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

her clasped hands to her husband, "hear me and forgive me if you can. I have done wrong--wrong--but I--I was afraid, and I thought he was drowned. I wanted to tell you all--I did, indeed, but papa and mamma were afraid--afraid of losing you, Victor. I told you a falsehood about the photograph--he, that wretch, did give it to me, and--" her face drooped with a bitter sob--"he was my lover then, years ago, in Scotland."

"Ah!" quoted Mr. Catheron, "truth is mighty and will prevail! Tell it, Ethel; the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

"Silence, sir!" Lady Catheron cried, "and don't dare call me Ethel. I was only fifteen, Victor--think of it, a child of fifteen, spending my holidays in Glasgow when I met him. And he dared to make love to me. It amused him for the time--representing himself as a sort of banished prince, a nobleman in disguise. He took my silly, girlish fancy for the time. What did I at fifteen know of love? The day I was to return home, we exchanged pictures and rings, and he took me out for a last walk. He led me into a solitary chapel, and made me join hands, and pledge myself to be his wife. There was not a soul in the place but ourselves. As we left it we met papa. We shook hands and parted, and until this hour I have never since set eyes on his face. Victor, don't blame me too much--think what a child I was--remember I was afraid of him. The instant he was out of my sight I disliked him. He wrote to me--I never answered his letters, except once, and then it was to return his, and tell him to trouble me no more. That is all. O Victor! don't look like that! I am sorry--I am sorry. Forgive me or I shall die."

He was ashen white, but there was a dignity about him that awed into silence even the easy assurance of Juan Catheron. He stooped and kissed the tear-wet, passionate, pleading face.

"I believe you," he said; "your only fault was in not telling me long ago. Don't cry, and sit down."

He placed her in a chair, walked over, and confronted his cousin.

"Juan Catheron," he said, "you are a slanderer and a scoundrel, as you always were. Leave this house, and never, whilst I live, set your foot across its threshold. Five years ago you committed a forgery of my name for three thousand pounds. I turned you out of Catheron Royals and let you go. I hold that forged check yet. Enter this house again, repeat your infamous lie, and you shall rot in Chesholm jail! I spared you then for your sister's sake--for the name you bear and disgrace--but come here again and defame my wife, and I'll transport you though you were my brother. Now go, and never come back."

He walked to the door and flung it wide. Juan Catheron stood and looked at him, his admirable good-humor unruffled, something like genuine admiration in his face.

"By Jupiter!" he exclaimed, "who'd have thought it! Such a milk-sop as he used to be! Well, baronet, I don't deny you got the upper hand of me in that unpleasant little affair of the forgery, and Portland Island with a chain on my leg and hard labor for twenty years I don't particularly crave. Of course, if Ethel won't come, she won't, but I say again it's deuced shabby treatment. Because, baronet, that sort of thing _is_ a marriage in Scotland, say what you like. I suppose it's natural she should prefer the owner of Catheron Royals and twenty thousand per annum, to a poor devil of a sailor like me; but all the same it's hard lines. Good-by, Inez--be sisterly, can't you, and come and see a fellow. I'm stopping at the 'Ring o' Bells,' in Chesholm. Good-by, Ethel. 'Thou hast learned to love another, thou hast broken every vow,' but you might shake hands for the sake of old times. You won't--well, then, good-by without. The next time I marry I'll make sure of my wife."

He swaggered out of the room, giving Sir Victor a friendly and forgiving nod, flung his wide awake on his black curls, clattered down the stairs and out of the house.

"By-by, William," he said to the butler. "I'm off again, you see. Most inhospitable lot _I_ ever saw--never so much as offered me a glass of wine. Good-night, my daisy. Oh river! as they say in French. Oh river!"

The door closed upon him. He looked back at the lighted windows and laughed. "I've given them a rare fright if nothing else. She went off stiff at sight of me, and he--egad! the little fair-haired baronet's plucky after all--such a molly-coddle as he used to be. Of course her being my wife's all bosh, but the scare was good fun. And it won't end here--my word for it. He's as jealous as the Grand Turk. I hope Inez will come to see me and give me some money. If she doesn't I must go and see her, that's all."

He was gone--and for a moment silence reigned. Lights burned, flowers bloomed, crystal and silver shone, rare wines and rich fruits glowed. But a skeleton sat at the feast. Juan Catheron had done many evil deeds in his lifetime, but never a more dastardly deed than to-night.

There was a flash of intolerable triumph in the dark eyes of Inez. She detested her brother, but she could have kissed him now. She had lost all, wealth, position, and the man she loved--this girl with the tangled yellow hair and pink and white face had taken all from her, but even _her_ path was not to be altogether a path of roses.

