Myra Jerrold stood looking very calm and statuesque, with James Barron
holding her hand.
"Yes," he said, "I am going now, but only for a few hours. I cannot
live away from you. Only a fortnight now, Myra, and then good-bye to
cold England. I take you to a land of beauty, of sunny skies, and joy
and love."
"Can any land be as beautiful as that which holds one's home?" she said.
"No," replied Barron quickly, "but that will be your home."
"Trinidad," said Myra thoughtfully; "so many thousand miles away."
"Bah! what are a few thousand miles now? A journey in a floating hotel
to a place where you can telegraph to your father's door--instantaneous
messages, and receive back the replies."
"But still so far," said Myra dreamily.
"Try and drive away such thoughts, dearest," whispered Barron. "I shall
be there. And besides, Sir Mark will run over and see us; and Edith,
too, with her husband."
Myra's manner changed. The dreaminess passed away and she looked
quickly in her betrothed's eyes.
"Yes, I always thought so," he said merrily. "'Tis love that makes the
world go round. That Mr Stratton, your old friend, is below. Don't
you understand?"
"No," said Myra quietly, "not quite."
"I think you do, dearest," he said, trying to pass his arm round her,
but she shrank gently away.
"Very well," he said, kissing her hand, "I can wait. You will not
always be so cold. Mr Stratton came to see your father on business,
looking the lover from head to foot. I was sent up to you, and soon
after our dear little Edie is summoned to the library. Come, don't look
so innocent, darling. You do understand."
"That Mr Stratton has come to propose for Edie's hand?"
"Of course."
Myra's brow contracted a little, and there was a puzzled look in her
eyes as she said gently:
"Yes, he has been very attentive to her often. Well, I like Mr
Stratton very much, Mr Barron."
"James," he said reproachfully.
"James," she said, as if repeating a lesson, in a dreamy tone, and her
eyes were directed toward the door.
"I like him, too, now that I am quite safe. There was a time, dear,
when I first came here, and had my doubts. I fancied a rival in Mr
Stratton."
"A rival?" she said, starting and colouring. "Yes; but so I did in any
man who approached you, dearest. But there never was anything--the
slightest flirtation?"
"No, never," she said quickly.
"Of course not; and I am so happy, Myra. You, so young and beautiful,
to awaken first to love at my words. But are you not cruel and cold to
me still? Our marriage so soon, and you treat me only kindly, as if I
were a friend, instead of as the man so soon to be your husband."
Myra withdrew her hand, for the door opened, and Edith entered the room,
looking troubled and disturbed.
"Good-bye, then, once more, dearest," said Barron, taking Myra's hand,
"till dinner time. Ah, Edie!" he said as he crossed to the door, which
she was in the act of closing. Then, in a whisper: "Am I to
congratulate you? My present will be a suite of pearls."
Edie started, and Barron smiled, nodded, and passed out. As he
descended the stairs his ears twitched, and his whole attention seemed
to be fixed upon the library door, but he could hear no sound, and,
taking his hat and gloves from the table, he passed out of the great
hall, erect, handsome, and with a self-satisfied smile, before the
butler could reach it in answer to the drawing room bell.
"Wedding a statue," he said to himself. "But the statue is thickly
gilt, and the marble underneath may be made to glow without a West
Indian sun. So it was little Edie, then. He hasn't bad taste. The
dark horse was not dangerous after all, and was not run for coin."
He was so intent upon his thoughts that he did not notice a hansom cab
drawn up about a hundred yards from the house, in which a man was
seated, watching him intently, and leaning forward more and more till he
was about to pass, when there was a sharp _pst-pst_, which made him turn
and scowl at the utterer of the signal.
"Hi! What a while you've been."
"What the devil brings you here?" said Barron.
"To find you, of course," said the man sourly. "Thought you'd be
there."
Barron looked quickly toward Sir Mark's house, turned, and said sharply:
"What is it?"
"Jump in, and I'll tell you," whispered the man. "Getting hot."
Barron jumped into the cab, which was rapidly driven off after
instructions had been given through the trap to the driver, and the next
minute it was out of sight.
Meanwhile, Edie had stood listening till she heard the hall door closed,
and then turned to where her cousin was gazing thoughtfully at the
window, not having moved since Barron left the room.
"Listening to his beloved footsteps, Myra?" said Edie sarcastically.
