The Senator's Bride

"Well, tell me this, brother. Did you ever go to see her at all? Did you like her—did she like you?"

"I went there sometimes—not often," his glance falling with unconscious pathos on the empty sleeve that lay between him and any aspiration toward woman's love. "I liked her very much indeed. She was very sweet and attractive, very obliging always. She liked me a little; I suppose, as a mere friend. I never presumed to ask for a deeper regard. I knew she loved Bruce. I felt, Lulu, it seemed to me then, in her dark days, every pang that struck home to that trusting and deceived young heart. I felt sorry for her, and admired her for the brave yet womanly strength that carried her through that bitter ordeal. I rejoiced with her when she married a better man than Bruce and seemed to have forgotten the past."

The tender brown eyes looked gravely at him as he spoke, reading his heart with a woman's quick intuition. She put both arms about his neck and touched her lips to the noble brow over which the brown curls fell so carelessly. The mute caress told him that she understood and sympathized in his unspoken grief. The man's heart in him could not bear it. He rose, putting her kindly and gently aside.

"Lulu, she has a noble husband; a handsome, generous fellow, a 'man among men,' but he is marred almost as much by his unreasoning jealousy as is Bruce by his unstable character. I pity her. She is worthy of confidence and all respect. It is an honor to any man to have loved her even though hopelessly."

"And Senator Winans has left her, they say, Brother Willie?"

"So rumor says," he answered, meditatively.

"Why don't you see him, brother, and talk with him, and try to make him look at things fairly? It seems a pity she should suffer so, through no fault of hers, too. My heart aches for her in her loneliness."

He did not answer. He was walking slowly up and down the floor, pausing now and then to look out of the window which overlooked the Elizabeth River and the wharves crowded with the shipping of all nationalities. His sister rose and paced the floor, also, her young heart full of sympathy for the four people whose life-paths crossed each other so strangely and sadly. She shuddered and hoped she would never love. Of the three men who each loved Grace Winans in his own fashion, she wondered which was the most unhappy; the husband who had stained his hands in human blood for his selfish passion; Bruce Conway who was dying for her, or her brother whose heart was silently breaking for her. The little maiden who was all unversed in the lore of life found herself bewildered in the maze of metaphysics into which she was drifting. She sat herself down with a sigh, and thought of the handsome face lying so deathly white up stairs, and half wishing her mother had not banished her from the room.

"Lulu!"

"Yes, Brother Willie."

He was looking at her as she looked up at him with a flitting blush on her round, dimpled face. She was wonderfully pretty, this Lulu Clendenon, with her arch brown eyes, and pink and white skin, the wavy brown hair that was gathered in a soft, loosely braided coil at the back of her small head, and her blue lawn dress, with its frillings, and flutings, and puffings, was very becoming, setting off the whiteness of her throat and wrists as no other color ever does for a pretty woman.

"Well," she said, as he did not answer her first reply.

"My little sister, I won't have you tangling your brain up with useless speculations over things that must happen as long as the world stands and men and women live, and breathe, and have their being. Don't let me see that pretty brow all puckered up again. What would mother and I do if our household fairy became dull, and dreamy, and philosophical."

"Brother Willie, am I always to be a child?"

"Always, my sweet? Why how old are you—sixteen?"

"I am nineteen, brother, and this Mrs. Winans of whom all Norfolk is raving, who is a wife and mother—she, it is said, is barely more than twenty."

"Yes, love; but the loss of parents and friends forced Grace Grey into premature womanhood and premature responsibilities; she took up the cross early, but you, dear little one–"

A low tinkle of the door-bell cut short whatever else he meant to say, and he answered the summons himself. It was a messenger from Mrs. Conway to inquire concerning her nephew. He sent back a message that he still lay sleeping quietly. For the rest of the day the house was besieged with callers and inquirers from all parts of the city, and Captain Clendenon found himself kept busy in replying.

In the midst of it all, in his deep grief and anxiety for his friend's life, in his pity and sympathy for the exiled duelist, a fair face brooded over all his thoughts, a pang for a woman's suffering struck coldly to his heart. To know that she was mourning alone, bowed to earth in her unmerited sorrow and shame, was the height and depth of bitterness to the man who loved her tenderly and purely as he did his own little sister.

