“But,” I cried, my romance a little dampened by this admission, “you tell me Mr. Clavering has enough to live upon, so you would not want; and if you love——”
Her violet eyes fairly flashed in her amazement.
“You don’t understand,” she said; “Mr. Clavering is not poor, but uncle is rich. I shall be a queen——” There she paused, trembling and falling on my breast. “Oh, it sounds mercenary, I know,” she sobbed, “but it is the fault of my bringing up. I have been taught to worship money. I would be utterly lost without it. And yet”—her whole face softening with the light of another emotion, “I cannot say to Henry Clavering: ‘Go! I love my riches better than you!’ I cannot, oh, I cannot.”
“You love him, then,” said I, determined to get at the truth of the matter if possible.
She rose restlessly. “Isn’t that a proof of love? If you knew me you would say it was.” And, turning, she took her stand before a picture that hung on the wall of my sitting room.
“That looks like me,” she said.
It was one of a good pair of photographs I possessed.
“Yes,” I remarked, “that is why I prize it.”
She did not seem to hear me; she was absorbed in gazing at the exquisite face before her. “That is a winning face,” I heard her say. “Sweeter than mine. I wonder if she would ever hesitate between love and money. I do not believe she would,” her own countenance growing gloomy and sad as she said so, “she would think only of the happiness she would confer; she is not hard like me; Eleanore herself would love this girl.”
I think she had forgotten my presence, for at the mention of her cousin’s name, she turned quickly round with a half-suspicious look, saying lightly:
“My dear old Mamma Hubbard looks horrified. She did not know she had such a very unromantic little wretch for a listener, when she was telling all those wonderful stories of Love slaying dragons, and living in caves, and walking over burning plowshares as if they were tufts of spring grass, did she?”
“No,” I said, taking her by an irresistible impulse of admiring affection into my arms, “but if I had, it would have made no difference. I should still have talked about love, and of all it can do to make this weary workaday world sweet and delightful.”
“Would you? Then you do not think me such a wretch?” What could I say? I thought her the winsomest being in the world, and frankly told her so. Instantly she brightened into her very gayest self. Not that I thought then, much less do I think now, that she particularly cared for my good opinion; but her nature demanded admiration and unconsciously blossomed under it, as a flower under the sunshine.
“And you will still let me come and tell you how bad I am—that is, if I go on being bad, as I doubtless shall to the end of the chapter? You will not turn me off?”
“I will never turn you off”
“Not if I should do a dreadful thing? Not if I should run away with my lover some fine night, and leave Uncle to discover how ill his affectionate partiality had been requited?”
It was lightly said, and lightly meant, for she did not even wait for my reply. But its seed sank deep into our two hearts for all that. And for two days I spent my time in planning how I should manage if it should ever fall to my lot to conduct to a successful issue so enthralling a piece of business as an elopement. You may imagine, then, how delighted I was, when one evening Hannah, this unhappy girl who is now lying dead under my roof, and who was occupying the position of lady’s maid to Miss Mary Leavenworth at that time, came to my door with a note from her mistress, running thus:
Have the loveliest story of the season ready for me tomorrow; and let the prince be as handsome as—as someone you have heard of, and the princess as foolish as your little yielding pet,
MARY.
Which short note could only mean that she was engaged. But morning-light did not bring my Mary, nor noontide, nor evening. The next day came and went, but beyond hearing that Mr. Leavenworth had returned—he had been away traveling—I received neither word nor token. Two more days dragged by, when just as twilight set in she came. It had been a week since I had seen her, but it might have been a year by the change I observed in her countenance and expression. I could scarcely greet her, with any show of pleasure, she was so unlike her former self.
“You are disappointed, are you not?” said she, looking at me. “You expected revelations, whispered hopes, and all manner of sweet confidences, and you see, instead, a cold, bitter woman, who, for the first time in your presence, feels inclined to be reserved and uncommunicative.”
“That is because you have had more to trouble than encourage you in your love,” I returned, though not without a certain shrinking caused more by her manner than words.
She did not reply to this, but rose and paced the floor; coldly at first, but afterward with a certain degree of excitement that proved to be the prelude to a change in her manner, for suddenly pausing she turned to me and said: “Mr. Clavering has left R——, Mrs. Belden.”
“Left!”
“Yes, my uncle commanded me to dismiss him, and I obeyed.”
The work dropped from my hands, in my heartfelt disappointment. “Ah! then he knows of your engagement to Mr. Clavering?”
“Yes; he had not been in the house five minutes before Eleanore told him.”
“Then she knew?”
“Yes”; with a half-sigh. “She could hardly help it. I was foolish enough to give her the cue in my first moment of joy and weakness. I did not think of the consequences; but I might have known. She is so conscientious.”
“I do not call it conscientiousness to tell another’s secrets,” I returned.
“That is because you are not Eleanore.”
Not having a reply for this, I said: “And so your uncle did not regard your engagement with favor?”
“Favor? Did I not tell you he would never allow me to marry an Englishman? He said he would sooner see me buried.”
“And you yielded? Made no struggle? Let the hard, cruel man have his way?”
