Library of the University of Toronto
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4
WIFE'S TRAGEDY
BY
MAY AGNES FLEMIJNG,
AUTHOR OP
A MAD MARRIAGE," " A WONDERFUL WOMAN. GUY EARLSCOURT's WIFE," ONE NIGHT's MYSTERY," "a TERRIBLE SECRET," "LOST FOR A WOMAN," ETC., ETC., ETC.
*' For auglit that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth."
Shakespeare's Mid. Night's Dream.
TORONTO :
HOSE-BELFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY.
MDCCCLXXXI.
OOl^TEl^TS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Arthur Sutherland 5
II. Eulalie 18
III. Beginning of the Trouble 32
IV. Battling with Fate 45
V. Fate's Victory 56
VI. Told in the Twilight 68
VII. Struck by Lightning 79
VIII. Taken Away 92
IX. " Come what Will, I have been Blessed." 104
X. The Lull before the Storm 112
XL At the Concert 122
XII. Mr. Gaston Benoir 133
XIII. Mr. Benoir's Letter 141
XIV. Mr. Benoir's Shadow 149
XV. Rebecca, the housemaid 160
XVI. A little Tangle in Mr. Benoir's Web 169
XVII. On the Scent 181
XVIII. Brought to a Beckoning 196
XIX. At the Summer-house 206
XX. Confidential 216
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER t-AGE
XXI. Mr. Benoir's Dilemma 225
XXII. Deepening Mystery 239
XXIII. Eulalie's Flight 253
XXIV. After the Inquest 261
XXV. Dark Days 273
XXVI. Found and Lost 284
XXVII. After Eight Years 290
A WIFE'S TRAGEDY.
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CHAPTER I.
ARTHUR SUTHERLAND.
MR. ARTHUR SUTHERLAND sat by the open win- dow of his room, in the Metropolitan, smoking a cigar and watching the ceaseless tide of humanity ebbing and flowing on Broadway. Three o'clock, and a sunshiny May afternoon — silks and satins and beautiful faces sweep- ing down to meet dress coats, and switch canes, and mous- tached faces, sauntering up. An organ-grinder, right below, was playing a lively air, and it seemed to Arthur Sutherland that the men and women were keeping time to his music, walking through the great quadrille of life. For what is it all, this ceaseless gliding in and out, bow- ing and dipping, and forward and back, but a mighty quadrille that we dance every day, with the music in our own hearts, whether that music be a jubilate or a dead march.
Arthur Sutherland sat and watched the evershifting panorama, with a face as serene as the bright May day. Why not ? He was young, and handsome, and rich, just returned from making the grand continental tour, and disposed to^think there was no place like home after all. A
6
A wife's TRAaEDY.
Young, and handsome, and rich ; surely ail that the world can give of happiness is contained in these three words ; and Arthur Sutherland was happy — very happy, indeed, this pleasant May afternoon. This bright little world of ours looked very much to him as Eden must have done to Adam on the first day of his life, and Eve — yes, Eve was up-town, in a brown-stone front, and only waiting the word to make him blessed for life. There was a tap at his door.
" Come in," said Mr. Sutherland, without looking round ; and some one obeyed and crossed the room, and struck him lightly on the shoulder with a kid-gloved hand. Mr. Sutherland turned round to see — not the waiter he had expected, but a gentlemanly young man, elaborately attired, faultless, from the toes of his shiny boots to the crown of his silk hat.
" Why, Phil., old fellow, is it you ? " said Arthur Suther- land, grasping both his visitor's hands. " Here's a sur- prise ! Where in the world did you come from ? "
" Where did I come from ? " exclaimed Mr. Sutherland's visitor, taking a seat after a prolonged shake-hands. " I think it is I who should ask that question ! Where do you come from and what do you mean by being in New York a whole week and not informing your friends ? "
" How should I know my friends were here ? What are you doing in New York ? Practising your profes sion ? "
" When I get any practising to do ; but the people who know me are so confoundedly healthy, and the people who don't know me won t employ me ; so, between both, I am in a state of genteel beggary. I wish," said Mr. Sutherland's visitor, vindictively, " the spotted plague, or the yellow-fever, or the small-pox, would break out ! A man might have some chance of living then."
" He would stand more chance of dying, I should think," said Arthur Sutherland, smiling. "Why don't you go down to St, Mary's, and hang out your shingle there ?
iRTHUR SUTHERLAND.
7
This big citj is surfeited with ambitious young doctors and well established old ones. Phj^sicians are few and far between and old-fogyish in St. Mary's, and the people know you there."
" For which very reason/' said the young doctor, deject- edly, " they wouldn't employ me. Do you suppose the men and women who knew little Phil. Sutherland when he wore petticoats, and got spankings, would employ Dr. Philip Sutherland to drag out their double teeth, or cure their colics or rheumatisms. No ; I might blue-mould in the grass-grown streets of St.Mary's before I sold sixpence worth of physic."
Arthur Sutherland laughed. There is no joke so good as the misfortunes of our friends, when we are beyond misfortune's reach ourselves. They were distant cousins, these young men, bearing the same good old English name ; but there, all resemblance between them ended, Arthur Sutherland was rich ; Philip Sutherland was poor. Arthur had a mother and sister, and a home ; Philip had no nearer kindred than this distant cousin, and no home but in swarming boarding-houses. He had been M.D. for about half a year, and found it terribly up-hill work.
All a chap can make," said Dr. Sutherland, moodily, " won't pay his board, and keep him in paper collars and cigars. As for the theatre, or paying tailors, or boot- makers, that's out of the question. If they would take payment in blue-pills and castor-oil, or blistering, or any- thing professional, I might manage somehow ; but they won't. Tailors and bootmakers never seem to be sick, or have their teeth drawn ; or, if they do, they won't come to me ! I wish I had taken to tailoring myself — it's money-making, and it's handy to be able to make your own coat and pantaloons. I have a strong mind, as it is, to throw physic to the dogs, and take to the needle and goose."
" It's a harrowing case, certainly," said Arthur, laugh- ing; "but don't disgrace the name of Sutherland yet.
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A wife's tkagedy.
You know my poor mother's proudest boast is, thete never yet was a Sutherland in trade. Stick to the scal- pel and lancet, dear boy, and marry an heiress ! "
" That's easier said than done," Doctor Sutherland re- plied, more moodily still. "I'd marry an heiress fast enough if I could find one to have me, let her be ugly as a Hottentot. But I never knew one heiress to speak to ; and if I did, she would treat me like the rest. She would sail past me with upturned nose, and plump into the arms of some fellow like yourself, with more money al- ready than you know what to do with. Marry an heiress ! I wish to Heaven I had the chance ! "
" I suppose it is only in novels that millionaires' daugh- ters elope with grooms and fortunes," said Arthur ; " and yet there ought to be heiresses in New York in these days of commercial fortune-making; and you are not such a bad-looking fellow in the main, Phil ! Hope on, hope ever, my boy ! there is no telling what is in store for you yet."
" Yes, there is the poorhouse," Dr. Sutherland replied, gloomily ; " unless I take to street sweeping or some other useful avocation to prevent it. I think I'll emigrate to Mexico or Havana ; they're nice unhealthy places in hot weather, and doctors ought to thrive there. And, by the bye, speaking of Havana," said Phil. Sutherland, rousing himself from his state of despondency, " are you aware your mother and sister spent January and February there this year ? "
" Yes, certainly. My mother wrote me from there, and went into rhapsodies over the beauties of Eden Lawn and its mistress. I was in Switzerland at the time, among the ice and snow, and it was rather odd to read that the weather was oppressively warm."
" Your mother liked it," said Phil., " but your sister Gusty didn't. You ought to hear her abusing the place and the people, the heat and the mosquitoes, the church- going bareheaded, and the two meals per day."
ARTHUR SUTHERLAND.
9
"Poor little girl! "Arthur said, smiling; "two meals per day I knew would not suit her. Who were the people, and how did my good mother make their ac- quaintance ? "
" It was at Montreal. You know your mother sent Augusta to the Convent of the Sacred Heart there, to be finished."
Arthur nodded.
" Well, among the pupils there it seems was a lovely young Creole, Mademoiselle Eulalie Rohan, Euglish on the paternal side, French on the maternal, fabulously beautiful, and fabulously wealthy. Your mother saw her, and was enraptured. The liking, it appears, was mutual ; for a pressing invitation followed from the young lady and her grandfather to spend the winter in Cuba ; which invitation was accepted, Gusty told me in a letter, only on condition that Mr. and Miss Rohan should spend the ensuing summer at Maplewood."
Arthur Sutherland looked surprised.
" Indeed ! I was not aware of that. Has Mademoi- selle no relative but grandfather ? "
" Not one, it appears. She has been an orphan from her earliest childhood, and this old grandfather idolizes her. Her fortune is beyond computation. Gusty says. There is a princely estate in South America, another princely estate in Louisiana, and still another in Cuba. Except the Rothschilds, Mr. Rohan and his pretty grand- daughter are about the richest people in this lower world."
Arthur Sutherland's small white hand fell lightly on his cousin's shoulder, and his blue eyes lit up mischie- vously.
" My dear fellow, the very thing. Nothing could fall out better. This heiress of fabulous wealth and beauty is to spend the summer at Maplewood. Dr. Phil. Suth- erland, young and good-looking and fascinating, shall
10
A wife's tragedy.
spend the summer at Maple wood also. The beautiful heiress and the fascinating physician will be perpetually- thrown together — riding, driving, walking, sailing. The result is apparent to the dullest comprehension. Dr. Sutherland will leave Maplewood a married man and a millionaire."
" Nothing of the sort," said Dr. Sutherland, in a hope- less tone, as he lit a cigar ; " no such luck for me ! It is for my dear cousin Arthur this golden trap is baited. You know the old proverb, ' He that has a goose will get a goose.' "
" For me ! Nonsense, Phil."
" Is it nonsense ? It is a wonderful woman, that stately mamma of yours, old boy ; and this gold-bullion heiress is for her Arthur — her only one, and nobody else."
" Then my stately mamma will have her trouble for her pains," said Arthur Sutherland, coolly ; " I have no fancy for gold-bullion heiresses, or for having the future Mrs. S. selected for me in this right royal fashion. No more have I for swarthy skins or tornado-tempered Creoles."
" No," said Phil., pufl&ng away energetically. " No ; you like pink cheeks, alabaster brows, and pale auburn ringlets. Miss Isabella Yansell is a very pretty girl."
Arthur Sutherland tried to look unconscious, but it would not do. The slight flush that reddened his hand- some face ended in a laugh.
" There you go again, talking more nonsense ! It is a lovely afternoon," said Mr. Sutherland, awakening sud- denly to the fact ; " suppose we take a stroll down Broadway."
" With all my heart. But, first, when is it to be ? " " When is what to be ? "
" The wedding of Arthur Sutherland, Esquire, of Maple- wood, Maine, to Miss Isabella Yansell, of Nev^ York City."
ARTHUR SUTHERLAND.
11
" As if I would put you au fait of my love-matters ! " said Arthur, drawing on his gloves. "Who has been talking to you of Miss Yansell ? "
" Oh, I happen to know the lady. She blushed beauti- fully yesterday when she asked me if I had seen my cousin, Mr. Sutherland, since his return to New York. Didn't I stare ! It was the first intimation I had of your return."
" Which proves you don't read the papers ; my return was duly chronicled."
" And so you really won't marry the heiress ? "
" I really won't."
" But you have not seen her."
" That makes not the slightest difference."
" And they say she is beautiful."
" All the better ! I should like my cousin Phil, to have a handsome wife. The Sutherlands always marry pretty women."
" Humph ! " muttered Dr. Phil, flinging his cigar out of the window, and rising to go ; " and when is the fair- haired Isabel to reign queen of old Maplewood ? "
" I haven't asked her that," replied Arthur ; " when I do, I will let you know. Now, drop the subject. Here we are on the pav^."
The two young men sauntered away, arm-in-arm, and made a very protracted stroll of it.^ They had been boys together, and had passed through college together, and they had not seen each other for three years ; so they found enough to talk about. They dined together some hours later, and afterward strolled into a fashionable theatre to see the melancholy Prince of Denmark and his love-sick Ophelia. And, when that was over, Arthur Sutherland went back to the Metropolitan, and Philip Sutherland returned to his east-side boarding-house.
The gas was burning low in Arthur Sutherland's room when he entered it, and in the obscurity he saw a white patch on the crimson tablecloth — a letter. He turned up
12
A wife's tragedy.
the light and looked at it. The address was written in a delicate Italian running-hand, and the envelope smelt like a jessamine blossom.
" From my mother," thought the young man. " She reads the papers, if Phil, does not. * Arthur Sutherland, Esquire, Metropolitan Hotel, New York.' Exactly ! Let us see what it says inside."
He opened the envelope with care, and drew out four sheets of fine pink paper, closely written and crossed. There was a fifth sheet, much smaller, and in a different ' hand — careless and sprawling, and a trifle blotted. The young man smiled, as he laid it down to read his mother's first.
" Poor little Gusty ! " he thought. " That big slapdash- fist and these blots are so like you ! If you ever write love-letters, I hope you will have an open grammar and dictionary before you ; for your spelling and composition would send Lindlay Murray and John Walker into fits. The nuns of the Sacred Heart may be very accomplished ladies, but they haven't succeeded in drilling spelling and grammar into the head of my only sister."
Mrs. Sutherland's letter, dated Maplewood, was very long, very afiectionate, and very entertaining. Her delight was boundless to know her darling was at home again ; her impatience indescribable to behold him. She and Augusta were well and happy. Maplewood was look- ing lovely this charming May-weather, and Mr. and Miss Eohan were enraptured with it. And from this point all Mrs. Sutherland's letter was taken up in singing the praises of Miss Eulalie Rohan — her fascination, her grace, her wealth ; above all, her inconceivable beauty. Mrs. Sutherland could find no words strong enough to tell her son her admiration of this young lady.
Her son took it very coolly, lying back in his arm-chair, and smoking as he read. When he read the finishing sentence — a strong appeal, that sounded like a command, to come home immediately, and immediately was under- lii^ed twice^he laid it down, an(} took up the o^her.
ARTHUR SUTHERLAND.
13
" Very well, mother ! " he said half aloud, " I will go home ; but I won't fall in love with your Creole heiress, and so I give you warning." The second epistle was in a very different style. It was short and energetic, and to the point, and not very easy to decipher. Miss Augusta Sutherland told her brother that she was glad he had come back from that horrid Europe, and she hoped he would come home at once, and stay at home, as he ought to do. They had Eulalie Rohan and her grandfather with them, and mamma was just bewitched about that Eulalie.
" I dare say," wrote the young lady, " you will be bad as the rest, and go stark staring mad about her black eyes, and pale face, and long curls, the moment you see them. Every one does. Even at school it was just the same ; and I declare it turns me sick sometimes. She has only been here a week, and not a soul of them in St. Mary's can talk of a single blessed thing but the black-eyed beauty up at Maplewood. Of course, I am nowhere. Even mamma scarcely takes any notice of me now. And when you return it will be the same, only more so. Of course, you will fall in love with Miss Rohan and her overgrown fortune, and there will be a wedding at Maple- wood. At least if there doesn't, I know mamma will have to be put in the nearest asylum. Come home as fast as you can. It is rather pleasant seeing one's fellow-beings making fools of themselves when one gets used to it ; and I know you will take the Cuban fever as badly as the rest. Your affectionate sister,
"Augusta Sutherland.
" P. S. — Phil. Sutherland is knocking about New York somewhere in his usual good-for-nothing way, if the authorities have not sent him to Blackwell's Island as a vagrant. If you see him, you may fetch him to Maple- wood. If he is not blessed with the usual quantity of brains, he is at least harmless, and it will be a sort of charity to keep him for the summer. Tell him I said so.
" A. S,"
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A wife's tragedy.
Mr. Sutherland's gold repeater pointed to half-past one as he finished the perusal of these letters. He rose, folded them up, thrust them into his coat-pocket, turned down the gas, and prepared to retire.
" Poor little Gusty !" he said to himself, with a yawn. " I don't think her convent life has changed her much. She does not seem to be so enraptured with this Creole belle as my mother ; but, then, it never was the little girl's nature to go into raptures over anybody."
Doctor Philip Sutherland presented himself next morn- ing at his cousin's hotel in time for breakfast. Arthur showed him his sister's letter, while they lounged over their cofiee and toast, which was served that morning in his room.
" You had better run down with me, Phil.," he said. " There used to be capital trout streams about St. Mary's ; and when you're not angling for the silver-backs, you can angle for that golden prize — the Cuban heiress."
" All right !" said Phil. " I have no objection to running wild for a couple of months at Maple wood ; and I do want to look at this bird of Paradise they have caged in your Maine home. When do you go ? "
" At noon, in the 12.50 train ; so you had better be off to your lodgings, and get your belongings together be- times. Fetch your cab here at twelve. I have an engage- ment in the interval."
" Yes, up-town, in Forty-third street, of course ! Are you going to ask Miss Isabel Vansell the momentous question before you start ? The gods grant she may say, Yes ! Some faint ray of hope where the heiress is con- cerned may glimmer for me then."
Mr. Sutherland's reply to this was to take his cousin by the collar, and walk him out of the room, with an im- perative order to be off and mind his own business, which Doctor Phil, did, laughing as he ran down the hotel-steps, while Mr. Arthur Sutherland stood before tjie mirror making his toilet.
ARTHUR SUTHERLAND.
15
A most elaborate toilet indeed. Arthur Sutherland was not a fop or a dandy, but no fop or dandy that ever lounged in the sunshine down Broadway could take more pains brushing hair or arranging his collar or cravat than he, this morning. He had every reason to be satisfied with the result ; the glass gave back a strikingly -hand- some face — a complexion of almost womanly fairness, large blue Saxon eyes, and profuse auburn hair. Yes, he looked handsome, and he knew it, still without being a fop or a dandy ; and, the toilet completed, he ran down the hotel-steps, sprang into a passing stage, and was rattled up- town. His destination was, as his cousin sur- mised, Forty-third street ; and ascending the marble steps of one of its long row of brown-stone palaces, he rang the bell and was admitted by a maid-servant. It was not his first call evidently ; for the girl knew him, and returned his nod and smile of recognition.
" Is Miss Vansell at home ? " Mr. Sutherland asked.
Yes, Miss Vansell was at home and in the morning- room ; and Susan, as she spoke, threw open the door of the morning-room, announced Mr. Sutherland, and van- ished. Arthur Sutherland had his own ideal of women, or at least of the woman he wanted to marry. A tall and slender angel robed in white book-muslin, with an aureole of pale gold hair, a broad white brow, and dove-like eyes of blue ; a beautiful and perfect creature, excelling in all womanly virtue and sweetness ; her very presence breath- ing purity and holiness, and whose heart never was to enshrine any image but his.
A lovely being scarcely formed or moulded, A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded,"
soft of voice, deft of touch, and free from every stain of earthly evil and passion : a woman and an angel blended in one, who would choose him out from all the world, and love him and cling to him in perfect faith and trust until death ; a perfect being, perfect in all feminine accom^
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A wife's tragedy.
plishments, whose music would lull him to sleep in the twilight, and whose fair Madonna-face would always brighten with a smile when he came, and sadden with tender melancholy when he went away. This was the sort of woman he wanted to marry ; and per- haps he thought he saw his ideal, this bright May morn- ing, when he entered the morning-room of the Vansell mansion.
Isabel Vansell stood by the open window, the breeze lifting her pale tinselled hair, and fluttering the azure rib- bons at her waist, and the flowing skirt of her white muslin dress. She stood by the open window, among pots of tall rose-geraniums, whose perfume scented the air, placing bits of sugar between the gilded bars of a canary-bird's cage, with deft white taper fingers. Robed in white, crowned with that aureole of golden ringlets, with as fair and sweet a face as ever the sun shone on — surely, in this graceful girl, whose blue eyes drooped, and whose pink cheeks deepened as she gave him her hand, Arthur Sutherland had found his ideal. Long after, when the dark and stormy and tragical days that intervened were past, that picture came back to him with a remorseful pang — this fair and graceful girl, with the sunlight making a halo round her drooping head.
Mr. Sutherland sat down by the open window among the rose-geraniums and canary-birds, and talked to Miss Yansell in very common-place fashion, indeed. He ad- mired her very much ; she was his ideal, his perfect woman, and he loved her, or thought he did ; but for all that he talked common-places, and never let drop one tender or admiring word. Isabel Vansell sat opposite him, with the breeze still stirring her lovely pale-gold hair, and the sunlight illuminating her delicate face.
They talked of the old themes, they went over the old beaten ground — Miss Vansell had no striking or original ideas on any subject, but she talked on all with charming fejijiriine grace. She was not voluble, and was Just a
ARTHUR SUTHERLAND.
