Doubly false

Cora Lander bent close to the sleeping woman’s ear, and uttered the word “mother,” in one of those sharp, sudden whispers which thrill the heart even in slumber.

Mrs. Lander started up with a faint cry, and pressing one elbow into the down of her pillow, gave a wild stare at the face bending over her.

“Who is this? What are you?” she cried, in sudden terror.

“Mother! mother! surely you know me!”

“Know you! know you! I was dreaming of those eyes, but not of you. My child was younger, frailer, lovelier. She is drowned! She is drowned! What do you want of me? I do not know you. How dare you call me mother?”

The woman spoke wildly, almost with defiance. Her hands quivered under their lace ruffles; the embroidery on her bosom rose and fell with a sudden spasm of dread.

“Mother, you know me well enough; I am Cora Lander, your own child.”

“My own child?”

“You thought me dead, I dare say. But here I am safe and well. Touch my hand—that will prove it.”

“But—but you are taller. You are a woman!” gasped the mother.

“A girl grows taller in eight years. But look close, mother—you would have known me by daylight.”

“No, no, I shouldn’t—I don’t. The hair is like, but darker—the eyes—the mouth—that smile. Cora! Cora Lander! my child! my child!”

All the motherhood of the woman sprang into action then. She seized the young girl in her arms, drew her down upon the bed and rained kisses upon her, sobbing, laughing and shivering under a rush of natural tenderness that swept all other feelings out of her heart. At last she pushed the girl back from her bosom and examined her face line by line.

“And you have come back—my child! my darling!”

“Hush! hush! we are having too much of this,” said the girl, sitting down on the bed. “Some one will hear us.”

“Well, why not? They will all know in the morning.”

“I think not, dear aunt!”

“Dear aunt! What is this for? But it reminds me that perhaps you and I are paupers. What has become of him? Is he alive too?”

“No, thank Heaven! he is safe, fathoms deep in the Atlantic.”

Mrs. Lander drew a quick breath. “Oh! dear, it seems terrible to hear you say this!” she said, with a frightened look. “But if he were alive what should we do? Poverty! poverty! poverty! I shouldn’t endure that after having so much!”

“But it may come upon us yet,” said the daughter.

“How? how? Oh! I remember—that other Cora, the girl they called Virginia. But she is fathoms deep too.”

“She is alive and well, down in New York, this moment,” said Cora, drily.

“What? what?” cried the woman, strangling with a hysterical rush of feeling. “She alive! Then we are a thousand times worse off than if Lander had lived. He was kind and generous enough. But that child, with her soft ways, and that smile, acting always as if she had been born a lady, while you would let the old Adam out—I would rather starve than take my bread from her! Oh! what will become of us?”

“That is what I came up from New York in the dead of night to talk to you about. No one knows that I am here—no one must know anything about it. Do try and be calm; everything depends on that.”

“Well, child, I am calm. Despair has this one good quality—it brings dead repose with it. After a little, I shall find strength to look this thing in the face. But it is hard.”

“I know that, mother; you have not tasted the bitterness of dependence alone. I know what it must be to give up a fortune like this. But how came you with it? Did my uncle make a will? The man you sent to New York with a pair of horses told me so.”

“Yes, he made a will—all to no purpose now. Oh! it was to no purpose!”

“And how did this will read? Tell me?”

“It gave everything to her.”

“Everything! And you blundered like that?”

“Yes, Cora. He wrote it with his own hand. Upon my life and honor, it was every word in his own handwriting!”

“But was that all? The law would have given it to her!”

“Yes, yes, I know; but the law, instead of giving you and I a chance of the whole, would have scattered it among those country cousins. That was what made Lander’s will valuable. If she died without children, you came next, and I after.”

“Indeed! Then it was under this that you took possession. It is hard on you that we turn up alive—hard on me too, for Cora may marry and have half-a-dozen children to cut us out. Will do all this, certainly, if we are fools enough to let her.”

“But how can we help it? What have we to do but sink back into our old dependence?”

“Mother, listen to me,” said Cora, in a hard, firm voice.

“Well, I listen,” was the wondering answer. “But how hard your face looks—there is no childhood left in you, Cora Lander.”

“I hope not, for the thing I came to talk about is no child’s play. It needs firmness, courage, audacity even. I fear that you will be wanting in these qualities when the test comes.”

“Why, do you fear me because I am taken by surprise, when roused out of a sound sleep, to find you at my bedside—not white and dripping, as I have seen you so often in my dreams—not the child whose brightness I was so proud of, but a calm, hard woman, taking the lead even with me, your own mother?”

“True, true, there is something in that. The surprise was enough to stagger any one. I might have bent under it myself, especially after tasting the sweetness of such wealth. But what I am thinking of requires the most consummate coolness, nerves of iron, a face of marble. It requires that determination which enables a man to commit what the world calls crime quietly, firmly. You could never do that.”

Mrs. Lander looked at her daughter half in triumph, half affrighted.

“You say this to test me, Cora—to make yourself certain that I am incapable of wrong. You suspect me, perhaps?”

