CHAPTER II.
Shortly after this everything about “The Gables” seemed to take on new life. Andrew had bade Victoria make ready and issue invitations for a grand fête, which should be given on a scale of magnificence never equalled, and which should hold a week. Victoria was thunderstruck. This indeed was a new departure for her husband, who had tabooed all society for nearly ten years, and who now chose to plunge headlong as it were into gayeties to which he was wholly a stranger. It is no wonder that she looked apprehensively at him, and wondered if he had not suddenly taken leave of his senses, but knowing his dislike to being questioned she merely asked: “How many invitations shall I issue, Andrew?”
“As many as the house will hold without crowding, Victoria. We can accommodate nearly a hundred who may come from a distance. The lodge will room twenty more. We can erect a temporary barracks for the men who come unaccompanied by ladies, so I think with the neighboring gentry who will, of course return home at night, you can get out three hundred invitations. I will get the necessary lumber and have the men begin erecting whatever is needful at once. Will this please you, my love?”
“It certainly ought to,” laughed Victoria. “Why, Andrew, the expense will be frightful.”
“It will not exceed ten thousand dollars, Victoria, and I shall never miss so small a sum. Even if it is twice that amount I shall not grumble. We have received many pressing invitations from friends. It is but courtesy on our part to return them. See that there is an abundance of everything, dear wife. There will be plenty of time to order anything you wish from New York. You have my consent to go in as deeply as you may desire.” And Victoria decided to obey her husband to the letter, and to make the fête one to be long remembered.
When it became known that “The Gables” was to be thrown open to the public, that everybody far and near had been invited by its master, the people could hardly believe the startling news. Very few had ever been inside the grand salon and reception-rooms, and those who had been so favored, had much to tell of their magnificence, and of the rare paintings and works of art with which the rooms were adorned. If Andrew was unpopular, Victoria was not, so there were very few regrets sent, and as the week approached, not a few anxious glances were cast at the threatening clouds which presaged bad weather; but the first day of the fête dawned cloudless, and before night every room in the spacious old house had been assigned to an occupant. Andrew laid aside his reserve, and proved himself to be a prince of entertainers. Victoria was amazed at this sudden transformation, and after seven years of married life saw her husband in an entirely different character, and also it was one which became him well. The first night was spent in all getting acquainted with one another, or in renewing old acquaintance, and in visiting the picture-gallery and other places of interest. The second day was to be devoted to the hunt. At night there was to be a hunt ball, and the grand ball-room was to be opened to the public for the first time in thirty-five years.
It was a merry party which assembled before the main entrance the morning of the hunt to say au revoir for a few hours to the hostess and those ladies who did not hunt. The gentlemen in their scarlet coats and buckskin breeches were bright bits of color among the more sombre riding-habits of the ladies, and Andrew, who sat his horse with a grace not equalled by any man present, noted the look of wifely pride on Victoria’s face, as she waved him an adieu with Mary perched upon her shoulder. The lady riding by his side saw the tender expression on his face as he kissed his fingers to Victoria, and as their horses cantered slowly down the avenue, she said: “You have a most charming wife, Mr. Willing, and the little one is simply cherubic.”
Andrew glanced at his companion. She was young and extremely beautiful. Rumor said that for three seasons she had been a reigning belle in New York and Baltimore society, and that, strange to relate, she cared more for the society of middle-aged men than for that of men nearer her own age. Was she fishing for a compliment, thinking that Andrew, as scores of other men might have done, would at once begin a flirtation on the strength of the few words of praise bestowed upon his wife? All this flashed through Andrew’s mind as he watched the blooming color, like the heart of a sea shell, come and go on the riante face of his fair guest. His dark, mournful eyes, whose sadness was their greatest charm, looked straight into the melting blue ones so near him while he said: “There is no woman on this earth to equal her, Miss Marchon. There never will be for me. Without her and the child, who is a part of us, my life would become a void. I should not care to live.”
A slightly sarcastic smile curved the beautiful lips of his hearer. “Such devotion after nearly fifteen years of married life is truly commendable, Mr. Willing. So you never have desired to bask in the smiles of any other fair lady?”
