Doubly false

The moment Cora returned home, she sent a note to Clarence Brooks, challenging him to ride that afternoon as some compensation for the one she had so unexpectedly deprived him of. With all her anxiety this strange being had been restless with a feverish desire to see Brooks and hear more distinctly than he had yet spoken the wishes that she believed burning in his heart. Throwing off her travelling dress, she put on her habit, and, ordering Blackbird to be saddled, was ready to start long before the man returned with her note unopened.

“Mr. Brooks had gone out to ride early in the afternoon,” the people at the hotel told him.

“What road?” she asked.

The man believed it was the river road. At first they were not quite certain that he had not taken his usual walk up the ravine.

“Up the ravine. What ravine?”

“That in which the pretty log cabin stood. Mr. Brooks spent a great deal of time up there, chestnuting and making pictures on scraps of paper. But he wasn’t doing anything of the kind this afternoon, for one of the boys had seen him riding across the little plank bridge below the railway.”

A wild, fierce pang shot into that woman’s bad heart. She knew that Virginia made frequent visits to the ravine, and her suspicions took fire at once. She turned her stormy face on the man and pointed sternly with her whip toward the stables.

“Go tell Joshua Hurd to bring my horse out at once.”

The man obeyed, and five minutes after his mistress was galloping up the river road with fire in her heart and a hot red on her cheeks. She had ridden perhaps three miles in this way, when a rise in the ground gave her command of a cross road which led through a maple grove on the right. With a sudden jerk of the bridle, she checked her horse, and a spasm of pain closed the teeth upon her lips, which grew white under the pressure.

This was what she saw—a black and a white horse drawn close together under a huge maple tree, which was raining its golden leaves all around them—a gentleman stooping toward a tall, slender girl, who wore a riding-dress almost exactly like her own. These two persons seemed to be talking earnestly, but after a few moments they prepared to move on. There was something wrong about the lady’s bridle, evidently, for the gentleman dismounted to arrange it, and snatching the hand which was extended to receive the reins from his, pressed it to his lips more than once. Cora not only saw this, but she observed that there was no glove upon that hand, for the lady drew on her gauntlet as she rode along.

Fierce as war, and hard as iron, that woman wheeled her horse slowly around and rode home. She made no remark, and avoided all questions, but seated herself by a window—massing the curtains into a safe concealment—and waited till her cousin should appear.

Virginia came at last, walking her horse up the carriage drive; she stooped forward more than once and patted the pretty animal’s neck, as if, in the supreme contentment of her heart, she must caress something. Cora remarked the bloom of happiness in her face and the cheerful leap with which she sprang from her horse. The sight was poison to her.

Ellen met Virginia at the door of their parlor, looking anxious and disturbed.

“She has come—Miss Cora is in the house,” she said, as if announcing some great calamity.

Virginia laughed. What had the beloved of Clarence Brooks to hope or fear from Cora Lander? Let her come and go as she pleased; a little time would separate them forever. But there was one thing she was anxious about. Could Eunice be persuaded to let them have the tray sent up a little earlier? The ride had given her an appetite, and then she had promised to bring Ellen to this little cataract—it was a shame to call it a cascade—to watch the sun set. There was a pile of clouds in the west, which would fire up beautifully.

Ellen undertook to propitiate Eunice, with whom she had become a great favorite, and Virginia, after taking off her habit, nestled herself into an easy chair and fell to dreaming, as innocent girls will when love throws a rosy bloom into the atmosphere around them.

The promise held out by that embankment of clouds was brilliantly kept; floods of rosy light floated through them, touched at the edges with fringes of living flames; opaline seas and lakes of amber hue broke out from their depths, surrounded by embankments of living gold, flashes of green and purple shot in here and there, as if the angels had got tired of weaving rainbows and flung their overplus of colors into one gorgeous sunset. As usual, Ellen wandered off by herself and drank in the glory of the scene with thrills of such delight as genius alone can feel. Even those two lovers, happy and refined as they were, failed to reach the exquisite pleasure that stirred her heart.

