THE MANSION ON THE RIVER
Up the Hudson river—no matter how far—stands a mansion that would be
wonderfully beautiful in any country where the leaf never falls. In the
summer time it is a splendid place enough even here, for its walls are
of pure white marble, and its architecture Grecian, which gives you an
exquisite idea of coolness and grace scarcely possessed by any other
habitation. It is not exactly a palace, though many a queen has
contented herself in a home less spacious. But the tall Corinthian
pillars that gleam through the trees—the balconies sculptured like
snow-wreaths—windows of solid plate glass, so clear that you scarcely
know when they are open or shut—and cornices wrought with no common
chisel, or designed by no common brain, give you an idea of splendor
scarcely less than royal.
The grounds, too, convey an impression of foreign lands, for it is the
first week in September, and all around this dwelling, arrayed in
wonderful contrast, is the cool green of closely rolled sward and trees
splendidly grouped, sheltering the blaze and glory of flowers born in
every known country that the sun shines upon. A lawn, large enough for a
small farm, rolls with green breaks and undulations to the edge of a
precipice which terraces it from the river.
Hot-houses and graperies form long avenues of rolling glass, which the
sunshine turns into waves of glittering silver at noonday, and kindles
up with bright golden fires for an hour before the night closes in. A
stretch of woodland lies to the left, full of shadowy dells and green
nooks, where splendid ferns and young wintergreen are found in
abundance. Here nature holds unmolested reign. The forest turf is kept
clear of brush, and dead branches are pruned away from the oaks and
beech trees, letting the sun in here and there with a cheerful effect.
Along the outskirts of this grove, between its marginal trees and the
lawn, a pretty upland stream, of no insignificant depth, has cut a
ravine where ash and dogwood droop and cast the snow of ten thousand
blossoms from year to year. Through the boulders and rocks that break up
this ravine, the stream descends in riotous waterfalls—sleeps in deep
pools—where the speckled trout once led a deliciously tranquil life—and
rushes down to the great river in miniature breakers that fill the air
with music. Two or three rustic bridges cross this stream, from which
pleasant footpaths lead into the woods, where singing birds answer back
the sweet chime of the waterfalls, and half tame squirrels leap from
bough to bough, rustling the leaves in harmony with all the other wild,
sweet sounds.
Back of the house, and away on either hand, lie broad meadows, rich in a
second crop of grass—orchards, just beginning to droop under the weight
of swelling fruit, and dim woodlands, left to nature only where art
fails to give them possibilities of new beauty.
This is all one domain. Its owner was Amos Lander, the man whose
terrible fate we have recorded in the last chapter, with that of the
steamer in which he had set sail for America. During ten years of his
life, Lander had retired from business, wealthy, honored, and in all
respects a prosperous man. A large portion of that time he had devoted
to the pleasant task of beautifying and improving the place which was
hereafter to be the home of his darling child and heiress, Cora Virginia
Lander, usually called Virginia, to distinguish her from her cousin of
the same appellation, who took the other name of Cora.
During the time that these two young girls had been completing their
education under the best teachers of France and Italy, the kind old man
had devoted himself heart and soul to embellishing this noble home,
which was to be their first grand surprise on returning to their native
land.
Amos Lander had been abroad several times during that period; for it was
impossible for him to live years together without seeing his child. He
was also deeply attached to that other Cora Virginia, who was the child
of his only brother, left to his bounty and compassion by that brother
on his death-bed. If Amos Lander’s heart was bound up in his daughter,
it was good enough and broad enough to enfold this orphan child with a
love that was almost paternal. Those who watched his face might have
seen by the glow of love that his own child was forever uppermost in
that warm heart, but in all his acts he treated the girls exactly as if
they had been sisters, usually called them his children, and, with
delicate tact, avoided such explanations as would have led to inquiry
with regard to their relative claims on him.
Each time that he visited Europe, Lander brought home statues, exquisite
marbles, pictures, bronzes and rare plants, all intended to beautify the
Paradise he was creating for his child and ward.
Not until the year in which Lander set forth to bring the girls home had
that marble house been complete in all its appointments; but for some
years before the girls went away it had been the residence of Mrs. Noel
Lander, widow of the brother we have spoken of, and the mother of his
only child, whom we left drifting upon the ocean in a frail boat,
without food and almost without hope.
This woman had never been permitted to feel the poverty to which the
death of an insolvent husband might have consigned her. In her
prosperity, she had been reckless, extravagant and terribly ambitious.
