The Light of Scarthey Part 60

"Base, cowardly, mean! Oh, my G.o.d, cruel--cruel! To go back without her."

After a little, with a sudden change of mood, she halted and stood a while, as if in deep reflection, holding her hand to her head, then crossing the room hurriedly, she knelt down, and flung her arms round the weeping figure.

"_Ma pet.i.te Madeleine_," she said in a voice of the most piteous pleading, "thou and I, we were always good friends; thou canst not have the heart to be so cruel to me now. See, my darling, he must die, they say--oh, Madeleine, Madeleine! And he asked for you. The one thing, he told Rene, the only thing we could do for him on earth was to let him see you once more. My little sister, you cannot refuse: he loves you. What has he done to offend you? Your pride cannot forgive him for being what he is, I suppose; yet such as he is you should be proud of him. He is too n.o.ble, too straightforward to have intentionally deceived you. If he did wrong, it was for love of you.

Madeleine, Madeleine!"

Her tones trailed away into a moan.

Miss O'Donoghue sobbed loudly from her corner. Madeleine, who had looked at her sister at first with repulsion, seemed moved; she placed her hands upon her shoulders, and gazed sadly into the flushed face.

"My poor Molly," she said hesitatingly, "this is dreadful! But I too--I too was led into deceit, into folly." She blushed painfully. "I would not blame you; it was not your fault that you were carried away in his s.h.i.+p. You went only for my sake: I cannot forget that. Yet that he should have this unhappy power over you too, you with your good husband, you a married woman, oh, my poor sister, it is terrible! He is a wicked man; I pray that he may yet repent."

"Heavens," interrupted Molly, her pa.s.sion up in arms again, loosening as she spoke her clasp upon her sister, and rising to her feet to look down on her with withering scorn, "have I not made myself clear? Are you deaf, stupid, as well as heartless? It is you--you--_you_ he loves, _you_ he wants. What am I to him?" with a curious sob, half of laughter, half of anguish. "Your pious fears are quite unfounded as far as he is concerned--the wicked man, as you call him! Oh, he spurns my love with as much horror as even you could wis.h.!.+"

"Molly!"

"Ay--Molly, and Molly--how shocked you are! Yes, I love him, I don't care who hears it. I love him--Adrian knows--he is not as virtuous as you, evidently, for Adrian pities me. He is doing all he can, though they say it is in vain, to get a reprieve for him--though I _do_ love him! While you--you are too good, too immaculate even to soil your dainty foot upon the floor of his prison, that floor that I could kiss because his shoe has trod it. But it is impossible! no human being could be so hard, least of all you, whom I have seen turn sick at the sight of a dead worm--Madeleine----!"

Crouching down in the former imploring manner, while her breast heaved with dry tearless sobs: "It cannot hurt you, you who loved him." And then with the old pitiful cry, "it is the only thing he wants, and he loves you."

Madeleine disengaged herself from the clinging hands with a gesture almost of disgust.

"Listen to me," she said, after a pause, "try and compose yourself and understand. All this month I have had time to think, to realise, to pray. I have seen what the world is worth, that it is full of horror, of sin, of trouble, of dreadful dissensions--that its sorrow far outweighs its happiness. I _have_ suffered," her pretty lips quivered an instant, but she hardened herself and went on, "but it is better so--it was G.o.d's will, it was to show me where to find real comfort, the true peace. I have quite made up my mind. I was only waiting to see you again and tell you--next week I am going back to the convent for ever. Oh, why did we leave it, Molly, why did we leave it!" She broke down, and the tears gushed from her eyes.

Lady Landale had listened in silence.

"Well--is that all?" she said impatiently, when her sister ceased speaking, while in the background Tanty groaned out a protest, and bewailed that she was alive to see the day. "What does it matter what you do afterwards--you can go to the convent--go where you will then; but what has that to say to your visit to _him_ now?"

"I have done with all human love," said Madeleine solemnly, crossing her hands on her breast, and looking upward with inspired eyes. "I did love this man once," she answered, hardening herself to speak firmly, though again her lips quivered--"he himself killed that love by his own doing. I trusted him; he betrayed that trust; he would have betrayed me, but that I have forgiven, it is past and done with. But to go and see him now, to stir up in my heart, not the old love, it could not be, but agitation, sorrow--to disturb this quietness of soul, this calm which G.o.d has given me at last after so much prayer and struggle--no, no--it would not be right, it cannot be! Moreover, if I would, I could not, indeed I could not. The very thought of it all, the disgrace, that place of sin and shame, of him in chains, condemned--a criminal--a murderer!..."

