EUGENIE AND ANNA.
“It had been Anna’s daily custom to steal away after lunch to her
favorite resort, the little yard where Agatha was buried, and where one
of the servants had built her a rustic seat beneath the trees, and here
Eugenie found her one afternoon, and leaning over the iron fence asked
first if she might come in, and next whose grave it was. From where she
stood she could not see the name upon the headstone, but when Anna
answered, ‘It is the grave of the young girl who is said to haunt the
chateau; you have heard the absurd story, of course,’ she was interested
at once, for she had heard from her maid something of a ghost whose
plaintive cry for home was heard wailing through the long, dark
corridors, and in the lonely rooms, especially on stormy nights when the
wind was high, and shook the massive walls of the chateau. Eugenie was
not at all superstitious, and knowing that nearly every old place like
Chateau d’Or had its ghost and ghost room, she had paid no attention to
the tale as told her by Elise, but when it assumed a tangible form in
the shape of a real grave, her curiosity was roused, and without waiting
for Anna’s permission she passed through the gate, and going round to
the seat where Anna sat, said:
“‘Then there was a girl who died and was buried here? Who was she? Do
you know?’
“‘It was before I came,’ Anna answered, ‘and I only know that she was
sick—crazy, they said, from some great wrong done to her, and quite up
to her death she kept singing of her home in Normandy.’
“‘Normandy! Did you say she came from Normandy? What was her name?’
Eugenie asked, but before Anna could answer she bent down and read
‘Agatha, aged 20.’
“‘Agatha!’ she repeated, as she grasped the headstone and stood with her
back to Anna, who thus did not see the corpse-like pallor which spread
all over her face as a horrible suspicion passed through her mind.
‘Agatha what? Had she no other name?’ she asked at last, when she had
mastered her emotion sufficiently to speak in her natural voice.
“‘Yes. Agatha Wynde,’ Anna replied, and was instantly startled by a low,
sharp cry from her companion, who laid her hand upon her side,
exclaiming:
“‘It’s my heart. I’m subject to it; but don’t call any one; let me sit
here until I’m better. Anything like a fuss around me disturbs me so
much.’
“She was very white, and shivering like one with an ague chill, and
though Anna did not call any one, she was glad to see her own maid,
Celine, coming toward them. Eugenie did not object to her, but suffered
her to rub her head and hands until she was better, and the violent
beating of her heart had ceased.
“‘Now let me sit here in quiet, and do you tell me about this Agatha,
whose ghost is said to haunt the chateau. Was she pretty, and when did
she die?’
“This she said to Celine, who, always ready and glad to talk, began the
story of Agatha so far as she knew it, telling of her arrival at the
chateau one wild rainy night, of her deep melancholy and sweet, quiet
ways, of her lapse into insanity, her pleadings to go home to Normandy,
and of her subsequent death with the words upon her lips, ‘_Je vais
revoir ma Normandie._’
“‘She was not like you, madame,’ Celine said. ‘She was the people like
me, and so she talked with me more than ladies might. There was no real
marriage, only a sham, a fraud she said; but she was innocent, and I
believe she told the truth; but _Mon Dieu_, what must such girls expect
when gentlemen like monsieur entice them away from home:’ and Celine
shrugged her shoulders meaningly, as if to say that the poor dead girl
beneath the grass had received only her due in betrayal and ruin.
“‘Yes, don’t talk any more, please. The pain has come back, and I
believe I’m dying,’ Eugenie gasped, while both Anna and Celine knelt by
her, rubbing her again, and loosening her dress until the color came
back to her face and she declared herself able to return to the chateau.
‘Don’t talk of my illness and bring everybody around me,’ she said to
her attendants. ‘I cannot bear people when I’m so. Send me Elise, and
leave me alone. She knows what to do.’
“They got her to her room, and called her maid, who said she had seen
her thus a hundred times, and so Anna felt no particular alarm at the
sudden illness, and did not think to connect it in any way with that
lonely grave in the yard, or dream of the agony and remorse of the proud
woman who lay upon her face writhing in pain and moaning bitterly:
“‘_Ma Petite_, oh, _ma Petite_. I have found thee at last, sent to thy
early grave by me—by me. Alas, if I too could die and be buried there
beside thee.’
“Eugenie did not appear at dinner that evening. She was suffering from a
severe nervous attack, Elise said, and the attack kept her in her room
for three days, during which time she saw no one but her maid, who
reported her to the servants as in a dreadful way, walking her room day
and night, eating nothing, but wringing her hands continually, and
moaning:
“‘Oh, how can I bear it—how can I bear it, and live?’
“Once Mr. Haverleigh attempted to see her, but she repulsed him angrily.
“‘No, no, tell him to go away. I cannot, and will not see him,’ she
said; and her eyes glared savagely at the door outside which he was
standing.
