Kitabı oku: «Laurel Vane; or, The Girls' Conspiracy», sayfa 14

CHAPTER XLIX

Carlyle Ford went up to the beautiful woman and took her cold trembling hands gently in his. She was as pale as death, and she shivered as if an icy wave had broken over her.

"My dear, this has been too much for you," he said. "I see now that we should never have come here."

Mrs. Lynn did not answer. She only drew her white hands from his, and, sinking down, covered her face with them. She remained thus some minutes, and her uncle saw that the bright tears were raining through her fingers, and her graceful figure heaving with deep emotion.

The child had returned to his sport with the butterflies and flowers as soon as the visitors departed. They were alone, and in a little while Mrs. Lynn looked up and brushed the tears from her beautiful face.

"Perhaps you are right," she said. "It may be that I was wrong to meet him at all. But, I had the greatest longing to see him after all these years. And, after all, I was no coward, Uncle Carlyle. I did not break down before him. I was calm and proud. He did not dream that I was other than I seemed."

"No; you played your part well," he said. "I was delighted with your dignity and grace. Mr. Le Roy was the more agitated of the two. He was struck by the resemblance. He showed deep, though repressed emotion."

"I think you give him credit for too much feeling," cried Mrs. Lynn, with a scornful flash in her dark eyes. "He has forgotten long ago."

"Perhaps so," said Mr. Ford, "yet I am inclined to think otherwise. And the lady—she could not keep her eyes off you and the child. She could not help seeing the likeness between her son and your son, I am sure. It was startling. The boy is much more like Mr. Le Roy than he is like you. The same hair and eyes, the same proud features, only he has your beautiful, tender mouth. Why did the lady faint?"

"I cannot tell," Mrs. Lynn answered, drearily.

"I think she was unnerved by the resemblance. It brought back the past too vividly. My darling, they have not forgotten, as you think. I foresee a reconciliation," he said.

"Never!" cried Mrs. Lynn, with curling lips and flashing eyes. "I may be weak enough to care for him still, but I can never forget, and I will never return to him. I am a child no longer. I am a woman, and my pride is equal to his own!"

The handsome, kindly face of old Mr. Ford looked grave and puzzled.

"My dear, is it right to cherish such pride?" he asked, slowly. "Were it not better to condone the past—to forgive and forget? Are you right to keep the heir of Eden from his own?"

"Uncle Carlyle, are you anxious to get rid of me?" asked the lovely, gifted woman, wistfully.

"No, no, dear! What should I do without you and the boy?" he cried. "But I do not want to be selfish; I do not want to keep St. Leon Le Roy's happiness from him."

The warm color flashed into her cheeks; she laughed bitterly.

"His happiness!" she cried. "His happiness! In his pride and cruelty he threw it away. He is as proud and cold now as he was then. He would take me back no sooner now than he would then. But why do we talk of these things? He will never have the chance. He will never know the truth. They have raised a costly monument to St. Leon Le Roy's beloved wife—for them that is the end."

"Eight years," he said, musingly. "At least he has been faithful to her memory. It is strange that he has not married again—if not for love, at least for the sake of an heir."

She caught her breath sharply; her lovely face grew deathly white.

"Married! married!" she cried, sharply. "Why do you talk of such things, Uncle Carlyle?"

"I did not mean to pain you, Laurel," he answered. "But, my dear, it seems so strange. Le Roy has a princely estate and fine old name. It would be only natural if he should wish to leave it to his own descendants."

"So he shall," she said. "When I am dead, he shall have Laurie. I have everything arranged in the clearest fashion. There will be no difficulty in proving his identity. But, Uncle Carlyle, do not let us talk of these things. They hurt me."

"You want to be alone," he said. "Very well, dear; I will go and play with my boy. Forgive me for saying those things that hurt you; I did not mean to do so."

He went away, and Laurel sunk down wearily, her hands clinched tightly together, a look of woe and dread on her lovely face.

"Married again!" she uttered, hoarsely. "Well, and if he should, what is there to prevent him? Could I speak? would I speak? No! And yet—ah, Heaven! the fatal glamour is on me still. It is a mad love—nothing less!"

