QUESTIONS AND CONFESSIONS.
Catharine was alone with old Mrs. Ford. Excitement, and a wild sense of
some mysteries which she had failed to fathom, made her bold. She
plunged abruptly into a subject long upon her mind, but which she had
never ventured to hint at before. Indeed, the quick crowding of painful
thoughts, during the last few weeks, had rendered her desperate.
“Mrs. Ford!”
Catharine’s voice was so sharp and abrupt, that it made the old lady
start and drop the sewing she was engaged on into her lap.
“What is it?” she said, breathlessly; for her thoughts always turned to
one object, “Elsie, is anything wrong with Elsie?”
“Mrs. Ford, there is a thing I wish to ask, a thing which I must ask or
die. Who is Elsie? Is her name Ford, was she ever married, has she a
child?”
Catharine spoke rapidly, almost wildly. Her eyes were keenly anxious,
her manner desperate.
Mrs. Ford sat silently gazing upon the speaker. Her face, always pale,
grew white and cold; her little withered hands crept together and
interlocked in her lap.
“What, what is it you ask? You,”—the words dropped, half-formed, from
her lips; and she gave a scared look at the door, as if preparing to
escape.
“Don’t! oh, don’t refuse to speak,” pleaded Catharine. “I must know; my
heart will break if I am left in this terrible darkness. What connection
has your daughter with the De Marke family?”
“De Marke—De Marke—who ever mentioned the name in this house?” said old
Mr. Ford, who entered at the moment.
Catharine turned to him. “It is I. Tell me, I beseech you, what have the
De Markes done, that the name should drive the blood from your faces?
Why did the portrait of a De Marke hang up in your library? How, and why
has it disappeared? I ask these things, because it is impossible to live
in such darkness. My own life, and all its hopes are at stake. What
brought that wicked old woman here? I must know, or become mad by the
side of our poor Elsie!”
The old people exchanged glances. Both were pale, but a look of gentle
commiseration settled upon their features.
“This is no idle question, Catharine,” said the old man, gently, but
with a quiver of the voice, “you would not wound us so from mere
curiosity.”
“Not for my life. I must know all this hidden history, to see the path
that I ought to tread. I am weak and blinded—alone, with no one but God
to help me. Tell me the history of your daughter, tell me why the name
of De Marke makes you tremble. Is it fatal to others as it has been to
me?”
“You,” said the old man in surprise, “you!”
“Even so, Mr. Ford. I was married to a De Marke, and he is still
living.”
The old lady arose, with an air of timid repulsion, and would have left
the room; but her husband gently waved her back.
“She suffers; she, too, is a victim, perhaps another Elsie,” he said,
compassionately. “Now, my child, come hither; sit down by the mother and
tell her all.”
Catharine sat down, still supported by nervous excitement, and laid her
heart and her life open before those pure-minded old people. It was
astonishing how little time it took to relate events and agonies that
had been so long in the acting. She concealed nothing. From the very
depths of her soul she drew forth the secrets that had been hoarded
there, corroding and wounding all her faculties, and laid them honestly
down before those kindly judges.
The old people listened, sometimes sadly, sometimes with broken
exclamations. Once or twice glances of surprise, almost of affright,
passed between them. When she had finished, the old lady bent down, with
tears in her eyes, and kissed her, while the husband stood over them,
and lifting his hands to heaven, thanked God that she had been cast
beneath his roof.
Catharine arose from her knees, for she had unconsciously fallen at Mrs.
Ford’s feet, with a deeper breath and more glowing countenance than she
had worn for years. No explanation had yet been offered by the old
people; but she felt certain that some unseen link of union existed
between her fate and theirs, and without speaking, she gazed wistfully
in their faces, waiting for light.
“Yes,” said the old man, fervently, “it is true. God does sometimes send
angels to us unawares. Catharine, my child, it is your husband’s mother
to whom you have given up the bloom and strength of your young life. The
father of George De Marke married Elsie Ford, our daughter.”
“And you—and you?” cried Catharine, eagerly.
“Are his grandfather—”
“And Madame de Marke?”
“Hush! do not mention her name; it is an accursed sound under this
roof,” answered the old man, almost sternly.
Catharine sat down, silenced, but still keenly anxious. The old
gentleman seated himself also, close by his wife, who regarded him with
a look, half frightened, half sorrowful.
“Tell her,” said the old man, in a low voice, “women understand each
other best.”
“I cannot. See how I shake.”
The old man took the hand held toward him in both of his, smoothing and
caressing it with gentle tenderness.
“You can witness,” he said, addressing Catharine, “how great this sorrow
has been. She cannot bear to speak of it. For years we have been silent,
even with each other.”
“I see,” answered Catharine, looking wistfully at the old lady, and
following her own thoughts. “His grandmother! That is why she seemed so
lovely from the first—_his_ grandmother, and _his_ mother, oh! how I
have been unconsciously blessed.”
“Elsie,” said the old man, looking anxiously at his wife, as if afraid
that her strength would give way, “Elsie was our only child. You see her
now, a poor, brain-crazed old woman; gray-headed and broken-hearted; but
then she was—”
“Oh!” broke in the old lady, with her eyes full of tears, that dimmed
the glasses of her spectacles like a frost, “she was the dearest, the
brightest, the most beautiful creature that ever trod the green grass.
You don’t know—you can’t tell, how many sweet, wild ways she had, and
all straight to the heart. He didn’t merely love her, nor did I; it was
worship in us both; we idolized this child; there was not a curl of her
black hair, or a glance of her eyes, bright and brimfull of feeling as
they always were, which was not lovely beyond all things to us.
“Remember, Catharine, she was our only child, a late blessing; for we
had been years married when God sent this angel to our fireside. You
have seen her portrait in the library. It is like her, and yet the
bright sparkle of her nature, the vivid flush of life, that came and
went like sunshine upon the hills, this no man could paint. It is all
over now. You can see nothing of what I am telling you in her wild eyes,
or in the sharp features that are at times so rigid and again so stolid;
but _we_ find it still. Don’t we, husband? Isn’t she beautiful to us,
even yet?”
“She is more than beautiful, our poor Elsie,” said the old man, looking
through the window to where the demented one wandered to and fro on the
grass, striving to catch the humming-birds that haunted a trumpet vine,
by quick dashes of her hand among the clustering bells. “God has
rendered her sacred—always and forever a child, spite of her gray hairs.
They cast her back upon our hearthstone, a poor, broken waif, but still
a blessing.
“I think,” continued the old man, “that it was a little before her
seventeenth birthday, when Elsie first saw that man. He was a dashing
young fellow, who had just come into possession of a large property, and
had returned from his travels abroad, before entering upon the business
of life. A neighbor, who lives across the Island, had invited him for a
long visit, and through this friend he was introduced into our family.
“We did not think it strange, that young De Marke should admire our
Elsie. Who could help it? But when she, who had always been bright as a
bird and as heart-free, began to look thoughtful in his absence, and shy
in his presence, it pained us a good deal; for she seemed still a mere
child, and we had hoped to keep her in the home-nest a few years longer.
“It was a wild, violent passion on both sides. We had no power to
resist, for he came with his impetuous pleading, and she, with a
thousand winning ways, sometimes lost in tears, sometimes bathed in
smiles, lured us from our better judgment. She was far too young, too
ardent. Oh! we should not have consented.
“This De Marke was of French origin, as you will judge by his name,
mercurial and impulsive, as most of the blood are. I do not think he was
a bad or faithless man at heart. I know that he loved Elsie, not as she
loved him—that was impossible—but he did love her!”
“Yes,” murmured the old lady, “he did love her. Who could help it?”