CHAPTER XII.LOVE VERSUS MONEY.
Tom had been the last to leave the house, for he had lingered awhile to talk to Alice, with whom he was standing in the conservatory, partially concealed by some tall vases and shrubs, when Mr. Thornton chanced that way. Thinking his guests all gone and hearing the murmur of voices, he stopped just in time to see Tom’s arm around his daughter’s waist and to hear a sound the meaning of which he could not mistake, as the young man’s face came in close proximity to that of his daughter. To say that he was astonished is saying very little. He was horrified and disgusted, and so indignant that his first impulse was to collar the audacious Tom and hurl him through the window. But not wishing a scene before the servants, he restrained himself, and went quietly away, with much the same feeling which prompted Cæsar to say, “Et tu, Brute!” Since his interview with his son he had never mentioned Bessie’s name to him, or raised any objection to her coming to his house as often as she liked. But he had watched her closely, and had been insensibly softened by her girlish beauty and quiet grace of manner. There was nothing of the plebeian in her appearance, and he was beginning to think that if Gerard’s heart were set upon her, rather than have a bitter quarrel he might possibly consent to the marriage, although it was not at all what he desired. The young couple could live at the Park house, and in the springhe would go abroad for an indefinite length of time, and thus separate himself and wife entirely from her family. In Europe, with her refinement and money, Alice would make a grand match and possibly marry an earl, for titles, he knew, could be bought, and he had the means to buy them. With a daughter who was My Lady, and a son-in-law who was My Lord, he could afford to have a Leach for his daughter-in-law, and Gerard’s star was rising when he came so unexpectedly upon a scene which at once changed him from a relenting father into a hard, determined man, whom nothing could move.
Mildred was asleep when he went to his room, but had she been awake he would have said nothing to her. His wrath was reserved for his daughter, who poured his coffee for him next morning, as Mildred had a headache, and was not out of her bed. Gerard, too, was absent, and the meal was a very silent, cheerless one, for Alice felt that something was the matter and trembled when, after it was over, her father asked her to step into the library, as he wished to speak with her alone.
“Alice,” he began, “I want to know the meaning of what I saw last night?”
“What did you see?” she asked, her heart beating rapidly but bravely as she resolved to stand by Tom.
“I am no spy on other people’s actions, but I was passing the conservatory and saw Tom Leach kiss you, and I think, yes, I’m very sure you kissed him back; at all events you laid your head on his shoulder in a very disreputable way, and I want to know what it means.”
Alice, who had some of her father’s nature, was calm and defiant in a moment. The word disreputable hadroused her, and her answer rang out clear and distinct, “It means that Tom and I are engaged.”
“Engaged! You engaged to Tom Leach!” Mr. Thornton exclaimed, putting as much contempt into his voice as it was possible to do. “Engaged to Tom Leach! Then you are no daughter of mine.”
Mr. Thornton had never liked Tom, whose frank, assured manner towards him was more like that of an equal than an inferior, and for a moment he felt that he would rather see Alice dead than married to him. Just then Gerard came to the door, but was about to withdraw when his father called him in and said inquiringly, “Your sister tells me she is engaged to Tom Leach. Did you know it?”
“Yes, I imagined something of the kind,” was Gerard’s reply, as he crossed over to his sister and stood protectingly by her side, while his father, forgetting his softened feelings towards Bessie, went on: “And you? I gave you time to consider your choice. Have you done so?”
“I have.”
“And it is——?”
“To marry Bessie,” was Gerard’s answer, while Alice’s came with it: “And I shall marry Tom.”
Such opposition from both his children roused Mr. Thornton to fury, and his look was the look of a madman, as he said, “That is your decision. Then hear mine. I shall disinherit you both! I can’t take away from you the few thousands your mother left you, but I can do as I like with my own. Now, what will you do?”
“Marry Bessie.”
“Marry Tom,” came simultaneously from the youngrebels, and with the words, “So be it,” their father left the room, and a few minutes later they saw him galloping rapidly down the avenue in the direction of the town.
He did not return to lunch, and when he came in to dinner he seemed very absent-minded and only volunteered the remark that he was going to New York the next day to see that their house was made ready for them within a week. As Mildred’s headache was unusually severe she had kept her bed the entire day and knew nothing of the trouble until just at twilight, when Alice, who felt that she must talk to some one, crept up to her, and laying her head on the pillow beside her, told of her father’s anger and threat and asked if she thought he would carry it out.
“No,” Mildred answered. “He will think better of it, I am sure,” and Alice continued, “Not that I care for myself, but I wanted to help Tom.”
