Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1898 — DOUBLY WEDDED [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DOUBLY WEDDED

BY - CHARLOTTE M. BRAEM.

CHAPTER X.—(Cintinued.) “Lillian,” said the coloApl, “you are visionary. It won’t do. Wti must give it -®p. You had better make up your mind marry me. You shall be happy, I promvfce you!” “Happy—when I cannot love you?” questioned Mrs. Drew hopelessly. “I will love you enough for us both,” eaid the colonel, with a smile. "I do not agree with you,” said Lillian, ■coldly, offended by the colonel’s coolness <nd self-possesion as much as by his epeech. “Love is unselfish —well and <ood: but it is not cold. If it is not that Cort of human idolatry at first, how can -ft stand the wear and tear of married life, •with its cares and troubles?” “Oh, I understand you to say that you -Sever loved Captain Drew in that way—that you were glad when he went out; you preferred the society of your lady triends!” “That has nothing to do with the question,” declared Mrs. Drew, the blood rushing to her cheeks and ears. “I did not .'love my husband in that way; and it was Just the knowledge of this which made me '-feel as if I were partly responsible for his iloving another woman.” “You have not loved your husband,” -caid the colonel, gravely throwing away his cigar, “and you do not love me? Who ia it then—who is the happy man who has ■made you feel as I am almost amused at having felt when I was an unfledged lout?” “No one!” cried Lillian impetuously. “I wonder you dare ask such a thing! I, a married woman, too!” They followed the path in silence. The colonel was perfectly satisfied. This was Ao passionless, immovable abstraction in the shape of a woman! The quiet Mrs. Drew had shown not only wounded vanity. but anger and jealousy during this •hort interview, while her emotions had been stirred. “I can make her love me with a doglike love,” he told himself. “Site •hall not bemy slave; but I bet that a year hence no one will be able to say with truth what they are so fond of saying •bout some newly married couples—‘the love is all on one side.’ ” While he was thinking thus, Lillian Drew, in her annoyance, pique, and perturbation, almost disliked him. They were on the terrace. "Lillian,” called Mrs. Ware from within the lighted drawing room, “have you jrour little shawl, my dear? Remember •the dew. and your thin muslin.” “Your dress may be damp; you had better go in at once,” said the colonel, touching her shoulder lightly with his one hand. “I suppose you would like to say ‘No to me before I go. Well, I do not intend to .give you the opportunity. I not Accept any answer to-night, as I have taken you by surprise. I shall travel for a month: then I shall come here for your Answer. Meanwhile —heaven bless you And your child —and the dear old folk! Then he stepped into the drawing room, •aid good-night and good-by to his aunt, And went off to the squire in the smoking room. Mrs. Drew awoke in the night, thought •f her peculiar position, said to herself that the colonel was a brute —only wanted to marry her to simplify matters and to ©lay the benefactor—and solved her difficulties by crying herself to sleep. When Mary entered quietly the next morning •he brought a letter from Lilith—a short Aote. “Oh, dearest mother, I am—we all are in such trouble! Willie has had an acci■dent to his head; he is still insensible; and it'was my fault. If you could only come! Airs. Law is dreadfully angry with me, and I do not wonder; but I do not care for that. Aunt Macdonald says nothing, and is wonderfully patient; but she looks so white, and as wretched as if. she believed Willie would die.” Mrs. Drew read the note twice, ordered •the carriage, gave housekeeping direc’tions, caught the early train, and in a few thours was knocking at the door of the ■old house in Prince’s Square. - Lilith took her mother to the drawing room, and related that Willie was taking her for a walk one evening, when her ."foot slipped, and she fell, crossing a road. A carriage came dashing round the cormer, and. in trying to snatch her from 'under the rearing horses, suddenly checked by the coachman, Willie was knocked down. "One of the horses kicked him,” she •aid. “How awful it was! Some men And I took him to a hospital close by; then Mrs. Law came in the carriage with her ■own doctor, and brought him home. It wan two days ago. I could not write yesterday—l felt too dreadful; but they say be tqay live now, although he is still