_POPULAR NOVELS_
By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes.
All published uniform with this volume, at $1.50, and sent _free_ by
mail on receipt of price.
* * * * *
I.— DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.
II.— ’LENA RIVERS.
III.— TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.
IV.— MARIAN GREY.
V.— MEADOW BROOK.
VI.— ENGLISH ORPHANS.
VII.— DORA DEANE.
VIII.— COUSIN MAUDE.
IX.— HOMESTEAD ON THE HILLSIDE.
* * * * *
Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books
are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the
sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention
to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.
CARLETON, Publisher,
New York.
MARIAN GREY;
OR, THE
HEIRESS OF REDSTONE HALL.
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,
AUTHOR OF “’LENA RIVERS,” “TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE,” ETC., ETC.
[Illustration: logo]
NEW YORK:
_Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway_.
M DCCC LXV.
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1863,
BY DANIEL HOLMES,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Northern District of
New York.
TO
N. C. MILLER,
OF NEW YORK,
MY MUCH ESTEEMED FRIEND,
AND
FORMER PUBLISHER,
THIS STORY OF MARIAN GREY
IS RESPECTFULLY
DEDICATED,
BY
THE AUTHOR
MARIAN GREY.
CHAPTER I.
GUARDIAN AND WARD.
The night was dark and the clouds black and heavy which hung over
Redstone Hall, whose massive walls loomed up through the darkness like
some huge sentinel keeping guard over the spacious grounds by which it
was surrounded. Within the house all was still, and without there was no
sound to break the midnight silence save the sighing of the autumnal
wind through the cedar trees, or the roar of the river, which, swollen
by the recent heavy rains, went rushing on to meet its twin sister at a
point well known in Kentucky, where our story opens, as “The Forks of
the Elkhorn.” From one of the lower windows a single light was shining,
and its dim rays fell upon the face of a white-haired man, who moaned
uneasily in his sleep, as if pursued by some tormenting fear. At last,
as the old fashioned clock struck off the hour of twelve, he awoke, and
glancing nervously toward the corner, whence the sound proceeded, he
whispered, “Have you come again, Ralph Lindsey, to tell me of my sin?”
“What is it, Mr. Raymond?” and a young girl glided to the bedside of the
old man, who, taking her hand in his, the better to assure himself of
her presence, said, “Marian, is there nothing in that corner
yonder—nothing with silvery hair?”
“Nothing,” answered Marian, “nothing but the lamplight shining on the
face of the old clock. Did you think there was some one here?”
“Yes—no. Marian, do you believe the dead can come back to us again—when
we have done them a wrong—the dead who are buried in the sea, I mean?”
Marian shuddered involuntarily, and cast a timid look toward the shadowy
corner, then, conquering her weakness, she answered, “No, the dead
cannot come back. But why do you talk so strangely to-night?”
The old man hesitated a moment ere he replied.—“The time has come for me
to speak, so that your father can rest in peace. He has been with me
more than once in this very room, and to-night I fancied he was here
again, asking why I had dealt so falsely with his child.”
“Falsely!” cried Marian, kissing tenderly the hand of the only parent
she had ever known. “Not falsely, I am sure, for you have been most kind
to me.”
“And yet, Marian,” he said, “I have done you a wrong—a wrong which has
eaten into my very soul, and worn my life away. I did not intend to
speak of it to-night, but something prompts me to do so, and you must
listen. On that night when your father died, and when all in the ship,
save ourselves and the watch, were asleep, I laid my hand on his
forehead, and swore to be faithful to my trust. Do you hear,
Marian—faithful to my trust. You don’t know what that meant, but _I_
know, and I’ve broken my oath to the dying—and from that grave in the
ocean he comes to me sometimes, and with the same look upon his face
which it wore that Summer afternoon when we laid him in the sea, he asks
why justice has not been done to you. Wait, Marian, until I have
finished,” he continued, as he saw her about to speak; “I know I have
not long to live, and I would make amends; but, Marian, I would
rather—oh, so much rather, you should not know the truth until I’m dead.
You will forgive me then more readily, won’t you, Marian? Promise me you
will forgive the poor old man who has loved you so much—loved you, if
possible, better than he loved his only son.”
