CHAPTER XXIII.REUNITED.
Virginia Alexander had gone up to her room less than half an hour previous, leaving Virgie in the library reading, and snugly ensconced in that great lounging chair by the fire.
While looking for something in a closet, she had come across the old Bible referred to, and opening it for examination, she had found a complete genealogical record covering more than a century and a half.
Delighted with her discovery, she hastened back to Virgie—who meantime had stolen out for a little exercise—eager to tell her news, and, coming into the room turning the leaves of the book, she had not noticed that a stranger was there until Sir William suddenly arose, his heart bounding within him at the sound of that well-remembered voice, and turned toward her.
She had not seen him for more than eighteen years, and he had changed far more than she during that time.
Sorrow had saddened him somewhat; he had grown grave and dignified, and his hair had just begun to be streaked with silver. There were lines about his mouth telling of a grief that he had never outgrown, there was a wistful look in his eyes showing that his heart still yearned for the love of his youth. Hisform, too, had developed; he was broader-shouldered and stouter.
But he was a grand and kingly looking man, and she knew him in a moment.
The color left her face; something seemed to smite her heart with a heavy blow, almost benumbing her, and she put out her hand, catching at the table for support, while the Bible fell heavily to the floor.
But she was very lovely even in her pallor and consternation. She wore a tea-gown of silver-gray, with a dainty fichu of lace and blue ribbons, while, as she arose from the dinner-table an hour before, Virgie had selected some pink and white roses and playfully tucked them in her corsage.
Even during that first blissful year of their wedded life she had never seemed more beautiful or more dear to Sir William Heath than at that moment.
“Virgie,” he cried, springing toward her, and would have caught her wildly to his breast, the past all forgotten, conscious only that he had found her, his own loved one, once more!
But she rallied instantly, though she trembled violently and still clung to the table for support.
She put out her hand to stop him.
“Sir William Heath!” she said, weakly, but with a haughty bearing which became her well, and warned him that he must not approach her, causing him to remember, too, that she was his wife no longer, for that dread decree of the divorce court stood between them.
Yet he loved her madly still; his heart recognized her as his wife in spite of all.
“Oh, Virgie, I have found you at last!” he cried, his voice breaking in a great sob.
“At last we meet,” she said, with pale lips, although she thrilled at his words, “but I did not think it would be like this. Did you come here to seek me?”
“No, I came upon business with Lord Norton. I never dreamed of finding you here. Where have you been all these long—these endless years? Where is our child? Oh, Virgieseamstresses how can you stand there like that, so cold, so relentless, when you think of that bond between us?”
“But—there is between us a barrier as relentless, as impassable as death!” she murmured, with quivering lips, while a film seemed gathering over her eyes, and her strength almost failed her.
Something in her tone and manner told Sir William, that she still loved him in spite of the misunderstanding of the past, and her present coldness, and his heart leaped with a sweet, new hope.
“Virgie, there is no barrier—there has never been any barrier save that which you yourself have interposed between us,” he said, eagerly, and venturing a step nearer to her.
Again she put out her hand to check him—that small, beautiful hand whose rosy finger-tips he had so loved to kiss in those old days.
“Your wife! your son!” she murmured, brokenly.
“I have no wife, Heaven help me!” he cried, the veins standing out full and hard upon his forehead. “What can you mean? I have no son.”
“Are they—dead?” she asked, lifting her eyes to his face for the first time since he had first confronted her.
“No,” he returned, briefly, trying to comprehend hermeaning, for of course he never knew that she had seen his cousin’s boy and believed him his.
“No?” Virgie questioned, catching her breath quickly. Was it possible that the beautiful woman he had married had, after long years, discovered his treachery and forsaken him?
“Virgie, my beloved, I never had but one wife,” said Sir William, gravely.
She seemed turning to stone at those words.
Had there been some terrible mistake after all? Had she lost eighteen years of happiness when she might have been his loved and loving wife?
“I know,” he went on, eagerly, “all about that wretched blunder in the newspapers, when my cousin, William Heath, was mistaken for me. He was married to Miss Margaret Stanhope soon after my return to England, but the notice in the papers read as if I had been married instead. They have a son. Oh, Virgie! is it possible that you have believed Willie was my boy?” he asked, light beginning to break in upon his mind.
A moan of pain broke from the pale woman before him.
“But they told me, Lady Linton wrote; ah! those cruel letters,” she faltered, in a voice of anguish.
“Who told you? what has my sister——” Sir William began, but that brave, long suffering heart, could bear no more as it realized all too late, that the bitter past need not have been, and she sank unconscious at his feet before he could complete his sentence.
Sir William sprang forward with a cry of fear, and raised her tenderly in his arms.
He laid her bright head upon his breast; he bent andkissed the fair, pale face with passionate, trembling lips, and held her to his throbbing heart with a clasp that claimed her all his own, in spite of the cruel decree that had parted them for so many years.
