CHAPTER III.

When Constance revived, she found herself in a quiet room remote from noise or intrusion, whither she had been tenderly carried. Virginia was with her, and with the aid of a professional nurse, who lived near by and was called in by Mrs. Harris, had been successful in restoring her to consciousness.

The reception was still swinging along at its full height, and while a few of the guests had heard in an indifferent way of some trouble on the lawn, the reports were so varied and coupled with the fact that no names were obtainable to give the reports zest, the incident was soon forgotten, and by the great mass of the guests was not even heard of.

It was a sore spot in her breast that throbbed and beat heavily upon the door of its prison as later she was being driven home in her carriage. Not a word from John to soothe the aching void. She did not even inquire about him, contenting herself with the simple assurance that he was doing his best to find Dorothy.

For two days the strain was upon her, breaking down by its heart violence her constitution, already frail to the declining point. Scarcely more than a year had passed since Constance had been stricken down with typhoid fever of a malignant type.

She had never regained her usual health and strength, and though the family physician had pronounced her recovery complete, there were those of her friends who, with bated breath, questioned his conclusion and predicted an after effect which in time would develop some strange and serious ailment.

Telephone inquiries regarding the lost child began to come in the second day, but none of any comfort to the distracted mother.

Not one intimation of her husband's quarrel with Corway had reached her. Mrs. Harris had been careful, upon Constance's recovery at the reception, not to breathe a word, or to allow, where she could control it, the faintest whisper likely to arouse her suspicion.

And as for Hazel, she had not clearly understood Mr. Thorpe's drift when he assaulted Corway. Nevertheless, she somehow had a vague idea that Constance was the cause; but being a discreet young woman, she had refrained from mentioning anything about it to her, thus leaving Constance completely ignorant of the true cause of John Thorpe's absence from home.

Perhaps if she had not been so absorbed in the recovery of Dorothy, her attention would have been arrested on perusing one of the daily papers by an ambiguous paragraph referring to a choice morsel of scandal on the "tapis" in a prominent family, and which was likely to terminate in a tragedy. It was a society paragraph separate from the report of the probable drowning of the child, Dorothy Thorpe. Several personal acquaintances had become aware, through the crafty Rutley, of a serious difference having arisen between John Thorpe and his beautiful wife, and some of these personal acquaintances, with significant looks, at once connected it with the mysterious disappearance of the child.

The fact that none of the fashionable set had visited her since the reception did not suggest a thought of being shunned. And so she waited for news of her child--waited with heart leaden with the chill of hope deferred--waited in momentary expectation of the home-coming of John.

She watched for him through the window, foreshadowing by his appearance on the walk gladness or sorrow.

"It is now the second day," she muttered, "since that eventful night, and yet no relief from this awful suspense. No word to cheer, or lead me to hope that Dorothy lives."

"It is no use grieving so much, Constance," broke in Hazel, who had just entered the room. "Dorothy may be safe with her father, somewhere. Try, dear, to think so, anyway. It is much the best."

"I cannot put away that winsome face from my mind, Hazel. Something tells me that I shall see her no more," and tears came into her eyes, despite her efforts to restrain them.

"There, yees be at it again, sure mam, yees do be makin' us all feel miserable."

It was Smith who spoke, in a soft, appealing voice, full of sympathy and tenderness, the common heritage of his race. He had entered the room by the parlor door, and stood with his hat in his hand--a short, thick-set man, with a full, smooth-shaven, ruddy face, strong in its lines of "true to a trust." His thin hair was tinged with gray. He wore a black frock coat that had seen considerable wear; in fact, that style of a coat was worn by him for the double purpose of partly concealing the "humiliating" curves of his short bent legs, and also the dignity he fancied it lent to his stature. He had been the family coachman for some years, and was familiarly called "Smith."

As Constance turned to him, he continued with a look suggestive of tearful sympathy.

"Will yees try to forget the trouble, and be the token av it, may it plaise ye mam, just wipe away that tear, do, dear."

"You have always been a good soul, Smith," and Constance tried to smile through her tears.

"Of course, but we are anxious to know the result of your search," remarked Hazel.

He was silent for a moment, and nervously commenced to fidget with his hat.

"Sure, ave yees'l wait till I think ave all the places I whint to, and all the people I sphoke to"--and he dolefully muttered under his breath--"Sure I dunno what I'll rayport at all, at all--"

"You are very thoughtful and persistent, Smith," responded Constance.

"Yis, indade, mam, I try to be that very same. Sure, wasn't I up at Rose-a-mant and walked the bache there and watched the boats, but niver a sight did I git ave Mr. Thorpe."

