Laurel felt a dreary kind of pleasure in hearing her husband ascribe to
her the only real happiness of his life. It was some atonement for all
that she had borne, all that she had suffered. Her heart beat quick and
fast beneath her white robe. He went on sadly:
"Never was there a stormier ending to a beautiful, sunny, summer day,
never a sadder waking from a happy dream. And it was all so swift and
sudden. It was like Burns' poem.
"'No pause the dire extremes between,
She made me blest and broke my heart.'"
Ah, yes, Laurel could remember how swift and sudden it had all
been--how like a thunderbolt falling from a clear sky. She sat there
pale and silent, and listened to her own story told by her husband's
lips, and felt a strange, dreary, aching pity for the girl who had
loved and suffered so much quite as if it had been another woman than
herself.
"We came home at last," he said. "My mother was very ill, and my wife
nursed and tended her unweariedly, and with all a daughter's devotion,
until she became convalescent. Then the hour of my awakening came. It
was so swift, so horribly sudden, I wonder sometimes that it did not
kill me."
Ah, she had wondered so often that she, too, had not died beneath the
stroke of that cruel fate. But she made no sign, she only sat still and
looked at the bowed head before her, and listened to his words.
"The Gordons came down from New York one day quite unexpectedly, to
visit their daughter. I was delighted, Mrs. Lynn, because I thought it
would add to my darling's happiness. I thought I would surprise her, so
I concealed the fact of their arrival, and led her into their presence
full of happiness myself in the prospect of witnessing her amazement
and joy."
Mrs. Lynn held her costly fan before her face a moment. She did not
want him to see the spasms of agony that convulsed her face. Ah, how
bitterly it all rushed over her, the pain, the shame, the horror of
that supreme moment he was now portraying.
"You are smothering a yawn behind your fan," he said. "Does my story
weary you, Mrs. Lynn? It has not developed into a plot for a novel yet,
has it? You see I have been telling it in the plainest fashion. I have
not embellished it like a story-writer. And, besides, up to the moment
of which I have spoken it had not developed any phases of the tragic.
It had only been the simplest, sweetest love idyl that was ever lived."
"That is perfectly true," she said to herself, with a burning face and
a strangely throbbing heart.
"But in the moment when I led my beautiful wife into the drawing-room
at Eden to meet her parents the _dénouement_ came," said St. Leon Le
Roy. "The tragic element entered my story then. Can you guess what
happened, Mrs. Lynn?"
"Your wife was properly surprised, and glad to see her parents, I
presume," said Mrs. Lynn, with an air of polite interest.
His dark lashes lifted, he gazed at her sadly a moment, then they fell
again.
"No one could guess what _did_ take place," said Mr. Le Roy. "It was
like a romance. You have never written anything stranger in all your
novels, Mrs. Lynn. But you must not expect me to describe it to you in
the language of fiction. Your own imagination must invest it with all
the eloquence it merits. I have been surprised at many things in my
life, Mrs. Lynn, but I was never more surprised, never more shocked,
than I was in the moment when I led my Beatrix up to her mother. I had
expected demonstrations of delighted affection, I beheld only utter
dismay and confusion. Can you believe it, Mrs. Lynn? My young wife and
the Gordons had never met before in their lives!"
A faint murmur came from her lips, meant to convey surprise. He
accepted it as such, and went on slowly:
"Then it all came out. I had been deceived. I had been made the victim
of a clever conspiracy. Two beautiful, clever girls had plotted
together and the result was this: Beatrix Gordon had never come to
Eden. She had gone away and married her lover, and she had sent Laurel
Vane to us in her place. It was cleverly planned, as I have said just
now, but I have often wondered how Laurel carried it out, and escaped
detection. She was innocent and transparent as a child. She was
frightened always, I know, for when all came out I could recall many
things that pointed to the truth if only I had not been so blind. But
fate helped it on, and made me the husband, not of Beatrix Gordon, the
daughter of the wealthy, well-born publisher, but of Laurel Vane, the
penniless orphan child of an author who, with the genius of an Edgar
Allan Poe, had shared all the weaknesses of the great poet and died as
miserable."
He paused, Laurel wondered if he could hear her heart beating in the
stillness of that place of graves. It sounded so loudly in her ears, it
almost drowned his voice.
It was only by the greatest effort of her pride and will that she
preserved her outward calmness.
"It was a terrible discovery for me to make," he said. "I was wounded
in my love, in my faith, in my pride. Can you imagine what I did, Mrs.
Lynn?"
He had lifted his drooping head, and was looking straight into her
face. She looked back at him steadily, almost scornfully, as she
replied:
"You loved her so dearly, and she made you so happy, perhaps I should
not err if I said that you forgave the girl for her sin."
He crushed back something like a groan upon his lips.
"Do you think I should have done so, Mrs. Lynn?" he asked.
"I do not know how to answer you," she said, and her voice trembled.
"From a woman's standpoint, I should answer yes. But men are unlike
women, are they not?--harder, colder, prone to harsh judgments!"
"Yes, men are harder," he said, and was silent until she broke the
strange stillness with her strange voice.
