A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER PAYS EDITH AN UNEXPECTED VISIT.
Edith listened until she heard madam descend the stairs, when she
sprang to her feet in a fever of excitement.
"Oh, how I hate myself for practicing even that much of deceit!" she
bitterly exclaimed; "to allow her to think for a moment that I have
been won over by those baubles. Although I told her no lie, I do
intend to go down by and by if I can see an opportunity to get out of
the house. But I did so long to stand boldly up and repudiate her
proposals and all these costly bribes. Dress myself in those things!"
she continued, with a scornful glance toward the bed; "make myself
look 'pretty and nice,' with the price of my self-respect, and then go
down to flaunt before the man who has grossly insulted me by assuming
that he could bribe me to submission! I would rather be clothed in
rags--the very sight of these things makes me sick at heart."
She turned resolutely from them, and, drawing the stiffest and hardest
chair in the room to a window, sat down with her back to the
allurements around her and gazed out upon the street.
She remained there until her lunch was sent up, when she ate enough to
barely satisfy her hunger, after which she went back to her post to
watch for the departure of Mrs. Goddard.
The house stood upon a corner, and thus faced upon two streets--the
avenue in front, and at the side a cross-street that led through to
Beacon street. Thus, Edith's room being upon the front of the
mansion, she had a wide outlook in two directions.
Not long after stationing herself at the window, she saw Mrs. Goddard
go out, and then she began to wonder how she could manage to make her
escape before her return.
She knew that she was only a prisoner in the house, in spite of the
fact that her door was not locked; that Emil Correlli had been left
below simply to act as her keeper; and, should she make the slightest
attempt to escape, he would immediately intercept her.
She could not get out of the house except by the front way, and to do
this she would have to pass down a long flight of stairs and by two or
three rooms, in any one of which Emil Correlli might be on the watch
in anticipation of this very proceeding.
There was a back stairway; but as this led directly up from the area
hall, the door at the bottom was always carefully kept locked--the key
hanging on a concealed nail for fear of burglars; and Edith, knowing
this, did not once think of attempting to go out that way.
While she sat by the window, trying to think of some way out of her
difficulties, her attention was attracted by the peculiar movements of
a woman on the opposite side of the street--it was the side street
leading through to Beacon.
She was of medium height, richly clad in a long seal garment, but
heavily veiled, and she was leading a little child, of two or three
years, by the hand.
But for her strange behavior, Edith would have simply thought her to
be some young mother, who was giving her little one an airing on that
pleasant winter afternoon. She appeared very anxious to shun
observation, dropping her head whenever any one passed her, and
sometimes turning abruptly around to avoid the gaze of the curious.
She never entirely passed the house, but walked back and forth again
and again from the corner to a point opposite the area door near the
rear of the dwelling, while she eagerly scanned every window, as if
seeking for a glimpse of some one whom she knew. Moreover, from time
to time, her eyes appeared to rest curiously upon Edith, whom she
could plainly perceive at her post above.
For nearly half an hour she kept this up; then, suddenly crossing the
street, disappeared within the area entrance to the house, greatly to
the surprise of our fair heroine.
"How very strange!" Edith remarked, in astonishment. "She is certainly
too richly clad to be the friend of any of the servants, and if she
desires to see Mrs. Goddard, why did she not go to the front entrance
and ring?"
While she was pondering the singular incident, she saw the gas-man
emerge from the same door, and pass down the street toward another
house; then her mind reverted again to her own precarious situation,
and she forgot about the intruder and her child below.
The house was very still--there was not even a servant moving about to
disturb the almost uncanny silence that reigned throughout it. It was
Thursday, and Edith knew that the housemaid and cook's assistant were
to have that afternoon out, which, doubtless, accounted in a measure
for the unusual quiet.
But this very fact she knew would only serve to make any movement on
her part all the more noticeable, and while she was wondering how she
should manage her escape before the return of Mrs. Goddard, a slight
noise behind her suddenly warned her of the presence of another in the
room.
She turned quickly, and a low cry of surprise broke from her as she
saw standing, just inside the door, the very woman whom, a few moments
before she had seen disappear within the area door of the house.
She was now holding her child in her arms and regarding Edith through
her veil with a look of fire and hatred that made the girl's flesh
creep with a sense of horror.
Putting the little one down on the floor, she braced herself against
the door and remarked, with a bitter sneer, but in a rich, musical
voice, and with a foreign accent:
"Without doubt I am in the presence of Madam Correlli."
