VERY MYSTERIOUS.
The house-warming at Redmon was such a house-warming as Speckport never
saw before; for, as Mr. Blake with his customary good sense remarked,
"When Mrs. P. Wyndham did that sort of thing, she did do it." In the
luminous darkness of the September evening, the carriages of the guests
drove through the tall iron gates up the back avenue, all aglow with
red, and blue, and green lamps, twinkling like tropical fireflies among
the trees. The whole front of the beautiful villa blazed with
illumination, and up in the gilded gallery the musicians were filling
the scented air with delicious melody. It was not Redmon, this; it was
fairy-land; it was a scene out of the Arabian Nights, and the
darkly-beautiful lady in ruby velvet and diamonds, welcoming her
friends, was the Princess Badelbradour, lovely enough to turn the heads
of a brigade of poor Aladdins. Society went through the house that
night, and had the eyes dazzled in their heads by the blinding radiance
of light, and the glowing coloring and richness of all. The ladies went
into raptures over Mrs. Wyndham's rooms, and the literary people cast
envious eyes over the book-lined library, with its busts of poets, and
pictures of great men, dead and gone. There was a little room opening
off this library that seemed out of keeping in its severe plainness with
the magnificence of the rest of the house--a bare, severe room, with
only one window, looking out upon the velvety sward of the lawn at the
back of the villa; a room that had no carpet on the floor, and very
little furniture, only two or three chairs, a baize-covered
writing-table, a leather-covered lounge under the window, a few pictures
of dogs and horses, a plaster head of John Milton, a selection of books
on swinging shelves, a bureau, a dressing-table, a lavatory, a
shaving-glass, and a sofa-bedstead. Except the servants' apartments,
there was nothing at all so plain as this in the whole house; and when
people asked what it was, they were told by Mrs. Hill, who showed the
house, that it was Mr. Wyndham's room. Yes, this was Mr. Wyndham's room,
the only room in that house he ever entered, save when he went to
dinner, or when visitors required his presence in the drawing-room or
library. His big dog Faust slept on a rug beside the table, his canaries
sung to him in their cages around the window, he wrote in that hard
leathern armchair beside the green-baize table, he lay on that lounge
under the open window in the golden breeze of the September weather,
and smoked endless cigars; late into the night his lamp glimmered in
that quiet room; and when it went out after midnight, he was sleeping
the sleep of the just on the sofa-bedstead. The servants at Redmon
talked, as servants will talk, about the palpable estrangement between
master and mistress, about their never meeting, except at dinner, when
there always was company; for Mrs. Wyndham breakfasted in the boudoir
and Mr. Wyndham never ate luncheon. He was quite hermit-like in his
habits, this pale, inscrutable young author--one glass of wine sufficed
for him--he was out of bed and at work before the stable-boys or
scullery-maids were stirring, and his only extravagance was in the way
of cigars. From the day he had married Olive Henderson until this, he
had never asked or received one stiver of her money; he had more than
sufficient of his own for his simple wants and his mother's, and had
Olive been the hardest virago of a landlady, she could hardly have
brought in a bill against him, even for board and lodging, for he more
than repaid her for both. He was always courteous, genial, and polite to
her--too polite for one spark of her affection; always deferring to her
wishes, and never attempting in the smallest iota to interfere with her
caprices, or thwart her desires, or use his husbandly authority. She was
in every way as much her own mistress as she had ever been; so much so
that sometimes she wondered, and found it impossible to realize that she
was really married. No, she was not married; these two had never been
united either in heart or desire; they were bound together by a compact
never mentioned now. What had he gained by this marriage? Olive
sometimes wonderingly asked herself. He told her, or as good as told
her, he wanted her for her money; but now that money was at his
disposal, and he never made use of it. What had he married her for?
"How proud you must be of your husband, Mrs. Wyndham!" other women had
said to her, when abroad; and sometimes, in spite of herself, a sharp
pang cut to the center of her haughty heart at the words. Why, these
very women had as much right to be proud of him, to speak to him, to be
near him, as she had. Proud of him! She thought she had cause to hate
him, she was wicked enough to wish to hate him, but she could not.