17
thought shy ; but Mr. Sutherland admired her none the less for that. Yet still he never betrayed that admiration by one word, or look, or tone ; and it was only when he arose to go that he alluded to his departure at all.
" It must be ' good-bye ' this time, and not ' good morn- ing,' "he said, smiling ; " I leave town at noon."
" Leave town ! " the young lady echoed, faintly, the rose-tint fading out of her sweet face ; " I did not know — I thought — "
Arthur Sutherland saw and interpreted the signs, with a little thrill of delight.
" I shall not be absent long," he said. " New York has irresistible charms for me just now. I shall only run down to Maple wood to see my mother and sister, and return."
The colour came back to Miss Vansell's cheeks, and she held out her lily-leaf hand with a smile.
" Bon voyage" she said ; " after three years' absence, I wonder you could linger even a week in New York."
" Home has its charms, and so has New York ; very powerful ones just at present. Shall I find you in the city when I return ?" he asked, holding the hand she given him a moment.
"Yes," said Miss Vansell, blushing beautifully; "good- bye!"
The momentous question, to which, Phil, had alluded, rose to the young man's lips, but he checked himself.
" Time enough when I return," he thought ; " it will be sweet to know it is for that I shall return."
So the words were not spoken that would have sealed his fate — that would have changed the whole current of his life. Perhaps there is a Providence in these things ; and all the fever of love, and doubt, and anguish, and misery was to be undergone, to make him a better man, to try him as gold is tried in the crucible.
Once he looked back, as he descended the stone steps, at the window of the morning-room. His ideal was there still, among the rose-geraniums and the birds, with the fair Madonna-face, and tender blue eyes.
CHAPTEE II.
EULALIE.
IN the puiple twilight of the next evening the two young men drove, in a buggy hired at tlie railway- station, through the one long, straggling street of the vil- lage of St. Mary's.
I wonder if any one who reads this ever was in St. Mary's; if not, I advise them to visit it as speedily as possible. That beautiful little city, Portland, is very near it ; and of all delightful villages on the rock-bound coast of Maine, I do not think there is one more delightful than St. Mary's. You walk down its chief street, between two rows of dear little white cottages, with green window- shutters and red doors, their snowy fronts all overrun with sweetbrier, and their windows looking into the pret- tiest of flower-gardens. You walk down the long strag- gling street, until it ceases to be a street, and you find yourself on a long white sandy beach, with the broad blue Atlantic spreading out before you, and melting in the far- off* purple horizon into the low blue sky. You see wind- ing paths leading here and there to beautiful villas and stately mansions, embosomed in towering trees ; and still further away, your view is bounded by black piny woods and the misty outline of hills. The salt breath of old ocean is in your lungs, its saline freshness in your face, its ceaseless roar in your ears, but there is little of the strife and tumult and bustle and uproar of the big rest- less world in St. Mary's.
In the purplish gloom of the May-twilight, Arthur
EtfLALlE.
19
Sutherland and his cousin drove slowly along the pleasant country-roads, with swelling meadows and dark woods, and peaceful-looking farmhouses and stately homesteads on either hand. It was all very familiar and very dear to them both; they had spent their boyhood together here before they had gone forth to light the battle of life ; and every green lane and upland meadow and forest ar- cade was as well known to them as their own faces in the glass. They drove along in the misty twilight, with the scented country air blowing in their faces, very silently — thinking of these by-gone days, perhaps, and wondering if they had changed as little as the land- scape m these intervening years. The twilight was deepening into starlit night as the home of Arthur Suther- land came in view. A -pair of tall iron gates stood wide ; and you saw a spacious carriage -drive, winding away between two rows of giant maples and hemlocks, while miniature forests of these same noble trees spread them- selves away on either hand. Embosomed among these glo- rious old trees stood a long, low old-fashioned gra}" stone house, older than the Revolution, and built far more with a view to strength and durability than beauty or chaste- ness of architecture. There were modern additions and repairs ; but the old gray stone house, with its high nar- row windows and stacks of chimneys and peaked gables stood much as it had stood when the first Sutherland who emigrated from England to the colonies built it, over one hundred years before. The Sutherlands were proud of their old mansion — very old as age goes in America — and only altered it to make unavoidable repairs. The long drawing-room and dining-room windows opened upon a sweep of grassy lawn, sloping down to the groves of maple and elm and hemlock like a green velvet carpet ; a piazza run around the second story, in which the tall windows opened in the same fashion. Stables and out-houses, also of gray stone, were in the rear of the building, and beyond them stretched a delightful orchard, where apple and
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A wife's tragedy.
plum, and pear and cherry-trees scented the air with their blossoms in spring, and strewed the sward with their de- licious ripe fruit in autumn. To the right rolled away swelling meadows, ending where the pine woods began ; to the left, another long garden, all aglow in summer with rose-trees, and where little wildernesses of lilacs and la- burnums, and cedar and tamarack, sloped down to the sea ; a glorious old garden, in whose green arcades and leafy aisles delicious silence and coolness ever reigned, where the singing of numberless birds, the wash of the ceaseless waves, or the swaying of the bough in the breeze, made music all day long ; a dreamy, delightful old gar- den, where everything grew or did not grow, as best pleased itself, ending in a grassy terrace, with a flight of stone steps leading down to the beach below. A magni- ficent place altogether, this ancestral home of the Suther- lands. There was not a tree or stone inside the iron gates that was not dear to them, and of which they were not proud.
The round May moon was sailing over the dim, dark hill-tops as the two young men drove round to the stables and left their vehicle there. Two long lines of light glanced across the front of the old stone house ; and, in the blue, misty moonlight, it cast quaint and weird shad- ows athwart the turfy lawn.
Arthur Sutherland lifted the ponderous iron knocker and roused the silent echoes by a loud alarm. The man- servant who opened the door was a stranger to the re- turned heir, and stared at him, and informed him Mrs. Sutherland was engaged, and that there was a dinner- party at the house.
" Never mind," said Arthur, " I dare say she will see me. J ust tell her two gentlemen await her presence in the library, my good fellow ! This way, Phil. !"
He pushed past the man as he spoke, and opened a door to the left, with an air of one all at home. A shad- ed lamp burned on a round table in the centre of the
EULALIE.
21
floor — they had no gas at Maplewood — and, by its sub- dued light, you saw a noble room, lined all round the four walls with books from floor to ceiling. A portrait of George Washington hung above the low black marble mantel ; albeit traditions averred the Sutherlands had rather snubbed that hero in his lifetime. Arm-chairs, cushioned in green billiard-cloth, to match the green carpet and curtains, stood around ; and just as the young gentlemen subsided into one apiece, a mighty rustling of silks resounded without, the door opened, and a lady entered ; a lady, fair and proud, and stately and hand- some, and still youthful-looking, with fair, unsilvered hair, delicate regular features, thin lips, and large, light blue eyes; a lady who would have told you she was five-and- forty, but who looked ten years younger, elegantly dressed, and redolent of patchouly. Arthur Sutherland rose up, the lady looked at him, give a cry of delight, ran forward, and clasped him in her arms.
" My darling boy! My dearest Arthur! and have you returned at last!"
" At last, my dear mother, and glad to be home again."
They were very much alike, the mother and son ; the same tall stature, the same blond type of Saxon beauty ; but the proud and somewhat severe look in the mother's blue eyes was a warm and more genial light in the son's. She held him off at arm's-length, and looked at him with loving and delighted eye.
" You have grown taller and stouter, I think," she said, while her son stood laughingly, to be inspected. " Your three years' travel has decidedly improved you! My dearest boy, I cannot tell you how rejoiced I am to have you home once more !"
" A thousand thanks, mother mine ! But have you no welcome for this other stranger ? "
The lady turned round quickly. She had quite over- looked him in the happiness of seeing her boy.
Doctor Sutherland came forward with a profound bow.
B
22
A wife's tragedy.
" Philip Sutherland ! " she said, smilingly, holding out her ringed, white hand. " I am very glad to see you back again at Maplewood."
Mr. Philip Sutherland expressed his thanks, and his pleasure at seeing her looking as young and handsome as ever.
"Pshaw!" said the lady, smiling graciously, however. "Have you not ceased that old habit of yours, of talking nonsense, Philip ? Have you dined, Arthur ? "
" Yes, mother. We dined in Portland. You are hav- ing a dinner-party, they tell me ? "
" Only Colonel and Mrs. Madison and the Honourable Mr. Long and his daughter. Will you go up to your room and dress, and join us in the drawing-room ? The gentlemen have not left their wine yet. You will find your room in as good order as if| you had been absent three days instead of three years ; and, Philip, you know your own old chamber."
" Up in the cock-loft ! " muttered Philip, [sotto voce. " Yes, ma'am, I know."
" But I should like to see Augusta first, mother. Will you send her word ? "
" I'm here ! " screamed a shrill voice ; and the door was flung open, and a young lady bounced into the room and bounced up to the speaker, flinging her arms round his neck, kissing him with sounding smacks : a young lady, inclined to embonpoint, fair-haired and blue-eyed — as it was the nature of the Sutherlands to be ; but, unlike the Sutherlands, with a snub-nose. Yes, this young lady was a Sutherland, but she had a snub nose and a low fore- head, and cheeks like a milkmaid in colour and plump- ness ; but for all that, a very nice-looking and very nice girl, indeed.
" Now, there, Augusta, don't strangle me," said Miss Augusta's brother, when he thought he had been suffi- ciently kissed. " Stand off and let me look at you. How fat you have grown ! "
EULALIE.
2a
" Oh, have I ? " exclaimed Miss Sutherland, with sud- den asperity. " I wonder you let me in the room before you told me that. Phil. Sutherland, how do you do ? I knew 3^ou were dying to be asked down here, and so I asked you ! "
Dr. Sutherland murmured his thanks in a subdued tone — he was always sudbued in the presence of this out- spoken cousin ; but the young lady paid no attention to him.
" Hadn't you better go back to the drawing-room, mamma ? That horrid old Colonel Madison will drink so much port wine, and come in and bore us all to death if you're not there to listen to him. I hate those stupid stories about Mexico, and all the valiant deeds he did there, and so does Eulalie ; and I gape in his face, and he goes off and tells his wife I'm the most ill-bred girl he ever met. I know he tells her that, and I hate him ! "
Miss Sutherland bounced out of the room as she had bounced into it, and Mrs. Sutherland turned to follow her.
" Make your toilets, young gentlemen, and show your- selves in the drawing-room as quickly as possible. Your luggage is upstairs by this time, no doubt."
She sailed out of the room ; and the two young men ran up-stairs to their respective apartments — Mr. Philip Sutherland's being rather in the attic than otherwise.
" My old roost looks much the same as ever," said the young doctor, glancing around. " I wonder if any one has courted the balmy up here since I left, or if it has been sacred to the memory of Philip Sutherland ! "
The young physician made a rather careful toilet, with the memory of the Creole heiress in his mind, and de- scended presently in all the purple and fine linen proper for young men to wear, and tapped at his cousin's door.
" Are you ready, old boy ? " he said, opening it and looking in. " Ah ! I see you are, and most elaborately got up ! Now, then, for our dark-eyed heiress ! "
24
A wife's tragedy.
The long drawing-room was all ablaze with light from pendant chandeliers when they entered; and Augusta Sutherland, sitting at a grand piano, was singing a Swiss song, that seemed more tra-la-las than anything else. The gentlemen had come in from the dining-room, it seemed ; for Mrs. Sutherland, lying back in a fauteuil, a la princesse, Avas listening with languid politeness to a stout military gentleman with a big bald head, while she watched the door. A smiling motion brought the young men to her velvet throne ; and they were introduced in due form to Colonel and Mrs. Madison — the latter a pale-faced, insipid- looking little woman, with nothing at all to say.
" Excuse me one moment, colonel," said Mrs. Suther- land, with her sweetest smile, " while I present my son to Mr. and Miss Rohan, neither of whom he has seen yet. I must hear the end of that Mexican adventure."
She took her son's arm, and they walked the length of the apartment together, while Philip was taken b}' the button-hole, captive to the Mexican officer, sorely against his will.
In the shadowy recess of a deep, old-fashioned bay- window Arthur saw two people sitting. A tall, and stately, and handsome old man, with hair as white as sil- ver, and a face deeply furrowed by time or trouble. The other, a tall and decidedly plain-looking girl, very stylishly dressed. There was a little low sofa between them that seemed only a mass of scarlet drapery and cushions, in the deep shadow cast by the heavy amber-coloured cur- tains of the bay-window.
" Is it possible," thought Arthur, " that this young lady, with the small eyes and wide mouth, is the beauty I have heard so much of ? They must look through a golden mist, indeed, who can discover loveliness in that face."
The young lady's name was pronounced even while he was thinking this ; but the name was Miss Long, and he remembered what his mother had told him of an Honour-
EtTLALlE.
25
able Mr. Long and his daughter being there. The stately old gentleman was Mr. Rohan, of Eden Lawn, Cuba, who bowed rather stiffly as the son of his hostess was intro- duced.
" Miss Rohan, allow me to present my son ; Arthur, Miss Eulalie Rohan."
The mass of scarlet drapery was pushed aside by a little hand all blazing with rich rings, and from the shade of the yellow curtains a recumbent figure rose, and a sweet voice, the sweetest he ever had heard, spoke to him, There had been a greenish gleam as she lifted her head, and Arthur saw that she wore a circlet of emeralds in her dense black hair ; but somehow he had thought of the fatal greenish glitter of a serpent's head, and he could not get rid of the idea. She rose up from the shadowy back- ground, among the glowing red of the cushions, a scarlet shawl thrown lightly over her shoulders ; and she looked like a picture starting vividly out from black gloom. Arthur Sutherland saw a face unlike any face he had ever seen before ; greatblack eyesof dusky splendour,lightingup gloriously a face of creamy pallor, and flashing white teeth, showing through vivid crimson lips. He could not tell whe- ther she was beautiful or not ; he was dazzled by the flash- ing splendour of those eyes and teeth, set in the shadow of that raven-black hair. In far-off eastern lands he had seen such darkly-splendid faces, and it seemed to him for a moment that he was back in the land of the date and the palm-tree,under a blazing, tropical sun ; but how strangely out of place this glowing Assyrian's beauty seemed in his staid New England home !
She had been resting lazily down among the crimson- velvet cushions, talking in her sweet, foreign voice to her grandfather and Miss Long ; but she sat up now, letting the scarlet shawl trail off her exquisite shoulders. As she moved her little black head, all running over with curis that hung below her taper waist, the greenish glitter of the emeralds flashed and gleamed with a pale, sinister
26
A wife's tragedy.
lustre. Arthur Sutherland hated the gems. He could not get rid of the thought of the serpent while this pale, sickly flashing met his eye. He thought of Isabel Van- sell, who woreOrient pearls as pale and pure as herself ; and thought how fortunate it was for him that he had seen and loved her before he met this black-eyed houri, whose darkly-gorgeous beauty might have bewitched him else. He was safe now, with that counter-charm, his fair-haired ideal ; and, being safe, it was only polite to sit down and talk to his mother's guests ; so he took a vacant chair near the low sofa, and began to converse.
Mr. Arthur Sutherland, among his other accomplish- ments, was an adept in the art of " making conversation." He and Miss Long, who was rather a blue-stocking and very strong-minded, had a discussion on the difference of society in the Old World and the New. This led him to speak of his travels, and he grew eloquent over descrip- tions of Florence the beautiful, and the solemn grandeur of the Eternal City. He had heard the wonderful " Mis- erere " in St. Peter's ; he had made the ascent of Mt. Blanc ; he had seen the carnival in Venice, and he had per- formed the Via Crucis in the Holy Land. The great, solemn, black eyes of Eulalie Rohan fixed themselves on his face, as she listened in breathless, childlike delight ; and perhaps the consciousness of this made him yet more eloquent, though he said very little to her. He had es- sayed some remarks to her grandfather, and received such brief replies as to nip the attempted conversation in the bud. But Eulalie could talk as well as listen ; and pre- sently, when he asked her something about Cuba, the glorious black eyes lit up, the dark Creole face kindled with yet more vivid beauty, and she talked of her home under the orange and citron groves, until he could feel the scented breath of the Cuban breeze blowing in his face, and see the magnolia swaying over his head. She talk- ed with the most charming infantile grace in the world, in that sweet, foreign-accented voice of hers — the small
EULALIE.
27
ringed-hands fluttering in and out the crimson drapery, and the serpent gleam of the emeralds ever displeasing the young man's eyes. She was not eloquent or original ; she was only very sweet and charming, and innocently childlike — not a bit strong-minded, like Miss Long — not at all given to bounce like Miss Auorusta Sutherland — and her sweetness was something entirely different from that of his pale, golden-haired saint and ideal, Isabel Van- sell — this dark divinity ,who was all jets and sparkles, all scarlet drapery and amber back -ground, and big black eyes, and emeralds and diamond rings. He could see, while he sat gravely listening to her sweet, childish voice, Philip Sutherland, staring over at her with open-eyed ad- miration, and smiled to himself.
" Poor Phil. 1 " he thought ; " he is just the sort of fellow to be caught by this tropical butterfly, this gorgeous little flower of the sun. Those big, velvet- black eyes of hers, and this silvery prattle, so babyish and so sweet, and that feathery cloud of purple-black hair is just the sort of thing to fascinate him. Now I should like a woman, and this is only a lisping baby — a very charming baby, no doubt, to people who admire olive skins, and pretty little tattle, but not at all to my taste."
Miss Rohan had one attentive auditor to everything she said, besides Mr. Sutherland, and that was her grand- father. Ai'thur had been struck from the very first by the old man's manner toward his child ; it was such a mixture of yearning, mournful tenderness, watchful care. He watched her every movement; he listened to every word that was said to her, and every word she uttered in reply. He seemed to have eyes and ears only for her, and his gaze had something of unspeakable sadness in it. The prevailing expression of his whole face, indeed, was one of settled melancholy ; that furrowed countenance was a history of deepest trouble — past, perhaps, but whose memory darkened his whole life.
Arthur Sutherland saw all this, and wondered what
28
A wife's tragedy.
that trouble could be, and what connection it could have with this bric(ht young creature, who seemed as inno- cently and childishly happy as if she were only a dozen instead of eighteen years old. Whatever it was, its blight had not fallen on her — her laugh was music itself, her silvery prattle gay as a skylark's song.
" Perhaps he loves her so well, and fears to lose her so much," he thought, " that the love and fear bring that look of unspeakable trouble with which he seems per- petually to regard her. Grandfathers have idolized before now granddaughters far less beautiful and charming than this dark-eyed siren."
The little part};^ gathered in the recess of the bay-win- dow so comfortably was broken up at this moment. The Honourable Mr. Long, who had been turning Miss Suth- erland's music while she sang, came forward now with that young lady on his arm, and begged Miss E-ohan to favour them with some music. Eulalie arose promptly, and Arthur saw for the first time what a tiny creature she was, with a waist he could have spanned like a doll's, and her flossy black ringlets hanging tar below it. There was a general move. Mr. and Miss Long and Mr. Rohan all adjourned to the other end of the drawing-room, but Arthur Sutherland remained, and his sister dropped down on the sofa Miss Rohan had just vacated.
" There they go ! " was her resentful cr}^ ; " the Longs and the grandfather, and now mamma and that stupid Mexican colonel and his automaton wife, and Phil. Suth- erland, all over to the piano to hear the millionaire's heir- ess sing. Nobody paid any attention to my singing, of course; even Mr. Long was gaping behind the music when he thought I was not looking. I wonder, if I were a millionaire's granddaughter, if people would flock round to Jisten to every word I let fall, as if they were pearls and diamonds, or would my snub nose and one hundred and forty-two pounds avoirdupois set them gaping when I open my mouth, as it does now."
EULA.LIE.
29
Arthur Sutherland smiled at his sister's tirade, but did not reply. He was listening to the grand, grateful notes of the instrument, swept by a master hand, and a rich ' contralto voice singing some mournful Spanish ballad. The voice was full of pathos, the song sad as a funeral dirge, with a wild, melancholy refrain.
"There!" burst out Augusta, "that's the sort of dis- malness she sings all the time. It makes my flesh creep sometimes to hear her, and people go mad over her singing and playing. Nobody ever sees anything in mine, and I'm sure I play the hardest gallops and polkas ^oing ; but I dare say, if I had big black eyes like two full moons, and a grandfather with several millions of money, it would be different !"
" How very fond of her he seems to be ! " said Arthur, looking over at the piano, where Mr. Rohan stood with his eyes on his granddaughter's face while she sang.
