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

were on Robinson Crusoe's desert island. Outwardly those ten months had changed her little--her brilliant, dusk beauty was scarcely dimmed--inwardly it had changed her greatly, and hardly for the better.

There had been a long and bitter struggle before she found herself in this safe haven. For months she had drifted about without rudder, or compass, or pilot, on the dark, turbid sea of London. She had come to the great city friendless and alone, with very little money, and very little knowledge of city life. She had found lodgings easily enough, cheap and clean, and had at once set about searching for work. On the way up she had decided what she must do--she would become a nursery governess or companion to some elderly lady, or she would teach music. But it was one thing to resolve, another to do. There were dozens of nursery governesses and companions to old ladies wanting in the columns of the _Times_, but they were not for her. "Where are your references?" was the terrible question that met her at every turn. She had no references, and the doors of the genteel second and third-rate houses shut quietly in her face.

Young and pretty, without references, money or friends, how was she ever to succeed? If she had been thirty and pock-marked she might have triumphed even over the reference business: as it was, her case seemed hopeless. It was long, however, before her indomitable spirit would yield. Her money ran low, she pawned several articles of jewelry and dress to pay for food and lodging. She grew wan and hollow-eyed in this terrible time--all her life long she could never recall it without a shudder.

Five months passed; despair, black and awful, filled her soul at last. The choice seemed to lie between going out as an ordinary servant and starving. Even as a housemaid she would want this not-to-be-got-over reference. In this darkest-hour before the dawn she saw Madame Mirebeau's advertisement for sewing girls, and in sheer despair applied. Tall, handsome girls of good address, were just what madame required, and somehow--it was the mercy of the good God no doubt--she was taken. For weeks after she was kept under close surveillance, she was so very unlike the young women who filled such situations--then the conviction became certainty that Miss Stuart had no sinister designs on the ruby velvets, the snowy satins, and priceless laces of her aristocratic customers--that she really wanted work and was thoroughly capable of doing it. Nature had made Edith an artist in dressmaking; her taste was excellent; madame became convinced she had found a treasure. Only one thing Miss Stuart steadfastly refused to do--that was to wait in the shop. "I have reasons of my own for keeping perfectly quiet," she said, looking madame unflinchingly in the eyes. "If I stay in the shop I may--though it is not likely--be recognized; and then I should be under the necessity of leaving you immediately."

Madame had no wish to lose her very best seamstress, so Miss Stuart had her way. The sentimental Frenchwoman's own idea was that Miss Stuart was a young person of rank and position, who owing to some ill-starred love affair had been obliged to run away and hide herself from her friends. However as her hopeless passion in no way interfered with her dressmaking ability, madame kept her suspicions to herself and retained her in the workroom.

And so after weary months of pain, and shame, and despair, Edith had come safely to land at last. For the past five months her life had flowed along smoothly, dully, uneventfully--going to her work in the morning, returning to her lodgings at night--sometimes indulging in a short walk in the summer twilight after her tea; at other times too wearied out in body and mind to do other than lie down on the little hard bed, and sleep the spent sleep of exhaustion. That was her outer life; of her inner life what shall I say? She could hardly have told in the after-days herself. Somehow strength is given us to bear all things and live on. Of the man she had married she could not, dare not think--her heart and soul filled with such dark and deadly hatred. She abhorred him,--it is not too much to say that. The packet of treasured letters written in New York so long--oh, so long ago! it seemed--became the one spot of sunshine in her sunless life. She read them until the words lost all meaning--until she knew every one by heart. She looked at the picture until the half-smiling eyes and lips seemed to mock her as she gazed. The little turquoise broach with the likeness, she wore in her bosom night and day--the first thing to be kissed in the morning, the last at night. Wrong, wrong, wrong, you say; but the girl was desperate and reckless--she did not care. Right and wrong were all confounded in her warped mind; only this was clear--she loved Charley as she had never loved him before she became Sir Victor Catheron's bride. He scorned and despised her; she would never look upon his face again--it did not matter; she would go to her grave loving him, his pictured face over her heart, his name the last upon her lips.

Sometimes, sitting alone in the dingy London twilight, there rose before her a vision of what might have been: Charley, poor as he was now, and she Charley's wife, he working for her, somewhere and somehow, as she knew he gladly would, she keeping their two or three tiny rooms in order, and waiting, with her best dress on, as evening came, to hear his step at the door. She would think until thought became torture, until thought became actual physical pain. His words, spoken to her that last night she had ever spent at Sandypoint, came back to her full of bitter meaning now: "Whatever the future brings, don't blame _me_." The future had brought loneliness, and poverty, and despair--all her own fault--her own fault. That was the bitterest sting of all--it was her own work from first to last. She had dreaded poverty, she had bartered her heart, her life, and him in her dread of it, and lo! such poverty as she had never dreamed of had come upon her. If she had only been true to herself and her own heart, what a happy creature she might have been to-day.

