A Fair Mystery: The Story of a Coquette

"Tell him the truth, Mattie," said Mrs. Brace; "there is no use in deceiving him any more; he has been deceived long enough; tell him the truth."

He looked from one to the other with haggard eyes.

"Yes, tell me," he said; "tell me the worst."

"She did not love you, Earle," said Mattie, with a deep sob; "she has gone away because she did not want to marry you."

"I do not believe it!" he gasped. "I will not believe it! Oh, Heaven! How do you dare to slander her so? She did love me. Why should she pretend? She promised to be my wife; why should she if she did not love me?"

"My poor Earle," said Mattie; and in his hand she placed the letter. "I never thought there was anything wrong," she continued; "but when neither of you returned, I went back into her room to look for something, and found these letters. They were pinned to the toilet cushion. One is for us, one for you. Oh, Earle, if I could but bear your sorrow for you."

He turned away, without one word, and opened the letter. They could never tell how he had read it, how long he was in mastering its contents, what he thought of them, or how he bore the pain. He made no comment as he read, his white lips never moved, no murmur escaped him; but, after a time – it seemed to them endless time – he fell with his face to the ground, as a brave man falls when he receives a death-wound.

"It has killed him," said Mrs. Brace. "Oh! that false, wicked girl! He is dead, Mattie?"

But Mattie, quick as thought, had raised his head and held it in her arms.

"He is not dead, mother," she said. "Run for my father." For one short minute she was left with him alone, then she raised her troubled face, repeated her well-known prayer: "God save Earle! If I could but have borne it for him!" she thought.

Then the farmer came in, utterly useless and incompetent, as men are in the presence of great trouble which they cannot understand. He commenced his assistance by talking loudly against the perfidy of women; and when his daughter sensibly reminded him that that was no longer any use, he began to lament the folly of men in loving women so madly; reminded again that this was still more useless, Mark raised the helpless figure in his strong arms, tears running down his face. He laid Earle on a couch, and then looked helplessly at him.

"I do not know what is to be done for him," he said. "His mother will go distracted. Ah! wife, she would have done a kinder deed, that golden-haired lassie of ours, if she had killed him at once."

Then Mark Brace went away.

"The women must manage it," he said to himself. His tender heart was wrung by the sight of that anguish.

It was Mattie who ministered to him, until Earle opened his eyes, and looked at her with a glance that frightened her.

"I remember it all," he said, hoarsely; "she has gone away because she did not love me – did not want to marry me. Will you leave me alone, Mattie?"

"If you will promise me not to do anything to hurt yourself," she said.

"I shall not do that. Do you know why? She promised to marry me, and she shall do it. To find her I will search the wide world through. I will follow her, even to the valley of the shadow of death, but she shall be my wife as she has promised to be – I swear it to the just high God!"

"Hush, my dear; your great sorrow drives you mad. You will think differently after a time."

"I shall not," he replied; "she shall be my wife. Listen, Mattie; bend down to me while I whisper. She shall be my wife, or I will kill her!"

"Hush! You do not mean it. Your sorrow has made you mad."

"No, I am not mad, Mattie." He held both her hands tightly in his own. "I am not mad, but I will have my just rights, or my just revenge." His breath flamed hotly upon her face. "You will remember that, on the day she fled from me, I swore never to rest until I found her; never to rest until she was my wife, and if she refused to be that, I swore to murder her!"

Mattie shrank from him, trembling and frightened.

"No wonder," he said, "that men go mad; women make devils of them. No wonder they slay that which they love best; women madden them. What have I done? – oh, Heaven! what have I done that I should suffer this? Listen to me before you go. I gave her my love – she has mocked it, laughed at it. I gave her my genius – she has blighted it, she has crushed it. I gave her my heart – it has been her toy and her plaything for a few short months, she has broken it with her white hands, she has danced over it with her light feet. I gave her my life, and she has destroyed it. I am a man, and I will have justice; she shall give back to me what I have given her, or I will kill her."

