Doubly false

The door in which the lovers stood was darkened by the hemlock; so Seymour drew the young girl into the cabin close to a little window that looked out upon the rustic bridge. It was a lovely object to gaze upon, splendid ferns fringed all the margin of the brook and rooted themselves in the stone-work of the bridge, pluming its mosses with tufts of green; ladies’ ear-jewels, wild asters and scarlet cardinal flowers tangled themselves in garlands of gold, blue and red over the water and round the ends of the bridge, massing their rich foliage up the embankment till some of the ear-jewels trembled, like bells of gold, under the cabin window.

“Ah, how beautiful the earth is!” said Seymour, bending to look into her eyes. “Great Heavens! it almost frightens one to feel so happy. Is it so with you, darling?”

“I am very, very happy,” she answered, with a sigh that seemed to bring up fragrance from the depths of her heart. “It rejoices me to know that you think this so beautiful—for it is mine, all mine!”

The young man did not take in her meaning, but drew her close to his bosom and answered, with passionate tenderness:

“And you, Cora, when shall I say that you are mine—all mine?”

His tenderness, the impatient trembling of his voice, made her bold, and she answered him with kisses, for his lips had sought them even as his words claimed her.

“I love you—oh! how dearly I love you!” she murmured, forgetting for that one moment her wealth—her crime—everything but the passionate tenderness which swayed her whole being.

“Then why should we wait? Come with me, darling—who on earth can love you as I will? I possess money now, we need have no fear of poverty—full twenty thousand dollars—”

She interrupted him with a ringing laugh, and throwing her head back, looked triumphantly in his face.

“And I, Seymour, I have fifty times as much—more than that—more than you and I can spend, let us be ever so extravagant. Throw your paltry gold into the river, or give it to your servant; with me you shall have everything, for I am rich—you can hardly imagine how rich.”

The young man dropped his arm from her waist and looked wildly into her flashing eyes. He was deadly white, even to the lips. Her news seemed to have frightened him.

A shade of terror came into her face, and she seized him by the arm.

“What is the matter?—how pale you are! Why, Seymour, you are trembling from head to foot!”

He broke away from her, folded his arms against the logs of the window-frame, and bowing his face upon them, burst into tears.

“Oh! my God, my God!” he broke forth, “if I had but known this before—if I had but known it!”

The girl was astonished. She had thought to complete the triumph of his happiness with her news, and there he stood trembling like a culprit—weeping like a child.

“Seymour! Seymour, tell me the reason of this! I thought my news would make you so happy,” she cried, partaking of his terror, for a painful suspicion had seized upon her.

“Did he know? Did he suspect?”

Her hands shook like wounded birds as she lifted his head from the logs, and the face she bent upon him was ashen with dread.

“Are you an angry? Does it make you so wretched because I am rich?” she said, shrinking from the mournful eyes he turned upon her. “Speak to me, Seymour! What have I done to wound you so?”

“Nothing,” he said, wearily; “nothing—you are everything that is beautiful, good and generous, while I—oh, Cora! Cora! I am not worthy of you! A beggar, and worse than a beggar, how dare I mate with a creature so beautiful, so bright?”

She drew close to him, for the moment generous and womanly.

“If I owned the whole world, Seymour, and had the beauty of an angel, all should be yours; I only ask that you love me.”

“Love you, girl! This is the very madness of love. If you only knew to what it has driven me!”

“If you love me so, it is enough. There, now the color is coming back to your lips. I felt mine growing cold, as if your kisses had frozen there. Come, come, smile again. You frightened me terribly.”

“Did I?” he answered, with a forced smile. “I did not intend it—but you took me by surprise.”

“Is it such a terrible calamity to be worth oceans of money?” she answered, a little proudly. “Does this wealth make you love me less? This poor little twenty thousand dollars you would have divided with me, whom you thought penniless.”

“This poor little twenty thousand dollars!” he repeated, bitterly. “Girl! girl! do you know what it cost me?”

Again she was terrified by his pallor and his vehemence, and answered, trembling:

“No matter what it cost you, I will repay it. There is nothing that love and power like mine shall not redeem.”

“Ah! if it could—if it could!” he answered, sorrowfully. “Why did you tell me that falsehood? Was it to test me? Did you doubt that I loved you? Why not say then, I am rich and will divide these riches with you?”

“Because my father was living and the wealth was his, not mine,” she answered promptly. “That was worse than poverty, for I knew he never would consent to our union.”

“But why not say that you were his daughter and heiress? Why pass yourself off on the man who loved you as a dependent niece?”

