Kitabı oku: «Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XXIII

Julius Revington went away from the presence of the girl he adored, cast down but not destroyed.

He had set his mind doggedly on winning her and he was by no means despondent of winning her yet.

His grosser, weaker nature could not comprehend the higher, loftier nature of Irene. Her gentle intimation of how he fell short of her ideal had not greatly impressed him except to fill him with a certain amount of sullen jealousy toward some unknown person or other whom it was evident existed in her mind, and possibly in flesh and blood upon the earth.

"Perhaps she has already given her heart away," he thought to himself. "But, no, she is too young. That cannot be."

As he walked slowly along the path toward the villa something bright and shining on the ground attracted his attention. He stooped and picked it up.

A cry of eager surprise broke from his lips.

It was the pretty, blue-enamelled locket that Irene usually wore around her white throat.

It had become detached from the slender gold chain and fallen on the ground without her knowledge.

Julius Revington had endured many pangs of baffled curiosity over this locket, of whose contents he had heard much from the ladies but which he had never had the good fortune to behold.

Pausing now in the quiet, secluded path, he deliberately touched the spring of the pretty bauble.

The lid flew open, and there before him under the soft light of the Italian sky that sifted down through the glistening leaves of the orange trees, were revealed the handsome faces of old Ronald Brooke and his daughter.

A hoarse cry broke from Julius Revington's lips, his face whitened, a cold dew started out upon his brow.

"My God," he said, and sank down upon a bed of flowers as if totally overcome.

With starting eyes he looked at the kind, genial, manly face of the old man, and then at the fair, almost angelic face of Elaine. An uncontrollable shudder shook his form.

"Father and daughter!" he said, under his breath.

Sitting there in the balmy air with the soft murmur of the waves in his ears, he relapsed into thought. Minutes went silently by, bringing a subtle change into the man's face. His cheeks glowed, his downcast eyes sparkled.

"A master rather than a slave," he muttered at last with an evil triumph in his tone; "so be it."

Slowly rising, he retraced his steps to Irene.

He met her coming along the path toward him, her fair face anxious and troubled.

"Oh, Mr. Revington," she cried, "I have lost the locket off my chain! Have you seen it anywhere?"

He held it up to the light, and her sweet face glowed with joy.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Revington," she cried, "I am so glad! I feared I had lost it forever!"

"I am very glad to have the good fortune to restore it to you," he said; "it lay directly in my path as I was returning to the villa."

"I am so glad," she repeated, kissing it as if it had been some sentient thing. "You see, Mr. Revington, it was a gift to me from one who is now dead—one whom I loved—dearly," she concluded, with a falter in her voice and a mist of tears in her eyes.

"Miss Berlin, will you pardon me if I ask you what may seem an impertinent question?" he asked.

She brushed the soft dew from her eyes with her lace handkerchief, and looked up at him with her soft, wondering glance.

"Well?" she said.

He did not look at her in return; his shifting eyes fell to the ground, as was their wonted habit.

"When I found the locket lying on the ground the lid was open. I saw the two faces it held," he said, in a strange, hesitating voice.

"Well?" she repeated, gravely, while a flush rose over her fair face.

"They—were not strange to me," he replied; "I was startled when I saw whose were the faces you wore always over your heart. Miss Berlin, will you tell me what that man and woman are to you?"

He saw her start and shiver—saw the warm crimson flash into her face, then recede again, leaving it deathly pale and cold. She clasped her hands over the locket, pressing it tightly to her beating heart, while she answered hoarsely and with downcast eyes:

"I cannot tell you, Mr. Revington; it is a secret, and that secret belongs to another. I have no right to reveal it."

CHAPTER XXIV

Julius Revington stood looking in silence at the beautiful, agitated girl as she repeated, sadly:

"The secret belongs to another. I have no right to reveal it."

"Is it a secret of shame?" Julius Revington asked, slowly.

Irene started, and flashed a look of anger upon him through her tear-wet lashes.

"You are impertinent," she said, sharply; "you have no right to seek to penetrate the secret of my past!"

"I have the same right as the physician who probes the wound to heal it," he replied, coolly.

"You!—you can heal no wound of mine!" she flashed, almost disdainfully.

"You think so, but you are wrong," said Julius Revington. "Sit down, Miss Berlin, I have much to say to you. It is for your own good that you should listen to it."

The earnestness of his tone impressed Irene against her will. She sat down slowly on the soft, green grass, still with a mutinous pout on her lips, and her eyes turned coldly away from him.

Mr. Revington seated himself also, and glanced carefully around, to make sure that no one was in hearing distance of himself and his fair companion.

"I see that you have no faith in my power of making an interesting communication to you," he said, addressing himself to Irene.

"No, I cannot imagine your telling me anything I should like to hear," she retorted, coldly.

