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Title: Nina's peril
a novel
Author: Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
Release date: April 22, 2026 [eBook #78525]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1887
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78525
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 NINA'S PERIL ***
NINA’S PERIL.
A Novel.
BY
MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
Copyright, 1886.
_G. W. Dillingham, Publisher_,
SUCCESSOR TO G. W. CARLETON & CO.
LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.
MDCCCLXXXVII
Stereotyped by
SAMUEL STODDER,
42 DEY STREET, N. Y.
DEDICATION.
TO
ALEXANDER McVEIGH MILLER,
AS A
SOUVENIR OF REGARD,
AND
IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE WARM SYMPATHY AND
WISE COUNSELS THAT HAVE AIDED AND ENCOURAGED
ME IN MY LITERARY EFFORTS.
YOUR WIFE.
_October, 1886._
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. A beautiful face 7
II. Waiting and Hoping 12
III. Sketching the Past 16
IV. Coming Home 22
V. “Nothing can undo the Folly of Five years Ago.” 28
VI. “Can this really be Nina?” 39
VII. Pride 49
VIII. “I have Sworn an Oath and I shall have to keep it.” 53
IX. Jealousy 59
X. “I will never forgive her.” 66
XI. The Shadows Fall 70
XII. An Interview Declined 76
XIII. Nina’s Sacrifice 80
XIV. A Maddened Lover 89
XV. The Tragedy 95
XVI. The Flight of Nina 101
XVII. Sibyl’s Accusation 108
XVIII. Rescued 114
XIX. With Friends 118
XX. The Fieldings 122
XXI. “Mad from Life’s History.” 128
XXII. Remorse 132
XXIII. Compagnons du Voyage 138
XXIV. “She is Dead to All.” 142
XXV. Poverty 148
XXVI. I must have Money 152
XXVII. Back to Selwyn Heights 158
XXVIII. Entrapped 162
XXIX. Nina learns the truth 166
XXX. A Ghostly Laugh 174
XXXI. The Arrest of Nina 185
XXXII. Talbot’s Suspicions 193
XXXIII. Talbot’s Dreams 201
XXXIV. The Prison 205
XXXV. Nina’s Despair 214
XXXVI. The Trial 220
XXXVII. The Letter 224
XXXVIII. The Ghost again 234
XXXIX. Nina forgives Talbot 245
XL. In Egypt 253
XLI. Ferris grows desperate 259
XLII. The Naya Haye 263
XLIII. Judge Lynch 274
XLIV. Armstrong’s News 278
XLV. Talbot learns all 282
XLVI. Talbot accuses Ferris 286
XLVII. Ralph St. Alban 294
XLVIII. Flight into the desert 305
XLIX. Torn by Wolves 311
L. Journeying Homeward 320
LI. On the Scaffold 330
LII. Sibyl’s Punishment 340
LIII. Nina’s Happiness 349
LIV. The Invitation 356
LV. “It’s we two for aye.” 360
NINA’S PERIL.
CHAPTER I.
A BEAUTIFUL FACE.
“A phial of laudanum, please!”
The sleepy clerk on night duty at the drug store looked up with a
start. He had not heard any one enter, but here stood a young girl by
the counter, looking at him with large, sombre dark eyes, that shone
wierdly out of a white, white face, framed in tresses of disordered
golden hair--a face beautiful beyond all dreams of fancy but for its
strange, marble pallor, and the anguished eyes out of which gleamed a
desperate purpose, as she extended a snowy ungloved hand with a silver
coin shining in the rosy palm, and repeated in a low, eager voice:
“A phial of laudanum, please.”
It was a wild wintry night in the great city, and there were none
abroad except those whom necessity forced to be out. The air was full
of keen, fine flakes of snow, that was frozen by the piercing wind even
before it fell to the earth. The cold was intense.
“The wrathful winter hastening on apace,
With blustering blasts had all ybared the treen;
And old Saturnus with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierced the tender green.”
The hour was late, and all the shops were closed except the drug stores
that stood open by night as well as by day, always at the service of
the sick and suffering. Even these, with their great red and green
lights glowing abroad like friendly beacons to those who were drifting
on the perilous seas of sickness and disease, were mostly deserted
to-night, and in this one, where that unlooked-for customer entered,
the weary clerk dozed at his post, and her sharp, eager young voice
roused him from a disconnected dream.
He sprang to his feet and looked at her, but his sleepy eyes did not
take in at first all the misery of that beautiful young face.
“What can I do for you, miss?” he inquired, with a tone of
irrepressible admiration in his voice; and the girl reiterated her
formula impatiently:
“A phial of laudanum, please.”
Then he looked at her more closely. He saw the misery in the great,
heavy black eyes, with the purple shadows lying darkly beneath them,
saw how awfully white and anguished was the lovely face with its
perfect features, sharpened and refined by keen suffering. He hesitated
before he complied with her request.
“We do not usually sell poisons without a doctor’s prescription. Have
you one?” he inquired.
She looked at him imploringly, and clasped her delicate hands together.
“No, I have not, but for God’s sake do not refuse me,” she cried,
almost wildly. “I _must_ have the laudanum! I am suffering so much,
and it will still this terrible pain.” She pressed her clenched hands
against her pale cheek with a suppressed groan.
The dawning suspicions of the drug clerk were instantly diverted by her
expressive movement.
“Oh, if it is the toothache, all right,” he said. “Here it is, miss. A
few drops on a bit of cotton will soon relieve you; be careful not to
use too much.”
She caught it quickly from his hand with a sudden low, hysterical laugh.
“Thank you a thousand times,” she said. “Oh, yes, I will be very
careful; but it is not the toothache, it is the heartache I am going to
cure.”
She murmured the last words in an undertone and hurried toward the
door before she had done speaking. He saw her pause in the doorway an
instant, saw her pull the stopple quickly from the little phial, then
she put the deadly drug to her lips, drained the last drop, and threw
the empty vessel far from her upon the pavement. All seemed to pass in
an instant of time, and before the horrified clerk recovered from the
trance of horror with which he beheld her terrible deed, she stepped
quickly out into the street, and disappeared in the gloom and darkness
of the inclement night.
“Great heaven!” gasped the clerk, springing forward in hot pursuit.
He gained the door, sprang into the street at one bound, and looked
about him with straining eyes. The drug store stood on the corner of
two streets that intersected each other; he looked hastily up one
street and then the other, but vainly. Even in that moment of time the
girl had disappeared from his sight like a spirit. Not a person was to
be seen, and the hard, white snow freezing sleetily upon the pavements,
and shining like diamonds under the light of the flaring gaslamps, held
no impression of the light feet that had sped over them so swiftly, and
borne her beyond his ken.
My readers, let us turn back a few pages in the tragic life-history of
that unhappy creature, and read the story of those heavy sorrows that
had driven the young and beautiful girl recklessly and wickedly forward
upon the terrible shoals of self-destruction.
CHAPTER II.
WAITING AND HOPING.
“‘If he would come to-day, to-day, to-day,
O what a day to-day would be!
But now he’s away, miles and miles away
From me across the sea.
“‘O little bird, flying, flying, flying,
To your nest in the warm west,
Tell him as you pass that I am dying,
As you pass home to your nest.’”
A cloudy gray sky, a chill gray sea, a stretch of sandy beach against a
back-ground of rugged hills covered with trees, through whose leafless
branches the March wind was eerily moaning. In all the grey monotony
there was no touch of color or brightness, save the figure of a girl in
a scarlet merino dress and turban, standing on the shell-strewn shore
gazing seaward at a noble steamer bounding over the waves toward the
landing that was hidden from sight by a turn in the shore, perhaps a
quarter of a mile distant.
The girl had come down from the great red brick mansion that crowned
a tall bluff, perhaps half a mile away, and she had no companion save
the great shaggy, black Newfoundland that crouched at her feet, gazing
up at her with mute, adoring eyes of almost human intelligence, as she
chanted low and softly to herself:
“‘If he would come to-day, to-day, to-day,
O what a day to-day would be!
But now he’s away, miles and miles away
From me across the sea.’”
Then she looked down with a laugh that was half sad, into the big brown
eyes of her canine friend.
“Ah, Lion, old fellow, what a silly pair we are, coming out in this
wild weather watching for a ship that never comes in,” she said. “Every
day for years we have come down to the wharf to wait for one who never
comes. Will it always be thus, I wonder? Shall I go on waiting and
hoping and loving till my hair turns gray, and will he never come?
Half unconsciously she hummed over another verse of her song:
“‘In this weary world it is so cold, so cold,
While I sit here all alone;
I would not like to wait and to grow old,
But just to be dead and gone.’”
Lion leaned his shaggy mane caressingly against her, and while she
patted his black head with her white, jeweled hand, the steamer touched
the wharf, landed a solitary passenger, and moved on majestically upon
its way.
Nina Strangemore looked up after a minute, gave a smothered sigh, and
turned back to her dog.
“Ah, Lion, my good dog, it is the same old story, ‘He cometh not,’”
she said; and the magnificent animal gave a piteous whine, as if he
comprehended the full measure of her wistful disappointment. He fell to
licking her hands and gazing up at her with his dumb, affectionate eyes
full of a mute sympathy that was almost painful to its recipient. She
pushed him almost pettishly from her, and looked out again at the wide
sea and the fast receding ship.
“How they come and go over the water like white-winged birds,” she
sighed, with a patient sorrow in her voice. “Ah, me, will they never
bring Talbot home?”
A sound, a step! She turned with a start.
A gentleman was coming along the level sands toward her--a tall,
bronzed, handsome man, whose eyes lingered upon her with startled,
irrepressible admiration. She met his gaze, and the rich color flew
into her cheeks, and the light of a sudden, supreme happiness flashed
into her great dark eyes. She made a few steps toward him, then quickly
checked herself, and stood waiting with a bounding pulse and wildly
beating heart.
The stranger came nearer, lifted his hat with courteous grace to the
solitary girl, and passed on, followed by a low, inquiring growl from
Lion, who did not quite know whether to regard him as friend or enemy.
But Nina Strangemore gazed like one petrified after the retreating
form, and when it had passed from her sight, she knelt down upon the
wet sands, put her arms around Lion’s black mane, and hid her white
face there.
“Oh, Lion, Lion,” she sobbed, in an abandon of girlish sorrow. “He is
home at last! Talbot, my husband, and he did not speak to me; he did
not even remember me, his little Nina, his loving girl-wife! Oh, what
shall we do, Lion, old fellow?”
CHAPTER III.
SKETCHING THE PAST.
While she kneels there desolately on the cold wet sands, we will
briefly sketch her past for you, reader.
She was an heiress, this dark-eyed girl sobbing there as forlornly as
if she had not a friend on earth. She had houses and land and gold,
but all her vast possessions had not kept her life from being sad and
lonely, for she was an orphan, and she had neither kith nor kin save a
sour maiden aunt who lived with her in lonely state at the great house
up yonder on the high bluff.
Five years ago she had been Nina Selwyn, a spoiled little girl of
thirteen years, the idol of her father and her gentle step-mother, for
Nina’s own mamma had died when her first-born was a toddling baby. Mr.
Selwyn had mourned her devoutly for five years, and then he married a
beautiful young widow with one son, Talbot Strangemore.
The second marriage resulted happily, perhaps the more happily because
no children came to usurp the place of the loving, petted, and yet
willful little Nina. Mrs. Selwyn was a good woman, and having no
daughter of her own lavished all the love she could spare from her son
upon her second husband’s only child. She was neither calculating nor
mercenary yet as the years rolled on, vague, pleasant dreams came to
her of a future in which the lives of Talbot Strangemore, her son, and
of Nina Selwyn, her little step-daughter, were bound together with a
flowery chain.
Mr. Selwyn shared these pleasant dreams. He had a profound admiration
for his step-son, then a youth ten years the senior of little Nina.
Talbot Strangemore merited all the loving admiration and pride that
was bestowed upon him. He was noble, gifted, and remarkably handsome
in a bold, manly style. He was in college, but all his vacations were
spent at Selwyn Heights, his step-father’s stately residence, where he
enjoyed himself intensely in the manly sports of hunting, fishing and
rowing, delighting in such recreations after the confinement of his
Alma Mater.
Little Nina, whose spirits were as gay and light as a wild bird’s, was
his frequent companion at these times, and the young heiress regarded
her step brother with a species of hero-worship that was carefully
fostered by her parents, who, while they encouraged the affection of
the pair, tried to preserve it from a fraternal cast. Nina was never
permitted to call Talbot her big brother any more than he was allowed
to term her his little sister. They were never suffered to forget that
there was no tie of real kinship between them.
“For if they grow up loving each other as brother and sister they will
never think of each other in any nearer, dearer light,” argued Mrs.
Selwyn, and she took the greatest pains to manage affairs agreeably to
the aim she had in view, although she gave no inkling of her designs
to the boy and girl for whom in innocent unconsciousness she was laying
up a heritage of woe.
Both she and Mr. Selwyn thought it would be for the happiness of both,
if they could one day be united in marriage. Talbot was so manly and
gifted, but had very little money, while Nina had so much, and although
she was a delicate, thin little creature now, she gave promise of
future beauty of a rare and unusual type, for she had hair of the real
golden shade and eyes as dark as pansies. She was thin and sunburned
now, for they could never keep her in the house, but the tan would wear
off when she was a young lady and she would be a real beauty, Mrs.
Selwyn averred knowingly, and, managed rightly, Talbot could not help
falling in love with the young heiress.
But when Talbot graduated at twenty-three with all the honors of his
Alma Mater, Nina at thirteen was not making any very rapid strides
toward being a charming young lady. She was such a willful, capricious,
yet withal loving little thing, and her wishes were so absolute that
her education had been dreadfully neglected. Mr. Selwyn loved her
too well to send her away from him to school, so he had employed
governesses at home, who one after another resigned their situations in
despair, declaring that Miss Selwyn would not attend to her books, and
that she was a wretched little romp, who cared for nothing but boats,
and dogs, and horses, and rough out-door sports.
Unfortunately, these charges were all quite true. Nina _did_ hate
books, and she _did_ love to be out of doors all the time, gathering
flowers in the splendid gardens and conservatories of Selwyn Heights,
or boating fearlessly on the billowy sea, or riding at break-neck pace
on her spirited white pony, with a grumbling groom galloping behind
her. Thus life went on, until she was thirteen, and from time to time
her doting parents would say, excusingly:
“The child is so thin and delicate that it is best to let her gain
health and strength in her outdoor pursuits, that she first learned to
love when she was Talbot’s little companion. There is time enough yet
to restrain her and educate her before she is a young lady.”
Poor little Nina Selwyn, those were her happiest days--those free,
untroubled days that were soon to be only a memory--the sweetest memory
in a life that in the coming time was to have many a thorn among its
roses. For suddenly, from a sky that had hitherto been cloudless and
serene, fell a swift, terrible bolt of fate.
Just before Talbot came home to prepare for the European tour that was
to follow his college course, Mr. Selwyn died suddenly one evening
while sitting peacefully in his chair watching a beautiful sunset
scene. All his affairs were found in perfect order at the reading of
the will. His large fortune was divided equally between his idolized
daughter and his beloved wife, the latter being appointed Nina’s
guardian.
But the loving wife did not live to discharge the sacred trust
bequeathed her. She was a nervous, delicately-organized woman, and she
never recovered the shock of her husband’s sudden death. In two weeks
she followed him to the grave, leaving behind her the two whom she
loved so well, and for whose future she had so hopefully plotted and
planned--a future which she influenced as much as her limited time on
earth would permit her, for before she died, she had joined the hands
of the beloved son and the simple, unformed girl of thirteen--had seen
consummated the marriage that is the subject of our story.
CHAPTER IV.
COMING HOME.
That was all five years ago now, but as Talbot Strangemore walked
slowly over the sand toward Selwyn Heights, memory recalled the past
time freshly to his thoughts--memory mixed with pain and mad regret. He
recalled his mother’s dying prayer that he would marry Nina Selwyn now
in her innocent childhood, that she, his mother, might die in peace,
knowing that her dearest wish was fulfilled, and that the happiness of
the two she loved was secured.
“She is only a child,” he had said, in horror and amazement.
“Yes, I know,” his mother answered, “and that is why I cannot bear to
leave her alone in the world to be the future prey of designing people.
It was her father’s wish and mine that she should be yours some day,
but how can I tell what may happen if I die and leave her unprotected
and uncared for, save by careless hirelings? Oh, Talbot, you have been
a good son to me always. Do not fail me now!”
And so, because the young fellow was momentarily reckless and
desperate, and because he was half distracted with grief over his dying
mother, and could not say no to her earnest prayer, he yielded to her
will.
“But Nina--what will she say?” he asked, thinking of the pale,
large-eyed child who was so changed and subdued by her father’s death
that she crept about the house a pallid, wistful little ghost, “Will
she be willing?”
“Nina will do any thing I ask,” she replied, and the event proved that
she was right, for after the child had been summoned to a private
interview with her step-mother she came out with wet eyes and grieving
red lips and sought Talbot Strangemore in the library.
“Mamma has been telling me that you want to marry me,” she said, laying
her small brown hand upon his arm, and looking at him with those sad,
wet eyes like dusky pansies drowned in dew.
He laid his strong white hand softly over the little fingers that
trembled on his arm.
“Yes,” he answered, “but are you willing, little girl?”
“Oh, yes, for when mamma dies I shall have no one left to love me but
you, and she says that if I do not marry you I may lose you too some
day, so I will be your wife, and then you can take care of me always,”
Nina replied, with childish directness, going over the specious
arguments that Mrs. Selwyn had used to gain her compliance with her
wish.
And so in this straightforward manner their strange troth was plighted
and a few hours later they stood hand in hand by Mrs. Selwyn’s
death-bed, and a wondering half disapproving man of God made the
innocent child a bride. In another day she was motherless. Heiress of
all the Selwyn wealth, and with all her life before her, she was yet
one to be pitied, for she had no one on earth but her husband, and
he did not love her, and believed that he had made a great sacrifice
when he had bound himself with all his future ambitions to that wan,
uninteresting child.
“And what about my tour abroad, mother?” he said, when they were alone
after the ceremony. “I do not believe I could bear to stay here when
you--are gone away from me! But what shall I do with Nina? She is too
young to be really my wife yet, shall I send her to school?”
“No,” she answered, “I will tell you what to do, Talbot, send for your
maiden aunt in Baltimore to come and live with Nina, secure governesses
for her and let her be educated thoroughly. By the time she is sixteen
she will be old enough and cultivated enough for you to come home and
claim your bride.”
He drew a sigh of relief at the respite her plans afforded him.
“I will do exactly as you advise,” he said, and he did.
The next day he and his child-bride stood to watch the last breath
flutter over her gasping lips.
She drew Nina close to her side. “Talbot is your husband now, my
darling,” she said, anxiously, “you will belong to him always, and he
to you. Promise me now that you will give him all your love and all
your life, that you will always try to secure his happiness.”
“I promise, mamma,” answered the weeping child, and the vow was
registered in heaven.
She did not ask Talbot for the same promise she had exacted from the
simple child, so innocent and ignorant of the world. She did not think
it was necessary; she believed implicitly in her son’s faith and honor.
And so having ordered their futures so far as lay in her finite power,
she passed “to where beyond these voices there is rest.”
Talbot carried out her wishes and advice to the letter. He installed
his maiden aunt and an accomplished teacher at Selwyn Heights, and when
he had done that he went abroad, although Nina clung to him weeping,
and besought him not to go.
“It is only for a little while,” he said, evasively, “And I shall write
to you often, dear. You must be a good girl, Nina, and as soon as I get
to New York I will send you back a nice present to remember me by.
Will you tell me what you would like to have, dear?”
He felt momentarily tender and sorry for the little girl who was
grieving so much over his going, but in the next moment he was
chagrined and half disgusted for she lifted her wet eyes from his
breast and said, with transient brightness:
“Oh, if you please, I would like a great big, black Newfoundland puppy,
Talbot.”
He promised and kept his word, but after that he forgot all about
it, almost forgot his child-bride, too, or remembered her only as an
incumbrance, for he stayed away five years instead of the three he had
at first arranged for, and when at last he came back it was with bitter
regret and reluctance.
“I have flung my life away, for what is life without happiness?” he was
saying to himself, with impatient wrath when he passed Nina upon the
sands that gray March afternoon, and he started with sudden admiration
and delight at sight of her and forgot his bitter thoughts for a
moment, for the girl was wonderfully lovely in her scarlet dress and
cap with the loose gold curls of her hair falling around her like a
veil of sunshine. He thought too, that the magnificent Newfoundland
added a picturesque touch to the lovely picture, but he had forgotten
the episode of the “great big black Newfoundland puppy” that had so
disgusted him at the time. In his thoughts he had forgotten to make
allowance for the lapse of time too, just as Nina had forgotten that
five years had improved her so much that it was a compliment to her
beauty when her husband failed to know her.
“What a charming girl! A new edition of Una and the Lion,” he thought
as he bowed and passed on his way.
CHAPTER V.
“NOTHING CAN UNDO THE FOLLY OF FIVE YEARS AGO.”
Miss Drusilla Strangemore, Talbot’s aunt, was a tall angular lady
in the fifties--a lady who detested men and whose opinion of the
sex in general had not been improved by what she called the
“shilly-shallying” of her absent nephew.
“Dawdling over Europe these five years and more, leaving his poor
little wife at home in this great, lonely house with nothing but me and
the servants for company, not but what she thinks more of the black dog
Talbot sent her than of the whole of us,” she would mutter to herself.
“I say it’s a shame and a sin for him to neglect her so, and she
bearing it all so patiently, and never breathing a word of complaint,
although he has not even written her a letter for a year and more! I
never liked men any how, and I like them less than ever now, seeing how
shamefully my nephew has treated the poor little ignorant child, his
mother fooled into marrying him just for the sake of the fortune her
father left her!”
