Kitabı oku: «Little Nobody», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XXXIX

He stood staring with frightened eyes at the white envelope, with its large black letters formed in Una's crude handwriting, dreading to touch it, for a swift instinct told him the truth.

She had left him, he felt quite sure—left him almost in the very hour when the discovery of their mutual love for each other had paved the way to their wedded happiness. Mme. Lorraine, like the serpent crawling into Eden, had brought woe and pain where love and joy had reigned.

All this flashed over him instinctively as he took the letter in his hand and tore it open, devouring in fierce haste the brief, sad note Una had written such a little while ago that the ink was scarcely dry upon the page.

"This is my farewell to you, Eliot," it said. "I have learned the secret of my identity. Forgive me that I shrink from revealing it to you. I can only say that it comes between us, and divides us as effectually as the grave itself. I have left you forever. Do not seek to trace me, for nothing can ever induce me to live with you again. Give up the thought of me and obtain a divorce (it will be easy, for, thank Heaven, I have never been your wife, save in name only), then you can marry Ida Hayes, whom you loved before you ever saw me. God bless you for all your goodness to me. If you had known who I was that time in New Orleans, you need not have sacrificed yourself for my sake. God bless my—yes, I will presume to call them sisters this once—Maud and Edith! I have left them the jewels they wore to-night in memory of Una, to whom they were so kind. Forget me, Eliot, as soon as you can, for I am all unworthy of your name and your love.

"Little Nobody."

She had deliberately signed the name she hated so much, and he knew that her humility must have been great to drive her to such an act. With a groan he sunk into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

"How could she, with her beauty and innocence, her high-bred air and noble soul, be lowly, even shamefully born, as this letter would have me believe?" he exclaimed. "No, no; it is only another of that wicked woman's falsehoods. She has taken Una with her, out of hatred for my darling and envy of our happiness. There can be nothing strong enough to come between us, my little love and I. Oh, why did I leave them alone together? I might have known that serpent's wiles. But I will follow and bring them back! Fortunately it is not too late."

But he was mistaken, for when he reached madame's hotel, half an hour later, he was told that she had left Boston by the 1:30 train.

"Just thirty minutes too late!" he muttered, wildly, and the sleepy night-clerk of the hotel looked at him in contemptuous amazement. He thought he must be some demented admirer of Mme. Leonie.

Eliot knew that madame's next engagement was in Philadelphia, and he determined that he would follow by the next train.

"Will she have the temerity to take Una with her, or will she try to hide her from me? The latter, most likely," he thought, sadly, and a presentiment grew upon him that his lovely girl-wife was lost to him forever.

But he followed the actress by the next train to Philadelphia, only to learn that she had never arrived there. At a heavy cost, she had made her manager cancel her engagement, and neither herself nor the manager could be found there, nor a clew obtained to their whereabouts.

Just as suddenly as she had returned to the stage, she disappeared from it, and the mystery of her disappearance was the topic of newspaper paragraphs for some days.

Only one of the journalistic fraternity had any idea of the cause of her flight, and he was too proud and bitter to give it to the world.

To his own family, under strict bonds of secrecy, he confided the truth, and Maud and Edith were indignant at the thought that wicked Mme. Lorraine had dared come beneath their roof, and loud in their protestations of disbelief in the story that there was a stain on Una's birth.

But Bryant, Sylvie, and Ida preserved a significant silence that told more plainly than words their belief that all had happened for the best. They hoped secretly that Eliot would get a divorce, as Una had told him to do.

CHAPTER XL

After the space of five years, let us look in again upon the Van Zandts.

Eliot Van Zandt has a guest.

Pierre Carmontelle!

For five years the noble Louisianian has been a wanderer in foreign lands. He has returned at last cured of his passion for the girl he had loved, strong enough now to witness her happiness with another.

Not since the day when he bid farewell to Eliot and his bride has he heard aught of their fate until now, when, strong in the consciousness of his conquered love, he goes to Boston, determined to visit the happy pair before his return South.

