Captain De Crespigny remained in his sitting-room till a late hour the
following night, looking over papers and preparing for his departure to
Yorkshire, after which he seated himself before the dying embers of his
fire to muse, for the twentieth time, on all that had passed between
himself and Marion. More in love with her than he had ever believed it
possible to be with any one, he recalled again and again to mind the
thrilling tones of her voice, and the matchless loveliness of her
countenance, till at length his attention being roused by the clock
striking two, he looked at the candles burning dimly in their sockets,
and prepared to wish himself good night.
When about to rise, his attention was suddenly arrested by a rustling
noise behind. The shadow of a figure became visible on the opposite
wall; it was distinctly outlined, and began slowly to move, when,
springing to his feet with an exclamation of astonishment, Captain De
Crespigny's eye fell on the tall figure of a woman enveloped in dark
draperies, who stood like a phantom close by his side, without speech
or motion. While his eyes were riveted in silent consternation on this
mysterious apparition, gradually the cloak was thrown aside, the veil
dropped, and a countenance became disclosed so white and rigid, so
soul-stricken in sorrow, so utterly without life or motion, that it
seemed as if nothing on earth could have looked so supernaturally
wretched. No moisture flouted over her large dilated eyes, which were
glassy and fixed, her parted lips were livid as death, a mortal
paleness was on her forehead and cheek, and not a sound became audible,
for the grave itself was not more silent. With her emaciated hands
riveted together, she stood the very image of woe; while nothing human
appeared in her face but its expression of mortal anguish.
Captain De Crespigny gazed at this mysterious apparition, unable to
believe the evidence of his senses. A vital horror thrilled through his
heart; his eyes closed as if he would willingly have closed his vision
against a sight which blasted him; but at length, by a strong effort
compelling himself to speak, he said, in a low, doubtful tone, "Mary
Anstruther! Impossible! I was told long ago you were no more."
A few quivering, inaudible murmurs, were for some moments her only
reply, as if unable yet to command herself, till at length, in a tone
so low, hollow, and concentrated, that it seemed scarcely human, but
resembled a dreary echo from the tomb, she said, fixing a ghastly look
on Captain De Crespigny,
"No wonder you disown the wreck! I scarcely know myself in mind or
body. Ages of misery have made me the creature I am! Not want, nor
suffering, nor humiliation, though these are what you consigned me to,
but the bitter agony of being despised and forgotten by yourself,--by
you for whom I steeped my very soul in guilt! You start!--You would
deny this; but when the Abbe Mordaunt, to gain possession of his
niece's fortune, wished me to assist in getting her driven from the
house, was it to serve him that I did so? Was it for his offered bribes
that I lent my aid to that guilty work! Oh no! but her child stood in
your way, and therefore I consented. You never knew what I had done for
your sake; but was it not one of the many promises that you have
broken, that sooner or later you would declare me--even me, the
wretched Mary Anstruther, your wife. Madness and despair drove me on! I
slandered her to Lord Doncaster--got her driven from his house--made my
brother believe she had misrepresented me--that she had caused our
disgrace and banishment--and you know the fearful end of all. I never,
never thought of blood! Oh never! He was mad then! He has been mad ever
since; and who can wonder! Her cry rings for ever in my ears, the
sharpest on earth--a cry for life. It haunts me night and day! Go where
I will, the shadow pursues me. A shapeless horror is on my mind! The
fear of discovery follows me like a spectre! A whispering sound is in
my ears, desolate and dreary thoughts, and fearful dreams, darkness,
poverty, and solitude; my pillow is a pillow of fire; my brain is
scorched,--wherever I turn, dead eyes are staring in their sockets at
me. Oh! if rivers of tears could restore that murdered being, I might
have peace!"
The wretched creature's words poured out like the rushing of a mighty
torrent, while her very reason seemed stretched to it utmost verge. She
leaned against a table, which quivered beneath her trembling form,
while her dragged and ghastly features were turned towards Captain De
Crespigny, and she fixed on him, with a look of dismal meaning, the
blackest eyes that ever vied with night. Vainly he endeavored to
withdraw his gaze from that wild and haggard countenance, or to shut
his ears against the tempest of her words; but there was a compression
at his heart, till his very breath seemed difficult to draw, while he
listened to her almost frenzied ravings. At length, in a voice of deep
and solemn import, he addressed her, while the color fled from his very
lips with agitation, and a cold shudder crept through his frame:
"Tell me, Mary, I adjure you, what all this means! I have sometimes
suspected that Henry De Lancey might be the natural son of my uncle;
never till this moment did I fully imagine that the murdered woman was
actually married. I must know all. Rather than remain in this suspense,
I will ask Lord Doncaster himself. I am not a man who would inherit one
acre unjustly, or sit tamely down under the suspicion that I might be
swindling another out of his rights. Vague apprehensions have sometimes
crossed my mind; but give me only a certainty one way or other. If
beggary itself be the consequence, I shall act like a man of honor, and
let the law take its course."
