THE ROCHESTERS ARE INTRODUCED.
It was a fine day in October.
In a beautiful room in one of the apartment-houses in the Rue de Rivoli,
in Paris, a handsome woman might have been seen sitting before a
cheerful fire in the polished grate; for although the sun was shining
brightly outside and the day was perfect, the air within the rooms, shut
in, as they were, behind solid walls, was keen and chill.
The occupant of this room was, perhaps, forty-five years of age, though
she looked younger. She had a small, finely shaped head, large, liquid
brown eyes, and chestnut hair, in which it would have taken a keen eye
to discover a thread of silver, rather delicately moulded features, and
a clear, softly tinted complexion. She was tall and rather slight,
although not angularly so, and there were in every movement an energy
and an animation which, in a woman of her age, were extremely
fascinating.
She was simply, though elegantly, clad in a heavy, lustreless black
silk, that fitted her fine figure like a glove, while the soft white
crape ruchings at her throat and wrist betrayed that she was in
mourning.
Low slippers incased the well-shaped feet that rested upon a hassock. In
her white hands, upon one of which there gleamed a massive wedding-ring
and a costly diamond, she held some bright-colored fancy work, and, in
the light of the glowing fire, surrounded by the rich hangings and
elaborate furnishings of the room, she made a very attractive picture.
Presently the door behind her opened, and a girl of about twenty-two or
twenty-three years swept into the apartment in a bright, breezy way that
was like the rustling of the gayly tinted autumn leaves upon the trees
outside.
“Mamma, such news as I have to tell you—you cannot guess, I am sure!”
she cried as she threw herself into a low rocker opposite the elder
woman and began to remove her beautifully fitting gloves.
She, too, was tall and slight, elegant in figure, perfect in her
bearing; but, unlike her companion, she was very fair, with light hair,
deep blue eyes, and a faultless complexion; and though her features were
cast in a less delicate mould than her mother’s, she was an exquisitely
beautiful girl.
She, too, was clad in black, but it was very becoming to her perfect
complexion.
“News, Sadie?” returned the elder lady as her eyes rested with a look of
pride and pleasure on the graceful figure opposite her. “I hope it is
home news, then, for I am really hungry for something American.”
“It is decidedly American,” cried the young lady, with a clear, exultant
laugh, “for I have met a gentleman from New York this morning.”
“Who?” demanded her mother eagerly.
“Guess.”
“I never could; don’t torture me with suspense, Sadie.”
“Well, then, a no less important personage than Dr. Truman Winthrop, the
man whom Milton Hamilton decreed should be the husband of Albert
Rochester’s daughter,” the girl answered, her blue eyes gleaming with a
light that made them seem almost black, a peculiar smile wreathing her
red lips.
“Sadie, you do not mean it!” exclaimed Mrs. Rochester, for the woman was
no other than the widow of the late Albert Rochester, who had covenanted
with his friend, Milton Hamilton, to unite, by the marriage of his only
daughter with the namesake and heir of the latter, the magnificent
estates of Brookside and Englehurst into one inheritance.
“Yes, I do,” responded the girl, with increasing animation. “I was in
the Luxembourg with Mrs. Savage and Nell, when who should come along but
Nell’s particular friend, Mr. Tillinghast—you have heard her speak of
him—and with him another man, whom he introduced as Dr. Winthrop. You
should have seen his start and look of surprise when he was presented to
me,” and the young lady completed her sentence with an amused ripple of
laughter.
“It is a little strange that we should always have thought of him by the
name of Hamilton until last autumn, when he wrote to your father that he
was coming abroad to meet us, and signed himself Truman Winthrop,” said
Mrs. Rochester musingly.
“Well, I do not know, mamma; we have not known much about the Winthrops.
Papa never met them. The most we have known was that one of the sons had
been named for Mr. Hamilton, who had adopted and made him his heir; so
it was natural, I suppose, that we should think of him as a Hamilton. It
is possible that he resumed his family name again after his uncle’s
death,” Miss Rochester argued thoughtfully.
“Well, I consider it a piece of unexampled good luck, your meeting him
to-day,” the elder lady remarked, with animation. “I did not dream that
he was on this side of the Atlantic and we should have been on our way
to New York a week later. Do you suppose he has written to us again at
Berlin that he was coming abroad, and, failing to get a reply, has been
wandering about in search of us?”
“I am sure I have no idea,” mused the young lady. “I have always thought
it very strange that we never heard anything after receiving that letter
of appointment last year. It has struck me that he was very shy of
us—that he dreaded to meet a woman whom some one else had picked out for
him; and no one could blame him if he did. Still, he might at least have
explained his delay in coming abroad.”
