Countess Vera; or, The Oath of Vengeance
by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller · English · Gutenberg #48824 · 471,525 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Countess Vera; or, The Oath of Vengeance
Author: Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNTESS VERA; OR, THE OATH OF VENGEANCE ***
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COUNTESS
VERA
BY
MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER,
AUTHOR OF "A DREADFUL TEMPTATION," "QUEENIE'S TERRIBLE
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COPYRIGHTED 1883.
COUNTESS VERA;
OR,
_The Oath of Vengeance_.
By MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER.
CONTENTS
COUNTESS VERA.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER XLV.
CHAPTER XLVI.
CHAPTER XLVII.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHAPTER XLIX.
THE MYSTERIOUS BEAUTY.
CHAPTER I.
"Dead!"
Leslie Noble reels backward, stunned by the shuddering horror of that
one word--"_Dead_!" The stiff, girlish characters of the open letter
in his hand waver up and down before his dazed vision, so that he can
scarcely read the pathetic words, _so_ pathetic now when the little
hand that penned them lies cold in death.
"Dear Leslie," it says, "when you come to bid me good-bye in the
morning I shall be dead. That is best. You see, I did not know till
to-night my sad story, and that you did not love me. Poor mamma was
wrong to bind you so. I am very sorry, Leslie. There is nothing I can
do but _die_."
There is no signature to the sad little letter--none--but they have
taken it from the hand of his girl-wife, found dead in her bed this
morning--his bride of two days agone.
With a shudder of unutterable horror, his glance falls on the lovely,
girlish face, lying still and cold with the marble mask of death on
its beauty. A faint tinge of the rose lingers still on the delicate
lips, the long, curling fringe of the lashes lies darkly against the
white cheeks, the rippling, waving, golden hair falls in billows of
brightness over the pillow. This was his unloved bride, and she has
died the awful and tragic death of the _suicide_.
* * * * *
Let us go back a little in the story of this mournful tragedy, my
reader, go back to the upper chamber of that stately mansion, where, on
a wild night in October, a woman lay dying--dying of that subtle malady
beyond all healing--a broken heart.
"Vera, my darling," says the weak, faint voice, "come to me, dear."
A little figure that has been kneeling with its face in the
bed-clothes, rises and comes forward. The small, white face is drenched
with tears, the dark eyes are dim and heavy.
"Mamma," the soft voice says, hopefully, "you are better?"
The wasted features of the invalid contract with pain.
"No, my little daughter," she sighs, "I shall never be any better in
this world. I am dying."
A stifled cry of pain, and the girl's soft cheek is pressed to hers in
despairing love.
"No, mamma, no," she wails. "You must not die and leave me alone."
"Alone?" the mother re-echoes. "Beautiful, poor and alone in the great,
cruel world--oh, my God!"
"You cannot be dying, mamma," the girl says, hopefully. "They--Mrs.
Cleveland and Miss Ivy--could not go on to their balls and operas if
you were as bad as _that_!"
Something of bitter scorn touches the faded beauty of the woman's face
a moment.
"Much they would care," she says, in a tone of scorn. "At this moment
my sister and her proud daughter are dancing and feasting at the
Riverton's ball, utterly careless and indifferent to the fact that the
poor dependent is lying here all alone, but for her poor, friendless
child."
"You were no dependent, mamma," the girl says, with a gleam of pride in
her dark eyes. "You worked hard for all we have had. But, mamma, if--if
you _leave_ me, I will not be Ivy Cleveland's slave any longer. I shall
go away."
"Where, dear?" the mother asks, anxiously.
"Somewhere," vaguely; "anywhere, away from these wicked Clevelands. I
hate them, mamma!" she says, with sudden passion in her voice and face.
"You do not hate Leslie Noble?" Mrs. Campbell asks, anxiously.
"No, mamma, for though he is akin to them he is unlike them. Mr. Noble
is always kind to me," Vera answers, musingly.
"Listen to me, Vera, child. Mr. Noble l--likes you. He wishes to marry
you," the mother exclaims, with a flush of excitement in her eyes.
"Marry me?" Vera repeats, a little blankly.
"Yes, dear. Are you willing?"
"I--I am too young, am I not, mamma?"
"Seventeen, dear. As old as I was when I married your father," Mrs.
Campbell answers with a look of heart pain flitting over the pallid
face.
"I have never thought of marrying," Vera goes on musingly. "He will not
be angry if I refuse, will he, mamma?"
"But, Vera, you must not refuse," the invalid cries out, in a sudden
spasm of feverish anxiety. "Your future will be settled if you marry
Mr. Noble. I can die in peace, leaving you in the care of a good
husband. Oh, my darling, you do not know what a cruel world this is.
I dare not leave you alone, my pure, white lamb, amid its terrible
dangers."
Exhausted by her eager speech she breaks into a terrible fit of
coughing. Vera bends over, penitent and loving.
"Cheer up, mamma," she whispers; "I am not going to refuse him. Since
he wants me, I will marry him for your sake, dear."
"But you like him, Vera?" the mother asks, with piteous pleading.
"Oh, yes," calmly. "He is very nice, isn't he? But, do you know, I
think, mamma, that Ivy intended to marry him herself. I heard her say
so."
"Yes, I know, but you see he preferred you, my darling," the mother
answers, with whitening lips.
"Then I will marry him. How angry my cousin will be," Vera answers,
with all the calmness of a heart untouched by the _grande passion_.
"Yes, she will be very angry, but you need not care, dear," Mrs.
Campbell answers faintly. "Leslie will take you away from here. You
will never have to slave for the Clevelands any more."
The door opens suddenly and softly. A tall, handsome man comes into the
room, followed by a clerical-looking individual.
"Oh, Leslie, you are come back again," Mrs. Campbell breathes,
joyfully. "I am glad, for I cannot last but a few minutes longer."
"Not so bad as that, I hope," he says, gently, advancing to the
bedside; then his hand touches lightly the golden head bowed on the
pillow. "Is my little bride ready yet?" he asks.
The girl starts up with a pale, bewildered face.
"Is it to be now?" she asks, blankly. "I thought--I thought----"
But Mrs. Campbell, drawing her quickly down, checks the half protest
with a feverish kiss.
"Yes, dear, it is to be now," she whispers, weakly. "I cannot die until
I know that you will be safe from the Clevelands. It is my dying wish,
Vera."
"Then I am ready," Vera answers, turning a pale and strangely-solemn
face on the waiting bridegroom.
The bridegroom is pale, too. His handsome face gleams out as pale as
marble in the flickering glare of the lamps, the dark hair tossed
carelessly back from the high, white brow, gleaming like ebony in the
dim light. The dark, mustached lips are set in a grave and thoughtful
line, the dark blue eyes look curiously into the bride's white face
as he takes her passive hand and draws her forward toward the waiting
minister.
It is a strange bridal. There are no wedding-favors, no wedding-robes,
no congratulations. The beautiful marriage words sound very solemn
there in the presence of the dying, and the girlish bride turns
silently from the side of the new-made husband to seek the arms of her
dying mother.
"Bless you, my Vera, my little darling," the pale lips whisper, and
then there falls a strange shadow on the room, and a strange silence,
for, with the murmured words of blessing, the chords of life have
gently parted in twain, and Mrs. Campbell's broken heart is at rest and
at peace in that Heavenly peace that "passeth all understanding."
CHAPTER II.
The long, wintry night wanes slowly. Vera's own loving hands have
robed the dead for the rest of the grave. She has gone away now to
the solitude of her own little chamber under the eaves, leaving Leslie
Noble keeping watch beside the loved lost one.
She has forgotten for a moment the brief and solemn words that gave
her away to be a wife in her early innocent girlhood; she remembers
only that the one creature that loved her, and whom she loved, is
dead. Crushed to earth by her terrible loss, Vera flings herself
face downward on the chilly, uncarpeted floor, and lies there mute,
moveless, tearless, stricken into silence by the weight of her bitter
despair.
Who that has lost a mother, the one true heart that loves us truly and
unselfishly of all the world, but can sympathize with the bereaved
child in her deep despair.
In vain the kind-hearted minister whispered words of comfort, in
vain Leslie tried to soothe her, and win her to tears, in awe of her
strange, white face and dry-lidded eyes. They could not understand her,
and were fain to leave her alone, the while one quoted fearfully to the
other:
"The grief that does not speak,
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break."
So the chilly night wanes, and at three o'clock in the morning,
carriage wheels echo loudly in the street below, and pause in front of
the house. The haughty mistress, and Ivy, her daughter, have returned
from the esthetic ball whose delights they could not forego, although
their relative lay ill unto death in the house.
A tap at Vera's door, and Mrs. Brown, the chamber-maid, glances in.
The worthy woman has been out at "a party" herself, and is quite
unconscious of all that has happened since she left the house. Her
stolid gaze falls curiously on the recumbent figure on the cold, hard
floor.
"Wake up, Miss Vera! Whatever be you a-sleeping on the cold floor this
night for? Miss Ivy says for you to come down to her room immejitly."
Disdaining a reply to the coarse woman, Vera drags herself up from the
hard floor, and with stiffened limbs takes her way to the luxurious
apartment of her cousin.
How different this large and comfortable room from Vera's bare and
fireless little den. Miss Cleveland's apartment has soft hangings
of pale-blue plush, bordered with silver, cream lace curtains, a
blue satin counterpane embroidered with silvery water-lilies. The
atmosphere is warm and dreamy, and languid with the scent of hot-house
flowers in blue and silver vases. The mistress of all this elegance
stands in the center of the room, clothed in an esthetic gown of
pale-blue, embroidered down the front with small sunflowers. She is a
pretty blonde, with straw-colored hair in loose waves, and turquoise
blue eyes, that usually wear an expression of infantine appeal and
innocence. Just now the eyes look heavy and dull, and there is a tired,
impatient look on her delicate-featured face.
"Here you are _at last_," she says, as Vera comes slowly in with her
white face and heavy eyes, with their look of dumb and hopeless pain.
"Hurry up now and undress me; I'm tired and sleepy, and ready to drop!"
Vera stands still, looking gravely at her, and making no move to obey
the cool and insolent mandate. For years her cousin has ruthlessly
trampled her under foot, and made her a despised slave.
It comes to the girl with a sudden thrill of triumph now that this is
the last time Ivy will ever order her about. She is Leslie Noble's
wife, and he will shield her from her cousin's abuse.
"Come, don't stand staring like a fool," Ivy breaks out coarsely and
impatiently. "Don't you see I'm waiting? Here, pull off these tight
slippers. I cannot stand them a minute longer!"
She throws herself into a blue-cushioned chair, and thrusts forward her
small feet encased in white kid slippers and blue silk hose, and Vera,
conquering her strong impulse of rebellion, kneels down to perform the
menial service.
After all, what does this last time matter? she asks herself, wearily.
After to-morrow she will be out of their power. Tonight, while that
dear, dead mother lies in the house, she will keep still, she will
have peace, no matter how bitter the cup of degradation pressed to her
loathing lips.
With steady hands she unlaces the silken cords that lace the white
slippers, draws them off the compressed feet, and unclasps the satin
garters from the blue silken hose. All the while Ivy raves angrily:
"I have seen for some time that you rebel against waiting on me,
ungrateful minx, as if all you could do would repay us for the
charity that has clothed and fed you all your life. To-morrow I shall
report you to your mother, and if she does not bring you into better
subjection, you shall both be driven away, do you hear?"
Her mother! This is the iron rod with which they have ruled poor Vera
all her life long. That poor, drooping, delicate mother, whose hold
on life had never been but half-hearted, whose only home and shelter
had been the grudging and hard-earned charity of her heartless and
parsimonious sister. Day in and day out the Clevelands had driven their
two weak slaves relentlessly, always holding over their heads the dread
of being turned out to face the cold world alone.
A low and bitter laugh rises to Vera's lips at the thought that that
poor, meek dependent is beyond their dominion now, and that Ivy's
threatened complaints can never rise to that high Heaven where her
mother's freed spirit soars in happiness and peace.
"Not that you are of much account, anyway," pursues the heartless girl,
angrily. "You can never be trained into a proper maid, you stiff-necked
little pauper. If mamma were not so mean and stingy she would let me
have a real French maid like other girls. Never mind, when once I am
Mrs. Leslie Noble I'll show her how I will spend money!"
Vera shivers, and her heart thumps heavily against her side. The
one idea of Ivy's life is to marry Leslie Noble. He is handsome,
fascinating, wealthy, in short, her _beau ideal_ of perfection. He has
come on a month's visit to her mother from a distant city, and both
_mater_ and daughter are sure, quite sure, that the object for which
he was invited is accomplished; they have hooked the golden fish, they
have no doubt. What will Ivy say when she knows that she, the despised
Vera, is Leslie Noble's chosen bride?
"She will kill me, just that!" the girl murmurs to herself in terror,
while a second terror shakes her slight frame.
"What are you trembling for?" Ivy demands, shortly. "Are you afraid I
will slap you as I did last night? Well, you richly deserve it, and I
don't know but that I may. Hurry, now, and fix my hair and bring my
_robe de nuit_. It will be broad daylight before I get into bed. And I
want to rise early to find out why Leslie did not come to the ball."
Vera moves about mechanically, obeying orders, but answering never a
word.
A golden gleam has come into the eyes beneath the drooping lashes, a
heavy, deep red spot glows in the center of her death-white cheeks.
Half-frightened as she is at the thought of Ivy's rage when she learns
the truth, she is yet filled with triumph at the thought of her own
vengeance on her enemies, this glorious vengeance that has come to her
unsought.
_She_ will be Leslie Noble's wife, she will queen it over Ivy and her
mother. She will wear satin and laces and diamonds, she will have
French maids to wait on her, and then a sudden anguished recollection
drives the blood from her heart and forces a moan of despair from her
white lips--what is all her triumph since it cannot bring back the dead?
She is moving to the door, having tucked the blue satin counterpane
about Ivy's small figure, when the straw-gold head pops up, and the
frivolous beauty recalls her.
"I say, Vera, is the embroidery finished on my Surah polonaise? Because
I shall want it to-morrow night to wear to Mrs. Montague's _german_.
Tell your mother I shall want it without fail. I am tired of this
shamming sickness. It's nothing but laziness--just _that_. Did you say
it was finished?"
"No," Vera answers her, through her white lips. Ivy springs up
tumultuously in the bed.
"Not finished!" she screams, shrilly.
"Scandalous! I tell you I want it to-morrow night! I will have it--you
hear! Go and tell your mother to get up this instant and go to work at
it. Go and tell her--you hear?"
Vera, with her hands on the latch, and that crimson spot burning dully
on her cheeks, answers with sudden, passionate defiance:
"I will not!"
All in a moment Ivy is out of bed, and her small, claw-like fingers
clutch Vera's arm, the other hand comes down in a ringing slap on
Vera's cheek.
"Take that, little vixen!" she hisses, furiously, "and that, and that!
How dare you defy me?"
Vera pushes her off with a sudden passionate defiance.
"Because I am not afraid of you any longer," she says, sharply.
"Because poor mamma has escaped you. She is free--she is dead!"
"Dead!" Ivy screams in passionate wrath. "Dead--and the embroidery
not finished on my Surah polonaise! It is just like her--the lazy,
ungrateful thing! To go and die just when I needed----"
But Vera slams the door between her and the rest of the heartless
lament, and flies along the hall laughing like some mad thing. In truth
the horrors of this dreadful night have almost unseated her reason. She
shuts and bolts herself into her room, her young heart filled with wild
hatred for her heartless cousin.
"To-morrow I shall have my revenge upon her," she cries, with clenched
hands. "I would not tell her to-night. My triumph would not have been
complete. I will wait--wait until to-morrow, when Leslie Noble will
take me by the hand and tell her to her face that he loves me, and that
I am his wife!"
And her strange, half-maddened laugh filled the little room with weird
echoes.
CHAPTER III.
To-morrow, Vera's to-morrow--dawns, rainy, chilly, cheerless, as only a
rainy autumn day can be. The wild winds sigh eerily around the house.
The autumn leaves are beaten from the trees and swirl through the air,
falling in dank, sodden masses on the soaked grass of the lawn. The sun
refuses to shine. No more dreary and desolate day could be imagined.
With the earliest peep of dawn Vera makes her way to her mother's room.
It is lonely and deserted save for the sheeted presence of the quiet
dead. The lamps burn dimly, and there is a silence in the room so deep
it may be felt.
With a trembling hand Vera turns down the cold linen cover for one
long, lingering look at the beloved face--the strangely-beautiful
marble-white face, on which the story of a life-long sorrow has carved
its mournful record in the subtle tracery of grief.
Mrs. Campbell has been that most sorrowful of all living creatures--a
deserted wife!
The beautiful, dark eyes of her daughter have never looked upon the
face of the father who should have loved and nurtured her tender life.
But it is all over now--the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness, the deep
humiliation. The small, toil-stained hands are folded gently together
over some odorous white tube-roses that Vera has placed within them!
The jetty fringe of the long, black lashes rests heavily against the
thin, white cheeks, the beautifully-curved lips are closed peacefully,
the golden brown hair, thickly-streaked with gray, is parted sweetly on
the peaceful brow.
As Vera gazes, the tears, which have remained sealed in their fountains
till now, burst forth in healing showers, breaking upon the terrible
calm that has been upon her.
Again and again she presses her hot, feverish lips to the cold, white
brow of the only friend her lonely life has ever known.
"Oh, mamma, mamma, if you might but have taken me with you," she sobs,
bitterly.
"The best thing that could have happened," says a curt, icy voice
behind her, and turning with a shiver of repulsion, Vera beholds
her aunt, Mrs. Cleveland, who has entered noiselessly in her furred
slippers and crimson dressing-gown.
She comes to the foot of the bed and stands silently a moment regarding
the cold, white features of her dead sister, then hastily turns her
head aside as if the still face held some unspoken reproach for her.
"Cover the face, Vera," she says, coldly. "It is not pleasant to look
at the dead."
"Not when we have wronged them," the girl murmurs, almost inaudibly,
and with deep bitterness.
"What is that you are saying?" demands Mrs. Cleveland, sharply. "'Not
when we have wronged them,' eh? Beware, girl, how you let that sharp
tongue of yours run on. You may chance to see the inside of the
alms-house!"
But Vera, biting her lips fiercely, in mute shame at that angry slip of
the tongue in presence of the dead, makes no answer. Dropping the white
sheet back over the sealed lips that cannot open to defend her child,
she buries her face in the pillow, trembling all over with indignation
and grief.
Mrs. Cleveland stands contemplating her a moment with a look of
contemptuous scorn on her high, Roman features, then, to Vera's
amazement, she exclaims:
"One of the servants told me that Leslie Noble brought a preacher in
here last night. Was it to administer the sacrament to the dying?"
No answer from Vera, whose face remains buried in the pillow.
"Speak!" Mrs. Cleveland commands, coming a step nearer, "did he come to
administer the consolations of religion to the dying?"
"No," Vera answers, lifting her white face a moment, and looking
steadily into her enemy's questioning eyes. "No."
"No," Mrs. Cleveland echoes, with a look of alarm. "What then, girl,
what then?"
But Vera, with the strange reply, "You must ask Mr. Noble--he will
inform you," drops her pallid face into her hands again.
Mrs. Cleveland makes a step forward, resolving in her own mind "to
shake the breath out of that stubborn girl," but even her wicked nature
is awed by the still presence of death in the room, and she desists
from her heartless purpose, and, retreating to the door, pauses with
her hand on the latch to say, icily:
"Your mother's funeral will take place from the Epiphany Church this
afternoon. Mourning garments will be sent to your room for you to wear."
Vera springs to her feet with a heart-wrung cry:
"So soon! Oh, my God, you will not bury her out of my sight to-day,
when she only died last night!"
Mrs. Cleveland's haughty features are convulsed with anger.
"Hush, you little fool!" she bursts out, angrily. "Do you think that
dead people are such enlivening company that one need keep them in the
house any longer than is necessary to provide a hearse and coffin? Only
died last night, forsooth! Well, she is as dead now as she will be a
hundred years hence, and the funeral will take place this afternoon.
You will be ready to attend, if you understand what is good for
yourself."
So saying, she sweeps from the room, slamming the door heavily behind
her.
Alas, the bitterness of poverty and dependence. Vera throws herself
down by the side of the bed, and weeps long and bitterly, until
exhausted nature succumbs to the strain upon it, and she sleeps deeply,
heavily, dreamlessly, wrapped in a dumb, narcotic stupor rather than
healthful slumber. She is hustled out of the way at length that her
mother may be placed in the plain coffin that has been provided for
her, and a few hours later--oh, so piteously few--she is standing by
that open grave in Glenwood, hearing the dull thud of the earth, and
the patter of the rain upon the coffin, and the solemn voice of the
minister, repeating in tones that sound faint and far away to her dazed
senses, "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust."
From her carriage, where she sits impatiently waiting the conclusion
of the sacred service, Mrs. Cleveland watches the scene, frowning
impatiently at the sight of Leslie Noble supporting Vera on his arm,
and holding his umbrella carefully over her, reckless of the rain-drops
that patter down on his uncovered head and face. Mrs. Cleveland does
not like the look of it at all. She regards Leslie as Ivy's own
especial property. Leslie is too kind-hearted. Why should he trouble
himself over Vera Campbell, her despised niece, who is no better
than a servant to Ivy, her idolized daughter. She does not like the
look of it at all, and when Leslie hands the sobbing girl into the
carriage, and takes a seat by her side instead of Mrs. Cleveland's, the
matron's vexation rises into almost uncontrollable rage. Biting her
lips fiercely, she resolves that as soon as they reach home she will
give the young man a broad hint to cease his little kindnesses in that
quarter.