Neither could she despise him; she might treat him as coldly as she
pleased, but she never could treat him with contempt. There was a
dignity about the man, the dignity of a gentleman and a scholar, that
asserted itself, and made her respect him, as she never had respected
any other man. Once or twice a strange thought had come across her; a
thought that if he would come to her and tell her he was growing to love
her, and ask her not to be so cruelly cold and repellent, she might lay
her hand on his shoulder with the humility of a little child, and trust
him, and yield herself to him as her friend and protector through life,
and be simply and honestly happy, like other women. But he never did
this; his manner never changed to her in the slightest degree. She had
nothing to complain of from him, she had every cause to be grateful for
his kindness and clemency. And so she shut herself up in her pride, and
silenced fiercely her mutinous heart, and sought happiness in costly
dress and jewelry, and womanly employment, and incessant visiting, and
party-giving, and receptions and money-spending--and failed miserably.
Was she never to be happy? She had everything her heart could desire--a
beautiful house, servants to attend her, rich garments to wear, and she
fared sumptuously every day; but for all that, she was wretched. I do
not suppose Dives was a happy man. There is only one receipt in this
wide world for happiness, believe me, and that is goodness. We may be
happy for a brief while, with the brief happiness of a lotus-eater; but
it cannot last--it cannot last! and the after-misery is worse than
anything we ever suffered before. Olive Henderson had said she would be
happy, she had tried to compel herself to be happy; and thought for a
few poor minutes, sometimes, when she found herself the belle of some
gay party, dancing and laughing, and reigning like a queen, that she had
succeeded. But "Oh, the lees are bitter, bitter!" Next day she would
know what a ghastly mockery it had all been, and she would watch Paul
Wyndham, mounted on his pony, with his dog behind him, riding away to
his mother's cottage, with a passionately rebellious and bitter heart,
and wonder if he or any one else in the wide world would really care if
they found her lying on the floor of her costly boudoir, stark and dead,
slain by her own hand.
Paul Wyndham appeared to be very fond of his mother, if he was not of
his wife. He rode over to Rosebush Cottage every day, rain or shine, and
sometimes staid there two or three days together.
Mr. Wyndham's mother, for all her age and her ill-health, could play the
piano, it seemed. People going past Rosebush Cottage had often heard the
piano going, and played, too, with masterly skill. At first, it was
thought to be Mr. Wyndham himself, who was quite a musician, but they
soon found out the piano-playing went on when he was known to be at
Redmon. Olive heard all this, and, like Speckport, would have given a
good deal to see Mr. Wyndham's mother; but she never saw her. She had
asked him, carelessly, if his mother would come to the house-warming,
and he had said "No, she never went out;" and so the house-warming had
come off without her.
There was one person present on that occasion whom Speckport was
surprised to see, and that was Captain Cavendish. Captain Cavendish had
received a card of invitation, and, having arrayed himself in his
uniform, made his appearance as a guest, in the house he once hoped to
call his own. Those floating stories, whispered by the servants, and
current in the town, of the cold disunion between husband and wife, had
reached him, and delighted him more than words can tell. After all,
then, she had loved him! Doubtless she spent her nights in secret
weeping and mourning for his loss, fit to tear her black hair out by the
roots, in her anguish at having lost him. He was very late in arriving
at Redmon, purposely late; and he could imagine her straining her eyes
toward the drawing-room door, her heart throbbing at every fresh
announcement, and turning sick with disappointment when she found it was
not he. Would she betray any emotion when she met him? Would her voice
falter, her eyes droop, her color rise, or her hand turn cold in his
own?
Oh, Captain Cavendish! you might have spared yourself the trouble of all
these conjectures. Not one poor thought had she ever given you; not once
had your image crossed her mind, until you stood bowing before her; and
then, when she spoke to you, every nerve was as steady as when, an
instant later, she welcomed old Squire Tod. Her eyes were following
furtively another form, nothing like so tall, or stately, or gallant as
your own, Captain Cavendish; another form that went in and out through
the crowd--the form of her husband, who welcomed every one with a face
infinitely kind and genial, who found partners for forlorn damsels, who
stopped to talk courteously to neglected wall-flowers, and who came to
where his wife stood every now and then, and addressed her as any other
gentleman in his own house might address his wife, showing no sign of
coldness or disunion on his part, at least.
