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Title: Saved from herself
or, On the edge of doom
Author: Adelaide Stirling
Release date: October 4, 2025 [eBook #76981]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Street & Smith, 1899
Credits: Demian Katz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAVED FROM HERSELF ***
EAGLE SERIES No. 550
SAVED FROM HERSELF
BY
ADELAIDE STIRLING
[Illustration]
STREET & SMITH ~ PUBLISHERS ~ NEW YORK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE THEATER.
CHAPTER II. “A PENNILESS ADVENTURESS.”
CHAPTER III. THE ROSE-COLORED ROOM.
CHAPTER IV. “THE MYSTERY.”
CHAPTER V. A LUCKY CAST.
CHAPTER VI. A DREAM OF SAFETY.
CHAPTER VII. THREEFOLD DANGER.
CHAPTER VIII. THE LUCK OF MARCUS WRAY.
CHAPTER IX. “I WILL POSSESS HIM OR DIE.”
CHAPTER X. A KISS.
CHAPTER XI. A NET FOR HER FEET.
CHAPTER XII. “IF I ASK YOU?”
CHAPTER XIII. HER HOUR OF TRIUMPH.
CHAPTER XIV. MORE TREACHERY.
CHAPTER XV. COILED TO SPRING.
CHAPTER XVI. CIRCE’S EYES.
CHAPTER XVII. THE SPINET.
CHAPTER XVIII. “AT MIDNIGHT.”
CHAPTER XIX. AT THE GATE OF HEAVEN.
CHAPTER XX. THE EDGE OF DOOM.
CHAPTER XXI. THE DOG IN THE MANGER.
CHAPTER XXII. “A CHARMING MAN.”
CHAPTER XXIII. A GHOSTLY EAVESDROPPER.
CHAPTER XXIV. “I NEVER SAW IT BEFORE.”
CHAPTER XXV. THE GRATITUDE OF CRISTIANE.
CHAPTER XXVI. “HER MOTHER’S CHILD!”
CHAPTER XXVII. TRUTH THAT LIED!
CHAPTER XXVIII. “MY NAME IS YESTERDAY.”
CHAPTER XXIX. A NIGHT’S WORK.
CHAPTER XXX. INTO THE LION’S MOUTH.
CHAPTER XXXI. “SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!”
CHAPTER XXXII. “THE DEED IN THE DARK.”
CHAPTER XXXIII. “HEAVENLY TRUE.”
CHAPTER XXXIV. “AND WHO IS THIS?”
CHAPTER XXXV. THE DIAMONDS.
The Eagle Series
OF POPULAR FICTION
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PUBLISHED EVERY WEEK
This is the pioneer line of copyright novels. Its popularity has
increased with every number, until, at the present time, it stands
unrivaled as regards sales and contents.
It is composed, mainly, of popular copyrighted titles which cannot be
had in any other lines at any price. The authors, as far as literary
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women of their time. The books, without exception, are of entrancing
interest, and manifestly those most desired by the American reading
public. A purchase of two or three of these books at random, will make
you a firm believer that there is no line of novels which can compare
favorably with the EAGLE SERIES.
To be issued during December.
553--Queen Kate By Charles Garvice
552--At the Court of the Maharaja By Louis Tracy
551--Pity--not Love By Laura Jean Libbey
550--Saved From Herself By Adelaide Stirling
549--Tempted By Love By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
To be issued during November.
548--’Twas Love’s Fault By Charles Garvice
547--A Plunge Into the Unknown By Richard Marsh
546--The Career of Mrs. Osborne By Helen Milecete
545--Well Worth Winning By St. George Rathborne
To be issued during October.
544--In Love’s Name By Emma Garrison Jones
543--The Veiled Bride By Laura Jean Libbey
542--Once in a Life By Charles Garvice
541--Her Evil Genius By Adelaide Stirling
540--A Daughter of Darkness By T. W. Hanshew
To be issued during September.
539--A Heart’s Triumph By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
538--The Fighting Chance By Gertrude Lynch
537--A Life’s Mistake By Charles Garvice
536--Companions in Arms By St. George Rathborne
To be issued during August.
535--The Trifler By Archibald Eyre
534--Lotta, The Cloak Model By Laura Jean Libbey
533--A Forgotten Love By Adelaide Stirling
532--True To His Bride By Emma Garrison Jones
To be issued during July.
531--Better Than Life By Charles Garvice
530--The Wiles of a Siren By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
529--Hearts Aflame By Louise Winter
528--Adela’s Ordeal By Florence Warden
527--For Love and Glory By St. George Rathborne
* * * * *
526--Love and Hate By Morley Roberts
525--Sweet Kitty Clover By Laura Jean Libbey
524--A Sacrifice of Pride By Mrs. Louisa Parr
523--A Banker of Bankersville By Maurice Thompson
522--A Spurned Proposal By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
521--The Witch from India By St. George Rathborne
520--The Heatherford Fortune By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
Sequel to “The Magic Cameo.”
519--The Magic Cameo By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
518--The Secret of a Letter By Gertrude Warden
517--They Looked and Loved By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
516--Florabel’s Lover By Laura Jean Libbey
515--Tiny Luttrell By E. W. Hornung
(Author of “Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman.”)
514--The Temptation of Mary Barr By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
513--A Sensational Case By Florence Warden
512--A Heritage of Love By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
Sequel to “The Golden Key.”
511--The Golden Key By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
510--Doctor Jack’s Paradise Mine By St. George Rathborne
509--A Penniless Princess By Emma Garrison Jones
508--The King of Honey Island By Maurice Thompson
507--A Mad Betrothal By Laura Jean Libbey
506--A Secret Foe By Gertrude Warden
505--Selina’s Love-story By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
504--Evelyn, the Actress By Wenona Gilman
503--A Lady in Black By Florence Warden
502--Fair Maid Marian By Mrs. Emma Garrison Jones
501--Her Husband’s Secret By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
500--Love and Spite By Adelaide Stirling
499--My Lady Cinderella By Mrs. C. N. Williamson
498--Andrew Leicester’s Love By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
497--A Chase for Love By Seward W. Hopkins
496--The Missing Heiress By C. H. Montague
495--An Excellent Story By May Agnes Fleming
494--Voyagers of Fortune By St. George Rathborne
493--The Girl He Loved By Adelaide Stirling
492--A Speedy Wooing By the Author of “As Common Mortals”
491--My Lady of Dreadwood By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
490--The Price of Jealousy By Maud Howe
489--Lucy Harding By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes
488--The French Witch By Gertrude Warden
487--A Wonderful Woman By May Agnes Fleming
486--Divided Lives By Edgar Fawcett
485--The End Crowns All By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
484--The Whistle of Fate By Richard Marsh
483--Miss Marston’s Heart By L. H. Bickford
482--A Little Worldling By L. C. Ellsworth
481--Wedded, Yet No Wife By May Agnes Fleming
480--A Perfect Fool By Florence Warden
479--Mysterious Mr. Sabin By E. Phillips Oppenheim
478--For Love of Sigrid By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
477--The Siberian Exiles By Col. Thomas Knox
476--Earle Wayne’s Nobility By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
475--Love Before Pride By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
474--The Belle of the Season By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
473--A Sacrifice To Love By Adelaide Stirling
472--Dr. Jack and Company By St. George Rathborne
471--A Shadowed Happiness By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
470--A Strange Wedding By Mary Hartwell Catherwood
469--A Soldier and a Gentleman By J. M. Cobban
468--The Wooing of a Fairy By Gertrude Warden
467--Zina’s Awaking By Mrs. J. K. Spender
466--Love, the Victor By a Popular Southern Author
465--Outside Her Eden By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
464--The Old Life’s Shadows By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
463--A Wife’s Triumph By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
462--A Stormy Wedding By Mary E. Bryan
461--Above All Things By Adelaide Stirling
460--Dr. Jack’s Talisman By St. George Rathborne
459--A Golden Mask By Charlotte M. Stanley
458--When Love Meets Love By Charles Garvice
457--Adrift in the World By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
456--A Vixen’s Treachery By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
455--Love’s Greatest Gift By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
454--Love’s Probation By Elizabeth Olmis
453--A Poor Girl’s Passion By Gertrude Warden
452--The Last of the Van Slacks By Edward S. Van Zile
451--Helen’s Triumph By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
450--Rosamond’s Love By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
449--The Bailiff’s Scheme By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
448--When Love Dawns By Adelaide Stirling
447--A Favorite of Fortune By St. George Rathborne
446--Bound with Love’s Fetters By Mary Grace Halpine
445--An Angel of Evil By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
444--Love’s Trials By Alfred R. Calhoun
443--In Spite of Proof By Gertrude Warden
442--Love Before Duty By Mrs. L. T. Meade
441--A Princess of the Stage By Nataly von Eschstruth
440--Edna’s Secret Marriage By Charles Garvice
439--Little Nan By Mary A. Denison
438--So Like a Man By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
437--The Breach of Custom By Mrs. D. M. Lowrey
436--The Rival Toreadors By St. George Rathborne
435--Under Oath By Jean Kate Ludlum
434--The Guardian’s Trust By Mary A. Denison
433--Winifred’s Sacrifice By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
432--Breta’s Double By Helen V. Greyson
431--Her Husband and Her Love By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
430--The Honor of a Heart By Mary J. Safford
429--A Fair Fraud By Emily Lovett Cameron
428--A Tramp’s Daughter By Hazel Wood
427--A Wizard of the Moors By St. George Rathborne
426--The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie’s Terrible Secret
By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
425--A College Widow By Frank H. Howe
SAVED FROM HERSELF;
OR,
ON THE EDGE OF DOOM
BY
ADELAIDE STIRLING
AUTHOR OF
“A Forgotten Love,” “Nerine’s Second Choice,” “A Sacrifice to Love,”
“Her Evil Genius,” “Above All Things,” “The Girl He Loved,”
“Love and Spite,” “When Love Dawns.” All published
exclusively in the EAGLE SERIES.
[Illustration: S AND S NOVELS, STREET & SMITH, NEW YORK]
NEW YORK
STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS
79-89 SEVENTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1898 and 1899
By STREET & SMITH
Saved from Herself
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.
SAVED FROM HERSELF
CHAPTER I.
THE THEATER.
“I don’t see,” said Mrs. Trelane discontentedly, “why the woman could
not have kept you.”
She spoke to her own reflection in the glass with an angry frown. What
was the good of an exquisite toilet, of a face that did not look within
ten years of its age, when seated on the sofa opposite was a grown-up
daughter whose presence in the house might spoil all her own well-laid
plans?
Just a week ago her only child, aged seventeen, had been returned from
her cheap boarding-school with a scathing note from the principal
regarding her unpaid bills. It was unbearable, even though she had
forbidden the girl to be about the house or meet any of her visitors.
To-night, when the table was laid for a party of two, the presence of a
third was--impossible!
“Ismay,” Mrs. Trelane turned sharply to the tall, slim figure coiled on
the sofa, “couldn’t you take a maid and go out somewhere to-night? Oh,
no--I can’t spare you! Well, mind you don’t let Abbotsford see you--he
doesn’t know you are, you know!”
The girl looked with somber impatience at her mother in her satin gown,
so great a contrast to her own shabby black serge.
“All right,” she said quietly, “but if he keeps coming here every day
he is bound to find out my existence.”
“It won’t matter--by and by.” Mrs. Trelane gave a little conscious
laugh and poured some peach-blossom scent on her handkerchief. Ismay,
as the delicate odor reached her, moved her head as if it sickened her.
Three years away from a mother who had never loved her had deadened
the memory of the regret, the loneliness, that had been her portion
always. But to-night she saw very clearly that she was, as always, a
stone in the road of Mrs. Trelane’s life.
She got up, with a leisurely grace, and looked about her as the
door-bell rang and Mrs. Trelane swished softly out of the room. She
was used to being unpopular; at school no one had liked her, but yet
indifference from her mother cut her.
And it was dull, deadly dull! There was nothing to read, nowhere to sit
but this disordered bedroom that smelled to nausea of almonds.
A neat maid with a cross face came in at that moment and bumped down
an uninviting tray of tea and bread and butter on a table, with
an impertinence that was somehow galling. Ismay Trelane looked at
it, and a sudden light sprang into her strangely lovely face, that
was sometimes so much older than her years, as a smile came to her
delicate, thin lips.
“There isn’t any room for me in mama’s life,” she thought quietly,
“it’s all taken up with Lord Abbotsford! She can’t surely think he
means to marry her, yet she never kept up the mask like this for any of
her other admirers.”
Looking back with ungirlish wisdom into the past before she had been
shoved into Mrs. Barlow’s school, she added:
“Well, it doesn’t matter! I’m not a child any more; I can amuse myself.”
She felt in the pocket of her old black frock, that was too short, for
all the money she owned--ten shillings her mother had given her in a
moment of generosity.
“She said to keep out of the way,” she reflected, “and I will. But I
won’t sit here all the evening, and I won’t”--pride getting the better
of hunger--“drink any of that horrid tea.”
She slipped on her sailor-hat and jacket, a garment that had been
barely decent all summer, but was threadbare now, and with noiseless
haste made her way down-stairs and out into the street.
The fresh, cool air did her good, and she walked quickly out of the
quiet Brompton Square into the bustling thoroughfare of the Brompton
Road.
London at night was strange to her, and she was not even sure what she
wanted to do.
“I’m out, though, and that’s the main thing,” she thought cheerfully.
“I think I’ll go for a drive on an omnibus! Then when I feel like it I
can get off and have something to eat somewhere.”
She felt almost gay as she hailed the first bus that came thundering
by, and climbed to the roof of the unwieldy thing.
How pretty it was! The long street like a shifting ribbon of light,
with its never-ending stream of carriage-lamps; its procession of
hansoms and carriages full of people--men chiefly--in evening dress.
“Where do you go?” she asked the conductor as she paid her fare.
“Piccadilly Circus, miss; Shaftesbury Avenue, past the Palace Theater.”
“Theater!”
Ismay’s heart gave a jump. Why not go to a theater? There was time; it
could not be more than half-past eight. After that she could take a cab
and go home. It was three years since she had been at a theater; but
she knew the Palace was a variety place, where it did not matter what
time you arrived.
The November air was cold on top of the omnibus, but the girl’s blood
was warm, as she watched the surging panorama of the streets. This was
life; the shifting crowd went to her head like wine; her eyes burned
like stars as she looked about her at the never-ending drama of London.
“Palace Theater, miss.” The conductor’s voice startled her. He helped
her down with a curious feeling that she was too young to be out alone.
But he was reassured as he saw her move composedly under the lighted
awning to the flaring entrance, where the lights shone red in the
box-office. She was older than she looked, he decided, as he signaled
the driver to go on.
Ismay, as the swinging doors closed behind her, stood undecided for a
minute. There was a notice facing her:
“Stalls, ten shillings. Dress-circle, seven and sixpence. Upper circle,
five shillings.”
Stalls were out of the question.
“One dress-circle,” she said composedly, making her way to the
ticket-seller’s window through the groups of men idling in the entrance.
Most of them looked at her curiously; her strange beauty and her shabby
black clothes contrasted oddly.
She read their thoughts as she turned with her ticket in her hand, and
her eyes glittered with pride under her long, dark lashes.
Yet, as she followed the usher up the stairs to the dress-circle, she
walked as one in a dream, and stood for a moment in a sort of daze as
she was turned over to the white-capped attendant.
The whole house was in darkness except for the lights upon the stage
and the constant glimmer of matches, for every one seemed to be
smoking, even many of the women in the boxes.
Ismay stumbled to her seat still dazed.
Was this a theater? Had she spend nearly all of her ten shillings for
this?
Two badly painted women danced between the verses of a song, and their
antics seemed to amuse the crowd.
Ismay drew her skirts away from the vicinity of a French hair-dresser
as she thought:
“If that is all they have to do to earn their livings I could make
mine.”
Then she started angrily.
A common, flashily dressed man beside her had spoken to her. His tone
offended her, and she rose and swept past him like an insulted duchess.
She walked up the steps to the third gallery, where men and women
were seated at small tables, eating olives and drinking liquor. As
she emerged into the bright light she stopped and leaned over the
balustrade with her beautiful eyes still glowing.
“Beast!” she said under her breath, “to dare to speak to me!”
A man standing quite near her glanced at her wonderingly, and as she
turned she found his eyes upon her.
“I beg your pardon,” he said civilly, “but I could not help hearing
what you said.”
Ismay Trelane lifted her strange eyes and saw a face that, dreaming or
waking, would haunt her to the end of her life.
Bronzed, gray-eyed, clear-cut--it came near to being the handsomest
face in London. Many a woman had turned to look upon it, and some, like
Ismay, carried the remembrance forever.
Something, she knew not what, made the girl tremble as she answered him.
“A man spoke to me,” she said slowly. “You do not think he will come up
here, do you?”
“I spoke to you, too,” her hearer’s voice was kind but a little puzzled.
“You are different,” she said simply. “Oh,” with a little gasp, “he is
coming up!”
“Stand by me and don’t look at him!” said the stranger authoritatively.
Miss Trelane moved closer to him, as she was told, and the obnoxious
Frenchman, with a curious glance, passed by her.
If she had looked up just then at her new friend she would have seen
that he was divided between wonder and--something else. Music-halls
were an old story to him, but this girl had apparently never been in
one. She looked so out of place, and yet--well, at all events, she was
beautiful! Though the beauty was not that of a young girl. This face
might have smiled on dead men out of Circe’s window, in strange lands
long ago. For the girl’s hair was an ashy flaxen without a hint of
gold; her skin was fine and milky white, and her lips so red as to be
startling in her colorless face. But it was her eyes more than anything
that were full of strange witchery, for they were as clear and dark a
green as the new shoots of a pine-tree in the spring.
“Nonsense!” the man thought, “she is only some little milliner. But she
ought not to be here.”
The girl looked up, as though she read his mind.
“I don’t like it--here. I think I’ll go home,” she said slowly.
“I think I would,” he returned, with a smile. “This is not a good place
to begin with when one has never been out alone before.”
“How did you know I never was?” she asked sharply.
“Oh, I thought so!” was the answer. “But if you do wish to go home you
had better let me take you down-stairs. It’s rather crowded, and--there
may be more Frenchmen!”
“Home!” she looked at him queerly. “Oh, I can’t go home! It’s too--too
lonely.” Her lips quivered desolately at the thought of the long hours
before bedtime in that house where she was not wanted.
As she looked at him the absolute beauty of his face struck her once
more. She had never spoken to a man like this; it had been a very
different sort of men she had been used to seeing in her childhood. How
immaculately dressed he was, and what lovely black pearls he wore as
shirt-studs. “I don’t think I’ll go home at all,” she ended abruptly.
“Not go home?” He stared at her. “My dear child, you’re talking
nonsense. Do you mean that you live alone when you say it is too
lonely?” He felt suddenly sorry for her, and wondered afresh who she
was. Her dress was old and worn, fit for a servant out of place, but
her ungloved hand lying on the red velvet rail was exquisitely white
and smooth.
As he looked at her she laughed, a little delicate laugh that was
somehow far older than her years.
“Yes, of course,” she said, “utter nonsense; for I can live with my
mother.”
She moved away as she spoke; even if the man was as good-looking as all
the gods, she would not stay talking with him after he had suggested
she should go.
“Wait a moment, if you are lonely at home. I am lonely here,” he said,
and he was very tall as he looked down at her with a little laugh.
“You--lonely!” her eyes darkened with surprise. “Why, you can go
anywhere you like in all London, you have not to sit alone evening
after evening till----”
“No, but you see I don’t know anywhere I want to go,” he interrupted.
“And if we’re both here, and both lonely, why--I think we may as well
talk to one another.”
They were moving slowly along the crowded promenade on their way to the
stairs, and the languid grace of the girl’s steps was apparent.
“Are you tired?” he said suddenly. “You look pale.”
“I’m always pale.”
A swift intuition flashed over him.
“I don’t think,” he observed deliberately, “that you have had any
dinner!”
Miss Trelane flushed--exquisitely.
The remembrance of the supper of bread and butter, which pride had made
her forego, was haunting her. She had eaten nothing since tea at five
o’clock.
She raised her head haughtily, as a woman of the world would have
done, and caught a look on her companion’s face that made her suddenly
childlike again.
“I--I didn’t wait,” she stammered.
Her companion stopped at a vacant table, and put her into a chair.
“Now that I think of it, I am hungry myself,” he observed, signaling to
a waiter, and then ordering sandwiches and some liquor.
He sat looking at this waif from some other world as she ate the
sandwiches; the fiery cherry brandy made her less pale, the depths of
her strange eyes less somber. His first theory had been right: she
was very young. But the beautiful face was prophetic of tragedy and
passion; the scarlet lips cynical. She looked at him, raising slow
white lids, till he seemed to see unfathomable depths in her clear
green eyes.
“Do you know you are the first person who has ever been kind to me in
all my life?” she said. “Tell me, why are you kind?”
There was in her voice only calm inquiry, nothing to tell him that this
strange, pale girl was filled with passionate gratitude.
“I’m not kind; it is a pleasure to sit and talk to you. You forget
that.” His manner was to the girl what it would have been to a duchess.
“But it’s getting late, and I’m going to take you home.”
He raised his eyebrows a little as he sat by her in a hansom and heard
her give the man an address in Colbourne Square; it was not exactly a
haunt of poverty, and this girl was nearly out at elbows.
“You live there with your mother?” he said involuntarily.
She laughed with a curious mockery of mirth.
“Yes, but you don’t know who I am, and I won’t tell you.”
“Don’t you want to know who I am?” he asked, somewhat piqued. “My
name----”
“Don’t tell me!” stopping him with a quick coldness. “I don’t want to
know. You have been kind to me--I’ll remember you by that best. No one
else ever was.”
“I wonder,” he said abruptly, “if I will ever see you again.”
“Do you wish to?”
He nodded, and with a sudden flash of her spirit Ismay Trelane
determined to see him again if she had to tramp the world for a sight
of his face.
“You won’t quite forget me, though you won’t let me tell you my name,”
he said more earnestly than he knew, for her strange beauty, her
strange manner, had gone a little to his head.
Ismay turned to him as the hansom stopped at her mother’s door, and
looked once more at his strong, sweet face and broad shoulders.
“No! I will not forget you,” she said, with her delicate smile that was
so much older than her manner. “And when I meet you again--remember,
you must be glad to see me.”
“Shall I knock for you?” he asked, helping her out.
“Knock? Oh, no!” Last night she would have been afraid to go out
secretly and come back openly with an utter stranger, but now there
was a lightness in her dancing blood that made her utterly indifferent
as to what reception she would get from her mother. The light from
the street-lamps fell on her face as she put her hand in his with a
gesture of dismissal, not learned, assuredly, at Mrs. Barlow’s school.
But at the clasp of his strong fingers she thrilled, and knew the world
would end for her before she forgot him.
She drew a long, shivering breath as she watched him drive away.
“I wish,” she thought, with a sudden vain longing, “that I had let him
tell me his name! But I will find him again some day, as sure as he and
I live in this world.”
She little knew how she would find him--nor what terror would make her
almost forget him first--as she calmly rang at her mother’s door-bell.
CHAPTER II.
“A PENNILESS ADVENTURESS.”
Lord Abbotsford stood in front of the fire and broke what had been a
long silence. He was tall and rather good-looking; years younger than
the woman who sat opposite him, her haggard face hidden in her hands.
But his voice was rough to brutality as he spoke.
“You knew I should have to marry some day. I can’t see why you are
making such a fuss.”
Mrs. Trelane quivered with anger. She had known it, but of late it had
been herself whom she had thought of as Lady Abbotsford. After all, why
not? She was as well born as he, and there was nothing--that Abbotsford
knew--against her. She took her hands from her eyes and looked at him.
“Be civil, it can’t hurt you,” she said coldly.
“Well, you did know it, Helen!” But his eyes fell shiftingly, though
he could not know the reason for the despair in hers. Helen Trelane
was like a gambler who had put his all on one throw and seen it swept
off the board. Her last few hundred pounds of capital had gone in the
struggle to be always well dressed and to have a good dinner always for
Lord Abbotsford. She had played not for his love, but for his coronet.
And to-night his news had cut the very ground from under her feet.
It was for this that she had forsaken the cheerful companions who
amused her; to have this dissipated boy stand up and tell her roundly
that he was going to be married, and would in future dispense with the
pleasure of her acquaintance.
And this to her, who had been born à la Marchant!
But the good blood in her veins did not let her forget that she was
penniless and ruined, and that she must drive a bargain with Abbotsford
or starve.
She rose from her low chair and looked at him, a beautiful woman still,
and young.
“Did you mean to marry a month ago, when you were ready to sell your
love to kiss my hand?” she said slowly, cuttingly. “You were ready
enough to come here to eat my bread; but it appears I am not fit to
eat yours in return. Your wife, Lord Abbotsford, has my sympathy. She
will marry a bad-tempered, miserly boy, who thinks of nothing but
his own pleasure. Your presents”--she tore some rings off and threw
them on a brass table, where they rang loud as they fell--“take them!
And go--leave my house. You have told me to my face that I am an
adventuress. I tell you that I am a penniless one, and that even so I
would rather be myself than you.”
She was magnificent as she faced him, and he stammered when he would
have spoken.
He might have said words that would have softened her, might only
have hurried the steps of the Nemesis at his heels, but he lost his
chance. The door of the small scented room opened quickly, and Ismay,
in her shabby clothes, the air still fresh on her cheeks, stood on the
threshold.
Mrs. Trelane stood turned to stone.
“Ismay!” she spoke at last. “What brings you here?”
“I forgot. I thought you were alone!” the girl said quietly. She had
only a contemptuous glance for Abbotsford, that contrasted him with the
man she had just left.
Her mother looked at her as she stood in the doorway; then at
Abbotsford, who was utterly astonished.
“You hear,” she said, “this is my daughter. You did not know I had one?
Well, I have, and I let her be humiliated that I might have money--for
other things.”
She walked over and put her arms round the girl, forgetting for the
moment how unwelcome she was in her fresh youth and beauty.
“Go,” she said, over her shoulder; “leave us! We can starve together
without you and your wife.”
Abbotsford walked by them without a word, but for once in his ill-spent
life he felt small.
But the door had barely closed behind him before Mrs. Trelane drew away
from her daughter, and stood looking at her; the anger Abbotsford had
roused turned on the girl.
“What madness is this?” she asked hardly. “Had you no sense that you
must come in here? And do you know what your freak means to me? If we
starve you have yourself to blame!”
She threw herself into a chair, her nerves and temper thoroughly out of
hand. And then started at the sound in her own child’s voice.
“Oh, no, we sha’n’t!” said the girl, with a cynical smile on her red
lips that were not like Mrs. Trelane’s. “You are too clever, and
so”--deliberately--“am I! You forget I’m not a child any longer.”
Mrs. Trelane looked up, and met eyes which were somehow those of an
equal, another woman, and spoke truthfully in her raging disappointment.
“That man who went out--he’s going to be married. And I, like a fool,
thought he meant to marry me!”
“Can’t you get something out of him?”
“I meant to marry him, I tell you”--roughly. “Those things are all he
ever gave me.” She pointed to the cast-off rings on the Moorish table.
“What do you mean about starving?” Ismay asked. “Haven’t you any money?
Have you”--deliberately--“spent it all on him?”--with a nod toward the
door by which Lord Abbotsford had departed.
Mrs. Trelane moaned.
“I thought it wouldn’t matter. I thought he meant to marry me,” she
said faintly. “That was why I kept you out of the way; I didn’t want
him to know how old I was till it was all settled. And now”--she flung
her hands out angrily--“I will pay him for it all if I kill him!”
“You can sell these things,” Ismay said quickly, looking round her at
the costly furniture, the many ornaments.
“There is a bill of sale on them already,” the woman said dryly, and
speaking perfectly openly, as if to another woman of her own age and
not to her daughter. It was a relief to speak out; she forgot how
she had treated the girl since her return, how she had neglected her
for the prospect of a rich marriage. “But I’ll get something out of
Abbotsford somehow, even if I have to call it a loan,” she added.
“I wouldn’t ever speak to him again,” Ismay remarked scornfully. “And
why didn’t you bring me home from school long ago, if you’d no money?”
“Because”--with absolute truth--“I didn’t want a grown-up girl about.”
For a moment the two pairs of eyes met; then the girl shrugged her
shoulders.
“Well, I’m here, and I’ll have to stay,” she retorted. “As for Lord
Abbotsford, you’re well rid of him. But I suppose you don’t think so.
Can I take this candle? There’s no light up-stairs, and I want to go to
bed.”
Mrs. Trelane was utterly taken aback by the matter-of-fact conclusion.
Somehow Ismay seemed years older to-night, and she had no clue to what
had worked the miracle. She pushed a candlestick over to her without
answering, and not a word did the girl breathe of where and how she had
spent her evening.
CHAPTER III.
THE ROSE-COLORED ROOM.
“Look.” Mrs. Trelane’s face was radiant as she threw a note across the
luncheon-table to Ismay the next day. It was from Lord Abbotsford.
“Look, he wants to see me this afternoon. He’s ill, can’t come out, and
he’s sent me this latch-key so that I can go in without his man seeing
me. He must be going to do something for me.”
“Will you go? I wouldn’t,” Ismay said slowly. She was weary from a
stormy morning; sickened by the abuse of the two maid servants who had
smelled disaster and departed after vainly demanding their wages.
“Go! What else should I do?” Mrs. Trelane seized the note again and
rose to leave the room. “Three o’clock, he says, and it’s two now. I’ll
go and dress.”
“Where does he live?” the girl asked idly, yet with intention. Somehow
she did not like this expedition.
“Not far; he has a house in Onslow Place.”
“Well, if I were you, I would ring the bell and go openly; have the
servant announce you! I wouldn’t creep in with a key.”
But Mrs. Trelane took no notice.
It was a dark afternoon, and Onslow Place was very quiet. No one saw
her as she opened Lord Abbotsford’s door with the little latch-key.
She met no one as she went softly up the carpeted stair to his
sitting-room. She had been there before once, and knew the way.
The room was strangely quiet as she opened the door. It was all hung
with pale pink, and furnished in a darker pink brocade; not like a
man’s room at all. There were bowls of hothouse carnations everywhere,
each great flower a fiery rose; and the silver lamps were already lit
under their rose-colored shades.
Mrs. Trelane shut the door behind her, and as she did so a faint rustle
in the next room could easily have passed unheard.
“Abbotsford,” she said softly, looking very young and handsome in her
plain tailor-made gown, “are you here?”
A screen was drawn round the hearth, with room enough for a sofa
between it and the fire. A table stood by the window, and at first Mrs.
Trelane paid no heed to it, as she walked round the screen.
Abbotsford was on the sofa asleep, his head lying on his arm.
“Wake up, I’m here,” she said lightly. “I don’t wonder you’re asleep.
Your flowers are too strong; they smell just like bitter almonds.”
Lord Abbotsford never moved; and once more the strange quiet of the
room struck on Helen Trelane’s nerves.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said sharply. “Why can’t you wake up?
And what are you doing with all that?” For the letter on the table had
caught her eye; money, notes, and gold, in an open purple velvet box;
diamonds, a necklace, bracelets, a tiara. Her heart gave a leap. Had he
indeed repented and sent for her to give her these?
Something else on the table softened her heart, too: the only
photograph she had ever had taken for years; it had been done for
Abbotsford. She remembered how he had taken the negative from the
photographer and broken it, for fear she might have more printed. He
had loved her then. Oh, if she could only rouse that love again for one
half-hour!
The silk linings of her dark purple dress rustled as she moved toward
him where he slept, and sank on her knees beside him.
“Wake up, sleepy boy, you sent for me, you know.” His hand was
strangely cool as she took it in hers; the next instant she had jumped
to her feet.
“My God!” she cried, trembling like a leaf. “It can’t be.”
She lifted the arm that was over the face, and kept, she never knew
how, from shrieking. John Inglesby, Lord Abbotsford, was dead--dead in
the pink, luxurious chamber where the flowers smelled of almonds, where
there was nothing to tell how he died.
Was it a trap? Had he killed himself on purpose? Sent for her?
Mrs. Trelane, with her skirts gathered up to make no sound, fled
swiftly from the room. The house was quite quiet, the servants all
down-stairs; the woman who had been young and radiant as she came in,
slipped out of that horrible house wan as the man up-stairs. She dared
not hurry away, though the early darkness of London was growing apace,
and she could not if she had tried, for her feet would scarcely carry
her.
Suddenly she stopped short, for quick steps came behind her. Had any
one seen her go out? Had any one found that which lay up-stairs? She
turned, ready to drop.
“Ismay!” The cry was hysterical, uncontrollable, for it was Ismay
hurrying after her. “What are you here for?”
“Why not? I was going for a walk, and I came this way. What made you so
quick? You have not been there five minutes--you can’t have.”
Her mother clutched her by the arm fiercely and whispered in her ear.
“Don’t stop like this! walk on,” the girl said, very low, yet with
authority. “Did any one see you? You’re sure there was no one there?”
“No one.” Mrs. Trelane’s teeth were chattering.
“Is there anything in the room that might get you into trouble? Think,
quick!”
“Oh, my photograph. It’s there on the table.” What a fool she had been
not to bring it.
“Do the servants know you? Does any one know he was a friend of yours?”
“No; no one! I was very careful. I did not want my past to come up--if
he married me.” The words were gasped out under her breath; for once
terror was too much for her. “You don’t think they’ll bring me into it,
Ismay?”
Ismay turned round.
“Go back,” she said, “quick, and get that photograph. It’s risky,
but it’s your only chance. Don’t you see that you might be suspected
through it?”
“I can’t,” but she had turned, too.
“You must! I’ll wait outside.”
She almost pulled the elder woman back to the house she had but just
left; with a steady hand she fitted in the latch-key her mother could
not turn. Sick with fright, but desperate, she pushed her gently into
the dim hall and closed the door softly behind her. Helen Trelane, like
a guilty thing, crept back to that room of horror, and her daughter
strolled quietly along outside in terror. Suppose she had done just the
wrong thing?
Ismay shivered in her thin coat, and then turned back in time to see
what made her blood thicken with a worse chill than the November air.
A hansom cab was stopping at Abbotsford’s door. A tall man in a loose
overcoat, that was like every other fashionable overcoat in London,
jumped out and put his hand in his pocket to pay his fare.
He was going into the house! He would find her mother, find Abbotsford;
he would find out, perhaps, more! With a horrible clearness those words
of her own mother’s came back to the girl.
“I will pay him for it all if I kill him.”
In her sick horror the girl’s breath failed her; before she could draw
it again the man, whose back was still turned to her in the dusk, had
put a key in the door--Lord Abbotsford was evidently generous with
keys--and disappeared within the house.
If Ismay Trelane had thought it would have availed her anything, she
would have fallen on her knees in the street--and prayed!
CHAPTER IV.
“THE MYSTERY.”
Mr. Marcus Wray laid down his morning paper on his lonely
breakfast-table with a queer sound in his throat.
He had taken a deep interest in the affairs, as became a barrister in
fair standing, and now the verdict of the coroner’s jury stared him in
the face. So important a thing had called out a leading article, and
Mr. Wray had read it till he knew it by heart. Yet he picked up the
paper now, and looked at it again.
“The mystery surrounding Lord Abbotsford’s death,” it ran, “has not
been lifted by the verdict at the inquest. The deceased clearly
came to his death by poisoning with cyanid of potassium, which
could not have been administered by his own hand, as no trace of
any bottle containing it was found anywhere in the house of the
unfortunate nobleman. And the verdict of murder by persons unknown
has only deepened the horror of the public, since no trace or clue
to the supposed murderer has been discovered. The evidence of the
servants--who were all able to prove an alibi on the afternoon of the
murder--that no one entered the house, has been rendered worthless
by the statement of Mr. Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry, who swore that he
had entered with a latch-key, gone up-stairs and put down a box of
cigarettes in the very room in which Lord Abbotsford was lying, and
gone out again at once without seeing him, where he lay on a sofa
behind a screen. He had hurried out to join a friend in the street:
half an hour later he went back to Lord Abbotsford’s house, and this
time discovered his body, and sent the servants at once for the
police. That Mr. Cylmer--who was a close friend of the deceased--was
guiltless, was amply proved at the inquest; but the criminal is still
to be found, and a large reward has been offered for his apprehension.
“The only clue so far comes from the evidence of Mr. Cylmer, that, on
laying down the box of cigarettes, he had noticed on a small table
some bank-notes, a quantity of loose gold, some diamonds in an open
box, and a woman’s photograph, which he had not been accustomed to
see there. On his return and discovery of the dead body, the gold,
diamonds, and photograph were gone; the notes only remained.
“Mr. Cylmer stated that he merely glanced at the photograph. Lord
Abbotsford had many women friends whom he did not know; but that he
remembered distinctly its being there. Of the diamonds missing, no
trace can be found, though they had only been purchased that day as
a gift for the betrothed wife of the dead man. But that such infamous
crimes can be committed with impunity in the house of a well-known
nobleman, in the very heart of London, is not to be thought possible,
and every means will be brought to bear to bring the perpetrator to
justice. No motive can be found for the murder, the robbery excepted.
His estates go to a distant cousin, at present a midshipman on foreign
service in the Royal Navy. The deepest of sympathy is extended
throughout society to the lady whose engagement to Lord Abbotsford was
announced only the day before his death.”
“A pack of fools!” said the reader slowly. “And the man who wrote this
is the worst. They may hunt through every street in London and never
find a thread to help them. If Lord Abbotsford had had a clever man
servant”--he shrugged his lean shoulders--“but he would have country
bumpkins from his estate to wait on him, and no others!”
He sat in a brown study for a long half-hour, and then roused himself
to eat his cold breakfast. He had not eaten much lately; his waitress,
when she cleared away, was glad his appetite had improved. He lived
alone in one of the curious rookeries known to the frequenters of the
Inns of Court. He was anything but a briefless barrister, yet his
briefs were usually of a sort another man would have looked at twice.
Not Marcus Wray--the world owed him a living, and he must get it,
somehow. It did not concern him that the people who went up and down
his staircase--after dark--were not the cream of society.
Contrary to his habits, he spent his morning in utter idleness,
smoking; his lean, round shoulders more humped than usual, his ugly,
clean-shaven face wrinkled repulsively.
There was money to be got out of the Abbotsford tragedy, yet just
how would not come to him. His thick, red lips pressed hard on his
cigar, and the lean, knotted hand that lay on his knee never ceased a
curiously light movement, as if he were driving in a nail, carefully,
very carefully. Suddenly the tapping ceased as the man’s face relaxed.
“I think I have it,” he said to himself. “Anyhow, I will go out
and--make a call!”
He folded up his paper and put it safely in his overcoat pocket when he
was ready to start. He might want it--it had interested him.
It had interested two other people in London--Ismay Trelane and her
mother.
Till they read it they had hardly eaten or slept; the days had passed
somehow, that was all. If Mr. Cylmer’s evidence had been given early in
the inquiry they might have suffered less, but it had been kept to the
very last.
Mrs. Trelane, pale and staring, was the first to speak when the morning
paper was read.
“We’re all right,” she said thickly.
Ismay nodded. “When he went in I thought you were lost. But it was
lucky you got that photograph. I suppose it’s Abbotsford’s sovereigns
you’ve been staving off your tradesmen with.”
“They were no good to him”--cynically.
“And not much to us; they’re all gone now.”
Mrs. Trelane, who had scarcely spoken since that day of terror, who had
not gone out lest some one should know her, seemed turned into another
woman by the reading of that newspaper article. She looked at Ismay
almost triumphantly.
“Very nearly gone, but--they’re not all!”
“Then,” said Ismay slowly, “you did take the diamonds! How did you find
the courage? You were almost too frightened to walk when I pushed you
in the door.” Once more that horrible suspicion sickened her.
“I don’t know,” said her mother simply. “You see, the shock of it was
over; after all, he was only a dead man, and I had seen dead people
before.”
“But you were mad; they’re no good to us,” the girl gasped; “we daren’t
sell them.”
“We do, to one man in London.”
“As they are?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, he won’t dare ask questions. But
once they are sold we can get away from here; go somewhere and start
fresh. I won’t be comfortable till we are out of London. The sale of
the diamonds will pay nearly everything, and leave us money in hand.”
“Are you wise?” Ismay asked hardly. “Or are you running into a trap?”
“Not I! I am too old a resident in ‘underground London’ for that,
Ismay.” She stopped suddenly and listened. “Did I hear a bell ring?”
“It’s the door-bell; some one has come for money. I’ll go.”
Ismay left her mother huddling over their scanty fire--for the
coal-merchant was like every one else, unpaid--and went to the front
door. The shabby black gown that was her all was not even neat, and she
had no collar on; her wonderful flaxen hair was coiled anyhow round
her small head, but to the man who stood on the door-step her strange
beauty was a revelation. Was this the ugly child Helen Trelane had
shoved into a convenient boarding-school and forgotten? Instinctively
he took off his hat, as if he had seen Circe herself.
“Is it possible that you are Ismay?” he said.
The girl looked at him with somber dislike, his ugliness repelled,
almost sickened, her. And at the cold oiliness of his voice she
recoiled as at something tangibly evil. Who was he that he knew her?
He held out his hand, but she would not see it.
“You don’t remember me, of course,” he smiled. “Is your mother in? I
came to see her.”
“I don’t know; she went out, but she may be back.” Some instinct made
her lie, and the man knew it.
“Tell her,” he said, “that Marcus Wray has come to see her.”
And before Ismay could shut the door he stood beside her in the little
white-paneled, turquoise-tiled hall, that felt so cold.
Mrs. Trelane started when her daughter came in breathless from she knew
not what.
“A man who wants you,” she said; “his name is Wray. And he called me
Ismay! Mother, who is he?”
If she had spoken truly, Mrs. Trelane would have said her evil genius.
Instead, her eyes glittered for one instant in surprise. What had
brought him, whom three years ago she had shaken off forever?
“Marcus Wray?” she said unbelievingly. “What could he want?”
“You. Oh, what a hideous man! He is like a toad, a snake!”
“Hush!” The woman whispered angrily. “He might hear, and he’s the man
I meant; the only man in London who will buy those diamonds. Bring him
here, it’s the only warm place in the house.”
Ismay glanced at the untidy breakfast, not cleared away, the disorder
of the luxuriously furnished room; and Mrs. Trelane laughed.
“He has seen worse,” she remarked quietly. “Bring him.”
“I won’t stay in the room with him! He makes me sick.”
“No one wants you to,” said her mother, yet as she looked in the glass
at her own worn beauty she felt a tinge of uneasiness. There was
something uncanny about this visit from a man she had not seen for
three years; his coming just when she had need of him. She wished she
could know what it meant. But as he entered, immaculately dressed as
she remembered him, Mrs. Trelane greeted him as if he were her dearest
friend.
“You don’t mind my having you in here?” she said simply. “It is the
only fire. And where have you been all this time--do you know it is
years since you have remembered me?”
“It is years since I have seen you,” he corrected her, “but you are
just the same. But the girl, your daughter”--the door had banged behind
him when he entered, making him smile covertly--“is not the same. She
is beautiful, though not like you; nor”--thoughtfully--“like Trelane.”
Mrs. Trelane bit her lip.
“Did you come to compliment me on my child?” she said prettily. “How
nice of you!”
Marcus Wray took a chair by the fire, though his hostess was standing.
“No,” he answered carelessly, his sharp, narrow eyes wandering round
the dusty costliness of the room. “No, I came--because you needed me.”
“Needed you. I?” Every bit of color left her face; her uneasiness had
been well founded then; it was not chance that brought Marcus Wray.
He nodded.
“I thought so; perhaps I’m wrong. But this morning I felt certain that
if I did not come to see you, you would come to me; so I saved you the
trouble. By the way”--he pulled something from his overcoat pocket and
held it out to her--“have you seen this morning’s _Herald_?”
Mrs. Trelane, standing by the table, put a sudden hand on it, as if her
strength had failed her.
“You have, I see. Well!--sit down, you can talk better.” He pushed a
chair to her with his foot, contemptuously.
“I have seen the paper--yes, of course! But what of it?” She had not
stirred to take the chair. The last time she had seen Marcus Wray she
had dictated to him--had he waited all this time to avenge himself?
“I thought you’d like to sell them. It’s not safe, you know, to have
them.”
“Sell what? Have what? I don’t know what you mean!” she panted.
“Don’t you? Well, I’ll tell you! I was in a house in Onslow Square,
across the way from Lord Abbotsford’s, one afternoon last week; I was
dull, and looked out the window. You came, you went; you came, you
went”--moving his hand to and fro like a weaver’s shuttle--“the last
time you were agitated, but not your daughter; she pushed you in.” He
paused, looking deliberately at her. “The second time you came out you
hurried--needlessly.”
“Mark, Mark.” She was beside him, clutching his arm hard with her slim
white hand. “He was dead when I went in, I swear he was dead! I went
back to get----”
“Your photograph, and the--other things. Well, you got them! I
congratulate you. But as for his being dead”--he shrugged his rounded
shoulders, heedless of her desperate hold on his arm.
“My God, do you think I killed him?”
The words came bleakly after a silence, when the slow dropping of the
coals from the grate had sounded loud.
“Would you like to stand your trial if I told all I saw? If you could
convince the jury, you could convince me afterward, you know.” The hand
on his arm relaxed suddenly.
