Kitabı oku: «Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily», sayfa 15

CHAPTER LI

There was a very good hotel in the vicinity of Bay View House, and Guy Kenmore and his little bride went there to await the coming of the midnight train by which they proposed returning to Baltimore.

He secured a comfortable private parlor, and sitting by the cheerful fire never hours of waiting passed more rapidly than these.

With her lover-husband's arm drawn close and fondly round her graceful form, Irene listened to the story of that momentous night when she had so unwisely fled. She learned that the man she had both feared and despised was dead, that Mr. Stuart was her father, and that Lilia and her mother were both dead.

"And it was my own precious mamma whom I refused to go and hear that night," she said. "Oh, if I had only known! But I was driven wild by my fears. In my trouble it seemed to me that there was no refuge on earth for me but in my mother's arms, and so I came back to America as fast as wind and tide could bring me!"

"If you had known then that I loved you, Irene, would you have gone?" he asked her softly, while he gazed deep in the lovely sapphire blue eyes.

The warm color surged into her cheeks at his earnest gaze, and she hesitated.

"Tell me," he pleaded, and then she answered frankly:

"No, I should not have gone. If you had claimed me then I should have come straight to your arms and told you all my doubts and fears. I could not have left you."

"My proud little darling," he murmured, "we were both mistaken in holding aloof from each other; but, please God, we will make up the loss of those months of separation by long years of happiness spent together. Do you remember those sweet lines of Jean Ingelow, my darling?

 
"It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye,
All the world and we two, and Heaven be our stay.
Like a laverock in the lift, sing, oh, bonny bride!
All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side.
 
 
"What's the world, my love! what can it do?
I am thine, and thou art mine, life is sweet and new;
If the world have missed the mark let it stand by,
For we two have gotten leave and once more we'll try."
 

In his deep, sweet tones and the fond glances of his eyes, Irene read that she was beloved even as she had longed to be in those days in Italy, when she had believed him cold, careless, indifferent, and determined not to acknowledge the tie between them. Tears of happiness sparkled in her eyes, and with a low sob she hid her face on his breast.

He held her close, and kissed her tears away, silently, thanking Heaven for the priceless gift of her innocent young heart.

He told her the gay yachting party had returned to Richmond, sobered and saddened by the loss of Mrs. Stuart and Lilia.

"The child—your half-sister, Irene—have you thought of that?—sent you some kind messages by Mrs. Leslie before she died," he said.

Irene was sorry to know that the spoiled, pretty Lilia was dead; but it pleased her to know that her mother had been kind to her—that she had soothed her dying hours with her soft, sweet songs.

"Dear, dear mamma—when shall I see her, Mr. Kenmore?" she asked, wistfully.

"I meant to surprise you," he said; "but I cannot keep you in suspense. You have already borne too much. You will see her to-morrow. She is the guest of my sister in Baltimore. When I found out in Florence that you had started to come back to America, I crossed in the next steamer, and your mother came with me. We landed in a few hours after you did, and I had no difficulty in tracing you. I learned that you had started for Bay View by the water route, and followed you on a fast train, by which means I was enabled to reach your old home in time to learn the wickedness and heartlessness of Bertha."

"In time to save me from perishing in the cold, for I had exhausted my last cent in the purchase of that ticket to Bay View," she said, with a shudder.

"I am most happy that I came, but in any case, you would not have suffered," he replied; "for old Faith assured me that, had they turned you out of the house, she would have gone with you and taken care of you."

"Dear old Faith, she was always kind to me," said Irene. "But Bertha always hated me, and I am sure that she will never forgive me for taking you away from her."

"Do not say that," he answered, "for I never belonged to Bertha. I admired her stately beauty, but the thought of taking a wife had never occurred to me until that night when," laughing, "you married me, willy-nilly."

Irene blushed very much, but ended by laughing, too. In a minute she grew very serious again, and, slipping her soft little hand into his, said, gently:

"Do you know, dear Guy, that since—since we love each other—that marriage in play seems very light and flippant to me? Shall we not—shall we not"– pausing, bashfully.

