Part 76 (2/2)
CHAPTER XXIX.
”Your bed is untouched, you did not undress! Why did you sit up all night, and alone?”
”Because I knew it was folly to attempt to sleep; and to watch the bay and the beauty of the night was less wearying than to toss on a pillow staring at the ceiling. Mrs. Waul, what brings you here so early?”
”A package of letters which must have arrived yesterday, but William only received them a few minutes since. Mrs. Orme, will you have your coffee now?”
”After a little while. Have everything in order to leave at a moment's notice, for I may not return here from Paestum. Give me the letters.”
Mrs. Orme tossed back her hair which had been unbound, and as the letters were placed in her hand, she seemed almost to forget them, so abstracted was the expression with which her eyes rested on the dancing waves of the Bay of Naples. The noise of the door closing behind Mrs. Waul seemed to arouse her, and glancing at the letters she opened one from Mr. Palma.
The long and harrowing vigil which had lasted from the moment of bidding General Laurance good-night, on the previous evening, had left its weary traces in the beautiful face; but rigid resolution had also set its stem seal on the compressed mouth, and the eyes were relentless as those of Irene, waiting for the awful consummation in the Porphyry chamber at Byzantium.
The spirit of revenge had effectually banished all the purer, holier emotions of her nature; and the hope of an overwhelming Nemesis beckoned her to a fearful sacrifice of womanly sensibility, but just now nothing seemed too sacred to be immolated upon the altar of her implacable Hate. To stab the hearts of those who had wronged her, she gladly subjected her own to the fiery ordeal of a merely nominal marriage with her husband's father, resolving that her triumph should be complete. Originally gentle, loving, yielding in nature, injustice and adversity had gradually petrified her character; yet beneath the rigid exterior flowed a lava tide, that now and then overflowed its stony barriers, and threatened irremediable ruin.
Fully resolved upon the revolting scheme which promised punishment to the family of Laurance, and
”Self-girded with torn strips of hope,”
she opened the New York letter.
The first few lines riveted her attention. She sat erect, leaned forward, with eyes wide and strained, and gradually rose to her feet, clutching the letter, until her fingers grew purple. As she hurried on, breathing like one whose everlasting destiny is being laid in the balance, a marvellous change overspread her countenance. The blood glowed in lip and cheek, the wild sparkle sank, extinguished in the tears that filled her eyes, the hardness melted away from the resolute features, and at last a cry like that of some doomed spirit suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed from the horrors of perdition and set for ever at rest upon meads of Asphodel and Amaranth, rolled through the room.
After so many years of reckless hopelessness the transition was overpowering, and the miserable wife and mother rescued upon the extreme verge of utter lifelong ruin, fell forward upon her knees, sobbing and laughing alternately.
From the hour when she learned of her husband's second marriage she had ceased to pray, abandoning herself completely to the cynicism and vindictiveness that overflowed her soul like a wave of Phlegethon; but now the fountain of grat.i.tude was unsealed, and she poured out a vehement, pa.s.sionate, thanksgiving to G.o.d. Alternately praying, weeping, smiling, she knelt there, now and then re-reading portions of the letters, to a.s.sure herself that it was not a mere blessed dream, and at length when the strain relaxed, she dropped her head on a chair, and like a spent feeble child, cried heartily, unrestrainedly.
Mr. Palma wrote that after years of fruitless effort he had succeeded in obtaining from Peleg Peterson a full retraction of the charges made against her name, whereby General Laurance had prevented a suit against his son. Peterson had made an affidavit of certain facts, which n.o.bly exonerated her from the heinous imputations with which she was threatened, should she attempt legal redress for her wrongs, and which proved that the defence upon which General Laurance relied, was the result of perjury and bribery.
In addition to the recantation of Peterson, Mr. Palma communicated the joyful intelligence that Gerbert Audre, who was believed to have been lost off the Labrador coast fifteen years before, had been discovered in Was.h.i.+ngton, where he was occupying a clerical desk in one of the departments; and that he had furnished conclusive testimony as a witness of the marriage, and a friend of Cuthbert Laurance.
The lawyer had carefully gathered all the necessary links of evidence, and was prepared to bring suit against Cuthbert Laurance for desertion and bigamy; a.s.suring the long-suffering wife that her name and life would be n.o.bly vindicated.
Within his letter was one addressed to Mrs. Orme by Peleg Peterson, and a portion of the scrawl was heavily underlined.
”For all that I have revealed to Mr. Palma and solemnly sworn to, for this clearing of your reputation, you may thank your child. But for her, I should never have declared the truth--would have gone down to the grave, leaving a blot upon you; for my conscience is too dead to trouble me, and I hate you, Minnie! Hate you for the wreck you helped to make of me. But that girl's white angel face touched me, when she said (and I knew she meant it), 'If I find from mother that you are indeed my father, then I will do my duty. I will take your hand--I will own you my father--face the world's contempt, and we will bear our disgrace together as best me may.' She would have done it, at all risk, and I have pitied her. It is so clear her, and give her the name she is ent.i.tled to, that at last I have spoken the truth. She is a n.o.ble brave girl, too good for you, too good for her father; far too good to own Rene Laurance for her grandfather. When he sees the child he paid me to claim, he will not need my oath to satisfy him that in body she is every inch a Laurance; but where she got her white soul G.o.d only knows--certainly it is neither Merle nor Laurance. You owe your salvation to your sweet, brave child, and have no cause to thank me, for I shall always hate you.”
Had some ministering angel removed from her hand the hemlock of that loathsome vengeance she had contemplated, and subst.i.tuted the nectar of hope and joy, the renewal of a life unclouded by the dread of disgrace that had hung over her like a pall for seventeen years? When gathering her garments about her to plunge into a dark gulf replete with seething horror, a strong hand had lifted her away from the fatal ledge, and she heard the voice of her youth calling her to the almost forgotten vale of peace; while supreme among the thronging visions of joy gleamed the fair face of her blue-eyed daughter. Had she been utterly mad in resolving to stain her own pure hand by the touch of Rene Laurance?
In the light of retrospection the unnatural and monstrous deed she had contemplated, seemed fraught with a horror scarcely inferior to that which lends such lurid l.u.s.tre to the ”Oedipus;” and now she cowered in shame and loathing as she reflected upon all that she had deliberately arranged while sitting upon the terrace of the Villa Reale. Could the unbridled thirst for revenge have dragged her on into a monomania that would finally have ended in downright madness?
Once nominally the wife of the man whom she so thoroughly abhorred, would not reason have fled before the horrors to which she linked herself? The rebellious bitterness of her soul melted away, and a fervent grat.i.tude to Heaven fell like dew upon her arid stony heart, waking words of penitence and praise to which her lips had long been strangers.
Adversity in the guise of human injustice and wrong generally indurates and embitters; and the chastis.e.m.e.nts that chasten are those which come directly from the hand of Him ”who doeth all things well.”
When Mrs. Waul came back Mrs. Orme was still kneeling, with her face hidden in her arms, and the letters lying beside her. Laying her wrinkled hand on the golden hair, the faithful old woman asked:
”Did you hear from your baby?”
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