The hot tears were rolling down my cheeks during this latter part of my mother's love-story, and when cousin Bessie looked and saw them, she buried her own face in her hands, and wept silently for few moments.
"And how did it end?" I asked through my sobs, impatient to know every detail.
"Sadly enough," said cousin Bessie, wiping her eyes with a little linen handkerchief, and folding her hands on her knees. "The truth came out when it was too late. Young Dalton's actions had been misconstrued by a malicious rumor, as many a good person's are. He had interested himself somewhat in Mlle. Campuzano at the request of the very man who, it was said, had determined to murder him, being a devoted and earnest friend to him all along. He waited patiently for a little while, thinking it would all come right in time; at length, he wrote such a pleading letter to your mother, urging her to renew her old trust in him, and to do him the justice, if not the kindness, of believing his solemn assurances, before the careless gossip of their mutual enemies. This letter reached our house on her wedding-day after she had left for her honey-moon trip.
"Shortly after her return, her aunt Liddy died, and as she was left sole heiress to the money and property, she was obliged to go to the funeral: there, she met Ernest Dalton once again. I believe their interview was heart-rending. She had her dignity as the wife of another man to sustain, and he had that dignity to respect, but he cleared himself in her eyes, and they bade one another a long farewell in the stillness of the death-chamber, with only the peaceful slumberer, who lay with the eternal sleep upon her cold drooped lids, as their witness and their safe-guard.
"Your poor mother was never the same again, and succumbed to the very first trial that beset her after this. She died, while you were yet struggling into existence. Heaven had pity upon her blighted life, and called her from the world of shadows and sighs that encompassed her round about. They repented—all of them—when repentance was only remorse, and kissed her dead lips with a passionate pleading for pardon, that was terrible to see.
"They christened you, calling you by her name, and Ernest Dalton was asked to be your god-father: these were the only amends they were ever able to make. I hope Heaven was merciful to them all, for they are dead and gone now," Cousin Bessie added, wiping fresh tears of bitter sadness from her eyes, "but it was a cruel wrong they did her—a cruel, cruel wrong," she repeated, swaying herself to and fro, and looking vacantly into the fire.
"And Ernest Dalton is my guardian, my god-father?" I said in a husky whisper, leaning towards her.
"Yes dear, did he never tell you? He couldn't speak of your mother, I suppose," she answered when I had shaken my head in a mute reply to her question; "he couldn't, God help him. I heard he carries her picture and his to this day, in a little locket on his watch-chain, and that he lives in voluntary singleness, determined that no one shall ever replace her in his love."
The tears were swimming in my eyes again: something throbbed and burned within my head, and my heart lay full and heavy in my breast. I remembered the little locket I had found, and saw Hortense's and my mistake about it now; but I would not speak of it then, I could not. I thought of Hortense's mysterious letter, and puzzled over it in painful confusion, but I would not mention that either, until it had shown me its meaning more definitely. One thing I did ask, with a trembling, unsteady voice:
"What became of this Miss Campuzano, did you hear, Cousin Bessie?"
"She married the Frenchman, dear, as she intended from the first. She liked the name and the prospect altogether of becoming his wife."
"What was his name?"
"Bayard de Beaumont, a good one it is I believe."
"Bayard de Beaumont!" I fairly screamed after her. "Oh, Cousin Bessie," I cried—"how very strange all this is, my nerves are on fire with agitation. I know him. I have met him, he is the brother of my little friend Hortense, whose family name I never happened to tell you."
"Well! that is the man, and a poor prize he had in his Spanish beauty," cousin Bessie went on. "She was as dazzling as the sunlight, and as beautiful as the richest exotic, but she was as heartless as a stone. He was the maddest man in love, they said, that ever lived. He made an idol of that woman and simply worshipped her, and she smiled upon him, the cold cruel traitress, as she smiled upon everybody; won his heart and his senses with her artful wiles, and in the belief that he was rich, as well as high-born, she married him."
"And they were not happy?" I put in eagerly.
"Happy!" Cousin Bessie repeated with terrible emphasis. "I don't think they were happy at the close of their wedding-day. She who had been all smiles, all sweetness before, showed herself in her true colours then. I have been told, that while they were traveling on their wedding-day, she coolly remarked to him that, 'there was no reason now why she should take the trouble to be always in a stupid good-humour, that he had taken her 'for better, for worse,' and if it was 'for worse' she couldn't help it.'"
"You can imagine how broken-hearted he became," Cousin Bessie proceeded, seeing how impatient I was to learn the whole story. "He grew morbid and gloomy at first, now appealing to her with the remnant of his former passionate love for her, now indulging her every caprice, thus hoping to guard against occasions that might provoke her quick and cutting sarcasm; but he was always coldly and cruelly baffled; he had married beauty and grace, and external loveliness in the height of its perfection, but oh! what a soul was coupled with all this!" Cousin Bessie exclaimed, shrinking into herself. "She was the most eminently and systematically selfish woman that ever lived, and she lived to weep and regret it. When she saw that her shameful behaviour alienated her from the love her husband had once cherished and professed for her, she declared herself injured and deceived, and determined to revenge herself. This she did, at the risk of her very soul."
"What did she do?" I asked in breathless enquiry.
"Had recourse to opium" said Cousin Bessie with a curl of her lip, and a shrug of her honest shoulders. "And kept at it" she continued, "until she brought herself to where she is to day!"
"Where?" I asked again, in a hushed whisper.
"To the mad-house, for she has become a raving maniac. Her last subterfuge was too much for her, and I only hope it may not have compromised her eternal happiness, in vainly striving to gratify a fiendish, unreasonable wrath, and avenge imaginary wrongs. Poor thing, her beauty was a fatal gift to her!"
With the other strange features of cousin Bessie's story still uppermost in my mind, it is little wonder that I sank back dumfounded and dazed, into my chair, as these final words resounded in my ears. I could see Bayard de Beaumont, with his grave, solemn face standing under a shadow of sorrow and gloom before me. What an infinite sadness, his seemed to me now, when I knew all! And my dream! How strange, how true it was. How well I knew that there was danger in that handsome face, with its intriguing loveliness, and its mock sincerity!
