her eyes absently following the couple in the carriage. But on the bed,
in her own room, lay Clara, her head buried deep in the pillows, her
slender hands covering the white face, sobbing as if her heart would
break. And through the half-open door came the saddening chant of
Christine:
"I have just been learning the lesson of life,
The sad, sad lesson of loving."
Could the words but have penetrated to the room below, they might have
been echoed there by another. Mr. Farnsworth was again making an
announcement to Mrs. Wardor--though in a manner not quite so
pompous--indeed, almost hesitating.
"Yes," he was saying, "my daughter cannot blame me, since I have made
her happy, that I too should look for a suitable companion. When I say
suitable, I mean one better fitted than the first Mrs. Farnsworth to
my--ahem!--to my--more advanced mental attainments. I have for some time
past observed the--ahem!--sweet disposition and--ahem!--amiable
character of your friend and _protégé_--Clara. Good gracious, madam, are
you sick? Can I do anything for you?"
"No, thanks; only a sudden dizziness that sometimes seizes me in warm
weather;" and, thanks to Mrs. Wardor's self-possession, it was over
directly. As Mr. Farnsworth took it for granted that it was quite
essential for a fine lady to have nerves, and even fainting-fits, he saw
nothing remarkable in Mrs. Wardor's sudden dizziness and pallor. Then
she said Clara was one of the sweetest-tempered women she had ever met
with, but she knew nothing of the state of her heart or affections; he
must lay the case before the lady herself. And here she suddenly
remembered not to have given full directions for supper to the Chinaman
in the kitchen, and left Mr. Farnsworth to his own meditations in the
parlor. Then the sun went down, and Christine, paying no heed to the
sound of carriage-wheels approaching--thinking the happy lovers had
returned--was startled by the sharp ring of the door-bell. She sprang to
her feet; she felt that the bell called to her, and she was at the door
before the servant could reach it. A tall, bearded man stood before her,
who, taking advantage of the girl's being utterly disconcerted, drew her
quickly to his breast. She rested there only a moment.
"Oh, Rudolph! your father," she said, with a tone of reproach in her
voice.
"Take me to him, Christine," and Mrs. Wardor, who had drawn her head
back discreetly a moment before, now came fully out of her sitting-room
to welcome Rudolph to his home.
"All the afternoon you left me by myself," said Mr. Muldweber,
querulously, as Christine softly entered his room. "Ah! if my boy would
only come, he would never let his old father lie here alone," and he
turned his head to the wall so as not to look at Christine.
"Forgive me," she said; "but poor Clara so needed me. And I have brought
news from your son--from Rudolph. He is coming soon--he will be here--"
"He is here now!" cried the old man, opening his arms, but turning his
eyes to the ceiling, as though he expected his Rudolph to flutter down
from there in the shape of a seraph or an angel.
A few hours later Mr. Muldweber's room, which had seemed so lonesome in
the afternoon, was filled to its full capacity. The old man sat in his
easy-chair, holding one hand each of Rudolph and Christine in his own,
and near them were Mrs. Wardor and Clara. Her friend's happiness was a
consolation to her, so much so that she could think, without breaking
into tears, of the trio in the parlor of the other house, talking over
their plans for the future, just as our friends were doing here.
Mr. Farnsworth intended going back to the city on the morrow, heavily
laden with "The Basket" (the German term for the mitten or the sack),
which Clara had given him.
In Mr. Muldweber's shanty reigned a soft, subdued happiness, like the
half-sad light of the moon flooding in through the window.
"It will be Lone Linden no longer," the old man said, "since I have so
large a family. See, I will not crowd you in the big house; I will stop
in my dear little hut. There will be only room enough in the other house
for Rudolph and his wife and her two sisters" (the old man was naturally
gallant), "whose knight I will be till some one worthier and better
shall fill my place. And the red-headed one will go next month?" he
asked, turning to Mrs. Wardor. With a sigh of relief he continued, "And
the black Kobold will go with her I hope, and the four-footed one too.
How they used to break my beautiful white lilies and throw them to that
animal. Ah! you cannot make me believe anything--if that horse were not
possessed by the evil one he never could have eaten those flowers--stem
and all." They could not help laughing, and parted almost merrily.