The occasion comes very soon. It is almost dark when they reach home.
The gas is lighted and a cheerful fire glows in the luxurious parlor.
Mr. Noble leads his passive companion deliberately in, and installs her
in a cushioned seat before the fire. With deft fingers he removes the
heavy veil and hat, the black shawl, and the wet gloves, and chafes in
his own warm clasp the half-frozen little fingers.
"Upon my word!" drawls a thin little voice, full of anger and surprise.
Mr. Leslie, glancing up, sees Ivy reclining on a couch, and regarding
the scene with supercilious surprise commingled with anger. Mrs.
Cleveland, who has followed them into the room, stands still, a mute
statue of rage and dismay.
"I--I should like to know the meaning of this, Mr. Noble," she gasps at
length, haughtily. "I do not allow that girl in my parlor! Let her go
to the servants' room. They are good enough for the likes of her."
Mr. Leslie turns his pale, handsome face round with an air of surprise.
"She is your sister's child," he says, with reproach in every tone of
his voice.
"Yes, to my sorrow," Mrs. Cleveland flashes out. "Add to that that she
is a pauper and an ingrate! Vera Campbell, get up and go to your own
room. _You_ ought to know your place if Mr. Noble does not!"
Vera rises silently, and standing still a moment, looks up into Leslie
Noble's face. The supreme moment of her triumph has arrived. With a
nervous tremor she looks up into his face for courage to sustain her in
the trying ordeal of the Clevelands' wrath before its vials are poured
out upon her shrinking head.
But the expression of the handsome, troubled face does not exactly
satisfy her. He is not looking at her. His eyes are fixed on Ivy
Cleveland's pretty face with its pink cheeks and turquoise-blue eyes.
There is tenderness, regret and trouble in the rather weak though
handsome face.
"Go, Vera," Mrs. Cleveland reiterates, sternly and impatiently.
Then Leslie's eyes fall on the slight, black-robed figure standing in
silent, proud humility by his side.
He stoops over her, not to caress her, as for a moment she vaguely
fancied, but to whisper in her ear:
"Do as she bids you this time, Vera. Go to your room and sleep soundly
to-night. I will have it out with her now, and in the morning I will
take you away."
She flashes one quick glance into his troubled eyes, bows her head, and
goes mutely from the room. But something in that look haunts Leslie
Noble ever after. It seemed to him as if those dark eyes said to him
plainer than words could speak: "You are a coward. Are you not afraid
to acknowledge your wife?" He is right. The look in her eyes has been
palpable contempt.
She goes from the room, but only to enter the room adjoining the
parlor, and conceal herself behind the heavy, dark-green hangings. So
this is the grand triumph her imagination has pictured for her. This is
the weak way in which her husband takes her part against the world.
CHAPTER IV.
When Vera has gone from the room, an embarrassed silence falls. Mrs.
Cleveland is wondering what to say next. It is no part of her plan to
offend Leslie Noble. She prefers to conciliate him. For Leslie himself,
he is wondering in what terms he shall convey the truth to his arrogant
relative and her haughty daughter.
"You must not take offense, Leslie, at my interference in this case,"
Mrs. Cleveland stammers at length. "I know your kind, easy nature, and
I cannot tamely see you imposed upon by that wretched girl, who is the
most ungrateful and hard-hearted creature you could imagine, and only
fit to herd with the low and vulgar."
"I do not understand you," Mr. Noble answers, resting his arms on the
back of the chair, and turning on her a white, perplexed face.
"She comes of bad stock," answered Mrs. Cleveland. "Her mother, my
sister, married most wretchedly beneath her. The man was a low,
drunken, brutal fellow, with nothing under Heaven to recommend him but
a handsome face. As might have been expected, he abused and maltreated
his wife, and then deserted her just before the birth of his daughter,
who resembled him exceedingly in character as well as in person."
Leslie Noble winces. Pride of birth is a strong point with him. He is
exceedingly well-born himself. The story of this drunken, wife-beating
fellow thrills him with keenest disgust.
"Where is the fellow now--dead?" he asks anxiously.
"No, indeed; at least, not that I ever heard of," Mrs. Cleveland
answers. "I have no doubt he is alive somewhere, in state prison,
perhaps, and he will turn up some day to claim his daughter, and drag
her down to his own vile depths of degradation."
Mr. Noble is silent from sheer inability to speak, and Mrs. Cleveland
resumes, with apparent earnestness:
"I have my doubts whether I am acting right in keeping the girl
here. She is a dead expense to me, and the most ungrateful and
violent-tempered creature that ever lived. Would you believe that she
flew at poor, dear little Ivy, and boxed her ears this morning? My pity
and affection for my sister induced me to give them a home as long as
she lived, but now that her influence is withdrawn from Vera, she will
be perfectly unmanageable. I think I shall send her away."
"Where?" inquires Mr. Noble, trying to keep his eyes from the pink and
white face of Ivy, who is listening intently to every word, without
speaking herself.
"To some place where she may earn her own living, or, perhaps, to the
House of Correction. She sadly needs discipline," is the instant reply.
Leslie Noble's face turns from white to red, and from red to white
again. What he has heard has utterly dismayed him.
"I wish that I had known all this yesterday, or last night," he
mutters, weakly.
"Why?" Mrs. Cleveland asks, startled by the dejected tone.
Leslie Noble looks from her to Ivy, who has started into a sitting
posture, and fixed her blue eyes on his face.
"Because I have something shocking to tell you," he answers, growing
very pale. "You must not be angry with me, Mrs. Cleveland, nor you,
Ivy. It would not have happened if I had known all that I know now."
"Oh, what can you mean?" screams Ivy, startled into speech by her vague
fear.
"You remember that I declined the Riverton's ball last night on the
score of a violent headache?" he says, looking gravely at her.
"Yes, and I missed you _so_ much. I did not enjoy the ball _one bit_,"
she murmurs, sentimentally.
Mr. Noble sighs furiously.
"I wish that I had gone, no matter how hard my head ached," he says,
dejectedly. "Then Mrs. Campbell would never have sent for me to come to
her room."
"To come to her room!" mother and daughter echo in breathless
indignation.
"Yes," answers the young man, with another sigh.
"Impertinent! What did she wish?" Mrs. Cleveland breaks out, furiously,
pale to the lips.
"She wished to tell me that she was dying, and to leave her daughter in
my care," he stammers, confusedly.
"Go on," Mrs. Cleveland exclaims.
"She told me that Vera was delicate, sensitive, helpless and
friendless, and so good and sweet that none could help loving her. She
declared she could not die in peace without leaving her in the care of
a kind protector."
"A fine protector a young man would make for a young girl," Mrs.
Cleveland sneers, with cutting irony.
"You do not understand, I think," Leslie answers her, gravely. "She
wished me to make her my wife."
"Your wife! Marry Vera Campbell!" Ivy shrieks out wildly.
He trembles at the passionate dismay of her voice, but answers,
desperately:
"Vera Noble, now, Ivy, for her mother's grief overcame my reason, and I
made her my wife last night by the side of her dying mother."
CHAPTER V.
Following that desperate declaration from Leslie Noble, there is a
scream of rage and anguish commingled. Ivy has fallen back on the sofa
in violent hysterics. Mrs. Cleveland glares at him reproachfully.
"You have killed her, my poor Ivy!" she cries. "She loved you, and you
had given her reason to think that--you meant to marry _her_."
"I _did_ so intend," he answers, on the spur of the moment. "I was only
waiting to be sure of my feelings before I declared myself. But now,
this dreadful marriage has blighted my life and hers. Poor little Ivy."
"I could almost curse my sister in her grave!" Mrs. Cleveland wails,
wringing her hands.
"Curse me rather," Leslie answers, bitterly, "that I was weak enough to
be deluded into such a mesalliance. She was ill and dying, she barely
knew what she did; but I was in full possession of my senses. Why did
I let my weak pity overcome me, and make me false to the real desire of
my heart?"
"Falsest, most deceitful of men!" sobs Ivy from her sofa, and Leslie
takes her white hand a moment in his own, pressing it despairingly to
his lips as he cries:
"You must forgive me, Ivy, I did not know how well I loved you until I
had lost you."
Mrs. Cleveland interposes sternly.
"Come, come, I cannot allow any tender passages between you two. If
Leslie intends for this nefarious marriage to stand, it will be best
that he shall remain a stranger henceforth to us both."
"To stand?" Leslie repeats, looking at her like one dazed.
"Yes," she answers, meaningly. "I ask you, Leslie, if such a marriage
as this can be legal and binding?"
"Oh, yes, it is perfectly so," he answers.
"Do you love her? Oh, Leslie, do you love that dreadful girl?" wails
Ivy, from her sofa.
He shakes his head, Mrs. Cleveland having interdicted other intercourse.
"Do you intend to live with her?" Mrs. Cleveland queries, significantly.
"Pray, what else can I do?" Mr. Noble queries, bewildered, and Ivy
groans, lugubriously.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," the lady answers, with a scornful laugh. "But
if it were me who had been deluded into such a marriage with a low and
mercenary girl, I am sure that nothing could induce me to live with
her. I would either divorce her, or pension her off."
Mr. Noble walks up and down the floor with folded arms, in deep
agitation.
"It would be quite impossible to procure a divorce," he answers, after
a moment's thought. "I could assign no earthly cause for demanding
one. I married her of my own free will, though I admit I was unduly
persuaded."
"All she cares for is your money," snaps Ivy, quite ignoring the fact
that this was her own motive for winning him. "It will kill me if you
take her home with you, Leslie. I shall die of a broken heart."
"Poor, deceived dear," sighs her mother, while Leslie breaks out,
ruefully:
"What else can I possibly do, Ivy?"
Mrs. Cleveland, who had been silently cogitating, answers with sudden
blandness:
"If you want my advice, Leslie, you shall have it, unfairly as you have
treated us. I say the girl is ignorant and uneducated, and quite unfit
to become the mistress of your elegant home in Philadelphia. If you are
compelled to stick to your unlucky bargain, you must try and make the
best of it. You will have to put her into a strict convent school where
her ill-nature will be tamed down, and her manners educated up to the
proper standard for your wife. How do you like that plan?"
Her magnetic gaze is fixed on Ivy as she speaks, compelling her to be
silent, though she was raising her shrill voice in protest.
"Would they be harsh with her?" Leslie asks anxiously, some instinct of
pity for the orphan girl struggling blindly in his heart.
"Not at all. I was educated at a convent school myself. I liked it
very much. But you will have to be very positive about Vera, to induce
her to go. She will wheedle you out of the notion if possible. Raw,
untrained girl as she is, she thinks she is quite capable of doing
anything, or filling any position. But if you listen to _her_, you will
find yourself mortified and disgraced directly," blandly insinuates the
wily woman.
Leslie Noble winces as she had meant he should. He is very proud and
sensitive, this rich, handsome man who finds himself placed, through
his weakness, in such a sore strait.
"I think your plan is a very good one," he says, hastily. "Do you know
where there is a school, such as you named just now?"
"I can give you the address of one in Maryland," Mrs. Cleveland
answers, readily.
"I will go there to-morrow and make arrangements for her reception as a
pupil," he replies. "Would it be better to apprise her of my intention
beforehand?" he inquires with some embarrassment.
"No, decidedly not. She might find means to circumvent you. She is
a very sharp witted girl. Merely tell her that you are called away
unexpectedly, on business, and that you will leave her in my charge
until you return."
"Would it be agreeable to you to have her stay that long?" he queries.
Mrs. Cleveland smiles a little grimly.
"Of course, as your wife, Vera may expect every courtesy from me," she
answers in a strange kind of voice, and there the conference ends.
From her hiding-place in the adjoining room Vera creeps out with a
white face, and takes her way up-stairs to her mother's room. Her step
is slow and heavy, her eyes are dull and black, there is no single
gleam of brightness in them. The last drop has been added to the
already overflowing cup of misery and despair.
With an unfaltering hand she goes to a small medicine chest kept for
her mother's use, and unlocking it, takes out two small vials filled
with a dark-colored liquid. Each vial has a label pasted on, containing
written directions for use, but without the name of the drug.
Vera knits her straight, black brows thoughtfully together as she
puzzles over them. "I remember," she says, aloud, "that mamma said one
would produce a long, deep sleep, the other--death! Now which is which?"
After a minute she decides to her satisfaction, and placing one vial
back, goes away with the other in her bosom. In her own little room
she sits down to pen a few words to Leslie, then slowly kneels by the
bedside.
"I do not think anyone can blame me," she murmurs, "not even God. The
world is so cold and hard I cannot live in it any longer. I am going to
my mother."
Some broken, pleading words falter over the quivering, white lips, then
a low amen.
She rises, puts the treasured vial to her lips, and drains the last
bitter drop, throwing the empty vessel on the hearth where it cracks
into a hundred fragments. Then she lies down upon the bed with her
letter to Leslie clenched tightly in her slim white hand. And when they
come to awake her in the morning, she is lying mute and pale, with the
marble mask of death over all her beauty.
CHAPTER VI.
When they tell Leslie Noble the fatal truth--when they lead him to the
cold, bare chamber where his girl-wife lies dead, he is stunned by the
swift and terrible blow that the hand of fate has dealt him. A quick
remorse has entered his soul. He did not love her, yet he would not
have the light of her young, strong life go out in darkness like that.
Though he has walked the floor of his room all night, raving, and
almost cursing himself because he had married her, the sight of her
now--like _that_--and the sad pathos of that brief letter touch him to
the depths of his heart with a vain remorse and pity. With a faltering
voice he reads aloud the sad and hopeless words:
"When you come to bid me good-by in the morning I shall be dead. That
is best. You see, I did not know till to-night my sad story, and
that--that you did not love me! Poor mamma was wrong to bind you so. I
am very sorry, Leslie. There is nothing I can do but die!"
His glance falls on Mrs. Cleveland, who is standing in the room with
a strange expression upon her face. He does not like to think it is
relief and satisfaction, and yet it is marvelously like it.
"Who has told her the truth? How has she learned it?" he asks. "I
never meant that she should know. I meant to do my duty by the poor,
friendless girl."
"No one told her. She must have listened at the door last night. It was
like her low, mean disposition to be peeping, and prying, and listening
to what did not concern her," Mrs. Cleveland bursts out, scornfully.
"Pardon me, but our conversation _did_ concern her," he answers,
gravely.
"At least, it was not intended for her hearing," she replies, shortly.
Mr. Noble is silent a moment, gazing earnestly at the pale, dead face,
from which the woman's eyes turn in fear and aversion.
"Perhaps we have wronged her," he says, slowly. "If she had been what
you believed her--coarse and low, and violent like her father--would
she have been driven," shudderingly, "to this!"
"You are allowing a maudlin sentimentality to run away with your
reason, Leslie," the woman answers, coldly. "Do you suppose I have
lied to you? The girl has lived here since infancy. I knew her temper
well, and I repeat that she was unbearable. I only endured her for her
mother's sake. This is very sad. Of course, you feel badly over it.
And yet, common sense whispers that this is a most fortunate thing for
you. You are freed from a galling bond. Had she lived, she would almost
inevitably have become a sorrow and a disgrace to you."
"We should not speak ill of the dead," he answers, a little sternly.
"Pardon me; I know there are some truths which we innately feel, but
should not give expression to," she answers, with keen irony.
"Does Ivy know?" he asks her.
"Not yet; poor dear, I have been watching by her bedside all night. She
is ill and almost heart-broken. I must go and break the news to her
now."
She moves to the door, but, seeing him standing irresolute in the
center of the floor, looks back over her shoulder to say, anxiously:
"Will you come away now, Leslie? The women would like to come in to
prepare the body for the grave."
He shivers, and turns to follow her, casting one long, lingering look
at the fair, immobile face upon the pillow.
"I did not know she was so beautiful," he murmurs to himself as he
passes out.
"Have you no message to send Ivy?" Mrs. Cleveland asks him, as they
pass along the hall. "She would be so glad of even one kind word from
you."
"I thought you interdicted all intercourse between us last night," he
answers, blankly.
"Yes; but the _obstacle_ no longer remains," she replies,
significantly, and, with a violent start, Leslie realizes the truth of
her words. In his horror and surprise he had not thought of it before.
Yes, Vera's death has set him free--free to marry Ivy when he will.
"Tell her that I am very sorry she is ill. I hope she will soon be
better," he answers, gravely and courteously. He will not say more now
out of respect to the dead, and Mrs. Cleveland is wise enough not to
press him.
Ivy, whose pretended illness is altogether a sham, is jubilant over the
news.
"Was there ever anything more fortunate?" she exclaims. "Lucky for us
that she listened, and found out the truth."
"Yes, indeed, she saved me a vast deal of plotting and planning, for
I was determined that she should be put out of the way somehow, and
that _soon_," Mrs. Cleveland answers, heartlessly. "The little fool! I
did not think she had the courage to kill herself, but I am very much
obliged to her."
"'Nothing in her life became her like the leaving it,'" Ivy quotes,
heartlessly.
"Remember, Ivy, you must not allow Leslie to perceive your joy. He
is very peculiar--weak-minded, indeed," scornfully. "And he might be
offended. Just now he is carried away by a maudlin sentimentality over
her tragic death."
"Never fear for me. I shall be discretion itself," laughs Ivy. "But, of
course, I shall make no display of grief. _That_ could not be expected."
"Of course not. But it will be a mark of respect to Leslie if you will
attend the funeral to-morrow."
"Then I will do so, with a proper show of decorum. I am determined that
he shall not slip through my fingers again."
So the two cruel and wicked women plot and plan, while the poor victim
of their heartlessness lies up-stairs dead, in all her young, winsome
beauty, with her small hands folded on her quiet heart, and the
black-fringed lashes lying heavily against the marble-white cheeks.
They have robed her for the grave, and left her there alone, with no
one "to come in and kiss her to lighten the gloom."
So the day wanes and the night, and Vera lies still and white in the
long black casket to which they have consigned her. They have left the
cover off, and only a transparent veil lies lightly across her face,
through which her delicate features show clearly. How wonderfully the
look of life lingers still; how the pink lips retain the warm, pink
coloring of life. But there is no one to note how wonderfully death has
spared her fairness; no one to exclaim, with the power of affection:
"She looks too sweet and life-like for us to bury her out of our sight."
Afternoon comes, and they carry the casket down into the parlor where a
little group are waiting to hear the brief service of the black-robed
minister. Then they gather around in the gloomy, darkened room, glance
shudderingly at the beautiful white face, and turn away, while the
stolid undertaker screws down the coffin-lid over the desperate young
suicide. After that the solemn, black-plumed hearse is waiting to bear
her away to her rest, by her mother's side. "Ashes to ashes, dust to
dust." "_Resquiescat in pace._"
* * * * *
Leslie Noble goes home that night. In his character of a widower, he
must wait a little space before he renews his suit to the impatient Ivy.
"You will come back to me soon, Leslie dear?" she sighs, sentimentally,
as she clings to his arm.
"As soon as decorum permits me," he replies. "Will you wait for me
patiently, Ivy?"
"Yes, only do not stay too long," she answers, and he presses a light
kiss on her powdered forehead, which Ivy takes in good faith as the
solemn seal of their betrothal.
* * * * *
"Oh, dear, it is very lonely," Ivy sighs, that evening, as she and her
mother sit alone in the luxurious parlor, where so late the presence
of death cast its pall of gloom. "I miss Leslie very much. Shall we be
obliged to seclude ourselves from all gaiety, mamma, just because those
two people--the plague of our lives--are dead?"
"I am afraid so--for awhile, at least, dear. People would think it
strange, you know, my dear Ivy, if we did not make some outward show
of grief," Mrs. Cleveland answers, thoughtfully, for she has been
turning the matter over in her own mind, and, like her daughter, she
cannot endure the thought of foregoing the daily round of fashionable
pleasures that are "meat and drink to her."
"How horrid!" complains Ivy. "I should die of the dismals! Listen,
mamma, I have a plan."
"Really?" Mrs. Cleveland asks, with faint sarcasm, for her daughter is
not at all clever.
"Yes, although you think I am so stupid," Ivy answers, vivaciously. "It
is this, mamma. Let us leave Washington and go south this winter to one
of the gayest, most fashionable cities, and have a real good time where
nobody can expect us to be snivelling several long months over two
deaths that give us unqualified pleasure."
"Vera and her mother were very useful to us, after all," Mrs. Cleveland
answers, with a sigh to the memory of her purse. "They saved me a good
deal of money in dressmaking bills and the like. They more than paid
for their keeping."
"What a stingy, craving soul you have, mother," Ivy exclaims,
impatiently. "But what do you think of my plan?"
"It is capital and quite original. I did not give you credit for so
much invention," Mrs. Cleveland answers, smiling at her daughter.
"Shall we go, then?" Ivy inquires.
"Yes, if----" Mrs. Cleveland is beginning to say, when she is
interrupted by the swift unclosing of the door, and a man comes into
the room, pausing abruptly in the center of the apartment, and fixing
his burning black eyes on the face of Mrs. Cleveland.
He is tall, dark, princely handsome, with a face full of fire and
passion, blent with "cureless melancholy." His dark hair, thickly
streaked with gray, is tossed carelessly back from his broad, white
brow, and an air of nobility is indelibly stamped on every straight,
aristocratic feature. Mrs. Cleveland springs to her feet with a cry of
surprise and terror:
"Lawrence Campbell!"
