PRINCE DUMPLING.
At Charing Cross, soon after the defeat and dispersion of the rebels,
I had caught sight of a face which set my heart beating wildly--the
proud, pale face of Kate, who was sitting at the window of a hotel.
Sending up my name, I was at once admitted, Kate clinging to me, and
crying over me, as if I were a soldier returned from the wars.
"I won't leave you again, darling," I said, "no matter what you or your
aunt may command or urge. How is that kindest of friends of mine?"
"I haven't seen her since soon after you--you--you--left us," was the
reply. "She went away by herself on some important business, and was
to have returned to-day to Taunton Square, where I have been staying
for the last week by myself. But something happened there that--that
frightened and upset me, Max dear, so I came on here, and left word to
Aunt Clara where to find me. Ah! here she is."
Miss Clara kissed first Kate and then me, after which, turning to her
niece, she said:
"What was it that frightened you and drove you away from Taunton
Square? The rioters?"
"No, aunt. I--I--hardly know how to tell you and Max. It was so
terrible. It was--it was--the Dumpling."
"The Dumpling!" exclaimed Miss Clara and I together.
"Yes, the Dumpling," replied Kate, putting her hands before her eyes,
as if to shut out some hateful vision. "I wasn't so much afraid of him
as of what I saw in his eyes--that awful picture----"
"I have something to tell you about him myself," said Miss Clara,
quietly. "Something that it is time both you and Max knew. But, first,
let us hear your story."
"I was sitting alone one evening in the dark in the conservatory,"
said Kate, "and feeling suddenly cold and frightened--I did not know
at what--I put out a hand and switched on the electric light. There,
glaring in at me from the window outside, I saw a man's face. It was
the man Max called the Dumpling. I recognised him at once by the
description. The face was gone almost as I looked, but before it
went I saw a picture in its eyes--a picture that seemed to be--that
something tells me _was_ true, but is so awful that I can hardly bear
to think, still less to speak, of it. But speak of it I must, for I can
bear the suspense no longer.
"I saw myself as a girl, standing in a church before an altar, being
married to this terrible man! Aunt, darling! Tell me it was all a
dream, and that it isn't true. It seemed hideously, cruelly true as I
saw it; and I know, now, that I have seen him before--that the man is
no stranger to me, and that I knew him long ago."
"Yes, darling," said the elder Miss Carleton, taking the sobbing girl
in her arms, "it is quite true. Listen, and you shall hear the facts.
I can tell them in a very few words. You were a mere girl of seventeen
at a boarding school in America when you first met this man. He was one
of the masters, and was known as 'The Prince,' because he claimed to be
a son of Napoleon the Third, and, in fact, I believe there was truth
in his claim. But he fell desperately in love with you, and you, an
innocent girl, with no thought of husband or love-making, laughed at
him. All this you will remember yourself. What you will not remember is
that the man, who has strange occult powers, hypnotised or mesmerised
you one day, and when you were in that state, and did not know what you
were doing, compelled you to go through the form of marriage with him.
I was staying in the neighbourhood of the school at the time, so as to
be near you, your dear mother being recently dead; and hearing that you
had been seen going out with 'The Prince'--no one knew why--I found out
in what direction you and he had gone, and followed, for I disliked and
distrusted him from the first. But I was too late. The ceremony was
over. You were--and, I fear, are--the man's wife. Even if we had gone
to law, to attempt to upset the marriage, we might not have won, for
hypnotic influence is hard to prove in the unsympathetic atmosphere of
the law courts, and, even if we had won, the scandal and shock might
have killed you, for you were already worn to a shadow by fretting for
your mother. I shrank from the thought of such a scandal, as I knew you
would have shrunk; and, rightly or wrongly, I did what seemed best to
me under the circumstances. I am not long in making up my mind, and, my
mind once made up, I do not hesitate to act.
"You were sitting, white and trembling, in a pew near the door. 'The
Prince' had followed the minister into an inner room or vestry, perhaps
to pay the fee. The key of the vestry door was on the outside. Without
a moment's hesitation I turned the key, locking the two of them in,
so as to give us a few minutes in which to get away. Then I got you
out, half supporting you, half carrying you, to where my own carriage
was waiting, lifted you in, jumped in myself, and told the coachman
to drive with all possible speed to the railway station. Here we were
just in time to catch an express to New York, and when you recovered
from the mesmeric state into which you had been thrown, and I found
that you knew nothing of what had happened, I determined to keep my own
counsel, and have told no one--not even your own father--the facts.
From New York we went next day to Europe, travelling from country to
country, so that the villain who had ruined your life might never
find you. I had hoped that he was long since dead, and it was only
when Max was telling us of the Dumpling's claim to be Napoleon that
the horrible possibility--a possibility which afterwards became a
certainty--occurred to me.
"Even in those far-away days he had dreams of a revolution which he
was one day to accomplish in England; even then he was passionately in
sympathy with the poor, and talked about them exactly as he talked to
Max. I recognised, from Max's description, the man whom he called 'The
Dumpling,' as the man you and I had long ago known as 'The Prince,'
and realised that he had tracked us at last. That was why Max saw him
shadowing the house, and that is why you saw his face watching you
through the window-pane. That was why I sent Max away, for while that
man lives you can never be Max's wife."
"She _shall_ be my wife," I interrupted, "if only she will consent to
do me such high honour; for be this man 'Prince,' or be he 'Dumpling,'
he has no power to come between Kate and me. You have told your
story--now listen to mine."