ARIELLE’S VISITORS ARRIVE.
Oh, there are moments for us here, when seeing
Life’s inequalities, and woe, and care,
The burdens laid upon our mortal being
Seem heavier than the human heart can bear.
For there are ills that come without foreboding,
Lightnings that fall before the thunder’s roll,
And these festering cares that by corroding
Eat silently their way into the soul.
And for the evils that our race inherit,
Is no strength given us that we may endure:
Yes! for the Heavenly Father of our spirit
Permits no sorrow that He cannot cure.
PHEBE CARY.
It was noon, and the two friends, Arielle Montjoie and Net Fleming, were
sitting together in the morning room, trying to interest themselves in
the silk flower embroidery that Arielle had learned from the late
countess and was now attempting to teach Net. But the young lady was
rather absent-minded, and made many mistakes.
“Arielle, dear, I never heard of a blue rose in my life! Surely—” began
Net, but her teacher cut her short with:
“Am I beginning a rose with blue silk? So I am! I must have been
thinking of a violet,” and she unthreaded her needle and began to pick
out the stitches.
“You were thinking of Valdimir Desparde,” thought Net, but she said
nothing.
“My Lord Beaudevere and Miss Desparde,” said a footman, throwing open
the door.
The baron and his young ward walked into the room.
Lady Arielle started and dropped her embroidery frame, but the next
instant she recovered her self-possession and received her visitors with
all that patrician repose
“That marks the caste of Vere de Vere.”
Net followed her example, and when their mutual greetings were over,
seats were offered and accepted by the new arrivals.
Arielle was “expiring” for news of Valdimir, but not to have prolonged
her own life would she have put the question in regard to him before
learning whether he were worthy of her interest.
Net felt no such reluctance to make inquiries. She sympathized with
Arielle’s anxiety and almost shared it, and she compassionated the
dreary pride that prevented the young lady from relieving her own
suspense; and so she turned to Lord Beaudevere and said:
“It was very vexatious—Mr. Desparde having been robbed of that family
jewel, just as he arrived in the country after so long an absence. I
hope he has recovered it, or got such a clew that he may do so soon and
come home to his friends.”
“No, my dear, he has not yet recovered it, and he is still detained by
its loss and occupied in trying to regain it,” replied Lord Beaudevere,
evasively.
Lady Arielle secretly thanked Net for the question and eagerly listened
to the answer and to all the words that followed.
“What hope is there of his recovering it?” inquired Net.
“Every hope, my dear. A jewel of that value cannot long be lost.”
“And when shall we see Mr. Desparde—at Christmas? It is very near, you
know.”
“I trust so, my dear Mrs. Fleming.”
Net said no more, and after a few moments’ silence Lord Beaudevere
turned to his youngest ward and said:
“Arielle, my love, I have a little business to transact with you. Will
you favor me with a few minutes’ conversation in the library?”
“Certainly, my dear guardian, if our friends here will excuse us,”
replied the young lady, with a smile on her companion.
“Of course,” “Assuredly,” answered the two visitors, with ready
courtesy.
“And, Vivienne, you may enlighten Mrs. Fleming while we are gone,” said
the baron, as he gave his arm to his ward and led her out of the room.
When they reached the library, Lord Beaudevere made Arielle sit down in
the great arm-chair that had once been her grandfather’s.
Then he drew another and seated himself beside her and took her hand,
saying:
“Arielle, my dear child, I have both good and ill news to tell you. But,
to fortify your mind, I will tell you first of all that Valdimir
Desparde is alive and in health, and that he is worthy of your continued
regard.”
She had grown very pale at the first clause of his speech, and now, at
the concluding words, she flushed rosy red.
“A false story was brought to us, my love, through a mistake of the
detectives, and a _forged_ letter was sent to you by a dastardly
traitor! Valdimir Desparde was never faithless to you, Arielle; he was
never married, nor ever attracted to any woman save yourself.”
The baron paused to note the effect of these words on Lady Arielle.
Her face was radiant with the flush of joy, her eyes beaming with light.
“I had sometimes thought he was faithful, in the face of all adverse
evidence. In the face of his flight upon our wedding morning, and the
detective’s report of his wife and child, and the forged letter
confessing his marriage—yes, in the face of all these, I have in my
heart of heart dared to believe that he was faithful! Yet I could not
act upon this belief,” murmured Arielle, in a tone of joy too deep for
expression.
