of sweat, notwithstanding the temperature of the day, upon his forehead.
"It was an accident, a misfortune; _you_ did not do it?"
She turned upon him eyes which were full of mingled horror and scorn.
"I _do_ it!" she said; "what are you dreaming of? I was mad; but not so
mad as that! How could you think it?" and the tears rose in her eyes
more at the supposition which his question had raised than at the idea
that he could so misjudge her.
"But why do you keep this? why do you carry it about with you, Blanche?
It is pure insanity on your part. How long is it since you have
travelled in company with that dreadful box?"
"More than two years," she said in a fearful whisper. "I have tried to
get rid of it, but to no purpose; there was always some one in the way.
I have reasoned with myself, and prayed to be delivered from it, but I
have never found an opportunity. And now, what does it matter? The
burden and heat of the day are past."
"Let me do it for you," said Mr. Laurence. "Whatever our future relation
to one another, I cannot consent that you should run so terrible a risk
through fault of mine. The strain upon your mind has been too great
already. Would to heaven I could have borne it for you! but you forbid
me even the privilege of knowing that you suffered. Now that I have
ascertained it, it must be my care that the cause of our separation
shall at least live in your memory only." And as he finished speaking he
attempted to lift the box; but Mrs. Damer sprang forward and prevented
him.
"Leave it!" she cried; "do not dare to touch it; it is _mine_! It has
gone wherever I have gone for years. Do you think, for the little space
that is left me, that I would part with the only link left between me
and my dread past?" and saying this she threw herself upon the black
trunk and burst into tears.
"Blanche! you love me as you ever did," exclaimed Herbert Laurence.
"These tears confess it. Let me make amends to you for this; let me try
to make the happiness of your future life!"
But before his sentence was concluded Mrs. Damer had risen from her
drooping attitude and stood before him.
"Make amends!" she echoed scornfully. "How can you 'make amends'?
Nothing can wipe out the memory of the shame and misery that I have
passed through, nothing restore the quiet conscience I have lost. I do
not know if I love you still or not. When I think of it, my head swims,
and I only feel confused and anxious. But I am sure of one thing, that
the horror of my remorse for even having listened to you has power to
overwhelm any regret that may be lingering in my unworthy breast, and
that the mere fact of your bodily presence is agony to me. When I met
you to-day I was battling with my invention to devise some means of
leaving the place where you are without exciting suspicion. If you ever
loved, have pity on me now; take the initiative, and rid me of
yourself."
"Is this your final decision, Blanche?" he asked, slowly. "Will you not
regret it when too late, and you are left alone with only _that_?"
She shuddered, and he caught at the fact as a sign of relenting.
"Dearest, loveliest," he commenced.--This woman had been the loveliest
to him in days gone past, and though she was so terribly changed in eyes
that regarded her less, Herbert Laurence, her once lover, could still
trace above the languor and debility and distress of her present
appearance, the fresh, sparkling woman who had sacrificed herself for
his sake; and although his style of address signified more than he
really thought for her, the knowledge of how much she had undergone
since their separation had the power to make him imagine that this
partial reanimation of an old flame was a proof that the fire which
kindled it had never perished. Therefore it did not appear absurd in his
mental eyes to preface his appeal to Mrs. Damer thus: "Dearest,
loveliest--" but she turned upon him as though he had insulted her.
"Mr. Laurence!" she exclaimed, "I have told you that the past is past;
be good enough to take me at my word. Do you think that I have lived
over two years of solitary shame and grief, to break the heart that
trusts in me _now_? If I had any wish, or any thought to the contrary,
it would be impossible. I am enveloped by kind words and acts, by care
and attention, which chain me as closely to my home as if I were kept a
prisoner between four walls. I could not free myself if I would," she
continued, throwing back her arms, as though she tried to break an
invisible thrall. "I must die first; the cords of gratitude are bound
about me so closely. It is killing me, as nothing else could kill," she
added, in a lower voice. "I lived under your loss, and the knowledge of
my own disgrace; but I cannot live under his perpetual kindness and
perfect trust. It cannot last much longer: for mercy's sake, leave me in
peace until the end comes!"
"And the box?" he demanded.
"I will provide for the box before that time," she answered, sadly; "but
if you have any fear, keep the key yourself: the lock is not one that
can be forced."
She took the key from her bosom, where it hung on a broad black ribbon,
as she spoke, and handed it to him. He accepted it without demur.
