Yours lovingly,“Max.”
Yours lovingly,“Max.”
Yours lovingly,“Max.”
Yours lovingly,
“Max.”
This was Max’s letter, which Grace read as she sat in her cosy sitting-room with every luxury around her which money could buy, from the hot house roses on the stand beside her to the costly rug on which her chair was standing in the ruddy glow of the cheerful grate fire. And as she read it she felt again the cold breath which had swept over her when Max was telling her of the young girl who had interested him so much. And in a way Grace, too, had interested herself in Maude, and through her maid had ascertained who she was, and that she was teaching in the southern part of the town. And there her interest had ceased. But it revived again on the receipt of Max’s letter and she said, “I must see this girl first and know what she is like. A woman can judge a woman better than a man, but I wish Max had not said what he did about our growing old. Am I greatly changed, I wonder?”
She could manage her chair herself in the house, and wheeling it before a long mirror, she leaned eagerly forward and examined the face reflected there. A pale, sweet face, framed in masses of snow white hair, which rather added to its youthful appearance than detracted from it, although she did not think so. She had been so proud of her golden hair, and the bitterest tears she had ever shed had been for the change in it.
“It’s my hair,” she whispered sadly,—“hair which belongs to a woman of sixty, rather than thirty-three, and there is a tired look about my eyes and mouth. Yes, I am growing old, oh, Max——,” and the slender fingers were pressed over the beautiful blue eyes where the tears came so fast. “Yes, I’ll see the girl,” she said, “and if I like her face, I’ll take her to please him.”
She knew there was to be an illumination on Christmas Eve in the church on Laurel Hill, and that Maude Graham was to sing a Christmas anthem alone.
“I’ll go, and hear, and see,” she decided, and when the evening came Grace was there in the Raynor pew listening while Maude Graham sang, her bright face glowing with excitement and her full, rich voice rising higher and higher, clearer and clearer, until it filled the church as it had never been filled before, and thrilled every nerve of the woman watching her so intently.
“Yes, she is pretty and good, too; I cannot be deceived in that face,” she said to herself, and when, after the services were over and Maude came up the aisle past the pew where she was sitting, she put out her hand and said, “Come here, my dear, and let me thank you for the pleasure you have given me. You have a wonderful voice and some time you must comeand sing to me. I am Miss Raynor, and you are Maude Graham.”
This was their introduction to each other, and that night Maud dreamed of the lovely face which had smiled upon her, and the voice, which had spoken so kindly to her.
Two weeks afterwards Grace’s note was brought to her and she read it with her feet upon the stove hearth and the low January sun shining in upon her.
Miss Raynor wanted her for a companion and friend, to read and sing to and soothe her in the hours of languor and depression, which were many.
“I am lonely,” she wrote, “and, as you know, wholly incapacitated from mingling with the world, and I want some one with me different from my maid. Will you come to me, Miss Graham? I will try to make you happy. If money is any object I will give you twice as much as you are now receiving, whatever that may be. Think of it and let me know your decision soon.
“Yours very truly,“Grace Raynor.”
“Yours very truly,“Grace Raynor.”
“Yours very truly,“Grace Raynor.”
“Yours very truly,
“Grace Raynor.”
“Oh,” Maude cried. “Eight dollars a week and a home at the Cedars, instead of four dollars a week and boarding around. Of course I will go, though not till my present engagement expires. This will not be until some time in March,” and she began to wonder if she could endure it so long, and, now that the pressure was lifting, how she had ever borne it at all.
But whatever may be the nature of our surroundings, time passes quickly, and leaves behind a sense of nearly as much pleasure as pain, and when at last the closing day of school came, it was with genuine feelings of regretthat Maude said good-bye to the pupils she had learned to love and the patrons who had been so kind to her.
It had cost Grace a struggle before she decided to take Maude as her companion, and she had been driven past the little log house among the hills and through the Bush district, that she might judge for herself of the girl’s surroundings. The day was raw and blustering, and great banks of snow were piled against the fences and lay heaped up in the road unbroken save by a foot path made by the children’s feet.
“And it is through this she walks in the morning, and then sits all day in that dingy room. I don’t believe I should like it,” Grace thought, and that night she wrote to Maude, offering her a situation with herself.
And now, on a lovely morning in April, when the crocuses and snowdrops were just beginning to blossom, she sat waiting for her, wondering if she had done well or ill for herself. She had seen Maude and talked with her, for the latter had called at the Cedars and spent an hour or more, and Grace had learned much from her of her former life and of Spring Farm, which she was going to buy back. Max’s name, however, was not mentioned, although he was constantly in the minds of both, and Grace was wondering if hewould come oftener to the Cedars if Maude were there. She could not be jealous of the girl, and yet the idea had taken possession of her that she was bringing her to the Cedars for Max rather than for herself, and this detracted a little from her pleasure when she began to fit up the room her companion was to occupy. Such a pretty room it was, just over her own, with a bow window looking across the valley where the lake lay sleeping, and on to the hills and the log school-house which, had it been higher, might have been seen above the woods which surrounded it. A room all pink and white, with roses and lilies everywhere, and a bright fire in the grate before which a willow chair was standing and a Maltese kitten sleeping when Maude was ushered into it by Jane, Miss Raynor’s maid.