"I know John is leaving no stone unturned to find Dorothy," assured Constance, "but you, poor man, you must be tired with your long walk."

"The walk was long, but me heart was warrum for yees, and I didn't moind it at all, at all. Sure, the child may not be in the water at all. Will yees try to think so, dear?" And again the beseeching look came over his expressive face.

"Do you think so, Smith?" interrogated Hazel.

"Well, I 'ave me own ideas, Miss, and to be plain, and not hurtin' yees failin's, I think she was kidnapped."

"You do?" questioned Hazel, surprised, for such a possibility had never crossed her mind.

"I do," he replied.

"Sure, I have no rason to think so, Miss, at all, at all; but says I to myself, says I, 'I'll just flim-flam around the 'dago' quarters in South Portland, on me own account, keeping a sharp lookout betimes.'"

"What did you find there?" again asked the girl.

"Nothin' I wanted, Miss, unless it war a sassy fellow wid a big black moustache, and a skin full ave greenbile."

"But you were not looking for him," replied Hazel.

"Not wan bit, Miss, though I do belave now he do be lookin' for me. Indade, Miss, I was not failin' well at all, at all. Sure, wasn't the little darlint missin', and between the sorrow at home and the failin' in me heart, and the long walk, and the cowld mornin', and the sassy look the fellow gave me--"

"What were you doing that so offended him?" interrupted Hazel.

"Indade, I was just walkin' around Carbut Strate and Hood Strate for a little divarsion--not wan bit more or less, Miss--an' he axed me what I wanted. Says I to him, says I, respectful-like, 'Maybe yees can tell me did yees see a little girl strayin' about widout a home. A lady sint me to inquire.'

"He immejetly made some raymark, quick an' sharp-like, about the dam desavin' wimmen--"

"Oh!" Hazel exclaimed, interrupting him.

"Shocking!" exclaimed Constance.

"Sure--and I beg yees pardon fir sayin' it, darlints, but that's just what he towld me and niver a wink whint wid it, the blackguard!

"I up and axed him who he'd be refarrin' to, because I had in my moind a sartin lady wid trouble ave her own.

"He says, says he, wid a snarl, 'None ave yees business.'

"Widout thinkin' whether he meant anything by it or not, I tould him he was a gintleman and a liar, too. So I did."

"You insulted him!" exclaimed Hazel, astounded.

"Indade I did, Miss, in foine style, sure"--and he spoke softly to Hazel--"he got it right betwix the two eyes, and I followed it wid wan on the soule ave his plexis."

"You did!" Hazel exclaimed, amazed, yet with an irrepressible smile that flickered about her pretty mouth.

"I did!" he replied gravely.

"Is the soul of one's plexus in his eyes, Smith?" interrogated Hazel.

"Sure, some say it do be the cramps; but I think it do be trouble ave the bowels, Miss," he answered.

"Poor man!" exclaimed Constance, and she looked at Smith reproachfully.

He quickly turned to her with a disgusted look on his face, and slowly exclaimed, "Yis mam!"

During the silence that followed Smith realized that he had spoken hastily and rude, and the disgust so palpably in evidence quickly merged into a look of grave concern.

His native wit, however, came to his aid in a singular apology.

"While the fellow hunted for a soft spot on the pavement, I called up a nearby doctor to help him," he said.

"You shall be repaid," Constance assured him in an absent manner.

"Plaise God, it will not be the 'dago' who'll do it!" he solemnly replied, and then he softly asked.

"Be there any more arders, mam?"

"No, Smith, you must be in need of rest. Thank you for all your kindness," and Constance turned from him with grief, unaffected, still on her face. "God bless yees!" he replied, and then as he turned to leave the room, said to himself, "I shud loike to see the wan--bad luck to him--who brought all this trouble on the poor missus," and he shut his teeth tight in silent rage.

After he had gone Constance pressed her hand down on the top of her head and said distractedly, "Still no word of encouragement; no relief to this strain that seems to be tearing my brain asunder!"

Under the circumstances, inaction, to one of Hazel's temperament, was anything but pleasant, and the young girl was to be condoned rather than censured for desiring to get away from the distress that pervaded the house. Moreover, she felt that something must be done to relieve the strain that weighed so heavily upon Constance.

"Don't you think I had better see Mrs. Harris, dear?" she said, with a wistful look of sympathy at Constance. "Perhaps she may have something to tell."

"Very well," replied Constance. "Do, dear, if you think some good may come from your visit. Virginia may be home soon and I shall not be alone."

"I shall get my wraps."

After Hazel had left the room, Constance, dispirited and sadly out of harmony with Smith's simple recital of his search for Dorothy, stepped out on the piazza, as though the air of the close room oppressed her.

