CHAPTER XI.

WITHOUT A HOME.

Overwhelmed with grief and horror at her son’s fate, Mrs. Murray held firmly to her resolve not to see Italy again. She regarded the hapless girl as a murderess. In vain did Alexie try to assuage her keen despair by pointing out to her that there was no certainty of her son’s death, but that he might possibly have been saved by the very steamer that had destroyed the little dory and set Italy adrift upon the wide sea.

“Dear Mrs. Murray, he was such a splendid swimmer, it is not probable he could have perished in so calm a sea,” she cried.

“Why, then, does he not return to me?” cried the anguished mother; and she added:

“It is three days ago now, and if he had been saved he would surely have come back ere now. No, no, he must have been killed by the stroke that cut the little boat in twain.”

It seemed so plausible that this was true that Alexie could not think of any more words of comfort. She had to leave the bereaved woman to her terrible despair.

But strangely enough, Italy Vale would not believe that Francis Murray was dead.

“Something tells me that he escaped--that he is alive somewhere in the world to-day, and that he will return,” she cried, her eyes beaming, a faint color staining the ivory pallor of her delicate cheek.

It was the fifth day after the moonlight party, and Italy was sitting up for the first time in an easy chair, wrapped in a loose, furred dressing-gown and warm slippers, for the day was chilly.

A storm had raged the night before, and the sea was high and rough, and a chilly wind was whistling along the New England coast, while heaps of drift lay along the sands that were dotted with screaming sea-gulls and sand-pipers.

Sweet Alexie Audenreid had been talking to the lonely girl with all the tenderness of a sister, telling her the truth that could be withheld no longer, but softening its harshness all that she could by her own expressions of affection.

But when she had ended she looked away from the keen pain in the dark eyes as Italy realized that she was an object of dislike to Mrs. Murray, an unwelcome guest whose departure was eagerly wished for--that she was homeless. She could not speak for some moments for the keen hurting in her throat, and the wonder in her mind.

Mrs. Murray had been kind to her when she first came to Winthrop. What had changed her so as the weeks went past? What had made her so bitterly unkind and cruel? As she thought it over, a dimpled white hand clasped hers tenderly, and sweet Alexie whispered:

“Do not mind this hard-hearted old woman, dear. I love you and so does Ralph, and when we are married we want you to be our guest for as long as you will stay. And in the meantime we have a plan to propose to you.”

The pathetic dark eyes turned on her in grateful wonder.

Alexie continued tenderly:

“You will wish to leave here as soon as you can. Do you know where you will go?”

“I--I--have not decided yet,” Italy gasped.

“Then I think Ralph’s plan is a good one. You see, he is boarding with a nice, quiet old lady in Boston while his folks are abroad. This old lady is quite a lady indeed, but in reduced circumstances, and takes a few boarders to eke out a genteel support. The family is small, herself and a daughter lately widowed. She has Ralph and a few other boarders, all good people. It is quite near us, too, which is another reason why I want you to go and board with this old lady, for then I could come and see you so often, dear.”

“You are a darling to plan everything for me like this. I will go to the old lady, and a thousand thanks to you,” Italy sobbed gratefully.

Italy’s two devoted friends removed her the next day from The Lodge to her pleasant new home in Boston.

Mrs. Murray remained cold and unrelenting to the last, and returned no reply to the brief note of thanks and farewell that Italy sent to her by her maid. She stayed closely shut in her own room until Italy had left the house, and heard with vindictive pleasure the crunching of the carriage wheels that bore her away.

And yet Mrs. Murray was not a mean or unprincipled woman. She had only been led astray by blind prejudice and the evil counsels of interested friends. She knew in her heart that Italy Vale was beautiful, pure, and good, and in consenting to receive her into the household at The Lodge she had put aside selfish prejudice and acted from a high sense of womanly duty combined with pity.

But her pride and prejudice had both taken serious alarm as she noted the interest that her son was taking in his protégée. This alarm skilfully fostered by the scheming Mrs. Dunn and her crafty niece, Alys, had developed into actual dislike and jealousy of the hapless orphan girl.

But as she listened to the grinding carriage wheels and exulted in Italy’s departure, the still, small voice of conscience was murmuring in her breast, although she tried to drown it. She knew that Italy was not to blame for Francis Murray’s death, if he were really dead, and she knew that if he returned he would censure her course in turning adrift on the world the lonely orphan who but a month ago had come to Winthrop pleading for a mother’s love to replace that which she had lost.

Alas! the world is but a cold, bleak place to a friendless orphan girl, and those who should love her most often goad her to despair by harshness or indifference. Mrs. Murray’s heart had shut itself against poor Italy, and she resolutely stifled the accusing voice of her sensitive conscience. But in Italy’s heart there was no resentment for Mrs. Murray’s course. Her heart was full of pain and sympathy for the sadly bereaved mother.

“Oh, that I might imbue her with some of my sanguine faith that Mr. Murray is not dead, and that he will yet return!” she exclaimed often, yet as weeks went on with no tidings she, too, began to lose heart of hope.

It was far into October now, and the autumn leaves were turning from red and gold to russet-brown and whirling through the chilly air; the nuts were ripe in the woods, and in the city streets people began to appear in warm clothing and furs; and Italy remembered that it was in the waning days of the bright summer that she had gone on that fatal little sailing trip with Francis Murray--far back in the last of summer since she had heard his voice, full of love and yearning, calling her “love,” “darling,” then fading out into the silence of a terrible mystery.

She awoke one stormy midnight, weeping, from a dreadful nightmare dream in which she had seen Francis Murray lying dead and cold upon the beach at Winthrop. It was storming wildly outdoors, and the noise had seemed to her, in her sleep, like the rush of waves that threw that pallid, drowned corpse at her feet.

Italy flung herself, in her dream, upon the cold, dead form and kissed the glorious face that she had never kissed in life--kissed the closed eyes, the marble-white brow, the cold, stiff lips that had called her in that last, supreme moment, “love,” “darling.”

“Oh, I love you, I love you!” she cried out to the dead, and then she awoke, weeping wildly.

She heard the wild rain swirling against the windows, and the gale shrieking around the corners of the streets. In the darkness she groped her way to the window and looked through the curtains into the street. By the white electric lights she saw the swirling sheets of rain go dashing past, swept by the cyclonic force of the wind, and the branches of the leafless trees bending and writhing and snapping off as though in the embrace of a gigantic monster. With a shudder she dropped the curtains together and crouched miserably upon the floor, her face in her hands.

“Oh, how dreadful it is, how dreadful--yet not so terrible as my dream!” she moaned. “Oh, is he dead, dead, and lost forever? Or did I wrong him with my wild suspicions? Was he noble and true, as he seemed? Who, then, was the fiend that murdered my father? Not Francis Murray, ah, no, no, no! Let me do him justice, now that he is dead. He was not the fiend I came here to find. He was noble, godlike, and I--loved him. Yes, I loved him from the first hour we met. I realize it now, in the darkness of my great despair.”

She thought of the bereaved mother, alone and lonely in the splendid home at Winthrop, and her heart yearned over her.

“God pity her, God comfort her!” she sobbed. “Ah, no wonder she execrates me! Through me she lost her noble son. Why did I ever come under her roof, and bring with me the doom of that tragedy? What have I accomplished? Nothing--less than nothing. I have wronged a true heart by a monstrous doubt, and through me he came to his death. And I am just as far as ever from keeping my vow to clear my mother from that dark cloud of shame! Oh, my dearest one, how could I ever meet you again, even in heaven, if I had broken faith with you! No, no, I cannot go to you, my vow binds me here!”