Part 14

Here Mrs. Wayland left him again standing upon the colonnade, and hurried rapidly from him down the path which led to the sea. Her conversation had revived in her heart all the strong passions which slumbered there, and which she usually held in close repression. As she paced wildly up and down the beach, feeling in her nearness to the sea a sort of comfort as though the great ocean were her friend, she thought over her whole lonely life. She thought of her happy and brilliant youth, of its gayeties, its triumphs, and its great hopes; she beheld herself the petted darling of a joyous circle of companions and friends. She thought of her journeys in distant lands, whither a loving father had taken her, and of all the delights of those years when they had wandered through all the sunny climes of southern Europe, and so away on to the Orient, where she had trodden with pilgrim feet all the sacred places of that Holy Land. It was there she had first met her husband; and she dwelt with fondness upon every little incident which memory recalled of her intercourse with him there, and of how they had sailed together upon their return to their native land. It was then she had learned to love the ocean. In those long days, when they were out upon the trackless deep, they had learned together the sweet mystery of loving. Night after night they had paced the deck together, gazing out upon the moonlighted expanse, and watching the breakers rise and fall. The long voyage had been a season of enchantment. It had passed into her being, and become a part of her inmost life forever. She had one of those natures to whom such things come but once in a lifetime. When they had reached home, they had been married, and, after a year or two of pleasant married life, they had built the old gray house of which I have told you, designing to pass their summers down there within hearing of the grand, eternal anthem of the sea. How well she remembered the hurry they were in to get down here,--so great a hurry that they could not stop to have the house entirely finished, and so in early May they had furnished two or three rooms, and lived here in a wild trance of what seems to her now, as she looks back upon it, perfect bliss. Here they wandered up and down the beach together hand in hand for hours and beheld the waters glowing in the early tints of sunrise, and reflecting the gorgeous splendors of sunset, and rippling and shimmering in the bewildering moonlight. Then she thinks of how gayeties began up at the village yonder, and how they began to see much company and to mingle in all the excitements of watering-place life. Here they had met the beautiful syren who had stolen her husband from her. With what angry hate she dwells upon the soft, bewildering beauty of that woman,--her rounded, dimpled form, her golden hair, and the languishing blueness of the dreamy eyes! She seemed in all her bewitching beauty, to the eye of Agnes Wayland, more hateful and hideous than a fiend. She had fascinated Mortimer Wayland almost from their first meeting. Of a dreamy, sensuous temperament, and a weak will, and with no great power of principle at his back, the artful and wicked woman had ensnared him with her wiles, and in the meshes of her charms he had forgotten the grand and queenly wife, who to every eye was so infinitely the superior of one for whom he was deserting her, and the little year-old baby, who was just learning to lisp "father" to him as he fondled him.

Of the wild tempest which tossed her soul at this time she dreaded to think even now. It had been so near to madness that it was a terror to her yet. But pride had always been one of her ruling passions, and, instead of pleading with him with a woman's tenderness, as some might have done, she had treated him with coldness and disdain, and with reproachful scorn had goaded him on to take the last step in the dreadful drama.

He had deserted her, and with the blue-eyed woman had sailed for a distant land. Never since that time, now nearly twenty years, had she left, except for her lonely walks, the old gray house. She shut herself up like a hermit, and with wild and bitter grief cursed herself and her God. Down into the deepest gloom of despair she went, where never a single ray of heavenly light and comfort reached her. Her child, indeed, she had left; but although she loved him with all the concentrated passion of her nature, he seemed little comfort to her. She brooded continually upon the darkness of her fate, and upon the fathomless depths of despair into which she was sinking.

Then the child died, and her last human interest went; and she made its little grave in the tangled garden, and every year covered it thick with flowers. But in her heart no white blossom of hope had ever sprung up, no purple pansy of royal magnanimity and forgiveness had yet blossomed there. And this night, after so many years, she was living it all over again with tragic interest, and no softened feelings of relenting or forgiveness entered her stern heart.

