Laurel Vane; or, The Girls' Conspiracy

Death would have been welcome in that hour. She longed for it, she prayed for it. It seemed to her quite impossible that she could lose St. Leon and live. She had told herself often and often that, if he refused to forgive her when he found her out, she should die. It had seemed to her that her heart would stop its beating, her pulses faint and fail in that terrible hour.

But the end had come, and the blood still pulsed through her veins, her heart still beat, the young, strong life that thrilled her held on its steady course. A great temptation came over her as she crouched in the night and the darkness on the banks of the swirling river. It would have been so pleasant, so sweet, to have ended the short, sad story of her life, with its terrible temptation and cruel failure, then and there—to have shut out the dark, foreboding future in the merciful shadows of oblivion, but something—perhaps that tender secret she had so shyly withheld from her husband—held her back from the fatal plunge. Her own life she might have taken in the frenzy of despair, but that other tenderer one throbbing beneath her broken heart, she could not, she dared not.

"I have no right," she said to herself. "I might be wicked and mad enough to commit suicide, but murder, never. No, no, I will be brave. I will bear my cross for the sake of what is coming to me. Who knows but that it may comfort me in my lonely future! St. Leon will not want it. He would hate it and exile it from him as he did me. It will be wholly mine—something of his that will love me and cling to me although he scorns and despises me."

So she went away. She took with her none of the jewels, none of the beautiful gifts her adoring husband had lavished upon her in the happy days now forever past. She slipped her purse into her pocket. It contained several hundred dollars. Pride would have made her leave it, but she felt that for the sake of her tender secret she had a right to take it with her. She would need it in the trial that lay before her.

So she left the veil and gloves upon the river bank where they would find them if they sought for her, and then she went to New York and hid herself and her sorrow in the obscurity of the great, thronged city, bearing her burden of sorrow alone and in pitiful silence and despair.

Through the medium of the omnipresent newspaper she learned of the tragedy that had occurred at Eden. As if it had been the story of another she went over the fate of the beautiful impostor who had been detected in her sin, and whose disappearance had been followed by the finding of her drowned body. Then, indeed, she started, wondering who the unfortunate river waif could have been who had been buried with the honors pertaining to St. Leon Le Roy's young wife.

"I will not undeceive them," she said. "Now, indeed, I am dead to him forever, and that is best. Let him forget me."

CHAPTER XLV

Alone and without references, Laurel did not find it easy to secure respectable lodgings in the city. She thought of returning to the house where she had lived with her father, but a wholesome dread of her base enemy, Ross Powell, held her back. She did not think it would be prudent to venture into that vicinity, so she went to a far-removed portion of the city, where she only secured the cheap and decent lodgings she desired by the payment of several months in advance. She was very well pleased to do this, for she had made up her mind to remain in this quiet, obscure locality until her trial was over. To her curious landlady she called herself Mrs. Vane, and said that she was a widow.

As she had left all her clothing at Eden, Laurel found herself compelled to draw again upon her small hoard of money. In accordance with her rôle of a widow, she bought only black dresses, and these of a cheap and simple kind. She put back her rich, golden hair under an ugly widow's cap, and never ventured into the street without a thick crape veil drawn closely over her face. She did not feel that she was acting a falsehood in doing this. She said to herself that she was worse than widowed. She had been most cruelly put away from her husband's heart for a sin that he ought to have forgiven because she had loved him so dearly and had been tempted so much beyond her power of resistance.

A strange cold bitterness began to grow up in her desolate young heart toward him. She called him hard and cold and unloving in her thoughts, because measured by her own passionate love his affection fell so far below the standard where she would have placed it. Laurel was all unversed in the lore of the world. She knew nothing of the difference between male and female love. She had never heard that couplet so wonderfully true that use has worn it threadbare:

"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,'Tis woman's whole existence."

She did not know this—no one had ever told her so, and she was fated to learn it in the hardest fashion by cruel experience. She was learning, too, in all their subtle pathos the truth of those mournful lines:

"Alas! the love of women, it is knownTo be a lovely and a fearful thing,For all of theirs upon the die is thrown,And if 'tis lost life has no more to bring."

