Читать книгу Magdalen's Vow - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 5
ОглавлениеTHE DEAD SISTER'S LETTER.
Through the gray gloom of another dull October day the scant funeral procession left the cottage, and took their way to the village churchyard. The coffin plate told the dead girl's mournful but too common history:
Laura Allward. Aged 18.
Laura Allward! And her baby wailed in old Rachel's faithful arms. That was why only one or two elderly matrons came near the cottage, and why such a handful of men followed the hearse, gloomily, to the grave!
It was not customary in that little New England village for women to attend funerals, but Magdalen Allward, with a thick veil over her face, and a heavy shawl drawn around her slender form, followed her sister to the grave. Curious eyes peeped from closed windows to scan that black-draped, girlish figure, and heads shook ominously, and croaking voices hoped she might come to a good end. But they doubted it—these good people; the taint of her sister's shame, her brother's disgrace, would cling to her like a garment of fire, through life.
The sods rattled down on the coffin lid, the men stood by with bare heads. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and then the sexton, blue and cold, in the bleak October weather, filled up the grave in a hurry, and slapped briskly on the sods. And all the time the veiled figure of the lonely girl stood apart, forlorn and shivering in the raw blasts. One by one the men straggled away and left her there, as desolate and forsaken a creature as the whole world held.
The new-made grave was under a clump of melancholy fir trees, worried by the high wind, and writhing like things in human agony. Side by side lay two others, sacred to the memory of John Allward and his wife Helen, but forever and ever that new-made grave must lie nameless.
Magdalen Allward looked up with a shiver at the low-lying sky, gray and desolate as her young life, and slowly, slowly turned away at last. Heaven knows what her thoughts had been while she stood there, alone among the dead, alone among the living, and felt that one man had wrought all this misery, and disgrace, and death. Her veiled face kept her secret well, as she walked wearily homeward through the windy twilight.
Rachel sat before the fire, holding the baby, and crooning softly as she rocked it asleep. Magdalen threw back her veil, stooped and kissed it.
"Then you are not going to dislike it," the nurse said, looking relieved. "I was afraid you would."
"Dislike it! Dislike a little babe!"
"You know what I mean, dear—for that villain's sake."
Magdalen rose up suddenly, her face darkening vindictively.
"You are right; I ought to hate it—spawn of a viper—as I hate him! But, no; it is Laura's baby; I will try and like it, for Laura's sake. I am going to my room now, Rachel. I am worn out. No, I want nothing but rest. Good night."
She quitted the room, ascended to her own, with slow, weary steps, undressed, and then threw herself upon the bed. Worn out she surely was, and scarcely had her head touched the pillow than she was asleep—the sound, blessed sleep of youth and health.
It was almost noon next day when she came down-stairs. Breakfast awaited her and in dark silence and moody she ate it. As she arose from the table she said:
"Rachel, where is the letter Laura left for me?"
Rachel produced it at once. A thick letter, in a buff envelope, sealed and addressed:
To My Sister Magdalen. To be read when I am buried.
Magdalen stood silently gazing at the familiar handwriting for a few moments, then, silently still, she turned and walked out of the kitchen. Rachel looked after her uneasily.
"She is going to read it in her own room. Poor child! I hope it may not distress her much. Her troubles are too heavy for her sixteen years."
Rachel was mistaken; she was not going to read it in her own room. She came down presently dressed for a walk, holding the letter in her hand.
"Where are you going with that letter, Magdalen?" the old woman asked, in alarm.
The girl paused on the threshold to answer her.
"I am going to read Laura's letter beside Laura's grave. It will seem like her voice speaking to me from the dead."
Magdalen could not have chosen a more secluded or lonely spot. Shut in by firs and hemlock, a place where no one ever came, save on a sunny Sunday afternoon, she was not likely to be disturbed. On a rustic bench, under the gloomy firs, she sat down, threw back her veil and reverently opened the letter. It was long and closely written, and there, by the writer's grave, seemed indeed a voice from the dead. Magdalen read:
My Dearest Sister:
When you read this the grave will have closed over me, and—and when you know the whole truth you may learn at least to think pityingly of the dead sister who has blighted your young life, but who has been more "sinned against than sinning." It is a little more than a year ago, and yet what a century of sin and misery it seems. My little Magdalen! my pretty, gentle, golden-haired sister! How little I thought when I kissed you good-by, that sunny September morning, it would be good-by forever and ever.
Rachel will tell you how I left home—she can tell you no more. Not how I loved Maurice Langley; not how I believed in him; not how I trusted him. He was the veriest hero of romance—the prince of my silly girlish dreams—and I loved him madly, after the fashion of foolish, novel-reading girls, and thought the sunshine of heaven not half so bright as his smile. And he—oh, Magdalen; it was easy for him—false to the core of his deceitful heart—to take me in his arms, and make me think I was all the world to him. I listened and I trusted, and was wrapt in ecstasy—delirious with love and delight—and like plastic wax in the hands of a molder, I heard his plausible story, and I believed it as I believed the Scriptures. It must be a secret marriage, or a total separation. His parents would never consent to an open marriage, and my father would never consent to a clandestine one. So I must fly. Separation to me was worse than death. I consented to anything—everything—rather than that.
