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

"Do not fall into such despondent thoughts again," he answers, evasively. "You are too young for sorrow, Reine. Look on the bright side of the picture. I foresee that this play will end with my falling desperately in love with my own wife."

"I hope so," she answers, with sudden, piteous earnestness, and a quiver of passionate sorrow in her voice.

"So do I," he says, filled with sudden penitence. "I am sure it cannot be hard to learn to love so fair and noble a wife. You have saved me from my own sinful passions, Reine. I can never forget that."

"And now I must go back," she says, with a bitter sigh of regret. "Uncle Langton will be lonely, and if—if I go to-morrow I have a great deal of packing to do first."

They walk slowly back to the hotel through the murmurous silence of the summer night by the sea, with the strong, sweet smell of the brine in their faces. It is the first time they have been together without cold words from one or the other, the first time her husband has caressed her.

And when he leaves her at the balcony steps he presses his lips to her white hand, and whispers, kindly:

"After to-night, little wife, we are never to be parted any more, remember."

CHAPTER XVIII

No one can recall without a shudder of horror the midnight burning of the steamer Hesperus in mid-ocean in 188-, and the terrible loss of life consequent upon that marine disaster.

She had been five days out, with fair skies and smooth seas, and every prospect of a prosperous and speedy voyage, when that disastrous fire stole upon her like a thief in the night, and wrapped her noble and majestic form in a winding sheet of flame.

Fifty souls perished miserably, including the captain and a part of crew.

In that terrible holocaust of fire and water, Reine Charteris was lost.

Her husband was saved—saved through such a tragedy of horror as sowed silvery threads in his fair, clustering locks, and almost broke his heart with remorse and pain.

We will hear him tell the story in his own words, as he told it that day when seated in the gloomy prison-cell, where Maud Langton was expiating her folly in bitterness of soul, he placed in her hands a small metallic case, locked with a tiny key, and said, solemnly and slowly:

"This means freedom and release to you, Maud. It is a legacy to you from the dead."

The beautiful, queenly-looking girl, wasted and worn from long confinement, and sickening dread and terror, looks up at the man's pale, haggard face, at the deep crape band on his hat, and shudders.

"You mean–" she says, then pauses, struck dumb by the white agony of his face.

"I mean I have lost my wife; Reine is dead."

"Dead!" the beautiful prisoner cries in wonder—not sorrow.

That is so plain to his senses, sharpened by grief, that he cries out bitterly:

"Yes, dead! But look at your legacy, Maud. That is all your selfish soul will care for!"

She gives him one look of cold surprise, and then turns eagerly to her treasure.

The small key grates in the lock, the lid of the box flies open.

Within lies a package wrapped in oil silk. Undoing this with eager fingers, Maud comes upon the precious note that means so much to her in this terrible plight, the note poor Reine had crossed the seas to win from the vengeful grasp of Vane Charteris.

All of Maud's cold, superb dignity breaks down at sight of that little slip of paper. She weeps and laughs together.

"This means hope, freedom, happiness to me," she cries, tearfully. "And you had it all the time, Vane. And Reine knew. It was for that she crossed the seas?"

"Yes," he answers, "and it was for that she died."

"No, no!" Maud says, and shakes her head; "how could that be? Oh, how I thank you for bringing me this! You did not know when you went away how much it was worth to me, did you? That my very life would depend upon it?"

He looks at her with steady, somber eyes.

"Yes, I knew," he answers. "I knew, but I did not care. My love for you was turned to hate by the crushing indignity you had put upon me. At that time I would have sold myself to the evil one for the chance of revenge upon you. Guess how I felt when, at the inquest over the dead body of the lover you had preferred to me, I found what terrible power fate had put into my eager hands. I rejoiced wickedly. I went away that the great ocean rolling between us might keep from me the tidings of your too probable fate, for I shuddered at the horror of my revenge, although I could not forego it. Yes, Maud, I, who had loved you dearly once, would not have lifted my finger to save you from the horror of a shameful death upon the scaffold; do you realize, now, the intensity of my hate?"

