Laurel Vane; or, The Girls' Conspiracy

"I have never loved him. It was only fancy. I have broken with him forever!" answered the girl.

"Thank God!" she cried, drawing her new daughter into her arms and kissing her fondly; while she added to St. Leon, gladly: "I am so glad it is our sweet little Beatrix, and not that odious Maud Merivale!"

And that day she wrote a letter to Mrs. Gordon, telling her how cleverly their plot had succeeded, and that St. Leon had taken Cyril Wentworth's place in her daughter's heart.

CHAPTER XXIV

"Wooed and married and a'." How swiftly it all had followed upon Laurel Vane's coming to Eden!

In June she had come to the Le Roys, a trembling, frightened, innocent little impostor, lending herself to a fraud for Beatrix Gordon's sake. From a most unwelcome intruder, whom they had received with secret disfavor, she had come to be the light of their eyes and their hearts. To-day—a fair, ripe day in October, with the "flying gold of the ruined woodlands driving through the air"—she clung to St. Leon Le Roy's arm, his worshiped bride, happy, with a strange, delirious happiness, in spite of the sword that ever hung suspended by a hair above her head—the sword that must surely fall some day, and cause her destruction.

She was dizzy with the whirl of events that had brought about this dazzling consummation.

In the first place, Mr. Le Roy had written to Mr. Gordon, announcing his engagement to his daughter, and pleading for an early marriage.

The publisher had replied, on the part of himself and wife, delightedly sanctioning their darling's betrothal to Mr. Le Roy, and permitting Beatrix to consult her own wishes in naming the day. They wished only to make their darling happy, they said; and she should, therefore, choose the earliest day that pleased her. Mrs. Gordon wrote that she would soon come home to superintend the preparation of the bridal trousseau.

Laurel was filled with dismay at the latter information. St. Leon, noting every change of the fair young face with a lover's eye, was quick to see the shadow.

"What is it, my darling?" he asked.

"We must postpone the wedding a long, long time," she said. "Mamma must not curtail her Southern trip and lose the benefit she is deriving from it. We must wait."

She felt like a hypocrite as she said it, but she was rendered desperate by her fears. She knew that, with Mrs. Gordon's coming, all was at an end, and she longed desperately to ward off the evil hour. She was so wildly, deliriously happy now, she would stave off the hour of reckoning as long as she could. Just to remain at Eden as long as she could was all that she asked. It always seemed to her quite impossible that she should ever become St. Leon Le Roy's wife. The blow would fall before then. She felt that she was only taking her pleasure like a butterfly in the sun, and that the nipping blasts of winter would soon lop off her gilded wings and leave her, crushed and trampled, beneath the scorner's heel.

Those joys that we hold by a frail, slight tenure we always prize the most. This love that she was fated one day to lose had become a part of Laurel Vane's life. She said to herself that, when she lost it she would die.

It was a mad love that she gave her noble, princely looking lover. She would have made any sacrifice for him except to tell him that she had deceived him. She would have died for him if need be, but death would have been easier than confessing her strange sin to him.

St. Leon chafed sorely at the idea of waiting so long to claim his bonny bride. They had talked of a bridal tour to Europe, and Laurel had betrayed the most eager delight at the idea. The tour of Europe had not the attraction of novelty to him. He had made it several times, but he longed to gratify the girl's wish; he was so sure that he would make her happy he could not bear to wait. And yet he was not selfish enough to wish to hasten Mrs. Gordon's return at the hazard of her health.

His mother agreed with him that it was unfortunate his having to wait. She was very anxious to see him married to Beatrix Gordon, and she thought the autumn a pleasant time for crossing the ocean.

If they could only be married in October, how pleasant it would be, but then the trousseau—it would take an endless time for that.

St. Leon displayed all a man's impatience under the circumstances.

"A fig for the trousseau! What could be prettier than Beatrix's white dresses that she wore every day? But if she had to have no end of new things, why couldn't they get them when they went to Paris? Worth was the only man who could make them, anyhow. Given a traveling-dress to cross the 'herring pond' in, and she might have a hundred new dresses if she liked, once they landed in France. Must a man wait months and months for his happiness on account of some paltry dresses?"