“The heart is often wiser than the head, my Arielle. And now, do you
surmise who the forger of that false letter was?”
“Yes, I do. It was Brandon Coyle.”
“The very same, my dear. The remorseless villain who has been at the
root of all your woes; whose fraudulent story, supported by unfortunate
circumstances, it was that sent my young kinsman, in his unstained
honor, a most wretched fugitive from his native land!”
“Oh, how could he do that?” breathed Arielle.
“You shall hear later, my dear. Brandon Coyle had all the subtlety,
duplicity, and malignity of an incarnate fiend. He paused at nothing.
Lately, I think, he has added murder to his list of crimes.”
“_Murder!_” uttered Lady Arielle, in a half suppressed cry.
“Yes, my dear. Very sorry am I to enter upon such a theme with you; but
I began by warning you, my love, that I had bad news to communicate as
well as good,” said the baron, solemnly.
“But—since Valdimir is alive, well, and constant, and since nearly all I
love in the world are under this roof, at this hour, I do not see what
ill news you have to tell that can affect us—Stay!” she suddenly
exclaimed. “Has that evil man—injured—killed—any one in whom we are
interested? Not—not his uncle?” inquired the young lady, in a half
hushed voice.
“No, not his uncle,” answered the baron.
“I—feared it might be so from the way in which you spoke, and from
remembering that the Uncle and nephew had left here in bad blood, and
the first had threatened to make a will and disinherit the last.”
“It was not old Mr. Coyle, who is alive and well. Yet it was some one in
whom we are all interested somewhat,” answered the baron, watching the
effect of his words on his hearer.
But Lady Arielle only looked perplexed and compassionate.
“Who was it, then, Baron?” she inquired.
“It was poor Kit Ken.”
Lord Beaudevere was hardly prepared for the effect these words had upon
Lady Arielle. She started forward, the blood rushed up to her temples,
her eyes dilated and fixed themselves in a prolonged stare upon those of
the speaker, and her voice was hoarse and almost inaudible as she echoed
the words:
“_Kit Ken?_”
“Yes, my dear. But what is the matter? Surely—”
But before the baron could utter another word Lady Arielle had fallen
back in her chair, her arms dropped by her side, her face pallid as that
of a corpse, her eyes closed, and her lips open.
“Arielle! Arielle, my child! Why—” began the baron, and then he put
forth his hand to ring the bell.
But her hand was laid on his to stop the action. Her touch was as cold
as ice, and her voice was like the sigh of death as she inquired:
“_When did this occur?_”
“This death? This murder?”
“Yes.”
“Thursday night, or perhaps Friday morning. The crime was committed at
night in a railway carriage. Let me get you a glass of wine,” said the
baron, rising then and hurrying to the dining-room, for he knew the ways
of the house.
There he found the table laid for luncheon, and the footman in
attendance.
Without calling on the servant at all he poured out a glass of sherry
from a decanter that stood upon the table and took it into the library
to Lady Arielle, who had already partly recovered from the shock she had
received.
She took the glass, drank the wine, and thanked the baron.
“My dear, I regret very much having given you so rude a shock. I would
not have done so could I have avoided the communication,” said Lord
Beaudevere, with much concern.
“Never mind, my dear guardian. Go on with your story. Do not be alarmed
for me; I shall not fail again,” said Arielle, rallying her spirits.
She did not tell the baron the real cause of her extreme agitation—the
dream, or vision, she had had of poor Kit Ken, on the very night of her
murder. She did not speak of this experience because she did not wish to
be laughed at by the baron as she had been by Net Fleming.
But, ah! Lord Beaudevere felt very unlike laughing at anything or
anybody under present circumstances.
“Are you sure, my dear Arielle, that you can be brave and strong enough
to hear the rest of this story?”
“Yes, I can, my guardian. Since Valdimir is alive, well, faithful, and
not far off from us, I am not afraid to hear anything you have to tell
me,” answered Arielle.
Then indeed Lord Beaudevere began, and with as much tenderness and
delicacy as it was possible to approach a subject so terrible and
revolting, he told her the story of that horrible midnight ride from his
own point of view, beginning with the engagement of the reserved
compartment on the Northwestern train, at Paddington Station, by an
unknown man, for himself and his female companion, whom Lord Beaudevere
did not hesitate to describe as Brandon Coyle and Kit Ken.
