WILL GORDON.
Mrs. Sheldon’s residence was a most delightful spot, reminding Marian a
little of Redstone Hall, and as she passed up its nicely graveled walk
and stepped upon its broad piazza, she felt that she could be very happy
there, provided she met with sympathizing friends. Any doubts she might
have had upon this subject were speedily dispelled by the appearance of
Mrs. Sheldon, in whose face there was something very familiar; and it
was not long ere Marian identified her as the lady who had spoken so
kindly to her in the car between Albany and New York, asking her what
was the matter, and if she had friends in the city. This put Marian at
once at her ease, and her admiration for her employer increased each
moment, particularly when she saw how gracious she was to Ben, who true
to his resolution, scarcely spoke except to answer Mrs. Sheldon’s
questions and to decline her invitation to dinner.
“I should never get through that in the world without some blunder,” he
thought, and as the dinner bell was ringing, he took his leave, crying
like a child when he parted with Marian, who was scarcely less affected
than himself.
Going to the depot, he sauntered into the ladies’ room, where he found a
group of young girls, who were waiting the arrival of a friend, and who,
meantime, were ready for any fun which might come up. Ben instantly
attracted their attention, and one who seemed to be the leader of the
party, began to quiz him, asking “where he lived, and if he had ever
been so far from home before?”
Ben understood the drift of her remarks at once, and with imperturbable
gravity, replied:
“I come from down East, where they raise sich as me, and this is the
fust time I was ever out of Tanton, which allus was my native town!”
Then, taking his tobacco box from his pocket, he passed it to an
elegant-looking man, whom he readily divined to be the brother of the
girl, saying to him:
“Have a chaw, captain? I’d just as lief you would as not.”
As he heard the loud laugh which this speech called forth, he continued,
without the shadow of a smile:
“I had—’strue’s I live, for I ain’t none o’ your tight critters. Nobody
ever said that of Ben Bur—Ben Butterwith,” he added, hastily, for until
Marian was discovered to Frederic, he thought it best to retain the
latter name.
“Ben Butterworth,” repeated the young girl in an aside to her
brother—“Why, Will, didn’t sister Mary tell us that was the adopted
brother or cousin of her new governess? You know Miss Grey mentioned his
name in one of her letters.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ben, ere Will had time to reply. “If by Mary you mean
Miss Sheldon, I’m the chap. Brought my sister there to-day, to be her
schoolma’am, and I don’t want you to run over her neither, ’cause you’ll
be sorry bimeby. That was all gammon I told you about never being away
from home before, for I’ve seen considerable of the world.”
The cars from Boston were by this time rolling in at the depot, and
without replying to Ben’s remark, the young lady went out to look for
her friend.
That night, just after dark, Mrs. Sheldon’s door bell rang, and her
brother and sister came in, the latter dressed in the extreme of
fashion, and bearing about her an air which seemed to indicate that she
had long been accustomed to receive the homage of those around her.
Seating herself on the sofa, she began, “Well, Mary, Will and I have
come over to see this wonderful prodigy. Mother was here, you know, this
afternoon, and she came home half wild on the subject of Miss Grey,
insisting that I should call directly, and so like a dutiful daughter I
have obeyed, though I must confess that the sight of Ben Butterworth,
whom we met at the depot, did not greatly prepossess me in her favor.”
“They are not at all alike,” said Mrs. Sheldon, “neither are they in any
way related. Miss Grey is highly educated, and has the sweetest face I
ever saw. She has some secret trouble, too, I’m sure, and she reminds me
of a beautiful picture over which a vail is thrown, softening, and at
the same time heightening its beauty.”
“Really,” said Will, rousing up, “some romance connected with her. Do
bring her out at once.”
Mrs. Sheldon left the room, and going up to Marian’s chamber, knocked at
the door. A low voice bade her come in, and she entered just in time to
see Marian hide away the daguerreotype of Frederic, at which she had
been looking.
“My brother and sister are in the parlor and have asked for you,” she
said.
“I will come down in a moment,” returned Marian, who wished a little
time to dry her tears, for she had been weeping over the pictures of
Frederic and Alice, both of which she had in her possession.
Accordingly, when Mrs. Sheldon was gone, she bathed her face until the
stains had disappeared; then smoothing her collar and brushing her wavy
hair, she descended to the parlor, where Ellen Gordon sat prepared to
criticise, and William Gordon sat prepared for almost anything, though
not for the vision which greeted his view when Marian Grey appeared
before him. The dazzling purity of her complexion contrasted well with
her black dress, and the natural bloom upon her cheek was increased by
her embarrassment, while her eyes dropped modestly beneath the
long-fringed lashes, which Ellen noticed at once, because they were the
one coveted beauty which had been denied to herself.