Andrew saw the drift which the conversation was beginning to take. It was as he had thought. His beautiful guest was endeavoring to draw him into a perhaps harmless flirtation, but nevertheless, in his loyalty to Victoria, one which would be extremely distasteful to him. He resolved to at once nip this evident admiration of Miss Marchon for himself in the bud. He turned his horse and pointed with his whip to “The Gables,” which in the next turn of the avenue would be lost to their view. “That house holds all I care for in the world. No woman, not even if she possessed the wiles of a Cleopatra, could turn my allegiance from the angel we have left behind. Other women when compared with her seem soulless, dead, devoid of all those graces which she alone possesses. My God, how I love her! It is something more than love. It is adoration, worship, an unquenchable fire, which, when I hold her in my arms burns with a fever heat. Ah, Miss Marchon, few women are loved with the devotion which I give Victoria. When I say that to save her one heart pang I would die for her, they are not idle words. They come from a heart whose every drop of blood flows for her.”
He lowered his whip, and they rode on in silence. Andrew’s dreamy, melancholy eyes had no further charm for Miss Marchon. He could not be drawn into a flirtation, be it ever so mild, so, as they joined the rest of the party she gradually drew away from him, and attached herself to the side of the governor of the state, who was a widower, and a noted gallant. Her bright beauty soon captivated him, and before long she had given him her views of their host.
“He is a boor; a perfect numskull. He does not know enough to compliment any lady but his wife, and his ravings about her are ridiculous in the extreme.”
“Do you mean to say that he has been in your charming society for a whole hour; has looked into those glorious eyes; has gazed upon those tempting lips; and yet has been so ungallant as not to have seemed to appreciate so much loveliness, and his own good fortune in being near it?” inquired the governor, bending from his saddle to touch lightly with his gloved hand the damask cheek of his companion.
“Even so,” she replied, giving him a bewitching smile.
“Then he is indeed all that you have called him and a great deal more. He is wanting in courtesy, but then you must excuse him on the plea of his not having been in society of late. He has withdrawn from the world so completely since that dreadful accident to his brother, of which he was an eye-witness, and which for a time ’tis said unbalanced his mind so that he has acted strangely ever since. His wife was also his brother’s, you no doubt know?”
“No, indeed. This is news,” replied Miss Marchon, eagerly, woman-like, scenting a romance. “Do tell me all about it, dear governor. I know very little regarding them except what Mrs. Lewis, where I am visiting, has told me. She said that the Willings were people a little eccentric, but it would not do to slight them in any way, as they are immensely wealthy, and their ancestors were among the bluest blood of England’s peers, and that the present Mrs. Willing is a titled English lady, who dropped her title upon marrying an American.”
“All of which is very true,” rejoined the governor, “but what I shall tell you borders on the romantic. Roger and Andrew Willing were twin brothers, and as unlike as you can imagine. I knew them both from childhood. Roger was one of the finest fellows I ever knew. Jolly, full of jokes, and always ready for a good time. He had the handsomest blue eyes I ever saw, excepting, of course, these at my side.”
Miss Marchon was one of the few women who can blush conveniently and at just the right time. A delicious rosy wave of color dyed her cheeks, and she laughingly tapped her admirer with her whip. “Go on, go on, you flatterer,” she cried, “I am becoming deeply interested. I wish I might have known this Roger Willing whose picture you sketch so charmingly.”
“You can see his portrait in the large gallery, Miss Marchon, taken in the heyday of his youth, but it does not do him justice. Well, as I was saying, he was a fellow beloved by everybody, and was so different from his twin brother, who was always as you see him now; moody, quiet, and sadly wanting in gallantry toward the fair sex, and if I am not mistaken, a little jealous of his more popular brother. Then when Roger was in his twenty-second year, just when life looked the fairest to him, he lost his eyesight in a powder explosion during a Fourth of July celebration in New York.”
“How very sad!” exclaimed Miss Marchon. “Those beautiful eyes! It must have been a serious affliction to him.”
“It was; but he was a fellow who always looked on the bright side of everything, and you can imagine how surprised all society was, when it became known that only two months after his accident, he had been quietly married to Lady Victoria Vale, who was visiting his mother, and who had fallen violently in love with the invalid, and he with her.”
“Oh, how romantic!” cried Miss Marchon, clapping her hands. “Just like a novel. Pray, hasten, governor.”
“Yes, very romantic, but nevertheless a most unfortunate marriage. Lady Vale had higher views for her daughter, and was much displeased, so she left immediately for England, and never became reconciled even when her child was made a widow, and Rumor says she is not pleased with this second marriage, but I am digressing. It seemed as if nothing but ill-fortune followed this hasty bridal, for Andrew and his mother had some high words over a matter which no one has ever been able to discover, and the poor lady died that night in a paralytic fit.”
“How dreadful! Why, it seems almost like a fatality, does it not, governor?”