Mrs. Le Roy, in her anxiety for the marriage, quite agreed with him in his tersely expressed views. If Mrs. Gordon came home she would order her daughter's dresses from Paris. How much easier for Beatrix to get them herself while abroad!

She wrote to Mrs. Gordon and suggested the idea. Moreover, she hinted broadly her fears that Beatrix, if let alone so long, might change her mind—might return to the old love—no one could say when Cyril Wentworth would return to America, nor what effect his return might have on his sweetheart. Mrs. Le Roy thought the wisest plan, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, would be for the Gordons to continue their Southern tour, and let St. Leon marry Beatrix quietly, without any fuss or ceremony, and take her abroad.

That clever hint about Cyril Wentworth had the intended effect on the nervous invalid. All her old fears of Cyril Wentworth were reawakened. A longing desire took possession of her to have her daughter married off safely out of the fortune-hunter's reach. In her sudden anxiety she would have had St. Leon and Beatrix married that moment by telegraph if possible. She infected her husband with all her own fears, and both concurred in the opinion of Mrs. Le Roy that delays were dangerous.

So a letter went hastily back to Eden full of good tidings to the dwellers there.

The Gordons approved and even advocated Mrs. Le Roy's plan. They wrote to their daughter, and recommended her to shorten the term of her lover's probation, regretting that the state of her mother's health made it desirable for her to remain where she was yet awhile longer. The letter was filled with such warm, parental love and advice that Laurel involuntarily wept over it. A generous check for her Parisian trousseau was inclosed. This the young girl put carefully away.

"I shall never use it," she said. "Gold could not tempt me to sin. It is love that has made me bad and wicked, but I cannot draw back now. I shall marry St. Leon Le Roy. It is fate."

So, following that fate, she went recklessly on in her strange career. Three weeks later she was no longer Laurel Vane, she was Laurel Le Roy, almost forgetting in her wild happiness her enemy's threat, "Who breaks—pays!"

CHAPTER XXV

Days came in which Laurel almost forgot the long, dark, threatening shadow that lay always just ahead of her.

They were crossing the wide Atlantic Ocean, and every one said that there never had been finer weather or a pleasanter trip. They had no rough winds the whole voyage. The calm, sunny blue sky hung over an ocean as beautifully blue and almost as calm. The foamy white caps of the waves were almost as fleecy and pure as the snowy little clouds that sailed through the sky. The beautiful shining-winged sea-birds were a source of beauty and delight to every one. Every day was warm and sunny, every night was moonlighted and balmy. No one had expected such perfect weather in October.

Forever after those two weeks remained in Laurel's memory like a beautiful dream, fadeless and ineffaceable.

For that little time she was perfectly secure. She knew no one on the steamer, no one knew her. Her husband was perfectly devoted to her as she was to him. They spent long, happy days together on deck, never weary of each other's society. They talked to each other by moonlight, their talk often drifting into poetry, which is the most natural language of love. They made some acquaintances, but they did not seek other society. They were all in all to each other. The girl-wife could not find it in her heart to repent of what she had done. It appeared to her that she had been made for him, and he for her, judging by their mutual love.

Certainly a change for the better had been effected in St. Leon Le Roy. His dark eyes were no longer cold and cynical, but beamed with love and happiness. The mocking smile no longer curled his lips. They were sweet and gentle. His voice rang with tenderness instead of sarcasm. His hatred and distrust for all women because Maud Merivale had deceived him was gradually dying out. He believed that his bride was an angel. When the awakening came, it was all the more bitter because he had believed in her so truly.

Laurel was as lovely as a dream in those honeymoon days. Her face glowed with happiness, her dark eyes lost their somber, brooding shadow, and sparkled like stars.

The passengers said that Mr. Le Roy's young bride was a perfect beauty. When she walked on deck in her soft, fine, white cashmere dresses, with a crimson scarf about her shoulders, diamonds blazing in her small, shell-like ears, and her splendid burnished golden hair flying like a banner of light on the gentle breeze, no one could keep from looking at her, no one could keep from envying St. Leon Le Roy the possession of so much beauty, and sweetness, and love.

