The Rector of St. Mark's Part 8

But she did not think so now, and in an ecstasy of joy she stood in the deep recess of the bay window, watching him as he went away through the moonlight and the feathery cloud of snow, wondering why, when she was so happy, there could cling to her a haunted presentiment that she and Arthur would never meet again just as they had parted.

Arthur, on the contrary, was troubled with no such presentiment. Of Anna he hardly thought, or, if he did, the vision was obscured by the fair picture he had seen standing in the door, with the snowflakes resting in her hair like pearls in a golden coronet. And Arthur thanked his G.o.d that he was beginning at last to feel right--that the solemn vows that he was so soon to utter would be more than a mockery.

It was Arthur's work to teach others how dark and mysterious are the ways of Providence, but he had not himself half learned that lesson in all its strange reality; but the lesson was coming on apace; each stride of his swift-footed beast brought him nearer to the great shock waiting for him upon the study table, where Thomas, his man, had put it.

He saw it the first thing on entering the room, but he did not take it up until the snow was brushed from his garments and he had warmed himself by the cheerful fire blazing on the hearth. Then, sitting in his easy-chair, and moving the lamp nearer to him, he took Mrs.

Meredith's letter and broke the seal, starting as if a serpent had stung him when, in the note inclosed, he recognized his own handwriting, the same he had sent to Anna when his heart was so full of hope as the brown stalks now beating against his windows with a dismal sound were full of fragrant blossoms. Both had died since then--the roses and his hopes--And Arthur almost wished that he, too, were dead when he read Mrs. Meredith's letter and saw the gulf his feet were treading. Like the waves of the sea, his love for Anna came rolling back upon him, augmented and intensified by all that he had suffered, and by the terrible conviction that it could not be, although, alas! "it might have been."

He repeated the words over and over again, as stupified with pain, he sat gazing at vacancy, thinking how true was the couplet--

"Of all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, it might have been."

He could not even pray at once, his brain was so confused, but when, at last, the white, quivering lips could move, and the poor aching heart could pray, he only whispered, "G.o.d help me to do right," and by that prayer he knew that for a single instant there had crept across his mind the possibility of sacrificing Lucy, who loved and trusted him so much. But only for an instant. He could not cast her from him, though to take her now, knowing what he did, were almost death itself.

"But G.o.d can help me to bear it," he cried; then, falling upon his knees, with his face bowed to the floor, the Rector of St. Mark's prayed as he had never prayed before--first for himself, whose need was greatest, and then for Lucy, that she might never know what making her happy had cost him, and then for Anna, whose name he could not speak. "That other one," he called her, and his heart kept swelling in his throat and preventing his utterance, so that the words he would say never reached his lips.

But G.o.d heard them just the same, and knew his child was asking that Anna might forget him, if to remember him was pain; that she might learn to love another far worthier than he had ever been.

He did not think of Mrs. Meredith; he had no feeling of resentment then; he was too wholly crushed to care how his ruin had been brought about, and, long after the wood fire on the hearth had turned to cold, gray ashes, he knelt upon the floor and battled with his grief, and when the morning broke it found him still in the cheerless room where he had pa.s.sed the entire night and from which he went forth strengthened, as he hoped, to do what he believed to be his duty. This was on Sat.u.r.day, and on the Sunday following there was no service at St. Mark's. The rector was sick, the s.e.xton said; "hard sick, too, he had heard," and the Hetherton carriage, with Lucy in it, drove swiftly to the rectory, where the quiet and solitude awed and frightened Lucy as she entered the house and asked the housekeeper how Mr. Leighton was.

"It is very sudden," she said. "He was perfectly well when he left me on Friday night. Please tell him I am here."

The housekeeper shook her head. Her master's orders were that no one but the doctor should be admitted, she said, repeating what Arthur had told her in antic.i.p.ation of just such an infliction as this.

But Lucy was not to be denied. Arthur was hers, his sickness was hers, his suffering was hers, and see him she would.

"He surely did not mean me when he asked that no one should be admitted. Tell him it is I; it is Lucy," she said with an air of authority, which, in one so small, so pretty and so child-like, only amused Mrs. Brown, who departed with the message, while Lucy sat down with her feet upon the stove and looked around the sitting-room, thinking that it was smaller and poorer than the one at Prospect Hill, and how she would remodel it when she was mistress there.

"He says you can come," was the word Mrs. Brown brought back, and, with a gleam of triumph in her eye and a toss of the head, which said, "I told you so," Lucy went softly into the darkened room and shut the door behind her.

Arthur had half expected this and had nerved himself to meet it, but the cold sweat stood on his face and his heart throbbed painfully as Lucy bent over him and Lucy's tears fell on his face while she took his feverish hands in hers and murmured softly, "Poor, dear Arthur, I am so sorry for you, and if I could I'd bear the pain so willingly."

