Kitabı oku: «The Senator's Bride», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XI.
"IT MAY BE FOR YEARS, AND IT MAY BE FOREVER."

 
"Enough that we are parted—that there rolls
A flood of headlong fate between our souls."
 

—Byron.

Between eight and nine o'clock Grace had specified as the hour when her husband might call—and the French clock on the mantel of her private parlor at Willard's hotel chimed the half-hour sharply as he was ushered in by an obsequious waiter.

The room was entirely deserted—no, a child was toddling uncertainly across the floor, jingling in its baby hand that infantile source of delight an ivory rattler, with multitudinous silver bells attached thereto.

What discordance will not a mother endure and call it music for the baby's sake?

One searching glance, and Paul Winans had his child in his arms, clasped close to his hungry, aching heart.

His boy! his! Long months had flown away since he had looked on the face of his child, and now he held him close, his proud, bearded lip pressed to the fragrant lips of the babe, his breath coming thick and fast, his jealous, passionate heart heaving with deep emotion.

But the child started back, frightened at the bearded face of the stranger, and his low cry of fear struck reproachfully to his father's soul.

"A stranger to my own child," he muttered, bitterly. "Why, my baby, my baby, do you not know your own papa?"

"Mamma! papa!" repeated the child, and with a sunny, fearless smile, he stroked the noble brow that bent over him.

Grace had taught his baby lips to love the name of "papa," and now at the very sound his terror was removed, and he nestled closer in the arms that held him as though the very name were a synonym for everything that was sweet and gentle.

The unhappy mother entering at that moment with pride and reserve sitting regnant on her brow, reeled backward at that sight, with a quivering lip, and pale hands clasped above her wildly throbbing heart.

It was but for a moment. As he turned to the rustle of her silken robe, with their child clasped in one strong arm, she came forward slowly, very slowly, but standing before him at last with bowed head and hands clasped loosely together.

Captain Clendenon had said of her long before, that as much of an angel as was possible for mortal to possess was about her. I don't know about its being so much angel—I, who know women better than the captain did, think that the best of them have quite sufficient of the opposite attribute about them; but, at this moment, all of the angel within her was roused by the sight of her husband with their child in his arms.

A moment before her soul had been charged with desperate anger and rebellion—now her face wore a soft, sad tenderness, her lifted eyes the clear glory of a suppliant angel's.

"Oh, my husband," she breathed, in low, intense accents, "you have scorned all words of mine, turned away from me with my defense unheard—let the pure love of our innocent babe plead for its innocent mother!"

It was like the low plaint for forgiveness from a wayward child that comes sobbing home to its mother with its small fault to confess—and she was so child-like, so very young, so very wretched. A sharp thrill of agonized pity and self-reproach made his firm lip quiver as he looked down at her, fiery love and hate struggling in his soul. A wild impulse to clasp her to his bosom—to crush against his sore heart all that pale yet glowing beauty, for one moment rushed over him, to be sharply dispelled by the memory of his jealous vow, and he answered not, but gazed on her for speechless moments, marking with eyes that had hungered weary months for a sight of her, every separate charm that distinguished this fatally fairest of women.

And she was looking very lovely to-night. Her entire absence of color, while it robbed her of one charm, bestowed another. That glowing yet perfect pallor of impassioned melancholy—that dark brilliance of eyes that could, but would not weep—made her beauty more luring than before; for a sorrowful face always appeals most directly to the heart.

She wore a dress he had always admired—a dinner-dress of pale, creamy-hued silk, shading, as the lustrous folds fell together, into pale wild-rose tints. A fragrant, half-blown tea-rose blossomed against her whiter throat, among frills of snowy lace, and a slender cross of pearls and diamonds depended from a slight golden chain that swung almost to her slim, girlish waist; a bandeau of rare pearls clasped on her brow with a diamond star held her golden hair in place, and gave the last touch that was wanting to make her fairly royal in her loveliness.

This was his wife! In all his jealous love and hatred, that name thrilled his soul like a pæan of triumph. All that beauty was his, his own; but—the undying thought thrilled him like a sword thrust—it might have been another's, had that other asked it first.