"Plight our marriage vows over again," he finished for her. "Yes, love, we will do so again, and this time our hearts shall go with our hands."

And the very next day they were married over again in the quiet little church in Baltimore, with their nearest relatives for witnesses, and although Irene wore the plainest pearl-gray silk, and the demurest little bonnet, Mr. Kenmore's handsome, fashionable sisters declared that she was the loveliest bride they had ever beheld.

They went away on a little southern tour to see Mrs. Leslie, who received her favorite with the gladdest of embraces and some incoherent reproaches, calling her a "naughty little runaway."

"I can never quite forgive you for not confiding your secret to me," she said. "I could have helped you so much, dear, if only you had let me."

Mr. Stuart came to see her and they sent her in alone to meet him. All felt that their meeting as father and child would be too sacred a scene for other eyes to gaze upon. She came from his presence weeping, but they were the placid tears of joy that her father was proven good and noble, and that his heart was full of love for her and her long-suffering mother.

"He is waiting in sorrowful patience for mamma to relent," she confided to her husband, when they were alone. "I hope she will go back to him soon. Only think! They have been cruelly separated for almost seventeen years!"

And looking into the beautiful, loving young face, Guy Kenmore realized something of Mr. Stuart's pain in the sudden pang with which he wondered how he could bear to be separated from his beautiful Irene for such an eternity of years.

He kissed the sorrowful young face into brightened smiles again.

"When we go home we will talk to mamma," he said. "We will tell her that life is too short to spend away from those we love and who love us. We will persuade her to shorten the span of his probation."

"He deserves it I know, for he tells me that he has suffered deeply," said Clarence Stuart's daughter. "Oh, Guy, I love him dearly already. He saved my life, you know, and I believe I have loved him ever since, although I could not understand the subtle nearness of the bond that drew me to him."

CHAPTER LII

Mrs. Brooke and Bertha did not go to New York the next day as they had intended doing.

Both of them were overcome by the scene of last night. Bertha's malevolence and angry bitterness made her almost ill. Mrs. Brooke was chagrined and regretful. She had permitted Bertha to rule her affairs with a high hand, believing in the wisdom of her ruling, and now she found that she had over-reached herself.

If she had dreamed that Guy Kenmore would claim Irene for his own, she would never have allowed her granddaughter to be driven from her doors. She had too keen a sense of the advantage to be gained from such a wealthy connection.

But it was too late now to recall the heartless deed by which she had closed Guy Kenmore's doors against her. His stern face remained in her memory, and his parting words rung like the clash of steel in her hearing:

"I hope I may never see either of your faces again."

It was just. She acknowledged it to herself, but it galled her none the less bitterly. She upbraided Bertha for her share in the transaction, and Bertha replied insolently. They spent their time in bitter recriminations, these two women who had so cleverly over-reached themselves.

In a few days a letter came from Elaine. The gentle reproach of its preface touched a painful chord in the mother's heart, for she had sadly missed her eldest daughter, though she would not have dared to say so before the overbearing Bertha.

"I have written to you many times since I left home, mamma," wrote gentle Elaine, "but as you never answered any of my letters, I conclude that they were unwelcome, and that I am forgotten and uncared for in my old home. I am writing you once again, probably for the last time."

Then in a few closely written pages Elaine told them the whole story of her new-found happiness.

"My plan for becoming an opera-singer is abandoned by the desire of my husband," she wrote, simply. "He is very wealthy, and there is no longer any need for me to work. I shall live in Baltimore. Irene's home will be here, and I cannot consent to live apart from my child. Mr. Kenmore has a superb residence here, and my husband has promised to secure a similar one for me on the same street, so that I may see my little Irene every day. Dear mamma, it seems to me that if you had loved your poor Elaine as warmly as I love my little girl, you could never have treated me so unkindly!"

