Kitabı oku: «Laurel Vane; or, The Girls' Conspiracy», sayfa 17

CHAPTER LIX

Was it chance or fate that brought Mr. Gordon down, a few weeks later, to consult with Mrs. Lynn about the publication of her new book?

She was down on the shore with her little Laurence and his playmate, Trixy Wentworth. The little girl's mother had promised to join her presently. She and Mrs. Lynn had become quite intimate friends by this time. They were fond of each other, as two young, pretty, noble women like Beatrix and Laurel are apt to be when thrown together. Beatrix had told all her romantic story to Mrs. Lynn, and Laurel had heard it silently, and made no sign. She said to herself that that unhappy girl, over whose fate Beatrix drowned her blue eyes in regretful tears, must remain as one dead to all the world. She would not confess her secret. She would remain Mrs. Lynn to the end of the chapter.

She sat still on her low camp-chair, with her large parasol held open over her head, and waited for Beatrix to come. She had a book open in her lap, but she was not reading. Her large, dark, thoughtful eyes wandered from the pretty children at play with their attentive nurses, to the billowy foam capped waves rolling in to her feet with a hollow, mystical murmur full of woe and mystery.

Mr. Gordon came out to her there, and he was puzzled, as he always was, when he saw Mrs. Lynn, by her subtle likeness to some one he had seen or known, and whom he could not now recall.

"Have I ever told you how strangely you affect me, Mrs. Lynn?" he said. "You are like some one I have known whom I cannot now recall. If I could bring myself to believe in theories I have heard advanced, I should say I had known you in some other previous world."

She knew where he had seen her. It was at Eden that fatal night that had struck her down from happiness to the keenest despair. Her face grew pale, her limbs trembled beneath her.

"Some day the truth will break upon him with the suddenness of the lightning's flash. He will recognize me as Laurel Vane, the girl he refused to forgive and pity that fatal night. He will know that the scorn of proud, rich people did not quite crush me, that I survived it all," she said to herself with the pride that had become a part of her nature.

But she did not mean that he should recognize her if she could help it. Certainly she would never own the truth even if he taxed her with it: so she answered with a careless smile:

"The world is full of chance resemblances that puzzle and amaze us, Mr. Gordon. You see that little girl playing with my son there? Well, when I first saw her I had the oddest fancy that she was like some one I had seen or known. The likeness was haunting and troublesome at first, but I have grown used to it now. It does not trouble me any longer. Do look at her, Mr. Gordon. Is she not a lovely child?"

He looked, and a sudden cry of wonder came from his lips. The years rolled backward, and in the face of little Trixy he seemed to see his own Beatrix in her tender childhood—his beautiful, beloved daughter, who had been so willful and disobedient, and to whose sin he had refused his forgiveness.

"She is like some one I have known, too. Ah, so like, so like!" he said, in a strange voice. "Who is she, Miss Lynn?"

"Her name is Trixy Wentworth, Mr. Gordon. She is an American child, but she was born in England. Her parents lived there nearly nine years. They have come back to New York to live now. Mr. Cyril Wentworth is in business there. Trixy is here with her mother for her health."

He stifled something like a groan upon his lips. Laurel saw how pale he had suddenly grown, and followed up her advantage by calling the little one to her and setting her on Mr. Gordon's knee.

"Give the gentleman a kiss, Trixy," she said to the lovely little golden-haired creature. "He is very lonely; he has no little girl of his own."

Trixy's ready sympathies were instantly enlisted by that, to her mind, pathetic statement. She gave Mr. Gordon a fastidious look-you-over stare, and, seeing that he was pleasant to look upon, put her round, dimpled arms about his neck and gave him a bear-like hug and a resounding kiss.

"Is it true that you really have no little girl?" she asked him, bending back her pretty head to look into his face with eyes that pierced his heart with their likeness to Beatrix—Beatrix, his little girl whom he had put away from his heart, hated and unforgiven, because she had disobeyed him.

He could not speak for a moment, and Mrs. Lynn said, gently, looking away at the restless sea the while:

"This little girl has a grandpapa in New York, Mr. Gordon, who has never seen her. Her mother made a marriage that displeased him, and he has never forgiven her. He has missed a world of love by his hardness and sternness—do you not think so?"

