Dora Thorne, Charlotte Mary Brame [beach read book TXT] 📗

walking quickly through the long gray fields, he wished that Dora had never seen Ronald Earle.

Poor Dora's troubles were not yet ended. When the warm August sun peeped into her room on the following morning, she did not see it shine; when the children crept to her side and called for mamma, she was deaf to their little voices. The tired head tossed wearily to and fro, the burning eyes would not close. A raging fever had her in its fierce clutches. When Mrs. Thorne, alarmed by the children's cries, came in, Dora did not know her, but cried out loudly that she was a false woman, who had lured her husband from her.

They sent in all haste for aid; but the battle was long and fierce. During the hours of delirium, Mrs. Thorne gleaned sorrowfully some portions of her daughter's story. She cried out incessantly against a fair woman--one Valentine--whom Ronald loved--cried in scorn and anger. Frequently she was in a garden, behind some trees; then confronting some one with flaming eyes, sobbing that she did not believe it; then hiding her face and crying out:

"He has ceased to love me--let me die!"

But the time came when the fierce fever burned itself out, and Dora lay weak and helpless as a little child. She recovered slowly, but she was never the same again. Her youth, hope, love, and happiness were all dead. No smile or dimple, no pretty blush, came to the changed face; the old coy beauty was all gone.

Calm and quiet, with deep, earnest eyes, and lips that seldom smiled, Dora seemed to have found another self. Even with her children the sad restraint never wore off nor grew less. If they wanted to play, they sought the farmer in the fields, the good-natured nurse, or the indulgent grandmamma--never the sad, pale mother. If they were in trouble then they sought her.

Dora asked for work. She would have been dairy maid, house maid, or anything else, but her father said "No." A pretty little room was given to her, with woodbines and roses peeping in at the window. Here for long hours every day, while the children played in the meadows, she sat and sewed. There, too, Dora, for the first time, learned what Ronald, far away in sunny Italy, failed to teach her--how to think and read. Big boxes of books came from the town of Shorebeach. Stephen Thorne spared no trouble or expense in pleasing his daughter. Dora wondered that she had never cared for books, now that deeper and more solemn thoughts came to her. The pale face took a new beauty; no one could have believed that the thoughtful woman with the sweet voice and refined accent was the daughter of the blunt farmer Thorne and his homely wife.

A few weeks passed, and but for the little ones Dora would have believed the whole to have been but a long, dark dream. She would not think of Ronald; she would not remember his love, his sacrifices for her; she thought only of her wrongs and his cruel words.

The children grew and throve. Dora had no care at present as to their education. From her they learned good English, and between herself and the faithful young nurse they could learn, she thought, tolerable Italian. She would not think of a future that might take these beloved children from her. She ignored Ronald's claim to them--they were hers. He had tired of them when he tired of her. She never felt the days monotonous in that quiet farm house, as others might have done. A dead calm seemed to surround her; but it was destined soon to be broken.


Chapter XV


Ronald did not return in the evening to the pretty villa where he had once been so happy. In the warmth of his anger, he felt that he never could look again upon his wife. To his sensitive, refined nature there was something more repulsive in the dishonorable act she had committed than there would have been in a crime of deeper dye. He was shocked and startled--more so than if he awoke some fair summer morning to find Dora dead by his side. She was indeed dead to him in one sense. The ideal girl, all purity, gentleness, and truth, whom he had loved and married, had, it appeared, never really existed after all. He shrank from the idea of the angry, vehement words and foul calumnies. He shrank from the woman who had forgotten every rule of good breeding, every trace of good manners, in angry, fierce passion.

How was he ever to face Miss Charteris again? She would never mention one word of what had happened, but he could ill brook the shame Dora had brought upon him. He remembered the summer morning in the woods when he told Valentine the story of his love, and had pictured his pretty, artless Dora to her. Could the angry woman who had dared to insult him, and to calumniate the fairest and truest lady in all England, possibly be the same?

