MARY GREY'S MYSTERY.
After Mrs. Grey's last interview with Alden Lytton, during which, partly
because she lost her self-command and partly because she did not care
longer to conceal her feelings, she had thrown off her mask, she sat
down to review the situation.
"Well, I have betrayed myself," she mused. "I have let him see how I
really feel about this marriage engagement between him and Emma
Cavendish. He knows now how I loved him; if he has eyes in his head he
sees now how I hate him.
"All right. I have now no further reason to deceive him. He has served
my utmost purpose for his own and her own destruction. I no longer need
his unconscious co-operation. I have his honor and his liberty, and her
reputation and peace, in my power and at my mercy.
"And I have done all this myself, without the voluntary help of any
human being. I have used men as the mechanic uses tools, making them do
his work, or as the potter uses clay, molding it to his purpose.
"Let him marry Emma Cavendish. I can part them at any moment afterward
and throw them into a felon's prison, and cast her down from her proud
place into misery and degradation.
"I _could_ stop their marriage now, or at the altar. But I will not do
that; for to do that would be only to disappoint or grieve them. But my
vengeance must strike a deeper blow. It must degrade and ruin them. I
will wait until they have been married some time. Then, in the hour of
their fancied security, I will come down upon them like an avalanche of
destruction."
In the feverish excitement of anticipating this fiendish consummation of
her revenge she almost forgot her heinous crime, and ceased to be
haunted by the hideous specter of her murdered lover.
It was on the fifteenth of the month, when she happened to take up the
morning paper.
She turned first--as she always did--to the column containing notices of
marriages and deaths.
And her face grew wild and white as she read:
MARRIED.--On the morning of the 10th instant, at Blue
Cliff Hall, Virginia, the seat of the bride, by the
Rev. Dr. Beresford Jones, Mr. Alden Lytton, of
Richmond, to Miss Emma Angela, only daughter of the
late Charles Cavendish, Governor of Virginia.
She read no further that day. There were other marriages following this;
but she felt no curiosity now about them. And there was a formidable row
of death notices, headed by the obituary of Mrs. Cavendish, but she did
not even see it.
The announcement of the marriage had taken her by surprise. She had not
expected to see it for a month yet to come. And, as she did not observe
the notice of Mrs. Cavendish's death, she could not understand why the
marriage had been hastened by so many weeks.
"So it is over," she said. "It is over, and it has been over for five
days. They are in the midst of their happiness, enjoyed at the expense
of my misery. Theirs is a fool's paradise from which I could eject them
at any moment; but I will not--not just yet. The longer I suspend the
blow the heavier it will fall at last. They will carry out their
programme, I presume; so far, at least, as to go upon their bridal trip
to Europe. I could stop them on the eve of their voyage; but I will not.
I will let them go and return, and hold their wedding-reception, and
then, in the midst of their joy and triumph, in the presence of their
admiring friends--"
She paused to gloat with demoniac enjoyment over the picture her wicked
imagination had conjured up.
--"Then I will turn all their joy to despair, all their triumph to
humiliation, all their glory to shame! And I will do all this
alone--alone, or use others only as my blind tools.
"Of course they will take this city on their way to New York to embark
for Europe. And they will call on me to show me their happiness, and
take a keener relish of it from seeing the contrast of my misery. But
they shall be disappointed in that, at least. I will not be dragged at
the wheels of their triumphal car. I will not stay here to receive them.
I will leave town, and stay out of it until I am sure that they have
passed through and left it."
She kept her word.
She went down to Forestville, ostensibly to relieve a poor family
suffering under an accumulation of afflictions, but really to be out of
the way of the bridal pair, and to get up evidence in the case she
intended to bring against the husband of Emma Cavendish.
When she had been but a few days at Forestville she received a letter
from Miss Romania Crane--who in her absence kept up a sentimental
correspondence with her--informing her of the visit of Mr. and Mrs.
Alden Lytton, the bride and bridegroom from Blue Cliffs, who stopped for
a day in the city on their way to New York.
Immediately on her receipt of this letter she returned to Richmond and
to the house of the Misses Crane.
And she very much surprised and shocked these ladies by assuming an air
of grief and distraction as extreme in itself as it was unaccountable to
them.
They could not even imagine what was the matter with her. She refused to
give any explanation of her apparent mental anguish, and she repelled
all sympathy.
The Misses Crane were afraid she was going to lose her reason.
They went to see the minister and the minister's wife on the subject.
They found only the lady at home. And to her they stated the mysterious
case.
"There is something very heavy on her mind, my dear. I am sure there is
something awful on her mind."
"There has been this long time, I think," said the minister's wife.
"Yes, I know; but it is a thousand times worse now. My dear, she keeps
her room nearly all day. She never comes to the table. If I send her
meals up to her they come back almost untasted. And I assure you she
does not sleep any better than she eats. Her room is over mine, and so I
can hear her walking the floor half the night," said Miss Romania Crane.
"What can be the cause of her distress?" inquired the rector's lady.
"I don't know. I can't get her to tell me. She only says that 'her life
is wrecked forever, and that she wishes only to be left to herself until
death shall relieve her.' And all that sort of talk," said Miss Romania.
"And have you no suspicion?"
"None in the world that seems at all rational. The only one I have seems
foolish."
"But what is it?"
"Well, I sometimes think--but indeed it is a silly thought--that her
distress is in some way connected with the marriage of Mr. Lytton and
Miss Cavendish, for I notice that every time the name of either of them
is mentioned she grows so much worse that I and my sister have ceased
ever to speak of them."
"It can not be that she was ever in love with Mr. Lytton," suggested the
minister's lady.
"I should think not. I should think she was not that weak-minded sort of
woman to give way to such sentiment, much less to be made so extremely
wretched by it. For I do tell you, my dear, her state is simply that of
the utmost mental wretchedness."
"I will ask my husband to go to her. He is her pastor, and may be able
to do her some good," said the minister's wife.
"Do, my dear, and come to see her yourself," said Miss Romania, as she
and her sister arose to take leave.
Now you know all this distress was just "put on" by Mrs. Grey, to give
coloring and plausibility to her future proceedings.
To be sure she kept her room, but it was not to grieve in secret: it was
to excite the compassion and wonder of her sympathizing friends, while
she laid her plans, drank French cordials, and feasted privately on the
delicacies of the season, which she would secretly bring in, or dozed on
her sofa and dreamed of her coming sweet revenge.
Certainly, instead of going to bed at a decent hour, she would walk the
floor of her chamber half the night. But this was not done because she
was suffering, or sleepless from grief, but for the purpose of keeping
poor Miss Crane awake all night in the room below and making the poor
lady believe that she, Mary Grey, was breaking her own heart in these
vigils.
And for her want of nightly rest Mary Grey compensated herself by dozing
half the day on her sofa; and for her want of regular meals she made up
by slipping out occasionally and feasting at some "ladies' restaurant."
But her object was effected. She impressed everybody who came near her
with the belief that she had suffered some awful wrong or bereavement of
which she could not speak, but which threatened to unseat her reason or
end her life.