A Fair Mystery: The Story of a Coquette

"Yes," she replied, "I will go."

He did not show his triumph in any extraordinary fashion; his dark face for one moment flushed burning red.

"You shall never repent it," he said, "you shall be happier than a queen."

He pressed her close to his breast, and imprinted upon her willing lips the most passionate of kisses.

"Dear Doris," he exclaimed, "you are mine – mine forever!"

For some moments they stood thus, his arm encircling her graceful waist. Then with an anxiety to complete the business in hand, he said:

"I leave the Castle to-morrow – I have already prolonged my visit to the utmost length, and I must go to-morrow. For your sake and mine, it will be better to avoid all scandal, all rumor. When I leave I shall go direct to London. Will you go to-night? Take a ticket for Liverpool, that will throw them all astray. When you reach Liverpool go to this hotel," and he handed her a card, "and I will join you there late to-morrow evening. The instant I reach London, I will take the express for Liverpool. Will you do that?"

"Yes; I do not see why I should not. I am a great hypocrite at times," she said, "and not particularly good; but I declare to you that I could not spend even a day more with Earle, knowing that I was intent upon deceiving him. Yes, I will go to-night."

"Good; that clears all difficulties. Then there is another thing; leave a letter behind you to say that you are tired of the dull life; that you can bear it no longer, and that fearing opposition, you have left home quietly, and have taken a situation as English teacher abroad. No one will suspect the truth of such a letter."

Gentle Mrs. Brace, honest Mark, loving Mattie – something like regret did seize her when she thought how earnestly they would read that letter, and how sincerely they would believe it.

"There is another thing," said this cold-blooded lord; "promise me that you will, at least until I join you, wear a thick veil. You have no idea what a sensation such a face as yours would make; you would easily be traced by it."

She smiled, well pleased with the compliment.

"Once away over the sea," he said, "and my proudest, keenest delight will be to show the whole world the beautiful prize I have won. Mind, the veil must be so thick that not one feature, of the face can be seen through it."

"I will remember," she said, with a smile.

Then he took from his pocket a purse well filled.

"I know you will not be angry," he said. "You cannot ask for money, or people will begin to wonder why you want it. You will take this."

A faint flush rose to her face.

"I must," she replied, "I have none of my own."

Then she rose; it was time to return to the house she was so soon to abandon.

He bent down to kiss her, and drew the beautiful face to his, just as Earle had done.

Thoughts of her treachery again disturbed her, and she shuddered as though with cold.

"You are tired, my darling," he said. "Go home and rest."

They parted under the trees. He went away, and as she walked slowly home, she said to herself:

"I have killed Earle!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

A WOMAN RESOLVED

Mattie Brace stood at the farm gate: she was looking impatiently up and down the road, and a sudden light flashed in her face as she caught sight of Doris. The beautiful face seemed to flash like light from beneath the gloom of green trees.

"Doris," cried Mattie, almost impatiently, "I have been looking everywhere for you. There is a whole roll of newspapers from London; they are directed to you, and I know the writing – it is Mr. Leslie's. I am sure they contain notices of your picture. Make haste – I am longing to see them."

Doris looked up with a shyness quite new to her.

"I am coming," she replied. "Where is Earle?"

She hesitated as she asked the question. There were no depths in her nature; she did not even understand regret – of remorse she had not the slightest conception; yet even she felt unwilling to look in the face of the man who loved her.

"Where is Earle?" she repeated.

"He has not returned from Quainton yet," replied Mattie; and the two girls entered the house together.

On the table of the little sitting-room lay a roll of newspapers, addressed to Miss Doris Brace. The beautiful lips curved with scorn as she read the name aloud.

"Doris Brace!" she said. "Fate must have been deriding me to give me such a name."

But Mattie made no reply; she had long since ceased to answer similar remarks.

Then Mrs. Brace, seeing the sitting-room door open, went in to look at what was going on. Doris looked up at her with a bright laugh.

"I am in a newspaper, mother," she said, "only imagine that!"