But out in the garden, in the tender white moonlight, Rudolph drew
Christine close to his heart and looked searchingly into her eyes.
"Are you at peace with yourself now, Christine, and satisfied to be
mine--satisfied and happy? Then why are those tears in your eyes?"
She struggled out of his arms, and passing her hand over her eyes, she
fell irresistibly into her old habit, and sang, soft and low,
"Mag auch im Aug' die Thräne stehn--
Das macht das frohe Wiedersehn."
_MANUELA._
"Poor Mrs. Kennerly" was more lachrymose than usual to-day; her eyes
paler, her hair more faded. Paul Kennerly, the keen-eyed, robust
counterpart and husband of the lady, was measuring the room with
impatient steps. When her pale-blue eyes shed tears and grew paler, his
flashed fire and grew deeper blue; when her light-yellow hair hung limp
and loose about her eyes, his darker, heavier locks rose obstinately
from his forehead, and were shaken back, now and again, as a lion shakes
his mane. While the profuse tears coursing over his wife's cheeks seemed
to bleach their original pink into vapid whiteness, his own flushed hot
and red with the quick blood mounting into them.
Yet, Mrs. Kennerly, of whom her friends spoke only with the adjective
"poor" prefixed, was not a martyr; on the contrary, to the unprejudiced
observer, the great tall man, in spite of flashing eye and reddened
cheek, appeared much more in that light and character.
"Laura, _will_ you stop crying just for two seconds, and listen to what
I have to say?"
"Oh, my poor sister! my poor sister! Coming home, and unwelcome in her
own dead father's house! unwelcome to her own brother-in-law, at the
house of her poor dead father--oh!"
Before she had finished her lamentation, Mr. Kennerly had left the room,
shutting the door behind him with a crash, and crossing the corridor
with long, heavy strides. Then his steps resounded on the veranda, where
the June sun threw deepening shadows of the old locusts that stood
sentinel in a half circle on the lawn. Pacing back and forth, with knit
brows and downcast eyes, the wooing beauties of the summer day were lost
on him, as they were without charm or joy to the weak-minded woman
fretting and complaining in her darkened room up-stairs.
Unnoticed by him was the short sweet grass on the lawn, and the rows of
blossoming lilacs and budding roses that hedged it in on either side,
down to the road; unheeded on his ear fell the gentle murmuring of the
wind in the cluster of poplar, beech, and elm that stood bowing and
swaying by the large old gate. Was it possible that he had ever pushed
through its portals (a wanderer returned to his early home), an
expectant bridegroom, to meet the meek-eyed bride whose phantom only
seemed now to haunt the old-fashioned, hospitable house? Again Paul
Kennerly threw back the hair from his forehead with the lion-like motion
that had grown more abrupt and hasty year after year. Then the footsteps
on the veranda ceased, and soon soft, full chords, such as a master-hand
only could strike on the piano, sounded through the wide corridor, and
floated up to the ears of the self-willed invalid. Louder and stronger
grew the strains; and the woman, in her feebleness, cowered on her
lounge up-stairs, and complained fretfully, "Now he storms again!" while
the man below seemed to have forgotten everything; his own existence,
perhaps--the existence of the woman, surely.
Yet she was present to the waking dreams he dreamed of his early
youth--they could not be dreamed without her. She had been his playmate,
his _protégé_; as her younger, stronger sister had been his natural
antagonist and aversion. The father had been his guardian. And when Paul
went as sutler and trader to New Mexico, just as Laura was budding into
girlhood, it was tacitly understood that on his return he would claim
her as his betrothed. Years passed, and when old Mr. Taylor felt his end
approaching, he begged Paul to return, and be to his two daughters the
protector that he had been to Paul's helpless childhood. Soon after
Laura's marriage, Mr. Taylor died, firm in the belief that he had made a
happy man of his favorite, Paul.
Before the mourning year was over, a schoolmate of Paul's, an army
officer, some years his senior, came to spend a month's furlough at the
old Taylor mansion. When he left, he was the willing slave and avowed
suitor of Regina, the queenly younger sister of Laura. If there were no
hearty congratulations from Paul's side, I doubt that either Colonel
Douglass, in his happiness, or Laura, in her self-absorption, felt the
withholding of his kind wishes; and Regina cared very little either for
his favor or his disapproval.