She saw that he was growing more wild with every word: his face flushed hotly, his lips burned like fire, his eyes were filled with flame. She was afraid of him; and yet in this, the darkest hour of his need, she could not leave him. Again and again from her lips, as she knelt there trying to console him, came the prayer of which she never tired – "God save Earle."

At last the wild raving – she could only think it raving – ceased; she saw his eyes darken and droop.

"He will sleep now," thought Mattie, "and sleep will save him."

She drew down the blinds, and shut out the bright sunshine; then, with a long, lingering look at the changed, haggard face, she left him.

Mrs. Brace saw her come from the little parlor, looking so white and wan that her mother's heart ached for her. She kissed the pale face.

"That wicked girl is not going to kill you as well as Earle," she said. "I will not have you distressed in this way."

"Oh, mother!" cried Mattie, "never mind my distress, think of Earle. Earle will go mad or die."

"Nothing of the kind, my dear. He was sure to feel very keenly. He loved Doris very much, but he will not die. It takes a great deal to kill. He has too much sense to go mad. He will get over it in time, and be just as fond of some one else."

Mattie had a truer insight into his nature than had Mrs. Brace.

They went in several times that day to look at him; he lay always in the same position, his face shaded with his hand and turned from the light, sleeping heavily they thought, but sleep and Earle were strangers. He lay there – only Heaven knew what he suffered during these hours of silence and solitude – going over and over again in his own mind all that he had ever said or done to Doris. She had been difficult to win; she had been coy, and he thought proud, sensitive; but he did really believe, from the depths of his heart, that she loved him. What motive could she have had in deceiving him if she had not really loved him? It would have been just as easy to have said so as not. There was no need for the deception. She could have rejected him just as easily as she accepted him.

He alternated between hope and despair. At one time he felt quite sure that she loved him, and that this was only a caprice, nothing more; she was determined not to be easily won. Then his mood changed, and he despaired. She had never loved him, and preferred leaving home and every one rather than marry him.

Still, in one thing, he was inflexible; let it be how it might, he was determined to find her. He would search the whole world through, but find her he would.

He was spared, in that hour of anguish, one trial; no pang of jealousy came to him; he felt certain of one thing, at least, if Doris did not love him, she loved no one else. If she would not marry him, she was not going to marry another. He knew quite well that here at Brackenside she had seen no one; thank Heaven at least for that.

Then a deep, heavy, dreamless sleep came over him. When he woke again it was night and honest Mark, with a face full of bewildered pain, was standing over him.

"Come, Earle," he said, "this will never do; you have been here all day without food. You must not give way after this fashion."

But the troubled eyes raised to his had no understanding in them.

"Remember," continued Mark, with his simple eloquence, "you are the only son of your mother, and she is a widow."

The words, in their simple pathos, struck Earle. He rose from his couch, and Mark saw, as he did so, that he shuddered and trembled like one seized with mortal cold.

"What do you wish me to do, Mark?" he said.

"Take something to eat, then go home to your mother. The world is not all ended because a golden-haired lassie has chosen to run away from you. Women are all very well," continued Mark, with an air of oracular wisdom, "but the man who trusted his whole heart in them would not be a wise man."

"Then I have been foolish," said Earle, "for I trusted my life and my love together."

He was standing up then, looking around him with vague, bewildered eyes.

"I am to go home, Mark?" he said at last.

And the farmer, believing that air and exercise would be best for him, said "Yes."

But Earle turned away with a sick shudder from the food that was offered to him.

"I could sooner eat ashes," he said.

And they forebore to press him.

"You will feel better to-morrow," said Mark. "A night's sleep makes a wonderful difference in our way of looking at matters."

But Mattie and her mother followed him with wistful eyes.

"She has spoiled his life," said Mrs. Brace.

"She has broken his heart," said Mattie.

Then they seemed to remember that all their sympathy was given to Earle, and they had not thought of being sorry for themselves.

Mattie had lost, as she believed, her sister, yet her thoughts were all for Earle.

The three sat in silence. It was Mark who broke it first:

"So, after all, it was to Earle and to us she was writing," he said, "and not to her school-fellows. I wish I had gone in the room and looked over her shoulder; I should have known, then, what she was doing."

