Cora did not believe him, but she refrained from saying so.
"The danger is past. Go on, my dear."
"We were shown into the strangers" pew. The voluntary was playing. We all bowed our heads for the short private prayer. The voluntary stopped.
Then we heard the voice of the dean and we lifted our heads. I turned to offer Mrs. Stillwater a prayer book. Then I saw her face. It was ghastly, and her eyes were fixed in a wild stare upon the face of the dean, whose eyes were upon the open book from which he was reading.
Quick as lightning she covered her face with her veil and so remained until we all knelt down for the opening prayer. When we arose from our knees, Rose was gone."
Cora paused for a few moments.
"Go on, go on," said Mr. Fabian.
"We did not leave the church. Grandfather evidently took for granted that Rose had left on account of some trifling indisposition, and he is not easily moved by women"s ailments, you know. So we stayed out the services and the sermon. When we returned to the hotel we found that Rose had retired to her room suffering from a severe attack of neuralgic headache, as she said."
"What did you think?"
"I thought she might have been suddenly attacked by maddening pain, which had given the wild look to her eyes; but the next day I had good reason to change my opinion as to the cause of her strange demeanor."
"What was that?"
"We all left the hotel at an early hour to take the train for West Point. Mrs. Stillwater seemed to have quite recovered from her illness.
We had arrived at the depot and received our tickets, and were waiting at the rear of a great crowd at the railway gate, till it should be opened to let us pa.s.s to our train. I was standing on the right of my grandfather, and Rose on my right. Suddenly a man looked around. He was a great Wall Street broker who had dealings with your firm. Seeing grandfather, he spoke to him heartily, and then begged to introduce the gentleman who was with him. And then and there he presented the Dean of Olivet to Mr. Rockharrt, who, after a few words of polite greeting, presented the dean to me, and turned to find Rose Stillwater."
"Well! Well!"
"She was gone. She had vanished from the crowd at the railway gate as swiftly, as suddenly, and as incomprehensibly as she had vanished from the church. After looking about him a little, my grandfather said that she had got pressed away from us by the crowd, but that she knew her way and would take care of herself and follow us to the train all right. But when the gates were opened we did not see her, nor did we find her on the train, though Mr. Rockharrt walked up and down through the twenty cars looking for her, and feeling sure that we should find her. The train had started, so we had to go on without her. My grandfather concluded that she had accidentally missed it and would follow by the next one."
"And what did you think, Cora?"
"I thought that, for some antecedent and mysterious reason, she had fled from before the face of the Dean of Olivet at the railway station, even as she had done at the church."
"When and where did you find her?"
"Not until our return to New York city. My grandfather was in a fine state; kept the telegraph wires at work between West Point and New York, until he got some clew to her, and then, without waiting for the closing exercises at the military academy, he hurried me back to the city. We found the missing woman at St. L----"s hospital, where she had been conveyed after having been found in an unconscious condition in the ladies" room of the railway depot. She was better, and we brought her away to the hotel. The Dean of Olivet went to Newport, and Mrs.
Stillwater recovered her spirits. A few days later she married Mr.
Rockharrt at the church where the dean had preached. You know everything else about the matter. And now, Uncle Fabian, tell me that woman"s story, or at least all that is proper for me to know of it."
"Cora, you read Rose Stillwater aright. She did on both these occasions fly from before the face of the Dean of Olivet. I will tell you all about her, for it is now right that you should know; but you must promise never to reveal it."
"I promise."
CHAPTER XXI.
WHO WAS ROSE FLOWERS?
"Well, my dear Corona, I must ask you to cast your thoughts back to that year when you first came to Rockhold to live, and engrossed so much of your grandmother"s time and attention that your grandfather grew jealous and impatient, and commissioned me to "hire" a nursery governess to look after you and teach you the rudiments of education. You remember that time, Cora?" inquired Mr. Fabian, as he held the reins with a slackened grasp, so that the horse jogged slowly along the wooded road between the foot of the mountain and the banks of the river, under the star-lit sky.
"I remember perfectly," answered the girl.
"Well, business took me to New York about that time, and I thought it a good opportunity to hunt up a governess for you. So I advertised in the New York papers, giving my address at an uptown office, while my own business kept me down town.