"He is very happy," she thought to herself as she wended her way back and stood by her little grave; "he is very happy, for he can stand by his child's bed and weep; and so could I, if I had his hope. O my darling, my darling, darling boy!" and she stooped down, and threw her arms caressingly over the little mound.

"Oh, if God would only, only let me meet you once more! O my God, why cannot I forgive and be forgiven?"

"My sister," said the kind old man, coming up and hearing her last words; and feeling how vain it would be to reason or expostulate with this woman,--"let us pray;" and, almost before she knew it, they were kneeling by the little one's grave; and before the old minister had concluded his simple but touching prayer, the woman, whose heart had been stone for so many years, was weeping, weeping with passionate sobs like a little child; and when he had concluded, she arose, and without a word made her way into the house, and soon the red light shone in the little window.

Somehow after this a more gentle feeling crept into the heart of Mrs. Wayland. A softer light came into her eye, and a more gentle tremor was in her voice as she addressed the old minister, who saw that she was touched, but was too wise to meddle farther than was absolutely necessary with the good work which he was sure was going on.

It was not many weeks from the evening of which I have spoken, when, as she was returning from her evening walk, she beheld a scene of bustle around the door of her house; a carriage was driving away, and a trunk stood upon the steps, while some figures seemed just entering the door whom she could not distinguish in the gathering darkness. "Dr. Ashly has some friends come," she thought, with a feeling of impatience; "what shall I do with them?" and she walked quickly to the house. As she turned into the cheerless dining-room,--the only room which was ever used below,--she saw, stretched upon a couch, the figure of a man propped up by pillows, which seemed to have been hastily brought, and looking pallid and wan. She walked quickly forward, but when she had reached the middle of the room, she stopped like one transfixed, and, with wild eyes full of eagerness and something like joy, looked about her.

"Mortimer Wayland!" she exclaimed at last, grasping the table for support. "Why come you here?"

"I have come home to die, Agnes. I could not die anywhere else; I have been for years trying to do so,--but God would not let me. I was forced to come and seek your forgiveness, and God will not take me until I have it; yet I dare not ask you to grant it; it is too much!" At this the sick man shut his eyes wearily, and said no more.

"Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us," solemnly said the voice of the old minister, who was sitting near the couch upon which the man lay.

"Oh, sir, you cannot know what it is for me to ask of her. Most wrongs may be forgiven; but mine against her is so great that she cannot forgive me, I am sure, unless God helps her. I have been suffering for it these twenty years,--trying to expiate it; but I have failed. I have suffered, I have struggled, I have almost died many times, sir; but I could not atone for my sin, and God could not forgive it, nor can she."

Then the minister's voice was heard again, and it said, "Sister, remember the little child's grave in the garden, and forgive and be forgiven."

Then Mrs. Wayland, who had stood like a statue all this time, rushed forward, and, kneeling by the couch poured forth her whole heart in a torrent of passionate words,--

"O my husband, my darling, my only love, forgive me for my coldness and my scorn! forgive me for not helping you to withstand temptation,--I, who was always the stronger! It was I who drove you away, and for it I have suffered and agonized all these years. I have been so hard, so wicked and cruel, so unpitying and unforgiving, that I have had no rest or peace night or day. It is so blessed to feel that I forgive you! so joyful to think that you will forgive me,--that God will forgive us both!" and the woman laid her head upon his breast, and rained upon his lips a thousand passionate kisses.

Then Dr. Ashly would have left them; but the woman called him back.

"Share in our great joy, dear friend," she said; "for, had it not been for you, this would never have been. A few weeks ago I should never have received him whom I loved even as I had always loved, but whom my pride would have banished from my door in the face of all his pleadings; but you have softened my heart, and to you we owe this joyful hour. And now you must help me," she continued, with a woman's thoughtful care, "to carry him to my own room upstairs, which is the only comfortable room I have; and there I can nurse him up, and soon have him well again."

And so he was carried up to the room where she had sat alone so many years, and was soon as comfortable as womanly care could make him.