Even before they were married, Regina knew that after a few short weeks
spent in the home-like, elegant quarters at the arsenal, they must leave
the ease and luxuries of civilization for the wilds of some frontier
country. But Regina was content to reign over the limited number of
hearts to be found in a frontier's camp, as she had reigned over her
train of admirers in the ball-room and at the watering-places; and, to
the delight of her husband, she uttered no word of complaint when an
order from the War Department sent them to an adobe-built fort on the
Rio Pecos, in the most desolate part of all New Mexico.
"Now, I should like to go with you, Hal," had said his brother-in-law,
when he read him the order; and he raised his head and flung back his
hair, as though he felt the wild, free wind of the Plains tossing it.
Paul rode back from the arsenal slowly that evening; and the nearer home
he came, the lower drooped his head, the darker grew his brow. At home
he paced the floor uneasily, paying little heed to the feeble whimpering
of his wife, who had been frittering her life away between
camphor-bottles and sentimental novels since Regina had left the house.
The drawing-room, where the piano stood, and where the windows opened
out on the veranda and the lawn, was his harbor this night, as often
when either his own thoughts or the selfish complainings of his wife
drove him distractedly about the house. But this night there sounded a
single soft strain through his "storming,"--as his wife called it,--and
the strain grew wilder and sweeter, till suddenly lost, as the note of
some clear-voiced, frightened bird is lost in the howling of the
midnight storm.
Then had come days of calm, during which the piano remained closed, and
he sat meekly under the drivelling talk of his wife, and in the close,
dark atmosphere which alone, she insisted, suited the delicate
complexion of her face and of her mind.
After that, an occasional letter from his brother-in-law, now at his
station on the Rio Pecos, or an extra twist of the cord matrimonial,
which, since the day of his marriage, seemed literally to encircle his
neck, would set the lion to fuming in his cage; and, with the toss of
his hair from the forehead, would commence the wandering through the
house which always ended with "storming" the piano.
But the days are passing while we travel back into the past; and one,
not far distant, brings Regina, the unwelcome. Before she had been in
the house many days, she knew from her sister's rambling talk what Paul
had said of her coming before she came--knew that he did not believe
what the colonel had written about the disastrous effects of the New
Mexican climate on his wife's health; but believed, rather, the rumors
that had come to him from all sides, each varying a little from the rest
in detail, but all agreeing in the main. Regina's marble face, and
nervous, transparent fingers, might have confirmed the theory of failing
health; but there was something in the momentary flash of her dark
eyes, as she listened to her sister's quavering voice, that told of
energy or despair, such as woman gains and gathers only from a sudden
calling forth of all her passions and powers for the defence of her
life, her honor, or position, as the case may be. It may have been only
once, in the long past, that this power was called out; but, like the
heat-lightning at the close of a hot, murky day, it throws baleful
gleams on the cloud-darkened horizon of her life forever after.
"My sternly-virtuous moral brother-in-law," Regina said softly to
herself, seated on a low stool in the room where her cradle had stood,
"would fain drive me from my own father's house, for a fancied injury to
the fair name of the Kennerly-Taylor family. Ah, well! the end of all
days has not come yet."
Her head sank on her bosom, as she sat watching the shadows of the
tree-clump by the gate, growing longer and deeper in the fading light of
the western sun; and a tear stole into her eye and trickled slowly down
her pure white cheek. Her sister, creeping up to her, and looking into
her face with what affection she was capable of, shed more of her
easy-coming tears.
"I told him they were slandering you. Papa always said you were too
proud to do a wrong and not acknowledge it. And Paul was always hard on
you, I know; and it's all a lie and slander; for even if you were not my
sister, I could tell, as any one could, from your face, that you are
good and without sin. I know from the stories I have read--they all have
just such pale, faultless faces when they're persecuted; and afterwards
the misunderstanding is cleared up, and they get married. But then, you
_are_ married." She had gotten into deep water now; and thinking,
probably, that her younger, cleverer sister would solve this problem as
she had so many others, Laura picked up her camphor-bottle and returned
to her own room. Regina remained, her "pale, faultless face" turned to
the dying light, a pensive, half-pained, half-sad expression on her lips
and in her eye, looking almost like a saint striving to forgive and
bless her traducers.
