Читать книгу: «Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily», страница 25
CHAPTER XXVIII
At that heart-thrilling cry of rapture, Vane Charteris and his companion turn around simultaneously.
Within a few feet of them they behold Reine, the long-lost bride, Reine, in the long, trailing sables of widowhood, yet with a face fairly transfigured by happiness, love and triumph.
The effect of her sudden appearance upon Maud is most startling.
The beautiful blonde, after one terrified glance at her strangely-restored cousin, shrieks out:
"A ghost, a ghost!" and flies in the wildest dismay toward the house.
Vane Charteris, half-bewildered, yet full of gladness, flies to clasp the beautiful phantom to his heart.
As his arms close around the palpitating figure, and he realizes that she is truly a creature of flesh and blood, a cry of thanksgiving escapes his lips, the tears of not unmanly emotion burst from the eyes and rain down on the dark head, nestled closely and lovingly against his breast.
He holds her close and tight, raining passionate kisses on the sweet, scarlet mouth, the blushing cheeks, the dark eye, tearful with this sudden happiness.
"You love me, Vane," she murmurs, softly and half-incredulously, "and yet I thought, I feared–"
"You feared what?" he asks, breaking in upon her shy pause.
"That you loved Maud best," she answers. "When I came up the path and saw you two together, I crept behind the tree and listened. If I had learned then that she was the desire of your heart, I should have crept away quietly to die of my sorrow, I should not have come between you and your love. You never should have known."
"But since you found me faithful to your memory, Reine, you will forgive all the past, will you not, my darling?" he pleads.
"Freely," she answers, with a smile that is all the brighter because it breaks through tears.
"And now," he says, drawing her down to a seat beside him on the bench beneath the tree, "now, dear, you will tell me all your story. Where have you been through all the long months in which I mourned you as dead?"
Resting in his arms she tells him the story of those long months of sorrow while she believed him dead, sobbing even now in the deep, sweet gladness that has come to her so suddenly, over the remembrance of her despair.
"I knew no better until I reached the village yonder, seeking Maud," she concludes. "There I learned the whole truth, that you lived, and were again the betrothed of my cousin. I came here to have one secret, farewell look at you, my husband, to go away and leave you to your love and your happiness. But I heard all you said, and I could not give you up to Maud's selfish claim after that."
"I thank God that I have found you again, my precious wife. We shall never be parted any more," he answers, earnestly.
"You have not told me how you were saved that night after you sprang from the life-boat in which I last saw you," the young wife says after a little, lifting to his her shy, yet radiant eyes.
"I floated on a plank a few hours, and was picked up by another life-boat, that is the whole story, simply told," he replies.
"And you did not forget me when you thought me dead—you loved me after I was gone from you?" she says, with a note of gladness in her deep, sweet voice.
"I loved you before I had lost you, darling. Did you not guess the truth, Reine?" he inquired, earnestly.
"No," she answers, with blended wonder and delight in her beautiful, glowing face.
"It is true, dear," he answers. "I loved you before I became aware of it myself. I was abominably jealous of the young lord who admired you in England. Yet at the time I was scarcely conscious of the meaning of my annoyance. My proposal to accompany you to America was an outgrowth of the longing to have you all to myself. And Reine, my darling wife, you remember that last night when the terrible trial of fire came to us, that night I had resolved that our strange alienation should exist no longer. I had determined to ask you, to pray you to come to your true resting-place upon my heart. But, my bride, my wife, there will be no more separation between us. You will share my home and my heart henceforth."
"You used not to like me," she says, filled with a glad surprise. "Why did you love me at last?"
The lover-husband looks down with a half-mischievous smile into the dark, questioning eyes.
"Why did I love you," he says, lightly, yet tenderly. "Shall I tell you, little one? Well, then, I believe it was because you loved me."
