The Senator's Bride

CHAPTER XXIV.

LULU TO HER MOTHER

"Even to the delicacy of their handsThere was resemblance, such as true blood wears."—Byron."London, Eng., November 16th, 1873.

"Dear, dearest mother, whom I long so much to see that it seems impossible to write you, sitting tamely here, all that is in my heart, how can I express my grief and anxiety at hearing that you are still in that terribly stricken city, and that there seems no present prospect of the abatement of that awful epidemic? Oh, mother, how could you go—you, and brother Willie, and Grace—all my dear ones—when you knew what anguish it must cause me in my absence? I know that it is right—know that it is a Christian's bounden duty to comfort the sick and afflicted, and I honor you each in my whole heart for such noble, self-sacrificing devotion as you are displaying. But oh, how my heart is aching with the dread! Oh, mother, what if one of you should be taken away? Oh, I cannot, cannot bear the thought! And yet a strange presentiment weighs on me that on one or the other of your dear faces I will never look again in this world. Bruce, dear Bruce, who is so kind and loving to me, tells me these are only homesick fancies. Aunt Conway persuades me that I am only nervous and depressed, and that my fancies are but the result of my feeble condition of health just now; but am certain that it is more than all this. I pray that it may not be, but my whole heart sinks with a sense of prophetic dread, and if Bruce would only consent, I should at once return to the United States and join you in Memphis; but neither he nor Aunt Conway will listen to such a thing—their plans being made to spend a portion of the winter in Italy, certainly—and the chances are I shall not see you, my sweet mamma, until spring, though how I shall survive our separation so long I cannot tell. I miss you—oh, I miss you so much! and I have wished for you so often! Even dear Bruce cannot make up to me my loss in you.

"I suppose it is not necessary to describe all that I have seen in this great city, as Brother Willie's letters from here were so exhaustive and entertaining that they have left no new field of description on which to waste my spare stock of adjectives.

"But, mother, I am so demure and quiet in my tastes that I care very little for all the glories of the old world, and I pine to go to you, and to be at home again, much to my dear husband's chagrin, who is disappointed that I do not enter with more enthusiasm into all the beauties of art and nature that we have seen in our travels. Mrs. Conway applauds everything, but I believe it is the fashion to do so—is it not? and she is so fashionable, you know! I honestly appreciate all I see that is appreciable, I think, but not with the keen pleasure of most travelers. I am a home-bird, I suppose—one of the little timid brown birds that hop contentedly about the quiet garden paths, and though having wings, do not care to fly.

"'The world of the affections is my world,Not that of man's ambition.'"

"Mother, do you remember when I wrote you from Brighton, England, about the little child in whom I was so strangely interested?—whose great resemblance to some one of whom I could not think puzzled and interested me so? Well, I have met again with the little darling here, and have visited his grandparents at their elegant villa just outside the city—very old people, I believe I wrote you they were—and devoted to this child, who is, so I am told, the last of the race and name, which has been in its time a very noble, as it is now, a very old one. They are very wealthy and very proud people—the old baronet, Sir Robert Willoughby, the haughtiest old aristocrat I ever met. His wife, Lady Marguerite, is of a sweeter, gentler type, yet, I fancy, very much in awe of her stern lord. Little Earle—the heir of this great wealth and proud title—is one of the most interesting little children I ever saw—wonderfully bright and intelligent. He has taken a flattering liking to me, and is always, when in my company, exerting his childish powers for my entertainment. We visit quite frequently—"charming people," Aunt Conway calls them. The little boy prattles to me, sometimes in an incoherent sort of fashion, of his mother, who seems to be a sort of faint, almost forgotten image in his baby mind. He is not more than three or four years old—well grown for his age. I have observed (Bruce, teasing fellow, says I have only fancied it,) that they do not like to hear the little boy speak of his mother. They never mention her themselves, and I have been given to understand that she is dead, but they have never said so in plain terms. The little one does not at all resemble his grandparents.