The outer door closed, while I sat silently thinking, and Louis and Zita came in with happy, beaming faces, and their school-books piled upon their arms. Cousin Bessie rose up, with a warning look at me, and kissed them both, tenderly, in her usual way.
The subject of our afternoon chat was hushed in a moment, and we gave our attention to the simple discussion of domestic topics, but it seems to me, if Zita or Louis had been in the least suspicious they could easily have detected the strained, unnatural efforts which cousin Bessie and I both made to appear disinterested and free from distractions, during the rest of that evening.
By noon, next day, I had reached my old home, and was folded in Alice Merivale's warm embrace. How beautiful she looked, standing on the platform of the depot as we steamed in? So tall, and graceful, and lady-like, so handsomely dressed, so striking in every particular!
I was proud to be claimed by her, when I came out, and be led enthusiastically away by her, into their comfortable sleigh, among their rich and luxurious robes: in twenty minutes we were at the house, where a cordial reception greeted me on every side.
The news of my engagement had got ahead of me; there is no bridling intelligences of this nature, whether they go up with the smoke out of our chimneys, or creep through the key-holes of our doors, it is hard to say, but get abroad, they must, and do.
They are served up at therechercherepasts of fashionable families, and keep time with the stitches of gossip-loving milliners and dress-makers, they are the great prevailing attraction at tea-socials, sewing societies and bazaars, and are not unfrequently discussed over the genial "rosy" or behind a flavoured cigar. Rumour is the worst epidemic that has ever visited humanity.
But as there is nothing to be ashamed of, in half of what Rumour says about us, we may as well meet it with a friendly face, and this I did, when my old friends teazed or congratulated me in their peculiar way. I shall not dwell at length upon the details of my first visit to my old home: those persons and circumstances that may interest the reader, more particularly, shall alone claim my attention. Ernest Dalton was not in town, he had left some days before my arrival, and had given no definite promise to return at a late or early date. I only learned, that he had "gone away."
Arthur Campbell, I do not count, of course, for I saw him every day at least, sometimes twice and oftener, in the twenty-four hours; and Alice Merivale? She had her own story, which I may as well finish for the reader, as I pass by.
She had been home, about three weeks, when a dashing young Englishman took the Capital by storm. One of those tall, lean, wiry-looking fellows with clothes so well-fitting that a pocket-full of bank-notes would have utterly destroyed the desired effect. He wore very long and very pointed shoes, and a peculiar little hat, made of hideous tweed, with flaps tied over the low crown with fluttering ribbons. He carried a tall, lean, wiry-looking stick, not a bad counterpart of himself, if it had only had a tweed cap on one end, and a pair of tooth-pick shoes on the other, with here and there a little slit for a silk handkerchief, or a reserved cigar. His drawl was perfect, and his eye-glass as bright—as his wits.
In his outer pocket, he carried a little plush card-case, stuffed with little printed visiting cards, on whose immaculate surface, the name—Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde—lay in conscious dignity and beauty. Away down in the left hand corner, like a parenthetical guarantee of Mr. Clyde's imposing social standing, was neatly inscribed—Portland Place, London, England.
Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde, of Portland Place, London, England, a pleasure tourist in Canada, with a (figurative) mortgage on every town he visited, and a claim on the hand of one of Canada's fairest daughters.
It would be too hazardous of me, perhaps to declare that he had no claim upon her heart, but with the most perfect sanction of the most scrupulous discretion, I can safely avow, that she never loved him, for she owned to me, she did not. She laughed most boisterously at him, when he took his maiden snow-shoe tramp, and actually displeased him with her ridicule, when he came up the toboggan hill after an unfortunate slide, making strenuous efforts to shake the wet snow from under his stiff, linen cuffs; his yellow gloves were sadly spoiled, and his eye-glass broken; his hat was injured by being blown off in the descent, and there were other still more grievous consequences which need not be mentioned, since the mercy of the darkness kept them from the general view.
She married him, however, before he returned to Portland Place. Her father and mother shouldered the responsibility of paraphrasing his genteel pretensions by enumerating, for the gratification or envy of other Canadian husband-seekers, the many titled connections and immediate relatives of their prospective son-in-law.
If all they said were true he must have been related to half the landed aristocracy of that world-famed metropolis. What surprised me, above and beyond all comprehension, was, that Mrs. Merivale, for a lady who had completely forgotten that "prepositions govern the objective case," could remember with such accurate fidelity the endless syllables of these high-sounding titles, and the intricate channels and by-ways through which the original blue blood came down the stream of vanished generations into the narrow vessels that made Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde's humanity sacred and precious to fashionable eyes.
There was not much mention of whose son he was, his social prestige had a more remote source than his immediate parentage. He was greater as a grandson, immortal as a nephew, a very idol on fashion's shrine when his relations by marriage were taken into account. He had endless cousins of high-bred notoriety, who had again married into still greater and grander families, all of whom Mrs. Merivale now reckoned as easily at her fingers' ends, as she could the days of the week, or seasons of the year. In this brainless boy who was, and ever must be an alien to the finer susceptibilities and nobler aspirations of true and sturdy manhood, the Merivales were pleased to see, a full and happy realization of all their fondest hopes. Alice would be courted and flattered in the highest circles; was not that what their dream had been from the first?
And Alice herself was seemingly satisfied. Her better nature had been crushed out entirely by her frivolous pastimes and pursuits. There was no re-action now, no leaping up of the old flame which cast great ugly shadows over her other life. She had stifled her struggling conscience, had laughed its keen remonstrances to scorn, and now she was free. Nothing now would do her but a ceaseless round of pleasures and gay distractions. Nothing but feasting, and merry-making and song. There must be no lull in the din of glad confusion, no pause in the ring of that restless mirth—that mock pacifier of human scruples that stirs and stimulates us to-day, but that to-morrow drives our deepest misery to remorse.
They were married after Easter, and such a wedding as it was! Half the merchants of the town might have retired upon their profits when it was over if they had had any hankering after good society, which they did not happen to have. Her bridal equipage, of course, came from England and was chosen by the Dowager Lady Trebleston, a great-aunt of the groom, who was not at all distinguished for any particular ability to choose a wedding outfit with extraordinary taste or economy, but whose name lent a flavour to the choice, as "Dresden" does to china, or "Cambridge" to sausages.
