Laurel had left Belle Vue in a sudden panic of fear and dread. She
was afraid that her bold denial of her identity would irritate the Le
Roys into an attempt to prove their charges and claim her child. She
determined to put a wide distance between herself and her husband,
regretting in her new-born terror that she had ever exposed herself to
the danger of being recognized by him.
She did not confide to her uncle the fact that she had been charged
with her identity by her husband and his mother. She knew that Mr.
Ford sympathized with the Le Roys in their repentance and sorrow,
and she knew what his advice would be. She had not confided to him
the reason of her sudden flitting. She knew that he was the loving
slave of her imperious will, and that she need but express a wish to
have it gratified. So the grand home on the Hudson was deserted, and
they sought "fresh fields and pastures new," according to Laurel's
capricious fancy. If Mr. Ford wondered at her fickleness, he kept it
to himself. Perhaps he was not altogether sorry that Laurel was not to
leave him yet. His heartstrings were very closely entwined around her
and her beautiful child. He would have been lonely indeed without them.
They went to a noted summer resort by the seashore, and Laurel declared
that she meant to labor diligently here on a new book she had commenced
to write that summer. But the new novel did not grow very fast. The
brilliant author was restless and ill at ease. Some days she would
devote to her task with a feverish energy and persistence, often
writing far into the night. Again there would be days and days when the
manuscript remained locked in her desk neglected and untouched, while
Laurel threw herself into the whirl of social pleasure with a zest born
of the desire to forget. But neither in work nor pleasure did she find
that lethean draught for which her lips thirsted. She was haunted by a
voice, a face. She could not choose but remember.
Even if it had been possible for her to forget, little Laurence would
not have allowed her to do so. Strange to say, the child had taken a
wondrous fancy to the Le Roys, both mother and son. He prattled of them
often in his pretty childish fashion, regretting that he could not see
them again, and every word was like a dagger in the mother's heart. She
knew that it was nature and instinct clamoring for its own in the boy's
heart. Sometimes she was almost melted, sometimes she felt keenly the
wrong she had done the child in depriving him of his father's love.
But her hard, bitter pride was always stronger than her pity and her
love.
Little Laurence found a congenial playmate at last, and his regrets
for Belle Vue and Eden grew daily less and less. It was a little
golden-haired girl of six years old, called Trixy by her nurse, who
brought her to play on the sands daily with her little toy spade and
bucket. In Laurie's shell-gathering expeditions with his own nurse, the
two children became acquainted and were soon inseparable companions and
friends. Laurence did not rest until he had made his mother acquainted
with the little beauty.
"I cannot understand my feelings when I look at little Trixy," Mrs.
Lynn said to her uncle, with a pretty, puzzled air. "The child's face
haunts me. In some inexplicable manner she recalls the past. And yet I
cannot remember whom she is like."
She was not fated to remain long in ignorance of the resemblance that
haunted her so strangely.
She was standing on the shore one day looking dreamily out at the
swelling, foam-capped waves, as they rolled in and broke in crystal
spray at her feet, when she was startled by little Trixy's voice,
crying vivaciously:
"Oh, Laurie, here comes mamma! Now she can see _your_ mamma, Laurie!"
Mrs. Lynn turned toward the children, and saw a fair, blue eyed woman
coming up to them. She gazed in silence a moment, then gave a great
strangling gasp of surprise and recognition. It was Beatrix Wentworth!
The past rushed bleakly over Laurel's memory; the past, with all its
love and sorrow and shame. The sight of this fair woman brought it all
back freshly and with terrible realism. She stood like one turned to
stone, as Mrs. Wentworth came up to her, a look of startled wonder on
her lovely blonde face.
"Laurel Vane!" she cried, and put out both her hands.
Laurel drew back coldly, all her self-possession returning.
"You have made a mistake," she said; "I am Mrs. Lynn!"
Mrs. Wentworth colored deeply.
"I beg your pardon--you are right," she said. "I was so startled by
your likeness to my friend that I forgot for the moment that she by
whose name I called you is long since numbered with the dead!"
"I regret to have awakened unpleasant emotions in your mind," said
Laurel, gently, as she offered her card to Mrs. Wentworth.
"You are little Trixy's mother," she went on, smiling. "I am very glad
to know you for her sake. She and my little son are great friends."
"You have a son?" said Mrs. Wentworth, as she exchanged cards with
Laurel. She sighed heavily, and then Laurel noticed that she wore a
black dress. "Ah, I had a son, too, Mrs. Lynn, a beautiful boy that
would be as old now as yours had he lived, but he lies buried in an
English graveyard."
"You are English?" asked Laurel, gently, her heart melting in sympathy
with the tear that sparkled down Beatrix's cheek.
"No, I am American, but I have lived in England ever since my marriage,
nine years ago. Little Trixy was born in London, as also my little
Cyril, dead three years ago. We have come home now to live."
"We?" said Mrs. Lynn, with a slight, interrogative accent on the
pronoun.
"I should have said Mr. Wentworth and myself, and Trixy. There are only
three of us," explained Beatrix, pensively, and smothering a sigh.
Laurel wondered to herself whether the Gordons had ever forgiven their
daughter; she wondered what had become of smart, pretty Clarice Wells.
