CHAPTER XIINATIVE LAND ADIEU

As the day of sailing drew near, Lilith’s heart sank into utter despondency.

Up to this time she had been almost unconsciously sustained by the recognized uncertainty of human affairs; by the deep-seated hope that “something might happen” to delay the voyage, or perhaps to put it off altogether.

She watched the newspapers for news of Hereward; but she found none. She knew that Congress was still in session in Washington, and she read all the Congressional reports in the hope of finding his name; but it was not there; not in any debate; not in any speech; not even in the mere rank and file of the yeas and nays when a vote was taken. It seemed to have dropped quite out of public affairs. What had become of that once shining beacon of liberty and light?

Lilith could not even conjecture.

She diligently searched the personal column of thePursuivant; but no carefully worded appeal came to her.

Lilith could not understand this utter silence, even from Ancillon, who had himself fixed in this column as the medium of their intercommunication.

Ah! but Lilith did not know that a coroner’s jury had pronounced her dead—and come to her death “from a fatal blow on the back of her head, inflicted by a blunt instrument held in the hands of some person unknown,” and that she had been given up, if not forgotten, by all her friends.

So Lilith looked through the papers day by day, “hoping against hope” for some sign from her silent husband.

“He knows that I cannot make any,” she said, despairingly, to herself. “He knows that he discarded me, and drove me from his home with insult and contumely. He knows that in my farewell letter to him I wrote that if ever he should review his course towards me, retract his charges against me, and permit me to return, I would go to him, and be to him all that I have been—wife, housekeeper, secretary, guardian of his home, and helper in his office. Yes, I would, for although he does not love me, oh! my Heavenly Father, I do love him, and I cannot help it! Oh! if I could but return to him! But he does not want me. He will not have me. If I had stayed at Cloud Cliffs he would have gone away never to return while I ‘desecrated the house’ with my presence! He told me so! And oh! oh! the scorn and hatred of his looks when he spoke those words! No! he will never relent. He will never retract. He will never permit me to return—never in this world. It is no use to hope. Nothing is going to happen to bring us together. Nothing ever happens that one either hopes or fears. A poor wretch condemned to death hopes something may happen to save him; but it does not, and he dies. A happy girl looking forward to her bridal, fears something may happento stop it; but it does not, and she marries. And oh! my Father, I still keep on hoping against hope; looking against a possibility for something to happen to open my husband’s eyes to show him how cruelly he has wronged me, to bring him to my side. Hoping and expecting with idiotic persistency. Yet I know that nothing will happen. I must ‘dree my weird,’ as the Scotch say.”

All this time Aunt Sophie watched her favorite with a troubled face, and often with tearful eyes. At last one day she said:

“There’s something on your mind, dear, that you never let on to any one about. What is it, dear?”

“It is nothing but vain regrets for all that I have lost, Aunt Sophie, and foolish, mad longings to recover the irrecoverable,” replied Lilith.

The gentle old lady did not quite comprehend her; but she said:

“I don’t believe as you want to go on this voyage, child. I have noticed as the nearer the time comes the worse you are. Now, if you don’t want to go, dear, don’t you go—don’t you. Stay here long o’ me!”

“Oh! Aunt Sophie, I do grieve to leave you, but I must go—I must,” sighed Lilith.

And she held to her resolution in spite of all the good woman could say.

For Lilith felt that since her husband would not relent, would not retract, would not call her back, the farther she could get away from the scene of her suffering the more contented she might be. In change of scene and foreign travel she might forget her misery.

Aunt Sophie, since she could not persuade her favorite to stay with her, busied herself in helping in the final preparations for her sea voyage. She packed little jars of home-made pickles and acid preserves,and little boxes of delicate biscuits and cakes, for Lilith’s private use.

“For,” she said, “though I know them ocean steamers have all the luxuries that can be bought with money, yet I do think as these home-made things is better. And though you mayn’t be downright sea-sick, honey, you’re bound to be a little bit mawkish with the motion of the vessel, and then these little things might suit your appetite when nothing else would.”

“I am sure of it, dear Aunt Sophie. Even a cup of tea is all the sweeter and more refreshing when it is poured out by a friend’s hand,” replied Lilith. Whereupon Aunt Sophie shed a few tears—weakly, not unhappily.

The last day before the sailing came. All the luggage was to be sent down on board the steamer that afternoon; and the next morning the baroness was to call in her carriage to pick up her companion on her way to the ship.

All that forenoon Aunt Sophie wept softly to herself, furtively wiping her eyes whenever she could get a chance.

“I don’t want the child to see me cry. It will only make her feel bad,” she said to herself as she dodged Lilith.

