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

Helena took her nephew's arm and hurried him, under the dripping trees, up the avenue to the house. Five minutes brought them to it--a red brick villa, its shutters all closed. The house-door stood ajar; without ceremony her ladyship entered. As she did so, another, door suddenly opened, and Inez Catheron came out.

The fixedly pale face, could by no possibility grow paler--could by no possibility change its marble calm. But the deep, dusk eyes looked at the young man, it seemed to him, with an infinite compassion.

"We are in time?" his aunt spoke.

"You are in time. In one moment you will see him. There is not a second to lose, and he knows it. He has begged you to be brought to him the moment you arrive."

"He knows then. Oh, thank God! Reason has returned at last."

"Reason has returned. Since yesterday he has been perfectly sane. His first words were that his son should be sent for, that the truth should be told."

There was a half-suppressed sob. Lady Helena covered her face with both hands. Her nephew looked at her, then back to Miss Catheron. The white face kept its calm, the pitying eyes looked at him with a gentle compassion no words can tell.

"Wait one moment," she said; "I must tell him you are here."

She hurried upstairs and disappeared. Neither of the two spoke. Lady Helena's face was still hidden. He knew that she was crying--silent, miserable tears--tears that were for _him_. He stood pale, composed, expectant--waiting for the end.

"Come up," Miss Catheron's soft voice at the head of the stairs called. Once more he gave his aunt his arm, once more in silence they went in together.

A breathless hush seemed to lie upon the house and all within it. Not a sound was to be heard except the soft rustle of the trees, the soft, ceaseless patter of the summer rain. In that silence they entered the chamber where the dying man lay. To the hour of his own death, that moment and all he saw was photographed indelibly upon Victor Catheron's mind. The dim gray light of the room, the great white bed in the centre, and the awfully corpse-like face of the man lying among the pillows, and gazing at him, with hollow, spectral eyes. His father--at last!

He advanced to the bedside as though under a spell. The spectral blue eyes were fixed upon him steadfastly, the pallid lips slowly opened and spoke.

"Like me--as I was--like me. Ethel's son."

"My father!"

He was on his knees--a great awe upon him. It was the first time in his young life he had ever been in the presence of death. And the dying was his father, and his father whom he had never seen before.

"Like me," the faint lips related; "my face, my height, my name, my age. Like me. O God! will his end be like mine?"

A thrill of horror ran through all his hearers. His son strove to take his hand; it was withdrawn. A frown wrinkled, the pallid brow.

"Wait," he said painfully; "don't touch me; don't speak to me. Wait. Sit down; don't kneel there. You don't know what you are about to hear. Inez, tell him now."

She closed the door--still with that changeless face--and locked it. It seemed as though, having suffered so much, nothing had power to move her outwardly now. She placed a chair for Lady Helena away from the bed--Lady Helena, who had stood aloof and not spoken to the dying man yet. She placed a chair for Sir Victor, and motioned him to seat himself, then drew another close to the bedside, stooped, and kissed the dying man. Then in a voice that never faltered, never failed, she began the story she had to tell.

* * * * *

Half an hour had passed. The story was told, and silence reigned in the darkened room. Lady Helena still sat, with averted face, in her distant seat, not moving, not looking up. The dying man still lay gazing weirdly upon his son, death every second drawing nearer and more near. Inez sat holding his hand, her pale, sad face, her dark, pitying eyes turned also upon his son.

That son had risen. He stood up in the centre of the room, with a white, stunned face. What was this he had heard? Was he asleep and dreaming?--was it all a horrible, ghastly delusion?--were they mocking him? or--O gracious God! was it _true_?

"Let me out!" They were his first words. "I can't breathe--I am choking in this room! I shall go mad if you keep me here!"

He staggered forward, as a drunken man or a blind man might stagger, to the door. He unlocked it, opened it, passed out into the passage, and down the stairs. His aunt followed him, her eyes streaming, her hands outstretched.

"Victor--my boy--my son--my darling! Victor--for the love of Heaven, speak to me!"

But he only made a gesture for her to stand back, and went on.

"Keep away from me!" he said, in a stifled voice; "let me think! Leave me alone!--I can't speak to you yet!"

He went forward out into the wet daylight. His head was bare; his overcoat was off; the rain beat unheeded upon him. What was this--what was this he had heard?

