THE TRAGEDY OF RACHEL KYNASTON.
"I wonder whether you know that we have met before, Miss Thurwell?" he
asked her suddenly.
She moved her screen and looked at him.
"Surely not! Where?"
In a few words he reminded her of that quaint street in the old Italian
town, and of the half-ruined Palazzo di Vechi. He had seen her only for
a few minutes, but her face had never been forgotten; the way in which
he told her so, although he did not dwell upon it, told her also that it
had been no ordinary memory--that it had held a separate place in his
thoughts, as was indeed the case. Something in the manner of his
allusion to it showed her too, as though he had laid his whole mind
bare, with what interest, almost reverence, he had guarded it, and all
that it had meant to him; and as she listened a faint color stole into
her cheeks, with which the fire had nothing to do. She held her screen
the closer, and bent her head lest he should see it.
But there was no fear of that; indeed, he had no thought of the kind.
Leaving the dangerous ground behind him, he glided easily and naturally
into impersonal subjects. From Italy he began to talk of Florence, of
Pico della Mirandola, and the painters of the Renaissance. He strove his
utmost to interest her, and with his vast stock of acquired knowledge,
and his wonderfully artistic felicity of expression, he talked on and
on, wandering from country to country, and age to age, till it all
seemed to her like a strangely beautiful poem, full of yellow light and
gleaming shadow, sometimes passionate and intense, at others fantastic
and almost ethereal. Now and then she half closed her eyes, and his
words, and their meaning, the form and the substance, seemed to come to
her like richly blended music, stirring all her senses and quickening
all her dormant faculties. Then she opened them again, and looked
steadily upon the dark, wan face, with its sharp thin outline and
strange poetic abstraction. By chance he spoke for a moment of De
Quincey, and a shudder passed through all her being. Could such a face
as that be a murderer's face? The utter morbidness of such a thought
oppressed her only for a moment. If to-morrow it was to be her duty to
loathe this man, then it should be so; but those few minutes were too
precious to be disturbed by such thoughts. A new life was stirring
within her, and its first breath was too sweet to be crushed on the
threshold. After to-night--anything! But to-night she would have for her
own.
And so the time passed on, and the evening slipped away. Mr. Thurwell
had looked in, but seeing them so engrossed he had quietly retreated and
indulged in his usual nap. A dainty tea equipage had been brought in,
and she had roused herself to prepare it with her own hands, and it
seemed to him that this little touch of domesticity had been the one
thing wanted to make the picture perfect. There had been a momentary
silence then, and she had found herself asking him questions.
"Do you never feel that you would like to be back in the world again?"
she asked. "Yours is a very lonely life!"
"I do not often find it so," he answered, with his eyes fixed upon the
fire. "One's books, and the thoughts one gets from them, are sufficient
companions."
"But they are not human ones, and man is human. Do you think a lonely
life quite healthy--mentally healthy, I mean?"
"It should be the healthiest of all lives. It is only in theory that
solitude is morbid. If you knew more of the world, Miss Thurwell, you
would understand something of its cramping influence upon all
independent thought. I am not a pessimist--at least, I try not to be. I
do not wish to say that there is more badness than goodness in the
world, but there is certainly more littleness than greatness. To live in
any manner of society without imbibing a certain form of selfishness is
difficult; to do so and to taste the full sweetness of the life that
never dies is impossible!"
"But there must be some exceptions!" she said hesitatingly. "If people
care for one another, and care for the same things----"
He shook his head.
"People never do care for one another. Life is so full nowadays, there
are so many things to care about, that any concentration of the
affections is impossible. Love is the derision of the modern world. It
has not even the respect one pays to the antique."
For several minutes there was deep silence. A piece of burning wood
tumbled off from the log and fell upon the tiles, where it lay with its
delicate blue smoke curling upward into the room, laden with the pungent
odor of the pine. She moved her feet, and there was the slight rustling
of her skirts. No other sound broke the stillness which they both
remembered for long afterwards--the stillness before the storm.