He paused for her reply, and half bewildered, Marian answered, “I don’t
know what you mean—but if, as you say, a wrong has been done, no matter
how great that wrong may be, it is freely forgiven for the sake of what
you’ve been to me.”
The sick man wound his arm lovingly around her, and bringing her nearer
to him, he said, “Bless you, Marian—bless you for that. It makes my
deathbed easier. I will leave it in writing—my confession. I cannot tell
it now, for I could not bear to see upon your face that you despised me.
You wrote to Frederic, and told him to come quickly?”
“Yes,” returned Marian, “I said you were very sick and wished to see him
at once.”
For a moment there was silence in the room; then, removing his arm from
the neck of the young girl, the old man raised himself upon his elbow
and looking her steadily in the face, said, “Marian, could you love my
son Frederic?”
The question was a strange one, but Marian Lindsey was accustomed to
strange modes of speech in her guardian, and with a slightly heightened
color she answered quietly, “I do love him as a brother—”
“Yes, but I would have you love him as something nearer,” returned her
guardian. “Ever since I took you for my child it has been the cherished
object of my life that you should be his wife.”
There was a nervous start and an increase of color in Marian’s face, for
the idea, though not altogether disagreeable, was a new one to her, but
she made no reply, and her guardian continued, “I am selfish in this
wish, though not wholly so. I know you could be happy with him, and in
no other way can my good name be saved from disgrace. Promise me,
Marian, that you will be his wife very soon after I am dead, and before
all Kentucky is talking of my sin. You are not too young. You will be
sixteen in a few months, and many marry as early as that.”
“Does _he_ wish it?” asked Marian, timidly; and her guardian replied,
“He has known you but little of late, but when he sees you here at home,
and learns how gentle and good you are, he cannot help loving you as you
deserve.”
“Yes he can,” answered Marian with childish simplicity. “No man as
handsome as Frederic ever loved a girl with an ugly face, and I heard
him tell Will Gordon, when he spent a vacation here, that I was a nice
little girl, but altogether too freckled, too red-headed, and scrawny,
ever to make a handsome woman,” and Marian’s voice trembled slightly as
she recalled a speech which had wrung from her many tears.
To this remark Col. Raymond made no reply—for he too, had cause to doubt
Frederic’s willingness to marry a girl who boasted so few personal
charms as did Marian Lindsey then. Rumors, too, he had heard, of a
peerlessly beautiful creature, with raven hair and eyes of deepest
black, who at the north kept his son a captive to her will. But this
could not be; Frederick must marry Marian, for in no other way could the
name of Raymond be saved from a disgrace, or the vast possessions he
called his be kept in the family, and he was about to speak again when a
heavy tread in the hall announced the approach of some one, and a moment
after, Aunt Dinah, the housekeeper, appeared. “She had come to sit up
with her marster,” she said, “and let Miss Marian go to bed, where
children like her ought to be.”
At first Marian objected, for though scarcely conscious of it herself,
she was well enough pleased to sit where she was and hear her guardian
talk of Frederic and of what she had no hope would ever be; but when
Aunt Dinah suggested to her that sitting up so much would make her look
yellow and old, she yielded, for Frederic was a passionate admirer of
beauty, and she well knew that she had none to lose. Kissing her
guardian good night, she hurried to her chamber, but not to sleep, for
the tumult of thought which her recent conversation had awakened kept
her restless and wakeful. Under ordinary circumstances she would have
wondered what the wrong could be at which Col. Raymond had hinted, but
now she scarcely remembered it, or if it occurred to her at all, she
instantly dismissed it from her mind as some trivial thing which the
weak state of her guardian’s mind magnified into a serious matter.
Thirteen years before our story opens, Marian had embarked with her
father on board a ship which sailed from Liverpool to New York. Of that
father she remembered little save that he was very poor, and that he
talked of his poverty as if it were something of which he was proud.
