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CHAPTER XXV

"Is the English mail in yet, Mrs. Odell? I do so want my English letter!"

Mrs. Odell turns a compassionate look on the pale, wistful face of the girl, into whose white cheeks all the life-giving breezes of Mentone have failed to restore the vanished rose.

Reine has been in Italy three weeks now. Thrice she has written to England to her Uncle Langton relating the story of her escape, and begging for news of himself and Vane.

No answer has come to these eager appeals, and she is half wild with anxiety.

"There is no letter yet, my dear," Mrs. Odell answers, sorrowfully, for she knows of Reine's strange story now. "I will tell you what to do now, Reine. Write to the postmaster there, and ask him for news of your uncle. Perhaps Mr. Langton has gone to another place."

"It is not probable," Reine answers, sighing, but she takes her friend's advice, and writes the letter of inquiry.

This time the answer comes all too soon. Her own three letters are returned unopened, with the information that Mr. Langton is long since dead! The physician encloses a certificate of death.

"He is dead, my dear, kind uncle is dead, Mrs. Odell!" Reine cries, lifting her dark eyes, heavy with grief, to the pale face of her friend.

"My poor darling, I feared as much," the lady answers, compassionately. "Now, darling, you belong wholly to me."

"You forget my husband," Reine answers, through her tears.

And Mrs. Odell, clasping tighter the paper she holds in her hand, speaks no word at first. How can she stab that tender heart yet deeper, already bleeding with the sad news of her uncle's death?

"You will be your uncle's heiress, dear," she says to her presently, thinking to check the flowing tide of grief.

The girl starts and looks up, bewildered.

"I said, you will be your uncle's heiress," Mrs. Odell repeats.

And Reine, growing a trifle paler, shakes her head

"Not if he has died so suddenly," she answers. "He intended to alter his will, but he had not done so when I left him. The old will left everything to my cousin, Maud Langton. It is more than probable that I am penniless."

"It does not seem to distress you, losing the fortune, I mean," the pale invalid remarks, with some surprise.

"It does not," the girl answers, calmly; "I never cared to have my uncle's money; I know that Vane will take care of me," she adds, with tender confidence.

And again Mrs. Odell's sad, white face grows sadder.

"Dear, you forget that you have no assurance that your husband is living," she exclaims abruptly.

Reine presses the small white hand that loosely wears the wedding-ring upon her poor aching heart, and lifts her dark, solemn eyes to the lady's face.

"My own heart tells me he is living," she says, with passionate energy. "He cannot be dead, my darling, just as I had almost won his heart. He lives to bless me yet with his love. Ah, if I only knew where to find him," she breathes, with despairing earnestness.

"My poor, poor child," Mrs. Odell says, with impulsive tenderness. "You must not be too sure. We can be sure of nothing in this world."

"You have heard—something!" Reine says, with vague terror, looking fixedly at the lady.

"Yes, dear. I have here some papers that I have been trying for sometime to get, the English and American papers with the accounts of the burning of the Hesperus and the list of those lost."

"And—my husband?" Reine says, looking at the lady with burning eyes.

"Is reported among the lost," Mrs. Odell replies, the papers trembling in her trembling hands.

A moment's silence, then Reine, trembling all over with emotion, rallies bravely from the shock.

"Am not I, too, reported among the lost?" she inquires.

"Yes, here it is, dear," and Mrs. Odell reads, under the heading of "Lost:" "'Vane Charteris and wife.'"

"So you see that does not really signify anything," Reine says, momentarily radiant. "Here I am safe and sound on terra firma. And Vane had so much better a chance than I had that he cannot be dead. Did I not see him safe on board the life-boat myself?"

"But, listen, dear," Mrs. Odell answers, sorrowfully.

She folds down the paper and reads, in a weak voice, a short paragraph:

"The Sea-Gull rescued one life-boat after it had drifted two days at the mercy of the wind and waves. It was filled with thirsty, famishing women and children. They reported that the boat had been on the point of sinking from too great a load, when the four men who were in it had leaped into the water, heroically resigning their only chance of life in favor of the weaker sex. There is no ground for hoping that either of these noble, manly hearts survived their self-sacrificing act, as none have been heard from since."