“Mark, Mark,” the woman said bitterly, “once I trusted you, when all
the world condemned you----”
“And kicked me from your door afterward like a troublesome dog,” he
interrupted her quietly. “Well, it’s my turn now! Give me the diamonds,
and your dog holds his tongue.”
“Do you mean sell them to you?” She had sunk into a chair as if she
could never rise again.
“No, I mean give,” he said relentlessly. “Don’t you understand? It’s my
price; the price of silence.”
“But I’m ruined! If you take them we are beggars on the street, the
girl and I. I took the diamonds because--look round you”--breaking off
desperately--“don’t you see we have nothing? There is a bill of sale on
the furniture, the lease of the house is up--do you want me to starve?”
“You have never starved yet,” he retorted. “But if you prefer to hang,
keep the diamonds. I, too, want money, and if you don’t pay me, some
one else will. Look!” He held to her a printed paper, that swam before
her eyes.
“I can’t read it,” she muttered.
“No? It is that five hundred pounds reward is offered for the discovery
of the murderer of Lord Abbotsford. Your diamonds are worth eight
hundred, so you will pay me best. Only if you fail me--well, if one
can’t have cake, one takes gingerbread!”
He leaned toward her threatening, sinister, yet smiling.
“You had better give me the cake.”
“How do I know”--after all, she was brave in her fashion, he could not
help wondering how she found courage to bargain--“how do I know that
you will not take my cake and their gingerbread? Giving you what you
say I have will not make you faithful.”
“Nothing will make me faithful,” said Marcus Wray, with a noiseless
laugh. “But the diamonds will help, and if your daughter is a sensible
girl she will do the rest. I am coming to see her--very often.”
He rose as he spoke and walked to the mantelpiece, where a heavily
framed picture hung.
“I have not forgotten your ways,” he observed, drawing out a purple
velvet box stuck behind the picture and putting it carefully into his
breast pocket. “I thought they would be there.” He took up his shining
hat airily.
“Au revoir, dear lady,” he said. “Tell your little girl to open the
door for me.”
At the words a last hope dawned on Mrs. Trelane’s misery. Marcus
admired the girl--then, perhaps, she could manage him where her mother
had failed.
“Wait here, I’ll find her,” she faltered; and hurried out.
Ismay, sitting on her bed, wrapped in the coverlet to keep warm,
started at her mother’s livid face; started once again at her quick,
whispered sentences.
“You let him frighten you! You let him know you had them!” She stamped
her foot.
“What could I do? Oh! go to him, try----”
Mrs. Trelane threw herself on the bed, broken with tearless sobbing
that she could not control; and her daughter, with a bravery that
sprang from ignorance, went down to try her strength against that of
Marcus Wray.
Half an hour later she stood alone in the room she had entered with her
head high and her eyes blazing. Now she shivered as she heard the front
door close behind the strange visitor.
Yet he had been perfectly civil.
“The diamonds--since you insist these are diamonds--are quite safe.
So is the reputation of your mother while you take an interest in it.
Suppose you go to the theater with me to-morrow night?--it would do you
good,” he had said to her.
His words rang in her ears, the tone had been perfectly polite, but the
veiled threat in it had staggered her. The next moment she had found
her courage.
“With you? No, never!”
“You had better think of it,” he said quietly. “I assure you I am a
good friend and a bad enemy. If I have taken a liking to you, why be
angry? You can’t get away from London, you know, without any money--nor
from me.”
He was gone now, out of the house, yet a sudden terror of him shook
her. She turned and ran, as if she were hunted, to where her mother lay
shivering on the bed.
“Mother,” she cried desperately, “think quickly! Isn’t there some way
we can be rid of that man?”
“I’ll try--but I don’t think I can find one.”
Mrs. Trelane shivered as she rose and went to her writing-table.
Ismay, watching her haggard face, was terror-stricken afresh. How had
her mother been terrified into giving up those diamonds? Was there
something that Marcus Wray knew?
Ismay could not finish that thought. She sat motionless, as Mrs.
Trelane, without even showing her the address of the letter she had
written, went out and posted it.
CHAPTER V.
A LUCKY CAST.
The great house lay very still in the evening sunshine that slanted
soft and red on its gray old walls and turned its many windows to amber
fires, its castellated roof to a rose-red carving against the pale
blue eastern sky. Over the great hall door that opened on a wide stone
terrace, grim with lions wrought in stone, was carved the motto of the
master of the house--“What Marchant held let Marchant hold.”
The words were repulsive and ironical in their pride to the man who
looked up at them involuntarily as he got out of his carriage and went
into his house. He passed wearily through the hall to his library, and
locked the door behind him.
He must have time to think; must be alone. He dreaded the sound of the
light knock at the door, which would mean Cristiane had come to see
what he had brought her from London. And the motto of his house over
his door had been like a blow on the eyes to him to-night.
“What Marchant held let Marchant hold.”
He, Gaspard le Marchant, had learned to-day that a resistless hand was
loosening his own grip on the house of his fathers; of his lands and
money; of his life itself. But it was not the losing of those things
that made his upper lip damp with sweat as he sat alone in the dim,
Russia leather scented library.
“Cristiane,” he said to himself very quietly. “Who can I leave with
Cristiane?”
His thought was all for his only daughter, the child of his love.
Seventeen years old, cherished, adored, beautiful--who would take care
of her when he was gone? And go he must, for the great London doctor
had told him so that very morning.
“It is a matter of months, Sir Gaspard; perhaps of weeks.”
The words in this hard gentleness seemed to ring still in the ears of
the man who sat alone.
“A matter of a very few months, and if you have anything to arrange it
would be best, perhaps, to see to it at once.”
Gaspard le Marchant’s voice had been quite quiet as he answered the
words that were his death-warrant, but he had gone straight from the
doctor’s house and taken the first train home to Marchant Place.
He had not felt really well for a year past, but he had never thought
it was serious when he paid that two-days’ visit to London; he had gone
up more to buy new clothes than to see a doctor. It had been a cursory
visit, and, like many such things, had held the tidings of death in it.
A few weeks more and Gaspard le Marchant would be done with this world,
and powerless to care for the child for whom that other Cristiane had
given her life seventeen years ago.
At the thought, another thought, that had been in the man’s mind all
day, came over him with ineffable power. The doctor had meant that if
there was anything he wanted to do before he died he had better do
it. Well, there was one thing--call it the whim of a dying man if you
liked! He must go once more to that grave where they had laid all that
was left of the woman who loved him, seventeen years ago.
He must bury his face in the grass that grew over her body; must tell
her that the parting was, after all, not long; the day very close at
hand now when he and she would walk together in the paths of paradise.
“I can’t tell the child I’m going to die,” he thought. “And I must find
a guardian for her somehow. If I only knew a woman I could trust! God
knows the girl must have missed her mother many a day.”
He was the last of the Le Marchants’; he had no relations except a
married cousin, of whom he had lost sight long ago, and his wife had
had no one.
People said Cristiane’s mother had been an adventuress; certainly she
had left her daughter the legacy only of her own outlandish name,
her own wonderful red-gold hair, and a wild will that there was no
compelling.
Cristiane Luoff her name had been, and Sir Gaspard had married her in
Rome. For a year they had been utterly happy--and now he was going to
look on her grave for the last time before he died.
First, though, he must find some one to leave with Cristiane, and he
had no inkling where to turn. Men he knew--but Cristiane was too pretty
to leave to any of them; women--he could not think of one!
He stared idly across the wide oak writing-table before him, and a neat
pile of letters caught his eye. Surely he had seen the writing on that
top envelope before--but where!
Small, neat, dainty, it lay before his gaze, and he opened it, more to
turn his thoughts than because it could have to do with what was in his
mind.
“Helen Trelane” it was signed, and he wondered no longer why the
writing had looked familiar, though it was years since he had seen it.
Mrs. Trelane was his only relative, and had married a man of whom
report spoke variously as a scoundrel and a martyr. Only reports of the
first sort had reached Sir Gaspard. Trelane had long been dead, and,
living, had had few friends. One thing was certain, that with him Mrs.
Trelane had led a life of precarious poverty, till she had gradually
drifted utterly away from the people who had known her as Helen le
Marchant.
When Trelane drank himself to death--or died of a broken heart, as some
people had it--Sir Gaspard had sent a large check to his widow, and she
had written more times than were quite necessary to thank him. He had
let the correspondence drop, but now he recognized the writing.
“My Dear Gaspard,” the letter ran, “I suppose you will be surprised
at hearing from one of whom you have heard nothing since your great
kindness at a sad time. I would have written had I had anything
pleasant to say, but things have not gone well with me and my little
girl.
“An imprudent man of business--I do not care to write a dishonest
one--the education of my child, which cost more than I imagined, and
perhaps my own foolish ignorance of money matters, have resulted in my
being nearly penniless.
“I write to you now as my only relation, to tell you that I must find
a situation as governess or companion to support my child, and to ask
you if you will be good enough to act as reference to my employers,
when I find them.
“If you answer this at once, this address will find me, but if not,
please write care May’s Employment Office, for my lease of this house
expires at the end of this week, and I do not know yet where I can go.
“You have never seen Ismay. She is sixteen now. I think her pretty,
and I know her to be my only comfort. When I find a situation I shall
send her back to her school as a pupil teacher, but the parting will
be a hard one, and I have not yet found courage to tell her of it.
“However, it must be; and I rely on your old kindness when I ask you
to let me refer to you as to my fitness to undertake the charge of
girls.
“Your cousin,
“HELEN TRELANE.
“1 Colbourne Square, London.”
It was a letter that had given its writer some trouble, but
circumstances had rendered it a masterpiece.
Could Helen Trelane have seen Sir Gaspard turn again to the few words
in which she spoke sadly of the parting with her daughter she would
have smiled in quiet triumph at the inspiration which had made her bait
her nearly hopeless hook with love for her child. She had asked for so
little, too; and there was nothing to let Sir Gaspard know that she
meant him to do for her treble what she asked.
“Poor girl, poor Helen!” he thought. “What a fate to have to earn her
own living and be parted from her child. But if she is the woman I
think her, I can save her from that--only I must see her first.”
It seemed to Le Marchant that the finger of Providence was in Helen
Trelane’s letter. Who would make a better guardian for Cristiane than
his own cousin, a mother herself?
She had said something about her ignorance of money matters, but
he could leave Cristiane’s money so tied up that there would be no
question of managing it.
He wrote a short note, appointing a time to see Mrs. Trelane in London.
Somehow his heart had lightened since reading that letter from another
Le Marchant, who was pained and desperate about her only child.
As he sealed his note he started, like a child caught in mischief, for
there sounded an impatient tap at the door.
It was Cristiane. And he was making plans for her he could not tell
her, with his heart full of an agony she must not suspect.
“Are you here, father? May I come in?”
How sweet and full the girl’s voice sounded through the oak door!
The man’s heart fairly turned in his breast as he rose and let her in.
But his handsome face was quite calm as the girl put up her fresh cheek
for his kiss; if his lip trembled under his fair mustache she was not
woman enough to know it.
“Have you just come back? Why didn’t you let me know, daddy?” she
demanded imperiously. “Or were you busy?”--with a careless glance at
the newly written note that was to mean so much for her. He nodded.
“Finished now? Tell me, chickabiddy, how did you get on without me?” He
could not keep from passing a hand that shook a little over the dear
waves of her red-gold hair.
She faced him suddenly.
“You’re tired, daddy; you look pale. We’ll have dinner early.”
“Whenever you like.”
He was looking at her as a man looks at the dearest thing on earth; how
fair, how heavenly fair she was as she stood, tall and slim, in her
white frock, the last sunset light catching her golden hair; falling
on her great dark-gray eyes, which were all but black, or sometimes
violet, as her mood varied; making lovely her faintly pink cheek, her
rose-red mouth.
It was as though Cristiane Luoff had come back from the dead, in the
crown of her youth.
“Oh, you are tired!” the girl cried, as she met his gaze. “You--you
look quite plain, daddy! I’ll ring for dinner now.”
Somehow Gaspard le Marchant found strength to laugh at that time-worn
joke about his plainness, but the next instant his hard-held composure
was nearly out of hand.
“You’ll never go away and leave me again, will you, daddy? I do miss
you so horribly.”
“I--I won’t, if I can help it,” said Sir Gaspard, almost sharply.
CHAPTER VI.
A DREAM OF SAFETY.
“Mother, aren’t you awake?”
Ismay, wrapped in an old flannel dressing-gown, stood knocking sharply
at Mrs. Trelane’s bedroom door, her knuckles blue with cold and her
face set peevishly.
“Mother,” she repeated, “there isn’t any milk, and the milkman won’t
leave us any unless we pay for it. Haven’t you any money?”--running her
fingers impatiently over the bedroom door. It opened quietly as she
drummed on it. Mrs. Trelane, dressed for the day and exquisitely neat,
stood looking at her.
“What’s the matter, what do you want?” she asked angrily. Her face was
drawn from a night of waking, and haggard as a gambler’s who has flung
down his last card and does not know what remains in his opponent’s
hand. “Money? You know I haven’t any. Can’t you do without milk?”
“I suppose I must”--sullenly. “Breakfast’s ready, then--dry bread and
tea without milk! What made you sleep so late? It’s nearly eleven.”
“What was the good of waking?” Not even to Ismay could she say that
she had never slept the livelong night for waiting for the day and the
postman’s knock; that when it came she had run to the door to find only
the big blue envelope she had dreaded, and not a word from the man to
whom she had turned in her despair.
Ever since she had sat old and haggard in the morning light, her busy
brain thinking, to no end. Unless Gaspard le Marchant answered that
letter destruction looked her in the face.
She dressed herself at last under the spur of Ismay’s incessant
knocking and calling, but though her iron nerve kept her face steady,
her knees were trembling under her as she followed the girl into the
bare kitchen, where half a loaf of bread and some weak tea represented
their morning meal.
Ismay sat down on the table and regarded her mother over the piece of
dry bread she held to her lips.
“Look here,” she remarked slowly, “don’t you think it’s about time you
did something? Are we going to sit here and starve? And do you know
that Marcus Wray was knocking here this morning and I wouldn’t go to
the door?”
Even the dirty dressing-gown, the weariness that drew down her upper
lip, could not take away from her unearthly beauty as her mother stared
at her.
“Do something!” she retorted. “I’ve done all I can. That is what’s the
matter. And we sha’n’t certainly sit here and starve, for I heard this
morning that we are to be turned out on Saturday and our things sold
for rent. We shall starve more romantically in the street.”
“I sha’n’t.”
“What can you do? Go back to your school as a pupil teacher?”
“Do I look like a pupil teacher?” asked Ismay, with a sarcastic glance
at herself.
“You look--well, I don’t know whether you are very beautiful or very
ugly!” the elder woman returned listlessly, trying to break some dry
bread with distasteful fingers.
“You’ll soon be told! Mother”--with sudden energy--“if you can’t find
some way out of this, I shall. I can sing, and I’m going round to every
music-hall I know till some man gives me a chance. Do you suppose”--she
stripped back the sleeve of her dingy dressing-gown from an arm that
was curiously slender, yet round, and of a milky whiteness--“that I am
going to let that starve?”
“And what about me? I suppose I can go out charing!”
Ismay shrugged her shoulders. There was no waste of courtesy between
the two.
In the silence that fell, the postman’s knock seemed to thunder through
the quiet. Mrs. Trelane put her cup down on the table.
“You go,” she said, for at the sudden noise her head swam. Surely she
had not lost her nerve, that had stood her in such stead this many a
year!
“Two letters--notes--for you.”
Ismay threw them down on the table, and, after one glance of sick
terror lest they might not be what she waited for, Mrs. Trelane seized
them. Both were in the writing she had not seen for years, both sealed
with the Le Marchant lion crouching with his paw on his prey. But why
were there two? Had he promised something, and then repented?
Sick with terror, Helen Trelane tore one open, and at first dared not
read it. Then the sense of it seemed to flash on her, and the reaction
made her dizzy.
It was all right! The last card, on which she had staked her all, had
not failed her. The writer would be in London on Friday, and would come
to see her at twelve o’clock, when he hoped to have some better plan to
propose than what she had suggested in her letter.
“Till then,” he ended kindly, “please do not fret about your own or
your daughter’s future, for I can promise you that I will arrange
something.
“Affectionately yours,
“G. LE MARCHANT.”
There was not a word in it about his daughter. Sir Gaspard was too
careful of her to do things blindly, but he meant when he wrote to
provide for Helen Trelane, even if she turned out unfit to be trusted
with his child.
Ismay took the note calmly from her mother’s nerveless hand.
“Who’s Gaspard le Marchant, and why is he yours affectionately?” she
asked curiously. “But it doesn’t matter. The chief thing is that he is
‘yours affectionately’ just in the nick of time. What’s in the other
note?”
“I don’t know.” Mrs. Trelane lay back, nerveless, in her hard chair;
she had conquered fate once more, but the relief was too acute yet to
be pleasant. With a shaking finger she opened the other note, and there
fell out two strips of paper.
“You may need this, and you and I can settle later.
“G. LE M.”
The yellow slip enclosed was a check for a hundred pounds.
When another woman would have cried with gratitude, Mrs. Trelane only
caught her breath cynically. “A fool and his money were soon parted,”
but what a mercy it was that he had been so easily managed!
“What about the music-halls, Ismay?” she said bitterly, lifting her
triumphant eyes to her daughter’s astonished face.
“Go out,” said the girl, “and cash this, and we’ll have meat for lunch.
But tell me first, who is he? And why didn’t you try him before?”
“He is Sir Gaspard le Marchant, and the only relation I own. And I did
try him before, in a way. He sent me money once before, but I didn’t
need it especially, and I didn’t want to have to go and stay in a
stupid country house or have my dear cousin come hunting me up. So I
did not write to him till it looked as though camping on the cold, cold
ground was going to be our fate.”
“Is he married?”
“His wife has been dead for years.”
“And you never tried to be Lady Le Marchant?”
Mrs. Trelane’s cheek grew slowly red.
“His first wife, my dear, was a Russian adventuress,” she returned
cuttingly, “and only a born adventuress could hope to succeed her. You
have all the qualifications--you might try for the place.”
And she walked airily out of the room, quite transformed from the
haggard woman she had been when she entered it. But, though she was
tall and fair and handsome, she was not in the least like the girl who
sat alone looking with eager interest at the Le Marchant seal, the
Le Marchant motto, on the back of one of the torn envelopes. No Le
Marchant and no Trelane had ever had those strange eyes, that uncanny,
colorless beauty, that mouth as red as new blood.
“What Marchant held let Marchant hold!” she read aloud from the
seal. “Well, half of me is Le Marchant, and the other half ‘born
adventuress’! I feel sorry--really sorry--for Sir Gaspard.” And she
slipped gracefully to the floor, and went after her mother. But in the
hall a knock and ring at their front door made her run noiselessly to
the bedroom, where Mrs. Trelane was putting on her bonnet.
“He’s here,” Ismay cried; “it must be he; for it’s twelve o’clock, and
it’s Friday! You’ll have to go and let him in, I can’t.”
“No, you can’t! Don’t you come near us,” said her mother, with quick
insistence, “unless I call you. Mind--for you might spoil everything!
And when I do call you, come in a decent frock, with a plain linen
collar, and behave yourself. Don’t make eyes at him whatever you do,
and be affectionate to me. Remember, now!”
And she was gone to open the door for the man who was to change the
very face of the world for her.
Miss Ismay Trelane, left alone, made a face.
“Where does she think I’m going to get a clean collar when the
washerwoman has clawed them all till she’s paid? And I won’t get
dressed for a minute.”
Lithe and slim she moved, without a sound, to a door that opened into
the drawing-room, and, noiselessly setting it ajar, listened with all
her ears.
When she crept away her eyes were blazing.
“It means plenty of money, and getting away from here to where Marcus
Wray will never think of looking for us!” she exulted, as she began
to change her dressing-gown for her only dress; but a sudden thought
dashed her joy.
To leave London would mean never to see again the man whose face had
never left her memory since that night at the Palace Theater.
“Why didn’t I let him tell me his name?” she thought, as she stamped
with impotent rage at her own folly.
CHAPTER VII.
THREEFOLD DANGER.
“Mrs. Trelane is father’s second cousin; and she and her daughter are
coming here for a visit; daddy has to go away, and he can’t take me,
and he won’t leave me alone.”
Cristiane le Marchant leaned against the stem of a huge beech-tree that
overhung the broad lake at Marchant’s Hold. The sunlight came through
the leafless trees, and made the golden-red of her hair ruddier and
more glorious in contrast; her cheeks had a soft rose that melted into
creamy whiteness, and her eyes were very dark.
Mr. Cylmer looked at her. She was certainly provokingly cool.
“What are they like?” she asked curiously.
“It doesn’t matter; they are a nuisance in any case,” said her
companion.
“Why?” she asked, but did not look at him.
“You never had a chaperon before,” he said dryly. “Oh! your father, I
know, but a woman’s--different. I know she’ll be in the way.”
“In your way, Mr. Cylmer!” retorted Miss Le Marchant demurely, but her
eyes flashed mischievously at him through her heavy lashes.
“Mr. Cylmer” kicked at the turf with vicious energy.
“You needn’t rub it in, Cristiane,” he said crossly. “I know you don’t
care a button whether you see me alone or not.”
He was very young-looking for his twenty-eight years; very brown and
big as he stood on the grass in his shooting-clothes. But he had not
been born yesterday for all his debonair face; there was very little
Mr. Cylmer had not done in this world; very little that his quick eye
did not see through.
But all his worldly wisdom was wont to desert him when he found himself
alone with Cristiane. He was her humble slave, and it never occurred
to him that she would have valued him much more if she had known that
Miles Cylmer, who was such an every-day sort of person to her, could
have thrown his handkerchief to half the fine ladies in London, and had
it snapped up on the second; or that every woman he knew adored him,
from duchess to dairymaids.
To Cristiane le Marchant he was plain Miles Cylmer, who had been in
and out of Marchant’s Hold all his life, and was to be regarded as a
convenient or inconvenient elder brother, as things might happen.
“Come on,” she commanded practically, “I have to go to the house to
meet them.”
“Is your father coming with them?”
He stood looking down at her, six feet and to spare, his keen hazel
eyes full of annoyance, and his face quite grave. Had he not given up a
whole day’s shooting to be near Cristiane le Marchant? And now, instead
of a tête-à-tête with her, there would be two women to be disposed of;
two strangers to spoil it.
“But your father’s coming with them,” he repeated, beginning to walk
slowly--very slowly--toward the house.
“No, he isn’t!” Cristiane stopped short. “That’s what’s so funny about
these visitors. Father has sent them here, and he doesn’t know how long
he’ll be away, and he wrote me such a funny note.” And she pulled a
letter out of her pocket.
“‘Write to me and tell me exactly what you think of Mrs. Trelane, if
you like her or not,’ she read. ‘But try and make friends with her
little daughter, for she needs a friend, and take time before you
write. Only write me your candid opinion.’ There, what do you think of
it? Why is this Mrs. Trelane so important, that I am to send daddy my
‘candid opinion.’ I can’t see any sense in it.”
“By George, I can, then!” was on the tip of Mr. Cylmer’s tongue, but he
caught back the words in time. There could be only one meaning to the
letter; Sir Gaspard must be thinking of marrying again.
Somehow Cylmer was unreasonably angry. From his earliest boyhood he had
been wont to gaze at the portrait of Cristiane’s mother, that hung
in Sir Gaspard’s room, with a wondering awe that any one could ever
have been so beautiful; it made him angry now in his manhood that the
husband she had loved should have dared to forget her.
“No, I can’t see any sense,” he said lamely; “only be sure you tell
your father outright if you don’t like this Trelane woman. Otherwise he
might ask her to stay on, or something----”
He jerked at his mustache irritably, quite unconscious how he was
wronging poor innocent Sir Gaspard.
“I never would have thought Le Marchant the sort of man to marry
again,” he thought gloomily. “I’ll see him as soon as he gets back, and
tell him I--I want Cristiane. She sha’n’t have any stepmother about
while there’s a roof at Cylmer’s Ferry!”
He looked doubtfully at the girl as she walked on before him. If only
he dared stoop and kiss those soft gold waves that were swept upward
from the back of her neck: dared to say he loved her from the crown of
her golden head to the tips of her little shoes.
“Cristiane,” he said, “I want to speak to you. Do you know you have
never said you were sorry that these people were coming; never said you
would miss our long, happy days together?”
“But I won’t,” she said calmly: “you’ll be here. You’re not going to
die, or anything, are you?”
She had turned round to him as she spoke, and her violet-gray eyes were
raised to his, her rose-colored lips parted in a mockery that stung for
all its sweetness.
Two hands that were light and yet hard as iron were laid on her
shoulders before she knew it. Miles Cylmer’s face, with a strange,
sweet pity on it that she had never seen there, was bent down to hers.
“Cristiane, little girl, I want you to promise me something. If
anything goes wrong with you--will you come to me?”
“What do you mean, Miles?” she said soberly. “What could go
wrong--while I have father?”
His hands were hard on her shoulders.
“I don’t know--but I love you, and somehow I’m afraid for you.”
He spoke stumblingly--in his outraged pity that he thought was
love--how could he keep his raging pulse quiet? How could he make this
child, who did not love him, come to his heart?
“Can’t you care a little, sweetheart?” he whispered. “Can’t you marry
me?”
Marry him, Miles Cylmer, who was like a brother?
“I--I don’t think I could, Miles,” Cristiane said slowly. “I----”
“Try.” His face was close to hers, she could feel his breath, sweet
and warm, on her cheek. Was this Miles, who had never even thought of
making love to her? Why, he was trembling!
With a sudden, wild rebellion the girl tore herself away from him.
“Don’t touch me,” she panted. “Marry you--I would as soon marry Thomas
the butler; I’ve known him from a child, too!”--with angry scorn.
Cylmer, very white and quiet, let his hands drop to his sides.
“All right,” he said quietly, “we won’t speak of it. And I won’t come
over any more--after to-day.”
“You needn’t.” She was struggling with tears. She did not know why.
“I--I wish you’d go home now!”--stamping her foot.
“I will; but I’m going up to see these daughters of Heth first,” he
returned quietly.
“Don’t dare to ask me to marry you again,” she cried childishly,
“because I don’t like it! And you’re not to stay to tea now--or come
here any more till I ask you.”
“I will not. I shall let Thomas try his luck.”
Mr. Cylmer’s voice was not without temper. He marched beside her over
the dun, wintry grass in silence, turning many things in his mind.
“Oh!” cried Cristiane angrily, “there they are now, on the terrace.
Daddy said I was to be certain to meet them when they came, and I’m not
there, and it’s all your fault!”
She hurried on to the great stone terrace that lay full in the wintry
sunshine. Two women stood there, both tall and slender, both dressed
in black. Cristiane was running now to join them, and a strange
superstitious feeling made Cylmer quicken his steps after her. Somehow
it was ominous--uncanny; the girl in all her youth and purity hurrying
toward those strange women in black.
“God only knows when she’ll get rid of them!” Cylmer growled, with more
truth than he knew.
As he neared them, Ismay, with a quick glance at his approaching figure
through the thick, spotted net of her veil, turned quietly and went
into the house.
Who was this whose walk, whose face, she knew so well, even though it
was only once in her life that she had seen them?
She looked sharply round the great, dim hall. It was empty, the
servants had gone. From its shelter, dark after the sun outside, the
girl peered carefully out through the wide crack of the hall door.
Oh! if it were he, how should she meet him? Would he know her? And what
would he say?
Her heart fairly stood still as she looked with her very soul in her
eyes through the crack to the group inside. And then it bounded with a
rapture that was pain.
It was he--the man himself for whose sake she had been loath to leave
London lest she might miss the chance sight of his face in the streets!
Thirstily she drank in the strong beauty of his face, whose clear-cut
lines were stamped on her heart. Not a thread of his shooting-tweeds,
his dull-red tie, was lost on her. Her delicate hands were clenched
hard in her smart new gloves as she stared--for who was he, and what
was he doing here alone with this golden-haired girl?
A wild jealousy caught her at the heart with a pain that was bodily. If
he were coming in, she dared not meet him under the eyes of her mother
and Cristiane le Marchant. She turned and fled swiftly into the first
room she saw; it was deserted and fireless, they would not come there.
And yet, while she hid, she would have given the life from her breast
to meet those grave, sweet eyes again with hers.
Cylmer had scarcely noticed that the younger of the two strangers had
gone; he did not even look at the door through which she had vanished
as he stepped to Cristiane’s side with an involuntary instinct of
protectiveness.
The girl grudgingly introduced him, as one might a troublesome child.
“My cousin, Mrs. Trelane,” she said. She did not even mention Cylmer’s
name.
Mrs. Trelane bowed graciously; if she had not been excited and
preoccupied at meeting Gaspard le Marchant’s daughter, on whom her stay
in safety and security at Marchant’s Hold depended, she might have seen
that Cylmer bent on her an uncomfortably searching stare.
But Cristiane had turned toward him.
“Good-by,” she said hastily; “so sorry you can’t come in.” And before
he could answer she had swept Mrs. Trelane into the house.
Mr. Cylmer was dismissed in disgrace.
Yet, as he turned away, he scarcely thought of it.
“Now, what,” he said to himself, “does that woman remind me of? I never
saw her before.” Yet the carriage of her head, her long throat, was
somehow familiar; and as he thought there came to him the sudden vision
of a little rose-colored room, full of a haunting scent of bitter
almonds.
“What nonsense!” he thought irritably. “Why should Sir Gaspard’s cousin
remind me of poor Abbotsford?” And then he stopped short, annoyingly
conscious that he must be making a fool of himself.
For he remembered now that Mrs. Trelane had held a handkerchief in her
hands. He had smelled that smell of bitter almonds in reality; the
woman and her handkerchief reeked of peach-blossom. And yet he was
puzzled--and might have been more so had he known whose strange green
eyes had peered at him through the crack of a sheltering door.
The woman in his thoughts was standing just then in her bedroom at
Marchant’s Hold, with her hostess beside her.
“You must be tired,” Cristiane said; “do come to dinner in a tea-gown.
We shall be alone, for there was no one I could have asked to meet you
except Miles Cylmer, whom you saw just now.”
“Miles Cylmer!” Mrs. Trelane turned her back sharply, in her sudden
sick surprise.
“Mr. Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry. He lives near, and he comes very often
when father is at home.”
A new self-consciousness born of the afternoon kept the girl from
looking at her guest.
“Come down,” she said abruptly, “when you’re ready.”
The door had hardly closed behind her before Ismay, in the next room,
heard herself called.
“What is it?” she asked, standing in the doorway. “Are you ill?”
For Mrs. Trelane was sitting down as if her strength were gone, gazing
straight before her as one who sees a ghost.
“Ismay,” she said, “that man who was here this afternoon, do you know
who he is?”
The girl hesitated; had her mother known more than she knew about her
visit to the Palace Theater?
“Do I know his name?” she parried. “No--why?”
Mrs. Trelane rose, staggered, and sat down again.
“I can’t look,” she said. “Open the door into the passage and see if
that girl has gone. Quick!”
“It’s all right,” Ismay said, after a contemptuous survey. “Why? I
don’t see why you’re looking as if you were going to be seasick.”
“Look here,” Mrs. Trelane said roughly, “do you remember the Abbotsford
business? This man who was here to-day is Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry.”
It was Ismay’s turn to stare with haggard eyes.
“You don’t mean it?” she cried fiercely, but with the low voice of
caution. “You don’t mean to say that we’ll have to get out of here?”
How could she not have known him that day in Onslow Square?
“I don’t know,” moaned the woman. A shudder shook her like a leaf. “Did
he look at me, or anything? I was too taken up--with the girl. I didn’t
notice”--her words coming in jerks. “Could you see from where you
were?”
“Yes,” said the girl frankly; “he stared at you like anything.”
“Get me a drink,” the elder woman said slowly. “There’s brandy in my
bag.”
She swallowed it, and sat silent, with closed eyes. The color crept
back into her lips, and she lifted her head and looked at her daughter.
“I’m making a fool of myself,” she ejaculated. “He never saw me,
never heard of me, any more than any one else did when there was all
that trouble. But it was that very Miles Cylmer who was Abbotsford’s
dearest friend, and strained every nerve to find out who the woman was
that--that was at the bottom of it.”
Her eyes dilated till they looked black in her colorless face. Ismay
stared at her mother.
“Do you think he ever saw that photograph I made you go back and get,
when you--found him?” she asked sternly. “If he did, you may have
trouble. He looked a determined sort of man, dogged, you know. But he’s
the handsomest man I ever laid eyes on!”
“What does it matter what he looks like, if he is that Cylmer?” Mrs.
Trelane cried angrily. “I talk about life and death, and you go on
about the man’s looks. What do they matter to you?”
“A great deal.” The girl’s eyes glittered very green to-night. “The
minute I saw him I meant to marry him. Do you suppose I’d take pains to
make him like me if he were ugly?”
“I know you wouldn’t; not to save me from anything,” Mrs. Trelane
returned bitterly. She had good reason to know that no power on earth
could force Ismay to be civil.
“But you’re talking nonsense,” she went on. “As things are, we must try
to keep the man from coming here. You can’t dare to try your hand on
him; we must steer clear of him.”
“And set him wondering why we should try to avoid him? No, no! Let me
alone. Only try to throw your mind back. Did he get into Abbotsford’s
room before you had taken away that picture?”
She looked like an accusing judge at her mother, cowering on the sofa
under her eyes.
“Oh, Ismay!” the woman cried wretchedly, “I don’t know, I don’t know.
I went back for it--I was just taking it--when there was a noise. I
got behind a curtain. Some one came in, and went out again, without
noticing--Abbotsford”--her voice low, tremulous with weeping. “I took
the photograph and got out of the house somehow. I didn’t meet any one.
I must have been at home an hour before any one--found Abbotsford.”
“Then why should you be so idiotic?”--jumping up in her relief. “It
could not have been Cylmer who came in----”
“It was. He said so afterward.”
“Well, he didn’t see you. As for the photograph, he couldn’t have
noticed it enough to know you by. You would have been ruined if you had
not gone back and got it, though!”
“It was providential.” Mrs. Trelane breathed freer.
“It was what?” cried Ismay. She went into a paroxysm of low laughter.
“Providence--and you! But I think you’re all right--you forgive my
smiling? I think he just stared at you because you and I are probably
in his way here; that was all. Only I wouldn’t let him see you in a
white evening gown; that might remind him.”
“I wish I had never seen Abbotsford.” Mrs. Trelane’s tears had washed
channels in her powder. She looked wan and old where she sat. “I bore
the brunt--and Marcus has the diamonds.”
“And we’re well out of it at that,” Ismay rejoined significantly. “For
at last I hope we’re rid of him. He’ll never find us here.”
“He’d find us in our graves,” said the woman. “And you’ve got to manage
him. Don’t go and get into any mad pursuit of Mr. Cylmer, for if Marcus
caught you at it----”
She paused, for Ismay was standing over her in a rage.
“Marcus!” she said scornfully. “What do I care for your Marcus? I am
not bound to him; it is you that need fear him, not I! And as far as
you are concerned, what do I owe you? You neglected me, cast me off,
and when I came back to you, that madness about Lord Abbotsford came on
you. I told you not to go that day--I knew there would be trouble--and
now it may be going to ruin my whole life.”
“What do you mean? You’re talking nonsense. And, considering you’ve
only seen Cylmer through the crack of a door, you’re pretty certain of
him,” cried her mother sneeringly.
Ismay drew a long breath.
“I’ve seen him before--never mind where,” she said.
“And he may be Cristiane’s property,” was the angry warning.
Ismay flung up her handsome head.
“He may belong to all the saints in heaven,” she said, with her voice
hard as ice, “but he will come to me in the end.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LUCK OF MARCUS WRAY.
Sir Gaspard le Marchant sat before an untasted breakfast in a Paris
hotel.
He felt curiously ill; far worse than he had ever known himself; he
breathed with an effort that made his man servant nervous as he stood
behind his chair. Parker alone knew the secret of his master’s state of
health, knew that their journey to Rome had been put off first that Sir
Gaspard might consult a Parisian specialist, and then because the man
who bore his pain so bravely had not the strength to travel.
“He looks pleased with Miss Cristiane’s letter; perhaps that’ll do him
good!” the man thought distressedly. “I wish he’d turn round and go
home.”
“Parker,” Sir Gaspard said suddenly, and with almost his old
cheerfulness, “I’ve heard from Marchant’s Hold, and Miss Le Marchant is
very well.”
“Yes, sir? I’m glad, sir.”
“But I don’t think I’m feeling much better this morning; perhaps I’m
nervous. At any rate, I have a little piece of business to see to. Go
down and ask the proprietor if he could give you the address of some
good English lawyer, and then go and bring him here.”
There were drops of cold dampness on his forehead as he finished
speaking. Parker, after one glance at him, went out with noiseless
haste.
Yet, for all his pain, it was with a great thankfulness at his heart
that Sir Gaspard lay back in his chair. The letter from Cristiane had
been full of pleasant things concerning Helen Trelane and her daughter.
She was very happy with them, and if he did not mind, would he ask them
to stay on a little while when he came back. There was not a word about
Miles Cylmer in the letter; only praises of the two women.
“So I can make it all right this morning,” the man thought feverishly,
“if only Parker can find the lawyer. And then I’ll go on to Rome.”
His head felt light and dizzy with pain. He had but two thoughts, oddly
intermingled: to make everything easy for Cristiane, and then to creep
away to die where his love had died, so many years ago.
He looked up in surprise as Parker came back.
“I didn’t have to leave the hotel, sir,” he said; “there is an English
lawyer staying here, and I brought him up.”
“You’re sure he’s all right--qualified--and that?” anxiously. “I don’t
want any trouble.”
“Sure, sir. They know him well here.”
“All right. Bring him in.”
He looked at the stranger Parker ushered in with a momentary curiosity.
He was a very ugly man; tall, dark, thick-lipped, almost repulsive. But
he was well-dressed and clean-shaved, and moved with a certain air of
gentlemanliness. His voice, too, was cultivated. Sir Gaspard noticed
this as he introduced himself, and gave a card with his address in
London Chambers.
“Mr. Marcus Wray,” the card read.
The name meant nothing to Sir Gaspard, though his own lawyers could
have told him it was that of a clever man who sailed perilously
close to the wind, and had once very nearly been disbarred. Only his
cleverness had saved him; there were no proofs ever to be found against
Mr. Marcus Wray. His business in Paris just now was not too safe, but
he stayed at a good hotel and went about it so carefully as to pass for
a model of English propriety.
He talked very little as Sir Gaspard gave his instructions. He
wished, he said, to make a new will, and draw up some papers for the
guardianship of his only daughter.
“Please make it all short,” Le Marchant ended. “I had meant to have my
own lawyer do it when I got back to England, but----” he did not finish.
Marcus Wray made no answer as he sat at a table Parker had covered with
writing-materials. The man was ill enough to have no time to lose, it
was plain--but not an inkling of that opinion showed itself on the
lawyer’s ugly, impassive face.
The will was simple enough, yet at a certain name in it only an iron
self-control kept Marcus Wray from a sharp exclamation.
So they had left London! And tried to shake him off. What a piece of
luck it was this man’s being taken ill in Paris! Without it, Helen
Trelane might have escaped him, and feathered her nest alone. Now----
“I beg your pardon, I did not catch that last.”
Mr. Wray looked up with an unmoved face, though the beating of his own
heart was loud in his ears.
Here was he, Marcus Wray, writing at the bidding of an utter stranger
words which would bring him the desire of his heart--aye, and gold to
gild it!
He looked furtively at the pale, handsome man who seemed dying before
his eyes. Was this Helen’s last victim? Or could it be possible that he
was only a simple fool who believed in her? It must be, since he was
giving over his only daughter and heiress to her guardianship till she
was twenty-one.
Well, even he had gone near to believing in her once! It was funny,
though, that this last game she had been at such pains to hide from him
should have been played straight into his hands like this. He held his
pen in air, looking at Sir Gaspard.
“There is one thing, sir--if your daughter dies unmarried, or before
the age of twenty-one----” he left the sentence unfinished.
“Unlikely, the girl is young, strong.” His hearer had winced. “But if
it were to happen, the place,” obstinately, “must go to a Le Marchant,
and Mrs. Trelane is the only one. It and the money can go to her, if my
daughter--but she won’t, she won’t!”
“As you say, it is most unlikely.”
Wray wrote hard as he spoke. The man seemed very weak and ill; better
to get everything signed and sealed as fast as possible.
He rang the bell sharply for Parker, and sent him for the proprietor
and a well-known London clergyman who happened to be staying in the
house. They would be unimpeachable witnesses to the will; there must
be nothing doubtful about it. But Marcus Wray’s strong fingers were
tapping his knee with that curious hammering motion, while the two men
wrote their names.
“What luck!” he thought, his eyes averted lest the gleam in them might
show. “All that money--for Helen--when this man dies. And he might die
to-morrow.”
To Cristiane, the daughter, he never gave a thought. With a will like
that, and Helen Trelane knowing of it, she was not likely to come of
age to marry.
And the money would be his, Marcus Wray’s, as the diamonds had been,
as anything belonging to Helen Trelane would be, at his nod. No more
slaving, no more risky transactions. The man rose abruptly and went
over to the window. He dared not think the thoughts that rang like
bells in his brain.
Yet his face was absolutely quiet and gentle as he turned to see the
two witnesses to the will leaving the room, while Sir Gaspard, very
white and still, leaned back in his chair.
“You are leaving for Rome, I think your man said?” The question was
kind, interested. Sir Gaspard was surprised, but he nodded.
“You forgive my asking, but it seems a long journey,” musingly. “Might
it not be wiser to go home?”
Parker waited breathlessly for the answer; it came loud, imperative.
“No! I must go to Rome. I have to go.” He pointed to the signed
will, spread on the table. “Put it in an envelope, address it to my
solicitors, Bolton & Carey, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. It can be
sent there, Parker, when I die.” With curious gentleness he put it
in the breast pocket of his coat, and Marcus Wray knew, with the
intuition of a man who lives by his wits, that there it would stay till
Sir Gaspard’s eyes were shut to this world forever. He shrugged his
shoulders as he left the room.
“Rome--and he wants to die there! I wonder why. Bah! he can die now in
the gutter, for all I care. He might have paid me my fee, though. It
may be a good while to wait for the indirect harvest.”
He mounted to his room in the fourth story and had barely time to
light a cigar before there was a discreet knock on his door. It was
Sir Gaspard’s man servant with a note. As he took it, Wray noticed the
curious likeness of the man to his master, but only for the instant.
“Discarded wardrobe does it, I suppose,” he thought, as he shut his
door and opened the note.
“DEAR SIR: Permit me to discharge my great obligation to you, with my
best thanks.
“Faithfully yours,
“GASPARD LE MARCHANT.”
Two five-pound notes fell from the open envelope, but Wray scarcely
looked at them. Instead, he stared hard at the careless, gentlemanly
signature before him. At sight of it a thought had flashed up in his
brain, so daring that even he almost feared it.
But it was so insistent, and it seemed so safe.
“Nothing more will be heard of it--if he lives! If he dies, I can
always say I acted by his orders--dying men do curious things,” he
muttered.
With his door locked, the lawyer worked hard for two hours. When at
last he stopped, with a long-drawn breath, a second copy of Sir Gaspard
le Marchant’s will lay before him, on the selfsame blue paper on which
the first had been written. On the floor lay many spoiled sheets of
paper covered with imperfect signatures; on the will itself the name of
Gaspard le Marchant was exact. The man himself could hardly have sworn
he had not written it.
The ticklish part was yet to come--the witnesses. Wray shut his teeth
hard as he realized that he dared not try any guesswork about their
handwriting.
Yet when he had cleared away all evidences of his morning’s work, and
put the folded will in his coat pocket, his face was quite passive.
So far the second will was only an experiment, concerning no one but
himself. If it proved impracticable--Mr. Wray shrugged his shoulders as
he went down-stairs to luncheon.
Yet, as he entered the long salle-a-manger he almost started.
At one of the first tables sat Sir Gaspard, and he beckoned Wray to
join him.
“I was tired of my own society,” he said--and if ever a man’s face was
weary it was his!--“so I came down. If you are not afraid of a dull
companion, will you lunch with me?”
Mr. Marcus Wray would be delighted.
He sat down and did his best to be amusing; by the time the sweets
appeared Sir Gaspard was smiling.
At the far end of the room, behind the baronet, Wray saw the stout form
of the London clergyman who had witnessed the will. He was enjoying his
luncheon, waited on by the proprietor in person. Truly, whatever gods
there were stood friendly to the man who sat so calmly with a forged
signature in his pocket.
“I have forgotten something,” he said suddenly. “If you will excuse me,
Sir Gaspard, for one moment, I have a little matter to arrange with the
dean there. I know he is leaving immediately.”
Sir Gaspard nodded, and, with quick, noiseless steps, Marcus Wray had
joined the dean.
“I regret having to trouble you again,” he said courteously, “but my
poor friend over there wishes a copy of his will left here with the
proprietor. He wishes to know if you will be good enough to witness it;
Dubourg also,” to the affable little proprietor.
The latter produced pen and ink from somewhere with incredible
quickness, and the dean wrote his ponderous signature with a glance at
Sir Gaspard, who seemed to sit expectant of his emissary’s return.
“The poor monsieur is of the dying,” the landlord said, as he added his
name. Wray nodded.
“I fear so,” he said. “This is to be deposited in your safe, Mr.
Dubourg,” he added, in an undertone as the man preceded him across
the room to draw out his chair at Sir Gaspard’s table. “Sealed, you
understand, and to remain there! In case you hear of Sir Gaspard’s
death you are to forward it. Otherwise, nothing is to be said about it.”
The little man bowed.
“I understand, it is for making sure,” he assented. “The poor man
leaves us to-night for Rome.”
Sir Gaspard, quite unconscious of the meaning of the proprietor’s
compassionate glance, retired almost on Wray’s return, to rest for his
journey. But that individual, whose business in Paris was finished, did
not take the mail-train for London, as he had intended. The motto of
his existence was: “Never desert your luck”--that luck of Marcus Wray
that was a proverb in the Inns of Court. To go back to London and dream
of a golden future would be to act like a fool; many a dying man had
lived to laugh at his heirs, and so might this one.
A prescience that the time was heavy with fate bade the lawyer not lose
sight of the invalid. Instead of going to London, his cab was just
behind Sir Gaspard’s on the way to the station. His last act before
leaving the hotel had been to deposit his sealed document in Monsieur
Dubourg’s safe. On bad news it was to be at once forwarded to Sir
Gaspard’s solicitors in London.
As the southern train rushed on through the night, Sir Gaspard,
sleepless on his comfortable bed, never dreamed that in the very last
carriage of the train his acquaintance of the morning slept the sleep
of the unjust, that is sounder than any.
The last carriage--truly there was something in that famous luck of
Marcus Wray! For as the pale light of dawn grew in the east something
happened; what, there was hardly time to say. Only a jar, a crash;
then for most people on that train a great void, a blotting out. The
train had left the track; the engine was down an embankment; all the
carriages but the very last a sickening, telescoped mass of shapeless
wood.
In that last carriage Marcus Wray was flung on the floor from a sound
sleep. The lamp had gone out, in the dark a woman screamed, and the
sharp sound brought back his senses. The train was wrecked!
With a quickness beyond belief he was on his feet, had slipped between
his struggling fellow passengers, and out the window, his narrow
shoulders doing him good service.
“Sir Gaspard--the will!”
He ran frantically along the track, passing the dead and dying,
thrusting a woman out of his way with brutal fingers. There was light
now beside the coming dawn, the light of burning carriages; and from
the reeking mass came sounds to turn a man sick, who had time to listen.
This man with unerring instinct found the carriage in which he had been
too poor to travel; it was to be entered now without paying his fare,
for the whole side of it gaped.
In the light of its burning roof he dragged at a heap that looked like
clothing, but he knew that ten minutes since it had been living men.
He lifted with all his strength, and dragged off the first figure of
the mass. As if he were searching for one he loved, he turned the face
to the light.
A dead man--a stranger in a fur coat! He dropped the bleeding head as
if it were but stone.
The next? He panted as he tugged, for the dead are heavy, and the heat
was scorching. This was a man, too, with his arms round another in a
last instinctive protection. Parker--and he had given his life for his
master! For the servant’s brains oozed warm under the lifting hands.
Try as he might, Marcus Wray could not loosen the arms that were
around that inert figure that had been Gaspard le Marchant! Was he
dead--living? He could not tell.
The heat was scorching the searcher as he dragged the two that lay
clasped so close from the burning carriage together. In its light
he knelt down beside them, gasping for breath in the cold dawn. Sir
Gaspard’s face was hidden on the breast of his faithful servant. As
a man who seeks a friend, Wray turned it toward him, tenderly, never
forgetting that anywhere in that dreadful place there might be watchful
eyes upon him.
In spite of his caution, his breath came in a great sigh of relief.
Sir Gaspard le Marchant lay with closed eyes and stilled heart, his
face uninjured, his clothes scarcely disordered, only something in that
strange machine we call a body out of gear forever.
“Dead!” the man breathed it softly in the light of the flaming
carriages, but if he had shrieked it to the sky above him it could not
have sounded louder in his own ears. The sound brought back his caution.
His long fingers groped deftly in the breast pocket of Sir Gaspard’s
coat, and the luck of Marcus Wray lay in his hand!
The man was drunk with his success as he turned away. This will need
never appear. When the news of Sir Gaspard’s death was telegraphed to
Paris an hour later Dubourg would forward his will to Bolton & Carey.
Marcus Wray would be out of the transaction, except for being the
lawyer employed by chance.
Now, the sooner he was out of this the better. He turned away, careless
whether the dead were out of the way of the fire or not. Sir Gaspard
living, had served him well; Sir Gaspard dead, might burn or be buried.
It was all one to Marcus Wray.
CHAPTER IX.
“I WILL POSSESS HIM OR DIE.”
Ismay Trelane stood alone in the great hall at Marchant’s Hold,
immaculately dressed in tight-fitting, dark-green cloth that showed
every curve of her slim body and seemed reflected in her strange eyes.
Her cheeks for once were flushed, and there was a curious light in
the glance that she swept deliberately over the luxury around her and
finally let rest on her own reflection in the old mirror that hung over
the wide fireplace.
“All this for one girl!” she whispered. The scarlet of her lips paled
with the tight pressure that drew them together. “And she has had it
all her life! If I had had one-tenth of it and been brought up like
her with white frocks in summer and good warm serge in winter, I might
have been quite--a nice girl!” She laughed at her own image in the new
clothes bought with Sir Gaspard’s money. But though she laughed, her
heart was not merry. She had seen too much that morning of how rich and
respectable people lived.
She had risen as early as she dared, too restless to stay in bed,
and made a slow, careful progress through the big house, fresh from
the housemaid’s dusters. The carpets, the silver, the carvings and
tapestries, all so solid, so different from those flimsy London
furnishings that had been her nearest approach to luxury, made her
close her white teeth hard together. They had the same blood in their
veins, Cristiane le Marchant and she, and the one had lived like this,
while the other--Ismay sickened at the thought of her own neglected,
hungry girlhood, that the price of one Turkey carpet might have made at
least bearable.
“It isn’t fair,” she thought hotly, “but it’s the way they manage the
world. And now I have a chance the world shall pay me all it owes.
Shabby clothes that were too tight,” she checked off her list on her
fingers airily, “one-quarter enough to eat, chilblains--I shall charge
a good price for chilblains”--remembering her swollen purple fingers
and her shame of them; “hateful girls who sneered at my stockings and
the holes in them--they were generally all holes--and a mother who did
not care whether I was alive or dead so that I was out of her way.
I have all that to make up to myself, and I will do it with--Miles
Cylmer.”
She started; she had all but spoken his name aloud, and standing behind
her fresh as day was Cristiane le Marchant. Ismay’s veiled glance took
her in swiftly. Her tailor-made serge was not new, but it looked as if
she wore it every day; not like Ismay’s own, as if it were a new thing
to be well dressed at breakfast.
“They told me you were down, so I hurried,” Cristiane said quickly. “I
was afraid you might be starving, and I did not think you would ring
for breakfast.”
“I always got up early at school,” said Ismay, her voice light and
hard; “but I dare say I shall get over it. Mother is tired; she said I
was to ask you if she might breakfast up-stairs.”
“Of course; I’ll send it up,” Cristiane said absently. “Come along and
we’ll have ours,” linking her arm through the slender one that was as
strong as steel, and never dreaming that Mrs. Trelane’s daughter had
rejoiced exceedingly that a bad night had reduced her mother’s temper
and complexions to an unpresentable state.
They had been two weeks at Marchant’s Hold, and never till now had
Mrs. Trelane left the two girls together. It was not safe, while Ismay
had that mad freak in her head about Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry. A
chance word, a too hard-pressed question, might in those early days
have turned Cristiane’s growing liking for mother and daughter into
jealous distrust--that liking on which their safety and peace depended.
Mrs. Trelane worked harder to gain this one girl’s affection than she
had ever done for that of all the men who had loved her. With almost
superhuman cleverness she had warded off all mention of Cylmer’s name,
for who knew what wild thing Ismay might say? Mrs. Trelane felt chilly
as she remembered the ring of the girl’s voice that first day at
Marchant’s Hold.
“If he belonged to all the saints in heaven, he should come to me at
the end.”
It was no echo of her own voice, nor of Mrs. Trelane’s, and it made her
shiver.
But this morning neuralgia made her forgetful; a chance sight some days
since of some words in Cristiane’s letter to her father left to dry on
the library table had soothed her soul to peace. She turned comfortably
to sleep in her warm bed up-stairs, careless that Ismay was at last
alone with her hostess.
Cristiane was almost hidden behind the high silver urn and the tea and
coffee-pots. Ismay, as she began to drink her coffee, moved her chair
so that she could see the lovely face under its crown of gold-red hair.
She waited till Thomas, the old butler, had supplied her with hot cakes
and cold game, and taken himself silently out of the room. Then she
laughed as she caught Cristiane’s eye.
“It is rather different from school here,” she observed frankly. “Do
you think I might come and pinch you to see if you’re real?”
“Indeed I don’t,” retorted Miss Le Marchant. “But I don’t see why you
didn’t like school. I found lessons with a governess very dull. Don’t
you miss the girls?”
Ismay made a mental review of them; ugly, bad-mannered, eager to curry
favors with the principal by carrying tales of the girl whose bills
were unpaid.
“I hated them,” she returned candidly. “You would have, too. Some of
them had warts on their hands and dropped their h’s.”
“Oh, don’t!” Cristiane gave a little shriek, and covered her ears. “Why
did you stay there?”
Ismay caught the truth on her lips and kept it back.
“We had no money for a better school; mother never knew how horrid it
was,” she said quietly. “The nastiest thing about it was that all the
first class were in love with some dreadful man or other; one used to
be wild about the postman. I hate men.”
“I don’t know any,” Cristiane said calmly, taking a large bite of
muffin, with her white teeth showing in a faultless half-circle.
“What!” Ismay exclaimed. “Why, there was a lovely young man here the
first day we came.”
Cristiane reddened.
“That was only Miles Cylmer,” she said scornfully. “I’ve known him for
ages, but he is about as exciting as--as Thomas!” remembering her own
comparison of Mr. Cylmer to that worthy man. “He’s only a neighbor, and
a friend of father’s.”
“Oh!” said Miss Trelane demurely. “He is good-looking.”
“I never noticed him especially. He is often here when father is at
home.”
The other girl made a mental comment, but she only said:
“I suppose he wouldn’t come when you were alone?”
Cristiane reflected. Miles had not been near her for a week, and, in
spite of her guests, she had missed him.
“He has more amusing things to do, I dare say,” she said smartly. It
was so silly of Miles not to come just because she had refused him;
selfish, too, for there was a distinct blank in her afternoon rides
without him.
Ismay smiled.
“I believe you were horrid to him and told him not to come,” she
observed shrewdly. “Now, weren’t you?”
“I don’t take enough interest in him,” said the other loftily. “I don’t
take any interest in any one but father. I wish he would come home.”
She looked out of the window, where the morning sun streamed in, over
the wide stretch of wintry park and great beech-trees. “This is a
hunting-morning; would you like to drive to the meet?”
“I can’t leave mother,” was the answer. It would never do to have Miles
Cylmer see her seated in Cristiane’s high dog-cart for the first time
since that night in London. Somehow or other, she must manage to meet
him first alone. And as yet she had no idea even where he lived.
“I suppose you can’t,” Cristiane assented disappointedly. “I will ride
over then by myself, but that’s dull.”
“Haven’t you any near neighbors?”
Both girls stood by the window as Ismay spoke.
“Only Miles Cylmer, and he hunts,” said Cristiane crossly. “Besides,
even he lives four miles off, that much nearer to the meet than we do.
It’s seven miles to Stoneycross by that road you see there,” pointing
to a glimpse of a highway that was just visible on the side of a hill
far across the park.
“Then he’s of no use.” Ismay turned into the room again to hide the
change in her face. Hurrah! she had got her bearings at last. If she
had to wait all day at his gate she would see him face to face this
very afternoon.
“You won’t be dull if I go out and leave you alone? You see, I am used
to riding every day. But it is stupid for you,” said Cristiane.
“Dull! I’m never dull.” Miss Trelane’s face wore that strange smile
that was so full of years and knowledge, her back still turned safely
to her hostess. Dull, with the prospect before her of hunting down
Miles Cylmer! She turned with quick, lovely grace. “Come, and I’ll help
you into your habit,” she cried; “I’m much cleverer than your maid.”
“I think you’re wonderful; how you do your own hair as you do is beyond
me,” Cristiane said, as they went up-stairs.
They were nearly of a height, and she ran her hand up the wonderful
flaxen waves that rippled up from the nape of Ismay’s white neck.
The girl frowned sharply.
“It’s hateful hair.” She moved her head away from the gentle hand. In
any case, she hated to be touched, and it was unbearable from a simple
little fool like Cristiane, who took her and her mother for decent
ladies. “Hateful! Some day I shall dye it,” and she slipped from the
other girl’s side and was up-stairs like a flash.
Yet two hours after she was coiling and twisting that hair she had
said was hateful, with a care that made it look like golden threads
shot with silver. The dark-green, velvet toque she set on it made its
strange sheen more lovely; the green cloth coat with its velvet collar
set off to perfection the milk-white beauty of her face. As she turned
from the glass to draw on her gloves her scarlet lips parted in a smile
of triumph. Queer as her beauty was, it would move the heart of a man
more than Cristiane’s roses and cream, or there was no truth in her
glass.
“Let me see,” she reflected, “four miles to Cylmer’s Ferry--he will be
at the meet and following the hounds--if they find a fox it will be
three o’clock or so before he gets home, perhaps later. There’s heaps
of time, but I had better get off before Cristiane gets home, or she
might be kind enough to go with me.”
She bestowed no thought on the suffering parent she had been unable
to leave, nor had she visited her all the morning. The atmosphere of
Mrs. Trelane’s room, where scents fought with the smell of menthol, had
no charms for her daughter. The only pause she made was in the empty
dining-room, where the table was laid for lunch. The silver epergne
was piled with forced peaches and hothouse grapes, a bread-tray full
of crisp dinner rolls adorned the sideboard among a multitude of cold
meats.
Miss Trelane stuffed two peaches into her pocket, inserted some cold
chicken that was ready cut between the halves of two rolls, calmly
wrapped up her spoils in a napkin, tucked them into her muff, and
departed unnoticed.
“Wonderfully convenient, living like this,” she reflected, with a sweet
little grin. “Otherwise, Mr. Cylmer might have caused me to go forth
hungry.”
CHAPTER X.
A KISS.
Ismay went out into the clear, soft sunlight, treading lightly in her
smart, thick boots, with joy in her heart.
Things had played into her hands at last. Toward half-past two
o’clock, warm and lovely with her quick walk, she stood at Miles
Cylmer’s gates. They were heavy iron, hung from carved stone posts,
“Cylmer’s Ferry” cut deeply on them. She saw the significance of
the name, for a hundred yards in front of her a narrow river ran
sluggishly, cutting through Cylmer’s property for miles. There was a
high ivy-covered wall on both sides of the road, and the view, except
of the river, was limited.
Miss Trelane glanced up and down.
“Very considerate of Mr. Cylmer to have no lodge,” she observed aloud.
“A lodge-keeper and six children would have embarrassed me very much.”
She marched deliberately to the ivy-covered wall opposite the gate, and
swung herself up with the ease of long practise over Mrs. Barlow’s wall
at school. She had come up-hill all the way from Marchant’s Hold, and
now from the top of the six-foot wall the country lay before her like a
map.
She seated herself comfortably, and began with a capital appetite on
her lunch. As she took the peaches from her pocket she gave a little
nod of satisfaction. Far off down in the valley she could see the
hounds being taken home. There would be no late waiting for Mr. Cylmer,
since there had evidently been no sport to speak of. The peaches had
rubbed against her pocket and stained its smart green lining.
“Bother!” said the girl, with the thriftiness of poverty. She turned
the pocket inside out to dry.
“But the peaches are all right,” she added, as she finished them and
wiped her fingers on the fine damask napkin which she neatly bestowed
down a convenient hole in the wall. There were plenty more at Marchant
Hold, and it was greasy.
For a moment her back was to the road. She did not see a man riding
toward her, and turned with a real start, to discover Miles Cylmer on
a big chestnut horse within ten yards of her. The sunlight fell on his
handsome, hard face, his tawny mustache, his splendid figure in his
red coat and white riding-breeches. The sight of him brought dismay to
Ismay’s heart. She forgot all she had meant to say in sheer foolish
excitement at seeing him.
“I--I can’t get down,” she said childishly.
Cylmer stopped his horse and sat staring at her in utter amazement.
Who was this who sat on his wall like a lovely nymph, her water-green
eyes on his, her flaxen hair glinting like barley in the sun? There
flashed up before him the lights of the Palace Theater, a slim girl in
black who was hungry.
“I beg your pardon,” he stammered in his surprise. Could there be two
girls in the world with such scarlet lips and strange eyes, for surely
this could not be the lonely girl he had taken home that night? How
could she get here?
Ismay Trelane smiled in his perplexed face that slow, witch-smile that
was her best weapon.
“Don’t you know me, Mr. Cylmer? I know you, you see, and--please take
me down!” She held out her hands entreatingly.
Cylmer, like a man in a dream, swung himself off his horse and slipped
his arm through the reins.
He had seen Cristiane at the meet, lovely in her blue habit, had ridden
up to greet her, and been smartly snubbed for his pains. Somehow it
had stung unbearably. And the joy on the face of the girl he had never
thought to see again was like balm to his wounds.
Ismay, seated on the wall, leaned down and gave him both hands; her
eyes met his, strange and deep, with something in them that brought the
blood to his face.
“I told you we should meet again!” she cried, with soft delight in her
voice. “Are you glad to see me?”
Cylmer lifted her down, setting her safely clear of his fretting horse.
Her queer beauty dazzled him.
“Very glad,” he answered slowly.
For the first time in her life Ismay Trelane’s eyes fell before the
look of other eyes.
Cylmer stooped and kissed her lips.
* * * * *
For a moment the whole world swung dizzily to Ismay Trelane. A golden
mist blotted out the bare trees and ivied walls; a sound as of many
waters was in her ears. She staggered helplessly, and from far, far
away heard a voice that was very low and pitiful.
“My little girl, don’t look like that. I was a brute! Did I frighten
you?”
Was it fright that made her feel her own blood running in her veins?
She did not know. With a sharp wrench she was clear of him, and stood
leaning against his horse’s shoulder, her breath coming fast and hard.
Cristiane would have stamped her foot at him. Ismay only looked him
full in the face.
“Why did you do that?” she said quietly, though her hand went to her
breast as if something hurt her.
Cylmer bit his lip.
“Because I----” he hesitated. The truth, because she was so fair, would
be an insult.
“Never mind looking for a reason,” she said; and he saw that even her
lips were white.
“You did it, and that’s enough. If you will move your horse out of the
way I will go home.”
She shook from head to foot. He had kissed her, as a man kisses a girl
he has met alone at a music-hall, and she had kissed him like a nun who
kisses the cross.
Her voice cut, but something in it made Miles Cylmer take off his hat
and stand bareheaded before her.
“I won’t even ask you to forgive me.” His voice was low and sweet as
perhaps but one other woman knew it could be. “I behaved unpardonably.
Yet if you can believe me, I was so much more than glad to see you that
I--I forgot myself.”
“And me!” she interrupted with a hard little smile. “You remembered me
as a toy: you greeted me as one. If it is of any interest to you I may
tell you the toy is--broken!” She made a little gesture and turned away
without looking at him.
Cylmer, leading his horse, was at her side before she had taken ten
steps.
“Don’t go away like this,” he said, a shamed color on his tanned
cheek. “I deserve all you can say to me, and more. I only want you
to let me beg your pardon. I won’t”--his keen eyes very sweet, very
honest--“even ask you to forgive me.”
“It would be of no use if you did,” she returned quietly. “I never
forgave anything I had against any one in all my life. You were the
first person I ever knew who was kind to me, and now you have made me
sorry that you were.”
Her even, level voice had an implacable ring to it. Cylmer, disgusted
with himself, went off on a new tack.
“You looked so tired that night, and so childlike,” he said, with a
little pause before the last word. Ismay turned on him, her eyes full
of somber fire.
“You thought me some little milliner,” she cried superbly. “Yet you
treated me there like a lady, while to-day----” she shrugged her lovely
shoulders as though she were at a loss for words. Yet presently, as she
went on, her tone softened.
“I had run away that night. I had just come home from school and had no
dresses fit to wear. My mother had some one to dinner, and I was too
shabby to be seen. It was dull sitting alone, so I took all the money I
had and went out. The reason I was hungry was that I wouldn’t eat the
dinner that was sent up to me; it was horrid,” with a little laugh.
“But it was a mad thing to do; don’t you know that?” he said
wonderingly.
“I didn’t then; I do now.” Her self-possession had come back to her;
her smile had that indefinite womanly quality in it that had struck him
long ago, when he had been puzzled as to her age.
“You mean I have taught you this morning! Will you give me leave to try
and make you forget that?”
“You may never see me again.”
“I will if you do not move to another planet,” remarked Mr. Cylmer
deliberately, “or tell the butler you are never at home to me.”
“I cannot do either,” she said, with an indifference that he never
dreamed was imitation. “I have no butler, for one thing, and I don’t
mean to die if I can help it.”
“My dear little lady, I didn’t mean that.”
“Didn’t you? I do! I have a horror of dying.” She shivered suddenly, as
if neither the afternoon nor the quick blood in her veins could warm
her. “To die, and be put in the cold, damp earth, and not even know
the sun shone over your grave! I often think of it, just because it
terrifies me.”
“You have all your life to live first,” he said, with a wandering
glance at her. She piqued him with her changes of mood.
“Life is very amusing,” she observed calmly. “You see so much you are
not meant to see. Now I saw why you kissed me just now.”
Mr. Cylmer’s bronzed cheek showed a faint trace of red.
“I was an ungentlemanly beast,” he cried hotly. “Be kind and let us
forget it.”
Ismay looked at him, and once more her beauty startled him.
“Forget it, by all means--if you can!” she retorted. “But I don’t think
you will. Good-by, I am going home now.” And before he could speak she
had slipped through a gap in the hedge, which, she had seen as he came,
led by a short cut to Marchant’s Hold.
“But you haven’t even told me your name, or how you know mine, or where
you live,” Mr. Cylmer spoke to the empty air apparently, but a light
laugh, sweet as spring, answered him from the other side of the hedge.
“You can find out all those things by diligence,” returned a voice full
of mockery.
Mr. Cylmer scrambled hastily through the gap in the hedge, reins in
hand, and his horse’s head pushing through behind him.
“You’d better tell me,” he observed calmly. “I might tell, you know,
how you went to see the world one night.”
“Ah, but you won’t!” She was suddenly radiant, suddenly conscious that
nothing on earth would have bound him to her like that kiss. “You have
too much honor, Mr. Cylmer. Now, I have no honor at all. I could tell
my mother that you spoke to me without any introduction.”
He laughed, his eyes very sweet and kindly, as he said: “You won’t,
will you?”
“No,” she answered slowly, “and if you ever meet me it must be for the
first time. You won’t stammer and be surprised or anything, will you?”
“No, I think I can promise you that,” he said bluntly. “Only let me see
you; it was chaff, you know, about my telling tales.”
The girl looked at him with hard scrutiny, and as he met her eyes he
could have cut his hand off for this morning’s work. For her face was
strangely innocent, and pitifully young to be that of a girl who was
allowed to wander about by herself to a music-hall.
“My dear little lady,” he said slowly, “do you know that I can never
forgive myself? I don’t deserve your ever speaking to me or trusting me
again. And yet, I ask you to let me be your friend. Will you?”
A little quiver shook her. Would he really be her friend? Yet, after
all, why not? But like a dream there rose before her the image of
Cristiane le Marchant, young, lovely, and rich; behind that the vision
of Marcus Wray, his thick red lips mocking her in her fancy. What could
either of them have to do with Miles Cylmer? Yet she was cold with
fright, standing there in the winter sun, lest Cristiane le Marchant
might have more of Cylmer’s heart than she knew, and lest Marcus
Wray might find her hiding-place with his secret that could make her
forswear the sight of Cylmer’s face for very terror.
She drew a sharp breath.
Cylmer’s face grew blank as he looked at her.
“You won’t! You can’t forgive me?” he said gently. “Very well.”
Ismay put her hand in his, but with the gesture of a woman, not a girl.
“Be my friend, then!” she said slowly. “Promise me that you will
believe in me, and trust me. No one ever did that.”
“I will trust you through anything,” he said, puzzled. “It is a
bargain; you are to forgive me, and I am to be your friend for always.”
He clasped her hand hard, as if it were the hand of a comrade, and the
blood came red to her cheek.
“Won’t you tell who you are?” he asked, smiling at the fancy that kept
her nameless, as he released her hand.
“Don’t look so startled, it’s only the station bus!” For there was a
sound of wheels on the road behind him. It was a long instant before
she answered, and when she spoke she looked no longer the same girl.
“I am no one--of any importance,” she said, with a languid nod; then
she turned away and was gone without even a good-by.
Cylmer was forced to go through the hedge, outside of which his horse
was fretting and plunging with impatience.
“I’d swear she never kissed a man before,” he mused as he mounted. “And
she’s right, I can’t forget it. I wonder who she’s staying with.” Not
for a moment connecting her with the strange woman at Marchant’s Hold.
Yet the girl in his thoughts had at that moment forgotten all about him.
She was running swiftly toward Marchant’s Hold, with a deadly terror
at her heart. It was senseless, unreasonable, yet the glimpse she had
had through the hedge of the occupant of the station bus was so like a
glimpse of Marcus Wray that she had turned sick.
It was like waking from a dream of warmth and happiness, to find death
in the house. Yet it could not be that Wray had found them.
“He would never think of us in a respectable house,” she thought, as
she hurried on.
“But if he did, we have no more diamonds; we can’t buy him off any
more.”
She reached an open field, below her in the level valley rose the
strong towers of Marchant’s Hold, with the flag of England’s glory
flying on the highest of them. As she looked the flag went suddenly
down to half-mast. Some one, a Le Marchant born, must be lying dead!
Ismay Trelane, who hated death, would have stayed away for hours, but
she dared not. With lagging feet she came at last to the great hall
door, with its motto over it: “What Marchant held let Marchant hold,”
its pride a mockery, grim and trenchant, for there was a streamer of
crape on the door-handle.
A deadly terror of being out there alone came over her. She pulled
desperately at the door-handle. If she had seen Marcus Wray he would be
on his way to Marchant’s Hold; she would die if he came and caught her
here alone.
“Thomas,” she cried. “What’s the matter?”
The old butler who let her in could hardly answer.
“My master’s dead, Miss Trelane,” he whispered, “killed in a railway
accident.”
“Dead!” she fairly staggered. That would mean turning out into the
world again. She ran wildly past him up-stairs to her mother’s room.
CHAPTER XI.
A NET FOR HER FEET.
Mrs. Trelane, her face drawn and gray, stood staring out of the window.
As Ismay returned she turned with sharp relief.
“Where have you been? Why did you go out like that and stay so long?”
she demanded fiercely. “I have been almost wild here, with no one to
speak to. Do you know that we’re ruined? That Sir Gaspard is dead?”
The girl nodded.
“I saw the flag half-mast--I asked Thomas.” Her face was suddenly very
tired. “How did you hear--and are you sure it’s true?”
“True enough. Look here.” She tossed a telegram toward the girl, who
caught the fluttering paper deftly.
“From Bolton & Carey to Mrs. Trelane,” the message ran. “Fatal accident
on the railway just before Aix. Have received wire that Sir Gaspard
le Marchant and servant are among those killed, and fear there is no
doubt it is not true. Break news to daughter. Will send particulars as
soon as they can be obtained.”
“How did they know you were here?”
“Sir Gaspard told them I was to be here during his absence. I know Mr.
Bolton--or I did when I was Helen le Marchant,” impatiently. “There’s
no mystery about that.”
“Have you told Cristiane?”
“No!” Mrs. Trelane flung herself into a chair and twisted her smooth
fingers uneasily. “She’s asleep. She came in dead tired and lay down.
Her maid is watching to tell her when she wakes. How can I tell her? If
I do it, it will make her hate me.”
With quick contempt Ismay glanced at her.
“On the contrary, it may be your only chance with her,” she said
angrily. “Tell me, had you any arrangement, any bargain, with Sir
Gaspard?”
“None,” with a sullen shake of the head. “We were asked here on a
visit, you and I, ’till things could be arranged,’ he said. But I know
that we were here on approval, if you like to call it so. If the girl
liked us we were to stay on indefinitely----”
“And you sit here when you know that, and run the chance of having that
maid whom she has had for years tell her that her father is dead!”
Ismay flung out her hands in exasperation. “Can’t you see that if any
one tells her but you or I we shall be outside of it all to Cristiane?
Move, please.” Mrs. Trelane’s chair blocked her path to the door. “I’m
going to tell her this minute.”
With the grace of an angry animal, she was out of the room and up the
corridor to Cristiane’s door. Jessie, the girl’s own maid, opened it,
her face swelled with crying.
“She’s asleep still, the poor lamb!” the woman whispered.
With unnatural strength Ismay kept the contempt from her face; the
woman was in a very luxury of woe, and would have blurted out her bad
news, without doubt, the very instant her mistress awoke. What luck
that she had come home in time!
“Oh, Jessie!” she said softly. “It’s so dreadful. And you must be
tired. Go and get your tea, and I’ll stay till you come back.”
Jessie cast a glance backward at the bed.
Cristiane, in a white dressing-gown, slept like a baby, her rose-leaf
lips just parted, her lovely cheek flushed. There was no sign of her
waking till dinner, and down-stairs there would be tea and muffins, and
solemn waggings of the head. Cook would be telling her dreams--she was
a great one for dreams. The prospect was too tempting.
“Thank you, miss,” she said. “I’d be glad of a cup of tea. I’ll be back
in a jiffy; long before she wakes.”
“Then you’ll be a clever woman, my good Jessie!” the girl thought, as
she nodded and passed silently by the woman, who stood respectfully out
of her way.
She looked around the room, where a fire burned softly between brass
andirons, where the floor was covered with a pale-blue and rose carpet,
and the walls hung with blue silk that was covered with pink roses. At
the side of the bed, where she might slip her bare feet upon it as she
got up in the mornings, was Cristiane’s only legacy from her mother, a
great, white bearskin, brought long ago from farthest Russian snows.
Not one atom of the prodigal luxury about the room was lost on those
green, dilated eyes that stared so mercilessly. The very silver of
the toilet-trays and bottles, the white vellum binding of the rows of
books, the rose velvet dressing-gown lined with white fur that hung by
the bedside, each and all struck Ismay with a separate stab.
“I will have them all before I die--all!” she said deliberately. “And
she’s got to help me, for now, at least, I can’t turn out into the
world again after I’ve seen this.”
Noiselessly she turned and bolted the door; she would have no maid
coming to interfere with her work. With that same silent, sinuous grace
she walked to the bedside, and if there had been eyes to see her as
she knelt there they might have looked away as at the sight of a snake
ready to strike.
Yet the hand she laid softly on Cristiane’s was utterly tender.
Perhaps the beauty of the gold-red hair that streamed over the
lace-trimmed pillow and the white satin quilt, the exquisite
unconsciousness of the lovely, girlish face, touched the onlooker in
some strange way, for her face softened miraculously.
“Cristiane,” she whispered. “Cristiane, dear, wake up.”
The girl stirred, muttered something with smiling lips, and was fast
asleep again.
“Cristiane!” Ismay repeated; she touched her more firmly, for time was
going.
“Yes.” The sleepy answer almost startled her. “Oh, it’s Ismay!”
Cristiane sat up, rubbing her eyes, drawing her hand from Ismay’s to
do it. “I’ve been asleep; I was so tired. Did you win a pair of gloves
from me?”
Ismay’s eyes filled with tears; she did not know herself if they were
real or if she were merely warming up to her part.
“I had such a funny dream!” Cristiane cried, with a little laugh of
pleasure. “I dreamed about daddy; he said he was coming home.” She
caught the look on Ismay’s face as she spoke.
“You’re crying! What’s the matter?” The sleepy sound was gone from
the voice at once. “Ismay, what is it?” with both her hands on the
shoulders of the girl kneeling by the bed.
“Mother has had a telegram. There was an accident----” Was it her own
voice that faltered so strangely?
“Not from father--he’s not hurt?” the hands on Ismay’s shoulders fairly
bruised them.
“Look at me, tell me!” Cristiane cried fiercely. “Is he hurt?”
Ismay lifted her face, and saw Cristiane’s eyes, black, dilated,
imperious.
“He’s not hurt!” she said dully; and then she flung her arms suddenly
round the girl who sat crouched in her white gown as though it were a
garment of fiery torture. “My dearest, nothing will ever hurt him any
more,” she said, in slow desperation.
“You mean he’s dead!” The words seemed to come after an interminable
interval of time, in which the ticking of the silver clock, the
murmur of the fire burning in the gate, had sounded loud and somewhat
threatening to Ismay Trelane. With a face as hard as stone Cristiane
had risen from her bed and stood on the white bearskin, her eyes
narrowed, her lips set.
“I mean he is happy”--as she had never thought in her life, Ismay
thought now for the words that would not come. “I mean he has gone to
be with your mother--till you come!”
To the speaker the words were a childish fable, a lie; but they went
home.
Cristiane swayed where she stood, and like a flash Ismay’s arms were
around her; but she seemed not to feel them.
“What is that to me?” she cried, with a dreadful harshness, trembling
like a leaf. Over her shoulder Ismay saw the clock. It was after five.
At any moment some old friend might come and touch that chord in the
girl’s heart for which she was trying in vain.
“Think!” she said quietly. “Put yourself in your father’s place. Your
mother loved him as you do. She died for his sake and yours when she
was but little older than you.”
As she spoke, she was thankful she had drawn the story from her mother
one day in bored curiosity. “Do you think she did not beg him to hurry
after her? Do you think the years were not long to the man she left
behind? Think of the time when you were only a child and busy with
lessons and play; think how your father sat alone at night with his
sorrow; think of the things he could never say to her, and how he
longed for the touch of her hand many a time--and then say, if you can,
that it is nothing to you that they are together again, you that he
loved, you that she died for!”
With a great cry Cristiane flung out her arms.
“Ismay! Ismay! Help me to bear it! I know--I’ve always known--he wanted
her!” Tears came at last from her frozen eyes. She clung wildly to the
girl who held her. “But I never thought he’d leave me.”
“God took him, Cristiane,” said Ismay, and as she said it she believed
it.
“Tell me all you know, quick!” her voice thick with sobbing.
With all the strength of her young, lithe body, Ismay lifted her and
sat down with her on her bed.
“He was going to Rome--she died there,” she whispered. “The train was
wrecked at Aix. He was--Cristiane, it was night, he was asleep, and he
woke in paradise with the woman he loved so long!”
Cristiane’s arms clutched her suddenly.
“He didn’t suffer, tell me! I’ll be brave; he always liked me to be
brave.”
Brave! Ismay could have laughed outright. If this were bravery, what
did you call the other thing? Not all death and hell could have made
her cry as Cristiane was crying now.
“He never felt it, he never knew,” she answered, and if her voice
hardened Cristiane did not hear it. As if the words tore the very soul
out of her, she cried out: “I want father! Oh! I want my father!”
Ismay Trelane at that cry for once was awed to silence. She stooped
and kissed the golden head that lay on her shoulder; kissed it with
a passion of pity, a sudden feeling of protection that was real, for
Cristiane le Marchant.
A knock came on the closed door.
“Tell them to go away,” Cristiane gasped. “Don’t move; don’t go. I
don’t want any one but you!”
The leap of sudden rapture in Ismay’s heart made her clutch at her
side. This was what she had wanted. Her work was done as no one else
could have done it.
“No one shall come in,” she answered softly. “Let me go and speak to
whoever it is for a minute and tell them to go away.”
She laid Cristiane deftly on the pillows, and with noiseless swiftness
slipped into the passage, closing the door behind her.
Mrs. Trelane was there, pale with nervous fright.
“It’s that man Cylmer. He wants to see her. What shall I do? Does she
know about her father?”
“Luckily for us, she does,” said the girl dryly. “Where do you suppose
we should have been if the maid had been with her and Mr. Cylmer had
come? She would have gone down and heard it from him.”
“Why not him as well as any other?” asked her mother, with quick
suspicion.
“Because I meant no one to tell her but me. Don’t you understand that
yet?” asked the girl sharply. Oh! how lucky she had been! But for her
it might have been Miles Cylmer Cristiane had clung to. Miles Cylmer
who had caught her as she swayed. The thought made Ismay sick, and for
another reason than the sake of her own bread and butter.
“Shall I go to her?” Mrs. Trelane made a step toward the shut door.
“No, better not! And don’t see Mr. Cylmer. It isn’t proper to see
people when there is any one dead,” she added.
“I’m not anxious to see him, you needn’t worry. But he gave Thomas this
for Cristiane.” She held out a card. Ismay’s eyes flashed as she read
it. Was it thus that a man who was only a friend of her father’s would
write to the girl who lay prostrate with grief?
“Be brave, dear. It may not be true. I am going up to town to-night
to find out all I can from the lawyers. I will be back as soon as
possible. Please let me try to help you. MILES.”
“He must have seen the flag and come over at once,” she thought, a
wild, unreasoning terror at her heart that he cared for Cristiane. Men
were like that; they kissed one girl when they loved another.
“I’ll give it to her. There’s no answer,” she said. And in the dusky
corridor her mother did not see that her lips had grown bloodless.
“Tell Thomas to say to Mr. Cylmer that Cristiane can’t see him. And
send up some tea or wine, or something.” She leaned hard on the door
for support. “I’m worn out; worn out!” She had been full of life five
minutes since, but now, when she must go and comfort this girl whom
Miles Cylmer had come in such haste to see, Ismay’s knees trembled
under her. If only she dared to leave Cristiane long enough to go to
him, to tell him----Bah! what could she tell him?
Mr. Cylmer turned away from Marchant’s Hold perfectly unsuspicious that
the green witch eyes that had held his were those of no other than
Ismay Trelane. If he had known he might not have been the first to
spread a net for her feet. But what he did unconsciously she did with
meaning. His note never reached the girl to whom it was written.
CHAPTER XII.
“IF I ASK YOU?”
Mr. Cylmer was not back at Marchant’s Hold as soon as he had expected.
Three days after his arrival in London he was still there, and he sat
now in Mr. Bolton’s private office listening impatiently to the old
man’s precise sentences. He had been put off from day to day till now;
there was no news, nothing definite. Mr. Cylmer must excuse Mr. Bolton
for not seeing him, as he had nothing to communicate--and so on. Small
wonder that when at last he was admitted Miles Cylmer sat impatiently
in the client’s chair of Mr. Bolton’s sanctum.
“The exact news is this,” the lawyer said slowly: “Sir Gaspard was
taken ill in Paris, and, being nervous, made a will, calling in a
lawyer who was in the hotel. The Dean of Chelsea, also a guest in the
house, and the proprietor were witnesses, and the will was placed by
the latter in his safe. A duplicate Sir Gaspard took with him on his
ill-fated journey. He left that night for Rome by the Mont Cenis route,
and at dawn the train was wrecked, just before it reached Aix. When I
say wrecked I mean there was an accident merely.”
“Of course!” Cylmer fidgeted. What did it matter how the thing
happened; it had no connection with Sir Gaspard’s affairs.
“In the sleeping-carriage, or just beside it, Sir Gaspard and his
servant were found by the guard, who had escaped injury and was able
to identify them, or, rather, the servant”--clearing his throat
hastily--“for the burning carriage had--well! the man knew it was Sir
Gaspard; he had noticed the fur-lined coat he traveled in, and there
were charred fragments of it around the body.” Mr. Bolton paused;
old friend as he was of Gaspard le Marchant, the manner of his death
sickened him.
“Was there no one else in the carriage?”
“One other man, a Frenchman. But he must have been caught in the
burning carriage and utterly destroyed. The railway people sent a very
clean report, and it has been corroborated by wire by the clerk I sent
over at once. He saw the bodies. I am afraid there is no doubt, for he
had often seen Parker. I was in the habit of sending him to Marchant’s
Hold on business. Sir Gaspard of late came to town very seldom.”
“I remember that fur-lined coat,” Cylmer said unwillingly. He
remembered also the history of it; the sables of its lining had been a
present from Sir Gaspard’s Russian wife; it was for her sake that he
wore it.
“But it was curious that he should have made a will in that sudden
way,” he protested.
“Not in his state of health,” Bolton returned. “I saw his doctor
yesterday, and I learned from him that Sir Gaspard’s death was in any
case imminent. He had a mortal disease--and knew it. Personally, I
think he went to Rome to die there--at least he meant to do so. That,
you see, explains his making a will.”
Cylmer nodded.
“How did you hear of the will?” he asked.
“I thought I told you,” patiently. “The will, with a letter from
Dubourg, the hotel proprietor, reached me yesterday. In it he mentioned
the Dean of Chelsea as one of the witnesses, and him I saw this
morning. It was all perfectly regular. The dean read both wills at Sir
Gaspard’s bidding. They were exactly alike. He thought him looking very
ill at the time.”
“Poor little Cristiane!” Cylmer said involuntarily. “It is a great
responsibility for her, all that money and land.”
“She is young”--with the unconscious cynicism of years--“the
world--life--will console her! But I could wish I had been left her
guardian.”
“What!” Cylmer’s handsome face was blank. “Who is, then, if you are
not?”
“Madam Trelane,” said the other dryly. “I can tell you that much
without a breach of confidence, for the dean will have told half London
by now.”
“That woman he sent down to stay with Cristiane!”
The words were irrepressible. At the mention of Mrs. Trelane there
sprang into Cylmer’s mind the memory of the only day he had seen her,
and once more he wondered why she made him think of Abbotsford.
“Who is she? Did she mean to marry Le Marchant?” he said quickly.
“My dear sir”--Mr. Bolton coughed dryly--“Mrs. Trelane was Helen le
Marchant, Sir Gaspard’s own cousin, and the nearest relative he had
except Cristiane. And she is said to be a clever woman.”
“Where has she been all this time?” Cylmer said slowly. “I never heard
of her.”
“In London.” There was no need to air all he knew of Helen Trelane.
Yet, in spite of his caution, there was deep distrust of her on his
face.
“A clever woman!” he repeated quietly; “as you will see when the will
is read to-morrow.”
Miles Cylmer got up, a strange look on his handsome face.
“If he has left the money to any one but Cristiane,” he said with a
ring of reckless truth in his voice, “I’ll settle twenty thousand
pounds on her. I would marry her--but she won’t have me. Anyhow, as
long as I live she shall have all the money she wants.”
“You are too hasty, Mr. Cylmer;” but there was a kind of pity in the
old lawyer’s eyes. “The child’s fortune is hers, but the reversion is
Mrs. Trelane’s and her daughter’s.”
“Was Sir Gaspard a lunatic?” Miles cried.
Mr. Bolton shook his head.
“No; only a good man, who knew nothing of the world,” he answered
cynically. “Good morning, Mr. Cylmer. If you go to Marchant’s Hold
before I do be good enough to keep my confidence.”
“I’m traveling down with you,” Cylmer returned with sudden haughtiness.
“I’ll meet you at the train to-night.” Yet as he turned he paused.
“Has Mrs. Trelane a husband?” he asked.
“Dead, years ago! A man who was his own enemy,” briefly. “She and her
daughter were alone and in poverty when Sir Gaspard found them.”
“And paid their debts?” said Cylmer searchingly.
“Very possibly.” Mr. Bolton was still negotiating with those unpaid
tradesmen, but he did not say so. “Mrs. Trelane was a very pretty girl,
Mr. Cylmer.”
“Then she has developed into a very well-painted lady,” Cylmer
responded, and departed without more ceremony.
“Trelane! It’s not a common name,” he thought as he went down-stairs.
“There must be some one in London who knows about her.”
He turned into his club at lunch-time, and looked up irritably as old
Lord De Fort greeted him from the next table.
“Sad news this about Le Marchant,” the neat old dandy said, tapping his
newspaper. “A young man, too. And not a relative to come in for all
that money but his daughter.”
“His cousin, Mrs. Trelane--perhaps!” The last word with late wisdom.
“Trelane? Not Helen Trelane?” Lord De Fort put up a shaky eye-glass and
stared at Cylmer.
“That’s her name, yes! Why?”
“Gad! So she is his cousin. I sincerely hope she’s forgotten it.”
Cylmer got up and seated himself at Lord De Fort’s table.
“Why?” he demanded. “Speak out. I only saw the woman once in my life.”
Lord De Fort obliged him. Under the sharp tongue of the old dandy every
shred of honor and virtue fell away from Helen Trelane. Her life was
set forth in detail, till Cylmer bit his lip as he sat silent. This
was the woman to whom was given the guardianship of a young girl, this
adventuress whom even Lord De Fort despised.
“She has a daughter,” Cylmer said at last, with a faint gleam of hope
that the girl might be different.
“Who grew too clever and so was sent to school. I used to see the
child, a skinny imp of ten, going to the pawn-shop of a morning. Helen
Trelane was in deep waters then.”
Cylmer got up to go, but something made him pause.
“Tell me,” he said suddenly, “was this Mrs. Trelane ever a friend of
Abbotsford’s?”
“What! The man who was murdered? My dear sir, I don’t know. What put it
into your head?”