Mrs. Brace sighed, as she generally did in answer to Doris. The girl was far above her comprehension, and she owned it humbly with a sigh.

"What do they say, I wonder? Oh, there is a letter from Mr. Leslie!" She opened it hastily, then read aloud:

"My Dear Miss Brace, – Need I tell you my picture is the great success of the season? All London is talking about it – the papers are filled with its praise. See how much I have to thank you for! There is even a greater honor than all this praise in store; the queen has signified her gracious desire to purchase my picture! My fortune is made; the face that made sunshine at Brackenside will now shine on the walls of a royal palace. No one admires it more than your sincere friend,

"Gregory Leslie."

"There!" cried the girl, triumphantly, "the queen – even the queen is going to buy me!"

"Not you, child," said Mrs. Brace, rebukingly – "only your picture."

"It is all the same thing; the queen must have admired, or she would not have wished to purchase it."

"Gregory Leslie is a grand artist," said Mattie. "Surely some merit is due to him."

Doris laughed, as she always did at her sister's admonitions.

"If he had painted you, my dear," she said, laughingly, "I do not think the queen would have bought the picture."

Mattie made no reply, knowing well that in all probability it was true.

Then Doris opened the papers, and read the critiques one after another; they were all alike – one rapture of praise over the magnificent picture. "'Innocence' is the great picture of the day," said one. Another asked: "Where had Mr. Leslie found the ideally beautiful face so gloriously placed on canvas? Had he drawn it from the rich depths of glowing fancy, or had he seen a face like it?" Another paper told how the queen had purchased the picture, and foretold great things for the artist.

"It is really true," said Doris. "I shall be in a palace. Oh, Mattie! I am so sorry that no one will know it is a picture of me; they will admire my portrait, and no one will see me. I should like to go to the queen and say: 'That is my picture hanging on your palace wall.'"

"She would not speak to you," said Mrs. Brace, who took all things literally.

"Hundreds of beautiful faces are placed upon canvas every day," said Mattie; "and I do not suppose any one cares for the models they are painted from."

"I wish I were my own picture," sighed Doris. "I would a thousand times rather hang upon a palace wall than live here."

Then she suddenly remembered how uncertain it was, after all, whether she should be here much longer; in the excitement of reading so much in her own praise, she had almost forgotten Lord Vivianne. As she remembered him her face grew burning red.

"I am glad you have the grace to blush," said Mattie. "You are so vain, Doris, I should be afraid that your vanity would lead you astray."

"No matter where I go my picture will be safe," was the flippant reply.

And then the little council was broken up. Mrs. Brace went away to tell Mark of her fears. Mattie did not care to hear any more self-laudation, and Doris was left alone. Her face flushed, her pulse thrilled with gratified vanity; her heart seemed to expand with the keen, passionate sense of her own beauty.

"If every earthly gift had been offered to me," Doris thought, "I should have chosen beauty. Rank and wealth are desirable; but without a face to charm they would be worth little, and beauty can win them even if one be born without them. I shall win them yet, because men cannot look at me without caring for me."

And as she stood by the little rose-framed window there came to her a passionate longing that her beauty should be seen and known, that it should receive the homage and praise due to it. She, who was fair enough to win the admiration of a queen – she, on whose face royal eyes would dwell so often, and with such great delight!

"I wonder," she thought to herself, "if any of the royal princes will be likely to see that picture. One of them might admire it, and then, if he saw me, admire me."

There was no limit to her ambition, as there was none to her vanity. Had she been asked to share a throne, she would have consented as to a right. Vision after vision of dazzling delight came to her as she stood in the humble sitting-room that was the great delight of Mrs. Brace's heart; life flushed and thrilled in every vein. Doris held out her hands with a yearning cry for that which seemed so near, yet so far from her; the thousand vague possibilities of life rose before her. What could she not win with her beauty – what could not her beauty do for her.

Then Mrs. Brace came in again on business cares intent, holding several pieces of calico in her hands.

"Doris," she said, "I have been thinking that as you will perhaps soon be married to Earle, I may as well order a piece of gray calico for you when I order one for ourselves."

