A SURPRISE
At Boxwell Hall a large audience sat expectantly waiting the appearance
of Mrs. Lucien.
Among the members present there were five with whom our readers are
familiar. The lights were yet turned low, and there was the usual buzz
and hum of low-voiced conversation which even those afflicted with
superstitious awe could not repress.
“I had some trouble to persuade Major Walden to come,” said Nathan in an
aside to his wife. “He has such a horror of this sort of thing, he
flatly refused at first; but when I asked him as a personal favor to
meet you, he consented.”
“I am sure he can’t denounce Mrs. Lucien, if she is as Elinor describes
her,” said Lissa. “I have really begun to like her, just from the
description. Ah, I wonder if she is coming now. What a perfectly
seraphic face.”
Mrs. Lucien was clothed in a soft, clinging gown of white wool, from
which her pure, oval face arose in statuesque grace and beauty.
The dark waves of her hair were brushed back from the rounded forehead
and gleamed in shining ripples to her neck as the glare of the
foot-lights fell upon her.
“What a striking face! A painter might have made a model of her for a
Madonna. She is grace personified,” whispered Alice. “I can think of
nothing but a statue of one of the graces.”
“Doesn’t she look more like a painting of St. Cecilia?” Mark replied.
“Yes, she does look like her. She is about to speak.”
The chairman of the psychical club led her forward and briefly
introduced her as Madame Lucien, who would give exhibitions of
psychometric reading and slate-writing. Mrs. Lucien bowed slightly for a
moment to the vociferous clapping of hands which greeted her, and then
spoke in a low, sympathetic voice, which thrilled her hearers.
“Dear Friends: I do not come to you to-night with any gift or knowledge
of my own winning. For some inscrutable reason it has been given me to
read that which my physical eyes cannot discern. By some psychic
telepathy, or telegraphy, which is as mysterious to me as to any one
here, I am made the bearer of messages and permitted to see and describe
to you that which is not visible to our mortal eyes.”
She turned toward the gentleman by whom she had been presented, who now
bound a handkerchief tightly over her eyes, and addressing the audience,
requested that while Madame Lucien was passing under control an usher
would gather up from the audience such articles as they would like to
submit to the medium for psychic reading and identification.
Handkerchiefs, gloves, pocket knives, etcetera, were being collected,
and Nathan was about to detach a charm from his watchguard with which to
test her powers, when he chanced to glance up at Major Walden.
He was startled. The scene at the office seemed about to be reenacted.
The Major’s face was livid and distorted.
“What is the matter?” Nathan asked with alarm.
“You—you—knew of this!” Walden hissed, with a desperate effort at
self-control.
“Knew of what? Great Heavens, Major, what do you mean?”
“I can’t stay here. I will not!” He arose to his feet, and Nathan,
taking his arm, led him to the open air.
“You’re a villain, sir! I wouldn’t have treated an enemy as you have me.
And I thought you my friend and trusted you. O Nathan, Nathan, how could
you have done it? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Major Walden, I don’t understand what I have done that was wrong. ’Pon
my honor I don’t!” said Nathan stoutly. “You knew it was a spirit—”
“Did you ask me to that place to-night? Tell me!”
“I certainly did, but I did not suppose it could be so offensive to
you.”
“You asked me there to see her?”
“Her? Whom? My wife? I asked you to meet my wife, and Mrs. Wylie, and—”
“And her, the woman that—”
“Good God!” cried Nathan, a light breaking in upon him. “You don’t mean
that Mrs. Lucien is—”
“My lost wife, Agnes! Yes.”
“Oh! my poor friend, forgive me. I never dreamed of such a thing.
Believe me, Major, I am innocent of any such plot as this. Mrs. Lucien
is an entire stranger to me. I only knew of her through Mrs. Wylie’s
friendship for her, and she knows nothing of her past history. We have
been blind instruments in the hands of Providence, Major. Why should it
have happened?”
“God knows, or the Devil. I’d rather have seen Agnes in her coffin,
Bartram. That villain Teasdale must be with her.”