The wind sighed in the trees, the murmur of the river came to her softly, the sweet, calm day seemed to woo her to forgetfulness, but the beautiful woman who had won fame and wealth and honor in those long years since she had been put away from her husband's heart, sat silent, with a look of mute despair on her fair young face. That mad love, that terrible temptation of her girlhood, had spoiled her life.

"It is a mad love," she repeated to herself. "How my face burned, and my heart beat, when I met him. All the old madness surged up within me, the love, the sorrow, the shame at my deceit. It is a wonder I did not fall down dead at his feet! No one ever loved more deeply than I loved St. Leon Le Roy," she went on, after a pause. "If he had forgiven me my fault that night when he had found me out, I should have been the happiest woman in the world, instead of being the most wretched, as I am! Ah! why did I ever come back here? It was a blind mistake. It has reopened the old wound, and it is bleeding, bleeding. Ah, Heaven, shall I never learn indifference? Shall I never sear my cureless wound? I must go away soon. I was weak and wild ever to have come here with Uncle Carlyle."

CHAPTER L

St. Leon Le Roy and his mother had a very quiet drive homeward. Both were busy with their own thoughts. The lady leaned back against the cushions of the phaeton with closed eyes, and a look of grave thought on her pale, wan features. St. Leon, with his calm, dark eyes, and sternly set lips, was as much absorbed as she was in grave and earnest thought. He sat very quietly holding the reins, and neither spoke until they had reached home. Then, when they were sitting together, St. Leon, with an open book before him, her keen eyes noted that he had not turned a page for half an hour, and she spoke abruptly:

"St. Leon, what do you think of the famous authoress?"

His head drooped still lower over his book, as he answered, quietly:

"She is very beautiful and brilliant. I had not expected to find her so young and fair."

"She is the loveliest woman I ever saw," said Mrs. Le Roy.

"Yes," he answered, simply, in his gravely quiet tone.

He did not care to talk. He was like one in a strange, trance-like dream. His soul had been shaken and stirred to its depths by the beautiful woman who had flashed before him with his dead wife's face and voice and the crimson roses in her hands, such as Laurel had loved to gather. The tide of time rolled backward, and in place of the proud, calm woman, the gifted genius before whom he had bowed to-day, came a vision of a simple, dark-eyed girl, wandering through the grounds at Eden, flitting among the fragrant flowers, herself the fairest rose of all. Did she love him, that beautiful impostor, St. Leon Le Roy asked himself, as he had done many times before in the eight years, while that marble cross had towered above the dead heart, whose secret now would never be told? Did she love him, indeed? Had she sinned through her love, not for wealth and position as he had believed that terrible night? And there came back to him through the mist of years the memory of that beautiful, tearful face, and the pleading voice.

"Ah, if only I had forgiven her!" he said to himself, in an agony of remorse and regret. "She loved me. I was mad to doubt it. Save for her one fault, her one deception, Laurel Vane was pure and true and innocent. I was hard and cold. Few men but would have forgiven her such a transgression for love's sake."

His face fell forward on the open pages of the book where he had been reading drearily enough some mournful lines that seemed to fit his mood:

 
"Glitters the dew and shines the river,
Up comes the lily and dries her bell,
But two are walking apart forever,
And wave their hands for a mute farewell."
 

A light touch fell on the bowed head whose raven locks were threaded with silver that grief, not time, had blanched. He glanced up, startled, into his mother's wistful face.

"Well?" he said, with a slight contraction of his straight, dark brows.

There was a strange, repressed emotion in her face as she answered:

"It is not well, St. Leon. You are unnerved, troubled, thoughtful even beyond your wont. Will you forgive me for asking why?"

The dark, inscrutable eyes looked at her gravely.

"I might turn your deeds upon yourself," he said. "Why did you faint in the garden at Belle Vue to-day?"

She flushed, and then grew very pale again.

"I will tell you the truth," she said, "or a part of it at least. I was unnerved and startled by the terrible resemblance of the beautiful Mrs. Lynn to—"

"My lost wife," he said, slowly, filling up her painful pause.

"So you noticed it?" she said.

"Could one help it?" he asked in his slow, repressed voice. "Why do you call it a terrible resemblance, mother?"

"She is so like, so like—she is the living image of what Laurel must have been now if she lived! And the child, St. Leon, the child—" she broke down suddenly, and burst into wild, hysterical sobbing.

