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Kitabı oku: «The Senator's Bride», sayfa 6

Yazı tipi:

A faint sarcastic curve of her red lip betrayed her contempt before it breathed in her voice:

"Is that all?"

"Not quite," he flushed again beneath her steady gaze, and said, abruptly, "Mrs. Winans, I trust you do not blame me for fulfilling your husband's trust. It is not intended, either by him or myself to wound you, and I have undertaken it, not—well, because I thought I could express his wishes regarding you, to you better than another."

"I am not thinking of blaming you," she said, gently, "not at all. I thank you for your kindness; I do indeed. Captain Clendenon, you should know me well enough to think better of me than that implied. Please go on."

"There is but little more," he answered, more at ease. "You will recollect, I suppose, having signified to Senator Winans a wish to revisit the home of your childhood?"

She slightly bowed her head.

"He merely wished me to tell you that should you still desire it, you are at liberty to visit Memphis now, or whenever you wish to do so, to remain as long as you please."

He rose at the last word, and she rose also, pale, proud, defiant, woman-like, having the "last words."

"Ah, indeed! I may go to Memphis, then, if it so please me?"

"Yes, Mrs. Winans;" and taking a step forward, he looked down at the fair face that he saw for the first time shaded with contempt and anger. "You are not angry?"

A mutinous quiver of the red lip answered him; just then it seems impossible for her to speak. A great, choking lump seems to rise into her throat, and prevent her from speech. Her heart is in a whirl of contending emotions—joy that her husband remembers and cares for her comfort—grief, pain, indignation evoked by his message—he is willing she should go far away from him, he is indifferent about seeing her, while she—she has been so wild to see him.

While she stands thus, the captain says, in his grave, singularly sweet tones:

"Mrs. Winans, I have known you so long, and am so much older, and perhaps, wiser, than you—I have learned wisdom knocking around this hard old world, you know—that you will pardon a word of advice from an old friend, as you were kind enough to call me just now. Try and overlook what seems to you injustice in your husband. His course toward you seems to him the wiser one, and he is perhaps the best judge of what was right for him—in this lately expressed wish of his he seems actuated solely by a desire for your comfort and happiness—he wishes ardently that you may content yourself during the period of his voluntarily enforced absence. Think as kindly as you can of him. I am sure that all this tangled web of fate will come straight and plain at last."

She responded to his wistful smile with another, as chill and pale as moonlight.

"Thank you; and, Captain Clendenon, you may tell your correspondent that I shall avail myself of his gracious permission to visit another city—not Memphis. I have no desire to visit there at present."

He looked down at the sweet, flushed, mutinous face with a yearning pity in his eyes, and a great throb of pain at his heart—the anguish of a man who sees a woman that is dear to him bowed beneath sufferings that he cannot alleviate.

All he could do was to clasp the small hand in sympathetic farewell, and beg her earnestly to call on him if ever she needed a friend's services.

"Since you will not go to Memphis," he said, relinquishing the small hand.

"No, I will not go—at least, not now," she answered, supplementing the harsh reply by a very gentle good-by.

When she did go, Paul Winans would have given all he possessed on earth to have recalled that freely accorded consent.

"I like Captain Clendenon so much," she wrote, in daintiest of Italian text, that night, within the sacred pages of her journal. "There is something so supremely noble about him, and to-day he looked at me so sorrowfully, so kindly, as I have fancied a dear brother or sister might do, had I ever been blessed with one. I used to shrink at seeing him; he brought back the first great shock of my life so vividly, and does still, though not so painfully as of old. It is only like touching the spot where a pain has been now—'what deep wound ever healed without a scar?' And I do not mind it now, though the unspoken sympathy in his great gray eyes used to wound my proud spirit deeply. I don't think he ever dreamed of it, though. Mrs. Conway used to think that he liked me excessively. I don't know—I think she was mistaken. I cannot fancy Willard Clendenon loving any woman except with the calm, superior love of a noble brother for a dear little sister. And he has a sister, though I have never seen her—charmingly pretty, Norah says she is. I believe I should like to know her, if she is at all like her brother. But all women, as a rule, are so frivolous—or, at least, all those whom fate has thrown in my way. At least, I should like to have a brother like this quiet, unselfish captain—this sterling, irreproachable character with the ring of the true metal about it—and a sister like what I fancy his pretty sister must be. Oh, Paul, were you not so cruel my poor heart would not be throwing out its bruised tendrils so wildly, seeking for some sure support on which to lean its fainting strength. It is so hard to stand alone–"

She closed the book abruptly at a sound of baby laughter from the nursery, and gliding into the room stood looking at Norah's busy movements. She was giving Master Paul his nightly bath on the rug in front of the fire. Up to his white and dimpled shoulders, in the marble bath of perfumed water, the little fellow was laughing and enjoying the fun to his heart's content. It won the child-like young mother to laughter too. She seated herself on a low ottoman near him, and watched the dear little baby, with its graceful, exquisite limbs flashing through the water, a rosy, perfect little Cupid, and something like content warmed her chilled and perturbed spirit.