But Virgie did not lose herself for more than a moment; the fall partially restored her, and she began to realize what was passing even though she had not strength to assert herself. She knew that she was lying upon the bosom of the man whom she had always loved, and it seemed like a blessed repose to rest there, and to feel his sheltering arms around her after the cares and struggles of the past.
She knew now that he had always loved her, and had been true to her, and that the woman, who for more than eighteen years had been the object of her jealousy and envy was, as far as he was concerned, but a myth—a phantom.
Oh! the delight of knowing that his affection had never wavered, of realizing that he had been as faithful to her as she to him.
Her eyes unclosed and she looked up into the fond face bending over her, and a quick flush of happiness swept up to her brow, as she met the fervent lovelight in his glance.
She sat up and gently released herself from his clinging arms, and he raised and led her to the great chair in which he had been sitting when she entered the room.
At that moment there came a knock on the door and the servant announced that Sir William’s carriage was ready.
Sir William controlled his emotion as well as he was able, and turning to the man, said:
“I find I cannot leave for another hour yet, please send the carriage back to the stable, and I will ring when I wish it again.”
The man bowed and withdrew, and Sir William turned again to his dear one.
“Are you better, Virgie! Shall I call a maid to get you something?” he asked, regarding her still pale face anxiously.
“No, do not,” she pleaded, putting out her hand beseechingly.
“At least let me get you some water,” he said, and going to a table where there were an ice pitcher and goblets, he filled a glass, and brought it to her.
She drank thirstily and passed the goblet back to him, looking up with a grateful little smile for the service.
He bent impulsively and touched his lips to her forehead.
“My darling!” he breathed.
Again the quick color flooded her face and tears sprang into her eyes; how she had longed for years to hear those tender tones!
The sight of her tears moved him deeply.
He put down the glass, and kneeling beside her drew her again into his arms.
“Oh, my love!” he whispered, a great sob heaving his broad chest, “you have been cruelly deceived, but set me at rest upon one point—tell me that you love me yet. I have never been untrue to you in thought or deed. I have lived a lonely, solitary life. I have been heart-broken without you. Virgie, you were the one love of my whole life; now tell me if your heart is still mine.”
She bowed her head upon his breast, melted by his fond words, and sobbed in an agony of grief for her lost happiness; she twined her arms about his neck and drew his face down to her tear-wet cheek.
“Oh, Will,” she murmured, brokenly, “I have ruined all your life and mine! I should have come to you, in spite of all, and to learn my fate from your own lips. We have lost all these years when we might have been so happy. You know that I love you; every day, every hour of my life my heart has cried out for you. I have literally been starving for your love.”
He needed no stronger proof of her devotion; he knew that she loved him as fondly now as in those months of their early wedded life, and he folded her still closer to him, kissing, again and again, those dear lips, which for eighteen years had known no caress save what she had received from her child.
Their reunion was perfect and complete, and, for a little while, they could think of nothing, speak of nothing save the joy of being once more all in all to each other.
But at length Sir William insisted that she should tell him all the story of the past; how the first suspicion of his treachery had taken root in her mind, and all the circumstances attending her quitting the hotel in New York where he had left her.
He was amazed when she related Mrs. Farnum’s instrumentality in the matter. It had never occurred to him that she could have been connected with it, although he had known that she was in America at that time.
He was furious upon learning how she had garbled the account of his cousin’s engagement to MargaretStanhope, and how his sister had purposely misrepresented facts in order to accomplish their separation.
He understood at once the whole plot, and recalled many things which went to prove that her ambition for him and her unreasonable prejudice against Virgie had been at the root of the whole matter.
“Did she dare write such falsehoods?” he cried, as Virgie repeated some passages from her letters.
“Yes,” she replied, “I copied both letters. I knew that some time there would come a day of reckoning between you and me, and although every line had been burned into my brain, as if branded there with a hot iron, I was resolved that you should have all the evidence against you, and know whence my information came.”
“Have you those copies with you, darling?”
“Yes; they are in my trunk.”
“Will you go and get them for me? I want them now,” he said, with a pale, set face.
Virgie left the room to comply with his request, but returned almost immediately with an envelope and a package in her hands.
“These are the letters—both are inclosed in one envelope,” she said, “and this is something that belongs to your sister, Lady Linton,” and she handed both to him.
She then told him how strangely her uncle had become possessed of that package so many years ago, and how she had but recently discovered to whom it belonged. She desired that he would now take charge of it and return it to her ladyship.
“It must be something very important for Miriam to be unwilling to trust it in the house during herabsence,” Sir William remarked, as he examined the seal and read the sentence penned upon the wrapper.
He laid it carelessly upon his knee, while he drew the copies of those miserable letters from their envelope.
But in so doing he changed his position slightly and the package, which a moment before he had laid down, tumbled to the floor.