She puts her delicate hand to her grand, white throat and sobs hysterically. By day and by night she has dreamed of that horrible, impending death. She knows that all believed her guilty of her lover's death, and that no jury would have cleared her without that note in Clyde's own writing, swearing that he would shoot himself if she failed to marry him.

"You were cruel, cruel," she moans.

"Say rather that I was insane," he answers; "my heart and my brain were on fire, and my soul was numb within me until Reine came to me and showed me what a wretch I was, and how I should be your murderer if I persisted in my wicked silence. Then I yielded to that white-souled child who was far too pure to be my wife, and I prayed God to forgive my sin, as I now pray you, Maud."

She looks at him with her large, clear blue eyes, with the glad tears of joy still pendant on the golden lashes and holds out her hands.

"I cannot refuse to forgive you since you have relented and brought me this invaluable paper," she answers, "and more especially since I know that I did you a cruel wrong. Can you forgive me, Vane?"

"Once I thought I could not, but it is easy enough now," he answers, gravely, just touching for a moment the soft, white, extended hands. "I have no longer any room in my heart for anger or resentment. I think only of my grief."

"For Reine!" she asks, with an almost imperceptible lifting of the golden eyebrows indicating surprise.

"For Reine," he answers, with a tortured sigh.

"Did she die abroad?" Maud asks in an awed and softened voice.

"She was drowned at midnight in the Atlantic Ocean, amid all the horrors of fire and flood," he groans.

"On the ill-fated Hesperus," she exclaims. "Oh, I read the news in the papers, but there were no particulars, and I did not dream of such a tragedy. You were with her, were you not? Why was it that you could not save her?"

His gloomy eyes fell with a look of loathing on the paper in her hand.

"She died, Maud, to save you from the consequences of your folly. She might have been saved but for that paper you hold in your hand," he answers, sternly.

"I do not understand you, Vane. Surely you know not what you say," Miss Langton utters in perplexity.

"Listen, and you shall be the judge," he answers, with a heavy sigh. "I sailed with my wife on the Hesperus——"

"And Uncle Langton?" she interrupts him to ask.

"We left Mr. Langton resting at a quiet summer resort. He was too much indisposed to return with us so soon. We were to have gone back for him as soon as your freedom had been secured," he explains.

She bows, silently, and he goes on, the pale, beautiful girl listening attentively.

"Reine came to me the day that we had been five days out, with that little metallic case in her hand. She had been very bright and happy since we started, but just then she was pale and grave. 'Vane,' she said to me, 'I have put Maud's precious paper in this little case for greater safety. But I have a strange dread of losing it. Put it in your breast pocket and keep it for me!' I—oh, Heaven! I obeyed her," he exclaims, struggling with a bitter remorse.

The beautiful prisoner regards him with silent sympathy.

"I obeyed her," he repeats, with a passionate remorse, "and that night when we sprang into the water together, fleeing from the devouring flames, it was still on my person. All hope seemed gone, and we clung to each other in the desperation of despair, determined at least to die together. Suddenly a crowded life-boat came in sight. A man shouted there was room for one more and that they would take the woman in. At these words she cried out frantically that I had Maud's precious paper, and that I was the one to be saved, and with that she loosed her hold, and with an awful suddenness pushed me from her, and sank down, down in the terrible water. With the awful shock of her loss I became unconscious. They drew me into the boat in the place of my poor girl, and the boat swept on over her awful burial-place. It was for you, Maud. She gave her beautiful, innocent life freely for you rather than risk the loss of the legacy I have brought you!"

CHAPTER XIX

Even Maud Langton's cold and shallow nature, utterly incapable of such an act of dauntless heroism as Reine's, is touched by the man's overmastering grief and the story of the woman's devotion.

"Poor little Reine! I did not deserve such a sacrifice from her," she exclaims, with a guilty consciousness of her cruel and contemptuous treatment of her generous rival.

Vane Charteris makes her no reply. He has dropped his pale, handsome face into his hands, his strong frame quivers with silent sobs. Maud watches him in amazement.

"You take it hard," she says; "yet I thought you did not love her, that you would not care."

"Not care!" lifting his somber blue eyes a moment to her pale, wondering face. "I care so much that by night or by day, sleeping or waking, her image is never absent from my thoughts. I would give the whole world to have her back, my poor lost darling!"