“Oh, it is so lovely,” Maude thought, as she looked about her, wondering if it were not a dream from which she should presently awake.
But it was no dream, and as the days went on it came to be real to her, and she was conscious of a deep and growing affection for the woman who was always so kind to her and who treated her like an equal rather than a hired companion. Together they read and talked of the books which Maude liked best, and gradually Grace learned of the dream life Maude had led before coming to Richland, and of the people who had deserted her among the hills, but who in this more congenial atmosphere came trooping back, legions of them, and crowding her brain until she had to tell of them, and of the two lives she was living, the ideal and the real. She was sitting on a stool at Grace’s feet, with her face flushed with excitement as she talked of the Kimbricks, and Websters, and Angeline Mason, whowere all with her now as they had been at home, and all as real to her as Miss Raynor was herself. Laying her hand upon the girl’s brown curls, Grace said, half laughingly, “And so you are going to write a book. Well, I believe all girls have some such aspiration. I had it once, but it was swallowed up by a stronger, deeper feeling, which absorbed my whole being.”
Here Grace’s voice trembled a little as she leaned back in her chair and seemed to be thinking. Then, rousing herself, she asked suddenly, “How old are you, Maude?”
“Nineteen this month,” was Maude’s reply, and Grace went on: “Just my age when the great sorrow came. That was fourteen years ago next June. I am thirty-three, and Max is thirty-seven.”
She said this last more to herself than to Maude, who started slightly, for this was the first time his name had been mentioned since she came to the Cedars.
After a moment Grace continued: “I have never spoken to you of Mr. Gordon, although I know you have met him. You were with him on the train from Albany to Canandaigua; he told me of you.”
“He did!” Maude exclaimed, with a ring in her voice which made Grace’s heart beat a little faster, but she went calmly on:
“Yes; he was greatly interested in you, although he did not then know who you were; but he knows now. He is coming here soon. We have been engaged ever since I was seventeen and he was twenty-one; fourteen years ago the 20th of June we were to have been married. Everything was ready; my bridal dress and veil had been brought home, and I tried them on one morning to see how I looked in them. I was beautiful,Max said, and I think he told the truth; for a woman may certainly know whether the face she sees in the mirror be pretty or not, and the picture I saw was very fair, while he, who stood beside me, was splendid in his young manhood. How I loved him; more, I fear, than I loved God, and for that I was punished,—oh, so dreadfully punished. We rode together that afternoon, Max and I, and I was wondering if there were ever a girl as happy as myself, and pitying the women I met because they had no Max beside them, when suddenly my horse reared, frightened by a dog, and I was thrown upon a sharp curb-stone. Of the months of agony which followed I cannot tell you, except that I prayed to die and so be rid of pain. The injury was in my spine, and I have never walked in all the fourteen years since. Max has been true to me, and would have married me had I allowed it. But I cannot burden him with a cripple, and sometimes I wish, or think I do, that he would find some one younger, fairer than I am, on whom to lavish his love. He would make a wife so happy. And yet it would be hard for me, I love him so much. Oh, Max; I don’t believe he knows how dear he is to me.”
She was crying softly now, and Maude was crying, too; and as she smoothed the snow-white hair and kissed the brow on which lines were beginning to show, she said:
“He will never find a sweeter face than yours.”
To her Max Gordon now was only the betrothed husband of her mistress, and still she found herself looking forward to his visit with a keen interest, wondering what he would say to her, and if his eyes would kindle at sight of her as they had done when she saw him inthe church at Laurel Hill. He was to come on the 20th, the anniversary of the day which was to have been his bridal day, and when the morning came, Grace said to Maude:
“I’d like to wear my wedding gown; do you think it would be too much like Dickens’ Miss Havershaw?”
“Yes, yes,” Maude answered, quickly, feeling that faded satin and lace of fourteen years’ standing would be sadly out of place. “You are lovely in those light gowns you wear so much,” she said.
So Grace wore the dress which Maude selected for her; a soft, woolen fabric of a creamy tint, with a blue shawl, the color of her eyes, thrown around her, and a bunch of June pinks, Max’s favorite flowers, at her belt, Then, when she was ready, Maude wheeled her out to the piazza, where they waited for their visitor.
The train was late that morning and lunch was nearly ready before they saw the open carriage turn into the grounds, with Max standing up in it and waving his hat to them.
“Oh, Maude,” Grace said, “I would give all I am worth to go and meet him. Isn’t he handsome and grand, my Max!” she continued, as if she would assert her right to him and hold it against the world.
But Maude did not hear her, for as Max alighted fromthe carriage and came eagerly forward, she stole away, feeling that it was not for her to witness the meeting of the lovers.
“Dear Max, you are not changed, are you?” Grace cried, extending her arms to him, with the effort to rise which she involuntarily made so often, and which was pitiful to see.
“Changed, darling? How could I change in less than a year?” Max answered, as he drew her face down to his bosom and stroked her hair.
