Cousin Maude

CHAPTER XVIII.

COUSIN MAUDE.

Three days had passed since the bridal, and James still lingered at Laurel Hill, while not very many miles away his mother waited and wondered why he did not come. J.C. and Nellie were gone, but ere they had left the former sought an interview with Maude, whose placid brow he kissed tenderly as he whispered in her ear: "Fate decreed that you should not be my wife, but I have made you my sister, and, if I mistake not, another wishes to make you my cousin."

To James he had given back the ornaments intended for another bride than Nellie, saying, as he did so, "Maude De Vere may wear them yet."

"What do you mean?" asked James, and J.C. replied: "I mean that I, and not you, will have a Cousin Maude."

Two days had elapsed since then, and it was night again—but to the blind girl, drinking in the words of love which fell like music on her ear, it was high noon-day, and the sky undimmed by a single cloud.

"I once called you my cousin, Maude," the deep-toned voice said, "and I thought it the sweetest name I had ever heard, but there is a nearer, dearer name which I would give to you, even my wife—Maude—shall it be?" and he looked into her sightless eyes to read her answer.

She had listened eagerly to the story of his love born so long ago—had held her breath lest she should lose a single word when he told her how he had battled with that love, and how his heart had thrilled with joy when he heard that she was free—but when he asked her to be his wife the bright vision faded, and she answered mournfully, "You know not what you say. You would not take a blind girl in her helplessness."

"A thousandfold dearer to me for that very helplessness," he said, and then he told her of the land beyond the sea, where the physicians were well skilled in everything pertaining to the eye. "Thither they would go," he said, "when the April winds were blowing, and should the experiment not succeed, he would love and cherish her all the more."

Maude knew he was in earnest, and was about to answer him, when along the hall there came the sound of little crutches, and over her face there flitted a shadow of pain. It was the sister-love warring with the love of self, but James De Vere understood it all, and he hastened to say, "Louis will go, too, my darling. I have never had a thought of separating you. In Europe he will have a rare opportunity for developing his taste. Shall it not be so?"

"Let him decide," was Maude's answer, as the crutches struck the soft carpet of the room.

"Louis," said Mr. De Vere, "shall Maude go with me to Europe as my wife?"

"Yes, yes—yes, yes," was Louis' hasty answer, his brown eyes filling with tears of joy when he heard that he, too, was to accompany them.

Maude could no longer refuse, and she half fancied she saw the flashing of the diamonds, when James placed upon her finger the ring which bore the inscription of "Cousin Maude." Before coming there that night, Mr. De Vere had consulted a New York paper, and found that a steamship would sail for Liverpool on the 20th of April, about six weeks from that day.

"We will go in it," he said, "my blind bird, Louis, and I," and he parted lovingly the silken tresses of her to whom this new appellation was given.

There was much in the future to anticipate, and much in the past which he wished to talk over; so he remained late that night, and on passing through the lower hall was greatly surprised to see Mrs. Kennedy still sitting in the parlor. She had divined the object and result of his visit, and the moment he was gone she glided up the stairs to the room where Maude was quietly weeping for very joy. The story of the engagement was soon told, and winding her arm around Maude's neck Mrs. Kennedy said, "I rejoice with you, daughter, in your happiness, but I shall be left so desolate when you and Louis are both gone."

Just then her eye caught the ring upon Maude's finger, and taking it in her hand, she admired its chaste beauty, and was calculating its probable cost, when glancing at the inside she started suddenly, exclaiming, "'Cousin Maude'—that is my name—the one by which he always called me. Has it been given to you, too?" and as the throng of memories that name awakened came rushing over her, the impulsive woman folded the blind girl to her bosom, saying to her, "My child, my, child, you should have been!"

"I do not understand you," said Maude, and Mrs. Kennedy replied, "It is not meet that we should part ere I tell you who and what I am. Is the name of Maude Glendower strange to you? Did you never hear it in your Vernon home?"

"It seemed familiar to me when J.C. De Vere first told me of you," answered Maude, "but I cannot recall any particular time when I heard it spoken. Did you know my mother?"

"Yes, father and mother both, and loved them too. Listen to me, Maude, while I tell you of the past. Though it seems so long ago, I was a schoolgirl once, and nightly in my arms there slept a fair-haired, blue-eyed maiden, four years my junior, over whom I exercised an elder sister's care. She loved me, this little blue-eyed girl, and when your brother first spoke to me I seemed again to hear her voice whispering in my ear, 'I love you, beautiful Maude.'"

"It was mother—it was mother!" and Maude Remington drew nearer to the excited woman, who answered:

"Yes, it was your mother, then little Matty Reed; we were at school together in New Haven, and she was my roommate. We were not at all alike, for I was wholly selfish, while she found her greatest pleasure in ministering to others' happiness; but she crossed my path at last, and then I thought I hated her."

"Not my mother, lady. You could not hate my mother!" and the blind eyes flashed as if they would tear away the veil of darkness in which they were enshrouded, and gaze upon a woman who could hate sweet Matty Remington.

"Hush, child! don't look so fiercely at me," said Maude Glendower. "Upon your mother's grave I have wept that sin away, and I know I am forgiven as well as if her own soft voice had told me so. I loved your father, Maude, and this was my great error. He was a distant relative of your mother, whom he always called his cousin. He visited her often, for he was a college student, and ere I was aware of it, I loved him, oh, so madly, vainly fancying my affection was returned. He was bashful, I thought, for he was not then twenty-one, and by way of rousing him to action. I trifled with another—with Dr. Kennedy," and she uttered the name spitefully, as if it were even now hateful to her.

