CHAPTER V.
A STRANGE OCCURRENCE.
Leonard Yorke threw open the door of the library and rushed into the room, Hilda following closely. His eyes fell at once upon the huddled heap upon the floor. A moment later he was kneeling beside the prostrate form, clasping the poor girl in his arms.
“Violet! Violet!” he cried, eagerly, anxiously, “open your eyes and let me hear you speak! Oh, Hilda, she is dead!”
Hilda Rutledge made an impatient gesture.
“Nonsense! She has only fainted. Go and send mamma here, we will attend to her.”
Leonard left the room, and Hilda bent over Violet and began to rub her hands and bathe her temples. In one hand, clasped tightly between the cold little fingers, was the crumpled letter which had nearly broken Violet’s heart. Hilda’s eyes scintillated.
“Ha! there is some mystery here!” she muttered. “I must see the contents of that letter!”
But she could not remove it from Violet’s grasp; and even while she was endeavoring to do so, the girl opened her eyes. A fearful shudder passed over her.
“Where is he?” she faltered, brokenly.
“Who?”
“That man——”
Violet stopped abruptly, as memory came slowly back to her. She struggled to a sitting posture just as Mrs. Rutledge entered the room, looking pale and frightened.
“My dear child!” she began at once. “Oh, thank Heaven, you are conscious! Come up to your own room, Violet, and lie down. Yes, I insist upon it.”
Violet arose, and leaning upon her aunt’s arm, moved slowly from the room.
Where was Leonard? Why had he deserted her? He had not returned to the library, and Violet did not know that he had been with her. Somehow, her heart sunk with a vague alarm. Something in the fact of his absence struck to her aching heart like a blow. Had he forgotten her? Then he had ceased to care for her—had never cared at all.
With all the usual inconsistency of a woman, she forgot that only a few hours had elapsed since Leonard Yorke’s avowal of love for her. How could he possibly have changed in that short time?
It was the wild outreaching of the loving, lonely little heart, and the intense disappointment that crushed down upon it like a vise was almost more than she could bear.
Once in her own chamber, she begged her aunt and cousin to leave her. The guests had, of course, long since departed; only Leonard remained, as he felt that he had a right to do. But Violet was ignorant of this fact, and so she misjudged him. Ah! if we only knew each other’s motives, how different life would be! And Violet never dreamed that Leonard had been forbidden by Mrs. Rutledge to enter her presence, and, with natural delicacy, the young man had held himself aloof.
Left alone in her own chamber, Violet’s first act was to lock its door against possible intruders. Then she placed the letter, which she still held in her hand, safely away in her little writing-desk; and at that moment she remembered the poem which Will Venners had given her—the pretty love verses written for the eyes of Jessie Glyndon alone. She searched in the lace of her corsage, but the poem was gone. Still, it was nothing of vital importance, and in the presence of the awful affliction which had come upon her and that other trouble which she felt certain was about to come into her life through Gilbert Warrington, she thought no more about it.
And little did she dream of the important part which that poem was destined to play in her own future. Little things sometimes sway and alter our whole lives. The veriest trifle may possibly work great and stupendous results. The mouse gnaws the rope which sets the prisoner free; a file can sever iron bars; a word in due season, how much good it can accomplish! Life is made up of trifles, after all. Victor Hugo maintains that had it not been for the small circumstance of a shower of rain, Napoleon would not have lost Waterloo, and the fate of two great nations might have been vastly different.
Down-stairs, in the deserted library, Leonard Yorke was pacing to and fro, his face pale and full of trouble. Something indefinable haunted him; a feeling of doubt, of distrust regarding Violet had taken possession of his heart. Leonard was by nature inclined to be jealous, and Hilda had contrived to arouse his latent jealousy.
Leonard thought it all over—all his supposed grounds for distrust of Violet—and his heart grew heavy. His mother, too, did not like Violet, and was always trying to influence her son against the girl, though this Violet never suspected.
Up and down he paced restlessly, impatient for news of Violet before he would go home. Yorke Towers was some two miles distant from The Oaks, and he was determined to remain until he was assured of his darling’s recovery from the indisposition which had prostrated her. As he paced slowly up and down the library, his eyes fell upon a folded paper lying upon the floor, just under the edge of a sofa. He stooped mechanically and picked it up. It was a closely written sheet of note-paper, evidently verses. Leonard Yorke’s brow contracted with an angry frown as he recognized Will Venners’ plain, elegant chirography—the gallant young captain who had seen service under Custer in the far West, but now seemed more at home in luxurious drawing-rooms at the feet of beauty. To sum it all up in a few words, Will Venners was the only man whom Leonard feared as a rival.
