THE AUDACITY OF CRIME.
It was October now—gorgeous, beautiful October. All the trees on the
Hudson felt the ripeness of the year in their foliage, which had taken
rich gleams of crimson into its greenest masses, and was just beginning
to throw out flashes of gold where the maples grew thickest.
In September Mrs. Lander had consented to accept Cora’s invitation to
stay with her awhile at one of the fashionable hotels in the city. A
splendid outfit of second mourning had been the principal inducement
held out for this temporary change of residence, and this important
business occupied the widow almost exclusively.
As for Cora, she took little interest in all the details of dead silk,
gray silk, bugle trimmings, or black ribbons. Indeed she was seldom at
her rooms twenty-four hours together. The first year of her mourning had
not yet expired; she made this an excuse for avoiding all society and
living a secluded life, which even her reputed aunt could not
understand. There was neither sympathy nor confidence now between these
two women. Cora held her mother at arm’s length and kept out of her
society as much as possible. She gave no explanation of her own mode of
life, but came and went as it pleased her, answering to no person for
her movements. At first there was a glow and enthusiasm about her that
forbade all thoughts of wrong or sorrow in her life. If she was
reticent, it was easy to see that intense happiness was all that she had
to conceal. She absolutely lived away from every friend, in a world of
her own that became more and more secret every day.
At last Mrs. Lander grew weary of shopping, and more weary of the
strange isolation which Cora’s retired life forced upon her. She
demanded more money and a broader range of social life in the hotel,
both of which Cora refused. So, one day when Cora was more insolent than
usual, Mrs. Lander packed up her things and betook herself to the old
home, where she threw herself upon Eunice for sympathy and protection.
When the evil spirit of the family was gone, something like tranquillity
settled upon the household. Eunice, who controlled her mistress with an
iron hand, broke up the old habit of staying in her chamber by main
force. The family meals were served in the dining-room, she said, and
were not to be scattered all over the house in trays, as if they kept a
tavern, as it was when that other highflyer was at home. If she was
expected to superintend things, every soul under that roof would come
down to regular meals in the regular place. She was tired of seeing such
goings on, and meant to take the reins in her own hands, just to see how
it seemed after being put down and rode over, as she had been for ever
so long.
She said this to Mrs. Lander when she came back from the city with her
intense mourning softened by gleams of jet, and her neck surrounded by a
rope of great black beads, to which a good-sized cross was suspended.
Mrs. Lander might not have yielded to this dictation in Eunice, but for
the trouble that had arisen between her and Cora at the hotel, which had
at length aroused all her temper and her old pride. Mrs. Lander never
gave even Eunice the details of the quarrel which had preceded her exit
from the hotel. But it had arisen in this way. After spending large sums
of money on her wardrobe, Mrs. Lander had asked for more, and was put
off grudgingly with a small sum, and in a manner that drove all the
woman’s smothered temper into revolt. “She wanted more,” she said, in
hot anger, “five times as much—ten times—twenty times. The money
belonged to her a great deal more than it ever did to her daughter.”
“Your daughter,” said Cora, rolling up the rejected money and crowding
it coolly back into her purse. “Never call me by that name while you
live, unless you wish to be arrested as a perjurer. You have rejected me
and claimed that other creature over and over again, and I, for one,
believe you. I am no more your daughter than you are mine.”
“Cora Lander, are you crazy or a fiend to say this?” cried the woman,
appalled by an audacity she had never dreamed of before.
“I am simply in earnest, madam.”
“Madam! and we alone!”
“No child can be sure of its parentage. We must take the word of some
one. A mother’s word is held as the most sacred evidence. That you have
given, society has accepted it. The Probate Court has accepted it. I
accept it. The thing is decided.”
“But it was not true—the falsehood was of your own contriving, wicked,
wicked girl!” cried the astonished woman.
“Falsehood! I will not permit you or any one to use such language to me.
I had long been troubled with suspicions, and did what I could to get at
the truth. It came from your false heart with a pang, I dare say; but it
was the truth, nevertheless.”
“Cora Lander, this is too much! Are you my child or a demon?”
“I would certainly rather be a demon than your child, provided demons
could inherit. As it is, I prefer to be as I am, the child and heiress
of Amos Lander.”
That young girl looked in her mother’s face with cold audacity as she
uttered this speech. It was evidently premeditated and the result of
deliberation. Did she wish to drive the poor woman to extremities? One
would think so. Mrs. Lander’s passion was completely subdued by this
unheard-of assurance. She began to doubt her own senses. Was that
creature really her child?