Shocked by the passionate grief so unusual in his stately lady-mother, he drew his arm tenderly around her and led her to a seat, kneeling down humbly before her.

"Mother, does the old wound still ache so bitterly?" he said, in blended pity and remorse. "I had thought the pain of it was past. Ah, I can never forgive myself for the madness, the cruelty, that robbed you of the daughter you loved!"

"And the grandchild I expected," she sobbed bitterly. "Ah, St. Leon, I can never forget how my hopes were blasted! Forgive me for those weak tears, my son. All the old regret and sorrow were stirred anew in my heart to-day by the sight of Mrs. Lynn and her beautiful child."

He had no answer for her. He was too proud and reserved to tell his mother the truth—that he, too, had been shaken by a ghost from the past that day. He knelt by her silently, letting her sob out all her grief and sorrow against his shoulder, and when she had grown calmer he said, gently:

"Mother, dear, you must not see this Mrs. Lynn again. It agitates you too much. After all, it is only a resemblance. She might not feel flattered if she knew that we compared her with my simple, little girl-wife, dead so long ago. Let me take you away to the seashore or the mountains while Mrs. Lynn remains at Belle Vue."

But she negatived the proposition in extreme alarm.

"It could only afford me pleasure to see Mrs. Lynn again," she declared. "I love her for her likeness to the dead. I am unwilling to lose a single chance of seeing her. And I promise you, St. Leon, that I will not lose my self-control again as I did to-day in the first shock of meeting her. I will be as calm and cold as she is."

CHAPTER LI

A few days later Mr. Ford brought his niece and her son to call at Eden.

The brilliant writer looked very elegant and distinguished in her dress of soft, rich black silk and lace. A dainty bonnet of black lace and gleaming jet rested on the dark golden waves of her hair, and set off to the greatest advantage her blonde loveliness, lighted by such dark and star-like eyes. A soft color glowed on her rounded cheeks, and her eyes were bright with repressed excitement, but no trace of her heart's emotion showed in her calm, gracious manner as she bowed to her handsome host and greeted his stately mother. She had schooled herself to calmness, and no heartless queen of society ever bore herself with more nonchalant ease and outward coldness than did Laurel in the hour when she re-entered the home she had left long years before, a wretched, despairing child, for whom life seemed over and done. Now, as she stepped across the threshold, a beautiful, proud, successful woman, whom the world delighted to honor, she remembered that broken-hearted child with a pang of bitterness that steeled her heart to the softness that had melted it for a moment. She would be cold and calm for the sake of the girl so cruelly put away from her husband's heart, so cruelly misjudged and scorned. Yet, as it all rushed over her again, she wondered, as she had wondered over and over in the past, how she had lived through her sorrow—that sorrow which she had said so many times would kill her when it came.

 
"The day drags through, though storms keep out the sun,
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on."
 

She said the pathetic lines over to herself, wearily, even as she touched St. Leon's hand with her own and looked at him with a smile—a smile bright but cold like moonlight on snow. He had no answering smile in return. His face was almost stern in its marble pallor and intensity of repressed emotion. His firm white hand was cold as ice as it touched the rosy palm so graciously extended; his voice had a strange tone, even to himself, as he welcomed her to his home.

"You have the most beautiful home on the Hudson. Eden is far more beautiful than Belle Vue," she said to him, with her bright, cold smile.

"I am glad you like my home. It will always have an added charm in my eyes since Mrs. Lynn has deigned to praise it," St. Leon answered, gallantly.

She thanked him almost mockingly, and then their conversation turned upon the safe ground of generalities—upon art, and books, and foreign travel, where both were at home. He found Mrs. Lynn his equal in every sense. Her mind was rarely cultured and stored with knowledge, her thoughts were beautiful and crystal clear. She held her own with the ease and grace of one who knew the world, yet retained the native innocence and frankness of a child. St. Leon's hauteur and reserve melted before the charm of her manner, and he became his natural self again, meeting her on her own ground with polished words and brilliant thoughts. Their glances met each other's calmly, telling no tales of that "auld lang syne" when "eyes looked love to eyes that spake again."

 
"Two maskers! what had they to do
With vows forsworn and loves untrue?"
 

