A Terrible Secret Part 55

Is he mad? Surely no sane man ever acted, or looked, or spoke like this. He lies so--prostrate, motionless--for upward of an hour, then slowly and heavily he rises. His face is calmer now; it is the face of a man who has fought some desperate fight, and gained some desperate victory--one of those victories more cruel than death.

He turns and goes hence. He crashes through the tall, dewy gra.s.s, his white face set in a look of iron resolution. He is ghastly beyond all telling; dead and in his coffin he will hardly look more death like.

He reaches the cottage, and the first sight upon which his eyes rest is his bride, peacefully asleep in the chair by the still open window.

She looks lovely in her slumber, and peaceful as a little child--no very terrible sight surely. But as his eyes fall upon her, he recoils in some great horror, as a man may who has received a blinding blow.

"Asleep!" his pale lips whisper; "asleep--as _she_ was!"

He stands spell-bound for a moment--then he breaks away headlong. He makes his way to the dining-room. The table, all bright with damask, silver, crystal, and cut flowers, stands spread for dinner. He takes from his pocket a note-book and pencil, and, still standing, writes rapidly down one page. Without reading, he folds and seals the sheet, and slowly and with dragging steps returns to the room where Edith sleeps. On the threshold he lingers--he seems afraid--_afraid_ to approach. But he does approach at last. He places the note he has written on a table, he draws near his sleeping bride, he kneels down and kisses her hands, her dress, her hair. His haggard eyes burn on her face, their mesmeric light disturbs her. She murmurs and moves restlessly in her sleep. In an instant he is on his feet; in another, he is out of the room and the house; in another, the deepening twilight takes him, and he is gone.

A train an hour later pa.s.ses through Carnarvon on its way to London.

One pa.s.senger alone awaits it at the station--one pa.s.senger who enters an empty first-cla.s.s compartment and disappears. Then it goes shrieking on its way, bearing with it to London the bridegroom, Sir Victor Catheron.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE DAY AFTER.

The last red ray of the sunset had faded, the silver stars were out, the yellow moon shone serenely over land and sea, before Edith awoke--awoke with a smile on her lips from a dream of Charley.

"Do go away--don't tease," she was murmuring half smilingly, half petulantly--the words she had spoken to him a hundred times. She was back in Sandypoint, he beside her, living over the old days, gone forever. She awoke to see the tawny moons.h.i.+ne streaming in, to hear the soft whispers of the night wind, the soft, sleepy lap of the sea on the sands, and to realize, with a thrill and a shock, she was Sir Victor Catheron's wife.

His wife! This was her wedding-day. Even in dreams Charley must come to her no more.

She rose up, slightly chilled from sleeping in the evening air, and s.h.i.+vering, partly with that chill, partly with a feeling she did not care to define. The dream of her life's ambition was realized in its fullest; she, Edith Darrell, was "my lady--a baronet's bride;" the vista of her life spread before her in glittering splendor; and yet her heart lay like lead in her bosom. In this hour she was afraid of herself, afraid of him.

But where was he?

She looked round the room, half in shadow, half in brilliant moonlight.

No, he was not there. Had he returned from his stroll? She took out her watch. A quarter of seven--of course he had. He was awaiting her, no doubt, impatient for his dinner, in the dining-room. She would make some change in her dress and join him there. She went up to her dressing room and lit the candles herself. She smoothed her ruffled hair, added a ribbon and a jewel or two, and then went back to the drawing-room. All unnoticed, in the shadows, the letter for her lay on the table. She sat down and rang the bell. Jamison, the confidential servant, appeared.

"Has Sir Victor returned from his walk, Jamison? Is he in the dining-room?"

Mr. Jamison's well-bred eyes looked in astonishment at the speaker, then around the room. Mr. Jamison's wooden countenance looked stolid surprise.

"Sir Victor, my lady--I--thought Sir Victor was _here_, my lady."

"Sir Victor has not been here since half an hour after our arrival. He went out for a walk, as you very well know. I ask you if he has returned."

"Sir Victor returned more than an hour ago, my lady. I saw him myself.

You were asleep, my lady, by the window as he came up. He went into the dining-room and wrote a letter; I saw it in his hand. And then, my lady, he came in here."

The man paused, and again peered around the room. Edith listened in growing surprise.

"I thought he was here still, my lady, so did Hemily, or we would have taken the liberty of hentering and closing the window. We was sure he was here. He suttingly hentered with the letter in his 'and. It's _very_ hodd."

Again there was a pause. Again Mr. Jamison--

"If your ladys.h.i.+p will hallow, I will light the candles here, and then go and hascertain whether Sir Victor is in hany of the hother rooms."

She made an affirmative gesture, and returned to the window. The man lit the candles; a second after an exclamation startled her.

"The note, my lady! Here it is."