When did sunset or landscape ever draw two lovers out of their own lives for any length of time? Before those noble colors had begun to melt into that soft purple which precedes the night, the young couple had become, as usual, absorbed in each other. They spoke of their loves—of the bright future which lay before them—of the long, long life in which they were never to be parted.

“It seems too blessed; sometimes I am frightened lest all this should fade away,” murmured Virginia as she saw that vivid tumult of colors melt tint by tint into a soft purplish blackness. “What if it should all break up like that?”

“The heavens themselves shall pass away first,” said Brooks, with solemnity. “The man or woman does not live that could separate us.”

A rustling of dead leaves, as if a sudden wind were whirling them up from some hollow, followed these words and out from behind the rock against which they sat started a tall figure, wrapped in a large blanket shawl.

Brooks heard this sound of whirling leaves and wrapped Virginia’s cloak more closely around her.

“The wind seems to be rising,” he said. “I must not keep you out in the cold.”

She thanked him with a smile, and, all unmindful of the evil thing that had crept so near them, they went down the ravine together for the last time.

The next day it rained heavily, and with the rain came a high wind, which swept the woods of all their foliage and filled the air with whirling leaves. It was a sad, gloomy day, such as only the late autumn can bring, and no human being, save those compelled to brave the storm, thought of venturing out of doors. This gloomy weather answered to the dark thoughts in Cora’s mind, as nature sometimes will aid evil passions. The woman had not closed her eyes all night—had not even undressed herself or gone to bed. Wrapped in the dull red of that great shawl, which had so well covered her movements among the perishing leaves, she huddled herself in a corner of her silken couch, and sat there like some wild animal waiting for its prey—fierce, watchful, poisoned with bitter thought—till the dawn looked in upon her. Then she arose and stood before the mirror, breathing heavily, as if, soul and body, she had been laboring in some oppressive atmosphere.

“It is well this rain has given me a few hours to myself,” she said, looking at the haggard face that seemed to threaten her from the glass. “I must have time to get smiles and color back to that miserable face. So beautiful as it was, and yet fail to keep that one man. What was nature doing, to match her features with mine? To make her slender, lithe, graceful as I am? It is like rivalling one’s self if it were not for this and this.”

Cora touched her heart and her forehead, while a look of triumph swept over the pallor of her face, changing it so that its resemblance to Virginia’s almost entirely disappeared. She had so many secrets, preying upon her like vampyres, that it was a relief to lock herself in that room and talk to her own image in the glass, or answer to the thoughts that haunted her through the darkness when she could not sleep. This expression of feelings which she dared not expose to any human being was like letting in fresh air on a poisonous atmosphere. It became a relief and habit to her at last.

“This quick intellect, this fiery heart—that tact which some people might spend a life time and never learn—she will no more acquire than she will get back the property I am enjoying. After all, compared to these advantages, beauty is a small thing, well enough in its way, but one could afford to dispense with it. Still, in a contest like this, everything counts.”

Thus this young woman gave forth her wicked thoughts, that were echoed back by her own heart only as rocky solitudes receive sound. She had formed her plans during the night, and began to work them out at once. Opening her door softly, she stole down a long passage leading to that end of the house where Virginia’s apartments lay. These were composed of two sleeping rooms and a small parlor, which Eunice had insisted on arranging for her occupation. Since her plain talk with Cora, this hard-faced woman had exercised her own will in the house with more despotism than she had ever used when Mrs. Lander was mistress. She seemed to take a pleasure in defying the person who had once attempted to drive her from the house. This defiance was most generally exhibited in some act of devotion to Virginia or Ellen, whose noble character had made itself felt even by her rough nature. She saw that it offended Cora to have this unfortunate girl recognized by the servants as their superior, and exalted her accordingly. The other retainers followed the housekeeper’s example, and no person in that mansion was treated kinder or respected more than Ellen Nolan.