Mrs. Le Roy gave her attention to Mr. Ford and the child. She had drawn little Laurence to a seat by her side, and was showing him some fine engravings. She could not keep her fascinated eyes from the beautiful, spirited, boyish face that bore such a startling resemblance to that of her own son. Mr. Ford watched her closely, and he saw that her heart had gone out to the child, and that she was trying to win his love in return. He looked on approvingly, longing, in the depths of his unselfish heart, for a reconciliation between the long-parted husband and wife.

"Neither one is happy," he said to himself, looking at them as they sat talking calmly like strangers—the proud husband and the proud wife. "That man has a story written on his face; he has suffered intensely; is it possible he does not suspect the truth? Can he look at her—speak to her—and not recognize her? It almost seems impossible. There was never beauty before like hers—never such winsomeness and artless grace. Before I came here I despised St. Leon Le Roy. Why is it that I pity him now? Is it because I can read his sorrow and repentance in the sadness of his face?"

Mr. Le Roy, rising at that moment, said, quietly, looking at his mother:

"I am taking Mrs. Lynn to the library, mother, to show her a book we have been discussing, if you and Mr. Ford will excuse us."

"Certainly," both answered in a breath; and they went away, followed by Mrs. Le Roy's startled glance.

"Your niece is very beautiful," she said, turning back, after a moment, to Mr. Ford. "Has she been long a widow?"

"Seven years," he answered.

"Then the child has never known his father?" she said, with a light, pitying touch of her ringed white hand on the boy's dark, clustering curls.

"No—much to the lad's regret," said Mr. Ford.

"I dare say you have acted a father's part by the fatherless one," she remarked, turning her grave, questioning eyes on his face. It seemed as if she was fascinated to speak of little Laurence. She could not keep her eyes nor her thoughts from him.

"Since I have known him—yes," Mr. Ford answered. "But though his mother is my own sister's child, Mrs. Le Roy, I never met her, never knew of her existence, until she was a widow, with a son three years old."

She looked the curiosity she was too well bred to express in words.

"Do you care to know the reason why?" asked Mr. Ford.

"I confess you have aroused my curiosity," she replied, with a smile.

"Then I will tell you," he said. "When I was quite a lad I ran away to Australia, seized with a gold-fever, then very prevalent in New York. After years of ill luck, sickness, and misfortune, I struck a bonanza. I was an old man then, and my heart yearned for the home and the friends of my youth. I came home, determined to share my wealth and prosperity with them, but all were dead, mother, father, and even the toddling little sister I had loved so dearly. She had married, and died in a short time after, leaving one daughter, whom I found it impossible to trace. Several years later, I discovered my missing niece, by a fortunate accident, in the brilliant novelist, Mrs. Lynn."

"She is very young to have achieved fame in the literary world," said the lady.

"The result of necessity, my dear madam," Mr. Ford replied. "Losing her husband before the birth of her child, my niece, scarcely more than a child herself then, was thrown upon her own resources for support. She became a writer, and most fortunately for the sake of the little, helpless being dependent upon her care, she succeeded where the many fail," he ended, leaving Mrs. Le Roy's unspoken curiosity on the subject of Mrs. Lynn even greater than before, through his meager explanation.

CHAPTER LII

Mr. Le Roy led his beautiful guest to the library, and placed a chair beside the table where he usually sat to read. Laurel sat silently a moment with averted face. She was fighting down her heart, thrusting back the memories that would arise like pallid ghosts from the dead past. Here in this room, nay, in this very chair where she was sitting, St. Leon had wooed her for his wife. She could be cold and proud in the grand drawing-room. It was there that he had put her away from him, there that he had spoken the cruel, angry words that sundered their hearts and lives forever. The memory of that night and that scene hardened her heart to her unforgiving husband, and helped her to be cold and careless. Here it was all different. This quiet retreat was hallowed by some of the sweetest moments of her life.

That hour which had lifted her from dumb, jealous misery and despair to the heights of bliss had come to her here.

The memory of her year of wedded happiness rushed over her with all the love and joy that had been crowded into it.

She trembled, she recalled all the horror and despair that had followed after, and for a moment it seemed to her that all was a hideous dream from which she would awaken presently. She longed to cry out aloud, to rush from this haunted room, to do anything that would free her from the gaze of those sad, dark eyes, whose burning glances as they sought her face seemed to read her secret and to plead with her for love and reconciliation. A smothered gasp, and she shook off the dangerous, luring spell, and became herself again, calm, indifferent, yet gracious, the woman that slighted and scorned love had made "icily splendid," fatally fair, as many a man had owned to his cost.