The sky was cloudy, the air raw and cold.

Dorothy's pet canary, with its bill thrust under its wing, rested on the perch of its cage, glum and inert, immediately before her.

"Poor thing!" she exclaimed tenderly. "Sweet, sweet! Look up, pet!"

The dainty little beauty, with a throat of silky mellowness, looked curiously about, gave a "cheep" of recognition and then again buried its bill under its wing.

"Even my darling's pet will not be comforted." And tears stole into her eyes as she turned away from the bird. "Oh, Sam, I've been so anxious to hear from you! Have you found my darling?"

Sam had approached the steps unseen by her, and when she turned away from the bird he stood directly in front of her, though at a little distance.

Her mind at once recalled his words, which rang in her ears as she sank to the ground on that fateful night of the reception, and it was therefore the first and most natural question uppermost in her mind when she saw him.

He started back in evident surprise and answered confusedly:

"Well--I--I am sure, Mrs. Thorpe, if I had found her, I should only be too glad to--to tell you."

"And you have no tidings of her? But--come in, I am sure something important brought you here."

She entered the house, followed by Sam, who muttered to himself, "She's conjuring tears already, but I'm proof, were they to fall like rain. I guess so!"

Upon entering the room he looked at her steadfastly and quizically.

There was something in his look, too, that bore the imprint of effrontery.

She stared at him and asked timidly with alarm in her voice. "Oh, what do you know of her?"

"I--I--beg your pardon, Mrs. Thorpe, but--well, the truth is, I called to know if you have any information of her."

"How can you ask that question of me?" replied Constance brokenly, while again the tears welled up in her eyes.

"You see, madam--ahem! You won't be offended with me, for God knows I do not mean any offense to you, but--ahem--you see, madam, you are the unhappy cause of as fine a hearted gentleman as was ever born being a broken-spirited, a--a--blighted man!"

"Sam!" she affrightedly exclaimed. "What are you saying?"

"This," continued he, with dauntless determination, "and I'll tell you the truth. You are the talk of the town, and they say you--you--you've secured the child from your husband."

Her face became ashy white as the meaning of John's absence from home dawned on her mind. She staggered, then sank into a chair. Presently she looked up with a sort of dazed, wandering expression and tried to smile through watery eyes. "My cup of woe is very full, Sam! Please don't jest with me!"

He wiped the perspiration from his brow, for he felt his resolution to accomplish what he had set out to do was fast crumbling.

He rushed on, "I am not jesting. No, I guess not! I know I am paining you, but I have a duty to do which I shall do, as I have always done through my life. And as this affair occurred at my uncle's place, they say he knows more about it than he cares to tell, which he doesn't. And I have come to see if you really don't know something of the whereabouts of Dorothy, as that would relieve my uncle and aunt of much embarrassment--at least--I guess so!"

Her lips trembled with the pathos of her reply: "Did I know of the fate of my child, heaven could not bless me with a more joyful desire--to let you know, to let your aunt know, that Dorothy is--is safe. As it is, I would to heaven that I were dead and with my darling." And her head fell forward on the table as a burst of heart-rending agony shook her frame.

It was evident Sam was uneasy and much affected by her distress. He coughed and tried to clear his throat again and again. "Ahem!--you must excuse me, Mrs. Thorpe--ahem! But--but, Lord--Lord! I can't bear to hear you take on that way. Ahem! Ahem! I'm rough and thoughtless in my way, and it seems harsh and brutal to speak to you as I have done--I guess so!--and if any man in my hearing says you have hidden your child--why, by Heavens, I'll knock the lie back through his teeth."

Sam had forgotten his resolution to resist the influence of a woman's tears; moreover, he felt convinced he was standing in the presence of a true, atrociously wronged and much slandered woman, and in his eagerness to undo the wrong he had done her by practically charging her with the wrecking of her husband's happiness and connivance at the child's disappearance, had lost control of that gentleness he felt due to the weaker sex, especially this bereaved woman. He stammered an apology in a soft regretful tone of voice.

"I--I--beg your pardon. I--I could not help it. These expressions will slip out now and again, won't they? I guess so. I am satisfied you are deeply grieved about Dorothy, and I'm interested in her, too. The fact is, I was so anxious on my aunt's account that I have behaved like a brute. Now please understand me, you are not friendless, for I shall do my best for you, and if Dorothy is out of water I'm going to find her. I'm off now, so good-bye!"

And he was gone--glad to get away from the distress that raised a lump in his throat which all his labored coughing could not dislodge.