"I commented casually on this to Lady Marguerite one day, and she answered no, that, to her great regret, the child resembled his father's family most, and she colored, and looked so annoyed, that I felt sorry I had said so much, and tried to mend the matter by saying that he had more the appearance of an American child than an English one. She flushed even deeper than before, and said that she had never been in America, and never to her knowledge seen an American child, but that Earle's parents were in that country at the time of his birth, and remained there some time after, which probably accounted for his American look—she did not know. We said no more on the subject, but the slight mystery that seemed to surround it made me think of it all the more; and, mother, now I will tell you why I have taken such an interest in the child. Aunt Conway and Bruce jestingly declare me a monomaniac on this subject, though they do not pretend to deny the fact of the likeness, which struck me the very first time I saw him. Mother, this little baronet that is to be, this little English child, with his long line of proud ancestry, his haughty, blue-eyed grandparents, his fragile, blue-eyed mother, whose picture I have seen in their picture-gallery—this little dark-eyed boy is enough like Paul and Grace Winans to be the child they lost so strangely in Washington two years ago! He has the rarely beautiful dark eyes, the dazzling smile of Senator Winans, the very features, expression, peculiar gestures, and seraphic fairness of Grace. It was a long time before this united likeness became clear to me. Then it dawned on me like a flash of lightning, and now I am continually reminded of dear Grace in the features and expressions of this little child. It perplexes and worries me, although Bruce assures me that it can only be one of those accidental resemblances that we meet sometimes at opposite sides of the world. Can this be so? It puzzles me, anyhow, and I heartily wish that the missing Senator—or General Winans he is now, you know—were here. I should certainly give him a glimpse of little Earle Willoughby (he bears the name of his grandparents by their wish), who is his living image, and then we should 'see what we should see.' But it seems that the prevailing belief in his death must be true for the papers now speak of it as a settled fact, and give him the most honorable mention. Poor, poor Grace! how my very heart bleeds at thought of her bereavement, and her beautiful, unselfish devotion to the cause of 'suffering, sad humanity.' Dear mother, please do not mention to her what I have written about the child. She cannot bear to have little Paul's name mentioned to her, and no wonder, poor, suffering, brave heart! But, mother, darling, I mean to get at the bottom of the slight mystery that enshrouds those people. If I discover anything worth writing I will mention it in my next letter to you.

"Aunt Conway and Bruce join me in love to you all. My warmest love to brother Willie and Grace, to both of whom I shall shortly write. Be careful of your health, dearest mother, I beg, and write early and often to your devoted daughter,

"Lulu C. Conway."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE PATHOS OF A QUIET LIFE

"Oh, being of beauty and bliss! seen and knownIn the depths of my soul, and possessed there alone!My days know thee not; and my lips name thee never;Thy place in my poor life is vacant forever.We have met; we have parted. No more is recordedIn my annals on earth."—From Lucille.

Captain Clendenon is taking an afternoon cigar.

He has stepped out of the hospital, where, thank God! there are fewer patients and less need of him now, for a stroll in the fresh air, and while he meanders down the principal thoroughfare, he lights a Havana and enjoys his walk.

In financial panics one sees a crowded thoroughfare, with people rushing hither and thither, and blockading the banks; in pestilential panics one sees silent, deserted streets, and dreary, deserted-looking buildings. This is all that meets Willard's gaze as he stops on the corner, man-fashion, and looks idly up and down at the occasional passers-by, for human faces are the exception, not the rule. Now and then a man goes by, looks hard at him, and nods respectfully. He is very well known here as the noted Norfolk lawyer who has so nobly volunteered in the cause of suffering humanity. Not a woman but looks twice at the tall figure, with its fine military bearing, its handsome head, set so grandly on its broad shoulders, its empty, pathetic coat-sleeve pinned across the left breast.

Old death has been at work here. Those whom he has not mowed down with his awful scythe have fled, terrified, beyond his present harvest-field. There are places of business closed—some of whose owners are abroad in other cities, others of whom are holding commerce now with the worm and the grave. Here and there a school-house is closed, the most of whose little pupils have gone to learn of the angels. It is the dreariness of desolation, and as he puffs meditatively away, these familiar lines of Hemans come into his thoughts:

"Leaves have their time to fall,And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath,And stars to set, but all,Thou hast all seasons for thine own, oh, death!We know when moons shall wane,When summer birds from far shall cross the sea,When autumn's hue shall touch the golden grain—But who shall tell us when to look for thee?"

