When Constance revived, she found herself in a quiet room remote from
noise or intrusion, whither she had been tenderly carried. Virginia
was with her, and with the aid of a professional nurse, who lived near
by and was called in by Mrs. Harris, had been successful in restoring
her to consciousness.
The reception was still swinging along at its full height, and while a
few of the guests had heard in an indifferent way of some trouble on
the lawn, the reports were so varied and coupled with the fact that no
names were obtainable to give the reports zest, the incident was soon
forgotten, and by the great mass of the guests was not even heard of.
It was a sore spot in her breast that throbbed and beat heavily upon
the door of its prison as later she was being driven home in her
carriage. Not a word from John to soothe the aching void. She did not
even inquire about him, contenting herself with the simple assurance
that he was doing his best to find Dorothy.
For two days the strain was upon her, breaking down by its heart
violence her constitution, already frail to the declining point.
Scarcely more than a year had passed since Constance had been stricken
down with typhoid fever of a malignant type.
She had never regained her usual health and strength, and though the
family physician had pronounced her recovery complete, there were
those of her friends who, with bated breath, questioned his conclusion
and predicted an after effect which in time would develop some strange
and serious ailment.
Telephone inquiries regarding the lost child began to come in the
second day, but none of any comfort to the distracted mother.
Not one intimation of her husband's quarrel with Corway had reached
her. Mrs. Harris had been careful, upon Constance's recovery at the
reception, not to breathe a word, or to allow, where she could control
it, the faintest whisper likely to arouse her suspicion.
And as for Hazel, she had not clearly understood Mr. Thorpe's drift
when he assaulted Corway. Nevertheless, she somehow had a vague idea
that Constance was the cause; but being a discreet young woman, she
had refrained from mentioning anything about it to her, thus leaving
Constance completely ignorant of the true cause of John Thorpe's
absence from home.
Perhaps if she had not been so absorbed in the recovery of Dorothy,
her attention would have been arrested on perusing one of the daily
papers by an ambiguous paragraph referring to a choice morsel of
scandal on the "tapis" in a prominent family, and which was likely to
terminate in a tragedy. It was a society paragraph separate from the
report of the probable drowning of the child, Dorothy Thorpe. Several
personal acquaintances had become aware, through the crafty Rutley, of
a serious difference having arisen between John Thorpe and his
beautiful wife, and some of these personal acquaintances, with
significant looks, at once connected it with the mysterious
disappearance of the child.
The fact that none of the fashionable set had visited her since the
reception did not suggest a thought of being shunned. And so she
waited for news of her child--waited with heart leaden with the chill
of hope deferred--waited in momentary expectation of the home-coming of
John.
She watched for him through the window, foreshadowing by his
appearance on the walk gladness or sorrow.
"It is now the second day," she muttered, "since that eventful night,
and yet no relief from this awful suspense. No word to cheer, or lead
me to hope that Dorothy lives."
"It is no use grieving so much, Constance," broke in Hazel, who had
just entered the room. "Dorothy may be safe with her father,
somewhere. Try, dear, to think so, anyway. It is much the best."
"I cannot put away that winsome face from my mind, Hazel. Something
tells me that I shall see her no more," and tears came into her eyes,
despite her efforts to restrain them.
"There, yees be at it again, sure mam, yees do be makin' us all feel
miserable."
It was Smith who spoke, in a soft, appealing voice, full of sympathy
and tenderness, the common heritage of his race. He had entered the
room by the parlor door, and stood with his hat in his hand--a short,
thick-set man, with a full, smooth-shaven, ruddy face, strong in its
lines of "true to a trust." His thin hair was tinged with gray. He
wore a black frock coat that had seen considerable wear; in fact, that
style of a coat was worn by him for the double purpose of partly
concealing the "humiliating" curves of his short bent legs, and also
the dignity he fancied it lent to his stature. He had been the family
coachman for some years, and was familiarly called "Smith."
As Constance turned to him, he continued with a look suggestive of
tearful sympathy.