Laurel had never known that she was beautiful until St. Leon told her so. It was a new delight to her. Some faint hope came to her that by that beauty she might hold his heart, even when he found her out—even when he knew her at her worst—an impostor who had masqueraded under a false name, and so won him. She had read that "beauty is lord of love," and she prayed that it might prove so to her in her dark hour—that hour always just a little ahead of her, when she should moan:

"So tired, so tired, my heart and I!Though now none takes me on his armTo fold me close and kiss me warmTill each quick breath end in a sighOf happy languor. Now alone,We lean upon some graveyard stone,Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I."

She would not think of that nearing future much. She gave herself up to the delights of the present. She was the most fondly worshiped wife in the world. When they went to Paris, he loaded her with costly gifts, splendid dresses, priceless jewels.

"I do not know how I shall ever be able to wear all of these splendid things; they are too fine for me," she said to him, almost afraid of herself in the midst of this splendid paraphernalia.

"Nothing is too costly or too fine for you, my little love," he answered, taking her in his arms and kissing the beautiful face over and over. "You will need all these things when you go into society. When we go home, we will spend our winters in New York, and the women in society there dress like queens. I shall want you to be the finest of them all, as you are decidedly the most beautiful."

He wondered why the fair face grew so pale, why his young wife shivered in his arms, and drooped her eyes from his.

"I hope it will be a long time before we return to New York," she said, almost petulantly. "I like Europe better than America."

"You are a most disloyal subject of the United States," he laughed: "but you shall stay as long as you wish, my darling."

CHAPTER XXVI

When they went to England, Laurel wondered a little tearfully if they should meet the Wentworths. She knew that they were in London, and the thought of coming upon them was not pleasant. She did not think that Beatrix Wentworth would approve of what she had done, and she recalled Clarice Wells' threat with an uncontrollable shudder. It had been so vivid.

"I would betray you even in front of the altar!" had said the maid.

Decidedly the thought of stumbling upon the Wentworths was not pleasant.

"But then," said the trembling young bride to herself, "there was no likelihood that they would do so. London was a great wide city. They might stay there for years, and never stumble upon these people of whom her guilty conscience made her feel so horribly afraid."

Again, she remembered that Cyril Wentworth was here on business, she and her husband in quest of pleasure. Their ways lay far apart. There were no mutual aims and pursuits to bring them together. It was decidedly unlikely that they should meet.

But some one has cleverly said that "The most unlikely things always happen."

They had been in London several weeks, patiently "doing" all the wonders of that wonderful city, when one day Mr. Le Roy took his wife to a famous art gallery. She had developed a perfect passion for fine pictures and statues, and he knew that she would be charmed with the works of the old masters that were gathered in this famous gallery—the Titians, Murillos, Guidos, Raphaels—all the glorious men who, by brush or chisel, had handed down their names to an immortal fame.

It was a bright day in December. The sun was shining, for a wonder, in murky, foggy London, irradiating its usual "pea-soup" atmosphere. St. Leon was delighted that the sun shone so brightly. He knew that it would show the pictures to still greater advantage, and he liked for his darling to have all her pleasures at their best.

Looking at Laurel you would never have guessed that until a few months ago she had lived in cheap lodgings with her erratic father, and tended their poor rooms with her own little white hands. She looked as dainty and lovely as a little princess now, as she tripped along by the side of her handsome, stately husband. The day was cold, although the sun shone so brightly, and Laurel was wrapped in a long cloak of shining seal-skin, with a pretty cap of the same perched jauntily on her head, its long brown ostrich plume drooping against her long golden curls, contrasting with their lovely tinge, which must have been a favorite shade with the old masters, for St. Leon observed that they had painted it on the heads of their most beautiful women.

"There is not a picture on the walls half so lovely as her living face," he said to himself, exultantly, looking at the fair flower-face with its full crimson lips, its oval outline, its wine dark eyes with such wealth of jetty lashes softly fringing them, and the soft, bright fringe of love-locks, shading the low, white brow. The splendid diamond solitaires in her rosy ears flashed and sparkled with every turn of the restless little head, and were wondrously becoming to her style. It was no wonder that St. Leon's eyes turned often from the changeless canvas to dwell in fondest admiration on the living face full of the glow and flash and sparkle of youthful beauty and happiness.