"It would not have prevented it," said Mrs. Brace. "Doris has always had her own way, no matter who suffered by it; if she had not gone now, she would have gone another time."

Then Mark looked up with a puzzled face.

"She has seen no one, to my knowledge," he said, "since she left school. How did she manage, I wonder, to get this situation?"

The solution of that problem occupied the remainder of the evening. They could not imagine how she had contrived it. To them it was another proof of her indomitable will, proving that she would accomplish her ends, no matter what they were, or at what cost.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THERE IS NO TRUE LOVE EXCEPT THE LOVE OF A MOTHER

Out once more under the pale light of the stars, repassing the same road that he had trodden a few hours since, so full of hope and love.

Earle walked like one dizzy from a great blow; the silent, pitiful stars, with their great golden eyes, shone down from the depths of the blue sky; the night wind seemed to hush, the birds were silent, the birds were asleep.

"Doris!" he cried, in a loud, passionate voice, "have you really gone from me, Doris?"

It seemed to him that the force of his love, the might of his affection, must call her back – she could not resist him. Surely the most pitiful cry that rose to the clear heavens that night was the cry of this broken heart.

"Doris!" sounded so distinctly that it startled the birds from their sleep; but no answer came to his call.

How he reached home he never knew. The stars were shining when he left Brackenside – they were shining when he reached Lindenholm; but he never knew how long he had been coming.

His mother, looking pale and tired, was waiting for him. She had felt impatient with him before, thinking that as he saw Doris every day, it was surely not needful to prolong his wooing until late at night, knowing that she must sit up for him; but one look at his face took away all thought of self. Wonder and alarm shone in her eyes as she gazed at his drawn, haggard features.

Then, as he had often done when he was a boy, he knelt at her feet and laid his head on her knee.

"Doris has gone away, mother," he said.

When she heard that she knew all. They sat talking, mother and son, far into the night; and then Mrs. Moray learned something of the passionate love of her son for the girl who had promised to be his wife. In that hour his whole heart was opened to her, and she listened in wondering fear. To love anything created, any human being after this wild fashion, seemed to her most wonderful and most sinful. It was a volcano, this poet's love. She laid her hand on the fair, bowed head of her son.

"It is the old story, Earle," she said, "of worshiping an idol, then finding it clay. You think your pain intolerable, impossible to bear; yet it is but the same as every man, and woman, too, who sets his or her heart upon a creature has to endure. There is no true love in this world, Earle – none," she continued, with passionate bitterness, "except the love of a mother for her child."

"I cannot believe it, mother. You loved my father, did you not – and he loved you?"

"Yes," she replied, "we had a deep, true, loyal affection for each other, but, Earle, listen, my son. My first love was a young soldier, who died in India; and before he knew me, your father had been deceived just as you have been. Oh! believe me, turn where you will, on which side you may, there is no reliance to be placed on human love."

He bent his head with a moan that went to his mother's heart.

"Then why," he said, "have I youth, and strength, and life, if I may not have love? I cannot believe it, mother, I love my love, and I will have her – I will search this wide world over, but I will find her. She is mine – my promised wife; her hands have been in mine, I have kissed her lips, and I would rather kill her and slay myself than that any one else should take her from me."

And his mother, with all her severity, knew that it was useless to argue with him then, nor did there come to her for long an opportunity for saying any more. That night she knelt by her son's bedside, as she had done many hundreds of times when he was a child; she bathed his hot brow, she made him repeat, after her, the simple prayers he had said as a child; and when, at last, the deep yet troubled sleep fell over him, she prayed as Mattie did – "God save my Earle."

Hard, bitter thoughts arose in her mind against the vain girl whose falsity had destroyed him; but the hardest thought, the darkest imagination she had of her, did not equal the reality, which – Heaven be thanked! – she never lived to see.

