Chapter VI: Mrs. Giles Thornton

She was very lovely in all the fullness of her matured beauty as she stepped from the train at Rocky Point, and with her large bright eyes swept the crowd of curious people gathered to see her, not one of whom she recognized. A handsome open carriage from Brewster’s, sent up a few days before for this occasion, was waiting for them, and with a half bow to those who ventured to salute her husband, Mildred seated herself in it and was driven through the well-remembered street, her heart beating so loudly that she could hear it distinctly as she drew near the top of the hill from which she knew she would see her old home and possibly her mother. And when the hill top was reached and she saw the house with its doors opened wide, and from the upper window of what had been hers and Bessie’s room a muslin curtain blowing in and out, she grew so white that her husband laid his hand on hers, and said, “Don’t take it so hard, darling. You are doing it to please me.”

“Yes, but it seems as if I must stop here,” she answered faintly as she leaned forward to look at the house around which there was no sign of life, or stir, except the moving of the curtain and the gambols of two kittens playing in the doorway where Mildred half expected to meet the glance of Bessie’s blue eyes and see the gleam of Charlie’s golden hair.

But Charlie was lying on the mountain side, and Bessie, although out of sight, was watching the carriage and the beautiful stranger in whom she saw no trace of her sister.

“I’ve seen her,” Bessie said, as she went into her mother’s room, “and she is very lovely, with such a bright color on her cheeks. And so young to be Mr. Thornton’s wife! I wonder if she loves him. I couldn’t.”

“No. I suppose you prefer Gerard,” Mrs. Leach replied, while Bessie answered blushingly, “Of course I do. Poor Gerard! How angry his father will be when he knows about Tom and me, too. Gerard was going to tell him at once, but I persuaded him to wait until the honeymoon was over. Just two months I’ll give him, and during that time I mean to cultivate Mrs. Thornton and get her on my side. I hope she is not proud like him. She did not look so.”

Bessie had been at the Park that morning helping Alice give the last touches to the rooms intended for the bride. These had been finished in the tints which Mr. Thornton had prescribed. Everything was new, from the carpets on the floors to the lace-canopied bedstead of brass. There were flowers everywhere in great profusion, roses mostly of every variety, and in a glass on a bracket in a corner, Bessie had put a bunch of June pinks from her own garden, explaining to Alice that her mother had sent them to the bride, as they were her favorite flowers and would make the rooms so sweet. Everything was finished at last, and after Bessie was gone Alice had nothing to do but to wait for the coming of the carriage which she soon saw entering the Park. Mildred’s face was very white and her voice trembled as she saw Alice in the distance and said, “I can’t bear it. I came near shrieking to the old home that I was Mildred. I must tell Alice. I cannot be so hypocritical. There is no reason for it.”

“No, no,” and Mr. Thornton spoke a little sternly. “It is too late now, and you have promised. I wish it and have my reason. Ah, here we are, and there are Alice and Gerard.”

They had stopped under the great archway at the side entrance where Gerard and Alice were waiting for them and scanning the bride curiously as she alighted and their father presented her to them,—not as their mother, but as “Mrs. Thornton, my wife.”

All Mildred’s color had come back and her face was glowing with excitement as she took Alice’s hand; then unable to control herself, she threw her arms around the neck of the astonished girl and burst into a flood of tears, while Mr. Thornton looked on in dismay, dreading what might follow. He was himself beginning to think it a very foolish and unnatural thing to try to keep his wife’s identity from her people, but he was not a man to give up easily, and once in a dilemma of his own making he would stay in it at any cost.

“She is very tired and must go to her room,” he said to his daughter, who was crying herself, and holding Mildred’s hands in her own.

Had Mildred tried she could have done nothing better for her cause than she had done. Alice had been very doubtful as to whether she should like her new mother or not, but something in the eyes which looked so appealingly into hers, and in the tears she felt upon her cheek, and the clasp of the arms around the neck, disarmed all prejudice and made of her a friend at once. As for Gerard, he had never meant to be anything but friendly, and when the scene between the two ladies was over he came forward with the slow, quiet manner natural to him and said, “Now it is my turn to welcome Mrs. Thornton, who does not look as if she could have for a son a great six-footer like me. But I’ll call you mother, if you say so.”

“No, don’t,” Mildred answered, flashing on him a smile which made his heart beat rapidly and brought a thought of Bessie, who sometimes smiled like that.

