Produced by Wendy Crockett, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
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A TERRIBLE SECRET.
A Novel.
BY
MAY AGNES FLEMING,
To
CHRISTIAN REID,
AUTHOR OF
"VALERIE AYLMER," ETC.,
AS A
TOKEN OF ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM,
THIS
STORY IS DEDICATED.
MAY AGNES FLEMING.
BROOKLYN,
_September_, 1874.
CONTENTS.
I.--Bride and Bridegroom Elect
II.--Wife and Heir
III.--How Lady Catheron came Home
IV.--"I'll not Believe but Desdemona's Honest"
V.--In the Twilight
VI.--In the Moonlight
VII.--In the Nursery
VIII.--In the Darkness
IX.--From the "Chesholm Courier"
X.--From the "Chesholm Courier"--Continued
XI.--"Ring out your Bells! Let Mourning Shows be Spread!"
XII.--The first Ending of the Tragedy
PART II.
I.--Miss Darrell
II.--A Night in the Snow
III.--Trixy's Party
IV.--"Under the Gaslight"
V.--Old Copies of the "Courier"
VI.--One Moonlight Night
VII.--Short and Sentimental
VIII.--In Two Boats
IX.--Alas for Trix
X.--How Trix took it
XI.--How Lady Helena took it
XII.--On St. Partridge Day
XIII.--How Charley took it
XIV.--To-morrow
XV.--Lady Helena's Ball
XVI.--"O My Cousin Shallow-hearted!"
XVII.--"Forever and Ever"
XVIII.--The Summons
XIX.--At Poplar Lodge
XX.--How the Wedding-day Began
XXI.--How the Wedding-day Ended
XXII.--The Day After
XXIII.--The Second Ending of the Tragedy
PART III.
I.--At Madame Mirebeau's, Oxford Street
II.--Edith
III.--How they Met
IV.--How they Parted
V.--The Telling of the Secret
VI.--The last Ending of the Tragedy
VII.--Two Years After
VIII.--Forgiven or--Forgotten?
IX.--Saying Good-by
X.--The Second Bridal
XI.--The Night
XII.--The Morning
CHAPTER I.
BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM ELECT.
Firelight falling on soft velvet carpet, where white lily buds trail
along azure ground, on chairs of white-polished wood that glitters
like ivory, with puffy of seats of blue satin; on blue and gilt
panelled walls; on a wonderfully carved oaken ceiling; on sweeping
draperies of blue satin and white lace; on half a dozen lovely
pictures; on an open piano; and last of all, on the handsome, angry
face of a girl who stands before it--Inez Catheron.
The month is August--the day the 29th--Miss Catheron has good reason
to remember it to the last day of her life. But, whether the August
sun blazes, or the January winds howl, the great rooms of Catheron
Royals are ever chilly. So on the white-tiled hearth of the blue
drawing-room this summer evening a coal fire flickers and falls, and
the mistress of Catheron Royals stands before it, an angry flush
burning deep red on either dusk cheek, an angry frown contracting her
straight black brows.
The mistress of Catheron Royals,--the biggest, oldest, queerest,
grandest place in all sunny Cheshire,--this slim, dark girl of
nineteen, for three years past the bride-elect of Sir Victor Catheron,
baronet, the last of his Saxon race and name, the lord of all these
sunny acres, this noble Norman pile, the smiling village of Catheron
below. The master of a stately park in Devon, a moor and "bothy" in
the highlands, a villa on the Arno, a gem of a cottage in the Isle of
Wight. "A darling of the gods," young, handsome, healthy; and best of
all, with twenty thousand a year.
She is his bride-elect. In her dark way she is very handsome. She is
to be married to Sir Victor early in the next month, and she is as
much in love with him as it is at all possible to be. A fair fate
surely. And yet while the August night shuts down, while the wind
whistles in the trees, while the long fingers of the elm, just outside
the window, tap in a ghostly way on the pane, she stands here, flushed,
angry, impatient, and sullen, her handsome lips set in a tight, rigid
line.
She is very dark at all times. Her cousin Victor tells her, laughingly,
she is an absolute nigger when in one of her silent rages. She has
jet-black hair, and big, brilliant, Spanish eyes. She _is_ Spanish.
Her dead mother was a Castilian, and that mother has left her her
Spanish name, her beautiful, passionate Spanish eyes, her hot,
passionate Spanish heart. In Old Castile Inez was born; and when
in her tenth year her English father followed his wife to the grave,
Inez came home to Catheron Royals, to reign there, a little,
imperious, hot-tempered Morisco princess ever since.
She did not come alone. A big boy of twelve, with a shock head of
blue-black hair, two wild, glittering black eyes, and a diabolically
handsome face, came with her. It was her only brother Juan, an imp
incarnate from his cradle. _He_ did not remain long. To the
unspeakable relief of the neighborhood for miles around, he had
vanished as suddenly as he had come, and for years was seen no more.
A Moorish Princess! It is her cousin and lover's favorite name for her,
and it fits well. There is a certain barbaric splendor about her as
she stands here in the firelight, in her trailing purple silk, in the
cross of rubies and fine gold that burns on her bosom, in the yellow,
perfumy rose in her hair, looking stately, and beautiful, and
dreadfully out of temper.
The big, lonesome house is as still as a tomb. Outside the wind is
rising, and the heavy patter, patter, of the rain-beats on the glass.
That, and the light fall of the cinders in the polished grate, are the
only sounds to be heard.
A clock on the mantel strikes seven. She has not stirred for nearly an
hour, but she looks up now, her black eyes full of passionate anger,
passionate impatience.
"Seven!" she says, in a suppressed sort of voice; "and he should have
been here at six. What if he should defy me?--what if he does not come
after all?"
She can remain still no longer. She walks across the room, and she
walks as only Spanish women do. She draws back one of the
window-curtains, and leans out into the night. The crushed sweetness
of the rain-beaten roses floats up to her in the wet darkness. Nothing
to be seen but the vague tossing of the trees, nothing to be heard but
the soughing of the wind, nothing to be felt but the fast and still
faster falling of the rain.
She lets the curtain fall, and returns to the fire.
"Will he dare defy me?" she whispers to herself. "Will he dare stay
away?"
There are two pictures hanging over the mantel--she looks up at them
as she asks the question. One is the sweet, patient face of a woman of
thirty; the other, the smiling face of a fair-haired, blue-eyed,
good-looking lad. It is a _very_ pleasant face; the blue eyes look
at you so brightly, so frankly; the boyish mouth is so sweet-tempered
and laughing that you smile back and fall in love with him at sight.
It is Sir Victor Catheron and his late mother.
Miss Inez Catheron is in many respects an extraordinary young
lady--Cheshire society has long ago decided that. They would have been
more convinced of it than ever, could they have seen her turn now to
Lady Catheron's portrait and appeal to it aloud in impassioned words:
"On his knees, by your dying bed, by your dying command, he vowed to
love and cherish me always--as he did then. Let him take care how he
trifles with that vow--let him take care!"
She lifts one hand (on which rubies and diamonds flash) menacingly,
then stops. Over the sweep of the storm, the rush of the rain, comes
another sound--a sound she has been listening for, longing for,
praying for--the rapid roll of carriage wheels up the drive. There can
be but one visitor to Catheron Royals to-night, at this hour and in
this storm--its master.
She stands still as a stone, white as a statue, waiting. She loves him;
she has hungered and thirsted for the sound of his voice, the sight of
his face, the clasp of his hand, all these weary, lonely months. In
some way it is her life or death she is to take from his hands
to-night. And now he is here.
She hears the great hall-door open and close with a clang; she hears
the step of the master in the hall--a quick, assured tread she would
know among a thousand; she hears a voice--a hearty, pleasant, manly,
English voice; a cheery laugh she remembers well.
"The Chief of Lara has returned again."
The quick, excitable blood leaps up from her heart to her face in a
rosy rush that makes her lovely. The eyes light, the lips part--she
takes a step forward, all anger, all fear, all neglect forgotten--a
girl in love going to meet her lover. The door is flung wide by an
impetuous hand, and wet and splashed, and tall and smiling, Sir Victor
Catheron stands before her.
"My dearest Inez!"
He comes forward, puts his arm around her, and touches his blonde
mustache to her flushed cheek.
"My dearest coz, I'm awfully glad to see you again, and looking so
uncommonly well too." He puts up his eye-glass to make sure of this
fact, then drops it "Uncommonly well," he repeats; "give you my word
I never saw you looking half a quarter so handsome before in my life.
Ah! why can't we all be Moorish princesses, and wear purple silks and
yellow roses?"
He flings himself into an easy-chair before the fire, throws back his
blonde head, and stretches forth his boots to the blaze.
"An hour after time, am I not? But blame the railway people--don't
blame _me_. Beastly sort of weather for the last week of August--cold
as Iceland and raining cats and dogs; the very dickens of a storm,
I can tell you."
He give the fire a poke, the light leaps up and illumines his handsome
face. He is very like his picture--a little older--a little
worn-looking, and with man's "crowning glory," a mustache. The girl
has moved a little away from him, the flush of "beauty's bright
transcient glow" has died out of her face, the hard, angry look has
come back. That careless kiss, that easy, cousinly embrace, have told
their story. A moment ago her heart beat high with hope--to the day of
her death it never beat like that again.
He doesn't look at her; he gazes at the fire instead, and talks with
the hurry of a nervous man. The handsome face is a very effeminate
face, and not even the light, carefully trained, carefully waxed
mustache can hide the weak, irresolute mouth, the delicate,
characterless chin. While he talks carelessly and quickly, while his
slim white fingers loop and unloop his watch-chain, in the blue eyes
fixed upon the fire there is an uneasy look of nervous fear. And into
the keeping of this man the girl with the dark powerful face has given
her heart, her fate!
"It seems no end good to be at home again," Sir Victor Catheron says,
as if afraid of that brief pause. "You've no idea, Inez, how uncommonly
familiar and jolly this blue room, this red fire, looked a moment ago,
as I stepped out of the darkness and rain. It brings back the old
times--this used to be _her_ favorite morning-room," he glanced at
the mother's picture, "and summer and winter a fire always burned
here, as now. And you, Inez, _cara mia_, with your gypsy face, most
familiar of all."
She moves over to the mantel. It is very low; she leans one arm upon
it, looks steadily at him, and speaks at last.
"I am glad Sir Victor Catheron can remember the old times, can still
recall his mother, has a slight regard left for Catheron Royals, and
am humbly grateful for his recollection of his gypsy cousin. From his
conduct of late it was hardly to have been expected."
"It is coming," thinks Sir Victor, with an inward groan; "and, O Lord!
_what_ a row it is going to be. When Inez shuts her lips up in that
tight line, and snaps her black eyes in that unpleasant way, I know
to my cost, it means 'war to the knife.' I'll be routed with dreadful
slaughter, and Inez's motto is ever, 'Woe to the conqueror!' Well,
here goes!"
He looks up at her, a good-humored smile on his good-looking face.
"Humbly grateful for my recollection of you! My dear Inez, I don't
know what you mean. As for my absence--"
"As for your absence," she interrupts, "you were to have been here, if
your memory will serve you, on the first of June. It is now the close
of August. Every day of that absence has been an added insult to me.
Even now you would not have been here if I had not written you a
letter you dare not neglect--sent a command you dare not disobey. You
are here to-night because you dare not stay away."
Some of the bold blood of the stern old Saxon race from which he
sprung is in his veins still. He looks at her full, still smiling.
"Dare not!" he repeats. "You use strong language, Inez. But then you
have an excitable sort of nature, and were ever inclined to hyperbole;
and it is a lady's privilege to talk."
"And a man's to act. But I begin to think Sir Victor Catheron is
something less than a man. The Catheron blood has bred many an outlaw,
many bitter, bad men, but to-day I begin to think it has bred
something infinitely worse--a traitor and a coward!"
He half springs up, his eyes flashing, then falls back, looks at the
fire again, and laughs.
"Meaning me?"
"Meaning you."
"Strong language once more--you assert your prerogative royally, my
handsome cousin. From whom did you inherit that two-edged tongue of
yours, Inez, I wonder? Your Castilian mother, surely; the women of our
house were never shrews. And even _you_, my dear, may go a little
too far. Will you drop vituperation and explain? How have I been
traitor and coward? It is well we should understand each other fully."
He has grown pale, though he speaks quietly, and his blue eyes gleam
dangerously. He is always quiet when most angry.
"It is. And we shall understand each other fully before we part--be
very sure of that. You shall learn what I have inherited from my
Castilian mother. You shall learn whether you are to play fast and
loose with me at your sovereign will. Does your excellent memory still
serve you, or must I tell you what day the twenty-third of September
is to be?"
He looks up at her, still pale, that smile on his lips, that gleam in
his eyes.
"My memory serves me perfectly," he answers coolly; "it was to have
been our wedding-day."
_Was to have been_. As he speaks the words coldly, almost cruelly,
as she looks in his face, the last trace of color leaves her own. The
hot fire dies out of her eyes, an awful terror comes in its place.
With all her heart, all her strength, she loves the man she so
bitterly reproaches. It seems to her she can look back upon no time in
which her love for him is not.
And now, it _was_ to have been!
She turns so ghastly that he springs to his feet in alarm.
"Good Heaven, Inez! you're not going to faint, are you? Don't! Here,
take my chair, and for pity's sake don't look like that. I'm a wretch,
a brute--what was it I said? Do sit down."
He has taken her in his arms. In the days that are gone he has been
very fond, and a little afraid of his gipsy cousin. He is afraid
still--horribly afraid, if the truth must be told, now that his
momentary anger is gone.
All the scorn, all the defiance has died out of her voice when she
speaks again. The great, solemn eyes transfix him with a look he
cannot meet.
"_Was to have been_," she repeats, in a sort of whisper; "was to
have been. Victor, does that mean it never _is_ to be?"
He turns away, shame, remorse, fear in his averted face. He holds the
back of the chair with one hand, she clings to the other as though it
held her last hope in life.
"Take time," she says, in the same slow, whispering way. "I can wait.
I have waited so long, what does a few minutes more matter now? But
think well before you speak--there is more at stake than you know of.
My whole future life hangs on your words. A woman's life. Have you
ever thought what that implies? 'Was to have been,' you said. Does
that mean it never is to be?"
Still no reply. He holds the back of the chair, his face averted, a
criminal before his judge.
"And while you think," she goes on, in that slow, sweet voice, "let me
recall the past. Do you remember, Victor, the day when I and Juan came
here from Spain? Do you remember me? I recall you as plainly at this
moment as though it were but yesterday--a little, flaxen-haired,
blue-eyed boy in violet velvet, unlike any child I had ever seen
before. I saw a woman with a face like an angel, who took me in her
arms, and kissed me, and cried over me, for my father's sake. We grew
up together, Victor, you and I, such happy, happy years, and I was
sixteen, you twenty. And all that time you had my whole heart. Then
came our first great sorrow, your mother's death."
She pauses a moment. Still he stands silent, but his left hand has
gone up and covers his face.
"You remember that last night, Victor--the night she died. No need to
ask you; whatever you may forget, you are not likely to forget
_that_. We knelt together by her bedside. It was as this is a stormy
summer night. Outside, the rain beat and the wind blew; inside, the
stillness of death was everywhere. We knelt alone in the dimly-lit
room, side by side, to receive her last blessing--her dying wish.
Victor, my cousin, do you recall what that wish was?"
She holds out her arms to him, all her heart breaking forth in the cry.
But he will neither look nor stir.
"With her dying hands she joined ours, her dying eyes looking at
_you_. With her dying lips she spoke to you: 'Inez is dearer to me
than all the world, Victor, except you. She must never face the world
alone. My son, you love her--promise me you will cherish and protect
her always. She loves you as no one else ever will. Promise me,
Victor, that in three years from to-night you will make her your
wife.' These were her words. And you took her hand, covered it with
tears and kisses, and promised.
"We buried her," Inez went on, "and we parted. You went up to Oxford;
I went over to a Paris _pensionnat_. In the hour of our parting we
went up together hand in hand to her room. We kissed the pillow where
her dying head had lain; we knelt by her bedside as we had done that
other night. You placed this ring upon my finger; sleeping or waking
it has never left it since, and you repeated your vow, that that
night three years, on the twenty-third of September, I should be
your wife."
She lifts the betrothal ring to her lips, and kisses it. "Dear little
ring," she says softly, "it has been my one comfort all these years.
Though all your coldness, all your neglect for the last year and a
half, I have looked at it, and known you would never break your
plighted word to the living and the dead.
"I came home from school a year ago. _You_ were not here to meet and
welcome me. You never came. You fixed the first of June for your
coming, and you broke your word. Do I tire you with all these details,
Victor? But I must speak to-night. It will be for the last time--you
will never give me cause again. Of the whispered slanders that have
reached me I do not speak; I do not believe them. Weak you may be,
fickle you may be, but you are a gentleman of loyal race and blood;
you will keep your plighted troth. Oh, forgive me, Victor! Why do you
make me say such things to you? I hate myself for them, but your
neglect has driven me nearly wild. What have I done?" Again she
stretches forth her hands in eloquent appeal. "See! I love you. What
more can I say? I forgive all the past; I ask no questions. I believe
nothing of the horrible stories they try to tell me. Only come back to
me. If I lose you I shall die."
Her face is transfigured as she speaks--her hands still stretched out.
"O Victor, come!" she says; "let the past be dead and forgotten. My
darling, come back!"
But he shrinks away as those soft hands touch him, and pushes her off.
"Let me go!" he cries; "don't touch me, Inez! It can never be. You
don't know what you ask!"
He stands confronting her now, pale as herself, with eyes alight. She
recoils like one who has received a blow.
"Can never be?" she repeats.
"Can never be!" he answers. "I am what you have called me, Inez, a
traitor and a coward. I stand here perjured before God, and you, and
my dead mother. It can never be. I can never marry you. I am married
already!"
The blow has fallen--the horrible, brutal blow. She stands looking at
him--she hardly seems to comprehend. There is a pause--the firelight
flickers, they hear the rain lashing the windows, the soughing of the
gale in the trees. Then Victor Catheron bursts forth:
"I don't ask you to forgive me--it is past all that. I make no excuse;
the deed is done. I met her, and I loved her. She has been my wife for
sixteen months, and--there is a son. Inez, don't look at me like that!
I am a scoundrel, I know, but--"
He breaks down--the sight of her face unmans him. He turns away, his
heart beating horribly thick. How long the ghastly pause that follows
lasts he never knows--a century, counting by what he undergoes. Once,
during that pause, he sees her fixed eyes turn slowly to his mother's
picture--he hears low, strange-sounding words drop from her lips:
"He swore by your dying bed, and see how he keeps his oath!"
Then the life that seems to have died from her face flames back.
Without speaking to him, without looking at him, she turns to leave
the room. On the threshold she pauses and looks back.
"A wife and a son," she says, slowly and distinctly. "Sir Victor
Catheron, fetch them home; I shall be glad to see them."
CHAPTER II.
WIFE AND HEIR.
In a very genteel lodging-house, in the very genteel neighborhood of
Russell Square, early in the afternoon of a September day, a young
girl stands impatiently awaiting the return of Sir Victor Catheron.
This girl is his wife.
It is a bright, sunny day--as sunny, at least, as a London day ever
can make up its mind to be--and as the yellow, slanting rays pour in
through the muslin curtains full on face and figure, you may search
and find no flaw in either. It is a very lovely face, a very graceful,
though petite figure. She is a blonde of the blondest type: her hair
is like spun gold, and, wonderful to relate, no Yellow Wash: no Golden
Fluid, has ever touched its shining abundance. Her eyes are bluer than
the September sky over the Russell Square chimney-pots; her nose is
neither aquiline nor Grecian, but it is very nice; her forehead is low,
her mouth and chin "morsels for the gods." The little figure is
deliciously rounded and ripe; in twenty years from now she may be a
heavy British matron, with a yard and a half wide waist--at eighteen
years old she is, in one word, perfection.
Her dress is perfection also. She wears a white India muslin, a marvel
of delicate embroidery and exquisite texture, and a great deal of
Valenciennes trimming. She has a pearl and turquoise star fastening
her lace collar, pearl and turquoise drops in her ears, and a half
dozen diamond rings on her plump, boneless fingers. A blue ribbon
knots up the loose yellow hair, and you may search the big city from
end to end, and find nothing fairer, fresher, sweeter than Ethel, Lady
Catheron.
If ever a gentleman and a baronet had a fair and sufficient excuse for
the folly of a low marriage, surely Sir Victor Catheron has it in this
fairy wife--for it is a "low marriage" of the most heinous type. Just
seventeen months ago, sauntering idly along the summer sands, looking
listlessly at the summer sea, thinking drearily that this time next
year his freedom would be over, and his Cousin Inez his lawful owner
and possessor, his eyes had fallen on that lovely blonde face--that
wealth of shining hair, and for all time--aye, for eternity--his fate
was fixed. The dark image of Inez as his wife faded out of his mind,
never to return more.
The earthly name of this dazzling divinity in yellow ringlets and pink
muslin was Ethel Margaretta--Dobb!
Dobb! It might have disenchanted a less rapturous adorer--it fell
powerless on Sir Victor Catheron's infatuated ear.
It was at Margate this meeting took place--that most popular and most
vulgar of all English watering-places; and the Cheshire baronet had
looked just once at the peach-bloom face, the blue eyes of laughing
light, the blushing, dimpling, seventeen-year-old face, and fallen in
love at once and forever.
He was a very impetuous young man, a very selfish and unstable young
man, with whom, all his life, to wish was to have. He had been spoiled
by a doting mother from his cradle, spoiled by obsequious servants,
spoiled by Inez Catheron's boundless worship. And he wished for this
"rose of the rose-bud garden of girls" as he had never wished for
anything in his two-and-twenty years of life. As a man in a dream he
went through that magic ceremony, "Miss Dobb, allow me to present my
friend, Sir Victor Catheron," and they were free to look at each other,
talk to each other, fall in love with each other as much as they
pleased. As in a dream he lingered by her side three golden hours, as
in a dream he said, "Good afternoon," and walked back to his hotel
smoking a cigar, the world glorified above and about him. As in a
dream they told him she was the only daughter and heiress of a
well-to-do London soap-boiler, and he did not wake.
She was the daughter of a soap-boiler. The paternal manufactory was in
the grimiest part of the grimy metropolis; but, remarkable to say, she
had as much innate pride, self-respect, and delicacy as though "all
the blood of all the Howards" flowed in those blue veins.
He wasn't a bad sort of young fellow, as young fellows go, and
frantically in love. There was but one question to ask, just eight
days after this--"Will you be my wife?"--but one answer, of
course--"Yes."
But one answer, of course! How would it be possible for a soap-boiler's
daughter to refuse a baronet? And yet his heart had beaten with a fear
that turned him dizzy and sick as he asked it; for she had shrunk away
for one instant, frightened by his fiery wooing, and the sweet face
had grown suddenly and startlingly pale. Is it not the rule that all
maidens shall blush when their lovers ask _the_ question of questions?
The rosy brightness, the smiles, the dimples, all faded out of this
face, and a white look of sudden fear crossed it. The startled eyes
had shrank from his eager, flushed face and looked over the wide sea.
For fully five minutes she never spoke or stirred. To his dying day
that hour was with him--his passionate love, his sick, horrible fear,
his dizzy rapture, when she spoke at last, only one word--"yes." To
his dying day he saw her as he saw her then, in her summery muslin
dress, her gipsy hat, the pale, troubled look chasing the color from
the drooping face.
But the answer was "yes." Was he not a baronet? Was she not a
well-trained English girl? And the ecstasy of pride, of joy, of that
city soap-boiler's family, who shall paint? "Awake my muse" and--but,
no! it passeth all telling. They bowed down before him (figuratively),
this good British tradesman and his fat wife, and worshipped him. They
burned incense at his shrine; they adored the ground he walked on;
they snubbed their neighbors, and held their chins at an altitude
never attained by the family of Dobb before. And in six weeks Miss
Ethel Dobb became Lady Catheron.