An angry light flared into the man's dark eyes a moment, but he bit his lip to keep back a sharp rejoinder. Her willfulness, her pretty petulances, had an actual fascination for him.

"Such an answer from any one but you, Miss Berlin, would be actual rudeness," he said, lightly. "But whether frowning or smiling you are ever charming to me. You remind me of nothing so much as one of Tennyson's heroines, 'a rosebud set with little willful thorns.'"

She answered not a word. Her fair face was averted, and her blue eyes gazed at the silvery Arno softly gliding past.

"You have been a beautiful, enchanting mystery to me ever since I met you," he continued, slowly. "I have wondered whence you came and to whom you belonged, but with no hope of unsealing your beautiful lips or the secret they held so close. But chance—or shall I call it fate?—has solved the mystery for me."

She turned her head and looked at him suddenly, her blue eyes dark with fear and wonder.

"What can you mean?" she exclaimed.

"I mean that when I came upon your picture in your locket just now the mystery of your identity was solved for me," he replied, coolly, glad that he had roused her at last.

"I do not understand you," she said through her lips that had suddenly grown white and trembling.

A slight smile curved Julius Revington's mustached lips, as he saw how much he had startled her.

"Master rather than slave," he repeated to himself, vindictively, for that was the way he interpreted her eloquent description of her ideal.

"I told you the faces were not strange to me," he said. "Shall I tell you their names?"

"You cannot," she returned, miserably.

"Do not deceive yourself," he retorted. "The old man is Ronald Brooke, the beautiful woman is his daughter, Elaine."

A startled cry broke from her lips, she flashed her eyes upon him in a swift, horrified gaze, a terrible suspicion darting through her heart.

"You know her?" she cried out, hoarsely.

His answer dispelled the horrible dread that had clutched at her heart with icy fingers.

"No, I have never met her in my life, but I have seen her picture before," he said.

She gave a gasp of relief. It had been horrible to fancy for a moment that this man whom she despised in her heart could be her mother's betrayer.

"You have seen her picture before?" she repeated. "Where?"

"It depends on yourself whether I ever answer that question or not," he said.

"On me?" she asked, with some wonder.

"Yes," he replied; "for if I should answer that question it would involve a long story. Before I tell it to you I shall expect to receive a like confidence from you."

She shut her lips tightly over her little clenched teeth, and he saw the blue eyes flash mutinously.

"You refuse?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied, dauntlessly. "You have startled and surprised me and I know not how much you know of me and my past. But at least you will never learn more from me."

He could not forbear a glance of annoyance.

"Miss Berlin, you are certainly the most willful child I ever saw," he exclaimed. "What good can it do you to refuse to tell me what relationship you bear to Ronald Brooke and his daughter?"

CHAPTER XXV

Irene raised her large blue eyes to Mr. Revington's face. They were full of anguish and despair.

"I have told you already that the secret is not mine to reveal," she said.

"Then I must answer my own question," he replied, with a swift glance around him to make sure that he was not overheard; "you are Elaine Brooke's illegitimate daughter!"

A low cry of bitterness and despair shrilled from her lips. It confirmed his hazardous guess.

"You cannot deny it!" he uttered, triumphantly.

"My God, are you man or devil, Julius Revington?" she exclaimed. "How came you by this knowledge?"

"In a perfectly natural manner," he answered, coolly. "The story of your mother's past is better known to me than to yourself, Irene."

She could not speak for a moment. A hand of ice seemed to grip her throat, her brain reeled, the sound of the river came to her faintly as in a dream. The hot color rushed to her face and her lashes fell. She could not look at this man who held the story of her mother's past—that secret so full of shame and sorrow.

"I know it far better than you do; better than she does," he repeated. "Do not hang your head so heart-brokenly, Irene. You have nothing to blush for."

"Nothing," she echoed, bitterly.

"No," he said, "I can tell you good news, little one. But first raise your head and look at me. I want to see the joylight flash into your eyes when you hear what I have to tell you."

She obeyed him, lifting her sweet eyes in wonder, with half-parted crimson lips that seemed to ask mutely what joy life could yet hold for her.

"You have nothing to blush for," he repeated. "Your mother was a lawfully wedded wife. You are not the child of shame as you have been taught to believe."

"Can I believe you?" she exclaimed, and he was dazzled by the flash of joy in her eyes.

"You may, for it is true, and I can produce proofs of what I say," he answered. "Your mother has been fearfully wronged, but it lies in my power to restore her to her rights again."

"God forever bless you, Mr. Revington, if you can lift the cloud of sorrow from the hearts and lives of a wronged woman and her child," exclaimed the lovely girl, fervently.

"It rests with you, Irene, whether I do so or not," he replied, flashing a look of admiration on her beautiful, agitated face.

"With me!" she echoed, blankly.

