Читать книгу Marked "Personal" - Anna Katharine Green - Страница 12

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Stanhope did not notice this parcel until after Josephine had gone. He was so intent upon regaining the self-possession of which the unexpected and not altogether welcome entrance of his father’s widow had robbed him, that he had but little thought to spare for any such small details. But when his inner calmness was restored, and he turned to face the drooping figure awaiting him near the doorway, and saw that her whole attention was fixed upon a small white package which she held doubtfully in her hand, he remembered the look with which Josephine had gone out of the room, and said to himself before Mrs. White had spoken, “This is the parcel Josephine carried to the Westminster!” adding in secret amaze the inner questions, “How came it here? And why do we see it again in the hands of Mrs. White?”

It was the young widow’s errand to answer these questions.

“See,” she cried, trembling visibly as she laid the parcel on the table beside them, “what has just been sent me from the Westminster Hotel. It was left there for me yesterday, and the proprietor, hearing of our trouble, has just returned it. It was directed to him on the outside, but on the inside—look!” She pointed to the box from which she had suddenly torn the wrapper, and he saw there written in his father’s well-known hand:

Mrs. Samuel White,

Westminster Hotel.

“From your father,” she whispered. “Sent before we were married; sent in that hour in which you saw such a change take place in him. I dare not open it.”

Stanhope felt an equal shrinking, but what he said was:

“How came it to be sent to the Westminster Hotel? I thought you intended to go South.”

“We did, but we had planned to stop at the Westminster till I was thoroughly rested.”

Stanhope’s face lightened.

“Then he still intended to go there when he sent this. Open it, Mrs. White; it may end our doubts forever.”

But she only drew back still further. “I cannot,” she protested; “the presence of death is upon it. Open it for me, Mr. White. I have no power to do it myself.”

Without another word he took the box in his hand, and tearing off the inner cover revealed a small velvet casket whose worn edges betrayed at once the fact that it was no longer new. At the sight an exclamation escaped Stanhope, and something like a flush mounted to his brow.

“I have seen this before,” he exclaimed in a low voice; and he laid it reverently down with the added exclamation: “It used to hold jewels that were my mother’s.”

The young woman before him uttered a sudden cry. “Your mother’s?” she repeated in awe-struck tones, shrinking from it with dilating eyes. “Oh, why should he send them to me?”

“The case — I speak of the case,” he declared; “the jewels that it contains may be new.”

“I—I cannot touch it,” she faltered. “I would rather never see what it holds. It was meant as an—”

But he had already touched the spring which held down the lid of the case before him, and the brooch and ear-rings thus disclosed were of so old-fashioned a make that she had no need to lift her eyes to his to be assured that not only the case but the jewels themselves were those he had been accustomed to see in his childhood.

“I do not understand it,” she declared, somewhat proudly, her dark eyes flashing with a new expression not far removed from defiance; “he had already given me jewels—diamonds—which I must have had on at the very moment he was writing my name upon these. Did he think—”

“This will tell you what he thought,” interrupted

Stanhope, passing her a little note which he had found wedged into the open lid of the casket.

He had feared she would make an objection to reading these words of her dead bridegroom, but she did not; the defiance of the moment giving her the courage she had lacked before. As her eye passed over the few words contained in the note thus given her, he could hardly restrain his own anxiety as to their purport; but when the last word had been read she raised her head, and he saw, for the first time since that fatal shot was heard, the glisten of tears on her lashes. He felt such a revulsion of hope that he staggered, and with difficulty heard her as she cried:

“I was not worthy to be his wife. Read, Mr. White, read; for after this we can never doubt again that his death was accidental.”

But Stanhope was now the more agitated of the two, and several minutes passed before his eye could make out the words which his father had written. When he did,—this was what he read:

“To My Dearly Loved Flora:

“These jewels, which were once worn by Stanhope’s mother, I present to you on this day of our marriage, not because of their value or inherent beauty, but because I know of no other token that would express so deeply both the admiration and the respect which I feel for the woman I have chosen to take that place in my heart occupied till now by the wife of my youth. May you wear them once a year upon this day, if only to show that you appreciate the feeling which influenced me in this the dearest gift which I could make you.”

“It was a strange thing to do,” came from Flora’s lips, when she perceived that Stanhope had finished the lines. “But it lifts a heavy weight from my heart, and makes it possible for me to weep. I can never wear them, though,” she declared, as Stanhope mechanically lifted the casket to look again at the gems which brought back to him such a rush of memories. “You had better put them away yourself. They belong to you by right, and it is fitter that they should remain in your possession than in mine.”

For answer he closed the casket and thrust it into the pocket of his vest. “I thank you,” said he. “My mother’s memory is very dear to me. She was a noble woman.”

Flora, whose aspect had undergone a great change in the last few moments, surveyed him for an instant with rapidly filling but very earnest eyes.

“Will you not be happier now?” she asked.

The reply he made was sudden as the resolve from which it evidently sprung.

“Yes. I will take this letter, which you have just been good enough to show me, as proof positive that we misunderstood my father’s emotions and the cause of his sudden end. So far from anticipating death, it was life he was looking forward to, and a life with you.”

The word seemed both to hurt and to relieve her, but she tried not to show the conflict of her feelings as she moved slowly back toward the door. “We shall not meet again,” she suggested, “till after the funeral,” and waited just an instant, to see if he had anything to say to her before she went. But he gave no sign of an intention, much less of a wish, to speak; and she, with a faint sigh, too faint to be heard by him even if he had been listening for it, turned away and disappeared quietly from the room.