"The first letter I opened interested me so much that I gave my whole attention to that first, and so it happened that I had no occasion to touch the others. It was from one Ann White, who described herself as a motherless and fatherless girl of sixteen, a stranger in this country, who was trying to get employment as a.s.sistant teacher, governess, or copyist, and who was well fitted to take sole charge of a little girl seven years old.
"Perhaps this might not have impressed me, but she went on to write that she had not a friend in the whole country, that she was utterly dest.i.tute and desolate, and begged me for Heaven"s mercy not to throw her letter aside, but to see her and give her a trial. She inclosed her photograph, not, as she wrote, from any vanity, but that I might see her face and take pity on her.
"Cora, there was an air of childish frankness and simplicity about her letter that was well ill.u.s.trated by her photograph. It was that of a sweet-smiling baby face; a sunny, innocent beautiful face. I answered the letter immediately, asking for her address, that I might call and see her. The next day I received her answer, thanking me with enthusiastic earnestness for my prompt attention to her note, and giving me the number and street of her residence in Harlem. I got on a Second Avenue car and rode out to Harlem; got off at the terminus, walked up a cross street and walked some distance to a bijou of a brown cottage, standing in shaded grounds, with sunny gleams and flower beds, and half covered by creeping roses, clematis, wisteria, and all that.
"I went in, and was received by the beautiful being that you have known as Rose Flowers. She was dressed in some misty, cloud-like pale blue fabric that set off her blonde beauty to perfection. After we were seated and had talked some time, I telling her what light duties would be required of her--only the care of one good little girl of seven years old, and of a very mild old lady who was the only lady in the house, and of the old gentleman who was the head of the family, strict but just in all his dealings; and of our country house in the mountains and our town house in the State capital--and she expressing the greatest and frankest anxiety to become a member of such a happy, amiable, prosperous family, and declaring with childish boasting that she was quite competent to perform all the duties expected of her and would perform them conscientiously, I suddenly asked her for her references.
""I--I have not a friend in this world," she said; and then in a timid voice, she asked: "Are references indispensable?"
""Of course," I answered
""Then the Lord help me! Nothing is left but the river. The river won"t require references;" and with that she buried her little golden-haired head in the cushions of the sofa and burst into a perfect storm of sobs and tears. Now, Cora, what in the deuce was a man to do? I had never seen anything like that in all my life before. I had never seen a woman in such a fit before. All this was strange and horrible to me.
"I am a middling strong old fellow, but that beautiful girl"s despair upset me, and I never could hear any one hint suicide, and she talked of the river. The river would receive her without references. The river was kinder than her own fellow creatures! The river would give her a home and rest and peace! She only wanted to do honest work for her living, but human beings would not even let her work for them without references! And I declare to you, Cora, she was not acting, as you might suspect. She was in deadly earnest. Her sobs shook her whole frame.
"At last I myself behaved like an a.s.s. I went and knelt down beside her so as to get quite close to her, and I began to comfort her. I told her not to mind about the references; that she might have me for a reference all the days of her life; that she should have the situation at Rockhold, where I would convey her and introduce her on my own responsibility.
"While I spoke to her I laid my hand on the little golden-haired head and smoothed it all the time. Out of pity, Cora, I a.s.sure you on my honor, out of pity. After a while her sobs seemed to subside slowly. I told her that her face was to me a sufficient recommendation in her favor, and all-sufficient testimonial of character; but that I must have her confidence in exchange for my own.
"You see, Cora, I was very sorry for the poor, pretty creature, and was really anxious to befriend her; but also my curiosity was keenly piqued.
I wished to know her private history, and so I a.s.sured her that she should have the position she wanted on the condition of telling me her antecedents.
"At last she yielded, and told me the story of her short, willful life.
This, then, was her poor, little, pathetic story.