" Who ? Her grandfather ? Good gracious me ! " cried Miss Sutherland shrilly, " there never was anything like it ! They talk about people adoring the ground other people walk on, but if they only could know how that Mr. Rohan admires Eulalie, they might talk. Of course it would be sinful idolatry in anybody but a millionaire ; and I know if I was Eulalie I should not put up with it. He watches her as a cat watches a mouse ; he won't let her go to parties ; he won't let her go outside the door, unless he is tagging at her apron-strings. He wouldn't let her speak to a young man, or let one look at her, if he could help it ; and he would like to shut her up in a box and carry her round with him, like that princess in the Arabian Nights. He wanted her to take the veil when she was in the convent."
" Wanted her to take the veil," echoed her brother, amazed.
" Yes," said Augusta, " and my opinion is there is some- thing wrong in the business, and Eulalie doesn't know what. She says he has been like that ever since she can
30
A wife's tragedy.
remember, loving her to absurdity, but always as if he pitied her or was afraid of her, or something. He is a very nice old man, but I think he is a monomaniac where his granddaughter is concerned — or would be, if he was not a millionaire."
A monomaniac ! The words spoken so lightly struck strangely and harshly on the ear of Arthur Sutherland. He had heard of such things ! And was this the secret of those loving, anxious, watchful looks ? Did he know he was mad, and did he fear the same fate for his beauti- ful child ? Was it hereditary in the family, yet a secret from her ?
" Well ! " exclaimed his sister, with her round, blue eyes fixed on his face. " I should like to know what that solemn countenance means ! If you were making your will you couldn't look more dismal ; and as you seem to have lost your tongue since Eulalie went away, I'll go and fetch her back to you."
Off went Miss Augusta. Arthur shook away the creep- ing feeling that had come over him, with a slight shudder.
" What an idiot I am ! " he thought, " weaving such a web of horrible, improbable fancies out of a casual word let drop by my chattering sister. The old man dotes on his grandchild, and that ceaseless care and mournful ten- derness of look and voice is only the effect of excessive love, and fear of losing her."
Half an hour after the dinner-party broke up, and the guests went home. Miss Rohan bade them good-night, with one of her brilliant smiles, and went up stairs with Augusta. As Arthur followed, and was entering his own room, Philip came along the hall, with a night-lamp in his hand. He had managed to get introduced to the heiress, and had been devouring her with his eyes ever since they had fallen on her first.
" I say, Arthur," he cried, as he went back, " what a glorious little beauty she is ! "
Arthur Sutherland looked at his cousin with a pitying smile.
EULALIE.
31
" With what different eyes people see things ! " he said. " You saw a glorious little beauty, and I saw — a dark fairy with a soft voice ! Good night ! "
Arthur Sutherland's dreams were a little confused that night, and Eulalie Rohan and Isabel Vansell got hopeless- ly mixed up in them. Once, in those uneasy dreams, he was walking through the leafy arcades and green isles of Maplewood with blue-eyed Isabel, robed in white and illuminated by the sunlight as he had seen her last, when, out of the black shadow of the trees a tall serpent reared itself upright with a hiss, and the sunshine was suddenly darkened. The serpent had an emerald flashing in its head, and looked at him with the great black eyes of the Creole heiress ; and then he awoke with a violent start, |nd the vision was gone.
CHAPTER III.
BEGINNING OF THE TEOUBLE.
ARTHUR SUTHERLAND rose early the morning after his return home, despite the previous day's fatiguing journey, and made a hasty toilet. The house was still as a tomb ; no one was stirring but the birds who chaunted their matin-hymns in the glorious May sunshine,, among the branches of the quaint hemlocks trailing * against his chamber- window. It had been his custom from boyhood to indulge himself in a long walk, a longer ride, or a sea bath before breakfast. He chose to ride this morning ; and, mounting his horse, rode away with all the old boyish light-heartedness back again. It was so pleas- ant to be at home after all these years of sight-seeing, and roaming up and down this big world ; andMaplewood,in the refulgent morning sunshine, was inexpressibly beautiful.
Yesf Maplewcod was beautiful, and Arthur's heart was in a glow of happy pride as he rode down the long graveled drive, through the tall iron gates and out into the dusty highroad. He met the farm-labourers going to their work ; he could see that St. Mary's was all astir, but he did not ride through St. Mary's. He galloped along the quiet roads, so tempted by the beauty of the morning that two hours had elapsed before he returned. Leaving his horse to the care of the stable-boys, he came round by the back of the house, humming a tune. As he turned a sharp angle of the building, the long grassy terrace over- looking the sea came in sight ; and he saw, to his surprise, a fairy form, in a white cashmere morning-dress, loitering
BEGINNING OF THE TKOUBLE.
33
. to and fro, and dropping pebbles into the placid waters below. She wore a little straw hat on her black curls, its white feather drooping among them, and the scarlet shawl of last nisfht drawn round her shoulders. Miss Rohan was not loitering alone either ; near her, leaning over the low iron railing, stood Philip Sutherland, talking anima- tedly, and Arthur could hear her low, musical laugh where he stood. There was no earthly reason why this should annoy him — he would not, for a moment, have confessed even to himself that it did annoy him — but his brow contracted, and he felt, for the first time, that his cousin was an officious meddler, whom it would have been better to have left in New York. He had started forward im- pulsively to join them — wias he not master here, and did not the laws of hospitality compel him to be attentive to his mother's guest ? — when he as impulsively stopped. Walking rapidly through the chestnut-grove, leading from the lawn to this terrace, he saw Mr. Rohan, his aged face looking tenfold more troubled and anxious and careworn in the garish sunshine than it had done in the lamplight. The trouble in his face was so very like terror, as he looked at his granddaughter loitering there with Philip Sutherland, that Arthur stared at him, amazed. He joined them, drawing his child's arm within his own, and bowing coldly and distantly to her companion. Ten min- utes after he saw the old man lead her away, and Philip following in their wake, faithful as a needle to the North Star. Arthur did not join him; he lingered on the ter- race, smoking a cigar, and trying to puzzle out the riddle, and only mystifying himself by the effort. He flung his smoked-out cigar into the blue waves ; and seeing by his watch it was the breakfast hour, he strolled back to the house, and into the breakfast-room.
The breakfast-room at Maplewood was a very pretty apartment, with canary-birds and flower-pots in the win- dow, and the fresh' sea-breeze rustling the muslin curtains.
Standing among these birds and flowers when he entered
34
A wife's tragedy.
was Eulalie. That sunlit figure in the white dress, among the geraniums and canaries, reminded him of another pic- ture he had looked at, just before leaving New York. But Eulalie turned round, and all similitude vanished. The dusky splendour of her Southern beauty extinguished poor Isabel's pale prettiness, as the sun might a penny candle. The flashing of those glorious eyes and those pearly teeth, the rosy, smiling mouth disclosed, blotted out even the memory of his flaxen-haired ideal. He hated tarry tresses, and sloe-black eyes, and dusky skins, and passionate dark daughters of the South ; but for all that he was none the less dazzled by those wonderful Creole eyes now. The gleaming emeralds he had disliked so much glittered no longer amid the ebon waves of her hair • — some scarlet geranium-blossoms shone like red stars in their place, and were the only speck of colour she wore.
Mrs. Sutherland and Augusta and Philip were there, and Mr. Rohan was near his granddaughter, as usual. He sat beside her at table, too, and listened to her, and watched her, with the same jealous watchfulness as last night. Just as they sat down, a young lady entered the room, at sight of whom both young men started up with exclamations of surprise, shaking hands, and calling her familiarly by her Christian name. She was a tall, slim, pale girl, rather pretty, with the light hair, and blue e3^es, and a look generally, of the Sutherlands. She was dressed in slight mourning, and looked four or five years the senior either of Augusta or Eulalie.
" Why, Lucy," Arthur cried, " this is an astonisher ! I did not know you were here 1 Mother said nothing about it."
Lucy Sutherland — she was cousin to both young men, and poorer even than Philip — lifted her light eyebrows slightly as she took her place.
" No," she said quietly ; " why should she mention so unimportant a matter. It was not worth mentioning."
Arthur smiled ; perhaps the answer was characteristic.
BEGINNING OF THE TROUBLE.
35
" Why were you not down last night ?"
" Because she is an oddity," said his mother, taking it upon herself to reply; "and as unsocial as that Black Dwarf in Sir Walter Scott's novel. I tell her she should have been with Robinson Crusoe on his island, or go and be a nun at once."
Miss Lucy Sutherland made no reply; silence was another of her oddities, it seemed; but Augusta and Ealalie chattered away like magpies. The whole party loitered a very unnecessary length of time over the break- fast-table; and, when they arose, the young ladies ad- journed to the drawing-room — Miss Rohan and Miss Augusta to practise some wonderful duet, and Miss Lucy to seat herself at another window, and stitch away in- dustriously at some elaborate piece of embroidery. Philip Sutherland hung devotedly over the piano, with rapt face ; the dragon — as he mentally styled the Cuban millionaire — had gone to the library to write letters. Arthur seated himself beside his cousin Lucy, to talk to her, and furtively watch the fairy figure in white at, the piano ; how well she played ; how those tiny, ringed hands flew over the polished keys, and what wonderful power to fascinate the little dark witch had ! He talked to Lucy Sutherland, snipping remorselessly at her silks, and listening to the music, and thinking what danger he might have been in of falling in love with a black-eyed girl if he had not been fortunate enough to first meet with Isabel Vansell.
" How long have you been at Maplewood, Lucy ?" he asked his cousin.
" Since my father's death — five months ago," she replied, in a grave but steady voice. " Your mother finds me use- ful, and desires me to stay ; and, being of use, I am quite willing."
Arthur smiled as he looked at her.
" Proud Lucy ! You are the same as of old, I see. I am very glad you are here. You must never leave us, Lucy, until you leave us for a home of your own."
36
A wife's tragedy.
Lucy Sutherland was habitually pale, but two red spots came into her cheeks, and slowly died out again. She did not reply ; she did not lift her eyes from her work, as her needle flashed in and out.
You were here when Mr. and Miss Rohan came, of course?" he said, after a pause.
" Yes."
" How do you like Miss Rohan ? " " Very well."
" Which means, I suppose, you do not like her at all ? " Lucy Sutherland looked up, calmly, as she threaded her needle.
Not at all ! Why should I dislike her ? "
" Heaven knows ! For some inscrutable female reason; but I am sure you do not like her."
" I have seen very little of Miss Rohan," said Lucy, rather coldly. " I'm always busy ; and she could hardly be expected to trouble herself much about me. Even if I were her equal in social position, we are so much unlike, and have so few tastes and sympathies in common that we should never care for each other's companionship. Miss Rohan never thought twice about me, and is supremely indifferent whether I like or dislike her."
" There spoke the pride of all the Suther lands ? " ex- claimed Arthur, smiling. " Why, you foolish Lucy, what do you mean by talking of being beneath her ? Are you not a lady by birth and descent and education, as much as she is ? As for her grandfather's millions, she can ajQTord to look down upon the whole of us, where they are concerned ; for, if report speaks truly, she will be rich enough to buy and sell all the Sutherlands that ever existed."
Here there was an interruption. Mrs. Sutherland came in to tell her son there were callers for him in the recep- tion-room. The guests of last night had spread the re- port of his return, and his old friends were losing no time.
" Mr. Synott asked for you, Philip," Mrs. Sutherland
BEGINNING OF THE TROUBLE.
37
said. " I dare say you would prefer turning over the music, but you must go."
" Oh, hang Mr. Synott ! " muttered Philip ; " I wish he was in Jericho ! "
There was no help for it, however ; he had to go ; and what was worse, he and Arthur were kept there until the luncheon-bell rang, by a constant stream of troublesome old friends. There was a conservatory off this reception- room where the back window commanded a view of the long terrace, and they could see Mr. Rohan and his dark- eyed granddaughter lounging there, when the practising and letter-writing were over. They disappeared before luncheon-hour, and were not present at that meal; neither was Lucy. The Cuban grandee and his grandchild had gone off riding ; and it was another of Lucy's oddities never to eat luncheon. It was a far less pleasant meal than breakfast had been, although half a dozen of the old friends partook of it, and talked a great deal ; but the dark, piquant face and wonderful black eyes were miss- ing, and it was all vexation of spirit.
Arthur Sutherland found that afternoon very long. The troublesome friends went away at last, but not until he was heartily sick of them ; and then he went up into his room to write letters. But, somehow, the great black eyes and entrancing Creole face came between him and the white paper, and sent him into long fits of musing that made him sadly neglect his writing. He tried to read ; but his book seemed stupid, and he flung it aside and went out, in desperation, to smoke away the tedious hours. He found Philip Sutherland pacing up and down the sunny lawn, with his cigar, and joined him. Augusta sat under a tree, reading a novel, with a big black New- foundland dozing beside her ; and Lucy, in her own chamber-window, still bending over her embroidery, watched them, and guessed instinctively the cause of their restlessness.
G
38
A wife's tragedy.
" When they were here before," she thought, with a contemptuous smile, " they were riding over the country, or off with their fishing-rods all day long. Now, they dare not stir outside the gates, lest they should lose one glimpse of that sallow baby-face and those great, mean- ingless black eyes."
The young men smoked a vast number of cigars under the waving arms of the old trees ; but thsy did not talk much, and Miss Rohan's name was not once mentioned. Yet both understood intuitively what the other waited for, and hated him for it. Philip made some allusion once to Miss Vansell, and asked Arthur, carelessly, when he was going back to New York, and had met with a decided rebuff.
It was nearly six o'clock, and the trees were flinging long, fantastic shadows on the cool, dark sward, when Mr. and Miss Rohan returned.
Beautiful she always was ; but in a side-saddle she was bewitching. She rode a spirited, flashing-eyed Arab, as dark and as daintily small as herself, and her long, green riding-skirt floated back in the breeze as she cantered up the avenue. Exercise could not flush the creamy pallor of her dark, Creole face ; but it made it radiant, and the black eyes were as bright as two sable stars. Both young men started forward to assist her, but, gathering up her long train in one gloved hand, and laughing gayly, she sprang lightly out of the saddle unaided.
" Thanks, Messieurs ! " she said ; " but Arab and I understand each other. Grandpapa, I shall not wait for you. I must run away and dress."
She tripped away as lightly as any other fairy, and the young men resumed their sauntering up and down the darkening avenue until the dinner-bell rang. Then they returned to the house, and presently the ladies appeared, and Miss Rohan, as usual, elegantly dressed. She had a fancy very often of arraying her light, delicate little figure in rich silks and costly moire antiques, stiff enough
BEGINNING OF THE TKOUBLE.
39
to stand alone ; but this evening Arthur Sutherland could hardly tell what she wore. He only knew she came floating in in a cloud of gauzy amber drapery, like a mist of sunshine, with all her feathery, black ringlets hanging around her, and wearing no ornaments save a glittering opal cross attached to a slender gold chain. The yellow, sinister light of the opals was almost as distasteful to him as the greenish gleam of the emeralds.
" I wish she would not wear jewels," he thought. " At least, none but diamonds. They are the only gems to bear comparison with such a pair of eyes."
Miss Rohan was in high spirits, and chattered away in her sweet, soft voice about the delightful long ride she and grandpapa had had, and which she had enjoyed so much. The little heiress and the Sutherlands — mother, son, and daughter — had the conversation all to them- selves. The other three took little share in it. Lucy was silent, because it was Lucy's nature to be silent. Mr. Rohan was moodily distrait, but not too much so to keep that endless watch on his granddaughter. And poor Philip sat staring at the beautiful brunette face across the table in speechless admiration, to the sad neglect of his dinner and the rules of politeness.
But Miss Rohan took no notice. She was so accustomed to be stared at wherever she went that she had grown used to it, and took the unconscious homage paid her beauty as a matter of course.
Philip held open the dining-room door for the ladies when dinner was over, and looked as if he would like to follow them. The three gentlemen were not very sociable over their wine and walnuts. Arthur essayed conversation with the grandfather of Eulalie, but failed ; for Mr. Rohan only answered absently and in monosyllables. So there was no temptation to linger ; and they speedily made their appearance in the drawing-room, where they found Mrs. Sutherland in an after-dinner doze, and Lucy read-
40
A wife's tragedy.
ing in a corner. The other two were nowhere visible, and Mrs. Sutherland opened her eyes to explain.
" The girls have gone out, I believe, to look at the moon- light. Excuse me, Mr. Rohan, but may I ask you to re- main a moment ? I wish to consult you on a little mat- ter of business."
Clever mamma ! Her son smiled to himself as he stepped through the open window out on the lawn. The moon was sailing up in a cloudless sky ; the stars were number- less ; and Maplewood — its gray, old mansion, its woods and shrubberies and groves, its velvety lawns and far- spreading meadows — looked beautiful enough for fairy- land.
Instinctively the young men turned their steps ter- raceward ; and there, leaning over the low iron railing, were the two girlish figures, the petite fairy in amber with a cloud of black lace hanging around her ; the other in pink muslin. The wide sea lay as smooth as a polished mirror ; the moonlight shone upon it in one long, silvery track, in and out of which the boats flitted, with their white wings spread. One gay boatful were singing, and the music came borne delightfully to them on the low night-breeze. A woman's sweet voice was singing " Kathleen Mavourneen," and neither of the cousins spoke as they joined the listening figures. The spell of the moonlit sea and the sad, sweet song was not to be broken ; but Eulalie's dark eyes and bright smile welcomed them. It was the first time Arthur had been near her without the Argus-eyes of the grandfather being upon them ; and just as the melody died out on the water, and he was thinking how best to take advantage of the situation, lo ! there was that ubiquitous grandfather emerging from the chestnut-walk. Had he cut short Mrs. Sutherland's little business matter, or had he managed to escape 1
" The deuse take him ! " was, I am afraid, Arthur Suth- erland's mental ejaculation. " If she were the Koh-i-noor itself she could not be more closely guarded ! "
BJlGitNNlNG OF THE TROUBLE.
41
" The dew is falling heavily, Eulalie," he said, drawing her hand within his arm ; " it is imprudent of you to be out at this hour. Miss Sutherland, let me advise you to return to the house."
He walked away with his granddaughter, but none of the others followed. There was no mistaking his coldly repellent manner, and Augusta apostrophized him as a " horrid old bear."
" That's the way he tyrannizes over her all the time ! " exclaimed Miss Sutherland ; " no old Turk could be worse. I've told Eulalie about a million times I wouldn't stand it, but then she has no spirit ! I'd stay out, just for spite!"
Was it tyranny? Eulalie, looking up, saw her grand- father's face so full of distress and trouble that her tender anxiety was aroused.
" What is it, grandpapa ? " she asked. " What is trou- bling you ? Something has happened."
" No, my darling," he said, with a weary sigh, " nothing has happened, but the old trouble that never will end until I am in my grave ! Oh, my darling ! my darling ! I wish we were both there together ! "
" Grandpapa ! " Eulalie cried, shocked and affrighted.
Again he sighed a long and heavy sigh. " Eulalie, are you not tired of this place ? Would you not like to go home ?"
" Home ! Oh, dear no, grandpapa ! I am very happy here, and it is not two weeks since we came. What would Mrs. Sutherland say ? "
" Why should you care, Eulalie ? Are we not happy enough together ? Let us go back to Eden Lawn, and live quietly, as we did before I sent you to school. What do we want or care for these people ? "
"Very well, grandpapa," but the sweet face darkened and saddened so while she said it, that his heart smote him.
" You don't want to go, my darling ? "
42
A wife's tragedy.
" Dear grandpapa, I will go if you desire it, but it is very pleasant to be here."
The troubled look grew deeper on his face than she had ever seen it, and his answer was something very like a groan. She clasped her little hands round his arm, and lifted her wistful dark eyes to his.
" Oh, grandpapa, what is it ? What is this dreadful trouble that is blighting your whole life ? When will you cease to treat me like a child — when will you tell me ? I know I am only a foolish little girl," she said with a rueful look at her diminutive proportions ; " but indeed I am not such a baby as you think ! I can bear to hear it, whatever it is, and you will feel happier for telling."
" Happier ! " he cried out, passionately, " Eulalie, the day I tell you my heart will break ! Oh, my pet ! my darling 1 God alone knows how I loved you, and yet my only prayer for you, all your innocent life, has been, that he might bless you with an early death ! "
She clasped her hands in speechless affright, her great black eyes dilating as she listened to the appalling words.
" When I placed you in the Sacred Heart," he went on, " it was not so much that you might be educated — that could have been done at home ; it was in the hope that you might take the veil, that you might become a nun. Hundreds as young and beautiful and rich as yourself re- nounce all this world can give, yearly, to become the bride of Heaven ; and I hoped you would do the same, and so escape the horrible fatality that may come. You would have been safe, then ; they never could tear a nun from her convent."
" Tear a nun from her convent ! Oh, grandpapa ! grandpapa ! what do you mean ? "
" Not now, Eulalie — not now, but very soon you shall ^ know ! Very soon, because it is impossible for me longer to conceal the horrible truth. While you were a child, all was well, and I have tried to keep you a child as long
BEGINNING OF THE TROUBLE.