It struck on a corner and the wrapper, which was old and brittle, burst from end to end, revealing a book about six inches long by four wide, which flew open midway as it escaped confinement disclosing pages closely written in Lady Linton’s own hand.
“Ah! a diary, I judge,” said Sir William, as he stooped to pick it up.
Then he gave a violent start as a few words caught his eye, and every atom of color fled from his face.
Lady Linton wrote a very bold, almost masculine hand, and it would hardly have been possible for anyone to be so near the book and not catch something written there.
The words which the baronet saw were under the date of August 15, and read thus:
“Another letter from that girl in New York.”
He lifted his glance for an instant to Virgie—hesitated, then resolutely bent his eyes again upon the page and read on, while Virgie wondered at the act.
“* * * * Will she never have done sending her whining, nauseating love-missives to W?” said the diary. “My patience is exhausted watching the mail bag, lest by some chance he should get one, and all my nicely laid schemes be upset just as success seems so sure.”
He turned a few leaves, glancing with lightning-like rapidity over them until he came to another entry that arrested his attention.
“The plot has worked to a charm, Myra says she accepted the whole story for a fact, and believes W. really untrue to her. She claims though that the child is legitimate, and says she will yet prove it. She threatens divorce—not wishing to hold a man unwillingly bound, ha! ha! If she will only carry out that project, my heart will be at rest.”
Still further on he read:
“The girl has gone—disappeared, and no one knows whither. Her last letter was really quite tragic, but, thank fortune, it was the last; she said it was a final plea, but the paper writhed and seemed almost like a thing of life as I burned it; it nearly gave me the horrors. But I can afford to suffer a few stings for the sake of keeping that low-born girl from disgracing the house of Heath. W. will get over his moping by and by, and marry again befitting his rank; but if he does not, why, Percy and Lillian will be the gainers.”
The book dropped from Sir William’s nerveless fingers at this point, for a terrible passion was raging within him as the heartlessness, the treachery and cunning of his sister were revealed. He understood everything now; he realized how his sister had schemed and plotted the ruin of all his hopes, out of spite against the innocent girl whom he had married, and in the hope that he would choose a wife from the English aristocracy.
Surely Mark Alexander’s prophecy had come true, for that mysterious package had indeed proved useful to Virgie in this crisis of her life. Sir William wasamazed, shocked, and moved to fearful anger at his sister’s daring wickedness.
She had robbed his mail bag for months, intercepting both his own and his wife’s letters. She had also been guilty of falsehood and treachery of the worst kind, hardening her heart against his sufferings, ignoring the agony of a beautiful young wife and mother, and all the while eating his bread, educating her children at his expense, and lavishly spending his money to gratify her own extravagant tastes and whims.
“Will, dear, you positively frighten me! What troubles you? Your face is terrible to look upon,” Virgie said, laying her hand gently upon his arm to arouse him from the stern reverie into which he had fallen.
He started at her touch, took the fair hand and raised it lovingly to his lips, while a smile, that was like sunlight after a tempest, broke over his face.
“I believe I was in a terrible mood, my darling,” he said, “but you will not marvel when I tell you all that I have read; no, I will not tell you,” he added, “it would be cruel to make you live over the past again as you would if I should reveal all my sister’s treachery to you. Suffice it to say that all our sorrow has been the result of a cunningly devised and—yes, a fiendish plot that originated in her brain. Under ordinary circumstances I should regard a diary as something sacred to its owner, but the few words that caught my eye as I picked the book up made me feel justified in reading more.
“But, Virgie,” Sir William concluded, sternly, “I shall never forgive Miriam Linton for the ruin which she wrought eighteen years ago.”
Then he read the letters, and his ire grew hotterand fiercer until he came to that portion where lady Linton sent the money to Virgie and advised her to “go away to some quiet place, where she was not known, and might be able to bring up her child in a respectable way, so that its future might not be hampered by its mother’s mistakes.”
At this point, his anger reached a white heat.
Sir William dashed the paper to the floor, his face one crimson sheet of flame, and pressed to his breast the woman he so passionately loved.
“My poor, wronged darling, how dared she write such horrible things of you?” he cried, in a shaking voice, “and to send you that paltry hundred pounds! What must you have thought of me, to be guilty of such a dastardly act, after taking away all the fortune that your father settled upon you? I wonder your love did not all turn to bitterest hatred. Oh, Virgie! Virgie! I feel as if I could not bear it, even though you are all my own once more,” he concluded, great drops of agony starting out upon his face.
“Don’t, Will,” she whispered, clinging fondly to him, “it is all over now; let us forget it, if possible, and enjoy to the utmost our new-found happiness.”
“Forget! I can never forget. I will never forgive this terrible wrong,” he said sternly. “Oh, my love, nothing can give us back those lost years; nothing can ever make me forget that for more than eighteen years I had a lovely daughter and never once looked upon her face to know her as such. Miriam Linton is a sister of mine no longer.”