Kitabı oku: «Laurel Vane; or, The Girls' Conspiracy», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XLI

St. Leon lifted his mother's senseless form, and bore her away to her room. Mrs. Gordon lay weeping, moaning, and wildly lamenting in her husband's arms. Ross Powell, having accomplished his wicked work, and finding himself unnoticed, stole quietly away from the scene of his villainy. No one seemed to heed the prostrate form, lying prone upon the floor like one dead, the marble-white face, with its closed eyes and night-black lashes, upturned to the light—no one save Mrs. Merivale, and she actually spurned it with her dainty foot, and glared upon it with envenomed hatred in her turquois-blue eyes.

"The little viper!" she muttered, bitterly. "Oh, that I had known the truth when I was here last summer! How I should have exulted in betraying her to my haughty lord who laughed at my love, and scorned me because once I was false to the trust he placed in me! She was an angel forsooth. Ha! ha! I would not have missed this rich scene for ten thousand dollars. What has become of that man who came so opportunely upon the scene? I must see him. It may be worth my while."

She cast a glance of hate and scorn upon Laurel's silent, recumbent figure, then hastened to the window and glided out, the heavy curtains of silk and lace falling noiselessly together behind her retreating form. The great gilded drawing-room, with its brilliant chandeliers and myriad flowers, was deserted now save for the half frantic Gordons and the unconscious girl upon the floor.

Unnoticed and deserted she struggled back to life and found herself alone save for those two who gazed upon her with reproach and hatred as the cause of their desolation. She had lent herself to the plot to rob them of their daughter, and they could not forgive her any more than they could forgive Beatrix for her unfilial desertion.

But she went and stood before them, so beautiful in her sorrow and despair, with her disheveled golden tresses and the red roses dying on her breast, that they could almost have pitied her in her tender youth and grief, if only she had not helped Beatrix to her happiness, and spoiled their clever scheme for separating her from her handsome, penniless lover.

"I have wronged you," she said, sadly. "I know that. But, believe me, I could not help it. She—your daughter—had been kind to me, and I promised her my eternal gratitude. When she claimed my promise, what could I do but yield! And—and—she is very happy. You must not forget that when you think of her. Perhaps you may forgive me when you know that she is so perfectly happy."

"Forgive!" they uttered, scornfully, for the thought that Beatrix was happy in her stolen marriage was like a thorn in the flesh to them. They felt hard and vindictive toward their beautiful, willful child. They would have been glad to hear that she was ill, unhappy, repentant, starving, even—anything but happy.

"You will forgive me, and forgive her?" pleaded the hapless girl.

"Never!" they answered, harshly, hardening their hearts against the two young creatures who had carried out that daring conspiracy.

And Laurel began to realize the enormity of what she had done. It had not seemed so bad to her at first, this helping a fair young girl and her lover to be happy in spite of opposition. She remembered that Clarice had called it a splendid joke, and Beatrix had laughed at her scruples. But it was quite another thing to the Gordons. It was a cruel outrage, and beyond pardon.

She stood looking at their cold, frowning faces a moment, then turned hopelessly away. Every one was against her. If only St. Leon would forgive her she would not care for the rest, she thought; but, alas—

"His love is turned to hate," she sighed. "He will never forgive me. He will drive me away from him into eternal banishment. My brief dream of happiness is over. And yet I was mad enough to think that out of his great love he would forgive me! Ah, me! ah, me!"

Mr. Gordon led his wife silently from the room without a glance at her. She was alone in the great, gilded drawing-room—deserted and alone in her terrible anguish and despair. The sting of their contempt pierced her heart.

"I am despised and deserted by all," she said, sorrowfully. "What shall I do? Must I go away? Would St. Leon like it? Would he be glad never to see me again?"

Something like a wail of anguish came from her lips at the thought of leaving her husband and never seeing him again. It was more bitter than death. She thought of his passionate, idolizing love. Had it all been murdered at one fell stroke by the knowledge of her sin?

The door opened, and he came suddenly into the room.

He saw her standing there, the only creature in the wide, brilliant drawing-room. He knew that every one had deserted her for her sin—that fatal retribution had overtaken her. His own heart had revolted from its allegiance, now that he knew her for the willful creature of clay that she was instead of the angel he had deemed her. Yet never had her perfect beauty struck him more forcibly than now. Robbed of its light, its coloring, its bloom, its perfection still showed supreme, like the beauty of a perfectly chiseled statue.

She ran to him; she threw herself humbly at his feet—

 
"There, with her milk-white arms and shadowy hair,
She made her face a darkness."
 

"Forgive me, my husband, forgive me!" prayed the wretched wife.