"You are the daughter of a wealthy, high-born, noble gentleman, who would be delighted to claim you if he knew that you lived, and who would rejoice to clasp your mother to his devoted heart," said Mr. Revington, watching her closely as he uttered the words. Her eyes beamed, her face glowed with joy; then suddenly a shadow fell on its brightness.

"You are deceiving me?" she said.

"No, I swear that I am not," he asseverated. "I can prove what I say, and I am ready to do so—on one condition!"

"And that?" she asked, innocently.

His shifting gaze fell before that eager, hopeful, unconscious look, but he answered, boldly:

"That you be my wife, Irene."

"I have told you that was impossible," she answered, growing suddenly pale to the lips.

"Why?" he inquired, chagrined at the prompt reply.

"I do not love you," she replied, evasively.

"Granted that you do not," he said, selfishly, "is your hand too great a price to pay to secure to your mother ease, honor, end happiness?"

She had no answer for him only an irrepressible moan of pain that broke uncontrollably over her white lips. Her thoughts went back to poor, patient, badgered Elaine, and her hard life at Bay View—harder now than ever, she guessed, since her father was dead, and she was left to the tender mercies of her mother and sister.

"Dear mother, how gladly I would purchase this man's knowledge, even at the bitter price he asks, for your dear sake, if only it were possible," she thought to herself with a pang like death at her heart, as she recalled her fatal marriage.

Julius Revington, watching the mute anguish on her speaking face, saw that it was no time to press the question.

"Do not answer me now, Irene," he said, with ready gentleness. "Take time to think it over. Revolve it in your mind to-night in soberness and calmness. Ask yourself if you do not owe this duty to your poor, wronged mother. How sweet it would be for her child to restore to her all she has lost."

"You are cruel and calculating," she said, indignantly. "Why should you ask such a costly price for doing this kindness to my poor, martyred mother?"

"Because I love you, and in no other way can I win you," he answered, boldly.

Her beautiful eyes flashed scornfully upon him.

"Would you take a reluctant and unloving bride?" she asked.

"I would take you on any terms, Irene," he replied.

She looked up at him and asked the strangest question that could possibly fall from a daughter's lips:

"Mr. Revington, will you tell me the name of my father?"

The piteous sadness of the tone, and the pathos of the question must have touched the heart of a better man.

But Julius Revington was thoroughly hard and selfish.

"You have never heard his name, then?" he said.

"Never," she replied. "Will you tell it to me now?"

"Not yet," he replied, cruelly. "I will reserve that pleasant bit of information for our marriage day."

She flashed a sudden, piercing glance upon him.

"You are deceiving me," she said. "You are trying to win me by a pretended knowledge of facts that do not exist."

"On my honor, no," he replied. "I admit that I am selfish, and that I am using the knowledge I possess to gain my own ends, but on the morning that you give me your hand in marriage I swear that I will place in your hands the documents that will prove your mother a lawfully-wedded wife, and give you a legal right to your father's name and wealth. Moreover, I assure you that no one will be more surprised or rejoiced than your father himself on learning the truth."

"And what if I refuse to marry you? she asked, fearfully.

"If you refuse," he replied, cruelly, "the cloud of shame shall never be lifted from your mother's life and yours. Nay, more, I will go to the Stuarts and your good friend, Mrs. Leslie, and I will tell them why you choose to make a mystery of your past. Consent to marry me, and on our wedding-day I will prove you the legal inheritor of an honorable name and a great fortune. I will give you until to-morrow to decide the question."

He rose with the words and walked abruptly away.

CHAPTER XXVI

Irene remained sitting like one stunned on the banks of the beautiful river.

Her white hands clasped each other convulsively in her lap, her head drooped on her breast, she stared blankly and dreamily before her, seeming lost to the beauty of the fair Italian scene, and deaf to the soft sounds that filled the air with a pleasant murmur.

Heart and brain were in a terrible tumult.

Her head ached and throbbed almost to bursting, her heart beat fast and hard in her breast.

The joy and triumph she would have experienced in the knowledge of her poor mother's innocence and honor were all damped by the thought of the costly price she was required to pay before she could have the happiness of bearing the glad tidings to the wronged, unhappy woman.

With deepest self-reproach the girl recalled her own frenzied reproaches to that beautiful, sorrow-stricken parent on the fatal night when she had been so maddened by the revelation of the angry Bertha. She looked back as though years had intervened upon the Irene of that summer night as a rude, impertinent, willful child.

"Is it any wonder my mother left me to the death I courted in my wild despair?" she thought. "How could I, who should have soothed sorrow, turned upon her so cruelly? Poor, unhappy Ellie, as I used to call her, what sorrows may she not be enduring now? What insolence, what cruelty, at the hands of her overbearing mother and sister? Even I, her child, did not spare her my reproaches in her dark hour, and how should they who love her less than I did?"