It was the last drop of bitter in Bertha's cup of humiliation. Elaine, whom she had trampled upon for years, despising her for her sorrow, envying her for her beauty—Elaine to be loved, honored, crowned with wealth and happiness! It stung Bertha to the depths of her little soul. She would have sold her soul to the powers of evil for the power to drag Elaine and her daughter down from their high estate.

But there was no convenient demon about to gratify Bertha's malevolent desires, and her mother began to assert her own will, which she had long permitted Bertha to dominate. She forced her to accompany her to Baltimore to see Elaine, though she rebelled bitterly against this eating of "humble pie."

They found the long despised daughter and sister the guest of Mrs. Livingstone, one of the leaders of fashion in the monumental city. She was a sister of Guy Kenmore, and it almost maddened Bertha to sit quietly and listen to the enthusiastic praises she bestowed on her brother's beautiful bride. "I have never seen anyone so artlessly lovely and charming," she said. "She will be the rage in society. While they are taking their little tour, the Kenmore diamonds and pearls are being reset for her, and her bridal reception dress is ordered from Paris. It will be a marvel of beauty."

"All might have been mine but for that fatal night's work," Bertha told herself, full of maddening envy, and no words could have told her hatred for innocent, willful Irene.

Elaine had become like a young girl again in the sunshine of her great, new happiness. Her blue eyes beamed with love and hope, her cheeks were tinted softly like the lining of the murmurous sea-shell, she had the sweetest smile in the world. There was only one shadow on her joy:

"If only my father could have lived to see my honor vindicated and my happiness restored," she would sigh, and when she remembered the cruel blow that had struck him down to death, she would steal away to her room to weep unavailing tears for his untimely fate. But she bore her pain alone, and none of those who had been bound to old Ronald Brooke by the tie of kinship ever knew the sorrowful secret hidden in Elaine's breast. Bertha did not let her mother stay long, though Elaine was very kind and gentle, and did not reproach them for their heartless denial of her daughter. The cruel, unkind sister could not bear the sight of Elaine's happiness, and so dragged her mother away, but not before the old lady had secretly whispered in the ear of her elder daughter that "everything had all been Bertha's fault."

Elaine did not doubt it, for she well knew her sister's malice and ill-nature, but seeing how their unkindness had recoiled upon their own heads, she tried to forgive and forget.

When beautiful, happy Irene came home, she pleaded her father's cause so well that Elaine, whose own heart was pleading for him, too, relented, and suffered her daughter to write for him. He came gladly, but the reunion of the long-parted husband and wife is too sacred a subject for us to dwell upon. It was the realization of the poet's dream:

 
"Look thro' mine eyes with thine. True wife,
Round my true heart thine arms entwine;
My other dearer life in life,
Look thro' my very soul with thine."
 

One bit of gossip, reader. Mrs. Brooke never sold her diamonds. Ten thousand dollars settled on her very quietly by her wronged and despised elder daughter, enables her and Bertha to keep their heads above water and to hold their place in society. They flash in and out from one gay resort to another, for Bertha is very restless and never contented long in one place. Mrs. Brooke is very fond of talking about "my daughter, Mrs. Stuart, and my granddaughter, Mrs. Kenmore," but it is noticeable that she is not very intimate with either. Indeed, she and Bertha have never yet crossed the threshold of the palace where Irene reigns a queen.

Bertha is an old maid now, faded, sour, and given to saying sharp things to everyone, so that no one enjoys her company, and no one dreams of seeking her for a wife. Proud, envious, spiteful, she seems to hate all the world, but no one with such concealed malice and galling bitterness as Guy Kenmore's wife.

[THE END.]

THE ROSE AND THE LILY;
OR,
LOVE WINS LOVE

CHAPTER I

A dusky, piquante face, arch, sparkling, bright, as only brunette faces can be, dark, waving hair, and pansy-dark eyes with golden lights in their soft depth, delicious lips, tinted with the velvety crimson of the rose, a slight girlish figure, unformed as yet, but with a willowy grace all its own—Reine Langton.

