LISTENING AND PLOTTING.
The moment Cora returned home, she sent a note to Clarence Brooks,
challenging him to ride that afternoon as some compensation for the one
she had so unexpectedly deprived him of. With all her anxiety this
strange being had been restless with a feverish desire to see Brooks and
hear more distinctly than he had yet spoken the wishes that she believed
burning in his heart. Throwing off her travelling dress, she put on her
habit, and, ordering Blackbird to be saddled, was ready to start long
before the man returned with her note unopened.
“Mr. Brooks had gone out to ride early in the afternoon,” the people at
the hotel told him.
“What road?” she asked.
The man believed it was the river road. At first they were not quite
certain that he had not taken his usual walk up the ravine.
“Up the ravine. What ravine?”
“That in which the pretty log cabin stood. Mr. Brooks spent a great deal
of time up there, chestnuting and making pictures on scraps of paper.
But he wasn’t doing anything of the kind this afternoon, for one of the
boys had seen him riding across the little plank bridge below the
railway.”
A wild, fierce pang shot into that woman’s bad heart. She knew that
Virginia made frequent visits to the ravine, and her suspicions took
fire at once. She turned her stormy face on the man and pointed sternly
with her whip toward the stables.
“Go tell Joshua Hurd to bring my horse out at once.”
The man obeyed, and five minutes after his mistress was galloping up the
river road with fire in her heart and a hot red on her cheeks. She had
ridden perhaps three miles in this way, when a rise in the ground gave
her command of a cross road which led through a maple grove on the
right. With a sudden jerk of the bridle, she checked her horse, and a
spasm of pain closed the teeth upon her lips, which grew white under the
pressure.
This was what she saw—a black and a white horse drawn close together
under a huge maple tree, which was raining its golden leaves all around
them—a gentleman stooping toward a tall, slender girl, who wore a
riding-dress almost exactly like her own. These two persons seemed to be
talking earnestly, but after a few moments they prepared to move on.
There was something wrong about the lady’s bridle, evidently, for the
gentleman dismounted to arrange it, and snatching the hand which was
extended to receive the reins from his, pressed it to his lips more than
once. Cora not only saw this, but she observed that there was no glove
upon that hand, for the lady drew on her gauntlet as she rode along.
Fierce as war, and hard as iron, that woman wheeled her horse slowly
around and rode home. She made no remark, and avoided all questions, but
seated herself by a window—massing the curtains into a safe
concealment—and waited till her cousin should appear.
Virginia came at last, walking her horse up the carriage drive; she
stooped forward more than once and patted the pretty animal’s neck, as
if, in the supreme contentment of her heart, she must caress something.
Cora remarked the bloom of happiness in her face and the cheerful leap
with which she sprang from her horse. The sight was poison to her.
Ellen met Virginia at the door of their parlor, looking anxious and
disturbed.
“She has come—Miss Cora is in the house,” she said, as if announcing
some great calamity.
Virginia laughed. What had the beloved of Clarence Brooks to hope or
fear from Cora Lander? Let her come and go as she pleased; a little time
would separate them forever. But there was one thing she was anxious
about. Could Eunice be persuaded to let them have the tray sent up a
little earlier? The ride had given her an appetite, and then she had
promised to bring Ellen to this little cataract—it was a shame to call
it a cascade—to watch the sun set. There was a pile of clouds in the
west, which would fire up beautifully.
Ellen undertook to propitiate Eunice, with whom she had become a great
favorite, and Virginia, after taking off her habit, nestled herself into
an easy chair and fell to dreaming, as innocent girls will when love
throws a rosy bloom into the atmosphere around them.
The promise held out by that embankment of clouds was brilliantly kept;
floods of rosy light floated through them, touched at the edges with
fringes of living flames; opaline seas and lakes of amber hue broke out
from their depths, surrounded by embankments of living gold, flashes of
green and purple shot in here and there, as if the angels had got tired
of weaving rainbows and flung their overplus of colors into one gorgeous
sunset. As usual, Ellen wandered off by herself and drank in the glory
of the scene with thrills of such delight as genius alone can feel. Even
those two lovers, happy and refined as they were, failed to reach the
exquisite pleasure that stirred her heart.