It was quite disappointing to Mrs. Merivale if any of her visitors had heard of Lady Trebleston's name, in connection with the bridal array, before she had had the opportunity and exquisite pleasure of imparting it. Still, she had many such disappointments, for the news had spread like wild-fire at its first mention, and floated through the town on every lip, regardless of discrimination.
The wedding-presents were marvels of beauty and wealth, and such an array as there was. Alice contemplated them with many a sweeping glance of open admiration, which was generally followed by the dancing of a light pirouette around the room, and an exulting cry of "Who wouldn't get married after that, eh, Miss Hampden?"
As this was not the time for remonstration of any sort, on my part, I remained utterly passive throughout, watching the proceedings in their origin and progress with a curious and puzzling eye. Alice was full of the occasion; she danced and sang, and skipped about the house, in the maddest manner possible, hugging us all around whenever some new addition arrived to her already magnificent collection of gifts.
Such a trying on of dresses, and mantles and hats. Such endless speculations about the ultimate crisis of the whole affair, and how it would all come off. What the papers would say, and what people would think. Such an arranging of after-sports, travels, and elaborate receptions. I expected the hair, of not only the men, women, and children, but of all the fur-bearing animals of the town, whether alive, or in door mats, to stand rigidly on end with consternation at sight of such realizations, and the teeth of all the combs and saws in the country, to water with envy when the great climax would have arrived.
No one spoke of her marriage as a great and solemn change coming into her life. No one foresaw cheerful glimpses of a happy, domestic life, presided over by a steady sustaining unity of loves. No pictures were drawn of quiet, fireside pleasures, in their future home, no praises uttered of a woman's hallowed power to make life's burdens easy for him whose happiness she is free to make or mar.
Every one said how bright a star this dazzling bride would be; the comet of many seasons, the cynosure of many jealous and many admiring eyes. No one said: "how loving, how devoted she will be, a model wife, a patient helpmate, the joy and comfort of her husband's days." This was a minor consideration. I suppose, the world knows nothing of these stay-at-home little housewives, the angels of many a happy hearth, whose busy fingers, beaming smiles and gentle accents are the rest and refuge of many a toil-worn weaver at life's heavy loom. To lay aside the world's distressing cares at sunset, to wipe his moistened brow, and "homeward plod his weary way" to his cabin small and lowly, where glows this cheerful love in one dear breast, in one sweet face, is to the uncouth "ploughman" a joy, a comfort, which many a prince doth envy.
It is not I who say it, but our century has proven beyond a question, unfortunately, that the full Christian interpretation of the Divine ordination concerning those "whom God hath joined together" has, like many other principles of rigid morality, become for the most part dependant upon that honest, toiling, sterling mass of humanity upon which society looks down with a haughty forbearance or condescending patronage. When we want a type of genuine manhood, let us leave the lighted hall, where gilded folly revels, let us leave the solemn chamber of science and of art, men have chilled it with the foul and withering breath of infidelity and materialism, let us leave the busy arena of commerce, men are gloating over gain and gold in their hidden corners; let us rest with that sturdy, active, middle-class, where the mechanic's ingenious conceptions puzzle and captivate the most listless observer; let us watch the busy minds and busier fingers of those men, so fascinated by their daily toil, that all the world outside their own great pursuits has become a power beyond them, which they neither flatter, nor defy. If the labour of the right hand be the touchstone of men's inward morality, then how conclusively my theory is sanctioned by the black and brawny fingers of the human industry, whose praises I could sing forever; there is no treacherous ambush in such natures, as I speak of now; no hidden recesses, where the animal man may lay in wait to assault or overcome the spiritual man. Every lurking tendency to evil is easily blighted by that stimulating activity which brings moisture to the furrowed brow, which strengthens the sinewy arm, and stamps its wholesome seal upon the broad and hardened hand!
It seems odd enough, to say, that among such are found the greatest and noblest phases of humanity, and yet, is it not so? Is not that man great and noble, whose honest path lies straight within the precincts of righteousness? who has lifted himself above the power of sordid influences, who looks upon mortal throes as the stepping-stones to immortal joys? that man to whose watchful eyes the shallow side of nature is ever uppermost, he who serves but one master, whose only policy is honesty, whose only stimulus is the ever-abiding promise of a blissful hereafter, and whose attitude towards his fellow-creatures is one of charity and kind forbearance?
I have wandered a little, while noting down the details of Alice Merivale's fashionable wedding, and though I feel that it is doing Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde a cruel injustice to bring him to the front again, beside such pictures of exalted humanity as we have just been contemplating, I owe it, in amendment, for my trespass upon the reader's patience, to proceed with the interrupted thread of my story, and can therefore only trust to the generosity of his disposition not to dwell at any length upon the compromising nature of the contrast, but to remember Mr. Clyde, in his more interesting character of bridegroom, at a very showy and stylish wedding ceremony.
When the great event had come and gone, no one could tell exactly whether half his or her sanguine expectations had been fulfilled or not. I had an uneasy suspicion, at the time, that the soundness of the family's mental organization had become temporarily suspended, from Mrs. Merivale down—they seemed to have gone stark mad.
It was six weeks after the ceremony of pelting a glittering carriage with white slippers and rice, as it rolled away from their festive-looking mansion, that Mrs. Merivale dropped down into an easy-chair one afternoon with the greatest languor and physical depression, and declaring that "those fashionable weddings were enough to knock a body up for a month," quietly fell asleep among her comfortable cushions.
There is only a little more labor for my long-used wheel, and the threads of my uneven life will have run on to the crisis. I cannot console myself with the thought that it has been watched through its tedious progress, by loving or partial glances: the bobbin was faulty and stiff at times, and the worker grew pensive and weary. Sometimes, the sunlight broke over my toil, and I sang to the wheel as it was rolling; but sometimes again there were shadows, and the wheel was then heavy and slower. Sometimes, the threads grew so tangled, that I sighed with impatience and worry, the weft bears the marks in the weaving—they are plain, in unwinding the pirns—and still, 'twas a labor of love, this patchwork of sunlight and shadow, this discord of sorrow and song.
"The fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web" said George Eliot, and who knew the nature of the warp and weft of our human fabric better than she! We pass from our joy to our sorrow, as the night passes into the day, it is part and parcel of the mechanism of our daily lives, smiling and sighing, we spin and we weave till the twilight's gray dusk overtakes us—then our tired hands are folded together, and the Master takes care of the rest.
