TOO LATE.
Ay, I saw her--we have met--
Married eyes how sweet they be!
Are you happier, Margaret,
Than you might have been with me?
Come, but there is naught to say,
Married eyes with mine have met,
Silence, oh! I had my day!
Margaret! Margaret!--JEAN INGELOW.
Mrs. Conway was not wearing the willow for her wandering nephew. On
the contrary, her elegant rooms constantly witnessed merry gatherings,
where mirth and music reigned supreme. She was still a handsome woman,
still a brilliant woman, and the world of society, fashion, and folly
held her as one of its leaders. The delicate state of her health had
improved, she had dispensed with her fair companion, and on a sweet
spring night, just four years from the date of the beginning of this
story, she was giving a splendid ball in honor of the wife of the
distinguished and handsome Senator Winans, of Virginia.
The elite of Norfolk was gathered there, the house was garnished with
wreaths and garlands of flowers, till the long drawing-rooms opening
into each other looked like fast succeeding vistas of intoxicating
bloom. Music rose voluptuously overall, and the proud hostess moved
among her guests looking handsome as a picture, and young for her
fifty-four years, in the sea-green silk and misty laces that accorded
so well with her dark eyes and hair, and sweetly smiling mouth.
But under all her brightness and gayety Mrs. Conway carried an uneasy
pang in her proud heart. It was the neglect of her idolized nephew.
She had never had any children of her own, and at the death of her
husband the orphan boy of her only brother crept into her heart, and
held the only place in it that was worth having; for the heart of a
fashionable fine lady, I take it, has little room to spare from the
vanities of dress and fashion; but whatever vacant room there remained
in Mrs. Conway's, it all belonged to her self-exiled nephew, and for
many months no news had come of the traveler. He had roved from one end
of Europe to the other, and wearied of it all, but still talked not of
coming home, and his aunt missed him sadly. He had been unfeignedly
fond of her. He was her nearest living relative, her chosen heir, and
she wanted him home for the few remaining years of her life. But with
the underlying strength of her proud heart she kept those feelings to
herself, and none were the wiser for them.
And in the midst of the music and dancing a stranger crept to the
door of the anteroom, and looked anxiously in--Bruce Conway. A little
thinner, a little bronzed by travel, a little more grave looking, but
every bit as handsome as the dashing young follow who had gambled with
a meteor for his chance of happiness and--lost.
Was he looking for his aunt? Twice she passed near enough to have
touched him with her hand, but he smiled and let her pass on, not
dreaming of his near presence.
At last his eyes encountered what they sought, and, half unconsciously,
he drew nearer, and scanned the peerless vision framed in the door-way
of the conservatory, in the soft but brilliant light of the wax-lights
half-hidden in flowers.
Was she a creature of this lower earth? He had thought, that spring
four years ago, with Grace Grey at seventeen, leaning on his arm,
looking into his face in the moonlight, that she was more a creature
of heaven than earth. He thought so again to-night, as he looked
at her leaning there under the arch of flowers that framed the
conservatory door. He thought of all the living loveliness, the
sculptured perfection, the radiant beauty that seemed to breathe
on the canvas--all he had seen in his wanderings from shore to
shore--and nothing he could recall was half so glorious as Grace Grey
at twenty-one, in her calm repose, standing quietly looking on at the
scene, seeming herself, to the fascinated eyes that beheld her, like a
young angel strayed away from paradise.
Mr. Conway slipped around and entered the room by a side door in the
rear of where she stood. At sound of his footstep she turned slowly and
looked at him carelessly, then looking again, threw up one hand. Was
she going to faint? Not she! Her face whitened, her pansy-violet eyes
grew black with intense emotion, but without a tremor she offered the
little cold hand he had dashed away from him so long before. It was as
cold now as it had been then--had it never been warm since, he wondered.
"Welcome home!" he heard in the remembered music of her voice.
"Oh, Grace, my darling, my wronged little love!" He knew his own mind
at last, and was down on his knees before she could prevent him,
passionately entreating, "My darling, will you forgive me, and give
yourself to me? I have come home to make reparation for the past. I
never knew how dear you were, how entirely I loved you, till the ocean
rolled between us."
For a moment the silence of unspeakable emotion fell between them; she
struggled for speech, waving her hand for him to pause, while over her
pure, pale face a flood of indignant crimson warmly drifted.
"Rise, sir," she answered, at last, in low, proud tones, "such words
are an insult to me!"
"And why? Oh! Grace, can you not forgive me, can you not love me? You
loved me once, I know. Don't send me away. Promise that I may still
love you, that you will be my worshiped wife!"