"How natural it all looks here!" he said, glancing around the room. "It is just as it used to be,--isn't it, darling? And I remember it so well,--furnished, to suit you, in crimson, which you still like, as I see by your shawl."

"Yes," she said, with a little blush; "I have always worn it for your sake. You used to say it was just the color to suit me, and I have worn it all these years."

"Darling," said he, looking all about the room, "I see no traces of any one but yourself here. Where is our child,--our little baby boy?"

Agnes Wayland went softly up to him, and put her arms around his neck, as she said,--

"I thought, a few weeks ago, that he was down in the garden under a bed of pansies; but now I know he is in heaven, where you and I will soon join him."

WHY MRS. RADNOR FAINTED.

WHY MRS. RADNOR FAINTED.

You have seen hazel eyes,--have you not? I don't mean the quiet nut-brown ones, you meet every day, but _bona fide_ hazel eyes, opaline in their wonderful changes,--that make you wonder, when you turn away from them, what color they will have assumed when you next look into their depths; for such eyes have depths, sometimes glowing emerald-like, with a steady, lambent flame, now gleaming with a soft lustre like pearls, or melted into sapphires by tears.

Such eyes had Mrs. Radnor,--cold, beautiful woman that she was; insensible, I was about to say, only I remember her fainting at sight of a pond-lily. How well I recollect the day! There was a party of us passing the midsummer at the old Richmond farm, a few miles from ----; Mr. and Mrs. Ferdinand Radnor among the rest. The latter, a haughty statuesque woman, with nothing save her wonderful eyes to indicate anything approaching a heart,--lovely as a dream, yet with beauty that repelled even in its fascination. Such hair, too, as she had, rolling in golden ripples down to her slender feet;--fine as silk, it was brown in the shade, but glowed and intensified in the light till it seemed as if a thousand stray sunbeams were imprisoned in the radiant mass. We always called her the "Princess with the golden locks." You remember her in the fairy tale,--do you not? That one, I mean, whose hair was the wonder and admiration of the whole world, and whose lovers delighted to bind themselves with fetters so exquisite; yet when they strove playfully to throw them off, they found themselves with gyves and manacles of steel, under which they were powerless.

Mr. Radnor was urbane and gentlemanly; but, possessing only half a soul, he divided the interest of that equally between admiring his own person and annoying Mrs. Radnor by his attentions.

It was a sultry July day, and we were all of us on the rose-terrace back of the house, some dozing,--I pretending to read, though all the time watching the "Princess" furtively from the shelter of my book.

She had a pile of cushions spread with a scarlet shawl, and, like an Eastern beauty, lay languidly upon them. Her dress of palest blue was open at the throat, and her hands toyed listlessly with the heavy cord that confined her waist. There was a blush-rose tint on her usually pale cheek, and her hair, half escaped from its little net, lay like flecks of gold on the scarlet cover. I think I never saw repose, utter and perfect, before.

"Down through her limbs a drooping languor crept, Her head a little bent, and on her mouth A doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moon In a still water."

Suddenly the charmed silence was broken, for round the corner of the house came Mr. Radnor, with his arms filled with superb water-lilies, which he threw in a fragrant shower over his wife. He was saluted with exclamations of wonder and delight, and while he was replying, I had leisure to observe his wife.

The change was frightful: an ashen pallor had spread itself over her face, she was panting violently for breath, and, at the same time, attempting to clasp both hands before her eyes. I cried aloud and sprang towards her,--but it was too late.

Mrs. Radnor had fainted!

At the same time, Anne Richmond threw herself upon her knees beside her, and, hastily gathering the snowy flowers from her dress and bosom, where they had fallen, thrust them into Mr. Radnor's arms, saying hurriedly, as she did so,--

"Pray, pray, take them away, sir, or your wife will die."

He obeyed blankly, and together Anne and I applied the usual restoratives, and, after some minutes, were rewarded by a faint color in her lips, then a quivering of the mouth, and I heard her murmur faintly,--"I saw him again, Anne. Oh, those dreadful flowers!"

