December snows lay deep and white all over Boston, but the sky was deeply blue, the sun was shining bright, and the merry jingle of the Christmas sleigh-bells filled the air with music.
In the small but dainty drawing-room of a pretty house on one of Boston’s principal avenues, a mother and daughter sat at the lace-draped window watching the gay vehicles flashing past.
Mrs. Vale had coldly declined Mrs. Murray’s invitation to Winthrop, and had made a home for herself and Italy in an aristocratic neighborhood in Boston. Here they had become the recipients of social attentions from the élite of the city. Friends of old flocked around the returned exile, trying to atone for the cruelty of the past. And on this beautiful Christmas morn the drawing-room was littered with elegant gifts and fragrant flowers, kindly tokens from loving hearts of friends.
Mrs. Vale was not yet forty, and looked much younger in spite of the trials she had borne. Her rich, golden hair showed no trace of silver, and there were few lines of age on her delicate face, only an expression that somehow showed that, for her, the fulness of life was over.
The settled sadness of her pale, clear face was in deep contrast to the subtile unrest of her daughter’s, with its deep, passionate eyes and proud, red lips.
Between the mother and daughter there was one tabooed subject. It was Francis Murray.
Italy firmly believed in his innocence, and her mother just as firmly believed in his guilt. Who could blame her? for had not Francis Murray and his mother turned the cold shoulder to her with the rest of the world?
“And all the while he was guilty, the dastard!” she cried loathingly, and shrank with abhorrence from meeting his mother.
It was cruelly hard for Italy. She loved them both, these two saddened women, and she would fain have brought them together. But Mrs. Murray, as well as Mrs. Vale, realized the impossibility of this union.
“No, she believes my son guilty, I should suffocate in her presence,” cried Mrs. Murray.
“Her son killed my husband. I could not breathe the same air with that woman!” cried Mrs. Vale.
So they had never met, and it was but rarely Italy could gain her mother’s consent to go to Winthrop.
Mrs. Murray’s life at The Lodge was now inexpressibly lonely, and worn with keen suspense, for the clever detectives had failed entirely to trace the mysterious sailor. It was believed that he must have shipped the same night upon another vessel, for he had never been seen again after he staggered out of the low saloon where, in a half-maudlin condition, he had related to a reporter and a score of other listeners, the thrilling story of Francis Murray’s confession of Ronald Vale’s murder.
In addition to the search that was going on privately, there were advertisements inserted in all the leading newspapers offering inducements to the sailor to return.
Mr. Gardner was secretly much discouraged at all these failures. He began to dread that there was nothing more to discover.
“And yet poor Francis Murray was my true friend. How can I believe him guilty?” he would ask himself reproachfully.
As Mrs. Vale and Italy sat together at the window this Christmas morning, an obsequious servant entered and presented a card to the former.
Mrs. Vale’s pale, beautiful face became, if possible, paler, and her voice was imperious, as she said:
“Tell the gentleman we are not at home.”
The trim, becapped maid glided out, and Italy somewhat curiously took up the card that her mother had thrown carelessly down upon the floor. She read on the bit of cardboard the name:
“Percy Seabright.”
Italy had not seen Mr. Seabright since that day in October at Ralph Allen’s studio, but knowing his wandering, Bohemian habits, she had felt no surprise.
Alexie Audenreid had told her only a week previous that he was in New York, and that Aunt Ione was furious because one of her friends there had written her he was dancing attendance on an actress there, a married woman at that, and that a divorce would very likely come of the flirtation.
“Aunt Ione will make him walk straight once they are married,” added Alexie, “but he is a sad flirt, and she is jealous of everybody he looks at now--married women and widows especially. She says they are all designing creatures, and just as anxious for beaus as the single girls. She says I am a fool to let Ralph get so interested in his landlady’s daughter, the pretty Widow Severn, and that she will rival me if I don’t look out. But I pity that sweet sad young thing just as much as dear Ralph does, and I know he will never love any one but me.”
All this rushed over Italy’s mind now, and she exclaimed:
“Why, mama, how strange that you refused to see Percy Seabright--dear papa’s dearest friend!”
She saw a quiver pass over the pale, beautiful face.
“Do you know him, Italy?”
“Why, of course, mama. We met often before you came. I must have written you about it.”
“Not one word, my child!”
“How very strange that I forgot to mention him, my dear mama. And I like him so very much, too, mama!”
“You like him--why?”
“Oh, mama, what a question! He is very kind and pleasant--and if he were not I should still have to like him for papa’s sake! They loved each other, you know, and were very intimate friends.”
“That is no reason you should love him, Italy, for--I--I--hate Percy Seabright!” cried Mrs. Vale, in a voice of loathing.
As Mrs. Vale uttered those strange words she started up from her seat, her eyes flashing with a steely glitter, her cheeks flushing warmly.
“I--hate--Percy--Seabright!” she repeated chokingly.
“Mama!”
Italy’s eyes were wide with wonder, but Mrs. Vale began to pace restlessly up and down the room, her long black velvet dress with its rich fur trimming trailing far behind her on the thick carpet. She was excited to the verge of hysteria, and seemed to almost forget Italy’s presence.
“Oh, how that man’s name brings back the past!” she cried, wringing her slender white hands in anguish. “Oh, Ronald, Ronald, it was of him we spoke that last, last night when I came to you in the library, and you promised, promised----” her voice broke in a long, wailing sob.
Italy was shocked. It was but seldom that her sad, quiet mother ever gave way like this. She hurried to her side, and slipped her arm about the slight waist.