Towards the rooms thus independently appropriated by her cousin, Cora made her stealthy way. She remembered that a narrow passage connected one of these rooms with the chamber that Amos Lander had formerly occupied, and which had been shut up since his death. Did this passage lead to Virginia’s sitting-room or had her sleeping chamber been arranged next that of her father? This was a question she had stolen forth in the early morning to satisfy herself upon. Treading softly, and holding her breath, she paused by a door, which might lead into Virginia’s sitting-room, or, quite as likely, into the chamber where she lay sleeping. With a silken touch, she turned the silver knob and cautiously opened the door just far enough to look in. With a sense of relief, she saw that it was unoccupied and evidently used as a parlor. A piano stood opposite the door, which she knew to have been removed from the drawing room to give space for the grand instrument Mrs. Lander had ordered during her brief season of extravagance. Books lay upon the tables, flowers drooped in the vases. Standing against the door, which Cora surveyed with eager scrutiny, was a desk, littered with manuscripts, some of which had fallen to the floor.

Cora advanced on tiptoe and took up one of those loose sheets. They were not in Virginia’s handwriting—nothing of her graceful elegance was there. The manuscript was hasty, erased, interlined and blotted as if a hand, stirred by strong feelings, had seized upon the pen in a passion of thought, and left almost illegible traces on the foolscap.

“Why, has that crooked thing turned author?” she thought. “I should not wonder, there was always something of that kind in her eyes.”

She let the paper flutter down from her hand, observed that the door against which the desk stood opened inward, and was thus blocked up. She was going out with another sweeping survey of the room, when her eyes fell on an object which made her heart stand still. It was the portrait of Amos Lander, hanging above the piano—a picture which, up to that season, had always hung in his office or private study. Struck with awe, breathless with vague terror, the woman could not turn her eyes from that face, which seemed to look down upon her in calm confidence that justice would reach all those evil deeds at last. She strove to wrest her eyes from the glance that held them, but could not, and walked backward, holding her breath, till she reached the door. She closed this and fled along the passage, seeking shelter from that face in her own room.

Some weeks before this, duplicate keys of all the rooms in the house had been brought to her, for she had begun with an elaborate display of housekeeping, which was an unforgivable cause of offence with Eunice Hurd. These keys she now searched over, and taking out the one which unlocked Mrs. Lander’s chamber, put it in her pocket.

By this time the household was astir, and she commenced her morning toilet, touching her cheeks with rouge for the first time in her life, for that picture had driven the last vestige of color away from them, and no effort of hers could bring it back again.

“They shall not see how haggard I am,” she muttered, sweeping the rich hair back from her temples and coiling it on the back of her head. “If I could get ten minutes’ sleep now. But that is hopeless. I can understand how Lady Macbeth felt when she prayed for sleep and only found dreams. But dreams that come when you are wide awake, as I was last night, are the worst of all when you are forced to work them out. Right or wrong—right or wrong I will accomplish mine.”

Cora met Mrs. Lander at breakfast, as had become her habit of late, with those hollow expressions of affection which appease rather than satisfy a loving heart. She went into an elaborate detail of the dresses which she had seen in progress; suggested more expensive trimmings for some, and took an interest in the whole affair that charmed her mother into a season of absolute forgetfulness of the sin she had committed. While they still lingered at the breakfast table, a servant came in with information that a boy had come up from the city on the early train, with a letter to Miss Lander, which he was directed to give to her in person.

“It is something from the dressmaker, I fancy,” said Cora, rising with every appearance of tranquillity from the table. “I told her to leave the silver gray satin till we sent farther directions. I thought lace would be lovely for the body and sleeves, but she objected on account of the mourning.”

“I’m afraid, dear,” said Mrs. Lander, “that the dressmaker was right. Even satin may be considered an innovation. Dead silk is really the thing. I am so sorry, but we must give up the lace. People are so censorious you know. Plain, with pipings of black, was what I had settled on. But I will see Fanchon’s messenger.”

