Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily

The beautiful voice rose clear, strong, delicious. There was just one falter in the first notes, just one tremor like a sob of agony. Then the woman's will conquered the woman's heart. She sang on to the end sweetly, bravely gathered up one or two of the fragrant floral tributes that rained at her feet, and with just the proper bow and smile retired.

Tumultuous applause, passionate encores followed her retreating footsteps. She did not respond to them. They thought her chary of her exquisite voice; they did not know that she had fallen down like one dead on the floor of the little dressing room, and that the lips that had sang to them so sweetly were now flecked with drops of blood forced out by the heart's great emotion. The flowers had fallen from her hands, and they were clenched so tightly that the white gloves were torn and spoiled.

"Oh, Clarence, Clarence, my traitor-love, we have met at last," she moaned. "Oh, God, how hard it is that I love him still! That perjured wretch who blighted my life and that of our innocent child! He has not forgotten me! It was remorse that looked out from his eyes at me to-night. Yet that was his wife and child who sat beside him! Oh, heavens, what humiliation for me who stood there beneath their cold, critic eyes to remember that I was once his wife, that I rested in his bosom, that my arms cradled his child! Oh, Irene, my lost one, my darling, I must crush down this weak love that blazed afresh in my heart when I met the eyes of the man I once held as the truest and noblest of men! I must remember that the knowledge of his sin drove you to death, my darling, and I must hate him for your wrongs and mine!"

So she raved on in her impotent despair, while the thunders of the orchestra filled the house, and people chanted her praises, prophesying for her a career equal to Patti or Nilsson. She, whose voice was sweeter than nightingale's notes or the sound of falling waters, lay there like a broken flower, crushed by her terrible despair.

When she had retreated from the stage, Mrs. Leslie touched Guy Kenmore's arm. Turning to look at her face, he saw that her eyes were wide and startled.

"Well!" he said.

She answered in a voice that was hoarse with emotion:

"It was the face that Irene wears in her locket. What does it mean?"

He whispered back softly, "It was Irene's mother! It was Elaine Brooke."

"Merciful heavens," exclaimed the lady, and turned to look at Mr. Stuart.

Then she saw Mrs. Stuart and Lilia hanging over him in an agony of despair, and gentlemen crowding into their box. Mr. Stuart was a brave and a strong man, but when that ghost from the past had risen to confront him, then faded quietly again, heart and strength had failed him, and sitting in his chair, he had silently swooned away.

They said that the heat had overcome him, and bore him out into the fresh air, where he revived a little. Some advised him not to return to the concert hall, but he waved them quietly aside, ashamed of his womanly weakness, and returned to Lilia, who was sobbing with grief and fear.

"It is nothing, my dear. I am quite well again," he said, gravely. "But shall I take you home now?"

"No, no, papa, I wish to hear the beautiful lady sing again," she replied, turning eagerly back to the stage.

Mrs. Stuart said nothing to her husband. She was whispering with Julius Revington, who had come into her box a little while before. The gleam of hate in the lady's eyes flashed almost brighter than her diamonds, her cheek glowed through its rouge with a deep natural red, and her jeweled hands clenched each other nervously in her lap.

Miss Brooke came again after a little interval, which was filled up by other performers. She had fought down her terrible emotion, but her lovely face was very pale and sad, and she never lifted her dark blue eyes while she sang. This time it was an Italian chanson, and the words flowed easily from her lips in that liquid southern tongue that is so sweet and soft. The Florentines were charmed, as the professor had intended they should be, at hearing one of their native songs warbled by the sweet lips of the stranger. She retired again under a storm of bouquets and applause, but, as before, she did not respond to their encores. It was too keen an agony to go back and sing to them again before those burning dark eyes, whose gaze she intuitively felt upon her, though she would not lift her own to meet their flashing light. It was all that she could bear to go on when her turn came.

But when she had sung her last song and the liquid Italian recall followed her again, Professor Bozzaotra went to her. He was radiant with joy.

"Let me beg you to humor them, my child," he said, radiantly. "You have carried their warm hearts by storm. Be kind to them. Sing them something, anything to satisfy their craving."

She went back and stood before them, with bowed head and an almost divine sadness on her face. She sang some words that were "as sad as earth, as sweet as Heaven."

