Dora Thorne, Charlotte Mary Brame [beach read book TXT] 📗

give her her freedom from a foolish promise she would always be my friend. At first I would not hear of it; but who could have refused her? If she had told me to lie down at her feet and let her trample the life out of me, I should have submitted.

"I promised to think of her request, and we walked on to the border of the lake. Every hair upon her head was sacred to me; the pretty, proud ways that tormented me delighted me, too. I promised I would release her, and give her the freedom she asked, if she told me I was not giving her up to another. She would not. Some few words drove me mad with jealous rage--yes, mad; the blood seemed to boil in my veins. Suddenly I caught sight of a golden locket on her neck, and I asked her whose portrait it contained. She refused to tell me. In the madness of my rage I tried to snatch it from her. She caught it in her hands, and, shrinking back from me, fell into the lake.

"I swear it was a sheer accident--I would not have hurt a hair of her head; but, oh! My lord, pardon me--pardon me, for Heaven's sake--I might have saved her and I did not; I might have plunged in after her and brought her back, but jealousy whispered to me, 'Do not save her for another--let her die.' I stood upon the bank, and saw the water close over her head. I saw the white hand thrown up in wild appeal, and never moved or stirred. I stood by the lake-side all night, and fled when the morning dawned in the sky.

"I killed her. I might have saved her, but did not. Anger of yours can add nothing to my torture; think what it has been. I was a strong man two days since; when the sun sets I shall be numbered with the dead. I do not wish to screen myself from justice. I have to meet the wrath of Heaven, and that appalls me as the anger of man never could. Send the officers of the law for me. If I am not dead, let them take me; if I am, let them bury me as they would a dog. I ask no mercy, no compassion nor forgiveness; I do not merit it.

"If by any torture, any death, I could undo what I have done, and save her, I would suffer the extremity of pain; but I can not. My deed will be judged in eternity.

"My lord, I write this confession partly to ease my own conscience, party to shield others from unjust blame. Do not curse me because, through my mad jealousy, my miserable revenge, as fair and pure a child as father ever loved has gone to her rest."

So the strange letter concluded. Lord Earle read every word, looking over and anon at the quiet, dead face that had kept the secret hidden. Every word seemed burned in upon his brain; every word seemed to rise before him like an accusing spirit.

He stood face to face at last with the sin of his youth; it had found him out. The willful, wanton disobedience, the marriage that had broken his father's heart, and struck Ronald himself from the roll of useful men; the willful, cruel neglect of duty; the throwing off of all ties; the indulgence in proud, unforgiving temper, the abandonment of wife and children--all ended there. But for his sins and errors, that white, still figure might now have been radiant with life and beauty.

The thought stung him with cruel pain. It was his own fault. Beatrice might have erred in meeting Hugh Fernely; Fernely had done wrong in trying to win that young child-like heart for his own; but he who left his children to strange hands, who neglected all duties of parentage, had surely done the greatest wrong.

For the first time his utter neglect of duty came home to him. He had thought himself rather a modern hero, but now he caught a glimpse of himself as he was in reality. He saw that he was not even a brave man; for a brave man neglects no duty. It was pitiful to see how sorrow bent his stately figure and lined his proud face. He leaned over his dead child, and cried to her to pardon him, for it was all his fault. Lady Helena, seeking him in the gloom of that solemn death chamber, found him weeping as strong men seldom weep.

He did not give her the letter, nor tell her aught of Hugh Fernely's confession. He turned to her with as sad a face as man ever wore.

"Mother," he said, "I want my kinsman, Lionel Dacre. Let him be sent for, and ask him to come without delay."

In this, the crowning sorrow of his life, he could not stand alone. He must have some one to think and to plan for him, some one to help him bear the burden that seemed too heavy for him to carry. Some one must see the unhappy man who had written that letter, and it should be a kinsman of his own.

Not the brave, sad young lover, fighting alone with his sorrow he must never know the tragedy of that brief life, to him her memory must be sacred and untarnished, unmarred by the knowledge of her folly.

Lady Helena was not long in discovering Lionel Dacre's whereabouts. One of the footmen who had attended him to the station remembered the name of the place for which he had taken a ticket. Lady Helena knew that Sir William Greston lived close by, and she sent at once to his house.