Captain Cavendish was disappointed, and all Speckport with him. Where
was the cold neglect on Mr. Wyndham's part, they had come prepared to
see and relish? where the haughty disdain of the neglected and resentful
wife? They were calmly polite to one another, and what more was
required? As long as Mr. Wyndham did not beat her, or Mrs. Wyndham
showed no sign of intending to elope with any other man, Speckport could
see no reason why it should set them down as other than a very
well-matched couple.
It was noticeable that Mr. Wyndham that night paid rather marked
attention to one of the lady guests present; but as the lady wore black
bombazine and crape, a widow's cap, and was on the frosty side of fifty,
no scandal came of it. The lady was poor Mrs. Marsh, who had come,
nothing loth, and who simpered a good deal, and was fluttered and
flattered to find herself thus honored by the master of Redmon.
"Her story is a very sad one, Olive," he said; "I am glad you settled
that annuity upon her; it does you credit."
Olive said nothing; but a dark red streak flushed across her face--a
burning glow of shame. She was thinking of Mrs. Major Wheatly's
governess--what would Paul Wyndham say of that pale little girl if he
knew all? Mrs. Wyndham had repeatedly invited Miss Rose to Redmon; and
Miss Rose had come two or three times, but never when there was company.
Mr. Wyndham led Mrs. Marsh in to supper, and sat beside her, and filled
her plate with good things, and talked to her all through that repast.
His wife, sitting between Major Wheatly and the Rev. Augustus Tod, still
watched him askance, and wondered what he could find to say to that
insipid and faded nonentity, who simpered like a school-girl as she
listened to him. But shortly after conducting Mrs. Marsh back to the
ballroom, and seeing her safely seated at a card-table, he disappeared,
and was nowhere to be seen. Every one was so busy dancing, and flirting,
and card-playing, that his absence was quite unnoticed--no, not quite,
his wife had observed it. It was strange the habit she had insensibly
contracted, of watching this man, for whom she did not care--or
persuaded herself she did not--of listening for his voice, his step, and
feeling better satisfied, somehow, to see him in the room. Where had he
gone to? What was he doing? How could he be so rude as to go and leave
their guests? She grew distrait, then fidgety, then feverishly and
foolishly anxious to know what he could be about, and who he was with;
and gliding unobserved from the crowded ballroom, she visited the
dining-room, the library, peeped into his own room, which she never
condescended to enter; all in vain. Mr. Wyndham was nowhere to be seen.
"It is very strange!" said Mrs. Wyndham to herself, knitting her black
brow--always her habit when annoyed. "It is most extraordinary conduct!
I think he might show a little more attention to his guests."
The library windows opened on the velvet lawn, and were opened now to
their widest extent, to admit the cool night air. She stepped out into
the pale starlit night, her rich ruby velvet dress and starry diamonds
glowing dimly in the luminous darkness. As she walked across the lawn,
glad to be alone for a moment, a figure all in white flew past her with
a rush, but not before she had recognized the frightened face of Laura
Blair.
"Laura!" she said, "is it you? What is the matter?"
Laura stopped, and passed her hands over her beating heart.
"I have had such a scare! I came out of the conservatory five minutes
ago, on to the lawn to get cool, when I saw a figure that had been
standing under the trees dart behind one of them, as if to hide. The
person seemed to have been watching the house, and was trying to hide
from me. It frightened me, and I ran."
Olive Wyndham was physically as brave as a man: she never screamed, or
ran, or went into hysterics, from palpable terror. Now, she drew Laura's
arm within her own, and turned in the direction that young lady had
come.
"You little goose," she said, "it was some of the people here, out to
get cool like yourself. We will go and see who they are."
"I don't believe it is any of the people here. I think it was a woman in
a long cloak, with the hood over her head. Oh, I had rather not go!"
"Nonsense! it was some of the servants, or some curious, inquisitive
straggler, come to----"
She stopped, for Laura had made a warning gesture, and whispered, "Look
there!" Olive looked. Directly opposite the house, and shrinking behind
a clump of cedar trees, on the edge of a thickly-wooded portion of the
grounds, she could see a figure indistinctly in the star-light--the
figure of a female it looked, wearing, as Laura said, a long cloak, with
the hood drawn over the head and shrouding the face. They were in deep
shadow themselves, and Laura hid her white dress behind some laurel
bushes. Olive's curiosity was excited by the steadfast manner in which
the shrouded figure watched the house--through those large, lighted
windows, Olive knew the person could distinctly see into the
drawing-room, if not distinguish the people there.
