Chapter XXI: One Glimpse--One Only

The two men at the gate passed on, but it was strange that they did not hear the moan of pain with which Maisie sank down so close to them beneath the large magnolia-tree in a very madness of despair, realizing the terrible truth.

She had come too late!

While she had remained away, starving her heart for the sake of mere conventionality, Barrington mourning her as dead, had found surcease of sorrow, had permitted himself to be comforted by wily Josephine.

The treacherous little coquette by wily arts had wormed herself into his heart. To-night she was his bride in yonder among the lights and flowers and music, while she, poor Maisie, who had learned to love him too late, crouched out here in the dark and cold, a broken-hearted girl.

As in a flash there came to her Delmar’s parting words:

“She is a treacherous little cat. She will try to marry Byrd for his money. Foil her little game if you can!”

Delmar loved Josephine, but he knew her at her worst--weak, vain, mercenary, and he had prophesied truly.

She had tried to marry Barrington, and, alas, she had succeeded!

It was more bitter than the pain of death to the girl crouching there in the darkness, heedless of the cold damp ground where she knelt, conscious only of the terrible blight that had fallen on her life.

It was enough to make reason totter on its throne, the sudden reaction from the glad anticipation of the last few months to the cruel shock of blank despair.

Dazed with the unexpected blow, she knelt there, trying to collect her scattered thoughts, asking herself what she should do next.

The answer came quickly from her wounded heart:

“Return to Mrs. Warren. Remain as one dead forever to him who forgot you so soon.”

A bitter pride nerved her up to her feet as she murmured:

“I must think no more of him, now that he belongs to Josephine!”

She came out of the gate slowly, as Eve must have departed from Paradise, and turned her high fur collar up close about her throat to shut off the bitter, freezing wind as she went slowly along until she was in front of Shirley, and could look up at the lighted windows and see figures moving in the dance to the sound of merry music, that grated painfully on her heart.

Some impulse moved her to slip inside the gates and peer into the windows as she had done at Castellane for one glimpse--one only--ere she turned away forever, leaving him to his happiness.

She drew near where the curtains were drawn back and the light gleamed out upon the wintry scene, and then it seemed to her as if fate itself had guided her to that spot.

Within the window stood Barrington and Josephine talking together, the bride resplendent in her wedding-robes, and rarely beautiful, with her dark, uplifted eyes that met Barrington’s gaze brightly enough, but alas, as the watcher saw too plainly, with no love in them for the man she had wedded--the tall handsome man who smiled down at her, indulgently, as she gave him a rose from her rare bouquet.

Maisie gazed at the pair as if fascinated, and a hand of ice seemed to close round her heart so keen was its despair, so bitter its jealousy of the girl who had twice come between her and the love she craved.

That burning gaze seemed somehow to draw Josephine’s troubled regard. An uneasy expression dawned upon her face; she abruptly turned her dark head and stared out of the window. For one awful, thrilling moment her glance and Maisie’s met.

A wild, frenzied cry burst from the bride’s lips, and she clung to Barrington without moving her eyes.

But before he could turn his head the vision faded and Josephine was gazing on empty air. Maisie had fled in terror from the scene.

They all crowded around the shrieking bride, who was pale as death and trembling with fear.

“What is it? are you ill or frightened?” some one cried, and took her from Barrington, clasping her tenderly in his arms.

She turned and clung to him, sobbing wildly:

“Oh, Del, it was a face at the window--a dead face--Maisie’s!”

And if Maisie had only lingered she would have seen with startled eyes what must have seemed as ghostly as she did to Josephine--the figure of the real bridegroom, Delmar Barrington, alive and in the flesh, holding Josephine in his arms and soothing her fears.

“It was only your fancy, Josephine! Come, come, you must not give way to jealous thoughts of the dead! You know that I never loved Maisie, but only you! And she is dead and happy in heaven. Why should she return to haunt you on your wedding-night?”

“She is jealous of our happiness!” moaned Josephine, and, though they made light of her fancy, they could not persuade her that she was mistaken.

She could tell them just how the white anguished face had appeared, how goldenly Maisie’s hair had gleamed under her close, black turban; how the dark fur collar had outlined the picture. She could never forget it, she wept wildly.

And when the story got noised about there were others who claimed to have seen Maisie, too--one or two servants at Castellane who were ready to take oath that the dead wife had come from her grave that night to attend her lord’s second wedding. Had they not seen her pale, lovely face, with great, haunting eyes, peering into the windows of Castellane, and disappearing again into the shadows of the wintry night? Two gave notice to leave next day, saying they were afraid of ghosts. They had heard that the first Mrs. Barrington walked, but they had never seen her, but in this case seeing was believing, and Barrington could not persuade them to stay.

In his heart he envied them. He would have rejoiced at the sight of even her spirit face, so passionate and faithful was his love.

“Why did she not come back to me?” he thought, most bitterly and yearningly. “Does she not know in the spirit land that I alone of all the world would welcome her back to life again?”

The happy consummation of Delmar’s love dream only made his own life more lonely by contrast.

There was a pain deep down in his heart that Delmar had not showed Maisie the respect of a year’s waiting before he married again.

But all expostulations had been swept aside like chaff by the lovers. His marriage to Maisie was an episode barely remembered now in the joy of their reunion.

If Maisie had been a more attentive reader of the newspapers she would, perhaps, have seen long ago that the story that had gone the round of the mistake that was made in reporting Delmar’s death in the hospital.

Though severely wounded and in an unconscious state when taken to the hospital at Santiago, he had slowly rallied, and though at death’s door when Byrd arrived to bear his body home for burial, his brother’s careful nursing and unlimited means of procuring comforts for the invalid resulted in his tedious convalescence and recovery. If with returning health he wondered at his brother’s tardy devotion, he made no protest, but accepted it gladly enough in his terrible strait, owning frankly at the last that he owed his very life to Byrd.

“Though why you have endangered your own health by constant attendance on me passes my comprehension. You never pretended much fondness for me, you know, Byrd, and you can’t deny you played me a dastardly trick at the last,” he said, recklessly, and with apparent ungratefulness.

It was the day after they had come home to Castellane--the war ended, the treaty of peace made, and in the chilly November weather Delmar lay smoking on a sofa in the cheerful library where in April they had had that bitter quarrel that sent Maisie flying from home to her untimely death. Byrd had told his brother all that passed afterward, and Delmar answered that he always suspected that Maisie was very high-spirited, but did not dream she could let her anger drive her to madness. He was very sorry she had met such a cruel fate, but he did not really feel himself to blame. She should have obeyed him and remained at Castellane till his return.

After that Byrd spoke no more to him of poor dead Maisie. Where was the use?

But at Delmar’s cutting words that day his brow grew very grave and sad, and he answered impulsively:

“I see no harm, Delmar, in unfolding to you the mystery that has puzzled you so much--the mystery of my blended love and hate of you all your life. Listen to the story of a woman’s wrongs and her jealous revenge.”

The early autumn twilight was filling the room when the thrilling story was ended, and Byrd said sadly:

“Now, you know it all--how my oath to the dead was kept, and how I could not do otherwise, painfully as my heart yearned to my brother in secret. You understand how I am still bound to my mother’s memory--but I have told Josephine that on the day she becomes your bride she will receive from me a gift of two hundred thousand dollars to make smooth her wedded life. I believe this will make your happiness possible.”