The Leavenworth Case, Anna Katharine Green [chrysanthemum read aloud TXT] 📗

“There, now, Mamma Hubbard, don’t you go and acknowledge that you are frightened, for I won’t hear it. I have promised to marry Henry Clavering to-day, and I am going to keep my word—if I don’t love him,” she added with bitter emphasis. Then, smiling upon me in a way which caused me to forget everything save the fact that she was going to her bridal, she handed me her veil to fasten. As I was doing this, with very trembling fingers, she said, looking straight at Eleanore:

“You have shown yourself more interested in my fate than I had any reason to expect. Will you continue to display this concern all the way to F——, or may I hope for a few moments of peace in which to dream upon the step which, according to you, is about to hurl upon me such dreadful consequences?”

“If I go with you to F——,” Eleanore returned, “it is as a witness, no more. My sisterly duty is done.”

“Very well, then,” Mary said, dimpling with sudden gayety; “I suppose I shall have to accept the situation. Mamma Hubbard, I am so sorry to disappoint you, but the buggy won’t hold three. If you are good you shall be the first to congratulate me when I come home to-night.” And, almost before I knew it, the two had taken their seats in the buggy that was waiting at the door. “Good-by,” cried Mary, waving her hand from the back; “wish me much joy—of my ride.”

I tried to do so, but the words wouldn’t come. I could only wave my hand in response, and rush sobbing into the house.

Of that day, and its long hours of alternate remorse and anxiety, I cannot trust myself to speak. Let me come at once to the time when, seated alone in my lamp-lighted room, I waited and watched for the token of their return which Mary had promised me. It came in the shape of Mary herself, who, wrapped in her long cloak, and with her beautiful face aglow with blushes, came stealing into the house just as I was beginning to despair.

A strain of wild music from the hotel porch, where they were having a dance, entered with her, producing such a weird effect upon my fancy that I was not at all surprised when, in flinging off her cloak, she displayed garments of bridal white and a head crowned with snowy roses.

“Oh, Mary!” I cried, bursting into tears; “you are then——”

“Mrs. Henry Clavering, at your service. I’m a bride, Auntie.”

“Without a bridal,” I murmured, taking her passionately into my embrace.

She was not insensible to my emotion. Nestling close to me, she gave herself up for one wild moment to a genuine burst of tears, saying between her sobs all manner of tender things; telling me how she loved me, and how I was the only one in all the world to whom she dared come on this, her wedding night, for comfort or congratulation, and of how frightened she felt now it was all over, as if with her name she had parted with something of inestimable value.

“And does not the thought of having made some one the proudest of men solace you?” I asked, more than dismayed at this failure of mine to make these lovers happy.

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “What satisfaction can it be for him to feel himself tied for life to a girl who, sooner than lose a prospective fortune, subjected him to such a parting?”

“Tell me about it,” said I.

But she was not in the mood at that moment. The excitement of the day had been too much for her. A thousand fears seemed to beset her mind. Crouching down on the stool at my feet, she sat with her hands folded and a glare on her face that lent an aspect of strange unreality to her brilliant attire. “How shall I keep it secret! The thought haunts me every moment; how can I keep it secret!”

“Why, is there any danger of its being known?” I inquired. “Were you seen or followed?”

“No,” she murmured. “It all went off well, but——”

“Where is the danger, then?”

“I cannot say; but some deeds are like ghosts. They will not be laid; they reappear; they gibber; they make themselves known whether we will or not. I did not think of this before. I was mad, reckless, what you will. But ever since the night has come, I have felt it crushing upon me like a pall that smothers life and youth and love out of my heart. While the sunlight remained I could endure it; but now—oh, Auntie, I have done something that will keep me in constant fear. I have allied myself to a living apprehension. I have destroyed my happiness.”

I was too aghast to speak.

“For two hours I have played at being gay. Dressed in my bridal white, and crowned with roses, I have greeted my friends as if they were wedding-guests, and made believe to myself that all the compliments bestowed upon me—and they are only too numerous—were just so many congratulations upon my marriage. But it was no use; Eleanore knew it was no use. She has gone to her room to pray, while I—I have come here for the first time, perhaps for the last, to fall at some one’s feet and cry,—’ God have mercy upon me!’”

I looked at her in uncontrollable emotion. “Oh, Mary, have I only succeeded, then, in making you miserable?”

She did not answer; she was engaged in picking up the crown of roses which had fallen from her hair to the floor.

“If I had not been taught to love money so!” she said at length. “If, like Eleanore, I could look upon the splendor which has been ours from childhood as a mere accessory of life, easy to be dropped at the call of duty or affection! If prestige, adulation, and elegant belongings were not so much to me; or love, friendship, and domestic happiness more! If only I could walk a step without dragging the chain of a thousand luxurious longings after me. Eleanore can. Imperious as she often is in her beautiful womanhood, haughty as she can be when the delicate quick of her personality is touched too rudely, I have known her to sit by the hour in a low, chilly, ill-lighted and ill-smelling garret, cradling a dirty child on her knee, and feeding with her own hand an impatient old woman whom no one else would consent to touch. Oh, oh! they talk about repentance and a change of heart! If some one or something would only change mine! But there is no hope of that! no hope of my ever being anything else than what I am: a selfish, wilful, mercenary girl.”

Nor was this mood a mere transitory one. That same night she made a discovery which increased her apprehension almost to terror. This was nothing less than the fact that Eleanore had been keeping a diary of the last few weeks. “Oh,” she cried in relating this to me the next day, “what security shall I ever feel as long as this diary of hers remains to confront me every time I go into her room? And she will not consent to destroy it, though I have done my best to show her that it is a betrayal of the trust I reposed