The Senator's Bride

CHAPTER XXIX.

LAST WORDS

"Grace, love, will you go to Willard? He has something to say to you."

The southern sun hung low in the western heavens; the day was excessively warm for April, and a little cloud in the sky, "no bigger than a man's hand," foreboded a shower. Grace turned from the window where she stood watching the shifting white clouds in the blue sky, and went back to the room from which she had stolen to hide the bitter pain at her heart.

A very solemn silence hung about the white-draped chamber. The window shutters were open to admit the balmy air, and a slanting ray of sunshine had stolen in and brightened the top of the sick man's pillow, touching into golden radiance the dark locks pushed away from his brow. The wan and wasted face wore a beautiful serenity that was not of earth. "God's finger" had "touched him" very gently, but palpably.

Grace bent over him, taking his cold white hand in hers with voiceless emotion. She had grown so fond of him in a warm, sisterly fashion, reverenced his brave, pure, upright spirit so highly that it seemed to her a close and kindred soul was winging its way from her side to the bright beyond, leaving her more alone and desolate than ever.

"It is almost over," he said, looking up at her with the reflex of a smile in the beautiful dark-gray orbs that kept their luminous radiance to the last.

She answers not. How can she break with the sounds of human grief the brooding peace that shines on the pathway of this departing spirit? Her voice, the sweetest one he will ever hear on this side of eternity, rises low but firm in one of the old-fashioned hymns the old-fashioned captain loved:

"Amen," he whispers, lowly. "His rod and His staff they comfort me."

Silence falls for a brief space. He is gathering his fainting strength for the words that come slowly from his lips:

"I have been the bearer to you of unwelcome tidings so often, Mrs. Winans, that it absolutely pains me now to recall it."

"Do not recall it," she rejoins, earnestly. "Why should you? The power overruling such things is higher than we are. You have been a comforter to me more often than you know of—take only that thought with you."

He smiles as she re-arranges his pillows, lifting his head so that his faint breath comes more evenly. The stray end of one of her long silken curls falls over his breast an instant, and he touches it with a caressing hand.

"It is given to me," he answers, "to bear you good tidings before I go. Your memories of me—will not thus be all unpleasant ones."

The eager remonstrance forming itself on her lip dies unspoken as he goes on:

"You have borne sorrow with a very brave heart, Gracie—have been, as you once told me, and as I really think, fireproof! Can you bear joy as well?"

She cannot possibly speak. Something rising in her throat literally chokes her breath.

"Little sister, be strong. Lulu has written—well, that your husband—that Winans is in London, alive and well—and is coming home to you—in May."

There is utter silence. She is quiet always, in pain or pleasure. He sees only her small hands clasping each other close, and her violet eyes—those unerring indices of her feelings—growing dusk black under the lashes. But something in the curve of her firm lip does not satisfy him. He feebly lifts his hand to touch hers.

"You will not be hard and unforgiving? It is not like Grace Winans to be that. Promise me that you will forgive him freely! If he acted wrongly he has suffered for it. It is so easy to go wrong—to err is human, you know."

No wavering in that sternly curved red lip shows acquiescence. His voice rises higher, with a throb of pain in it:

"'If ye forgive not men their trespasses how shall my Father which is in heaven forgive you?' Gracie, say 'I promise.'"

All the sudden hot anger against the husband she had loved—the husband who had wronged her, and left desolate the sweetest years of her life—fades out of her heart. The words falter as hollowly from her lips as from his:

"I promise."

"Thanks. May God bless you—and—and make all your future years happy ones. Mother—call mother, please."

She puts a little cordial to the panting lips and tearfully obeys.

On her knees at the other side of the bed the anguished mother listens to the tender message to the absent sister, the soft words of comfort, the low farewell. With the last kiss of her son on her lips she buries her face speechlessly in his pillow.

"Gracie, will you raise me a little?"

She bends with one arm under his shoulders, the other across his breast, and lifts him so that his head rests comfortably against her shoulder—an easy task, fragile and wearied as she is, for he has wasted in the grasp of that destroying fever until he is scarcely more than a wan shadow of himself.

Bending to look into his face, she asks, softly:

"Willard, are you easy now?"

"Quite easy," he answers, in a strangely contented tone, with such a tender caress in it that Grace starts; and as he falters "good-by," she bends with a sudden impulse and just touches her lips to his in a pure thrill of sisterly affection and grief; his glance lifts to hers an instant and remains fixed; a quivering sigh, a scarcely perceptible shudder, and Willard Clendenon's spirit has flown out of the earthly heaven of her arms to the higher heaven of his soul.