Sam had entered her presence a scoffer. He had made up his mind that her grief was as deceitful as her reputed double life. He departed, her firm friend and almost choked with disgust at his own readiness to believe the foul reports, magnified by gossiping busybodies.

Gradually Constances' emotion subsided. She sat upright in the chair. A significant dryness had come into her eyes as she stared at the wall with profound abstraction. Out of the haze John Thorpe's picture gradually emerged.

Suddenly she exclaimed in strangely low tones, almost a whisper--tones in which a woman's life was projected on the horoscope of faithfulness, immutable as the "Rock of Ages":

"John! John! You are breaking my heart!"

Then her mind began to settle upon one object--to see her husband, John Thorpe.

"It must be some mistake!" she muttered. "It cannot be so. John would never treat me thus. I will have Smith seek him and deliver a message at once."

She went to her desk and wrote a hasty note, requesting John to come home to her immediately. With the sealed note in her hand, she hurried out to find Smith. She found him fast asleep on an old couch just inside the coach-house door, and remembering his tired look, softly said: "Poor man! How fatigued he must be! After all, what matters it for a few hours?" And then, instead of arousing him, she took his coat off the rack and gently covered him, murmuring in a broken voice that betrayed the pathos of her trouble: "Asleep, with the peace of God resting on his face. Heaven bless and reward your faithful heart. Sleep on."

Returning to the house, she sat down at the table to think of a possible something she had done to cause John's unkind behavior.

A shadow darkened the doorway. She turned mechanically. A tall, grave and elderly gentleman, with stooping shoulders and bared head, stood in the entrance.

Constance arose. He approached her and said softly: "I beg to apologize for the intrusion. The door being open, and seeing you within, I entered unannounced."

"Oh, Mr. Williams! Have you any tidings of Dorothy?"

"I regret not being able to bring any tidings of your child. The river has been carefully dragged for a considerable distance in front of 'Rosemont.' I fear she is drowned and the body carried down to the Columbia."

"My poor darling!"

"There is yet hope, however, that your child lives. An old cripple--a disreputable looking vagabond--was seen lurking about the grounds the night she was lost. He has not been seen since. Detectives are baffled in tracing him. He may have abducted your child. It's the only hope that she is alive, though I admit, a frail one."

"Heaven give me strength to hope it is so. But who could be so cruel as to steal away my little darling? No, no, she is drowned!"

"I have to announce a disagreeable errand," and he paused, not quite satisfied of the propriety of the moment for so serious a declaration as he was about to make; but he at length continued hesitatingly:

"As--as your--legal adviser--." Again he paused.

Constance looked at him timidly. A cold, creepy fear of something dreadful about to happen chilled her. Her blanched face and beseeching eyes warned him of very grave consequences.

"What is it, Judge?" she whispered with parched lips, "speak out; tell me what you have come for."

"Are you strong enough?--I think--perhaps--I had better defer--"

"Oh, yes, my strength is not great--but--the suspense--I cannot bear. Let me hear--what it is." He hesitated no longer.

"As your attorney, I have been served with a notice of an application for a divorce, by John Thorpe, from his wife, Constance."

With bowed head he laid the document on the table.

She clasped her hand to her head, clutched the back of a chair for support, for the suddenness and weight of the blow staggered her. She, however, managed to bear herself bravely up.

"And--could--he really believe this of me?" she said distractedly.

"He has, at the same time, placed at your disposal in the National Bank a sum of money for your immediate wants." He paused. A solemn quietness pervaded the room.

At length he continued in a low, grave tone: "I am prepared to receive instructions. Shall I give notice of your intention to resist his application for divorce?"

Still leaning on the chair for support, and without lifting her bowed head, or raising her downcast eyes, she said in a voice barely articulate with the huskiness and tremor of threatened physical collapse, "Please leave me for awhile. Providence has seen fit to afflict me so sorely that I must beg a little time to try to think. But, stay!" And her voice gathered a little strength in an effort to keep from breaking down altogether:

"I desire to receive nothing from John. I shall not reply to his complaint, and you will return the money he has placed to my credit in the bank. Now, please leave me; I desire to be alone."

During his professional experience, the "Judge" had been a witness to many painful scenes, and familiarity had calloused somewhat his sense of sympathy. But as he gazed upon the white, spiritually chaste face of this frail woman, a conviction that a great wrong was being done to her forced and crowded itself upon his brain.

"Someone must answer for it before a higher than human court," he thought, and then with bent head he left her, feeling that he would value beyond price the power to effect a little gleam of sunshine to heal her broken heart.

"Dorothy! Dorothy!" he muttered, and he passed out from her presence with words of Tennyson on his lips:

"Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, The sound of a voice that is still!"