“That will do no good; just write your directions and send the note down to me. I will add all that is necessary. She has my general orders to make everything as beautiful as possible and spare no expense.”

“What a dear, kind, liberal creature you are—no mother ever had a more generous child.”

“Dear aunt, have you not always been treated exactly as if I were your own child? I’m sure it was my father’s wish.”

Cora looked steadily into her mother’s eyes as she said this, and walked quietly out of the room. There was no danger that the widow would follow her after this covert rebuke.

Cora found, as she expected, Brian Nolan waiting in a small reception room which opened from the library. She had never seen this lad but once, and that was at the hotel the day after her arrival in New York. She took the letter that he gave her and looked at the address, which was a simple name, with some evidence of surprise.

“This is for my cousin,” she said, “I will take it to her. Wait for the answer here.”

“If you please, there is a young person living here that I should like to speak with,” said Brian, glad to have accomplished his task so easily. “Her name is Ellen—Ellen Nolan.”

“She shall be sent for at once.”

Cora rang the bell and told a servant to inform Ellen Nolan that a person from the city wished to speak with her. Then she left the room with a quiet, leisurely air, as if the paper in her hand could be of no possible consequence, though it was making her tremble from head to foot.

“I wonder if his wife is so very handsome,” thought Brian, watching her as she moved through the library. “This is the lady Ellen loves so much. She speaks softly and does not look unkind, but I should hate to ask her myself. What a slow, proud walk she has.”

Ellen Nolan came like a bird into the room where her brother sat. She knew that it must be him, for, in all that strange land, there was no one else who had the slightest interest in her outside of that house.

“O, Brian, Brian, how glad I am!” she cried, throwing her arms around him, and kissing his hair and mouth and eyes with indiscriminate affection. “I have so longed for you—so pined and prayed for a sight of you. Don’t think it strange, dear, if I do act like a crazy thing; in the wide, wide world you are all I have, except my lady. God forgive me if, in my joy, I forget her for one moment. O, Brian, she is an angel!”

“I am glad of that,” answered Brian, returning his sister’s embrace with ardor, and giving back glad tears in exchange for her kisses, “for I have a great favor to ask of her. Something that will frighten you at first.”

“A favor to ask of my lady, Brian?”

“Ellen, I have come to you for help. The best friend I ever knew is in trouble.”

“What, the good gentleman?”

“Yes, dear. Bend your head; we are alone, but I dare not speak out loud.”

Ellen bent her head, but, in an instant, started back with a cry of such wild surprise, that it was clearly heard in the library, where Cora was reading that letter. She lifted her face and listened.

“What can it be about?” she thought. “Surely he has not entrusted that boy with our secret.”

She arose white with dread, and, stepping through one of the library windows, regardless of the drifting rain, which wetted her slippers through in an instant, softly opened the blinds of another window, over which she remembered the silken drapery of a curtain was falling loose. The reception room had been occupied late the evening before, and the curtain let down, to shut out all sounds of the storm, which was beating against that side of the house with violence, from which another window, opening to the west, was protected. No servant had entered the room that morning. Thus it remained, with the drapery sweeping over one window and looped back from the other.

Taking advantage of a gust of wind, that came sweeping around the house that moment, Cora softly pushed the unfastened sashes back to the places made to receive them, on each side of the deep recess, and, drawing the blinds after her, sat down on an ottoman, which always occupied the space shut in by the curtains. In this position she heard all that Brian Nolan had to tell his sister, except those words which he could only force himself to utter in a whisper. This much, however, she did learn. Seymour was making strenuous efforts to repay the money he had taken, and Virginia was to be importuned in his behalf. Out of this came glorious materials for the web her crafty mind was weaving. If she could only bring Seymour and her cousin once into companionship, the task she had imposed on herself would be of easy accomplishment.