The dark-eyed little Laurence came running up before he could frame a reply.

"Oh, but, Trixy, you shouldn't be sitting on that gentleman's lap, you know," he exclaimed, "for you have promised to be my little wife!"

This childish jealousy provoked such a laugh from the elders, that it quite drowned the sound of a light, quick step that came up behind them. In a moment more Beatrix Wentworth came around in front of the group.

The smile died on her lips, as she saw her little daughter sitting on the lap of the stern father she had not beheld for more than nine years. Poor Beatrix looked frightened and dismayed. The pretty rose-tint faded from her face, her lips trembled, and the words she strove to utter died silently upon them.

Laurel rose with an encouraging smile and drew her friend forward.

"Mr. Gordon," she said, "this is my friend, Mrs. Wentworth. She is little Trixy's mother."

Beatrix looked upon into the face of her father through blinding tears and put out her hand.

"Papa, forgive me," she murmured, sadly.

There was a moment's dead silence. Mr. Gordon had put the child from his knee and risen, but he did not answer his daughter. She went on, in gentle, pleading tones.

"Papa, I have written to you so often and begged you to forgive me, and every time my letters came back to me unopened. Papa, I cannot say I am sorry for my fault, because Cyril is good and kind, and he makes me very happy. But I have grieved sorely for you and mamma, I have longed to be reconciled to you. Oh, surely you will not refuse to forgive me now that we are face to face!"

"Forgive her, Mr. Gordon," cried Laurel, impulsively.

The two fair faces, the pleading voices, the wondering eyes of the little children, were too much for Mr. Gordon's calmness. His pride and sternness melted into love and remorse. Laurel gave one glance at his quivering face and turned gently away. She knew that the end was won—that love had conquered pride. He would forgive Beatrix.

But she did not know that in this moment when the ice melted around his hard, cold heart and he forgave his disobedient daughter, new light had broken upon his mind. The sight of Beatrix had supplied the missing link that connected Mrs. Lynn so subtly with his past. Like a flash of lightning it dawned upon him that this was Laurel Vane.

That night at Eden rushed over his mind, freshly as though it were but yesterday. He saw again the beautiful impostor who had personated his own daughter and married the master of Eden.

While he gave Beatrix the tender embrace of forgiveness, he seemed to see in fancy the kneeling, suppliant girl to whom he had refused his forgiveness, whom no one had pitied, whom all had forsaken and ignored. Even in his anger that night he had been struck by the wondrous beauty of the girl. This was the same lovely face, with its charm only intensified by time; this was the same sweet voice asking him to pardon Beatrix that had begged forgiveness vainly for herself. He was full of wonder over his sudden discovery.

"They said that Le Roy's wife drowned herself, but it cannot be true. There is some terrible mistake, some unexplained mystery. This is Louis Vane's daughter, and she has inherited all the genius of her erratic father," he said to himself.

He did not know what to do. He was frightened at his own discovery. He wondered if Beatrix knew the truth. He inclined to believe that she did, but when he found an opportunity and questioned her he was rather staggered to find that Mrs. Lynn had resolutely denied her identity with Laurel Vane.

"I do not believe her. She is St. Leon Le Roy's wife, and the child is his. It bears its paternity on its face. What is your opinion, Beatrix?" asked the great publisher, thoughtfully.

"I believe that you are right," she replied; "I have believed that she was Mr. Le Roy's wife ever since I first met her several weeks ago. Her assertions to the contrary had no weight with me, although I held my peace and respected her reserve. I have been silent, but I have not been convinced."

"What is her object in this strange denial of herself?" he asked, thoughtfully.

"Pride and wounded feeling," Beatrix answered, with the unerring instinct of a woman.

When he remembered that night long years ago he did not blame her much. They had scorned and flouted her cruelly among them—they had no pity on the erring girl—they had driven her to desperation, forgetting how young and friendless she had been. He wondered much what had been the history of the intervening years, and how she had come by her name of Mrs. Lynn.

"Only her nom de plume, perhaps," he thought; and then he said, aloud: "Beatrix, do you not think I ought to write to St. Leon Le Roy to come down here?"