She was walking off to look again at that picture which had attracted her attention the time before, but at this word gave me one little sidelong look that was inexpressibly suggestive.
“I obeyed him when he commanded, if that is what you mean.”
“And dismissed Mr. Clavering after having given him your word of honor to be his wife?”
“Why not, when I found I could not keep my word?”
“Then you have decided not to marry him?”
She did not reply at once, but lifted her face mechanically to the picture.
“My uncle would tell you that I had decided to be governed wholly by his wishes,” she responded at last with what I felt was self-scornful bitterness.
Greatly disappointed, I burst into tears: “Oh, Mary!” I cried, “Oh, Mary!” and instantly blushed, startled that I had called her by her first name.
But she did not appear to notice.
“Have you any complaint to make?” she asked. “Is it not my manifest duty to be governed by my uncle’s wishes? Has he not brought me up from childhood? lavished every luxury upon me? made me all I am, even to the love of riches which he has instilled into my soul with every gift he has thrown into my lap, every word he has dropped in my ear, since I was old enough to know what riches meant? Is it for me now to turn my back upon fostering care so wise, beneficent, and free, just because a man whom I have known some two weeks chances to offer me in exchange what he pleases to call his love?”
“But,” I feebly essayed, convinced perhaps by the tone of sarcasm in which this was uttered that she was not far from my way of thinking after all, “if in two weeks you have learned to love this man more than everything else, even the riches which make your uncle’s favor a thing of such moment——”
“Well?” said she, “what then?”
“Why, then I would say, secure your happiness with the man of your choice if you have to marry him in secret, trusting to your influence ov
er your uncle to win the forgiveness he never can persistently deny.”
You should have seen the arch expression which stole across her face at that. “Would it not be better,” she asked, creeping to my arms and laying her head on my shoulder; “would it not be better for me to make sure of that uncle’s favor first, before undertaking the hazardous experiment of running away with a too ardent lover?” Struck by her manner, I lifted her face and looked at it. It was one amused smile.
“Oh, my darling,” said I, “you have not, then, dismissed Mr. Clavering?”
“I have sent him away,” she whispered demurely.
“But not without hope?”
She burst into a ringing laugh. “Oh, you dear old Mamma Hubbard, what a matchmaker you are to be sure! You appear as much interested as if you were the lover himself.”
“But tell me,” I urged.
In a moment her serious mood returned. “He will wait for me,” said she.
The next day I submitted to her the plan I had formed for her clandestine intercourse with Mr. Clavering. It was for them both to assume names, she taking mine as one less liable to provoke conjecture than a strange name, and he that of Le Roy Robbins. The plan pleased her, and with the slight modification of a secret sign being used on the envelope to distinguish her letters from mine, was at once adopted.
And so it was I took the fatal step that has involved me in all this trouble. With the gift of my name to this young girl to use as she would and sign what she would, I seemed to part with what was left me of judgment and discretion. Henceforth I was only her scheming, planning, devoted slave, now copying the letters which she brought me and enclosing them to the false name we had agreed upon, and now busying myself in devising ways to forward to her those which I received from him, without risk of discovery. Hannah was usually the medium we employed for this, as Mary felt that it would not be wise in her to come too often to my house. To this girl’s charge, then, I gave such notes as I could not forward in any other way, secure in the reticence of her nature as well as in her inability to read, that these letters addressed to Mrs. Amy Belden would arrive at their proper destination without mishap. And I believe they always did. At all events no difficulty that I ever heard of arose out of the use of this girl as a go-between.
But a change was at hand. Mr. Clavering, who had left an invalid mother in England, suddenly received notice that she was very ill and requested his immediate return. He prepared to obey the summons, but flushed with love, distracted by doubts, smitten with the fear that once withdrawn from the neighborhood of a woman so universally courted as Mary, he would stand small chance of retaining his position in her regard, he wrote to her, telling his fears and asking her to marry him before he went.
“Make me once your husband and I will follow your wishes in all things,” he wrote. “The certainty that you are mine will make parting possible; without it I cannot go, no, not if my mother should die without the comfort of saying good-bye to her only child.”
By some chance she was in my house when I brought this letter from the post office, and I shall never forget how she started when she read it. But from looking as if she had received an insult, she speedily settled down into a calm consideration of the subject, writing and delivering into my charge for copying a few lines in which she promised to accede to his request, if he would agree to leave the public declaration of the marriage to her discretion and consent to bid her farewell at the door of the church or wherever the ceremony of marriage should take place, never to come into her presence again till such declaration had been made. Of course this brought in a couple of days the sure response. “Anything so you will be mine.” And Amy Belden’s wits and powers of planning were all summoned into requisition for the second time, to devise how this matter could be arranged without subjecting the parties to the chance of detection. I found the thing very difficult. In the first place it was essential that the marriage should come off within three days, Mr. Clavering having upon the receipt of her letter secured his passage upon a steamer that sailed on the following Saturday; and next both he and Miss Leavenworth were too conspicuous in their personal appearance to make it at all possible for them to be married without remark, anywhere within gossiping distance of this place. And yet it was desirable that the scene of the ceremony should not be too far away, or the time occupied in effecting the journey to and from the place would necessitate an absence from the hotel on the part of Miss Leavenworth long enough to arouse the suspicions of Eleanore; something which Mary felt it wiser to avoid. Her uncle, I have forgotten to say, was not here—having gone off traveling again, shortly after the apparent dismissal of Mr. Clavering. F——, then, was the only town I could think of which combined the two advantages of distance and accessibility. Although upon railroad, it was an insignificant place, and had what was better yet, a very obscure man for its clergyman, living, which was best of all, not ten rods from the station. If they could meet there? Making inquiries, I found that it could be done, and all alive to the romance of the occasion, proceeded to plan the details.
