Infelice Part 83

"One night in Chicago, having overtaxed my strength, I fainted on the street, _en route_ from the theatre, and while my servant fled for a.s.sistance, I was found by Mr. and Mrs. Waul, and taken to their home. Their kind hearts warmed toward me, and no parents could have been more tenderly watchful than they have proved ever since. They supplied a need of protection, of which I was growing painfully conscious, and I engaged them to travel with me.

"Once I took three days out of my busy life, and visited the old family homestead of General Laurance. The owner was in Europe, the house closed; but, standing unnoticed under the venerable oaks that formed the avenue of approach to the ancestral halls of my husband, I looked at the stately pile and the broad fields that surrounded it, and called upon Heaven to spare me long enough to see my child the regnant heiress of all that proud domain. There I vowed that cost what it might, I would accomplish my revenge, would place you there as owner of that n.o.ble inheritance.

"Through Mr. Palma's inquiries concerning the records, I ascertained that this property had been settled upon Cuthbert on the week of his second marriage. You were ten years old when I determined to go to Europe and consummate my plan. Peleg had disappeared, and I knew that the other agent of the Laurances had lost all trace of me. You were so grieved because I left for Europe without bidding you good-bye!

Ah, my sweet child! You never knew that it was the hardest trial of my life to put the ocean between us, and that I was too cowardly to witness your distress at the separation that was so uncertain in duration.

"Could I have gone without the sight of my precious baby? I reached the convent about dusk, and informed the sisters that I deemed it best to transfer you to the guardianship of two gentlemen, one of whom would come and take you away the ensuing week. Through a crevice of the dormitory door I watched you undress, envied the gentle nun who gathered up your long hair and tied over it the little white ruffled muslin cap; and when you knelt by your small curtained bed, and repeated your evening prayers, adding a special pet.i.tion that '_Heavenly Father would bless dear mother, and keep her safe_,' I stifled my sobs in my handkerchief. When you were asleep I crept in on tiptoe, and while Sister Angela held the lamp, I drew aside the curtain and looked at you. How the sweet face of my baby stirred all the tenderness that was left in my embittered nature! As you slumbered, you threw your feet outside the cover, and murmured in your musical childish babble something indistinct about 'mother, and our Blessed Lady.'

"My heart yearned over you, but I could not bear the thought of hearing your peculiarly plaintive wailing cry, which always pierced my soul so painfully, and I softly kissed your feet and hurried away.

Come, put your arms around my neck, and kiss me, my lovely fatherless child!"

For some seconds Mrs. Orme held her in a warm embrace. "There sit down. Little remains to be told, but how bitter! Here in Paris, while playing 'Amy Robsart,' I saw once more, after the lapse of thirteen years, the man who had so contemptuously repudiated me. Regina, if ever you are so unfortunate, so deluded, as to deeply and sincerely love any man, and live to know that you are forgotten, that another woman wears the name and receives the caresses that once made heaven in your heart, then, and only then, can you realize what I suffered, while looking at Cuthbert, with that other creature at his side, acknowledged his wife! I thought I had petrified, had ceased to feel aught but loathing and hate, but ah! the agony of that intolerable, that maddening sight! Ask G.o.d for a shroud and coffin, rather than endure what I suffered that night!"

She was too much engrossed by her mournful retrospective task, to observe the deadly pallor that overspread Regina's face, as the girl rested her head on the arm of the sofa and pa.s.sed her fingers across her eyes, striving to veil the image of one beyond the broad Atlantic's sweep and roar.

"At last I began to taste the sweet poison of my revenge. Cuthbert did not suspect my ident.i.ty, but he was strangely fascinated by my face and acting. Openly indifferent to the woman with whom his father had linked him, and provided with no conscientious scruples, he audaciously expressed his admiration, and contrived an interview to commence his advances. He avowed sentiments disloyal to the heiress who wore his name and jewels, and insulting to me had I been what he supposed me, merely Odille Orme a pretty actress. I repulsed and derided him, forbidding him my presence; and none can appreciate the exquisite delight it afforded me to humiliate and torture him. When it was a crime in the sight of man, he really began to love the woman, who--in G.o.d's sight--was his own lawful wife; and his punishment was slowly approaching.

"My health gave way under the unnatural pressure of acting evening after evening, with his handsome magnetic face watching every feature, every inflection of my voice. I was ordered to rest in Italy, and when I learned I should there meet General Laurance, I consented to go. Before leaving Paris, I saw the only child of that hideous iniquitous sham marriage; and, darling, when I contrasted you, my own pure pearl, with the deformed, dwarfish, repulsive daughter, whom the Nemesis of my wrongs gave to Cuthbert, in little Maud Laurance, I almost shouted aloud in my great exultation. You so beautiful, with his own lineaments in every feature, disowned for that misshapen, imbecile heiress of his proud name. Oh, mills of the G.o.ds! how delicious the slow music of their grinding!

