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

way. You are honest enough to confess that you married him--poor boy, poor boy--for his rank and rent-roll. _There_, at least, you need not be disappointed. The settlements made upon you before your marriage were, as you know, liberal in the extreme. In addition to that, every farthing that it is in his power to dispose of he intends settling upon you besides. His grandmother's fortune, which descends to him, is to be yours. You may spend money like water if it pleases you--the title and the wealth for which you wedded are still yours. For himself, he intends to go abroad--to the East, I believe. He retains nothing but what will supply his travelling expenses. He cannot meet you--if he did, he might never be able to leave you. O Edith, you blame him, you hate him; but if you had only seen him, only heard him last night, only knew how inevitable it is, how he suffered, how bitterer than death this parting is to him, you would pity, you would forgive him."

"You think so," the girl said, with a wistful, weary sigh. "Ah, well, perhaps so. I don't know. Just now I can realize nothing except that I am a lost, forsaken wretch; that I _do_ hate him; that if I were dying, or that if he were dying, I could not say 'I forgive you.' As to his liberality, I never doubted that; I have owned that I married him for his wealth and station. I own it still; but there are some things not the wealth of a king could compensate for. To desert a bride on her wedding-day is one of them. I repeat, Lady Helena, with your permission, I will go to my room; we won't talk of my future plans and prospects just now. To-morrow you shall know my decision."

She turned to go. The elder woman looked after her with yearning, sorrowful eyes.

"If I knew what to do--if I knew what to say," she murmured helplessly. "Edith, I loved him more dearly than any son. I think my heart is breaking. O child, don't judge him--be merciful to him who loves you while he leaves you--be merciful to me whose life has been so full of trouble."

Her voice broke down in a passion of tears. Edith turned from the door, put her arms around her neck and kissed her.

"Dear friend," she said; "dear Lady Helena, I pity _you_ from the bottom of my heart. I wish--I wish I could only comfort you."

"You can," was the eager answer. "Stay with me, Edith; don't leave me alone. Be a daughter to me; take the place of the son I have lost."

But Edith's pale, resolute face did not soften.

"To-morrow we will settle all this," was her reply. "Wait until to-morrow."

Then she was gone--shut up and locked in her own room. She did not descend to either luncheon or dinner--one of the housemaids served her in her dressing-room. And Lady Helena, alone and miserable, wandered uneasily about the lower rooms, and wondered how she spent that long rainy day.

She spent it busily enough. The plain black box she had brought from New York, containing all her earthly belongings, she drew out and packed. It was not hard to do, since nothing went into it but what had belonged to her then. All the dresses, all the jewels, all the costly gifts that had been given her by the man she had married, and his friends, she left as they were. She kept nothing, not even her wedding-ring: she placed it among the rest, in the jewel casket, closed and locked it. Then she wrote a letter to Lady Helena, and placed the key inside. This is what she said:

* * * * *

"DEAR FRIEND: When you open this I shall have left Powyss Place forever. It will be quite useless to follow or endeavor to bring me back. My mind is made up. I recognize no authority--nothing will induce me to revoke my decision. I go out into the world to make my own way. With youth, and health, and ordinary intelligence, it ought not to be impossible. The things belonging to me when I first came here I have packed in the black box; in a week you will have the kindness to forward it to the Euston station. The rest I leave behind--retaining one or two books as souvenirs of _you_. I take nothing of Sir Victor Catheron's--not even his name. You must see that it is utterly impossible; that I must lose the last shred of pride and self-respect before I could assume his name or take a penny belonging to him. Dear, kind Lady Helena good-by. If we never meet again in the world, remember there is no thought in my heart of you that is not one of affection and gratitude. EDITH."

* * * * *

Her hand never trembled as she wrote this letter. She placed the key in it, folded, sealed, and addressed it. It was dark by this time. As she knelt to cord and lock her trunk, she espied the writing-case within it. She hesitated a moment, then took it out, opened it, and drew forth the packet of Charley Stuart's letters. She took out the photograph and looked at it with a half-tender, half-sad smile.

"I never thought to look at you again," she said softly. "You are all I have left now."

She put the picture in her bosom, replaced the rest, and locked the trunk, and put the key in her purse. She sat down and counted her money. She was the possessor of twelve sovereigns--left over from Mr. Stuart, senior's, bounty. It was her whole stock of wealth with which to face and begin the world. Then she sat down resolutely to think it out. And the question rose grim before her, "What am I to do?"

