comfort and freedom, and shutting yourself up with your books and
studies to the neglect of other duties. But it need be so no longer. The
necessity for it, if it existed once, certainly does not now. I will not
be in your way; forgive me that I ever have been.”
Lucy’s voice began to tremble as she gathered up her riding-habit and
turned to find her gauntlets. One of them had dropped upon the floor
between the table and the rector, and as she stooped to reach it her
curls almost swept the young man’s lap.
“Let me get it for you,” he said, hastily pushing back his chair and
awkwardly entangling his foot in her long sweeping dress, so that when
she arose she stumbled backward and would have fallen, but for the arm
he quickly passed around her.
Something in the touch of that quivering form completed the work of
temptation, and he held it for an instant, when she said to him
pettishly:
“Please let me go, sir.”
“No, Lucy, I can’t let you go. I want you to stay with me.”
Instantly the drooping head was uplifted, and Lucy’s eyes looked into
his with such a wistful, pleading, wondering look that Arthur saw or
thought he saw his duty plain, and gently touching his lips to the brow
glistening so white within their reach, he continued:
“There is a way to stop the gossip and make it right for me to see you.
Promise to be my wife, and not even Captain Humphreys can say aught
against it.”
Arthur’s voice trembled now, for the mention of Captain Humphreys had
brought a thought of Anna, whose eyes seemed for an instant to look
reproachfully upon that wooing. But he had gone too far to retract; he
had only to wait for Lucy’s answer. There was no deception about her;
hers was a nature as clear as crystal, and with a gush of glad tears she
promised to be the rector’s wife; and hiding her face on his bosom, told
him, brokenly, how unworthy she was of him; how foolish, and how
unsuited to the place, but promising to do the best she could not to
bring him into disgrace on account of her shortcomings.
“With the knowledge that you love me I can do anything,” she said, and
her white hand crept slowly into the cold, clammy one which lay so
listlessly on Arthur’s lap.
He was already repenting, for he felt that it was sin to take that warm,
trusting, loving heart in exchange for the cold, half lifeless one he
should render in return, and in which scarcely a pulse of joy was
beating, even though he held his promised wife; and she was fair and
beautiful as ever promised wife could be.
“But I can make her happy, and I will,” he thought, pressing the warm
fingers which quivered to his touch.
But he did not kiss her again; he could not for the eyes, which still
seemed looking at him and asking what he did. There was a strange spell
about those phantom eyes, and they made him say to Lucy, who was now
sitting demurely at his side:
“I could not clear my conscience if I did not confess that you are not
the first woman whom I have asked to be my wife.”
There was a start, and Lucy’s face was pale as ashes, while her hand
went quickly to her side, where the heartbeats were visible, warning
Arthur to be careful how he startled one whose life hung on so slender a
thread as Lucy’s; so, when she asked, “Who was it, and why did you not
marry her? Did you love her very much?” he answered indifferently, “I
would rather not tell you who it was, as that might be a breach of
confidence. She did not care to be my wife, and so that dream was over
and I was left for you.”
He did not say how much he loved her who had discarded him, but Lucy
forgot the omission, and asked, “Was she very young and pretty?”
“Young and pretty both, but not as beautiful as you,” Arthur replied,
his fingers softly putting back the golden curls from the face looking
so trustingly into his.
And in that he answered truly. He had seen no face as beautiful of its
kind as Lucy’s was, and he was glad that he could tell her so. He knew
how that would please her and partly make amends for the tender words
which he could not speak,—for the phantom eyes still haunting him so
strangely.
And Lucy, who took all things for granted, was more than content,
although she wondered that he did not kiss her again, and wished she
knew the girl who had come so near being in her place. But she respected
his wishes too much to ask after what he had said, and she tried to make
herself glad that he had been so frank with her and not left his other
love-affair to the chance of her discovering it afterwards, at a time
when it might be painful to her.
“I wish I had something to confess,” she thought; but from the score of
her flirtations, and even offers, for she had not lacked for them, she
could not find one where her own feelings had been enlisted in ever so
slight a degree until she remembered Thornton Hastings, who for one
whole week had paid her such attentions as had made her dream of him,
and even drive round once on purpose to look at the house on Madison
Square where the future Mrs. Hastings was to live.
But his coolness afterwards, and his comments on her frivolity had
terribly angered her, making her think that she hated him, as she had
said to Anna. Now, however, as she remembered the drive and the house,
she nestled closer to Arthur and told him all about it, fingering the
buttons on his dressing-gown as she told him it, and never dreaming of
the pang she was inflicting as Arthur thought how mysterious were God’s
ways, and wondered that He had not reversed the matter and given Lucy to
Thornton Hastings, rather than to him, who did not half deserve her.
“I know now I never cared a bit for Thornton Hastings, though I might if
he had not been so mean as to call me frivolous,” Lucy said, as she
arose to go; then suddenly turning to the rector, she added: “I shall
never ask who your first love was, but would like to know if you have
quite forgotten her?”
“Have you forgotten Thornton Hastings?” Arthur asked, laughingly; and
Lucy replied, “Of course not; one never forgets, but I don’t care a pin
about him now, and did I tell you, Fanny writes that rumor says he will
marry Anna Ruthven?”
“Yes,—no,—I did not know; I am not surprised;” and Arthur stooped to
pick up a book lying on the floor, thus hiding his face from Lucy, who,
woman-like, was glad to report a piece of gossip, and continued:
“She is a great belle, Fanny says; dresses beautifully and in perfect
taste, besides talking as if she knew something, and this pleases Mr.
Hastings, who takes her out to ride and drive, and all this after I
warned her against him and told her just what he said of me. I am
surprised at her!”
Lucy was drawing on her gauntlets, and Arthur was waiting to see her
out, but she still lingered on the threshold, and at last said to him:
“I wonder you never fell in love with Anna yourself. I am sure, if I
were you I should prefer her to me. She knows something and I do not,
but I am going to study; there are piles of books in the library at
Prospect Hill, and you shall see what a famous student I will become. If
I get puzzled will you help me?”
“Yes, willingly,” Arthur replied, wishing that she would go, before she
indulged in any more speculation as to why he did not love Anna Ruthven.
But Lucy was not done yet; the keenest pang was yet to come, and Arthur
felt as if the earth was giving way beneath his feet, when, as he lifted
her into the saddle and took her hand at parting, she said:
“You remember I am not going to be jealous of that other girl. There is
only one person who could make me so, and that is Anna Ruthven; but I
know it was not she, for that night we all came from Mrs. Hobbs’s and
she went with me upstairs, I asked her honestly if you had ever offered
yourself to her, and she told me you had not. I think you showed a lack
of taste; but I am glad it was not Anna.”
Lucy was far down the road ere Arthur recovered from the shock her last
words had given him. What did it mean, and why had Anna said he never
proposed? Was there some mistake, and he the victim of it? There was a
blinding mist before the young man’s eyes, and a gnawing pain at his
heart as he returned to his study and went over again with all the
incidents of Anna’s refusal, even to the reading of the letter which, he
already knew by heart. Then, as the thought came over him that possibly
Mrs. Meredith played him false in some way, he groaned aloud, and the
great sweat-drops fell upon the table where he leaned his head. But this
could not be, he reasoned. Lucy was mistaken. She had not heard aright.
Somebody surely was mistaken, or he had committed a fatal error.
“But I must abide by it,” he said, lifting up his pallid face. “God
forgive the wrong I have done in asking Lucy to be my wife when my heart
belonged to another. God help me to forget the one and love the other as
I ought. She is a lovely little girl, trusting me so wholly that I can
make her happy,—and I will!—but Anna,—O Anna!”
It was a despairing cry, such as a newly-engaged man should never have
sent after another than his affianced bride; and Arthur thought so too,
fighting back his first love with an iron will, and after that hour of
anguish burying it so far from sight that he went that night to Captain
Humphreys and told of his engagement; then called upon his bride-elect,
and tried so hard to be satisfied, that, when at a late hour he returned
to the parsonage, he was more than content; and by way of fortifying
himself still more, wrote the letter which Thornton Hastings read at
Newport.