43
as I could. But you are a woman now, my little inno- cent lamb ! I never felt it so plainly as to-night."
" To-night ?" She could only echo his own words — she was too utterly bewildered and shocked to think.
" Yes, these young men have made me see it very plain- ly," he said, bitterly. " I might have known it was mad- ness to try to keep lovers off, and you a beauty and an heiress. The convent was the only hope. Say, my child, is it too late yet ? do you not long to go back to the peace and holy calm of the convent, out of this weary battle of life?"
" Grandpapa, I was very happy in the Sacred Heart with the dear, kind ladies, but I am also very happy here in this beautiful world, or would be, if your trouble did not make me so wretched ! Oh, grandpapa ! what is this dreadful secret ? "
" Something too dreadful for my lips ever to tell you. I must say the horrible truth in writing, if my heart breaks whilst doing it."
Every trace of colour had faded out of the dark face, and her black eyes were dilated in vague horror.
" Is it any disgrace, grandpapa ? — my father — " she faltered and stopped.
" Your father was the soul of honour. He never wrong- ed a human creature in his life ! "
"And my mother ? — I never knew either of them, grandpapa ? "
"Your mother was beautiful and pure as an angel! As innocent as a baby of all the wickedness and misery of this big world ! "
She gave a little sigh of fervent thanksgiving. A great fear had been removed.
" It cannot be anything so very terrible, then," she said. " You magnify the danger, grandpapa. Only tell me, and see how bravely I will bear it ! "
They were ascending the portico-steps. He looked down on her, and she saw what a haggard and wretched face he wore.
A wife's tragedy.
" My poor little girl ! " he said mournfully, you do not know what you are saying ! There are horrors in this great world that you never have dreamed of. Go to your room, my darling, and pray to Heaven to give you strength to bear the blow when it comes."
" Only one word, grandpapa ! " she cried^ a wild idea flashing through her brain ; " is it some hereditary disease you fear — is it" — her very lips whitened as she pro- nounced the word — " is it insanity ? "
The old man looked at her in unmistakable surprise.
" My darling, what put such a revolting idea ij). your poor little head ! No, physically and mentally the race from which you have sprung is sound. There are worse things even than madness 1 "
He left her with the last dreadful words on his lips, and went up stairs. Eulalie lingered a moment in the portico, shivering with a horrible vague fear. The two strolling back from the terrace caught one glimpse of her, before she saw them and flitted in, but that glimpse was enough to reveal how sad and disheartened the bright face had become.
" The old brute has been scolding her !" burst out Philip Sutherland ; " and choking would be too good for him — the old monster!"
• A
CHAPTER IV.
BATTLING WITH FATE.
THERE was a perceptible change in the manner of Eulalie Rohan, after that night's interview. The vaguely-terrible things the old man had said could scarcely fail to affect his granddaughter, and disturb her greatly. She had been so happy all her life — to her, ex- istence was one long holiday — this lower world was no place of exile, but a terrestial Eden, and she had been as innocently and joyously happy as the wild birds warbling in the trees. But now some shadowy horror impended over her, all tl^e more fearful for being shadowy, and the sunshine of her life was suddenly darkened.
" I wonder what it all means," she thought, sadly. " If grandpapa would only speak out — I think I could bear it far better than this suspense. What can this dark mys- tery be ? It is not disgrace, it is not disease, it is not poverty.^ What, then, is it that is worse than these ? Poor dear grandpapa ! he is very wretched, I know, but I am sure that I -shall not be half so unhappy when I know the truth, as I am now."
The family at Maplewood noticed the change, and won- dered too. They saw the shadow that had fallen on the little Creole heiress, and how lovingly sorrowful the eyes with which she watched her grandfather. She devoted herself more to him than ever before, walked with him, rode with him, read with him, sang to him, and did all in her power to divert him from his morbid melancholy, with an earnest devotion that was touching to see.
46
A wife's teagedy.
" There is something wrong and abnormal about all this," thought Arthur Sutherland ; " there is some mys- tery here, or else Augusta was right, and the old man is a monomaniac, and she knows it. Poor little girl ! David never tried harder to win Saul from his gloomy melan- choly than she does her grandfather. I must ask my mother what she knows of their history."
It was one evening, in the long drawing-room, about a week after that moonlight night, that Arthur thought this. The windows were all wide open and the pale twilight stole in, fragrant with the perfume of the rose-trees. Eu- lalie Rohan sat on a low stool at one of these open case- ments, dressed in white ; and with no jewels, green or yellow, to offend his fastidious eye. The breeze lifted her feathery ebon curls, and fluttered back her flowing muslin sleeves, as her fingers lightly touched the strings of her guitar. Her grandfather sat in an arm-chair beside her ; listening with closed eyes to the sweet old Spanish ballad she sang. There was no other light than the pale gloam- ing ; the song was low and wild, and mournful, and the singer's voice full of pathos, that went to his heart. Philip Sutherland was listening just outside the window with his heart in his eyes. Poor Philip was wildly, and hope- lessly, in love with the little Creole beauty, and made no secret of it; and was madly jealous of Arthur, and every other single man in the neighbourhood, under forty, who spoke to her. Augusta and Lucy were spending the even- ing out — his mother sat at the other extremity of the apartment, reading a magazine by the last rays of the daylight. Arthur went over and sat beside her, and plunged into the subject headforemost.
Mother," he said ; " how long have you known Mr. Rohan ? "
Mrs. Sutherland looked up and laid down her book.
" How long have I known Mr. Rohan 1 Not very long. When Augusta was at school in Montreal, I met him there. It is about three years since I saw him first."
BATTLING WITH E'ATE.
47
" t)o you know anything of his history ? I am curious to know the meaning of that settled melancholy of his."
" I cannot tell you ; unless it be continued grief for the death of his only son."
" His only son ! Eulalie's father ! But he has been dead for upward of eighteen years. A tolerable time to blunt the edge of any sorrow."
" It has not blunted his, it seems ; and I am at a loss to account for his gloom in any other way. His son married very young, before he was twenty, and went with his bride from Louisiana to Cuba, and died there ten months after with yellow fever. His wife, a poor little helpless thing of sixteen, wrote to Mr. Rohan, who went out there immediately, to find her utterly pros- trated by the blow. She idolized her young husband, it seems, and never held her head up again. A few weeks after Eulalie's birth, she was laid beside him in the ground ; and Mr. Rohan bought the estate there — Eden Lawn — and devoted himself to the child she had left. Eulalie grew up there, and never quitted it until three years ago, when she was fifteen ; and he placed her in the Sacred Heart at Montreal, to complete her very imperfect educa- tion. That is all I know of her history, and this m^ch Mr. Rohan told me himself."
" Poor little thing ! " said Arthur, looking pityingly over at the orphan heiress. " She is poorer than other girls, notwithstanding her grandfather's millions. And you think the loss of his son has been preying on his spirits ever since ? "
" It is the only way in which I can account for his sin- gular gloom ; and his continual watchful anxiety about Eulalie no doubt springs from excessive love. He seems very unwilling to speak of himself or his family affairs at all — in fact, I believe he never would talk if he could help it."
"The Rohans are English, you told me, by descent. What was Eulalie's mother ? "
" A lovely French Creole, I have heard ; and Eulalie
48
A wife's tragedy.
inherits all her gorgeous Southern beauty. She is like some Assyrian princess, with those luminous eyes and that wonderful fall of hair."
The last cadence of the song died out as Mrs. Suther- land said this — died out as sadly as the last cadence of a funeral hymn. Arthur looked over at the twilight pic- ture ; the old man was asleep in his chair, and the little white figure specking the blue dusk free from his sur- veillance for once. The opportunity was not to be lost. Arthur rose and crossed the room, and Eulalie's pensive face lit up with a beautiful, shy, welcoming smile.
" Your song is a very sad one, Miss Rohan," he said ; " but all your songs are that. Is it the old story of the nightingale with the breast against a thorn ? "
" * The sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought,' " quoted Eulalie : " grandpapa loves those quaint old Spanish ballads, and at this hour so do I. I used to sit and sing to him by the hour, in the twilight, at dear old Eden Lawn."
She struck a few plaintive chords of the air she had been singing, and looked up, dreamily, at the evening star, whose tremulous beauty she had often watched through acacia leaves, at this hour, in her sunny Cuban home. What a lovely night it is ! " she said.
" Yes," said Arthur ; " too lovely to spend in the house. Will you not come down to the terrace, to see the moon rise ? "
Phil. Sutherland, watching them, jealously, in the shadow of the clematis vines, gnashed his teeth at this rather sentimental request, but Eulalie only smiled and shook her head.
" You forget, Mr. Sutherland, grandpapa objects to the night air for me. I don't think it does me any harm, but he does, and that settles the matter."
" You are obedience itself. Miss Rohan."
" Grandpapa loves me so very much," she said, simply ; it is the least I can do, surely."
BATTLING WITH FATE.
49
There was a pause. Mrs. Sutherland was ringing for lights, but the moon streaming in through the waving foli- age lit up this window with silvery radiance. The little figure, the tender, beautiful face, the drooping head, with its cloud of shining tresses, made a very pretty picture, which stamped itself indelibly in the memory of the two young men, when the poor little beauty's tragic story was all over.
" I thought you were to dine this evening at Colonel Madison's with Lucy and Augusta," he said, presently.
" I was invited, but grandpapa did not wish me to go."
" Your grandpapa is as surly an old Turk as ever I heard of !" thought Arthur ; " his love is more like tyranny than anything else."
And I preferred staying home myself," said Eulalie, lifting her earnest, dark eyes to his face, while the thought passed through his mind. " I am always happier at home with grand — "
She stopped and sprang to her feet. Arthur and Philip darted forward, and all stared at the old man. He was still asleep, but in his sleep he had screamed out — a scream so full of horror that it had thrilled through them all. His face was convulsed, his hands outstretched, and work- ing in agony.
" It is false ! " he cried, in a voice between a gasp and a shriek. " She is mine and you shall not take her from me ? Oh, Eulalie ! Eulalie ! "
He awoke with that scream of agony on his lips, his face still convulsed with the horror of his dream, his fin- gers working, his eyes wild. Eulalie knelt beside him, her face ashen white, and caught his hand in her own.
" I am here," she said ; " dear, dear grandpapa, what is the matter?"
With an unnatural cry he caught her in his arms and strained her to him, his whole form quivering with convul- sive emotion.
" Thank God I" he cried ; " it was all a dream ! Oh, my
50
A wife's tragedy.
darling ! my darling ! I thought they were going to tear you from me ! "
He dropped his head on her shoulder, and burst out into a passion of hysterical sobbing, dreadful to hear. Eulalie looked up at Arthur with a face like marble, but trying bravely to be calm.
" Will you help him up to his room, Mr. Sutherland ? Dear, dear, dear grandpapa, don't cry ! You are breaking my heart ! Dearest grandpapa, don't. Eulalie is here — it was only a bad dream 1 Nobody shall ever take me from you !"
She kissed him, and caressed the poor old head ; and strove by every endearment to soothe him, her voice trembling sadly. The rest stood by, pale, startled, and wondering.
The old man lifted his head at last, and saw them. The sight of those pale, grave faces seemed to restore hira mag- ically, and he arose, still sustaining his clasp of his grand- daughter, the horror of his dream yet vibrating through all his frame.
" I have had a terrible dream ! " he said ; " I fear I have startled you all. Eulalie, will you help me to my room ? "
Arthur came forward.
" Miss Rohan is not strong enough," he said ; " permit me to assist you up-stairs."
But the old man would accept no assistance save his granddaughter's; and Arthur had to stand and w^atch them toiling wearily up the great staircase, he leaning on her arm. Not one of the three spoke when they were gone. Mrs. Sutherland retreated to her sofa with a very grave face. Philip went up to his own chamber. The drawing- room was a dreary desert, now that she was gone, and Arthur stepped out of the open window on the moonlit lawn to smoke, and cogitate over his queer bij^iness.
" There is a screw loose somewhere," he thought; "there is no effect without a cause. What, then, is the cause of
BATTLING WITH FATE.
51
this old man's morbid dread of losing his granddaughter ? It haunts him in his sleep — it makes his waking life a misery. There must be some cause for this fear — some grounds for this ceaseless terror ; or else, through sheer love, he is going mad. In either case, she is much to be pitied ; poor thing ! How white and terrified that plead- ing face was she turned to me. Poor child — she is only a child ! I pity her very much ! "
Yes ; Mr. Sutherland pitied the black-eyed little heiress very much, forgetting how near akin pity is to that other feeling he was resolutely determined not to feel for her. He pitied her very much, with this dreadful old grand- father, and paced up and down the lawn in the moonlight, thinking about her until the carriage that had been sent to Colonel Madison's returned with his sister and cousin. It was very late then — past midnight — but he could see the light burning in Mr. Rohan's room ; and the shadows cast on the blind, the shadows of the old man and his grandchild, sitting there, talking still.
Yes, they sat there talking still ; the terror of his dream so clinging to him that he seemed unable to let her out of his sight. He sat in an arm chair, she on a low stool at his feet, her hands clasped in his, her eyes uplifted anxiously to his disturbed face, her own quite colourless.
" You are better now, grandpapa," she was saying. " Will you not tell me what that terrible dream was ? "
The bare memory of the dream made him shudder, and tighten his clasp until her little hands ached.
" 0 my darJing, it was only the great troubles of my life haunting me in my sleep. The horrible fear that never leaves me, night or day, realized in my dreams."
" The horrible fear ! Oh, grandpapa, what do you mean ? What is it you are afraid of ? "
*' Don't ask me ! " exclaimed the old man, trembling at her words. " Don't ask me ! You will know it too soon, and it will ruin your life as it has ruined mine."
*" Grandpapa, is it for me or for yourself you fear ? "
52
A wife's teagedy.
" For myself?" he echoed. "Do you think any fear for myself could trouble me like this ? My life, at the best, is near its close. Could any fear for myself, do you think, disturb the few days that are left like this ? No, it is for you — for you, my cherished darling — that I fear, and one of the greatest horrors of all is to have to tell you what that fear is ! "
There was a long pause. Eulalie's face could not grow whiter than it was, but the great black eyes were un- naturally dilated. Through it, all this dark, troubled mystery, she was trying to keep calm, all for his sake.
" You spoke, grandpapa," she said, " of my being torn from you. Could any one in the world do that ? "
She glanced up at him, but his face was so full of anguish that she dared not look again.
" Heaven pit}^ you, my poor girl, thej^ could ! You are my dead son's only child, but I should be powerless to prevent it ! If all the wealth I possess could save you, I would open my hands and let it flow out like water. I could die happy, leaving you penniless, and knowing you were safe."
Safe ! Safe from what ? " she repeated in vague horror.
" From a fate dreadful to think of — from a fate the fear of which is shortening my life."
" Grandpapa ! " she broke out, passionately, " this is cruel ! You frighten me to death with vague terrors, when I could far better bear the truth ! Tell me what I have to dread — the truth will be easier to bear than this horrible suspense ! "
" Not now ! Not now ! " he cried out, imploringly. " 0 my Eulalie ! I do not mean to be cruel ! If I have said this much, it is only to prepare you for the truth. If this intolerable pain at the heart and this blinding gid- diness of the head mean what I think they do, my time is very short. Rest content, my darling, in a very few weeks you shall know all I "
BATTLING WITH t^ATE.
53
" Only tell me one thing," she pleaded, with new energy ; " have I enemies ? Is there any one in the world I have cause to fear ? "
She listened breathlessly for the answer, her great wild eyes fixed on his face.
" Yes, there is one, and only one, whom you have the in- tensest cause to fear. It is the dread of meeting this one enemy that has caused me to keep you secluded — that has caused me to wish you so ardently to bury yourself in a convent ! I have been battling with fate for the past eighteen years, and yet I know it is all in vain. I may take what precautions I please ; I may seclude you in the farthest corner of the world ; and yet when the time comes you and that man will meet ! "
" Hitherto I have never seen him, then ? "
" No — that is, since you were an infant."
" Then, grandpapa, how should he ever know me ? "
The old man looked at her with infinite pity in his eyes.
" My poor child ! I will show you here ! "
He drew from around his neck a thin gold chain, with a locket attached. He touched the spring and handed her the locket.
It contained two portraits — one of a bright, boyish handsome face ; the other, dark and beautiful, the pic- tured image of the living face looking down upon it. Under each was a name, " Arthur — Eulalie."
" It is your mother and father, my darling ! " he said. " Look at your mother's face. Do you not think that any one who ever saw that face in life would recognise you, her living image ? "
" And her name was Eulalie, too. I never knew that be- fore. 'Eulalie— Arthur ! ' My father's name was Arthur ? "
" Yes," said Mr. Rohan, sorrowfully. " His name was Arthur."
" Arthur !— Arthur ! " she repeated softly. " I like the name."
" You like it, Eulalie. Is it for the sake of the father.
54
A wife's tragedy.
you have never seen, or the young man downstairs, whom you have seen ? "
" Oh, grandpapa ! " was Eulalie's reproachful cry.
" My dear little girl, I can read your heart plainer, perhaps, than you can yourself, ^ou must not fall in love with this young man, Eulalie. It will be folly — worse than folly — madness — for you ever to let yourself love him or any one else."
" Grandpapa ! " rather indignantly, " I never thought of falling in love with him ! "
" No, my poor dear, you never thought of it, I dare say. But it may happen for all that ; and you cannot prevent him from admiring and loving you. That is why I wished you to return to Eden Lawn the other night — that is why I wish you to go still."
" Would it be so very dreadful, then," Eulalie asked, a little embarrassed, and not looking up, " if he — if I — I mean if we did ? "
" Yes," said Mr. Rohan, solemnly. " It would be dreadful, circumstanced as you are. I shall tell you all very soon ; until then, you must neither give nor take any promises from any man. When what I have to tell is told, you shall be as free as air — ^you shall do what you please, go where you like, act as your own conscience may suggest. And now go to your room, my darling, for it is very late, and remember me in your innocent prayers ? "
He kissed her, and led her to the door; and as she walked down the hall to her room, she heard him lock himself in. She was hopelessly mystified and dazed, poor child ! and the blight of that fearful unknown secret was falling upon her already. She might go to her room, but it was to cry herself to sleep like a little child,
Mr. Rohan did not appear in the drawing-room for the remainder of the week. The excitement of that night threw him into a kind of low nervous fever, that kept him in his own apartment, and kept Eulalie there most of the time, too. She was the best and most devoted of pulses, rea^ding and singing to him, scarcely ever from his
BATTLING WITH FATE.
55
iside. But Arthur Sutherland saw the sad, pale face that he remembered so brightly beautiful, and pitied her every day more and more.
He, too, was battling with fate, and failing as miserably as we all do in that hopeless struggle. For he found him- self thinking a great deal more of this Creole heiress than was at all wise or prudent, considering he was not in love with her, and never meant to be. Those large, starry black eyes ; those floating ink-black curls, soft and fea- therly as floss silk ; that dainty, fairy form, and that soft, sweet voice, haunted him too much by night and by day for his own peace of mind. He wanted to be true to his blue-eyed, golden-haired ideal ; he wanted to go back to New York and marry Miss Yansell. And, wanting to do all this, he yet lingered and lingered at Maplewood, and found it more and more difficult every day to tear him- self from the enchanted spot. He did not want to marry a woman with big black eyes and a dark skin ; he did not want to marry a foreigner ; he did not want to marry any one about whom there hung the faintest shadow of mystery or secrecy. And yet he lingered at Maplewood, fascinated by that lovely Creole face, and the spell of that musical voice, watching for her coming with feverish impatience, and chafing at her absence or delay. He did not want to fall in love with her himself, but he hated Philip Sutherland with a most savage hatred for having had that misfortune. He could not help admiring her, he said to himself ; no one could, any more than they could help admiring an exquisite painting or the marble Yenus de Medicis ; but he meant to be faithful to the old ideal, and make his pale saint with the halo of golden hair Mrs. Arthur Sutherland. Was he not as good as en- gaged to Isabel ? What business had those raven tresses and dark oriental 'eyes perpetually to come and disturb all his waking and sleeping dreams ? He battled con- scientiously with his fate — or fancied he did — and the more he battled, the more ' and more he thought pf JEulalie !
CHAPTER V.
fate's victory.
IN the very plain parlour of a very unpretending house, in a very quiet street of that lively little tree-shaded city, Portland, Maine, there sat, one lovely afternoon in June, a woman busily sewing.