Grace was not thinking of a physical change. Indeed she did not know what she did mean, for she was not herself conscious how strong an idea had taken possession of her that she was losing Max. But with him there beside her, her morbid fears vanished, and letting her head rest upon his arm, she said:
“I don’t know, Max, only things come back to me to-day and I am thinking of fourteen years ago and that I am fourteen years older than I was then, and crippled and helpless and faded, while you are young as ever. Oh, Max, stay by me till the last. It will not be for long. I am growing so tired and sad.”
Grace hardly knew what she was saying, or why, as she said it, Maude Graham’s face, young and fair and fresh, seemed to come between herself and Max, any more than he could have told why he was so vaguely wondering what had become of the girl in black, whom he had seen in the distance quite as soon as he had seen the woman in the chair. During his journey Grace and Maude had been pretty equally in his mind, and he was conscious of the feeling that the Cedars held an added attraction for him because the latter was there; and now, when he began to have a faint perception ofGrace’s meaning, though he did not associate it with Maude, he felt half guilty because he had for a moment thought any place where Grace was could be made pleasanter than she could make it. Taking her face between his hands he looked at it more closely, noticing with a pang that it had grown thinner and paler and that there were lines about the eyes and the mouth, while the blue veins stood out full and distinct upon the forehead. Was she slowly fading? he asked himself, resolving that nothing should be lacking on his part to prove that she was just as dear to him as in the days when they were young and the future bright before them. He did not even speak of Maude until he saw her in the distance, trying to train a refractory honeysuckle over a tall frame. Then he said:
“Is that Miss Graham, and do you like her as well as ever?”
“Yes, better and better every day,” was Grace’s reply. “It was a little awkward at first to have a stranger with me continually, but I am accustomed to her now, and couldn’t part with her. She is very dear to me,” she continued, while Max listened and watched the girl, moving about so gracefully, and once showing her arms to the elbows as her wide sleeves fell back in her efforts to reach the top of the frame.
“She oughtn’t to do that,” Grace said. “She is not tall enough. Go and help her, Max,” and nothing loth, Max went along the terrace to where Maude was standing, her face flushed with exercise as she gave him her hand and said, “Good-morning, Mr. Gordon. I am Maude Graham. Perhaps you remember me.”
“How could I forget you,” sprang to Max’s lips, but he said instead, “Good-morning, Miss Graham. I havecome to help you. Miss Raynor thinks it is bad for your heart to reach so high.”
Maude could have told him that her heart had not beaten one half as fast while reaching up as it was beating now, with him there beside her holding the vine while she tied it to its place, his hand touching hers and his arm once thrown out to keep her from falling as she stumbled backward. It took a long time to fix that honeysuckle, and Max had leisure to tell Maude of a call made upon her mother only a week before.
“Spring Farm is looking its loveliest, with the roses and lilies in bloom,” he said, “and Angie, my sister, is enjoying it immensely. She has filled the house with her city friends and has made some changes, of which I think you would approve. Your mother does, but when she wanted to cut down that apple-tree in the corner I would not let her do it. You remember it, don’t you?”
“Oh, Mr. Gordon,” Maude exclaimed, “don’t let her touch that tree. My play-house was under it, and there the people used to come to see me.”
He did not know who the people were, for he had never heard of Maude’s brain children,—the Kimbricks and the Websters,—and could hardly have understood if he had; but Maude’s voice was very pathetic and the eyes which looked at him were full of tears, moving him strangely and making him very earnest in his manner as he assured her that every tree and shrub should be kept intact for her.
“You know you are going to buy it back,” he continued laughingly, as they walked slowly toward the house where Grace was waiting to be taken in to lunch.
“Yes, and I shall do it, too. You will see; it may bemany years, but I trust you to keep it for me,” Maude said, and he replied, “You may trust me with anything, and I shall not disappoint you.”
The talk by the honeysuckle was one of many which took place while Max was at the Cedars, for Grace was too unselfish to keep him chained to her side, and insisted that he should enjoy what there was to enjoy in the way of rides and drives in the neighborhood, and as she could not often go with him she sent Maude in her stead, even though she knew the danger there was in it, for she was not insensible to Max’s admiration for the girl, or Maude’s interest in him.
“If Max is true to me to the last, and he will be, it is all I ask,” she thought, and gave no sign of the ache in her heart, when she saw him going from her with Maude and felt that it was in more senses than one. “If he is happy, I am happy, too, she would say to herself, as she sat alone hour after hour, while Max and Maude explored the country in every direction.
Sometimes they drove together, but oftener rode, for Maude was a fine horsewoman and never looked better than when on horseback, in the becoming habit which Grace had given her and which fitted her admirably. Together they went through the pleasant Richland woods, where the grass was like a mossy carpet beneath their horses’ hoofs, and the singing of the birds and the brook was the only sound which broke the summer stillness, then again they galloped over the hills and round the lake, and once through the Bush district, up to the little log house which Max expressed a wish to see. It was past the hour for school. Teacher and scholars had gone home, and tying their horses to the fence they went into the dingy room and sat down side by sideupon one of the wooden benches, and just where a ray of sunlight fell upon Maude’s face and hair, for she had removed her hat and was fanning herself with it. She was very beautiful, with that halo around her head, Max thought, as he sat watching and listening to her, as in answer to his question, “How could you endure it here?” she told him of her terrible homesickness during the first weeks of her life as a school-teacher.