“Do not go too far,” she said, standing up with some of Cora’s own stony
resolution in her face. “If you treat me in this way, so help me Heaven,
I will retract and expose everything!”
“Do,” answered the wicked girl. “Try that, and so surely as we both
live, I will ground a charge of insanity; on that very confession, and
shut you up in a mad-house. Remember, madam, it was your lips that first
proclaimed the fact that insanity was a family inheritance on your side
of the house—that it had already appeared in your daughter, the young
woman who has driven me out of my own house by her crazy vagaries. What
is more natural than that you, my poor aunt, should give way to the
malady that you assert has existed for generations among your
ancestors—such ancestors?”
“Cora Lander!” cried the wretched woman, coming out of her amazement
pale and stern as the bold creature who taunted her, “be careful how you
gibe at me and mine! Whatever I am, you came of the same stock.”
“That is exactly what I deny, and am prepared to deny before the face of
the whole world. My mother was a Ravensworth—a nice old family, that
never had a blemish were the Ravensworths—I will not hear a word against
them.”
Cora smiled as she spoke, the very insolence of her words made her lip
curve. Mrs. Lander saw this, and was seized with a new idea. She came
eagerly forward and threw her arms about the girl.
“Ah! now I understand it all. You are only teasing me—saying all these
horrid things to see if I mind them. Of course I did a little—who could
help it? But it is all over. Give up the money, dear, and we will have
no more of these cruel jokes—they hurt me, indeed they do. There, now
kiss me.”
Cora kissed that poor, quivering face with lips of ice.
“I will give you the money, aunt, of course. I have always wished to be
liberal, both with you and my cousin; but there is no joke in what I
have been saying.”
“Oh, how can you, child! This is too cruel!”
“Cruel! no, it is a fixed truth, Aunt Lander.”
“Aunt Lander! I will _not_ hear that!” cried the woman bursting into a
passion of sobs.
“You will and must,” answered Cora, in a low resolute voice, “for never
on this earth will I recognize you by any other name.”
“But I will compel you,” said the desperate woman, in a hard whisper.
“Hush! this white rage will make you ill. Here is the money, take it and
let us be at peace.”
She took the roll of notes a second time from the reticule purse still
swinging from her wrist, and held it towards Mrs. Lander.
“No!” said the outraged woman, dashing the money from her, “I will
perish first.”
Cora picked up the money with a forced smile, and would have offered it
a second time, but Mrs. Lander had left the room.
Half an hour after this scene, the widow Lander came from her room with
her mourning shawl on and a thick crape veil drawn over her white face.
She shivered as if an ague fit had seized upon her, and went back for
her furs, thinking, poor woman, that they might drive off the cold that
was freezing her heart. But even under that thick cloak of Russian
sables she shook with that inner cold which seizes upon the very life.
Cora stood at the window as her mother went out, and a cloud swept over
her face. With all her iron courage, she did not feel altogether secure.
“Let her go,” she said at last, turning from the window. “This money
will soon draw her back; she cannot live without it. Why on earth did I
refuse all she wanted? Why—because having decided on being mean, I must
have it out. It’s my fate, when a thing is to be done I must rush at it;
there is no patience in my whole nature. It was a dangerous move,
though! How she turned upon me. I had no idea that she had so much iron
in her composition. What if she should really revolt and do what she
threatens? But she will not do it. If she did—well, my threat might soon
be a reality—I would fight it out to the bitter end.”
Cora left the window and sat down near the fire, hardening her heart;
for some natural relenting did force itself upon her. After all, the
woman was her mother, and had been an over kind one all the early years
of her life. But the crime which she had been tempted by her very
affection to commit stood between them, till the girl began almost to
hate the mother who knew how wicked she was. In a little time she
reasoned: “_Our_ life must begin, and I want no incumbrances—Seymour and
I are enough for each other. We must become leaders in the world—I in
society, he in political life. Whatever he wants, that my husband shall
have. With wealth, beauty, talent like mine, it will be easy to give him
any position he may desire—I will obtain it for him—I will subdue men
and women in his behalf—when I am ready to take his name he shall soon
stand highest among great men. Talent; oh, yes, no one can question
that! Thank Heaven, he has the ability to back up all my exertions to
hold place with the strongest and the proudest!”
Foolish, vain woman! did she not understand that a man, to be great must
work out his own greatness? That he despises the ladder erected by other
hands than his own, though he may mount it to the topmost round. She was
thinking of ambition now. Before it had been all love, that wild
impetuous love, which is sure to end in some other selfish passion.