For this was the way that Mrs. Selwyn’s sister-in-law and the world
at large regarded the strange marriage of Talbot and Nina. It was
considered in the light of a purely mercenary scheme in which the
innocent little heiress had been made the victim of a designing mother
and son. But no one, not even the sour old maid, dared hint to the pure
young maiden-wife that she had been married for her money. Her trust
in her absent husband was too flawless and perfect, her worship too
entire and deep to admit of a doubt of him. Most purely and earnestly
had she kept her vow that she would give all her life and all her love
to him.
And now Miss Strangemore who was leisurely taking a cup of tea and some
seed cakes in the cozy privacy of her own chamber was startled by the
entrance of a servant who carried upon a salver a masculine looking
square white card----she almost dropped the china cup out of her
shaking fingers when she read upon it the name of Talbot Strangemore.
“At last!” she exclaimed, in blended sarcasm and surprise, and it was
several minutes before she recovered herself sufficiently to tell the
negro to apprise Mr. Strangemore that she would be with him directly.
But when she was left alone she dawdled over her tea and cakes, out of
pure perversity.
“Why should I hurry myself?” she thought, grimly. “_He_ has not made
any haste in coming, certainly; and then, of course, Nina is with him.
She went down to the wharf to meet him as she has done every day for
years, poor little simpleton! I will give them a little while to bill
and coo.”
So Talbot Strangemore waited impatiently in the library almost half
an hour before Nina’s grim chateleine appeared before him, stiff and
stately in her black silk dress and point lace collar, her cap-border
bristling with indignation at “the graceless young scamp,” whom, she
said to herself, had perhaps only come home “to get a big slice of his
wife’s money, and be off again!”
She was rather surprised when she found him all alone. She said to
herself that he had missed meeting Nina after all.
He was not much disheartened at her chill, nonchalant greeting. He knew
that his aunt despised men, and that she had never made much exception
in his favor.
“Have you seen Nina?” she asked him, brusquely, adding, maliciously:
“Not that I suppose you are in any hurry to meet your wife.”
Hardly as she judged him, she was unprepared for his agitated answer.
He flung recklessly out of his chair, and began to stride madly up and
down the floor, while he said in hoarse, strained accents:
“You are quite right there, Aunt Drusilla. I wish indeed that I had
never met her!”
She gazed keenly at the dark, handsome face, and she saw that he was
laboring under intense excitement that had been rising to fever heat
while he waited for her entrance in the solitude of the dim and quiet
library. Before she could answer, he flung himself down again into a
chair in front of her, and, lifting his eyes to her face, said, almost
pleadingly:
“Tell me, Aunt Drusilla, do you not think with me that this marriage of
mine with Nina Selwyn was a cruel and inexcusable outrage?”
Miss Strangemore regarded him in surprise a moment, then she answered,
with the perfect frankness which often made her a disagreeable
companion to thin-skinned people:
“Yes, indeed, I do consider it an outrage, Talbot, but I did not think
you would have the grace to acknowledge it. I never _did_ like your
mother, but I could not have believed that she would do such a wicked
thing on her death-bed as to take advantage of that helpless child and
bind her to you, so that you might get all her money.”
A deep, angry red flashed through the rich, clear bronze of Talbot
Strangemore’s face. He tore, furiously, though with a trembling hand,
at the drooping ends of his long, silky moustache.
“Aunt Drusilla, for shame’s sake, forbear! How dare you traduce the
memory of my angel mother?” he cried, hotly.
She was a little bewildered, but she retorted, curtly:
“You began it yourself, sir, remember. You said it was a cruel and
inexcusable outrage, and I agreed with you with all my heart.”
“But, Aunt Drusilla, you misunderstood me,” he replied. “I did not mean
to throw a reflection on the memory of my mother. She was a good woman,
and she was not envious of Nina’s fortune. She was only solicitous over
the child’s future, and anxious to leave her in the care of one whom
she knew and trusted. She told me that it was Mr. Selwyn’s cherished
wish that Nina should some day become my wife; so I weakly yielded
to her wishes, but, oh, what a terrible mistake we all made in the
consummation of that ill-starred marriage!” he added, in deep agitation.
Miss Strangemore gave him a scathing glance over the tops of her
gold-bowed eye glasses.
“I begin to understand you, Talbot Strangemore,” she said, frigidly.
“You do not mean that a wicked and inexcusable outrage was committed on
Mr. Selwyn’s daughter in making her your wife, but that you were the
one wronged, in being made her husband.”
He flinched when she put the real meaning of his words before him in
her cold, matter-of-fact way, and grew crimson again.
“Perhaps I should not have said that,” he answered. “I--I did not mean
to put it in such an offensive way. I did not mean to say one word of
what I _have_ said; but somehow, sitting here all alone, my nerves were
unstrung by my thoughts, and I spoke out what was in my heart. I was a
fool for my pains, for nothing can undo the folly of five years ago,
least of all mere empty words.”
“I gather from your talk that you regret your marriage. Indeed, I
surmised as much long ago, from your shameful neglect of your wife!”
said Miss Drusilla, sharply.
“Neglect?” he echoed, a little blankly.
“Yes,” she replied, “Have you not stayed away from her five long years?”
“I know that,” he replied. “But I did not intend it for neglect. It
was originally planned that I should stay three years, you know,
and--somehow--they lengthened into five. I will tell you the truth,
Aunt Drusilla. There were reasons why I could not bear to come. But,
after all, you cannot call it neglect, for Nina was only a child--too
young to be my wife yet, only in name.”
“Too young--she is in her nineteenth year,” said the old maid, tartly.
“And let me tell you, young man, your mother was a married woman and
you were born before she was as old as Nina is now!”
He gave a gasp as if she had thrown cold water over him.
“Nina in her nineteenth year!” he exclaimed, “she is a woman then, how
strange it seems! Do you know, Aunt Drusilla, that I have gone on all
these years thinking of Nina just as the child I left behind me!”
“She is greatly altered. You would not know her again,” said Miss
Strangemore, thinking of the many charms of beautiful Nina.
But her nephew only groaned:
“So much the worse. I used to like the child quite well. Perhaps it may
be different now!”
“You might wait until you see her before you make up your mind at
least,” his aunt said, with a curling lip.
The handsome young fellow looked at her, gloomily.
“Aunt Drusilla, you despise me,” he said, abruptly.
“I despise men in general, and I see no reason to make an exception in
your favor,” snapped the maiden lady, scornfully.
“And yet I am not a bad fellow as men go,” said Talbot Strangemore,
self-excusingly. “Aunt Drusilla, I am going to tell you the truth now
before I meet Nina, and then we will never speak of it again. Somehow
I think I shall feel better if I confess to someone.”
“I can guess your secret. It is an entanglement with some woman or
other,” she said.
“Not an entanglement,” he said, with dignity. “I am not that kind of
a man, Aunt Drusilla, but it is that my whole heart is so irrevocably
given to another woman that the bare thought of taking Nina to my arms
thrills me with dread and repulsion. I have fought many a battle with
my heart, tried bravely to cast out the passion within me that is an
insult to the girl who is my wife, but I have ignobly failed in every
effort, and now having torn myself away from my idol, I have brought
only a broken heart to lay in Nina’s shrine.”
He went on then to tell her his whole sad story, and neither of them
dreamed of the white-faced girl in the next room, who had stolen in
quietly just to catch the sound of her idol’s voice, and who had thus
heard in horror and amazement the tale of his love for another and his
repugnance to herself.
She went away presently very quietly to her own room with a face from
which all the beauty and brightness had suddenly been stricken as
a flower is blighted by the frost of a night, leaving her pale and
wild-eyed and forlorn.
She locked herself into the room and stood up white and agonized,
looking her fate in the face.
“How dared she take him from me, that beautiful woman?” she muttered,
bitterly, twisting her white hands in and out in anguish. “He belongs
to me always, and I to him! Mamma told me so on her dying bed, and she
would not have told me a falsehood. I shall go and see that woman and I
shall tell her that she is a criminal before high heaven, for she has
robbed me of my husband, and ruined all my life. What do they do with
such women I wonder? Is there any punishment for a woman that steals
the heart of another woman’s husband? If there is, I will find it out
and punish her for her sin!”
CHAPTER VI.
“CAN THIS REALLY BE NINA?”
Nina was half mad for the time over the terrible experience that had
come to her. She had sorrowed long over her husband’s absence and
silence, but the worst fear that had come to her was that he was dead.
That he was cold, indifferent, false, had never once occurred to
her. The magnitude of her discovery stunned her. She could not think
clearly. She was only conscious of one feeling, and that was a bitter,
burning jealousy and hatred of the woman that held Talbot Strangemore’s
heart.
“He is sorry that I am his wife--he is angry with his dead mother
because she made him marry me. Oh, how can I bear this terrible
humiliation!” she moaned, pressing her white hands against her
throbbing temples, while her heart felt as if it would break with its
burden of despair.
Presently Kitty--her own, faithful Kitty, who had been her maid ever
since she, Nina, had been a little girl--came and knocked at her door.
“You may go away, Kitty, I do not want you now,” Nina said, in as
natural a tone as she could assume.
“Open the door, Miss Nina, please, I have such joyful news for you,”
cried Kitty, on the other side.
“What is it?” Nina asked, faintly, although she knew only too well.
“Miss Strangemore wants you to come down at once. Your husband is come
at last,” the maid bawled through the key-hole, sorely disappointed
that she had missed seeing the joylight flash into the fair face of the
young mistress she loved so well.
She waited a moment, and she was surprised when Nina replied,
indifferently:
“I--I--my head aches, Kitty. Tell them I cannot come down until dinner.”
“Well, I never! I thought she’d be wild with joy, and she’s as cool
as a cucumber!” muttered disconcerted Kitty, as she retired with the
message.
Miss Strangemore was too much astonished for words. When she had heard
from one of the servants that Nina had come in, she had sent at once
to her room, expecting in all good faith that the girl would come
flying down the stairs to fling herself into the arms of her husband.
The cool, almost curt reply amazed her, but Talbot Strangemore only
laughed. The respite was indeed a relief.
“My wife apparently is no more anxious to meet me than I was to see
her,” he said, lightly. “She gives me a chance to meet her under the
least embarrassing circumstances; I commend her tact. Can you send a
servant to the wharf, Aunt Drusilla, for my trunk, as I shall have to
dress for dinner?”
“Your trunk? Then you have come to stay?” his aunt exclaimed, quickly.
“Of course. What else?” he exclaimed, in surprise, and arching his dark
brows a little frowningly; but she did not explain. She could not tell
him what she had been thinking about him in the privacy of her own room.
She had his trunks brought, and he went to the rooms that were
always in readiness for him by Nina’s express orders, and where the
furnishings and arrangements were perfect, while a vase of fresh
flowers always stood upon the mantel, breathing forth a fragrant
welcome to the possible return of the master. He noted their sweetness
and beauty, and when he had carefully made his toilet for the late
dinner, he selected a rosebud and some delicious heliotrope for a
_boutonniere_, but it did not once occur to him that Nina’s delicate
fingers had culled these sweets from the wealth of the conservatory,
and placed them there in anticipation of his coming, although his
thoughts were busy with her as he fastened them upon his coat.
“She was very ceremonious, certainly, deferring our meeting until
dinner,” he thought, with unconscious pique. “I hope she has not been
brought up with exaggerated notions of her importance as an heiress.
How ridiculous that would make me appear before my friends, who already
consider me a martyr!”
He went down stairs, where he found his aunt waiting primly in the
large, seldom used parlor, which had been lighted and warmed in honor
of his coming. A sensation of pleasure came over him as he entered the
handsomely furnished room, and realized that he was master of all this
elegance and luxury. He glanced around for the girl, the gift of whose
small white hand had conferred it all upon him, but she was not visible.
“Nina is not down yet, but it is not many minutes to dinner, so she
cannot delay her coming much longer,” said Miss Drusilla, interpreting
his glance.
He took his stand on the hearth-rug and waited with his back to the
glowing fire that the inclement March evening rendered necessary.
“It is very strange that you missed meeting her this evening,” pursued
the old maid, reflectively. “Every day for years she and Lion have gone
down to the wharf to see if the boat brought you home, and she was as
punctual as usual this time.”
“I missed her, at all events,” said stupid Talbot Strangemore. “There
was no one at the landing, and I met no one on the way to Selwyn
Heights except a beautiful young lady with a black dog.”
Miss Drusilla regarded him as scornfully as if he had been a fool or a
madman.
“Why, you simpleton”--she was beginning, tartly, when she was
interrupted by the opening of a door. A tall, white figure glided into
the room.
“Mrs. Strangemore!” announced Miss Drusilla, maliciously, and she
immediately retired from the room, leaving husband and wife alone and
face to face.
“I must be dreaming,” Talbot Strangemore said to himself, for here
in the center of the room gazing fixedly at him, was the lovely girl
he had encountered on the sands that evening, only that the warm
red merino had been exchanged for a soft, clinging white robe with
misty laces and multitudinous knots and loops of silvery white satin
ribbon, while Kitty who had been intent on making her mistress look
as bride-like as possible, had actually rifled the orange trees in
the conservatory of their costly blooms and adorned her so that the
folds of her dress and the loose veil of her golden hair exhaled the
delicious fragrance of real orange blossoms as she moved slowly across
the room to greet the handsome man who gazed at her in perplexity a
moment, and then advanced to meet her, catching both her white hands in
his as he said, with a tender intonation:
“Can this really be Nina, my little child-bride grown so beautiful and
womanly?”
“Yes, it is Nina,” she replied, but when he bent down to kiss her
curved red lips, she crested her golden head in haughty refusal.
“What, not even one kiss from my bride after all these years apart?”
Talbot said, banteringly, and she answered, with girlish dignity:
“You know although we are married, we are almost strangers to each
other,” and Talbot laughed a little as he answered:
“Yes, strangers, for we did not even recognize each other when we met
upon the sands this afternoon.”
He was surprised when she looked steadily at him with those great dark
eyes full of blended fire and softness and answered:
“You are mistaken, Mr. Strangemore, I knew you as soon as I saw you.”
“You knew me, and yet you did not speak. Why was that, Nina?” She had
gone over to the corner of the hearth and was standing there with her
white arm resting on the low, black marble mantel. He followed her and
looked anxiously into her beautiful, pale face for a reply.
She answered with outward nonchalance and hidden bitterness:
“I really do not know. Perhaps I was disappointed at your failure to
recognize Lion and me, or perhaps, I thought that our greetings might
well keep a little longer.”
“My failure to know you again was a compliment of the highest type,”
said Talbot Strangemore. “I had never dreamed that the little girl I
left behind me would blossom out into such a rare and radiant maiden.
Do not look at me so incredulously, my darling. Indeed, you _are_
beautiful, and in those white robes and real orange flowers you look
queen-like, bride-like. Does it not seem to you, Nina, like a new
bridal hour?”
Carried away by the influence of her marvelous beauty and her strange
reserve, he would have continued in the same strain, but the girl did
not heed him. She was gazing with horrified eyes at the bride-like robe
in which her maid had dressed her. She tore the orange blossoms from
her breast and hair and threw them disdainfully upon the floor.
“Kitty has done this, and I did not notice! How dared she make me so
ridiculous?” she cried, bursting into a torrent of humiliated tears
while she hid her shamed face in her hands.
Talbot Strangemore suddenly remembered the little girl who had wept so
dolorously upon his breast five years ago, and he would have taken her
to his arms again but she repulsed him. He retreated to his original
position upon the hearth-rug, and stood watching her with puzzled eyes,
until, her brief tempest of passion over, she dashed the tears from her
cheeks and looked at him half wistfully under the long black fringes of
her lashes.
“You must blame Kitty, really,” she said, “I--I did not know that I was
actually attired as a bride coming to the arms of a husband. You see
I was unnerved, agitated, by your sudden coming, and I did not notice
what my poor, silly Kitty was putting on me. I am ashamed to think that
she has made me remind you of that long past event that you----that
I----would both so gladly forget. If you will excuse me I will go and
change this inappropriate dress,” and she pulled angrily at the silvery
loops of white satin ribbon.
“It is not inappropriate, and I will not excuse you,” said Talbot, in
a very winning voice. He had already gathered the scattered orange
blossoms from the floor, and now he came up to her and said gently:
“Nina, let me put these back, please.”
She could have killed herself for yielding, but when he laid his
hand lightly but firmly on her shoulder she could not say him nay.
An electric thrill ran over her and she remained perfectly still and
silent while he fastened the wax-white flowers again upon her corsage
and in the soft curls of her hair, retaining a single one himself which
he placed with the rose-bud and heliotrope upon his coat. While he was
yet bending over her, dinner was announced, and drawing her white hand
through his arm, he led her to the dining room.
Miss Drusilla, who was waiting for them, studied the two faces
anxiously. Talbot’s had certainly acquired a more animated expression,
but Nina was very unlike herself, pale, _distrait_, almost proud.
“What is the matter with the child? Is she already disappointed with
her wretch of a husband?” the old maid wondered within herself.
CHAPTER VII.
PRIDE.
Miss Drusilla’s wonder grew and grew when, after dinner, they all
returned to the parlor, Nina treated her husband more distantly than
she would have done an ordinary stranger. Her courtesy was all of the
most stately fashion. She played at his request on the grand piano,
but it was with automaton-like precision, and the brilliant pieces she
selected had nothing sweet or tender in them. Miss Drusilla thought of
the pathetic song “If” that was oftenest on the girl’s lips, and she
marvelled within herself.
“Perhaps it is only maidenly shyness, after all. His sudden coming has
frightened the child,” she reflected. “He should have written.”
And she said, on the impulse of the moment:
“How was it, Talbot, that you did not write to apprise us of your
coming?”
“I did,” he replied. “And have you not received my letter?”
“It is more than a year ago since we have received a line from you. We
had begun to believe that you must have died abroad.”
He flushed scarlet at her curt tone and sour look.
“And you both believe me a villain of the deepest dye,” he said,
flashing a swift look from her face to Nina’s. “But, indeed, I am not
so bad as that. I wrote to you and Nina--not very often, for I received
no replies--but at least several times within the last year. My last
letter--dated from Baltimore two days ago--bade you expect me to-day.”
“We did not receive it,” announced Miss Drusilla, with no abatement of
her frigid air.
“I see that you are skeptical on the subject,” he said, with some
chagrin. “But I really wrote, although my letters have perhaps
miscarried. But you, Aunt Drusilla, and you, Nina, might have written
to say that you had not heard from me.”
He looked across at the pale, beautiful face of his wife. She answered,
almost inaudibly:
“I wrote--often.”
“But I did not receive your letters”--he said, quickly. “You see,
I have been yachting for a year and more--the guest of my friend,
Cameron, from Baltimore. He came abroad with some friends, and I
came back with them. I thought that my roving life explained the
non-reception of letters from home, but you should have received mine;
I cannot understand why you did not.”
There was a momentarily stern expression on his face and he thought:
“I gave Cameron my letters to forward. What did he do with them? Has
there been treachery any where?”
He said to himself that this was the reason of Nina’s cold reserve and
dignity. She resented with a woman’s pride his long absence and his
strange silence. She would forgive him now that she knew the reason.
But when he looked at her he saw no change in the cold proud face with
its flower-like lips and great slumbrous dark eyes whose thick drooping
fringe hid the fire and passion within her. He decided that there was
something else yet. Nina was not glad to have him home again. She did
not love him now as the girl Nina had loved her boyish playfellow long
ago.
“There are many changes in five years. What if she, too, has learned
to love another?” he thought, feeling suddenly hot and cold, and
distinctly angry all together.
He walked hastily over to the window, drew back the heavy curtains of
velvet and lace, and looked out. A full moon was lighting the bare
March landscape into dreary splendor. The glass roof of the long
conservatory was silvered by its beams. The terraced walks beneath the
window shone whitely and coldly. Farther on, the great white-capped
waves of the mysterious sea rolled on with a hollow murmur to the
ocean. He looked back at Nina with a sudden impulse.
“Are you afraid of the chilly night, or will you put a wrap on, and
walk on the terrace with me?” he asked.
She raised her dark eyes to his face with an air of surprise, and
shivered perceptibly.
“It is too cold. Pray excuse me,” she replied, while Miss Drusilla
hopped up with an audible sniff, and said with dignity:
“If I am _de trop_, pray excuse me, I’ll retire.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“I HAVE SWORN AN OATH AND I SHALL HAVE TO KEEP IT.”
Talbot Strangemore could not repress a smile at the absurd action of
his exceedingly high-tempered aunt. He said, hastily:
“Do not leave us, Aunt Drusilla. We are very glad of your company.”
But Miss Strangemore’s stiff black silk had already rustled across the
threshold. He looked at Nina, half pityingly.
“I am afraid that my aunt has not been a very charming companion for
you all these years,” he said.
“She has been all kindness,” Nina answered hastily. “Then, too, I had
my governess. She was a very gentle, lovable lady.”
“She has left you?” he asked.
“A year ago,” she answered, simply.
“You should have retained her when your education was finished, as a
companion,” said Talbot Strangemore.
“Do you think so?” she asked, “but you see that was impossible. She
was engaged to be married all those years, and she left me to become a
companion to a husband who worshiped her, and who had grown impatient
of waiting.”
The light of the lamps shining full on his splendidly handsome face,
showed that the delicate shaft had struck home. He winced slightly,
said, “Ah-h?” in an embarrassed tone, and then a silence ensued, which
he broke at length by an abrupt change of the subject:
“There is something that I ought to tell you, Nina, as the mistress
of Selwyn Heights. My friends with whom I have been yachting--Cameron
and the rest--have threatened to make an unceremonious descent upon us
to-morrow. Of course I would rather they did not--so soon--but they
have been so kind to me, I could really say nothing when they said they
were so anxious to meet my young wife, and as they were yachting in
these waters, they would run into Selwyn Heights to-morrow. Can you,
will you, receive them, Nina? Or will it be inconvenient for you to
entertain them?”