“I longed so for mother and Johnnie,” she said, “and was always thinking of them, and the dear old home, and—and sometimes—of you, too, before I received your letter.”
“Of me!” Max said, moving a little nearer to her, while she went on:
“Yes, I’ve wanted to tell you how angry I was because you bought our home. I wrote you something about it, you remember, but I did not tell you half how bitter I felt. I know now you were not to blame, but I did not think so then, and said some harsh things of you to Archie; perhaps he told you. I said he might. Did he?”
“No,” Max answered, playing idly with the riding whip Maude held in her hand. “No, Archie has only told me pleasant things of you. I think he is very fond of you,” and he looked straight into Maude’s face, waiting for her reply.
It was surely nothing to him whether Archie were fond of Maude, or she were fond of Archie, and yet her answer was very reassuring and lifted from his heart a little shadow resting there.
“Yes,” Maude said, without the slightest change in voice or expression. “Archie and I are good friends. I have known him and played with him, and quarreledwith him ever since I was a child, so that he seems more like a brother than anything else.”
“Oh, ye-es,” Max resumed, with a feeling of relief, as he let his arm rest on the high desk behind her, so that if she moved ever so little it would touch her.
There was in Max’s mind no thought of love-making. Indeed, he did not know that he was thinking of anything except the lovely picture the young girl made with the sunlight playing on her hair and the shy look in her eyes as, in a pretty, apologetic way she told him how she had disliked him and credited him with all the trouble which had come upon them since her father’s death.
“Why, I thought I hated you,” she said with energy.
“Hated me! Oh, Maude, you don’t hate me now, I hope;—I could not bear that,” Max said, letting the whip fall and taking Maude’s hand in his, as he said again, “You don’t hate me now?”
“No, no; oh, no. I—oh, Mr. Gordon,” Maude began, but stopped abruptly, startled by something in the eyes of the man, who had never called her Maude before, and whose voice had never sounded as it did now, making every nerve thrill with a sudden joy, all the sweeter, perhaps, because she knew it must not be.
Wrenching her hand from his and springing to her feet she said, “It is growing late, and Miss Raynor is waiting for us. Have you forgottenher?”
He had forgotten her for one delirious moment, but she came back to him with a throb of pain and self-reproach that he had allowed himself to swerve in the slightest degree from his loyalty to her.
“I am not a man, but a traitor,” he said to himself,as he helped Maude into her saddle and then vaulted into his own.
The ride home was a comparatively silent one, for both knew that they had not been quite true to the woman who welcomed them back so sweetly and asked so many questions about their ride and what they had seen. Poor Grace; she did not in the least understand why Maude lavished so much attention upon her that evening, or why Max lingered longer than usual at her side, or why his voice was so tender and loving, when he at last said good-night and went to his own room, and the self-castigation which he knew awaited him there.
“I was a villain,” he said, as he recalled that little episode in the school-house, when to have put his arm around Maude Graham and held her for a moment, would have been like heaven to him. “I was false to Grace, although I did not mean it, and, God helping me, I will never be so again.” Then, as he remembered the expression of the eyes which had looked up so shyly at him, he said aloud, “Could I win her, were I free? But that is impossible. May God forgive me for the thought. Oh, why has Grace thrown her so much in my way? She surely is to blame for that, while I——well, I am a fool, and a knave, and a sneak.”
He called himself a great many hard names that night, and registered a vow that so long as Grace lived, and he said he hoped she would live forever, he would be true to her no matter how strong the temptation placed in his way. It was a fierce battle Max fought, but he came off conqueror, and the meeting between himself and Maude next morning was as natural as if toneither of them had ever come a moment when they had a glimpse of the happiness which, under other circumstances, might perhaps have been theirs. Maude, too, had had her hours of remorse and contrition and close questioning as to the cause of the strange joy which had thrilled every nerve when Max Gordon called her Maude and asked her if she hated him.
“Hate him! Never!” she thought; “but I have been false to the truest, best woman that ever lived. She trusted her lover to me, and——”
She did not quite know what she had done, but whatever it was it should not be repeated. There were to be no more rides, or drives, or talks alone with Max. And when next day Grace suggested that she go with him to an adjoining town where a fair was to be held, she took refuge in a headache and insisted that Grace should go herself, while Max, too, encouraged it, and tried to believe that he was just as happy with her beside him as he would have been with the young girl who brought a cushion for her mistress’ back and adjusted her shawl about her shoulders and arranged her bonnet strings, and then, kissing her fondly, said, “I am so glad that you are going instead of myself.”
This was for the benefit of Max, at whom she nodded a little defiantly, and who understood her meaning as well as if she had put it into words. Everything was over between them, and he accepted the situation, and during the remainder of his stay at the Cedars, devoted himself to Grace with an assiduity worthy of the most ardent lover. He even remained longer than he had intended doing, for Grace was loth to let him go, and the soft haze of early September was beginning to show on the Richland hills when he at last said good-bye,promising to come again at Christmas, if it were possible to do so.