The sweet face, covered with blushes, droops from his gaze. He bends to kiss it, then continues, less teasingly:
"You remember how you used to gibe and tease and ridicule me, Reine, and how I retaliated in likewise? Well, when it came to me suddenly that you really loved me, it filled me with a certain, indefinable triumph and pride which grew and grew upon me until when you came to England the feeling blossomed into passion. Every time I looked at you I said to myself: 'She loves me, that beautiful, spirited girl loves me,' and there was such strange, thrilling sweetness in the thought that it seemed to compel my love in return. Now, Reine, my own adored one, I feel and know that my love for you is the one great passion of my life. That which I felt for Maud was a mere empty fancy, born of her lily-like beauty, and fading when I saw that her soul was not fair and angelic like her face. Henceforth, my wife, you will embody all the beauty of earth to me. You are 'queen, lily and rose' in one."
She has no answer for him, her tears are falling so fast—the tender tears of happiness, soft and cooling, like the rain of summer that falls like a blessing. Vane kisses them away with tender solicitude. They are the last that dim her eyes for many years. The sunshine of her future happiness shines too bright on her life for clouds and tears to dim its glory.
After awhile, Miss Langton, who has been silently reconnoitering from an upper window, comes out to them.
"You see I was not a ghost after all," Reine exclaims, advancing to meet her. "Will you not bid me welcome, Cousin Maud?"
"You are an imposter!" Miss Langton answers, angrily, recoiling from the white, extended hand. "I will never acknowledge you as a cousin of mine!"
"For shame, Maud!" Vane Charteris cries out, warmly, drawing his young wife to his side. "This is my wife, and you know it!"
"I have your own assurance that your wife was drowned before your eyes on the night of the burning of the Hesperus," Maud answers, icily.
"That was a mistake, Maud. I only dived beneath the water and came up again out of his range of vision," Reine explains, eagerly.
But Vane checks her gently.
"Do not trouble yourself to explain to her, my darling," he says. "It matters very little to us whether she recognizes you or not. We can be happy without her favor."
"Happy! oh, I dare say," Maud laughs, hysterically. "No doubt you, Mr. Charteris, will be exceedingly happy in a squalid cottage, with a sharp-tongued little vixen for your companion. Permit me to remind you of the o'er-true adage that 'When poverty comes in the door, love flies out of the window.'"
Something in the blue fire of the eyes he bends upon her makes her quail momentarily. He answers with chill brevity:
"Fortunately I may take my wife to a palace, not a cottage, so we need run no such risks as you apprehend, Miss Langton. To convince you, will you look at this?"
He draws a folded paper from his breast and holds it open before her startled eyes.
"You see," he says, icily, "it is the will with which Mr. Langton threatened you the night you jilted me. I am a lawyer, you remember. I drew this up for him at his own request. It is signed by competent and available witnesses. It is perfectly legal, and I can prove it so in any court in the land. It bequeathes Mr. Langton's whole fortune equally between my wife and myself, cutting you off without a shilling."
Maud stares at the terrible legal-looking document with frightened eyes and a corpse-like pallor.
"You—you are deceiving me," she says, faintly. "If it is really true, why have you kept the will so long and allowed me to usurp the property?"
"Through pity and kindness for you," he answers, with cold contempt. "As long as Reine was supposed dead, no one suffered from the fraud but myself, and I was content to be poor that you might have the wealth your soul coveted. But now my wife's claims must be considered above all others."
"I would sooner die than be poor!" Maud weeps, wildly.
And Reine, taking the legal document between her white fingers, turns her shining eyes on her husband.
"Could you be happy with me, Vane, if we had really to live in a cottage and work hard for each other?" she asks, earnestly.
"Yes, Reine, I am quite sure I could," he answers, as earnestly.
"Then may I do as I like with this paper?" she inquires.
"You must not defraud yourself, dear," he says, startled.
She laughs—her old, ringing, joyous laugh, with a new tone of tenderness in its musical cadence.