Myra turned upon her with her eyes flashing, but a smile came upon her
lips, and she said:
"Well, Edie, am I to congratulate you, too?"
"What about?" flashed out the girl, bitterly mortified by the position
in which she had been placed. "Being made a laughing stock for you?"
"What do you mean, dear?" said Myra, startled by the girl's angry way;
but there was no answer, and, full of eagerness now, Myra caught her
hands. "Mr Barron said just now that Mr Stratton came to propose for
you."
"For me?" cried Edith bitterly. "Absurd!"
"But I always thought he was so attentive to you, dear. I always felt
that you were encouraging him."
"Oh, how can people be so stupidly blind!" cried Edie, snatching herself
away. "It is ridiculous."
"But, Edie, he was always with you. When he came here, or we met him
and his friend at auntie's--"
"Leave his friend alone, please," raged the girl. Then, trembling at
her sudden outburst, she continued seriously:
"Always with me! Of course he was: to sit and pour into my ears praises
of you; to talk about your playing and singing, and ask my opinion of
this and that which you had said and done, till I was sick of the man.
Do you hear? Sick of him!"
A mist began to form before Myra's eyes, gradually shutting her in as
she sank back in her chair, till all around was darkness, and she could
not see the unwonted excitement of her cousin, who, with her fingers
tightly enlaced, kept on moving from place to place, and talking
rapidly.
But there was a bright light beginning to flash out in Myra's inner
consciousness, and growing moment by moment, till the maiden calm within
her breast was agitated by the first breathings--the forerunners of a
tempest--and she saw little thoughts of the past, which she had crushed
out at once as silly girlish fancies, rising again, and taking solid
shape. Looks that had more than once startled her and set her thinking,
but suppressed at once as follies, now coming back to be illumined by
this wondrous light, till, in the full awakening that had come, she
grasped the sides of the chair and began to tremble, as Edie's voice
came out from beyond the darkness, in which externals were shrouded, the
essence of all coming home to her in one terrible reproach, as she told
herself that she had been blind, and that the awakening to the truth had
come too late.
"How could you--how could you!" cried Edie in a low voice, full of the
emotion which stirred her. "You thought I loved Malcolm? O Myry, as if
I should have kept it from you if I had. Like him? Yes, always as the
dearest, best fellow I ever met. I didn't mean it, dear. I never was
sick of him; but he used to make me angry, because I felt that he almost
worshipped you, and was making me a stepping-stone to get nearer. Well,
why don't you ask me why I did not speak?"
There was no reply, and Edie went on as if she had been answered.
"Of course I could not say a word. One day I felt sure that he loved
you, and would confide in me; the next time we met he was so quiet and
strange that I told myself it was all fancy, and that I should be a
silly, match-making creature if I said a word. Besides, how could I?
What would uncle, who has been so good to me, have thought if I had
seemed to encourage it? And you, all the time, like a horrid, cold,
marble statue at an exhibition, with no more heart or care, or else you
would have seen."
Edie relieved her feelings by unlacing her fingers, taking out her
handkerchief from her pocket and beginning to tear it.
"And now," she went on, "you tell me you believed that he cared for me,
and suggest that but for this idea things might have been different.
But they would not have been. You are a hard, cold, heartless creature,
Myra. He was too poor for you, and not likely to buy you diamonds and
pearls like Mr Barron does. Promise me pearls, would he! Insulting me
as he did this morning! Why, I would rather have Malcolm Stratton
without a penny than Mr Barron with all the West Indies and East
Indies, too, for a portion. Malcolm is worth a hundred millions of him,
and I hope you are happy now, for I shouldn't wonder if you've broken
the poor fellow's heart."
Myra could bear no more, and turning sharply toward her cousin she
stretched out her hands imploringly, as her pale face, with its wild
looking, dilated eyes seemed to ask for help. But the look was not
seen, for, bursting into a fit of weeping, Edie cried:
"But it's too late now! I hope you'll be happy, dear, and uncle
satisfied; but you will repent it, I am sure, for I don't believe you
love Mr Barron the slightest bit."
As she spoke those last words she left the room, and Myra was alone with
thoughts which grew and swelled till she felt half suffocated, while,
like some vibrating, echoing stroke of a distant knell, came the
repetition of those two words, quivering through every nerve and fibre
of her being:
"Too late--too late--too late!"