A nervous shudder shook her from head to foot, she seemed in truth to sicken and grow faint, like one forced to face some hideous nauseating spectacle. "As for him," she went on in low, feeble tones, "it will be the best too. G.o.d knows I forgive him, that I am sorry for him, that I regret his terrible fate. But I feel it would be worse for him to see me--if he must die, it would be wrong to distract him from his last preparations. And it would only be a useless pain to him, for I could not pretend--he would see that I despise him. I thought I loved a n.o.ble gentleman, not one who was even then playing with crime and cheating."

The faint pa.s.sionless voice had hardly ceased before, with a loud cry, Molly sprang at her sister as if she would have strangled her.

"Oh, unnatural wretch," she exclaimed, "you are not fit to live!"

Tanty rushed forward and dragged the infuriated woman away.

Madeleine rose up stiffly--swayed a moment as she stood--and then fell unconscious to the ground.

Next day in the dawn Lady Landale came into her sister's bedroom. Her circled eyes, her drawn face bespeaking a sleepless night.

Madeleine was lying, beautiful and white, like a broken lily, in the dim light of the lamp; Sophia, an unlovely spectacle in curl papers, wizened and red-eyed from her night's watch, looked up warningly from the arm-chair beside her. But Molly went unhesitatingly to the window, pulled the curtains, unbarred the shutters, and then walked over to the bed.

As she approached, Madeleine opened her blue eyes and gazed at her beseechingly.

"There is yet time," said Molly in a hollow voice. "Get up and come with me."

The wan face upon the pillow grew whiter still, the old horror grew in the uplifted eyes, the wan lips murmured, "I cannot."

There was an immense strength of resistance in the girl's very feebleness.

Molly turned away abruptly, then back again once more.

"At least you will send him a message?"

Madeleine drew a deep breath, closed her eyes a moment and seemed to whisper a prayer; then aloud she said, while, like a shadow so faint was it, a flush rose to her cheeks:

"Tell him that I forgive him, that I forgive him freely--that I shall always pray for him." The flush grew deeper. "Tell him too that I shall never be any man's bride, now."

She closed her eyes again and the colour slowly ebbed away. Molly stood, her black brows drawn, gazing down upon her in silence.--Did she love him after all? Who can fathom the mystery of another's heart?

"I will tell him," she answered at last. "Good-bye, Madeleine--I shall never see you or speak to you again as long as I live."

She left the room with a slow, heavy step.

Madeleine s.h.i.+vered, and with both hands clasped the silver crucifix that hung around her neck; two great tears escaped from her black lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Miss Sophia moaned. She, poor soul, had had tragedy enough, at last.

When the jailer brought in the mid-day meal after Adrian's departure, he found the prisoner seated very quietly at his table, his open Bible before him, but his eyes fixed dreamily upon the s.p.a.ce of dim whitewashed wall, and his mind evidently far away.

Upon his guardian's entrance he roused himself, however, and begged him, when he should return for the dish, to restore neatness to the bed and to a.s.sist him in the ordering of his toilet which he wished to be spick and span.

"For I expect a visitor," said Captain Jack gravely.

When in due course the fellow had carried out these wishes with the surly good-nature characteristic of him, Jack set himself to wait.

The square of sky through his window grew from dazzling white to deepest blue, the shadows travelled along the blank walls, the street noises rose and fell in capricious gusts, the church bells jangled, all the myriad sounds which had come to measure his solitary day struck their familiar course upon his ear; yet the expected visitor delayed. But the captain, among other things, had learnt to possess his soul in patience of late; and so, as he slowly paced his cell after his wont, he betrayed neither irritation nor melancholy. If she did not come to-day, then it would be to-morrow. He had no doubt of this.

The afternoon had waned--golden without, full of grey shadows in the prison room--when light footfalls mingled with the well-known heavy tread and jangle of keys, along the echoing pa.s.sage.

There was the murmur of a woman's voice, a word of gruff reply, and the next moment a tall form wrapped in a many-folded black cloak and closely veiled, advanced a few steps into the room, while, as before, the turnkey retired and locked the door behind him.

His heart beating so thickly that for the moment utterance was impossible, Captain Jack made one hurried pace forward with outstretched hands, only to check himself, however, and let them fall by his side. He would meet her calmly, humbly, as he had resolved.

The woman threw back her veil, and it was Molly's dark gaze, Molly's brown face, flushed and haggard, yet always beautiful, that looked out of the black frame.

An ashen pallor spread over the prisoner's countenance.

"Madeleine?" he asked in a whisper; then, with a loud ring of stern demand, "_Madeleine!_"

"I went for her, I went for her myself--I did all I could--she would not come."

_She would not come!_