"Then you learned to love her?" Miss Langton exclaims, recalling his fastidious dislike of Reine's wild ways and sharp little speeches.

"Yes; now, when it is all too late," he answers, in a wild burst of remorse and sorrow.

Then there is a brief silence. How often those sad words, "too late," come home to stricken hearts with a pathos that words are all too powerless to express. Could Reine but have known—in that fair land to which her soul had flown—her husband's poignant repentance, she might well have answered with the poet:

"Too late, too late, thy beaming smile rests on me,Warm sighs and loving whispers come too lateSince thou hast lost that true and loving passionWhich, while it lived, met but thy scorn or hate."It might have been—had but thy love awakenedBefore my ruined life no power could save;But now, alas! thy warm and tender glancesFall on my heart like sunlight on a grave."

"Believe me, Vane, I am very, very sorry," Maud says to him in her gentlest tones. "Perhaps you think I was not worthy little Reine's generous self-sacrifice."

He has no answer ready for her. She begins to realize that he is strangely changed. The fair and handsome face that used to be so gay and debonair has grown wan and haggard. Some silver threads shine in the fair, clustering locks on his temples. His step is slow and heavy as he turns to go.

"How long will it be before I shall be free?" she asks him, wistfully, as he turns to go.

He starts, and turns back, remembering suddenly what the petted beauty must have endured in these weary weeks of confinement, with the shadow of an awful fate hanging over her.

Looking closer into the white face with its finely-chiseled features, sharpened and refined by the agony she has endured, his heart swells with momentary pity for the cold beauty who has wronged him so deeply.

"But a little while, I think," he answers, kindly. "I have seen your lawyer. He told me that the trial which he has been staving off from time to time, will take place to-morrow. He is quite sure that your innocence will be indisputably proven by the paper you hold, together with other facts in his possession. I congratulate you, Maud, upon your narrow escape from the terrible web that circumstantial evidence had woven around you."

She shudders, and grows deathly pale at the thought of it, and Vane hurries from the room and from the presence of her who had been, for a brief while, the sun of his existence.

Hurrying back to his hotel, he finds there a letter which has followed him across the sea from the quiet watering-place where he had left Mr. Langton. It is from the genial, kindly physician, and the news is startling.

The old millionaire, the sharp-tongued, irascible, yet kindly-hearted old gentleman, is dead—has died suddenly and strangely of disease of the heart in two days after Reine and Vane had left him in the confident hope of soon rejoining him. They have buried him there in the quiet churchyard by the sea, far away from his native land, and the friends he loved. All unknowing of Reine's fate, he has gone to rejoin her in the unknown land.

CHAPTER XX

Mr. Langton's favorite axiom: "Delays are dangerous," which he had quoted so effectively to Reine, would seem to have made less impression on his own mind. The new will, which was to have disinherited Maud Langton and made Vane Charteris and his wife his sole heirs, had been carelessly and fatally postponed. Beautiful Maud, but yesterday penniless, imprisoned, suspected, goes back to-day, free, joyous, triumphant, to her old home, the undisputed mistress of Langton Hall and her uncle's great wealth. Vane Charteris, in nowise disconcerted, and scarcely disappointed, returns to the musty little law office in Washington, from whence his old friend's letter had summoned him a few months before to marry his heiress.

It is a dull, prosaic life enough. Vane is young yet, and has not made his mark. Very few clients come to seek his assistance out of their difficulties. Some dreary days go by, and life does not look quite the same through his office windows as it did in the golden spring before he went to Langton Hall. It is autumn now. The leaves are turning red, and brown, and yellow, the petals are falling from the flowers. Not that Vane takes note of this. One flower that faded in the summer gone, is worth all the world to him. For a time ambition, energy, hope, seem to forsake him. Always before his eyes floats a vision of a fair, dead face with waving tresses, tangled with seaweed; always against his breast he feels the pressure of small hands pressing against him, pushing him from her in the mad resolve to die in his stead. For in his heart Vane feels that it was not alone for Maud's sake she died. She had meant to save him, whom she loved far more than life.