Then her eyes opened,--those wonderful eyes, that were then almost startling in their blackness. She looked wildly round her for a single second, and, catching sight of me, was herself again,--haughty, self-sustained as before, even though lying helpless as a child on Anne Richmond's arms.

And, after all, pride is better for a fainting woman than all the sal volatile in the world, thought I, receiving her languidly uttered thanks, and retreating.

We saw no more of Mrs. Radnor that day. Her husband talked loudly of the extreme heat; and no one but the two who had observed the expression of her face when the perfume of the lilies first met her senses, knew anything to the contrary. As for me, I was restless and unquiet. There had been from the first a nameless something about Mrs. Radnor which had excited my deepest interest, and now my imagination was busy. One thing the painful scene of the morning had convinced me of, and that was, that some time in the past she had been quickened into life by the breath of love, and the flowers had played a terrible part in overwhelming her with memories possibly long buried in the deepest recesses of her heart; for--I acknowledged it--Mrs. Radnor had a heart. I never doubted it from the moment in which her face changed from its quiet repose into that torturing expression of fear that it wore when she fainted.

"Anne," I said that evening to Miss Richmond, as I drew her into my chamber after the party had separated for the night, "tell me something of Mrs. Radnor. I am sure you are in some way concerned in her past."

"Yes," she answered, with a little, fluttering sigh; "there is one page of her life that no one living has ever read but myself. Perhaps I do wrong in consenting to turn it for you; but it may be a warning to you, child. To-morrow we will go down to the lake together, and I will tell you what has changed Mrs. Radnor, from the brightest, sunniest girl that ever lived, to the breathing statue that she has been for ten years."

She sighed again, as she kissed my cheek, and then I heard her footsteps die away in the long corridor.

My room was in the second story, and directly over those occupied by the Radnors, which opened on a balcony leading down by a little flight of steps to the lawn.

The night was sultry and still. All the usual bustle and stir of retiring had ceased, and, extinguishing my candle, I curled myself on the broad window-seat, watching the stars that seemed to smile in the hazy atmosphere. It was late,--nearly midnight, I think; and I drank with delight the heavy fragrance which that hour always seems to draw from the heliotrope, great masses of which grew under my windows. I do not know how long I sat there. Waking dreams, such as flit lightly in the tender stillness of summer nights, wooed me with delicious repose. I fancied myself beneath Eastern skies, and the faint stir of a bird in a neighboring tree seemed to me the pluming of a bulbul's wing; and through the gilded lattice of the harem two starry eyes--and they were Mrs. Radnor's--glittered and gleamed. The soft running of a brook through the grounds was the lapping of waves against Venice stones. I heard the twinkle of a guitar, and, framed by carved, gray stone work, her rippling golden hair stirred in the night-breeze.

Then everything faded, and I slept a moment or an hour,--I cannot say which, so softly had the hours passed in softest sandals,--and it was with a start that I sat upright and heard, with a keen thrill of fear, a faint click, as of a drawn bolt, and immediately the distant bell of St. Michael's pealing out.

One--two; and with the dying of the second stroke there was a rustling sound beneath my window, and then a shuddering whisper,--"My God! my God! have mercy upon me!"

Shrouded by a half-closed blind, I peered out, and, kneeling on the balcony below, I saw a white figure illuminated by the strange, weird light of a waning moon. The face was uplifted, and the expression might have been that worn by Maria Therese in the solitude of her chamber when the Archduchess Josepha died.

I drew back,--it seemed like profanity for any but the God to whom she appealed to witness her despair,--for it was Mrs. Radnor. I heard a long, deep-drawn sigh, a footstep, and then the silky tones of her husband.

"My love,--why will you? The dew is very heavy." Then a stir and the sound of a closing door.

I shivered in the ghostly light that had crept into my window, and, softly closing my blinds, I laid down to sleep if I could.