And that was how it happened.
CHAPTER IX.
ANNA.
Through the rich curtains which shaded the windows of a room looking out
on Fifth Avenue the late October sun was shining; and as its red light
played among the flowers on the carpet, a pale young girl sat watching
it and thinking of the Hanover hills, now decked in their autumnal
glory, and of the ivy on St. Mark’s, growing so bright and beautiful
beneath the autumnal frosts. Anna had been very sick since that morning
in September when she sat on the piazza at the Ocean House and read Lucy
Harcourt’s letter. The faint was a precursor of fever, the physician
said when summoned to her aid; and in a tremor of fear and distress Mrs.
Meredith had had her removed at once to New York, and that was the last
Anna remembered. From the moment her aching head had touched the soft
pillows in Aunt Meredith’s home, all consciousness had fled, and for
weeks she had hovered so near to death that the telegraph-wires bore
daily messages to Hanover, where the aged couple who had cared for her
since her childhood wept, and prayed, and watched for tidings from their
darling. They could not go to her, for Grandpa Humphreys had broken his
leg, and his wife could not leave him; so they waited with what patience
they could for the daily bulletins which Mrs. Meredith sent,
appreciating their anxiety, and feeling glad withal of anything which
kept them from New York.
“She had best be prayed for in church,” the old man said; and so, Sunday
after Sunday, Arthur read the prayer for the sick, his voice trembling
as it had never trembled before, and a keener sorrow in his heart than
he had ever known when saying the solemn words.
Heretofore the persons prayed for had been comparative strangers,—people
in whom he felt only the interest a pastor feels in all his flock; but
now it was _Anna_, whose case he took to God, and he always smothered a
sob during the moment he waited for the fervent response the
congregation made, the _Amen_ which came from the pew where Lucy sat
being louder and heartier than all the rest, and having in it a sound of
the tears which dropped so fast on Lucy’s book, as she asked that her
dear friend might not die. Oh, how he longed to go to her! But this he
could not do, and so he had sent Lucy, who bent so tenderly above the
sick girl, whispering loving words in her ear, and dropping kisses upon
the lips which uttered no response, save once, when Lucy said, “Do you
remember Arthur?”
Then they murmured faintly: “Yes,—Arthur,—I remember him, and the
Christmas song, and the gathering in the church. But that was long ago;
there’s much happened since then.”
“And I am to marry Arthur,” Lucy had said again; but this time there was
no sign that she was understood, and that afternoon she went back to
Hanover loaded with tickets for the children of St. Mark’s and new books
for the Sunday-school, and accompanied by Valencia, who, having had a
serious difference with her mistress, Mrs. Meredith, had offered her
services to Miss Harcourt, and been at once accepted.
That was near the middle of October; now it was the last, and Anna was
so much better that she sat up for an hour or more and listened with
some degree of interest to what Mrs. Meredith told her of the days when
she lay so unconscious of all that was passing around her, never heeding
the kindly voice of Thornton Hastings, who more than once had stood by
her pillow with his hand on her feverish brow, and tokens of whose
thoughtfulness were visible in the choice bouquets he sent each day,
with notes of anxious inquiry when he did not come himself. Anna had not
seen him yet since her convalescence. She would rather not see any one
until strong enough to talk, she said. And so Thornton waited patiently
for the interview she had promised him when she should be stronger, but
every day he sent her fruit, and flowers, and books which he thought
would interest her, and which always made her cheeks grow hot and her
heart beat regretfully, for she knew of the answer she must give him
when he came, and she shrank from wounding him.
“He is too good, too noble, to have an unwilling wife,” she thought; but
that did not make it the less hard to tell him so, and when at last she
was well enough to see him, she waited his coming nervously, starting
when she heard his step, and trembling like a leaf as he drew near her
chair.
It was a very thin, wasted hand which he took in his, holding it for a
moment between his own, and then laying it gently back upon her lap. He
had come for the answer to a question put six weeks before, and Anna
gave it to him,—kindly, considerately, but decidedly. She could not be
his wife, she said, because she did not love him as he ought to be
loved.
“It is nothing personal,” she added, working nervously at the heavy
fringe of her shawl. “I respect you more than any man I ever
knew,—except one; and had I met you years ago,—before—before—”
“I understand you,” Thornton said, coming to her aid. “You have tried to
love me, but you cannot, because your affections are given to another.”
Anna bowed her head in silence; then, after a moment, she continued:
“You must forgive me, Mr. Hastings, for not telling you this at once. I
did not know then but I could love you; at least, I meant to try, for
you see this other one,”—the fingers got terribly tangled in the fringe
as Anna gasped for breath and went on,—“he does not know, and never
will,—that is,—he never cared for me, nor guessed how foolish I was to
give him my love unsought.”
“Then it is _not_ Arthur Leighton, and that is why you refused him too,”
Mr. Hastings said involuntarily; and Anna looked quickly up, her cheeks
growing paler than they were before, as she replied: “I don’t know what
you mean. I never refused Mr. Leighton,—never!”
“You never refused Mr. Leighton?” Thornton exclaimed, forgetting all
discretion in his surprise at this flat contradiction. “I have Arthur’s
word for it, written to me last June, while Mrs. Meredith was there, I
think.”
“He surely could not have meant it, because it never occurred; there is
some mistake,” Anna found strength to say; and then she lay back in her
easy-chair panting for breath, her brain all in a whirl as she thought
of the possibility that she was once so near the greatest happiness she
had ever desired, and which was lost to her now.
He brought her smelling-salts; he gave her ice-water to drink, and then,
kneeling beside her, he fanned her gently, while he continued: “There
surely _is_ a mistake, and, I fear, a great wrong, too, somewhere. Were
all your servants trusty? Was there no one who would withhold a letter
if he had written? Were you always at home when he called?”
Thornton questioned her rapidly, for there was a suspicion in his mind
as to the real culprit, but he would not hint it to Anna unless she
suggested it herself. And this she was not likely to do. Mrs. Meredith
had been too kind to her during the past summer, and especially during
her recent illness, to allow of such a thought concerning her; and in a
maze of perplexity she replied to his inquiries: “We keep but one
servant,—Esther,—and she I know is trusty. Besides, who could have
refused him for me? Grandfather would not, I know, because—because—” she
hesitated a little, and her cheeks blushed scarlet as she added, “I
sometimes thought he wanted it to be.”
If Thornton had previously had a doubt as to the other man who stood
between himself and Anna, that doubt was now removed, and laying aside
all thoughts of self, he exclaimed:
“I tell you there is a great wrong somewhere. Arthur never told an
untruth; he thought that you refused him; he thinks so still, and I
shall never rest till I have solved the mystery. I will write to him
to-day.”
For an instant there swept over Anna a feeling of unutterable joy as she
thought what the end might be; then, as she remembered Lucy, her heart
seemed to stop its beating, and with a moan she stretched her hands
towards Thornton, who had risen as if to leave her.
“No, no, you must not interfere,” she said. “It is too late, too late.
Don’t you remember Lucy? don’t you know she is to be his wife? Lucy must
not be sacrificed for me. _I_ can bear it the best.”
She knew she had betrayed her secret, and she tried to take it back, but
Thornton interrupted her with, “Never mind now, Anna. I guessed it all
before, and it hurts my self-pride less to know that it is Arthur whom
you prefer to me. I do not blame you for it.”
He smoothed her hair pityingly, while he stood over her a moment,
wondering what his duty was. Anna told him plainly what it was. He must
leave Arthur and Lucy alone. She insisted upon having it so, and he
promised her at last that he would not interfere. Then taking her hand,
he pressed it a moment between his own and went out from her presence.
In the hall below he met with Mrs. Meredith, who he knew was waiting
anxiously to hear the result of that long interview.
