Infelice Part 86

Cuthbert grasped his father's hand, and murmured:

"Don't you know the college? That is Minnie yonder!"

"Minnie? My son, what ails you? Go home, you are ill."

"I tell you, that is Minnie Merle, so surely as there is a G.o.d above us. Mrs. Orme--is Minnie--my Minnie! My wife! She has dramatized her own life!"

"Impossible, Cuthbert! You are delirious--insane. You are----"

"That woman yonder is my wife! Now I understand why such strange sweet memories thrilled me when I saw her first in 'Amy Robsart.' The golden hair disguised her. Oh, father!"

The blank dismay in General Laurance's countenance was succeeded by an expression of dread, and as he looked from his son's blanched convulsed face to that of the actress under the arching elms of the campus, the horrible truth flashed upon him like a lurid glimpse of Hades. He struck his hand against his forehead, and his grizzled head sank on his bosom. All that had formerly perplexed him was hideously apparent, startlingly clear; and he saw the abyss to which she had lured him, and understood the motives that had prompted her.

After some moments he pushed his seat back beyond the range of observation from the audience, and beckoned his son to follow his example, but Cuthbert stood leaning upon the back of his chair, with eyes riveted on the play.

The courts.h.i.+p, the clandestine meetings, the interview in which Peleg intruded upon the lovers, the revelation to the grandmother, were accurately delineated, and in each scene the girl grew taller, by some arrangement of the skirts, which were at first very short, while she appeared in a sitting posture.

When the secret marriage was decided upon, and the party left the cottage by night, Cuthbert turned, rested one hand on his father's shoulder, and as the scene changed to the quiet parsonage, he pressed heavily, and muttered:

"Even the very dress that she wore that day! And--there is the black agate! On her hand--where I put it! Don't you know it? How she turns it!"

In the tableau of the marriage ceremony she had taken her position with reference to the locality of the box, and as near it as possible, and in the glare of the footlights the ring was clearly revealed.

Lifting his lorgnette, General Laurance inspected the white hand he had once kissed so rapturously, and by the aid of the lenses he recognized the costly ring, the valued heirloom, for the recovery of which he had offered five hundred dollars. Had he still cherished a shadowy hope that Cuthbert was suffering from some fearful delusion, the sight of that singular and fatal ring utterly overthrew the last lingering vestige of doubt. Stunned, miserable, dimly foreboding some overwhelming _denouement_, he sat in stony stillness, knowing that this was but the prelude to some dire catastrophe.

When the telegram, arrived and the young husband took his bride in his arms, the girlish face was lifted, and the pa.s.sionate gleam of the dilating brown eyes sent a strange thrill to the hearts of both father and son. Vowing to return very soon and claim her, the husband tore himself away, and as he vanished through a side door near the box, Minnie followed, stretched out her arms, and looking up full at its two tenants she breathed her wild pa.s.sionate prayer which rang with indescribable pathos through that vast building:

"My husband! My husband--do not forsake me!"

Cuthbert put his hand over his eyes, and but for the voices on the stage his shuddering groan would have been heard outside the box. In the scene where Peleg's advances were indignantly repulsed, and his threats to unleash the bloodhounds of slander, hunting her to infamy, were fully developed, Cuthbert seemed to rouse himself from his stupor and a different expression crossed his features.

Skilfully the part played by General Laurance in bribing Peleg, and returning the letters of the wretched wife, the disgraceful threats, the offers to buy up and cancel her conjugal claims, were all presented.

When the grandmother departed, and the child-wife secretly made her way to New York, seeking service that would secure her bread, and still hopeful of her husband's return, Cuthbert grasped his father's arm and hissed in his ear:

"You deceived me! You told me she went with that villain to California to hide her disgrace!"

Cowed and powerless, the old man sat, recognizing the faithful portraiture of his own dark schemes in those early days of the trouble, and growing numb with a vague prophetic dread that the foundations of the world were crumbling away.

His son suddenly drew his chair a little forward and sat down, his elbow on his knee, his head on his hand; his gaze fixed on the woman who had contrived to reproduce even the fall that caused her removal to the hospital.

The ensuing scene represented the young mother, sitting on a cot in the hospital, with a babe lying across her knees, and the storm of horror, hate, and defiance with which she spurned Peleg from her, calling on heaven to defend her and her baby, and denouncing the treachery of General Laurance who had bribed Peterson to insult and defame her.

As he was dragged from the apartment, vowing that neither she nor her child should be permitted to enjoy the name to which they were ent.i.tled, the feeble woman, shorn of her brown locks, and wearing a close cap, lifted her infant, and with streaming eyes implored heaven to defend it and its hapless mother from cruel persecution.

In the wonderful power with which she proclaimed her deathless loyalty to the husband of her love, and her conviction that G.o.d would interpose to s.h.i.+eld his helpless child, the audience recognized the fervour and pathos of the rendition, and the applause that greeted her, as she bowed sobbing over her baby, told how the hearts of her hearers thrilled.

