A GREAT DISCOVERY.
Oh, fatal opportunity!
That work’st our thoughts into desires, desires
To resolutions; and these being ripe and ready,
Then giv’st them birth and brings’t them forth to action.—DENHAM.
The means that fortune yields must be embraced
And not neglected; else if fortune would,
And we will not, her offers we refuse,
And miss the means of action and success.—SHAKSPEARE.
She whom they had sought so vainly, lay there, doubled up, on the floor,
and partly covered by the dropping folds of the curtain.
“Oh, master! Oh, sir! She is dead! She is murdered! She is, indeed, sir,
and the thieves have been in and done it!” cried Pina, recovering her
voice and wringing her hands in grief and terror.
And her dreadful words seemed to be true.
Mr. Lyon could not speak. He silently lifted the lifeless form, and
shuddering to see how helplessly the head and limbs fell over his arms,
he bore it into the drawing-room, and laid it on the sofa.
Pina followed him, and stood sobbing and wringing her hands.
He knelt down by the body and gazed on the marble face, the half-open
eyes, and the rigid lips drawn tightly from the white and glistening
teeth.
He hastily unfastened the front of her dress, and put his hand in her
bosom to feel if her heart yet beat. It seemed still.
He put his ear down to listen if her lungs yet moved. They were
motionless.
He felt her hands and feet. They were cold and stiff.
Then he arose and stood gazing upon the body.
“Oh, is she dead? Is you sure?” inquired Pina, with tears streaming down
her face.
“Yes. She seems to have been dead some hours;” groaned Alexander, with
his own face as white as that of the lifeless form before him.
“Oh, master! Oh, sir! The thieves broke in and done it, didn’t they?
Didn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Lyon, speaking slowly and softly. “There is no
evidence of the late presence of thieves in the house. Nothing as yet is
missing. And there is no sign of blood upon her clothing.”
“Oh, master, but her dress is black, and wouldn’t show it plain.”
Alexander knew this to be true, and he also knew that some wounds bleed
only inwardly. So he began to examine her body. First he unloosed her
beautiful hair, and ran his fingers through its tresses, and felt all
over her head. But apparently she had received no sort of injury there.
While he was proceeding with this inspection, Pina suddenly started up
and ran out of the room.
He made a most careful examination, but found no mark of violence upon
her person.
And yet he thought she must have come to her death suddenly and
violently; since she had been alive and in her usual health between ten
and eleven o’clock on the preceding evening, and now was dead, and
apparently had been so for several hours.
He had scarcely finished his examination, when Pina rushed back into the
room, holding a fragment of looking-glass in her hand, and exclaiming
eagerly:
“Try this! Oh, dear master, try this! Lay it to her lips and hold it
there a minute or so, and if there’s any moisture on it, it is a sign
that there’s a little life left, and where there’s life, you know, if
there’s ever so little, there’s hope.”
Mr. Lyon silently took the piece of glass, and laid it flat with the
bright side to the cold lips, and stood watching the result.
“Oh, sir, I’m glad I happened to think of it! I know’d a woman, I did,
who fell down into a fit, and lay for dead all day long; for her breath
had stopped, and her heart had stopped, and she was cold and stiff; and
they were going to lay her out, when somebody said ‘try a glass,’ and so
they tried it, and sure enough, after they held it over her lips a
little while, there was a moisture on it, and so they knew she still
breathed ever so little, though they couldn’t perceive it in any other
way but by the glass—and so—”
“Hush, stop,” said Mr. Lyon, interrupting the garrulous girl, and
examining the glass.
There was a dimness on its bright surface.
“You are right. Life is not yet quite extinct. She still breathes
slightly.”
“Oh, sir, I’m so glad! I feel as glad as if—”
“Hurry and make a fire in her bed-chamber, while I carry her up stairs,”
said Mr. Lyon, again interrupting the stream of the girl’s talk.
Pina flew down stairs to get kindling wood, and to startle her brother
with the news that their mistress had been found in a fainting fit so
deep that she seemed dead, or dying, at the last gasp, and it was
doubtful whether she would ever come out of it.
Meanwhile, Alexander lifted the insensible form and carried it up
stairs, to the bed-chamber, and laid it on the bed.
Pina soon came in with the kindling wood and rapidly revived the fire
that had not yet gone out.
Then, while her master ran down stairs and searched for restoratives,
she undressed her mistress and put her between soft, warm blankets, in
the bed, and began to rub her hands and feet in the hope of restoring
the arrested circulation.
Mr. Lyon returned with brandy and ammonia, and then master and maid used
the most vigorous means for recovering the unconscious sufferer.
For nearly two hours they worked over her; but their efforts seemed
utterly unavailing.
At length when they were almost ready to give over in despair, Alexander
perceived a slight fluttering near the heart of his wife. With revived
hope, he redoubled his efforts and soon had the satisfaction of seeing
further signs of returning life. Her chest labored and heaved; her lips
trembled and parted; and then she gasped and opened her eyes.
“Drusa, Drusa, my darling, do you know me?” he inquired, looking
anxiously in her face.
But she only gazed at him, with wide open, soft inexpressive eyes,
without replying.
He hastily mixed a little ammonia and water and raised her head and put
the cordial to her lips. She drank it mechanically; but it immediately
revived her.
“Drusa, my little Drusa, do you know me now?” he inquired, setting the
glass aside and bending over her.
She looked at him with infinite love, put her arms up around his neck,
drew his head down to hers and kissed him tenderly.
He returned her soft caresses, for while he gazed on her sweet, patient,
loving face, and reflected that she was just rescued, as it were, from
the jaws of death, he felt all his compassion, if not his affection for
her, revived.