Pleasant memories, though, she had of an American gentleman who used
often to take her on his lap, and tell her of the land to which she was
going; and when one day her father laid him down in his berth, with the
fever as they said, she remembered how the kind man had cared for him,
holding his aching head and watching by him till he died;—then, when it
was all over, he had taken her upon his knee and told her she was to be
his little girl now, and he bade her call him father—telling her how her
own dead parent had asked him to care for her, who in all the wide world
had no near relative. Something, too, she remembered about an old coarse
bag, which had troubled her new father very much, and which he had
finally put in the bottom of his trunk, throwing overboard a few
articles of clothing to make room for it. The voyage was long and
stormy, but they reached New York at last, and he took her to his
home—not Redstone Hall, but an humble farm-house on the Hudson, where he
had always lived. Frederic was a boy then—a dark-haired handsome boy of
eleven, and even now she shuddered as she remembered how he used to
tease and worry her. Still he liked her, she was sure—and the first real
grief which she remembered was on that rainy day when, with an extra
pull at her long curls, he bade her good-by and went off to a distant
boarding school.
Col. Raymond, her guardian, was growing rich, and people said he must
have entered into some fortunate speculation while abroad, for, since
his return, prosperity had attended every movement; and when, six months
after Frederic’s departure, he went to Kentucky and purchased Redstone
Hall, then rather a dilapidated building, Mrs. Burt, his housekeeper,
had wondered where all his money came from, when he used to be so poor.
They had moved to Kentucky when Marian was five and a half years old—and
now, after ten years’ improvement, there was not in the whole county so
beautiful a spot as Redstone Hall, with its terraced grounds, its
graveled walks, its plats of grass, its grand old trees, its creeping
vines, its flowering shrubs and handsome park in the rear. And this was
Marian’s home;—here she had lived a rather secluded life, for only when
Frederic was with them did they see much company, and all the knowledge
she had of the world was what she gleaned from books or learned from the
negress Dinah, who, “having lived with the very first families,”
frequently entertained her young mistress with stories of “the quality,”
and the dinner parties at which her presence was once so indispensable.
And Marian, listening to these glowing descriptions of satin dresses,
diamonds and feathers, sometimes wished that she were rich, and could
have a taste of fashion. To be sure, her guardian bought her always more
than she needed—but it was not hers, and without any particular reason
why she should do so, she felt that she was a dependent and something of
an inferior, especially when Frederic came home with his aristocratic
manners, his graceful mustache, and the soft scent of perfumery he
usually carried with him. He was always polite and kind to Marian, but
she felt that there was a gulf between them. He was handsome; she was
plain—he was rich; she was poor—he was educated, and she—alas, for
Marian’s education—she read a great deal, but never yet had she given
herself up to a systematic course of study. Governesses she had in
plenty, but she usually coaxed them off into the woods, or down by the
river, where she left them to do what they pleased, while she learned
many a lesson from the great book of nature spread out so beautifully
before her. All this had tended to make and keep her a very child, and
it was not until her fourteenth year that any thing occurred to develop
the genuine womanly qualities which she possessed.
By the death of a distant relative, a little unfortunate blind girl was
left to Colonel Raymond’s care, and was immediately taken to Redstone
Hall, where she became the pet of Marian, who loved nothing in the whole
world as dearly as the poor blind Alice. And well was that love repaid;
for to Alice Marian Lindsey was the embodiment of everything beautiful,
pure and good. Frederic, on the contrary, was a kind of terror to the
little Alice. “He was so precise and stuck up,” she said; “and when he
was at home Marian was not a bit like herself.” To Marian, however, his
occasional visits to Redstone Hall were sources of great pleasure. To
look at his handsome figure, to listen to his voice, to anticipate his
slightest wish and minister to his wants so quietly that he scarcely
knew from whom the attention came, was happiness for her, and when he
smiled upon her, as he often did, calling her “a good little girl,” she
felt repaid for all she had done. Occasionally, since her guardian’s
illness, she had thought of the future when some fine lady might come to
Redstone Hall as its mistress, but the subject was an unpleasant one,
and she always dismissed it from her mind. In her estimation, there were
few worthy to be the wife of Frederic—certainly not herself—and when the
idea was suggested to her by his father, she regarded it as an utter
impossibility. Still it kept her wakeful, and once she said softly to
herself, “I could love him so much if he would let me, and I should be
so proud of him, too.” Then, as she remembered the remark she had heard
him make to his college friend, she covered her face with her hands and
whispered, sadly, “Oh, I wish I wasn’t ugly.” Anon, however, there came
stealing over her the thought that in the estimation of others she was
not as plain as in that of Frederic Raymond. Every body seemed to like
her, and if she were hideous looking they could not. Alice, whose
darkened eyes had never looked upon the light of day, and who judged by
the touch alone, declared that she was beautiful, while old Dinah said
that age would improve her as it did wine, and that in time she would be
the handsomest woman in all Kentucky.