CHAPTER VII.
After that one shriek of surprise and almost terror, Mrs. Cleveland
remains silent, devouring the man's face with a gaze as fixed and
burning as his own. Ivy, in her corner, is forgotten by her mother, and
unnoticed by the stranger.
"Yes, Lawrence Campbell," he answers her in a deep, hoarse voice, that
thrills to the hearts of the listeners. "Are you glad to see me, Mrs.
Cleveland?"
"Glad!" she shudders, in an indescribable voice.
"After these long years," he pursues, speaking under the spur of
some deep, overmastering agitation, "I have come back to curse you,
traitorous, false-hearted woman, and to make atonement."
"Atonement!" she falters, with a start of fear.
"Yes, Marcia Cleveland, atonement," he bursts out passionately. "Tell
me, where is the dear, true angel-wife whom I was led to believe false
and unfaithful to me, through your heartless machinations. At last I
know the truth, at last I know you, devil that you are! You maligned
the truest, purest, gentlest woman that ever lived! Your own sister,
too--the beautiful, innocent child that was left to your charge by her
dying parents. God only knows what motive you had for your terrible
sin."
She glares at him with fiery eyes from which the momentary fear has
fled, leaving them filled with the mocking light of a wicked triumph.
"_You_ should have known my motive, Lawrence Campbell," she bursts out,
passionately. "When I first met you in society, the plain, untitled
English gentleman, I was a young, beautiful, wealthy widow, and by your
attentions and visits you led me to believe that you loved me.
"Then Edith came home from her boarding-school, and with her baby-face
and silly school-girl shyness won you from me. You married her, and
the very torments of the lost were mine, for I loved with a passion
of which she, poor, weak-natured creature, could never dream. Did you
think I could tamely bear the slight that was put upon me? No, no, I
swore revenge--a deep and deadly revenge, and I have had it; ha, ha! a
costly cup, full to the brim and running over!"
She pauses with a wild and maniacal laugh. The man stares at her with
starting eyes and a death-white face. The enormity of the wrong that
has been done him seems to strike him dumb.
"I have had a glorious revenge," she goes on, wildly, seeing that he
cannot speak; "you fell an easy prey to my plan of vengeance through
your foolish and ridiculous jealousy. Through the efficient help of a
poor, weak fool who loved me I made you believe Edith false and vile,
and taunted you into deserting her! Have you suffered? Ah, God, so did
I! I was on fire with jealousy and hate. Every pang I made you and
Edith suffer was like balm to my heart. I parted you, I came between
your wedded hearts, and made your life and hers a hell! Aye, and your
child's, too--ha, ha, I made her weep for the hour in which she was
born!"
She tosses her white arms wildly in the air, and laughs low and
wickedly with the glare of malice and revenge in her flashing, black
eyes. She is transformed from the handsome, clever woman of the world
into a mocking devil. Even Ivy, who knows her mother's heartlessness as
none other know, stares with distended eyes at the infuriated woman.
She involuntarily recalls a verse she has somewhere read:
"Earth has no spell like love to hatred turned,
And hell no fury like a woman scorned."
"My child," the man breaks out, with a yearning heart-hunger in his
melancholy eyes. "She lives then--my child, and Edith's! Oh, God,
will she ever forgive me the wrong I have done her mother? Speak,
woman--devil, rather--and tell me where to find my Edith and her little
one!"
"Little one!" mocks Mrs. Cleveland, scornfully. "Do you forget,
Lawrence Campbell, that seventeen years have come and gone since you
deserted Edith and her unborn child?"
"No, I am not likely to forget," he answers, with the bitterness of
remorse in his low voice. "The child must be a woman now. But I will
atone to Edith and her child for all I have made them suffer through
your sin. I am rich, now, and I have fallen heir to a title in my
native land. Edith will be a countess, our child a wealthy heiress.
And I will make them happy yet. My heart is young, although my hair is
gray. I love my wife yet, with all the fire of youth. Tell me where
to find them, Marcia Cleveland, and for that one act of grace, I will
forgive you all the black and sinful past."
He pauses, with his hollow, burning eyes fixed eerily upon her, waiting
her reply. The autumn winds wail sharply round the house, the chilly
rain taps at the window pane with ghostly fingers, as if to hint of
those two graves lying side by side under the cold and starless sky of
night.
"Tell me," she says, putting aside his questions scornfully. "How did
you learn that I had deceived you?"
"From the dying lips of your tool--Egbert Harding. He was in
London--dying of the excesses brought on by a fast and wicked life.
At the last he repented of his sins, afraid to face the God whom his
wicked life had outraged. He sent for me and confessed all--how he had
lent himself to your diabolical plan to dupe and deceive me. He swore
to me that my beautiful Edith was as innocent as an angel. I left him,
poor, frightened, despairing wretch, at his last gasp, and came across
the seas to seek for you and my wronged wife. Tell me, Marcia, for I
can wait no longer; my heart is half-broken with grief and suspense.
Where shall I find my wife and child?"
"_In their graves_!" she answers, with the hollow and exultant laugh of
a fiend.
Lawrence Campbell reels backward as if some invisible hand had smitten
him across the face. He throws up his thin, white, quivering hands in
the air, as though in the agonies of death. But in a moment he rallies
himself and looks at the tormenting fiend with lurid, blazing eyes.
"You lie!" he exclaims, hoarsely. "You are false to the core of your
heart, Marcia. I will not believe you. God, who knows how much I have
suffered, would not afflict me so cruelly. I ask you again--where are
they?"
"And I tell you they are _dead_!" she answers, hoarsely. "If you will
not believe me, go to Glenwood. You know our family burial-plot. There
you will find two new-made graves. Ask the sexton whose they are, and
he will tell you Mrs. Campbell's and her daughter Vera's. Your wife
died three nights ago--died of a broken heart, while I, her sister who
hated her, was dancing at a ball! Your daughter, Vera, died the night
before last by her own hand--died the death of the suicide! Ha, ha!"
she laughed, sneeringly, "have I not had a glorious revenge for my
slighted love?"
"I will not believe you--I cannot. It is too terrible," Lawrence
Campbell moans, with his hands pressed to his head, and a dazed look in
his great, black eyes.
"You may, for it is true," exclaims Ivy, coming forward into the light,
with a wicked triumph in her pale-blue eyes. "If you will not believe
my mother, go to the graveyard and see, as she bade you."
He lifts his eyes and stares at her a moment, a white, dizzy horror
on his face. The next moment he reels forward blindly, like some
slaughtered thing, and falls in a white and senseless heap upon the
floor.
"You have killed him, too, mamma," Ivy exclaims, exultantly.
The heartless woman, turning around, spurns the fallen body with her
foot.
"A fit ending to the tragedy," she utters, cruelly. "Ring the bell for
a servant, Ivy."
In a moment a white-aproned menial appears in the room. Mrs. Cleveland
looks at him frowningly.
"John, who admitted this drunken fellow into the house?" she inquires,
sharply.
"I did, madam. He said he was an old friend of yours," the man answers
respectfully. "Is anything wrong about it, madam? He seems," bending
over him, "to be dead."
"Dead drunk," the woman utters, scornfully. "Drag him out of the house,
John, and throw him into the street."
The man stares in consternation.
"It's pouring down rain, ma'am," he exclaims, deprecatingly, "and
pitchy dark. Hadn't I best call the police?"
"Do as I bid you," Mrs. Cleveland storms. "Throw him into the street,
and leave him there. And mind how you admit such characters into the
house again, or you may lose your place!"
She stands still with lowering brows, watching the man as he executes
her orders, dragging the heavy, unconscious form from the room, and
along the hall to the door.
When the lumbering sound has ceased, and the heavy clang of the outer
door grates sharply on the silence, she draws a deep breath of relief.
"Now I know why you always hated Vera and her mother so much," Ivy
exclaims. "Why did you never tell me, mamma?"
"It was no business of yours," Mrs. Cleveland answers, sharply.
"Oh, indeed, we are very lofty!" Ivy comments, impudently.
Mrs. Cleveland makes her no answer. She has sunk into the depths of a
velvet-cushioned chair, and with lowered eyelids and protruding lips
seems to be grimly brooding. Her form seems to have collapsed and grown
smaller, her face is ashy white.
"You are a smarter and wickeder woman than I gave you credit for," Ivy
resumes, curiously. "So, then, the tale you told Leslie Noble about
Vera's dissipated father was altogether false."
"Yes," her mother mutters, mechanically.
But presently she starts up like one in a panic.
"Ivy, we must go away from here," she exclaims, in a strange and
hurried voice. "I am afraid to stay."
"Afraid of what?" Ivy queries, impatiently.
"Of Lawrence Campbell's vengeance," the woman answers, fearfully. "It
is a fearful wrong I have done him, and he will strike me back. We must
fly--fly from his wrath!"
CHAPTER VIII.
The unconscious man who has been so heartlessly thrust forth in the
bleak, inclement night, lies still upon the wet and flinty pavement,
his ghastly face upturned to the uncertain flicker of the street lamps,
his eyes closed, his lips half parted as if he were, indeed, dead. No
one is passing, no one notes that the form of an apparently dead man
has been hustled out of the inhospitable gates of the stately Cleveland
Mansion. None care to be abroad this wet and windy night. The chilly
rain beats down into the still, white face, and at last revives him. He
drags himself wearily up to his feet, and clinging to the iron spokes
of the ornamental lawn fence, stares up at the dark, gloomy-looking
building which now, with closed and darkened windows, appears dreary as
a tomb. He shudders, and his eyes flash luridly in the darkness.
"May the curse of God light upon her," he murmurs, distractedly. "She
robbed me of everything, and laid my life bare and desolate. My heart
is a bare and empty ruin where the loathsome bats and shrieking night
birds of remorse flap their ebon wings in the haunted darkness. Edith,
Vera, my wronged, my murdered darlings--would God that you might have
lived to forgive me for the madness that ruined your lives, and broke
your tender hearts!"
No answer comes to his wild appeal from the wide and limitless spaces
of the black night. Those two whom he adjures so despairingly, lie
still "under the sod and the dew," deaf to his yearning calls, though
he cry out ever so loudly to them, from his sore and tortured heart.
And at last, tormented with doubts, and longing to know the truth,
for he cannot trust the oath of the false Marcia Cleveland, he flings
himself into a passing car that goes toward the cemetery, fired with
the wild resolve that he would never believe her wicked assertion until
he can prove its truth--not until looking into the coffin, and calling
on her loved name, he shall know that his wife is surely dead, because
she is dumb to the wild and yearning cry of his heart.
A wild resolve--worthy of a madman. But Lawrence Campbell is scarcely
sane to-night. Remorse and despair have driven him wild.
Gold--potent gold--what will it not buy? It opens the gates of the
cemetery to the wronged, half-maddened husband and father, it throws
off the heavy clods that lie between him and the face he yearns for.
Quick and fast fall the rapid strokes of the spade, the dull thud of
the fresh earth thrown out on the soft grass is continuous.
At last the sexton, pausing to take breath and wipe the beaded dews
from his hot brow, utters a smothered cry of dismay:
"What was I thinking of to blunder so? I have made a great mistake,
sir. This is the daughter's grave, not the mother's."
"No matter--go on with your work. Let me see the face of the child that
I never beheld in life," Lawrence Campbell answers, resolutely.
Seeing how useless would be remonstrance the sexton bends to his task
again. In a few minutes the earth is all out, but it requires the
united strength of both men to raise the casket and lay it upon the
upper ground.
"Now the lid--have it off quickly," groans the wretched man; "and the
lantern. Bring it near that I may look on my dead."
Eagerly he kneels on the ground and scans the beautiful white features
of the dead. A groan burst from his lips:
"It is _she_, my wife, my lost Edith, still young and beautiful as when
I wooed her to be my own! Ah, even time and death could not efface that
surpassing loveliness!"
But the sexton answers, compassionately:
"Ah, sir, it is not your wife, but your daughter. Your wife had grown
older and sadder. Her bonny locks were mixed with gray; I used to
see her here on many a Sabbath when she came to weep by her parents'
graves. This, sir, is your daughter, with her mother's face."
"My daughter, with her mother's face!" he cries, and stoops to press
a long-lingering kiss on the white brow beneath the careless rings of
sunny hair. He starts back with a loud cry: "My God!"
The sexton trembles with apprehension.
"My dear sir, let me beg you to be more prudent," he whispers. "What if
we should be discovered?"
But Lawrence Campbell's face is transfigured with a trembling hope and
joy.
"I believe that I am sane," he exclaims, "I do not believe that I am
dreaming. Yet when I kissed Vera's brow it felt warm and moist like the
flesh of the living. Tell me, am I right?"
The sexton wipes his grimy hand to press it on the fair, girlish brow.
He bends his ear to the delicate lips that still retain the warm,
natural coloring of life. A smothered cry breaks from him.
"You are right, Mr. Campbell. Her flesh is warm and moist, her
color is life-like and natural, and she breathes faintly. Oh,
wonderful--most wonderful! She seems to be in a deep trance-like sleep.
How terrible--how terrible to think of! Your daughter has been buried
alive."
"She lives!" the father echoes, in wild thankfulness.
"She lives and we must carry her to my cottage as soon as possible. She
must not awaken in this dreadful place. It would frighten her into real
death," answers the sexton.
They lift the slight form out of its grim receptacle and bear her to
the sexton's secluded cot where he lives alone, his wife having died a
few months previous. They lay her down on his clean bed in the warm,
cozy room; and still her strange, deep slumber is unbroken.
"I will watch beside her," says Mr. Campbell. "You must go back,
restore the empty coffin to the grave, and throw in the earth again."
"You do not wish that this discovery shall ever be known, then?" the
sexton asks, gravely.
"No--at least not now," Mr. Campbell answers, after a pause of silent
thought.
A moment later he adds, wistfully:
"My wife's grave--you will open that too? Who knows but that she, too,
may be only sleeping?"
"It is scarce probable, sir, but I will do it to satisfy you," the
sexton answers, moving away.
The dawn of a new day is breaking when he returns, having just finished
his weary task. Lawrence Campbell starts up from his weary vigil by his
daughter's silent form.
"You promised to come for me, and I waited and waited!" he cries,
reproachfully. "You did not do as I bade you."
The old sexton's face is ashen gray as if with the memory of some
recent horror.
"Oh, sir, I swear to you, I kept my word," he cries, "but--but--oh, Mr.
Campbell, I spared you in mercy that dreadful sight! You would not have
known her, you could not have borne to see how death had effaced her
beauty. You must remember her as she was--not as she is."
Lawrence Campbell's despairing moan is echoed by a low and fainter one.
Vera's dark eyes open slowly, her lips part in faint, shivering sighs.
"Quick--the wine!" exclaims the sexton. "Pour a few drops between her
lips."
Lawrence Campbell obeys gladly, and Vera's lips part thirstily to
receive the potent medicine. She lifts her white hand to her brow as if
to clear away the shadows that cloud her brain.
"I have been asleep, and my dreams were strange and wild," she murmurs.
"I thought I had found my father. You, sir, look at me lovingly and
kindly. Can it be----"
"That I am your father--yes, my precious Vera," he answers, pressing a
father's holy kiss on the sweet, wistful lips.
Her dark, dreamy eyes look searchingly up into the handsome, noble face.
"Ah, I am so glad," she murmurs, "and you are good and true and noble.
I cannot understand why you went away from mamma, but I can tell
by your face that you are not the bad and wicked wretch that woman
pretended."
"Mrs. Cleveland?" he asks, a spasm of rage and hatred distorting his
pallid features.
"Perhaps it will be best not to excite the young lady by talking to her
just at first," the sexton interposes, anxiously and respectfully. "She
must be very weak, having taken no nourishment for so long. I will go
out and prepare a little warm broth for her."
"You must lie still and rest, darling," Lawrence Campbell whispers,
pouring a little more of the stimulant between her pale lips--paler now
from exhaustion than they were when she lay sleeping in the coffin,
and with a faint sigh of assent she closes her eyes and lies silent,
while the sexton goes out on his kindly meant errand.
The moments pass, Lawrence Campbell sits still with his head bowed
moodily on his hand, his thoughts strangely blended, joy for his
daughter's recovery, despairing grief for his wife's loss, and
unutterable hate for Marcia Cleveland all mixed inextricably together.
All that he has lost by that woman's perjury rushes bitterly over him.
In the stillness, broken only by the crackle of the fresh coals upon
the fire, and the monotonous ticking of the clock upon the mantel, he
broods over his wrongs until they assume gigantic proportions.
And Vera--so strangely rescued from the coffin and the grave--she is
very silent also, but none the less is her brain active and her mind
busy. One by one she is gathering up the links of memory.
Her strange marriage, her mother's death, her terrible defeat in the
triumph she had anticipated over the Clevelands--all come freshly over
her memory, with that crowning hour in which wounded to the heart and
filled with a deadly despair, she had crept away to die because she
could not endure the humiliation and shame of the knowledge she had
gained.
"I remember it all now; I could not decide upon the right vial, and by
chance I took the wrong one. It was the sleeping potion. How long have
I been asleep, and how came I here?"
Unclosing her languid eyes, she repeats the question aloud:
"Father, how came I here?"
He starts, nervously, at the unexpected question.
"My dear, you must not ask questions," he answers. "At least--not yet."
"But just this one, father. It keeps ringing itself in my head. I am
filled with wonder. I drank a vial of what I imagined contained death,
and lay down on my bed to die. But I only slept, and my dreams were
wild. Then I awoke in this strange room, and saw you looking at me so
kindly, and I knew you in my heart for my father. My wonder is so great
that I cannot rest. Suspense is worse than knowledge. Only tell me how
I came to be here?"
He looks at the beautiful, eloquent lips and pleading eyes, looking so
dark with the purple shadows around them, and the pale, pale face.
"I must not tell her the truth," he said to himself. "She looks too
slight and frail to bear the shock of hearing it. She need not ever
know that she had been buried alive, and rescued out of the blackness
of the grave. The horror of it would be enough to unhinge her reason."
"The last that I remember," she continues, "I was lying on my bed at
Mrs. Cleveland's, waiting for death to come. I awoke here in this
strange place. How did it happen?"
"I had you conveyed here in your sleep," he answers. "My dear, I see
that you have all of woman's proverbial curiosity. But there is no
mystery here. The simple truth is, that I went to Mrs. Cleveland's to
seek my wife and child. I found that your mother was dead, and you
were locked in a strange, narcotic sleep, almost as deep as death. I
had you conveyed here, and watched over you until you awakened from
your long slumber. That is all, my dear little daughter. Now, can you
rest satisfied?"
The dark eyes seek his, still wistfully, and with dawning tenderness.
"Father, you do not know how I love the sound of your voice," she
murmurs. "It does not excite nor weary me. It is full of soothing,
calming power. It falls on my thirsty, yearning heart like the dew upon
flowers. I wish that you would talk to me. Nothing you can say would
weary me so much as my own tumultuous thoughts."
He sighs, and smooths back the soft waves of gold that stray over the
blue-veined temples.
"What shall I talk of, little one?" he inquires.
"Tell me where you have been all these long years, father, and why you
never came for mamma and I when you were so unhappy?" she sighs.
Tears that do not shame his manhood crowd into his dark, sad eyes.
"Vera, you will hate me when I tell you that it was a mad, unreasoning
jealousy, aroused and fostered by Marcia Cleveland, that led me to
desert my innocent wife, and you, my little child, before you were
born," he answers, heavily.
Vera's dark eyes flash with ominous light. She lies silent a moment,
brooding over her mother's terrible wrongs.
"I have been a lonely wanderer from land to land ever since," he goes
on, slowly. "God only knows what I suffered, Vera, for I could never
tear the image of my wife from my breast, although I believed her false
and vile. But I was too proud to go back to her. I never knew how she
was breaking her heart in silent sorrow for me, her life made doubly
wretched by the abuses of the false sister who hated her because I
loved her. At last I was recalled from my wanderings. I had fallen heir
to a title I had never dreamed of inheriting, and which only filled me
with bitterness. I reflected that, but for Edith's falsity, she might
have been my countess; as fair a lady as ever reigned in my ancestral
halls."
"Poor mamma, leading her slavish life in Mrs. Cleveland's house," the
girl murmurs, in vain regret.
"Poor martyr to the sins of others," the man echoes, heavily.
"Yet you came back at last," Vera murmurs. "Had you repented of your
hasty desertion?"
"I had learned the truth, Vera, through the dying confession of Mrs.
Cleveland's weak tool. I had learned how terribly I had been deceived,
and that I had deserted my angel wife for naught. Vera, did she curse
my memory when she lay dying of a broken heart?"
"She never named you either in praise or blame, father. I had some
vague impression that you were dead. I knew no better until I overheard
Mrs. Cleveland telling some one that you had deserted my mother before
I was born, and that you were a low, drunken, brutal wretch, who had
abused and maltreated her from the first."
"Oh, my God, my God! that such demons should walk the earth!" the man
groans through his clenched teeth.
He rises and walks up and down the floor, struggling with his strong,
overmastering agitation.
"Vera, we three--you and I, and our lost loved one--have been wronged
as, it seems to me, never mortals were before. My heart is on fire with
rage and hate for the devil who has so blasted our lives. It seems to
me that I can never rest until I strike back. Vera, shall we not avenge
ourselves?"