“It was just idle curiosity,” said Cylmer hastily. “I have no reason
to think so,” for, after all, he had no right to drag any woman’s name
into an affair like that.
“Humph!” Lord De Fort gave a dry grunt. “I don’t think she ever knew
him. Mrs. Trelane is much too clever a woman to have ever known a
murdered man.”
Cylmer’s head was dizzy as he left the club. To think of Cristiane down
in the country, away from every one, with a woman like that, in her
absolute power for years to come, made him burn with useless rage.
A sudden thought came over him as he walked aimlessly down the street,
his features drawn with worry. If he could see the woman now, before
she knew of that iniquitous will, perhaps he could terrify her into
letting him buy her off. His promise to Mr. Bolton would not stand in
his way; that was only that he would not mention his knowledge of Sir
Gaspard’s will--surely the very last piece of information he would wish
to give to Helen Trelane.
Mr. Cylmer took the first train for home.
“I can make the country too hot to hold her, and I’ll tell her so,” he
reflected as he got out at the little way station for Marchant’s Hold.
But he was uncomfortably conscious that if she did not care, and said
so, he was powerless.
Mrs. Trelane, in immaculate black, was seated cozily over the
drawing-room fire, outwardly calm, inwardly a prey to forebodings. She
never looked up as the door opened, and unannounced, unexpected, Miles
Cylmer walked in. She sprang to her feet, utterly astounded. Then she
remembered he had been Sir Gaspard’s most intimate friend.
“It is Mr. Cylmer, is it not?” she said quietly, peering at him in the
firelight. “Have you any news?”
He looked at her, at the tea-table where the silver glittered
sumptuously; at all the luxury of the room. It might all come to be
this woman’s own. Already she looked as though she were mistress. He
seemed not to see the hand she held out to him, and, white and smooth,
she let it fall to her black skirts.
“No, there is no fresh news. It is all quite true, that is all.” His
voice rang harshly in spite of himself.
Mrs. Trelane, looking at him, was somehow afraid. He looked as though
he had come for a purpose.
“Poor Cristiane!” she said gently. “You would like to see her? I hardly
know--I am afraid----”
“I came to see you!” This time he saw her quick start as the fire
blazed up. “I have just come from London. I met a friend of yours
there.”
“A friend of mine?” she stammered. “Did they send you to me?”
She had only one thought, Lord Abbotsford lying dead in the little
rose-colored room. Had anything come out? On a sudden her very throat
was dry.
Cylmer had not sat down; she wished he would not stand over her, as if
he threatened her.
“I have few friends,” her voice was wonderfully steady. “Who was this?”
“Lord De Fort.” He looked at her masterfully. “Mrs. Trelane, you are a
clever woman. I think you will see that Marchant’s Hold will not give
your--abilities--scope!”
Lord De Fort! It was he and his old stories that had made her shake in
her chair! She would have laughed aloud had she dared.
“Lord De Fort hates me!” She shrugged her shoulders. “Have you come
down here to tell me so?”
Her glance moved suddenly to a dark corner of the room. Did something
stir there? Or was it a curtain swaying in a draft? Cylmer was puzzled.
There was relief in her voice when he had implied that he knew what
would have overwhelmed another woman with shame--and at first she had
been terrified. What was she looking at now in the dark, over his
shoulder?
He turned sharply.
A slim girl, all in black, her flaxen head held high, her eyes very
dark in the fitful light, stood behind him, for once the witch-smile
absent from her mouth.
“Mother, please go to Cristiane,” she said almost sternly, and Mrs.
Trelane without a word obeyed her. Ismay came a step nearer to Cylmer
and looked him in the eyes.
“You!” she said, and the sound of her voice was like knives. “It is
you, who would”--she stopped as if something suffocated her.
Cylmer put his hand on her shoulder, quick and hard.
“What are you doing here--with her?” he nodded toward the door.
“She is my mother,” the girl said simply. “I am Ismay Trelane!”
In the silence neither knew how long they stood motionless. The girl
spoke first.
“I heard all you said,” she uttered slowly. “I know--oh! I know--what
you meant. That we are not fit to stay here, my mother and I. Make your
mind easy; we shall be turned out when the will is read! We have no
money, nowhere to go; but that will not concern you.”
Miles Cylmer felt suddenly contemptible. His righteous anger fell from
him like a garment.
“You don’t understand,” he groaned. “You can’t.”
“Oh! but I do. That old man told you to-day that we were poor,
disreputable. I tell you that Sir Gaspard found us starving, and he
gave us a chance; a chance to start fair, to pay our debts, to have
enough to eat and to wear! And then he died, and it was gone from
us--like that!” with a little flick of her exquisite hand. “You need
not threaten my mother; we shall be out of your way soon enough.”
“Ismay!” he cried, involuntarily, “I could not know she was your
mother. What are you going to do?”
She took no heed of his words.
“Shall you tell Cristiane all you know? Or if I ask you”--there
was sudden passion in her even voice, sudden fire in her strange
eyes--“will you let us go from here as we came, just the decent, poor
relations that her innocent soul thinks us? She will know evil soon
enough. Will you tell her it is in her very house?”
“I will tell her--nothing,” he answered slowly. “God forbid that I,
who promised to be your friend, should say the first word against your
mother.”
Months afterward he knew that nothing on earth should have kept him
from speaking out. Yet to what good? The will was hard and fast;
nothing could be done to break it.
He turned away from the pleading eyes as if he dared not look in them.
It was not till he was out in the frosty air that he remembered he had
never even asked after Cristiane le Marchant.
CHAPTER XIII.
HER HOUR OF TRIUMPH.
The solemn memorial service in the parish church for Gaspard le
Marchant was over. Mr. Bolton had come away from it a puzzled man.
Helen Trelane and her daughter had sat facing him while the rector
read, and there was no triumph on either of their faces; only a
strained something that might have been despair.
Could he have been too hasty? Did Helen Trelane know nothing of that
will, whose distasteful pages he must presently read aloud?
Cristiane puzzled him, too. Why had she not had her father’s body
brought home to rest in peace with his kith and kin? Under her black
veil he saw that she sobbed pitifully, and saw, too, that her hand
throughout the service was fast in Ismay Trelane’s. Could he have
wronged them, mother and daughter?
The old man coughed irritably as he sat in the library at Marchant’s
Hold, where Sir Gaspard had written that fateful letter to Helen
Trelane. Miles Cylmer, who sat there, too, as Sir Gaspard’s old friend
had a right, rose suddenly and aroused the old lawyer from his thoughts.
The library door was opening; the hour had come for Cristiane le
Marchant; from now, good or bad, gentlewoman or adventuress, Helen
Trelane held her fate to mold at her will.
And Cristiane came in first, slowly, reluctantly, as if to hear the
wishes of her father, who had been her all, cut her to the heart, now
that she would hear his voice no more. Ismay, her head held high as she
saw Miles Cylmer without seeming even to let her eyes rest on his face,
followed close behind. Last came the woman whom both the men standing
up to receive distrusted and despised.
Calm, pale, handsome, Mrs. Trelane swept in, and read nothing friendly
in those waiting faces.
Well, they would read the will! And then there would be the world to
face again for Helen Trelane.
There was not even a flicker of her lowered eyelids as she sat down.
There would be no use in begging for mercy from men like these. She was
ready for dismissal, as a man who has lost all is ready for death. Mr.
Bolton, anxious to get his work over and be done, opened the envelope
containing the two foolscap pages that Gaspard le Marchant had never
signed. As he read, the silence of death was in the room.
The world was going round dizzily to Mrs. Trelane as she listened.
She, who sat there sick and hopeless, without a penny, was to have
the sole guardianship of Cristiane till she was twenty-one; was to be
allowed five hundred pounds a year for her life, to be shared with
her daughter; was--her heart fairly turned over in her breast as the
next clause came out--to be sole inheritrix if Cristiane were to die
unmarried, or without children, and in that case everything would be
Ismay’s in the end.
She tried to speak, but there was only a queer little sound in her
throat; and opposite her, in her pride and triumph, sat Miles Cylmer,
who last night had insulted her when she was in despair. A hand of
steel clutched her arm at the thought.
“Don’t look like that!” Ismay’s furious whisper was low in her ear, as
the lawyer went on reading unimportant clauses as to legacies to old
servants. “Play your game! Be careful!”
No one else heard the words, or knew even that the girl had spoken.
Mrs. Trelane, with the paleness of death on her face, sat without
moving, as quiet and apparently as calm as when she entered the room.
Yet her heart was beating madly.
“Safety, luxury, power!” it pounded in her ear. “Yours, all yours. A
dead past, a living present! No more duns, no more striving.” In sheer
terror, lest she should scream aloud in her joyful relief, lest it
should be written on her face that Gaspard le Marchant was no more to
her than a dead dog, Ismay tightened her warning hand till sheer pain
brought her mother to her senses.
Once more the girl’s wits had been her salvation. As the lawyer
finished the short will and sat looking quietly at the neat sheets,
wherein he and Miles Cylmer were executors with the woman whose past
they knew, Mrs. Trelane rose to her feet. Her ghastly pallor, her
statuesque quiet, were magnificent as she faced them, only her eyes
were not on theirs. “Cristiane,” she said very gently, “this has
surprised me, and you, too! If you do not want me to live here and try
to make you happy, say so. And Mr. Bolton can perhaps make some other
arrangement.”
Both men gasped stupidly in their amazement. The lawyer’s distrust of
her was already shaken--it vanished utterly at her words. Cylmer could
have killed her for daring to speak and propose what she knew could not
be done. And yet, as his eyes fell on Ismay, he could not help feeling
relief at the knowledge that she was not to be turned out as she had
foreseen.
In the silence Cristiane spoke between her sobs.
“No, no! Daddy wished it,” she cried out. “Oh, don’t go! I have no one
else, and I--I’m so lonely.”
She crossed swiftly to where the elder woman stood waiting, and flung
her arms round her neck, where she stood faintly redolent of the
peach-blossom which had sickened Miles Cylmer as she entered.
“You won’t leave me! I would die without you and Ismay! Ismay, who is
like my sister already.” Cristiane pleaded imploringly, and at the
sight of her young innocence, as she clung to the woman, it was not
in human nature that either of the men who looked on should repress a
start. Cylmer kept down a furious word, somehow, but he could not keep
from making a long step toward Cristiane, even though he knew he had no
right to tear her from the woman she clasped so closely.
Yet some one else was more sick than he at the sight, though Helen
Trelane was her own mother. A touch gentle as velvet, more compelling
than steel, somehow had drawn Cristiane a yard away.
“Hush, dear!” Ismay said softly. “Everything shall be as you say. But
let Mr. Bolton talk a little to mother.”
She did not hold the girl; her touch was scarcely more innocent of
evil than her mother’s; and at the sharp flash of gratitude in Miles
Cylmer’s eyes her own were lowered angrily.
“I suppose the will stands!” Mrs. Trelane was saying gently.
“H’m! Yes--yes--of course!” Mr. Bolton returned. “If Cristiane did
not approve I suppose it could be put in chancery and guardians
appointed”--in his heart knowing it impossible.
“But I do approve!” Cristiane cried imperiously. “It is what daddy
wanted, and what I wish, too. I will not have his will questioned in
courts.”
All the wilfulness she had from her mother awoke in her; she looked at
the old lawyer with cried-out eyes that yet were steady.
“You are sure, Cristiane?” Cylmer said sternly.
“Sure!”--with a flash of her spirit.
“You hear her?” Mrs. Trelane, gentle still, spoke to Mr. Bolton. “You
know that I stay, by her wish, not my own.”
“By her wish!” he returned mechanically.
“And the will!” Miles Cylmer murmured sarcastically, knowing she was
safe in her magnanimity, her self-forgetfulness, since no court in
England would doubt that clear will.
“Then I will stay.” With a little sigh, as if she had been seeking
the right path, and at last found it, Mrs. Trelane moved nearer to
Cristiane; not very near, for somehow Ismay stood between them, her
eyes, that only her mother could see, blazing green with warning.
She lowered them as her mother stood back, and was no longer between
her mother and the two men, and so did not see Mrs. Trelane for the
first time look full at Miles Cylmer.
She had reason, since last evening, to hate him, yet it was not her
dislike that made him grow so pale.
The merciless triumph in her hard blue eyes, whence a veil seemed to
have been lifted, the cold derision which said plainly, “Where are your
threats now?” troubled him more than the undying enmity that he saw on
her face. What would come to Cristiane in the hands of a woman like
this, who could act gentleness and magnanimity at one minute, and the
next show the true colors of an adventuress who has outwitted her enemy?
Would she use her power to forbid him the house? Very likely, after
last night’s mad attempt to stay the tide of fate with a straw!
“She will have her work cut out to do it,” he reflected, the muscles
round his mouth very set and grim. He moved quickly toward Cristiane.
“You will let me come and see you sometimes,” he said very low, “even
now that you have new friends?”
For he was sore and smarting that the girl who knew he loved her, who
had known him all her life, had never even given him a look since she
entered the room.
She looked at him now indifferently.
“If you care to come over, please do”--her voice quite cold and level.
“You will let me do anything I can for you--you know I am always at
your service.”
Cristiane’s lip curled, ever so faintly. If he were always at her
service, why had he never come, never written, when the dreadful news
was known? The new friends that he grudged her were more faithful than
the old, very surely! When she had wanted comfort it was not Miles
Cylmer who had given it.
“I don’t think I want anything now,” she said proudly, never dreaming
of how he had tried to do his best for her. “But, of course, come when
you please.”
She went quietly forward to speak to Mr. Bolton, and for a moment
Cylmer stood silent, sick at heart, though he had made his point, and
the door of Marchant’s Hold was not shut to him. Ismay’s eyes were deep
and green as she watched his face; he had made a point for her, too.
“He will come to see Cristiane,” she thought triumphantly; “he shall
stay to see me!” She had no longer any fear lest her mother should
be connected in his mind with that missing photograph. She was too
different in her decorous black from the white-gowned, bare-armed woman
of the picture.
She beckoned Cylmer close to her with a little backward motion of her
head. “Make it up with mother,” she said under her breath, Cylmer’s
broad shoulders shielding her from the others. “She will never really
forgive you, but she will pretend to.”
Cylmer nodded.
“And you?” he said uncomfortably.
Ismay’s eyes met his, and for once they were true.
“I am going to take care of Cristiane.” She little knew of all she
meant when she spoke; of the days of watching, the nights of fear; but
long after Miles Cylmer, remembering this day, knew that in her fashion
she had kept her word.
CHAPTER XIV.
MORE TREACHERY.
“Do you think I should have a crape veil?” Mother and daughter sat
alone in the comfortable sitting-room that was Ismay’s own, when a
week had passed after the reading of the will and their security was
no longer a matter for ceaseless, exulting discussion. Around both of
them lay a wild confusion of dressmakers’ patterns, bits of black stuff
of all sorts, sketches of gowns which had been, till now, only dreams
of Ismay Trelane. Yet she pushed them suddenly off her lap and yawned
listlessly. A whole week had gone by without a sign of Cylmer; and yet
she knew he had patched up a hollow truce with her mother.
“Oh, I wish I knew if he were in love with Cristiane,” she mused
moodily. “I could do more.”
“Do listen, Ismay, and don’t look so sulky!” Mrs. Trelane said smartly.
“Do you think I had better have a crape veil or plain net?”
“Crape. It hides your face more!”--with unpleasant significance. “Ugh!
How I hate mourning. Mother, where is Cristiane?”
“Where she always is; sitting moaning in that library,” was the answer.
“She is so deathly in her plain black serge she makes me cold. And she
won’t talk of anything but her father’s grave, and how we must go to
Rome in the spring. I never heard of such nonsense as having him moved
there. As if he knew where he was buried!”
“I don’t know that I would have dug him up, either,” said Ismay; “but
don’t, for Heaven’s sake, say so.”
A faint, far-off sound, which might have been the clang of the
door-bell down-stairs, reached her as she spoke. Mrs. Trelane, not
nearly so quick-eared, went on gloating over the vision of a soft black
silk gown, that should glitter with jet, all veiled with cloudy crape.
She did not see Ismay stiffen in her chair.
“It must be tea-time,” she suggested absently. “Perhaps you had better
go and find Cristiane.”
“Perhaps I had.” Life in her eyes, the blood scarlet in her lips, Ismay
was up like a flash. It had been the door-bell; she had heard the great
hall door close dully in the silent house. And a visitor could be none
other than Miles Cylmer. Every drop of her blood ached to see him, and
there was another reason that hurried her through the passages. Miles
must not be allowed to see Cristiane while that scribbled card of his
reposed in Ismay’s pocket. His hand had written it, and Ismay Trelane
had lacked strength to burn the dangerous thing.
“Even if he does tell her he’s called twice, she won’t believe him
now!” she reflected, pausing at the library door.
It was shut. From inside came a murmur of voices. Cristiane’s strained,
wild, almost joyful; then another--oh! it was not Miles Cylmer’s.
Sick with terror, Ismay clung to the door-handle. Whose voice was it
that she heard, cold, suave to oiliness? Surely she was dreaming; it
could not be that voice here!
“Tell me, tell me everything!” Cristiane was crying, but her voice,
broken and piercing, was distinct to the girl whose feet were failing
under her.
“All I know.” The answer was plain, and conviction struck heavy at
Ismay’s heart.
It was he, Marcus Wray! But how had he got here, and what was he
telling Cristiane? His voice went on low and smooth, his words she
could not hear. And she dared not go in; she, Ismay Trelane, who had
said she feared nothing, was cold with fear now. She got up-stairs,
her knees trembling under her as she stumbled into the room where Mrs.
Trelane sat, gloating over her toilets.
The blood gone from her cheek, her heart hammering at her side, Ismay
clutched her by the shoulder, her shut throat so dry that she could not
speak.
“Are you crazy?” Mrs. Trelane cried angrily. “You hurt me; let me go.”
Ismay shook her fiercely.
“Go down, quick!” she muttered. “He’s there with Cristiane. He’s
telling her something--it must be about us. You must go and stop him.”
“Him! Who?”
Ismay’s grasp slackened.
“Marcus Wray.”
For a minute they looked at each other, the elder woman’s face turning
from unbelief to gray despair. How had her enemy found her?
“Go! There’s no time to waste,” the girl said sharply. “I knew he’d
hunt us down. I didn’t think it would be so soon.”
Mrs. Trelane drew a long breath.
“Perhaps he will find it is different now,” she said. “We can keep him
quiet with money; oh, I know we can!”
“It may be too late--now. And you once kept him quiet with
diamonds!”--contemptuously.
“I’ll do what I can.”
She was not so frightened as Ismay, though she knew Marcus Wray.
Startled she was at his finding her, yet surely now that she had money
and position she could make terms with a man who lived by his wits. A
sense of power had grown in her since the day she had looked defiance
into Miles Cylmer’s eyes; she felt strong now, even for Marcus Wray,
as she opened the library door and went in gracefully, languidly, as
though she expected nothing.
Yet what she saw was staggering enough. Marcus Wray, in the flesh, sat
with his back to her, faultlessly dressed, as usual, his black hair
brushed to satin. Facing him was Cristiane, her checks crimson, her
violet eyes shining softly, the dyes of one moved to the depths.
“Dear Mrs. Trelane”--the girl had started up and run to her--“I was
just going to send for you. This gentleman has been telling me things
I--I was sick to hear.”
Helen Trelane’s upper lip was wet.
“What things, dear?” she managed to say, as Marcus Wray turned round
and faced her. Cristiane’s hand was cold in hers, and the touch brought
back the deadly chill of Abbotsford’s hand as he lay in the little
rose-colored room. But she would not wait for an answer.
“Mr. Wray!” she exclaimed; and, to her credit, there was pleased
surprise in her voice. “You here? I did not know you knew my little
ward!”
Marcus Wray came forward and took the loose, lifeless hand that she
could not make steady, Cristiane clinging to the other the while.
“It is an unexpected pleasure for me,” he murmured, with smooth
untruth. “I did not know Miss Le Marchant was your ward. I came to tell
her”--he paused almost imperceptibly, noting the tiny drops round Helen
Trelane’s mouth--“that I was with her father--at the end.”
His eyes were on hers, in cold warning; yet, in spite of the hidden
threat there, the woman breathed again. At least, he had not been
telling Cristiane of Abbotsford--and the diamonds.
“I did not know you knew Mrs. Trelane.” Cristiane glanced wonderingly
from one to the other.
“You see, Miss Le Marchant,” he said courteously, “Mrs. Trelane and I
have been--friends--for some years.”
“We have known each other--well, for a long time.” For her life, Helen
Trelane could not keep the angry scorn from her voice, but Cristiane
was not woman enough to hear it.
“I am so glad,” she said, with a little sigh of pleasure, “for now
perhaps Mr. Wray will spend the night. I have so much to ask him--it
seems like a last message”--with a quiver of her lovely lips--“from
daddy.”
Mrs. Trelane sat down, Cristiane beside her, on the wide sofa by the
fire. Her brain was whirling. Was it possible that Marcus Wray was
telling the truth, or was it all a lie to get into the house?
“Please tell it all again,” Cristiane said pleadingly, and Marcus
Wray obeyed her, the story of the accident to the train only slightly
altered by his being with Sir Gaspard, having accompanied him from
Paris, instead of having followed him in that lucky last carriage.
“It was all so quick he felt nothing,” he ended gently. “I would have
saved him if I could.”
“Have you been in Aix ever since?” Mrs. Trelane asked dryly.
Marcus Wray made his last, best point with Cristiane.
“I have been to Rome,” he responded. “There was a telegram from Sir
Gaspard’s lawyers that he should be buried there, and I, as his only
friend, went, too, and saw him laid in his last resting-place. He had
told me, in Paris, that he would like to be buried in Rome----”
“But was he ill in Paris?” Cristiane cried.
“Very ill, I am afraid,” Wray answered gently. “He spoke of his wish,
at all events, and so I saw that it was fulfilled.” He drew out a
pocketbook and took some violets from it that were sweet still.
“These are from your mother’s grave”--his voice reverential, softly
thrilled, he put them into Cristiane’s hand. “And he lies beside her.”
But the tiny purple scented things fluttered to the ground, the very
flood-gates of her heart opened, she sobbed on Mrs. Trelane’s shoulder,
torn with her grief.
“Oh, if I could go, too!” she moaned. “Father, father, if I could go,
too.”
Mrs. Trelane caught the girl to her.
“Darling, don’t cry like that; please don’t!” she said authoritatively.
“Come with me; come to Ismay.”
She cast an indignant look at Marcus Wray. Why did he harrow the girl
with his lies?
“Don’t let him go,” Cristiane gasped. “I want to ask him something.”
“I will wait.” Marcus Wray’s voice and glance turned Mrs. Trelane’s
indignation to terror.
Somehow she got Cristiane up-stairs, with the aid of Jessie, who was
all sympathy at the quick words Mrs. Trelane whispered.
“My lamb, you must rest!” the woman said pityingly. “You shall see the
gentleman to-morrow. Come with Jessie now.”
As the girl went to her room, worn out, Mrs. Trelane forgot to send
Ismay to soothe her; forgot everything on earth but Marcus Wray.
Cristiane was out of the way; it did not matter where Ismay was.
She little knew how those early morning inspections of Ismay’s had
familiarized her with every room and nook and passage of the house. Nor
that a door opening into the library from the drawing-room was masked
by bookshelves on one side and curtains on the other, and had warped so
that it could never be quite closed from the weight of the shelves on
it. But Ismay knew!
Crouched tailor-fashion on the floor, she had heard from her
hiding-place every word of Marcus Wray’s, and her quick brain was
working, as she waited for her mother’s return, like a detective’s on a
clue.
“It was not to tell Cristiane that drivel that he came,” she thought
nervously, almost afraid to breathe, lest his quick ears should know
it. “There’s something more. Oh, I wish mother had listened to me and
never gone to Lord Abbotsford’s.”
Her mother’s voice cut on her ears as the door from the hall closed
behind her.
“You have nearly killed the girl with your lies,” she cried. “Why
couldn’t you come and ask for me, instead of playing a game like that?
I know quite well you came to see me.”
“You are--partially--right!” Cristiane would not have recognized the
voice, so slow and insulting. “I did come to see you. But I did not
tell lies, but truth--embroidered.”
“You knew I was here,” she retorted angrily. “You did!”
“I did”--with amused mockery.
“Then what do you want of me? Do your worst and go. I tell you I will
not live like this, to be bullied by you!”
“Whom once you bullied,” the man answered quietly. “Sit down, Helen,
and don’t scream your conversation. I am here as your friend.”
“My friend! How?”
But Ismay heard the soft rustle of silks as Mrs. Trelane sat down.
“I’ll tell you, only listen and be quiet. I was with Sir Gaspard
in Paris, but by chance, as a lawyer, not as his friend. Do you
understand?”
“No.” Very low, and it was well Ismay could not see how her mother was
cowering before Marcus Wray’s contemptuous eyes.
“Don’t you? Well, I made that will. Now, do you know what brought me
here?”
“To make me pay you to go away”--bitterly.
“No, not that. I do not mean to go away; and what good would the
pittance you could screw from five hundred a year be to me? I am going
to pay you short visits often; the girl likes me----”
“Mark,” she broke in, “what for? Why do you want to come to a dull hole
like this if it was not to get money out of me?”
A thought that sprang in her suddenly made her gasp, and then speak
louder.
“Or do you want to make love to Cristiane, and marry her, and have me
turned out by betraying all you know?”
“I don’t mean anything out of that exhaustive catalogue”--coolly.
“Let me recall a clause of the will to your memory: ‘If my daughter
Cristiane should die unmarried or without children, the property and
all moneys of which I am possessed shall go to my only remaining
relative, the aforesaid Helen Trelane, reverting on her decease to her
only daughter, Ismay Trelane.’ Now do you see my meaning?” His voice
was low as caution could make it; his eyes spoke terrors that could not
be said even to the wretched woman before him.
With a dreadful, strangled wail she was on her knees beside him.
“Mark, Mark! Would you make me a murderess?”
His eyes burned into hers as he stooped closer to her, where she shook
on her knees.
“What are you now, if I speak out?” he said slowly. “You can take your
choice.”
“I can’t do it! It would be madness. She is young. Oh! for God’s sake,
say you didn’t mean it.”
“Mean what? I said nothing. You need do nothing. But if that happens
you are free. Why, you fool! Do you think I want you to give her a
dagger?”
“Marry her; let me go, and marry her! You’d be rich!”
“I am going to marry Ismay,” said Marcus Wray.
CHAPTER XV.
COILED TO SPRING.
Just how long she sat crouched in the dark Ismay Trelane never knew.
She heard a bell ring and lamps brought that shone through the chink
straight on her. Then there was a tinkle of glasses, and, as a bottle
was opened with a sharp explosion, she dared to steal away.
“Oh, what wickedness! I never dreamed of such wickedness,” she thought,
gaining her own room and locking herself in, as though Wray might come
to seek her. “But he sha’n’t do it. I swear he sha’n’t do it, unless he
kills me first!”
For she knew that somewhere, somehow, death would be lurking in her own
house for Cristiane le Marchant; not now, but later on, when people had
ceased to talk of Sir Gaspard’s death, and his strange will.
Curiously enough, now that she knew the real danger, all her courage
had come back to her. It was with nerves of steel that she sat
thinking, thinking; her eyes gleaming green in the darkness like a
watching leopard’s, that waits to kill.
“What shall I do? I can’t let mother know I heard--she would tell him,
and I wouldn’t have any chance.” Her anguish almost broke out into a
cry. “Oh! what have I done to have such a mother?”--her teeth gritting
as she kept back the words. “And he will marry me then, will he? He
will marry a dose of poison, and I will hang for it first! To sit there
in cold blood and talk of murder--and she so young.” She rocked to and
fro. Cristiane le Marchant was in her way, but that was a thing to
fight and triumph over. Not even to marry Miles Cylmer would Ismay let
that awful scheme of death be played out.
And her mother had begged to him, not defied him; that cry of “Mark,
Mark!” still rang in the daughter’s ears. Could it be true what he
said, that it was she who had poisoned Abbotsford? Had her mother
managed to deceive even her when she swore she had no hand in it?
“I will find out!” The girl’s dumb lips were awful in the dusk. “I will
make Marcus Wray a thing the world shudders at before I am done. I will
take care of Cristiane,” she moaned sharply, remembering how she had
said these very words to Cylmer.
“Oh, you’ll love me in the end,” she panted, as though he could hear
the thought in her brain. “I would die for you; surely you’ll love me
in the end!”
Frightened at her own passion, she got up in the dark and bathed her
face in cold water, and washed the hands that were soiled from the dust
in her ambush. Her mother would wonder, if she came in before dinner
and found her in a dress all gray with dust.
She made a careful toilet, that she might be ready when the gong rang
for dinner, and looked at herself in the glass. But her own eyes were
dreadful to her, for they were the eyes of a hunted beast at bay. She
turned quickly from the glass. She could not think if she saw her own
face, and think she must before she had to meet Marcus Wray.
She opened the window to the bitter winter air, and its chill cleared
her brain.
First, there was that matter of Lord Abbotsford, and the hold it had
given Wray on her mother. He must have proof of what the latter denied,
or she would not be in such terror of him. The thought brought no new
terror to Ismay Trelane; true or not, the accusation was Marcus Wray’s
weapon, and she must look for one of her own that would turn its edge.
Then there was Cylmer. He, too, would be against her mother if he knew
all, and Wray would stick at nothing if he once knew that Ismay loved
another man. He must know nothing of Cylmer; yet, if he stayed here,
how was he to be kept in the dark?
And Cristiane? Suppose Ismay’s dull suspicion were true, and Cylmer
loved her, why should she live to come between him and Ismay Trelane?
The girl, sitting, with clenched hands, on her bed, answered her own
question.
“Because I hate, hate, hate Marcus Wray!” she whispered hoarsely.
“Because he shall never have a penny of Sir Gaspard’s money, nor my
little finger, to call his own. I must carry my own sins. I will not be
made to help carry Marcus Wray’s! Cristiane----” She went to the glass
again, and this time she did not flinch. “Cristiane cannot keep any man
from me! I will have it all, all, from marrying Miles Cylmer to beating
Marcus Wray at his own game.”
For there faced her in the glass her own beauty, strange and glorious.
Not a curve of her milky cheeks, a wave of her flax-white hair, a line
of her scarlet mouth was lost on her. She gazed steadily into her own
eyes in the mirror till it seemed as if a soul not her own gazed back
at her from them. They were no longer the eyes of Ismay Trelane, a girl
not eighteen years old, but those of a woman who had lived and loved
and known the very wisdom of earth long ago, when the world was very
young.
The old, old smile curved the girl’s lips as she turned away.
There was her weapon to fight Marcus Wray--her beauty, her wits, her
self-reliance that should never again fail her as it had failed her
to-day.
“I shall manage them all!” She flung back her lovely head triumphantly,
securely. “Who is Cristiane that I should be afraid of her, when he can
look at me? She shall help me with him! She shall be the bait that will
bring him to me. And I will not go to him with blood on my hands to
save Marcus Wray.”
Not even to herself would she own that in spite of herself Cristiane
had grown dear to her, for to care for any one but oneself and a man
was to be a fool, to Ismay Trelane. Her mother--bah! Her mother was
safe enough while her enemy was playing for such high stakes.
The only danger was lest Wray might think things about Cylmer, and
forget his caution in a mad rage of jealousy. That thick, yellow skin,
those dark red lips bore the very trade-mark on them of the most
ungovernable passion in the world.
“It is I who must take care of that,” Ismay mused. “And before I am
done, it is Marcus Wray that shall tremble for his skin, not I, nor my
mother, nor Cristiane.”
She went down-stairs as calm as a lake at dawn; cool and silent
she bowed to Marcus Wray where he stood with her mother in the
drawing-room, dressed for dinner.
She had never seen him in evening clothes, and he was more repulsive in
the plain black and white than she had ever dreamed he could be.
“What! You don’t shake hands?” he said, with amusement.
Cristiane was not coming down, and Mrs. Trelane looked at her daughter
as if she longed to slap her.
“Don’t be silly, Ismay!” she snapped.
“Let her alone,” Wray said quietly. “It will come to the same thing in
the end. The harder it is to get a thing, the more I enjoy it.”
Even Mrs. Trelane felt cold at his hideous, gloating look at her
daughter, but Ismay glanced at him with calm distaste, to which her
beauty lent a sting.
“Let us go to dinner,” she said, as if he were beneath any direct reply.
And as she sat at his right hand, opposite her mother, not even the
luck of Marcus Wray could warn him that a white adder, with gleaming
emerald eyes, coiled up to spring, would have been a safer neighbor for
him than Ismay Trelane.
CHAPTER XVI.
CIRCE’S EYES.
Nothing in the whole house was good enough for Marcus Wray. Ismay saw
that as soon as she came down to breakfast.
Cristiane, behind the great urn, was changed from yesterday; a peace
was on her face, and for the first time since the news of her father’s
death her eyes bore no traces of a night spent in tears. Marcus Wray
had built better than he knew when he came as the one friend who had
done the very last things for Gaspard le Marchant. The news had spread
like wild-fire through the household. Thomas, the old butler, waited
on the strange gentleman from London with a noiseless assiduity he had
never shown to either of the Trelanes.
“Must you go this morning?” Cristiane said wistfully. “I suppose there
is very little temptation to stay in a quiet house like this!”
“There is every temptation,” Wray returned, with the frankness that was
so good an imitation, “to a tired man who has found old friends here
and the kindest of hospitality”--with a glance at Cristiane that made
Ismay wince. “But I am afraid I must go and look after my bread and
butter. I am one of the working-classes, Miss Le Marchant.”
“But you don’t work always! If you have a Saturday and Sunday to spare,
will you remember you are wanted here?”
For the man seemed a link with her dead father that she could not lose.
Wray glanced at Mrs. Trelane.
“Cristiane is right, Mr. Wray,” she said. “We shall always be glad to
see you, though, of course, at present we do not see any one but old
friends.”
“Well, we live and learn,” reflected Ismay. “Fancy mother saying she
will be glad to see that man. She must be in a blue fright.”
She heard in utter silence an arrangement made which would bring Marcus
Wray from London on the next Saturday fortnight. She had that much time
in which to see Cylmer.
In the morning sunshine what she had overheard last night in the dusk
seemed monstrous and absurd. Yet there sat the man whose profession
was blackmail, and there sat the woman who feared him, pale, worn, and
harried, in the dainty breakfast-room.
“There’s plenty of time, that is the only thing,” Ismay thought, as she
saw Cristiane leave the room with Wray and go out by the window onto
the terrace. The morning was almost warm, and they walked up and down
there, like old friends, a hideous sight to the girl who watched them
over her empty teacup.
“Plenty of time; he is too clever to hurry and make a scandal in the
country.” She wondered morbidly how he would set about his hideous end
when the time was ripe.
“Nonsense!” she said to herself smartly. “I shall have the upper hand
long before that, though I don’t know how yet.”
She rose quickly and went out through the open French window. Cristiane
was alone now, and Ismay had no mind for a solitary conversation with
Mr. Wray, who had come into the house by the hall door to get ready for
his train.
“Mother can talk to him if she chooses, not I!” she thought, with
a shrug of her shoulders. “I am a fool to mix myself up in it, I
believe, and yet I haven’t much choice. Some one must look after this
baby”--with a grudging glance at the girl whose bare head shone ruddy
in the winter sun.
Cristiane slipped her arm through Ismay’s, a trick the latter hated,
yet she dared not take away her arm.
“I feel so much better, Ismay,” she said softly, “as if I had been near
father. That friend of your mother’s has been very kind.”
“Very,” said Ismay dryly.
“Don’t you like him?”
“I don’t like him at all. But, of course, he has been very kind to you.”
“What is the matter with him?” Cristiane was up in arms at once.
“Nobody who wasn’t nice would do all he has done for utter strangers.
You have no real reason for disliking him, have you?”
“A very small one,” Miss Trelane returned calmly. “I’ll tell it to you
some day--perhaps.”
“Well, I have a very big reason for liking him, and I think you’re
rather horrid about it,” she replied injuredly. “Don’t you want him to
come back again?”
“Not particularly,” said the girl, with an inward longing that he might
break his neck on the way to the station.
Cristiane laughed.
“How funny you are! You look at the man as if he were a toad, and you
only say ‘not particularly’ when I ask you if you mind his coming here.”
“Well, then, I am sorry you asked him, if you must know.”
“I wanted him,” Cristiane rejoined obstinately, “and I should be very
ungrateful if I didn’t.”
Ismay laughed; it was safer not to go any further, and there would be
no good in driving Cristiane.
“Gratitude is a vice; you never know where it may lead you,” she
remarked. “He is coming to say good-by to you. I shall go in;” and
she vanished. A thrill of relief went through her when she heard the
crunching of wheels over the gravel as Marcus Wray drove off. When
their last sound had died away, she stepped out on the terrace again
and stood staring, with an incredulous joy that was almost pain.
Mr. Cylmer was coming up the avenue, a sight to make any woman look
with pleasure at him, in his spotless breeches and boots, and the
scarlet coat that showed to the utmost advantage every line of his
strong, splendid figure. He was walking and leading a very lame horse.
“Why, here’s Miles!” Cristiane cried wonderingly. “And his horse can
hardly crawl. I wonder what is the matter.”
She forgot there had been any gap in his coming and going to Marchant’s
Hold; his arriving at this unseemly hour was so like the old days, when
he had always been welcome.
“What on earth has happened to you?” she called, as he came nearer.
“Molly strained her shoulder at the bank down by your outfields,” he
returned, stopping in front of them, his handsome head glossy in the
sun as he lifted his hat. “So I came to ask you if I might put her in
your stable instead of taking her all the way home. I don’t know how it
happened; slipped, I fancy; she didn’t fall.”
“I knew you’d do it some day. You go at your banks too fast.” Cristiane
frowned as she touched the mare’s shoulder with knowledgable fingers.
“Poor Molly! It’s a shame.”
Mr. Cylmer was annoyed. Few men rode with more judgment than he, and he
knew it.
“You needn’t think I like it, any more than Molly,” he returned, a
trifle crossly.
“Come along to the stables,” Cristiane said. “The sooner she is seen to
the better. I’m glad you brought her. Come on, Ismay.”
She had had time to recollect that Miles, who had forgotten her in his
sorrow, could remember now that she could be useful. She marched on in
front, leading the limping mare. Ismay and Cylmer were left to follow.
“You’ve cut your hand,” said Ismay, and her voice fell softly on his
ears, that Cristiane’s words had left tingling. “It’s bleeding.”
“It’s all right,” he replied shamefacedly. “I was stooping to make a
gap in the hedge for Molly, and she trod on it.”
It was cut and bruised so that it ached abominably. He winced with pain
as he tried to move it.
Ismay’s handkerchief, white, filmy, fine, and smelling of nothing but
fresh linen, was out in a second.
“There is no sense in getting yourself all horrid with it,” she said
practically. “Hold out your hand.”
There was an ugly circular jag across the back of the fingers, where
the horse’s shoe had come.
“It’s too beastly,” he said. He did not want her to look at the mingled
blood and dirt that covered his hand.
But she only laughed, a little low laugh, like a woman comforting the
hurt of a child.
“Hold it out,” she repeated, and through the cool linen he could feel
the touch of her slim, deft fingers, a touch that somehow made him
thrill.
Cristiane had never even seen his hand!
She stood by while he and a groom saw to Molly, and then as they turned
away the bandage caught her eye.
“What a baby you are, Miles!” she laughed. “Fancy binding up your whole
hand for a cut!”
“It’s smashed flat,” he returned quietly. “And you’re an unsympathetic
little wretch. By the way, didn’t I meet a stranger driving down your
avenue?”
“He isn’t a stranger,” she retorted. “It was Mr. Wray, a friend
of--father’s.” Her lips quivered suddenly.
“Wray? I never heard of him”--soberly.
Cristiane stamped her foot.
“Well, you hear now!” she cried. “Ismay has been horrid about him, and
now I suppose you’re going to be; but I won’t stay and hear it. She
can tell you why”--with a great sob--“why he came!” and before the
astonished Cylmer could breathe, she had run away like a hare, in a
very tempest of tears.
“What’s the matter with her? She is not at all like herself!” he
exclaimed.
“She’s unstrung, poor little soul! And I don’t wonder. He came to tell
her he was with Sir Gaspard when he died.”
“What!” But after that one quick word he listened in silence, as Ismay
told him all she saw fit to tell.
“Why did she say you had been horrid about him?” he asked as she
finished.
“I don’t like him. Mother and I knew him in London. He is so ugly--oh!
so ugly that I shiver when I look at him,” she returned lightly, yet
he saw there was something behind her words. Even in a casual glance
there had been something repulsive to him, too, in the face of the man
who had passed him so quickly; not a nice person to have make love to
you, as he guessed he had done to Miss Trelane.
“Send for me if he comes again and you want to get rid of him,” he said
as lightly as she. “I’d like to see him, too”--with sudden gravity. “It
was strange, his being with Sir Gaspard at the end!”
“He is a strange man, here to-day and gone to-morrow.” She spoke
wearily. “But, of course, I really know very little about him. I was
angry because his coming upset Cristiane so.”
“Poor child.” But the tone in his voice was not that with which he
would have spoken of the girl a fortnight before. “Time and letting
alone are what she wants.” He glanced at the house as they neared it.
“Do you think I am to be admitted?” he said. “Is your mother----” He
did not finish.
“My mother can afford to forgive you”--with unconscious bitterness.
“And Cristiane would not like it if you did not come in.”
“I don’t think it would disturb her,” he replied dryly. But he followed
Ismay into the house.
They sat by the hall fire, that glowed with a gentle warmth, and talked
softly of nothings; with one consent of anything but the things that
were past. As the girl’s green eyes met his, the spell of her beauty
fell on him, till his love for Cristiane seemed a childish dream. Soft,
white, sinuous, she sat in her great chair, and as she looked at him
Miles Cylmer was powerlessly under her sway.
“I will come to-morrow to bring back the horse,” he said softly,
forgetting it was not his house. “May I?”
And his blood was quick in him as she gave a little languid nod, so
sweet and full of sorcery were her marvelous eyes.
If he had dared he would have told her then and there that she was the
only woman in the world for him. He knew now that pity and affection
and an idle heart had made him fancy he cared for Cristiane.
“You don’t hear what I’m saying, Mr. Cylmer!”
Ismay’s little laugh roused him, and the man who had been loved by many
women in his time looked up in boyish confusion.
“I beg your pardon. What was it?”
“It was like me, a thing of no importance,” she answered lazily. “But
I wonder where your thoughts are”--and her hand, as if by accident,
covered for one instant her scarlet lips.
Was she a witch who had read his thoughts? For all he knew, she might
be a very Circe, false as water, and yet he would have sworn that she
was heavenly true.
“I will tell you where they were some day,” he said, wondering if
all the time she knew. For as she talked and he looked at her the
remembrance of her lips on his in that kiss he had taken on that
morning at his gates had come back to him with shame.
He had kissed her as if she had been a pretty dairymaid and he a king.
Now his soul went out in longing to have her for his own, to kiss her
as his queen, his wife. How had he dared to think of her in any other
way?
Her history, her mother, were as nothing to him in face of her
loveliness that bewitched him.
When at last his borrowed horse came to the door he rose reluctantly.
“Till to-morrow. I must bring it back, you know,” he said, and at
something in his eyes she flushed, ever so faintly.
“Till to-morrow,” she echoed quietly.
And he never imagined that she watched him out of sight as he rode
away, her heart fairly plunging with rapture.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SPINET.
It was tea-time when Cristiane appeared again from her bedroom, where
she had fled in her anger with Cylmer. She came straight to Ismay,
where she sat in the drawing-room with her mother, and kissed her
penitently.
“I was horrid this morning,” she observed childishly. “But Miles was so
stupid. You forgive me, don’t you?”
“I haven’t any need”--smiling, for she could have had no greater
service done to her. “But I had to go for a walk by myself this
afternoon, and I got drenched.”
“The rain came on slowly enough,” Cristiane laughed, listening for a
minute to the driving flood that rustled at the windows. “But you are
such a town person! You might have known it was coming.”
“I had to go out. I couldn’t sleep last night. It was very funny”--with
sudden animation--“perhaps you know something about it?”
“What was funny?” Cristiane moved a little as Thomas arrived with the
tea, and began to arrange the table close to the two girls.
“Why--the music! I don’t suppose you were playing on the piano at two
in the morning, were you? For some one was.”
She looked at Cristiane with a little, puzzled frown. Then she started.
Thomas, his face like ashes, had dropped the cream-jug; as he stood
staring at the ruin she caught his eyes on her in beseeching warning.
“I was asleep,” said Cristiane. “Oh, Thomas, never mind! There is
plenty of cream, you needn’t look like that.”
“Yes, miss! No, miss! I’m very sorry,” the old man said confusedly. “I
will fetch some more.”
“What did you say about a piano? You must have been dreaming.”
“I suppose I was”--slowly. “But I thought I woke up and heard some one
playing a queer tune on a piano. But, of course, it was a dream!” She
finished quietly, for there was something in the old servant’s face to
make her hold her tongue.
“It is rather odd,” Cristiane said, as she carried Mrs. Trelane’s cup
to her, “for Jessie had the same dream once, and Thomas nearly ate her
for telling it. She is his daughter, you know.”
Ismay drank her tea as lazily as usual, and watched her chance to slip
away after a while.
Last night’s music had been no dream, and Thomas’ face had mystified
her. As soon as Cristiane and her mother was settled at a game of Halma
for chocolates, she departed unnoticed, and sought Thomas, who was in
his pantry.
Miss Trelane walked in and closed the door behind her.
“Why did you look at me like that in the drawing-room, Thomas?” she
asked, with a bluntness very foreign to her. “Why did not you want me
to speak of last night?”
The old man turned from the decanters he was filling.
“Because I won’t have Miss Cristiane made nervous,” he said doggedly.
“That’s why, Miss Trelane.”
“How could it make her nervous to know I heard a piano in the night?
Robbers don’t play on pianos, Thomas.”
“It’s not robbers I’m thinking of, and if you’re wise you’ll not
mention it again, miss,” he spoke imploringly.
“I’ll speak of it now, once for all, then,” she said. “For I know it
wasn’t a dream, and you can’t scold me like you did Jessie”--with her
lovely smile.
“Jessie’s a fool, for all her forty years,” he grumbled, “if she told
you that.”
“She didn’t, it was Miss Cristiane. Listen, Thomas! Last night I woke
up, broad awake, as I never do, and I heard quite plainly some one
playing a queer tinkling tune on a piano, somewhere up-stairs. It
sounded so uncanny that I sat up to listen, and then I got out of bed
and found my door was open into the hall; out there I heard the music
plainer still, and it made me feel cold. But I thought I’d go and see
who it was.”
The old man stood staring at her, his face twitching.
“Well, I went up-stairs, in the dark, till I got to a hall I didn’t
know, and from a room that opened off it I heard that music as plainly
as you hear me now! But the door was shut.”
“You didn’t go in? For God’s sake, Miss Trelane, never go in!” His
voice, full of horror, startled her.
“Why? Who’s there? Who was playing that piano?”
“No one”--heavily. “And it’s no piano, but a spinet that belonged to
Sir Gaspard’s grandmother. It’s haunted, that’s what it is, and to hear
it means trouble to this house. Jessie heard it before the master was
killed. But Miss Cristiane knows naught of it, and don’t you tell her.”
“It’s mice in the strings,” she said. “Anything else is nonsense.” Yet
with a shudder she remembered the thing had played a tune. “If you
think it’s haunted, why don’t you break it up?”
“Because we can’t. It isn’t healthy in that room,” he stammered.
“Before Lady Le Marchant died I was in there with one of the footmen,
and we opened the thing and looked all through it. There wasn’t a sign
of mice. And when we turned from it, it began to play, first a scale,
and then a tune that queer that we couldn’t move. And there in broad
daylight a wind went by us that was cold like snow. I’ve never been in
there since.”
He wiped his forehead that was wet.
“There must be something inside that’s like a musical-box,” she said,
more to herself than to him. But he shook his head.
“There’s naught. I’ve seen it and I know. ’Tis the fingers of her that
plays it--and God knows that’s enough! Pray to Him that you never see
her, Miss Trelane”--reverentially.
“Did any one ever?” she breathed sharply.
“Yes! She walks--all over the house--of nights like this,” he admitted
unwillingly. “But I have the servants all sleep in the new wing, else
we’d have ne’er a one. But you stay in your bed, miss, and you’ll never
see her. And don’t tell Miss Cristiane; her father never let her hear
of any such tales.”
“I won’t tell her; for one thing, I don’t believe in it,” Ismay said
sharply. But she showed no sign of leaving the pantry.
“Who was the ghost, Thomas, and what did she do, that she
walks?”--seating herself on one end of his table.
“She was a Lady Le Marchant,” he began sullenly, but at her interested
face he warmed suddenly to his tale. “You’ll give your word you’ll not
tell Miss Cristiane?” he promised.
“Not I,” she answered, her elbows on her knees, her chin in the palm of
her hand, in a curious crouching attitude that brought her eyes full on
his as he faced her.
“Go on, Thomas.”
“Well, then, she was a Lady Le Marchant. And her husband, Sir Guy,
fairly doted on her; but she was a childless woman, and given up to
pleasure and dancing, and the like. She had lovers by the score, but
she never cared for one of them beyond the first day or so. Fair she
was, they say; as fair as you, Miss Trelane”--glancing at her flaxen
hair--“and ’tis her picture hangs in the room with the spinet. ’Twas
done by a foreign artist Sir Guy had over from Italy, and that man the
lady loved.
“While the picture was being painted Sir Guy noticed nothing, but when
’twas done, and the man still stayed on, he wondered. And one day he
saw them kissing. She was playing the tune she loved best of all on
that spinet, and the foreign artist was behind her. And, not seeing her
husband, she throws back her head, and the man kisses her lips.
“They say Sir Guy was a proud man. Anyhow, he turned and went away as
if he’d seen nothing.
“But that night he told her, as she was singing herself that ungodly
tune she was forever playing on the spinet.
“Whatever he said no one knows. But it must have maddened her, for she
whipped up a knife that was on a table and stabbed him to the heart.
“He put out his hands to her, and one of them marked the dress she had
on with a stain of blood on the breast. But he lay dead in his chair,
and she with his blood wet on her gown went down-stairs to the artist,
and told him plump and plain what she’d done for his sake. And he would
have none of her.”
“He was a fool; she must have been good stuff,” observed his listener
musingly. “But I don’t know. She should have known him better first.”
“She was good stuff, Miss Trelane,” the old man went on quietly. “For
when he laid her crime before her, and told her he loved her no more,
she never even answered him. Just turned away silent, and up-stairs to
the room where Sir Guy lay dead.
“They say she played that tune then, in that room with a murdered man
to listen; played it for the last time. For one of the servants heard
it as he passed. And she heard him, too, for she opened the door and
called him.
“‘James,’ she says, ‘come here. Did you hear me playing just now?’
“‘Madam, yes,’ he answers. ‘’Tis all writ out in a book in the library.
You can see it if you like, miss.’
“‘And did you know the tune?’
“’Twas the one you’re so fond of, my lady.’ And he wondered at her for
asking, and for sitting without a light, for the room was dark and he
could not see into it.
“‘You’ll have no chance to forget it, you and those that come after
you,’ she says very slow. ‘When I’m gone you’ll hear it, and always
for evil. When you hear it’--and she laughed till he thought she was
crazy--‘you’ll remember I told you that in my dying hour.’
“Then she draws herself up and speaks out loud and grand till they
heard her through the house.
“‘Come in, man, and look at your master! He lies dead, and I killed
him; for I was weary of his face;’ and before he could know what she
meant, she had struck that bloody knife into her own breast, for she
was a strong woman, and she knew where to find her heart.”
“Is that all?” Ismay spoke with a curious effort, like one in a dream.
“All. Except that ’twas a stormy night like this will be, and ’tis
those times that she walks. And her spinet plays yet, and no one ever
heard it for good, or went into that room for luck.”
“I’d like to, Thomas,” she said quietly.
“Don’t you go,” he warned her. “For you might be frightened and run,
and them stairs outside and the rails of them are fairly crumbling
with dry-rot. If you tripped and fell against them, as like as not the
banisters would give way with you, and you’d fall to your death into
the great hall below. Mind now, Miss Trelane, for that’s the truth.”
“What would you do if you saw her, Thomas?” she queried idly.
“Me--miss?” he said shamefully. “Well! I’d run and get out of her way,
behind a locked door, and so would Jessie. As for the maids, they don’t
know, and if they did, they’d be gone without waiting to see her.”
Ismay slipped off the table.
“Thank you, Thomas,” she said. “I won’t tell Miss Cristiane, or any one
else. But it’s a queer story.”
“Too queer when you know it’s true,” he muttered. “Excuse me, miss, but
the dressing-bell has rung.”
“All right. I’m going.”
But as she went slowly up the stairs she laughed to herself, and the
laugh was short and ugly.
Surely she had found a weapon at last to do her good service against
Marcus Wray.
“To hear is to know,” she thought; “but I hope it may be a long time
before I hear his voice in this house. But at least I will be prepared.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
“AT MIDNIGHT.”
The household retired to rest early, at Marchant’s Hold, and Ismay was
in her bed and asleep by ten o’clock, but with a purpose in her mind
that made her wake to the minute as the clock rang two.
She had left her blinds up, and as she sat up in her bed she saw the
moonlight lying on the carpet. The rain was over.
“That is lucky, I sha’n’t need much light,” she thought composedly, as
she got up and put on a warm, dark dressing-gown, and woolen slippers
that would make no sound.
She must investigate that room up-stairs, and her only chance was at
night, when her mother and Cristiane were safe.
“Besides,” she reminded herself quite gaily, “I shall have to use it
at night, when I need it; and I may as well get used to it. It is at
night that mother and Marcus Wray will make their plans, at night that
they will carry them out. And at night I always lock my door! I’m very
nervous--in the dark!” she laughed noiselessly. “I must impress that
on my parent.” But it was without a tremor that she slipped out into
the silent house and up the stairs, where there were no windows and the
darkness was inky.
There was no sound of music to-night to guide her as she stood at
last in the black hall, where a dozen shut doors kept the darkness
inviolate. She felt in her pocket for her end of candle and matches.
They were there, but she dared not strike a light here in the corridor.
One hand held at arm’s length before her, she moved on cautiously, till
she felt a door. The handle turned under her fingers, and she went in
without a sound; without a sound the door closed behind her, though for
all she knew she stood alone at night, in the room where Thomas had
been terror-stricken in daylight.
With steady fingers she lit the candle, and stared round her as it
burned dimly. The room was chilly and close, but it was not the room
she wanted, only an unused bedroom, a little dusty. She pinched out her
candle and went into the hall again.
“What a fool I am not to remember!” she thought angrily; “it’s cold up
here, and no fun.”
She tried three more rooms in succession; all had no sign in them of
any musical instrument, nor ghostly habitation. Could she be in the
wrong hall?
She opened the next door in doubtful irritation, but her hand stopped
with a jerk as she lifted it to strike a match.
Opposite her the moonlight poured through a wide, low window, till the
room seemed light as day after the dark hall, and in the very full
flood of the moonlight stood the little spinet on its high, thin legs,
its narrow ivory keyboard shining dustily in the moon-rays.
An inexplicable terror that she was not alone clutched at the girl’s
bold heart. Thomas was right, there was something queer about this
room! Without turning, Ismay stretched out her arm backward, to shut
the door. But it was fast already; noiselessly it had swung back on its
hinges, without even a click of the latch.
In the cold, musty air the girl felt choked. With quick, steady fingers
she lit her candle; to stay in this room with no light but the moon’s
was beyond her. As the lighted wick burned from blue into yellow, she
sighed with relief.
“I--to be frightened by Thomas’ silly stories!” she thought
contemptuously. “If I had heard nothing about the room I should never
have thought of having cold chills down my back.”
With the thought she had set the candle on the side of the old spinet
that was supposed to sound from the touch of fingers that had long been
mold. It was silent enough now. Not a sound came from it as she opened
the back and peered into the depths of the case where the strings were
stretched like a piano’s. She put her slim, long arm down inside it,
and felt the instrument all over. It was a plain, old-fashioned thing
enough, strong and good still. But it apparently held no trace of any
mechanism that would make it play alone at night.
Ismay drew back and stared at it. In the fantastic mingling of
moonlight and candle-light her uncanny beauty was more witchlike than
ever, with the flaxen hair falling to her knees over the dark wrapper.
“I should say Thomas was crazy if I had not heard the thing myself!”
she said aloud, and there was nothing but puzzled curiosity in her
voice.
“But it’s got to be made to play again, and I don’t know the national
air of the mice.”
She put a stool carefully in front of the spinet, and sat down,
fumbling at the keys. Clear, thin, and sweet, the notes tinkled softly
under her fingers.
“The tune--how did it go?” she tried for it softly. It had been a
strange tune, with queer intervals; an air that was very old and
wailing.
She played a few bars, stumblingly.
How cold, how very cold the room was, and what was the matter with
the candle? Without a flicker the yellow flame had turned blue as she
stared at it, it went out; she could see the wick smoking in the
moonlight.
“Truly,” said Ismay, to herself, “I must have iron nerves! I’m not
frightened. Yet I don’t think that was a draft.”
Without moving, she tried the strange tune again, and this time the
very terror of death fell on her. Without turning her head, she knew
there was something behind her; something very cold and threatening;
something that in a minute would be at her throat, choking her till her
hand fell from the keyboard. She swung sharply round. There was nothing
there.
“Thomas’ nonsense again, and my fancy,” she said deliberately, for the
room was certainly empty. “My nerves are playing me tricks, after all.”
As she started, in the darkness beyond the patch of moonlight she saw
something, the picture of a woman hanging on the wall.
“The late owner of the spinet!”
She got up, and lit her candle. Light in hand, she went close to the
picture, till the painted eyes were plain. Dark eyes they were, in a
pale, cruel face, with red lips, like Ismay’s own. The fair hair was
piled high on the head; the dress was of the latter part of the last
century.
“So you are the lady that walks! And you are a little like me, which is
all the better,” she murmured. “And if you are a wise ghost, you will
help me, and not hinder me, for you and I are all the defense Cristiane
le Marchant has.”
Her eyes, that were full of a strange compelling, were fastened on the
picture. Childish and far-fetched as it was, it seemed to the girl that
she was bending something to her own ends, something both wickeder and
weaker than she. A strange delight thrilled her.
“I am not afraid any more!” she cried out, with soft rapture, “and I
remember the tune now.”
With a noiseless movement, she was at the spinet, under her fingers the
whole tune tinkled out, and this time there was no dread in her of a
lurking terror behind. Ghost, imagination, mice--whatever it was--she,
Ismay Trelane, was its mistress, by the very courage of her heart.
There was nothing there, nothing! Yet there should be a terror there
that would walk in darkness, and hear, and know, and see, till Marcus
Wray was thwarted in this house, at least.
The cold air of the room had struck to her bones, and she drew her warm
gown about her as she turned to go. She had learned enough to go on.
From now, not a word spoken at midnight, or a trap laid, would escape
Ismay Trelane. She was laughing to herself as she walked to the door.
But as she turned the handle, she stopped.
The spinet was playing. Clear, unearthly, that strange tune tinkled
out, under her very eyes.
Whatever it was, it was very queer. She stared incredulously, as Thomas
had done, but, unlike Thomas, she was not frightened.
“Thank you!” she said gravely, and without bravado. “If you are a
musical box, or whatever you are, you are going to be my friend.” And
without a tremor she turned to the uncanny thing when its tune was
done, and peered once more into its depths.
Had she been blind before? For now she saw plainly enough a small brass
bracket, black with age, almost invisible in dust. It was a plain
oblong slip, about the size of a railway-ticket, and it stuck out from
the inside of the case.
Leaning down, Ismay pressed it, ever so lightly.
Almost immediately the weird music poured into the room.
The girl saw the whole thing now. The woman to whom it belonged had had
it made, so that she might hear the tune she loved without playing it.
Her threat to her servant had been a grim and mocking jest.
Very quietly, she put out her light and went out into the dark hall and
down-stairs, and yet she was trembling. If it were all a trick, why had
her candle gone out?
“If I had once been frightened I should have died of it, up there in
the moonlight!” she said to herself, with conviction.
CHAPTER XIX.
AT THE GATE OF HEAVEN.
Time hung heavily on Mrs. Trelane’s hands for all the comfort and
luxury of the house.
She missed the freedom, missed the theaters, the little suppers at
restaurants, missed more than either the companionship of the men who
were wont to gather round her in London--gentlemen with reputations out
at elbows, but clever, amusing, the very salt of life to Helen Trelane.
Therefore, she said at breakfast, with a little distasteful sigh, that
she must go to London, to see the dressmaker.
Ismay lifted her brows.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you. You can bully people better in writing.”
Her tone was very significant.
She supposed the “dressmaker” meant an appeal to the mercy of a man who
had none, and then a mad whirl of amusement, her mourning thrown to the
winds.
But she was wrong. Mrs. Trelane had no thought of Wray.
“I really must go,” she said, “annoying as it is. Should you mind,
Cristiane?”
“Not a bit. You won’t stay long, will you? I shall teach Ismay to ride
while you are gone,” with a little, affectionate glance. “We shall be
quite happy.”
“Oh, no! Not long, of course.”
In spite of herself, her tone was joyous as a child’s. To be in London,
with money, to drink deep of life again. No wonder her voice betrayed
her.
Ismay followed her to her room, where she stood, in her smart mourning.
“The Gaiety, the Café Royal, and cards afterward till daylight may be
amusing,” she observed cuttingly, “but they are not worth your neck.”
“What do you mean?” In her annoyance, Mrs. Trelane almost dropped the
bottle of peach-blossom scent in her hand.
“I mean you’ll go to London, and wear a white gown in the evenings,
with a string of mock pearls round your neck. Because the gossip
about Lord Abbotsford has died away you are quite comfortable,” Ismay
retorted; “and about now the police will be waking up to their work.
London will not be a good retreat for the person who killed him!”
“Ismay!” The scent-bottle crashed on the floor now from the loosened
fingers; strong and sickly, its contents flooded the room. “Ismay, are
you mad? What has come over you? You know that”--her voice fell to a
frightened whisper--“that he was dead when I went there.” She looked
old and wretched as she stood, ready dressed to start.
“I know what you choose to tell me. Oh! mother,” passionately, “let us
both go away from here, go somewhere that is safe, and live quietly,
you and I. I’ll work for you----”
A laugh cut her short. Yet Mrs. Trelane stood, wringing her hands.
“You know we can’t get away,” she cried, “and why should we? I never
killed Abbotsford!”
“Then why are you so frightened of Marcus Wray?” deliberately.
“You little fool. I took the diamonds!” She stooped and picked up
the fragments of her cut-glass bottle. “You know all I did,” she
cried, straightening herself to face her daughter, her clean-cut
face very pale. “What on earth has changed you, till you talk like a
Sunday-school book? What has become of your fine plan for securing Mr.
Cylmer, that you try to frighten me into leaving here with your silly,
lying accusation? You work for me?” she laughed miserably. “Would you
take in washing?”
Ismay’s passion of earnestness left her with her old manners, her old
catlike grace. She flung herself into a chair.
“Never mind what I’d do. I meant it,” she retorted. “As for Mr. Cylmer,
you can let him alone. I would have let him go--for you--five minutes
ago. But I don’t think I would--now! Go to London,” politely, “but
don’t forget my advice. You ought to know by this time it’s more lucky
to take it.”
“I know you are an ungrateful little idiot,” said Mrs. Trelane angrily.
And with that for her only farewell, she swept down-stairs to get into
her carriage. Ismay turning pious was a good joke. As for Cylmer, it
was simply girlish boasting. Mrs. Trelane felt quite safe on that score
as she drove away. It was not in the least likely that he would come to
Marchant’s Hold, or that Ismay would get hold of him, and bring down
the wrath of Marcus Wray. All girls had a hero, usually out of reach.
Why should Ismay be superior to the rest? And as for Wray and his awful
schemes, with his absence their very memory had vanished from the
light mind of the woman who lived to please herself. It was all absurd
nonsense, he would not dare to go any farther with it.
All her fears soothed to rest, she proceeded to spend a cheerful
afternoon on reaching London, little knowing how she had rocked her
troubles to sleep with lying hopes.
In his chambers, Marcus Wray sat reading a short newspaper paragraph
over and over, his fingers tapping at his knee, his lips hard set.
Only a short paragraph, but it meant danger, and he frowned as he read.
Helen Trelane up in London, dressed in her best, was like a child
playing with a smoking bomb; if Mr. Wray had known of it he would have
packed her straight off to the country, and gone with her himself,
which it was well for Ismay that he did not do.
She was very nervous about the sudden freak her mother had taken;
in some way or other it was sure to mean more trouble. And she was
disappointed about her afternoon.
At lunch Cristiane had mentioned carelessly that Cylmer had sent a
groom over with the horse borrowed the day before; that was all, but
Ismay knew he had meant to come himself, and had thought better of it.
She would not listen when Cristiane proposed lending her a habit and
taking her out riding.
“I think I’ve got a headache,” she said wearily. “You go for a ride,
and I’ll walk a little by myself. I’ll be all right at tea-time.”
She strolled out through the quiet winter lanes when Cristiane was
gone. She was very pale to-day, very languid, a presentiment of evil
was heavy at her heart. Her mother had been mad to go to London; she
herself was more idiotic, still, to think that Miles Cylmer would ever
care for her.
Tired at last, she sat down on a stile between two fields, and leaned
back, staring in front of her. Somehow, her heart was faint within her
to-day, but why any more than yesterday?
“Because I sha’n’t see him, and I want him,” she thought dreamily. “I
want something that will strengthen me, something that I can look back
to, and think that nothing matters since I was happy once. And I will
be happy. I will!”
Her scarlet mouth was so determined that a man who had come up
unnoticed smiled as he saw it. Yet briefly, for her face was
pathetically weary, more than ever it bore that prophecy of tragedy
that seemed so out of place for Ismay Trelane.
“Where are your thoughts?” Cylmer said lightly. “Oh, did I startle you?”
For Ismay, who never blushed, had turned first a faint rose, then a
fiery scarlet, that burned on her smooth cheeks.
“My thoughts?” Confused, she put her hands to her face. “Oh, anywhere.
Yes, of course, you startled me.” But she was mistress of herself again
now, and she smiled into his eyes as he stood before her, cap in hand.
“I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?” Why did the girl’s glance go to his
head like wine? Why did he think of nothing, want nothing, but to sit
and talk with the daughter of an adventuress whom he scarcely knew?
He sat down beside her on the stile.
“I was going to see you,” he said, “though, I must say, I was shy about
it. Your mother, with excellent reason, hates me.”
“My mother has gone to London,” simply.
“And I don’t think Cristiane is overfond of my society.”
“Why not?” she asked languidly.
“Good taste, I suppose,” was the answer, and both laughed.
“I was taking you something. Will you have it?” he asked, and she saw
that he carried something. Before she could answer he had laid in her
lap a great bunch of roses, crimson, sweet smelling.
The girl stared at them as they lay in her lap. In all her life no one
had ever given her a flower. She put the roses to her face with a quick
tenderness no one had ever seen in her.
As she looked up at him, her eyes were very deep and soft. She held the
roses tightly in both hands.
“Why are you giving them to me?” she said wonderingly.
“Because you’ve had so little. Because I thought you might like them.”
“I do.” Her voice was very low. “But how do you know I’ve had--so
little?”
“Lord De Fort told me,” was on his tongue, but it stuck there.
“Do you remember that night at the Palace?” he asked, instead. “Shall I
tell you what I saw there? A girl in a threadbare black gown, worn at
the elbows, and too thin for the weather; a girl who was pale and very
tired, but more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen. Do you know
that, Ismay?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Then you know now,” he retorted, his face very pale, his eyes, that
were so sweet, close to hers. “I thought I cared for some one else,
then--now I know that I would let everything in this world go to be
with you--even honor!”
Why did the two last words almost stop her heart, that was beating so
quick? Why should Ismay Trelane, to whom honor was but a foolish thing,
a mere word, turn cold, to think he would let it go--for her. She flung
out her hands with a little cry.
“Why should you let it go--for me?” She was panting for breath. “Do you
mean that I, who am nobody, and have come here from the gutters, am a
thing you could not touch and keep your honor?”
“No, no! Not that. Don’t think I dared mean that. It was only a way of
saying”--he took one little bare hand, and held it in strong fingers
that were very careful--“how much I love you.”
“You love me?” For once she was not thinking or acting a part; not
thinking of all Cylmer could give her; not thinking of anything but
that he was beside her, his voice low in her ears, his hand in hers.
“It can’t be true,” she said desperately. “When I came here you loved
Cristiane; I saw it in her face when she came in that first day.”
For a minute he was staggered.
“I thought I did.” And at the truth in his voice Ismay’s heart jumped.
“I know now I never did, for I love you. When I kissed you that day I
knew that your lips on mine had made me yours to take or leave. Which
will you do, Ismay?”
“Yet a little time after you said things to my mother that----” She
stopped, and did not look at him.
“I did not know she was your mother.”
“It did not matter. They were true. They are just as true now. Can you
love me, knowing them?”
For the first time she spoke with a purpose. There must be no slip
between the cup and the lip for want of a little plain speaking.
“Can I love you? Can I help breathing?” almost angrily. “I tell you I
am yours to take or leave. Which is it, Ismay?”
She turned her face to him deliberately; as she lifted her chin, he saw
the long, lovely line of it, that slipped into her throat; saw the
milky whiteness of her oval cheek, that just missed being hollow; saw
her eyes, dark and green, full of his own image; saw her lips--the man
was dizzy as she spoke.
“Take me,” she whispered. “Love me, kill me, it is all one to me,
for I--love you!” And in her face there was all that miracle of pure
passion that had never shone on Cristiane’s, whom he had thought he
loved.
With something very near to reverence, Miles Cylmer kissed her. As he
let her go, he was shaking.
Hand in hand, like two children, they sat, as the winter sun set in a
pale glory behind the leafless trees.
Ismay looked at him, soft malice in her eyes.
“By the way, why are you here on a hunting-day?” she inquired demurely.
“I’ve a sore bridle-hand,” he said calmly.
She caught the quick look he flashed on her, that was both sweet and
mischievous.
“What a story, Mr. Cylmer!” childishly.
“Mr. who?”
“Mr. Cylmer. It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Not to you.” He turned her face to him with a masterful hand. “Are you
going to call me that when you come to live over there?” he whispered,
and laughed with pleasure as the blood leaped to her face.
“Live over there?” she stammered, looking to where, on the far-off
hill, the roof of Cylmer’s Ferry caught the last sunbeams.
“I don’t see where else you’re going to live when you marry me.”
“Marry you!” Every trace of color left her cheek. “I--can’t marry you.”
“What! Why not?” His careless, teasing voice turned her cold. “Tell me,
why not, my witch?”
Tell him! She turned with sudden passion, and clung to him, hiding her
face in his rough tweed coat.
What had she done through this mad love that possessed her? What was
she to do?
The first word of her marriage with another man would make a very devil
in Marcus Wray. She would look well being married to Cylmer, while her
mother was being tried for her life for the murder of Lord Abbotsford,
for that was what her stolen love would bring to her.
“My love, my only love!” She crushed the words back against his
shoulder, thankful to hide her face, and yet agonized, for how long
would its shelter be hers if he knew?
“Ismay, what’s the matter?” Cylmer was suddenly frightened at the wild
cling of her hand in his. “Why can’t you marry me? I thought you were
playing--do you mean you are in earnest?”
In earnest, with the toils all around her; with murder past, and murder
to come! She set her teeth hard before she answered.
“Mother would never hear of it,” she faltered lamely.
“Why not?” He made her look at him.
“She hates you.”
“But if you loved me?” wonderingly.
“It wouldn’t matter! And, besides----”
“Besides what?” He was very grave, his lips hard under his tawny
mustache.
“She wants me to marry some one else. If she thought you loved me, she
would do it all the more.”
“She couldn’t,” very quietly. “Do you think I am a boy, to be bullied?”
Ismay drew away from him. She could not think with her face against his
warm shoulder, and think she must.
“Listen,” she said slowly. “I know my mother better than you. Let me
get her round by degrees before we tell her anything; let nobody know
just yet that you care.”
“Who is the other man?” shortly. “Do you mean you are engaged to him?”
Ismay turned, and looked at him.
“I mean I hate him”--her voice low, with unutterable loathing--“as I
shall hate you, whom I love, if you dare to think that of me.”
The truth and passion in her voice made him wince with shame.
“Ismay!” he cried. “Oh, love, forgive me!”
“I’d forgive you if you killed me,” recklessly.
“But you must listen to me, and never tell you love me till I say it is
time.”
“Through life and death and past the grave.”
“Anything, if you love me, and only me.”
They stood close now, his arms fast round her; through the silk of his
mustache she felt his lips on hers, and knew that, come what might, for
one long instant she had stood at the gate of heaven.
“My sweet, how can I leave you?” he said, letting her go a little that
he might feast his eyes on her face, that was transfigured.
“Leave me? Why should you leave me?”
“Kiss me again, and I’ll tell you.”
But she could not; a curious premonition had suddenly brought her back
to the old Ismay Trelane, who must watch, and think, and scheme.
“Tell me, now,” she said, and at the weariness in her voice he drew
her to him, penitently.
“Was I too rough with you, sweet? I’m so sorry. But I really have to go
away; that was why I came over to-day. I must go to London to-morrow.”
“Away from me?” but she could not smile.
“Does town count before me?”
“Nothing does. But after you comes a duty to the dead.”
“To the dead?” She stared at him. “Do you mean Sir Gaspard?”
“No; but it’s a ghastly thing to talk of to-day.”
“Tell me; you’re frightening me; I--I hate death.”
“Don’t be frightened, sweet; it is nothing to do with you, not much
with me. But do you remember how they found Lord Abbotsford dead this
autumn? Or did you ever hear of it?”
“I--I heard.” Her eyes, black, dilated, with terror, stared, unseeing,
at his unconscious face.
“Well, I’ve had a detective working at it ever since--and--this is the
first secret I’ve ever told you, sweet, and it is a secret--he wants
to see me at once. He thinks he has got a clue to the murderer. Why,
Ismay! Darling! Why did I speak of such a horror to you?” with dismay.
For she had slipped like water through his arms, a lifeless heap on the
cold ground.
CHAPTER XX.
THE EDGE OF DOOM.
A cold black void; a struggle that was agony to get out of it; a
falling through deep waters that were loud in her ears, then blackness
once more, deep and awful. Slowly, slowly, it faded, and with a
sickness like death at her heart Ismay was conscious again. Where was
she? What was this?
She lifted her head from the wintry earth, and let it fall again.
“Lie still; don’t move.” Cylmer was kneeling beside her, inwardly
cursing himself for a fool, when he knew her horror of death.
“Ismay, darling, forgive me, and forget it. I might have known it was
enough to sicken any woman.”
“Death--murder--you!” she cried incoherently. “Ever since I came here
death has been round me, I”--her voice was shrill, hysterical--“I smell
death in Marchant’s Hold, and I meet it.” Her eyes closed again.
“No, no! Don’t talk like that, my sweet,” gathering her close with
protecting arms. “I was a brute to tell you such things. You were tired
out, unstrung already. I was too rough and careless with you, my heart.”
But she shrank away.
“You--to bring any one to their death; to find clues that would hang
them!”
“It is not I, it is justice. Oh! don’t draw away from me.”
“Justice on the poor, the tempted!” A sudden sense of the danger that
her words held checked her. “Oh, why did you tell me? Why should I
know you are helping to hunt any poor wretch down?”
“Oh, the tender woman’s soul that cannot bear anything to be hurt!” he
thought swiftly, loving her all the more for her weakness.
“Would you let things go, and have the innocent suffer for the guilty?”
he said gravely. “I think not, dear.”
The innocent! Was there any one in the world innocent? She had no
reason to love her mother, yet now, in her peril, she was ready to
fight, tooth and nail, for her, even when her enemy was Miles Cylmer,
whose kiss had opened heaven.
All that he was doing she must know, and make of no avail, and at the
task before her the girl’s brave spirit quailed. Somehow she must save
her mother, and keep him! Her brain reeled as she thought that some
one, no matter how innocent, must have that crime brought home to them
to save the mother who was guilty.
Ismay summoned all her strength, and sat up, very white.
“Did you know I was such a baby?” she whispered. “I hate hearing of
horrors, and it startled me to know you had anything to do with things
like that. But you’re quite right. I won’t be so silly any more. Only
I--I was ready to cry in any case. I loved you, and you kissed me,
and----”
“And then I had not any more sense than to blurt out things you should
never hear of,” he finished for her, kissing her again, very softly.
“I’m going to take you home now, and we’ll never speak of Abbotsford
again.”
“You can as much as you like, now,” and if her lips were wan he did not
notice. “I know whatever you do will be for the right,” speaking the
truth, but not adding, “no matter the cost to me and mine.”
“My little sweetheart,” he said, fastening the fur collar of her
coat, that he had unfastened to give her room to breathe when she lay
unconscious. “I wish I could carry you home. You aren’t fit to walk.”
“I am fit to go anywhere with you,” she smiled, with all the strange
sorcery that was hers, a smile that covered deadly terror. “Bring my
roses. They are the first thing you ever gave me,” pointing to the
great bunch of blood-red flowers lying on the ground in the early
twilight.
“They are not half so sweet and fine as you,” Cylmer said, as he saw
her put them to her face. “Do you know how beautiful you are? I wish
you would marry me to-morrow, so that you could put away all that
black, and let me see you in a white gown.”
With a little shiver, she drew closer to him, where she walked within
his arm in the sheltering dusk.
“Tell me about Lord Abbotsford,” she said, as his arm tightened round
her, for she must know; she dared not let him go back to talk of that
love that might turn so bitter in the end.
“And make you faint again? Not I!”
“I won’t. It wasn’t that.” He could not know the sweet shyness of her
voice was put there to cover the first lie she had ever told him. “I
was--tired.”
And in the languor of happiness that was in his own blood, he believed
her.
“But you hate those things!”
“Not if you say they are right.”
“They are, I suppose,” he answered slowly. “A man’s blood cries from
the ground for justice, and I was his only friend. But I don’t think I
ought to talk about it--to you.”
“If I am going to be your wife, will you always hide unpleasant things
from me?” softly. “I don’t think I should like that.”
“I’m never going to hide anything from you,” he cried, with love in his
voice. “But there isn’t much to tell.”
She listened with a heart like ice as he told her all that she knew so
well--the missing photograph, the money, the diamonds--she had to hold
herself hard not to forestall him as he talked. Would he never come to
something new? But when he came to it she was thankful for the darkness
that hid her face.
“The diamonds vanished utterly,” he was saying; “but the other day, one
of them, a very curious stone, with a pink tinge in it, turned up in
Amsterdam. The tracing of it will be long, but certain in the end; it
will ruin the man or woman who took it.”
“Or woman!” The interruption was nearly a cry. “What woman would do
such things?”
“It looked as if a woman had taken away the photograph.” He drew her
closer. “Look out, the path is slippery!”
“Very slippery,” said Ismay Trelane, keeping down the dry sob in her
throat. Slippery, and on the very edge of doom, this path that she must
walk to the end.
“You see, there must have been a woman in it somewhere, for Abbotsford
was going to be married, and he was leaving all the people he had been
friendly with, and arranging all his affairs.”
“Say it plainly,” said the old Ismay Trelane, who had been brought up
to uncanny knowledge.
“I can’t say it--to you,” Cylmer returned, with shame.
“Go on, then, I know what you mean. Let us say the photograph was the
woman’s he was leaving for his wife.”
“Then, don’t you see, it must have either been she or some man for her
who came back and took it.”
“I think it must have been a man!” Her voice through her white lips
sounded almost indifferent. “A woman would not dare.”
“Whichever it was, they were mad to take the diamonds. I don’t know,”
he continued, “that it’s going to make much difference. The diamonds
may be traced, of course, but they are not the clue I spoke about.
Kivers tells me there was something found in the room when they were
getting things ready for the new Lord Abbotsford’s family. It will
probably show clearly enough whether the murderer was a man or not.”
“Something found! What, I wonder?” like lightning she was going over
that day. Her mother had not dropped or lost anything; she could not
have, or she would have missed it, and said so, Ismay thought, in new
terror. “Why must it belong to the man who killed him? What was found,
I mean? Fifty people may have been in and out of that room since he
died.”
“No one has; it was locked and sealed after the inquest by my--the
detective,” quickly correcting himself. “It was only opened two days
ago by him, when he made a last search, before giving up hope, and
before the new family came to him. And in the last search he found
something.”
“What?” Her impatience made her eyes burn in the dusk.
“That’s what I’m going up to see. ‘A trinket, or a part of one,’ he
said.”
“A trinket!” involuntarily the words escaped her, with an anxiety that
was pain. Yet she was sure that her mother had not lost anything that
awful day, unless--she had not known she did!
“It may be something I have seen before,” said Cylmer coolly, and once
more that hand of ice was on her heart. “So I shall go up to-morrow.”
“To-morrow!” What should she do all the long day when he was gone. When
each minute might be bringing detection nearer? “You won’t stay long?”
she added imploringly. “You’ll come back?”
“As soon as I possibly can; the next day at farthest. Shall you miss
me?”
“Miss you!” She gathered all her strength and laughed lightly, without
a trace of care. “I have not had you long enough to miss you.”
They were close to Marchant’s Hold now. The lighted lamps shone rosy
from the drawing-room windows, and she kept carefully out of the
patches of light on the gravel where they stood.
“I shall miss you, then, every second! And, look here, Ismay! I hate
the business. I only do it because he was my friend, and I feel bound
to it. Do you understand?”
“I dare say you will hate it more before it is done,” she said, as if
in idleness, and afterward he remembered, when the stone he had set
rolling threatened to crush all he loved on earth. “But it interests me
in a dreadful sort of way. When you come back you will tell me what
you found, won’t you? I won’t tell. It shall be your secret, like your
loving me is mine.”
“I’ll tell you anything you ask,” he said tenderly. “But I wish you
would let me have my way, and be engaged to you openly. I would like to
go in and tell Cristiane now!” He moved toward the great door with so
much purpose that she flew after him.
“No, no!” she cried. “Mother hates you; she’d send me away straight
off; you’d never see me again. If you tell it means that I shall
suffer.”
“Then I’ll wait forever.” In the shadow of an evergreen he caught her
to him, as a man holds his only love on earth. “Till you tell me to
speak I will hold my tongue. Will that satisfy you? And, instead of my
coming to Marchant’s Hold, will you meet me at the stile, at five, the
day after to-morrow? It will be best, if we are to keep our secret.”
She gave a long sigh of relief, resting for perhaps the last time
against the strong shoulders of the man who might know things when he
came from London that would part them forever.
“That is all I want,” she said; “just to let no one know but us two! I
must go now; good-by.”
“But I want to come in.” He had not let her go.
She smiled in the darkness.
“And even Thomas would know from your face! And how should I look
coming home at this hour with you?”
“You are too worldly-wise. How do you know all these things?”
half-proud of her shrewdness and sense. “You’re too young to know them.”
“Sometimes I feel old, so old,” she answered gravely, “as if I had
lived lives and lives.”
“And loved?” catching her jealously, as if they were not talking
nonsense. “And loved, Ismay?”
For answer her arms went round his neck in quick passion.
“I never loved any one on earth till I loved you,” she whispered.
“There is only you for me now, till I die. Even if you tire of me--or
hate me.”
She stepped away from him and into the house before he could answer,
before he could even tighten his arms to hold her. He turned away for
his long walk home with a strange loneliness, as if his very soul had
left him when Ismay went.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE DOG IN THE MANGER.
Could Cylmer have seen her through that night of wan fear? In and out
of her bed, like a restless ghost, she who had always before slept like
a baby; crouching sullenly over her fire, hardening her heart to meet
what must come; till a sudden thought would strike with an unendurable
pang of terror, and make her start to her feet and walk round and
round her room, wild and terrible in her beauty, all her flaxen hair
streaming over the face that was more white than her nightgown.
“Murder will out, and by to-morrow night he may have brought it home to
her! What shall I do? Oh! What shall I do?”
She stopped in front of the roses her lover had given her, and with
sudden frantic hands tore them to shreds; crimson petals, green leaves,
fluttered over her muslin night-dress; the thorns of the stripped
stalks tore her hands, wounded her bare white feet. As if the pain
had brought back her senses, she gave a long sigh, and stood quite
motionless; presently, she sat down very wearily on her tossed bed.
“I’m behaving like a fool!” she thought. “He will be back and tell me
what was found before the police act on it, or can get very far if they
do. And, for all I know, it may be the greatest piece of luck we could
have, and draw suspicion off on a false scent, and save us. I will get
out of him all they are doing in time to run, if we must”--she winced
in spite of herself--“but we won’t run while there is one chance left.
I can’t, I won’t, lose him!”
Her lips curved in that hard smile that could make even Mrs. Trelane
shrink. She rose and put on a thick dressing-gown. As calmly as if
it were broad daylight, and the proper time for sewing, Miss Trelane
opened a locked drawer, and took out a roll of material she had been at
some pains to obtain. She got down on the floor and cut out and sewed
hard for the next two hours, not that there was any haste to complete
her task, but for the solace of the effort. The thick softness of the
white satin she was working with made her frown with some emotion that
she fought down, for she thought of the dress that she would never wear
standing at the altar with the man she loved.
“Well, I can bear it as other women have before!” she thought grimly,
sewing with firm, practical fingers. “Thank fortune, all this wants is
good, solid basting that can’t come out! I would find no joy in sewing
my fingers off, even to get a hold on Marcus Wray.”
She gave a little stretch of fatigue, and surveyed her work when the
last stitch was in. Then she let her dressing-gown slip off her lovely
shoulders, and put on the dress she had so hastily run together.
“Lucky I haven’t to powder my hair!” she thought, as she piled it high
on her head deftly, without going near the glass. “Powder dropped on
Miss Le Marchant’s red felt stair carpets would be too remarkable even
for Thomas!” She stooped as she spoke, took a filmy white scarf, yards
long, from the open dresser, and put it over her head and round her
slim body, leaving the long wide ends to float gauzily behind her as
she walked over to the long glass set in her wardrobe.
And even she was startled at what she saw in the light of the nearly
burned-out candles.
Tall and strangely slender in the short-waisted, tight-skirted gown,
that clung to her shape, her pale face ghostly under the filmy crape
that veiled it, only her eyes burning dark, fiery, and revengeful,
to give it any semblance of life, she stood the living image of the
pictured woman up-stairs. In her bare feet she moved to and fro in
front of the glass, till she learned a movement that made her look as
if she floated rather than walked.
“That is all right, I think!” she mused. “Thomas and Jessie are
the only people I should ever be in danger of meeting, and I think
I am quite enough to make them howl and run, without stopping to
investigate. But as things are now I don’t feel so much interest in
sneaking round at night, trying to catch Marcus out. My parent’s neck
and my own happiness seem a trifle more important.”
She pulled off the old-fashioned frock as carelessly as she dared,
considering its frail putting together, and stuffed it and the scarf
into the drawer, picked up every thread and scrap of satin that might
betray her occupation, and burned them. She was asleep almost before
she had extinguished the candles and got her head on her pillow, and
as she slept the night skies burst in rain, and at the roar of the
downpour on the windows, the girl’s quiet face twitched with pain.
In her dream it was the noise of the crowd waiting to see her mother
hanged!
In the morning it still rained heavily. For one moment she hoped the
weather would keep Cylmer at home, but then she remembered that rich
people with closed carriages cared very little for rain and wind. And
she wanted him to go, the sooner she knew what had been found, the
better.
“Ismay!” Cristiane said at breakfast, “what have you been doing to your
poor hands?”
“Briars,” concisely.
“You shouldn’t try to pick those thorny rose-berries without gloves,
town child!”
And at the laughing voice Ismay shuddered. Truly, such as she had no
right with roses at all.
“What are we going to do all day?” pursued the heiress discontentedly,
the riches and luxury of her house being too old a story to enjoy of a
wet day. “Just look at the rain! Let’s go out, and get dripping.”
“And have pneumonia when we come in,” with practical experience of
wettings in the days when she ran errands, half-clad. “Not I!”
“But I’m bored,” peevishly.
“Are you? Then thank Heaven! It’s a very healthy state of mind,” said
Ismay drolly. “I wish I were.”
“Aren’t you?” with her violet eyes wide.
Ismay shook her head.
“Too glad to be in out of that!” she observed coolly. “I used to be out
in it too often when we were poor.”
“I’d like to be poor, and work,” Cristiane said thoughtfully. “It must
be so amusing never to know where you’re going to get to-morrow’s
dinner! Something like gambling.”
“Very like it; when you lose, and have no dinner.”
“You’re so material!” Cristiane said reproachfully. “Now I want to be
amused. Even stupid old Miles would be better than nobody.”
Ismay was so startled that she had blushed crimson before she had time
to turn away her head. Utterly at loss she sat as guilty-looking as the
silliest schoolgirl who ever adored a music-master in secret!
“Stupid old Miles!” she could have boxed her hostess’ ears with rage.
And for once her hostess was clear-eyed.
A suspicion had sprung up full grown in her mind as she saw Ismay’s
confusion. Why should she get so red at the mere name of a man she
had only seen twice? Could those solitary walks of hers have covered
meetings with him? He was nearly always hanging about--or had been!
Cristiane had refused him, certainly, but she was none the less stung
at the mere thought that he was daring to console himself; she felt
exactly like the proverbial dog in the manger, even if she did not want
the oats no one else should have them. For the first time, Miles Cylmer
seemed a desirable possession to the spoiled child.
“What’s the matter?” she inquired. “Don’t look so cross.”
Ismay threw back her head, with a lovely laugh, that rang with
innocence.
“I’m not cross,” she cried, “it’s you that are a baby! I told you long
ago that you really liked him.” Her sweet voice gave no sign of the
fright in her mind lest this girl, who had everything, might try to get
back the one that was Ismay’s all, and so strike aside the arm that
stood between her and death.
“I didn’t like him, or I could have married him,” Cristiane retorted,
with intention; Ismay should see that Miles was hers, and not to be
interfered with.
“Why on earth didn’t you, then? He’s so good-looking,” said the other
imperturbably.
“I get too tired of him. He was a friend of father’s, and always
bothering over here.” As usual, her crimson lips quivered at her
father’s name.