Months had gone by, and her great love had already come to this. She
thirsted now for her days of mourning to be over, that she might come
forth into the world hand in hand with her husband, and astonish it. But
exactly as she had prepared that exquisite home for her married life,
she would burst forth upon the great world and dazzle it. When she
presented herself to society as an heiress, a bride and a beauty at the
same time, it must be surrounded with even greater splendor than she had
already secured in her secret home. Until all this was arranged and her
mourning thrown off, that home must be enough for them both.
Was Cora, in fact, beginning to weary of it? Had the first bloom of her
love gone off? Did she find constant companionship sometimes a little
oppressive? Better women might have done so without blame. Men worth
having do not care to be caged with their mates eternally, like singing
birds.
Cora had not come out of that cruel scene with her mother anywhere near
so calm and unhurt as she seemed. The widow’s resolution had startled
her. There was something in her conscience, too, that disturbed her
temper. She was surprised and fearfully anxious; that sudden departure
annoyed her exceedingly. The presence of her aunt, as she introduced the
woman, was a necessity for her at the hotel. Perhaps she might come back
again—time would show. She would say nothing of their separation, but go
for a time to her own house, leaving every one to suppose that aunt and
niece had gone up the river together, meanwhile.
Cora went to her own house. Seymour had gone out, his servant said, but
would return soon, he was quite sure. Cora was ill at ease; the little
drawing room, with its closed curtains and maize-colored furniture, was
overheated, and oppressed her. A certain feeling of satiety made her
turn palled from the costly things which she had deemed indispensable to
her wedding. “I will have them changed,” she said. “The same thing for
ever and ever—how it tires one!”
Up the stairs she went into her own bed-chamber; there the heart would
be less oppressed. That day the room did not look exactly the same to
her. The lace curtains, falling like sifted snow over the bed, had lost
their first crispness; the silk, of a faint rose-color, with which the
walls were fluted from floor to ceiling, was beginning to fade to a dull
white where the sun had touched it. The alabaster vase which stood close
to her pillow was full of dead flowers. Here, too, a faint betrayal of
disgust came into her face. The dead flowers made her angry—knowing how
keenly she loved flowers, he might at least have kept them fresh even
with his own hands. It was not much to expect in return for all she had
done.
Hah! woman, had it came to that? Are you beginning to count obligations?
Better not let your husband know it.
The trouble was in Cora’s heart, not in the rooms; but she would not
look there, fearing to discover something worse than dead flowers, no
doubt. Sweeping her long, black dress over the carpet, she entered that
little snuggery that I have told you of. The toilet table was littered
with ornaments just as she had left them. A wreath of artificial daisies
hung over one of the gilded lilies, and a lace handkerchief, more than
half soiled, was thrust beneath another.
“It seems like the room of a broken-down actress,” she said, looking
around, bitter at heart. “As I can flee to no other place, this shall at
least be made tidy.”
She rung the bell and Alice appeared, calm and quiet as ever. What did
madam please to want?
Why everything; but first, she would like to see that table cleared off,
the wreath flung into the fire, and the handkerchief—that might as well
be sent to the laundry. It had cost thirty dollars or so, and was worth
keeping.
Madame should be obeyed; if Madame remembered, she had requested that
the things on that table should not be disturbed. What dress would
madame prefer?
Madame was out of temper, and answered sharply that she did not care to
change her dress.
Alice looked at the black bombazine, trimmed knee-deep with crape, and
shook her head. Madame knew best, she said, but it seemed strange to see
her sitting in that chair which had relieved the whiteness of her bridal
dress so beautifully, in such gloomy mourning. But Cora had a little
satisfaction in keeping on her sable dress—had not Seymour neglected to
put fresh flowers in that Hebe vase? So she sat still in her mourning,
angry with herself, angry with him—out of humor with all the world.
An hour went by—another—and still Seymour did not come. This was
strange. The young man had few acquaintances in the city, and nothing
was likely to delay him long. It was dusk before Cora heard his step on
the gravel. She had become nervous with anxiety, and sprang up with a
feeling of relief, followed close by a flash of resentment that he had
caused her so much pain. She stood in her bed-room window and saw him
pass the fountain. He walked hurriedly—wildly—like one in a dream, or
like a ghost just freed from the grave; for his face was deathly white
and his eyes were full of terror. She heard Alice tell him that she was
up stairs, and listened for some exclamation of pleasure, but a single
sentence escaped his lips, which fell upon her ear like living fire;
“Great Heavens, I hope not!”
The blood sprang up from her heart hot as venom. She bit her lips till
they grew white under her teeth. How she was thoroughly angry.