From Alice Merivale's wedding, I was called to Hortense de Beaumont's bedside. In the comparatively short interval of our separation, she had wasted almost beyond recognition. We were mistaken when we persuaded ourselves, that she had baffled her former attack, she had never quite rallied, and when the March winds began to blow, her frail constitution gave way anew. She drooped so quickly, that it was too late when real danger was apprehended, to take her to a warmer refuge. Madame de Beaumont looked little better than her invalid daughter from weeping and worrying, when I arrived.
On the second day, only, was I allowed to see Hortense, and what a change I saw! There was death in every feature, every curve of her once beautiful face. She revived as usual, when I was announced, and wanted to sit up and talk a great deal more than the attending physician would allow, or than she was really able to do. They took advantage of this desire of hers, to coax her to nourish herself more than she was wont.
"If you take your prescriptions and obey orders, I shall let you have a half-hour's conversation with your friend every day," said the doctor one morning, in a bargaining tone; "if not" he added, pausing, and looking at her seriously—after which he shook his head slowly and emphatically, and said no more.
"Very well then, I will try to take them doubled if you like" she answered faintly, directing a playful glance towards me, and breaking into one of her old smiles. "I must talk to her!"
She could not "take them doubled," poor child, but she made heroic efforts to swallow them as prescribed, in order that she might have her talk with me. My poor Hortense! She never had but the one half-hour's conversation with me, for she passed into a better world, before the birds had learned their summer songs.
"Put away that book, and come here, my Amey" she said faintly one afternoon, as I sat by her bedside watching with her. I closed the volume and going nearer to her, sat on the margin of her bed, and took her delicate hands in mine.
"I have something to tell you now—my big secret—that I wrote you about, you know."
She began in broken sentences, her breath was weak and short, and her voice like an echo.
"It would not be so long if you knew about—about Bayard, poor—Bayard, and that dreadful—" she stopped, and a crimson spot appeared on each pallid cheek. I leaned over her gently, and said in a soothing whisper:
"May be I do know it, my little woman. Is it about Bayard's unfortunate marriage? If so, they have told me the whole sad story."
She bowed her head, in answer to my question and muttered feebly:
"I am so glad because I hate to speak of it, but my secret is not that. Do you know where Inez is now?"
I nodded affirmatively. "Well, first when she went there, Bayard had a dreadful sickness, and he wanted to die—called out to death at every moment to come and rescue him, though he was not prepared; he would not hear of forgiving Inez, he declared he hated her, and was glad of her affliction, and still, with these sentiments he wanted to die! Oh, how I prayed against his prayer!" she exclaimed, with an effort of enthusiasm, "how I begged of God, to turn a deaf ear to his mad supplication, and lend a willing one to mine. I suffered an agony of suspense, and at last, the crisis came, he struggled with it, conquered it, and got better. So far my prayer was heard, but my trouble was not over, he regained his health and his strength, but he was a changed man otherwise. He hated his past life and the woman who was so intimately associated with it; he became gloomy and reckless, gave up his religion with all its practices of piety, and abandoned himself to books of science, such as are the ruin of human souls all over the world. I remonstrated with him hourly, but without avail—" a slight coughing interrupted her here, I gave her a drink and shook up her pillows, and feeling somewhat refreshed, she lay back again and continued:
"Mamma thought that his solitude was perhaps his great enemy and wrote to his college chum, Mr. Dalton, to come and visit us for a little while." At the mention of Ernest Dalton's name a faint pink colour rose steadily into her face. "He came and spent three months with us, but did little good in the way we had hoped he could, but he was kind and consoling in another way. He gave poor mamma great comfort while he remained; when he left they sent me to Notre Dame, I don't know why, although it proved a great blessing in the end.
"My mother used to write me about Bayard's moods, which were now often worse, and never better. Ah! no one knew what a burden of grief I carried to and from the class-room of Notre Dame Abbey. Sometimes I felt that only for my mother, death would be a merciful relief, which is a sad conviction for one so young. One day," she said, lowering her voice almost to a whisper and folding her thin hands over the white counter-pane "I was praying in the chapel and I began to think seriously of all my troubles, how dark and gloomy they looked and how weak and cowardly I seemed! Suddenly a little voice within me began to ask: 'Why don't you make some desperate effort to save those whose misfortunes are making you so miserable? Why would you not try some daring sacrifice for instance, so that your brother be set free and the ultimate recovery and conversion of his wife be obtained?' I hesitated and looked through my gathering tears at the flickering lamp in the sanctuary. What sacrifice could I make?Ihad no pleasures, no real comforts in life—nor the prospect of any—except one, and even that was only a shadowy, misty hope, the merest uncertainty; but it was my dearest, best-loved fancy, and I could not do more then than resign it, so I knelt down, Amey, where you and I knelt side by side a few nights later before you went away, and—" a sob came into her throat and tears dimmed her eyes; my own were moist in expectation of what was coming. She rested a little, and allowing her tears to fall unwiped upon her cheeks, she took up the broken thread and added:
"I pledged myself to Our Blessed Lady, in soul and body for all the days of my life, if, by her holy intercession the double conversions of Bayard and Inez might be accomplished before I died."
"You mean that you promised—"
"Never to marry," she added eagerly "although at that time, only Heaven knew how I had grown to love Ernest Dalton. I did not know he wasyourfriend then, Amey. I fancied he had spoken in a particularly kind way to me and he could not but see how fondly I cherished his every word and look—but I gave him up—the only sacrifice I had to lay upon that altar of supplication. Afterwards I saw that what I had done out of solicitude for the welfare of those who are nearest and dearest to me on earth would, perhaps, have been exacted of me by the cruel irony of fate. Ernest Dalton loved you all along, I suspected it on that day when we examined his locket together, and your strange, conscious look when I spoke of him convinced me of it easily."
"Poor Hortense," I muttered in a half sob.—"He is my guardian, my god-father, and the picture in his locket is not mine at all, it is my mother's."
"Amey! Your mother's?"
"Yes, he loved her years ago before she married my father. There was some misunderstanding between them and they drifted apart, but he has always been faithful to her memory up to this. They say I am very like her," I added slowly, folding my hands and looking away towards the distant gray clouds outside.