"Laura," she whispered, "I must find out who that is. I can get round
without being seen--you remain and wait for me here."
Keeping in the shadow, Olive skirted the lawn and round the cedar clump,
without being seen or heard by the watcher. She glided behind the
stunted trees; but though she was almost near enough to touch the
singular apparition, she could not see its face, it was so shrouded by
the cowl-like hood. While she stood waiting for it to turn round, a man
crossed the lawn hurriedly, excitedly, and, with a suppressed
exclamation, clasped the cloaked figure in his arms. Olive hardly
repressed a cry--the man was her husband, Paul Wyndham!
"My darling!" she heard him say, in a voice she never forgot--a voice so
full of infinite love and tenderness, that it thrilled to her very
heart--"my darling, why have you done this? I have been searching for
you everywhere since I heard you were here. My love! my love! how could
you be so rash?"
"I was so lonely, Paul, without you!" a woman's voice answered--a voice
that had a strangely-familiar sound, and Olive saw the cloaked figure
clinging to him, trustingly. "I was so lonely, and I wanted to see them
all. But I am very cold now, and I want to go home!"
"I shall take you home at once, my darling! Your carriage is waiting at
the gate. Come, I know a path through this wood that will lead us
out--it will not do to go down the avenue. Oh, my dearest! never be so
rash again! You might have been seen."
They were gone; disappearing into the black cedar woods, like two dark
specters, and Olive Wyndham came out from her place of concealment, and
stood an instant or two like one who has been stunned by a blow. Laura
Blair rose up at her approach with a startled face, and saw that she was
ghastly white.
"Olly!" Laura said, in a scared voice, "wasn't that Mr. Wyndham who went
away with--with--that person?"
Olive Wyndham turned suddenly upon her, and grasped her arm, with a
violence that made Laura cry out with pain.
"Laura Blair!" she cried, with passionate fierceness in her voice, "if
ever you say a word of what you have seen to-night, I will kill you!"
With which remark, Mrs. Wyndham walked away, stepped through the library
window, and into the house. She was in the drawing-room when poor Laura
ventured in, sitting at the piano, enchanting her guests with some new
and popular music, but with a face that had blanched to a sickly white.
She might play, she might talk, she might laugh and dance, but she could
not banish that frozen look from her face; and her friends, looking at
her, inquired anxiously if she was ill; no, she said she was not ill;
but she had been out in the grounds a short time before, and had got
chilled--that was all.
Half an hour later, Mr. Wyndham re-appeared in the drawing-room, with a
calm face that hid his secret guilt well. Some of the people were
already beginning to depart, and his absence was unknown to all save
two. Once he spoke to his wife, remarking on her paleness, and telling
her she had fatigued herself dancing; and she had laughed strangely and
answered, yes, it had been a delightful evening all through, and she had
never enjoyed herself so much. And then she was animatedly bidding the
last of her guests good-night, and the lights were fled, the garlands
dead, and the banquet-hall deserted. And Paul Wyndham bade her good
night, and left her alone in her velvet robes and diamond necklace, and
splendid misery, and never dreamed that he was found out.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham did not meet again until Sunday. The next day,
Friday, the young author had gone over to Rosebush Cottage with his MSS.
and fishing-rod, and there spent the rest of the week. The dissipation
at Redmon, the constant round of dressing, and visiting, and
party-giving, knocked him up, he told Val Blake, and unfitted him for
work; and, at the cottage, he could recruit, and smoke, and get on with
his writing.
Speckport saw Mrs. Wyndham driving, and riding, and promenading through
its streets, that day and the next, beautifully dressed and looking
beautiful, but Speckport never once dreamed of the devouring jealousy
that had eaten its way to her inmost heart, and must hitherto be added
to her other tortures. Yes, Olive Wyndham was jealous, with the fierce
jealousy of such natures as hers--and your dark women can be jealous of
your fair women with a vengeance. And as real jealousy without love is
simply an impossibility, the slow truth broke upon Olive Wyndham that
she had grown to love her husband.