unconscious.” Mrs. Drew soothed and comforted Lilith. She was, as it were, steadied by this ■Unexpected trouble. Yesterday and the •colonel seemed a feverish drcam. She ■•made Lilith lie down; then she took off her ’bonnet, and, going to the door of the sick Toom, knocked. Mrs. Macdonald came to the door, and, seeing who it was, joined Mrs. Drew in the passage, ■“1 am glad you have come,” she said, '“for poor Lilith's sake.” Then she exonerated Lilith from all blame. “I shall take her home,” announced Mrs. Drew. ■“Perhaps it would bo as well,” said- " Willie's mother. “You see, it would not do quite to let her help to tiurse him, although she is ready and willing to do it, ©oor child. The fact is, Mrs. Law thinks ter too old. She says the neFghlMirs have talked about their being so much together, as it Is. That is nonsense, between louI ou and me,” she added. Then she asked Irs. Drew if she would like to see Willie. Mrs. Drew shrank a little, but said •*Yes.” Mrs. Mhcdonald opened the door. It was a simple room, hung with engrnvdngSr Over the mantelpiece was a pcncil•drawing—to Mrs. Drew’s great astonishment, a portrait of herself, with flowing -hair and a crown. No one, perhaps, would have recognized that it was intended as a ©ortrait. But she well remembered Lilith’s sketching bar «me day as Mary was

brushing her long hair. The crown had been added since. She looked away, slightly startled at such a curious incident —away to the other side of the room, where there was an iron bedstead, beside which sat a nurse, who rose as she and Mrs. Macdonald approached the bed. “Sit down,” said Willie’s mother, gently pushing Mrs. Drew into the vacant chair. “He will not know or take notice. He only at noises—sometimes.” Willie’s face was turned away on the pillow—his head was bandaged; but his breathing was soft and slow. “I believe that he will get well, that he is better,” said Mrs. Drew confidently to the motherland nurse. Then she went to Lilith, who was leaning in dumb despair against the painting room window. Since the night when William Macdonald promised Mrs. Drew to protect and care for Lilith, he had gradually made himself indispensable to the girl. While living his own working life he had actually lived for her. It all seemed so plain to Lilith now as she looked out at the black gardens—the dying leaves dropping with the steady rain and the clouds of smoke borne downward, making a dismal picture. She had been exacting, too, and on one or two occasions, when he was unpunctual, had been almost disagreeable in her manner to him, who was always cheerfully kind. When her mother came in and said, “He is better; I feel sure he will live,” she burst into a fit of sobbing; but this broke the ice, and she spent the next half hour in passionate eulogium —extravagant, even, for Lilith. “This is that calf-love Colonel Geoffrey sneered at,” thought her mother; “and he, of course, loves her.” She sighed—sighed as one disabled by age may sigh, watching the gambols of young creatures in the exuberance of youth’s grace and freedom. She was loath to grieve her child; but, when Lilith spoke of the time when she should be allowed to see the patient, she at once told her that she would return home that night. Lilith begged and entreated; she coaxed, argued, even fell at her mother’s knees and embraced them; but this made Mrs. Drew still firmer in her determination —only she softened matters by suggesting that, when William Macdonald, was better, he should come to Heathside for change of air. And being satisfied with this concession, Lilith took leave of her London friends and returned home with her mother. CHAPTER XI. It was a calm August evening. The harvest was over; the last roses were half hidden by the dying leaves. The hall windows glittered golden red in the sunset. This was the day that Willie Macdonald was to come to Heathside Hall “to be nursed,” as Mrs. Drew worded it. A fortnight before she had longed to have the forlorn little lad, her husband’s only son Gerald, to lavish her tenderness upon; but Colonel Ware and Mr. Rawson had taken the affair of the actress and her family completely out of Lillian’s hands. Mrs. Drew was not consulted; she was told what had been done. And the ways of those two worldly wise men were not as her Impulsive and somewhat eccentric ways. Gerald was sent away to the seaside to be day boarder at a school where he was afterward to be educated—instead of going to Eton and costing Mrs. Drew the greater part of her income, as she had