Yet the woman was not without sin; though how much was to be laid at her
door none could tell.
Out in New Mexico, the rumor ran, at the lonely adobe-built post on the
Rio Pecos, where her husband, the colonel, was stationed, there was also
a post surgeon, a young, handsome man, of fascinating manners, of
unquestioned skill and bravery, and born of an Italian mother, from whom
he had inherited passion, temper, and disposition, together with
Southern eyes and curly, silken hair. His courage had probably come from
his American father; none but such could have a son who, in his
dare-devil bravery, would go so far as to capture and tame a young
panther, and chain him outside his door, to act as watch-dog and
protector. And so great was the love of this animal for his master, that
he was known to leap and roar for joy when seeing him approach after an
absence from home.
Of course, Regina was expected to visit and admire the panther as a
"natural curiosity;" and her hand, too, it was said, the beast would
lick with every sign of affection and submission. Rumor said, that in
the dead of night, when no one else could approach the doctor's quarters
within a hundred yards, she could pass by and into the doctor's rooms
without hindrance or opposition from Royal, the panther. And, moreover,
rumor went on to say, that whenever the colonel was away on duty,
looking after those troublesome Navajoes and uncertain Apaches, Regina's
white robe was frequently seen flitting past the uncanny keeper of the
doctor's door.
But there came a day--a night, rather--when Royal, after a short but
terrible conflict with a midnight invader, lay dead on his master's
doorsteps, and over the body strode the invader into the presence of the
young doctor, who, with an almost superhuman effort, tried to shield the
queenly, white-robed form that fell prone to the floor. To be sure, he
received a bullet in his temple; and the dark, silken curls were dank
and stiff with gore when the sun lighted up the low adobe room next
morning. However, he had saved _her_ life; for the colonel became cool
when he saw the destroyer of his peace and honor lying dead at his feet.
There was no public trial--not even a court-martial. The colonel had
killed the doctor in a duel; but nobody demanded a record of the event,
and the reprimand he received was not by sentence. But he was ordered to
Fort Marcy, near Santa Fé. The colonel had borne off a cut across the
forehead, extending upward till under the hair, in one of the pitched
battles with the Indians; and he was known to suffer from headache and
irritation of the wound to such a degree, at times, that
over-excitement, from anger or other cause, made him almost crazy. He
was an old, valiant, and valued officer; and the War Department, not
supposed to know any uninvestigated matter, would excuse many things in
such a one, even though it could not approve them.
Then it was that the colonel's wife had returned to the States "for her
health,"--as her husband was particular to write to his brother officers
stationed at the barracks and arsenal near to the western city where his
wife's home was.
Who can tell how rumor travels? When Regina made her appearance at the
arsenal, the very women who had once been proud of her notice seemed
hardly to remember a passing acquaintance with her; and, stung to the
quick, she had barely strength to control her face and hold high her
head till the door of her carriage had closed on her. She laid back her
head, throbbing and aching, yet filled with a thousand plans for
regaining her position and punishing those who had so humbled her.
It was one of Paul's restless days; and she heard him "storming" on the
piano as her carriage entered the gateway. With sudden interest she
raised her head, while her face grew animated with some struggling
thought.
When night had set in, and the broad hall-door was thrown open to admit
the soft breeze and the tender moonlight, Regina, for the first time
since her return to the home of her childhood, approached the piano in
the drawing-room and ran her fingers over the keys. The door stood open,
and from her seat she could see into the hall, and catch a glimpse of
Paul's shadow every time he passed the hall-door in his walk on the
moonlit veranda. Not a muscle of her face moved as she continued in her
play, striking chords and running _roulades_, without any apparent
purpose save that of touching once more the old familiar key-board.
Paul's shadow flitted by, regularly and restlessly, never varying an
inch in his distance from the door as he passed it. Suddenly the chords
melted into a melody low and sweet, yet swelling almost into wildness in
its yearning, longing tenderness.