“Impossible! Did he not tell you otherwise? Don’t, Major, lay that crime
upon her in your excitement. Surely, surely she is blameless and good.
Her face shows that.”
“Aye! Her face is the face of an angel. O Agnes, Agnes! Nathan, I’m
beset by a thousand furies and fiends of torture. What shall I do? I
want to see her and talk with her. I must, now, now—that I’ve seen her
at all.”
Nathan was perplexed.
“You might call at her hotel and see her in the morning,” he ventured to
suggest.
“No, I’ll see her to-night. I’ll be here at the door when this infernal
business is over, and I will see and speak to her. I want to lift the
weight from my conscience, if possible, and I _will_ speak to her.”
“But, think of the shock to her. My friend, is it best?”
“Best? Perdition take me! I don’t know what is best. Leave me! Go back
into the hall and tell your friends I am sick—vertigo—jimjams—anything.
But leave me to think.”
“But,” began Nathan, loth to leave him by himself in his excited
condition.
“Go in! I can’t be spoken to now. Go back into the hall. Will you?” he
exclaimed vehemently.
Nathan turned away slowly and reentered the building, beset with many
misgivings. What might not this irascible and tortured man do if left
alone?
Mrs. Lucien had begun her reading. She held in her hand a knife which
had been submitted to her for test.
“I am sure the person to whom this knife belongs is one of very orderly
habits, or was. The present owner has not had it very long. I can see
the woman to whom it formerly belonged. She has auburn hair, and is
rather below the medium height. She is laughing, and says she won the
knife on a philopena.”
“Is this true?” asked the chairman, taking the knife from Mrs. Lucien
and holding it up.
“It is true,” responded a man from the audience. “I am acquainted with
the knife’s history.”
Suddenly an idea presented itself to Nathan, upon which he immediately
acted.
He picked up one of the Major’s gloves which, in his agitation, he had
withdrawn and left behind him, and motioning to an usher, asked him to
place it upon the table for Madame Lucien’s reading. Then he awaited
results with eager curiosity.
One after another the articles were taken up and read.
“This brings me face to face with an aged woman,” she said, as a thimble
was presented. “She calls ‘Annette, Annette.’”
A woman across the aisle from Nathan began to sob. He noticed the tawdry
showiness of her attire, and read in her face a pathetic history as she
stood up to reclaim the thimble. “It was my mother’s,” she sobbed, as
she dropped back into her seat.
Then Madame Lucien’s fingers lifted the glove Nathan had sent to her.
“I am sure the owner of this glove is a person of very positive
character,” she began. “He will combat any irrational belief, or one not
proven to his satisfaction. I can feel a chill of opposition. I—I—can—”
Mrs. Lucien began to breathe in gasps. Her hands shook. Nathan was
frightened at the spasm of agony which swept her face. She dropped the
glove and stretched out her hands helplessly.
The manager came forward and assisted her from the platform, amid a buzz
of excitement in the audience, returning in a few moments to announce
that Madame Lucien had been affected by the heat of the room and would
be unable to continue the reading, but he would introduce in her place
the trance medium Mr. Eugene Potts, who was both clairvoyant and
audient.
While this scene was transpiring in Boxwell Hall, Major Walden was
hurrying down the street as though driven by a legion of furies. He felt
that he must get away or do that for which he might be sorry. On, on he
walked, heeding not his direction or whereabouts. He was fleeing from
her and from this nightmare of horror which beset him. And the vision
before his eyes of the pale, spirituelle face of his lost one kept pace
with him. He could not escape it.
An hour later he had turned his steps homeward. He had walked away the
uncontrollable emotion which had possessed him at the sight of Agnes,
and a calmer spirit prevailed. He had decided that it was better that he
should not meet her again. He would go to his office and write her
fully, and send her again the letter which he had sent to her Eastern
home and which had been returned to him through the dead letter office
but a few days before this. She should know how completely he had been
punished for his lack of trust in her, and should forgive him, if her
sweet, forgiving nature could do so.
The people were returning from the hall. He stepped into the shadow of a
doorway and waited for the crowd to pass by and the street to become
once more deserted. He realized he scanned each face and figure closely.
