CHAPTER XXXIX.THE TWO PORTRAITS.
When Catharine arose to go, Elsie, following out the wilful instincts of her new character, crept close to old Mrs. Ford, and clung to her dress, entreating to be left; which flung the old couple into a state of absolute delight beautiful to behold. It was the first time their child had been content to remain alone with them since her sojourn in the house. Now she clung pleadingly to her mother’s dress, and, seating herself upon a low stool at her feet, began to amuse herself by arranging scraps of silk, which she found in her mother’s work-basket, with great nicety as to the colors, which made the old people look at each other with mournful smiles; it put them so in mind of old times, when she was indeed a child, body and mind.
Meantime Catharine had gone back to the library. She would summon no help, but, closing the door which shut her out from the rest of the house, began to work diligently, cleansing the books from dust, and re-arranging everything exactly as she had found it. In the progress of her task, she was constantly falling upon some new object of interest. The books we have spoken of held forth a sort of enchantment which turned her from work. The bronze medallions took a new interest after the dust had been removed from their delicate lines. But beyond this was a vague feelingthat she had a personal interest in redeeming those beautiful objects from neglect. The very atmosphere of the place seemed familiar, as if she had breathed it before. At any rate, a new vista of life opened to her from that room. It contained the means of knowledge, the power which should be to her in the place of lost happiness.
In a day or two this room was entirely in order, but it was only at intervals that Catharine could visit it, and her labors were performed with a guilty feeling, as if every wave of her brush must inflict a pang upon the old people who trusted her so thoroughly.
Had any one asked the girl why it was that she left the pictures to the last, and the meaning of the strange thrill that checked her whenever she approached them, no answer could have been obtained. She would have called it a foolish superstition, perhaps. Indeed, she did chide herself more than once for the vague feeling that possessed her, and imputed it to the general impression that she was intruding on sacred grounds, which had seized upon her from the first.
When all was finished, the crimson drapery taken from the table and arranged that it might flow over the bay window, or fall in rich waves against the black-walnut casement on each side; when the great library-chairs were dusted and in place, and the mosaic table shone out clear and bright, with the bird-cage in the centre, she turned slowly and walked toward the pictures.
Again the strange chill arrested her. A thin veil of gauze hung like a dusty cobweb over the paintings, and the frames gleamed out dim and misty from the crimson walls. She stood and wondered, holding her breath. How many years had that dusty web concealed the canvas which she was hesitating to look upon? Who had placed it there? Why had it never been removed? Perhaps it might prove the portrait of old Mr. Ford, or that dear old gentlewoman, his wife.
These thoughts kept her motionless till curiosity became painful. With a faint laugh at her own irresolution, she sprang upon a library-chair and tore away the gauze.
What a beautiful creature she must have been, this Elsie Ford, with those lustrous eyes, that peachy bloom of the cheek, and those lips so full and ripe, like strawberries with the June sunshine upon them, the smile hovering like the shadow of a honey-bee about the mouth, dimpling it softly at the corners. How beautiful Elsie Ford must have been!
Catharine’s eyes filled as she looked upon the portrait, and traced back its dim resemblance to the stricken woman whom she had just left, catching like an infant at the sunbeams that came into her chamber-window. The bright, beautiful life, so charming in the picture, had all faded out from the original being. That image on the canvas seemed vital, Elsie the picture. Catharine sunk down to the easy-chair and wept.
After a time she went to the pendant of this picture, still oppressed by the strange dread which had followed her ever since she first entered the room. A sweep of her hand carried away the gauze from this portrait also, and that which was behind seemed to chill her into marble. She did not breathe, the color left her lips, and she retreated slowly backward, mute and astonished.
It was the portrait of her husband, the man who had abandoned her and her child to disgrace and starvation. Her own husband, for say what they would, deny it as he might, the man yonder, smiling upon her from the crimson of the wall, with his clear gray eyes and chestnut hair, was her husband. All the perjury on earth could not change the truth.
It was a terrible shock, this sudden appearance of the man who had wronged her. How frankly those eyes looked down into hers; that smile hovering around the fine mouth! her heart swelled to meet it with a great throb of joy. Thosecurls—chestnut with a gleam of gold in them—how often had she swept them together in masses with her own hand, and laughed at the air of playful impatience with which he had shaken them back to their place on his white temples.
Oh, these memories were too sweet and too painful. The joy of the past was upon it in a bright, rosy cloud, but underneath lay the black thought that he had wronged and left her; even as she looked on the picture, it was there, darting like a flash of lightning through her heart.
In this struggle of joy and anguish she sat down, gazing up wistfully at the portrait, and though she knew that it was inanimate, beseeching it to speak one word, and tell her that he was blameless,—that the miserly old woman, his mother, had maligned him, and she would believe his first breath, believe even a look against the whole world, against facts, against truth itself.
Thus, half madly, the poor girl, the wife who had no husband, who had been a mother and was childless, pleaded with the dumb, smiling picture.
At last the sound of her own voice fell back upon her like a mockery. She hushed her weeping and grew still, but the yearning affections, which are the perfume of womanhood, struggled out of passion into thought. She pondered over her whole life, not yet a long one, not really eventful, for the most terrible suffering more frequently springs from commonplace circumstances than from startling romance. It was a life of feeling, of endurance and doubt, rather than action—so far destiny had been wrought out for her. She had neither chosen nor rejected it, gloomy as it had always been. Save the few months in which love had filled her dreary lot with sunshine, so glorious that her heart ached to think of it, existence to her had been a dreary thing. But the very absence of earthly friends had unconsciously lifted her thoughts to a higher and holier power, and there she had learned to look trustingly. She was young, too, andhealthy; thus life was not altogether a desert, though some of it had been spent in an insane asylum, and the rest marked by orphanage and desertion.
Desertion, ah! there was the doubt, which had never yet been entirely put to rest. Now, with that bright, honest face looking down upon her from the wall, her whole nature rose up against the conviction. He had died suddenly, or something would yet arise to clear him from the evil suspicions that she—wretch that she was—had dared to harbor against him.
These thoughts became a conviction. Her face, still wet with tears, was bathed with smiles. A holy faith in him she had loved so truly filled her soul, and the happiness therefrom rose and sparkled like starlight all around her. Her hands were softly clasped; her lips murmured a prayer for the forgiveness she would not grant to herself. She began to love the old library and everything in it, for was it not the scene of this sweet revelation? She had found her husband again.