Kitabı oku: «The Senator's Bride», sayfa 11
CHAPTER XIX.
A NEW YEAR'S GIFT
"And why, if we must part, Lulu!
Why let me love you so?
Nay, waste no more your sweet farewells,
I cannot let you go—
Not let you go, Lulu!
I cannot let you go!"
—Mrs. Osgood.
On the following Christmas morning Mrs. Clendenon, Mrs. Winans and Lulu, together with the returned captain, all attended divine service at the Protestant Episcopal Church.
It seems strange how many of us become recognized members of the Church of Christ under religious conviction, without ever having any great and realizing sense of the saving power of God, not only in the matter of the world beyond, but in the limitless power of sustaining us among the trials of this.
This had been peculiarly the case with our heroine. She had for years been a member of the Episcopal Church, and, as the world goes, a dutiful member. But religion had been to her mind too much in the abstract, too much a thing above and beyond her to be taken into her daily life in the part of a comforter and sustainer. She had gone to the world for consolation in the hour of her trial. It had failed her. To-day as the glorious old "Te Deum" rose and soared grandly through the arches of the temple of worship, filling her soul with sublime pathos, she began to see how He, who had dimly held to her the place of a Saviour in the world beyond, is an ever-present Comforter and sustainer in the fateful Gethsemane of this probationary earth.
Captain Clendenon, as he sat by her side and heard the low, musical voice as it uttered the prayerful responses to the Litany, thought her but little lower than the angels. She in her deep and newly roused humility felt herself scarcely worthy to take the name of a long misunderstood Saviour on her lips. Few of the congregation who commented, on dispersing, relative to the pearl-fair beauty and elegant apparel of the Senator's deserted wife, fathomed the feelings that throbbed tumultuously beneath that pale calm bearing as they left the sacred edifice.
"Lulu," she queried later, as up in the young lady's dressing-room they had laid aside their warm wrappings and furs. "Lulu, what do you do for Christ?"
Lulu turned about in some surprise:
"What do I do for Christ?" she repeated. "Oh, Gracie, too little, I fear."
"'Tell me," she persisted.
"Well, then, I have my Sabbath-school class, my list of Christ's poor, whom I visit and aid to the best of my ability, my missionary fund, and finally, Gracie, dearest, whatever my hand 'findeth to do,' I try to do with all my might."
Gracie stood still, twisting one of the long curls that swept to her waist over one diamond-ringed white finger.
"Darling, why do you ask?" Lulu said, with her arm about the other's waist.
The fair cheek nestled confidingly against Lulu's own.
"I want to help you, if you will let me—let me go with you on your errands for Christ. I belong to the world no longer. Show me how to fill up the measure of my days with prayerful work for the Master."
One pearly drop from Lulu's eyes fell down on the golden head that had pillowed itself on her breast.
"God, I thank Thee," she murmured, "that there is joy in heaven to-day over the lamb that has come into the fold."
She whispered it to Brother Willie that day at a far corner of the parlor when they happened to be alone for a moment together.
He glanced across at the slender, stately figure standing at the window between the falling lace curtains, looking wistfully out.
"It is natural," he said. "A nature so pure, so strong, so devotional as hers must needs have more than the world can give to satisfy its immortal cravings. Poor girl! she is passing through the fire of affliction. Let us thank God that she is coming out pure gold."
After awhile, when Lulu had slipped from the room, leaving them alone together, he crossed over to her side, and began telling her of his experiences and adventures abroad. She listened, pleased and interested, soothed by his kind, almost brotherly tone.
"You do not ask me after Winans," said he, playfully, at last.
She did not answer, save by a heightened flush.
"You did not know that through his reckless bravery, his gentleness and humanity to his men, he has risen to the rank of general in the army of France?" A soldierly flash in the clear gray eyes.
"Yes," she answered in a low voice; "I have seen it in the newspapers."