By audacious expenditure she had attempted to conceal a low origin and
many humiliating antecedents. But while the younger Lander went backward
day by day, everything throve and turned to gold with Amos. At last the
younger brother died, heart-broken and ruined, leaving his wife
destitute, with a child to encumber her future.
Then Amos Lander came forward, forgetting everything but the brother who
had loved this woman, and holding her very faults sacred for his sake.
He took the widow into his own family, as if she had been a sister in
reality. Her child shared the same nursery and the same lessons with his
own. A good and gentle wife welcomed her ungrudgingly to a share of her
home, her wealth and such household affection as loving hearts bestow on
the bereaved.
But Amos Lander, noble and generous as he was, fell into deep grief a
year or two after his brother’s widow became an inmate of his family.
The woman whom he had loved with all his life and soul died suddenly,
breaking up the richest hopes of his life. He was never the same man
after this. Business lost its stimulant, pleasure its zest. The bloom
and brightness of his life was gone. While he was in this state of
mournful apathy, the widow Lander quietly took possession of all
household authority, and, with adroit kindness, settled herself as
mistress of the family. If her brother-in-law thought of this at all, he
was grateful for it in a passive way, and thus strengthened her
position.
But that did not satisfy her craving nature. She would be mistress in
her own right, not by sufferance. The rich widower should be brought to
acknowledge not only how needful she was to him, but that he could not
live without her. As his wife she would possess everything that a nature
like hers could desire. His wealth excited her cupidity, and his
position was exalted enough to gratify even her grasping aspirations. In
order to captivate this man, she brought all the powers of a really fine
person and considerable talent into action. But all her efforts were
insufficient even to arouse their object to a sense of her wishes. The
idea of giving a stepmother to his daughter never entered the good man’s
imagination, and if the thought had presented itself, the woman whose
false ambition had brought ruin to a beloved brother could not have been
its object. A person who could satisfy herself with possession without
one honorable effort to deserve it was not likely to attract a man like
Lander. Toiling to make the rich man her victim, she was compelled to
live upon his bounty, and this galled her ambitious spirit to its
depths.
About this time she began to hate that generous man with the quiet,
settled hatred which a woman, not scorned but neglected, can feel in all
its bitterness. This hatred extended even to his child; but it was never
once expressed by word or action. The widow was dispirited, but she did
not altogether despair. Time frequently carries great contradictions and
improbabilities in his bosom. She could watch and wait. During several
years the widow did keep her soul in tolerable patience; but there is no
human being so blind as the man who veils his eyes with one grand idea
of the heart. Lander had no future save that which centred about his
child. To him she was the loveliest and best creature that the sun ever
shone upon. Her smile warmed his heart to the core. Her laugh was all
the music he ever cared to hear. Her breath, as he kissed her, was like
the perfume of roses. Her childish love was absolute despotism; her tiny
hand held his very heartstrings. Fortunately for him the child grew up
good and true-hearted, like her mother. Beautiful also, but of a
different type from the woman he had lost, whose soft black eyes and
raven hair haunted him to the day of his death with a sweet remembrance
of beauty, perfect in its kind.
As a lily breathes the perfume of kindred lilies, this child possessed
all that was brightest and sweetest about her mother, the tender smile
and loving expression—while she was like her father’s family in form and
glowing warmth of color. These latter traits she shared alike with her
less fortunate cousin, but the expression was all her own.
Time wore on and there was little change. Amos Lander was kind to his
brother’s widow, and more than kind to his orphan niece, who inherited
all her low-born mother’s taste for splendor and thirst for wealth. He
loved them, too, in a secondary way, because one looked like his idol
and the other had been in many ways useful to her childhood. Besides,
the brother who was dead had been very dear to him. So, next to the one
being who possessed him supremely, these two persons stood nearest to
his affections.
Things were in this state when Amos Lander took his last voyage, with
the purpose of bringing the young girls home. He left Mrs. Noel Lander
in full charge of the mansion, and at last she felt the joy and glory of
supreme command. No person born to luxury could have enjoyed it with the
zest which this woman experienced when she found herself mistress of
that almost princely establishment. She took her enjoyments to the full
as they arose, like a humming-bird that leaves no drop of sweetness in
the honeysuckle for want of vigorous shaking. The choicest of everything
in that luxurious dwelling had already been appropriated to her own use.
Her chamber window looked out on the brightest flower-beds and coolest
trees. Of all the rare objects gathered in the mansion, she selected
what seemed to her most valuable and gorgeous for her own rooms and
personal use. The woman loved her daughter, it is true, but not as she
worshipped herself, not as a good mother loves her child.
