Doubly false

Mrs. Lander drew slowly toward the window. Eunice Hurd followed her, and behind the cold, hard face of the mistress, peered the sharp, anxious features of the servant.

“There they come, three of ’em,” snarled Eunice, laying her bony hand heavily on Mrs. Lander’s shoulder. “Who’s the other?”

She turned sharply to address Joshua, but he had left the room. Mrs. Lander did not move, but spoke to her servant in a forced, husky voice.

“Go down to your place, Eunice.”

“What!”

“Go down stairs and see that the preparations are complete. I shall meet my child and niece in the hall.”

Eunice hesitated, and stood in the middle of the chamber eyeing her mistress venomously; one would have supposed that the lady had deprived her attendant of some great fortune by the anger she betrayed. Mrs. Lander took no apparent heed of this, but swept slowly across the room, down the marble stairs, forcing a smile to her white face.

They stood in the hall, forming a little group on the tesselated floor—Cora, Virginia and the hunchback, whose face alone was bright with generous exultation. The two girls were pale and troubled; Virginia trembled visibly, but Cora was firm as granite.

When Mrs. Lander reached the bottom of the staircase, she paused a moment, reached out her arms, and, looking at Cora, cried out:

“My child! my child!”

Cora Lander drew back of her cousin, meeting that wild, motherly impulse with icy looks. Virginia cast an astonished glance back on her cousin, and, filled with pity for the mother, whose arms had dropped like lead, went up with tears in her eyes and embraced her. Those arms were lifted heavily and wound over the young girl’s shoulders. Kisses fell on that white cheek, cold and sharp, like hailstones on snow. Twice the woman attempted to utter a welcome but the forced voice rattled in her throat, and at last broke forth in a hoarse cry that made Virginia start from her arms.

“My child! my daughter!”

The young girl looked into the hardening face turned upon her one instant in profound astonishment. Then the warm, true heart swelled in her bosom, and she reached out her hand to Cora.

“Not your daughter. It was kind to mistake me so tenderly, but this is your child, dear aunt.”

Cora stepped back and waved her hand with a gesture of dissent. Mrs. Lander looked from one to the other with a searching glance, then threw her arms around Virginia again, crying out, still hoarsely and in an unnatural voice:

“No, no; an attempt at deception at this moment is cruel! Do I not know my own child?”

“But, Aunt, you are mistaken. Cora—Cora, you can satisfy her. A mother’s heart must leap to the touch of her own child.”

“But this lady is not my mother,” answered Cora Lander in a clear, ringing voice.

Virginia released herself forcibly from Mrs. Lander’s arms and turned upon her cousin in dumb amazement. Cora was calm and cold; her lips parted firmly, her eyes were bright, but all the rest of her face bespoke simple surprise, merging into displeasure.

“This is a strange time for joking, cousin,” she said.

“I wonder that you can trifle with feelings that should be sacred. You might have known from the first that she could not be deceived.”

Virginia stood dumb. She could not comprehend the enormous fraud being practised upon her. Once more Mrs. Lander embraced her. Again those cold kisses fell on her forehead. She shrunk from them, shuddering.

“Madam! madam! you should feel—you should know that I am not your child! She stands yonder. I will be no party to a mysticism so cruel. Cora! Cora, I entreat you, put an end to this!”

“What can I do? How can I act? If you persist in disclaiming your own mother, I can only denounce it as a great cruelty whether done in jest or earnest. In my father’s time you would not have ventured on a piece of pleasantry like this.”

“Cora Lander!” cried Virginia, aroused to indignation by this cool speech. “Cora Lander! is this a farce, or some horrible fraud?”

“I do not understand you, cousin,” said Cora, with a gentle lift of the eyebrows. “It seems to me that all this is at least in bad taste—I will not say unfeeling. Remember you find a mother overjoyed to receive you, while I have left the kindest and best father that ever lived buried in the ocean, and return to my own home wholly an orphan. Aunt, forgive me if this feeling has made me seem less glad to see you than I am. Believe me, if your child seems unkind, it is not in her nature to be so in reality. As for me, all the noble generosity which you and my cousin have received from my father shall be renewed in his child. You shall be to me as a mother; your child has always been my sister. There need be no change.”

Virginia Lander drew slowly toward Ellen Nolan, and there she stood, lofty, pale, statue-like. The audacity of this scene kindled all the energy of her fine nature into resolute resistance.

“Cora Lander,” she said, “there is either a terrible crime in your thoughts or this is a joke so coarse and ill-timed that I can never forgive it.”

Ellen Nolan had been vigilant during this scene; her eyes turned sharply from Cora to Mrs. Lander, and she observed that these women never once looked each other in the face. She saw, too, that Mrs. Lander trembled violently and shrunk away from Virginia even while embracing her.

