The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [69]
Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor frequent between the remote confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and Laura was in a measure lost sight of—indeed, everyone had troubles enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors.
Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did not or would not see it. It was the passion of her life, the time when her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers. Was her husband ever cold or indifferent? She shut her eyes to everything but her sense of possession of her idol.
Three months passed. One morning her husband informed her that he had been ordered South, and must go within two hours.
“I can be ready,” said Laura, cheerfully.
“But I can’t take you. You must go back to Hawkeye.”
“Can’t—take—me?” Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes. “I can’t live without you. You said—”
“O bother what I said—”and the Colonel took up his sword to buckle it on, and then continued coolly, “the fact is Laura, our romance is played out.”
Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried, “George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go any where with you. I will wait any where. I can’t go back to Hawkeye.”
“Well, go where you like. Perhaps,” continued he with a sneer, “you would do as well to wait here, for another colonel.”
Laura’s brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. “What does this mean? Where are you going?”
“It means,” said the officer, in measured words, “that you haven’t anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New Orleans.”
“It’s a lie, George, it’s a lie. I am your wife. I shall go. I shall follow you to New Orleans.”
“Perhaps my wife might not like it!”
Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire, she tried to utter a cry, and fell senseless on the floor.
When she came to herself the Colonel was gone. Washington Hawkins stood at her bedside. Did she come to herself ? Was there anything left in her heart but hate and bitterness, a sense of an infamous wrong at the hands of the only man she had ever loved?
She returned to Hawkeye. With the exception of Washington and his mother, no one knew what had happened. The neighbors supposed that the engagement with Col. Selby had fallen through. Laura was ill for a long time, but she recovered; she had that resolution in her that could conquer death almost. And with her health came back her beauty, and an added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci1 from her guilt or her innocence?
Laura Swoons at Col. Selby’s Words.
Laura was not much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart. That was all.
CHAPTER 19
HEINE.
Mr. Harry Brierly drew his pay as an engineer while he was living at the City Hotel in Hawkeye. Mr. Thompson had been kind enough to say that it didn’t make any difference whether he was with the corps or not; and although Harry protested to the Colonel daily and to Washington Hawkins that he must go back at once to the line and superintend the lay-out with reference to his contract, yet he did not go, but wrote instead long letters to Philip, instructing him to keep his eye out, and to let him know when any difficulty occurred that required his presence.
Meantime Harry blossomed out in the society of Hawkeye, as he did in any society where fortune