Was he hoping to see her? No, it were better that he did not; he had
settled that question, but now, in the struggle with himself.
The street lamps flamed and flickered, casting weird shadows on the
darkened buildings of the business street where he stood. Ahead of him,
as he again started forward, he saw a solitary individual stop under a
light and take a letter from his pocket, which, leaning against the
lamp-post, he began to read. Something in his figure and attitude
arrested Major Walden’s attention. He looked at him searchingly as he
approached him. At the moment the man, hearing his footsteps, turned his
face from the letter toward him.
A flame of angry fire shot from the Major’s brain to each prescient
nerve and muscle of his being. With a spring he was upon the man, his
hand upon his throat.
“Ah, ha! You miserable, white-livered abomination! It is well I have
found you now,—now, when your victim is here in this city,—you
fiend-ambassador of Satan! Killing is too good for you!”
The attack was so sudden the victim had no chance to cry out, and sank
to the ground, with no show of resistance, the Major’s hand in a
death-grip upon his throat, shutting off breath from his lungs.
“Take that—and that—and that!” cried Walden, raining the blows with his
clenched fist upon the other’s face and shoulders. “I shall kill you! do
you hear?”
The victim struggled, his eyes, protruding from their sockets, pleaded
for mercy, and his speechless tongue hung swollen from his lips. Voices
were heard approaching him, but the infuriated and frenzied man did not
heed them. The higher man had, for the time, been lost in the maddened
animal.
“You snake! It is a joy to throttle you, to see your lying tongue
palsied! Your forked tongue that has stung with its venom God’s best and
purest. A thousand deaths could not pay for the ruin you have made, you
viper!” and the Major’s eyes, red with passion and fury, glared into the
terrified ones beneath him.
It is a fearful thing to see a man, made in the image of God, unchain
the passions of his soul and allow them to control him. Major Walden
was, for the time, a madman.
“Hold on, what’s the matter here?” cried a voice, and a hand grasped the
collar of the would-be murderer.
“I should think the fellow was holding on with a vengeance,” said
another voice. “Come, let up that fellow, or you’ll be an assassin.”
Releasing his hand from his victim’s throat, Major Walden wrenched
himself free from the intruder’s clutch, and planting his foot upon the
prostrate man, turned defiantly.
“Is it murder to kill a reptile—a miserable, venomous viper?” he hissed.
“Good God! It is the Major. Have you gone mad, friend? What does this
mean?”
“It means that I’ve nearly or quite squeezed the life out of that
villain Teasdale. I’ll assure you I shall not let him go till I’ve
finished him.”
“Markham! O Markham!”
“Agnes!” he faltered, as he heard the tones of her voice, so pathetic in
its intensity.
She stood before him, her hands clasped, her pale face agonized with
fear and supplication.
It was a scene for a painter. The gladiatorial attitude of the Major,
the frightened faces of Lissa, Elinor, and Alice, with Nathan and Mark
standing at either side as rescuers.
“‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,’” feebly quoted
Agnes.
The Major’s hands fell. He took his foot from Teasdale’s body as the man
began to breathe and struggle to rise.
Mark bent forward to assist him, then started back in disgust.
“It’s that contemptible hound Russell,” he said, with a gesture of
abhorrence. “Lie where you are, sir, you travesty upon man, until we see
about this! Lie still, or, by the powers, I’ll finish you myself!”
“Get him out of my sight, or I’ll not answer for the results!” the Major
cried in a hoarse voice. “There is all of murder in my heart, and my
conscience would not trouble me more than if I had killed a snake.”
“The lock-up’s the place for him. He’s unfit to run loose,” said Mark.
“I’m sorry to be found in such company, Captain Cramer, but Nathan will
explain to you my cause of provocation,” Walden continued. “And this
letter will explain to you,” turning to Mrs. Lucien.
He took a letter from his pocket with a dead letter stamp upon it, and
handed it to her. “This has but recently been returned to me from
Washington.”
“Wait! He shall explain,” cried Nathan, catching the battered and
bleeding Teasdale, or Russell, by the collar and jerking him forward.