intended. The mother was removed from the house of her drunken parents to a home where she would be nursed back into health, should such a thing be possible; and the little girls were placed in the family of a struggling clergyman, whose wife would give them maternal care. It was all most satisfactorily arranged. To-day Willie was to arrive, shortly before dinner. Neither Mrs. Drew nor Lilith had altered her daily program. They had been out; Lilith had put the finishing touches to a landscape. Mrs. Drew, arranging her hair before her glass about six o’clock, saw Lilith, already dressed, sauntering into the garden. “Where are you going?" she cried, hurrying to the window. “The train will be in soon; he will be here in less than half an hour.” "I am going to fetch a book I left in the wigwam,” said Lilith coolly, nnd then she went slowly down the terrace steps. Mrs. Drew stared for a moment in surprise; then she returned to her dressing table. “Strange child!” she thought, puzzled. “She adores him —1 am certain of it; yet, I when ho is expected, she gets out of the wny. Is she afraid of betraying herself? It must be that —It enn be nothing else!” Her kind little mother was already in the drawing room. As Lillian joined her, she asked the aid of Ist arm. "1 must be in the hull, to welcome the poor lad, Lillian, nly dear," she said as she walked slowly out of the room and into the hall, where she sat down on an old oaken porter's chair. "He will feel lonely, strange poor young man —tired from his journey.” Where was no sound but a distant whistle from the railway. How calm nnd beautiful the park looked, with its fair green slopes, with the big trees still, ns if slumbering, their stately tops gilded by the last sun-rays! What peace this must seem to a weary invalid after the heat, smoke. nnd noise of a grout city! Mrs. Drew felt a sudden fear lest the carriage should drive up empty—lest M illie should be worse —perhaps—Who could tell t —dead. Dead—and through Lilith? Perhaps Lilith had feared thia, nnd hnd gone away into the garden to hide her mispensc. Fear chilled Mrs. Drew ns she stood in the pnle evening light. Her eyes gtew dim; ahe could haadly renlize that this was the carriage turning the corner nnd driving toward her. Willie, lying back on the cushions that hnd been packed into the broughnm by Mrs. Drew and her maid Mary, was languidly luxuriating in the rurnl benuty, filled with delightful anticipation. Ue

felt cruelly worn, ill, exhausted, yet he smiled. “It would be good to die here,” he was. thinking, as they came in sight of the! gray mansion, and he saw Mrs. Drew] watching on the steps. “The angel of gentleness and mercy!” he thought, as the carriage door opened and Mrs. Drew smiled upon him. It seemed too good to be true to the dazed invalid as the delicate lady assisted a man servant to bring him into this new! haven of rest, talking gently and encour-j agingly of how soon he would laugh ar such aids and disdain his nurses. His dreams were lingering about “him as, he awoke in the early morning. A ray of gold came through the opening in the, shutters. He was in a huge bedstead’ draped with flowery chintz; at its foot! was a sofa. Raising himself on his arm,; he saw his male attendant stretched* asleep upoq the chintz-covered couch; be-; yond was a writing table; on either side] of the writing materials were vases containing clusters of white roses. His weakened heart gave a leap. White roses! Who had decked his room with these reminiscences of that eventful night when, by his innocent connivance, the! lovely woman who had worn his gift o? just such flowers had to suffer so much' with such gentle bravery at the theater "A Could it be Mrs. Drew herself? Oh, no, impossible! The blood rushed to his pale cheek. The excitement of the thought made him feel stronger than since his accident; he coughed loudly, awakened the man servant and insisted upon getting up. At breakfast Lilith came in and greeted Willie as quietly as if this had been the table in Prince’s Square, with severa Mrs. Law at its head instead of her moth-! er. Then she sat down in her place, which was next Willie's, and remained pale and silent for a while. She had suffered intensely on the preceding day, dreading to see a change in her brightfaced friend—a change of which she had been the innocent cause; she suffered still more when she realized the effect of the accident. Willie Macdonald was not only thin and white-faced; there were the lines; marked around his