“Jupiter!” was Will’s mental comment. “Mary didn’t exaggerate in the
least, and Nell will have to yield the palm at once.”
Something like this passed through Ellen’s mind, but though on the whole
a frank, right-minded girl, she was resolved upon finding fault with the
stranger, simply because her mother and sister had said so much in her
praise.
“She is vulgar, I know,” she thought, and she watched narrowly for
something which should betray her low birth, but she waited in vain.
Marian was perfectly lady-like in her manners; her language was well
chosen; her voice soft and low; and ere she had been with her half an
hour, Ellen secretly acknowledged her superiority to most of the young
ladies of her acquaintance, and she regretted that she, too, had not
been educated at Mrs. Harcourt’s school, if such manners as Miss Grey’s
were common there.
At Mrs. Sheldon’s request, Marian took her seat at the piano, and then
Ellen hoped to criticise; but here again she was at fault, for Marian
was a brilliant performer, keeping perfect time, and playing with the
most exquisite taste.
As she was turning over the leaves of the music book after the close of
the first piece, Will said to his sister:
“By the way, Nell, I had a letter from Fred to-day and he says he will
be delighted to get you that music the first time he goes to the city.”
Marian started just as she had done that afternoon when Mrs. Sheldon
called her youngest boy Fred. Still there was no reason why she should
do so. Frederic was a common name, and she kept on turning the leaves,
while Ellen replied, “What else did he write, and when is he going
south?”
Marian’s hand was stayed now, and she listened eagerly for the answer,
which was “Sometime in November, and he has invited me to go with him,
but I hardly think I shall. He’s lonesome, he says, and can find no
trace of his run away wife. So, there’s a shadow of a chance for you
Nell.”
The hand which held the leaf suspended, came down with a crash upon the
keys of the piano, but Ellen thought it was an accident, if she thought
of it at all; and she replied, “Fie, just as though I would have a man
before I knew for certain that his wife was dead. I admire Mr. Raymond
very much, and if he had not been so foolish as to marry that child, I
can’t say that he would not have made an impression, for he is the
finest looking and most agreeable gentleman I ever met. Isn’t it strange
where that girl went, and what she went for? Hasn’t he ever told you
anything that would explain it?”
Up to this point Marian had sat immovable, listening eagerly and
wondering where these people had known Frederic Raymond. Then, as
something far back in the past flashed upon her mind, she turned, and
looking in the young man’s face, knew who he was and that they had met
before. His name had seemed familiar from the first, and she knew that
he was the Will Gordon who had been Frederic’s chum in college, and had
once spent a vacation at Redstone Hall. He had predicted that she would
be a handsome woman, and Frederic had said she could not with such hair.
She remembered it all distinctly, but any effect it might then have had
upon her was lost in her anxiety to hear the answer to Ellen’s question.
“Fred generally keeps his matters to himself, but I know as much as
this: He didn’t love that Miss Lindsey any too well when he married her,
but he has admitted to me since that his feelings toward her had
undergone a change, and he would give almost anything to find her. He is
certain that she was with him when he was sick in New York, and since
that time he has sought for her everywhere.”
William Gordon had no idea of the effect his words produced upon the
figure which, on the music stool, sat as motionless as if it had been a
block of marble. During all the long, dreary years of exile from home
there had not come to her so cheering a ray of hope as this, and the
bright bloom deepened on her cheek, while the joy which danced in her
deep blue eyes made them look almost black beneath the heavy lashes.
Frederic was beginning to love her—he had acknowledged as much to Mr.
Gordon, and her heart bounded forward to the time when she should see
him face to face, and hear him tell her so with his own lips. Little now
she heeded Ellen’s next remark, “I presume it would be just the same
even if he were to find her. He is a great admirer of beauty, and she, I
believe, was very ordinary looking.”
“Not remarkably so,” returned Will. “She was thin-faced and had red
hair, but I remember thinking she might make a handsome woman—”
“With red hair! Oh, Will!” and the black-tressed Ellen laughed at the
very idea.
A sudden movement on Marian’s part made Will recollect her, and he
hastened to apologise for his apparent forgetfulness of her presence.
“You will please excuse us,” he said, “for discussing an affair in which
you, of course, can have no interest.”