It was the quietest, the dullest, the most secret of weddings--not a
soul present except Papa and Mamma Dobb, a military swell in the
grenadier guards--Pythias, at present, to Sir Victor's Damon--the
parson, and the pew-opener. He was madly in love, but he was ashamed
of the family soap-boiling, and he was afraid of his cousin Inez.
He told them a vague story enough of family matters, etc., that
rendered secrecy for the present necessary, and nobody cross-questioned
the baronet. That the parson was a parson, the marriage _bona fide_,
his daughter "my lady," and himself the prospective grandfather of
many baronets, was enough for the honest soap-boiler.
For the bride herself, she said little, in a shy, faltering little way.
She was very fond of her dashing, high-born, impulsive lover, and very
well content not to come into the full blaze and dazzle of high life
just yet. If any other romance had ever figured in her simple life,
_the_ story was finished and done with, the book read and put away.
He took her to Switzerland, to Germany, to Southern France, keeping
well out of the way of other tourists, and ten months followed--ten
months of such exquisite, unalloyed bliss, as rarely falls to mortal
man. Unalloyed, did I say? Well, not quite, since earth and heaven are
two different places. In the dead of pale Southern nights, with the
shine of the moon on his wife's lovely sleeping face; in the hot,
brilliant noontide; in the sweet, green gloaming--Inez Catheron's
black eyes came menacingly before him--the one bitter drop in his cup.
All his life he had been a little afraid of her. He was something more
than a little afraid of her now.
They returned. The commodious lodgings in Russell Square awaited him,
and Sir Victor "went in" for domestic felicity in the parish of
Bloomsbury, "on the quiet." Very much "on the quiet" no theatre going,
no opera, no visitors, and big Captain Jack Erroll, of the Second
Grenadiers, his only guest. Four months of this sort of thing, and
then--and then there was a son.
Lying in her lace-draped, satin-covered bed, looking at baby's fat
little, funny little face, Ethel, Lady Catheron, began to think. She
had time to think in her quiet and solitude. Monthly nurses and
husbands being in the very nature of things antagonistic, and nurse
being reigning potentate at present, the husband was banished. And
Lady Catheron grew hot and indignant that the heir of Catheron Royals
should have to be born in London lodgings, and the mistress of
Catheron Royals live shut up like a nun, or a fair Rosamond in a bower.
"You have no relations living but your cousin, Victor," she said to
him, more coldly than she had ever spoken in her life. "Are you master
in your own house, or is she? Are you afraid of this Miss Catheron,
who writes you such long letters (which I never see), that you dare
not take your wife home?"
He had told her something of that other story necessarily--his former
engagement to his cousin, Inez. Only something--not the bare ugly
truth of his own treachery. The soap-boiler's daughter was more noble
of soul than the baronet. Gentle as she was, she would have despised
him thoroughly had she known the truth.
"This secrecy has lasted long enough," Lady Catheron said, a
resolute-looking expression crossing her pretty, soft-cut mouth. "The
time has come when you must speak. Don't make me think you are ashamed
of me, or afraid of her. Take me home--it is my right; acknowledge
your son--it is _his_. When there was only I, it did not so much
matter--it is different now."
She lifted one of baby's dots of hands, and kissed it. And Sir Victor,
his face hidden in the shadow of the curtains, his voice husky, made
answer:
"You are right, Ethel--you always are. As soon as you both can travel,
my wife and child shall come home with me to Catheron Royals."
Just three weeks later, as the August days were ending, came that last
letter from Inez, commanding his return. His hour had come. He took
the next morning train, and went forth to meet the woman he feared and
had wronged.
* * * * *
The afternoon sun drops lower. If Sir Victor returns from Cheshire
to-day, Lady Catheron knows he will be here in a few minutes. She
looked at her watch a little wearily. The days are very long and
lonely without him. Looks up again, her eyes alight. A hansom has
dashed up to the door, and it is her husband who leaps out. Half a
minute and he is in the room, and she is clasped in his arms.
"My darling!" he exclaims, and you need only hear the two words to
tell how rapturously he loves his wife. "Let me look at you. Oh! as
pale as ever, I see. Never mind! Cheshire air, sunshine, green fields,
and new milk shall bring back your roses. And your son and heir, my
lady, how is he?"
He bends over the pretty bassinet, with that absurd paternal look all
_very_ new fathers regard the first blessing, and his mustache tickles
baby's innocent nose.
A flush comes into her face. She looks at him eagerly.
"At last! Oh, Victor, when do we go?"
"To-morrow, if you are able. The sooner the better."
He says it with rather a forced laugh. Her face clouds a little.
"And your cousin? Was she _very_ angry!" she asked, wistfully; "_very_
much surprised?"
"Well--yes--naturally, I am afraid she was both. We must make the best
of that, however. To tell the truth, I had only one interview with her,
and that of so particularly unpleasant a nature, that I left next
morning. So then we start to-morrow? I'll just drop a line to Erroll
to apprise him."
He catches hold of his wife's writing-table to wheel it near. By some
clumsiness his foot catches in one of its spidery claws, and with a
crash it topples over. Away goes the writing case, flying open and
scattering the contents far and wide. The crash shocks baby's nerves,
baby begins to cry, and the new-made mamma flies to her angel's side.
"I say!" Sir Victor cries. "Look here! Awkward thing of me to do, eh,
Ethel? Writing case broken too. Never mind, I'll pick 'em up."
He goes down on his knees boyishly, and begins gathering them up.
Letters, envelopes, wax, seals, pens and pencils. He flings all in a
heap in the broken case. Lady Catheron cooing to baby, looks smilingly
on. Suddenly he comes to a full stop.
Comes to a full stop, and holds something before him as though it were
a snake. A very harmless snake apparently--the photograph of a young
and handsome man. For fully a minute he gazes at it utterly aghast.
"Good Heaven!" his wife hears him say.
Holding baby in her arms she glances at him. The back of the picture
is toward her, but she recognizes it. Her face turns ashen gray--she
moves round and bends it over baby.
"Ethel!" Sir Victor says, his voice stern, "what does this mean?"
"What does what mean? Hush-h-h baby, darling. Not so loud, Victor,
please. I want to get babe asleep."
"How comes Juan Catheron's picture here?"
She catches her breath--the tone, in which Sir Victor speaks, is a
tone not pleasant to hear. She is a thoroughly good little thing, but
the best of little things (being women) are _ergo_ dissemblers. For
a second she dares not face him; then she comes bravely up to time
and looks at him over her shoulder.
"Juan Catheron! Oh, to be sure. Is that picture here yet?" with a
little laugh. "I thought I had lost it centuries ago." "Good Heaven!"
she exclaims inwardly; "how _could_ I have been such a fool!"
Sir Victor rises to his feet--a curious passing likeness to his dark
cousin, Inez, on his fair blonde face. "Then you know Juan Catheron.
_You_! And you never told me."
"My dear Sir Victor," with a little pout, "don't be unreasonable. I
should have something to do, if I put you _au courant_ of all my
acquaintances. I knew Mr. Catheron--slightly," with a gasp. "Is there
any crime in that?"
"Yes!" Sir Victor answers, in a voice that makes his wife jump and his
son cry. "Yes--there is. I wouldn't own a dog--if Juan Catheron had
owned him before me. To look at him, is pollution enough--to know
him--disgrace!"
"Victor! Disgrace!"
"Disgrace, Ethel! He is one of the vilest, most profligate, most lost
wretches that ever disgraced a good name. Ethel, I command you to tell
me--was this man ever anything to you--friend--lover--what?"
"And if he has been--what then?" She rises and faces him proudly. "Am
I to answer for his sins?"
"Yes--we all must answer more or less for those who are our friends.
How come you to have his picture? What has he been to you? Not your
lover--for Heaven's sake, Ethel, never _that_!"
"And why not? Mind!" she says, still facing him, her blue eyes
aglitter, "I don't say that he was, but _if_ he was--what then?"
"What then?" He is white to the lips with jealous rage and fear. "This
then--_you should never again be wife of mine_!"
"Victor!" she puts out her hands as if to ward off a blow, "don't say
that--oh, don't say that! And--and it isn't true--he never was a lover
of mine--never, never!"
She bursts out with the denial in passionate fear and trembling. In
all her wedded life she has never seen him look, heard him speak like
this, though she has seen him jealous--needlessly--often.
"He never was your lover? You are telling me the truth?"
"No, no--never! never, Victor--don't look like that! Oh, what brought
that wretched picture here! I knew him slightly--only that--and he
_did_ give me his photograph. How could I tell he was the wretch you
say he is--how could I think there would be any harm in taking a
picture? He seemed nice, Victor. What did he ever do?"
"He seemed nice!" Sir Victor repeated, bitterly; "and what did he ever
do? What has he left undone you had better ask. He has broken every
command of the decalogue--every law human and divine. He is dead to us
all--his sister included, and has been these many years. Ethel, can I
believe--"
"I have told you, Sir Victor. You will believe as you please," his
wife answers, a little sullenly, turning away from him.
She understands him. His very jealousy and anger are born of his
passionate love for her. To grieve her is torture to him, yet he
grieves her often.
For a tradesman's daughter to marry a baronet may be but one remove
from paradise; still it is a remove. And the serpent in Lady Catheron's
Eden is the ugliest and most vicious of all serpents--jealousy. He has
never shown his green eyes and obnoxious claws so palpably before, and
as Sir Victor looks at her bending over her baby, his fierce paroxysm
of jealousy gives way to a fierce paroxysm of love.
"Oh, Ethel, forgive me!" he says; "I did not mean to wound you, but
the thought of that man--faugh! But I am a fool to be jealous of you,
my white lily. Kiss me--forgive me--we'll throw this snake in the
grass out of the window and forget it. Only--I had rather you had told
me."
He tears up the wretched little mischief-making picture, and flings it
out of the window with a look of disgust. Then they "kiss and make up,"
but the stab has been given, and will rankle. The folly of her past is
doing its work, as all our follies past and present are pretty sure to
do.
CHAPTER III.
HOW LADY CATHERON CAME HOME.
Late in the afternoon of a September day Sir Victor Catheron, of
Catheron Royals, brought home his wife and son.
His wife and son! The county stood astounded. And it had been a dead
secret. Dreadful! And Inez Catheron was jilted? Shocking! And _she_
was a soap-boiler's daughter? Horrible! And now when this wretched,
misguided young man could keep his folly a secret no longer, he was
bringing his wife and child home.
The resident gentry sat thunderstruck. Did he expect they could call?
(This was the gentler sex.) Plutocracy might jostle aristocracy into
the background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter
of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be positive
there had been a marriage at all. And poor Inez Catheron! Ah it was
very sad--very sad. There was a well-known, well-hidden taint of
insanity in the Catheron family. It must be that latent insanity
cropping up. The young man must simply be mad.
Nevertheless bells rung and bonfires blazed, tenantry cheered, and all
the old servants (with Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, and Mr. Hooper,
the butler, at their head) were drawn up in formidable array to
receive them. And if both husband and wife were very pale, very silent,
and very nervous, who is to blame them? Sir Victor had set society at
defiance; it was society's turn now, and then--there was Inez!
For Lady Catheron, the dark, menacing figure of her husband's cousin
haunted her, too. As the big, turreted, towered, ivied pile of stone
and mortar called Catheron Royals, with its great bell booming, its
Union Jack waving, reared up before the soap-boiler's daughter--she
absolutely cowered with a dread that had no name.
"I am afraid!" she said. "Oh, Victor, I am afraid!"
He laughed--not quite naturally, though. If the painful truth must be
told of a baronet and a Catheron, Sir Victor was afraid, too.
"Afraid?" he laughed; "of what, Ethel? The ghost of the Gray Lady, who
walks twice in every year in Rupert's Tower? Like all fine old
families, we have our fine old family ghost, and would not part with
it for the world. I'll tell you the legend some day; at present 'screw
your courage to the sticking place,' for here we are."
He descended from the carriage, and walked into the grand manorial
hall, vast enough to have lodged a hundred men, his wife on his arm,
his head very high, his face very pale. She clung to him, poor child!
and yet she battled hard for her dignity, too. Hat in hand, smiling
right and left in the old pleasant way, he shook hands with Mrs. Marsh
and Mr. Hooper, presented them to my lady, and bravely inquired for
Miss Inez. Miss Inez was well, and awaiting him in the Cedar
drawing-room.
They ascended to the Cedar drawing-room, one of the grandest rooms in
the house, all gilding and ormolu, and magnificent upholstery--Master
Baby following in the arms of his nurse. The sweet face and soft eyes
of Lady Catheron had done their work already in the ranks of the
servants--she would be an easier mistress to serve than Miss Inez.
"If she ever _is_ mistress in her own house," thought Mrs. Marsh,
who was "companion" to Miss Catheron as well as housekeeper; "and
mistress she never will be while Miss Catheron is at the Royals."
The drawing-room was brilliantly lit, and standing in the full glare
of the lamps--Inez. She was gorgeous this evening in maize silk, that
was like woven sunshine; she had a white camelia in her hair, a
diamond cross on her breast, scented laces about her, diamonds on her
arms and in her ears. So she stood--a resplendent vision--so Sir
Victor beheld her again.
He put up his hand for an instant like one who is dazzled--then he led
forward his wife, as men have led on a forlorn hope.
"My cousin," he said, "my wife; Inez, this is Ethel."
There was a certain pathos in the simplicity of the words, in the tone
of his voice, in the look of his eyes. And as some _very_ uplifted
young empress might bow to the lowliest of her handmaidens, Miss
Catheron bowed to Lady Catheron.
"Ethel," she repeated, a smile on her lips, "a pretty name, and a
pretty face. I congratulate you on your taste, Victor. And this is the
baby--I must look at him."
There was an insufferable insolence in the smile, an insufferable
sneer in the compliment. Ethel had half extended a timid hand--Victor
had wholly extended a pleading one. She took not the slightest notice
of either. She lifted the white veil, and looked down at the sleeping
baby.
"The heir of Catheron Royals," she said, "and a fine baby no doubt, as
babies go. I don't pretend to be a judge. He is very bald and very
flabby, and very fat just at present. Whom does he resemble? Not you,
Victor. O, no doubt the distaff side of the house. What do you call
him, nurse? Not christened yet? But of course the heir of the house is
always christened at Catheron Royals. Victor, no doubt you'll follow
the habit of your ancestors, and give him his mother's family name.
_Your_ mother was the daughter of a marquis, and you are Victor St.
Albans Catheron. Good customs should not be dropped--let your son's
name be Victor _Dobb_ Catheron."
She laughed as she dropped the veil, a laugh that made all the blood
in Sir Victor's body tingle in his face. But he stood silent. And it
was Ethel who, to the surprise of every one, her husband included,
turned upon Miss Catheron with flashing eyes and flushing cheeks.
"And suppose, he is christened Victor Dobb Catheron, what then? It is
an honest English name, of which none of my family have ever had
reason to feel ashamed. My husband's mother may have been the daughter
of a marquis--my son's mother is the daughter of a tradesman--the name
that has been good enough for me will be good enough for him. I have
yet to learn there is any disgrace in honest trade."
Miss Catheron smiled once more, a smile more stinging than words.
"No doubt. You have many things yet to learn, I am quite sure. Victor,
tell your wife that, however dulcet her voice may be, it would sound
sweeter if not raised so _very_ high. Of course, it is to be
expected--I make every allowance, poor child, for the failings of
her--class. The dressing-bell is ringing, dinner in an hour, until
then--_au revoir_."
Still with that most insolent smile she bows low once more, and in her
gold silk, her Spanish laces, her diamonds and splendor, Miss Catheron
swept out of the room.
And this was Ethel's welcome home.
* * * * *
Just two hours later, a young man came walking briskly up the long
avenue leading to the great portico entrance of Catheron Royals. The
night was dark, except for the chill white stars--here under the
arching oaks and elms not even the starlight shone. But neither for
the darkness nor loneliness cared this young man. With his hands in
his pockets he went along at a swinging pace, whistling cheerily. He
was very tall; he walked with a swagger. You could make out no more in
the darkness.
The great house loomed up before him, huge, black, grand, a row of
lights all along the first floor. The young man stopped his whistling,
and looked up with a smile not pleasant to see.
"Four years ago," he said, between his teeth, "you flung me from your
door like a dog, most noble baronet, and you swore to lodge me in
Chesholm jail if I ever presumed to come back. And I swore to pay you
off if I ever had a chance. To-night the chance has come, thanks to
the girl who jilted me. You're a young man of uncommonly high stomach,
my baronet, proud as the deuce and jealous as the devil. I'll give
your pride and your jealousy a chance to show themselves to-night."
He lifted the massive brass knocker, and brought it down with a clang
that echoed through the house. Then he began whistling again, watching
those lighted, lace-draped windows.
"And to think," he was saying inwardly, "to think of our little Ethel
being mistress here. On my word it's a lift in life for the
soap-boiler's pretty daughter. I wonder what they're all about up
there now, and how Inez takes it. I should think there must have been
the dickens to pay when she heard it first."
The heavy door swung back, and a dignified elderly gentleman, in black
broadcloth and silk stockings, stood gazing at the intruder. The young
man stepped from the outer darkness into the lighted vestibule, and
the elderly gentleman fell back with a cry.
"Master Juan!"
"_Mister_ Juan, Hooper, if you please--_Mister_ Juan. William, my
old cockalorum, my last rose of summer, how goes it?"
He grasped the family butler's hand with a jolly laugh, and gave it a
shake that brought tears of torture to its owner's eyes. In the blaze
of the hall chandelier he stood revealed, a big fellow, with eyes and
hair raven black, and a bold, bronzed face.
"What, William! friend of my childhood's days, 'none knew thee but to
love thee, none named thee but to praise'--not a word of welcome?
Stricken dumb at sight of the prodigal son! I say! Where's the rest?
The baronet, you know, and my sister, and the new wife and kid? In the
dining-room?"
"In the dining-room," Mr. Hooper is but just able to gasp, as with
horror pictured on his face he falls back.
"All right, then. Don't fatigue your venerable shanks preceding me. I
know the way. Bless you, William, bless you, and be happy!"
He bounces up the stairs, this lively young man, and the next instant,
hat in hand, stands in the large, handsome, brilliantly lit
dining-room. They are still lingering over the dessert, and with a
simultaneous cry, and as if by one impulse, the three start to their
feet and stand confounded. The young man strikes a tragic theatrical
attitude.
"Scene--dining-room of the reprobate 'Don Giovanni'--tremulo music,
lights half down--_enter_ statue of virtuous Don Pedro." He breaks
into a rollicking laugh and changes his tone for that of every-day
life. "Didn't expect me, did you?" he says, addressing everybody.
"Joyful surprise, isn't it? Inez, how do? Baronet, your humble
servant. Sorry to intrude, but I've been told my wife is here, and
I've come after her, naturally. And here she is. Ethel, my darling,
who'd have thought of seeing _you_ at Catheron Royals, an honored
guest? Give us a kiss, my angel, and say you're glad to see your
scrapegrace husband back."
He strides forward and has her in his arms before any one can speak.
He stoops his black-bearded face to kiss her, just as with a gasping
sob, her golden head falls on his shoulder and she faints dead away.
CHAPTER IV.
"I'LL NOT BELIEVE BUT DESDEMONA'S HONEST."
With a cry that is like nothing human, Sir Victor Catheron leaps
forward and tears his fainting wife out of the grasp of the
black-bronzed, bearded, piratical-looking young man.
"You villain!" he shouts, hoarse with amaze and fury; "stand back, or
by the living Lord I'll have your life! You scoundrel, how dare you
lay hands on my wife!"
"Your wife! Yours! Come now, I like that! It's against the law of this
narrow-minded country for a woman to have two husbands. You're a
magistrate and ought to know. Don't call names, and do keep your
temper--violent language is unbecoming a gentleman and a baronet. Inez,
what does he mean by calling Ethel his wife?"
"She is his wife," Inez answers, her black eyes glittering.
"Oh, but I'll be hanged if she is. She's mine--mine hard and fast, by
jingo. There's some little misunderstanding here. Keep your temper,
baronet, and let us clear it up. _I_ married Miss Ethel Dobb in
Glasgow, on the thirteenth of May, two years ago. Now, Sir Victor
Catheron, when did _you_ marry her."
Sir Victor made no answer; his face, as he stood supporting his wife,
was ghastly with rage and fear. Ethel lay like one dead; Juan Catheron,
still eminently good-humored and self-possessed, turned to his sister:
"Look here, Inez, this is how it stands: Miss Dobb was only fifteen
when I met her first. It was in Scotland. We fell in love with each
other; it was the suddenest case of spoons you ever saw. We exchanged
pictures, we vowed vows, we did the 'meet me by moonlight alone'
business--you know the programme yourself. The time came to part--Ethel
to return to school, I to sail for the China Sea--and the day we left
Scotland we went into church and were married. There! I don't deny we
parted at the church door, and have never met since, but she's my wife;
mine, baronet, by Jove! since the first marriage is the legal one.
Come, now! You _don't_ mean to say that you've been and married
another fellow's wife. 'Pon my word, you know I shouldn't have
believed it of Ethel."
"She is reviving," Inez said.
She spoke quietly, but her eyes were shining like black stars. She
knew her brother for a liar of old, but what if this were true? what
if her vengeance were here so soon? She held a glass of iced champagne
to the white lips.
"Drink!" she said, authoritatively, and Ethel mechanically drank. Then
the blue eyes opened, and she stood erect in Sir Victor's arms.
"Oh, what is it?" she said. "What has happened?"
Her eyes fell upon the dark intruder, and with a cry of fear, a
shudder of repulsion, her hands flew up and covered her face.
"Don't be afraid, my darling," Sir Victor said, holding her close, and
looking with flashing, defiant eyes at his enemy; "this coward has
told a monstrous falsehood. Deny it, my love. I ask no more, and my
servants shall kick him out."
"Oh, shall they!" said Mr. Catheron; "well, we'll see. Now, Ethel,
look here. I don't understand this business, you know. What does Sir
Victor mean by calling you his wife? It isn't possible you've gone and
committed bigamy--there _must_ be a mistake. You are my wife, and
as such I claim you."
"Ethel, you hear that," Sir Victor cried in a voice of agony; "for
Heaven's sake speak! The sight of this fellow--the sound of his voice
is driving me mad. Speak and deny this horrible charge."
"She can't," said Juan Catheron!
"I can! I do!" exclaimed Ethel, starting up with flushing face and
kindling eyes; "It is a monstrous lie. Victor! O, Victor, send him
away! It isn't true--it isn't, it isn't!"
"Hold on, Sir Victor," Mr. Catheron, interposed, "let me ask this
young lady a question or two. Ethel, do you remember May, two years
ago in Scotland? Look at this picture; it's yours, isn't it? Look at
this ring on my little finger; you gave it to me, didn't you? Think of
the little Glasgow presbytery where we went through the ceremony, and
deny that I'm your husband, if you can."
But her blood was up--gentle, yielding, timid, she had yet a spirit of
her own, and her share of British "pluck."
She faced her accuser like a small, fair-haired lioness, her eyes
flashing blue fire.
"I do deny it! You wretch, how dare you come here with such a lie!"
She turned her back upon him with a scorn under which even he winced.
"Victor!" she cried, lifting her clasped hands to her husband, "hear
me and forgive me if you can. I have done wrong--wrong--but I--I was
afraid, and I thought he was drowned. I wanted to tell you all--I did,
indeed, but papa and mamma were afraid--afraid of losing you, Victor.
I told you a falsehood about the photograph--he, that wretch, did give
it to me, and--" her face drooped with a bitter sob--"he was my lover
then, years ago, in Scotland."
"Ah!" quoted Mr. Catheron, "truth is mighty and will prevail! Tell it,
Ethel; the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
"Silence, sir!" Lady Catheron cried, "and don't dare call me Ethel. I
was only fifteen, Victor--think of it, a child of fifteen, spending my
holidays in Glasgow when I met him. And he dared to make love to me.