"I stand by the river where both of us stood,And there is but one shadow to darken the flood;And the path leading to it where both used to pass,Has the step of but one to take dew from the grass;One forlorn since that day!"The flowers of the margins are many to see,But none stoops at my bidding to pluck them for me;The bird in the alder sings loudly and long,For my low sound of weeping disturbs not his song,As thy vow did that day."I stand by the river—I think of the vow—calm as the place is, vow-breaker, be thou!I leave the flower growing—the bird, unreproved—Would I trouble thee rather than them, my beloved,And my lover that day?"Go! be sure of my love—by that treason forgiven;Of my prayers—by the blessings they win thee from Heaven;Of my grief—(guess the length of the sword by the sheath's)By the silence of life more pathetic than death's!Go! be clear of that day!"

Then the concert was over!

CHAPTER XLII

The concert was over, and hastily excusing himself to his companion, Guy Kenmore made his way around to the private entrance; with some difficulty he elbowed his way through the eager throng that waited to see the lovely singer pass to her carriage, and was fortunate enough to meet her coming down the steps on the professor's arm. He touched her eagerly.

"Miss Brooke," he said, and she turned with a start and a cry. Her eyes dilated with wonder as she saw by whom she was addressed.

"Mr. Kenmore—you here!" she exclaimed, and put out her delicate hand graciously.

He pressed it warmly in both his own.

"I am delighted to meet you," he said, "I have news for you—good news. May I call on you at the earliest admissible hour to-morrow morning?"

She glanced at the carriage.

"You may come with us in the carriage now if you will," she replied. "The hour is not too late for good news from an old friend."

Then she introduced her friend to the professor. The gentlemen shook hands cordially, and Bozzaotra repeated Elaine's invitation to come with them in the carriage.

"Gratefully, if you can wait for one moment while I make my excuses to a friend," he said.

They promised to wait, and Mr. Kenmore hurried back to inform Mrs. Leslie that he would not return to the villa that night. He heard Julius Revington saying that he should remain at the hotel that night and walk out to the villa in the morning; but he paid small heed to the words, in the preoccupation of his mind. He was longing to tell Elaine that her daughter lived; and as soon as he had handed Mrs. Leslie to her carriage, he hurried back to her.

She received him with a pensive smile of pleasure, and made room for him by her side, the professor being seated opposite. The carriage door was closed, and they were whirled away.

"It is a great surprise to see you here, Mr. Kenmore," Elaine began, in her musical voice. "Is your news from mamma and Bertha? I have so longed to hear from them; but, though I have written them several times, I have had no news of them since I left Bay View."

"Bang! Whirr!"

His answer is not on record.

A pistol had been fired close to the horses' heads, and they plunged and reared, almost upsetting the carriage. The shriek of the driver was heard as he tumbled from his seat upon the stony pavement; then the maddened steeds, without check or hindrance, dashed blindly forward in a mad, terrified pace, dragging after them the rocking carriage, with its precious, living freight.

Meantime, the man who had fired that reckless, murderous shot had been overtaken by Nemesis.

In his eager excitement he had gone too near the horses' heads, and, making his retreat, he had stumbled and fallen. In an instant they had trampled his fallen body with their plunging hoofs. Compassionate hands lifted him up from the stony street, a crushed and bleeding mass, in which the spark of life yet feebly lingered.

The carriage driver was picked up senseless in the street, where the maddened horses had hurled him in their swift rush to destruction. Luckily, he had escaped the contact of their iron hoofs, and his injuries, though serious, were not mortal.

But that poor sinner who, in the commission of a dastardly crime, had been overtaken by a swift and just Nemesis, how fared he?

They placed him on a litter and bore him into the nearest house. Men looked at that crushed and bleeding semblance of poor humanity, and, turning away, shuddered with horror. The physician came, and shook his head.

"My poor fellow, you can live but a few hours more," he said. "Tell us who your friends are that we may summon them."

"Are you sure, quite sure, that I must die?" moaned the sufferer, while the dews of terror beaded the weakly, handsome face which had escaped the vicious hoofs that had beaten the life from his body.

