The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie's Part 91

"The few hours of life that remain to me are not worth your vengeance,"

was the quiet reply. "Sit down, Captain Ernscliffe, I would speak to you of your wife."

He pointed to a chair, but the visitor shook his head.

"No, I prefer standing. I can scarcely breathe the same air with you, Leon Vinton! Speak quickly."

"Do not look on me as your enemy now, Captain Ernscliffe," said the prisoner, deprecatingly. "I stand apart from my fellow-men as a condemned criminal about to be executed.

"Think of me as a wretched sinner trying to make peace with those whom I have wronged that I may plead for pardon before my offended G.o.d."

Captain Ernscliffe bowed silently, and the angry flash in his dark eyes faded out at the melancholy tone and air of the frightened and wretched criminal.

"I lied to you when I told you that I did not marry Queenie Lyle," said Leon Vinton, looking down and speaking in a low, hoa.r.s.e voice.

"The day she ran away with me I married her, and the certificate was placed in her hands.

"She thought she was my wife, but the pretended minister who performed the ceremony was only a boon companion of mine who had served me before in such an accommodating manner.

"It was the merest farce, but Queenie thought she was my legal wife.

"She would not have gone with me else. She was as pure and innocent as an angel."

He paused a moment, but he did not look up. He could not bear to meet the tiger glare in the eyes of the man before him. Clearing his throat nervously, he continued:

"I lived with her a year, and then we mutually wearied of each other.

"Her keen intuition soon showed her that she had been deceived in me, and that I was far different from the ideal which she had placed on a lofty pedestal and wors.h.i.+ped for awhile as a G.o.d among men.

"She scorned me then, and I hated her because she had found me out. In my rage I told her the truth, and then I tried to kill her."

"My G.o.d!" Captain Ernscliffe muttered, clenching his hands as though he would have torn the villain limb from limb.

"I thought I had killed her," pursued Vinton. "I strangled her with both my hands.

"I threw her down and trampled upon her beautiful face that had been her ruin.

"I hurriedly dug her a shallow grave, covered her over with the wet earth and leaves, and hastened back to the cottage by the river where we had lived together."

"Fiend!" thundered Captain Ernscliffe, springing furiously upon him.

The prisoner, chained as he was, could offer no resistance to his infuriated a.s.sailant. He did not even utter a cry.

But all in a moment Captain Ernscliffe remembered himself, and drew back before he had struck the fatal blow he had meditated. He would not harm a defenseless man.

"I will not kill you," he said, hoa.r.s.ely, "but finish your story quickly. I can scarcely bear your presence."

"It was the first murder I had ever attempted," said the prisoner, after a long-drawn breath. "Naturally enough, I felt nervous over it.

"I walked up and down the river-bank for hours in the rain, trying to excuse myself to myself.

"Then all of a sudden she came up behind me, and pushed me in, and ran away.

"It was then that she went home to her parents. They took her back, kept her terrible secret, and married her to you.

"If I had let her alone then, all might have gone well," pursued the prisoner, "but I hated her for her maddened blow that dark, rainy night.

"I swore revenge. It was I who sent her the bouquet of flowers that caused her seeming death at the altar that night.

"I resurrected her, and made her a prisoner. She escaped the day that Farmer Thorn shot me.

"She thought I was dead, but as soon as I recovered from my wound I started out upon her trail again, still pursuing my h.e.l.lish scheme of vengeance.

"But she escaped me for years, and I never met her again, until the night that I murdered her sister.

"I had just reached London that night, and went into the theater, full of idle curiosity to see La Reine Blanche, the beautiful idol of the hour.

"The moment she came upon the stage I recognized in the great actress the lovely girl I had treated so inhumanly.

"In an instant I conceived my diabolical plan of revenge. I hurried out of the theater, sent that note to her dressing-room, and waited at the western door.

"The woman who came had the voice, the form, the step of Queenie, and I plunged my dagger in her heart. I killed Sydney, but the blow was meant for Queenie."

He stopped, and there was silence in the gloomy prison-cell, while the criminal waited for Ernscliffe to speak.

"You are telling me the truth?" he demanded, hoa.r.s.ely.

"As G.o.d is my judge, and on the word of a dying man. Let Queenie tell you her story and she will corroborate my words. I have pursued her pitilessly, remorselessly. I have wronged her beyond all reparation, yet she is as pure, and true, and innocent to-day as she was that fatal hour when I first met her, a happy, thoughtless girl, selling her painted fan to buy her simple ball-dress. My terrible sin against her is enough of itself to drag my soul down to the lowest depths of perdition!" added the prisoner, with a hollow groan.

"You have indeed sinned fearfully, and G.o.d will punish you," said Captain Ernscliffe, turning to go.

"A moment longer," pleaded the unhappy wretch. "Say that you forgive me before you go."

"Never in this world or in the next!" cried Captain Ernscliffe, furiously.

The grated door unclosing, let in the priest who was to spend the night with the condemned man.

He caught their parting words.

"My son, my son," he said, laying his withered hand on Ernscliffe's arm, "forgive the poor soul; he is almost beyond your resentment. Think where his soul will be to-morrow night. Give him your hand in token of pardon."

"No, no," said the listener, shuddering; "I will not touch his hand, but--but"--with a great effort--"I will forgive him."

"Tell _her_ to forgive me, too," said Leon Vinton, looking at him with his wild, frightened face. "Tell her I am sorry--tell her that I repent.

She is an angel. She will forgive me."

The door closed upon the retreating form, and the gentle priest knelt down and began to pray for the guilty soul so soon to be launched into a dread eternity.