CHAPTER XXXIII
All of the young bride's happiness began to wane from that hour. The shadow of the nearing future began to fall upon her heart. The "coming events cast their shadows before."
A subtle change came over her. Her cheek was a shade less bright, her voice had an unconscious tone of pathos, and her dark eyes drooped beneath their shady lashes. Sometimes she fell into deep reveries that lasted for hours. The return voyage was not so pleasant by any means as the other had been. Laurel was going away from her peril then, she was returning to it now.
St. Leon gave all his thoughts and all his love to his fair bride. Now he divided them with her and his mother. He was very fond of his handsome, stately lady mother, and deeply distressed over her illness. He longed to fly to her on the wings of love. He chafed over their slow progress, bitterly impatient of the adverse winds and waves that hindered the gallant ship from making progress. If he had known how his wife welcomed every storm he would have been horrified. If some hidden rock had sunk the steamer, and she and St. Leon had gone to the bottom clasped
"In one another's arms,
And silent in a last embrace,"
she would have been glad, she would have thought that that was happiness compared with what lay before her.
St. Leon did not notice the slight yet subtle change in his darling, so absorbed was he in anxiety over his mother. Perhaps he thought she shared in his trouble. He knew that her devotion to him was more manifest than ever before, and he repaid it with the love of his inmost heart, but he was very grave and thoughtful. The dread that he might find his mother dead weighed heavily on his spirits.
Poor Laurel in her terror for herself did not give many thoughts to Mrs. Le Roy. The lesser evil was swallowed up in the greater. The Gordons had returned to New York in the spring. Once she returned home, a meeting with them was inevitable. And then—what! Detection, exposure, banishment, despair!
Through all her dread and terror one spark of hope burned feebly in her heart. She knew that her husband loved her with a deep, and mighty love. Perhaps through that love, he would forgive her.
"I could forgive him anything," she said to herself with the divine love of a woman. "Surely, surely he will forgive me!"
It was May when they reached New York. Laurel had had eight months of happiness now—almost perfect happiness. She was little more than a child still. She was only seventeen. But she had gained great benefit from her happy bridal trip. Her beauty was deepened and intensified, she had acquired polish and dignity, and there was a sweet and gracious womanliness about her that was exquisitely charming. St. Leon said to himself exultantly that he should be very proud to introduce his bonny bride to New York society next winter. She would be without a peer for loveliness.
"I am so impatient to go home to my sick mother at Eden, that I am almost selfish enough to ask you to pass through New York without stopping to see your parents," he said when they landed.
She hastily assured him that she had no intention of stopping. Her anxiety to reach Eden was as great as his own. There would be time enough to see her parents when they were assured of Mrs. Le Roy's well-being.
He did not notice how deathly pale she was, but thanking her gratefully for what appeared to him sweet self-sacrifice, accepted it, and she said to herself with a beating heart:
"I have still a little respite. I shall see Eden once more before I am banished forever."
The home on the Hudson looked Eden-like indeed that bright, warm day when they walked, arm in arm, up to the house. The trees and shrubberies were tinted with the tender green of spring, a soft, warm air, redolent with flowers, fanned their faces. St. Leon looked pleased at being home again, but it struck him all at once that his wife looked pale and wan and miserable.
"It is plain to be seen, Beatrix, that you have no joy in your homecoming," he said, unable to conceal his disappointment. "And yet I thought—indeed you used to say—that you adored Eden."
"Indeed I do! I love every tree and flower, every tiniest blade of grass in the place. I am very happy in my home-coming," she cried, eagerly, but she had a guilty, miserable inward consciousness that he did not believe her. Her changeful telltale face had betrayed her all too plainly.
They went into the house, and then she forgot for a while all her own selfish terrors as St. Leon forgot his disappointment over his wife's reluctance to come home.
For the shadow of the death angel's wing hung darkly over Eden!
Mrs. Le Roy was yet very ill with a low typhoid fever and pneumonia. Surrounded by skillful nurses and the ablest physicians, there were yet grave doubts whether she would ever recover. The disease was deeply seated, and the physicians could not conceal from the invalid's stricken son their fears of a fatal result. She had been dangerously ill three weeks now—wavering, as it were, between life and death. They would do all they could, the physicians said, but the issue lay with God.
In that dark hour, Laurel was her husband's comforter. She put herself aside. She forgot that a shadow deeper than death brooded darkly over her own young life. She whispered peace and hope to the troubled heart.
"I will pray for her," she said, "and I will nurse her. Perhaps love can save her even where paid attention fails. Then, too, she will be so glad to have her children home again. Happiness may have a good effect on her. Do not despair, St. Leon, I have the greatest faith that she will be spared for us."
His heavy heart unconsciously grew lighter at the sweet, hopeful words. And one thing she said came true at least. Though they were almost afraid to break the news to Mrs. Le Roy of her son's arrival and set about it in the most cautious manner, it undoubtedly produced a beneficial effect on her. She seemed to grow better from that hour, and her joy at seeing Laurel was as great as that she evinced in the return of St. Leon.
Laurel, as she had declared she would, became the most devoted and patient nurse at Mrs. Le Roy's bedside. Her love and her eagerness to be of use served her instead of experience. There was no step so light, no touch so cool and soft as hers, no face so eagerly welcomed by the bedside of the sufferer.
"Beatrix is my ministering angel," she confided to her son, and Laurel, hearing it, was thrilled with inward joy.
"I have won a place in her heart. When my dark hour comes, she will take my part, she will plead for me," the poor child said to herself.
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