When did sunset or landscape ever draw two lovers out of their own lives
for any length of time? Before those noble colors had begun to melt into
that soft purple which precedes the night, the young couple had become,
as usual, absorbed in each other. They spoke of their loves—of the
bright future which lay before them—of the long, long life in which they
were never to be parted.
“It seems too blessed; sometimes I am frightened lest all this should
fade away,” murmured Virginia as she saw that vivid tumult of colors
melt tint by tint into a soft purplish blackness. “What if it should all
break up like that?”
“The heavens themselves shall pass away first,” said Brooks, with
solemnity. “The man or woman does not live that could separate us.”
A rustling of dead leaves, as if a sudden wind were whirling them up
from some hollow, followed these words and out from behind the rock
against which they sat started a tall figure, wrapped in a large blanket
shawl.
Brooks heard this sound of whirling leaves and wrapped Virginia’s cloak
more closely around her.
“The wind seems to be rising,” he said. “I must not keep you out in the
cold.”
She thanked him with a smile, and, all unmindful of the evil thing that
had crept so near them, they went down the ravine together for the last
time.
The next day it rained heavily, and with the rain came a high wind,
which swept the woods of all their foliage and filled the air with
whirling leaves. It was a sad, gloomy day, such as only the late autumn
can bring, and no human being, save those compelled to brave the storm,
thought of venturing out of doors. This gloomy weather answered to the
dark thoughts in Cora’s mind, as nature sometimes will aid evil
passions. The woman had not closed her eyes all night—had not even
undressed herself or gone to bed. Wrapped in the dull red of that great
shawl, which had so well covered her movements among the perishing
leaves, she huddled herself in a corner of her silken couch, and sat
there like some wild animal waiting for its prey—fierce, watchful,
poisoned with bitter thought—till the dawn looked in upon her. Then she
arose and stood before the mirror, breathing heavily, as if, soul and
body, she had been laboring in some oppressive atmosphere.
“It is well this rain has given me a few hours to myself,” she said,
looking at the haggard face that seemed to threaten her from the glass.
“I must have time to get smiles and color back to that miserable face.
So beautiful as it was, and yet fail to keep that one man. What was
nature doing, to match her features with mine? To make her slender,
lithe, graceful as I am? It is like rivalling one’s self if it were not
for this and this.”
Cora touched her heart and her forehead, while a look of triumph swept
over the pallor of her face, changing it so that its resemblance to
Virginia’s almost entirely disappeared. She had so many secrets, preying
upon her like vampyres, that it was a relief to lock herself in that
room and talk to her own image in the glass, or answer to the thoughts
that haunted her through the darkness when she could not sleep. This
expression of feelings which she dared not expose to any human being was
like letting in fresh air on a poisonous atmosphere. It became a relief
and habit to her at last.
“This quick intellect, this fiery heart—that tact which some people
might spend a life time and never learn—she will no more acquire than
she will get back the property I am enjoying. After all, compared to
these advantages, beauty is a small thing, well enough in its way, but
one could afford to dispense with it. Still, in a contest like this,
everything counts.”
Thus this young woman gave forth her wicked thoughts, that were echoed
back by her own heart only as rocky solitudes receive sound. She had
formed her plans during the night, and began to work them out at once.
Opening her door softly, she stole down a long passage leading to that
end of the house where Virginia’s apartments lay. These were composed of
two sleeping rooms and a small parlor, which Eunice had insisted on
arranging for her occupation. Since her plain talk with Cora, this
hard-faced woman had exercised her own will in the house with more
despotism than she had ever used when Mrs. Lander was mistress. She
seemed to take a pleasure in defying the person who had once attempted
to drive her from the house. This defiance was most generally exhibited
in some act of devotion to Virginia or Ellen, whose noble character had
made itself felt even by her rough nature. She saw that it offended Cora
to have this unfortunate girl recognized by the servants as their
superior, and exalted her accordingly. The other retainers followed the
housekeeper’s example, and no person in that mansion was treated kinder
or respected more than Ellen Nolan.