The woman sat at the open window, and the window commanded an exquisite view of beautiful Oasco Bay, but she never once stopped in her work to glance at it. Per- haps she had no time to spare ; perhaps Casco Bay was a very old song ; or perhaps its sunlit beauty was beyond the power of her soul to appreciate. She sat and stitched and stitched and stitched, with dull, monotonous rapidity, on the child's dress she was making, a faded and fretted- looking creature, with pale hair and eyes, and shrunk, thin features. She was dressed in rusty black, and wore a widow's cap, and her name was Mrs. Sutherland — Lucy Sutherland's mother. Two or three small children rolled over on the thread-bare carpet, playing noisily with rag dolls and with tops, and two or three more of a larger growth were down in the kitchen, regaling themselves with bread and meat, after school.
It needed no second glance at the worn-out carpet, the rheumatic chairs, the shabby sofa, the cracked looking- glass, and the seedy garments, to tell you this family were very poor. They were very poor, and of that class of poor most to be pitied, who have seen " better days," poor souls ! and who struggle, and pinch, and tell lies, and eat their hearts out, trving to keep up appearances. They
fate's victory.
57
were in mourning for the husband and father, half-brother to the late James Sutherland, Esquire, of Maplewood, as Mrs. Sutherland never was tired telling her neighbors.
They had been very poor in his lifetime, for he was of dissipated habits ; but they were poorer now, and Mrs. Sutherland had no time to admire Casco Bay, for patching and darning, and making and mending, from week's end to week's end. There were six besides Lucy ; and Lucy and her salary, as paid companion to the lady of Maple- wood, was their chief support.
Lucy Sutherland's life had been a hard one. Six years before this June afternoon she had gone first to live at Maplewood — gone to eat the bitter bread of dependence. But Lucy Sutherland was morbidly proud ; Mrs. Suther- land, of Maplewood, haughty and over-bearing ; and Augusta too much given to fly out into gusts of bad temper. Of course, the cold pride and the hot temper clashed at once, and Mrs. Sutherland swept stormily in, boxed Augusta's ears, and scolded Lucy stoutly. Lucy retorted with flashing eyes, and banged the door in the great lady's face, packed up her belongings, and was home before night. But there were too many at home already. Lucy went out once more as a nursery-governess ; and for four years led the wretched, slavish life that nursery- governesses mostly lead. She was perpetually losing her place, and perpetually trying the next one, and only seeming to find each worse than the last. Four years of this sort of life broke down and subdued Lucy Sutherland enough even to suit Mrs. J ames Sutherland, of Maplewood. That lady, finding herself very lonely when Augusta went away to school, and remembering how useful she had found Lucy, presented herself at the house in Portland one day, and asked her to come back. Lucy was out of place, as usual. Mrs. Sutherland oflfered a higher figure than she had ever received as nursery-governess, and Lucy, neither forgiving nor forgetting the past, took pru- dence for her counsellor, and went back. Whatever she
58
A wife's tkagedy.
had to endure, she did endure, with stony patience — her heart rebelling fiercely against destiny, but her lips never uttering one complaint. She had been the chief support of the family since then, not through any very strong sisterly love, but because of that very pride that would have them keep up appearances to the last gasp. She did not visit them very often ; she wrote to her mother once a month, a brief letter, inclosing a remittance ; and she endured her life with hard, icy coldness, that was anything but the virtue of resignation.
Mrs. Sutherland, sitting sewing this afternoon, was listening for the postman's knock. It was the time for Lucy's letter, and the remittance was truly needed. While she watched, a cab drove up to the door ; a tall young lady, dressed in black, and wearing a black gauze vail over her face, alighted, and rang the bell. The next moment, there was a shout from the girls and boys below of—
" Oh, mamma ! Here's Lucy ! "
Mrs. Sutherland, dropping her work, met her eldest daughter in the doorway, and kissed her.
The children, playing on the floor, suspended their game to flock around their sister. Lucy kissed them one after the other, and then pushed them away.
"There! there!" she said, impatiently. "Run away now. Bessy, don't stand on my dress. Franky, go along to your tops, and let me alone. I am hot, and tired to death !"
She dropped into a seat, still pushing them away — her face looking pale, and haggard, and careworn. Mrs. Sutherland saw her daughter was in no very sweet temper, and hustled the noisy flock out of the room, and came back and sat down with a face full of anxiety.
"What is it, Lucy, dear?" she asked. "Have you left your Aunt Anna's again ? "
They were very much alike, this mother and daughter — alike outwardly and inwardly. Lucy Sutherland looked at her mother, and broke into a hard laugh,
fate's victory.
59
"Your welcome is not a very cordial one, mamma! You ask me if I have lost my place — hasn't that a very pleas- ant housemaid-like sound ? — before you invite me to take off my bonnet. I suppose if I had lost my place you would find me another before dark."
Mrs. Sutherland took up her sewing and recommenced.
"Take off your bonnet, Lucy," said she. " We have not much ; but whatever we have, you are welcome to your share of it. Have you quarrelled with your Aunt Anna?"
" No, T have not quarrelled with my Aunt Anna ! " replied Lucy with sneering emphasis; for Lucy never deigned to call her rich relative aunt; "but my Aunt Anna has sent me home on her service for something not to be had in St. Mary's, and which is not worth while sending for to Boston. I think I will take off my bonnet, mother, since you are so pressing ! "
Mrs. Sutherland took no notice of her daughter's ill- temper. She was too much dependent on Lucy to afford the luxury of quarrelling with her ; so she laid aside her bonnet and mantle, and produced some crackers and a glass of wine.
^" I don't want anything," said Lucy, impatiently. " Drink the wine yourself, mamma, you look as if you needed it. What are you making there ? "
" A dress for Fanny ! The child is in tatters, and not fit to go to school. I had to get it on credit."
" Pay for it with this," said Lucy, throwing her wallet into her mother's lap. "There is fifty dollars. Mrs. Sutherland is charitable enough to give me all her old black silks that are too good to give to the cook, and I make them over and save my money."
" How long are you going to stay with us, Lucy dear?"
" Very delicately put, mamma ! But don't be afraid, I return to-morrow by the earliest train."
" And what is the news from Maplewood ? " inquired Mrs, Sutherland, " Has Arthur returned ? "
60
A wife's tragedy.
" Yes, Arthur has returned."
She spoke so sullenly, and with a face that darkened so ominously that her mother looked up from her work once more.
" How long is it since he came ? " she asked, almost afraid to ask anything in her daughter's present frame of mind.
" Not a month yet ; but loug enough to make a fool of himself ! He and Phil. Sutherland came together ; and Phil., perhaps, is the greatest fool of the two. He is the noisiest, at least."
" My dear Lucy ! how strangely you talk ! What do you mean ? In what manner are they making fools of themselves ? "
Lucy Sutherland laughed a hard andfbitter laugh ; but her eyes were flashing blue flame, and her lips were white with passion.
" Oh, about a pretty little puppet ^they have there, mo- ther— a wax doll with a little waist and dark skin, and big vacant black eyes — an insipid little nonentity, who can lisp puerile baby-talk about grandpapa and Cuba, and who is to be heiress of countless thousands. They are making fools of themselves about her, mamma. It is for this little foreign simpleton that they are both going mad!"
Mrs. Sutherland was a woman of penetration, but not of much tact. She saw at once that something more than mere feminine spleen was at the bottom of this bitter, reckless speech, and was unwise enough to utter her thoughts.
" I know you always liked Arthur," she said. " And I hoped, when he returned, and you were thrown so much together, it might be a match. Lucy ! Good Heavens ! "
She started up suddenly in consternation ; for Lucy, at the words, had broken into a violent fit of hysterical sob- bing. It was so unexpected, so foreign to the nature of one so self -restrained and calm, this stormy gust of pas- sionate weeping, that her mother could only stand and look on in blank dismay.
fate's victoby.
61
It did not last long, it was too violent to last. Lucy Sutherland looked up, and dashed the tears fiercely away.
" There ! " she said. " It is all over, and you need not wear that frightened face. It is not likely to happen again. I am a fool, I dare say ; but I think I should go mad if I could not cry out sometimes like this. I am not made of wood or stone, after all, though I gain credit for it ; and this is all that keeps me from going wild."
" My dear girl ! " her mother anxiously said. " My dear Lucy, there is something more than common the cause of this. Tell mother ! "
" It is only this, then," cried Lucy, passionately, " that I hate Arthur Sutherland, and I hate Eulalie Kohan ; and I hate myself for being the wretched, pitiful fool I am ! "
Mrs. Sutherland listened to this wildly-desperate speech in grave silence ; and, when it was over, sat down and re- sumed her sewing, still in silence. Her woman's penetra- tion saw the truth — that her quiet daughter was furiously jealous of this foreign beauty.
" She always was more or less in love with Arthur," the mother mused. " And the ruling passion of her life was to be mistress of Maplewood. She has found out how hopeless her dream has been, and this insane outcry is the natural result. It is not like Lucy, and it will soon be over."
Mrs. Sutherland was right. The first wild outburst was over, and Lucy was becoming her old self again.
" I suppose you think I am going mad, mamma," she said, after a pause ; " and I think I should if I could not cry out to some one. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be Arthur Sutherland's wife, for your sake, and the child- ren's sake, as well as for my own. But that is all over now. He will marry this Creole heiress before long, if something does not occur to prevent it."
" What should occur to prevent it ? " replied her mo- ther.
" Arthur Sutherland's own pride, There is something
62
A wife's tragedy.
very strange, to say the very least, and very suspicious, in the manner of this girl's grandfather, who seems to be her only living relative. There is some mystery — some guilt, I am positive — in his past history, which may be visited yet on his granddaughter. He lives in constant dread of something, and that something threatens her whom he idolizes as only these old dotards ever do idolize. My suspicions have been aroused from the first ; and if I fail to find out what it means, it will be no fault of mine. I hate you, Eulalie Rohan" — she exclaimed, clenching her little hand, while her blue eyes flashed — "I hate you, and Heaven help you if ever you are in my power ! "
In the misty twilight of the evening following this, Lucy returned to Maplewood. There was a dinner-party at the house, and the family and the guests were yet at table. Sarah, the housemaid, told Miss Lucy this, while arranging a little repast of strong tea and toast in the young lady's room,and further informed her that Mr. Rohan was not yet well enough to appear in the dining-room, but that Miss Rohan was down-stairs, and was looking beautiful. Even the very servants (she thought, bitterly) were bewitched by the black eyes and exquisite face of the Creole heiress ; while she was looked upon, perhaps, as almost one of themselves.
Lucy drank her tea and ate her toast, and made her toilet, and descended to the drawing room to report the success of her mission to the lady of the house. Eulalie was at the piano, looking beautiful indeed in amber silk, and with rich gems flashing through the misty lace on her neck and arms. There was a tinge of melancholy in the large dark eyes, that added the only charm her beauty lacked. And Lucy Sutherland hated her for that beauty, and that costly dress, and those rare gems, with tenfold intensity. She knew how her own common-place pretti- ness of features and complexion paled into insignificance
fate's victoky.
63
beside the tropical splendour of such dusky beauty as this ; and she envied her as only one jealous woman can envy another, with an envy all the more furious for every outward sign being suppressed.
Lucy reported her successful mission to Mrs. Suther- land, and then retired to a remote corner, as a discreet companion should. She saw the gentlemen enter the room presently, and flock about the piano, and press Miss Rohan to sing. Philip Sutherland was at their head ; but Arthur, seeing the instrument besieged, went and sat down by his mother. There were no lady-guests for him to devote himself to, and the gentlemen were all engrossed by the black-e3^ed pianiste. Lucy's remote corner was not so very far off but that, by straining her ears, she could hear the conversation between mother and son ; and Lucy did not scruple to listen. The talk at first was desultory enough. Mrs Sutherland crocheted, and her son toyed with her coloured silk and made rambling re- marks, but his gaze never wandered from the piano.
" He is thinking about her," thought Lucy, " though he speaks of the heat and the dinner, and he will begin to talk of her presently."
Lucy was right. Arthur was thinking of the Cuban beauty, as he seemed always to be doing of late. He had no idea of falling in love with her ; it was the very last thing he wanted to do. He had come home determined to dislike her — to have no yellow-skinned heiress forced upon him by his mother ; and yet here he was walking into the trap with his eyes wide open. He despised him- self for his weakness, but that did not make him any stronger. He wished his mother would broach the match- making subject, that he might raise objections ; but she never did. He wished now she would begin talking of her, but she crocheted away as serenely as if match-mak- ing had never entered her head, and he had to start the subject himself.
" How long before Mr. Kohan leaves here ? " he asked, carelessly.
64
A wife's tragedy.
" Not for months yet, I trust," replied his mother ; " he promised to spend the summer with us. We should miss Eulalie sadly."
" He will return to Cuba, I suppose, when he does leave here ? "
" I presume so."
" What a lonely life Miss Rohan must lead there ! " said Arthur, thoughtfully.
" Yes, it is lonely, poor child. Arthur," — looking up sud- denly, and laying her hand on his arm — " why should Miss Rohan return to Cuba ? "
" It is coming," thought Lucy setting her teeth.
" Why should she return, mother ? " said Arthur colour- ing consciously, while he laughed. " Why should she not return ? It is her home."
" I said why should Miss Rohan return. I say so still. I have no objection to Eulalie's going to Cuba — only let her go as Mrs. Arthur Sutherland."
" My dear mother ! "
Mrs. Sutherland smiled.
" That astonished look is very well feigned, Arthur, but it does not deceive me. It is not the first time you have thought on this subject ; though why it should take you so long to debate, I confess, puzzles me. There never was such a prize so easily to be won before. If you do not bear it off, some one else will, and that speedily."
" But, my dear match-making mamma," remonstrated her son, still laughing, " I do not like prizes too easily won. It is the grapes that hang above one's head, not those ready to drop into one's mouth, that we long for."
" Very well," said Mrs. Sutherland, gravely, " you will please yourself. While you are struggling for the sour grapes overhead, some wise man will step in and bear off the prize within reach. It is your affair, not mine."
She closed her lips, and went industriously on with her work. Arthur looked over at Miss Rohan, the shimmer of whose amber silk dress and flashing ornaments he could see between the dark garments qf the men about her.
fate's victory.
65
" After all, mother," he said, " is not your castle built on Very empty air ? I may propose to Miss Rohan, and be refused for my pains. The heiress of a millionaire is not to be had for the asking."
" Very true ! You must take your chance of that. But you know, Arthur, it is the grapes that hang highest you prefer. Perhaps you will find Miss Rohan beyond your reach after all."
Her son made no reply ; he had caught a glimpse of Lucy's black barege dress, and crossed over to where she sat at once.
" Why, Lucy, I didn't know you had returned," he cried. You come and go like a pale, noiseless shadow, appear- ing and disappearing when we least expect you."
A faint angry colour flushed into the girl's pale face, but Arthur did not see it as he leaned over her chair.
" When did you arrive ? "
" About an hour ago."
" And how did you find the good people of Portland ? Your mother and the little ones are well, I trust." " Quite well, thank you ! "
" You should have made them a longer visit, Lucy. It is rather unsatisfactory running home, and — "
He stopped abruptly in the middle of his own sentence. He had been watching Eulalie and thinking of Eulalie all the time he was talking. He had seen her leave the piano five minutes before, and cross to the open windows, and disappear in the moonlight, and Philip Sutherland striding after her.
Arthur's brow darkened, and his face flushed. In some strange, magnetic manner the conviction flashed upon him that another was about to ask for the prize he would not seek. If Philip Sutherland should succeed ! He turned sick and giddy at the thought, and in one instant the scales dropped from his eyes, and he saw the palpable truth. He loved Eulalie Rohan ; and what he felt for Isabel Vansell was only calm, placid admiration. He
66
A WII^JI'S TBAGEDY.
loved this glorious little beauty ; and now lie Was on tke point of losing her, perhaps forever ! " How blessings brighten as they take their flight." In that moment he would have given all the wealth of the Sutherlands and the Rohans combined to have forestalled his cousin Philip.
Lucy Sutherland silently arose. She saw his ashen face, and read his thoughts like a printed book. She, too, by that mysterious rapport, guessed Philip's errand, and from her heart of hearts prayed he might succeed.
The group gathered round the piano paid no attention to them, as they went out through the open window, upon the lawn, where the moonlight lay in silvery sheets. Silently and by the same impulse, they turned down the chestnut avenue that led to the terrace. Two minutes and it came in sight, and they saw Eulalie Rohan stand- ing by the low iron railing, her silk dress and the bril- liants she wore flashing in the moon's rays, and the tang- led black ringlets fluttering in the breeze. She wore a large shawl, for she was a chilly little creature ; and, even in that supreme moment Arthur could notice how grace- fully she wore it, and how unspeakably lovely the dark face was in the pale moonlight. The lilacs waved their perfumed arms about her head, and she broke off" fragrant purple bunches as she watched the placid moonlit ocean. He saw all these minor details while he looked at Philip Sutherland coming up to her, and breaking out vehement- ly and at once with the story he had to tell. Such an old, old story ; but heard for the first time, this June night, by those innocent ears. Arthur Sutherland set his teeth and clenched his fists, and felt a mad impulse to spring upon his cousin and hurl him over the iron- work into the sea. They both stood still — Lucy nearly as white as her companion, but as calm as stone, and looked at the scene. They were too far off" to hear what was said ; but in the bright moonlight they saw Eulalie turn away, and cover her face with her hands, and Philip fall
/
t*ATE^S VICTORY. 67
down on his knees at her feet. There was white despair in every line of his face, and they knew what his answer had been.
" She has refused him!" Arthur cried. "Thank God?"
" Let us go back to the house/' said Lucy, icily ; " Miss Rohan might take us for eavesdroppers if she saw us here."
She was deadly pale, and there was a strange, un- natural glitter in her blue eyes ; but Arthur never once looked at her or thought of her as they walked back to the house.
" I will ask Eulalie Rohan to be my wife, before the sun goes down to-morrow," was his mental determination by the way.
Miss Rohan returned to the house ten minutes after, looking pale, and w^th a startled look in her great dark eyes that reminded Arthur of a frightened gazelle. She quitted the drawing-room almost immediately after, to see if her grandfather had been made comfortable for the night, and did not return ; and the long drawing-room became all at once to Arthur Sutherland as empty as a desert.
It was late when the guests departed, although their host was the reverse of entertaining, [and he was free to go out and let the cold night-air blow away the fever in his veins. He felt no desire to sleep, and he wandered aimlessly through the far-spreading grounds of his an- cestral home, tormented by conflicting doubts, and hopes, and fears. *
About ten minutes'' walk from the grassy terrace, half- buried in a jungle of tall fern and rank grass, and shaded by gloomy elm-trees, there was the ruins of an old sum- mer-house. A lonely and forsaken summer-house, where no one ever went now, but a chair of twisted branches and a rickety table showed that it once had its day. Lying on the damp, grass-grown floor of this old summer- house, his arms folded and his face resting on them, lay poor Philip Sutherland, doing battle with his despair.
CHAPTER VI.
TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT.
" 'T WILL propose to Eulalie to-morrow ! " was Arthur
I Sutherland's last thought, as sometime in the small hours he laid his head upon his pillow, to toss about rest- lessly until daybreak.
" I will ask her to be my wife to-day ! " was his first thought as he rose in the morning. " There is no use in struggling against destiny ; and it is my destiny to love this beautiful, dark-eyed creature beyond anything in this lower world."
The heir of Maplewood made a most careful toilet that morning, and never was so little pleased with his success. It was still early when he descended the stairs, and passed out of the hall-door to solace himself with a matutinal cigar, and think how he should say what he had to say. Conscience gave him some twinges still, and would not let him forget that in some manner he stood pledged to Miss Vansell, and that it was hardly honour- able to throw her over like this. The still, small voice was so clamorous that he turned savage at last, and told Conscience to mind her own business and let him alone. After that Conscience had no more to say ; and he went off into long, delicious, day-dreams of the bright future, when this beautiful Creole girl should be his wife.
The ringing of the breakfast bell awoke him from his castle-building. He flung away his cigar, and went into the house, expecting for certain to find Miss Rohan in the breakfast-room, She had never been absent once since
TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT.
60
his return home. The sweet, dark face, shaded by that glorious fall of perfumed hair, and lit by those starry eyes, had always shone upon him across the damask and china and silver of the breakfast service. But, do things ever turn out in this world as we plan them ? Eulalie was not there. His mother and sister and Lucy alone were in the room. As he entered, a housemaid came in at an opposite door, with Miss Rohan's compliments, and would they please not to wait breakfast ; she had a head- ache, and would not come down.
Mrs. Sutherland dispatched a cup of strong tea and some toast to Miss Rohan's room b}' the housemaid, and the quartette sat down to the morning meal. A chill of disappointment had fallen upon Arthur. She had never been absent before. Was it an omen of evil ? He had been so confident of meeting her, and he was disap- pointed. Was this disappointment the forerunner of a greater still ?
