Chapter XV: In the Dark Waters (2)

Hugh’s last work had been to close up the “Elmleaf” headquarters, and to direct Bagley, now the head butler at Lakemere, in storing the scattered effects of the unhappy suicide.

For Mrs. Katharine Norreys Vreeland had departed for Europe, and, even the International Trust Company refused to disclose her address or whereabouts.

Her private lawyer, Mr. Abel Hanford, of the company’s legal staff, declined to accept the ownership of the mementoes of the dead adventurer and guarded a grim and sullen silence.

“I am positively ordered not to disturb my client, who is in impaired health, with any references to the late Mr. Vreeland or his affairs. Sell the trash, and turn the money in to me. I will receipt for that!” It was cold comfort.

And no further word would the cool young lawyer utter, even to Horton Wyman, now anxious to legally close up all the affairs of the defunct schemer.

“Turn the whole thing then over to the Public Administrator!” was the counselor’s curt order. “My client will not return to America for many years, if ever.”

In all these strange happenings Miss Sara Conyers was the only one at Lakemere who was really unhappy at heart. She was the sole confidante of Romaine Garland, who now poured out all her secret conclusions upon the bosom of her faithful friend.

Romaine had seized upon Katharine Vreeland’s departure as being the closing scene of the veiled mystery of her unknown father’s life.

But a lucky accident helped the plans of the wise old Judge. “I am to bury the past and all reference to it. There must have been some strange sorrow, and perhaps my co-heiress was in the past a part of some hostile element.”

Completely deceived as to her birth, the young girl divided with Sara Conyers a budding mystery of sweetness and light, which she dared not as yet acknowledge upon her mother’s bosom. For the Queen of the Street was a stately presence, and Romaine’s maidenly heart was shy and gentle.

But Noel Endicott was daily becoming to her the joy-bringer and his “business” at Lakemere was not unseen by his astute old uncle.

“That goes on well enough!” the old lawyer chuckled, “and it will be a noble ending to the poor girl’s homeless childhood. But my lady herself is a mystery.” He forgot to add, “as all other women are,”—the same changeful mystery.

“She has locked up her heart and seems to be still determined to walk the lonely path. If Alynton would only speak!” The old Judge fretted and fumed among his parchments.

Loyal Sara Conyers alone, knew why her brother Hugh had studiously avoided the happy circle at Lakemere.

For old Judge Endicott’s prophetic words as to Alynton’s wooing rankled deep in the steadfast man’s lonely heart. He waited grimly and afar off for the advent of the conquering swain, Senator Alynton.

“She needs me no more,” he bitterly decided. “It is all over. I have the whole world to choose from for a future home, and as she seems to have captured Sara for life, I am now free to go my way.”

And so, when the foreign station was offered him, Conyers quietly accepted it, and then leisurely prepared for his departure.

In daily close communion with Hugh Conyers’ sister, the Lady of Lakemere silently wondered at his continued absence and pondered over the gravely worded letters of polite refusal which answered her hospitable biddings.

There was that strange, sweet womanly pride in Elaine Willoughby’s heart, the pride of a cherished secret, which held her speechless when the words of inquiry trembled on her lips. And it seemed as if the witching breath of the tender spring, hinting of summer roses, had now bewitched the whole circle. The fern seed of invisibility drifted down on all the hidden plans slowly revolving around Lakemere. For the long winter had worn away, and the time of the singing of birds had come again.

Elaine Willoughby, hugging her undiscovered secret with a lingering pleasure, ardently sighed for the days when safe beyond the reach of all untoward accident, she could build up around her recovered daughter the paradise of a happy home beyond the seas. Of herself, of her own future, she dared not to think, for the sweet spring was stirring in her throbbing pulses.

“She will learn, she must learn, in my tenderest love, to forget that unasked question of her brooding eyes—‘My father!’ It is better that she never knows—best for us all.” This task of induced forgetfulness was the mother’s single ambition now.

The arrangements for departure were rapidly progressing, and as the time of roses came nearer, Elaine could not disguise her increasing restlessness in noting Hugh Conyers’ absence.

The saddened eyes of his sister brought a sudden alarm to Elaine’s heart.

For a pride as strong as her own had kept them tenderly apart.

The modest household of Roundsman Dan Daly had been enriched with all the splendors removed from the Elmleaf, and Mary Daly daily blessed the generous hand which had given to her the home in which the very spirit of happiness seemed to have nestled.