"Will yees try to forget the trouble, and be the token av it, may it
plaise ye mam, just wipe away that tear, do, dear."
"You have always been a good soul, Smith," and Constance tried to
smile through her tears.
"Of course, but we are anxious to know the result of your search,"
remarked Hazel.
He was silent for a moment, and nervously commenced to fidget with his
hat.
"Sure, ave yees'l wait till I think ave all the places I whint to, and
all the people I sphoke to"--and he dolefully muttered under his
breath--"Sure I dunno what I'll rayport at all, at all--"
"You are very thoughtful and persistent, Smith," responded Constance.
"Yis, indade, mam, I try to be that very same. Sure, wasn't I up at
Rose-a-mant and walked the bache there and watched the boats, but
niver a sight did I git ave Mr. Thorpe."
"I know John is leaving no stone unturned to find Dorothy," assured
Constance, "but you, poor man, you must be tired with your long walk."
"The walk was long, but me heart was warrum for yees, and I didn't
moind it at all, at all. Sure, the child may not be in the water at
all. Will yees try to think so, dear?" And again the beseeching look
came over his expressive face.
"Do you think so, Smith?" interrogated Hazel.
"Well, I 'ave me own ideas, Miss, and to be plain, and not hurtin'
yees failin's, I think she was kidnapped."
"You do?" questioned Hazel, surprised, for such a possibility had
never crossed her mind.
"I do," he replied.
"Sure, I have no rason to think so, Miss, at all, at all; but says I
to myself, says I, 'I'll just flim-flam around the 'dago' quarters in
South Portland, on me own account, keeping a sharp lookout betimes.'"
"What did you find there?" again asked the girl.
"Nothin' I wanted, Miss, unless it war a sassy fellow wid a big black
moustache, and a skin full ave greenbile."
"But you were not looking for him," replied Hazel.
"Not wan bit, Miss, though I do belave now he do be lookin' for me.
Indade, Miss, I was not failin' well at all, at all. Sure, wasn't the
little darlint missin', and between the sorrow at home and the failin'
in me heart, and the long walk, and the cowld mornin', and the sassy
look the fellow gave me--"
"What were you doing that so offended him?" interrupted Hazel.
"Indade, I was just walkin' around Carbut Strate and Hood Strate for a
little divarsion--not wan bit more or less, Miss--an' he axed me what I
wanted. Says I to him, says I, respectful-like, 'Maybe yees can tell
me did yees see a little girl strayin' about widout a home. A lady
sint me to inquire.'
"He immejetly made some raymark, quick an' sharp-like, about the dam
desavin' wimmen--"
"Oh!" Hazel exclaimed, interrupting him.
"Shocking!" exclaimed Constance.
[Illustration: Smith--"Indade Miss, Oi followed wid wan on the soule
ave his plexus."]
"Sure--and I beg yees pardon fir sayin' it, darlints, but that's just
what he towld me and niver a wink whint wid it, the blackguard!
"I up and axed him who he'd be refarrin' to, because I had in my moind
a sartin lady wid trouble ave her own.
"He says, says he, wid a snarl, 'None ave yees business.'
"Widout thinkin' whether he meant anything by it or not, I tould him
he was a gintleman and a liar, too. So I did."
"You insulted him!" exclaimed Hazel, astounded.
"Indade I did, Miss, in foine style, sure"--and he spoke softly to
Hazel--"he got it right betwix the two eyes, and I followed it wid wan
on the soule ave his plexis."
"You did!" Hazel exclaimed, amazed, yet with an irrepressible smile
that flickered about her pretty mouth.
"I did!" he replied gravely.
"Is the soul of one's plexus in his eyes, Smith?" interrogated Hazel.
"Sure, some say it do be the cramps; but I think it do be trouble ave
the bowels, Miss," he answered.
"Poor man!" exclaimed Constance, and she looked at Smith
reproachfully.
He quickly turned to her with a disgusted look on his face, and slowly
exclaimed, "Yis mam!"