So the autumn days go by. By-and-by the gay, brilliant, beautiful city of Washington begins to fill up with its usual winter throng. Congress assembles, and the brilliant crowds that follow in its train. And one day there comes a delicate, perfumed note to Vane from one of the most fashionable avenues of the fashionable city.

"Dear Vane," it says, "I have come to Washington for the winter, but shall be very quiet, of course, being in deep mourning for my dear uncle. I have invited the Widow Baird and her daughter—unexceptionable people, you know—to stay with me. But I am very lonely, very repentant, and very sad. Will you let by-gones be by-gones, and come and see me?

"Maud Langton."

A delicate, dainty, seductive note. With a start, Vane remembers the elegant house on – avenue, which had been Mr. Langton's property. Here it is that his heiress had pitched her tent, figuratively speaking, and opened the campaign, for she is determined not to lose the delights of the winter wholly, although in ostensible mourning.

Vane is roused to indignation at first. Why should she ask him to call? Does she take him for a simpleton? He has forgiven her for Reine's sake. That is enough.

He stays away, and in three days an elegant private carriage sets Maud down in front of his office. She rustles across the threshold in a costly costume, designed to represent slight second mourning—a black silk with jetted trimmings, white crepe lisse at throat and wrists, a jetted bonnet with white lisse strings, a dress that is marvelously becoming to the pearl-fair beauty, framed in soft waves of golden hair.

"Perhaps you think I have come to scold you," she says, with infinite tact, as he comes forward, visibly embarrassed; "but I have not. Of course you had a right to decline my invitation, if it did not please you to come. I shall not trouble you long now. I am here on a matter of business."

Mr. Charteris bows and hands her a chair. She seats herself, making moonlight, not "sunlight," "in a shady place," with her cold, white beauty.

Then her large, light-blue eyes turn scrutinizingly on his worn, handsome face.

"You are not looking well," she pronounces. "Business, perhaps, is driving you too hard?"

Vane smiles rather grimly.

"I cannot make any complaint of that nature," he responds.

The blue eyes light, unmistakably, with pleasure.

"Then you are not busy," she says; "I am rather glad to hear it. Perhaps you will have time to manage my property for me?"

He looks inquiringly at the beautiful, smiling face.

"I have quarreled with my lawyer," she explains. "I intended to take the management of my affairs out of his hands. Will you take his place, Vane?"

A dark, red flush creeps up to his temples at her air of condescending patronage.

"Excuse me, I must decline," he answers.

"You decline—surely not!" says the proud beauty, with incredulous surprise.

"Why should I not decline?" Vane Charteris asks, with a certain haughtiness, before which Maud lowers her proud tone of patronage visibly.

"I thought you could not afford to decline," she falters. "Are you not—not poor?"

"Granted," he answers, with a slight, cold smile. "I am not yet poor enough to barter my self-respect. For the rest, you know, Miss Langton—

"'Man wants but little here below,Nor wants that little long.'"

Maud, who has come bustling with pretty patronage and self-importance, is visibly disconcerted. She takes a new tone.

"You are harsh and cruel to me, Vane," she says, petulantly. "I came with the best intentions. I only meant kindness."

"Thank you," stiffly.

"I thought you had forgiven my—my folly," she goes on further, with a killing glance from the long-lashed, seraphic-blue eyes.

"I hope I have," he replies, still coldly.

"Then why—why will you refuse my request?" she asks.

Something like scorn flashes on her from the man's sapphire-blue eyes.

"Miss Langton, I have forgiven the indignity you put upon me last summer," he answers, shortly, "but do you think I could stoop to serve you—you?"

The heiress colors under his glance of haughty scorn.

"You will never forget that," she sighs. "You will not believe how eager I am to make atonement for my sin against you. I see you are determined to be hard and cold with me. You will not make friends."

Vane turns round upon her a little fiercely.

"What are you driving at, Maud?" he asks, with positive rudeness. "Do you wish to make a fool of me again? To win my heart from me again and trample it under your feet?"

And then a sudden impulsive shame seizes upon him as she shrinks before his quick wrath with something very like fear in her face.

