Cynthia Wakeham's Money

Frank, who had a tender heart for all misfortune, surveyed the old lady wistfully. How placid she looked, how at home with her thoughts! It was peacefulness to the spirit to meet her eye. Bowing again, he turned towards Hermione and remarked:

"What a very lovely face! She looks as if she had never known anything but the pleasures of life."

"On the contrary," returned Hermione, "she has never known much but its disappointments. But they have left no trace on her face, or in her nature, I think. She is an embodiment of trust, and in the great silence there is about her, she hears sounds and sees visions which are denied to others. But when did you come to Marston?"

He told her he had just arrived, and, satisfied with the slight look of confusion which mantled her face at this acknowledgment, launched into talk all tending to one end, his love for her. But he did not reach that end immediately; for if the old lady could not hear, she could see, and Frank, for all his impetuosity, possessed sufficient restraint upon himself not to subject himself or Hermione to the criticism of even this most benignant relative. Not till Mrs. Lovell left the room, as she did after a while, – being a very wise old lady as well as mild, – did he allow himself to say:

"There can be but one reason now for my coming to Marston – to see you, Miss Cavanagh; I have no other business here."

"I thought," she began, with some confusion, – evidently she had been taken by surprise, – "that you were looking for some one, a Harriet Smith, I think, whom you had reason to believe once lived here."

"I did come to Marston originally on that errand, but I have so far failed in finding any trace of her in this place that I begin to think we were mistaken in our inferences that she had ever lived here."

"Yet you had reason for thinking that she did," Hermione went on, with the anxiety of one desirous to put off the declaration she probably saw coming.

"Yes; we had reasons, but they prove to have been unfounded."

"Was – was your motive for finding her an important one?" she asked, with some hesitation, and a look of curiosity in her fine eyes.

"Quite; a fortune of some thousands is involved in her discovery. She is heiress to at least a hundred thousand dollars from a sister she has not seen since they were girls together."

"Indeed!" and Hermione's eyes opened in some surprise, then fell before the burning light in his.

"But do not let us talk of a matter that for me is now of secondary interest," cried he, letting the full stream of his ardor find its way. "You are all I can think of now; you, you, whom I have loved since I caught the first glimpse of your face one night through the window yonder. Though I have known you but a little while, and though I cannot hope to have awakened a kindred feeling in you, you have so filled my mind and heart during the few short weeks since I learned your name, that I find it impossible to keep back the words which the sight of your face calls forth. I love you, and I want to guard you from loneliness forever. Will you give me that sweet right?"

"But," she cried, starting to her feet in an excitement that made her face radiantly beautiful, "you do not seem to think of my misfortune, my – "

"Do you mean this scar?" he whispered softly, gliding swiftly to her side. "It is no misfortune in my eyes; on the contrary, I think it endears you to me all the more. I love it, Hermione, because it is a part of you. See how I feel towards it!" and he bent his head with a quick movement, and imprinted a kiss upon the mark she had probably never touched herself but with shrinking.

"Oh!" went up from her lips in a low cry, and she covered her face with her hands in a rush of feeling that was not entirely connected with that moment.

"Did you think I would let that stand in my way?" he asked, with a proud tenderness with which no sensitive woman could fail to be impressed. "It is one reason more for a man to love your beautiful face, your noble manners, your soft white hand. I think half the pleasure would be gone from the prospect of loving you if I did not hope to make you forget what you have perhaps too often remembered."

She dropped her hands, and he saw her eyes fixed upon him with a strange look.

"O how wicked I have been!" she murmured. "And what good men there are in the world!"

He shook his head.

"It is not goodness," he began, but she stopped him with a wave of her hand.

A strange elation seemed to have taken hold of her, and she walked the floor with lifted head and sparkling eye.

"It restores my belief in love," she exclaimed, "and in mankind." And she seemed content just to brood upon that thought.

But he was not; naturally he wished for some assurance from her; so he stepped in her path as she was crossing the room, and, taking her by the hands, said, smilingly:

"Do you know how you can testify your appreciation in a way to make me perfectly happy?"