During the silence that followed Smith realized that he had spoken
hastily and rude, and the disgust so palpably in evidence quickly
merged into a look of grave concern.
His native wit, however, came to his aid in a singular apology.
"While the fellow hunted for a soft spot on the pavement, I called up
a nearby doctor to help him," he said.
"You shall be repaid," Constance assured him in an absent manner.
"Plaise God, it will not be the 'dago' who'll do it!" he solemnly
replied, and then he softly asked.
"Be there any more arders, mam?"
"No, Smith, you must be in need of rest. Thank you for all your
kindness," and Constance turned from him with grief, unaffected, still
on her face. "God bless yees!" he replied, and then as he turned to
leave the room, said to himself, "I shud loike to see the wan--bad luck
to him--who brought all this trouble on the poor missus," and he shut
his teeth tight in silent rage.
After he had gone Constance pressed her hand down on the top of her
head and said distractedly, "Still no word of encouragement; no relief
to this strain that seems to be tearing my brain asunder!"
Under the circumstances, inaction, to one of Hazel's temperament, was
anything but pleasant, and the young girl was to be condoned rather
than censured for desiring to get away from the distress that pervaded
the house. Moreover, she felt that something must be done to relieve
the strain that weighed so heavily upon Constance.
"Don't you think I had better see Mrs. Harris, dear?" she said, with a
wistful look of sympathy at Constance. "Perhaps she may have something
to tell."
"Very well," replied Constance. "Do, dear, if you think some good may
come from your visit. Virginia may be home soon and I shall not be
alone."
"I shall get my wraps."
After Hazel had left the room, Constance, dispirited and sadly out of
harmony with Smith's simple recital of his search for Dorothy, stepped
out on the piazza, as though the air of the close room oppressed her.
The sky was cloudy, the air raw and cold.
Dorothy's pet canary, with its bill thrust under its wing, rested on
the perch of its cage, glum and inert, immediately before her.
"Poor thing!" she exclaimed tenderly. "Sweet, sweet! Look up, pet!"
The dainty little beauty, with a throat of silky mellowness, looked
curiously about, gave a "cheep" of recognition and then again buried
its bill under its wing.
"Even my darling's pet will not be comforted." And tears stole into
her eyes as she turned away from the bird. "Oh, Sam, I've been so
anxious to hear from you! Have you found my darling?"
Sam had approached the steps unseen by her, and when she turned away
from the bird he stood directly in front of her, though at a little
distance.
Her mind at once recalled his words, which rang in her ears as she
sank to the ground on that fateful night of the reception, and it was
therefore the first and most natural question uppermost in her mind
when she saw him.
He started back in evident surprise and answered confusedly:
"Well--I--I am sure, Mrs. Thorpe, if I had found her, I should only be
too glad to--to tell you."
"And you have no tidings of her? But--come in, I am sure something
important brought you here."
She entered the house, followed by Sam, who muttered to himself,
"She's conjuring tears already, but I'm proof, were they to fall like
rain. I guess so!"
Upon entering the room he looked at her steadfastly and quizically.
There was something in his look, too, that bore the imprint of
effrontery.
She stared at him and asked timidly with alarm in her voice. "Oh, what
do you know of her?"
"I--I--beg your pardon, Mrs. Thorpe, but--well, the truth is, I called to
know if you have any information of her."
"How can you ask that question of me?" replied Constance brokenly,
while again the tears welled up in her eyes.
"You see, madam--ahem! You won't be offended with me, for God knows I
do not mean any offense to you, but--ahem--you see, madam, you are the
unhappy cause of as fine a hearted gentleman as was ever born being a
broken-spirited, a--a--blighted man!"
"Sam!" she affrightedly exclaimed. "What are you saying?"
"This," continued he, with dauntless determination, "and I'll tell you
the truth. You are the talk of the town, and they say you--you--you've
secured the child from your husband."
Her face became ashy white as the meaning of John's absence from home
dawned on her mind. She staggered, then sank into a chair. Presently
she looked up with a sort of dazed, wandering expression and tried to
smile through watery eyes. "My cup of woe is very full, Sam! Please
don't jest with me!"