“Describe him to me, Sadie. Is he nice-looking?” asked Mrs. Rochester
with eager interest.
“Mamma, he is grand—a perfect king in appearance! I believe he is the
handsomest man I have ever seen,” the young lady returned with a glowing
face. “Only,” she added, “he seemed strangely sad, as if he had recently
met with some great trouble, and there was a wide band upon his hat.
There must have been some recent death in his family.”
“Perhaps that is the secret of his long delay in coming abroad,” said
Mrs. Rochester. “However,” she added, a peculiar gleam in her dark eyes
as they met her daughter’s, “it is rather fortunate for us, for we can
manage things our own way now. You think you will like him?”
“‘Like?’ It is a strange word to use in connection with him,” said Miss
Rochester, with a flush.
“Then there will be nothing disagreeable to you in fulfilling the
conditions of the will, provided the gentleman is also agreeable?”
questioned Mrs. Rochester, bestowing a searching glance upon her
companion.
“No, indeed!” she answered decidedly. “If I am any judge, Dr. Winthrop
is a man who would not meet his equal among a thousand. Any woman might
feel proud to win him for her husband, even without the very tempting
plum that his uncle has left him.”
“Well, well! I should say this was a case of love at first sight,” said
Mrs. Rochester, laughing; “and it is evident that you will do your
utmost to make yourself agreeable.”
“Yes, if he gives me the opportunity; but I am not going to throw myself
at him, much as I desire to become mistress of that double fortune,”
responded the girl haughtily, but with an anxious frown upon her brow.
“Well, he might go the world over and never find as handsome a wife as
you would make him, Sadie,” returned her mother, bestowing a proud
glance upon her daughter. “For my sake, as well as your own, you must
try to win him, for you know the will says that I can have full control
of the income of fifty thousand only upon the consummation of the
marriage. What an abominable will it is!” she added indignantly; “and
what a couple of fools those two men were! Do you believe Dr. Winthrop
will call upon us?”
“I cannot tell,” responded Miss Rochester thoughtfully; “he looked too
sad to-day to care to make new acquaintances. I should really like to
know what his trouble is. He did not seem disposed to talk with any of
us; but after the introductions were over he passed on and appeared to
be absorbed in the pictures, although once or twice, as I was talking
with Mr. Tillinghast, I caught him regarding me with a curious glance.”
“He was probably taking the measure of the wife whom his uncle had
selected for him,” Mrs. Rochester observed; adding, “I wonder if he
knows that Mr. Rochester is dead?”
“I don’t know; but he was evidently surprised to learn that we were in
Paris.”
“Yes, we were in Berlin when he wrote that he would join us, and
doubtless he imagined that we were still there. I should suppose he
would call; I do not see how he can do otherwise—it would really seem
rude in him to avoid us, even though he should not wish to fulfil the
conditions of the will,” Mrs. Rochester gravely observed.
Yes, Dr. Winthrop was in Paris.
He had met a friend at Interlaken, and together they had made a tour of
the Alps and of Germany, and now were intending to spend a little time
in Paris, after which they were to go on to Italy.
He had been greatly astonished when he was so unexpectedly introduced to
Miss Sadie Rochester in the Luxembourg.
The meeting had also been a great shock to him, for it brought vividly
to his memory all the past and opened afresh the wounds caused by his
recent loss.
He had not given any special thought to the Rochesters since his
marriage. He had expected, as we already know, to go abroad to meet them
the previous fall, but his duties in New York had prevented. Then as
soon as the epidemic in that city had subsided, he had gone to keep a
long-deferred appointment with his friend Dr. Cutler, of Boston, after
which he intended to join his family abroad and meet the lady whom his
uncle and his mother were so anxious he should marry.
Meantime Mr. Rochester, who had long been in poor health, had died
suddenly, and Mrs. Rochester—who, by the way, was a second wife—never
having liked Berlin, but having always been eager for the gayeties of
the French capital, made arrangements as soon as possible to come to
Paris, where she and her daughter had remained ever since.
Being in mourning, they could not go into society very much, but they
managed to have a pleasant time visiting various points of interest and
mingling in a quiet way with a few Americans whom they found in Paris.
Dr. Winthrop, after having sent his father home with his brother, had
begun a sort of aimless wandering, and had been so absorbed in his grief
that he had not given a thought to the Rochesters.
He knew that he had broken the conditions of his uncle’s will by
marrying Salome; and even had he realized that he could still marry Miss
Rochester, or given it any thought whatever, he probably would have
imagined that she would not now entertain any desire for the union,
knowing that he had already chosen some one in preference to her and
given the affection of his heart to another.