"You are so rash," he said; "it will be safer with me: let me take the
box also?"
"No, no!" said Mrs. Damer, hurriedly; "you shall not; and it would be no
use. If it were out of my sight, I should dream that it was found, and
talk of it in my sleep. I often rise in the night now to see if it is
safe. Nothing could do away with it. If you buried it, some one would
dig it up; if you threw it in the water, it would float. It would lie
still nowhere but on my heart, where it ought to be!--it ought to be!"
Her eyes had reassumed the wild, restless expression which they took
whilst speaking of the past, and her voice had sunk to a low, fearful
whisper.
"This is madness," muttered Herbert Laurence; and he was right. On the
subject of the black box Mrs. Damer's brain was turned.
He was just about to speak to her again, and try to reason her out of
her folly, when voices were heard merrily talking together in the hall,
and her face worked with the dread of discovery.
"Go!" she said; "pray, go at once. I have told you everything." And in
another moment Herbert Laurence had dashed through the passage to the
privacy of his own room; and Mrs. Clayton, glowing from her drive, and
with a fine rosy baby in her arms, had entered the apartment of her
cousin.
II
Bella found her cousin sitting in an arm-chair, with the cloak still
over her shoulders, and a face of ashy whiteness, the reaction of her
excitement.
"My dear, how ill you look!" was her first exclamation. "Have you been
out?"
"I went a little way into the shrubberies," said Mrs. Damer; "but the
day turned so cold."
"Do you think so? We have all been saying what a genial afternoon it is:
but it certainly does not seem to have agreed with you. Look at my boy:
isn't he a fine fellow?--he has been out all day in the garden. I often
wish you had a child, Blanchey."
"Do you, dear? it is more than I do."
"Ah, but you can't tell, till they are really yours, how much pleasure
they give you; no one knows who has not been a mother."
"No; I suppose not."
Mrs. Damer shivered as she said the words, and looked into the baby's
fat, unmeaning face with eyes of sad import. Mrs. Clayton thought she
had wounded her cousin, and stooped to kiss the slight offence away; but
she fancied that Blanche almost shrunk from her embrace.
"She must be really ill," thought the kindly little Bella, who had no
notion of such a thing as heart-sickness for an apparently happy married
woman. "She ought to see a doctor: I shall tell Colonel Damer so."
In another half-hour they were at her side together, urging her to take
their advice.
"Now, my darling," said the Colonel, when Mrs. Damer faintly protested
against being made a fuss about, "you must be good for my sake. You know
how precious you are to me, and how it would grieve me to have you laid
up; let me send for Dr. Barlow, as your cousin advises. You were very
much overcome by the long journey here, and I am afraid the subsequent
excitement of seeing your kind friends has been too much for you. You do
not half know how dear you are to me, Blanche, or you would not refuse
such a trifling request. Here have I been, for five years, dearest, only
looking forward from day to day to meeting my dear loving little wife
again; and then to have you so ill as this the first month of our
reunion, is a great trial to me. Pray let me send for Dr. Barlow."
But Mrs. Damer pleaded for delay. She had become chilled through being
out in the shrubberies; she had not yet got over the fatigue of her
journey; she had caught a cold whilst crossing from Havre to Folkestone:
it was anything and everything but an illness which required medical
attendance. If she were not better in the morning, she promised to make
no opposition to their wishes.
So she forced herself to rise and dress for dinner. She appeared there
calm and collected, and continued so throughout the evening, talking
with Mr. Laurence quite as much as with the rest of the company; and she
went to bed at the same hour as the other guests of Molton Grange,
receiving with her cousin's good-night, congratulations on the evident
improvement of her health.
"I cannot quite make out what has come to that cousin of yours, Bella,"
said Harry Clayton to his wife, as they too retired for the night; "she
doesn't appear half such a jolly woman as she used to be."
"She is certainly very much altered," was Mrs. Clayton's response; "but
I think it must be chiefly owing to her health; a feeling of debility is
so very depressing."
"I suppose it can't be anything on her mind, Bella?" suggested the
husband, after a pause.
"On her _mind_, Harry!" said Bella, sitting up in bed in her wonderment;
"of course not; why, how could it be? She has everything she can wish
for; and, I am sure, no woman could have a more devoted husband than
Colonel Damer. He has been speaking a great deal about her to me to-day,
and his anxiety is something enormous. On her _mind_!--what a funny
idea, Harry; what could have put that in your head?"