At noon Lilith’s trunk was taken down to the hall, to wait for the expressman to call and carry it to the ship.

Lilith herself, with nothing at all to do, sat with Aunt Sophie at the front parlor window, saying those last, tender words that are always repeated over and over again for days and hours before parting, when there came a ring at the door bell, followed soon by the entrance of Monsieur Le Grange, private secretary to the Baroness Von Bruyin.

The little old gentleman came in, bowing as was his wont.

Mrs. Downie got up to leave the room—thinking that the secretary might have brought some private message from the baroness to her young companion; but he prevented her by a deprecatory bow and a polite disclaimer:

“Pardon, madame! I have come but to say a word, to make an explanation. I have come from Madame la Baronne to her beautiful and accomplisheddame de compagniehere,” he said, turning with another bow to Lilith. “Madame desires me to say, to explain, that she goes not to Europe by the Kron Prinz to-morrow.”

“She does not sail by the Kron Prinz!” exclaimed Lilith, as if in her surprise she could not comprehend the fact.

“No, madame. La Baronne has changed her plan. She sails not to-morrow.”

“Has she changed her mind about going to Europe?” inquired Lilith, with new hope lighting her eyes at this reprieve.

“No, madame. She has not changed her mind, but only her ship. She will go by the Kaiser Wilhelm on Saturday.”

“Dear me, what a pity! Why, she will lose all her passage money!” exclaimed Mrs. Downie, whose economical soul was dismayed at such a useless sacrifice of the “needful.”

“She will lose the half of it, madame, for herself and all her suite, and that is considerable, as her suite is large. But she goes, after all, by a ship of the same line.”

“Well, honey,” said Aunt Sophie, turning to Lilith, “at least this will give me three days more of your dear company; and who knows?—before Saturday something may happen to prevent your going at all.”

“Oh, no!” sighed Lilith “Nothing will happen. Nothing one hopes or fears ever happens.”

“Now, what was the reason why the baroness put off her voyage for only three days at such a cost as that?” inquired simple Aunt Sophie, asking a question that Lilith had longed to ask but had shrunk from putting.

“I do not know, madame. Her resolution was taken very suddenly this morning,” said the secretary, rising to take leave.

“Has the baroness any commands for me?” inquired Lilith, also rising.

“No, madame, none,” replied the secretary, bowing himself out.

“Well, of all the whims I ever heard of in my life!” exclaimed Aunt Sophie. “But, anyways, ‘it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.’ And this here ‘whim’ has blown me the blessing of your company for three days more, honey, and something may happen.”

Lilith shook her head incredulously.

She gave all her time to Aunt Sophie that day and the next day, when the old lady said to her:

“To think, now, if it hadn’t been for the whim of the baroness you would now have been on the ocean, instead of sitting here beside me. And maybe you won’t go on Saturday, neither, who knows? Something may happen.”

But again Lilith smiled and shook her head.

In the course of the forenoon a note came from the baroness to Lilith.

“Come to me this evening, my dear, and I will tell you why I changed my ship. The news will astonish you, I think, and it may indeed change my whole destiny. Tell your good landlady not to expect you back soon, as I shall keep you until a late hour, andthen return you safe, as before, under the escort of Monsieur Le Grange. Answer by the messenger.

“Affectionately, L. V. B.”

Lilith wrote a note to the effect that she would wait on the baroness at seven o’clock that evening, and sent it by the page who had brought the first.

Then she showed the baroness’ note to Aunt Sophie, who, after hearing it read, was filled with curiosity.

“Now what on earth can she have to tell you that will astonish you so much? Maybe she is going to marry the old secretary, and wants you to be bridesmaid!” said Aunt Sophie.

Lilith looked at the simple woman and laughed. It was the first time she had laughed since her heavy sorrow.

“Well, now, stranger things than that has happened, honey; let alone the fact that nobody can ever account for the whims of these fine ladies. And come to think of it, didn’t she marry an old man for her first husband? Maybe she has a fancy for old men. Some women have, I know,” said Aunt Sophie, nodding her head sagaciously.

“Perhaps,” said Lilith, remembering Mrs. Jab Jordon, and being unable to gainsay Aunt Sophie’s declaration—“perhaps; but I do not think Madame Von Bruyin is one of those women. She married the Herr Baron to please her father.”

“She don’t look to me like one as would do anything as didn’t please herself just as well. She is a good lady, a mighty good lady, and a generous and a charitable one, and she give me a great deal of money for the poor children. And I shall always be thankful to her and pray for her, and get the brethren to pray for her; but all the same, she’s got a willof her own, my dear. She will have her own way—you may depend she will.

