"He does not know, and never will; that is, he never cared for me, nor guessed how foolish I was to give him my love unsought."
"Then it is not Arthur Leighton, and that is the reason you refused him, too?" Mr. Hastings said, involuntarily, and Anna looked quickly up, her cheeks growing paler than they were before, as she replied:
"I don't know what you mean. I never refused Mr. Leighton—never."
"You never refused Mr. Leighton?" Thornton exclaimed, forgetting all discretion in his surprise at this flat contradiction. "I have Arthur's word for it, written to me last June, while Mrs. Meredith was there, I think."
"He surely could not have meant it, because it never occurred. Once, I was foolish enough to think he was going to, but he did not. There is some great mistake," Anna found strength to say, and then she lay back in her easy-chair panting for breath, her brain all in a whirl as she thought of the possibility that she was once so near the greatest happiness she had ever desired, and which was now lost to her forever.
He brought her smelling salts, he gave her ice-water to drink, and then, kneeling beside her, he fanned her gently, while he said: "There surely is a mistake, and, I fear, a great wrong, too, somewhere. Were all your servants trusty? Was there no one who would withhold a letter if he had written? Were you always at home when he called?" Thornton questioned her rapidly, for there was a suspicion in his mind as to the real culprit; but he would not hint it to Anna unless she suggested it herself. And this she was not likely to do. Mrs. Meredith had been too kind to her during the past summer, and especially during her illness, to allow of such a thought concerning her, and, in a maze of perplexity, she replied to his inquiries: "We keep but one servant, Esther, and she, I know, is trusty. Besides, who could have refused him for me? Grandfather would not, I know, because—because——"
She hesitated a little and her cheeks blushed scarlet, as she added: "I sometimes thought he wished it to be."
If Thornton had previously a doubt as to the other man who stood between himself and Anna, that doubt was now removed, and laying aside all thoughts of self, he exclaimed: "I tell you there is a great wrong somewhere. Arthur never told an untruth; he thought that you refused him; he thinks so still, and I shall never rest till I have solved the mystery. I will write to him to-day."
For an instant there swept over Anna a feeling of unutterable joy as she thought of what the end might be; then, as she remembered Lucy, her heart seemed to stop its beating, and, with a moan, she stretched her hand toward Thornton, who had risen as if to leave her.
"No, no; you must not interfere," she said. "It is too late, too late. Don't you remember Lucy? Don't you know she is to be his wife? Lucy must not be sacrificed for me. I can bear it the best."
She knew she had betrayed her secret and she tried to take it back, but Thornton interrupted her with, "Never mind now, Anna; I guessed it all before, and it hurts my pride less to know that it is Arthur whom you prefer to me; I do not blame you for it."
He smoothed her hair pityingly, while he stood over her for a moment, wondering what his duty was. Anna had told him plainly what it was. He must leave Arthur and Lucy alone. She insisted upon having it so, and he promised her at least that he would not interfere; then, taking her hand, he pressed it a moment between his own and went out from her presence. In the hall below he met with Mrs. Meredith, who he knew was waiting anxiously to hear the result of that long interview.
"Your niece will never be my wife, and I am satisfied to have it so," he said; then, as he saw the lowering of her brow, he continued: "I have long suspected that she loved another, and my suspicions are confirmed, though there's something I cannot understand," and fixing his eyes searchingly upon Mrs. Meredith, he told her what Arthur had written and of Anna's denial of the same. "Somebody played her false," he said, rather enjoying the look of terror and shame which crept into the haughty woman's eyes, as she tried to appear natural and express her own surprise at what she heard.
"I was right in my conjecture," Thornton thought, as he took his leave of Mrs. Meredith who could not face Anna then, but paced restlessly up and down her spacious rooms, wondering how much Thornton had suspected and what the end would be.
She had sinned for naught. Anna had upset all her cherished plans, and, could she have gone back for a few months and done her work again, she would have left the letter lying where she found it. But that could not be now. She must reap as she had sown, and resolving finally to hope for the best and abide the result, she went up to Anna, who having no suspicion of her, hurt her ten times more cruelly by the perfect faith with which she confided the story to her than bitter reproaches would have done.
"I know you wanted me to marry Mr. Hastings," Anna said, "and I would if I could have done so conscientiously, but I could not; for, I may now confess it to you, I did love Arthur so much; and once I hoped that he loved me."
The cold hard woman, who had brought this grief upon her niece, could only answer that it did not matter.
She was not very sorry, although she had wished her to marry Mr. Hastings, but she must not fret about that, or about anything. She would be better by and by, and forget that she ever cared for Arthur Leighton.
"At least," and she spoke entreatingly now, "you will not demean yourself to let him know of the mistake. It would scarcely be womanly, and he may have gotten over it. Present circumstances would seem to prove as much."
Mrs. Meredith felt that her secret was comparatively safe, and, with her spirits lightened, she kissed her niece lovingly and told her of a trip to Europe which she had in view, promising that if she went Anna should go with her and so not be at home when the marriage of Arthur and Lucy took place.
It was appointed for the 15th of January, that being the day when Lucy came of age, and the very afternoon succeeding Anna's interview with Mr. Hastings the little lady came down to New York to direct her bridal trousseau making in the city.
She was brimming over with happiness, and her face was a perfect gleam of sunshine when she came next day to Anna's room, and, throwing off her wrappings, plunged at once into the subject uppermost in her thoughts, telling first how she and Arthur had quarreled.