"Her living image," said Hortense, wistfully, "if I may judge by that little picture, but you—didn't you love him too, Amey?" she asked with an eager look, stroking my hand gently with her own delicate palm.
"It is a time for confessions, Hortense," I answered timidly, "or I should never tell you this, however, we may as well be frank with one another now. I thought I did, until I had reason to suspect that you loved him also, from that moment I resigned him to you and refused to think of him ever again, except as an old, esteemed and devoted friend. I did not know at that time that he had ever known my mother, nor did I suspect the existence of the close ties that bind us to one another in a different way. I only knew that in encouraging my regard for him, I might be trespassing upon the peace and happiness of your life and that is something that Amey Hampden never would or could do to Hortense de Beaumont above all other living creatures."
"You thought he would return my love in time and that we would ultimately be happy together, and with this hope you made your sacrifice did you?" she questioned eagerly.
"I did, my darling little friend! I would not come between you and your life's projects, for all the world," I answered, clasping her wasted form in my strong, loving embrace. "I would have been well repaid, when I saw you happy with my help."
She leaned her head upon my shoulder and wept in silence for a moment. I would have checked her, but there were sobs in my own voice, and water in my eyes. At last when I had calmed myself a little, I stroked her hair kindly and consolingly, entreating her to be quiet and composed. "You shall harm yourself, with crying, and they will blame me" I urged, "so cheer up like a good little woman, and be yourself again."
She looked up quickly, as I spoke, the fresh tears trembled on her lids, like dew upon the petals of some woodland flower, but a smile, as bright as the sun-ray that dispels the dew-drop broke over her wan and wasted countenance, as she answered:
"Blameyou! Oh Amey I have never been so happy, as with you. You have been more than a sister to me, you have done for me what no one else in the world would have thought of doing for another but Amey Hampden!"
"It has brought you no benefit, my little woman" I said regretfully, "although I believed your happiness was partly in my hands at the time."
"It has brought me more than you can ever realize, Amey," she interrupted, falling back among her pillows, tired from her exertion. "It has held the cup of a soothing friendship to my parched and fevered lip whose draught has dispelled every sorrow that lay hopeless and heavy upon my heart. If life could tempt me, now, to return to my former vigour and strength, it need only hold up to my dying eyes the picture of your unselfish heroism. When one has a friend, such as you have been, the pleasures of the world have a double sweetness; in a little while" she added, lowering her voice, and looking away towards the western horizon, into which the setting sun had begun to dip his yellow rays, "I will have left all these things behind me; the joys and sorrows of my young life will recede together into the mists of time, as I go on to my eternity—but, I know there will be some remaining who will carry my memory, the memory of my little life, that was not more than half spent, through all the years of her own happy one, someone to pray for me, to commune with me in spirit, even when I have passed into that shadow-land. And that will be you, my Amey. Perhaps it will comfort you then, to remember that I died in peace and contentment after all—for my poor prayer has been heard in heaven. When I wrote you that last letter, about my dawning compensation, I could see that I had not made my sacrifice in vain, Bayard was changing, every one saw it, resolving himself into the better man, he has since become, and more than that, Amey—oh, how it thrills me to think of it!" she exclaimed with reverent ardour "a change has taken place elsewhere! We received a letter from the superintendent of the asylum where poor Inez is confined, telling us that she had many lucid moments of late, and that her attendants had frequently found her upon her knees, with streaming eyes and trembling hands, imploring forgiveness for her past follies. This was soon followed by a second one, which urged Bayard to go to her: her health and strength were failing, it said, and there were great hopes of her recovering her senses before death. His name, it further stated, was ever on her lips.
"Bayard had a terrible struggle with his pride and his passions. He walked the room through the whole of one livelong night, sighing and moaning, and talking to himself in muttered syllables—mamma and I could hear him, and he prayed unceasingly, again and again. I renewed my promises and my life oblation. Towards morning Bayard grew calmer and when the sun rose he unlocked his door and came to seek us in our seclusion. How pale his handsome face had grown! How wild and dishevelled his wavy hair! How marked were the lines of misery and care around his mouth and eyes! He came to my bed and leaned tenderly over me, I could see the traces of his recent conflict so plainly then."
"'Good-bye, little sister,' he said, 'I am going away for a few days, take care of yourself during my absence,—and pray for me.' He kissed me with his cold, dry lips and turned away. When he came back a week later there was a peaceful sadness where his misery had been. He had seen Inez again; had sat by her death-bed and held her dying hand in generous forgiveness. He believed her then that she sorely repented of her past. Her dark hair had turned almost white, and where rich curves of beauty had marked the outlines of her face and form there were hollows and angles of emaciation and suffering. She died with a pleading for pardon and mercy upon her lips, and Bayard came back a better man. He says he will devote the remainder of his life to an atonement for his past, and this is what I have been waiting to hear before I could die in peace. I cannot presume to say," Hortense added humbly, "that my poor prayers alone could have brought about these wonderful conversions, but I suppose they have helped, the good sisters at Notre Dame always told us to 'ask and we should receive,' and I believe them now. What is the pledge I have made to the fruit it has yielded? The happiness which the world affords is well lost in such a cause as this. Is it not, my Amey?"
"Indeed it is," I answered earnestly, "but all the same I think you have done the most noble and heroic of Christian actions in enlisting against your own earthly happiness to favor such a cause however worthy it may be."
"I do not regret it now, Amey," she said with a sweet, sad smile; "when we look back upon our lives from the watch-tower of a dawning eternity we are glad to see some noble effort standing out in relief from all the daily transgressions that confront us. I wish now there were more such purposes in my empty life."
"This one comprised all others, it seems to me," I put in, earnestly, "you renounced even the possible and uncertain joys of the world. You lived under the yoke of this voluntary self-sacrifice, which was bringing you nearer and nearer every day to your reward."
