Fashion and Famine Part 28

"Well, now, you'll confess it's rather hard to like a man who has won ten thousand dollars from you, in one night; but I do rather fancy him, in spite of it."

"Has he won this money from you?" inquired the lady, in a low voice--"you, a minor!"

"_Entre nous_, yes; but it was all above-board, and in the most gentlemanly manner."

"Is Mr. Leicester at the hotel? Has he ever presented himself in the drawing-room?"

"No; he thinks the ladies a bore. I thought so myself, ten minutes ago; but now, with an old friend, it is different. The sight of you brought me back to Florence. You were kind to me there: I shall never, never forget the days and nights of that terrible fever; but for you, I must have died."

"I was used to sickness, you know," answered the lady, in a faltering voice.

"I remember," answered the earl, "that lovely girl--your relative, I believe--did she recover in Florence?"

"She died there," was the low reply.

"As I might have done, but for you," he answered, with feeling. "It was the first idea I ever had of a mother's kindness."

"And do you really feel this little service so much?"

"I only wish it were in my power to prove how much!"

"You can, easily."

"How, lady?"

"Return to your tutor in the morning--break off all acquaintance with this gentleman."

"What--Leicester?"

"Yes, Leicester."

"That is easy; he left for New York this evening, and I go forward to Canada. Is there nothing more difficult by which I can prove my grat.i.tude?"

"Yes; tell me all that has pa.s.sed between you and this Mr. Leicester, but not here--let us walk down into the drawing-room."

A few moments after, Mrs. Sykes drew softly up to Mrs. Nash, with one of her sweetest smiles: "His lords.h.i.+p, after all, glides back to his own countrywomen; we Americans stand no chance," she said.

Mrs. Nash bit her lip, and gave the folds of her gold-colored moire a backward sweep with her hand.

"I fancy the earl is not anxious to extend his attention beyond its present limit; I always said she was worth knowing. Mrs. Gordon seems an old acquaintance. We may, perhaps, now find out who she really is; I will ask him in the morning."

"Do!" cried half a dozen voices--"we always thought her somebody, but really, she quite patronises the earl himself: do ask all about her, when his lords.h.i.+p comes back."

It was a vain request--the young earl had left the ball-room for good; and long before the persons grouped around Mrs. Nash had left their beds in the morning, he was pa.s.sing up Lake Champlain, sleepily regarding the scenery along its sh.o.r.e.

That same morning, Mrs. Gordon left Saratoga, so early that no one witnessed her departure. But two or three young men, who had finished up their fancy ball in the open air, reported that she was seen at daybreak, on the colonnade, talking very earnestly to her tall, awkward serving-man, for more than half an hour.

Mrs. Gordon--for thus the lady continued to be known--came to New York early in the autumn, and in the great emporium began a new phase of her erratic and brilliant life.

A mansion, in the upper part of the city, had been in the course of erection during the previous year. It was a castellated villa in the very suburbs, standing upon the gentle swell of a hill, and commanding a fine view both of the city, and the beautiful scenery that lies upon the North and East Rivers.

A few ancient trees, rooted when New York was almost a distant city, stood around this dwelling, sheltering with their old and leafy branches the glowing flowers and rare shrubbery with which grounds of considerable extent were crowded.

This dwelling, so graceful in its architecture, so fairy-like in its grounds, had risen as if by magic among those old trees. Lavish was the cost bestowed upon it; rich and faultless was the furniture that arrived from day to day after the masons and artists had completed their work.

Statues of Parian marble, rich bronzes, antique carvings in wood, and the most sumptuous upholstery were arranged by the architect who had superintended the building, and who acted under directions from some person abroad.

When all was arranged, drawing-rooms, library, ladies' boudoir and sleeping chambers, that might have sheltered the repose of an Eastern princess, the house was closed. Those who pa.s.sed it could now and then catch a glimpse of rich fresco paintings, upon the walls, through a half-fastened shutter; and through the hot-house windows might be seen a little world of exotic plants, dropping their rich blossoms to waste; while the walls beyond were laden with fruit ripening in the artificial atmosphere. Grapes and nectarines fell from bough and vine, untasted, or only to be gathered stealthily by the old man who had temporary charge of the grounds.