Suddenly it came to an end. There was a sound of doors being quickly
opened and shut, voices in the hall, and then a light, firm tread,
crossing the main portion of the room. They both glanced toward the
curtains, and there was a second's expectancy. Then they were thrown on
one side with a hasty movement, and a tall dark woman in a long
traveling cloak swept through them.
She paused for a moment on the threshold, and her flashing black eyes
seemed to take in every detail of the little scene. She saw Helen, fair
and comely, with an added beauty in her soft, animated expression, and
she saw her companion, his face alight with intelligence and
sensibility, and with the glow of a new life in his brilliant eyes. The
perfume of the Egyptian tobacco which hung about the room, the tea tray,
their two chairs drawn up before the fire--nothing escaped her. It all
seemed to increase her wrath.
For she was very angry. Her form was dilated with passion, and her
voice, when she spoke, shook with it. But it was not her anger, nor her
threatening gestures, before which they both shrank back for a moment,
appalled. It was her awful likeness to the murdered Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston.
"Helen!" she cried, "they told me of this; but if I had not seen it with
my own eyes, I would never have believed it."
Helen rose to her feet, pale, but with a kindling light in her eyes, and
a haughty poise of her fair shapely head.
"You speak in riddles, Rachel," she said quietly. "I do not understand
you."
A very storm of hysterical passion seemed to shake the woman, who had
approached a little further into the room.
"Not understand me! Listen, and I will make it plain. You were engaged
to marry my brother. I come here, almost from his funeral, and I find
you thus--with his murderer! Girl, I wonder that you do not die of
shame!"
His murderer! For a moment the color fled from cheeks and lips, and the
room seemed whirling around her. But one glance at him brought back her
drooping courage. He was standing close to her side, erect and firm as a
statue, with his head thrown back, and his eyes fixed upon Rachel
Kynaston. Blanched and colorless as his face was, there was no flinching
in it.
"It is false!" she said proudly. "Ask him yourself."
"Ask him!" She turned upon him like a tigress, her eyes blazing with
fury. "Let him hear what I have to say, and deny it. Is it not you who
followed him from city to city all over the world, seeking always his
life? Is it not you who kept him for many years from his native land for
fear of blood-shed--yours or his? Is it not you who have fought with him
and been worsted, and sworn to carry your enmity with you through life,
and bury it only in his grave? Look at me, man, if you dare, look me in
the face and tell me whether you did not seek his life in Vienna, and
whether you did not fight with him on the sands at Boulogne. Oh, I know
you! It is you! It is you! And then you come down here and live alone,
waiting your chance. He is found foully murdered, and you are the only
man who could have done it. Ask you whether you be guilty? There is no
need, no need. Can anyone in their senses, knowing the story of your
past hate, doubt it for one moment? And yet, answer me if you can. Look
me in the face, and let me hear you lie, if you dare. Tell me that you
know nothing of my brother's death!"
He had stood like marble, with never a change in his face, while she had
poured out her passionate accusation. But when silence came, and she
waited for him to speak, he could not. A seal seemed set upon his lips.
He could not open them. He was silent.
A fearful glare of triumph blazed up in her eyes. She staggered back a
little, and leaned upon the table, with her hand clasped to her side.
"See, Helen," she cried, "is that innocence? O God! give me strength to
go on. I will see Mr. Thurwell. I will tell him everything. He shall
sign a warrant. Ah!"
A terrible scream rang through the room, and echoed through the house.
Mr. Thurwell and several of the servants came hurrying in. In the middle
of the floor Rachel Kynaston lay prostrate, her fingers grasping
convulsively at the empty air, and an awful look in her face. Helen was
on her knees by her side, and Mr. Brown stood in the background,
irresolute whether to stay or leave.
They crowded round her, but she waved them off, and grasping Helen's
wrist, dragged her down till their heads nearly touched.
"Helen," she moaned, "I am dying. Swear to me that you will avenge
Geoffrey's murder. That man did it. His name--his name----"
Suddenly her grasp relaxed, and Helen reeled back fainting into her
father's arms.
"It is a fit," some one murmured.
But it was death.