"A penny for your thoughts, Captain Clendenon," says a fresh, young voice, and a small hand taps him on the shoulder.

He turns with a start. One of the dusky-eyed belles of Memphis, with whom he has a casual acquaintance, has stopped to chat with him—a tall, handsome young lady in a mannish costume of navy-blue velvet, double-breasted English walking-jacket, a mannish hat set jauntily on her black hair, and a set of Grecian features, and large, black eyes.

His gray eyes light momentarily.

"Ah! Miss De Vere, this is a pleasure! About the thoughts—they were not worth your inquiry."

"I am the best judge of that," and something in her tones, not her careless words, imply that all his thoughts are precious to her.

He tosses his cigar away, and turning, asks, politely:

"Are you out for a stroll? May I walk with you?"

"Am I out for a stroll? Yes, but on my way home now. You may see me there with pleasure."

They walk on together down the quiet street, and her cheek flushes a warmer red as she chatters softly to him, he rather listening than talking. It is his way.

"I thought you were out of the city—at the North," he says, in answer to some remark. "Your father told me two months ago he meant to take his family away from the pestilence."

"And so we were. We have but just gotten back since the fever began to lose its hold. How brave you were to stay here! Ugh!" she shuddered a little, "that terrible fever! Do you know people say that you are a hero?"

"Do they?"

A low laugh ripples over his serene, finely cut lips. He wears no beard, no mustache, and every flitting emotion shows itself about his mobile mouth.

She sees a careless sort of surprise on his face now—nothing more.

"Don't you care for it? It is so pleasant to be praised," she says, in some wonder.

"I don't know—is it?"

"Is it not? Do you mean to say that you attach no value to fame—fame that is won by good deeds?"

"I don't know," he answers again, in an absent way. "I might have done it in my younger days—scarcely now. I like to do good for its own sake—not for any praise that may follow it."

"I know—I have heard at least," she stammered, with strange timidity, "that you lost your arm to—to save another man's life! Is it so, Captain Clendenon—did you give your arm for his life?" her dusky eyes kindling with a passionate hero-worship, that is characteristic of Southern women.

"Yes, I gave my arm for his life," he says, grimly. "I might as well have given him my life, for when I buried my left arm on the battle-field at Chancellorsville I buried with it all the hopes that make a man's life worth the living."

"And why?" an unspoken sympathy on her pretty face. "What hopes can there be that your misfortune can possibly destroy?"

They turn a corner into a side street, where her home lies, meeting a group coming toward them, a man with a bright-faced wife clinging to one arm, a little laughing child by the other hand, and two others following after. His glance marks them out a moment, then meets hers, as he quotes, half-sadly:

"'Domestic happiness! thou only blissOf Paradise that has survived the fall.'

"Miss De Vere, cannot you suppose that a man getting into the 'sere and yellow leaf'—I am almost six-and-thirty years old—must feel the need of some 'fair spirit for his minister?' And," his glance falling, hers following, on his empty sleeve, "what woman could I ask to give herself to half a man?"

She slackens her pace to look up at him, in genuine honest astonishment.

"Captain Clendenon, you have never been so quixotic, so absurdly chivalrous as to think that any woman would not feel honored to cast her lot with yours in spite of your honorable misfortune—yes, if you had lost both your arms in the army as nobly as you have lost one!"

"Thank you! thank you!" he answers, deeply moved, and seeing the sudden waves of hot color breaking over the warm Southern beauty of her face, he looks blindly away and thinks what a noble-hearted girl she is, and how he has misjudged her in thinking her a fine, fashionable flirt, as all along he had been doing, when he thought of her at all, which was but seldom.

And then they are at the steps of the elegant De Vere mansion, and she gently invites him to enter. He shakes his head.

"I thank you; but I will continue my stroll. One gets so little fresh air indoors, and I have been so confined lately. To-day I am off duty, and making the most of it. My respects to the family."

"Oh!" she says, turning, with her foot on the marble step. "May I ask you one question?"

"A dozen, if you please," he returned, gallantly.

