts by storm.
For Clarence Stuart, sitting pale and silent by the side of his dying daughter and his faded wife, it seemed as if a ghost had sprung up before his eyes.
He knew her instantly—that fair, false wife who had forsworn him so long ago, and whom all these long, long years he had believed to be lying dead under foreign skies, with her baby on her breast. It was Elaine, the woman, lovelier in her splendid prime than she had been in her spring. As she stood there, "gowned in pure white that fitted to the shape," her only ornaments the clusters of pure white roses on her breast and in her golden hair, she looked queen-like, bride-like, and the man's heart swelled with a great despair as he gazed upon her, remembering how he had lost her forever. But he spoke not, he scarcely breathed, only sat and gazed with an eternity of despair shining out of his wide dark eyes.
There was one other, too, who gazed as if petrified upon that beautiful vision.
It was Guy Kenmore, who instantly recognized Elaine Brooke, but whose great wonder and surprise held him still and speechless, while her rich, clear voice rose and fell in waves of mellow sweetness on the tranced air. She sang a difficult, classic song, which the professor had chosen to display the great beauty and volume of her voice, and every note rung clear and true as liquid gold. When the first verse was ended, and she stood waiting for the tumultuous applause to die away, she suddenly lifted her eyes to the box above, as if drawn by some strange, magnetic power, and her glance met full those dark, burning, anguished eyes with which her husband gazed upon her.
A start, a shiver! Those who gazed closely at the beautiful singer saw her reel slightly; saw her white-gloved hand pressed convulsively upon her heart as if in pain. She stood thus, statue-like and immovable, for an instant, her eye held as if fascinated by that conspicuous group in the box; then suddenly, as the professor struck the opening notes of the next verse, she seemed to recall her wandering senses by a supreme effort of will. For weary years she had nerved herself for this chance meeting, which had come about so strangely at last. She would not let herself be conquered by it.
The beautiful voice rose clear, strong, delicious. There was just one falter in the first notes, just one tremor like a sob of agony. Then the woman's will conquered the woman's heart. She sang on to the end sweetly, bravely gathered up one or two of the fragrant floral tributes that rained at her feet, and with just the proper bow and smile retired.
Tumultuous applause, passionate encores followed her retreating footsteps. She did not respond to them. They thought her chary of her exquisite voice; they did not know that she had fallen down like one dead on the floor of the little dressing room, and that the lips that had sang to them so sweetly were now flecked with drops of blood forced out by the heart's great emotion. The flowers had fallen from her hands, and they were clenched so tightly that the white gloves were torn and spoiled.
"Oh, Clarence, Clarence, my traitor-love, we have met at last," she moaned. "Oh, God, how hard it is that I love him still! That perjured wretch who blighted my life and that of our innocent child! He has not forgotten me! It was remorse that looked out from his eyes at me to-night. Yet that was his wife and child who sat beside him! Oh, heavens, what humiliation for me who stood there beneath their cold, critic eyes to remember that I was once his wife, that I rested in his bosom, that my arms cradled his child! Oh, Irene, my lost one, my darling, I must crush down this weak love that blazed afresh in my heart when I met the eyes of the man I once held as the truest and noblest of men! I must remember that the knowledge of his sin drove you to death, my darling, and I must hate him for your wrongs and mine!"
So she raved on in her impotent despair, while the thunders of the orchestra filled the house, and people chanted her praises, prophesying for her a career equal to Patti or Nilsson. She, whose voice was sweeter than nightingale's notes or the sound of falling waters, lay there like a broken flower, crushed by her terrible despair.
When she had retreated from the stage, Mrs. Leslie touched Guy Kenmore's arm. Turning to look at her face, he saw that her eyes were wide and startled.
"Well!" he said.
She answered in a voice that was hoarse with emotion:
"It was the face that Irene wears in her locket. What does it mean?"
He whispered back softly, "It was Irene's mother! It was Elaine Brooke."
"Merciful heavens," exclaimed the lady, and turned to look at Mr. Stuart.
Then she saw Mrs. Stuart and Lilia hanging over him in an agony of despair, and gentlemen crowding into their box. Mr. Stuart was a brave and a strong man, but when that ghost from the past had risen to confront him, then faded quietly again, heart and strength had failed him, and sitting in his chair, he had silently swooned away.
They said that the heat had overcome him, and bore him out into the fresh air, where he revived a little. Some advised him not to return to the concert hall, but he waved them quietly aside, ashamed of his womanly weakness, and returned to Lilia, who was sobbing with grief and fear.
"It is nothing, my dear. I am quite well again," he said, gravely. "But shall I take you home now?"
"No, no, papa, I wish to hear the beautiful lady sing again," she replied, turning eagerly back to the stage.
Mrs. Stuart said nothing to her husband. She was whispering with Julius Revington, who had come into her box a little while before. The gleam of hate in the lady's eyes flashed almost brighter than her diamonds, her cheek glowed through its rouge with a deep natural red, and her jeweled hands clenched each other nervously in her lap.
Miss Brooke came again after a little interval, which was filled up by other performers. She had fought down her terrible emotion, but her lovely face was very pale and sad, and she never lifted her dark blue eyes while she sang. This time it was an Italian chanson, and the words flowed easily from her lips in that liquid southern tongue that is so sweet and soft. The Florentines were charmed, as the professor had intended they should be, at hearing one of their native songs warbled by the sweet lips of the stranger. She retired again under a storm of bouquets and applause, but, as before, she did not respond to their encores. It was too keen an agony to go back and sing to them again before those burning dark eyes, whose gaze she intuitively felt upon her, though she would not lift her own to meet their flashing light. It was all that she could bear to go on when her turn came.