His dark, passionate eyes fill with the fire that rages in his soul.
Vera looks up at him, half-fearfully.
"How, father?" she queries, slowly.
The heavy gloom deepens in his night-black eyes.
"How--I cannot tell!" he says, hoarsely. "But I will bide my time. I
will wait and watch. Edith's wrongs shall not go unavenged."
The beautiful young face on the pillow softens and saddens.
"Mother was very gentle and forgiving," she murmurs. "_She_ would have
said, leave it to Heaven."
"She was an angel--I am but human," he answers. "Vera, we must work
together for vengeance. The time will come when we will make Marcia
Cleveland bite the dust--when she shall curse the stars that shone over
her ill-fated birth."
So the wronged man raves, and Vera's passionate heart is kindled into
flames by his burning eloquence. She is with him heart and soul, loyal
to the core of her woman's heart.
Strange, that when she tells him the story of her short, sad life she
should hold one secret back. The words die on her white lips when she
tries to tell him. A passionate shame fills her heart. Oh, the bitter
pain, the deep humiliation of the thought that she is Leslie Noble's
wife. Leslie Noble whom she scorns and despises. Have they told her
father the truth? she wonders.
No, for presently he says, tenderly:
"Do not think that all my thoughts are given up to vengeance, Vera.
I shall care for you very tenderly, darling. And if you should ever
marry, I pray God that your wedded happiness may not be blighted by
such a terrible wrong as mine."
Her heart gives a great throb of relief. He does not know. He never
shall know by her telling, she resolves.
The day comes soon when they kneel hand in hand by Edith's grave to bid
her good-bye before departing for England's shore.
"Edith, my darling," he whispers to the dead heart below, "the human
vampire has escaped me this time. She has fled from my vengeance, and
left no trace behind her. But let her beware, for I but bide my time.
The bloodhounds of hate are howling behind her, and sooner or later she
will be brought to bay. Farewell, my murdered darling. Remember that I
only live to avenge your wrongs, and to protect your child!"
CHAPTER IX.
No one had created such a sensation in London for several years as did
Lady Vera, the Earl of Fairvale's only child, when she was presented
at court. She was just nineteen, and a perfect beauty. She was more
American than English in style--tall and slenderly formed, with a
stately grace all her own, with large, dark eyes, and black brows and
lashes, with hair of a magnificent, dark-golden shade, and well-formed,
aristocratic features. Then, as the crowning charm to her brilliant
loveliness, she had inherited from her English ancestry a dazzling
complexion of lilies and roses.
People who studied and admired Lady Vera most, said that they could not
quite understand the expression of her face. It was too intense for one
so young. It was full of passion, tempered by the gravest thought.
The young English girls had dimples and smiles for everyone, but Lady
Vera was different. She had the sweetest, most radiant smile in the
world when you saw it, but that was so very seldom. She seemed to be
thinking all the time--thinking deeply, even when she danced or sang,
or conversed. And her favorite flowers were the beautiful, velvety
pansies, whose very emblem is thought.
Yet when you looked into the Earl of Fairvale's face, you ceased
to wonder at his daughter. The shadow on her face was reflected
from the cloud on his. His dark, handsome face was a study. Where
Lady Vera seemed to be thinking, his expression was that of one
brooding--brooding all the while on one subject, and that not a
pleasant one.
It was with some difficulty that he met the requirements of society.
When spoken to suddenly sometimes, he would start and look bewildered
as if his thoughts were far away. Ladies admired him immensely,
although he was very inattentive to them. The dark, sad, melancholy
face had a peculiar charm for them. They said he reminded them of
Byron's heroes.
The earl was very fond of his daughter, and very careful of her. His
eyes followed her everywhere, but their expression was always sad and
melancholy. No one knew that every time he looked at her, he remembered
how he had wronged her mother, and that his heart was breaking with
remorse and grief, as well as with the consuming fires of a baffled
revenge.
His story was not generally known. He had succeeded to the Earldom of
Fairvale through a series of unexpected deaths, and though everyone
knew of handsome Lawrence Campbell's accessions, little was known of
him personally beyond the rumor that he had married an American lady,
who had died and left him one only child, his beautiful and worshiped
Vera.
Lady Vera had many admirers. Aside from her personal charms, the fact
that she would succeed to the title and estates of Fairvale, cast a
flattering prestige around her.
She was the same to all who came to woo--cool, courteous, gently
indifferent. After awhile they began to say that the earl's daughter
was very proud. Ordinary people were not to her fancy, evidently. She
must be waiting for a duke or a prince. Poor Lady Vera! Who was to know
the bitter secret, the ceaseless dread that ached in the fair breast,
that rose and fell beneath the knots of velvety pansies that were her
simple and favorite adornment?
Vera has seen and learned a great deal since that night when her
father's mad frenzy had been the means of saving her from the horrors
of a dreadful death.
She has traveled, she has had masters and governesses; luxuries of
which she never even faintly dreamed, have surrounded her and become
daily necessities. Pleasure has wooed her softly to its flowery paths,
love has been lavishly laid at her feet. But through it all a loathing
remembrance of Leslie Noble has poisoned her peace.
"Where is he? Does he know where I am? Will he ever come to claim me?"
she often asks herself, never dreaming that he of whose coming she is
so terribly afraid believes her dead, and that he has erected a costly
marble monument over the spot where her remains are supposed to rest.
Her father's mistaken kindness has kept from her the knowledge of her
deadly peril and her opportune rescue, little dreaming in what an
untoward hour the startling truth shall come to her.
And she, in her sensitive pride, has held her peace over that ill-fated
marriage by the bedside of her dying mother--the poor, heart-broken
mother who had erred so fatally, when, with weak, human foresight she
had tried to plan for the future well-being of her helpless child.
"Oh, mamma, dearest," she moans, when alone in her silken _boudoir_,
she recalls the wretched past, "how terribly blind and mistaken you
were. Oh, to be free from these fetters that chafe and fret and gall so
terribly!"
"Shall you never marry, Vera?" her father asks her one day.
It is the day after she has refused Lord Greyhurst, one of the finest
and wealthiest young noblemen in London.
The deep color flows into the girl's fair cheeks.
"I think not, father," she answers, gravely. "I have no wish to marry.
I have never met anyone that I could love."
Earl Fairvale is well pleased.
"I am glad to hear you say that, my dear," he answers. "I have no wish
to lose my daughter. And, after all, so much sorrow comes from love,
one is best without it."
Lady Vera is very glad to hear him talk so. He will never urge her to
marry, and she may keep her secret always--always, _unless_--dreaded
possibility--Leslie Noble should return to claim her.
"But he will not. Why should he? He never cared for me. Yet how strange
that he should have let my father take me away without one word. He
must indeed have been glad to be rid of me," she muses.
The earl and his daughter are staying with Lady Clive for the "season."
She is an American, and the daughter of a famous American general. She
is very happily married to Sir Harry Clive, baronet. Loving everything
American with intensest love, she falls an instant victim to Lady
Vera's charms.
"Your mother was an American--so am I," she says, vivaciously; "so I
claim you on that score. Do you like England, Lady Vera, and English
people?"
"Yes," Vera answers, in her grave way.
"And," Lady Clive goes on, in her bright, airy fashion, "do you intend
to marry an Englishman or an American?"
"I shall never marry at all," Lady Vera says, with a face of extreme
disgust.
"Never! Ah, my dear, you are too young to decide such a momentous
question. Only wait and see," cries Lady Clive, who has a match laid
out in her mind for Vera, but who is far too wise to give her a hint of
it.
"I shall never marry," Vera repeats, calmly. "I do not even like to
think of such things as love and marriage. Dear Lady Clive, let us
talk of something more interesting. You promised to take me into the
nursery, and show me your little children--did you not?"
"Yes, and we will go now," her friend answers, leading the way; but
to herself she says, wonderingly: "What a strange girl. At her age I
did not think a set of noisy children more interesting than love and
marriage."
The grave young face grows brighter than Lady Clive has ever seen it as
Vera watches the beautiful little children at their playful sports. She
even smiles when they caress her, and gives them the flowers from her
bosom in payment for kisses.
"She loves children dearly," Lady Clive says to herself, well pleased.
"How strange that she should be so set against marriage. She is an odd
girl, but I think I shall live to see her change her mind."
CHAPTER X.
Lady Vera having gained the _entree_ to the nursery, pays it daily
visits, always finding herself vociferously welcomed by the three small
dwellers therein.
And one day she finds the youthful trio in a hubbub of excitement.
"Our uncle from America is coming over to visit us," they triumphantly
announce to their friend.
"You seem to be glad," Lady Vera answers, kindly.
"Oh, we are," they laugh. "Aren't you glad, too, Vera?"
"I do not know. I do not like Americans much," says Lady Vera, with a
distinct remembrance of the Clevelands and Leslie Noble.
"Oh, but you will be sure to like Uncle Phil. He is awfully jolly, and
he is a soldier, too. He has a sword and a gun and has promised to
teach me to shoot. I am going to be a soldier, too," cries out Mark,
the second son.
"And when is this terrible soldier coming?" Lady Vera inquires, with
languid interest.
"We do not know exactly, but very soon," they tell her. "He came about
this time last year. Mamma had a letter from him this morning."
"You have not told me his name yet," Lady Vera continues.
"He is Captain Philip Lockhart, and his father, our own grandpapa, is
General Lockhart," answers Hal, the heir, while little Dot claps her
small hands gleefully, crying out:
"Uncle Phil will bring us lots of bu'ful playt'ings from New York. He
always does."
But though "Uncle Phil" remains the favorite topic of the nursery for
several days, Lady Clive quite forgets to tell her guest that she
expects her brother.
Lady Vera scarcely gives it a thought. In the expected arrival of
Captain Lockhart she takes not the slightest interest.
So it happened that when Vera runs into the nursery one evening--having
promised the children a peep at her ball dress--she comes upon an
unexpected tableau. A man on his knees, hammering at the lid of a big
box, three hopefuls gathered around him, and chattering like magpies;
the prim, white-aproned nurse vainly endeavoring to command silence.
Before Vera can beat her instantly-attempted retreat, the little
"Philistines are upon her."
"Here she is," they cry. "This is Vera, of whom we have been telling
you. Isn't she pretty, Uncle Phil?"
"But she doesn't like Americans," adds one _enfant terrible_.
"I am sorry for that," says Captain Lockhart, rising hastily, and
giving Lady Vera a soldier's stately bow. "Cannot you persuade her that
I am of some other nationality, my dears?"
The ease and lightness of his words and manner carry off some of the
embarrassment of the meeting. Lady Vera gives him a bow, and a slight
little smile, sweet and transient.
"I am sorry to have interrupted you," she says. "I am going now,
directly."
But her swift, upward glance has given her a glimpse of a tall,
soldierly form, and a handsome-featured face, with dark-blue eyes,
and dark-brown mustache, while short, curling locks of deepest brown
cluster about a finely-shaped head--"every inch a soldier."
Our hero, on his part, sees a vision of dazzling beauty--dark eyes,
golden tresses, scarlet lips, a slim yet daintily-rounded figure in
costly lace, with knots of purple, golden-hearted pansies. Around the
slender, stately column of the white throat a necklace of pansies
formed of dark, purple amethysts with diamond centers radiating fire--a
birthday gift from her father.
"Pray do not go," Captain Lockhart says, persuasively, with the winning
tongue of a soldier. "The children have been eagerly expecting you. Do
not damp their pleasure. Rather let me withdraw."
"No, no," Lady Vera says, hastily, as he crosses to the door, her
haughtiness melting for the moment under his chivalrous manner. "We
will both stay--that is, I can only give the children a moment. I am
going to a ball."
"So am I, directly, with my sister and Sir Harry. It is very strange
Nella did not tell me she had a young lady guest. I am," smiling under
the brown mustache, "puzzled over your name."
"It is Vera Campbell," she answers, with a slight flush.
"_Lady_ Vera," pipes the prim nurse from her corner, obsequiously.
"Lady Vera," he says, with a bow and smile; then: "Thank you for the
favor. Mine is Philip Lockhart."
"Captain Phil," shouts Mark, anxious that his uncle shall abate no jot
of his soldierly dignity.
"He has brought us a great big box," Dot confides to Lady Vera,
triumphantly at this moment.
"Which I will leave him to open. My maid has not finished me yet,"
fibs Vera, and so makes her escape, leaving Captain Phil to the tender
mercies of his small relatives, who give him no peace until the heavy
box is unpacked, and its contents paraded before their dazzled and
rejoicing sight.
Meanwhile Vera secures her opera-cloak, and goes down to the
drawing-room, where the earl and Sir Harry are waiting for the ladies.
"Nella will be here in a moment," explains Sir Harry. "She has gone to
hurry up her brother, over whom the children are having no end of a
jollification. Oh, I forgot, you may not know whom I am talking about.
Lady Clive's brother arrived this evening, and will accompany us to
Lady Ford's ball."
Vera bows silently, and presently Lady Clive sails in, proudly, with
the truant in tow. Evening dress is marvelously becoming to the
handsome soldier. Involuntarily Vera thinks of Sir Launcelot:
"The goodliest man that ever among ladies sat in hall,
And noblest."
"Lady Vera, this is my brother, Captain Lockhart," Lady Clive begins,
with conscious pride; then pauses, disconcerted by the "still, soft
smile" creeping over either face.
"We have met before," Lady Vera explains, with, for her, unusual
graciousness. "Met before! Not in America?" cried Lady Clive,
bewildered.
"Oh, no," her brother answers, and Lady Vera adds, smiling: "In the
nursery, ten minutes ago."
So there is only the earl to introduce, and then they are whirled away
to Lady Ford's, where Captain Lockhart meets a score of last season's
friends, and to the surprise of Lady Vera, who is prejudiced against
almost anything American, he develops some of the graces of a society
man, even playing and singing superbly in a full, rich tenor voice.
"Yet, why should he have selected that old, _old_ song: 'The Banks of
Allan Water?'" Lady Vera asks herself, scornfully, "and when he sang:
"'For his bride a soldier sought her,'
why should he have looked so straight at _me_? It was not an
impertinent look, I own, but why should he have looked at me at all?"
But even to her own heart, Lady Vera will not own that her great
vexation is directed against herself because she has blushed vividly
crimson under that one look from Captain Lockhart's blue eyes, while
her heart has beat so strangely--with annoyance, she thinks.
"I foresee that I shall hate this American soldier," she muses, "and no
wonder at all when I shall be forced to see him every day. I wish now
that we had not accepted Lady Clive's invitation for the London season."
CHAPTER XI.
The day after Lady Ford's ball dawns cheerlessly. It is cool, and
the air is full of floating mists. The gentlemen determine to go out
anyhow. The ladies elect to remain at home. The glowing fire in the
library has more charms than the bleak, spring air.
"I am not surprised at Nella," says Captain Lockhart, leisurely
buttoning his overcoat. "_She_ was raised in America, and our ladies
do not walk much. But I have been told that English ladies walk every
morning, whether rain or shine. Are you false to the tradition, Lady
Vera?"
The color flies into her cheek at his quizzical glance, but she will
not tell him what she sees he does not know--that she has been raised
in America, too.
"I suppose so," she says, a little shortly, in answer to his question.
"Suppose you come with us for a turn around the square, my dear?"
suggests the earl.
"So I will," answers Lady Vera, determined to have Captain Lockhart see
that she is quite English in her habits.
She comes down in a moment covered almost to the pink tips of her ears
in rich velvet. To her dismay Earl Fairvale strolls forward in a fit of
absent-mindedness with Sir Harry, leaving her to be accompanied by the
American soldier. She sees no other course but to accept the situation.
"It is only for a few minutes at the worst," she thinks to herself.
So she walks on by his side, looking so pretty with the nipping wind
kissing her cheeks into a scarlet glow, that Captain Lockhart can
scarcely keep the admiration out of his eyes.
"The loveliest girl I have ever seen in my life," he mentally decides.
"But, by Jove! as cold and proud as an iceberg!"
"So you do not like Americans?" he says to her, regretfully, as they
turn a corner.
"No," curtly.
"Ah, but, Lady Vera, is that fair?" plaintively. "You do not know us,
yet you condemn us without a hearing. Mere English prejudice--is it
not?"
She looks around at the handsome face, full of fire and life, and the
sparkling blue eyes. The thoughtful gravity on the lovely face grows
deeper. The dark eyes flash.
"Captain Lockhart, you are talking of what you do not understand," she
says, impatiently.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Vera," he answers, flushing, "I spoke from
the merest impulse. I thought--since you are so very young--you could
not know my country well."
Lady Vera blushes, but holds her peace. Of course, somebody will tell
him her story soon--tell him that her mother was American, and that
she herself had spent seventeen years in his own native land. At least
he shall not hear it from her. She has a vague notion that it would
please him to know it, that the blue eyes whose sparkle she has already
learned to know, would light with pleasure at the knowledge.
Those eyes, how bright and keen they are. They seem to read one's
thoughts. Lady Vera finds her gaze drooping from them as they never
drooped before mortal man's before. Why? she asks herself.
"It is because he is so bold," she decides, vexedly. "He seems to be
trying to read one's inmost thoughts. I will show him that I am not
afraid of him."
Thereupon she lifts the dark eyes bravely to give him a cool society
stare, but in an instant they waver and fall before the glance they
have surprised in his. Just so the blue eyes had turned on her last
night, when he sang:
"On the banks of Allan Water,
When the sweet spring tide did fall,
Was the miller's lovely daughter,
Fairest of them all!
For his bride a soldier sought her,
And a winning tongue had he,
On the banks of Allan Water
None so gay as she."
"Why do you stare at me _so_?" she breaks out, angry with herself, and
with him.
He flushes, startled by her _brusquerie_.
"I beg your pardon--I did not mean to be rude," he answers, quietly.
"But, Lady Vera, a man must be blind not to look at _you_."
"Why?" she asks, still sharply.
"Because I think God made all beautiful things for the pleasure of
men's eyes," he answers, firmly, yet respectfully.
"Impertinent!" Vera says to herself, indignantly, and looks another way.
"Do you lay an embargo on my eye-sight as far as you are concerned,
Lady Vera?" he continues, after a moment.
"Yes," she replies, with her head still turned away.
"Then I shall try to obey you," he answers, calmly. "I will not even
see you when I can help it, but you must forgive me for saying that if
I should never see you again I shall never forget a single line of your
face."
"I hope he is not making love to me," Lady Vera says to herself,
uneasily, then laughing at herself. "Of course not; I dare say he has
a sweetheart in his own land, some dear, sweet, angelic creature, like
Ivy Cleveland, perhaps."
They speak no more, and when they have gone once around the square,
Captain Lockhart leaves the earl's daughter at the door with a low
bow. She goes into the house, her cheeks tingling with an odd kind of
shame.
"I was rude, _perhaps_," she thinks, a little uneasily. "What must he
think of English manners? But then why did he look at me so? I felt
so--so strangely."
To Lady Clive, who is trifling over a bit of fancy work, she says,
presently:
"Why did you not tell me you expected your brother?"
Lady Clive glances up under her long lashes at the flushed face, a
gleam of mischief in the blue eyes so much like her brother's.
"It was just like me--to forget it," she exclaims. "But then I knew you
would not be interested. And, besides, I knew he would not be in your
way. Phil is only a plain, blunt soldier--not at all a ladies' man."
"I thought he seemed like _that_ last night," Lady Vera answers,
turning the leaves of a book very fast, and not knowing how ambiguous
is her answer.
"Like _what_?" her friend inquires.
"A ladies' man," Vera answers.
"Did you? Oh, yes, when he is thrown among them he tries to make
himself agreeable, but he does not fall in love, he does not run after
them. When he was with us last season, Lady Eva Clarendon made a dead
set at him. Phil was very civil at first--sang with her, danced with
her, played the agreeable in his careless way, you know. But when he
found she was losing her heart to him, he drew off, terrified--seemed
to think she would marry him, willy-nilly--and went away to Italy, then
back home."
"I should have thought it would have been a grand match for _him_,"
Lady Vera answers, with unconscious emphasis of the pronoun.
Lady Clive's head goes up, slightly.
"For _my_ brother? Not at all, Lady Vera," she answers, with a slight
touch of stiffness in her voice. "Philip met the Clarendons on equal
ground. He is wealthy--that is the first and greatest thing with
people, you know--our great-uncle left him a fortune. Next, he is
well-born, and the general, our father, is famous over two continents.
As for Lady Eva's title, that would not weigh a feather with my
brother. He comes from a land, you know, where native worth and
nobility take precedence over all."
And having thus blandly squelched Lady Vera's arrogance, the American
lady bends smilingly to her lace work again. Lady Vera only smiles. She
cannot feel offended.
"I deserved it all," she thinks, soberly to herself. "Oh! why do I
suffer my hatred of the Clevelands and Leslie Noble to make me venomous
and unjust to every American I meet? I have offended this kind friend
of mine, and been rude to her brother all through my spite against
those wicked people. I wish he would forgive those ridiculous words
I said to him. Not look at me, indeed. How silly! He will think me
wondrous vain."
But Captain Lockhart does not forget. When they meet at dinner again
Vera glances at him shyly several times across the silver and crystal
and flowers, but the blue eyes are always on his plate, or on someone
else's face--never on hers. What though she is lovely as a dream in
pale-blue satin and gleaming pearls? Captain Lockhart is serenely
unconscious of the color of her robe, or the half-repentance in her
starry eyes.
