THE COMING OF WANDA.
The spectacle of a pair of lovers equally pale and proud alighting at
her door was rather dispiriting to Lady Sarah Maitland, but she did
not lose heart. This she rightly considered to be the proper thing for
_them_, not for her to do. At least they should not escape "the
solitude of the crowd," and opportunities for bringing them into this
sort of solitude were not lacking. The same afternoon an English lord,
who had recently been making a tour of the States, with some officers
of His Majesty's 70th Regiment, then stationed at York, arrived at
Stamford Cottage, and in their honour a large number of guests were
assembled that evening. The soft radiance of mingled moonlight and
candle light, the artistic luxury of the place and its surroundings,
the exquisite robes of soft-voiced women, the cultivated tone and
manner of the men, with a sort of subtle and distinguished aroma of
British nobility shed over the whole--all of these things held for
Edward Macleod a potent witchery. This evening he was in unusually
good spirits, and was entertaining a group of gentlemen, who had
gathered about him in the centre of the large drawing-room, by an
amusing account of his hunting experiences in the backwoods. The
sounds of subdued mirth that followed his recital induced a passing
bevy of ladies to join them. Lady Sarah took the arm of Helene, and
gave him her flattering attention along with the rest. A young man
never talks poorly from the knowledge that he has gained the ear of
his audience.
"Really, a remarkably bright young fellow," confided Lord E---- to Sir
Peregrine, at the close of another story, which was accentuated by
little bursts of gentle laughter.
A slight breeze blew from a suddenly opened door upon the wax tapers,
and the next moment a strange figure made its way through that
brilliantly dressed assemblage, and laid its hand upon the arm of
Edward. With his face flushed and eyes brightened by the sweetly
breathed flattery that, like wine, was apt to go to his brain, he
turned and beheld Wanda. She had evidently walked all the way from her
home for the express purpose of finding him. Her dress, made up of
various coloured garments, the cast-off raiment of those whose charity
had fed and lodged her on the way, was covered with dust; her
magnificent hair lay in a great straggling heap upon her shoulders.
"My father has gone to the spirit-land," she said, "and now I come to
you." Lady Sarah and Rose advanced immediately, with protestations of
pity and sympathy, and entreaties that she would go at once with them
to find food and rest. But she was immovable as granite. "I have come
to _you_," she said, her beautiful eyes fixed upon Edward, and she
uttered a few words of endearment in the Huron tongue. Nobody
understood them but the young man, his sister, and hostess. The latter
lady felt herself growing very cold, but she accompanied the pair to a
private parlour, and returned to her guests with an amused smile upon
her lips.
"Poor thing!" she said in a clear voice, distinctly audible to all.
"Her foster-father died last week, and left no end of messages and
requests to Mr. Macleod, his friend and constant companion in his
hunting expeditions. The girl has that exaggerated idea of filial duty
common to the Indian races. She could not rest until she had fulfilled
his dying wishes."
No; Lady Sarah certainly did not merit the compliment she had given
her husband--she was not the soul of honour--but what would you? With
her cheery voice and confident laugh she had dispelled at a breath the
vile suspicion of scandal. The company experienced a wonderful relief,
and the conversation naturally turned to the peculiarities of savages.
Rose had vanished, and it was generally supposed that she was with her
brother and that queer Indian girl. In reality she was locked in her
room, saturating her pillow with her tears.
Edward was alone with Wanda. For a moment the blood ran hot in his
veins, and he longed to act the part of a man. He longed to take the
hand of this beautiful travel-stained savage, and lead her back into
the midst of those fashionably dressed, superficially smiling, ladies
and gentlemen. He longed to declare, nay, rather to thunder forth, the
words: "This is my promised wife! Through weary days and nights, with
sore feet and sorer heart she has been coming to me. Burned by the sun
and blinded with the dust, hungry and thirsty, and aching in every
fibre, her trust never faltered, her love never failed. And her love
is matched by mine. The loyalty and devotion of my life I lay at her
poor bleeding feet."
That would have satisfied his imagination, but in real life imagination
must always go a-hungering. He sat down beside her with a face far
more weary than her own.
"Wanda," he burst forth, "my poor fatherless, friendless child, what
can I say to you? I am a villain, a coward, a reptile! I thought I
loved you, and I do not. No, though my heart aches for you, I do not
love you. Oh, you look as though I were murdering you, and it is
better for me to murder you now by a few sharp terrible words, than by
a life-time of neglect and loathing."