“Certainly,” she replied, while around the corners of her mouth were
little laughing dimples, which told no tales to the young man, who
continued: “Will you give us some more music? I admire your style of
playing.”
Marian was in a mood for anything, and turning to the piano she dashed
off into a merry, spirited thing, to which Will’s feet kept time, while
Ellen looked on amazed at the white fingers which flew like lightning
over the keys, seemingly never resting for an instant upon any one of
them, but lighting here and there with a rapidity she never before seen
equalled. It was the outpouring of Marian’s heart, and the tune she
played was a song of jubilee for the glad tidings she had heard. Ere she
had half finished, Will Gordon was at her side, gazing wonderingly into
her face, which sparkled and glowed with her excitement.
“She is strangely beautiful,” he thought, and so he said to Ellen when
they were walking home together.
“She looks very well,” returned Ellen, “but I trust you will not feel it
your duty to fall in love with her on that account. Wouldn’t it be
ridiculous though, for you, who profess never to have felt the least
affection for any woman, to yield at once to Mary’s governess?”
“Mary’s governess is no ordinary person,” answered Will. “How like the
mischief she made those fingers go in that last piece. I never saw
anything like it;” and he tried in vain to whistle a few bars of the
lively strain.
That night three men dreamed of Marian—Will Gordon in his bachelor
apartments, which he had said should never be invaded with a female’s
wardrobe—Ben Burt in his room at the Lovejoy Hotel—and Frederic Raymond
in his cheerful home upon the Hudson. But to Marian, sleeping so quietly
in her chamber there came a thought of only one, and that one Frederic
Raymond, whose picture lay beneath her pillow. She had never placed it
there until to-night, for she had felt that she had no right to do so.
But Mr. Gordon’s words had effected a change. He said that Frederic was
beginning to love her at last—that he had sought for her without
success—that he would give almost anything to find her. It is true she
could not reconcile all this with her preconceived opinion: but she had
no wish to doubt it, and she accepted it as truth, thinking it was
probably a very recent thing with him, this searching after and loving
her.
Very rapidly and pleasantly to Marian did the first few weeks of her
sojourn with Mrs. Sheldon pass away. She was interested in her pupils,
two bright-faced little girls, and doubly interested in their brother,
the brown-eyed _Fred_, whose real name she learned was Frederic Raymond,
he having been called, Mrs. Sheldon said, after Williams particular
friend, who spent his winters in Kentucky, and his Summers at Riverside,
a delightful place on the Hudson. Frederic Raymond was a frequent
subject of conversation in Mrs. Sheldon’s family, and once, after Marian
had been there four or five months, and Will, as usual, was spending an
evening there, the matter was discussed at length, while Marian, sitting
partly in the shade, so that the working of her features could not be
seen, dropped stitch after stitch in the cloud she was crocheting, and
finally stopped altogether as the conversation proceeded.
“I am positive,” said Mrs. Sheldon, “that I saw Mrs. Raymond in the
cars, between Albany and Newburg. It was four years ago, last Autumn,
and about that time she came away. There was a very young girl sitting
before me, dressed in black, with long red curls, and she looked as if
she had wept all her tears away, though they fell like rain when I spoke
to her and asked her what was the matter. I remember her particularly
from her question, ‘Is New York a heap noisier than Albany or Buffalo?’”
“That ‘heap’ is purely Southern,” interrupted Will, while his sister
continued:
“She said she had but one friend in the world, and that one was in New
York. I remember, too, that one of her hands was ungloved. It was so
white and small, and she used it so often to brush her tears away.”
Here Will glanced involuntarily at the beautiful little hands busy with
the cloud. It might have been fancy, but he thought they trembled, and
so he closed the register and opened a door, thinking the heat of the
room might have made Miss Grey nervous—and he was growing very careful
of her comfort!
Poor Will!
Returning to his seat, he replied to his sister’s remark, “That was
undoubtedly Marian Lindsey. Did you speak of it to Frederic?”
“No,” said Mrs. Sheldon, “I have always thought he disliked talking of
her to me, and that makes me think there is something wrong—that he did
her an injury.”
“Every man who marries without love injures the woman he makes his
wife,” said Will, “and Frederic does not profess to have loved her then.