"I cannot blame him," she admits to herself, "I acted like a silly
child."
The days go by, Captain Lockhart and the earl's daughter are merely
civil--they seldom seem to see each other. Each absorbed in the
engagements of the gay season, each drifting further apart in the
whirl, there is no time for pardon or reconciliation. Lady Vera finds
no time for the nursery now save when the soldier is out. Yet she is
ever listening for one step, and the color flies into her cheek when
she hears it.
Lady Clive is perplexed and sorry because her brother and her favorite
do not take to each other.
"I thought they seemed made for each other," she complains, to Sir
Harry. "And I thought I had managed them so cleverly. But they scarcely
seem conscious of each other's existence."
"I hope you are not turning match-maker, Nella," Sir Harry Clive
replies, laughing.
Earl Fairvale sees nothing. Day by day he grows more gloomy, more
self-absorbed, and goes less into society. The only interest in his
life outside of his adored daughter, centers in the occasional letters
that reach him from America. But after each one he grows more sad
and gloomy, losing flesh and color daily. Only Vera knows that the
vengeance that is the object of his life is so long delayed that
the strain on his mind is killing him. For though the most skilled
detectives in the world are watching and working, they can find
no trace of the secure hiding-place where Marcia Cleveland dwells
untroubled by the vengeance from which she has fled.
Lady Vera's roses pale when she sees how her father is breaking
down--how the mind is wearing out the body, even as the sword wears out
the scabbard.
"Father, even if you found out her hiding-place, what could you do?
What form could your revenge take?" she asks him, mournfully, as she
has done many times before.
"I cannot tell--but some way would be opened. I should find some
vulnerable point at which to strike," he answers, moodily.
She twines her fair, white arms about his neck, and presses her fresh
young lips to his clouded brow.
"Father, this long brooding over your revenge, this hatred, nourished
in your heart, is sapping your life," she sighs. "I beg you, for my
sake, to give it up, dear father. Give it up, and leave it to Heaven!"
He looks at the beautiful, tearful eyes and the sweet face, pale now
with its sorrow.
"Vera, you come to me with your mother's face, your mother's voice, and
ask me not to avenge her ruined life, her broken heart, her mournful
death," he answers, bitterly. "Child, you know not what you ask. What
can you know of the pangs I have endured? Have you forgotten, too, the
indignities heaped upon you in your young, defenseless life?"
The dark eyes filled with smouldering wrath.
"No, father, never!" she cries; "but it is all past. Mother is safe in
Heaven, you and I are together. Let us forget those wicked ones. Surely
God will punish them for the ruin they have wrought."
"I will not listen to you, Vera," he says, putting her from him,
resolutely. "I have sworn to break Marcia Cleveland's heart if it be
not made of stone. If I fail--listen to me, darling--if I fail, I shall
bequeath my revenge and my oath to you in dying."
She pales and shivers through all her slight young frame, as if some
dim foreboding came to her of the nearing future--that future in whose
black shadow her feet already tread, it comes so near.
"I shall bequeath it to you," Earl Fairvale repeats, gloomily; "you
will lack no means to accomplish it if only you can find out the
serpent's lair. You will be Countess of Fairvale. You will inherit
great wealth, and an enormous rent-roll. With wealth you can do almost
anything. If I fail you will take up the work where it dropped from my
hand in dying--you, Vera, will avenge the dead."
CHAPTER XII.
One of Earl Fairvale's favorite amusements was riding on horseback. He
had a passion for fast horses. He might often be seen mounted on some
spirited and superb animal, riding in the "Row" by his daughter's side,
who was herself a finished horsewoman.
Sometimes he drove a four-in-hand. Often he might be seen tearing along
at a wild and break-neck pace on some fiery-looking horse that ordinary
people would shudder to look at. But the earl did not know the name
of fear. He seemed to take a reckless delight and gloomy satisfaction
in those wild, John Gilpin-like races, at which others trembled with
dread. He laughed at the fears of his daughter and her friends, and
disregarded their entreaties.
Sir Harry Clive came home one day, his fine face clouded with anxiety.
"The earl has bought a new horse," he said. "It is a beautiful
creature, black as night, glossy as satin, clean-limbed, superb, but
with the most vicious eye conceivable, and a fiery temper. They call
him King."
"I suppose there is no danger to the earl," said his wife. "He has a
marvelous control over his horses. They seem to obey the least touch of
his hand or sound of his voice."
"This animal he has now is not like to be tamed so easily," Sir Harry
answers, gravely. "It is said that he threw his last master and killed
him. Indeed, Nella, you could not imagine a more devilish-looking
creature than this beautiful King. I told Fairvale that its true name
ought to be the Black Devil, for I am sure he looks like one."
Lady Clive shudders.
"Has the earl tried him yet?" she inquires.
"He started out upon him an hour ago," Sir Harry answers. "There were a
score of us who tried to persuade him not to mount the fiery creature.
But he laughed at our fears, and went off in gallant style. King tried
to prevent him from mounting, but he succeeded in first-rate style. Yet
I doubt," gloomily, "if he ever returns alive."
"What will Lady Vera say? She has been so anxious over him, so nervous
of late," sighs Lady Clive.
"You need not tell her," he answers. "No need to alarm her needlessly.
After all, our forebodings may be vain. Fairvale is the most fearless
and accomplished rider I ever saw. He may even conquer King."
But even then the loud and startling peal of the door-bell rings like a
wild alarm through the house.
* * * * *
Sir Harry's fears have had only too good a foundation. They have picked
up the earl from the hard and flinty pavement, where the maddened brute
had flung him, and brought him home bleeding, senseless--mortally
injured, all the surgeons agree.
And Lady Vera? The shock of the awful tidings had almost rent her heart
in twain. Passing from one swoon into another, she lies on her couch,
white and horror-stricken, shuddering sighs heaving her breast. At last
they come to tell her that the awful stupor is over. He is conscious,
and has asked for her.
"How long?" she asks, faintly, for they have told her that his hours
are numbered.
"Calm yourself, for he cannot bear the least excitement."
But when Vera goes into his presence, and sees him lying so
marble-white, with the black hair tossed back from the high, pale brow,
and the eager, asking eyes fixed upon her anguished face, a great,
choking knot rises into her throat--it seems as if she will choke with
the violence of her repressed emotion.
"Father!" she wails, with a world of grief in that one word, and falls
on her knees by his bed-side.
"I am going from you, dear," he answers, with the strange calmness of
the dying. "The black river of death yawns at my feet. The pale and
mystic boatman is waiting to row me over. Already the cold waves splash
over me. Vera!"
"Father," she answers, placing her hand in the cold one feebly groping
for it.
His hollow, dark eyes roll around the room.
"Are we alone?"
"Alone," she answers, for all the kindly watchers have withdrawn,
leaving father and child to the sweet solace of this last moment
together, undisturbed by alien eyes.
The dark eyes seek hers--sad, wistful, full of vain remorse.
"Vera, I was reckless, mad, defiant of fate. I have thrown my life
away, my poor, blighted life. Can you forgive me, my poor, orphaned
girl?"
Only her stifled sobs answer him.
"I did not mean it, Vera. I was tormented by my burning thoughts, and I
only sought diversion. I thought I could hold the fiery brute in check.
But the devil threw me. No matter; I am to blame. I was too reckless.
But you forgive me, darling?"
She kisses him because she cannot speak.
"I have lost my life," he murmurs, sadly; "lost it before my work on
earth was done. My daughter, you recall what I said to you so short a
while ago?"
She shivers, and lifts her dark, foreboding eyes to his face.
"Yes, father."
"Bring me the Bible from yonder stand, dear. You must swear a solemn
oath."
The beautiful young face quivers with nameless dread and fear.
"Oh, father," she prays, with lifted hands and streaming eyes, "leave
it to Heaven!"
The dark eyes, fast glazing over with the film of death, grow hard and
stern.
"Vera, child of my martyred wife, will you be false to your father's
dying trust? Will you refuse to obey his dying commands?"
"No, father, no," she weeps.
"Then place your hand on this Bible, my darling."
Silently she obeys him, the pale, chill light of the waning day
glimmering in on her ghost-like, pallid face, and the dark eyes full of
pain and despair.
And the voice of the dying man rises strangely on the utter stillness.
"Swear, Vera, swear by all your hopes of happiness, that you will
punish Marcia Cleveland through her dearest affections, that at any
cost to yourself you will avenge your mother's wrongs!"
A gasp; the words die on Lady Vera's parched tongue.
"Speak, my little countess. Repeat my words," he urges, anxiously.
With a terrible effort she murmurs them over:
"I swear, by all my hopes of happiness, that I will punish Marcia
Cleveland through her dearest affections; that at any cost to myself I
will avenge my mother's wrongs!"
She glances down at the loved face for his smile of approval. An icy
hand seems to clutch her heart. Her father has died as the last words
left her lips--died with a smile of triumph on his marble-white face!
One piercing cry of anguish, and the Countess of Fairvale falls
lifeless across the still warm body of the dead.
CHAPTER XIII.
Long days of illness for Lady Fairvale follow upon the tragic episode
of her father's death.
Nights and days go by like utter blanks to her, with only slightly
recurring intervals of consciousness. It has been a great shock to her,
this swift and terrible rending apart of the last filial tie earth
holds for her. Near kindred she has none. Her father's death has seemed
to leave her utterly alone on earth. It is true there is some distant
cousin and heir-at-law who would, no doubt, take it as a favor if she
would die and leave him title and estates, but him she knows not.
"There is no one living who has the least claim upon my affection,"
she thinks, forlornly, to herself that day, when, with agonized heart
she bends to press the last farewell kiss on her father's marble lips;
but even with the words a sudden memory stabs her heart and crushes
her senseless to the floor with the silent whisper of one name--Leslie
Noble!
That feared and dreaded name has power to blanch poor Vera's cheek and
drive the blood from her heart at any moment.
"What if, dazzled by my wealth and title, he should come and claim
me?" is her dreadful thought, never dreaming of that stately monument
in fair and flowery Glenwood, on which Leslie Noble has caused to be
inscribed the simple name of:
"VERA,
WIFE OF LESLIE NOBLE.
Died, ---- --th, 18--; aged 17."
thus trying to atone to the dead in some slight measure for the
pitiful, unmanly cowardice that had driven her desperate.
But after that terrible brain fever, that great struggle between the
opposing forces of life and death, Vera lies still upon her couch with
wide, dark eyes that look out from her small, white face drearily upon
the world--the great, wicked world in which, though she has so much
wealth and power, she cannot claim so much as a single true friend.
"Unless Lady Clive be one," she muses, "and--and," but then she stops,
and takes herself to task because she has so strangely thought of
Captain Lockhart just then.
"Where can he be?" she wonders. "Perhaps he has taken himself off to
livelier quarters. The house must have been as dull as a tomb while I
lay so ill. I wonder if Lady Clive will ever forgive me for spoiling
her 'season' like this."
She propounds this latter question gravely to Lady Clive herself, who
responds with an encouraging smile, and the gay little answer:
"I will try."
But when she sees how pale and wistful is Countess Vera's lovely face,
she folds her in her arms and kisses her.
"My dear, do not give a thought to _that_," she says. "There is nothing
to forgive, believe me. I am very glad that you were with us when you
fell sick. I have nursed you with all the love and tenderness I could
have given a sister."
Why should Countess Vera's heart beat so fast at the thought of being
Lady Clive's sister, and why should her pale cheeks flush, and the
grateful words falter on her lips?
"We all love you," her friend goes on kindly. "The children have been
dolorous over you. 'When will Vera come and see us again?' they ask
every day. Have you looked at the pretty bouquets they sent in for you
this morning?"
Lady Vera smiles assent. Fresh flowers are brought to her room every
morning, and they tell her the children send them. But there are only
three children, and always four bouquets. Vera asks no questions but
she knows that the fourth one is always the largest and sweetest.
To-day it is of crimson rose-buds, mixed with heliotrope and pansies,
for there is always some blending of her favorite flower.
"You do not know how much we miss you from our home circle," the
charming Lady Clive resumes, vivaciously. "You must not leave us when
you get well, dear. Make your home with us until you get settled for
life. You will be so lonely if you try to live alone with a chaperon.
Won't you promise to stay?"
"I will think of it," Lady Vera answers, gratefully, while tears rise
to her dark eyes.
Lady Clive comes to sit with her often, sending away the prim nurse,
and installing herself in her place. She chats vivaciously, retailing
bits of society gossip, telling of all the great people who have left
cards of condolence for the young countess, of the lovers who are all
_desoles_ over her illness; of Sir Harry's regret and the children's
clamorous despair. But, strange to say, she utterly forgets the
existence of her brother, Captain Lockhart, or, perhaps, deems the
subject uninteresting to her guest.
He has gone away, Lady Vera tells herself; yet she, in some vague way,
feels that he has not. She hears a step in the hall outside her door
sometimes--a manly step that is not Sir Harry Clive's, but which has
a firm, remembered ring in it that has power to send the warm blood
flying from her heart to her face.
When she is well enough to sit up in her white dressing-gown, lying
back in a great, cushioned arm-chair, the children are admitted to see
her. They spend a noisy five minutes with their friend, then the nurse
bundles them out, closing the door on their clamorous tongues, but not
so quickly but that Countess Vera catches Mark's disgusted dictum in
the hall:
"Oh, Uncle Phil! Vera isn't a bit pretty any more. Her face is all
white and thin, and her eyes are _so_ big."
So he is here. Her subtle intuitions had been right.
Impulsively she turns to the prim old nurse.
"Open that door, and ask Captain Lockhart to come in here."
He comes, eager, smiling, filled with wonder, yet outwardly calm.
"You are very kind; you permit me to share the children's treat," he
says. "May I----" then he pauses, confused.
"Look at me? yes, do," she says, crimsoning painfully. "I want you to
tell me--is it true what Mark said--that I am not pretty any more?"
The blue eyes meet hers with the old, strange look that always made her
heart beat against her will.
"Mark is a little dunce," he answers, smiling. "He has no eye for
anything but roses. I assure you, Lady Vera, that you are as beautiful
in your pallor and delicacy as you were in health. More beautiful to
me," he adds, his voice falling slightly lower "because now you are
kind."
"Kind!"
She arches her dark brows slightly in surprise.
"Yes," he answers. "Did you not know how I have been longing for a
sight of your face, Lady Vera? But I dared not ask, and now you allow
me to see you of your own free will. You cannot guess how much I thank
you."
His voice trembles with feeling. The countess, blushing in spite of
herself, tries to make light of it all.
"I did not think of _les proprietes_ when I called you in here," she
stammers. "My vanity was so alarmed by Mark's terrible speech that I
forgot everything. I think you must go now."
But he lingers.
"Won't you come down into the library?" persuasively. "We could all
amuse you there. You could lie on the sofa with a warm shawl over you,
and we would read aloud to you, or sing, or play--whatever pleased you
most. It must be dull for you here with your sick fancies. Will you
come?"
What an atmosphere of cheerfulness he has brought into the sick-room.
Lady Vera's heart that has lain numb and chill, and hopeless in her
breast so long, seems to warm itself to life again in the sunlight of
his smile.
"I will go, if Lady Clive thinks it prudent," she declares.
Lady Clive--that astute general--on being consulted, puts on the
gravest face over her well-pleased mind, and declares that Lady
Vera may venture to-morrow, perhaps, and so gives Captain Lockhart
twenty-four hours of the pleasures of anticipation, which philosophers
declare exceed those of reality.
With to-morrow begins a love-idyl, one of the sweetest ever enacted,
perhaps, and the most innocent, for Lady Vera is unconscious of it all,
nor dreams that love is near. Captain Lockhart is no bold nor intrusive
lover. He does not weary Lady Vera with his company or attentions,
oftener than not leaving her to the companionship of his sister. But
when he enters the room it is always brighter for his coming; when
he reads, the volume gains a new interest; when he sings, she lies
with closed eyelids, and wonders why she had ever fancied she would
dislike this pleasant, agreeable gentleman, with his handsome face, his
scholarly mind and chivalrous manner.
"It is very pleasant having such a friend," she thinks, within her
innocent, unconscious heart. "I was so lonely losing dear papa, and
having not one true heart to turn to in my sorrow."
A remembrance of her oath of vengeance comes into her mind, and a
troubled look sweeps over the fair, young face. It weighs upon her like
a burden--the legacy of hate her dying father has left her. How shall
she ever keep her vow?
"Shall I go to America and seek my enemies who are so securely hidden
away that even detectives cannot find them?" she asks herself. "Or
shall I lie passive and wait? and when found, how shall I strike Marcia
Cleveland's cruel heart?"
Alas! poor Vera, if you only knew the dreadful truth. If you only
guessed how, in wounding your enemy's heart, you must fatally stab your
own, you might pray to die now while the pulses of life are low, ere
life became a living death. Well for us that:
"Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate."
And the pretty idyl goes on. Lady Vera's morbid thoughts are drawn out
of herself, and lifted to a higher plane by Philip Lockhart's cheerful,
active mind. The weeks round into a month, and she is almost well
again. The color and roundness of youth have come back to her cheek,
the light of a strange, new, unconscious happiness is dawning in the
darkness of her eyes.
CHAPTER XIV.
Far away from the spot where Countess Vera broods over her oath of
vengeance, in far America, away in the green heart of the langourous
south, is the white marble palace where Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter
dwelt, hidden from the knowledge of the man they had wronged, and who
had sworn to bring home to them the ruin they had wrought.
To-day, a lovely morning in the autumn of that summer in which the
Earl of Fairvale died, Mrs. Cleveland comes out on the piazza of her
stately southern home, with a frown upon her brow. Behind her, in the
magnificent saloon she has just quitted, high words are raging.
"You never loved me, or you would do as I wish you," wails the weak
voice of Ivy to her husband, as, dissolved in tears, she flings herself
upon a costly sofa.
"I begin to think I never did, but all the same you and your mother
have ruined me by your cursed extravagance. I have not a thousand
dollars to my name in bank. This place will have to be sold and we can
live on the proceeds a little longer, perhaps," Leslie Noble answers,
in a sharp, high-pitched voice, as he strides up and down the floor,
cursing within his heart the weak fancy that had led him to marry this
shrewish creature.
"Ruined! I do not believe one word of it!" Mrs. Noble breaks out,
starting up and glaring at him with her pale, blue eyes. "It is a
falsehood you have trumped up to keep from taking mamma and me to
Europe where our hearts are just breaking to go! You know very well we
have not spent a fortune in the little year and a half we have been
married. We couldn't have done it."
"We _have_ done it, anyhow," he answers, sullenly. "It was no difficult
manner, considering the way in which you and your mother have forced me
to live. Furniture fit for a palace, jewels costly enough for a queen,
entertainments costing thousand of dollars, recklessly repeated over
and over. We are at the end of the line at last, and you may yet have
to take in washing for a living."
"You brute!" she exclaims, flashing him a glance of wrath and scorn.
"To begrudge us the pleasant time we have had! I did not know you could
be so mean and stingy! Of course I knew that your bachelor uncle in
Philadelphia--the one you are named for--would leave you his money
when he died. I wish he would die now. He's mortally slow about it. I
should think he must be a hundred years old."
"Good God, Ivy! what a heartless and mercenary woman you are!" her
husband cries, stormily. "That poor old man, my uncle, who never harmed
living soul, how dare you wish for his death? Upon my soul, I am
tempted to write to him to leave his money to some orphan asylum or art
gallery just to disappoint your hopes."
"You would not dare!" she sobs, hysterically.
"Try me too far, and see what I will not dare," he answers,
threateningly, and she stops her sobbing and looks up, fearfully, at
the dark, handsome face bent sternly upon her with two smouldering
fires in his gloomy black eyes.
It is not as handsome and refined a face as Leslie Noble could boast of
two years ago. There are lines of dissipation on it. There is a certain
hardness and coarseness upon it, as if engendered by ill-nature and the
free indulgence of evil passions. Association with such a woman as Ivy
Cleveland would naturally bring that look into a man's face. Coarse,
selfish, and unprincipled herself, she has dragged the man's weak,
easily-moulded nature down upon a level with her own.
"When I married you, Ivy," pursues Mr. Noble, "I desired to take you to
Europe on a bridal tour, but you and your mother, for no earthly reason
that I can imagine, declined to go. You refused my offers to take you
to my own home in Philadelphia, preferring, as you said, the sunny
south for a home. Now you have changed your minds, and declare American
life monotonous and unendurable, and fancy you would like to figure in
the courts of Europe. You had just as well cry for the moon. You have
recklessly dissipated your own property and mine, and must bear the
consequences. I cannot afford to take you abroad, and I do not desire
to be badgered about it any longer."
"You shall hear about it day and night until I get my wish," Ivy cries,
with passionate defiance. "Sell this house and all our fine furniture
if you choose. It will bring enough with what you have in bank to
afford us a brilliant season in London. Then by the time we return old
Noble will have died, perhaps, and left us his fortune."
"Did I not tell you I will not have Uncle Leslie's death counted on so
coarsely?" cries Mr. Noble, furiously. "You are a perfect harpy."
"And you are a brute!" Mrs. Noble retorts. "Aren't you ashamed to call
your wife such names? and you pretended to be in love with me when you
married me, you cruel, unfeeling wretch!"
"You dropped your mask as soon as I made you my wife, and showed me
what you really were," Leslie Noble answers, with bitter anger and
scorn. "I was only a tool for you, and a stepping-stone to power. Your
mother's money was well-nigh exhausted, and you married me so that you
could squander mine. Then, too, you have the most horrible temper in
the world. Do you think any man could continue to love such a woman?"