It was a cold, stormy afternoon in March. The thermometer marked six below zero, and the snow which had fallen the day before was tossed by the wind in great white clouds, which sifted through every crevice of the house at the Cedars, and beat against the window from which Maude Graham was looking anxiously out into the storm for the carriage which had been sent to meet the train in which Max Gordon was expected. He had not kept his promise to be with Grace at Christmas. An important lawsuit had detained him, and as it would be necessary for him to go to London immediately after its close, he could not tell just when he would be at the Cedars again.
All through the autumn Grace had been failing, while a cold, taken in November, had left her with a cough, which clung to her persistently. Still she kept up, looking forward to the holidays, when Max would be with her. But when she found he was not coming she lost all courage, and Maude was alarmed to see how rapidly she failed. Nearly all the day she lay upon the couch in her bedroom, while Maude read or sang to her or talked with her of the book which had actually been commenced, and in which Grace was almost as muchinterested as Maude herself. Grace was a careful and discriminating critic, and if Maude were ever a success she would owe much of it to the kind friend whose sympathy and advice were so invaluable. A portion of every day she wrote, and every evening read what she had written, to Grace, who smiled as she recognized Max Gordon in the hero and knew that Maude was weaving the tale mostly from her own experience. Even the Bush district and its people furnished material for the plot, and more than one boy and girl who had called Maude schoolma’am figured in its pages, while Grace was everywhere, permeating the whole with her sweetness and purity.
“I shall dedicate it to you,” Maude said to her one day, and Grace replied:
“That will be kind; but I shall not be here to see it, for before your book is published I shall be lying under the flowers in Mt. Auburn. I want you to take me there, if Max is not here to do it.”
“Oh, Miss Raynor,” Maude cried, dropping her MS. and sinking upon her knees beside the couch where Grace was lying, “you must not talk that way. You are not going to die. I can’t lose you, the dearest friend I ever had. What should I do without you, and what would Max Gordon do?”
At the mention of Max’s name a faint smile played around Grace’s white lips, and lifting her thin hand she laid it caressingly upon the girl’s brown hair as she said:
“Max will be sorry for awhile, but after a time there will be a change, and I shall be only a memory. Tell him I was willing, and that although it was hard at first it was easy at the last.”
What did she mean? Maude asked herself, while her thoughts went back to that summer afternoon in the log school-house on the hill, when Max Gordon’s eyes and voice had in them a tone and look born of more than mere friendship. Did Grace know? Had she guessed the truth? Maude wondered, as, conscience-stricken, she laid her burning cheek against the pale one upon the pillow. There was silence a moment, and when Grace spoke again she said:
“It is nearly time for Max to be starting for Europe, or I should send for him to come, I wish so much to see him once more before I die.”
“Do you think a hundred trips to Europe would keep him from you if he knew you wanted him?” Maude asked, and Grace replied:
“Perhaps not. I don’t know. I only wish he were here.”
This was the last of February, and after that Grace failed so fast, that with the hope that it might reach him before he sailed, Maude wrote to Max, telling him to come at once, if he would see Grace before she died. She knew about how long it would take her letter to reach him and how long for him to come, allowing for no delays, and on the morning of the first day when she could by any chance expect him, she sent the carriage to the Canandaigua station, and then all through the hours of the long, dreary day, she sat by Grace’s bedside, watching with a sinking heart the pallor on her lips and brow, and the look she could not mistake deepening on her face.
“What if she should die before he gets here, or what if he should not come at all?” she thought, as the hours went by.
She was more afraid of the latter, and when she saw the carriage coming up the avenue she strained her eyes through the blinding snow to see if he were in it. When he came before he had stood up and waved his hat to them, but there was no token now to tell if he were there, and she waited breathlessly until the carriage stopped before the side entrance, knowing then for sure that he had come.
“Thank God!” she cried, as she went out to meet him, bursting into tears as she said to him, “I am so glad, and so will Miss Raynor be. She does not know that I wrote you. I didn’t tell her, for fear you wouldn’t come.”
She had given him her hand and he was holding it fast as she led him into the hall. She did not ask him when or where he received her letter. She only helped him off with his coat, and made him sit down by the fire while she told him how rapidly Grace had failed and how little hope there was that she would ever recover.
“You will help her, if anything can. I am going to prepare her now,” she said, and, going out, she left him there alone.
He had been very sorry himself that he could not keep his promise at Christmas, and had tried to find a few days in which to visit the Cedars between the close of the suit and his departure for England. But he could not, and his passage was taken and his luggage on the ship, which was to sail early in the morning, when, about six o’clock in the evening, Maude’s letter was brought to him, changing his plans at once. Grace was dying,—the woman he had loved so long, and although thousands of dollars depended upon his keepinghis appointment in London, he must lose it all, and go to her. Sending for his luggage, and writing a few letters of explanation, the next morning found him on his way to the Cedars, which he reached on the day when Maude expected him.
She had left Grace asleep when she went to meet Max, but on re-entering her room found her awake and leaning on her elbow in the attitude of intense listening.
“Oh, Maude,” she said, “was it a dream, or did I hear Max speaking to you in the hall? Tell me is he here?”