"Her name was Ann White. She was the daughter of Amos White, an English curate, living in a remote village in Northumberland, and of his first wife, who had died during the infancy of her youngest child, Ann, a year after which her father had married again. Ann"s step-mother was one of the most beautiful women in England, and--one of the most discontented, as the wife of a widowed clergyman who was old enough to be her father, who had three sons and two daughters by a former marriage, and who was trying to support his family on a hundred pounds a year. Yet, so long as her father lived, Ann"s childhood was happy. But her father, who had been a consumptive, also died when Ann was about seven years old. Then the family was broken up. The three step-sons went to seek their fortunes in New Zealand. The eldest step-daughter had been married and had gone to London a few months before her father"s death; the younger step-daughter went to live with that married sister. Ann and her step-mother were permitted to remain at the parsonage until the successor of Amos White could be appointed. At last the new curate came--a handsome and accomplished man--Rev. Raphael Rosslynn. He was a bachelor, without near relatives. He called on the Widow White and at once set her heart at ease by begging her not to trouble herself to leave the parsonage, but to remain there for the present at least, and take him as a boarder. He was perfectly frank with the lovely widow, and told her that he was engaged to his own cousin, and that as soon as he should get a living promised him on the death of the present inc.u.mbent, and which was worth twelve hundred pounds a year, he should marry, but that he could not allow himself to antic.i.p.ate happiness that must rise on a grave. But in the course of the year that which might have been expected happened, the young widow, who had never cared for her elderly first husband, fell desperately in love with her lodger, who was not very slow to respond, for her grace, beauty and allurements attracted, bewildered, and bedeviled him, so that he forgot or deplored his plighted vows to his good little cousin. To shorten the story, the cousin released him. In a few days the curate and the widow were married. Ann was utterly neglected, ignored, and forgotten. Her lessons, which, before the advent of the handsome curate, had been the widow"s care, were now suspended. Time went on, and these ardent lovers cooled off. Not that their youth or health or beauty waned; not at all; but that their illusions were fading. Yet, as often happens, as love cooled, jealousy warmed to life--each one conscious of indifference toward the other, yet resented a corresponding indifference in the other. As years went on, six children were born to this unhappy pair, whom not the Lord but the devil had joined together, and with their increasing family came increasing poverty. It was hard to support a growing household on one hundred pounds a year.
"In the seventh year of their marriage, in desperation, the Reverend Raphael advertised his ability and readiness to "prepare young men for college." He obtained but one pupil one Alfred Whyte, the son of a retired brewer. You perceive that he had the same surname with the young Ann, but it was spelled differently--with a _y_, instead of an _i_, as her name was. He seems to have been a fine, hearty, good natured young fellow, about twenty years of age, with a short, stout form, a round, red face, and dark eyes and hair. He hated study, but loved children, animals, and out-door sports. It was in the course of nature that he should fall in love with the fair fifteen-year-old beauty Ann White.
"She returned his affection because since her father"s death he was the only human being who had ever been kind to her. The first year that he spent at the parsonage was the happiest year Ann had ever known. Before it drew to an end, however, their happiness was clouded. The young man had over and over again a.s.sured the girl of his love for her, and at last he asked her to marry him. She consented. Then he wrote and asked permission of his father to wed the curate"s step-daughter.
"The answer might have been antic.i.p.ated. The purse-proud retired brewer, who had dreams of his only son and heir going into Parliament and marrying some impoverished n.o.bleman"s daughter, wrote two furious letters, one to his son, commanding his immediate return home, and another to the Rev. Raphael Rosslynn, reproaching him with having entrapped his pupil into an engagement with his pauper step-daughter.
"We can judge the effect of these letters upon the peace of the parsonage.
"The Reverend Raphael commanded his pupil into his presence, and after severely censuring him for his conduct in "betraying the confidence of the family who had received him into its bosom," he requested that Master Whyte should leave the house with all convenient speed.
"The youth urged that he had meant no harm and had done no harm, that he was honestly in love with the young lady, and had honestly asked leave to marry her, and that he certainly would marry her--
""Though mammy and daddy and all gang mad."
"Mr. Rosslynn referred him to his father"s letter and ordered him to depart. And then the reverend gentleman went to his wife"s room and bitterly reproached her that her forward girl had been the cause of his losing his pupil and eighty pounds a year.
"She told him that the fault was his own; that he should never have received a young man as a resident pupil in the house where there was a young girl.