He had been struck with Miss Rochester’s exceeding beauty that morning
when he was introduced to her, while the quick flush which had mantled
her cheek on being presented to him told him that she at once associated
him with the strange contract which Mr. Rochester and his uncle had made
in connection with them.
He had been a little surprised, too, by her graciousness of manner, by
the smile of pleasure and glance of admiration with which she had
greeted him.
He had always pictured her as meeting him with coldness, if not with
hauteur. Almost any refined and sensitive woman, he thought, would
resent being so summarily disposed of to a man whom she had never seen,
and of whose character she was in total ignorance.
She certainly would be indignant, he told himself, when, after failing
to keep his appointment a year ago, or to notify either herself or her
father that he had violated the conditions of his uncle’s will, she
should learn of his marriage.
“I ought to have written to Mr. Rochester and explained the affair to
him,” he mused, after returning to his hotel that day; “but so many
things crowded themselves upon me that I did not think anything about
the matter. I must acquaint him now, and formally renounce all claim to
Miss Rochester’s hand, so that he can change the provisions of his will
in her favor if he wishes; for of course, with my crushed heart and
broken life, I cannot marry any woman. What an unpleasant position for
her! for her flush to-day told me that she imagined my errand abroad was
to seek her. She is truly a beautiful girl. I wonder who she is in
mourning for?—her mother, perhaps. I will write at once, state plainly
just how I am situated, and then take myself away from Paris with all
possible dispatch.”
He put his resolution into effect at once. He wrote a full account of
the past year; told what had prevented his keeping his appointment for
the previous year, of his visit to Boston, and the events which led to
his marriage, and the sad incidents that had since so embittered his
life. He stated that he had fully intended to meet Miss Rochester, and,
if they had been mutually pleased with each other, comply with his
uncle’s wishes by asking her to be his wife; but now, under the
circumstances, he felt obliged to waive all claims to her hand, since it
would be but a mockery and an insult to any woman to offer her his hand
when his heart was so filled with the image of another, his life and his
hopes so blighted by the loss of his wife, even if he himself did not
recoil from such a union.
It was a frank and manly letter, written with all the delicacy and
feeling that would naturally be expected from one so innately true and
noble, and having sealed and addressed it, he dispatched it by a special
messenger to the hotel where he had overheard Miss Rochester say she was
stopping.
He had arranged with his friend, Mr. Tillinghast, for a drive in the
suburbs the next day, and as he did not like to disappoint him, he
decided to keep this engagement and leave the following morning for
Italy.
He was still very sad; life seemed to have no special attraction for
him—he had no ambition but to kill time and keep himself from thinking
of the past.
He had lost his interest in his profession, and cared nothing for the
hospitals, as one would naturally expect. He rather shunned them, for
even the sight of one brought back to his mind so much that was
associated with Salome that he could not bear to enter.
The next morning, between eight and nine o’clock, a letter addressed to
“Albert Rochester, Esq.,” was handed to Mrs. Rochester—it had arrived
too late the evening before to be given to her, and she seldom arose
before eight.
“What can be the meaning of this?” she exclaimed, as she read the
superscription, and grew slightly pale at the now unaccustomed sight of
her husband’s name upon a letter.
“What is the matter?” inquired Miss Rochester, looking up from the
morning paper.
“A letter addressed to your father.”
“Open it and read it—then you will know the meaning of it,” was the
practical suggestion of the younger lady.
“There is no postmark upon it, either,” continued Mrs. Rochester, as she
broke the seal. “Why, how strange! it is from some one who does not know
that Mr. Rochester is not living,” she added, with a puzzled air, as she
began to read, and then she turned at once to the signature to ascertain
who had written the letter.
“Sadie, it is from Dr. Winthrop!” she exclaimed, a moment later.
“Why, mamma!” and the girl flushed a vivid scarlet, for something seemed
to tell her at once that the contents of the epistle related in some way
to herself.
“Read it aloud—of course it must be something about that contract,” she
murmured, beginning to tremble with excitement.
Mrs. Rochester obeyed, and both women immediately became absorbed in the
romantic story which the young physician had written, to account for his
long silence and his apparent neglect of them, together with the
explanation of his sudden departure from Paris.
“What a wonderful—almost improbable story!” Mrs. Rochester cried, when
she had finished reading the letter; “and,” she added, with white lips
and a frowning brow, “I suppose this settles your fate as well as mine
regarding that fifty thousand.”
“Yes—oh, mamma!” and Sadie Rochester suddenly slipped from her chair and
lay white and senseless upon the floor at her mother’s feet.