"Well?" Reine says, in a hushed voice, with a strange, prescient dread on her white face.

"Oh, my poor, bereaved girl, how can I tell you?" exclaims the frail invalid, the dew of womanly sympathy starting into her eyes.

And Reine, with a horrible weight pressing on her heart, gasps faintly:

"My husband–"

"His name appears in the list of the four who leaped into the water," Mrs. Odell replies in an awe-struck voice.

One cry, whose terrible despair pierces to the blue heavens, then blank silence. Reine has fallen forward, face downward, on the floor. For a brief space, time, love, sorrow, all the things of life, are blotted from her mind in a merciful semi-death.

The days go by—"time does not stop for tears"—and one day there comes out of the room where Reine, the girl, was carried in senseless, a beautiful, sad-eyed woman in sables. Sorrow has touched her with its transfiguring finger. The beautiful dark eyes droop always beneath the black-fringed lashes, the lips forget to smile, the white cheeks have lost their dimples and roses. For the passionate, loving heart, life is over and done—yet she lives on.

 
"Death does not always bring its balm
To every aching ill—
Life may outlast its dearest charm,
And heart-break does not kill."
 

After a time there comes to the crushed heart a thought crowded out at first by the intensity of woe—the remembrance of Maud. Maud, whose hopes, like her own, have hung trembling on the life of Vane Charteris.

"I must go home," she says, sadly, to her friend. "Maud will need me. God only knows what has happened to her in these long months."

And Mrs. Odell, who has daily grown weaker and frailer, looking up from the couch where she rests almost all day now, cries out, sorrowfully:

"Oh, Reine, you will not let this Maud come between us? She cannot love you as well as I do."

The girl answers her a little sadly.

"I do not think she loves me at all."

"Then, why go to her?" Mrs. Odell exclaims.

"Because it seems my duty," Reine answers calmly.

"Write to her," suggests the invalid eagerly.

"There is no surety in the mail. It is safer to go," Reine objects.

But that evening, faithful Dr. Franks, who has come across the ocean to watch over the invalid's health, requests a private interview with Mrs. Charteris.

"I hear that you wish to return to America?" he says, fixing his kind, smiling gray eyes on her quiet face, with its grave, sweet lips and drooping eyes.

"Yes," she answers.

"Is it imperative?" asks Dr. Franks.

"I think so," Reine replies, with some little wonder at his curiosity.

"You are the best judge," he answers, gravely. "Were it otherwise I would beg you not to go."

"Why?" Reine asks, surprised.

"For that poor lady's sake in yonder. Do you know that your going will shorten her days upon earth?"

"Dr. Franks, how can you speak so? You know I would not harm one hair of her dear, kind head," Reine says, with subdued indignation.

"I know," he says, gently for him, usually so brusque and careless. "But she will grieve for you so. She has grown to love you as a daughter. She has no one else to cling to—she is sensitive and loving, who has buried all she loves, and is so ill and lonely."

"What would you have me do?" Reine asks, irresolute and pained.

"Stay with her till the last, if that were possible," he answers. "It cannot be for long. Do you know that her days are numbered?"

She starts, and trembles.

"No, I thought that this genial climate was to restore her health," she exclaims.

"We hoped it, but all has failed," he answers, sadly. "She fails daily and rapidly. There is no power in medicine, no magic in these balmy airs to lengthen her life. She is surely fading from us."

The dark eyes brim over with sorrow.

"How long?" she asks, faintly.

"I cannot tell," he answers, sadly. "Her disease is too insidious for one to say with any certainty. It may be hours, days, weeks, months, for who can prognosticate surely the coming of that dread enemy that flatters only to destroy."

"Then I must not leave her," she answers, warmly, "and yet, I know that I ought to go back to America."

"Can you not write?" he inquires.

"I must do so," she answers, "and trust to God that my letter may go safely across the ocean. Mrs. Odell has been too kind and tender to me for me to desert her now. Believe me, I did not know that the end was so near. I thought, I hoped, she would get well, but now I will not leave her while she lives."

"God bless you!" Doctor Franks exclaims, with strong but repressed emotion. "Will you go in and tell her that? I left her in the bitterest distress over the thought of your going."