"You cannot possibly live but a few hours longer," repeated the physician as kindly as he could speak, and with a deep pity on his face that would not have been there could he have guessed that the wretch had wrought his own destruction.

Moans of terror and despair welled over the man's blanched lips when he realized that death was so near him. He begged that a priest might be sent for to pray the pardon of Heaven on his sinful soul.

"And your friends," they asked him, "shall we not bring them, too?"

With a moan of pain he answered:

"Send some one with a swift horse to overtake Clarence Stuart, who is returning to his villa in the suburbs. Tell him Julius Revington is dying, and—the lady—who was in the carriage—with the runaway horses—if she is living, bring her to me with all haste."

CHAPTER XLIII

The willing hearts were not wanting to do the bidding of the dying man. Messengers went in three different directions, while the physician remained to assuage by all means that lay in his power the agonies that racked that tortured form. Anon the priest came, and with prayers and holy words strove to comfort the poor departing soul.

The swiftest horse in Florence went clattering over the road in pursuit of the carriage that held Clarence Stuart and his wife and daughter. It was soon overtaken, and the ominous message flashed like a thunder-clap upon their startled senses.

Mrs. Stuart and Lilia uttered shrieks of the wildest dismay.

But Clarence Stuart, after the first shock of surprise, regained his self-possession.

"I must go to him at once," he said. "Mrs. Stuart, I must transfer you and Lilia to one of the other carriages while I return to poor Julius."

To his surprise the lady answered, in sharp, hysterical tones:

"Lilia may go in the carriage with Mrs. Leslie, but I shall return with you to the death-bed of poor Julius."

"I object to your doing so. It may be an unpleasant ordeal for a lady of your delicate nerves," Mr. Stuart said, almost sternly.

"I insist upon going. All the arguments against my doing so will be quite wasted," she exclaimed, doggedly.

"Oh, mamma, do not leave me," cried her daughter, in almost hysterical distress.

But Mrs. Stuart shook off the clinging hands of the weeping girl almost rudely.

Mr. Stuart regarded his wife in silent amaze and displeasure. Nothing angered him more than for anyone to speak unkindly to his child, but he well knew how useless it would be to remonstrate with his wife, so without more ado Lilia was transferred to Mrs. Leslie's care, and the husband and wife returned to the city.

No more unpleasant sight could have greeted Julius Revington's eyes than the face of Mrs. Stuart as she entered the room where he lay attended by the priest and the physician, the only helpers left to him on earth. The eyes already dim with the film of death gazed at her with weak repugnance and horror.

Unheeding his gaping wounds and his blood-stained garments, she knelt down by his side and whispered frantically in his ear.

With all the strength that was left in his mangled arms he pushed her from him.

"Do not tempt me to die with all this load of sin on my soul!" he cried. "I must confess, confess! The priest is waiting to shrive me of my sins! Clarence, Clarence," he cried out wildly, "take her away, take her away! She has been my evil genius. I was weak, but never guilty until she whispered her evil suggestions in my ear and bribed me with her gold!"

"It is false, false! Let no one listen to him. These are but the ravings of delirium!" cried the woman angrily.

Her looks and actions were those of a desperate, maddened woman. The physician came up firmly to her side and attempted to draw her away.

"Let me entreat you, madam, not to shorten the brief span of my patient's life by your unjust charges," he cried. "I assure you he is not delirious, but in the full possession of his senses. Come away from him."

They were about to drag her forcibly away when the door opened suddenly and Guy Kenmore entered the room with Miss Brooke clinging to his arm.

CHAPTER XLIV

It was a strange sight on which the flickering gaslight fell in that little room. The dying man, lying on the litter on which he had been borne into the room, and from which the physician declared it impossible to remove him, was a ghastly sight that sickened human sensibilities.

Mrs. Stuart, crouching on the floor beside him in her rose-tinted satin, her priceless lace and flashing diamonds, looked like a maniac. Her eyes flashed with hatred and desperation, her face was death-white, her breath fluttered over her lips in short gasps, and she defiantly resisted the efforts of Mr. Stuart and the physician to draw her away from the side of the dying man whose looks all too plainly expressed his abhorrence at her presence. At a little distance the old priest was devoutly crossing himself while he muttered an inaudible prayer. No wonder that Elaine Brooke reeled with horror as her gaze fell on that strange and dreadful scene.

