If Sydney's heart had been less hard than marble she must have pitied
the beautiful, unfortunate young sister so sadly rehearsing the story of
her terrible wrongs.
But she uttered no word of sympathy or pity, she did not take the golden
head upon her breast and weep over it as a loving sister would have
done. She only said, in her cold, hard, jealous voice:
"Go on, Queenie. You went home to papa then?"
"No, I did not. I went back to the beautiful cottage where I had lived
in a fool's Paradise one fatal year. Before I reached there I saw _him_
standing alone on the banks of the river. I told you I thirsted for his
blood. Nothing could have cooled the fire of my terrible hate but his
life-blood poured out in a free libation. His back was turned to me, he
neither saw nor heard me. I crept up behind him, I--oh, Sydney, do not
look at me so! Remember it was not little Queenie, but a woman gone mad
over her terrible wrongs. I could not help it. I put my hand on his
shoulder and pushed him down into the river!"
"You are even worse than I thought you, Queenie," exclaimed her sister;
"yet you--a Magdalen, a murderess--you dared to come back to us and to
marry Captain Ernscliffe!"
"I disclaim either of the hard names you have called me, Sydney," her
sister answered, defiantly. "I have been deeply sinned against, but I
have not sinned. I had no intention of evil when I eloped with Leon
Vinton. I thought I was his wife when I lived with him. When I pushed
him into the river it was a simple act of justice. If I had gone home to
papa and told him my wrongs, and he had killed Leon Vinton, society
would have applauded the act and any jury would have acquitted him. It
was right for me to punish him. I gloried in the deed."
Sydney made a gesture of abhorrence.
"The only pity," continued the actress, passionately, "is that I did not
succeed in my revenge. He rose upon the water once after I pushed him
in, and saw me on the bank. Then he shook his fist at me and shouted,
with his mouth full of water: 'If I live I will have revenge for this!'
Then he went under again, and I ran away and went home to papa."
"Then he was not drowned, after all?" said Sydney.
"No, he was saved from a watery grave, and forthwith began to dog my
footsteps again, though so cautiously that I never dreamed but that he
was dead. The night I was married I saw him looking in the window at me,
but I took him for a ghost or an illusion of fancy, never for a moment
as a living creature. But in the moment that I was made a bride he sent
me a bouquet. I inhaled the perfume and fell senseless. It was drugged
with a powerful sleeping potion. I was not dead, only asleep and
unconscious, when they buried me. Leon Vinton resurrected me that night,
and confined me as a hated prisoner at the cottage to which he had taken
me a happy, thoughtless young bride. That was his diabolical revenge. He
knew where I was all the time, but he waited until the full cup of
happiness was pressed to my lips, then dashed it away, and spilled the
precious wine forever."
She looked at her elder sister with a tearless agony in her pansy-blue
eyes, but Sydney only said, impatiently:
"I am anxious to hear how you happened to become such a noted actress."
"A few months after my supposed death, Leon Vinton was killed by the
outraged father of a young girl whom he had basely betrayed. In the
consequent excitement my prison door was left open, and I escaped and
went back to the city, toiling on through the stormy, winter weather as
though it was summer time, in my joy at the thought of going back to my
home again."
She wrung her jeweled hands and groaned aloud.
"Oh, Heaven! how little I dreamed of the changes that awaited me in the
home from which I had been carried a seeming corpse but a few months
before. Papa was dead, the rest of you were gone to Europe; there were
strangers in the house. Staggering blindly along, almost overwhelmed by
the shock of my father's loss, I went to my husband's home. Alas! he,
too, was traveling abroad. My last prop was swept from under me. I was
homeless, friendless, penniless and forsaken in the great, heartless
city, alone in the streets at night, beaten and tossed about by the wind
and storm."
"Oh, if she had but died then!" breathed Sydney, inaudibly.
"Sydney, try to put yourself in my place for a moment. You who have lain
in luxury's silken lap all your life--who have never known a sorrow.
Think of your wronged little sister alone and friendless in the dark and
dangerous streets of the city, buffeted by the wintery storms. Surely,
then, you will feel some pity for all that I have endured."
Sydney would not even look at the sorrowful face; her ears were deaf to
the tremulous, appealing voice.
"Go on with your story," she said, coldly. "These digressions are
wearisome. What happened to you then?"
But Queenie had thrown herself back on the divan, with her white hands
over her face, and for a moment a profound silence reigned throughout
the room. The little French pendule on the mantel was ticking the hours
toward noon, but neither of the two women, in their all-absorbing
interest in the present, seemed to remember that the actress had made an
appointment with Captain Ernscliffe at that hour. Presently Queenie
spoke in a faint and mournful voice.
"Sydney, I cannot go on now; I am too faint and exhausted. These painful
recollections have wearied and depressed me. Wait a little. I must
rest."
"You have come so near to the end of the story, surely you can finish it
now," objected Sydney, unfeelingly.
The actress did not speak for a moment; the small hands dropped away
from her face, and she lay still, with her long-fringed lashes resting
on her white cheek, a look of pain and exhaustion on her delicate lips.
Sydney rose and walked impatiently up and down the floor.
"Sydney," said her sister presently, "there is some wine and glasses on
the cabinet there. Will you give me a few drops? Perhaps it may rally my
fainting strength."
Sydney went to the cabinet and found a flask of port wine and delicate
little crystal glasses.
She poured a little into a glass and looked over at her sister.
Her eyes were still closed, and she looked death-like and pallid as she
lay there in her velvet dress and rich surroundings.
A terrible look came into Sydney's face. She put her hand into her bosom
and drew out a little vial, unstoppered it, and poured a few drops into
the wine.
Then she crossed the room to Queenie's side. Her eyes were burning with
some inward fire.
"Here, Queenie," she said, "drink your wine."