That wild and piercing cry penetrated to many ears. The manager and the
actress heard it where they stood conversing together, and though
Queenie did not know that it was Sydney's voice, still she grew pale as
death, and an indefinable fear crept coldly around her heart. The
manager put her into a chair, for he saw that she could not stand.
"Stay here until I return," he said, "I will go and see what has
happened."
He hurried round to the western door from which the sound had seemed to
proceed.
A little knot of theater _attaches_ had preceded him. They were gathered
round the prostrate form, and one had unwound the shrouding veil from
her pale face and exposed it to the air and light. Her dark eyes were
staring upward with a look of pain and horror in their starry depths,
her face was ashen white, her lips quivered with faint, anguished moans,
and her white, jeweled hands worked convulsively at the hilt of the
dagger whose deadly blade was buried in her breast.
She looked up at the manager as he bent over her. A gleam of recognition
came into her eyes.
"I am dying," she said, in a faint, gasping voice. "Let someone go into
the theater and bring Captain Ernscliffe! Don't let anyone else know I
am here! Queenie--I mean--Madame De Lisle--must not know! Let the play
go on."
At that moment they brought a physician, summoned in haste from his seat
in the theater. He knelt down and tried to draw the dagger from her
breast, but desisted in a moment and shook his head ominously.
"Tell me the truth," she moaned. "How many minutes have I to live?"
The physician looked down at her with a grave pity in his kindly eyes.
"Only as long as the dagger remains in the wound," he answered, gently.
"When that is removed you will bleed to death in a minute."
She clasped both hands around the murderous steel as if to drive it
deeper into her heart.
"Let it remain there, then," she gasped, "I have something to say
before--I go hence!"
"Great Heaven! who has done this?" exclaimed a shocked voice.
They all looked around. It was Captain Ernscliffe who spoke. He knelt
down by his wife and looked at the murderous dagger whose hilt she
grasped, with eyes full of horror. The pain in her face softened. She
put out one hand to him, and he clasped it in his own.
"Lawrence--I have been--cruelly murdered!" she moaned. "Let someone take
my dying deposition."
The manager hurriedly produced pencil and paper.
"I went into Madame De Lisle's dressing-room," she began. "She had not
come in, and I waited a little while, wishing to speak to her. Have you
put that down?"
The manager replied in the affirmative.
"I saw a sealed letter lying on the table," she went on slowly and
painfully; "I was jealous of Madame De Lisle, to whom it was addressed.
I thought my husband had written it. I opened it--I--read it."
The physician stopped her a minute to pour a few drops of something
between her panting lips. Then she went on:
"It was only a line imploring her to meet him for a moment at the
western door. No name was signed, but I was foolish enough to believe it
was--my husband."
Her dark eyes lifted to his a moment with a mute appeal for forgiveness
in their dusky depths. He pressed her hand and murmured:
"My poor Sydney!"
She lay still a moment while great drops of dew beaded her white brow,
forced out by her terrible suffering.
"Can we do nothing to help her?" Captain Ernscliffe inquired anxiously,
as he pillowed the dark head gently on his arm.
The physician shook his head gravely.
"No--nothing," Sydney answered him herself. "Only stay by me--till the
last. Let me finish my story."
Captain Ernscliffe wiped the cold dews of death from her brow and she
continued:
"I took Madame De Lisle's cloak and put it over my dress, I tied her
veil about my head and face, and--and--went to the western door--myself!
Oh! God, this dagger, how it hurts my side!"
A few moans of terrible agony, then she went on, gaspingly:
"There was a tall, dark man outside the door--he said: 'Is it you,
Queenie?' Then I saw my mistake--it was not my husband! But
I--thought--I might learn--some fatal secret of hers--so I answered
yes."
She shuddered from head to foot and a groan of mortal agony broke from
her white lips.
"That falsehood sealed my doom! He sprang forward without a word, buried
this dagger in my breast, and fled. It was Madame De Lisle's enemy. I
know now. I received in my heart the stroke that was meant for hers."