His father drew him into this match, and for some inexplicable reason
Fred consented, when all the time he loved that Isabel Huntington. But
he has recovered from that infatuation, and I am glad of it, for I never
liked her, and had the thing been possible, I should say she poisoned
him against this Marian. Why, Miss Grey, you are actually shivering,” he
added, as he saw the violent trembling of Marian’s body, and this time
he opened the register and shut the door, offering to go for a shawl,
and asking where she had taken such a cold.
“It’s only a slight chill—it will soon pass off,” she said, and as Mrs.
Sheldon was just then called from the room, Will drew his chair a little
nearer to Marian and continued:
“This Raymond affair must be irksome to you, who know nothing about it.”
“Oh, no,” said Marian faintly. “I am greatly interested, particularly in
the girl-wife. Can’t he find her? Seems as though he might. Perhaps
though, he don’t really care.”
“Yes, he does,” interrupted Will. “He disliked her once, but I believe
he feels differently toward her now. His hobby in college was a handsome
wife, but he has learned that beauty alone is worthless, and he would
gladly take Marian back.”
“Red hair and all?” asked Marian, mischievously, and Will replied, “Yes,
I believe he’s even made up his mind to the red hair. I didn’t object to
it myself, and I once saw this girl.”
“Redstone Hall is a beautiful spot, I believe,” said Marian, briefly
stating that Ben had once been there in his travels, and had since met
Mr. Raymond in New York.
“Then you know the family,” said Will, in some surprise.
“I know _of_ them,” returned Marian, “for Ben was so much interested in
the blind girl that after his return he talked of little else.”
“You have never seen them youself, of course,” and taking this fact for
granted, Will proceeded to give her a most minute description of
Redstone Hall, of its master, and of herself as she was when he visited
Kentucky.
Frederic’s marriage was then touched upon. Will telling how angry his
chum used to be when he received a letter on the subject from his
father.
“We were studying law together,” he said, “and, as we were room-mates in
college, it was quite natural that we should confide in each other; so
he used to tell me of his father’s project, and almost _swear_ he
wouldn’t do it. I never was more astonished than when I heard he was to
be married in a few days. ‘It’s all over with me,’ he wrote, ‘I can’t
help it!’ and he signed himself ‘Your wretched Fred!’ But what are you
crying for, Miss Grey? You certainly are. What is the matter?”
“I am crying for her—for poor Marian Lindsey!” was the answer; and
Marian’s tears flowed faster.
Will Gordon was distressed at the sight of woman’s tears, but
particularly at the sight of Marian Grey’s, and he tried to console her
by saying he was sure Mr. Raymond would sometime find his wife, and they
all would be the happier for what they both had suffered. Involuntarily
he had touched the right chord, for, in listening to his predictions of
future good, which should come to Frederic Raymond’s wife, Marian Grey
ceased to weep, and when, ere his departure, Will asked her for some
music, she gave him one of those stirring pieces she always played when
her heart was running over with happy anticipations!
Will Gordon was older than Frederic Raymond, and an examination of the
family Bible would have shown him to be thirty. Quite a bachelor, his
sister Ellen said, and she marveled that he had lived thus long without
taking to himself a wife. But Will was very fastidious in his ideas of
females, and though he had traveled much, both in Europe and his own
country, he had never seen a face which could hold his fancy for a
moment, until the sunny blue eyes of Marian Grey shone upon him and
thawed the ice which had laid about his heart so many years. Even then
he did not quite understand the feeling, or know how it was that night
after night he found himself locked out at home, while morning after
morning his sister Ellen scolded him for staying out so late, wondering
what attraction he could find at Mary’s, when he knew as well as she
that he would never disgrace the Gordon family by marrying a
_governess_, and a peddler’s adopted sister, too! Will hardly thought he
should either. He didn’t quite know what ailed him, and in a letter
written to Frederic, who was now in Kentucky, he gave an analysis of his
feelings, after having first told him that Marian Grey was the adopted
sister of a Yankee peddler, who had once visited Redstone Hall, and who,
he was sure, Frederic would remember for his oddities.
“I wish you could see this girl,” he wrote, “I’d like to have your
opinion, for I know you are a _connoisseur_ in everything pertaining to
female charms, but I am sure you never in all your life saw anything
like Marian Grey. I never did, and I have seen the proudest court
beauties in Europe—but nobody like her. And yet it is not so much the
exceeding fairness of her complexion, or the perfect regularity of her
features, as it is the indescribably fascinating something which demands
your pity as well as your admiration. There is that about her mouth, and
in her smile, which seems to say that she has suffered as few have ever
done, and that from this suffering she has risen purified, beautified,
and if I may be allowed a term which my good mother would call wicked in
the extreme, _glorified_ as it were!