"You have? Then you have seen also that he–"
He paused, looking down at her quiet face in some perplexity and doubt.
"That he—what?" she asked, looking up at him, and growing slightly pale.
"I do not know how to tell you, if you do not know," his eyes, full of grave compassion, fixed on hers.
One of her small hands groped blindly out, and clung firmly to his arm.
"Captain Clendenon, I know that the Franco-Prussian war is ended. Is that what you mean? Is he—my husband—is he coming home—to America?"
She read in his eyes the negative she felt she could not speak.
"Tell me," she said, desperately, "if he is not coming home, what is it? I am braver than you think. I can bear a great deal. Is he—is he—dead?"
"May God have mercy on your poor, tired little soul," he answered, solemnly. "It is more than we know. In the last great battle, General Winans was wounded near unto death, and left on the field. When search was made for him he was not found. Whatever his fate was—whether he was buried, unshrouded and uncoffined, like many of those poor fellows, in an unknown grave, or whether an unknown fate met him, is as yet uncertain. We hope for the best while we fear the worst."
One hand still lay on his coat-sleeve—the other one followed it, clasped itself over it, and she laid her white face down upon them, creeping closer to him as if to shield herself against his strong, true heart from the storms that beat on her frail woman-life. One moment he felt the wild throb of her agonized heart against his own; then all was still. Lifting the lifeless form on his arm, he laid it on a sofa and called to Lulu:
"I had to tell her!" he exclaimed. "She did not bear it as well as we hoped. I am afraid I have killed her."
Ah! grief seldom kills. If it did, this fair world would not have so many of us striving, busy atoms struggling for its possession.
She came back to life again, lying still and white in Lulu's loving arms. Captain Clendenon and his mother went out and left them together. They would not intrude on the sore heart whose wound they could not heal.
"After all we can hope still," Lulu said, cheerily. "All is uncertainty and mere conjecture. We can still hope on, until something more definite is known."
"Hope," repeated the listener, mournfully.
"Hope, yes," was the firm reply. "Hope and pray. One of Brother Willie's favorite maxims is that hope springs eternal in the human breast!"
"I can bear it," came softly from the other. "I have borne so much, I can still endure. With God's help I will be patient under all."
"Whom He loveth He chasteneth," answered Lulu.
When New Year's Day came with its social gayeties, receptions, and friendly calls, one of Lulu's latest and most surprising visits was from our old friend, Bruce Conway. He had not called on her for a long time, and she had heard that he was in Washington. The warm blood suffused her face as she stood alone in the parlor, with his card in her hand, and it grew rosier as he entered, and with his inimitable, indolent grace, paid the compliments of the season.
"You do not ask me where I have been these many days," he said, as he sipped the steaming mocha she offered him in the daintiest of China cups. She never offered her friends wine.
"I had heard that you were in Washington," she answered, apologetically.
"Right—and what was I doing there? Can you undertake to guess?"
"I am sure it is beyond me." This with her most languid air. "Flirting, perhaps."
A light smile curves his mustached lip. Certainly this little beauty, he thinks, is "good at guessing."
"Have your callers been many to-day?" he asked.
"Quite a number of my friends have called—all, I think. I expect no more this evening," she answers, demurely.
"I am glad of that. I shall have you all to myself, Lulu—willful, indifferent still, since you will not ask my object in Washington, I will e'en tell you anyhow."
"Go on—I am listening."
Putting down the cup he had finished, he seated himself on the sofa by her side, good-humoredly taking no notice of the fact that she moved a little farther away from him.
"How pretty you are looking, ma belle. Your blue silk is the loveliest shade—so becoming; your laces exquisite. Scarlet geraniums in your hair—ah! Lulu, for whose sake?"
"Not for yours," she flashes, with a hot remembrance that he has always liked her in scarlet geraniums.
A slow smile dawns in his eyes—his lips keep their pretense of gravity.
"Her hair is braided not for me,
Her eye is turned away."
he begins to hum.