"I do not intend to," she answers. "You are everything to me, Vane; Maud may have all the rest."
With the words, the white paper flutters in her whiter fingers, there is a sound of tearing paper, and the old millionaire's will flutters in a heap of snowy fragments on the soft, green grass.
Then Reine laughs in pretty, childish exultation.
"You are the heiress still, Maud," she says, gayly. "I have only Vane. From first to last, he is all I have cared for or wanted."
There is a moment's stunned silence, then the ice around Maud's selfish, worldly heart melts in the sunshine of this warm and loving nature. She is conquered by this heavenly forgiveness and love.
"Reine, Reine," she cries, in hoarse, half-choking accents, "forgive me for my cruel and wicked denial of you. I know you now. No other woman but Reine Charteris could be so forgiving, so generous, so self-sacrificing."
"You have beggared yourself," Vane says to his wife, a little vexed.
"I have you," she answers, with a glance so radiant and loving that he cannot but forgive her folly.
So there is peace between the three—a peace that is never more broken, for Maud's heart has gone out to her cousin in a love never to be recalled. She even offers to divide the fortune so generously bestowed on her, but Vane and Reine decline the compromise. They have each other, and as each laughingly declares, "that is the world and all." They try "love in a cottage" for a year, and declare it a perfect success.
One of the world's great bards has written: "The secret of genius is dogged persistence." Vane Charteris, toiling early and late in his dusty office for his little wife, finds it true. The laurels he would never have won in ease and indolence, begin to circle his brow with a chaplet that is the pride of his young wife's heart.
Yet he goes home one evening with a sigh instead of a smile for the dark-eyed wife who meets him in the homely little parlor, made beautiful only by her beautiful presence.
"Reine, how lovely you are," he murmurs, bending to kiss the upturned lips. "Ah!" with a discontented sigh, "if I only had jewels and laces, satins and velvets to adorn that glorious beauty."
"What is it, dear?" she asks, trying to smooth the frown from his brow with her dainty forefinger.
"It is only this, dear: Invitations are pouring in upon us which we cannot accept because we are too poor to enter into that circle where we rightfully belong by reason of my talent and your beauty. Darling, how I hate to seclude you from the gaze of men because I am too poor to adorn you like the rest. What shall we do?"
"Do? Why, we must go into the world and shine with the rest," she answers, promptly and gayly.
"We are too poor," he replies, gloomily.
"We are worth a million of dollars," Mrs. Charteris answers, calmly, with her dainty head perched sidewise like a bird's.
"Reine!"
"Vane!"
"Whatever do you mean?" he inquires.
"I mean," contritely, "that Mrs. Odell divided her fortune between Dr. Franks and me, and I have kept the secret, like a naughty girl, just for the pleasure of having you work for me. You see, Vane, you were careless, indolent, ease-loving. You never would have made a name if you had not an object to work for. Now, dear, will you forgive me for keeping the secret a whole year?"
"I forgive you and thank you, too," he answers, earnestly. "You have made a man of me, little wife."
"Yes, indeed," she says, with a pretty, happy triumph "And now, Vane, we will share the fortune and all the pleasures it can give together. My dear friend left me all her jewels, too. Only think," gayly, "how I shall shine in them."
In society they meet Maud, and—actually—Doctor Franks, who has also returned to America. Putting aside his own regret, he rejoices heartily in Reine's happiness. Maud's blue eyes heal the wound that Reine's dark eyes made, and a year later the pair are happily married, the selfish woman having developed into a nobler creature under Reine's lovely example.
The current of Reine's life glides on smoothly and brightly under the blue and sunny sky of love. At times the old, gay, teasing nature bubbles up to the surface; at times Mr. Charteris calls her "vixen and scold," but never in spite or vexation, only in the gay and careless badinage in which it pleases them sometimes to indulge, as when under the green trees of Langton Villa, where the separate streams of their lives first met and mingled into one.