"Not quarreled as Uncle and Aunt Hetherton and lots of people do, but differed so seriously that I cried, and had to give up, too," she said. "I wanted you for bridesmaid, and, do you think, he objected! Not objected to you, but to bridesmaids generally, and he carried his point, so that unless Fanny is married at the same time, as, perhaps, she will be, we are just to stand up stiff and straight alone, except as you'll all be round me in the aisle. You'll be well by that time, and I want you very near to me," Lucy said, squeezing fondly the icy hand whose coldness made her start and exclaim:
"Why, Anna, how cold you are, and how pale you are looking! You have been so sick, and I am well. It don't seem quite right, does it? And Arthur, too, is looking thin and worn—so thin that I have coaxed him to raise whiskers to cover the hollows in his cheeks. He looks a heap better now, though he was always handsome. I do so wonder that you two never fell in love, and I tell him so most every time I see him."
It was terrible to Anna to sit and hear all this, and the room grew dark as she listened; but she forced back her pain, and, stroking the curly head almost resting in her lap, said kindly:
"You love him very much, don't you, darling; so much that it would be hard to give him up?"
"Yes; oh, yes. I could not give him up now, except to God. I trust I could do that, though once I could not, I am sure," and, nestling closer to Anna, Lucy whispered to her of the new-born hope that she was better than she used to be, that daily interviews with Arthur had not been without their effect, and now, she trusted, she tried to do right, from a higher motive than just the pleasing of him.
"God bless you, darling," was Anna's response, as she clasped the hand of the young girl who was now far more worthy to be Arthur's wife than once she had been.
If Anna ever had a thought of telling Arthur, it would have been put aside by that interview with Lucy. She could not harm that pure, loving, trusting girl, and she sent her from her with a kiss and blessing, praying silently that she might never know a shadow of the pain which she was suffering.
She had one, years before, but, since the summer day when she sent from her the white-faced man whose heart she had broken, it had been hardening over with a stony crust which nothing, it seemed, could break. And yet there were times when she was softened and wished that much which she had done might be blotted out from the great book in which she believed.
There was many a misdeed recorded there against her, she knew, and occasionally there stole over her a strange disquietude as to how she could confront them when they all came up against her.
Usually, she could cast such thoughts aside by a drive down gay Broadway, or, at most, a call at Stewart's; but the sight of Anna's white face and the knowing what made it so white was a constant reproach, and conscience gradually wakened from its torpor enough to whisper of the only restitution in her power—that of confession to Arthur.
But from this she shrank nervously. She could not humble herself thus to any one, and she would not either. Then came the fear lest by another than herself her guilt should come to light. What if Thornton Hastings should find her out? She was half afraid he suspected her now, and that gave her the keenest pang of all, for she respected Thornton highly, and it would cost her much to lose his good opinion.
She had lost him for her niece, but she could not spare him from herself, and so, in sad perplexity, which wore upon her visibly, the autumn days went on until at last she sat one morning in her dressing-room and read in a foreign paper:
"Died, at Strasburgh, August 31st, Edward Coleman, aged 46."
That was all; but the paper dropped from the trembling hands, and the proud woman of the world bowed her head upon the cold marble of the table and wept aloud. She was not Mrs. Meredith now. She was Julia Ruthven again, and she stood with Edward Coleman out in the grassy orchard, where the apple-blossoms were dropping from the trees and the air was full of insects' hum and the song of matin birds. She was the wealthy Mrs. Meredith now, and he was dead in Strasburgh. True to her he had been to the last; for he had never married, and those who had met him abroad had brought back the same report of "a white-haired man, old before his time, with a tired, sad look upon his face." That look she had written there, and she wept on as she recalled the past and murmured softly:
"Poor Edward! I loved you all the while, but I sold myself for gold, and it turned your brown locks snowy-white, poor darling!" and her hands moved up and down the folds of her cashmere robe, as if it were the brown locks they were smoothing just as they used to do. Then came a thought of Anna, whose face wore much the look which Edward's did when he went slowly from the orchard and left her there alone, with the apple-blossoms dropping on her head and the wild bees' hum in her ear.
"I can at least do right in that respect," she said; "I can undo the past to some extent and lessen the load of sin rolling upon my shoulders. I will write to Arthur Leighton. I surely need tell no one else; not yet, at least, lest he has outlived his love for Anna. I can trust to his discretion and to his honor, too. He will not betray me unless it is necessary, and then only to Anna. Edward would bid me do it if he could speak. He was somewhat like Arthur Leighton."
And so, with the dead man in Strasburgh before her eyes, Mrs. Meredith nerved herself to write to Arthur Leighton, confessing the fraud imposed upon him, imploring his forgiveness and begging him to spare her as much as possible.
"I know from Anna's own lips how much she has always loved you," she wrote in conclusion; "but she does not know of the stolen letter, and I leave you to make such use of the knowledge as you shall think proper."
She did not put in a single plea for the poor, little Lucy, dancing so gayly over the mine just ready to explode. She was purely selfish still, with all her qualms of conscience, and thought only of Anna, whom she would make happy at another's sacrifice. So she never hinted that it was possible for Arthur to keep his word pledged to Lucy Harcourt, and, as she finished her letter and placed it in an envelope with the one which Arthur had sent to Anna, her thoughts leaped forward to the wedding she would give her niece—a wedding not quite like that she had designed for Mrs. Thornton Hastings, but a quiet, elegant affair, just suited to a clergyman who was marrying a Ruthven.
Arthur had been spending the evening at Prospect Hill. The Hethertons had returned and would remain till after the fifteenth, and since they had come the rector found it even pleasanter calling there than it had been before, with only his bride-elect to entertain him. Sure of Dr. Bellamy, Fanny had laid aside her sharpness, and was exceedingly witty and brilliant, while, now that it was settled, the colonel was too thoroughly a gentleman to be otherwise than gracious to his future nephew; and Mrs. Hetherton was always polite and lady-like, so that the rector looked forward with a good deal of interest to the evenings he usually gave to Lucy, who, though satisfied to have him in her sight, still preferred the olden time, when she had him all to herself and was not disquieted with the fear that she did not know enough for him, as she often was when she heard him talking with Fanny and her uncle of things she did not understand.