"I know it—I know it," returned Maude, "he told me that when he first talked with me of you, but I did not suppose the dark-eyed student was my father."

"It was none other," said Mrs. Kennedy, "and you can form some conception of my love for him, when I tell you that it has never died away, but is as fresh within my heart this night as when I walked with him upon the College Green and he Called me 'Cousin Maude,' for he gave me that name because of my fondness for Matty, and he sealed it with a kiss. Matty was present at that time, and had I not been blind I should have seen how his whole soul was bound up in her, even while kissing me. I regarded her as a child, and so she was; but men sometimes love children, you know. When she was fifteen, she left New Haven. I, too, had ceased to be a schoolgirl, but I still remained in the city and wrote to her regularly, until at last your father came to me, and with the light of a great joy shining all over his face, told me she was to be his bride on her sixteenth birthday. She would have written it herself, he said, only she was a bashful little creature, and would rather he should tell me. I know not what I did, for the blow was sudden, and took my senses away. He had been so kind to me of late—had visited me so often, that my heart was full of hope. But it was all gone now. Matty Reed was preferred to me, and while my Spanish blood boiled at the fancied indignity, I said many a harsh thing of her—I called her designing, deceitful, and false; and then in my frenzy quitted the room. I never saw Harry, again, for he left the city next morning; but to my dying hour I shall not forget the expression of his face when I talked to him of Matty. Turn away, Maude, turn away! for there is the same look now upon your face. But I have repented of that act, though not till years after. I tore up Mattie's letters. I. said I would burn the soft brown tress—"

"Oh, woman, woman! you did not burn my mother's hair!" and with a shudder Maude unwound the soft, white arm which so closely encircled her.

"No, Maude, no. I couldn't. It would not leave my fingers, but coiled around them with a loving grasp. I have it now, and esteem it my choicest treasure. When I heard that you were born, my heart softened toward the young girl. Mother and I wrote, asking that Harry's child might be called for me. I did not disguise my love for him, and I said it would be some consolation to know that his daughter bore my name. My letter did not reach them until you had been baptized Matilda, which was the name of your mother and grandmother, but to prove their goodness, they ever after called you Maude."

"Then I was named for you;" and Maude Remington came back to the embrace of Maude Glendower, who, kissing, her white brow, continued: "Two years afterward I found myself in Vernon, stopping for a night at the hotel. 'I will see them in the morning,' I said; 'Harry, Matty, and the little child;' and I asked the landlord where you lived. I was standing upon the stairs, and in the partial darkness he could not see my anguish when he replied, 'Bless you, miss. Harry Remington died a fortnight ago.'"

"How I reached my room I never knew, but reach it I did, and half an hour later I knelt by his grave, where I wept away every womanly feeling of my heart, and then went back to the giddy world, the gayest of the gay. I did not seek an interview with your mother, though I have often regretted it since. Did she never speak of me? Think. Did you never hear my name?"

"In Vernon, I am sure I did," answered Maude, "but I was then too young to receive a very vivid impression, and after we came here mother, I fear, was too unhappy to talk much of the past."

"I understand it," answered Maude Glendower, and over her fine features there stole a hard, dark look, as she continued, "I can see how one of her gentle nature would wither and die in this atmosphere, and forgive me, Maude, she never loved your father as I loved him, for had he called me wife I should never have been here."

"What made you come?" asked Maude; and the lady answered, "For Louis' sake and yours I came. I never lost sight of your mother. I knew she married the man I rejected, and from my inmost soul I pitied her. But I am redressing her wrongs and those of that other woman who wore her life away within these gloomy walls. Money is his idol, and when you touch his purse you touch his tenderest point. But I have opened it, and, struggle as he may, it shall not be closed again."

She spoke bitterly, and Maude knew that Dr. Kennedy had more than met his equal in that woman of iron will.

"I should have made a splendid carpenter," the lady continued, "for nothing pleases me more than the sound of the hammer and saw, and when you are gone I shall solace myself with fixing the entire house. I must have excitement, or die as the others did."

"Maude—Mrs. Kennedy, do you know what time it is?" came from the foot of the stairs, and Mrs. Kennedy answered, "It is one o'clock, I believe."

"Then why are you sitting up so late, and why is that lamp left burning in the parlor, with four tubes going off at once? It's a maxim of mine—"

"Spare your maxims, do. I'm coming directly," and kissing the blind girl affectionately, Mrs. Kennedy went down to her liege lord, whom she found extinguishing the light, and gently shaking the lamp to see how much fluid had been uselessly wasted.

He might have made some conjugal remark, but the expression of her face forbade anything like reproof, and he soon found use for his powers of speech in the invectives he heaped upon the long rocker of the chair over which he stumbled as he groped his way back to the bedroom, where his wife rather enjoyed, than otherwise, the lamentations which he made over his "bruised shin." The story she had been telling had awakened many bitter memories in Maude Glendower's bosom, and for hours she turned uneasily from side to side, trying in vain to sleep. Maude Remington, too, was wakeful, thinking over the strange tale she had heard, and marveling that her life should be so closely interwoven with that of the woman whom she called her mother.

"I love her all the more," she said; "I shall pity her so, staying here alone, when I am gone."

Then her thoughts turned upon the future, when she would be the wife of James De Vere, and while wondering if she should really ever see again, she fell asleep just as the morning was dimly breaking in the east.