Part 87 (1/2)

The audience dispersed, and Cuthbert and his father sat like those old Roman Senators, awaiting the breaking of the wave of savage vengeance that was rolling in upon them.

At length General Laurance struggled to his feet, and mechanically quitted the theatre, followed by his son. Reaching the carriage, they entered, and Cuthbert ordered the coachman to drive to Mrs. Orme's hotel.

”Not now! For G.o.d's sake, not to-night,” groaned the old man.

”To-night, before another hour, this awful imposture must be confessed, and reparation offered. I sinned against Minnie, but not premeditatedly. You deceived me. You made me believe her the foul, guilty thing you wished her. You intercepted her letters, you never let me know that I had a child neglected and forsaken; and, father, G.o.d may forgive you, but I never can. My proud, lovely Minnie! My own wife!”

Cuthbert buried his face in his hands, and his strong frame shook as he pictured what might have been, contrasting it with the hideous reality of his loveless and miserable marriage with the banker's daughter, who threatened him with social disgrace.

During that drive General Laurance felt that he was approaching some offended and avenging Fury, that he was drifting down to ruin, powerless to lift his hand and stay even for an instant the fatal descent; that he was gradually petrifying, and things seemed vague and intangible.

When they reached the hotel, they were ushered into the salon already brilliantly lighted as if in expectation of their arrival. Cuthbert paced the floor; his father sank into a chair, resting his hands on the top of his cane.

After a little while, a silk curtain at the lower end of the room was lifted, and Mrs. Orme came slowly forward. How her l.u.s.trous eyes gleamed as she stood in the centre of the apartment, scorn, triumph, hate, all struggling for mastery in her lovely face.

”Gentlemen, you have read the handwriting on the wall. Do you come for defiance, or capitulation?”

General Laurance lifted his head, but instantly dropped it on his bosom; he seemed to have aged suddenly, prematurely. Cuthbert advanced, stood close beside the woman whose gaze intensified as he drew near her, and said brokenly:

”Minnie, I come merely to exonerate myself before G.o.d and man. Heaven is my witness, that I never knew I had a child in America until to-night, that until to-night I believed you were in California living as the wife of that base villain Peterson, who wrote announcing himself your accepted lover. From the day I kissed you good-bye at the cottage, I never received a line, a word, a message from you. When I doubted my father's and Peterson's statements concerning you, and wrote two letters, one to the President of the college, one to a resident professor, seeking some information of your whereabouts, in order at least to visit you once more, when I became twenty-one, both answered me that you had forfeited your fair name, had been forsaken by your grandmother, and had gone away from the village accompanied by Peterson, who was regarded as your favoured lover. I ceased to doubt, I believed you false. I knew no better until to-night. Father, my honour demands that the truth be spoken at last. Will you corroborate my statement?”

Pale and proud, he stood erect, and she saw that a consciousness of rect.i.tude at least in purpose, sustained him.

”Mrs. Orme----” began General Laurance.

”Away with such shams and masks! Mrs. Orme died on the theatrical boards to-night, and henceforth the world knows me as Minnie Laurance! Ah! by the grace of G.o.d! Minnie Laurance!”

She laughed derisively, and held up her fair slender hand, exhibiting the black agate with its grinning skull lighted by the glow of the large radiant diamonds.

”Minnie, I never dreamed you were his wife; oh, my G.o.d! how horrible it all is!”

He seemed bewildered, and his son exclaimed:

”Who is responsible for the separation from my wife? You, father, or I?”

”I did it, my son. I meant it for the best. I naturally believed you had been entrapped into a shameful alliance, and as any other father would have done, I was ready to credit the unfavourable estimate derived from the man Peterson. He told me that Minnie had belonged to him until she and her grandmother conceived the scheme of inveigling you into a secret marriage; and afterward he informed me of the birth of his child. I did not pay him to claim it, but when he p.r.o.nounced it his, I gave him money to pay the expenses of the two whom he claimed to California; and I supposed until to-night that both had accompanied him. I did not manufacture statements, I only gladly credited them; and believing all that man told me, I felt justified in intercepting letters addressed to you by the woman whom he claimed as mother of his child. Madame, do not blame Cuthbert. I did it all.”

The abject wretchedness of his mien disconcerted her; robbed her of half her antic.i.p.ated triumph. How could she exult in trampling upon a bruised worm which made no attempt to crawl from beneath her heel? He sat, the image of hopeless dejection, his hands crossed on the gold head of his cane.

Mrs. Orme walked to the end of the room, lifted the curtain, and at a signal Regina joined her. Clasping the girl's fingers firmly she led her forward, and when to front of the old man, she exclaimed:

”Rene Laurance, blood triumphs over malice, perjury, and bribery; whose is this child? Is she Merle, Peterson, or Laurance?”

Standing before them, in a dress of some soft snowy s.h.i.+ning fabric, neither silk nor c.r.a.pe, with white starry jasmines in her raven hair and upon her bosom, Regina seemed some angelic visitant sent to still the strife of human pa.s.sions, so lovely and pure was her colourless face; and as General Laurance looked up at her, he rose suddenly.

”Pauline Laurance, my sister; the exact, the wonderful image!

Laurance, all Laurance, from head to foot.”

He dropped back into the chair, and smiled vacantly.