He told her that she was more beautiful than the pictured faces on the walls, and her eyes flashed with joy, and her face flushed rosily. She was so glad of the fairness God had given her, she never wearied of hearing about it. It was the link by which she hoped to hold her husband when he found out the truth about her.

She often asked herself anxiously which would be the stronger in that terrible hour—his love or his pride—but she could never answer her own question. She loved St. Leon, but she did not yet understand him.

They were standing in front of a seraphic-looking Madonna, when suddenly he touched her arm, and whispered in her ear:

"Some others are waiting to look at this, dear. Let us move on."

She turned her beautiful, happy face from the picture toward the group who had just come up to them—a young lady and gentleman with a trim maid following after, some rich, warm wraps over her arm. They were Cyril Wentworth, his wife, and her maid Clarice.

The beautiful smile froze on Laurel's lips as she met their startled, wondering gaze. She uttered a moan like one dying, and all in a moment fell senseless on the floor.

CHAPTER XXVII

More than once, since they came to England, Clarice Wells said, anxiously, to her mistress:

"I am afraid Miss Vane has laid her plans to marry Mr. Le Roy. Why else should she have wished to remain at Eden?"

But Beatrix, who was very fond of the lovely girl who had made such a sacrifice for her sake, would not believe it.

"She was a dear, good, honest child," she said. "I had hard work to persuade her to personate me for a little while. Her exaggerated notion of gratitude was all that tipped the scale in my favor, allowing a little for her romantic pity for two despairing lovers. I am sure she would not attempt an intrigue at her own risk."

"One risks a great deal for love's sake," said Clarice Wells. "You would know that by your experience, Mrs. Wentworth."

"But Laurel was not in love with Mr. Le Roy. She was afraid of him. She wrote me to that effect," objected pretty Beatrix, fixing her large blue eyes surprisedly on Clarice's sober face.

"I beg your pardon. That might have been the case at first, but it was not likely to last," said the maid, pursuing her argument with the freedom of a favorite. "I do not believe Miss Vane's antipathy lasted long. He was very handsome and fascinating—just the man to win the love of an innocent young girl! And he admired her, I am sure of that, Mrs. Wentworth. And believing her to be his equal in wealth and station, what was there to prevent their marrying if they loved each other?"

"You are very clever, Clarice, but I am afraid you are making mountains of mole-hills," Beatrix Wentworth answered, lightly. "How could they marry without papa and mamma's consent? Beatrix Gordon would have to return to New York and be married from her father's house. And how could little Laurel Vane, with her big black eyes and innocent soul, personate me to my own parents? Do you not see that your theory wouldn't hold water, Clarice, as Cyril would say in his lively way."

Clarice was silenced, but not convinced.

"Anyway, I wish I had not left her there," she said. "My conscience would be all the clearer. But, Mrs. Wentworth, don't you think that you should write to your parents now and confess what you have done, and beg them to forgive you for your naughty conspiracy and runaway marriage?"

Two crystal drops brimmed over in Mrs. Wentworth's blue eyes and splashed down upon her pink cheeks.

"Dear papa, dear mamma, it was naughty and wicked to desert them so," she said; "but they were too hard upon Cyril and me. I loved him so dearly. I could not bear it. But I loved them too; and although Cyril makes me so happy, my heart aches for the dear ones at home."

"And you will write to them? The plunge has to be made some time. As well now as ever," urged the maid.

"No, not now. What do you take me for, Clarice? Do you think I would betray sweet little Laurel, to whom I owe all my happiness?" cried Beatrix, indignantly.

"I beg your pardon for naming it. Of course, you know best, Mrs. Wentworth," replied discreet Clarice, dropping the subject.

They had discussed the matter several times, each retaining her own opinion of the matter on the well-known principle that

"A woman convinced against her willIs of the same opinion still."

Beatrix, like most adoring young wives, who confide all they know to their husbands, laid her grievance before Cyril.