And the spring day wore to its close, and the silence of the balmy spring night, with its wandering breeze of violets, its mysterious stare, fell over all things. The string of inquirers from among the friends of the wounded man thinned out, the surgeon came and went, and still Bruce Conway lay locked in that strange pallid sleep on whose waking so many hearts hung with anxiety and dread.

At ten o'clock the captain admitted John, who had come to seek fresh tidings for his mistress. His honest black face looked up in vague, awe-struck grief at the captain's mournful features.

"Oh, marse cap'en!" he pleaded, "lemme see him, if you please, sir, once more before he dies!"

"Be very quiet, then," said the captain, "and it will do no harm for you to go in."

The black boy went in with footfalls noiseless as the captain's own. Lulu and her mother were there, one on each side of the bed, watching the sleeper with anxious eyes. They looked up at the strange face of the boy as he paused and gazed at the still, white face on the pillow. His dark skin seemed to grow ashen white as he looked, his thick, ugly lip quivered convulsively, and two tears darted from his black eyes and rolled down upon his breast. He gazed long and mournfully, seeming to take in every lineament of that beloved face; then, as he turned reluctantly away, stooped carefully down, and touched his rough lips tenderly and lightly on the cold, white hand that lay outside of the coverlid.

"Twas a hand that never struck me, and was always kind to me," he murmured, mournfully, as he went out, followed by the injunction from Mrs. Clendenon to report that Mr. Conway was still in the same condition—sleeping quietly.

Lulu looked down at the hand lying so still and lifeless on the counterpane. A tear-drop that had fallen from the eyes of the poor black boy lay on it, shining purely as a pearl in the subdued light. Lulu would not wipe it away. It was a precious drop distilled from the fountain of unselfish love and sorrow; it seemed to plead mutely to the girl for the man who lay there so still and pale, unable to speak for himself.

"There must have been much good in the poor young man," she thought, impulsively, "or his servants would not have loved him like that."

By and by she stole down to her brother, who was still pacing, with muffled footfalls, the parlor floor. He turned to her, inquiringly.

"Well?" he queried.

"No change yet—not the slightest."

"Probably there will not be until midnight. I trust it will be favorable, though we have no grounds to expect it. The surgeon fears internal hemorrhage from that great bullet-wound in the side—it narrowly escaped the heart. He will be here again to-night before the crisis comes."

Once more comes a low, muffled door-bell. Lulu drops into an arm-chair, shivering, though the night is warm. Willard goes to the door.

Presently he comes back, ushering in a stranger. She rises up, thinking as a matter of course that this is the surgeon.

"My sister, Lulu, Senator Winans," said her brother's quiet tones.

Lulu nearly dropped to the floor in astonishment and terror. She was very nervous to-night—so nervous that she actually trembled when he lightly touched her hand, and she almost pushed his away, thinking, angrily, that that firm white hand had done Bruce Conway to death.

He was not so terrible to look at, though, she thought, as with woman's proverbial curiosity she furtively scanned the tall, fine figure.

He was very young to fill such a post of honor in his country—he certainly did not look thirty—and the fine white brow, crowned by curling, jet-black hair, might have worn a princely crown and honored it in the wearing. Beautiful, dusk-black eyes, gloomy now as a starless midnight, looked at her from under slender, arched, black brows. The nose was perfectly chiseled, of Grecian shape and profile; the mouth was flexible and expressive—one that might be sweet or stern at will; the slight, curling mustache did not hide it, though his firm chin was concealed by the dark beard that rippled luxuriantly over his breast.

It was a face that breathed power; whose beauty was thoroughly masculine; that was mobile always; that might be proud, or passionate, or jealous—never ignoble. Altogether he was a splendidly handsome man. Lulu could not help acknowledging this to herself—the very handsomest man she had ever seen in her life. But for all that, after she had politely offered him a chair, she retreated as far as possible from his vicinity. Why had he come there in his proud, strong manhood and beauty, and Bruce Conway lying up stairs like that? He did not take the offered seat, but merely placing one hand on the back of it, looked from her to her brother.