“Your niece will never be my wife, and I am satisfied to have it so,” he
said; then, as he saw the lowering of her brow, he continued, “I have
long suspected that she loved another, and my suspicions are confirmed,
though there’s something I cannot understand,” and fixing his eyes
searchingly upon Mrs. Meredith, he told what Arthur had written and of
Anna’s denial of the same. “Somebody played her false,” he said, rather
enjoying the look of terror and shame which crept into the haughty
woman’s eyes, as she tried to appear natural and express her own
surprise at what she heard.
“I was right in my conjecture,” Thornton thought as he took his leave of
Mrs. Meredith, who could not face Anna then, but paced restlessly up and
down her spacious rooms, wondering how much Thornton suspected, and what
the end would be.
She had sinned for naught; Anna had upset all her cherished plans, and
could she have gone back for a few months and done her work again, she
would have left the letter lying where she found it. But that could not
be now. She must reap as she had sown, and resolving finally to hope for
the best and abide the result, she went up to Anna, who, having no
suspicion of her, hurt her ten times more cruelly, by the perfect faith
with which she confided the story to her, than bitter reproaches would
have done.
“I know you wanted me to marry Mr. Hastings,” Anna said, “and I would if
I could have done so conscientiously, but I could not, for I may confess
it now to you. I did love Arthur so much, and I hoped that he loved me.”
The cold, hard woman, who had brought this grief upon her niece, could
only answer that it did not matter. She was not very sorry, although she
had wanted her to marry Mr. Hastings, but she must not fret about that
now, or about anything. She would be better by and by, and forget that
she ever cared for Arthur Leighton.
“At least,” and she spoke entreatingly now, “you will not demean
yourself to let him know of the mistake. It would scarcely be womanly,
and he may have gotten over it. Present circumstances seem to prove as
much.”
Mrs. Meredith felt now that her secret was comparatively safe, and with
her spirits lighter she kissed her niece lovingly and told her of a trip
to Europe which she had in view, promising that Anna should go with her,
and so not be at home when the marriage of Arthur and Lucy took place.
It was appointed for the 15th of January, that being the day when Lucy
came of age, and the very afternoon succeeding Anna’s interview with Mr.
Hastings the little lady came down to New York to direct about her
bridal trousseau making, in the city. She was brimming over with
happiness and her face was a perfect gleam of sunshine, when she came
next day to Anna’s room, and throwing off her wrappings plunged at once
into the subject uppermost in her thoughts, telling first how she and
Arthur had quarrelled,—“not quarrelled as uncle and aunt Hetherton and
lots of people do, but differed so seriously that I cried and had to
give up, too,” she said. “I wanted you for bridesmaid, and do you think,
he objected; not objected to you, but to bridesmaids generally, and he
carried his point, so that we are just to stand up stiff and straight
alone, except as you’ll all be round me in the aisle. You’ll be well by
that time, and I want you very near to me,” Lucy said, squeezing the icy
hand, whose coldness made her start and exclaim, “Why, Anna, how cold
you are, and how pale you are looking. You have been so sick, and I am
so well; it don’t seem quite right, does it? And Arthur, too, is so thin
that I have coaxed him to raise whiskers to cover the hollows in his
cheeks. He looks a heap better now, though he was always handsome. I do
so wonder that you two never fell in love, and I tell him so most every
time I see him, for I always think of you then.”
It was terrible to Anna to sit and hear all this, and the room grew dark
as she listened, but she forced back her pain, and stroking the curly
head almost resting on her lap, and said kindly, “You love him very
much, don’t you, darling,—so much that it would be hard to give him up?”
“Yes, oh yes, I could not give him up now, except to God. I trust I
could do that, though once I could not, I am sure,” and nestling closer
to Anna, Lucy whispered to her of the hope that she was better than she
used to be,—that daily intercourse with Arthur had not been without its
effect, and now she believed she tried to do right from a higher motive
than just to please him.
“God bless you, darling,” was Anna’s response, as she clasped the hand
of the young girl, who was now far more worthy to be Arthur’s wife than
once she had been.
If Anna had ever had a thought of telling Arthur, it would have been put
aside by that interview with Lucy. She could not harm that pure, loving,
trusting girl, and she sent her from her with a kiss and a blessing,
praying silently that she might never know a shadow of the pain which
she was suffering.
CHAPTER X.
MRS. MEREDITH’S CONSCIENCE.
She had one years before, but since the summer day when she sent from
her the white-faced man, whose heart she knew she had broken, it had
been hardening,—searing over with a stiff crust which nothing, it
seemed, could penetrate. And yet there were times when she was softened
and wished that much which she had done might be blotted out from the
great book in which even she believed. There was many a misdeed recorded
there against her, she knew, and occasionally there stole over her a
strange disquietude as to how she should confront them when they all
came up before her. Usually she could cast such thoughts aside by a
drive down gay Broadway, or at most by a call at Stewart’s, but the
sight of Anna’s white face and the knowing what made it so white were a
constant reproach, and conscience gradually wakened from its torpor,
enough to whisper of the only restitution in her power, that of
confession to Arthur. But from this she shrank nervously. She could not
humble herself thus to any one, and she would not either, she said. Then
came the fear lest by another than herself her guilt should come to
light. What if Thornton Hastings should find her out? She was half
afraid he suspected her now, and that gave her the heaviest pang of all,
for she respected Thornton highly, and it would cost her much to lose
his good opinion. She had lost him for her niece, but she could not
spare him from herself, and so in sad perplexity, which wore upon her
visibly, the autumn days went on until at last she sat one morning in
her dressing-room and read in a foreign paper:
“Died at Strasburg, Aug. 31st, Edward Coleman, Esq. aged 46.”
That was all, but the paper dropped from the trembling hands, and the
proud woman of the world bowed her head upon the cold marble of the
table and wept aloud. She was not Mrs. Meredith now, she was Julia
Ruthven again, and she stood with Edward Coleman out in the grassy
orchard where the apple-blossoms were dropping from the trees, and the
air was full of the insects’ hum and the song of mating birds. Many
years had passed since then. She was the wealthy Mrs. Meredith now, and
he was dead in Strasburg. He had been true to her to the last, for he
had never married, and those who had met him abroad had brought back the
same report of a “white-haired man, old before his time, and with a
tired, sad look on his face.” That look she had written there, and she
wept on as she recalled the past and murmured softly: “Poor Edward, I
loved you all the while, but I sold myself for gold, and it turned your
brown locks snowy white,—poor darling,—” and her hands moved up and down
the folds of her cashmere robe as if it were the brown locks they were
smoothing just as they used to do. Then came a thought of Anna, whose
face wore much the look which Edward’s did when he went slowly from the
orchard and left her there alone with the apple-blossoms dropping on her
head, and the hum of the bees in her ear.
“I can at least do right in that respect,” she said. “I can undo the
past to some extent and lessen the load of sin upon my shoulders. I will
write to Arthur Leighton; I surely need tell no one else,—not yet, at
least, lest he has outlived his love for Anna. I can trust to his
discretion and to his honor too; he will not betray me, unless it is
necessary, and then only to Anna. Edward would bid me do it if he could
speak; he was some like Arthur Leighton.”
And so with the dead man in Strasburg before her eyes, Mrs. Meredith
nerved herself to write to Arthur Leighton, confessing the fraud imposed
upon him, imploring his forgiveness, and begging him to spare her as
much as possible.
“I know from Anna’s own lips how much she has always loved you,” she
wrote in conclusion, “but she does not know of the stolen letter, and I
leave you to make such use of the knowledge as you shall think proper.”
She did not put in a single plea for poor little Lucy dancing so gayly
over the mine just ready to explode. She was purely selfish still with
all her qualms of conscience, and only thought of Anna, whom she would
make happy at another’s sacrifice. So she never hinted that it was
possible for Arthur to keep his word pledged to Lucy Harcourt, and as
she finished her own letter and placed it in an envelope with the one
which Arthur had sent to Anna, her thoughts leaped forward to the
wedding she would give her niece,—a wedding not quite like that she had
designed for Mrs. Thornton Hastings, but a quiet, elegant affair, just
suited to a clergyman who was marrying a Ruthven.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LETTER RECEIVED.