“What caused your swoon, my little Drusa?” he inquired.
But a spasm of pain, or fear, passed over her face and form, and she
shuddered and closed her eyes.
“Beg your pardon, sir, but if I was you, I wouldn’t ask no questions
yet,” said Pina in a low respectful voice.
“You are right again,” he answered.
And he contented himself with sitting by his wife’s bed and holding her
hand, and occasionally bending down and kissing her forehead.
“If you please sir, to let me go down and bring my mistress up a cup of
strong tea and a bit of dry toast, I think if she could be got to take
it, it would do her good,” said Pina.
“Go then,” replied Mr. Lyon.
And as the girl left the room, he stooped and whispered to his wife.
“I hope you are better, love.”
“Yes,” she answered.
“I will not try your strength with questions, now; but as soon as you
are able, you will tell me what caused your deep swoon.”
She drew his head down to hers and answered in a low, faint voice:
“_It was the face at the window._”
“The face at the window! again last night.”
She nodded; and her lips grew so white and her eyes so wild with terror,
that he hastened to soothe her.
“There, there is no danger now, my little Drusa! I am here by your side.
Compose yourself for the present, and when you have quite recovered you
shall tell me all about it, and the affair shall be investigated.”
He laid his hand upon her brow; and she with a sigh of relief, closed
her eyes.
Presently Pina came in with a little tray upon which stood a cup of tea
and a small piece of dried toast.
At Alexander’s entreaty and with his assistance, Drusilla sat up and
drank the tea and ate the toast, and then sank back upon her pillow and
after a while, with her hand in his, fell into a natural and refreshing
sleep.
Alexander still watched her for five or ten minutes longer, and then
after glancing up at the time-piece on the mantle shelf and seeing that
it was nearly eleven o’clock he slipped his hand from hers, told Pina to
take his place by the bedside, and then left the chamber.
He went down stairs into the drawing-room and rang the bell.
Leo answered it.
“Serve my breakfast immediately and then go and saddle my horse and
bring him around to the door,” were Mr. Lyon’s directions.
Leo, much wondering that his master should leave his mistress at such a
time, went out of the room to obey his orders.
Breakfast was soon served. Alexander dispatched it in haste, and then
went up stairs to change his dress for his ride into town.
When he found himself alone in his dressing-room, all the embarrassments
of his false position—forgotten during the exciting events that had
followed his late arrival at home—were now recalled to mind.
In an hour or two he should meet his uncle and his cousin. The former
would expect that he should make his proposal for immediate marriage
with Anna, and the latter would be ready to meet it.
He might either make the anticipated proposal or omit to do it.
If he should make it, and his cousin should meet it favorably, the
embarrassments of his position would be multiplied a thousand fold, for
certainly he could not marry two wives; neither could he, after having
committed himself by his proposal, confess his prior marriage.
If he should omit to make the proposal at all, such omission would
subject him to suspicion and severe cross-examination by his uncle and
the grandfather of his betrothed.
His first hope, then, was in being able to evade the dilemma by
procrastination; and his second hope was that Anna herself might take
the responsibility of insisting upon a further delay of the wedding.
As for his secret marriage with Drusilla, he was now resolved, come what
might, that he would never reveal it; because he felt sure, if he should
do so, that his uncle and cousin would both discard him, and she would
become the wife of his rival.
But even in the midst of these evil thoughts, he started as an
absent-minded walker might at seeing himself on the brink of a dreadful
precipice,—yes, started with a sudden consciousness of what a villain he
was growing to be—he who up to this time had been a man of stainless
honor.
While agitated by these emotions, he was mechanically dressing himself.
He went to his wardrobe to search for a thick coat, for the morning was
still bitterly cold, and the overcoat that he had worn on the previous
day and night had received some damage from Leo’s frantic pistol shots.
He took down coat after coat, but they were all too thin.
At length, far back in the wardrobe, he found one that he had not worn
for many months. It belonged to the travelling suit that he had worn
when he went to Alexandria to meet Drusilla and went to the parson to
marry her.
With feelings of sadness, regret and compunction, he turned the garment
about and looked at it. Then he carefully brushed it and put it on,
buttoned it closely, and thrust both hands in his pockets to push them
down. In doing so, he felt a folded paper. And in listless curiosity he
took it out, opened it, and looked at it.
In an instant all his listlessness vanished. He held it from him, and
gazed, and gazed at it with his eyes dilating, his lips parting, and his
face blanching with what would have seemed at first view to be amazement
and horror, but which soon proved to be delight and triumph.
He could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses. He suspected that
he was dreaming. He pinched himself to prove that he was awake.
Then he suddenly dropped into a chair, waved the paper above his head,
and burst into a loud laugh.
“Well,” he said, “if I had been the most consummate schemer that ever
lived, I could not have plotted for myself better than fortune has
planned for me. Now, then, Mr. Richard Hammond! Let us see now what are
your prospects of ultimately winning the beauty and the heiress! But
little Drusa! poor little Drusa! patient, loving little Drusa! Thank
fortune that you neither know nor suspect anything of this matter! And
you _must_ neither know nor suspect it yet awhile! For the knowledge, or
even the very suspicion of this, would go near to kill you. Very, very
gradually must you be prepared for it, my darling; very, very gently
must the truth be broken to you, my poor little girl!”
He felt now no embarrassment as to his relations, present or
prospective, with his betrothed and her grandfather. He was ready to
propose to Anna the next day, and to marry her in a month after, if
expedient.
For the paper that he had found in the pocket of his wedding coat, and
now held in his hand, proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that his
marriage with poor Drusilla was informal, null and void; that it had
always been so, and that he was legally free to love and to wed
whomsoever he should please.