“Yes, he is here. I sent for him and he came,” Maude replied, while Grace fell back upon her pillow, whispering faintly:
“Bring him at once.”
“Come,” Maude said to Max, who followed her to the sick-room, where she left him alone with Grace.
He stayed by her all that night and the day following, in order to give Maude the rest she needed, but when the second night came they kept the watch together, he on one side of the bed, and she upon the other, with their eyes fixed upon the white, pinched face where the shadow of death was settling. For several hours Grace slept quietly. Then, just as the gray daylight was beginning to show itself in the corners of the room, she awoke and asked:
“Where is Max?”
“Here, darling,” was his response, as he bent over her and kissed her lips.
“I think it has grown cold and dark, for I can’t see you,” she said, groping for his hand, which she held tightly between her own as she went on: “I have been dreaming, Max,—such a pleasant dream, for I wasyoung again,—young as Maude, and wore my bridal dress, just as I did that day when you said I was so pretty. Do you remember it? That was years ago,—oh! so many,—and I am getting old; we both are growing old. You said so in your letter. But Maude is young, and in my dream she wore the bridal dress at the last, and I saw my own grave, with you beside it and Maude, and both so sorry because I was dead. But it is better so, and I am glad to die and be at rest. If I could be what I once was, oh! how I should cling to life! For I love you so much! Oh, Max, do you know, can you guess how I have loved you all these years, and what it has cost me to give you up?”
Max’s only answer was the hot tears he dropped upon her face as she went on: “You will not forget me, that I know; but some time,—yes, some time,—and when it comes, remember I was willing. I told Maude so. Where is she?”
“Here!” and Maude knelt, sobbing, by the dying woman, who went on: “She has been everything to me, Max, and I love her next to you. God bless you both! And if, in the Heaven I am going to, I can watch over you, I will do it, and be often, often with you, when you think I’m far away. Who was it said that? I read it long ago. But things are going from me, and Heaven is very near, and the Saviour is with me,—closer, nearer than you are, Max; and the other world is just in sight, where I soon shall be, free from pain, with my poor, crippled feet all strong and well, like Maude’s. Dear Maude! tell her how I loved her; tell her——”
Here her voice grew indistinct, and for a few moments she seemed to be sleeping; then, suddenly, openingher eyes wide, she exclaimed, as an expression of joy broke over her face: “It is here,—the glory which shineth as the noonday. In another moment I shall be walking the golden streets. Good-bye, Max; good-bye.”
Grace was dead, and Maude made her ready for the coffin, her tears falling like rain upon the shrivelled feet and on the waxen hands which she folded over the pulseless bosom, placing in them the flowers her mistress had loved best in life. She was to be buried in Mt. Auburn, and Maude went with the remains to Boston, as Grace had requested her to do, caring nothing because Mrs. Marshall-More hinted broadly at the impropriety of the act, wondering how she could have done it.
“She did it at Grace’s request, and to please me,” Max said; and that silenced the lady, who was afraid of her brother, and a little afraid of Maude, who did not seem quite the girl she had last seen in Merrivale.
“What will you do now? Go back to your teaching?” she asked, after the funeral was over.
“I shall go home to mother,” Maude replied, and that afternoon she took the train for Merrivale, accompanied by Max, who was going on to New York, and thence to keep his appointment in London.
Few were the words spoken between them during the journey, and those mostly of the dead woman lying under the snow at Mt. Auburn; but when Merrivale was reached, Max took the girl’s hands and pressed them hard as he called her a second time by her name.
“God bless you, Maude, for all you were to Grace. When I can I will write to you. Good-bye.”
Only for a moment the train stopped at the station, and then it moved swiftly on, leaving Maude standingupon the platform with her mother and John, while Max resumed his seat, and pulling his hat over his eyes, never spoke again until New York was reached. A week later and a ship of the Cunard line was plowing the ocean to the eastward, and Max Gordon was among the passengers, silent and abstracted, with a bitter sense of loneliness and pain in his heart as he thought of the living and the dead he was leaving behind,—Grace, who was to have been his bride, dead in all her sweetness and beauty, and Maude, who was nothing to him but a delicious memory, alive in all her freshness and youthful bloom. He could hardly tell of which he thought the more, Grace or Maude. Both seemed ever present with him, and it was many a day before he could rid himself of the fancy that two faces were close against his own, one cold and dead, as he had seen it last, with the snowy hair about the brow and a smile of perfect peace upon the lips which had never said aught but words of love to him,—the other glowing with life and girlish beauty, as it had looked at him in the gathering darkness when he stood upon the car step and waved it his good-bye.
Five years had passed since Grace was laid in her grave in Mt. Auburn, and Max was still abroad, leading that kind of Bohemian life which many Americans lead in Europe, when there is nothing to call themhome. And to himself Max often said there was nothing to call him home, but as often as he said it a throb of pain belied his words, for he knew that across the sea was a face and voice he was longing to see and hear again, a face which now visited him in his dreams quite as often as that of his dead love, and which he always saw as it had looked at him that summer afternoon in the log house among the Richland hills, with the sunlight falling upon the rings of hair, and lending a warmer tint to the glowing cheeks. Delicious as was the memory of that afternoon, it had been the means of keeping Max abroad during all these years, for, in the morbid state of mind into which he had fallen after Grace’s death, he felt that he must do penance for having allowed himself for a moment to forget her, who had believed in him so fully.