"I am sure I don't know," was the husband's reply, rather ruefully
given, as if conscious he had made a great mistake.
"You old _goose_," said his wife, with an emphatic kiss, as she composed
herself to her innocent slumbers.
But before they were broken by nature, in the gray of the morning, Mrs.
Clayton was roused by a tapping at the bedroom door; a tapping to which
all Mr. Clayton's shouts to "come in," only served as a renewal.
"Who can it be, Harry?--do get up and see," said Bella.
So Harry got up, like a dutiful husband, and opened the door, and the
figure of Colonel Damer, robed in a dressing-gown, and looking very
shadowy and unreal in the dawning, presented itself on the threshold.
"Is your wife here?" demanded the Colonel briefly.
"Of course she is," said Mr. Clayton, wondering what the Colonel wanted
with her.
"Will she come to Mrs. Damer? she is _very_ ill," was the next sentence,
delivered tremblingly.
"Very ill!" exclaimed Bella, jumping out of bed and wrapping herself in
a dressing-gown. "How do you mean, Colonel Damer?--when did it happen?"
"God knows!" he said, in an agitated voice; "but for some time after she
fell asleep she was feverish and excited, and spoke much. I woke
suddenly in the night and missed her, and going in search of her with a
light, found her fallen on the landing."
"Fainted?" said Bella.
"I don't know now whether it was a faint or a fit," he replied, "but I
incline to the latter belief. I carried her back to her bed, and gave
her some restoratives, not liking to disturb you--"
"Oh! why didn't you, Colonel Damer?" interposed his hostess.
"--and thought she was better, till just now, when she had another
attack of unconsciousness, and is so weak after it she cannot move. She
has fever too, I am sure, from the rapidity of her pulse, and I don't
think her head is quite clear."
"Harry, dear, send for Dr. Barlow at once," thrusting her naked feet
into slippers, "and come back with me, Colonel Damer; she should not be
left for a minute."
And she passed swiftly along the corridor to her cousin's room. As she
neared that of Mr. Laurence, the door opened a little, and a voice asked
huskily--
"Is anything the matter, Mrs. Clayton? I have been listening to noises
in the house for the last hour."
"My cousin, Mrs. Damer, has been taken ill, Mr. Laurence, but we have
sent for the doctor; I am going to her now."
And as the door closed again she fancied that she heard a sigh.
Blanche Damer was lying on her pillows very hot and flushed, with that
anxious, perturbed look which the eyes assume when the brain is only
half clouded, and can feel itself to be wandering.
"Blanche, dearest," cried Bella, as she caught sight of her face, "what
is the matter? How did this happen?"
"I dreamt that he had taken it," said Mrs. Damer, slowly and sadly; "but
it was a mistake: he must not have it yet--not yet! only a little while
to wait now!--but he has the key."
"Her mind is wandering at present," said Colonel Damer, who had followed
Mrs. Clayton into the room.
"Oh, Colonel Damer," exclaimed Bella, tearfully, "how dreadful it
is!--she frightens me! Could she have knocked her head in falling? Have
you no idea why she got up and went into the passage?"
"Not the slightest," he returned. And now that she examined him under
the morning light, which was by this time streaming through the open
shutters, Bella Clayton saw how aged and haggard his night's anxiety had
made him look. "My wife has been very subject to both sleeping-talking
and walking since my return, and I have several times missed her, as I
did last night, and found her walking about the room in her sleep, but
she has never been like this before. When I first found her in the
passage, I asked her why she had gone there, or what she wanted, and she
said, 'the key.' When I had relifted her into bed, I found her bunch of
keys as usual, on the dressing-table, therefore I imagine she could not
then have known what she was talking about. I trust Dr. Barlow will not
be long in coming; I am deeply anxious."
And he looked the truth of what he uttered; whilst poor little Mrs.
Clayton could only press his hand and entreat him to be hopeful; and his
wife lay on her pillows, and silently stared into vacancy.
As soon as the doctor arrived he pronounced the patient to be suffering
from an attack of pressure on the brain, and wished to know whether she
had not been subjected to some great mental shock or strain.
