CHAPTER XXXII.

Mrs. Leigh’s health and spirits were soon improved in the genial atmosphere of Chestnut Grove, but there was a lingering sadness in her demeanor which she could not dispel. James explained to Hagar that it was probably due to Josephine’s grief on account of her husband’s wrecked condition, but added that he was certain some cause of estrangement existed between them—something more subtle in its effects than any physical injury. In speaking of the matter to Hagar, he said:—

“Without having the remotest idea of what this trouble is, I have determined to make an effort to bring about a reconciliation. Dr. Bruce thinks that, if they could meet alone under favorable conditions, all would be set right, and it has occurred to me that the occasion of your wedding will afford just the opportunity we want. I will arrange the details, and you must help me to carry them out.”

Nearly every day Josephine received a note from Dr. Bruce, who was in Colonel Taine’s confidence, respecting her husband’s health and the general news of the hospital, in which her patient devotion had been a feature for many months. In his latest letter the Doctor wrote:

“General Leigh seems much happier of late, and is also in better health. But he still refuses to leave the hospital except with a certificate that he is fit for service. This, of course is out of the question, for as a matter of fact, he will never again be fit for active service. He seems to suspect that you have left the hospital, and said to me yesterday: ‘I have treated my wife with great indignity since I came here, and I want to see her to ask her forgiveness.’ I put him off by saying that you were away for a rest but would soon be back. Mrs. Lamont has returned, broken-hearted to New Orleans, still struggling against doubts that only her own goodness prevented her from perceiving in their true bearings, and in spite of all her sufferings, believing still that the husband who so cruelly blighted her life, was innocent.”

Hagar’s daily letter to Spencer kept him informed of all that was transpiring at Chestnut Grove, and when, on Saturday night he came there to stay over Sunday, it did not take them long to determine that there was no good reason why their marriage should be further delayed.

“I’m afraid you will find me a dull old fellow for a husband, darling Hagar,” said Spencer, after the wedding day had been fixed. “But if you can reconcile yourself to live in the same house with one whose faults you have had no opportunity to discover, my undying love and a constant purpose of amendment may help to atone for my shortcomings. As I grow older, the missionary spirit which was strong within me when we first met, seems to take a firmer hold upon my mind and heart; but it is broader now than the pinched horizon of a creed, and I feel that I am not fixed in a groove as I was before. As I look back, I realize that a kind of canker possessed me, body and soul, and it seems that the Worker of Miracles had found me battling with a devil and mercifully cast it out. My spirit is resolute, and free and kindly towards all men as it never was before; the bitterness of a narrow bigotry has ceased to control my heart—I am literally ‘the deformed transformed.’ And all this I owe to you my darling, my wife!”

“What, then, do I not owe to you, love, and what do we both not owe to heaven? In my sight you can never have a fault. We may be called upon to suffer or to mourn together, but I conceive you perfect. To be convinced that you were not would be worse than death; and death would come sooner than that conviction. For you are brave, and generous, and good. You think of others rather than yourself, and make your spirit master of what’s beneath it. I shall learn from you, love, how to think; and you may learn from me, how to love.”

“I think I might pass a fair examination in that sweet study already. But, do you know, dearest, that I almost regret your fortune came to prevent the ideal bliss I had imagined for us in a tiny cottage far removed from the notice of the world. I pictured myself struggling cheerfully to pay the rent and provide such humble fare as poverty can afford; while I saw you the busy housewife, my sweeter self, happy and bright through adversity, making the poor man’s cottage sunnier than any palace. But what will be our course under the new conditions?”

“First of all, let us travel. That experience will give a still wider range to your ‘missionary spirit,’ and on our return we can have the ideal cottage of your dream. But, tell me, love, do you ever regret having separated yourself from the Mormon Zion? There always seems to be a sad note in your voice when you recur to your people.”

“I regret the people but not the cause.”

“And, while I think of it, what religion shall we profess now?”

“Let us profess the religion of action rather than that of creed. Let us endeavor to be and do, rather than to seem or pretend. Like other men, I can readily conjure up an impossible ideal, but the possible extends as far as man need want to go. While much of the so called moral teaching and religious doctrine of the past is doubtful both as to authority and utility, the two simple commands of the Saviour which may be understood by a child, bear the impress of perfect Truth, and I sincerely believe are within the bounds of the possible.

“Love one another.”

“Do unto others as you would that they should do to you.”

“These apply to both needs and the natures of men in their best state. We feel that we require justice from others, and we therefore accord it gladly. Realized, these commands solve all human difficulties. They change chaos into concord by the magic of their touch; they set straight all the crooked ways of thought and action which now keep men floundering in despair. They signify the only remedy for evils which now pervade every human institution and every phase of human life. To obey them ‘in spirit and in truth,’ is to disarm the oppressor, to check, and finally to abolish evil-doing and evil-thinking, too; and to adjust all the varied and complicated relations of life upon principles as harmonious as Nature herself; for, to be fair, just, honest, truthful, virtuous and conscientious, in all our conduct and dealings with our fellow-beings, would be the inevitable result of strict obedience to these two Divine commands.”

“Why, then, are they not obeyed? Is it one of the conditions of existence here that we must continue in a state of misery and imperfection?”