He knew she would; she was just as loving and unselfish as that, and he wound his arms around her and drew her down close to him while he whispered, "My poor, little Lucy; I don't deserve this from you."

She did not know what he meant, and she only answered him with kisses, while her little hands moved caressingly across his forehead just as they had done years ago in Rome, when she soothed the pain away. There certainly was a mesmeric influence emanating from those hands, and Arthur felt its power, growing very quiet and at last falling away to sleep, while the soft pa.s.ses went on, and Lucy held her breath lest she would waken him.

"She was a famous nurse," the physician said when he came, const.i.tuting her his coadjutor and making her tread wild with joy and importance when he gave his patient's medicine into her hands.

"It was hardly proper for her niece to stay," Mrs. Hetherton thought, but Lucy was one who could trample down proprieties, and it was finally arranged that f.a.n.n.y should stay with her. So, while f.a.n.n.y went to bed and slept, Lucy sat all night in the sick room with Mrs.

Brown, and when the next morning came she was looking very pale and languid, but very beautiful withal. At least, such was the mental compliment paid her by Thornton Hastings, who was pa.s.sing through Hanover and had stopped over one train to see his old college friend and, perhaps, tell him what he began to feel it was his duty to tell him in spite of his promise to Anna. She was nearly well now and had driven with him twice to the park, but he could not be insensible to what she suffered, or how she shrank from having the projected wedding discussed, and, in his intense pity for her, he had half resolved to break his word and tell Arthur what he knew. But he changed his mind when he had been in Hanover a few hours and watched the little fairy who, like some ministering angel, glided about the sick room, showing herself every whit a woman, and making him repent that he had ever called her frivolous or silly. She was not either, he said, and, with a magnanimity for which he thought himself ent.i.tled to a good deal of praise, he even felt that it was very possible for Arthur to love the gentle little girl who smoothed his pillows so tenderly and whose fingers threaded so lovingly the damp, brown locks when she thought he, Thornton, was not looking on. She was very coy of him and very distant towards him, too, for she had not forgotten his sin, and she treated him at first with a reserve for which he could not account.

But, as the days went on, and Arthur grew so sick that his parishioners began to tremble for their young minister's life, and to think it perfectly right for Lucy to stay with him, even if she was a.s.sisted in her labor of love by the stranger from New York, the reserve disappeared and on the most perfect terms of amity she and Thornton Hastings watched together by Arthur's side. Thornton Hastings learned more lessons than one in that sick room where Arthur's faith in G.o.d triumphed over the terrors of the grave, which, at one time, seemed so near, while the timid Lucy, whom he had only known as a gay b.u.t.terfly of fashion, dared before him to pray that G.o.d would spare her promised husband or give her grace to say, "Thy will be done."

Thornton could hardly say that he was skeptical before, but any doubts he might have had touching the great fundamental truths on which a true religion rests were gone forever, and he left Hanover a changed man in more respects than one.

Arthur did not die, and on the Sunday preceding the week when the usual Christmas decorations were to commence he came again before his people, his face very pale and worn, and wearing upon it a look which told of a new baptism, an added amount of faith which had helped to lift him above the fleeting cares of this present life. And yet there was much of earth clinging to him still, and it made itself felt in the rapid beating of his heart when he glanced towards the square pew where Lucy knelt and knew that she was giving thanks for him restored again.

Once, in the earlier stages of his convalescence, he had almost betrayed his secret by asking her which she would rather do--bury him from her sight, feeling that he loved her to the last, or give him to another, now that she knew he would recover. There was a frightened look in Lucy's eyes as she replied: "I would ten thousand times rather see you dead, and know that, even in death, you were my own, than to lose you that other way. Oh, Arthur, you have no thought of leaving me now?"

"No, darling, I have not, I am yours always," he said, feeling that the compact was sealed forever and that G.o.d blessed the sealing.

He had written to Mrs. Meredith, granting her his forgiveness and asking that, if Anna did not already know of the deception, she might never be enlightened. And Mrs. Meredith had answered that Anna had only heard a rumor that an offer had been made her, but that she regarded it as a mistake, and was fast recovering both her health and spirits. Mrs. Meredith did not add her surprise at Arthur's generosity in adhering to his engagement, nor hint that, now her attack of conscience was so safely over, she was glad he did so, having hope yet of that house on Madison Square; but Arthur guessed at it and dismissed her from his mind just as he tried to dismiss every unpleasant thought, waiting with a trusting heart for whatever the future might bring.

CHAPTER XII.

VALENCIA.

Very extensive preparations were making at Prospect Hill for the double wedding to occur on the 15th. After much debate and consultation, f.a.n.n.y had decided to take the doctor then; and thus she, too, shared largely in the general interest and excitement which pervaded everything.