He wiped the perspiration from his brow, for he felt his resolution to
accomplish what he had set out to do was fast crumbling.
He rushed on, "I am not jesting. No, I guess not! I know I am paining
you, but I have a duty to do which I shall do, as I have always done
through my life. And as this affair occurred at my uncle's place, they
say he knows more about it than he cares to tell, which he doesn't.
And I have come to see if you really don't know something of the
whereabouts of Dorothy, as that would relieve my uncle and aunt of
much embarrassment--at least--I guess so!"
Her lips trembled with the pathos of her reply: "Did I know of the
fate of my child, heaven could not bless me with a more joyful
desire--to let you know, to let your aunt know, that Dorothy is--is
safe. As it is, I would to heaven that I were dead and with my
darling." And her head fell forward on the table as a burst of
heart-rending agony shook her frame.
It was evident Sam was uneasy and much affected by her distress. He
coughed and tried to clear his throat again and again. "Ahem!--you must
excuse me, Mrs. Thorpe--ahem! But--but, Lord--Lord! I can't bear to hear
you take on that way. Ahem! Ahem! I'm rough and thoughtless in my way,
and it seems harsh and brutal to speak to you as I have done--I guess
so!--and if any man in my hearing says you have hidden your child--why,
by Heavens, I'll knock the lie back through his teeth."
Sam had forgotten his resolution to resist the influence of a woman's
tears; moreover, he felt convinced he was standing in the presence of
a true, atrociously wronged and much slandered woman, and in his
eagerness to undo the wrong he had done her by practically charging
her with the wrecking of her husband's happiness and connivance at the
child's disappearance, had lost control of that gentleness he felt due
to the weaker sex, especially this bereaved woman. He stammered an
apology in a soft regretful tone of voice.
"I--I--beg your pardon. I--I could not help it. These expressions will
slip out now and again, won't they? I guess so. I am satisfied you are
deeply grieved about Dorothy, and I'm interested in her, too. The fact
is, I was so anxious on my aunt's account that I have behaved like a
brute. Now please understand me, you are not friendless, for I shall
do my best for you, and if Dorothy is out of water I'm going to find
her. I'm off now, so good-bye!"
And he was gone--glad to get away from the distress that raised a lump
in his throat which all his labored coughing could not dislodge.
Sam had entered her presence a scoffer. He had made up his mind that
her grief was as deceitful as her reputed double life. He departed,
her firm friend and almost choked with disgust at his own readiness to
believe the foul reports, magnified by gossiping busybodies.
Gradually Constances' emotion subsided. She sat upright in the chair.
A significant dryness had come into her eyes as she stared at the wall
with profound abstraction. Out of the haze John Thorpe's picture
gradually emerged.
Suddenly she exclaimed in strangely low tones, almost a whisper--tones
in which a woman's life was projected on the horoscope of
faithfulness, immutable as the "Rock of Ages":
"John! John! You are breaking my heart!"
Then her mind began to settle upon one object--to see her husband, John
Thorpe.
"It must be some mistake!" she muttered. "It cannot be so. John would
never treat me thus. I will have Smith seek him and deliver a message
at once."
She went to her desk and wrote a hasty note, requesting John to come
home to her immediately. With the sealed note in her hand, she hurried
out to find Smith. She found him fast asleep on an old couch just
inside the coach-house door, and remembering his tired look, softly
said: "Poor man! How fatigued he must be! After all, what matters it
for a few hours?" And then, instead of arousing him, she took his coat
off the rack and gently covered him, murmuring in a broken voice that
betrayed the pathos of her trouble: "Asleep, with the peace of God
resting on his face. Heaven bless and reward your faithful heart.
Sleep on."
Returning to the house, she sat down at the table to think of a
possible something she had done to cause John's unkind behavior.
A shadow darkened the doorway. She turned mechanically. A tall, grave
and elderly gentleman, with stooping shoulders and bared head, stood
in the entrance.