"It is only this: It is a current report here that the Hon. Mrs. Winans, who came down here with your party to help nurse the fever patients, is, or was, Miss Grace Grey of this city—do you know if this is true?" lifting eager, inquiring eyes to his face.

"Yes, it is certainly true," and she sees some sort of a change pass over his face—what, she cannot fathom.

"Indeed!" she says, in quick surprise and pleasure. "I knew her intimately as a child; we were next-door neighbors"—she nods at the handsome residence standing next to her own, and he looks at it with tender interest—"and afterward we were in boarding-school together. I always liked her so much. Will you give her Stella De Vere's love, and tell her I will come and see her if she will let me?"

"I certainly will, with pleasure," and they shake hands and say good-by again, and she runs up the steps of her father's stately home, pausing in the door-way as he turns away.

"He is a hero," she says, with a dreamy light in her dark eyes. "How I could love him, if–"

She shuts the door, half-sighing, and goes in.

For him, he walks away, stopping a moment in front of the next-door house to light a fresh cigar, and glancing at the green grounds, with their graveled paths, goes away with a fancy in his mind of a fairy child with violet eyes and golden curls at play beside the marble fountain under its dashing spray.

Grace Grey!

He walks on down the lonely street, his heart full of Grace Grey, not Grace Winans; full of the child and girl whose light steps have danced down this street in happier days—not the Senator's sad-eyed wife—he has no right to think of her. But this fairy, winning child, this innocent, joyous maiden, who grows into shape and life in his loving imagination—she is his own, his very own, to hold in his "heart of hearts," to think of, to idealize, to worship. He creates in his own mind the goddess she was, goes back from the days when he first knew her to those earlier days when Stella De Vere knew her. Then an idle remembrance of Stella's praise of him sets him thinking. Was it true? Would any woman have loved him as well with his one arm as with two? Would Grace have done it had he tried to win her? For a moment a half-wish that he had tried, that he had won her for his own idolized wife, overwhelmed him.

"She might have been quietly content with me," he thinks. "At least she should never have known the suffering, the passionate pathos that darkens her young life now."

Too late! "Her place in his poor life is vacant for ever," and, as Grace has said once, he repeats:

"Fate is above us all."

He goes back to his visions of the child and maiden again; his heart thrills with passionate fondness for the happy child, the lovely girl whose dual lives have merged into the shadowed life of beautiful Grace Winans. Fancies come and go, the "light that never was on sea nor land" shining over his mild pictures of what "might have been," and never opium-eater's visions were fairer than the ideal dreams that go curling up in the blue, fantastic smoke-wreaths of Captain Clendenon's cigar.

Sunset drives him to his hotel, chilled and thoughtful. The winter sunshine, pleasant enough in this southern city, in its declining, has left a chill in the air that seems to strike to his heart. At the door he tosses away the remains of that magic cigar and goes up to his room, where a cheerful fire throws its genial warmth over everything, and brings out the stale odor of cigar smoke that clings to him. He throws off his coat, and in his white shirt-sleeves, pours fresh water from the pitcher into the basin.

"Phew!" he says, in disgust, "how smoky I am!" pushing back his neat linen cuff and bending over, in manly fashion, to dip head and hand into the water; he gives a slight cough, then, gasping, bends lower, while a crimson stream flows fast from his lips into the crystal water, turning it all to blood.

Again and again that slight cough, again and again that warm tide flowing from his lips—and yet he seems not in the least surprised, not in the least alarmed, only steadies himself, with his hand pressed on the edge of the wash-stand, and watches the flowing life-stream, his face growing white as marble.

Then the stream thins, grows less and less, and less, and gradually ceases. Taking up a glass of fresh water he rinses his mouth of the blood, and standing, looking down at the scarlet flood in the wash-basin, says thoughtfully, but not fearfully:

"This is the second time I have done it. I think I will see Dr. Constant to-morrow."

A tap at the door.

"Mother must not know," he says, and hurriedly laying a large towel over the wash-basin, is sitting comfortably in front of his fire when he calls out:

"Come in."

It is Mrs. Clendenon, just come in from the hospital, her gentle face flushed from walking, a placid smile on her lip.

"Willard, are you here? Gracie and I have but just come in and missed you—why, how pale you are—are you sick?"

