“Where’er I go I hear her low and plaintive murmuring,
I feel her little fairy clasp around my finger cling;
“I hope--I pray--that she is blest; but, oh, I pine to see
Once more the pretty pleading smile she used to give me!
“I pine to hear the low, sweet trill with which, whene’er I came,
Her little soft voice called to me, half welcome and half blame.
“I am so weary of the world, its falsehood and its strife,
So weary of the wrong and ruth that mar our human life.
“Oh, God! give back--give back my child, if but one hour, that I
May tell her all my passionate love for once before I die!”
Arthur Varian was somewhat startled by Madame Ray’s emotion. He looked
at her in gentle sympathy as she dashed the fugitive tears from her
eyes.
She read his thoughts, and after a short silence said gravely:
“You are surprised at my emotion, and you think me a very mysterious
woman. Perhaps you are even curious over my history.”
“You have read my thoughts,” he answered. “But, believe me, it is not
vulgar curiosity, but the keen interest awakened by one so charming, we
would fain know more.”
She acknowledged the pretty compliment by a grateful smile, and the
words:
“I am tempted to gratify your wish by giving you a brief synopsis of my
life.”
“I should be proud to be thus honored with your confidence,” he
answered, gratefully and truthfully, for he found her most interesting,
and guessed that some sad story lay masked behind the occasional pathos
of her smile.
“‘If I dared leave this smile,’ she said,
‘And take a moan upon my mouth,
And tie a cypress round my head,
And let my tears run smooth,
It were the happier way,’ she said.”
It was not often that Madame Ray bestowed confidence on any one. She
was naturally a reserved woman, but she had grown fond of Arthur, and
read his friendly curiosity over her past. She determined to gratify
it, perhaps hoping for a like confidence from him.
Glancing toward the open door of the drawing-room, where they sat to
see that no one was near, she began:
“I was born in Macon, Georgia, about thirty-nine years ago, and was
married at eighteen to Richard Ray, a young man I had known from
childhood, and who had been my school-boy lover. We were devoted to
each other, and never had any girl better reason for devotion; for,
besides being magnificently handsome in a dark and manly style, he was
one of the noblest of men.
“To refer briefly to our family history, Richard was the only son of a
Georgia planter ruined by the late war, and at the time of our marriage
both his parents were dead, while my father and sisters had died of
fever in my childhood, leaving mother and I alone in the world almost
save for her rich aunt who lived at Lodge Delight, and took scant
notice of our existence.
“My mother had but a small property, and Richard was not rich; but at
his business--a real estate agency--he earned a fair competency, and
when we were married, we three, mamma, Richard and I, lived together
very happily until--alas!” she bowed her head and wept bitterly.
“Do not continue if it pains you so,” Arthur cried, with keen sympathy;
but she checked a rising sob, and continued:
“I have been most bitterly bereaved, for when only eight months a
bride, my dear mother was taken from me by an attack of heart failure.
Her death was very sudden, and without premonition. She was gathering
some flowers to take to the cemetery to place on the graves of her
husband and children, when she suddenly fell forward, and expired
painlessly among the roses.
“It was a cruel blow, but I bore it bravely, because I knew that she
was reunited to her dear ones gone before, and I had my dear Richard
left to comfort me, besides the hope of a future blessing.”
Again that heavy sigh from the depths of a burdened heart, whose agony
had been almost unendurable. Then she took up the thread of her story
again, murmuring:
“I was so young; and I loved my husband so dearly, and he made me so
blissfully happy, that I was getting over my mother’s loss just a
little, when two months later--oh, Heaven, only two months later--God
took away my Richard!”
Again her voice broke, and she remained sad and silent until she could
regain it, then went on:
“On a trip away from home, in the interest of some intending land
buyers, he was killed instantly in a railroad wreck. Oh, my God! how
did I live through that sorrow? Only, by Thine infinite grace and love,
and the hope of that which was coming to me soon to fill the void of my
two sudden and awful bereavements. I almost went mad at first, and I
prayed for death to remove me from the life that was now only misery.
“But kind friends and neighbors took charge of me. I was placed in
the care of a noble physician and skillful nurse. The days dragged on
in illness, wretchedness, and rebellion until I had been widowed six
weeks, then God sent me a child to love--a little dark-eyed daughter.
“At first I was disappointed with my fate, I had so longed for a boy
to bear Richard’s name and to grow up in his image. But kind friends
soothed me, and I grew to dote on my lovely babe. But nothing was to be
left me to love, it seemed, for when baby, as I called her, not having
chosen a name yet, was only a month old, I woke up one night, missing
the little darling from my arms, and crying out in alarm.
“Alas! she too was gone, and so was the nurse who slept on a cot in my
room. She had stolen baby, for what purpose I can not guess, and gone
away, and so carefully had she covered her flight, that after spending
every dollar of my little competency in the vain effort to trace her,
not a single clew was gained.”
With a shaking voice she added:
“I can not tell you why God made me live after all my tribulations. I
longed for death, but it did not come, and I dared not hurl myself out
of existence, having been raised by a Christian mother. So I lived,
though weary of life, and in the struggle for existence I became an
actress, having always possessed talents for the stage, and finding in
its arduous work relief from the pangs of memory.
“This is, in brief, my story, and it will show you in part why Cinthia
Dawn is so dear to me. Although her beauty and sweetness are most
attractive, still it is not those alone that draw her to my heart. It
is because of her orphanage and sorrow, for Everard Dawn, from some
cause, does not give her a real fatherly love, and she is lonely at
heart beyond expression.”
“Poor, poor Cinthia!” he breathed, with deep emotion.
She dried her tearful eyes, and continued, with a searching glance at
his perturbed face:
“Perhaps you would like to hear under what circumstances I first met
Cinthia?”
He replied very readily:
“Yes.”
“It seemed like chance at first, but ever since I have thought that
Providence itself sent me to the poor girl’s aid in that hour. It was
in Washington, on the morning of your interrupted marriage, when she
was waiting for her father to come and take her home. I had been a
guest of the hotel the night before, and on removing to one nearer
the theater, I found I had left two handsome rings. I returned for
them, and met Cinthia just leaving her room to go upon the street,
a reckless, desperate girl, maddened by misery and humiliation, her
head filled with insane ideas of suicide, of going on the stage, of
anything to escape from herself and her despair. I drew her back, my
heart full of love and pity, and in an hour we changed from strangers
to loving friends. I put new hope in her heart, or at least courage to
bear the ills she could not cure, so that when her father came for her
she went with him readily to the new future he had planned by the aid
of a little fortune that had suddenly fallen to her from some distant
relative.”
“You saved her from herself and from the keenest pangs of the sorrow
I had unwittingly brought upon her by my enforced renunciation of our
betrothal. God forever bless you, noble woman!” cried Arthur, crushing
her hand in his in the exuberance of his gratitude, and adding, warmly:
“You wondered why you could not die when bereaved of all that made life
worth living; but do you not see that Heaven spared you to be an angel
of mercy to this young girl?”
He was tempted to confide his own story to her ears, that she might not
blame him so bitterly for Cinthia’s grief, but prudence intervened,
whispering that it were wiser to keep the cruel secret.