Regina listened intently, and--surely Paul could not have paused
suddenly in his walk on the veranda! Directly his footsteps came again,
halting and uncertain, and Regina repeated the air, throwing into it
more intensity, even, than at first. She seemed absorbed in her playing,
though she knew full well when Paul's hesitating footsteps crossed the
threshold, and moved nearer the drawing-room entrance. When he stood in
the door, she looked up, as though unwilling to be disturbed in her
musical meditations. One look at the deathly-pale face, above which the
dark blonde hair rose like a lion's mane, assured her that she would
gain--_had_ gained--her end; and she played on, as though forgetting his
presence in an instant. Presently, a hoarse, unsteady voice reached her
ear:
"Where did you learn that air? Who taught you the song?"
She looked up unconcernedly.
"That air? Do you like it?"
He nodded his head impatiently.
"Where did you learn it? Who taught you?"
"That song? Oh, I learned that in New Mexico."
He looked at her wildly for a moment, but her gaze was so steady that he
dropped his eyes and moved slowly away.
Late in the night, when Regina awoke from a sleep sweeter and sounder
than any she had yet enjoyed, she heard Paul's steps in the hall-way, on
his way to bed.
"You have left me alone all night again," complained his wife, when he
entered the room; "and I have had one of my nervous spells."
"You keep the room so confoundedly hot and full of camphor that it
smothers me to stay here," was the crusty reply.
"Would you want me to keep the windows and shutters open, so as to let
the mosquitoes come in and devour us?"
"Why do you keep the light burning till twelve in the night, then?"
"But, Paul, I can't read in the dark, can I? And I want some pastime, I
am sure, so sick and feeble as I am," weeping for very pity of herself.
"Throw those foolish books out of the window; the camphor-bottle, too;
let air and daylight into your room, and you'll soon get well and
strong," he answered, willing to be kind and anxious to hush her
distracting sobs.
Regina, in her room, breathed a little sigh of satisfaction; for though
she could not hear the conversation, she could guess very nearly what
Paul's reception had been: "Ah! my clever brother-in-law, yours is not a
bed of roses, either;" and with this comforting reflection she dropped
off to sleep.
Next morning, at the breakfast-table, Regina watched with placid
interest the haggard face of Paul, and the furtive looks he threw over
to where she sat. During the morning his wife was attacked with sick
headache, "from reading those trashy novels," he said; and by night he
was wandering through the house again, groaning in very anguish of
spirit, and flying, at last, to his only refuge, the piano. Through the
loud clanging of the chords there breathed a strain, now and then, of
the song Regina had played; but in a moment it was drowned by the louder
crashes, which almost shook the house, and seemed the outpouring of some
wild spirit in its abject misery. Day followed day, and as the season
advanced, and autumn set in, with stormy days and long, moonless nights,
Paul grew more restless; and one night, when he had wandered through the
house all day--"as though driven by the Fury of Remorse," Regina
said--she went, unobserved, into the drawing-room, from where soon came
the strains of the song that had so agitated Paul. Again his heavy steps
approached the door, and, as he entered the room, Regina said to
herself, "He has grown ten years older since that evening last summer,
and he is ripe for my purpose now."
"You learned that song in New Mexico?" he asked, trying to speak in his
usual quiet tones. "I suppose it is a popular air among the Mexicans?"
"Not a common one, though it is a Spanish song;" and she softly sang the
refrain, "_Ela--Manuela!_"
Had she stabbed him to the heart he could not have turned paler, or
sprung forward quicker, than at the uttering of the words.
"She taught it you! Tell me quick, for God's sake!"
He had clutched her arm, and was shaking her without knowing it.
"Gently, my dear brother-in-law," she said, sneeringly; and he shook the
hair back from his forehead, and regained his self-possession by a
strong effort.
"You wanted to know who taught me the song? My information has a
price."
She had folded her hands in her lap, and was looking quietly into his
face.
"Name it!" he burst out impatiently.
"It is a high price; but I can give you _all_ the information you may
want in return. Here is a sample."
She had turned the music-stool on which she was seated, and while he
paced up and down the room to hide his agitation, she continued in the
tone of one holding easy converse with a good friend: