THE ONE HE LOVED AND THE ONE WHO LOVED HIM
On the evening of the previous day Lady Landale and her Aunt had
arrived at Pulwick. The drive had been a dismal one to poor Miss
O'Donoghue. Neither her angry expostulations, nor her tender
remonstrances, nor her attempts at consolation could succeed in
drawing a connected sentence from Molly, who, with a fever spot of red
upon each cheek only roused herself from the depth of thought in which
she seemed plunged to urge the coachman to greater speed. Miss
O'Donoghue tried the whole gamut of her art in vain, and was obliged
at last to desist from sheer weariness and in much anxiety.
Madeleine and Sophia were seated by the fireside in the library when
the unexpected travellers came in upon them. Sophia, in the blackest
of black weeds, started guiltily up from the volume of "The Corsair,"
in which she had been plunged, while Madeleine, without manifesting
any surprise, rose placidly, laid aside her needlework--a coarse
flannel frock, evidently destined for charity--and bestowed upon her
sister and aunt an affectionate though unexpansive embrace.
She had grown somewhat thinner and more thoughtful-looking since Molly
and she had last met, on that fatal 15th of March, but otherwise was
unchanged in her serene beauty. Molly clutched her wrist with a
burning hand, and, paying not the slightest attention to the other
two, nor condescending to any preamble, began at once, in hurried
words to explain her mission.
"He has asked for you, Madeleine," she cried, her eyes flaming with
unnatural brilliance as they sought her sister's mild gaze. "He has
asked for you, I will take you back with me, to-morrow, not later than
to-morrow. Don't you understand?" shaking her impatiently as she held
her, "he is in prison, condemned to death, he has asked for you, he
wants to see you. On Saturday--on Saturday----" Something clicked in
her throat, and she raised her hand to it with an uneasy gesture, one
that those who surrounded her had grown curiously familiar with of
late.
Madeleine drew away from her at this address, the whole fair calm of
her countenance troubled like a placid pool by the casting of a stone.
Clasping her hands and looking down: "I saw that the unfortunate man
was condemned," she said. "I have prayed for him daily, I trust he
repents. I am truly sorry for him. From my heart I forgive him the
deception he practised upon me. But----" a slight shudder shook her,
"I could not see him again--surely you could not wish it of me."
She spoke with such extreme gentleness that for a minute the woman
before her, in the seething turmoil of her soul, failed to grasp the
meaning of her words.
"You could not go!" she repeated in a bewildered way, "I could not
wish it of you--!" then with a sort of shriek which drew Tanty and
Miss Sophia hurriedly towards her, "Don't you understand--on
Saturday--if it all fails, they will hang him?"
"A-ah!" exclaimed Madeleine with a movement as if to ward off the
sound--the cry, the gesture expressive, not of grief, but of shrinking
repugnance. But after a second, controlling herself:
"And what should that be now, sister, to you or to me?" she said
haughtily.
Lady Landale clapped her hands together.
"And this is the woman he loves!" she cried with a shrill laugh. And
she staggered, and sank back upon a chair in an attitude of utter
prostration.
"Molly, Molly," exclaimed her sister reprovingly, while she glanced in
much distress at Miss O'Donoghue, "you are not yourself; you do not
know what you are saying."
"Remember," interposed Sophia in tragic tones, "that you are speaking
of the murderer of my beloved brother." Then she dissolved in tears,
and was obliged to hide her countenance in the folds of a vast
pocket-handkerchief.
"Killing vermin is not murder!" cried Molly fiercely, awakening from
her torpor.
Miss O'Donoghue, who in the most unwonted silence had been watching
the scene with her shrewd eyes, here seized the horrified Sophia by
the elbow and trundled her, with a great deal of energy and
determination, to the door.