Ronald had never before been brought into close contact with dishonor. He had some faint recollection at college of having seen and known a young man, the son of a wealthy nobleman, scorned and despised, driven from all society, and he was told that it was because he had been detected in the act of listening at the principal's door. He remembered how old and young had shunned this young man as though he were plague-stricken; and now his own wife Dora had done the very same thing under circumstances that rendered the dishonor greater. He asked himself, with a cynical smile, what he could expect? He had married for love of a pretty, child-like face, never giving any thought to principle, mind, or intellect. The only wonder was that so wretched and unequal a match had not turned out ten times worse. His father's warning rang in his ears. How blind, how foolish he had been!

Every hope of his own life was wrecked, every hope and plan of his father's disappointed and dead. There seemed to him nothing left to care for. His wife--oh, he would not think of her! The name vexed him. He could not stand in Valentine's presence again, and for the first time he realized what she had been to him. Home, and consequently England, was closed to him; the grand mansion he had once believed his had faded from his mind.

Thinking of all these things, Ronald's love for his young wife seemed changed to dislike. Three days passed before he returned home; then he was somewhat startled to find her really gone. He had anticipated sullen temper, renewed quarrels, and then perhaps a separation, but he was startled to find her actually gone. The servant gave him the cold farewell letter, written without tears, without sorrow. He tore it into shreds and flung it from him.

"The last act in the farce," he said, bitterly. "If I had not been mad, I should have foreseen this."

The silent, deserted rooms did not remind him of the loving young wife parted from him forever. He was too angry, too annoyed, for any gentle thoughts to influence him. She had left him--so much the better; there could never again be peace between them. He thought with regret of the little ones--they were too young for him to undertake charge of them, so that they were best left with their mother for a time. He said to himself that he must make the best use he could of his life; everything seemed at an end. He felt very lonely and unhappy as he sat in his solitary home; and the more sorrow present upon him, the more bitter his thoughts grew, the deeper became his dislike to this unhappy young wife.

Ronald wrote to his mother, but said no word to her of the cause of their quarrel.

"Dora and I," he said, "will never live together again--perhaps never meet. She has gone home to her father; I am going to wander over the wide earth. Will you induce my father to receive my children at Earlescourt? And will you see Mr. Burt, and arrange that half of my small income is settled upon Dora?"

But to all his wife's entreaties Lord Earle turned a deaf ear. He declared that never during his life time should the children of Dora Thorne enter Earlescourt. His resolution was fixed and unalterable. How, he asked, was he to trust the man who had once deceived him? For aught he knew, the separation between Ronald and his wife might be a deeply laid scheme, and, the children once with him, there would be a grand reconciliation between the parents.

"I am not surprised," he said, "that the unhappy boy is weary of his pretty toy. It could not be otherwise; he must bear the consequences of his own folly. He had time for thought, he made his own choice--now let him abide by it. You have disregarded my wish, Lady Helena, in even naming the matter to me. Let all mention of it cease. I have no son. One thing remember--I am not hard upon you--you can go where you like, see whom you like, and spend what money you will, and as you will."

Lady Earle was not long in availing herself of the permission. There was great excitement at the Elms one morning, caused by the receipt of a letter from Lady Earle saying that she would be there on the same day to visit the son's wife and children.

The little ones looked up to her with wondering eyes. To them she was like a vision, with her noble face and distinguished air.

Stephen Thorne and his wife received the great lady not without some trepidation; yet they were in no way to blame. The fatal marriage had been as great a blow to them as to Lord and Lady Earle. With the quiet dignity and graceful ease that never deserted her, Lady Earle soon made them feel at home. She started in utter surprise, when a quiet, grave woman, on whose face sweetness and sullen humor were strangely mingled, entered the room. This could not be pretty, coy, blushing Dora! Where were the dimples and smiles? The large dark eyes raised so sadly to hers were full of strange, pathetic beauty. With sharp pain the thought struck Lady Earle, "What must not Dora have suffered to have changed her so greatly!" The sad eyes and worn face touched her as no beauty could have done. She clasped Dora in her arms and kissed her.

"You are my daughter now," she said, in that rich, musical voice which Dora remembered so well. "We will not mention the past; it is irrevocable. If you sinned against duty and obedience, your face tells me you have suffered. What has come between you and my son I do not seek to know. The shock must have been a great one which parted you, for he gave up all the world for you, Dora, years ago. We will not speak of Ronald. Our care must be the children. Of course you wish them to remain