Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty Craig

by Mary Jane Holmes

“‘We don’t think quite the same,’ Agatha had said to her during a lucid interval a day or two before she died. ‘We are not the same religion. You Protestant, I Catholique; but you love Jesus, you ask him to forgive, and so do I; Him and Mary, too; and He will, and you will come to Heaven after poor Agatha some day. I sure you will, for there be now and then some Protestant there.’

“This was quite a concession for one so devout as Agatha, and Madame Verwest had smiled faintly when it was made, but she kissed the pallid lips and brow where death had already set its seal, and when at last all was over she placed a golden crucifix in the white hands folded so meekly over the heart which would never know pain again. She telegraphed to Haverleigh, who was dining with Eugenie when he received the message, and who read the telegram without a word of comment, and then, lest the jealous eyes watching him so closely should see it, he lighted a match, and applying it to the paper saw it burn to ashes. But he could not seem quite natural, and as soon as dinner was over he excused himself, and started directly for the station, leaving Eugenie to speculate upon the nature of the telegram which had so plainly affected his spirits, and taken him from her earlier than his wont. Alas, she little guessed the truth, or dreamed of the beautiful girl lying so cold and still in her coffin, and on whose white face even Haverleigh’s tears fell when he looked upon her dead, and remembered what she was when he first saw her, a lovely peasant-girl in Normandy, singing by her father’s door. They buried her quietly, and then Haverleigh returned to Paris and Eugenie, while over the lonely grave Madame Verwest vowed that no other maiden should ever come there as Agatha had come; and so, when she first heard of Anna, she determined upon something desperate, until told that Anna was a wife in very deed, and that no stain was on her name. Then, when she learned who she was, and whence she came, her heart went out to the desolate creature with a great throb of love, which strengthened every day, and was such as a real mother feels for a suffering, ill-used child. Many times, when listening to Anna’s talk of her New England home, she had been tempted to tell her who she was, but had refrained from doing so, hoping always that the day was not far distant when she could disclose everything, and be her real self again. That day had come at last, and with no fear of the dreadful man who had ruled her for so many years, she told her story, and waited the verdict of her wondering listeners.

“Anna was the first to speak. Motioning Madame Verwest to her bedside, she wound her arms around her neck, and said:

“‘I loved you as a mother at Chateau d’Or, and am so glad to find you are my mother truly, and the grandmother of little Arthur.’

“Neither were Mrs. Strong and Mary backward in their demonstrations of friendship and esteem for the woman who had suffered so much since the day, years and years before, when she had left her home in Millfield and returned no more. Could the inmates of the red house have blotted from their minds the memory of the poor lunatic who, not many miles away, was chafing and raging like a newly-caged animal, they would have been very happy these last summer days; and, to a certain degree, they were happy, though, in her low, nervous state Anna could never quite put from her mind the fear lest her dreaded husband should by some means escape from his confinement and come to do her harm. But the bolts and bars were very strong which held him, else he might perhaps have escaped, for he seemed endowed with superhuman strength, and clutched savagely at the iron gratings of his cell, shaking them at times as if they were but dried twigs in his hands.

“He was terrible in his insanity, and only his keeper and physician ever ventured near him. At them he sprang and snapped viciously, like a dog chained to a post, while he filled the room with the most horrid oaths, cursing Madame Verwest, who had dared to call him her child.

“‘He who was highly born, the son of a gentleman, the child of a servant, a nurse, a Yankee, and illegitimate at that; curse her! curse her! she lies! she lies! she played me false, and I hate her!’ he would scream, when his mother was the subject of his thoughts.

“Again, when it was Eugenie, he grew, if possible, more desperate than before, and would utter such oaths that even his keeper, hardened as he was by similar scenes, fled from the hearing of the blasphemous words.

“Of Anna and Agatha he never spoke until toward the last, when, as if he had worn his fierce nature out, he grew more quiet, and would sit for hours perfectly still, with his head bowed upon his hands, intently brooding over something in the past. Was he thinking of Agatha, and the cottage far away in Normandy, where he first saw her singing in the sunshine, with the sweet, shy look of innocence in her soft eyes, or did she come up before him as he last looked upon her, cold, white, and dead in her coffin, ruined by him, who had used every act in his power to lure her into the snare. It would seem that she came to him in both phases, for at times he would smile faintly and whisper, very soft and low:

“‘Ma petite, ma cherie. Venez avec moi a Paris. Je vous aime bien.’