But these times of torture were mercifully rare. Her heart seemed numb--she worked too hard to think much--at night she was too dead tired to spend the hours in fruitless anguish and tears. Her life went on in a sort of treadmill existence; and until the coming of Inez Catheron nothing had occurred to disturb it.

Her heart was full of bitter tumult and revolt as she went back to her work. The dastard! how dared he! He was dying, Inez Catheron had said, and for love of her. Bah! she could have laughed in her bitter scorn,--what a mockery it was! If it were true, why let him die! The sooner the better--then indeed she would be free. Perhaps Edith had lost something--heart, conscience--in the pain and shame of the past. All that was soft and forgiving in her nature seemed wholly to have died out. He had wronged her beyond all reparation--the only reparation he could make was to die and leave her free.

Madame's young women were detained half an hour later than usual that evening. A great Belgravian ball came off next night, and there was a glut of work. They got away at last, half fagged to death, only to find a dull drizzling rain falling, and the murky darkness of early night settling down over the gas-lit highways of London. Miss Stuart bade her companions a brief good-night, raised her umbrella, and hurried on her way. She did not observe the waiting figure, muffled from the rain and hidden by an umbrella, that had been watching for her, and who instantly followed her steps. She hurried on rapidly and came at last to a part of the street where it was necessary she should cross. She paused an instant on the curbstone irresolute. Cabs, omnibuses and hansoms were tearing by in numbers innumerable. It was a perilous passage. She waited two or three minutes, but there was no lull in the rush. Then growing quite desperate in her impatience she started to cross. The crossing was slippery and wet.

"I say! look out there, will you!" half a dozen shrill cabbies called, before and behind.

She grew bewildered--her presence of mind deserted her--she dropped her umbrella and held up her hands instinctively to keep them off. As she did so, two arms grasped her, she felt herself absolutely lifted off her feet, and carried over. But just as the curbstone was reached, something--a carriage pole it appeared--struck her rescuer on the head, and felled him to the ground. As he fell, Edith sprang lightly out of his arms, and stood on the pavement, unhurt.

The man had fallen. It was all the driver of the hansom could do to keep his horse from going over him. There was shouting and yelling and an uproar directly. A crowd surrounded the prostrate man. X 2001 came up with his baton and authority. For Edith, she stood stunned and bewildered still. She saw the man lifted and carried into a chemist's near by. Instinctively she followed--it was in saving _her_ he had come to grief. She saw him placed in a chair, the mire and blood washed off his face, and then--was she stunned and stupefied still--or was it, _was_ it the face of Sir Victor Catheron?

It was--awfully bloodless, awfully corpse-like, awfully like the face of a dead man; but the face of the man whose bride she had been ten months ago--the face of Sir Victor Catheron.

She leaned heavily against the counter, feeling giddy and sick--the place swimming around her. Was he dead? Had he met his death trying to save her? "Blessed if I don't think he's dead and done for," said the chemist. "It ain't such a bad cut neither. I say! does anybody know who he is?"

Nobody knew. Then the keen eyes of X 2001 fell upon Edith, pale and wild-looking, with evident terror and recognition in her face.

"I say, miss, _you_ know, don't you?" Bobby suggested politely. "It was reskying you he got it, you know. You know this 'ere gent, don't you, miss! Who is he?"

"He is Sir Victor Catheron."

"Oh," said Bobby. "Sir Victor Catheron, is he? I thought he was a heavy swell." And then his eyes took in Edith's very handsome face, and very plain dress, and evident station, and he formed his own surmise. "Perhaps now, miss, you knows too, where he ought to be took?"

"No," she answered mechanically; "I don't know. If you search his pockets, you will most likely find his address. You--you, don't really think he is dead?"

She came a step nearer as she asked the question--her very lips colorless. An hour ago it seemed to her she had almost wished for his death--now it seemed too horrible. And to meet it saving her too,--after all her thoughts of him. She felt as though she could never bear that.

"Well, no, miss, I don't think he is dead," the chemist answered, "though I must say he looks uncommon like it. There's something more the matter with him than this rap on the 'ead. Here's his card-case--now let's see: 'Sir Victor Catheron, Bart. Fenton's 'Otel.' Fenton's 'Otel. Bobby, I say, let's horder a cab and 'ave him driven there."

"Somebody ought to go with him," said X 2001. "I can't go--_you_ can't