Thus everything remained close and silent, like some enchanted palace of fairy land, week after week, till the autumn came on. Since the architect left it, no person save the old gardener, had ever been observed to enter even the delicate iron railing that encompa.s.sed the grounds. True, the neighbors, to whom this dwelling had become an object of great interest, were heard to a.s.sert that at a time, early in the summer, lights had been observed one stormy night, in the second-story, and even high up in the princ.i.p.al tower. Some even persisted that before it was quite dark, a close carriage had been driven up to the door and away again, leaving two or three persons, who certainly entered the house. After that, carriage wheels had more than once been heard above the storm, rolling to and fro, as if people were coming and going all night.

The next morning, when all the neighborhood was alive with curiosity, this dwelling stood as before--stately and silent, amid the old forest trees. The shutters were closed; the gate locked. Not a trace could be found proving that any human being had entered the premises. So the whole story was generally set down as an Irish fiction, though the servant girl, who originated it, persisted stoutly that she had not only seen lights and heard the wheels, but had caught glimpses of a cashmere shawl within the door; and of a little barefooted girl, with a basket on her arm, coming out half an hour after, and alone. But there stood the closed and silent house--and there was the talkative old gardener in contradiction of this marvellous tale. Besides, carriages were always going up and down the avenue upon which the dwelling stood, and out of this the girl had probably found material for her fiction. Certain it was, that from this time till October no being was seen to enter the silent palace.

Then, in the first golden flush of autumn, the house was flung open.

Carriages came to and fro almost every hour. Saddle horses, light phaetons, and an equipage yet more stately, drove in and out of the stables. The windows, with all their wealth of gorgeously tinted gla.s.s, were open to the hazy atmosphere; grooms hung around the stables; footmen glided over the tesselated marble of the entrance-hall.

Conspicuous among the rest, was one tall, awkwardly-shaped man, who came and went apparently at pleasure. His duties seemed difficult to define, even by the curious neighbors. Sometimes he drove the carriage, but never unless the lady of the mansion rode in it. Sometimes he opened the door. Again he might be seen in the conservatory, grouping flowers with the taste and delicacy of a professed artist; or in the hot-houses, gathering fruit and arranging it in rich ma.s.ses for the table. It was marvellous to see the beautiful effect produced by those great, awkward hands. The very j.a.ponicas and red roses seemed to have become more glowing and delicate beneath his touch. But after the first week this man almost wholly disappeared from the dwelling. Sometimes he might be seen stealing gently in at nightfall, or very early in the morning; but his active superintendence was over; he seemed to be no longer an inmate, but one who came to the place occasionally to inquire after old friends.

But the mistress of all this splendor--the beautiful woman who sometimes came smilingly forth to enter her carriage, who sauntered now and then into the conservatory, blooming as the flowers that surrounded her, mature in her loveliness as the fruit that hung upon the walls bathed in the golden suns.h.i.+ne--who was this woman, with her unparalleled attractions, her almost fabulous wealth? The world asked this question without an answer, for the Mrs. Gordon of Saratoga, and the Ada Leicester of our story, satisfied no curiosity regarding her personal history. She visited no one who did not first seek her companions.h.i.+p, and thus deprived society of its right to question her.

We, who know this woman by her right name, and in her true character--that of a disappointed, erring, but still affectionate being--might wonder at her bloom, her smiling cheerfulness, her easy and gentle repose of look and manner; but human nature is full of such contradictions, teeming with serpents, absolutely hidden and bathed in the perfume of flowers.

If Ada Leicester smiled, she was not the less sad at heart. If her manners were easy and her voice sweet, it was habit--the necessity of pleasing others--that had rendered these things a second nature to her.

With one great, and, we may add, almost holy object at heart, she pursued it earnestly, while all the routine of life went on as if she had no thought but for the world, and no pleasure or aim beyond the luxurious life which seemed to render her existence one continued gleam of Paradise.

Hitherto we have seen this woman in the agony of perverted love--perverted, though legal, for its object was vile; and wors.h.i.+p of a base thing is hideous according to its power. We have seen her bowed down with grief, grovelling to the very soil of her native valley, in pa.s.sionate agony. But these were phases in her life, and extremes of character which seldom appeared before the world.