Towards the rooms thus independently appropriated by her cousin, Cora
made her stealthy way. She remembered that a narrow passage connected
one of these rooms with the chamber that Amos Lander had formerly
occupied, and which had been shut up since his death. Did this passage
lead to Virginia’s sitting-room or had her sleeping chamber been
arranged next that of her father? This was a question she had stolen
forth in the early morning to satisfy herself upon. Treading softly, and
holding her breath, she paused by a door, which might lead into
Virginia’s sitting-room, or, quite as likely, into the chamber where she
lay sleeping. With a silken touch, she turned the silver knob and
cautiously opened the door just far enough to look in. With a sense of
relief, she saw that it was unoccupied and evidently used as a parlor. A
piano stood opposite the door, which she knew to have been removed from
the drawing room to give space for the grand instrument Mrs. Lander had
ordered during her brief season of extravagance. Books lay upon the
tables, flowers drooped in the vases. Standing against the door, which
Cora surveyed with eager scrutiny, was a desk, littered with
manuscripts, some of which had fallen to the floor.
Cora advanced on tiptoe and took up one of those loose sheets. They were
not in Virginia’s handwriting—nothing of her graceful elegance was
there. The manuscript was hasty, erased, interlined and blotted as if a
hand, stirred by strong feelings, had seized upon the pen in a passion
of thought, and left almost illegible traces on the foolscap.
“Why, has that crooked thing turned author?” she thought. “I should not
wonder, there was always something of that kind in her eyes.”
She let the paper flutter down from her hand, observed that the door
against which the desk stood opened inward, and was thus blocked up. She
was going out with another sweeping survey of the room, when her eyes
fell on an object which made her heart stand still. It was the portrait
of Amos Lander, hanging above the piano—a picture which, up to that
season, had always hung in his office or private study. Struck with awe,
breathless with vague terror, the woman could not turn her eyes from
that face, which seemed to look down upon her in calm confidence that
justice would reach all those evil deeds at last. She strove to wrest
her eyes from the glance that held them, but could not, and walked
backward, holding her breath, till she reached the door. She closed this
and fled along the passage, seeking shelter from that face in her own
room.
Some weeks before this, duplicate keys of all the rooms in the house had
been brought to her, for she had begun with an elaborate display of
housekeeping, which was an unforgivable cause of offence with Eunice
Hurd. These keys she now searched over, and taking out the one which
unlocked Mrs. Lander’s chamber, put it in her pocket.
By this time the household was astir, and she commenced her morning
toilet, touching her cheeks with rouge for the first time in her life,
for that picture had driven the last vestige of color away from them,
and no effort of hers could bring it back again.
“They shall not see how haggard I am,” she muttered, sweeping the rich
hair back from her temples and coiling it on the back of her head. “If I
could get ten minutes’ sleep now. But that is hopeless. I can understand
how Lady Macbeth felt when she prayed for sleep and only found dreams.
But dreams that come when you are wide awake, as I was last night, are
the worst of all when you are forced to work them out. Right or
wrong—right or wrong I will accomplish mine.”
Cora met Mrs. Lander at breakfast, as had become her habit of late, with
those hollow expressions of affection which appease rather than satisfy
a loving heart. She went into an elaborate detail of the dresses which
she had seen in progress; suggested more expensive trimmings for some,
and took an interest in the whole affair that charmed her mother into a
season of absolute forgetfulness of the sin she had committed. While
they still lingered at the breakfast table, a servant came in with
information that a boy had come up from the city on the early train,
with a letter to Miss Lander, which he was directed to give to her in
person.