Leading the way to Mildred’s rooms, Alice said, as she threw open the door, “I hope you will like them.”

“Like them! They are perfect,” was Mildred’s answer, as she walked through the apartments, feeling that it must be a dream from which she would bye-and-bye awaken. “And so many roses,” she said, stopping here and there over a bowl or cluster of them until, guided by the perfume, she came upon the pinks her mother had sent to her.

Taking up the glass she held it for an instant while Alice said, “June pinks, perhaps you do not have them in England. They are old-fashioned flowers, but very sweet. A friend of mine, Bessie Leach, brought them for you from her mother, who is blind.”

There was a low cry and a crash as the finger-glass fell to the floor and Mildred sank into the nearest chair, white as ashes, with a look in her eyes which startled and frightened Alice.

“It is the heat and fatigue of the voyage. I was very sea-sick,” Mildred said, trying to smile and recover herself, while Alice went for a towel to wipe up the water trickling over the carpet, and wondering if Mrs. Thornton was given to faintings and hysterics like this.

“She don’t look like it,” she thought, as she picked up and carried out the bits of glass and the pinks which had done the mischief.

When lunch was served Mildred was too ill to go down. A severe headache had come on, and for a time Alice sat by her couch bathing her forehead and brushing her hair, which was more a mottled than golden brown, for it was darker in some places than others, especially when seen in certain lights and shadows. But this only added to its beauty, and Alice ran her fingers through the shining mass, admiring the color and the texture and admiring the woman generally and answering the many questions which were asked her. Hungry at heart to hear something of her family, Mildred said to her, “Tell me of your friends. Have you any here? Girl friends, I mean.”

“Only one with whom I am intimate,” Alice replied, and then as girls will she went off into rhapsodies over Bessie Leach, and in a burst of confidence concluded by saying, “You must not tell papa, for he is not to know it yet, but Bessie is to be my sister. She is to marry Gerard.”

“Marry Gerard!” and Mildred raised herself upon her elbow and shedding her heavy hair back from her face stared at Alice with an expression in her eyes which the girl could not understand, and which made her wonder if her stepmother, too, were as proud as her father and would resent Gerard’s choice.

This called forth another eulogy upon Bessie’s beauty and sweetness, with many injunctions that Mildred should not repeat to her husband what had been told her.

“Nobody knows it for certain but Mr. McGregor and ourselves,” she added, and then, turning her face away so that it could not be seen, Mildred said, “Mr. McGregor? That is your father’s attorney. Is he a married man?”

The question was a singular one, but Alice was not quick to suspect, and answered laughingly, “Hugh McGregor married! Why, I don’t suppose he has ever looked twice at any girl. He is a confirmed old bachelor, but very nice. Father thinks the world of him.”

“Yes, oh, yes,” Mildred moaned, as she clasped her hands over her forehead where the pain was so intense.

“You are worse. You are white as a sheet; let me call papa,” Alice cried, alarmed at the look of anguish in the dark eyes and the gray pallor of the face which seemed to have grown pinched and thin in a moment.

But her husband was the last person whom Mildred wished to see then, and detaining Alice she said, “Don’t call him, please. It will soon pass off, and don’t think me ungrateful, either, but I’d rather be alone for a while. I may sleep and that will do me good.”

And so, after darkening the room, Alice went out and left the wretched woman alone in her grief and pain.

“Mrs. Hayford was mistaken. Hugh is not engaged to Bessie, and I am Mrs. Giles Thornton,” she said, a little bitterly. “My ambition ought to be satisfied. I have made my own bed and must lie in it, and go on lying, too!”

She smiled faintly at her own joke and then continued: “If I had only resisted and come back Mildred Leach! But it is now too late, and Hugh will always despise me for the deception. Oh, Hugh!”

There was a spasmodic wringing of the hands, and then, as if ashamed of herself Mildred said, “I must not, will not be faithless to my husband, who loves me, I know, and I will be worthy of his love and make him happy, so help me Heaven!”

The vow was made and Mildred would keep it to the death. The might have been, which has broken so many hearts when the knowledge came too late, was put away and buried deep down in the inmost recesses of her soul, and when two hours later she awoke from a refreshing sleep and found her husband sitting by her, she put her hand in his just as she had never put it before, and did not shrink from him when he stooped down to caress her.