“Do you love him so much that you cannot give him up?” Mildred asked.
“Love him! Why, I would rather be poor and work for my living with Tom, than have all the world without him,” Alice replied, while the hand on her head pressed a little heavily as she went on: “Papa is so proud. You don’t know how contemptuously he saysthose Leaches, as if they were too low for anything, and all because they happen to be poor, and because——Did I ever tell you that Bessie’s sister Mildred, who has been so long in Europe, was once,—not exactly a servant in our family, for she took care of me,—my little friend, I called her, and was very fond of her. But I suppose father does not wish Gerard and me to marryinto her family. Are you crying?” Alice asked suddenly, as she heard what sounded like a sob.
“Yes,—no,—I don’t know. I wish I could help you, but I can’t,” Mildred answered, while the tears rolled down her cheeks like rain.
Every word concerning her family and herself had been like a stab to her, and she felt how bitterly she was being punished for her deception. Once she decided to tell Alice the truth, and might have done so if she had not heard her husband’s step outside the door. That broke up the conference between herself and Alice, who immediately left the room.
The next morning Mr. Thornton started for New York, where he was absent for three or four days, and when he returned he complained of a headache and pain in all parts of his body. He had taken a severe cold, he said, and went at once to his bed, which he never left again, for the cold proved to be a fever, which assumed the typhoid form, with its attendant delirium, and for two weeks Mildred watched over and cared for him with all the devotion of a true and loving wife. True she had always been, and but for one memory might have been loving, too, for Mr. Thornton had been kind and indulgent to her, and she repaid him with every possible care and attention. He always knew her in his wildest fits of delirium, and would smile when she laid her cool hand on his hot head, and sometimes whisper her name. Gerard and Alice he never knew, although he often talked of them, asking where they were, and once, during a partially lucid interval, when alone with Mildred, he said to her, “Tell the children I was very angry, but I am sorry, and I mean to make it right.”
“I am sure you do,” Mildred replied, little guessing what he meant, as his mind began to wander again, and he only said, “Yes,—all right, and you will see to it. All right,—all right.”
And these were the last words he ever spoke, for on the fourteenth day after his return from New York, he died, with Mildred bending over him and Mildred’s hand in his.
When Mr. Thornton left Gerard and Alice after his threat of disinheritance, he went straight to the office of Hugh McGregor, and asking to see him alone, announced his intention of making his will.
“It’s time I did it,” he said with a little laugh, and then as Hugh seated himself at his table, he dictated as follows:
To a few charitable institutions in New York he gave a certain sum; to his children, Gerard and Alice, a thousand dollars each, and the rest of his property he gave unconditionally to his beloved wife, Mildred F. Thornton.
“Excuse me, Mr. Thornton,” Hugh said, looking up curiously from the paper on which he was writing, “isn’t this a strange thing you are doing, giving everything to your wife, and nothing to your children. Does she know,—does she desire it?”
“She knows nothing, but I do. I know my own business.Please go on. Write what I tell you,” Mr. Thornton answered impatiently, and without further protest Hugh wrote the will, which was to make Mildred the richest woman in the county, his hand trembling a little as he wrote Mildred F., and thought to himself, “That is Milly’s name. She did not deceive him there. Does he know the rest?”
“You must have three witnesses,” he said, when the legal instrument was drawn up.
“Tom Leach is in the next room. I saw him. He will do for one,” Mr. Thornton said, with a grim smile, as he thought what a ghastly joke it would be for Tom to witness a will which cut Alice off with a mere pittance. “Have him in.”
So Tom was called, together with another man who had just entered the office. A stiff bow was Mr. Thornton’s only greeting to Tom, who listened while the usual formula was gone through with, and then signing his name, Thomas J. Leach, went back to his books, with no suspicion as to what the will contained or how it would affect him.
“I will keep the paper myself,” Mr. Thornton said, taking it from Hugh, with some shadowy idea in his brain that it might be well to have it handy in case he changed his mind and wished to destroy it.
But death came too soon for that, and when he died his will was lying among his papers in his private drawer, where it was found by Gerard, who without opening it, carried it to Mildred. There had been a funeral befitting Mr. Thornton’s position and wealth, and he had been taken to Greenwood and laid beside his first wife, and after a few days spent in New York the family came back to their country home, which theypreferred to the city. Bessie, Tom and Hugh met them at the station, the heart of the latter beating rapidly when he saw Mildred in her widow’s weeds, and helping her alight from the train, he went with her to her carriage, and telling her he should call in a few days on business, bowed a little stiffly and walked away.