It amused him for the time--representing himself as a sort of banished
prince, a nobleman in disguise. He took my silly, girlish fancy for
the time. What did I at fifteen know of love? The day I was to return
home, we exchanged pictures and rings, and he took me out for a last
walk. He led me into a solitary chapel, and made me join hands, and
pledge myself to be his wife. There was not a soul in the place but
ourselves. As we left it we met papa. We shook hands and parted, and
until this hour I have never since set eyes on his face. Victor, don't
blame me too much--think what a child I was--remember I was afraid of
him. The instant he was out of my sight I disliked him. He wrote to
me--I never answered his letters, except once, and then it was to
return his, and tell him to trouble me no more. That is all. O Victor!
don't look like that! I am sorry--I am sorry. Forgive me or I shall
die."
He was ashen white, but there was a dignity about him that awed into
silence even the easy assurance of Juan Catheron. He stooped and
kissed the tear-wet, passionate, pleading face.
"I believe you," he said; "your only fault was in not telling me long
ago. Don't cry, and sit down."
He placed her in a chair, walked over, and confronted his cousin.
"Juan Catheron," he said, "you are a slanderer and a scoundrel, as you
always were. Leave this house, and never, whilst I live, set your foot
across its threshold. Five years ago you committed a forgery of my
name for three thousand pounds. I turned you out of Catheron Royals
and let you go. I hold that forged check yet. Enter this house again,
repeat your infamous lie, and you shall rot in Chesholm jail! I spared
you then for your sister's sake--for the name you bear and disgrace--but
come here again and defame my wife, and I'll transport you though you
were my brother. Now go, and never come back."
He walked to the door and flung it wide. Juan Catheron stood and
looked at him, his admirable good-humor unruffled, something like
genuine admiration in his face.
"By Jupiter!" he exclaimed, "who'd have thought it! Such a milk-sop as
he used to be! Well, baronet, I don't deny you got the upper hand of
me in that unpleasant little affair of the forgery, and Portland
Island with a chain on my leg and hard labor for twenty years I don't
particularly crave. Of course, if Ethel won't come, she won't, but I
say again it's deuced shabby treatment. Because, baronet, that sort of
thing _is_ a marriage in Scotland, say what you like. I suppose it's
natural she should prefer the owner of Catheron Royals and twenty
thousand per annum, to a poor devil of a sailor like me; but all the
same it's hard lines. Good-by, Inez--be sisterly, can't you, and come
and see a fellow. I'm stopping at the 'Ring o' Bells,' in Chesholm.
Good-by, Ethel. 'Thou hast learned to love another, thou hast broken
every vow,' but you might shake hands for the sake of old times. You
won't--well, then, good-by without. The next time I marry I'll make
sure of my wife."
He swaggered out of the room, giving Sir Victor a friendly and
forgiving nod, flung his wide awake on his black curls, clattered down
the stairs and out of the house.
"By-by, William," he said to the butler. "I'm off again, you see. Most
inhospitable lot _I_ ever saw--never so much as offered me a glass
of wine. Good-night, my daisy. Oh river! as they say in French. Oh
river!"
The door closed upon him. He looked back at the lighted windows and
laughed.
"I've given them a rare fright if nothing else. She went off stiff at
sight of me, and he--egad! the little fair-haired baronet's plucky
after all--such a molly-coddle as he used to be. Of course her being
my wife's all bosh, but the scare was good fun. And it won't end
here--my word for it. He's as jealous as the Grand Turk. I hope Inez
will come to see me and give me some money. If she doesn't I must go
and see her, that's all."
He was gone--and for a moment silence reigned. Lights burned, flowers
bloomed, crystal and silver shone, rare wines and rich fruits glowed.
But a skeleton sat at the feast. Juan Catheron had done many evil
deeds in his lifetime, but never a more dastardly deed than to-night.
There was a flash of intolerable triumph in the dark eyes of Inez. She
detested her brother, but she could have kissed him now. She had lost
all, wealth, position, and the man she loved--this girl with the
tangled yellow hair and pink and white face had taken all from her,
but even _her_ path was not to be altogether a path of roses.
Ashen pale and with eyes averted, Sir Victor walked back and resumed
his seat at the table. Ashen pale, trembling and frightened, Ethel sat
where he had placed her. And no one spoke--what was there to be said?
It was a fortunate thing that just at this juncture baby should see
fit to wake and set up a dismal cry, so shrill as to penetrate even to
the distant dinner-room. Lady Catheron rose to her feet, uttered a
hasty and incoherent apology, and ran from the room.
She did not return. Peace reigned, the infant heir of the Catherons
was soothed, but his mamma went downstairs no more that night. She
lingered in the nursery for over an hour. Somehow by her baby's side
she felt a sense of peace and safety. She dreaded to meet her husband.
What must he think of her? She had stooped to concealment, to
falsehood--would he ever love her or trust her again?
She went at last to her rooms. On the dressing-table waxlights
burned, but the bedroom was unlit. She seated herself by the window
and looked out at the starlit sky, at the darkly-waving trees of the
park. "And this is my welcome home," she thought, "to find in my
husband's house my rival and enemy, whose first look, whose first
words are insults. She is mistress here, not I. And that fatal folly
of my childhood come back. That horrible man!" She shuddered as she
sat alone. "Ah, why did I not tell, why did mamma beg me to hide it
from him? She was so afraid he would have gone--so afraid her daughter
would miss a baronet, and I--I was weak and a coward. No, it is all
over--he will never care for me, never trust me again."
He came in as she sat there, mournful and alone. In the dusk of the
chamber the little half-hidden white figure caught his eye, the golden
hair glimmering through the dusk.
"Ethel," he said, "is that window open? Come away immediately--you
will take cold in the draught."
He spoke gently but very coldly as he had never spoken to her before.
She turned to him with a great sob.
"Oh, Victor, forgive me!" she said.
He was silent for a moment. He loved her with a great and passionate
love; to see her weep was torture, to see her suffer, misery. She had
never been dearer than in this hour. Still he stood aloof, torn by
doubt, racked by jealousy.
"Ethel," he cried out, "_why_ did you deceive me? I thought--I could
have sworn you were all truth and innocence, stainless as a lily,
white as an angel. And to think that another man--and of all men Juan
Catheron. No. I can't even think of it--it is enough to drive me mad!"
She fell down on her knees before him and held up her clasped hands.
There was a little sob, and her head lay on his shoulder.
"I tried to once or twice--I did indeed, but you know what a coward I
am. And mamma forbade my telling--that is the truth. She said I had
been a little fool--that was all over and done with--no need to be a
great fool, telling my own folly. And after we were married, and I saw
you jealous of every man I looked at--you know you were, sir!--I was
more scared than ever. I thought Juan Catheron was dead. I never wrote
to him. I had returned all his letters. I thought I had destroyed his
picture; I never knew that I had done so very wrong in knowing him at
all, until that day in Russell Square. But Victor--husband--only
forgive me this once, and I'll never, never have a secret from you
again as long as I live."
She was little better than a child still--this pretty youthful matron
and mother. And with the sweet, pleading face uplifted, the big blue
eyes swimming in tears, the quivering lips, the pathetic voice, he did
what _you_, sir, would have done in his place--kissed and forgave her.
CHAPTER V.
IN THE TWILIGHT.
"No words can be strong enough to reprehend your conduct, Victor. You
have acted disgracefully; you are listening, sir,--disgracefully, I
say, to your cousin Inez. And you are the first of your line who has
blurred the family escutcheon. Dukes' daughters have entered Catheron
Royals as brides. It was left for you to wed a soap-boiler's daughter!"
Thus Lady Helena Powyss, of Powyss Place, to her nephew, Sir Victor
Catheron, just one fortnight after that memorable night of his wife
and heir's coming home. The young man stood listening in sullen anger,
the red blood mounting to his very temples. His Cousin Inez had
managed during the past two weeks to make his existence as thoroughly
uncomfortable as a thoroughly jealous and spiteful woman can. He had
flown at last to his aunt for comfort, and this is how he got it.
"Lady Helena," he burst forth, "this is too much! Not even from you
will I bear it. A soap-boiler's daughter my wife may be--it is the
only charge that can be brought against her. I have married to please
myself, and it _does_ please me enormously. Inez, confound her!
badgers me enough. I didn't expect, Aunt Helena, to be badgered by
you."
"I have no wish to badger you. I bring no charge against your wife. I
have seen her but once, and personally I like her excessively. I
believe her to be as good as she is pretty. But again _your_ conduct
I do and will protest. You have cruelly, shamefully wronged your
cousin--humiliated her beyond all telling. I can only wonder--yes,
Victor, wonder--that with her fiery nature she takes it as quietly as
she does."
"As quietly as she does! Good Heavens!" burst forth this "badgered"
baronet. "You should live in the same house with her to find out how
quietly she takes it. Women understand how to torture--they should
have been grand inquisitors of a Spanish inquisition, if such a thing
ever existed. I am afraid to face her. She stabs my wife in fifty
different ways fifty times a day, and I--my guilty conscience won't
let me silence her. Ethel has not known a happy hour since she entered
Catheron Royals, and all through her infernal serpent tongue. Let her
take care--if she were ten times my cousin, even she may go one step
too far."
"Does that mean, Victor, you will turn her from Catheron Royals?"
"It means that, if you like. Inez is my cousin, Ethel is my wife. You
are her friend, Aunt Helena; you will be doing a friendly action if
you drop her a hint. I wish you good-morning."
He took his hat and turned to go, his handsome blonde face sullen and
set.
"Very well," Lady Helena answered; "I will. You are to blame--not that
poor fair-haired child. I will speak to Inez; and, Victor, I will try
to forgive you for your mother's sake. Though you broke her heart she
would have forgiven you. I will try to do as she would have done--and
I like the little thing. You will not fail me on Thursday next? If
_I_ take up your wife all the neighborhood will, you may depend."
"We are not likely to fail. The invitation is like your kindness, Aunt
Helena. Thanks very much!"
His short-lived anger died away; he gave his hand frankly to his aunt.
She was his wife's friend--the only one who had taken the slightest
notice of her since her arrival. For the resident gentry had decided
that they couldn't--really couldn't--call upon the soap-boiler's
daughter.
Sir Victor Catheron had shocked and scandalized his order as it had
not been shocked and scandalized for half a century. A banker's
daughter, a brewer's daughter, they were prepared to accept--banking
and brewing are genteel sort of things. But a soap-boiler!--and married
in secret!--and a baby born in lodgings!--and Miss Catheron jilted in
cold blood!--Oh it was shameful!--shameful! No, they could not call
upon the new Lady Catheron--well, at least until they saw whether the
Lady Helena Powyss meant to take her up.
Lady Helena was the only sister of the young baronet's late mother,
with no children of her own, and very strongly attached to both Sir
Victor and Inez. His mother's dying desire had been that he should
marry his cousin. He had promised, and Lady Helena's strongest hope in
life had been to see that promise fulfilled. The news of his low
marriage fell upon her like a thunderbolt. She was the proudest of
dowagers--when had a Catheron made a _mesalliance_ before? No; she
could not forgive him--could never receive his wife.
But when he came to her, pale, sad, appealing for pardon, she relented.
It was a very tender and womanly heart, despite its pride of birth,
that beat in Lady Helena's bosom; and jolly Squire Powyss, who had
seen the little wife at the Royals, took sides with his nephew.
"It's done, and can't be undone, my dear," the squire said,
philosophically; "and it's always wise to make the best of a bad
bargain; and 'pon my life, my love, it's the sweetest little face the
sun ever shone on! Gad! I'd have done it myself. Forgive him, my
dear--boys will be boys--and go and see his wife."
Lady Helena yielded--love for her boy stronger than pride or anger.
She went; and there came into one of the dusk drawing-rooms of the
Royals, a little white vision, with fair, floating hair, and pathetic
blue eyes--a little creature, so like a child, that the tender,
motherly heart of the great lady went out to her at once.
"You pretty little thing!" she said, taking her in her arms and
kissing her as though she had been eight rather than eighteen. "You're
nothing but a baby yourself and you have got a baby they tell me. Take
me to see him, my dear."
They were friends from that hour. Ethel, with grateful tears in her
eyes, led her up to the dainty berceaunette where the heir of Catheron
Royals slept, and as she kissed his velvet cheek and looked pityingly
from babe to mother, the last remains of anger died out of her heart.
Lady Helena Powyss would "take Lady Catheron up."
"She's pretty, and gentle, and good, and a lady if ever I saw one,"
she said to Inez Catheron; "and she doesn't look too happy. Don't be
too hard on her, my dear--it isn't her fault. Victor is to blame. No
one feels that more than I. But not that blue-eyed child--try to
forgive her Inez, my love. A little kindness will go a long way there."
Inez Catheron sitting in the sunlit window of her own luxurious room,
turned her face from the rosy sunset sky full upon her aunt.
"I know what I owe my cousin Victor and his wife," she answered
steadily, "and one day I shall pay my debt."
The large, lustrous Spanish eyes turned once more to the crimson light
in the western sky. Some of that lurid splendor lit her dark,
colorless face with a vivid glow. Lady Helena looked at her
uneasily--there was a depth here she could not fathom. Was Inez
"taking it quietly" after all?
"I--I don't ask you to forgive _him_, my dear," she said,
nervously--"at least, just yet. I don't think I could do it myself.
And of course you can't be expected to feel very kindly to her who has
usurped your place. But I would let her alone if I were you. Victor is
master here, and his wife must be mistress, and naturally he doesn't
like it. You might go too far, and then--"
"He might turn me out of Catheron Royals--is that what you are trying
to say, Aunt Helena?"
"Well, my dear--"
"Victor was to see you yesterday. Did he tell you this? No need to
distress yourself--I see he did. And so I am to be turned from
Catheron Royals for the soap-boiler's daughter, if I don't stand aside
and let her reign. It is well to be warned--I shall not forget it."
Lady Helena was at a loss. What could she say? What could she do?
Something in the set, intense face of the girl frightened
her--absolutely frightened her. She rose hurriedly to go.
"Will you come to Powyss Place on Thursday next?" she asked. "I hardly
like to press you, Inez, under the circumstances. For poor Victor's
sake I want to make the best of it. I give a dinner party, as you know;
invite all our friends, and present Lady Catheron. There is no help
for it. If I take her up, all the country will; but if _you_ had
rather not appear, Inez--"
There was a sharp, quick, warning flash from the black eyes.
"Why should I not appear? Victor may be a coward--_I_ am not. I will
go. I will face our whole visiting list, and defy them to pity me.
Take up the soap-boiler's heiress by all means, but, powerful as you
are, I doubt if even you will be able to keep her afloat. Try the
experiment--give the dinner party--I will be there."
"It's a very fine thing for a tradesman's daughter to marry a rich
baronet, no doubt," commented Lady Helena, as she was driven home;
"but, with Inez for my rival, _I_ shouldn't care to risk it. I only
hope, for my sake at least, she will let the poor thing alone next
Thursday."
The "poor thing" indeed! If Sir Victor's life had been badgered during
the past fortnight, his wife's life had been rendered nearly
unendurable. Inez knew so well how to stab, and she never spared a
thrust. It was wonderful, the bitterest, stinging things she could say
over and over again, in her slow, _legato_ tones. She never spared.
Her tongue was a two-edged sword, and the black deriding eyes looked
pitilessly on her victim's writhes and quivers. And Ethel bore it.
She loved her husband--he feared his cousin--for his sake she endured.
Only once, after some trebly cruel stab, she had cried aloud in her
passionate pain:
"I can't endure it, Victor--I cannot! She will kill me. Take me back
to London, to Russell Square, anywhere away from your dreadful cousin!"
He had soothed her as best he might, and riding over to Powyss Place,
had given his aunt that warning.
"It will seem a horribly cruel and inhuman thing to turn her from the
home where she has reigned mistress so long," he said to himself. "I
will never be able to hold up my head in the county after--but she
_must_ let Ethel alone. By fair means or foul she must."
The day of Lady Helena Powyss' party came--a terrible ordeal for Ethel.
She had grown miserably nervous under the life she had led the past
two weeks--the ceaseless mockery of Miss Catheron's soft, scornful
tones, the silent contempt and derision of her hard black eyes. What
should she wear? how should she act? What if she made some absurd
blunder, betraying her plebeian birth and breeding? What if she
mortified her thin-skinned husband? Oh! why was it necessary to go at
all?
"My dear child," her husband said, kissing her good-humoredly, "it
isn't worth that despairing face. Just put on one of your pretty
dinner-dresses, a flower in your hair, and your pearls. Be your own
simple, natural, dear little self, and there will not be a lady at
Aunt Helena's able to shine you down."
And when an hour after, she descended, in a sweeping robe of silvery
blue, white lilies in her yellow hair, and pale pearls clasping her
slim throat, she looked fair as a dream.
Inez's black eyes flashed angrily as they fell upon her. Soap-boiler's
daughter she might be, with the blood of many Dobbs in her veins, but
no young peeress, born to the purple, ever looked more graceful, more
refined.
For Miss Catheron herself, she was quite bewildering in a dress of
dead white silk, soft laces and dashes of crimson about her as usual,
and rubies flashing here and there. She swept on to the carriage with
head held haughtily erect, a contemptuous smile on her lips, like
anything on earth but a jilted maiden.
Lady Helena's rooms were filled when they entered; not one invitation
had been declined. Society had mustered in fullest force to see Sir
Victor Catheron's low-born wife, to see how Miss Catheron bore her
humiliation. How would the one bear their scrutiny, the other their
pity? But Miss Catheron, handsome, smiling, brilliant, came in among
them with eyes that said: "Pity me if you dare!" And upon Sir Victor's
arm there followed the small, graceful figure, the sweet, fair face of
a girl who did not look one day more than sixteen--by all odds the
prettiest girl in the rooms.
Lady Helena--who, when she did that sort of thing, _did_ do it--took
the little wife under her wing at once. People by the score, it
seemed to the bewildered Ethel, were presented, and the stereotyped
compliments of society were poured into her ear. Sir Victor was
congratulated, sincerely by the men, with an under-current of pity and
mockery by the women. Then they were all at dinner--the bride in the
place of honor--running the gauntlet of all those eyes on the alert
for any solecism of good manners.
She went through it all, her cheeks flushing, her eyes kindling with
excitement growing prettier every moment. Her spirits rose--she would
let these peoples and Inez Catheron see, she was their equal in all
things save birth. She talked, she laughed, she took captive half the
male hearts, and when the ladies at length sailed away to the
drawing-room, Lady Helena stooped and kissed her, almost with motherly
pride.
"My dear," she whispered, "let me congratulate you. Nothing could be a
greater success. All the men are in love with you--all the women
jealous. A most excellent beginning indeed!"
She laughed pleasantly, this kindly dowager, and passed on. It was, an
unspeakable relief to her to see her nephew's low-born wife face
society so bravely and well. And better still, Inez had not launched
one single poisoned dart. But the evening was not ended yet. Inez's
time was to come. Enter the gentlemen presently, and flirtations are
resumed, _tete-a-tetes_ in quiet comers recommenced, conversation
becomes general. There is music. A certain Lord Verriker, the youngest
man present, and the greatest in social status, monopolizes Lady
Catheron. He leads her to the piano, and she sings. She is on trial
still, and does her best, and her best is very good--a sweet Scotch
ballad. There is quite a murmur of applause as she rises, and through
it there breaks Miss Catheron's soft, sarcastic laugh. The flush
deepens in Ethel's cheek--the laugh is at her performance she feels.
And now the hour of Inez's vengeance comes. Young Captain Varden is
leaning over her chair; he is in love with Miss Catheron, and hovers
about her unceasingly. He talks a great deal, though not very
brilliantly. He is telling her in an audible undertone how Jack
Singleton of "Ours" has lately made an object of himself before gods
and men, and irretrievably ruined himself for life by marrying the
youngest Miss Potter, of Potter's Park.
"Indeed!" Miss Catheron responds, with her light laugh, and her low,
clear voice perfectly distinct to all; "the youngest Miss Potter. Ah,
yes! I've heard of them. The paternal Potter kept a shop in Chester,
didn't he--a grocer, or something of the sort, and having made money
enough behind the counter, has retired. And poor Lieutenant Singleton
has married the youngest Miss Potter! 'Whom the gods wish to destroy
they first make mad.' A very charming girl no doubt, as sweet as the
paternal treacle, and as melting as her father's butter. It's an old
custom in some families--my own for instance--to quarter the arms of
the bride on the family shield. Now what do you suppose the arms of
the Potter family may be--a white apron and a pair of scales?"
And then, all through the room, there is a horrible suppressed laugh.
The blood rushes in a fiery tide to the face of Sir Victor, and Lady
Helena outglows her crimson velvet gown. Ethel, with the youthful Lord
Verriker still hovering around her, has but one wild instinct, that of
flight. Oh! to be away, from these merciless people--from that bitter,
dagger-tongued Inez Catheron! She looks wildly at her husband. Must
she bear this? But his back is to her--he is wilfully blind and deaf.
The courage to take up the gauntlet for his wife, to make a scene, to
silence his cousin, is a courage he does not possess.
Under the midnight stars Lady Helena's guests drive home. In the
carriage of Sir Victor Catheron there is dead silence. Ethel,
shrinking from her husband almost as much as from his cousin, lies
back in a corner, pale and mute. Inez Catheron's dauntless black eyes
look up at the white, countless stars as she softly hums a tune. Sir
Victor sits with his eyes shut, but he is not asleep. He is in a rage
with himself, he hates his cousin, he is afraid to look at his wife.
One way or other he feels there must be an immediate end of this.
The first estrangement that has parted him and Ethel has come. He
hardly knows her to-night--her cold, brief words, her averted face,
her palpable shrinking as he approaches. She despises him, and with
reason, a man who has not the courage to protect his wife from insult.
Next day Lady Catheron declines to appear at either breakfast or
luncheon, and when, five minutes before dinner, Sir Victor and Miss
Catheron meet in the dining-room, she is absent still. He rings the
bell angrily and demands where she is.
"My lady has gone out," the footman answers. "She went half an hour
ago. She had a book with her, and she went in the direction of the
laurel walk."
"I will go in search of her," Sir Victor says, taking his hat; "let
dinner wait until our return."
Ethel has gone, because she cannot meet Inez Catheron again, never
again break bread at the same board with her pitiless enemy. She cried
herself quietly to sleep last night; her head aches with a dull,
sickening pain to-day. To be home once more--to be back in the cosy,
common-place Russell square lodgings! If it were not for baby she
feels as though she would like to run away, from Sir Victor and all,
anywhere that Inez Catheron's black eyes and derisive smile could
never come.
The September twilight, sparkling with frosty-looking stars, is
settling down over the trees. The great house looms up, big, sombre,
stately, a home to be proud of, yet Ethel shudders as she looks at it.
The only miserable days of her life have been spent beneath its roof;
she will hate it before long. Her very love for her husband seems to
die out in bitter contempt, as she thinks of last night, when he stood
by and heard his cousin's sneering insult. The gloaming is chilly, she
draws her shawl closer around her, and walks slowly up and down. Slow,
miserable tears trickle down her cheeks as she walks. She feels so
utterly alone, so utterly forlorn, so utterly at the mercy of this
merciless woman.
"Oh!" she says, with a passionate sob, and unconsciously aloud,
"_why_ did I ever marry him?"
"If you mean Sir Victor Catheron," answers a voice, "I think I can
tell you. You married Sir Victor Catheron because he _was_ Sir Victor
Catheron. But it isn't a marriage, my dear--you know that. A young
lady can't have two husbands, and I'm your legal, lawful-wedded
spouse."
She utters a cry--she recoils with a face of terror, for there in the
twilight before her, tall, black, sinister, stands Juan Catheron.
"_You_!" she gasps.