He stood there now slowly turning over the poem which Will had so carefully written to the woman he loved. But how was Leonard to know that it was meant for Jessie Glyndon? Had he not seen Captain Venners slip the paper into Violet’s willing hand out in the moonlight on the river-bank, when neither of them thought themselves observed? A hot flood of anger swelled Leonard Yorke’s heart. Slowly he read the lines, and as he read, the anger grew and strengthened:
“Dear, I tried to write you such a letter
As would tell you all my heart to-day;
Written love is poor, one word were better,
Easier, too, a thousand times to say.
“I can tell you all; fear, doubts unheeding
While I can be near you, hold your hand;
Looking right into your eyes and reading
Reassurance that you understand.
“But I wrote it through, then lingered, thinking
Of its reaching you, what hour, what day,
Until my heart and courage sinking
With a strange, new, wondering dismay.
“‘Will my letter fall,’ I wondered sadly,
‘Upon her mood like some discordant tone,
Or be welcomed tenderly and gladly?
Will she be with others, or—alone?
“‘It may find her too absorbed to read it,
Save with hurried glance and careless air;
Sad and weary, she may scarcely heed it,
Gay and happy, she may hardly care.
“‘Shall I—dare I—risk the chances?’ Slowly
Something, was it shyness, love, or pride?
Chilled all my heart and checked my courage wholly;
In wistful silence then I laid it all aside.
“Then I leant against the casement, turning
My tearful eyes toward the far-off West,
Where the golden evening light was burning,
Until my heart throbbed back again to rest.
“And I thought, ‘Love’s soul is not in fetters;
Neither space nor time keeps souls apart;
Since I can not, dare, not, send my letters
Through the silence, I will send my heart.
“‘She will hear, while twilight’s shades infold her,
All the gathered love she knows so well;
Deepest love my words have even told her—
Deeper still all I can never tell.’
“Wondering at the strange, mysterious power
That has touched her heart, then she will say:
‘Some one whom I love, this very hour
Thinks of me, and loves me far away!’
“So I dreamed, and watched the stars’ far splendor
Glimmering in the azure darkness start,
While the stars of trust rose bright and tender
Through the twilight shadows of my heart.”
With a muttered imprecation, Leonard Yorke thrust the paper into his pocket and hastened from the room. In the hall outside he encountered Miss Rutledge. Upstairs, in the chamber of death, the body of Rosamond Arleigh was being prepared for its last resting-place. The house was very still; the awful shadow of death rested over it.
Below stairs, the servants with busy hands were removing all traces of the ball—the faded garlands and drooping evergreens, the débris of the supper. Everything was done in a swift, silent fashion to restore the house to its usual order and decorum; and the drawing-room, where only a few hours before merriment had reigned supreme, was being prepared to receive the body of the mistress of The Oaks. The burial casket was already ordered, and in a short time the place which had known Rosamond Arleigh would know her no more.
“You look tired and troubled, Leonard,” began Mrs. Rutledge, kindly. “Come and have some coffee. You are not able to ride home now.”
“Thanks, dear Mrs. Rutledge,” he returned, “but I could not take anything, and I think I had better go home at once. Miss Glyndon will break the sad news to my mother, and she will be looking anxiously for me. Can I do anything for you—or”—with a slight hesitation—“for Violet?”
Mrs. Rutledge shook her head.
“I will let you know, my dear boy, if there should be anything for you to do,” she returned. “You will come back soon?”
“I will; to-night or to-morrow morning. And now good-bye.”
He pressed her hand warmly, and mounting his horse, rode swiftly away back to Yorke Towers.
The day passed, and Violet kept her own room. Leonard did not return that night, and no intelligence came from Yorke Towers.
Night came down calm and still, and when everybody had retired to their own rooms, Violet Arleigh stole from her chamber and went softly down-stairs to the drawing-room, where her mother lay sleeping the long, last sleep—never to open her eyes again upon the scenes of this world; never to speak a loving word to her child; to lie in the cold, dark grave alone with the worm and corruption. Violet’s heart bled at the thought. She opened the drawing-room door softly, and entering, crept to the side of the couch upon which the body lay.
The burial casket would not arrive until a late hour that night, so the body had been placed upon a low couch strewn with fragrant flowers. In an adjoining room, Doctor Danton and a grave-faced man, a stranger to Violet, sat alone. No one else kept watch, for it was a special request of the old physician. He had been Rosamond Arleigh’s medical adviser for years, and was like a brother to her. Violet crept to the side of the couch where the cold form was lying, and knelt down. She buried her face upon the pillow beside the cold cheek.
“Mamma, mamma!” wailed the girl in broken accents. “Come back to me, mamma, for oh, I can not live without you!”
It was the burden of her cry—a cry which has gone up from many an aching heart, but all in vain. The words died upon her lips in a stifled groan. Powers above! could it be true? Was her brain turning, or had she imagined it? Surely—surely she had seen the eyelids flutter, and something like a feeble respiration stirred the snowy linen on Rosamond Arleigh’s breast.