That other! he had seen her clinging to his arm that day, her magical eyes uplifted to his in deep emotion. In the anger that rose at the remembrance, he forgot the passionate pride and love that had shown on him from the gallery that morning—forgot everything but that later scene; and as it rushed vividly back to his mind, he put his hand to his face and groaned aloud.

And still she stood mute, moveless, with that hunted look deepening on her face, as no word or sign betrayed his answer.

"You will not even answer me!" she moaned, at last.

"It needs not his love to plead your cause, Grace," he answered, in heart-wrung accents. "While I thought that your only fault was in deceiving me before our marriage, my own love pleaded unceasingly for you, my every effort was directed to the destruction of my fiery jealousy and anger toward you. I was succeeding. God knows this is true. The message I sent you by Captain Clendenon was the outgrowth of that milder mood. In all probability I should soon have returned to you—glad to call you mine, even though I knew you to have once loved another. Once! My God! how little I knew of the dark reality! how little I dreamed of your deception until I saw you here to-day—with him!"

"Oh! not with him!" she cried, in indignant denial—"oh! not with him! I had met him but that moment, and by the merest accident. Paul, was I to blame for that?"

"Mamma, pretty mamma!" lisped the baby, reaching his arms to her in vague alarm at the papa who was grieving her so, and, with cold deference, he laid him in his mother's arms, as he answered:

"Not to blame for meeting him accidentally, of course, Grace; but you were to blame for stopping him, for clinging to him, for looking into his eyes as you did, knowing what you did of the feelings existing between himself and me—deeply to blame."

"I was frightened," she pleaded. "I did not think—it would have happened just the same had it been a stranger, and not Mr. Conway."

"Ah, no!" he sneered, beside himself with jealous passion. "I have learned, too late, that your marriage with me was one of ambition and pride. There was love in the look you gave him, Grace—such love as you have never accorded me."

He was walking excitedly up and down the floor, never even glancing at her. She sighed bitterly, pillowing her burning cheek against her child, as though to gather strength before she spoke again.

"You are mistaken; it was fright, alarm, foolish nervousness; not love, God knows; anything else but that! I do not know how to please you, my husband. You are fearfully, causelessly jealous—oh! what did you want me to do?"

"I did not want you to touch him; I did not want you to speak to him or notice him. I am jealous, Grace," stopping suddenly beside her, and gathering all her long fair ringlets into his hands, and lifting one bright tendril caressingly to his lips—"so jealous that I am almost angry with the very winds when they dare lift this treasured glory from your shoulders."

She trembled so violently that she was forced to put down the child on a cushion at her feet. As she turned, with a mute gesture, as if to throw herself into his arms, he dropped the golden mass from his hands and coldly turned away.

"I would like to know, madam," after a long pause, his voice ringing, clear, cold, steady, from the opposite side of the room, "why you chose to come to Washington at all—knowing it to be against my wishes—what object could you possibly have had, unless it were to see him?"

That cruel insult struck the warm fountain of tears, too oft repressed by the proud, loving young wife. Her face dropped in her hands, bright tears falling through her fingers; her voice came to him mournfully earnest through its repressed sobs and moans:

"Because, oh! because I wanted to see you, Paul, so much—oh, so much!—that I felt I could brave your blame—dare all your anger, but to look on your dear face once more! I hoped you would not see me. I did not know you could be so cruel and unjust to me, or I would have fought harder against the temptation to come."

Moving toward her, he half opened his arms, then dropped them again at his sides, with something like a moan.

"Oh, God, if I could only believe you!"

"And do you not?" she asked, slowly.

"I cannot. The miserable doubt that you have never loved me, the fear that your marriage with me arose from selfish considerations while your heart was in the keeping of one who valued it so little then, however much he may now—Gracie, with all these torturing doubts on my soul, I try to believe you, and—I cannot."

"Once for all," she says, still patiently, "let me tell you, whether you credit or not, Paul, that my love for Bruce Conway compared with my love for you was as moonlight unto sunlight, or as water unto wine. He was the ideal of my silly, inexperienced girlhood—nay, childhood—he never could have been the choice of my maturer years. You are all I can ask for in perfection of manliness, saving this unhappily jealous nature, and my whole heart is yours. I did not marry you for any selfish consideration, except that I loved you and wanted always to be near that strong, true, noble heart, sheltered by its warm affection. Paul, can you believe these things if I tell you so on my very knees?"