"I, my dear--I, in the flesh. Did you think I had gone? My dear Ethel,
so I would have gone, if Inez had come down in the sisterly way she
should. But she hasn't. I give you my word of honor her conduct has
been shabby in the extreme. A few hundreds--I asked no more--and she
wouldn't. What was a miserly fifty pun' note to a man like me, with
expensive tastes, and who has not set foot on British soil for two
years? Not a jewel would she part with--all Sir Victor's presents,
forsooth! And she's in love with Sir Victor, you know. Perhaps you
_don't_ know, though. 'Pon my life, she is, Ethel, and means to have
him yet, too. That's what she says, and she is a girl to do as she
says, is Inez. That's why I'm here to-night, my dear. I can't go to
Sir Victor, you understand--motives of delicacy, and all that--so
I waited my chance, and have come to you. You may be fickle, but I
don't think you're stingy. And something is due to my outraged
feelings, blighted affections, and all that. Give me five hundred
pounds, Ethel, and let us call it square."
He came nearer, his big, brown hand outstretched. She shrank away,
hatred and repulsion in her face.
"Stand back!" she said. "Don't come near me, Juan Catheron! How dare
you intrude here! How dare you speak to me!"
"How dare I? Oh, come now, I say, I like that. If a man may not speak
to his own wife, to whom _may_ he speak? If it comes to that, how
dare you throw me over, and commit bigamy, and marry Sir Victor
Catheron? It's of no use your riding the high horse with me, Ethel;
you had better give me the five hundred--I'm sure I'm moderate
enough--and let me go."
"I will not give you a farthing; and if you do not leave this place
instantly, I will call my husband. Oh!" she burst forth, frantically,
"between you and your sister you will drive me mad!"
"Will you give me the money?" asked Juan Catheron, folding his arms
and turning sullen.
"I have not got it. What money have I?--and if I had, I say I would
not give you a farthing. Begone! or--"
"You have diamonds." He pointed to her hands. "They will do--easily
convertible in London. Hand them here, or, by all the gods, I'll blow
the story of your bigamy all over England!"
"You will not!" she cried, her eyes flashing in the twilight--"you
coward! you dare not! Sir Victor has _you_ in his power, and he will
keep his threat. Speak one word of that vile lie, and your tongue
will be silenced in Chesholm jail. Leave me, I say!"--she stamped her
foot passionately--"I am not afraid of you, Juan Catheron!"
"And you will not give me the jewels?"
"Not one--not to keep you from spreading your slander from end to end
of England! Do your worst!--you cannot make me more wretched than I am.
And go, or I will call for help, and see whether my husband has not
courage to keep his word."
"You will not give me the rings?"
"Not to save your life! Hark! some one is coming! Now you will see
which of us is afraid of the other!"
He stood looking at her, a dangerous gleam in his black eyes.
"Very well!" he said; "so be it! Don't trouble yourself to call your
hero of a husband--I'm going. You're a plucky little thing after all,
Ethel. I don't know but that I rather admire your spirit. Adieu, my
dear, until we meet again."
He swung round, and vanished among the trees. He was actually singing
as he went,
"To-day for me.
To-morrow for thee--
But will that to-morrow ever be?"
The last rustle of the laurels died away; all was still; the twilight
was closing darkness, and, with a shudder, Ethel turned to go.
"But will that to-morrow ever be?"--the refrain of the doggerel rung
in her ears. "Am I never to be free from this brother and sister?" she
cried to herself, desperately, as she advanced to the house. "Am I
never to be free from this bondage?"
As the last flutter of her white dress disappeared, Sir Victor
Catheron emerged from the shadow of the trees, and the face, on which
the rising moon shone, was white as the face of death.
CHAPTER VI.
IN THE MOONLIGHT.
He had not overheard a word, he had not tried to overhear; but he had
seen them together--that was enough. He had reached the spot only a
moment before their parting, and had stood confounded at sight of his
wife alone here in the dusk with Juan Catheron.
He saw them part--saw him dash through the woodland, singing as he
went--saw her turn away and walk rapidly to the house. She had come
here to meet him, then, her former lover. He had not left Chesholm;
he was lurking in the neighborhood of the Royals, and she knew it. She
knew it. How many times had they met before--his wife and the man he
abhorred--the man who claimed her as his wife. What if she _were_
his wife? What if that plight pledged in the Scotch kirk were binding?
She had loved Juan Catheron then. What if she loved him still? She had
hidden it from him, until it could be hidden no longer--she had
deceived him in the past, she was deceiving him in the present. So
fair and so false, so innocent to all outward seeming. Yet so lost to
all truth and honor.
He turned sick and giddy; he leaned against a tree, feeling as though
he could never look upon her false face again. Yet the next moment he
started passionately up.
"I will go to her," he thought; "I will hear what she has to say. If
she voluntarily tells me, I must, I will believe her. If she is silent,
I will take it as proof of her guilt."
He strode away to the house. As he entered, his man Edwards met him,
and presented him a note.
"Brought by a groom from Powyss Place, Sir Victor," he said. "Squire
Powyss has had a stroke."
The baronet tore it open--it was an impetuous summons from Lady Helena.
"The squire has had an attack of apoplexy. For Heaven's sake come at
once."
He crushed it in his hand, and went into the dining-room. His wife was
not there. He turned to the nursery; he was pretty sure of always
finding her _there_.
She was there, bending over her baby, looking fair and sweet as the
babe itself. Fair and sweet surely. Yet why, if innocent, that nervous
start at sight of him--that frightened look in the blue eyes. The
nurse stood at a distance, but he did not heed her.
"A summons from Powyss Place," he said; "the poor old squire has had a
fit of apoplexy. This is the second within the year, and may prove
fatal. I must go at once. It is not likely I shall return to-night."
She looked at him, startled by his deadly paleness; but then, perhaps,
the summons accounted for that. She murmured her regrets, then bent
again over her baby.
"You have nothing to say to me, Ethel, before I go?" he said, looking
at her steadily.
She half-lifted her head, the words half-rose to her lips. She glanced
at the distant nurse, who was still busy in the room, glanced at her
husband's pale set face, and they died away again. Why detain him now
in his haste and trouble? Why rouse his rage against Juan Catheron at
this inopportune time? No, she would wait until to-morrow--nothing
could be done now; then she would reveal that intrusion in the grounds.
"I have nothing to say, except good-by. I hope poor Mr. Powyss may not
be so ill as you fear."
He turned away--a tumult of jealous rage within him. A deliberate lie
he thought it; there could be no doubt of her guilt now. And yet,
insanely inconsistent as it seems, he had never loved her more
passionately than in that hour.
He turned to go without a word. He had reached the door. All at once
he turned back, caught her in his arms almost fiercely, and kissed her
again and again.
"Good-by," he said, "my wife, my love--good-by."
His vehemence frightened her. She released herself and looked at him,
her heart fluttering. A second time he walked to the door--a second
time he paused. Something seemed to stay his feet on the threshold.
"You will think me foolish, Ethel," he said, with a forced laugh; "but
I seem afraid to leave you to-night. Nervous folly, I suppose; but
take care of yourself, my darling, until I return. I shall be back at
the earliest possible moment."
Then he was gone.
She crossed over to the low French window, standing wide open, and
looked after him wistfully.
"Dear Victor," she thought, "how fond he is of me, after all."
The moon was shining brightly now, though the day still lingered. She
stood and watched him out of sight. Once, as he rode away, he turned
back--she kissed and waved her hand to him with a smile.
"Poor Victor!" she thought again, "he loves me so dearly that I ought
to forgive him everything. How happy we might be here together, if it
were not for that horrible brother and sister. I wish--I wish he would
send her away."
She lingered by the window, fascinated by the brilliancy of the rising
September moon. As she stood there, the nursery door opened, and Miss
Catheron entered.
"You here," she said, coolly; "I didn't know it. I wanted Victor. I
thought I heard his voice. And how is the heir of Catheron Royals?"
She bent, with her usual slight, chill smile over the crib of that
young gentleman, and regarded him in his sleep. The nurse, listening
in the dusk, she did not perceive.
"By the bye, I wonder if he _is_ the heir of Catheron Royals though?
I am reading up the Scottish Law of Marriage, and really I have my
doubts. If you are Juan's wife, you can't be Sir Victor's,
consequently the legitimacy of his son may yet be--"
She never finished the sentence. It was the last drop in the brimming
cup--the straw that broke the camel's back--the one insult of all
others not to be borne. With eyes afire in the dusk, Sir Victor's wife
confronted her.
"You have uttered your last affront, Inez Catheron," she exclaimed.
"You will never utter another beneath this roof. To-morrow you leave
it! I am Sir Victor Catheron's wife, the mistress of Catheron Royals,
and this is the last night it shall ever shelter you. Go!" She threw
open the nursery door. "When my husband returns either you or I leave
this house forever!"
The nurse was absolutely forgotten. For a second even Inez Catheron
quailed before the storm she had raised; then black eyes met blue,
with defiant scorn.
"Not all the soap-boiler's daughters in London or England shall send
me from Catheron Royals! Not all the Miss Dobbs that ever bore that
distinguished appellation shall drive me forth. _You_ may go to-morrow
if you will. I shall not."
She swept from the room, with eyes that blazed, and voice that rang.
And Jane Pool, the nurse, thinking she had heard a little too much,
softly opened an opposite door and stole out.
"Good Lor'!" she thought, "_here_ be a pretty flare up! Ain't Miss
Inez just got a temper though. I wouldn't stand in my lady's shoes,
and her a-hating me so; no, not for all her money. I'll go down and
get my supper, and call for Master Baby by and by."
Mrs. Pool descended to the servants' hall, to narrate, of course in
confidence, to her most particular friends, the scene she had just
overheard. There was Welsh rabbits for supper--nurse was particularly
fond of Welsh rabbits--and in discussing it and Miss Inez's awful
temper half an hour slipped away. Then she arose again to see after
her charge.
"Which he should have been undressed and tucked away for the night
half an hour ago, bless him," she remarked; "but I could not make up
my mind to face my lady after _that_ row. Poor thing! It does seem
hard now she can't be mistress in her own 'ouse. It's a pity Sir
Victor can't turn Turk and marry 'em both, since he can't abear to
part with neither."
Mrs. Pool made her exit and wended her way to the nursery. She tapped
at the door--there was no reply--she opened it and went in--my lady
had quitted it, no doubt.
No--to her surprise my lady was still there. The window still stood
wide open, the white, piercing moonlight streamed in. An arm-chair
stood near this window, and lying back in the arm-chair was my lady,
fast asleep.
Fast asleep. Jane Pool tiptoed over to make sure. She was pale as the
moonlight itself. Her lips quivered as she slept like the lips of a
hurt child, her eyelashes were yet wet with tears. Sitting there alone
she had cried herself to sleep.
"Poor thing!" Jane Pool said again. She was so young, so pretty, so
gentle, that all the household loved her. "Poor dear thing! I say it's
a burning shame for Sir Victor, so fond as he is of her too, to let
Miss Inez torment her. _I_ wouldn't stand her hairs and her
'aughtiness, her temper and her tongue; no, not to be ten baronets'
ladies, ten times hover!"
In his pretty blue silk, white lace, and carved rosewood nest, Master
Victor lay still, sleeping also. Mrs. Pool softly folded a shawl
around her lady's shoulder, lifted babe without awakening him, and
stole softly out. The night nursery was an upper room. Jane Pool
carried him up, disrobed him, fed him, and tucked him up for the night.
He fell again asleep almost instantly. She summoned the under
nurse-maid to remain with him, and went back to the lower regions.
Half an hour had passed since she left; it struck the half hour after
eight as she descended the stairs.
"I'm sore afraid my lady will catch cold sleeping in the night air.
I do think now I ought to go in and wake her."
While she stood hesitating before it, the door opened suddenly and
Miss Catheron came out. She was very pale. Jane Pool was struck by it,
and the scarlet shawl she wore twisted about her, made her face look
almost ghastly in the lamplight.
"_You_ here?" she said, in her haughty way. "What do you want? Where
is baby?"
"Baby's asleep, miss, for the night," Jane answered, with a stiff
little curtsey; "and what I'm here for, is to wake my lady. Sleeping
in a draught cannot be good for anybody. But perhaps she is awake."
"You will let my lady alone," said Miss Catheron sharply, "and attend
to your nursery. She is asleep still. It is not _your_ place to
disturb her. Go!"
"Drat her!" Nurse Pool exclaimed inwardly, obeying, however; "she's
that 'aughty and that stuck up, that she thinks we're the dirt under
her feet. I only hope she'll be sent packing to-morrow, but I has my
doubts. Sir Victor's afraid of her--anybody can see that with half an
eye."
She descended to the servants' regions again, and encountered Ellen,
Lady Catheron's smart maid, sociably drinking tea with the housekeeper.
And once more into their attentive ears she poured forth this addenda
to her previous narrative.
"What was Miss Inez doing in there?" demanded the maid; "no, good,
I'll be bound. She hates my lady like poison; Sir Victor jilted her,
you know, and she's in love with him yet. My lady _shall_ be woke
up in spite of her; she'd like her to get her death in the night air,
I dare say. I've an easy missis and a good place, and I mean to keep
'em. I ain't afraid of Miss Inez's black eyes and sharp tongue;
_I'll_ go and wake my lady up."
She finished her tea and left. She reached the nursery door and rapped
as Nurse Pool had done. There was no reply. She turned the handle
softly and went in.
The large, crystal, clear moon was high in the sky now; its chill
brightness filled the room. The arm-chair still stood under the window;
the small figure of my lady still lay motionless in it.
"My lady," Ellen said gently, advancing, "please wake up."
There was no reply, no stir. She bent closer over her.
"Please, my lady, wake up; I'm afraid you'll catch your death of--"
The words ended in a shriek that rang through the house from end to
end--a woman's shrill, ear-splitting shriek. She had laid her hand
upon my lady's bosom to arouse her; she snatched it away and sprang
back in horror. Asleep! Yes the sleep that knows no waking. Sir Victor
Catheron's pretty young wife lay there in the moonlight--dead.
Dead! There is blood on the white dress, blood on the blue shawl,
blood on Ellen's hand, blood trickling in a small red stream from
under the left breast. Ethel, Lady Catheron, lies there before her in
the moonlight stone dead--foully murdered.
CHAPTER VII.
IN THE NURSERY.
She stands for a moment paralyzed--struck dumb by a horror too great
for word or cry. Then she rushes to the door, along the passages, into
the midst of the startled household like a mad creature, shrieking
that one most awful word, "Murder!"
They flock around her, they catch hold of her, and keep her still by
main force. They ask her questions, but she only screams still that
ghastly word, "Murder!"
"_Who_ is murdered? Where--what do you mean? Good Lord! young woman,"
cries Mr. Hooper, the butler, giving her a shake, "do come out of
these hysterics if you can, and speak! _Who's_ murdered?"
"My lady! Oh, my lady! my lady! my lady!"
She is like a creature distraught. There is blood on her right hand;
she sees it, and with a gasping cry at the grisly sight, and before
they know what she is about, she falls down in a faint in their midst.
They lift her up; they look into one another's pale faces.
"My lady!" they repeat, in an awe-struck whisper. "_Murdered_!"
"Here!" cries Mr. Hooper, his dignity coming to his aid, "let us
investigate this here. Lay this young woman flat on her back on the
floor, sprinkle her with water, and let her come to. I'm going to find
out what she means."
They lay poor Ellen stiffly out as directed, some one dashes water
into her face, then in a body, with Mr. Hooper at their head, they
march off to investigate.
"She was in the day-nursery," Nurse Pool suggests, in a whisper, and
to the day-nursery they go.
On the threshold for a second or two they halt, their courage failing.
But there is nothing very terrifying. Only the solemn moonlight, only
the motionless little figure in the arm-chair. And yet a great awe
holds them back. Does death--does murder stand grisly in their midst?
"Let us go in, in the name of Providence," says Mr. Hooper, a tremble
in his voice; "it--it can't be what she says. O good Lord, no!"
They go forward on tiptoe, as if afraid of awakening that quiet
sleeper whom only the last trump will ever awake now. They bend above
her, holding their breath. Yes, there it is--the blood that is soaking
her dress, dripping horribly on the carpet--oozing slowly from that
cruel wound.
A gasping, inarticulate sort of groan comes heavily from every lip.
Old Hooper takes her wrist between his shaking fingers. Stilled
forever, already with the awful chill of death. In the crystal light
of the moon the sweet young face has never looked fairer, calmer, more
peaceful than now.
The old butler straightens himself up, ashen gray.
"It's too true," he says, with a sort of sob. "O Lord, have mercy on
us--it's too true! She's dead! She's murdered!"
He drops the wrist he holds, the little jewelled, dead hand falls limp
and heavy. He puts his own hands over his face and sobs aloud:
"Who will tell Sir Victor? O my master! my dear young master!"
No one speaks--a spell of great horror has fallen upon them. Murdered
in their midst, in their peaceful household--they cannot comprehend it.
At last--
"_Where is Miss Catheron_?" asks a sombre voice.
No one knows who speaks; no one seems to care; no one dare reply.
"Where is Inez Catheron?" the voice says again.
Something in the tone, something in the ghastly silence that follows,
seems to arouse the butler. Since his tenth year he has been in the
service of the Catherons--his father before him was butler in this
house. Their honor is his. He starts angrily round now.
"Who was that?" he demands. "Of course Miss Inez knows nothing of
this."
No one had accused her, but he is unconsciously defending her already.
"She must be told at once," he says. "I'll go and tell her myself.
Edwards, draw the curtains, will you, and light the candles?"
He leaves the room. The valet mechanically does as he is bid--the
curtains are drawn, the waxlights illumine the apartment. No one else
stirs. The soft, abundant light falls down upon that tranquil, marble
face--upon that most awful stain of blood.
The butler goes straight up to his young lady's room. Wayward,
passionate, proud Miss Inez may be, but she is very dear to him. He
has carried her in his arms many a time, a little laughing, black-eyed
child. A vague, sickening fear fills him now.
"She hated my lady," he thinks, in a dazed, helpless sort of way;
"everybody knows that. What will she say when she hears this?"
He knocks; there is no reply. He knocks again and calls huskily:
"Miss Inez, are you there? For the dear Lord's sake open the door!"
"Come in!" a voice answers.
He cannot tell whether it is Miss Inez or not. He opens the door and
enters.
This room is unlit too--the shine of the moon fills it as it fills
that other room below. Here too a solitary figure sits, crouches,
rather, near the window in a strange, distorted attitude of pain. He
knows the flowing black hair, the scarlet wrap--he cannot see her face,
she does not look round.
"Miss Inez!"--his voice shakes--"I bring you bad news, awful news.
Don't be shocked--but--a murder has been done."
There is no answer. If she hears him she does not heed. She just sits
still and looks out into the night.
"Miss Inez! you hear me?"
He comes a little nearer--he tries to see her face.
"You hear me?" he repeats.
"I hear you."
The words drop like ice from her lips. One hand is clutching the arm
of her chair--her wide-open black eyes never turn from the night-scene.
"My lady is dead--cruelly murdered. O Miss Inez! do you
hear?--_murdered_! What is to be done?"
She does not answer. Her lips move, but no word comes. An awful fear
begins to fill the faithful servant's heart.
"Miss Inez!" he cries out, "you _must_ come--they are waiting for you
below. There is no one here but you--Sir Victor is away. Sir Victor--"
His voice breaks; he takes out his handkerchief and sobs like a child.
"My dear young master! My dear young master! He loved the very ground
she walked on. Oh, who is to tell him this?"
She rises slowly now, like one who is cramped, and stiff, and cold.
She looks at the old man. In her eyes there is a blind, dazed sort of
horror--on her face there is a ghastliness no words can describe.
"Who is to tell Sir Victor?" the butler repeats. "It will kill
him--the horror of it. So pretty and so young--so sweet and so good.
Oh, how could they do it--how could they do it!"
She tries to speak once more--it seems as though her white lips cannot
shape the words. Old Hooper looks up at her piteously.
"Tell us what is to be done, Miss Inez," he implores; "you are mistress
here now."
She shrinks as if he had struck her.
"Shall we send for Sir Victor first?"
"Yes," she says, in a sort of whisper, "send for Sir Victor first."
The voice in which she speaks is not the voice of Inez Catheron. The
butler looks at her, that great fear in his eyes.
"You haven't seen her, Miss Inez," he says. "It is a fearful
sight--but--will you come down?"
He almost dreads a refusal, but she does not refuse.
"I will go down," she answers, and turns at once to go.
The servants stand huddled together in the centre of the room. _It_
lies there, in its dreadful quiet, before them. Every eye turns darkly
upon Miss Catheron as she comes in.
She never sees them. She advances like a sleep-walker, that dazed,
dumb horror still in her eyes, the whiteness of death on her face. She
walks over and looks down upon the dead mistress of Catheron Royals.
No change comes over her--she softens neither into pity nor tears. So
long she stands there, so rigid she looks, so threatening are the eyes
that watch her, that Hooper interposes his portly figure between her
and them.
"Miss Inez," he says, "will you please give your orders? Shall I send
for Sir Victor at once, or--"
"Yes, send for Sir Victor at once." She arouses herself to say it.
"And I think you had better send to Chesholm for a doctor and--and the
police."
"The police!"
"A murder has been committed," she says, in a cold, hard voice; "the
murderer must be found."
Something of her old calm, stately haughtiness returns as she speaks.
"This room must be cleared. Let no one touch _her_," she shudders
and looks away, "until Sir Victor comes. Ellen, Pool, Hooper, you
three had better remain to watch. Edwards, mount the fastest horse in
the stables and ride to Powyss Place for your life."
"Yes, miss," Edwards answers, in a low voice; "and please, miss, am I
to tell Sir Victor?"
She hesitates a moment--her face changes, her voice shakes a little
for the first time.
"Yes," she answers, faintly, "tell him."
Edwards leaves the room. She turns to another of the men servants.
"You will ride to Chesholm and fetch Dr. Dane. On your way stop at the
police station and apprise them. The rest of you go. Jane Pool, where
is the baby?"
"Up stairs in the night nursery," Jane Pool answers sullenly.
"And crying, too--I hear him. Hannah," to the under nurse, "go up and
remain with him. I am going to my own room. When," she pauses a second
and speaks with an effort, "when Sir Victor comes, you will receive
your further orders from him. I can do nothing more."
She left the room. Jane Pool looked ominously after her.
"No," she said, between her set lips; "you have done enough."
"Oh, Jane, hush!" Ellen whispers in terror.
There has still been no direct accusation, but they understand each
other perfectly.
"When the time comes to speak, you'll see whether I'll hush," retorts
Jane. "What was she doing in this room fifteen minutes before you
found my lady dead? Why wouldn't she let me in? why did she tell me a
lie? what made her say my lady was still asleep? Asleep! Oh, poor soul,
to think of her being murdered here, while we were all enjoying
ourselves below. And if I hadn't took away the baby its my opinion it
would have been--"
"Oh, Jane!"
"'Oh, Jane,' as much as you please, it's the gospel truth. Them that
killed the mother hated the child. When the time comes I'll speak, if
she was twice the lady she is, Ellen!"
"Lor!" Ellen cried with a nervous jump, "don't speak so jerky Mrs.
Pool. You make my blood a mask of ice. What is it?"
"Ellen," Jane Pool said solemnly, "where is the dagger?"
"What dagger?"
"The furrin dagger with the gold handle and the big ruby set in it,
that my lady used as a paper knife. I'll take my oath I saw it lying
on the table there, shining in the moonlight, when I took away baby.
Where is it now?"
The dagger the nurse spoke of, was a curious Eastern knife, that had
belonged to Sir Victor's mother. It had a long, keen steel blade, a
slim handle of wrought gold set with a large ruby. Sir Victor's wife
had taken a fancy to the pretty Syrian toy, and converted it into a
paper knife.
"I saw it on that there table when I took away baby," Jane said
compressing her lips; "_it_ would do it. Where is it now?"