eyes by brain mischief. He stooped; each movement was languid and heavy, instead of brisk and buoyant. Little wonder that Lilith felt hopelessly wretched! She got away from the breakfast table as soon as she could, and went wandering aimlessly into the shrubbery. The pleasant working time —pleasant in spite of its struggles and disappointments—when Willie’s companionship had been her happiness, Willie’s consolation and his way of making fun of her difficulties her great help in patiently enduring her life at the drawing school, seemed ages ago. “Never to come again,” she said to herself—“ Sever again!” Why did she feel that “all was over?” she asked herself as she threw herself upon the grass on a little knoll in the shrubbery, and, leaning on her elbows, unconsciously watched the tiny weeds, the insects creeping through the grass, the dead leaves as they fluttered slowly down and fell noiselessly upon the turf. How long she had lain pondering—the leaves dropping upon her as if she were a babe in the wood, and the redbreasts busy in the branches above—she did not know; but she was roused by distant voices, and a laugh she knew to be her mother’s. The knoll was a hundred yards or so from the Hall. Rising, she looked over the shrubbery fence, and saw a group about the steps leading to the hall door. A groom was at the head of Madam Ware’s little pony-chair, in which she took airings, when not so well as usual. Mrs. Drew, in a large hat, was arranging pillows; Mitry and a man servant were assisting the invalid down the steps. Lilith stood still, watching. She watched the three settle Willie in his invalid carriage. She noted the tender way in which her mother wrapped one of her Indian shawls —one she preferred, too—about his knees; she even saw, or fancied she saw, his grateful smile. His eyes were gazing up toward his new nurse with an expression she had never seen there; she felt a sudden pang, a sudden enlightenment. “That look means admiration,” she thought bitterly. “And I—l could never, never inspire that.” “You told me —you were so good as to tell me—so much about yoursflf,” began. Willie earnestly, though lowering his voice lest the groom who was walking a short distance ahead might hear, "that you will forgive me for asking you if you are not happy?” "At this moment?” She paused and looked round. “Well, to-day I feel strangely light-hearted. The sun seems brighter, the air sweet, exhilarating. Oh, life is very beautiful!” she said suddenly, looking Willie straight in the face, with an innocent surprise. “I wonder—l do believe I am a person of moods, after all!” she added, with a laugh. “I have longed so for some one to take care of. Lilith doesn't want it. I believe I was born to l>e a nurse.” Then she told him the tale of poor little Gerald, found under the hedge by Willie’s uncle, Mr. Rawson. "You mentioned a cousin—the colonel—who is he?” asked Willie, after sympathizing with her on the subject of the “exiled children," as she considered them. "The heir—our successor here,” said Mrs. Drew; but she spoke with slight embarrassment, which did not escape the notice of the convalescent. "A middleaged Indian officer, very nice in his way, is my cousin Geoffrey.” Then she related about the afternoon spent at the rectory. “He was so delighted with the house, the dairies, with everything," she added —•"especially with one of your cousins—her singing, I mean. You can imagine what a delightful place a peaceful English homestead like Mr. Rawsoji's must seem to a dried-up old Indian." “This—this place must have pleased him* still more, 1 should think," remarked the young man. He had never eared much for the Rnwaon family, he told Mrs. Drew. His cousins he considered commonplace, nnd. as for their mother, "She is more of a Pharisee even than Aunt Judith," he said. "My uncle, too, is an average English parson.” “Hush! You must not sny that; he is my best friend," replied Mrs. Drew, with gentle chilling. This little excursion, this plncid interchange of confidences was the prelude to many such. Willie lias been ordered to be out in the ,air ns much ns possible without fatigue. The three ladies took him drives in the landau. Mr. Rawson drove him leisurely through the lanes in his daughter’s pony carriage. But Willie did not care for these excursions, si- , though he wns grateful to all and each for their kind efforts on his behalf. The drives were, ns he told himself, n "comedown” after that first morning aloue with Mrs. Drew. ; (To be continued.)