Irene preserved a dignified reserve toward Mr. Kenmore after that day
when he had so angered her by his allusions to Julius Revington. She
never spoke to him when she could avoid it, she never looked at him, she
never seemed to know that he was in the room. She froze him by her
coldness and indifference. He did not even dare speak to her unless
courtesy strictly required it. Yet all the while her heart was aching
with its doubt and pain, while as for him, his love for his beautiful,
willful girl-bride grew stronger every hour, though in his pride and
resentment at her coldness and scorn he would have died rather than avow
it.
A few days after his arrival at the villa some of the gentlemen rode
into Florence, and when they returned they brought tickets for a grand
concert to be given that night. They reported that the music-loving
Italians were in ecstasies over it.
It appeared that one of their countrymen, a musician, had gone to
America twenty years before, where he had remained until two months ago,
when he had returned to Florence, bringing with him a beautiful young
lady whose voice he designed to cultivate for the operatic stage. The
curiosity of the volatile Italians had run high over this pupil of the
great musician, and unable to resist the importunities of his
countrymen, Professor Bozzaotra had promised a public concert in which
the American singer would make her _debut_. Her name was down on the
programme as Miss Brooke. Strange to say, not one of the villa
inhabitants to whom that name was so sadly familiar, were struck by its
similarity to Clarence Stuart's first wife's. It failed to suggest any
probabilities to their minds. One and all were eager to attend the
promised feast of music.
But at the very last moment Irene declined to accompany the merry,
expectant party to the concert.
A headache was the alleged feminine excuse for her refusal.
In vain Mr. Revington pleaded and Mrs. Leslie added her protests. They
could not persuade Irene that the ride in the fresh air would benefit
her head, or that the music would cause her to forget indisposition.
"I do not wish to go," she reiterated, firmly, and Mrs. Leslie wondered
a little at the tears in the girl's blue eyes, as she kissed her
good-night, and the more than usual fervency of her embrace.
When they were all gone, and the villa was left to the occupancy of
herself and the servants, Irene retired to her room. She sat down and
wrote a hasty letter to Mrs. Leslie, which, after sealing and
addressing, she placed in a conspicuous place on the toilet table.
"She will think me unkind and ungrateful," she sighed to herself; "but
what can I do?"
She removed her pretty blue dinner dress, and substituted a plain, black
cashmere. Then, with trembling fingers and nervous haste, she packed a
change of clothing into a small hand-bag. Lastly she took out her little
shell purse, and counted its contents. There was something more than a
hundred dollars, the gift of her munificent friend, Mrs. Leslie.
"She little thought for what purpose I would use it," sighed poor Irene.
"But I have no other refuge left me!"
She put the purse into her pocket, drew on a dark gray travelling
ulster, and a little cap with a thick veil. Then taking the hand-bag in
her little trembling hands, she stole silently as a ghost from the great
house, and did not draw a free breath until she stood alone in the
moonlighted garden.
Then she paused and lifted her white face and tear-wet eyes to the
starry sky.
"If only _he_ had loved me I need not have gone," she sighed. "Ah, my
husband, my darling, farewell!"
Without another word she was gone, flitting away, a small, dark shadow,
to mingle with the shadows of the night.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the party from the villa were seated in the great concert
hall awaiting the appearance of the lovely American _debutante_.
They occupied two boxes, and conspicuous in the foremost one was Mrs.
Stuart, with her daughter and her husband.
Mrs. Stuart was elegantly dressed in rose-colored satin and point lace,
with magnificent diamonds. With the aid of pearl powder and rouge she
had been made up by her maid into quite a beauty for this occasion.
Lilia wore soft white mull and pearls. As she sat by the side of her
handsome, dark-eyed father her likeness to him was marked and
conspicuous. No one could have failed to see that they were father and
child.