"I shall see Van Zandt grown portly and important, the Little Nobody of old matronly and magnificent," he said to himself, with a smile.

Fancy the shock of the reality when he found Eliot a grave, sad man, old beyond his years through the influence of sorrow for the young wife lost so strangely out of his life.

It was several minutes after Eliot had told him his story before he could utter a word, so greatly was he affected by what had been told him. Then he called down the vengeance of Heaven on the head of the wicked woman.

Eliot's grave, sad face, with its lines of suffering, told plainer than words all that he had endured.

"Surely you pursued them?" cried Carmontelle.

"As long as my means lasted—yes," said Van Zandt. "But that was such a little while. You know I had so little beyond my salary, and—there were my two sisters."

"You should have written to me."

"I did—your letter was returned to me—you had sailed for Europe."

"And not a clew in all these years?"

"None."

"I need not ask if you have taken Una's advice and procured a divorce?" Carmontelle said, with quiet comprehension of the other's pale, grave face that flushed slightly, as he answered:

"I am bound to Una while I live, although I have given up all hope of ever seeing her again."

Carmontelle's steady eyes went over the worn sheet of paper on which Una had traced her pathetic farewell to her husband.

"And Miss Hayes, whom she says here you loved before your marriage?" he said, abruptly.

"I can not tell how she fell into such an error. Miss Hayes is my brother's sister-in-law. She visited here often, but we were never more than friends," Eliot answered, quietly, all unsuspicious of Sylvie's treachery.

Then the ladies of the house came in, and the conversation drifted to other subjects.

Sylvie was the same exquisitely dressed doll; but five years had changed Maud and Edith from pretty, vivacious girls to quiet, dignified young ladies. In Maud there was a greater change than in Edith, and the secret lay in the failure of her beloved novel.

Three years ago the cherished book had been given to the world, and the cruel critics had ridiculed the immature work of the girl, saying that the wild flights of fancy, so fresh, so buoyant, could have emanated from none but a young, inexperienced brain knowing nothing of the hard, cruel world.

Pretty, tender Maud did not have the spirit of a Byron to retort on her critics and write, despite their sneers, so she laid down her pen, as she said, forever, and nearly broke her heart in bitter humiliation over her cruel failure. So there lay the secret of the beauty so ethereally frail that one fancied, in looking at her, that the spirit would soon plume its wings for another world.

Edith was made of different metal. When the picture on which she had spent so much time was voted as great a failure as Maud's book, she shed a few bitter tears, brushed them away, and began again.

On her easel had stood, for some time, an unfinished portrait of Una. Turning to this now, she made a fancy picture of it, and boldly called it Una.

Upon this portrait rested Edith's fame. When exhibited, it created a great sensation. She had many offers for it, but she rejected all to present the portrait to her brother. He was deeply moved, and declared that the gift of a fortune would not have pleased him so much.

So Edith's fame was established. A few copies of the beautiful "Una" found ready sale. Then there came in orders for portraits. She had her own beautiful studio now, and made money enough to buy her own dresses, and Maud's, too; so Eliot was free now, but he had never begrudged the manly aid he lent to his sisters. Even now he spent very little for himself, but went on laying up his small savings carefully for Una, if she should ever come back.

Pierre Carmontelle, who had traveled five years to get cured of an attack of the grande passion, fell straight into Cupid's net again when he encountered Maud's pensive beauty. She, on her part, was attracted to this noble man of forty-odd years as she had never been to younger ones who had bowed at her shrine.

Never did anything come about more suddenly; for the Southerner, who had expected to remain in Boston only a day, stayed a month, and at the expiration of that time Maud was his promised wife.

Of course they had talked to each other about Una, and when Maud wanted to defer the bridal-day six months, Carmontelle said, artfully:

"Do not make it so long as that, my darling, because you and I want to go in search of Una just as soon as we are married, do we not?"