Later, as Grace lay weeping in her own room, the bereaved mother came gliding in. The soft flame of a wax candle lent a faint, pure light to the room, and showed her gentle face, free from tears, but seamed with a touching resignation beautiful in the extreme. What a mournful pathos lies in the grief of an old face! It is more eloquent than tears, even as silence can be more eloquent than speech.

Sitting on the edge of Grace's lounge, gently smoothing the disheveled curls with her cool fingers, it would seem as if the younger woman were the mourner, she the comforter.

"God knows best," she says, with a Christian's strong reliance; and then she added, pathetically: "And it has come to me suddenly, Gracie, child, that my poor boy was not, perhaps, quite happy, or, at least, that some grief, at which we never guessed, was mingled with the quiet thread of his life."

A sudden memory of words of his came into Grace's mind.

"God, when He puts a life-long sorrow on our hearts, usually compensates for it by giving us a brief span of life in which to endure it."

"He deserved to be happy," she answered, warmly. "He was so good, so true. If any merited perfect content, it was your son."

"You have seen him sometimes in the whirl of gay society, Grace; did you ever notice in him any peculiar attachment for a woman?"

"Never," Grace answered, wondering. "He was courteously polite, deferentially chivalrous to all, but seemed attached to none in particular. Why do you ask?"

"Because I found this—I would show it to none but you, Grace—on his poor dead heart. It tells its own sad story."

She put into the young girl's hand a broad, flat gold locket, swinging by a slight gold chain. Almost as if she touched a coffin-lid, Grace moved the spring.

It flew open. No woman's pictured face smiled back at her—the upper lid had a deeply cut inscription, February, 1871—in the other deeper side lay a dead white rose, its short, thorny stem wound about with a tangle of pale-gold hair.

That was all. A sudden memory stirred at Grace's heart, and it all came back to her. The winter morning in her conservatory at Norfolk—the white rose on her breast, the tangled, broken curl, the gentle good-by. Warm flushes of irrepressible color surged up to her pale face, and with a sudden shocked horror Mrs. Clendenon glanced from the stem of the withered rose to the soft curls she was mechanically smoothing.

It was enough. "My poor boy!" she murmured and taking Grace Winans in her tender, forgiving, motherly arms, kissed her forehead.

And the tie between the two women never grew less close and warm. The still form they carried home to Norfolk to lay in its grave was a mutual sorrowful tie between them forever.

Stella De Vere came next day, heavily vailed, on her father's arm, and kissed Captain Clendenon in his coffin, leaving a bouquet of lilies on his pulseless breast.

But at early morning's dawn a slender, white-robed form bent over him, all her golden tresses sweeping over the heart that lay under its treasured keepsake still, and a sister's pained and tender kiss rested warmly on the sealed lips whose untold secret had come so strangely into her keeping.

CHAPTER XXX.

"BABY FINGERS, WAXEN TOUCHES."

The telegraphic message that flashed across the ocean to Lulu Conway with such mournful tidings never reached her; she was already on the ocean, homeward bound, having just received the letter that told of Willard's illness at Memphis. It was not until she reached home in May, and was safely domiciled at Ocean View, that Bruce went into Norfolk and brought back the sad-faced mother, whose mourning weeds were the first indication to Lulu of her bitter bereavement.

Mrs. Winans, too, was domiciled safely at home again, to the great delight of honest Norah, who had been left in entire charge of the stately Winans' mansion, and had fretted herself almost to a shadow in anticipation of losing her mistress by that "fatal yellow fever." Even now Norah was hardly morally convinced that this were really she. But as the days went by and the young lady's cheek began to gather color and roundness again, and her soft, unwonted laugh to wake the sweeping echoes of the large, silent house, Norah's doubts were displaced by joyful certainty, and she began to hope that a happier life for the young lady was presaged by her returning smile and lighter spirits.

Norah did not know that the hope springing softly in the wife's heart had such sure foundation to build upon. Grace had withheld from her the fact that General Winans was coming home in May, and Norah's secret thoughts and misgivings on this subject were many.