"Yes," Reine answers, but when he has left her she lingers a little to regain her composure before returning to the presence of the hapless lady whom death had marked for his own.

The sun is shining on the soft, blue water, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing.

Surely, this clime is fair and balmy enough to woo expiring life back to its tenement of clay. And yet, she, too, her last loved friend, thinks Reine, must go from her out into the darkness and dreariness of death.

Crushing back one hopeless sigh, Reine goes back to the shaded, quiet chamber, where the sick woman lies on her silken couch, with tearful eyes veiled by the thin, emaciated fingers on which the shining wealth of rings hang loosely.

She kneels down and presses her soft, loving lips on the thin, fever-flushed cheek.

"You are crying for me," she says, with an earnest penitence and regret. "I was cruel and ungrateful to talk of leaving you. Can you forgive me?"

"You are sorry; you will stay!" the sick woman murmurs, with piteous eagerness.

"Yes, as long as you live, I will never leave you nor forsake you," Reine murmurs, with all the solemnity of a vow, thinking sadly to herself that this is the only heart left on earth to which she is near and dear.

"God bless you, you shall be like my own child, Reine. And it may not be for long," Mrs. Odell sighs. "I am afraid—afraid, dear, that I shall never see my native land again."

"We will hope for the best," the girl answers, gently, "and if—if it should be as you fear, you will not forget that Heaven is as near to Italy as to our native land."

Heaven! to these two who have lost the treasure of life, that word is sweet and potent.

Drawn nearer together by the waves of sorrow that have gone over their heads, they cling together in the falling twilight, and talk softly of

 
"A land whose light is never dimmed with shade,
Whose fields are ever vernal;
Where nothing beautiful can ever fade,
But blooms for aye eternal."
 

The soft Italian winter comes and goes. To Reine's young and inexperienced eyes, as she ministers lovingly to her dying friend, it seems as if a change for the better is taking place. But Doctor Franks shakes his head.

"Impossible," he tells her, sadly. "It is a marvel she has lasted so long. It almost seems as if your love and tenderness have held her fluttering spirit back from the other world. The end is not far now."

But the spring days pass with such gentle touches on the wasting frame that the spirit lingers still.

At last, in the golden sunset of a golden June, Mrs. Odell's summons comes, gently, as if angels had borne it down the golden stairway of the sky, closing her tired eyelids on the fair land of Italy, with her thin hand nestled in Reine's warm clasp, she opens them again on the "stiller, fairer world of the dead."

CHAPTER XXVI

Standing alone and sadly by the marble cross that marks Mrs. Odell's quiet grave, Reine's thoughts turn homeward. The longing for native land inherent in humanity begins to stir in her heart.

 
"'Tis hame, hame, hame, hame I fain would be,
Hame, hame, hame, in my ain countree."
 

The slim, dark figure standing quietly with the pale face turned seaward, has a pathetic grace and beauty all its own.

So thinks one who approaches so quietly along the grass-grown paths of "the city of the dead," that she starts with a frightened little cry when he stands before her.

"Oh! Dr. Franks, how you startled me," she says, with one slim, white hand pressed against her heart to still its rapid beating.

"Did I? Pardon me," he answers, with an irrepressible glance of admiration. "I forgot you might be nervous in this quiet, lonely spot. Do I intrude upon you?"

"The place is free to all," she answers, somewhat confusedly.

"That would be no excuse for me if you did not desire my company," he answers, quickly and humbly, then in a lower tone: "Oh! Mrs. Charteris, you must pardon me that I have followed you here! I had something to say to you. Can you not guess?"

"Do not say it, please. I would rather not hear," she answers, with weary indifference in face and voice.

His handsome, eager face grows blank and dismayed.

"You will not listen?" he says. "Oh! Reine, think a minute. Is it best to refuse such love as mine—so ardent, strong, and devoted? You are so young and lovely, yet so lonely and unprotected. Let me throw the strong shield of my love around you—let me make you my wife!"

Reine waves him away with a quiver of pain on the beautiful face, that is even more lovely in its pallor and gravity than it used to be in its blushes and dimples.

"I shall never love—never marry—again," she answers, in a choking voice.