CHAPTER XLII

He stood there in silence, looking down at that bowed head, veiled by its sweeping golden hair. He made no effort to raise her; he answered not a word to her wild appeal. There was a smoldering fire in his dark eyes, a stern compression of his lips, that boded ill for the granting of her prayer.

He had received a terrible shock. His love and his pride alike had been outraged, and in his case it was a strong love and a strong pride. The wound to both was accordingly all the greater.

His strange silence grew terrible to her. She lifted her face a little and looked at him, recoiling from the terrible indignation in his eyes as if he had struck her a blow.

"St. Leon, speak to me," she wailed. "Oh, you will not be hard and unforgiving to me! I have wronged you and deceived you, I know; but it was all because I loved you. No woman ever loved with so mad a love as I have given you. If I had not loved you so dearly, I had not dared so much."

He spoke then. There was concentrated passion, burning contempt, in his deep and angry voice.

"Do not speak of love!" he said. "I can fancy with what love the drunken journalist's daughter, the poor clerk's runaway fiancé, could love St. Leon Le Roy. I can imagine that the temptation to lift yourself to my level from the dust where you groveled was too strong for you. I can fancy that the greed for wealth and honor led you astray. But love—faugh! If one spark of that divine passion had burned in your scheming breast, you would have respected the unsullied honor, the proud old name of the Le Roys—you would have spared me the disgraceful alliance with a drunkard's daughter!"

Slow, cruel, bitter, every word fell like a coal of fire on her bleeding heart. Was it the gifted father, the brilliant genius whom she had loved and revered despite his weakness, who was thus stigmatized as a drunkard by her husband's lips? Had that father's sin indeed set her apart as a mark for the finger of scorn to point at, a creature too low to even lift her eyes to the proud and rich St. Leon Le Roy? It was a cruel, a bitter insult. It rankled like a sword point in her heart.

She rose slowly to her feet and faced him with a strange, new-born dignity that sat gracefully on her perfect beauty. She did not speak, but waited with drooping head and tightly folded hands for his further words.

They came, still further blighting the sad young heart:

"There can be no talk of forgiveness between you and me. You have injured me beyond reparation. You can be nothing to me henceforth."

"You will send me away from you—you will divorce me?" she asked, with a shiver.

"No, I will have no scandal. I will not drag the proud name of Le Roy through the mire of a divorce court. That for which you schemed so craftily shall not be taken away from you. I shall go away and leave you at Eden in the enjoyment of the wealth and the name you have won. Then our tacit separation and divorce will be accomplished. I shall never willingly look upon your beautiful, false face again!"

She bowed her head in speechless acquiescence. Where were the wild words, the matchless eloquence with which she meant to plead her cause, to implore for pardon when this dark hour came upon her? That love and beauty which she had deemed such powerful agents to hold his heart and win his clemency, of what avail were they now? His icy scorn, his proud, decisive, determination left no room for dissent or appeal. The terrible weight of her sin had fallen upon her and crushed her.

"I think you understand me," he said. "The wife I loved is as one dead to me. She never existed save in my imagination. You must accept this as your punishment, if indeed you can feel any remorse for your falsehood and deceit. Now go to your room and let your maid attend you there. I presume you will not care to meet our guests again. I am quite sure they will not wish to see you. Remain in seclusion. To-morrow I will make all needful arrangements for our separation, and they shall be duly communicated to you."

She lifted her head and gave one long, grave look from her heavy, somber eyes at the handsome, haughty face, bowed slowly, and went out of the room. The slow swish of her trailing satin robe echoed drearily in his hearing as he stood there pale and statue-like, but he did not turn his head for one farewell glance at the girl who was his wife and who had so terribly deceived him.

She went to her room and sunk down wearily upon her sofa. Marie the maid came in presently. Her face showed that she knew all.

"Marie," she said, "go and ask Mrs. Le Roy if she will permit me to come to her for a few moments."

The maid returned in a moment.

"Mr. Le Roy is with his mother. He desires that you will not disturb her," she said.

Laurel answered quietly.

"You may go away, and leave me now, Marie, I wish to be alone for awhile."

When the maid had gone she went to the window, drew back the rich curtains of silk and lace and gazed out upon the scene. Night had fallen—the beautiful moonlit summer night. The perfume of roses and honeysuckles came floating heavily on the soft air, the wide expanse of the Hudson shone like a silver sea.

"I must go away from Eden," said the girl-wife to herself, drearily. "What shall I do with my empty, ruined life?"

Strangely enough there came to her a memory of the day she had first met St. Leon Le Roy—the questions she had asked him and his strange reply:

"I believe I should throw myself into yonder beautiful river and so end all," he had said.