"Gone," Ellen answered. "Oh, Jane do you think--"
"She has been stabbed, you see, right through the heart, and there
isn't much blood. That devilish little glittering knife has done the
deed. There it was ready for its work, as if Satan himself had left it
handy. Oh, poor lady--poor lady! to think that the toy she used to
play with, should one day take her life!"
While they whispered in the death room, up in her chamber, while the
hours of the dreary night wore on, Inez Catheron sat, crouched in a
heap, as Hooper had found her, her face hidden in her hands. Two hours
had passed, an awful silence filled the whole house, while she sat
there and never stirred. As eleven struck from the turret clock, the
thunder of horses' hoofs on the avenue below, came to her dulled ears.
A great shudder shook her from head to foot--she lifted her haggard
face. The lull before the storm was over--Sir Victor Catheron had come.
CHAPTER VIII.
IN THE DARKNESS.
Half an hour's rapid gallop had brought Edwards, the valet, to Powyss
Place. The stately mansion, park, lawn, and terraces, lay bathed in
the silvery shower of moonlight. From the upper windows, where the
sick man lay, lights streamed; all the rest of the house was in deep
shadow.
In one of those dimly lighted rooms Sir Victor Catheron lay upon a
lounge fast asleep. He had remained for about two hours by the sick
man's bedside; then, persuaded by his aunt, had gone to lie down in an
inner department.
"You look pale and ill yourself," she had said, tenderly; "lie down
and rest for a little. If I need you, I will call you at once."
He had obeyed, and had dropped off into a heavy sleep. A dull
oppression of heart and soul beset him; he had no mind to slumber--it
had come upon him unawares. He was awakened suddenly by some one
calling his name.
"Victor! Victor!" the voice called, "awake!"
He sat up with a bewildered face. Was that his aunt's voice, so hoarse,
so strange? Was this his aunt with that white, horror-struck face?
"Victor!" she cried, the words a very wail. "Oh, my boy! my boy! how
shall I ever tell you? Oh, why did I send for you this dreadful night?
Ethel"--her voice choked.
He rose to his feet, staring at her blankly.
"Ethel!" he repeated. "Ethel--"
She covered her face with her hands and burst into a hysterical
outbreak of tears. Edwards, standing behind her in the doorway, made
a step forward.
"Tell him, Edwards," said Lady Helena. "I cannot. It seems too
horrible to tell or to believe. Oh, my poor Victor! my poor, poor boy!"
Edwards came forward reluctantly, with a very pale, scared face.
"It's dreadful news, Sir Victor--I don't know how to tell you, but my
lady, I'm afraid she--she's dead."
"Dead!"
He repeated the word dully, staring almost stupidly at the speaker.
"Dead, Sir Victor!" the man repeated, solemnly. "I'm sore afraid,
murdered!"
There was a sudden, headlong rush from the room; no other reply. Like
a flash Sir Victor passed them both. They heard him clear the stairs,
rush along the lower hall, and out of the house. The next instant the
valet and Lady Helena were in pursuit.
He was mounted on Edwards' horse and dashing furiously away, before
they reached the court-yard. They called to him--he neither heard nor
heeded. He dashed his spurred heel into the horse's side and flew out
of sight like the wind.
"Follow him!" Lady Helena cried, breathlessly, to the groom. "Overtake
him, for the love of Heaven! Oh, _who_ can have done this awful deed?
Edwards, you are sure there is no mistake? It seems too unnatural,
too impossible to believe."
"There is no mistake, my lady," the man answered, sadly. "I saw her
myself, the blood flowing where they had stabbed her, cold and dead."
Lady Helena wrung her hands and turned away.
"Ride for your life after your master!" she said. "I will follow you
as soon as I can."
She went back to her husband's side. He was no worse--he seemed if
anything, better. She might leave him in her housekeeper's charge
until morning.
She ordered the carriage and rapidly changed her dress. It was about
one in the morning when she reached Catheron Royals. The tall turrets
were silvered in the moonlight, the windows sparkled in the crystal
light. The sweet beauty and peace of the September night lay like a
benediction over the earth. And, amid all the silence and sweetness,
a foul, a most horrible murder had been done.
She encountered Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, in the hall, her face
pale, her eyes red with weeping. Some dim hope that up to this time
had upheld her, that, after all, there _might_ be a mistake, died
out then.
"Oh, Marsh," she said, piteously, "_is_ it true?"
Mrs. Marsh's answer was a fresh burst of tears. Like all the rest of
the household, the gentle ways, the sweet face, and soft voice of Sir
Victor's wife had won her heart from the first.
"It is too true, my lady--the Lord have mercy upon us all. It seems
too horrid for belief, but it is true. As she lay asleep there, four
hours ago, in her own house, surrounded by her own servants, some
monster in human form stabbed her through the heart--through the heart,
my lady--Dr. Dane says one blow did it, and that death must have been
instantaneous. So young, so sweet, and so lovely. Oh, how could they
do it--how could any one do it?"
Mrs. Marsh's sobs grew hysterical. Lady Helena's own tears were
flowing.
"I feel as though I were guilty in some way myself," the housekeeper
went on. "If we had only woke her up, or fastened the window, or
anything! I know the monster, whoever he was, got in through the
window. And, oh, my lady!"--Mrs. Marsh wiped her eyes suddenly, and
lowered her voice to an excited whisper--"I wish you would speak to
Jane Pool, the nurse. She doesn't dare say anything out openly, but
the looks she gives, and the hints she drops, are almost worse than
the murder itself. You can see as clear as day that she suspects--Miss
Inez."
"Marsh! Great Heaven!" Lady Helena cried, recoiling in horror. "Miss
Inez!"
"Oh, my lady, _I_ don't say it--_I_ don't think it--Heaven
forbid!--it's only that wicked, spiteful nurse, Pool. She hates Miss
Inez--she has hated her from the first--and she loved my lady. Ah! who
could help being fond of her--poor, lovely young lady!--with a sweet
smile and pleasant word for every one in the house? And you know Miss
Inez's high, haughty way. Jane Pool hates her, and will do her
mischief if she can. A word from you might check her. No one knows the
harm a babbling tongue may do."
Lady Helena drew herself up proudly.
"I shall not say one word to her, Marsh. Jane Pool can do my niece no
harm. The bare repetition of it is an insult. Miss Catheron--that I
should have to say such a thing!--is above suspicion."
"My lady, I believe it; still, if you would only speak to her. You
don't know all. She saw Miss Inez coming out of the nursery a quarter
of an hour before we found Lady Catheron dead. She wished to enter,
and Miss Inez ordered her away. She has been talking to the police,
and I saw that Inspector Darwin watching Miss Inez in a way that made
my blood run cold."
But Lady Helena waived the topic away haughtily.
"Be silent, Marsh! I will not hear another word of this--it is too
horrible! Where is Miss Inez?"
"In her own room, my lady. And--I beg your pardon for alluding to it
again--but I think she suspects. She seemed dazed-like, stupefied at
first; she is more like herself now. Will you not go in and see _her_,
poor soul, before you go to Miss Inez? Oh, my lady, my lady! it breaks
my heart when I look at her--when I look at Sir Victor."
For a moment Lady Helena shrank.
"Sir Victor is in there--with her?" she faltered.
"Yes, my lady--like a man all struck stupid. It frightens me to see
him. If he would only speak, or cry, or fly out against the
murderer--but he just sits there as if turning to stone."
His aunt covered her face for an instant with both hands, heart-sick
with all these horrors; then she looked up, and moved forward.
"Where is she?" she asked--"in which room?"
"In the white drawing-room, my lady; the doctors brought her there.
Sir Victor is with her, alone."
Lady Helen slowly advanced. At the door she paused a moment to nerve
herself for what she must see; then she turned the handle and went in.
It was one of the stateliest rooms in the house--all white and gold,
and dimly lit now by wax tapers. Lying on one of the white velvet
sofas she saw a rigid figure, over which a white covering was drawn;
but the golden hair and the fair, marble face gleaming in the
waxlights as beautiful as ever in life.
He sat beside his dead--almost as motionless, almost as cold, almost
as white. He had loved her with a love that was akin to idolatrous--he
had grudged that the eye of man should rest on his treasure--and now
he sat beside her--dead.
If he heard the door open, he neither moved nor stirred. He never once
looked up as his aunt came forward; his eyes were riveted upon that
ineffably calm face with a vacant, sightless sort of stare that
chilled her blood.
"Victor!" she cried out, in a frightened voice; "Victor speak to me.
For pity's sake, don't look like that?"
The dull, blinded eyes looked up at her, full of infinite, unutterable
despair.
"She is dead," he said, in a slow, dragging sort of voice--"dead!
And last night I left her well and happy--left her to be
murdered--to--be--murdered."
The slow words fell heavily from his lips--his eyes went back to her
face, his dulled mind seemed lapsing into its stupefied trance of
quiet. More and more alarmed, his aunt gazed at him. Had the death of
his wife turned his brain?
"Victor!" she exclaimed, almost angrily, "you must rouse yourself. You
must not stay here. Be a man! Wake up. Your wife has been murdered. Go
and find her murderer."
"Her murderer," he replied, in the same slow tone of unnatural quiet;
"her murderer. It seems strange, Aunt Helena, doesn't it, that any one
_could_ murder her? 'I must find her murderer.' Oh," he cried,
suddenly, in a voice of anguish; "what does it matter about her
murderer! It won't bring her back to life. She is dead I tell
you--dead!"
He flung himself off his chair, on his knees by the couch. He drew
down the white satin counterpane, and pointed to that one dark, small
stab on the left side.
"Look!" he said, in a shrill, wailing voice, "through the
heart--through the heart! She did not suffer--the doctors say
_that_. Through the heart as she slept. Oh, my love, my darling,
my wife!"
He kissed the wound--he kissed the hands, the face, the hair. Then
with a long, low moan of utter desolation, he drew back the covering
and buried his face in it.
"Leave me alone," he said, despairingly; "I will not go--I will never
go from her again. She was mine in life--mine only. Juan Catheron lied,
she is mine in death. My wife--my Ethel!"
He started up as suddenly as he had flung himself down, his ghastly
face flaming dark red.
"Leave me alone, I tell you! Why do you all come here? I will
_not_ go! Leave me, I command you--I am master here!"
She shrank from him in absolute physical terror. Never over-strong at
any time, her worst fears were indeed true, the shock of his wife's
tragic death was turning Sir Victor's brain. There was nothing to be
done--nothing to be said--he must be obeyed--must be soothed.
"Dear Victor," she said, "I will go. Don't be hard with poor Aunt
Helena. There is no one in all this world as sorry for you as I am.
Only tell me this before I leave you--shall we not send for her father
and mother?"
"No," he answered, in the same fierce tone; "they can't bring her back
to life--no one can now. I don't want them. I want nobody. Ethel is
mine I tell you--mine alone!"
He motioned her imperiously to leave him--a light in his eye--a flush
on his face there was no mistaking. She went at once. How was it all
to end she wondered, more and more sick at heart--this mysterious
murder, this suspicion against Inez, this dreadful overthrow of her
nephew's mind?
"May Heaven help us!" she cried. "What have we done that this awful
trouble should come upon us!"
"Aunt Helena."
She looked round with a little cry, all her nerves trembling and
unstrung. Inez stood before her--Inez with dark, resolute eyes, and
stony face.
"I have been waiting for you--they told me you were _there_." She
pointed with a shudder to the door. "What are we to do?"
"Don't ask me," Lady Helena answered, helplessly. "I don't know. I
feel stunned and stupid with all these horrors."
"The police are here," Miss Catheron went on, "and the coroner has
been apprised. I suppose, they will hold an inquest to-morrow."
Her aunt looked at her in surprise. The calm, cold tone of her voice
grated on her sick heart.
"Have you seen _him_?" she asked almost in a whisper. "Inez--I
fear--I fear it is turning his brain."
Miss Catheron's short, scornful upper lip, curled with the old look of
contempt.
"The Catheron brain was never noted for its strength. I shall not be
surprised at all. Poor wretch!" She turned away and looked out into
the darkness. "It does seem hard on him."
"Who can have done it?"
The question on every lip rose to Lady Helena's, but somehow she could
not utter it. Did Inez know of the dark, sinister suspicion against
herself? _Could_ she know and be calm like this?
"I forgot to ask for Uncle Godfrey," Inez's quiet voice said again.
"Of course he is better, or even at such a time as this you would not
be here?"
"He is better, Inez," she broke out desperately. "Who can have done
this? She had not an enemy in the world. Is--is there any one
suspected?"
"There is," Inez answered, turning from the window, and facing her
aunt. "The servants suspect _me_."
"Inez!"
"Their case isn't a bad one as they make it out," pursued Miss
Catheron, cooly. "There was ill blood between us. It is of no use
denying it. I hated her with my whole heart. I was the last person
seen coming out of the room, fifteen minutes before they found her
dead. Jane Pool says I refused to let her go in--perhaps I did. It is
quite likely. About an hour previously we had a violent quarrel. The
ubiquitous Mrs. Pool overheard that also. You see her case is rather a
strong one."
"But--Inez--!"
"I chanced to overhear all this," still went on Miss Catheron, quietly,
but with set lips and gleaming eyes. "Jane Pool was holding forth to
the inspector of police. I walked up to them, and they both slunk away
like beaten curs. Orders have been issued, that no one is to leave the
house. To-morrow these facts are to be placed before the coroner's
jury. If they find me guilty--don't cry, Aunt Helena--I shall be sorry
for _you_--sorry I have disgraced a good old name. For the rest, it
doesn't much matter what becomes of such a woman as I am."
She turned again to the window and looked out into the darkness. There
was a desperate bitterness in her tone that Lady Helena could not
understand.
"Good Heaven!" she burst forth, "one would think you were all in a
conspiracy to drive me mad. It doesn't matter, what becomes of you,
doesn't it? I tell you if this last worst misery falls upon us, it
will kill me on the spot; just that."
The girl sighed drearily.
"Kill you, Aunt Helena," she repeated, mournfully. "No--we don't any
of us die so easily. Don't be afraid--I am not likely to talk in this
way before any one but you. I am only telling you the truth. They will
have the inquest, and all that Jane Pool can say against me will be
said. Do you think Victor will be able to appear?"
"I don't think Victor is in a condition to appear at an inquest or
anywhere else. Ah, poor boy! he loved her so dearly, it is enough to
shake the mind of a stronger man."
But Miss Catheron was dead silent--it was evident her feelings here
were as bitter as ever--that even the tragic death of her rival had
not softened her.
"He will survive it," she answered, in the same half-contemptuous tone.
"Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
"Inez," said her aunt, suddenly coming a step nearer, "a rumor has
reached me--is it true?--that Juan is back--that he has been here?"
"It is quite true," her niece answered, without turning round; "he
_has_ been here. He was here on the night Lady Catheron first came."
"There is another rumor afloat, that there was a violent quarrel on
that occasion--that he claimed to be an old lover of Ethel's, poor
child, and that Victor turned him out. Since then it is said he has
been seen more than once prowling about the grounds. For everybody's
sake I hope it is not true."
Inez faced round suddenly--almost fiercely.
"And what if I say it _is_ true, in every respect? He did come--there
was a quarrel, and Victor ordered him out. Since then he has been
here--prowling, as you call it--trying to see me, trying to force
me to give him money. I was flinty as usual, and would give him none.
Where is the crime in all that?"
"Has he gone?" was Lady Helena's response.
"I believe so--I hope so. He had nothing to stay for. Of course he has
gone."
"I am glad of that, at least. And now, as it seems I can do nothing
more at present, I will return home. Watch Victor, Inez--he needs it,
believe me. I will return at the earliest possible moment to-morrow."
So, in the chill gray of the fast-coming morning, Lady Helena, very
heavy-hearted, returned to Powyss Place and her sick husband's bedside.
Meantime matters were really beginning to look dark for Miss Catheron.
The superintendent of the district, Mr. Ferrick, was filling his
note-book with very ominous information. She had loved Sir Victor--she
had hated Sir Victor's wife--they had led a cat-and-dog life from the
first--an hour before the murder they had had a violent quarrel--Lady
Catheron had threatened to make her husband turn her out of the house
on the morrow. At eight o'clock, Jane Pool had left the nursery with
the baby, my lady peacefully asleep in her chair--the Eastern poniard
on the table. At half-past eight, returning to arouse my lady, she had
encountered Miss Inez coming out of the nursery, and Miss Inez had
ordered her sharply away, telling her my lady was still asleep. A
quarter of nine, Ellen, the maid, going to the room, found my lady
stone dead, stabbed through the heart. Miss Inez, when summoned by
Hooper, is ghastly pale at first, and hardly seems to know what she is
doing or saying. A very pretty case of tragedy in high life,
Superintendent Ferrick thinks, pursing up his lips with professional
zest, and not the first murder jealousy has made fine ladies commit,
either. Now if that Turkish dagger would only turn up.
Two policemen are sent quietly in search of it through the grounds. It
isn't likely they'll find it, still it will do no harm to try. He
finds out which are Miss Catheron's rooms, and keeps his official eye
upon them. He goes through the house with the velvet tread of a cat.
In the course of his wanderings everywhere, he brings up presently in
the stables, and finds them untenanted, save by one lad, who sits
solitary among the straw. He is rather a dull-looking youth, with a
florid, vacant face at most times, but looking dazed and anxious just
now. "Something on _his_ mind," thinks the superintendent, and sits
sociably down on a box beside him at once.
"Now, my man," Mr. Ferrick says, pleasantly, "and what is it that's
troubling _you_? Out with it--every little's a help in a case like
this."
The lad--his name is Jimmy--does not need pressing--his secret has
been weighing uneasily upon him for the last hour or more, ever since
he heard of the murder, in fact, and he pours his revelation into the
superintendent's eager ear. His revelation is this:
Last evening, just about dusk, strolling by chance in the direction of
the Laurel walk, he heard voices raised and angry in the walk--the
voices of a man and a woman. He had peeped through the branches and
seen my lady and a very tall man. No, it wasn't Sir Victor--it was a
much bigger man, with long black curling hair. Didn't see his face. It
was dark in there among the trees. Wasn't sure, but it struck him it
might be the tall, black-avised man, who came first the night Sir
Victor brought home my lady, and who had been seen skulking about the
park once or twice since. Had heard a whisper, that the man was Miss
Inez's brother--didn't know himself. All he did know was, that my lady
and a man were quarrelling on the evening of the murder in the Laurel
walk. What were they quarrelling about? Well, he couldn't catch their
talk very well--it was about money he thought. The man wanted money
and jewels, and my lady wouldn't give 'em. He threatened to do
something or tell something; then _she_ threatened to have him put
in Chesholm jail if he did. He, Jimmy, though full of curiosity,
was afraid the man would spring out and catch him, and so at that
juncture he came away. There! that was all, if it did the gentleman
any good, he was welcome to it.
It did the gentleman a world of good--it complicated matters
beautifully. Five minutes ago the case looked dark as night for Miss
Catheron--here was a rift in her sky. Who was this man--_was_ it
Miss Catheron's scapegrace brother? Jimmy could tell him nothing more.
"If you wants to find out about Miss Inez' brother," said Jimmy, "you
go to old Hooper. _He_ knows. All _I_ know is, that they say he was
an uncommon bad lot; but old Hooper, he's knowed him ever since he
was a young'un and lived here. If old Hooper says he wasn't here the
night Sir Victor brought my lady home, don't you believe him--he was,
and he's been seen off and on in the grounds since. The women folks
in the servants' hall, they say, as how he must have been an old
sweetheart of my lady's. You go to old Hooper and worrit it out of
him."
Mr. Superintendent Ferrick went. How artfully he began his work, how
delicately and skillfully he "pumped" old Hooper dry, no words can
tell. Mr. Juan Catheron _was_ an "uncommon bad lot," he had come to
the house and forced an entrance into the dining-room the night of
Lady Catheron's arrival--there had been a quarrel, and he had been
compelled to leave. Bit by bit this was drawn from Mr. Hooper. Since
then, Jackson, the head groom, and Edwards, the valet, had seen him
hovering about the grounds watching the house.
Mr. Ferrick ponders these things in his heart, and is still. This
vagabond, Juan Catheron, follows my lady to Catheron Royals, is
expelled, haunts the grounds, and a man answering to his description
is discovered quarrelling with my lady, demanding money, etc., two or
three hours before the murder. The window of the room, in which she
takes that fatal sleep, opens on the lawn; any one may enter who sees
fit. No one is about. The Oriental dagger lies convenient to his hand
on the table. "Here, now," says Mr. Ferrick _to_ Mr. Ferrick, with
a reflective frown, "which is guilty--the brother or sister?"
He goes and gives an order to one of his men, and the man starts in
search of Mr. Juan Catheron. Mr. Catheron must be found, though they
summon the detectives of Scotland Yard to aid them in their search.
The dull hours wear on--the new day, sunny and bright, is with them.
The white drawing-room is darkened--the master of Catheron Royals sits
there alone with his dead. And presently the coroner comes, and talks
with the superintendent, and they enter softly and look at the
murdered lady. The coroner departs again--a jury is summoned, and the
inquest is fixed to begin at noon next day in the "Mitre" tavern at
Chesholm.
Lady Helena returns and goes at once to her nephew. Inez, in spite of
her injunctions, has never been near him once. He sits there still, as
she left him many hours ago; he has never stirred or spoken since.
Left to himself he is almost apathetic in his quiet--he rouses into
fury, when they strive to take him away. As the dusk falls, Lady
Helena, passing the door, hears him softly talking to the dead, and
once--oh, pitiful Heaven! she hears a low, blood-chilling laugh. She
opens the door and goes in. He is kneeling besides the sofa, holding
the stark figure in his arms, urging her to get up and dress.
"It is a lovely night, Ethel," he says; "the moon is shining, and you
know, you like to walk out on moonlight nights. Do you remember, love,
those nights at Margate; when we walked together first on the sands?
Ah! you never lay like this, cold and still, then. Do get up, Ethel!"
petulantly this; "I am tired of sitting here and waiting for you to
awake. You have slept long enough. Get up!"
He tries to lift her. Horror struck, Lady Helena catches him in time
to prevent it.
"Victor, Victor!" she cries, "for the love of Heaven put her down.
Come away. Don't you know she is dead?"
He lifts his dim eyes to her face, blind with the misery of a dumb
animal.
"_Dead_!" he whispers.
Then with a low, moaning gasp, he falls back in her arms, fainting
wholly away.
Her cries bring aid--they lift him and carry him up to his room,
undress and place him in bed. The family physician is summoned--feels
his pulse, hears what Lady Helena has to say, and looks very grave.
The shock has been too much for a not overstrong body or mind. Sir
Victor is in imminent danger of brain fever.
The night shuts down. A messenger comes to Lady Helena saying the
squire is much better, and she makes up her mind to remain all night.
Inez comes, pale and calm, and also takes her place by the stricken
man's bedside, a great sadness and pity for the first time on her
face. The White Room is locked--Lady Helena keeps the key--one pale
light burns dimly in its glittering vastness. And as the night closes
in blackness over the doomed house, one of the policemen comes in
haste to Superintendent Ferrick, triumph in his face. He has found the
dagger.
Mr. Ferrick opens his eyes rather--it is more than he expected.
"A bungler," he mutters, "whoever did it. Jones, where did you find
this?"
Jones explains.
Near the entrance gates there is a wilderness of fern, or bracken, as
high as your waist. Hidden in the midst of this unlikely place Jones
has found the dagger. It is as if the party, going down the avenue,
had flung it in.
"Bungler," Superintendent Ferrick says again. "It's bad enough to be a
murderer without being a fool."
He takes the dagger. No doubt about the work it has done. It is
incrusted with blood--dry, dark, and clotted up to the hilt. A strong,
sure hand had certainly done the deed. For the first time the thought
strikes him--_could_ a woman's hand, strike that one strong, sure,
deadly blow? Miss Catheron is a fragile-looking young lady, with a
waist he could span, slim little fingers, and a delicate wrist. Could
she strike this blow--it is quite evident only one has been struck.