"Then you can give me no hope?" Doctor Franks asks sadly, and she shakes her head.

"You do not know how long I have loved you," he says, pleadingly. "Ever since I first saw you you have been the delight of my eyes and heart. But I have tried to be patient. I have respected your widowhood and your sorrow. But now, Reine, seeing you so utterly alone in the world, the time seemed come for me to speak. Are you sure—quite sure, dear, that you can never love me?"

The sound of the sea comes to them soft and sad; the wind sighs through the long grass above the quiet sleepers, whom the things of this world trouble no more. Tears rise into the dark eyes of the girl as she looks into the man's troubled face. It is no slight thing to a true woman to hold the great, throbbing pulse of a man's heart in the hollow of the hand.

She lifts to his the great, dewy, pain-filled eyes.

"I am so sorry," she falters; "but you must have seen how little I cared for you, for anyone, and that my heart was broken."

Before that grave and pathetic confession the man's passion is mute.

"And I have wounded you," he says, in self-condemnation. "Forgive me, Mrs. Charteris, I have heard of women who were faithful unto death. I did not know there were those who carried love beyond it."

She sighs wearily and rests her cheek against the cold marble cross.

"My heart is broken," she repeats sadly. "I shall never have any more room in my life for love and lovers."

"Nor friends?" he asks, pleadingly, and Reine impulsively holds out her hand.

"Yes, if you care to claim me," she answers, gently.

"Rather your friendship than any other woman's love," says the rejected lover, loyally.

"You must not feel like that, it is so very hopeless," the girl answers. "I am going home soon. You may never see me again. I hope that you may love and marry some happier woman."

And when he has gone away and left her to the loneliness of her own thought, she sinks down in the long, sweet grass, weeping long and bitterly.

Until now she has never quite realized the truth of her widowhood. It comes to her with a great pang of agony that Vane Charteris has no longer any place among men.

His place in her poor life is vacant forever.

"And I loved him so dearly," she sighs, lifting her desolate, tear-wet eyes to the fair, blue heavens. "I loved him, and if he had lived he would have loved me. My patient love must have won him in the end."

And again her thoughts turn homeward as if drawn by some irresistible power.

"I will return to my native land," she resolves. "I will seek out Maud, if indeed she has escaped from the terrible web that encompassed her. I am so lonely and sad perhaps she will be kinder to me than of old."

CHAPTER XXVII

A year has passed since the ill-fated Hesperus was burned in mid-ocean with such terrible loss of human life.

In the sultry heat of August, Vane Charteris has forsaken the breathless, dusty city for the coolness and verdure of that terrestrial paradise among the hills, Langton Villa.

He is the guest of Miss Langton, who queens it right royally here over the grand domain she had nearly lost by her folly of one year ago.

They walk up and down beneath the trees, Maud and her handsome lawyer, in the glow of the evening sunset, with the lovely sights and sounds of summer all around them.

The heiress, in a robe of palest blue, with creamy lace, looks her fairest. Mr. Charteris, always handsome, is none the less so for the shadow brooding darkly in the deep blue eyes, lending its touch of earnestness to the grave, pale face.

"How dull and distrait you are," she says at length, impatiently. "Let us sit down here beneath this tree, and I will try to charm this dull mood away."

But for once she finds her fascinations fail. Vane, always inclined to be taciturn, is more than usually so to-night, even to the verge of embarrassment.

She wonders why his eyes evade her own, why he makes no reply to some tender epithets that falls cooingly from the beautiful lips.

"I thought you loved me, Vane," she breaks out at last, with some indignation.

"Yes, I thought so too, for a little while, under the glamour of your beauty and my own loneliness, but when you were gone, I found that I was mistaken. I am here to tell you this. Can you forgive me, Maud?" he blunders out, with all the shame of a man who feels himself placed in an uncomfortable position.

"Mistaken!" she cries, transfixing him with the angry gleam of her blue eyes. "Why, only the last time we met you said that you loved me."

Vane, rather red and ashamed, still holds his ground bravely.

"I was mistaken, as I told you just now," he says. "I do not, I cannot love you."

"Cannot!" she repeats, a little blankly.