It lay upon the table; she walked over and took it up. In Sir Victor's hand, and addressed to herself! What did this mean? She stood looking at it a moment--then she turned to Jamison.

"That will do," she said briefly; "if I want you I will ring."

The man bowed and left the room. She stood still, holding the unopened note, strangely reluctant to break the seal. What did Sir Victor mean by absenting himself and writing her a note? With an effort she aroused herself at last, and tore it open. It was strangely scrawled, the writing half illegible; slowly and with difficulty she made it out This was what she read:

"For Heaven's sake, pity me--for Heaven's sake, pardon me. We shall never meet more! O beloved! believe that I love you, believe that I never loved you half so well as now, when I leave you forever. If I loved you less I might dare to stay. But I dare not. I can tell you no more--a promise to the living and the dead binds me. A dreadful secret of sin, and shame, and guilt, is involved. Go to Lady Helena.

My love--my bride--my heart is breaking as I write the word--the cruel word that must be written--farewell. I have but one prayer in my heart--but one wish in my soul--that my life may be a short one.

"VICTOR."

No more. So, in short, incoherent, disconnected sentences, this incomprehensible letter began and ended. She stood stunned, bewildered, dazed, holding it, gazing at it blankly. Was she asleep?

Was this a dream? Was Sir Victor playing some ghastly kind of practical joke, or--had Sir Victor all of a sudden gone wholly and entirely mad?

She shrank from the last thought--but the dim possibility that it might be true calmed her. She sat down, hardly knowing what she was doing, and read the letter again. Yes, surely, surely she was right.

Sir Victor had gone mad! Madness was hereditary in his family--had it come to him on his wedding-day of all days? On his wedding-day the last remnant of reason had deserted him, and he had deserted _her_.

She sat quite still,--the light of the candles falling upon her, upon the fatal letter,--trying to steady herself, trying to think. She read it again and again; surely no sane man ever wrote such a letter as this. "A dreadful secret of sin, and shame, and guilt, is involved."

Did that dreadful secret mean the secret of his mother's death? But why should that cause him to leave her? She knew all about it already.

What frightful revelation had been made to him on his father's dying bed? He had never been the same man since. An idea flashed across her brain--dreadful and unnatural enough in all conscience--but why should even _that_, supposing her suspicions to be true, cause him to leave her? "If I loved you less, I might dare to stay with you." What rhodomontade was this? Men prove their love by living with the women they marry, not by deserting them. Oh, he was mad, mad, mad--not a doubt of that could remain.

Her thoughts went back over the past two weeks--to the change in him ever since his father's death. There had been times when he had visibly shrunk from her, when he had seemed absolutely afraid of her.

She had doubted it then--she knew it now. It was the dawning of his insanity--the family taint breaking forth. His father's delusion had been to shut himself up, to give out that he was dead--the son's was to desert his bride on their bridal day forever. Forever! the letter said so. Again, and still again, she read it. Very strangely she looked, the waxlights flickering on her pale, rigid young face, her compressed lips set in one tight line--on her soft pearl gray silk, with its point lace collar and diamond star. A bride, alone, forsaken, on her wedding-day!

How strange it all was! The thought came to her: was it retributive justice pursuing her for having bartered herself for rank? And yet girls as good and better than she, did it every day. She rose and began pacing up and down the floor. What should she do? "Go back to Lady Helena," said the letter. Go back! cast off, deserted--she, who only at noon to-day had left them a radiant bride! As she thought it, a feeling of absolute hatred for the man she had married came into her heart. Sane or mad she would hate him now, all the rest of her life.

The hours were creeping on--two had pa.s.sed since she had sent Jamison out of her room. What were they thinking of her, these keen-sighted, gossiping servants? what would they think and say when she told them Sir Victor would return no more?--that she was going back to Ches.h.i.+re alone to-morrow morning? There was no help for it. There was resolute blood in the girl's veins; she walked over to the bell, rang it, her head erect, her eyes bright, only her lips still set in that tight, unpleasant line.

Mr. Jamison, grave and respectful, his burning curiosity diplomatically hidden, answered.

"Jamison," the young lady said, her tones clear and calm, looking the man straight in the eyes, "your master has been obliged to leave Wales suddenly, and will not return. You may spend the night in packing up.

To-morrow, by the earliest train, I return to Ches.h.i.+re."

"Yes, me lady."

Not a muscle of Jamison's face moved--not a vestige of surprise or any other earthly emotion was visible in his smooth-shaven face. If she had said, "To-morrow by the earliest train I shall take a trip to the moon," Mr. Jamison would have bowed and said, "Yes, me lady," in precisely the same tone.

"Is dinner served?" his young mistress asked, looking at her watch.

"If not, serve immediately. I shall be there in two minutes."

She kept her word. With that light in her eyes, that pale composure on her face, she swept into the dining-room, and took her place at the glittering table. Jamison waited upon her--watching her, of course, as a cat a mouse.