Chapter XXVI: Like an Envenomed Arrow

A blue lake, a blue sky, a blue haze on distant hills, golden sunshine, a land of roses, languorous airs full of sweetness--nowhere but in southern Italy could be found such a paradise.

“Dear, you will get strong and well here,” cried Mr. Warren. “I am told that this spot is a paradise for invalids as well as pleasure-seekers.”

“I should judge so, from the crowds of people at the two hotels,” said Maisie, charmed with everything--most of all to get away from Paris and Barrington.

Vain delusion! It was barely a week before Barrington arrived at the other hotel with his sick brother and aunt, having left Josephine alone in Paris under the care of the Bonners, to pursue her heartless course of pleasure-seeking and flirtation.

Maisie was on the verge of an éclaircissement of which she little dreamed, but not the slightest suspicion of it crossed her when, one morning, Mrs. Warren, coming in from a walk with her husband remarked:

“Violet, you remember that extremely handsome couple we saw at the art-gallery the day before we left Paris--in front of the portrait like you, you know?”

“I hope they have not followed us here,” cried Maisie, with a sharp note of anxiety in her sweet voice.

Mrs Warren laughed.

“If you call it following, he has. But I must have been mistaken about the bride. The brown-eyed beauty is not with him now.”

“Oh, there was no mistake! She is his wife,” cried Maisie thoughtlessly.

“But how do you know that, Violet? Why, what is the matter with you, my dear girl? Your face has grown scarlet. Why are you blushing?” cried her friend in wonder.

Then Maisie saw that she had betrayed herself so that, in fact, it would be better to confide in her friends, now that they could help her to shield her secret.

She would not run away from Barrington again--where would be the use? The world did not seem wide enough to keep them from meeting. So hereafter he must know her, if at all, as Violet Summers, a girl who had a striking resemblance to one he had loved and lost--that was all.

She would avoid him if she could. In the gay throngs he might never notice the one girl, yet she must be on her guard--she and her friends.

So she answered gently:

“I blushed because I thoughtlessly betrayed myself. That man is known to me, and I never wished to see him again. Listen, and I will tell you why.”

Mrs. Warren dearly loved a romance, and when she had listened with eager attention to the young girl’s story she declared it was more thrilling than any novel she had ever read.

“But, oh, the pity of it that you stayed away too long--that you let him marry another! He must have loved you well! That was why he lingered so long by the portrait that resembled you so much. Perhaps even now your memory is dearer to him than even his living wife,” she exclaimed.

“If so, it is all the more imperative that he should believe me dead, my dear friend, so I shall depend on you and Mr. Warren to keep my secret,” Maisie answered firmly, eliciting a ready promise to do as she wished.

Then Mrs. Warren continued:

“I do not know where the pretty young wife can be, but she is not with her husband. I heard some one saying that the rich American came to the other hotel yesterday with a party consisting of a sick young man, an elderly lady and two servants.”

“They cannot belong to Mr. Barrington’s party,” said Maisie decisively, believing Delmar dead, and never dreaming that staid, home-keeping Aunt Constance would venture abroad.

And she knew no better for some time, for though not far apart, they did not meet.

Delmar Barrington, the young lieutenant, was rather worse for a while, ill and feverish, and so irritable that he was a sore trial to the patience of all who had anything to do with him. It was Josephine’s absence and heartlessness that preyed on his mind, but he was so proud and indignant he would almost have died before he would admit the truth.

He missed her daily, hourly--longed for the flash of the brown eyes, the touch of the soft white hands, the kisses of the rosebud lips, the sound of the musical voice, and the loss of them all was poison to his heart.

Yet in secret he knew that Josephine was unworthy of his worship; that she was light and vain and shallow, and made but a poor return for all he gave. It was bitter, bitter, when he looked back on his own unfaltering devotion and contrasted it with her fickleness.

“I could almost believe that she had married me just for gold’s sake if I had not kept it secret from her about poor Maisie’s money,” he said to himself, with a half-regret for the poor girl he had driven mad with his deceit.

“Poor little Maisie, I never meant her to find out the truth. If she had lived until I came back to her I would have tried to be faithful to her and forget Josephine,” he thought remorsefully.

It was well he did not guess how Aunt Constance had betrayed the secret of his wealth to Josephine or it would have driven him mad with rage.

He was bitter enough as it was, seeing how little his bride cared about him now, how she deserted him in his weakness to revel in gayer scenes, never hesitating to accept other men’s attentions. He knew this, too, and it added the burning pangs of jealousy to his pain.

He would drag himself to a mirror and stare moodily at his thin face, so pale and colorless, and his hollow, dark eyes, muttering:

“Not a trace of the good looks that won her girlish fancy. No wonder her fickle heart was turned away!”

All his brooding and fretting only made the pain of his shattered lung worse, and moved Byrd to deepest sympathy with the pain that he knew lay deeper than the wound.

He cried impatiently one day:

“Let me send for Josephine to come to you. It is fretting for her that makes you worse, and no one can wonder. Her place is by your side.”

“She shall come when she gets ready, of her own free will, or not at all!” Delmar responded stubbornly, with flashing eyes.

“As you please,” Byrd answered quietly, but as he went out to snatch a little recreation by the blue lake, breathing in the balmy air, he thought bitterly:

“There is no rest for any of the Barringtons in love. It comes to their hearts like an envenomed arrow, poisoning peace and rest.”

His wistful thoughts dwelt on the tragedy of love that had shadowed his own life--on Maisie, the well-beloved, the sadly lost. He held himself most bitterly to blame.

“If I had but taken her at her word that day, all might have come out right in the end,” he thought. “Patient, devoted love like mine must have won a return. It was strange, passing strange, that, although she vowed she hated me, there was found in her hand-bag a picture of me--of--me--not Delmar, her husband. Why did she carry it away with her into exile?”

The wonder of it, the gladness of it, had filled many a restless hour.

He stood still, watching the blue lake and the little boats going up and down with gay parties in them--pretty girls and jolly young men--and he prayed God that love might never come to any of them as it came to those of the Barrington race--with grief and despair in its burning train.

His eyes singled out a little boat with a solitary occupant--a white-gowned girl pulling swiftly for the shore. The lithe grace of her movements excited a languid interest, and he put up his field-glass to examine her more closely.

A startled cry came from his lips.

It was almost as if the dead had come to life, the girl in the boat was so strangely like poor dead Maisie.

His heart leaped wildly in his breast, his breath came quickly over his parted lips.

He thought of the portrait that had charmed him so in Paris.

“This young girl must be the original! How strange to find Maisie’s counterpart at the other end of the wild world!” he thought, waiting in feverish impatience for her to land, devoured with the eager impulse to behold her nearer.

How skilful she was with the oars, how cleverly she steered her way through the fleet of little boats that crowded her so close. But surely she must collide with that one so near, crowded with bungling women who did not seem to understand the simple art of rowing. They were bearing clumsily down upon her. Could she escape?

His heart leaped into his throat.

Others were watching beside himself. He heard anxious voices all around him, and one exclaimed:

“Heavens, those foolish women are going to upset her boat! I wish Violet had not gone out alone! I begged her not, but she only laughed at me.”

“She will hold her own, dear,” was the consoling answer, but at that moment the air was filled with frightened shrieks, for out there in the deep blue lake, under the deep blue sky, in the golden sunshine, a terrible accident had happened.

The two boats had collided and overturned, throwing all the occupants into the water.

Barrington heard the anxious voice behind him again:

“Oh, Heaven, Violet will be drowned! She cannot swim!”

Barrington threw off his coat, and leaped into the water like an athlete. The girl that looked like Maisie should not lose her sweet young life!