The first person I saw, on entering the breakfast-room the next morning, was Mrs. Radnor, pale as the muslin wrapper she wore, but as coldly self-contained as usual. I felt the passionate sympathy, which had taken firm hold on me since the scenes of the previous night, almost vanish before her languidly uttered replies to my inquiries for her health. It was only in watching the drooping corners of her rarely beautiful mouth and the violet circles beneath the wonderful eyes, that I could connect the haughty being before me with the utterer of the despairing cry of the night before.

The day wore on slowly enough to me, and it was only when the lengthened shadows on the terrace, and Miss Richmond, equipped for her walk, greeted my eyes, that my impatience subsided.

The path led us through a shady grove of pines, that sighed mournfully as one passed through them, then across a sloping interval made green by recent rains, and so down through a fringe of alders to a little seat close by the margin of a charming lake on which myriads of water-lilies were closing their cups of incense.

"Sit here," said Anne, pointing to a place at her side.

"It is not always pleasant to think or speak of the past," she began, after a few moments' silence, "although day by day its scenes and actors appear to us. There are some memories in every heart that thrill us with grief unutterable, and when you know that one person in the story which I shall tell you was dear to me as my own soul, you will not wonder if my lip falters or I fail to dwell on the more painful portions of it."

Then for the first time I was aware of another unwritten heart-history, and knew why the soft lips and eyes of the woman beside me had so often uttered their fatal no.

"Ten years ago," she said, "our house was full of guests, and among them was Eleanor Orne,--the most perfectly beautiful girl I ever beheld. Fancy Mrs. Radnor, younger by as many years, with a bewildering smile ever ready to play around the lovely mouth, with expressions as rapidly following themselves in her eyes as clouds on an April day, and you can form a faint idea of her loveliness.

"There was also a young student of divinity, with an eye as clear as a star and a soul pure as prayer itself. Proud and calm he was; but it was a noble pride that clothed him as with a garment, and a gracious calmness resulting from a vaulting intellect, subdued and chastened by firmest faith.

"He had been fond of me in a way, but from the night that Eleanor came floating down the long piazza, attired in some diaphanous gray that streamed around her like mist, I knew how it would be. I marked, with one great heart-throb, the perfect delight that flashed in his dark eyes as they rested upon her face and form.

"After that they were always together. In the mornings he was reading to her as she worked; on afternoons, rocking together in the little boat on the lake; and then, in the purple twilight, singing dreamy German music, of which they were both passionately fond.

"I soon knew that James Alexander loved her. I read it in every glance, in every tone. But Eleanor? I was not sure. Watch her as narrowly as I would, I could not see that the rose in her cheek became a deeper pink when he approached, or that her eyes were raised more tenderly to him than to a dozen others who sought her smiles.

"There had been rumors of Eleanor's engagement and approaching marriage, which had drifted to me from her city home; but, when I saw her day by day allowing him to become more attached to her,--for she could not fail to perceive it all,--I rejected the rumor, and with it the impulse which had prompted me to repeat it to James, that he might, if not already too late, be upon his guard.

"At last the end came. I dozed one day on a sofa in an inner room, and watched with delicious delight my dream of fair woman that a dark-velvet lounging-chair brought out in clear relief. Eleanor sat there, with downcast eyes and clasped hands. Suddenly a step, hurried and joyous in its very lightness, sounded in the hall; the door opened and closed again, and Alexander stood before her with an open letter in his hand.

"'See,' he said, speaking rapidly, 'it has come at last, and I may speak. It is a call to one of the largest parishes in your own city, and I may say, what you must have known for weeks past, that I love you, Eleanor, deeply, devotedly; that I want you. My darling, tell me that you are not indifferent to me,--that you will be my wife.'

"It was too late for me to move; and something--perhaps it was a kind of dull despair--kept me motionless, with eyes riveted upon the group.

"'Speak to me, Eleanor,' he said, more eagerly, bending over her as he spoke.

"I saw her face flush, and an almost imperceptible shrinking from him, that made him quickly draw back.