"I have been well repaid," she answered faintly, closing her tired lids wearily, and folding her hands; after a pause she opened them and continued:
"When they saw how ill I was they sent for Mr. Dalton again, and he came to see me. He told me you were on your way to visit Miss Merivale, who was to be married in a little while, and that you were said to be engaged to Doctor Campbell, which was puzzling news to me at that time. He spoke sympathetically but not regretfully, I thought, of your engagement, and I wondered more than ever what relationship existed between Ernest Dalton and you. He praised Doctor Campbell in the highest terms and said that you had 'made a man of him' for life. Bayard was glad to have Mr. Dalton with us and kept him for several weeks. He left with a promise to return soon again, I suppose he likes to comfort Bayard while his sorrows are fresh," she added, closing her eyes languidly and sighing faintly.
Just then Mdme. de Beaumont came in on tip-toe with some tempting morsel for her little invalid. This broke the strain of confidence, and as Hortense showed symptoms of exhaustion and drowsiness, after taking her nourishment, we lowered the blinds and stole from the room. In a few moments she was fast asleep.
By degrees Hortense succumbed to her disease. There were no happy revivals of her old mood now; no flickering of the old vitality that had brightened other lives besides her own.
She dozed nearly all day long, speaking very little and hardly heeding the questions that were breathed into her ears. The April thaw had set in and the air was moist and chilly. There was something cloudy and oppressive in the very atmosphere one breathed, but as the days wore on the sunshine grew warmer and brighter, and the birds hopping from twig to twig cleared their little throats and sang forth a merry greeting to the advancing summer-time.
The sunshine that flooded the world without grew warmer and brighter, it is true, but the sunshine of hope that gladdens sorrow-stricken human hearts in hours of wearisome suspense became colder and dimmer as each new day confirmed the painful fears of Hortense's friends concerning her ultimate recovery.
The time had at last arrived when death's dreadful warning rested on every feature of her wasted countenance. We no longer exchanged cheerful glances of mutual encouragement as we glided in and out of her chamber. All was solemn and silent as the awful visitor whose advent was now unmistakably and hopelessly announced.
There were tears, and sobs, and aching hearts that could not plead to Hope now, for Hope had grown powerless and passive; and so we waited in sorrow and suspense for the dismal day that was so surely at hand, praying and watching with our loved one while the flame faintly flickered with a dying effort within her soul.
May came—the bright, golden month of song and sunshine—and still the faint flame flickered, leaping up at times with a delusive strength and activity, then sinking down again until it almost expired forever. One afternoon I returned late. I had gone out into the fields in search of a handful of Mayflowers. I thought they might bring a smile to my darling's lips, and for hours I had wandered about the open country searching amid the tender early blades for violets—white or blue.
I was coming back as, the sun began to set, feeling tired and low-spirited. I had found but a few little flowers, for the season was late, and I was eager to reach my destination with them while the freshness of their beauty glowed on their tiny leaves. When I stole to her room, however, the door was partly closed, and Bayard was walking slowly up and down the corridor outside.
"You cannot go in now," he said in a whisper, laying one hand tenderly upon my shoulder, "Father Douglas is with her. Go and wait in the little front room," he added "I will call you when she is alone again."
I turned softly around, and crept on tip-toe to the sitting-room, at the end of the passage; the door was partly open, and I glided in noiselessly. In an easy chair, by the open window, with his back towards me, sat Ernest Dalton, alone.
He did not hear me, and I stood with my hand upon the casement, wondering what I had better do: it was only for a moment, however. He was not the same man to me now, with whom I had parted so strangely, after my father's death; he was neither Hortense's lover nor mine, but a good friend to us both; he was my guardian, and the only father I had left.
It seemed strange to me, at that instant, that I ever should have looked upon him differently, I, who had sat upon his knee in my childhood, and cried myself to sleep within his arms, why should I shrink from him now, when his shoulders were bending with their burden of sorrow, and his hair growing silver, with the bitter touches of time?
By right, he should have been my father! My poor mother had loved him so! perhaps he was thinking of her, as he sat there, looking vacantly out towards the west. I stole my hand from the casement, and crept towards him slowly and gently. Still he did not heed me, he was sunk in a reverie too profound; a little footstool lay on the floor at his feet, I dropped myself quietly upon it, and looked up with a smile into his face.
"Mr. Dalton!" was all I could say at the moment.
He started, as if from sleep, and turned his sad blue eyes upon me, with a quiet wonder.
"It is you little Amey, is it?" he said, at length, taking both my hands and bending down towards me. "How are you, little one; are you well and happy?"
"I am not little Amey any more, Mr. Dalton," I answered, with my hands still in his, and my eyes turned up to his good, honest face. "I have grown into a great woman since I saw you last; I have learned many things—sorrowful things; they have told me the story of my mother's life, and it has changed the whole nature of my own."
"They have told you?—did they tell you all?" he asked in a low, tremulous voice.
"Yes, everything," I answered warmly; "Mrs. Nyle has given me every detail."
He looked at me steadily for a moment in silence, and the tears gathered in his blue eyes—but they did not fall. When they had gone back again he drew the footstool nearer, and began to stroke my hair with one gentle hand.
"Amey," he said, "I have been waiting for this day through many a long and lonely year. I might have hastened it, I suppose, but I could not—however, perhaps it is time enough now. You know, now," he continued, taking my hands in his again and holding them firmly together, "why I have watched you, and followed your progress through childhood and girlhood, into your blooming womanhood. You know why I shared your little joys and sorrows in your youth; why I persuaded your father to send you to Notre Dame, when I saw how miserable your life was at home. During your absence I managed to find out the only surviving relative I knew you had. I feared a day might come when you would find yourself in need of such a friend, and indeed such came to pass. When you returned from school I met you in the Hartmanns' ball room; I had come in late on the evening train, and found an invitation among my letters; I knew you had come home, and expected to find you there, so I hastened thither, and saw you, as you know, first when you were dancing, and next in the conservatory. I shall never forget how you looked that night, Amey; it was as if time had rolled its iron portals back, and that forth from the buried past came the dearest and holiest associations of my life. I saw in you, as plainly as if the 'loved and lost' one her self had stood before me, the image proud and beautiful, of my first and only love."
"My mother?" I faltered.
"Your mother," he repeated.
"I remember now," I said, with slow, sad emphasis, "that papa looked strangely at me that night too, and did what he had not done for years before, he kissed me kindly and tenderly, and muttered something about my being the 'image of his happy past,' and of his never having seen 'such a likeness before.'"