He wondered why she grew as pale as her trailing white robe, why she
held her white hands so tightly together in her lap, why she was silent
so long before she answered in a dull, strange voice:
“I will receive them.”
“The thought does not please you,” he said, quickly, and with a ring
of offended pride in his tone. “Very well, Nina, you shall not be
disturbed. This is your house, your home, and I will see that my
friends do not intrude upon you.”
She rose quickly from her seat and looked him through with her proud,
pure gaze.
“You quite misunderstood me, Mr. Strangemore,” she said, with quiet
dignity. “You are master here as I am mistress. Your friends have a
right to come to Selwyn Heights, I am ready to welcome them here. I
had no intention of declining the honor of their visit. I will go
now and consult with Aunt Drusilla, as to the arrangements for their
entertainment.”
She swept to the door with queenly grace. He followed her almost
against his own will, for her looks and tones although quiet and
well-bred, had been a tacit repulse to him.
“You will come back,” he said.
She paused on the threshold, a slim, white figure, full of enchanting
girlish curves and supple grace, looking back at him.
“No, this is my good-night,” she answered.
“But I shall see you again to-night,” he said, taking her hand in his
and looking tenderly at the beautiful face.
She drew it quickly away and a hot blush stained her white brow and
cheeks. Her young bosom heaved beneath its lace and flowers.
“No, not until to-morrow,” she answered, with something like a
passionate protest in her young voice. “You know we are like strangers
yet.”
“Good-night, then, my beautiful Nina,” he said, gently, but she shrank
from the offered caress, and ran swiftly away from him.
He watched the pretty bride-like figure disappear with something like
regret.
“By Jove, how beautiful she is,” he cried. “Mother was right, she has
developed into a beauty of the rarest type. She is not like Sibyl or
the rest; charming as they are there is something rarer yet about this
girl my mother chose for my wife. What if I should suddenly fall in
love with the fate I have raved against for long years! But, heavens,
how angry Sibyl would be if she knew that I was actually thinking
tenderly of my lovely and reserved young wife? What a pity that fate
ever threw that little enchantress in my way again!”
He went out on the terrace alone and smoked a cigar in a fierce,
irritated fashion, gazing up now and then at the tall, dark front of
the house, and wondering idly which was his wife’s window, while all
alone at the darkened casement of her room, Nina watched him with
heavy, woeful eyes.
She had gone up to her dressing-room and hastily huddled out of Kitty’s
keen sight a grey traveling-dress and cloak, that she had laid out to
don that night.
“I shall not need them yet,” she said. “How strange that instead of
my going away to seek my rival to-night, she is coming here under my
own roof to-morrow. He will actually bring her here, that fair woman
he loves, and they will flaunt their love under my wretched eyes and
madden me with misery, until I give him the freedom he craves, either
through the horrible mire of a divorce court, or--or, by the straight
road of death! I have sworn an oath, and I shall have to keep it.
Oh, mamma, did you realize what you were doing when you bade me give
your son all my love and all my life, and to try always to secure his
happiness? I do not believe you even dreamed that you were pledging me
to a terrible sacrifice!”
Very different are Miss Drusilla’s thoughts and feelings, for she is
scolding vigorously in the house-keeper’s room over the influx of
unexpected guests to-morrow.
“It don’t make one bit of difference to me, Miss Strangemore,” that
worthy person placidly assures her. “I prides myself on never being
taken at a disadvantage! All will be in readiness for your friends,
ma’am.”
“Don’t call them _my_ friends!” snaps the irate spitfire. “They’re no
friends of mine, let me tell you; and I think they might have stayed
away for decency’s sake, until Talbot Strangemore got acquainted with
his wife. It’s outrageous, I say, crowding into Selwyn Heights at such
a delicate time!”
Perhaps Talbot Strangemore thinks the same thoughts, pacing up and down
the terrace before the tall, dark house, idly admiring its splendid
proportions, and all unconscious of the brooding shadow of a coming
tragedy.
CHAPTER IX.
JEALOUSY.
“Talbot, where can I see you alone a moment? I am so anxious to speak
to you privately. I hurried with my dressing purposely, so that I might
have you to myself before the others come down!”
A snowy hand, sparkling with diamonds, fluttered down on Talbot
Strangemore’s arm and a pair of seductive blue eyes looked up into
his proud dark ones. An uneasy frown drew his brows together, and he
mentally ejaculated:
“The devil!”
To-morrow evening had come, and with it had punctually appeared Mr.
Strangemore’s self-invited guests. There were all in all three ladies
and four gentlemen. Talbot and his aunt had received and welcomed
them, and now all had gone to their rooms to dress for dinner. One
indeed had finished her toilette and come down before the others to the
elegant parlor where, as she had hoped and expected she found Talbot
Strangemore alone.
She was a petite, flaxen-haired fairy with a milk-white skin, rosy
cheeks, and large limpid blue eyes that usually wore a look of
infantine guilelessness and confidence that impressed one with the idea
that she was sixteen instead of six and twenty, her real age. She was
as exquisitely pretty as a doll, and her dress of soft blue silk and
creamy-hued lace, with ornaments of torquoise and pearls, enhanced her
dainty charms.
But, lovely, winning, as she was, the frown between Talbot
Strangemore’s eyes was a deep one as he looked down at her and answered:
“Excuse me, Sibyl, but there is no time for us to talk privately now. I
shall have to remain in here to entertain my guests who will be coming
down at any moment.”
She looked at him with a mutinous pout on her rich, red lips.
“I don’t believe you want to talk to me, there,” she said, “I thought
you’d be just dying to see me again, but I see how it is--the girl-wife
has rivalled me in your fickle heart already. Oh, Talbot, Talbot, I did
not believe you could be so cruel to me!”
The pale, gold lashes began to glitter with the dew of impending tears.
“Do not make a scene, for Heaven’s sake, Sibyl,” he said, impatiently,
“I don’t go in for hysterics, you know. Come into the conservatory and
look at the flowers. If you must talk to me now, I suppose you can have
an opportunity there.”
A gleam of triumph brightened her eyes as he drew her into the
conservatory, that had a door opening from the parlor. She slipped her
hand through his arm in a pretty, confiding fashion, and began to talk
to him eagerly.
The parlor began to fill up quickly with the guests who strolled in
one after another. Miss Drusilla and her niece entered, Nina in her
pretty bride-like white again, with five rows of great, moon-white
pearls shining around the slender column of her graceful throat. Some
womanly longing to look as lovely as she could in the eyes of her rival
had made her quite quiescent under Kitty’s loving hands this evening.
The result was a lovely, snow-white maiden, whose own wine-dark eyes,
golden hair, and girlish bloom, set off the whiteness of her robe
admirably. She greeted the guests with graceful ease, although each one
noted her single, quick, disappointed glance around the room.
One man whispered _sub rosa_ to the others:
“Strangemore has acted like a fool, dangling after that little
coquette, while this beautiful creature was waiting for him at home!”
“We are all here now except Mr. Strangemore and Sibyl,” said Miss
Mason. “Does any one know if Mrs. St. Alban is down yet?”
No one seemed to know, and Nina crossed the room to the conservatory,
obeying an idle fancy for a rosebud. She stepped under the broad
arch that led into it, and disappeared from view for a moment--only
a moment, for then she came hurrying back with a handful of pink
geraniums, snatched at random. Her face was as white as her dress, her
dark eyes blazed with indignation. She looked at pretty Miss Mason, and
said, in a trembling, incoherent voice:
“I--I think your friend is in there. I saw a lady with my husband.”
And the beautiful young face, all untutored in the art of hiding the
emotions of the heart, betrayed its bitter, burning jealousy to all.
“He is giving her some flowers--we must have some, too!” both the
ladies cried, and they rushed to the door of the conservatory.
Far down the flowery vista of sweetness, they saw Talbot Strangemore
standing motionless, while Sibyl St. Alban leaned her fair head on his
breast, weeping bitterly.
They turned back quickly as Nina had done, but they could not meet the
dark eyes of the girl. They tried to talk of other things.
But that terrible Miss Drusilla watching them closely, said to herself
grimly and with not very choice phraseology, that she “smelt a rat in
the pantry,” and she immediately arose and plunged into the odorous
green shadows of the conservatory.
She did not start and turn back as the others did. She walked straight
on toward the beautiful siren who was laying her head on Talbot’s
breast and sobbing, with bitter reproach and anger:
“You cannot mean it, Talbot, you would not be so cruel to your poor
Sibyl!”
Miss Drusilla walked straight up to them, and Talbot lifted his head
with a frightened start.
“Talbot,” said the grim spinster, “I hope your pretty young friend
hasn’t heard any bad news that some of her friends are dead. She is
certainly taking on as if she had! I expect some of her lady friends
could comfort her better than you could!”
Sibyl St. Alban, the charming young widow, lifted her head from its
resting place and flashed a steady glance into Miss Drusilla’s scornful
eyes. From that moment the two women knew themselves as enemies.
“I expect Aunt Drusilla is right, Sibyl. Let us return to our
friends,” Mr. Strangemore said in a short tone of displeasure, and he
led her into the parlor, hoping devoutly that no one would observe the
pink rims around her eyes which had shed such angry tears.
Too much annoyed himself to notice the _distrait_ looks of the others,
Talbot led his fair enchantress across the room to where his unloved
wife was sitting, Cameron hovering attentively by her side.
“Mrs. St. Alban, _my wife_,” he said, simply, but every ear in the room
except Nina’s was struck by the tender pride that breathed in those two
words “_my wife_.”
Nina arose and they bowed to each other. Sibyl St. Alban drew her
breath hard when she took her first look at her rival.
There was a proud, fearless scorn and deep reproach in the dark eyes
that met her own in one swift, quickly withdrawn glance.
Then dinner was announced, and every one breathed freer, as for a few
moments, as Virgie Mason whispered to her partner at table, there had
seemed to be suppressed thunder and lightning in the air.
CHAPTER X.
“I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER.”
“Mrs. Strangemore, I think yours is the most romantic marriage I ever
heard of. You were the merest child, weren’t you?” said Virgie Mason,
curiously.
The gentlemen were lingering over their cigars, and the ladies had
gone back to the parlor. Virgie, a pretty and very voluble young lady,
started the after-dinner conversation with the above remark.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” Miss Drusilla snapped to
herself. “Now, what under heaven does that chatterbox want to discuss
Nina’s marriage for? And before that hateful St. Alban’s woman, too!”
She hoped that Nina would, as _she_ mentally phased it, “shut her up;”
but the girl only answered, in a dreamy sort of way:
“Yes, I was only a child--barely thirteen years old.”
Sibyl St. Alban flashed her a look of hate under her drooping lids.
Only eighteen, while she was twenty-six.
“Were you very much impressed with the importance of your
position--married, although but a child in years?” continued
inquisitive Virgie, while her bosom friend, Miss Starr, tried to
telegraph her a warning glance, but failed utterly, because Virgie’s
grey eyes were fixed admiringly on Nina’s agitated face, as she
answered, slowly:
“I was very much impressed by the dying words of Talbot’s mother
addressed to me. I have never forgotten one single word.”
“They were solemn words, perhaps,” the girl said, with irrepressible
curiosity.
“Yes,” her hostess answered. “Would you like to hear them? These were
the words she said:”
She looked straight into Sibyl St. Alban’s face as she repeated:
“‘Talbot is your husband now, my darling. You will belong to him
always, and he to you. Promise me now that you will give him all
your love and all your life, that you will always try to secure his
happiness.’”
The blue-eyed beauty flashed her a furtive look of defiance, but her
heart sank with fear. It seemed to her that Nina had already penetrated
her secret, and that she was appealing to the dead against her.
“How sweet! how romantic!” said Miss Starr’s gentle voice.
“You promised her, I know,” said Virgie, with that confidence with
which one young, noble heart reads another.
“Yes, I promised her,” Nina answered, and suddenly at the thought of
all the wasted love and trust she had lavished on Talbot Strangemore a
pulse in her heart seemed to snap asunder--her bitter pride seemed to
fail her--she broke down before them all, and hiding her face in her
hands, sobbed passionately.
“Oh, I was too thoughtless, making you talk about those long past
things; I am so sorry! Do forgive me dear Mrs. Strangemore,” cried
Virgie, full of compunction.
Miss Drusilla scowled at the penitent girl.
“Let her alone, please, she is not used to being so badgered,” she
cried, testily. “Nina, my dear, let me take you to your room until you
feel better--or let me call Talbot.”
“Not for worlds,” shivered the girl, dashing the tear-drops from her
eyes, and turning them full of superb wrath upon Sibyl St. Alban. “Why
should you call him to my side to comfort me?” she flashed. “He is
not mine, no, not even though God and his mother gave him to me! He
belongs to that woman there, who this evening put her arms around him
and rested her head on his breast. Do not look at me so strangely, all
of you, I know all that you thought was hidden from me! Aunt Drusilla,
I heard all that Talbot confided to you, yesterday. I know that Talbot
Strangemore is my husband in name only, for this woman here who cast
him aside when he was a boy to marry a richer man, has thrown her
fetters around him again. She is cruel, heartless, shameless, for she
kept him from me all the time while I was waiting for him and loving
him so truly. She is false and wicked and I hate her for what she has
done--”
“Nina, hush, dear!” Miss Drusilla implored.
“I will not hush!” the girl raved, madly, “she is a wicked woman, and I
pray God to punish her for her sin. I will never forgive her for what
she has done by the power of her cruel beauty. I--”
She looked up, saw Talbot Strangemore gazing at her in wonder and
dismay from the open door-way and with an inarticulate moan of shame,
she fell forward senseless and apparently lifeless, at Miss Drusilla’s
feet.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SHADOWS FALL.
Sibyl St. Alban uttered a dramatic shriek, and rushed forward to meet
her host.
“Oh, Talbot, Talbot,” she cried, lifting her humid blue eyes to his
face, appealingly, “Your wife has insulted me cruelly! She has been
saying the most dreadful things to me. She hates me, she says, and she
has called me all sorts of bad names, and----”
But he checked the torrent of complaint by putting her firmly aside,
while his dark eyes flashed her a look so stern that she quailed
beneath it.
“Sibyl, I have no time to hear your complaints now,” he said,
impatiently. “My wife needs me. I must attend to her.”
She threw herself, weeping, upon a silken sofa, and Talbot hastened
on to the spot where Nina lay white and motionless, with the veil of
her golden hair about her. He was frightened when he saw how white and
rigid was the lovely young face.
“It is only a faint,” said Miss Drusilla, “But I wish you would carry
her to her room, Talbot.”
“If you will lead the way,” he replied; and the ladies exchanged
glances. What a strange husband not even to know where his wife’s room
was.
He took the slender young form up tenderly in his strong arms, and
followed Miss Drusilla from the room. Mrs. St. Alban sent a long look,
full of hatred, after the retreating forms.
“I will be revenged for this,” she muttered, clenching her tiny fist
angrily under the silken folds of her dress. “I will not be thrown
aside for that impertinent, black-eyed minx! So she saw me with him
in the conservatory, did she? Well, I meant that she should. That
theatrical scene was intended for her benefit. She is madly jealous;
she knows already that he loves me, that he has loved me for years. I
intended that she should know it, but she has found it out by Talbot’s
bungling, not by my telling. That is best. All is working well for my
purpose; all but Talbot himself. How dare he throw me over after all
our hopes and plans? But he shall not do it. I will not give him up. I
will yet win him for my husband. I love him, and I will not give him up
to that disdainful heiress, not if he were hers by even a stronger tie
than he is!”
And as she lay there in sullen anger, a diabolical purpose entered her
soul.
Dashing the angry tears from her cheeks, she rose and trailed her rich
silken robes slowly over the floor to where the two young girls were
whispering together.
“Did you ever hear such an ill-bred, unprovoked attack?--and in her own
house, too?”--she exclaimed, “I never was so insulted in my life! I
shall go back to Baltimore in the morning. If Duke Cameron won’t take
me in the yacht, I’ll go on the earliest steamer!”
“I want to go, too,” said Virgie Mason, “somehow I feel mean, although
I didn’t dream that I should cause such a scene by my idle curiosity.
But, oh, Sib, I love Mrs. Strangemore, and I feel sorry for her. Only
fancy her feelings! she saw you--we all saw you--among the flowers,
with your arms around Talbot Strangemore and your head on his breast,”
and she flashed a look that was almost contempt upon the flaxen haired
blonde.
Mrs. St. Alban had the grace to color under the reproachful glance of
those pure young eyes, then she crested her head defiantly.
“How could I help it if Talbot Strangemore caught me in his arms and
kissed me and cried out that he was wretched in his marriage to that
girl?” she said. “He has been in love with me six years, as you all
know. I threw him over once for Mr. St. Alban, and since my husband’s
death you know he has come back again as loving as ever. I am sorry for
the girl, but how can I help Talbot’s loving me so?”
“But indeed, Sibyl, I rather think you encouraged him to flirt with
you--didn’t you now?” said frank Virgie.
“Oh, Virgie Mason, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! How can
you even hint such a thing? I encourage a married man’s folly and
misplaced affection! you know me better than that although you talk to
me so! I wish I had never allowed myself to be persuaded to come to
this dreadful place!” wept Mrs. St. Alban, hiding her face in her tiny
lace handkerchief.
“I thought that you were the first one that proposed coming,” said
Helen Starr, rather drily, but the wounded widow was saved the
necessity for a reply by the entrance of the gentlemen.
Candid Virgie immediately blurted out the whole story of the scene that
had passed. They all looked very grave when they heard it. Talbot’s
infatuation for the beautiful widow had long been patent to all, and
they had heretofore made a jest of it: Now that they had come to Selwyn
Heights and seen the beautiful young neglected wife and heard her
indignant plaint the affair suddenly assumed a different aspect.
“We should not have come here at all. It was an unwarrantable
intrusion,” said Duke Cameron, who was the prince of good fellows,
immensely rich, and as generous as a king to his friends. “I think we
must all go away in the morning.”
“That is just what I was saying before you came in,” cried the widow,
eagerly, “I have been cruelly insulted by poor Talbot’s wife, and if
you all will not go with me, I shall go alone! I do think however, that
that girl ought to apologize to me for what she said. I am not to blame
for her husband loving me! We were engaged when he was a student at
college, and how could I help it if he went on loving me after I threw
him over for one whom I liked better than----”
Her torrent of words was interrupted by the sudden entrance of Talbot
himself. He came up to them pale, but composed.
“I can guess what you are talking of,” he said, seeing how silent they
all suddenly became. “I am very sorry for all that has happened this
evening. I hope no one will blame my wife. She is but a child in her
innocence and ignorance of the world. I take the blame upon myself. I
have neglected her, forgotten her, and acted a dastardly part for which
the devotion of my whole future can scarce atone.”
He looked so shamed and contrite that every one was sorry for him but
Sibyl, at whom he did not look while he was speaking, for he well knew
that his words would make her bitterly angry.
Virgie Mason cried out, impulsively:
“I love your sweet Nina dearly, and I do not blame her one bit! Please
tell us if she is any better, Mr. Strangemore?”
“I left her with her maid and my aunt. They think she will soon be
better,” he replied, gratefully.
CHAPTER XII.
AN INTERVIEW DECLINED.
He did not tell her that Miss Drusilla had sent him out of the room
with the bitter words:
“Now go back to your charming widow! It will only make Nina worse to
come to and find you here. I dare say she hates you now as much as she
has loved you these five years. And no wonder, for any one who could
prefer that little simpering doll to this beautiful girl, deserves for
every sensible woman to hate him!”
“But I have a right to stay by my wife’s side, Aunt Drusilla, and
I cannot bear to leave her like this,” he remonstrated, glancing
apprehensively at the lovely, death-like face that Kitty was
convulsively weeping over.
But the excited old lady actually opened the door, took him by the
shoulder, and shoved him out into the hall.
“You may just go, for men-folks are always in the way at times like
this,” she said. “I’ll send you word by Kitty when she gets better.”
“Ask her to let me see her as soon as she revives,” he said, “I have
something very particular to tell her,” and then he went down to the
parlor, carrying with him a troubled consciousness of that lovely,
death-white face, but with no presentiment of the years that would
elapse before he looked again upon its girlish beauty.
“We shall go away in the morning,” Duke Cameron said to him. “Indeed
I believe we owe you all an apology for coming at this time. It was
very thoughtless and ill-advised. I hope you will excuse us. We should
have remembered that you would want some time to make your wife’s
acquaintance before your friends came to see her.”
In their secret hearts every one knew that Sibyl St. Alban had been
the motive power in their coming, that she had instigated and urged
it. No one had considered the girl-wife until now. Indeed every one’s
sympathies had been with Sibyl and Talbot, the two who were openly
devoted to each other, and who were cruelly debarred from a union by
the existence of an unloved wife whom Talbot himself represented as
homely and unlovable.
Sibyl had gone so far as to circulate hints among her friends of an
intended divorce that would make Talbot free to marry where he pleased,
but this had not been openly discussed, although no one blamed Talbot
much for wishing to shake off the fetters that had been thrust upon
him. Now since they had come to Selwyn Heights, since they had heard
the plaint of pain from the stricken wife, they became suddenly roused
to the enormity of what they had been contemplating so carelessly, and
there was something almost like contempt in Duke Cameron’s voice as he
said:
“I wish from my soul we had not come here. You ought to have told us to
stay away, Talbot.”
He was glad that they retired early to their rooms that night, glad
that they were going away in the morning. He said to himself that it
would have been well, indeed, if they had stayed away as they said.
Kitty came at last to say that her mistress had revived from her long
swoon, and was better.
“And I may go to her now--she will see me?” he asked, eagerly.
“No, sir,” and Kitty shook her head in unconscious imitation of Nina’s
imperative little nod. “She will not see you to-night.”