"Get out of this, you foolish creature," she said in a stern whisper,
"and don't attempt to show your nose here again till I give it leave
to walk in!" Then returning to the sisters, and looking from Molly's
haggard, distracted face to Madeleine's pale one: "If you take my
advice, my dear," she said, a little drily, to the latter, "you will
not make so many bones about going to see that poor lad in the prison,
and you'll stop wrangling with your sister, for she is just not able
to bear it. We shall start to-morrow, Molly," turning to Lady Landale,
and speaking in the tone of one addressing a sick child, "and
Madeleine will be quite ready as early as you wish."
"My dear aunt," said Madeleine, growing white to the lips, "I am very
sorry if Molly is ill, but you are quite mistaken if you think I can
yield to her wishes in this matter. I could not go; I could not; it is
impossible!"
"Hear her," cried the other, starting from her seat. "Oh, what are you
made of? Is it water that runs in your veins? you that he loves"--her
voice broke into a wail--"you who ought to be so proud to know he
loves you even though your heart be broken! You refuse to go to him,
refuse his last request!... Come to the light," she went on, seizing
the girl's wrists again; "let me look at you. Bah! you never loved
him. You don't even understand what it is to love.... But what could
one expect from you, who abandoned him in the moment of danger. You
are afraid; afraid of the painful scene, the discomfort, the sight of
the prison, of his beautiful face worn and changed--afraid of the
discredit. Oh! I know you, I know you. But mind you, Madeleine de
Savenaye, he wishes to see you, and I swore you would go to him, and
you shall go, if I have to drag you with these hands of mine."
Her grip was so fierce, her eyes so savage, the words so strange, that
Madeleine screamed faintly, "She is mad!" and was amazed that Miss
O'Donoghue did not rush to the rescue!
But Miss O'Donoghue, peering at her from the depths of her arm-chair,
merely said snappishly: "Ah, child, can't you say you will go, and
have done! Oughtn't you to be ashamed to be so hard-hearted?" and
mopped her perspiring and agitated countenance with her kerchief. Then
upon the girl's bewildered mind dawned a glimmer of the truth; and,
blushing to the roots of her hair, she looked at her sister with a
growing horror.
"Oh, Molly, Molly!" she said again, with a sort of groan.
"Will you go?" cried Molly from between her set teeth.
Again the girl shuddered.
"Less than ever--now," she murmured. And as Molly threw her from her,
almost with violence, she covered her face with her hands and fell,
weeping bitter tears, upon the couch behind her.
Lady Landale, with great steps, stormed up and down the room, her eyes
fixed on space, her lips moving; now and again a word escaped her
then, sometimes hurled at her sister, sometimes only in desperate
communing with herself.
"Base, cowardly, mean! Oh, my God, cruel--cruel! To go back without
her."
After a little, with a sudden change of mood, she halted and stood a
while, as if in deep reflection, holding her hand to her head, then
crossing the room hurriedly, she knelt down, and flung her arms round
the weeping figure.
"_Ma petite Madeleine_," she said in a voice of the most piteous
pleading, "thou and I, we were always good friends; thou canst not
have the heart to be so cruel to me now. See, my darling, he must die,
they say--oh, Madeleine, Madeleine! And he asked for you. The one
thing, he told Rene, the only thing we could do for him on earth was
to let him see you once more. My little sister, you cannot refuse: he
loves you. What has he done to offend you? Your pride cannot forgive
him for being what he is, I suppose; yet such as he is you should be
proud of him. He is too noble, too straightforward to have
intentionally deceived you. If he did wrong, it was for love of you.
Madeleine, Madeleine!"
Her tones trailed away into a moan.
Miss O'Donoghue sobbed loudly from her corner. Madeleine, who had
looked at her sister at first with repulsion, seemed moved; she
placed her hands upon her shoulders, and gazed sadly into the flushed
face.
"My poor Molly," she said hesitatingly, "this is dreadful! But I
too--I too was led into deceit, into folly." She blushed painfully. "I
would not blame you; it was not your fault that you were carried away
in his ship. You went only for my sake: I cannot forget that. Yet that
he should have this unhappy power over you too, you with your good
husband, you a married woman, oh, my poor sister, it is terrible! He
is a wicked man; I pray that he may yet repent."