"I cannot," he answers. "I find in the light of my later experiences that I never really loved you, not even when I was about to make you my wife. I was under the spell of your beauty. I know now that my heart was untouched."

"What do you mean by later experience?" the beautiful woman asks, sneeringly.

"I mean that the love I feel now, when too late, for my lost wife, Reine, is the only love my heart can ever know," he answers, speaking low and reverentially, as if in the presence of the dead.

The cold blue eyes of the beautiful heiress kindle with pride and resentment.

"You expect me to believe this?" she cries, hotly. "Do I not know how you despised Reine Langton! How you called her vixen, spit-fire, scold! How you longed to be out of her presence and rid of her?"

"For all of which I would beg her pardon on my knees if she were living," he answers, still low and reverentially; "I did not understand her then. I was a simpleton, an indolent, fastidious fool. I know now that those bright, wild ways were but the ripple and effervescence on the water that ran deep, and calm, and sweet beneath. She was like a lovely rose that hid its sweetness behind 'little wilful thorns.' At heart she was true, and sweet, and womanly. Too late I learned that I loved her, and in honor to her memory I will make no other woman my wife."

The angry color rises into Miss Langton's fair cheek.

"You forget that you are pledged to me," she says, in a low, fierce whisper. "You forget that our marriage day is already set."

"I forget nothing," he returns, sadly. "Nothing except that I was blinded for a moment by your subtle charm, and offered you what was not mine to give, what belongs irrevocably to the dead—my whole heart. I came to ask you for my freedom, Maud."

"What if I refuse?" she asks, with a subtle flash in the blue eyes.

"Then God help me and forgive you," he answers, solemnly, "for we can never be happy together. There are two ghosts between us, Maud. The man who murdered himself because of your falsity, and the fair, sweet girl who gave her life to save yours. They would haunt us and reproach us with their slighted and forgotten love. They would come between us ever."

Her cheeks and lips are paling, her eyes stare before her, wild and frightened; she shivers, and puts up her white hand as if to ward off some threatening danger.

"I—am haunted already," she says, in a low and trembling voice. "Do you think I do not see him in my dreams, with menace in his staring eyes and reproaches on his lips? He was my dreaded companion in the lonely prison-cell. He stalks before me grimly in the grand saloons of wealth and pride, always with a look of terrible reproach and despair on his dead, white face. I am a haunted woman. It is for this I have sought to win back your heart. I would fain put your warm, living love and tenderness between me and the pursuing ghost of the man whom I betrayed to his death. I am afraid of the dark, the loneliness, the terror of my own thoughts. Do not put me away from you, Vane. My only hope is in you."

They gaze at each other silently a moment. The soft wind, odorous with the breath of honeysuckles, pinks and roses, sighing through the garden, whispers to them of a slight form bowed behind the tree, a white face convulsed with passionate emotion. But they neither hear nor heed its admonition. Maud speaks again, pleadingly:

"I cannot release you, Vane. I love you. Surely you can give me some little tenderness and love when once I am your wife? I will make you happy—I swear it."

"The only woman who could make me happy rests in her ocean grave," Vane answers, with deep solemnity and truth.

Miss Langton regards him in wonder.

"Yet once you scorned her," she says slowly. "How did she win you at last, Vane?"

He is silent a moment, as if the question has struck home to his own heart, awakening thought and memory to life. His lips grow strangely tender in their saddened curve.

"How can I tell?" he says slowly. "Perhaps it was the softened sweetness that hung about her after that night when our lives became one. Perhaps it was her proud, sweet patience under my unkindness. Perhaps, yes, after all! I believe it was the charm of her love that won me. Can you realize such a thing as this, Maud, that love should win love?"

"Yes," she answers, hopefully. "Did I not tell you just now that my love would win you and make you happy?"

He shakes his head impatiently

"That could never be, Maud. You and I are better apart. I can never forget Reine, my slighted girl-bride. She is ever in my thoughts. I think of her as of one living, not dead. I recall her rose-leaf lips, her dark, laughing eyes, the nameless charm that clung about her, and my very heart aches with the intensity of its yearning to find my loved and lost one again."

"Thank God!" exclaimed a low, rapturous, thrilling voice almost at his very side.