THORNS OF REGRET

By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

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THORNS OF REGRET OR, His Brother’s Wife

BY Mrs. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER AUTHOR OF “A Crushed Lily,” “Her Husband’s Secret,” “Little Coquette Bonnie,” “My Lillian.”

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION PUBLISHERS 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

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Copyright, 1899 By Norman L. Munro

Thorns of Regret

(Printed in the United States of America)

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. ASHES TO ASHES. CHAPTER II. THE READING OF THE WILL. CHAPTER III. FATE. CHAPTER IV. A HASTY WOOING. CHAPTER V. “THERE ARE OTHER LIPS!” CHAPTER VI. THE WORST FATE THAT COULD BEFALL. CHAPTER VII. PURE GOLD AND GILDED DROSS. CHAPTER VIII. GIVE ME MY RELEASE. CHAPTER IX. “LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION!” CHAPTER X. MAISIE’S FLIGHT FROM HOME. CHAPTER XI. ONLY TO SUFFER AND ENDURE! CHAPTER XII. THE DIE WAS CAST. CHAPTER XIII. JOSEPHINE’S LITTLE GAME. CHAPTER XIV. WHAT BLISS HAD SHE ONLY LOVED ME. CHAPTER XV. IN THE CLASH OF HOSTILE ARMS. CHAPTER XVI. SUCH A TRAGEDY OF WOE. CHAPTER XVII. THE ONLY ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE. CHAPTER XVIII. A PAINFUL DISAPPOINTMENT. CHAPTER XIX. A SUSPICIOUS LOVER. CHAPTER XX. “FORGIVE THE PAST; I LOVE YOU NOW!” CHAPTER XXI. ONE GLIMPSE—ONE ONLY. CHAPTER XXII. BROTHERS AT LAST. CHAPTER XXIII. THE WEDDING-BELLS. CHAPTER XXIV. I COULD NOT BE HAPPY WITHOUT LOVE! CHAPTER XXV. A WRETCHED MEETING. CHAPTER XXVI. LIKE AN ENVENOMED ARROW. CHAPTER XXVII. THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE THORNS OF REGRET. CHAPTER XXIX. TRUE LOVE IS ETERNAL.

CHAPTER XXX. THE LIGHTNING BOLT OF JEALOUSY. CHAPTER XXXI. “LONG HOPES WEAR OUT JOY.” CHAPTER XXXII. “YOU HAVE GROWN INTO MY HEART.” CHAPTER XXXIII. A BREATHING SPELL OF JOY. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE SUSPENDED SWORD. CHAPTER XXXV. UNMASKED. CHAPTER XXXVI. “HAVE YOU NO PITY FOR ME?” CHAPTER XXXVII. I KNOW NO COMFORT! CHAPTER XXXVIII. LOOKING BACKWARD. CHAPTER XXXIX. THE SUNSHINE OF A WINTER DAY. CHAPTER XL. “THE POOR HEART SHE BROKE.”

CHAPTER I. ASHES TO ASHES.

Slowly and solemnly the village church-bells tolled while the funeral cortège wound its way to the grave, followed by the long train of mourners.

The richest man in the country was dead, and the whole neighborhood had turned out to do honor to his obsequies.

The chief mourners were his two sons, Byrd and Delmar Barrington, his widowed sister, Mrs. French, and his adopted daughter, Maisie Van Allyn.

These four stood in silent grief by the grave while the preacher’s voice droned over the burial service, shuddering as the clods began to fall upon the splendid casket, but waiting till the mound was shaped and covered with floral tributes before they turned away and left the dead to his long repose.

No violent grief had been shown by the mourners, and nothing but subdued respect by the sympathetic [Pg 6]friends, and as the crowd dispersed there was not one who said feelingly:

“There is another good man gone!”

The minister who had preached his funeral sermon had very pertinently remarked before launching into an eloquent discourse upon death:

“The deceased is too well known to you all for me to dilate at length upon his characteristics. He has made his way among you from obscurity to wealth and position.”

What the reverend man said was perfectly true. Any of Augustus Barrington’s neighbors could have sketched the outlines of his biography.

Augustus Barrington had prided himself upon being a self-made man.

He had been reared on a Virginia farm, and at fifteen years of age he ran away to the nearest town, disgusted with poverty, and determined to make his own way in life. Securing a position as errand-boy in a bank, he improved his education by attending night-school. By thrift and rigid attention to business he rose by successive gradations to the honorable position of cashier of the bank.

By this time he had been received into the best society of the town, and his vaulting ambition prompted [Pg 7]him to seek in an advantageous marriage still further advancement in life.

It was supposed that he would marry well; indeed, every one generously agreed that such a plucky fellow deserved it, but even his nearest friends scarcely expected him to lift his eyes to an heiress, daughter of the richest man in town, the president of the bank in which he was simply the cashier.

To be brief, he aspired and won, to the surprise of the whole town.

Perhaps he had had one advantage in wooing Miss Byrd. She was not pretty, and in spite of her father’s wealth she was so diffident that her bashfulness, mistaken for pride, had daunted other suitors. So she had reached the same age as Barrington, twenty-five, when his bold and determined siege conquered the citadel of her tender heart.

It was a misalliance in the eyes of the world, but Miss Byrd was fond and romantic, and this only added zest to her love-affair. She coaxed her rather reluctant parents to consent.

They were married and settled down at Castellane with the old folks, who in a few years died and left their daughter half a million of money.

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One would have thought that Barrington’s gratitude would have surrounded with an atmosphere of adoration the fond wife who had brought him wealth and position, added to worshiping love.

Not so. He was selfish to the core and incapable of gratitude, while his pretended love had been but a sham. Secretly he adored beauty, and his homely, devoted wife had no share in his heart.

Neglect and indifference became her portion, Barrington proceeding to enjoy himself on her money, allowing himself more relaxation from business now that he was rich, having succeeded his late father-in-law as owner and president of the bank by the weakness of his wife, who, in her pitiful attempts to buy his love, permitted him to have the mastery of her fortune.

The day came when, through her inability to cope with the keen, avaricious man of business, he became owner of everything, and she could not command a dollar save by his will.

Then he dropped every pretense of affection, and the ghastly reality stared her in the face. Barrington had married the heiress, not the woman. He had her money now, and only tolerated her because she was the mother of his son, and held the position of his wife. [Pg 9]He did not dare outrage society by extreme measures, but he outraged her heart in every conceivable fashion, so that she began to die by inches of a strange decline—the malady of a broken heart.

So the woman’s wounded love, changing slowly to jealous pain and fierce resentment, died the death, leaving in its place a thirst for revenge. She dragged through nine wretched years and died.

Three children had been born to her, but only the eldest one survived. He was her constant companion, worshiping her as an angel, and to the boy of eight years, mature and thoughtful for his age, she confided all her sorrows, and bequeathed him, alas, a legacy of hate!

“Listen, dear,” she had told him, over and over; “when I am dead your father, who married me for my money and broke my heart, will some day bring home another wife. He will marry for love the next time, and he will endow her with the gold he has wrested from me. This wealth should all come to you, Byrd, but there will be other children who will wish to share your inheritance.”

“They shall not!” cried the boy of eight, his proud blue eyes flashing.

“That is spoken well, my son, but you will have to [Pg 10]fight for your rights to the bitter end. Remember, you are to hate your stepmother and every child she bears; you are to stand between them and your father so that neither he nor she shall ever have any real happiness. Poison his heart against her if you can, and scheme in every way possible to prevent them ever inheriting when he dies a single dollar of the money that should rightfully fall to you. All this may seem strange to you now, but as you grow older you can think of many cunning schemes for repaying your cruel father for breaking your loving mother’s heart. Swear now that you will faithfully carry out my wishes!” cried the frenzied mother, joining the little white hands of her son, while she made him take a solemn vow of obedience and secrecy.

He never forgot the grateful kiss she pressed on his brow, her lips were so hot and burning with the fever that was consuming her life.

So, for the remaining days of her short life, the wronged, half-maddened wife hugged to her heart the thought of the vengeance that would go on beyond the grave, and died, without ever revoking her baleful legacy of hate.

The boy Byrd grieved for her with unavailing regret, and bided his time for vengeance.

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It was not long in coming, for at the end of the second year of bereavement his father married a second time.

And this time, as the dead wife had predicted, it was for love—love so passionate that it overruled prudence.

He lost his heart to a girl of nineteen, while he was nearly forty, and looked even older, and laid siege to her heart with such ardor that she capitulated and accepted, but then she was very poor, and her family, broken-down aristocracy, could not make both ends meet, so they dazzled her with his wealth and power, and persuaded her that gratitude and respect were as good as love.

She was beautiful and charming, and seemed like a living bit of sunshine in gloomy, grand old Castellane, but her stepson hated her from the very beginning, and repulsed friendly overtures with scorn.

He was ten years old now, and his cunning brain devised many plans of annoying the usurper of his mother’s place.

At the same time he managed to keep always in his father’s favor while devising each day new schemes to destroy his happiness.

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“Papa,” he said once, drawing him aside into the library and whispering, “I have a secret to tell you.”

“Yes, Byrd.”

“It is this: your new wife did not marry you for love, as my dear mama did! She married you for money!”

“How dare you?” cried the man, stung by the assertion of what he already dreaded, and wondering at the boy’s cleverness.

“But, papa, it is the truth. Do you know that that proud old woman, her mother, comes here to beg money of her daughter? But she never gives her any, so Mrs. Delmar was rather angry yesterday. She cried, and said: ‘Kathleen, I never thought you could be so heartless as to refuse your poor mother a few dollars when you are rolling in gold.’”

“Ah!” cried Barrington angrily.

“I was hid behind the curtains. I could hear all plainly,” continued the boy. “The new wife cried, too, and told Mrs. Delmar that you had never given her a dollar of her own to spend. She had asked you for a little money several times, but you said: ‘Never mind the money. Buy the things you want and send the bills to me.’”

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His father cried breathlessly:

“What next?”

“Then your new wife went on complainingly:

“‘Mama, I see that I made a terrible mistake—marrying him. I was dazzled by his money and the thought of what I could do for you all. I wanted to send Hugh and Rob to school, to hire a servant to do the work for you, and to buy you a black silk gown. Perhaps I can manage the gown, because he gave me carte blanche to buy what I chose. But as for the rest, you see how it is, mama; he is miserly and will not allow me a penny of my own. And the worst of it is, I am getting disgusted with his stinginess, and can hardly respect him, much less love him! Oh, how different it is from what we expected! Just think! if he would have let me share my good fortune with the needy ones at home, I think I should have loved him out of pure gratitude and joy, but now—now’—and she cried so hard she could not go on, so her mother kissed her twice and went home.”

How every inflection of the childish voice stung, as Byrd meant it should, taking revenge for his mother’s wrong.

Augustus Barrington, face to face with the truth, chafed in fury.

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He did not try to buy Kathleen’s love by indulgence; he was too stubborn and angry. He punished her innocent fault by indifference and neglect, thinking to pique her into tenderness; but ere he saw any signs of success, the brief story of Kathleen’s life ended suddenly with the birth of a little dark-eyed son ere she was twelve months a wife.

“Call him Delmar!” she said with her dying breath.

So she passed away soon from her short earth life, and was buried by the side of Byrd’s mother, with a space between them for the husband who had broken both their hearts. Now the third tenant was come, but was it possible he could rest there in peace?

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CHAPTER II. THE READING OF THE WILL.

Under a light shower of sudden April rain three carriages rolled in through the broad gates of Castellane bearing Barrington’s relations and the lawyer who was to remain for the reading of the will that afternoon.

Much interest centered in that important event, for with successive years Barrington had grown richer and richer, fairly piling up gold, which he hoarded with almost miserly greed, and all his neighbors declared that he had never in his life been known to do but one charitable deed.

That was when he went to see some California gold-mines in which he owned large shares and brought back with him the little daughter of a miner who had died without achieving the success he had vainly courted through weary years. The motherless child, so pretty and winsome, had touched Barrington’s heart, and he could not refuse her father’s dying plea to adopt her as his daughter.

When Maisie Van Allyn came to Castellane she was ten years old, a bright-eyed, fearless little beauty, [Pg 16]and Delmar was a handsome, spirited lad of fourteen, while Byrd, his elder brother, was twenty-five, and the pride of his father’s heart.

And, needless to say, he had kept faith with his dead mother in his secret, untiring persecution of Delmar, who in the neighborhood was called the unloved son, so small a place had he in his father’s heart, thanks to the machinations of Byrd.

Indeed, the younger son could scarcely be said to enjoy the really intimate acquaintance of his father, so little time had they passed together from the boy’s infancy till now, when he stood and listened to the clods rattling down on the grave of one whom he could remember only as a stern, censorious parent, finding always naught to praise but all to blame in the child of his second wife.

From nurses and tutors he had passed to college, and vacations by the sea or in the country, Byrd always managing to keep the two apart while encouraging Delmar in all boyish extravagance.

Now the last act in the drama of hate was to be played in the reading of the will, and as the family assembled in the darkened library that afternoon a grim smile played on Barrington’s fair mustached lips as he recalled his mother’s adjuration:

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“Swear that not a dollar of the gold your father wrested from me shall ever be left to a second wife or her children!”

In the years while Delmar was kept at college Byrd had had ample time to perfect his schemes.

His younger brother, open-handed and warm-hearted, taking his nature from the generous Delmars, was painted to his father as dissolute and spendthrift, unworthy to be trusted with money that he would only squander in dissolute pleasures.

So in time the seed he had planted bore its natural fruit.

Though the father could not repress a thrill of pride when Delmar graduated at twenty-five with the highest honors of his Alma Mater, the triumph could not undo Byrd’s long work of misrepresentation. It worked well with the leaven of his resentment toward the beautiful girl who had married him for his money and learned to hate him afterward for his parsimony. It never came home to him that he was reaping what he had sown. He only remembered with humiliation and bitterness that the woman he had loved had not returned his passion, while the one he had slighted had been his devoted slave. With the flight of years he [Pg 18]began to realize that the best of his love was due to her son, thus doing a tardy justice to her memory.

While much of this had been guessed at by the curious outside world, and by the group of relations who awaited the reading of the will, yet not one dreamed of the startling finale except Byrd, who sat with grim smile at the corners of his lips and that hard light in his cold blue eyes so like those of his dead mother, whose vengeance he had brought to pass.

Lawyer Munsey opened the seals of the will, cleared his throat, and began the reading.

Barrington had generously remembered his few country relatives with small bequests, the largest amount, ten thousand dollars, going to his sister, Mrs. French, in grateful acknowledgment of her services as chatelaine of his home during the years of his widowerhood. A smile of satisfaction dawned on all those faces at finding their names remembered in the will of their rich relation.

Next came the name of Maisie Van Allyn, whom the testator complained he had treated for eight years as a daughter, only to be rewarded by ingratitude, of which he now reminded her by cutting her off with fifty dollars that would pay her way until she could find a situation to support herself.

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Maisie’s dewy rosebud of a mouth parted in a startled “Oh,” and she flashed a quick, resentful glance at Byrd Barrington’s calm, impassive face, then dropped the dark curly fringe of her lashes almost to her cheek, listening in silence to the lawyer’s monotonous voice droning on in the next paragraph which disposed of Delmar Barrington’s expectations.

The testator put on record that he was exceedingly wroth with his younger son by reason of his low tastes and spendthrift habits, and felt that the inheritance of a fortune would only help him to go to the dogs faster. Having toiled hard to amass a large fortune, he objected to having it dissipated in riotous living, hence Delmar’s portion would be the monthly interest of fifty dollars accruing from stocks set aside for that purpose, and a home at Castellane for life. Perhaps Delmar would thus learn by this needful lesson the virtues of thrift and economy.

You might have heard a pin drop at that moment.

It seemed as if every one forgot to breathe through sheer astonishment, and in the breathless silence the lawyer resumed his reading of the will, which named last of all Byrd Barrington as the sole inheritor of his father’s vast wealth—in stocks, bonds, and real estate, over five millions of money. A final clause stated that [Pg 20]the beginnings of his wealth having come from Byrd’s mother, it was but just to restore it to her son.

Delmar’s great dark eyes blazed with disappointment and anger. He sprang to his feet, facing his elder brother accusingly:

“You have done me this foul wrong, Byrd! It is your cursed malice! You told lies of me to my father, and set his heart against me!” he cried scathingly.

Maisie Van Allyn sprang to his side with a second accusation:

“It was spite work, too, that turned his love from me! I have always been dutiful and obedient to my adopted father—I never crossed his wishes in but one thing!”—she hesitated a moment, then added bitterly: “He wished me to marry that snake in the grass, his elder son! Bah, I would not have him with all his five millions thrown in!” and she stamped her foot at him in superb rage.

Mrs. French reprimanded her curtly:

“Fie, Maisie, this behavior is unseemly. Do not forget that you are simply Byrd’s guest now!”

“I am not forgetting it, I shall leave here as soon as I can pack my clothes!” beautiful Maisie retorted, flying from the room in a passion.

Thus through “the long slow years that bring us [Pg 21]all things ill,” the dead cold hand of the wronged wife had stretched forth from the grave and taken vengeance through her devoted son for all the sufferings of her wedded life.