Part 30 (2/2)

”Out of death unto life,” was the quick reply. ”This way! Do not mar the railing”; and the two men pa.s.sed on with the last trunk. ”Forty minutes before train time, I believe?” she interrogated as she stepped forward to close the door. ”Yes, madam”; and she turned to the bewildered woman who was silently gazing at her.

”Well, I am going,” she said calmly; ”it matters not to you where, but remember this! If there is a path for such as I back to womanhood I am determined to find it!” A cynical laugh was her only response.

”Nevertheless, it is true! The miseries of the last few days have completed the grave into which I have cast my pride and ambitions; would that the bitter memories of the past could be buried with them! But I must go. Farewell--do not wait to attempt your own rescue until the quicksands have swallowed you up; again farewell!”

Her companion did not speak, but turned coldly away, while Mrs. Belmont, with a heart lighter than it had been for many months, tripped down the steps. New resolutions had taken possession of her soul, and with them had entered a ray of cheering light. The door had been thrown ajar for the spirit of penitence, but how dark the long closed chamber appeared, how ghostly the spectral memories that crouched among its shadows! The ”broken and contrite heart” had not as yet opened the windows to the glories of the noonday sun of righteousness; and the door was reclosed, and upon the outside the new resolves were laid with trembling hands.

She was Mrs. Belmont again--the mistress of Rosedale, and nevermore would she stoop to fraud or ignominy! Her daughter would come to her and ask for the mother-love her disobedience had forfeited, and she would humbly grant it! Colonel Hamilton was not one to be ashamed of; and then the dark night at the seash.o.r.e, the cry of the abducted Lily rolled its burden of remorse close where the new resolutions were lying, and she trembled as the engine whistled its frightful alarm--something was on the track! ”O G.o.d! What if Thy anger should fall upon me, where O where shall the sinner appear?” burst from her lips as she covered her face with her hands.

”There is no danger,” shouted the brakeman at last; ”the track is clear.” And with folded hands she rode on breathing freely once more.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXIX.

A NIGHT UPON THE BILLOWS.

How the circ.u.mstances of life throw us about! Now, upon the revolving wheel, we are raised high above our fellows, where, from our dizzy elevation, we look about us with a sense of giddiness lest we fall; then with sudden revolution we descend while those upon the low grounds are carried up. Change! Change!

Our little circle of actors in the present drama were on the ”wheel,”

but not one experienced more disagreeable sensations in its turnings than did Mrs. Belmont, the once haughty mistress of Rosedale. Hers was not alone in the experience of external disagreeables; but in her soul, where the continual revolvings of the corresponding whirlings of good resolutions and evil pa.s.sions, which the hand of avarice was turning.

Poor soul; with only such a power to govern its weal or woe!

Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d lingered about the maelstrom where her darling had disappeared from sight many weeks, loth to believe that she would not rise again to bless and cheer her loneliness. ”She was so like me,” she would repeat over and over again; ”the same restless ambitions, the same longings after something her hand could never reach! And now she is gone! I could bear it if the beautiful casket, emptied of its treasure had been left for my stricken heart to cherish and lay away in its bed of flowers under the green gra.s.s; but to lose all but the memory of her uncertain fate! This is the darkest cloud of all. Then what will Willie, the poor struggling cripple, say? How shall I ever meet him.”

The shadows deepened in the home of the St. Clair's, and none rejoiced more when the husband bore his weeping wife back to her Virginia life than did the sympathizing Mrs. Mason. ”It was dreadful,” she said to her mother, after the good-byes were over; ”but as we could not help it became a trifle monotonous,--this petting and soothing.”

”Well, as for me, I would give a pretty large sum to know the whole of that transaction,” remarked Mr. St. Clair, one day as the whole matter was being talked over. ”There is a wheel within a wheel or I am mistaken. These old eyes are not so very blind when they have their spectacles on.”

”I do wish you would never again throw out one of your wild and foolish 'perhaps so's!” exclaimed the wife pettishly. ”I should not be surprised if your cousin should bring you before the courts for slander.”

The husband threw up his broad hands high above his head while a merry peal of laughter rang through the apartment.

”Only to think, wife! Slander! I tell you there are chapters in that woman's life that she would not like to have me or any one else be fumbling over, and there is not much danger that she will ever turn the leaves for my especial benefit.”

”You are too bad; the mother of Lillian Belmont ought to be above such insinuations, Mr. St. Clair!”

”That is a fact, but she is not, and there is where the too bad comes in”; and the merry laugh again resounded.

Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d reached her home in safety. It was a fine old residence, standing back from the highway, nearly hidden from the pa.s.ser by because of the large wide-spreading trees with which it was surrounded; yet the broadly-paved walks that branched off in every direction as they wound around among the cool shadows of the overhanging branches were delightfully inviting to the weary traveler who looked in upon them. The mistress of that pleasant retreat now, however, walked with languid step up the winding path to the house with a heavy heart. The darker shades of an overhanging gloom oppressed her. On the portico the servants were collected to give her welcome, and as she took the tawny hand of each in her own, said, ”You too will miss your young mistress. You loved her, Jenny,--she will make no more turbans for you, Phebe--and poor little Pegs! who will fix his kite or teach him how to spin his top?”

”Whar is she Missus?” asked Phebe, with the great tears rolling down her ebony cheeks, and several other voices chimed in ”Dar--dar--Missus, whar is she?”

”Dead! Swallowed up by the big sea, and we shall see her no more!” She pa.s.sed on, for Mr. g.a.y.l.o.r.d had taken her arm and was leading her into the long drawing-room, where he bade her stop her prating and making a simpleton of herself.

”It might as well be she as any one,” he continued, noticing the look of distress on the pale face; ”Seldom could there be found a young lady of her attractions who would break fewer hearts by disappearing than would she. But I am sorry for you. There was a little more color in your face, and a slight return of the former sprightliness in your manner while she was with you. But she is gone, Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d, and what is the use of throwing misery over every one who crosses your path because of it? If you must pine away the few attractions you have left out of your life, why, do it silently and alone.”

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