"I think it would be perfectly proper," she replied.

CHAPTER LX

Mrs. Wentworth and Mr. Gordon were not the only persons at the seaside who suspected that Mrs. Lynn was other than she seemed.

The curiosity of the pretty, faded widow, Mrs. Merivale, had been aroused by the first sight of Mrs. Lynn. She spared no pains until she obtained an introduction to the noted writer, over whose charms of mind and person all the best people at the seaside were enthusiastic in admiration. When she had done so, she was almost frightened by the astonishing likeness of Mrs. Lynn to Laurel Vane.

"It is the dead alive!" she said to herself. "I can no longer believe that St. Leon's wife drowned herself. There has been some great mistake. She went away and hid herself from all who knew her, and she has reappeared as Mrs. Lynn. I wish I knew the history of those intervening years, and what she intends to do. Will she return to St. Leon? Will he forgive her and take her back?"

She was bitterly chagrined and angry at the thought that Laurel lived in the person of the beautiful, gifted, wealthy Mrs. Lynn. She had been glad when she heard that Laurel was dead. She began to feel now that Fate had played her an unkind trick in resurrecting her hated rival from the grave, where she had deemed her resting all these long years; not that the wily widow had any hope of winning St. Leon. She had understood that long ago. She knew that he was proof against her faded charms, her rouged and powdered beauty, that he thoroughly despised her. She had known it ever since that night at Eden, when he had flung back her offered heart on her hands in supremest scorn and sarcasm. The knowledge had aroused all the littleness and spite of her malicious nature. She had hated St. Leon from that moment—hated the beautiful girl who had won him even more. She would gladly have done both an ill turn if she could, but Laurel, dead in her grave, was secure from her vengeance, and St. Leon, in his proud position and calm reserve, beyond her reach. For several years she had not seen him, but she knew that he had returned from his wanderings and was at home again. The thought that Laurel still lived, the bare possibility that she might yet be reunited to her husband, filled her with jealous anger and dread. On the spur of the moment she penned a letter to one who hated St. Leon and Laurel with as deadly a rancor as her own—one whose love for Laurel had changed to hate, even as had Mrs. Merivale's for St. Leon—no less a person than the villain, Ross Powell.

Mr. Powell's animosity against the rich man who had won Laurel had not been lessened by the fact that Mr. Le Roy had secured the dismissal of the villain from Mr. Gordon's employ in the week immediately following the exposé at Eden. Mr. Le Roy's resentment had followed him steadily from one place to another in New York, until he found that it was useless to expect to retain employment in that city, and was forced to seek a livelihood in a more distant one beyond the reach of his enemy's anger.

The villain was well punished for his unmanly persecution of an innocent, helpless girl, but it did not add to the sweetness of his temper to receive this merited retribution for his wickedness. He swore revenge upon St. Leon Le Roy, and patiently bided his time, pledging himself the faithful ally of Mrs. Merivale in her hatred of her whilom friend and lover.

The time for his revenge seemed come at last, when he received Mrs. Merivale's letter, urging him to come to the seaside, and help her to identify Laurel Vane in the beautiful, courted woman queening it so royally in circles where Maud Merivale could barely find a footing. He lost no time in obeying her mandate, feeling as anxious as the wicked widow herself to prevent a reunion of the long-separated husband and wife.

He reached the hotel on a lovely evening in the last of August, and was shown at once to Mrs. Merivale's private parlor. They had never met but once before, but there was no embarrassment in the meeting. Both were alike at heart—crafty, evil, unscrupulous—ready to do their best to dash down the possible cup of happiness from the lips of the man and woman they hated with all the venom of their little souls.

"And you are sure that she is Laurel Vane?" he said, in wonder.

"I am sure—quite sure in my own mind," she replied. "But you will see her very probably this evening at the usual hop if she deigns to honor it with her presence. It is not often she appears, being very exclusive and reserved, but if you miss her to-night you will be very sure to see her on the shore in the morning."

"What are we to do if it be really Laurel Vane?" asked Powell, musingly.

Her pale eyes flashed with subtle meaning.

"We must do anything to prevent her from meeting Mr. Le Roy again—I could not endure their happiness," she replied, bitterly.