The chill seemed contagious : all were silent and con- strained ; and the breakfast was unspeakably dismal. Mrs. Sutherland seemed absent and preoccupied ; Lucy sat frigidly mute ; and Augusta was, I regret to say, intensely sulky. Poor Augusta ! She alone knew the secret mo- tive prompting that postscript inviting Philip Sutherland down to Maple wood ; and she alone knew how cruelly that hidden hope had been disappointed. She had dressed prettily, and looked charming — or at least as charming as that snub nose of hers would permit ; and it had been all in vain. How could Philip Sutherland see her rosy cheeks, and dimples, and round blue eyes, while he was dazzled and blinded by the dark splendour of that Creole face ? She had not been a spectator of that moonlight scene on the grassy terrace ; but she knew as well as Lucy or Ar- thur what had happened last night, and what had occa- sioned the absence of Eulalie and Philip this morning. Therefore, Miss Sutherland was in the sulks, and had red rims rounds her blue eyes, and that poor snub nose swollen, as people's will when they cry half the night.
70
A wife's TKAGEDY.
The meal was half over before Mrs. Sutherland, in her preoccupation, missed Philip, and inquired for him.
" Philip has gone," said Lucy, quietly.
" Gone ! Gone where ? " demanded her aunt, staring.
" Back to New York, I presume. He left very early this morning, before any of you were up."
Mrs. Sutherland still stared.
" Back to New York so suddenly ! Arthur, did he tell you he was going ? " ''Not a word."
" Where did you see him, Lucy ? " inquired the aston- ished lady of the house.
" Leaving his room about six o'clock. I generally come down-stairs about that time ; and, as I opened my door, I encountered him quitting his room, with his travelling- bag in his hand. I asked him where he was going, and he answered, 'To perdition! Anywhere out of this place!'"
Lucy repeated Philip Sutherland's forcible words as calmly as if it had been the most matter-of-fact answer in the world. She said nothing of the wildly-haggard face he had worn ; but a blank silence fell on all, and his name was not mentioned again until the dreary meal was over.
Arthur Sutherland passed the bright morning-hours in aimless wanderings in and out of the house, and under the green arcades of the leafy groves, waiting impatiently for Miss Rohan to appear. He waited for some hours in vain ; and, when at last she did appear, it was only ano- ther disappointment. He had sauntered down through the old orchard, idly breaking off twigs, and trying to read the morning paper, when the sound of carriage -wheels brought him back. For his pains, he just got a glimpse of his mother and Eulalie and Mr. Rohan, as the carriage rolled away. If indisposition prevented Mr. and Miss Rohan from appearing in the breakfast-room, they were •yvell enough to take an airing in the carriage, it seemed.
I
TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT, 71
That was the longest day Arthur Sutherland ever re- Inembered in his life. He kept wandering aimlessly in and out, smoking no end of cigars, and talking by fits and starts to Lucy, who was about as genial and sympathetic as an icicle. The first dinner-bell had rung, and the long red lances of the sunset were slanting through the chest- nuts and maples when the carriage-party returned. They all went up-stairs at once ; and Arthur entered the dining- room to wait, feverishly, her entrance.
There was a letter awaiting Mr. Rohan, bearing the New York postmark. He opened it, and his face clouded as he read it. It was written by the solicitor of one Mrs. Lawrence, who lay dangerously ill, and requesting him to come to New York at once if he wished to see her before she died.
Mr. Eohan laid down the letter with a troubled face. Mrs. Lawrence was a relative — a distant one — but his only living relative save his granddaugh :er, and the re- quest must be obeyed. The trouble was about Eulalie. How could he hurry her off on such short notice, and how could he leave her behind ? He walked up and down his room in perturbed thought, revolving the difficulty, and at a loss whether to take or leave her.
" She does not wish to leave this place," he thought ; " why should I drag her away, poor child ? The time has come for her to know all — dreadful as it will be for me to tell it ; why not leave her here and let her learn the hor- rible truth when I am gone ? It would break my heart to see her first despair ; if I let her find it out in my ab- sence, the shock will be over before I return. Yes, I will go and Eulalie shall remain, and I shall leave in writing the miserable story that must be told. My poor darling ! my poor little innocent child ! may heaven help you to bear the misery of your lot ! "
The second bell rang, and Mr. Rohan descended to the dining-room, trying to conceal all signs of agitation. His granddaughter was there, talking to Arthur Sutherland,
n
A wife's TRAdEbY.
whose devoted manner there was no mistaking. The signs he could not fail to read deepened the old man's trouble, and his voice shook painfully in spite of himself as he an- nounced his departure next day.
Every one was surprised. Eulalie uttered a little cry of distress.
" Going to New York, grandpapa ? Are you going to take me ? "
" No, my dear," the old man said ; and Arthur, who had turned very pale, breathed again. " You could not be ready ; and, as I hope to return in a week, it would not be worth while."
Almost immediately after dinner, Mr. Kohan returned to his room, pleading the truth — letters to write. But fate had declared against Arthur that day. Carriage- wheels rattled up to the door almost instantly after, and some half-dozen of his mother's most intimate friends came in. There were three young ladies, who at once took possession of Eulalie, and all chance of saying what he had to say was at an end for that evening.
Arthur Sutherland being a gentleman — what is better, a Christian — did not swear ; but I am afraid he wished the three Misses Albermarle at Jericho. They were tall young ladies, with voluminous drapery and balloon-like crinoline, and his little black-eyed divinity was quite lost among them. The oldest Miss Albermarle presently made a dead set at him, and held him captive until it was time to depart ; and then, when he came back from escorting them to their carriage, he just got a glimpse of Eulalie's fairy figure flitting up-stairs to her room.
No, to her grandfather's, for she tapped at that first to say good-night. He was writing still, she could see, when he opened the door, and the old troubled look was at its worst. He would not let her come in ; he kissed her and dismissed her, and returned to his writing.
It was a very long letter — written slowly, and in deep agitatipn. Sometimes his tears blistered the paper ; some-
TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT.
73
times he threw down his pen and covered his face with his hands, while his whole frame was convulsed. But he always went on again — scratch, scratch, scratch ; the in- exorable pen set down the words, and as the clock was striking two his task was ended. He folded the long, closely-written letter, placed it in an envelope, addressed , to his granddaughter, and locked it in his desk.
" My poor, poor girl ! " he said ; " my little helpless lamb ! How will you live after reading this ! "
The Cuban millionaire passed a miserably restless night — too much agitated by what he had written, and the memories it had recalled, to sleep. Not that the tragical story of the past was ever absent from his sleeping or waking fancy, but this written record was like the tearing open of half -healed wounds. He could not sleep ; and he was glad when the red dawn came glimmering into the east, to rise and go out, that the morning breeze might cool his hot head.
The sun arose dazzlingly. The scent of the long, leafy avenues, the saline breath of the sea, was so refreshing, the songs of countless birds so inspiriting, that he could hardly fail to benefited by his morning walk. When the breakfast-bell rang, he entered the house with a face even brighter than usual, and gave Eulalie, who came tripping to meet him, her morning kiss, with a smile.
" By what train do you go ? " Mrs. Sutherland asked, as they sat down to breakfast.
The twelve o'clock. I have a little business to trans- act in Boston, and shall remain there over night."
Mr. Kohan remained in the drawing-room the best part of the morning, while his granddaughter sat at the piano, and sang and played for him incessantly. She and Mrs. Sutherland were to see him off : and just before it was time to start, he called her into his room, and closed the door. Eulalie came in, looking darkly-bewitching in a little Spanish, hat with long plumes, and a shawl of black lace, trailing along her bright silk dress. The smile faded
74-
A wife's tragedy.
from her red lips at sight of grandpapa's face, and she glanced apprehensively from him to a large sealed letter he held in his hand.
" Eulalie," he said, steadying his voice by an effort, " I promised that you should speedily learn the story that must be the secret of your life, I could not sit down and tell it to you — I could not ; but I have written it here, and to-night or to-morrow you will read it, and learn all. My poor little darling, if I could spare you the shock of this revelation with my life, God knows how freely that life would be given ! But I cannot ; you must know what is set down here. And all I can do is, to pray that the knowledge may not blast your whole life as it has blasted mine."
" Grandpapa ! grandpapa ! is it so very dreadful, then ! "
" Yes, poor child, it is dreadful. Say a prayer, Eulalie, before you open this letter, for strength and fortitude to bear its contents."
She held the letter without looking at it. Her dilated eyes were fixed on his face — her parted lips were mutely appealing to him. He took both her hands and clasped them in his.
" Ask me nothing now, my darling. It is all written there. I shall return in a week, and you shall remain here, or go home, just as you please. May all good angels have you in their keeping, my precious child, until I return."
He kissed her passionately, and led her towards her own room.
" Lock up your letter," he said ; " and bring the key with you. No eye must rest on this history but your own."
He quitted her and descended the stairs. The car- riage was in waiting, and so was Mrs. Sutherland, in a Parisian bonnet and cashmere shawl. She was going with Eulalie, to see him off, and a groom was just leading round Mr. Sutherland's horse.
"Your guard of honour is going to be a large one,"
TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT.
75
laughed Mrs. Sutherland. " Arthur insists on escorting us to the depot. Where is Eulalie ? Ah ! here she is at last ; and your grandpapa has no time to spare, Miss Rohan."
They entered the carriage, and drove away, Arthur riding beside them, determined this day should not pass without his speaking. They stood on the platform, watching the train out of sight, and then returned to the carriage.
" Crying ! you foolish child ! " exclaimed Mrs. Suther- land ; " and grandpapa only going for a week ! Come ! I shall not permit this ! I am going shopping in the vil- lage, and afterward I have some calls to make, and you shall accompany me. That will cheer you up."
Eulalie would have excused herself if she could, and gone directly back to Maplewood. She was dying to read that mysterious letter, and learn her grandfather's terrible secret ; but there was nothing for it but submission. So the shopping was done, and the calls made, with Arthur still dutifully in attendance ; and the sunset was blazing itself out in the sky before they returned.
A red and wrathful sunset. The day had been oppres- sively hot, and the sun lurid and crimson in a brassy sky. There was not a breath of air stirring, and there was an unnatural greenish glare in the atmosphere, ominous of coming storm. The trees shivered at intervals, as if they felt already the tempest to come ; the glassy and black- ening sea moaned as it washed up over the sands ; the frightened birds cowered in their snug nests, and over the paralyzed earth, the hot, brazen sky hung like a burning roof. Eulalie glanced fearfully around as she was helped from the carriage by Arthur.
" We are going to have a storm," he said, answering her startled glance ; " and that very soon."
It wanted but a quarter of seven, Eulalie's watch told her ; and she hastened after Mrs. Sutherland, to change her dress. She resigned herself into the hands of her
76
A wife's tragedy.
maid, with a sigh of resignation —there was no time for letter-reading now — and went down-stairs, when the dinner-bell rang. But dinner on such a stifling evening was little better than a meaningless ceremony of sitting down and getting up again. Eulalie, accustomed to a tropical clime, felt as if she were gasping for air, as if she could not breathe, and passed out through the open drawing-room window, down to the terrace. Now was Arthur's chance. Fortune, that had so long taken a malicious pleasure in balking him, was in a favourable mood at last. He arose, with a heart beating thick and fast, and strode out after her, feeling that the supreme moment had come. He could see her misty white dress fluttering in and out among the trees, and came up to her just as she leaned over the iron railing, to catch the faintest breath from the sea. The lurid twilight was fiery- red yet, in the west, but all the rest of the sky looked like hot brass shutting down over their heads. Eulalie lifted her dark eyes to his face, in awe, as he stood beside her.
" How hot it is," she said ; " and what an awful sky. The very sea seems holding its breath, and waiting for something fearful ! "
" The storm is very near," said Arthur ; " the sky over there looks like a sea of blood."
There was something in his voice that made Eulalie look at him instead of at the blood-red sky ; and Arthur Sutherland broke out at once with what he had followed her there to say. That passionate avowal was the first he had ever uttered in his life ; and the crimson west, and the lurid atmosphere, and the black, heaving sea swam in a hot mist before his eyes, and the scheme of creation seemed suspended, not awaiting the coming storm, but the answer of this black-eyed Creole girl.
***** Mrs, Sutherland, sitting in the entrance of the bay win-
TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT.
77
dow, too languid to fan herself, this oppressive June even- ing, was disturbed five minutes after the departure of her son and Miss Rohan by the announcement of a visitor. A visitor at such an abnormal evening was certainly the last thing Mrs. Sutherland expected or desired ; but the visitor was shown in, and proved to be the Reverend Cal- vin Masterson, pastor of the fashionable church of St. Mary's. The Rev. Calvin had come to solicit a donation toward a new pulpit and sounding-board and being anxi- ous to complete the affair as soon as possible, had ventured out this sultry evening to Maplewood.
Mrs. Sutherland, who had long ago set the Rev. Calvin down as a very desirable husband for Augusta, subsci'ibed liberally ; and knowing Eulalie's purse was ever open to contributions of all kinds, turned round to look foi'her; but Eulalie was not to be seen. Lucy Sutherland, sifting pale and cool through all the heat, came out of the shad- ows to inform her Miss Rohan had gone out.
" Then go after her, Lucy," said Mrs Sutherland. You will find her in the terrace, I dare say."
Lucy, who never hurried, walked leisurely down the chestnut avenue. Long before she came to the terrace, she could see the small, white figure, with the long, jetty curls, and that other tall form beside it. There could be no mistaking that they stood there as plighted husband and wife now. If any doubt remained, a few words of Arthur's, caught as she neared them, would have ended it.
" And I may speak to your grandfather, then, my dear- est girl, as soon as he returns ?"
Perhaps Lucy's pale face grew a shade paler, perhaps her thin lips compressed themselves more firmly; but that was all. An instant after, she was standing beside them, delivering in her usual quiet voice Mrs. Suther- land's message.
" Masterson, eh ? " cried Arthur. "He must be in a tremendous hurry for the sounding-board, when he comes up from St. Mary's such a hot evening as this."
78
A wife's tragedy.
He drew Eulalie's hand within his arm, with a face quite radiant with his new joy, and led her away. Lucy followed slowly, her lips still tightly compressed, and a bright light shining in her blue eyes. She did not re- turn to the drawing-room. She went straight to her own apartment, and sat down by the open window, and watched the starless night blacken down.
An hour after, the Rev. Calvin Masterson drove away ; and, as the clock struck ten, she heard Eulalie, Augusta, and Arthur come up-stairs.
" Mr. Masterson will have a dark night for his home- ward drive," Arthur was saying. " We will have the storm before morning."
CHAPTER YII.
STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.
EULALIE ROHAN went to her room that hot June evening with a new and delicious sense of joy thrilling through every fibre of her heart. She had taken life all along as a bright summer-holiday, whose dark- est cloud was a shadow of the past in her beloved grand- father's face ; but, to- night, the world was all Eden, and she the happiest Eve that had ever danced in the sun- shine. She had never known, until she stood listening to his avowal on the terrace, how much she had grown to love Arthur Sutherland. She had never dreamed how near and dear he had become, or why she had rejected poor Philip ; but she passed from childhood to woman- hood in one instant, and knew all now.
The wax tapers, held up by fat Cupids in the frame of her mirror, were lit when she entered, and Mademoiselle Trinette, her maid, stood ready to make her young lady's night-toilet ; but Eulalie was not going to sleep just yet, and dismissed her with a smile.
" It is too hot to go to bed, Trinette," she said. " I shall not retire for an hour or two, and you need not wait up. Good night."
The femme-de-chamhre quitted the room, and Eulalie seated herself by the window. The night was moonless and starless, and would have been pitch-dark but for a lurid phosphorescent glare in the atmosphere. In the x^ftnatural stillness of the night, she could hear the shiver-
so
A wife's tragedy.
ing of the trees, the slipping of a snake in the under- brush, or the uneasy ihittering of a bird in its nest. No breath of air came through the wide-open casement, and the waves boomed dully on the shore below with an ominous roar.
In her white dress and dark black ringlets, Eulalie sat by the window and thought how very happy she was, and how very happy she was going to be. She mused over the glorious picture of the future Arthur had painted while they stood in the red twilight of the terrace, the long continued tour through beautiful Italy, fair France,* sunny Spain, and picturesque Switzerland ; of the winters spent in her Cuban home among the magnolia and the acacia groves, and the summers passed here at Maple- wood. It was such a beautiful and happy life to look forward to — almost too happy she feared — too much of Heaven to be enjoyed on earth.
An hour had passed — two hours — before Eulalie arose from the window and prepared to retire. As she stood before the glass, combing out her magnificent hair, her eye fell on the little rosewood desk in which she had locked that mysterious letter given her by her grand- father. She had forgotten all about it until now, and the memory sent a thrill of vague fear to her very heart. That mysterious secret that he told her would darken her whole life as it had darkened his — what could it be ? She unlocked the desk and took it out with fingers that trembled a little, and sat looking at it with a supersti- tion."^ terror of opening it.
How foolish I am ! " she thought, at last ; " it cannot be so very terrible after all. Poor grandpapa is morbid, and aggravates its importance. It is no record of crime, he says ; it is no hereditary disease, physical or mental ; and if it be the loss of wealth, even of my whole fortune, I shall not regret that much. I often think I should like to be poor, and wear pretty print dresses and linen collars, and live in a little white cottage with green window-^
STKtJCK: Rt LIGHTNING.
81
sliuiters, like those in St. Mary's, and take tea with Arthur every evening at six o'clock. I will say a prayer, as grandpapa told me, and read this letter, and go to bed."
There was a lovdy picture of the Mater Dolorosa hang- ing above her bed. Eulalie knelt down before it and murmured an Ave Maria, as she had been wont to do in her convent-days ; and chen, drawing a low chair close to the dressing-table, opened the letter. It was very long — half a dozen closely- vvritten sheets — and signed, "Your heart-broken grandfather ; " and Eulalie, taking up the first shee^ began to read.
Arthur Sutherland felt no more inclination for sleep this oppressive summer-night than Eulalie Rohan, The closeness of the air seemed to stifle him, and he stepped out of the open corridor to the piazza that ran round the second story. He could see the lights from the other chamber windows glaring across the dusky gloom, and he knew the others were as wakeful as himself. It was one of those abnormal nights — not made for sleep — in which you lie awake and toss about frantically, as if your pillows were red-hot and your bed a rack.
" I feel," he thought — as he leaned against a slender column overrun with clematis, and lit a cigar — " I feel as though something were about to happen. I feel as though this intense happiness were too supreme to last —as though the tie that binds me and Eulalie were but a single hair. Good Heavens ! if I should lose her — if something should happen to take her from me ! "
He turned faint and giddy at the bare thought. Poor slighted Philip ! he could afford to pity him now. Where was he this hot, dark night, and how was he bearing the blow he had received ? It was so impossible not to love this beautiful black-eyed enchantress that Philip was not so much to blame after all.
" I will run up to New York when Mr. Rohan returns
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A wife's tragedy.
and I have spoken to him, and hunt the poor lad up/^ mused Arthur. " I wish I had not brought him down. But how was I to know that my motlier's heiress would turn out a httle black-eyed angel ! "
He walked slowly up and down the piazza, smoking and thinking for over two hours. One by one, the lighted windows darkened — Eulalie's alone shone bright still. He wondered what she could be doing to keep her up so long ; and while he watched her window, there shot athwart the sultry gloom a sheet of blue flame that almost blinded him. A moment's pause, and then a roll of thunder, as if the heavens were rending asunder. A great drop of rain fell on his face, then another and another, thick and fast ; and the storm threatening so long had burst in its might.
Arthur stepped hastily through the window and closed it. A second sheet of lurid flame leaped out like a two- edged sword, and lit up, with an unearthly glare, the woods and meadows and gardens of Maplewood. A second roll of thunder, nearer and more deafening than the first, and a deluge of rain. The sky had kept its pro- mise, and the tempest and rain and lightning and thunder was appalling in its fury. Arthur Sutherland put his hand over his dazzled eyes, feeling as though the inces- sant blaze of the lightning were striking him blind. Flash followed flash, almost without a second's intermission, blue, blinding, ghostly — the continual roll of the thunder was horrible, and the rain fell with a roar like a water- fall.
"Good Heavens !" thought Arthur, "what awful light- ning ! My poor little timid Eulalie will be frightened. I remember Augusta telling me once how terrified she was at thunder-storms."
He opened his door, crossed the hall, and tapped at his sister's. It was opened immediately by Augusta, who looked like a picture of the tragic muse, with her hair all dishevelled, and her white morning-dress hanging Joose about her.
STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.
83
" Have you not retired yet, Augusta ? " her brother asked.
" No, I staid up reading a novel until the lightning com- menced ; and now it is of no use thinking of bed until this storm is over. Good Heaven ! what awful lightning ! "
A sheet of blue lambent flame that almost blinded them lit up, for nearly three nftnutes, the hall, followed by a thunder-clap that shook the house to its very foundation. Augusta clasped her hands over her dazzled eyes, and her brother seized her wrist and drew her with him into the hall.