Down went the brilliant vision! The queen who admired her face, the palace where her picture would hang, the glorious prospect, the dream that had no name, the sweet, wild fancies that had filled every nerve – they faded before those prosaic words like snow in the sun!

"Marriage and gray calico! gray calico and Earle!" She turned with a quick, impatient gesture, almost fierce in its anger.

"Oh, mother! you do say such absurd things," she said; "you annoy me."

"Why, my dear? What have I said? You will want gray calico. You cannot be married from a respectable home like this, and not take a store of house linen with you."

"House linen!" repeated Doris. "You are not talking to Mattie, mother."

"I am not, indeed; if I were, I should at least receive a sensible answer. You are above my understanding. If you think that because a gentleman painted your portrait, and people admire it, you will never need to be sensible again, you make a great mistake."

Doris made no reply; a great flame of impatience seemed to burn her heart. How could she bear it, this prosaic, commonplace life? Gray calico and marriage all mingled in one idea! Kindly Mrs. Brace mistook her silence, and really thought she was making an impression on her.

"We have had but this one chance of giving the order; if it is not done now, it cannot be done until next year. Mrs. Moray is such a respectable woman herself that I should not like – "

Doris held up her hands with a passionate cry.

"That will do, mother! Order what you like, do as you like, but do not talk to me; I will not hear another word."

"You will grow more sensible as you grow older," said Mrs. Brace, composedly, as she went away with the calico in her hand, leaving Doris once more alone.

"How have I borne it all this time?" she asked herself, with a flush of anger on her fair face. "Yet, why should I be angry, and in what differ from them? Why should I be vexed or angry? Mattie would have talked for an hour – would have given a sensible answer, while I feel as though I had been insulted. They are my own mother and sister – why am I so different from them? Why does a bird of paradise differ from a homely linnet? Why does a carnation differ from a sun-flower? I cannot tell."

She could not tell. It was not given to her to know that all the characteristics of race were strong within her. But that little scene decided her; there had been some faint doubt in her mind, some little leaning toward Earle, and his great wealth of poetry and love – some lingering regret as to whether she was not forsaking the certain humble paths of peace and virtue for a brilliant but uncertain career.

"If I do this," she had thought to herself, "I shall kill Earle," and the idea had filled her mind with strange pathos. But all that vanished under one unskillful touch. Writing her story, knowing her faults, I make no excuses for her; but if she had had more congenial surroundings the tragedy of her life might have been averted.

She stood by the open window and thought it all over. The rich scent of the roses came in and clung to her dress and her hair; the blue sky had no cloud; the birds sang sweetly and clearly in the far distance; she heard the lowing of the cattle and the voices of the laborers.

Then her whole heart turned in disgust from her quiet home; it had no charm for her; she wanted none of it – she wanted life, warmth, glitter, perfume, jewels, the praise of men, the envy of women; she wanted to feel her own power, and to be followed by homage. What was her bright loveliness for if not for this? Stay here, where all the people were persecuting her about marrying Earle, having a respectable home, and buying gray calico! No, not for such a commonplace life. The beauty of hill and sky, and quaint meadow and shady lane, of blooming flowers and green trees, was not for her; it was dull, tame and uninteresting.

The greatest queen in all the wide world had admired her face. Was she to remain hidden in this humble, lowly house, where no one saw her but Earle and the few men whom business brought to the farm? It was not to be imagined. She raised her beautiful head with a clear, defiant gaze.

"I do not care," she said to herself, "whether it is right or wrong; I do not care what the price or penalty may be, I will go and take my share of what men and women call life."

And from that resolution, taken on a calm, bright summer day, under the golden light of heaven, with the song of the birds in her ears, she never once swerved or departed, let it cost her what it might.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FLIGHT AT MIDNIGHT

"It will be a fine moonlight night," said honest Mark Brace. "If this weather lasts, Patty, we shall have a good balance in the bank by the end of the year."

"Thank Heaven!" said his wife, "a little money is a comfortable thing, Mark; there is always a blessing on honest industry."

