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

the room and spoke: "You wished to see me, Sir Victor Catheron?"

Cold and calm the formal words fell.

"Edith!"

His answer was a cry--a cry wrung from a soul full of love and anguish untold. It struck home, even to _her_ heart, steeled against him and all feeling of pity.

"I am sorry to see you so ill. I am glad your accident is no worse." Again she spoke, stiff, formal, commonplace words, that sounded horribly out of place, even to herself.

"Edith," he repeated, and again no words can tell the pathos, the despair of that cry, "forgive me--have pity on me. You hate me, and I deserve your hate, but oh! if you knew, even you would have mercy and relent!"

He touched her in spite of herself. Even a heart of stone might have softened at the sound of that despairing, heart-wrung voice--at sight of that death-like, tortured face. And Edith's, whatever she might say or think, was not a heart of stone.

"I do pity you," she said very gently; "I never thought to--but from my soul I do. But, forgive you! No, Sir Victor Catheron; I am only mortal. I have been wronged and humiliated as no girl was ever wronged and humiliated before. I can't do that."

He covered his face with his hands--she could hear the dry sobbing sound of his wordless misery.

"It would have been better if I had not come here," she said still gently. "You are ill, and this excitement will make you worse. But they insisted upon it--they said you had a request to make. I think you had better not make it--I can grant nothing--nothing."

"You will grant this," he answered, lifting his face and using the words Inez had used; "it is only that when I am dying, and send for you on my death-bed, you will come to me. Before I die I must tell you all--the terrible secret; I dare not tell you in life; and then, oh surely, surely you will pity and forgive! Edith, my love, my darling, leave me this one hope, give me this one promise before you go?"

"I promise to come," was her answer; "I promise to listen--I can promise no more. A week ago I thought I would have died sooner than pledge myself to that much--sooner than look in your face, or speak to you one word. And now, Sir Victor Catheron, farewell."

She turned to go without waiting for his reply. As she opened the door, she heard a wailing cry that struck chill with pity and terror to her inmost heart.

"Oh, my love! my bride! my wife!"--then the door closed behind her--she heard and saw no more.

So they had met and parted, and only death could bring them together again.

She passed out into the sunshine and splendor of the summer morning, dazed and cold, her whole soul full of untold compassion for the man she had left.


CHAPTER V.

THE TELLING OF THE SECRET.

Edith went back to the work-room in Oxford Street, to the old treadmill life of ceaseless sewing, and once more a lull came into her disturbed existence--the lull preceding the last ending of this strange mystery that had wrecked two lives. It seemed to her as she sat down among madame's troop of noisy, chattering girls, as though last night and its events were a long way off and a figment of some strange dream. That she had stood face to face with Sir Victor Catheron, spent a night under the same roof, actually spoken to him, actually felt sorry for him, was too unreal to be true. They had said rightly when they told her death was pictured on his face. Whatever this secret of his might be, it was a secret that had cost him his life. A hundred times a day that pallid, tortured face, rose before her, that last agonized cry of a strong heart in strong agony rang in her ears. All her hatred, all her revengeful thoughts of him were gone--she understood no better than before, but she pitied him from the depths of her heart.

They disturbed her no more, neither by letters nor visits. Only as the weeks went by she noticed _this_--that as surely as evening came, a shadowy figure hovering aloof, followed her home. She knew who it was--at first she felt inclined to resent it, but as he never came near, never spoke, only followed her from that safe distance, she grew reconciled and accustomed to it at last. She understood his motive--to shield her--to protect her from danger and insult, thinking himself unobserved.

Once or twice she caught a fleeting glimpse of his face on these occasions.

What a corpse-like face it was--how utterly weak and worn-out he seemed--more fitted for a sick-bed than the role of protector. "Poor fellow," Edith thought often, her heart growing very gentle with pity and wonder, "how he loves me, how faithful he is after all. Oh, I wonder--I wonder, _what_ this secret is that took him from me a year ago. Will his mountain turn into a mole-hill when I hear it, if I ever do, or will it justify him? Is he sane or mad? And yet Lady Helena, who is in her right mind, surely, holds him justified in what he has done."

July--August passed--the middle of September came. All this time, whatever the weather, she never once missed her "shadow" from his post. As we grow accustomed to all things, she grew accustomed to this watchful care, grew to look for him when the day's work was done. But in the middle of September she missed him. Evening after evening came, and she returned home unfollowed and alone. Something had happened.