Here Colonel Damer came forward and stoutly denied the possibility of
such a thing. He had joined his wife from India a month ago, at which
time she was, though in delicate, not in bad health, and he had never
left her since. They had crossed from Havre to Folkestone three days
before, and Mrs. Damer had not complained of any unusual sickness or
fatigue. She was a person of a highly excitable and nervous temperament,
and her appetite and spirit were variable; otherwise there had been
nothing in her state of health to call for anxiety on the part of her
friends.
Dr. Barlow listened to all these statements, and believed as much of
them as he chose. However he waived the subject of the cause of the
disaster; the fact that it had occurred was undeniable; and the remedies
for such emergencies were immediately resorted to. But all proved alike
ineffectual, for the simple reason that the irrevocable fiat had gone
forth, and Blanche Damer was appointed to die.
As the day wore on, and the case assumed a darker aspect, and the
doctor's prognostications became less hopeful, Colonel Damer worked
himself into a perfect frenzy of fear.
"Save her, Dr. Barlow," he had said to that gentleman, in the insane
manner in which people are used to address the Faculty, as if it was in
their power to do more than help the efforts of nature. "Save her life,
for God's sake! and there is nothing that I can do for you, of earthly
good, that shall not be yours. Shall I call in other advice? Shall I
telegraph to London? Is there anyone there who can save her? It is my
life as well as hers that is trembling in the scale. For the love of
heaven, do not stand on ceremony, but only tell me what is best to be
done!"
Of course Dr. Barlow told him that if he was not perfectly satisfied, he
should wish him to telegraph to town for further advice, and mentioned
several names celebrated in such cases; at the same time he assured
Colonel Damer that he did not believe any number of doctors could do
more for the patient than he was doing, and that it was impossible to
guess at the probable termination of the illness for some days to come.
Bella Clayton gave up the duty of amusing her guests, and stationed
herself at the bedside of her cousin; and the unhappy husband wandered
in and out of the room like a ghost; trying to think upon each fresh
visit, that there was a slight improvement in the symptoms, and spending
the intervening time in praying for the life which he fondly imagined
had been devoted to himself. Meanwhile, whenever Mrs. Damer opened her
lips, it was to ramble on in this manner:
"Dying!" her hollow voice would exclaim; "crushed to death beneath the
weight of a pyramid of blessings that lies like lead upon my chest and
reaches to the ceiling. Kind words--fond care, and sweet
attentions--they bow me down to the earth! I am stifling beneath the
burden of their silent reproaches. Two and two are four; and four and
four is eight; eight times locked should be secure--but there is a worm
that dieth not, and a fire that is not quenched."
"Oh! don't come in here, Colonel Damer," poor Bella would exclaim, as
the unhappy man would creep to the foot of the bed and stand listening,
with blanched cheeks, to the delirious ravings of his wife. "She doesn't
know what she is saying, remember; and she will be better to-morrow,
doubtless. Don't distress yourself more, by listening to all this
nonsense."
"I don't believe she will ever be better, Mrs. Clayton," he replied, on
one of these occasions. This was on the third day.
"Dearest!" the sick woman resumed, in a plaintively soft voice, without
being in the least disturbed by the conversation around her, "if you
have ever loved me, you will believe in this hour that I love you in
return. If you have given me your love, I have given you more than my
life."
"Does she speak of me?" demanded Colonel Damer.
"I think so," said Bella Clayton, sadly.
"Take it off! take it off!" cried Mrs. Damer, starting with
terror--"this box--this iron-clamped box which presses on my soul. What
have I done? Where shall I go? How am I to meet him again?"
"What does she say?" asked the Colonel, trembling.
"Colonel Damer, I must beg you to quit the room," said Bella, weeping.
"I cannot bear to stay here with both of you. Pray leave me alone with
Blanche until she is quieter."
And so the husband left the chamber, with fellow tears in his eyes, and
she set herself to the painful task of attempting to soothe the
delirious woman.
"If he would only strike me," moaned Mrs. Damer, "or frown at me, or
tell me that I lie, I could bear it better; but he is killing me with
kindness. Where is the box?--open it--let him see all. I am ready to
die. But I forgot--there is no key, and no one shall touch it: it is
mine--mine. Hark! I hear it! I hear it! How could I put it there? Let me
go--no one shall hold me! Let me go, I say--I _hear_ it; and--and--the
world is nothing to me!"
At last, when they had almost despaired of ever seeing her sleep again,
there came an uninterrupted hour of repose from sheer weariness; and
then wide-open hollow eyes--a changed voice sounding with the
question--"Bella! have I been ill?" and Mrs. Damer's delirium was over.