How it had come about, Heaven only knows; she had honestly done her best
to hate him. But that mischievous little blind god, flying his arrows at
random, had shot one straight to her haughty heart. This, then, was the
secret of all her anxiety and watchfulness, though she had never
suspected it--she might have been a long time in suspecting it, but for
the discovery made in the grounds that night. She loved him who would
never love her. She knew him indifferent to herself; but while she
thought him equally indifferent to every one else, she had not cared
much; but now, but now! Who was this woman who had stepped between her
and the man to whom she was married?
Who was she? who was she? she asked herself the miserable question a
hundred times a minute--she could think of nothing else--but she never
could answer it. In all Speckport she could not fix upon any one she
knew Paul Wyndham was likely to address such words as she had heard to.
How their memory thrilled her--those tones so full of passionate
love--it made her grind her teeth to think of them.
"If I had her here, whoever she is," she thought, "I could tear the eyes
out of her head, and send her back to him streaming blood! Oh, who can
she be? who can she be?"
It was Catty Clowrie who first changed the course of her ideas, and set
her off at a new tangent. Catty was sewing at the villa; and, as Mrs.
Wyndham, in her miserable restlessness, wandered from room to room, she
came at last to a pleasant vine-grown glass porch at the back of the
house, where Miss Clowrie sat stitching away in the afternoon sunshine.
An open book lay beside her, as if she had just been reading, and Olive
saw it was Mr. Wyndham's volume of travels. She took it up with a
strange contradictory feeling of tenderness for the insensate thing.
"How do you like it?" she asked, looking at his portrait in front, the
deep, thoughtful eyes gazing back at her from the engraving, with the
same inscrutable look she knew so well.
"I think it is lovely," said Catty. "I wish I could finish it, but I
must get on with my work. Mr. Wyndham must be wonderfully clever; his
descriptions set the places before you as if you saw them."
Olive sat down, and began talking to this girl, whom she instinctively
disliked, about her husband and her husband's books. Catty, snapping off
her thread, asked at last:
"Mr. Wyndham is not at home to-day, is he? I haven't seen him."
"No," said his wife, carelessly, "he has gone over to Rosebush Cottage."
Miss Clowrie gave an unpleasant little laugh.
"Of course he is at Rosebush Cottage! Every one knows Mr. Wyndham never
goes anywhere else! If he had a Fair Rosamond shut up there, he could
not be fonder of going there. Mr. Wyndham must be very much attached to
his mother."
There was a long blank pause after her cruel speech, during which the
mistress of Redmon never took the book from before her face. She felt
that she was deadly pale, and had sense enough left not to wish Catty
Clowrie to see it. She rose up presently, throwing the book on the
ground as she did so, and walked out of the porch with such fierce
rebellious bitterness in her heart, as never at her worst of misery had
she felt before. A Fair Rosamond! Yes, the secret was out! and what a
blind fool she must have been not to have seen it before! It was no
sickly old mother Paul Wyndham had shut up in Rosebush Cottage, but a
fair inamorata. It was she, too, whom they had seen in the grounds the
previous night; she who, wearied of her pretty prison without him, and
fall of curiosity, doubtless, had come to Redmon. "I was so lonely
without you, Paul!"--she remembered the sweet and strangely-familiar
voice that had said those words, and the tender caress which had
answered them; and she sank down in her jealous rage and despair in her
own room, hating herself and all the world. Oh, my poor Olive! Surely
retribution had overtaken you, surely judgment had fallen upon you even
in this life, for your sins of ambition and pride!
Mrs. Wyndham was not much of a church-goer, but rather the reverse. She
had a heathenish way of lolling in her boudoir Sundays, and listening
with a dreamy sensuous pleasure to the clashing of bells, and falling
asleep when they ceased, and awakening to read novels until dinner-time.
But sometimes she went to the fashionable Episcopal church, and yawned
in the face of the Rev. Augustus Tod, expounding the word rather
drawlingly in his white surplice, and sometimes she went to the
cathedral with Laura Blair. She took the same sensuous, dreamy pleasure
in going there that she did in listening to the bells, or in reading
Owen Meredith's poetry. She liked to watch the purple, and violet, and
ruby, and amber glows from the stained-glass windows on the heads of the
faithful; she liked to listen to the grand solemn music of the old
church, to inhale the floating incense, and listen to the chanting of
the robed priests. And best of all she liked to see the Sisters of
Charity glide noiselessly in through some side-door, with vailed faces
and bowed heads, and to weave romances about them all the time high mass
was going on. Matter-of-fact Catholics about her wondered why Mrs.