"All this is not telling me what mischief you were at in Washington?" she interrupts.
"Oh," trying to look demure, but woefully failing, "no mischief at all—only paying off old scores—spoiling Fontenay's fun for him as he did for me last winter.
"Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do."
"Miss Clendenon, you are hard on a poor follow. Why don't you ask her name; if she is pretty; if she is in the 'set;' if she is rich; and so on, ad infinitum?"
"I hardly care to know," she answers, with pretty unconcern.
"Hardly care to know—now, really? I shall tell you anyhow. Well, she is an heiress; is pretty; in her second Washington season; father in the banking business, and Fontenay, despairing of winning you, has transferred his 'young affections' to her. She rather likes him—will marry him, perhaps, but then–"
"But then?"
"She likes me, too, and I have teased the gallant captain considerably. Oh, the drives I have had with the fair Cordelia, the gas-light flirtations; the morning strolls to the capitol; the art-gallery; everywhere, in short, where you went with the major. I am not sure but she would throw him over for me altogether."
Her heart sinks within her. Has his fickle love turned from her so soon to this "fair Cordelia?" Better so, perhaps, for her in the end; but now—oh! she has never loved him so well as at this moment, sitting beside her in his dusk patrician beauty, with a certain odd earnestness underlying his flippant manner.
"Mrs. Conway is well, I hope?" she says, to change that painful conversation.
"Is well?—yes, and misses you amid the gay scenes of the capital. What have you been doing secluded here in your quiet home, little saint?"
"Oh! nothing particularly."
"You have not been falling in love, have you?"
"Why?" with an irrepressible blush.
"I wanted to know—that is all. Brownie, Aunt Conway, and I are going abroad this spring to stay, oh, ever so long."
He is watching her narrowly. She knows it, and changes her sudden start into one of pretty affected surprise.
"Oh, indeed! Will wedding cards and the 'fair Cordelia' bear you company?"
"Not if some one else will. Brownie, cannot you guess why I have come here this evening?" his voice growing eagerly earnest, a genuine love and earnestness shining in his eyes.
"To make a New Year's call, I guess," she answers, with innocent unconsciousness in her large dark eyes, and the faintest dimples around her lips.
"Guess again, Brownie?"
"I cannot; I have not the faintest idea," turning slightly from him.
"Then, Brownie," taking her unwilling hand in his. "I have come to ask you for a New Year's gift."
A scarlet geranium is fastened in with the lace at her throat. She plucks it out and holds it toward him with a mischievous smile.
"Will you take this? I am sorry it is all I have to offer."
He takes the hand that holds the flower and puts it to his lips.
"It is all I ask; so your heart comes with it."
Vainly she tries to draw back; he holds the small hand tighter, bending till his breath floats over her forehead.
"Lulu, I did not come here for the gift of a hot-house flower, though coming from you it is dearer than would be a very flower from those botanical gardens that are the glory of Washington. I wanted a rarer flower—even yourself."
Her face is hidden in one small hand. In low tones she answers:
"I thought this matter was settled long ago. Did I not tell you no?"
There is a long pause. Presently he answers, with a wondrous patience for him:
"You did, and rightly then, for I did not fully appreciate your pure womanly affection. I thought I could easily win you, and having lost you I loved you more. Lulu, I am woefully in earnest. Refuse me now, and you, perhaps, drive me away from you for years—it may be forever. I love you more than I did then—a thousand times better."
Still she is silent.
"Brownie," he pleads, "I am not so fickle as you think me. I have fancied many pretty women, but only loved two—Grace Grey and yourself. My love for her is a thing of the past, and has to do with the past only—'echoes of harp-strings that broke long ago'—my love for you is a thing of the present, and will influence my whole future. You can make of me a nobler man than what I am. Willard is willing, your mother is willing, I have asked them both. Brownie, let us make of that Continental trip a wedding tour?"
