WITH THE FLIGHT OF TIME.
When Lelia recovered from her strange, somnambulistic trance, and
learned from her mother all that had happened in that fateful night,
she was like a mad thing for a while.
The most terrible denunciations of her husband leaped from her
beautiful lips.
She called down bitter curses on his head, she railed at fate for its
terrible irony, at Heaven for its swift justice, and she swore that, in
return for her wrongs, she would yet have the life of Rosalind Whitney.
“She was born to be my evil genius!” she passionately cried. “Is it
any wonder I hated her from the first moment that I looked on her dark
face? It was a true instinct that warned me from the first to crush her
as one treads on the poisonous vipers coiling in one’s path!”
The mother, who had grown gray in a night with sorrow, who had looked
life in the face through its many phases in dark vigils of gloom, who
had begun to comprehend dimly her own grave errors and mistakes, burst
into stormy tears.
“They have broken your heart, too!” cried Lelia bitterly. “They have
sowed lines in your face and white threads in your hair! Oh, I will pay
them out for that, too; I will bide my time to repay.”
“Hush, Lelia, darling; you are all wrong,” sobbed the mother
entreatingly, and she added brokenly:
“We have reaped what we sowed in our blindness, in our malice, and our
envy. We hated, and our hate lured evil in our lives. I have been to
blame for all. I taught you the law of hate, instead of love.”
“Then I should curse you, too!” was the answer, hissed through writhing
lips, and Lelia flung herself sullenly, face downward, on her bed,
refusing to speak or look up for hours, the prey of dumb fury and
despair beyond expression.
No one ever had a harder task to bring a reckless mind to reason than
the erring mother, who had fostered in her child all the faults that
laid her young life in ruins.
The girl could think only of her fancied wrongs, her yearned-for
revenge; she raved wildly in her impotent despair.
Mrs. Ritchie tried to whisper hope and resignation.
“Obedience to your husband’s wishes will bring forgiveness in time,”
she said. “He will return, he must return, and the memory of your past
errors will fade, while his old love revives in its entirety.”
“But to go and shut myself up in prison, mama, in a horrible sanatorium
for sick people, it nearly kills me to think of it!” cried the girl.
“I am not ill, I am not mad, I only talk in my sleep, and now that
you all know about it, the terrible strain will be off my mind--the
dreadful fear of being betrayed--so that I may be able to sleep calmly
once more! Oh, I will never consent to go into seclusion this way. It
is just like being put in prison for what I did to my hated rival--like
being punished for my sin!”
“It is the only way in which to account for your separation from
Laurie. Do you want to go out into society, and face the accusation
that your husband deserted you on your wedding-day? It would cover
you with shame that you never could live down,” cried Mrs. Ritchie,
appealing to her pride.
Lelia’s towering pride rose in arms.
“You are right. I must go to stop the tongue of slander,” she agreed,
bitterly vowing to herself that she would bide her time for revenge on
all who had brought about her cruel humiliation.
“I shall go with you, my dear; I shall share your punishment; I will
help you to bear it, and, if you improve very fast, we can soon leave
and go into the world again; perhaps follow Laurie across the sea.”
“But that girl, mama! She must never cross my path again. I could not
bear it!” furiously.
“Not now, perhaps, Lelia, but by and by you must school yourself to it.
General Willoughby is her guardian now, and you can scarcely prevent a
future meeting,” anxiously.
The upshot of it all was that Lelia went with her mother the next day
to the sanatorium for nerve treatment.
And for a week or two she certainly needed the treatment she received
there.
She was unstrung by her misfortune; her mind was a nightmare of
revengeful, rebellious thoughts.
As she grew better she began to look about among her fellow patients
for diversion.
And no one in the world, no one who had known her even the most
intimately, could have predicted what was coming to Lelia there in what
she petulantly called her prison.
She became deeply interested in a sick playwright, a handsome young
fellow, who had broken down in the midst of what he called the
cleverest production he had ever attempted--a play that was sure to
make his fortune.
Ill and nervous, broken down with overwork, forbidden to touch a pen,
he yet chafed unceasingly over his plight.
In the beautiful Lelia, whom he regarded with passionate admiration, he
found an ardent sympathizer.
“Only think, there are but five scenes wanting to complete the drama!
And I cannot go on. When I try to think there is such a strange buzzing
in my head. They say I have wheels in it, don’t you know,” laughingly,
“so I cannot get on. I grow nervous and weary and despondent, and the
doctor scolds me for trying to do anything! Yet I am ruined if I break
my contract to have it ready for staging the first of October.”
Lelia knit her fair brows and exclaimed thoughtfully;
“Oh, perhaps I can help you. I have seen so many plays, I have read so
many novels, and I have so many plots in my head. Tell me all about
your play.”
