Wives and Widows; or The Broken Life Part 56

Before I could answer, Lottie had left the room; with a chuckle and a leap she cleared the staircase, and, finding young Bosworth in the square balcony, presented Miss Hyde's compliments, and desired him to walk up to the tower-chamber.

I was going down to perform the same ceremony, in a different way, when Lottie met me on the stairs. I stopped on the landing to let the young gentleman pa.s.s; Lottie followed, opened the door, closed it softly, and came back.

"What's the use of shuffling about in this way?" she said. "She wants him to go up, and he wants to go. When people want a good slide down hill, what's the use of putting jumpers in the way? I'm getting sick of your notions, Miss Hyde. Wouldn't give a copper for delicacy; and as for honor, see what it's done. Don't talk to me!"

With a sort of Jim-Crow step, Lottie whirled about on the landing, gave a leap down three stairs at a time, and went off somewhat in her former style.

I was glad to see a dash of the old spirit coming back to the strange creature; but a moment after I looked out and saw her crying like a child, behind one of the large garden vases. After all, there was no real cheerfulness about Lottie. Spasmodic flashes of her nature would break out, but at heart she mourned continually.

CHAPTER LXIII.

OLD-FAs.h.i.+ONED POLITENESS.

When I entered Jessie's room, the old lady was busy arranging some flowers, which they had brought, in a vase near the window. She had put on her gold spectacles, and was examining the tints so carefully, that there was no room for attention anywhere else.

Bosworth was sitting near Jessie, looking so pleased at being permitted to her presence, that I could not help a throb of sympathetic pleasure.

He had, I am sure, been holding Jessie's hand; for as I came in, she withdrew it with a hasty movement, and its delicate whiteness was flushed, as if warm lips had touched it. No wonder the young man was happy! Jessie Lee would never have permitted that bearded mouth to approach her hand unless a true heart had beaten quicker to the touch.

Lawrence had gained no favor like that in the time of his greatest power.

The old d.u.c.h.ess was looking through her spectacles just as I came in; but not exactly at the flowers, or that bland little smile would never have made her mouth look so young, or that demure blush have settled on her soft cheek. Dear old lady! All those years, while they taught her limbs the uses of a staff, had left her heart fresh and modest as a girl's. How transparent was the gentle artifice with which she beguiled me out of the room, to search for some purple heliotrope that might soften the tints of her bouquet!

As Jessie grew better, these visits were repeated. Young Bosworth seldom failed to come with his grandmother; and after a little the old lady would often stay behind, contenting herself with some message, or a present of fruit and flowers. Then no excuse became necessary, except that Jessie required a stronger arm than mine to support her first walks in the garden; and after that the young man seemed more at home in our house than he could have been in the fine old mansion behind the hill.

Spite of the painful circ.u.mstances that had left us so lonely, we were beginning to feel the strength of our lives slowly returning. True, there was an undercurrent of deep, deep trouble all the time sweeping through an existence that seemed so bright to others.

The cruel absence of Mr. Lee, his determined silence, always lay heavily upon us; but it was not as if we had deserved the stern displeasure which had driven him away; and if we mourned over this great sorrow, there was some relief in the oppression that Mrs. Dennison's departure had taken away.

Of this woman we heard nothing, and her name was seldom mentioned, even by Lottie. We all shrunk in terror from the reminiscences connected with her. Still our lives were more endurable than they had been for many a month; and but for the aching pain which sprung out of that scene in the library, we might have been tranquil,--sad with the great loss which had fallen upon the house, but hopeful for the future.

But with that gentle woman, lying in her last sleep down in the valley, and the power of our house gone from us, we could only wait and hope that G.o.d, in his infinite justice, would yet unfold the truth to Mr.

Lee, and give him back to his home.

Sometimes Jessie and I would talk over these matters when quite alone in her room; but the whole chain of events was too inexplicable and full of pain for frequent mention. Jessie hardly yet comprehended the enormity of the charge brought against her. What was in the letter which her dying mother had grasped so tightly to the last moment? Who had written it? Was the handwriting like hers--did I think? Her head had been so dizzy that she could not make out a line of it.

These were the questions she would now and then put to me. I told her what the anonymous letter to Mrs. Dennison contained, but I had no heart to enlighten her with regard to my conjectures about the other. Nor could I for one moment guess what its import might have been, except from Mr. Lee's words, and the terrible effect it had produced upon him.

Never for an instant did I doubt Jessie's innocence in the matter, whatever it might prove. She was truth itself.