This evening, however, the family were away and she received him alone, trying so hard to come up to his capacity, talking so intelligibly of books she had been reading and looking so lovely in her winter crimson dress, besides being so sweetly affectionate and confiding, that for once since his engagement Arthur was more than content, and returned her modest caresses with a warmth he had not felt before. He did love her, he said to himself, or, at least, he was learning to love her very much; and when at last he took his leave, and she went with him to the door, there was an unwonted tenderness in his manner as he pushed her gently back, for the first snow of the season was falling and the large flakes dropped upon her golden hair, from which he brushed them carefully away.
"I cannot let my darling take cold," he said, and Lucy felt a strange thrill of joy, for never before had he called her his darling, and sometimes she had thought that the love she received was not as great as the love she gave.
But she did not think so now, and in an ecstasy of joy she stood in the deep recess of the bay window, watching him as he went away through the moonlight and the feathery cloud of snow, wondering why, when she was so happy, there could cling to her a haunted presentiment that she and Arthur would never meet again just as they had parted.
Arthur, on the contrary, was troubled with no such presentiment. Of Anna he hardly thought, or, if he did, the vision was obscured by the fair picture he had seen standing in the door, with the snowflakes resting in her hair like pearls in a golden coronet. And Arthur thanked his God that he was beginning at last to feel right—that the solemn vows that he was so soon to utter would be more than a mockery.
It was Arthur's work to teach others how dark and mysterious are the ways of Providence, but he had not himself half learned that lesson in all its strange reality; but the lesson was coming on apace; each stride of his swift-footed beast brought him nearer to the great shock waiting for him upon the study table, where Thomas, his man, had put it.
He saw it the first thing on entering the room, but he did not take it up until the snow was brushed from his garments and he had warmed himself by the cheerful fire blazing on the hearth. Then, sitting in his easy-chair, and moving the lamp nearer to him, he took Mrs. Meredith's letter and broke the seal, starting as if a serpent had stung him when, in the note inclosed, he recognized his own handwriting, the same he had sent to Anna when his heart was so full of hope as the brown stalks now beating against his windows with a dismal sound were full of fragrant blossoms. Both had died since then—the roses and his hopes—And Arthur almost wished that he, too, were dead when he read Mrs. Meredith's letter and saw the gulf his feet were treading. Like the waves of the sea, his love for Anna came rolling back upon him, augmented and intensified by all that he had suffered, and by the terrible conviction that it could not be, although, alas! "it might have been."
He repeated the words over and over again, as stupified with pain, he sat gazing at vacancy, thinking how true was the couplet—
He could not even pray at once, his brain was so confused, but when, at last, the white, quivering lips could move, and the poor aching heart could pray, he only whispered, "God help me to do right," and by that prayer he knew that for a single instant there had crept across his mind the possibility of sacrificing Lucy, who loved and trusted him so much. But only for an instant. He could not cast her from him, though to take her now, knowing what he did, were almost death itself.
"But God can help me to bear it," he cried; then, falling upon his knees, with his face bowed to the floor, the Rector of St. Mark's prayed as he had never prayed before—first for himself, whose need was greatest, and then for Lucy, that she might never know what making her happy had cost him, and then for Anna, whose name he could not speak. "That other one," he called her, and his heart kept swelling in his throat and preventing his utterance, so that the words he would say never reached his lips.
But God heard them just the same, and knew his child was asking that Anna might forget him, if to remember him was pain; that she might learn to love another far worthier than he had ever been.
He did not think of Mrs. Meredith; he had no feeling of resentment then; he was too wholly crushed to care how his ruin had been brought about, and, long after the wood fire on the hearth had turned to cold, gray ashes, he knelt upon the floor and battled with his grief, and when the morning broke it found him still in the cheerless room where he had passed the entire night and from which he went forth strengthened, as he hoped, to do what he believed to be his duty. This was on Saturday, and on the Sunday following there was no service at St. Mark's. The rector was sick, the sexton said; "hard sick, too, he had heard," and the Hetherton carriage, with Lucy in it, drove swiftly to the rectory, where the quiet and solitude awed and frightened Lucy as she entered the house and asked the housekeeper how Mr. Leighton was.
"It is very sudden," she said. "He was perfectly well when he left me on Friday night. Please tell him I am here."
The housekeeper shook her head. Her master's orders were that no one but the doctor should be admitted, she said, repeating what Arthur had told her in anticipation of just such an infliction as this.
But Lucy was not to be denied. Arthur was hers, his sickness was hers, his suffering was hers, and see him she would.
"He surely did not mean me when he asked that no one should be admitted. Tell him it is I; it is Lucy," she said with an air of authority, which, in one so small, so pretty and so child-like, only amused Mrs. Brown, who departed with the message, while Lucy sat down with her feet upon the stove and looked around the sitting-room, thinking that it was smaller and poorer than the one at Prospect Hill, and how she would remodel it when she was mistress there.
"He says you can come," was the word Mrs. Brown brought back, and, with a gleam of triumph in her eye and a toss of the head, which said, "I told you so," Lucy went softly into the darkened room and shut the door behind her.
Arthur had half expected this and had nerved himself to meet it, but the cold sweat stood on his face and his heart throbbed painfully as Lucy bent over him and Lucy's tears fell on his face while she took his feverish hands in hers and murmured softly, "Poor, dear Arthur, I am so sorry for you, and if I could I'd bear the pain so willingly."
He knew she would; she was just as loving and unselfish as that, and he wound his arms around her and drew her down close to him while he whispered, "My poor, little Lucy; I don't deserve this from you."