"Do you love Tennyson, Mr. Le Roy? I do. I think one of the grandest,
most beautiful passages in the book is King Arthur's forgiveness of
Guinevere's terrible sin. Do you remember those words:
"'Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God forgives'?"
"Her sin was not like Guinevere's," he said, hastily.
"And therefore the more easily to be forgiven," she said. "Do you not
think that your wife suffered for her sin? And, after all, it was for
love's sake. And women do and dare so much for love's sake, remember."
"You are speaking as if I did not forgive her," he said. "I had not
told you that yet."
"But I fancied it must be so," she said, "because this is her grave."
The shot went home. He shivered, and a hollow groan escaped his lips.
"Would she have died for such a cause?" he asked, and she answered
gravely, and with a touch of sadness.
"Women's hearts have broken for even lighter causes."
To herself she said, mournfully: "I should have died myself if it had
not been for little Laurie's coming. I could not have lived through
these weary years if it had not been for the little child that loved
me!"
"_Her_ heart was broken then," he said, "for I refused to forgive her,
Mrs. Lynn. I was hard and stern and angry. But I never dreamed what
would happen."
"What did she do?" inquired the brilliant novelist, with interest.
"She went away that night, Mrs. Lynn, and all search for her proved
futile and vain. In a few days after a body washed up from the river--a
young, golden-haired woman. They said it was Laurel, my missing wife.
You know the rest. This is her grave."
Laurel looked at the grassy mound with a strange dreary wonder over the
waif whom they had buried there. She wondered what her name and history
had been. "Perhaps as sad as mine," she sighed to herself.
"This is her grave," he repeated. "Ah, Mrs. Lynn, you have a glowing,
vivid imagination. Can you fancy what I have suffered? Can you
comprehend how the demons of remorse and despair have pursued me
unceasingly?"
"Then you repented when too late?" she said.
"Too late," he echoed, drearily. "Yes, I repented when _too late_. Ah,
Mrs. Lynn, are there any sadder words than those two in the English
language?"
"Yes, I think so," she replied. "You remember what the poet Whittier
has written?
"'Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been."'"
"'It might have been,'" he repeated. "Ah, yes, I can testify to all
the sadness of those words! Have I not felt it all? Since she died my
life has been one dreary penance, one long regret. Ah, Mrs. Lynn, if
only I had forgiven her--if only I had not driven her from me by my
harshness and cruelty! I was a fool, and blind. She loved me and made
me happy. She sinned through her love, first, for Beatrix Gordon, then
for me. Her story is the saddest, the most pitiful I ever heard or
read. I should have forgiven the child--she was nothing but a child,
and she had not been well taught. But it was all so sudden, and I was
half dazed by the shock. Ah, well, I have had ample time to repent my
haste and madness. The years have been long and dreary enough without
my darling. Every time I come here to this quiet grave I whisper to the
silent dust beneath:
"'Oh, to call back the days that are not!
My eyes were blinded, your words were few,
Do you know the truth now up in heaven,
Laurel, Laurel, tender and true?'"
How the sweet passion and sorrow of the words moved her! He was sorry
for his cruelty, he repented it all. She said to herself that if she
had really been dead in that grave beneath him, she must have heard
those words--they would have thrilled even her dust. Tennyson's
beautiful words came into her mind:
"My dust would hear him and beat
Had it lain for a century dead,
Would start and tremble under his feet
And blossom in purple and red."
He looked up at her sitting there so fair and young, and so like the
dead, and his heart went out to her in passionate adoration. He cried
out, hoarsely, in his deep emotion:
"Mrs. Lynn, what do you think? Have I really sinned beyond forgiveness?
If Laurel could come back from the world of shadows, do you think she
would forgive me for that night?"
"Are you asking me to tell you what I should do in your wife's place,
Mr. Le Roy?" she asked him in a low, strange voice.
"Yes, put yourself in her place," he replied. "Tell me, could you
forgive me and love me again after the coldness with which I put my
wife from me that night?"
"I do not believe I could ever forget or forgive such unkindness," she
replied.
He looked at her keenly, with a brooding trouble in his eyes.
"Perhaps you do not look at the subject quite as my young wife would
have done," he said, anxiously. "Laurel loved me, Mrs. Lynn. Do not
forget that. Would she not forgive me for love's sweet sake?"
"No, I do not think she would. Her pride would be stronger than her
love," answered the beautiful woman.
"Laurel was not proud," said St. Leon Le Roy.
"Not when you loved her, not when she was happy," said Mrs. Lynn. "But
can you not fancy the sweetness of even such a nature as hers turned
to gall by wrong and ruth? I repeat it, Mr. Le Roy, if I were in your
Laurel's place, if I could come back after all those years, I believe
I should be as proud and cold as I was gentle once, I do not believe I
could forgive you!"
He sprung up, he held out his arms to her yearningly, his face
transfigured by the yearning passion of his heart.
"Laurel, Laurel, do not speak to me so cruelly, do not judge me so
hardly!" he cried. "Do you think I do not know you, my darling?--that I
have not known you since the moment we met again? That senseless marble
lies when it says my wife is dead! You are she, you are Laurel Le Roy!"