"I can never be utterly desolate while I have him," she murmured, running her taper, jeweled fingers through the clustering rings of his dark hair.

Norah, looking across at her mistress, asked, timidly, if she were quite resolved on going to Washington next week.

Mrs. Winans' soft eyes fixed themselves on the bright anthracite fire in the grate, as if an answer to the question might be evoked from its mystic hearth. Her baby seized the opportunity thus afforded to catch the nearest end of one of her floating ringlets, and dip it in the bath with mischievous fingers. She caught it from his fingers with a fitful smile, and began wringing the water from the golden tendrils, and asking absently:

"What was it you asked me, Norah?"

"I asked if you really intended visiting Washington next week," explained Norah, clearly and intelligibly. She was an educated Irishwoman, and did not affect the brogue of her countrymen.

"Yes, I certainly do so intend," decisively this time, and leaning a little forward, twisting the damp curl into a hundred glittering little spirals, she went on: "for a few days only though, as I believe I told you this morning."

"You will not take much baggage, then, I suppose?"

"No," smiling at the baby's antics in the water, and dodging the drops he mischievously splashed in her direction, "only a small trunk with necessary changes for baby and myself. I certainly shall not stay more than three days at the most."

Shall not? On the mystic page of our irrevocable destiny our resolves are sometimes translated crosswise, and will sometimes becomes will not, and shall not oft becomes shall! We, who cannot see a moment beyond the present hour, undertake in the face of God to say what we shall or shall not do in the unknown future! But poor human hearts,

"Feeble and finite, oh! what can we know!"

CHAPTER X.
AT THE CAPITOL

"Alone she sat—alone! that worn-out word,
So idly spoken and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known,
Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word—alone!"

—The New Timon.

"How changed since last her speaking eye
Glanced gladness round the glittering room;
Where high-born men were proud to wait,
And beauty watched to imitate."

—Byron.

It was a crisp, cold, sunny morning toward the last of January, and all the world—at least, all the Washington world—was packed in the Senate galleries at the capitol, the occasion being the speech of one of the master minds of the Senate on a very important subject that was just then agitating the country North and South. But we have nothing to do with this brilliant speech. We will leave the gentlemen in the Reporters' Gallery to report it in irreproachable short-hand. For ourselves we are looking for friends of ours who have eddied thither with the crowd, and are occupying seats on the east side, where they command a good view of the Senate floor. There they are—Mrs. Conway in black silk, bonnet to match, gold eye-glasses, and the yellowest and costliest of real lace shading throat and wrists—an out-and-out aristocrat from the tip of her streaming ostrich plume to her small kid boot. Near her sits Lulu Clendenon, the brilliant center of many admiring eyes. The little Norfolk beauty has become a noted belle under the chaperonage of Mrs. Conway, and to-day she looks rarely beautiful in her brown silk dress, with soft facings and trimmings of seal-brown velvet, her soft brown furs, and a sash of fringed scarlet silk at her throat, confining the soft lace frill. Her great velvet-brown eyes hold two restless stars, her round cheeks are dashed with fitful scarlet, all her nut-brown hair is arranged on the top of her head in a mass of lustrous braids, and one long heavy ringlet floats over her sloping shoulder. The daintiest little hat of seal-brown velvet, with the scarlet wing of a bird fluttering one side crowns the small head, whose stately poise is grace itself. Bruce Conway, languid, handsome, elegant, in attendance on the little beauty, is the envy of half the Washington fops.

They sit dutifully still and listen to the learned harangue from the Senator on the floor below, admire his tropes, follow his gestures, wonder how much longer he is going to continue, until Bruce, who has come there every day that week, and listened to "that sort of thing" till he wearies of it all, loses his interest in the subject, and allows his appreciative glance to wander over the galleries at the beaming faces of the "fair."

"Lots of pretty girls here," he whispers to Lulu.

"Yes," she murmurs back, then stifling a pretty yawn. "What a long speech this is! Don't you think so?" bending one ear to him and the other to the speaker.

"Awfully slow," he answers, glancing at his watch. "Oh! I say, did I tell you, Brownie, or did you know that Winans is expected to reply to this speech?"

"No. Is he?" she asks, eagerly.

"Yes; and the other is winding up his peroration now, I think. Ah! there he sits down, and there is my lordly Winans rising now—how kingly he looks!" says Bruce, in honest admiration of the man who is his enemy.