The curtain fell, and Cuthbert's eyes, gleaming like steel, turned to his father's countenance.

"Is that true? Dare you deny it?"

The old man only stared blankly at the carpet on the floor, and his son's fingers closed like a vice around his arm.

"You have practised an infernal imposture upon me! You told me she followed him, and that the child was his."

"He said so."

General Laurance's voice was husky, and a grey hue had settled upon his features.

"You paid him to proclaim the base falsehood! You whom I trusted so fully. Father, where is my child?"

No answer; and the curtain rose on the fair young mother, came forward with her own golden hair in full splendour.

Involuntarily the audience testified their recognition of the beautiful actress who now appeared for the first time, looking as when she made her _debut_ long ago in Paris. She was at the asylum, with a young child clinging to her finger, tottering at her side, and as she guided its steps, and hushed it in her arms, many mothers among the spectators felt the tears rush to their eyes.

Walking with the infant cradled on her bosom, she pa.s.sed twice across the stage, then paused beneath the box, and murmured:

"Papa's baby--Papa's own precious baby!" and her splendid eyes humid with tears looked full, straight into those of her husband.

It was the first time they had met during the evening, and something she saw in that quivering face made her heart ache with the old numbing agony. Cuthbert could scarcely restrain himself from leaping down upon the stage and clasping her in his arms; but she moved away, and the sorely smitten husband bowed his face in his hand, luckily s.h.i.+elded from public view by the position in which he sat.

The dinner scene ensued, and the abrupt announcement of the second marriage. The anguish and despair of the repudiated wife were portrayed with a vividness, a marvellous eloquence and pa.s.sionate fervour that surpa.s.sed all former exhibitions of her genius, and the people rose, and applauded, as audiences sometimes do, when the magnetic wave rolls from the heart and brain on the stage to those of the men and women who watch and listen completely _en rapport_.

The life of the actress began, the struggle to provide for her child, the constant care to elude discovery, the application for legal advice, the statement of her helplessness, the attempt to secure the license; all were represented, and at last the meeting with her husband in the theatre.

Gradually the pathos melted away, she was the stern relentless outraged wife, intent only upon revenge. She spared not even the interview in which the faithless husband sought her presence; and as Cuthbert watched her, repeating the sentences that had so galled his pride, he asked himself how he had failed to recognize his own wife?

In the meeting with the child of the second marriage, her wild exultation, her impa.s.sioned invocation of Nemesis, was one of the most effective pa.s.sages in the drama; and it caused a s.h.i.+ver to creep like a serpent over the body of the father, who pitied so tenderly the afflicted Maud.

As the scheme of saying her own daughter, by sacrificing herself in a nominal marriage with the man whom she hated and loathed so intensely, developed itself, a perceptible chill fell upon the audience; the unnaturalness of the crime a.s.serted itself.

While she rendered almost literally the interviews at Pozzuoli and at Naples, Cuthbert glanced at his father, and saw a purplish flush steal from neck to forehead, but the old man's eyes never quitted the floor. He seemed incapable of moving, Gorgonized by the beautiful Medusa whose invectives against him were scathing, terrible.

As the play approached its close and the preparation for the marriage, even the details of the settlement were narrated, suspense reached its acme. Then came the letters of reprieve, the deliverance from the bondage of Peterson's vindictive malice, the power of establis.h.i.+ng her claim; and when she wept her thanksgiving for salvation, many wept in sympathy; while Regina, borne away in breathless admiration of her mother's wonderful genius, sobbed unrestrainedly.

When the letters of Peterson and of the lawyer were read, mapping the line of prosecution for the recovery of the wife's rights, the father slowly raised his eyes, and, looking drearily at his son, muttered:

"It is all over with us, Cuthbert. She has won; we are ruined. Let us go home."

He attempted to rise, but with a glare of mingled wrath and scorn his son held him back.

The last scene was reached; the triumphant vindication of wife and child, the condemnation of the two who had conspired to defraud them, the foreclosure of the mortgages, the penury of the proud aristocrats, and the disgrace that overwhelmed them.

Finally the second wife and afflicted child came to crave leniency, and the husband and the father pleaded for pardon; but with a malediction upon the house that caused her wretchedness, the broken-hearted woman retreated to the palatial home she had at last secured, and under its upas shadow died in the arms of her daughter.

Her play contained many pa.s.sages which afforded her scope for the manifestation of her extraordinary power, and at its close the people would not depart until she had appeared in acknowledgment of their plaudits.

Brilliantly beautiful she looked, with the glittering light of triumph in her large mesmeric eyes, a rich glow mantling her cheeks, and rouging her lips; while in heavy folds the black velvet robe swept around her queenly figure. How stately, elegant, unapproachable she seemed to the man who leaned forward, gazing with all his heart in his eyes upon the wife of his youth, the only woman he had ever really loved, now his most implacable foe!