Poor Norah had never forgiven herself for the loss of the little child that had been left in its father's care to be so strangely spirited away. She reproached herself always, in her sensitive soul feeling herself entirely to blame, and humbly wondering sometimes how Mrs. Winans could abide the sight of her, much less her daily personal attendance; while Mrs. Winans herself, always just, gentle, and considerate to her domestics as to others, never blamed her in the least, really was fond of the honest creature, and in her sensitive dread of new faces around, would not have consented to be deprived of Norah. Indeed, her whole domestic staff had entered her service when she came as a bride to Senator Winans' new and beautiful home, and were likely to remain as long as they behaved passably well. She never drew a tight rein on the poor creatures, following as nearly as she could, in her daily life, the golden rule.

A charmingly affectionate billet from Mrs. Conway, the morning succeeding their return to Ocean View, invited Grace to come out and see them, as they were all in the deepest grief for the poor, dear captain—Lulu, indeed, being excessively shocked and ill, with the physician in close attendance.

The afternoon found Gracie springing from her phaeton at the gates of Ocean View, where John, as of old, met her with an adoring smile on his dark visage.

"And what is the news with you, John?" she asked, good-naturedly, as she saw that some unusual news agitated his shallow brain. "What have you been doing all this time with yourself?"

"Only jist gittin' married, Miss Grace," he responded, with a glittering smile, "to jist the prettiest yaller gal ole mis' eber owned! You 'members of Julie, de chambermaid?"

Grace supplemented her uncontrollable smile with a solid congratulation in the shape of a bridal gift from her well-filled porte-monnaie, and swept on to the house.

Mrs. Conway and her nephew met her in the hall, both unaffectedly glad to see her, and in the midst of much whispering, they left Bruce below, and went up to Lulu's chamber.

It was so dark in here that Grace, coming directly in from the May sunshine, at first saw nothing; then, as the gloom cleared away a little, she distinguished Mrs. Clendenon's black-robed form sitting near the bed where Lulu lay, white, and still, and grief-stricken, under the white draperies, with a tiny mite of a girl-baby (prematurely hurried into the world by grief that oftenest hurries people out of it) on her arm.

She stooped and kissed the quivering lips that tried to speak, but could not; and, indeed, what could either say that breathed aught of comfort to that shocked and distressed young spirit whose life hung vibrant on a quivering thread? Silence was perhaps the best comforter then, and Grace took the little newcomer in her arms, and gently diverted the young mother's thoughts by tracing vague resemblances to its handsome parents in the pink and infinitesimal morsel of life—and what a power there is in a simple baby-life sometimes!

Lulu's pain was softened momentarily by this idle feminine chatter and small talk so vigorously maintained, and her tears remained awhile unwept in their fountains, while now and then a low whisper to her old friend showed how welcome and appreciated was that visit.

"If baby lives," she murmured in an undertone to Grace, "we mean to call it Grace Willard, for you—and—brother," with a falter over the name. "I think he would have liked it so."

And Mrs. Winans has hard work to keep back her own tears at the memories that flow while she holds Lulu's mite of a girl in her arms—thronging memories of her own early days of motherhood—her nestling baby-boy, her darling so rudely torn from her breast. She is glad when the afternoon wanes and it is time to go for she cannot bear to sit there smiling and outwardly content with that heavy, aching heart.

"Gracie"—Lulu draws her down to whisper with pink lips against her ear—"you may expect him—General Winans—at any hour. He gets into Norfolk to-day. We traveled from Europe together, but he had to stop in Washington on business, and gets here this evening, I think. Will you be glad, dear?"

She cannot answer. Her heart is in a great whirl of painful feelings. Her baby! She wants her baby! The unhealed wound in the mother-heart will not be satisfied thus. Lulu's motherhood has thrilled that aching chord afresh; the years that have passed are but a dream, and she longs to hold her rosy, laughing boy again to her tortured breast. Mother-love never grows cold nor dead, mother-grief never can be healed nor even seared. It "lives eternal" in the mother's breast, the most exquisite joy, the most exquisite searching pain the human heart can know.

"You are going to be so happy," Lulu whispers again in her loving tone, "and, Gracie," with a fluttering sigh. "I have been so happy in anticipating your happiness!"

Touched to the depths of her warm heart Grace bends to leave a tender kiss on the pale brow, and promising to come again, goes out. Her adieus are hastily made to the rest, and once more in the little pony phaeton she skims over the miles between her and home. The bright roses that blossom on her cheeks are sources of undisguised admiration to Norah, who opines that Mrs. Winans ought to drive every evening.

"Never mind about that, Norah," she answers, indifferently; "only please brush my curls over fresh, and give me a pretty white muslin dress to wear this evening."