She did not know what he meant, and she only answered him with kisses, while her little hands moved caressingly across his forehead just as they had done years ago in Rome, when she soothed the pain away. There certainly was a mesmeric influence emanating from those hands, and Arthur felt its power, growing very quiet and at last falling away to sleep, while the soft passes went on, and Lucy held her breath lest she would waken him.
"She was a famous nurse," the physician said when he came, constituting her his coadjutor and making her tread wild with joy and importance when he gave his patient's medicine into her hands.
"It was hardly proper for her niece to stay," Mrs. Hetherton thought, but Lucy was one who could trample down proprieties, and it was finally arranged that Fanny should stay with her. So, while Fanny went to bed and slept, Lucy sat all night in the sick room with Mrs. Brown, and when the next morning came she was looking very pale and languid, but very beautiful withal. At least, such was the mental compliment paid her by Thornton Hastings, who was passing through Hanover and had stopped over one train to see his old college friend and, perhaps, tell him what he began to feel it was his duty to tell him in spite of his promise to Anna. She was nearly well now and had driven with him twice to the park, but he could not be insensible to what she suffered, or how she shrank from having the projected wedding discussed, and, in his intense pity for her, he had half resolved to break his word and tell Arthur what he knew. But he changed his mind when he had been in Hanover a few hours and watched the little fairy who, like some ministering angel, glided about the sick room, showing herself every whit a woman, and making him repent that he had ever called her frivolous or silly. She was not either, he said, and, with a magnanimity for which he thought himself entitled to a good deal of praise, he even felt that it was very possible for Arthur to love the gentle little girl who smoothed his pillows so tenderly and whose fingers threaded so lovingly the damp, brown locks when she thought he, Thornton, was not looking on. She was very coy of him and very distant towards him, too, for she had not forgotten his sin, and she treated him at first with a reserve for which he could not account. But, as the days went on, and Arthur grew so sick that his parishioners began to tremble for their young minister's life, and to think it perfectly right for Lucy to stay with him, even if she was assisted in her labor of love by the stranger from New York, the reserve disappeared and on the most perfect terms of amity she and Thornton Hastings watched together by Arthur's side. Thornton Hastings learned more lessons than one in that sick room where Arthur's faith in God triumphed over the terrors of the grave, which, at one time, seemed so near, while the timid Lucy, whom he had only known as a gay butterfly of fashion, dared before him to pray that God would spare her promised husband or give her grace to say, "Thy will be done."
Thornton could hardly say that he was skeptical before, but any doubts he might have had touching the great fundamental truths on which a true religion rests were gone forever, and he left Hanover a changed man in more respects than one.
Arthur did not die, and on the Sunday preceding the week when the usual Christmas decorations were to commence he came again before his people, his face very pale and worn, and wearing upon it a look which told of a new baptism, an added amount of faith which had helped to lift him above the fleeting cares of this present life. And yet there was much of earth clinging to him still, and it made itself felt in the rapid beating of his heart when he glanced towards the square pew where Lucy knelt and knew that she was giving thanks for him restored again.
Once, in the earlier stages of his convalescence, he had almost betrayed his secret by asking her which she would rather do—bury him from her sight, feeling that he loved her to the last, or give him to another, now that she knew he would recover. There was a frightened look in Lucy's eyes as she replied: "I would ten thousand times rather see you dead, and know that, even in death, you were my own, than to lose you that other way. Oh, Arthur, you have no thought of leaving me now?"
"No, darling, I have not, I am yours always," he said, feeling that the compact was sealed forever and that God blessed the sealing.
He had written to Mrs. Meredith, granting her his forgiveness and asking that, if Anna did not already know of the deception, she might never be enlightened. And Mrs. Meredith had answered that Anna had only heard a rumor that an offer had been made her, but that she regarded it as a mistake, and was fast recovering both her health and spirits. Mrs. Meredith did not add her surprise at Arthur's generosity in adhering to his engagement, nor hint that, now her attack of conscience was so safely over, she was glad he did so, having hope yet of that house on Madison Square; but Arthur guessed at it and dismissed her from his mind just as he tried to dismiss every unpleasant thought, waiting with a trusting heart for whatever the future might bring.
Very extensive preparations were making at Prospect Hill for the double wedding to occur on the 15th. After much debate and consultation, Fanny had decided to take the doctor then; and thus she, too, shared largely in the general interest and excitement which pervaded everything.
Both brides elect seemed very happy, but in a very different way; for, while Fanny was quiet and undemonstrative, Lucy seemed wild with joy, and danced gayly about the house—now in the kitchen, where the cake was making; now in the chamber where the plain sewing was done, and then flitting to her own room in quest of Valencia, who was sent on divers errands, the little lady thinking that, now the time was so near, it would be proper for her to remain indoors and not show herself in public quite as freely as she had been in the habit of doing.
So she remained at home, while they missed her in the back streets and bylanes, the Widow Hobbs, who was still an invalid, pining for a sight of her bright face, and only half compensated for its absence by the charities which Valencia brought; the smart waiting-maid putting on innumerable airs and making Mrs. Hobbs feel keenly how greatly she thought herself demeaned by coming to such a heathenish place as that.
The Hanoverians, too, missed her in the street, but for this they made ample amends by discussing the doings at Prospect Hill and commenting upon the bridal trousseau which was sent up from New York the very week before Christmas, thus affording a most fruitful theme for conversation for the women and girls engaged in trimming the church.
There were dresses of every conceivable fabric, they said, but none were quite so grand as the wedding-dress itself—the heavy white silk which could "stand alone," and trailed "a full half-yard behind."
It was also whispered round that, not content with seeing the effect of her bridal robes as they lay upon the bed, Miss Lucy Harcourt had actually tried them on—wreath, veil and all—and stood before the glass until Miss Fanny had laughed at her for being so vain and foolish, and said she was a pretty specimen for a sober clergyman's wife.