CHAPTER LXI

Contrary to her usual habit, and to humor a caprice of Mrs. Wentworth's, Laurel decided to make her appearance in the hotel parlors that evening. Beatrix and her child were going back to New York with Mr. Gordon the next day. He had promised his daughter to take her home to her mother—promised her Mrs. Gordon's free and full forgiveness both for herself and her beloved Cyril. Beatrix was very happy in the reconciliation with her father—so happy that Laurel could not bear to cloud the brightness of her sky with a single shadow, so she did not refuse when Beatrix asked her to go into the parlors with her that evening.

"Papa wishes it," said Mrs. Wentworth, "and Cyril is coming, too. He has read your books, and he is very anxious to see you. He can scarcely credit my written statement that you are so young still, in spite of your brilliant literary fame. He imagines you an old lady in cap and spectacles."

Laurel laughed and promised to be introduced to Mr. Wentworth. She had a vivid remembrance of the fair, handsome young fellow who had been so kind and pitiful to her that day in London, when Beatrix and Clarice had so scolded and frightened her. She felt grateful to him still, and was not averse to seeing him again, herself unknown.

She chose an evening dress of pale-pink brocade, with cream-white Spanish lace. The rainbow fire of opals shone on her arms and neck, and her beautiful burnished golden hair was arranged on the top of her head in a queenly fashion. Though she had scarcely given a thought to her personal appearance, she had never looked more lovely. There was not a single woman at the seaside that night who could at all compare with Mrs. Lynn for grace and beauty.

Some one else besides Ross Powell had arrived that evening—no less a person than St. Leon Le Roy.

He was rather puzzled to know why Mr. Gordon had sent him that mysterious summons; but when they met, and he frankly inquired the reason, he received an evasive reply. Mr. Gordon promised to tell him after awhile, but just now he had promised to escort his daughter, Mrs. Wentworth, into the ball-room, where the lively strains of the band were already in progress.

Would Mr. Le Roy see Beatrix and forgive her for her share in his past trouble? She was so sorry, so ashamed. She had never dreamed how it would all turn out.

The publisher was a little nervous as he thus pleaded for his daughter. She had told her father the story of her unanswered letter to Mr. Le Roy. He could not tell whether time had softened his resentment at the girl's conspiracy that had ended so disastrously.

Mr. Le Roy grew very pale for a moment as he was thus brought face to face with the past. Then he remembered Mrs. Wentworth's letter with something like shame. It had been so kind, and sweet, and womanly—so truly repentant.

"I was rude and churlish to slight it so," he said to himself, remorsefully.

"I shall be very glad to see her, and I hope she will forgive me for my churlishness," he said.

Mr. Gordon conducted him to his daughter's private parlor. Beatrix was there, looking very lovely in a simple evening-dress of black and white. Tears crowded thickly to her azure eyes as she confessed her fault and begged him to pardon her.

"If I had known that you were at Eden, Mr. Le Roy, I should never have sent poor little Laurel there," said Beatrix. "I was a young and silly girl enough, I own, but I should have been too wise to have sent that lovely, ignorant child into the way of temptation."

"That lovely, ignorant child!"—somehow those words seemed like a tacit reproach to him. Yes, that was what she had been—a beautiful, simple child, all unversed in the world's ways, ignorant of the enormity of her fault, or believing that her great love condoned it. How hardly, how cruelly he had judged her, the girl-wife he had taken before God, "for better, for worse."

"I have not kept my vow," he said to himself, and Beatrix, who thought him hard and stern, wondered at the softness of his voice as he replied:

"I forgive you freely, Mrs. Wentworth, and, indeed, I sometimes wonder if there is anything to forgive. My wife made me very happy. I erred when in my hardness I refused to forgive her. But for my hard, suspicious nature that made me impute mercenary motives to her, I should have pardoned the child's fault. But I was cruelly hard. It is no wonder she refuses to forgive me."

"Refuses!" Beatrix echoed, with a start of wonder, as she gazed into his pale, agitated face.

"I spoke in the present tense, as if Laurel really existed. A mere slip of the tongue, Mrs. Wentworth," he said, with assumed carelessness.