But she could not ask any of these questions that filled her thoughts,
because she had decided that she, in her own proper identity, would
remain as dead to Mrs. Wentworth as she was to the rest of the world.
They stood there side by side, the two fair women who had so greatly
influenced each other's lives, and gazed pensively at the sun-gilded
waves, trying to put away the thoughts of the past that each recalled
to the other, and to recall themselves to the present.
"I have read your books, Mrs. Lynn," said Beatrix. "I think they are
among the most beautiful in the language. I am proud of you as an
American author."
"You praise my poor efforts too highly," Laurel said, with her slow,
half-sad smile.
"I do not think so. The critics agree with me at least," said Beatrix.
"Do you not find it very pleasant to be laurel crowned, Mrs. Lynn--to
win the applause of the world and own a name that will live beyond the
grave?"
"To be
"'Conscious that a world's regret
Would seek us where we lie!'"
quoted Mrs. Lynn, with a slight, sad smile. "Ah, Mrs. Wentworth, will
you believe that I have scarcely ever regarded the subject from that
point of view? When I first took up literary work it was to win bread
for my little child. Since success has crowned my efforts, since hard
necessity drives me no longer, I labor on because I have need to fill
an empty void in my life. From first to last I have had no thought of
fame."
The soft sigh of the waves blending with her voice made it sound very
sad. Mrs. Wentworth looked at the beautiful, proud face curiously.
Some kind of a history was written on it. There was a lingering
shadow in the somber, dark eyes, a sorrowful gravity about the lovely
crimson lips. She wondered what that empty void might be. And then she
remembered that she had heard that Mrs. Lynn was a widow.
"It is grief for her husband," said Beatrix to herself.
"I suppose we all have something in our lives that we are glad to
forget in the oblivion of hard work, or even in the pursuit of
pleasure," she said. "My little Cyril's death left an aching void in
my own heart, and I have another sorrow too. I have been a disobedient
child to my parents. I never fully appreciated the enormity of my
unpardonable fault until I had a little daughter of my own."
Beatrix spoke in a tone of dreamy sadness. She did not seem to be
speaking to a stranger, but rather to a friend. The subtle likeness
between Mrs. Lynn and Laurel Vane affected her strangely.
Laurel caught at her words quickly.
"Your unpardoned fault," she echoed. "Do you mean to say that your
parents never forgave your disobedience, Mrs. Wentworth?"
"Never," Beatrix answered, with a sigh that showed how deep her pain
lay.
Then they were silent for a time. The idle loiterers on the beach,
the casual passers by turned twice to look at the two fair women, so
beautiful, so unlike in their beauty--Beatrix so lily-fair with her
large blue eyes and pale-gold tresses; Laurel with her rare, unusual
type of beauty, her dark eyes, her blonde skin, her burnished hair; the
one in her dress of deep, lusterless black silk, the other in something
white and soft and clinging, marvelously becoming to her graceful style.
"Shall you be long at the seaside?" Laurel inquired, presently.
"A few weeks--that is all," Beatrix replied. "Mr. Wentworth is in New
York--business, you know, Mrs. Lynn--Trixy and I cannot stay long away
from him."
"You are fond of him?" said Laurel, turning her large, wistful eyes on
the other's tender face.
The tenderness deepened in Mrs. Wentworth's sweet blue eyes, and around
her gentle lips.
"You would think so if you knew the story of our marriage," she said.
"Ours was a real love-match, Mrs. Lynn. It was most romantic. Some day,
when I know you better I will tell it to you. It would furnish you a
plot for a novel."
Laurel turned her head aside and set her lips in a tense, hard line.
She remembered how the story had been told her a few weeks ago in that
green city of the dead beside the grave where the unknown waif lay
under the name of Laurel Le Roy.
"God forbid that I should have to hear the story told again," she
murmured to herself.
She looked back at Mrs. Wentworth and said, calmly, and even smilingly:
"It is very pleasant to hear of a real love-match in real life. I
suppose you are very happy, Mrs. Wentworth?"
"Yes, I am very happy with my noble husband," Beatrix said,
thoughtfully. "But my happiness was purchased at a bitter cost to
another. I know what it is to feel the sharp sting of remorse, Mrs.
Lynn."
Little Trixy came up with a beautiful shell and claimed her mother's
attention. They went away together presently, and left Laurel to her
own reflections. They were very sweet and noble ones. She was thinking
of the Gordons--longing to reconcile them to their daughter and her
husband.
"I am glad that she is happy with her husband," mused Laurel. "Oh, how
differently our girlish conspiracy resulted for her and for me. And
yet--would I change places with her? No, hers be the pleasure, mine the
pain."
She walked slowly back to the hotel, leaving Laurie at play with his
nurse on the shell-strewn beach. In the hotel corridor she encountered
some new arrivals, ladies and gentlemen, going to their rooms. Quite
oblivious of their interested, admiring stare, she passed on, and took
no note of the pretty, painted blonde face that whitened beneath all
her rouge as she stared aghast, and murmured, huskily:
"Is it Laurel Vane or her ghost? I never saw such a terrible likeness!"