The handsome, happy young Benedick humbly begged his wife's pardon for coinciding with Clarice's views rather than hers, but he could not be shaken from his first opinion that the romance of the conspiracy would culminate in the marriage of St. Leon Le Roy and Laurel Vane.

"It would be a delightful ending," he said, laughing at her horrified face.

"But I tell you it would not," she said, emphatically. "It would be just too dreadful for anything, and I will not believe it of sweet little Laurel Vane!"

"I hope she may justify your good opinion, my dear," said Cyril Wentworth, dryly, but kissing her fondly, and loving her all the more for her boundless faith in her fellow woman.

But they dropped the subject then, and if any one speculated further on Laurel Vane's hopes and plans it passed in silence. Beatrix was too generous to believe evil of the innocent girl who had served her in her clever counterplot against her parents. She loved Laurel for all she had done for her. When the shock of the truth came upon her it was all the harder to bear because of the loving faith she had persistently cherished.

That bright December day Cyril went home to their neat, pretty lodgings and announced that he had a holiday.

"It is such a lovely day, I should like to take you out somewhere, darling," he said, smoothing the bright waves of her golden hair with caressing fingers. "You know it is not often that I have the chance to escort you anywhere in the day."

They discussed duly the important subject of where to go, and decided on an art gallery. Both adored pictures.

Clarice dressed her mistress in her silks and furs and decided to follow the party with extra wraps for her mistress in case the day should prove colder than they thought, and in order to gratify her own penchant for sight-seeing.

No thought came to them of the great surprise that awaited them in the famous art gallery. They went forward to meet it all unconsciously, even as Laurel awaited their coming among the pictures and statues, all unconscious of what was hastening to her.

They were unusually gay. Beatrix had been pining a little of late under the depressing influence of the rainy, dismal weather. The bright sunshine revived her spirits and brought the warm pink roses to her cheeks. She laughed and chatted gayly to her delighted husband.

They loitered in the gallery and admired the beautiful paintings and statues, all the work of master hands long since dissolved to dust. They saw only two persons besides themselves—a lady and gentleman with their faces turned toward the beautiful painting of a Madonna. The lady had golden hair that was strangely familiar to Beatrix and Clarice, but then, many of the Englishwomen had golden hair. Each said to herself that it was only fancy that it reminded them of Laurel Vane.

So they went on slowly and unconsciously, and the handsome man and beautiful girl turned around and faced them.

They saw the young face whiten with fear, heard the frightened moan break from the trembling lips, saw her reel dizzily, and fall like a stone at their feet—and they knew that this was Laurel Vane, that St. Leon Le Roy was her husband, and that her wretched falsehood had found her out!

CHAPTER XXVIII

Mr. Le Roy, turning in the same moment with his wife, saw two faces that he recognized—Cyril Wentworth's that he had seen once in New York, and Clarice's, which he remembered perfectly well. Beatrix he did not know. He glanced at her carelessly, little thinking what an influence the pretty blonde had exerted over his life.

A pang of jealousy, keen, swift, and terrible as the lightning's flash tore through his heart as he beheld his worshiped bride waver and fall, like one dead, to the floor.

He believed that the mere sight of Cyril Wentworth's face had produced that terrible emotion that had stricken her down like a broken flower at their feet.

For an instant he stood motionless, almost petrified by his agitation, then he bent down over the beautiful face that only a moment ago had been lifted to his sparkling and glowing with love and happiness. It was pale and rigid now, and the jetty fringe of the lashes lay heavily on the white cheeks as if they would never lift again from the sweet dark eyes.

Quick as he was, light-footed Clarice was before him. She was kneeling down loosening the furs and laces about the throat of the unconscious girl with deft, easy fingers. She looked up at him with a strange glance.

"It is only a faint," she said, "but she may be some time in recovering. You had better go out and bring eau de Cologne."

He obeyed her like one in a dream, and the moment he was gone quick-witted Clarice borrowed Mrs. Wentworth's vinaigrette.

"I only sent him out on a pretext," she said. "We must get her revived before he returns. Mr. Wentworth, will you please remove her gloves and chafe her hands? No, perhaps your wife might do it better," she added, with a quick afterthought.