In this manner he led gradually up to the denouement of that night’s
doings, still from his own standpoint—telling how the man’s form was
concealed in a long ulster and his face shadowed by a cap with a low
brim or visor; how he must have murdered his companion and arranged her
figure and her dress to appear as if she were sleeping, and that he must
have done all this between Peterborough and the Grand Junction, where he
got off and quietly left the train to take some other.
How, at the Grand Junction, Valdimir Desparde, coming up from
Southampton, had got on the train, and being also clothed in a black
ulster, and having his head covered with a cap and his face shaded by
the drooping visor, and being of the same height and size of Brandon
Coyle, had been mistaken by the guard for the man who had engaged the
reserved compartment and had by him been ushered into it.
How, finding the compartment dimly lighted and occupied only by one
woman, whom he supposed to be sleeping, he had refrained from turning up
the light, lest it should disturb the sleeper, and had ridden all the
way to the Miston Branch Junction, and there left the train for the
Miston special, quite ignorant that his traveling companion for so many
hours was a corpse.
“And now, my dear Arielle, are you prepared for a misapprehension on the
part of the authorities that has subjected us all to some annoyance and
inconvenience?” inquired Lord Beaudevere, gently.
She changed color again, and began to tremble.
“They never can have suspected Valdimir Desparde of that assassination?”
she faltered.
“Yes, my dear, they have; but the suspicion can be easily disproved,”
the baron hastened to say, fearing the consequences of his announcement.
“Is that—is that—what has detained him at Yockley?” she inquired.
“Yes, my, dear, though his detention is but a matter of a few days. As
soon as we can find some of his fellow travelers who came up with him
from Southampton, to prove an _alibi_, he will be set at liberty.”
“‘Set at liberty!’” echoed Lady Arielle, her blue eyes dilating with
terror, with horror. “Why—why—he is not _restrained_ of his liberty?
Valdimir Desparde cannot be—they can never have dared to take _him_ in
custody!”
“My dear, the law is no respecter of persons; if he had been a prince of
the blood royal, they would have taken him into custody under the
circumstances! But do not be alarmed. It is an inconvenience, an
annoyance, but nothing more. There can be no danger. It is only a matter
of a little time,” said the baron.
“When—was—he—taken?” falteringly inquired the girl.
“On the very morning of his arrival at Miston, where I met him at the
station, and where we went to breakfast at the Dolphin. The murder was
not discovered until the train reached Yockley. Then a party of ladies
and children who were crowding into the carriage found out that the
woman in the corner was a corpse, and gave the alarm. Investigation was
made, and the guard, who had recognized Valdimir Desparde at the Grand
Junction, and mistaken him for the man who had engaged for himself and
his female companion the reserved compartment in which the girl was
afterwards found murdered, gave information which caused a warrant to be
made out for the arrest of Mr. Desparde.”
“How long has Valdimir been—in prison?” inquired Arielle, as if the
words choked her.
“Several days,” answered the baron, after a pause for calculation.
“And all this time you have left me in ignorance of his condition, Lord
Beaudevere!” said the girl, reproachfully.
“My dear, I had hoped that something would have turned up ere this to
have set him at liberty, and that you might never have had occasion to
be pained by the news of his arrest. I kept you in ignorance from this
hope,” replied the baron.
Many other questions were asked and answered, and then Arielle said:
“My dear guardian, you must take me to see my betrothed to-morrow. I
would go to-day were there time enough left.”
“But, my dear Arielle!”
“It is of no use to argue with me, Lord Beaudevere! Valdimir _is_ my
betrothed! All that has happened since that broken wedding-day is as a
dream dispersed. I am going to visit my betrothed in his trouble,”
firmly replied the young lady.
“Well, well, my dear, I spoke only in your own interests. If you are
resolved to go I will take you, and Vivienne also, to-morrow. And in
this case I think that my cousin and myself will have to trespass on
your hospitality to-night,” said the baron.
“It will be a comfort to have you,” replied Arielle, earnestly.
“I will send the coachman back with the carriage to tell the household
not to expect us home to-night. And we can be indebted to you for the
use of _your_ equipage to take us to the train to-morrow.”
This being agreed upon the baron arose and gave Lady Arielle his arm to
take her back to join their friends in the drawing-room.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]