She was sitting at breakfast—this woman who seemed at this time little
better or worse than her fellow-creatures—she was getting anxious about
the steamer, and had asked more than once for the morning papers, though
it was hardly time for the train which brought them up the river to be
in. Still her anxiety failed to diminish an appetite which was both keen
and fastidious. She went on with her breakfast with a relish—picked out
the dainty white meat from the breast of a nicely-broiled chicken which
lay on a plate of china, and disturbed the little island of cream that
floated on her coffee with a gold spoon, which she stopped now and then
to examine with a sensuous enjoyment of possession.
“I wonder how I ever got along without these things,” she said, laying
down her spoon and leaning back to survey the apartment. “How rich and
bright it looks. This is the joy of wealth—well-grounded wealth—for,
next to that girl, he loves us, and an estate like his can bear
dividing—a moiety of it is riches. But then, if he should die without a
will—if this belated steamer should be lost, I am a beggar. I, who
shudder in my sleep, dreaming of the old times when I was sent
barefooted on a cold October morning to search for the cows browsing in
some swamp before we could hope for a meagre breakfast of hasty pudding
and milk. What if I come to that in the end? Could I do anything to
prevent it? So many years of comforts like these have left me helpless
as a child. Great Heavens, I wish the steamer would come! it terrifies
me to think of this one black chance! David—David, is not that the
whistle?”
The waiter thus addressed—who was bringing in a fruit-dish on which lay
two magnificent clusters of hot-house grapes, purple and amber-hued,
blending their tints in luscious ripeness—came forward and placed the
fruit before her.
“No, madam, that is a passing boat, but the train is due now, and John
is waiting at the depot. We shall have the papers directly, never fear.”
Mrs. Lander bent over the dish of fruit, touching it daintily with her
finger.
“When were these cut?” she inquired, rather sharply.
“At sunset yesterday, I believe, madam.”
“Take them to the kitchen, and order the gardener to bring me some fresh
from the vines,” she said; “and see that this does not happen again.”
“Yes, madam. It is not often that you ask for fruit at breakfast; that
is how it happened, I suppose.”
“The possibility that I may ask should be enough,” was the haughty
answer. “There—there—surely that is the train. Run and meet John. Bring
me the papers at once.”
“But the grapes, madam?”
“Well, yes. It will scarcely make a minute’s difference. Go to the
gardener. See, John is coming up the terrace steps, walking fast.
Go—go—”
The woman was really agitated, and her hand shook as she reached it
forth to receive the papers, which John gave her with unusual
hesitation.
“Have you read—have you seen anything?” she demanded, in a voice made
sharp with anxiety.
She opened the paper as she spoke and looked at the first page.
“AN OCEAN STEAMER BURNED AT SEA.”
The woman read this and uttered a cry of pain, so sharp and sudden that
David, who was half way to the kitchen, ran back in affright. Mrs.
Lander had fallen forward in her chair, with one hand pressed to her
side; quick spasms swept over her face, and she shook from head to foot.
David stooped to take up the paper, which had fallen to the floor; but
she snatched it from him, and clenching each hand on an edge of the
sheet, made a desperate effort to hold it still and read, with some
fortitude, the awful calamity which had befallen her.
“Burned to the water—all lost! All lost! Great Heavens, this is awful!”
she cried, dashing the paper from her and sinking back in her chair,
shocked and trembling. “Read it,” she added, “read it, and search out if
any one was saved—the words run like vipers before my eyes, I cannot
make them out! Read, and if they are all dead tell me at once and let
the blow kill me.”
David took the paper from her shaking hand and read down the first
column, which was half capitals. She watched him with a shrinking terror
in her eyes.
“All! all! are they all gone?” she said, with a struggle of the voice.
“Some boats put out, but they were swamped; eighteen persons were found
clinging to the bowsprit—”
“Men or women?”
“Men—all men. The women had jumped overboard.”
“My child! my child!”
A pang of womanly anguish broke forth in this cry—for one moment the
mother forgot everything save that her child was dead. This outburst of
true sorrow touched the men who witnessed it with compassion. David
knelt before her and attempted to chafe her cold hands; she wrung them
from him with passionate violence and buried her face in them.
“Oh, it has come to pass—it has come to pass! I am a beggar again!”
The two men looked at each other, wondering. The woman dashed her hands
apart, burst into a fierce laugh, and slid from the cushions of her
chair to the carpet in strong hysterics. She was taken up with her eyes
set and the white upper lip curved back from her teeth, shrieking like a
maniac. The burden of her cry was, “I am a beggar—I am a beggar!”