Signing the Contract and What it Cost

Mary’s entrance with a light, and the announcement that tea was ready, prevented a reply to the remark with which the Madame supplemented her promise, and the subject was not broached again during the hour or two that they remained together after the conclusion of the meal.

But having withdrawn to the privacy of her own apartments, Ethel sat long over the fire in her boudoir lost in thought, vainly trying to conjecture what cruelty her aunt could have been guilty of toward the sister she seemed to remember with such tender affection.

“Hate her!” she exclaimed half aloud, thinking of the Madame’s sadly-spoken words. “No, no, I could not do that, whatever she has done! I should be an ingrate if I could,” she added, sending a sweeping glance about the elegantly-appointed room, and as she did so catching the reflection in an opposite mirror of a slight, graceful, girlish figure richly and tastefully attired, reclining at ease on the most comfortable of softly-cushioned chairs in front of a glowing, beautiful fire.

Without the storm was raging with increased violence; it seemed to have culminated in a furious tempest.

Absorbed in her own musings, Ethel had hardly been conscious of it before; but now the howling of the wind, the dashing of the waves on the shore, and the rattling of the sleet against the windows made her shiver and sigh as she thought of the homeless on land and the sailors on the water alike exposed to this wild war of the elements.

Ah, were Espy and her dear unknown mother among the number? What a throb of fear and pain came with that thought!

But she put it resolutely aside. She would hope for the best, and – there was One who knew where each of these loved ones was, and who was able to take care of them. To His kind keeping she would commit both them and herself, and go to her rest with the peaceful, confiding trust of a little child.

“Ah, little one, how did you rest?” was Madame Le Conte’s morning salutation.

“Delightfully, auntie; dropped asleep the instant my head touched the pillow, and knew no more till I woke to find the sun shining in at the windows. And you? how did you rest?”

“Very little,” the Madame sighed, shaking her head sadly; “my asthma was worse than usual, and would scarcely allow me to lie down.”

“I am so sorry! But you are better?”

“Yes; the attack has passed.”

The tempest was over, the day still, calm, and bright, but intensely cold, and the streets were so blocked up by a heavy fall of snow that going out was not to be thought of; nor were they likely to be troubled with callers.

“We shall have the day to ourselves,” the Madame remarked as they left the breakfast-table, “and if you will invite me into your boudoir, Pansy, we will pass the morning there for variety.”

“I shall be delighted to entertain and wait upon you, Aunt Nannette,” Ethel answered, with a smile.

She was looking very lovely in a pretty morning dress of crimson cashmere, edged at neck and sleeves with ruches of soft, rich lace.

Having seen her aunt comfortably established in an easy chair, Ethel took possession of a low rocker near her side, and employing her busy fingers with some fancy work – a shawl of soft white zephyr which she was crocheting for Hetty – waited with outward composure, but inward impatience, for the fulfilment of yesterday’s promise.

The Madame sat with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes gazing into vacancy, her breathing somewhat labored, her thoughts evidently far away. To Ethel’s eager expectance it seemed a long time that she sat thus, but at length she began, in a low, even tone, much as if she were reading aloud, and with eyes still looking straight before her:

“I was eight years older than my sister Ethel, my little Pansy. There had been others, but they all died in infancy, and we two were the only ones left when our parents were taken. That was when Ethel was fourteen and I twenty-two.

“I tried to be a mother to her. I was very fond of her, yet now I can see that I always cared more for my own happiness than for hers – always wanted to be first, and to rule her.

“We lived in Jefferson, Indiana, a mere village, to which the family had removed shortly before the death of our father; he and mother went very near together, both dying of congestive chills. We were left with a little home of our own and a modest competence, and we continued to keep house, a middle-aged woman who had been in the family from the time of my birth matronizing us and taking the oversight of domestic affairs.”

Madame Le Conte paused for breath, and Ethel said softly, “Aunt, you have never told me the family name; it seems odd enough that I should never have heard it – my own mother’s maiden name.”

“Gramont – Nannette and Ethel Gramont we were called, and I have always thought them very pretty names.”

Again the Madame paused for a moment. Her voice trembled slightly as she resumed:

“It was something more than a year after we were left alone in the world that Rolfe Heywood came to Jefferson and opened a dry-goods store. He was a fine-looking, gentlemanly fellow, some twenty three or four years old, I should think, well educated, of agreeable manners, and rather fond of ladies’ society.

“I was pleased with him, and the liking seemed to be mutual. He became a frequent visitor at our house, and soon the girls began to tease me about him. He was said to be paying attention to me, and indeed I think he was at first, and I gave him some little encouragement – not much, for I had several suitors, and was naturally inclined to coquetry; but I liked Rolfe Heywood best of all. I think partly because I was less sure of him than of the others, and that piqued my vanity and pride.

