CHAPTER II.HELOISE.
Of Mrs. Fordham but little was known in Hampstead at that time. She had only been with us since the first of May, and soon after her coming she had said that if she could not have the best society she would prefer to have none; and as the so-called best society was a little shy of strangers and foreigners, she was left mostly to herself, and was seldom seen except at church, where she was a regular attendant, and where her daughter, a young girl of fifteen or more, attracted much attention by the exceeding beauty of her face, and the delicate refinement of her manner.
Subsequently we learned more of her history, which was as follows:
A native of Berwick, in England, she belonged to what might be called the “higher poor class.” A nursery governess in her girlhood, she had come in constant contact with many high-born ladies who visited in the family of her employer, and whom she watched and imitated until there was in her manner a certain dignity and air of cultivation which marked her as different from others in her own rank of life. Exceedingly ambitious, she refused many an offer which her companions called good, and at the age of thirty was married to Henry Fordham, a poor curate, whose parish was on the Scottish border among the heather hills. Here, after three years of wedded life, she buried him and returned to her lonely home in Berwick, with one only child, a little girl, whom she called Edith Heloise.
As the daughter of a clergyman Edith was a born lady, and Mrs. Fordham felt all her old ambition revive, as she thought what her daughter might one day become,—a titled lady perhaps, and certainly the mistress of some rich man’s home; and to this end she was carefully secluded from the common people around her, and early taught to think that a brilliant future lay before her if she would follow implicitly the instructions of hermother. From a distant relative Mrs. Fordham had received a small annuity, on which she managed to live very comfortably until Edith, or Heloise, as she preferred to call her, was fifteen, when she determined upon emigrating to America, where her daughter’s chances for a high social position were greater than in England.
In the same vessel with her was Abelard Lyle, a young carpenter from Alnwick, who was also going to seek his fortune in the western world. Arrived at New York he found employment at once on Col. Schuyler’s house in Hampstead, whither, at his instigation, Mrs. Fordham removed early in May. She was wanting a cottage in the country, she said, and Abelard found one for her and persuaded her to take it, and attended himself to fitting it up, and stood waiting to welcome her when she came at last to take possession. Mrs. Fordham was very gracious and thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and said he was very good and she should not forget his kind interest in her; and yet there was in her manner something which he understood, and which made him doubly anxious to please and propitiate her. He was well enough as a friend and adviser, and during the voyage and after their arrival in New York, Mrs. Fordham had found it convenient to call upon him for help whenever she pleased, but she always managed to make him feel how immeasurable was the gulf between him and her daughter, whose servant he might be, but nothing more.
Heloise was wondrously beautiful, with an ease and grace about her which would have become a princess. From her father’s side she had inherited “good blood,” a fact which her mother kept constantly before her mind. And as she talked of the brilliant matches which had been made in the new world and could be made again, Heloise listened, at first quietly, with a peculiar look in her eyes and a bright flush on her cheek. Latterly, however, there had been a worried, anxious expression on her face when her mother was talking to her, and on the morning of which I write she had left her coffee untouched and stolen from the room so as not to hear what her mother was saying of Abelard Lyle. He had called upon them the previous night,and stayed too long and seemed too much at home, Mrs. Fordham thought.
“He is a fine young man, I know, and I respect him very much,” she said; “but he is only a carpenter, and I do not think it well to be very intimate with him. I saw you give him a rose. I wouldn’t do it again, or encourage him to come here.”
Mrs. Fordham was talking to herself now, for Heloise was in the garden, with her face turned toward Schuyler Hill, where the men were already at work. She could hear the sound of their hammers, as stroke after stroke fell upon the heavy timbers, and it seemed to her as if there were a low undertone of music in it all, especially in the strokes which rang out from the tall tower rising above the trees. There was a fascination about that tower; and all during the morning, while her mother, who had an errand in the village, was away, Heloise sat by the window, where she could see the square frame and the broad-shouldered figure upon it.
Once, when she felt sure the face was turned toward her, she waved her handkerchief, and was rewarded with a flourish in the air of the right arm, and then she knew that Abelard could see her; and she sat very still, and applied herself to the ruffle she was hemming, and thought such thoughts as made her cheeks the color of the rose she had given to Abelard the previous night.