She shook her head, and tried to draw her hands away.

"By taking a walk, the least walk in the world, beyond that wooden gate."

She shuddered and her hands fell from his.

"You do not know what you ask," said she; then after a moment, "it was that I meant and not the scar, when I spoke of my misfortune. I cannot go outside the garden wall, and I was wrong to listen to your words for a moment, knowing what a barrier this fact raises up between us."

"Hermione, – " he was very serious now, and she gathered up all her strength to meet the questions she knew were coming, – "why cannot you go beyond the garden gate? Cannot you tell me? Or do you hesitate because you are afraid I shall smile at your reasons for this determined seclusion?"

"I am not afraid of your smiling, but I cannot give my reasons. That I consider them good must answer for us both."

"Very well, then, we will let them answer. You need not take the walk I ask, but give me instead another pleasure – your promise to be my wife."

"Your wife?"

"Yes, Hermione."

"With such a secret between us?"

"It will not be a secret long."

"Mr. Etheridge," she cried with emotion, "you do not know the woman you thus honor. If it had been Emma – "

"It is you I love."

"It would have been safe," she went on as if she had not heard him. "She is lovely, and amiable, and constant, and in her memory there is no dark scar as there is in mine, a scar deeper than this," she said, laying her finger on her cheek, "and fully as ineffaceable."

"Some day you will take me into your confidence," he averred, "and then that scar will gradually disappear."

"What confidence you have in me?" she cried. "What have you seen, what can you see in me to make you trust me so in face of my own words?"

"I think it is the look in your eyes. There is purity there, Hermione, and a deep sadness which is too near like sorrow to be the result of an evil action."

"What do you call evil?" she cried. Then suddenly, "I once did a great wrong – in a fit of temper – and I can never undo it, never, yet its consequences are lasting. Would you give your heart to a woman who could so forget herself, and who is capable of forgetting herself again if her passions are roused as they were then?"

"Perhaps not," he acknowledged, "but my heart is already given and I do not know how to take it back."

"Yet you must," said she. "No man with a career before him should marry a recluse, and I am that, whatever else I may or may not be. I would be doing a second ineffaceable wrong if I took advantage of your generous impulse and bound you to a fate that in less than two months would be intolerably irksome to one of your temperament."

"Now you do not know me," he protested.

But she heeded neither his words nor his pleading look.

"I know human nature," she avowed, "and if I do not mingle much with the world I know the passions that sway it. I can never be the wife of any man, Mr. Etheridge, much less of one so generous and so self-forgetting as yourself."

"Do you – are you certain?" he asked.

"Certain."

"Then I have not succeeded in raising one throb of interest in your breast?"

She opened her lips and his heart stood still for her answer, but she closed them again and remained standing so long with her hands locked together and her face downcast, that his hopes revived again, and he was about to put in another plea for her hand when she looked up and said firmly:

"I think you ought to know that my heart does not respond to your suit. It may make any disappointment which you feel less lasting."

He uttered a low exclamation and stepped back.

"I beg your pardon," said he, "I ought not to have annoyed you. You will forget my folly, I hope."

"Do you forget it!" cried she; but her lips trembled and he saw it.

"Hermione! Hermione!" he murmured, and was down at her feet before she could prevent it. "Oh, how I love you!" he breathed, and kissed her hand wildly, passionately.

XII.

HOW MUCH DID IT MEAN?

Frank Etheridge left the presence of Hermione Cavanagh, carrying with him an indelible impression of her slender, white-robed figure and pallid, passion-drawn face. There was such tragedy in the latter, that he shuddered at its memory, and stopped before he reached the gate to ask himself if the feeling she displayed was for him or another. If for another, then was that other Dr. Sellick, and as the name formed itself in his thoughts, he felt the dark cloud of jealousy creep over his mind, obscuring the past and making dangerous the future.

