A MIDNIGHT TETE-A-TETE.
Mollie Dane sat alone in her pretty room. A bright fire burned in the
grate. Old Mme. Walraven liked coal-fires, and would have them
throughout the house. It was very late--past midnight--but the gas
burned full flare, its garish flame subdued by globes of tinted glass,
and Mollie, on a low stool before the fire, was still in all the
splendor of her pink silk dinner-dress, her laces, her pearls.
Mollie's considering-cap was on, and Mollie's dainty brows were
contracted, and the rosebud month ominously puckered. Miss Dane was
doing what she did not often do--thinking--and the thoughts chasing one
another through her flighty brain were evidently the reverse of
pleasant.
"So I'm really married," mused the young lady--"really and truly
married!--and I've been thinking all along it was only a sham ceremony."
She lifted up her left hand and looked at the shining wedding-ring.
"Ernest! Such a pretty name! And that's all I know about him. Oh, who
is he, among all the men I know--who? It's not Doctor Oleander--I'm
certain it's not, although the height and shape are the same; and I
don't think it's Sardonyx, and I know it's not Hugh Ingelow--handsome
Hugh!--because he hasn't the pluck, and he's a great deal too lazy. If
it's the lawyer or the doctor, I'll have a divorce, certain. If it were
the artist--more's the pity it's not--I--well, I shouldn't ask for a
divorce. I do like Hugh! I like him more and more every day, and I
almost wish I hadn't played that shameful trick upon him. I know he
loves me dearly--poor little, mad-headed me! And I--oh! how could I
think to marry Sir Roger Trajenna, knowing in my heart I loved Hugh?
Dear, dear! it's such a pity I can't be good, and take to love-making,
and marriage, and shirt-buttons, like other girls! But I can't; it's not
in me. I was born a rattle-pate, and I don't see how any one can blame
me for letting 'nater caper.'"
She rose up impatiently and began pacing the room--always her first
impulse in moments of perplexity.
"I'm a mystery and a puzzle to myself and to everybody else. I don't
know who I am, nor what my real name may be--if I have any right to a
name! I don't know what I am to this Mr. Walraven, and I don't know who
that mysterious woman, Miriam, is. I don't know anything. I have a
husband, and I don't know him--shouldn't recognize him if I met him
face to face this instant. I'm like the mysterious orphans in the
story-books, and I expect it will turn out I have a duke for a father,
somewhere or other."
Miss Dane walked to the window, drew the curtain, and looked out.
The full April moon, round and white, shone down in silvery radiance
upon the deserted avenue; the sky was aglitter with myriad stars; the
rattling of belated vehicles came, faint and far off, on the windless
night.
No-one was visible--not even a stray "guardian of the night," treading
his solitary round--and Mollie, after one glance at the starry concave,
was about to drop the curtain and retire, when a tall, dark figure came
fluttering up the street, pausing before the Walraven mansion, and
gazing up earnestly at its palatial front.
Mollie recognized that towering form instantly, and, impulsively opening
the sash, she leaned forward and called:
"Miriam!"
The woman heard her, responded, and advanced.
Mollie leaned further out.
"Have you come to see me?"
"I should like to see you. I heard you had returned, and came here,
though I did not expect to meet you at this hour."
"Wait one moment," said Mollie; "I will go down and let you in."
She closed the window and flew down-stairs, opened the house door
softly, and beckoned.
Miriam entered. Ten minutes later, and they were safely closeted in the
young lady's cozy room.
"Sit down, Aunt Miriam, and take off your shawl. You look cold and
wretched and half starved."
The woman turned her hollow eyes mournfully upon her. They were indeed a
contrast--the bright vision in the rose silk dress, the floating amber
curls, the milky pearls, the foamy lace, and the weird woman in the
wretched rags, with sunken cheeks and hollow, spectral eyes.
"I am cold and wretched and half starved," she said, in a harsh
voice--"a miserable, homeless outcast, forsaken of God and man. My bed
is a bundle of filthy straw, my food a crust or a bone, my garments rags
from the gutters. And yet I accept my fate, since you are rich and well
and happy."
"My poor, poor Miriam! Let me go and get you something to eat, and a
glass of wine to refresh you. It is dreadful to see any human being so
destitute."
She started impetuously up, but Miriam stretched forth her hand to
detain her, her fierce eyes flaming up.
"Not half so dreadful, Mollie Dane, as the eating the bread or drinking
the cup of Carl Walraven! No; I told him before, and I tell you now, I
would die in a kennel, like a stray dog, before I would accept help from
him."
"Miriam!"
Miriam made an impatient gesture.