"Yes," she answered eagerly; and thereupon agreed to get ready to be married in two months.

Sylvie said that it was all hurried up in the worst of taste. She had not believed Maud would be so ready to snap up a rich man; but—ah! well, your romantic, novel-writing folks had an eye to the main chance, like everybody else.

Edith answered daringly:

"Why not say at once, Sylvie, that you're envious because Maud is going to be as rich as you are? Goodness knows, I'm glad one of the Van Zandts will be rich at last, so that you will not be able always to fling our poverty in our faces!"

CHAPTER XLI

Maud declared that the trousseau must be a very simple and quiet one, since almost everything must come from the pockets of Eliot and Edith.

But the brother and sister overruled her objections.

"As if we had any other use for our savings!" cried Edith. "We are going to spend every penny. Do you think we are going to let our sister go to her rich husband plain and shabby?"

So the order was given for several very handsome dresses, among them an ivory white satin, veiled in lace, for the bridal-dress.

But before the bills came in from milliners and modistes the young authoress was able to pay them out of her own purse.

And it came about in this wise.

About four weeks after her engagement to the rich Southerner she received a visit from her Boston publisher.

He put into her hand a check for several hundred dollars, the receipts from her novel which until now had not paid for the first costs of its publication.

"I congratulate you, Miss Van Zandt," he said. "Your novel is suddenly becoming popular. The book-sellers report numerous calls for it, and in consequence I have large orders."

Maud's lip quivered, and her blue-gray eyes, so like Eliot's, dimmed with happy tears.

"At last!" she exclaimed, joyously. "Oh, I had ceased to hope or expect anything!"

"I have taken pains to inquire into the cause of your success after the unfriendliness of the critics had so long injured its sale," he said; "and I have found out that the real merits of your novel have at last been discovered and revealed by a friendly critic."

"I thought they were all my mortal foes!" she exclaimed.

He smiled, and answered:

"Not this one, at least, for he or she has been very frank, as well as very just. While the defects of your book are plainly acknowledged, its many beauties and merits are enthusiastically dwelt upon, and the fact of the author's tender youth is eloquently dilated on in excusing its faults."

The girl's sweet eyes dilated wildly.

"Who could have known that?" she asked him.

"I can not tell. I understood that the writer is a reviewer of books for a noted New York magazine. I have not learned the name, but I will find it out for you, Miss Van Zandt," promised the genial publisher.

"Pray, do so, if possible; and also please get the magazine containing the friendly review of my poor book. It will make me so happy to read it, and to write a letter of thanks to my good angel!" she exclaimed, fervently.

Smiling at her enthusiasm, and promising to gratify her desire, the publisher took leave, and the very next day sent her the magazine.

How gladly, how happily the young heart beat as her eager eyes devoured the column of reviews, and at last fell on "The Fatal Roses," her own romantic and high-flown novel, over whose non-success she had shed such bitter, burning tears.

But they were tears of joy that glittered on her lashes now, as she went eagerly over the two full columns that had been given to "The Fatal Roses" by one who signed the, to Maud, startling name of "Una."

"Una!" she cried out, wildly, and ran to seek Eliot, who was in the library with her intended husband.

"Eliot! oh, Eliot, look! Our own darling Una!" she exclaimed, wildly, pointing with her taper finger at the startling name.

Scarcely less agitated than herself, he took the review and read it hurriedly, then passed it to Carmontelle.

"Can it be my Una?" he exclaimed, pale and agitated, his heart beating wildly.

But the face of Pierre Carmontelle looked calm and grave.

"Dear Eliot, dear Maud, do not give yourself up too ardently to hope," he said. "This may prove but a coincidence. The name may have been chosen as a nom de plume by the writer."

"My publisher promised to find out the name of the critic, if possible," Maud said; and to him Eliot went at once in a fever of anxiety.