"I feel that this is an unwelcome intrusion, Captain Clendenon," he said, slowly, and in soft, sad tones, that thrilled the girl's heart, in spite of the anger she felt for him, "but I cannot help it, though you may not believe me when I tell you that it was so impossible for me endure the suspense and horror of to-night that I have come here to beg you for news of the man whom I have almost murdered."

Black eyes and gray ones met each other without wavering. Soul met soul, and read each other by the fine touchstone of a fellow-feeling. Even in his anger for his friend, Willard Clendenon could not withhold a merited kindly answer.

"I do believe you," he answered, quietly, "and am glad you came, though I can tell you nothing satisfactory. The patient has slept all day—still sleeps– he will awaken to life or death. We are only waiting."

"Waiting!" That word chilled the fiery, impulsive soul of Paul Winans into a dumb horror. Waiting!—for what! To see his work completed. What had he done? Taken in cold blood a human life that at this moment, in his swift remorse and self-accusation, he would have freely given his own to save; in the height of his jealous madness committed a deed from which his calmer retrospection revolted in horror. He looked from one to the other in pale, impotent despair. He had gone his length—the length of human power and passion—now God's hand held the balance.

"Then, at least, you will let me wait," he said. "If he dies, I shall surrender myself up to justice. If he lives, I shall all the sooner know that I am not a murderer."

"You shall stay, certainly, and welcome," Willard said, cordially, touched by the evident suffering of the other.

"Very well; I will sit here and wait, with thanks. I do not deserve this kindness."

Lulu stole from the room, leaving them alone together, and resumed her place up stairs. The patient slept calmly on, her mother placidly watching him. Once or twice her brother looked quietly in, and as quietly withdrew. There was something on his mind that must be spoken. He turned once and looked at his companion as he sat upright in his chair, still and pale almost as his victim lay up stairs.

"Winans," he said, slowly, "we have known each other for a long time, and I knew your wife long before you ever met her, and knew her but to reverence her as a pearl among women. Will you pardon me if I confess to an interest in her that lends me to inquire frankly if you think you are doing her justice?"

"Clendenon, I know that I am not. I know that I am unworthy of her—pure, injured angel that she is—but what can I do? I dare not remain near her. I should but make her miserable. It maddens me, in my jealous bitterness, when I remember that young, fair, and sweet as she was when I first met her, the pure page of her heart had already been inscribed with the burning legend of a first love. Her first love lost to me, her second only given to me, I cannot bear! When I can overcome this fiery passion, and if Bruce Conway lives, I will return to her—not till then."

"You are wrong, my friend—bitterly wrong. Think of what she suffers, of the scandal, the conjecture that your course will create. You should be her defender, not leave her defenseless to meet the barbed arrows of caviling society. Return to your injured wife, Winans. Take the candid advice of one who esteems you both. It is so hard on her. She suffers deeply, I feel."

"Clendenon, hush! You madden me, and cannot shake my firm resolve—would that I had never met her."

"Possibly she might have been happier," Clendenon says, with sudden scathing sarcasm, "but I will say no more. It is not my province to come between man and wife. May God have more mercy on her than you have!"

The words pierced that proud heart deeply. The erring, passionate man arose and looked at the other in his calm, truthful scorn, and burning words leaped to his lips.

"Clendenon, you don't know what you are talking of. You blame me for what I cannot overcome. Do you know where I was born? Under the burning skies of Louisiana. The hot blood of the fiery South leaps through my veins, the burning love of the Southern clime pours its flood-tide through my heart, the passionate jealousy of the far South fires my soul. I cannot help my nature. I cannot entirely control nor transform it into a colder, calmer one. Blame me if you will, think me unmanly if you will, but I have told you the truth. It shall be the study of my life to bring this madness into subjection. Till then I will not hold my wife in my arms, will not kiss her dear lips. It is for the best. I will not frighten her from me forever by showing her how like a madman I can be under the influence of my master-passion."

Slowly, slowly the hours wore on until midnight. Mrs. Clendenon fell into a light doze in the sick-room, but Lulu was still watching that still form. The shaded lamps burned dimly, the room was full of shadows, the strange silence and awe that fill a room at an hour like this brooded solemnly over all things.