" Augusta," he said, hurriedly, "you told me Eulalie was afraid of lightning. I wish you would go in and stay with the poor child until this storm is past."
Miss Sutherland, just at that particular time, had no very especial love for the black-eyed beauty, who had won her cousin Philip from her ; but she tapped, nevertheless, at Miss Rohan's door. There was no reply ; Augusta rapped again, more loudly, but still no answer. She turned to her brother with a paling face.
" Try the door," he said ; " open it yourself."
Augusta turned the handle. The door was not locked, and she went in. Went in, over the threshold and recoiled an instant after, with a shrill and prolonged scream, that echoed from end to end of the house.
Arthur Sutherland, lingering in the hall, was standing in the doorway in a moment. In all the long years of his after-life he never forgot the picture on which he looked then. The tall candles flared around the mirror, but the perpetual flashing of the lightning lit the room with a blue ghastliness that quenched their pale light. There was a certain sulphurous smell in the chamber, too, that Arthur had perceived in the hall, but not half so strongly as here. Eulalie sat at the table, still in her dinner-dress, the shin- ing skirt trailing the carpet, the jewellery she wore flashing wierdly in the unnatural light. She sat in an armchair, erect and rigid ; her hands clasping the last sheet of a
84
A WIFE^S TRAGEDY.
letter, her large black eyes staring wide open, with an awful, glazed, and sightless glare. Not one vestige of colour remained in the dead, white face ; and with the staring, wide-open eyes, the marble stiffness of form and face, she looked like nothing on earth but a galvanized corpse, A terrible sight, sitting upright^there, tricked out in satin and lace, and perhaps stone-dead. She had evidently but just finished reading her letter — the loose sheets lay at her feet, where they had fluttered down. The horrible truth flashed upon Arthur in a moment — she had been struck by lightning ! With the awful thought yet thrilling to the core of his heart, he was bending over her, holding both her hands clasped in his. These hands were ice -cold, and she sat, neither hearing nor seeing him, staring blankly at vacancy.
"Eulalie!" he cried. "My darling! speak to me! Eulalie ! Eulalie do you not know me ?"
She might have been stone-deaf, for all the sign she made of hearing him — stone-blind, for all the sign she made of seeing him — stone-dead, for any proof of life or consciousness.
There were others in the chamber now — looking on with pallid, awe-struck faces. Augusta's scream had aroused the house. Arthur Sutherland saw a mist of faces around him, without recognising one of them ; he could see nothing but that one white, rigid face, with the staring, wide-open black eyes.
" Arthur," a quiet voice said, and a hand was laid lightly on his shoulder. He looked up, and saw his mother, in her dressing-gown, pale and composed. " Arthur, you had better go for Dr. Denover at once. The storm is subsiding and there is no time to lose. I fear she has been stunned by the lightning."
The words restored Arthur to himself. He started to his feet, and was out of the room in a second. In an- other, he had donned hat and waterproof coat, and in five minutes was galloping, through darkness and rain, and thunder and lightning, as he never had galloped before.
STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.
85
Mrs. Sutherland had sal-volatile, cologne, and other female restoratives for fainting brought, but, in this case, all proved useless. She chafed the cold hands and tem- ples, but warmth was not to be restored. She strove by caresses and endearing words to restore some sign of life into that death-like face ; but all in vain ; all in vain. Augusta and Luc^ stood silently near ; the servants were grouped in the hall, hushed and frightened ; and the ghastly blue glare of the lightning still lit up, at fitful intervals, the room.
Mrs. Sutherland desisted at length from her hopeless task, and rose up, very pale.
" I can do no more," she said. " It is the first case of the kind that has eyer come within my observation. I wish Dr. Denover was here ! Lucy, what is that ?"
Lucy had stooped to pick up the fallen sheets of the let- ter ; and she looked up from sorting them at this abrupt question. One sentence had caught her eye on the last sheet, and set her curiosity aflame. The sentence was this : " Beware of that man, my child ! I know not whether he is living or dead, but the fear has been the blight of my life, as it must be the bane of yours."
Lucy Sutherland had time to see no more. Her aunt's hand was outstretched to receive the letter, her aunt's haughty voice was speaking.
" That is Miss Rohan's letter, Miss Sutherland. Give it to me !"
Lucy silently obeyed. Mrs. Sutherland crossed to Eu- lalie's bureau, placed the letter in one of the drawers, with- out looking at it, locked the drawer, and put the key in her pocket. There was a significance in the act that made Lucy's light blue eyes flash, and she turned and walked out of the apartment, up-stairs, to her room.
In her own room, she sat down by the open window, and looked out at the black, blind night. Ghastly gleams of lightning quivered zig-zag in the air yet, the rain still fell with an angry rush, and the thunder boomed sullenly ; F
86
A wife's tragedy.
but the midnight storm was subsiding. Lucy Sutherland, sitting there, felt a fiendish joy at her heart — a demoniacal sense of triumph and delight. In all the pride of her beauty and her youth, the fiery arrow from the clouds had struck her rival down. " She may die ! She may die ! " was her inward thought ; " and he may be mine yet ! "
She sat there the livelong night, looking out at the black trees, listening to the hurrying of feet down stairs, the opening and shutting of doors ; careless what they thought of her absence, and thinking her own dark thoughts. Had Eulalie E-ohan really been struck by light- ning, or was it something in that letter that had struck her down, like a death-blow ? " Beware of that man ! I know not whether he is living or dead ; but the fear has been the blight of my life, as it must be the bane of yours." The strange words danced before her eyes, as if the letter were yet in her hands. She knew it was from Eulalie's grandfather. She had seen the signature on the same last sheet, " Your heart-broken grand-father, Gustavus Rohan."
It sounded very melodramatic, but there might be a terrible meaning in the words after all.
" If I could only get that letter," she mused ; " If I could only get it for ten minutes. There is some secret in that old man's life, and that secret is to overshadow the life of his granddaughter. What can it be ? Who is this man of whom he warns her — who has her in his power — the fear of whom is to be the bane of her life, as it has been the blight of his ? If I could only fathom this mystery, I might stop the marriage yet. Where there is secrecy there is apt to be guilt, and Arthur Sutherland would never ally himself with guilt Oh ! if I could only get that letter ! "
She heard the return of Arthur and the physician, and stole on tiptoe to the head of the stairs to listen. Eula- lie's room-door stood open this sultry night, and she could hear as plainly as- if she were in the apartment. It was
STKUCK BY LIGHTNING.
87
quite plain the doctor was as much puzzled as the rest, and failed as entirely to restore the stunned girl to con- sciousness. If she had really been struck by lightning, the fiery shaft had left no trace ; it had benumbed her, as the whistling of a cannon-ball close to her head might have benumbed her. She sat there before them an awful sight, in the dismal gray of the coming morning, decked in satin and lace and jewels, the white face stony and corpse-like, the black, staring eyes awfully like the eyes of the dead.
" It is a most remarkable case," Doctor Denover said ; " a case such as has never come under my observation be- fore. I have known cases where intense fear or sudden shocks have produced some such result. I cannot be cer- tain that it was the lightning. Do you know if the young lady had received a shock of any kind ? There are finely- strung, sensitive organizations that sudden shocks of any kind stun into a state like this."
" No," said Mrs. Sutherland, " I am not aware of any. Miss Rohan spent the evening with us, and retired to her room about two hours before we discovered her, in excel- lent spirits. I am positive she received no shock."
" Was she very much afraid of thunder-storms ? " in- quired Dr. Denover; "intense fear might have this ef- fect."
" Yes," answered Augusta, " Eulalie was always terribly frightened by lightning, more frightened than any one I ever knew."
" It may have been fear, then," said the doctor ; " as I said, I have known such things to occur, and the sufierers have been stunned into a state resembling death. Some- times they have recovered, sometimes they have not. Some- times physical animation returns, but the mind remains dead forever. In this case I cannot at present pronounce an opinion. The poor young lady had better be undressed and placed in bed, my dear Mrs. Sutherland, and we will try what a little blood-letting will do for her."
88
A wife's tkagedy.
" I wonder how he is bearing all this ? " thought Lucy, at the head of the stairs, with a savage feeling of revenge- ful delight at her heart ; " I wonder whose is the triumph
She passed the remainder of the long night, or rather dawn, between her own chamber and the head of the stairs, listening to what was going on below. She knew, with a horrible inward joy, that he had failed in every attempt to rouse her, and that he was going away in de- spair.
" I can do nothing more at present," she heard him sa}^, as he was leaving; " it is an extraordinary case, and has had no parallel in my practice. I will return this after- noon, as you directed, Mrs. Sutherland, with Doctors Reachton and May, and we will have a consultation. Meantime, keep her quiet, and force her to take the nourishment I mentioned. I think, Mr. Sutherland, you would do well to telegraph for her grandfather at once."
" You think, then, doctor," Lucy heard Arthur say, in a voice that did not sound like the voice of Arthur, " that there is no hope ?"
" By no means, my dear sir, by no means ; while there is life there is hope."
" Which is equivalent to saying that her doom is sealed," thought the listener at the head of the stairs.
The doctor took his departure, in the dismal grayness of the rainy morning. A dull and hopeless day rose slowly out of the black and stormy night ; a gloomy day at the best, depressing and wretched, even to the happy ; doubly depressing and wretched in the silent house. Drifts of sullen clouds darkened the leaden sky ; the rain fell with miserable persistence ; the wind howled in long, lamentable blasts through the wet trees; and the dull, ceaseless roar of the surf on the shore boomed over all. Inside the house, the silence of death reigned now ; the noises of the night were replaced by ominous calm. If that pretty room below had contained a corpse, the old
STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.
89
mansion could not have been hushed in more profound stillness.
A deep-voiced clock, somewhere in the silent house, struck nine, and the strokes sounded like the tolling of a death-bell. Lucy, in a carefully arranged toilet, with neatly-braided hair, and spotless cuffs and collar, de- scended calmly to breakfast. The door of Miss Rohan's room stood ajar, and she caught a glimpse of her aunt sit- ting by the bedside. She saw Arthur in his own room, too, as she passed the half -open door, pacing up and down, looking worn and haggard in the dismal daylight.
Augusta followed her into the breakfast-parlour, and they took their solitary meal together. When it was over — and a most silent and comfortless repast it was — Augusta went up to Eulalie's room; and Lucy, with her everlasting work-basket and embroidery, took her seat near the window and calmly waited for events to take their course.
It rained all day, ceaselessly, wretchedly. The melan- choly wind tore through the trees, and beat the rain against the glass, and deepened the white rage of the surf on the shore. But through it all, the telegram recalling Mr. Rohan to Maplewood went shivering along the wires to New York ; and through it all the three doctors of St. Mary's drove up to the house in the afternoon. There was an examination of the patient. They found the death-like trance as death -like as ever ; and had a pro- longed consultation afterward in the library. Lucy did not hear the result, but it was evident enough the case baffled the three. They staid for dinner, and talked learnedly of the eccentricities of the electric fluid; of people struck blind, or dumb, or dead, by lightning. But all the precedents they cited seemed to throw no light on the present case, and they went away in the gloomy twi- light, leaving matters much as they were.
Three days passed and still no change. She lay in her little white bed, as a corpse might lie on its bier, cold and
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A wife's tragedy.
white as snow. The soul looking out of that white face might have fled forever, for all signs of life in the vacant black eyes. She lay without speaking or moving, or seeming to recognise any of them. At intervals they parted the locked teeth with a knife, and forced her to swallow teaspoonsful of port wine and essence of beef. They gave her powerful opiates, and drew the curtains, and darkened the room ; and perhaps in these intervals she slept ; but whenever they drew near the bed^ they found the great dark eyes wide open and looking blankly at the white wall. They never left her, night or day ; and Lucy, quietly observant of all, wondered if Arthur ever meant to eat or sleep again. Those three days had made him pale, haggard, and hollow-eyed, and revealed his secret to every one in the house.
On the fourth day there was a change. Some sign of recognising Arthur had been given when he stooped over her, and she had articulated a word — "grandfather." But she had fallen off again, and they had failed to arouse her, as she lay vacantly looking at the blank wall.
" It is very strange, Arthur," Mrs. Sutherland said, as she stood with her son for a moment on the piazza, before descending to dinner — " it is very strange Mr. Rohan does not return."
" He may have left New York," said Arthur, " before the telegram reached there. He will be with us, no doubt, in a day or two."
Even as he spoke, carriage wheels rolled rapidly up along the drive ; and, an instant after, a conveyance from the railway emerged from the* shadow of the trees, and they saw the Cuban millionaire sitting behind the driver.
Mrs. Sutherland and Arthur hastened down at once, and met the old man on the portico steps. His face was ashen white, and there was a strange fire in his eyes, a strange and startling energy in his voice.
" Will she live ? " he cried, grasping Mrs. Sutherland's hand, and looking at her with that startling fire in his eyes. " Will she live ? "
STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.
01
" My dear Mr. Rohan," Mrs. Sutherland was beginning, sadly ; but he cut her short, with a flashing glance and a stamp of passionate impatience.
" Will she live ? " he cried out vehemently ; " quick ! Yes or no ? "
" The doctors say no ! "
" Thank God ! "
Mother and son recoiled at that fearful thanksgiving, as if they had been struck. But he never looked at them as he strode straight on to his granddaughter's room.
CHAPTER VIII.
TAKEN AWAY.
EXJLALIE did not die. The doctors had said she could not recover, but, in spite of the doctors, she did. From that fourth day, on which she had spoken, vi- tality returned; and in the brief struggle between life and death, life had gained the victory. But the recovery was wearily slow, and very trying to those who loved her. She knew her grandfather when he bent over her, his tears streaming on her white face, but she knew him as if he not been absent at all. She seemed to have forgotten that. Very slowly the fair, frail body began to recover, but the mind remained hopelessly benumbed. She knew them all when they spoke to her, but their presence seemed to convey no idea to her clouded brain. She had nothing to say to them ; she had nothing to say to any one, except to her grandfather, and her poor, plaintive, childish cry to him ever was, " Take me home, grandpapa — take me home 1 "
In her sleep she wandered deliriously, and talked of her Cuban home, her convent school, her lessons, her tasks, her girl friends, but she never by any chance came back to the present, Maple wood seemed to have entirely faded out, and she was only the child Eulalie once more, crying- out to be taken home.
During the three long weeks in which the poor little feet strayed wearily in the "valley of the shadow of death," Mr. Rohan scarcely left her side, night or day. There
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was no mistaking the passionate love, the devoted tender- ness, the sleepless anxiety, with which he watched over her. There was no mistaking that all absorbing love for his grandchild — sinful, beyond doubt, in its excess, despite that strange and unnatural " Thank God ! " he had uttered so fervently when he heard she must die. It was won- derful inconsistency, surely, but so it was. He scarcely left her long enough to take sufficient food or sleep to support nature ; his tears furrowed his aged cheeks as he watched that snowy face, so cold and deathlike, con- trasting with the great, hollow black eyes and disheveled raven hair.
Mrs. Sutherland had followed him to his granddaugh- ter's chamber, on the evening of his arrival, and had been startled considerably by the vehemence with which he asked his first question. She had been narrating to him, by the way, the circumstances attending Eulalie's mis- fortune.
" Madam ! " he said, cutting her abruptly short, " I sent my granddaughter a letter which she should have received on that day. Where is that letter ? "
Mrs. Sutherland produced the key of the bureau drawer.
" We found the letter lying on the floor at her feet as if she had just finished reading it, and I locked it in that drawer."
Mr. Rohan crossed the room, opened the drawer, took out the letter, and placed it carefully in his pocket-book, before he sat down by his grandchild's bedside.
He listened to what Mrs. Sutherland had to say, with his eyes fixed on the colourless face, and both wasted little hands clasped in his. He listened without answering — without taking his eyes once oft' that dear face, his own drawn and quivering with suppressed anguish.
He is the strangest old man," Mrs,. Sutherland said to her son, afterward ; " I sometimes think his mind is going. How extraordinary that he should utter that horrible thanksgiving when I told him Eulalie must die ! and yet he loves her to idolatry."
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" Poor old man," said Arthur, sadly ; " how I pity him."
" That letter, too," his mother went on musingly ; " why should he be so anxious about it the first moment he arrives ? It is absurd to suppose that he can have any secret to conceal ; and yet, dear me ! it seems very much like it."
Arthur did not reply ; he scarcely heard her. He only feared that the life and the reason of the woman he loved were in danger, and that dreadful knowledge biotted out everything else. The silent agony of those long days and nights that had intervened since the fiery bolt had struck her down in the zenith of her beauty and youth, had left traces in his pale worn face that no one could mis- take. Perhaps even that devoted grandfather, watching over his one ewe-lamb, suffered less than the young lover, who had yielded his whole heart to the spell of the dark- eyed enchantress, hovering now between life and death. He had spoken to that grandfather, or rather his heart had broken out in spite of him, in his despair, and he had told the story of his love and acceptance, and his anguish, w^ith a passionate abandonment of sorrow that could not fail to touch any heart that loved her.
It was a silent, sultry summer evening, a week after the old man's return. The two went walking up and down the chestnut-grove, with the black shadows of the trees making flickering arabesques on the sward at his feet, and the yellow summer-moon flaming up in the low sky. He could not tell how the silent and self-contained old millionaire might take his revelations — -just at that moment he did not care ; but he was certainly unprepared for having his hand grasped, as a father might have grasped it.
" My poor boy ! " — the old man said, in a broken voice ; — " my poor boy, I have foreseen this ! I would have saved you — I would have saved her ; but I could not ! I could not ! There is a fate, I suppose, in these things ! May Heaven help you to bear your trial !"
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Then you would not have withheld your consent ?" Arthur said. " I feared you would think me presumptu- ous in asking for her hand. I feared you might have higher views !"
" No, no, no 1 " cried the old man, vehemently. " God knows how gladly I would give my darling to you, Ar- thur Sutherland, for I believe you to be a good and hon- ourable man ; but there is an obstacle — an obstacle that can never be surmounted — between you."
" An obstacle ! " Arthur repeated, in astonishment. " What is it ? "
" I cannot tell you," said Mr. Rohan, turning his face awa}^ " It is my secret and hers, poor child ! and I fear it is the knowledge of that secret, and no lightning-flash, that has struck her down. I cannot tell you what it is, Mr. Sutherland. I can only say I fear it will keep you apart forever. If my poor darling lives, it Avill keep her Eulalie Rohan all her life."
" This is very strange," said Arthur, slowly ; " I have no claim to a knowledge of your secret, Mr. Rohan ; but so far as it involves her who has promised to be my wife, I surely have some right to know why it is to keep us apart, and to judge for myself whether it is sufficient. It must be a very powerful reason, indeed " — with a tremor of the voice — " that will hold me for life from the woman I love."
" This is a powerful reason," said Mr. Rohan ; " but not even so far as you ask have I a right to reveal this seci'et of my life. I have not the right ; for it menaces Eulalie, not me."
" Menaces Eulalie ! It is some danger, then ? " " It is some danger."
" Perhaps it is the loss of wealth you fear," cried Ar- thur, brightening ; if so—"
" No, no, no ! " interposed the old man, hastily ; " would to Heaven the loss of every farthing I possess could free my poor child from her danger ! Most gladly, most thank- fully would I become a beggar to-morrow ! "
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A wife's tragedy.
Arthur Sutherland's brow contracted. Was there really some dark and hideous secret involving his plighted wife, or was all this strange talk but the lunacy of a monoma- niac. There was a long and painful pause, broken at last by the younger man.
" You do not treat me well, Mr. Kohan," he said, the light of the yellow moon showing how pale his face was. " You do not treat me generously. Have you no trust in me ? Can you not rely upon my love for your grand- daughter, to keep your secret and hers, and judge for my- self whether it is sufficient to sever us forever. Is the whole happiness of my life to be lost for a darkly mys- terious hint that I cannot comprehend ? Oh, Mr. Rohan ! remember that T love her, that she loves me ; and pity us both ! "
They were standing on the terrace as he spoke, on the very spot where he had stood with Eulalie that fatal even- ing. The old man laid his hand kindly on his arm.
My dear boy," he said, " I have no wish to distress you. I am the last in the world who would make a mys- tery or raise an obstacle were it in my power to avoid it. It would be the proudest and happiest day of my life, the day on which I could see my child your wife, if this rea- son did not exist to render that happiness impossible."
" Why impossible ? " cried Arthur, vehemently ; "why if we love and trust each other ? She has committed no crime, Mr. Rohan, that needs concealment."
" She ! My innocent darling ! who knows no more of the wickedness and misery of this big world than an infant ! Oh, no!"
