AN UNINVITED GUEST.
Sir Jasper Kingsland stood moodily alone. He was in the library,
standing by the window--that very window through which, one stormy
night scarcely a month before, he had admitted Achmet the Astrologer.
He stood there with a face of such dark gloom that all the brightness
of the sunlit April day could not cast one enlivening gleam.
He stood there scowling darkly upon it all, so lost in his own somber
thoughts that he did not hear the library door open, nor the soft
rustle of a woman's dress as she halted on the threshold.
A fair and stately lady, with a proud, colorless face lighted up with
pale-blue eyes, and with bands of pale flaxen hair pushed away under a
dainty lace cap--a lady who looked scarce thirty, although almost ten
years older, unmistakably handsome, unmistakably proud. It was Olivia,
Lady Kingsland.
"Alone, Sir Jasper!" a musical voice said. "May I come in, or do you
prefer solitude and your own thoughts?"
The sweet voice--soft and low, as a lady's voice should be--broke the
somber spell that bound him. He wheeled round, his dark, moody face
lighting up at sight of her, as all the glorious morning sunshine never
could have lighted it. That one radiant look would have told you how
he loved his wife.
"You, Olivia?" he cried, advancing. "Surely this is a surprise! My
dearest, is it quite prudent in you to leave your room?"
He took the slender, white-robed figure in his arms, and kissed her as
tenderly as a bridegroom of a week might have done. Lady Kingsland
laughed a soft, tinkling little laugh.
"A month is quite long enough to be a prisoner, Jasper, even although a
prisoner of state. And on my boy's christening fete--the son and heir
I have desired so long--ah, surely a weaker mother than I might essay
to quit her room."
The moody darkness, like a palpable frown, swept over the baronet's
face again at her words.
"Is he dressed?" he asked.
"He is dressed and asleep, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon, his
godmother and godfather, are hovering over the crib like twin guardian
angels. And Mildred sits _en grande tenue_ on her cricket, in a
speechless trance of delight, and nurse rustles about in her new silk
gown and white lace cap with an air of importance and self-complacency
almost indescribable. The domestic picture only wants papa and mamma
to make it complete."
She laughed as she spoke, a little sarcastically; but Sir Jasper's
attempt even to smile was a ghastly failure.
Lady Kingsland folded both her hands on his shoulder, and looked up in
his face with anxious, searching eyes.
"What is it?" she asked.
The baronet laughed uneasily.
"What is what?"
"This gloom, this depression, this dark, mysterious moodiness. Jasper,
what has changed you of late?"
"Mysterious moodiness! changed me of late! Nonsense, Olivia! I don't
know what you mean."
Again he strove to laugh, and again it was a wretched failure.
Lady Kingsland's light-blue eyes never left his face.
"I think you do, Jasper. Since the night of our boy's birth you have
been another man. What is it?"
A spasm crossed the baronet's face; his lips twitched convulsively; his
face slowly changed to a gray, ashen pallor.
"What is it?" the lady slowly reiterated. "Surely my husband, after
all these years, has no secrets from me?"
The tender reproach of her tone, of her eyes, stung the husband, who
loved her, to the quick.
"For God's sake, Olivia, don't ask me!" he cried passionately. "It
would be sheerest nonsense in your eyes, I know. You would but laugh
at what half drives me mad!"
Jasper!"
"Don't look at me with that reproachful face, Olivia! It is true. You
would look upon it as sheerest folly, I tell you, and laugh at me for a
credulous fool."
"No," said Lady Kingsland, quietly, and a little coldly. "You know me
better. I could never laugh at what gives my husband pain."
"Pain! I have lived in torment ever since, and yet--who knows?--it may
be absurdest jugglery. But he told me the past so truly--my very
thoughts! And no one could know what happened in Spain so many years
ago! Oh, I must believe it--I can not help it--and that belief will
drive me mad!"
Lady Kingsland stood looking and listening, in pale wonder.
"I don't understand a word of this," she said, slowly. "Will you tell
me, Sir Jasper, or am I to understand you have secrets your wife may
not share?"
"My own dear wife," he said--"my best beloved--Heaven knows, if I have
one secret from you, I keep it that I may save you sorrow. Not one
cloud should ever darken the sunshine of your sky, if I had my way.
You are right--I have a secret--a secret of horror, and dread, and
dismay--a terrible secret that sears my brain and burns my heart!
Olivia, my darling, its very horror prevents my telling it to you!"
"Does it concern our boy?" she asked, quickly.