And while she sat there thus, there was the sound of carriage-wheels, and Lady Emily Schuyler drove slowly down the road with her English maid in attendance. Heloise had seen the lady in church the day before, but instead of staring at her as the others had done, had shrunk from view, and was glad that she sat behind the Schuyler pew instead of in front of it. And now, as the carriage came near, she leaned back in her chair to avoid being seen.
Thus screened from observation, she sat waiting for it to pass, and her heart gave a great thump when she heard it stop directly before the house, while Mrs. Schuyler uttered an exclamation of delight at the roses growing so profusely in the yard.
“Oh, Janette, how lovely those roses are! I must havesome for my hair,—they will brighten me up at dinner, and I am looking pale and forlorn, and that vexes Colonel Schuyler so. I wonder if there is any one at home.”
“There must be, for both doors and windows are open. Wait while I see.”
And, suiting the action to the word, the maid, Janette, sprang to the ground, and, opening the gate, walked up to the door of the room where Heloise was sitting.
There was no help for her now. The danger, if danger there was in seeing Mrs. Schuyler, must be met, and Heloise rose at once, and to Janette’s explanation that “Lady Emily would like a few of those lovely roses,” she bowed assent, and went herself to get them.
“It may as well come first as last,” she thought, and, without any covering for her head, she went out into the yard, and, gathering a bunch of the finest flowers, carried them to Mrs. Schuyler, who looked curiously at her, while she expressed her thanks.
Very curiously, too, Heloise looked at her, thinking it would take more than roses to brighten up that sallow, sickly face, and not much wondering that Colonel Schuyler did not like it.
“I don’t believe she remembered me,” she said, as she returned to the house and watched the carriage disappearing from view. “And why should she?” she continued. “She was not at all interested in the matter, and only thought of me as some common girl doing a very foolish thing, I daresay. She looks paler than she did then, and more fretful, too. I wonder if she is happy with all her money?”
And Heloise fell to speculating as to whether she could be happy if she were Mrs. Schuyler and lived in that handsome house on Schuyler Hill. It would be a fine thing, no doubt, to have all the money one wanted, and not to be obliged to turn and fix and mend the Sunday dress until there was but little of the original left; and she tried to fancy herself the mistress of Schuyler Hill, with Colonel Schuyler away and some one else in his place, and her eyes went over the tree-tops to the tall tower and the figure working there.
“Better as it is,” she thought, and leaning back in her chair she went off into a pleasant kind of reverie, from which she was roused by the sound of horse’s feet, galloping swiftly down the road as if on an errand of life or death.
The rider was one of the men from Schuyler Hill, and swiftly as he rode Heloise detected a look of terror on his face and wondered what had happened.
Involuntarily she glanced again toward the tower, and missed the form she had seen there a short time before. But there was nothing strange in that. She often missed him when he went down for nails or orders from his overseer, and she thought no more of it until an hour later, when her mother came up the walk, looking very red and disturbed, and asking, abruptly:
“Have you heard of the dreadful accident at the Hill?”
Heloise never could explain why it was that she seemed intuitively to know that the accident had reference to the only one through whom she could be deeply touched. But she did know it, and her lips were pale as ashes, and trembled in a grieved kind of way as she said: “It is Abelard.”
“Yes; who told you?” her mother asked.
And Heloise replied:
“No one told me. I knew without telling. Is he much hurt? Where is he?”
And she caught her bonnet from the nail and started for the door.
“Stop, child. Where are you going?” Mrs. Fordham said.
And Heloise replied:
“Going to Abelard. Didn’t you tell me he was hurt?”
“Yes; but,—Heloise”—and Mrs. Fordham hesitated a little, frightened by the expression on her daughter’s face, “you must not go. There is no need; he will be here soon. I told them to bring him, as we are the only friends he has, and I hurried home to get the front room ready. Abelard is dead; he fell from the tower and was killed; there they are now.”
And pointing to the group of men coming slowly down theroad, Mrs. Fordham hastened to open her best room, and did not see the look of unutterable anguish and horror which came into her daughter’s face when she heard the news.