It is a mistake when people fancy that any life can be made up of unmitigated sorrow. Even evil has its excitement and its gleams of wild pleasure, vivid and keen. The sting of conscience is sometimes forgotten; the viper, buried so deeply in flowers that his presence is scarcely felt, till, uncoiling with a fling, he dashes them all aside, withered by his hot breath and spotted with venom. This heart-shock, while it lasts, is terrible; but those who have no strength to cast forth the serpent bury him again in fresh flowers, and lull him to a poisonous sleep in some secret fold of the heart, till he grows restless and fierce once more.

With all her splendor, Ada Leicester was profoundly unhappy. The deep under-current of her heart always welled up bitter waters. Let the surface sparkle as it would, tears were constantly sleeping beneath.

There is no agony like that of a heart naturally pure and n.o.ble, which circ.u.mstance, weakness, or temptation has warped from its integrity. To know yourself possessed of n.o.ble powers, to appreciate all the sublimity of goodness, and yet feel that you have undermined your own strength, and cast a veil over the beautiful through which you can never see clearly, this is deep sorrow--this is the darkness and punishment of sin. If we could but know how evil is punished in the heart of the evil-doer, charity would indeed cover a mult.i.tude of sins.

Ada Leicester was unhappy--so unhappy that the beggar at her gate might have pitied her. The pomp, the adulation which surrounded her, had become a habit; thus all the zest and novelty of first possession was gone, and these things became necessary, without gratifying the hungry cry of her soul.

At this period of her life she was utterly without objects of attachment; and what desolation is equal to this in a woman's heart? The thwarted affections and warm sympathies of her nature became clamorous for something to love. Her whole being yearned over the blighted affections of other days; maternal love grew strong within her. She absolutely panted to fold the child, abandoned in a delirium of pa.s.sionate resentment, once more to her bosom. But that child could nowhere be found. Her parents, too--that n.o.ble, kind old man, who had loved her so--that meek and loving woman, her mother--had the earth opened and swallowed them up? was she never to see them more?--to what terrible dest.i.tution might her sin have driven them.

The time had been when this proud woman shrunk from meeting persons so deeply injured--but oh, how fervently loved! Now she absolutely panted to fling herself at their feet, and crave forgiveness for all the shame and anguish her madness had cast upon them. In all this her exertions had been cruelly thwarted; parents, child, everything that had loved her and suffered for her, seemed swept into oblivion. The past was but a painful remembrance, not a wreck of it remained save in her own mind.

Another feeling more powerful than filial or maternal love--more absorbing--more ruthlessly adhesive, was the love she could not conquer for the man who had been the first cause of all the misery and wrong against which she was struggling. It was the one pa.s.sion of a life-time--the love of a warm, impulsive heart--of a vivid intellect, and, say what we will, this is a love that never changes--never dies. It may be perverted--it may be wrestled with and cast to the earth for a time; but such love once planted in a woman's bosom, burns there so long as a spark is left to feed its vitality; burns there, it may be, for ever and ever, a blessing or a curse.

To Ada Leicester it was a curse, for it outlived scorn. It crushed her self-respect--it fell like a mildew upon all the good resolutions that, about this time, began to spring up and brighten in her nature. You would not have supposed that proud, beautiful woman so humble in her love--her hopeless love--of a bad man, and that man the husband whom she had wronged! Yet so it was. Notwithstanding the past: notwithstanding all the perfidy and cruel scorn with which he had deliberately urged her on to ruin, she would have given up anything, everything for one expression of affection, such as had won the love of her young heart.

But even here, where the accomplishment of her wish would surely have proved a punishment, her affections were flung rudely back.

And now, when all her efforts were in vain, when no one could be found to accept her penitence, or return some little portion of the yearning tenderness that filled her heart, she plunged recklessly into the world again. The arrow was in her side; but she folded her silken robes over it, and strove to feed her great want with the husks of fas.h.i.+onable life; alas, how vainly! To persons of her pa.s.sionate nature, the very attempt thus to appease the soul's hunger is a mockery. Ada Leicester felt this, and at times she grew faint amid her empty splendor. She had met with none of the usual retributions which are the coa.r.s.er and more common result of faults like hers. No disgrace clung to her name: she had wealth, beauty, position, homage. But who shall say that the punishment of her sin was not great even then? for there is no pain to some hearts so great as a consciousness of undeserved homage. Still this was but the silver edging to the cloud that had begun to rise and darken over her life. Her own proud, warm heart was doomed to punish itself to the utmost.

CHAPTER XIII.