CHAPTER LVIII
Laurel had left Belle Vue in a sudden panic of fear and dread. She was afraid that her bold denial of her identity would irritate the Le Roys into an attempt to prove their charges and claim her child. She determined to put a wide distance between herself and her husband, regretting in her newborn terror that she had ever exposed herself to the danger of being recognized by him.
She did not confide in her uncle the fact that she had been charged with her identity by her husband and his mother. She knew that Mr. Ford sympathized with the Le Roys in their repentance and sorrow, and she knew what his advice would be. She had not confided to him the reason for her sudden flitting. She knew that he was the loving slave of her imperious will and that she needed but express a wish to have it gratified. So the grand home on the Hudson was deserted, and they sought "fresh fields and pastures new," according to Laurel's capricious fancy. If Mr. Ford wondered at her fickleness, he kept it to himself. Perhaps he was not altogether sorry that Laurel was not to leave him yet. His heartstrings were very closely entwined around her and her beautiful child. He would have been lonely indeed without them.
They went to a noted summer resort by the seashore, and Laurel declared that she meant to labor diligently here on a new book she had commenced to write that summer. However, the new novel did not grow very fast. The brilliant author was restless and ill at ease. Some days she would devote herself to her task with feverish energy and persistence, often writing far into the night. Again there would be days and days when the manuscript remained locked in her desk neglected and untouched, while Laurel threw herself into the whirl of social pleasure with a zest born of the desire to forget. But neither in work nor pleasure did she find that Lethean draught for which her lips thirsted. She was haunted by a voice, a face. She could not choose but remember.
Even if it had been possible for her to forget, little Laurence would not have allowed her to do so. Strange to say, the child had taken a wondrous fancy to the Le Roys, both mother and son. He prattled of them often in his pretty childish fashion, regretting that he could not see them again, and every word was like a dagger in the mother's heart. She knew that it was nature and instinct clamoring for its own in the boy's heart. Sometimes she was almost melted, sometimes she felt keenly the wrong she had done the child in depriving him of his father's love. But her hard, bitter pride was always stronger than her pity and her love.
Little Laurence found a congenial playmate at last, and his regrets for Belle Vue and Eden grew daily less and less. It was a little golden-haired girl of six years old, called Trixy by her nurse, who brought her to play on the sands daily with her little toy spade and bucket. In Laurie's shell-gathering expeditions with his own nurse, the two children became acquainted and were soon inseparable companions and friends. Laurence did not rest until he had made his mother acquainted with the little beauty.
"I cannot understand my feelings when I look at little Trixy," Mrs. Lynn said to her uncle, with a pretty, puzzled air. "The child's face haunts me. In some inexplicable manner, she recalls the past. And yet I cannot remember whom she is like."
She was not fated to remain long in ignorance of the resemblance that haunted her so strangely.
She was standing on the shore one day looking dreamily out at the swelling, foam-capped waves, as they rolled in and broke in crystal spray at her feet when she was startled by little Trixy's voice, crying vivaciously:
"Oh, Laurie, here comes Mamma! Now she can see your mamma, Laurie!"
Mrs. Lynn turned toward the children and saw a fair, blue-eyed woman coming up to them. She gazed in silence a moment, then gave a great strangling gasp of surprise and recognition. It was Beatrix Wentworth!
The past rushed bleakly over Laurel's memory; the past, with all its love and sorrow and shame. The sight of this fair woman brought it all back freshly and with terrible realism. She stood like one turned to stone, as Mrs. Wentworth came up to her, a look of startled wonder on her lovely blonde face.
"Laurel Vane!" she cried and put out both her hands.
Laurel drew back coldly, all her self-possession returning.
"You have made a mistake," she said; "I am Mrs. Lynn!"
Mrs. Wentworth colored deeply.
"I beg your pardon—you are right," she said. "I was so startled by your likeness to my friend that I forgot for the moment that she by whose name I called you is long since numbered with the dead!"
"I regret to have awakened unpleasant emotions in your mind," said Laurel, gently, as she offered her card to Mrs. Wentworth.
"You are little Trixy's mother," she went on, smiling. "I am very glad to know you for her sake. She and my little son are great friends."
"You have a son?" said Mrs. Wentworth, as she exchanged cards with Laurel. She sighed heavily, and then Laurel noticed that she wore a black dress. "Ah, I had a son, too, Mrs. Lynn, a beautiful boy that would be as old now as yours had he lived, but he lies buried in an English graveyard."
"You are English?" asked Laurel, gently, her heart melting in sympathy with the tear that sparkled down Beatrix's cheek.
"No, I am American, but I have lived in England ever since my marriage, nine years ago. Little Trixy was born in London, as also my little Cyril, dead three years ago. We have come home now to live."
"We?" said Mrs. Lynn, with a slight, interrogative accent on the pronoun.
"I should have said Mr. Wentworth and myself, and Trixy. There are only three of us," explained Beatrix, pensively, and smothering a sigh.