" Then," cried Arthur, still more vehemently, " she shall not suffer for the crimes of others ! Whatever your se- cret is, Mr. Rohan, keep it ! I don't ask to know it. She is innocent of all evil ; and, in spite of ten thousand se- crets I claim her as my promised wife ! "
Mr. Rohan caught none of his enthusiasm. His face only clouded the more.
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97
" Poor boy ! " he said, " it is hard to dash such high hopes. I shall not dash them — you shall take your an- swer from Eulalie, if she ever recovers sufficiently to give you an answer. When she promised to be your wife, subject to my consent, Mr. Sutherland, she was as igno- rant as you are now of this hidden spring in her life. She learned it that night ; and it was that knowledge, and not the lightning, that struck her down. If she ever recovers, she shall decide your fate herself, unbiassed by me, and you shall hear it from her own lips. If she thinks, in spite of everything, she can still be your wife, your wife she shall be, with my heartfelt blessing and prayers for you both."
Arthur grasped the old man's hand, and poured out such a flood of grateful acknowledgments as he never had listened to before. He looked at the flushed, handsome face, with a sad smile.
" Ah ! it is very little, after all, that I am promising you ; but Eulalie shall decide for herself The poor child wants to go home. Let us take her home, Mr. Suther- land. Among the old scenes and the old faithful faces, she may recover. Do not come to us. Do not write to her. Give us time — say half a year ; and then, when only the memory of this sorrowful time remains, come to our Cuban home, and say to Eulalie what you have said to me. She shall do as she pleases — go with you as your bride, or remain with me, without my speaking one word to influence her. Will you do this, Mr. Sutherland ? "
Poor Arthur ! Six months seemed a drearily long time. But what could he say, save yes ?
" Will you write to me ? " he said. " Will you not let me kno w how she is ? "
Most certainly ! And she shall write to you herself, if she wishes it. As soon as she is strong enough to bear the journey, we shall start. The home air wiU restore her faster than anyttiing else."
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A wife's tragedy.
So it was arranged. The matter ended with these words, and no more was said on the subject.
The invalid still reiterated her mournlnl cry :
" Take me home, grandpapa ! Take me home ! "
And the old man's answer ever was :
" Yes, dear, we'll go home very soon now."
But in spite of the anxiety of both, it was nearly a month before the frail invalid could start on that home- ward journey. Before the expiration of a fortnight, she was able to rise and lie all day on the sofa, dosing the ^ still, sultry hours away, or looking vacantly, with large., haggard eyes, at the purple, sunlit sky. In another week she could go down stairs, clinging to her grandfather's arm — a poor, pale shadow — and, wrapped in a large shawl, walk out feebly in the lovely green arcades of Maple wood. Very slowly strength of body was returning to that deli- cate little frame ; but strength of mind came slower still. Nothing could arouse her from that slow torpor — t-hat dull apathy to everything and everybody. Whether it was Mrs. Sutherland, or Augusta, or Lucy, or Arthur, it seemed much the same to her. She was restless, and silent, and uneasy with them all. Only with her grand- father was she at rest and content.
At last came the day of departure. A very sad day in the Sutherland mansion, with none of the gay bustle, and pleasant confusion and hurry that usually attends de- partures. The trunks were packed a-nd strapped in si- lence and gloom ; the last meal was eaten together in a dismal and comfortless way ; and Arthur lifted Eulalie into the carriage with a face nearly as pale as her own, and a heart that lay like lead in his bosom. His mother and sister drove with them in the roomy carriage to the depot, and he rode beside them at a funeral pace.
Little more than a month ago, he had ridden beside them, as he was doing now, to see Mr. Rohan off on his journey ; and how his whole life seemed to have changed since then ! How bright the world had looked that day.
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taking its colour from his own goodness of heart ! What a desolate, blank waste it seemed now — all things darkened by his own gloom ! He could see the frail little creature, who lay back among the silken cushions, languid, and wasted, and wan ; and he remembered how bright, and beautiful, and radiant she had been that day! Only one month ago ! It seemed to him that he had lived centuries since then.
The last good-bye was said, the train went shrieking on its western way, and the Sutherlands returned home. How still, how ghostly silent that home seemed ! If a corpse had been carried out of the house and buried, the oppressive quietude and loneliness could not have been greater. They all felt it. There was so much to remind them of her — her empty and desolate-looking room, the music she loved scattered loose upon the piano, the books she used to read, her vacant seat at the table, her empty sofa under the amber curtains of the bay-window— all telling of some one lost, and lost, perhaps, for ever.
Mrs. Sutherland, standing by the drawing-room win- dow, in the grey tAvilight of that same evening, was re- volving a plan in her mind for changing all this. It was a dull, sunless, airless, oppressive evening, with a low- lying grey sky, from which all rosy and golden clouds had gone ; and the tall trees looked black against the leaden back-ground. There was a rustic bench, under a clump of bushes visible from the window, and she could see her son lying, with his face on his arm, upon it, in a forlorn and hopeless sort of w^ay. Augusta was gaping dismally in the ghostly twilight over a book ; and Lucy, at the piano, was playing some mournful air in a wailing minor key, that was desolation itself.
" This won't do ! " thought Mrs. Sutherland, decisively. " We must have a change. That poor girl's memory is like a nightmare in this house, making us all melancholy and wretched. There is that boy gone to a shadow, and as pale, and haggard, and miserable as if he had lost every
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A wife's tragedy.
frieDd he had in the world. Augusta, too, whose spirits used to be boisterous enough for anything, is moping her- self to death ; and I believe I am catching the infection, for I am nervous and low-spirited, and out of sorts. I shall leave Maplewood before the week ends, and take them both with me."
Mrs. Sutherland was as good as her word, and went to work with energy. The bustle and hurry of preparation turned the quiet house topsy-turvy, and forced the most torpid of them into action.
" I am going to Saratoga, Arthur," Mrs. Sutherland said, with calm determination. " Augusta wants change ; and you are to accompany and remain with us. The gay life there, the fresh scenes and fresh faces will do us all good. I shall probably remain until late in September, and pass a month or two in New York before returning here.^'
Arthur listened listlessly. He was not to see Eulalie Rohan for six months ; and it mattered very little to him where these six weary months were passed. So he re- signed himself, " passive to all changes," and saw to the huge pile of trunks and bandboxes, and attended them faithfully to their destination.
And Lucy Sutherland, the housekeeper, and the ser- vants, had the old house at Maplewood all to themselves. Lucy might have gone to Portland, and spent those months with her mother ; but she liked the grand house, and sunlit lawn, and green arcades, and spreading gar- dens, and sea-side terraces of Maplewood, far better than the dingy hired house looking out on Casco Bay. She had her books (and Lucy was fond of reading), her cou- sin's piano, and her eternal embroidery ; and she liked being alone, and bore the departure of her aunt and cou- sins with constitutional calm. Mrs. Sutherland had in- formed them they were all three to be absent until the close of November. Great, therefore, was Lucy's surprise when, before the first fortnight had worn away, one of the
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two returned. She was sitting at the piano, playing softly in the hot twilight, when a tall form strode into the room, and stood between her and the red sunset. She rose up, with a face that told no tales of the rapid heart-beating beneath, and looked at her cousin Arthur.
" I could not stay there, Lucy," he said ; " I was sick of it all in ten days 1 What did I care for those crowds of strange men and women, and the dressing, and danc- ing, and drinking, and the rest of the foolery ! I shall do far better here, in this quiet place, and with you, my quiet, fireside fairy ! "
" And your mother ? " Lucy asked.
" My mother adheres to the original programme. She and Augusta like the gay Saratoga life, and dress and drink water with the best. I am afraid they did not like my desertion ; but they knew no end of people there, and were not likely to need me ; and so I got desperate, and — here I am."
The two cousins sat in the twilight a long time talk- ing, that still summer evening. Both of them thought of Eulalie, but neither spoke of her ; and Lucy's hopes were high once more. She sat at her window until the midnight moon sailed up to the zenith, with a flush in her cheek, and a fire in her blue eyes, and a hopefulness at her heart all unusual there. The black-eyed siren, whose dusky beauty had bewitched him, was far away. All the long summer she would have him to herself, thrown entirely upon her society in this quiet country- house ! Surely, surely, her time had come !
Lucy Sutherland came out in quite a new character after that night. She who had always been as silent and as taciturn as an Indian became all at once conversable and entertaining. She played for him — not very bril- liantly, perhaps. She walked out with him ; and asked him to read aloud to her while she worked. The old housekeeper looked on approvingly ; they were cousins, and it was all right ; and Arthur talked to her, and read G
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A wife's tkagedy.
to her, and thought of her precisely as he would have talked, and read, and thought of Augusta. And he would have been almost as much amazed if any one had told him his sister Augusta was in love with him as his cousin Lucy.
There was but one woman in all the world to him, whose memory was a thousand times dearer than all the cousins in existence. How he passed all those long, long, purposeless days, and weeks, and months, thinking of her, dreaming of her, and praying for her, he alone knew. How his mind ever went back to that one absorbing sub- ject, let him talk of what he pleased to Lucy ; how her face came between him and the page from which he read aloud ; how he would shut his eyes and lean back in his chair when Lucy played, and see the fairy figure once more, in Lucy's place, and hear the sweet old Mozart melodies she loved to play. Poor Lucy ! If you had only known how all those pretty, tasteful toilets were thrown away, how vain were all your efforts to please, you might have saved yourself a great deal of useless trouble during the weeks of that, for jou, far too pleasant summer.
The close of the first month brought a letter bearing the Havana postmark. What an event that was, and how eagerly it was torn open and devoured ! It was very short, and very cold, the feverish lover thought. Eulalie was greatly improved since their return ; and he, (Mr. Rohan) had strong hopes of her speedy and perfect restoration to health. That was all ; but Arthur thanked God for the news it brought, and felt he could wait more hopefully now. He wrote often, and very long letters ; but Mr. Rohan's replies were few and far between, and said very little.
July, August, and September passed. Mrs. Sutherland quitted the springs, and established herself for a couple of months in New York. It was bleak December, and the giound was white with snow ; and the green arcades and long sunny gardens were drear and forsaken. Then
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maples, and hemlocks, and beeches, and chestnuts were gaunt and stripped, and the wintry blasts howled dis- mally around the old house, before the lady and her daughter returned to spend Christmas at home.
But while the world lay wrapped in its winding-sheet of snow, and the old year was dying, with melancholy north winds shrieking its requiem, and the roses had faded from Lucy Sutherland's cheeks that the summer had brought there, Arthur was in an elysium of happi- ness. Christmas -eve had brought him joy, in the shape of a letter from Cuba. It was of the briefest, as usual ; but it contained these words, and they had transformed the scheme of the universe :
My dear Boy : — The time of probation is past, and you have nobly kept your word. Eulalie is perfectly restored once more — a little quieter and more womanly than of old, but her restoration to health complete. You may come to us if you will. Eden Lawn is delightful this December weather ; and we will both rejoice to see you."
CHAPTER IX.
" COME WHAT WILL. I HAVE BEEN BLESSED."
THE long windows of the flat-roofed, foreign-looking mansion shone like sheets of red gold in the evening sunlight. The low, scented, tropical wind stirred the lime- trees and orange-trees, and swung the creamy magnolias and clustering acacias. It was a January evening. The snow was piled high and the freezing blasts howled some- v/here ; but not here, in this isle of the tropics. The red lances of the sunset kissed the sleeping flowers good-night as it drooped behind the rosy horizon, so resplendently brilliant that it seemed as if some of the glory of heaven shone through.
The girl who lay languid^ on a lounge, with a book^in her hand, looked out with dark, dreamy eyes on the fading radiance, her thoughts far away. The white-muslin wrap- per she carelessly wore hung loose around her wasted figure, and was hardly less colourless than the face above it. The dark, pallid, Creole face was unspeakably lovely still, though its brightness had fled ; the profuse raven curls as beautiful and silky as ever, and falling dank and divided over her shoulders, like an ebon veil. The book she held in her hand was half closed. She was not reading, but thinking very sadly — thinking of a pleasant Northern household around which the snowdrifts were flying this J anuary evening, and the desolate wind howling up from the angry sea. She could see the long drawing-room where the coal fire blazed in the polished grates, the lighted
"COME WHAT WILL, I HAVE BEEN BLESSED." 105
lamps, and the drawn curtains. She saw a stately elderly lady, with a face pale and proud, lying back in an arm- chair luxuriously, "in after-dinner mood/' with half-closed eyes. She saw a plump, fair-haired, rose-cheeked damsel sitting at the piano, dressed in violent pink, playing noisy polkas or stormy mazurkas. She saw another young lady, robed in nun-like black, with a suppressed look in her pale face, and a clear, cold, fathomless light in her blue eyes. She saw these three women as she had often seen them ; and she saw, with an aching sense of loss and desolation at her heart, a fourth form — a man's form — sitting reading by the light of a shaded lamp, as she had been wont to see him sit and read in the happy days gone by. Did they miss her at all ? Did he miss her ? In that New England mansion, on the stormy sea-coast, was even the memory of the Creole girl, who had once been one of them, for- gotten ?
While she was thinking all this, the fading sunlight was darkened, and a stranger stood before the window. He had to pass it to reach the door ; but the low cry the girl gave at sight of him reached his ear and stopped him. She had started up in a violent tremor and faintness, and he had caught sight of her. A moment more, and he was through the low, open casement, holding her in his arms.
My darling ! " he cried, " have I found you again ? "
She was so agitated and so excited by the unexpected sight of him that she could not speak. She trembled so as he held her that he grew alarmed.
" My love !" he said, tenderly, " how you tremble ! I have frightened you, I fear, coming so suddenly. Sit down here, my dearest, and try to be calm."
He seated her gently on the lounge. Her face, pale be- fore, blanched now with the excitement of the moment, even to the lips. He was pale himself with suppressed agitation, but he was calm outwardly, for her sake.
" Will you speak to me, Eulalie ? " he said, holding both
106 A wife's tragedy.
her hands in his. " You have not said one word of wel- come yet."
She laid her face — her poor, pale face, down on the dear hands that clasped hers, and he conld feel them grow wet with her tears.
" Oh, Eulalie ! " he said, in a distressed voice, " are you sorry I have come ? "
" No ! no ! " said Eulalie, in broken tones, " no ! For- give me, Arthur. I am not strong — I am not what I used to be. I am very glad to see you, and I am very foolish to cry, but I cannot help it. Excuse my weakness. I will be better in a moment."
Presently she looked up with a faint smile breaking through her tears.
" I am sorry to distress you by crying so," she said ; " but I have been weak and nervous ever since I was ill, and those tears flow too easily. Thank you for not try- ing to stop me ! "
"You are not well yet," Arthur said, with an anxious glance at the thin, pale face. " Your grandfather told me you were."
" And I am. I am quite well again, only not so strong as I used to be. When did you come ? "
" I reached Havanna last evening, and have lost as little time as possible in arriving here."
" How are all in Maplewood — your mother, and sister, and Lucy ? "
" They are all well, and all miss you very much,"
There was a blank pause. How difficult it is, in that first meeting, after an absence of months from those who are dear to us, to say what we want to say most. The wretched feeling of restraint we cannot overcome — so much to say, that we grow confused and say nothing at all, or only ask trivial questions. It was so with Arthur and Eulalie now. With the questions that were to decide the whole future lives of both pending, they sat and talked, the commonest common-place, and with long em- barrassing gaps between.
"COME WHAT WILL, I HAVE BEEN BLESSED." 107
" Where is your grandfather ? " Arthur asked.
" Here ! " said a familiar voice, before she could reply. " Welcome, my dear boy, to Eden Lawn I"
He had entered quietly, unobserved, and came round from behind Eulalie's lounge, with outstretched hand and friendly smile. There was a heartiness in his voice, a hos- pitable warmth in his manner, that was a new revelation. The cold, watchful, silent, gloomy old man, who had been the nightmare of their lives at Maplewood, was an en- tirely different person from this courteous and gentlemanly host, welcoming his guest.
"I heard your voice as I descended the stairs," he said. " And how are all at home ? "
Athur answered ; and the three sat long in the rosy twilight, talking. Mr. Rohan was genial, and the most fluent talker of the three. The change in him for the bet- ter was really marvellous. It was as if some unendurable weight had been lifted off" from his mind, and that, re- lieved of that oppression, his nature resumed its natural bent again. But the spirits he had gained, his grand- daughter seemed to have lost.
Arthur Sutherland looked at her with a sense of inde- scrible pain at his heart. Let her change as she might, he could not love her less. He had given her his whole heart, and that faithful heart grieved now, to see how al- tered she had grown. He could remember her, a bright little tropical flower — as radiant a little beauty as ever danced in the sunlight ; and he saw her a woman, with haggard cheeks and great melancholy, dark eyes. No common illness could have wrought a change like this. Was it, then, that dark, that impenetrable secret, that was to stand between them all their lives ? Had the old man cast off" his burden when he told it ? and was its shadow, that had darkened his life so long, darkening hers now ?
Arthur Sutherland asked himself those questions in the solitude of his own room that night. He loved her so
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A wife's tragedy.
well and so truly— he trusted in her truth and innocence so implicitly, that, despite this dark barrier of a secret he was never to know, he could take her to his heart to- morrow, and thank God for the gift. His pride and his sense of honour were as of old ; but he loved his dark- eyed enchantress, and he felt that his life without her would be a dead and dismal blank — useless to himself or his fellow-beings. He had tried, in the days gone by, to look his worst fate in the face — a life apart from hers — but he never could, he never could ! She seemed to have be- come part of his very nature ; and he felt — it was very wrong, no doubt — that a life separated from Eulalie was a life not worth having.
With all this, Arthur found it was not so very easy to regain his old place — to bridge over the chasm of six months, and stand on his former footing. He found it hard to speak of the subject that had brought him to Cuba ; but he was so happy, only to be with Eulalie once more, that waiting was not so very trying. A week passed away before he ventured to speak ; a blissful week, that brought back the old delicious time when he had read and walked with his dark- eyed divinity in the summer twilights and sunsets, and listened to her play- ing all the long, sultry afternoons. She . was changed since then. She was grown so very quiet ; and the beau- tiful eyes were so mournful in their subdued light; but no change could make her. less lovely to him. Mr. Rohan was invariably kind ; he seemed trying to atone for his past coldness and reserve by his genial warmth and cor- diality now : and it was to him the young man first found courage to speak.
They were walking up and down the lime-walk, in the coolness of the early morning, when Arthur broached the subject.
" You know, Mr. Rohan," he said, with an agitation in his voice no effort could quite overcome ; " you know the object that has brought me here. I have not said one
''COME WHAT WILL, I HAVE BEEN BLESSED." 109
word to Eulalie yet. Have I your permission to speak to her ? "
Mr. Rohan looked kindly at the agitated face of the speaker.
" Most certainly," he said. " Most certainly, my dear boy. I told you, when you spoke to me last, that my granddaughter should never be influenced one way or other by me in this matter. I told you this, and I have kept my word."
Arthur grasped the old man's hand in his fervent grati- tude.
" Then I have your permission to speak to her at once, to end this suspense ? "
" Yes," said Mr. Rohan ; " whatever Eulalie says, I agree to beforehand. You have acted nobly and self-denyingly, my dear boy, and you are worthy of her. Tell her what I have said ; that she is free to act as she pleases. Heaven knows, the only desire for which I live is to promote her happiness ! "
Arthur waited for no more. He knew where Eulalie was to be found, and he sought her out with a radiant face. She was reclining, as usual, on a lounge in the breakfast-room, in a loose, white wrapper, reading from a volume of poems he himself had given her. She dropped it suddenly, for Arthur was beside her, pouring out, with new-found eloquence, the words he had come to say.
" I have waited so long," Eulalie, he cried ; " I have remained away from your dear presence for six long months, at your grandfather's desire, and surely now I have some claim to speak. When will you keep your promise, Eulalie — when will you be my wife ? "
She dropped her book, and sat up, and looked at him with a frightened face.
" Oh, Arthur ! " she exclaimed, " you must never ask me that question again ! I can never be your wife ! "
Arthur Sutherland stood staring at her, utterly con- founded.
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A wife's tragedy.
" Oh, forgive me ! " she said ; " forgive me, Arthur ! It is breaking my heart, but I cannot help it ! When I made that promise, I did not know what I know now. I can never be your wife, Arthur — never, never ! "
" Never 1 " repeated Arthur, white to the ver}^ lips. " Have I thus been the dupe of a coquette from first to last ? Was I only mocked when you told me at Maple- wood that you loved me ? "
" No, no, no ! " Eulalie cried out, vehemently. " I spoke the truth. It is because I love you that I cannot be your wife ! "
That darkly- mysterious secret again ! He knew she referred to that. Was it to be a stumbling-block in the way to the very end.
" I cannot understand this, Eulalie. What is to prevent your keeping your promise — what is to prevent your being my wife ? "
She turned away from him and hid her face in her hands.
" Because — because there is a secret I can