“Go and ask her to give me only ten minutes, Kitty. Tell her I pray
her, I implore her, to grant me even that short space of time.”
Kitty went back with the message--Miss Drusilla herself brought the
answer.
“She utterly declines to see you for even one minute. Be merciful,
Talbot, and do not insist upon an interview that cannot be anything but
painful to both. Indeed, I should think you must feel ashamed to face
the poor girl. It seems she heard everything yesterday; and, then, she
saw you in the conservatory with that woman to-night.”
He looked at her with heavy eyes.
“What does she mean to do?” he asked, slowly.
“I do not know, but I should think that she would separate herself
from you. Any woman of spirit would!” said the man-hating spinster,
decidedly.
Talbot went to his room, desperate.
“I will write her a letter, and I will send it to her to-night,” he
said, throwing himself down before his desk in feverish haste. “I will
tell her what a fool I have been, and how I repent my folly! I cannot
wait until to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XIII.
NINA’S SACRIFICE.
“Let me sit up with you to-night, Miss Nina,” said Kitty.
Miss Drusilla had already retired, but Kitty lingered by the fire,
where Nina, wrapped in a pink cashmere dressing-gown, lay back in a
great white-draped easy-chair, and stared into the leaping flame within
the steel bars of the grate.
She shook her golden head decidedly at faithful Kitty’s appeal.
“No, I shall not need you,” she said.
“But it seems so lonesome-like for you, and you aren’t well, I’m sure,”
urged the girl.
“I will ring if I need you. Now go, please. I would rather be alone.”
Thus summarily dismissed, Kitty had no resource but to go, yet the
girl’s heart ached to leave her there solitary and forlorn, with her
golden head bowed sadly on her jewelled hand.
“A strange home-coming for the master of a house,” she thought. “Oh, I
wonder what it is that has come between Mr. Strangemore and my sweet
young mistress, and made them both so unhappy.”
Nina sat very still, gazing sadly into the fire, her sweet lips
quivering, her young heart throbbing with pain and shame. She would
have given all the wealth her father had left her to have recalled her
mad and jealous outbreak that night.
“What must he think of me? Why did he wish to see me? To upbraid me,
perhaps, for my discourtesy to his charming and beloved guest. Ah,
heaven, I do not think I can ever, ever, meet him again! I have too
bitterly humiliated myself by my folly of to-night,” she moaned, aloud.
The door opened and shut softly, unheeded by the girl absorbed in her
own sad and gloomy reflections. A _petite_ form clothed in soft, rich
blue, glided across the floor, and stood beside Nina’s chair.
“Mrs. Strangemore--Nina!”
With what a cooing, melodious murmur the words fell upon Nina’s ears.
She looked up with a start.
“Mrs. St. Alban,” she exclaimed, haughtily, “Why this unwelcome
intrusion?”
The great blue eyes lifted to Nina’s flashing dark ones, filled with
quick tears.
“Oh, do not speak to me so harshly, so coldly,” implored Sibyl. “You
cannot guess what I suffer, Mrs. Strangemore, or you would forgive me
for seeking your presence thus by stealth, to exculpate myself in your
eyes from all the cruel aspersions you cast upon me to-night. Oh, you
beautiful, fortunate child, you have wronged me bitterly. You cannot
in justice refuse to hear my defense!”
They stood looking at each other, the unloved wife and the triumphant
rival, in silence a moment after Sibyl’s artful appeal, then Nina
answered, slowly:
“What defense can you make? I saw you myself with your head upon my
husband’s breast.”
“But it was his fault not mine,” said Sibyl, quickly, “Oh, Nina, my
child, you must listen to me while I confess all! You took Talbot from
me five years ago! We were engaged to be married and your mother thrust
that unwelcome marriage upon him and ruined both our lives. Out of
pique I married another, but I never loved him, for my heart was broken
by Talbot’s loss. When Mr. St. Alban died and left me a rich widow two
years ago I went to Europe. I--I met Talbot in London. He was about to
go home to you, dear Nina.”
A sob, and the tiny lace handkerchief fluttered up to her wet eyes
with a waft of perfume. Nina stood before her cold, pale, statue-like,
listening in silence.
“Indeed, indeed, it was not my fault that he lingered and lingered,
putting off his return from day to day,” sighed Sibyl. “I will not deny
that I loved him still, but I would not have kept him from his wife,
oh, no, no, no! But, poor fellow, he was mad for love of me, and I
could not drive him away. Oh, you cold-hearted child, do not look at
me so scornfully. We loved each other so dearly, and we had been so
cruelly parted, was it any wonder that we liked to be together, or that
Talbot raved against the child his mother had forced him to marry for
the sake of sordid money?”
She saw the beautiful face before her grow crimson with shame and
anger, and laughed within herself.
“Ah, that was a trump card,” she thought, cruelly, and she continued in
her soft, sad, regretful tones:
“Ah, we were perfectly wild with joy in these first days of my freedom.
We dreamed happy, impossible dreams of freedom for Talbot, too--freedom
that should give him back to me as in the days before he forged those
fetters he hated so madly!”
The flush of shame on the lovely face before her grew deeper. A low
moan of pain escaped Nina’s lips.
“Oh, how cruel you are! Why do you tell me these dreadful things?--me,
his wife?” she exclaimed, reproachfully.
“To defend myself,” Sibyl answered, pitilessly. “You said crueler
things to me down stairs to-night, and yet I had done nothing wrong. I
loved Talbot, that was all my sin. I loved him, and when I was saying a
last farewell to all my hopes I laid my head upon his breast and wept,
that was all!”
“Your hopes?” Nina echoed, uncomprehendingly.
“Yes, my hopes,” Sibyl answered, watching the lovely shame stricken
face before her with keen eyes. “Before Talbot came home to you he told
me that he meant to procure a divorce from you that he might marry me!”
“Oh, God!” Nina cried, and reeled backward into her chair like one
death-smitten.
“Do not take it so hard, Nina,” said the smooth, musical voice. “I have
more to tell you yet.”
“No more for sweet pity’s sake!” cried the agonized girl.
“I must for in this lies my whole defense,” Sibyl answered, sadly. “You
think very hard of Talbot now, but you will retract your opinion when
you hear that when he came home and saw you he repented his promise to
me!”
A faint gleam of hope flashed into Nina’s eyes.
“He repented,” she murmured to herself.
“Yes,” Sibyl answered, sobbingly. “He told me that we must say an
eternal farewell to our love and our hopes. He had found out that
you loved him devotedly, and he was so sure that you would contest a
divorce that he was afraid to ask your consent. He said that you were
his wife and that we must sacrifice ourselves on the altar of your
happiness. We kissed and parted for an eternal farewell! Oh, Nina,
Nina,” she fell on her knees with a sudden theatrical semi-tragic air,
“You cannot have the heart to be angry with us any longer when you
know that we are so unhappy, and that we are parted forever for your
sake. Forgive me, dear, for the unconscious wrong I did you in winning
Talbot’s heart, and promise me that you will not hate me any longer for
the poor reason that he belonged to me before an adverse fate gave him
to you!”
The passionate torrent of words ceased, and Nina lifted her hand and
pointed to the door.
“Go, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “I cannot bear your presence any
longer.”
Sibyl rose, sullenly.
“Nina, you must have a heart of stone,” she cried, upbraidingly. “After
the way I have humbled myself to you, you have not one single word of
sympathy for the grief that you alone have caused me! You are not one
bit sorry for poor Talbot and me!”
“I am sorry for you both--sorrier still for myself,” said Nina,
drearily. “But what are you waiting for, Mrs. St. Alban? Do you want me
to promise you that Talbot shall have a divorce?”
“Ah, you will not do it. _He_ said so,” Sibyl answered, hopelessly.
“He said you were so desperately fond of him you would not give him
up. Don’t think I blame you, Nina. I know how you feel by my own
experience.”
“Hush, I have heard enough,” Nina answered, bitterly. “Go back to your
room, Mrs. St. Alban. Talbot shall have his freedom. You shall have
him for your husband soon. I promise you that I shall not be in your
way long. I will keep my promise to the dead. I will try to secure his
happiness!”
“You generous darling! I thought you would be willing to do what was
right,” Sibyl began effusively; but Nina immediately turned her back
upon her, so, having gained what she came for, she concluded to leave
without further ceremony.
She glided toward the door, and as she came near it, she saw a large,
square, white envelope lying upon the floor, as if it had been pushed
beneath the door by a cautious hand. An instant suspicion darted into
her crafty mind. In a moment she had slyly secured it, and pushed it
inside the corsage of her dress. Nina heard the door close upon her,
and drew a sigh of relief, unconscious that she carried with her a
letter from Talbot Strangemore, that, had she only received it, would
have changed the current of her life so far that this story of her
sorrows need never have been written.
* * * * *
Later in the night a little dark-robed figure glided out from the
grand portals of Selwyn Heights, and took its way along the sea-shore.
It was Nina Strangemore, alone and empty-handed, for on the strange
journey she was desperately resolved upon, they who venture forth carry
nothing with them.
CHAPTER XIV.
A MADDENED LOVER.
Sibyl St. Alban gained her room, turned the key hurriedly in the door
lock, and looked at the letter she had brought from Nina’s room. It was
addressed in a firm strong hand that she knew well, and she shivered
with rage as she tore it open.
“Why is he writing to her? I _will_ know,” she said, and she ran her
gleaming eyes hurriedly over the letter, murmuring bitter words to
herself as she took in the full import of the words the repentant,
shame-stricken husband had written for the eyes of the fair young wife
that now would never rest upon those pages.
“Nina, my beloved, my darling wife,” he wrote, in deep haste and
agitation, “On my knees I beg you to forgive me for the folly and
madness of which I have been guilty. Oh, if you could know how
remorseful, how shame-stricken, how repentant I feel, you could not
help but pardon me. I am not worthy of you, my beautiful wife, but I
love you with a deep and passionate love that sprung into full growth
in the first moment I saw you last night with the orange-blossoms on
your hair and breast. In that very moment my mad penchant for a fair
coquette died an instant death, slain by the glances of your innocent
eyes. I know now that she was not worthy the foolish passion I wasted
on her for years, and I beg your pardon for permitting her presence
beneath your roof. Oh, my sweet and deeply injured wife, I can explain
all if you will grant me an interview to-night, to-morrow, or at any
time you may select. I shall not sleep to-night. I shall wait in my
room, hoping that you will send me word that I may come to you and
plead my cause. Oh, my bride, my wife, do not be hard upon me, do not
judge me as I deserve! Only remember my love and my repentance that I
place humbly at your feet, hoping prayerfully that you will accept
them, and that you will give me a chance to win your forgiveness, and
then your love, my beautiful fate. Remember, I am waiting for a single
word from your lips, Nina, and be merciful to me, although my past
egregious folly merits no mercy at your pure hands!”
Sibyl crushed the letter in her little white hands, and paced madly
up and down the floor, her silken robes trailing over the carpet with
a low swish, swish, that sounded like the hissing of a serpent in
the silence of the room. Her blue eyes scintillated fury beneath her
frowning brows.
“How dare he, how dare he!” she muttered. “A fair coquette! unworthy
of the passion he has wasted on me for years, am I? We shall see, we
shall see about that my fickle lover! It is most fortunate that I
went in there to-night. If she had received this letter it would have
made all clear between them, for I could see, poor fool, that she was
dying for him! But she will go away, after what I told her about the
divorce, her pride will not permit her to accept any overtures toward
a reconciliation. She will set him free that he may be mine. She has
promised me, and I am sure she will keep her word. But what will she
do? Will she separate from him, or will she commit suicide? The latter,
I hope, for I do not believe I could win his love again unless he knew
that she was dead. Death! oh, what a horrible thing that is! The very
thought of it frightens me alone in my room, and so late into the
night!”
And she shuddered and hid her face for a moment in her hands with a
vague presentiment of horror stealing wierdly over her.
After a little she lifted her face and looked half-fearfully around her
at the dark shadows in the corners of the elegant chamber.
“What is it that I am so afraid of?” she asked herself, aloud, “I never
felt so strangely before. I have a horrible dread upon me. Perhaps I am
going to be ill. I think I will go to Helen Starr’s room and ask her to
let me stay with her to-night. This large room with its dark corners
makes me feel frightened and lonely.”
She caught up a light shawl, threw it about her shoulders, and softly
opening the door peered out into the hall. She drew back with a
smothered exclamation.
She had caught sight of a slender, dark-cloaked figure moving with
swift and noiseless footsteps along the dimly lighted hall toward the
stairway.
Forgetting all her nervousness and terror of a little while ago, Sibyl
peered through a crevice of the slightly open door at the vanishing
form.
“It is Nina,” she muttered, with a cruel, exultant laugh. “She is going
away, and I think I may safely predict that this is the last we shall
ever see of the heiress of Selwyn Heights.”
In her glad excitement over Nina’s flitting she forgot her momentary
fears, and her intention of going to Helen Starr’s room to pass the
night. She hastily disrobed, and lay down to rest on her soft bed,
under the flowing canopy of silk and lace.
“I can rest in peace now that I know that I am rid of my dangerous
rival,” she said, with a low laugh of triumph, as she nestled her
flaxen head among the lace-trimmed pillows. “Perhaps even now she has
plunged into the cold, dark sea out yonder, and Talbot may be already a
widower.”
Too heartless to give even one regret to the fate of the hapless girl
she had wronged so cruelly, she closed her eyes and was soon fast
asleep, dreaming of the day when she should be Talbot Strangemore’s
bride, and mistress of Selwyn Heights.
The night hours wore on to midnight. The light of the shaded lamp fell
on Sibyl’s fair, placid face, its round cheeks daintily flushed by
warmth, its red lips slightly parted with the soft, even breath of her
happy slumber. From one of those shadowy corners that had so affrighted
her with their gloom and darkness, a stealthy form crept forth to gaze
upon the sleeping beauty.
Oh, how the dark, blazing eyes of this sinister intruder gloated upon
her loveliness! How the strong, passionate features worked with emotion
beneath the shade of the dark hat drawn down over his brows! How his
muscular hand trembled as it closed nervously over the hilt of a
slender dagger, half hidden in his breast.
“So she was afraid, was she?” came in a low, fierce sneer from his
lips. “The spirit of murder made itself felt in the room, I think, and
yet she wondered what it was she feared. Why did she not remember me
and my wrongs that I had sworn to avenge? Ah, how lovely she is, the
base little coquette! Too lovely to live, because a devil’s heart with
a face like that has too much power for evil in this world! Die, my
beautiful false lover, my blue-eyed siren, and go home to Hades, where
you justly belong!”
The gleaming, upraised steel descended on the bare, white breast, and
Sibyl’s eyes flared wide open, while her dying shriek rang through the
house, “Murder! Murder! Murder!”
CHAPTER XV.
THE TRAGEDY.
That awful, blood-curdling cry of agony and despair rang through and
through the silent house, hushed in the repose of slumber. The echoes
caught it up and prolonged it in awful, sound waves:
“Murder! Murder! Murder!”
There was no ear in that great house upon which it did not fall.
Talbot Strangemore, keeping his wakeful vigil in patient expectation
of a summons from Nina, heard it first, and rushed madly from the
room out into the faintly-lighted hall. His first thought was of his
wife; but when he ran to her apartments, so sacred until now from his
intrusion, he found the outer door locked against him, and, horrified
and bewildered, he turned away.
In a few moments the corridors were full of excited people running
hither and thither, looking into each other’s blanched faces, and
asking what was the matter, and was it really a shriek of “Murder” that
had roused them from slumber.
Miss Drusilla was there in nightcap and slippers, with a large
red shawl hastily thrown over her flapping night-robe. Helen and
Virgie were there in dressing-gowns hastily huddled over their white
wrappers; all the men were there in various stages of dishabille, the
servants were all there too, and but two of the whole household were
missing--those two were Mrs. Strangemore and Mrs. St. Alban.
Some ran hastily to one door--some to another--Nina’s was locked;
Sibyl had forgotten hers in her joy at witnessing her rival’s flight.
They entered readily.
It was Helen Starr who entered first. Her shriek of horror and dismay
rang in the hearing of all long afterward. It announced the tragedy
that in a minute more every one crowded in to gaze upon.
No one ever forgot that tragic sight in the dimly-lighted room, where
some one quickly brightened the lamp for a clearer view. Sibyl St.
Alban lay wounded and apparently dying, across the bed, her life-blood
staining her white robes and the white counterpane in a ghastly
torrent, while a bloody dagger lay carelessly upon the floor.
They crowded around her, and the dim, fast glazing eyes searched their
faces with mute yearning until Talbot Strangemore came. Her drawn lips
faintly murmured his name:
“Talbot!”
“Sibyl!”
He took her hand compassionately in his and looked at her with dazed,
horrified eyes. Some faint fear came over him that she had thrown away
her life because she had lost him.
“My poor Sibyl,” he repeated, and the lips she had opened to speak to
him closed without a sound, the white lids dropped heavily over the
blue imploring eyes in a momentary unconsciousness. Better for him had
it been an eternal sleep.
“Let someone bring a doctor,” he said, hastily, and one of the
half-dazed men-servants went out to do his bidding.
Miss Drusilla, beginning to recover from the trance of horror which had
struck her at first, began to bustle around. She cleared the room first
of all the gaping, terrified domestics who were huddled in a group at
the foot of the bed, whispering fearfully together.
One man in his retreat picked up the blood-stained dagger and presented
it to Miss Drusilla. The housemaid found a letter lying on the floor.
She could not read, so she handed it to Helen Starr who stood nearest
her.
“Oh, Miss, here’s a letter I found on the floor. Mayhap the bloody
murderer who killed that lady dropped it there,” she shuddered.
Helen took it with an answering shiver of fear. She held it out and
read the name upon the back, then she held it out to her host.
“Perhaps I had better give it to you, as it is addressed to your wife,”
she said.
Talbot Strangemore took it from her hand and looked at it. It was the
letter he had slipped under Nina’s door a few hours ago.
“Yes, it belongs to my wife. I wrote it, but how came it here?” he
said, full of wonder.
“Perhaps she has been in here and dropped it,” said some one, and those
words although so innocently spoken, suggested a terrible possibility
to every one. Every face blanched suddenly, and a silence fell that was
more fearful than words.
And in their sudden interest over the letter no one noticed that
Sibyl’s eyes had opened languidly again, and that she heard and saw all
that was passing around her.
Her first thought was one of terror that she had thrown Talbot’s letter
carelessly from her in her wrath and that now it was discovered in
her possession. But a moment later some one spoke the thoughtless
words, “Perhaps she has been in here and dropped it,” and the sentence
conveyed such a sinister idea to her mind that she drew a quick breath
and shut her eyes again before Talbot looked around at her and said,
decidedly:
“No, I do not believe that Nina has been in this room at all. When Mrs.
St. Alban revives from her swoon she will no doubt be able to explain
how it came to be in here.”
He crushed it fiercely in his hand, and gazed anxiously at the still
white face on the pillow, until the pale gold lashes fluttered open and
Sibyl looked up at him with a faint, dying expression.
“You are better, Sibyl. Can you speak to us?” he asked.
“No, I am not better--I--I--am dying,” faintly articulated the victim.
“Let some one--bring--pencil and--and paper. Let them take--my--my
dying deposition!”
It was Duke Cameron who obeyed her. He looked with sad, pained eyes at
the dying face.
“Poor Sibyl,” he said, sorrowfully, as to a hurt child, “I am ready
now--what is it you wish me to write?”
She looked at Talbot Strangemore not at him as she answered, slowly and
painfully:
“I have been--foully murdered! It was your wife that did it, Talbot
Strangemore! It--it was Nina! She was--jealous, mad--she hated me,
and in--in her rage she stole upon me in my sleep and--and plunged a
knife in my breast! I saw her--she wore a hood and cloak, ready--to
fly--to fly from the scene of her crime! I am--am dying, and--she--Nina
Strangemore who hated me--is the woman who has cruelly--murdered--me!”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FLIGHT OF NINA.
Several days after that tragic night at Selwyn Heights a sensational
item appeared in the Baltimore papers and was thence copied widely into
other journals.
“A thrilling tragedy. A jealous wife murders her beautiful rival and
makes a successful flight from justice. A fine old family disgraced by
the crime of its last remaining descendant.”
Under that heading came the following:
“Many members of the _bon ton_ in this city will remember the beautiful
Mrs. St. Alban, who about two years ago was the star of a season
here, and who at the death of her husband went abroad with a party
of friends in the splendid yacht of our citizen, Marmaduke Cameron.
This lady recently returned from Europe and during a visit at Selwyn
Heights, the seaside home of her friend, Mr. Talbot Strangemore, she
was cruelly murdered by the young wife of the latter gentleman. Rumor
accredited Mr. Strangemore with a penchant for the charming widow which
so enraged the beautiful young wife that she publicly declared her
hatred and jealousy of Mrs. St. Alban, and that night she stealthily
entered the young widow’s room and assaulted her with a sharp dagger
which she left lying upon the floor when she fled from the scene. Mrs.
St. Alban is now lying at the point of death at Selwyn Heights, and
there is not the faintest hope of her recovery. Her dying deposition
accuses Mrs. Strangemore with the crime, and her testimony is strangely
supported by the fact that a letter, addressed to Mrs. Strangemore and
written by her husband, was found in Mrs. St. Alban’s room, where the
jealous wife had most probably dropped it in making her hasty escape.
The whole affair is extremely distressing. All the parties belong to
the best society, and the crime of the jealous wife has covered with
ignominy the name of a fine old family of which she is the last living
descendant. It is said that some members of her household will not
believe in her guilt, but all the evidence is against her, and her
mysterious, unexplained absence of itself is a tacit admission of her
sin. Vigorous search is now being made for her, but as yet without
success.”
