Mrs. Orme had carefully instructed Mrs. Waul concerning the details
of her daughter's _toilette_, and selected certain articles which she
desired her to wear; but Regina saw her mother no more that day, and
late in the afternoon, when she knocked at the door, soliciting
admission, for a moment only, the mother answered from within:
"No; my child would only unnerve me now, and there is too much at
stake. Uncle Orme understands all that I wish done to-night."
Regina heard the quick restless tread across the floor, betraying the
extreme agitation that prevailed in her mind and heart; and
sorrowfully the girl went back to her uncle, in whose society she
daily found increasing balm and comfort.
The theatre was crowded when Mr. Chesley and Regina entered their
box; and though the latter had several times attended the opera in
New York, the elegance and brilliance of the surrounding scene
surpassed all that she had hitherto witnessed. Mrs. Orme had created
a profound impression by her earlier _rôles_ at this theatre, and the
sudden termination of her engagement by the illness that succeeded
her extraordinarily pathetic and touching "Katherine," had aroused
much sympathy, stimulated curiosity and interest; consequently her
reappearance in a new play, of whose plot no hint had yet been made
public, sufficed to fill the house at an early hour.
Soon after their entrance, Mr. Chesley laid his hand on his
companion's and whispered:
"Will you promise to be very calm and self-controlled, if I show you
your father?"
He felt her hand grow cold, and in reply she merely pressed his
fingers.
"When I hold the curtain slightly aside, look into the second box
immediately opposite, where two gentlemen are sitting. They are your
father and grandfather."
She leaned and looked, and how eagerly, how yearningly her eyes dwelt
upon the handsome face which still closely resembled the Cuthbert of
college days, and the ambrotype she had studied so carefully since
her arrival in Paris.
As she watched her breathing became rapid, laboured, her eyes filled,
her face quivered uncontrollably, and she half rose from her seat,
but Mr. Chesley held her back, and dropped the curtain.
"Oh, uncle! How handsome, how refined, how noble-looking! Poor
darling mother! how could she help giving him her heart? In all my
dreams and fancies, I never even hoped to find him such a man! My
father, my father!"
She trembled so violently that Mr. Chesley said hastily:
"Compose yourself, or I shall be forced to take you home, and your
mother will be displeased; for she particularly desired that I would
watch the effect of the play on those two men opposite."
She leaned back, shut her eyes, and bravely endeavoured to conquer
her agitation, and luckily at this moment the stage-curtain rose.
By the aid of photographs procured in America, and by dint of
personal supervision and suggestions, Mrs. Orme had successfully
arranged the exact reproduction of certain localities: the
college--the campus--the humble cottage of old Mrs. Chesley with its
peculiar porch, whose column caps were carved to represent dogs'
heads--the interior of a hospital, of an orphan asylum, and of the
library at the parsonage.
Leaning far back in his chair, a prey to gloomy and indescribably
bitter reflections, as he accustomed himself to the contemplation of
the fact that the beautiful woman in whom his own fickle wayward
heart had become earnestly interested, would sell herself to the
grey-bearded man beside him, Cuthbert gnawed his silky moustache;
while his father watched with feverish impatience for the opening of
the play, and the sight of his enchantress.
The curtain rose upon a group sitting on the sward before the cottage
door. Minnie Merle in the costume of a very young girl, with her
golden hair all hidden under a thick wig of dark curling locks, that
straggled in childish disorder around her neck and shoulders, while
her sun-bonnet, the veritable green and white gingham of other days,
lay at her feet. Beside her a tall youth, who represented Peleg
Peterson, in the garb of a carpenter, with a tool-box on the ground,
and in his hands a wooden doll, which he was carving for the child.
In the door of the cottage sat the grandmother knitting and nodding,
with white hair shining under her snowy cap-border; and while the
carpenter carved and whistled an old-fashioned ditty, "Meet me by
moonlight alone," the girl in a quavering voice attempted to
accompany him.
Minnie sat with her countenance turned fully to the audience, and
when Cuthbert Laurance's eyes fell on the cottage front, and upon
the face under that cloud of dark elfish locks, he caught his breath,
and his eyes seemed almost starting from their sockets. His hand fell
heavily on his father's knee, and he groaned audibly.
General Laurance turned and whispered:
"For God's sake, what is the matter? Are you ill?"
There was no answer from the son, who tightened his clutch upon the
old man's knee, and watched breathlessly what was passing on the
stage.