But when she had sung her last song and the liquid Italian recall followed her again, Professor Bozzaotra went to her. He was radiant with joy.
"Let me beg you to humor them, my child," he said, radiantly. "You have carried their warm hearts by storm. Be kind to them. Sing them something, anything to satisfy their craving."
She went back and stood before them, with bowed head and an almost divine sadness on her face. She sang some words that were "as sad as earth, as sweet as Heaven."
"I stand by the river where both of us stood,
And there is but one shadow to darken the flood;
And the path leading to it where both used to pass,
Has the step of but one to take dew from the grass;
One forlorn since that day!
"The flowers of the margins are many to see,
But none stoops at my bidding to pluck them for me;
The bird in the alder sings loudly and long,
For my low sound of weeping disturbs not his song,
As thy vow did that day.
"I stand by the river—I think of the vow—
calm as the place is, vow-breaker, be thou!
I leave the flower growing—the bird, unreproved—
Would I trouble thee rather than them, my beloved,
And my lover that day?
"Go! be sure of my love—by that treason forgiven;
Of my prayers—by the blessings they win thee from Heaven;
Of my grief—(guess the length of the sword by the sheath's)
By the silence of life more pathetic than death's!
Go! be clear of that day!"
Then the concert was over!
CHAPTER XLII
The concert was over, and hastily excusing himself to his companion, Guy Kenmore made his way around to the private entrance; with some difficulty he elbowed his way through the eager throng that waited to see the lovely singer pass to her carriage, and was fortunate enough to meet her coming down the steps on the professor's arm. He touched her eagerly.
"Miss Brooke," he said, and she turned with a start and a cry. Her eyes dilated with wonder as she saw by whom she was addressed.
"Mr. Kenmore—you here!" she exclaimed, and put out her delicate hand graciously.
He pressed it warmly in both his own.
"I am delighted to meet you," he said, "I have news for you—good news. May I call on you at the earliest admissible hour to-morrow morning?"
She glanced at the carriage.
"You may come with us in the carriage now if you will," she replied. "The hour is not too late for good news from an old friend."
Then she introduced her friend to the professor. The gentlemen shook hands cordially, and Bozzaotra repeated Elaine's invitation to come with them in the carriage.
"Gratefully, if you can wait for one moment while I make my excuses to a friend," he said.
They promised to wait, and Mr. Kenmore hurried back to inform Mrs. Leslie that he would not return to the villa that night. He heard Julius Revington saying that he should remain at the hotel that night and walk out to the villa in the morning; but he paid small heed to the words, in the preoccupation of his mind. He was longing to tell Elaine that her daughter lived; and as soon as he had handed Mrs. Leslie to her carriage, he hurried back to her.
She received him with a pensive smile of pleasure, and made room for him by her side, the professor being seated opposite. The carriage door was closed, and they were whirled away.
"It is a great surprise to see you here, Mr. Kenmore," Elaine began, in her musical voice. "Is your news from mamma and Bertha? I have so longed to hear from them; but, though I have written them several times, I have had no news of them since I left Bay View."
"Bang! Whirr!"
His answer is not on record.
A pistol had been fired close to the horses' heads, and they plunged and reared, almost upsetting the carriage. The shriek of the driver was heard as he tumbled from his seat upon the stony pavement; then the maddened steeds, without check or hindrance, dashed blindly forward in a mad, terrified pace, dragging after them the rocking carriage, with its precious, living freight.
Meantime, the man who had fired that reckless, murderous shot had been overtaken by Nemesis.
In his eager excitement he had gone too near the horses' heads, and, making his retreat, he had stumbled and fallen. In an instant they had trampled his fallen body with their plunging hoofs. Compassionate hands lifted him up from the stony street, a crushed and bleeding mass, in which the spark of life yet feebly lingered.
The carriage driver was picked up senseless in the street, where the maddened horses had hurled him in their swift rush to destruction. Luckily, he had escaped the contact of their iron hoofs, and his injuries, though serious, were not mortal.
But that poor sinner who, in the commission of a dastardly crime, had been overtaken by a swift and just Nemesis, how fared he?
They placed him on a litter and bore him into the nearest house. Men looked at that crushed and bleeding semblance of poor humanity, and, turning away, shuddered with horror. The physician came, and shook his head.
"My poor fellow, you can live but a few hours more," he said. "Tell us who your friends are that we may summon them."
"Are you sure, quite sure, that I must die?" moaned the sufferer, while the dews of terror beaded the weakly, handsome face which had escaped the vicious hoofs that had beaten the life from his body.
"You cannot possibly live but a few hours longer," repeated the physician as kindly as he could speak, and with a deep pity on his face that would not have been there could he have guessed that the wretch had wrought his own destruction.
Moans of terror and despair welled over the man's blanched lips when he realized that death was so near him. He begged that a priest might be sent for to pray the pardon of Heaven on his sinful soul.
"And your friends," they asked him, "shall we not bring them, too?"
With a moan of pain he answered:
"Send some one with a swift horse to overtake Clarence Stuart, who is returning to his villa in the suburbs. Tell him Julius Revington is dying, and—the lady—who was in the carriage—with the runaway horses—if she is living, bring her to me with all haste."