“After a few days, however, she grew more quiet, and asked for Anna, who
went to her immediately, feeling shocked at the great change a few days
had wrought in the brilliant woman whom so many accounted handsome. True
to her instincts as a French woman, she was becomingly dressed in an
elegant morning wrapper, with a tasteful cap upon her glossy hair, but
all her bright color was gone; her eyes were sunken and glassy, and she
looked pale, and withered, and old as she reclined in her easy-chair.
“‘Oh, madame, I did not know you had been so sick. I am very sorry,’
Anna said, going up her, and offering her hand.
“But Eugenie would not take it, and motioning her away, said:
“‘It is not for you to touch such as I; but sit down. I want to talk
much with you. There is something I must tell somebody, and you are the
only true, pure woman here, unless it may be Madame Verwest, who hates
me. I’d as soon talk to an icicle and expect sympathy, as to her. I
liked you when I saw you, though I came prepared to hate, and do you
harm.’
“‘Hate me, and wished to do me harm? Why?’ Anna asked, her great blue
eyes full of wonder and surprise.
“‘Don’t you know? Can’t you guess some reason why I should hate you?’
Eugenie said: and Anna, into whose mind a suspicion of what this woman
really was had never entered, answered:
‘I do not know why any one should hate me, when I am so desolate, and
wretched, and homesick here, but not crazy. Oh, madame, surely you do
not believe me crazy?’
‘Crazy! No, not half as much so as the man who keeps you here,’ and
Eugenie spoke impetuously, while her black eyes flashed, and there came
a deep red flush to her face. ‘What age have you, girl? You look too
young to be madame,’ she continued.
“‘Not quite nineteen,’ was Anna’s reply.
“‘Neither was _she_ when I saw her last, and you are like her in voice
and manner, and so many things, and that’s why I cannot hate you. Oh,
_Mon Dieu_, that she should die and I live on,’ said Eugenie. ‘Let me
tell you about her, the sweetest child that ever drew breath; not high
or noble, but lowly born, a country lass, as innocent and happy as the
birds which sang by that cottage door, and I loved her, oh, how I loved
her from the hour her dying mother, who was not my mother, but my
father’s wife, put her in my arms. I am almost thirty-eight. She, if
living, would be twenty-three; so you see my arms were young and strong,
and they kept her so tenderly and lovingly. How I cared for her and
watched over her as she grew into the sweetest rose that ever bloomed in
fair Normandy. How I toiled and drudged for her, going without myself
that _Petite_ might be fed, that hers might be the dainty food, the
pretty peasant’s dress in which she was so lovely. How I meant to
educate and bring her up a lady, so that no soil should come to her soft
white hands, no tire to her little feet. When she was fifteen I went to
Paris, hoping to get money and a home for her. I was a milliner first,
then I recited, I sang, I acted and attracted much attention, and kept
myself good and pure for her, till there came a chance of earning money
faster, and woe is me. I took it. You are _Anglaise_ or _Americaine_,
which amounts to the same thing. You do not understand how a woman may
think herself respectable and do these things, but I am French, educated
differently. Half of my countrywomen have their _grande passion_, their
_liaison_, their, what do you call it in English?’
“‘I know, I understand,’ Anna said, feeling an involuntary shrinking
from the woman, who went on:
“‘I sent her money and such lovely dresses, and meant to leave my own
bad life and make a home where she could come and keep herself
unspotted; but, alas! the wolf entered the fold, and the news came
startlingly, one day, that she had fled from Normandy with an
Englishman, who promised her marriage, and she believed him, and left
these lines for me:
“‘Darling sister, I go for good, not for bad. He will marry me in Paris,
and he is so noble and kind; but for a time it must be secret, his
relatives are so grand, and will be angry at first.’
“‘Then I believe I went mad, and for weeks I scoured Paris in quest of
her, but found her not, and I grew desperate, for I knew the world
better than she did, and knew he would not marry her, and so the
wretched months dragged on and grew into a year and a half, and then the
white-haired father wrote me our darling was dead, where, or how, or
when he did not know, only she was dead, with a blight on her name I was
sure, and I think I was glad she was gone before she grew to be what I
was. I folded away all the pretty dresses and trinkets I had saved for
her; I put them in a chest and turned the key, and called it _Petite’s_
grave, and made another grave in my heart, and buried there every
womanly instinct and feeling, and stamped them down and said I did not
care to what lengths I went now that _Petite_ was gone. Then I painted
my face, and braided my hair, and put on all my diamonds, and went to
the opera that very night, and was stared at and commented upon, and
called the best dressed woman there, and I had a _petit souper_ after at
my home, and was admired and complimented by the men who partook of my
hospitality, and whom I hated so bitterly because they were men, and
through such as they _ma Petite_ was in her grave.’