He flung himself away from her with a heart-wrung sigh.

"God help my jealous nature, I cannot!"

"And you will leave me again after this—indefinitely—or forever?" leaning her elbow on the low marble mantel, and looking at him with a sort of wistful wonder in her tear-wet eyes.

"I must. My vow is recorded—I cannot help myself—it must be fulfilled."

She smiled slightly, but with something in her smile that half maddened him. The tears were quite dry on her lashes, her cheeks were pink as rose-leaves, her bosom rose and fell more calmly. The smile that played on her lips was not "all angel" now. She had sued for the last time to her unjust lord.

"Since this is your decision," she answered, in calm tones, that belied her tortured heart, "would it not be as well to separate altogether? Would not your freedom be better insured by a complete divorce from one who has so deeply deceived you that it seems impossible to trust her again? I confess that it is irksome to me to live upon the splendors your wealth supplies while I am an exile and an alien from your heart. Once fairly divorced, and we could go away—my baby and I—and never trouble you again. I have worked for myself before; I am sure I can do it again."

He glared at her speechless, her cool, quiet words stinging him sharply, and widening the gulf between them. Before it was a turbulent stream; now a rushing river.

"And then you might be Bruce Conway's wife," he says, bitterly, at last, "and be happy ever after in his love. Is that what you mean, fair lady?"

"Oh, no, no, no! I should never marry again! I should not want to—nor dare to! Oh, Heaven, what has love ever brought me but agony?" with a despairing gesture of her clenched white hand.

"Ta, ta!" he says, with a light, sarcastic laugh. "You should not judge the future by the past. You 'may be happy yet,' as one of your songs prettily expresses it. Certainly, you may have a divorce if you wish, only,"—stooping to lift his boy in his arms—"in that case, you know, the law will give this dear little fellow into my sole care and keeping; though, of course, the blissful bride of Conway will not miss the child of the man she never loved."

If that last taunt struck home she did not betray it, save that she whitened to her lips as she slowly reiterated his words.

"The law would take my baby from me?"

"Yes, of course; that is the law of the land—do you still desire to have a divorce?"

"Oh, God, no! I never did, except for your sake. I felt myself to be a burden on your unwilling hands, on your unwilling heart, and I simply could not bear the thought. But my baby—don't take him from me, Paul! I have suffered until I thought I could bear no more, and that, oh! that would be death. He is all I have to love me now."

She caught her child from his arms and held him strained to her beating heart, feeling for the first time the awful agony of a mother's dread of losing her loved one. Her husband looked at her with no trace of his feelings written on his still face, and merely said:

"Do not fear; I shall not take him from you, unless in the event to which we have alluded. But I hope you will let me see him while he is so near me. When do you propose to leave Washington?"

"On the day after to-morrow. I only came yesterday."

"Ah! then I shall look for Norah, to-morrow—you have Norah with you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then I shall expect Norah and my baby to call on me quite punctually, at ten to-morrow. I want to see all I can of the little fellow while he is here."

He penciled his address on a card, and laid it on the marble mantel. She watched him mutely as he turned toward her, thinking gravely to herself what a great, grand, kingly nature was marred by the jealous passion that laid waste the fair garden of this man's soul.

"Hear me now, Grace, and understand that what I wrote you in my parting note is still my wish. You will remain in our home with our little boy; command my banker for unlimited sums, and be as happy as you can. Do not, I beg of you, seek to see me again."

"No," she answers, slowly and proudly; "the next time, you will seek me!"

"Indeed, I hope so," he gravely answers, "so do not worry, and think as kindly of me as you can until we meet again."

"Until we meet again," she murmurs, under her breath.

"Until we meet again," he repeats, with a lingering look, and a deep, low bow.

She makes a pained, impatient gesture. He turns and goes out, humming with a cruel lightness that breaks her heart, the sad refrain of an old song:

 
"It may be for years, and it may be forever."
 

CHAPTER XII.
"FATE HAS DONE ITS WORST."

 
"I touch this flower of silken leaf my earlier days that knew,
Its soft leaves wound me with a grief whose balsam never grew."
 

—Emerson.