Since drawing the will he had been growing very hard towards Mildred, whose identity he did not believe her husband knew, else he had not married her, and as he went back to his office after meeting her at the station he wondered what Gerard would think of the will, half hoping he would contest it, and wondering how long before something would be said of it to him. It was not long, for the second day after his return from New York, Gerard found it and took it to Mildred.
“Father’s will,” he said, with a sinking sensation, as if he already saw the shadow on his life.
Mildred took the paper rather indifferently, but her face blanched as she read it, and her words came slowly and thick as she said, “Oh, Gerard, I am so sorry, but he did not mean it to stand, and it shall not. Read it.”
Taking it from her, Gerard read with a face almost as white as hers, but with a different expression upon it. She was sorry and astonished, while he was resentful and angry at the man whose dead hand was striking him so hard. But he was too proud to show what he really felt, and said composedly, “I am not surprised. He threatened to disinherit us unless we gave up Bessie and Tom, and he has done so. It’s all right. I have something from mother and I shall be as glad to work for Bessie as Tom will be to work for Alice. It’s not the money I care for so much as the feeling whichprompted the act, and, by George,” he continued, as he glanced for the first time at the signatures, Henry Boyd, Thomas J. Leach, Hugh McGregor, “if he didn’t get Tom to sign Alice’s death warrant. That is the meanest of all.”
What more he would have said was cut short by the violent fit of hysterics into which Mildred went for the first time in her life. And she did not come out of it easily either, but sobbed and cried convulsively all the morning, and in the afternoon kept her room, seeing no one but Alice, who clung to her as fondly as if she had been her own mother. Alice had heard of the will with a good deal of composure, for she was just the age and temperament to think that a life of poverty, if shared with the man she loved, was not so very hard, and besides she had in her own right seven hundred dollars a year, which was something, she reasoned, and she took her loss quite philosophically, and tried to comfort Mildred, whose distress she could not understand. Mildred knew by the handwriting that Hugh had drawn the will, and after passing a sleepless night she arose early the next morning, weak in body but strong in her resolve to right the wrong which had been done to Gerard and Alice.
“I am going to see Mr. McGregor,” she said to them when breakfast was over, and an hour or two later her carriage was brought out, and the coachman ordered to drive her to Hugh’s office and leave her there.
CHAPTER XIV.MILDRED AND HUGH.
Tom was at work that morning on the farm, and as the other clerk was taking a holiday, Hugh was alone when he received his visitor, whose appearance there surprised him, and at whom he looked curiously, her face was so white and her eyes, swollen with weeping, so unnaturally large and bright. But she was very calm, and taking the seat he offered, and throwing back the heavy veil whose length swept the floor as she sat, she began at once by saying:
“You drew my husband’s will?”
“Yes, I drew it,” he answered curtly, and not at all prepared for her next question, which seemed to arraign him as a culprit.
“Why did you do it?” and there was a ring in her voice he could not understand.
“Why did I do it?” he repeated. “Don’t you know that lawyers usually follow their client’s wishes in making their wills?”
“Yes, but you might have dissuaded him from it. You knew it was wrong.”
“You don’t like it then?” he asked, but repented the question when he saw the effect upon her.
Rising to her feet and tugging at her bonnet strings as if they choked her, she looked steadily at him and said:
“Don’t like it? What do you take me for? No, Idon’t like it, and if I had found it first, I think,—I am sure I should have torn it to pieces.”
She had her bonnet off, and was tossing it toward the table as if its weight oppressed her. But it fell upon the floor, where it might have lain if Hugh had not picked it up, carefully and gingerly, as if half afraid of this mass of crape. But it was Milly’s bonnet, and he brushed a bit of dust from the veil, and held it in his hand, while she pushed back her hair from her forehead, and wiping away the drops of perspiration standing there went on:
“Do you know why he made such a will?”
“I confess I do not. I expressed my surprise at the time, but he was not a man to be turned from his purpose when once his mind was made up. MayIask why he did it?” Hugh said, and Mildred replied:
“Yes;—he was angry with Gerard and Alice, because of—of—Tom and Bessie Leach. The young people are engaged and he accidentally found it out.”
“Yes, I see;—he thought a Thornton too good to marry a Leach. Do you share his opinion?” Hugh asked, while the blood came surging back to Mildred’s white face in a great red wave, but left it again, except in two round spots which burned on either cheek.
Hugh was torturing her cruelly, and she wrung her hands, but did not answer his question directly. She only said, as she took the will from her pocket and held it towards him, “It is all right? It is legally executed?”