Ashen pale and with eyes averted, Sir Victor walked back and resumed his seat at the table. Ashen pale, trembling and frightened, Ethel sat where he had placed her. And no one spoke--what was there to be said?

It was a fortunate thing that just at this juncture baby should see fit to wake and set up a dismal cry, so shrill as to penetrate even to the distant dinner-room. Lady Catheron rose to her feet, uttered a hasty and incoherent apology, and ran from the room.

She did not return. Peace reigned, the infant heir of the Catherons was soothed, but his mamma went downstairs no more that night. She lingered in the nursery for over an hour. Somehow by her baby's side she felt a sense of peace and safety. She dreaded to meet her husband. What must he think of her? She had stooped to concealment, to falsehood--would he ever love her or trust her again?

She went at last to her rooms. On the dressing-table waxlights burned, but the bedroom was unlit. She seated herself by the window and looked out at the starlit sky, at the darkly-waving trees of the park. "And this is my welcome home," she thought, "to find in my husband's house my rival and enemy, whose first look, whose first words are insults. She is mistress here, not I. And that fatal folly of my childhood come back. That horrible man!" She shuddered as she sat alone. "Ah, why did I not tell, why did mamma beg me to hide it from him? She was so afraid he would have gone--so afraid her daughter would miss a baronet, and I--I was weak and a coward. No, it is all over--he will never care for me, never trust me again."

He came in as she sat there, mournful and alone. In the dusk of the chamber the little half-hidden white figure caught his eye, the golden hair glimmering through the dusk.

"Ethel," he said, "is that window open? Come away immediately--you will take cold in the draught."

He spoke gently but very coldly as he had never spoken to her before. She turned to him with a great sob.

"Oh, Victor, forgive me!" she said.

He was silent for a moment. He loved her with a great and passionate love; to see her weep was torture, to see her suffer, misery. She had never been dearer than in this hour. Still he stood aloof, torn by doubt, racked by jealousy.

"Ethel," he cried out, "_why_ did you deceive me? I thought--I could have sworn you were all truth and innocence, stainless as a lily, white as an angel. And to think that another man--and of all men Juan Catheron. No. I can't even think of it--it is enough to drive me mad!"

She fell down on her knees before him and held up her clasped hands.

There was a little sob, and her head lay on his shoulder.

"I tried to once or twice--I did indeed, but you know what a coward I am. And mamma forbade my telling--that is the truth. She said I had been a little fool--that was all over and done with--no need to be a great fool, telling my own folly. And after we were married, and I saw you jealous of every man I looked at--you know you were, sir!--I was more scared than ever. I thought Juan Catheron was dead. I never wrote to him. I had returned all his letters. I thought I had destroyed his picture; I never knew that I had done so very wrong in knowing him at all, until that day in Russell Square. But Victor--husband--only forgive me this once, and I'll never, never have a secret from you again as long as I live."

She was little better than a child still--this pretty youthful matron and mother. And with the sweet, pleading face uplifted, the big blue eyes swimming in tears, the quivering lips, the pathetic voice, he did what _you_, sir, would have done in his place--kissed and forgave her.


CHAPTER V.

IN THE TWILIGHT.

"No words can be strong enough to reprehend your conduct, Victor. You have acted disgracefully; you are listening, sir,--disgracefully, I say, to your cousin Inez. And you are the first of your line who has blurred the family escutcheon. Dukes' daughters have entered Catheron Royals as brides. It was left for you to wed a soap-boiler's daughter!"

Thus Lady Helena Powyss, of Powyss Place, to her nephew, Sir Victor Catheron, just one fortnight after that memorable night of his wife and heir's coming home. The young man stood listening in sullen anger, the red blood mounting to his very temples. His Cousin Inez had managed during the past two weeks to make his existence as thoroughly uncomfortable as a thoroughly jealous and spiteful woman can. He had flown at last to his aunt for comfort, and this is how he got it.

"Lady Helena," he burst forth, "this is too much! Not even from you will I bear it. A soap-boiler's daughter my wife may be--it is the only charge that can be brought against her. I have married to please myself, and it _does_ please me enormously. Inez, confound her! badgers me enough. I didn't expect, Aunt Helena, to be badgered by you."

"I have no wish to badger you. I bring no charge against your wife. I have seen her but once, and personally I like her excessively. I believe her to be as good as she is pretty. But again _your_ conduct I do and will protest. You have cruelly, shamefully wronged your cousin--humiliated her beyond all telling. I can only wonder--yes, Victor, wonder--that with her fiery nature she takes it as quietly as she does."

"As quietly as she does! Good Heavens!" burst forth this "badgered" baronet. "You should live in