She did not laugh at him, as you or I might have done, my reader. It
was not in the nature of the girl Bruce Conway had scorned for her
low estate to be anything but sweet and merciful. She looked at him,
still faintly flushed and excited, but answered with unconsciously
straightening figure, and a firm but gentle dignity peculiar to her
always:
"Possibly you are not aware, Mr. Conway, that your words of love are
addressed to one who is already a wife--and mother."
Mr. Conway had never fainted in his life, but with a feeling that sense
and strength were giving way, he rose, and, dropping into a chair,
white as death, looked at the young creature whose quiet assertion of
matronly dignity had fallen on his ears like a death-warrant. And as
he looked, with that strange power we have of discriminating details
even in the most eventful hours, he noticed many things that went
far to prove the truth of her words. He had left her poor and almost
friendless, her richest dress a simple white muslin, and scarcely
another piece of jewelry than the simple trinket of gold and pearls
that clasped the frill of lace at her white throat. To-night she
wore a sweeping robe of costly white silk, with flouncings of real
lace, that was worth a small fortune in itself. There were diamonds
on the wavering swell of her white bosom, depending from the pearly
ears, scintillating fire from her restless taper wrists, clasping her
statuesque throat like sunshine glowing on snow. She was wealthy,
prosperous, beloved now, he read in the restful peace that crowned her
innocent brow; and bitterest thought of all to the man who had loved
and deserted her--another man called her _his wife_--another man's
child called her mother.
While she stood with that flush of offended wifely dignity burning
hotly on her pure cheek, while he looked at her with a soul's despair
written on his handsome features, a gentleman entered the room carrying
an ice. He was tall and splendidly handsome, his countenance frank,
and pleasant, but a slight frown contracted his brow as he took in the
scene, and it did not clear away as the lady said, distantly:
"Mr. Conway, allow me the pleasure of presenting to you my husband,
Senator Winans."
Both gentlemen bowed ceremoniously, but neither offered the hand.
Mr. Conway hated Winans already, and the gentleman thus honored felt
intuitively that he should hate Conway. So their greeting was of the
briefest. The discomfited traveler turned and walked over to the Hon.
Mrs. Winans.
"I beg your pardon," he said, in low, earnest tones; "I did not
know--had not heard the least hint of your marriage."
He was gone the next moment. Senator Winans looked inquiringly at his
beautiful young wife. She did not speak; he fancied she shrank a little
as he looked at her, but as he set down the ice on a small flower-stand
near by, she took up the little golden spoon and let a tiny bit of the
frozen cream melt on her ruby lip, while a faint smile dimpled the
corners of her mouth.
"My love," he said, lifting the small, white hand, and toying with its
jeweled fingers, "are you ill? Your hand is cold as ice."
"I never felt better in my life," smiling up into his questioning
eyes, and nestling the small hand still closer in his. "The cold
cream chilled me after dancing so much, or," her natural truthfulness
asserting itself, "I may be a little nervous, and that makes my hands
cold."
"And what has made you nervous to-night?" his tone unconsciously stern
and his thoughts full of the dark, despairing face that had looked up
from the depths of the arm-chair at his queenly looking wife.
"Nothing," she answered, dreamily, while a swift flush burned on her
cheek, and she turned away a little petulantly and began to trifle with
the ice again.
"I beg your pardon, but it was something, and that something was the
man who has just left us. Who and what is he?"
"Mr. Bruce Conway, nephew and heir of our hostess. He has been abroad
four years, I think, and but just returned."
"An old acquaintance of yours, then?"
"Well, yes."
She turned toward him with marvelous sweetness and self-command.
"During my stay with Mrs. Conway I was naturally brought frequently in
contact with her nephew. I found him a pleasant acquaintance."
"Nothing more--was he not a lover?"
His beautiful dark eyes seemed to burn into her soul, so full were they
of jealous pain and sudden doubt.
She came up to him, crossing her round white arms over one of his,
looking up at him with an arch, merry smile.
"I really cannot say, since he never confessed to a tender passion for
me. The difference in our stations precluded anything of the sort.
You must remember that there are few men like you, my loyal love, who
stooped to lift a beggar-maid to share your throne."
Her eyes were misty and full of unshed tears, partly out of gratitude
and love for him, and partly--she could not help it--because she was
conscious of a sharp, agonized remembrance of a night four years
before, the very thought of which made her turn white and cold as death
as she leaned upon her husband's arm.
One hand beneath her dimpled chin lifted her face to meet his gaze. She
met it sweetly and frankly, but he knew her well enough to know that
the intense blackness of her dilated eyes denoted deep emotion.