"How dare you talk to poor, dear Ivy so cruelly?" Mrs. Cleveland
exclaims, stepping back through the low, French window, and glaring at
her son-in-law with tigerish hate in her keen, black eyes. "You have
frightened her into hysterics, you unfeeling wretch!"
"I would thank you not to interfere between me and my wife," he
answers, stung to defiance by the insolence of both mother and
daughter. "You have always thrust yourself into my affairs. You have
been the power behind the throne and moved Ivy like a puppet at your
will. I wish to Heaven you would go away and leave us to fight our own
battles. It would be something to be rid of even one of you!"
A scream of rage from Ivy, who proceeds to roll on the floor in violent
hysterics. Such scenes as these are of frequent occurrence, but Mr.
Noble has seldom spoken his mind so plainly, especially on the subject
of his mother-in-law. There is no telling what might have happened,
for Mrs. Cleveland looks furious enough to spring upon the offender
and rend him limb from limb, but at this moment there appears upon the
scene a messenger with one of those yellow-covered envelopes which
carry joy or sorrow to so many hearts.
"A telegram," Mr. Noble exclaims, and tears it hurriedly open.
As he reads, a look of sorrow, strangely blended with relief, comes out
upon his features. His wife, forgetful of her sham hysterics, springs
up and regards him, intently.
"A telegram! From whom? And what does it mean?" she exclaims.
"It is from my lawyer," Mr. Noble answers, bitterly, "and it means
that the devil takes care of his own so well that you will be able to
gratify your latest whim. My uncle is dead and has left me his whole
fortune."
"Glorious news!" Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter echo with one accord.
CHAPTER XV.
Some hints of autumn are in the soft, warm airs that blow through the
smoke and heat of London. The fashionable season is over, and the gay
butterflies of fashion have begun to seek "fresh fields and pastures
new." Lady Clive begins to think of flitting with the rest.
It has been settled that the Countess of Fairvale shall remain with the
Clives for the autumn and winter months at least. She is in mourning
for her father, and is quite settled in her mind at first that she will
go home to her ancestral castle and spend the period of retirement in
strict seclusion with a proper chaperon. But the Clives will not hear
of it. Lady Clive is afraid that she will mope herself to death.
"Besides, I shall be so lonely," she declares. "Philip is going back
soon to his own home, and we shall have no young people with us at
all if Lady Vera leaves us, too. My dear, do say that you will stay.
We are not going to be very gay this season. Sir Harry and I want to
take the children down to our country home, where they may roll in
the grass to their hearts' content. Let us invite two or three sweet
young girls, and as many young men, to go down with us, and we can have
such a charming time, with picnics and lawn tennis, and simple country
pleasures. Then, after awhile, we will go to Switzerland and climb the
Alps. What say you, my little countess?"
Lady Vera, so ardently pressed, yields a gentle assent, and the
party of "sweet, young girls" and eligible young men is immediately
organized, Captain Lockhart promising to go down with them and remain a
week before he returns to America.
So in the late summer they go down to Sunny Bank, as the Clives call
the large, rambling, ornate pile of white buildings that is the
sweetest home in all Devonshire.
The children go mad with delight over the fragrant grass and the
autumnal flowers. The young people begin to pair off in couples, and
one day Vera goes for a walk with the American soldier.
She is looking her fairest and sweetest. A dress of soft, rich,
lusterless black drapes her slender figure superbly, and the round,
white column of her throat rises lily-like from the thin, soft ruche
of black around it, her face appearing like some rare flower beneath
the shade of her wide, black Gainsborough hat. No wonder that Captain
Lockhart's dark blue eyes return again and again to that delicately
lovely face.
"It is no wonder," said the lords,
"She is more beautiful than day."
They walk slowly down the green, country lane, bordered with oak and
holly. The flowers are beginning to fade, and the air is sweet with
their pungent fragrance. The sky is deeply blue, with little, white,
silvery clouds sailing softly over it. The sun is shining sweet and
warm as if it were May. Little birds are singing blithely for joy as if
the spring-time had come again.
"Do you know that this is the first time I have walked by your side
since that day last spring, when you were so cruel to me?" he asks,
breaking a long interval of silence that has been perilously sweet.
"Cruel?" she says, lifting to his the half-shy gaze of the dark and
dreamy eyes.
"Yes, cruel, for you forbade me even to look at you," he answers,
smiling now over that past pain in the eager elation of the present.
"Ah, Lady Vera, you did not know then, perhaps, what a cross you laid
upon me--that I loved you even then so dearly----"
"Hush!" she cries, in such a startled voice that he pauses and looks
around to see what has frightened her.
"What is it, Lady Vera? Has anything alarmed you?" he asks her,
anxiously.
"Nothing, but that I am tired. I will sit down here on this mossy
log, and rest a moment," she answers, sinking wearily down, a sudden
paleness chasing the roses from her cheeks. Captain Lockhart throws
himself down on the short, velvety, green turf at her feet. There
ensues a short silence, broken only by the hum of the busy insects, the
song of the birds, and the soft rustle of a passing wind in the leaves
overhead.
There is some embarrassment in their silence. Her cry of alarm has
been so sharp and sudden that he does not know how to return to the
interrupted subject. And yet his heart is so full of it.
He looks into the lovely, spirited young face, and he cannot keep the
words back any longer.
He turns to her suddenly, and tells her the story of his love in
burning words, whose eloquent fire brooks no check nor remonstrance.
His face glows under its soldierly brown, his blue eyes darken with
feeling, his voice trembles with passion, but when he pauses, Lady
Vera, who has heard him through with tightly clenched hands and a
strangely blanched face, can only falter:
"You love me, Captain Lockhart? I thought--that we were only friends."
The frightened, wondering voice falls like ice upon his heart.
"Only friends," he echoes, "when I have loved you since the first hour
I saw you. Oh, Lady Vera, do not grow so pale! Is it strange that I
should love you? Others have been as wild and presumptuous as I have.
Others have come down before the fire of those dark eyes, slain by
their beauty. I know you have been cold, indifferent to all, even to me
at first. But when you thawed to me at last, when you were kindly and
friendly----"
"Yes, that was all," she interrupts him, in a kind of frantic haste. "I
was kind and friendly, that was all. I meant no more, believe me."
The soldier's blue eyes look at her with a keen reproach before which
her own glance wavers and falls.
"Lady Vera, you are no coquette," he exclaims, "and yet I could swear
that you have given me encouragement to hope that you would love me.
Do you remember the beautiful poems of love I have read to you, with
my very heart on my lips? Do you remember the songs I have sung to
you, and the dreamy twilights when we sat and talked together? Do you
remember how you have worn the flowers I brought you? You have blushed
and smiled for me as you did for no other, and you are no coquette. Oh,
my darling, surely you will love me?"
As he talks to her, the color goes from white to red, and red to white
in her beautiful face. Her lips quiver, the tears spring into her eyes.
"You are blaming me," she says, incoherently, "but you have no right. I
know nothing of love. I thought we were only friends. I am so sorry."
"Do you mean to say you do not love me, that you did not know I loved
you, and was seeking you for my wife, Lady Vera?" he asks, with forced
calmness.
"Yes, I mean all these things," she answers, looking at him with such
wide, frank, innocent eyes that he can find no room for doubt.
He is puzzled for a moment.
"I have deceived myself," he sighs, inly. "I thought she was learning
to love me."
"Lady Vera, I have been too hopeful," he says, manfully. "I have been
thinking of love while you dreamed only of friendship. But now that you
know my heart, will you not suffer me to woo you for my bride? I love
you so dearly I am sure I could make you happy."
Ah! the fathomless pain that comes into the dark eyes into which he
gazes so tenderly. He cannot understand it.
"I shall never marry, Captain Lockhart," she answers, in a low, pained
voice. "There is no use to woo me. I can never be yours."
"Never!" he echoes, with despair in his voice.
"I shall never marry anyone," she repeats, mournfully.
He looks at her with all his passionate heart in his eyes.
"Never is a terrible word, Lady Vera," he answers sadly. "Only think
how I love you. I have never loved anyone before in all my life, and
I shall never love anyone again. You are my first and last love. Only
think how terrible it is, how cruelly hard, for me to give up the hopes
of winning you for my own. You are so beautiful and noble, my dark-eyed
love. I have dreamed of kissing your small, white hands, your fair,
white brow, your golden hair, even your beautiful, crimson lips. I had
thought to win you for my very own, and now you strike dead every hope
by that cruel word, _never_. Oh, my darling, you are too young to say
you will never wed. What can you know of the needs of your own heart?
Let me teach you to love me."
"Ah, if he only knew the fatal truth," the tortured young heart moans
to itself, in the silence of its great despair. "If he knew that I am
already bound by a tie that I hate and loathe."
But she speaks no word, only to look up at him with pained, dark eyes,
and reiterate:
"I am very sorry I have caused you pain, Captain Lockhart, but I shall
never marry."
He rises and looks down at her with his handsome face grown strangely
pale and grave, his blue eyes dim and heavy.
"So be it, Lady Vera," he answers, folding his arms across his broad
breast. "You know what is best for you, but, ah, lovely one, if you
could know how sweet were the hopes you have slain this hour you could
not choose but weep over my saddened life."
She put up her white hand imploringly.
"Forbear, Captain Lockhart. You cannot guess what pangs are aching in
my breast or you would spare me your reproaches. Be pitiful and leave
me."
"Not here," he says, looking up and down the flowery lane. "Let me take
you back to the house, Lady Vera. We cannot trust these autumnal skies.
It may rain at any moment."
"As you will," she answers, wearily, and rising, retraces her steps by
his side. But this time they speak no word to each other and the fair
young countess flies up to her room, and flings herself down on her
couch to weep such tears as have never rained from those lovely eyes
before, for a great happiness and a great sorrow have come into her
life, as it were, together.
"For I love him," she moans to herself. "I love him, but as Heaven
sees me, I did not know it. It all came to me like a flash when he was
telling me how he loved me. Oh, God, what happiness is possible to me,
and yet beyond my reach."
She lies still weeping bitterly, and recalling in all its bitterness
that midnight marriage by the side of her dying mother.
"Oh! what a blind mistake it was," she weeps. "But for Leslie Noble
I might marry the man I love. I might go back to America with him. I
might tell him the story of my oath of vengeance, and he would help me
to find my enemy and punish her for her sin."
The day drags wearily. In the afternoon Vera goes down to the library
in search of something to read. Gliding softly in she finds it tenanted
by Captain Lockhart, who is busy over a fresh batch of papers from the
United States. He glances up as she is about withdrawing, and springs
to his feet with courteous grace.
"Pray do not let me frighten you, Lady Vera. I will take my budget of
papers, and be off," he exclaims.
"No, I do not wish to disturb you," she answers. "I am in search of
something to read myself."
"Pray take your choice from among my papers," he replies, gravely, but
kindly, and half-listlessly Lady Vera turns them over and selects one
at random.
Captain Lockhart places a chair for her and returns to his reading,
thinking that the best way to place her at her ease. His heart yearns
over the beautiful, pale, suffering face, but he does not dream of her
sorrow, and he has no right to comfort her, so he turns his glance
away, and, looking round again a little later, sees that Countess Vera
has quietly swooned away in her chair, and that the American newspaper
has slipped from her lap to the floor.
With a startled cry that brings Lady Clive rushing into the room, he
springs to his feet. Lady Vera's swoon is a long and deep one, and
they wonder much over its cause, but no one dreams that the American
newspaper has caused it all. Yet the listless gaze of the unhappy
girl roving over the list of deaths in a Philadelphia paper has found
one line that struck dumb, for a moment, the sources of life in their
fountains. It was only this:
"Died, at his residence on Arch street, on the 19th instant _Leslie
Noble_."
CHAPTER XVI.
Lady Vera waking from her long and death-like swoon, wakens also to
a dream of happiness. The terrible incubus that weighed upon her so
heavily is lifted from her heart. The loveless fetter that bound her is
snapped asunder. Leslie Noble, whose very name has been a shuddering
horror to her for more than two years, is dead, and she is free--free!
What exquisite possibilities of happiness thrill her heart at the very
thought!
She keeps her room that evening, pleading weariness as an excuse for
not appearing at dinner. She wants time to think over the joyful change
in her prospects before she meets Captain Lockhart again. She is
scarcely herself now. Such a strange, tremulous, passionate happiness
is thrilling through her heart as makes her nervous with its intensity.
Little shafts of fire seem thrilling through her veins. Love, which
she had thought never to experience, has taken up its dwelling in her
heart, and every nerve thrills with its unspeakable rapture.
"And I was so blind, I thought it only friendship!" the fair young
countess murmurs to herself, with a happy smile playing around her
lips. "How happy he will be when I tell him that I love him, and that
I will be his wife! It cannot be wrong for me to marry him. I am sure
he will help me to my vengeance when I tell him of the oath I swore by
my father's death-bed. Dear Philip, how grand and handsome he is! He is
the noblest of men!"
Lady Clive, having privately questioned her brother as to Vera's
fainting fit, and received no satisfaction, is at her wits' end! Why
this terrible swoon, when she had deemed Lady Vera well and strong
again?
She wonders even more when the young girl appears at breakfast the next
morning. Never had the young countess appeared so enchantingly lovely.
Clothed in a delicate, white morning dress, with purple pansies at her
throat and waist, and all her glorious golden hair floating loosely
about her perfect form, with a blush of happiness on her cheeks, and
the shy light of tenderness in her splendid eyes, it seemed to all as
if her peerless beauty had received a new dower of glory. All wondered,
but none knew that the threatening cloud that had overshadowed her life
so long had rolled away, and that it was the new light of hope that
made her face so radiant.
"You look unusually well, my dear. There is no trace of your illness
left this morning," Lady Clive exclaims, with her usual charming good
nature, as Lady Vera glides into her seat.
A blush and smile of acknowledgement from the young girl. She glances
shyly under her long lashes at Captain Lockhart, who is her _vis-a-vis_
at table. But the handsome soldier, after one slight glance and a
courtly bow, does not seem to see her. Miss Montgomery, who sits next
him, absorbs his attention this morning. She is a belle and beauty,
and has long angled for Captain Lockhart. Seeing Lady Vera so gay and
smiling, he resolves not to damp her pleasure by a sight of his own
grave, troubled face, so he lends himself assiduously to the coquette's
efforts to amuse him, succeeding so well in his plan that she is
completely blinded, and murmurs to herself with sudden bitterness:
"He is flirting with Miss Montgomery to show me how little he cares for
my rejection. Ah, well, if he is satisfied, I am!"
So the first seeds of pride are sown in her heart by a coquette's petty
arts.
"Alas! how slight a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!"
"I had meant to win him back to my side," she thinks, with a sudden
sigh. "I would not have told him so in so many words, but I thought to
let him see that I repented after all, and that--I love him! I fear me
I am too late after all. Oh, that he had not spoken yesterday. If only
he had waited until to-day!"
After breakfast they organized a riding-party. Captain Lockhart rides
by Miss Montgomery's side, the countess goes with Lord Gordon--poor
Lord Gordon, who has long been waiting for this chance to put his fate
"To the test,
And win or lose it all."
How lovely she was in her sable habit and streaming feather. Though
Captain Lockhart rode attentive by Miss Montgomery's side, he could not
help seeing her beauty and repeating to himself Tennyson's exquisite
lines:
"As she fled fast through sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid,
She looked so lovely as she swayed
The rein with dainty finger tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly wealth for this;
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips."
"And yet after all, in her quiet, proud way, she must be a flirt," he
thinks to himself, with subdued bitterness. "How bright and gay she
appeared this morning, as if careless of my sorrow, and almost exulting
in it. I thought she had more feeling. And, indeed, she appeared to
smile on my suit, though she was coy and cold at first. See now how
charming she is with Lord Gordon. Poor fellow, he has long been seeking
a chance to propose to her. Well, he will find it to-day, and she will
ruthlessly trample his heart as she did mine yesterday."
Sweet, innocent Vera, how fast the springing hopes of last night and
this morning are turning to dead sea fruit upon thy lips.
Lord Gordon speaks and receives his answer. Lady Vera is very sorry to
pain him, but she has no heart to give.
Captain Lockhart sees the shadow on the fair, English face of the young
lord, and is secretly conscious of a savage satisfaction.
She has refused him, too. She is too cold and proud to love any one, he
tells himself.
"Are you really going to-morrow, Lockhart?" Lord Gordon asks him in the
drawing-room, that evening.
"Yes, I am really going," he answers, and never dreams of the wild
throb Lady Vera's heart gives beneath its silken bodice.
"Why don't you ask me to go with you?" Lord Gordon continues,
good-naturedly. "I have long contemplated a tour of the United States.
I am _ennuyed_ to death. I should like a taste of a different life."
"I shall be glad of your company, and you will be quite likely to have
a taste of something different if you go with me," laughs Captain
Lockhart. "Father writes me that my regiment may be ordered out on the
plains to fight the Indians next month."
"Ugh! those horrid savages!" the ladies cry, all but Lady Vera.
She raises the black satin fan a little higher before her face, and
leans back in her chair, indifferent, to all appearance, but, oh, with
such a deadly pain tearing at her heart-strings.
"To lose him like this," she moans to herself, "it is too dreadful. Oh,
if I had even ten minutes alone with him, I would make him understand
the truth. He should not leave me!"
But Captain Lockhart, stealing a furtive glance at the beautiful face
in its high-bred repose, tells himself sadly:
"She is utterly indifferent to what fate I meet. Beautiful as she is,
she must be utterly heartless."
"Then if you like to have me I will be ready to go with you to-morrow,
Lockhart," Lord Gordon announces, and gives Lady Vera one gloomy glance
and heavy sigh.
It is for her sake he is going. Since she is not for him he means to
try and forget her.
But Lady Vera, in the keen smart of her own pain is oblivious to his.
She rises and slips through the low, French window out upon the
balcony, and sits down in the darkness not heavier than her thoughts.
Presently low voices float out to her from the curtained recesses of
the window--Captain Lockhart's and Lord Gordon's.
"Rather a sudden resolution, isn't it, this trip across the water?" in
Lockhart's clear, full voice.
"Well, yes," in Gordon's voice. "I'm running away from myself, you
understand. I fancy we are sailing in the same boat, eh, old fellow?"
"Yes," Captain Lockhart answers, quietly.
"I thought so. Saw that you were hard hit. What are you going to do
about it?"
"Nothing," Captain Lockhart answers, with grim pleasantry. "I am a
soldier. I look for wounds upon the field of battle."
"Has she really a heart, do you think?" Lord Gordon pursues. "The
fellows raved about her last season in London. She refused Greyhurst
and a score of others as eligible. She must be very cold."
"I fancy so," Captain Lockhart answers, dryly. "A beautiful iceberg."
"Few women would have refused you, Lockhart. There was the beautiful
Clarendon year before last, and now the charming Montgomery ready to
fling herself at your head."
"Spare my modesty, Lord Gordon. You are calling in the aid of your
imagination now. Cannot we have some music to beguile the moments of
our last evening at Sunny Bank?"
They pass away to another portion of the room.
Lady Vera sits silent, brooding over the words she has heard.
"How coolly they discussed their rejection," she thinks. "Lord Gordon
wondered if I had a heart. Captain Lockhart called me a beautiful
iceberg. Perhaps he does not care much. How carelessly he said that he
was a soldier and expected wounds upon the field of battle. Perhaps he
does not mind it, now that it is over. I remember that one of the poets
has written:
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."
The moon comes out and shines upon her, sitting sad and lonely, with
her white hands folded across her black dress. Two quiet tears tremble
upon her lashes, and fall upon her cheeks.
"If I were a fatalist," she thinks, "I should believe that my life is
destined to lie always in the shadow. I have never known an hour of
perfect happiness."
No one seems to miss her. In the drawing-room they are singing. Miss
Montgomery's pretty soprano blends softly with the soldier's superb
tenor.
The pretty, sentimental song dies away into silence presently.
There is some careless talk and laughter. Again the piano keys thrill
under the firm touches of a man, and this time Captain Lockhart sings
alone, sings with such passion and fervor as Lady Vera has never heard
before, sings with his whole heart trembling on his lips, and she feels
within her heart that it is his farewell to her:
"I love thee, I love thee,
Far better than wine;
But the curse is above,
Thou'lt never be mine.
"As the blade wears the scabbard,
The billow the shore,
So sorrow doth fret me
Forevermore.
"Fair beauty, I leave thee
To conquer my heart;
I'll see thee, I'll bless thee,
And then depart.
"Let me take, ere I vanish,
One look of thine eyes--
One smile for remembrance,
For life soon flies.
"And now for the fortune
That hangeth above,
And to bury in battle
My dreams of love."
"Does he know that I am here?" she asks herself. "Perhaps he meant me
to hear what he said just now. A beautiful iceberg, that is what he
thinks me."
Someone misses Lady Vera, perhaps the significance of the soldier's
song recalls her to mind; they go out to seek her, the giddy girls, who
cannot guess how she has stolen out to bear her pain alone.
"Here she is, hiding from us," they cry. "Come, Lady Vera, it is your
turn now to sing."
"I--cannot," she murmurs, faintly.
"No such obstinacy can be tolerated," they reply. "Lord Gordon and
Captain Lockhart leave us to-morrow and everyone must contribute to
their entertainment to-night. Only one song, Lady Vera, then we will
excuse you."