“It is something from the dressmaker, I fancy,” said Cora, rising with
every appearance of tranquillity from the table. “I told her to leave
the silver gray satin till we sent farther directions. I thought lace
would be lovely for the body and sleeves, but she objected on account of
the mourning.”
“I’m afraid, dear,” said Mrs. Lander, “that the dressmaker was right.
Even satin may be considered an innovation. Dead silk is really the
thing. I am _so_ sorry, but we must give up the lace. People are so
censorious you know. Plain, with pipings of black, was what I had
settled on. But I will see Fanchon’s messenger.”
“That will do no good; just write your directions and send the note down
to me. I will add all that is necessary. She has my general orders to
make everything as beautiful as possible and spare no expense.”
“What a dear, kind, liberal creature you are—no mother ever had a more
generous child.”
“Dear aunt, have you not always been treated exactly as if I were your
own child? I’m sure it was my father’s wish.”
Cora looked steadily into her mother’s eyes as she said this, and walked
quietly out of the room. There was no danger that the widow would follow
her after this covert rebuke.
Cora found, as she expected, Brian Nolan waiting in a small reception
room which opened from the library. She had never seen this lad but
once, and that was at the hotel the day after her arrival in New York.
She took the letter that he gave her and looked at the address, which
was a simple name, with some evidence of surprise.
“This is for my cousin,” she said, “I will take it to her. Wait for the
answer here.”
“If you please, there is a young person living here that I should like
to speak with,” said Brian, glad to have accomplished his task so
easily. “Her name is Ellen—Ellen Nolan.”
“She shall be sent for at once.”
Cora rang the bell and told a servant to inform Ellen Nolan that a
person from the city wished to speak with her. Then she left the room
with a quiet, leisurely air, as if the paper in her hand could be of no
possible consequence, though it was making her tremble from head to
foot.
“I wonder if his wife is so very handsome,” thought Brian, watching her
as she moved through the library. “This is the lady Ellen loves so much.
She speaks softly and does not look unkind, but I should hate to ask her
myself. What a slow, proud walk she has.”
Ellen Nolan came like a bird into the room where her brother sat. She
knew that it must be him, for, in all that strange land, there was no
one else who had the slightest interest in her outside of that house.
“O, Brian, Brian, how glad I am!” she cried, throwing her arms around
him, and kissing his hair and mouth and eyes with indiscriminate
affection. “I have so longed for you—so pined and prayed for a sight of
you. Don’t think it strange, dear, if I do act like a crazy thing; in
the wide, wide world you are all I have, except my lady. God forgive me
if, in my joy, I forget her for one moment. O, Brian, she is an angel!”
“I am glad of that,” answered Brian, returning his sister’s embrace with
ardor, and giving back glad tears in exchange for her kisses, “for I
have a great favor to ask of her. Something that will frighten you at
first.”
“A favor to ask of my lady, Brian?”
“Ellen, I have come to you for help. The best friend I ever knew is in
trouble.”
“What, the good gentleman?”
“Yes, dear. Bend your head; we are alone, but I dare not speak out
loud.”
Ellen bent her head, but, in an instant, started back with a cry of such
wild surprise, that it was clearly heard in the library, where Cora was
reading that letter. She lifted her face and listened.
“What _can_ it be about?” she thought. “Surely he has not entrusted that
boy with our secret.”
She arose white with dread, and, stepping through one of the library
windows, regardless of the drifting rain, which wetted her slippers
through in an instant, softly opened the blinds of another window, over
which she remembered the silken drapery of a curtain was falling loose.
The reception room had been occupied late the evening before, and the
curtain let down, to shut out all sounds of the storm, which was beating
against that side of the house with violence, from which another window,
opening to the west, was protected. No servant had entered the room that
morning. Thus it remained, with the drapery sweeping over one window and
looped back from the other.
Taking advantage of a gust of wind, that came sweeping around the house
that moment, Cora softly pushed the unfastened sashes back to the places
made to receive them, on each side of the deep recess, and, drawing the
blinds after her, sat down on an ottoman, which always occupied the
space shut in by the curtains. In this position she heard all that Brian
Nolan had to tell his sister, except those words which he could only
force himself to utter in a whisper. This much, however, she did learn.