Lulu settled herself for strict attention, as did every one else, a low hum of admiration echoed through the galleries, and then silence fell as the musical, resonant voice of Paul Winans filled the grand old Senate Chamber, weakening the strong points of his opponent in the political field with clear practical reasoning, handling his subject skillfuly and well, keen shafts of wit and sarcasm flashing from his lips, his dark eyes burning with inspiration, his whole frame expanding with the fiery eloquence that carried his audience along with him on its sparkling tide. He had never spoken so ably and brilliantly before, and low murmured praises echoed on all sides from the audience and the members, and pencils flew fast in the Reporters' Gallery.

Lulu sat still and speechless, charmed with the eloquence of the speaker, her eyes shining, her full red lips apart. At some argument more telling than the rest, something that appealed forcibly to her clear mind, she turned instinctively to seek sympathy in the eyes of Bruce Conway, only to discover, with dismay, that he was not looking at her nor the speaker. His face was strangely white, his eyes were looking across at the opposite gallery at some one—a pretty girl Lulu judged from the expression of rapt interest he wore. Silently her glance followed his, roving over the sea of faces till it found the focus of his, and this is what she saw:

Near to, and on the right of the Reporters' Gallery, a lady leaning forward against the railing, her dark, passionately mournful eyes following Paul Winans with deep, absorbing interest. All the faces of fair women around her paled into insignificance as Lulu looked at that pale, clear profile, as classically chiseled, as "faultily faultless," as if cut in white marble by some master-hand; the vivid line of the crimson lips, the black, arched brows so clearly defined against the pure forehead, the ripple of pale-gold hair that, escaping its jeweled comb at the back, flowed in a cascade of brightness over the black velvet dress, that fitted so closely and perfectly to the full yet delicate figure as to reveal the perfection of gracefulness to the watcher. A tiny mask vail of black lace that she wore had been pushed unconsciously back over the top of her little black velvet hat, and so she sat in her pure, melancholy loveliness before the eyes of the girl who interpreted Bruce Conway's look aright, and knew before she asked a word that this could be no other than the being she had so long wished to gaze upon—the fair, forsaken wife, the beautiful and determined recluse—Grace Winans.

She touched his arm with an effort, her heart throbbing wildly, her breath coming in a sort of gasp.

"Will you tell me the earthly name of the divinity who absorbs your flattering notice?"

He started violently and looked round like one waking from a dream. Her voice in its tones was much like her brother's, and she had used almost his very words at Ocean View when he first saw Grace. No effort of his will could subdue his voice into its ordinary firmness, as he answered:

"Oh, that is the Hon. Mrs. Paul Winans."

And Lulu answered, with an unconscious sigh:

"I could not have imagined any one so perfectly lovely."

"Grace here—is it possible?" commented Mrs. Conway, lifting her eye-glass to stare across at the young wife. "Well, really, I wonder what has happened, and why she is here, and where she is staying? I must find out and call."

In which laudable desire she continued to gaze across, trying to catch the young lady's eye; but Mrs. Winans had neither eyes nor ears for any one but her husband. Her whole soul was intent on him, and when the speech came to an end she remained in the same rapt, eager position until, just as he was resuming his seat amid the prolonged applause, one of those strange psychological impressions that inform one of the intense gaze of another caused him to look up, and his dark eyes, still blazing with eloquent excitement, met the deep, impassioned gaze of her violet orbs, swimming in unshed tears; he sank into his seat as if shot.

As for her, she started up, horrified at having betrayed her presence, and was trying to get out of the thronged gallery when a sudden request to have the galleries cleared while the Senate went into executive session set all the crowd on their feet and moving toward the doors. Mingling with them and quite unaccustomed to visiting the capitol unaccompanied, Grace found herself suddenly alone, and quite lost in a maze of corridors far away from the moving throng of people. Perplexed and frightened at she knew not what, she hurried on, only losing herself more effectually, seeing no outer door to the vast, wandering building, and, strangely enough, meeting no one of whom to learn the way out, until as she desperately turned into yet another long corridor she stumbled against a gentleman coming in the opposite direction. Looking up she met the surprised eyes of Bruce Conway, and remembering only that she wanted to get out of that place, that she was in trouble, and that he had been her friend, her white detaining hand caught nervously at his coat-sleeve.

"Oh, Mr. Conway," she almost sobbed, "I have lost my way and cannot get out of the capitol; will you set me right?"

Before a word had passed his lips, while she yet stood with her dark, uplifted, appealing eyes burning in Conway's soul, a quick, ringing step came along the corridor, and Paul Winans stood beside them, towering over both in his kingly height and beauty.

And the untamed devil of a jealous nature rose in his eyes and shone out upon the two.

"Great God!" he breathed, in tones of concentrated passion, "Grace Winans, are you as false as this?"

The small hand fell nervelessly from Conway's coat-sleeve and transferred itself to her husband's arm, her eyes lifted proudly, gravely to his.