Those were sad and heavy days that followed on her flitting to New York. She was almost crazed with the bitterness of her despair. There were weeks that were afterward almost a blank to her because she spent them in tears that were like drops of blood wrung from her aching, bleeding heart. She lay all day on her little bed vainly dwelling on the irrevocable past, looking back on all that she had lost with incurable longing and bitter regret. When this season of lamenting had worn itself out, Laurel grew hard and proud and tried to forget—a hard task that many, stronger than our little heroine, have essayed in vain.

After awhile she found out that she would have to draw again on the contents of her already diminished purse. There were garments to be provided for the little stranger that was coming to brighten her darkened life. She would not choose coarse, cheap garments now, such as she had bought for herself. She selected the finest, whitest linen, the softest, warmest flannel, the daintiest muslin, and was even a little extravagant in the matter of dainty laces and Hamburg trimmings. Then, when the complete and pretty outfit was laid away, with lavender and rose-leaves between the snowy folds, Laurel counted the few dollars that were left from her expenditures, and became frightened.

"When it is all gone, what shall I do?" she asked herself, blankly. "Where is the next to come from?"

And her startled reason harshly answered her: "You will have to work for it. You will have to earn it."

Laurel did not know how to earn money. She had never been taught any available thing, and her delicate condition of health precluded the idea of going out into the busy world to toil. Besides, her morbid sensibilities shrunk from the thought of encountering strangers who would look upon her with coldness, perhaps suspicion.

She was in despair at first, but she suddenly remembered how easily and quickly her reckless, pleasure-loving father had earned the wherewithal for their support.

"The publishers were always eager for papa's MSS.," she said to herself hopefully; "and, being his daughter, I must have inherited his genius. I will write."

She was not egotistical. She was simply ignorant of the world's ways. She did not know how many failed in the world of letters, where one succeeded. The idea took hold of her fancy, and without a dream of failure, she armed herself with a ream of foolscap, plenty of ink and pens, and went enthusiastically to work.

CHAPTER XLVI

Ill news flies apace. It was not long before Beatrix Wentworth, leisurely reading her New York paper in London, came upon the story of that tragedy on the beautiful Hudson—read the ending of the strange story of love and temptation, for which she felt herself in some degree responsible, since she herself had sent Laurel Vane to Eden.

She threw down the paper and wept bitterly. It was true that she had been angry with Laurel because she had deceived St. Leon Le Roy. She had known that she would find it harder to be forgiven for her elopement with Cyril since Laurel's willful marriage, but in this moment she forgot her pique, her annoyance, her resentment at Laurel's fault, and her heart was full of grief and pity over the girl's sad fate. She remembered how young and fair and loving the erring girl had been, and she said to herself that St. Leon Le Roy had been too hard and cold when he found her out. He might have forgiven her, he should have been kind and pitiful to her, at least, for the sake of that mad love that had tempted her to sin.

Cyril agreed with her that the proud, rich man might have forgiven the lovely, hapless girl for the sake of her great love. He had felt so grateful to Laurel Vane for the service she had done him and Beatrix, that he wished her the greatest good and the greatest happiness that is possible to mortals. It came upon him with a great shock, that the beautiful, dark-eyed girl, with the crimson lips, like a pomegranate flower, and the shining, golden hair was dead—worse than all, dead because she could not bear her life, driven into the dark, cold river by the intensity of her despair. He wondered what Mr. Le Roy's feelings could be.

"I should feel like a murderer," he said, to Beatrix. "It would seem to me that with my own hand I had pushed the poor child into the cruel river."

"He was so proud! All my life I have heard of the Le Roy pride," said Beatrix. "I have felt frightened for Laurel, ever since I found out what she had done. I never doubted that he would put her away from him when he found her out; but I never dreamed she would be driven to suicide. I thought that after awhile he would forgive her and take her back."

She could not bear to think of the gentle, beautiful, golden-haired girl, lying dead. She wept when she recalled her first meeting with her, and the temptation that had entered her mind. How sadly their girlish conspiracy had ended for the dead author's daughter.