“Oh, Cristiane--darling, forgive me!” Ismay kissed her, half with real
compunction, half to mislead her. “Don’t let’s talk of him any more.”
“I don’t want to; I hate him. He never came near me when I was in
trouble, just because I wouldn’t marry him. Did you ever hear of
anything so selfish?” smarting tears in her eyes.
Ismay reflected swiftly that she must burn that penciled card.
“I suppose,” Cristiane was going on, “he will be back again
soon--saying he loves me, and all that, but he can die of love, for all
me.”
In spite of her anxious heart it was all Ismay could do to restrain the
cold, clear laugh that was in her throat.
“I wish that nice Mr. Wray was coming back sooner,” Cristiane observed,
when her equanimity was further restored. “A fortnight is a very long
time when you’re dull. I like him far better than Miles Cylmer. He’s so
much cleverer--and kinder,” dropping her voice.
“Kinder? Look here, Cristiane, listen to me,” said Ismay, very
earnestly. “He isn’t kind at all, and I wouldn’t trust him, if I were
you, with my little finger.”
“Why? I believe you’re cross, Ismay, because Mr. Wray talks more to
your mother and me than to you.”
“I wish he were struck dumb, and would never speak again,” replied
Ismay viciously. “I don’t like him because I think he’s a bad man, that
is why.”
“Then I shall like him,” with defiance. “Bad men in books are always
much the nicest; I have often longed to know one.”
“Well, you have your wish!” returned Ismay calmly.
“Listen, I hear wheels!” cried Cristiane suddenly. “There’s some one
coming. Even if it’s only Miles, he shall stay to lunch.”
Indifferently, since Miles was in London, Ismay followed her, to look
out on the rain-beaten sweep of gravel. Yet could it be Miles? For a
closed fly from the station was in front of the hall door.
Cristiane gave a little shriek.
“It’s--why, Ismay, it’s your mother! And Mr. Wray,” as a man followed
Mrs. Trelane leisurely onto the streaming terrace.
She rushed to the door to greet the arrivals.
Ismay Trelane, white as ashes, was left alone to meet a terror that
made her arms fall inert to her sides.
What had brought her mother back? And what was hurrying Marcus Wray,
that his fortnight of grace had been turned to two days?
CHAPTER XXII.
“A CHARMING MAN.”
Thomas, waiting that evening on the dinner-party, beamed as he directed
his subordinates, so joyful was he to see the old light of happiness
and gaiety on his young mistress’ face.
The strange gentleman from London talked so well, and was so quietly
amusing, that the old man had to turn away at times to hide the smile
forbidden to a well-bred servant. But he showed his gratification by
pressing on Mr. Wray Sir Gaspard’s priceless Burgundy, which by degrees
warmed that individual to the heart, so that important things seemed
curiously less important, even to him.
Ismay surveyed the party from a different point of view.
There sat her mother, probably a murderess, certainly a thief; next
her, Wray, a receiver of stolen goods, a blackmailer, with an awful
crime waiting for committal; at the head of the table, Cristiane, with
death at her elbow, and against them all no one but a girl, fearing
all things, hoping nothing. It was certainly an unusual party.
Mrs. Trelane, powdered, painted, nervously gay, was reckless in her
conversation.
Ismay, with resigned despair, did not try to warn her even by a glance;
Cristiane, perhaps, did not understand her wildest sallies.
“If she did, she’d leave the table,” the girl thought scornfully,
looking at the other girl’s smiling density. “But I wonder, wonder,
wonder, what brought him down!”
Mr. Wray caught her glance that was so hard and searching.
“Dear Ismay,” he said paternally, “have a little mercy! Don’t sit
there, wishing I had stayed at home.”
“I didn’t know you had a home!” cuttingly. “Have you?”
For some unknown reason the shot told; perhaps Mr. Wray knew more of
domesticity than he avowed, for he changed his smile with abruptness.
“I hope to have one--some day!” his tone that of a man who takes an
undeserved wound bravely; his glance, that only Ismay saw, a cold and
savage threat.
Cristiane flushed. How could Ismay, whom her father had saved from
starvation, dare to taunt a man, who could not be too well off, with
his poverty?
“Homes are uncertain things!” she observed acidly, and Ismay could have
wrung her hands under the table as she saw her mother look with open
mockery at Wray.
What were they going to do?
“There’ll be no chance of my finding out by listening,” she thought
forlornly. “They must have done all the talking they needed in the
train. Their plans--his plan”--with bitter correction, “must be cut and
dried by now, and that idiot of a girl will walk into their trap!
“But perhaps he means to stand by my mother on account of the money. He
must--it would be murder wasted, if he did not. And not even he would
waste murder.”
Her face was more somber than she knew, as her thoughts, in spite
of her, flew to Cylmer and his business in London. And Wray saw it;
he was used to rudeness in her, but not to gloom, and, in spite of
the cheering Burgundy, he was suspicious. At bedtime, as he lit Mrs.
Trelane’s candle for her in the hall, he spoke to her angrily, and
quietly, having ignored her for Cristiane throughout the evening.
“What’s the matter with Ismay? Have you been fool enough to tell her
things? She looks simply stuffed with righteous wrath.”
Ismay, on the first step of the stairs, pricked up her ears at his
tone. But Cristiane, her arm through hers, was dragging her on--her
young blood as light from Marcus Wray’s respectfully adoring eyes as
his had been from her father’s Burgundy!
Miss Trelane, for the second time that day, longed to box her ears.
“I hate fools,” she thought grimly, “and this one will ruin herself
and me, too, if I can’t teach her some sense. And the worst of it is,
I can’t help trying to take care of the silly little donkey. I wish I
could speak out to her, but she’d only think me crazy.”
Cristiane gave an ecstatic squeeze to the inert arm in hers.
“Isn’t he a dear?” she whispered, as they turned the corner of the
great stairs.
Ismay stopped the second they were out of sight from below, and was
listening with all her ears, but not to Cristiane.
Wray was just underneath her, and his voice floated up to her in a
far-reaching whisper.
“Mind you find out what ails the girl before you go to bed, and come
and tell me in the library. She makes me angry with her tragedy airs.”
“Nothing so fatal as a whisper! I’ll mark that for future reference,”
reflected the eavesdropper, with lightning speed. “What did you say,
Cristiane, dear?”
“If he’s a bad man, they’re charming things. And he’s going to stay a
week; I asked him. Won’t it be nice? Come now, tell the truth! Don’t
you honestly think he’s charming?”
“Charming? Yes! But you’ll turn his head if you let him know it.”
Charming was exactly the word; people used it about a snake fascinating
a bird before it killed it.
“Of course, I sha’n’t let him know it,” returned Cristiane. “Good
night; mind you’re nice to him to-morrow, because he’s going to stay,”
with a laughing nod of power, since it was her house and her guest that
were in question.
“She won’t let him know it! When she’s been gazing at him all the
evening,” said Miss Trelane derisively, when she was safe in her own
bedroom. “For pure downright idiocy, commend me to a well-brought-up
girl, who thinks the world is a playground where little geese can wear
gold collars and show them off to the nice, kind foxes!” but she did
not smile at her own parable, as she locked her door and got into bed
with incredible speed.
She had not been there five minutes before the door-handle was turned
sharply.
“Ismay, open the door at once! You can’t be in bed,” cried her mother,
from the corridor, with the assurance of a person who finds a door
unexpectedly locked.
“Yes, I am!” with childlike surprise. “What’s the matter? I don’t want
to get up again.”
“Let me in at once,” giving the door a cross jerk.
“Delighted!” she crossed the floor with swift bare feet, and turned the
key.
“What on earth did you lock your door for?”
Mrs. Trelane banged it, too, behind her as she swept in, her gauzy,
glittering gown, that was fit for the stage, trailing behind her.
“And you’ll never keep your looks if you’re going to get into bed like
a plowboy, without even washing your face.”
“It’s quite clean. I never use powder,” was the retort.
“Pray don’t be clever. I’m dead tired.” Mrs. Trelane dropped into the
most comfortable chair in the room. “I can’t appreciate it. I suppose
you locked your door because you’re annoyed with me for bringing Marcus
here?”
Ismay, sitting on the edge of her bed, white and exquisite, rubbed one
foot with the shell-pink heel of the other; and looked ashamed, as one
who is about to disgrace herself by a chicken-hearted confession.
“I always lock my door in this house at night,” looking at her feet.
“I’m--afraid!”
“Afraid? What on earth of?”
“Nothing--on earth,” whispering. “But haven’t you heard anything funny
since you came here?”
“Nothing so funny as this!” contemptuously. “Do talk sensibly. I came
to say something. Do you suppose I came back to this dull hole for fun?”
“I am talking sensibly.” For the first time Ismay looked up, and her
gaze would have made the fortune of a tragedienne. Deep, earnest,
magnetic, her eyes caught and held her mother’s.
“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know about the things there is in
this house?” she demanded. “The thing that moves softly at night,
up and down the stairs, that you can hear if you stand in the
corridor--coming closer, closer every minute, till it passes you with a
cold like snow in your face, and you can’t move for fright----” She was
moving her hands in a strange waving motion to and fro, and a strange
uneasiness caught at Helen Trelane’s wretched soul, even while she gave
a scoffing laugh.
“The thing that is very old and evil, and means no good to any in the
house. Because, if you don’t know, ask Thomas! You saw how frightened
he was the day I told before him my dream about the music at night,”
with a return to her practical manner that was somehow more impressive
than her mother liked.
“What has your dream of a piano being played in the night got to do
with servants’ stories about ghosts?” Yet Mrs. Trelane could not help
glancing at the shut door. With Marcus in the house, with the world
against her on every side, it would be too awful to get nervous terrors
on her brain.
“It wasn’t a dream--and it wasn’t a piano,” said Ismay quietly. “Thomas
can tell you; I’ve had enough without talking about it. And, if I were
you, I’d get to bed before it got much later; I want to get my door
locked. I don’t care much for those dark corridors outside. And if you
get frightened out there it won’t be of any use coming to my door,
for no power on earth would make me unlock it after twelve o’clock at
night. This is a vile, abominable house, and I’m afraid in it. So now
you know.”
“I know I never heard anything so silly,” viciously; yet the cowering,
apprehensive look the girl gave at the corridor, as her mother threw
open the door into it made Mrs. Trelane uncomfortable.
Ismay hesitated for an instant before she locked the door and returned
to bed.
“I never found out why she came back, or why she brought him,” she
mused. “But it would have been no good to ask. She would only have
made up something; she never looked at me except that once, when I
made her. And it would not be wise to go down and listen after telling
her ghost-stories. She didn’t believe them, and she’ll tell him, and
he won’t believe them, and they’ll laugh. But all the same he will
investigate every mouse that squeaks in the passage, and I should get
caught.”
She got into bed, suddenly conscious of being very weary as she nestled
into the warm sheets, but her mind was alert enough.
“I’ll give them time to interview Thomas, and let my tale sink in a
little. I don’t believe they will say anything worth knowing to-night.
And by to-morrow night I shall know more. I’ll probably be able to
frighten her into anything by to-morrow night!”
Yet the next instant she sat up and listened. She had been right; that
was the rustle of her mother’s dress, as she swept by to her bedroom.
Ismay sat perfectly quiet as the light steps paused and Mrs. Trelane
tried the door again.
Not a sound answered her sharp “Ismay!” but the girl did not smile as
she spoke to herself when the steps had passed on.
“I’ve convinced her that I’m not to be got at, at night, from fright,”
she muttered, “if I were not really sick with fright for her life--and
other things--it might be funny!” and as she lay down she shivered.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A GHOSTLY EAVESDROPPER.
Mr. Wray sat by the library fire the next night as the clock chimed
twelve. There was whisky beside him, and soda, but he was not drinking,
only staring at the hearth, and tapping with his finger on his knee,
with the old action of driving in a nail.
The day had been long, hideously long, to every one but Cristiane le
Marchant, who had drunk in specious, covert admiration as a thirsty man
drinks water. To Mrs. Trelane it had been one effort of the nerves not
to give way to her misgivings; to Ismay the hours had dragged, and yet
flown, in her fears that to-morrow might be fraught with danger that
could not be evaded; her longing, that was yet a dread, for Cylmer’s
return. And, come what might, Wray must not see them together.
Marcus, until ten o’clock, had been coldly uneasy, despite all his
careful politeness. Since then the deep lines about his mouth were
drawn less tightly, and yet the look on his face did not reassure Helen
Trelane, as she came noiselessly into the room.
“Well, you have not overexerted yourself to get here!” he did not stop
the tapping that was enough to get on an innocent woman’s nerves.
“Do you know I have been waiting for an hour? Though, of course I
should be at your disposal till four in the morning!” with sarcastic
deference.
“I couldn’t come,” she retorted. “Cristiane came to my room to brush
her hair, and I had to pretend to get ready for bed.”
“Evidently.” For her carefully dressed hair had been changed to a small
coil that made her ten years older. “Well, now you are here, I have
some news!”
“Mark!” she caught him by the arm. “Quick, tell me. Good, or bad?”
“It is always ‘Mark’ when you are afraid of your neck!” his tone was
smoothly uncivil, his action openly brutal as he shook off her hand.
“Good, if one can believe it,” he took a telegram from his pocket.
“And don’t you?”
“I’ve no particular reason to; Van Hoeft was always a liar,” coolly.
“Yet I think he knows it wouldn’t pay to lie to me.”
“Who’s Van Hoeft? Give it to me.” She snatched it from his hand.
“A henchman of mine, in Amsterdam. Be good enough,” peremptorily, “not
to read it at the top of your sweetly penetrating voice.”
“There’s no one to hear.” But she did moderate the strained pitch of
her voice a little.
“‘The parcel cannot be traced beyond Paris. Will wire if any news of
it.’”
“The parcel. Does he mean the diamonds?” she cried, raging at his
sullen calm. “Why don’t you answer?”
“Of course he does, else why would it be good news?”
“And you think he may be deceiving you?”
“I think he may be fool enough to try to keep me quiet while he saves
his own skin.”
“Then why don’t you go and find out,” her voice was harsh, ringing.
“Are you going to sit here and let us both be ruined?”
“I am going to sit here, because I am afraid to be seen in either Paris
or Amsterdam,” he returned as carelessly as if he spoke of avoiding a
draft of air. “And because I’ve a good thing here, and the sooner it’s
managed the better.”
Twice the woman tried to speak and could not.
“What was in that paragraph, exactly?” she said at last.
“Exactly this.” He drew out a clipping from his pocketbook and read it
aloud.
“There is at last some clue to the mystery surrounding the death of
the late Lord Abbotsford, whose tragic end our readers will remember.
Some of the missing diamonds have been found at Amsterdam by a
clever detective, and the tracing of their whole history since their
disappearance can now be only a matter of time.”
“You’re sure that’s all?” she moistened her lip with his full tumbler
of whisky and soda.
“It’s enough, isn’t it? Oh, pray keep my drink!” as she handed it to
him. “I prefer a clean glass.”
“Mark, you must see,” she wailed wretchedly, “that it’s no time to have
a nine days’ wonder here. It would be madness to draw attention to
either of us, now.” She leaned forward, haggard, imploring. “I’ll give
you anything, all I have, if you only go away and let the girl be.”
“I told you before that was abject rot,” he exclaimed icily. “I’m not
playing for the few pounds you would forget to send when I was out of
your way. I mean to have all this”--glancing around him--“and Ismay,
in a satin gown, to take off my boots.” For once his calm was gone; he
breathed sharply. Mrs. Trelane rocked to and fro in her chair, with
fear and loathing.
“She’ll never have you,” she said through her teeth.
“Then you can swing,” said Mr. Wray, with a significant finger at his
own throat.
And this time she made no protestation of her innocence. Any one
listening might well have believed in her guilt. When she spoke again
her voice was hollow, like a dying woman’s.
“You can’t poison her without being found out.”
Mr. Wray threw back his head and laughed noiselessly, as was his habit.
The joke, for some unknown reason, was apparently an excellent one.
“Dear lady, how your mind reverts to a groove,” he said, surveying
her with half-shut eyes that made him more hideous than ever. “Your
method is not going to be employed again,” and he laughed once more,
unmercifully.
“Mark,” she was crying hysterically, “don’t laugh like that! You’ll
kill me if you laugh. You frighten me--I could scream”--her sobs broke
her words. “Tell me what you mean, and let me go.”
“I mean an accident, then; a common or garden accident. There couldn’t
be any fuss about that; it might happen to every one. And the less you
know about it the better. If you knew you’d do something foolish, and
the whole thing would be made a mess of.”
“It will put us both in our graves, never mind what I do.” She turned
on him fiercely.
He got up coolly and pulled up the blind, staring out into the
moonlight night.
“Does it interest you to know that it’s freezing hard? And there’s not
a breath of wind on the lake,” he asked.
“Nothing interests me while you live to curse my eyes,” she said with
unutterable bitterness, and in the silence of the room he laughed to
himself.
“Then let me advise you to drink that whisky and go to bed,” he said,
dropping the blind and turning around. “Also to rejoice that you will
not encounter any one in the passages,” glancing distastefully at the
channels her tears had marked through her powder.
“You have prepared me for a good night’s rest,” she returned heavily,
opening the door and making a few steps into the dark hall outside.
The next minute she flew back again.
“Mark, quick--for Heaven’s sake! There’s some one, something, there. I
can’t go.”
“You don’t mean you are believing in that crazy lie of Thomas?” he said
after a contemptuous survey of the empty hall, lamp in hand. “There
isn’t a creature stirring.”
“He believes it; Jessie believes it.”
“And in spite of that they also believe that when any one dies they go
either to hell or to heaven,” he jeered. “Can’t you see the thing’s
absurd?”
“But I heard something. I did, indeed. Oh, I’m nervous, unstrung. I
can’t face those dark stairs and passages. You will have to go up with
me.”
“Because Thomas is hanging round to see that all the lights are out,”
shrugging his shoulders. “I suppose neither of those two girls would
come down for anything.”
Mrs. Trelane shook her head. “Thomas thinks we are all in bed. He
hasn’t left a light anywhere. Jessie sleeps in a room off Cristiane’s;
she would never let her get out of her bed. And Ismay--oh, Mark! even
Ismay is afraid here at night. She locks her door and won’t open it
till daylight--for fear.”
“Then she has her weak side, for all her airs.”
He moved, lamp in hand, to the foot of the stairs.
“There, I’ll stay here till you are in your room,” he said resignedly.
“I wonder why women were created cowards.”
But she did not answer him. As quickly and almost as lightly as Ismay,
she had sped up the stairs and was groping through the dark hall above
their own room. When she reached it she was breathless; for just as
Ismay had said, she had heard that faint footfall, coming closer every
minute; inexorable, ghostly, in the silent house where no one waked
save she and Marcus Wray.
The latter had heard nothing, nor would he have cared if he had. In so
old a house night noises were a foregone conclusion.
He returned to his neglected whisky and soda, and a cigar. But there
was no bite to the whisky, no taste in the tobacco. His mind was not as
easy as he liked, in spite of his friend in Amsterdam. There had been
a weak point in the underground career of those diamonds, and Mr. Wray
knew it.
“What has to be done must be done at once,” he said aloud, stretching
out his long legs in Sir Gaspard’s chair. “And then I’ll be off to lie
low till I can reap the harvest. My old friend here can’t escape me,
even if she dared to try. And the weather has turned cold,” his voice
changed abruptly, as if something pleased him. “It’s freezing hard.
If all goes well the day after to-morrow will see the fair Helen an
heiress, after which I shall spend a few months living retired--in
Bohemia.”
Yawning, he extinguished the light and went up-stairs to bed. This
country life was at present convenient; in future it would be
profitable; but it was certainly deadly dull.
“To-morrow I’ll amuse myself with my dear friend and well-wisher,
Ismay,” he reflected. “I like to see her hate me, it adds to the
pleasure of having her under my fingers. Hello!” as he stood in his
door, candle in hand--the candle he would not give Helen Trelane for
pure deviltry--“what’s that?”
From somewhere far off a tinkling tune came softly, yet clearly; an
unearthly sound in the midnight hush.
“Thomas is up to some game, I suppose, and I’m damned if I know why!
But I’ll choke him off now, once for all.” He started in search of the
mysterious sound, kicking off his patent-leather slippers that he might
steal unseen on the erring Thomas. At the head of the stairs the music
ceased, not suddenly, but with the curious falling cadence that marked
the end of the tune. But music was lost on Mr. Wray.
“I’ve got off the track,” he thought, descending once more, somewhat
gingerly in his stocking feet. The instant he was in the lower passage
the air tinkled out again with a mocking lightness. The sound certainly
came from above him, and he ran up again, utterly careless if he were
heard or not.
There was only an empty passage to be seen, door after door on each
side of it. He flung them open, one by one, but only disused bedrooms
met his scrutiny. As he threw the fifth door wide his candle went out,
not quickly, but slowly, as if something ailed the wick. Dim and blue
it faded slowly and the music that had seemed so near was gone.
A cloud was over the moon; he could not see a yard into the room in
front of him, but the same cold disused air met him that he had felt in
all the other rooms.
“Thomas and his remarkable ghost seem to be founded on fact,” he
thought angrily, jarred, in spite of himself, by that slow fading of
his light. “Well, they can play till doomsday for all I care; but first
I will make sure of Thomas!”
He stumbled down to his own room in the dark, stubbing his toes
unmercifully. Then with a relit candle he sought the small room next
the butler’s pantry, where Thomas dwelt to guard his silver.
The door was ajar, the old man peacefully sleeping. Whoever was
disturbing the house, it was not the gray-haired servant. Once more
Mr. Wray sought his bedroom, stopping only to try Ismay’s door with
infinite caution.
It was locked, hard and fast.
“The hypocritical little devil,” he muttered, “who told me that she
was never afraid of anything, and is terrified by a musical box that
some servant winds up at night! It’s just as well, though. I don’t want
Miss Ismay’s company of an evening when I am talking business with her
charming mother.”
Ismay, seated somewhat breathless on her bed, shook with impotent rage
at that cautious hand on her door.
“Insolent wretch!” she thought furiously. “I hope those doctored
library candles were a success. Who would think a schoolgirl trick of
a thread soaked in saltpeter and run through with a fine needle would
ever come in so usefully. But that was only a side-show. ‘The day after
to-morrow,’ he said--and ‘an accident.’ What can he have in his mind?
Oh, if I only knew. And if only Miles would come back. I could die with
this awful feeling that it is something of my own mother’s that was
found in that room.”
She was weak with the vision flashing before her of disgrace, of the
police, of discovery, of Miles’ face when he knew, and in them she
forgot the most important words Wray had spoken that night, though she
had heard them well enough.
“And the weather’s changed. It is freezing hard.”
They carried Cristiane’s life and death, and her own fate hung on them,
and, shrewd as she was, Ismay overlooked them.
CHAPTER XXIV.
“I NEVER SAW IT BEFORE.”
The frost still held. The river that ran through Cylmer’s Ferry was
skimmed with ice; the lake at Marchant’s Hold was a shining, glittering
thing as Ismay passed it on her way to keep her tryst at the stile.
Only at one side, where a deep brook ran into it, was there a spot of
black ice. Ismay passed it without a glance as she hurried on.
Wray had been at her elbow all the afternoon, hideous, revolting,
stinging her with veiled hints of the price that she, and she alone,
could pay for her mother’s safety. She had broken away from him at
last, with the arrival of tea and Cristiane, and before the eyes of the
heiress he had made no attempt to detain her. There was nothing she
could do down here at Marchant’s Hold.
He laughed as he saw her hurrying out through the frozen park, as if to
get away from an unclean atmosphere and drink deep of the stainless air.
And yet it was then that fate laughed, too, had he known it; laughed
even at that luck of Marcus Wray that the agony of a frail girl would
presently meet.
Cylmer, straight from the station, strode to meet Ismay as she reached
the stile.
The place was silent, deserted, and he took her in his arms. She felt
the cloth of his coat under her cheek, felt his arms tighten once more
about her, steeled herself to meet his kiss.
Oh, God! In ten minutes, in five, would there be that between them that
would stop his kisses forevermore?
“You’re pale.” He held her at arm’s length to look at her. “You’re
cold. I was a brute to bring you out in this freezing weather.”
“No, no, I don’t feel it.” She led the way to the stile. “I think I am
tired. Let us sit down,” with a smile that was not like her own.
“I thought I’d never get back,” he said, sitting down beside her, his
arm round her to draw her close. “You were right, Ismay. It was an
awful business. Don’t draw away from me, sweet! There’s not a soul to
see.”
“Why was it awful?” For once her scarlet lips were dry. “Do you mean
you’ve found the murderer?”
“No. But we shall; and the awful part is that it must have been a woman
who poisoned him. But let us talk of something else, of you and me. I’m
sick of the ugly side of life.”
Sick? What would he be when he knew it all?
“Tell me first. I like to know all you do, you know.” Would her heart
ever beat again, would he feel her strained breathlessness as she sat
within his arm?
“What an exacting child it is,” he said. “I’ll tell you, and then we’ll
leave the whole hateful subject. When Kivers made that last search he
found where the carpet stopped at the threshold just inside the bedroom
a jewel, or a piece of one, wedged into the little crevice. It looked
as if it might have been a charm.”
“A charm!” Mechanically she forced out the words. Oh, that tinkling
bunch of golden toys her mother always wore on a chatelaine! Why, had
she not long ago gone over them one by one?
“I think so. For it isn’t a thing a man would be likely to wear. What
do you think?” Before she could draw her laboring breath he had laid
something in the frightened, relaxed hand that lay on her knee. “I got
Kivers to lend it to me. I wanted to look at it under a microscope.”
“This!” She was bolt upright, clear of his embrace, staring at the
thing in her hand. “This!” relief that was agony in her voice. “I--I
never saw it before.”
“Saw it before?” He stared at her. Then he laughed. “Saw one before, I
suppose you mean, little silly! It is an Egyptian scarab, one of their
sacred beetles that are so precious. Look at its color in the sunset.”
Golden green, turquoise blue, in its gold setting; the beetle that was
older than Christianity glowed dully in her ungloved palm.
But it was not its beauty that made her eyes shine, nor anything but
the rapture of knowing that never, never had her mother possessed a
thing like it.
Had she been wronging her all this time? Had she been speaking the
truth, and Abbotsford been done to death by another hand before ever
she entered the house? If she had dared, she would have laughed out
wildly, flung her hands out in delirious joy; but she must even turn
her face from her lover, that he might not see the triumphant blood
mantling in her cheeks.
There had been some one else in the room!
It was all she could do not to shriek it aloud.
“How excited you are!” he laughed. “Do you think you would make a good
detective when a little thing like this turns your head?”
“Why should the thing have belonged to a woman?” she said irrelevantly.
“Because a man could only wear it set in a ring, and this was never in
a ring. Don’t you see the light setting of gold round it and the broken
catch of a tiny chain? It has been a pendant, hanging for luck on a
woman’s bracelet. For deadly luck for some poor soul,” gravely.
“You are sure it wasn’t Lord Abbotsford’s own?” with a persistence that
might make him wonder.
“Certain. If you had ever seen Abbotsford you would see the absurdity.
He was never known to wear even a jeweled stud. He told me once that
he always thought of the money that was sunk in women’s diamonds, and
groaned inwardly at the waste of capital. He was never very free with
money, poor chap. He was a man’s man, not a woman’s.”
“Yet you said he had a photograph that was not his fiancée’s?”
wonderingly.
“Oh, that’s different.” Cylmer grew red under his bronze. “But you
wouldn’t understand, and I don’t want you to. Come home, darling mine;
it’s too cold for you here.”
Home, to Marcus and his evil plots; to the mother she had wronged in
her thoughts ever since that awful day, but who, innocent or guilty,
was putting her head blindly into another noose.
“I wish I were going home with you,” she cried, with a shyness
that made her hide her face the second the words were out. “I hate
Marchant’s Hold!”
“You could come to-morrow if you would let me have my way,” rapture at
her avowal in his voice. “Look up, Ismay. Don’t be ashamed. There is
nothing that can’t be said between you and me.”
“I wish I thought so,” she murmured with sudden significance. “Perhaps
I shall some day. What are you and the detectives going to do?” she
asked, holding the little beetle tight.
“Find out who the woman is who was in his rooms that day--and then, I
suppose, I’ll strain every nerve to keep her from being hanged as she
deserves,” with a laugh at his own weakness. “Women have always been
kind to me, my Ismay,” simply and without the least conceit, as though
such kindness were a debt he must repay. But she guessed shrewdly that
many a woman had loved Miles Cylmer, and worn sorrow at her heart for
her folly.
“Miles, if I had done it could you love me still?” she said, on an
impulse.
“You? Don’t even in fun class yourself with a woman like that!” sternly.
“Well, then, my mother!” It was almost a cry. “If she had done it would
you marry me? Tell me.”
Cylmer was absolutely truthful. For a moment he looked away from her,
awkwardly.
“Ismay, don’t ask me,” he answered very low. “I--I don’t know.”
And he never turned to see that the knife had gone home to the hilt.
“You’re quite right,” she spoke slowly, flatly. “I shouldn’t have said
it. Take me home now. You’ll tell me, won’t you, if you think you are
going to find--that woman?”
“Yes,” reluctantly. “But I wish I had never named a woman like that to
you. Wait, Ismay,” with a motion of his broad shoulders, as if he shook
off the memory of a distasteful burden, “I want to give you something
first.”
He drew a case from his pocket, and even in the light that was nearly
gone from the sky she saw something flash as he opened it. The next
instant he slipped a band of great diamonds, each one a fortune, on her
smooth white finger.
“With my body I thee worship,” he quoted softly, his eyes, that were
her heaven, bent on her changing face. “I will say that once more when
I put another ring on your finger.”
For a moment her hard-held composure was gone.
“Mark,” she stammered, “I can’t wear it.”
“Mark! My name isn’t Mark.” He looked at her hardly, sharply in the
dusk. “What do you mean, Ismay? Are you dreaming, or do you think you
are talking to another man?”
Appalled by her own slip of the tongue, she could not speak. What was
this love doing to her, that she was losing her nerve, her self-command?
“Ismay, answer me!” How stern his voice was. “Is there any other man
who ever said he loved you, that you should think of him now?”
With the sure instinct that the truth alone could answer him, she
turned to him, her face white and hard as he had never seen it.
“Did you think I meant you when I said ‘Mark’? I meant”--somehow, she
seemed as tall as he as she faced him--“the man my mother means to
marry me to. He is staying with us now. When I said his name and not
yours I meant that with his eyes on me I would never dare to wear it.”
“Staying with you now? What for?” His heart revolted at the thought of
guests in a house of mourning. “And why should you mind his seeing it?
What is he to you?”
“Nothing. A thing so small that I would kill myself before I fell into
his hands. And that is what would happen if he saw me wearing your
ring.”
“Ismay, don’t speak in riddles. Tell me what you mean. What right has
any man to object to your wearing my ring?”
“Don’t speak to me like that. I can’t bear it.” To his shame he saw
that she was crying. Ismay, who never cried, to whose eyes tears were
strangers!
“Oh, he can do anything, anything,” she sobbed. “He--he knows something
about my mother; she is afraid of him.”
“My sweet, my poor sweet.” The man who had done his best to threaten
that mother into leaving Marchant’s Hold felt suddenly guilty and
ashamed. “What can I say to you? But if you would listen to me and get
your mother on my side I think I could make short work of him for her.”
“Can you blot out the past?” said Ismay Trelane.
She wiped away her tears that shamed her; was she no stronger than
Cristiane that she must cry in her pain?
Very pitifully the man kissed her.
“I would do anything on earth for you!” he whispered. “Can’t you tell
me what it is he knows?”
“She’s my mother.” Once more she held her head up, proudly, lest he
should see her wince at her mother’s shame. “And as for Marcus Wray, I
will beat him yet, and then you can marry me--if you will.”
“I’d rather help you.” But she made no answer as they hurried homeward,
his ring still on her finger, the little scarab, that he had forgotten,
safe inside the palm of her other hand.
“I’m coming over to-morrow to see Cristiane,” he threatened, as he left
her in the garden.
“Oh, Miles, don’t,” she cried sharply; “or, if you come, wait for me
there by the lake behind those cedars. I daren’t see you before Marcus
Wray. And yet I may want you.”
“What do you mean, sweet?”
But she only laughed, and the laugh was not good to hear.
“I don’t know; but you’ll see,” and she was gone. There was nothing to
tell him that by to-morrow she thought to catch Marcus Wray red-handed,
and so would never fear him any more. Her heart was lighter than for
many a day as she locked away the little blue-green beetle that Cylmer
had forgotten. The diamond ring she hid away with it. Never till the
owner of his scarab was found would she dare to put it on. And, oh!
would it be to-morrow?
But at the thought her heart sank again. The owner of the lost scarab
must be found first, and how was she to do it?
CHAPTER XXV.
THE GRATITUDE OF CRISTIANE.
No day that held murder and sudden death in it ever dawned more fair to
see than the next morning.
The sun shone sweetly on the frozen world, the robins came confidently
to the dining-room window, red-breasted, certain of crumbs; the lake
shone as glittering glass; the cold, sweet air of morning was like wine
to the nerves as Ismay, after breakfast, stood at the window feeding
the hungry birds.
She almost wondered at her own fear of Marcus Wray this morning. The
look of latent savagery was all gone from his calm, clean-shaven face
as he stood by the fire idly smoking a cigarette. And the strained,
expectant horror was gone from her mother’s face. For some reason or
other, the awful purpose of the day had been postponed. There was
relief at Ismay’s heart as she read those faces.
“We are a nice, harmonious, affectionate household for one more day. I
suppose he has his reasons,” she thought. But she did not want to catch
his eye. She stood with an indifferent shoulder to him as he moved
toward the door. “What, Cristiane?” She started from her reverie as if
she were shot.
Cristiane was eying her like a kitten who has just scratched.
“I only said you and Miles were very late last night,” she repeated
viciously.
Ismay could not speak. She made instead a quick step toward the door
that had barely closed behind Wray. Was he out of hearing, or was he
there still?
“I--and Miles!” she said coldly. “What do you mean?”
Mrs. Trelane, reading a letter, fairly dropped it as she stared at the
two. What had Ismay been doing? Was the girl crazy?
Cristiane laughed, like a child pleased with mischief.
“Don’t look so angry,” she remarked. “I was only trying to pay you
for--you know what!” with a nod in the direction of the departed Wray.
“You two children!” said Mrs. Trelane, with an indulgent smile, that
covered her relief that this was only play.
But Ismay, facing Cristiane, was not so certain. There was a something
in the baby face of the only child that she did not like.
“She saw us! And if she tells Marcus I’m done,” she reflected.
But Cristiane, as she purred an amiable apology, had no intention of
telling Marcus. She meant to have Marcus and Miles both, and something
warned even her that it would not be well to speak of Ismay to Wray.
And Ismay, in spite of the exquisite day, was feeling strangely dull.
A deadly lassitude was in all her limbs; the strain of constant,
racking thought for the girl who was so spoiled, the mother who was so
careless, was telling on her.
She saw Wray go out, and Cristiane busy writing a note, to whom she did
not care, and crept away to a dark corner of the hall where a screen
hid her from passers-by. While things were quiet she must sleep, or she
would break down. Had there been anything the matter with her coffee?
But she could think no longer. She dropped on the seat behind the
screen, never stopping to consider that she was clearly visible from
the turn of the stairs overhead, and slept like a dead thing.
Hours passed, and she knew nothing, felt nothing, except that once
she tried to brush what felt like a fly from her cheek; once turned,
in what seemed a happy dream, to the familiar touch of a man’s rough
tweed coat on her face, stretching her arms out in sleep at the happy
thought; in her dream nestling close to the dear shoulder, till
suddenly a nightmare terror shook her. She tried to scream and could
not; woke for an instant to think she heard a footstep stealing away,
and, not half-awake, was asleep again almost before she realized her
thought.
“Where can Ismay be?” Mrs. Trelane wondered at lunch.
Cristiane shook her head with guileless innocence.
Wray said carelessly that he did not know, but his face flushed a
little.
Mrs. Trelane finished her lunch and went to find out. Half-way upstairs
she looked down; there was Ismay on her comfortably padded sofa,
stretching herself awake.
“Well, of all the peculiar people! I never saw any one stretch so like
a cat. Ismay,” she said aloud, “what on earth are you doing there?”
“I was tired--I think. Mother, come here a minute.”
The unusual tone in her voice astounded the listener; she came
down-stairs hastily.
“Tired! From what? And why did you go to sleep here? I couldn’t find
you anywhere, and I was terrified Cristiane might think something
about you and that horrid Cylmer. Tell me, did she mean anything this
morning?” sharply, seating herself on the end of the sofa.
“Don’t know, and don’t care,” said the girl sleepily. “Of course not.
How could she? It was to pay me for saying Marcus was horrid.”
“You said that to her!”
“Oh, don’t be agitated. She didn’t believe me,” said Ismay flippantly.
“Mother, I want to speak to you. No, don’t move! It’s safer here than
anywhere. We can hear any one coming a long way off on this hard oak
floor. I want you to tell me--think hard, mother, I mean it--if you
don’t know of any one that might have been in Abbotsford’s room that
day?”
“What makes you think of that now?”
“I’m always thinking of it,” her hand to her head that felt so oddly
heavy. “I’m frightened.”
“What of? I didn’t do it,” almost absently. “Think of some one, you
say. You little fool, do you suppose I have not tried and tried? There
was no one who had anything against Abbotsford. I know you don’t
believe me; I know you think I did it.”
“You might as well have if we can’t find out who did,” Ismay said
wearily. “Look here, where was Marcus that day?”
“Marcus!” She hushed the cry with a sudden remembrance of those two in
the dining-room; but she went on with unexpected freedom, recollecting
they were going out, were gone by now.
“Oh, you needn’t think of him!” she said scornfully. “He was across the
way, waiting to see Florrie Bernstein, the dancer. She was out, and to
amuse himself the devil put it in his head to stare out the window. He
never had anything to do with the matter.”
The strangely found beetle was on the girl’s lips, but the sleep was
off her brain now, and she dared not trust her secret to her mother’s
careless keeping.
“I wish he had done it. I should like him to be hanged,” she muttered.
“He’s too clever,” bitterly, “to do anything but bully women.”
“Where is he now?” with late caution.
“He and Cristiane have gone out skating,” she said carelessly, for
Marcus had assured her the night before that the time was not ripe yet
for any action. “They’re all right, you little idiot. There’s no need
for you to look like that.”
Wild, dazed, swaying, Ismay was on her feet. All right, with that black
place in the ice, with that purpose in Wray’s mind!
“Get out of my way! Move!” she cried. “Get me some water, brandy,
anything! I can’t stand.”
Mrs. Trelane was in the dining-room and back almost before she knew at
the authority in the sharply breathed words.
“What’s the matter? Are you going to be ill?” she cried.
Ismay snatched the brandy and water.
“Ill? No! If I am we’re ruined.” With quick, swaying steps she passed
her mother, letting the empty glass fall in shivers to the floor.
“Then you’re crazy!” cried the mother. She stared stupidly at the
splinters, and by the time she had shrugged her shoulders amazedly
Ismay was gone.
Out the great door, hatless, into the winter air, that struck cold on
her forehead and drove away the deadly faintness on her. Down the broad
avenue toward the lake, staggering at first. Then, as her strength
revived, running like young Diana, the beat of her flying feet only a
little heavier than usual as she tore along.
Marcus and Cristiane--the wolf and the lamb! That black place in the
ice where the current came from a spring. And this awful stiffness that
cramped her like a vise as she ran.
Could she ever get there? She could see the lake now as she mounted
the last rise in the avenue. And there was Marcus on the safe ice, and
Cristiane? On the other side of the black streak Cristiane was sliding,
without skates, drawing every minute nearer to it. Ismay knew now what
was in his brain.
All alone out there, there was no one to hear him dare her to cross it,
and that was what he was doing. And Cristiane was heavy; it would never
bear her. To slip into that running water meant death. The thought
seemed to paralyze the girl who looked on.
Helpless, rigid, great drops on her forehead for all the cold, she
stood in full view of Cristiane, who waved her hand at her; in full
view of some one else, long before his time at that tryst behind the
cedars, as Cristiane, step by step, drew closer to that thin film of
ice.
With one piercing, ringing shriek, one bound, Ismay was running again,
like an arrow from a bow. Running with skirts drawn up, elbows down,
steady and fast as a man who must win a race. She dared not think what
it meant if she could not reach Cristiane before she was on that black
mockery of ice.
No wonder her ringing scream sounded so wild and dreadful in the clear
air; no wonder she ran with the blood beating in her eyes and forehead,
the sharp air rasping in her agonized lungs.
She shrieked again. No matter what Marcus thought if only she could
keep Cristiane off that ice.
At that shrill cry Cristiane turned and went on faster. Ismay should
not frighten her before Marcus Wray, who had laughed and forbidden her
to dare the crossing, as if she were a town-bred baby.
Miles Cylmer, a long way off behind his cedars, shouted in answer and
ran down the long shore, too late to stop what he saw. Cristiane,
laughing, defiant, on the edge of the black ice, a few rods behind her,
bareheaded, slim, nearly exhausted, Ismay running to cut her off.
Wray had turned at the man’s voice and cried aloud:
“Go back! Don’t try it.” But it was no accident that made him fall flat
as he spoke.
Cylmer ran as he, too, had never run before, for the black ice had
crashed from under Cristiane’s feet. She went through like a stone as
she stepped on it.
Yet the next second he saw her white hand flung up from the black ice,
the blacker water; saw Ismay, flung flat on the sound ice, stretch out
till she caught the hand in hers; did not see that Cristiane’s other
hand had clutched her as with a vise, nor that Ismay was completely
done and exhausted.
And Cristiane le Marchant was a well-grown, heavy girl, Ismay slight
and dainty. Then inch by inch the sound ice cracked around them, as
Cristiane, in her frantic struggling, drew Ismay nearer and nearer
death. As Cylmer reached her it broke under her. But it was Mrs.
Trelane who screamed as she ran frantically down from the avenue, where
she had followed Ismay from pure wonder at the girl’s actions.
“He told me he wouldn’t do it! Oh, I might have known,” she cried
helplessly, as she ran. She dropped on her knees with a great sob as
she reached the lakeshore, and hid her eyes in terror.
On the grass beside Cristiane in her priceless, soaked furs, lay Ismay
in her thin house-gown. There was a crimson stain oozing from her set
and speechless mouth, and she was deadly still, the blood thick in that
clay-cold body that had been so quick and warm but now.
For once Mrs. Trelane was careless of appearances.
“What have you done?” she shrieked at Wray. “What----” But his hand was
on her shoulder.
“Tried to save Ismay,” he said shortly, as was true, for he had done
his best to help Cylmer, only to be savagely thrust out of the way.
“This gentleman had Miss le Marchant out of the water before I was
on my feet. I fell,” with rage in his tone because his plans had
miscarried, because it was Cristiane who could sit up and speak, not
Ismay.
“Mr. Wray told me not to try,” Cristiane said, shivering. “And I would.
I’m cold. Take me home.”
Cylmer looked at her.
“Have you no thought for Miss Trelane, who tried to save you?” he said
sternly.
Cristiane went off into wild hysterics.
“She didn’t try to save me,” she gasped; “she stood on the hill and
watched me. I saw her. She could have got here long ago, but she hates
me. Oh, I know. Just because you love me.” Cylmer made one quick stride
to her.
“Be silent. Have you no sense; no decency?” His face absolutely white,
he pointed to where Ismay lay on the grass. “You abuse her when for
all you know she may have died for you. Take Mrs. Trelane’s arm and go
home. I am ashamed that you are your father’s daughter.”
Wray had not heard her. After he had frightened Mrs. Trelane to silence
with that cruel grasp of her shoulder he had run with all his speed to
the stables to send a man for a doctor.
He was more savage than he had ever been in his life at his morning’s
work. No one knew as he did why Ismay had not been able to withstand
the shock of that icy water. And the heiress was to go scot-free! He
ground his teeth as he hurried.
Never! Dead or alive, Ismay should not save her. But if he could do it,
there should be life kept in that sweet body of hers yet, for, in his
way, the man loved her.
Cristiane, the icy water dripping from her, rose and looked at Cylmer
with chattering teeth.
“She hates me, and she is a liar and a thief. Look what I found this
morning.” Her voice low and spiteful, never reached Mrs. Trelane, as
she hung over Ismay.
She stuffed a little card, dirty and crumbled, into his hand, but
though he took it, it was without knowledge or care of what she said.
“Go!” he repeated angrily. “Don’t you see you must get off your wet
clothes?”
But without seeing what she did he had stooped and lifted in his arms
the girl who was to have been flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone.
An old, old cry was on his lips as he lifted his ice-cold, ghastly
burden:
“Would that I had died for thee, I and none other!”
CHAPTER XXVI.
“HER MOTHER’S CHILD!”
Cylmer, waiting by the hall fire, his wet clothes steaming, thought the
doctor would never come down-stairs.
To Wray he gave no thought; it never occurred to him that that astute
person was keeping out of the way, for fear of comments of his idiocy
in having taken Cristiane on ice he knew nothing about. And Mrs.
Trelane was with Ismay; Cristiane put to bed crying with temper and
fright. The empty feeling of the house drove Cylmer wild. He was more
glad to see the little country doctor than he had ever been at anything
in his life.
“Miss Trelane!” he said bluntly. “Is she----” The words stuck in his
throat.
