Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily

CHAPTER XV

Bertha had promised to keep Guy Kenmore informed of the progress of Elaine's illness, and she was glad to keep her word, as it afforded her a pretext for writing to the young man, and thus keeping her memory alive in his heart.

Since the supposed death of poor Irene, the artful Bertha was again laying plans for the capture of Mr. Kenmore. She hoped in time to allay the unfavorable impression she had created in his mind the night of the ball, and to establish an empire over his heart. Mr. Kenmore belonged to one of the wealthiest and most aristocratic families in Baltimore, and it was the hight of her ambition to become his wife.

Though the young man's interest in Elaine afforded her a pretext for corresponding with him, Bertha was vaguely displeased at his anxiety over her sister. It filled her with secret jealousy. Elaine was still young and beautiful enough to win the heart of the man who had married her daughter. Bertha was determined not to tolerate her as a rival.

"There is no accounting for men's tastes," she said, angrily, to her mother. "I supposed that his knowledge of Elaine's shameful secret would utterly disgust him with her. But he is almost as anxious over her as if he were her lover."

"Men regard these things somewhat differently from women," replied Mrs. Brooke. "It is possible he may regard Elaine with pity, rather than disgust. And pity is akin to love, you know."

In her heart Mrs. Brooke was rather elated at Guy's interest in Elaine. If she could not secure him for Bertha, she would be very pleased to have him for her elder daughter.

Bertha saw the bent of her mother's mind, and inwardly raged at it. Day and night her mind was filled with projects for diverting Guy's mind from the charms of her elder sister. On this particular state of her mind Elaine's announcement of leaving Bay View fell like healing balm.

Several days elapsed after her departure before Bertha communicated the fact to Mr. Kenmore in a brief, ambiguous note.

It was no part of her plan that he should become acquainted with their poverty, or with the reason of Elaine going.

So she wrote simply:

"Elaine convalesced more rapidly than was expected, and has left us in anger, declining to live with us longer, and making a mystery of her destination. Come down to Bay View and I will give you the particulars."

The note had the effect she anticipated of bringing Mr. Kenmore down to Bay View without delay.

Then Bertha told her story with well-acted grief and penitence.

"It was all my wretched fault," she sighed. "Elaine would not forgive me for giving way to my jealous passion that dreadful night, and betraying her shameful story. It was all in vain that I declared my penitence on my knees and implored her forgiveness. She would not hear me. She declared that she should hate me so long as she lived, and that the same roof could not shelter us both. So she went away from mamma and me, declaring that it was forever."

The arch deceiver here shed some quiet, natural-looking tears into her perfumed, black-bordered handkerchief.

"It was very hard, losing papa and Elaine, and poor little Irene, all, as it were, at one fatal stroke," she declared, sobbingly.

Mr. Kenmore was gravely, sadly silent. He did not think of doubting Bertha's clever tale. It seemed very natural that poor Elaine should resent her sister's cruel betrayal of the long-guarded secret of Irene's birth. He scarcely wondered that she had gone away desperately wounded and unforgiving, in the smart of her bitter pain.

"Oh, if you could know how bitterly I have repented all that I said that dreadful night," sighed Bertha, giving him a sidewise glance under her long, black lashes. "I must have been mad, I think. You know the great poet says, 'There's madness in the moon,' and that night Irene had fairly driven me wild. Oh, if I could only think you had forgotten the unkind things I said to you in my foolish passion!" she pursued, remorsefully.

Her pretty shame and penitence touched him.

"I wish that you could forget it as freely as I forgive it, Miss Brooke," he answered, kindly.

"Oh, thank you, thank you," she cried. "I have repented my folly in bitterness and tears. I let my own heart deceive me. I know now that a woman should not give her heart unasked, still less betray its tender throbbings to the cold and careless."

She hid her face in her hands as if she could not bear his kindly gaze. Guy, touched by her tears and sorrow, did not know what to say or do. He was intensely sorry for her, forgetting how much he had disliked her that night when she had shown herself in her true colors.

"Let us forget it all, Miss Brooke," he said, uneasily, anxious to dry up her springing tears.

The beautiful brunette gave him a swift, shy look of gratitude.

