MARK FELT.
[Illustration: S]
Subjected as I have been in the last three hours to distress and
turmoil, I was delighted to find mademoiselle asleep, and to behold her
peaceful face. Gazing at it, and noting the happy smile which
unconsciously lingered on her lips, I could not but feel that, despite
the hideous revelations which lay before her, her lot was an enviable
one, allied as it promised to be with that of one of such high
principles as the marquis. Though I am old now and have had my day, the
love of the innocent and pure is sacred to me, and in this case it
certainly has the charm of a spotless lily blooming in the jaws of hell.
As it was late and I was almost exhausted, I began to think of rest. But
my uneasiness in regard to madame would not let me sleep till I had
made another visit to her room. So, leaving the gentle sleeper lapped in
serenest dreams, I proceeded to descend once more. As I passed the great
clock on the stairs, I noticed that it was almost midnight and began to
hasten my steps, when I heard a loud knock at the front door.
This is not an infrequent sound with us, but it greatly startled me this
night. I even remember pausing and looking helplessly up and down the
hall, as if it were a question whether I should obey the unwelcome
summons. But such knocking as speedily followed could not be long
ignored. So, subduing my impatience, I hastened to the door, and
unlocking it, threw it open. A gust of rain and wind greeted me.
This was my first surprise, for I had not even noticed that the weather
was unpleasant, so completely had I been absorbed by what had been going
on in the house. My next was the bearing and appearance of the stranger
who demanded my hospitality. For though both face and form were unknown
to me, there was that in his aspect which stirred recollections not out
of keeping with the unhappy subject then occupying all my thoughts. Yet
I could not speak his name, or put into words the anticipations that
vaguely agitated me, and led him through the hall and into the
comfortable sitting room so lately vacated by the marquis, with no more
distinct impression in my mind than that something was about to happen
which would complete rather than interrupt the horrors of this eventful
night.
And when the light fell full upon him, and I could see his eager eyes,
this feeling increased, and no sooner had his cloak fallen from his
shoulders and his hat left his head, than I recognized the prominent jaw
and earnest face, and putting no curb on my impetuosity, I exclaimed at
once, and without a doubt:
"Mr. Felt!"
The utterance of this name seemed to cause no surprise to my new guest.
"The same," he replied; "and you are Mrs. Truax, of course. Mr. Tamworth
has described you to me, also this inn, till I feel as if I knew its
every stone. I did not wish to visit it, but I could not help myself. An
unknown influence has been drawing me here for days, and though I
resisted it with all my strength, it finally became so powerful that I
rose from my bed at night, saddled my horse, and started in this
direction. I have been twenty hours on the road, but part of these I
have spent in the thicket just over against you on the opposite side of
the road. For the sight of the house awakened in my mind such a
disturbance that I feared to show myself at the door. A voice out of the
air seemed to cry, 'Not yet! not yet!' Nevertheless I could not go back
nor leave the spot, which, once seen, possessed for me a fatal
fascination."
I was speechless. Good God! were the old psychological influences at
work, and had they acted upon him at forty miles distance?
"You come from Albany?" I at last stammered forth. "You must have had a
wet time of it; it storms heavily, I see."
"Storms?" he repeated, glancing at the cloak he had thrown off. "Great
Heaven! my cloak is saturated, and I did not even know it rained. A
touch of the old spell," he murmured. "Something is about to happen to
me; something has drawn me with purpose to this house."
I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what that something was?
"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted air of one
recalling an experience, "I felt a pang shoot through my breast. I had
been looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere about the
building a light seemed to go out, for a pall of darkness suddenly
settled upon it, simultaneously with the cessation of that imaginary cry
which had hitherto detained me. Where was that light, Mrs. Truax, and
what has happened here that I should feel myself called upon to cross
this threshold to-night?"
I did not answer at once, for I was trembling. Was I to be subjected to
another such an ordeal as I had experienced earlier in the evening and
be forced to prepare, by such means as lay in my power, a much abused
man for a most dreadful revelation? It began to look so.
"What has called me here?" he repeated. "Danger to her or death to him?
They are thousands of miles away, and Tamworth could not have yet
reached them, but peril of some deadly nature menaces them, I know. A
stroke has gone home to him or her, and it is in this place I am to
learn it; is it not so, Mrs. Truax?"
"Perhaps," I tremblingly assented. "There is a gentleman here from
France who may be able to tell you something of the man and the woman
you mean. Would it affect you very much to hear disastrous news of
them?"
"I cannot say," he answered; "it should not. Mr. Tamworth tells me that
he has acquainted you with the story of my life. Do you think I should
feel overwhelmed at any retribution following a crime that was committed
almost as much against me as against the pure and noble being who was
the visible sufferer?"
"I shrink from answering," I returned; "the human heart is a curious
thing. If he alone were to suffer--"
"Ah, he!" was the bitter ejaculation.
"Or if she," I proceeded, "were bound by no ties appealing to the
sympathies! But she is a mother--"
"Good God!"
I had not thought it would affect him so, and stood appalled.