Arthur had been spending the evening at Prospect hill. The Hethertons
were there now, and would remain till after the 15th; and since they
came the rector had found it even pleasanter calling there than it had
been before with only his bride-elect to entertain him. Sure of Mr.
Bellamy, Fanny had laid aside her sharpness and was exceedingly witty
and brilliant, while, now that it was settled, the colonel was too
thorough a gentleman to be otherwise than gracious to his future nephew,
and Mrs. Hetherton was always polite and ladylike, so that the rector
looked forward with a good deal of interest to the evenings he usually
gave to Lucy, who, though satisfied to have him in her sight, still
preferred the olden time when she had him all to herself, and was not
disquieted with the fear that she was not learned enough for him, as she
often was when she heard him talking with Fanny and her uncle of things
she did not understand. This evening, however, the family were away and
she received him alone, trying so hard to come up to his capacity,
talking so intelligibly of the books she had been reading, and looking
so lovely in her crimson winter dress, besides being so sweetly
affectionate and confiding that for once since his engagement Arthur was
more than content, and returned her modest caresses with a warmth he had
not felt before. He was learning to love her very much, he thought, and
when at last he took his leave and she went with him to the door there
was an unwonted tenderness in his manner as he pushed her gently back,
for the first snow of the season was falling and the large flakes
dropped upon her hair, from which he brushed them carefully away.
“I cannot let my darling take cold,” he said, and Lucy felt a strange
thrill of joy, for never before had he called her his darling, and
sometimes she had feared that the love she received was not as great as
the love she gave.
But she did not think so now, and in an ecstasy of joy she stood in the
deep recess of the bay-window watching him as he went away through the
moonlight and the feathery cloud of snow, wondering why, when she was so
happy, there should cling to her a haunting presentiment that she and
Arthur would never meet again just as they had parted. Arthur, on the
contrary, was troubled with no such presentiment. Of Anna he hardly
thought, or, if he did, the vision was obscured by the fair picture he
had seen standing in the door with the snow-flakes resting on its hair
like pearls in a golden cabinet. And Arthur thanked his God that he was
beginning at last to feel right, that the solemn vows he was so soon to
utter would not be a mockery. It was Arthur’s wish to teach to others
how dark and mysterious are the ways of Providence, but he had not
himself half learned that lesson in all its strange reality; but the
lesson was coming on apace; each stride of his swift-footed beast
brought him nearer and nearer to the great shock waiting for him upon
his study-table, where his man had put it. He saw it the first thing on
entering the room, but he did not take it up until the snow was brushed
from his garments and he had seated himself by the cheerful fire blazing
on the hearth. Then sitting in his easy-chair and moving the lamp nearer
to him, he took Mrs. Meredith’s letter and broke the seal, starting as
if a serpent had stung him when in the note enclosed he recognized his
own handwriting, the same he had sent to Anna when his heart was as full
of hope as the brown stalks, now beating against his windows with a
dismal sound, were full of fragrant blossoms. Both had died since then,
the roses and his hopes, and Arthur almost wished that he, too, were
dead when he read Mrs. Meredith’s letter and saw the gulf he was
treading. Like the waves of the sea his love for Anna came rolling back
upon him, augmented and intensified by all that he had suffered, and by
the terrible conviction that it could not be, although, alas, “it might
have been.” He repeated these words over and over again, as, stupefied
with pain, he sat gazing at vacancy, thinking how true was the couplet:
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these,—_it might_ have been.”
He could not pray at first, his brain was so confused; but when the
white, quivering lips could move and the poor aching heart could pray,
he only whispered: “God help me to do right,” and by that prayer he knew
that for a single instant there had crept across his mind the
possibility of sacrificing Lucy, the girl who loved and trusted him so
much; but only for an instant. He would not cast her from him, though to
take her now, knowing what he did, was almost death itself. “But God can
help me, and he will,” he cried,—then falling upon his knees, with his
face bowed to the floor, the rector of St. Mark’s prayed as he had never
prayed before, first for himself, whose need was greatest, then for
Lucy, that she might never know what making her happy had cost him, and
then for Anna, whose name he could not speak. “That other one,” he
called her, and his heart kept swelling in his throat and preventing his
utterance so that the words he would say never reached his lips. But God
heard them just the same, and knew his child was asking that Anna might
forget him, if to remember him was pain,—that she might learn to love
another far worthier than he had ever been. He did not think of Mrs.
Meredith; he had no feeling of resentment then; he was too wholly
crushed to care how his ruin had been brought about, and long after the
wood-fire on the hearth had turned to cold, gray ashes, he knelt upon
the floor and battled with his grief; and when the morning broke it
found him still in the cheerless room, where he had passed the entire
night and from which he went forth strengthened as he hoped to do what
he fully believed to be his duty.
This was on Saturday, and the Sunday following there was no service at
St. Mark’s. The rector was sick, the sexton said, hard sick, too, he had
heard, and the Hetherton carriage with Lucy in it drove swiftly to the
parsonage, where the quiet and solitude awed and frightened her as she
entered the house and asked the housekeeper how Mr. Leighton was.
“It is very sudden,” she said. “He was perfectly well when he left me on
Friday night. Please tell him I am here.”
The housekeeper shook her head. Her master’s orders were that no one but
the doctor should be admitted, she said, repeating what Arthur had told
her in anticipation of just such an infliction as this. But Lucy was not
to be denied; Arthur was hers; his sickness was hers; his suffering was
hers, and see him she would.
“He surely did not mean me, when he asked that no one should be
admitted. Tell him it is I; it is Lucy,” she said, with an air of
authority, which in one so small, so pretty, and so childish only amused
Mrs. Brown, who departed with the message, while Lucy sat down with her
feet upon the stove and looked around the sitting-room, thinking that it
was smaller and poorer than the one at Prospect Hill, and how she would
remodel it when she was mistress there.
“He says you can come,” was the word Mrs. Brown brought back, and with a
gleam of triumph in her eye and a toss of the head which said, “I told
you so,” Lucy went softly into the darkened room and shut the door
behind her.
Arthur had half expected this and had nerved himself to meet it, but the
cold sweat stood on his face and his heart throbbed painfully as Lucy
bent over him and said, “Poor, dear Arthur, I am so sorry for you, and
if I could I’d bear the pain so willingly.”
He knew she would; she was just as loving and unselfish as that, and he
wound his arms around her and drew her closer to him, while he
whispered, “My poor little Lucy, my poor little Lucy. I don’t deserve
this from you.”
She did not know what he meant, and she only answered him with kisses,
while her hands moved caressingly across his forehead, just as they had
moved years ago in Rome when she soothed the pain away. There certainly
was a mesmeric influence emanating from those hands, and Arthur felt its
power, growing very quiet and at last falling away to sleep while the
passes went on, and Lucy held her breath lest she should waken him. She
was a famous nurse, the physician said, when he came, and he constituted
her his coadjutor and gave his patient’s medicine into her care.
It was hardly proper for her niece to stay at the rectory, Mrs.
Hetherton thought, but Lucy was one who could trample down proprieties,
and it was finally arranged that, in order to avoid all comment, Fanny
should stay with her.
So, while Fanny went to bed and slept Lucy sat all night in the
sick-room with Mrs. Brown, and when the next morning came she was
looking very pale, and languid, but very beautiful withal. At least such
was the mental compliment paid her by Thornton Hastings, who was passing
through Hanover and stopped over a train to see his old college friend
and perhaps tell him what he began to feel it was his duty to tell him
in spite of his promise to Anna. She was nearly well now and had driven
with him twice to the park, but he could not be insensible to what she
suffered, or how she shrank from hearing the proposed wedding discussed,
and in his intense pity for her he had half resolved to break his word
and tell Arthur what he knew. But he changed his mind when he had been
in Hanover a few hours and watched the little fairy, who, like some
ministering angel, glided about the sick-room, showing herself every
whit a woman, and making him repent that he had ever called her
frivolous or silly. She was not either, he said, and with a magnanimity
for which he thought himself entitled to a good deal of praise, he felt
that it was very possible for Arthur to love the gentle little girl who
smoothed his pillows so tenderly, and whose fingers threaded so lovingly
the dark brown locks when she thought he—Thornton—was not looking on.