Over with her life. For on his next visit Dr. Barlow found her sensible
but cold and pulseless, and broke to her friends the news that twelve
hours more would end her existence.
Colonel Damer went wild, and telegraphed at once to London for men who
arrived when his wife was ready to be coffined. Bella heard the decree
and wept silently; and a great gloom fell upon the guests of Molton
Chase, who had been left altogether on poor Harry's hands since Mrs.
Damer's illness.
The dying woman lay very silent and exhausted for some time after she
had waked from that brief, memory-restoring sleep. When she next spoke,
she said, observing her cousin's swollen eyes--
"Am I dying, Bella?"
Poor little Mrs. Clayton did not at all know what answer to make to such
a direct question, but she managed to stammer out something which,
whatever it was meant for, was taken as affirmative by the one it most
concerned.
"I thought so. Shall I never be able to get out of bed again?"
"I am afraid not, darling--you are so weak!"
"Yes, I am--I can hardly raise my hand. And yet I must rise if I can. I
have something so particular to do."
"Cannot I do it for you, Blanche?"
"_Will_ you do it, Bella?"
"Anything--everything, love! How can you ask me?"
"And you will promise secrecy? Let me look in your face. Yes, it is a
true face, as it has ever been, and I can trust you. Have the black box
moved out of my room before I die, Bella--mind, _before_ I die, and
placed in your own dressing-room."
"What, dear, your linen box?"
"Yes, my linen box, or whatever you choose to call it. Take it away _at
once_, Bella. Tell no one; and when I am dead, have it buried in my
grave. Surely you could manage so much for me!"
"And Colonel Damer?"
"If you speak to him about it, Bella, or to your husband, or to any one,
I'll never forgive you, and I'm dying!" cried Mrs. Damer, almost rising
in her excitement. "Oh! why have I delayed it so long, why did I not see
to this before? I cannot even die in peace."
"Yes, yes, dearest Blanche, I will do it, indeed I will," said Mrs.
Clayton, alarmed at her emotion; "and no one shall know of it but
myself. Shall I send it to my room at once? You may trust entirely to my
discretion. Pray, have no fear!"
"Yes! at once--directly; it cannot be too soon!" said Mrs. Damer,
falling back exhausted on her pillow. So a servant was called, and the
iron-clamped box was carried away from the sick-room and secreted in
Mrs. Clayton's private apartment. Mrs. Damer seemed so weak, that her
cousin suggested summoning her husband to her side, but she appeared to
shrink from an interview with him.
"I have nothing to say but what will make him sad to think of
afterwards," she murmured. "Let me die with you alone, dear Bella. It is
better so."
So Colonel Damer, although he went backwards and forwards all the night,
was not called at any particular moment to see the last of his wife, and
Blanche had her wish. She died alone with her faithful little cousin
before the morning broke. As she was just going, she said, in a vague
sort of manner--
"Tell him, Bella, that I forgive him as I hope to be forgiven. And that
I have seen Heaven open to-night, and a child spirit pleading with the
Woman-born for us; and that the burden is lifted off my soul at last."
And then she added solemnly--"I will arise and go to my Father--," and
went before she could finish the sentence.
Innocent Bella repeated her last message in perfect faith to Colonel
Damer.
"She told me to tell you, that she felt herself forgiven, and that she
had seen Heaven opened for her, and the weight of her sins was lifted
off her soul. Oh! Colonel Damer, pray think of that, and take comfort.
She is happier than you could make her."
But the poor faithful husband was, for the present, beyond all reach of
comfort.
The London doctors arrived with the daylight, and had to be solemnly
entertained at breakfast, and warmed and comforted before they were
despatched home again. The Christmas guests were all packing up their
boxes, preparatory to taking their leave of Molton Chase, for it was
impossible to think of festivities with such a bereavement in the house.
And Harry Clayton told his wife that he was very thankful that they
thought of doing so.
"It has been a most unfortunate business altogether, Bella, and of
course they all felt it, poor things; and the more so because they could
take no active part in it. The house has had a pall over it the last
week; and it would have been still worse if they had remained. As for
Laurence, I never saw a man so cut up. He has eaten nothing since your
poor cousin was taken ill. One would think she had been his sister, or
his dearest friend."
"Is he going with the rest, Harry?"