In the flood-tide of remorseful affection that swept over her heart, she longed to go home to her mother, to take her in her arms, and say, lovingly: "Mother, darling, you and your husband were both cruelly wronged. Here are the papers that will prove your wifely honor. Take them and forgive me my wicked reproaches."

Alas, between her and that beautiful hour which fancy painted so glowingly, there yawned a dread, impassable gulf!

"Even if I could consent to pay Julius Revington's terrible price for those papers, I could not do so. I am already wedded," she said to herself; and her heart thrilled strangely at the thought.

The remembrance of his threat sent a shiver of dread thrilling through her frame. To-morrow he would tell Mrs. Leslie and the Stuarts that she was a child of shame; that her beautiful, pure-hearted mother was a sinful, erring woman. How should she bear it? she asked herself, with a moan.

The evening sun sunk lower and lower; the twittering birds flew home to their nests; the cool, soft dew began to fall on Irene's face and hands. She rose with a shiver, as though of mortal cold, and dragged herself back wearily to the villa.

Then she felt that she could not endure to meet the cold, curious faces of Mrs. Stuart and her friends just then. She stole quietly up to her own room, closed and locked the door, and threw herself wretchedly down upon the floor, with her face hidden on her arm.

She did not know how long she had lain there, wretched, forlorn, despairing, when she was roused by the tap of a servant outside, who desired her presence at dinner.

She replied, through the closed door, that she was ill, and did not wish any, and returned to her crouching posture on the floor, as if she found a grim pleasure in physical discomfort, as a set-off to her mental trouble.

She felt angry with herself for the fairness that had won Julius Revington's love.

"If I had been homely and ill-shapen, instead of fair and graceful, he would never have loved me, and he might then have given me those papers for pure pity's sake, with no such condition attached," she told herself, sadly.

Two hours later Mrs. Leslie came tapping softly at the door.

"You must let me in, Irene, for I shall keep 'tapping, tapping,' like the raven, until you do," she called out gaily.

With a smothered sigh Irene admitted her friend.

"What, all in darkness? I beg your pardon, I did not know you had retired," exclaimed the lady.

Irene struck a light and then Mrs. Leslie gazed in wonder at the pale, haggard face.

"My dear child, what is the matter with you?" she cried out in wonder.

"It is nothing—only a headache, I—I have been lying down," she faltered, miserably.

The lady glanced at the white, unrumpled bed, and then at Irene, curiously.

"Where—upon the floor?" she inquired, with a mixture of sarcasm and amazement.

"I—believe so; I felt so bad I did not think," answered Irene, trying to smile.

"Poor dear," said the lady, full of womanly compassion; "if I had known you were so ill I would have come up to you long ago. It was too bad your lying here all by yourself in the dark! In your tight dress, too; I am ashamed of myself! But now I am going to undress you and 'put you in your little bed.'"

Heedless of Irene's gentle expostulations, she proceeded to follow the kind promptings of her womanly heart, and directly she had the girl dressed in her snowy robe de nuit and nestled among the pillows of the snowy bed.

"Now you may shut your eyes, and I will bathe your head with eau de cologne until you fall asleep," she said.

"But indeed it does not ache now. Pray do not trouble yourself," Irene expostulated, now thoroughly ashamed of her innocent little fib.

The lady sat down and began passing her hand tenderly over the pillow.

"I am glad it does not ache any longer," she said, unsuspiciously. "You were sadly missed from among us this evening, my dear," she continued in a light, bantering tone. "Mr. Revington was exceedingly distrait; Miss Smith teased him for a song, but he gave her such a doleful one that he received no encores whatever."

Irene looked so plainly disgusted at the mention of her lover's name that Mrs. Leslie forebore to tease her. She delicately changed the subject.

"Mr. Stuart came back from his trip to Florence this evening, and brought us some sad news," she said.

Irene tried hard to look interested in this communication, but failed dismally. Her own troubles absorbed all her care.

"There has been the most terrible ocean disaster," continued Mrs. Leslie. "Two American steamers, one homeward bound, the other en route for Italy, collided in mid-ocean at midnight, with a horrible loss of human life. Is it not awful?"

Irene tried to look properly shocked, but heart and brain were so numbed by her own grief that she could scarcely comprehend the extent of the calamity her friend was bewailing.

"It is very dreadful," she murmured, feebly.

"Is it not?" said Mrs. Leslie, in awe-struck tones; "and, only think, Irene, I was personally acquainted with one of the passengers who perished in the wreck. I met him once while visiting my sister in Baltimore. He was very handsome and agreeable, besides being very wealthy. His name was Guy Kenmore."

She paused, and uttered a cry of alarm in the next breath. Irene had gasped convulsively once or twice, then fainted dead away.