Chapter XXVI: Remorse

“Who then to hope and gladness shall restore.
That which our evil rashness hath undone?
Who unto mystic harmony once more
Attune those broken chords?”--HEMANS.

To Vivian, whom he had summoned immediately to her father’s bedside, Charlton gave no intimation of nature of the shock that had stricken down this gracious, kindly life.

The shock of her affections was so terrible in itself that it seemed to her brother the additional knowledge of her husband’s crime must have ended the sad young life.

He bore her fainting form from the room of death, and left her to the care of sympathizing women, who came from their rooms with one accord and vied with each other in kindly efforts to revive and comfort the bereaved daughter.

Later in the day Earle Essex, unconscious that his sin had found him out, came to the hotel to offer condolences. Charlton felt a thrill of bitter anger and indignation as he pushed aside the offered hand of his brother-in-law.

“Essex,” the young man said, bitterly, “spare your deceitful words. Words of condolence are wasted between you and me. I know the worthlessness of your protestations. I took your measure long ago. Yonder, across the hall, behind that closed door, lies a despairing woman, broken in heart, in health, in hope, the mere wreck of my once beautiful happy sister. Here in this casket lies a man doubly wronged, doubly outraged, struck down to death by a villain’s crime. Man, it is your fiendish work. Go! I spare you the terrors of the law you have broken, for the sake of my sister and her innocent child, but never let me look upon your face again. Go now before I curse you for your sin.”

He opened the door, pointed to it in chilling silence, and Essex, cowering beneath the blaze of those scornful blue eyes, slunk like a beaten cur out of the room of death.

He paused then, and looked at that door across the hall where Charlton had said his sister was lying--“broken in heart, in health, in hope.” He put his hand before his eyes in a bewildered way, and memory evoked a vision from the vanished past--a fair and radiant girl leaning lightly on her lover’s arm. How noble and happy they had looked, Vivian and her fair-faced lover, on the night of the birthday ball. As he looked back through the vista of years upon the pair whom his jealous love and wicked scheming had driven so widely apart, the one of an exile in the foreign land, the other “broken in heart, in health, and hope,” a pang of sudden remorse pierced his heart, and he felt keenly how lightly he had valued the prize he had sacrificed so much to win, and how coldly he had chosen his own sinful pleasures, and blighted Vivian’s happiness.

Ah, it is true that if there be “a devil in man there is an angel, too,” and for a moment as that sinner stood between those two closed rooms, within whose doors lay on one side the man he had robbed of wealth and life, and on the other the woman he had robbed of health and happiness, he seemed to hear faintly in his soul a voice unheard for years! The voice of awakened conscience, the good angel of our lives, crying loudly to his hardened heart, “Repent ye!”

He pushed open the door very softly, and found Vivian all alone, lying prostrate on the velvet carpet, sobbing in an agony of hopeless grief, her dark curling tresses flowing loose, like a torrent about her wasted form. At the sight there came over him, with a wild rush, something of the old passionate love he had felt for her before the rosy bloom of youth had faded, washed away by scalding tears.

“My poor little wife, let me take you up and put you on the bed,” he murmured, tenderly, but she only shrank from him.

“Go away, Earle. You cannot comfort me,” she moaned, despairingly, and with a thrill of despair he realized the truth of her words. It was his cruel hand that had poured the cup of her sorrow full to overflowing.

She turned her face away from him in mute despair, and he felt that his presence was an intrusion upon the sacredness of her sorrow. He had no right by her side, he who had become her husband by a fraud, who had murdered her happiness, and slain her father.

“Does she know it,” he wondered. “No, for Charlton said he would spare me, for her sake and the child’s. What if I make an effort to reform, and retrieve my sinful past? I will, I will. I will go and sign the temperance pledge to-day, and try to get work like an honest man, and support my family,” and full of this new resolve for good he stole out of the room.

* * * * *

The funeral is over. Friends from far and near have gathered to pay the last sad tribute of respect to the departed. The long aisles of St. Paul’s have echoed the solemn steps of his bearers, the heavy hearts of the mourners have taken what comfort they could from those impressive words, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

“Dust to dust” has been spoken above Judge Leigh’s grave, the bitter tears of the mourners have rained upon the sod, and in the calm shades of Hollywood they leave him sleeping beside the fair young wife who went before him years ago to the spirit-land.

The trite proverb that “Misfortunes never come singly” proves itself true in the case of the Leighs. A few weeks only elapse before the whole country thrills with horror at the awful news of the wreck of the Hesperus in mid ocean, with the total loss of all on board.

It is the steamer on which the Van Dysarts and the Vernes had taken passage for home--alas, for their eternal home! for the blue deeps of ocean received their bodies in its vast wandering embrace, and their imperishable souls fled to the God who gave them.

Charlton bears the sad news to Vivian in her poor little home, and holds her gently in his arms while she weeps bitter tears for the beloved sister she will see no more until they meet “as disembodied spirits in the fields of ether.”

“Oh, Charlton, it should have been me!” she cries. “Not Musa! She had love and happiness to bind her to earth, but my life is so empty I long to be at rest!”

What can he say to the wail of this poor, tortured heart? Not one word, but his arms fold her close in silent sympathy, and he lets her weep until she is weary. There is relief in tears.