THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR.
But we must now return to Gerelda. She fell back, pale and trembling,
among the cushions of the carriage, her brain in a whirl, her heart
panting almost to suffocation.
At the entrance gate of the old mansion, Gerelda dismissed the cab.
Stealing around by the rear wall, she entered the grounds by an unused
gravel walk, and gained the arbor. Then she crept up to one of the
windows whose blind had swung open from a fierce gust of wind. The room
into which she gazed had not changed much. A bright fire glowed cheerily
in the grate, its radiance rendering all objects about it clear and
distinct.
She distinguished two figures standing hand in hand in the softened
shadows. The girl's face, radiant with the light of love, was upturned
toward the handsome one bending over her. He was talking to her in the
sweet, deep musical voice Gerelda remembered so well.
She saw the girl lay one little hand caressingly on his arm, and droop
her pretty, golden head until it nearly rested on his broad shoulder.
Then Gerelda heard him say, "I have in my pocket the wedding-gift with
which I am to present you. It is not so very costly, but you will
appreciate it, I hope," disclosing as he spoke a ruby velvet case, the
spring of which he touched lightly, and the lid flew back, revealing a
magnificent diamond necklace and a pendant star.
"Oh, Hubert, you can not mean that that is for me!" cried Jessie.
But the second dinner-bell rang, and ere the sound died away, Mrs.
Varrick and a few guests entered the room. All further private
conversation was now at an end, but from that moment all sights and
sounds were lost to the creature outside. She had fallen in a little
dark heap on the ice-covered porch, lost to the world's misery in
pitiful unconsciousness.
The house was wrapped in darkness when she woke to consciousness.
Gerelda struggled to her feet, muttering to herself that it was surely
death that was stealing slowly but surely over her.
Slowly, from over the distant hills, she heard some church-clock ring
out the hour. "Eleven!" she counted, in measured strokes. As the sound
died away, Gerelda crept round the house to the servants' entrance.
To her intense delight, the door yielded to her touch, and Gerelda
glided noiselessly across the threshold. The butler sat before the dying
embers of the fire, his paper was lying at his feet, and his glasses
were in his lap. So sound was his slumber that he did not awaken as the
door opened. Gerelda passed him like a shadow and gained the door-way
that led into the corridor.
She knew Hubert's custom of going to the library long after the rest of
the family had retired for the night. She would make her way there, and
confront him. As she reached the door she heard voices within. She
recognized them at once as Hubert's and his mother's.
She crouched behind the heavy velvet _portieres_ of the arched door-way,
until his mother should leave.
"Good-night again, Hubert," the mother said.
"Good-night mother," he answered.
He flung himself down in the soft-cushioned arm-chair beside the glowing
grate, drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it, dreamily watching
the curling rings. Suddenly he became aware that there was another
presence within the room beside his own.
His eyes became riveted upon a dark object near the door-way. It
occurred to him how strangely like a woman the dark shadow looked.
And as he gazed, lo! it moved, and to his utmost amazement, advanced
slowly toward him. For an instant all his powers seemed to leave him.
"Gerelda, by all that's merciful," he cried.
"Yes, it is I, Gerelda!" she cried, hoarsely, confronting him. "I have
come back from the grave to claim you!"
She did not heed his wild cry of horror, but went on, mockingly: "You do
not seem pleased to see me, judging from your manner."
For an instant the world seemed closing around Hubert Varrick.
She cried, "I repeat that I am here to claim you!" flinging herself in
an arm-chair opposite him.
"Now that your wife is with you once again, you are saved the
trouble--just, in time, too--of wedding a new one;" adding: "You are not
giving me the welcome which I expected in my husband's home. Turn on
the lights and ring for every one to come hither!" she said. "If you
refuse to ring the bell, I shall."
Hubert Varrick cried out that he could not bear it; he pleaded with her
to leave the house with him; that since Heaven had brought her back to
him, he would make the best of it; all that he would ask would be that
she should come quietly away with him.