“No, no; I wish that were possible.”

“What were possible?”

“Why, that you had the courage to reach forth your hand for this noble inheritance.”

“But I have the courage. You do not know—”

“Yes the courage to submit.”

“No, to struggle—to fight. Only all struggles are hopeless now.”

“But you have not the courage, I repeat, to commit what men might call a crime even to make your child, and through her yourself, heiress of all this wealth.”

“What—what is it you mean? Are you setting up an inquisition over your own mother? Of what can you suspect me?”

Mrs. Lander was deadly pale, her mouth contracted itself, her eyes gleamed with apprehension.

The girl looked into that craven face with keen inquiry. It puzzled even her penetration. If the mere thought of wrong had so disturbed her mother, there was little hope that the scheme which had brought her there could be carried out. But her searching eye soon discovered more than the mere revolt of innocent conscience in this strange agitation. There was actual guilt in that face. What could that guilt be? Quick as lightning that sharp intellect ran over all possible causes for this singular agitation, and settled on the will.

“I only suspect, mother, that you tampered with Uncle Lander’s will.”

Mrs. Lander fell back upon her pillow, white and breathless.

“The will! the will!” she whispered. “Who told—who has dared?”

“Be tranquil, do be tranquil, mother,” said the girl taking the trembling hand put forth to repulse her and kissing it tenderly. “All this makes our way clear; I do not blame you. What else could you do?”

“It would have gone to those stupid cousins,” pleaded the woman. “Besides, the will was his, every word—”

“Except the names,” said Cora, gently. “I understand. Well, after all, that was risking a great deal, while my plan has positively no danger in it.”

“But will it secure the property?” asked the mother.

“Yes.”

“To me, just as it is now—and without danger?”

“Not to you; that is impossible.”

Mrs. Lander’s face contracted with disappointment, while her daughter went on:

“But through me your only child, everything can be done.”

Mrs. Lander did not speak, but her eyes asked eager questions.

“What matters it,” said the girl, “which is absolute owner here? Are not a mother and daughter one?”

“But it seems most natural that a mother should possess the power,” faltered Mrs. Lander.

“And so you shall in everything but the name. Only aid me in getting possession, and there will be no dispute about power between us.”

“But how?”

“It is easy, mother, and perfectly safe. To-morrow, when we come home, forget that I am your daughter, and in my place accept the girl called Virginia Lander.”

Mrs. Lander rose to a sitting posture in the bed, her eyes were full of wild light, her lips parted.

“What!”

Cora answered this sharp exclamation very calmly.

“We two girls are so much alike that people take us for twins. We have been away from the country eight years. No human being is qualified to contradict you when you claim Virginia and disown me. No other evidence of identity will be needed, even if it comes to a court of law. I shall support you—from the first I shall recognize you only as my aunt, claim Amos Lander as my father, and quietly take the position of his child. By what force can she dislodge me?”

Mrs. Lander sunk back to the pillows, astounded by the bold scheme which was to deprive her of a daughter.

“Let me rest—let me think,” she said; “the audacity of this thing appals me.”

“Do think—reflect; nothing can be safer. It is simply to say a thing and persist in it.”.

“But the people abroad—those who knew you both at the schools—should there be a contest, they will be called as witnesses.”

“What then? They know nothing. We passed as Mr. Lander’s children; no distinction was ever made; I doubt if any one knew that we were not sisters. Thanks to Virginia’s sensitive generosity, she never spoke of my dependent position, and as for Uncle Lander, he always introduced us on shipboard and elsewhere as Miss Lander and Miss Cora Lander.”

Mrs. Lander drew a deep breath; the anxiety was dying out from her face.

“And this would make you heiress of everything?” she said. “But where would my claim be?”

“In your power to dispossess me by a word. That would make you, in fact, mistress here.”

“True, true; but they might force me to swear that you were not my child; then my power of retreat would be cut off.”

Cora Lander could be sweet and affectionate enough when it pleased her to put forth these gentle qualities. She stooped down to her mother, threw one arm caressingly over her and pressed half-a-dozen soft kisses on her face.

“It is for us both—for you, dear mother, more than myself. I am ready to risk something rather than see you cast back into poverty. Think how hard it will be to give all this luxury up to another—think of my fate, compelled to take every mouthful of bread I eat from her bounty. Mother, if you prove coward and force me to this, I shall hate you!”

“If we could share it together, I would not hesitate, but the wrong and falsehood will be all mine, the reward yours.”

“Only in name, sweet mother—only in name. The wealth and power you shall possess alike with myself.”

“But this girl, this poor Virginia, whom we are wronging so—what will become of her?”

“Let her stay here and learn the bitter lesson she has taught you and me—that of a poor relative subsisting on a rich man’s bounty. We must change places. I will be gracious, kind and killingly generous to her, as she has been to us.”

“But she will protest, appeal to the law.”

“Let her; without proof against that best of evidence, the woman who claims to be her mother, what will her protest amount to?”