‘Gin mammie and daddie and a’ gang mad,’

as the old song says.”

“Well, I shall know to-morrow why she has delayed her voyage,” said Lilith.

“Yes, and if she is going to marry the old secretary—and a nice old gentleman he is, too, I will say that for him—she won’t want you, my dear. It’s only rich old maids and rich widows as wants companions—married women don’t. And so she’ll let you off your bargain and pay you compensation, which is no more than right and proper, she being wealthy and generous and you being a young orphan. And that’s what’s going to happen, maybe, to prevent your voyage, and I shall have you all to myself. Who knows?”

“I do not think that will happen, Aunt Sophie.”

“Well, we’ll see.”

“Yes, very soon. This very evening.”

“And if it is that which I said, of course we shall all hear it. But if it is anything else that has made her change her day of sailing, will you tell me?”

“Yes, Aunt Sophie, unless the communication of the baroness to me should be of a confidential nature,” said Lilith.

“How I do hate secrets! I never had one of my own in my life,” said Aunt Sophie, with funny simplicity.

When evening came Lilith set out to walk to the hotel to keep her appointment with the baroness.

When she reached that lady’s apartments, however, she was met by the secretary, who, after politely greeting her, explained the absence of the baroness.

“Madame is ill! She is ill! Headache. Migraine, you know,” he said, in a very pathetic tone. “Shelies in a room pitch dark; her maid sits beside her, silent as death. It is a vault—it is a grave, for she cannot bear the faintest ray of light, or murmur of sound. She can see no one; but before she retired to her bed she bade me receive you here, excuse her to you, and say to you, in brief, that the reason why she changed her steamer was that there was a party going by the Kron Prinz with whom she did not wish to sail, and that she would explain further when you meet. Meanwhile, chère madame, all arrangements are completed for our embarkation on the Kaiser Wilhelm on Saturday morning. Our baggage will be sent on board on Friday evening.”

Lilith thanked the old secretary for his information, left her sympathetic regrets for Madame Von Bruyin, and arose to depart.

“I will have the honor to see you home, madame,” said the polite secretary, as he attended Lilith downstairs and out to the sidewalk.

There, as before, he called a carriage, put her into it, took a seat by her side and ordered the coachman to drive to Mrs. Downie’s boarding-house.

He only left Lilith when he had seen her enter the hall.

“And now, honey, what is it?” inquired Aunt Sophie, as soon as the two friends were seated in the front parlor together. “You are back a heap sooner than I expected. What did she tell you?”

“Nothing. I did not see her. She has gone to bed with a severe headache. But she left a short message for me with Monsieur Le Grange to the effect that the reason why she would not sail by the Kron Prinz was that there was a party going by that steamer with whom she did not wish to travel,” answered Lilith.

“Now, did ever any soul hear the like of that?” exclaimed Mrs. Downie. “If that doesn’t cap all thewhims I ever heard of in all the days of my life! But I oughtn’t to say anything agin’ her, I oughtn’t indeed, for she’s a mighty good lady and a charitable one, and she give me such a heap of money for the poor street children.”

Lilith saw no more of Madame Von Bruyin until Saturday morning, when the baroness called in her carriage to pick up her companion on her way to the steamer.

Madame got out of her coach and went into the house for the purpose of bidding good-bye to Mrs. Downie, whom she found crying over Lilith.

“You’ll be good to the child, madame! I know you will be good to her! I believe, I hope, I trust you will,” said Aunt Sophie, a little inconsistently, as, after reiterated leave-taking, she resigned Lilith into the charge of the baroness.

“Have no fear. She shall be happy, if I can make her so,” said the lady. And then, with a sudden impulse of kindness, she added the question:

“Would you not like to go down to the ship and see us off? Come with us—do! And the same carriage can bring you back to your own door.”

“Oh, thank you, yes. Indeed, indeed, I would. And I won’t be a minute in getting on my things,” said the grateful old lady, as she hurried from the room.

In a very few moments she reappeared with her mashed black silk bonnet, rusty black Canton crape shawl, and thread gloves.

The three went out to the carriage, in which the old Frenchman had remained seated. When they appeared he got out, politely saluted the party, handed them into their seats, and then followed them.

The four persons just comfortably filled the carriage. Madame’s maid and footman followed in anothercarriage, having charge of their lady’s lighter luggage.

And so they started to drive down the avenue to the ferry by which they were to cross to Hoboken, from which point the steamer was to sail.

Arrived at the pier on the other side, they found their ship, and in and about it a crowd, mostly composed of foreigners, commercial travelers, returning German emigrants, and a few summer tourists.