“Forgive me! forgive me! I was wrong not to know you better; but the deception sprang from a wish to be loved for myself alone.”

“Ah, Cora, had you but told me then!” he said, with a piteous smile. “But let it pass. What a brute I am to frighten the color from your face in this way. Come closer to me, love. Do not look so terrified—nothing is wrong between us in reality. There! there! don’t tremble so, I am not angry with any one but myself. We were talking about—about the time when we need never separate again—oh! that blessed time for which any sacrifice is not too great. When shall it be, love? In a week? to-morrow?”

“So soon—oh, no! how impetuous you are! Days—weeks—why it must be months before I can even lighten my mourning.”

“Your mourning! What is there in a few yards of black crape more or less that should separate us? Must you necessarily mourn the dead less because we love each other?”

“No, no; but there exist reasons which force me to be careful of appearances. My cousin, the girl I represented myself to be when you first knew me, threatens to contest my right to the property.”

“But how can she?”

“How can crazy people do any wild thing? The poor creature is insane, but only on this one point. She is so rational and even cunning, in other matters that astute lawyers may be won to take up her cause.”

“But why should this affect our marriage, Cora?”

“You are a foreigner and cannot understand the senseless etiquette which makes deep mourning and solitude imperative in this country after the loss of a relative. Were I to abandon this mourning for a wedding-dress, the world would hold it as strong evidence in favor of my cousin. No daughter could so forget the respect due a deceased parent, it would insist.”

“And you would have me wait the tedious result of a law-suit—cast me back from my happiness because people might cavil about time and place. Cora Lander, this delay will prove an eternal separation!”

“No, no it cannot—it shall not! Only wait patiently a few months!” cried the girl, with a burst of alarm. “My heart has nothing to say in this, it pleads for you—for myself—that alone knows how I love you.”

“Yet, for the sake of this money, you kill me with delay.”

“But I wound myself in doing it. Be patient, do be patient!”

“Patient, girl! when any hour may take you from me,” cried the young man, with a despairing gesture.

“No power on earth can do that, Seymour. I would perish rather than give you up. Trust me! trust me!”

“But can I trust Fate? You have no pity, Cora Lander!”

“You are excited—wild. There is no such serious matter in a little delay,” she answered, soothingly.

“There is! there is! You cannot understand. How should you?”

“What is there, Seymour, that I do not understand? Have you secrets?”

Cora turned white as marble, and the glitter of steel came into her eyes as they searched the pale face turned away from her.

“Has some other woman claims upon you?” she added, in a low, husky voice, that made the white lips quiver as it passed through.

“No, on my honor, on my soul, no!”

This exclamation was full of passionate truth. The young man turned his face full upon her now. Slowly the color came back to her cheek and lips, and her heart flung off the pain that had seized upon it with a throb of relief such as she had never felt before. It seemed as if she had wrenched herself free from the grasp of a demon, that pang of jealousy had been so sharp and bitter.

“Cora,” said the young man, with emotion, “since the day I saw you, the image of no other woman has entered my heart—scarcely reached my thoughts. I have loved you devotedly, entirely—do not trifle with me now!”

“I do not trifle with you.”

“But you prefer the opinion of a crowd of men and women, whom you do not even know, to my wishes or my happiness.”

“But I must live among these people, Seymour. They compose the world in which men and women must work out their ambition.”

“My only ambition is your love, Cora,” said Seymour, with great tenderness.

“And mine is for you,” she answered, kindling with enthusiasm. “When we are married, Seymour, I would have the whole world look on and know that it is my hand that endows you with wealth—my love which chooses you from among all other men. There can be nothing costly or rare with which we will not surround ourselves. Love, to be complete, should envelop itself in purple, bathe itself in the perfume of flowers and be lulled to sleep by sweet music.”

The young man smiled to see her eyes kindle and her cheeks burn. This material picture fired his imagination, but failed to satisfy that deeper feeling which in reality lifted him above the woman he so worshipped.

“Love like mine craves none of these things,” he said, almost reproachfully. “With you, Cora, I could be happy in a log cabin less pretentious than this little rustic nest—away from the world, away—”

Cora interrupted him, a little scornfully, with a laugh that thrilled him half with pain, half with pleasure.

“And I would lavish everything beautiful and precious in the world on you,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder.

“But you will not give up any of these things for me.”

“I would give up everything for you, if that were needful.”

“Then brave the opinion of these people you call the world.”

“Had we not better evade it?” said Cora, drawing her face nearer to his and almost whispering in his ear.

“Evade it; how?”

“Why need any one know till all these vexatious questions about the property are settled?”