"It is little wonder, child," Mr. Dalton answered, looking wistfully into the space between us. "He loved her, too, poor Hampden—every one did—but I loved her first, and best—yes, I know I loved her best. How I watched your every look and tone and gesture at this time, Amey," he exclaimed eagerly, "they were constantly bringing back my vanished youth, and casting fitful gleams of sunshine across my wintry track. And you took to me. I could see the reflection of the old love-light, faint though it was, in the eyes that were only like hers, and not really hers—yes it was a living pledge of her early love each time you watched for me, and welcomed me, or singled me out in a crowded room from all the rest. It was her inheritance, that she left you, wherewith to gladden the life that Fate had urged her to darken,—and you did it, my little one, though it could never be quite the same."
"I loved you, and watched you jealously, God knows I did, but it was not with that other dead love, which shall never be revived on earth. In the sight of heaven we belonged to one another, a pledge is a pledge, in spite of all the subterfuges and impediments of destiny, and we were pledged to one another. Therefore do I weep my widowed love, as if men had called her mine, as well as heaven."
"You were the only living reminder of my past to me, and as such I cherished and guarded you. One day I almost forgot that you were only what you are to me—it was the anniversary of that betrothal day, and though the winter wind blew cold and fierce without, something of the old fire glowed anew within my breast. I said to myself as I sauntered along the quiet street, 'I will go and see myotherAmey, in commemoration of this eventful day, perhaps she will smile a familiar smile and speak words of kindness, like those my heart remembers, of long ago.'"
"I went up to the house and asked, as usual, for your father," he said, breaking into a sad smile. "They told me he was in his library, and with the privileges of an old friend I walked unceremoniously in. It was nearly dark there, and the fire was smouldering quietly among the gathering ashes, there was a lounge drawn up before it, on which my 'other' Amey lay sleeping. My coming in did not disturb her; she never moved, one hand was thrown carelessly over her shapely head, the other hung down beside her, a rich red glow was on each pretty cheek and the shadow of a smile upon the lips so like those silent sealed ones that twenty odd years before had spoken their love into my listening ear.
"I looked down upon her, scarcely daring to breathe, lest the spell be broken. We were alone in the room—we two, and it was a day pregnant with stirring remembrances for me. Even supposing the spirit of my loved and lost one kept guard beside her sleeping child, would she check the honest impulse that seized me at that moment? Would she cover the unconscious lips, that in deepest reverence and most hallowed and respectful love I stooped and kissed? Would she, Amey—tell me do you think she would?" he pleaded, with a wistful sadness.
"I don't think so, Mr. Dalton," I replied in solemn earnest. "If things had been otherwise, no one would have had a better right to do so than you. Even as it is, your faithful, I may say religious, love for my poor angel-mother recommends you before all others to my everlasting esteem and affection. Besides—" I added a little playfully—"I am your god-child, you know!"
"I have not forgotten it, bless you '" he answered. "You have her spirit in you," he then muttered, as if in soliloquy, and then went on to say—
"It was on that day, that I lost this little amulet of mine—this priceless treasure, with the image of her beauty within, I have worn it for twenty years and more, I shall wear it until I die! I knew I lost it in that library, and used to assure myself that it was safe, though I would not mention it to any one. At last, you returned it to me, and I restored it to its accustomed place. It is all I will have, in a little while, when Arthur Campbell has taken you away from me."
I have never been able to say very much in the trying moments of my life, and so when Mr. Dalton's story was ended, I only looked out of the window upon the gathering twilight, listening to the echo of his plaintive accents, as they settled down upon my heart forever. After a pause, he spoke again:—"You have promised to marry Campbell, have you not?" he asked.
"Yes Mr. Dalton, I think he is a worthy fellow, don't you?" I replied.
"He is Amey, he is. I trust you will both be happy," was the distracted rejoinder, and then Bayard knocked timidly at the door; I knew what the summons meant and starting to my feet at once, I went and obeyed it.
It was my last vigil by Hortense's bed-side—for, when morning came with its glad sun-beams, her spirit had passed away—there was no struggle, no pain, only a sinking to rest, a falling to sleep; a quiet transit from life's worrying turmoil, into the hallowed peace of death!
With a handful of fresh violets, and a cross upon her breast, a lily, white and newly-gathered, in her hand, the emblem of that purity in which her eternal sleep had overtaken her, she lay within the quiet precincts of her little room.
Many tears were shed, and many sighs were heaved about her! So young, so fresh a flower in life's great garden, lying before us with its broken stem!
We bade her our last farewell, and resigned her to the grave; I, who had loved her with all the intimate intensity of a glowing friendship, kissed her cold lips again and again, and turned away from her, forever. Mr. Dalton wiped the moisture from his eyes, as he stooped over the coffin lid, and touched her brow, fondly but reverently, with his trembling lips, Mdme. de Beaumont fell upon the prostrate figure of her darling, and in their last mortal embrace, swooned away! Bayard leaning slowly over her, with a face almost as pallid as her own, muttered in feeble sobs—"My angel! my guardian angel!" and with one long, lingering kiss, the last he could ever give her, he turned from her, baptized anew in her self-abnegating love, a conscious and contrite penitent.
When the funeral was over and peace and quiet were in a measure restored to the agitated hearts of her mother and Bayard, I made my silent preparations to depart. Mr. Dalton had left before me. Madame de Beaumont parted from me with the greatest reluctance, and indeed, I was not over anxious to leave her so soon after her severe bereavement, but my duty now lay elsewhere.
It was with the greatest profusion of gratitude and expressions of the deepest appreciation and regard, that Bayard and his mother bade me their last farewells. We went together to Hortense's grave in the morning, and prayed awhile; I plucked one little sprig of early clover that had struggled into bloom above her, and carried it away with me as the last parting souvenir of my deeply lamented friend.
When I returned to the comfort and quiet of Cousin Bessie's home, from which I had been estranged for many months, I began to feel the re-action of all my recent exertions setting in. I struggled against it with all the violence of a perverse inclination to combat it, but I was baffled; I grew weaker day by day, and at length succumbed to the depressing influence of a slow fever.