CHAPTER XLIII

Mlle. Marie was very glad to get away from attendance on her mistress for a few hours. There is nothing happens in the parlor, but is immediately communicated to the kitchen, so the dénouement in high life had immediately become the sensation in low life below stairs. The maid was eager to join the gossips.

So Laurel remained alone and undisturbed in the elegant rooms, where she had spent such happy hours with the husband who now disowned and abandoned her. She stared out into the beautiful summer night with dark, inscrutable eyes, trying dimly to pierce the veil that hid the future from her aching sight.

St. Leon Le Roy remained in attendance on his mother. The poor lady, in her weak, enfeebled state, had sustained a terrible shock. She had fallen from one fainting spell to another, and the nurse and her son remained constantly by her side. At length she recovered her reason, and was given a composing draught. She fell into a light slumber, and St. Leon stole away and consummated that fatal interview with his wife, then returned to watch by the invalid's couch.

He did not intend to deny his wife an interview with his mother, though he did not think it would avail her anything, believing that she would take sides with himself against the wife who had so bitterly deceived him. He did not think it prudent to allow a meeting between them that night, so when Marie came he returned the curt message that swept the last hope from Laurel's heart, and, as it seemed, the last plank from between her and despair.

Mrs. Le Roy slumbered fitfully until midnight. St. Leon sent the nurse to the lounge in the dressing-room, and kept vigil himself by the sick-bed, looking more like a statue than a man, as he sat there in the shaded night-light, pale and moveless, as if carved in marble; his lips compressed sternly, a smoldering fire burning in his veiled, dark eyes. His mind was busy with thought and memory. He was going over, step by step, his acquaintance with the false Beatrix Gordon from the day when she had first stood, shy and frightened in the doorway of Eden, until to-night. He held the key now to many a subtle enigma that had puzzled him in those past days.

"So fair, so young, and seemingly so ignorant of the world, and yet so false," he said to himself. "False to her lover, Ross Powell, first, then doubly false in wedding me in borrowed plumes. There is no faith nor truth in woman. They are bad and mercenary to the core—all of them, except my honored mother. Yet my wife has the face of an angel. Who would have believed that the greed of gold could have tempted her to such a sin!"

Mrs. Le Roy stirred and opened her eyes. They rested wistfully on the stern, impassive face of her son.

"Your wife, St. Leon," she said, faintly. "Have you forgiven her?"

"Could there be any forgiveness for such falsity as hers, mother?" he asked, turning sternly toward her.

A sigh breathed over Mrs. Le Roy's lips.

"She was such a child," she said, plaintively, almost excusingly. "Have you given her any chance to exculpate herself, my son?"

"Could any exculpation be acceptable?" he asked again, sternly.

"Where is she? What has been done to her?" she asked, anxiously.

He told her his decision, told her all that he had said to his wife in his outraged pride and wrath. She was weeping bitterly when he had finished.

"Mother, surely you do not blame me and excuse her," he said, wonderingly. "I had no thought but that you would take my part against her."

"I must see her first," she said, almost angrily in her deep earnestness. "I cannot condemn her unheard. You will let me see the child, St. Leon?"

"Of course," he answered, impatiently. "You do not suppose I would deny any wish of that kind you choose to express, mother. But to-night you are too ill and nervous. You will wait until to-morrow."

"Oh, my son, do not be angry with me—I cannot wait. Send her to me now," she wept.

"I am quite sure you had better wait until to-morrow," he began, but at that moment Mlle. Marie pushed open the door and looked in with a pale, frightened face.

"Is Mrs. Le Roy here?" she asked. "Because she is not in her room, and I cannot find her anywhere."

"St. Leon, you have driven her away," his mother cried out, wildly.

He sprung to his feet in dismay.

"No, no," he said, quickly. "Do not think such a thing, mother. Stay here, Marie, I will go and find her if she can be found. She is not far, of course."

But all the same a hand of ice seemed to grip his heart as he hurried from the room.

She was gone—the dark-eyed bride whom he had loved so well, and who had so fatally deceived him. While Marie gossiped with her familiars she had quietly stolen away. A little, tear-blotted note lay on her dressing-table.

"I have gone away, my husband," it said. "I shall never trouble your peace again. Perhaps when I am dead you will forgive me for having loved you, 'not wisely, but too well.'"

And to the pathetic note she had simply signed the despised name of "Laurel Vane."

The white satin dress, the withered crimson roses, lay on the dressing-room floor; the jewels she had worn, some costly sparkling rubies, on her dressing-table, beside the little note. A simple walking-dress and close hat and veil were gone from her wardrobe; but the next morning the dark-blue veil and a pair of pretty dark kid gloves, with the dimpled impress of her hand still in them, were found upon the river bank close to the greedy gurgling waves. They suggested a horrible possibility to every one.

