Chapter XVI: Such a Tragedy of Woe

In far-away Chicago another pair of eyes scanned the news from El Caney--a pair of lovely eyes, large, deep, and purplish blue, like velvet pansies growing in the shade--and from Maisie’s lips came a startled cry of commingled surprise and dismay.

“Mortally wounded--Delmar Barrington, Young Guards, Virginia--died
later in hospital.”

Her lovely face grew lily pale, her heart throbbed wildly, her white hands trembled so violently that the newspaper fell from her grasp to the floor.

The past rose up before her mind’s eye, conjured up by the sight of that name--the years in which she had loved him with the romance and passion of first youth--when she thought that heaven lay in the depths of those dark, flashing eyes.

She remembered the feverish night when she had kept a waking vigil, dreaming of her happiness, recalling the kisses that had burned her lips, the words he had spoken, the joy of to-morrow, when she should be his bride.

Could anything ever blot from her mind that to-morrow when it came; the agony, the pain, the humiliation that had almost driven her mad!

She was his bride, the fate she had dreamed of as most blissful under heaven, but from the hour of her wedding she had worn those fetters as iron bands that chafed night and day; fetters she loathed and hated, but could not throw off though they ate into her heart.

Often she felt that she could not bear her life thus bound--that she could almost die if there were no other way to get free.

And, strangely enough, she had never contemplated Delmar’s death as likely to occur; never calculated the chances of war in her own favor.

She had thrown herself with ardor into the new life that had so strangely opened before her because it offered surcease from torturing memory. The work was wearisome, the emoluments small, but she developed an unexpected talent for theatricals, and threw all her energy into the parts she acted, glad to merge her own personality into that of another than poor little Maisie, the desperate bride who had been married for spite and in her agony had rashly offered to marry another man if he would get her released from his brother. The shame of it almost drove her mad at times, remembering how firmly she had been refused.

So the time had dragged along. In the company her position was assured, and, in spite of her quiet, reserved manners, she was a favorite. They came to understand that she was secretly unhappy, that she had a shadowed past somehow, but she withheld her confidence, and they did not seek to force it.

After their stay in New York they had made a summer tour of the West, not caring to disband for the season, and now they were in Chicago, making their way East, playing in all the larger towns several nights each as they traveled. It relieved the tedium of the journey and put money in their purses besides, for it was really a clever company, and drew good houses whenever they stopped. By the last of July they expected to reach Washington.

Maisie sat alone, with great, startled eyes of wonder, trying to grasp the situation, trying not to exult over the death that left her free at last of the fetters she hated.

“I did not wish him dead; I could never, never desire any one’s death for any good it might bring to me; but oh, oh, I am glad I am not his wife now!” she panted, and burst into low, hysterical sobs that shook her whole frame with their violence.

She had dropped her heavy burden at last, and her joy and relief found vent in wildest emotion.

Hushing her sobs at last, she moaned self-reproachfully:

“God pardon me if I am glad that he is dead! I do not mean to rejoice, though I despised him. Why did he wrong my fond love so cruelly? Why deceive me so shamelessly? He might have said: ‘Maisie, I loved Josephine, and she has proved false. I am going to try to love you now. Will you help me, so that I may forget that other?’ I would have listened and pitied him; I would have said: ‘Del, I shall be proud and glad if you will learn to love me, but I cannot marry you till your heart is truly mine!’ Then, perhaps, all might have gone well! But to be married for spite! Ah, Heaven, it was too bitter to tamely endure! Married for spite and deserted on her wedding-day! I wonder did such a tragedy of grief ever happen to any young girl before?”

So she raved on in her reawakened excitement, her thoughts flying back to Castellane and that other--the man who had loved her long, and at whose love she had laughed in scorn--who had had his revenge when he threw back in her face with his calm words her offer to become his wife if he would divorce her from his brother. Yes, no doubt, he had enjoyed his triumph well. Who could blame him?

She wondered with a spasm of writhing shame if he had told false Josephine the story.

Of course, he had married Josephine. He had threatened Delmar he might do it, in retaliation, and, no doubt, the vain coquette had got him into her toils by now, and was queening it at Castellane. Well, let them enjoy their triumph. She did not care.

“I--I hate them all!--I almost hate everybody in the whole world!” sobbed poor Maisie from the depths of her wretched heart.

And then, by some chance of fate, she began running over the paper again, and chanced upon a society-letter from that popular watering-place, the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, in West Virginia.

“There are over a thousand guests here from all parts of the country,” she read, “and,” following, “among the Virginians here are the millionaire Byrd Barrington and his aunt, Mrs. French; the beautiful Miss Shirley, with her mother, and----” but Maisie read no more. Her eyes danced through their mist of tears.

“So he has not married her yet,” she said gladly.