Four o'clock striking in Mrs. Conway's parlor, and our three friends variously disposed therein; Mrs. Conway trifling with some light affair of fancy work, in bright-colored Berlin wool; Bruce with the daily paper; Lulu, a trifle restless, and sitting before the piano, striking low, wandering chords and symphonies, turning now and then an impatient glance at the newspaper that diverts the gentleman's attention from her. Women are invariably jealous of newspapers.

"What a nice thing it is to be interested in politics," she says, petulantly, at last.

He is deeply immersed in a synopsis of the speech of Senator Winans, having missed it the preceding day by being absorbed in contemplation of the Senator's wife; but he looks up to retort, lightly:

"What a nice thing it is to be a belle and take on airs."

She pouts, with a toss of her small head, then smiles.

"Meaning me?" she queries.

"Meaning you," he answers, glancing at the white fingers that go straying over the keys, waking a low accompaniment, to which she sings, softly:

 
"Violets, roses,
Sweet-scented posies,
Who'll buy my roses,
All scattered with dew?"
 

"Meaning the mammoth bouquet that came this morning with the captain's compliments?" he interrupts her to ask, with a glimmer of fun in his dark eye.

She breaks off, laughing, half-blushing, and saucily retorting:

"Indeed, no. Were I ever so avaricious a flower-vendor I could not part with the gift of the gallant captain."

"By the way," he says, suddenly and mischievously ("by the way" being a byword of the captain under discussion), "it strikes me as rather droll that such a charming flirtation should have sprung up between you and Captain Frank Fontenay—the man who tried to help kill me, and the little fairy who helped cure me."

"Ah, yes, now I think of it," with an infinitesimal shudder, "he was Senator Winans' second in that affair. Well," saucily this, "you could not have been seconded by a finer gentleman."

He rises and saunters over to her side, out of reach of Mrs. Conway's ears, who is near the window (exactly what Lulu wishes him to do). Long ago he has read, like an open page, the pure, adoring heart of this girl—no vanity in him, for it is so palpable to all; to a certain degree he loves her, admires her fresh, young beauty, her sunny ways; means certainly some day to make her his wife; and something under her surface gayety now that reveals a wistful, unsatisfied yearning touches him to greater tenderness than he has ever felt for her before. As he bends to speak she turns her head, with a deepening flush; the movement wafts to him the subtle fragrance of a white rose worn in her brown hair, and the words she longs to hear die unspoken on his lips. What is there in the fragrance of a flower that can pierce one deeper than a sword-thrust with the sweet-bitterness of memory? What kinship does it bear to the roses that blossomed in other days, in other hands that we have loved? Who can tell?

Impatiently he disengages it from its becoming brown setting and tosses it far from him.

"Never wear white roses where I am, Lulu; I cannot bear their perfume—it absolutely sickens me. I like you best in scarlet. It suits your piquant beauty best."

"Did she wear white roses?" she queries, with inexpressible bitterness, and reaching conclusions with a woman's quick wit.

"She wore white roses—yes," he answers, slowly, as if impelled by some power stronger than his own volition; "and, Lulu, she sat one evening with her lap full of white roses, and her hands glanced among them as white as they—you have heard the whole story before—and the only really cowardly act of my life, the only dastardly speech of my life, was made then—oh, Heaven! I shall never forget the eyes she lifted to my face; white roses always stir me with remorse—always breathe the funereal air of dead hopes."

"It is a sin to love her so—now," she whispered, under her breath.

"I know, I know; but cannot you understand, Lu, that this is remorse that has built its habitation over the grave of love? Another love is rising in my heart above the wreck of my earlier one, but my regret for what I caused her to suffer then—for what I have unwittingly caused her to bear since—is, and must ever be, unceasing."

"You need not grieve so deeply," she urges, trying to comfort him. "She found consolation—she has 'learned to love another.'"

"Yes, my loss was his gain, but still the influence of what I did in the past throws its blighting consequence over her life; but let us not speak of it, Lulu. There are themes more pleasant to me—ah, if I mistake not," glancing out of a near window, "there's the captain's faultless equipage outside—do you drive with him this evening?"

"I believe I did promise him," she says, reluctantly, and the next moment the fine-looking captain is ushered in, and Bruce goes back to his former seat.

Coolly polite are the greetings between the two gentlemen. The words that pass between them are of the briefest, while Lulu goes for her wrappings.