"I was her evil genius, but I only meant to be kind to her," she repeated, remorsefully, many times.

Even Clarice, who had been very angry with Laurel, and who had judged her hardly at first, had nothing but tears and regrets for the dead girl. Her passionate love that had ended in so sad a tragedy set her apart in solemn sacredness. She had atoned for her fault with her life.

"We must write to Mr. Le Roy," said Cyril Wentworth. "We must confess all our fault in sending Laurel to Eden. We must tell him how kind and true and sweet she was until her mad love led her astray. We must beg him to forgive her now that she is dead."

Beatrix wrote. It was a brave though most pathetic letter. She owned her fault in sending Laurel to Eden, she dwelt pathetically on her temptation to do so. She begged his pardon for her fault, and then she pleaded for Laurel dead as warmly and earnestly as if she had been living to profit by the prayers of her friend. The page was blistered by her tears, but no answer ever came to her earnest appeal. It seemed that Mr. Le Roy was indeed hard and unforgiving. He could not accord his pardon to any of the actors in the strange drama that had shadowed his life.

Then Beatrix wrote to her parents, humbly acknowledging her fault and praying their pardon. She loved them dearly although she had deserted them for her handsome, adoring young lover. She had a faint hope that they would forgive her and Cyril and bid them come home. She longed for her father's kiss of welcome, her mother's clasping arms.

Oh, how impatiently she waited for the answer to that letter! How eagerly she longed to be pardoned for the girlish conspiracy that had ended so disastrously to Laurel Vane! She began to see her fault in a darker light now since the tragedy at Eden. The shadow of Laurel's grave seemed to fall long and dark across her wedded happiness!

An answer came at last from her outraged father—such an answer as withered all the springing-hopes in her breast. They would never forgive her for her fault. They had no longer a daughter. Their Beatrix was the same as dead to them, and they wished never to hear from Cyril Wentworth's wife.

CHAPTER XLVII

"I want that rose so much,I would take the world back there to the nightWhen I saw it blush in the grass, to touchIt once in that fair fall light;And only once if I might."Never any rose beforeWas like that rose very well I knowNever another rose any moreWill blow as that rose did blow."

St. Leon Le Roy sat alone in his handsome, spacious library. He had been reading, but the book of poems had fallen from his hand, and he was dreamily repeating some lines that had touched an aching chord in his heart:

"I want that rose so much,I would take the world back there to the nightWhen I saw it blush in the grass, to touchIt once in that fair fall light;And only once if I might."

Memory was busy at his heart, for time had not healed, it had only seared the wound of years ago.

Eight years had come and gone since that terrible night when his bitter anger and hard judgment had driven his erring childish wife out into the darkness of death. Scarcely an hour ago he had stood by the broken marble shaft that marked her grave and seen the gray moss creeping over the sweet, simple name—

"LAUREL,Beloved wife of St. Leon Le Roy."

Beloved! Yes, he had carved it on her tombstone when all too late to save the broken heart that had loved him with a madness that proved its own destruction. Beloved! ah, he never knew how well until the slow years coming and going, "barren of all joy," had shown him how empty and hollow was all the world measured with what he had lost. All his life was a long regret, an echo of the poet's plaint:

"Oh, to call back the days that are not!"

The years had marked his face with the story of their sadness. Handsome as Apollo still, there were lines of pain about the cold, proud lids, there were silver threads clustering in the raven locks tossed carelessly back from the white brow, there were shadows always lying perdu in the splendid dark eyes. For years he had been a lonely wanderer by land and sea, but now that he had come home again to Eden and to his mother, and to Laurel's grave, he found that he had not forgotten—that he never could forget.

He had been standing by her grave where she had rested for eight long years, he had read her name carved on the cold, white marble, but back here in the room where he had wooed her for his wife, where she had promised to be his, it seemed to him that he could not make her dead. She haunted him—not in

"The garmentsDripping like cerement,"

in which she had been drawn from her watery grave; but bright, blushing, beautiful, as in those days forever past when she had come to Eden first and made herself his fate.

