Part 17 (2/2)
”Upon your mother's grave I have wept that sin away, and I know I am forgiven as well as if her own soft voice had told me so. I loved your father, Maude, and this was my great error. He was a distant relative of your mother, whom he always called his cousin. He visited her often, for he was a college student, and ere I was aware of it, I loved him, oh, so madly, vainly fancying my affection was returned. He was bashful, I thought, for he was not then twenty-one, and by way of rousing him to action. I trifled with another--with Dr. Kennedy,” and she uttered the name spitefully, as if it were even now hateful to her.
”I know it--I know it,” returned Maude, ”he told me that when he first talked with me of you, but I did not suppose the dark-eyed student was my father.”
”It was none other,” said Mrs. Kennedy, ”and you can form some conception of my love for him, when I tell you that it has never died away, but is as fresh within my heart this night as when I walked with him upon the College Green and he Called me 'Cousin Maude,' for he gave me that name because of my fondness for Matty, and he sealed it with a kiss. Matty was present at that time, and had I not been blind I should have seen how his whole soul was bound up in her, even while kissing me. I regarded her as a child, and so she was; but men sometimes love children, you know. When she was fifteen, she left New Haven. I, too, had ceased to be a schoolgirl, but I still remained in the city and wrote to her regularly, until at last your father came to me, and with the light of a great joy s.h.i.+ning all over his face, told me she was to be his bride on her sixteenth birthday. She would have written it herself, he said, only she was a bashful little creature, and would rather he should tell me. I know not what I did, for the blow was sudden, and took my senses away. He had been so kind to me of late--had visited me so often, that my heart was full of hope. But it was all gone now.
Matty Reed was preferred to me, and while my Spanish blood boiled at the fancied indignity, I said many a harsh thing of her--I called her designing, deceitful, and false; and then in my frenzy quitted the room. I never saw Harry, again, for he left the city next morning; but to my dying hour I shall not forget the expression of his face when I talked to him of Matty. Turn away, Maude, turn away!
for there is the same look now upon your face. But I have repented of that act, though not till years after. I tore up Mattie's letters. I. said I would burn the soft brown tress--”
”Oh, woman, woman! you did not burn my mother's hair!” and with a shudder Maude unwound the soft, white arm which so closely encircled her.
”No, Maude, no. I couldn't. It would not leave my fingers, but coiled around them with a loving grasp. I have it now, and esteem it my choicest treasure. When I heard that you were born, my heart softened toward the young girl. Mother and I wrote, asking that Harry's child might be called for me. I did not disguise my love for him, and I said it would be some consolation to know that his daughter bore my name. My letter did not reach them until you had been baptized Matilda, which was the name of your mother and grandmother, but to prove their goodness, they ever after called you Maude.”
”Then I was named for you;” and Maude Remington came back to the embrace of Maude Glendower, who, kissing, her white brow, continued: ”Two years afterward I found myself in Vernon, stopping for a night at the hotel. 'I will see them in the morning,' I said; 'Harry, Matty, and the little child;' and I asked the landlord where you lived. I was standing upon the stairs, and in the partial darkness he could not see my anguish when he replied, 'Bless you, miss. Harry Remington died a fortnight ago.'”
”How I reached my room I never knew, but reach it I did, and half an hour later I knelt by his grave, where I wept away every womanly feeling of my heart, and then went back to the giddy world, the gayest of the gay. I did not seek an interview with your mother, though I have often regretted it since. Did she never speak of me?
Think. Did you never hear my name?”
”In Vernon, I am sure I did,” answered Maude, ”but I was then too young to receive a very vivid impression, and after we came here mother, I fear, was too unhappy to talk much of the past.”
”I understand it,” answered Maude Glendower, and over her fine features there stole a hard, dark look, as she continued, ”I can see how one of her gentle nature would wither and die in this atmosphere, and forgive me, Maude, she never loved your father as I loved him, for had he called me wife I should never have been here.”
”What made you come?” asked Maude; and the lady answered, ”For Louis' sake and yours I came. I never lost sight of your mother. I knew she married the man I rejected, and from my inmost soul I pitied her. But I am redressing her wrongs and those of that other woman who wore her life away within these gloomy walls. Money is his idol, and when you touch his purse you touch his tenderest point.
But I have opened it, and, struggle as he may, it shall not be closed again.”
She spoke bitterly, and Maude knew that Dr. Kennedy had more than met his equal in that woman of iron will.
”I should have made a splendid carpenter,” the lady continued, ”for nothing pleases me more than the sound of the hammer and saw, and when you are gone I shall solace myself with fixing the entire house. I must have excitement, or die as the others did.”
”Maude--Mrs. Kennedy, do you know what time it is?” came from the foot of the stairs, and Mrs. Kennedy answered, ”It is one o'clock, I believe.”
”Then why are you sitting up so late, and why is that lamp left burning in the parlor, with four tubes going off at once? It's a maxim of mine--”
”Spare your maxims, do. I'm coming directly,” and kissing the blind girl affectionately, Mrs. Kennedy went down to her liege lord, whom she found extinguis.h.i.+ng the light, and gently shaking the lamp to see how much fluid had been uselessly wasted.
He might have made some conjugal remark, but the expression of her face forbade anything like reproof, and he soon found use for his powers of speech in the invectives he heaped upon the long rocker of the chair over which he stumbled as he groped his way back to the bedroom, where his wife rather enjoyed, than otherwise, the lamentations which he made over his ”bruised s.h.i.+n.” The story she had been telling had awakened many bitter memories in Maude Glendower's bosom, and for hours she turned uneasily from side to side, trying in vain to sleep. Maude Remington, too, was wakeful, thinking over the strange tale she had heard, and marveling that her life should be so closely interwoven with that of the woman whom she called her mother.
”I love her all the more,” she said; ”I shall pity her so, staying here alone, when I am gone.”
Then her thoughts turned upon the future, when she would be the wife of James De Vere, and while wondering if she should really ever see again, she fell asleep just as the morning was dimly breaking in the east.
CHAPTER XIX.
A SECOND BRIDAL.
After the night of which we have written, the tie of affection between Mrs. Kennedy and the blind girl was stronger than before, and when the former said to her husband, ”Maude must have an outfit worthy of a rich man's stepdaughter,” he knew by the tone of her voice that remonstrance was useless, and answered meekly, ”I will do what is right, but don't be too extravagant, for Nellie's clothes almost ruined me, and I had to pay for that piano yesterday. Will fifty dollars do?”
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