She was very coy of _him_, and very distant towards him, for she had not
forgotten his sin, and she treated him at first with a reserve for which
he could not account. But as the days went on and Arthur grew so sick
that his parishioners began to tremble for their young minister’s life,
and to think it perfectly right for Lucy to stay with him even if she
was assisted in her labor of love by the stranger from New York, the
reserve all disappeared, and on the most perfect terms of amity she and
Thornton Hastings watched together by Arthur’s side.
Thornton Hastings learned more lessons than one in that sick-room where
Arthur’s faith in God triumphed over the terrors of the grave which at
one time seemed so near, while the timid Lucy, whom he had only known as
a gay butterfly of fashion, dared before him to pray that God would
spare her promised husband, or give her grace to say “Thy will be done.”
Thornton could hardly say that he was skeptical before, but any doubts
he might have had touching the great fundamental truths on which a true
religion rests were gone forever, and he left Hanover a changed man in
more respects than one.
Arthur did not die, and on the Sunday preceding the week when the
Christmas decorations were to commence he came again before his people,
his face very pale and worn, and wearing upon it a look which told of a
new baptism,—an added amount of faith which had helped to lift him above
the fleeting cares of this present life. And yet there was much of earth
clinging to him still, and it made itself felt in the rapid beatings of
his heart when he glanced towards the pew where Lucy knelt and knew that
she was giving thanks for him restored again.
Once in the earlier stages of his convalescence he had almost betrayed
his secret by asking her which she would rather do, bury him from her
sight, feeling that he loved her to the last, or give him to another now
that she knew he would recover.
There was a frightened look in Lucy’s eyes as she replied:
“I would ten thousand times rather see you dead, and know that even in
death you were my own, than to lose you that other way. O Arthur, you
have no thought of leaving me now?”
“No, darling, I have not. I am yours always,” he said, feeling that the
compact was sealed forever, and that God blessed the sealing.
He had written to Mrs. Meredith, granting her his forgiveness, and
asking that if Anna did not already know of the deception she might
never be enlightened. And Mrs. Meredith had answered that Anna had only
heard a rumor that an offer had been made her, but that she regarded it
as a mistake, and was fast recovering both her health and spirits. Mrs.
Meredith did not add her surprise at Arthur’s conscientiousness in
adhering to his engagement, nor hint that her attack of conscience was
so safely over; she was glad of it, for she still had hope of that house
on Madison Square; but Arthur guessed at it and dismissed her from his
mind, and waited with a trusting heart for whatever the future might
bring.
CHAPTER XII.
VALENCIA.
Very extensive preparations were making at Prospect Hill for the double
wedding to occur on the 15th of January. After much debate and
consultation, Fanny had decided to take Mr. Bellamy then, and thus she,
too, shared largely in the general interest and excitement which
pervaded everything. Both brides-elect were very happy, but in a widely
different way, for while Fanny was quiet and undemonstrative Lucy seemed
wild with joy and danced gayly about the house, now in the kitchen,
where the cake was made, now in the chamber, where the plain sewing was
done, and then flitting to her own room in quest of Valencia, who was
sent on divers errands of mercy, the little lady thinking that as the
time for her marriage was so near it would be proper for her to stop
in-doors and not show herself in public quite so freely as she had been
in the habit of doing. So she remained at home, and they missed her in
the back streets and by-lanes, and the Widow Hobbs, who was still an
invalid, pined for a sight of her bright face, and was only half
consoled for its absence by the charities which Valencia brought, the
smart waiting-maid putting on a great many airs and making Mrs. Hobbs
feel keenly how greatly she thought herself demeaned by coming to such a
heathenish place. The Hanoverians, too, missed her in the streets, but
for this they made ample amends by discussing the preparations at
Prospect Hill and commenting upon the bridal trousseau, which was sent
from New York the week before Christmas, thus affording a most fruitful
theme of comment for the women and maids engaged in trimming the church.
There were dresses of every conceivable fashion, it was said, but none
were quite so grand as the wedding-dress itself,—a heavy white silk
which “could stand alone,” and trailed a full yard behind. It was also
whispered that, not content with seeing the effect of her bridal robes
as they lay upon the bed, Miss Lucy Harcourt had actually tried them on,
wreath, veil, and all, and stood before the glass until Miss Fanny had
laughed at her for being so vain and foolish, and said she was a pretty
specimen for a sober clergyman’s wife. For all this gossip the villagers
were indebted mostly to Valencia Le Barre, who, ever since her arrival
at Prospect Hill, had been growing somewhat dissatisfied with the young
mistress she had expected to rule even more completely than she had
ruled Mrs. Meredith. But in this she was mistaken, and it did not
improve her never very amiable temper to find that she could not with
safety appropriate more than half her mistress’ handkerchiefs, collars,
cuffs, and gloves, to say nothing of perfumery and pomades; and as this
was a new state of things with Valencia, she chafed at the
administration under which she had so willingly put herself, and told
things of her mistress which no sensible servant would ever have
reported. And Lucy gave her plenty to tell. Frank and outspoken as a
child, she acted as she felt and _did_ try on the bridal dress, did
scream with delight when Valencia fastened the veil and let its fleecy
folds fall gracefully around her.
“I wonder what Arthur will think. I so wish he was here,” she had said,
ordering a glass brought, that she might see herself from behind, and
know just how much her dress trailed, and how it looked beneath the
costly veil.
She was very beautiful in her bridal robes, and she kept them on till
Fanny began to chide her for her vanity, and even then she lingered
before the mirror as if loth to take them off.
“I don’t believe in presentiments,” she said, “but do you know it seems
to me just as if I should never wear this again,” and she smoothed
thoughtfully the folds of the heavy silk she had just laid upon the bed.
“I don’t know what can happen to prevent it, unless Arthur should die.
He was so pale last Sunday, and seemed so weak that I shuddered every
time I looked at him. I mean to drive round there this afternoon,” she
continued. “I suppose it is too cold for him to venture out, and he has
no carriage, either.”
Accordingly she went to the rectory that afternoon, and the women in the
church saw her as she drove by, the gorgeous colors of her
carriage-blanket flashing in the wintry sunshine, and the long white
feather in her hat waving up and down as she nodded to them. There was a
little too much of the lady patroness about her to suit the plain
Hanoverians, especially those who were neither high enough nor low
enough to be honored with her notice; and as they returned to their
wreath-making and gossip, they wondered under their breath if it would
not on the whole have been better if their clergyman had married Anna
Ruthven, instead of the fine city girl with her Parisian manners. As
they said this, a gleam of intelligence shot from the gray eyes of
Valencia Le Barre, who was there at work in a most unamiable mood.
“_She_ did not like to stain her hands with the nasty hemlock, more than
other folks,” she had said, when, after the trying on of the bridal
dress, Lucy had remonstrated with her for some duty neglected, and then
bidden her go to the church and help if she was needed.
“I must certainly dismiss you unless you improve,” Lucy had said to the
insolent girl, who went unwillingly to the church, where she sat tying
wreaths when the carriage went by.
She had thought many times of the letter she had read, and more than
once when particularly angry it had been upon her lips to tell her
mistress that she was not Mr. Leighton’s _first_ choice, if indeed she
was his choice at all; but there was something in Lucy’s manner which
held her back, besides which she was rather unwilling to confess to her
own meanness in reading the stolen letter.
“I _could_ tell them something if I would,” she thought, as she bent
over the hemlock boughs, and listened to the remarks; but for that time
she kept her secret and worked on moodily, while the unsuspecting Lucy
went her way, and was soon alighting at the parsonage-gate.