For all this gossip the villagers were indebted mostly to Miss Valencia Le Barre, who, ever since her arrival at Prospect Hill, had been growing somewhat disenchanted with the young mistress she had expected to rule even more completely than she had ruled Mrs. Meredith. But in this she was mistaken, and it did not improve her never very amiable temper to find that she could not with safety appropriate more than half her mistress' handkerchiefs, collars, cuffs, and gloves, to say nothing of perfumery, and pomades, and, as this was a new state of things with Valencia, she chafed at the administration under which she had so willingly put herself, and told things of her mistress which no sensible servant would ever have reported. And Lucy gave her plenty to tell.
Frank and outspoken as a child, she acted as she felt, and did try on the bridal dress, screaming with pleased delight when Valencia fastened the veil and let its fleecy folds fall gracefully around her.
"I wonder what Arthur will think, I do so wish he was here," she had said, ordering a hand-glass brought that she might see herself from behind and know just how much her dress did trail, and how it looked beneath the costly veil.
She was very beautiful in her bridal robes, and she kept them on till Fanny began to chide her for her vanity, and, even then, she lingered before the mirror, as if loath to take them off.
"I don't believe in presentiments," she said to Fanny; "but, do you know, it seems to me just as if I should never wear this again," and she smoothed thoughtfully the folds of the heavy silk she had just laid upon the bed. "I don't know what can happen to prevent it, unless Arthur should die. He was so pale last Sunday and seemed so weak that I shuddered every time I looked at him. I mean to drive round there this afternoon," she continued. "I suppose it is too cold for him to venture as far as here, and he has no carriage, either."
She went to the parsonage that afternoon, and the women in the church saw her as she drove by, the gorgeous colors of her carriage blanket flashing in the wintry sunshine just as the diamonds flashed upon the hand she waved gayly towards them.
There was a little too much of the lady patroness about her quite to suit the plain Hanoverians, especially those who were neither high enough or low enough to be honored with her notice, and they returned to their wreathmaking and gossip, wondering under their breath if it would not, on the whole, have been just as well if their clergyman had married Anna Ruthven instead of this fine city girl with her Parisian manners.
A gleam of intelligence shot from the gray eyes of Valencia, who was in a most unreasonable mood.
"She did not like to stain her hands with the nasty hemlock more than some other folks," she had said, when, after the trying on of the bridal dress, Lucy had remonstrated with her for some duty neglected, and then bidden her to go to the church and help if she were needed.
"I must certainly dismiss you," Lucy had said, wondering how Mrs. Meredith had borne so long with the insolent girl, who went unwillingly to the church, where she was at work when the carriage drove by.
She had thought many times of the letter she had read, and, more than once, when particularly angry, it had been upon her lips to tell her mistress that she was not the first whom Mr. Leighton had asked to be his wife, if, indeed, she was his choice at all; but there was something in Lucy's manner which held her back; besides which, she was, perhaps, unwilling to confess to her own meanness in reading the stolen letter.
"I could tell them something if I would," she thought, as she bent over the hemlock boughs and listened to the remarks; but, for that time, she kept the secret and worked on moodily, while the unsuspecting Lucy went her way and was soon alighting at the rectory gate.
Arthur saw her as she came up the walk and went to meet her.
He was looking very pale and miserable, and his clothes hung loosely upon him; but he welcomed her kindly leading her in to the fire, and trying to believe that he was glad to see her sitting there with her little high-heeled boots upon the fender and the bright hues of her Balmoral just showing beneath her dress of blue merino.
She went all over the house, as she usually did, suggesting alterations and improvements, and greatly confusing good Mrs. Brown, who trudged obediently after her, wondering what she and her master were ever to do with that gay-plumaged bird, whose ways were so unlike their own.
"You must drive with me to the church," she said at last to Arthur, "Fresh air will do you good, and you stay moped up too much. I wanted you to-day at Prospect Hill, for this morning's express from New York brought——"
She stood up on tiptoe to whisper the great news to him, but his pulses did not quicken in the least, even when she told him how charming was the bridal dress. He was standing before the mirror and, glancing at himself, he said, half laughingly, half sadly:
"I am a pitiful-looking bridegroom to go with all that finery: I should not think you would want me, Lucy."
"But I do," she answered, holding his hand and leading him to the carriage, which took him to the church.
He had not intended going there as long as there was an excuse for staying away, and he felt himself grow sick and faint when he stood amid the Christmas decorations and remembered the last year when he and Anna had fastened the wreaths upon the wall.
They were trimming the church very elaborately in honor of him and his bride, and white artificial flowers, so natural that they could not be detected, were mingled with scarlet leaves and placed among the mass of green. The effect was very fine and Arthur tried to praise it, but his face belied his words; and, after he was gone, the disappointed girls declared that he acted more like a man about to be hung than one so soon to be married.
It was very late that night when Lucy summoned Valencia to comb out her long, thick curls, and Valencia was tired, and cross, and sleepy, handling the brush so awkwardly and snarling her mistress's hair so often that Lucy expostulated with her sharply, and this awoke the slumbering demon, which, bursting into full life, could no longer be restrained; and, in amazement, which kept her silent, Lucy listened while Valencia taunted her "with standing in Anna Ruthven's shoes," and told her all she knew of the letter stolen by Mrs. Meredith, and the one she carried to Arthur. But Valencia's anger quickly cooled, and she trembled with fear when she saw how deathly white her mistress grew at first and heard the loud beating of her heart, which seemed trying to burst from its prison and fall bleeding at the feet of the poor, wretched girl, around whose lips the white foam gathered as she motioned Valencia to stop and whispered:
"I am dying!"