She comes singing along the graveled path between the trim borders of bright verbenas, velvety pansies and fragrant pinks, swinging her large straw hat by its scarlet ribbons. The golden light of the summer day falls on the uncovered head, and on the fair, low forehead with its silky rings of clustering hair, and its slender, straight, black brows. She sings shrilly, but sweetly

 
"'Love not—love not, ye hapless sons of clay;
Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers;
Things that were made to fade and fall away
When they have blossomed but a few short hours;
Love not—love not.'"
 

The handsome, blonde face of a young man lifts itself from the reclining depths of a hammock-chair, swung under a wide-spreading tree; as she draws nearer, he breaks out with careless raillery:

"Pray forbear, Miss Langton! your shrill soprano has frightened me from a charming dream. I do not believe your match could be found for keeping one's nerves continually on edge."

"Men have no business with nerves," she retorts, coolly. "For shame, Mr. Vane Charteris. Get out of that hammock and stir yourself. I can't abide a lazy man."

He looks at her with sleepy, half-shut eyes that mirror the deep, beautiful blue of the sky overhead.

"Fortunately you do not have to abide me," he says, bruskly. "After to-morrow I shall forever be out of reach of your shrill voice and scolding tongue!"

A strange look comes into her dark eyes a moment. Some of the golden light dies out of them, they grow darker and vaguely sad, but she laughs.

"A pity for you, too. My influence and example might rouse you otherwise from your stupid inertia. Tennyson must have had a lazy man in his mind's eye when he wrote the Lotos-Eaters."

He smiles, and quotes with careless good-nature:

 
"'In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills, like gods together, careless of mankind.'"
 

"Is not that an idyllic life, Reine?"

"No," she says, promptly. "I have no patience with the dolce far niente of some people. It is a pity you are to marry Maud Langton!"

He colors, and asks:

"Why?"

"Because she is as lazy as you are. When you marry her and come into Uncle Langton's money, you'll both be too lazy to breathe, just that! You will die for lack of energy to live."

She has stopped beside the hammock-chair, and leaning against the tree looks down into the handsome, debonair face with a gleam of audacious levity in the dusky eyes. He starts up to a sitting posture, thoroughly aggravated.

"Thank you," he remarks, with immense dignity. "I understand," with cutting irony, "the reason of your spite. You wanted Mr. Langton's money yourself."

"Not a bit of it," decidedly. "Thank goodness, I know how to earn my own living. Not but that Uncle Langton has treated me unfairly, though. I am as near kin to him as Maud. My father was his own brother. Why should he make her his heiress, and marry her to the son of his old sweetheart, cutting me off with a beggarly invitation to spend three weeks, and be her bride's-maid?"

"Why don't you tell him that?" he queries, watching the rich color deepen on the delicate cheek.

"I don't care to," with careless indifference. "I don't want his money."

"No—do you mean to say you do not care for all this?" He glances around him at the spacious white villa, set in the midst of a green, flower-gemmed lawn, shaded by stately trees. "Only think, my lady disdain: A summer home in these grand old mountains, a winter palace in Washington, a cottage by the sea, and a fabulous bank account; does it all count for nothing in your eyes?"

"Yes," pertly, "if, like poor Maud, I had to take you as an incumbrance with it all!"

He flushes with wounded vanity and anger.

"The feeling is mutual," he retorts, under the spur of pride. "If I had to take you with Mr. Langton's money, it might go to found an idiot asylum."

"Vane Charteris, I hate you!" she exclaims, with a flash of childish passion.

"I take it as a compliment," he replies, with a profound bow.

"Quarreling as usual," says a clear, sweetly modulated voice, and both turn with a start.

A tall, imperially stately woman has come sauntering down the path from the house. You think of Tennyson's description:

 
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall.
And most divinely fair."
 

Vane Charteris' face lights with languid pleasure. It is Maud Langton, his betrothed. This very night she is to be his bride.

"Ah, Maud," he says, "I am glad you are come. Perhaps you will deliver me from this little vixen!"

