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

the present to know.

She took out a purse, that fairies and gold dollars alone might have entered, and looked at its contents. By sheer good luck and chance, it contained three or four sovereigns--more than sufficient for the return journey. To-morrow morning she would go back to Powyss Place and tell Lady Helena; after that--

Her thoughts broke--to-night she could not look beyond. The misery, the shame, the horrible scandal, the loneliness, the whole wreck of life that was to come, she could not feel as yet. She knew what she would do to-morrow--after that all was a blank.

What a lovely night it was! What were they doing at home? What was Trixy about just now? What was--Charley? She had made up her mind never to think of Charley more. His face rose vividly before her now in the moonrays, pale, stern, contemptuous. "Oh!" she passionately thought, "how he must scorn, how he must despise me!" "Whatever comes," he had said to her that rainy morning at Sandypoint; "whatever the new life brings, you are never to blame _me_!" How long ago that rainy morning seemed now. What an eternity since that other night in the snow. If she had only died beside him that night--the clear, white, painless death--unspotted from the world! If she had only died that night!

Her arms were on the window-sill--her face fell upon them. One hour, two, three passed; she never moved. She was not crying, she was suffering, but dully, with a numb, torpid, miserable sense of pain. All her life since that rainy spring day, when Charley Stuart had come to Sandypoint with his mother's letter, returned to her. She had striven and coquetted to bring about the result she wanted--it had seemed such a dazzling thing to be a baronet's wife, with an income that would flow in to her like a ceaseless golden river. She had jilted the man she loved in cold bloody and accepted the man to whom her heart was as stone. In the hour when fortune was deserting her best friends, she had deserted them too. And the end was--_this_.

It was close upon twelve when Emily, the maid, sleepy and cross, tapped at the door. She had to tap many times before her mistress heard her. When she did hear and open, and the girl came in, she recoiled from the ghastly pallor of her lady's face.

"I shall not want you to-night," Edith said briefly. "You may go to bed."

"But you are ill, my lady. If you only saw yourself! Can't I fetch you something? A glass of wine from the dining-room?"

"Nothing, Emily, thank you. I have sat up too long in the night air--that is all. Go to bed; I shall do very well."

The girl went, full of pity and worries, shaking her head. "Only this morning I thought what a fine thing it was to be the bride of so fine a gentleman, and look at her now."

Left alone, she closed and fastened the window herself. An unsupportable sense of pain and weariness oppressed her. She did not undress. She loosened her clothes, wrapped a heavy, soft railway rug about her, and lay down upon the bed. In five minutes the tired eyes had closed. There is no surer narcotic than trouble sometimes; hers was forgotten--deeply, dreamlessly, she slept until morning.

The sun was high in the sky when she awoke. She raised herself upon her elbow and looked around, bewildered. In a second yesterday flashed upon her, and her journey of to-day. She arose, made her morning toilet, and rang for her maid. Breakfast was waiting--it was past nine o'clock, and she could leave Carnarvon in three quarters of an hour. She made an effort to eat and drink; but it was little better than an effort. She gave Jamison his parting instructions--he was to remain here until to-morrow; by that time orders would come from Powyss Place. Then, in the dress she had travelled in yesterday, she entered the railway carriage and started upon her return journey.

How speedily her honeymoon had ended! A curious sort of smile passed over her face as she thought it. She had not anticipated Elysium--quite--but she certainly had anticipated something very different from this.

She kept back thought resolutely--she would _not_ think--she sat and looked at the genial October landscape flitting by. Sooner or later the floodgates would open, but not yet.

It was about three in the afternoon when the fly from the railway drove up to the stately portico entrance of Powyss Place. She paid and dismissed the man, and knocked unthinkingly. The servant who opened the door fell back, staring at her, as though she had been a ghost.

"Is Lady Helena at home?"

Lady Helena was at home--and still the man stared blankly as he made the reply. She swept past him, and made her way, unannounced, to her ladyship's private rooms. She tapped at the door.

"Come in," said the familiar voice, and she obeyed. Then a startled cry rang out. Lady Helena arose and stood spellbound, gazing in mute consternation at the pale girl before her.

"Edith!" she could but just gasp. "What is this? Where is Victor?"

Edith came in, closed the door, and quietly faced her ladyship.

"I have not the faintest idea where Sir Victor Catheron may be at this present moment. Wherever he is, it is to be hoped he is able to take care of himself. I know I have not seen him since four o'clock yesterday afternoon."

The lips of Lady Helena moved, but no sound came from them. Some great and nameless terror seemed to have fallen upon her.

