Part 81 (2/2)
The very tones of your voice, the carriage of your head, even the peculiar shape of your fingers and nails, are his--all his! Oh, my baby! my white lamb! my precious little one, if I had not fed you from my bosom--cradled you in my arms--realized that you were indeed flesh of my flesh--my own unfortunate, unprotected disowned baby, I believe I should hate you!”
She bowed her head in her hands, and groaned aloud.
”Forgive me, mother. If I had imagined the real cause, I would never have inquired. Let it pa.s.s. Tell me nothing that will bring such a storm of grief as this. G.o.d knows I wish I resembled you--only you.”
She covered her mother's hands with kisses, and tears gathered in her eyes.
”No; G.o.d knew best, and in His wisdom, His mercy for widowhood and orphanage, He stamped your father's unmistakable likeness indelibly upon you. Providentially a badge of honourable parentage was set upon the deserted infant, which neither fraud, slander, nor perjury can ever remove. The laws G.o.d set to work in nature defy the calumny, the corruption, the vindictive persecution and foul injustice cloaked under legal statutes, human decrees; and though a world swore to the contrary, your face proclaims your father, and his own image will hunt him through all his toils and triumphantly confront him with his crime. No jury ever empanelled could see you side by side with your father, and dare to doubt that you were his child! No, bitter as are the memories your countenance recalls, I hold it the keenest weapon in the armoury of my revenge.”
”Let us talk of something that grieves and agitates you less. May I sing you a song always a.s.sociated with your portrait, an invocation sacred to my lovely mother?”
”No, sometime you must know the history I have carefully hidden from all but Mr. Palma and your dead guardian; and now that the bitter waves are already roaring over me, why should I delay the narration?
It was not my purpose to tell you thus, I though it would too completely unnerve me, and I wrote the story of my life in the form of a drama, and called it _Infelice!_ But the recital is in Mr.
Chesley's hands for perusal; and I shall feel stronger, less oppressed, when I have talked freely with you. Kiss me, my pure darling, my own little nameless treasure, my fatherless baby; for indeed I need the elixir of my daughter's love to keep me human when I dwell upon the past.”
She strained the girl to her heart, then put her away and rose.
Opening a strong metallic box concealed in a drawer of the dressing-table, she took out several papers, some yellowed with age, and blurred with tears, and while Regina still sat, with her arm resting on the chair, Mrs. Orme locked the door, and began to walk slowly up and down the room.
”One moment, mother. I want to know why my heart is drawn so steadily and so powerfully toward Mr. Chesley, and why something in his face reminds me tenderly of you? Are you quite willing to tell me why he seems so deeply interested in me?”
”Regina, have you never guessed? Orme Chesley is my uncle, my mother's only brother.”
”Oh, how rejoiced I am! I hoped he was in some mysterious way related to us, but I feared to lean too much upon the pleasant thought, lest it proved a disappointment. My own uncle? What a blessing! Does Mr.
Palma know it?”
”Mr. Palma first suspected and traced the relations.h.i.+p, and it was from him that Uncle Orme learned of my existence, for it appears he believed me dead. Mr. Palma has long held all the tangled threads of my miserable history in his skilful hands, and to his prudent, patient care you and I shall owe our salvation. For years he has been to me the truest, wisest, kindest friend a deserted and helpless woman ever found.”
Regina sank her head upon the chair, afraid that her radiant face might betray the joy his praises kindled; and while she walked, Mrs.
Orme began her recital:
”My grandfather, Hubert Chesley, was from Alsace; my grandmother originally belonged to the French family of Ormes. They had two children, Orme the eldest, and Minetta, who while very young married a travelling musician from Switzerland, named Leon Merle. A year after she became his wife her father died, and the family resolved to emigrate to America. On the voyage, which was upon a crowded emigrant s.h.i.+p, I was born; and a few hours after my mother died.
They buried her at sea, and would to G.o.d I too had been thrown into the waves, for then this tale of misery would never torture innocent ears. But children who have only a heritage of woe, and ought to die, fight for existence defying adversity, and thrive strangely; so I lucklessly survived.
”My first recollections are of a pauper quarter in a large city, where my father supported us scantily by teaching music. Subsequently we removed to several villages, and finally settled in one where were located a college for young gentlemen, and a seminary for girls. In the latter my father was employed as musical professor, and here we lived very comfortably until he died of congestion of the lungs.
Uncle Orme at that time was in feeble health, and unable to contribute toward our maintenance, and soon after father's death he went out to California to the mining region. I was about ten years old when he left, and recollect him as a pale, thin, delicate man.
In those days it cost a good deal of money to reach the gold mines, and this alone prevented him from taking us with him.
”We were very poor, but grandmother was foolishly, inconsistently proud, and though compelled to sew for our daily bread, she dressed me in a style incompatible with our poverty, and contrived to send me to school. Finally her eyes failed, and with dest.i.tution staring open-jawed upon us, she reluctantly consented to do the was.h.i.+ng and mending for three college boys. She was well educated, and inordinately vain of her blood, and how this galling necessity humiliated her! We of course could employ no servant, and once when she was confined to her bed by inflammatory rheumatism, I was sent to the college to carry the clothes washed and ironed that week. It was the only time I was ever permitted to cross the campus, but it sufficed to wreck my life. On that luckless day I first met Cuthbert Laurance, then only nineteen, while I was not yet fifteen. Think of it, my darling; three years younger than you are now, and you a mere child still! While he paid me the money due, he looked at and talked to me. Oh, my daughter! my daughter! as I see you at this instant, with your violet eyes, watching me from under those slender, black arches, it seems the very same regular, aristocratic, beautiful face that met me that wretched afternoon, beneath the branching elms that shaded the campus! So courteous, so winning, so chivalric, so indescribably handsome did he present himself to my admiring eyes. I was young, pretty, an innocent, ignorant, foolish child, and I yielded to the fascination he exerted.
”Day by day the charm deepened, and he sought numerous opportunities of seeing me again; gave me books, brought me flowers, became the king of my waking thoughts, the G.o.d of my dreams. In a cottage near us lived a widow, Mrs. Peterson; whose only child Peleg, a rough overgrown lad, was a journeyman carpenter, and quite skilful in carving wooden figures. We had grown up together, and he seemed particularly fond of and kind to me, rendering me many little services which a stalwart man can perform for a delicate petted young creature such as I was then.
”As grandmother's infirmity increased, and her strict supervision relaxed, I met Cuthbert more frequently, but as yet without her knowledge; and gradually be won my childish heart completely. His father, General Rene Laurance, was a haughty wealthy planter residing in one of the Middle States, and Cuthbert was his only child, the pride of his heart and home. Those happy days seem a misty dream to me now, I have so utterly outgrown the faith that lent a glory to that early time. Cuthbert a.s.sured me of his affection, swore undying allegiance to me; and like many other silly, trusting, inexperienced, doomed young fools, I believed every syllable that he whispered in my ears.
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