Impatience was at its hight. The orchestra had rendered its overture,
and been vociferously applauded by the enthusiastic Italians. Professor
Bozzaotra himself had executed a magnificent violin solo, and responded
twice to encores that could not be suppressed. The curtain had fallen,
to rise the next time on the lovely _debutante_ whom Rumor credited with
the beauty of an angel and the voice of a siren.
It rose at last, and the hundreds of curious eyes fell on her, standing
there with modestly drooping head, yet quiet, calm, and self-possessed,
and so lovely, withal, that before she opened her lips for a single note
a thunder of applause shook the building. Silently and by the mere force
of her peerless beauty she had carried all their hearts by storm.
For Clarence Stuart, sitting pale and silent by the side of his dying
daughter and his faded wife, it seemed as if a ghost had sprung up
before his eyes.
He knew her instantly--that fair, false wife who had forsworn him so
long ago, and whom all these long, long years he had believed to be
lying dead under foreign skies, with her baby on her breast. It was
Elaine, the woman, lovelier in her splendid prime than she had been in
her spring. As she stood there, "gowned in pure white that fitted to the
shape," her only ornaments the clusters of pure white roses on her
breast and in her golden hair, she looked queen-like, bride-like, and
the man's heart swelled with a great despair as he gazed upon her,
remembering how he had lost her forever. But he spoke not, he scarcely
breathed, only sat and gazed with an eternity of despair shining out of
his wide dark eyes.
There was one other, too, who gazed as if petrified upon that beautiful
vision.
It was Guy Kenmore, who instantly recognized Elaine Brooke, but whose
great wonder and surprise held him still and speechless, while her rich,
clear voice rose and fell in waves of mellow sweetness on the tranced
air. She sang a difficult, classic song, which the professor had chosen
to display the great beauty and volume of her voice, and every note rung
clear and true as liquid gold. When the first verse was ended, and she
stood waiting for the tumultuous applause to die away, she suddenly
lifted her eyes to the box above, as if drawn by some strange, magnetic
power, and her glance met full those dark, burning, anguished eyes with
which her husband gazed upon her.
A start, a shiver! Those who gazed closely at the beautiful singer saw
her reel slightly; saw her white-gloved hand pressed convulsively upon
her heart as if in pain. She stood thus, statue-like and immovable, for
an instant, her eye held as if fascinated by that conspicuous group in
the box; then suddenly, as the professor struck the opening notes of the
next verse, she seemed to recall her wandering senses by a supreme
effort of will. For weary years she had nerved herself for this chance
meeting, which had come about so strangely at last. She would not let
herself be conquered by it.
The beautiful voice rose clear, strong, delicious. There was just one
falter in the first notes, just one tremor like a sob of agony. Then the
woman's will conquered the woman's heart. She sang on to the end
sweetly, bravely gathered up one or two of the fragrant floral tributes
that rained at her feet, and with just the proper bow and smile retired.
Tumultuous applause, passionate encores followed her retreating
footsteps. She did not respond to them. They thought her chary of her
exquisite voice; they did not know that she had fallen down like one
dead on the floor of the little dressing room, and that the lips that
had sang to them so sweetly were now flecked with drops of blood forced
out by the heart's great emotion. The flowers had fallen from her hands,
and they were clenched so tightly that the white gloves were torn and
spoiled.
"Oh, Clarence, Clarence, my traitor-love, we have met at last," she
moaned. "Oh, God, how hard it is that I love him still! That perjured
wretch who blighted my life and that of our innocent child! He has not
forgotten me! It was remorse that looked out from his eyes at me
to-night. Yet that was his wife and child who sat beside him! Oh,
heavens, what humiliation for me who stood there beneath their cold,
critic eyes to remember that I was once his wife, that I rested in his
bosom, that my arms cradled his child! Oh, Irene, my lost one, my
darling, I must crush down this weak love that blazed afresh in my heart
when I met the eyes of the man I once held as the truest and noblest of
men! I must remember that the knowledge of his sin drove you to death,
my darling, and I must hate him for your wrongs and mine!"