“Almost, Miss Marchon; but Lady Victoria’s troubles were not over by any means, for less than five years after her marriage, Roger was killed in a railway accident and brought home a shapeless bit of flesh, to be buried in the family plot beside his mother, whose favorite he had always been, and from whom he was not long separated.”
Here Miss Marchon brushed a few pearly tears—which had conveniently appeared just at the right moment—from her blue eyes. “It is so affecting,” she said in excuse, as the governor watched her admiringly.
“It only shows what a tender little heart it has,” he said, riding close to her, and softly brushing her eyes with his own daintily monogrammed cambric.
“Is there more?” she inquired, putting up her face in the most innocent manner, and squeezing out still another tear which was tenderly taken care of by the devoted governor.
“I wish there was more so that I might still perform this pleasant task,” he said, as he lingered long over the last tear, “but there is nothing of any interest except that Andrew profited much by his brother’s death, and not three years after, married the widow who had seemed inconsolable at first. She is certainly a most beautiful woman, but she is no longer in the full bloom of youth, and not to be compared with the charmer by my side in whom her husband can see no beauty.”
“Oh, you are a naughty man,” cried Miss Marchon, “you don’t mean a word you have said, and for punishment I shall ride on and join Miss Fairley, who has no companion.”
“Ah! do not be so cruel,” exclaimed the governor, catching her horse’s bridle. “The hunt will have no pleasures for me, if you desert me. Pray remove that glove that I may see your hand. Ah, it is still unfettered.” He caught the white hand and pressed it to his lips. “May I, dare I hope, that this little hand shall be mine for——”
Miss Marchon turned away her head, so that he should not see the smile of triumph on her lips. Here was a proposal worth accepting, but she would not make haste to jump at it too quickly. She must appear diffident, coy, and quite innocently maidenish, although she had passed the rubicon some time before and was anything but an amateur in conducting love affairs to the desired point. His finishing words, however, brought her reverie to the ground with a thud, which she felt if no one else did, and she could have struck him in the face as he wound up with—“several dances at the ball to-night?”
For a moment she lost her head and came near bursting into tears. How glad she was that she had turned her head away. When she did look toward him her face was wreathed in smiles, and with a bewitching gesture, she replied: “As many dances as you wish dear governor. How can I refuse when asked in such a charming manner? But see, our party is already at the field. We are way in the rear. Come, let us hasten, or they will start without us.
And so ended the brief dream of Miss Marchon of some day becoming a governor’s lady, for he never proposed, but rode away when the fetê was ended, and she never saw him more.
Andrew opened the ball that night with Miss Marchon, and her unwilling ears were obliged to listen, while he berated the custom which tabooed him from dancing the first figure with his wife. Victoria, feeling happier than at any time since her marriage, was dancing with the governor, and as Andrew watched the face so dear to him, and noted every changing mood from grave to gay, from laughter to serious thought, he did not regret the step he had taken in throwing open his doors to this “howling mob,” as he called it, much as it was distasteful to him. He watched the governor as he bent in a most lover-like attitude over Victoria, and although he knew that Victoria was no flirt, yet the attention of any man toward his wife stirred something within him which if not exactly jealousy was very near akin to it. What man but himself had a right to clasp that slender waist, or press the exquisite figure of his loved one, perhaps with more tenderness than was at all necessary. He could hardly wait for the figure to be ended, so eager was he to join his wife, and with scarcely a word he led Miss Marchon to a seat, and crossed the room to where Victoria sat surrounded by a crowd of gallants.
She looked up with a bright smile as Andrew approached. “How charmingly Miss Marchon and you dance together,” she said, as he bent over her. “Is she not royally beautiful? I call her the most beautiful and the best dressed lady here.”
“I had not thought of her beauty,” replied Andrew, glancing at the sweet, serious face of Victoria, “and as for her costume I cannot tell you whether it be black or white. All women look alike to me save one, Victoria. That one I have deified. She stands a queen among her lesser satellites, and overshadows them all.”
Victoria looked up into her husband’s face. His eyes were full of slumbering passion, ready to burst into flame at a kind word from her. The other men had left them alone as Andrew began speaking to his wife, and somehow, as Victoria caught the fire in her husband’s eyes, something which she had not felt before stirred within her. A tremor, delicious in its vagueness, shot through her veins, and she thought: “Can this be love which I feel coming to me? Love for a man whom I have said I hated?” She laid her fan upon his arm. “How much you do love me, Andrew? I wonder if there be another man in this ball-room who is saying such devoted words to his wife as I am hearing?”