"Don't let us talk about me. Let us talk about yourself. It is my first
chance since you came here. You are well and happy, are you not? You
look both."
"I am well and I am happy; that is, as happy as I can be, shrouded in
mystery. Miriam, I have been thinking about myself. I have learned to
think, of late, and I would give a year of my life to know who I am."
"What do you want to know?" Miriam asked, gloomily.
"Who I am; what my name may be; who were my parents--everything that I
ought to know."
"Why do you speak to me about it?"
"Because you know, I am certain; because you can tell me, if you will.
Tell me, Miriam--tell me!"
She leaned forward, her ringed hands clasped, her blue eyes lighted and
eager, her pretty face aglow. But Miriam drew back with a frown.
"I have nothing to tell you, Mollie--nothing that would make you better
or happier to hear. Be content and ask no questions."
"I can't be content, and I must ask questions!" the girl cried,
passionately. "If you cared for me, as you seem to, you would tell me!
What is Mr. Walraven to me? Why has he brought me here?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me. He says he took a fancy to me, seeing me play
'Fanchon' at K----, and brought me here and adopted me. A very likely
story! No, Miriam; I am silly enough, Heaven knows, but I am not quite
so silly as that. He came after me because you sent him, and because I
have some claim on him he dare not forego. What is it, Miriam? Am I his
daughter?"
Miriam sat and stared at her a moment in admiring wonder, then her dark,
gaunt face relaxed into a grim smile.
"What a sharp little witch it is! His daughter, indeed! What do you
think about it yourself? Does the voice of nature speak in your filial
heart, or is the resemblance between you so strong?"
Mollie shook her sunny curls.
"The 'voice of nature' has nothing to say in the matter, and I am no more
like him than a white chick is like a mastiff. But it might be so, you
know, for all that."
"I know. Would it make you any happier to know you were his daughter?"
"I don't know," said Mollie, thoughtfully. "I dare say not. For, if I
were his daughter and had a right to his name, I would probably bear
it, and be publicly acknowledged as such before now; and if I am his
daughter, with no right to his name, I know I would not live ten-minutes
under the same roof with him after finding it out."
"Sharp little Mollie! Ask no questions, then, and I'll tell you no lies.
Take the goods the gods provide, and be content."
"But, Miriam, are you really my aunt?"
"Yes; that much is true."
"And your name is Dane?"
"It is."
"And my mother was your sister, and I bear my mother's name?"
The dark, weather-beaten face of the haggard woman lighted up with a
fiery glow, and into either eye leaped a devil.
"Mollie Dane, if you ever want me to speak to you again, never breathe
the name of your mother. Whatever she did, and whatever she was, the
grave has closed over her, and there let her lie. I never want to hear
her name this side of eternity."
Mollie looked almost frightened; she shrunk away with a wistful little
sigh.
"I am never to know, then, if seems, and I am to go on through life a
cheat and a lie. It is very hard. People have found out already I am not
what I seem."
"How?" sharply.
"Why, the night I was deluded from home, it was by a letter signed
'Miriam' purporting to come from you, saying you were dying, and that
you wanted to tell me all. I went, and walked straight into the
cunningest trap that ever was set for a poor little girl."
"You have no idea from whom that letter came?"
"Not the slightest. I am pretty sure, though, it came from my husband."
"Your--what?"
"My husband, Miriam! You didn't know Miss Dane was a respectable married
woman, did you? It's true, however. I've been married over a month."
There was no doubting the face with which it was said. Miriam sat
staring, utterly confounded.
"Good heavens! Married! You never mean it, Mollie?"
"I do mean it. It's an accomplished fact, Mrs. Miriam Dane, and there's
my wedding-ring."
She held up her left hand. Among the opals, and pearls, and pale
emeralds flashing there, gleamed a little circlet of plain gold--badge
of woman's servitude.
"Married!" Miriam gasped, in indescribable consternation. "I thought you
were to marry Sir Roger Trajenna?"
"So I was--so I would have, if I had been let alone. But that letter
from you came--that forgery, you know--and I was carried off and
married, willy-nilly, to somebody else. Who that somebody else is, I
don't know."
"You don't know?"
"Haven't the slightest idea! I've a good mind to tell you the story. I
haven't told any one yet, and the weight of a secret a month old is
getting a little too much for me. It would be a relief to get some one
else to keep it for me, and I fancy you could keep a secret as well as
any one else I know."
"I can keep your secret, Mollie. Go on."
So Mollie began and related the romantic story of that fortnight she had
passed away from home.