This did not suit Gerelda at all; she had set her heart upon abusing
Jessie Bain, and she would brook no refusal. She sprang hastily for the
bell-rope. Divining her object, he caught her arm.
If he had not been so intensely excited he would have realized, even in
that dim light, that there was something horribly wrong about her; that
once more reason, which had been until so lately clouded, wavered in the
balance.
"Unhand me, or I shall scream!" she cried.
Varrick placed one hand hurriedly over her mouth, in his agony, hardly
heeding what he was doing.
"For the love of Heaven, I beg you to listen to me!" he cried. "You
must--you shall!"
She sprang backward from him, falling heavily over one of the chairs as
she did so. There was a heavy thud which awakened with a start the
sleeping butler on the floor below. With one bound he had reached the
door that opened upon the lower corridor.
"Thieves! robbers!" he ejaculated under his breath.
His first impulse was to cry aloud, but the next moment it occurred to
him that the better plan would be to break upon the midnight intruder
unawares, and assist his master in vanquishing him. The door was ajar,
and in the semi-darkness he beheld Hubert Varrick, his master,
struggling desperately with some dark, swaying figure. In that same
instant Varrick tripped upon a hassock and fell backward, striking his
head heavily against the marble mantel.
The butler lost no time. Quick as a flash he had cleared the distance
between the door-way and that other figure--which attempted to clutch at
him in turn--and raising the knife he had caught up from the table of
the room below, he buried it to the hilt in the swaying, writhing form.
The next instant it fell heavily at his feet. A moan, that sounded
wonderfully like a woman's, fell upon his horrified ear.
Varrick did not rise, though the terrified butler called upon him
vehemently. He had the presence of mind, even in that calamity, to turn
on the gas, and as a flood of light illumined the scene, he saw that it
was a _woman_ lying at his feet--ay, a woman into whose body he had
plunged that fatal knife!--while his master lay unconscious but a few
feet distant.
"Help! I am dying!" gasped the woman.
Those words recalled his scattered senses. Self-preservation is strong
within us all. As in a glass, darkly, the terrified butler, realizing
what he had done, saw arrest and prison before him, and realized that
the gallows yawned before him in the near future.
The thought came to him that there was but one thing to do, and that was
to make his escape.
Every moment was precious. His strained ear caught the sound of a
commotion on the floor above. He knew in an instant more they would find
him there with the tell-tale knife, dripping with blood, in his hand.
He flung it from him and made a dash from the room. It was not a moment
too soon, for the opposite door, which led to the private stair-way, had
barely closed after him ere the sound of approaching footsteps was
plainly heard hurrying quickly toward the library.
In that instant Hubert Varrick--who had been dazed by his fall, and the
terrible blow on his head caused by striking it against the mantel--was
struggling to a sitting posture. Varrick had scarcely regained his feet
ere the _portieres_ were flung quickly aside, and his mother and half a
dozen servants appeared.
A horrible shriek rent the air as Mrs. Varrick's eyes fell upon her son,
and the figure of a woman but a few feet from him with a knife lying
beside her.
"What does it mean?" cried Mrs. Varrick.
He pointed to the fallen figure.
"Gerelda has come back to torture me, mother!" he cried.
By a terrible effort Gerelda struggled to her knees.
"Hear me, one and all!" she cried. "Listen; while yet the strength is
mine, I will proclaim it! See, I am dying--that man, my husband, is my
murderer! He murdered me to keep me from touching the bell-rope--to tell
you all I was here!"
With this horrible accusation on her lips, Gerelda sunk back
unconscious.
Who shall picture the scene that ensued?
"It is false--all false--so help me Heaven!" Hubert panted. That was all
that he could say.
The sound of the commotion within had reached the street, and had
brought two of the night-watchmen hurrying to the scene. Their loud
peal at the bell brought down a servant, who admitted them at once. In a
trice they had sprung up the broad stair-way to the landing above, from
whence the excited voices proceeded, appearing on the threshold just in
time to hear Gerelda's terrible accusation. Each laid a hand on Hubert
Varrick's shoulder.
