35. CHAPTER XXXV.
“NOT LAUNCELOT OR ANOTHER.”
The next day brought Vaughn's promised letter to Neria. It was this:
Pardon the seeming discourtesy of my abrupt departure, and my first signifying it to
Francia. I could not see you again, Neria, I could not write to you of less than the
whole.
Remember first and always in what I have to say, that I hold you above al women in
my respect, and in my love, and that whatever unhappiness has come between us I trace
wholly to my own folly, and would, if possible, keep wholly to my own heart, leaving you
only the divine sorrow of an angel who has tried to become mortal for a mortal's sake, and
has failed.
Dearest, this is a farewell and a petition. A farewell, for a great battle is approaching,
and what one poor life can do to win it for our country shall be done. A petition, for I
see now, as never before, the cruel wrong I did in accepting the sacrifice of your young
life, and in giving it back to you, as I shall do in my death, I ask you to bestow it, hereafter,
where your heart dictates. Become his wife, dear child, without too much regret for
him who should never have stood between you, and be sure that such peace as my hereafter
may know, is doubled by the assurance of your happiness.
Nor fancy, tender conscience, that you have wronged my love by showing, even to my
eyes, the love, not for me, filling your pure heart. Love such as yours, Neria, is of God,
and as holy and as sacred as all his gifts. You have subdued and hidden it, because the
unholy bond between us two forced you to do so, but had there been sin and shame in its
existence, that sin and shame should have been mine, not yours.
Now you are free, or shall be soon, and let the future recompense the past. But at
the last, O love and life, hear me say that never one thought of blame, never one reproach
for you has sullied my heart. Chief among women I have loved you, chief among women
I have reverenced you, and do now, and shall, as I go out alone to fight and die, and win
for myself the peaceful rest of a struggle past, the sweet dark night of the toilsome day.
As Neria read and read again these tender words, and felt the noble heart
throb through them its devotion, its trust, its heroic abnegation, her own heart
stirred within her as it never yet had stirred. Again and again she read them
until her eyes shown bright, and her cheeks burned scarlet with the fire of a
wild emotion.
“You, you yourself, my king! `Not Launcelot or another,' ” murmured
she, pressing the letter to her brow, her heart, her lips. And then the passionate
words of the great Idyl sprang to her lips, and with the guilty queen she
cried
Is there none
Will tell him that I love him thóugh so late?
Now, ere he goes to the great battle?
But at that woful word, the new-born human love gave way to human grief
and terror, and Neria, for the first time in her married life, felt her heart shrink
with the sudden fear that Vaughn might die and leave her desolate.
“Not before he knows that I love him, not before my lips have told him so!
O God, not so!” cried she, upon her knees, with hands and eyes upraised to
heaven. When she arose comforted, it was with a fixed resolve. She would seek
her husband were it in the front of battle. If he died she would die with him;
if he lived her love should make life another existence from what they had either
of them known. And then her thoughts went back through her own brief history,
gratefully acknowledging the tender affection, care, and honor with which
Vaughn had crowned the life he had rescued; the chivalrous homage of his love,
the passionate devotion, so coldly repaid, in the early days of their marriage.
And now, at last, when he had traversed hundreds of miles to greet her, perhaps
for the last time, to bid her, it might be an eternal farewell, he had found her
preoccupied, cold, reserved. It was the shadow of the secret, she said to herself,
it was the curse of that old-time sin and misery pursuing to the third and
fourth generation the children of those who had so sinned and suffered; and she
now regretted that she had not at once confided all to Vaughn, and by sharing
with him the secret of her depression, prevented the misconception under which
he evidently labored.
Still dreaming, with smiling lips and dewy eyes, Neria was startled by two
soft arms laid tenderly about her neck, while Francia's lips sought hers. “Forgive
me, darling; say that you forgive me,” whispered she.
Neria's arm about her waist drew her to a seat upon her lap as she whispered
back: “How can I forgive what has not offended me?”
“You should have been offended, or at least shocked and hurt, at my conduct
ever since we left Mrs. Rhee's that day,” persisted Francia; “but she told me,
O little mother, she said such things of you, and, and—some one.”
“Yes, dear, I know. And you believed them?”
“No, O Neria, I did not believe; but you know I felt—well I felt differently
o you.”
“Yes, dear, I know,” said Neria again.
“And then she said papa believed—”
“You should have done your father more honor than to believe that he believed,”
said Neria, quietly.
“I know it; but at first—and then, Neria, she told me something else—
something—”
The girl paused, and, drawing a little back, looked into Neria's face with such
a dumb cry of appeal, such endless protest against the burden fallen of a sudden
upon her untried shoulders, that Neria caught her to her heart, shielding and
comforting her as if she were a little wounded child.
“Of your mother, darling?”
“Yes, and of herself. O Neria, my father bought her; she was a slave. I
don't so much mind the negro blood; but I come of a race of slaves, of women
who have been bought and sold for their beauty, of women who had no right to
their own consciences, their own honor. Neria, Neria, speak out the truth!
What can wipe away such disgrace? How can I ever feel myself what I was
before? How could any honorable man ever trust—”
She hid her burning face again, and the passionate sobs that shook her frame
finished the sentence.
“Make yourself such a woman, Francia, that an honorable man shall in loving
you care for no past; shall trust the future as he does the present, because
to doubt it were to doubt you.”
“But, O, Neria, can I learn to be such a woman? Can I ever be such a
woman that a man would say, `I trust you in spite of all?”'