Her shy eyes lifted, meeting in his a deeper love than she has ever expected to see in them for her.
"Let me see," he goes on, "Aunt Conway and I are going to Europe in June—that is time enough for you to get ready. Think of it, Brownie, I am to be gone months and months. Can you bear to let me go alone?"
"No, I cannot," she sobs, hiding her face against his shoulder; and Bruce takes her in his arms and kisses her with a genuine fondness, prizing her, after the fashion of most men, all the better because she was so hard to win.
CHAPTER XX.
WEDDING CARDS
"Now she adores thee as one without spot,
Dreams not of sorrow to darken her lot,
Joyful, yet tearful, I yield her to thee;
Take her, the light of thy dwelling to be."
Fair Lulu found so little time amid the preparations that went so swiftly forward for her marriage that she was very glad to avail herself of Grace's offered assistance in looking after her poor people, her missionary box, &c., and so the lonely and depressed young creature found something to occupy her time as well as to fill up her thoughts. She was of great assistance, too, to Lulu in the selection and purchase of the bridal trousseau in which she took a pleasant feminine interest.
Lulu, who deferred always to her friend's exquisite taste, would suffer nothing to be purchased until first pronounced comme il faut by Mrs. Winans; and Bruce Conway, who had returned in the midst of the season from Washington, and haunted Lulu's steps with lover-like devotion, declared that his most dangerous rival in Lulu's heart was Mrs. Winans.
The old yearning passion he had felt for Grace had passed into a dream of the past; something he never liked to recall, because there was something of pain about it still like the soreness of an old wound—"what deep wound ever healed without a scar?" But they were very good friends now—not cordial—they would never be that, but still very pleasant and genial to each other.
Mrs. Conway, who was very well pleased to see Bruce about to marry, wished it to be so, Lulu wished it to be so; and these two who had been so much to each other, and who were so little now, tried, and succeeded in overcoming a certain embarrassment they felt, and for Lulu's sake, and not to shadow her happiness, endured each other's presence.
"Mrs. Winans," he had said one day, when some odd chance had left them alone together in Lulu's parlor, "it is an unpleasant thing to speak of. Yet I have always wanted to tell you how, from the very depths of my soul, I am sorry that any folly of mine has brought upon you so much unmerited suffering. Can you ever forgive me?"
She glanced up at him from the small bit of embroidery that occupied her glancing white fingers, her eyes a thought bluer for the moment with the stirring of the still waters that flowed through the dim fields of memory and the pure young spirit came up a moment to look at him through those serene orbs.
"Can I, yes," she answered, gravely. "When I pray, nightly, that Our Father will forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me, my heart is free from ill-feeling toward any one. How else could I expect to be forgiven?"
And Lulu's entrance, with a song on her happy lips, had put an end to the conversation that was never again revived between them.
And days, and weeks, and months went by and brought June. In that month the wedding was to be, and Lulu and her mother, beginning to realize the parting that loomed up so close before them, began to make April weather in the home that had been all sunshine.
But "time does not stop for tears." The fateful day came when Lulu, in her white silk dress, and floating vail and orange blossoms, stood before the altar and took on her sweet lips the vow to be faithful until death do us part, and, as in a dream, she was whirled back to her home to the wedding reception and breakfast, after which she was to depart on that European tour.
Is there any need to describe it all? Do not all wedding breakfasts look and taste very nearly alike? Do not all our dear "five hundred friends" say the same agreeable things when they congratulate us? Is it not to be supposed that the bridal reception of the charming Miss Clendenon and the elegant Bruce Conway is comme il faut? We are not good at describing such things, dear reader, so we will leave it all to your imagination, which we know will do it ample justice. We want to follow Captain Clendenon and Mrs. Winans as they slowly promenade the back parlor where the wedding gifts are displayed for the pleasure of the wedding guests.