"And besides," says Superintendent Ferrick, argumentatively to himself,
"it's fifteen minutes' fast walking from the house to the gates.
Fifteen minutes only elapse between the time Nurse Pool sees her come
out of the nursery and Maid Ellen finds her mistress murdered. And
I'll be sworn, she hasn't been out of the house to-day. All last night
they _say_ she kept herself shut up in her room. Suppose she
wasn't--suppose she went out last night and tried to hide it, is it
likely--come, I say! is it likely, she would take and throw it right
in the very spot, where it was sure to be found? A Tartar that young
woman is, I have no doubt, but she's a long way off being a fool. She
may know _who_ has done this murder, but I'll stake my professional
reputation, in spite of Mrs. Pool, that she never did it herself."
A thin, drizzling rain comes on with the night, the trees drip, drip
in a feeble melancholy sort of way, the wind has a lugubrious sob in
its voice, and it is intensely dark. It is about nine o'clock, when
Miss Catheron rises from her place by the sick-bed and goes out of the
room. In the corridor she stands a moment, with the air of one who
looks, and listens. She sees no one. The dark figure of a woman, who
hovers afar off and watches her, is there, but lost in a shadowy
corner; a woman, who since the murder, has never entirely lost sight
of her. Miss Catheron does not see her, she takes up a shawl, wraps it
about her, over her head, walks rapidly along the passage, down a back
stairway, out of a side door, little used, and so out into the dark,
dripping, sighing night.
There are the Chesholm constabulary on guard on the wet grass and
gravel elsewhere--there are none here. But the quiet figure of Jane
Pool has followed her, like her shadow, and Jane Pool's face, peers
cautiously out from the half-open door.
In that one instant while she waits, she misses her prey--she emerges,
but in the darkness nothing is to be seen or heard.
As she stands irresolute, she suddenly hears a low, distinct whistle
to the left. It may be the call of a night-bird--it may be a signal.
She glides to the left, straining her eyes through the gloom. It is
many minutes before she can see anything, except the vaguely waving
trees--then a fiery spark, a red eye glows through the night. She has
run her prey to earth--it is the lighted tip of a cigar.
She draws near--her heart throbs. Dimly she sees the tall figure of a
man; close to him the slender, slighter figure of a woman. They are
talking in whispers, and she is mortally afraid of coming too close.
What is to keep them from murdering her too?
"I tell you, you _must_ go, and at once," are the first words, she
hears Inez Catheron speaking, in a passionate, intense whisper. "I
tell you I am suspected already; do you think _you_ can escape much
longer? If you have any feeling for yourself, for me, go, go, I
beseech you, at once! They are searching for you now, I warn you, and
if they find you--"
"If they find me," the man retorts, doggedly, "it can't be much worse
than it is. Things have been so black with me for years, that they
can't be much blacker. But I'll go. I'm not over anxious to stay, Lord
knows. Give me the money and I'll be off."
She takes from her bosom a package, and hands it to him; by the glow
of the red cigar-tip Jane sees her.
"It is all I have--all I can get, jewels and all," she says; "enough
to keep you for years with care. Now go, and never come back--your
coming has done evil enough, surely."
Jane Pool catches the words--the man mutters some sullen, inaudible
reply. Inez Catheron speaks again in the same passionate voice.
"How dare you say so?" she cries, stamping her foot. "You wretch! whom
it is my bitterest shame to call brother. But for you _she_ would
be alive and well. Do you think I do not know it? Go--living or dead,
I never want to look upon your face again!"
Jane Pool hears those terrible words and stands paralyzed. Can it be,
that Miss Inez is not the murderess after all? The man retorts
again--she does not hear how--then plunges into the woodland and
disappears. An instant the girl stands motionless looking after him,
then she turns and walks rapidly back into the house.
CHAPTER IX.
FROM THE "CHESHOLM COURIER."
The Monday morning edition of the _Chesholm Courier_, September 19th,
18--, contained the following, eagerly devoured by every man and woman
in the county, able to read at all:
THE TRAGEDY AT CATHERON ROYALS.
"In all the annals of mysterious crime (began the editor, with intense
evident relish), nothing more mysterious, or more awful, has ever been
known, than the recent tragedy at Catheron Royals. In the annals of
our town, of our county, of our country we may almost say, it stands
unparalleled in its atrocity. A young and lovely lady, wedded little
better than a year, holding the very highest position in society, in
the sacred privacy of her own household, surrounded by faithful
servants, is struck down by the dagger of the assassin. Her youth, her
beauty, the sanctity of slumber, all were powerless to shield her.
Full of life, and hope, and happiness, she is foully and hideously
murdered--her babe left motherless, her young husband bereaved and
desolate. If anything were needed to make the dreadful tragedy yet
more dreadful, it is, that Sir Victor Catheron lies, as, we write,
hovering between life and death. The blow, which struck her down, has
stricken him too--has laid him upon what may be his death-bed. At
present he lies mercifully unconscious of his terrible loss tossing in
the delirium of violent brain fever.
"Who, we ask, is safe after this? A lady of the very highest rank, in
her own home, surrounded by her servants, in open day, is stabbed to
the heart. Who, we ask again, is safe after this? Who was the
assassin--what was the motive? Does that assassin yet lurk in our
midst? Let it be the work of the coroner and his jury to discover the
terrible secret, to bring the wretch to justice. And it is the duty of
every man and woman in Chesholm to aid, if they can, that discovery."
* * * * *
_From Tuesday's Edition_.
The inquest began at one o'clock yesterday in the parlor of the Mitre
Inn, Lady Helena Powyss, of Powyss Place, and Miss Inez Catheron being
present. The first witness called was Ellen Butters.
ELLEN BUTTERS sworn.--"I was Lady Catheron's maid; I was engaged in
London and came down with her here; on the afternoon of Friday, 16th,
I last saw my lady alive, about half-past six in the afternoon; she
had dressed for dinner; the family dinner hour is seven; saw nothing
unusual about her; well yes, she seemed a little out of spirits, but
was gentle and patient as usual; when I had finished dressing her she
threw her shawl about her, and took a book, and said she would go out
a few minutes and take the air; she did go out, and I went down to the
servant's hall; sometime after seven Jane Pool, the nurse, came down
in a great flurry and said--"
THE CORONER.--"Young woman we don't want to hear what Jane Pool said
and did. We want to know what you saw yourself."
ELLEN BUTTERS (sulkily).--"Very well, that's what I'm trying to tell
you. If Jane Pool hadn't said Sir Victor had gone off to Powyss Place,
and that she didn't think it would be proper to disturb my lady just
then, I would have gone up to my lady for orders. Jane had her supper
and went up to the nursery for baby. She came back again after
awhile--it was just past eight--in a temper, saying she had left my
lady asleep when she took away baby, and returned to awake her. She
had met Miss Inez who ordered her away about her business, saying my
lady was still asleep. Jane Pool said--"
THE CORONER--"Young woman, we _don't_ want to hear what Jane Pool
said. Jane Pool will tell her own story presently; we won't trouble
you to tell both. At what hour did you go up to the nursery yourself?"
ELLEN BUTTERS (more sulkily).--"I disremember; it was after eight. I
could tell all about it better, if you wouldn't keep interrupting and
putting me out. It was about a quarter or twenty minutes past eight, I
think--"
THE CORONER (dogmatically).--"What you think won't do. Be more precise
if you please, and keep your temper. What o'clock was it, I say, when
you went up to the nursery?"
ELLEN BUTTERS (excitedly).--"It was about a quarter or twenty minutes
past eight--how can I know any surer when I _don't_ know. I don't
carry a watch, and didn't look at the clock. I'm sure I never expected
to be badgered about it in this way. I said I'd go and wake my lady up
and not leave her there, to catch her death, in spite of fifty Miss
Catherons. I rapped at the door and got no answer, then I opened it
and went in. There was no light, but the moon was shining bright and
clear, and I saw my lady sitting, with her shawl around her, in the
arm-chair. I thought she was asleep and called her--there was no
answer. I called again, and put my hand on her bosom to arouse her.
Something wet my hand--it was blood. I looked at her closer, and saw
blood on her dress, and oozing in a little stream from the left breast.
Then I knew she had been killed. I ran screaming from the room, and
down among the rest of the servants. I told them--I didn't know how.
And I don't remember any more, for I fell in a faint. When I came to I
was alone--the rest were up in the nursery. I got up and joined
them--that's everything I know about it."
Ellen Butters retired, and William Hooper was called. This is Mr.
Hooper's evidence:
"I have been butler in Sir Victor Catheron's family for twenty years.
On the night of Friday last, as I sat in the servants' hall after
supper, the young woman, Ellen Butters, my lady's London maid, came
screeching downstairs like a creature gone mad, that my lady was
murdered, and frightened us all out of our senses. As she was always a
flighty young person, I didn't believe her. I ordered her to be quiet,
and tell us what she meant. Instead of doing it she gave a sort of
gasp and fell fainting down in a heap. I made them lay her down on the
floor, and then follow me up to the nursery. We went in a body--I at
the head. There was no light but the moon-light in the room. My lady
lay back in the arm-chair, her eyes closed, bleeding and quite dead. I
ran up to Miss Inez's room, and called her. My master was not at home,
or I would have called him instead. I think she must have been dead
some minutes. She was growing cold when I found her."
"William Hooper," continued the _Chesholm Courier_, communicatively,
"was cross-examined as to the precise time of finding the body. He
said it was close upon half-past eight, the half hour struck as he
went up to Miss Inez's room."
James Dicksey was next called. James Dicksey, a shambling lad of
eighteen, took his place, his eyes rolling in abject terror, and under
the evident impression that he was being tried for his life. Every
answer was wrung from this frightened youth, as with red-hot pincers,
and it was with the utmost difficulty anything consistent could be
extorted at all.
"About half-past six on Friday evening, Mr. Dicksey was rambling about
the grounds, in the direction of the laurel walk. In the open ground
it was still quite light, in the laurel walk it was growing dusk. As
he drew near, he heard voices in the laurel walk--angry voices, though
not very loud--the voices of a man and a woman. Peeped in and saw my
lady. Yes, it was my lady--yes, he was sure. Was it likely now he
wouldn't know my lady? The man was very tall, had a furrin-looking hat
pulled over his eyes, and stood with his back to him. He didn't see
his face. They were quarrelling and--well yes, he did listen. Heard
the man call her 'Ethel,' and ask for money. She wouldn't give it to
him. Then he asked for jewels. She refused again, and ordered him to
go. She was very angry--she stamped her foot once and said: 'If you
don't go instantly I'll call my husband. Between you and your sister
you will drive me mad.' When she said that, he guessed at once, who
the big furrin-looking man was. It was Miss Inez's brother, Mr. Juan
Catheron. Had heard tell of him often, and knew he had been at the
house the night of my lady's arrival, and that there had been a row."
Mr. Dicksey was here sharply reprimanded, informed that his suspicions
and hearsays were not wanted, and requested to come back to the point.
He came back.
"My lady wouldn't give him anything, then he got mad and said: (James
Dicksey had been vaguely impressed by these remarkable words at the
time, and had been silently revolving them ever since) 'Give me the
jewels, or by all the gods I'll blow the story of your marriage to me
all over England!'"
The breathless silence of coroner, jury, and spectators at this
juncture was something not to be described. In that profound silence,
James Dicksey went rambling on to say, that he could swear before the
Queen herself to those words, that he had been thinking them over ever
since he had heard them, and that he couldn't make top or tail of them.
THE CORONER (interrupting)--"What further did you overhear? Be careful,
remember you are on oath."
JAMES DICKSEY.--"I heard what my lady said. She was in an awful
passion, and spoke loud. She said, 'You will not, you dare not, you're
a coward; Sir Victor has you in his power, and if you say one word
you'll be silenced in Chesholm jail.' Then she stamped her foot again,
and said, 'Leave me, Juan Catheron; I am not afraid of you.' Yes; he
was sure of the name; she called him Juan Catheron, and looked as if
she could eat him alive. He had heard no more; he was afraid of being
caught, and had stolen quietly away. Had said nothing at all about it
to any one, was afraid it might reach my lady's ears, and that he
would lose his place for eavesdropping. At ten o'clock that night was
told of the murder, and was took all of a-tremble. Had told
Superintendent Ferrick something of this next day, but this was
all--yes so help him, all he had heard, and just as he had heard it."
James Dicksey was rigidly cross-examined, and clung to his testimony
with a dogged tenacity nothing could alter or shake. He could swear
positively to the name she had uttered, to the words both had spoken,
if he were dying. A profound sensation ran through the room as James
Dicksey sat down--a thrill of unutterable apprehension and fear.
The examination of these three witnesses had occupied the whole of the
afternoon. The court adjourned until next morning at ten o'clock.
On Tuesday morning, despite the inclemency of the weather (said the
_Chesholm Courier_ to its readers) the parlor of the "Mitre," the
halls, the stairways, and even the inn yard were filled at the hour of
nine. The excitement was intense--you might have heard a pin drop in
the silence, when the examination of witnesses was resumed. William
Hooper was again called to take the stand:
THE CORONER.--"You remember, I suppose, the evening on which Sir
Victor brought Lady Catheron home?"
WITNESS.--"I do."
CORONER.--"You had a visitor on that night. You admitted him, did you
not, Mr. Hooper? Who was that visitor?"
"It was Mr. Juan Catheron."
"Was Mr. Juan Catheron in the habit of visiting Catheron Royals?"
"He was not."
"Can you recollect, how long a period had elapsed since his previous
visit?"
"Mr. Catheron had not been at the Royals for over four years. He was
wild--there was ill-feeling between him and my master."
"Between him and his sister also?"
"I don't know. I--believe so." Here the witness looked piteously at
the jury. "I had rather not answer these questions, gentlemen, if you
please. I'm an old servant of the family--whatever family secrets may
have come under my knowledge, I have no right to reveal."
THE CORONER (blandly).--"Only a few more, Mr. Hooper. We require to
know on what footing Mr. Juan Catheron stood with his family. Did he
ever come to Catheron Royals to visit his sister?"
"He did not."
"Had he ever been forbidden the house?"
"I--believe so."
"On the evening of Sir Victor and Lady Catheron's arrival, his visit
was entirely unexpected then?"
"I don't know."
"You admitted him?"
"I did."
"What did he say to you?"
"I don't remember. Some rattling nonsense--nothing more. He was always
lightheaded. He ran upstairs and into the dining-room before I could
prevent it."
"How long did he remain?"
"About twenty minutes--not longer, I am certain. Then he came running
back and I let him out."
"Had there been a quarrel?"
"I don't know," doggedly; "I wasn't there. Mr. Juan came down laughing,
I know _that_. I know nothing more about it. I have never seen him
since."
CHAPTER X.
FROM THE "CHESHOLM COURIER"--CONTINUED.
Jane Pool was called. A suppressed murmur of deepest interest ran
through the room at the name of this witness. It was understood her
evidence would have the deepest bearing on the case. Mrs. Pool took
the stand. "A decent, intelligent young woman," said the _Chesholm
Courier_, "who gave her evidence in a clear, straightforward way
that carried conviction to every hearer." "I am Jane Pool. I am nurse
to Sir Victor Catheron's infant son. Early in August I entered the
service of the deceased Lady Catheron in London; the first week of
September I accompanied them down here. On the evening of the murder,
about half-past six o'clock, or perhaps a quarter of seven, while I
was busy in the day nursery over my duties, my lady came in, as she
often did, though not at that hour. She looked pale and flurried, and
bent over baby, who lay asleep, without speaking. Sir Victor came in
while she was still there, and without taking any notice of me, told
her he had received a note from Lady Helena Powyss saying Squire
Powyss had had a stroke, and that he must go at once to Powyss Place.
He said he thought he would be absent all night, that he would return
as soon as he could, and that she was to take care of herself. He
kissed her good-by and left the room. My lady went to the window and
waved her hand to him, and watched him out of sight. About ten minutes
after, while she still stood there, the door opened and Miss Inez came
in and asked for Sir Victor; she said she wanted him. Then she stooped
over and looked at the baby, calling him the heir of Catheron Royals.
Then she laughed in her soft way, and said: 'I wonder if he _is_ the
heir of Catheron Royals? I have been reading the Scotch marriage law
and after what you and my brother said the other night--' If she said
any more I didn't catch it--my lady turned round in such a flame of
anger as I never saw her in before, and says she: 'You have uttered
your last insult, Inez Catheron--you will never utter another beneath
this roof. To-morrow you will leave it. I am Sir Victor Catheron's
wife, and mistress of Catheron Royals--this is the last night it will
ever shelter you.' Then she opens the door. 'Go!' she said; 'when my
husband returns you or I leave this forever.' Neither of them took the
least notice of me; I was afraid of being seen, and kept as quiet as I
could. I heard Miss Inez answer: 'Not all the soap-boilers' daughters
in England shall send me from Catheron Royals. You may go to-morrow if
you will, but I will never go, never!' With that she went away, and my
lady shut the door upon her. I did not want her to see me there, when
she turned round, so I slipped out of another door, and downstairs. I
took my supper, lingering, I dare say, half an hour; I don't think it
was much more than half after seven when I returned to the nursery for
baby. I found my lady asleep in the arm-chair besides the open window.
She had been crying--there were tears on her cheeks and eyelashes as
she slept. I did not disturb her. I lifted baby and carried him up to
the nursery. I left him in charge of the under nursemaid, and returned
to the room my lady was in. The clock was striking eight as I came
downstairs. I was going in to awaken my lady, not liking to have her
sleep in the night air. My hand was on the handle, when the door
opened and Miss Inez came out. She looked paler than common, I thought
but she spoke just as high and haughty as usual. She asked me what I
wanted there; I told her I wanted to waken my lady. She looked at me,
as though she would like to bite off my head--she was in one of her
tempers, I could see. 'You had better let my lady alone,' she says,
'and attend to your nursery. She's asleep still, and it isn't _your_
place to awaken her. Go.' I was in a fury; I don't mind owning that,
but I said nothing and I went. When Miss Inez looked and spoke like
that, every servant in the house knew it was as much as her place
was worth to disobey her. I went back and told Ellen Butters. Ellen
was drinking her tea; she couldn't abide Miss Inez, and the minute
she finished her cup she jumps up. '_I'm_ not afraid of her,' says
Ellen; 'she ain't _my_ missis; I'll go and wake my lady up.' She went;
we staid below. It might be five minutes after, when she comes flying
back, screaming fit to wake the dead, 'Murder! murder!' There was
blood on one of her hands, and before we could get anything more from
her except 'My lady! my lady!' she drops down in a faint. We left
her there, and followed Hooper upstairs. There was my lady lying in
the arm-chair under the window, as I had seen her last--stone dead.
We were all so shocked and frightened, I hardly know what was said
or done for a while. Then somebody says--I don't know who to this
minute, 'Where is Miss Catheron?' Nobody made answer. Says the person
again: 'Where is Miss Catheron?' I think it frightened Hooper. He
turned round, and said he would go for her. He went--we waited. He
came back with her in a short while, and we all looked at her. She
was nearly as much like a dead woman as my lady herself. I never saw
such a look on any face before--her eyes seemed dazed in her head,
like. She hardly seemed to know what she was saying or doing, and
she didn't seem a bit surprised. Hooper said to her: 'Shall I send
for Sir Victor?' She answered, still in that stunned sort of way: 'Yes,
send for Sir Victor, and the doctor, and the police at once.' She was
shivering like one in the chills, as she said it. She said she could
do nothing more, and she left us and went back to her room. It was
then I first missed the dagger. I can swear it was lying on the table
beside a book, when my lady first fell asleep; when I looked round,
the book was still there, the dagger gone."
The blood-stained dagger found by the policeman, was here produced and
identified at once by the witness.
"It is the same--I have had it in my hand a hundred times, and seen it
with her. Oh, my lady--my lady--my dear lady!"
The sight of the blood-incrusted weapon, seemed totally to unnerve the
witness. She broke out into hysterical sobbing, which nothing could
quiet. It being now noon, the court adjourned till two o'clock.
Jane Pool was then again called, and resumed her important testimony,
in the same rapid, narrative, connected style as before.
"I felt dreadfully about the murder, and I don't mind owning I had my
suspicions. I said to myself: 'I'll keep an eye on Miss Inez,' and I
did, as well as I could. She kept her room nearly all next day. Toward
night, Sir Victor was took down with the fever--wild and raving like,
and Miss Inez went with Lady Helena to sit with him and watch. I was
watching too, Sir Victor's room door. I don't know why, but I seemed
to expect something. About nine, or a little later, as I stood at one
end of the hall in the shadow, I saw the door open and Miss Inez come
out. She looked up and down to see if the coast was clear, then put
her shawl over her head, and walked very fast to the opposite end,
downstairs and out of the side door. I followed her. It was raining
and very dark, and at first I lost her among the trees. Then I heard a
whistle, and following it, the next thing I saw was a tall man smoking
a cigar, close beside her. It was too dark to see his face; I could
just make out that he was very tall. They were talking in whispers,
and what with the drip, drip of rain and the rustling of the trees, I
couldn't catch at first what they were saying."
"Indeed, Mrs. Pool," the coroner observed at this point, "that is to
be regretted. Eavesdropping seems to be your forte."
"I don't think it is any harm to listen in a good cause," Mrs. Pool
retorted, sullenly. "If you don't care to have me repeat my
eavesdropping, I won't."
"Repeat what you heard, if it bears on this case."
"The first words I heard, were from Miss Inez. She was giving him
something--money, I thought, and she said: 'Now go and never come back.
Your coming has done evil enough surely.' I couldn't catch his answer.
He took what she gave him, and Miss Inez burst out, as she always does,
in one of her tearing passions: 'How dare you say so, you wretch! whom
it is my bitterest shame to call brother. _But for you she would be
alive and well_--do you think I don't know it? Go! Living or dead,
I never want to look upon your face again.'"
The sensation in the court [said the _Chesholm Courier_] as the
witness repeated these words, was something indescribable. A low,
angry murmur ran from lip to lip; even the coroner turned pale.
"Witness," he said, "take care! You are on oath, remember. How can you
recall accurately word for word what you heard?"
"Are they the sort of words likely to be forgotten?" Jane Pool
retorted. "I know I'm on oath; I'll take five hundred oaths to these
words, if you like. Those were the very words Miss Inez Catheron spoke.
She called him her brother. She said but for him _she_ would be alive
to-night. Then he plunged into the wood and disappeared, and she went
back to the house. I hav'nt spoken of this to any one since. I wrote
the words down when I came in. Here is the writing."
She handed the coroner a slip of paper, on which what she had repeated
was written.
"I knew I would have to swear to it, so I wrote it down to make sure.
But my memory is good; I wouldn't have forgotten."
The witness was rigidly cross-examined, but nothing could shake her
testimony.
"The window," she said, "of the room where the murder was committed,
opened on a lawn and flower-garden--any one could have entered by it.
The knife lay on the table close by."
Dr. Dane was next called and gave his medical testimony. The dagger
shown, would inflict the wound that caused Lady Catheron's death. In
his opinion, but one blow had been struck and had penetrated the heart.
Death must have been instantaneous. A strong, sure hand must have
struck the blow.
The policeman who had found the dagger was called, and testified as to
its discovery among the brake, on the evening succeeding the murder.
Miss Catheron was the next and last witness summoned. At the sound of
her name a low, ominous hiss was heard--sternly repressed at once by
the coroner.
"Miss Catheron came in," quoth the _Courier_, "as pale as marble and
looking as emotionless. Her large dark eyes glanced over the crowded
room, and dead silence fell. The young lady gave her evidence clearly
and concisely--perfectly calm in tone and manner.