Edith flushed crimson at her words.
"I--I do not understand you," she faltered, filled with surprise and
dismay at being thus addressed by the veiled stranger.
"I wish to see Madam Correlli," the woman remarked, in an impatient
and bitter tone. "I am sure I am not mistaken addressing you thus."
"Yes, you are mistaken--there is no such person," Edith boldly
replied, determined that she would never commit herself by responding
to that hated name.
"Are you not the girl whose name was Edith Allen?" demanded her
companion, sharply.
"My name is Edith Allen--"
She checked herself suddenly, for she had unwittingly come near
uttering the rest of it. She went a step or two nearer the woman,
trying to distinguish her features, which were so shadowed by the veil
she wore that she could not tell how she looked.
"Ah! so you will admit your identity, but you will not confess to the
name by which I have addressed you. Why?" demanded the unknown
visitor, with a sneer.
"Because I do not choose," said Edith, coldly. "Who are you, and why
have you forced yourself upon me thus?"
"And you will also deny this?" cried the stranger, in tones of
repressed passion, but ignoring the girl's questions, as she pulled a
paper from her pocket and thrust under her eyes a notice of the
marriage at Wyoming.
Edith grew pale at the sight of it, when the other, quick to observe
it, laughed softly but derisively.
"Ah, no; you cannot deny that you were married to Emil Correlli, only
the night before last, in the presence of many, many people," she
said, in a hoarse, passionate whisper. "Do you think you can deceive
me? Do you dare to lie to me?"
"I have no wish to deceive you. I would not knowingly utter a
falsehood to any one," Edith gravely returned. "I know, of course, to
what you refer; but"--throwing back her head with a defiant air--"I
will never answer to the name by which you have called me!"
"Ha! say you so! And why?" eagerly exclaimed her companion, regarding
her curiously. "Can you deny that you went to the altar with Emil
Correlli?" she continued, excitedly. "That a clergyman read the
marriage service over you?--that you were afterward introduced to many
people as his wife?--and that you are now living under the same roof
with him, surrounded by all this luxury"--sweeping her eyes around the
room--"for which he has paid?"
"No, I cannot deny it!" said Edith, with a weary sigh. "All that you
have read in that paper really happened; but--"
"Aha! Well, but what?" interposed the woman, with a malicious sneer
that instantly aroused all Edith's spirit.
"Pardon me," she said, drawing herself proudly erect and speaking with
offended dignity, "but I cannot understand what right you, an utter
stranger to me, have to intrude upon me thus. Who are you, madam, and
why have you forced yourself here to question me in such a dictatorial
manner?"
"Ha! ha! ha!" The mirthless laugh was scarcely audible, but it was
replete with a bitterness that made Edith shiver with a nameless
horror. "Who am I, indeed? Let me assure you that I am one who would
never take the stand that you have just taken; who would never refuse
to be known as the wife of Emil Correlli, or to be called by his name
if I could but have the right to such a position. Look at me!" she
commanded, tearing the veil from her face. "We have met before."
Edith beheld her, and was amazed, for it needed but a glance to show
her that she was the girl who had accosted Emil Correlli on the street
that afternoon when he had overtaken and walked home with her after
the singular accident and encounter with Mrs. Stewart.
"Aha! and so you know me," the girl went on--for she could not have
been a day older than Edith herself, Although there were lines of care
and suffering upon her brilliant face--seeking the look of recognition
in her eyes; "you remember how I confronted him that day when he was
walking with you."
"Yes, I remember; but--"
"But that does not tell you who--or what I am, would perhaps be the
better way of putting it," said the stranger, with bitter irony. "Look
here; perhaps this will tell you better than any other form of
introduction," she added, almost fiercely, as, with one hand, she
snatched the cap off her child's head and then turned his face toward
Edith.
The startled girl involuntarily uttered a cry of mingled surprise and
dismay, for, in face and form and bearing, she beheld--a miniature
Emil Correlli!
For a moment she was speechless, thrilled with greater loathing for
the man than she had ever before experienced, as a suspicion of the
truth flashed through her brain.
Then she lifted her astonished eyes to the woman, to find her
regarding her with a look of mingled curiosity, hatred, and triumph.
"The boy is--his child?" Edith murmured at last, in an inquiring tone.
A slow smile crept over the mother's face as she stood for a moment
looking at Edith--a smile of malice which betrayed that she gloried in
seeing that the girl at last understood her purpose in bringing the
little one there.