The scene was shifted, and now the whole façade of the college rose
before him, with a pretty picture in the foreground; a tall handsome
student, leaning against the trunk of an ancient elm, and talking to
the girl who sat on the turf, with a basket of freshly-ironed shirts
resting on the grass beside her. The identical straw hat, which
Cuthbert had left behind him when summoned home, was upon the
student's head, and as the timid shrinking girl glanced up shyly at
her companion, Cuthbert Laurance almost hissed in his father's ear:
"Great God! It is Minnie herself!"
General Laurance loosened the curtain next the audience, and as the
folds swept down, concealing somewhat the figure of his son, he
whispered:
"What do you mean? Are you drunk, or mad?"
Cuthbert grasped his father's hand, and murmured:
"Don't you know the college? That is Minnie yonder!"
"Minnie? My son, what ails you? Go home, you are ill."
"I tell you, that is Minnie Merle, so surely as there is a God above
us. Mrs. Orme--is Minnie--my Minnie! My wife! She has dramatized her
own life!"
"Impossible, Cuthbert! You are delirious--insane. You are----"
"That woman yonder is my wife! Now I understand why such strange
sweet memories thrilled me when I saw her first in 'Amy Robsart.' The
golden hair disguised her. Oh, father!"
The blank dismay in General Laurance's countenance was succeeded by
an expression of dread, and as he looked from his son's blanched
convulsed face to that of the actress under the arching elms of the
campus, the horrible truth flashed upon him like a lurid glimpse of
Hades. He struck his hand against his forehead, and his grizzled head
sank on his bosom. All that had formerly perplexed him was hideously
apparent, startlingly clear; and he saw the abyss to which she had
lured him, and understood the motives that had prompted her.
After some moments he pushed his seat back beyond the range of
observation from the audience, and beckoned his son to follow his
example, but Cuthbert stood leaning upon the back of his chair, with
eyes riveted on the play.
The courtship, the clandestine meetings, the interview in which Peleg
intruded upon the lovers, the revelation to the grandmother, were
accurately delineated, and in each scene the girl grew taller, by
some arrangement of the skirts, which were at first very short, while
she appeared in a sitting posture.
When the secret marriage was decided upon, and the party left the
cottage by night, Cuthbert turned, rested one hand on his father's
shoulder, and as the scene changed to the quiet parsonage, he pressed
heavily, and muttered:
"Even the very dress that she wore that day! And--there is the black
agate! On her hand--where I put it! Don't you know it? How she turns
it!"
In the tableau of the marriage ceremony she had taken her position
with reference to the locality of the box, and as near it as
possible, and in the glare of the footlights the ring was clearly
revealed.
Lifting his lorgnette, General Laurance inspected the white hand he
had once kissed so rapturously, and by the aid of the lenses he
recognized the costly ring, the valued heirloom, for the recovery of
which he had offered five hundred dollars. Had he still cherished a
shadowy hope that Cuthbert was suffering from some fearful delusion,
the sight of that singular and fatal ring utterly overthrew the last
lingering vestige of doubt. Stunned, miserable, dimly foreboding some
overwhelming _dénouement_, he sat in stony stillness, knowing that
this was but the prelude to some dire catastrophe.
When the telegram, arrived and the young husband took his bride in
his arms, the girlish face was lifted, and the passionate gleam of
the dilating brown eyes sent a strange thrill to the hearts of both
father and son. Vowing to return very soon and claim her, the husband
tore himself away, and as he vanished through a side door near the
box, Minnie followed, stretched out her arms, and looking up full at
its two tenants she breathed her wild passionate prayer which rang
with indescribable pathos through that vast building:
"My husband! My husband--do not forsake me!"
Cuthbert put his hand over his eyes, and but for the voices on the
stage his shuddering groan would have been heard outside the box. In
the scene where Peleg's advances were indignantly repulsed, and his
threats to unleash the bloodhounds of slander, hunting her to infamy,
were fully developed, Cuthbert seemed to rouse himself from his
stupor and a different expression crossed his features.
Skilfully the part played by General Laurance in bribing Peleg, and
returning the letters of the wretched wife, the disgraceful threats,
the offers to buy up and cancel her conjugal claims, were all
presented.
