Pansy had quite forgotten why she came to the Capitol Square. She could
think of nothing but Norman Wylde and the sorrow on his handsome face.
She lingered beside him until he consented to tell her the story of his
unhappy love affair.
“I was engaged to Juliette Ives, but I was not very much in love
with her. I met, in the country, a beautiful young girl named Pansy
Laurens,” he said. “The young lady was not in our set. She was poor,
and worked at Arnell & Grey’s tobacco factory; but she was the fairest,
sweetest, most charming little creature I ever met. We fell in love
at first sight, and I broke my engagement with Juliette for her sake.
But, of course, you think, as every one else did, Mrs. Falconer, that I
acted badly.”
He stopped and looked searchingly into her pale face. Oh, how like it
was to his lost love’s, only with a proud smile on it that made it a
little different from Pansy’s, that had been so sweet and gentle.
“I am very much interested; please go on,” she murmured. And, sighing
heavily, Norman Wylde continued:
“Of course, everybody set themselves against us, Pansy’s relations as
well as mine.”
Pansy trembled, for the deep, sweet, thrilling voice went to her heart,
which began to beat heavily and painfully. How her thoughts went back
to the past, when he had been her worshiped lover, and she had thought
him true!
“We met in secret, my sweet little love and I,” continued Norman, “but
we could not see each other very often, because she had to work in the
factory all the week. But on Sundays I saw her at church, and in the
afternoons she would come here, or to Libby Hill Park, always to a
different place, that no one might suspect us. I would have married her
at once, but we should have had nothing to live on, as I had no clients
yet, and my father had threatened to disinherit me if I did not give
her up. But I vowed in secret that I would not do that, and, at last,
fate--as I thought--opened out a way for us to be happy. I found a
client who wished me to go to Europe and manage an important case.”
“And you went?” she asked, for he paused so long that she feared his
confidences were at an end.
“Yes, I went,” he answered slowly; then he looked at her gravely,
and said: “You are a stranger, Mrs. Falconer, and there is something
connected with my trip to London that I should not betray, perhaps, for
the sake of my family.”
“Whatever you tell me will be held sacred,” she said, almost inaudibly,
and the dark eyes looked at her in a sort of wonder.
“I ought not to betray this to any one but a dear friend,” he said
hesitatingly. “Mrs. Falconer, I wonder if you could like me well enough
to be my friend? It would be very pleasant to me. You look so much like
her that I should find comfort in your friendship.”
Many and many a time Pansy Laurens had said to herself that Norman
Wylde was the greatest enemy she had on earth. But now she held out her
hand to him, in its soft silken glove, and he took it and pressed it
eagerly.
“I will be your friend,” she said, wondering if he was going to confess
to her now about the secret marriage that was no marriage, after all.
She was so curious to hear how he would justify that that she did not
hesitate to promise him her friendship.
But, to her wonder and indignation, he skipped quite over that
important era in his love affair, and went on telling her about his
trip to London:
“Mrs. Falconer, that tour on which I prided myself was a plot, a trap,
laid by my parents to get me away from Richmond and from Pansy. My
client was a paid tool of my father’s, and his craft followed me to
London, where, for almost a year, I remained, vainly seeking links in
a case that never had existed, save in the fertile brain of those who
invented that pretext for the purpose of luring me away from home and
love. My brain whirls yet when I recall how I was duped and deceived,
my life and hers made pitiable wrecks for the sake of a despicable
pride of birth and position.”
His agitation was terrible for the moment. His dark eyes blazed, great
drops of perspiration started out on his pallid brow. As for her, she
could not speak; she sat staring at him with parted lips and blue eyes
full of misery.
“Oh, I ought not to have gone back to that time, for it stirs the
smoldering ashes into fire again,” he cried bitterly. “Think, Mrs.
Falconer, how I suffered all that time, never hearing a word from my
darling, although I wrote to her every week, and she had promised to
write to me. And, at last--oh, Heaven!--there came to me a Richmond
paper, saying that she had drowned herself.”
“Oh!” sighed Pansy sympathetically, but he did not seem to hear her.
His head drooped, and his eyes sought the ground. He seemed to be
oblivious to all but his own pain.
For her, she was thinking bitterly:
“I am glad he is capable of some remorse for his sin. It makes me think
a little more kindly of him.”
Then she shuddered at herself, for she knew that she was thinking of
him more than kindly--fast falling under the old glamour--and she knew
this must not be, that she ought to fly as from the tempting of a
serpent. She made a motion to rise, but he looked up quickly.
“Do not go--yet,” he said pleadingly. “Somehow, it is a sad pleasure to
me to see you sitting there, with that face so like poor dead Pansy’s
that it brings back all the perished past.”
At those words she could not rise. She seemed to have no volition
of her own. She sat still, comparing herself to a bird charmed by a
serpent.
“Do you know,” he went on, “we sat here on the very bench one Sunday,
just a week before I sailed for England. She wore a white dress and
wide straw hat, something like you wear now. I told her of my good
fortune, but, poor child, a presentiment seemed to come over her gentle
spirit, and she wept most bitterly because I was going away.”
“He will tell me now of that most shameful marriage,” Pansy thought;
but again she was mistaken.
“Poor little darling! No wonder she felt so gloomy, for our parting
was the knell of her fate,” said Norman Wylde. “I feel quite sure that
by some underhand means our letters to each other were suppressed, for
not a line ever came to me, though I shall never doubt that she wrote
often, and I feel quite certain that it was the agony of suspense and
hope deferred that drove her to suicide.”
“You came home, then, did you not?” she asked.
“No; for I could not have borne to return and find her gone. What was
there to come back to, Mrs. Falconer? Not even a grave, for her body
was never recovered from the river.”
He raised his downcast eyes and looked into her face with such a
searching expression that she trembled lest he was going to tax her
with her identity.
But he did not do so. He only said:
“I was too miserable and distracted to come home then. Besides, I had
not yet discovered the fraud that had been perpetrated on me. I stayed
in London almost a year longer, vainly prosecuting my search for the
missing links in my client’s case, and then, by accident, I found out
how I had been deceived. I came home at once then, and taxed my parents
with the truth. They acknowledged the deception, but claimed that it
had been done for my good, and begged my pardon. I would not forgive
them, yet, for the sake of family pride, I kept secret their perfidy,
and you are the first one to whom it has been revealed.”
“Oh, what a sad, what a miserable ending for so sweet a love story! It
seems a pity you did not marry the girl and take her away with you!”
cried Pansy.
“I wish that I had done so, for then I might have been happy, instead
of the most miserable and remorseful man in the whole world,” groaned
Norman Wylde; and she wondered how much of this was acting and how much
reality.
“Perhaps he loved me better than he knew, and repented when too late
the miserable betrayal that wrecked my life,” she thought, softening
more and more toward him whom she knew she ought to hate.
But before either one could utter another word, the prattling voice of
a little child was heard, and Pansy looked up and saw Mrs. Meade and
little Pet coming along the path toward where she sat.
Pet caught sight of the two sitting there together, and ran forward
with a cry of delight.
“Pretty yady, pretty yady!” he cried joyously, and climbed into Pansy’s
lap and kissed her.