How good, and generous and thoughtful, dear Cousin Bessie proved herself a thousand times over during my tedious illness. Never complaining, never impatient, though at times I was so peevish and trying, night after night she tended me with her own loving hands, cheering me up when I was disposed to be gloomy, with the happiest of predictions about my near recovery. At last, I began to show the effects of her careful nursing, and was well enough to be helped downstairs by Girly, or Zita or some one of that loving household—and even here their untiring solicitude pursued me; there was no end to the diversity of the distractions they provided for me, foremost among which was an invitation written by Louis urging Arthur Campbell to come and spend a few weeks at the house.
Cousin Bessie has most seriously maintained to this day that we treated her very shabbily on this occasion; she declares she shall never forgive Arthur, but she says it so good-humouredly that I am tempted to suspect her sincerity.
That she should have brought us together in the fulness and generosity of her heart, and that we should have taken advantage of the opportunity she afforded us of enjoying one another's company from morning until night, to plot and plan a speedy escape from her immediate guardianship, seemed to her a selfish and ungrateful return for so great a favour.
But she was too kind-hearted to wear her pleasant scowl very long. Mr. Nyle would talk of a time when "somebody" that he "had since had reason to know very well had committed just such an appalling offence, herself and," he argued, very suggestively, "unless that 'somebody' has had reason to regret and repent of her own rash ingratitude," he "could not see why she should interfere with other people, who were tempted to follow in her footsteps."
Zita and Louis laughed merrily at such allusions from their father, whose own eyes sparkled with the "light of other days," as he spoke them, and Cousin Bessie either bowed her head much lower than usual over her knitting as she heard them, or looked playfully up at her husband with a quick revival of the old time love in her pleasant, earnest features, and entreated him to "have sense, for mercy's sake and not have the children laughing at him."
In the first week of June, while the young summer sunshine was bright and pleasant, Arthur and I were married, Zita was my pretty bridesmaid and Louis our gallant groomsman; our only guests were the Rutherbys and Mr. Dalton.
Cousin Bessie gave us a cosy wedding breakfast, and it was amid riotous merry-making and boisterous good wishes for a long and happy future we drove away from the little gate, where some months before that we had begun the chapter whose joyful sequel was now in progress.
The rest is an old story, familiar to many homes and hearts, the story of that wedded happiness which is the outgrowth of two steady, abiding, enduring loves. I have been happier as Arthur Campbell's wife than I could ever have been as Ernest Dalton's, and I shall state why:
When we are young, we develop a tendency to exalt and idealize the common-place phases of life beyond all limits of reason or possibility. We flatter our buoyant expectations with the conviction that there is honey in the heart of every trifling flower we must gather by life's dusty roadside, and that it needs but the magic touch of our own hand to have it brought to the surface. This is a pleasant delusion, which, however, is susceptible of being rudely and roughly dispelled by an impartial experience as we grow older, when this exaggerated tendency creeps into our loves, and it is there it holds the fullest sway, and does the maddest mischief, the danger of a disenchanting awakening is still greater and more hazardous. For when we love in an abstract sense we exclusively, love in utter oblivion of the exactions of real life; we never stop to consider that that love which purposes to endure and strengthen with time must be coupled with a broad, impartial view of the stubborn circumstances, which are the facts of existence. A love that is all poetry and moonshine dies a sudden death in the face of practical dilemmas.
I have become convinced of this many a time, though my experience of wedded life is necessarily limited. Arthur and I have counted the grocer's bills, and made out the wash account, with the pleasantest smiles and most playful manner possible; and I have felt as I leaned upon his shoulder and scanned the items before us, that he was the dearest and best of husbands, whereas—Mr. Dalton, oh shades of poetry and song! imagine Ernest Dalton poring over a soapy wash account. I mention it, and Arthur joins me in the merry laugh the bare thought of it provokes.
Mr. Dalton, however, was always our good, kind friend, while he remained in our town. To the spirit of emigration that pervaded our cities some years later we owe his loss. He stole away without letting any one know of his definite purpose, and buried himself in the solitude of the North-West prairies.
For a time he was a punctual correspondent, but there came a breach and a pause, during which we learned of his serious illness, and subsequently of his death. To the end he had remembered us, and no one grieved for him more earnestly, more deeply than Arthur and I.
Some weeks after the announcement of his death had been made known to us, I received a little box which had been found among his personal belongings, addressed to me. It contained the identical locket which had been in my possession once before, and which was now bequeathed to me with injunctions to wear it faithfully, in memory of the two departed ones, whose time-worn pictures lay safely stowed away within.
His money and other properties he bequeathed to the little fair-haired prattler now playing at my knee. We have called him Ernest Dalton Campbell, but Arthur says we must keep that until he is big, and in the meantime has christened him "Toddles," which is very absurd to my thinking, but to which, with all the edifying obedience of a Christian wife I am bound to submit now, as well as in every matter of greater or less moment.
I thought I had finished my story when I laid down my pen, a few months ago, and gave a long-drawn sigh of infinite relief. Time has, however, hastened the development of a few more items, that may be of more or less interest to those readers who have kindly followed thedramatis personae, that have been flitting through these chapters, with a partial attention.
As I write the closing words mydramatis personaecome trooping to the front, to group themselves for the final tableau—Cousin Bessie and her faithful husband are the central and leading figures; her hands are folded, and a happy, peaceful smile plays around the corners of her good-humoured face.
On one side of her stands Zita, a pretty, blushing bride, leaning on Philip Rutherby's arm; so ardent is the young bridegroom in his admiration that he threatens to spoil the whole effect, if we keep him before the public eye for very long. Louis is not with them, he has been sent away to college.
On the other side of the leading figures, Dr. and Mrs. Campbell, with a roguish gray-eyed darling, are grouped affectionately together; they all look very happy, but I think Mrs. Campbell is the most so of any. At a little distance from this last small circle stands our old friend, Girly, now grown beyond all recognition into a pleasing and promising womanhood; and away in the misty background a long-forgotten trio loom out in sombre sullenness; they are Mrs. Hampden, and Fred and the 'solicitous brother.' Fred is a hopeless dyspeptic, who can give his mind to nothing else but his digestion, which unfortunate circumstance frets his new disenchanted parent and provokes his no longer solicitous uncle.
They are all in apparent ill-humour, so we will screen them off from our laughing, happy band, as we rise to make our final curtsey and retire behind the curtain of our private, domestic lives.