All Baltimore rang with that sensation. Many recalled the beautiful
fairy, coquettish Mrs. St. Alban, the bride of the rich manufacturer
Ralph St. Alban. He was twice as old as she was, having been her
father’s friend at college, and no one supposed that the poor
professor’s daughter was in love with her elderly spouse, or that she
grieved much when he suddenly died after three years of wedded bliss
and left her a wealthy and attractive young widow. She had been a flirt
of the most pronounced order, dreaded alike by plain wives and pretty
young girls, and now when this story of the tragedy appeared, many said
that they were not surprised at the fate that had befallen her. She had
always had too strong a _penchant_ for the sweethearts and husbands of
other women, and now Nemesis had overtaken her at last. There was a
great deal of silent but intense sympathy with the young wife who had
been goaded to desperation and crime by her cruel wrongs. More than
one woman who had been insolently rivaled by triumphant Sibyl thought
furtively within herself that the little coquette had only got what she
deserved.
While Rumor repeats with its thousand barbed tongues the story of the
tragedy at Selwyn Heights, let us follow the flight of hapless Nina,
reader mine, when she stole forth that night, wretched and despairing,
from the shelter of her beautiful home.
Nina had fled from Selwyn Heights with the idea of self-destruction
uppermost in her mind. She had brooded morbidly over her promise to
Mrs. Selwyn, until it assumed the proportions of a solemn oath in her
eyes. She believed that she was solemnly bound to ignore and sacrifice
herself, if in no other way the happiness of Talbot Strangemore could
be secured.
“I would sooner die by my own act than be divorced from him that he may
marry another woman. I could not live under such shame and ignominy as
that!” she cried, passionately, for she had come of a proud race, and
she inherited all of their pride and nobility. And then she clasped her
beautiful hands together and added, with bitter pathos:
“The sorrow would be as great as the shame, for, oh, I love him still,
in spite of all that has passed; I love him still, and I believe that
I shall always love him! I have worshipped him so truly for five long
years, have studied, read, practiced, all to improve myself for his
sake, that it would be impossible now to live and look on him as the
husband of another woman. It would be easier to die!”
And so she had gone away, leaving behind her a pathetic little note,
whose incoherent sentences only made another terrible link against her
in the evidence that convicted her of a fearful sin.
“My husband,” she wrote, and a great burning tear splashed on the word,
and almost blotted it out; “I am going away out of your life forever! I
know all now, and I take the only way I can think of to free you from
the fetters that chafe you so cruelly. May God forgive me for what I am
going to do to-night, for I am so maddened by my wrongs that I am not
accountable. But you will be free, you will be happy, and I ask no more
of fate. Do not blame me when they tell you of the awful deed I have
done. Only remember that I was driven mad by my wrongs, and that my
oath to your dying mother compelled me to the deed.”
To that strangely ambiguous note she signed her name in full, “Nina
Selwyn Strangemore,” and then she laid it conspicuously upon the toilet
table, and left the room, locking the door outside, and taking the key
away that her flight might not be discovered until morning.
“I shall be dead then--dead in the deep sea, or perhaps the cold waves
will cast me back upon the sands, and he will behold my dead face and
rejoice that he is free to marry his beloved Sibyl,” she said and she
went on steadily to the place where day after day she and Lion had
waited for the ship that would bring Talbot home. She had a fancy that
on that spot where she had stood so often she would seek her death.
How dark was the night, how dark the sea! No one saw the slender
black-clad figure stealing along the shore going to her death.
“Mad from life’s history,
Glad to death’s mystery.”
Behind her on the tall heights stood her stately home, the goodly
inheritance her father had left his child. She looked back just once at
its gloomy towers with a farewell on her lips.
“It will belong to Talbot now--Talbot and his blue-eyed love,” she
murmured, and with a prayer to heaven for peace and pardon she sprang
desperately into the cold, black water.
CHAPTER XVII.
SIBYL’S ACCUSATION.
Something like a blind horror filled Talbot Strangemore’s heart as Mrs.
St. Alban’s blighting accusation of his wife fell upon his ears. He
staggered back from her side with a cry that was almost like the wail
of a lost soul, and passed his hand before his eyes in a bewildered
way, then turning to her again, he exclaimed in hoarse tones of anguish:
“Sibyl, you know not what you say! You have made a terrible mistake! My
wife is innocent of the guilt with which you charge her!”
And Miss Drusilla, who had heard all with a horror equal to his own,
echoed, fiercely:
“She is innocent! Woman, how dare you charge our little Nina with such
a fearful sin? The angels in Heaven are not more guiltless of that sin
than she!”
And Sibyl St. Alban, inwardly full of malicious triumph, lifted her
heavy eyes and answered in a voice that sounded faint and far away
like a dying tone:
“If she is innocent why is she not here? Why, oh, why, has she--fled
from the scene of her crime?”
“She is ill,” Miss Drusilla answered, instantly, “she is perhaps unable
to come, but I will go find her, I will tell her what horrible things
you have said. Not but what you have treated her bad enough, Mrs. St.
Alban, for her to have felt like taking vengeance upon you, but she
would not have done this. I could sooner believe that some one of the
many enemies you must have made in your heartless life has followed
you here and tried to put an end to your flirtings and stealing other
women’s husbands!”
She did not know how keenly her shot told, for Sibyl had shut her eyes
and seemed to have relapsed into a deep swoon again, and just then the
hastily summoned physician entered the room, and the indignant spinster
went out to find Nina, followed closely by her nephew.
They found Nina’s door still locked. Miss Drusilla pounded, called,
raved in vain.
“I am afraid she has fallen into another swoon,” she said, looking
anxiously into Talbot’s white, almost rigid face, as he hovered by
her side. “I ought not to have left her alone, but she was so anxious
to get me away, and I felt sure she would let Kitty stay with her all
night!”
“Indeed, then, Miss Drusilla, I almost went down upon my knees to her
but she would not have me. She sent me away in spite of all I could
beg her to let me stay,” said Kitty’s voice right over her shoulder.
“Oh, me, my poor young mistress, what has happened to you all alone in
there? Perhaps you have been murdered, too!” she cried, bursting into a
storm of tears.
“Talbot, you will have to do something--cannot you break the door down?
She must not stay in there by herself!” exclaimed his aunt, displaying
a tenderness of heart he had not dreamed of under her sour exterior.
Maddened by excitement he threw himself against the door. He did not
know that he was so strong, but the lock yielded to the mighty pressure
and burst from the door. It flew wide open, and they all tumbled
pell-mell into the spacious apartment, the snowy, lace-draped bower of
maiden innocence where Nina nightly pillowed her golden head.
The fire had burned into ashes, the lamp flickered dimly on the toilet
table. Kitty ran to the bed that stood like a great drift of new
fallen snow in a corner of the room, and drew back the voluminous lace
draperies.
“Oh, Miss Nina, darling!” she cried.
Talbot waited at the door, too chivalrous to follow them into the
sanctuary Nina had forbidden him, but Miss Drusilla was just behind
Kitty, and a cry of dismay escaped her: “Oh, oh, oh!”
For the great mound of whiteness, the silken coverlet, the embroidered
pillows, were smooth and empty, no golden head rested there, no slender
maidenly form. Nina was gone! Kitty dived into the dressing-room, the
boudoir, the bath room--all in vain.
“Oh, Miss Nina, my darling, where are you?” cried the poor girl,
beginning to sob with fear and excitement, and she ran to the
dressing-table in her flurry and began to shake the perfume boxes
aimlessly as if her missing mistress might, perchance, be hidden there.
And so in a minute she came upon the note.
“It is mine,” cried Talbot Strangemore, taking it from her hand with a
swift, terrible throb of the heart.
By this time several people had followed them into the room. They
watched him curiously as he tore open the note. They never forgot the
cry of anguish and despair that thrilled over his lips as he read it.
“What is it?” cried Miss Drusilla. “What is it?” cried every one
crowding around him, but he crushed it in his hand and turned upon them
like some fierce, wounded creature at bay.
“No one shall ever see, no one shall ever know,” he answered, with a
ring of strange defiance in his voice, and lifting his arm, he thrust
the crumpled note into the flame of the lamp, and held it aloft until
it shriveled into ashes. The flames burned his hand, but not so deeply
as the words had burned themselves into his heart.
And then, strong man as he was, the horrors of this awful night
overcame him. For a moment he staggered dizzily, then fell like a
log to the floor and lay there for long minutes wrapped in merciful
unconsciousness of his misery.
“He’s dead--Mr. Strangemore’s dead, and, oh, where is my young
mistress?” cried Kitty, wildly weeping and bewailing, her honest heart
nearly broken with sorrow.
But Miss Drusilla only looked grimmer and sourer than ever.
“He’s not dead, but it might be better if he were,” she said. “I wish
indeed he had died long ago, before he and his mother brought all this
trouble on poor Nina Selwyn! Poor child, I expect she’s run away, but I
know she never hurt that beautiful fiend in there! Dear girl, she would
not have harmed a worm! She has run away from her own misery, that’s
all. She’s innocent, poor pretty Nina, as innocent as a lamb!”
“I’d stake my life on that!” sobbed Kitty, and Miss Drusilla suddenly
felt a soft hand touch her arm, and Virgie Mason said, with streaming
eyes, “I believe she’s innocent, too--as innocent as an angel!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
RESCUED.
“Fate is above us all,” has been aptly written by the poet. Our hapless
young heroine found it true in her own case.
It was not destined that the spark of her life should go out in the
black waters into which she had hurled herself in a very desperation of
despair.
In her excitement she had not observed that Marmaduke Cameron’s yacht,
the Sea Bird, lay at anchor near the spot where she had sprung into the
water. But it was there, and through the gloom and darkness a pair of
horrified eyes had witnessed from the deck her desperate plunge into
the sea.
Rendered unconscious by the shock of her rapid descent into the deep,
cold waves, Nina’s body rose to the surface again. In the meantime a
little boat had been hastily lowered from the yacht and a man had gone
to her assistance. When she was about sinking again into the water
friendly hands reached out to save her, she was drawn into the little
boat and thence conveyed to the yacht.
We will leave her there a little while and look forward a few hours in
the progress of our story.
To do so we must give our readers a peep into the interior of a
charming little birds’-nest of a cottage in the city of Baltimore.
It is early hours for calling, for the gray dawn-light of the new day
is just beginning to glimmer in the east, but our hostess is not a
fashionable lady. She is just a darling little busy bee who rises with
the sun and whatsoever her hand findeth to do does it with all her
might.
So, peeping into her pretty, simple chamber, we find her already up and
dressed and drawing back the curtains to admit the cold, gray light of
the new day, while she murmurs to herself with a pleased smile on her
gentle womanly face:
“I shall have a whole long day to myself while Arthur is away, and
I shall not do one bit of cooking, I shall just lunch on bread and
cheese, and I can do ever-so-much sewing for baby if she will only be
good and lie in her cradle!”
And even as she utters the words she is startled by the sound of
wheels, grating
“Low on the sand and loud on the stone,”
--wheels that stop deliberately before her very door.
She gives a little, startled exclamation, pushes up the sash, throws
open the blind, and looks out.
It is a small, simple brougham with a pretty bay horse that greets her
sight, but her gentle face grows radiant with pleasure, and forgetting
her self-gratulations a moment ago, she cries out joyously:
“It is Arthur, home before I expected him. Oh, how glad I am!” and she
flies down the steps two at a time to open the door.
Her big gray eyes grow round and bright with dismay and wonder as
she sees her tall, strong husband alighting from his brougham with a
drooping black-robed figure in his arms.
“Oh, Doctor, you have brought a patient home,” she exclaims, holding
the door wide for him to enter with his burden.
“Yes,” he answers. “Have you a fire any where in the house, Minnie?”
She answers “Yes,” and leads the way to her own room, where every thing
is in dainty order, the baby sleeping sweetly in its cradle, and a
bright fire burning in the polished bars of the grate.
Doctor Fielding advanced without the least hesitation and laid the
motionless form he carried down upon the smooth white bed. Then he
stooped and pressed a tender kiss on his wife’s lips as he said, fondly:
“You and baby have been well, Minnie?”
“Oh, yes, thank you, but we have missed you sadly. We did not expect
you home so soon.”
“I had good reason for coming,” he replied, gravely, and he bent down
and gently removed the close dark hood that completely hid the face of
his mysterious patient. As he did so a mass of damp golden hair fell
in disheveled tresses over the pillow, and a pallid, lovely face was
revealed, with delicately chiseled features, straight dark brows, and
fringed black lashes lying heavily against a marble cheek.
A cry burst from Mrs. Fielding’s lips:
“It is Nina Strangemore! Oh, Arthur, what does it mean? Do not tell me
she is dead!”
CHAPTER XIX.
WITH FRIENDS.
Doctor Fielding turned his kind, grave eyes upon the frightened face of
his pretty wife and shook his head.
“No, she is not dead, Minnie, but I shall have to reserve all
explanations until we have resuscitated her,” he said. “She is in a
deep swoon now, and before we try to revive her I want you to bring
some of your warm, dry garments and put them upon her. You see she is
quite damp now. She has been in the water.”
“In the water--oh, dear!” Minnie Fielding cried, with a shiver.
“I will go and light a fire in the kitchen while you change your
patient,” said her husband. “I daresay Mrs. Strangemore will need a cup
of warm coffee when she revives.”
“And I have been so lazy I have not made a drop this morning,” Mrs.
Fielding cried, penitently.
“Of course not--it is much too early for breakfast yet, but I will see
about the coffee, dear, while you attend to your friend.”
He slipped on a short gray dressing-gown and went out. Mrs. Fielding
went about the task he had set her with tearful alacrity, pausing now
and then to drop a kiss on the pale cheeks of the unconscious girl.
“Oh, my dear little pupil, my sweet Nina, what has happened to you?”
she cried, sorrowfully, as she buttoned up her own pretty blue
dressing-gown upon the slim, girlish figure.
Something in the sorrowful, tender words must have gone straight
through the sealed consciousness of Nina for she stirred faintly and
opened her eyes. Their dark wondering gaze fell on Mrs. Fielding’s
tender tearful face.
“Nina, my darling little girl,” she repeated, fondly, and chafing the
cold little hands in both her own, “Oh, my little pupil, how glad I am
to see you again. I have wished so often that you would come and see
me in my humble, happy little home, and now my hope is fulfilled!”
The dazed expression vanished out of the girl’s eyes, and full
consciousness came into them--full consciousness of her sorrow. She
could not answer the loving words of her old teacher. She looked
back at her mutely with big, heavy dark eyes circled by wide, purple
shadows, and full of hopeless misery.
Then for the first time it dawned on Mrs. Fielding that her old pupil
had come to her in sorrow and misery, not in joyful greeting. Those
dark eyes so full of despair told their own story. All the agony of a
breaking heart was in them.
The kind hearted lady uttered a cry of blended sympathy and sorrow,
and threw her arms around the passive figure, laying the golden head
against her shoulder.
“Do not speak one word to me, darling, if you do not choose,” she said,
“I see that you are in trouble and sorrow, and I am, oh, so sorry for
you!”
Doctor Fielding coming in presently, found them thus, but he did
not like the hard, cold misery of Nina’s face, lighted by the large
suffering black eyes. Her speechless calm, her stony endurance seemed
more terrible than tears.
He went to the crib to kiss his sleeping child, and the babe stirred
and awoke. He took it carefully in his arms and carried it to Nina.
“This is our little daughter--just two months old--Mrs. Strangemore,”
he said, “I hope you will kiss the little stranger, for Minnie has
named her Nina for the sake of the love she had for you.”
Nina gazed with strange, wild eyes at the sweet, pink face a moment,
then she stooped and pressed her lips to her little namesake’s cheeks.
Two great burning tears splashed on the child’s face as she did so,
and when she lifted her head it was to break into a tempest of bitter
weeping which dismayed Minnie, but at which her husband gazed in silent
satisfaction.
“Let her weep. It is better for her,” he said, under his breath, and
he carried the baby out of the room, and left Minnie alone with the
mourner.
She followed him presently with a sad, perplexed face, and took the
fretful babe from his arms.
“She has sobbed herself to sleep without saying a word. Oh, Arthur,
what has happened to the poor child?”
“Indeed, Minnie, I do not know,” he answered, “But I think she must
have had some terrible trouble greater than she could bear, for last
night I rescued her from a suicide’s grave in the deep sea.”
A cry of terror came from the lips of the happy young wife as she
pressed her infant in her arms.
CHAPTER XX.
THE FIELDINGS.
“A suicide’s grave! Oh, how terrible!” she cried, with blanched face
and trembling hands.
“I will tell you all I know about it,” said her husband. “I went on Mr.
Cameron’s yacht as I promised, to look after the health of my willful
patient Mr. Mason who accompanied his sister. Pretty soon I found
out several things. One was that your old pupil’s husband, Talbot
Strangemore, had returned to his home at Selwyn Heights the day before.”
“Talbot Strangemore, home at last! Oh, how pleased, how happy Nina must
have been at his return,” exclaimed Mrs. Fielding.
Doctor Fielding looked rather cynical, but he continued:
“I learned also that Mr. Cameron’s party was bound for Selwyn Heights
to visit the Strangemores.”
“So soon? But I should have thought that Nina would have liked to have
her husband all to herself just at first, after his long absence!”
exclaimed the little woman.
“Something of the same feeling was in my own mind,” replied her
husband. “Mr. Cameron invited me to accompany them to the Heights,
but although I knew that I would be sure of a welcome from your old
pupil, I declined his courtesy. It seemed to me like an unwarrantable
intrusion upon the husband and wife in the first hours of their
reunion.”
“Yes, for although they have been married five years, this is really
their honey-moon. Talbot Strangemore is a bride-groom, Nina a bride,”
assented his wife.
“So I decided to remain on the yacht as my patient seemed recovering
very fast from his sudden attack of indisposition,” continued the
doctor. “They all went away to Selwyn Heights without me, I spent a day
and night very pleasantly with my books and the captain of the yacht.
The next night I grew rather restless, thinking of you and baby alone
and lonely at home, and I heartily wished that Mr. Mason would dismiss
me from attendance upon him that I might return to you.”
Minnie nestled nearer to his side to kiss his bearded cheek fondly in
return for his tender words.
“I talked to the captain until quite late last night, then I went on
deck to smoke before retiring. I suppose it was quite midnight then. I
walked up and down and gazed at the lights gleaming from the windows of
Selwyn Heights, far away on its high bluff, and I thought of the sweet
young mistress of the place whom my little wife loved so dearly, and I
hoped in my heart that she was as happy with her husband as you and I
are, my darling.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Fielding answered, with a sigh of infinite content.
“I do not know what it was that made me suddenly turn my eyes from
the bluff to the shore,” he continued, “But it is certain that some
influence in the air, some unaccountable premonition, moved me to do
so. Then all in a flash as it seemed to my startled senses, Minnie, I
beheld a slight, dark figure spring from the shore and fall into the
water with a loud, terrible splash. Then it disappeared an instant in
the depths of the waves.”
Mrs. Fielding shuddered through all her plump, pretty frame.
“Oh, poor Nina!” she cried, with the tears raining down her cheeks, and
Doctor Fielding after a thoughtful pause again resumed his story: “I
gave a cry of alarm that brought Captain Travers rushing to my side. We
immediately lowered a little boat from the side of the yacht and went
to the rescue of the would-be suicide. As she came back to the surface
from her terrible plunge I seized her skirts and drew her into the
boat. She was already unconscious but not dead. We took her on board
the yacht, and what was my horror and amaze when I discovered in that
desperate creature the lovely and wealthy Mrs. Strangemore, your former
pupil and friend.”
Mrs. Fielding rocking her baby on her bosom, could only murmur over and
over:
“Oh, poor little Nina, poor little Nina!”
“I did not tell the captain that she was Mrs. Strangemore,” continued
the doctor. “Some inward consciousness warned me not to do so. But I
told him that she was a friend of my wife, and that I would be glad if
I could bring her home to you. He was very kind. I did all that I could
to resuscitate her, and having restored her to partial animation, I put
her in the little boat which he kindly placed at my disposal and myself
rowed her to Baltimore to give her the tender care of her old friend. I
felt sure that something very dreadful must have driven her from Selwyn
Heights, and I did not think it would be wise to take her back there
until we knew more.”
“You did right, but, oh, Arthur, it is a three hours row from Selwyn
Heights to Baltimore. How weary you must be!” she cried.
He held up his blistered palms with a smile.
“It was hard work,” he said. “My hands are unused to the oar since my
college days. But I did not mind it for the sake of the girl you loved
so well, Minnie!”
“You darling!” she exclaimed.
* * * * *
Nina’s slumber was a long and deep one. She had scarcely slept an hour
since her husband’s home-coming, and now since her reckless attempt at
suicide exhausted nature could bear no more. Wearily, heavily, almost
like one in a state of coma, she lay and slumbered, the pale, pale
face, with the dark lashes lying heavily against her cheeks, looking
death-like in its wanness, while the breath was scarcely perceptible as
it fluttered over her lips. The doctor and his wife stole in and out
now and then to look at her, but they were careful not to disturb her,
and the little one was carried to a distant room that its cries might
not awake her.
Doctor Fielding hoped much from that long, saving sleep.
“She will awaken rested and refreshed, and although very weak from her
long, unbroken fast, she will be in a better frame of mind, and I have
no doubt that she will repent of the desperate deed she attempted last
night,” he said.
Meanwhile the chilly dawn had broken and one of the most inclement days
of blustering March had set in. It rained, hailed, snowed, by turns,
and the cold was intense.
CHAPTER XXI.
“MAD FROM LIFE’S HISTORY.”
The short, wintry day passed away. Mrs. Fielding, intent on the
household tasks which she accomplished without the aid of a servant,
was obliged to leave her patient alone many times, but on each occasion
when she tip-toed back Nina still lay wrapped in that deep, lethargic
sleep.
