THE PHOTOGRAPH
The days passed rapidly, and Connie and Kitty, as they called each
other, seemed to have become one personality, so fast their friendship
grew. Connie spent the most of her time at the villa, where the baby was
the great attraction. For hours she would hold it, studying its
features, and sometimes seeming almost to get a glimpse of something she
had seen like them; then the likeness would fade into a mist, leaving
her as puzzled as ever.
“She is like Harry,” Kitty said to her one day when she sat with the
baby in her lap, “and he is the handsomest man you ever saw. Dr. Kenneth
is grand and splendid, and makes you feel that there is a power there
for great and noble things,—self-sacrifice, I mean, and all that. Harry
is different. I love him dearly, but I don’t believe he would give up as
much as Dr. Kenneth. He always gets his way, he is so persuasive, and
his eyes and voice talk. He was very kind to me when he heard father had
lost everything and could not send me the allowance I’d always had.
‘Served me right,’ he said. I didn’t know what he meant, unless he had
married me for my money. When I asked him he kissed me and said I was
all the world to him. He told me though, before we were married, that he
had once loved a beautiful girl, and when I asked, ‘Why didn’t you marry
her?’ he said, ‘Because I wanted you.’ Nice, wasn’t it? I have often
wondered who that girl was, and wanted to ask him, but think perhaps I’d
better not. Would you?”
“No,” Connie answered, mechanically, as she poked the baby’s chin trying
to make it laugh.
“Strange you have never seen Harry,” Kitty continued, “but you will
soon. I expect him to-morrow night or the next.”
She was going out to drive that morning, with the baby, and asked Connie
to go with her; but Connie declined, saying she was not quite well, and
would rather stay in the cool, quiet room if Kitty did not mind. The
baby was soon ready, and as Kitty came down with her wraps on, she said
to Connie: “I have just come across, in one of my trunks, a splendid
photo of Harry, taken in Paris two years ago. It is on my table, if you
care to see it.”
Connie thanked her, and after the carriage drove from the house, with
Kitty kissing her hand to her and the baby’s little face looking out
from its lace cap, she went upstairs and into Kitty’s room. On a table
some books were lying, and near them a large photograph on an easel.
This must be Kitty’s husband, and she went swiftly towards it, then
stopped suddenly and put up her hand to wipe the mist she thought must
be before her eyes, preventing her from seeing clearly. But there was no
mist. She was not mistaken. Kitty’s husband was the man who had wrecked
her life. She had a photograph like this one,—smaller, but like it,
taken in Paris two years ago. She knew those soft, persuasive eyes, the
smile around the mouth, the way the brown hair was parted on the
forehead, the erect and rather haughty carriage,—all were his. She could
not be mistaken, and for a moment everything around her turned black as
she grasped a chair to keep from falling.
“Villain!” she said, when she could speak. “You have wronged Kitty more
than you have me, and how dare you come back and face me? I believe I
could strike you dead, if it were really you smiling upon me there,
instead of your picture.”
Connie was terrible in her anger and resentment. All her love for the
man had died out, and what she felt was indignation against him, with an
intense pity for Kitty.
“What can I do to spare her? What ought I to do?” she asked herself, as
she continued to look at the picture, which each moment grew more like
the man who had sat with her on the Alpine bowlder and sworn eternal
fidelity.
In a great emergency some minds work rapidly, and Connie’s was one of
them. To stay and meet Harry was impossible without betraying herself.
Betrayal meant ruin to Kitty, and something in the warm-hearted Southern
girl had appealed to her strangely.
“I love her,” she whispered, “and there is the baby named for me, I know
now, instead of the city where it was born. Kitty must never know what I
do, and I must go away before he comes.”
But where, and how, and what excuse to give, were the problems she must
work out alone. Kenneth had left that morning for Boston, where he was
to meet some members of the medical faculty. He might be gone two days,
and she could not consult him. She could consult no one, and must act
for herself. Providentially, as it seemed to her, she found on her
return to the farmhouse a letter from her aunt, saying she should sail
in a few days for New York, and wished Connie would see that her house
was put in order and be there to receive her. “God has surely opened a
way, and I’ll go to-day,” Connie thought, as she read the letter,
wondering at her calmness when her plans were finally made. Mrs.
Stannard was surprised and sorry, and so was Kitty, when she returned
from her drive and stopped for a moment at the farmhouse.
“Going before Harry comes? He’ll be here to-night on the late train.
I’ve had a telegram,” she said, while Connie bit her lips until the
blood nearly came through, the feeling within her was so strong to cry
out, “He is a rascal, he is a villain, and that is why I go away.”
“You will come back in a few days,” Kitty said, and Connie replied:
“Perhaps; I can’t tell. I will write, and now please leave me to rest a
little; I am very tired.”
She wanted to be alone, and think whether to tell Kenneth or not. The
hardest of all was leaving him, for life was very sweet with him, even
if he could never be more to her than a friend, and when she was alone
she broke down and cried like a little child.
“Oh, Kenneth! if it could be, but it never can. I had thought he might
be dead, and that some time I should know, but he is alive; he is
Kitty’s husband and baby’s father, and they must never know, and it can
never be. But I will tell you.”
Drying her tears, she began a letter which would tell Kenneth why she
was leaving.
“Dear Kenneth,” she began, “I have found out something and must go away
before your cousin comes. Kitty showed me his photograph, and he is the
man who stands between you and me. _He is my husband._”
Something like the sharp cut of a knife pierced her heart as she wrote
the words and looked at them with a desire to tear them from the paper.
“I can’t tell you about it,” she went on. “It is too dreadful to recall.
I will only say he bade me good-by the night we were married, and I have
never seen him since. He called himself _Harold Meurice_, and that is
why I have never identified him with your cousin. My aunt did not like
him and must not know who he really is. No one but you must know, for
Kitty’s sake and the baby’s. Oh, Kenneth! It cannot be wicked to tell
you, as I say good-by forever, that I love you; but don’t try to see me;
it can do no good. I must live my life alone. Don’t tell _him_ that you
know. Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth! Good-by.
“CONNIE.”
A great tear fell on the word “Connie” and blotted it, but she could not
rewrite the note, and, folding it, she directed it to Kenneth, and
taking it to his room placed it where he would see it at once. There was
not much time to lose if she would take the three o’clock train, and she
accepted Kitty’s offer to help her pack, while Mrs. Stannard, half
distraught with the suddenness of Connie’s going, kept wondering why she
need take everything, if she were coming back. And Connie could not
talk, for the swelling in her throat and the tears she was trying to
keep down. She was very white, and there was a drawn look about her
mouth and an expression in her eyes which troubled Kitty, and when
everything was done and they were waiting for the carriage which was to
take Connie to the station, she put her arm caressingly around her neck
and said:
“Is it some trouble, Connie, and can I help you?”
“No; oh, no. You least of all,” was Connie’s answer, and putting her
head on Kitty’s shoulder, she cried aloud for a moment, then lifting up
her head, she said, with an attempt to smile: “Excuse me for the
weakness. It is like leaving home, where I have been so happy. I must
cry a little.”
Mrs. Stannard, Kitty and the baby went to the station with her in
Kitty’s brougham, with the coachman in livery and the blooded horses.
Could she have had her choice, she would have preferred going in a
wheelbarrow to this fine turnout of the man who had so deceived her. But
there was no alternative. Deacon Stannard was away, and she must go with
Kitty, who clung to her as if she were her sister, and whose tears were
hot on her cheek when she at last said good-bye.
“Too bad you can’t meet Harry; but you saw his picture, didn’t you?”
Kitty said.
“Yes, I saw it,” Connie gasped, springing on the platform of the car so
as to hear no more of Harry, whose baby, held high up in Kitty’s arms,
was the last thing she saw clearly as the train took her away.