She was not dying, but the fainting fit which ensued was longer and more like death than that which had come upon Anna when she heard that Arthur was lost. Twice they thought her heart had ceased to beat, and, in an agony of remorse, Valencia hung over her, accusing herself as her murderer, but giving no other explanation to those around her than: "I was combing her hair when the white froth spirted all over her wrapper, and she said that she was dying."
And that was all the family knew of the strange attack, which lasted till the dawn of the day, and left upon Lucy's face a look as if years and years of anguish had passed over her young head and left its footprints behind.
Early in the morning she asked to see Valencia alone, and the repentant girl went to her prepared to take back all she had said and declare the whole a lie. But Lucy wrung the truth from her, and she repeated the story again so clearly that Lucy had no longer a doubt that Anna was preferred to herself, and sending Valencia away, she moaned piteously:
"Oh, what shall I do? What is my duty?"
The part which hurt her most of all was the terrible certainty that Arthur did not love her as he loved Anna Ruthven. She saw it now just as it was; how, in an unguarded moment, he had offered himself to save her good name from gossip, and how, ever since, his life had been a constant struggle to do his duty by her.
"Poor Arthur," she sobbed, "yours has been a hard lot trying to act the love you did not feel; but it shall be so no longer. Lucy will set you free."
This was her final decision, but she did not reach it till a day and a night had passed, during which she lay with her white face turned to the wall, saying she wanted nothing except to be left alone.
"When I can, I'll tell you," she had said to Fanny and her aunt, when they insisted upon knowing the cause of her distress. "When I can I'll tell you. Leave me alone till then."
So they ceased to worry her, but Fanny sat constantly in the room watching the motionless figure, which took whatever she offered, but otherwise gave no sign of life until the morning of the second day, when it turned slowly towards her, the livid lips quivering piteously and making an attempt to smile as they said:
"Fanny, I can tell you now; I have made up my mind."
Fanny's black eyes were dim with the truest tears she had ever shed when Lucy's story was ended, and her voice was very low as she asked:
"And do you mean to give him up at this late hour?"
"Yes, I mean to give him up. I have been over the entire ground many times, even to the deep humiliation of what people will say, and I have come each time to the same conclusion. It is right that Arthur should be released and I shall release him."
"And you—what will you do?" Fanny asked, gazing in wonder and awe at the young girl, who answered:
"I do not know; I have not thought. I guess God will take care of that."
He would, indeed, take care of that just as he took care of her, inclining the Hetherton family to be so kind and tender towards her, and keeping Arthur from the house during the time when the Christmas decorations were completed and the Christmas festival was held.
Many were the inquiries made for her, and many the thanks and wishes for her speedy restoration sent her by those whom she had so bountifully remembered.
Thornton Hastings, too, who had come to town and was present at the church on Christmas-eve, asked for her with almost as much interest as Arthur, although the latter had hoped she was not seriously ill and expressed a regret that she was not there, saying he should call on her on the morrow after the morning service.
"Oh, I cannot see him here. I must tell him there, at the rectory, in the very room where he asked Anna and me both to be his wife," Lucy said when Fanny reported Arthur's message. "I am able to go there and I must. It will be fine sleighing to-morrow. See, the snow is falling now," and pushing back the curtain, Lucy looked dreamily out upon the fast whitening ground, sighing, as she remembered the night when the first snowflakes fell and she stood watching them with Arthur at her side.
Fanny did not oppose her cousin, and, with a kiss upon the blue-veined forehead, she went to her own room, leaving Lucy to think over for the hundredth time what she would say to Arthur.
The worshippers at St. Mark's on Christmas morning heard the music of the bells as the Hetherton sleigh passed by, but none of them knew whither it was bound, or the scene which awaited the rector, when, his services over, he started towards home.
Lucy had kept her word, and, just as Mrs. Brown was looking at the clock to see if it was time to put her fowls to bake, she heard the hall-door open softly and almost dropped her dripping-pan in her surprise at the sight of Lucy Harcourt, with her white face and great sunken blue eyes, which looked so mournfully at her as Lucy said:
"I want to go to Arthur's room—the library, I mean."
"Why, child, what is the matter? I heard you was sick, but did not s'pose 'twas anything like this. You are paler than a ghost," Mrs. Brown exclaimed as she tried to unfasten Lucy's hood and cloak and lead her to the fire.
But Lucy was not cold, she said. She would rather go at once to Arthur's room. Mrs. Brown made no objection, though she wondered if the girl was crazy as she went back to her fowls and Christmas pudding, leaving Lucy to find her way alone to Arthur's study, which looked so like its owner, with his dressing-gown across the lounge, just where he had thrown it, his slippers under the table and his arm-chair standing near the table, where he sat when he asked Lucy to be his wife, and where she now sat down, panting for breath and gazing dreamily around with the look of a frightened bird when seeking for some avenue of escape from an appalling danger. There was no escape, and, with a moan, she laid her head upon the table and prayed that Arthur might come quickly while she had sense and strength to tell him. She heard his step at last, and rose up to meet him, smiling a little at his sudden start when he saw her there.
"It's only I," she said, shedding back the clustering curls from her pallid face, and grasping the chair to steady herself and keep from falling. "I am not here to frighten you, I've come to do you good—to set you free. Oh, Arthur, you do not know how terribly you have been wronged, and I did not know it, either, till a few days ago. She never received your letter—Anna never did. If she had she would have answered yes, and have been in my place now; but she is going to be there. I give you up to Anna. I'm here to tell you so. But oh, Arthur, it hurts—it hurts."
He knew it hurt by the agonizing expression of her face, but he could not go near her for a moment, so overwhelming was his surprise at what he saw and heard. But, when the first shock to them both was past, and he could listen to her more rational account of what she knew and what she was there to do, he refused to listen. He would not be free. He would keep his word, he said. Matters had gone too far to be suddenly ended. He held her to his promise and she must be his wife.