“I almost wish she would awaken--her sleep seems almost as deep as
death,” murmured the little woman over and over to herself.
But when Nina wakened at last she was all alone in the pretty cheerful
chamber, with its nameless air of comfort and refinement.
The lamp burned dimly under its clear, white shade, the fire leaped and
glowed in the grate. Nina lay still for some moments gazing around her
with large, dark, wondering eyes.
“Where am I?” she asked herself, vaguely, and the answer to her
question came in a sudden rush of memory. She gave a shiver of horror
and sprang upright in the bed.
“I remember now that I saw Doctor Fielding and his wife, my dear old
teacher, in this room some time ago,” she thought. “But how came I
here? Who took me out of the water, and how dared they do it, for I
cannot, I will not endure my life. I have lost my husband whom I loved
so dearly, and I cannot bear my life without him!”
She went to the window, drew back the crimson curtain, and looked down
into the street. She saw that she was in a large city. There was a
wide brick pavement under the window, and the flaring light of the gas
lamps at the corners showed her wild drifts of whirling sleet and snow.
It was a wild and terrible night. The keen, sharp wind tore fiercely
around the corners, banging loose window shutters, and shrieking loudly
as it held high carnival abroad. The streets were coated with sleet
that shone with diamond brightness in the light. Nina gazed at it all
with dull mechanical eyes. Her thoughts were of other things.
Doctor Fielding had been mistaken in his thought that she would repent
her mad attempt at self destruction. He had not known the terrible
motive power that urged her onward.
“I have been foiled once,” she murmured, “And so I have it all to
do over again. I promised to give him all my love and all my life,
and that meant I think that I must sacrifice my life for him if need
be. And there is no other way, none! I never heard of a Selwyn being
divorced. They could not have borne it. There is too much pride in the
race. No, there is only one way for Talbot Strangemore to find his
happiness, and that is by walking across my grave!”
Near the fire spread open over some chairs to dry, was the dark hood
and cloak she had worn last night. Nina deliberately put them on
again, opened the door and looked out into the narrow little entry.
She saw and heard no one. Mrs. Fielding was in the kitchen keeping
an appetizing supper warm for her guest when she should wake. Doctor
Fielding had stepped out to see a patient in the neighborhood. The girl
ran with light feet along the entry to the street door. The good doctor
had carelessly left it unlocked. She opened it softly. In a minute more
she was out in the night and the storm alone.
Blown hither and thither by the blinding storm, Nina pursued her way
along the almost deserted streets. She came at last to a corner where
the flaring lights, blue, red and green, of a drug-store, streamed
athwart the stormy night. Without a moment’s hesitation, she ran into
the store.
“A phial of laudanum, please,” she said to the sleepy clerk who stared
in amazement at his beautiful unexpected customer, and she handed him a
silver coin she had taken from a little pocket in her cloak.
“We do not sell poisons without a physician’s prescription,” he had
said to her at first, then yielded and gave her the phial because in
some adroit way she had conveyed to him the impression that she wished
it to relieve a tooth-ache.
She caught it eagerly from his hand, and madly drained the last drop,
then dashed wildly from the place. The horrified clerk ran after her,
but the beautiful desperate girl had already disappeared from his sight
like a shadow among the shadows of the inclement night.
CHAPTER XXII.
REMORSE.
The world of fashiondom that had been so shocked and astonished at the
news from Selwyn Heights of the attempted murder of Mrs. St. Alban had
another sensation a few days later when an item quite as startling as
the first appeared in the newspapers.
“Death in the streets. A mysterious suicide. Night before last the
drug-clerk at the store of Physic & Co. on B. street was very much
startled at a late hour by the entrance of a beautiful young girl who
asked for some laudanum for the tooth-ache. As she appeared to be
suffering acute pain he complied with her request, but was horrified
when he beheld her pause on the threshold, pull the stopper from
the phial, and drain the last drop of the deadly narcotic poison.
He immediately ran after her, but she rushed into the street and
in a moment had entirely disappeared from sight. Mr. Meldrum, the
clerk, gave the alarm to a passing policeman, but he failed to trace
the mysterious suicide, and up to this date her body has not been
recovered, although it is believed that she must surely have succeeded
in her fell design of self-destruction. A clue to her identity is
afforded in the fact that she dropped her handkerchief upon the floor
of the shop where the clerk found it lying after she was gone. The
perfumed bit of lace and embroidery was marked in the corner with
the name Nina Strangemore. It is believed without a doubt that she
was the desperate young wife who fled from Selwyn Heights after the
attempted murder of her rival, Mrs. St. Alban. Her description tallies
exactly with that of the missing Mrs. Strangemore, who was said to be
brilliantly lovely, a dark-eyed blonde with rich golden hair, and a
skin like lillies and roses. Her mournful suicide from remorse and
despair furnishes the finale to her sad and romantic story of love,
jealousy and revenge.”
What a passion of remorse, of horror, and despair, swept over Talbot
Strangemore’s heart as he unfolded his morning paper still damp from
the press, and read that dreadful paragraph. He threw the paper to his
aunt without a word, and rising unsteadily from his chair at breakfast,
went away to his room to lock himself in with that guilty conscience
that rose up and called him to his face “Murderer!”
“She is dead, my fair young wife whom I neglected so long, and wronged
so cruelly, and it was I that drove her to her death! I am her
murderer. It was my folly and sin that broke her heart and sent her
away from me in despair. I am morally guilty of her death, and I wish
that the heavens would fall upon me and crush me out of my loathed
existence!” he groaned, in a paroxysm of despair.
He was full of the bitterest self-shame and self-reproach. He knew
that he had betrayed his mother’s trust. She had given him Nina so
gladly, so confidingly, and he had forgotten the child who was his
wife--forgotten and neglected her, and given the heart that belonged
to her to another woman. And how fair, how lovely, how lovable she
had been, this neglected bride of his? Keen arrows of remorse and
self-reproach quivered through his heart as he realized all that he
had done, all that he had brought about by his inexcusable folly and
madness.
Under the same roof with himself, wounded, dying, perhaps, lay the
woman who had so fatally beguiled him with her blue eyes and honeyed
smiles. His mad and foolish infatuation for her was over. It had burned
itself to ashes as by a flash of lightning in the instant when he had
looked into his wife’s dark eyes and felt, with a throb of passionate
joy, that that beautiful creature belonged to him by the nearest,
dearest tie upon earth, his
“Other dearer life in life.”
Sibyl St. Alban lay at the point of death. He was sincerely sorry for
her, but he could not believe that harm had reached her at the hands
of Nina. He thought of the beautiful, dimpled white hands with their
slender, taper fingers and rosy palms, and he could not believe that
Sibyl’s blood was upon them. They were not strong enough nor cruel
enough to have driven that dagger home in the white breast of her rival.
“I cannot, I will not think that she is guilty,” he had said, over and
over to himself. “I must believe that she is innocent in spite of all
the damning evidence in support of Sibyl’s accusation. Yes, although
Nina declared to her face that she hated her, that she would never
forgive her for what she had done, and prayed God to punish her for her
sin, I will believe that her young soul is pure and unstained. I will
try to find out how my letter to Nina came to be in Mrs. St. Alban’s
room. I am sure my wife did not drop it there. Perhaps she sent it
back to me in her righteous scorn and it fell into Sibyl’s hands, who
knows? I could sooner believe that than the other! I have wronged my
fair young wife enough already, and I will be loyal to her now. I will
not even take her own terrible letter with its dreadful admissions
as evidence against her. I could sooner think that in her frenzy of
despair and humiliation she knew not what she was writing. Oh, my
darling, if I only knew where to find you, how glad I would be, for
something tells me that you will yet belong to me really and truly, and
that we will yet be very happy together.”
All these things he had said over to himself many times since Nina’s
flitting that awful night, and with the sanguine spirit of a young man,
he had hoped for Nina’s return to him, had hoped that all might yet be
well, and that he might make her so happy that she would forget the sad
and unhappy past.
But that terrible paragraph he had just read in the paper struck down
at one fell blow the rose-colored fabric of his hopes and dreams. She
was dead, the beautiful, dark-eyed maiden who had been his wife in name
only for five long years that he had spent in restless wanderings in
foreign lands, chafing like a fool and a madman against the bondage
that held him. In the dark and terrible hour that came to him now he
cursed himself bitterly for his folly and his sin that had cost him so
dear. He had been in sight of an earthly heaven, and had lost it by his
willful blindness.
While he raved alone in his madness some one came to tell him that
Sibyl St. Alban had that moment died.
CHAPTER XXIII.
COMPAGNONS DU VOYAGE.
And so Talbot Strangemore’s home-coming, long-deferred, had ended in a
tragedy. The two women who had loved him were both dead. Both had died
wretched and tragical deaths, and he felt dimly in his soul that he was
to blame for it all.
Only a few days ago he had deemed himself wretched because he was bound
to one woman while loving another one. What a mockery those foolish
pangs seemed to him now in the light of the real grief and deep remorse
that came to him when he realized that Sibyl St. Alban and Nina, his
wife, had both gone out of the world in their youth and beauty for his
sake.
He had a conscience although it had spoken but seldom in the years
while he had been away, neglecting his simple child-bride, and hating
the bonds that held them together. It wakened to active life now and
almost maddened him with its stinging reproaches and accusations.
It appeared to him now as if his Aunt Drusilla, Kitty, his dead wife’s
maid, and the servants generally, at Selwyn Heights, hated the very
sight of him. The story of Nina’s wrongs and sorrows had become known
to all, and every one seemed to resent his part in it. Cold looks and
averted faces met him everywhere. No one felt any kindness or pity for
the fickle husband whose folly had driven the fair young mistress of
Selwyn Heights to her dreadful death.
“I cannot bear my life here. I shall go mad with shame and sorrow and
remorse, if I go on like this,” he said to Miss Strangemore soon. “Can
you bear it to stay here and let me go abroad again?”
She answered, “yes,” and he took her at her word. The day after Mrs.
St. Alban’s funeral he quitted Selwyn Heights, saying to himself that
he would never return there, never claim the place as his, although,
since Nina’s death there was no owner for it but him. Miss Drusilla’s
broad hints that his mother had married him to Nina from mercenary
motives still rankled bitterly in his heart. He would show her that
she was mistaken. He would never touch one penny of all the vast Selwyn
wealth. His own narrow income should suffice for his wanderings.
He went to Baltimore and had an interview with the drug clerk who had
sold Nina the fatal poison. When he left him he had not a doubt that
it was his wife who had thus recklessly precipitated herself into
eternity. He carried with him in his exile the dainty handkerchief
that bore her name. It lay always upon his breast. But it brought him
no peace. Rather it was like the shirt of mail that Nessus wore for an
everlasting torture.
* * * * *
“I will go abroad with you, Strangemore, if you will have my company,”
said Oswald Ferris.
He had been one of Duke Cameron’s yachting friends, and later one of
the guests at Selwyn Heights, a tall, dark, taciturn man whom every
one voted a good fellow, but no one quite understood. Duke Cameron had
admired him for his handsome looks and his superior intellect, but the
ladies had declared that they were afraid of him, although they never
could explain the reason why.
“It is just because”--Virgie Mason would say, vaguely, and with this
highly satisfactory reason the subject would fall through.
Talbot Strangemore stared in surprise at the offer of Ferris.
“I warn you that I shall be a dull companion,” he said, hoarsely, “I am
steeped to the lips in misery.”
“We shall be companions in despair then,” Oswald Ferris answered,
drawing his heavy brows darkly together, “I too am going abroad to seek
Nepenthe from maddening memory.”
“_You!_”
They gazed at each other a moment, then Ferris said, with bitter
emphasis:
“Yes, even I! Have you never guessed my painful secret, Strangemore?
I, too, loved Sibyl St. Alban. She, the cruel little coquette, made a
victim of me, then threw me aside like a broken toy, when she met you.
We are fellow-companions in misery. I know she was fickle, light, and
unworthy, yet since she died I seem to be going mad, I shall lose my
senses unless I find
“Respite, respite, and Nepenthe
From my memories of Lenore.”
So the two men with their shadowed lives sailed away from the American
shores together.
CHAPTER XXIV.
“SHE IS DEAD TO ALL.”
“My little Nina, my sweet pupil, a murderess! No, no, never! I cannot
believe it. That woman spoke falsely,” Mrs. Fielding cried, turning her
white, horror-struck face upon her husband.
She held in her hand the paper with the paragraph relating to the
murder at Selwyn Heights. Her face was white with terror, and her voice
shook as she uttered her vehement disclaimer to the doctor.
“The case looks very dark against her,” he said, gravely, as he took
the paper from her hand, and again ran his eyes hurriedly over it.
It was the morning after Nina had run away from the care of her kind
friends, and the daily paper had brought the news of the tragical
occurrence at Selwyn Heights. They had wondered much what had happened
to Nina to drive her from her home in despair, and now they held the
key to the mystery. Love and jealousy had been at the bottom of it as
they are at the bottom of most of the tragedies of life.
“I will never believe that my sweet Nina is guilty of the murder,” Mrs.
Fielding cried, loyally. “The deed was committed after she went away
that night. I will go and show her this paper. I know she will be able
to vindicate herself.”
She rose hurriedly from the breakfast table and was leaving the room,
but her husband intercepted her.
“No, dear,” he said, “you must not do so. The consequence of such a
procedure in my patient’s weak state would be most disastrous. If your
faith in your friend’s innocence is so strong prove your loyalty by
destroying that paper and never breathing to her one word of what you
know.”
Mrs. Fielding gazed at him in mute dismay for a moment, and then she
threw the paper into the fire, saying simply:
“I believe in Nina’s innocence just as firmly as I do in God and the
angels, and I will do just as you say. I will never let her know that I
have heard the things that bad and wicked people are saying about her.”
“That will be best,” he said, and in their pity and tenderness over
the stricken young wife they kept their knowledge to themselves, and
Nina remained blindly ignorant of the terrible accusation and the awful
peril that remained suspended like a sword over her head.
The next day the Fielding’s morning paper, chronicled the attempted
suicide of Nina at the drug-store. They read it with dismay.
“She is now dead to her husband and to all the world should she choose
to remain so,” the good physician said, gravely, to his wife.
For Doctor Fielding had again become the instrument selected by
Providence to snatch the wretched and desperate young creature from a
reckless, self-sought death.
When Nina had stolen from his door in the storm and darkness of the
preceding night he had been on the opposite side of the street about
returning from his professional call, and having his eyes fixed on the
tiny, little cottage he called home he beheld a sight that momentarily
thrilled him with alarm and dread.
The front door had opened suddenly, and the bright light from the entry
lamp had streamed out into the night. The broad glare revealed the
slender graceful form of Nina poised on the threshold a moment, and in
the next instant the whole scene was blotted out by darkness as she
slammed the door behind her and hurried out into the street.
“Great heaven, she has escaped, and she will make another attempt at
self-destruction,” Doctor Fielding ejaculated, hoarsely, and he dashed
across the street in desperate pursuit.
“I can overtake her in a moment,” he thought confidently.
But in this he was mistaken. For one thing Nina had the start of him,
and in the second place he could scarcely preserve his footing on the
pavement which was like a sheet of ice with the sleet and snow that
had been steadily coming down all day and freezing as it fell.
Making his best efforts to effect a swift transit over terra firma he
found that he was not gaining in the least and that he could scarcely
keep the flitting figure in sight as it hurried on beneath the glare of
the gaslights.
When she was more than a block ahead of him he saw her disappear into
the drug-store whose ruddy colored lights streamed out athwart the
gloomy darkness of the night.
He instantly divined her terrible purpose, and with horror-thrilled
pulses redoubled his efforts to overtake her. Though his feet
threatened to fly from beneath him every moment, he fairly flew over
the pavement. He was almost abreast with the drug-store when Nina
reappeared in the lurid light of the door-way, drained the phial of
laudanum to the last drop, and flashed out and on though the darkness.
He gave a single downward glance at the phial lying label upward, with
the staring skull and cross-bones and the black letters laudanum, then
he rushed after her in desperate pursuit.
She, poor child, fainting with the horror of what she had done, and
believing that death would overtake her in a few moments, had slipped
into a secluded alley-way, and crouched down in a heap, waiting
despairingly for the end, with a murmured prayer on her trembling lips:
“Dear papa, dear mamma, and dear Lord, pardon me for what I have done!”
And so Doctor Fielding found her.
There was no time to be lost, and he uttered no word, raised no alarm.
He had a small case of medicine and instruments in his pocket. He set
to work then and there to relieve his patient of the deadly drug she
had swallowed. The intense cold was a help rather than a hindrance to
his efforts, and in a short time he was successful. She was dumb and
passive in his hands, feeling that fate was too strong for her.
No one passed, no one ever dreamed that in that narrow alley-way,
on that wild March night, Death had been cheated of his prey, and
presently Doctor Fielding drew Nina’s hand through his arm and led her
quietly home again almost before his wife had missed her.
CHAPTER XXV.
POVERTY.
After those exciting days and nights Nina fell into a low, nervous
fever. In the meantime Sibyl St. Alban had died and Talbot Strangemore
had gone back to Europe. The tender-hearted Fieldings were in despair.
They did not know what to do.
“Ought we to let her husband know that she is alive?” they had asked
each other many times, and one terrible answer had always stared them
in the face:
“She is accused of the murder of Mrs. St. Alban. If the officers of the
law knew where to find her she would be thrown into prison and tried
for her life!”
That terrible thought held them back from what seemed to be their duty
to Talbot Strangemore. Nina was safe with them now, and dead to all the
world beside. Full of fears and doubts and sorrow they decided to keep
her presence with them a secret still until she grew well and strong
again. Then Doctor Fielding said she should do as she pleased about the
matter and decide her own future. If she chose to remain dead to her
old life no one could greatly blame her.
But there were days and nights when Mrs. Fielding, frightened and
nervous, was almost tempted to send for Miss Drusilla and confide her
strange secret to the ears of the old lady, Nina lay so low and ill,
so perilously near the borders of the death for which she longed, that
she grew frightened. She was afraid that the girl would die indeed, and
her heart ached and her tears fell often while she gazed at the fragile
form and wan, white face, with the dark eyes looking so wild and wide
and dreary, as if she were so utterly wretched and undone.
In those long days and nights of sorrow and sickness, Nina always had
one reproach for Doctor Fielding. When he came and stood beside her
looking down at her with his kind, grave eyes, she would away say to
him with a pathetic sadness deeper than the wildest reproaches could
have seemed, “You should have let me die!”
“Should we not send for Miss Strangemore? She loves Nina, and she will
keep her secret,” the wife said one day when the girl seemed sinking
fast, and they had almost despaired of her recovery.
But she saw a shiver run over the wasted form, and the hollow dark eyes
flared wide open upon her face.
“No, no, no!” Nina muttered, in feverish displeasure, and after that
they spoke no more of it, but did their best for the poor sufferer and
prayerfully left the issues with God.
March waned, April came in with its soft showers and tenderer breezes,
and, contrary to all their expectations, Nina grew better. They knew
now that her dreary, darkened life would be spared to her, for although
she convalesced with painful slowness they saw that the improvement was
decided.
“She will live, but only God knows what she will do with her broken,
ruined life, for, oh, how empty the world will be to her without the
love of her husband,” sighed Mrs. Fielding, who was so happy in her
home, her husband and child, that she had a profound pity and sympathy
for less fortunate women than herself.
“I wish that we could take her to the sea-shore to recuperate her
exhausted energies,” Doctor Fielding said in May, for the wasted face
and the hollow dark eyes of the girl troubled his peace. He longed for
her to get well faster.
“And cannot we do so?” his wife asked, wistfully, for she, too, longed
to see the drooping, pining invalid grow well and strong again.
He flushed and sighed as though his poverty were a disgrace to his
manhood.
“I had as well cry for the moon,” he answered. “I am so poor, dear
little wife, and my income from my practice is so small that it barely
supports us, even with your strict economy and the toil of your little
hands over the weary routine of household tasks. Even the long illness
of that dear girl has been a heavy tax upon us, and it will take close
financiering to meet our expenses this year; so our greatest wish
cannot be gratified,” he added, little dreaming what terrible fruit his
kindly spoken and kindly meant words would bear in the near future.
CHAPTER XXVI.
I MUST HAVE MONEY.
Doctor Fielding had forgotten that the door of the room where he sat
with his wife was ajar, and that it opened into the pretty little
chamber where Nina was lying back listlessly with half-shut eyes in the
comfortable reclining chair he had procured for her. When he had gone
in a little while ago to speak to her she had been asleep, but now she
was broad awake, and every word of the conversation had reached her
ears.
She awoke suddenly to a fact that had never occurred to her mind before.
“The Fieldings are poor people, and I have been here two months, weakly
brooding over my troubles without giving a thought to the fact that I
am a burden and expense to them almost heavier than they can bear,”
she said to herself with lively compunction, although she might well
have been excused for her thoughtlessness. Having been reared in an
atmosphere of wealth and luxury, she had perhaps never given a thought
to the fact that there is so much want, misery and sorrow in the world,
all caused by the lack of money.
But her sensitive conscience, spurred into activity by the words she
had overheard, was on the alert now.
“I must go away from here and relieve these kind true friends of the
burden of my support, and I must try to reimburse them for the expense
I have been to them,” she decided.
But in a moment came the thought:
“Where shall I go?”
“Not back to Selwyn Heights,” and she shivered, “Not back to my
faithless, unloving husband, and my triumphant rival. They believe me
dead as I would have been but for Doctor Fielding. They may think so
still. I shall never intrude upon them. Doubtless they will be married
soon, and _she_ will reign in my old home, queen of the heart I could
not win although I was his wedded wife.”
With a smothered moan she rose and walked unsteadily across the room
to where her dark cloak hung upon a peg in the corner. She slipped her
hand into the pocket and drew out a little port-monnaie of pearl and
silver.