"Ah! if only he knew the real truth! But I can see that he is deeply repentant, and I foresee a joyful reconciliation between him and his beautiful gifted wife," said Beatrix to herself, hopefully.

In a little while Cyril Wentworth came in. It was but a distant greeting the two gentlemen gave each other. Cyril thought that Mr. Le Roy had treated his erring bride hardly and unjustly, and he could not be cordial to him, for pretty Laurel's sake—and on the other hand St. Leon remembered how jealous he had been of this handsome young man in the days before he learned the truth about his wife. The old dislike and resentment lingered with him unconsciously still. He took leave very soon after Cyril's entrance, promising to meet them later in the ball-room or the parlors.

"Now, I am going to introduce you to Mrs. Lynn," said Beatrix to her husband. "You will escort her to the ball-room, and papa will take me."

She led him to Laurel's apartment, and watched him closely as he bowed before the gifted authoress whose writings he admired so much. Cyril was almost dumb with surprise and admiration. It was some time before he recovered himself sufficiently to offer her his arm to conduct her to the ball-room.

"Well, Cyril, what do you think of her?" Beatrix asked him eagerly, as soon as she found a chance to hang upon his arm apart from the rest.

He looked fondly down into the fair face.

"You must not be jealous of my opinion, my darling," he said. "Of course you are the sweetest, fairest woman on earth to me. But Mrs. Lynn is the most beautiful as well as the most gifted one I ever met."

It was eloquent praise, but somehow Beatrix looked disappointed. He read it plainly on the fair mobile face.

"Is there anything more that I ought to say about your favorite?" he inquired, laughingly.

"Have you, indeed, no more to say about her?" she returned wistfully.

"Yes, there is something else—only I am afraid you will laugh at the fancy, dear," said Cyril Wentworth, with a masculine dread of ridicule.

"No, I will not laugh at you. Tell me," said Beatrix, anxiously.

"I am not at all sure you will not laugh," he said, "but I will tell you the truth. Although I have never seen any one quite so lovely as your Mrs. Lynn, yet she recalls to my mind some one else whom I have met—indeed Beatrix, the resemblance is simply marvelous," he exclaimed, glancing across to where the lovely authoress stood conversing with Mr. Gordon.

"Whom does she resemble?" Beatrix inquired with her heart on her lips.

"I am sure you will see the likeness as soon as I mention it," he said. "Look closely at Mrs. Lynn, Beatrix—at her rare type of beauty, her dark eyes, her golden hair, her blonde coloring, her delicately chiseled features, her sweet, sad lips. She is like one long dead. She is like Laurel Vane."

A sigh of relief came from her lips.

"I was sure you could not fail to see the resemblance," she said.

"So you had already noted it?" he said.

"Could one help it?" she whispered. "I will tell you a secret, Cyril. I believe that this is Laurel Vane herself."

"But she is dead," Cyril objected, dazed by the suddenness of his wife's revelation.

"I do not believe it. There has been some dreadful mistake. I believe that St. Leon Le Roy's wife lives in the person of Mrs. Lynn," exclaimed Beatrix, whispering to him earnestly for a few minutes.

Laurel and Mr. Gordon, together with Mr. Ford, stood a little apart watching the gay crowd of waltzers whirling down the center of the long room to the measured beat of the gay dance music. She did not know why she turned her head and looked in another direction, but it must have been in magnetic obedience to an evil spell, for in a moment she met the glance of Maud Merivale—Maud standing near and leaning on the arm of a man who regarded her with bold and eager eyes.

To have saved her life, Laurel could not have repressed that agitated start, that tremor that shook her from head to foot at sight of her old enemy's face! She had been proof against the softness of love, the allurements of friendship, but in that instant the deadly influence of fear and detestation sent a shudder through her frame and blanched her lovely face to the pallor of death. It seemed as though she was possessed by some horrible nightmare dream, as she met those bold, evil eyes, and realized he recognized her as Laurel Vane whom he had so relentlessly pursued with his evil designs.

With a terrible effort she turned her eyes from the villain's exultant face, and they rested by chance on Beatrix, where she stood leaning on her husband's arm. But whose was that other form beside Beatrix—that tall and stately presence? She gave a great gasp of blended emotion—St. Leon Le Roy!