Seymour was making strenuous efforts to repay the money he had taken,
and Virginia was to be importuned in his behalf. Out of this came
glorious materials for the web her crafty mind was weaving. If she could
only bring Seymour and her cousin once into companionship, the task she
had imposed on herself would be of easy accomplishment.
Brian kept his benefactor’s secret well. Not even to his own sister
would he whisper the secret which had been entrusted to himself alone.
That which related to himself, Seymour had permitted him to tell their
sister Ellen, who sat listening, half in joy, half in bitter grief, but
the words of her father still whispering in her heart. He was her
brother—with all his faults he was her brother! He had been so kind to
Brian, who came to him miserable and utterly unknown. There must be some
nobility of heart in a man who could be so generous to a helpless fellow
creature. She would see him, help him, toil for him, if the way could be
pointed out.
Brian told her of his hopes that her friend and mistress might be
induced to let their brother have the money, which would save him from
eternal degradation.
Ellen shook her head. “Her mistress was not the rich one; she had the
heart of an angel, but—”
Here Ellen paused, sprang up, and clasped her hands with passionate
force.
“Oh! it might be—it might be! God grant it! That would, indeed, prove
the happiest moment of her life. Brian must not ask her what it was yet;
but she had hopes. Only wait a little, and she would soon test her
ability.”
All this was incoherent enough; but there was something so earnest and
hopeful in all the girl said and did that Brian had that faith in her
which singleness of purpose always inspires.
“You will ask this good lady to help us, Ellen,” he said; “we are so
friendless that no chance must be neglected. If you only knew how he
suffers.”
“But he shall not suffer long. This will be working out my father’s
wishes. O, Brian, he loved his prodigal devotedly!”
“I know it, Ellen; but love for a man like that is so natural. It seems
to me that he is younger than I am—as if you and I must be strong for
him.”
“I remember him, Brian. His face was beautiful. His eyes—yes—yes—his
eyes are like our father’s, so deep, so mournfully deep.”
The listener in that window heard nothing of this. Having mastered the
substance of their conversation, and discovered their object, she left
these affectionate nothings to their speakers, and, opening the letter
which Seymour had sent her, began to read it by the bars of light that
fell through the shutters.
“My wife, my own beloved wife,” it began—“I am here in the house, which
was our Paradise, but now seems deserted. Without you, every place is
like a desert to me. With you, I desire no better heaven. Come to me, my
beloved. Do you know that it is weeks and weeks since I bade you
farewell in this room, with your dear head on my bosom, and your
trembling lips pressed to mine? That was a moment of anguish
unutterable; but, compared to this dull waiting, and the baffled
expectation that tortures me, whenever the gate opens, or a carriage
turns the corner, it was happiness, for you were with me. I know it is
very foolish, but sometimes a fear comes upon me that—No! I will not put
into language the apprehensions that harass me. Your presence will drive
them away, as sunshine turns the blackest clouds into embankments of
luminous snow. Did the woman tell you that I had returned? I am sure she
must have forgotten it, or I should not now be sitting among our
‘household gods’ alone. But you will get this. I send it by one who is
trustworthy, and who loves me. Give him a few gentle words for my sake.
Above all, give him an answer to this. Tell me what hour and minute I
may hope for you!
ALFRED.”
Cora read this letter from beginning to end, without a quickened breath
or a flush of the face. She had prepared herself for anything he might
say, and no granite was ever harder than the heart which beat in that
young bosom.
“Let these young fools talk out their dreams. I have the pith of all
they know or intend,” she said, inly. “Innocent as lambs they will be
working for me. I cannot exactly see how as yet; but this brain is ready
to mould events.”
She moved from her place of concealment, closing the blinds carefully
behind her as she went out, leaving wet footsteps on the marble pavement
in her progress.