And only there, in that modest home, of all the circle, was there peace and rest, for both the mother and daughter at Lakemere, in tender deceit, guarded the heart secrets which they dared not own.

The silent resentment of Sara Conyers against the self-banishment of her brother was now growing into a doubt of Elaine Willoughby’s womanly gratitude.

“Between her and Hugh I have no choice,” the angered womanly champion of an absent brother decided. “Back to our old eyrie we go together, or else, I will share Hugh’s foreign exile.” And she marveled at her brother’s imperative injunction of silence as to his plans.

It was when Noel Endicott was feverishly closing up the last final “business affairs” at Lakemere, supplemented with some portentously long “personal conferences” with that young Diana, Miss Romaine Garland, that Judge Endicott, a grave embassador, came up to Lakemere with news of serious moment. He was secretly Cupid’s embassador.

He was alone with the woman whose interests he had chivalrously guarded for fifteen long years. With a sigh he returned again to the question of the marriage—the strange dead-lock which had so baffled him.

“You sail for Europe in a month. Have you nothing to say to me, Elaine? There is but one final seal to the happiness of your future life. Your marriage.”

“The Senator has an ardent advocate, my dear old friend!” Elaine answered, with beaming eyes, “but he has not yet asked for me!”

“He will,” very decidedly answered Endicott. “I have a letter, in which he asks me to arrange an interview, to formally ask your permission to come here.

“I now understand the delicacy which has held him back till all your momentous business matters have been settled and you have been relieved from all the awkwardness of your confidential relations with the two great bands of capitalists.

“He has respected your illness, your agitation over Garston’s mysterious death, and has given you time to arrange all your legal affairs and settle Romaine’s inheritance.

“Remember, he deems her to be only your ward.

“They speak now of Alynton for a leading Cabinet position. His term in the Senate is expiring; or they will give him one of the four Embassies.

“If he asks you to share his life, I would say nothing to him of the unhappy past. Romaine is now of age. She is rich beyond need. I myself never have questioned you.

“You have a right to hold back all that might shadow Romaine (God bless her!) in her possible future marriage.”

Endicott’s voice was tremblingly affectionate, and yet the solicitude was tinged with a solemn earnestness.

The old lawyer rose and kissed the fair woman’s hand. “My life-work is nearly done. Noel, as your agent, can carry on the executive affairs, and as you are off the ‘Street’ and out of stocks forever, you will need no lawyer, only now and then a mere bit of office counsel, and therefore I am turning over my practice soon to Headley, my partner and legal disciple. He will be to you what I have been. Alynton will call within two days.”

“You wish me to marry?” said Elaine, with softly shining eyes. “Wait, wait! I may consider your advice and act favorably upon it.” The happy old advocate departed, sure of his victory. It was all going on well.

Hiram Endicott was haunted by the strange smile which lit up the thoughtful face of the woman whose life as Margaret Cranstoun was now closed forever from a curious world by the sealed barriers of a dead past.

“She will surely accept him,” rejoicingly muttered the happy old advocate. “Noel will then gain Romaine’s heart, and there will be a royal circle gathered in coming years at Lakemere, around the once lonely fireside.” But, Love that hath us in the net was weaving, ever weaving, in silence.

And the cross purposes of the unwitting actors were seemingly as unsolved as before. With a sudden craving for aid in her hour of mental indecision, that night Elaine Willoughby wrote a last appeal to the invisible Hugh Conyers:

“I must see you, Hugh, at once on a matter involving the happiness of my whole future life. Come to me. I have no one but you to depend upon in this vitally important juncture.”

As the Lady of Lakemere mentioned to her now all-potent representative, Sara Conyers, the impending visit of Senator David Alynton, she saw, with a womanly intuition, an indignant flash of unspoken resentment in her friend’s eyes.

Suddenly forgetting her usually affectionate “Good-night,” the startled hostess fled away to her own room, and not daring to look at her own face in the mirror, seized the letter directed to the recalcitrant Hugh and tore it into little fragments.

“I understand!” she whispered with self-accusing timidity, and now strangely fearful of her own judgment, her heart leaping up in defense of the absent man. “It would be too cruel! I dare not, and yet how will he ever know?” Dan Cupid, from rosy clouds, smiled roguishly upon her slumbers that night.

The brooding peace of Lakemere was left undisturbed by the lively heiress and Miss Sara Conyers, who had managed to have “sudden business” in the city during the formal visit of Senator Alynton.