"On the Friday evening in question, the deceased Lady Catheron and
myself had a misunderstanding. It was my fault. I made a remark that
wounded her, and she retorted by saying I should leave Catheron Royals
on the morrow. I answered equally angrily, that I would not, and left
the room. When I was alone I began to regret what I had so hastily
said. I thought the matter over for a time, and finally resolved to
return and apologize. I went back to the nursery, and found Lady
Catheron fast asleep. I would not disturb her, and immediately left
the room. On the threshold, I encountered Nurse Pool. I had always
disliked the woman, and spoke sharply to her, ordering her away. Half
an hour after, as I sat in my room alone, Hooper, the butler, came up,
and told me my lady was murdered. I was naturally shocked and
horrified. I went down with him, and saw her. I hardly knew what to do;
I felt stunned and bewildered by the suddenness of so terrible a
catastrophe. I told the butler to send for Sir Victor, for the family
physician, and the police. I knew not what else to do. I could not
remain in the room, because the sight of blood always turns me faint
and sick. I retired to my own apartment and remained there until the
arrival of Lady Helena Powyss."
* * * * *
There was one fact, the _Chesholm Courier_ did not chronicle,
concerning Miss Catheron's evidence--the formal, constrained manner in
which it was given, like one who repeats a well-learned lesson by rote.
* * * * *
As she concluded, the coroner ventured to put a few respectful
questions.
"On the night succeeding the murder, Miss Catheron, you met after dusk
a man in the grounds. Do you object to telling us who that man was?"
"I do," Miss Catheron replied, haughtily. "I most decidedly object. I
have told all I have to tell concerning this murder. About my private
affairs I will answer no impertinent questions, either now or at any
future time."
Miss Catheron was then allowed to retire. The jury held a consultation,
and it was proposed to adjourn the inquest for a few days, until Juan
Catheron should be discovered.
* * * * *
In one of the rooms of the "Mitre," Miss Catheron stood with Lady
Helena, Sir Roger Kendrick, and a few other sympathizing and indignant
friends. There was but little said--but little to say. All felt that a
dark, terrible cloud was gathering over the girl's head. It broke
sooner than they looked for.
As they lingered there for a few moments, awaiting the issue of the
inquest, a constable entered with a warrant, approached and touched
Miss Catheron lightly on the shoulder.
Lady Helena uttered a gasping cry; Sir Roger strode forward; the young
lady slightly recoiled. The constable took off his hat and spoke:
"Very sorry, Miss, but it's my painful duty. I have a warrant here
from Squire Smiley, Justice of the Peace, to arrest you on suspicion
of wilful murder."
CHAPTER XI.
"RING OUT YOUR BELLS! LET MOURNING SHOWS BE SPREAD!"
Three days after, a long and stately procession passed slowly through
the great gates, under the lofty Norman archway, bearing to the
Catheron vaults the body of Ethel, last lady Catheron.
A long and sad ceremonial! Why, it seemed only yesterday that that
mournful, passing bell had rung out the welcoming peal; but yesterday
since they had lit the bon-fires, and tossed their hats in the air,
and cheered with all their hearts and souls, the gallant husband and
lovely wife. For a "squire of high degree" to marry beneath him, is
something that goes home, warm and true, to every humble heart. Sir
Victor's tenantry had never been half so proud of him, as when he had
brought among them his low-born wife. It seemed but yesterday that all
the parish had seen her, walking up this very aisle, in pale, flowing
silks, and with the sweetest face the sun ever shone on, leaning on
her happy young husband's arm; and now they carried her dead--foully
murdered--to the open Catheron vault, and laid her to sleep forever
beside the high-born dames of the race who slept their last sleep
there.
"All men are equal on the turf and under it," once said a famous
sporting nobleman. Ethel Dobb, the London soap-boiler's daughter, took
her place to-day, among the dead daughters of earls and marquises,
their equal at last, by right divine of the great leveller, Death.
A great and solemn hush pervaded all ranks, sexes, and classes. Struck
down in her sleep, without a moment's warning, in her own home--a deep
murmur, that was like the murmur of an angry sea, ran through them as
they collected together.
_Who_ had done this deed?--the girl confined in Chesholm jail, or
her scoundrel brother? They remembered him well--like Ishmael of old,
his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him, the head
and instigator of every poaching fray, or hen-roost robbery, every
fight and evil deed done in Chesholm. Both brother and sister hated
her--Inez Catheron that she had taken her lover from her--Juan
Catheron that he had lost her himself. After Sir Victor he was
heir-at-law. Failing the life of the infant son, he might one day
write himself Sir Juan.
It was a lucky thing, croaked the Chesholm gossips, that Nurse Pool
had removed the baby, else the dagger that stabbed the mother would
have found its way to the heart of the child. Curse the black-hearted
murderer of sleeping women and from the throng in the churchyard there
rose up a groan to Heaven, and a hundred angry hearts pledged
themselves to avenge it if the law would not.
"The coroner would have let the young lady escape," said one. "See how
he snubbed Mrs. Pool, and how easily he let her betters off. If
Justice Smiley hadn't got out his warrant, she'd have been off to the
continent and clear away, long before this."
"Why don't they find Juan Catheron?" said another. "They _say_ they're
looking for him--why don't they find him then? Murderers don't escape
so easily nowadays--the law finds 'em if it wants to find 'em. It's
seven days since the murder was done, and no tale or tidings of him
yet."
"And when he is found neither he nor his sister shall escape. If the
law lets them clear, _we_ won't. The time when rank could shield crime
is over, thank Heaven. Let them hang as high as Haman--they deserve
it. I'll be the first to pull the rope."
Day-by-day, the feeling had grown stronger and bitterer, against
brother and sister. The Englishman's proverbial love of "fair play,"
seemed for once forgotten. The merciful reasoning of the law, that
takes every man to be innocent until he is proven guilty, was too
lenient to be listened to. The brother had murdered her--the sister
had aided and abetted. Let them both hang--that was the _vox populi_
of Chesholm--hanging was too good for them.
"How did she take her arrest--she was always as proud as Lucifer and
as haughty as a duke's daughter?" asked the curious townfolk.
She had taken it very quietly as though she had expected it. When Lady
Helena and Sir Roger had cried out in horror at her arrest, she had
stood firm. A slight, sad smile had even crossed her lips.
"Dear Aunt Helena--dear Sir Roger," she had said, "there's nothing to
be surprised at. Don't interfere with this man; he is only doing his
duty. I knew this would come. I have expected it from the first. It
will be unpleasant for the time--of the result I have no fear. In
these days, when so many guilty escape, it is not likely the innocent
will be punished. Let me go with this man quietly, Aunt Helena; I," a
flush of proud pain passed over her face, "I don't want the
servants--I don't want the rabble to see me."
She held out her hand to her aunt, and her aunt's old friend.
"Good-by, Aunt Helena," she said wistfully. "Good-by, Sir Roger.
Nothing that they can bring against me will shake your faith in me, I
know. You will both come to see me often, I hope, and bring me news of
poor Victor. Should--I mean _when_ he recovers--don't tell him of
this--don't, I beg. It can do no good--it may do him harm. Good-by
once more--give my love to Uncle Godfrey. Aunt Helena, don't distress
yourself so; I cannot bear it."
"Do you think I will let you go alone? No, I will go with you to the
prison, if these besotted wretches persist in sending you there. But
oh, there _must_ be some mistake--it is too atrocious. Sir Roger,
can't you do something? Great Heaven! the idea of Inez Catheron being
lodged in Chesholm jail like a common felon!"
"Sir Roger can do nothing," Inez answered; "the law must take its
course. Let us end this painful scene--let us go at once." She
shuddered in spite of herself. "The sooner it is over the better."
She shook hands again with Sir Roger. A cab was at the door--the old
baronet handed the ladies in, and stood bare-headed, until they were
driven out of sight. They reached the square, gloomy, black building
called Chesholm jail, standing in the center of a gloomy, paved
quadrangle. Miss Catheron was shown to a room. The jailer had once
been a servant in the Powyss family, and he pledged himself now to
make Miss Inez as comfortable as was admissible under the
circumstances.
Once in the dreary room, with the heavy door closed and locked, Lady
Helena suddenly fell down on the stone floor before her niece and held
up her hands.
"Inez," she said, "in Heaven's name hear me! You are shielding some
one--that guilty man--you saw him do this deed. Speak out! Save
yourself--let the guilty suffer. What is he, that you should perish
for his sake? He was always evil and guilty--forget his blood flows in
your veins--speak out and save yourself. Let him who is guilty suffer
for his own crime!"
The soft September twilight was filling the room. One pale flash of
sunset came slanting through the grated window and fell on Inez
Catheron's face. She stood in the middle of the floor, her clasped
hands hanging loosely before her, an indescribable expression on her
face.
"Poor Juan," she said, wearily; "don't be too hard on him, Aunt Helena.
We have none of us ever been too gentle with him in his wrong doing,
and he wasn't really bad at heart _then_. If any letter should come
from him to you, for me, say nothing about it--bring it here. I don't
think he will be taken; he can double like a hare, and he is used
to being hunted. I hope he is far away at sea before this. For the
rest, I have nothing to say--nothing. I can live disgraced and die
a felon if need be, but not ten thousand disgraceful deaths can make
me speak one word more than I choose to utter."
Lady Helena's stifled sobbing filled the room. "Oh, my child! my
child!" she cried; "what madness is this, and for one so unworthy!"
"But there will be no such tragical ending. I will be tried at the
Assizes and acquitted. They _can't_ bring me in guilty. Jane Pool's
circumstancial evidence may sound very conclusive in the ears of Mr.
Justice Smiley, but it won't bring conviction with a grand jury. You
see it wasn't sufficient even for the coroner. The imprisonment here
will be the worst, but you will lighten that. Then when it is all
over, I will leave England and go back to Spain, to my mother's people.
They will receive me gladly, I know. It is growing dark, Aunt
Helena--pray don't linger here longer."
Lady Helena arose, her face set in a look of quiet, stubborn resolve.
"Take good care of poor Victor, and watch the baby well. He is the
last of the Catherons now, you know. Don't let any one approach Victor
but Mrs. Marsh, and warn her not to speak of my arrest--the shock
might kill him. I wish--I wish I had treated her more kindly in the
past. I feel as though I could never forgive myself now."
"You had better not talk so much, Inez," her aunt said, almost coldly.
"You may be overheard. I don't pretend to understand you. You know
best, whether he, for whom you are making this sacrifice, deserves it
or not. Good-night, my poor child--I will see you early to-morrow."
Lady Helena, her lips set in that rigid line of resolve, her tears
dried, rode back to Catheron Royals. The darkness had fallen by this
time--fallen with black, fast-drifting clouds, and chill whistling
winds. Two or three lights, here and there, gleamed along the lofty
facade of the old mansion, now a house of mourning indeed. Beneath its
roof a foul, dark murder had been done--beneath its roof its master
lay ill unto death. And for the guilty wretch who had wrought this
ruin, Inez Catheron was to suffer imprisonment, suspicion, and
life-long disgrace. The curse that the towns-people invoked on Juan
Catheron, Lady Helena had it in her heart to echo.
Her first act was to dismiss Jane Pool, the nurse.
"We keep servants, not spies and informers, at Catheron Royals," she
said, imperiously. "Go to Mrs. Marsh--what is due you she will pay.
You leave Catheron Royals without a character, and at once."
"I'm not afraid, my lady," Jane Pool retorted, with a toss of her head.
"People will know why I'm turned away, and I'll get plenty of places.
I knew I would lose my situation for telling the truth, but I'm not
the first that has suffered in a good cause."
Lady Helena had swept away, disdaining all reply. She ascended to Sir
Victor's room--the night-lamp burned low, mournful shadows filled it.
A trusty nurse sat patiently by the bedside.
"How is he now?" asked his aunt, bending above him.
"Much the same, your ladyship--in a sort of stupor all the time,
tossing about, and muttering ceaselessly. I can't make out anything he
says, except the name Ethel. He repeats that over and over in a way
that breaks my heart to hear."
The name seemed to catch the dulled ear of the delirious man.
"Ethel," he said, wearily. "Yes--yes I must go and fetch Ethel home. I
wish Inez would go away--her black eyes make one afraid--they follow
me everywhere. Ethel--Ethel--Ethel!" He murmured the name dreamily,
tenderly. Suddenly he half started up in bed and looked about him
wildly. "What brings Juan Catheron's picture here? Ethel! come away
from him. How dare you meet him here alone?" He grasped Lady Helena's
wrist and looked at her with haggard, bloodshot eyes. "He was your
lover once--how dare he come here? Oh, Ethel you won't leave me for
him! I love you--I can't live without you--_don't_ go. Oh, my Ethel!
my Ethel! my Ethel!"
He fell back upon the bed with a sort of sobbing cry that brought the
tears streaming from the eyes of the tender-hearted nurse.
"He goes on like that continual, my lady," she said, "and it's awful
wearing. Always 'Ethel.' Ah, it's a dreadful thing?"
"Hooper will watch with you to-night, Martha," Lady Helena said. "Mrs.
Marsh will relieve you to-morrow. No stranger shall come near him. I
will take a look at baby before going home. I shall return here early
to-morrow, and I need not tell you to be very watchful!--I know you
will."
"You needn't indeed, my lady," the woman answered, mournfully. "I was
his mother's own maid, and I've nursed him in my arms, a little
white-haired baby, many a time. I will be watchful, my lady."
Lady Helena left her and ascended to the night nursery. She had to
pass the room where the tragedy had been enacted. She shivered as she
went by. She found the little heir of Catheron Royals asleep in his
crib, guarded by the under-nurse--head-nurse now, _vice_ Mrs. Pool
cashiered.
"Take good care of him, nurse," was Lady Helena's last charge, as she
stooped and kissed him, tears in her eyes; "poor little motherless
lamb."
"I'll guard him with my life, my lady," the girl answered, sturdily.
"No harm shall come to _him_."
Lady Helena returned to Powyss Place and her convalescent husband, her
heart lying like a stone in her breast.
"If I hadn't sent for Victor that night--if I had left him at home to
protect his wife, this might never have happened," she thought,
remorsefully; "_he_ would never have left her alone and unprotected,
to sleep beside an open window in the chill night air."
Amid her multiplicity of occupations, amid her own great distress, she
had found time to write to Mr. Dobb and his wife a touching, womanly
letter. They had come down to see their dead daughter and departed
again. She had been taken out of their life--raised far above them,
and even in death they would not claim her.
And now that the funeral was over, Inez in prison, the tumult and
excitement at an end, who shall describe the awful quiet that fell
upon the old house. A ghastly stillness reigned--servants spoke in
whispers, and stole from room to room--the red shadow of Murder rested
in their midst. And upstairs, in that dusk chamber, while the nights
fell, Sir Victor lay hovering between life and death.
CHAPTER XII.
THE FIRST ENDING OF THE TRAGEDY.
Eight days after the burial of Lady Catheron, several events, occurred
that wrought the seething excitement of Chesholm to boiling-over
point--events talked of for many an after year, by cottage fireside
and manor hearth.
The first of these, was Miss Catheron's examination before the police
magistrate, and her committal to jail, until the assizes. The justice
before whom the young lady appeared was the same who had already
issued his warrant for her arrest--a man likely to show her little
favor on account of her youth, her beauty, or her rank. Indeed the
latter made him doubly bitter; he was a virulent hater of the "bloated
aristocracy." Now that he had one of them in his power, he was
determined to let the world at large, and Chesholm in small see that
neither station nor wealth could be shields for crime.
She took her place in the prisoner's dock, pale, proud, disdainful.
She glanced over the dark sea of threatening faces that thronged the
court-room, with calmly haughty eyes--outwardly unmoved. Her few
friends were there--few indeed, for nearly all believed that if hers
was not the hand that had struck the blow, she had been at least her
brother's abettor. Many were brought forward who could swear how she
had hated my lady; how she had taken every opportunity to insult and
annoy her; how again and again my lady had been found crying fit to
break her heart after the lash of Miss Inez's stinging tongue. She had
loved Sir Victor--she was furiously jealous of his wife--she had fiery
Spanish blood in her veins, and a passionate temper that stopped at
nothing. Jane Pool was there, more bitter than ever--more deadly in
her evidence. Hooper was there, and his reluctantly extorted testimony
told dead against her. The examination lasted two days. Inez Catheron
was re-committed to prison to stand her trial for murder at the next
assizes.
The second fact worthy of note was, that despite the efforts of the
Chesholm police, in spite of the London detectives, no tale or tidings
of Juan Catheron were to be found. The earth might have opened and
swallowed him, so completely had he disappeared.
The third fact was, that Sir Victor Catheron had reached the crisis of
his disease and passed it safely. The fever was slowly but steadily
abating. Sir Victor was not to die, but to "take up the burden of life
again"--a dreary burden, with the wife he had loved so fondly,
sleeping in the vaults of Chesholm Church.
The fourth fact was, that the infant heir of the Catherons had been
removed from Catheron Royals to Powyss Place, to be brought up under
the watchful eye and care of his grand-aunt, Lady Helena.
On the evening of the day that saw Inez Catheron committed for trial,
the post brought Lady Helena a letter. The handwriting, evidently
disguised, was unfamiliar, and yet something about it set her heart
throbbing. She tore it open; it contained an inclosure. There were but
three lines for herself:
* * * * *
"DEAR LADY H.: If you will permit a reprobate to be on such familiar
terms with your highly respectable name, I address I----, under cover
to you, as per order. J.C."
* * * * *
The inclosure was sealed. Lady Helena destroyed her own, and next day
drove to the prison with the other. She found her niece sitting
comfortably enough in an arm-chair, reading, and except that she had
grown thinner and paler, looking little the worse. All that it was
possible to do, to make her comfortable, had been done. Without a word
the elder woman presented the letter--without a word the younger took
it. She turned to the window and read its brief contents.
"Thank Heaven!" her aunt heard her fervently say.
"May I see it, Inez? What does he say? Is he coming here to--"
"Coming here!" The girl's dark eyes looked at her in grave astonishment
"Certainly not. He is safe away, I am thankful to say, and out of their
reach."
"And he leaves you here to suffer in his stead, and you thank Heaven
for it! Inez Catheron, you are the most egregious--. Give me that
note!"
Inez smiled as she gave it. Her aunt put up her double eye-glass, and
read:
"ON BOARD THE THREE BELLS,
"OFF PLYMOUTH, Oct.--.
"DEAR I.:--I've dodged the beaks, you see. I bought a disguise that
would have baffled Fouche himself and--here I am. In twenty minutes
we'll have weighed anchor and away to the West Indies. I've read the
papers, and I'm sorry to see they've taken you on suspicion. Inez,
you're a trump, by Jove! I can say no more, but mind you, only I know
they can't commit you, I'd come back and confess all. I would, by
jingo. I may be a scoundrel, but I'm not such a scoundrel as that.
"I see the baronet's down with brain fever. If he goes off the hooks,
there will be only the young 'un between me and the succession.
Suppose _he_ goes off the hooks too, then I'll be a full-fledged
baronet! But of course he won't. I'm always an unlucky beggar. You may
write me on board the Three Bells, at Martinique, and let me know how
things go on in England. J."
* * * * *
A flush--a deep angry flush reddened the face of Lady Helena Powyss,
as she finished this cool epistle. She crushed it in her hand as
though it were a viper.
"The coward! the dastard! And it is for the heartless writer of this
insolent letter that you suffer all this. Inez Catheron. I command
you--speak out. Tell what you know. Let the guilty wretch you call
brother, suffer for his own crime."
Inez looked at her, with something of the stern, haughty glance she
had cast upon the rabble of the court room.
"Enough, Lady Helena! You don't know what you are talking about. I
have told you before; all I had to say I said at the inquest. It is of
no use our talking about it. Come what may, I will never say one word
more."
And looking at her stern, resolute face, Lady Helena knew she never
would. She tore the letter she held into minutest morsels, and tied
them up in her handkerchief.
"I'll burn them when I get home, and I never want to hear _his_ name
again. For you," lowering her voice, "we must save you in spite of
yourself. You shall never stand your trial at the assizes."
Miss Catheron looked wistfully at the heavily bolted and barred window.
"I should like to be saved," she said, wearily, "at any other price
than that of speaking. Once I thought I would die sooner than stoop to
run away--a fortnight's imprisonment changes all that. Save me if you
can, Aunt Helena--it will kill me to face that horrible mob again."
Her voice died out in a choking sob. She was thoroughly brave, but she
shuddered with sick fear and loathing, from head to foot, as she
recalled the dark, vindictive faces, the merciless eyes that had
confronted her yesterday on every side.
Lady Helena kissed her quietly and turned to go.
"Keep up heart," she said; "before the week ends you shall be free."
Two days later, Lady Helena and the warden of Chesholm jail sat
closeted together in deep and mysterious conference. On the table
between them lay a crossed check for seven thousand pounds.
The jailor sat with knitted brows and troubled, anxious face. He had
been for years a servant in Lady Helena's family. Her influence had
procured him his present situation. He had a sick wife and a large
family, and seven thousand pounds was an immense temptation.
"You risk nothing," Lady Helena was saying, in an agitated whisper,
"and you gain everything. They will blame you for nothing worse than
carelessness in the discharge of your duty. You may lose your
situation. Very well, lose it. Here are seven thousand pounds for you.
In all your life, grubbing here, you would never accumulate half or
quarter that sum. You can remove to London; trust to my influence to
procure you a better situation there than this. And oh, think of
_her_--young, guiltless--think what her life has been, think what
it is now destined to be. She is innocent--I swear it. You have
daughters of your own, about her age--think of them and yield!"
He stretched forth his hand and answered, resolutely:
"Say no more, my lady. Let good or ill betide--I'll do it."
The issue of the _Chesholm Courier_ four days later contained a
paragraph that created the profoundest excitement from end to end of
the town. We quote it:
* * * * *
"ESCAPE OF MISS INEZ CATHERON FROM CHESHOLM JAIL--NO TRACE OF HER TO
BE FOUND--SUSPECTED FOUL PLAY--THE JAILER THREATENED BY THE MOB.
* * * * *
"Early on the morning of Tuesday the under jailer, going to Miss
Catheron's cell with her breakfast, found, to his astonishment and
dismay, that it was empty and his prisoner flown.
"A moment's investigation showed him the bars of the window cleanly
filed through and removed. A rope ladder and a friend without, it is
quite evident, did the rest. The man instantly gave the alarm and aid
came. The head jailer appears to be as much at a loss as his underling,
but he is suspected. He lived in his youth in the Powyss family, and
was suspected of a strong attachment to the prisoner. He says he
visited Miss Catheron last night as usual when on his rounds, and saw
nothing wrong or suspicious then, either about the filed bars or the
young lady. It was a very dark night, and no doubt her escape was
easily enough effected. If any proof of the prisoner's guilt were
needed, her flight from justice surely renders it. Miss Catheron's
friends have been permitted from the first to visit her at their
pleasure and bring her what they chose--the result is to be seen
to-day. The police, both of our town and the metropolis, are
diligently at work. It is hoped their labors will be more productive
of success in the case of the sister than they have been in that of
the brother.
"The head jailer, it is said, will be dismissed from his post. No
doubt, pecuniarily, this is a matter of indifference to him _now_.
He made his appearance once in the street this morning, and came near
being mobbed. Let this escape be rigidly investigated, and let all
implicated be punished."
The escape created even more intense and angry excitement than the
murder. The rabble were furious. It is not every day that a young lady
of the upper ten thousand comes before the lower ten million in the
popular character of a murderess. They had been lately favored with
such rich and sensational disclosures in high life, love, jealousy,
quarrels, assassination. Their victim was safely in their hands; they
would try her, condemn her, hang her, and teach the aristocracy, law
was a game two could play at. And lo! in the hour of their triumph,
she slips from between their hands, and, like her guilty brother and
abettor, makes good her escape.
The town of Chesholm was furious. If the jailer had shown his face he
stood in danger of being torn to pieces. They understood thoroughly
how it was--that he had been bribed. In the dead of night, the man and
his family shook the dust of Chesholm off their feet, and went to hide
themselves in the busy world of London.