Poor Lulu looked at her mother. The sweet old face, framed in its soft lace cap, was locked in such gentle repose the girl had not the heart to awaken her. It grew so lonely she wished her brother would return to the room.

Presently she bent forward and looked into Conway's face, and laid her hand tenderly on his brow; it felt warmer and more natural; he stirred slightly. Before she could move her hand his white lids unclosed, the dark eyes looked at her with the calm light of reason in their depths.

"Gracie, is it you?" he whispered, faintly.

"Not Gracie—Lulu," she answered.

"Not Gracie—Lulu?" he slowly murmured after her, and wearily closed his eyes.

"I think he will live," said a voice above her.

She looked up. Her brother and the surgeon had come in so quietly she had not heard them. She rose from her wearisome vigil and glided softly down stairs, moved by a divine impulse of pity for the pale watcher below.

"I think it is life," she said, simply.

He sprang up and looked at her, two stars dawning in the dusk eyes, a glory shining on his darkly handsome face.

"Thank God!" he cried, "I am not a murderer!"

And strangely as he had come he was gone.

CHAPTER VII.

"I HATE IT—I HATE HER!"

"When first I saw my favorite child,I thought my jealous heart would break,But when the unconscious infant smiled,I kissed it for its mother's sake."—Byron.

With the rosy dawn of the summer day consciousness returned to Bruce Conway—a dazed, half-consciousness, though, that only took in part of the scene, and a memory that only held Grace Winans. He muttered of her in his distracted slumbers; he waked and asked for her with a piteous anxiety that went to Lulu's tender heart.

"Had we better send for her?" she wistfully queried of her brother.

"No, indeed, little sister; it would only complicate matters. She would not come; he does not deserve it. Poor boy! I am sorry, but we can do nothing."

"Nothing, brother?"

"To bring her here, I mean. Try to reason with him, Lulu, and talk him out of this feverish fancy."

"Grace—Gracie!" came in a whisper from the bed.

Lulu was by him in an instant.

"Will not I do as well as Grace?"

"No." His pallid brow contracted in a vexed frown. "Go away; you are not Grace."

"No, but I am Willard's sister. Cannot you like me a little for his sake, and not worry yourself so much?" she asked, gently and persuasively.

"Cannot you get Grace to come—won't you try?" he whispered, in a faint voice.

A low tinkle of the door-bell seemed to echo his words. Half raising his handsome head, he looked at her eagerly.

"That may be Grace now," he said. "Won't you go and see?"

"Yes," she answered, gently, though she sighed as she went; "I will go and see."

She started in astonishment when she opened the door. Outside was a pleasant-faced Irishwoman, dressed plainly and neatly, with a pretty babe in her arms. It was Mrs. Winans' nurse and child.

Grace had learned from Miss Story where Bruce was, and when Norah went out to take the little boy for his morning airing, she had directed her to call and inquire of Captain Clendenon how Mr. Conway was getting on.

Norah introduced herself and her business briefly and clearly, and Lulu invited her in and gave her a seat.

"And this is Mrs. Winans' baby?" she said, taking the beautiful boy from the nurse's arms and kissing his rosy face. "How lovely he is!"

Little Paul smiled fearlessly back at her, and something in the dark flash of his eyes so vividly recalled his father that she thought suddenly of Bruce Conway waiting up stairs for her.

"I will bring my brother down to tell you exactly how Mr. Conway is," she said; and turning away with the little bundle of lace, and cambric, and laughing babyhood in her arms, she went back to Bruce Conway's room.

Her brother looked surprised at the strange little visitor. She smiled and went up to the bedside, holding triumphantly up the tiny baby that, quite unabashed by the strange scene, jumped, and crowed, and smiled brilliantly at Bruce.

"Mrs. Winans did not come, but she sent her representative, Mr. Conway," she said, thinking it would please him to see the pretty child. "This is her son."

"Her son!" Bruce Conway's eyes dwelt a moment on that picture of rosy health and beauty, and a shudder shook him from head to foot. "Her child! his child! Take it away from me, Miss Clendenon. I hate it! I hate her!"

Lulu recoiled in terror at the sharp, angry tones and the jealous pain and madness that gleamed in his eyes. She turned away surprised and frightened at the mischief she had done, and was about to leave the room.