She hesitates for a moment. Then a thought flashes over her mind.
"He sang to me," she thinks. "Why cannot I sing to him? Surely he must
understand me then."
She suffers them to persuade her, and Lord Gordon comes forward to turn
the leaves of the music. She shakes her head.
"I will sing some simple thing from memory," she says, and then he
takes her fan and retains his place near her on that small pretext.
His eyes linger on her beauty, the proud throat and fair face rising
lily-like from the somber black dress.
She touches the white keys softly with her slim, white fingers. A
plaintive melody rises, a mournful, minor chord; she sings with sudden,
passionate fervor, some simple, pathetic words:
"I strove to tear thee from my heart,
The effort was in vain,
The spell was ever on my life,
And I am here again.
"Oh, I have ranged in countries strange,
And vowed no more to meet,
But power was in thy parting glance
To bring me to thy feet.
"We cannot go against love's will
When he has bound us fast;
Forgive the thought that did thee wrong
And be my own at last!"
She glances up. If she can point the words by even one deep glance into
her lover's eyes, all may yet be well. But Miss Montgomery, as if in
malice prepense, has suddenly risen and leaned against the piano just
before the singer's eyes. Captain Lockhart, standing with folded arms
across the room, is out of the range of her vision. Lady Vera rises
in despair. Her innocent little plan has failed. All hope dies in her
breast.
She sits down in a quiet corner, and Lord Gordon insists on fanning
her, and showing her a new portfolio of engravings. This is his last
evening with her, and like the reckless moth that he is, he singes his
wings in the flame of her beauty.
Someone calls him away at last, and the girl's heart gives a great,
muffled throb of relief. She is alone for the moment, in the quiet
alcove, half hidden by the white lace curtain. Will Captain Lockhart
come to her now? she asks herself, with a wildly-beating heart.
He sees her sitting there in her black dress and lily-white beauty, the
light shining down on her golden head and star-like face. Some impulse
stronger than his pride moves him to cross the room to her side. She
glances up with a smile so dazzling in its joy, that Tennyson's lines
rush into his mind:
"What if with her sunny hair,
And smile as sunny as cold,
She meant to weave me a snare
Of some coquettish deceit,
Cleopatra-like, as of old,
To entangle me when we met,
To have her lion roll in a silken net,
And fawn at a victor's feet?"
He sits down in Lord Gordon's vacant chair, the little stand with the
portfolio of new engravings and a vase of roses just between them. The
countess takes one of the crimson roses and plays with it to hide her
nervousness. She does not think how beautiful her slender, white hands
look playing with the red leaves of the rose.
The handsome soldier is for once embarrassed. That smile which she had
thought would tell him all has only puzzled him.
"Is she only a coquette, after all?" he asks himself. "Is she trying to
draw me into the toils again that she may see how great is her power?"
With that thought he grows cold and hard toward her.
"Lady Vera, do you know that you are very cruel to that poor rose?" he
asks.
"Am I? I did not mean to be," she answers, gently, looking down at the
torn petals strewing her lap. "I did not really think what I was doing."
"You had better give it to me, I will care for it more tenderly," he
pursues.
"Not this, but a sweeter one," she answers, with a beating heart.
Her white hands flutter over the vase a moment, and she selects a
lovely scarlet one just opening into perfect bloom.
Bending her head with regal grace, she touches the rose to the crimson
flower of her lips and holds it toward him.
Something in the strange significance of the action strikes him oddly.
An eager, impetuous speech springs to his lips, but Miss Montgomery,
who has seen the rose given, comes hastily up to them, interrupting him.
"Lord Gordon has been telling me of those beautiful new engravings. May
I look at them, Lady Vera, if I do not interrupt your _tete-a-tete_?"
she asks with sweet unconsciousness.
"Certainly. Pray take my seat," Lady Vera answers with icy coldness,
moving away.
Captain Lockhart is about to follow her when the fair marplot claims
his assistance in adjusting the stereoscope to the right focus.
Before she releases him the attention of Lady Vera is claimed by Sir
Roger Mansfield, who admires her immensely.
She leans back in her chair listening to his lively sallies of wit and
humor with a languid smile, in apparent forgetfulness of the episode of
the roses.
"It was only a bit of careless coquetry. I was a fool to think she
meant anything by it," the captain tells himself, angrily, turning away.
Fifteen minutes later they are all separating for the night, and
Captain Lockhart and Lord Gordon make their adieux to the ladies
because they must take the early train for London in the morning before
the household is astir.
Lady Vera stands quietly waiting her turn. She has wished Lord Gordon
farewell and _bon voyage_ with a smile, and she summons all her pride
to bear her up in her parting with Captain Lockhart.
He has left her for the last one, perhaps with some care that hers
shall be the last hand he clasps, the last eyes he looks into on
leaving England.
"Lady Vera, I have to thank you at parting that you have helped to make
my stay in England very pleasant," he says, offering his hand, with his
soldierly grace.
No reproaches for the pain she has caused him, the wrecked heart he
carries away from the field whereon he was vanquished.
Only the brave, soldierly smile, and the courtly words. He wears the
scarlet rose proudly on his breast, though he feels it to be a token of
defeat.
Lady Vera lays her hand on his and tries to say something very calm and
friendly, but the words die on her white lips.
She is very pale; he cannot help from seeing that. Her voice is very
gentle, but so low he fails to catch the words.
She does not look up at him; that is what pains him most. How is he to
know that the lowered lids veil the terrible pain in the dark eyes she
cannot lift to meet his yearning glance.
Others are looking on, and Vera, Countess of Fairvale, is too proud to
wear her heart on her sleeve. The message of the rose has failed, and
there is now no other sign to tell him that she loves him and would
fain take back the denial of yesterday.
So he goes, wounded by the coldness of her parting, yet wondering a
little why the hand that lay a moment in his own had felt so icy cold.
Ah, if he only had guessed the truth. But nothing was further from
Captain Lockhart's thoughts than that Lady Vera loved him and longed to
let him know the truth.
He carried back with him to his native land the memory of a fair face
and a heart that seemed colder than the beautiful iceberg to which he
had likened her in the bitterness of his pain.
For Lady Vera, she glides from the room, calm and cold to all outward
seeming, but filled with the bitterness of a great despair.
The long night passes in a weary vigil, and the handsome soldier never
dreams whose dark eyes watch his departure next morning while the words
of his song echo through her heart and brain.
"As the sword wears the scabbard,
The billow the shore,
So sorrow doth fret me
Forevermore."
CHAPTER XVII.
Long before the next season began in London, loud-tongued Madam Rumor
was talking of the rich Americans who had bought Darnley House, that
splendid mansion, from its ruined owner, and refitted it anew with
almost princely magnificence, and filled it with troops of obsequious
servants who held it in charge while the owners courted pleasure
abroad.
The most ridiculous stories were abroad concerning these people.
They were said to possess unlimited wealth; their diamonds were
believed to equal Queen Victoria's; it was confidently reported and
universally believed that they owned mines of gold and diamonds in
Nevada and California.
If the rumors had been traced back to their source it would have been
found that the American ladies themselves had artfully promulgated
these reports, but this was not known.
The stories usually came from the servants of Darnley House, and
confidently accepted, for are not hirelings always supposed to know the
affairs of their masters and mistresses?
Society was on the _qui vive_ for the beginning of the season when,
it was said, the Americans expected to take possession of their
magnificent residence, and astonish the world with their splendor and
_eclat_.
Meanwhile the three Americans with whom gossip made so free, were
disporting themselves in the delights of leisurely travel, taking in
Germany, Italy and Switzerland, in their round of pleasure.
Lady Clive, meeting them in Switzerland, had written thus to the
Countess of Fairvale, who contrary to all persuasion had gone home
to Fairvale Park to spend the summer quietly with a prim, elderly
gentlewoman as chaperon:
"We have some Americans here. You know I usually adore everything
that hails from the land of the free, being one of them myself. But,
really, I could not fraternize with these people. The man was well
enough, but the wife and the mother-in-law--well, dearest Vera, the
English language has no term strong enough to express my antipathy.
They are abominably rich, I believe. I hear that they have bought and
refurnished Darnley House with a view to spending the season in London.
If they do you will meet them, as you have promised to come to Clive
House for the season.
"Do you care to hear about Philip, poor, dear boy? They sent him out
on the plains, poor dear, to fight the Indians, wretched creatures,
this summer. He has been wounded in the shoulder, and promoted to a
colonelcy for bravery. Lord Gordon is coming over in time for the
hunting season, I hear, but Philip will not promise to get leave and
come with him.
"Dear Vera, I wish you would have come with us. I know you are moped to
death in your grand, but lonely home, with prim old Mrs. Vance for your
duenna. As soon as we go home to Sunny Bank and rest up a little, we
mean to take you by storm, Sir Harry, and I, and all the children."
Lady Vera smiles over that last threat. The news is very welcome. She
fancies how much brighter Fairvale Park will seem with Lady Clive's
happy children chasing the deer in the wide, green park, and gathering
the lilies from the peaceful lake. She takes no interest in the story
of the rich Americans, but later on a letter comes to her from New
York, which, oddly enough, instantly recalls Lady Clive's letter to her
mind.
The letter is from the New York detective whom her father had employed
to track his enemy to her hiding-place. Lady Fairvale having retained
him in her employ, he writes, briefly and respectfully:
"I have traced the Clevelands at last only to lose them again. They
have been living in Florida all the while. The daughter has married a
rich man, and this summer they came to New York, and soon after sailed
for England. I learn that they are now traveling in Switzerland with
great _eclat_, so that your ladyship will scarcely fail to hear of
them."
Lady Vera is walking slowly by the beautiful lake, brooding deeply over
this letter. She does not see the white lilies nodding their heads
among the broad, green leaves, nor the soft breeze dimpling the placid
water into tiny laughing wavelets. She is thinking of Lady Clive's
story of the rich Americans, to whom she had conceived an antipathy.
"They must be one and the same," she tells herself, "but I cannot write
to Lady Clive and ask her, because she is traveling all the while,
and gives me no address. But I shall see them in London, as they will
be there for the season. And so Ivy has married since her old lover,
Leslie Noble, died. I wonder whom she has beguiled into taking her?
Whoever he may be, I pity him, being tied to such a shrew! Well, well,
the time for my vengeance is near at hand. What shape will it take, I
wonder?"
A wind, colder than that which ruffles the lilies on the lake, seems to
chill her graceful form, as she recalls the words of her vow:
"I swear, by all my hopes of happiness, that I will punish that woman
through her dearest affections--that, at any cost to myself, I will
avenge my mother's wrongs! They are rich, arrogant, prosperous. How
can I hurt them?" she muses. "What blow can I strike at their stony
hearts that will avenge the wrongs of the dead? Shall I tell the
world the story of my mother's wrongs and mine? Marcia Cleveland and
her cruel daughter would only laugh me to scorn if I did. Yet I must
think of some plan to humble them. I am bound by my oath to the dead.
All is blank before me yet; I cannot see one step before me to the
accomplishment of my task. Would it be wrong to ask God to help me to
punish those wicked and cruel women?"
What form will her vengeance take? Day and night the lonely young
countess broods over that puzzling question. She forms a hundred
schemes and abandons them all. Some of them are too dreadful. Her pure,
delicate nature recoils from them. She grows pale and thin brooding
over this vexing question. It banishes for a time even the remembrance
of Captain Lockhart from her mind. She scarcely eats or sleeps. Long
hours she wanders by the quiet lake, up and down, up and down, like a
sentry on his post, heedless of Mrs. Vance's remonstrances on her pale
and altered looks.
"You live too much alone, I fear," the kind chaperon remonstrates. "It
is not well for the young to live so quiet and isolated a life as you
are doing, my dear. You should accept the invitations of the county
families, and entertain them in return."
"I am in mourning," Lady Vera objects, wearily.
"But I do not mean for you to be very gay, my dear Lady Vera. If you
would even invite some young lady of your own age to come and visit you
it would be so much livelier for you. There is Miss Montgomery, for
instance. She is at Sir William Spencer's. I dare say she would come if
you invited her."
"I detest Miss Montgomery," Lady Vera replies, with unusual pettishness.
"Someone else, then; anyone whom you could like," Mrs. Vance suggests.
"There is no one," Lady Vera answers. "I expect Lady Clive soon. We
shall have a little gaiety then. I will have no one else before that."
"I do not think you are well, Lady Vera. You have lost your color,
you are growing thin, your eyes look large in your face. Will you not
consult a physician?" Mrs. Vance goes on, resolutely.
"No; for I am perfectly well," Lady Vera answers, impatiently. "Pray do
not take up idle fancies about me, Mrs. Vance."
So the good lady, sighing, desists, and Countess Fairvale "gaes her ain
gait."
The bright days of September wane and fade, and October comes in bright
and sunny.
Every day now Lady Vera looks for Lady Clive to come. Her spirits grow
brighter at the thought.
Sitting in the grand drawing-room one pleasant evening, with Mrs. Vance
nodding placidly in a corner, and the soft breeze fluttering the lace
draperies at the open windows, she touches the keys of the grand piano,
pouring out her sad young soul in plaintive melodies. Song after song
thrills out upon the air, each one sadder and sweeter than the last, as
though
"The anguish of the singer made the sweetness of the strain."
Very beautiful looks Lady Vera in her thin, black robe, with knots of
pure white pansies at her throat and waist, very beautiful and girlish
still, though she is almost twenty, and a woman's sorrow is written all
over her lovely, mobile face, that rises like some fair, white lily
above her somber robe.
Memory is busy at her heart to-night. She has forgotten the Clevelands
for a little while, and is thinking of her princely-looking soldier
lover far away beneath those American skies where her own young life
was passed.
She loves him still. In vain the nobles of her father's land sue for
her favor.
All her heart is given to that untitled lover who comes of a land
"Where they bow not the knee,
Save to One unto whom monarchs bow down."
Almost unconsciously she touches the keys and sings one of our best
loved songs:
"On the banks of Allan Water
When the sweet spring-tide did fall,
There I saw the miller's daughter,
Fairest of them all!
For his bride a soldier sought her,
And a winning tongue had he;
On the banks of Allan Water,
None so gay as she!
"On the banks of Allan Water,
When brown autumn spread his store,
There I saw the miller's daughter,
But she smiled no more!
For the summer grief had brought her,
And the soldier false was he;
On the banks of Allan Water,
None so sad as she!"
"Nay, nay, Lady Vera, a libel on the soldier," a voice cries over her
shoulder.
She springs up wildly, with a startled cry:
"Captain Lockhart!"
CHAPTER XVIII.
It is Philip Lockhart, indeed, towering above her, tall,
broad-shouldered, handsome, as if her yearning thoughts had embodied
themselves. Lady Vera cannot keep the joy out of her voice and face.
"Is it really you?" she cries, touching him gently with one soft, white
hand, her dark eyes moist with gladness.
"It is really Philip Lockhart," he laughs. "I am _avant-coureur_ for
Nella, who will descend upon you to-morrow, bag and baggage, with all
the little imps. Will you pardon me, Lady Fairvale, for my impudence in
entering by the open window? Your sweet music tempted me."
"The pleasure of seeing you so unexpectedly might well condone a
greater offense," she answers, smiling.
Then she blushes deeply, for the beautiful, dark-blue eyes look down
into her own, gravely and thoughtfully.
"Thank you," he answers; "I had grave doubts of a welcome, and you
set my mind at ease. The truth is I came down with Lord Gordon to Sir
William Spencer's for the hunting, and Nella desired me to call and
apprise you of her meditated descent upon your fold."
She freezes over so suddenly and subtly that he is mystified.
"Pray sit down, Colonel Lockhart," with the coolest courtesy. "All this
while I have kept you standing."
He accepts the offered chair and his altered position brings in range
of his sight Mrs. Vance dozing blissfully in a luxurious arm-chair.
"My companion," Lady Vera explains.
The blue eyes look at her pleadingly, with a half-smile in them.
"Pray do not disturb her dreams on my account. I shall be going
directly."
She sits down listlessly enough on the piano-stool facing him. Some of
the first glow of brightness has faded from her face, showing him the
subtle change six months has made in it. The once bright cheek is pale
and clear, the dark eyes look darker still by contrast with the dark
purple shadows lightly outlined beneath them. He marvels, but dares not
speak of it.
"I am very glad Lady Clive is coming; I have been expecting her some
time," she observes.
"I thought you were glad to see me at first," he answers, plaintively,
"but now you have frozen over again."
"You took me by surprise," she replies, with dignity. "I thought you
were not coming to England this winter. Lady Clive wrote me something
like that."
"I did not intend to come; I knew it was wiser to stay away. 'A burnt
child dreads the fire' you know. But something drew me against my will.
It was like your song, Lady Vera:
"'I strove to tear thee from my heart,
The effort was in vain;
The spell was ever on my life,
And I am here again.'"
The warm color flies into her face again. The lines recall that night
when she had tried to show him her heart, and the caprice of a coquette
had come between them. She asks, with irrepressible pique:
"Was Miss Montgomery glad to see you?"
"Glad? Why should she be?" he asks her, wondering if that strange
discord in her voice can really be pique and jealousy. Spite of Lady
Vera's pride, it sounds marvelously like it.
"She liked you, I thought," she answers, flushing under the steady fire
of his eyes.
"Did she? I am sure I did not know it," he fibs, unblushingly. "I never
thought of any other save you, Lady Vera. You were my only love. I have
carried the rose you gave me ever since that night when we parted so
coldly."
He comes nearer to her side, and taking the withered rose from his
breast, holds it out before her gaze. She looks up and sees the old,
warm love-light shining on her from the deep blue eyes. The sight makes
her brave to speak.
"Yet if you had understood the message of the rose, we need not have
parted at all," she falters, low and softly, with crimson blushes
burning her lovely face.
"Vera, my love, my queen!"
He has bowed on one knee before her that he may look into the dark eyes
so sweetly veiled beneath the drooping lashes. A rapture of happiness
quivers in his voice.
"Lady Vera, tell me, do you mean that you repented after all? Did you
find that my devotion had not been lavished in vain, and that you could
give me love for love? Was that the message of the rose, my beautiful
darling?"
No answer from the sweet, quivering lips, but that swift, quickly
withdrawn glance from the dewy eyes tells Lady Vera's story plainer
than words to her lover's heart.
The rose has carried its tender message at last, in spite of a hundred
Miss Montgomerys, and if the sleepy chaperon should open her placid
eyes now she would be shocked beyond recovery, for Colonel Lockhart,
with all the boldness of a soldier, has drawn his darling into the
shelter of his arms, and pressed the golden head close against the
brave and loyal heart that beats for her alone.
CHAPTER XIX.
Imagine Lady Clive's delight when she learns that her brother is to
marry her favorite, Lady Vera.
"It is what I most wished upon earth," she says, "but I had despaired
of ever having my heart's desire. You never acted much like lovers, you
two."
"You see I never intended to marry, so I did not encourage lovers,
then," Lady Vera explains.
"And _now_?" Lady Clive inquires, with a roguish twinkle of her bright,
blue eyes.
"_Now_ I have changed my mind," the countess exclaims, evasively.
"Lovely woman's divine prerogative," laughs her friend. "But do you
know that malicious people will say that you have quite thrown yourself
away in marrying a plain, untitled American?"
"I am quite indifferent to what they will say," the young countess
replies, serenely. "I shall have secured my own happiness, and that is
the main point. For the rest, I am not anxious over titles. You know I
am part American myself."
"Yes, I know, but this is the first time I have ever heard you allude
to it," Lady Clive replies. "I fancied you were ashamed of the Yankee
strain in your blood."
The sensitive color rushes warmly into Lady Vera's cheek.
"I was," she admits, "but I had no need to be. My mother was one of
the fairest, sweetest, and purest of America's daughters. Yet I had
a prejudice against the people of her native land and mine, a girl's
prejudice that made me unjust to the many because I hated a few. Some
day I will tell you about my life in America, Lady Clive, and you will
understand me better, perhaps."
"Shall you go back to the United States with Phil, or shall you prefer
a life in England?" Lady Clive inquires.
"We have not settled that yet," the young girl answers, blushing.
Her face has grown very thoughtful as she speaks. A moment later she
asks, in an altered voice:
"Who were those American people whom you met in Switzerland, Lady
Clive?"
Lady Clive seemed to reflect.
"You mean those vulgarly rich people?" she inquires.
"Yes."
"My dear, I have quite forgotten what they were called. I have such a
poor memory for names. But no matter. You will see them in London this
winter," Lady Clive replies.
And again the vexing question which she has forgotten since yesterday,
recurs to Lady Vera's mind:
"What form will my vengeance take?"
But no faintest idea comes to her of the terrible truth. If anyone were
to whisper it to her in these first hours of her great new happiness,
it would surely strike her dead. The shock of pain would be too great
for endurance.
But fate withholds the blow as yet, and some golden days of peace and
happiness dawn for Lady Vera.
With Lady Clive's arrival she inaugurates a little reign of gaiety that
rejoices the heart of Mrs. Vance. She gives and receives invitations.
Colonel Lockhart rides over daily to spend long hours by his lady's
side, reading, singing, talking to each other in the low, sweet tones
of lovers. Lord Gordon consoles himself with Miss Montgomery, who
secretly confides to him that she "cannot imagine what Colonel Lockhart
sees in that haughty Lady Fairvale."
"She is beautiful," Lord Gordon answers, loyal to his old love yet.