Constance arose. He approached her and said softly: "I beg to
apologize for the intrusion. The door being open, and seeing you
within, I entered unannounced."
"Oh, Mr. Williams! Have you any tidings of Dorothy?"
"I regret not being able to bring any tidings of your child. The river
has been carefully dragged for a considerable distance in front of
'Rosemont.' I fear she is drowned and the body carried down to the
Columbia."
"My poor darling!"
"There is yet hope, however, that your child lives. An old cripple--a
disreputable looking vagabond--was seen lurking about the grounds the
night she was lost. He has not been seen since. Detectives are baffled
in tracing him. He may have abducted your child. It's the only hope
that she is alive, though I admit, a frail one."
"Heaven give me strength to hope it is so. But who could be so cruel
as to steal away my little darling? No, no, she is drowned!"
"I have to announce a disagreeable errand," and he paused, not quite
satisfied of the propriety of the moment for so serious a declaration
as he was about to make; but he at length continued hesitatingly:
"As--as your--legal adviser--." Again he paused.
Constance looked at him timidly. A cold, creepy fear of something
dreadful about to happen chilled her. Her blanched face and beseeching
eyes warned him of very grave consequences.
"What is it, Judge?" she whispered with parched lips, "speak out; tell
me what you have come for."
"Are you strong enough?--I think--perhaps--I had better defer--"
"Oh, yes, my strength is not great--but--the suspense--I cannot bear. Let
me hear--what it is." He hesitated no longer.
"As your attorney, I have been served with a notice of an application
for a divorce, by John Thorpe, from his wife, Constance."
With bowed head he laid the document on the table.
She clasped her hand to her head, clutched the back of a chair for
support, for the suddenness and weight of the blow staggered her. She,
however, managed to bear herself bravely up.
"And--could--he really believe this of me?" she said distractedly.
"He has, at the same time, placed at your disposal in the National
Bank a sum of money for your immediate wants." He paused. A solemn
quietness pervaded the room.
At length he continued in a low, grave tone: "I am prepared to receive
instructions. Shall I give notice of your intention to resist his
application for divorce?"
Still leaning on the chair for support, and without lifting her bowed
head, or raising her downcast eyes, she said in a voice barely
articulate with the huskiness and tremor of threatened physical
collapse, "Please leave me for awhile. Providence has seen fit to
afflict me so sorely that I must beg a little time to try to think.
But, stay!" And her voice gathered a little strength in an effort to
keep from breaking down altogether:
"I desire to receive nothing from John. I shall not reply to his
complaint, and you will return the money he has placed to my credit in
the bank. Now, please leave me; I desire to be alone."
During his professional experience, the "Judge" had been a witness to
many painful scenes, and familiarity had calloused somewhat his sense
of sympathy. But as he gazed upon the white, spiritually chaste face
of this frail woman, a conviction that a great wrong was being done to
her forced and crowded itself upon his brain.
"Someone must answer for it before a higher than human court," he
thought, and then with bent head he left her, feeling that he would
value beyond price the power to effect a little gleam of sunshine to
heal her broken heart.
"Dorothy! Dorothy!" he muttered, and he passed out from her presence
with words of Tennyson on his lips:
"Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
The sound of a voice that is still!"
After he had gone, Constance remained motionless. She was strangely
quiet, yet wrapt in thoughts of bitterest shame and grief, the world
had little left for her to care for.
A sense of gloom enveloped her. Its shadow bore heavily upon her
oppressed spirits, smothering by its weight the stifled cry of her
heart's anguish.
It was therefore with a wondrously calm voice, pregnant with tragic
pathos, that she at length broke the stillness: "I am sure of the
cause of John's absence now, and the very worst has come to me. What
now can compensate me for the humiliation of being thought by him so
shameless and debased? Oh, how wretched I am!" and with a moan, she
placed her hand on the top of her head.
"Oh, heaven spare my reason--yet--what is reason to me now? Or--life? My
darling is drowned. John has left me, and with them hope and happiness
are gone forever."