A sudden joy flashed into the young man’s face.

“And would you, would you?” he questioned, girding her waist unconsciously with his arm.

“Will you wait patiently for the time of disclosure to come? Will you keep it secret?”

“I will be anything you wish.”

“And not urge me to declare our marriage till it is perfectly safe?”

“Why should I—you will be mine?”

“Then be it next week—nay, to-morrow, if you like.”

Her cheeks were one flush of roses, her eyes became flooded with misty softness, over which the white lids drooped, for she was ashamed of her own eagerness. Though perverted and wicked, she was yet a woman, and trembled a little at the great venture she was making. Seymour did not speak at first and his arms released its fond hold on her waist. She looked suddenly in his face and blushed red when she saw a sort of wonder in his eyes rather than the great joy she had expected. Quick as thought she understood this delicate revulsion.

“Then next week, to-morrow, if you like, we will talk the matter over more dispassionately,” she said, drawing gently away from him. “We have many things to reflect on. Even now it would be better to wait.”

A flash of eager fire in the young man’s face proved the sudden reaction caused by her words. The pride of his manhood, faulty as it was, recoiled from an offer even of the happiness he craved when it came so readily from those crimson lips. But her retreat, which seemed to spring from delicacy, was made with such dexterous craft that it swept this feeling away, and he became an eager suppliant again.

“Not a week—not a day—not an hour—if I can help it, shall this great happiness escape me,” he exclaimed, with passionate warmth. “I feel as if each moment might snatch you from me, and tremble as it passes. Let us go at once; there must be a clergyman somewhere in the neighborhood.”

Cora gave one of her clear, ringing laughs, and patted her hand with a light caress upon the curls on one side of his head.

“What an impetuous, rash creature it is who has made me love him so,” she said. “Why we might as well summon a regiment to see us married. No, that country clergyman will never do. Let us think—let us consult. This thing must be secret as the grave.”

“The grave, Cora? That is an ugly word to couple with our love.”

“Well, then, secret as the fruit that lies hidden in the heart of a blossom. Will that do?”

“Anything that is sweet and lovely will do. Well, we are to be secret. I consent to that, if it brings no delay.”

“We must go to the city. My un—, my father had a house there, which he occupied in the winter of late years; a gem of a residence, I am told. That shall be our home.”

“Admirable! But soon—let it be soon.”

“To-morrow I will go to the city alone and make all necessary preparation. Next week—”

“Well, what shall come next week!”

“The clergyman, as you are determined to have it so.”

Her eyelids drooped as she spoke, and fringes, of a rich golden brown, curled over the passion of love that slept in her eyes. This was not all unreal; she was womanly for the moment. He thought her the very incarnation of pure loveliness, and trembled with a joy that was almost pain as he gazed upon her.

“Then I am determined to have it so. In one week I will bring the clergyman who is to make you my wife to the place you speak of. But your aunt?”

“She must know nothing. Her heart would be with us, but she is weak and irresolute. The shock of her daughter’s insanity has unnerved her. In all things I am independent.”

“But you will let me go with you to the city?”

“No. You can follow me and I will manage to see you at the hotel just once during the week.”

“This week—this one week, and then you are my wife. Oh, Cora! this happiness seems too great. I am not worthy of it; yet if deep, pure, overpowering love could make a man worthy, I might claim something from that.”

The young man—earnest and true, most surely, for the moment—held her by the waist as he spoke and looked tenderly into her free. She met his gaze smiling, and with a warm red, which was not blushes, on her cheek.

“My wife,” he whispered; “my wife! That is a dear word. Great Heavens, how dear it must be to a good man!”

A sensitive woman would have been troubled by these regretful exclamations, and felt in her heart that there was something wrong under them. But with so many passionate and ardent feelings mingled with the selfishness of her nature, Cora was neither a sensitive nor really refined woman. She scarcely heeded the expressions of self-reproach that escaped him from time to time, and if she did, imputed them to the humility of a man whom she was lifting from poverty to an equality with herself one of the most beautiful and wealthy women of the land.

“Now, good-bye, it is growing dark inside the cabin, and they will miss me at home.”

“Not yet, darling; not yet. The stars are trembling down through the leaves with a tender light. See how the purple shadows are deepening along the hollows of the brook. Directly the moon must begin to shine, and that will give a holier beauty to your face. Does not this remind you of that sunset among the hills when I first saw you wandering along, left behind by your friends, and searching for the path which you never would have found. With what a gentle radiance the moon arose that night! Ah, I was free and happy then!”

“And now your voice is sad, tears tremble in your voice. Why is this, Seymour?”