When the grandmother departed, and the child-wife secretly made her
way to New York, seeking service that would secure her bread, and
still hopeful of her husband's return, Cuthbert grasped his father's
arm and hissed in his ear:
"You deceived me! You told me she went with that villain to
California to hide her disgrace!"
Cowed and powerless, the old man sat, recognizing the faithful
portraiture of his own dark schemes in those early days of the
trouble, and growing numb with a vague prophetic dread that the
foundations of the world were crumbling away.
His son suddenly drew his chair a little forward and sat down, his
elbow on his knee, his head on his hand; his gaze fixed on the woman
who had contrived to reproduce even the fall that caused her removal
to the hospital.
The ensuing scene represented the young mother, sitting on a cot in
the hospital, with a babe lying across her knees, and the storm of
horror, hate, and defiance with which she spurned Peleg from her,
calling on heaven to defend her and her baby, and denouncing the
treachery of General Laurance who had bribed Peterson to insult and
defame her.
As he was dragged from the apartment, vowing that neither she nor her
child should be permitted to enjoy the name to which they were
entitled, the feeble woman, shorn of her brown locks, and wearing a
close cap, lifted her infant, and with streaming eyes implored heaven
to defend it and its hapless mother from cruel persecution.
In the wonderful power with which she proclaimed her deathless
loyalty to the husband of her love, and her conviction that God would
interpose to shield his helpless child, the audience recognized the
fervour and pathos of the rendition, and the applause that greeted
her, as she bowed sobbing over her baby, told how the hearts of her
hearers thrilled.
The curtain fell, and Cuthbert's eyes, gleaming like steel, turned to
his father's countenance.
"Is that true? Dare you deny it?"
The old man only stared blankly at the carpet on the floor, and his
son's fingers closed like a vice around his arm.
"You have practised an infernal imposture upon me! You told me she
followed him, and that the child was his."
"He said so."
General Laurance's voice was husky, and a grey hue had settled upon
his features.
"You paid him to proclaim the base falsehood! You whom I trusted so
fully. Father, where is my child?"
No answer; and the curtain rose on the fair young mother, came
forward with her own golden hair in full splendour.
Involuntarily the audience testified their recognition of the
beautiful actress who now appeared for the first time, looking as
when she made her _début_ long ago in Paris. She was at the asylum,
with a young child clinging to her finger, tottering at her side, and
as she guided its steps, and hushed it in her arms, many mothers
among the spectators felt the tears rush to their eyes.
Walking with the infant cradled on her bosom, she passed twice across
the stage, then paused beneath the box, and murmured:
"Papa's baby--Papa's own precious baby!" and her splendid eyes humid
with tears looked full, straight into those of her husband.
It was the first time they had met during the evening, and something
she saw in that quivering face made her heart ache with the old
numbing agony. Cuthbert could scarcely restrain himself from leaping
down upon the stage and clasping her in his arms; but she moved away,
and the sorely smitten husband bowed his face in his hand, luckily
shielded from public view by the position in which he sat.
The dinner scene ensued, and the abrupt announcement of the second
marriage. The anguish and despair of the repudiated wife were
portrayed with a vividness, a marvellous eloquence and passionate
fervour that surpassed all former exhibitions of her genius, and the
people rose, and applauded, as audiences sometimes do, when the
magnetic wave rolls from the heart and brain on the stage to those of
the men and women who watch and listen completely _en rapport_.
The life of the actress began, the struggle to provide for her child,
the constant care to elude discovery, the application for legal
advice, the statement of her helplessness, the attempt to secure the
license; all were represented, and at last the meeting with her
husband in the theatre.
Gradually the pathos melted away, she was the stern relentless
outraged wife, intent only upon revenge. She spared not even the
interview in which the faithless husband sought her presence; and as
Cuthbert watched her, repeating the sentences that had so galled his
pride, he asked himself how he had failed to recognize his own wife?
In the meeting with the child of the second marriage, her wild
exultation, her impassioned invocation of Nemesis, was one of the
most effective passages in the drama; and it caused a shiver to creep
like a serpent over the body of the father, who pitied so tenderly
the afflicted Maud.
As the scheme of saying her own daughter, by sacrificing herself in a
nominal marriage with the man whom she hated and loathed so
intensely, developed itself, a perceptible chill fell upon the
audience; the unnaturalness of the crime asserted itself.
