The long, wintry night wanes slowly. Vera's own loving hands have
robed the dead for the rest of the grave. She has gone away now to
the solitude of her own little chamber under the eaves, leaving Leslie
Noble keeping watch beside the loved lost one.
She has forgotten for a moment the brief and solemn words that gave
her away to be a wife in her early innocent girlhood; she remembers
only that the one creature that loved her, and whom she loved, is
dead. Crushed to earth by her terrible loss, Vera flings herself
face downward on the chilly, uncarpeted floor, and lies there mute,
moveless, tearless, stricken into silence by the weight of her bitter
despair.
Who that has lost a mother, the one true heart that loves us truly and
unselfishly of all the world, but can sympathize with the bereaved
child in her deep despair.
In vain the kind-hearted minister whispered words of comfort, in
vain Leslie tried to soothe her, and win her to tears, in awe of her
strange, white face and dry-lidded eyes. They could not understand her,
and were fain to leave her alone, the while one quoted fearfully to the
other:
"The grief that does not speak,
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break."
So the chilly night wanes, and at three o'clock in the morning,
carriage wheels echo loudly in the street below, and pause in front of
the house. The haughty mistress, and Ivy, her daughter, have returned
from the esthetic ball whose delights they could not forego, although
their relative lay ill unto death in the house.
A tap at Vera's door, and Mrs. Brown, the chamber-maid, glances in.
The worthy woman has been out at "a party" herself, and is quite
unconscious of all that has happened since she left the house. Her
stolid gaze falls curiously on the recumbent figure on the cold, hard
floor.
"Wake up, Miss Vera! Whatever be you a-sleeping on the cold floor this
night for? Miss Ivy says for you to come down to her room immejitly."
Disdaining a reply to the coarse woman, Vera drags herself up from the
hard floor, and with stiffened limbs takes her way to the luxurious
apartment of her cousin.
How different this large and comfortable room from Vera's bare and
fireless little den. Miss Cleveland's apartment has soft hangings
of pale-blue plush, bordered with silver, cream lace curtains, a
blue satin counterpane embroidered with silvery water-lilies. The
atmosphere is warm and dreamy, and languid with the scent of hot-house
flowers in blue and silver vases. The mistress of all this elegance
stands in the center of the room, clothed in an esthetic gown of
pale-blue, embroidered down the front with small sunflowers. She is a
pretty blonde, with straw-colored hair in loose waves, and turquoise
blue eyes, that usually wear an expression of infantine appeal and
innocence. Just now the eyes look heavy and dull, and there is a tired,
impatient look on her delicate-featured face.
"Here you are _at last_," she says, as Vera comes slowly in with her
white face and heavy eyes, with their look of dumb and hopeless pain.
"Hurry up now and undress me; I'm tired and sleepy, and ready to drop!"
Vera stands still, looking gravely at her, and making no move to obey
the cool and insolent mandate. For years her cousin has ruthlessly
trampled her under foot, and made her a despised slave.
It comes to the girl with a sudden thrill of triumph now that this is
the last time Ivy will ever order her about. She is Leslie Noble's
wife, and he will shield her from her cousin's abuse.
"Come, don't stand staring like a fool," Ivy breaks out coarsely and
impatiently. "Don't you see I'm waiting? Here, pull off these tight
slippers. I cannot stand them a minute longer!"
She throws herself into a blue-cushioned chair, and thrusts forward her
small feet encased in white kid slippers and blue silk hose, and Vera,
conquering her strong impulse of rebellion, kneels down to perform the
menial service.
After all, what does this last time matter? she asks herself, wearily.
After to-morrow she will be out of their power. Tonight, while that
dear, dead mother lies in the house, she will keep still, she will
have peace, no matter how bitter the cup of degradation pressed to her
loathing lips.
With steady hands she unlaces the silken cords that lace the white
slippers, draws them off the compressed feet, and unclasps the satin
garters from the blue silken hose. All the while Ivy raves angrily:
"I have seen for some time that you rebel against waiting on me,
ungrateful minx, as if all you could do would repay us for the
charity that has clothed and fed you all your life. To-morrow I shall
report you to your mother, and if she does not bring you into better
subjection, you shall both be driven away, do you hear?"
Her mother! This is the iron rod with which they have ruled poor Vera
all her life long. That poor, drooping, delicate mother, whose hold
on life had never been but half-hearted, whose only home and shelter
had been the grudging and hard-earned charity of her heartless and
parsimonious sister. Day in and day out the Clevelands had driven their
two weak slaves relentlessly, always holding over their heads the dread
of being turned out to face the cold world alone.
