Part 88 (1/2)
”After five minutes, show him in.”
Mrs. Orme closed her eyes, and her lips trembled.
”My daughter, do you desire to be present at this last earthly interview?”
”No, mother. My wrongs I freely forgive, I told him so, but yours I can never forget; and I would prefer in future not to meet him. G.o.d pity and comfort you both.”
She kissed her mother's cheek, lips, even her hands, and hastily retreated. As she vanished, Mrs. Orme threw herself on her knees, and her lips moved rapidly while she wrung her fingers; but the pet.i.tion was inaudible, known only to the Searcher of hearts. Was it for strength to prosecute to the bitter end, or for grace to forgive?
She placed a strong metal box on the ormolu stand near her chair, and had just resumed her seat when Mr. Laurance entered, and approached her. He was in deep mourning, and his intensely pale but composed face bore the chastening lines of a profound and hopeless sorrow; but retained the proud unflinching regard peculiar to his family.
Of the two, he was most calm and self-possessed. Bowing in answer to the inclination of her head, he drew a chair in front of her, and when he sat down she saw a package of papers in his hand.
”I am glad, Mrs. Laurance, that you grant me this opportunity of saying a few words, which after to-day I shall seek no occasion to repeat; for with this interview ends all intercourse between us, at least in this world. These papers I found in poor father's private desk, and I have read them. They are your notes, and the marriage contract, which only awaited the signature he intended to affix.”
She held out her hand, and a burning blush dyed her cheek, as she reflected on the loathsome purpose which had framed that carefully worded instrument.
”To-day I leave Paris for America, to front, as best I may, the changed aspect of life. I have not yet told Abbie of the cloud of sorrow and humiliation that will soon break over our family circle, for poor little Maud has been quite ill, and I deferred my bitter revelation until her mother's mind is composed and clear enough to grasp the mournful truth. In the suit which I presume you will commence, as soon as I land in America, you need apprehend no effort on my part to elude the consequences of my own criminal folly and rashness. I shall attempt no defence, beyond requiring my counsel to state that no communication ever reached me from you; that I believed you the wife of another; and I shall also insist upon the reading of the two letters in answer to those I wrote, requesting the President and Professor to ascertain where you were. I was a.s.sured that a marriage contracted during my minority was invalid, and without due investigation of the statutes of the State in which it was performed and which had unfortunately undergone a change, I believed it. Your right as a wife is clear, indisputable, inalienable, and cannot be withheld; and the divorce you desire will inevitably be granted. I cannot censure your resolution, it is due to yourself, doubly due to your child--our child! My child! Oh! that I had known the truth seventeen years ago! How different your fate and mine!”
She leaned back, closing her eyes, against the eloquent pleading of that mesmeric countenance which was slowly robbing her of her stern purposes; renewing the spell she had never been able to fully resist.
He saw the spasm of pain that wrinkled her brow, blanched her lips; and gazing into the lovely face so dear to him, he exclaimed:
”Minnie! Minnie! Oh, my wife! My own wife!”
He sank on his knees before her, and his handsome head fell upon the arm of her chair. She covered her face with her hands, and a smothered sob broke from her tortured heart.
”I have sinned, but not intentionally against you. G.o.d is my witness had I known all twenty oceans could not have kept me from my wife and my baby. When you lived it all over again that night, when I saw you ill, deserted, in a charity hospital, with the child you say is mine cradled in your arms, oh! then indeed I suffered what all the pangs of perdition cannot surpa.s.s. When you and I married we were but children, but I loved you; afterward when I was a man, I madly renewed those vows to one, whom I was urged, persuaded, to wed. I am not a villain, and I know my duties to the mother of my afflicted Maud, to the child of my loveless union, and I intend rigidly to discharge them. But, Minnie, G.o.d knows that you are my true, lawful wife, and I want here upon my knees, before we part for ever, to tell you that no other woman ever possessed my heart. I have tried to be a patient, kind, indulgent husband to Abbie, but when I look at you, and think of her, remembering that my own rash blindness shut me from the Eden that now seems so deliciously alluring, when I realize what might have been for you and me, my punishment indeed appears unendurable. Ah, no language can describe my feelings, as I looked at that n.o.ble, lovely girl. Oh the fond pride of knowing that she is mine as well as yours! My wife! my wife, let the holy blue eyes and pure lips of our baby, our daughter, plead her father's forgiveness----”
His voice faltered. There was a deep silence. Although kneeling so near, he made no attempt to touch her. For fifteen years she had struggled against all tender memories, and every softening recollection had been harshly banished. She had trained herself to despise and hate the man who had so blackened her life at its dewy threshold; but the mysterious workings of a woman's heart baffle experience, a.n.a.lysis, and conjecture.
Listening to the low cadence of the beloved voice that first waked her from the magic realm of childhood, and unsealed the fountain of affection, the days of their courts.h.i.+p stole back; the blissful hours of the brief honeymoon. He was her lover, her n.o.ble young husband; above all, he was the father of her baby; and yielding to the old irresistible infatuation she suddenly laid her hand upon his head. As yet she had not uttered a syllable since his entrance, but the floodgates were lifted, and he heard the despairing cry of her famished heart:
”Oh, my husband! My husband, my own husband!”
He threw his arms around her as she leaned toward him, and drew the head to his shoulder. So in silence they rested, and he felt that one arm tightened around him, as he knelt holding her to his heart.
”Minnie, your true heart forgives your unworthy husband. Tell me so, and it will enable me to bear all that the future may contain. Say, Cuthbert, I forgive you.”
She struggled up, gazed into his eyes, and exclaimed:
”No; I loved you too well, too insanely ever to forgive, had loved you less, I might have forgiven more. There is no meekness in my soul, but an intolerable bitterness that mocks and maddens me. I ought to despise myself, and I certainly shall, for this unpardonable weakness. But very precious memories unnerved me just then, and I clung, not to you, not to Abbie Ames' husband, but to the phantom of the Cuthbert whom long ago I loved so well, to the vision of the young bridegroom I wors.h.i.+pped so blindly. Let me go. Our interview is ended.”
She withdrew from his arms, and rose.
”Before I go, let me see our child once more. Let me tell her that her father is inexpressibly proud of the daughter who will honour his unworthy name again.”
”She declines meeting you again.”