A Terrible Secret, May Agnes Fleming [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

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