"Yes!" with a groan. "Now you can understand its full terror. It
menaces the son I love more than life. I thought to keep it from you;
I tried to appear unchanged; but it seems I have failed miserably."
"And you will not tell me what this secret is?"
"I dare not! I would not have you suffer as I suffer."
"A moment ago you said I would laugh at it and you. Your terms are
inconsistent, Sir Jasper."
"Spare me, Olivia!--I scarce know what I say--and do not be angry."
She drew her hands coldly and haughtily away from his grasp. She was a
thoroughly proud woman, and his secrecy stung her.
"I am not angry, Sir Jasper. Keep your secret, if you will. I was
foolish enough to fancy I had right to know of any danger that menaces
my baby, but it appears I was mistaken. In half an hour the carriages
will start for the church. You will find us all in the nursery."
She was sweeping proudly away in silent anger, but the baronet strode
after her and caught her arm.
"You will know this!" he said, huskily. "Olivia, Olivia! you are cruel
to yourself and to me, but you shall hear--part, at least. I warn you,
however, you will be no happier for knowing."
"Go on," she said, steadily.
He turned from her, walked to the window, and kept his back to her
while he spoke.
"You have no faith in fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers, and
the like, have you, Olivia?"
"Most certainly not!"
"Then what I have to say will scarcely trouble you as it troubles
me--for I believe; and the prediction of an astrologer has ruined my
peace for the past month."
"Is that all? The mountain in labor has brought forth a mouse. My
dear Sir Jasper, how can you be so simply credulous?"
"I knew you would laugh," said Sir Jasper, moodily; "I said so. But
laugh if you can. I believe!"
"Was the prediction very terrible, then?" asked his wife, with a smile.
"Pray tell me all about it."
"It was terrible," her husband replied, sternly. "The living horror it
has cast over me might have told you that. Listen, Olivia! On that
night of our baby boy's birth, after I left you and came here, I stood
by this window and saw a spectral face gleaming through the glass. It
was the face of a man--a belated wayfarer--who adjured me, in the
Savior's name, to let him in."
"Well, you let him in, I suppose?"
"I let him in--a strange-looking object, Olivia, like no creature I
ever saw before, with flowing beard and hair silver-white--"
"False, no doubt."
"He wore a long, disguising cloak and a skull-cap," went on Sir Jasper,
"and his face was blanched to a dull dead white. He would have looked
like a resuscitated corpse, only for a pair of burning black eyes."
"Quite a startling apparition! Melodramatic in the extreme! And this
singular being--what was he? Clairvoyant, astrologer, what?"
"Astrologer--an Eastern astrologer--Achmet by name."
"And who, probably, never was further than London in his life-time. A
well-got-up charlatan, no doubt."
"Charlatan he may have been; Englishman he was not. His face, his
speech, convinced me of that. And, Olivia, charlatan or no, he told me
my past life as truly as I knew it myself."
Lady Kingsland listened with a quiet smile.
"No doubt he has been talking to the good people of the village and to
the servants in the house."
"Neither the people of the village nor the servants of the house know
aught of what he told me. He showed me what transpired twenty years
ago.
"Twenty years ago?"
"Yes, when I was fresh from Cambridge, and making my first tour.
Events that occurred in Spain--that no one under heaven save myself can
know of--he told me."
"That was strange!"
"Olivia, it was astounding--incomprehensible! I should never have
credited one word he said but for that. He told me the past as I know
it myself. Events that transpired in a far foreign land a score of
years ago, known, as I thought, to no creature under heaven, he told me
of as if they had transpired yesterday. The very thoughts that I
thought in that by-gone time he revealed as if my heart lay open before
him. How, then, could I doubt? If he could lift the veil of the
irrevocable past, why not be able to lift the veil of the mysterious
future? He took the hour of our child's birth and ascended to the
battlements, and there, alone with the stars of heaven, he cast his
horoscope. Olivia, men in all ages have believed in this power of
astrology, and I believe as firmly as I believe in Heaven."
Lady Kingsland listened, and that quiet smile of half amusement, half
contempt never left her lips.
"And the horoscope proved a horrorscope, no doubt," she said, the smile
deepening. "You paid your astrologer handsomely, I presume, Sir
Jasper?"
"I gave him nothing. He would take nothing--not even a cup of water.
Of his own free will he cast the horoscope, and, without reward of any
kind, went his way when he had done."
"What did you say the name was?"
"Achmet the Astrologer."
"Melodramatic again! And now, Sir Jasper, what awful fate betides our
boy?"
"Ask me not! You do not believe. What the astrologer foretold I shall
tell no one."