Mr. Dudley could not give him any satisfaction. He had written to the New York publisher, asking for information, but had not yet received his reply. As soon as it came, he would be happy to lay his letter before Miss Van Zandt and her brother.

It was almost a week before the reply came, and Mr. Dudley forwarded it at once to Maud.

The New York publisher wrote that he was unacquainted with his able critic, save by the name of Una. All his business with her was transacted through a Boston banker, whose name he gave, and whom the Van Zandts knew as the head of one of the most influential banks in the city.

"She is here, then, in this very city, my lost Una—so near and 'yet so far!'" groaned Eliot. "But I shall go at once to Mr. Chesterton, with whom I have long had a friendly acquaintance."

He went and elicited simply nothing. The great banker would give him no information.

"I am not at liberty to speak one word on the subject, although I would gladly oblige you, Van Zandt, were it in my power!" he cried, affably.

"At least tell me if Una is young, and if it is a real name, or a nom de plume," pleaded Eliot.

"I regret that I am not at liberty to answer your questions," repeated courteous Mr. Chesterton.

Baffled, but almost convinced by all this mystery that Maud's friendly critic was none other than his lovely, lost Una, Eliot went away in despair, and found a comforter in Carmontelle.

"Leave it to me, Eliot, and I will find out all about the little runaway," he said, confidently.

He went to a directory and found out the residence of Mr. Chesterton, a stately brown-stone residence in a fashionable and aristocratic street.

A day or two later he said to Van Zandt:

"I have found out all about the members of Mr. Chesterton's family. He has a handsome young wife, three small children, and a beautiful young governess."

"Una!" Eliot cried, with a start.

"Perhaps so; but we must not be too sure. I have not seen her yet," said Carmontelle.

"But you will do so soon?" anxiously.

A week later he came to Eliot where he sat with his sisters in the library, their favorite room, for here Sylvie seldom obtruded her presence.

Maud, so lovely and happy now that she did not look like the pensive girl of a month ago, sprung up impetuously and caught his arm.

"Oh, you look so happy, you surely found our darling girl!"

Taking Eliot's and Edith's indulgence for granted, he pressed a light kiss on her pure brow.

"You have guessed aright," he answered, "I have seen Mr. Chesterton's governess. She calls herself Mademoiselle Lorraine, and teaches French to the little Chestertons, but she is indeed no other than our Una."

"Thank Heaven!" Eliot cried, springing up, "I will go to her at once."

"Nonsense! She will not receive you," said his friend, and Eliot flung himself down again with a groan.

"Listen," said Pierre Carmontelle, "Mademoiselle Lorraine goes out every afternoon to walk with her little charges. She is always closely veiled, and sometimes she walks past this very house, and looks up at the windows with eyes full of sadness. I saw her myself to-day, and recognized her in spite of her thick veil. I followed her, and when near the gate, I spoke to her; but afterward I was almost sorry I had done so, she was so terribly frightened."

"Frightened!—but why?" cried Maud.

And Eliot echoed bitterly:

"Why?"

"I can not tell you, I only know that she did not accord me any welcome. She only looked sorry and frightened and cried out sharply: 'Oh, you have hunted me down! This is cruel, cruel; but, oh, Monsieur Carmontelle, for God's sake, do not betray me to Eliot—to Mr. Van Zandt.'"

"And then?" cried Edith, breathlessly.

"Then her little pupils came around her and hurried her inside the gate. She looked back at me, waved her little gloved hand imploringly, and cried out again, 'Do not betray me to Eliot, or any one.' Then she vanished inside the banker's door."

They sat looking sadly, and yet gladly, at one another. At least she lived, poor darling, and was out of the power of the wicked woman whose malice had lured her from home and love.

"If I could only see her, only speak to her, my poor little Una, I am sure I could win her confidence!" Eliot exclaimed, passionately.

"You are right; and indeed you must see her now," answered his friend. "Una must give you her confidence, must come home to you. It is not right that she, your wife, and my adopted child, should be slaving her young life away like this through some fancied duty."