“He did not offer himself, but kept on coming to the house and making himself very much at home there. And so things went on for nearly two years, when all at once I discovered that it was Ethel he admired and wanted. She was seventeen now, and a sweeter, prettier creature you never saw. Ah, my darling little Pansy!”

Tears rolled down the Madame’s cheeks. She hastily wiped them away.

“How did you make the discovery, aunt?” her niece asked in low but eager tones.

“By a look I saw him give her, and which she did not see. It made me furious at him, and I vowed he should never have her. I thought she did not care for him. I kept her out of his way as much as I could, and she made no resistance. But the more obstacles I threw in his way the more eager after her he became.

“At length we learned that he had sold out his business and was going to California, and now my eyes were opened to the fact that Pansy did care for him, she turned so white when she heard the news.

“But I said to myself that it was only a passing fancy, and she would soon forget him. I watched her constantly, and contrived never to allow them to be alone together.

“But one day – the day he was to leave – he called, and found her alone in the parlor. He had not been there ten minutes, though, before I hurried in, pretending to think his call was meant as much for me as for her, and was just in time to prevent a declaration of love which I saw he was beginning.

“It was his last opportunity, and he went away without telling her his feelings or learning hers. He held her hand lingeringly in parting, but I gave him no chance to speak.

“Poor thing! she drooped sadly when he was gone, but I took no notice, saying to myself, ‘She’ll get over it in time.’

“I thought he would write, and he did. I took his letter from the office, deliberately broke the seal, read it (’twas full of passionate love, and would have been a cordial to the poor darling’s fainting heart), and answered with a cold rejection of his suit, imitating my sister’s hand so perfectly that even she could hardly have recognized it as a counterfeit, and signing her name.

“Monsieur Le Conte was paying me attention at this time, having come to the place some months before. He was a handsome, middle-aged man, of courtly manners and considerable wealth. I found his company agreeable, and before we had been acquainted a year we were married.

“He had an intimate friend, a distant relative, Adrian Farnese, who came to see us shortly after our marriage, and who took a violent fancy to Ethel from the first moment he set eyes on her.

“He courted her assiduously, but she turned coldly from him and rejected his addresses again and again, much to my husband’s annoyance and mine, for we both liked Adrian and desired the match.

“I undertook to reason with Ethel, saying everything I could think of in Adrian’s favor. She heard me in sad silence, and when at last I insisted upon her giving me a reason for her persistent rejection, she burst into tears, crying out, ‘Oh, how can I marry him when my heart is another’s?’

“Then I twitted her with giving her heart unasked, said I knew it was to Rolfe Heywood she had lost it, but he didn’t care for her now, if he ever had; that was plain enough from his silence. No doubt he had found a new sweetheart by this time – perhaps was already married.

“My poor little Pansy never answered back a word, but cried as if her heart would break.”

The Madame’s voice broke. She stopped, buried her face in her handkerchief, and sobbed aloud. Tears were stealing down the cheeks of her listener also, and for a moment neither spoke.

Then the Madame resumed her narrative:

“As I said before, Ethel and I were very different – she so gentle and yielding, so ready to think others wiser than herself; I proud and wilful, always made more determined by opposition. I resolved that she should marry Adrian Farnese.”

“Oh, how could you be so cruel?” cried her listener.

“Ah, try not to hate me! I have suffered terribly for my fault, as you shall learn presently,” said the Madame in piteous tones. “But how shall I tell of all my wicked unkindness to that poor child! I wrote a notice of the marriage of Rolfe Heywood, giving a fictitious name to the bride, and sent it to a paper published in New York. I was a subscriber, and when the number with the notice came I showed it to Ethel, saying, ‘You see I was right. Rolfe Heywood cared nothing for you, and is already united to another.’”

“She turned deathly white, seemed about to faint, but recovering herself a little, hastily left the room.

“‘Now,’ I thought, ‘she will presently give up and marry Adrian.’ But she would not hear of it, and avoided him whenever she could without absolute rudeness.

“‘No, she’ll never give up while she knows Rolfe Heywood is alive,’ I said to my husband one day.

“‘Then we must make her believe him dead,’ he answered.

“I was afraid to publish a false report of his death, but we got one printed on a slip of paper that had the appearance of having been cut from a newspaper, and I gave it to my sister. She swooned, and looked so deathlike, seemed so utterly crushed for days and weeks afterward, that I could scarcely refrain from telling her the whole truth. But the fear of my husband’s displeasure, and the thought that if I did Rolfe Heywood would get her after all, restrained me. So I kept my secret, and tried to make all other amends in my power by being very kind and sympathizing.

“Ah, her gratitude for it was quite touching – almost harder to withstand than her grief!

“She seemed gradually to recover from the shock, but was never again the light-hearted, merry creature she had been before Rolfe Heywood went away.”

“And she learned at last to love – ?” Ethel broke off without pronouncing the name.