Laurel wondered to herself whether the Gordons had ever forgiven their daughter; she wondered what had become of smart, pretty Clarice Wells. But she could not ask any of these questions that filled her thoughts, because she had decided that she, in her own proper identity, would remain as dead to Mrs. Wentworth as she was to the rest of the world. They stood there side by side, the two fair women who had so greatly influenced each other's lives, and gazed pensively at the sun-gilded waves, trying to put away the thoughts of the past that each recalled to the other and to recall themselves to the present.
"I have read your books, Mrs. Lynn," said Beatrix. "I think they are among the most beautiful in the language. I am proud of you as an American author."
"You praise my poor efforts too highly," Laurel said, with her slow, half-sad smile.
"I do not think so. The critics agree with me at least," said Beatrix. "Do you not find it very pleasant to be laurel crowned, Mrs. Lynn—to win the applause of the world and own a name that will live beyond the grave?"
"To be
"'Conscious that a world's regret
Would seek us where we lie!'"
quoted Mrs. Lynn, with a slight, sad smile. "Ah, Mrs. Wentworth, will you believe that I have scarcely ever regarded the subject from that point of view? When I first took up literary work it was to win bread for my little child. Since success has crowned my efforts, since hard necessity drives me no longer, I labor on because I have need to fill an empty void in my life. From first to last I have had no thought of fame."
The soft sigh of the waves blending with her voice made it sound very sad. Mrs. Wentworth looked at the beautiful, proud face curiously. Some kind of a history was written on it. There was a lingering shadow in the somber, dark eyes, a sorrowful gravity about the lovely crimson lips. She wondered what that empty void might be. And then she remembered that she had heard that Mrs. Lynn was a widow.
"It is grief for her husband," said Beatrix to herself.
"I suppose we all have something in our lives that we are glad to forget in the oblivion of hard work, or even in the pursuit of pleasure," she said. "My little Cyril's death left an aching void in my own heart, and I have another sorrow too. I have been a disobedient child to my parents. I never fully appreciated the enormity of my unpardonable fault until I had a little daughter of my own."
Beatrix spoke in a tone of dreamy sadness. She did not seem to be speaking to a stranger, but rather to a friend. The subtle likeness between Mrs. Lynn and Laurel Vane affected her strangely.
Laurel caught at her words quickly.
"Your unpardoned fault," she echoed. "Do you mean to say that your parents never forgave your disobedience, Mrs. Wentworth?"
"Never," Beatrix answered, with a sigh that showed how deep her pain lay.
Then they were silent for a time. The idle loiterers on the beach, the casual passers-by turned twice to look at the two fair women, so beautiful, so unlike in their beauty—Beatrix so lily-fair with her large blue eyes and pale-gold tresses; Laurel with her rare, unusual type of beauty, her dark eyes, her blonde skin, her burnished hair; the one in her dress of deep, lusterless black silk, the other in something white and soft and clinging, marvelously becoming to her graceful style.
"Shall you be long at the seaside?" Laurel inquired, presently.
"A few weeks—that is all," Beatrix replied. "Mr. Wentworth is in New York—business, you know, Mrs. Lynn—Trixy and I cannot stay long away from him."
"You are fond of him?" said Laurel, turning her large, wistful eyes on the other's tender face.
The tenderness deepened in Mrs. Wentworth's sweet blue eyes, and around her gentle lips.
"You would think so if you knew the story of our marriage," she said. "Ours was a real love match, Mrs. Lynn. It was most romantic. Some day, when I know you better I will tell it to you. It would furnish you with a plot for a novel."
Laurel turned her head aside and set her lips in a tense, hard line. She remembered how the story had been told to her a few weeks ago in that green city of the dead beside the grave where the unknown waif lay under the name of Laurel Le Roy.
"God forbid that I should have to hear the story told again," she murmured to herself.
She looked back at Mrs. Wentworth and said, calmly, and even smilingly:
"It is very pleasant to hear of a real love match in real life. I suppose you are very happy, Mrs. Wentworth?"
"Yes, I am very happy with my noble husband," Beatrix said, thoughtfully. "But my happiness was purchased at a bitter cost to another. I know what it is to feel the sharp sting of remorse, Mrs. Lynn."
Little Trixy came up with a beautiful shell and claimed her mother's attention. They went away together presently and left Laurel to her own reflections. They were very sweet and noble ones. She was thinking of the Gordons—longing to reconcile them to their daughter and her husband.
"I am glad that she is happy with her husband," mused Laurel. "Oh, how differently our girlish conspiracy resulted for her and for me. And yet—would I change places with her? No, hers be the pleasure, mine the pain."
She walked slowly back to the hotel, leaving Laurie at play with his nurse on the shell-strewn beach. In the hotel corridor, she encountered some new arrivals, ladies and gentlemen, going to their rooms. Quite oblivious of their interested, admiring stare, she passed on and took no note of the pretty, painted blonde face that whitened beneath all her rouge as she stared aghast, and murmured, huskily:
"Is it Laurel Vane or her ghost? I never saw such a terrible likeness!"
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