TOGETHER, YET SEPARATED.
Directly, that magnificent suite of rooms was full. The house had given
up its gay company group by group, when the vast apartments overflowed,
and the illuminated grounds grew brilliant as fairy land. It was
remarked that Mrs. Nelson had never received with such queenly grace
before. That superb toilet surpassed her usual sumptuousness; the glow
of her jewels scarcely matched the wild light that came and went in her
eyes. Her spirits were unusually brilliant throughout the whole
entertainment; the scarlet of excitement burned on her cheeks; she
seemed lifted out of herself by the success of this unique fete.
This was the general opinion of her guests. They could account for the
brilliant beauty of her presence in no other way.
How could strangers guess at the quivering fear that trembled at her
heart when any unusual noise arose in the crowd which surrounded her
with flattery and soft adulation? How was it possible for them to know
that the brilliant beauty of her face was lighted by the fever of
anxiety so terrible that her heart quailed under it.
A few of the guests remarked upon the absence of Mr. Nelson. At first
she evaded these inquiries, but, as the evening drew near its close, she
whispered to one of her most intimate friends a secret that soon spread
through the vast crowd:
Mr. Nelson was insane. The men that had been remarked with him in the
hall were his keepers. The malady had been growing upon him for months,
and could be kept secret no longer. She had done her best to conceal it,
but of late his eccentricities had become so uncontrollable that a
private asylum had been decided on. This it was which had made her so
restless and excited all the evening. People thought it high spirits,
but alas! how little the world knows of human suffering.
It had been against her will that the party had gone on. Indeed, her
husband's malady had never become really violent until after the
invitations were given out, but he was quite unfit to appear. It was a
great affliction, but Mrs. Nelson was afraid of her life, and had with
painful reluctance compelled herself to consign her dear husband
entirely into medical hands. Early in the morning he would leave home.
These were the remarks which floated from lip to lip when the guests
broke into groups after supper, and the dear friends who had met the
lady of the mansion with congratulations, left with compassionate words
of consolation, which she received with gentle grace, more attractive
than her previous high spirits had been.
Ellen Mason was a magnificent actress--few women on the stage ever went
through a difficult _role_ so triumphantly. But when her guests were all
gone, the facts of her position came upon her mind with bitter force.
She looked around on the luxurious ruin of the supper table, the
withered garlands, the groups of glasses stained with amber, or ruddy
wine, the broken pyramids, and silver baskets, heaped with dying flowers
and rejected fruit, with a feeling of absolute disgust. The glittering
confusion made her faint. She longed to rush by the servants, who were
closing the house, and seek the open air, late as it was. This impulse
seized upon her with such force that she gathered up the scarf of
Brussels point, which had fallen like frost-work over her dress, and
vailing her head with it, stepped through an open window into the
grounds.
The moon was down, but hundreds of colored lamps still burned in the
trees, looking only the more brilliant from the deep shadows that lay in
the leaves. The cool night air chilled the fever in her veins and gave
her more vivid power of reflection. There is no time when the emptiness
of fashionable life strikes the mind so forcibly as that which follows a
successful entertainment. The ruins of a feast are always oppressive.
The hollowness of her whole life struck Ellen Mason full upon the heart.
What was she after all but a gross impostor forced to work out the
problem of her own falsehood without help? She began to realize the
insufficiency of all that had been gained to her life. She thought of
the honest love that had made her humble home in the pine wood so
pleasant. In that home how often had she thought of scenes like the one
before her, and longed to act a part in them. But these had been only
dreams. They had never deepened to ambitious hopes till Thrasher came
with his brilliant temptations and won her from that honest roof. What a
worthless life hers had proved since then! would it always be so? had
she tied herself forever and ever to all this emptiness? Would she
indeed be permitted to revel still among these golden husks? That man
had threatened her with his speech and more fiercely still with his
eyes. Oh, how she dreaded him.
Lost in these thoughts she sat down on a garden chair, and clasping both
hands in her lap, began to cry. This was an unusual weakness. She had
wept when the news of her husband's death came, but seldom since then.
Vanity thrives best in the sunshine, tears are unnecessary to its
growth. And now Ellen Mason's life was all vanity.
But Ellen wept now. The excitement of the evening had left her in a
state of utter exhaustion. She gathered the lace scarf over her eyes,
and it fell away damp, like a cobweb heavy with dew.
A slight noise upon the turf made her look up with some impatience. What
servant had dared to follow and disturb her?
It was no servant, but a tall man, with the light from a cluster of
lamps lying full upon his face. She arose, stood upright a moment, and
fell back again, her lips apart, her eyes closed tight, as if to shut
out some terrible object. Her lips trembled as if words were struggling
through them, but they gave forth no sound, and she fell away with her
head resting against the hard iron fruit and clustering leaves of the
garden chair.
The man drew close to her side, when he found that she was insensible,
and bent over her with a countenance full of unutterable grief. There
she lay beneath his eyes like a broken statue. The mother of his
child--the wife of his youth, with the burning shame of a second and
illegal marriage flashing from the jewels on her bosom and in her hair.
But she was the mother of his child, the object of his first and only
love, and that pale, cold face was wet with tears. His own hands had
aided in separating her from that man. It was a solemn duty, but he had
no wish of revenge beyond that. This task accomplished he would go away
and struggle against his bereavement as a strong man should. He had not
expected, nor perhaps wished to see that woman's face again, but as it
lay beneath his gaze so like death, something of the solemn tenderness
which death claims came over him. It was not love. It was not
forgiveness--he had never condemned her enough for that--but the wronged
man could not forget that she had been his wife, and that great sorrow
and bitter shame had fallen upon her that night. He knelt upon the
grass, and lifting her head from its iron resting-place, drew it to his
bosom. The heart beneath scarcely quickened a pulse. To him she was not
a living woman, but a memory that had turned to marble under his eyes
and lay like marble against his heart.
It was terrible to see a human being so perfectly lifeless and yet feel
that vitality existed in the pulseless heart. He did not touch that
forehead with his lips, but passed one hand tenderly over it, muttering:
"Poor Ellen--poor lost Ellen."
She did not move; his words failed to reach her. He felt how cold she
was growing, and lifting her in his arms carried her into the house; for
the window through which she had passed was still open, the light of a
chandelier poured through it, and was exhausted in the flower beds
underneath.
In passing through the shrubbery the lace scarf caught on a rose-bush
and was torn in fragments. He remembered how the drapery which had
shrouded Paul's mother had been swept from the dead, and sighed heavily,
as if composing this one also for the grave.
Mason passed through the window and stood in the little breakfast room,
which has already been described. Through the open doors he caught a
glimpse of the supper room, from which the scent of luscious fruits and
dying flowers came with sickening force. On the other hand was a long
vista of drawing-rooms, with the lights half extinguished, and a host of
glittering objects visible through the semi-darkness, as lightning
breaks through a cloud surcharged with electricity.
A sadness like that of death fell upon Mason as he saw these things.
They told, in one glance, the history of her involuntary sin. Why should
he wait there to cover her with new anguish and more living shame when
life came back? He laid her down among the silken cushions of a couch
whose crimson warmth only made her face more deathly, and went away
forever. What more was there for him to do? Already he had persuaded
Rice to spare that proud woman the last humiliation of her rashness,
and keep her name, as it was now recognized, out of all legal
proceedings necessary to the conviction of Nelson Thrasher. Beyond this,
magnanimity itself was powerless.