It was nearly nine o'clock; a late hour for Mark and his simple industrious habits; but after supper he had taken his pipe and found the conversation of his wife and daughter very delightful. Doris was not with them; she had letters to write to an old schoolfellow; she said she wanted to attend to them that very evening.

Insensibly, the absence of Doris was something of a relief to the honest farmer and his wife. When Doris was present, she kept them in a continual turmoil. They honestly believed themselves bound to correct her, to admonish her, to check her wild flow of words, the careless and often irreligious speech, and she never brooked the correction; so that most evenings in the old homestead were of a stormy nature. It was something of a relief, therefore, to have his homely wife on one side, and his daughter on the other. Honest Mark could indulge in that which his soul loved best; a few homely jests and solemn assurances of his own prosperity, while the bright, beautiful girl who puzzled him, was beyond the reach of his understanding, was busied in her own affairs.

"It is after nine," said Mark, "and I am tired. How was it that Earle did not return?"

"He knew that he could not see Doris," said Mattie, with a smile that was half a sigh.

Mark laughed when he was at a safe distance from her. There was nothing that Mark enjoyed more than what he called Doris' airs and graces.

"She keeps him in order," he said, slyly. "Mattie, if ever you think of being married, take a lesson from your sister, my dear."

"I hope she will not," said Mrs. Brace. "The true secret of being a good wife, Mattie, is to love your husband better than yourself; and though Doris is beautiful as a day-star, she will never do that."

Then Mark looked out into the quiet, white moonlight, and said:

"I shall begin to work in the Thorpe Meadows to-morrow, I hope the birds will wake me when the sun rises." And as he passed Doris' room he saw the light underneath the door. "Good-night," he said; "do not sit up late, writing, or you will spoil your eyes, and then Earle will grumble at me."

"I shall not be late," said Doris.

And Mark Brace, without a thought of the tragedy looming, went on.

Mrs. Brace saw the light, but she had not yet forgotten the cruel reception of her advice about the gray calico.

"Good-night, Doris," she said, without entering.

But Mattie went into the room. The excuse had been a perfectly true one. Doris sat writing still, with a tired look on her face, her round, white arms on the table, and two letters by her side.

"I have finished," she said, looking at Mattie.

"What can I do for you, Doris – shall I stay and talk to you?"

"No," she interrupted; "I am tired, and I would rather be alone."

"Good-night," said Mattie, not particularly liking the rebuff.

Then Doris went to her, and clasped her arms round her sister's neck.

"Good-night, little Mattie – good, simple Mattie. Kiss me."

The brown eyes were raised slowly to her face.

"You have never asked me to kiss you before, Doris."

"Have I not? Perhaps I never may ask you again. Perhaps if I asked you for a kiss this time next year, you would refuse to give it to me."

"No, I should never do that, Doris."

And the two faces – one so brilliantly beautiful, the other so good in its intelligent kindness – touched each other.

Long afterward Mattie remembered that the warm arms had seemed to tighten their clasp round her neck; then Doris drew away, with a little mocking laugh.

"What a sentimental scene!" she said; "the world must be coming to an end."

Mattie wondered a little at her sister's manner, then remembered that she never ought to be surprised, let Doris do what she might.

"Good-night," she repeated as she quitted the room, so little dreaming of all that would pass before she saw that face again.

Then Doris re-read her letters.

"Kindness in this case would only be cruelty," she said to herself. "Better for Earle to know at once. I should prefer sudden death to lingering torture." The beautiful lips curved in a smile that had in it much of pity. "Poor Earle!" she murmured, as she placed the letter written to him on the table. It ran as follows:

"Dear Earle, – I have thought it all over – my promise to marry you, and your great wish that I should become your wife. I have thought it all over, and feel convinced that it will not do – we should not be happy. What I want, in order to be happy, you cannot give me. You will have to work hard for money, then you will have but little of it. We are better apart. I love you, and it will be a sorrow to leave you; but it is all for the best. I have gone away where it will be useless to follow me. I am going abroad as governess to some little children, and that will give me a chance to see the world I am longing to behold.