"Ask nothing! suspect nothing! The dark and dreadful story is buried in
her grave, never to be heard of more. It rests upon the Abbe Mordaunt's
conscience, and on him be the curse! Look here!" cried she wildly
throwing off her cap, while her hair, which streamed like a long banner
behind, was perfectly white and silvery. "This was the work of a single
day, and my heart is no less changed. The world itself has altered! Oh!
who can tell the unimaginable wretchedness that surrounds me! You
believed that I was dead! Would that it had been so! I wish it, and
well may you!" A strange smile gleamed upon her features for a moment,
and vanished. "When shall I become like the dust I tread on? When shall
I find beneath the green turf a chamber of darkness, of silence, and
perhaps of peace! Often, often do I ask myself why I consent to live,
when there are a thousand ways of escaping to my only refuge,--death!
It is a horrid thought, but it will come. There is no future in my
life! Houseless, friendless, penniless, and without hope,--a fiery
anguish is at my heart, as if hell itself were there!"
"Mary Anstruther!" said Captain De Crespigny, in a hurried tone of
great agitation, "I wronged you once. I acknowledge it with sorrow and
remorse. We were young indeed then, and you had no cause, surely, to
complain of my liberality. I offered you----"
"Yes! yes! yes!" replied she, with frantic vehemence, while her eyes,
glazed, and without moisture, were darkened by the shadow of deep
despair. "You offered me everything but what you had promised, and what
alone I would accept. You took from me every blessing of life, and
offered me money! I hated you for supposing me mean enough to accept
it. I would rather die in the street, or perish on a dung-hill, than
receive your alms. My name branded with infamy, not a roof to cover me,
and not a friend in all the earth to pity me; my brother now a terror
and a reproach to all who know him; crazed myself in mind and heart,
aloof from all earthly sympathy, branded and alone--what remains for
me? Yet I would rather die in an hospital than owe the very air I
breathe to you."
"Why, then, do I see you here?" asked Captain De Crespigny, endeavoring
to steady the tremulousness of his voice. "I would serve you yet, if
possible. I cannot entirely forget former times!"
"Former times!" exclaimed the miserable being, with a heavy sob, while
a rush of agony poured itself out in her voice, and clasping her hands
over her burning eyes, tears, such as she had not shed for ages, fell
like rain over her face. "Who talks of former times! You! who made my
whole life, past, present, and future, one long agony of suffering! Do
you remind me of former times! Oh! bring them back--those days which
now seem like a dream, when I was young, innocent, and happy! Who so
gay then as I--whose step so joyous--whose eye so bright--who so
admired; and," added she, her voice changing to a low, deep tone of
anguish, "who so loved? It was the delirium of an hour, and what am I
now? Of all the wretched outcasts on earth, the most wretched; while he
who has made me so thinks it degradation to waste a thought upon one so
lost."
There was a pause for some moments, and she added, in a deep,
sepulchral voice,
"A wide gulph separates us now. I know and feel that. I do not even
wish it otherwise. You are courted and admired in every house, while I
wander like a solitary ghost upon the earth! A furnace of guilt and
horror burns within me! No language is dark and dreadful enough to
express what I endure. The fresh green turf, and the blue sky above, I
dare not look upon; for they speak of days that are for ever past--of
that short summer filled with hope and joy, which has been followed by
this dreary, endless winter----"
Captain De Crespigny's eye quailed beneath the look of chilling despair
fastened upon himself. The hurricane of her feelings had been
exhausted, but there was an unearthly fixedness in the eye of Mary
Anstruther. In her voice, too, a cold, calm, almost spectral solemnity
of tone had succeeded to the wild expression of her manner. Her
expression was that of a lull after a storm, the ground-swell that
follows the hushing of a tempest; and she again stood as at first, pale
as death, still and motionless as a corpse, while the long drapery of
her cloak hung as a winding-sheet around her wasted limbs.
"If there be any thing on earth I can do for you, speak but the word,
and it is done," said Captain De Crespigny, with undisguised emotion.