He arranged it all that night, with the ready facility, I know now, of one well used to such deception. In two days he would start for New York—make all necessary arrangements—I was to follow, and join him there. A clergyman, a college friend of his, would perform the ceremony within an hour of my arrival, and then no more partings from his darling Laura in this lower world. Oh, never did Satan, in tempting Eve, paint the forbidden fruit in more dazzling colors than did my tempter in alluring me.
Magdalen, I consented. I left my home—my father—all that was dear to me in this world, for my lover.
I reached New York. He was there as I left the cars, impatiently awaiting me, for he loved me then, with a fierce, impetuous love—too burning to last. And he kept his promise—within the hour a marriage ceremony took place. A clergyman, white-haired and venerable, married us at the hotel, without witnesses, and immediately departed. I had no doubts of its validity—no thought of any horrible fraud. I was his wife, or death by torture would not have kept me by his side one moment, dearly as I loved him.
We lived in the hotel, quiet and retired, and I was unutterably happy, unutterably blessed. There was but one drawback to my perfect joy—he would not let me write home. And that refusal was the forerunner—the first of the misery that was to come. It came soon—very soon—bitter and heavy. Indifference began—coldness, neglect, cruelty. He left me alone, day after day, night after night. When he did return it was always brutally drunk, and in drunkenness the truth came out. The man I had married was a professed gambler.
After that bitter blow the others followed fast. Coldness and cruelty turned to loathing and hate. I was a nuisance and a burden to him. He wished he had never seen me; he was a fool for encumbering himself with a white-faced, pitiful, whimpering cry-baby. He took me from the hotel and placed me in a shabby boarding-house, reeking with foul smells and loathing sights; he swore at me when he came home reeling, beastly drunk, and often, often Magdalen, maddened with liquor and losses, he struck me. It was after that Willie came. They met and Maurice obtained his old ascendency over Willie's weak mind. He could be so agreeable, so delightful, so fascinating, when he chose. He brought Willie home, apologizing in his laughing way for our Bohemian lodgings, and, knowing well I would never betray him. God knows I tried to save Willie. I warned him. I did what I could, but it was all in vain. In a few months he was in a felon's cell, for forgery. It was through an anonymous letter the news reached me first, written in a man's hand, very brief, but full of appalling facts. Maurice Langley was the most worthless of all worthless scoundrels, false and corrupt to the core of his heart. His name was not Langley; that name was as false as the dyed hair and mustache he wore to disguise himself. I was not his wife—that ceremony in the hotel was the most contemptible of shams; he had a bona-fide wife living before he ever saw me, and living still—deserted. I had been fooled from the first to last. If I doubted the charges, let me show the letter to Langley, and let him disprove them if he dare.
I did not doubt. Conviction, strong as death, seized upon me from the first. I was so stunned by repeated blows that I sat in a sort of numb despair, hardly conscious that I suffered. A horrible stupor held me—I sat without a tear or groan, waiting for my betrayer to come.
He came some time before midnight, drunk as usual, reeling into the room, singing a vulgar song. I rose up and put the letter in his hand, without saying a word. He read it through and burst out with an oath: "That scoundrel, Burns, I always knew he would peach! Well, my girl, it's all true, and now what are you going to do about it?"
I stood there before him and looked him straight in the face until he quailed. I never spoke a word. I went over to the bed where my shawl and bonnet lay and put them on.
"Where are you going?" he said.
"I am going home."
I don't know what there was in my face that awed and sobered him. I dare say he thought me mad. He kept aloof, very pale, watching me.
"It's the middle of the night, Laura," he said, "don't go. Wait until morning."
I heard him, as we hear people talking in a dream. I never heeded—I opened the door and walked out into a blind, black night, as wretched a creature as ever trod the pave.
I wandered about until morning. I think I was light-headed. There was a mad, reckless longing in my half-crazed brain to go home—to fall at my father's feet, to sob out my sin and die. How I got to the station, how I knew enough to take my ticket and start on my journey, I cannot tell. It is all confused and bewildering. The first distinct impression I had was of being face to face with Rachel, and hearing her say my father was dead.
I have no more to tell—my story and my life are done.
You will think as pityingly and as forgivingly of me as you can, and if my child lives you will take its dead mother's place. Never let its father look on it if you can prevent it—he is my murderer—your father's—Willie's. I cannot forgive him—I cannot! I am dying and I cannot.
Farewell, my sister; may your life be as happy as mine has been miserable. I leave this record in justice to myself. Don't hate poor Laura's memory when she is gone.
There the letter ended. Magdalen looked up, whiter than snow—whiter than death. The twilight had fallen, the stars swung silver-white, the young moon shimmered on the edge of an opal-tinted sky, and the evening wind sighed forlornly among the melancholy firs. The girl dropped the letter, fell on her knees by her sister's grave, and, clasping her hands, held up her pale face to the starry sky.
"Hear me, oh God!" she cried, "hear the vow of a desolate orphan—of a blighted and ruined life! From this hour I swear to devote myself to the discovery of my sister's murderer—to the avenging of my sister's wrongs. Thou who hast said, 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life,' hear me, and help me to keep my vow!"
She dropped down, her colorless, rigid face, lying on Laura's grave as if waiting some response to her wild appeal. But no sound responded—only the dreary wailing of the cold October wind over the lonely graves.
