"The ball that entered Olney Winthrop's heart was fired by the hand of
Leith Pierrepont!"
Over and over again, like the insistent surge of the waves, or the
maddening repetition of some wild, fantastic melody, those words kept
repeating themselves in Carlita's reeling brain.
She had crept away noiselessly when she had heard them spoken, crept
away and almost crawled up the stairs to her own chamber, where the
gathering darkness lay in somber shadows. She closed the door and
turned the key, leaning against it in a weak, half-relieved sort of
way, like the criminal who has gained a moment of respite from his too
close pursuers.
But the haunting memory of those ghastly words aroused her again, and
she pressed her hands upon her breast, her great eyes peering into the
gloomy shadows, the words she had heard standing out before her in
letters of glaring fire.
"It can't be--it can't be!" she panted, leaning forward as if she were
speaking her passionate cry into some listening ear. "It can't be!
Olney Winthrop murdered, and--Leith Pierrepont his--No, no, no! It
can not be true! My God! I will not believe it! There is some awful
mistake! Some hideous blunder! But then--but then--"
She paused and moistened her stiff lips, her eyes opening and closing
curiously. She did not continue that monologue, but catching hold of
a chair, then the foot of the bed, a table, then another chair, she
dragged herself to the fireside, which had burned itself to little more
than dull gray ashes.
She knelt upon the white bear-skin rug, and taking the poker tried to
stir it into a blaze again; but the faint flicker made her shiver. She
dropped the poker from her cold fingers, and burying her white face
upon her knees crossed her arms around them.
Her grief for her betrothed seemed to be swallowed up in the awful
sense of horror that oppressed her. It was not so much of Olney
Winthrop murdered that she thought, as of Leith Pierrepont murderer.
And then the shadows lengthened and dusk faded into night. The poor
fire died entirely and lay gray and passionless upon the hearth. The
cold flash of an electric lamp shone through the window, over which the
shade had not been drawn, and lay in a line of light across the floor,
beyond which were ponderous caverns made of shadow.
It was ghoulish, eerie.
She would have thought it strange that her maid had not come to prepare
her bath and bed if she had been in a condition to consider ordinary
subjects, but matters of daily moment and time ceased to exist for her
during those hours.
Once or twice she moved uneasily, and a hoarse moan left her lips as if
some horrible thought, too heavy to be borne in silence, weighed upon
her heart.
And then at last she lifted her head. The eyes burned like living
coals, but the face was gray and passionless, like the dead ashes upon
the hearth. It was a curious, uncanny contrast.
Her neck was stiff and sore from its long continuance in one position,
but she did not seem to be conscious of it. Her fingers were still
interlaced about her knee. Her mental faculties seemed to return to her
suddenly.
"He told me that he loved me, that whether I desired or not, I should
be his wife," she said in a low, hoarse tone that fitted the scene
with curious horror, the "he" referring to Leith Pierrepont. "Knowing
that I was the betrothed wife of his friend, he came in that friend's
absence and made his dastardly proposal to me. Can it be that he has
done this thing for--that? For that? In order that he might carry out
this hideous desire? Good God! No human thing with the dim shadow of
blood in his veins could do a thing so vile. And yet--God of Heaven,
I will know! I must know! I will avenge you, Olney! I swear it! Do
you hear me, sleeping there in your lonely grave? I swear that I will
avenge you, and that I will bring your murderer to justice, let it cost
me what it will of womanliness, of self-respect, of life itself even.
My moment of weakness is passed, and the work shall commence at once."
She arose, feverishly stiff and cramped from her long, sorrowful vigil,
and walked with a step that was almost firm to the door.
It never occurred to her to consider the time, but turning the key in
the lock, she opened the door and went into the hall.
All was dark, the house strangely still.
"It is out of respect for--Olney," she whispered to herself, with a
little catch in her voice like a sob. "It was kind of Jessica! After
all--"
She didn't finish the sentence, but walked unsteadily up the hall. Her
weakness seemed to come again with her knowledge of the darkness.
She paused before Jessica's door and hesitated for a moment, then she
saw a faint gleam of light beneath the door. It gave her courage. She
did not knock, but turned the knob gently. It yielded, and the door
swung back.