Wyndham stared so at the Sisters, and it is probable the Sisters
themselves would have laughed good-naturedly had they known of the tale
of romance with which the dark-eyed heiress invested them. But it was
not to look at the nuns--though she did look at them, almost wishing she
were one too, and at rest from the great world strife--it was not to
look at them she had come to the cathedral to-day, but to listen to a
celebrated preacher somewhere from the United States. Laura had told
her he was a Jesuit--those terrible Jesuits!--and Olive had almost as
much curiosity to see a Jesuit as a nun. So she drove to the cathedral
in her carriage, and sat in Mr. Blair's cushioned pew, and watched the
people filling the large building, and listened to the grand, solemn
strains of the organ touched by the masterly hand; and all listlessly
enough. But suddenly her heart gave a quick plunge, and all listlessness
was gone. There, coming up the aisle, behind the sexton, was a gentleman
and a lady; a gentleman whose step she would have known the wide world
over, and a lady she was more desirous of seeing than any other being on
earth. It was Mr. Wyndham and his mother, and dozens of heads turned in
surprise and curiosity, to look at that hitherto invisible mother. But
she was invisible still, at least her face was, for the long black crape
vail she wore was so impenetrably thick, no human eyes could pierce it.
They saw she was tall and very slender, although she wore a great double
black woolen shawl that would have made the slightest girlish form look
clumsy and stout. She bent forward slightly as she walked, but the stoop
was not the stoop of age--Olive Wyndham saw that. Mr. Wyndham, hat in
hand, his mother hanging on his arm, his pale face gravely reverent,
entered the pew the sexton indicated, after his mother.
It was directly in front of Mr. Blair's, facing the grand altar, and the
jealous wife had an excellent chance of watching her husband and his
companion.
Paul Wyndham was not a Catholic--he did not pretend to be anything in
particular, a favorite creed with his countrymen, I think--but he was a
gentleman; so he rose and sat and knelt as the worshipers about him did,
and never once turned his back to the altar to stare at the choir.
Mrs. Wyndham, Senior, made no attempt to raise her vail during the whole
service. She knelt most of the time with her face lying on the front
rail of the pew, as if in prayer--a good deal to the surprise of those
who saw her and imagined her not of their faith.
Olive never took her eyes off her--the Sisters of Charity, the swinging
censers, the mitred bishop, the robed priests, the solemn ceremonies,
the swelling music, were all unheard and unseen--that woman in front
absorbed every sense she possessed. Even when the Jesuit mounted to the
pulpit, she only gave him one glance, and saw that he was tall and thin
and sallow, and not a bit oily and Jesuit-like, and returned to her
watching of Mr. Wyndham's mother. That lady seemed to pay attention to
the sermon, if her daughter-in-law did not, and a very impressive sermon
it was, and one Olive Wyndham would have done well to heed. He took for
his text that solemn warning of our Lord, "What will it avail a man to
gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" and the hearts of his
hearers thrilled within them with wholesome fear as they listened to the
discourse which followed. "You are here to-day, but you may be gone
to-morrow. O my brethren!" the sonorous voice, which rang from aisle to
aisle, like the trump of the last angel, cried; "the riches you are
laboring so hard to amass you may never enjoy. The riches for which you
toil by day and by night mean nothing if your poor span of existence
permits you to accomplish them. Stop and think, oh, worldlings, while
time remains. Work while it is yet day, for the night is at hand, and
work for the glory which shall last for eternity. The road over which
you are walking leads nowhere, but ends abruptly in the yawning grave.
The fame for which you suffer and struggle and give up ease and rest,
will be when over but a hollow sound, heard for one poor, pitiful
moment, ere your ears are stilled in death, and your laurel crown dust
and ashes. The great of this world--who made kings their puppets, and
the nations of the earth their toys--have lived their brief space and
are gone, and what avails them now the glory and the greatness they won?