“Yes, it is all right.”
“And it gives everything to me to do with as I please?”
“Yes, it gives everything to you to do with as youplease. You are a very rich woman, Mrs. Thornton, and I congratulate you.”
His tone was sarcastic in the extreme, and stung Mildred so deeply that she forgot herself, and going a step nearer to him cried out, “Oh, Hugh, why are you so hard upon me? Why do you hate me so? Don’t you know who I am?”
Hugh had not expected this, for he had no idea that Mildred would ever tell who she was, and the sound of his name, spoken as she used to speak it when excited, moved him strangely. He was still holding her black bonnet, the long veil of which had become twisted around his boot, and without answering her at once he stooped to unwind it and then put the bonnet from him upon the table as if it had been a barrier between him and the woman, whose eyes were upon him.
“Yes,” he said at last, very slowly, for he was afraid his voice might tremble, “You are Mrs. Thornton now; but you were Mildred Leach.”
“Oh, Hugh, I am so glad!” Mildred cried, as she sank into her chair, and covering her face with her hands, sobbed like a child, while Hugh stood looking at her, wondering what he ought to do, or say, and wishing she would speak first. But she did not, and at last he said:
“Mrs. Thornton, you have often puzzled me with a likeness to somebody seen before I met you. But I had no suspicion of the truth until I saw you in the cemetery at your father’s grave. I am no eavesdropper, but was so placed that I had to see and hear, and I knew then that you were Mildred, come back to us, not as we hoped you would come, but——”
His voice was getting shaky, and he stopped amoment to recover himself. Then, taking from his side pocket the handkerchief he had carried with him since the night he found it, he passed it to her, saying:
“I picked it up after you left the yard. Have you missed it?”
“Yes,—no. I don’t remember,” she replied, taking the handkerchief, and drying her eyes with it. Then, looking up at Hugh, while the first smile she had known since her husband died broke over her face, she continued: “I am glad you know me; I have wanted to tell you and mother and everybody. The deception was terrible to me, but I had promised and must keep my word.”
“Then Mr. Thornton knew? You did not deceive him?” Hugh asked, conscious of a great revulsion of feeling towards the woman he had believed so steeped in hypocrisy.
“Deceive him?” Mildred said, in some surprise. “Never,—in any single thing. I am innocent there. Let me explain how it happened, and you will tell the others, for I can never do it but once. I am so tired. You don’t know how tired,” and she put her hands to her face, which was white as marble, as she commenced the story which the reader already knows, telling it rapidly, blaming herself more than she deserved and softening as much as possible her husband’s share in the matter.
“He was very proud, you know,” she said, “and the Leaches were like the ground beneath his feet. But he loved me. I am sure of that, and he was always kind and good, and tried to make up for the burden he had imposed upon me. Yes, my husband loved me, knowing I was a Leach.”
“And you loved him?” Hugh asked, regretting the words the moment they had passed his lips, and regretting them more when he saw their effect upon Mildred.
Drawing herself up, she replied:
“Whether I loved him or not does not matter to you, or any one else. He was my husband, and I did my duty by him, and he was satisfied. If I could have forgotten I should have been happy, and I tell you truly I am sorry he is dead, and if I could I’d bring him back to-day.”
She was now putting on the bonnet which made her a widow again, and made her face so deathly white that Hugh was frightened and said to her:
“Forgive me, Mrs. Thornton. It was rude in me to ask that question. Forget it, I beg of you. You are very pale. Can I do anything for you?”
“No,” she answered, faintly. “I am only tired, that’s all, and I must get this business settled before I can rest. I have come to give the money back to Gerard and Alice, and you must help me do it.”
“I don’t quite understand you,” Hugh said. “Do you mean to give away the fortune your husband left you?”
“Yes, every farthing of it. I can never use it. It would not be right for me to keep it. He was angry when he made that will. He did not mean it, and had he lived he would have changed it. That was what troubled him when he was ill and he tried to tell me about it,” and very briefly she repeated what her husband had said to her of his children.
“I did not understand him then, but I do now. He knew I would do right; he trusted me,” she continued, her tears falling so fast as almost to choke her utterance.
“But,” said Hugh, “why give it all? If Mr. Thornton had made his will under different conditions, he would have remembered you. Why not divide equally? Why leave yourself penniless?”
“I shall not be penniless,” Mildred replied. “When I was married Mr. Thornton gave me fifteen thousand dollars for my own. This I shall keep. It will support mother and me, for I am going back to her as soon as all is known. And you will help me? You will tell mother and Bessie and Tom, and everybody, and you will be my friend, just for a little while, for the sake of the days when we played together?”