"Oh, how gladly I will do so!" she exclaimed, putting out her delicate, white hand to him. "Shall we be friends as we were before– that fatal night?"

"Yes," he replied, pressing her hand kindly, but lightly, for he had no mind to be drawn into the role of a lover again.

"And you will come down to Bay View sometimes? Mamma and I will be so lonely and sad now, after losing so many dear links from our family circle," said the dark-eyed beauty, following up her advantage.

"Sometimes—when I can find leisure," he replied ambiguously.

And with that Bertha was obliged to be content. She hoped great things from the concessions he had already made. Now that Irene was dead, and Elaine gone, she would have no rivals, and surely, surely her beauty, her fascination, her tenderness for him must win him even against his will.

She brought the whole battery of her charms and graces to bear upon him, but was obliged to confess to herself that she had never seen him so sad, so grave, so pale and so distrait.

"It cannot be that he is sorry over that child's death. He ought to be glad," she thought to herself. "It must be that he assumes this gravity in deference to my affliction."

Yet she was troubled and chagrined when he left her so indifferently and went down to the shore. She watched him from her window, standing quietly, with folded arms, a tall, dark shape, outlined against the brightness of the summer eve.

"Of what is he thinking?" she asked her heart, uneasily.

It would have seemed strange to her if she had known. It even seemed strange to himself.

He was standing there gazing with dark, heavy eyes at the rolling waves, much as if he had been gazing on a grave.

He was recalling to mind the winsome, changeful, perfect beauty, the fire, the soul, the passion of the girl he had so strangely wedded, the girl who had recklessly flung herself into the deep, relentless waves, leaving him only the memory of the few, brief hours in which she had flashed before him in the extremes of joy and despair– one moment a beautiful, spirited, happy child, the next a passionate, despairing, crushed and broken-hearted woman!

"Poor little Irene," he said to himself. "If she had lived, who knows"—then a sigh, deeper than he knew, finished the regretful words.

CHAPTER XVI

He stood there a long, long time, listening to the beat of the waves, and thinking of Irene and her mother. Bertha grew tired of watching him and stole away to try the effect of a new mourning bonnet that had just been sent home from the milliner. Guy had forgotten her. He was wrapped in other thoughts. New feelings had come to him since that night, when, indolent, blase, careless, he had come face to face with his fate. He was haunted by a voice, a face. Some sad words came to his mind:

He turned away at last warned by the darkening twilight that fell like a pall over his lost bride's "vast and wandering grave."

"I must bid adieu to Mrs. Brooke and Bertha and return home to-night," was the thought in his mind.

Mrs. Brooke was in the parlor alone, Bertha being still absorbed in the new bonnet. A sudden impulse came to Guy Kenmore.

He sat down by the matron's side and gazed sympathetically into her still youthful-looking and handsome face.

"Miss Brooke left you no address when she went away, I presume?" he inquired in a tone of respectful anxiety.

Mrs. Brooke had received her cue from Bertha and answered accordingly:

"No. She has deserted us most heartlessly, and I fear, I fear"– she broke down and buried her face in her handkerchief.

"You do not suppose that she can have made away with herself?" he cried in low, awe-struck tones.

"No, no; worse, far worse," groaned the apparently deeply agitated woman. "Oh, Mr. Kenmore, pity the grief and shame of a heart-broken mother—I fear that Elaine has returned to her wicked deceiver."

"Impossible!" he exclaimed, in stern and startled tones.

"Would that I could think so," sighed the unjust mother. "But my heart is torn by cruel suspicions. Elaine has never ceased to love that wicked wretch, and to whom else can she have gone?"

To herself she said, self-excusingly: "Poor Elaine, I would not blacken her name still more, only to help Bertha. If she marries him I shall manage to let him find out the real truth about Elaine directly afterward. She shall not lie under that base imposition any longer than is necessary for Bertha's welfare."

She was startled when she saw how reproachfully and sternly his brown eyes gleamed upon her.

"A mother is the last person to impute sin to her child," he said.

Mrs. Brooke only sobbed into her handkerchief by way of answer to this reproach.

"I have become deeply interested in your daughter's sad story, Mrs. Brooke," he went on. "Pray do not think me inquisitive if I ask you one question."