Never before had Marian thought so much of her personal appearance—and
now, feeling anxious to know exactly what her defects were, she arose,
and lighting the lamp, placed it upon her dressing bureau—then throwing
a shawl around her shoulders, she sat down and minutely inspected the
face which Frederic Raymond called so homely. The features were regular
enough, but the face was very thin—“scrawny,” Frederic had said, and the
cheek bones were plainly perceptible. This might be the result of eating
slate-stones; Dinah, who knew everything, said it was, and mentally
resolving thereafter to abjure everything of the kind, Marian continued
her investigations. It did not occur to her that her complexion was
surpassingly fair, nor yet that her eyes were of a most beautiful blue,
so intent was she upon the freckles which dotted her nose and a portion
of her face. Slate-stones surely had nothing to do with these, and she
knew of no way of remedying this evil—unless, indeed, _poulticing_
should do it.—She would consult Dinah on the subject, and feeling a good
deal of confidence in the negress’ judgment, she passed on to what she
considered her crowning point of ugliness—her _hair!_ It was soft,
luxuriant and curly, but alas, it bore the color which, though accounted
beautiful in Mary Stuart’s time, has long since been proscribed by
fashion as horrid and unbecoming. Turn which way she would, or hold the
lamp in any position she chose, it was still red—a dark, decided red—and
the tears came to Marian’s eyes as she recalled the many times when, as
a boy, Frederic taunted her with being a “red-head” or a “brick-top,”
just as the humor suited him. Suddenly she remembered that among her
treasures was a lock of her mother’s hair, and opening a rosewood box
she took from it a shining tress which she laid upon the marble top of
her bureau, and then bent down to admire its color, a beautiful auburn,
such as is rarely seen—and which, when seen, is sure to be admired.
“And this was my mother’s,” she whispered, smoothing caressingly the
silken hair. “I must resemble her more than my father, who my guardian
says was dark. I wish I was like her in everything, for I believe she
was beautiful,” and into the mind of the orphan girl there crept an
image of a bright-haired, sweet-faced woman, whose eyes of lustrous blue
looked lovingly into her own—and this was her mother. She had seen her
thus in fancy many a time, but never so vividly as to-night, and
unconsciously she breathed the petition, “Let me look like her some day,
and I shall be content.”
The gray morning light was by this time stealing through the window, and
overcome with weariness and watching, Marian fell asleep, and when, two
hours later, old Dinah came in to wake her, she found her sitting before
the glass, with the lamp still burning at her side, and her head resting
on her arms, which lay upon the low bureau.
“For the dear Lord’s sake, what are you doing?” was Dinah’s exclamation,
which at once roused Marian, who unhesitatingly answered,
“I got up to look in the glass, and see if I was so very homely.”
“Humbly! Nonsense, child,” returned old Dinah. “You look like a picter
lyin’ thar with the sun a shinin’ on yer har, and makin’ it look like a
piece of crimson satin.”
The compliment was a doubtful one, but Marian knew it was well meant,
and, without a word in reply, commenced her morning toilet. That day,
somewhat to her disappointment, her guardian did not resume the
conversation of the previous night. He was convinced that Marian could
be easily won, but he did not think it wise to encourage her until he
had talked with his son, whose return he looked for anxiously. But day
after day went by, and it was in vain that Alice listened, and Marian
watched, for the daily stage. It never stopped at the gate; and each
time that the old man heard them say it had gone by, he groaned afresh,
fearing Frederic would not come until it was too late.