And so there was no one to see the proud man go forth with a man’s saddest burden in his heart. She loved another!

No one of the obsequious attendants saw a graver shade than ordinary settle down upon the face of the statesman when he turned his stately head at the park gates in a last adieu to the graceful woman who stood with her earnest eyes following his departing form.

“God bless her now and always!” the saddened suitor murmured, even in his heart’s sorrow.

The noble simplicity of Alynton’s tender of his hand, the tribute laid at her feet of a choice between the honors of the Cabinet and a foreign place of splendid precedence—the manly words in which he told her of his grave solicitude for her happiness, and the real reasons for his past reticence, all had touched her heart with a womanly pride in this man’s honest love.

“I could not tell him the whole truth, for the child’s sake; and, less than the whole truth, would be an outrage to his faith and a blot upon my womanhood.”

Judge Endicott now followed her with mute accusing eyes, for he feared the ruin of his hopes.

It was a week before Romaine Garland’s head sought her friend’s bosom.

“Sara,” she whispered, “do you know that we sail next week? Your brother must come and say adieu, for it is more than she can bear. I have a secret to tell you. I need your help. I need his friendship. Only Hugh can help me with my mother, for this parting from Noel is almost death to me. She must know the truth, but how?”

The elder woman raised the loving girl’s glowing face to her own and fondly kissed her trembling lips:

“Ah! this is an easy task for you! I can guess your secret, darling,” Sara sadly said. “But, I am going away to share Hugh’s lot.

“I do not sail to Europe with you. I have not yet told your dear mother.

“For she will know it soon enough, and then over there, beyond the sea, you will live in new scenes, with other friends to share your happy hours. You will be soon called back—there, don’t deny it.

“And your mother—who would not love her?” The blushing girl was seized with a sudden impulse, love’s chords were thrilling in her heart.

It was on that very afternoon that Miss Romaine Garland drove resolutely to the station and indited a telegram which brought Hugh Conyers promptly to the door of Lakemere, as the setting sun was dropping behind the western hills of the Highlands. He feared the very worst; some sudden disaster.

The mystified face of his loving sister at once undeceived the man whose heart had been so strangely stirred by Miss Mischief’s imperative dispatch. For, the Silent Knight had “reported for duty.” It was a lovingly set trap.

“Nothing has really happened?” he asked, with a fear of some reserved news of unwelcome portent.

“Nothing, sir,” said Elaine Willoughby, quietly, as she suddenly appeared before him, bringing a quick thrill to his heart, “but that you are now under arrest as a deserter, and so will have to stand a formal court-martial.”

It was a second strategic movement on the part of Romaine Garland, that summons of her lark-like voice calling Sara Conyers to some consultation of truly feminine gravity, in the distant seclusion of her own rooms. “Miss Mischief” was _en suprême_.

And there, side by side, Elaine Willoughby and Conyers wandered away over to the summer-house, where the first roses were breathing out their promise of summer’s royal richness upon the fresh crystalline air. Neither seemed willing to break the silence of their hushed hearts.

“You sent for me, Elaine?” said the man, who hardly dared to trust the sound of his own voice. It seemed to him so strange and hollow.

His hostess turned her splendid eyes toward him, and their hands met in silence.

“I did not, Hugh,” she softly said. “But as I will be away for some years, I thank God that you are here! For, I have a sacred duty to perform.

“I know not what may happen.

“Sara has just told me that she will not go to Europe with me. All seems so changed! Endicott is growing old. I have no other friend, and I am solicitous about Romaine’s future. I did intend to ask you to act for me in some very grave matters, but you have lately avoided me—strangely, cruelly.”

The voice was broken now, and Hugh Conyers hastened to man his last works.

He knew now how love had sealed her proud, womanly lips, for her heart was beating with his own.

“How could I come to you? If Sara had only saved me this last sorrow! When I heard from Endicott that you were to marry Alynton, I at once accepted an engagement for five years to represent the _Clarion_ in Europe.

“I sail myself in a few weeks. I only waited for your departure to have my sister select our little household gods.

“For I have sworn to be a slave of the lamp no more, and so my spinning is done. I shall not return to America.”

“Do not leave me, Hugh!” murmured Elaine Willoughby. “I need your friendship; I need you more than ever, now that—”

He was already striding away, for with a last convulsive grasp of her hands, he had swiftly passed on over the velvety turf toward the still opened gates.

