Chapter LX

When Mr. Delaney’s physician came next day he declared that his patient was not as well as he had expected to find him. He looked apprehensive over him.

“What have they been doing to you?” he asked, brusquely.

“I have had the best of care, doctor,” Mr. Delaney answered.

The old physician looked at him, curiously. The dark, handsome face was grave, and there was a settled sadness on it. But the tone, more than the words, struck the physician. A heartache ran drearily through it.

“You are fretting over something,” he said. “Come, Delaney, this will not do. You will never get well at this rate.”

Oran Delaney only smiled, but he said to himself that he did not greatly care. He had long been tired of his life. What matter how soon the end came. There would be no one to grieve for him, except his faithful old nurse. He thought of Mr. Rodney, but he said to himself that no jury in this southern land would convict him even if his victim died. All would think him justified in avenging his daughter.

That day Mr. Delaney made his will. He left Mrs. Griffin a comfortable legacy, left a large sum of money to take care of the maniac, Julie Sanson, if she was ever found, and the residue of his large fortune he bequeathed unconditionally to Aline Rodney.

And then he said to himself that he was ready to die. He had provided the best he could for the future of the girl whom he loved, and he had no more left to live for. His life had been ruined in its prime by a bad man’s treachery. Hope, love, happiness, henceforth could be only names to him. He did not care to live.

A great despair had fallen upon him. He had wakened up to the one grand passion of his life, and it was utterly hopeless. He loved Aline Rodney, but she hated him for the sorrow he had brought into her young life. She would marry Mr. Lane, perhaps, when she came home again, and Oran Delaney said to himself, with a pang of the bitterest despair, that he would rather be dead than live to see the fair young creature he loved the wife of another.

Days went and came, and he lay there wearily and hopelessly, and the physician went and came daily, growing more and more puzzled over him.

“He goes down hill every day, and yet, the case was very favorable at first,” he said to Mr. Rodney. “I am puzzled over him. I am afraid it is the mind wearing out the body. What do you think about it?”

“I have the same opinion as you,” the lawyer answered. “It is not the wound I gave him, it is mental trouble that is killing him. It is the old fable of the sword wearing out the scabbard.”

“Can nothing be done?” asked the old physician, who had become deeply interested in his new patient.

“Nothing, I am quite sure,” Mr. Rodney answered, for he knew now all the pain and sorrow and remorse that were killing Oran Delaney.

“Then he must die. All my medical skill can avail nothing to save him,” answered the physician, regretfully.

In the meantime Mr. Rodney had followed out Mr. Delaney’s wishes. He had made public all that strange secret, whose keeping had cast that black shadow over Aline’s life.

Chester was all agog with curiosity and excitement. It was a nine days’ wonder.

As often happens in such cases, there was a complete revulsion of feeling. The great wave of public sentiment rolled toward Aline in a gush of pity and sympathy. The world was not as bad as Mr. Lane had believed it. No one was found to doubt the story Mr. Delaney had told on what all believed to be his death-bed. It was so strange and romantic, it appealed so powerfully to that love of the wonderful and mysterious inherent in all hearts, that every one believed it. If Aline had been at home society would have made her the heroine of the hour. It would have taken her to its heart of hearts, and worshiped her as blindly as it had wronged her. It would have made atonement for its hasty judgment, but pity and regret were now alike too late. Aline had vanished out of her old life as utterly as if she were dead and buried. The places that had known her knew her now no more. In her home they mourned her as one dead.

In the stress of her trouble and anxiety, poor Mrs. Rodney had taken down to her sick-bed again. The pretty, self-possessed, dignified lady was completely broken down. She blamed herself as the author of all her beautiful daughter’s sorrow.

“I was too harsh, too strict with her. Her faults were only those of youth and inexperience, united to high spirits. Her punishments were too severe, and I am rightly punished for my hardness of heart,” wept and sighed the poor mother, in the long winter nights, while she tossed upon her sleepless bed, tormented with remorse and misery over the treatment she had given Aline.

A month passed away, and it was time for the return of Dr. Anthony and Effie from their bridal tour. They were to settle down to housekeeping in a pretty house the doctor owned at Maywood.

Mrs. Rodney yearned for Effie’s return. She longed to pour into her sympathizing ears all her sorrow and despair at the loss, for the second time, of her beautiful Aline.

The cottage was a most dreary place for sunny-tempered Max Rodney, in those days. He missed his beautiful sisters, the gentle, graceful Effie, and the light-hearted, volatile Aline. His mother was always in tears, now, and seldom left her room. Besides, there was a real invalid in the house, and the enforced quiet was most irksome to the high spirited lad whose gay voice, blending with his younger sister’s, had been wont to waken joyous echoes from garret to cellar of the roomy cottage. In despair, Max took to spending the most of his time from home, unreproved by his grief-stricken parents, who had become almost apathetic in their dumb, agonizing sorrow for their lost daughter.