It was then a strange, uncanny, desperate flash leapt into her eyes.
Suddenly she withdrew her hand from the top of her head, but instantly
pressed it to her brow.
In a moment her appearance underwent a great change. Under the
continuous strain, the strands of grief and despair had at last
snapped asunder and up rushed an exultation that instantly overwhelmed
all opposition to a suddenly conceived and terrible purpose. She
whispered with an earnestness intense as it was significant: "There is
a way out." Then she suddenly burst into a frenzy of pathetic joy as
she thought of the phial of laudanum in the medicine chest in her
room.
"A passage to my darling beyond!"
She did not see Virginia standing in the doorway, nor did she pause as
some do to take a last farewell look at earth and sky. Her mind was
set upon the swift accomplishment of an object.
Upon reaching her room, she took up the phial of laudanum and then, as
she fell on her knees, locked her hands together, and her voice
softened into tenderness--softened in inexpressibly sweet and plaintive
tones, as she cried out in a whisper of her soul's anguish:
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me!"
She was standing in the shadow of the valley of death.
Strangely coincident, the inspiring notes of the "Star Spangled
Banner" softly broke upon the air from a piano in the music room
below. As the grand strains swelled upward, they were met with a break
in the clouds through which the sun poured down a flood of dazzling
glory.
At that moment Dorothy's pet canary began to sing. The delicate little
feathered thing, that had nestled its bill under its wing in the raw
cold of the morning, felt the warm influence of the sunshine that fell
upon it, and looked up, twittered, lifted its voice in surprised
gladness, and then in response to the soft strains that were pealing
forth from the music room, broke into song.
Higher and higher it swelled, cleaving the air with its exultant
melody.
Oh! the wild soaring flight of that joyous song!
Through the partly closed window it burst and flooded the room with
its gladness and cheer. Death stayed his hand.
The little silken feathered throat of her darling's pet had turned
aside the "Grim Sickle."
She heard it. Out over the entrancing beauty of Autumn-dyed
vegetation, her sad eyes wandered--wandered wistfully over nature
bathed in the splendor of the sun's radiance. She heeded the call, and
then, appalled at her contemplated sin, she cowered--bowed down--lower,
lower. In tones of resignation--tones tremulous with awe of the
Omnipotent, she said: "Have pity upon me, Merciful Heaven!"
And then very softly Virginia knelt beside her, gently encircling her
waist with her arm, and looked into her spiritual face with eyes
overflowing with tears. In a broken voice, scarcely articulate through
a great sob, she said: "Oh, Constance! Constance, dear, I am punished
enough already!"
After Hazel had completed her attire for a visit to Mrs. Harris, she
descended the stairs with the same feeling of gloom and depression
upon her.
Slow and hesitating as was her action--as though undecided as to the
propriety of leaving Constance, and while drawing on her gloves, she
aimlessly wandered into the music room and listlessly sat on the piano
stool. Then, with her head turned looking out of the window, she let
her fingers ramble over the keys of the instrument. Then she saw
Virginia pass up the walk and enter the house, but after the lapse of
a few moments and her cousin not appearing, Hazel entered the drawing
room to greet her--but too late. Through the open door she heard a step
on the main stairs above. Hazel followed. On passing the table the
divorce bill caught her eye. For a moment she paused and picked it up;
then laid it down, her breath coming in gasps, for she instantly
realized a crisis of a very grave moment had appeared. She ran
upstairs, surmising that Virginia was connected with the "divorce
bill," for she had not seen Mr. Williams.
And then she heard Virginia's voice. Softly she stole to the door and
looked in. There, kneeling on the floor, were Constance and Virginia,
looking into each other's eyes, Constance drawn back in timid alarm,
and Virginia blinded with tears, clasping the hand that held the
laudanum phial, her free arm thrown lovingly around Constance's waist.
Hazel silently drew back, an overpowering emotion suffusing her eyes
with tears. "Poor Constance! Her trouble thickens fast. What will the
end be?"