"How can I know," thought he, "how can I know?" and just as the second repetition passed his lips, he heard a soft step near him, and, looking up, saw the gentle Emma watering her flowers.

To gain her side was his first impulse. To obtain her confidence the second. Taking the heavy watering-pot from her hand, he poured its contents on the rose-bush she was tending, and then setting it down, said quietly:

"I have just made your sister very unhappy, Miss Cavanagh."

She started and her soft eyes showed the shadow of an alarm.

"I thought you were her friend," she said.

He drew her around the corner of the house towards the poplar trees. "Had I been only that," he avowed, "I might have spared her pain, but I am more than that, Miss Cavanagh, I am her lover."

The hesitating step at his side paused, and though no great change came into her face, she seemed to have received a shock.

"I can understand," said she, "that you hurt her."

"Is she so wedded to the past, then?" he cried. "Was there some one, is there some one whom she – she – "

He could not finish, but the candid-eyed girl beside him did not profess to misunderstand him. A pitiful smile crossed her lips, and she looked for a minute whiter than her sister had done, but she answered firmly:

"You could easily overcome any mere memory, but the decision she has made never to leave the house, I fear you cannot overcome."

"Does it spring – forgive me if I go beyond the bounds of discretion, but this mystery is driving me mad – does it spring from that past attachment you have almost acknowledged?"

She drooped her head and his heart misgave him. Why should he hurt both these women when his whole feeling towards them was one of kindness and love?

"Pardon me," he pleaded. "I withdraw the question; I had no right to put it."

"Thank you," said she, and looked away from him towards the distant prospect of hill and valley lying before them.

He stood revolving the matter in his disturbed mind.

"I should have been glad to have been the means of happiness to your sister and yourself. Such seclusion as you have imposed upon yourselves seems unnecessary, but if it must be, and this garden wall is destined to be the boundary of your world, it would have been a great pleasure to me to have brought into it some freshness from the life which lies beyond it. But it is destined not to be."

The sad expression in her face changed into one of wistfulness.

"Then you are not coming any more?" said she.

He caught his breath. There was disappointment in her tones and this could mean nothing but regret, and regret meant the loss of something which might have been hope. She felt, then, that he might have won her sister if he had been more patient.

"Do you think it will do for me to come here after your sister has told me that it was useless for me to aspire to her hand?"

She gave him for the first time a glance that had the element of mirthfulness in it.

"Come as my friend," she suggested; then in a more serious mood added: "It is her only chance of happiness, but I do not know that I would be doing right in influencing you to pursue a suit which may not be for yours. You know, or will know after reflection (and I advise you to reflect well), whether an alliance with women situated as we are would be conducive to your welfare. If you decide yes, think that a woman taken by surprise, as my sister undoubtedly was, may not in the first hurried moment of decision know her own mind, but also remember that no woman who has taken such a decision as she has, is cast in the common mould, and that you may but add to your regrets by a persistency she may never fully reward."

Astonished at her manner and still more astonished at the intimation conveyed in her last words, he looked at her as one who would say:

"But you also share her fate and the resolve that made it."

She seemed to understand him.

"Free Hermione," she whispered, "from the shackles she has wound about herself and you will free me."

"Miss Emma," he began, but she put her finger on her lips.

"Hush!" she entreated; "let us not talk any more about it. I have already said what I never meant should pass my lips; but the affection I bear my sister made me forget myself; she does so need to love and be loved."

"And you think I – "

"Ah, sir, you must be the judge of your own chances. You have heard her refusal and must best know just how much it means."

"How much it means!" Long did Frank muse over that phrase, after he had left the sweet girl who had uttered it. As he sat with Edgar at supper, his abstracted countenance showed that he was still revolving the question, though he endeavored to seem at home with his friend and interested in the last serious case which had occupied the attention of the newly settled doctor. How much it means! Not much, he was beginning to say to himself, and insensibly his face began to brighten and his manner to grow less restrained, when Edgar, who had been watching him furtively, broke out:

"Now you are more like yourself. Business responsibilities are as hard to shake off as a critical case in medicine."

