SUCH A TRAGEDY OF WOE.
In far-away Chicago another pair of eyes scanned the news from El
Caney--a pair of lovely eyes, large, deep, and purplish blue, like
velvet pansies growing in the shade--and from Maisie’s lips came a
startled cry of commingled surprise and dismay.
“Mortally wounded--Delmar Barrington, Young Guards, Virginia--died
later in hospital.”
Her lovely face grew lily pale, her heart throbbed wildly, her white
hands trembled so violently that the newspaper fell from her grasp to
the floor.
The past rose up before her mind’s eye, conjured up by the sight of
that name--the years in which she had loved him with the romance and
passion of first youth--when she thought that heaven lay in the depths
of those dark, flashing eyes.
She remembered the feverish night when she had kept a waking vigil,
dreaming of her happiness, recalling the kisses that had burned her
lips, the words he had spoken, the joy of to-morrow, when she should be
his bride.
Could anything ever blot from her mind that to-morrow when it came; the
agony, the pain, the humiliation that had almost driven her mad!
She was his bride, the fate she had dreamed of as most blissful under
heaven, but from the hour of her wedding she had worn those fetters as
iron bands that chafed night and day; fetters she loathed and hated,
but could not throw off though they ate into her heart.
Often she felt that she could not bear her life thus bound--that she
could almost die if there were no other way to get free.
And, strangely enough, she had never contemplated Delmar’s death as
likely to occur; never calculated the chances of war in her own favor.
She had thrown herself with ardor into the new life that had so
strangely opened before her because it offered surcease from torturing
memory. The work was wearisome, the emoluments small, but she developed
an unexpected talent for theatricals, and threw all her energy into the
parts she acted, glad to merge her own personality into that of another
than poor little Maisie, the desperate bride who had been married for
spite and in her agony had rashly offered to marry another man if he
would get her released from his brother. The shame of it almost drove
her mad at times, remembering how firmly she had been refused.
So the time had dragged along. In the company her position was assured,
and, in spite of her quiet, reserved manners, she was a favorite.
They came to understand that she was secretly unhappy, that she had a
shadowed past somehow, but she withheld her confidence, and they did
not seek to force it.
After their stay in New York they had made a summer tour of the West,
not caring to disband for the season, and now they were in Chicago,
making their way East, playing in all the larger towns several nights
each as they traveled. It relieved the tedium of the journey and put
money in their purses besides, for it was really a clever company,
and drew good houses whenever they stopped. By the last of July they
expected to reach Washington.
Maisie sat alone, with great, startled eyes of wonder, trying to grasp
the situation, trying not to exult over the death that left her free at
last of the fetters she hated.
“I did not wish him dead; I could never, never desire any one’s death
for any good it might bring to me; but oh, oh, I am glad I am not his
wife now!” she panted, and burst into low, hysterical sobs that shook
her whole frame with their violence.
She had dropped her heavy burden at last, and her joy and relief found
vent in wildest emotion.
Hushing her sobs at last, she moaned self-reproachfully:
“God pardon me if I am glad that he is dead! I do not mean to rejoice,
though I despised him. Why did he wrong my fond love so cruelly?
Why deceive me so shamelessly? He might have said: ‘Maisie, I loved
Josephine, and she has proved false. I am going to try to love you
now. Will you help me, so that I may forget that other?’ I would have
listened and pitied him; I would have said: ‘Del, I shall be proud and
glad if you will learn to love me, but I cannot marry you till your
heart is truly mine!’ Then, perhaps, all might have gone well! But to
be married for spite! Ah, Heaven, it was too bitter to tamely endure!
Married for spite and deserted on her wedding-day! I wonder did such a
tragedy of grief ever happen to any young girl before?”
So she raved on in her reawakened excitement, her thoughts flying back
to Castellane and that other--the man who had loved her long, and at
whose love she had laughed in scorn--who had had his revenge when he
threw back in her face with his calm words her offer to become his wife
if he would divorce her from his brother. Yes, no doubt, he had enjoyed
his triumph well. Who could blame him?
She wondered with a spasm of writhing shame if he had told false
Josephine the story.
Of course, he had married Josephine. He had threatened Delmar he might
do it, in retaliation, and, no doubt, the vain coquette had got him
into her toils by now, and was queening it at Castellane. Well, let
them enjoy their triumph. She did not care.
“I--I hate them all!--I almost hate everybody in the whole world!”
sobbed poor Maisie from the depths of her wretched heart.
And then, by some chance of fate, she began running over the
paper again, and chanced upon a society-letter from that popular
watering-place, the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, in West Virginia.
“There are over a thousand guests here from all parts of the country,”
she read, “and,” following, “among the Virginians here are the
millionaire Byrd Barrington and his aunt, Mrs. French; the beautiful
Miss Shirley, with her mother, and----” but Maisie read no more. Her
eyes danced through their mist of tears.
“So he has not married her yet,” she said gladly.