"Tell me the truth, Gracie," he entreated. "That man looked at you as
no mere acquaintance ever looked at a woman--looked at you as he had no
right to look at the wife of another man! What mystery is this you are
trying to withhold from me? If you refuse to answer what I have a right
to know you force me to seek satisfaction from him."
He was terribly in earnest. The baleful fire of doubt and jealousy
burned in his eagle gaze, and startled the young creature who read its
language with a vague doubt creeping into her soul. She did not want to
deceive her husband--still less did she want to tell him the truth for
which he asked.
"Spare me!" she entreated. "There is nothing to tell, my love--nothing
of any consequence, I mean. It would but annoy you to hear it, mortify
me to tell it," and once more the warm blush of insulted matronly pride
tinged the girlish cheek with crimson.
"For all that I insist upon having an explanation of the scene I
witnessed here after leaving you scarcely a minute before!"
Unconsciously to himself he shook off the small hands that clasped his
arm in his eager interest and excitement. She did not replace them,
but, folding both her arms across her breast, lifted her pale, earnest
face to his.
Her answer came low and sweet, though perhaps a trifle impatient, as
though the subject seemed to her scarcely worth this "wordy war."
"Well, then, Mr. Bruce Conway startled me very much by entering here
quite suddenly and making me an offer of his hand, declaring that he
had learned to love me while abroad. I checked him by telling him that
I was a wife and mother. You heard his apology to me--he did not know
of my marriage. That is all there is to tell."
He looked at her and half smiled at thought of Conway's discomfiture;
but the passing merriment was displaced in a moment by the sharp pain
tugging at his heart-strings. He had the jealous Southern nature to
perfection. He could not endure even the thought that another had ever
enshrined in his heart the image of Grace, his lovely girl-bride. So
sharp a pang tore his heart that he could not move nor speak.
"Paul, my husband"--she looked up at him as wondrously fair in his eyes
as she had been in Bruce Conway's, and with a timid grace that was
infinitely becoming to her--"surely you do not blame me. I could not
help it. I am sorry it has happened. I cannot say more."
It was not in human nature to withstand the mute pleading of her
manner, or the soft gaze that met his own. He stooped and touched his
lips to her pure brow.
"Let us go, love," he said. "I confess that I shall feel better away
from here and in our pleasant home."
"But this reception was given for us. Our hostess will feel offended at
so early a departure."
"I will tell her we were called away--that is, unless you wish to
remain."
"No, indeed; I would rather be at home with my precious baby; and your
wishes are always mine, Paul."
How exquisitely she tempered wifely submission and obedience with
gentleness and love! If there was a cross in her life, she wreathed it
over with flowers. Her soothing voice fell like the oil of peace on the
troubled waters of his soul.
Long after their adieus to their hostess had been spoken, and his arm
had lovingly lifted her into her carriage, Bruce Conway's eyes watched
vacantly the spot where she had vanished from his sight, while that
haggard wanness of despair never left his face. Never until the hour
in which he knew her irrevocably lost to him did he realize how deeply
rooted in his soul his love had been. Amid all the glories of the
old world he had felt that life was a desert without her, and in the
Arabian deserts the knowledge had dawned slowly upon him, that even
here her mere presence would have created a paradise of bliss. Far
away from her, unconsciously to her, he had mentally renounced his
anticipated inheritance, and come home with the fixed intention of
winning her, and toiling, if need be, cheerfully for her.
Not a thought of disappointment, not a possibility of her marriage
had crossed his mind. It was left to this hour, when he stood there
listening to the slow crunch of her carriage wheels that seemed
grinding over his heart as they rolled away, to know his own heart
truly, and to feel how much better than he knew himself his friend had
known him when he said, on almost the same spot where he now stood
alone:
"Is it not just as possible that the day may come when for the sake of
the loving, trusting, friendless child you desert to-day, you would
peril not only your hopes of present fortune and future prosperity, but
your aspirations for a brighter world?"
It had come. Passionate heart, undisciplined temper, unsatisfied
yearnings clamored fiercely for the woman who had loved him as he would
never be loved again. He would have given then, in his wild abandonment
to his love and despair, all his hopes of fortune, his dreams of fame,
his chances of futurity, to have stood for one hour in the place of the
man who, even then in his beautiful home, clasped wife and child in one
embrace to his noble heart, while he thanked God for the treasure of a
pure woman's love.
A touch on his shoulder, a voice in his ear jarred suddenly on his
wild, semi-savage mood.