And one week later a mutilated unrecognizable body was washed upon the shore near Eden. The face was defaced beyond recognition; but the golden hair, the dark dress, the dainty linen, were like Laurel's. No one doubted that the despairing wife had sought oblivion from her woes in the deep, swirling river. If St. Leon forgave her now for her sin, he made no sign. He remained silent, grave, inscrutable. But the waif from the river was buried quietly in the Le Roy vault, with all the honors due to his wife. He shed no tears, he spoke no word of the feelings that held sway within him. The separation of death was no wider than he had meant should exist in life.

But Mrs. Le Roy was inconsolable. She wept bitterly for the daughter-in-law who had so deceived her. She forgave her for her sin, because she was so young and had loved St. Leon so dearly. And there was another reason, which one day, through her bitter lamentations, she revealed to St. Leon.

"You must have forgiven her if you had known it, St. Leon," she said. "But she was so shy and she had only known it a little while herself. She told me first, and I was so happy over the news! There was soon to be a little heir to Eden."

CHAPTER XLIV

Laurel had left her veil and gloves on the bank of the river with a deliberate purpose.

She desired that her angry, unforgiving husband should believe that she was dead. Since he had deliberately planned to put her out of his life forever, he would, no doubt, be glad to think that she was dead. So, with a heart full of bitterness and wounded love, she had penned that pathetic note to him and gone away.

All her trembling hopes were over now. She knew the worst. St. Leon would never forgive her for the deceit by which she had made herself his wife. He had forgotten his love; indeed, she did not doubt but that he hated her now, and believed Ross Powell's shameless lie against her. Mrs. Le Roy, too, had declined to see her. Of course she took sides with her son. The poor child had not one friend to turn to in her despair.

Her heart beat, her face burned at the thought of the ignominious separation her husband had planned. What did she care for Eden, for the wealth he had sneeringly said she should not be deprived of, now that she had lost him? All the latent pride within her rose in arms against such terrible humiliation. She would have died, indeed, would have faced the crudest death unflinchingly, rather than have remained at Eden on such terms. Laurel had been a passionate, loving, impulsive child till now. In the hour of her unutterable desolation, she became a proud, cold, blighted woman. Her sin had found her out. That time of which she had spoken to Beatrix Wentworth and Clarice, saying that only when it came could she repent of her fault, had come, and, metaphorically speaking, she wore sack-cloth and ashes.

Death would have been welcome in that hour. She longed for it, she prayed for it. It seemed to her quite impossible that she could lose St. Leon and live. She had told herself often and often that, if he refused to forgive her when he found her out, she should die. It had seemed to her that her heart would stop its beating, her pulses faint and fail in that terrible hour.

But the end had come, and the blood still pulsed through her veins, her heart still beat, the young, strong life that thrilled her held on its steady course. A great temptation came over her as she crouched in the night and the darkness on the banks of the swirling river. It would have been so pleasant, so sweet, to have ended the short, sad story of her life, with its terrible temptation and cruel failure, then and there—to have shut out the dark, foreboding future in the merciful shadows of oblivion, but something—perhaps that tender secret she had so shyly withheld from her husband—held her back from the fatal plunge. Her own life she might have taken in the frenzy of despair, but that other tenderer one throbbing beneath her broken heart, she could not, she dared not.

"I have no right," she said to herself. "I might be wicked and mad enough to commit suicide, but murder, never. No, no, I will be brave. I will bear my cross for the sake of what is coming to me. Who knows but that it may comfort me in my lonely future! St. Leon will not want it. He would hate it and exile it from him as he did me. It will be wholly mine—something of his that will love me and cling to me although he scorns and despises me."

So she went away. She took with her none of the jewels, none of the beautiful gifts her adoring husband had lavished upon her in the happy days now forever past. She slipped her purse into her pocket. It contained several hundred dollars. Pride would have made her leave it, but she felt that for the sake of her tender secret she had a right to take it with her. She would need it in the trial that lay before her.

So she left the veil and gloves upon the river bank where they would find them if they sought for her, and then she went to New York and hid herself and her sorrow in the obscurity of the great, thronged city, bearing her burden of sorrow alone and in pitiful silence and despair.

Through the medium of the omnipresent newspaper she learned of the tragedy that had occurred at Eden. As if it had been the story of another she went over the fate of the beautiful impostor who had been detected in her sin, and whose disappearance had been followed by the finding of her drowned body. Then, indeed, she started, wondering who the unfortunate river waif could have been who had been buried with the honors pertaining to St. Leon Le Roy's young wife.

"I will not undeceive them," she said. "Now, indeed, I am dead to him forever, and that is best. Let him forget me."