Cruel As The Grave Part 8

"Believe me," she said, tenderly taking the hand of the injured wife, "I feel the deepest sympathy with your misfortunes. I will do everything in my power to comfort and help you--not in words only, but in deeds; and I only grieve, dear, that I cannot give you back your husband in his honor and integrity as you once regarded him," added this loving and confiding wife, to whom no misery seemed so great as that caused by the default and desertion of a husband.

"Oh, do not name him to me!" burst forth in pain from the lips of Rosa Blondelle; "oh, I hope, as long as I may live in this world, never to be wounded by the sound of his base name, or blasted with the sight of his false face again."

Sybil Berners shrank in dismay from the excited woman, who continued, vehemently:

"Do you wonder at this? I tell you, madam, it is possible for love to die a sudden and violent death, for mine has done so within the last three days."

"I am deeply grieved to hear you say so, for it proves how much you must have suffered--how much more than even I had imagined. But try to take a little comfort. I and my own dear husband will be your friends, will be a sister and a brother to you," said Sybil earnestly, with all the impulsive, unlimited generosity of her youth and her race, awakened by her sympathy with the sorrows of this young stranger.

"Oh, madam, you--" began Rosa, but her voice broke down in sobs.

"Take comfort," continued Sybil, laying her little brown hand on that fair golden head, "take comfort. Think, you have not lost all. You have your child left."

"Ah, my child!" cried Rosa, in a tone like a shriek of anguish, "my child, my wronged and ruined babe! The sight of him is a sword through my bosom! my child that _he_ robbed and made _me_ an accomplice in robbing--it is maddening to think of it."

"Then do not think of it," said Sybil, gently, and still caressing the bowed head; "think of anything else--think of what I am going to say to you. Listen. While you remain in this crowded and noisy hotel, you can never recover calmness enough to act with any good effect. So I wish you to come home with me and my dear husband to our quiet country house, and be our cherished guest until you can communicate with your friends, or come to some satisfactory decision concerning your future course."

While Sybil spoke these words, the young stranger raised her head and looked up with gradually dilating eyes.

"Come, now; what say you? Will you be our dear and welcome guest this autumn?" smiled Sybil.

"Oh, _do_ you mean this? _can_ you mean it?" exclaimed Rosa, in something like an ecstasy of surprise and grat.i.tude.

"In our secluded country house, with sympathizing friends around you,"

continued Sybil, still caressing Rosa's little golden-haired head, and speaking all the more calmly because of Rosa's excitement, "you will have repose and leisure to collect your thoughts and to write to your friends in the old country, and to wait without hurry or anxiety to hear from them."

"Oh, angels in Heaven, do you hear what this angel on earth is saying to me! Oh, was ever such divine goodness seen under the sun before! Oh, dear lady, you amaze, you confound me with your heavenly goodness!"

exclaimed the young stranger, in strong emotion.

Sybil took her hand, and still all the more gently for the increasing agitation of Rosa, she continued:

"We are daughters of the Divine Father, sisters in one suffering humanity, and so we should care for each other. At present you are suffering, and I have some power to comfort you. In the future our positions may be reversed, and _I_ may be the sufferer and you the comforter. Who can tell?"

"O, dear lady, Heaven forbid that great heart of yours should ever be called to suffer, or that you should ever need such poor help as mine.

But this I know: so penetrated am I by your goodness, that, if ever you should lose your present happiness and my death would restore it, I would die to give it back to you," fervently exclaimed the stranger.

And for the moment she felt as she had spoken, for she was most profoundly moved by a magnanimity she had never seen equalled.

Sybil blushed like a child, and found nothing to say in reply to this excessive praise. She only left her hand in the clasp of the stranger, who covered it with kisses, and then continued:

"When I first saw your little white card and the delicate tracery of your name and your kind words, I seemed to know it was a friend's writing. And when I first saw your sweet face and heard your tender tones, both so full of heavenly pity, I felt that the good Lord had not forsaken me, for He had sent one of his holy angels to visit me. Ah, lady, if you had only come and looked at me so and spoken to me so, and then pa.s.sed out and away forever, still, still, that look and that tone would have remained with me, a comfort and a blessing for all time. But now--but now to hold out your hands to lead me to a place in your own home, by your own side--oh, it is too much! too much!"

And tears of many mingled emotions flowed down the speaker's cheeks.

"There, there!" said Sybil, utterly confused by this excessive, but most sincere adulation, yet still caressing the stranger's fair head, "there, dear, dry your eyes, and tell me if you can be ready to leave this place with us to-morrow morning."

Again the foreign lady seized and kissed the hands of her new friend, exclaiming fervently:

"Yes dear lady, yes! I am too deeply touched by your heavenly goodness not to be anxious to profit by it as soon as possible."

"Then I will leave you to your preparations for the journey," said Sybil, rising.

Rosa also stood up.

"There will be much to be done in a short time. Will you let me send my maid to help yours?" inquired Sybil, with a hesitating smile.

"Thanks, dear madam. I shall be much obliged," replied Rosa, with a bow.

"And there is yet another request I have to make," added Mrs. Berners, pausing with her hand upon the latch of the door--"Will you kindly meet us at breakfast at eight o'clock to-morrow morning in our private sitting-room, so that I may make you acquainted with my husband before we all start on our journey together?"

"With pleasure, dear lady! It is your will to load me with benefits, and you must be gratified," replied Rosa, with a faint smile.

"Then I will come myself and fetch you, a little before the hour," added Sybil, playfully throwing a kiss as she darted through the door.

When she re-entered her own apartment, she found her husband impatiently pacing up and down the floor.

"How very long you have been, my darling Sybil," he said, with all the fondness of a newly-wedded lover, as he went to meet her.

"Oh, I am so glad you thought it long!" she answered mischievously, as she took his hand and pulled him to the big easy-chair and pushed him down into it.

"Sit down there, and listen to me," she said, with a pretty little air of authority. Then she drew an ottoman to his side and sunk down upon it, and leaned her arms upon his knees, and lifted her beautiful dark face, now all aglow with the delight of benevolence, and told him all that had pa.s.sed in the interview between herself and Mrs. Blondelle.

And Lyon Berners, with his arm over her graceful shoulders, his fingers stringing her silken black ringlets, and his eyes gazing with infinite tenderness and admiration down on her eloquent face, listened with attentive interest to the story. But at its close, great was his astonishment.

"My dear, impulsive Sybil, what have you done!" he exclaimed.

"What!" echoed Sybil, her crimson lips breathlessly apart--her dark eyes dilated.

"Love, you have invited a perfect stranger, casually met at a hotel--a gambler's wife, even by her own showing, an adventuress by all other appearances, to come and take up her abode with us for an indefinite length of time!"

Sybil's mouth opened, and her eyes dilated with an almost comical expression of dismay. She had not a word to say in self-defence!

"Do not think I blame you, dear, warm, imprudent heart! I only wonder at you, and--adore you!" he said, earnestly pressing her to his bosom.

"Oh, but you would have done as I did, if you had seen her distress!"

pleaded Sybil, recovering her powers of speech.

"But could you not have helped her without inviting her home with us?"

"But how?" inquired Sybil.

"Could you not have paid her board? or lent her money?"

"Oh, Lyon! Lyon!" said Sybil, slowly shaking her head and looking up in his face with a heavenly benevolence beaming through her own. "Oh, Lyon!

it was not a boarding-house she wanted, it was a _refuge_, a home with friends! But I am very sorry if this displeases you."

"Dear, impetuous, self-forgetting child! I am not so impious as to find fault with you."