“Oh, my dearest one, what is it? Were you not willing for papa to be his friend?” she cried.
“Ah, my child, I have betrayed myself! I did not care that you should ever know this! But come, sit beside me on the sofa and I will tell you all.”
Italy sat beside her, looking in wonder into the agitated face, and waiting curiously for the explanation. It seemed strange to her that any one should dislike bright, debonair Percy Seabright, who was always so kind.
Then she suddenly remembered that Emmett Harlow had frankly avowed an aversion to him, and she herself had seen faults in him, although he had laughed them off with his winning air, and she had generously tried to excuse them.
“It is something like this that has vexed mama, no doubt,” she thought, and her mother’s first words confirmed her belief.
“After all,” she said, “perhaps I feel too strongly on the subject; perhaps I ought to forgive him, but do not think, my darling, that I was jealous of your father’s love for his friend. No, no; it was Percy Seabright that hated me!”
Then Italy remembered suddenly that she had never heard Percy Seabright express one kindly feeling toward her mother.
“Oh, mama!” she cried, aghast.
“Percy Seabright disliked me before I was married, he hated me afterward,” went on Mrs. Vale, with that crimson spot still burning on her pale cheek, and her eyes agleam with blue fire.
“But, mama, why?”
“I was poor then, you know, Italy, and no one knew that my uncle, who so kindly cared for me, intended to make me his heiress. He was a bachelor, but still quite young enough to marry. But when you were only two years old Uncle Leonard died and his fortune came to me. But Percy Seabright, before I was married, tried to persuade your father that I did not love him, that I was marrying him for his money.”
“Shameful!” cried Italy, with flashing eyes.
“Was it not?” cried Mrs. Vale warmly. “But Ronald would not believe him. We were married, and he continued to hate me. I believe he was foolishly jealous of my husband’s love for me. Anyhow, we never became friends, and I found out at last that he was always plotting to turn my Ronald’s heart against me. The knowledge made me very bitter against him, and that night when I went to Ronald in the library my heart was very sore with something I had heard at the reception, some slighting words Percy Seabright had said about me. I told everything to my dear husband, and begged him to break off with Percy because he was mean and deceitful, and not worthy to be my darling’s friend.”
“Oh,” breathed Italy, intensely interested, and Mrs. Vale continued:
“Ronald was very angry, and threatened to call Percy out the next day, but I told him no, I did not wish it. I only wished he should withdraw his friendship from the traitor. He promised, with a caress, that he would do so, and added that he had long been losing faith in his once friend, and would not be sorry to give him up!”
“Oh, mama, what if, what if----” Italy cried wildly.
“My dear?”
“What if--it has been--this man who followed you with his hatred all these years? It must be, because it is so plain!” the girl panted.
“No, dear.”
“But, mama, it must be. He might even have----Oh, could he have caused--could he have killed papa?”
“Dearest, you talk wildly. Percy Seabright loved your father too well to harm him! Yet, I confess these suspicions came to me. But they were baseless. He was in New York that night, and--he reached home--only in time for the funeral. He fainted over the coffin, and was ill afterward for days. But he behaved generously after that. He combatted the world’s verdict that I was guilty. He advanced and clung to the theory that Ronald committed suicide. He rejoiced when I was cleared, and offered me his friendship in that winning way so few can resist. I think he was sorry for me, sympathized with me in our common sorrow over a loved one’s death. But--my nature is not a forgiving one--I could not forget nor forgive his former enmity. I turned my back on him, coldly declined his friendship, and--have never seen him since.”
“And you do not believe that he is your enemy still?”
“No, dear, not in the face of his proffered friendship and his seemingly sincere repentance. Doubtless he believed all that he charged against me, but why should he war with me further--a woman whose heart was broken!”
“And you cannot learn to tolerate him, mama?”
“No, Italy, every instinct of my nature is in revolt against this man despite his repentance. I hope never to gaze on his false, smiling face again.”
Italy kissed her tenderly, without replying. She was thinking of that Mephistophelian smile she had sometimes caught on Percy Seabright’s lips. It had always revolted her, and suddenly it came to her that a man with so evil a smile might be capable of any wickedness. She went to the window again and looked out at the snowy street and the passing sleighs with her head in a whirl.
“I wish I had known all this before,” she thought. “It puts a new face on everything. What if--what if this man is a fiend in disguise! Oh, how my head whirls! Francis Murray, I remember he tried to lay the crime on you! Let me think, let me think! Oh, what a flood of suspicions crowd upon me! Is this man, this Percy Seabright, who loved my father so dearly, a saint or a fiend? I must know; I will watch him, I will try to trap him. Dear Heaven, help me, I implore!”
She heard her mother’s passionate sobs from the sofa, where she crouched in an agony of reawakened recollection, and her heart grew hard as stone toward Percy Seabright.
“Liar!” she breathed hoarsely. “Perhaps it was from you that Francis Murray heard that dark and blighting story of my mother’s dishonor--that falsehood that should have seared the lips that breathed it. Ah, at last I have a clue! I must follow it warily, and perhaps it may lead to the awful truth! If only Francis Murray were here, I believe he would help me now! Shall I tell Mr. Gardner what is in my mind? No, not yet, for he is as blind as my mother, who believes in Percy Seabright’s honesty of purpose in spite of her dislike of him. The path is dark, dark, but I must venture on it a little way alone. Oh, for a guiding hand in this black darkness!”
The burning tears rolled down her cheeks and blinded her to everything. On that fair Christmas morn, Italy Vale felt herself the most desolate girl beneath the heavens.