The fame of Shakespeare, of Alexander, of Napoleon of France, of a
Byron, and a Milton, and all other great men--great in this
life--remains to posterity, but what availed it all to them at the
judgment-seat of God. There, at that awful tribunal, where we all must
stand, nothing but their good works--if they ever did good works--could
soften the rigor of Divine Justice. The world is like an express-train,
rushing madly on, with a fathomless precipice at the end; and you laugh
and sing on your way to it, consoling yourself with the thought, 'At the
last moment I will repent, and all will be well.' But the Divine Justice
has answered you beforehand--terribly answered you--'You shall seek me
and you shall not find me, and you shall die in your sins!'"
The sermon was a very long one, and a very terrible one, likely to stir
the dead souls of the most hardened sinner there. It was noticeable that
Mr. Wyndham's mother never lifted her head all the time, but that it lay
on the pew-rail, and that she was as immovable as a figure carved in
ebony. Olive Wyndham had to listen, and her cheek blanched as she did
so. Was this sermon preached for her? Was she bartering her immortal
soul for dross, so soon to be taken from her? And then a wild terror
took possession of her, and she dared think no longer. She could have
put her fingers to her ears to shut out the inexorable voice, thundering
awfully to her conscience: "You shall seek me and you shall not find me,
and you shall die in your sins." There was a dead silence of dumb fear
in the cathedral when the eloquent preacher descended, and very devout
were the hearers until the conclusion of mass. Then they poured out, a
good deal more subdued than when they had entered, and Olive had to go
with the rest. Mr. Wyndham and his mother showed no sign of stirring,
nor did they leave their pew until the last straggler of the
congregation was gone. The carriage from Rosebush Cottage was waiting
outside the gates, and Mr. Wyndham assisted his mother in, and they
drove off.
Olive dined at Mr. Blair's that day, and heard them discussing the
sermon, and the unexpected appearance of Mr. Wyndham and his mother.
Olive said very little--the panic in her soul had not ceased. The
shortness of time, the length of eternity--that terrible eternity!--had
never been brought so vividly before her before. Was the express-train
in which she was flying through life near the end--near that awful chasm
where all was blackness and horror? Human things frittered
away--earthly troubles, gigantic before, looked puny and insignificant
seen in the light of eternity--so soon to begin, never to end! She had
been awakened--she never could sleep again the blind, heathenish sleep
that had been hers all her life, or woe to her if she could.
Mr. Blake and Miss Blair walked home with her in the hazy September
moonlight. They found Mr. Wyndham sitting in one of the basket-chairs in
the glass porch, looking up at the moon as seen through the smoke of his
cigar, and Olive's inconsistent heart throbbed as if it would break from
its prison and fly to him. Oh, if all this miserable acting could end;
if he would only love her, and let her love him, she would yield forever
the wealth that had never brought her happiness, and be his true and
loving wife from henceforth, and try and atone for the sins of the past.
She might be a good woman yet, if her life could only be simple and true
like other women, and all this miserable secresy at an end. But, though
the silken skirt of her rich robe touched him, they could not have been
further apart if the wide world divided them. She could have laid her
head down on the table there, and wept passionate, scalding tears, so
utterly forlorn and wretched and lonely and unloved did she feel. She
could not talk--something rose in her throat and choked her--but she
listened to Mr. Wyndham telling in his quiet voice how he had persuaded
his mother to go out that day to hear the famous preacher, and how he
thought it had done her good.
Val and Laura did not stay long, but set out on their moonlit homeward
way. Ann Nettleby sat in her own doorway, and Val paused to speak to
her.
"No news of Cherrie, yet, Ann?"
Ann made the usual reply, "No," and they walked on, talking of lost
Cherrie.
"I'll find her out yet," Mr. Blake said, determinedly. "I don't despair,
even though--well, what's the matter?"
Laura had uttered an exclamation, and clung suddenly to his arm. Redmon
road was lonely, as you know, and not a creature was to be seen; but
Laura was pointing to where, under the trees, in the moonlight, a woman
was standing still. A woman or a spirit, which? For it was robed in
white from head to foot, and a shower of pale hair drifted over its
shoulders. The face turned toward them as they approached, a face as
white as the dress, and Laura Blair uttered a loud shriek as she saw it,
reeled and would have fallen, had not Val caught her in his arms.
Val had turned white himself, for the pale shadow under the trees had
worn the dead face of Nathalie Marsh! As Laura shrieked it had vanished,
in a ghostly manner enough, among the trees, and Val Blake was left
standing gaping in the middle of Redmon road, holding a fainting lady in
his arms.