"Can you tell me truly that you love me more than Anna?" Lucy asked, a ray of hope dawning for an instant upon her heart, but fading into utter darkness as Arthur hesitated to answer.
He did love Anna best, though never had Lucy been so near supplanting even her as at that moment, when she stood before him and told him he was free. There was something in the magnitude of her generosity which touched a tender chord and made her dearer to him than she had ever been.
"I can make you very happy," he said at last, and Lucy replied:
"Yes, but yourself—how with yourself? Would you be happy, too? No, Arthur, you would not, and neither should I, knowing all I do. It is best that we should part, though it almost breaks my heart, for I have loved you so much."
She stopped for breath, and Arthur was wondering what he could say to persuade her, when a cheery whistle sounded near and Thornton Hastings appeared in the door. He had gone to the office after church, and not knowing that anyone but Arthur was in the library, had come there at once.
"I beg your pardon," he said when he saw Lucy, and he was hurrying away, but Lucy called him back, feeling that in him she should find a powerful ally to aid her in her task.
Appealing to him as Arthur's friend, she repeated the story rapidly, and then went on:
"Tell him it is best—he must not argue against me, for I feel myself giving way through my great love for him, and it is not right. Tell him so Mr. Hastings—plead my cause for me—say what a true woman ought to say, for, believe me, I am in earnest in giving him to Anna."
There was a ghastly hue upon her face, and her features looked pinched and rigid, but the terrible heart-beats were not there. God, in his great mercy, kept them back, else she had surely died under that strong excitement. Thornton thought she was fainting, and, going hastily to her side, passed his arm around her and put her in the chair; then, standing protectingly by her, he said just what first came into his mind to say. It was a delicate matter in which to interfere, and he handled it carefully, telling frankly of what had passed between himself and Anna, and giving it as his opinion that she loved Arthur to-day just as well as before she left Hanover.
"Then, if that is so and Arthur loves her, as I know he does, it is surely right for them to marry, and they must," Lucy exclaimed, vehemently, while Thornton laid his hand pityingly upon her head and said:
"And only you be sacrificed?"
There was something wondrously tender in the tone of Thornton's voice, and Lucy glanced quickly up at him, while her blue eyes filled with the first tears she had shed since she came into that room.
"I am willing—I am ready—I have made up my mind and I shall never revoke it," she answered, while Arthur again put in a feeble remonstrance.
But Thornton was on Lucy's side. He did with cooler judgment what she could not, and when, at last, the interview was ended, there was no ring on Lucy's forefinger, for Arthur held it in his hand and their engagement was at an end.
Stunned with what he had passed through, Arthur stood motionless, while Thornton drew Lucy's cloak about her shoulders, fastened her fur himself, tied on her satin hood, taking such care of her as a mother would take of a suffering child.
"It is hardly safe to send her home alone," he thought, as he looked into her face and saw how weak she was. "As a friend of both, I ought to accompany her."
She was, indeed, very weak, so weak that she could scarcely stand, and Thornton took her in his arms and carried her to the sleigh; then springing in beside her he made her lean her tired head upon his shoulder as they drove to Prospect Hill. She did not seem frivolous to him now, but rather the noblest type of womanhood he had ever met. Few could do what she had done, and there was much of warmth and fervor in the clasp of his hand as he bade her good-by and went back to the rectory, thinking how deceived he had been in Lucy Harcourt.
Great was the consternation and surprise in Hanover when it was known that there was to be but one bride at Prospect Hill on the night of the fifteenth, and various were the surmises as to the cause of the sudden change; but, strive as they might, the good people of the village could not get at the truth, for Valencia held her peace, while the Hethertons were far too proud to admit of being questioned, and Thornton Hastings stood a bulwark of defence between the people and their clergyman, adroitly managing to have the pulpit at St. Mark's supplied for a few weeks while he took Arthur away, saying that his health required the change.
"You have done nobly, darling," Fanny Hetherton had said to Lucy when she received her from Thornton's hands and heard that all was over; then, leading her half-fainting cousin to her own cheerful room, she made her lie down while she told of the plan she had formed when first she heard what Lucy's intentions were.
"I wrote to the doctor, asking if he would take a trip to Europe, so that you could go with us, for I know you would not wish to stay here. To-day I have his answer, saying he will go, and what is better yet, father and mother are going, too."
"Oh, I am so glad, so glad. I could not stay here now," Lucy replied, sobbing herself to sleep, while Fanny sat by and watched, wondering at the strength which had upheld her weak little cousin in the struggle she had been through, and, now that it was over and the doctor safe from temptation, feeling that it was just as well; for, after all, it was amésalliancefor an heiress like her cousin to marry a poor clergyman.
There was a very quiet wedding at Prospect Hill on the night of the fifteenth, but neither Lucy nor Arthur were there. He lay sick again at the St. Denis in New York and she was alone in her chamber, fighting back her tears and praying that, now the worst was over, she might be withheld from looking back and wishing the work undone. She went with the bridal party to New York, where she tarried for a few days, seeing no one but Anna, for whom she sent at once. The interview had lasted more than an hour, and Anna's eyes were swollen with passionate weeping when at last it ended, but Lucy's face, though white as snow, was very calm and quiet, wearing a peaceful, placid look, which made it like the face of an angel. Two weeks later and the steamer bore her away across the water, where she hoped to outlive the storm which had beaten so piteously upon her. Thornton Hastings and Anna went with her on board the ship, and for their sakes she tried to appear natural, succeeding so well that it was a very pleasant picture which Thornton cherished in his mind of a frail little figure standing upon the deck, holding its waterproof together with one hand and with the other waving a smiling adieu to Anna and himself.