After he had gone, Constance remained motionless. She was strangely quiet, yet wrapt in thoughts of bitterest shame and grief, the world had little left for her to care for.

A sense of gloom enveloped her. Its shadow bore heavily upon her oppressed spirits, smothering by its weight the stifled cry of her heart's anguish.

It was therefore with a wondrously calm voice, pregnant with tragic pathos, that she at length broke the stillness: "I am sure of the cause of John's absence now, and the very worst has come to me. What now can compensate me for the humiliation of being thought by him so shameless and debased? Oh, how wretched I am!" and with a moan, she placed her hand on the top of her head.

"Oh, heaven spare my reason--yet--what is reason to me now? Or--life? My darling is drowned. John has left me, and with them hope and happiness are gone forever."

It was then a strange, uncanny, desperate flash leapt into her eyes. Suddenly she withdrew her hand from the top of her head, but instantly pressed it to her brow.

In a moment her appearance underwent a great change. Under the continuous strain, the strands of grief and despair had at last snapped asunder and up rushed an exultation that instantly overwhelmed all opposition to a suddenly conceived and terrible purpose. She whispered with an earnestness intense as it was significant: "There is a way out." Then she suddenly burst into a frenzy of pathetic joy as she thought of the phial of laudanum in the medicine chest in her room.

"A passage to my darling beyond!"

She did not see Virginia standing in the doorway, nor did she pause as some do to take a last farewell look at earth and sky. Her mind was set upon the swift accomplishment of an object.

Upon reaching her room, she took up the phial of laudanum and then, as she fell on her knees, locked her hands together, and her voice softened into tenderness--softened in inexpressibly sweet and plaintive tones, as she cried out in a whisper of her soul's anguish:

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me!"

She was standing in the shadow of the valley of death.

Strangely coincident, the inspiring notes of the "Star Spangled Banner" softly broke upon the air from a piano in the music room below. As the grand strains swelled upward, they were met with a break in the clouds through which the sun poured down a flood of dazzling glory.

At that moment Dorothy's pet canary began to sing. The delicate little feathered thing, that had nestled its bill under its wing in the raw cold of the morning, felt the warm influence of the sunshine that fell upon it, and looked up, twittered, lifted its voice in surprised gladness, and then in response to the soft strains that were pealing forth from the music room, broke into song.

Higher and higher it swelled, cleaving the air with its exultant melody.

Oh! the wild soaring flight of that joyous song!

Through the partly closed window it burst and flooded the room with its gladness and cheer. Death stayed his hand.

The little silken feathered throat of her darling's pet had turned aside the "Grim Sickle."

She heard it. Out over the entrancing beauty of Autumn-dyed vegetation, her sad eyes wandered--wandered wistfully over nature bathed in the splendor of the sun's radiance. She heeded the call, and then, appalled at her contemplated sin, she cowered--bowed down--lower, lower. In tones of resignation--tones tremulous with awe of the Omnipotent, she said: "Have pity upon me, Merciful Heaven!"

And then very softly Virginia knelt beside her, gently encircling her waist with her arm, and looked into her spiritual face with eyes overflowing with tears. In a broken voice, scarcely articulate through a great sob, she said: "Oh, Constance! Constance, dear, I am punished enough already!"

After Hazel had completed her attire for a visit to Mrs. Harris, she descended the stairs with the same feeling of gloom and depression upon her.

Slow and hesitating as was her action--as though undecided as to the propriety of leaving Constance, and while drawing on her gloves, she aimlessly wandered into the music room and listlessly sat on the piano stool. Then, with her head turned looking out of the window, she let her fingers ramble over the keys of the instrument. Then she saw Virginia pass up the walk and enter the house, but after the lapse of a few moments and her cousin not appearing, Hazel entered the drawing room to greet her--but too late. Through the open door she heard a step on the main stairs above. Hazel followed. On passing the table the divorce bill caught her eye. For a moment she paused and picked it up; then laid it down, her breath coming in gasps, for she instantly realized a crisis of a very grave moment had appeared. She ran upstairs, surmising that Virginia was connected with the "divorce bill," for she had not seen Mr. Williams.

And then she heard Virginia's voice. Softly she stole to the door and looked in. There, kneeling on the floor, were Constance and Virginia, looking into each other's eyes, Constance drawn back in timid alarm, and Virginia blinded with tears, clasping the hand that held the laudanum phial, her free arm thrown lovingly around Constance's waist.

Hazel silently drew back, an overpowering emotion suffusing her eyes with tears. "Poor Constance! Her trouble thickens fast. What will the end be?"