“Grace trusted me, and I was false to her and will punish myself for it, even if by the means I lose all that now makes life seem desirable,” he thought.
And so he stayed on and on, year after year, knowing always just where Maude was and what she was doing, for Archie kept him informed. Occasionally he wrote to her himself,—pleasant, chatty letters, which had in them a great deal of Grace,—his lost darling, he called her,—and a little of the places he was visiting. Occasionally, too, Maude wrote to him, her letters full of Grace, with a little of her life in Merrivale, for she was with her mother now, and had been since Miss Raynor’s death. A codicil to Grace’s will, bequeathing her a few thousand dollars, made it unnecessary for her to earn her own livelihood. Indeed, she might have bought Spring Farm, if she had liked; but this she would not do. The money given for that must be earned by herself,paid by the book she was writing, and which, after it was finished and published, and after a few savage criticisms by some dyspeptic critics, who saw no good in it, began to be read, then to be talked about, then to sell,—until finally it became the rage and was found in every book store, and railway car, and on almost every parlor table in New England, while the young authoress was spoken of as “a star which at one flight had soared to the zenith of literary fame,” and this from the very pens which at first had denounced “Sunny Bank” as a milk-and-watery effort, not worth the paper on which it was written.
All Mrs. Marshall-More’s guests at Spring Farm read it, and Mrs. Marshall-More and Archie read it, too, and both went down to congratulate the author upon her success, the latter saying to her, when they were alone:
“I say, Maude, your prophecy came true. You told me you’d write a book which every one would read, and which would make mother proud to say she knew you, and, by Jove, you have done it. You ought to hear her talk to some of the Boston people about Miss Graham, the authoress. You’d suppose you’d been her dearest friend. I wonder what Uncle Max will say? I told you you would make him your hero, and you have. I recognized him at once; but the heroine is more like Grace than you. I am going to send it to him.”
And the next steamer which sailed from New York for Europe carried with it Maude’s book, directed to Max Gordon, who read it at one sitting in a sunny nook of the Colosseum, where he spent a great part of his time. Grace was in it, and he was in it, too, he was sure, and, reading between the lines what a stranger could not read, he felt when he had finished it that inthe passionate love of the heroine for the hero he heard Maude calling to him to come back to the happiness there was still for him.
“And I will go,” he said. “Five years of penance have atoned for five minutes of forgetfulness, and Grace would bid me go, if she could, for she foresaw what would be, and told me she was willing.”
With Max to will was to do, and among the list of passengers who sailed from Liverpool, March 20th, 18—, was the name of Maxwell Gordon, Boston, Mass.
It was the 2d of April, and a lovely morning, with skies as blue and air as soft and warm as in the later days of May. Spring Farm, for the season, was looking its loveliest, for Mrs. Marshall-More had lavished fabulous sums of money upon it, until she had very nearly transformed it into what she meant it should be, an English Park. She knew that Maude had once expressed her intention to buy it back some day, but this she was sure she could never do, and if she could Max would never sell it, and if he would she would never let him. So, with all theseneversto reassure her, she went on year after year improving and beautifying the place until it was worth far more than when it came into her hands, and she was contemplating still greater improvements during the coming summer, when Max suddenly walked in upon her, and announced his intention of going to Merrivale the next day.
“But where will you stay? Both houses are closed only the one at Spring Farm has in it an old couple—Mr. and Mrs. Martin—who look after it in the winter,” she said, and Max replied:
“I will stay at Spring Farm with the Martins. I want to see the place.” And the next day found him there, occupying the room which, by a little skillful questioning of Mrs. Martin, he learned had been Maude’s when her father owned the farm.
Miss Graham was home, she said, and at once launched out into praises of the young authoress of whom Merrivale was so proud.
“And to think,” she said, “that she was born here in this very house! It seems so queer.”
“And is the house more honored now than when she was simple Maude Graham?” Max asked, and the old lady replied:
“To be sure it is. Any house can have a baby born in it, but not every one an authoress!” and with that she bustled off to see about supper for her guest.
Max was up early the next morning, wondering how soon it would be proper for him to call upon Maude. He had no thought that she would come to him, and was somewhat surprised when just after breakfast her card was brought up by Mrs. Martin, who said she was in the parlor. Maude had heard of his arrival from Mr. Martin, who had stopped at the cottage the previous night on his way to the village.
“Mr. Gordon in town! I supposed he was in Europe!” she exclaimed, feeling herself grow hot and cold and faint as she thought of Max Gordon being so near to her.
That very afternoon she had received the first check from her publisher, and been delighted with the amount, so much more than she had expected. There was enough to buy Spring Farm, if Max did not ask too much, and she resolved to write to him at once and askhis price. But that was not necessary now, for he was here and she should see him face to face, and the next morning she started for Spring Farm immediately after their breakfast, which was never served very early.