"Now, is not that an exquisite set of bronzes?" she is saying, with her hand lightly touching his arm. "And that silver tea-service from the Bernards—is it not superb? That statuette I have never seen equaled. Ah, see! there is the gift of Major Fontenay, that ice-cream set in silver, lined with gold. That is generous in him—is it not, poor fellow?"
"To my mind, that exquisitely bound Bible is the prettiest thing in the collection," he returns.
"It is beautiful. That is from her Sunday-school children. This ruby necklace, set in gold and pearls, is from Mrs. Conway–"
"And this?" he touches a sandal-wood jewel casket, satin-lined, and holding a pair of slender dead-gold bracelets with monograms exquisitely wrought in diamonds—"this is–"
"My gift to Lulu."
"Oh! they are beautiful, as are all the things. But, do you know, Mrs. Winans, that I am so old-fashioned in my ideas that I do not approve of the habit of making wedding presents—no, I do not mean where friendship or love prompts the gift—but the indiscriminate practice, you understand!"
"You are right; but in the case of your sister, Captain Clendenon, I think that the most of her very pretty collection of wedding gifts are the spontaneous expressions of genuine affection and respect. Lulu is very much beloved among her circle of friends."
"You, at least," he says, reflectively, "will miss her greatly. You have so long honored her by your preference for her society and companionship. How will you fill up the long months of her absence?"
She sighs softly.
"She has left me a precious charge—all her poor to look after, her heathen fund, her sewing society—much that has been her sole charge heretofore, and which I fear may be but imperfectly fulfilled by me. Still I will do my best."
"You always do your best, I think, in all that you undertake," says this loyal heart.
"Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, I think," she answers, with a faint flush evoked by his quiet meed of praise.
Then people begin to flock in to look at the wedding gifts and at Grace Winans, who is the loveliest thing of all. She has on a wedding garment in the shape of pale violet silk, with overdress of cool muslin, trimmed with Valenciennes, white kid gloves and turquois ornaments set in pearls. The wedding guests wore their bonnets, and she had a flimsy affair of white lace studded with pansies on the top of her graceful head. Her dress was somewhat after the style of fashionable half-mourning. She had selected it purposely because not knowing if she were wife or widow a more showy attire was repugnant to her feelings.
"This," she said, touching a costly little prayer-book with golden cross, monogram, and clasps. "This, I fancy, is from you."
"You are right," he answered. "This set of the poets so handsomely bound is from mother. But are you not weary of looking at all these things? Shall we not go and find Lulu?"
"By the way," she says, idly, as they slowly pass through the politely staring throng, exchanging frequent nods and smiles with acquaintances, and occasional compliments with more intimate friends, "there is a report—have you heard it?—from Memphis, Tennessee—of the yellow fever."
"Yes," he answers, slowly. "I have heard the faintest rumor of it," looking down with a cloud in his clear eyes at the fair inscrutable face. "Are you worried about it? I remember to have heard you say your nearest relatives were there."
"Only distant relatives," she answers, composedly. "I am no more worried about them than about the other inhabitants of that city. My relatives had little sympathy for me in the days of my bereavement and destitution, and though one may overlook and forgive such things one does not easily forget."
He was looking at her all the time she was speaking, though her eyes had not lifted to his. On the sweet, outwardly serene face he saw the impress of a growing purpose. What it was he dared not whisper to his own heart.
The cloud only leaves his brow when they reach his radiant sister. She stands beneath a bridal arch of fragrant white blossoms, roses, and lilies, and orange blossoms dropping their pendant leaves down over her head as she receives the congratulations and adieus of her friends before she goes to change her bridal robe for the traveling-dress in which she is to start for the other shores of the Atlantic. Conway is beside her, nonchalant, smiling, handsome, very well satisfied with himself and the world. As his glance falls on the fair, pensive face of the Senator's deserted wife, the smile forsakes his lip, one sigh is given to the memory of "what might have been," and turning again to his young bride, the past is put away from him forever, and he is content.