He bent his face to hers in the purple dusk of the twilight.

“Have you never heard of happiness so great that it trenches on pain?” he said, evasively. “But, look, the moon is rising; you can see its dancing silver on the water. Ah, my beloved, now your face returns to me as it did then, dear and delicate, like a soul imprisoned in marble. I remember well a sadness fell upon me when I left you, so deep and strange that it seemed like the shadow of some dark fate. It is creeping over me now.”

Cora broke impatiently from his arm; she had no sympathy with the sadness of his thoughts, and strove to win him from them by trivial questions.

“I remember,” she said. “There was a gentleman with you then, and you would not tell me his name; it is very cruel, for, from the distance, he seemed both elegant and handsome. Who was it, tell me now?”

Even in the moonlight, Cora was surprised to see how white and stonelike Seymour turned. He was silent half a minute, then roused himself abruptly and answered her in a voice that seemed sharp with pain:

“I will answer that question, but on condition that you ask no more regarding that man now or ever. He was my friend and he is dead.”

The moment he had spoken, Seymour bent down, pressed a cold kiss upon her lips that clung there like ice, and left the cabin. Cora found him outside the door, leaning heavily against the logs.

“Come,” he said, in a troubled voice, “we are getting sad, and that will never do. Which way is your house, along this path?”

“But it is dangerous—you may be seen. I must return home alone,” Cora protested.

“I will retreat when we get to the edge of the wood, from thence I can watch you,” he answered, supporting her along the path.

Cora allowed the escort in silence. She was depressed by his unaccountable sadness and disappointment in the termination of an interview from which she had promised herself unmixed joy.

They reached the edge of the woods, and then he took her in his arms again.

“And will you always love me?” he said, with pathetic earnestness. “Can nothing turn your heart from me?”

“I will always love you, Seymour. Nothing on this earth can ever turn my heart from you,” she answered, almost in tears.

“In sorrow—sickness—poverty?”

“These things are nothing that I should shrink from them,” was her reply.

“In disgrace?”

He asked that question in a whisper that crept through her with a chill.

“That can never reach you while I am your wife,” she said, proudly.

“But if it should?”

“Then I, your wife, would sweep it away from you, or—”

“Or what?”

“Share it with you. But why ask such questions? Is it to try me? That is ungenerous. Have I not promised to many you unquestioned, scarcely knowing or caring if you had prince or peasant for a father?”

“What if he were low-born?”

“Low-born—that is, a man who worked for his living? Well, what do I care for that? In this country work is the foundation of greatness, statesmen tell us. If you have nothing more serious than low birth and poverty to frighten me with, pray compose yourself.”

“But if it were crime?”

She started, for that word lay buried deep in her own heart, and the husky slowness with which it was uttered seemed searching it out.

“Sometimes a great motive, an overpowering ambition, almost ennobles crime itself,” she said. “If the object were sufficient, even that could not conquer such love as ours.”

He snatched her suddenly to his heart, kissed her two or three times upon the eyelids and lips and let her go. Cora found herself out in the moonlight and alone before she recovered from the surprise left upon her by this action.

Seymour drew back into the shadows, from which he watched her as she crossed a meadow separated by an invisible fence from the lawn. When she disappeared among the shrubbery, he turned, walked hastily back along the narrow footpath, and entering the log cabin, threw himself prostrate on the floor, with his face buried in his folded arms. There he burst into a passion of tears that filled the little building with such sounds of grief as had never visited it before. At last the violence of his emotion exhausted itself. Then the sweet hum and flow of the brook stole in through the open door and swept away his sobs into their own music, soothing him, unconsciously, till the wet lashes closed over his eyes and the moonlight streamed in upon his sleeping face, giving it the rare beauty of some sculptured ideal. Had you looked upon him then you could have thought nothing that was not bright and good of the young man; grief and that gentle sleep had purified his nature for the time, and no dark passion left its shadow upon that face.

Hour after hour the young man slept with the scent of ferns and ripening leaves sweeping over him hushed into sweet rest by the chime of waters, the rustle of forest boughs and the far-off flow of the Hudson, which came up from the distance like a voice from eternity sweeping through the night. All at once the cry of a whip-poor-will from the hemlock, whose branches swept the cabin roof, aroused him. He started up, felt the sublime stillness of the night like one in a dream, and at last began to realize where he was and what had happened.

Fortunately the young man had but to follow the footpath which brought him to the tavern stoop into which his own room opened. He had purposely left the inner door locked, and that which he had unfastened remained partly open. So he made his way to bed in the dark, satisfied that his absence had been undiscovered.