“It may be, but I prefer to think that the methods which are, and have been, employed ostensibly for the purpose of giving them effect, were not of a character to attain that end, and that men for ages have pursued a shadow at the cost of the substance. There may be better methods still available. It appears to me, moreover, that the question of maintaining life has a powerful bearing here. While men are struggling desperately for existence they will not, they cannot, receive much benefit from merely ethical teaching. The acceptation and practice of these beneficent doctrines cannot be confined to a class or race, they must be universal; and universal man in the present state of the world, whatever his origin may have been, is much more animal than spirit.”

“But is there not much honest effort being made in the direction of a higher and better plane? May not your highest ideal sometime be realized?”

“In the remotest future, yes. But in our own day men lack sympathy. They cannot ‘love one another,’ because they think and care only for themselves. The advance of science has far outstripped that of morals. Men hate and fear each other because most of their callings hinge on trickery. The practice of reprisal, which in the Middle ages was carried on by direct open attack, is perpetuated in modern cunning, and the ‘Robber Baron’ of to-day is he who has driven less lucky tricksters to the wall by his superior talents as a gambler. Only a revolution of the most astonishing kind can bring men to their senses.”

“A revolution! Do you mean a war?”

“It might be done without war if men would pause to think; but history seems to show that the only lessons that have a lasting effect on the world are written in blood. But the mandate has gone forth, and a greater multitude of the people than most men dream of, are already convinced that it must be obeyed. Those who hinder will be left behind, and those who oppose will be trampled under foot. The awful problem can only be solved by the power of the Infinite working here through good men. It seems like a maze impossible to thread! Is the solution to be found in some natural fact like steam or electricity, and to be brought home to the race as palpably as these? The thing is there like lightning in the clouds, but where is the Franklin to capture it on his kite’s tail and demonstrate it to humanity!”

“Perhaps that honor may be reserved for you.”

Spencer spoke with the rapt interest and enthusiasm that can only emanate from a true and ardent soul. They were sitting on the verandah in the shadow of the creeper that hung in graceful clusters, and the moon beams as they fell through the lattice were dancing in kaleidoscopic figures about them. Hagar had nestled her head against her lover’s breast as she made the last remark, and Spencer was about to reply, when they heard a footstep on the porch. Looking round they saw the dark outline of a woman’s figure standing a short distance from them. Her hat and costume showed them at once that she was a stranger, but her face was in shadow.

Spencer rose, and taking a step toward her, said:

“May I ask whom we have the pleasure of——”

“You do not know me,” interrupted the figure. “I have come here with a message for the daughter of Hope Vincent—is she here?”

“A message from my mother!” exclaimed Hagar, seizing Spencer’s arm. “Will you come in?”

“No—I take it you are Hagar, and if so, can deliver my message here.”

“I am.”

She had scarcely uttered the words when two pistol shots in quick succession flashed in her face, and she sank to the floor uttering a faint moan.

The woman vanished as stealthily as she had come, and the panic caused by the alarm of firearms completely unnerved everybody about the place. James was absent, and Josephine was frantic when she rushed down stairs and met Spencer carrying Hagar into the sitting-room.

The poor fellow was dumb with agony beyond the power of words, beyond the range of thought. His darling one had fallen mortally hurt in his very arms, and he could not save her. By the lurid glare of the deadly weapon that had torn her from him, he saw and knew the face of her murderer.

“It is possible that her life may yet be saved. Hurry, Dan, get a horse and go for a doctor, quick, quick,” gasped poor Spencer.

Despite his deadly fear, Dan lost no time in making his way to the nearest country doctor’s, but long before the doctor came, Hagar was no more.

After quarter of a century the gloom of that dread night still casts its shadows over the minds of those who knew and loved the victim. James Taine, the honored veteran has spent his lonely life in chosen seclusion at the old home, and has tried in vain through all these years to account for the mystery of Hagar’s death. Spencer never told him nor anybody what he knew about it; but, only the other day in writing from the slums of New York, where he has spent his life and Hagar’s fortune, in trying to help the wretched, he said:

“To-day I met with a most singular experience. A denizen of one of the most squalid tenements of Catherine Street came and told me that a woman was sick in a garret where starvation threatened her and another woman with three children who were her fellow lodgers. The sick woman, my informant said, had lived for some time by fishing scraps from garbage barrels along the curb-stones of the quarter, was old and bent, and given to the use of grog. When I reached the noisome garret where she lay, it was plain that neither grog nor any other stimulant, solid or liquid, had played any part there for many hours. I sent for food and fuel and paused to make enquiries for future guidance, when to my horror I discovered that the woman was none other than the Belle Ross of whose visits Dr. Bruce told us before that fatal night. I had met her during my memorable stay at Cincinnati in ’62, and the next time I saw her face was by a pistol flash. Oh, James! I cannot tell you the anguish this cruel tearing open of a mortal wound has caused me! I taxed the loathsome creature with her crime and she confessed in full, saying that she was thirsting for revenge from the moment she knew the disposition Hope Vincent made of her property. A lover deserted her on account of her failure to secure the fortune—a lover for whom she would willingly have died, and for whose support she had systematically robbed her mistress for months. This, she said, completely unbalanced her mind, and without caring what might be the result, she vowed to do the awful deed! ——— She begged me not to give her over to the law, but to have pity, and supply her with drink enough to drown remembrance.... Little can be done for the poor wretch, but I shall help her as best I can to prepare for the end, which is near at hand.”