Fashion and Famine Part 33

"Ask me no questions now; by-and-bye you will know all about it; the money is mine. I have earned it honestly; as much more is all that I have in the world. No thanks! I never could bear them, besides it will be repaid in time!"

"If I live," said Robert, with tears in his eyes.

"This week, remember--this week you must be absent. A visit to the old homestead, anything that will take you out of town."

"I will go," said Robert, "it can certainly do no harm."

And they parted.

Ada Leicester fled from the keen disappointment which almost crushed her for a time, and sought to drown all thought in the whirl of fas.h.i.+onable life. Her reception evenings were splendid. Beauty, talent, wit, everything that could charm or dazzle gathered beneath her roof. She gave herself no time for grief. Occasionally a thought of her husband would sting her into fresh bursts of excitement--sometimes the memory of her parents and her child pa.s.sed over her heart, leaving a swell behind like that which followed the angels when they went down to trouble the still waters. Her wit grew more sparkling, her graceful sarcasm keener than ever it had been. She was the rage that season, and exhausted her rich talent in efforts to win excitement. She did not hope for happiness from the homage and splendor that her beauty and wealth had secured; excitement was all she asked.

When all other devices for amus.e.m.e.nt failed to keep up the fever of her artificial life, she bethought her of a new project. Her talent, her wealth must achieve something more brilliant than had yet been dreamed of, she would give a fancy ball, something far more picturesque than had ever been known in Saratoga or Newport.

At first Ada thought of this ball only as a something that should pa.s.s like a rocket through the upper ten thousand; but as the project grew upon her, she resolved to make it an epoch in her own inner life. The man whom she had loved, the husband who had so coldly trampled her to the earth in her seeming poverty--he should witness this grand gala--he should see her in the fall blaze of her splendid career. There was something of proud retaliation in this; she fancied that it was resentful hate that prompted this desire to see and triumph over the man who had scorned her. Alas! poor woman, was there no lurking hope?--no feeling that she dared not call by its right name in all that wild excitement?

She sent for Jacob, and besought him to devise some means by which Leicester should be won to attend the ball, without suspecting her ident.i.ty.

"Let it be superb--let it surpa.s.s everything hitherto known in elegance," she said--"he shall be here--he shall see the poor governess, the scorned wife in a new phase."

There was triumph in her eyes as she spoke.

"You love this man, even now, in spite of all that he has done?" said Jacob Strong, who stood before her while she spoke.

"No," she answered--"no, I hate--oh! how I do hate him!"

Jacob regarded her with a steady, fixed glance of the eye; he was afraid to believe her. He would not have believed her but for the powerful wish that gave an unnatural impulse to his faith.

"He may be dazzled by all this splendor; the knowledge of so much wealth will make him humble--he will be your slave again!"

Ada glanced around the sumptuous array of her boudoir. Her eyes sparkled; her lip quivered with haughty triumph.

"And I would spurn him even as he spurned me in that humble room over-head--that room filled with its wealth of old memories."

Jacob turned away to hide the joy that burned in his eyes.

"Oh! my mistress, say it again. In earnest truth, you hate this man; do not deceive yourself. Have you unwound the adder from your heart? Did that night do its work?"

Ada Leicester paused; she was ashamed to own, even before that devoted servant, how closely the adder still folded himself in her bosom. She turned pale, but still answered with unfaltering voice, "Jacob, I hate him!"

"Not yet--not as you ought to hate him," answered Jacob, regarding her pallid face so searchingly that his own cheek whitened, "but when you see him in all his villany, as I have seen him; when you know all!"

"And do I not know all? What is it you keep from me? What is there to learn more vile--more terrible than the past?"

"What if I tell you that within a month, William Leicester, your husband, will be married to another woman?"

"Married! married to another!--Leicester--my----" she broke off, for her white lips refused to utter another syllable. After a momentary struggle she started up--"does he think that I am dead?--does he hope that night has killed me?"

"He knows that you are living; but thinks you have returned to England."

"But this is crime--punishable crime."

"I know that it is."

A faint, incredulous smile stole over her lips, and she waved her hand.

"He will not violate the law; never was a bad man more prudent."

"He will be married to-morrow night."

"And to that girl? Does he love her so much? Is her beauty so overpowering? What has she to tempt Leicester into this crime?"

"Her father is dead. By his will a large property falls to this poor girl. The letter came under cover to Leicester; he opened it. After the marriage they will sail for the north of Europe--there the letter will follow them, telling the poor orphan of her father's death. How can she guess that her husband has seen it before!"

"But I--I am not dead!"

"You love him, he knows that better than you do. Death is no stronger safeguard than that knowledge. In your love or in your death he is equally safe."

"G.o.d help me; but I will not be a slave to this abject love forever. If this last treachery be true, my soul will loathe him as he deserves."

"It is true."

"But my ball is to-morrow night. He accepted the invitation. You are certain that he will come?"

"He accepted the invitation eagerly enough," said Jacob, dryly; "but what then?"

"Why, to-morrow night--this cannot happen before to-morrow night--then I shall see him; after that--no, no, he dare not. You see, Jacob, it is in order to save him from deeper crime; we must not sit still and allow this poor girl to be sacrificed; that would be terrible. It must be prevented."

"Nothing easier. Let him know that the brilliant, the wealthy Mrs.

Gordon, is his wife; say that she has millions at her disposal; this poor girl has only one or two hundred thousand, the choice would be soon made."

"Do you believe it? can you think it was belief in my poverty, and not--not a deeper feeling that made him so cruel that night? would he have accepted me for this wealth?"

A painful red hovered in Ada's cheek, as she asked this question; it was shaping a humiliating doubt into words. It was exposing the scorpion that stung most keenly at her heart.

Jacob drew closer to his mistress; he clasped her two hands between his, and his heavy frame bent over her, not awkwardly, for deep feeling is never awkward.

"Oh, my mistress, say to me that you will give up this man--utterly give him up; even now you cannot guess how wicked he is; do not, by your wealth, help him to make new victims; do not see him and thus give him a right over yourself and your property--a right he will not fail to use; give up this ball; leave the city--this is no way to find that poor old man, that child----"

"Jacob! Jacob!" almost shrieked the unhappy woman, "do you see how such words wound and rankle? I may be wild--the wish may be madness--but once more let me meet him face to face----"

Jacob dropped her hands; two great tears left his eyes, and rolled slowly down his cheeks.

"How she loves that man!" he said, in a tone of despondency.

"Remember, Jacob, it is to serve another. What if, thinking himself safe, he marries that poor girl?" said Ada, in an humble, deprecating tone.

"Madam," answered Jacob, "do you know that the law gives this man power over you--a husband's power--if he chooses to claim it?" Jacob broke off, and clenched his huge hand in an agony of impatience, for his words had only brought the bright blood into that eloquent face. Through those drooping lashes he saw the downcast eyes kindle.

"She hopes it! she hopes it!" he said, in the bitterness of his thought; "but I will save her--with G.o.d's help I will save them both!"