On the next day, Earle was so ill that she would not allow him to get up. Whenever she went near him he was muttering to himself about Doris; and when he spoke aloud, it was always on one subject – going in search of her. It did not surprise Mrs. Moray, on the third day of his illness, to find him in a high fever, and to hear the doctor say, when he was sent for, that he had but little hope of his life. They, for the time, almost forgot Doris in their fear for Earle. As the long days and longer nights passed on, and the danger increased, Mrs. Moray aged terribly – the upright figure grew bent and stooping; the gray hair turned white; deep furrows came in the pale forehead – her whole, sole prayer was for the life of her son.

By her father's desire, Mattie went to Lindenholm, and remained there, so as to be a comfort to the widow. Mattie never forgot those days, the breathless suspense, the fear, the earnestness with which the unhappy mother would follow her about from room to room, saying always the same thing:

"Never mind talking to me, Mattie; pray for my son."

There came a day when the doctor said he feared no human means could save him – when the white-haired mother flung herself on her knees, crying loudly to Heaven to spare her son. She had preached, in her stern, cold way of resignation, to others, but in this, the hour of her terrible trial, she forgot all; she besieged Heaven, as it were, for her son. Even Mattie shrank from those wild words.

"Let me suffer, my God!" she cried; "send me torture and death, but spare him! let me suffer, let him live! I would give my body to be burned, my heart to be riven – but spare my only son!"

Faint with the fervor of her own words, she fell on her face, and there lay till Mattie touched her gently.

"He is asleep," she said; "Earle has fallen into a deep sleep, and the doctor says he has taken a turn for the better."

She could not thank God, for her rapture of gratitude found no words.

Who is it that says that "a prayer granted is sometimes a curse?"

The time was coming when those who loved him best said it was the greatest pity that he had not died in this illness; he would then have died with his mother's hope of heaven infolding him.

Earle grew better so slowly that the improvement could hardly be seen, and during the whole of his convalescence, his mind was busy upon the subject. He would go in search of Doris; nothing should keep him from that; neither remonstrance nor tears. The idea grew with his strength, until it became part of his life. He had some little money – money that he had saved for his marriage; he would spend it in searching for her.

One day, when the doctor came, he raised his wistful eyes to the kindly face.

"How soon shall I be able to travel?" he asked.

"Not for six weeks," was the reply, "and not even then unless you are careful."

Careful he resolved to be, and his mother wondered at his sudden submission and attention to the doctor's orders; but much that was wonderful had to happen before those six weeks were ended.

There had been great anxiety at the farm; one reason of it was, that very soon after Doris went, the money came as usual, and Mark Brace was deeply puzzled to know what to do with it. He would have returned it, but he did not know where to return it to. He took long and wise counsel with his wife, but Mrs. Brace saw no way out of the difficulty.

"If we could but write to the person who sent it, and tell her what Doris has done, it would be some comfort," she said; "but we cannot do that even."

It was settled at last, that the money should be placed in the bank, to await the return of Doris.

"She will come back," said Mark, "some day, when she has seen enough of the world she so longed for – to find out how false it is; she will come back when she wants true friends and true love; though it may be a long time first."

After long discussions, they agreed it would be better to sanction Doris' flight than to call public attention to it.

"There was nothing so injurious to a girl as to have it known that she ran away from home," Mrs. Brace said. "We must shield her all we can. We must shield her even more than if she were our own."

So, when friends and neighbors asked about her, the farmer and his wife had but one answer to make, and that was, that she had grown tired of the quiet of Brackenside, and had gone out as a governess.

Monsieur D'Anvers was the only one who persisted in his inquiries, and he asked where she had gone. Mark, who loved truth, and hated falsehood, looked uncomfortable, then replied that she had gone abroad: but for himself he did not know the names of foreign places; so it passed over. The few who knew the family told each other, as a piece of news, that the pretty Miss Brace had gone abroad as a governess. Some said, with her beautiful face she would be sure to marry well; and then the matter died away.

One day Mark returned home in a state of great excitement and happiness.

"What do you think has happened," he asked of his wife.

"You have heard from Doris," she replied.

Then for one moment his face darkened.

"No," he replied, "I have not heard from Doris. I wish you did not think so much of her; it makes you dull. I heard this morning that all the family were at the Castle again."