And presently the new-made Mrs. Conway flits up stairs with Gracie, to array herself in the sober gray traveling-silk.
Grace parts the misty folds of the bridal vail and kisses the pearl-fair forehead.
"Oh, darling!" she whispers, "may God be very good to you—may he bless you in your union with the man of your choice."
Lulu's tears, always lying near the surface, begin to flow.
"Oh, Gracie," she says, suddenly, "if all should not be as we fear—if I should chance to see your husband on the shores of Europe, may I tell him—remember he has suffered so much—may I tell him that you take back the words you said in the first agony of your baby's loss?"
"What was it I said?" asked Gracie, with soft surprise.
"Do you not remember the night you were taken ill, when you were half delirious, and he came to see you–"
"Did he come to see me?" interrupts Grace.
"Certainly—don't you remember? You were half delirious, and you fancied your husband had hidden away the child to worry you, and you said–"
"I said—oh, what did I say, Lulu?" breathed the listener, impatiently.
Lulu stopped short, looking, in surprise, at the other.
"Gracie, is it possible that you were entirely delirious, and that you recollect nothing of your husband's visit and your refusal to see him?"
"This is the first I ever knew of it," said Grace, sadly; "but go on, Lulu, and tell me, please, what I did say."
"You refused to see him, though entreated to do so by Mrs. Conway; you said you would never see him—never, never—unless he came with the missing child in his arms."
"Did I say all that, Lulu?" asked Grace, in repentant surprise.
"All that, and more. You said that if he attempted to enter your room you would spring from the window—and he was in the parlor; he heard every word from your own lips."
"Oh, Lulu, I must have been delirious; I remember nothing of all that, and it has, perhaps, kept him from me all the time," came in a moan from the unhappy young creature, as she leaned against the toilet-table, with one hand clasping her heart.
Lulu caught up a bottle of eau-de-cologne and showered the fine, fragrant spray over the white face, just as Mrs. Clendenon hurried in.
"My darling, do you know you should have been down stairs before this time—hurry, do."
And too much absorbed in her own grief to observe the ill-concealed agitation of Mrs. Winans, or attributing it to her sorrow at losing Lulu, the mother assisted the young bride to change her white silk for her traveling one.
Then for one moment Lulu flung herself in passionate tears on her friend's breast, with a hundred incoherent injunctions and promises, from which she was disturbed by the entrance of Mrs. Conway, radiantly announcing that the carriage waited and they had no time to spare. And Lulu, lingering only for a blessing from her mother's lips, a prayerful "God bless you" from her brother's, went forth with hope on her path, love in her heart, and the sunshine on her head, to the new life she had chosen.
When the last guest had departed, the "banquet fled, the garland dead," Mrs. Winans removed her bonnet, and spent the remainder of the day in diverting the sad mother whose heart was aching at the loss of her youngest darling.
"It seems as if all the sunshine had gone out of the house with her," Willard said, sadly, to Grace, as they stood looking together at the deserted bridal arch that seemed drooping and fading, as if in grief for the absent head over which it had lately blossomed. "I fancied we should keep our baby with us always in the dear home nest; but she is gone, so soon—a wife before I had realized she had passed the boundaries of childhood."
"The months of absence will pass away very quickly," she said, gently, trying to comfort him as best she could, "and you will have her back with you."
"I don't know," he said, with a half-sob in his manly voice, lifting a long, trailing spray of white blossoms that an hour before he had seen resting against the dear brown head of his sister, touching it tenderly to his lips—"I don't know, Mrs. Winans. I don't believe in presentiments—I am not at all superstitious—but to-day, when I kissed my sister's lips in farewell, a chill crept through my frame, a voice, that seemed as clear and distinct as any human voice, seemed to whisper in my ear, 'Never again on this side of eternity!' What did it mean?"
Ah! Willard Clendenon—that the fleshly vail that separates your pure spirit from the angels is so clear that a gleam of your near immortality glimmered through!