“Here, you knave, explain to these ladies that those letters you wrote
and sent were but forgeries, fabricated and secreted by you or your
emissaries, to work ruin and unhappiness.”
Russell gulped and gasped in an effort to speak.
“Speak! Out with it! Tell the truth!” Mark commanded savagely.
“I admit it,” he groaned at last. “I wrote the letters and bribed a
servant to hide them in a desk at the Major’s house when his wife was
away from home, in the hope that he might find them and believe that she
was false to him. She knew nothing of them, nor did she ever receive a
letter from me.”
“Oh, wretched man! How could you conceive of such infamy!” murmured
Agnes, turning away her pallid face.
“It is to be hoped you will receive a just reward for your wickedness,”
said Mrs. Wylie, who in the light of this scene could unravel all the
mysteries that had so long puzzled her with regard to Mrs. Lucien’s past
history.
“He shall receive it if there is any justice in this land of ours,” said
Mark. “This is not the only crime he has to answer for. What could have
been your object in this case, you dog?”
“Revenge!” Russell uttered the word with an evil sneer.
“Can you ever forgive me, Agnes?” Major Walden had turned from Russell
and was looking at Agnes beseechingly.
“As I hope to be forgiven, Markham,” she replied solemnly.
“Thank you. It is more than I have a right to expect. I—” His voice
broke in its utterance, and he turned away to recover his self-control.
“And now what shall we do with this fellow?” asked Nathan. “Turn him
over to the police?”
“He certainly should not be allowed to go about leaving in his wake the
slimy trail of the serpent,” responded Mark. “I’ll swear out a warrant
charging him with abducting Esther McCleary.”
“There are reasons,” said Major Walden, “why it might be unpleasant to
bring my affair into court. However, I am ready to testify against him
if needed.”
Mark turned again toward Russell, but to his consternation and
astonishment the man had vanished. Before the eyes of six persons he had
managed to glide away unobserved. They looked up and down the streets,
peered into stairways, and searched alleys, but he was not to be found.
He had disappeared as suddenly and entirely as though the ground had
opened and swallowed him.
“A guard of his imps must have snatched him away,” said Nathan as the
men came back from their search to the place they had left the women.
“Perhaps he assumed his natural form and slithered away on the ground to
his den,” said Walden.
“I imagine the fellow must have hypnotized us,” Mark replied. “I can’t
account for his getting away without being seen by some of us by any
other hypothesis. But let us believe it is good riddance. He’ll not be
apt to trouble any of us again. I should like to have had him reveal
Esther’s whereabouts, however.”
“It’s a pity he’s at large to ruin other homes,” Mrs. Wylie murmured.
“But if God permits him to live, I suppose we may.”
“Markham!”
“Agnes!” The Major turned toward his former wife and stood with bowed
head and dejected countenance.
“I must ask you a question which has been upon my lips since I met you,
but which I am almost—afraid to ask. Is Freddie alive?”
“Yes, Agnes, yes. He is with me. I will send him to you at once. Oh, my
God!”
“What is it? Is he ill? Is anything wrong concerning him, my precious
boy?”
“No, he is well,” he groaned. “Freddie is well, and bright and good. You
may well be proud of him.”
“Thank God, oh, thank God!” She put her handkerchief to her eyes and
sobbed for very joy. The other women wept with her. Finally, while her
moistened eyes shone with the happiness of the moment, she said
tremulously: “I have news for you, Markham. I want to tell you what
perhaps I should not have kept from you, that God sent me solace for the
loss of my children. A little girl was born to me soon after the death
of my darlings. She is with me here at the hotel. Do you care to see
her, your child, the little Dolores?”
“Yes, only—Good God, I cannot!”
“Markham, I do not understand you. Have you aught against me now?” Agnes
Walden said, raising her eyes, now filled with doubt and questioning, to
search his face.
“No, no; Heaven knows I have not, but—some one tell her. I cannot.”
Major Walden turned from her and walked forward several paces, his face
set and drawn.
“He has another family, another wife,” said Lissa softly. “God pity both
him and you!”