“I always had plenty of money in my purse,” she thought, “Perhaps I
have enough to give the Fieldings some now.”
She opened it and an exclamation of disappointment broke from her pale
lips.
There was only a five dollar bill and some loose change in it. She
remembered then that she had left home on so desperate a mission that
she had taken nothing with her. It was by the merest accident, and not
by design that the little purse had been in her pocket.
“Only five dollars, and I wanted to help them so much,” she sobbed,
bursting into babyish tears. It was the first time in her young life
that she had ever felt the need of money.
And while she stood there forlornly weeping she remembered that only
one day before Talbot Strangemore had come home she had put away
five hundred dollars in the secret bottom of her jewel casket for
safe-keeping.
“If I only had that five hundred dollars out of all the wealth I have
left behind me, how rich I would feel,” she murmured, “I would give
every penny to these noble people. We could go to the sea-shore then,
and it would do Mrs. Fielding and the baby as much good as it would me.”
She began to revolve all sorts of schemes in her mind for obtaining
possession of the money hidden in her jewel casket at Selwyn Heights.
“I believe that I could easily enter the house by night, obtain the
money, and slip away again unobserved,” she thought.
The fancy took possession of her mind. Perhaps there was blended with
it an undefined longing to know what Talbot and the rest of them
were doing now that they believed her dead and lost to them forever.
She persuaded herself that nothing could be easier than to go to
Selwyn Heights, get her money, and come away again, all without being
discovered.
“And I am compelled to have it,” she reasoned, “I intend to cast my
lot with the Fieldings henceforth, and I must have money to live upon
until I get strong enough to work for my daily bread.”
A faint smile crossed her lips at the thought of one of the Selwyns,
whose pride and wealth had descended to them through many generations,
working like a pauper for daily bread.
“But even that would not be so bad as what that dreadful woman talked
about so coolly,” Nina thought, with a lump in her throat, that hurt
her cruelly, “I could bear anything rather than the world should say
that Nina Selwyn was put away by her husband because he did not love
her. It is a shame to a woman to be divorced. I could not have borne
the disgrace of it. Talbot was cruelly hard and unkind to suggest it to
that woman!”
She was proud and sensitive. She had chosen death rather than the
public disgrace of the divorce she believed that Talbot intended to
have. She could not think of anything more terrible than that. If any
one had told her that a degradation even deeper awaited her, that
before long she would be convicted of a murder, that the shadow of the
gallows tree hung over her head, and that ere many months she would
feel the horrible rope of the hangman about her fair white throat, she
would never have lived to endure it, she would have fallen down dead
with the very horror of the thought.
But she did not dream of all that impended over her. She did not know
that her husband had gone abroad, that Sibyl St. Alban was dead, and
that she herself lay under the ban of murder. The Fieldings had kept
everything from her in the kindness of their hearts, waiting until she
grew strong enough to bear it.
So in utter ignorance of all that awaited her, of the tragedy that
loomed over her darkly, Nina went straight to her fate.
* * * * *
The next morning she was gone and Mrs. Fielding found a brief note upon
the pillow the tired head had been wont to press.
“Do not be alarmed about me, dear friends,” the poor sick girl had
written. “I am not going to make another effort at self destruction. I
am simply gone away upon an imperative matter of business, and I shall
return to you in a few hours never to leave you again if you will let
me stay with you. I have forever renounced home and name and husband,
and I desire that no one shall ever know that Nina Strangemore still
lives upon the cruel earth--no one at least except you two who have
been so good to me!”
CHAPTER XXVII.
BACK TO SELWYN HEIGHTS.
The great house on Selwyn Heights where that dreadful tragedy had so
lately been enacted loomed up dark and stern and stately in the soft
spring moonlight. The salty breath of the sea came up over the high
bluff and mingled with the perfume of flowers in the spacious terraced
grounds. In the great mansion everything was still and silent as the
spell of the midnight hour fell over all.
“Midnight was come, and every vital thing
With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest;
The beasts were still, the little birds that sing,
Now sweetly slept beside their mother’s breast.”
Miss Drusilla Strangemore, the grim guardian of Selwyn Heights in the
absence of its master, slumbered peacefully in her room, the domestics
had all retired hours ago. Surely no one could detect her now, thought
the fair young mistress of that stately home, as she stole along
through the dark, deserted halls, and entered her own especial chamber,
stealthily, like a thief in the night.
Blank darkness met her as she groped her way to the toilet table and
lighted one of the wax candles that always stood in the silver sconces
beside the long mirror. A pale, clear flame streamed athwart the
darkness, and showed her the dear familiar room looking so dainty and
home like, yet withal having such an air of loneliness and desertion
that Nina burst into quick tears of sympathy and sorrow for the girl
who had lived there so long with her happy love-dream only to have it
rudely dispelled at last.
“It seems as if it were some other girl and not me, little Nina Selwyn,
who bore all that cross of sorrow. I can scarcely realize that it was
really I, for since my long illness I seem to have grown years older
and graver,” she thought, as she wiped away her tears and looked
around her for her little jewel case.
There it stood in its old familiar place, and the little key was in her
purse. She hurriedly unlocked it, threw back the lid, and her treasures
of gold and precious stones lay revealed--diamonds and rubies and
pearls, emeralds, amethysts, cameos--all flashing back the light in
shimmering radiance. They were the accumulated treasures of the dead
and gone Selwyns, and she, the last descendant of that proud old race,
caught up a great broad neck-let of rubies that lay nearest her hand
and let it shine a moment in the light.
“They look like blood,” she cried, and dropped them back with a strange
thrill almost of fear.
“What if I should take some of these jewels of mine? They would make
the Fieldings rich. They would keep me from want all my life,” she
murmured.
But in a moment she put away the temptation firmly.
“No, I must not take them, even though they are really mine. They
might be missed some day, and an innocent person be suspected of the
larceny--my own faithful Kitty, perhaps! I will leave them all. They
will belong to my faithless husband now. Perhaps he will be heartless
enough, some day, to adorn my rival with them--the dainty beauty who
ruined my life,” she said, bitterly.
She laid all the glittering things upon the table, and lifted out the
false bottom of the box, whose secret was known only to herself. There,
on the soft satin cushion of the real bottom, lay the bank-notes she
had laid there nearly three months ago. She crammed them hastily into
her purse, and then rearranged the box and the jewels, locking it, and
taking away the key as before.
“Only five hundred dollars out of the millions my father left me!
Talbot may have all the rest!” she said, sadly, as she prepared to go.
But suddenly she gave a wild start of terror, and the candle she was
about to extinguish fell from her shaking hands to the floor, and left
her in total darkness, while she gasped in despair, for a pair of warm,
loving arms had been thrown around her, and the voice of her own dear
Kitty was saying in eager joy and triumph:
“Oh, Miss Nina, dear, darling child, so it is really yourself, and
not your ghost that walked by night as they said? Oh, my dear young
mistress, my poor wronged baby, why did you run away from us that awful
night?”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
ENTRAPPED.
In the thick darkness that wrapped them around, Nina made a convulsive
effort to tear herself away, but she was like a baby, indeed, in the
clasp of Kitty’s strong arms, and the fiercer her struggles the tighter
the maid held her.
“Oh, my dear young lady, what do you want to go away for?” she cried,
reproachfully. Haven’t you given us trouble enough already, running
away like you did, and us thinking you were dead by that dreadful
laudanum? And why did you do it, anyhow? Didn’t you know it would break
all our hearts to lose you, and you the last one of your race! Be
quiet, my lamb, my darling, for I shall not let you go again, oh, no,
no, never!”
“Let me go, Kitty! How dare you keep me against my will?” Nina cried,
sharply, making frantic efforts to escape from her captor. “Let me go,
and keep my secret for me, please! I went away because I was unhappy
here, and I drank the laudanum, too, but Doctor Fielding was so cruel
he would not let me die! But I must go away again to-night, and I shall
never come back to my old home! No one must ever know that I am alive,
Kitty!”
Significant silence followed on the part of Kitty. She held the frail,
weak girl tightly in the clasp of one arm, and with the other managed
to strike a light again. By its soft clear beams she gazed into Nina’s
face with dismay.
“Oh, my dear young lady, what have you been doing to yourself?” she
exclaimed, “You are all thin and pale, and your eyes like saucers!”
“I have been ill, Kitty, I have been very near death,” said Nina,
nestling her golden head wearily against the faithful creature’s breast
and ceasing her fitful, futile efforts at escape.
“Near death! I should think so indeed,” cried the maid, “You look like
a real ghost!”
Nina only sighed and clung closer to the maid. Oh, how good it seemed
to be back with her dear, kind Kitty again, after all she had endured.
The girl had been her childhood’s nurse, and her girlhood’s maid,
always dearly loved by Nina, who looked upon her as the only present
link between her and that happy past, before her idolizing parents died
and left her alone. Her love for the girl was more like that of friend
for friend than of mistress for servant. She said to herself that since
Kitty had caught her there would be no harm in lingering a little
while. Kitty would tell her something of all that had happened since
she went away, and then she would persuade the good creature to let her
go away again, perhaps, even, Kitty would go with her. The future would
not be quite so dark and desolate if she had this true soul to lean
upon.
So she said, coaxingly:
“I will stay with you a little while, Kitty, dear, and then you must
let me go. But tell me something about them all--about Aunt Drusilla,
and--yourself--and--and”--she broke down, crimson with shame and pain,
angry with herself because in her secret heart she was longing for
tidings of Talbot Strangemore.
“I love him still! cruel, neglectful, and unkind as he has been to me,
I cannot tear his image from my heart!” she moaned within herself.
The maid was quick to interpret what she meant by her broken-off speech.
“About Mr. Strangemore,” she said, “Oh, my dear, he went back to Europe
after he saw that piece in the paper about your taking the laudanum. He
thought you were dead--we all thought so--and he said he could not bear
to stay at Selwyn Heights after that.”
“But--but”--Nina began, and broke off the sentence--indeed it was
interrupted by a startling occurrence.
The door had suddenly opened wide and a slight figure all in white,
stood upon the threshold gazing in at them. When it saw the light upon
the table, and the startled women, it suddenly turned around and fled
swiftly and silently down the gloomy hall.
“Great heaven, that dreadful woman, she is here yet,” Nina exclaimed,
but her words were drowned by a succession of piercing shrieks from
Kitty that brought every inmate of the great house rushing to the scene.
CHAPTER XXIX.
NINA LEARNS THE TRUTH.
Miss Drusilla, the maid-servants, the boy-of-all-work, all in various
disheveled stages of attire that but for the warmth of the night might
have been productive of colds and catarrhs, appeared precipitately in
the room, and when they saw the young mistress of Selwyn Heights they
thought they understood the meaning of Kitty’s outcry.
“It is the ghost, the ghost! Kitty said she would sleep in the room
and catch it,” cried the maids, and one or two, more fearful than the
rest, ran out into the hall again, unable to endure the proximity of a
visitant from the other world.
But Miss Drusilla Strangemore being made of sterner stuff than those
weak-minded ones, walked straight up to her niece and laid her hand on
her shoulder.
“So it is really you, Nina,” she said, with a touch of tenderness in
her stern, old voice, “Oh, my dear, how glad I am that you have come
home at last. We have grieved for you so much, for we believed you
dead.”
And she put her arms around the trembling girl and shed some furtive
tears of joy on the top of the golden head.
“I would have been dead if I had had my way, Aunt Drusilla,” the girl
answered, bitterly, but she returned the caresses of the old lady, and
felt as she had done with Kitty that it was pleasant to be with her
again, for although Miss Drusilla had a hard, stern nature, she had
always been kind to the orphan girl confided to her care.
“And you, Kitty,” said Miss Drusilla, looking over the top of Nina’s
head, and feeling compelled to scold somebody to check her rushing
tears, “aren’t you ashamed of yourself, shrieking out, and raising a
regular hullabaloo at the sight of your young mistress? Didn’t you
have sense enough to know that she was not a ghost?”
“Why yes, ma’am, of course. It wasn’t Miss Nina that frightened me--no,
not if it _had_ been her ghost instead of her dear blessed self. It was
the other one that made me scream,” Kitty answered.
“The other one?” Miss Strangemore interrogated, with an air of
mystification.
“Mrs. St. Alban, ma’am,” explained Kitty.
“Lord-a-mercy!”
“Um-me, tother one, too!”
“_She_ walks!”
“I leaves this haunted house to-morrow!”
These disjointed exclamations from the servants followed pell mell upon
Kitty’s words. The women huddled together with frightened faces, gazing
half terrified at Nina, as if her ghostliness and the other’s combined,
were too much for weak human endurance.
“Kitty, you are crazy.” Miss Strangemore said, shortly.
“Very well, ma’am, you may doubt my word if you like, but ask Miss Nina
here what made me scream.”
Nina lifted her pale, weary looking face from her aunt’s shoulder.
“We were in here alone, Kitty and I,” she said, simply. “She had just
been telling me that----that Mr. Strangemore had gone abroad again,
when the door into the hall there suddenly opened wide. We both looked
up, and we saw that woman----I mean Sibyl St. Alban----standing in the
door, clad in a soft, loose white dress, with her hair hanging down
over her shoulders. When she saw us looking at her she turned around
and fled from us.”
A renewed chorus of groans and whispers greeted Nina’s words. Even Miss
Drusilla looked pale and troubled. She gazed blankly into Nina’s face.
“Are you quite sure, my love, that it was Mrs. St. Alban?” she asked.
“I am perfectly certain of it,” was the confident reply, and then the
girl burst out, reproachfully, “Oh, Aunt Drusilla, I did not think you
could have tolerated that woman here so long! Why is she here still? It
cannot be that Talbot has already married her and made her the mistress
of my home?”
They gazed at her blankly, what wild words was she saying?
“Nina, where have you been all this time?” her aunt asked, with seeming
irrelevance.
“I have been in Baltimore!”
“So near, and not know all that has happened at Selwyn Heights since
you went away? Are you jesting with me, child?”
“No, I am telling you the truth, dear Aunt Drusilla. I have been very
ill for months. I know nothing, I have heard nothing, I have not
read a newspaper since I went away. What has happened? Tell me, Aunt
Drusilla,” said the girl, with innocent unconsciousness.
Miss Drusilla groaned, and did not answer. Nina looked at Kitty.
“Has anything bad happened? Tell me the truth,” she said.
Kitty answered, agitatedly:
“Mrs. St. Alban is dead, Miss Nina!”
* * * * *
After one moment’s blank, shocked silence, a cry of amaze burst from
Nina’s lips:
“Are you mad, Kitty? Did I not see Mrs. St. Alban there in the door
looking at me ten minutes ago?”
“You saw her ghost, dear Miss Nina,” said the girl, solemnly, “Mrs.
St. Alban is dead and buried long ago, but they do say that bad people
can’t rest in their graves, and so I guess that is why her spirit walks
at night.”
A great tremor ran over Nina at the maid’s dreadful words. Her sweet
face grew ashen, she leaned against Kitty for support.
“Dead,” she murmured, in a tone of awe and wonder. “How long has it
been, Aunt Drusilla?”
“About three days after you went away,” the old lady replied, and the
wonder in Nina’s eyes grew deeper.
“But she was young and well and strong,” she said, “What was it that
killed her so suddenly?”
Miss Drusilla’s heart gave a great throb of dread. She answered almost
against her own will:
“She was murdered!”
She never forgot Nina’s ghastly white, horrified face, and she hurried
on to the end of her story for fear the girl would faint.
“Someone went into her room the very night you went away and stabbed
her in the breast with a sharp dagger.”
“Oh, my God, how horrible!” shivered the girl, “Oh, she was hard, she
was cruel and relentless, but she was so beautiful, so weak, who could
have had the heart to kill her? Who did it, Aunt Drusilla? Who murdered
Mrs. St. Alban?”
Miss Drusilla turned away from the appealing look in those dark eyes.
She could not speak.
“Who was it, Kitty?” said the girl, startled by Miss Strangemore’s
emotion, “It was not, oh, no, no, never--it was not my husband?”
“No, it was not Mr. Strangemore,” several voices answered her at once.
Nina clasped her hands together.
“Oh, I am so glad,” she cried. “You all acted so strangely I knew not
what to think. But who was it, then, that killed Mrs. St. Alban? Aunt
Drusilla, why don’t you speak to me?”
Thus adjured Miss Drusilla’s pale lips parted stiffly, and she
answered, desperately.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Nina!”
“Was there ever such a strange answer given to anyone,” Nina asked
herself in wonder, and she looked back at her maid.
“And you, Kitty,” she said, “Are you dumb, too, because you know not
what to say to me? Can’t you tell me who killed Mrs. St. Alban?”
“Miss Nina, darling, I don’t know who killed her!” the maid responded,
doggedly.
The answer was simple enough but Nina’s strained, alert senses detected
something beyond it.
“You are keeping something back from me, all of you,” she said, looking
round upon their white, scared faces.
“Lucy,” she added, turning around to the chambermaid, who was regarding
her through a swift rain of quick tears, “why are you crying, child?”
“About you, Mrs. Strangemore,” sobbed the girl, “because--because--that
bad, wicked woman said before she died that it was--was _you_ that had
killed her!”
Those words blurted out by Lucy in her grief, seemed to have killed
Nina too, for a moment. She stood still an instant like one transfixed,
her form and face rigid and statue-like, her white features looking
marble-like, and her eyes wild and wide with horror. Presently one
single word, uttered in tones of deepest dismay and wonder, fell from
her blanched lips:
“I!”
“Yes, you, Miss Nina,” Lucy reiterated. “She made them put it down upon
a paper that you had stole into her room and killed her and then run
away!”
“My God!” the poor girl uttered, in a voice of horror, and then her
voice failed her. She reeled dizzily a moment, then dropped heavily,
like one dead, to the floor.
CHAPTER XXX.
A GHOSTLY LAUGH.
Miss Drusilla was so angry with Lucy for blurting out the truth to Nina
that she drove her out of the room.
“You have killed the poor child with your long tongue!” she exclaimed.
Lucy sobbed and protested that she had not wished to hurt her darling
Miss Nina, but Miss Strangemore sent her out with the others, and
followed them a minute after with a grave, portentous face.
“Mind,” she said, shaking her long, slim finger at the staring
frightened group, “not a word of what has happened outside this
house! Listen to me, all of you women, and Jack there, too. I do not
want any of you to open your lips to any one on the subject of Mrs.
Strangemore’s return. No one outside this house must know that your
young mistress is alive and that she has come back to Selwyn Heights.
Her presence here must be kept perfectly secret. I know that this
silence will be hard upon you, for women have long tongues, but it is
necessary to the safety of your mistress that you keep her secret.”
“I’d have my right arm cut off before I’d tell,” exclaimed Jack the boy
of all work, loyally, for he worshiped the beautiful young mistress who
was always kind and pleasant to him.
“And I, and I”--came the quick response from all, and though Miss
Strangemore had small faith in humanity in general she believed in the
promises of these simple, humble servants. She knew that each one
worshiped their gentle, indulgent, young mistress.
“Very well,” she said, “I am glad to see that you are all disposed to
obey orders, and if you all keep your word I will see that you each
receive a nice present for doing your duty. Now go back to your beds
and don’t stand gaping in the halls, gossiping, and looking for Mrs.
St. Alban’s ghost. She does not walk at all. It was only Nina’s and
Kitty’s fancy. Dead people don’t come back to earth, for if they get to
heaven they don’t want to return, and if the devil gets ’em he won’t
let ’em, and I am pretty sure he got Sibyl St. Alban!”
And leaving her startled hearers, shivering and gaping in a
huddled-together group, the stern female returned to the room where she
had left Kitty applying restoratives to her mistress.
But none of her remedies had taken effect as yet. Nina still lay upon
the floor, her beautiful, rigid face upturned to the light with no more
signs of life upon it than if she had been a corpse. Kitty was silently
weeping over her.
“Oh, Miss Drusilla, I can’t bring her to. She is dead, surely,” she
sobbed. “She was weak and faint. She told me that she had been ill a
long time, and so she could not bear the shock of Lucy’s words. They
have killed her, my poor young mistress.”
“No, Kitty, I do not believe that she is dead. She is in a deep swoon,
that is all. But we must do the best we can for her ourselves. We
cannot call a doctor. You understand me, Kitty?” said Miss Drusilla,
and in the dim light they looked at each other across the lifeless body
with awed eyes.
“You mean”--Kitty said, with a shudder.
“That the horrible malice, the dying falsehoods of Sibyl St. Alban
have ruined Nina’s life. Oh, what a wicked woman she must have been to
die with a lie upon her lips to gratify her jealous malice! If it were
known that Nina were alive, that she had come home to Selwyn Heights,
she would be arrested for murder!”
Was it only their fancy, or did a low laugh of horrible, unearthly,
exultant malice echo through and through the room, seeming to come from
the other side of the door? Kitty was a devout Catholic. She crossed
herself when she heard it.
“The saints preserve us!” she cried. “Did you hear the ghost laughing,
Miss Drusilla?”
“Kitty, you’re a fool! ’Twas nothing but the wind in the gables,” the
lady cried, sharply, but she went quickly to the door and threw it wide
open.
“There’s nothing there,” she said, triumphantly, and Kitty did not
know that she was shuddering in spite of her pretended bravado, and
that that eerie, mocking laugh still rang in her ears. “Mind,” she
continued, sharply, “don’t you tell the servants you fancied you heard
something. They’ll be leaving the house in a body if you tell them any
more ghost tales.”
“I’ll not breathe a word to them, ma’am,” answered trembling,
frightened Kitty.
“And now let us do what we can for this poor, unhappy girl,” continued
Miss Drusilla, calmly. “Let us take this tight dress off and put on
her night-gown and lay her in bed. I think she is going to revive
presently.”
“The saints grant it,” prayed Kitty, and Miss Drusilla replied, rather
bitterly:
“Perhaps the saints would be in better business if they took her home
to glory. Even if she lives what will she do with her blighted future?