How well this young creature had considered her plans; not a thread of the web was wanting; even the law itself seemed powerless to break into its meshes; never did a fraud seem more certain of success. The widow had yielded herself to Cora’s blandishments; they seemed to insure her a splendid future. With a creature like that, so beautiful and bright, wealth would have tenfold value. The joy of her child’s return was mingled with all this. She loved the fair young creature with newborn affection. Her voice was sweet, her smile persuasive. The very crime that she proposed assimilated so well with that already committed by herself, that it broke down the barriers of reserve which long absence and the change from childhood to womanliness would naturally have produced. Sympathy either in good or evil draws hearts close together. Cora leaned toward her mother and kissed her cheek, which was scarlet and hot with struggling emotions.

“Say, now,” she pleaded, “if you and I are to be mistresses of this noble property, this house with all its luxurious appliances, or beggars again?”

“Cora, I never could endure that. Possession has been too sweet. This broad, free sense of independence has expanded my whole life. I love to give orders and receive the homage of those whom money has made the slaves of my will. I love to feel that the marble under my feet is mine to tread upon or tear up as I will; the fruit and flowers growing around me are mine, mine, mine to give, keep, sell or leave on the boughs. Cora, I never knew till now the entire bitterness of poverty, the abject humiliation of dependence.”

“But all this must come unless you act as I wish.”

“Yes, I see; I see. But to give up my own fair child and take another in her place, one too whom I have wronged so, that too seems impossible.”

“I know, I know; but in secret I shall still be your child.”

“But I shall be nothing, not even mother to the heiress.”

“You will be her aunt. The most loved and honored relative that ever controlled a household. Besides, pray remember, a few months will put this entire property into my hands, then I can divide it with you.”

“And will you? She too can be provided for, and it will not seem so hard.”

“We will think of that—but tell me now, are you prepared? Will you promise to be firm? In a little time the train will come down; I must be assured of my position before I go.”

“I wish Eunice were here!”

“Eunice, the hard-faced woman with the red hair? Surely you do not trust people like her!”

“She is—” Mrs. Lander stopped suddenly, checked herself, and added, as if from some after-thought, “She is faithful and devoted to me.”

“Mother,” said Cora, with great firmness, “this secret rests between us two. On your life, I charge you, share it with no other living soul! That would be to make ourselves slaves indeed.”

“Not with Eunice? Not with Eunice?” almost pleaded the widow.

“Mother, a secret shared is an object lost. What is this iron-faced woman to us, that we should take her into our souls?”

“Eunice—Eunice. Oh, nothing but a faithful old servant, who loved me well before I became rich.”

“Let her remain a faithful servant, nothing more,” answered Cora. “I want no confidants bred in the kitchen, no love from any quarter which cannot be paid for with money. So let her pass, for we have but little time. I hear a clock striking, or rather giving out fairy music. What sumptuous tastes you have, mother! It would be a pity to give all these pretty things up to my cousin!”

“That I never will—never! never!” cried Mrs. Lander.

“Then be firm and prepare to receive that other one as your daughter. Good-night, I must go now.”

“Good-night! With these words we are torn apart never again to be mother and child! God has given you back to me, and in your place I take money got by crime.”

Mrs. Lander spoke low, but with deep, passionate feeling. She was not hard by nature, like the fair young girl who looked down upon her, beautiful as Lucifer and almost as wicked.

“This is sentiment—nonsense—and such things are out of place when an object like this lies before us. We can love each other and live together. Why not? Aunts are often very, very fond of their nieces. It excites no wonder.”

“No, no; crime strangles love.”

“Not with the strong and bold. Take courage, you have little to do; I am not afraid to lead the way.”

Cora turned toward the window, gathering her cloak tightly around her. Mrs. Lander sprang out of bed and followed her with both trembling hands held out.

“One embrace, Cora! Let me feel you close to my heart before you go! Call me mother again!”

“There, mother, am I close enough? Why how you tremble!”

“My child!”

“There! there! kiss me a hundred times if you like; but when that little clock chimes the quarter I must be gone. Why, how foolish you are! how weak! We shall meet again to-morrow or next day, and there will be no more parting.”

“Crime parts everything, Cora; I have learned that already. Heaven help us! it had almost reconciled me to your death, and now that you have come back, awaking my heart to its old tenderness, you would pile up barriers between us. No! no! let us be poor again—very poor! I shall not care, so long as we are innocent and love each other.”

“But I should not love you.”

“Don’t say that! I could give these things up, indeed I could!”

“And repine over it forever after. Know yourself better; but this argument would last forever. Once for all, will you act as I desire?”

“Yes! yes!”

“That is right. Now I love you dearly. You shall be the grand dame of the establishment.”

“I know that you will be kind, dear.”

“Trust me. There goes the quarter—good-bye! good-bye!”

When the last word left her lips, Cora was outside upon the ladder, with her beautiful face uplifted to the light. In an instant she glided downward into the darkness. The ladder was drawn after her and fell softly to its old place in the grass. A branch of the rose-bush swayed back, as if something had dragged it out of place, and that was all.