He smiles, as standing at the window he meets her regretful smile, and knows how much rather she had been with him than dashing off in that handsome phaeton.

She carries that smile in her heart as they whirl down the avenue, past the White House, and off by a pretty circuitous route for the little city of Georgetown. There is a glow on her cheek, a sweet, serious light in her eyes, a slight abstraction in her manner, that charms her companion. He bends near her, a sparkle in his blue eyes, a gratified smile on his lips, for he fancies that he has called that added charm to her face.

She has taken his heart by storm, and before she can realize it, he has capitulated and laid the spoils of war at her feet—namely, the battered old heart of a forty-year-old captain in the U. S. A., a brown-stone front on Capitol Hill, and fifty thousand dollars.

She looks up in utter amaze at the fair blonde face of the really handsome veteran, with its rippling beard and sunny expression of good-humor, then her eyes fall, and she softly laughs at his folly in the charmingly incredulous way with which some women refuse an offer.

"My dear sir, you do me too much honor, and I would not for the world exchange my maiden freedom for 'a name and a ring.'"

The captain is not so very much disheartened. He is of a sanguine temperament, and says he will not despair yet—in short, means to try again at some fitting future period; and she, leaning back, listless, half sorry for him, and a little flattered at his preference, wishes with all her heart that this were Bruce Conway instead.

"Ah! by the way," he breaks in presently, "there is a rumor—I beg your pardon if I offend—but is it true, as society declares, that you are to marry Conway?"

Her heart gives a great muffled throb, that almost stifles her, then the small head lifts erect and calm.

"It is not a fact—at least, I am not aware of it—unless, indeed, society means to marry us willy-nilly."

"Society has made worse matches," he lightly rejoins. "Conway is a prize in the market matrimonial—Miss Clendenon certainly has no peer!"

She laughs. Indeed, it is one of her charming ways that she laughs at everything that can be possibly laughed at, and since her laugh is most musical, and her teeth twin rows of pearls, we can excuse her—ah, how much nonsense we pardon to youth and beauty!

"Ah, by the way," (this favorite formula), "talking of Conway reminds me of my friend, Winans—in the Senate, you know. A strange affair that of his child—don't you think so?"

She is busy fighting the wind, that blows the long loose strands of her solitary brown ringlet all over her pink cheeks, and turns half-way to him, the sunny smile utterly forsaking her lip, answering vaguely and in some surprise:

"What about it? I have heard nothing."

"Have not?—ah!" as they turn a corner and come upon a lovely view of the noble Potomac. "There you have a fine view, Miss Clendenon."

She looks mechanically.

"Yes, it is grand, but—but what did you say about the child of Senator Winans?"

"Ah, yes, I was going to tell you, I had not forgotten," he smiled. "Why, it seems that his wife was in the city, and he called on her last evening at the hotel where she is stopping—he told me, poor fellow, in confidence that they parted more bitterly alienated than before. I blame him, though, the most. I know his hot temper, you see, Miss Lulu—and he desired her to send the child and nurse around to his hotel this morning, that he might see as much as possible of the child before she returned to Norfolk, as she designed doing to-day."

"Well?" she breathes eagerly.

She is twisting the wayward ringlet round and round one taper finger and listening with absorbing interest as he goes on.

"Well, Norah O'Neil, the nurse, took the child very punctually to its father at ten o'clock this morning. He received them in his private parlor that opened on a long handsome hall, where similar parlors opened in a similar manner. And—but this cannot be interesting to you, Miss Clendenon, since you do not know the parties."

"On the contrary, I am deeply interested," she said. "Go on if you please."

"Well, it seems that Winans kept the little thing so long with him that it began to grow hungry and fretful. Winans suggested that Norah, the nurse, you know, should go down to the lower regions of the hotel and bring up some warm milk and crackers for the hungry child. She went, attended by a waiter Winans summoned for the purpose, and remained some time—ah! Miss Clendenon, here we are on Prospect Hill with a charming sea-view before us—and there—you see that romantic-looking cottage not a stone's throw from us—that is the home of the well-known novelist, Mrs. Southworth."

"Ah!" she said, brightly, turning a look of deep interest at the spot. "But about the child—what happened while the nurse was gone?"