Arthur saw her as she came up the walk, and went out to meet her. He was
looking very pale and miserable, and his clothes hung loosely upon him,
but he welcomed her kindly, and lead her in to the fire, and tried to
believe that he was glad to see her sitting there with her little
high-heeled boots upon the fender, and the bright hues of her balmoral
just showing beneath her dress of blue merino. She went all over the
house as she usually did, suggesting alterations and improvements, and
greatly confusing good Mrs. Brown, who trudged obediently after her,
wondering what she and her master were ever to do with the gay-plumaged
bird, whose ways were so unlike their own.
“You must drive with me to the church,” she said at last to Arthur.
“Fresh air will do you good, and you stay moped up too much. I wanted
you to-day at Prospect Hill, for this morning the express from New York
brought—” she stood up on tiptoe to whisper the great news to him, but
his pulses did not quicken in the least, even when she told him how
charming was the bridal dress.
He was standing before the mirror, and glancing at himself, he said half
laughingly, half sadly, “I am a pitiful-looking bridegroom to go with
all that finery. I should not think you would want me, Lucy.”
“But I do,” she answered, holding his hand and leading him to the
carriage, which took him swiftly to the church.
He had not intended going there as long as there was an excuse for
staying away, and he felt himself grow sick and faint when he stood amid
the Christmas decorations, and remembered the last year, when he and
Anna had fastened the wreaths upon the wall. They were trimming the
church very elaborately in honor of him and his bride-elect, and white
artificial flowers, so natural that they could not be detected from the
real, were mixed with scarlet leaves and placed among the mass of green.
The effect was very fine, and Arthur tried to praise it, but his face
belied his words, and after he was gone, the disappointed girls declared
that he looked more like a man about to be hung, than one so soon to be
married.
It was very late that night when Lucy summoned Valencia to comb out her
long, thick curls, and Valencia was tired and cross and sleepy, and
handled the brush so awkwardly, and snarled her mistress’s hair so
often, that Lucy expostulated with her sharply, and this awoke the
slumbering demon, which, bursting into full life, could no longer be
restrained, and in amazement which kept her silent, Lucy listened, while
Valencia vulgarly taunted her with “standing in Anna Ruthven’s shoes,”
and told all she knew of the letter stolen by Mrs. Meredith, and the one
she carried to Arthur. But Valencia’s anger quickly cooled, and she
trembled with fear when she saw how deathly white her distress grew, and
even heard the loud beating of the heart which seemed trying to burst
from its prison, and fall bleeding at the feet of the poor, wretched
girl, around whose lips the white foam gathered as she motioned Valencia
to stop, and whispered “I am dying.”
She was _not_ dying, but the fainting-fit which ensued was more like
death than that which had come upon Anna when she heard that Arthur was
lost. Once they really thought her dead, and in an agony of remorse
Valencia hung over her, accusing herself as a murderess, but giving no
other explanation to those around her than:
“I was combing her hair when the white froth spirted all over her
wrapper, and she said that she was dying.”
And that was all the family know of the strange attack which lasted till
the dawn of day, and left upon Lucy’s face a look as if years and years
of roguish had passed over her young head, and left its footprints
behind. Early in the morning she asked to see Valencia alone, and the
repentant girl went to her, prepared to take back all she had said, and
declare the whole a lie. But something in Lucy’s manner wrung the truth
from her, and she repeated the story again so clearly, that Lucy had no
longer a doubt that Anna was preferred to herself, and sending Valencia
away, she moaned piteously:
“Oh, what shall I do? What is my duty?”
The part which hurt her most of all was the terrible certainty that
Arthur did not love _her_, as he loved Anna Ruthven. She seemed
intuitively to understand it all, and see how in an unguarded moment he
had offered himself to save her good name from gossip, and how ever
since his life had been a constant struggle to do his duty by her.
“Poor Arthur,” she sobbed, “yours has been a hard lot, trying to act the
love you did not feel; but it shall be so no longer, for I will set you
free.”
This was her final decision, but she did not reach it till a day and
night had passed, during which she lay with her face turned to the wall,
saying she wanted nothing except to be left alone.
“When I can, I’ll tell you,” she had said to Fanny and her aunt, who
insisted upon knowing the cause of her distress. “When I can, I’ll tell
you all about it. Leave me alone till then.”
So they ceased to worry her, but Fanny sat constantly in the room
watching the motionless figure, which took whatever she offered, but
otherwise gave no sign of life until the morning of the second day, when
it turned slowly towards her, and the livid lips quivered piteously and
made an attempt to smile as they said:
“I can tell you now. I have made up my mind.”
Fanny’s eyes were dim with the truest tears she had ever shed when
Lucy’s story was ended, and her voice was very low as she asked:
“And you mean to give him up at this late hour?”
“Yes, I mean to give him up. I have been over the entire ground many
times, even to the deep humiliation of what people will say, and I have
come each time to the same conclusion. It is right that Arthur should be
released, and I shall release him.”
“And what will _you_ do?” Fanny asked, gazing in wonder and awe at the
young girl, who answered: “I do not know; I have not thought. I guess
God will take care of that.”
And God _did_ take care of _that_, and inclined the Hetherton family to
be very kind and tender towards her, and kept Arthur from the house
until the Christmas decorations were completed and the Christmas
festival was held. Many were the inquiries made for Lucy on Christmas
Eve, and many thanks and wishes for her speedy restoration were sent to
her by those whom she had so bountifully remembered. Thornton Hastings,
too, who had come to town and was present at the church on Christmas
Eve, asked for her with almost as much interest as Arthur, who bade
Fanny tell her that he should call on her on the morrow after the
morning service.
“Oh, I cannot see him here! I must tell him at the rectory in the very
room where he asked me to be his wife,” Lucy said, when Fanny reported
Arthur’s message. “I am able to ride there, and it will be fine
sleighing to-morrow. See, the snow is falling now,” and pushing back the
curtain Lucy looked drearily out upon the fast-whitening ground, sighing
as she remembered the night when the first snow-flakes were falling, and
she stood watching them with Arthur at her side.
Fanny did not oppose her cousin, and with a kiss upon the blue-veined
forehead, she went to her own room and left her to think for the
hundredth time _what_ she should say to Arthur.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHRISTMAS DAY.
The worshippers at St. Mark’s on Christmas morning heard the music of
the bells as the Hetherton sleigh dashed by, but none of them knew
whither it was bound or dreamed of the scene which awaited the rector
when after the services were over he started towards home. Lucy had kept
to her resolution, and just as Mrs. Brown was looking at the clock to
see if it was time to put her fowls to bake, she heard the hall door
open softly, and almost dropped her dripping-pan in her surprise at the
sight of Lucy Harcourt, who looked so mournfully at her as she said:
“I want to go to Arthur’s room,—the library, I mean.”
“Why, child, what is the matter? I heard you was sick, but did not
s’spose ’twas anything very bad. You are paler than a ghost,” Mrs. Brown
exclaimed, as she tried to unfasten Lucy’s hood and cloak and lead her
to the fire.
But Lucy was not cold, and would rather go at once to Arthur’s room. So
Mrs. Brown made no objection, though she wondered if the girl was crazy
as she went back to her fowls and Christmas pudding, and left Lucy to
find her way alone to Arthur’s study, which looked so like its owner,
with his dressing-gown across the lounge just where he had thrown it,
his slippers on the rug, and his arm-chair standing near the table,
where he had sat when he asked Lucy to be his wife, and where she now
sat down, panting heavily for breath and gazing drearily around with the
look of a frightened bird when seeking for some avenue of escape from an
appalling danger. There _was_ no escape, and with a moan she laid her
head upon the writing-table, and prayed that Arthur might come quickly
while she had sense and strength to tell him. She heard his step at
last, and rose up to meet him, smiling a little at his sudden start when
he saw her there.
“It’s only I,” she said, shedding back the curls from her pallid face
and grasping the chair to steady herself and keep from falling. “I am
not here to frighten or worry you. I’ve come to do you good,—to set you
free. O Arthur, you do not know how terribly you have been wronged, and
I did not know it either till a few days ago! She never received your
letter,—Anna never did. If she had she would have answered yes and been
in my place now; but she is going to be there. I give you up to Anna.
