WHATEVER hope of escape from his self-imposed bondage Preston Cheney had
entertained when he began the note to his fiancée which the Baroness had
read, completely vanished during the weeks which followed the death of
Mrs Lawrence.
Mabel’s nervous condition was alarming, and her father seemed to rely
wholly upon his future son-in-law for courage and moral support during
the trying ordeal. Like most large men of strong physique, Judge
Lawrence was as helpless as an infant in the presence of an ailing woman;
and his experience as the husband of a wife whose nerves were the only
notable thing about her, had given him an absolute terror of feminine
invalids.
Mabel had never been very fond of her mother; she had not been a loving
or a dutiful daughter. A petulant child and an irritable, fault-finding
young woman, who had often been devoid of sympathy for her parents, she
now exhibited such an excess of grief over the death of her mother that
her reason seemed to be threatened.
It was, in fact, quite as much anger as grief which caused her nervous
paroxysms. Mabel Lawrence had never since her infancy known what it was
to be thwarted in a wish. Both parents had been slaves to her slightest
caprice and she had ruled the household with a look or a word. Death had
suddenly deprived her of a mother who was necessary to her comfort and to
whose presence she was accustomed, and her heart was full of angry
resentment at the fate which had dared to take away a member of her
household. It had never entered her thoughts that death could devastate
_her_ home.
Other people lost fathers and mothers, of course; but that Mabel Lawrence
could be deprived of a parent seemed incredible. Anger is a strong
ingredient in the excessive grief of every selfish nature.
Preston Cheney became more and more disheartened with the prospect of his
future, as he studied the character and temperament of his fiancée during
her first weeks of loss.
But the net which he had woven was closing closer and closer about him,
and every day he became more hopelessly entangled in its meshes.
At the end of one month, the family physician decided that travel and
change of air and scene was an imperative necessity for Miss Lawrence.
Judge Lawrence was engaged in some important legal matters which rendered
an extended journey impossible for him. To trust Mabel in the hands of
hired nurses alone, was not advisable. It was her father who suggested
an early marriage and a European trip for bride and groom, as the wisest
expedient under the circumstances.
Like the prisoner in the iron room, who saw the walls slowly but surely
closing in to crush out his life, Preston Cheney saw his wedding day
approaching, and knew that his doom was sealed.
There were many desperate hours, when, had he possessed the slightest
clue to the hiding-place of Berene Dumont, he would have flown to her,
even knowing that he left disgrace and death behind him. He realised
that he now owed a duty to the girl he loved, higher and more imperative
by far than any he owed to his fiancée. But he had not the means to
employ a detective to find Berene; and he was not sure that, if found,
she might not spurn him. He had heard and read of cases where a woman’s
love had turned to bitter loathing and hatred for the man who had not
protected her in a moment of weakness. He could think of no other cause
which would lead Berene to disappear in such a mysterious manner at such
a time, and so the days passed and he married Mabel Lawrence two months
after the death of her mother, and the young couple set forth immediately
on extended foreign travels. Fifteen months later they returned to
Beryngford with their infant daughter Alice. Mrs Cheney was much
improved in health, though still a great sufferer from nervous disorders,
a misfortune which the child seemed to inherit. She would lie and scream
for hours at a time, clenching her small fists and growing purple in the
face, and all efforts of parents, nurses or physicians to soothe her,
served only to further increase her frenzy. She screamed and beat the
air with her thin arms and legs until nature exhausted itself, then she
fell into a heavy slumber and awoke in good spirits.
These attacks came on frequently in the night, and as they rendered Mrs
Cheney very “nervous,” and caused a panic among the nurses, it devolved
upon the unhappy father to endeavour to soothe the violent child. And
while he walked the floor with her or leaned over her crib, using all his
strong mental powers to control these unfortunate paroxysms, no vision
came to him of another child lying cuddled in her mother’s arms in a
distant town, a child of wonderful beauty and angelic nature, born of
love, and inheriting love’s divine qualities.
A few months before the young couple returned to their native soil, they
received a letter which caused Preston the greatest astonishment, and
Mabel some hours of hysterical weeping. This letter was written by Judge
Lawrence, and announced his marriage to Baroness Brown. Judge Lawrence
had been a widower more than a year when the Baroness took the book of
his heart, in which he supposed the hand of romance had long ago written
“finis,” and turning it to his astonished eyes revealed a whole volume of
love’s love.
It is in the second reading of their hearts that the majority of men find
the most interesting literature.
Before the Baroness had been three months his wife, the long years of
martyrdom he had endured as the husband of Mabel’s mother seemed like a
nightmare dream to Judge Lawrence; and all of life, hope and happiness
was embodied in the woman who ruled his destiny with a hypnotic sway no
one could dispute, yet a woman whose heart still throbbed with a stubborn
and lawless passion for the man who called her husband father.