"Yes, you see--you understand," she said, at last; "any one would know
that Correlli is his father."
"And you--" Edith breathed, in a scarcely audible voice, while she
began to tremble with a secret hope.
"I am the child's mother--yes," the girl returned, with a look of
despair in her dusky orbs.
But she was not prepared for the light of eager joy that leaped into
Edith's eyes at this confession--the new life and hope that swept
over her face and animated her manner until she seemed almost
transformed, from the weary, spiritless appearing girl she had seemed
on her entrance, into a new creature.
"Then, of course, you are Emil Correlli's wife," she cried, in a glad
tone; "you have come to tell me this--to tell me that I am free from
the hateful tie which I supposed bound me to him? Oh, I thank you! I
thank you!"
"You thank me?"
"Yes, a thousand times."
"Ha! and you say the tie that binds you to him is hateful?" whispered
the strange woman, while she studied Edith's face with mingled wonder
and curiosity.
"More hateful than I can express," said Edith, with incisive
bitterness.
"And you do not--love him?"
"Love him? Oh, no!"
The tone was too replete with aversion to be doubted.
"Ah, it is I who do not understand now!" exclaimed Edith's visitor,
with a look of perplexity.
"Let me tell you," said the young girl, drawing nearer and speaking
rapidly. "I was Mrs. Goddard's companion, and quite happy and content
with my work until he--her villainous brother--came. Ah, perhaps I
shall wound you if I say more," she interposed, and breaking off
suddenly, as she saw her companion wince.
"No, no; go on," commanded her guest, imperatively.
"Well, Monsieur Correlli began to make love to me and to persecute me
with his attentions soon after he came here. He proposed marriage to
me some weeks ago, and I refused to listen to him--"
"You refused him!"
"Why, yes, certainly; I did not love him; I would not marry any one
whom I could not love," Edith replied, with a little scornful curl of
her lips at the astonished interruption, which had betrayed that her
guest thought no girl could be indifferent to the charms of the man
whom she so adored.
"He was offended," Edith resumed, "and insisted that he would not take
my refusal as final. When I finally convinced him that I meant what I
had said, he and his sister plotted together to accomplish their
object, and make me his wife by strategy. Madam planned a winter
frolic at her country residence; she wrote the play of which you have
an account in that paper; she chose her characters, and it was
rehearsed to perfection. At the last moment, on the evening of its
presentation before her friends, she removed the two principal
characters--telling me that they had been called home by a
telegram--and substituted her brother and me in their places. She did
not even tell me who was to take the gentleman's place--she simply
said a friend; it was all done so hurriedly there was no time,
apparently, for explanations. And then--oh! it is too horrible to
think of!" interposed Edith, bringing her hands together with a
despairing gesture, "she had that ordained minister come on the stage
and legally marry us. From beginning to end it was all a fraud!"
"Stop, girl! and swear that you are telling me the truth!" cried her
strange companion, as she stepped close to Edith's side, laid a
violent hand upon her arm, and searched her face with a look that must
have made her shrink and cower if she had been trying to deceive.
"Oh, I would give the world if it were not true!" Edith exclaimed,
with an earnestness that could not be doubted--"if the last scene in
that drama had never been enacted, or if I could have been warned in
time of the treachery of which I was being made the victim!"
"Suppose you had been warned!" demanded her guest, still clutching her
arm with painful force, "would you have dared refuse to do their
bidding?"
"Would I have dared refuse?" exclaimed Edith, drawing herself
haughtily erect. "No power on earth could have made me marry that
man."
"I don't know! I don't know! He is rich, handsome, talented," muttered
the other, regarding her suspiciously. "Will you swear that it was
fraud--that you did not know you were being married to him? Do not
try to lie to me," she went on, warningly. "I came here this afternoon
with a heart full of bitter hatred toward you; in my soul I believe I
was almost a murderess. But--if you also are the victim of a bad man's
perfidy, then we have a common cause."
"I have told you only the truth," responded Edith, gravely. "Monsieur
Correlli was utterly repulsive to me, and I never could have consented
to marry him, under any circumstances. I know he is considered
handsome--I know he is rich and talented; but all that would be no
temptation to me--I could never sell myself for fortune or position. I
am very sorry if you have been made unhappy because of me," she went
on gently; "but I have not willfully wronged you in any way. And if
you have come here to tell me that you are Monsieur Correlli's wife,
you have saved me from a fate I abhorred--and I shall be--I am free!
and I shall bless you as long as I live!"