Her lips were quivering and her eyes were full of tears as she made this appeal, which no man could have withstood, much less Hugh, who would have faced the cannon’s mouth for her then, so great was his sympathy for her.
“Yes, I will do all you wish, but not to-day. The will must be proved first, and you are too tired. I will see to it at once, and then if you still are of the same mind as now I am at your service. Perhaps it will be better to say nothing for a few days.”
“Yes, better so,—you—know—best—stand—by—me,—Hugh,” Mildred said, very slowly, as she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes in the weary way of a child going to sleep.
Hugh thought she was going to faint, her face was so pinched and gray, and he said, excitedly:
“Mildred, Mildred, rouse yourself. You must not faint here. I don’t know what to do with people who faint. You must go home at once. Your carriage is gone but I see a cab coming. I will call it for you.”
Darting to the door, he signaled the cab, to which hehalf led, half carried Mildred, who seemed very weak and was shaking with cold. Rallying a little, she said to him:
“Thank you, Hugh. I’d better go home. I am getting worse very fast and everything is black. Is it growing dark?”
This was alarming. He could not let her go alone, and springing in beside her, Hugh bade the cabman drive with all possible speed to the Park and then go for a physician.
Nothing could have happened better for Mildred and her cause than the long and dangerous illness which followed that visit to Hugh’s office. It was early September then, but the cold November rain was beating against the windows of her room when at last she was able to sit up and carry out her purpose. She had been very ill, first with the fever taken from her husband, and then with nervous prostration, harder to bear than the fever, for then she had known nothing of what was passing around her, or whose were the voices speaking so lovingly to her, or whose the hands ministering to her so tenderly, Bessie, who called her sister, and Alice, who was scarcely less anxious and attentive than Bessie herself. She did not even know the white-haired woman who sat by her day after day, with her blindeyes turned toward the tossing, moaning, babbling figure on the bed, whose talk was always of the past, when she was a girl and lived at home, and bathed her mother’s head and cooked the dinner and scolded Tom and Bessie and kissed and petted Charlie. Of Hugh she seldom spoke, and when she did it was in the old, teasing way, calling him a red-haired Scotchman and laughing at his big hands and feet. To all intents and purposes she was the Mildred whom we first saw shelling peas in the doorway, and the names of her husband and Gerard and Alice never passed her lips. Every morning and evening Hugh walked up the avenue, and ringing the bell asked, “How is Mrs. Thornton?” Then he would walk back again with an abstracted look upon his face, which to a close observer would have told of the fear tugging at his heart. The possibility that Mildred could ever be anything to him, if she lived, did not once enter his mind, but he did not want her to die, and the man who had seldom prayed before, now learned to pray earnestly for Mildred’s life, as many others were doing.
Hugh had done his work well, and told Mildred’s story, first to her mother, Bessie and Tom, then to Gerard and Alice, and then to everybody, giving it, however, a different coloring from what Mildred had done. She had softened her husband’s part in the matter and magnified her own, while he passed very lightly over hers, and dwelt at length upon the pride and arrogance of the man who, to keep her family aloof, wrung from her a promise, given unguardedly and repented of so bitterly. Thus the sympathy of the people was all with Mildred, who, as the lady of Thornton Park, had won their good opinion by her kindness and gentleness, andgracious, familiar manner. That she was Mrs. Giles Thornton did not harm her at all, for money and position are a mighty power, and the interest in, and sympathy for her were quite as great, if not greater, than would have been the case if it were plain Mildred Leach for whom each Sunday prayers were said in the churches and for whom inquiries were made each day until the glad news went through the town that the crisis was past and she would live. Hugh was alone in his office when the little boy who brought him the morning paper said, as he threw it in, “Mis’ Thornton’s better. She knows her marm, and the doctor says she’ll git well.” Then he passed on, leaving Hugh alone with the good news.
“Thank God,—thank God,” he said. “I couldn’t let Milly die,” and when a few minutes later one of his clerks came into the front office, he heard his chief in the next room whistling Annie Laurie, and said to himself, with a little nod, “I guess she’s better.”
It had been a very difficult task to tell Mildred’s story to Mrs. Leach and Tom and Bessie, but Hugh had done it so well that the shock was not as great as he had feared it might be. As was natural, Mrs. Leach was the most affected of the three, and within an hour was at Mildred’s bedside, calling her Milly and daughter and kissing the hot lips which gave back no answering sign, for Mildred never knew her, nor any one, until a morning in October, when, waking suddenly from a long, refreshing sleep, she looked curiously about her, and saw the blind woman sitting just where she had sat for days and days and would have sat for nights had she been permitted to do so. Now she was partially asleep, but the words “Mother, are you here?”roused her, and in an instant Mildred was in her mother’s arms, begging for the pardon which was not long withheld.