"Be brave. Do not lose heart," Guy Kenmore whispered to her as he felt her weight grow heavier on his arm. "That dying man may have an important confession to make to you."

"I will be brave," she whispered back, but when she saw Clarence Stuart and the woman who had rivalled her in his heart—the woman who was his wife—it seemed to her that she could not breathe, that she must rush from the room, or surely she would fall down dead there at her traitor husband's feet.

They turned and saw them, the tall, gracious-looking man with his gentle, protecting air as he looked down upon Elaine—Elaine all in white, with her golden hair fallen down upon her shoulders in shining disorder, the snowy roses dying on her breast, and the pathos of a terrible despair written all over her lovely, pallid face—they saw her, and from Mrs. Stuart's lips shrilled a cry of rage and despair, from those of the dying man an exclamation of joy.

"You live!" he cried, "thank God, you live! Your death is not upon these dying hands!"

"Then it was you who fired that terrible shot!" cried Elaine, in horror.

"God forgive me, yes," he wailed. "Come nearer, Elaine Brooke. I have a story to tell you before I go hence. I have a legacy to leave you. Oh, horrors, will not some one take this mad woman away from me?"

Mrs. Stuart had sprung upon him in such insane fury that it seemed as though she meant to hurry his remorseful soul into the eternity to which it was hastening. Mr. Stuart hastened to draw her away, dreading the struggle that must ensue, when suddenly, with a choking gasp, she fell senseless into his arms. The tension on her nerves had given way, and she had instantly fainted.

"That is much better than having to remove the lady by violence," said the physician, relieved. "We will remove her to another room now where she cannot distress my patient."

"Clarence, you must return in a moment," moaned Julius Revington. "I have a confession to make to this lady—one that you must hear."

Mr. Stuart looked back a moment, and his glance met Elaine's large blue eyes, true as those of an angel, yet full of dumb agony. His glance fell and he turned away, with a strange thrill at his heart.

"She repents of her cruelty to me," he said in his heart. Meanwhile Guy Kenmore had spread a dark covering over Revington's mangled form, and Elaine knelt down beside him on a low cushion which Mr. Kenmore had arranged for her. She looked with compassionate gentleness at the sufferer who was passing away so fast from the reach of all earthly resentment.

"You are a stranger to me," she said, wonderingly. "Why did you try to harm me, and what can you have to confess to me?"

"You shall know presently," he answered. "Wait until Clarence Stuart comes back. You must hear my story together—you two who have been so foully wronged and parted."

CHAPTER XLV

A startled look came over Elaine's face at those strange words from the lips of the dying man.

"Wronged and parted," she repeated, vaguely.

"Yes," he replied, and at that moment the door unclosed and Mr. Stuart came again into the room.

"Let all go out now except Mr. Stuart and this lady," said Julius Revington, feebly.

But Elaine interposed:

"I should like for my friend, Mr. Kenmore, to stay," she said. "He knows all the story of my life, and if I have been deceived beyond what I know I should like for him to hear it."

Julius Revington looked curiously at the man whom Elaine claimed as her friend.

The doctor and the priest had retired, and the four were alone in the room.

"What is he to you?" he asked, in his weak, painful tones.

Elaine looked up at Guy.

"Shall I tell him?" she asked.

He bowed his head in acquiescence, and she replied:

"He is my daughter's husband."

"Irene's husband!" exclaimed the dying man, feebly, and Clarence Stuart echoed the startled cry, "Irene's husband!"

"Yes, she is my wife, but she believed me dead when she promised to marry you," replied Guy Kenmore, looking at the dying man.

"My God," exclaimed Julius Revington, and for a few moments he lay silent contemplating this strange piece of news, then he looked curiously at the handsome, noble-looking man.

"You did not claim her when you came," he said.

"It was her secret. I was waiting until she gave me leave to divulge it," was the quiet reply.

Elaine had been listening with startled eyes. She sprang up and caught Mr. Kenmore's arm.

"I—do not—understand you," she panted. "You speak as if—as if my child were yet alive!"

He took her trembling hands and held them gently in his own.

"I meant to break it to you gently," he said. "But do not be shocked. That is the news I had for you. Irene is alive, and but a few miles away from you. You shall see her soon."