"It was rather an unusual thing to do," the clear, steady tones of the bride went on, "but being very tired after the journey, I fell asleep in the cottage parlor at Carnarvon, half an hour after our arrival. Sir Victor had left me to take a walk and a smoke, he said. It was nearly seven when I awoke. I was still alone. Your nephew had come and gone."

"Gone!"

"Gone--and left this for me. Read it, Lady Helena, and you will see that in returning here, I am only obeying my lord and master's command."

She took the note from her pocket, and presented it. Her ladyship took it, read it, her face growing a dreadful ashen gray.

"So soon!" she said, in a sort of whisper; "that it should have fallen upon him so soon! Oh! I feared it! I feared it! I feared it!"

"You feared it!" Edith repeated, watching her intently. "Does that mean your ladyship understands this letter?"

"Heaven help me! I am afraid I do."

"It means, then, what I have thought it meant: that when I married Sir Victor yesterday I married a madman!"

There was a sort of moan from Lady Helena--no other reply.

"Insanity is in the Catheron blood--I knew that from the first. His father lived and died a maniac. The father's fate is the son's. It has lain dormant for three-and-twenty years, to break out on his wedding-day. Lady Helena, am I right?"

But Lady Helena was sobbing convulsively now. Her sobs were her only reply.

"It is hard on _you_," Edith said, with a dreary sort of pity. "You loved him."

"And you did not," the elder woman retorted, looking up. "You loved your cousin, and you married my poor, unhappy boy for his title and his wealth. It would have been better for him he had died than ever set eyes on your face."

"Much better," Edith answered steadily. "Better for him--better for me. You are right, Lady Helena Powyss, I loved my cousin, and I married your nephew for his title and his wealth. I deserve all you can say of me. The worst will not be half bad enough."

Her ladyship's face drooped again; her suppressed sobbing was the only sound to be heard.

"I have come to you," Edith went on, "to tell you the truth. I don't ask what his secret is he speaks of; I don't wish to know. I think he should be looked after. If he is insane he should not be allowed to go at large."

"If he is insane!" Lady Helena cried, looking up again angrily. "You do well to say _if_. He is no more insane than you are!"

Edith stood still looking at her. The last trace of color faded from her face.

"_Not_ insane," she whispered, as if to herself; "_not_ insane, and--he deserts me!"

"Oh, what have I said!" Lady Helena cried; "forgive me, Edith--I don't know what I am saying--I don't know what to think. Leave me alone, and let me try to understand it, if I can. Your old rooms are ready for you. You have come to remain with me, of course."

"For the present--yes. Of the future I have not yet thought. I will leave you alone, Lady Helena, as you desire. I will not trouble you again until to-morrow."

She was quitting the room. Lady Helena arose and took her in her arms, her face all blotted with a rain of tears.

"My child! my child!" she said, "it is hard on you--so young, so pretty, and only married yesterday! Edith, you frighten me! What are you made of? You look like a stone!"

The girl sighed--a long, weary, heart-sick sigh.

"I feel like a stone. I can't cry. I think I have no heart, no soul, no feeling, no conscience--that I am scarcely a human being. I am a hardened, callous wretch, for whom any fate is too good. Don't pity me, dear Lady Helena; don't waste one tear on me. I am not worth it."

She touched her lips to the wet cheek, and went slowly on her way. No heart--no soul! if she had, both felt benumbed, dead. She seemed to herself a century old, as she toiled on to her familiar rooms. They met no more that day--each kept to her own apartments.

The afternoon set in wet and wild; the rain fell ceaselessly and dismally; an evening to depress the happiest closed down.

It was long after dark when there came a ring at the bell, and the footman, opening the door, saw the figure of a man muffled and disguised in slouch hat and great-coat. He held an umbrella over his head, and a scarf was twisted about the lower part of his face. In a husky voice, stifled in his scarf, he asked for Lady Helena.

"Her ladyship's at home," the footman answered, rather superciliously, "but she don't see strangers at this hour."

"Give her this," the stranger said; "she will see _me_."

In spite of hat, scarf, and umbrella, there was something familiar in the air of the visitor, something familiar in his tone. The man took the note suspiciously and passed it to another, who passed it to her ladyship's maid. The maid passed it to her ladyship, and her ladyship read it with a suppressed cry.

"Show him into the library at once. I will go down."

The muffled man was shown in, still wearing hat and scarf. The library was but dimly lit. He stood like a dark shadow amid the other shadows. An instant later the door opened and Lady Helena, pale and wild, appeared on the threshold.

"It is," she faltered. "It is--you!"

She approached slowly, her terrified eyes riveted on the hidden face.

"It is I. Lock the door."

She obeyed, she came nearer. He drew away the scarf, lifted the hat,