"Thus far, my daughter, I have shown you all your mother's wretched past, and now I shrink from the last blotted pages. Hitherto my record was blameless, but even now take care how you judge the mother, who if she has gone astray did it for you, all for you. For some time I had known that Cuthbert was living in reckless extravagance, that the affairs of the father-in-law were dangerously involved, and that without his own father's knowledge Cuthbert had borrowed large sums in London and Paris, securing the loans by mortgages on his real estate in America; especially the elegant homestead, preserved for several generations in his family. Employing two shrewd Hebrew brokers, I by degrees bought up those mortgages, straining every effort to effect the purchase.

"When I reached Milan, I sat one night pondering what was most expedient. It was apparent that in a suit for and publication of my real t.i.tle and rights, I should be defeated by the disgrace hurled upon me; and to subject the Laurances to the humiliation of a court scandal would poorly indemnify me for the horrible stain which Peterson's foul claim would entail upon your innocent but premature birth. My health was feeble, consumption threatened my lungs, and Mr.

Palma urged me to attempt no legal redress for my injuries. I could not die without one more struggle to see you lighted, clothed with your lawful name.

"My daughter, my darling, let all my love for you plead vehemently in my defence, when I tell you that for your dear sake I made a desperate, an awful, a sickening resolve. General Laurance was infatuated by my beauty, which has been as fatal to his house as his name to me. Like many handsome old men, he was inordinately vain, and imagined himself irresistible; and when he persecuted me with attentions that might have compromised a woman less prudent and prudish than I bore myself, I determined to force him to an offer of his hand, to marry him."

With a sharp cry Regina sprang up.

"Mother, not him! Not my father's father!"

"Yes, Rene Laurance, my husband's father."

With a gesture of horror the girl groaned and covered her white convulsed face.

"Mother! Could my mother commit such a loathsome, awful crime against G.o.d, and nature?"

"It was for your sake, my darling!" cried Mrs. Orme, wringing her hands, as she saw the shudder with which her child repulsed her.

"For my sake that you stained you dear pure hands! For my sake that you steeped your soul in guilt that even brutal savages abhor, and loaded your name and memory with infamy! In his desertion my father sinned against me, and freely because he is my father I could forgive him; but you, the immaculate mother of my lifelong worship, you who have reigned white-souled and angelic over all my hopes, my aspirations, my love and reverence, oh, mother! mother, you have doubly wronged me! The disgrace of your unnatural and heinous crime I can never, never pardon!"

With averted head she stood apart, a pitiable picture of misery, that could find no adequate expression.

"My baby, my love, my precious daughter!"

Ah the pleading pathos of that marvellous voice which had swayed at will the emotions of vast audiences, as soft fitful zephyrs stir and bow the tender gra.s.ses in quiet meadows! Slowly the girl turned around, and reluctantly looked at the beloved beautiful face, tearful yet smiling, beaming with such pa.s.sionate tenderness upon her.

Mrs. Orme opened her arms, and Regina sprang forward, sinking on her knees at her mother's feet, clinging to her dress.

"You could not smile upon me so, with that sin soiling your soul! Oh, mother, say you did it not!"

"G.o.d had mercy, and saved me from it."

"Let us praise and serve Him for ever, in thanksgiving," sobbed the daughter.

"I see now that my punishment would have been unendurable, for I should have lost the one true, pure heart that clings to me. How do mothers face their retribution, I wonder, when they disgrace their innocent little ones, and see shame and horror and aversion in the soft faces that slept upon their bosoms, and once looked in adoration at the heaven of their eyes? Even in this life the pangs of the lost must seize all such.

"I did not marry General Laurance, though I entertained the purpose of a merely nominal union, and he acceded to my conditions, signing a marriage contract to adopt you, give you his name, settled upon you all his remaining fortune, except the real estate which I knew he had transferred to his son. I think my intense hate and thirst for vengeance temporarily maddened me; for certainly had I been quite sane I should never have forced myself to hang upon the verge of such an odious gulf. I was tempted by the prospect of making you the real heiress of the Laurance name and wealth, and of beggaring Cuthbert, his so-called wife and crippled child, by displaying the mortgage I held; and which will yet sweep them to penury, for the banker has failed, and Abbie Ames is penniless as Minnie Merle once was.