"I must see her. I will go to Mr. Chesterton since she denies me a sight of her. I will tell him my story, I will ask him to plead my cause with Una," Eliot exclaimed, in strong agitation; and just a little later he stood before the banker's mansion ringing the bell, and looking up in the darkness at the front of the great house, thrilling with the thought that his loved, lost bride was so near to him at this moment, that it seemed almost impossible but that they must soon come face to face.

"And if she loves me still, as she said she did that happy night before she left me, I swear that no earthly power shall ever tear her again from my arms!" he vowed to himself.

Mr. Chesterton was at home, and received his guest in the library with courteous surprise; but when the young man poured forth his agitated story, the banker became greatly interested and excited.

"You are right. She is, she must be your wife. She came to us two years ago from the Convent of Le Bon Berger in New Orleans. My wife was once a pupil there, and wrote to the mother superior for a French teacher for our little ones. She sent us Mademoiselle Lorraine, who is as gifted and clever as she is lovely and winning. But I have always seen that she lay beneath the shadow of some sorrow. Wait, my young friend, and I will go upstairs and beg this proud young wife to give you an immediate interview," concluded the good man.

CHAPTER XLII

Eliot waited in the large, elegant library with eager impatience, never doubting that Mr. Chesterton would succeed in his kindly mission. Una could not be so cruel as to refuse him an interview.

"And once in her presence I will combat every objection she can raise until I persuade her to go home with me," he said to himself, firmly, and his heart began to beat lightly, happily, with the thought that soon Una would be with him, never to be torn from him again.

"It is five years since I saw her. She was scarcely more than a child then. Now she is a woman, beautiful, gifted, intelligent. Oh, how I long to be wealthy, for the sake of my fair young wife!" he thought.

Then it dawned upon him that the banker was staying a long time. The bronze clock on the mantel had chimed the quarters of an hour twice while he had sat there all alone.

"He finds her hard to persuade," he exclaimed, rising from his chair and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the floor.

Five, ten minutes elapsed. Then there came a step at the door. The handle turned. Mr. Chesterton entered—alone.

Eliot turned to him in unutterable dismay.

"Una!" he exclaimed, hoarsely, then paused, speechless. He saw a folded slip of paper in the banker's hand, and on his genial face disappointment and regret.

"Van Zandt, I am sorry for you, upon my word!" he said, feelingly. "I used all my eloquence, but I have failed. She gave me this note for you," he added, thrusting the slip of paper into Eliot's hand.

He took it in a dazed, lifeless way, opened it slowly, and read the words written in an elegant flowing hand, very different from the cramped, childish one in which Una had penned her farewell to him five years ago.

"Oh, forgive me," it ran, "but I can not see you now, or ever again in this world. What I wrote you when I left you five years ago remains unchanged. There is a barrier between us cruel as the grave. You must seek freedom from the nominal tie that binds you to me. Then you will forget me and find happiness with some woman more blessed by fate than I have been. For me, I shall convince you that our separation is irrevocable by returning at once to New Orleans, there to enter a convent and take the veil for life.

Una."

The cruel letter fell from his hand, and staggering heavily forward, Eliot dropped into a chair and bowed his face on the table.

"Van Zandt!" exclaimed the banker.

There was no reply.

Rushing to Eliot's side, he lifted his head from the table, and it fell again heavily. The young man's overwrought feelings had culminated in momentary unconsciousness.

A sharp peal of the bell brought the servants rushing to the scene, but not so soon but that Mr. Chesterton heard a gasp of terror from behind the curtains that divided the library from a pretty little parlor. Poor Una had crept in there for one stolen glimpse of the face of her beloved.

The banker saw the lovely, frightened face peering around the curtain, and said, sharply:

"Mrs. Van Zandt, I fear you have killed your husband!"