"My purse, if you will yet accept it, is yours; but remember your very
life is at stake in coming here. I have shut my eyes already too long!
I cannot conceal from my own mind that the man who calls himself
Howard, and lives with Sir Arthur Dunbar, must be your brother. He has
hidden himself always from me, and I should scarcely even know him if
we met, but this shall not last. Tell him he must go! Once,--and once
only, I may for your sake connive at his escape from justice, but let
Ernest cross my path again, and no earthly power shall induce me to
neglect the sacred law that bids us deliver up the murderer to justice.
You also at St. John's Lodge, would once have followed the example of
your unhappy brother's crime. You escaped on that occasion, and I have
tried to convince myself it could not be,--that you were already in
another world,--but I will not, even for the sake of our early days, be
made a participator in crime. Go, then, to some distant country
together. The sword of the law is suspended over both your heads. Fly
for your very lives. The means shall not be wanting,--and tell your
guilty brother, as I tell you, that if he delays, cost what it
may,--and I know the cost to me will be great indeed, justice shall
have its course."
"Let me then drink my cup of sorrow to the dregs!" replied Mary, in a
low deep whisper. "He will not go! No earthly power can rule him,--no
terror in life intimidates him. For myself; I dread nothing now but a
prolonged existence. The sooner it is ended by any hand but my own, the
better. Yours is indeed the fittest. That will only complete the work
which you began. Give us up then to justice. In remembrance of those
days when among the green lanes of England you promised to love me,--me
only till death,--deliver us up now to the rope and to the scaffold.
Yes!" added she, with a look of fevered anguish, and a frightful
hysterical laugh, "This is as it should be; cheated of innocence,
blighted in affection, blistered in heart, trodden down with contempt,
driven almost to madness, and delivered up to death. Such be the fate
of all who ever trust in man."
"Leave me! leave me!" said Captain De Crespigny, visibly shuddering.
"If you desire vengeance, the sight of you, Mary Anstruther, such as
you are now, is more than I can bear. Leave me!"
"Vengeance!--No!--It was for a good purpose I came, and let me not
forget it," said Mary, in a low, broken, bewildered voice, while a
gleam like sun-light on the stormy wave seemed for a moment to restore
the softness and beauty of youth to her countenance. "I would save you
from death. My wretched brother long ago suspected that you were the
author of my ruin. That secret he never could wring from me, and he
never shall. Oh, no! I ask no revenge on you. I am grieved, even once
to have reproached you; but it is done, and my tongue shall be silent
in the grave before you hear it again. Ernest swore an oath,--a deep,
deep oath, that if you had indeed deceived me, nothing should screen
you from his vengeance. Already he was irritated, believing you wished
to marry Miss Howard, and on that subject you know how long he has been
crazed. Ernest never forgives, and never forgets. He lives but for
revenge. He would make you drink a cup bitter as his own. On that fatal
night to which I never dare to look back, the knife he used was
yours,--yes! it was stolen for the very purpose, and you know its
peculiar form. He intended, if detected, to accuse you as an accessary
to the murder. His plans are skillfully laid, and he threatens thus to
hurl you from the eminence on which you now stand in society----"
"Impossible! absurd! Nothing but derangement could make your brother
imagine any mortal would believe a fabrication so atrocious and
improbable!"
"It will at least excite interest, and his plans are but too well laid.
My story might then become public; and little as the world thinks in
general of such sorrows as mine, there are some who would pity me.
Ernest has the cunning of madness; and he thinks if you and Henry De
Lancey were removed, he must succeed to Lord Doncaster. If I live, his
strange and deadly scheme of revenge shall be circumvented; yet beware
of Ernest! Your life is not safe for an hour! Night and day,--alone or
in company, at your table or in your bed, wherever you turn, and
wherever you go, beware; for none but myself can tell what his love or
his hatred are. I would prevent mischief for his sake, and--and even
for yours."
A dark convulsion passed over the unhappy woman's countenance,--she
gazed for several moments at Captain De Crespigny in silent, disastrous
wretchedness, and with the livid smile of a broken heart, she
disappeared.
Captain De Crespigny scarcely slept that night,--the moaning of the
wind sounded dismal as the cry of departed spirits in his ears, and
when at last his eye closed in feverish, restless slumber, he suddenly
started up, thinking his name had been called out with a shriek of
anguish in accents to which he had long been a stranger, and unable to
tell whether it had been a dream or a reality, he watched for some time
in agitated silence, and towards morning fell into a deep repose.