“‘And did you never hear how she died, or where?’ Anna asked, without a
shadow of suspicion as to the truth.
“‘Yes,’ Eugenie replied. ‘After years—three years, I believe, though
they seemed a hundred to me—I heard that my darling was pure and white
as the early snow which falls on the fields in the country. The wretch
could not possess her without the marriage tie, and so entangled was he
with another woman, who had great power over him, that he dared not make
her his wife; and so there was a form, which would not stand and was no
marriage at all, and when she found it out she went mad, and died with a
song of home on her lips. Yes, went mad—mad, my darling. You know whom I
mean.’
“She hissed out the two words, ‘mad, mad,’ and rocked to and fro in her
anguish, while Anna, with a face as white as the dead girl’s in her
grave, whispered back:
“‘You mean Agatha.’
“‘Yes, I mean Agatha—Agatha—my pet, my pride, my idol. Agatha, lured,
deceived, betrayed, ruined, murdered by the man on whom I who would have
given my heart’s blood to save her, was even then wasting my
blandishments, and doing all I could to keep him from a new love. Oh,
Agatha, if you could but know the grief I am enduring for my sin. No
Magdalen ever repented more bitterly than do I, but for me there is no
voice bidding me sin no more, and I shall go on and on, deeper and
deeper, till the horror of the pit overtakes me, and Agatha and I will
never meet again—never, never.’
“Oh, how Anna pitied the poor, repentant woman, writhing with pain and
remorse, and how she loathed the man who stood revealed to her just as
he never had been before—the monster who had wrought such misery. And
she shrank from Eugenie, too; but pitied her as well, for there was much
of the true woman left in her still, and Anna forced herself to lay her
hands on the bowed head of the sorrowing woman, to whom the touch of
those hands seemed to be life-giving and reassuring for there was a
storm of sobs, and tears, and fierce gesticulations, and then the
impetuous and excitable Frenchwoman grew calm, and something of her old
self was on her face as she shrugged her shoulders significantly, and
said:
“‘Oh, _Mon Dieu!_ such a scene as I’ve made, and frightened you, child.
How monsieur would have enjoyed that; he would call it my high art in
acting. Curse him! I’ll act for him no more;’ and the hard, bitter look
of hatred came back to her face for an instant, then left it again as
she said: ‘I’ve told you my story, little one, who seems like Agatha.
Now tell me yours; where you met him; why you married, and how you came
here shut up, a prisoner. Maybe I can help you. Who knows? I owe him
something for his wrong to Agatha.’
“But for this hint that possibly Eugenie could help her, Anna might have
shrank from confiding her story to her, but this new revelation of her
husband’s character had so increased her horror and dislike of him, that
she readily seized upon anything which offered the shadow of a chance to
escape from a life she hated; and conquering all feelings of distrust
and aversion for one who had openly confessed herself a bad woman, she
began the story, and told first of her New England home, her poverty,
and her life in the dingy shoe-shop, with the sickening smell of leather
and wax. At this point Eugenie started forward, exclaiming joyfully, and
this time in her broken English:
“‘Then you are not _no-bil-i-te_. You be very _people_ as me. _J’en suis
bien aise._ I hate _no-bil-i-te_, who will trample such as we. I am
pleased you are much the people. I will help you more.’
“‘You mistake,’ Anna cried, eagerly, ‘I am _nobility_, as you call it.
We are _all_ nobility in America, or can be. We are all sovereigns by
right. No matter what we do, we can rise.’
“Anna grew very warm with this flash of national and personal pride,
while Eugenie looked at her curiously, wondering, no doubt, how a born
sovereign could work in wax and leather, but she was too good-natured
and polite to dispute the point, and answered, laughingly:
“‘_Pardonnez moi, madame. Je me trompe. En Amerique vous—vous_—what you
call it? You all expect to marry kings and emperors, and be mi-lady some
time—_oui—oui—je l’aime beaucoup_, but go on, I wait to hear how
monsieur came——’
“Then Anna told her of Haverleigh’s visit to Millfield; of his
admiration for herself; of her desire for money and position; of the
marriage in the church, which was a real marriage; of the foolish words
spoken and overheard in New York; of Haverleigh’s jealousy and rage; of
the punishment finally inflicted upon her, and of her husband’s
different moods since, sometimes so loving as to fill her with disgust,
and again revengeful and savage to a degree which made her dread him as
a madman.
“Ah, _ma Petite_,” Eugenie cried, ‘and he is a madman, at times—much
mad; but, tell me, was there no other one whom _Petite_ cared for at
home, in that quiet, small town? No _grande passion_ to make monsieur
jealous?’