I’m here to tell you so. But O Arthur, it hurts,—it hurts—”
He knew it hurt by the agonized expression of her face, but he could not
go near her for a moment, so great was his surprise at what he saw and
heard. But when the first shock for them both was past, and he could
listen to her more rational account of what she knew and what she was
there to do, he refused to listen. He knew it all before, and he would
not be free; he would keep his word, he said. Matters had gone too far
to be so suddenly ended; he held her to her promise, and she must be his
wife.
“Can you tell me truly that you love _me_ more than Anna?” Lucy asked, a
ray of hope dawning for an instant upon her heart, but fading into utter
darkness as Arthur hesitated to answer her.
He _did_ love Anna best, though never had Lucy been so near supplanting
her as at that moment when she stood before him and told him he was
free. There was something in the magnitude of her generosity which
touched him closely, and made her dearer to him than she had ever been.
“I can make you very happy,” he said at last, and Lucy replied, “Yes,
but how with yourself? Would you be happy too? No, Arthur, you would
not, and neither should I, knowing what I do. It is best that we should
part, though it almost breaks my heart, for I have loved you so much.”
She stopped for breath, and Arthur was wondering what he should say
next, when a cheery whistle sounded near, and Thornton Hastings appeared
in the door. He had just returned from the post-office, whither he had
gone after church, and not knowing any one but Arthur was in the
library, had come there at once.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, when he saw Lucy; and he was hurrying
away, but Lucy called him back, feeling that in him she would find a
powerful ally to aid her in her task.
Appealing to him as Arthur’s friend, she repeated Valencia’s story
rapidly, and then went on: “Anna never knew of that letter,—or she would
have answered yes. I know she loves him, for I can remember a thousand
things which prove it, and I know he has loved her best all the time,
even when trying so hard to love me. Oh, how it hurts me to think he had
to _try_ to love me who loved him so much. But that is all past now. I
give him up to Anna, and you must help me as if I were your sister. Tell
him it is best. He must not argue against me, for I feel myself giving
way through my great love for him, and I know it is not right. Tell him,
Mr. Hastings; plead my cause for me; say what a true woman ought to say,
for, believe me, I am in earnest in giving him to Anna.”
There was a ghastly hue upon her face, and her features looked pinched
and rigid, but the terrible heartbeats were not there. God in His great
mercy kept them back, else she had surely died under that strong
excitement. Thornton thought she was fainting, and going hastily to her
side, passed his arm around her and put her in the chair; then standing
by her, he said just what first came into his mind to say. It was a
delicate matter in which to interfere, but he handled it carefully,
telling frankly what had passed between himself and Anna, and giving as
his opinion, that she loved Arthur to-day just as well as before she
left Hanover.
“Then it is surely right for Arthur to marry her, and he must!” Lucy
exclaimed vehemently, while Thornton laid his hand pityingly upon her
head, and said, “And only you be sacrificed.”
There was something wonderfully tender in the tone of Thornton’s voice,
and Lucy glanced quickly at him while her eyes filled with the first
tears she had shed since she came into the room.
“I am willing; I am ready; I have made up my mind, and I shall never
unmake it,” she answered, while Arthur put in a feeble remonstrance.
But Thornton was on Lucy’s side, and did with his cooler judgment what
she could not; and when at last the interview was ended, there was no
ring on Lucy’s forefinger, for Arthur held it in his hand, and their
engagement was at an end. Stunned with what he had passed through, he
stood motionless while Thornton drew Lucy’s cloak about her shoulders,
fastened her fur, tied on her satin hood, and took such care of her as a
mother would take of a suffering child.
“It is hardly safe to send her home alone,” he thought, as he looked
into her face and saw how weak she was. “As a friend of both I ought to
accompany her.”
She was indeed so weak that she could scarcely stand, and Thornton took
her in his arms and carried her to the sleigh; then springing in beside
her, he made her lean her tired head upon his shoulder as they drove to
Prospect Hill. She did not seem frivolous to him now, but rather the
noblest type of womanhood he had ever met. Few could have done what she
had, and there was much of warmth and fervor in the clasp of his hand as
he bade her good-by, and went back to the rectory.
* * * * *
Great was the consternation and surprise in Hanover when it was known
that there was to be but one bride at Prospect Hill on the night of the
15th, and various were the surmises as to the cause of the sudden
change; but strive as they might, the good people of the village could
not get at the truth, for Valencia held her peace, while the Hethertons
were far too proud to admit of their being questioned, and Thornton
Hastings stood a bulwark of defence between the people and the
clergyman, and managed to have the pulpit at St. Mark’s supplied for a
few weeks, while he took Arthur away, saying that his health required
the change.
“You have done nobly, darling,” Fanny Hetherton had said to Lucy when
she received her from Thornton’s hands and heard that all was over.
Then, leading her half-fainting cousin to her own cheerful room, she
made her lie down while she told her of the plan she had formed when
first she heard what Lucy’s intentions were. “I wrote to Mr. Bellamy
asking if he would take a trip to Europe, so that you could go with us,
for I knew you would not wish to stay here. To-day I have his answer
saying he will go; and what is better yet, father and mother are going,
too.”
“Oh I am so glad! I could not stay here now,” Lucy replied, sobbing
herself to sleep, while Fanny sat by and watched, wondering at the
strength which had upheld her weak little cousin in the struggle she had
been through, and feeling, too, that it was just as well, for after all
it was a mésalliance for an heiress like her cousin to marry a poor
clergyman.
* * * * *
There was a great wedding at Prospect Hill on the night of the 15th, but
neither Lucy nor Arthur were there. He lay sick again at the St. Denis,
in New York, and she was alone in her chamber fighting back her tears,
and praying that now the worst was over she might be withheld from
looking back and wishing the work undone. She went with the bridal party
to New York, where she tarried for a few days, but saw no one but Anna,
for whom she sent at once. The interview lasted more than an hour, and
Anna’s eyes were swollen with weeping when at last it ended; but Lucy’s
face, though white as snow, was very calm and quiet, and wore a
peaceful, placid look which made it like the face of an angel. Two weeks
later, and the steamer Java bore her away across the water, where she
hoped to outlive the storm which had beaten so piteously upon her.
Thornton Hastings and Anna went with her on board the ship, and for
their sakes she tried to appear natural, succeeding so well that it was
a very pleasant picture, which Thornton kept in his mind, of a frail
little figure standing upon the deck, holding its water-proof together
with one hand, and with the other waving a smiling adieu to Anna and
himself.
More than a year later Thornton Hastings followed that figure across the
sea, and found it in beautiful Venice, sailing again through the moonlit
streets, and listening to the music which came so oft from the passing
gondolas. It had recovered its former roundness, and the face was even
more beautiful than it had been before, for the light frivolity was
gone, and there was in its stead a peaceful, subdued expression which
made Lucy Harcourt more attractive than she had ever been. At least so
Thornton Hastings thought, and he lingered at her side, and felt glad
that she gave no outward token of agitation when he said to her:
“There was a wedding at St. Mark’s in Hanover just before I left. Can
you guess who the happy couple were?”
“Yes, Arthur and Anna. She wrote me they were to be married on Christmas
eve. I am so glad it has come around at last.”
Then she questioned him of the bridal,—of Arthur,—and even of Anna’s
dress, her manner evincing that the old wound had healed, or was healing
very fast, and that soon only a scar would remain to tell where it had
been.
And so the days went on beneath the sunny Italian skies, until one
glorious night in Rome, when they sat together amid the ruins of the
Colosseum, and Thornton spoke his mind, alluding to the time when each
had loved another, expressing himself as glad that in his case the
matter had ended as it did, and then asking Lucy if she could
conscientiously be his wife.
“What! You marry a frivolous plaything like me?” Lucy asked, her woman’s
pride flashing up once more, but this time playfully, as Thornton knew
by the joyous light in her eye.
She told him what she meant, and how she had hated him for it, and then
they laughed together, but Thornton’s kiss smothered the laugh on Lucy’s
lips, for he guessed what her answer was, and that this, his second
wooing, was more successful than his first had been.