"I am not false," she answered, in a ringing voice; "you know that I am not, Paul."

"Am I to disbelieve my eyes?" he questioned, in fiery tones. "I saw you in the gallery—here in Washington, without my knowledge or consent—I go to seek you and place you under proper protection, and find you—you my wife—clinging to this man's arm, your eyes uplifted in such graceful adoration as would make your fortune on the tragic stage—and yet you are not false! It would seem that Mr. Conway has not suffered enough at my hands already."

The latent nobility in Bruce Conway's nature passed over the taunt unnoticed in his solicitude for the young creature who stood trembling between them, beloved by each, rendered so fatally unhappy by both.

"Senator Winans," he said, coldly, but earnestly and remarkably for one of his wavering nature, "there is no need for this scene. I encountered your wife in a purely accidental manner only this moment. She could not find her way out, and requested me to show her the entrance. She was frightened and alarmed, and had you not come up as you did, I should have complied with her wish, placed her in her carriage, and left her. I could not do less for any lady who needed my momentary protection. This is all for which you have to upbraid Mrs. Winans, whom, pardon me, you have injured enough already."

Senator Winans passed over the concluding home thrust, and bowed coldly but disbelievingly. He turned to his wife, still burning with resentful anger, but the words he would have spoken faltered on his lips as he looked at her.

She had removed her hand from his arm, and fallen back a pace or two from him, her slender figure thrown back, the trailing folds of her rich black velvet robe sweeping far behind her on the marble floor. Her small hands hung helpless at her sides, her fair face looked stony in a fixed despair that seemed as changeless as the expression on the marble face of the statue that stood in a niche near by.

Poor child! Her heart was aching with its unmerited humiliation. Here stood the man who had won her young heart in earlier days, only to cast it aside as a worthless toy, a mute witness of the same thing re-enacted by another, and that other one who had promised to love, cherish, and protect her through all the storms of life. To her proud, sensitive soul it was like the bitterness of death to stand there as she stood between these two men.

"Well, madam, I am waiting to hear what you have to say for yourself," her husband said, coldly.

She whirled toward him, a sudden contempt burning under her black lashes, her voice cool, clear, decisive.

"This: that I do not choose to stand here and bandy words with you, Senator Winans, exposed to the comment of any chance passer-by. Whatever more on the subject you can have to say to me I will hear at my private parlor at Willard's Hotel this evening between eight and nine o'clock, if you will do me the honor to call. At present, if one of you gentlemen will take me to my carriage, which is in waiting, I will put an end to this scene."

She looked quite indifferently from one to the other, feeling all her latent pride rise hotly to the surface, as neither stirred for an instant. Then her lawful master drew her hand through his arm, with the cold deference he might have accorded a stranger. She bowed to Mr. Conway, and was led away and placed in the carriage that awaited her, without a word on either side.

And Bruce went back to his aunt and Lulu, whom he had left talking with some friends in the rotunda. He said nothing to them, however, of the scene that had just occurred.

But the fact of Mrs. Winans' presence at the capitol was very well known by this time. Some of her "dear five hundred" friends had seen her when the little mask vail had been unconsciously thrown back in her eager excitement, and those who had not seen her were told by those who had. Many eyes curiously followed the hero of that long past love affair, whose shadow still brooded so pitilessly over Grace Winans' life, as he moved away by the side of the brown-eyed belle to whom society reported him as affianced.

"What next?" he queried, smiling down into the slightly thoughtful face.

"I don't know—that is—I believe Mrs. Conway spoke of the Art Gallery next," she answered, listlessly.

"After luncheon, though. We go to the hotel first for lunch," interposed Mrs. Conway, briskly, who not being young, nor in love, was blessed with a good appetite. "After that the Art Gallery, and there is that masquerade ball, you know, to-night."

"As if our daily life were not masquerade enough," he thinks, with smothered bitterness, as he attends them down the terraced walks to the park, thence to the avenue, for they decide on walking to the hotel, Lulu having a penchant for promenading the avenue on sunny days like this when all the city is doing likewise.

"For I like to look at people's faces," she naively explains to the young man, "and build up little romances from the materials culled thereby."

"Ah, a youthful student of human nature! Can you read faces?" he retorts, brusquely.

"Sometimes, I fancy, but very imperfectly," she says, flushing a little under his keen gaze, as she walks on, her silken skirts sweeping the avenue, in the perfection of grace.

"Read mine, then," he answers, half jestingly, half curious as to her boasted power, as they fall a little behind the elder lady.

"I cannot," she answers, "I would not attempt it."

"Nay," he insists, "fair seeress, read me even one expression that has crossed my tell-tale face to-day—come, I want to test your power."

"Well," she answers, half-reluctantly, "once to-day in the gallery, there was a look on your face—flitting and momentary, though—that reminded me of this line which I have somewhere read: