Into that splendid home in New York where the Desmonds had just
arrived from Europe, that terrible telegram came like a thunder-clap.
Bertram Chesleigh's repentant soul reeled in agony before it.
"I am justly punished for my cowardly desertion of my darling," he
groaned to his sister, to whom he had confided his sorrowful secret.
"But, oh, God! how terribly I have suffered for the weakness and folly
of an hour!"
Edith, whose heart had been strangely changed and softened since her
reconciliation with her husband, wept with him over the dreadful news.
"Bertram, we must go to her," she said. "In death, if not in life, we
must lift the shadow from the poor girl's memory. Elinor Glenalvan is
going home to-day. Shall we accompany her?"
"Yes; but do not tell her why we go. She hated my poor, little Golden,"
he answered, sighing heavily.
Elinor wondered secretly over their going, but rejoiced also. She had
gone abroad with them, had had a most delightful time, and she sighed
to think that the end had come at last.
But one thing grieved her most of all. All her arts and her beauty,
added to Mrs. Desmond's influence, had failed to win Bertram Chesleigh.
She almost hated him when she thought of going home to hear her
mother's lamentations over her failure, and her sister's taunts.
Her spirits rose at the welcome news that he was going south with her.
Perhaps she might triumph yet. It was a hopeful augury that he was not
willing to lose sight of her yet.
Poor vain and artful Elinor! She did not dream of the real truth.
She believed that Golden had been thrust out of her way forever.
Strangely enough, though she had known the true cause of the Desmonds'
separation, she had never been able to ferret out the reason of their
reconciliation.
Immediately after Mr. Desmond reached Italy his wife had summarily
dismissed Celine.
No hints, nor careless appearance of wonder on Elinor's part could
elicit the reason for the maid's dismissal.
She only knew that the Frenchwoman had gone away in insolent triumph,
taking with her the money she had wrested from her in payment for her
treachery to poor little Golden.
Mrs. Desmond's generous impulse to accompany her brother was frustrated
by the sudden illness of her little daughter, so Bertram was forced to
go on his sad mission without her, and Elinor was jubilant over the
prospect of a long, delightful trip under his exclusive care.
Anticipation and reality are different things, however, as Elinor was
fated to learn.
Never was there a more gloomy or self-absorbed cavalier than the
handsome and entertaining Mr. Chesleigh on this occasion.
Elinor bit her ruby lip and looked daggers as he lounged in his seat,
pretending to be absorbed in a newspaper, but with lips compressed
beneath his dark mustache, and a strange, somber light in the large,
black eyes that puzzled Elinor, who had not the key to his mood.
Indeed she began to be conscious of a vague feeling of dread and
anxiety.
She asked herself over and over why he had chosen to bear her company
on her homeward way.
Evidently it was through no tenderness for her. Though scrupulously
polite and attentive, he preserved the appearance of distant
friendliness in too marked a fashion to be misinterpreted.
When at last, after traveling without delay or rest, they found
themselves seated in the carriage that was to convey them to Glenalvan
Hall, Elinor felt a certain sense of relief mingled with her chagrin
and disappointment. She loved Bertram Chesleigh, but his moodiness and
silence were strangely oppressive.
"Why did he come with me?" she asked herself for the last time as
the carriage rolled along the breezy, wooded drive, and her strange
companion lay back among the cushions, his hat tilted over his eyes,
his face pale, his lips working convulsively. "What will Clare say when
she sees how disdainfully he treats me? How she will triumph at my
disappointment."
Her heart sank at the prospect of returning to the quietude and
dreariness of Glenalvan Hall after the gay, easy, luxurious life she
had led for the last few months.
For a moment her love for the indifferent man beside her was
transformed to hate.
Why had he slighted her beauty, and her fascinations to turn to that
doll-faced child whose life was a disgrace to the Glenalvans?
She hated Bertram Chesleigh because he had not rescued her from the
poverty of which she had grown so weary, and from which his love might
have delivered her.
"At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I removed that little
vixen, Golden, from his pathway," she thought, with vindictive triumph.
"If she had remained who knows what might have happened? I should like
to know what became of her when she left Mrs. Desmond's. I sincerely
hope she drowned herself in the sea!"
The carriage turned a sudden bend in the road, and Elinor, leaning idly
forward to note the old, familiar landmarks, gazed intently one moment,
then uttered a stifled cry of terror.
Bertram Chesleigh started, like one awaking from a dream.
"What is it? Has anything alarmed you, Miss Glenalvan?" he inquired,
courteously.
"Look there," she cried, fearfully, pointing her hand through the
window.
He followed the direction of her finger and saw--oh horror, that they
were passing the burial-ground of the Glenalvans.
He saw a little band of black-robed mourners grouped around a narrow
mound of freshly-thrown-up earth.
He saw the minister standing at the head of the grave with his open
book, and fancied he could hear him repeating the solemn, beautiful
words with which we consign "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust."
"Pray tell the driver to stop," Elinor cried out, excitedly, "I must
get out. Someone of my own family must be dead."
He made no answer. He was handing her out with hands that trembled as
nervously as her own. One terrible, blasting thought was in his mind.
"It is Golden, my wronged, little wife, and my babe that I never saw,
whom they are hiding beneath that little mound," he said to himself, in
agony. "Oh, God! that I should have come only in time for this!"
He opened the little, white gate that led into the green burial-place,
with its glimmering, white stones, and Elinor silently followed him.
The little group about the grave fell back as they approached, and they
saw the men throwing up the earth upon the new-made grave. Its dull,
awful thud fell like the crash of a great despair upon his heart.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," murmured the minister's solemn voice,
and the conscience-stricken man fell on his knees and hid his face in
his hand, afraid and ashamed, for that deep voice seemed to condemn him
for the evil he had wrought.
A weak and trembling hand fluttered down on his shoulder, and a thin,
quavering voice sounded reproachfully in his ear:
"So you have come to exhult over your wicked work, Bertram Chesleigh."
The wretched man looked up into the streaming eyes of old Hugh
Glenalvan.
At a little distance he saw old black Dinah regarding him with looks
of horror and loathing. A beautiful, golden-haired woman stood apart,
weeping silently, and Elinor Glenalvan had gone to the minister and was
speaking to him agitatedly.
Bertram sprang up desperately.
"Oh, sir, for God's sake," he cried to the dejected old man, "tell me
whom they have buried here!"
And the answer came in broken tones:
"Golden Glenalvan and her babe."
Bertram Chesleigh, kneeling in the dust that was heaped above the dead
heart that had loved him so devotedly, lifted his hands and eyes to
Heaven, and cried out, in a broken, contrite voice:
"I call God to witness that it is Golden Chesleigh, not Golden
Glenalvan, you have buried here. This dead girl was my wife, made so
by a secret marriage last summer. It is my wife and my child you have
hidden from me in this low grave. May God forgive me for the wrong I
did them."
Then, unable to bear the strain upon his nerves and his heart any
longer, the wretched man fell forward heavily, and lay in a deep swoon
across the mound that covered little Golden and her child.
A terrible punishment had been meted out to him for the pride and
selfishness that had made of his innocent child-wife an outcast, and a
creature at whom to point the finger of a seemingly just scorn.
The deathless flame of that deep "remorse that spurns atonement's
power" had been kindled in his heart, never to go out save with the
breath of life.