“She finally gave up to us and married him,” sighed the Madame. “How much she loved him, if at all, I do not know. I tried to believe her not unhappy, and she made no complaint.

“However, they had not been married many months when a fierce quarrel arose between our husbands. It was about some money matters. I never fully understood it, but I then learned for the first time that it was more Pansy’s little fortune Adrian wanted than herself, and that Monsieur Le Conte’s influence was used in his favor because they had agreed that in that way he should cancel a debt owed to Adrian. Had I known this I would never have let them use me as their tool.”

“And he was my father!” murmured Ethel in a pained tone.

“Yes, child, and you might justly hate me for giving you such a one!” exclaimed the Madame almost passionately. “I’m afraid he was a bad man. I fear he was unkind to my sister; but she was loyal to him, poor thing.

“When the quarrel arose between him and Monsieur Le Conte I sided with my husband, and went to Ethel with his version of the affair; but she would not listen to me.

“‘I am his wife now,’ she said; ‘I will hear nothing against him. And you, Nannette, who brought about the match, should be the last to tempt me to do so.’

“I was very angry, and heaped bitter reproaches upon her,” pursued the Madame, almost overcome by emotion. “She heard them in grieved silence, which somehow only exasperated me the more, and I said still harder and more cruel words. And so I left her.”

For some minutes the room was filled with the sound of the Madame’s sobs, and Ethel wept with her.

“It was our last interview,” she began again in a broken voice. “A few days later her husband spirited her away no one knew whither, and from that day to this I have never heard a word from her or about her, except what I have learned through you – her child.

“I have now told you of my crime; I have yet to tell of its punishment. In spite of all my unkindness, I loved my sister; how dearly I never guessed till she was gone. I was nearly frantic at her loss, and at the thought of my last words to her.

“The world went prosperously with us so far as money was concerned. My husband invested my little fortune and his own partly in an oil-well, partly in a gold-mine in California, and we were wonderfully successful in both. But we were not happy. Remorse and anxiety about Pansy made me wretched and robbed me of my vivacity and my bloom. I grew dull and spiritless, and my husband began to neglect me and to seek the society of other women, whom, as he said, he found more entertaining.

“I sought forgetfulness in dress and all sorts of dissipation. I could not bear to be alone; but sometimes Monsieur Le Conte’s business would call him away for days and weeks together. I had no child, and I could not always go out or contrive to have company in the house; and so at times I would try to drown my misery in the wine-cup.

“I did not become a drunkard, but two or three times I drank to intoxication.”

She paused, and, with a downward glance at her mutilated limb, sighed heavily.

“One wild, stormy night I was quite alone,” she continued. “The wind howled round the house like a legion of devils, as it seemed to me, and the air was full of eerie sounds. I had been more than usually depressed all day, and grew worse and worse as the hours crept slowly by. My husband I knew would not be home before morning; one servant was away, and the other had gone to bed in a distant part of the house.

“I wasn’t exactly afraid, but I kept thinking of Ethel, and how I had ill-used her, and that I should probably never see her again, till I was half crazed with remorse. At last I could not endure it any longer. I kept wine in a closet in my dressing-room; I went to it, poured out and drank one glass after another till I was quite stupefied.

“The last thing I remember is dropping into a chair beside the fire – a low-down grate filled with glowing coals; the next I knew I awoke in my bed, roused to consciousness by a sharp pain in my right arm.

“My husband, the servant-woman – who was crying bitterly – and two or three doctors were in the room. They were talking in low tones, and kept glancing at me.

“‘What is the matter?’ I asked; ‘what have you been doing to my hand that it pains me so?’ It was the surgeon nearest me who answered.

“‘Madame,’ he said in a compassionate tone, ‘it was so badly burned that we were obliged to take it off.’

“‘Off! burned!’ I shrieked, wild with terror and despair.

“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘your husband found you lying insensible on the floor, with your right hand in the grate and burnt almost to a cinder.’”

Ethel sprang up, threw her arms about the Madame’s neck, and sobbed aloud.

“My poor, poor aunt!” she said when she could speak. “What a dreadful, dreadful thing it was! My heart aches for you! oh, how could you bear it?”

Madame Le Conte returned the caress, then Ethel resumed her seat.

“I could not escape it!” she sighed, “and I felt that it was a just punishment that deprived me of the hand I had used to forge the notices which robbed my sister of her lover.

“Remorse has tortured me horribly many a time since, but I never have resorted to the intoxicating cup to escape its stings.

“I gave up society from the time of my accident. I could not bear the thought of exposing myself to the curious gaze and questioning of common acquaintances or of strangers.

“My husband pitied me very much, and never once said to me, ‘It is your own fault,’ as well he might. Finding how I shrank from meeting any one I knew, he proposed removing to this city, where we were entirely unknown, and I was glad to come. It is now ten years since he died, leaving me everything he possessed.”