His fate! Yes, it had come to that. The one woman who had stirred his heart to its deepest depths, who had loved him so blindly, and deceived him so terribly, had made herself his fate. He had not forgotten her, he never would forget. He remembered the dark, wistful eyes, the trembling smile of the crimson lips, the curling golden hair, the warm, dimpled, white hands. Ah! only to clasp them again, only to kiss the lovely responsive lips, what would he not have given!

"But that rose is notAnywhere just now—God knowsWhere all the old sweetness goes."

"If only I had forgiven her," he said to himself as he had said it over and over in the long, weary years. "She was only a child and the temptation was so great. I was hard and cold. I thought only of myself, my own injuries. Poor little loving Laurel, driven to her death by my hard judgment. Ah, that my sorrow, my love, my repentance could bring her back!"

He bent his head wearily down upon his folded hands heedless of the light, gliding step that came to his side, the soft touch that fell upon his hair, the voice that breathed in loving sympathy, "My son."

It was his mother. She knew where he had been, and her heart was full of grief and sorrow for his hopeless pain. Yet she knew that words were powerless to soothe the agony of remorse and pain that filled his heart. She only came with her silent sympathy to be near him because she loved him and shared in his grief.

He looked up at last, trying to seem cheerful for her sake, for she, too, was sadly changed by the progress of the years. The soft waves of hair that clustered on her brow had grown snowy white, the high-bred patrician face was pale and sad, her voice had always a tone of unconscious pathos in its low, clear modulations.

"I am sorry you have found me thus, mother," he said, seeing the sorrowful tears shining in her gentle eyes. "Years should have taught me to be brave and strong. But you know where I have been. It brought the past all back, and temporarily unnerved me."

"Yes, I know. But you will feel better by and by," she said simply, feeling that silence was better than words before such grief as his. It was a subject on which they never conversed. She had felt it was a cruel and unkind act when she first learned of the interview that St. Leon had refused to allow between her and Laurel that tragic night. She had reproached him most bitterly for it once, but ever since she had held her peace. There was that in his face, when she looked at him, that told of a conscience never at rest, of a heart whose self-reproaches were harder to bear than words of hers could have been. She grew to be sorry for him, and never, by word or sign, added to his pain; for the proud, lonely, disappointed old woman idolized her stately son even yet, although by his hard, unforgiving course toward Laurel Vane he had shattered the dearest hope of her life.

That hope, that longing for an heir to Eden—for another Le Roy to rule and reign at the grand old home on the Hudson, when she and St. Leon should have passed away—was long since dead. She had ceased even to hope that her son would ever marry again. She saw how coldly and carelessly he turned from the fair faces that smiled upon him, how restless and impatient he was under the requirements of society. When he died, their fine estates, their vast wealth, would have to pass to distant relations, mere strangers bearing another name. It was hard, it hurt her pride cruelly, but she said nothing to St. Leon. She kept her tears and her bitter lamentations for that quiet grave, where the unfulfilled hope of her life lay buried in darkness forever. For the sake of that hope she had been willing to forgive Laurel's deceit and duplicity. She would have forgiven even more for the sake of holding her grandchild in her arms.

It was too late now. St. Leon would never marry, would never forget. With a smothered sigh, she tried to put the vexing thought out of her mind, and with the same laudable intent toward St. Leon, she roused herself and said, quietly:

"I do not believe I have told you yet, St. Leon, that we have new neighbors at Belle Vue?"

Belle Vue was the country house next to them, and one almost as beautiful as Eden. It was scarcely a mile away, and St. Leon looked up with some little interest, as he inquired:

"What? Have the Armisteads sold out or gone away?"

"Both. Robert Armistead failed in his banking business, and it involved the loss of his whole private fortune. He sold out everything, and went West with his family to seek his fortune again."

"I am sorry for Armistead," said St. Leon Le Roy, in that vague, conventional tone, in which one is usually sorry for the misfortunes that do not touch himself. "And so there are new people at Belle Vue?"

"Yes, they have been down about a month."

"Are they new rich people?" St. Leon asked, with some little disdain.

"Indeed, I do not know. I should say not, however," said his mother. "People have taken them up very sociably. There is an old gentleman, a Mr. Ford, quite a traveled man, I am told. His niece lives with him, and her son. She is a widow, and literary."