"Be a man, Bruce, old fellow, be a man. It is too late for unavailing
regrets. Call all your manhood to your aid."
"Clendenon, is it you?" He turned and wrung his friend's hand with a
grip that must have pained him. "Have you come to exult over my misery
with the stereotyped 'I told you so?'"
"Can you think it of me? Bruce, I have watched you for the last five
minutes, and I understand your feelings. From my soul I pity you!"
"Don't! Sympathy I cannot bear--even from you, old boy. Clen, how long
has it been--when was she,"--a great gulp--"married?"
"More than eighteen months ago Senator Winans saw her first at one
of your aunt's receptions, where she was brought forward to perform a
difficult sonata for a musical party. He saw and loved (what man could
see her and not love her?) There was a brief courtship, a brilliant
marriage, under the rejoicing auspices of your aunt, and the beautiful
Hon. Mrs. Winans was the belle of last season in Washington, as her
husband was one of the most notable members of the Senate. She has been
'the fashion' ever since."
"So she was like all other women, after all," sneered Conway,
in jealous rage. "Sold herself. So much beauty, intellect, and
frivolity--for a brilliant establishment, a proud name, and high
position."
"I think not. They live very happily, I am told. He is worthy any
woman's love, and has won hers, no doubt. And, Bruce, I don't think
anything could make her worldly or calculating. As much of the angel is
about her as is possible for mortal to possess."
Conway looked suddenly up into the handsome, inscrutable face of the
speaker.
"Clen, _mon ami_, if it had to be any one else than me, I wish it had
been you that had married her. You are deserving of any blessing that
can come into a good man's life."
"Thanks," his friend answered, simply, and moved aside to make way for
Mrs. Conway, who swept out on the piazza and up to the side of her
nephew. Somehow the news of his return had been noised about the rooms,
and she had come to seek him, vexed and mortified that he had not come
to her, but still very happy to know that he was there at all.
"My dear boy," she said, as she clasped his hand and took the gallant
kiss he offered, "this is, indeed, a joyful surprise. Will you come up
into my boudoir, where we can have a quiet chat to ourselves, before
your many friends claim your attention?"
Silent and moody he followed her. Once within the quiet seclusion of
her own special apartment, and she turned upon him with a sudden storm
of reproaches.
"Bruce, what is all this I hear? That gossiping old maid, Miss Lavinia
Story, has spread from one guest to the other a sensational report of
your meeting Mrs. Winans in the conservatory just now, and proposing
to her under the impression that she was still Miss Grey, my late
companion. It can't be true of you; don't say it is, and make me
ashamed of you in the very hour of your return. You could not have been
guilty of such rashness and stupidity. Give me authority to deny it to
our friends."
"I can't do it." He was always rather laconic in his way of speaking,
and he answered her now in a moody, don't-care, scarcely respectful
sort of style, without even looking at her. "It's all true, every word
of it, and more besides."
"Bruce, Bruce, what madness!"
"Was it? Well, I suppose you did not expect as much manliness as that
even from one who had been so ready to sell himself for your gold.
But I could not do it, Aunt Conway. You know well enough that I loved
her. That was why you were so willing I should go away. But I did not
forget her so easily as I thought I would. My love only strengthened
with time until I resolved to resign my claims to your fortune, come
home, win her, and work for her like a man. I came, saw her, forgot all
about the proprieties, and spoke at once. I didn't stop to think why
she wore silk instead of muslin, diamonds instead of flowers. I saw
only her heavenly, sweet face, and blundered straight into--making a
laughing-stock of myself for all your acquaintance!"
"Exactly!" groaned Mrs. Conway. "Miss Story eavesdropped--she pretends
to have heard it purely accidentally. The old--"
"News-carrier!" grimly suggested her nephew, finding her at a loss for
a word.
"You may well say that! She will have it all over Norfolk to-morrow.
Oh! how it mortifies my pride to have anything occur to disgrace me so!
Bruce, I could almost find it in my heart to curse you!"
"And I you! You are to blame for it all. But for you and your foolish
pride of wealth and position, I might have wooed and won her; but while
I wavered in my shameful vacillation and selfishness, a better and
nobler man has stepped in between us! You are proud to welcome _him_,
proud to do him honor; proud to welcome her in her beauty and grace,
now that you have put her forever out of my reach. But you are well
repaid to-night. Look at my blasted hopes and ruined life, and curse
yourself, your gold, everything that has come between two loving hearts
and sundered them forever!"
He threw the words at her like a curse, stepped outside the door, and
slammed it heavily after him.
She saw him no more that night.