"Yes," was the muttered reply, as Frank rose from the table, and took the cigar his friend offered him. "And business with me just now is particularly perplexing. I cannot get any clue to Harriet Smith or her heirs, nor can the police or the presumably sharp detective I have put upon the search."

"That must please Huckins."

"Yes, confound him! such a villain as he is! I sometimes wonder if he killed his sister."

"That you can certainly find out."

"No, for she had a mortal complaint, and that satisfies the physicians. But there are ways of hastening a death, and those I dare avow he would not be above using. The greed in his eyes would do anything; it even suffices to make him my very good friend, now that he sees that he might lose everything by opposing me."

"I am glad you see through his friendship."

"See through a sieve?"

"He plays his part badly, then?"

"He cannot help it, with that face of his; and then he gave himself away in the beginning. No attitude he could take now would make me forget the sneak I saw in him then."

This topic was interesting, but Edgar knew it was no matter of business which had caused the fitful changes he had been observing in Frank's tell-tale countenance. Yet he did not broach any other theme, and it was Frank who finally remarked:

"I suppose you think me a fool to fix my heart on a woman with a secret."

"Fool is a strong word," answered Edgar, somewhat bitterly, "but that you were unfortunate to have been attracted by Hermione Cavanagh, I think any man would acknowledge. You would acknowledge it yourself, if you stopped to weigh the consequences of indulging a passion for a woman so eccentric."

"Perhaps I should, if my interest would allow me to stop. But it won't, Edgar; it has got too strong a hold upon me; everything else sinks in importance before it. I love her, and am willing to sacrifice something for her sake."

"Something, perhaps; but in this case it would be everything."

"I do not think so."

"You do not think so now; but you would soon."

"Perhaps I should, but it is hard to realize it. Besides, she would drop her eccentricities if her affections once became engaged."

"Oh, if you have assurance of that."

"Do I need assurance? Doesn't it stand to reason? A woman loved is so different from a woman – " scorned, he was going to say, but, remembering himself, added softly, "from a woman who has no one to think of but herself."

"This woman has a sister," observed Edgar.

Frank faltered. "Yes, and that sister is involved in her fate," thought he, but he said, quietly: "Emma Cavanagh does not complain of Hermione; on the contrary, she expresses the greatest affection for her."

"They are both mysteries," exclaimed Edgar, and dropped the subject, though it was not half talked out.

Frank was quite willing to accept his silence, for he was out of sorts with his friend and with himself. He knew his passion was a mad one, and yet he felt that it had made giant strides that day, and had really been augmented instead of diminished by the refusal he had received from Hermione, and the encouragement to persistence which he had received from her usually shy sister. As the evening wore on and the night approached, his thoughts not only grew in intensity, but deepened into tenderness. It was undoubtedly a passion that had smitten him, but that passion was hallowed by the unselfish feelings of a profound affection. He did not want her to engage herself to him if it would not be for her happiness. That it would be, every throb of his heart assured him, but he might be mistaken, and if so, better her dreams of the past than a future he could not make bright. He was so moved at the turmoil which his thoughts made in his usually quiet breast, that he could not think of sleep, but sat in his room for hours indulging in dreams which his practical nature would have greatly scorned a few short weeks before. He saw her again in fancy in every attitude in which his eyes had ever beheld her, and sanctified thus by distance, her beauty seemed both wonderful and touching. And that was not all. Some chord between them seemed to have been struck, and he felt himself drawn towards her as if (it was a strange fancy) she stood by that garden gate, and was looking in his direction with rapt, appealing eyes. So strong became that fancy at last, that he actually rose to his feet and went to the window which opened towards the south.

"Hermione! Hermione!" broke in longing from his lips, and then annoyed at what he could not but consider a display of weakness on his part, he withdrew himself from the window, determined to forget for the moment that there lived for him such a cause for love and sorrow. But what man can forget by a mere effort of will, or what lover shut his eyes to the haunting vision which projects itself upon the inner consciousness. In fancy he saw her still, and this time she seemed to be pacing up and down the poplar walk, wringing her hands and wildly calling his name. It was more than he could bear. He must know if this was only an hallucination, and in a feverish impulse he rushed from his room with the intention of going to her at once.