"You will have to come with us," they said.
Mrs. Varrick sprung forward and flung herself on her knees before them.
"Oh, you must not, you shall not take him!" she cried; "my darling son
is innocent!"
It was a mercy from Heaven that unconsciousness came upon her in that
moment and the dread happenings of the world were lost to her. There
were the bitterest wailings from the old servants as the men of the law
led Hubert away.
In the excitement no one had remembered Gerelda; now the servants
carried her to a _boudoir_ across the hall, and summoned a doctor.
"If this poor girl recovers it will be little short of a miracle," he
said.
Through all this commotion Jessie Bain slept on, little realizing the
tragic events that were transpiring around her. No one thought of
awakening her. The sun was shining bright and clear when she opened her
eyes on the light the next morning.
How strangely still the house seemed! For a moment Jessie was
bewildered. Had it not been that the sun lay in a great bar in the
center of the room--and it never reached this point until nearly eight
in the morning--she would have thought that it was very, very early.
"My wedding-day!" murmured the girl, slipping from her couch and gazing
through the lace-draped windows on the white world without. But at that
moment a maid entered and she told Jessie Bain the story of the tragedy.
A thunder-bolt from a clear sky, the earth suddenly opening beneath her
feet, could not have startled Jessie Bain more. A few minutes later she
recovered her composure and hurried to Mrs. Varrick's room.
Mrs. Varrick reached out her hand to Jessie, and the next moment they
were sobbing wildly in each other's arms. Little by little the girl's
noble spirit in all its grandeur gained the ascendency. Slowly she
turned to the housekeeper, who was sobbing over the fact that there was
no one to take care of Hubert's wife, until a trained nurse the doctor
had expected should arrive.
"She shall be _my_ care," said Jessie, determinedly. "I will go to her
at once; lead the way, please."
Who shall picture the dismay of Jessie when she looked upon the face of
the woman who had come between her and the man she was to have wedded
that day and found that it was the very creature whom she herself had
sheltered--the girl whom she had known as Margaret Moore?
The doctor was greatly moved at the heroic stand Jessie Bain proposed to
take in nursing her rival back to health and strength.
"Not one woman in a thousand would do it," he declared. "May Heaven
bless you for it! Besides," he added in a low, grave voice, "you could
serve poor Hubert Varrick in no better way than by restoring her. If
she dies it will go hard indeed with young Varrick."
Jessie realized this but too well, and bent all her energies to nurse
her back to health and strength, though what she suffered no one in this
world could tell.
If Margaret recovered, she knew that she would go away with Hubert. He
might not love her, but he would be obliged to live his whole life out
with her. If she died, he would hang for it. Better that he should live,
even with the other one, than die.
Her heart went out to Hubert Varrick in the bitterest of sorrow. She
realized what he must be suffering. She would have flown to him on the
wings of love, but she dared not.
She wrote a letter to him for his mother, at her dictation, adding a
little tear-blotted postscript of her own, making no mention of her own
great love and the sorrow that had darkened her young life. In that
letter she urged him to keep up brave spirits; that everything was being
done for Gerelda, his wife, that could be done; that she was sitting up
night and day nursing her.
When Hubert Varrick received that tear-stained missive, in the
loneliness of his desolate cell he bowed his head and wept like a child,
crying out to Heaven that he was surely the most wretched man on God's
earth.
He tried to think out all the horrors of that bitter midnight tragedy,
which seemed more like a dream to him than a reality. He could not
understand how Gerelda came by that wound, unless, through her terrible
rage, she had attempted to take her life by her own hand; and through
the same intense rage, strong even in death, wanted to persecute him
even after she had known that her moments were numbered.
As for Gerelda, her life hung by the slenderest of threads for many days
after, and during these anxious hours no one could induce Jessie Bain to
leave her bedside. But at last the hour came when the doctors pronounced
Gerelda out of danger.