While she rendered almost literally the interviews at Pozzuoli and at
Naples, Cuthbert glanced at his father, and saw a purplish flush
steal from neck to forehead, but the old man's eyes never quitted the
floor. He seemed incapable of moving, Gorgonized by the beautiful
Medusa whose invectives against him were scathing, terrible.
As the play approached its close and the preparation for the
marriage, even the details of the settlement were narrated, suspense
reached its acme. Then came the letters of reprieve, the deliverance
from the bondage of Peterson's vindictive malice, the power of
establishing her claim; and when she wept her thanksgiving for
salvation, many wept in sympathy; while Regina, borne away in
breathless admiration of her mother's wonderful genius, sobbed
unrestrainedly.
When the letters of Peterson and of the lawyer were read, mapping the
line of prosecution for the recovery of the wife's rights, the father
slowly raised his eyes, and, looking drearily at his son, muttered:
"It is all over with us, Cuthbert. She has won; we are ruined. Let us
go home."
He attempted to rise, but with a glare of mingled wrath and scorn his
son held him back.
The last scene was reached; the triumphant vindication of wife and
child, the condemnation of the two who had conspired to defraud them,
the foreclosure of the mortgages, the penury of the proud
aristocrats, and the disgrace that overwhelmed them.
Finally the second wife and afflicted child came to crave leniency,
and the husband and the father pleaded for pardon; but with a
malediction upon the house that caused her wretchedness, the
broken-hearted woman retreated to the palatial home she had at last
secured, and under its upas shadow died in the arms of her daughter.
Her play contained many passages which afforded her scope for the
manifestation of her extraordinary power, and at its close the people
would not depart until she had appeared in acknowledgment of their
plaudits.
Brilliantly beautiful she looked, with the glittering light of
triumph in her large mesmeric eyes, a rich glow mantling her cheeks,
and rouging her lips; while in heavy folds the black velvet robe
swept around her queenly figure. How stately, elegant, unapproachable
she seemed to the man who leaned forward, gazing with all his heart
in his eyes upon the wife of his youth, the only woman he had ever
really loved, now his most implacable foe!
The audience dispersed, and Cuthbert and his father sat like those
old Roman Senators, awaiting the breaking of the wave of savage
vengeance that was rolling in upon them.
At length General Laurance struggled to his feet, and mechanically
quitted the theatre, followed by his son. Reaching the carriage, they
entered, and Cuthbert ordered the coachman to drive to Mrs. Orme's
hotel.
"Not now! For God's sake, not to-night," groaned the old man.
"To-night, before another hour, this awful imposture must be
confessed, and reparation offered. I sinned against Minnie, but not
premeditatedly. You deceived me. You made me believe her the foul,
guilty thing you wished her. You intercepted her letters, you never
let me know that I had a child neglected and forsaken; and, father,
God may forgive you, but I never can. My proud, lovely Minnie! My own
wife!"
Cuthbert buried his face in his hands, and his strong frame shook as
he pictured what might have been, contrasting it with the hideous
reality of his loveless and miserable marriage with the banker's
daughter, who threatened him with social disgrace.
During that drive General Laurance felt that he was approaching some
offended and avenging Fury, that he was drifting down to ruin,
powerless to lift his hand and stay even for an instant the fatal
descent; that he was gradually petrifying, and things seemed vague
and intangible.
When they reached the hotel, they were ushered into the salon already
brilliantly lighted as if in expectation of their arrival. Cuthbert
paced the floor; his father sank into a chair, resting his hands on
the top of his cane.
After a little while, a silk curtain at the lower end of the room was
lifted, and Mrs. Orme came slowly forward. How her lustrous eyes
gleamed as she stood in the centre of the apartment, scorn, triumph,
hate, all struggling for mastery in her lovely face.
"Gentlemen, you have read the handwriting on the wall. Do you come
for defiance, or capitulation?"
General Laurance lifted his head, but instantly dropped it on his
bosom; he seemed to have aged suddenly, prematurely. Cuthbert
advanced, stood close beside the woman whose gaze intensified as he
drew near her, and said brokenly:
"Minnie, I come merely to exonerate myself before God and man. Heaven
is my witness, that I never knew I had a child in America until
to-night, that until to-night I believed you were in California
living as the wife of that base villain Peterson, who wrote
announcing himself your accepted lover. From the day I kissed you
good-bye at the cottage, I never received a line, a word, a message
from you. When I doubted my father's and Peterson's statements
concerning you, and wrote two letters, one to the President of the
college, one to a resident professor, seeking some information of
your whereabouts, in order at least to visit you once more, when I
became twenty-one, both answered me that you had forfeited your fair
name, had been forsaken by your grandmother, and had gone away from
the village accompanied by Peterson, who was regarded as your
favoured lover. I ceased to doubt, I believed you false. I knew no
better until to-night. Father, my honour demands that the truth be
spoken at last. Will you corroborate my statement?"