“She’ll do now, I think,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “But it’s
a peculiar case. It was not that she was in danger of death from
drowning, but there seemed to have been something in the shock. I don’t
know”--more briskly--“but she will do well now. She looks frail, but
her vitality is tremendous. But, my dear man, you must go home at once
unless you wish to die of pneumonia. Come with me in the brougham. You
can come back again later on. There’s no sense in shivering to death
here when you can’t see either of the victims.”
He carried Cylmer off, and deposited him, rolled in a fur rug, at his
own door. And not till he was being stripped of his soaked clothes by
his fussy servant did Miles discover that he held something in his
hand. It was the card Cristiane had given him, the penciled words only
a blur now.
“Does she mean she never got it? Is that why she called Ismay a
liar and a thief for the carelessness of some servant?” he thought
contemptuously. “I must tell the lady a few plain truths, I fancy.
I’d tell her everything this very night if I could get Ismay to
consent. But, of course, she won’t be up. I sha’n’t see either of them,
probably. If I do Miss Cristiane shall retire in tears,” with a grim
smile.
In spite of what the doctor had said, Mr. Cylmer only made a pretense
of eating his dinner.
He drove over to Marchant’s Hold without so much as waiting for his
coffee. Even Mrs. Trelane, who hated him, would be civil to him
to-night, since but for him Ismay would be lying dead.
He went straight into the drawing-room, prepared to meet Mrs. Trelane
only. But she was not there. He paused, and saw on a distant sofa
Cristiane, her head bowed on her hands.
“Cristiane,” his heart had sickened at her attitude, “what’s the
matter? She’s not--not dead?”
“She? Do you mean Ismay?” She lifted her lovely eyes, drowned in tears.
“Not she. Why, Miles? Do you care--so much?”
“Never mind what I do. If she is all right why are you crying?” sternly.
“Because she’s made me be so horrid to you!”
“You needn’t cry on my account,” he said, looking down at her, “I can
assure you. And how do you mean she had made you horrid to me?”
“Because that card I gave you--I never got it. I thought you had never
come near me, and so I hated you.”
“Never got it! But you gave it to me.”
“Ismay pulled it out of her pocket this morning with her handkerchief,
and I picked it up. Oh, Miles!” her downcast face sweet, imploring,
“can you ever forgive me?”
“Forgive you?”--impatiently. “I don’t know what you’re driving at! You
don’t mean you think Ismay kept it from you on purpose? Was that why
you dared to call her a thief?”
His tone maddened her. She sat up and looked at him, sorrowfully, with
pained surprise.
“Miles, you don’t care for her?” she whispered.
“Why do you speak of her like that? She saved your life”--coldly.
“She didn’t. It was you”--slowly. “I tell you she saw what I was doing
and stood waiting. She never ran till she saw you, and knew she must.
She would rather I was dead; she hates me.”
“Cristiane, are you out of your senses?” He shook her roughly by the
shoulder. “Your ingratitude I cannot help; your abuse of her I will not
bear. As for loving her, I love her with all my heart. I’d marry her
to-morrow if she would have me.”
And this was the Miles she had thought of as miserable with his love
that she would have none of! She was all passion in the frank brutality
with which she turned on him.
“She can’t do that; she daren’t! She’s playing a double game with you.
She’s a bad, wicked girl”--her voice rising angrily. “I saw her this
very day lying with her head on Mr. Wray’s shoulder. She was pretending
to be asleep, and she stretched out her arms and put them about his
neck, and----”
“Look here, Cristiane,” Miles broke in angrily, frantically. “You can
shut up! If it is true I don’t want to hear it, but if it’s a lie,
you’ll have to pay for every word of it.”
“Miles,” she said slowly, “it’s every word of it true. I saw her. I
was on the stairs and she was lying on the sofa in the hall. I saw
him come and kneel beside her. She’s a horrid, horrid girl--I’m so
miserable”--with sudden choking tears. “I wish I hadn’t told you.
But I know you were with her often lately. I couldn’t let you go on
without telling you.”
“Then allow me to tell you your conscientious scruples do you no
credit,” he said stoutly. Yet he did not see in his pain that she had
changed her tactics utterly, even while he had been talking to her. It
was all too much of a piece with that fatal cry of Mark, that senseless
terror of having her engagement to him an open thing. Ismay, his Ismay,
untrue! The solid ground had been cut away under his feet, yet he was
stubbornly faithful. He would not believe this spoiled child, who was
not even grateful to the girl who had nearly died to save her.
“You don’t believe me? Oh, Miles, what can I do?” Cristiane moaned. She
hid her angry, tearless eyes that he might think she cried.
“I wouldn’t believe an angel from heaven against Ismay!” he said
stoutly.
But he lied, and he knew it.
As for the note Cristiane implied Ismay had kept back, he never gave
it a thought. Cristiane and her feelings were nothing to him now. But
Ismay and that man from London were another story.
“Don’t dare to say she did not try to save you,” he said to drown his
thoughts. “I was there. I did not see your danger, no more did she.”
“And yet--you saved me,” she said quietly, and before he knew it she
had kissed his strong hand softly. He drew it away as if her lips had
stung.
“I saved you as I would have saved a drowning dog,” he said, his voice
ominously level. “Now you know. I care nothing for you. My love for you
was only play. I know it now.”
“Miles, don’t,” she gasped; “you kill me. But I can do you one service,
and I will. I--I love you now. I will take you to Ismay.”
“You can’t. She’s in bed.”
“She’s up in her sitting-room;” and he could not see the spite in her
face.
Marveling at her strange changes, Cylmer followed her, his heart
beating uncomfortably. But to see Ismay, to have in one word all
his doubts destroyed--for that he would have followed anywhere
unquestioning.
“Mrs. Trelane?” he said doubtingly, as they mounted the stairs.
“Is in the library. Besides, what matters?”--dully. “You have the
right. You mean to marry her.”
She opened Ismay’s door softly--too softly--and parted the curtains.
“Look,” she whispered in his ear, “there is the girl you love. Now, who
is right, you or I?”
Cylmer gave one glance; then, sick, staggered, broken, he turned away.
In a great chair Ismay sat; at her feet was Marcus Wray, holding her
hand, talking eagerly, very low. On the girl’s face was no sign of that
loathing she had professed, only a beseeching, doubtful look of dread
and hope.
“Come away,” whispered Cristiane, and he obeyed her, dazed and
stumbling.
Ismay, whom he would have sworn was true, whom he had loved as he had
never thought to love, Ismay was her mother’s child!
His face was hard as iron and as relentless as he stopped in the hall.
Cristiane shrank away from him like a child who fears a blow.
“Don’t look like that. I didn’t know,” she lied breathlessly. “But, you
see, I told the truth.”
“Curse the truth, and you,” he said between his teeth. “Get out of my
way.”
She could not hear what he said, but she turned away again, crying
pitifully.
“I couldn’t let you love her and not know. Don’t be so hard to me.”
With an effort that wrenched his very soul, the man mastered himself.
“All right, child. I know you meant to be straight. But run away to
bed. I can’t talk.”
Humiliated to the last drop of his blood, he stood in the hall alone,
opposite the half-opened door of the library.
Cristiane had spoken the truth again; Mrs. Trelane was there. And the
very spirit of evil and recklessness had prompted her to put on that
very white gown in which she had been photographed for Lord Abbotsford.
Ismay was not there to stop her; she had explained to Cristiane that
her black evening gown was torn; and now she stood, ignorant of any
stranger’s eyes, before the glass over the fireplace in the very
attitude of the photograph.
Her round, languorous throat; her arms, lovely still; the very turn of
her head, Miles Cylmer--saw--and remembered.
The mysterious woman of the photograph stood before him.
No wonder Ismay had been interested in Abbotsford’s death; no wonder
she had paled when he brought out that broken trinket. She had it
still, and probably she and her mother had laughed together at
the cleverness with which she had wiled it from him. He had been
fooled--fooled by a pair of green eyes, a mouth all love, a smile all
witching.
Mechanically, as a man in a dream, he put on his coat and hat and got
into his dog-cart that was waiting at the door. Cristiane was right.
Ismay Trelane was bad to the core.
But the man could not see the road for the bitterness of his heart as
he drove home through the dark.
Cristiane, in spite of her fright at his anger, smiled, well pleased,
as she went up-stairs to bed.
She had really seen Marcus Wray kiss Ismay; she had only kept back that
the girl’s subtle instinct, even in her sleep, had made her moan and
turn away from him, so that he crept away lest she should awake. She
was cunning enough not to tell Wray what she had seen, but the sudden
enlightenment had made her furious. Was this girl to come here and take
every man she saw? Were her own good looks, her fortune, as nothing
compared with the strange beauty of the other? Not while Cristiane le
Marchant could stop it.
Loved, caressed, guided in her every footstep by her dead father,
the girl was utterly spoiled. Without that firm and loving hand she
steered her own bark wildly, caring nothing for others, so that her own
vanity was satisfied. And Miles Cylmer that night had struck at the
self-conceit that was her most vulnerable part.
“He’s going to hate her now,” she thought, with gleeful conviction.
“Then he’ll come back to me, and I’ll refuse him again. Oh, how I will
refuse him! And I’ll keep Mr. Wray here and make Miles wild.”
She sank to sleep in a blissful reverie of Ismay driven out, Miles
sighing in vain, and she herself marrying a duke. She would wear white
satin and look very proud and cold. It would be delightful. And that
death had to-day only missed her by a hair’s breadth, and to-morrow
might strike again, she never thought. Nor that the girl she had
betrayed this very night was the only soul on earth who could save her.
CHAPTER XXVII.
TRUTH THAT LIED!
It was all so black, so terribly obvious as he looked at it.
Cylmer thought long that night, in a weary circle that led back to the
same horror. The original of that photograph had been Mrs. Trelane, and
if Abbotsford’s death lay at her door, Ismay had known it. That little
cry of hers came back to him.
“I never saw it before.”
A lie and a foolish one, that looking back was damning.
And Wray--she could deceive him for a brute like that?
And then there rushed over him the awful thought of the disgrace to
come; the wheels that he had set in motion that were even now out of
his power to stop. Even in his disenchantment, with that raging pain
at his heart that she was false who seemed so true, he was glad that
that one clue, that one fatal bit of evidence, the blue-green beetle,
was in her hands. The detectives would never see it again; Mrs. Trelane
warned in time, would destroy it and the bracelet he was certain it had
belonged to--and Ismay.
“Ismay can be consoled by Mark.” Yet at the thought his forehead was
wet. He would have given his soul not to have seen her to-night, to
have gone on believing in her; as he would never believe in any one
again.
And yet it had all been so simple; if fate had not played into the
spiteful hands of Cristiane le Marchant, would have been another link
to bind him to the girl who for his sake was fighting with the world
against her.
At eight o’clock Ismay had waked from a long sleep; waked weary and
languid in body, but with her brain more quick and clear than it had
been for two days. She was alone, and she lay for a little, thinking,
remembering.
What had made her so drowsy, so strange all that day? Had Wray, to keep
her out of the way, given her anything?
“There was only breakfast, he couldn’t!” she reflected. “We all had
the same, even my coffee Thomas poured out at the sideboard. Besides,
he doesn’t suspect me at all, thanks to Thomas’ version of my midnight
promenades.” She smiled to herself.
Had not Thomas met her face to face one night, and had not Jessie
told her in deepest secrecy of how the lady had walked, with the
very blood-stain that was the mark of her crimes on her breast! That
blood-stain she had made in sewing her ghost’s gown, with fingers that
were torn by Cylmer’s roses.
“Jessie.” Conviction flashed over her at the woman’s name.
Jessie had put her early tea down outside the door this morning. Ismay
was sleepy and too lazy to get up and let the woman in.
“I said to leave it, and I heard her go away,” she thought. “When I
took it in it was cold, and I thought it wasn’t nice, but I drank it.
He had plenty of time to put anything in it. If he passed and saw it
there he would not hesitate one second. Even if he did not suspect me
he may have been determined I should have to stay at home. One more
score against him.”
Her anger lent her strength. She got out of bed and clothed herself
in a warm dressing-gown, utterly heedless of the doctor’s orders.
Something that was not herself made her think of the scarab and Marcus
Wray. Could she have in her very hands the destruction of her enemy,
and not know it?
She took it out of its hiding-place, and saw the flash of Cylmer’s
ring, where it lay beside it.
When Marcus Wray was routed, she could put it on--she turned away that
she might not see it, but the sight of it had deepened her hatred of
the man who stood between her and happiness, whom, for her mother’s
sake, she dared not defy.
A step outside startled her. She had just time to throw the scarab into
the drawer and lock it, when her mother was in the room.
Her mother in white, in that very gown she should have burned, long ago!
“Why are you up? You’ll kill yourself!” Mrs. Trelane said sharply.
“I’m all right. I couldn’t stay in bed. Mother, in Heaven’s name, why
have you got on that?” she pointed like an accusing judge at the tawdry
white dress.
“Because I was sick of looking like a fright in black. It shows out
every line in my face. And there’s no one here but Marcus.”
“Who is your worst enemy,” helplessly. “And it isn’t decent, with Sir
Gaspard not dead a month.”
“Oh, bother! I told Cristiane my black one was torn,” lightly. “But
Ismay, are you really quite well? I was terrified about you this
morning!”
“Terrified!” Ismay threw back her head with her old laugh of mockery.
She knew quite well the depth of that terror. A horrible sight, the awe
of death that lies in all of us; but if death had been there her mother
would have dried her tears as useless, aging things; forgotten her
daughter as soon as the earth had closed over her.
“If you are going to be so brutal I shall go away,” Mrs. Trelane said
angrily. “If you have no feelings you might give me credit for some.”
“Don’t go.” Ismay caught her dress. “Come into the sitting-room. Tell
me about this morning--what happened, who carried me home?”
“Mr. Cylmer. Tell me, Ismay,” with quiet curiosity, “how well do you
know him? He looked like death when he carried you. And how did he
happen to be there?”
“He just, happened, I suppose,” provokingly.
“And I don’t suppose I was an engaging sight. What did Cristiane do?”
“Had hysterics, I think. I wasn’t listening. I thought you were dead;
so did Marcus.”
“You didn’t let him touch me?
“He went straight off for the doctor. It was that man Cylmer who got
you out of the water.”
“That man Cylmer!” The girl flushed with pride and joy. How she would
thank him when she saw him, with the strong arm that had saved her
close about her shoulders.
“Marcus wants to see you. That’s why I came up,” Mrs. Trelane remarked.
“Do be civil to him, Ismay, he tried to help you.”
“Me? yes?” enigmatically, and her mother shivered with a suspicion of
the girl’s knowledge, that died on the instant at her placid face.
“See me?” Ismay amended. “Very well, send him up. No, don’t stay! I’ll
be civil, you needn’t worry.”
Her eyes alert, her cheek feverish, she watched him come in.
“What do you want?” she inquired calmly, as he hesitated on the
threshold.
“To see for myself that you’re all right,” his cold sneering manner all
gone. “Ought you to be up? But you look quite well, quite yourself.”
“I am quite myself. What made you think I shouldn’t be?” she said dryly.
“The shock, the wetting,” he hesitated.
“Neither the shock nor the wetting have affected me,” she assured him.
Could she suspect anything about that tea? he gave her a searching
glance with narrowed eyes. But her face was as openly hostile as usual,
with no underlying doubt.
“If you’re going to stay, sit down,” she yawned laughingly. “You make
me nervous fidgeting there by the door.”
He drew a chair near to her sofa, and she let her eyes close sleepily.
Through their dark fringes they looked him all over searchingly.
Evening clothes, a shirt and collar as immaculate as usual, a neat
black tie, two pearl studs, rather flawed and too large. So he had a
taste for jewels.
His hands, long, deceitful, cruel, lay on his knees. On one of them was
a diamond ring, too big for a man, too sparkling.
“His cuffs!” she thought, with inspiration. But they were hidden under
his black coat-sleeve. One day she had laughed at Cylmer’s plain
mother-of-pearl cuff-studs, and he had said that there was nothing a
man was so wedded to as a peculiar kind of cuff-stud.
“If he wears links, he always wears links, generally of the same
pattern. If he wears studs, he never changes the make.”
The blood beat hard in her temples. That bluey-green Egyptian beetle
could well have been half of a cuff-link, florid, expensive, odd, as
were those shirt-studs of pearls and greenish gold.
“Why are you so thoughtful, Ismay? Why will you go on hating me?” Wray
asked slowly. “Don’t you know it’s no use?”
There was a biting answer on her tongue, but she kept it back. She
must say something--anything--that would make him hold out his hand to
her with a sharp, hasty gesture that would clear his shirt-cuff, links
upward, from his sleeve.
“And if I did not hate you, what would you do for me?” she moved her
hand toward him as if by accident.
The next instant he had seized it, was holding it in a grasp that was
loathsomely hot and strong. Words she did not listen to poured in a low
whisper from his lips. Intent, her face alight with eagerness, she was
gazing at his wrist, moving her hand till his lay palm upward under
hers.
But if she expected to see the scarabs, of which she had one, she was
wrong. And yet her heart leaped. For he did wear links, not studs, and
they were showy and costly. Ovals of pink coral set round with seed
pearls.
As she gazed, his low voice in her ears killed the sound as Cristiane
parted the curtain. Wray, with his back to the door and off his guard,
saw nothing, and Cylmer, cut to the heart, had seen enough.
If Cylmer had been one moment later he would have seen her snatch her
hand away; wipe it with insolent care on her handkerchief; laugh, with
utter scorn in Marcus Wray’s furious face, as, her aim attained, she
spoke out:
“You might give me the whole earth, and I should hate you,” she cried
out with insane bravery. “I hate death, but I would die before I
married a man like you!”
Dazed, taken aback, he looked at her.
“You can go,” she said, smiling like Circe, treacherous and merciless;
“I’m done with you.”
In the long moment’s pause a door shut somewhere, and she could not
know it was Miles, going away. And Wray did not hear it. His hands
trembled, his face full of evil, he looked down at her insolent beauty.
“But I am not done with you,” he said very low.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“MY NAME IS YESTERDAY.”
Ismay was gay as any lark that next morning. Her path, that had been so
hard to tread, seemed sure and easy now; her course of action plain.
When Miles came, as of course he would come to see how she was, she
would tell him all--everything. With those showy cuff-links of Marcus
Wray’s in her remembrance, that broken jewel in her keeping, that had
never been her mother’s, she had something to go on. Miles should know
all; she would keep nothing back, and then they two, together, should
bring guilt home to Marcus Wray.
For, with the certainty of a person whose intuitions are never wrong,
she was sure that it was he who had poisoned Abbotsford, he who had
managed so cleverly that if anything were discovered, it was Mrs.
Trelane who should bear the whole brunt.
But the morning passed, and no Miles. The waiting, the hope deferred,
made her pale. And there was too much at stake--she could not afford to
wait. She slipped out to the stable and sent a groom with a note.
“Please come to the stile at four. I’m quite well to-day, and I must
see you. I have something to tell you.
“ISMAY.”
Something to tell him! Cylmer’s face hardened as he read. He heard
beforehand the smooth, plausible story she would have made ready when
Cristiane--as Cristiane was sure to do--had told her of the night
before.
“I won’t go. I can’t see her,” he thought wretchedly, and yet his
longing was too much for him. He would see her once more--once more
feast his eyes on her fatal beauty that had weaned him from all simple
loves forever; he would tell her that he knew, and bid her save herself
and her mother, and go.
“I will be there at four,” he wrote, without beginning or signature,
and Ismay as she read it only thought how careful he was to write
nothing that could matter if other hands opened his note.
“He hates writing. He never even says he is glad I’m all right.” She
kissed the little note before she burned it, not thinking that never
again would Miles Cylmer write to Ismay Trelane.
She evaded the others that afternoon with some trouble, so that she
was late at the stile. Miles was there before her, very tall, very
handsome in the gray light. For the day was thawing drearily.
“Miles”--her voice rang out sweetly, joyfully, as he had heard it in
his dreams--“I’m here! I’m quite well. Aren’t you glad?” She stopped
abruptly as she reached his side, saw his face. “Miles, what’s the
matter?” An agony of terror such as all her hunted life had never known
made her dizzy as she looked.
He could not answer. He was fighting with that worst pain on earth when
a man has learned to distrust and hate all that has been most dear and
sweet and true.
“Are you sorry you saved me?” She tried hard for his old light mirth.
“Is that it?”
Cylmer shivered. Truly he would rather she had died than that he should
have known this of her.
“I don’t know,” he said under his mustache, never moving a step toward
her, his hands, that were wont to clasp hers so eagerly, lax at his
sides.
“What’s the matter? Look at me,” she cried desperately. “Why are you
like this, when I’ve come all this way to tell you something that will
take all my courage to tell?”
“Then you can spare your courage, for I know.”
“Know! You can’t.” She was panting, wild. “What can you know that has
changed you so?”
“I know that it was your mother’s whose photograph was in Abbotsford’s
room,” he said hoarsely.
“I know why you fainted here in my arms when I talked of it. I know how
you and she have made a fool of me; how you have deceived me for Wray.”
“Wray!” She stared aghast. What did he mean?
“I saw you last night--with Wray.”
And at the look on his face the girl’s heart died within her.
“You saw me?” Ismay repeated. “Last night--with Marcus Wray?”
“Last night,” he echoed, “with Marcus Wray. He was alone with you in
your sitting-room, holding your hand. And you, who say you hate him,
lay looking at him so intently that you never knew I was there.”
“You were there!”--her eyes wide, dilated, were almost stupid as she
stared at him. “What brought you there?”
“To see you! But as it was an inconvenient moment”--with a short, angry
laugh--“I did not intrude.”
“Miles,” she cried, “I had a reason; I held his hand for a purpose.”
“I do not doubt it; you always have, I should fancy,” he said bitterly.
“Had you the same purpose in the morning, when you let him kiss you in
the hall, where the whole house might see?”
“Kiss me? He never kissed me.” Her lips, no longer scarlet, were
parted, her forehead suddenly livid.
Kissed her, Marcus Wray? With a sudden dread she remembered she had
dreamed of Cylmer, felt the tweed of his coat under her cheek.
“Miles! Miles!”--with a revulsion that was agony. “I was asleep. I
thought, I dreamed”--faltering--“it was you.”
“You forget, he never kissed you”--disdainfully. “You say you slept.
Do you think I, who loved you, would take advantage of your sleep to
kiss you? But why talk of it”--with a quick, slighting motion of his
hand--“since it is true?”
Yes, it was true. Just as holding his hand last night was true, and yet
hell was no falser.
“Who told you?” she asked quietly, without denial or protest.
“The person who saw you. And because I would not believe I went
up-stairs to see you, and I saw--but I did not come to talk of what you
know so thoroughly.”
“Then why did you come?” For the first time her voice was unsteady. To
his informant, as to Wray’s kisses, she never gave a thought; any one
might have seen her as she slept.
“I came to tell you that I knew it all, everything; that I see now that
from the first day you have been your mother’s daughter. Forgive my
rudeness; it is an easy way--of putting it.”
“I don’t understand.” How cold it was growing, and how dark, she
thought irrelevantly. Why could he not finish and go?
He pulled a card from his pocket.
“Who kept this from Cristiane?” he said roughly. “Was it you?”
“So you want to go back to your Cristiane?” For one second her eyes
flashed.
“I don’t care if I never see her again”--impatiently. “Yesterday, God
forgive me, I would have let her die for you.”
Yesterday! The utter change in his voice hurt.
“Don’t you see it isn’t Cristiane who is in question? It’s what you
did, or did not. Tell me, did you keep that card?”
“I kept it,” very evenly. “I loved you, and I was afraid of her.”
“You loved me?” he laughed, unbelieving. “Why, you had only seen me
once!” The contemptible thought of his money, his position, crowded
into his brain and maddened him. “Oh, not me!” he ended in a tone that
was an insult.
But she never noticed it.
She sat down on the stile, as if she were tired. That stile where the
gate of heaven had been closed on her.
“So you came about that note and Wray!” she said. “Well, I did both
things! What next?”
It was Cylmer’s turn to wince.
“This next,” he answered, and he could not meet her eyes, that once had
been so sweet, so serene. “It was for your sake, because I pitied you,
that I told nothing of all I knew about your mother. When you asked me,
I was silent. And all the time you knew that she was not only unfit to
have charge of an innocent girl, but was a murderess.”
“I thought so. Yes.”
“And then I loved you. And you used my love to find out what the
police were doing. But even your nerves could not keep you from making
mistakes. You fainted when I told you the police were on the murderer’s
track, and I was too blind to know you had excellent reason. And
because I was a fool I gave you that scarab, and I suppose you have
profited by my folly, and destroyed the others, though you had ‘never
seen it before!’”
“Miles, she is my mother.” Yet there was no pleading in her voice.
“And I thought I was your lover. But it seems I was mistaken. There is
Wray. I will leave the field to him.”
For the first time her temper rose.
“And then you will tell what you know of my mother--and me--to the
police, and the countryside?” she said scathingly. To hear her cut
Cylmer to the quick.
“That is what I will not do. To my shame, I will help you both to go.
I will let my friend lie unavenged. I will balk the investigation--if
I can, and for my shame I shall know I am a party to a crime. This is
what I came to tell you. It is not safe to stay here a day. You have
that scarab, but by this time a description of it is with all the
police in England, and any day they may be on you. If they ask me again
on my oath if I can identify that photograph, what can I answer? For I
saw your mother in that very attitude, that very dress, admiring her
reflection in a mirror last night. If you want money I will give it to
you; but make an excuse to Cristiane, and get your mother away. Let me
never see her again, that I may forget her.”
“And me? You would forget me?” her voice oddly flat and lifeless.
“Forget you? I would give my soul if I could,” simply. But there was
nothing in his bearing to comfort her.
“You don’t love me--now?” She persisted.
“No, not now. It will hurt you very little, as you have Wray.” There
was no taunt in his voice, only misery and conviction.
She sat, dumb and quivering.
“If you ever loved me, go!” he cried. “Can’t you see that any hour you
may be tracked?”
Like lightning she was on her feet, facing him. Her eyes were splendid
in the dusk, her beauty appalling as she spoke.
“If I ever loved you!” she cried. “I, who loved you as a nun adores
the cross; who was wicked, heartless, altogether evil, till you made me
see that truth and goodness were things to live and die for! It was for
your sake I fought for my mother. I hated her till I knew you; now I
pity her with all my heart.
“Miles, if you listen now, I can tell you what would make even you
pitiful. I can show you what a lying truth yesterday was--only hear me.”
“I would not believe you,” he cried wretchedly. “I should go home and
know it was only another act in the play; that you----”
With a gesture she stopped him; she had raised both her hands with a
movement that was magnificent. She spoke solemnly, as a priest who
calls down the wrath of God.
“Then it is on your head,” she said, and he could but just hear her.
“The sin, the crime, all that will come if you send me away. If I go
from you it will be to become all you think me; neither truth nor honor
nor pity will ever spring in me again. You will hear of me, and know
that it was you who made me that thing that I shall be; the memory of
it shall haunt you in life; it will cry out against you at the judgment
day.
“As for my mother”--superb, powerful, she held him with her eyes--“I
will bring that crime home--but not to my mother. I would have told
you all the truth to-day, but you sealed my lips. I could tell you of
a thing so wicked that even I could not see it done--but why should I
warn you, when you think I am a liar?”
“My God, Ismay! What are you saying?” A thought so awful in his mind
that he caught her by the arm till her flesh was bruised.
“Let me go!” She wrenched herself free. “God--I believed in no God
till I knew you. Now, I believe, and as He hears me, I swear the day
will come when for this day’s work you could kill yourself. No, don’t
answer; don’t speak!” contemptuously. “By and by you will know that
once I was true, and by then I shall be a thing to shudder at, with
death on my hands----” Her voice broke wildly. “But the guilt of it
will be on you. I wash my hands of it. Take your ring. I was never fit
to wear it. But when I am dead and in hell, you can remember that you
put me there.”
“Tell me what you mean!” authoritatively.
“I came to tell you--and you would not hear me. Now it is too late.”
All her excitement was gone, her words were as quick and irrevocable as
Fate.
“Ismay, love!” the man fairly groaned. “Do you mean me to believe all
you’ve been saying? Wait a minute; speak to me; forget everything but
that I loved you and you drove me mad!”
“Loved me? A thief, a liar, the daughter of a murderess, whose name is
a byword!” Her voice rang out clear and wicked.
“Oh, no, Mr. Cylmer! You did not love me. You thought you loved me
yesterday. Farewell!”
His ring lay unheeded on the ground between them, as he sprang to stop
her. But she was quick and elusive as a shadow. Cylmer, his courage
gone, his heart faint within him, leaned on the stile, as weak as a
woman.
In all her words there had been only one meaning to him. It was she
who had done it, and not her mother. And it was he who had stirred the
lagging investigation to fresh life.
Girl, sorceress, woman! Whatever she was, she had been a child in his
hands till to-day. And it was he who had set the noose about her neck!
“Ismay!” he sobbed once sharply, as a man does, from his very heart’s
core.
Her blood would be on his head, and he loved her still. And yet she had
been right. Not all she could have said or sworn would have blotted out
those facts that, true or false, stood out so blackly against her.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A NIGHT’S WORK.
White, tense, her nerves like an overstrung bow that goes near to
breaking, Ismay ran through the dark to Marchant’s Hold. And as she
entered the great hall door any pity that might have lingered in her
breast was killed.
Cristiane stood by the fire, dressed for dinner, her bare arms very
fair against her black dress.
“What! alone, and so late. Wouldn’t he even see you home to-night?” she
laughed, for Ismay’s face was not hard to read.
“He? Who do you mean?” She did not look a thing to play with as she
stopped short before the girl who mocked her.
“Miles, of course. Wasn’t he nice to you, Ismay? Or did that card I
never got stick in his throat?”
That card! So when she lost it, Cristiane had found it. It was she who
had given it to Cylmer. She who had told everything.
“You did it. You!” She could hardly speak.
“Yes, it was I,” cheerfully. “You see, I am not such a baby, after all.
But, cheer up. He will come back to-morrow. He won’t mind little things
like those.”
“You took him to my door last night.” But it was not a question, only a
statement.
“I withdrew him at once, promptly, when I saw it was a mistake,” calmly.
And this was the girl whom only yesterday she had nearly died to save!
Well, that was over. She could die now, as she pleased. No more would
an arm be stretched out to protect her. Never again would a mock ghost
play the spy on Marcus Wray.
Her eyes were very steady, very evil, as she looked up.
“I took that card, and I am very sorry I did,” she answered quietly.
“He would have loved me without it. You can think of that for your
pains.”
Cristiane was suddenly afraid, but she gave a last fling.
“Did he love you very much to-day?” she asked involuntarily.
Ismay’s face hardened like stone.
“You are what people call good,” she said slowly; “and I was sorry for
you. I did my best for you--in a fashion. Stand still and let me look
at you--for I may never see you again.”
Something in her eyes made Cristiane cold.
“What do you mean?” she shrieked. “Are you going away?” She sprang
forward, and took Ismay’s hand, but the girl shook her off.
“I am going to bed,” she said shortly. “Tell them not to disturb me. I
stole your note, Cristiane, but you are revenged. You have stolen from
me enough to make me go to bed without my dinner.”
Lightly, pitilessly, she nodded as she turned away. Let Marcus do what
he liked, it was nothing to her that he should have one more sin on
his shoulders. For if ever a woman was mad with misery, it was Ismay
Trelane that night.
Still in her outdoor dress she sat crouched on her bed, motionless as
a panther who waits to spring, death-driven, almost hopeless. In the
house the gong sounded for dinner; a servant came to the door, and was
sent petulantly away. Mrs. Trelane, all silks and rustle, knocked in
annoyance.
“Aren’t you coming down?” she cried.
“No. Please go away and leave me alone. I shall be all right in the
morning. I’m tired,” with a tearless sob.
She was weary to the bone. The shock of yesterday had borne hard on her
vigorous young body; the shock of to-day had withered her very soul.
She was faint for want of food, but she could not break bread with
Cristiane or Marcus Wray, and yet she must eat, or this night’s work
would never be done.
At a tap on her door she opened it, to see Jessie; Jessie, who honestly
loved her for many a kind word given when Cristiane had been cruelly
sharp with the faithful soul.
“I brought some soup and wine, Miss Ismay,” she said. “Are you sick?
You’re that pale.”
At the only kind word she had heard all day Ismay Trelane stooped and
kissed the honest, fresh cheek of the servant-woman.
“No, I’m tired,” she said slowly. “Make them let me be till the
morning. Promise, Jessie.”
“Will I get you to bed?” confused at the honor done her. “Will I fetch
Miss Cristiane?”
“Don’t fetch any one, and I’ll lock my door now. I’m afraid of that
ghost.”
“She don’t walk so early,” said the woman, with simple belief. “Good
night, Miss Ismay. I’ll not come in the morning till you ring.”
Ismay laughed.
“That’s a good soul,” she said. “Let me sleep--till I ring.”
Jessie would scarcely have known her ten minutes later, as she stood in
front of her glass, putting on the old clothes some mood had made her
bring with her to Marchant’s Hold.
Shabby, ugly, too short, the dress hung on her, the old-fashioned hat
set absurdly on her head. But there was color in her face from the soup
and wine, as she put into a safe hiding-place in her coat the scarab
that was all the clue she had.
“Vulgar cuff-links are a very small thing to go on,” she reflected;
“but I will try, and in the meantime Cristiane and Miles can find out
what sort of a house this is without me. I don’t think they’ll have
long to wait, either.”
She looked doubtfully at the few coins she had, as she put them into
her pocket.
“If they’re not enough, looking at them won’t help,” she thought. “They
will get me there, and that’s all I care for. If I fail I am not likely
to need any. If I don’t fail”--she laughed--“some one else will pay my
fare for the last time to Marchant’s Hold.”
She opened her door noiselessly and listened. There was only the
cheerful clink that came intermittently from the dining-room. There was
not a step or a sound on her floor.
Without a click to betray her, she locked her door behind her,
pocketing the key. Her room was in darkness, and no one would know the
key was gone till late in the morning; when it did not matter if the
whole world knew.
“Marcus may be certain I’ve gone to London, but it will take a cleverer
man than Marcus to find me,” she thought, as she went softly down the
stairs. The dining-room door was closed, the servants safe inside, the
front door swung noiselessly on its hinges as she slipped out unseen,
and closed it behind her without one telltale sound.
In the dark she stood looking at the house, with curiously hard eyes.
She was free. She was going to London with that scarab in her pocket,
to bring home his crime to the man who did it. Going alone, almost
penniless, to the cold winter streets, friendless, powerless, but
determined. And she left behind her, at the mercy of the merciless,
the girl whose only protection she had been. Left her with scarcely a
thought, without pity, with nothing in her hand but the one purpose--to
clear her mother before Cylmer and the world, to get out of Wray’s
power forever.
A train would leave the station for London at half-past nine. At twelve
o’clock she would be there, with just one night’s start of Marcus
Wray. One night in which to ruin him. The girl’s lips tightened as she
hurried along her lonely road.
“I may have more. They don’t know me at the station, and they will
never think it is a girl dressed like this whom he means. He will ask
for Miss Trelane, and I don’t look much like Miss Trelane.”
She was right, for the man who sold her her ticket never glanced at
her. There had been an excursion to some races, and the station was
crowded. The shabbily dressed girl got into her third-class carriage
unnoticed. And once the train started and she was safe, she dropped
asleep, in utter weariness, never once stirring till they were in the
London station.
She got out, and went quickly from the glaring lights and the crowd
into the comparative darkness of the streets. It was well they were
used to her locked door, otherwise they might have telegraphed and
stopped her. But once out of the station she was secure.
Twelve o’clock, and the night before her, fresh and rested with her
sleep, but no tangible plan in her head, no notion of what she meant
to do. She trudged aimlessly through the streets. Once she passed a
lighted music-hall, and thought of her first meeting with Cylmer, but
with a curious distance, as if of a man long dead.
Gradually, she left the thronged streets behind her, still unconscious
where she was going, till at last she stood in an open square, and knew
where she was. Round her were the lights of Onslow Square; at her very
feet the steps of Lord Abbotsford’s house.
What had drawn her to that dreadful place, alone in the night? What had
guided her straying feet? She could see the windows of that little room
where the dreadful thing had been done. They were in darkness, like the
rest of the windows, but she knew them.
Oh! why had she come here? Why was she wasting the priceless hours
like this? She turned to run, sick and trembling, but something black
on the door-step caught her eye. Ismay stooped down and peered at the
shapeless bundle.
It was a very little boy, a bootblack, asleep on the homeless stones.
His box was clasped tight in his arms, and he sobbed in his sleep.
The pity of the thing came home to the girl who had also nowhere to go,
no shelter from the freezing rain that was beginning to fall. She had
a shilling in her pocket besides what must pay for her breakfast, and
surely it was her guardian angel that prompted her to give it to the
boy.
Very gently she touched his thin shoulder.
He started up, awake at once, defiant, yet frightened, like a true
London waif.
“Let me alone,” he said. “I ain’t done nothing. Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m sleeping out, like you,” she answered. “But I’m grown up, and
you’re too little,” with a kind of reckless fellowship that reassured
the boy, who was ready for a run.
“Ain’t you got nowhere to go, either? Oh!” He stared at her with the
uncanny wisdom of the streets.
“Do you know anywhere to go if I give you a shilling?” she asked, more
for the comfort of talking than for anything else.
“I can go home if I’ve a bob. I daresent without any money. Mother’d
lick me, and I’m sick. Will you give me a bob, honest? And no tracts,
nor nothing?”
She nodded, ashamed by this time of her impulse.
What had made her such a fool, when she might starve to-morrow for want
of that shilling?
The boy stood up and stared resentfully at the dark house in front of
them.
“It’s no good staying here. The man won’t let me in. He kicked me down
the steps last time I rung.”
“Let you in!” She looked with wonder at the dirty, ragged mite. “What
do you want to go in for?”
“I want to tell them something. It’s a shame,” with a man’s oath. “They
had Billy Cook in, and asked him things, and gave him half a crown, and
he didn’t know nothin’! And it was me that ought to had it. It was my
stand opposite, by that muddy crossing, and I took sick that day, and
stayed home ever since, and to-day when I come back Billy had my stand,
and what ought to ‘a’ been mine--and he didn’t know nothing, only
answered silly.”
“Know nothing about what?” she echoed involuntarily, with no thought of
the answer that was to make her heart leap.
“About the man that was in that house the day they said there was no
one in. I say, couldn’t you knock at the door, and I’d tell them. And
p’haps they’d give me ’arf a quid, and mother could get too dead drunk
to hit me?”
“What man? Tell me, quick. I’ll get you more than half a sovereign.”
She did not know how fierce her voice was till the boy started back
from her.
“It ain’t no business of yours,” he cried. “I say, you ain’t got
nothing to do with the coppers, ’ave you?” he was on the defensive
instantly, all ready to flee.
“No; no!” she said, so gently that he believed her. “But if you’ll tell
me, instead of them,” nodding at the big silent house, “I’ll get you
more money than you ever saw in your life.”
“Girls like you don’t have none,” he retorted, with a distrustful
shiver.
“I’ll get it for you in the morning. You needn’t let me out of your
sight all night, not till it’s in your hand, if you’ll tell me all you
know.”
The boy gave a cheerful whirl.
“Golly! I bet Billy Cook’ll be sick,” he exclaimed. “Do you mean it;
hope you may die?”
“Hope I may die,” she asserted gravely, her marvelous eyes, that even
the child saw, bent on him. “But not here. Let’s walk on somewhere out
of the rain. I’m cold.”
“I’m always cold,” returned the small bootblack.
“It ain’t nothin’ when you’re used to it. But we’d better keep movin’;
cops comes round when you stands.”
“Go on about the man,” she said shortly. “How do you know it was the
day of the murder?”
“Ho! I’m not blind. Why, you never see such a how d’ye do in your
life. Cabs, and perlice, and reporters, and the cook screaming in the
area. I knowed right enough, but I never knowed they were looking for
no man till I come back to-day, and Billy Cook said so. He punched
me, too, because he’d got my stand, and I wanted it. And when I said
that ’arf-crown was mine, he punched me again. So I went to the house,
and the man told me to get out with my lies. They’d had the square
bootblack in a’ready. Billy Cook,” scornfully, “that never see the
square in his life till I got took bad with brownkeeters. He didn’t
see no man come out of the house, any day.”
“Did you?”
The great clock on the church-tower struck one. If the boy did not
hurry it would be too late to-night for what was in her mind.
“I saw him go in about half after one. I saw a woman go in and out
twice, too; but that was after three. The last time there was a girl
with her, and they whispered, and while the woman was in a gentleman
went in and come out again quick. Him that raised the fuss afterward.
But my man he never come out till half-past four. I heard the clock,
when it was dusklike. He never see me, and he walked quick. And he was
crossing the street by my stand when he drops something out of his
hand, quick, right in the middle of the road, in the traffic. So I
jumped to get it before a bus went over it, and it was just a little
blue glass bottle that smelled funny.”
“What did you do with it?” She was exultant, treading on air, the rain
falling unfelt on her thinly clad shoulders. And yet she dreaded that
at a question the boy’s story would fall to the ground.
“Put it in my box. It’s there now. You bet I didn’t tell Billy Cook
anything about it to-day, when he was smelling round! I was sick when I
went home, and I never thought of it till to-day, and the man wouldn’t
let me speak.”
“What did he look like, the man you saw come out of the house?”
“He was big, and ugly, without no mustache. I’d know him if I see him.
Say, do you suppose there was stuff in that bottle to kill a man?”
“I don’t know. Let me see it.”
The boy yawned; but he took it from his box as they walked. In the
light of a street-lamp Ismay looked at it, shaking with excitement. An
ordinary chemist’s bottle, of blue glass, without a label. She pulled
out the cork, and a faint odor of bitter almonds met her nostrils.
Prussic acid! And the bottle had held enough to kill ten men!
In a wild fit of laughter that made the boy start, she shook from head
to foot.
“Can’t you remember anything else about him?” she gasped, at last.
“Dirty cuffs,” said the boy doubtfully. “I saw ’em in the lights when
he passed the shop at the corner. Oh! and blue things on them, on the
one next me.”
“Blue things! What like?”
“Oh, I dunno! They were blue. Studs, I guess. He was awful ugly, and
thin.”
Ismay stopped short on the soaking pavement, and whistled to a belated
hansom.
“Come on; we’re going to get that money!” she said, and before the boy
could object she had jerked him adroitly into the cab.
But as she gave the driver an address that made him stare, her bold
heart was quailing. In another hour she might have given her own mother
over to be hanged! At best it would be touch and go. She caught the
bootblack’s dirty hand and clung to it despairingly, as if to her only
friend. Something not herself was driving her; something she must obey.
She shook in her terror, sitting close to the dirty little boy.
CHAPTER XXX.
INTO THE LION’S MOUTH.
In the sickness of her suspense Ismay turned to the bootblack. Her
mouth was so stiff and dry that she questioned him chiefly to see if
her tongue would obey her.
“Why didn’t you go straight to the police and tell them all you knew
this afternoon? That man in the house was only a servant, who didn’t
care what you knew.”
“I ain’t lucky,” he said cunningly. “It’s all right if they comes to
you, then you has to answer. But it’s never no good to go and blow the
gaff on any one. You gets it in the neck after.”
“That’s nonsense,” with uneasy sharpness. What if the child were right?
“I never was in no cab before,” he remarked gaily. “It’s fine, ain’t
it? Where are we going?”
“We’re nearly there.” She peered out into the silent, dreary streets
evasively.
“I say, you’re not taking me to no refuge?” he cried suspiciously.
“Because I won’t go, and you can’t make me. I earn my living, I do.”
“No, we’re not going to--a refuge,” she answered, with a pang at her
heart. For truly she was going into the lion’s mouth.
They had turned under a stone archway, and the hansom stopped at an
open door, where the cold electric light shone relentlessly.
She dared not stop to pay the cab, for the boy, with a yell, and a wild
squirm, was trying to get away from her.
“I ain’t done nothing,” he screeched, “and you’re a liar. You said
you’d nothing to do with the coppers, and you’ve brought me to Scotland
Yard!”
He bit at her hand as she forced him into the grim hall, under the
glaring lights.
“Listen!” she cried; “no one’s going to hurt you. It’s I they’ll hurt
if it’s any one. You’re not going to get anything but good.”
But the bootblack merely roared and kicked. Two policemen, who were
standing by a door, came forward.
“What’s the matter, miss?” one asked affably. “Has he been picking your
pocket? I beg your pardon, madam!” for Ismay, without slackening her
hold on the writhing child, had looked at him as a queen looks at a
forward servant.
“He has done nothing,” she said clearly. “Is the inspector here, Mr.
Davids?” she spoke on chance. Davids had been inspector here four years
ago. He might have left or died since then.
“Yes, madam. But----” he hesitated. “It’s very late, and these things
usually go to the police court.”
“Go and tell him I want to see him.” The tone was perfectly civil, but
the man went as if he had been shot out of a gun. Who was this that
came so late, in the clothes of a working girl, with the speech and
manner of a duchess? But the inspector, sitting wearily, waiting for a
report, was not much interested. He was too well used to women arriving
at strange hours, and they had generally lost their umbrellas.
“Let her in,” he said resignedly. “Did you say she was a lady?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ismay took her last coin from her pocket as the man came out.