"In a moment, Miss Lulu," touching whip to the prancing iron-gray ponies and setting them off at a dashing rate. "Yes, as I was saying, Winans played with the child that kept fretting for Norah and the milk, and I dare say he grew tired of playing the nurse—I should in his place, I know—and thought of taking a comfortable smoke. He left the baby sitting on a divan, stopped into his dressing-room, selected a good weed, lighted it, and stepped back again."

"And what happened then?" Lulu inquired.

"Would you believe it!—the little thing that could no more than toddle by itself—that he had left but a moment before, sitting on the divan, fretting for Norah and its milk—it was gone."

"Gone—where?" asked Lulu, staring blankly at him.

"The Lord in heaven knows, Miss Clendenon. Winans ran to the door—it had stood ajar all the time for fresh air—and looked up and down the hall for him, in vain though. Then the nurse came up with the milk, and they began to search together, called up the waiters, alarmed the whole house, in fact; and all was useless. Every room was searched, every one inquired of, but not a trace of the child was found; he was clearly not in the house. I happened in just then and joined in the search. At four this evening the search had become widespread; two detectives have scoured the city, and it seems impossible to throw the least light on the affair. Winans is perfectly wild about it—never saw a man suffer so."

"Oh, how dreadful!" breathed Lulu, "and who broke it to her—the wretched mother?"

"Norah absolutely refused to go to her with news which she said must certainly kill her. Winans shrunk from the task in the same desperate horror. She does not know it yet, and he clings to a hope of finding it before dark, and sending it back by Norah as though nothing had happened; but I fear he will fail. Little Paul has undoubtedly been stolen for the sake of a ransom, no doubt, or his fine clothes; and it is probable they will get him back, but scarcely to-day."

"Oh, poor unhappy Grace!" murmured Lulu, and all her miserable, half-indefinable jealousy of the beautiful woman melted in a hot rain of tears for the terribly bereaved young mother.

The captain, greatly surprised at this feminine outburst, was really at a loss to offer consolation. Having all a man's horror of woman's tears, he let the sudden rain-storm have its way, and then hazarded a remark:

"Why, you do not know her; I beg your pardon, do you?"

"No," brushing away the pearly drops with a dainty lace-bordered handkerchief. "I have seen her, heard her trouble, and take a very deep interest in her, and," as she dried the last tear and looked pensively up, "I am such a baby that my tears are ready on all occasions."

"An April day," is his oft-quoted comment, "'all smiles and tears.'"

Silence falls. Captain Fontenay looks a little sad, intensely thoughtful, evidently revolving something in his mind.

"You speak of having heard of Mrs. Winans' troubles," he ventured at last. "Mrs. Conway is one of her friends, I believe?"

"Yes, she has known Mrs. Winans for years—loves and admires her greatly."

"Perhaps then," pulling his mustache doubtfully, as they drive slowly on, and looking anxious as to how his remark will be received, "perhaps since Winans and the nurse both are so reluctant to carry the news to Mrs. Winans—perhaps Mrs. Conway would be a proper person to break it to her—that is if she would undertake the painful task."

"I am sure she would do so; painful as it would be to her I feel she would rather it were her than a stranger; she could tell it more gently than one unaccustomed to Grace—I call her Grace because I have gotten into the familiar habit from hearing Mrs. Conway call her so," she said, apologetically.

"Then, if you think so," he makes answer, "I will call on our return and ask her to do so, seeing Winans afterward to let him know of her willingness to assume the unpleasant task. Then, if he thinks best, I will call and take Mrs. Conway to her hotel."

They drove back, and broke the sad news to Mrs. Conway. Shocked, surprised, and grieved as she was, she eschewed for once the nerves of a fashionable, and professed herself willing and anxious to go to the bereaved young mother.

At seven o'clock that evening the captain called for her.

"No tidings of him yet," he said, "and Winans is anxious you should go to her at once and break it with all possible tenderness, with the assurance that he expects at any hour to find the baby and bring it to her. Norah will come back after it is told. Poor lady! fate has done its worst for her."

At the door of Grace's room let us pause, dear reader. We have heard the moan of that aching, tortured heart so often, as she quailed before the shafts of fate, that we dare not look on the agony whose remembrance will haunt even the callous heart of the fashionable and world-worn Mrs. Conway through all her future years. It was the agony of Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not.