Yes, something had happened. He had never really held up his head after that second parting with Edith. For days he had lain prostrate, so near to death that they thought death surely must come. But by the end of a week he was better--as much better at least as he ever would be in this world.

"Victor," his aunt would cry out, "I wish--I _wish_ you would consult a physician about this affection of the heart. I am frightened for you--it is not like anything else. There is this famous German--do go to see him to please me."

"To please you, my dear aunt--my good, patient nurse--I would do much," her nephew was wont to answer with a smile. "Believe me your fears are groundless, however. Death takes the hopeful and happy, and passes by such wretches as I am. It all comes of weakness of body and depression of mind; there's nothing serious the matter. If I get worse, you may depend upon it, I'll go and consult Herr Von Werter."

Then it was that he began his nightly duty--the one joy left in his joyless life. Lady Helena and Inez returned to St. John's Wood. And Sir Victor, from his lodgings in Fenton's Hotel, followed his wife home every evening. It was his first thought when he arose in the morning, the one hope that upheld him all the long, weary, aimless day--the one wild delight that was like a spasm, half pain, half joy--when the dusk fell to see her slender figure come forth, to follow his darling, himself unseen, as he fancied, to her humble home. To watch near it, to look up at her lighted windows with eyes full of such love and longing as no words can ever picture, and then, shivering in the rising night wind, to hail a hansom and go home--to live only in the thought of another meeting on the morrow.

Whatever the weather, it has been said, he went. On many occasions he returned drenched through, with chattering teeth and livid lips. Then would follow long, fever-tossed, sleepless nights, and a morning of utter prostration, mental and physical.

But come what might, while he was able to stand, he must return to his post--to his wife. But Nature, defied long, claimed her penalty at last. There came a day when Sir Victor could rise from his bed no more, when the heart spasms, in their anguish, grew even more than his resolute will could bear. A day when in dire alarm Lady Helena and Inez were once more summoned by faithful Jamison, and when at last--at last the infallible German doctor was sent for.

The interview between physician and patient was long and strictly private. When Herr Von Werter went away at last his phlegmatic Teuton face was set with an unwonted expression of pity and pain. After an interval of almost unendurable suspense, Lady Helena was sent for by her nephew, to be told the result. He lay upon a low sofa, wheeled near the window. The last light of the September day streamed in and fell full upon his face--perhaps that was what glorified it and gave it such a radiant look. A faint smile lingered on his lips, his eyes had a far-off, dreamy look, and were fixed on the rosy evening sky. A strange, unearthly, exalted look altogether, that made his aunt's heart sink like stone.

"Well?" She said it in a tense sort of whisper, longing for, yet dreading, the reply. He turned to her, that smile still on his lips, still in his eyes. He had not looked so well for months. He took her hand.

"Aunt," he said, "you have heard of doomed men sentenced to death receiving their reprieve at the last hour? I think I know to-day how those men must feel. My reprieve has come."

"Victor!" It was a gasp. "Dr. Von Werter says you will recover!"

His eyes turned from her to that radiant brightness in the September sky.

"It is aneurism of the heart. Dr. Von Werter says I won't live three weeks."

* * * * *

They were down in Cheshire. They had taken him home while there was yet time, by slow and easy stages. They took him to Catheron Royals--it was his wish, and they lived but to gratify his wishes now.

The grand old house was as it had been left a year ago--fitted up resplendently for a bride--a bride who had never come. There was one particular room to which he desired to be taken, a spacious and sumptuous chamber, all purple and gilding, and there they laid him upon the bed, from which he would never rise.

It was the close of September now, the days golden and mellow, beautiful with the rich beauty of early autumn, before decay has come. He had grown rapidly worse since that memorable interview with the German doctor, and paralysis, that "death in life" was preceding the fatal footsteps of aneurism of the heart. His lower limbs were paralyzed. The end was very near now. On the last day of September Herr Von Werter paid his last visit.

"It's of no use, madame," he said to Lady Helena; "I can do nothing--nothing whatever. He won't last the week out."

The young baronet turned his serene eyes, serene at last with the awful serenity that precedes the end. He had heard the fiat not intended for his ears.

"You are sure of this, doctor? _Sure_, mind! I won't last the week out?"

"It is impossible, Sir Victor. I always tell my patients the truth. Your disease is beyond the reach of all earthly skill. The end may come at any