She looked it him in startled surprise.

"It is only this, Mrs. Brooke," he said. "Will you tell me in what city lived the man who so cruelly wronged beautiful Elaine?"

"It can do no good to rake up these old things," she said, half-fretfully.

"It was only a single question. It cannot hurt you to answer," he said, almost pleadingly.

She said to herself that it could not matter indeed, and she did not wish to offend the young man whom she hoped to capture for her son-in-law.

"It is very painful re-opening these old wounds," she sighed; "but since you insist upon it I will answer your question. The young villain lived at Richmond."

He bowed his thanks.

"I already know his name," he said, "and since you have no son to send upon this delicate mission, Mrs. Brooke, I will make it my business to inquire if your elder daughter has indeed deserted you for her base betrayer."

She was about to protest against his doing so on the first pretext she could think of, when Bertha's entrance suddenly closed the conversation.

He made his adieux and departed, giving an evasive reply to the young lady's wishes for his swift return.

One week later Mrs. Brooke received a letter from him dated at Richmond.

"You wronged your daughter by your unkind suspicions," he wrote; "she is not with the man you thought. Clarence Stuart left Richmond on the very day of your husband's death, in his own yacht, with his wife and daughter, and a party of friends. They were on a pleasure-trip to Italy. You will no doubt be glad to hear that Elaine is not so wicked as you believed her."

Thus the letter closed abruptly. Mrs. Brooke, in a curt note, thanked Mr. Kenmore for his information. She did not dare give way to her indignation at his interference, dreading that it would injure the success of Bertha's husband-hunting.

CHAPTER XVII

Lilia Stuart was very much frightened by her father's strange seizure. She was about to scream loudly for help when Irene, with a sensitive horror of scenes, laid her white hand gently but firmly over the parted lips.

"Do not be frightened, Lilia," she said. "Get some cold water. That is all that is necessary."

Lilia sprang to the ice-flagon and returned with a glass of cold water in her trembling grasp. Irene thrust her white hand into the cold fluid, and deluged Mr. Stuart's rigid white face with it.

It produced the desired effect. Mr. Stuart shivered, opened his eyes, and stared blankly around him for a moment.

"Oh, papa, you are better," cried Lilia, springing to throw her arms around his neck. "I am so frightened, dearest papa, shall I not call mamma?"

Something like dread or fear flashed for a moment into his open dark eyes.

"No, for Heaven's sake, don't!" he exclaimed, testily; "I detest scenes! There is nothing at all the matter with me! Say nothing to your mother, Lilia. You understand me?"

"Yes, papa," the girl replied, obediently. "But what made you faint?" she continued, curiously.

An expression of deep annoyance clouded Mr. Stuart's handsome face.

"Pooh, I did not faint," he said, sharply. "A mere dizziness overcame me. Don't let your fancies run away with your reason, Lilia."

He rose as he spoke, and without a glance at Irene or the open locket that still swung at her throat, hastily quitted the room. Lilia, forgetting her guest, followed after him.

Irene thus left alone, fell into a startled revery.

She had not been deceived like Lilia by Mr. Stuart's short assertion of dizziness. She knew that he had actually fainted, and she believed that the bare sight of her mother's face in the locket had been the cause of his agitation.

"He recognized the face, and it had power to stay the very pulses of his life for a moment," she said to herself.

A terrible suspicion darted into her young mind, chilling the blood in her veins, and driving it coldly back upon her heart.

"Can this man be my father, my mother's base betrayer?" she thought.

She did not like to think so. Her heart had gone out strangely to this man, the savior of her young life. She liked to think that he was noble, good and brave. For the villain who had betrayed her trusting young mother she had nothing in her heart but hatred, and a burning desire for revenge.

Suddenly the saloon door opened softly. Mr. Stuart had eluded Lilia and returned.

He came to her side and sat down again. His dark face was strangely pale still. There was a troubled look in his large, dark eyes.

"You must have thought my agitation strange just now, Irene," he said.

"Yes," she answered, gravely.

"And—you guessed the reason?" he inquired, slowly, fixing a keen glance on her face.

She raised her beautiful, troubled blue eyes steadily to his.