"I do not admire her style. She is too slim--too American in her
looks," Miss Montgomery rejoins. She is inclined to _embonpoint_
herself, and envies every slender woman she sees.
Lord Gordon does not dispute her charge. He is too wise for that. But
in his heart he wonders why Lady Vera had reconsidered her rejection
of his friend, and wishes that he had been the happy man blest by her
preference.
Lady Vera, on her part, has quite forgotten the coquette's existence
in her serene, new happiness. Philip is her love, her lord, her king.
She forgets all else save him who holds her heart. The light comes back
to her eyes, the roundness and color to her cheek. She is dazzlingly
lovely in the new beauty that love brings to her face.
The days pass, and they begin to talk of going up to London. The lovely
fall weather is over, and mists and rain obscure the sky. They are
glad to huddle around the glowing fires in the luxurious rooms, and
Lady Clive's thoughts begin to turn on the subject most dear to the
fashionable woman's heart--new dresses.
"Vera, you will lay aside your mourning, dear, I hope," she says. "Do
you know that those black dresses make you look too sad and thoughtful
for your years? Do send Worth an order for something brighter--will you
not?"
"I will have some white dresses, I think," Lady Vera promises.
"Some of those sweet embroidered things!" Lady Clive exclaims,
enthusiastically. "She will look lovely in them--don't you think so,
Philip?"
"She looks lovely in anything," answers the loyal lover, and Lady Vera
shivers and represses a sigh. Now and then a shadow from the nearing
future falls darkly over her spirit. The memory of her vow of vengeance
falls like an incubus over her spirit. What will Philip say to this
strange vow of hers, she asks herself over and over.
She gives Worth _carte blanche_ for the dresses, and in a few weeks
they go up to London, already filling up with fashion and beauty. No
one knows how regretfully Lady Vera looks back upon the happy hours she
has spent at Fairvale Park with her happy lover. They see that her face
is graver, but they do not guess her thoughts. How should they? No one
dreams of that oath of vengeance bequeathed her by her dead father. No
one knows how often she whispers to herself in the still watches of the
wakeful nights:
"Soon I shall be face to face with Marcia Cleveland, and must punish
her for her wicked sins. How shall I strike her best? What form will my
vengeance take?"
* * * * *
Invitations began to pour in upon them as soon as they were fairly
settled at Clive House. Lady Clive decides to attend Lady Spencer's
grand ball.
Sir Harry objects.
"There will be a crush," he says. "Lady Spencer always asks everybody."
"Precisely why I am going," responds his vivacious wife. "Crowds always
amuse me. Besides, we will see almost everybody who will be here for
the season."
"Your countrymen, those rich Americans, will be there," Sir Harry
insinuates, maliciously.
"I can stand that, too," Lady Clive retorts. "I am not to be daunted by
trifles. Besides, I want Philip and Vera to see those people."
Lady Vera says not a word, but her heart beats high, and there is some
little triumph mingled with her thoughts.
"Will Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter know me?" she asks herself. "Will
they recognize the poor girl whom they injured and insulted so cruelly
in the wealthy and honored Countess of Fairvale?"
She selects one of her loveliest dresses--a silvery white brocade,
trimmed with a broidery and fringe of gleaming pearls. No jewels mar
the rounded whiteness of her perfect arms and stately throat. The
waving, golden hair is piled high upon her graceful head, with no
ornament save a cluster of velvety white pansies.
"They say that my enemies' jewels are almost barbaric in their
splendor. I will show them that I am lovely enough to leave my jewels
at home," she tells herself, with some little girlish triumph.
CHAPTER XX.
At Darnley House on the night of Lady Spencer's ball, all the devices
of art and the aid of two well-nigh distracted maids are called in
to beautify Mrs. Leslie Noble for her _debut_ in London fashionable
society. Her small, pale, faded face is rejuvenated by _rouge_ and
powder, the hair-dresser furnishes a tower of straw-gold puffs to crown
her own sparse locks, and add dignity and hight to her low stature. Her
dress is a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the Parisian man milliner--palest blue
satin, with diaphanous, floating draperies of blue embroidered crape.
A magnificent diamond necklace clasps her small throat. Bracelets of
diamonds shine on her wrists, diamonds blaze in her hair, diamond
clasps hold the azure draperies in place. From head to foot the small
blonde sparkles with splendor, and her weak soul thrills with vanity.
She is determined to create a sensation, and to have the incense of
admiration poured at her shrine.
When she has fretted and worried through the process of dressing, and
slapped the face of one maid, and scolded the other one into floods of
tears, she sends for her mother to come into the dressing-room.
There is a little delay, and then Mrs. Cleveland sails in, gorgeous
in crimson brocade and rubies, her black eyes shining with triumphant
satisfaction at her own really fine appearance. But Ivy, absorbed in
her own self, has no admiration to spare for her mother.
"I sent for you, mamma, to ask you how I look," she says. "These stupid
women have worried me into a fever. They can do nothing right. Tell me,
do you think any of these proud, titled dames will outshine me in the
ball-room to-night?"
Mrs. Cleveland's glance roves critically over the resplendent figure.
All the appliances of wealth and art cannot hide the fretful,
ill-natured look on the small, thin face, nor the shrewish light in the
pale-blue eyes.
"Your dress is faultless--I do not believe anyone will be more
magnificent than you," she answers; "but try to look more complaisant,
do, Ivy. You have no idea how that fretful look mars the beauty of
your face. Remember you will have some formidable rivals to-night. The
grandest and most beautiful women in London will be at Lady Spencer's
ball."
"I am as pretty as any of them," Mrs. Noble cries, irascibly. "I don't
see why I am to be cautioned against my looks so much. An angel would
lose her temper. There was Leslie to-day, telling me to look for my
laurels, for the beauty of last season would be there, and carry all
before her?"
"The Countess of Fairvale--yes, I have heard that she would be there,"
Mrs. Cleveland answers. "I am quite curious to see her. She is as
lovely as a dream, they say, a dark-eyed blonde with golden hair."
"Leslie saw her portrait at Delany's--the great artist, you know," Mrs.
Noble answers. "Would you believe he had the insolence to tell me she
reminded him of that wretched creature--Vera Campbell?"
"_She_ had dark eyes and fair hair, you remember," Mrs. Cleveland
answers, carelessly.
"Yes, but the idea of comparing her to a great beauty like this Lady
Fairvale--that girl who was no better than a servant!" Mrs. Noble
cries, indignantly.
"Well, well, there is no use to be jealous of the dead. Vera Campbell
was beautiful, certainly, but Leslie never cared for her, you know,"
Mrs. Cleveland answers, impatiently.
"Precious little he cares for me, either," her daughter complains. "He
pretended to love me once, but he has dropped even the pretense long
ago!"
"What does it matter? You are his wife, and spend his money all the
same," Mrs. Cleveland answers, heartlessly. "Come, Ivy, if you mean
to attend the ball to-night, it's time to be off. For Heaven's sake,
smooth those ugly frowns off your face before we reach Lady Spencer's,
or people will think you old and ugly in spite of your diamonds."
Ivy's pale eyes flash with rage at the cool reminder, but she is wise
enough to know that her mother is speaking for her good. She dabs on
a little more pearl powder, takes up her white satin cloak lined with
snowy swan's-down, and with a fond, farewell glance into the mirror,
turns to go.
"You need not fear for me, mamma," she says, summoning a smile to her
painted lips. "I shall be as bright and smiling as the Countess of
Fairvale herself. But I wonder where Leslie can be! He drank so much
wine at dinner that I am afraid he is in no condition to attend us."
A door opens suddenly to her right, and Mr. Noble appears in full
evening dress, his face somewhat flushed, but looking otherwise none
the worse for the wine his wife deplores. He looks ungraciously at his
resplendent wife.
"So you have got on all your war-paint," he sneers. "How ridiculously
over-dressed you are, Ivy. You make one think of a jeweler's
show-window. A pity you could not have bored a hole through your nose,
and hung a diamond there, too."
"A pity you drank enough wine at dinner to make you a drunken boor,"
she retorts angrily.
CHAPTER XXI.
Dazzling vistas of gorgeous rooms; a blaze of light and flowers
everywhere: men and women in festive attire; over all, the throb and
swell of the gay, sweet, maddening dance-music.
Lady Spencer's ball is in full blast, and as Sir Harry Clive predicted,
it is a "crush." But after all everyone seems to be enjoying it, even
Mrs. Noble, who, in a conspicuous position, and surrounded by a small
circle of diamond-admirers, deems herself an acknowledged belle, and
gives herself pleasant and coquettish little airs, accordingly.
"I have seen no one any prettier than I am," she confides to her
mother, in a delighted whisper. "If that Lady Fairvale is here
she cannot be a very great beauty. Doubtless she has been greatly
overrated. I fancy that girl over there in the pink satin and opals
must be she. You observe she has fair hair with dark eyes."
"No; for that is Lady Alice Fordham, I am told," Mrs. Cleveland
answers. "I do not think the beauty has arrived yet."
"Staying late in order to create a sensation," Mrs. Noble sneers, then
returning to her own admirers, forgets the distasteful subject for
awhile in airing her own graces with the laudable intent of aggravating
her husband, who has retired to a distant part of the room in supreme
disgust.
But suddenly in Mrs. Noble's vicinity an eager whisper runs from lip
to lip, all eyes turn in one direction, a lady and gentleman advancing
down the center of the room are the cynosure of all eyes--Lady Fairvale
and Colonel Lockhart. Mrs. Noble catches her breath in unwilling
admiration.
For surely since Adam and Eve were paired in the Garden of Eden, no
more beautiful pair had been created than these two!
Colonel Lockhart, to humor a whim of his sister's, appeared in the
splendid and becoming uniform of a colonel in the United States Army.
His martial form and handsome face appeared princely in his becoming
garb, and his fine, dark-blue eyes were sparkling with pride and
happiness as they rested on the lovely girl who hung upon his arm with
all the confidence of first, pure, innocent love.
"She is as lovely as a dream," Mrs. Cleveland had said to her daughter,
and Ivy, with a gasp of envy, is fain to acknowledge the truth.
Tall, slenderly formed, with
"Cheek of rose and brow of pearl,
Shadowed by many a golden curl,"
with dark eyes radiating light beneath the drooping, ebon lashes, with
neck and arms moulded like the gleaming white marble of a sculptor's
masterpiece, and guiltless of all adornment; with that silvery robe
sweeping about the stately form as if the mist of the sea had enveloped
her, Lady Vera looks and moves "a queen," gracious, lovely, smiling,
as if the shadow of a great despair were not brooding over that golden
head.
"Not a jewel, scarcely a flower, and yet more perfect than an artist's
dream," Mrs. Cleveland whispers maliciously to her overbearing daughter.
But Ivy forgets to be angry at the little thrust. She stares at the
beautiful vision, pale to the very lips.
"Leslie was right," she murmurs, like one dazed. "She frightens me, she
is so like--so like that dead girl, Vera. Do you not see it, mamma?"
"Yes, but why should a mere chance likeness frighten you?" Mrs.
Cleveland retorts, with subdued scorn.
Lady Vera has not seen her enemies yet. A group of admirers has closed
around her, and for a little while she forgets that she will meet here
the heartless and vindictive woman who destroyed the happiness of her
parents. Her lover claims her hand for the dance, and she passes from
their sight a little space.
Colonel Lockhart is radiant with joy and pride. The hum of admiration
that follows his darling everywhere is music in his ears.
"My darling, do you see how every eye follows you?" he whispers, fondly.
But Lady Vera laughs archly in the happiness of her heart.
"You are mistaken. They are only admiring your uniform," she retorts,
gayly, and the soldier thinks to himself that surely the smile upon the
crimson lips is the gladdest and sweetest that ever rejoiced a lover's
heart.
But it fades suddenly, the glad, sweet smile, and the blush upon the
rounded cheek.
The dance is over, and they are lingering together by a stand of rare
and fragrant flowers.
Suddenly the blush and smile fade together. A strange, stern look comes
into the dark eyes, she drops the rose that her lover has just placed
in her hand.
"Vera," he asks, looking anxiously at her, "what ails you, dear? You
have grown so grave."
She looks up at him with strange eyes, from which the light and joy of
a moment ago have faded as if they had never been.
"Philip, who is that woman over there, in the crimson brocade and
rubies?" she asks, indicating the person by a slight inclination of her
head.
His glance follows hers.
"That woman--yes, someone told me awhile ago that she was a
countrywoman of mine, a Mrs. Cleveland. The one next her, in the
diamonds, is her daughter."
Lady Vera is silent a moment, gazing steadily at the unconscious two.
She has recognized them instantly, and only asked the question to "make
assurance doubly sure." Some of the bitterness in the heart rises up to
her face. Her lips curl in scorn.
Colonel Lockhart regards her anxiously, puzzled by the inexplicable
change in her face.
"What is it, Vera? Do you know these people?" he asks.
"How should I know them?" she asks, trying to throw off the weight that
has fallen on her heart.
"Are you ill, then? These flowers are too heavy and sweet, perhaps.
Shall I take you away?" he inquires.
"Not yet," she answers.
She continues gazing steadily at Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter. To
her heart she is saying over and over:
"I am face to face with my enemies at last. What form will my vengeance
take?"
In a moment that question that she has asked herself so many times is
terribly answered.
Watching Ivy with her strange, intent gaze, she sees a gentleman come
up to her side.
"Am I mad," she asks herself, with terrible calm despair, "or is it
really Leslie Noble?"
Her lover unconsciously answers the silent question.
"You see that dark, handsome man, Vera?" he says. "His name is Leslie
Noble. He is the husband of the lady in the diamonds."
She makes him no answer at first. Her eyes are wide and dark with
horror. All in a moment she sees plainly the awful answer to the
question so often asked of her shuddering heart.
"Vera, indeed you are ill. Let me take you away from the heavy scent of
these flowers," her lover pleads.
She starts like one waking from a dreadful dream, and clings to his arm.
"Yes, take me away," she echoes, in a far-off voice. "There are too
many flowers here, and the light hurts my eyes, and the music my heart."
CHAPTER XXII.
"My darling, I do not know what to think," Colonel Lockhart exclaims,
anxiously. "A moment ago you were so bright and happy--now you look
pale and startled, and your words are strange and wild. Has anything
frightened you, my darling?"
She lifts her heavy, dark eyes almost beseechingly to his own.
"Philip, please do not talk to me, now," she says. "Do not ask me any
questions. Only find me a quiet place away from the crowd, where I may
rest awhile. I am ill."
"I do not know where to find such a place, unless I take you into the
conservatory. I expect it is quite deserted now," he answers.
"We will go there, then," she replies.
Troubled at heart, and very anxious over his darling, Colonel Lockhart
leads her down through the long vistas of fragrant bloom to a quiet
seat under a slender young palm tree. There are very few flowers
here--only cool, green thickets of lovely, lace-like ferns, watered by
the sparkling fountain poured from the lifted urn of a marble Naiad.
"Will this spot suit you, Vera?" he inquires, anxiously.
She bows, and looks at him with her grave, sad gaze.
"Philip, you must leave me here alone for half an hour," she says, "I
wish to rest awhile. Then you may come to me."
"You look so ill and pale I am almost afraid to leave you alone," he
answers. "May I not remain near you, Vera? I will not talk to you, nor
weary you in any way. I will sit silently and wait your pleasure."
"I would rather be alone," she answers, wearily.
"Then I will go, my darling, but I shall be very anxious over you. It
will be the longest half hour of my life."
He stoops over her, and taking the sweet white face in his hands,
kisses the pale, drawn lips. A stifled sob breaks from her at the
thought that in a little while these kisses will be hers no longer.
"You are nervous, dear. Let me send my sister to you," he urges.
"I had rather be alone," she answers.
"Forgive me, dear. I will go, then," he answers, turning away.
The tall form disappears in the green, flowery shrubbery. The echo
of the firm, elastic footstep dies away. Lady Vera is alone at last,
sitting with folded hands and dark, terrified eyes, face to face with
the awful reality of her life's despair.
"Leslie Noble, my unloved and unloving husband, is alive and married
to his old love, Ivy Cleveland--how passing strange," she murmurs,
hollowly, to herself. "What strange mystery is here? Did he believe
me dead, as I did him? Or has he, in the madness of his love for Ivy,
recklessly plunged into sin? But if so, why did he bring her here where
they must meet me? There is some strange, unfathomable mystery here
which I cannot penetrate."
Alas, poor Vera! the gloom of a subtle mystery wraps thee round,
indeed, and the hand that held the key to the secret is cold in death.
Low moans gurgle over her lips, and blend with the murmur of the
fountain as it splashes musically into the marble basin. She is
thinking of her handsome, noble lover between whose heart and hers a
barrier has risen, wide and deep as the eternal Heaven.
"I must part from him, my Philip, my love!" she moans, "for in the
sight of God I am Leslie Noble's wife, even though before men he is Ivy
Cleveland's husband."
She bows her face in her hands, and bitter, burning tears stream
through her fingers. In all the hours when she has brooded over that
oath of vengeance made by her father's death-bed, no slightest thought
has come to her in what terrible way she must keep her vow, and at what
fearful cost to her life's happiness.
"What strange prescience came to my father in dying?" she asks herself,
in wonder. "How strangely his words were shaped to fit the awful
reality. I must punish Marcia Cleveland through her dearest affections,
he said. All her heart is centered on Ivy, and when I claim Leslie
Noble from her and cover her head with that awful shame, my father's
wishes will be fulfilled. And lest I should falter in my dreadful task,
he added that last clause, no matter at what cost to myself. Oh, God!
what will Philip say when he learns the truth? The way is plain before
me how to keep my vow. I, who loathe and despise Leslie Noble, must
claim him before God and man as my husband, and humiliate Ivy Cleveland
to the dust. In no other way can I punish Marcia Cleveland and avenge
my mother's wrongs."
"In no other way," the fountain seems to echo, as it splashes musically
down, and Lady Vera, turning coward now in the face of the terrible
future, prays in bitterest agony: "Oh, God! if I could die--die here
and now, with Philip's last fond kiss still warm upon my lips, before I
have to speak the dreadful words that will doom us to a living death in
life."
With an effort she shakes off, presently, the horror and dread and
shrinking repugnance with which she looks forward to the fulfillment of
her oath.
"Mother, forgive me," she weeps. "Do I not remember all your bitter
wrongs and mine, and how often my young heart burned to avenge them?
And shall I shrink back now when the flaming sword is in my hand, and
I am able to crush your enemy into the dust? No, no! What matter if it
breaks my heart? My gentle mother, yours was broken, too. And though I
tread on burning plow-shares, I will keep my oath of vengeance."
No faltering; no looking back now. Something of her father's haughty
spirit is infused into Lady Vera's soul. Her dark eyes light with the
strange fire that burns on the altar of her heart, and when her lover
comes anxiously to seek her, she has recovered all her usual calmness,
and greets him with a smile.
"You are better, dear?" he exclaims.
"Yes, and we will return to the ball-room now," she answers, resting
her icy fingers lightly against his arm.
Passing from the subdued light of the conservatory into the glare of
the ball-room, they come face to face with Leslie, with Ivy hanging on
his arm, flushed and heated from the dance. Lady Vera lifts her head
with stag-like grace, and looks steadily into their eyes, but beyond an
insolent stare from Ivy, and a glance of warm admiration from the man,
they give no sign of recognition. Lady Vera passes on, and Lady Clive
comes up to her, laughing.
"My dear, you have seen our country people--the rich Americans," she
says. "How do you like them?"
"I will tell you some day," she answers, in a strange tone, yet with a
careless smile.
Still later in the evening Lady Spencer seeks out the countess.
"Dear Lady Fairvale, will you allow me to introduce to you our American
guests?" she asks. "They are most anxious to know the beauty of the
season."
Lady Vera, growing pale as her white robe, draws her slight form
proudly erect.
"Pray, pardon my rudeness, Lady Spencer," she answers, coldly. "But I
must decline. I do not wish to know them."
CHAPTER XXIII.
Society, which likes nothing better than a bit of gossip, commented
considerably on the Countess of Fairvale's refusal to know the rich
Americans. There were some who blamed her and thought she was over-nice
and proud. The American Consul vouched for their respectability, and
their style of living attested to their wealth. What more could she
desire? Everyone else received them on equal terms. Why did Lady Vera
hold out so obstinately against speaking to them? It could only be a
girl's foolish whim--nothing more, for she assigned no reason for her
refusal.
But it created some little embarrassment at first. People did not
like to invite the countess and the Americans together for fear of an
unpleasant collision. They could not slight Lady Vera, and they did
not wish to offend the Americans. The affair was quite unpleasant, and
created some little notoriety.
"And after all, Lady Vera's mother was an American, and she was born in
the United States herself. Why should she hold herself above one of her
own country people?" said one of the knowing ones.
No one could answer the question, and least of all the Americans
themselves, who were secretly galled and humiliated almost beyond
endurance by the scorn and indifference of the proud and beautiful
young girl.
Mr. Noble was sorely chafed by Lady Vera's course. He had conceived a
great admiration for her, and desired to hear her talk, that he might
learn if her voice as well as her face resembled his dead wife, Vera,
the girl who had committed suicide rather than be an unloving wife.
Mrs. Cleveland, who had desired to know her because she was the fashion
just then, was very angry, too, but Ivy took it the hardest of all. She
considered it a deliberate and malicious affront to herself.
"The proud minx!" she said, angrily. "In what is she better than I am
that she should refuse to know me? I shall ask her what she me
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