"I beg your pardon—I was talking foolishly to you," he says. "You do not at all understand me, I think, Miss Langton, or you would never have–"

"Never have come here, you mean," she says, as he pauses. "Aren't you just a little rude, Mr. Charteris? But I am determined not to be angry with you. Forgive me for trespassing on your time. I am going now."

Swish! goes the rich silk against her chair with a waft of delicious perfume.

The tips of her gloved fingers settle lightly against his coat-sleeve, the great, blue eyes look straight into his own, persuasively.

"Vane, think better of your refusal, pray do," she says. "I did not come here to insult you, neither to wheedle you back to your old allegiance. I thought you would help me about this great, troublesome property. I am so ignorant and helpless."

"Any lawyer in the city would be glad to manage your business for you," he returns, with cool courtesy.

"I shall not ask any of them till I hear from you again. Perhaps you may change your mind, and let me know that you will take this trouble off my hands," she answers, good humoredly, moving toward the door.

Vane attends her to her carriage, and with a formal bow returns to his lonely office. How lonely he never quite realized till now, looking at the empty chair where the brilliant heiress had sat just now, queenly and graceful like the tall, white lily to which he had once likened her.

CHAPTER XXI

We will return to Reine Charteris on that terrible night of fire and flood, when, with all the deathless devotion of a true woman's heart she sacrificed herself to save her husband and her friend.

In the minute before the life-boat came into sight Reine's mind had been comparatively calm and contented.

Though she believed that certain death stared her in the face, it had no special terrors for her. Her life had been good and pure, and she had no dread of the hereafter.

The thought of dying with the husband she loved had a strange, romantic sweetness for her heart.

In the bright and awful glare of light thrown upon the waters by the burning ship, her pale and lovely face had upon it an expression of rapt and Heavenly sweetness and content, untouched by dread or fear.

Vane's arm was drawn around her, and they were slowly swimming about and looking for some drifting desperate hope of rescue.

A few minutes ago the black waves, weirdly illumined by the red glare of the flames, had been filled with a writhing, despairing, shrieking mass of anguished humanity, but now they had all disappeared. Some had floated off to a distance, some had sunk beneath the waves and found a watery grave—

"Unknelled, uncoffined, and unsung."

Vane and Reine were quite alone for a moment—alone, and drawn seemingly nearer together than they had ever been in life by the deadly peril that menaced them. They had made up their minds to death. Both were good swimmers, but they were too far from land for their strength and skill to avail. They clung together, each feeling instinctively that death would be less hard if shared together.

At that moment one of the life-boats that had been seized upon in the first moments of peril by a fortunate few, came in sight of them. It was crowded, already, but one manly heart saw and pitied the terrible case of the two victims. He shouted that they would make room for one more—they would take the woman in.

"Come, Reine, they will save you, my darling," Vane Charteris cried out, tenderly and joyfully, yet with the solemnity of a last farewell in his eyes, as he drew his young wife forward.

But with a sudden cry of anguish, the girl resisted him.

The bare thought of forsaking her husband and leaving him to die alone, was more bitter than death. With that thought came the remembrance of the precious paper she had crossed the sea to win from Vane's vengeful keeping.

"Let me save you—remember you have Maud's precious paper," she cried out, hoarsely, and pushing him frantically from her with both extended hands, she sank down—down into the depths of the sea. They waited a moment, but she did not rise again, and seeing that Vane had lost consciousness, they drew him into the life-boat, and in the efforts to revive him, they soon drifted out of sight of the spot where the devoted girl had disappeared beneath the fire-illumined waves.

In the meantime Reine, who was really a strong and expert swimmer, had only dived beneath the waves, and had come up again in a few seconds later at a different spot where, herself unseen, she could behold the life-boat with its living freight drifting swiftly out of her yearning sight. She had freely given her one chance of life to her husband, but with the thought that he would live there was born in her own young heart an agonizing desire for life. She loved Vane so dearly that she could not bear to leave him in the bright, gay world, and go down to death alone. Though not regretting that she had saved her husband by so great a sacrifice, she breathed a silent, fervent, yet seemingly hopeless prayer, that she might also be rescued and restored to him.