And Norah obeys in secret wonder at her mistress' suddenly-developed vanity.

She is lovely enough to be vain when Norah turns her off her hands as "finished." All that golden glory of ringlets ripples away from the fair, pure brow enchantingly, sweeping to her dainty waist in a sweet girlish fashion. A faint flush covers her cheeks, two stars burn in the violet depths of her eyes, her lips are unwontedly tender and sweet. The slim, perfect figure is draped in the misty folds of a snowy muslin, whose loose sleeves falling open, leave bare her dimpled white arms and hands. The low frill of misty lace leaves the white curve of her throat exposed, with no other ornament than a tea-rose budding against its lovely whiteness. So as lovely as one can fancy Eve, fresh from the hands of her Creator, the beautiful, unhappy, wronged young wife passed from her dressing-room and into that lovely shrine of her garnered griefs that saw what the world saw not—the desolation of that sensitive heart—the nursery of her loved, lost baby!

CHAPTER XXXI.

AT HER FEET

She pushes back the sliding-doors between her own room and this one, letting the soft, clear light flood its dim recesses, opens the windows admitting the balmy sea breeze and the moonlight. Divided then between suspense and pain she throws upward the lace canopy and stands leaning once more over the empty crib that seems to her now more like a grave.

"It was May, 1870, when we quarreled here over baby's crib," she muses to herself, "and it seems as if years, and years, and years have gone over my head—yet this is only May, 1874. Ah! me."

Did minutes or hours go by? She never knew as she steadied her soul against the rushing, headlong waves of memory that threatened to engulf her in its chilling tide. She had put the past away from her in the excitement of other pursuits and other aims, and now—now it came back, relentless, remorseless, sweeping her quivering heart-strings, atuning all her sensitive nerves to pain.

Would he come? Her helpless heart throbbed a passive denial. If he came, as Lulu had asked her, would she be glad?

She scarcely knew. She loved him—loved him with a pure, deep love that having once given its pledge to last till death, no earthly power could alter. Hers was a very strong and faithful devotion, but human resentment must hold a small place in the human breast as long as life lasts. And Grace Winans, brave, patient, tried by fire as she had been, was still only mortal. If he came, strengthened, purified, enobled by suffering and sad experience, they must still meet, she thinks, with a sharp heart-pang, as over a grave—the grave of their child; the winsome baby whom she sees in fancy at his childish play on the nursery rug, toddling over the floor, laughing in her arms, catching at her long, bright curls—what shall she say to the man whose folly has deprived her of all this joy, when he comes to ask forgiveness?

"God help me!" she moans, and drops her hopeless head upon her hands.

"Gracie!"

Does her heart deceive her ears? She glances shyly up, sees him standing not three feet from her, and he lifts the little child by his side, and tossing him into the crib, growing too small for his boyish proportions, says, wistfully:

"Gracie, I have brought him back to you to plead his father's cause."

One long look into the boyish beauty of that face that has not outgrown its infantile bloom, and her arms are about the little form, though silent in her joy as in her grief no word escapes her lips.

"Mamma, my own lovely mamma!" the little boy lisps, tutored thereto no doubt by his father's wisdom, and her only answer is in raining kisses, smiles and tears.

It is so long before she thinks of the silent father that when she turns it is only to find him kneeling at her feet. On the dusk beauty of that proud face she sees the sharp traces of suffering, weariness, almost hopelessness. He takes the small hand that falls passive to her side, touching it lightly to his feverish lips.

"Gracie," she hears in the low, strong accents of despair, "there is nothing I can say for myself—I am at your foot to hear my doom! Whatever you accord me, it cannot be utter despair, since I am blessed beyond measure in having looked even once more on your beloved face."

For minutes she looked down on that bowed head in silence. All the love and pride, all the good and evil in her nature are warring against each other. Shall she let the cruel past go by, or shall she—and then, between her and these tumultuous thoughts, rises the face of one who is an angel in heaven—her lips part to speak, and close mutely; she smiles, then slowly falling like the perfuming petals of a great white rose, her white robes waver to the floor, and her small hand flutters down on his shoulder, and she is kneeling beside him.

He looks up with an unspoken prayer of thanksgiving on his mobile features, and twines strong, loving arms about the form that has fallen unconscious against his breast.

General Winans takes his wife abroad to escape the "nine days wonder." Norah goes with them, in charge of little Earle, her face glowing like a miniature sun with delight at the way that "things," in her homely phraseology "have turned out."