"You recognized the pictures in my locket," she replied, touching it with her trembling hand.

"My God, yes!" he answered hoarsely. "Irene, child, for the love of Heaven, tell me what this man and woman are to you."

She had no answer for him. In her own heart she was saying, dumbly:

"I cannot tell him. It is my mother's secret. She guarded it for sixteen years, and I must not betray her."

He looked at the white, agonized face of the girl, and repeated his question:

"Tell me what this man and woman are to you."

"I cannot tell you, Mr. Stuart," she replied, falteringly.

"You mean you will not," he said, studying her downcast face, with grave, attentive eyes.

"I cannot," she replied. "It is a secret that belongs to others. I cannot betray confidence."

A baffled look came into his troubled, marble-white face.

"Do you mean to preserve an utter incognito among us?" he asked.

"I must," she answered, while great, trembling tears started beneath her drooping lashes. "I can say no more than what I have told you already. I am homeless, friendless, nameless!"

"How old are you?" he inquired.

"I was sixteen years old but a few days ago," she answered.

He looked again keenly at her face, and bending forward, again looked at the beautiful, pictured face of Elaine Brooke.

A shudder shook his form.

"You are strangely like her—strangely like," he said. "Child, I would give much to hear you say what this beautiful woman is to you."

Irene looked gravely at him, her young bosom shaken by a storm of suspicion.

"Confidence invites confidence," she said, harshly. "I will tell you what this woman is to me if you tell me what she once was to you."

CHAPTER XVIII

Irene's stern, abrupt question produced a startling effect upon Mr. Stuart. His face grew ashy pale, even to his lips, and he gazed suspiciously, almost angrily, at the girl's grave face. Seeing only an earnest wonder mirrored in her clear, sweet eyes, he sprang abruptly from his seat, and without replying to her question began to pace rapidly up and down the room.

Her grave, troubled eyes followed him slowly up and down, while a terrible pain tore her heart.

He seemed to have forgotten her presence, as with clenched hands and wildly staring eyes he paced up and down, muttering bitter phrases to himself.

Irene caught the echo of some passionate words quoted in a voice of raging scorn:

Suddenly he stopped in his wild march, and came back to her side.

"No, child, keep your secret," he said, hoarsely. "Keep your secret, and I will keep mine. God help you if yours be as hard to bear as mine."

She must have pitied the dreary despair of his face and voice if her heart had not been hardened against him by her terrible suspicions. A hard, scornful laugh broke over her lips.

"Remorse is always hard to bear," she said, bitterly, to herself.

He looked at her in wonder.

"We will keep our own sad secrets," he repeated, mournfully. "But you are friendless. I will be your friend. You are homeless. My home shall be yours. You are nameless. You shall be Lilia's sister, and share her name. It is a noble one, and has never been stained by disgrace."

She looked at him gravely, fixedly.

Did he speak the truth? Did not her mother's shame and hers lie at his door?

"Do you accept my proposition?" he inquired, anxiously.

For a moment she was tempted to give him an angry passionate denial, to say bitterly:

"No, I will not have these things on sufferance that should be mine by right. I will not have your favor or your pity, you demon, who blasted my mother's life and mine! I could rather curse you!"

But on a sudden she remembered that her suspicions were merely suspicions. She had no proof that this noble-looking man, who seemed crushed by the weight of some inward sorrow, was her father. Perhaps she wronged him in her thoughts.

"I must give him the benefit of the doubt, since he saved my life," she thought, and put out a cold, little hand to him.

"I must perforce accept your kindness," she said, mournfully, "since I have not a friend to turn to in all the wide, wide world."

He crushed the slender fingers in his firm clasp.

"I will be your friend, always—remember that," he said.

Irene would have thanked him feebly, but the saloon door hastily unclosed, admitting Lilia and her faded, peevish-looking mother.

"You here, Clarence!" exclaimed the latter, in a tone of marked displeasure.

He gave her a quick, cold look. Her eyes fell before it. Cowed by her husband's superior will, she vented her spite on Irene.

"Lilia has been telling me that you threw yourself into the water," she said, flashing her eyes full of greenish rage on the pale young girl. "Oh, you wicked, wicked girl!"