With a stifled wail, she rushed forward and flung herself on her knees beside Eliot's unconscious form, catching his limp hands in both her warm, trembling white ones.

"Dead! Oh, no, no, Mr. Chesterton, do not charge me with such cruelty!" she cried, gazing with straining eyes into that pale, handsome face. Her touch, her voice, her gaze, seemed to recall him to life, for suddenly his eyes opened wide on that lovely face. A cry of dismay broke from her lips, and dropping his hands, she rushed through the curtains and disappeared just as two servants entered at the other door.

"Bring water and wine," said the banker. "This gentleman is ill."

Both disappeared at once, and Eliot Van Zandt struggled up to a sitting posture, gazing wildly around the room.

"Una—she was here!" he murmured, faintly.

"She has gone," Mr. Chesterton answered, gravely. "Drink this wine, Van Zandt, it will revive you."

"No; the water, please."

He swallowed a few drops, and rose to go in spite of Mr. Chesterton's entreaties that he would stay until he was better.

"I am all right. It was but a temporary faintness. Heaven bless you for your kindness to a miserable man, Mr. Chesterton," said Eliot, wringing his friend's hand fervently.

Then he repossessed himself of Una's note that he had dropped on the floor, and went out of the room with a ghastly face. Mr. Chesterton, alarmed at his looks, followed him at a discreet distance until he saw him enter a car that would take him straight to Beacon Hill, then bethinking himself of an engagement he had for that evening, he hurried back home to don evening-dress and escort his beautiful wife to a soirée.

Returning home in the small hours, he concluded to make a confidante of his wife and enlist her sympathies in Eliot Van Zandt's case.

"What a romantic story!" exclaimed Mrs. Chesterton. "But I always thought there was something very interesting hidden in the past of our gifted governess. So she is a Van Zandt—one of the oldest, proudest names in Boston. My dear, I will speak to her in the morning, and see if I can not untangle the strange web of fate that has been woven around her life by that wicked Madame Lorraine."

"I knew your sympathies would be drawn to this unhappy pair, Constance!" exclaimed the banker, fondly.

But, alas! his story had been told too late. Morning found the young governess gone.

She had left the house during their absence, and taken her trunks with her, flying like a thief in the night, not from pursuit, not from shame, but from a husband's love, the deepest, fondest, most passionate that ever thrilled a manly breast.

"I must take the veil, then he will understand that all hope is indeed ended," she said, resolutely to herself. "I had no business returning here. Father Quentin told me it was wrong, but in my mad yearning to see his face, I would not listen. Now I must go back and stay there forever. Eliot will soon forget me, for it was more pity than love that he felt for me. When he realizes that all is irrevocably at an end between us, he will seek his freedom that he may return to his old love, his first love, Ida Hayes."

With the thought of her rival, all the old-time bitter jealousy rushed over Una's heart, and she told herself that Eliot had never really loved any one but Ida, and that he could not but rejoice some day that fate had freed him from the incubus of Little Nobody.

"I have spoiled his life for years, but at last he will be happy," she said, thinking bitterly of that year in which she had lived with Eliot, less to him, as she thought, than his sisters, or the governess even, wearing his name because it had been given not in love, but through an instinct of tender pity.

She was older, wiser, now than she had been before Sylvie made that cruel revelation to her that winter night, and she chafed with shame at remembering the position she had filled in Eliot's home—that of a wife in name only, unloved and barely endured.

"How they must have pitied and despised me!" she thought, with hot tears in her dark eyes as the express train rushed along through the night. "Ah, it is better, better for us both that things fell out as they did. I have a very jealous mind. I should never have forgotten that he loved Ida Hayes first, that he married me for pity's sake, so I never should have been quite sure of his heart. Ah, I wish—wish," with a choking sob, "that we had died together in madame's underground prison!"

And in this wretched frame of mind, bitter and despairing, Una went away from Boston and her husband, back to the South and the Convent of Le Bon Berger.