More than a year after, Thornton Hastings followed that figure across the sea, finding it in beautiful Venice, sailing again through the moon-lit streets and listening to the music which came so oft from the passing gondolas. It had recovered its former roundness and the face was even more beautiful than it had been before, for the light frivolity was all gone and there was reigning in its stead a peaceful, subdued expression which made Lucy Harcourt very fair to look upon. At least, so thought Thornton Hastings, and he lingered at her side, feeling glad that she had given no outward token of agitation when he said to her:
"There was a wedding at St. Mark's, in Hanover, just before I left; can you guess who the happy couple were?"
"Yes—Arthur and Anna. She wrote me they were to be married on Christmas Eve. I am so glad it has come round at last."
Then she questioned him of the bridal, of Arthur, and even of Anna's dress, her manner evincing that the old wound had healed and nothing but a sear remained to tell where it had been. And so the days went on beneath the sunny Italian skies, until one glorious night, when Thornton spoke his mind, alluding to the time when each loved another, expressing himself as glad that, in his case, the matter had ended as it did, and then asking Lucy if she could conscientiously be his wife.
"What, you marry a frivolous plaything like me?" Lucy asked, her woman's pride flashing up once more, but this time playfully, as Thornton knew by the joyous light in her eye.
She told him what she meant and how she had hated him for it, and then they laughed together; but Thornton's kiss smothered the laugh on Lucy's lips, for he guessed what her answer was, and that this, his second wooing, was more successful than his first.
"Married, in Rome, on Thursday, April 10th, Thornton Hastings, Esq., of New York City, to Miss Lucy Harcourt, also of New York, and niece of Colonel James Hetherton."
Anna was out in the rectory garden bending over a bed of hyacinths when Arthur brought her the paper and pointed to the notice.
"Oh, I am so glad—so glad—so glad!" she exclaimed, emphasizing each successive "glad" a little more and setting down her foot, as if to give it force. "I have never dared to be quite as happy with you as I might," she continued, leaning lovingly against her husband, "for there was always a thought of Lucy and what a fearful price she paid for our happiness. But now it is all as it should be; and, Arthur, am I very vain in thinking that she is better suited to Thornton Hastings than I ever was, and that I do better as your wife than Lucy would have done?"
A kiss was Arthur's only answer, but Anna was satisfied, and there rested upon her face a look of perfect content as all that warm spring afternoon she worked in her pleasant garden, thinking of the newly-married pair in Rome, and glancing occasionally at the open window of the library, where Arthur was busy with his sermon, his pen moving all the faster for the knowing that Anna was just within his call—that by turning his head he could see her dear face, and that by-and-by when his work was done she would come in to him, and with her loving words and winsome ways, make him forget how tired he was, and thank heaven again for the great gift bestowed when it gave him Anna Ruthven.
THE END.
"Heigh-ho! This is Valentine's day. Oh, how I would like to get a valentine! Did you ever get one, aunty?" said little Etta Mayfield.
"Yes, many of them. But not when I was a child. In my day children were children. You get a valentine! I'm e'en a'most struck dumb with astonishment to hear you think of such things. Go, get your doll-baby, or your sampler, and look on that. Saints of Mercy! It seems only yesterday you were a baby in long clothes," answered Miss Henrietta Mayfield, a spinster of uncertain age; but the folks in the village, who always knew everything, declared she had not owned to a day over thirty-five for the last ten years. This, if true, was quite excusable, for Miss Henrietta's little toilette glass reflected a bright, pleasant, and remarkably youthful face.
"I'm almost seventeen, aunty, and I'm tired of being treated like a child," said Etta, with a pout of her rosy lips.
"Ten years to come will be plenty time enough for you to think of such things. A valentine, indeed! I'd like to know who is to send one to you, or to any one else. There are only three unmarried men in our village; which of them would you like for your valentine; Jake Spikes, the blind fiddler; Bill Bowen, the deaf mail-boy, or Squire Sloughman? If the squire sends a valentine, I rather guess it will be to me. Oh, I forgot! There's the handsome stranger that boarded last summer with Miss Plimpkins. I noticed him at church Sunday. Come down to make a little visit and bring Miss Plimpkins a nice present ag'in, I guess. He is mighty grateful to her for taking such good care of him while he was sick. A uncommon handsome man. But 'taint a bit likely he'll think of a baby like you. He is a man old enough to know better—near forty, likely. He was monstrous polite to me; always finding the hymns, and passing his book to me. And I noticed Sunday he looked amazing pleasing at me. Land! it's ten o'clock. You'd better run over to the office and get the paper. No, I'll go myself. I want to stop in the store, to get some yarn and a little tea."
Miss Henrietta hurried off, and little Etta pouted on and murmured something about:
"People must have been dreadful slow and dull in aunty's young days," and then her thoughts wandered to that same handsome stranger.
She, too, had seen him in church on Sunday, and knew well how the rosy blush mantled her fair face when she saw the pleasant smile she had hoped was for her. But she might have known better, she thought; such a splendid man would never think of her. She would be sure to die an old maid, all on account of that dark-eyed stranger.
"Has Bill got in with the mail?" asked Miss Mayfield.
"Yes, miss; here's your paper what Bill brought, and here is a letter or valentine what Bill didn't bring. It's from the village," said the little old postmaster, with a merry laugh.
Yes, no mistaking, it was a valentine, directed in a fine manly hand to Miss Henrietta Mayfield. "From Squire Sloughman," thought Miss Henrietta. "He has spoken, or rather written his hopes at last." But, no, that was not his handwriting.
Miss Mayfield stepped out on the porch, carefully opened the envelope, and glanced hurriedly over the contents, and then at the signature—Arthur Linton.
"Well, well, who would have thought?" said she; "that is the name of the handsome stranger! Just to think of his really taking a liking to me. Stop! maybe he is a sharper from town, who has heard of my having a little property, and that's what he's after. I'll read his valentine over again: