The Wooing of Wanda

by Edgar Fawcett

THE WOOING OF WANDA ^[1]

All Old-time Christmas Story

By Edgar Fawcett

IN the earlier years of the century, when Now York was but fairly high on even the list (if drowsy little seaport towns, a plain yet wide-fronted house, with marks of simple elegance about its exterior, stood in Beaver Street, not far from Bowling Green. Long since destroyed and forgotten, it was the home of a family that were once of high social place.

But the Van Brughs, though still important and wealthy, were now a sadly diminished race. All their fine ancestors, famed in fight and politics and law, had perished. In the quiet Beaver Street mansion lived a gentleman of intensely secluded habits, whose name was Alston Van Brugh, and whose position as head of his family had once been undisputed. He now passed his days in great loneliness. Occasionally his tall, bent figure could be seen on Broadway or among the breeze-swept paths of the Battery. But he rarely bowed even to those who had been his intimates in other hours. His handsome face, with its cameo-like profile, was forever set in one expression of absorbed melancholy. Beneath his hat, wide of brim and low of crown, the snowy locks fell sparsely, yet touched the somewhat rusty black of his high stock. Sometimes he would stand for long intervals, with eyes fixed wistfully yet sternly on the shores of Staten Island, where the Narrows go sparkling away to open sea.

"Is he thinking of his wife?" people would ask one another, furtively watching him. "Heavens, what a wreck that woman has made of him! That this should be Alston Van Brugh, the merry and blithe-hearted man of fashion, whose gay dances and suppers, always presided over by the beautiful Southern heiress and belle he had married, delighted and charmed one-half our town and were puritanically deplored of the other!"

And so, quite naturally, when an adventurous and handsome young Englishman landed in New York, one day, with a letter of introduction from his father to Alston Van Brugh, the resident British consul strongly advised him not to present it.

"Or, at least, if you do, Lord Albert," was the added monition, "I should first suggest to you that you call upon Mr. Van Brugh's brother. He lives ever so far away, in a country-house on the banks of the East River. But you could easily be driven there, and you'd find him very agreeable. I perfectly recollect hearing of your father's visit to this country, long ago as it was. No wonder that he admired and liked Alston Van Brugh then. But a great change has come over him—a great sorrow has befallen him. Perhaps his brother, Marcus Van Brugh, will tell you all about it. In any case, I am sure he will give you the warmest of welcomes."

And Marcus Van Brugh did. He, too, had known the Marquis of Ellesmere, Lord Albert Winwood's father, and had greatly liked him. "Ever so far away, on the banks of the East River," meant a pretty cottage just about in the present locality of East Fourteenth Street. Lord Albert's host was a childless widower of about sixty, on whom his years sat lightly. He had never been a beau like his brother, but he was affable, fond of new faces, and, within somewhat simple limits, a cordial entertainer.

"So you came over just for the big voyage," he said to his guest, "being a devoted lover of sea-faring? Deuced long and tedious you must have found your trip. But now you are here, you should not dream of rushing back so soon as within a fortnight. I've grown to be a good deal of a recluse, though not in the least a misanthropic one. I know everybody in town who's worth knowing, and I mean to go there and stop at one of the hotels and bring you about."

This was no idle promise. For a week Marcus Van Brugh devoted himself to showing Lord Albert the town, as he called it, and a very placid and harmless sort of town it seemed to this young Briton, fresh from all the pomps and pleasures of gigantic London. But Lord Albert, then in his four-and-twentieth year, was far from being spoiled either by his rank or previous encompassments. A certain boyish frankness and gentleness in him completely won his new elderly friend. And soon Marcus Van Brugh became quite confidential to him regarding the strangely secluded owner of the Beaver Street abode.

"I rarely see Alston, now. It pains me greatly to see him. The cause of his terrible depression is well known. I will tell it you. Eighteen years ago, while he and his wife were the most envied pair in New York, and just two years after your father met them here, Mrs. Alston Van Brugh became secretly infatuated with a certain Spanish nobleman (a man of unquestioned rank and distinction), who had chanced to visit these shores. One day she fled with him to Spain, Europe, the end of the world—Heaven knows where."

"Ah," murmured Lord Albert, "that was most unfortunate!"

"It was hideous, ghastly. But her abandonment of her little infant daughter made it more so."

"Indeed, yes!"

"The child is now, of course, a grown up girl, and yet my brother never sees her except once a year. This is on Christmas day, which happens to be the day he received that fatal news. Our only sister, Mrs. Apthorpe, is Wanda's constant guardian and companion. Wanda—it's a pretty name, isn't it? My brother had been reading some German romance or poem, or something like that, when the child was born. Ah! if you could have seen him then, just as your father saw him! I want you to meet my sister, Mrs. Apthorpe. I'm sure you will like her. She's a serious woman, and a bit grim, but she has a vein of humor running like a golden thread through her temperament. You'll like her, I know,"

Lord Albert smiled, pulling at his downy blond whiskers. "And shall I like Miss Wanda, too?" he asked.

Marcus Van Brugh's kindly face saddened below its rather complex wrinkles. "Like her? yes. You couldn't help it, she's so gentle and maidenly and dove-eyed. Ah, she's a little beauty is Wanda Van Brugh… But alas! … I may as well tell it, I suppose—why not?" and the old widower's cheery hazel eyes visibly moistened.

"The truth is, she's deaf and dumb."

"How dreadfully sad!" exclaimed Lord Albert.

But he did not find it so sad when he had seen Wanda. She struck him as the sweetest of damsels, and her tender gray eyes had for him a magic trick of speech that subtly if not fully compensated for the muteness of her demure, roseleaf lips.

Mrs. Althorpe lived in a Colonial-looking wooden homestead, left her by her late husband, who had been a famed and prosperous lawyer in his day. The building, with its pretty lawns and gardens (though now the time of year was wintry and verged upon Christmas), faced the new canal, which had been made by draining the marshes of that region and also the Collect Pond, formerly a pleasure-haunt in all seasons. On either side the smooth-edged current of water were banks green in summer with double rows of shade-trees. Opposite this thoroughfare, which was then as now called Canal Street, and which bears at the present day no possible semblance of its former rural picturesqueness, Mrs. Apthorpe had dwelt since the infancy of her sweet young protegée. She had never been a woman of society, and she had chosen to let few of her small circle of friends catch more than a glimpse of Wanda. A very accomplished and even erudite lady, named Mrs. Beale, had lived with her for certainly fifteen years. And it was generally understood that Mrs. Beale had had large previous experience in the rearing and training of deaf mutes.

The Apthorpe abode was called Poplar House, because of two poplar trees that sentineled its porch. Lord Albert's visit here was hailed most hospitably by its proprietress.

"My brother, Marcus," she said, "must not claim too large a monopoly of acquaintanceship with your delightful father. I, too, knew him well, and I shall never forget the exquisite tact and high-breeding which he showed to all us Americans, coming here, as he did, at a time when the Republic was in its earliest youth, and when prejudice, born of such recent unhappy conflict, might easily have misconstrued even some unguarded courtesy."

Lord Albert soon paid another visit to Poplar House, and with unerring keenness Mrs. Apthorpe detected its motive. After he had come and gone the second time, she said, while closeted with her cherished friend, Mrs. Beale:

"Have you noticed, Augusta, how our Wanda seems to fascinate him?"

Mrs. Beale nodded. She had a plump, genial face, in strong contrast with her friend's firm and sedate one.

"Of course I've noticed, Ellen. Isn't it strange?"

"Strange? Oh, I don't know. I've sometimes thought that the thing men cared least for in women was their power of speech."

"Lady Albert Winwood!" smiled Mrs. Beale. "What a fine sound it has! He'll never be the Marquis, though, will he?"

"No. He's the second son by a second marriage. His brother, the Earl of Carrolford, is ever so much older than he, and has been married ever so long, and has a large family—chiefly sons, I think he said."

"Too bad, now, isn't it?"

"No. He's charming, and has twelve thousand pounds a year in his own right. He told me so yesterday, in his nice, simple candid way It would be a superb match for Wanda. The canal is frozen as hard as iron and he's fond of skating, and I told him Wanda could skate beautifully. So he's coming over to morrow morning at eleven to skate with her He's crazy to take lessons in the deaf-and-dumb language, too, and I've promised that I'll teach him."

Mrs. Apthorpe kept this promise, and though the young Englishman's infatuation gave her little time for tuition, his cleverness as a pupil surprised her. Not once, but several times, did he skate with Wanda. They made, indeed, a comely couple, gliding together with joined hands and frost-flushed faces over that bluish green strip of ice, where now cars jingle and carts rattle, and all kinds of traffic bustle and haggle, and not a gleam remains of the old meadowy quietude and peace!

Mrs. Apthorpe and Mrs. Beale would watch them from one of the upper windows of Poplar House. "What a strange wooing," at length said Wanda's aunt, "if wooing indeed it is."

One day, at about dusk, and on Christmas-eve, Wanda hurried into the presence of her aunt, who had just returned from the kitchen—where ladies of that period went oftener than ladies of this, and were not in the least ashamed of going, either. She had told Lord Albert, who was to dine with them at two o'clock on the morrow, that she would give him as fine a plum pudding as any that he had ever eaten at home in his own land, renowned though it was for this same viand. Wanda went straight up to her. She held her skates dangling by a strap from one hand. With the other hand she caught her aunt's arm. Silver lights were flashing from her gray eyes, and her cheeks were a brilliant rose.

"Oh, Aunt Ellen," cried the deaf and dumb girl, "I—I spoke!"

"Well," returned Mrs. Apthorpe, composedly, "I was sure you would, sooner or later. Calm yourself, dear. There; let me take off your things. How did it happen? He said something very sweet, I suppose."

"Oh, he—he talked to himself about me, right out loud! It was too trying!"

"I should think it might have been. What did he say? Stop crying, and tell me right out loud."

"Oh, that I was the sweetest girl he'd ever met, and that if only I were not deaf and dumb he'd beg me to marry him, and when I'd said 'Yes ' he'd write instantly to his father in England, and tell him that he was going to bring over the fairest bride in all Christendom. He kept on saying things like this, till at last I—well, I couldn't stand it any more, and I didn't."

Mrs. Apthorpe kissed the girl's cold, damask, tear-stained cheek. "You found a tongue, darling, and I don't blame you."

"But you have always so implored, insisted, commanded, Aunt Ellen——"

"Yes; never mind that; I plead guilty, dearest. And what did he say?"

"Say?" shuddered Wanda. "Oh, he turned white and gnawed his lips, and muttered that he'd been made a fool of."

"So he has. Poor Lord Albert! where is he now?"

"I think he followed me. I dare say he's downstairs. He grumbled something about seeing you and having it out with you."

"He was quite right. We will have it out together, if he is downstairs."

Lord Albert was. … Five minutes later Mrs. Apthorpe sat beside him, on the prim hair-cloth parlor sofa, in the winter twilight of Christmas-eve.

"You're angry, of course," she began. "But I believe your heart will soften when I've told you the real story of Wanda's life. A few people know she isn't deaf and dumb, but not many, when all are named. I've lived so quietly out here ever since my husband died, and that was before she was born. My brother, Marcus, never knew, and I shrank from telling him. He's a dear fellow, but then he's a gossip, and I fear he'd part with a secret as quickly as a fool parts with his money."

Then the speaker, in a few vivid words, referred to the great bereavement which had wrecked her brother Alston's life. . . . "When I went to Wanda's father, after the blow had fallen on him," she pursued, "I felt almost sure that he would soon become mad. His loathing of little Wanda was so great that he terrified me half to death by saying that he had an impulse to kill the poor innocent babe. … Then his mood grew sullen. Oh, no; the child should live, and should be his living vengeance as well! When I heard him speak like that I grew faint and sick. I stayed with him for days and did my best to brighten his awful gloom. Then at last I found that my presence was useless, and that he wanted to be alone with his morbid thoughts, and that a certain hideous resolve regarding Wanda was growing firmer each day. He had determined (think of it!) that she should never even be taught to speak! And when she had reached full womanhood, he meant to take her to her mother and says "Here is the child you deserted. She is so ignorant that she does not know her name, but at least she is powerless to utter lies."

"How distressing!"

"Oh, it was agonizing! I longed so to get the little one away from his custody that I would have faced almost any peril for such an object. Perhaps, woman-like, when force failed me I fell back on deceit. Anyway, I got little Wanda. Some people would say that I got her by perjuring myself. But if ever the end justified the means I believe it did so then. I told Alston that I would faithfully promise to bring the child up just as he so vengefully desired. He looked me in the eyes, and shook his head, and doubted me. All his old, sweet, sunny nature had vanished. I could scarcely recognize him as he was. I have never been able to recognize him since. His sorrow and his shame have petrified him. … At last he said to me that if I would give him my sacred oath to carry out his wish, and that if I would bring him Wanda each Christmas day as proof that I was carrying it out, he would place the child in my charge."

Here Mrs. Apthorpe's lips quivered, then tightened. With a sudden, wistful, pathetic smile she exclaimed:

"I gave my sacred oath, and I got the child. I broke my oath, but I saved Wanda from the forlornest fate. Was I not right? Are there not times when even perjury ceases to be a sin?"

Lord Albert rose from his chair, and took one of the lady's delicate, faded hands, and touched it with his lips. This was the young man's answer.

"Thanks," Mrs. Apthorpe faltered. Then, after a moment: "Well, his hardness did not soften. I brought him the child each Christmas afternoon till she was five years old. She was shy, and I knew that all his questionings could not wring a word from her. On the Christmas day when she was six years old I felt terribly frightened, for she was now growing very bright and talkative with those whom she knew, and though I had told her not to say a single word, I still trembled with dread that she would burst into a loquacious little monologue. But no; her shyness still befriended me. On the next Christmas day, when she had turned seven, I felt so doubtful of her that I went alone to my brother, there in that dreary, darkened house which had once brimmed with hospitality, bubbled with mirth. I told him that Wanda was ill—too ill for me to bring her that day. He believed me, after a long look straight into my eyes, which I tried to make the soul of sincerity and truth. 'I hope she will not die,' he answered, the words ending a long pause; 'I want her to live, you know . . I want her to live.' . . When the next Christmas came I brought her; she was eight, then, and wise for her years. She knew her part and played it. . . Since that day I have had no fear. And to-morrow——"

Here Mrs. Apthorpe stopped short. She searched the manful, amiable face of her guest, but her lips had grown silent.

"Well," suddenly exclaimed Lord Albert, "pray, what about to-morrow?"

Mrs. Apthorpe drooped her eyes, then slowly raised them.

"Of course Wanda heard you when you—when you spoke to yourself there on the canal, while you and she skated together. But she doesn't hold you to it—nor should I dream of doing so. What anyone says to himself isn't … oh, how shall I express it? … isn't binding, you understand!"

"By Jove, it's binding, as you call it, dear lady, with me!" exclaimed Lord Albert, again rising. "I want to marry your niece, and I'm my own master, and the ship that bears me back to England will either take on her passenger list one of the wretchedest bachelors or the happiest of Benedicts!"

Mrs. Apthorpe jumped up from the hair-cloth sofa with a young girl's agility. She threw both arms around Lord Albert's neck, and gave him, on one of his fresh-tinted English cheeks, a resounding kiss.

"God bless you!" she cried, her voice breaking. "Don't feel shocked; I'm old enough to be your mother." . . .

By about three o'clock the next afternoon Alston Van Brugh went into his dim front drawing-room and seated himself in a certain silken, beflowered easy-chair. The whole apartment breathed of a piteous, antiquated splendor. Nothing had been changed there since the coming of that calamity which had soured and stunned and shattered him. Time had wrought sorry changes in this once modish chamber. Two or three trusted servants had done their best with it, but they had not been able to save its aspect from the ravages of desuetude and decay.

Here Alston Van Brugh waited, as he had done for so many years past. This was the last Christmas day, he had decided, on which Ellen Apthorpe should bring to him the child whose future she had solemnly sworn to wrong and wreck. He had kept himself fairly well posted as to the whereabouts of his wife. He knew just in what European city to find her. When Mrs. Apthorpe came he had determined to tell her that her services were now ended, and that he and Wanda would soon start for Europe, though she might accompany them if so inclined.

Grief sometimes makes us insane, and there is slight doubt that Mrs. Apthorpe's fear lest her brother might become a madman when the horror of his wife's desertion first broke on him, was in no sense idle apprehension. Alston Van Brugh had for years been a monomaniac; he had indeed gone mad under his affliction. His trust that a virtuous and high-minded woman like his sister would both take that odious oath and keep it, was one proof of his mordant malady, so subtle, desolating and continuous.

Drawing out, half mechanically, the big, heavy watch whose gold fob gleamed below his long waistcoat, he looked at the hour. "It's their time," he murmured aloud, not knowing his words were audible.

Mrs. Apthorpe arrived soon after this, but she entered the chamber alone. Her brother did not rise; he sat quite still, except for a faint nod, while she seated herself at his side. He had forgotten every vestige of his old courtly suavity.

"Where's the girl?" he sharply questioned, looking past her toward the rear of the room, obscure in the early winter dusk.

"You may see her later, if you wish, Alston, but not now."

"She came with you?"

His sister ignored this question. "Alston, have you heard the news about … your wife?" she asked.

His brows clouded. "News?" he said, gruffly. "What news?"

"I had a letter, three days ago, from my old friend, Mrs. Gamett, who lives in Dresden. Emily lived there, too. I say 'lived,' Alston, for she died there, somewhat suddenly, a month ago."

He turned livid. "Where's your letter?" And he stretched out one trembling hand.

Mrs. Apthorpe, who had it with her, eagerly produced and gave it him.

He bent over it in silence; the light of a near window streamed on its pages.

His eyes were wild and fierce as he turned them on his sister.

"So … the plan and hope of years must perish like this!"

Mrs. Apthorpe rose and went quite close to him. "Yes, Alston. We both understand. You can never wreak your vengeance on her now. She's past all that."

He shook his head wofully from side to side. "Past all that," he repeated, "past all that!"

"And poor Wanda, Alston? Are you not sorry that she should be the victim of this unhappy and unholy plot?"

He did not answer. His gaze drooped, and he sat quite moveless and silent.

"You remember my oath to you, Alston?"

Suddenly he lifted his head and replied with a sorrowful stare: "Oh, yes, I remember it. The girl must be the only sufferer—that's all. God help her!"

Mrs. Apthorpe, standing beside him, let one hand fall on his shoulder.

"Alston," she said, "I have come here to tell you that I lied to you."

"Lied … to … me? You? " He slowly rose.

"Yes. I took the child; you've often seen her since. It is not true that she is what you have believed her. I thought your wrath might be terrible when I told you (as I'm telling you now) that rather than have you visit upon her so severe, so undeserved a fate, I had steeped myself in falsehood, perjury, dishonor—what you please. For this reason, Alston, I came to you alone. Wanda is saved. If in your anger you choose to kill me, your child shall at least be spared."

He drew nearer to her. She unflinchingly met his gaze in its arraigning sombreness.

"You … betrayed me like this?"

"I stood between you and the commission of a crime."

She saw his hands clench themselves. "What had that woman done to me? Pray, was her act a crime?"

"One crime does not excuse another. … And fate, destiny, God, Alston—whatever you choose to call the power—has swept from you all means of actualizing your design. Even if I had kept faith with you, Emily's death, as it now happens, would have left poor Wanda cursed for all her coming life."

He sank back into his chair. His face had got a deathly pallor, and his eyes were filled with a wandering blankness.

"Will you not let her come to you, Alston?" his sister softly pleaded. "She is here, and she is here with one who loves her. He will tell you who he is. It will be a great match for her. You have heard of nothing—you have wrapped yourself in constant solitude; otherwise you would have known of his presence here in town—you would have known, Alston, that he is the son of an old friend and admirer, a friend of those sunnier, humaner days … Alston!"

The last word left her lips in a plaintive shriek. Wanda and Lord Albert heard it, and hurried together through the doorway near which they stood. But already his head had fallen forward, bis limbs had relaxed, and, the next instant, while a long, deep, fluttering sigh sounded from his lips, he sank helpless on the floor.

Even by the time they had all three gathered about him and raised him, he had ceased to live. Afterward, when a noted physician reported scientifically on the cause of his death, the announcement came that it was a wonder he had lived for so many years, and that nothing could have sustained the meagre vitality of brain and heart except some rigid purpose, some ever-haunting illusion, born either from savage prejudice or confirmed dementia.

But to Wanda and her lover this grim, abrupt event could not possibly prove more than a transient blot upon the new-thrilling happiness of their Christmas-tide. Naturally, for Mrs. Apthorpe the case was different. She had had her sense of relief, it is true, but also her memories of struggle, anxiety, and dread. Still, to think what droll romanticism must always memorially cling about the wooing of her loved Wanda, sent a sun-ray amid her gloomiest musings, while to picture this dear ward as happily and brilliantly wedded was to feel the future flush and sparkle with a joy victorious yet tender.

"Only," she said to her niece, "you mustn't put the ocean between us. And by 'us,' dear, I mean Mrs. Beale as well as myself. We'll take a little house in Richmond, or Windsor, or Twickenham, or some place like that; and no matter what London grandeurs may surround you, I'm sure you'll remember us with a visit now and then, even if it's merely an hour or so long."

Wanda kissed her aunt. "I would not sail," she said, "unless you both sailed sooner or later. Nor would Albert," she added, "knowing all that you both have been to me, dream of wishing otherwise!"

1. Written for Shorl Stories. Illustrations by H. M. Wolcott.