Fortunately the messenger found him. Startled and horrified by the news, Lionel lost no time in returning. He could not realize that his beautiful young cousin was really dead. Her face, in its smiling brightness, haunted him. Her voice seemed to mingle with the wild clang of the iron wheels. She was dead, and he was going to console her father.

No particulars of her death had reached him; he now only knew that she had walked out in her sleep, and had fallen into the lake.

Twenty-four hours had not elapsed since Lord Earle cried out in grief for his young kinsman, yet already he stood by his side.

"Persuade him to leave that room," said Lady Helena. "Since our darling was carried there he has never left her side."

Lionel did as requested. He went straight to the library, and sent for Lord Earle, saying that he could not at present look upon the sad sight in the gloomy death chamber.

While waiting there, he heard of Lillian's dangerous illness. Lady Helena told him how she had changed before her sister's death; and, despite the young man's anger, his heart was sore and heavy.

He hardly recognized Lord Earle in the aged, altered man who soon stood before him. The long watch, the bitter remorse, the miserable consciousness of his own folly and errors had written strange lines upon his face.

"I sent for you, Lionel," he said, "because I am in trouble--so great that I can no longer bear it alone. You must think and work for me; I can do neither for myself."

Looking into his kinsman's face, Lionel felt that more than the death of his child weighed upon the heart and mind of Ronald Earle.

"There are secrets in every family," said Ronald; "henceforth there will be one in mine--and it will be the true story of my daughter's death. While I knelt yesterday by her side, this letter was brought to me. Read it, Lionel; then act for me."

He read it slowly, tears gathering fast in his eyes, his lips quivering, and his hands tightly clinched.

"My poor Beatrice!" he exclaimed; and then the strength of his young manhood gave way, and Lionel Dacre wept as he had never wept before. "The mean, pitiful scoundrel!" he cried, angry indignation rising as he thought of her cruel death. "The wretched villain--to stand by while she died!"

"Hush!" said Lord Earle. "He has gone to his account. What have you to say to me, Lionel? Because I had a miserable quarrel with my wife I abandoned my children. I never cared to see them from the time they were babes until they were women grown. How guilty am I? That man believed he was about to raise Beatrice in the social scale when he asked her to be his wife, or as he says, he would never have dreamed of proposing to marry my daughter. If he merits blame, what do I deserve?"

"It was a false position, certainly," replied Lionel Dacre.

"This secret must be kept inviolate," said Lord Earle. "Lord Airlie must never know it--it would kill Lady Helena, I believe. One thing puzzles me, Lionel--Fernely says Lillian met him. I do not think that is true."

"It is!" cried Lionel, a sudden light breaking in upon him. "I saw her with him. Oh, Lord Earle, you may be proud of Lillian! She is the noblest, truest girl that ever lived. Why, she sacrificed her own love, her own happiness, for her sister! She loved me; and when this wedding, which will never now take place, was over, I intended to ask you to give me Lillian. One night, quite accidentally, while I was wandering in the grounds with a cigar, I saw her speaking to a stranger, her fair sweet face full of pity and compassion, which I mistook for love. Shame to me that I was base enough to doubt her--that I spoke to her the words I uttered! I demanded to know who it was she had met, and why she had met him. She asked me to trust her, saying she could not tell me. I stabbed her with cruel words, and left her vowing that I would never see her again. Her sister must have trusted her with her secret, and she would not divulge it."

"We can not ask her now," said Lord Earle; "my mother tells me she is very ill."

"I must see her," cried Lionel, "and ask her to pardon me if she can. What am I to do for you, Lord Earle? Command me as though I were your own son."

"I want you to go to the cottage," said Ronald, "and see if the man is living or dead. You will know how to act. I need not ask a kinsman and a gentleman to keep my secret."

In a few minutes Lionel Dacre was on his way to the cottage, riding as though it were for dear life. Death had been still more swift. Hugh Fernely lay dead.

The cottager's wife told Lionel how the children out at play had found a man lying in the dank grass near the pond, and how her husband, in his own strong arms, had brought him to their abode. He lay still for many hours, and then asked for pen and ink. He was writing, she said, nearly all night, and afterward prayed her husband to take the letter to Lord Earle. The man refused any