“Pay my hansom,” she said, and heard the second policeman laugh.
“The like of them coming in hansoms!” And for a moment she regretted
her worn-out, ugly clothes.
A lady! As the door closed behind her and the struggling boy, who was
fighting dumbly, too terrified to scream, the inspector looked up in
surprise. The girl was as shabby, if not as ragged, as the boy.
“Please tell him that he is not to be hurt, that he’s safe,” she said
quickly. “He’s so frightened.”
The inspector looked from her to the child.
“Then what have you brought him here for at this hour?” he asked
sternly.
“Because he knows something about the Onslow Square mystery.” Now that
the die was cast and she must speak, she could hardly drag out the
words.
“What! that child?” said the inspector incredulously. But he rose and
went over to the gasping, terrified boy, and put a kindly hand on his
shoulder.
“No one will hurt you,” he said, and the firm touch of his hand quieted
the child like magic.
As he looked up he met Ismay’s eyes, darkly green, but dull as
malachite.
“Mr. Davids, don’t you know me?” And in spite of her quiet voice he saw
she trembled.
“I am Ismay Trelane. Do you remember the night you raided my mother’s
house in St. John’s Wood for a gambling-den? I was a child, and afraid.
You stopped me as I was running out of the house, and you carried me
up-stairs to my bed.”
“Mrs. Trelane is your mother? You are that long-legged child?” He
stood, remembering the utter forlornness of the little girl, her
miserable bedroom in that sumptuous house, her pride that kept her from
crying as she clung to him.
“How do you come here?” he asked. “I heard your mother had--had gone
back to her relations.”
The boy, now that they talked of other things, was relieved; also
that no policemen were in the room was reassuring. He sat down in a
frightened way on the edge of a chair, staring at them.
“I’m going to tell you.” Bravely she held up her small, lovely head,
till he wondered at her beauty and her hard-held agony. “If I’m wrong,
and there isn’t enough to go on----” she caught her breath.
“Sit down.” The inspector pushed a chair toward her, his weariness all
gone.
Slowly, clearly, she told him everything, except that Marcus Wray meant
Sir Gaspard’s daughter to die. Let her die; she would no longer raise a
finger to save her. It was not to prevent Wray’s crimes, but to bring
them home to him, that she was here.
When she came to the scarab she faltered a little, for Davids was
frowning. Yet he could not wonder, looking at her marvelous face, at
Cylmer’s weakness in giving her his secret. He only wondered at the
blindness that had made the man refuse to hear her story. And still,
when it was all done, he shook his head very pitifully.
“I’m afraid it isn’t enough,” he said, looking at the girl who had come
to London in despair to try and save the mother against whom things
looked so dark.
Ismay pointed to the boy.
“Ask him,” she said dully. “I went to Onslow Square. I found him on the
steps, crying because they wouldn’t let him in.”
The child, who had sat dumb and only half-comprehending, shied at
first, then, under the half-teasing questions of the inspector, grew
garrulous, then proud of his importance.
“I’d know him fast enough, if I see him,” he observed cheerfully. “He
upset my box when he passed me, and so I run after him, and I see him
drop that bottle. It was shiny, and I run and grabbed it.”
“Or it would have been ground to powder?” the inspector said musingly.
“It would have been a clever idea if it had worked better.”
He held out the scarab in its broken setting.
“Was the blue thing on his cuff like this?”
“I dunno. I hadn’t time to see. Won’t it soon be morning, mister? I’m
awful hungry.”
“What are you going to do?” said Ismay, very low. For there had been no
change in that imperturbable face.
Davids turned round from a cupboard, whence he produced some biscuits
for the boy, who fell on them ravenously.
“Where does this man Wray live?” he asked, and she told him.
He locked away the scarab and the bottle in silence, and the girl’s
beautiful face grew blank and wan. Was he going to do nothing? Had she
told her story in vain?
“I won’t hide anything from you, Miss Trelane,” he said bluntly. “I’m
going myself to Wray’s rooms, and I must tell you if we find nothing
there, and have only this boy’s story to go on, the case against your
mother will scarcely be improved. The child can identify Wray, perhaps,
but he may be able to clear himself with the greatest of ease.”
Ismay looked at him blankly. Her head ached till the pain numbed her,
her excitement had gone, and instead she felt sick. If she had told
all, only for Cylmer to triumph in her mother’s guilt, what should she
do? Yet her lips never quivered as she nodded in assent.
“I am going to turn the key on you, too,” he said, so evenly that she
did not know whether he thought her an impostor or not. “And you’d
better try to sleep. I may be a long time.”
He wondered afresh at her courage as he left her alone with the boy,
in a suspense that must be like the very grasp of death. He was not
too certain of her, either. She seemed truthful, but she was Mrs.
Trelane’s child. A long acquaintance with that lady’s career did not
lead to confidence in her daughter. Hour by hour the night wore on. The
bootblack slept coiled up on the floor; but Ismay sat bolt upright,
wide-awake, her damp clothes drying on her.
Once she started to her feet at a noise outside. But whoever it was
passed on, and as the dark hour before dawn hung on the earth her head
fell backward on the leather chair. The night was so long, the day so
far off yet, and there was nothing to tell her what the sunrise would
bring.
Davids, coming in before the first gray light began to make the lights
pale, stopped on the threshold and looked pitifully at the boy and
girl. Both were asleep; the boy with a tear-stained face; the girl
like a lovely marble image, an image of a woman who has drunk deep of
a bitter cup in her youth, and must remember the taste of it till her
dying day. The inspector was a hard man, and this was his trade, but
something in the sight touched his heart.
“Poor children!” he said softly. “Poor babes that have never been
young,” and, with a gentle hand, he touched Ismay’s shoulder.
“Wake up!” he cried softly. “You must catch the early train back to the
country. You can’t do any good here.”
She started to her feet; wan, haggard, with black rings round her eyes.
“Me alone?” she said. He noted approvingly that she showed no symptom
of screaming. “Yes, alone. It is our only chance. Can you get into your
room without being seen?”
“I think so, if there’s time.”
Her eyes widened like a cat’s as she looked at his face. She was awake
now to the new day. And at what she saw there she cried out aloud, her
icy calm shattered at last.
“You’ve been very brave. Can you be braver still?” the man said slowly.
And the girl, whose strength was nearly done, said “yes.”
CHAPTER XXXI.
“SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!”
The conversation had been exciting enough, yet Mr. Wray was bored.
“Where is Ismay?” he asked shortly, as he finished his very late
breakfast.
Mrs. Trelane shrugged her shoulders.
“She’s in bed. She told Jessie she wasn’t to be disturbed till she
rang.”
Wray’s eyebrows went up. Truly, these were airs in a girl who had been
used to cooking her own breakfast, and been glad to have it to cook.
“I’ll go to her.” Mrs. Trelane rose quickly, reading his face
anxiously. She had watched him open his letters, and she had seen
annoyance in his face.
“What do you want Ismay for?” Cristiane inquired coquettishly.
Wray suppressed a bad word. All the previous evening Cristiane, whose
successes had gone to her head, had fairly flung herself at his head.
She had sung to him, talked to him, bored him, till he could have
strangled her. And now she was hammering the last few nails into her
coffin.
“I don’t want her, especially,” he said coldly, wishing the little fool
would hold her tongue.
Cristiane laughed.
“Do you know what I think?” she asked. “I think you are in love with
her.”
Under the table he shut one hand hard.
“Do you? Why?
“Ain’t people in love when they kneel down beside a girl, and kiss her,
once, twice, twenty times?” nodding her head knowingly at each number.
Wray was for a moment taken back.
So the little fool had seen him! Now she had begun to suspect; the next
thing she would begin to talk, perhaps to Cylmer; and if he carried out
his schemes it would be with a light on them that would make them plain
to the world.
Cristiane had signed her own death-warrant. She was no longer innocent,
but dangerous and in the way. To-night she should be no longer one nor
the other. He looked at her with that frank gaze that always cloaked
his worst deceits.
“When a man dare not ask for what he wants, because it is so far above
him, do you blame him for taking--what he can get?” His voice, full of
hopeless longing, made the blood of triumph spring to her cheeks. Here
again she would defeat Ismay!
“Yes,” she said, her eyes on the table-cloth. “You could have--tried!
You need not have kissed her,” pettishly, “before my very eyes.”
“Cristiane!” he was on his feet at her side, his voice thrilling with
simulated joy and passion; “you’re angry because I kissed her? You
care?”
She did not care, beyond her vanity that was piqued, but she was afraid
to say so. Somehow the man dominated her till she sat an arrant coward.
She trembled before his eyes, that were full of a passion that she
thought was love; she had no intuition to tell her that it was hatred
and the threat of death.
“I--I don’t know!” she stammered.
“You shall know!” he retorted, knowing better than to plead with her.
His hand, softly brutal, was under her chin. “Kiss me,” he ordered.
“Tell me you love me.”
Like a frightened child, she repeated the words, and he knew she
lied as she spoke. He was right, she was dangerous; weak, obstinate,
self-willed, with an utterly unbridled tongue.
“Kiss me,” he repeated, longing to choke her instead, and having
nothing but distaste for her peachlike cheek, her parted lips. He was
relieved that she sprang away from him--and she never dreamed that he
let her go.
From the door she looked back provokingly. “Not now--perhaps to-night!”
and she went off singing.
Mrs. Trelane heard her, as, having been in a hurry despite her hasty
retreat, she stood leisurely at Ismay’s door. Her shrewd ears caught
the excited note in the girl’s voice.
“He’s been making love to her,” she thought astutely.
“Marcus making love at this hour in the morning! Can he mean to go that
way for his money, after all?” She knocked, this time with earnestness,
at Ismay’s locked door. It opened on the instant.
Ismay, dressed as usual, stood inside, her eyes a little heavy, her
face unnaturally flushed. She had got back by the early train, driving
from the station to the gate in a fly, moneyless no longer, thanks to
Davids; by eight o’clock had gained her room, unseen by any one, since
the servants were at breakfast, and the rest of the house waiting till
half-past eight should bring their tea and hot water.
As the girl bathed and dressed herself it almost seemed to her that
it was a dream, that she could never have been in London and got back
again in those few hours while the house slept. Only the instructions
she had from Davids told her it was no dream, but reality. At the sight
of her mother, for the first time in all her life she flung her arms
round her and kissed her.
Mrs. Trelane gazed at her stupidly.
“What’s the matter?” she drawled. “Why do you greet me as if I had been
buried for years? This isn’t the resurrection day.”
Ismay smiled wickedly. It was more like the day of judgment, to her
mind.
“What on earth have you been shutting yourself up for?” Mrs. Trelane
inquired crossly. “And why didn’t you answer last night when there was
all that fuss? You must have heard me knocking.”
“What fuss? I told you long ago I wouldn’t open my door at night. I was
tired, too. I wanted to rest.”
“You don’t look as if repose had agreed with you,” said her mother
acidly. “Your face is blazing, and I don’t see how you could rest with
Cristiane screaming. Don’t you want any breakfast?”
“I’ve had it,” shortly, curiosity overwhelming her. “What was she
screaming about?”
“That ghost of yours and Thomas’,” she began contemptuously, but her
face fell. “It’s too queer to be nice in this big house at night,” she
added, closing the door behind her and sitting down. “I don’t wonder
the girl screamed. I was frightened to death.”
“My ghost couldn’t have frightened you last night!” For her life, Ismay
could not help the retort, but she was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the ghost, then,” quite unconscious of the significance of the
girl’s manner. “You were shut up in here, and I went to bed early.
Marcus and Cristiane stayed down-stairs----”
“You left them together?” Ismay broke in with real dismay, for
Cristiane had probably profited by the opportunity to air Ismay’s
acquaintance with Cylmer.
“I’m not Providence!” said the woman smartly; “and, besides, I had
neuralgia. At all events they sat up late, and when they came up-stairs
they heard that music. Marcus, of course, didn’t know Cristiane had
never heard about it, and he told her Thomas’ nonsense about the ghost.”
“How did he know about it?”
“Oh, I told him! I was frightened one night myself. Ismay,” her face
changing, “as sure as I see you this minute, I heard those awful steps,
coming closer and closer, till I was paralyzed with fear. And, later
on, Marcus went up-stairs to see who was playing that piano, and his
candle went out the moment he entered the room.”
“I told you this wasn’t a nice house at night. But go on. What happened
last night?”
“Well, Cristiane had hysterics--you must have heard her; declared her
father couldn’t rest in his grave, and what not. She nearly choked
Marcus holding on round his neck, so that he couldn’t go up and see. I
couldn’t stop her, and up came Thomas, half-dressed, and Jessie, and
altogether we got Cristiane to stop her shrieking.
“Then Marcus ran up-stairs, and Thomas after him, begging him to let
the room alone. ‘There was a curse on it.’”
“Well, did he?” with sudden interest.
“That’s the queer part. When he got up there the door was locked, and
Thomas said he hadn’t locked it. Marcus was going to break open the
door, and I thought the old man would have killed him. He said that his
dead master’s orders were that no one was to enter that room, and he
was there to see them obeyed. Even Marcus had to give in to him.”
“Good for Thomas!” the girl observed quietly. “Was the spirit playing
all this time?”
“No; it was quieter than the grave. So Marcus shrugged his
shoulders--you know how he does--and we came down-stairs again. There
wasn’t another sound all night. But to-night he and Cristiane are going
up to investigate after Thomas is in bed. They planned it at breakfast,
and she’s going to get a key. I don’t know what Marcus is up to, for
I don’t think he believes in ghosts. I suppose it will be a good
opportunity for flirtation, for lately I think he’s made up his mind to
marry her.”
“To-night, are they?” For some unknown reason Miss Trelane leaned back
in her chair and laughed, wrinkling up her eyes deliciously.
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll marry her,” she remarked. “You forget he means
to marry me.”
Mrs. Trelane flushed under her powder.
“How do you know?” she said, with sudden suspicion.
“If I don’t know it’s not for want of hearing,” the retort remarkably
misleading in its truth.
“Oh, mother, how I hate him, don’t you? He has been our evil genius
ever since Abbotsford was murdered.”
“I hate him well enough,” said her mother sullenly; “but I don’t want
him to tell I took those diamonds. I could never prove myself innocent
of the other, if it came out that it was I who took those.”
“And yet you are innocent. You haven’t blood enough to sin--like that.”
“Have you?” asked the woman, aghast, for the cold, queer eyes were a
thing to shudder at.
“I wouldn’t murder; it’s generally so messy. But I could stand by if I
hated a man, and see him commit a murder, just so that I might see him
hanged for it. And so,” very deliberately, “would you!”
“Ismay, you know?” the wretched woman, whose cunning had failed her,
crouched abjectly in her chair, as she whispered the words.
“I know nothing; neither do you,” Ismay rejoined sternly. “But he
would--hang!” The words came out slowly, separately, like the blows of
a hammer.
“I couldn’t see it,” the woman was sobbing wildly, the girl’s face set
like a rock. “Besides, he’d tell before he died--about the diamonds--it
wouldn’t be safe. Ismay, Ismay, you’re stronger than I ever was. For
God’s sake, save me from myself!”
And it was the mother who bore her who was agonized at her daughter’s
feet, who prayed to her for help against herself.
“Save me from myself!” the girl repeated mechanically. Was that her own
prayer, too? She trembled, and did not know.
The next instant she was kneeling by her mother’s chair.
“Mother, don’t look like that; don’t speak like that,” she implored,
and even Miles Cylmer would not have known the voice was hers. “I did
not mean it. I only said it from wickedness.”
And all through that day that seemed unending, Ismay Trelane, eating,
drinking, talking, was fighting a battle between the good and evil in
her soul.
Desperately, she thrust aside the importunate cry that rose in her
mind, bidding her kneel down and cry it aloud with her lips.
“Save me from myself!”
Fiercely, she tried to kill the best impulse of her life, and harden
her heart for the end.
Cristiane, dead, could never get Cylmer back again, and Marcus Wray was
doomed already.
CHAPTER XXXII.
“THE DEED IN THE DARK.”
The house was dark as the grave; quiet as death. From somewhere a clock
struck the hour with one solemn stroke, that clanged and echoed through
the silent halls.
Mrs. Trelane, lying sleepless in her bedroom, where she had been sent
like a beaten dog by one glance from Wray, sprang up with causeless
terror. Only the remembrance of Ismay’s locked door kept her from
running to the girl for companionship, but she dared not stand outside
that door, even for one minute, and knock in vain, with perhaps those
awful steps behind her.
Cowering in her pillows, she listened, but heard no more. Even to
herself she would not own that what she feared was not so much the
ghost, as what Marcus Wray might be going to do this night in the dark.
For she had seen him look once at Cristiane that day, and the look held
death in it.
Once, earlier in the night, she had fancied she heard the noiseless
tread of cautious feet, as though people passed her door silently. She
had looked out, then, and seen nothing but Ismay, pale as death itself,
standing alone in the still lighted hall.
“What’s the matter?” the girl said. “Don’t say you want me, because
I’m going to bed,” and she went into her room and locked the door
carelessly, as though death and retribution were left outside.
There were quiet steps again now, but Mrs. Trelane’s fingers were in
her ears, and she never heard them.
Marcus Wray and Cristiane had come up silently, he with a light in one
hand, the other round Cristiane’s waist, that terror might not make
her break away from him.
Frightened she was, but like a child who enjoys a game that startles
it, but also a little afraid of the arm that was so grimly protective.
It was amusing to be hunting ghosts at night with a man who was in love
with you; but it was also, somehow, disquieting.
There was not a sound as they stood at the turn of the stairs, with
only half a dozen more steps to mount to the hall the haunted room
opened from. Wray stopped, candle in hand. It was no ghost-hunting that
had brought him up here at the dead of night.
“Why didn’t you go on?” she whispered.
He kissed her, almost savagely.
“I don’t hear anything. I’m waiting for the music.”
“Oh, I’m frightened of it! I don’t want to hear it. Let us go down.”
Their voices were echoing in the hall above as in a whispering gallery.
“Down!” The man held his candle aloft, and looked down the well of the
stairs. Down, down, it went till his eye lost in the blackness the hard
oak floor of the great hall below. There was no one to see him, and his
face was the face of a devil. He set his candle on the stair.
“You can go down--presently,” he answered recklessly. He took a sharp
sideways step so that she was pressed near the banister. Far below
he saw the light of a candle. Thomas was carrying it, the old man
was coming up-stairs. It was all the better; an accident, without a
witness, sometimes smelled of murder. How slowly Thomas was mounting
the stairs! If some one in the hall above had seen Wray’s face, the
glare in his eyes, and caught their breath in swift horror, there might
have been precisely the little sound that reached Cristiane’s ears.
“What was that? I heard a noise,” she whispered, gazing up the stairs
with great, startled eyes.
“Nothing!” said Wray furiously. Thomas was nearly up now.
“Cristiane!” Wray cried at the top of his voice: “what are you doing up
here? There’s no ghost, don’t run. For God’s sake, take care of those
banisters--they’re rotten!” and with God’s name on his lips in the lie
that was to make Thomas a witness who would clear him, he shoved her
suddenly, savagely, against the banisters, that were frail as reeds
with dry rot.
Cristiane screamed the long, wild cry of a woman in the last pinch of
fear.
“Help me!” she shrieked again, and for one second his grasp of her
relaxed. She had fallen flat on the stairs, still pressed against the
banisters where they were socketed in the steps.
Wray put his shoulder against the rail; it cracked, crashed, with half
the uprights, down into the awful depths below. Only half-against the
splintered lower part Cristiane lay huddled.
With an inarticulate curse, Marcus Wray stooped to do deliberate
murder, to pick up the girl, whose only sin was her wealth and her
defenselessness. Thomas was not come yet; there was no witness.
But was there?
Who was that who stood just above him, in a curious white satin gown,
marked with blood on the breast? Who stood dead-white through her
flimsy gauze veil, her eyes burning like cold, green flames?
He looked, he sprang, kicking over the candle so that there was
darkness. But in that one glance he had known her. It was Ismay who
had played the ghost. Ismay who had seen him now! Beyond himself with
rage and terror, he leaped after her in the dark. In the dark she ran,
voiceless, weakened by the long strain on her, the horror of what she
had been within an ace of allowing to be done.
A square of moonlight marked the open door that was her safety. She
leaped to it, but Marcus Wray was quicker still. Her flying dress
caught round her feet as he seized it. She fell headlong on the hard,
oak threshold, her head striking it with a dull and awful sound.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
“HEAVENLY TRUE.”
Over that quiet body, that had been so quick to dare and do, and need
do neither any more, a furious struggle in the dark, of three men
against one, who saw himself caught red-handed, and fought, not for his
own life, but to kill.
Then lights in the haunted room, quiet only broken by the hard
breathing of panting men; Marcus Wray, with handcuffs on his wrists,
held fast by two policemen in plain clothes, a small and dirty boy
yelling with excitement:
“That’s him! That’s the man. I told you I’d know him!”
Thomas, haggard with frightened amazement, peering in at the door;
behind him Cristiane, crying desperately; Mrs. Trelane in a sumptuous
tea-gown, half-on, that was incongruous with her face, so wan without
its rouge and powder.
Davids, his hard face full of triumph, since the unraveling of the
Onslow Square mystery was a glory even to him, stepped forward and
touched Marcus Wray’s shoulder.
“For the murder of the Earl of Abbotsford,” he said, and Wray laughed
in his face.
“You’ve no proofs!” he sneered.
Davids drew out a broken cuff-link, a scarab from which a thin chain
dangled.
“I found this in your rooms,” he said, “and the other half of it one of
my men found in Lord Abbotsford’s bedroom. And this boy saw you go in
and go out on the day of Lord Abbotsford’s murder; saw the blue thing
on your cuff as you threw the bottle that had held the poison into the
middle of the traffic at the corner, to be ground to powder.”
Once more Wray laughed.
He had seen a laden omnibus go over the very spot where he had flung
the bottle.
“Powder, exactly!” he said. “And neither your boy nor your scarabs are
any use without that bottle.” Yet the scarabs had staggered even him.
He had forgotten to take them out; they had gone to the wash in his
shirt, and his washerwoman had returned them with tears, believing she
had broken off one of them in her ironing.
And Wray, thinking so, too, had never given the missing scarab another
thought. The whole link and the broken one had been lying openly on his
dressing-table last night when the inspector had broken into his rooms.
He had never thought of Abbotsford even when he fought so madly on
the threshold. It was that these men had seen his attempted murder of
Cristiane le Marchant that had made his case so desperate.
Davids glanced at him, and at the look his lips grew dry.
“I have the bottle,” the inspector said simply. “The boy kept it to
play with.”
Wray looked from one to the other, like a devil incarnate that is
beaten.
“May I ask you how you found out this rot?” He could not speak with the
old voice, but he tried.
“I found it out because a girl was too shrewd and brave for you. Miss
Trelane, by a coincidence, obtained that broken cuff-link; she knew
the hold the stolen diamonds had given you on her mother; she came to
London by chance, came on the only night since the murder when she
could lay her hands on the evidence that was wanted; she found the boy,
and brought him straight to me, with the broken bit of jewelry that I
found the other half of in your room.”
“She? Ismay!” His oath sounded loud in the quiet room. “She was a spy!
Well, it’s a comfort to me to know that I’ve killed her!”
He stretched out his manacled hands and pointed where the girl lay on
the floor, face down.
No one had noticed her at first. She had tripped and lay still, worn
out--that was all.
But they looked now on a huddled heap of white satin, on slow blood
that oozed scarlet from her hidden forehead.
Cristiane screamed from the depths of a penitent soul:
“She’s dead! He’s killed her. And it was she who saved me just now. He
was trying to push me through the banisters, and I looked up and saw
her. She motioned with her hand for me to drop down flat, and I did.
It saved me, for the upper part of the banisters went, as I would have
gone if I’d been standing. I thought it was the ghost, but I saw her
eyes, and I knew her. I dropped as she meant me to, and then he stooped
to throw me over, and she sprang at him from behind. Oh! Ismay!” she
threw herself on the floor by the slight figure that was so awful in
its stillness. “Ismay, look up! Forgive me! Don’t lie like that!”
But Ismay did not stir.
Davids put out a hand that shook in his dread, to draw Cristiane away.
But some one was quicker than he; some one who hurled himself through
the doorway, brushing past Thomas and Mrs. Trelane as if he did not see
them.
Cylmer, by merest chance, had been hunting twenty miles off, doing
his best to forget the girl he loved, had stayed to dine with a noisy
party, and came back by train.
As he stood on the station platform, waiting for his dog-cart, a man
had touched him on the shoulder.
“Kivers!” he cried. “What brings you here?”
“Good news for you, Mr. Cylmer!” the man said softly, though there was
no one in hearing. “The inspector has discovered Lord Abbotsford’s
murderer. He and three of the force are at Marchant’s Hold now. I’m
waiting here, in case there’s any accidents, and they make a run for
the station.”
“They! Marchant’s Hold!” Cylmer was sick. Then the blow had fallen!
“I’m going there,” he said, through set lips. Was he too late? Could he
carry off Ismay, or would he find her with handcuffs on her wrists?
“Wait; they won’t let you in; our men won’t know you.” Kivers thrust
a hastily scrawled card in Cylmer’s hand, wondering not at all at his
excitement, when at last the murderer of his friend was in his hands.
But the groom on the back of the two-wheeled cart prayed to the saints,
and clung for his life; the galloping horse, the swaying dog-cart, and
a master who had suddenly gone crazy, were too much for him. The wind
whistled past Cylmer’s ears with the speed of his going, but it seemed
years before he stopped his reeking, blown horse at Marchant’s Hold. He
was forced to wait while a policeman on guard read Kivers’ note and let
him into the house.
But there was not a soul to be seen, not a sound anywhere. As he
listened in the dark, not knowing which way to turn, he heard a woman
sob, up-stairs, far above him. He was up three steps at a time, lost in
wonder as he ran. What in Heaven’s name were they doing in the garret?
An open door; a lighted room; Mrs. Trelane and Thomas barring the way.
Mrs. Trelane, free, scathless!
Then it must be Ismay--Ismay! And he was too late.
He could not move nor speak for the cruel pain that brought the cold
sweat on his forehead.
“Ismay.” He listened, silent, breathless; he dared not go in lest he
should see her, now that he was too late.
Davids’ voice, cold, incisive, startled him; then Wray’s. Yet it was
not till Cristiane was kneeling by Ismay that he saw her. And then he
saw nothing else. He was down by her side, lifting her, her blood on
his hands, his heart craving her. The girl his self-righteousness had
rejected, who, because he would not hear her and help her, had fought
her battle alone--to die from it.
He would not, would not have it! She was stunned; it must be that she
was stunned. But the heart under his hand did not even flicker.
“Are you going to let her die here?” he cried. “Move, Cristiane; let
me carry her to her bed. You are her mother”--turning fiercely on Mrs.
Trelane--“send some one for a doctor!”
Tenderly, jealously, he lifted her, whom no other hands should touch.
And as he carried her her lovely head fell backward on his arm, her
hands hung at his side, swaying like a dead woman’s.
Masterfully, as one who has a right, he sponged the blood from her
face, when she lay on her bed in her fantastic dress. There was but a
simple cut on her forehead--not enough to make her unconscious.
“Why is she dressed like this?” he said sternly to Mrs. Trelane, who
stood, dazed and helpless, not even wondering why he was there.
“The house was said to be haunted. She played the ghost to overhear
Marcus at night talking to me. She played it to-night to save
Cristiane, and to get Marcus up to the room where the police waited for
him,” for the inspector had spoken brutal truths to her, and at last
she knew what the girl had done for her sake.
She drew the bloody scarf from Ismay’s head, and Cylmer could see.
Under her left ear was a bruise--only a little bruise; yet he groaned
as he saw it. Wray, as she tripped, had struck her there, as a
prize-fighter strikes, with the deadly accuracy of knowledge. No one
should have her if he could not.
It was a man hopeless and helpless whom the doctor sent from the room,
for it was he who had done it. If he had heard her out that day she
would even now be warm with life.
Mechanically, he found his way to the empty drawing-room, where one
lamp burned, forgotten.
In the house were noises of many feet, as Davids and his men took
away Marcus Wray with handcuffs on his wrists; a going to and fro of
frightened servants on the staircases; then the hush of a house where a
soul is passing. But Miles Cylmer knew none of these things.
He was down upon his face in very hell.
If it were he, not she, who must die! How should he rise and look upon
the day when they came to tell him his love was dead?
How should he live, when in a few days they would commit her sweet body
to the dust?
As though tears of blood were rising from his heart to his eyes the
man looked into a red mist as some one came into the room, and he sat
up.
It was the doctor.
“Well?” It was all Cylmer could say.
“I don’t know.” His voice changed suddenly to deepest pity at the
haggard face before him, livid as if with years. “My dear Cylmer, I
don’t know. She is alive; but the blow must have been a cruel one. She
may live for days in a stupor, as she lies now.”
“And then?”
“She is young and strong. She may have vitality enough----” But he
could not finish. He knew that in all human probability the candle of
her life would burn lower and lower, till scarcely even he would know
when it was burned away.
“Can I go to her? I was going to marry her.”
Cylmer’s voice was perfectly steady as he rose, a strange figure in
his overcoat, that he had never taken off, a scarlet stain on its
fawn-colored sleeve.
The doctor nodded.
“She won’t know you, Cylmer--she has never opened her eyes; but she
breathes still. I’ll be here till morning.”
“Breathes still.” The gentle words rang in Cylmer’s ears as he went
up-stairs. But yesterday she had been all his own; to-day all that pity
could find to say was that.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
“AND WHO IS THIS?”
For a day and a night he watched her as she lay. Sometimes he leaned
over her in sudden fright that she had ceased to breathe; sometimes he
fancied she stirred, that her eyelids quivered. But neither the good
nor the bad was true. The slow hours came and passed and died, and
there was no change on that quiet face.
Cylmer turned away as the nurse approached the bed, bearing wine and
a spoon. He hated that useless cruelty of trying to feed her. It
sickened him to see the things they gave her ooze from the corners of
her lips.
He stood leaning by the window and watched with listless inattention a
carriage driving to the door. Curious visitors came by the score, to
be turned away. Cristiane had no heart to see them; Mrs. Trelane, with
the prospect of going into court to account for those stolen diamonds
before her, would face no one.
A quick, cautious cry from the nurse made Cylmer turn. With two strides
he was at the bedside. Had Ismay gone--passed from him without a word,
while he looked out on the sky whose glory was gone forever?
“She’s not----”
“Quick! Go tell the doctor to come here! He’s down-stairs with the
specialist from London. She swallowed that champagne.”
Before the woman could lay down the spoon Cylmer was back, with the two
men at his heels.
Ismay turned on her side, moaned. Slowly, very slowly, her eyes opened,
then shut again, seeing nothing.
“Ismay! Is she--dying?” his tongue cleaving to his mouth.
The little doctor laid a hand on Cylmer’s shoulder.
“Dying! No; she’s saved.” For with a steady hand the nurse was putting
more wine to the lips that closed now on the spoon.
With a little sigh Ismay Trelane opened her eyes.
The shock in her brain had made her forget all recent things--Marcus
Wray, Davids, her quarrel with Cylmer, were all gone from her mind, as
a slate is sponged off. All she saw was the man she loved bending over
her, holding her hands.
With a heavenly smile of rest and peace she smiled at him.
“Miles,” she whispered. “My Miles!”
“Lie still, my heart! I’m here,” he answered simply.
“Hold my hand,” she sighed, and closed her eyes happily, in a sleep
that was sweet and natural.
And, kneeling by her bed, he held that hand he loved, till with the
hours he, too, slept.
When she woke again it was he who fed her, and then, and not till
then, he went away, cramped and stiff, but happy as he had not been in
his life.
As he washed and dressed himself in the clothes that had come for him
from Cylmer’s Ferry, he heard a whispered conversation at his door,
then a knock that made him leap to open it. Was Ismay worse?
But it was not Ismay.
A man stood on the threshold--two men.
Mr. Bolton, the lawyer, and another--bearded, thin, but hale and
strong. And yet Cylmer could not believe his senses. Had his long
watching made him see visions?
“Gaspard!” he cried, wondering who this man could be that was so like
the man that was in his grave. “Not Gaspard--but who?”
“It’s I, fast enough,” the man answered simply. “Let us in. I only got
to England to-day.”
“To England?” Cylmer started foolishly. “But----”
“But I was never killed, and never buried. I had lent my coat to a
Frenchman, and they buried what was left of him for me. I came to
myself and wandered away, quite cracked. When I woke up I was in bed in
a cottage, and a woman was looking after me. I didn’t know my own name,
even, and I was in hideous pain.
“I lay like that for I don’t know how long. When I came to myself they
told me I was in the lodge of the country-house of the Duke of Tours,
and that he, on hearing a man was ill there, had sent his doctor from
Paris. He had done an operation that meant kill or cure, and it was
cure.”
“But Bolton told me you were dying of heart-disease?”
“So my doctors thought, but this one was young and very clever. He
thought it was something else, and it was. He cut it away. That’s all.”
He smiled in Cylmer’s puzzled face.
“But the railway people. How was it they didn’t know?”
Sir Gaspard laughed out.
“You’re very anxious I should be an impostor. Did you wish to marry my
heiress?” he cried cheerfully. “There was no mark or wound on me; the
woman never connected me with the accident to the train, nor did any
one, till I was recovered and able to tell them. It was all so simple
that no one ever thought of it.”
“You never wrote,” wonderingly.
“No! I couldn’t have waited for the answer. When I was fit to write I
was fit to travel, so I came straight to Bolton, here, and he told me
things that brought me home on the double-quick. It’s all too awful.
And to think it was that will I made that was such a pitfall! Will that
poor child die?”
“No.” Cylmer put down the hair-brush he had all the time been holding.
“Thank God, no!” he said slowly. “For I am going to marry her.”
“Marry her.” It took all Sir Gaspard could do not to exclaim in
amazement. “Marry the daughter of a woman not yet out of suspicion of
murder, with the theft of the diamonds on her to a certainty!”
Cylmer nodded.
“Wait. I’ll tell you all,” he said, and Sir Gaspard listened in wonder.
“Marry her,” he had said, as though she were a leper, and but for her
Cristiane would be cold in her grave. He stretched out his hand and
took Cylmer’s in a clasp of gratitude, without a spoken word.
“Have you seen Cristiane?” For the first time Cylmer thought of her.
Sir Gaspard smiled.
“Didn’t you hear us in the passage?” he asked. “I only persuaded her to
leave me for ten minutes by saying that you were certain to come to the
door half-dressed. She’s wild with joy; she can hardly believe in me
yet.”
“She missed you.” And if the tone was dry Sir Gaspard did not notice
it. Not yet could Mr. Cylmer bear any good-will to Cristiane.
Only one thing troubled Cylmer now. With Sir Gaspard’s return things
were smoothed out, indeed, all but this. It hung over him more and more
heavily as Ismay grew better, and at last could talk to him.
Those stolen diamonds that could not be explained away! His mind was
full of them as he sat with Ismay alone in her sitting-room. But he
kept his trouble off his lips, and talked of other things that he might
not see it reflected in her eyes.
“You never asked me how I managed the ghost-music,” she said suddenly,
with her old, lovely smile, that was so much more wistful than of old.
“No. How did you? For it played of itself before you meddled with it,
Thomas says.”
“I went up one night to see, and I was frightened out of my life, at
first. And then I found out. There was a spring--just a simple little
spring--so light that the weight of a rat on it could set the thing
going. And there were plenty of rats there. It was just an ordinary
old-fashioned spinet till the spring touched the mechanism, then it
played of itself. While it was playing like that you could not sound a
note on it. Afterward, when the tune was done, you could play. I made
a dress like the ghost’s, or the picture that was supposed to be the
ghost’s, so that if any one met me in the passages they would scream
and run. And I found out he meant to murder Cristiane while I was
behind the library door.”
“Did you know Wray made Sir Gaspard’s will?”
She nodded.
“I heard him say so.”
“And for fear it should go wrong he forged another,” Cylmer went on.
“Don’t look sad, darling. He deserves everything.”
But she shivered.
“It has all been such a nightmare. I wish I had had no hand in it.
Miles, can you truly love a girl like me?” She was earnest, pale, as
she looked at him.
He kissed the hand that was in his, where a new ring shone.
“Who nearly gave her life twice for another’s,” he said, with adoration.
“I liked her, in a way. Till she told you things.”
She hid her face on his arm. “Miles, do you know I meant to let her
die the last time? You were my world--she had taken you from me.”
“You never meant it, my heart,” he whispered. “You only thought so.”
“And I stole that card of yours, so that you might come to me.”
Cylmer lifted the head that lay so low, and looked straight into her
shamed eyes.
“Do you think a hundred cards would have mattered, if I had loved her?”
he demanded. “You were mine, and I was yours, from the first hour,
though I was too blind to know.”
“But I meant when I left you to live----” He stopped her words on her
lips.
“Let me forget--that day!” he begged, “for it was I who was to blame.
If you had slipped from me your life would have been on my head.”
She looked at him with a curious pride.
“Miles,” she said slowly, “I am my mother’s daughter still, and there
are the diamonds!”
The man caught her close and hard.
“If they were all the world it would not matter,” he said stoutly.
“If I had only seen you and passed by,” his voice full of love, of
reverence, “I should be proud of having once seen you, my witch that
was so true.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DIAMONDS.
“If you owed him no ill-will, why did you steal those diamonds?”
The court-room was crowded, packed with idle people come to see a man
tried for his life.
It was more exciting than a theater, for the drama was real.
Among them were perhaps a dozen people who sickened at the hideous
scene. Sir Gaspard, Mr. Bolton, Cylmer--turned away from the man in
the dock as his crimes were brought before him. Utterly hopeless, he
was venomous still. Not a question that could humiliate Helen Trelane
had his counsel spared her. Cylmer wondered at her courage as she stood
in the witness-stand. Pale, perfectly dressed, she stood unmoved, as
the question of the diamonds was asked.
Neither Ismay nor Cristiane were there, and Cylmer was thankful. At
least they would not see the spectacle of a woman shamed before the
world.
He started at the sound of Mrs. Trelane’s voice, as she answered the
question, her words distinct in the close hush.
“I took them,” she said softly, “because they were mine! He sent for me
to give them to me. This note”--taking it from her pocket--“was on the
table.”
There was absolute silence in court while the few lines were read aloud:
“DEAR HELEN: I can’t forget last night. Will you take these and wear
them or sell them, as you like, in memory of our friendship. Yours
faithfully,
“ABBOTSFORD.
“P. S.--I wrote this, meaning to send the diamonds, but I have let it
stand, even now that you are coming to see me. You know I never was
much good at talking, and I might not get it said.”
“Why did you not produce this at the time?” Wray’s counsel asked
sharply.
“Because I was afraid! I thought I could not clear myself of the
murder,” she answered simply.
Turning, she met the eyes of the prisoner at the bar, and for all his
desperate straits he smiled with understanding. She was Helen Trelane
still, adventuress to the bone. He knew quite well that she had stolen
that note.
He had stuffed it into his pocket that day at Abbotsford’s, and had
not burned it for the pure pleasure of having in his hands the proof
that she was really not guilty; afterward, when Sir Gaspard’s will had
delivered her into his hands, he had kept it still, so that when all
was done and Ismay was his he could bring it out and laugh in their
faces. But he dared not say so now. It would only make his case more
black, his conduct more cold-blooded. And he could not see how she
had obtained it; so that his bare word would go for nothing. She had
outwitted him, and he made her a slight ironical sign of admiration
with his eyes.
And yet it was simple enough.
When Davids and his men searched Wray’s room at Marchant’s Hold, they
had never thought of a black frock coat that the housemaid had taken
to replace a button. When he was gone the girl had taken it to Mrs.
Trelane, and she had flung it on her bed with loathing, since it
was his. When the girl was gone she picked it up gingerly, to feel
something in the pocket, and so she found her salvation. She had
avoided people after that, not from terror, but to laugh at them in her
sleeve.
And in the very face of the man who knew the note was stolen, she
left the witness-stand without a stain. He cared but little. He was
defeated, his case hopeless, and he was weary of the court, the curious
faces. Since it must all come out, it should come of his own free will.
His counsel gasped as the prisoner leaned forward and asked leave of
the judge to make a statement.
“My lord,” he began; he looked about him listlessly, as if he had very
little interest in his own words, “we have been here a long time, and
I for one am weary. The facts are these: I had lived on Abbotsford for
years, call it chantage, if you like. I lived on him. It was said he
hated women; he had reason. He had been trapped into a marriage with
a woman who was the worst of her sex. She was married already, but no
one knew that but I, for she was my wife.” His insolent, deliberate
voice paused an instant. “I was his best man, and the only witness of
his marriage with a woman whose very existence disgraced him. He paid
me to hold my tongue. But I drove him too far. He found the whole thing
out. He had supported my wife for years, since he was a mere boy, and
he had paid me to keep the marriage that was no marriage a secret, and
he threatened to expose me. I should have been ruined at the bar and
elsewhere.
“I went to see him on the day his engagement was announced. On the way
I bought a bottle of prussic acid. If he gave me his word not to expose
me, well and good! If not”--he shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I was
stronger than he. To knock him down and pour the prussic acid in his
mouth would not be hard. But I had no need.
“I found him lying on his sofa, ill, but quite obstinate. That very
night should see me a marked and disgraced man; his letters were
written. And then he asked me--me to hand him something that was poured
out ready in a glass, because his throat was sore! I did, but first
I poured in what was in my bottle. He drank a mere mouthful. Then he
threw down the glass and tried to call. But that time was over.
“I laid him back on the sofa, as if he slept, and I had barely
time to hide in the bedroom when that lady there”--looking at Mrs.
Trelane--“came in and found Lord Abbotsford dead. The rest you know,
even to the jewels that were her own! I trust, my lord, that the
case is done, and that the ladies and gentlemen who have honored the
court”--with an ironical bow--“have not found the entertainment more
dull than they expected.”
A little rustle ran through the court. Never had there been so
extraordinary an ending to a trial for murder. A man who let his life
go because he was weary of the tedious defense of it! Not even the
judge could find voice for an instant. And then some one screamed.
Marcus Wray had fallen in the dock like a slaughtered ox.
“A fit! Poison!” Every soul there gasped out one word or the other.
But it was neither. The long strain, the sudden effort of cool courage
had ruptured a blood-vessel in his brain. As he fell, so he lay; as
he lay, so he died; never speaking or moving again. The case for the
defense was closed. The luck of Marcus Wray had stuck by him to the
end.
Ismay clung in silence to Cylmer when he told her. When she lifted her
face it was wet.
“I’m glad, oh, glad!” she sobbed. “When I thought I had brought him to
it, that it was through me he must be hanged, I didn’t tell you, but I
thought it would drive me mad.”
“Forget it, sweet. Blot it out from your mind,” was all he could find
to say. “We will never speak of it again.”
“There’s one thing first. The boy! I promised him money, and I have
none.”
“You!” he laughed. “You have fifteen thousand pounds a year, all I own.
You shall have the boy taught a trade, and set him up in it. I have
seen about it already!” He looked keenly at her face, that was too
pale, too weary.
“Ismay,” he said quietly, “I am going to marry you in three weeks,
as soon as things can be arranged, and take you away to travel. Can
you bear that prospect? I’ve never known you go to church. Will you
come--once--with me?”
The color flooded her face.
“To marry you, do you mean?” She clung to him. Ismay, who had relied
on herself alone. “Yes; but, Miles, listen. I don’t want any wedding,
and I won’t wear a white gown. The only white gown I ever owned had a
blood-stain on it, and I can’t forget it--yet.”
“As you like, my sweet.” And the touch of his lips on her forehead was
full of understanding.
They were married as she wished, quietly, Sir Gaspard giving away the
bride, and portioning her with generosity born of his great gratitude.
It was two years before Miles Cylmer and Ismay came home to Cylmer’s
Ferry, two years that Mrs. Trelane spent gaily, having five hundred a
year allowed her by the baronet, and living where she liked.
Cristiane, sobered and steadied, lived with her father, and he had his
wish of taking her to London, and seeing her marry a man who preferred
her before any green-eyed Circe in the world.
To do her justice, Sir Gaspard never heard of that stolen card, only of
Ismay’s protection and bravery in the tragic chapters of her life. And
there is no cynicism now in the lines of Ismay Cylmer’s beautiful face.
The love that nearly was her doom has been her saving grace.
THE END.
EAGLE SERIES
A weekly publication devoted to good literature.
December 10, 1907.
No. 550
STREET & SMITH are now the
Owners of all
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COPYRIGHTED NOVELS
We do not need to tell any of our patrons how popular the works of
Charles Garvice are because his name is a byword wherever first-class
novels are read and appreciated. We are pleased, therefore, to announce
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This purchase makes Street & Smith the sole owners and publishers
of all of this celebrated author’s copyrighted stories. This only
emphasizes what has always been a patent fact--that Street & Smith
are the most progressive paper-book publishers in the world, and that
nowhere can the novel reader get so much for his or her money as in the
S. & S. lines.
STREET & SMITH, Publishers
New York
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected (sometimes in
consultation with the original 1898-1899 serial appearance in _Street &
Smith’ New York Weekly_ to ensure accuracy to the author's intent).
Table of contents has been added and placed into the public domain by
the transcriber.
Inconsistent hyphenation of upstairs vs. up-stairs is preserved from
the original text.
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