"And you consented to marry him," Miriam exclaimed, when she had got
that far--"you consented to marry a man totally unknown to you, whose
face you had not even seen, whose name you did not even know, for the
sake of freedom? Mollie, you're nothing but a miserable little coward,
after all!"
"Perhaps so," said Mollie, defiantly. "But I would do it again, and
twice as much, for freedom. Think of being cooped up in four stifling
walls, shut in from the blessed sunshine and fresh air of heaven. I tell
you that man would have kept me there until now, and should have gone
stark, staring mad in half the time. Oh, dear!" cried Mollie,
impatiently, "I wish I was a gypsy, free and happy, to wander about all
day long, singing in the sunshine, to sleep at night under the waving
trees, to tell fortunes, and wear a pretty scarlet cloak, and never
know, when I got up in the morning, where I would lie down at night.
It's nothing but a nuisance, and a trouble, and a bother, being rich,
and dressing for dinner, and going to the opera and two or three parties
of a night, and being obliged to talk and walk and eat and sleep by line
and plummet. I hate it all!"
"You're tired of it, then?" Miriam asked, with a curious smile.
"Yes; just now I am. The fit will pass away, I suppose, as other similar
fits have passed."
"I wonder you never take it into your head to go back upon the stage.
You liked that life?"
"Liked it? Yes: and I will, too," said Mollie, recklessly, "some day,
when I'm more than usually aggravated. It strikes me, however, I should
like to find out my husband first."
"Finish your story. You married this masked man?"
"Yes; that very night, about midnight, we were married. Sarah came to me
early in the evening, and told me to be ready, that the clergyman would
be there, and that I was to be wedded under my Christian name, Mary,
alone. I still wore the wedding-robes in which I was to have been made
Lady Trajenna. To these a white silk mask, completely hiding my face,
was added, and I was led forth by my masked bridegroom into another
apartment, and stood face to face with a portly, reverend gentleman of
most clerical aspect and most alarmed face. I thought he had a familiar
look, but in the confusion of such a moment I could not place him. I
know him now, though--it was the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh, of St.
Pancras'. I've heard him preach dozens of times."
"How came he to lend himself to such an irregular proceeding?"
"By force, as I did. He was carried off in much the same fashion, and
scared pretty nearly out of his wits--married us to get free--like me
again. At the conclusion of the ceremony, I returned with Sarah to the
inner room, and the Reverend Mr. Rashleigh was safely taken home."
There was a pause. Mollie sat looking with knitted brows into the fire.
"Well?" questioned Miriam, sharply.
"I stayed there a week," went on Mollie, hurriedly. "It was part of the
compact, and if he was to keep his, and liberate me, I was to remain
quietly as long as I had promised. But it was not so long in passing. I
had the range of two or three rooms--all with carefully closed blinds,
however--and I had a piano and plenty of books, and as much of Miss
Sarah Grant's society as I chose. There was nothing to be got out of
her, however, and I tried hard enough, goodness knows. You might as well
wring a dry sponge."
"And the man you married?"
"Oh, he was there, too--off and on everyday; but he kept me as much in
the dark as Sarah. He always persisted in speaking French to me--that I
might fail to recognize his voice, I dare say; and he spoke it as
fluently as a Frenchman. But he was really an agreeable companion, could
talk about everything I liked to talk about, could play the piano to a
charm, and I should have liked him immensely if he had not been my
husband, and if he had not worn that odious mask. Do you know, Miriam,"
flashing a sudden look up, "if he had taken off that mask, and showed me
the handsome face of one of my rejected suitors I did not absolutely
abhor, I think I should have consented to stay with him always. He was
so nice to talk to, and I liked his bold stroke for a wife--so much in
the 'Dare-Devil Dick' style. But I would have been torn to pieces before
I'd have dropped a hint to that effect."
"If it had been Doctor Oleander, would you have consented to stay with
him as his wife?"
"Doctor Oleander? No. Didn't I say if it were some one I did not
absolutely abhor? I absolutely and utterly and altogether abhor and
detest Doctor Oleander!"
"What is that? Some one is listening."
Miriam had started in alarm to her feet; Mollie rose up also, and stood
hearkening. There had been a suppressed sound, like a convulsive sneeze,
outside the door. Mollie flung it wide in an instant. The hall lamp
poured down its subdued light all along the stately corridor, on
pictures and statues and cabinets, but no living thing was visible.
"There is no one," said Mollie. "It was cats or rats, or the rising wind.
Every one in the house is asleep."
She closed the door and went back to the fire. As she did so, a face
peeped out from behind a great, carved Indian cabinet, not far from the
door--a face lighted with a diabolical smile of triumph.