* * * * *
“MARRIED, in Rome, on Thursday, April 10th, THORNTON HASTINGS, ESQ., of
New York City, to MISS LUCY HARCOURT, also of New York, and niece of
Colonel James Hetherton.”
Anna was out in the rectory garden bending over a bed of hyacinths when
Arthur brought her the paper and pointed to the notice.
“Oh, I am so glad, so _glad_, so GLAD!” she exclaimed, emphasizing each
successive glad a little more, and setting down her foot as if to give
it force. “I have never dared be quite as happy with you as I might,”
she continued, leaning lovingly against her husband, “for there was
always a thought of Lucy, and what a fearful price she paid for our
happiness. But now it is all as it should be, and, Arthur, am I very
vain in thinking that she is better suited to Thornton Hastings than I
ever was, and that I do better as your wife than Lucy would have done?”
A kiss was Arthur’s only answer, but Anna was satisfied, and there
rested upon her face a look of perfect content as all that warm spring
afternoon she walked in her pleasant garden, thinking of the newly
married pair in Rome, and glancing occasionally at the open window of
the library where Arthur was, busy with his sermon, his pen moving all
the faster for the knowing that Anna was just within his call,—that by
turning his head he could see her dear face, and that by and by, when
his work was done, she would come in to him, and with her loving words
and winsome ways make him forget how tired he was, and thank Heaven
again for the great gift bestowed when it gave him Anna Ruthven.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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CHARLES DICKENS’ WORKS.
=A New Edition.=
Among the numerous editions of the works of this greatest of English
Novelists, there has not been until now _one_ that entirely satisfies
the public demand.... Without exception, they each have some strong
distinctive objection, ... either the shape and dimensions of the
volumes are unhandy—or, the type is small and indistinct—or, the paper
is thin and poor—or, the illustrations [if they have any] are
unsatisfactory—or, the binding is bad—or, the price is too high.
A new edition is _now_, however, published by G. W. Carleton & Co. of
New York, which, it is believed, will, in every respect, completely
satisfy the popular demand.... It is known as
“=Carleton’s New Illustrated Edition.=”
The size and form is most convenient for holding, ... the type is
entirely new, and of a clear and open character that has received the
approval of the reading community in other popular works.
The illustrations are by the original artists chosen by Charles Dickens
himself ... and the paper, printing, and binding are of the most
attractive and substantial character.
The publication of this beautiful new edition was commenced in April,
1873, and will be completed in 20 volumes—one novel each month—at the
extremely reasonable price of $1.50 per volume, as follows:—
1—THE PICKWICK PAPERS.
2—OLIVER TWIST.
3—DAVID COPPERFIELD.
4—GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
5—DOMBEY AND SON.
6—BARNABY RUDGE.
7—NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.
8—OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.
9—BLEAK HOUSE.
10—LITTLE DORRIT.
11—MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.
12—OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
13—TALE OF TWO CITIES.
14—CHRISTMAS BOOKS.
15—SKETCHES BY “BOZ.”
16—HARD TIMES, ETC.
17—PICTURES OF ITALY, ETC.
18—UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.
19—EDWIN DROOD, ETC.
20—ENGLAND and CATALOGUE.
Being issued, month by month, at so reasonable a price, those who
_begin_ by subscribing for this work, will imperceptibly soon find
themselves fortunate owners of an entire set of this _best edition of
Dickens’ Works_, almost without having paid for it.
A Prospectus furnishing specimen of type, sized-page, and illustrations,
will be sent to any one _free_ on application—and specimen copies of the
bound books will be forwarded by mail, _postage free_, on receipt of
price, $1.50, by
G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers,
Madison Square, New York.
THREE VALUABLE BOOKS,
All Beautifully Printed and Elegantly Bound.
=I.—The Art of Conversation,=
With Directing for Self-Culture. An admirably conceived and entertaining
work—sensible, instructive, and full of suggestions valuable to every
one who desires to be either a good talker or listener, or who wishes to
appear to advantage in good society. Every young and even old person
should read it, study it over and over again, and follow those hints in
it which lead them to break up bad habits and cultivate good ones. ⁂
Price $1.50. Among the contents will be found chapters upon—
ATTENTION IN CONVERSATION.—SATIRE.—PUNS.—SARCASM.—TEASING.—CENSURE.—
FAULT-FINDING.—EGOTISM.—POLITENESS.—COMPLIMENTS.—STORIES.—ANECDOTES.—
QUESTIONING.—LIBERTIES.—IMPUDENCE.—STARING.—DISAGREEABLE SUBJECTS.—
SELFISHNESS.—ARGUMENT.—SACRIFICES.—SILENT PEOPLE.—DINNER CONVERSATION.—
TIMIDITY.—ITS CURE.—MODESTY.—CORRECT LANGUAGE.—SELF-INSTRUCTION.—
MISCELLANEOUS KNOWLEDGE.—LANGUAGES.
=II.—The Habits of Good Society.=
A Handbook for Ladies and Gentlemen. With thoughts, hints, and anecdotes
concerning social observances, nice points of taste and good manners,
and the art of making oneself agreeable. The whole interspersed with
humorous illustrations of social predicaments, remarks on fashion, etc.
⁂ Price $1.75. Among the contents will be found chapters upon—
GENTLEMEN’S PREFACE.
LADIES’ PREFACE.—FASHIONS.
THOUGHTS ON SOCIETY.
GOOD SOCIETY.—BAD SOCIETY.
THE DRESSING-ROOM.
THE LADIES’ TOILET.—DRESS.
FEMININE ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
MANNERS AND HABITS.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ETIQUETTE.
MARRIED AND UNMARRIED LADIES.
DO DO GENTLEMEN.
CALLING ETIQUETTE.—CARDS.
VISITING ETIQUETTE.—DINNERS.
DINNER PARTIES.
LADIES AT DINNER.
DINNER HABITS.—CARVING.
MANNERS AT SUPPER.—BALLS.
MORNING PARTIES.—PICNICS.
EVENING PARTIES.—DANCES.
PRIVATE THEATRICALS.
RECEPTIONS.—ENGAGEMENTS.
MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.
INVITATIONS.—DRESSES.
BRIDESMAIDS.—PRESENTS.
TRAVELLING ETIQUETTE.
PUBLIC PROMENADE.
COUNTRY VISITS.—CITY VISITS.
=III.—Arts of Writing, Reading, and Speaking.=
An exceedingly fascinating work for teaching not only the beginner, but
for perfecting every one in these three most desirable accomplishments.
For youth this book is both interesting and valuable; and for adults,
whether professionally or socially it is a book that they cannot
dispense with. ⁂ Price $1.50. Among the contents will be found chapters
upon—
READING & THINKING.—LANGUAGE.—WORDS, SENTENCES, & CONSTRUCTION.—WHAT TO
AVOID.—LETTER WRITING.—PRONUNCIATION.—EXPRESSION.—TONE.—RELIGIOUS
READINGS.—THE BIBLE.—PRAYERS.—DRAMATIC READINGS.—THE ACTOR & READER.—
FOUNDATIONS FOR ORATORY AND SPEAKING.—WHAT TO SAY.—WHAT NOT TO SAY—HOW
TO BEGIN.—CAUTIONS.—DELIVERY.—WRITING A SPEECH.—FIRST LESSONS.—PUBLIC
SPEAKING.—DELIVERY.—ACTION.—ORATORY OF THE PULPIT.—COMPOSITION.—THE
BAR.—READING OF WIT & HUMOR.—THE PLATFORM.—CONSTRUCTION OF A SPEECH.
_These works are the most perfect of their kind ever published; fresh,
sensible good-humored, entertaining, and readable. Every person of taste
should possess them, and cannot be otherwise than delighted with them._
☞ A beautiful new miniature edition of these very popular books has just
been published, entitled “THE DIAMOND EDITION,” three little volumes,
elegantly printed on tinted paper, and handsomely bound in a box. Price
$3.00.
⁂ These books are all sent by mail, _postage free_, on receipt of price,
by
G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers, Madison Square, New York.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.