So she raved on in her impotent despair, while the thunders of the
orchestra filled the house, and people chanted her praises, prophesying
for her a career equal to Patti or Nilsson. She, whose voice was sweeter
than nightingale's notes or the sound of falling waters, lay there like
a broken flower, crushed by her terrible despair.
When she had retreated from the stage, Mrs. Leslie touched Guy Kenmore's
arm. Turning to look at her face, he saw that her eyes were wide and
startled.
"Well!" he said.
She answered in a voice that was hoarse with emotion:
"It was the face that Irene wears in her locket. What does it mean?"
He whispered back softly, "It was Irene's mother! It was Elaine
Brooke."
"Merciful heavens," exclaimed the lady, and turned to look at Mr.
Stuart.
Then she saw Mrs. Stuart and Lilia hanging over him in an agony of
despair, and gentlemen crowding into their box. Mr. Stuart was a brave
and a strong man, but when that ghost from the past had risen to
confront him, then faded quietly again, heart and strength had failed
him, and sitting in his chair, he had silently swooned away.
They said that the heat had overcome him, and bore him out into the
fresh air, where he revived a little. Some advised him not to return to
the concert hall, but he waved them quietly aside, ashamed of his
womanly weakness, and returned to Lilia, who was sobbing with grief and
fear.
"It is nothing, my dear. I am quite well again," he said, gravely. "But
shall I take you home now?"
"No, no, papa, I wish to hear the beautiful lady sing again," she
replied, turning eagerly back to the stage.
Mrs. Stuart said nothing to her husband. She was whispering with Julius
Revington, who had come into her box a little while before. The gleam of
hate in the lady's eyes flashed almost brighter than her diamonds, her
cheek glowed through its rouge with a deep natural red, and her jeweled
hands clenched each other nervously in her lap.
Miss Brooke came again after a little interval, which was filled up by
other performers. She had fought down her terrible emotion, but her
lovely face was very pale and sad, and she never lifted her dark blue
eyes while she sang. This time it was an Italian _chanson_, and the
words flowed easily from her lips in that liquid southern tongue that is
so sweet and soft. The Florentines were charmed, as the professor had
intended they should be, at hearing one of their native songs warbled by
the sweet lips of the stranger. She retired again under a storm of
bouquets and applause, but, as before, she did not respond to their
encores. It was too keen an agony to go back and sing to them again
before those burning dark eyes, whose gaze she intuitively felt upon
her, though she would not lift her own to meet their flashing light. It
was all that she could bear to go on when her turn came.
But when she had sung her last song and the liquid Italian recall
followed her again, Professor Bozzaotra went to her. He was radiant with
joy.
"Let me beg you to humor them, my child," he said, radiantly. "You have
carried their warm hearts by storm. Be kind to them. Sing them
something, anything to satisfy their craving."
She went back and stood before them, with bowed head and an almost
divine sadness on her face. She sang some words that were "as sad as
earth, as sweet as Heaven."
"I stand by the river where both of us stood,
And there is but one shadow to darken the flood;
And the path leading to it where both used to pass,
Has the step of but one to take dew from the grass;
One forlorn since that day!
"The flowers of the margins are many to see,
But none stoops at my bidding to pluck them for me;
The bird in the alder sings loudly and long,
For my low sound of weeping disturbs not his song,
As thy vow did that day.
"I stand by the river--I think of the vow--
calm as the place is, vow-breaker, be _thou_!
I leave the flower growing--the bird, unreproved--
Would I trouble _thee_ rather than _them_, my beloved,
And my lover that day?
"Go! be sure of my love--by that treason forgiven;
Of my prayers--by the blessings they win thee from Heaven;
Of my grief--(guess the length of the sword by the sheath's)
By the silence of life more pathetic than death's!
Go! be clear of that day!"
Then the concert was over!