“Will he find me greatly changed, I wonder,” she thought, as she sat waiting for him, her heart beating so rapidly that she could scarcely speak when at last he came and stood before her, the same man she had parted from five years before save that he seemed a little older, with a look of weariness in his eyes.
But that lifted the moment they rested upon her.
“Oh, Maude,” was all he could say, as he looked into the face he had seen so often in his dreams, though never as beautiful as it was now. “Maude,” he began at last, “I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you again, or how glad I am for your success. I read the book in Rome. Archie sent it to me, and I have come to congratulate you.”
He was talking so fast and pressing her hands so hard that he almost took her breath away. But she released herself from him, and, determining to have thebusinessoff her mind as soon as possible, began abruptly:
“I was surprised to hear of your arrival, and glad, too, as it saves me the trouble of writing you. I can buy Spring Farm now. You know you promised to keep it for me. What is your price?”
“How much can you give?” Max asked; and without stopping to consider the strangeness of the question, Maude told him frankly the size of the check she had received, and asked if it were enough.
“No, Maude,” Max said, and over the face looking so anxiously at him there fell a cloud of disappointment as Maude replied:
“Is it much more you ask?”
“Yes, a great deal more,” and Max seated himself beside her upon the sofa, for she was now sitting down; “but I think you can arrange it. Don’t look so sorry; It isyouI want, not your money. Will you give me yourself in return for Spring Farm?”
He had her hands again, but she drew them from him, and covering her face with them, began to cry, while he went on:
“Five years is a long time to wait for one we love, and I have waited that length of time, with thoughts of you in my heart, almost as much as thoughts of Grace, whom I loved dearly while she lived. But she is dead, and could she speak she would bid you grant me the happiness I have been denied so many years. I think she knew it would come some day. I am sure she did, and she told me she was willing. I did not mean to ask you quite so soon, but the sight of you, and the belief that you care for me as I care for you, has made me forget all the proprieties, and I cannot recall my words, so I ask you again to be my wife, to give me yourself as the price of Spring Farm, which shall be your home as long as you choose to make it so. Will you, Maude? I have come thousands of miles for your answer, which must not be no.”
What else he said, or what she said, it is not necessary for the reader to know; only this, that when the two walked back to the cottage Maude said to her mother, “I am to marry Mr. Gordon in June, and you will spend the summer in our old home, and John will go to college in the fall.”
It was very bad taste in Max to select the 20th of June for his wedding day, and she should suppose hewould remember twenty years ago, when Grace Raynor was to have been his bride, Mrs. Marshall-More said to Archie, when commenting upon her brother’s approaching marriage, which did not altogether please her. She would far rather that he should remain single, for Archie’s sake and her own. And still it was some comfort that she was to have for her sister one so famous as Maude was getting to be. So she went up to Merrivale early in June and opened her own house, and patronized Maude and Mrs. Graham, and made many suggestions with regard to the wedding, which she would have had very fine and elaborate had they allowed it. But Maude’s preference was for a quiet affair, with only a few of her more intimate friends present. And she had her way. Archie was there, of course, and made himself master of ceremonies. He had received the news of Maude’s engagement with a keener pang of regret than he had thought it possible for him to feel, and suddenly woke up to a consciousness that he had always had a greater liking for Maude than he supposed. But it was too late now, and casting his regrets to the winds he made the best of it, and was apparently the gayest of all the guests who, on the morning of the 20th of June, assembled in Mrs. Graham’s parlor, where Max and Maude were made one.
Aunt Maude, Archie called her, as he kissed her and asked if she remembered the time she cried on the neck of the brown ox, and declared her hatred of Max and all his relations.
“But I did not know him then; did I, Max?” Maude said; and the bright face she lifted to her husband told that she was far from hating him now.
There was a short trip to the West and a flying visitto Richland and the Cedars, so fraught with memories of the past and of Grace, whose grave on the wedding day had been one mass of flowers which Max had ordered put there. “Her wedding garment,” he said to Maude, to whom he told what he had done. “She seems very near to me now, and I am sure she is glad.”
It was a lovely July day, when Max and Maude returned from their bridal journey and took possession of the old home at Spring Farm, where Mrs. Graham met them with a very different expression upon her face from what it wore when we first saw her there years ago. The place was hers again, to enjoy as long as she lived; and if it had been beautiful when she left it, she found it far more so now, for Mrs. Marshall-More’s improvements, for which Max’s money had paid, were mostly in good taste, and never had the grounds looked better than when Max and Maude drove into them on this July afternoon. Although a little past their prime, there were roses everywhere, and the grassy walks, which Mrs. More had substituted in place of gravel, were freshly cut, and smooth and soft as velvet, while the old-fashioned flowers Maude loved so well, were filling the air with their perfume, and the birds in the maple tree seemed carolling a welcome to the bride so full were they of song.
And here we shall leave her, happy in her old home and in her husband’s love, which is more to her than all the world beside. Whether she will ever write another book we do not know, probably she will, for where the brain seeds have taken root it is hard to dislodge them,and Maude often hears around her the voices of new ideal friends, to whom she may some time be compelled to give shape and name, as she did to the friends of her childhood.