The Thorn in the Nest

The moment they were out of sight and hearing he and Hans rose, scrambled down the hill, mounted their horses, which they had left at its foot, concealed in the thick wood, and striking into the trail at the nearest point, pushed on their way eastward with all possible despatch.

CHAPTER XXIX

Clendenin's heart beat quickly between hope and fear. He was nearing the home of his childhood and knew not in what state he should find the dear ones there, for he had had no later news of them than that contained in the letter written so many weeks ago, and received the night before he left Chillicothe.

He had pressed on as rapidly as circumstances would allow, yet the journey had been long and tedious, made to seem doubly so by his haste and anxiety; for faith was not always strong enough to triumph over doubts and fears.

He had passed the previous night some ten miles west of Glen Forest, and taking an early start entered the little valley two hours before noon.

It was a sweet, bright summer day, trees dressed in their richest robes of green, wild wood flowers scattered in lavish profusion on every side, fields clothed in verdure, the air filled with the music of birds and insects, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of kine, and the fretting, gurgling, and babbling of the mountain stream, as it danced and sparkled in the sun.

Each familiar scene had charms for Kenneth's eye, yet he lingered not a moment, but urged Romeo to a brisk canter, until, as he came in sight of the house, his eye was suddenly caught by the gleam of something white among the trees that bordered the rivulet.

He halted, looked more closely at the object, then hastily dismounted, and, giving the bridle into Zeb's hands, bade him go on to the house and say that he was with Miss Marian, and they would both come in presently.

Marian had wandered out an hour ago to the spot where she and Lyttleton had sat together for the last time, on the day he bade her a final good-bye.

It had been her favorite resort ever since. Thither she would carry book or work, or go to sit with folded hands and dream away the time that seemed so long, so very, very long till he would come again.

That was all she was doing now, seated on the grass with her arms clasped about Caius's neck, her cheek resting on his head, and her eyes fixed with mournful gaze upon the rippling water at her feet.

Kenneth drew near with so noiseless a step that she knew not of his coming, and he had leisure to study her face for several minutes while she was entirely unconscious of his scrutiny.

His breast heaved, his lip quivered, and his eyes filled as he gazed; for a sad change had come over the fair, young face since last he looked upon it, the bloom was all gone from cheek and lip, the temple looked sunken, the eyes unnaturally large, and, oh, the unfathomable depth of sadness in them! And the slight girlish figure had lost its roundness; the small, shapely hands were very thin and white.

A bird suddenly swooped down from a tree and skimmed along just above the stream. Caius uttered a short, sharp bark and made a spring toward it, and with a deep sigh Marian awoke, released him, and turning her eyes in Kenneth's direction gave a joyful cry.

In a moment she was clasped in his arms, her head pillowed on his breast, with convulsive sobbing and floods of tears, while he held her close and soothed her with tender words and caresses.

"O, Kenneth, how glad I am you have come at last!" she said when she could command her voice. "It seemed so long, so very long that we had to wait; and yet you are here sooner than mother thought you could come."

"I made all the haste I could, dear child," he answered, "starting early the morning after the letter reached me with the news that you were not well. What ails you, Marian, dear?"

"I'm not sick, Kenneth," she said, a vivid blush suddenly suffusing her cheek.

"But you have grown very thin and pale, and do not seem strong," he said, regarding her with tender, sorrowful scrutiny. "Something is amiss with you, and surely you will tell me what it is, that I may try to relieve you?"

She only hid her face on his shoulder with a fresh burst of weeping.

A terrible fear oppressed him as he went on questioning her about the symptoms of her disease, she still insisting that she had no pain and was not sick, though she could not deny loss of appetite, weakness and palpitation of the heart upon slight exertion.

At length her reserve gave way before his loving solicitude; for she had been wont to confide her childish joys and sorrows to him in the old days before he went to Ohio, and could tell him now what she would not breathe to any other creature.

"O, Kenneth!" she cried, "can't you see that my body is not sick, that it's my heart that is breaking?"

His very lips grew white.

"What can you mean, my poor, poor child?" he asked huskily, drawing her closer to him with a quick protecting gesture, as if he would shield her from the threatened danger.

"Oh," she cried in bitter despairing tones, "I thought he loved me, he said it with his eyes and with his tongue; he said I was the sweetest, fairest, dearest girl he ever saw, and he promised to come again in a year at the very farthest; but more than a year has gone by and never a word from him."

His first emotion as he listened to this burst of anguish was utter astonishment; the next the fear that she was not in her right mind, for he had every reason to suppose that she had never met other than to exchange the merest civilities of life with any man.

Her mother had no suspicion of the real cause of her child's suffering. Marian had not confided in her, had never mentioned Lyttleton's name; and the death of the Misses Burns, followed very shortly by the removal to a distance of their maid Kitty, had left no one in the neighborhood who had been cognizant of even that small part of the intercourse between Marian and Lyttleton of which Woodland was the scene.

But the ice once broken, the pent up waters of the poor child's anguish speedily swept away every barrier of reserve, and the whole sad story was poured out into Kenneth's sympathizing ear.

It brought relief from the fear for her reason, but filled his heart with grief and pity for her, mingled with burning indignation against the author of her woe.

"And who is this wretch?" he cried in tones quivering with intense emotion.

The answer was so low that he bent his ear almost to her lips to catch it.

"Lyttleton!" he exclaimed, "Lysander Lyttleton? I know the man; and Marian, my poor deceived and wronged little sister, he is utterly unworthy of even your friendship; 'twould be the consorting of the dove with the vulture."

She gave a sharp cry of pain.

"O, Kenneth, Kenneth, you can't mean it?"

It was hard to see her suffer, but best that she should know the truth at once. In a few brief sentences, carefully worded to spare her as much as possible, he told of Lyttleton's approaching marriage.

She did not cry out again, but asked, in a tone of quiet despair, to whom.

It cost Kenneth an effort to speak Nell's name, and something in his voice thrilled his listener with an instant consciousness of what she was to him.

She lifted her face to his, the wet eyes full of tender pity.

"You, too, Kenneth, my poor dear Kenneth?" she said in low, tremulous tones, "has he wronged you too? Then he is cast out of my heart forever. I cannot love one so base, so unworthy."

But with the last words her head went down upon his shoulder again with a passionate burst of weeping.

A storm of feeling swept over Kenneth as he held her close, not speaking, for he could find no words, but softly smoothing her hair, gently pressing one of the small, thin hands which he had taken in his.

He could not forgive Lyttleton at that moment, he felt that he could crush him under foot as he would a viper that had stung this precious little sister, and poisoned two other lives. His own must be dark and dreary without sweet Nell, and what better could hers be, passed in the society of such a wretch, nay, more, in the closest union with him.

Alas! alas! hers was the saddest fate of all, and none the less to be pitied because she had in some measure brought it upon herself.

In some measure? Ah, was he utterly blameless, Kenneth Clendenin?

The question came to him with a sharp pang of self-reproach. He had won her affection, his lips had never breathed a syllable of love. Then who was he that he should be so fierce against this other transgressor?

The tempest of emotion had spent itself, and Marian lay pale and exhausted in his arms, trembling like a leaf.

Very gently he raised her, and bidding her cling about his neck, bore her in those strong arms to the house, Caius running on before to announce their coming.

Mrs. Clendenin met them in the porch, her face full of anxiety and alarm.

"Kenneth! what is it?"