Aunt Sophie accompanied her friends on board the steamer, and became an interested and sympathetic spectator of the busy and affecting scene around her. Some of the leave-takings touched her tender heart even to tears, and made her think of the happy land where there would be “no more sorrow nor crying,” and she kept on fortifying her mind by repeating over and over to herself the lines of her hymn:

“Oh, that will be joyful!Joyful, joyful, joyful!Oh, that will be joyfulTo meet, to part no more!To meet to part no more,On Canaan’s happy shore,Where we shall meetAt Jesus’ feet,And meet to part no more!”

“Oh, that will be joyful!

Joyful, joyful, joyful!

Oh, that will be joyful

To meet, to part no more!

To meet to part no more,

On Canaan’s happy shore,

Where we shall meet

At Jesus’ feet,

And meet to part no more!”

Tears were in her tender eyes while the music of the simple hymn was sounding through her spirit.

Farewells were falling from faltering lips and failing hearts all around her. And in a saloon not far off a party of Germans were celebrating their embarkation by drinking lager and singing songs, in which Fatherland was the most frequent word and the chorus.

But Aunt Sophie heard none of this. She was in a dream.

She was aroused by the gentle voice of Lilith in her ear, saying:

“Aunt Sophie, the baroness says you have just time to bid us good-bye and get comfortably back to the pier. Monsieur Le Grange is waiting here to take you to the carriage, after which he will barely have time to return to us before the plank is drawn. Dear Aunt Sophie, the moment has come. Bid me good-bye and give me your blessing.”

Mrs. Downie caught Lilith to her breast, burst into tears and sobbed aloud.

Lilith kissed her repeatedly, reiterating all the promises she had ever made, never to forget her, always to love her, often to write to her, and soon as possible to return.

“Madame, I must have the honor, if you please,” said Monsieur Le Grange, with kindly firmness, as he drew the arm of the little old lady within his own and led her off to the gang plank, over which a sad procession was passing to the pier.

She had not even remembered to take leave of the baroness.

In five minutes Monsieur Le Grange returned to the deck, rejoined Madame Von Bruyin’s party and reported:

“Madame Downie has serened herself on the cushions of the carriage. She repeats to herself some consoling office of her religion. She——”

But the good secretary’s voice was drowned in the loud report of the farewell gun.

And the next minute the Kaiser Wilhelm stood out to sea.

It was two hours later. Most of the passengers had gone below, either to arrange their berths, or to guard against the first approaches of sea-sickness.

Madame Von Bruyin and her young companion sat well forward on the deck and quite out of hearingof any fellow-voyager. They had been silently gazing out to sea for a few minutes, when the baroness suddenly turned to her companion and said:

“I presume Monsieur Le Grange gave you my message that evening when you came to the hotel and found me too ill to keep my appointment?”

“Yes, madame.”

“And he told you my reason for changing steamers?”

“Yes, madame, very briefly, to the effect that there was a party on board the Kron Prinz with whom you did not wish to travel.”

“Yes, that was my short message; but he also added, if he reported me aright, that I would explain further when we should meet.”

“He told me that, madame.”

“Well, my dear, I suppose you could never be able to guess who it was from whom I shrank on the Kron Prinz.”

“No, I am sure I could not. I have known so very few of your acquaintances, madame.”

“Yet of this especial acquaintance I have spoken to you more than once. Surely now you can guess who it is that has gone before us to Europe in the Kron Prinz, can you not?”

“No, madame; unless—unless it was Prince Carl of Altenburg——”

“Prince Carl? Well, you know, of course, he was a bore, and worried me not a little; but I should not have changed my steamer on his account, even if he had been on board the Kron Prinz, which he was not. No, you must try again.”

“I am sure I cannot guess, madame,” said Lilith, with a smile, but with no interest in the question.

“Then I must tell you,” said the lady; and dropping her voice, she added: “Who should it be but my old lover, Mr. Tudor Hereward, who has justbeen appointed Secretary of Legation to the Court of ——.”

Lilith grew cold as death, but did not reply.

The baroness, too full of the subject, and of her own possible fortunes in connection with it, failed to notice her companion’s silence, and went on eagerly to say:

“Yes, I first saw the announcement of his appointment, and of his intended voyage on the Kron Prinz, in thePursuivantof Tuesday morning. And I saw something more in connection with his history that surprised me very much—something that seemed to render it indelicate, embarrassing, and even improper for me to make this sea voyage in his company. But we shall be sure to meet on the other side. And that meeting will probably decide our destinies. For now, my dear, we are both free!”

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