"No, not sick. I have but just come in also. I was out walking and came in chilled—have not thawed out yet."

"Oh, Willard, my boy!" she cries, in a horrified tone, "what is that?"

A great spat of blood he had not observed stained his spotless linen cuff; she turned dead white as she saw it.

"It is nothing," he answers, with his handkerchief at his lips, but he draws it away dashed with minute streaks of blood; "sit down, mother, dear, don't get nervous, don't get excited."

She is leaning over his chair, her arm around his shoulder, her eyes full of piteous mother's love and fear fixed on his pale face.

"My son, what does it mean?"

"Mother, nothing much. I have only had a slight hemorrhage from the lungs—from over-exertion, I presume. It is all over now; but to make all sure I will consult Doctor Constant to-morrow, and I will be more careful of my health and strength hereafter, I promise you."

"Oh, I knew you were killing yourself," she wailed; "I knew it!"

"Don't, mother—don't talk so wildly. It was for the best, I assure you; it had to come. I shall be very much better after this; Doctor Constant will tell you so," he says, tenderly, to the wild-eyed mother, who is white with fear for her boy, and with all a woman's physical horror at the sight of blood.

She glances around her vacantly, then suddenly walks across the room, lifting the towel from the wash-basin. She looks with reeling brain and dazed eyes on that scarlet tide, and turns on her son a look of awful horror and anguish—such anguish as a mother's heart can feel—down, down, down in its fathomless, illimitable depths. He comes forth and steadies her reeling form with his one arm about her waist, looking down at her with those earnest, beautiful gray eyes.

"Oh, mother, don't look so—don't grieve so! I tell you, certainly, I shall be better after this. I have only lost a little blood. Cheer up, little mother. Doctor Constant shall give me a tonic, and make it all right. You won't tell Mrs. Winans? I would rather she did not know. She would worry over it, too, and there is nothing to alarm either of your tender hearts."

He did get better of it, though Doctor Constant shook his head warningly when he met him still at his labors in the hospital. Grace knew nothing of it, by his wish, and in February a letter from Lulu, who had spent a portion of the winter in Italy, filled Mrs. Clendenon with the same perplexities, doubts, and hopes that agitated Lulu's heart in her far away home in London, which, with its foggy atmosphere and chilly rains, made itself peculiarly disagreeable to the young American lady who pined for the clear, pure atmosphere and health-giving sea-breeze of her own native home, while she gently deferred to the wishes of her husband and his aunt, and remained abroad until it pleased them to turn their faces homeward.

CHAPTER XXVI.

LULU TO HER MOTHER

"Tis strange but true; for truth is always strange,Stranger than fiction."—Byron."London, Eng., March 20th, 1874.

"I promised to write you, dear mother if I should discover anything of interest relating to the little child of whom I wrote you in the autumn; and thanks to dear Bruce (who pretended not to take any interest in the matter at all) I have something to write you which, if nothing more comes of it, is certainly one of the strangest coincidences that ever happened. Mrs. Conway and Bruce think it can be only a coincidence, but my hopeful heart whispers that it may be more. But I will tell you of it, mother dearest, and leave you to judge for yourself.

"In the first place, then, my dear Bruce used only to be amused at my fondness for and interest in the child that bore such marked resemblance to two of my friends, though he could not but admit the likeness himself. But after he became convinced, as I was, that there was some mystery or some secret about the little one's parentage, he, quite unknown to me (not wishing to arouse hopes that might be disappointed in the end), set about making inquiries in a quiet and cautious manner, which brought to light the facts I am about to relate.

"I suppose it is hardly necessary I should remind you, mother, that the Englishwoman, Mrs. Moreland, who stole little Paul Winans from the hotel in Washington, D. C., and was traced to the steamer that left for England, told the servant-girl there that she had buried her husband in New York, as also a little girl and boy one year old, and that he was the last child of five. You will also remember that the girl, Annie Grady, and other waiters in the hotel thought that Mrs. Moreland was not quite right in her mind—that is to say, she was on the verge of insanity, and it was supposed that, under some hallucination that the child was her own, she kidnapped little Paul, and, with a lunatic's proverbial cunning, succeeded in getting away with him.