"What has she written?" he inquires, with faint interest.

"Several novels—'Ermengarde,' 'The Curse of Gold,' 'Sacrificed,' and some others. Mr. Gordon is her New York publisher, but I think she has been in Europe lately with Mr. Ford."

Some little excitement gleams in his eyes.

"The author of 'Sacrificed' our nearest neighbor!" he exclaims. "Why, mother, did you know that her books have made quite a stir abroad as well as at home? They are quite the fashion."

"I am sure I liked them myself—the style is very fresh and pure. Do you think we ought to call at Belle Vue, St. Leon? I have been thinking that it is my duty to do so."

"Perhaps it is. I will go with you, if you wish, some day. I am just a little curious over the blue-stocking, but I dare say she is old, and wears caps and spectacles," he answers, carelessly enough.

CHAPTER XLVIII

"Laurie! Laurie! come and carry my flowers for me!" called a voice.

It was sweet and clear as a chime of silver bells, but it pierced St. Leon Le Roy's heart like a sword-point. It thrilled and quivered through him, stirring him with a blended joy and pain. He listened, and again the sweet voice cried:

"Come, my son! Mamma is waiting for you."

They were calling at Belle Vue—St. Leon and his mother. Mr. Ford had entertained them graciously in the splendid blue and gold drawing-room, but Mrs. Lynn could not be found. "She must be out walking," said her uncle, disappointedly, and after awhile he invited them to come out into the rose-garden. She might be there, he said. It was a favorite haunt of hers.

So, in the freshness and beauty of the July morning, they went out into the graveled paths lying whitely in the sunshine, forming such an exquisite contrast to the green grass and the beds of glorious ever-blooming roses, with the morning dew still shining on their bright petals; and while they walked that voice came to St. Leon like an echo from the buried past—dead and buried for eight long years.

"She is here. I will bring her to you," Mr. Ford says, nervously, starting away from them; and they pause by a little crystal fountain throwing up diamond spray into the clear, bright air, and wait—St. Leon with his heart beating strangely, thrilled to blended ecstasy and despair by a voice.

"Her voice is like—" Mrs. Le Roy begins; then shuts her lips over the unspoken name, vexed with herself that she was about to sadden the tenor of her idol's thoughts. "Let us walk on a little further," she amends, abruptly, and a few more steps bring them upon a picture.

Mr. Ford has found his niece. He is standing talking to her earnestly, making no move to return to his guests. Perhaps he is explaining to her the fact of their presence.

"Am I going mad?" St. Leon asks himself, with stern, set lips and wildly staring eyes.

"She is not of us, as I divine;She comes from another, stiller world of the dead."

The tide of years rolls backward. He has forgotten Mrs. Lynn the authoress as if she had never been. This slender, stately woman with her white hand resting lightly on Mr. Ford's arm is a ghost from the past; the dark, uplifted eyes, the tender crimson mouth, the waving, golden hair, are like hers whom, for a little while he believed to be an angel, but finding her only a faulty mortal, he had sternly put away from him. So like, so like, that he cannot take his eyes from the white-robed form with the wide sun-hat tilted carelessly back from the low white brow with its clustering waves of sunny hair, and the white hands full of roses, most of them dewy crimson, as if she loved that color best.

While he gazes like one stupefied, they turn and walk toward him. St. Leon is conscious of a little admonitory pinch administered by his mother's slim fingers, and tries to rouse himself to the occasion. In a minute he is conscious of a lamentable failure as he meets Mrs. Lynn's dark eyes upturned to his in calm surprise. She is by far the cooler and calmer of the two, and directly he finds himself walking by her side along the graveled path, the elder couple pacing sedately after them.

He is aware that he has not distinguished himself in this meeting with the gifted authoress. His words have been few and incoherent—not worthy of St. Leon Le Roy. He rallies himself with a desperate effort and makes the first remark that comes into his head:

"You like flowers, Mrs. Lynn?" is the hackneyed observation.

"I love them," she answers, quickly, and he is instantly reminded of another who "loved," not "liked," the fragrant, dewy darlings.