For the bud of love had been lying dormant in her breast, waiting to
expand, and it was opening fast now, as she felt, but only to be
withered as its petals fell apart.
Hurried on by Barron's impetuous advances, approved as a suitor by her
father, her betrothed's courtship had carried all before it. His
attentions had pleased her, and she had reproached herself at times
after he had complained that she was cold. One evening, when assailed
by doubts of herself, she had appealed to her father and asked him if he
wished her to marry Mr Barron, and she recalled his words when she had
dreamily said that she did not think she loved him.
"Why, of course I wish it, my darling," he cried; "and as to the love--
oh, that will come. Don't let schoolgirl fancies and romances which you
have read influence you, my child. You esteem Mr Barron, do you not?"
She had said that she did, and then let herself subside into a dreamy
state, principally taken up by thoughts of the change, the preparations
for that change, and visions of the glorious country--all sunshine,
languor, and delights--which Barron never seemed to tire of painting.
But now the awakening had come--now that it was too late!
That night, hollow-eyed, and as if he had risen from a sick bed, Malcolm
sat writing in his chambers by the light of his shaded lamp. The old
panelled room looked weird and strange, and dark shadows lurked in the
corners and were cast by the flickering flames of the fire on his left.
Since his return from the Jerrolds' he had gone through a phase of agony
and despair so terrible that his actions, hidden from all within that
solitary room, had resembled those of the insane; but at last the calm
had come, and after sitting for some time looking his position in the
face, he had set to work writing two or three letters, and then
commenced one full of instructions to Percy Guest, telling him how to
act when he received that letter, asking his forgiveness, and ending by
saying:
I cannot face it. You will call me a coward, perhaps, but you would
not if you could grasp all. I am perfectly calm now, sensible of the
awful responsibilities of my act, but after what I have gone through
since I have been here alone to-day I know perfectly well that my
reason is failing, and that in a few hours the paroxysm will return,
finding me weaker than before. Better the end at once than after a
few months' or years' living death, confined among other miserables
like myself.
It was my all--my one aim, Guest, for which I toiled so hard, fighting
for success. And the good fortune has come in company with a failure
so great that the success is nothing.
Good-bye.
He read his letter over as calmly as if it contained memoranda to send
to a friend prior to his departure on a short journey. Then, folding
it, inclosing it in an envelope, he directed it, and laid it carefully
beside the others on the table before sinking back in his chair.
"Is there anything else?" he said quietly.
At that moment the clock on a cabinet rung out the musical chimes of
four quarters, and a deeper toned bell sounded the hour.
"Ten," he said, smiling. "Two hours more and then the beginning of a
longer day."
He opened a drawer, took out a parchment label, and wrote upon it
carefully:
To Edward Brettison, when time is no more for his obliged and grateful
friend, Malcolm Stratton.
Rising from his chair he crossed to the cabinet, tied the label to one
of the handles of the clock, then opened the door beneath, and laid bare
a shelf of bottles, while a penetrating odour of camphor and other gums
floated out into the room--a familiar odour to those who study natural
history, and preserve specimens of insect or bird life.
He had to move two or three bottles to get at one with a large neck and
stopper, which he shook up and loosened several pieces of dull looking
white crystal. One of these pieces he turned out on to the table by his
letters, hesitated, and jerked out another. Then, setting down the
bottle, he crossed the room to where a table-filter stood on a bracket,
and returned with the large _carafe_ and a tumbler, which he filled
nearly full of water. These two he set down on the table, and taking up
one of the lumps of crystal he dropped it into the glass, taking care
that no water should sprinkle over the side.
He held it up to his lamp to see how quickly it would dissolve, set it
down again, and dropped in the second piece before beginning to tap the
table with his nails, watching the crystalline pieces the while.
"Quick and painless, I hope," he said quietly. "Bah! I can bear a
little pain."
He turned in his chair with a laugh, which froze upon his lips as he saw
his shadow on a panel a few yards away, the weird aspect of the moving
figure having so terrible an effect upon his shattered nerves that he
sprang from his seat and fled to the wall, where he stood breathing
hard.
"Yes, I know," he cried wildly. "Only my shadow, but it is coming
back--I cannot--it is more than man can bear."
There was a wild despair in his utterance, and he shrank away more and
more toward the doorway leading to the further room. Then, as if making
a supreme effort, he drew himself up erect, with his lips moving rapidly
in a low murmur, stepped firmly toward the table and seized the glass.