“So much had happened since the days when Anna walked home from church
with Hal Morton, and sang to him in the twilight, that she had almost
forgotten him, but thoughts of him came back to her now, and by the
sudden heaving of her chest, and the flush which rose to her forehead,
Eugenie guessed that there was some _grande passion_, as she named it,
and very adroitly drew from Anna that somebody was perhaps sadder for
her marriage, ‘though I never should have married him,’ she said, ‘We
were both too poor, and Mr. Morton’s family were the first in Boston.’
“‘_Mon Dieu. Quel difference_,’ Eugenie exclaimed, with a shrug. ‘Are
you not all born—what you call it in English—governors! _Non,
pardonnez_—sovereigns! I do so have things mixed.’
“Anna laughed at the mistake, the first real, hearty laugh in which she
had indulged since she came to Chateau d’Or, and said:
“‘Yes, but sometimes there’s a difference in sovereigns, you know.’
“‘_Oh, ciel_, but it’s to me very strange. I think I should like _votre
republique_, but go on. You never think to marry Monsieur Morton, but
you like him much, and Monsieur Haverleigh find it out, and trust me,
child, that broil—bake—fry; what you call it, rankle in his jealous
brain, for however many passions he have, he want you to own but one.
_Me comprenez vous? Bien! Je commence a comprendre l’affaire_; but I can
help _la petite madame_, and I will. And _la mere_, does she never know
where you stay all these time?’
“There was then a rain of tears as Anna told of her mother’s death, and
her sister’s removal to some place in the far West, whose name she did
not even know, and how, latterly, the sister had ceased to write at all,
Mr. Haverleigh said.
“‘And they think I am in a mad-house, and that is the worst of all. Oh,
I wish I were dead like mother, for I’ve given up all hope of leaving
Chateau d’Or, and when baby is born I hope I’ll die,’ Anna said, amid
her tears.
“‘_Die! Jamais!_ You shall go home—back to the leetle house, and the
wax, and the leather, and the smell-bad, and the mother who is _not_
dead. I not believe that, it is one part of the great whole; _la mere_
not dead, and you shall see her yet. Give me the—the—what you say—_post
restante—l’addresse_ of the little _village_, and I write _toute de
suite_. Trust me, _ma petite enfant_. Trust Eugenie, for the sake of
Agatha.’
“It seemed to Anna that when Eugenie attempted English she was softer
and more womanly in her way of expressing herself; was very pretty and
sweet, and Anna began to feel a degree of trust in and dependence upon
her which astonished herself. Eugenie remained at the chateau a week
longer, but never again took any part in the gayeties which without her
suggestive and ruling spirit, were inexpressibly flat and stale. To
Haverleigh she was cold and distant to a degree, which angered him
sorely and made him cross, and irritable, and moody; but he was far from
suspecting the cause of Eugenie’s changed demeanor, and never dreamed of
connecting it in any way with Agatha, or suspected the intimacy
springing up between his wife and Eugenie.
“It was no part of Eugenie’s plan that he should do so, and though she
saw Anna often in the privacy of her apartment, where she spent much of
her time, she scarcely ever spoke to her in the presence of Haverleigh,
except to pass the compliments of the day, and when at last she left the
chateau for good, there was a simple hand-shake and _au revoir_ between
herself and Anna, who, nevertheless, grew more cheerful and happy, but
kept, even from Madame Verwest, the hope she had of a release, or at
least of hearing once more from home. How this would be accomplished she
did not know, but she trusted to Eugenie’s ready wit and ingenuity in
deceiving Haverleigh, who lingered at the chateau until November and who
grew so moody, and unreasonable, and tyrannical that, popular as he
usually was with his servants, every one hailed his final departure with
delight.
“When next Anna heard from him he told her of a dangerous and most
unaccountable illness which had come upon Eugenie the very day she
reached Paris.
“‘She did not go straight home,’ he wrote, ‘but took a roundabout way
through Normandy, where in some obscure place she spent a week with her
father, who, it seems, died while she was there. His death or something
upset her terribly, and she has suffered, and is still suffering, with a
nervous fever which makes her perfectly dreadful at times—out of her
head in fact—and she will not see one of her old friends. Even I, who
have known her so long, am forbidden the house, her nurse telling me
that she actually knows when I step on the stair and instantly grows
fearfully excited. So, lest I make her worse, I only send now twice a
day to inquire how she is. They say she talks a great deal of _La
Petite_, and Anna when delirious. That Anna is you, of course, but who
is _Petite_? Do you know?’
“Anna thought she did, but did not deem it advisable to enlighten her
husband, whose letter she only answered because of her anxiety to hear
again from Eugenie. All her hopes for the future were centered upon that
woman for whose recovery she prayed many times a day, wondering if any
letter had yet gone across the water, and waiting so anxiously for the
response it was sure to bring.