And now I am coming to what might have caused the overthrow of the whole scheme; I allude to the detection on the part of Eleanore of the correspondence between Mary and Mr. Clavering. It happened thus. Hannah, who in her goings back and forth had grown very fond of my society, had come in to sit with me for a while one evening. She had not been in the house, however, more than three minutes before there came a knock at the front door, and going to it I saw, as I supposed, Mary, from the long cloak she wore, standing before me. Thinking she had come with a letter for Mr. Clavering, I grasped her arm and drew her into the hall, saying: “Have you got it? I must post it tonight or he will not receive it in time.” There I paused, for the panting creature I had by the arm turning upon me, I saw that it was a stranger.
“You have made a mistake,” she cried. “I am Eleanore Leavenworth, and I have come for my girl Hannah. Is she here?”
I could only raise my hand in apprehension and point to the girl sitting in the corner of the room before her. Miss Leavenworth immediately turned back.
“Hannah, I want you,” said she, and would have left the house without another word, but I caught her by the arm.
“Oh, miss——” I began, but she gave me such a look, I dropped her arm as if it had been hot steel.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she cried in a low, thrilling voice. “Do not detain me.” And with a glance to see if Hannah were following her, she went out.
For an hour I sat crouched on the stair just where she had left me. Then I went to bed, but I did not sleep a wink that night. You can imagine, then, my wonder, when with the first glow of the early morning light, Mary, looking more beautiful than ever, came running up the steps and into the room where I was with the letter for Mr. Clavering trembling in her hand.
“Oh!” I cried in my joy and relief, “didn’t she understand me, then?”
The gay look on Mary’s face turned to one of reckless scorn. “If you mean Eleanore, yes. She is duly initiated, Mamma Hubbard; knows that I love Mr. Clavering and write to him. I couldn’t keep it secret after the mistake you made last evening, so I did the next best thing, told her the truth.”
“Not that you were about to be married?”
“Certainly not. I don’t believe in unnecessary communications.”
“And you did not find her as angry as you expected?”
“I will not say that; she was angry enough. And yet”—continued Mary with a burst of self-scornful penitence, “I will not call Eleanore’s loftly indignation, anger. She was grieved, Mamma Hubbard, grieved.” And with a laugh that I believe was rather the result of her own relief than of any wish to reflect on her cousin, she threw her head on one side and eyed me with a look which seemed to say: “Do I plague you so very much, you dear old Mamma Hubbard?”
She did plague me and I could not conceal it. “And will she not tell your uncle?” I gasped.
The naïve expression on Mary�
�s face quickly changed. “No,” said she.
I felt a heavy hand hot with fever lifted from my heart. “And we can still go on?”
She held out the letter for reply.
The plan agreed upon between us for the carrying out of our intentions was this. At the time appointed, Mary was to excuse herself to her cousin upon the plea that she had promised to take me to see a friend in the next town. She was then to enter a buggy previously ordered and drive here, where I was to join her. We were then to proceed immediately to the minister’s house in F——, where we had reason to believe we should find everything prepared for us. But in this plan, simple as it was, one thing was forgotten, and that was the character of Eleanore’s love for her cousin. That she would suspect something was wrong we did not doubt, but that she would actually follow her up and demand an explanation of her conduct was what neither she who knew her so well, nor I who knew her so little, ever imagined possible. And yet that was just what occurred. But let me explain. Mary, who had followed out the program to the point of leaving a little note of excuse on Eleanore’s dressing-table, had come to my house and was just taking off her long cloak to show me her dress, when there came a commanding knock at the front door. Hastily pulling her cloak about her I ran to open it, intending, you may be sure, to dismiss my visitor with short ceremony, when I heard a voice behind me say, “Good Heavens, it is Eleanore!” and glancing back, saw Mary looking through the window-blind upon the porch without.
“What shall I do!” cried I, shrinking back.
“Do? why, open the door and let her in; I am not afraid of Eleanore.”
I immediately did so, and Eleanore Leavenworth, very pale but with a resolute countenance, walked into the house and into this room, confronting Mary in very nearly the same spot where you are now sitting. “I have come,” said she, lifting a face whose expression of mingled sweetness and power I could not but admire even in that moment of apprehension, “to ask you, without any excuse for my request, if you will allow me to accompany you upon your drive this morning?”
The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics) Page 28