“Oh, Milly, my child, how could you see me blind and not tell me who you were?” were the only words of reproof the mother ever uttered; then all was joy and peace, and Mildred’s face shone with the light of a great gladness, when Tom and Bessie came in to see her, both very kind and both a little constrained in their manner towards her, for neither could make it quite seem as if she were their sister.
Gerard and Alice took it more naturally, and after a few days matters adjusted themselves, and as no word was said of the past Mildred began to recover her strength, which, however, came back slowly, so that it was November before she was able to see Hugh in her boudoir, where Tom carried her in his arms, saying, as he put her down in her easy-chair, “Are you sure you are strong enough for it?”
“Yes,” she answered, eagerly. “I can’t put it off any longer. I shall never rest until it is done. Tell Hugh I am ready.”
Tom had only a vague idea of what she wished to do, but knew that it had some connection with her husband’s will, the nature of which he had been told by Gerard.
“She’ll never let that stand a minute after she gets well,” Tom had said, but he never guessed that she meant to give up the whole.
Hugh, who had been sent for that morning, came at once, and found himself trembling in every nerve as he followed Tom to the room where Mildred was waiting for him. He had not seen her during her sickness, and he was not prepared to find her so white and thin andstill so exquisitely lovely as she looked with her eyes so large and bright, and the smile of welcome on her face as she gave him her hand and said, “We must finish that business now, and then I can get well. Suppose I had died, and the money had gone from Gerard and Alice.”
“I think it would have come back to them all the same,” Hugh replied, sitting down beside her, and wondering why the sight of her affected him so strangely.
But she did not give him much time to think, and plunging at once into business, told him that she wished to give everything to Gerard and Alice, dividing it equally between them.
“You know exactly what my husband had and where it was invested,” she said, “and you must divide it to the best of your ability, giving to each an equal share in the Park, for I think they will both live here. I wish them to do it, for then we shall all be near each other. I shall live with mother and try to atone for the wrong I have done. I have enough to keep us in comfort, and shall not take a cent of what was left me in the will.”
This was her decision, from which nothing could move her, and when at last Hugh left her she had signed away over a million of dollars and felt the richer for it, nor could Gerard and Alice induce her to take back any part of it after they were told what she had done.
“Don’t worry me,” she said to them. “It seemed to me a kind of atonement to do it, and I am so happy, and I am sure your father would approve of it if he could know about it.”
After that Mildred’s recovery was rapid, and on thefirst day of the new year she went back to the farm house to live, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties of Gerard and Alice that she should stay with them until Tom and Bessie came, for it was decided that the four should, for a time at least, live together at the Park. But Mildred was firm.
“Mother needs me,” she said, “and is happier when I am with her. I can see that she is failing. I shall not have her long, and while she lives I shall try to make up to her for all the selfish years when I was away, seeking my own pleasure and forgetting hers.”
And Mildred kept her word and was everything to her mother, who lived to see, or rather hear, the double wedding, which took place at St. Jude’s one morning in September, little more than a year after Mr. Thornton’s death. The church was full and there was scarcely a dry eye in it as Mildred led her blind mother up the aisle, and laid her hand upon Bessie’s arm in response to the question, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” It was Mildred who gave Alice away, and who three weeks later received the young people when they came home from their wedding journey, seeming and looking much like her old self as she did the honors of the house where she had once been mistress, and joining heartily in their happiness, laughingly returned Tom’s badinage when he called her his stepmother-in-law. Then, when the festivities were over, she went back to her mother, whom she cared for so tenderly that her life was prolonged for more than a year, and the chimes in the old church belfry were ringing for a Saviour born, when she at last died in Mildred’s arms, with Mildred’s name upon her lips and a blessing for the beloved daughter who had been so much to her.The night before she died Mildred was alone with her for several hours, and bending over her she said, “I want to hear you say again that you forgive me for the waywardness which kept me from you so long, and my deception when I came back. I am so sorry, mother.”
“Forgive you?” her mother said, her blind eyes trying to pierce the darkness and look into the face so close to hers. “I have nothing to forgive. I understand it all, and since you came back to me you have been the dearest child a mother ever had. Don’t cry so, Milly,” and the shaky hand wiped away the tears which fell so fast, as Mildred went on:
“I don’t know whether the saints at rest ever think of those they have left behind; but if they do, and father asks for me, tell him how sorry I am, and tell Charlie how I loved him, and how much I meant to do for him when I went away.”