She looked about for something to divert her attention, and saw just at her hand lying on the table a volume elegantly bound in crimson and gold. She took it in her hand and read aloud the gold-lettered title on the back: "Laurel Blossoms."

"Laurel Blossoms," she repeated, and turned to the title-page. With widening eyes and a swift color that went and came from white to red and from red to white she read: "By Louis Vane."

St. Leon had drawn a chair near her. He spoke to her now in a calm, carefully modulated voice that went far toward restoring her shattered equanimity.

"That is a collection of tales and essays, Mrs. Lynn, arranged by myself for publication. The author is long since dead. He was my wife's father."

"Yes," she murmured, turning the precious pages slowly with her trembling hands, her eyes downcast, and bravely keeping back their threatening tears.

"Perhaps some one has told you the romantic story of my marriage, Mrs. Lynn?" he said, watching the fair, drooping face with earnest eyes.

She shook her head. She would not trust herself to speak.

"No?" he said. "Then perhaps I will tell you some day myself. You love romance and tragedy, I infer, from your books. My marriage had the elements of both in it."

She bowed again silently. It was quite impossible for her to utter a word just then; but she said to herself, with a sort of passionate disdain, that he was very daring, indeed, to speak to her of his marriage—to her, of all women in the world.

He went on in his quiet, musical tones:

"Louis Vane was a genius, but, like many another gifted spirit, he smirched the glorious talents given him in the degradation of strong drink. He loved pleasure better than fame. But for his weakness and his madness he would have made a name that must have gone ringing down the ages."

She was silent, steeling her heart to the sweetness of those words of praise. She remembered that strong, sweet voice that praised Louis Vane for his genius now, denouncing and scorning her that night, long years ago, as a "drunken journalist's daughter."

"When my wife died, seven years ago," went on St. Leon, "I made it my duty and my pleasure to gather her father's miscellaneous writings from the journals and magazines where they were scattered, and publish them in one volume, that they might be rescued from oblivion and preserved for the pleasure of his admirers. The book had a great sale. It was very popular. Have you never seen it before, Mrs. Lynn?"

Again she shook her head in silence.

"Then let me beg your acceptance of this copy. I should like you to read it. I assure you it will repay perusal. You may wonder at its fanciful name. My dead young wife was called Laurel. Is it not a sweet name? In memory of her I called it 'Laurel Blossoms'!"

Would he never have done speaking? A strange softness was stealing over her heart that frightened her. No other atonement on earth could have touched and moved her like this one. It was what she could have wished most upon earth—to have her father's brilliant essays collected into this beautiful volume, and yet she had never thought of doing it herself. A pang of self-reproach pierced her heart.

"Forgive me, father," she whispered, inly, as if the dead were present in spirit, and could know and feel her mute repentance. "I have been so absorbed in my own selfish sorrows and triumphs I forgot to rescue your genius from the oblivion that must have ingulfed it but for this man's effort."

All this while he was waiting for an answer. What must he think of her strange silence? With a great effort she lifted her eyes to his face, and said, in tones ringing with latent sarcasm and incredulity:

"You must have loved your wife very dearly, Mr. Le Roy?"

"More than I knew," he answered, simply, and the tone even more than the words betrayed the burden of remorse and sorrow his heart had borne for years.

She rose abruptly with the precious volume of her father's writings clasped tightly in her hands. She was afraid to stay longer—afraid of that sweet and subtle pity that thrilled her woman's heart.

"I have made too long a call for a first visit," she said. "Another time will do for the books of which we spoke. The 'Laurel Blossoms' made me forget."

"You have forgotten the flowers I promised to show you, too," he said. "Let me take you to the garden now."

"Some other time. I must really go now," she said, feeling that for this one day she had already borne all that she could bear.

He did not urge the point. Perhaps the trial was as hard for him as for her.

"Will you drive with me to-morrow?" he asked, as he touched her hand at parting. "There are some beautiful views in this vicinity that I should like to have the pleasure of showing you."

"Yes, I will go," she answered, hastily, unable to deny herself the blended bliss and pain of his companionship even while she despised herself for what she disdainfully termed to herself her woman's weakness.