"Heavens," interrupted Molly, her passion up in arms again, loosening
as she spoke her clasp upon her sister, and rising to her feet to look
down on her with withering scorn, "have I not made myself clear? Are
you deaf, stupid, as well as heartless? It is you--you--_you_ he
loves, _you_ he wants. What am I to him?" with a curious sob, half of
laughter, half of anguish. "Your pious fears are quite unfounded as
far as he is concerned--the wicked man, as you call him! Oh, he spurns
my love with as much horror as even you could wish!"
"Molly!"
"Ay--Molly, and Molly--how shocked you are! Yes, I love him, I don't
care who hears it. I love him--Adrian knows--he is not as virtuous as
you, evidently, for Adrian pities me. He is doing all he can, though
they say it is in vain, to get a reprieve for him--though I _do_ love
him! While you--you are too good, too immaculate even to soil your
dainty foot upon the floor of his prison, that floor that I could kiss
because his shoe has trod it. But it is impossible! no human being
could be so hard, least of all you, whom I have seen turn sick at the
sight of a dead worm--Madeleine----!"
Crouching down in the former imploring manner, while her breast heaved
with dry tearless sobs: "It cannot hurt you, you who loved him." And
then with the old pitiful cry, "it is the only thing he wants, and he
loves you."
Madeleine disengaged herself from the clinging hands with a gesture
almost of disgust.
"Listen to me," she said, after a pause, "try and compose yourself and
understand. All this month I have had time to think, to realise, to
pray. I have seen what the world is worth, that it is full of horror,
of sin, of trouble, of dreadful dissensions--that its sorrow far
outweighs its happiness. I _have_ suffered," her pretty lips quivered
an instant, but she hardened herself and went on, "but it is better
so--it was God's will, it was to show me where to find real comfort,
the true peace. I have quite made up my mind. I was only waiting to
see you again and tell you--next week I am going back to the convent
for ever. Oh, why did we leave it, Molly, why did we leave it!" She
broke down, and the tears gushed from her eyes.
Lady Landale had listened in silence.
"Well--is that all?" she said impatiently, when her sister ceased
speaking, while in the background Tanty groaned out a protest, and
bewailed that she was alive to see the day. "What does it matter what
you do afterwards--you can go to the convent--go where you will then;
but what has that to say to your visit to _him_ now?"
"I have done with all human love," said Madeleine solemnly, crossing
her hands on her breast, and looking upward with inspired eyes. "I did
love this man once," she answered, hardening herself to speak firmly,
though again her lips quivered--"he himself killed that love by his
own doing. I trusted him; he betrayed that trust; he would have
betrayed me, but that I have forgiven, it is past and done with. But
to go and see him now, to stir up in my heart, not the old love, it
could not be, but agitation, sorrow--to disturb this quietness of
soul, this calm which God has given me at last after so much prayer
and struggle--no, no--it would not be right, it cannot be! Moreover,
if I would, I could not, indeed I could not. The very thought of it
all, the disgrace, that place of sin and shame, of him in chains,
condemned--a criminal--a murderer!..."
A nervous shudder shook her from head to foot, she seemed in truth to
sicken and grow faint, like one forced to face some hideous nauseating
spectacle. "As for him," she went on in low, feeble tones, "it will be
the best too. God knows I forgive him, that I am sorry for him, that I
regret his terrible fate. But I feel it would be worse for him to see
me--if he must die, it would be wrong to distract him from his last
preparations. And it would only be a useless pain to him, for I could
not pretend--he would see that I despise him. I thought I loved a
noble gentleman, not one who was even then playing with crime and
cheating."
The faint passionless voice had hardly ceased before, with a loud cry,
Molly sprang at her sister as if she would have strangled her.
"Oh, unnatural wretch," she exclaimed, "you are not fit to live!"
Tanty rushed forward and dragged the infuriated woman away.
Madeleine rose up stiffly--swayed a moment as she stood--and then fell
unconscious to the ground.
* * * * *
Next day in the dawn Lady Landale came into her sister's bedroom. Her
circled eyes, her drawn face bespeaking a sleepless night.
Madeleine was lying, beautiful and white, like a broken lily, in the
dim light of the lamp; Sophia, an unlovely spectacle in curl papers,
wizened and red-eyed from her night's watch, looked up warningly from
the arm-chair beside her. But Molly went unhesitatingly to the window,
pulled the curtains, unbarred the shutters, and then walked over to
the bed.
As she approached, Madeleine opened her blue eyes and gazed at her
beseechingly.
"There is yet time," said Molly in a hollow voice. "Get up and come
with me."
The wan face upon the pillow grew whiter still, the old horror grew in
the uplifted eyes, the wan lips murmured, "I cannot."
There was an immense strength of resistance in the girl's very
feebleness.
Molly turned away abruptly, then back again once more.
"At least you will send him a message?"
Madeleine drew a deep breath, closed her eyes a moment and seemed to
whisper a prayer; then aloud she said, while, like a shadow so faint
was it, a flush rose to her cheeks:
"Tell him that I forgive him, that I forgive him freely--that I shall
always pray for him." The flush grew deeper. "Tell him too that I
shall never be any man's bride, now."
She closed her eyes again and the colour slowly ebbed away. Molly
stood, her black brows drawn, gazing down upon her in silence.--Did
she love him after all? Who can fathom the mystery of another's heart?
"I will tell him," she answered at last. "Good-bye, Madeleine--I shall
never see you or speak to you again as long as I live."
She left the room with a slow, heavy step.
Madeleine shivered, and with both hands clasped the silver crucifix
that hung around her neck; two great tears escaped from her black
lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Miss Sophia moaned. She, poor soul,
had had tragedy enough, at last.
* * * * *
When the jailer brought in the mid-day meal after Adrian's departure,
he found the prisoner seated very quietly at his table, his open Bible
before him, but his eyes fixed dreamily upon the space of dim
whitewashed wall, and his mind evidently far away.
Upon his guardian's entrance he roused himself, however, and begged
him, when he should return for the dish, to restore neatness to the
bed and to assist him in the ordering of his toilet which he wished to
be spick and span.
"For I expect a visitor," said Captain Jack gravely.
When in due course the fellow had carried out these wishes with the
surly good-nature characteristic of him, Jack set himself to wait.
The square of sky through his window grew from dazzling white to
deepest blue, the shadows travelled along the blank walls, the street
noises rose and fell in capricious gusts, the church bells jangled,
all the myriad sounds which had come to measure his solitary day
struck their familiar course upon his ear; yet the expected visitor
delayed. But the captain, among other things, had learnt to possess
his soul in patience of late; and so, as he slowly paced his cell
after his wont, he betrayed neither irritation nor melancholy. If she
did not come to-day, then it would be to-morrow. He had no doubt of
this.
The afternoon had waned--golden without, full of grey shadows in the
prison room--when light footfalls mingled with the well-known heavy
tread and jangle of keys, along the echoing passage.
There was the murmur of a woman's voice, a word of gruff reply, and
the next moment a tall form wrapped in a many-folded black cloak and
closely veiled, advanced a few steps into the room, while, as before,
the turnkey retired and locked the door behind him.
His heart beating so thickly that for the moment utterance was
impossible, Captain Jack made one hurried pace forward with
outstretched hands, only to check himself, however, and let them fall
by his side. He would meet her calmly, humbly, as he had resolved.
The woman threw back her veil, and it was Molly's dark gaze, Molly's
brown face, flushed and haggard, yet always beautiful, that looked out
of the black frame.
An ashen pallor spread over the prisoner's countenance.
"Madeleine?" he asked in a whisper; then, with a loud ring of stern
demand, "_Madeleine!_"
"I went for her, I went for her myself--I did all I could--she would
not come."
_She would not come!_
It is a sort of unwritten law that the supremely afflicted have the
right, where possible, to the gratification of the least of their
wishes. That Madeleine could refuse to come to him in his last
extremity, had never once crossed her lover's brain. He stood
bewildered.
"She is not ill?"
"Ill!" Lady Landale's red lips curved in scorn, "No--not ill--but a
coward!" She spat the word fiercely as if at the offender's face.
There fell a minute's silence, broken only by a few labouring
deep-drawn breaths from the prisoner's oppressed lungs. Then he stood
as if turned to stone, not a muscle moving, his eyes fixed, his jaw
set.
Molly trembled before this composure, beneath which she divined a
suffering so intense that her own frail barriers of self-restraint
were well-nigh broken down by a torrent of passionate pity.
But she braced herself with the feeling of the moment's urgency. She
had no time to lose.
"Hear me," she cried in low hurried tones, laying a hand upon his
folded arm and then drawing it away again as if frightened by the
rigid tension she felt there. "Waste no more thought on one so
unworthy--all is not lost--I bring you hope, life. Oh, for God's
sake, wake up and listen to me--I can save you still. Captain Smith,
Jack--_Jack!_"
Her voice rose as high as she dare lift it, but no statue could be
more unhearing.
The woman cast a desperate look around her; hearkened fearfully, all
was silent within the prison; then with tremulous haste she cast off
her immense cloak, pulled her bonnet from her head, divested herself
of her long full skirt and stood, a strange vision, lithe,
unconscious, unashamed, her slender woman's figure clad in complete
man's raiment, with the exception of the coat. Her dark head cropped
and curly, her face, with its fever-bloom, rising flower-like above
the folds of her white shirt.
With anxious haste she compared herself with the prisoner.
"Rene told me well," she said; "with your coat upon me none would tell
the difference in this dark room. I am nearly as tall as you too.
Thanks be to God that he made me so. _Jack_," calling in his ear,
"don't you see? Don't you understand? It is all quite easy. You have
only to put on these clothes of mine, this cloak, the bonnet comes
quite over the face; stoop a little as you go out and hold this
handkerchief to your face as if in tears. The carriage waits outside
and Rene. The rest is planned. I shall sit on the bed with your coat
on. It is a chance--a certainty. When I found Rene had failed, I swore
that I would save you yet. Ever since I came from Pulwick this morning
he and I have worked together upon this last plan. There is not a
flaw; it must succeed. Oh, God, he does not hear me! Jack--Jack!"
She shook him with a sort of fury, then, falling at his feet, clasped
his knees.
"For God's sake--for God's sake!"
He sighed, and again came the murmur:
"She would not come----" He lifted his hand to his forehead and looked
round, then down at her, as if from a great height.
She saw that he was aroused at last, sprang to her feet, and poured
out the details of the scheme again.
"I run no risk, you see. They would not dare to punish me, a
woman--Lady Landale--even if they could. Be quick, the precious
moments are going by. I gave the man some gold to leave us as long as
he could, but any moment he may be upon us."
"Poor woman," said Jack, and his voice seemed as far off as his gaze;
"see these chains."
She staggered back an instant, but the next, crying:
"The file--the file--that was why Rene gave it to me." She seized the
skirt as it lay at her feet, and, striving with agonised endeavours to
control the trembling of her hands, drew forth from its pocket a file
and would have taken his wrist. But he held his hands above his head,
out of her reach, while a strange smile, almost of triumph, parted his
lips.
"The bitterness of death is past," he said.
She tore at him in a frenzy, but, repulsed by his immobility, fell
again broken at his feet.
In a torrent of words she besought him, for Adrian's sake, for the
sake of the beautiful world, of his youth, of the sweetness of
life--in her madness, at last, for her own sake! She had ruined him,
but she would atone, she would make him happy yet. If he died it was
death to her....
When at length her voice sank away from sheer exhaustion, he helped
her to rise, and seated her on the chair; then told her quietly that
he was quite determined.