There is a grave, far-away look in the light blue eyes of the bride-elect. She looks at Reine, not at her lover, as she answers lightly:

"It is very undignified to call names, Vane, and how often have I told you, Reine, that you must bridle that sharp tongue of yours?"

"He began it," mutters Reine, with a childish petulance.

"You should have known better than to tease the child, Vane," says Miss Langton. "If you are in fault, you must apologize, of course."

"I'll be shot if I do," he begins, stoutly, then stops at her look of dignified amaze, and says, with a gleam of tender relenting: "Very well, Maud. Of course I can refuse you nothing on this day of all days. See here, Reine, I beg your pardon for what I said. Will you forgive me?"

"No, I won't—so there!" she flashes, with some wrathful tears splashing down her cheeks.

"Reine!" Miss Langton cries, horrified.

"Reine!" mimics the girl, provokingly.

"Ah, me!" with a pretty sigh of resignation, "I see it is no use trying to train you," but Reine Langton is already out of hearing. They catch the distant gleam of her white dress among the trees.

Vane Charteris rises from his indolent pose in the hammock-chair and installs his blonde angel in his place. Tall, graceful, with the fair beauty of a Greek god, he might hold any woman's heart, but as he stands by her side, lightly swaying the chair, Miss Langton's large, blue eyes wander from him to the line of the distant hills that stand around about her beautiful home in a glorious green wooded circle.

"Ah, Maud, my beautiful, gentle darling," he says, "how hard it is to believe that Reine Langton is your cousin. You are so utterly unlike. You are so calm and sweet and gracious, she is so rude, so pettish, so like a chestnut burr!"

"Poor Reine," she says, not disputing him, yet a little apologetically, "she has had no training. Her mother died in Reine's infancy, and her father brought her up after his own fashion, dying two years ago, and leaving her to get her own living. You cannot expect an underpaid teacher to have the manners of a lady."

"She is rather young to teach others, isn't she?" he says.

"Rather," she replies. "Sixteen or seventeen at the most, I should say. But now, Vane, I really must go in; I have fifty things to attend to. All my bride's-maids will be coming presently."

"My sweetest, how shy you are," he laughs; "you will barely look at me, yet in a few hours more you will be my own. Mine to love and caress as much as I please. Do you realize it, my dignified darling?"

A slight, a very slight shiver passes over the imperially-molded form. She looks at him, then, half-fearfully, half-questioningly—

"Vane, tell me the truth," she says. "Is it me you love or is it my uncle's money?"

A dark-red flush stains his handsome face.

"Maud, that question is unworthy of you. I have loved you from the first hour I saw you. I have told you how irritated I was at first when my mother's old friend wrote to me offering me a wife and a fortune. Poor as I am I was determined not to marry you unless I loved you. But your peerless beauty conquered me as soon as I saw you."

Something very like a sigh ripples over the delicate rose-leaf lips. She does not smile nor blush as if she felt flattered.

"I will tell you something else, now, my Maud, if you'll promise not to laugh," he goes on; "I was jealous at first of that handsome, black-eyed Clyde that came so frequently to call on you. I was very glad when you sent him away. You never cared for him, did you, dear?"

"Of course not, you foolish boy," she laughs, and with that she slips away from him.

He watches the flutter of her pale blue robe out of sight, then, dropping his eyes, sees a folded slip of paper lying on the ground at his feet. In a careless, mechanical way he picks it up and reads the few lines hastily scribbled in a man's strong hand.

"My darling," it says, "you have relented at the last and made me the happiest of men. God forever bless you. Do not fail to be at the appointed place. If you do not marry me I swear I'll shoot myself through the heart, but if you keep your promise I promise to make you the happiest woman on earth."

The note was signed with a blurred, undistinguishable initial. Vane Charteris tucked it into his vest-pocket in happy unconsciousness of the fatal truth.

"Reine Langton must have dropped this," he thinks to himself. "I'll restore it to her the first opportunity. I wonder who her suicidal correspondent may be?"