“I’ll tell them. Don’t cry,” came faintly from the dying woman, who said but little more until the dawn was breaking, and she heard in the distance the sound of the chimes ringing in the Christmas morn. Then, lifting her head from Mildred’s arm, she cried joyfully:
“The bells,—the bells,—the Christmas bells. I am glad to go on his birthday. Good-bye, Milly. God bless you; don’t cry.”
They buried her by her husband and Charlie, and then Mildred was all alone, except for the one servant she kept. Bessie and Alice would gladly have had her at the Park, but she resisted all their entreaties and gave no sign of the terrible loneliness which oppressed her as day after day she lived her solitary life, which, for the first week or two, was seldom enlivened by thepresence of any one except Gerard and Tom, who each day plowed their way through the heavy drifts of snow which were piled high above the fence tops. A terrible storm was raging on the mountains, and Rocky Point felt it in all its fury. The trains were stopped,—the roads were blocked,—communication between neighbor and neighbor was cut off, and though many would gladly have done so, few could visit the lonely woman, who sat all day where she could look out toward the graves on which she knew the snow was drifting, and who at night sat motionless by the fire, living over the past and shrinking from the future which lay so drearily before her.
It was the last day, or rather the last night of the storm. The wind had subsided, and when the sun went down there was in the west a tinge of red as a promise of a fair to-morrow. But to Mildred there seemed no to-morrow better than to-day had been, and when after her early tea she sat down in her little sitting-room, there came over her such a sense of dreariness and pain as she had never before experienced. Once she thought of her husband, who had been so kind to her, and whispered sadly:
“I might have learned to love him, but he is dead and gone; everybody is gone who cared for me. EvenHugh has disappointed me,” and although she did not realize it this thought was perhaps the saddest of all. Hugh had disappointed her. During the two years since her return to the farm house, she had seen but little of him, for it was seldom that he called, and when he did it was upon her mother, not herself.
But he had not forgotten her, and there was scarcely a waking hour of his life that she was not in his mind, and often when he was busiest with his clients, who were increasing rapidly, he saw in the papers he was drawing up for them, her face as it had looked at him when she said:
“Oh, Hugh, don’t you know me?” He was angry with her then, and his heart was full of bitterness towards her for her deception. But that was gone long ago, and he was only biding his time to speak.
“While her mother lives she will not leave her,” he said; but her mother was dead, and he could wait no longer. “I must be decent, and not go the very first day after the funeral,” he thought, a little glad of the storm which kept every one indoors.
But it was over now, and wrapping his overcoat around him, and pulling his fur cap over his ears he went striding through the snow to the farm house, which he reached just as Mildred was so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear the door opened by her maid, or know that he was there until he came into the room and was standing upon the hearth rug before her. Then, with the cry, “Oh, Hugh, is it you? I am glad you have come. It is so lonesome,” she sprang up and offered him her hand, while he looked at her with a feeling of regret that he had not come before. He did not sit down beside her, but opposite, where hecould see her as they talked on indifferent subjects,—the storm,—the trains delayed,—the wires down,—the damage done in town,—and the prospect of a fair day to-morrow. Then there was silence between them and Mildred got up and raked the fire in the grate and brushed the hearth with a little broom in the corner, while Hugh watched her, and when she was through took the poker himself and attacked the fire, which was doing very well.
“I like to poke the fire,” he said, while Mildred replied, “So do I;” and then there was silence again, until Hugh burst out:
“I say, Milly, how much longer am I to wait?”
“Wha—at?” Mildred replied, a faint flush tinging her face.
“How much longer am I to wait?” he repeated; and she answered, “Wait for what?”
“For you,” and Hugh arose and went and stood over her as he continued: “Do you know how old I am?”
Her face was scarlet now, but she answered laughingly, “I am thirty. You used to be four years older than myself, which makes you thirty-four.”
“Yes,” he said. “As time goes I am thirty-four, but measured by my feelings it is a hundred years since that morning when I saw you going through the Park gate and felt that I had lost you, as I knew I had afterwards, and never more so than when I saw you in the cemetery and knew who you were.”
“Why are you reminding me of all this? Don’t you know how it hurts? I know you despised me then, and must despise me now,” Mildred said, with anguish in her tones as she, too, rose from her chair and stood apart from him.