And one day, when the sun was shining brightly, and the winter snows that had lain for weeks upon the frozen earth were melting under its genial glow, Max came home from a long excursion with “the boys,” and burst into his mother’s room like a small cyclone or tornado.

“Mamma,” he cried, all in a flurry, “may I go into Mr. Delaney’s room? I have something to tell him.”

Mrs. Rodney looked curiously at the flushed cheeks and sparkling blue eyes of her handsome boy.

“Why, what is it, my dear?” she asked. “You know the doctor wishes to keep Mr. Delaney very quiet. He is very low now, and we must do all that we can to make him well; for if he died, people would look upon your dear papa as a murderer!”

She shuddered; but the boy’s eyes flashed, and he cried out, proudly:

“No one would call papa a murderer, mamma, even if Mr. Delaney died. He was right to shoot Mr. Delaney if he thought he had my sister shut up in his house. I have heard a lot of people say so. If I had been a man, I should have shot him myself.”

“But you are not a man, Max, so you must not talk so boldly. What is this that you have to tell Mr. Delaney?”

“A bit of news that will please him, I dare say,” said the boy.

“Oh, Max, is it news of Aline?” quivered the poor mother.

“No, no, mamma; for of course I would tell you that first,” said the boy.

“Then what can it be? You know we must not excite Mr. Delaney, dear. It might be his death. You must tell me what you have heard, and then I can decide better if you may be allowed to tell him.”

“Oh, mamma, I wanted to be the first to tell him,” objected the boy.

“I am sorry; but we must not run the risk, indeed,” Mrs. Rodney said.

Max looked disappointed.

“Well, then, I cannot keep it any longer!” he burst out. “We--that is, the boys and me--we have found Mr. Delaney’s crazy wife--”

“Impossible!” Mrs. Rodney exclaimed.

“Under a melted snow-drift,” continued Max. “She must have been dead a long time--ever since that night she set fire to Delaney House, I guess--for she is in a very bad state; but we are perfectly certain that she is the one. She is dressed just as papa described her, in the finery and the jewels. Do you think that Mr. Delaney will be glad, mamma?”

“Glad that the poor creature is dead, Max?” she cried, quite shocked.

“Yes, mamma,” he replied, undauntedly. “Everybody should be glad, for what pleasure could that poor, afflicted creature have in her life, and why should one wish her to live? Mr. Delaney will be glad, I know, and no one can blame him!”

“Hush, dear, you do not know what you are saying,” said his mother, “and, besides, this is all surmise on your part. It may not be the woman at all.”

“Very well, mamma, we shall soon know, for they have sent me to bring Mrs. Griffin to identity her,” he said.

It all turned out as the little lad had said. The poor creature who had lain for long weeks under the frozen snow-drifts proved to be Julie Sanson, indeed. The mystery of her fate was solved at last. She had not perished in the fiery flames that consumed Delaney House. She had wandered out into the dark and stormy night and met her death in the cold, white, drifting snow that wrapped the earth like a ghostly winding sheet.

It came upon Oran Delaney with a shock that the deformed maniac was dead. It pained him that death had come to her in such horrible shape. Indeed, the very existence of such a creature upon the earth had always seemed to him something for which one might almost arraign Divine Providence. Why was it permitted?

“I cannot understand it,” he said. “And it pains me that she died so hard a death. Yet I cannot be sorry that she is dead. She was a horrible burden upon my life, and her existence was a joyless one. I thank God that having done my duty by her, I am free at last.”

They buried her quietly and simply, but the circumstances were so well known that a large number of people attended the burial. Every one rejoiced that Oran Delaney was free at last from the horrible fetters that had bound him. He had become quite a hero in these few days.

When his strange story became well known it excited the greatest sympathy and pity. Many of the townspeople would have liked to call upon him to express their feelings, but this was strictly forbidden by the physician, who prescribed the strictest quiet for his patient. Every one was very sorry for him, although under the peculiar circumstances of the case no one ever blamed Mr. Rodney for what he had done. Every father sympathized with him, and declared that with the same provocation they would have done the same.

Effie came at last. Dr. Anthony drove over from Maywood with her the morning after their return. There was a most affecting meeting between mother and daughter. Mrs. Rodney fell on the bride’s neck in tears. Effie listened to her story of Aline’s disappearance, with a strange look upon her beautiful, happy face.

“And he is here, Effie, Mr. Delaney is here,” she said. “It is stranger than a novel, is it not? Aline lay wounded and ill in his house once, and now here he is in ours, wounded and dying.”