“Dear lady,” she said, in a voice so sweet that it sounded strangely in that atmosphere of discord, “come away—do come away.”

“I will,” answered Virginia, casting a look of affection on her attendant; “I will. When I am gone, these people may come to their senses. Eunice Hurd, I am glad to see you—very, very glad to see you. Is my old room ready?”

“Yes; the room is ready exactly as you left it, Miss Lander. I have kept it in order, but haven’t changed a thing. Mr. Lander wouldn’t have that altered.”

Cora Lander turned sharply upon Eunice, and the widow lifted an imploring look to her face. But Eunice gave her head a fierce, angry toss, and marched up stairs, muttering defiance as she went. Virginia followed her, treading the steps firmly as a queen enters her palace. But for the strange obstacle which she had encountered, this poor girl would have shrunk from entering the rooms which the presence of her father had once made so homelike; but now all the energy of her being was up in arms. Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes burned blackly. Never in her life had such anger filled her heart. She did not yet comprehend the magnitude of the wrong intended her, but the single fact that some mysticism had been practised upon her in the sacred moment when she entered her home, an orphan and a mourner, revolted her whole being. The tears which she would have shed for her father were turned into angry fire by this insult offered to his memory.

“Come, Ellen,” she said, “from this hour you are my cousin and friend.”

Eunice turned sharply and looked at Ellen.

“Humph!” she muttered. “Sharp and honest! No place for her!”

A shade of feeling crept over that hard face when Eunice turned the key in one of the chamber doors and stepped aside that Virginia might pass her. Ellen lifted her eyes and caught the expression.

“Be good to her,” she said, in her sweet, low voice.

Eunice started and looked down upon that upturned face with the shadow of a smile on her thin lips.

“Go in, both of you,” she said, “and take the key inside. I say nothing, because nothing has been said to me; but just now I’d like to wring that white neck, gold chains and all—not yourn, I don’t mean yourn,” she added, with a swing of the hand. “Go in; go in, you’ll find your things right, letters and all. I took care that nobody should get nested here. There, that’ll do, turn the key. Sure bind, sure find, as the Bible says.”

Virginia stood in the midst of her own room, half terrified, and feeling painfully strange, while Ellen softly closed the door and turned the key. She, poor girl, felt like a deer hunted into its lair by an unexpected rush of hounds. She looked around—old memories came back—there was her little writing-desk, ebony, encrusted with gold, where many a hard lesson had been conned under the loving eyes of her father. Close by stood a low chair, covered with rich embroidery entraced by the hands of a mother she had never seen, save as a shadow hovering over her first idea of life. The colors were faded, the delicate tints of the blossoms had long since been drawn out by the light, but it was still the dearest thing in that exquisite little chamber—that and the desk, which had been one of the last gifts of her father before he took her and her cousin to Europe.

Everything reminded her of that good man; his taste had selected all the ornaments of the room. The carpet, composed of a single medallion, in which masses of blooming flowers seemed to have been cast on newly fallen snow, framed in with arabesques of dove-color and delicate blue, knotted together with garlands of roses, had been of his selection. The walls, so delicately frescoed that the designs seemed like tinted shadows, were more his idea than the artist’s. The great carved easy chair in which he had spent so many hours, while she was sitting at his feet with her little porcelain slate studying out one of the problems he delighted in teaching her. The very books that lay on that pretty table of Oriental alabaster, inlaid with golden beetles, spoke so clearly of him that she gave one broken cry and fell upon her knees by the great chair, convulsed with a storm of grief which shook her from head to foot.

“Oh, my father! my father!” she cried, “help me! help me! for it seems as if I must die!”

A pair of feeble arms were softly flung around her, a little crooked form crept in by the side of her superb beauty, and a voice that seemed that of an angel pleaded also.

“Father! my father! help! help! for she is alone, with no one but me—no one but me!”

For some moments these two voices blended in one prayer, then the sobs that filled the room grew fainter, and the stillness of an exhausted tempest fell upon them. Ellen was the first to move. She arose, and going to a broad window which opened on a balcony, saw two women standing together and conversing earnestly. They had paused a little way from the front portico, and by the gestures of the younger person she judged that some stormy debate was passing between them. As she looked, Mrs. Lander held out her arms with a gesture of imploring tenderness, and would have flung herself upon the bosom of the proud girl who stood before her. But Cora took a swift survey around, caught a glimpse of Ellen’s face at the window, and pushed the woman away so impetuously that she reeled back against one of the marble pillars, and thus saved herself from falling.

Ellen turned away from the window, convinced that some great wrong was being done to the young creature who lay weeping, half upon the floor, half on the great easy chair.

“Lady,” said the hunchback, “do stop crying so, and let us think what is best to be done.”

“What can be done? He is dead—my poor father is dead, and I am so helpless.”