The colour had all ebbed from her face. She fell on her knees beside
him, and her liquid childish eyes and sweet lips were upraised to his.
"No, no, my little fawn, I must not kiss you. It is wicked to kiss
what we do not love. And I do _not_ love you." He was sheltering
himself behind that assertion, but of a sudden he broke into crying,
and his tears fell upon her face. "Child," he said, rising and pacing
the room, "do you know what it is to many a man, who cares a great
deal for your lips and eyes, and nothing for your mind and soul? It is
to marry a beast! You would be wretched with me. We should grow
inexpressibly tired of each other. Tell me," he cried, stopping short
in his swift walk to and fro, and confronting her with parched lips
and wet eyes, "could you endure to have me say cruel things to you
every day? Could you bear to have me think bitter things of you in my
heart, though I left them unsaid? How could you live under my coldness
and neglect? You must learn to hate me--to scorn me,--to think as
harshly of me as I shall always think of myself."
She was faint and dizzy, but she rose to her feet, and groped feebly
to the door, cowering from him as she went, with her hands over her
eyes. Then she turned back with a low wail of irrepressible anguish.
"I cannot leave you," she said, "I cannot give you up!"
Again he was bound in her chains. Her feverish hands held his, her
burning eyes drank up the dew in his own, her pathetic presence
thrilled him with a sense of love stronger than any he had dreamed of
or imagined. Neglect, cruelty, bitterness, scorn! What did the words
mean? Like poisonous weeds they had grown fast and rank before his
eyes, but in the burning face of this all-conquering love they had
shrunk, withered and dead to the earth. Yes, it was the vile earth
from which they had sprung, and it was in the radiant heavens that
this great love was shining. Wanda's victory was nearly complete. The
only thing lacking to make it so was that she should renounce it
altogether. And this she did--not with conscious art but by that sure
instinct of womanliness which teaches that a man won by other than
indirect methods is not won at all. Then she said, pushing him gently
aside, "I will go away now, and never see you again, because I am a
burden to you. No," for he had put his hand upon her wrist, "you must
not touch me, because--" the words choked her for a moment, and then
they fell from her lips with a sound of fathomless despair--"it is as
though you were my little child that I was forced to leave forever."
Again she had reached the door, but this time it was his arm around
her that brought her back, his protestations of undying affection that
revived her drooping frame.
There was a light tap at the door, which opened to admit Lady Sarah
Maitland. "My maids will attend to this poor child," she said,
addressing Edward. "She will have a bath, and food, and a bed.
Meantime, I want you to help to entertain my guests."
"Really?" The young man frowned at the idea of rejoining that gay
throng. He was in a state of mental exaltation--so far up in the
clouds that the idea of attending a reception given by his brilliant
hostess seemed by contrast spiritless and earthy.
"It would be a great kindness to let me off," he pleaded.
"It would be the greatest kindness to compel you to come," she
insisted. There was a significance in the eye and tone of this
thorough-bred woman of the world that were not without effect upon
Edward, who at once accompanied her. His bright face, collected
manner, and ready speech, lessened the impression made upon the
company by the episode which had drawn general attention to him early
in the evening. Not till after the guests had begun to retire did he
again see Wanda. Running upstairs to get a wrap for the fair shoulders
of a young lady, who preferred a moonlit seat on the lawn to the
rather oppressive warmth within doors, he chanced into a little
sitting-room in which Wanda, left alone for a moment, was resting with
closed eyes in a great easy chair. Fresh from her bath, with her damp
heavy hair lying along the folds of a loose white _neglige_, she
looked almost too tired to smile. Edward advanced with beating heart,
but stopped half-way, suddenly smitten by the sight of a pair of
little bruised feet, carefully bandaged, resting upon a stool--the
little feet that had travelled such a long hard road, that had been
torn and wounded for his sake. A great wave of shame swept over him.
"I am not worthy to stand in your presence," he said penitently,
kneeling at her side.
A low murmur of joy escaped the Indian Maiden's lips.
She drew his head down for a moment under the dusky curtain of her
overhanging hair, and then her eyes closed again.
Edward rose and beheld in the open doorway Helene DeBerczy; her large
gaze, darker than a thunder cloud, was illumined by a long lightning
flash of merciless irony.