Читать книгу Her Mother's Secret - Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth - Страница 18

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He promptly kept his word. He struck into the woods, made a short detour, and came out again upon the path some yards in front of Odalite and her guardian. Walking rapidly, he arrived at home before her.

He went immediately in search of Mrs. Force, whom he found at her piano in the drawing room.

“I must have a few moments uninterrupted conversation with you. Where can I best secure it?”

“Here,” she answered, wearily. “No one is likely to enter and disturb you.”

“Very well, then. Here be it,” he assented, walking down the room to a group of chairs near the open fire.

She arose and followed him.

As soon as they were seated he said:

“I have just left your daughter. I have made her an offer of my hand.”

“Well?”

“She refused it.”

“Just what you might have expected.”

“Thank you.”

“What next?”

“I am not a man to be repulsed. I pressed my suit with some earnest persistency.”

“And then?”

“She threatened to appeal to her father for protection against me.”

“Poor Odalite! Poor child!” murmured the unhappy mother.

“Poor idiot!” brutally exclaimed the man. “See here, madam, I shall insist upon this marriage. If she is permitted to appeal to her father at this point I shall be disappointed, but you will be lost. You must see the girl at once, before the return of her father this evening. You must induce her to accept me for her husband. She must be made to do so, or pretend to do so, willingly, joyfully. You know best what arguments to use with her. You must also persuade your husband to consent to the marriage, for the sake of his dear daughter’s happiness, you understand.”

“For the sake of his dear daughter’s ‘happiness’!” moaned Elfrida Force, in mournful irony.

“Yes. I repeat it. For the sake of her happiness. How, under existing circumstances, should her happiness be best preserved, do you think? By marrying that young naval officer, and seeing, as a consequence, the ruin and dishonor of her whole family, and, bitterest of all, being made to feel the shame and regret of her own young husband for having married her, the daughter of——”

“Wretch! hold your tongue!” exclaimed Elfrida Force, clasping her head with both hands.

“Or,” relentlessly continued the man, “would her happiness be best secured by marrying me, who, knowing the skeleton in the closet, accepts it with other family incumbrances, and keeps it closely locked up from the knowledge of all, since his honor is then also concerned in its concealment, and in the social rank and domestic peace of his new relations? Now, then, answer me. Which fate is to be preferred for your daughter?”

“Oh, demon! I think a marriage with you the worst possible fate that could befall my child. If she only were in question I would—oh, my Lord, how gladly!—lay her in her coffin rather than give her to you. But it is not of her that I am thinking most,” moaned the lady, almost unconsciously, as she bowed her weary head upon her hand.

No, nor was it over the child, but over the husband she was mourning—the adored husband—the proud, sensitive, honorable man, whose head would be bowed to the dust with shame at any reproach, however undeserved, that might fall upon his wife.

Who cannot foresee the result of such a contest? Before the end of the interview the mother had consented to offer up her child, that the wife might save her husband.

Angus Anglesea left the room triumphant.

Elfrida Force crept up to her bedchamber, opened a little medicine chest, took from it a small vial containing a colorless liquid, poured out a few drops in a wineglass half full of water, and drank off the sedative.

This was not the first occasion on which the unhappy lady had felt herself obliged to resort to deadening drugs to enable her to bear the presence of Angus Anglesea in the house.

Then she locked her medicine chest, and went down to the sitting room, and, calling a servant, said:

“Watch for Miss Odalite. She is out walking. As soon as she returns ask her to come immediately to me.”

“Miss Odalite is comin’, ma’am. I seen her just now a-comin’ froo de souf gate,” replied the negro boy.

“Then go and meet her, and ask her to come to me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the boy, darting out to do his errand.

In a few moments Odalite came in, looking anxiously at her mother.

“You sent for me, mamma. You are not well. Have you a headache?” she inquired, tenderly.

“No, darling, a heartache, rather. Lay off your bonnet and coat, Odalite, and come here and sit beside me on this sofa.”

Odalite obeyed, still full of vague forebodings.

“I hear, my love,” said the lady, putting her arm around the girl’s slight waist, as they sat together, “that a great honor has been offered you this morning.”

Odalite looked up, uneasily.

“Do you understand me, darling?” the lady inquired, gently pressing the form of her child, and gazing fondly in her face.

“I—I—think I know what you allude to, mamma; but—I did not consider it an honor,” faltered the girl, dropping her eyes.

“Col. Anglesea has offered you his hand. Is it not so?”

“Yes, mamma.”

“Col. Anglesea is a gentleman of the highest social position. I congratulate you, my darling.”

“But, mother! mother!” Odalite exclaimed in alarm. “I have declined Col. Anglesea’s offer!”

“Have you, my dear? Then you acted very hastily and inconsiderately. You will think better of it and accept it,” said the lady, very gravely.

“Oh, no, no, mamma! Never! never! How could I think of doing such a thing, when I am on the very eve of marriage with Le?”

“My daughter, you were too hasty in that matter also. That childish engagement—which was no binding one, after all—need not and must not prevent your forming a more desirable union with Col. Anglesea,” urged the lady, almost in the very words used by the colonel himself when pressing his suit with Odalite.

“Oh, mother! mother! surely you do not advocate——Oh, mother! mother! Spare me! Do not urge me into such a dreadful act!” exclaimed the girl, starting up in a wild excitement.

“Sit down and calm yourself, my dear child, and listen to me.”

Odalite threw herself on the sofa, and buried her face in its cushions.

“Col. Anglesea belongs to one of the noblest families in the north of England,” continued the lady. “He is a neighbor and friend of my father. He can give you a high position among the landed gentry of England.”

“But, oh, mother! dear mother! dear mother! I do not want a high position anywhere! and especially in a foreign country, where I should be separated from you and father and my little sisters!” sobbed the girl, with her face down in the cushions.

“But, my dear, you are very young, and you do not know what is good for you. I, your mother, so much older, so much more experienced, surely do know what is best for your happiness. And, Odalite, I have set my heart on your marriage with this gentleman. If you should persist in your rejection of his suit I should be more than disappointed; I should be deeply grieved; yes, grieved beyond measure, Odalite.”

This, and much more to the same purpose, was strongly and persistently urged by the mother, until Odalite, frightened, distressed and overwhelmed by her vehemence, earnestness and persistence, fell half conquered at the lady’s feet, with the cry that opened this story:

“Mother! oh, mother! it will break my heart!”

Yet not for that would the lady yield. And not for that did she pause. But after more caressings, more persuasion, and more arguments—seeing that nothing less than the knowledge of the dread secret which had blighted her own bright youth could ever win Odalite to consent to the only sacrifice through which that secret would be kept—the mother, as has been already told, drew her daughter off to the seclusion of her own bedchamber, where they remained shut up for two hours.

At the end of that time Odalite came out alone, looking, oh! so changed, as if the bright and blooming girl of sixteen had suddenly become a sad and weary woman.

With her face pale and drawn, her forehead puckered into painful furrows, her eyes red and sunken, her lips shrunken down at the corners, her head bent, her form bowed, her steps feeble, she went like a woman walking in her sleep, straight down the stairs, down the hall and through the front door to the piazza, where she found Col. Anglesea walking slowly up and down the floor and smoking.

At her approach he threw away his cigar and turned to meet her, eager expectation on his face.

She went and stood before him, and said, with a strange, cold steadiness:

“Col. Anglesea, I have come to tell you that you may go to my father and ask his permission for you to marry me. You may also say to him, from me, that I hope he will give his consent, because—it will be a fiendish falsehood; but never mind that; you can tell it—because the marriage will secure my happiness.”