“Just picture to yourself a graceful, airy figure, five feet four inches
high—then clothe it in black, and adapt every article of dress exactly
to her form and style, then imagine a rose-bud face, which I cannot
describe, with the deepest, saddest, brightest, merriest, sunniest,
laughing blue eyes you ever saw. You see there is a slight contradiction
of words, but every one by turns will apply to her eyes of blue. Then
her hair—oh, Fred, words fail me here. It’s a mixture of
everything—brown, black, yellow, and red. Yes, red—I mean it, for it has
decidedly a reddish hue in the sunshine. By gas-light it is brown, and
by daylight a most beautiful chesnut or auburn—rippling all over her
head in glossy waves, and curling about her forehead and neck.
“Beautiful—beautiful Marian! Yes, I will call her Marian here on paper,
with no one to see it but you. ’Tis a sweet, feminine name, Fred;—the
name, too, of your lost wife. I told her that story the other night, and
she cried great tears, which looked like pearls upon her cheek.
“Do write soon, and give me your advice—though what I want of it is more
than I can tell. I only know that I feel strangely about the region of
my waistbands, and every time I see Miss Grey, I feel a heap worse, as
you folks say. She is of low origin, I know, and this would make a
difference with a man as proud as you, but I don’t care. Marian Grey has
bewitched me, I verily believe, until I am—I don’t know what.
“Do write, Fred, and tell me what I am, and what to do. But pray don’t
preface your letter with long-winded remarks about marrying my
equal—looking higher than a peddler’s sister, and all that nonsense, for
it will be lost on me. I never can get higher than Marian’s blue eyes
unless indeed I reached her hair, at which point I should certainly
yield, and go over to the enemy at once.”
This letter reached Frederic one rainy afternoon, when he had nothing to
do but to read it, laugh over it, reflect upon and answer it. Will
Gordon’s description of Marian Grey thrilled him with a strange feeling
of pleasure, imperceptibly sending his thoughts after another Marian,
and involuntarily he said, aloud, “If she had been like this picture
Will has drawn, I should not be here so lonely and desolate.”
Frederic Raymond was prouder far than Will Gordon, and his feelings at
first rebelled against his friend’s taking for a bride the sister of
unpolished, uneducated Ben. “But it is his own matter,” he said; “I see
plainly that he is in love, so I will write at once and tell him what is
the ‘trouble.’”
Accordingly he commenced a letter, in which after expressing his
happiness that his college friend had not persisted in shutting his eyes
to all female charms, he wrote:
“I should prefer your wife to be somewhat nearer your equal in point of
family, it is true, but your description of Marian Grey won my heart
entirely, and you have my consent to offer yourself at once. By so
doing, you will probably deprive Alice of her governess and me of a
pleasant companion, for I had made an arrangement with Ben to have Miss
Grey with us next year. But no matter for that. Woo and win her just the
same, and Heaven grant you a happier future than my past has been.
“‘Beautiful! beautiful Marian!’ you said, and without knowing why, my
heart responded to it. She is beautiful, I am sure, and your description
of her is just what I would like to apply to my own wife—my lost Marian!
You see I have withdrawn my allegiance from black haired dark eyed
maidens, and gone over to laughing blue eyes and auburn tresses.
“By the way, speaking of the dark eyed maidens reminds me that Agnes
Gibson’s husband is dead, and she is sole heiress of all his fortune,
except a legacy which he left to Miss Huntington, who lived in his
family at the time of his death. Poor old man! Rumor says he led a sorry
life with both of them, but at the last his young wife cajoled him into
making his will, and was really kind to him. She is at her father’s now,
and Miss Huntington is there also. I called upon them yesterday, and
have hardly recovered yet from the chilling reception I met with from
the latter.
“But pardon me, Will, for this digression, when I was to write of
nothing save Marian Grey. The name reminded me of my own wife, and that,
as a matter of course, suggested Isabel. Give my compliments to Miss
Grey, and tell her that, under the circumstances, I release her from her
engagement with myself, and that, if she is a sensible girl, as I
suppose she is, she will not keep you on your knees longer than
necessary. Let me hear of your success or failure, and, on no account,
forget to invite me to the wedding. It is possible I may be obliged to
come North on business, in the course of a few weeks, and, if so, I
shall certainly call on you for the sake of seeing this wonderful Marian
Grey.
“Yours truly,
“F. Raymond.”