Both brides elect seemed very happy, but in a very different way; for, while f.a.n.n.y was quiet and undemonstrative, Lucy seemed wild with joy, and danced gayly about the house--now in the kitchen, where the cake was making; now in the chamber where the plain sewing was done, and then flitting to her own room in quest of Valencia, who was sent on divers errands, the little lady thinking that, now the time was so near, it would be proper for her to remain indoors and not show herself in public quite as freely as she had been in the habit of doing.

So she remained at home, while they missed her in the back streets and bylanes, the Widow Hobbs, who was still an invalid, pining for a sight of her bright face, and only half compensated for its absence by the charities which Valencia brought; the smart waiting-maid putting on innumerable airs and making Mrs. Hobbs feel keenly how greatly she thought herself demeaned by coming to such a heathenish place as that.

The Hanoverians, too, missed her in the street, but for this they made ample amends by discussing the doings at Prospect Hill and commenting upon the bridal trousseau which was sent up from New York the very week before Christmas, thus affording a most fruitful theme for conversation for the women and girls engaged in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the church.

There were dresses of every conceivable fabric, they said, but none were quite so grand as the wedding-dress itself--the heavy white silk which could "stand alone," and trailed "a full half-yard behind."

It was also whispered round that, not content with seeing the effect of her bridal robes as they lay upon the bed, Miss Lucy Harcourt had actually tried them on--wreath, veil and all--and stood before the gla.s.s until Miss f.a.n.n.y had laughed at her for being so vain and foolish, and said she was a pretty specimen for a sober clergyman's wife.

For all this gossip the villagers were indebted mostly to Miss Valencia Le Barre, who, ever since her arrival at Prospect Hill, had been growing somewhat disenchanted with the young mistress she had expected to rule even more completely than she had ruled Mrs.

Meredith. But in this she was mistaken, and it did not improve her never very amiable temper to find that she could not with safety appropriate more than half her mistress' handkerchiefs, collars, cuffs, and gloves, to say nothing of perfumery, and pomades, and, as this was a new state of things with Valencia, she chafed at the administration under which she had so willingly put herself, and told things of her mistress which no sensible servant would ever have reported. And Lucy gave her plenty to tell.

Frank and outspoken as a child, she acted as she felt, and did try on the bridal dress, screaming with pleased delight when Valencia fastened the veil and let its fleecy folds fall gracefully around her.

"I wonder what Arthur will think, I do so wish he was here," she had said, ordering a hand-gla.s.s brought that she might see herself from behind and know just how much her dress did trail, and how it looked beneath the costly veil.

She was very beautiful in her bridal robes, and she kept them on till f.a.n.n.y began to chide her for her vanity, and, even then, she lingered before the mirror, as if loath to take them off.

"I don't believe in presentiments," she said to f.a.n.n.y; "but, do you know, it seems to me just as if I should never wear this again," and she smoothed thoughtfully the folds of the heavy silk she had just laid upon the bed. "I don't know what can happen to prevent it, unless Arthur should die. He was so pale last Sunday and seemed so weak that I shuddered every time I looked at him. I mean to drive round there this afternoon," she continued. "I suppose it is too cold for him to venture as far as here, and he has no carriage, either."

She went to the parsonage that afternoon, and the women in the church saw her as she drove by, the gorgeous colors of her carriage blanket flashing in the wintry sunshine just as the diamonds flashed upon the hand she waved gayly towards them.

There was a little too much of the lady patroness about her quite to suit the plain Hanoverians, especially those who were neither high enough or low enough to be honored with her notice, and they returned to their wreathmaking and gossip, wondering under their breath if it would not, on the whole, have been just as well if their clergyman had married Anna Ruthven instead of this fine city girl with her Parisian manners.

A gleam of intelligence shot from the gray eyes of Valencia, who was in a most unreasonable mood.

"She did not like to stain her hands with the nasty hemlock more than some other folks," she had said, when, after the trying on of the bridal dress, Lucy had remonstrated with her for some duty neglected, and then bidden her to go to the church and help if she were needed.

"I must certainly dismiss you," Lucy had said, wondering how Mrs.

Meredith had borne so long with the insolent girl, who went unwillingly to the church, where she was at work when the carriage drove by.

She had thought many times of the letter she had read, and, more than once, when particularly angry, it had been upon her lips to tell her mistress that she was not the first whom Mr. Leighton had asked to be his wife, if, indeed, she was his choice at all; but there was something in Lucy's manner which held her back; besides which, she was, perhaps, unwilling to confess to her own meanness in reading the stolen letter.

"I could tell them something if I would," she thought, as she bent over the hemlock boughs and listened to the remarks; but, for that time, she kept the secret and worked on moodily, while the unsuspecting Lucy went her way and was soon alighting at the rectory gate.