“Yes. Franc, such a woman you can be, and though the day may never come
when the man you love best shall say this to you, it shall not be that you do not
deserve it, but that our destinies are not for us to choose.”
“You do not think he will ever love me, then?” broke from Francia's impetuous
lips; but before Neria could answer, she hurried on: “I don't mean—that
is—I wasn't thinking of what I said. I have a little note for both of us from
dear papa. I did not give it you at first because I wanted to make up, and let
you not have my ill temper to trouble you, too. Uncle Murray sent it down just
now. It was directed to either of us, so I opened it. See!”
Neria took the scrap of soiled and torn paper and read these lines, hastily
written in pencil:
I arrive just in time. My regiment is to move in half an hour. We shall be in action
before night. A courier leaves for Washington at once, and I write one line to say good-bye,
and God bless you both. My darlings, He only knows how I love you. I leave you
each to the other's care.
“So soon! O, I shall be too late; I shall not reach him! O, Francia, why
did you not give it me at once? I must go to him; I must go directly! If it
should already be too late! My God, if it should be too late!”
Francia looked at her in astonishment. Could this be the calm and self-contained
Neria; this wild-eyed creature, moving, looking, speaking with an impetuosity
to which her own stormy moods were calm? And so resolute to seek,
even upon a battle-field, the husband whose danger and whose absence had been
hitherto so tranquilly borne? What could it all mean? But almost before the
question was formed Francia's affectionate nature had set it aside for the more
pressing need of sympathizing with and comforting even an undue affliction.
“I will go, too, Neria, darling, if you must go,” said she, beginning with busy
hands to arrange the clothes in a travelling sack that Neria was already packing.
“Come, then, but hurry; for every moment is a life now!” said Neria, ringing
the bell violently to give the order: “Tell John to harness the horses as
quick as possible to drive me to Carrick, and send Mrs. Barlow to me immediately.”
A few moments later, the two young women were on their road; and that
evening, as Mr. Murray and Fergus sat at their unsocial tea-table they were
startled by the intelligence that Mrs. and Miss Vaughn were in the drawing-room,
and would like to see the elder gentleman as quickly as possible.
Both answered the summons; both heard in silent astonishment the hurried
announcement that Colonel Vaughn's wife and daughter were about to seek him
upon the field of battle, and each replied in his own way—the father by a compassionate
smile and a shake of the head so courteous as to be almost an affirmative,
the son by the curt remark:
“I should think you were out of your senses, both of you. It is perfectly
impossible.”
“I must try it. I must see my husband at all hazards,” exclaimed Neria,
feverishly, turning from one to the other with hands clasped in unconscious
appeal.
“If it could be done at any hazard, however great, Neria, you should try it,
and I with you,” said Fergus, coming close to her, and taking the clasped hands
in his; “but we might not even be allowed to try. It would be impossible for
any but a military man or a government agent to obtain a pass to the front now,
and without one we should be turned back before we were within ten miles of
the scene of action. It is quite impossible, believe me. Do you not say so, sir?”
“Of course, of course; Fergus is entirely correct, my dear, and you can only
submit. In a few days, or whenever hostilities cease, it is very possible something
may be done; but at present it is quite, O quite out of the question,”
replied Mr. Murray, in his silkiest manner, but with a determination in his cold
eyes that smote Neria with dismay.
“Quite impossible?” echoed she, despairingly.
“Quite, my dear Mrs. Vaughn. In fact, the telegraph announces to-night
that action has already commenced with the right wing of our army; and long
before you could reach even Washington the whole force will have marched and
countermarched, have moved this way and that, hither and you, a dozen times.
If my life depended upon it, absolutely my life, madam, I would not undertake
to find Colonel Vaughn until this battle is well over.”
Neria's head dropped upon her breast. “And when it is over he will be
where I shall never find him!” muttered she.
The cool-blooded old man could not hear the words; but even he could not
see unmoved the despairing attitude, the woful face of one so fair, so young, so
delicately nurtured. He laid a hand upon her shoulder, and the dry white fingers
quivered with a motion that was almost a caress.
“Don't be so much disappointed, my dear,” said he, kindly, “Vaughn will be
at home again before long, and that will pay for all.”
Neria looked vacantly in his face, and turned to Fergus. “And do you refuse
to help me, too, Fergus?” asked she, unconsciously using as a weapon in her
extremity the very ove whose confession she had so sharply rebuked a few hours
before.
“Refuse you, Neria?” exclaimed the young man, passionately; “it is not I,
it is the fact that refuses you. I would do more than you think to satisfy you,
if it were possible; but it is not. You can only wait.”
“Wait! But while I wait he will be killed; and then—” She looked at
him, at his father, at Francia. In every face she read denial, and all the pity
and the love covering it could not assuage the sharp pang that pierced her heart,
the bitterness as of death borne in upon her soul by the mocking echo, “Too
late! too late!”
To return to Bonniemeer in this uncertainty was impossible; and for the
next four days the two ladies waited under Mr. Murray's roof for the almost
hourly bulletins flashed over the wires from the scene of action, and regularly
brought to them by Fergus, even before the public could receive them.
At last came the victory; but victory or deteat were one to Neria in the terrible
anxiety devouring her. The returns from the regiments arrived, and hour
by hour Fergus came with cheery step to say, “No bad news yet, Neria.” At last
he did not come until, as the suspense grew intolerable, and Neria was about to
venture forth to seek him, she heard him slowly ascending the stairs. She met
him in the doorway, looked into his marble face and pitiful eyes, and crying,
“Too late! too late!” sank swooning at his feet.