“I did despise you then, it’s true,” Hugh replied, “and tried to think I hated you, not so much for deceiving us as for deceiving your husband, as I believed you must have done; but I know better now. Your record has not been stainless, Milly, and I would rather have you as you were seventeen years ago on the summer morning when you were a little girl of thirteen shelling peas and prophesying that you would one day be the mistress of Thornton Park. You have been its mistress, and I am sorry for that, but nothing can kill my love, which commenced in my boyhood, when you made fun of my hands and feet and brogue and called me freckled and awkward, and then atoned for it all by some look in your bright eyes which said you did not mean it. I am awkward still, but the frecks and the brogue are gone, and I have come to ask you to be my wife,—not to-morrow, but some time next spring, when everything is beginning new. Will you, Milly? I will try and make you happy, even if I have but little money.
“Oh, Hugh! What do I care for money. I hate it!”
It was the old Mildred who spoke in the old familiar words, which Hugh remembered so well, but it was the new Mildred who, when he held his arms towards her, saying “Come,” went gladly into them, as a tired child goes to its mother.
It was late that night when Hugh left his promised bride, for there was much to talk about, and all the incidents of their childhood to be lived over again, Hugh telling of the lock of hair and the pea-pod he had kept with the peas, hard as bullets now, especially the smaller one, which he called Mildred.
“But, do you know, I really think it has recently begun to change,” Hugh said, “and I shall not be surprised to find it soft again——”
“Just as I am to let you see how much I love you,” Mildred said, as she laid her beautiful head upon his arm, and told him of the rumor of his engagement to Bessie, which had been the means of making her Mrs. Thornton.
“That was the only secret I had from my husband,” she said. “I told him everything else, and he took me knowing it all, and I believe he loved me, too. He was very kind to me,—and——”
She meant to be loyal to her husband, and would have said more, if Hugh had not stopped her mouth in a most effective way. No man cares to hear the woman who has just promised to marry him talk about her dead husband, and Hugh was not an exception.
“Yes, darling, I know,” he said. “But let’s bury the past. You are mine now; all mine.”
Hugh might be awkward and shy in many things, but he was not at all shy or awkward in love-making when once the ice was broken. He had waited for Mildred seventeen years, and he meant to make the most of her now, and he stayed so long that she at last bade him go, and pointed to the clock just striking the hour of midnight.
No one seemed surprised when told of the engagement. It was what everybody expected, and what should have been long ago, and what would have been, if Mildred had staid at home, instead of going off to Europe. Congratulations came from every quarter and none were more sincere than those from the youngpeople at the Park, who wanted to make a grand wedding. To this Hugh did not object, for in his heart was the shadow of a wish to see Mildred again as he saw her that night at the party in jewels and satins and lace. But she vetoed it at once. A widow had no business with orange blossoms, she said, and besides that she was too old, and Hugh was old, too, and she should be married quietly in church, in a plain gray traveling dress and bonnet. And she was married thus on a lovely morning in June, when the roses were in full bloom, and the church was full of flowers, and people, too,—for everybody was there to see the bride, who went in Mildred Thornton and came out Mildred McGregor.
And now there is little more to tell. It is three years since that wedding day, and Hugh and Mildred live in the red farm house, which is scarcely a farm house now, it has been so enlarged and changed, with its pointed roofs and bow windows and balconies. Brook Cottage they call it, and across the brook in the rear there is a rustic bridge leading to the meadow, where Mr. Leach’s cows used to feed, but which now is a garden, or pleasure ground, not so large, but quite as pretty as the Park, and every fine afternoon at the hour when Hugh is expected from his office, Mildred walks through the grounds, leading by the hand a little golden-haired boy, whom she calls Charlie for the baby brother who died and whom he greatly resembles. And when at last Hugh comes, the three go back together, Hugh’s arm around Milly’s waist and his boy upon his shoulder. They are not rich and never will be, but they are very happy in each other’s love, and no shadow, however small, ever rests on Milly’s still lovely face, save whenshe recalls the mad ambition and discontent which came so near wrecking her life.
In the Park three children play, Giles and Fanny, who belong to the Thorntons, and a second Mildred Leach, who belongs to Tom and Alice.
One picture more, and then we leave them forever near the spot where we first saw them. Gerard and Bessie,—Alice and Tom,—have come to the cottage at the close of a warm July afternoon, and are grouped around the door, where Mildred sits, with the sunlight falling on her hair, a bunch of sweet peas pinned upon her bosom, and the light of a great joy in her eyes as she watches Hugh swinging the four children in a hammock, and says to Bessie “I never thought I could be as happy as I am now. God has been very good to me.”