“I can at least tell him the truth on paper,” he said to himself at
last, “and it may be he will pay more heed to words, which a dead father
wrote, than to words which a living father spoke.”
Marian was accordingly bidden to bring him his little writing desk, and
then to leave the room, for he would be alone when he wrote that letter
of confession. It cost him many a fierce struggle—the telling to his son
a secret which none save himself and God had ever known—aye, which none
had ever need to know if he would have it so—but he would not. The
secret had worn his life away, and he must make reparation now. So, with
the perspiration dropping from every pore, he wrote; and, as he wrote,
in his disordered imagination, there stood beside his pillow the
white-haired Englishman, watching carefully to see that justice was done
at last to Marian. Recently several letters had passed between the
father and his son concerning the marriage of the latter with Marian—a
marriage every way distasteful to the young man, who, in his answer, had
said far harsher things of Marian than he really meant, hoping thus to
put an end to his father’s plan. She was “rough, uncouth, uneducated and
ugly,” he said, “and if his father did not give up that foolish fancy,
he should positively hate the red-headed fright.”
All this the old man touched upon—quoting the very words his son had
used, and whispering to himself, “Poor—poor Marian, it would break her
heart to know that he said that, but she never will—she never will;” and
then, with the energy of despair, he wrote the reason why she must be
the wife of his son, pleading with him as only a dying man can plead,
that he would not disregard the wishes of his father, and begging him to
forget the dark-haired Isabel, who, though perhaps more beautiful, was
not—could not—be as pure, as gentle and as good as Marian.
The letter was finished, and ’mid burning tears of remorse and shame the
old man read it through.
“Yes, that will do,” he said. “Frederic will heed what’s written here.
He’ll marry her or else make restitution;” and laying it away, he
commenced the last and hardest part of all—the confessing to Marian how
he had sinned against her.
Although there was no tie of blood between them, the gentle young orphan
had crept down into his inmost heart, where once he treasured a little
golden-haired girl, who, before Frederic was born, died on his lap, and
went to the heaven made for such as she. In the first moments of his
bereavement, he had thought his loss could never be repaired, but when,
with her soft arms around his neck, Marian Lindsey had murmured in his
ear how much she loved the only father she had ever known, he felt that
the angel he had lost was restored to him tenfold in the little English
girl. He knew that she believed that there was in him no evil, and his
heart throbbed with agony as he nerved himself to tell her how for years
he had acted a villain’s part, but it was done at last, and with a
passionate appeal for her forgiveness, and a request that she would not
forget him wholly, but come some time to visit his lonely grave, he
finished the letter, and folding it up, wrote upon its back, “_For
Marian_;” then, taking the one intended for Frederic, he attempted to
write, “_For my Son_,” but the ink was gone from his pen, there was a
blur before his eyes, and though he traced the words he left no impress,
and the letter bore no superscription to tell to whom it belonged.
Stepping upon the floor, he dragged his feeble limbs to the adjoining
room, his library, and placing both letters in his private drawer,
retired to his bed, where, utterly exhausted, he fell asleep.
When at last he awoke, Marian was sitting by his side, and to her he
communicated what he had done, telling her where the letters were, and
that if he died ere Frederic’s return, she must give the one bearing the
words “For my Son” to him.
“You will not read it, of course,” he said, “or ever seek to know what
its contents are.”
Had Marian Lindsey been like many girls, the caution would have insured
the reading of the letter at once, but she fortunately shrank from
anything dishonorable, and was blessed with but a limited share of
woman’s curiosity; consequently, the letter was safe in her care, even
though no one ever came to claim it. All that afternoon she sat by her
guardian, and when as usual the stage thundered down the turnpike,
leaving no Frederic at the door, she soothed him with the hope that he
would be there to-morrow. But the morrow came and went as did other
to-morrows, until Col. Raymond grew so ill that a telegram was
despatched to the truant boy, bidding him hasten if he would see his
father again alive.
“That will bring him,” the old man said, while the big tears rolled down
his wrinkled face. “He’ll be here in a few days,” and he asked that his
bed might be moved near the window, where, propped upon pillows, he
watched with childish impatience for the coming of his boy.