“Perhaps I can think a little for you,” said Ellen, with tender meekness. “You, sweet lady, were strong enough to carry me safely through the deep ocean. Now let me help you.”

“But how, Ellen? What help is there for me?” cried Virginia, lifting her beautiful face, wet with a rain of tears, to meet the kind eyes of her attendant. “Astonishment and grief bewilders me so! What can they want? What do they mean? They cannot be in earnest, Ellen!”

“Yes, lady, I am sure they are in earnest.”

“But he was my own father. They know it—that woman was present when I was born.”

“Still they mean what they say, I am sure of that.”

“But it is impossible. They cannot carry it out.”

“No, no; there must be plenty of people who know you.”

“Plenty who know me—yes, yes; but we are so alike. We have been away eight years. If her mother does not recognize the difference, who will?”

“But her mother does recognize the difference,” said Ellen, quietly.

“Then I have nothing but trouble before me!” said Virginia, sitting down in her father’s chair and dropping both hands into her lap in an abandonment of sorrow.

“What can I do?”

“Wait, and God will show us the way.”

“But I am so helpless—more helpless than you were when I found you in the water, poor little friend! Until my father was taken from me, I never knew what trouble meant. Oh, Ellen! can my cousin be so wicked?”

“I think she is a very wicked person, hard as rock. But God is above all. Let me take off your bonnet, sweet lady, and smooth your hair. Don’t, don’t shiver so—poor little hands, how the cold strikes through your gloves! Let me kiss them warm. That’s right, lay your head on my shoulder, it’s broad enough.”

Here the kind hunchback gave a short, sobbing laugh, and searched for an answering smile in the beautiful face of her mistress. But Virginia shook her head, and replied tenderly:

“Oh, Ellen! you should not do that. This honest face and true heart is worth a thousand straight forms. How miserable I should be without you!”

“Then there is Brian, my brother, who has such a grand heart; besides he is sharp and bright as a lawyer. Think how many friends you have close by.”

“I will—I will.”

“That’s kind—that’s nice! Look out and see how brightly the sun shines. That is the way God smiles when he wishes to cheer us in the midst of a great trouble.”

“It does not seem bright to me. This is a sad return home—if it is my home!”

Virginia fell into despondency again. She really was very helpless, but Ellen brightened up and prepared herself for usefulness.

“This is your own room, so here we stay; but the closets are locked. Must I ask them for the keys before I can put away your bonnet and shawl?”

Virginia started from her seat. “No, no,” she said, taking a gold chain from her neck, to which was attached a small master key. “My father told me to lock everything up, and promised that nothing should be touched till I came home again. The keys are in that Malachite box on the table. He gave it to me just before I went away.”

Ellen unlocked the box with the tiny key, half gold, half steel, which Virginia had worn suspended from her neck many a year.

“Here is a bunch of keys, a package of letters, and some jewelry,” she said.

“They are my father’s letters and birthday keepsakes,” answered Virginia, turning pale with a sudden rush of memory. “My poor mother’s jewels, too, should be there.”

Ellen closed the box and stood with her hand on the lid, quietly thoughtful.

“These things belong to you, sweet mistress. There may be proofs here of the truth. Let us make sure of them.”

“What, child! do you think they would rob me of them?”

“They are robbing you already. Please open this desk and see if anything is here.”

Virginia unlocked the desk and Ellen swept out its contents into a corner of her shawl, which she gathered up in one hand for the purpose. There was a quantity of papers, jewel cases and one or two books. One of these cases fell out of her dress and broke open on the floor, revealing a necklace and bracelets of large pearls, rolling away from their purple satin cushion.

“They belonged to my mother. She wore them on her wedding day—that once, but never again,” said Virginia, with tears in her eyes.

Ellen snatched up the case, huddled the pearls into their purple bed and thrust them back among the papers.

“Where can we put them? I forgot to think of that,” she said, appealing to her mistress.

“Wait a moment—I know of a place,” answered Virginia, drawing back the drapery from an arched recess, fluted from roof to floor with light blue satin. Under this was a pretty, snow-white bed, clouded in from the chamber by curtains of lace delicate as the frost-work on a window, and so voluminous that it seemed like sweeping back a summer cloud from the blue of Heaven when they were thrown aside. Close by the bed stood an exquisite little toilet table surmounted by an oval glass, in a frame that seemed woven from the most delicate golden spray, over which a dove, cut from mother of pearl was flying with a mass of filmy lace drapery in its bill. An ottoman of amber colored damask stood before the toilet.

“Here, here,” said Virginia, dropping on her knees by the ottoman and flinging the top back, which opened on hinges.

A moment after, a peremptory knock was heard at the door. The two girls held their breath an instant, then Ellen ran to the desk, threw the bunch of keys into the Malachite box, and locking that, flung the chain and key over the neck of her mistress exactly as she had been in the habit of wearing it.