"Go out into the world and work for your daily bread. Face the poverty you have feared so much, through fear of which, two days ago, you sold yourself. Go to London--it is the centre of the world; lose yourself, hide from all who ever knew you. Go to London. Work of some kind can surely be had by the willing in that mighty city. Go to London."

That was the answer that came clearly. She shrank for a moment--the thought of facing life single-handed, poor and alone in that great, terrible, pitiless city, was overwhelming. But she did not flinch from her resolve; her mind was made up. Come woe, come weal, she would go to London.

An "A. B. C." railway guide lay on the table--she consulted it. A train left Chester for London at eight o'clock, A. M. Neither Lady Helena nor any of her household was stirring at that hour. She could walk to Chesholm in the early morning, get a fly there and drive to the Chester station in time. By four in the afternoon she would be in London.

No thought of returning home ever recurred to her. Home! What home had she? Her step-mother was master and mistress in her father's house, and to return, to go back to Sandypoint, and the life she had left, was as utter an impossibility almost as though she should take a rope and hang herself. She had not the means to go if she had desired, but that made no difference. She could never go back, never see her father, or Charley, or Trixy more. Alone she must live, alone she must die.

The flood-gates were opened; she suffered this last night as women of her strong, self-contained temperament only suffer.

"Save me, O God! for the waters are come into my soul!" That was the wild, wordless prayer of her heart. Her life was wrecked, her heart was desolate; she must go forth a beggar and an outcast, and fight the bitter battle of life alone. And love, and home, and Charley might have been hers. "It might have been!" Is there any anguish in this world of anguish like that we work with our own hands?--any sorrow like that which we bring upon ourselves? In the darkness she sank down upon her knees, her face covered with her hands, tears, that were as dreadful as tears of blood, falling from her eyes. Lost--lost! all that made life worth having. To live and die alone, that was her fate!

So the black, wild night passed, hiding her, as miserable a woman as the wide earth held.

* * * * *

The gray dawn of the dull October morning was creeping over the far-off Welsh hills as Edith in shawl and hat, closely veiled, and carrying a hand-bag, came softly down the stairs, and out of a side door, chiefly used by the servants. She met no one. Noiselessly she drew the bolt, opened the door, and looked out.

It was raw and cold, a dreary wind still blowing, but it had ceased to rain. As she stood there, seven struck from the turret clock. "One long, last, lingering look behind"--one last upward glance at Lady Helena's windows.

"Good-by!" the pale lips whispered; then she passed resolutely out into the melancholy autumn morning and was gone.


PART III


CHAPTER I.

AT MADAME MIREBEAU'S, OXFORD STREET.

Half-past four of a delightful June afternoon, and two young ladies sit at two large, lace-draped windows, overlooking a fashionable Mayfair street, alternately glancing over the books they hold, and listlessly watching the passers-by. The house was one of those big black West-End houses, whose outward darkness and dismalness is in direct ratio to their inward brilliance and splendor. This particular room is lofty and long, luxurious with softest carpet, satin upholstery, pictures, flowers, and lace draperies. The two young ladies are, with the exception of their bonnets, in elegant carriage costume.

_Young_ ladies, I have said; and being unmarried, they are young ladies, of course. One of them, however, is three-and-thirty, counting by actual years--the peerage gives it in cold blood. It is the Lady Gwendoline Drexel. Her companion is the Honorable Mary Howard, just nineteen, and just "out."

Lady Gwendoline yawns drearily over her book--Algernon Swineburne's latest--and pulls out her watch impatiently every few minutes.

"What can keep Portia?" she exclaims, with irritation. "We should have been gone the last half-hour."

The Honorable Mary looks up from her Parisian fashion-book, and glances from the window with a smile.

"Restrain your impatience, Gwendoline," she answers. "Here comes Lady Portia now."

A minute later the door is flung wide by a tall gentleman in plush, and Lady Portia Hampton sweeps in. She is a tall, slender lady, very like her sister: the same dully fair complexion, the same coiffure of copper-gold, the same light, inane blue eyes. The dull complexion wears at this moment an absolute flush; the light, lack-lustre eyes an absolute sparkle. There is something in her look as she sails forward, that makes them both look up expectantly from their books.

"Well?" Lady Gwendoline says.

"Gwen!" her sister exclaims--absolutely exclaims--"_whom_ do you