Mrs. Brace, seeing that he really wished her to be surprised, was surprised.

"I am very glad they are back," she said. "A great noble like the duke should live upon his own land."

"That is not all," said Mark, with irrepressible triumph. "I was walking through the market-place at Quainton this morning, and I saw the carriage with out-riders and footmen. Now, what do you think, Patty? before all the town the duke stopped the carriage and sent for me."

Then indeed Mrs. Brace felt deeply interested. How could she think too much of a duke who stopped his carriage in a public market-place and spoke to her husband?

"What did he say, Mark?" she asked.

"He said that he had been away some months, and he hoped we were all well. That proud, beautiful daughter of his was in the carriage, Lady Estelle; her voice is like a clear, soft flute. 'How do you do, Mr. Brace?' she said, and I told her that I enjoyed the best of health, hoping that she did the same."

"That was rather free spoken, Mark," said his wife, doubtfully.

"Not at all," was the sturdy reply. "She looked pleased enough; then she said: 'How is the young girl you brought to see the Castle?' I told her that Doris had gone abroad, to be a governess; she leaned back in her carriage, and held up her parasol.

"'Was she tired of Brackenside?' she asked, and I said, 'Yes – I thought she was.'

"'Is she married?' asked my lady. I said, 'No.'

"She looked at me strangely, and then the carriage drove on. It was strange altogether."

And again Mrs. Brace turned from her husband with a sigh. There was evil at hand, she was sure.

CHAPTER XXXIV

"AFTER SO MANY YEARS OF DREAD HAS IT COME AT LAST?"

There was no part of the day that the Duke of Downsbury enjoyed so much as the breakfast hour, when his beautiful daughter and his aristocratic wife amused themselves by the discussion of letters and papers that had come by post; then Lady Estelle seemed more lively, and the very sunshine of the duke's life was the happiness of his only child. As the day passed on she grew more listless, and the expression of ennui on her face grew deeper, but with the morning light she had something of the brightness that had distinguished her as a girl.

On this morning the sun shone so fairly, the roses were blooming, the birds were singing, the whole world was bright and gay. The breakfast-room was, in itself, the very picture of comfort and luxury; the sunbeams sparkled on the costly silver, the flowers filled the air with fragrance. The duke, a fine, handsome man, the very type of an English nobleman, sat with a most contented smile on his face. The cup of tea by his plate was odorous as a bouquet of flowers. The duchess, proud and stately, was deeply engaged in the perusal of a closely-written letter. Lady Estelle, looking more beautiful than ever in the morning light, was busily engaged in doing nothing; neither book nor paper interested her; but to one who knew that fair face well, there was a cloud upon it, an expression of unusual languor and thought.

Suddenly the duke addressed his wife:

"Did I tell you, my dear, that I met my model farmer yesterday, the honest man who amused you so much by his uncertainty over his hands and feet?"

"I remember Mark Brace," said the duchess; "how could I ever forget him? He seemed to me the most honest and sensible man I ever met."

"You remember, perhaps, the pretty child, and the romantic story?"

"Yes; and I never prophesied good for that child," rejoined the duchess.

Lady Estelle raised her fair, proud face.

"Do not say that, mamma; it seems so hard upon the child."

"It will be true, my dear," said her grace, calmly. "What has become of her, I wonder? I have not heard anything of her lately."

The duke smiled.

"One part of your prophecy has come true; she was tired of Brackenside, and has gone abroad."

"Gone abroad?" repeated her grace.

It was the calm, sweet voice of Lady Estelle that replied:

"She has gone as governess to some little children, mamma; surely that was a sensible thing to do."

The duchess looked up in surprise at the unwonted interest in Lady Estelle's voice.

"It is so sensible, Estelle, that I am disposed to alter my opinion of her; she has more sense and less vanity than I gave her credit for. I am much pleased to hear it. But surely you or some one else told me she was going to be married."

"She told me so herself," replied Lady Estelle, "on the day she came here; she was going to marry a gentleman and a poet."

"Very improbable," said her grace; "gentlemen do not marry beneath them, as a rule."