Sometimes I wondered if Lottie had not written those fatal missives. The girl was bright and sharp as steel. She was not without education; and I remembered, in confirmation of these doubts, that of late I had often found her writing something which she endeavored to conceal. Had she not, in her practice, copied Jessie's handwriting, and taken this method of warning her mistress? Nothing was more natural. The girl might thus unconsciously have cast suspicion on her young lady.

That Lottie was capable of writing the letters, I had no doubt--not with malice, but from an ardent desire to drive the woman who had wounded us so deeply from the house. With her crude ideas, and intense devotion to us all, she might have settled on this method of ridding the house of its torment.

I questioned Lottie on this subject, so far as I could venture, without informing her of what had pa.s.sed in the library, of which she was entirely ignorant; but she declared that she knew nothing of the letter, which had been given to her mistress, till it was placed in her own hands by the man who brought our mails from the town. As for Mrs.

Dennison, she would as soon touch a copperhead as write a word to that she-Babylon.

All this might be true. At any rate, Lottie looked truthful when she said it; but in her sayings and doings, the girl was not altogether as clear as crystal, and, spite of her protestations, I had some doubt left.

No person except Jessie and myself, either in the house or neighborhood, knew the reason of Mr. Lee's sudden departure. It was understood that, broken down by the death of his wife, he had sought distraction from grief in travelling. So the secret, growing more and more bitter every day--for we received no letters--rested between us two. As the time wore on, we became miserably anxious.

Had Mr. Lee utterly abandoned his daughter? Would he never return to his home and prove how true and loving she had always been? His cruel anger had thrown her almost upon a bed of death, yet he could go from his home without a word of inquiry or comfort.

Jessie was a proud girl, as I have said more than once, and as young Lawrence had good reason to know; but all her haughty self-esteem gave way where her father was concerned. She never blamed him, nor ceased to pine for his presence. What it was that had separated them she could not understand; but that her father was unjust or wrong, never entered her mind for an instant.

As for me--but what right had I in the matter? The right of anxiety such as eats all happiness out of a human life--the hungry feeling of a beggar that dares not ask for food.

I think we should have gone insane--Jessie and I--if this terrible anxiety had been without its relief; but, as days and weeks pa.s.sed, bringing no letter, no message, we sunk gradually into a state of despair, not the less wearying that it was silent.

Thus six months crept by. The duties of life went on--the household routine met with no obstruction. It was wonderful how little change appeared around us. Yet the tower-chamber was empty, and _he_ was gone,--we, two lonely women, lived on, to all appearance, the same; but oh! how changed at heart!

CHAPTER LXIV.

NEWS FROM ABROAD.

We heard of Mr. Lee once or twice through the public journals, now travelling in the Holy Land, again in the heart of Russia, but no letters came. We wrote to him more than once, but directed at random, and our letters probably never reached him.

One day, when Lottie was in the room, I took up a New York journal, and read this paragraph from a Paris correspondent,--

"A wedding is expected to take place within the month, at the American Legation in Paris. Mr. Lee, a wealthy landholder of Pennsylvania, is to be married to Mrs. Dennison, a beautiful and fas.h.i.+onable widow, who is said to have been the intimate friend of his first wife."

I read this paragraph through. My face must have betrayed the deathly feeling that came over me, for Lottie came behind my chair, read a few words over my shoulder, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from my hand with a suddenness that tore it almost in two.

"What is it," inquired Jessie, started by this action--"any--anything about _him_?"

"About him? I should think so. Sin, iniquity, and pestilence. Read it, Miss Jessie, I can't; it seems as if a snake were crawling over it."

Jessie took the paper, read it, and fainted in her chair.

Lottie did not seem to regard the condition of her young mistress, but ran out of the room, clenching her hand fiercely, as if she longed for bitter contest with some one.

These paroxysms of feeling had been very unusual with her of late; for in the quiet of our mournful lives, she had been left a good deal to her loneliness in the tower, where she still kept guard over Mrs. Lee's chamber.

Sometimes she reverted to the past, and would ask anxiously if I knew where Babylon was spreading her plumes. But I had no means of informing her, being in profound ignorance of that lady's movements from the time she left our house.

This would satisfy Lottie; but I remarked that she had taken a sudden and deep interest in her geographical studies, for I seldom went to her room without finding an atlas open upon the table, and a gazetteer close by, which she seemed to have been diligently studying.

I had thought but little of these things at the time; but they came back to me with force on the very next day, when Lottie came to me in the garden, and inquired anxiously if Miss Jessie wasn't just breaking her heart over that paragraph in the newspaper.

I answered that Miss Lee was very sad and unhappy, certainly.

"I knew it--I was sure of it," cried the girl, with quick tears in her eyes. "It will kill her--she will pine away like her mother. You know she will, Miss Hyde."

"I'm afraid so, Lottie."