The brilliant gleam of light blinded her for a moment, and then she
saw Jessica standing beneath the chandelier. She was clothed in a long
gown of shimmering greenish satin, the décolleté bodice finished with
a fall of lace that somehow made her look like a serpent which trails
his long, singularly graceful body in the moonlight. About her handsome
throat was a string of diamonds, and in the clustering coils of auburn
hair a crown of diamonds that scintillated and flashed with defiant
glitter.
And there was something in the cold look of the brown eyes that matched
them strangely--a look that hardened as it rested upon the girl at the
door.
She observed the expression of surprised contempt in Carlita's burning
eyes all too clearly, but it only served to intensify her hatred.
"I--I didn't know you had--been out," Carlita stammered. "I half feared
I should find you in bed. The house was still and dark. Is it late?"
"No, early--in the morning," Jessica answered, with a short laugh.
"Haven't you been to bed? It is almost three. There! the clock is
striking now."
"I had no idea--" returned Carlita, in an uncertain and indefinite sort
of way, as if she didn't quite know what she wanted to say. "May I come
in for a moment?"
"As well come in and close the door as stand there and have the draught
blow on one," answered Jessica. "It has been a very stupid evening,"
stifling a yawn. "Calve was not in voice, and Jean de Reske didn't sing
at all. It seems to me abominably like a swindle to announce at the
last moment that some one whom you especially went to hear 'has a cold,
and So-and-so has kindly consented to take his place.' Even the poker
game afterward was stupid--insufferably stupid. Carlita, what a fool
you are, that you don't cut all the Puritan idiocy of your bringing up,
and try the gaits with me! You'd have twice the friends, live twice as
long, and have a thousand times the fun."
Carlita shivered slightly, as her eyes traveled over the figure before
her.
"I suppose you are right," she said, half stupidly; "but somehow it
doesn't seem to be in my line."
"Pouf! You can do anything you like. What's the good of making a
sepulcher of one's life--of living for death, so to speak--when you
have so little of life and so much of death? You make a constant sermon
of yourself, and people hate sermons. That's why they go to sleep in
church. You never see any one go to sleep at a poker-table. There are
people who talk against it, I know--'wouldn't have their sisters play
for their right arms,' and all that rot--and then turn round and kill
their best friend!"
She laughed shortly, heavily, hatefully, and again Carlita shivered,
while she moved uneasily.
"It is inconsistent," she said, in a stony sort of way; "but so few
people are consistent. I wanted to ask you about--him. You know--the
man whom--"
"Leith Pierrepont?"
"Yes."
"What about him?"
"What did he tell you about--Olney? I fainted, or--or something--and
after that he had gone."
She was suffering too acutely to observe the gleam in the red-brown
eyes, and there was nothing in the voice to attract attention.
"Olney is--dead. You know that?"
"Oh, yes; he said that. But how?"
"Shot through the heart."
Carlita moistened her lips, and then continued her grewsome questioning.
"And they buried him--?"
"Out there."
"Was there an effort made to--to discover the murderer?"
"Effort? Oh, yes; I suppose so. But, after all, what does 'effort'
amount to in a place like that? His murderer might have been standing
right beside the coffin, and no one would have made an 'effort' to
arrest him. Leith Pierrepont himself says that man's importance is
measured there by the number of men he has slain."
"Good heavens! He said that?"
"Yes."
"The dastard!"
"It is doubly pitiful for poor Olney," Jessica continued, volubly,
"because he was so alone in the world. There is no one to take his
case for him--no one to see that justice is done. The murder was
committed out of the country, and so the murderer will go scot-free,
deceiving other people, his polluted body in contact with that of
innocence--perhaps even marry a pure young girl."
"No!" cried Carlita, her voice tragic in its suppressed
passion--"never! Olney is not without an avenger. I have sworn before
Heaven a solemn vow that I will bring his murderer to punishment for
his cowardly crime; and I will keep that vow, let it cost me what it
will of happiness, of life, or even honor. All the world shall know
and scorn him for the thing he is, and God Himself shall put upon him
the brand of Cain. I have sworn an oath to Olney dead, and may I stand
accursed before Heaven if I fail to keep it!"
She went swiftly from the room, and Jessica closed the door behind her,
her low, strident laughter filling the room with unmusical sound.
"I shall have my revenge upon both," she said, with sardonic
triumph--"my sweet revenge!"