Pale and proud, he stood erect, and she saw that a consciousness of
rectitude at least in purpose, sustained him.
"Mrs. Orme----" began General Laurance.
"Away with such shams and masks! Mrs. Orme died on the theatrical
boards to-night, and henceforth the world knows me as Minnie
Laurance! Ah! by the grace of God! Minnie Laurance!"
She laughed derisively, and held up her fair slender hand, exhibiting
the black agate with its grinning skull lighted by the glow of the
large radiant diamonds.
"Minnie, I never dreamed you were his wife; oh, my God! how horrible
it all is!"
He seemed bewildered, and his son exclaimed:
"Who is responsible for the separation from my wife? You, father, or
I?"
"I did it, my son. I meant it for the best. I naturally believed you
had been entrapped into a shameful alliance, and as any other father
would have done, I was ready to credit the unfavourable estimate
derived from the man Peterson. He told me that Minnie had belonged to
him until she and her grandmother conceived the scheme of inveigling
you into a secret marriage; and afterward he informed me of the birth
of his child. I did not pay him to claim it, but when he pronounced
it his, I gave him money to pay the expenses of the two whom he
claimed to California; and I supposed until to-night that both had
accompanied him. I did not manufacture statements, I only gladly
credited them; and believing all that man told me, I felt justified
in intercepting letters addressed to you by the woman whom he claimed
as mother of his child. Madame, do not blame Cuthbert. I did it all."
The abject wretchedness of his mien disconcerted her; robbed her of
half her anticipated triumph. How could she exult in trampling upon a
bruised worm which made no attempt to crawl from beneath her heel? He
sat, the image of hopeless dejection, his hands crossed on the gold
head of his cane.
Mrs. Orme walked to the end of the room, lifted the curtain, and at a
signal Regina joined her. Clasping the girl's fingers firmly she led
her forward, and when to front of the old man, she exclaimed:
"René Laurance, blood triumphs over malice, perjury, and bribery;
whose is this child? Is she Merle, Peterson, or Laurance?"
Standing before them, in a dress of some soft snowy shining fabric,
neither silk nor crape, with white starry jasmines in her raven hair
and upon her bosom, Regina seemed some angelic visitant sent to still
the strife of human passions, so lovely and pure was her colourless
face; and as General Laurance looked up at her, he rose suddenly.
"Pauline Laurance, my sister; the exact, the wonderful image!
Laurance, all Laurance, from head to foot."
He dropped back into the chair, and smiled vacantly.
Cuthbert sprang forward, his face all aglow, his eyes radiant, and
eloquent.
"Minnie, is this indeed _our child?_ Your daughter--and mine?"
He extended his arms, but she waved him back.
"Do not touch her! How dare you? This is my baby, my darling, my
treasure. This is the helpless little one, whose wails echoed in a
hospital ward; who came into the world cursed with the likeness of
her father. This is the child you disowned, persecuted; this is the
baby God gave to you and to me; but you forfeited your claim long
years ago, and she has no father, only his name henceforth. She is
wholly, entirely her mother's blue-eyed baby. You have your Maud."
As she spoke a wealth of proud tenderness shone in her eyes, which
rested on the lily face of her child, and at that moment how she
gloried in her perfect loveliness.
Her husband groaned, and clasped his hand over his face to conceal
the agony that was intolerable, and in an instant, ere the mother
could suspect or frustrate her design, the girl broke from her hand,
sprang forward and threw herself on Cuthbert's bosom, clasping her
arms around his neck, and sobbing:
"My father! Take me just once to your heart! Call me daughter; let
me once in my life hear the blessed words from my own father's lips!"
He strained her to his bosom, and kissed the pure face, while tears
trickled over his cheeks and dripped down on hers. Her mother made a
step forward to snatch her back, but at sight of his tears, of the
close embrace in which he held her, the wife turned away, unable to
look upon the spectacle and preserve her composure.
A heavy fall startled all present, and a glance showed them General
Laurance lying insensible on the carpet.