"Lulu, let me see the baby," said her brother's voice, as she reached the door.

His tones wore strangely moved, and as he came across to her she noted the faint flush that colored his high forehead. He took it in his arms and looked long and earnestly at the little face, finding amid its darker beauty many infantile beauties borrowed from the fair lineaments of its mother.

"God bless you, little baby," he said, touching reverent lips to the innocent brow, with a prayer in his heart for her whose brow was so mirrored in that of her child that he flushed, then paled, as he kissed it, thinking of hers that his lips might never press.

He loved the child for its mother's sake.

Bruce hated it for its father's sake.

It was a fair exponent of the character of the two men.

He gave it quietly back to Lulu, but she, explaining her errand sent him to tell Norah, with the child in his arms, while she went back to soothe the irritated invalid.

"I am sorry," she began, penitently, "I would not have brought the babe, but I thought, I fancied, that you would like it for its mother's sake. Forgive me."

The moody anger in his eyes cleared at sound of her magical, silver-sweet tones.

"Forgive me," he said, feebly. "I was a brute to speak to a lady so—but I was not myself. You don't understand a man's feelings in such a case, Miss Clendenon. Thank you for that forgiving smile."

He caught up the little hand gently straightening his tumbled pillows, and with feeble, pallid gallantry, touched it to his lips. A shiver of bitter-sweet emotion thrilled the young girl as she hastily drew it away.

"You must not talk any more," she said, gently, "or brother will scold, and the surgeon, too. Brother will be back in a minute, so be quiet. Don't let anything occupy your mind, and try, do, to go to sleep and rest."

She put her finger to her lip and nodded archly at him.

He smiled back, and half-closing his eyes, lay looking at her as she took a chair at the other end of the room, and busied herself with a bit of fancy work.

"How pretty she is," he thought, vaguely, and when he fell into a fitful slumber, her fair face blent with Grace's in his dreams, and bewildered him with its bright, enchanting beauty.

CHAPTER VIII.

"BUT AS FOR HER, SHE STAID AT HOME."

To aid thy mind's development, to watchThe dawn of little joys, to sit and seeAlmost thy very growth, to view thee catchKnowledge of objects, wonders yet to see!To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss.—Byron's Childe Harold.

To Bruce Conway the months of slow and tardy convalescence seemed like dead weights on his impatient, restless soul; to Grace Winans, in her splendid but strangely silent home, where but few guests were received, and which she rarely left, time passed as it did to Mariana in the Moated Grange. But for all that, the summer passed like a painful dream, and the "melancholy days" had come; "time does not stop for tears."

Mrs. Conway had prevailed on Bruce to compromise his intention of going abroad again by spending the winter with her amid the gayeties of Washington—the "Paris of America."

How far a pretty face had influenced him in making this decision it is impossible to say; but Mrs. Conway, in her gratitude to the Clendenons for their kindness to her idol, had fairly worried them into consenting to let Lulu pass the winter with her in the gay capital city. For Lulu it may be said that no persuasion was needed to obtain her consent, and how far her fancy for a handsome face had influenced her, we will not undertake to say either. However this may be, the Washington newspapers duly chronicled for the benefit of fashionable society the interesting intelligence that the elegant Mr. Bruce Conway, the hero of the much talked of Norfolk duel, and his still brilliant aunt, Mrs. Conway—both so well known in Washington circles—had taken a handsome suite of rooms at Willard's Hotel for the winter. And the newspapers—which will flatter any woman in society, be she fair or homely—added the information that Mrs. Conway had one of the belles of Norfolk for her guest—the lovely Miss C.—concluding with the stereotyped compliment that her marvelous beauty and varied accomplishments would create a stir in fashionable society; and thus was Lulu Clendenon launched on the sea of social dissipation.

A deep flush of shame and annoyance tinged the girl's dimpled cheeks, as leaning back in a great sleepy hollow of a chair in their private parlor, skimming lightly over the "society news," she came upon this paragraph about a week after their arrival.

Bruce Conway, lounging idly in an opposite chair, marked that sudden rose-flush under his half-closed lids, and wondered thereat.

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light.

"As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the Northern night," he spouted, in his old non-commital fashion of quoting Tennyson to pretty girls.