An ominous gasp from Julius Revington recalled them to his side.

"That news will wait," he said. "But I—I have but a little while to live. Listen to me first."

With a beating heart and a face radiant with sudden joy Elaine knelt down beside him. She could have touched Clarence Stuart as he sat by the litter, but she shrunk sensitively back, without looking at him. Guy Kenmore stood apart at a little distance, with his arms folded over his broad breast, his clear brown eyes fixed gravely on the little group.

"Clarence," said the dying man, turning his dim eyes on the face of his cousin, "you believed that this lady deserted you sixteen years ago of her own free will and desire. It was not true."

"Not true!" gasped Clarence Stuart.

"No, it was not true. She loved you and she was true to you. The wicked machinations of your father parted you from each other."

"My father! Oh, God, no!" exclaimed Mr. Stuart, in an agony of grief.

"It is horrible, but it is true," said Julius Revington. "He was bitterly enraged against you because of your marriage with Miss Brooke instead of the heiress he had selected for you. He laid his plans cleverly to circumvent you. Your severe illness that prevented you from returning to your wife was caused from drugs administered by him in the wine you drank that night."

"What authority have you for making these statements? Remember that you are dying, Julius, and do not try to falsify anything," exclaimed Mr. Stuart, almost sternly.

"I do not forget that I am dying," moaned the sufferer. "I speak the truth as God hears me—the truth as I received it from the lips of your father upon his death-bed."

"He revealed the truth to you instead of to me—strange!" cried the tortured man, almost incredulously.

"Yes; can you guess why?"

"I cannot."

"He repented of his sin, but he was afraid to confess it to you. He dreaded your terrible anger and dreadful despair. He feared that you would curse him upon his dying bed."

"I am afraid I should have done so, indeed," muttered Clarence Stuart.

"So he selected me as the instrument to right the wrong," went on Revington. "He wrote out a full confession of his sin, detailing the means he had used to separate you, and he deputed me to carry it to Bay View, where your first wife had been living all the time while you believed her dead in a foreign land."

"And you failed in your promise to the dead," exclaimed Mr. Stuart, fixing a glance of deep reproach upon his cousin.

"No, I kept my promise. You remember the night we stopped at Brooke Wharf on our way to Italy, Clarence?"

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, that night while you lay in your stores of fruit, and the rest of our party rambled about, I fulfilled my mission. I went to Bay View Hall, and I persuaded old Mr. Brooke to come out on the shore with me. I told him of your father's death-bed repentance, and I confided to his care the written confession. He promised to deliver it to his daughter Elaine, and I came away and left him."

Elaine hid her face in her hands and low moans of pain came from her lips.

Julius Revington lay still a moment, breathing hard and painfully, then he resumed slowly:

"There was one who, by some means, had become cognizant of the secret confided me by the dying man. I will call no names. Your own heart may suggest who that person was, Clarence Stuart. She sought me and endeavored to buy my silence by costly bribes. I refused her importunities. I was bound by a solemn pledge to the dead, and I kept my vow. God knows how she learned my mission that night, but she followed me at a distance. She concealed herself, and when I had gone she felled the old man with a sharp blow on the temple from a thick stone she carried, and then she wrested the precious confession from his clenched hand and fled back to the yacht."

A piercing cry broke from Elaine's lips.

"Oh, God, papa, my own papa, you were most foully murdered," and throwing up her arms, she fell like one dead upon the floor.

Guy Kenmore placed a cushion beneath her head with gentle care, but he made no effort to restore her to consciousness.

"It is better thus," he said. "I have long known or believed, that Ronald Brooke met his death by violence, but I would have been glad to spare this poor soul that harrowing knowledge if I could."

"You knew it!" both Clarence Stuart and the dying man reiterated in surprise.

"I suspected it," said Mr. Kenmore, "but the physician said that he died of heart disease, and I had no right to go beyond his verdict. I alone observed the purplish mark of a blow upon his temple. I alone knew that some important paper had been wrested from his hand in that last dreadful struggle. I kept silence, but I have been on the track of his slayer ever since. But go on with your story, Mr. Revington. Do not wait for this broken-hearted woman to recover. She has heard enough."