His heart was in a mad revolt, there had been some meddling folly, and his pulses were throbbing now in a wild unrest. The agony was beyond his surface stoicism.

But, he stood as one transfixed when a voice sweet and low set his blood leaping madly through his veins.

“Hugh, come back!” The words were simple, but he turned to where the woman whom he madly loved stood awaiting him with half-outstretched arms.

“Do you not see?” she murmured. “How can I tell you what you should have known long ago?”

“You are not to marry Alynton?” cried her lover, a light of hope stealing into his eyes. His heart was flooded with a warmth of daring hopes.

“The man whom I am to marry has not yet asked me to be his wife,” faintly said Elaine.

“It was only Judge Endicott’s foolish solicitude for my future.

“He may have told you what his own hopes or wishes were, but only in the simple faith of a prophet before his time.”

“It has been a hell on earth these long months,” was Hugh’s response; “and I dared not to hope—I did not know—”

“How weak and fond we women wait
Behind our silken armor—”

whispered the splendid woman whose hand he had covered with burning kisses.

“I have loved you, have worshiped you, and have served you in perfect faith and truth since first I saw your dear face,” was Hugh Conyers’ confession of faith. She was gently paltering with her rebellious heart. She would bring herself to the lines of a clearly defined duty now.

“I must tell you to-night the story of a life. I must swear you to secrecy, my Hugh,” faltered Margaret Cranstoun.

“For the child’s sake, you alone must know every throbbing of my heart!”

He bowed his head in token of that fealty of the soul which she longed for.

“You shall be the queen to the very end, my darling!” he said. “I will lend you Sara,” he simply said. “Take Romaine and her, and I will join you by Lake Malar.

“I will at first report at London, and then, they can name a man to relieve me.

“It will be the best plan, for our quiet marriage over there, will arouse no comment here.

“The gold fish in the swim will not pause to wonder, for their own reflections on the shallow water of the pool of Fashion fill their delighted eyes.”

And so, they walked back, hand in hand, their hearts throbbing together in Love’s royal bondage.

A week later, Judge Endicott stood upon the deck of the Campania, waiting to give his last greetings to the Lady of Lakemere, whose wonderful cheerfulness now boded some new springing impulse of her happy heart.

The old advocate eyed Hugh Conyers and his sister with a pleading for the confirmation of his cherished hopes. There seemed to be a happy secret linking the three travelers in a golden bond. Was Alynton’s life to be crowned at last?

And the silver-haired Judge, with a secret joy, observed Noel Endicott’s tall form bending over Miss Romaine Garland, whose hands were filled with those June roses which are the very daintiest seals of Cupid’s pledges.

In the last moments there was vouchsafed to him the answer to the unspoken question which was lingering on his lips, “the long-hoped-for marriage.”

“I am to be married, as you advised, my dear and faithful friend,” was the parting confession of the Lady of Lakemere.

“When?” demanded the delighted lawyer, as his mind reverted to the vast advantages of Senator Alynton’s friendship for his favorite nephew.

“Whenever Hugh calls upon me,” was Elaine’s reply, as she felt her lover’s strong grasp of an already imprisoned hand.

“Bless my soul! I have been blind!” cried the happy old advocate.

“So, have we all been too long, Judge!” Hugh Conyers gaily answered.

There was a little scene “not down on the bills” in the shady corner, where Romaine Garland slipped a sparkling ring upon her finger, when Noel Endicott kissed her trembling lips.

“I will tell them as soon as we are at Stockholm, and cable to you ‘Come,’” was the maiden’s pledge.

The uncle wondered at his nephew’s loyal vigil until the stately ship was lost to sight far down the beautiful bay.

And so, Love reigned upon the darkling waters that happy night.

THE END.

Transcriber’s Note

Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained: battle-ground/battle ground, bodyguard/body-guard, cannot/can not, clubhouse/club house, clubman/club man, clubmen/club men, crossroads/cross-roads, dead-lock/dead lock, faraway/far-away, Frenchwoman/French woman, girl-wife/girl wife, half-dozen/half dozen, hiding-place/hiding place, housewarming/house-warming, Indian-summer/Indian summer, letter-carrier/letter carrier, master-stroke/master stroke, overreaching/over-reaching, overshadowed/over-shadowed, shamefaced/shame-faced, sick-room/sick room, someone/some one, spellbound/spell-bound, summer-house/summer house, taking-off/taking off, tiger-cat/tiger cat, wildly-beating/wildly beating, woman-heart/woman heart.