"The carriage waits, my lady," a servant said, entering. "Lady Helen
bade me remind you, my lady, it is time to start for church."
Lady Kingsland hastily glanced at her watch.
"Why, so it is! I had nearly forgotten. Come, Sir Jasper, and forget
your fears on this happy day."
She led him from the room. Baby, in its christening-robes, slept in
nurse's arms, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon stood impatiently waiting.
"We will certainly be late!" Lady Helen, who was god-mamma, said,
fussily. "Had we not better depart at once, Sir Jasper?"
"I am quite at your ladyship's service. We will not delay an instant
longer. Proceed, nurse."
Nurse, with her precious burden, went before. Sir Jasper drew Lady
Helen's arm within his own, and Mr. Carlyon followed with little
Mildred Kingsland.
Lady Kingsland watched the carriage out of sight, and then went slowly
and thoughtfully back to her room.
"How extremely foolish and weak of Sir Jasper," she was thinking, "to
pay the slightest attention to the canting nonsense of these
fortune-telling impostors! If I had been in his place I would have had
him horsewhipped from my gates for his pains. I must find out what
this terrible prediction was and laugh it out of my husband's mind."
Meantime the carriage rolled down the long avenue, under the majestic
copper-beeches, through the lofty gates, and along the bright sunlit
road leading to the village.
In stole and surplice, within the village church, the Reverend Cyrus
Green, Rector of Stonehaven, stood by the baptismal font, waiting to
baptize the heir of all the Kingslands.
Stately, Sir Jasper Kingsland strode up the aisle, with Lady Helen upon
his arm. No trace of the trouble within showed in his pale face as he
heard his son baptized Everard Jasper Carew Kingsland.
The ceremony was over. Nurse took the infant baronet again; Lady Helen
adjusted her mantle, and the Reverend Cyrus Green was blandly offering
his congratulations to the greatest man in the parish, when a sudden
commotion at the door startled all. Some one striving to enter, and
some other one refusing admission.
"Let me in, I tell you!" cried a shrill, piercing voice--the voice of
an angry woman. "Stand aside, woman! I will see Sir Jasper Kingsland."
With the last ringing words the intruder burst past the pew-opener, and
rushed wildly into the church. A weird and unearthly figure--like one
of Macbeth's witches--with streaming black hair floating over a long,
red cloak, and two black eyes of flame. All recoiled as the spectral
figure rushed up like a mad thing and confronted Sir Jasper Kingsland.
"At last!" she shrilly cried, in a voice that pierced even to the
gaping listeners without--"at last, Sir Jasper Kingsland! At last we
meet again!"
There was a horrible cry as the baronet started back, putting up both
hands, with a look of unutterable horror.
"Good God! Zenith!"
"Yes, Zenith!" shrieked the woman; "Zenith, the beautiful, once!
Zenith, the hag, the crone, the madwoman, now! Look at me well, Sir
Jasper Kingsland--for the ruin is your own handiwork!"
He stood like a man paralyzed--speechless, stunned--his face the livid
hue of death.
The wretched woman stood before him with streaming hair, blazing eyes,
and uplifted arm, a very incarnate fury.
"Look at me well!" she fiercely shrieked, tossing her locks of old off
her fiery face. "Am I like the Zenith of twenty years ago--young and
beautiful, and bright enough even for the fastidious Englishman to
love? Look at me now--ugly and old, wrinkled and wretched, deserted
and despised--and tell me if I have not greater reason to hate you than
ever woman had to hate man?"
She tossed her arms aloft with a madwoman's shriek--crying out her
words in a long, wild scream.
"I hate you--I hate you! Villain! dastard! perjured wretch! I hate
you, and I curse you, here in the church you call holy! I curse you
with a ruined woman's curse, and hot and scathing may it burn on your
head and on the heads of your children's children!"
The last horrible words aroused the listeners from their petrified
trance. The Reverend Cyrus Green lifted up his voice in a tone of
command:
"This woman is mad! She is a furious lunatic! Dawson! Humphreys!
come here and secure her!"
"The child! the child!" she cried, with a screech of demoniac delight;
"the spawn of the viper is within my grasp!"
One plunge forward and the infant heir was in her arms, held high
aloft. One second later, and its blood and brains would have
bespattered the stone floor, but Mr. Carlyon sprung forward and
wrenched it from her grasp.
The two men summoned by the clergyman closed upon her and held her
fast; her frantic shrieks rang to the roof. Then suddenly, all ceased,
and, foaming and livid, she fell between them in a fit.