Heloise did not faint, but she uttered a low, gasping cry, and held fast to the back of a chair, while everything turned dark about her, and she was conscious of nothing except that in the yard there was the tramp of feet as the men came up the walk, bearing the body of him who had left her only the night before, full of life and health. Then she started, and fleeing up the stairs to her own room, threw herself upon the bed, where she lay listening to the sounds below, and trying to realize the full extent of the horror which had come upon her. At last when all was quiet, and the men were gone, she crept to the window and looked out upon the day, which had seemed so bright to her in the early morning, but was so dark and dreary now.
Colonel Schuyler himself was just going through the gate, so occupied with his own thoughts that he nearly stumbled over a little girl who was coming into the yard, and in whom Heloise recognized Phebe Young, the daughter of the woman with whom Abelard had boarded. Heloise was not afraid of Phebe, but she drew back from the window till Colonel Schuyler was out of sight, feeling as if she almost hated him for having built the house where Abelard lost his life.
There was a knock at the door, and ere Heloise could answer it little Phebe Young came in. She had caught a glimpse of Heloise at the window, and thinking it no harm, had come straight up to her room.
“Please, miss,” she said, laying a paper on the young girl’s lap, “we found this under his jacket pinned tight, and ma knew most it comed from your rose bush, for there hain’t no more like it in Hampstead, and she sent it to you, cause she guesses you liked him some.”
It was the rose Heloise had picked for Abelard and fastened in his buttonhole the night before, when they stood for a moment by the gate, and he told her to watch for him on the morrow as he was to work upon the tower. Now he was dead, and the rose, which had been so fresh and dewy then, was wilted andcrushed, and right in the centre, upon the pure white petals, was a little drop of blood, or rather the stain of one. Abelard’s blood, Heloise knew, and she felt a strange sickness steal over her as she held the faded flower in her hand and gazed upon that bright red spot, the sight of which seemed to stamp a similar mark upon her heart, which ached and throbbed with a new pain.
“Yes, Phebe, thank you; it was kind in your mother; and now, please go; my head is aching badly,” she said; and motioning Phebe from the room, she thrust the blood-stained rose into her bosom and went again to her bed, where she lay until her mother came to see what she was doing.
There were no tears on Heloise’s cheeks, no trace of them in her eyes, but her white face told volumes to Mrs. Fordham, who laid her hand on her daughter’s hair, saying, kindly:
“I never knew you cared so much for him. Poor boy, I am so sorry. He looks very natural. Would you like to see him?”
“No, mother, not now,” was the answer, and that was all that passed between them on the subject of Abelard that day.
Heloise was very sick with headache and kept her room, and at night her mother brought her toast and tea, and tried to make her eat, and told her how kind the Schuylers were, and what a sweet little boy Godfrey was, and how badly he felt at Abelard’s death. He had been to see the body, and his mother had been there, too, and Mrs. Fordham dwelt upon her fine manners and handsome dress, and Godfrey’s velvet suit and manly face, until Heloise felt as if she should go mad, and begged her mother to leave her.
She hated the Schuylers one and all, for through them Abelard had met his death, and she did not dare look into the future or question what it had in store for her. She only felt that all the brightness of her life had been suddenly stricken out, leaving her utterly hopeless and desolate, and long after her mother was asleep in the next room she lay awake wondering what she should do, and if, as she feared, it would be necessary for her to tell. And even if it were not necessary, was it right for her to withhold the secret which was torturing her socruelly? Was it just to Abelard, and did it not look as if she were ashamed of the past as connected with him?
“I am not, darling, I am not!” she moaned; “and to-morrow, when they lower you into the grave, I will be there, and, in a voice everybody can hear, I’ll tell the truth, and face the entire world, mother and all.”
The facing mother was the hardest part of all, and Heloise felt her pulse quicken and her head throb violently as she fancied her mother’s look of surprise and anger when she heard the story which she meant to tell at the grave, and, while thinking how she should combat that anger and reproach, the early summer morning crept into her room, and she heard the watchers with the dead go through the yard into the street, and knew that another day had come.