"You will try to forget me, will you not, Earle? Is it any use suggesting to you that Mattie would be a far more sensible wife for you than I could ever make? Do not try to find me; I am going abroad under another name, and it would not please me to see you. I say good-bye to you with sorrow. As far as I can love any one, I love you. Doris."

It was a cold, heartless, decided letter; but it was twenty times better, she thought, in its decisive cruelty, than if she had lingered over soft farewell phrases. There was a second letter, even more cruel and more curt. It was addressed "To Father, Mother, and Mattie," and ran thus:

"I write to you all together as I have not time for three separate letters. You will be surprised in the morning not to see me. I have borne this kind of life as long as it was possible for me to do so, and now I am going away. I hope you will not make any effort to find me; I do not want to return to Brackenside – I do not want to marry Earle. I am going to teach some little children; and though it may not be quite the life I should like, it will be better than this."

It was not a kind letter. She placed them both together and pinned them to the cushion of the toilet-table.

"Mattie will see them the first thing in the morning," she said, "and ah, me, what a sensation they will make!"

Then she looked at her little watch; it was but just ten; she had to go to the railway station at Quainton, and catch the mail train for Liverpool – it would pass there at midnight. She had to walk some distance through the fields and on the high-road.

"I am sorry the moon shines so clearly, it will be light as day."

The moon had looked down on many cruel deeds, perhaps on none more cruel than the flight of this young girl from the roof that had so long sheltered her, the home that had been hers. Her path lay over a broken heart, and as she set her fair feet on it no remorse or regret came to her as the crimson life-blood flowed.

When she had crossed the meadows that led from the farm, she stood still and looked back at the pretty homestead; the moonbeams glistened in the windows, the great roses looked silvery, the ivy and jasmine clung to the walls, the flowers lay sleeping in the moonlight; there was the garden where she had spent the long, sunny days with Earle, there was the path which lead to the woods, the spreading tree underneath whose shades Earle had told of his great love. She looked at it all with a smile on her lips; no thought of regret in her heart.

"It is a dull, dreary place," she said to herself; "I never wish to see it again." Then she added: "I have killed Earle."

Good-bye, sweet, soft moonlight; good-bye, white-robed purity, girlish innocence – all left behind with the sleeping roses and the silent trees!

She turned away impatiently: perhaps the moonbeams had, after all, a language of their own that stirred some unknown depths in the vain, foolish heart.

Then she hastened down the high-road, thinking how fortunate it was that the country side was so deserted. The town of Quainton rose before her, the church, the market hall, and last of all the railway station. It wanted a quarter of an hour yet to midnight, and she remembered her lover's injunction that her face was not to be seen. She was careful enough never to raise the veil.

"I wonder," she thought to herself, "why he disliked the idea of my being seen?"

Then she laughed a little mocking laugh.

"It would be inconsistent," she said, "for the model of 'innocence' to be seen at a railway station at midnight."

There were few passengers for the mail train; she managed to get her ticket first-class for Liverpool without attracting much attention, or exciting any comment or surprise. During the few moments she stood there, she told the porter that she was going to meet her husband, whose ship had just reached the shore. Her face had flushed as she took out Lord Vivianne's purse and Lord Vivianne's money to pay for her ticket; then the mail train came thundering into the station: there was a minute or two of great confusion. She took her seat in a first-class carriage, then left Earle and Brackenside far behind.

"That is all done with," said Doris. "Those quiet pastoral days are ended, thank Heaven!"

No warning came to her of how she should return to the home she was in such haste to quit.

The journey was a long one. A flush of dawn reddened the sky, and the dew was shining, the birds beginning to sing, as she reached the great bustling city of Liverpool. She was half bewildered by the noise and confusion. A porter found a cab for her, and she gave the address of the hotel Lord Vivianne had given her. There was a long drive through the wilderness of streets, then she reached the hotel.

She felt, in spite of all her courage, some little timidity, when she found herself in those rooms alone. Her thoughts turned involuntarily to Earle – Earle, always tender and true, considerate of her comfort. What if this new lover, this rich young lord, should fail her, after all?