She paused, then repressing a groan of pain, said feebly:
"Have you written it all down?"
"Yes, madam," the manager answered.
"Very well. I want you all to go away now--I want to be alone--with my
husband. Don't let anyone else know I am here. The play must not be
stopped. Let him be all mine a little longer!"
They turned away in wonder at her strange words, and left her lying
there supported on her husband's arm--the beautiful woman with the
diamonds in her dark hair, and the dagger's hilt above her heart, her
white hand grasping it convulsively while she panted forth to him her
strange story in the briefest words she could find, for her strength was
ebbing fast, and her pain was becoming almost unendurable.
The manager went back to the actress and told her some plausible tale to
allay her fears, and, as Sydney had wished, "the play went on." The
foolish, fond old "Lear" ranted and raved his little hour, the cruel
sisters of "Cordelia"--even poor "Cordelia" herself--all died their
mimic deaths upon the stage--little dreaming that a tragedy in real life
had been enacted so close and so near, and that poor, erring Sydney lay
dead beneath the same roof where the vast throng of people wept and
applauded at the superb rendition of Shakespeare's grand creation, "King
Lear."
Yet so it was, for when Sydney had faltered out her mournful story, she
looked up at Captain Ernscliffe and said with a quivering sigh:
"I have done now, Lawrence, and the pain is so great I cannot bear it
any longer! Will you draw the dagger from my wound and let me die?"
But he shrank back aghast at her words.
"Oh, Sydney, don't ask me! Will you not see them all first, and say
good-bye--your mother, your sisters?'
"No, no, I want--none--but you," she moaned, "and, oh, my God, how
terrible the pain is! Yet, Lawrence--I will stay yet a little longer--I
will try to bear it still, if you will kneel down there and pray for me!
I am such a sinner, I am almost _afraid to die_!"
"Do you repent, Sydney?" he asked, gently.
"Do I?" she wailed; "oh, my God, _yes_! I am sorry for it all, now! Tell
her I tried to make atonement at the last. She will forgive me. Little
Queenie was always very tender-hearted. Pray for me now--ask God to
forgive me, too."
He bowed his head and prayed fervently for the welfare of the soul about
to be launched upon the shoreless waters of eternity.
When the low "amen" vibrated on the night air, she looked up and said
moaningly:
"Have you forgiven me, too, Lawrence?"
He bent and kissed the poor, pale, quivering lips.
"All is forgiven, Sydney," he answered, gently.
"Then call the physician," she moaned. "Let him draw this cruel steel
from--my breast! I cannot--bear it--any longer!"
But the physician recoiled as Captain Ernscliffe had done when she told
him what she wished him to do.
"I should feel like a murderer," he gasped. "You could not live a minute
after the blade was drawn out of your breast."
She turned away from him and put out her hand to the man she loved so
madly.
"Farewell, Lawrence," she said. "Think of me sometimes as of one
who--loved you--'not wisely, but too well!'"
Then, before they even guessed what she was about to do, she clasped
both hands about the dagger's hilt, and with a terrible effort wrenched
it from her breast and threw it far from her. Her heart's blood spurted
out in a great, warm, crimson tide over the bodice of her white satin
dress, she quivered from head to foot, and died with her dim eyes fixed
in a long, last look of love on Lawrence Ernscliffe's handsome face.
* * * * *
When the play was over, and the beautiful actress was leaving the
theater for the last time, someone touched her arm and detained her. She
looked up into the pale face of Captain Ernscliffe.
"Nay, Queenie," he said gently, "you need not shrink from me now. Sydney
has confessed all."
She looked up at him in wonder as he drew her hand lovingly within his
arm.
"She has given you up to me, and you know _all_?" she repeated, like one
dazed.
"Yes, Queenie, I know all, and I am yours alone now, for--prepare
yourself for a great shock, my darling--your sister, Sydney, is dead!"