But he no sooner stood in the hall than he realized he was not alone in the house, and that he should have to pass Edgar's door. He naturally felt some hesitation at this and was inclined to give up his purpose. But the fever urging him on said no; so stealing warily down the hall he stepped softly by the threshold of his friend's room, when to his surprise he perceived that the door was ajar.

Pushing it gently open he found the room brilliant with moonlight but empty. Greatly relieved and considering that the doctor had been sent for by some suffering patient, he passed at once out of the house.

He went directly to that of Hermione, walking where the shadows were thickest as if he were afraid of being recognized. But no one was in the streets, and when he reached the point where the tall poplar-trees made a wall against the moonbeams, he slid into the deep obscurity he found there with a feeling of relief such as the heart experiences when it is suddenly released from some great strain.

Was she in the poplar walk? He did not mean to accost her if she were, nor to show himself or pass beyond the boundary of the wall, but he must know if her restless spirit drove her to pace these moonlit walks, and if it were true or not that she was murmuring his name.

The gate which opened in the wall at the side of the house was in a direct line with the window he had long ago fixed upon as hers. He accordingly took up his station at that spot and as he did so he was sure that he saw the flitting of some dark form amid the alternate bands of moonlight and shadow that lay across the weird pathway before him. Holding his breath he listened. Oh, the stillness of the night! How awesome and yet how sweet it was! But is there no break in the universal silence? Above his head the ever restless leaves make a low murmuring, and far away in the dim distances rises a faint sound that he cannot mistake; it is the light footfall of a dainty woman.

He can see her now. She is coming towards him, her shadow gliding before her. Seeing it he quails. From the rush of emotion seizing him, he knows that he should not be upon this spot, and panting with the effort, he turns and flees just as the sudden sound of a lifted window comes from the house.

That arrests him. Pausing, he looks up. It is her window that is open, and in the dark square thus made he sees her face bright with the moonlight streaming over it. Instantly he recovers himself. It is Emma's step, not Hermione's, he hears upon the walk. Hermione is above and in an anxious mood, for she is looking eagerly out and calling her sister by name.

"I am coming," answers back the clear, low voice of Emma from below.

"It is late," cries Hermione, "and very cold. Come in, Emma."

"I am coming," repeated the young girl. And in another moment he heard her step draw nearer, saw her flitting figure halt for a moment on the door-step before him and then disappear just as the window closed above. He had not been observed.

Relieved, he drew a long breath and leaned his head against the garden wall. Ah, how fair had been the vision of his beloved one's face in the moonlight. It filled him with indescribable thoughts; it made his spirit reel and his heart burn; it made him ten times her lover. Yet because he was her lover he felt that he ought not to linger there any longer; that the place was hallowed even from his presence, and that he should return at once to the doctor's house. But when he lifted his head he heard steps, this time not within the wall but on the roadside behind him, and alert at once to the mischievous surmises which might be aroused by the discovery of his presence there, he remained perfectly still in the hope that his form would be so lost in the deep shadows where he had withdrawn himself, that he would not be seen.

But the person, whoever it was, had evidently already detected him, for the footsteps turned the corner and advanced rapidly to where he stood. Should he step forward and meet the intruder, or remain still and await the words of surprise he had every reason to expect? He decided to remain where he was, and in another moment realized his wisdom in doing so, for the footsteps passed on and did not halt till they had reached the gate. But they paused there and at once he felt himself seized by a sudden jealousy and took a step forward, eager to see what this man would do.

He did not do much; he cast a look up at the house, and a heavy sigh broke from his lips; then he leaned forward and plucked a rose that grew inside the wall and kissed it there in the moonlight, and put it inside his breast-pocket; then he turned again towards the highway, and started back in surprise to see Frank Etheridge standing before him.