"Go home," said he, "and leave me in peace. I thank you for what you
would have done, thank you for trying to bring Madeleine," he paused a
moment. How purely he had loved her--and twice, twice she had failed
him. "Yet, I do not blame her," he went on as if to himself; "I did
not deserve to see her, and it has made all the rest easy. Remember,"
again addressing the woman whom hopelessness seemed for a moment to
have benumbed, "that if you would yet do me a kindness, be kind to
her. If you would atone--atone to Adrian."
"To Adrian?" echoed Molly, stung to the quick, with a pale smile of
exceeding bitterness. And with a rush of pride, strength returned to
her.
"I leave you resolved to die then?" she asked him, fiercely.
"You leave me glad to die," he replied, unhesitatingly.
She spoke no more, but got up to replace her garments. He assisted her
in silence, but as his awkward bound hands touched her she shuddered
away from him.
As she gathered the cloak round her shoulders again, there was a noise
of heavy feet at the door.
The jailer thrust in his rusty head and looked furtively from the
prisoner to his visitor as they stood silently apart from each other;
then, making a sign to some one whose dark figure was shadowed behind
him without, entered with a hesitating sidelong step, and, drawing
Captain Jack on one side, whispered in his ear.
"The blacksmith's yonder. He's come to measure you, captain, for them
there irons you know of--best get the lady quietly away, for he wunnut
wait no longer."
The prisoner smiled sternly.
"I am ready," he said, aloud.
"I'll keep him outside a minute or two," added the man, wiping his
brow, evidently much relieved by his charge's calmness. "I kep' him
back as long as I could--but happen it's allus best to hurry the
parting after all."
He moved away upon tiptoe, in instinctive tribute to the lady's
sorrow, and drew the door to.
Molly threw back her veil which she had lowered upon his entrance, her
face was livid.
"What is it?" she asked, articulating with difficulty.
"Nothing--a fellow to see to my irons."
He moved his hands as he spoke, and she understood him, as he had
hoped, to refer only to his manacles.
She drew a gasping breath. How they watched him! Yet all was not lost
after all.
"I will leave the file," she said, in a quick whisper; "you will
reflect; there is yet to-morrow," and rushed to hide it in his bed.
But he caught her by the arm, his patience worn out at length.
"Useless," he answered, harshly. "I shall not use it. Moreover, it
would be found, and I am sure it is not your wish to bring unnecessary
hardship upon my last moments. I should lose the only thing that is
left to me, the comfort of being alone. And to-morrow I shall see no
one."
The door groaned apart:
"Very sorry, mum," came the husky voice in the opening, "Time's up."
She turned a look of agony upon Captain Jack's determined figure. Was
this to be the end? Was she to leave him so, without even one kind
word?
Alas, poor soul! All her hopes had fallen to this--a parting word.
He was unpitying; his arms were folded; he made no sign.
She took a step away and swayed; the turnkey came forward
compassionately to lead her out. But the next instant she wheeled
round and stood alone and erect, braced up by the extremity of her
anguish.
"I _have_ a message," she cried, as if the words were forced from her.
"I could not make her come, but I made her send you a message. She
told me to say that she forgave you, freely; that she would always
pray for you. She bade me tell you too that she would never be any
man's bride now."
It had been like the rending of body and soul to tell him this. As she
saw the condemned man's face quiver and flush at last out of its
impassiveness, she thought hell itself could hold no more hideous
torment.
He extended his arms:
"Now welcome death!" he exclaimed.
And she turned and fled down the passage as though driven upon this
last cry.
* * * * *
"E-h, he be a strange one!" said the jailer afterwards to his mate.
"If ye'd heard that poor lady sob as she went by! I've seen many a one
in the same case, but I was sore for her, I was that. And he--as
cool--joking with Robert over the hanging irons the next minute. 'New
sort of tailor I've got,' says he. 'Make them smart,' he says, 'since
I'm to wear them in so exalted a position.' So exalted a position,
that's what he says. 'And they've got to last me some long time, you
know,' says he."
"He'll be something worth looking at on Saturday. I could almost wish
he could ha' got off, only that it's a fine sight to see a real
gentleman go through it. Ah, it's they desperate villains has the
proper pluck!"