Three weeks passed. October, with its mellow days and frosty nights,
was gone. And still no trace of the fugitive. All the skill of the
officials of the town and country had been baffled by the cunning of a
woman. Inez Catheron might have flown with the dead summer's swallows
for all the trace she had left behind.
The first week of November brought still another revelation. Sir
Victor Catheron had left the Royals; Lady Helena, the squire, the baby,
the nurse, Powyss Place. They were all going to the south of France
for the young baronet's spirits and health. Catheron Royals, in charge
of Mrs. Marsh and Mr. Hooper, and two servants, on board wages, was
left to silence and gloom, rats and evil repute, autumnal rain and
wind. The room of the tragedy was shut up, a doomed room, "under the
ban" forever.
And so for the present the "tragedy of Catheron Royals" had ended.
Brother and sister had fled in their guilt, alike from justice and
vengeance. Ethel, Lady Catheron, lay with folded hands and sealed lips
in the grim old vaults, and a parchment and a monument in Chesholm
Church recorded her name and age--no more. So for the present it had
ended.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
MISS DARRELL.
It had been a week of ceaseless rain--the whole country side was
sodden. The month was March, and after an unusually severe January and
February, a "soft spell" had come, the rain had poured or dripped
incessantly from a smoke-colored sky, the state of the earth was only
to be described by that one uncomfortable word "slush." Spring was at
hand after a horribly bitter winter--a spring that was all wet and
slop, miserable easterly winds, and bleak, drizzling rain.
Perhaps if you searched the whole coast line between Maine and Florida,
you could not light upon a drearier, dirtier, duller little town than
the town of Sandypoint, Massachusetts. It was a straggling place, more
village than town, consisting mainly of one long street, filled with
frame houses of staring white, picked out with red doors and very
green shutters. Half a dozen pretentious "stores," a school-house, one
or two churches, a town hall, and three hotels, comprised the public
buildings. Behind Sandypoint stretched out the "forest primeval;"
before Sandypoint spread away its one beauty, the bright, broad sea.
To-day it looked neither bright nor broad, but all blurred in gray wet
mist; the surf cannonaded the shore with its dull thunder; the
woodland in the background was a very black forest in the dreariness,
and the roads--who shall paint the state of the Sandypoint roads?
Worst of all, the weather showed no sign of relenting, no symptoms of
clearing up. The new clock recently affixed to the Sandypoint Town
Hall, was striking the matutinal hour of ten. The population of
Sandypoint might all have been dead and buried, for any sign of life
Independence street showed. Doors and windows were all closed in a
melancholy way--a stray, draggled dog the only living creature to be
seen.
Or stay--no! there was a girl besides the dog, almost as draggled as
her four-footed companion. A girl of eighteen, perhaps, who walked
along through rain and discomfort, without so much as an umbrella to
protect her. She had come out of one of the ugliest of the ugly
buildings nearest the sea, and walked along in a slipshod sort of way,
never turning to the right or left to avoid an unusually deep puddle.
She plunged right on through it all--a dark, sullen-looking girl in a
shabby black dress, a red and black tartan shawl, an old black felt
hat with dingy red flowers, long past being spoilt by rain or wind.
And yet she was a pretty girl too--a _very_ pretty girl. Take the
Venus Celestis, plump her down in a muddy road in a rainstorm, dress
her in a draggled black alpaca, a faded shawl, and shocking bad hat,
and what can you say for your goddess but that she isn't a bad-looking
young woman? Miss Edith Darrell labors under all these disadvantages
at present. More--she looks sulky and sour; it is evident her personal
appearance has troubled her very little this dismal March morning. And
yet as you look at her, at those big black somber eyes, at those
almost classically regular features, at all that untidy abundance of
blackish-brown hair, you think involuntarily "what a pretty girl that
might be if she only combed her hair, put on a clean dress, and wasn't
in bad temper!"
She is tall, she is slender--there is a supple grace about her even
now--she has shapely feet and hands. She is a brunette of the most
pronounced type, with a skin like creamy velvet, just touched on
either ripe cheek with a peach-like glow, and with lips like cherries.
You _know_ without seeing her laugh, that she has very white teeth.
She is in no way inclined to show her white teeth laughingly this
morning. She goes steadily along to her destination--one of the
"stores" where groceries and provisions are sold. The storekeeper
smilingly accosts her with a brisk "Good-morning, Miss Darrell! Who'd
have thought of seeing you out this nasty whether? Can I do anything
for you to-day?"
"If you couldn't do anything for me, Mr. Webster," answers Miss
Darrell, in no very conciliatory tone, "it isn't likely you'd see me
in your shop this morning. Give me one pound of tea, one pound of
coffee, three pounds of brown sugar, and a quarter of starch. Put them
in this basket, and I'll call for them when I'm going home."
She goes out again into the rain, and makes her way to an emporium
where dry goods, boots and shoes, millinery, and crockery are for sale.
A sandy-haired young man, with a sandy mustache and a tendency to
blushes, springs forward at sight of her, as though galvanized,
reddening to the florid roots of his hair.
"Miss Darrell!" he cries, in a sort of rapture. "Who'd a thought it?
So early in the morning, and without an umbrella! How's your pa and ma,
and all the children?"
"My pa and ma, and all the children are well of course," the young
lady answers, impatiently, as though it were out of the nature of
things for anything to ail her family. "Mr. Doolittle, I want six
yards of crash for kitchen towels, three pairs of shoes for the
children, and two yards and a half of stone-colored ribbon for Mrs.
Darrell's drab bonnet. And be quick."
The blushes and emotion of young Mr. Doolittle, it was quite evident,
were entirely thrown away upon Miss Darrell. "Not at home to lovers,"
was plainly written on her moody brow and impatient lips. So Mr.
Doolittle produced the crash and cut off the six yards, the three
pairs of shoes were picked out, and the stoniest of the stone colors
chosen, the parcel tied up and paid for.
"We didn't see you up to Squire Whipple's surprise party last night,
Miss Edith," Mr. Doolittle timidly ventured, with a strong "Down East"
accent. "We had a hunky supper and a rale good time."
"No, you didn't see me, Mr. Doolittle, and I don't think you're likely
to in a hurry, either. The deadly liveliness of Sandypoint surprise
parties, and the beauty of Sandypoint, and its beastly weather are
about on a par--the parties, if anything, the most dismal of the
three."
With which the young lady went out with a cool parting nod. There was
one more errand to go--this one for herself. It was to the post-office,
and even the old post-master lit up into a smile of welcome at sight
of his visitor. It was evident, that when in good temper Miss Darrell
must be rather a favorite in the neighborhood.
"Letters for you? Well, yes, Miss Edie, I think there is. What's this?
Miss Edith S. Darrell, Sandypoint Mass. That's for you, and from New
York again, I see. Ah! I hope none o' them York chaps will be coming
down here to carry away the best-lookin' gal in town."
He handed her the letter. For a moment her dark face lit up with an
eager flush; as she took the letter it fell. It was superscribed in a
girl's spidery tracery, sealed with blue wax, and a sentimental French
seal and motto.
"From Trixy," she said, under her breath; "and I felt sure there would
be one from--Are you _sure_ this is all, Mr. Merriweather? I expected
another."
"Sure and certain, Miss Edie. Sorry to disappoint you, but that's all.
Never mind, my dear--he'll write by next mail."
She turned shortly away, putting the letter in her pocket. Her face
relapsed again, into what seemed its habitual look of gloom and
discontent.
"He's like all the rest of the world," she thought, bitterly, "out of
sight, out of mind. I was a fool to think he would remember me long. I
only wonder Beatrix takes the trouble of writing to this dead-and-alive
place. One thing is very certain--she won't do it long."
She returned for her parcels, and set out on her wet return walk home.
Mr. Doolittle volunteered to escort her thither, but she made short
work of _him_. Through the rain, through the slop, wet, cold,
comfortless, the girl left the ugly town behind her, and came out on
the lonely road that led along to the sea. Five minutes more, brought
her in sight of her home--a forlorn house, standing bleak and bare on
a cliff. One path led to it--another to the sands below. At the point
where she must turn either way, Miss Darrell stood still and looked
moodily up at the house.
"If I go there," she muttered, "she'll set me to hem the towels, or
trim the bonnet, or make a pudding for dinner. It's wash day, and I
know what _that_ means in our house. I _won't_ go--it's better out
in the rain; the towels and the drab bonnet may go _au diable_, and
my blessed stepmother with them, if it comes to that."
She turned sharply and took the path to the right. Half way down she
came to a sort of projection in the cliff, partly sheltered from the
rain by a clump of spruce-trees. Seating herself on this, with the
grey sea sending its flying spray almost up in her face, she drew
forth her letter, broke the seal, and read:
NEW YORK, March 13, 18--.
"DEAREST DITHY:--Just half-an-hour ago I came home from a _splendid_
ball, the most splendid by far of the winter, and before one ray of
all its brilliance fades from my frivolous mind, let me sit down and
tell you all about it if I can.
"The ball was held at the De Rooyter house, up the avenue, in honor of
their distinguished English guests, Lady Helena Powyss, of Powyss
Place, Cheshire, and Sir Victor Catheron, of Catheron Royals, Cheshire.
How grand the titles sound! My very pen expands as it writes those
patrician names. Lady Helena. Oh, Dithy! _how_ delicious it must be
to be, 'My Lady!'
"What did I wear, you ask? Well, my dear, I wore a lovely trained
green silk--gas-light green, you know, under white tulle, all looped
up with trailing sprays of lily of the valley and grasses--ditto,
ditto, in my hair, and just one pink, half-blown rose. A trying
costume you say? Yes, I know it, but you see, the only beauty poor
Trixy can claim is a tolerable pink and white complexion, and a decent
head of light brown hair. So I carried it off--everyone says I really
looked my very best, and--don't set this down to vanity dear--the
gentlemen's eyes indorsed it. I danced all night, and here is where
the rapture comes in, three times with the baronet. I can't say much
for his waltzing, but he's delightful, Dithy--charming. Could a
baronet be anything else? He talks with that delightful English accent,
which it is impossible to imitate or describe--he is very young, about
three-and-twenty, I should judge, and really (in that blonde English
way) very handsome. His hair is very light--he has large, lovely,
short-sighted blue eyes, and wears an eye-glass. Now, I think an
eye-glass is distinguished looking in itself, and it is _haut ton_
to be short sighted. Why are they in New York do I hear you say? Lady
Helena was recommended a sea voyage for her health, and her nephew
accompanied her. Lady Helena is not young nor beautiful, as you might
imagine, but a fair, fat, and sixty, I should say, British matron. She
is the daughter of the late Marquis of St Albans, and a widow, her
husband having died some time ago. And they are immensely rich.
IMMENSELY, Dithy! Capitals can't do justice to it. And of course all
the young ladies last night were making a dead set at the young
baronet Oh, Dithy--child, if he should only fall in love with me--with
ME, and make me Lady Catheron, I believe I should just die of pure
ecstasy (is that word spelled right?) like Lord Berleigh's bride in
the story. Fancy yourself reading it in the papers:
"'On the ----th inst, by the Rev. Blank Blank, assisted by etc., etc.,
at the residence of the bride's father, Sir Victor Catheron, Baronet,
of Catheron Royals, Cheshire, England, to Beatrix Marie Stuart, only
daughter of James Stuart, Esq., banker of Fifth avenue, New York.
_No Cards_!
"Dithy, think of it! It makes my brain swim, and stranger things have
happened. My twentieth birthday comes next week, and ma gives a large
party, and Lady H. and Sir V. are coming. I am to wear a pink silk
with trimmings of real point, and pa sent home a set of pearls from
Tiffany's yesterday, for which he gave $1,000. If the rose silk and
pearls fail to finish him, then there is another project on the carpet.
It is this, Lady H. and Sir V. go home the first week of May, and we
are going with them in the same ship. I say _we_--pa, ma, Charley,
and me. Won't it be lovely? If _you_ were coming, you might write
a book about our haps and mishaps. I think they will equal the 'Dodd
Family Abroad.' Seriously, though, Edith dear, I wish you were coming
with us. It's a burning shame that you should be buried alive down in
that poky Sandypoint, with your cleverness, and your accomplishments,
and good looks, and everything. If I marry the baronet, Dith, I shall
take you with me to England, and you shall live happy forever after.
"I set out to tell you of the De Rooyter ball, and see how I run on.
All New York was there--the crush was awful, the music excellent, the
supper--heavenly! Sir Victor likes us Americans _so_ much; but then
who could help liking us? Oh, it has been a charming winter--parties
somewhere every night. Nilsson singing for us, some sleighing, and
skating no end. I have had the loveliest skating costume, of violet
velvet, satin and ermine--words can't do it justice.
"Hark! A clock down-stairs strikes five, and, 'Kathleen Mavourneen,
the grey dawn is breaking' over the deserted city streets. As Lady
Macbeth says, 'To bed--to bed!' With endless love, and endless kisses,
ever thine own.
"BEATRIX."
She finished the letter--it dropped upon her lap, and her large, dark
eyes looked blankly out over the cold, gray, rain-beaten sea. _This_
was the life she longed for, prayed for, dreamed of, the life for
which she would have sold half the years of her life. The balls, the
operas, the rose silks and pearls, the booths and merry-go rounds of
Vanity Fair. She thirsted for them as the blind thirst for sight. She
longed for the "halls of dazzling light," the dainty dishes, the
violet velvet and ermine, with a longing no words can paint. She had
youth and beauty; she would have suited the life as the life suited
her. Nature had made her for it, and Fate had planted her here in the
dreariest of all dreary sea-coast towns.
The rain beat upon her uncovered head, the cold wind blew in her
face--she felt neither. Her heart was full of tumult, revolt,
bitterness untold.
Beatrix Stuart's father had been her dead mother's cousin. Why was
Beatrix chosen among the elect of Mammon, and Edith left to drag out
"life among the lowly?" She sat here while the moments wore on, the
letter crushed in her lap, her lips set in a line of dull pain. The
glory of the world, the flesh-pots of Egypt, the purple and fine linen
of life, her heart craved with an exceeding great longing, and all
life had given her was hideous poverty, going errands in shabby hats,
and her stepmother's rubbers, through rain and mud, and being waited
upon by such men as Sam Doolittle. She looked with eyes full of
passionate despair at the dark, stormy sea.
"If I only had courage," she said, between her set teeth, "to jump in
there and make an end of it. I will some day--or I'll run away. I
don't much care what becomes of me. Nothing can be worse than this
sort of life--nothing."
She looked dangerous as she thought it--dangerous to herself and
others, and ready for any desperate deed. So absorbed was she in her
own gloomy thoughts, as she sat there, that she never heard a footstep
descending the rocky path behind her. Suddenly two gloved hands were
clasped over her eyes, and a mellow, masculine voice, sang a verse of
an appropriate song:
"'Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, oh sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.'
"I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,
concerning young ladies who sit perched on rocks in the rain. Is it
your favorite amusement, may I ask, Miss Darrell, to sit here and be
rained on? And are there no lunatic asylums in Sandypoint, that they
allow such people as you to go at large?"
She sprang to her feet and confronted him, her breath caught, her eyes
dilating.
"Oh!" she cried, in a breathless sort of way, "it _is_ Charley!"
She held out both her hands, the whole expression of her face
changing--her eyes like stars.
"Charley, Miss Darrell, and if it had been the Man in the Moon you
could hardly look more thunderstruck. And now, if I may venture to
propound so delicate a conundrum, how long is it since you lost your
senses? Or had you ever any to lose, that you sit here in the present
beastly state of the weather, to get comfortably drenched to the skin?"
He was holding both her hands, and looking at her as he spoke--a young
man of some five-and-twenty, with grey eyes and chestnut hair,
well-looking and well-dressed, and with that indescribable air of ease
and fashion which belongs to the "golden youth" of New York.
"You don't say you're glad to see me, Dithy, and you _do_ look
uncommonly blank. Will you end my agonizing suspense on this point,
Miss Darrell, by saving it now, and giving me a sociable kiss?"
He made as though he would take it, but Edith drew back, laughing and
blushing a little.
"You know what Gretchen says to Faust: 'Love me as much as you like,
but no kissing, that is vulgar.' I agree with Gretchen--it is vulgar.
Oh, Mr. Stuart, what a surprise this is! I have just been reading a
letter from your sister, and she doesn't say a word of your coming."
"For the excellent reason that she knew nothing about it when that
letter was written. Let me look at you, Edie. What have you been doing
to yourself since I left, that you should fall away to a shadow in
this manner? But perhaps your failing is the natural and inevitable
result of my leaving?"
"No doubt. Life would naturally be insupportable without you. Whatever
_I_ may have lost, Mr. Stuart, it is quite evident you have not lost
the most striking trait in your character--your self-conceit."
"No," the young man answered; "my virtues are as lasting as they are
numerous. May I ask, how it is that I have suddenly become 'Mr.
Stuart,' when it has been 'Charley' and 'dear Cousin Charley' for the
past two years?"
Miss Darrell laughed a little and blushed a little again, showing very
white teeth and lovely color.
"I have been reading Trixy's letter, and it fills me with an awful
respect for you and all the Stuart family. How could I presume to
address as plain Charley any one so fortunate as the bosom friend
of a baronet?"
"Ah!" Mr. Stuart remarked, placidly; "Trixy's been giving you a
quarter quire crossed sheets of that, has she? You really wade through
that poor child's interminable epistles, do you? I hardly know which
to admire most, the genius that can write twenty pages of--nothing--or
the patience which reads it, word for word. This one is Sir Victor
from date to signature, I'll swear. Well, yes, Miss Darrell, I know
the baronet, and he's a very heavy swell and a blue diamond of the
first water. Talk of pedigree, there's a pedigree, if you like. A
Catheron, of Catheron, was hand and glove with Alfred the Great. He's
a very lucky young fellow, and why the gods should have singled _him_
out as the recipient of their favors, and left _me_ in the cold, is
a problem I can't solve. He's a baronet, he has more thousands a year,
and more houses in more counties than you, with your limited knowledge
of arithmetic, could count. He has a fair complexion, a melancholy
contrast on that point to you, my poor Edith; he has incipient, pale,
yellow whiskers, he has an English accent, and he goes through life
mostly in a suit of Oxford mixture and a round felt hat. He's a very
fine fellow, and I approve of him. Need I say more?"
"More would be superfluous. If you approve of him, my lord, all is
said in that. And Lady Helena?"
"Lady Helena is a ponderous and venerable matron, in black silks,
Chantilly lace, and marabout feathers, who would weigh down sixteen of
you and me, and who worships the ground her nephew walks on. She is
the daughter of a marquis and a peeress in her own right. Think of
that, you poor, little, half-civilized Yankee girl, and blush to
remember you never had an ancestor. But why do I waste my breath and
time in these details, when Trix has narrated them already by the
cubic foot. Miss Darrell, _you_ may be a mermaid or a kelpie--that
sort of young person does exist, I believe, in a perpetual shower bath,
but I regret to inform you _I_ am mortal--very mortal--subject to
melancholy colds in the head, and depressing attacks of influenza. At
the present moment, my patent leather boots are leaking at every pore,
the garments I wear beneath this gray overcoat are saturated, and
little rills of rain water are trickling down the small of my back.
You nursed me through one prolonged siege of fever and freezing--unless
you are especially desirous of nursing me through another, perhaps we
had better get out of this. I merely throw out the suggestion--it's a
matter of indifference to me."
Edith laughed and turned to go.
"As it is by no means a matter of indifference to me, I move an
adjournment to the house. No, thank you, I don't want your arm. This
isn't the fashionable side of Broadway, at four o'clock of a summer
afternoon. I talk of it, as though I had been there--I who never was
farther than Boston in my life, and who, judging from present
appearances, never will."
"Then," said Mr. Stuart, "it's very rash and premature to judge by
present appearances, my errand here being to--Miss Darrell, doesn't it
strike you to inquire _what_ my errand here may be?"
"Shooting," Miss Darrell said, promptly.
"Shooting in March. Good Heavens, no!"
"Fishing then."
"Fishing is a delightful recreation in a rippling brook, on a hot
August day, but in this month and in this weather! For a Massachusetts
young lady, Dithy, I must say your guessing education has been
shamefully neglected. No, I have come for something better than either
fishing or shooting--I have come for _you_."
"Charley!"
"I've got her note somewhere," said Charley, feeling in his pockets as
they walked along, "if it hasn't melted away in the rain. No, here it
is. Did Trix, by any chance, allude to a projected tour of the
governor's and the maternal's to Europe?"
"Yes." Her eyes were fixed eagerly on his face, her lips apart, and
breathless. "Oh, Charley! what do you mean?"
In the intensity of her emotions she forgets to be formal, and becomes
natural and cousinly once more.
"Ah! I am Charley again. Here is the note. As it is your healthful and
refreshing custom to read your letters in the rain, I need hardly urge
you to open and peruse this one."
Hardly! She tore it open, and ran over it with kindling cheeks and
fast throbbing heart.
* * * * *
"MY DEAR EDITH: Mr. Stuart and myself, Charles and Beatrix, propose
visiting Europe in May. From my son I learn that you are proficient in
the French and German languages, and would be invaluable to us on the
journey, besides the pleasure your society will afford us all. If you
think six hundred dollars per annum sufficient recompense for your
services and _all_ your expenses paid, we shall be glad to have you
return (under proper female charge) with Charley. I trust this will
prove acceptable to you, and that your papa will allow you to come.
The advantages of foreign travel will be of inestimable benefit to
a young lady so thoroughly educated and talented as yourself. Beatrix
bids me add she will never forgive you if you do not come.
"With kindest regards to Mr. and Mrs. Darrell, I remain, my dear Edith,
Very sincerely yours,
"CHARLOTTE STUART."
* * * * *
She had come to a stand still in the middle of the muddy road, while
in a rapture she devoured this. Now she looked up, her face
transfigured--absolutely glorified. Go to Europe! France, Italy,
Germany, Switzerland! live in that radiant upper world of her dreams!
She turned to Charley, and to the unutterable surprise of that young
gentleman, flung her arms around him, and gave him a frantic hug.
"Charley! Charley! _Oh_, Charley!" was all she could cry.
Mr. Stuart returned the impulsive embrace, with a promptitude and
warmth that did him credit.
"I never knew a letter of my mother's to have such a pleasant effect
before. How delightful it must be to be a postman. It is yes, then,
Edith?"
"Oh, Charley! as if it could be anything else? I owe this to you--I
know I do. How shall I ever thank you?"
"By a repetition of your little performance. You won't? Well, as your
stepmother is looking at us out of the window, with a face of verjuice,
perhaps it is just as well. You're sure the dear old dad won't say no?"
"Poor papa!" her radiant face clouded a little, "he _will_ miss me,
but no--he couldn't refuse me anything if he tried--least of all this.
Charley, I _do_ thank you--dear, best cousin that ever was--with all
my heart!"
She held out both hands, her heart full, and brimming over in her
black eyes. For once in his life Charley Stuart forgot to be flippant
and cynical. He held the hands gently, and he looked half-laughingly,
half-compassionately into the flushed, earnest face.
"You poor child!" he said; "and you think the world outside this sea,
and these sandhills, is all sunshine and _coleur de rose_. Well, think
so--it's a harmless delusion, and one that won't last. And whatever
betides," he said this earnestly, "whatever this new life brings,
you'll never blame _me_, Edith, for having taken you away from the
old one?"
"Never!" she answered. And she kept her word. In all the sadness--the
shame, the pain of the after-time, she would never have gone back if
she could--she never blamed him.
They walked on in silence. They were at the door of the ugly bleak
house which Edith Darrell for eighteen years had called home, but
which she was never to call home more. You would hardly have known
her--so bright, so beautiful in a moment had Hope made her--a smile on
her lips, her eyes like dark diamonds. For Charley, he watched her, as
he might some interesting natural curiosity.
"When am I to be ready?" she asked him, softly, at the door.
"The sooner the better," he answered.
Then she opened it and went in.