"While I floated down the dark stream to ruin, a blessed interposing hand arrested me. Mr. Palma wrote that at last a glorious day of hope dawned on my weary, starless night. Gerbert Audre was alive and anxious to testify to the validity of my marriage, and the perfect sanity and sobriety of Cuthbert when it was solemnized (his father was prepared to plead that he was insane from intoxication when he was inveigled into the ceremony); and oh, better, best of all, my persecutor had relented! Peleg swore that his a.s.sertions regarding my character were untrue, were prompted by malice, stimulated by Laurance gold. Having been arrested by Mr. Palma and carried before a magistrate, he had written and signed a n.o.ble vindication of me. To you he avows I owe his tardy recantation and complete justification of my past; and you will find among those papers his letter to me upon this subject.

"My daughter, what do we not owe to Erle Palma? G.o.d bless him--now--and for ever! And may the dearest, fondest wishes of his heart be fulfilled as completely as have been his promises to me."

Regina's face was shrouded by her mother's dress, but thinking of Mrs. Carew, she sank lower at Mrs. Orme's feet, knowing that her sad heart could not echo that prayer.

"As yet my ident.i.ty has not been suspected, but the end is at hand, and I am about to break the vials of wrath upon their heads. Mr.

Palma only waits to hear from me to bring suit against Cuthbert for desertion and bigamy, and against Rene Laurance, the arch-demon of my luckless carried life, for wilful slander, premeditated defamation of character. My lawful unstained wife-hood will be established, your spotless birth and lineage triumphantly proclaimed; and I shall see my own darling, my Regina Laurance, reigning as mistress in the halls of her ancestors. To confront you with your father and grandfather, I have called you to Paris, and when I have talked with Uncle Orme, whose step I hear, I shall be able to tell you definitely of the hour when the thunderbolt will be hurled into the camp of our enemies.

Kiss me good-night. G.o.d bless my child."

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

After a sleepless night, Cuthbert Laurance sat in dressing gown and slippers before the table, on which was arranged his breakfast. In his right hand he held, partly lifted, the cup of coffee; upon the left he rested his head, seeming abstracted, oblivious of the dainty dishes that invited his attention.

The graceful _insouciance_ of the Sybarite had vanished, and though the thirty-seven years of his life had dealt very gently with his manly beauty, leaving few lines about his womanishly fair brow, he seemed to-day gravely preoccupied, anxious, and depressed. Pushing back his chair, he sat for some time in a profound and evidently painful reverie, and when his father came in, and closed the door behind him, the cloud of apprehension deepened.

"Good-morning, Cuthbert, I must compliment you on your early hours.

How is Maud?"

"I have not seen her this morning. Victorine usually takes her out at this time of the day. I hope after a night's reflection and rest, you feel disposed to afford me more comfort than you extended last evening. The fact is, unless you come forward and help me, I shall be utterly ruined."

General Laurance lighted his cigar, and, standing before his son, answered coldly:

"I beg you to recollect that my resources are not quite inexhaustible, and last year when I gave that Chicago property to you, I explained the necessity of curbing your reckless extravagance.

Were I possessed of Rothschild's income, it would not suffice to keep upon his feet a man who sells himself to the Devil of the gaming table, and entertains with the prodigality of a crown prince. I never dreamed until last night that the real estate at home is enc.u.mbered by mortgages, and it will be an everlasting shame if the homestead should be sacrificed; but I can do no more for you. This failure of Ames is a disgraceful affair, and I understand soils his reputation--past all hope of purification. How long does Abbie expect to remain in Nice? It does not look well, I can tell you, that she should go off and leave Maud with her _bonne_."

"Oh! for that matter, Maud is better off here, where she can be seen regularly by the physician, and Victorine knows much better what to do for her than her mother. Abbie is perfectly acquainted with the change in her father's and in my own affairs, and I should suppose she would have returned immediately after the receipt of the intelligence, especially as I informed her that we should be compelled to return to America."

"I shall telegraph her to come back at once, for I hear that she is leading a very gay life at Nice, and that her conduct is not wholly compatible with her duties as a wife and mother."

An expression of subdued scorn pa.s.sed over Cuthbert's face, as he answered sarcastically:

"Probably your influence may avail to hasten her return. As for her peculiar views, and way of conducting herself, I imagine it is rather too late for you to indulge in fastidious carpings, as you selected and presented her to me as a suitable bride, particularly acceptable to you for a daughter-in-law.

"When men live as you have done since your marriage, it is scarcely surprising that wives should emulate their lax example. You have never disguised your indifference as a husband."