A low and bitter laugh rises to Vera's lips at the thought that that
poor, meek dependent is beyond their dominion now, and that Ivy's
threatened complaints can never rise to that high Heaven where her
mother's freed spirit soars in happiness and peace.
"Not that you are of much account, anyway," pursues the heartless girl,
angrily. "You can never be trained into a proper maid, you stiff-necked
little pauper. If mamma were not so mean and stingy she would let me
have a real French maid like other girls. Never mind, when once I am
Mrs. Leslie Noble I'll show her how I will spend money!"
Vera shivers, and her heart thumps heavily against her side. The
one idea of Ivy's life is to marry Leslie Noble. He is handsome,
fascinating, wealthy, in short, her _beau ideal_ of perfection. He has
come on a month's visit to her mother from a distant city, and both
_mater_ and daughter are sure, quite sure, that the object for which
he was invited is accomplished; they have hooked the golden fish, they
have no doubt. What will Ivy say when she knows that she, the despised
Vera, is Leslie Noble's chosen bride?
"She will kill me, just that!" the girl murmurs to herself in terror,
while a second terror shakes her slight frame.
"What are you trembling for?" Ivy demands, shortly. "Are you afraid I
will slap you as I did last night? Well, you richly deserve it, and I
don't know but that I may. Hurry, now, and fix my hair and bring my
_robe de nuit_. It will be broad daylight before I get into bed. And I
want to rise early to find out why Leslie did not come to the ball."
Vera moves about mechanically, obeying orders, but answering never a
word.
A golden gleam has come into the eyes beneath the drooping lashes, a
heavy, deep red spot glows in the center of her death-white cheeks.
Half-frightened as she is at the thought of Ivy's rage when she learns
the truth, she is yet filled with triumph at the thought of her own
vengeance on her enemies, this glorious vengeance that has come to her
unsought.
_She_ will be Leslie Noble's wife, she will queen it over Ivy and her
mother. She will wear satin and laces and diamonds, she will have
French maids to wait on her, and then a sudden anguished recollection
drives the blood from her heart and forces a moan of despair from her
white lips--what is all her triumph since it cannot bring back the dead?
She is moving to the door, having tucked the blue satin counterpane
about Ivy's small figure, when the straw-gold head pops up, and the
frivolous beauty recalls her.
"I say, Vera, is the embroidery finished on my Surah polonaise? Because
I shall want it to-morrow night to wear to Mrs. Montague's _german_.
Tell your mother I shall want it without fail. I am tired of this
shamming sickness. It's nothing but laziness--just _that_. Did you say
it was finished?"
"No," Vera answers her, through her white lips. Ivy springs up
tumultuously in the bed.
"Not finished!" she screams, shrilly.
"Scandalous! I tell you I want it to-morrow night! I will have it--you
hear! Go and tell your mother to get up this instant and go to work at
it. Go and tell her--you hear?"
Vera, with her hands on the latch, and that crimson spot burning dully
on her cheeks, answers with sudden, passionate defiance:
"I will not!"
All in a moment Ivy is out of bed, and her small, claw-like fingers
clutch Vera's arm, the other hand comes down in a ringing slap on
Vera's cheek.
"Take that, little vixen!" she hisses, furiously, "and that, and that!
How dare you defy me?"
Vera pushes her off with a sudden passionate defiance.
"Because I am not afraid of you any longer," she says, sharply.
"Because poor mamma has escaped you. She is free--she is dead!"
"Dead!" Ivy screams in passionate wrath. "Dead--and the embroidery
not finished on my Surah polonaise! It is just like her--the lazy,
ungrateful thing! To go and die just when I needed----"
But Vera slams the door between her and the rest of the heartless
lament, and flies along the hall laughing like some mad thing. In truth
the horrors of this dreadful night have almost unseated her reason. She
shuts and bolts herself into her room, her young heart filled with wild
hatred for her heartless cousin.
"To-morrow I shall have my revenge upon her," she cries, with clenched
hands. "I would not tell her to-night. My triumph would not have been
complete. I will wait--wait until to-morrow, when Leslie Noble will
take me by the hand and tell her to her face that he loves me, and that
I am his wife!"
And her strange, half-maddened laugh filled the little room with weird
echoes.