He paced up and down under the trees. The moments passed. An hour went; he neither knew nor cared. He was stunned--stunned body and soul--too stunned even to think. His mind was in chaos, an awful horror had fallen upon him; he must wait before thought would come. Whilst he still paced there, as a stricken animal might, a great cry reached him. Then a woman's flying figure came down the path. It was his aunt.

"Come--come--come!" she cried; "he is dying!"

She drew him with her by main force into the house--up the stairs--into the chamber of death. But Death had been there before them. A dead man lay upon the bed now, rigid and white. A second cry arose--a cry of almost more than woman's woe. And with it Inez Catheron clasped the dead man in her arms, and covered his face with her raining tears.

The son stood beside her like a figure of stone, gazing down at that marble face. For the first time in his life he was Sir Victor Catheron.


CHAPTER XX.

HOW THE WEDDING-DAY BEGAN.

Six days later, Sir Victor Catheron and his aunt came home. These six days had passed very quietly, very pleasantly, to Edith. She was not in the least lonely; the same sense of relief in her lover's absence was upon her as she had felt at Torquay. It seemed to her she breathed freer when a few score miles lay between them. She had her pet books and music, and she read and played a great deal; she had her long, solitary rambles through the leafy lanes and quiet roads, her long drives in the little pony phaeton her future husband had given her. Sometimes Lady Gwendoline was her companion; oftener she was quite alone. She was not at all unhappy now; she was just drifting passively on to the end. She had chosen, and was quietly abiding by her choice; that was all. She caught herself thinking, sometimes, that since she felt so much happier and freer in Sir Victor's brief absences, how was she going to endure all the years that must be passed at his side? No doubt she would grow used to him after a while, as we grow used and reconciled to everything earthly.

One circumstance rather surprised her: during those six days of absence she had received but one note from her lover. She had counted at least upon the post fetching her one or two per day, as when at Torquay, but this time he wrote her but once. An odd, incoherent, hurried sort of note, too--very brief and unsatisfactory, if she had had much curiosity on the subject of what was going on at St. John's Wood. But she had not. Whether his father lived or died, so that he never interfered with her claim to the title of Lady Catheron in the future, Miss Darrell cared very little. This hurried note briefly told her his father had died on the day of their arrival; that by his own request the burial place was to be Kensal Green, not the Catheron vaults; that the secret of his life and death was still to be kept inviolate; and that (in this part of the note he grew impassionedly earnest) their marriage was not to be postponed. On the third of October, as all had been arranged, it was still to take place. No other note followed. If Miss Darrell had been in love with her future husband, this profound silence must have wounded, surprised, grieved her. But she was not in love. He must be very much occupied, she carelessly thought, since he could not find time to drop her a daily bulletin--then dismissed the matter indifferently from her mind.

Late in the evening of the sixth day Sir Victor and Lady Helena returned home.

Edith stood alone awaiting them, dressed in black silk, and with soft white lace and ruby ornaments, and looking very handsome.

Her lover rushed in and caught her in his arms with a sort of rapturous, breathless delight.

"My love! my life!" he cried, "every hour has been an age since I said good-by!"

She drew herself from him. Sir Victor, in the calm, courteous character of a perfectly undemonstrative suitor she tolerated. Sir Victor in the role of Romeo was excessively distasteful to her. She drew herself out of his arms coldly and decisively.

"I am glad to see you back, Sir Victor." But the stereotyped words of welcome fell chill on his ear. "You are not looking well. I am afraid you have been very much harassed since you left."

Surely he was not looking well. In those six days he had grown more than six years older. He had lost flesh and color; there was an indescribable something in his face and expression she had never seen before. More had happened than the death of the father he had never known, to alter him like this. She looked at him curiously. Would he tell her?

He did not. Not looking at her, with his eyes fixed moodily on the wood-fire smoldering on the hearth, he repeated what his letter had already said. His father had died the morning of their arrival in London; they had buried him quietly and unobtrusively, by his own request, in Kensal Green Cemetery; no one was to be told, and the wedding was not to be postponed. All this he said as a man repeats a lesson learned by rote--his eyes never once meeting hers.

She stood silently by, looking at him, listening to him.

Something lay behind, then, that she was not to know. Well, it made them quits--she didn't care for the Catheron family secrets; if it were something unpleasant, as well _not_ know. If Sir Victor told her, very well; if not, very well also. She cared little either way.

"Miss Catheron remains at St John's Wood, I suppose?" she inquired indifferently, feeling in the pause that ensued she must say something.

"She remains--yes--with her two old servants for the present. I believe her