"A mother!" he repeated; "she! she! the tigress, the heartless one, with
no more soul than the naked dagger I should have plunged into her breast
and did not! Great Heaven! and this child has lived, I suppose; is
grown up and--and--"
"Is the sweetest, purest, most unworldly of beautiful women that these
eyes have ever rested upon."
I thought he would spring upon me, he leaned forward with so much
impetuosity.
"How do you know?" he asked, and my heart stood still at the question.
"Because I have seen her," I presently rejoined. "Because I have had
opportunities for studying her heart. She is called Honora, and she is
like Miss Dudleigh, only more beautiful and with more claims to what is
called character."
He did not seem to take in my words.
"You have been to France?" he declared.
"No," I corrected; "Miss Urquhart has been here."
He fell back, then started forward again, opened his lips and stared
wildly, half fearfully about the room.
"Here?" he repeated, evidently overcome at the idea. "Why did they send
her here? I should as soon have expected them to send her into the murk
of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent girl, you say, and sent
here?"
"They had reason; besides, she did not come alone."
This time he understood me.
"Oh!" he shrieked, "she in the house. I might have known it," he went on
more calmly; "I did, only I would not believe it. Her crime has drawn
her to the place of its perpetration. She could not resist the magnetic
influence which all places of blood have upon the guilty. She has come
back! And he?"
I shook my head.
"The man had less courage," I declared. "Perhaps because he was more
guilty; perhaps because he had less love."
"Love?"
"It was love for the daughter which drew the mother here, not the spell
of her crime or the accusing spirit of the dead. The woman who wronged
you has some heart; she was willing to risk detection, and with it her
reputation and life, to see if by any possibility she could venture to
give happiness to the one being whom she really loves."
"Explain; I do not understand. How could she hope to find happiness for
her child here?"
"By settling the question which evidently tortured her. By determining
once for all whether the crime of sixteen years back had ever been
discovered, and if she found it had not, to satisfy at once her own
pride and her daughter's heart by giving that daughter to as noble a
gentleman as ever carried a sword."
"And they are here now?"
"They are here."
"And she has discovered--"
"The futility of all her hopes."
He drew back, and his heavy breath echoed in deep pants through the
room.
"What an end for Marah Leighton!" he gasped.
"What an end! And she is here!" he went on, after a moment of silent
emotion--"under this roof! No wonder I felt myself called hither. And
she knows her crime is detected? How came she to know this? Did you
recognize her and tell her?"
"I recognized her and told her. There was no other course. We met in the
secret chamber, whither she had come to make her own terrible
investigations; and the sight of her there, on the spot where she had
left the innocent to die, was too much for my sense of justice. I
accused her to her face, and she crouched before me as under the lash.
There was no possibility of denial after that, and she now lies--"
"Wait!" he cried, catching me painfully by the arm. "When was this day?
To-day--to-night?"
"Not two hours ago."
His brow took on a look of awe.
"You see," he murmured, "she has power over me yet. When her hope broke,
something snapped within me here. I abhor her, but I feel her grief. She
was once all the world to me."
I recognized his right to emotion, and did not profane it by any words
of mine. Instead of that I sought to leave him, but he would not let me
go till he had asked me another question.
"And the daughter?" he urged. "Does she know of the opprobrium which
must fall upon her head?"
"She sleeps," I replied, "with a smile of the shyest delight upon her
lips. Her lover has followed her to this place, and the last words she
heard to-night were those of his devotion. Her suffering must come
to-morrow; yet it will be mitigated, for he will not forsake her,
whatever shame may follow his loyalty. I have his word for that."
"Then the earth holds two lovers," was Mark Felt's rejoinder. "I thought
it held but one." And with a sigh he let go my arm and turned to the
window, with its background of driving rain and pitiless flashes of
lightning.
I took the opportunity to excuse myself for a few minutes, and hurrying
again into the hall, hastened, with nervous fear and an agitation
greatly heightened by the unexpected interview I had just been through,
to the now oft-opened door leading into the oak parlor.
I found it closed but not locked, and pushing it open, listened for a
moment, then took a glance within. All was quiet and ghostly. A single
candle guttering on the table at one end of the room lent a partial
light by which I could discern the funereal bed and the other heavy and
desolate-looking articles of furniture with which the room was
encumbered. Honora's flowers, withering on the window seat, spoke of
tender hopes not yet vanished from her tender dreams, but elsewhere all
was hard, all was dreary, all was inexorably forbidding and cold. I
shuddered as I looked, and shuddered still more as I approached the bed
and paused firmly before it.
"Madame Letellier"--it was the only name by which I could bring myself
to address her at that instant--"there is one gleam of brightness in
your sky. The marquis knows the story of your guilt, yet consents to
marry your daughter."
I received no reply.
Shaken by fresh doubts, and moved by an inexplicable terror, I stood
still for a moment gathering up my strength, then I repeated my words,
this time with sharp emphasis and scarcely concealed importunity.
"Madame," said I, "the marquis knows your guilt, yet consents to marry
your daughter."
But the silence within remained unbroken, and not a movement displaced
the somber falling curtains.
Agitated beyond endurance, I stretched forth my hands and drew those
curtains aside. An unexpected sight met my eyes. There was no madame
there; the bed was empty.