“No,” replied Andrew, “for no man loves his wife with the strength of passion which you inspire in me. Plenty are devoting themselves to the entertainment of other men’s wives, leaving their own neglected, or to be led into a flirtation which belittles them in the eyes of serious people. The men are vain and careless of the reputation of those who should be the most cherished by them. The women are silly and frivolous, and so the world moves on, and this reminds me that I have a request to ask of you, my darling. Will you dance with nobody but me to-night? I do not care for any partner but your sweet self, and you may deem me very silly, but I cannot see you in the arms of any one of these men who are so inferior to you, without a jealous pang.”
Victoria laughed. “What an idea, Andrew. Would you monopolize your wife at your own ball? What will people say?”
“I don’t give a continental for what people may say. I want you for myself. What is your decision, sweetheart?”
“Of course I will do as you wish, Andrew. I don’t care to dance a very great deal. What I have promised I can no doubt get excused from.”
“Then do. Are you promised for the next? Yes, I see you are. I will at once seek your partner and get a substitute in your place. Then I shall claim my rights. Do you know, sweet wife, that this will be our first dance together? Can you imagine how eager I am to try my step with yours?”
He pressed her hand to his lips and left her. She watched him treading his way among the crowd. Surely she had every reason to be proud of him, and she ought to love him. Such devotion was certainly worthy of a return. Then she thought of that other husband, asleep under the freshly cut flowers which Mary and herself had strewn upon his bed that morning. Every morning ere the sun was up she took Mary, and together they walked to the pines where Roger lay, and laid their tribute of affection over the quiet sleeper. Andrew knew of these early visits but he never objected as any other man might have done under the circumstances, and as she sat there thinking of his careful tenderness for her and their child; of his patient love which had grown instead of diminished during nearly eight years of married life; how he had bourne without any outward signs of how it hurt him, her days of lamentations for Roger, when she had shut her door against everybody including her beloved child, and refused to be comforted. As she thought of all these things she saw her selfishness in many ways, and she resolved to gradually drop those early visits, and by so doing remove one thorn from Andrew’s path, for it had been a thorn to him she well knew. This morbid love of hers for the dead who could never return. She welcomed him with a smile when he returned, and he saw that in her face which was new to him. He looked at her searchingly.
“Have you been communing with unseen spirits, Victoria?” he said, as he led her upon the floor, “your face is angelic.”
“Yes,” she replied, looking up to him with a strange light in her eyes. “I have seen a vision which I never expected to behold. A vision of love in which only you and I, and our child were the central figures.”
He understood, and for a moment, strong man that he was, he reeled under the exquisite meaning conveyed in her words. She was beginning to love him. She had put Roger away out of her thoughts. He placed his arm about her to begin the figure, and he pressed her to him with such passion as to crush the flowers at her bodice. “Don’t, Andrew,” she whispered, “you hurt me; besides, people about us are remarking your actions.”
“The whole world may see and comment,” he replied, as he strained her to him again. “I could shout it out from the house tops, I am so happy. I feel as if I were drunk, Victoria. Drunk with joy. Have I not waited for eight long weary years to hear the blessed words? Ah, if I had you alone, away from this gaping crowd, I would kneel before you and worship you as a divinity. My God! was ever woman so sweet as you? Was ever man so blessed as I? Will this ball ever come to an end?”
Indeed, Andrew in his ecstatic state of mind was nearer being a madman than a rational creature, and seemed to have thrown aside melancholy, and he entered into the sports of the ball with a zest equal to the youngest gallant there. Not until the revel was over, and he had sought his study for a few moments before retiring, as was his custom no matter how late the hour, did he remember the sword suspended by a single hair. Ah, yes, now it came back to him with cruel force after the sweet assurance held out to him by Victoria. With a maddening rush, all the simple events of the past ten years crowded upon his brain in a seething whirlpool, and beating his breast with his clenched hands, the strong man fell upon his knees, and for the first time in his life prayed God to forgive him his sins while he wept like a child. Ah, he was not without a conscience, which goaded and pricked him sharply. He had no need to wear a garment of hair next his flesh to remind him of a sin for which to do penance, and now—now that he knew Victoria was his; that in time she would give to him the sweet love for which he so craved, his sins looked more heinous than ever, yet he could not bring himself to confess them, for fear of losing both Victoria and his child; and he seemed to see written in letters of fire upon the study wall the words: “Be sure in time your sins will be discovered. Repent then, and confess.”
“I cannot! I cannot!” cried the miserable man, in answer to those unspoken words, yet which were visible to his eye. “If my soul goes to torment I cannot confess. God help me!”