She seemed so beautiful, so clever, and there was about her, somehow,
such a latent fire and passion that he thought she might possibly
suggest an idea that was lacking.
So, with a trembling hope, he let her read the manuscript.
Lelia became enthusiastic. There was a fortune in that drama, she
declared.
“Oh, let me finish it! I can do it! I feel it stirring in me!” she
cried, with breathless enthusiasm.
Richard Hale was only too willing to have her try, and with the
stirrings of some new force within her, Lelia shut herself into her
room and worked with ardor on the conclusion of the drama.
In a week it was finished. Flushed and panting from her labor, she
placed it in his hands, that trembled with eagerness as he received it.
He had scarcely dared hope that the embryo authoress had succeeded, yet
she had imbued his mind with some of her fiery enthusiasm.
“I shall succeed, I vow it!” she declared over and over, stirred with a
new sense of power, blent with fierce ambition.
When he read what she had written he fairly shouted with joy.
She had caught his idea, carried out his conception brilliantly,
developing an undreamed-of literary force and talent.
He did not know how to thank her enough. The tears overflowed in his
eyes as he clasped her beautiful hands, crying out that he would be
grateful to her his life long; he would owe her a debt that he could
never repay. She had helped him to make his fortune, for he knew his
play would have a grand success.
Proud, selfish, cruel Lelia, who had never done a kind act in her life
before, had an entirely new sensation--the joy of doing good.
There was something else, too. She who had pursued nothing else but
pleasure all her life had a new aim.
Proud of her newly acquired talent, as a miser of his hidden treasure,
she vowed she would become an author herself, and win fame and fortune
by her versatile pen.
She set to work at once, and in her enthusiastic absorption her past
became almost like a dream to her mind.
The nightmare dreams of her terrible sin came no more. Her days were
filled with work, her nights calm and restful. Her soul was on fire
with feverish ambition to win fame and fortune.
She did not care to leave the sanatorium now; she could work better
there.
When Richard Hale’s play was received by the public that winter with
enthusiasm, she felt herself sure of success.
The winter slipped away in enthusiastic work. In May the new play was
finished.
Richard Hale, still an invalid, was proud to place it in his manager’s
hands, proud when it was accepted.
There was sadness, but no envy, in his face when he congratulated Lelia.
“You will take my place,” he said. “I shall never write again. The
doctor has told me so. He sends me abroad to end my days in the golden
sunshine of the Riviera. Thanks to you, I have an income from my play
that insures me luxury the rest of my days. Ah! were you but free,
dearest Lelia, I would ask you to go with me, to make glad these
fleeting days of my life!”
“But I am bound!” she answered gravely, with a bitter heart-pang, for
in all the months no word had come from the husband she loved still
with ardent passion.
In desperation, she wrote to him. She claimed his forgiveness, his love.
She told him of her play, she asked him to be proud of her now, she
begged him to return.
A reply came promptly to her mother, returning her letter.
Laurie begged Mrs. Ritchie to forbid her daughter writing him ever
again. His love could never be resurrected from the gulf where it lay
buried. Silence was all he claimed from her who had made such cruel
shipwreck of his life.
Her pride was outraged, she sank deep in the valley of humiliation
again.
“I will punish him! I will get a divorce!” she cried hotly to her
mother.
“Then he will marry Rosalind Whitney, and you will go mad with
jealousy.”
“Rosalind is to marry young Lord Warrington, with whose mother she is
spending the season in London. I have seen it announced in all the
papers. Her head is quite turned by the admiration she has received
over there, and she will never stoop to Laurie now.”
“They will be sure to marry if he ever gets free of you,” her mother
insisted.
It was just then that the manager came to see her about advertising her
sensational play. He must have her portrait for the newspapers and a
spicy biographical sketch of the subject.
“You may write it yourself, if you choose, and color it as highly as
you wish. Your beauty will almost carry the day, but if you can work in
some sensation, all the better.” He paused, and added, with transient
embarrassment: “The world has some tales of a runaway husband. Would
you like to work that sensation for all it is worth?”
“I have just decided to divorce my husband,” Lelia replied coolly.
“Excellent! The success of your play is assured. Your beauty and
the romance of your life will interest the public immediately, and
curiosity will do the rest. ‘Magdala’ will draw full houses,” cried the
manager, little dreaming that the beautiful author had dipped her pen
in her own heart’s blood to write the play.
For it was not wholly a work of imagination; rather a combination of
fact and fancy, and “Magdala, the gipsy queen,” played a prominent part
in it.
It brought great success to the author, but the old general, her close
relative, was horrified when he saw her portrait in the papers, and
learned that the courts had granted her a divorce from his son.
“What a horrible disgrace to the proud name of Willoughby! Really, I
can never countenance Lelia again!” he cried angrily.