CHAPTER LXXI.QUESTIONS AND CONFESSIONS.
Catharine was alone with old Mrs. Ford. Excitement, and a wild sense of some mysteries which she had failed to fathom, made her bold. She plunged abruptly into a subject long upon her mind, but which she had never ventured to hint at before. Indeed, the quick crowding of painful thoughts, during the last few weeks, had rendered her desperate.
“Mrs. Ford!”
Catharine’s voice was so sharp and abrupt, that it made the old lady start and drop the sewing she was engaged on into her lap.
“What is it?” she said, breathlessly; for her thoughts always turned to one object, “Elsie, is anything wrong with Elsie?”
“Mrs. Ford, there is a thing I wish to ask, a thing which I must ask or die. Who is Elsie? Is her name Ford, was she ever married, has she a child?”
Catharine spoke rapidly, almost wildly. Her eyes were keenly anxious, her manner desperate.
Mrs. Ford sat silently gazing upon the speaker. Her face, always pale, grew white and cold; her little withered hands crept together and interlocked in her lap.
“What, what is it you ask? You,”—the words dropped,half-formed, from her lips; and she gave a scared look at the door, as if preparing to escape.
“Don’t! oh, don’t refuse to speak,” pleaded Catharine. “I must know; my heart will break if I am left in this terrible darkness. What connection has your daughter with the De Marke family?”
“De Marke—De Marke—who ever mentioned the name in this house?” said old Mr. Ford, who entered at the moment.
Catharine turned to him. “It is I. Tell me, I beseech you, what have the De Markes done, that the name should drive the blood from your faces? Why did the portrait of a De Marke hang up in your library? How, and why has it disappeared? I ask these things, because it is impossible to live in such darkness. My own life, and all its hopes are at stake. What brought that wicked old woman here? I must know, or become mad by the side of our poor Elsie!”
The old people exchanged glances. Both were pale, but a look of gentle commiseration settled upon their features.
“This is no idle question, Catharine,” said the old man, gently, but with a quiver of the voice, “you would not wound us so from mere curiosity.”
“Not for my life. I must know all this hidden history, to see the path that I ought to tread. I am weak and blinded—alone, with no one but God to help me. Tell me the history of your daughter, tell me why the name of De Marke makes you tremble. Is it fatal to others as it has been to me?”
“You,” said the old man in surprise, “you!”
“Even so, Mr. Ford. I was married to a De Marke, and he is still living.”
The old lady arose, with an air of timid repulsion, and would have left the room; but her husband gently waved her back.
“She suffers; she, too, is a victim, perhaps another Elsie,”he said, compassionately. “Now, my child, come hither; sit down by the mother and tell her all.”
Catharine sat down, still supported by nervous excitement, and laid her heart and her life open before those pure-minded old people. It was astonishing how little time it took to relate events and agonies that had been so long in the acting. She concealed nothing. From the very depths of her soul she drew forth the secrets that had been hoarded there, corroding and wounding all her faculties, and laid them honestly down before those kindly judges.
The old people listened, sometimes sadly, sometimes with broken exclamations. Once or twice glances of surprise, almost of affright, passed between them. When she had finished, the old lady bent down, with tears in her eyes, and kissed her, while the husband stood over them, and lifting his hands to heaven, thanked God that she had been cast beneath his roof.
Catharine arose from her knees, for she had unconsciously fallen at Mrs. Ford’s feet, with a deeper breath and more glowing countenance than she had worn for years. No explanation had yet been offered by the old people; but she felt certain that some unseen link of union existed between her fate and theirs, and without speaking, she gazed wistfully in their faces, waiting for light.
“Yes,” said the old man, fervently, “it is true. God does sometimes send angels to us unawares. Catharine, my child, it is your husband’s mother to whom you have given up the bloom and strength of your young life. The father of George De Marke married Elsie Ford, our daughter.”
“And you—and you?” cried Catharine, eagerly.
“Are his grandfather—”
“And Madame de Marke?”
“Hush! do not mention her name; it is an accursed sound under this roof,” answered the old man, almost sternly.
Catharine sat down, silenced, but still keenly anxious.The old gentleman seated himself also, close by his wife, who regarded him with a look, half frightened, half sorrowful.
“Tell her,” said the old man, in a low voice, “women understand each other best.”
“I cannot. See how I shake.”
The old man took the hand held toward him in both of his, smoothing and caressing it with gentle tenderness.
“You can witness,” he said, addressing Catharine, “how great this sorrow has been. She cannot bear to speak of it. For years we have been silent, even with each other.”
“I see,” answered Catharine, looking wistfully at the old lady, and following her own thoughts. “His grandmother! That is why she seemed so lovely from the first—hisgrandmother, andhismother, oh! how I have been unconsciously blessed.”
“Elsie,” said the old man, looking anxiously at his wife, as if afraid that her strength would give way, “Elsie was our only child. You see her now, a poor, brain-crazed old woman; gray-headed and broken-hearted; but then she was—”
“Oh!” broke in the old lady, with her eyes full of tears, that dimmed the glasses of her spectacles like a frost, “she was the dearest, the brightest, the most beautiful creature that ever trod the green grass. You don’t know—you can’t tell, how many sweet, wild ways she had, and all straight to the heart. He didn’t merely love her, nor did I; it was worship in us both; we idolized this child; there was not a curl of her black hair, or a glance of her eyes, bright and brimfull of feeling as they always were, which was not lovely beyond all things to us.
“Remember, Catharine, she was our only child, a late blessing; for we had been years married when God sent this angel to our fireside. You have seen her portrait in the library. It is like her, and yet the bright sparkle of hernature, the vivid flush of life, that came and went like sunshine upon the hills, this no man could paint. It is all over now. You can see nothing of what I am telling you in her wild eyes, or in the sharp features that are at times so rigid and again so stolid; butwefind it still. Don’t we, husband? Isn’t she beautiful to us, even yet?”
“She is more than beautiful, our poor Elsie,” said the old man, looking through the window to where the demented one wandered to and fro on the grass, striving to catch the humming-birds that haunted a trumpet vine, by quick dashes of her hand among the clustering bells. “God has rendered her sacred—always and forever a child, spite of her gray hairs. They cast her back upon our hearthstone, a poor, broken waif, but still a blessing.
“I think,” continued the old man, “that it was a little before her seventeenth birthday, when Elsie first saw that man. He was a dashing young fellow, who had just come into possession of a large property, and had returned from his travels abroad, before entering upon the business of life. A neighbor, who lives across the Island, had invited him for a long visit, and through this friend he was introduced into our family.
“We did not think it strange, that young De Marke should admire our Elsie. Who could help it? But when she, who had always been bright as a bird and as heart-free, began to look thoughtful in his absence, and shy in his presence, it pained us a good deal; for she seemed still a mere child, and we had hoped to keep her in the home-nest a few years longer.
“It was a wild, violent passion on both sides. We had no power to resist, for he came with his impetuous pleading, and she, with a thousand winning ways, sometimes lost in tears, sometimes bathed in smiles, lured us from our better judgment. She was far too young, too ardent. Oh! we should not have consented.
“This De Marke was of French origin, as you will judge by his name, mercurial and impulsive, as most of the blood are. I do not think he was a bad or faithless man at heart. I know that he loved Elsie, not as she loved him—that was impossible—but he did love her!”
“Yes,” murmured the old lady, “he did love her. Who could help it?”