She will have to fly from justice, a poor, hunted creature! All the
world believes her guilty of Mrs. St. Alban’s death!”
And while she busied herself with tender assiduity to bring back the
suspended life of the girl, she told herself that she was doing wrong,
that Nina was better off dead than to awake to the doom that menaced
her.
“I would sooner see her laid in her grave than dragged before a judge
and jury to be tried for the murder of the bad and cruel woman who
stole her husband and blighted all the happiness of her young life!”
she said to herself, “And yet I would give worlds to see her cleared
from the base accusation Sibyl St. Alban made against her in her dying
hours. But there is no hope of that. The mystery will never be cleared
away.”
When she looked at the rigid white face upon the bed and thought of
the suffering that had come to this last fair descendant of the proud
old Selwyns through her nephew’s sin she felt that she cordially hated
Talbot Strangemore.
“If his mother could look down upon Nina now what must she think of
her selfish work?” she thought, for she could not divest herself of
the impression that her sister-in-law had acted from purely selfish
considerations in bringing about Nina’s marriage with her son.
“Oh,” cried Kitty, and looking down at Nina, Miss Strangemore saw that
her dark eyes had flared wide open and her lips parted with a gasp of
returning consciousness.
She had come back to life, to consciousness, to sorrow. The two women
there who loved this beautiful young creature better than they loved
anything else on earth did not know whether to laugh or weep at her
recovery.
But Kitty took the nerveless white hand in her own and kissed it warmly
through falling tears, while the spinster scarcely less moved, but
hiding her emotion better, continued to bathe Nina’s face and hands
with delicate, pungent perfumes.
“Oh, Aunt Drusilla, I thought I was dying just now, and I was so glad,
so glad, but now I am come back to life, and I could weep with the
very sorrow of it,” shivered the wretched girl, “I--I--think something
frightened me very much just now, but I cannot quite remember. My brain
seems dazed. Some one said something just now, something very horrible!
What was it, Kitty? tell me.”
“It was nothing, Miss Nina, dear, only your fancy,” soothed the maid.
She could not summon courage to tell her the truth, she looked so frail
and helpless, so like a broken flower, lying back among the pillows
with her wan, white face and masses of disheveled golden hair that
contrasted so strangely with her large, brilliant dark eyes, darker and
larger than ever now as they stared perplexedly at the maid.
“But I am sure there was something,” she said, faintly, “I--I--shall
remember it myself presently,” and suddenly like a flash of light
memory came back.
She gave a long, low, shivering moan, and exclaimed:
“Some one--Lucy I think--said that I had killed Mrs. St. Alban.”
“No, no, dear,” her aunt answered. “Not quite that.”
“Something very like it, then. Now I remember it. Mrs. St. Alban
made them write down that I, Nina, who never harmed the tiniest fly,
even--that I had killed her.”
“We did not believe it, darling,” soothed Miss Drusilla.
“Did any one believe it?” Nina asked, and somehow Miss Drusilla quickly
gathered the yearning thought in her young mind.
“Talbot did not believe it. He felt quite sure that you were innocent,”
she replied, and she saw a look of relief pass quickly over the lovely
face.
“But, oh, Nina, why did you go away that night?” continued her aunt.
“I went away to die, that Talbot might be free to marry the woman he
loved so much,” answered the girl. “Oh, Aunt Drusilla, do not look so
shocked! there was no other way for me. Talbot’s mother made me promise
solemnly on her death-bed that I would always try to secure his
happiness, that I would give him all my love and all my life. So when I
found that his happiness could only be secured by a union with Mrs. St.
Alban, what could I do but give him my life as I had promised Mamma?”
Miss Drusilla raised her hands and eyes to heaven in holy horror.
“Oh, you poor devoted child, Mrs. Selwyn did not mean that!” she cried.
“She did not want you to kill yourself for the sake of that great,
hulking, selfish fellow. She only meant for you to be true and faithful
to him all your life, and to make him happy with your love.”
That view of the matter had never occurred to Nina. She lay looking at
her aunt with a mild surprise in her eyes.
“And did you really try to kill yourself, poor darling?” cried Kitty.
“Yes, I threw myself into the water the night I ran away, but Doctor
Fielding saw me and saved my life. He took me to Baltimore, and I ran
away again and drank some laudanum, but he had followed me, and he
frustrated my purpose again. So then I was very ill, and as soon as I
grew better I came back here.”
“Repenting of your silliness in running away, and wishing to make it
all up with Talbot?” Miss Drusilla inquired.
Nina blushed through all her pallor, but she answered, readily.
“No, indeed. It was no such pacific motive that brought me back. I came
to get some money that I had hidden away in my jewel casket. Then I
intended to steal away again unseen, but I was so unfortunate as to be
caught by Kitty who would not let me go.”
“Do you mean to say that you intended to live your life out away from
us, and never let us know you were living?”
Nina blushed and hung her head.
“Yes, for Talbot’s sake, you know,” she answered.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE ARREST OF NINA.
Miss Drusilla looked profoundly vexed and annoyed at her niece’s answer.
“Nina, you are certainly a most unmitigated little simpleton! I really
have no patience with you,” she remarked. “It was ridiculous for you to
think of blotting yourself out like that for Talbot Strangemore. He is
not worth it, indeed no man is worth the sacrifice of a woman’s life.
I have always despised men, and my nephew’s conduct has only made me
dislike them worse. What was he, what kindness had he ever done you,
that you should have given up your life for him? I wish he had died
before he ever came back to make all this trouble. I am sure I hate
him, even if he was my brother’s son!”
“So do we all,” Kitty muttered under her breath, but not so low but
that Nina caught it.
She looked reproachfully at them both.
“Oh, Aunt Drusilla, oh, Kitty, please do not talk about my husband like
that! I used to love him so much,” she pleaded.
“And love him still, eh?” the spinster asked, half-vexedly,
half-pityingly.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Nina tried to say, but a great sob rose in her throat
and choked her.
“You need not try to tell me a fib, child. I know just how weak and
silly women’s hearts are. Go on loving your husband as much as you
like. Perhaps he will turn out more worthy of your love some day. I
wish I knew where to write to him now. He ought to come home to you,”
Miss Drusilla said, thoughtfully.
“No, not for worlds!” Nina gasped, in horror, “Do not send for him,
please. I will not stay to meet him!”
“Nonsense, child, you need him now. His place is by your side to shield
you and protect you,” said the old lady, impressively.
Something in the tone and air struck Nina. She looked up inquiringly.
“What do you mean?” she asked, and Miss Drusilla felt that no task she
had ever undertaken in her life was as hard as that which lay before
her now.
“I cannot tell her the whole truth. I will temporize with her,” she
finally decided, and so, looking as calmly as she could into the pale,
sweet face, she said:
“I mean that Talbot ought to be here to silence any malicious tongues
that may wag over that dying falsehood of Sibyl St. Alban.”
There was a minute’s silence. The pale face on the pillow grew, if
possible, still paler.
“Does any one credit that cruel story?” she asked, faintly, and
suddenly Kitty flung herself down on her knees by the bed.
“Oh, Miss Nina, darling, you can prove that you did not do it, can’t
you, dear?” she cried. “What time was it when you went away that night,
because the murder was not committed until midnight, and if you can
prove that you went away before that time no one can believe aught
against you.”
“Indeed, Kitty, I do not know what time it was when I went away. I was
so wretched, so humiliated by my own madness that I took no thought of
time!”
“But after you sent me away, Miss Nina, you went away at _once_--that
was the way, wasn’t it, darling?” Kitty asked, anxiously.
“Let me think a moment, Kitty.” She put her hand to her brow in a
bewildered way, then answered. “No, I did not go away then, for after
you were gone Mrs. St. Alban came into my room to talk to me about my
husband.”
“The viper! What could she have to say about Talbot?” flashed Miss
Strangemore.
“She wanted to tell me how unhappy they both were and how I had
ruined all their lives by marrying Talbot. She wanted me to consent
to a divorce that he wanted to have so that he might marry her,” Nina
answered, bitterly.
“The she-devil!” Miss Drusilla cried, violently. “How did she dare talk
to you so? She was brazen-faced indeed! I hope you ordered her out of
the room, Nina.”
“I asked her to go, I think, but not until I told her that she should
have Talbot for her own soon,” the girl answered, wearily.
“You meant to consent to a divorce?” the maiden lady cried, aghast,
and all the pride of the Selwyn’s flashed from Nina’s eyes as she
answered:
“No, never!”
“What, then?”
“I meant to throw away my life, and so set him free and make him happy.”
“But you were committing a deadly sin. Did you think of that?”
“Perhaps so, I don’t know. I remember that I asked God to forgive me
when I sprang into the cold water.”
“You went away directly after that woman left you?” the lady asked her,
anxiously, and her heart sank when Nina answered, sadly:
“No, not just at once. I was so hurt, so shocked at the thought that
Talbot actually contemplated divorcing me, that I sat like one stunned
for some time, going over and over in my mind the humiliating thought.
I rose at last mechanically, put some dark garments on, and went away
down to the shore and flung myself into the sea.”
“But after all it could not have been midnight when you went, Nina,”
said Miss Strangemore, and the tremor of deep anxiety in her voice
struck the girl oddly.
“Indeed I do not know, I cannot remember,” she said. “But it does not
matter very much, I suppose.”
They turned it off as lightly as possible, but their strange questions,
their confused answers, awakened her suspicions. The truth began to
dawn upon her mind.
She sat up in bed looking almost unearthly, with her great, startled
dark eyes and her deathly white face.
“You are frightened over something, both of you. Is it about me?” she
asked.
And then Kitty went and sat down behind her on the bed and put her arms
about the slender form. Nina turned her face to her.
“Can anybody punish me, Kitty, because I tried to kill myself?”
“No, dear--no one but God, and He will forgive you if you ask him.”
In a minute she asked another question.
“Can anyone punish me because that dreadful woman said falsely that I
killed her?”
“Not if you can prove that she lied,” Miss Drusilla answered.
“But if”--and all in a minute a ghastly change came over the lovely,
stricken young face, “oh, Aunt Drusilla, what if I cannot prove it?”
* * * * *
It was all over. They never quite remembered in what words they had
told her the truth, but they never forgot the wail of agony that came
from her lips as she put her white hand to her throat and said, with an
awful shudder:
“They will try me for murder and then they will put a rope around my
neck and hang me!”
Then there had followed another season of blank unconsciousness. This
time Miss Drusilla had not lifted a finger to help her back to life.
She had sternly forbidden Kitty, too.
“We both love her,” she said, “Let us have mercy upon her. Let us pray
God to take her suffering spirit back to himself.”
It did not seem to them that they were doing wrong, they were wrought
up to so high a pitch of frenzy by the dread of the future. They stood
by her senseless body without lifting a finger and they silently
implored Heaven that she might never awaken from her swoon.
But their wild wishes were not to be granted. The vitality in the
girl’s young frame was not exhausted yet. She struggled back to life
unaided, and then they realized all that lay before them, the peril,
the danger that they must try to avert.
“We must hide her,” they said to each other. “We will take her back to
Doctor Fielding. He is strong and wise. He will tell us what to do.”
And for the first time since Talbot went away his aunt regretted that
he had left her no address to which to write.
“I shall be a remorseful, broken-hearted wanderer all over the wide
world, and it is not likely that I shall ever return here,” he had
said, and in her wrath against him she had let him go, not forseeing
this moment when she should vainly long to warn him of his wife’s
peril.... The first gray beams of dawn were beginning to glimmer in the
sky when three heavily veiled women stole out from the portals of the
great house and went swiftly and silently down the long avenue.
But fast as they went the law had traveled faster. Two men came in at
the tall gate--men in official clothing, with hats drawn over their
brows as if ashamed of their mission. One advanced and laid a heavy
hand upon one of the vailed figures leaving the house. She gave a
startled cry and drew back, but he held her fast.
“Mrs. Strangemore, you are under arrest for the murder of Mrs. St.
Alban,” he said, in an official tone.
CHAPTER XXXII.
TALBOT’S SUSPICIONS.
All unconscious of the portentous events happening at home, Talbot
Strangemore pursued his wanderings from city to city, from clime to
clime, in restless search after that fabled Lethean stream in whose
waves one may bury all the woeful memories found too heavy to carry
through the pilgrimage of life. Oswald Ferris bore him indefatigable
company in his strange pursuit.
He was a very peculiar man, this Oswald Ferris with his tall,
proud form, and dark, corsair like beauty. He was a brilliant
conversationalist, and shone in society, although after all, men liked
him best. Women like Virgie Mason shrunk from him without a reason
why, but Sibyl St. Alban had been hand-and-glove with him for a brief
season. She had taught him
“All the cruel madness of love,
The honey of poison-flowers,
And all the measureless ill.”
The little coquette had scarcely understood the nature of the man she
had fooled with such charming grace in the early days of her widowhood,
when, having been debarred from the pastime for some months, she
entered upon it with new zest and pleasure. Ferris had been a splendid
subject, too, for he seemed so ignorant of womanly coquetry and was so
jealous, passionate, and intense, that he was a constant amusement to
Sibyl. She greatly enjoyed “playing this big fish” as Cameron and the
others phrased it, enjoyed it, systematically, until Strangemore joined
them, then as her slighted lover said, she threw him over.
She was tired of him, and here was another subject, that was all
Sibyl thought about it. She did not think about the adoring heart,
the fiery temper, the passionate, undisciplined nature of the man she
had wronged, nor of the fiery desire and longing for vengeance that
rose from the ashes of his dead love. He had served her purpose, and
she was done with him. She bent herself to the delightful task of
winning Talbot Strangemore from his child-bride at home, and forgot all
about Oswald Ferris, save when she was reminded of his existence by
the reproachful glances he flashed at her, and by words he sometimes
uttered whose barbed point had seemed to be aimed at her heart, and
which stung her by their truth, but did not move her to repentance,
because she was entirely cruel and heartless.
So now this man whose heart and soul she had wrecked so heartlessly,
was an exile for her sake, hating all women because this Circe born
without a soul, had made a plaything of his heart and flung it back
to him when weary, broken, ruined and worthless from the pastime of an
hour.
He was not a pleasant companion for Talbot Strangemore now. All his
old brilliant gifts of talk and manner had deserted him. He had grown
moody, dull, distrait and restless beyond measure. Once he had loved
books, but he never opened one now. He spent hours and hours in long
solitary walks. Strangemore rallied him a little drearily on his deep
depression.
“Do not give yourself up so wholly to your sorrow,” he said. “It is
wrong to speak ill of the dead, but after all, Mrs. St. Alban was not
worthy of the feeling we both wasted on her. That truth has come home
to me although too late for my happiness.”
They looked deep into each other’s eyes, those two men whose lives had
been ruined to please the vanity of a beautiful, heartless butterfly.
“That is the bitterest part of it,” said Oswald Ferris, low and
bitterly. “I have lost myself for her sake, and after all she was not
worth it. Oh, how I fooled myself with the thought of making that
dainty creature my bride. She promised it. She took my ring, my gifts,
she let me hold her in my arms, she suffered me to kiss her face, and
to toy with her soft gold hair, and after all she was false. She was
only feeding her vanity with my admiration, and by and by when a new
victim came, she dropped me as coolly as if I had been a soulless clod,
instead of a man mad for love and thirsting for vengeance. Was it any
wonder I was wrought to frenzy when she lavished her love and her
smiles on you, when she even dared try to divorce you from your fair,
sweet bride? Oh, my God”--he paused, abruptly, with a startled look, as
if in his passion he had uttered too much.
“Why did you not tell me how she had wronged you then, while she was
making a fool of me?--doubly a fool, for I had known her wiles before,”
said Talbot, with biting self-contempt.
“Did you think I wore my heart on my sleeve for daws to peck at?”
demanded Ferris. “No, I was too proud. I bore all in silence, save
that now and then I reproached her with bitter looks and barbed words,
which she received with tacit defiance. I wondered then why she had no
conscience. I often wonder now why she had no fear. Did she think she
could drive a great, strong powerful animal mad with impunity?”
“She knew that the animal in this case had a soul,” said Strangemore,
with a rather dreary smile. “Women expect men to bear such wrongs as
yours, _mon ami_, with meekness and equanimity. You would not have
harmed that gilded butterfly, would you? Nay,” he added, springing to
his feet while a terrible suspicion smote his brain, “_You_ did not
hurt her, did you? You whose wrongs were so deep that your brain was
half distraught with rage and resentment, you did not strike the dagger
into her white breast, did you?”
The suspicion and the words were born together, and with such
suddenness that Ferris was for a moment staggered by them.
He recoiled before the excited speaker with a marble-white face and a
startled hunted look that was almost like guilt itself in his blazing
eyes. Strangemore believed that he had detected the murderer of Sibyl
St. Alban.
“My God, Ferris, then it was you that committed that dastardly deed!”
he cried.
Ferris had recovered himself now. He turned upon his accuser with
passionate defiance.
“How dare you, oh, how dare you accuse me of the heinous crime
committed by your own wife?” he exclaimed, hoarsely, “Have you
forgotten that she, too, was maddened by her wrongs?--wrongs that you
had inflicted upon her in your mad worship of her rival! Have you
forgotten that Sibyl St. Alban’s dying deposition laid her death at the
door of Nina Strangemore? Have you forgotten the letter dropped by your
wife in the room of the murdered woman? Have you forgotten her flight
that was a tacit admission of her guilt?”
He hurled the angry words one after another thick and fast at
his accuser and each charge fell upon Strangemore’s heart like a
hail-stone. He recoiled with an exceeding bitter cry:
“Oh, God, to think that my folly and madness brought all this upon my
poor young wife! Would to God, I had died before my return home!”
Ferris regarded him cynically, with a dark and lowering expression
between his brows.
“If your wife had only killed herself instead of sending her rival
out of the world, too, how pleasant it would have been for you,” he
observed. “You could have married Sibyl and been happy after all.”
He shrunk from the lightning flash in the eyes of his companion.
“Hush,” Strangemore said, hoarsely. “Do not throw my folly and sin into
my face. I cannot bear it. No, I could never have married Sibyl even if
Nina’s desperate suicide had left me free to do so. I loved my young
wife from the first moment we met after my return. At the first sight
of her pure young face the wicked infatuation that Sibyl had fostered
died within me, and a pure and holy love for my neglected bride took
its place. If Sibyl had not formed that mad scheme for coming to Selwyn
Heights and ruining my wedded happiness all would have gone well with
me. I should not have been caught in the trap she set for me, Nina
would not have been driven desperate, nothing would have happened as it
did!”
And then he added, hoarsely:
“But, so help me God, Ferris, in spite of all the awful evidence
against her, I cannot believe that Nina, my wife, was guilty of that
terrible crime. Some dreadful mystery hangs around that murder--a
mystery that Sibyl St. Alban hid behind her false declaration that Nina
had killed her. It was some other hand that drove that dagger home in
her breast.”
And looking steadily at the downcast face of Ferris, he said within
himself: “Thou art the man!”
But he did not again charge him with the crime. Some instinct told him
to be wary. He said to himself that he would watch Ferris closely, but
in silence, for some token that should convict him of his sin.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
TALBOT’S DREAMS.
Talbot brooded more than ever over the memory of his dead bride after
those words with Oswald Ferris. That night he dreamed of her.
Not that he had not dreamed of her before in his dreary, remorseful
exile, for there were few nights when her image did not brood above
his pillow. But his visions of his poor wronged Nina had been most
unsatisfactory ones. She appeared to him always cold, proud, repellant,
as she had been after she overheard the foolish confidence he had
reposed in his aunt. To-night there was a change.
Sometimes Talbot fancied that it had been a real vision not merely a
dream that came to him that night, it was so strangely real.
He had not retired, he had merely dropped into a doze over his book,
when the form of Nina rose clearly before his mind’s eye, and the
beautiful, despairing young face with its hollow, pleading dark eyes,
made an ineffaceable impression on his memory. Her golden hair floated
like a vail over her shoulders, and her delicate white hands were
raised and clasped as she murmured in tones of agonizing entreaty:
“Talbot, my husband, come to me! I need you!”
Talbot Strangemore started forward to inclose that suppliant figure
with his arms, but they only clasped the empty air. The vision had
dissolved, faded, even while the low, entreating tones seemed to
tremble on the air.
“Nina!” he cried, but no voice answered him back. He saw that he was
alone, that his lamp had burned low, and his book fallen to the floor.
He looked at his watch and saw that it was midnight, the hour when
restless spirits revisit the earth.
“Was it her restless ghost come to summon me to the other world?” he
asked himself with throbbing pulses, and a certain sense of pleasure
came to him with the thought.
“By that token I know that she has forgiven me,” he thought. “She knows
now all my sorrow, all my repentance, all my love, and she forgives me
and summons me to join her in that dark, mysterious Beyond, whither she
so rashly precipitated herself.”
There was joy to him in the fancy that his wronged young wife desired
his presence in that other world where she was gone. He knew it would
be sin to take his own life, yet for a moment the temptation came over
him almost too strongly to be resisted. The beautiful vision seemed to
beckon him away, the voice seemed to draw him by invisible chains.
“She needs me,” he said to himself, and he was only held back from
throwing himself into the blue waves of the sea that flowed beneath
the windows of the old chateau where he was staying, by a sudden
warning thought:
“I must live to track Oswald Ferris down to conviction for his crime,
and clear my darling’s name from the shadow of a sin before I go hence
to join her.”
So he whispered to Nina as if she were present in spirit and could hear
him, that she must wait a little while until his mission on earth was
accomplished before he was ready to join her in the spirit world. Then
he would come to her, oh, so gladly.
After that day he watched Oswald Ferris furtively but closely. He was
determined that he would ferret out the secret the man had hid so
cleverly, leaving a lovely, innocent, unhappy girl to bear the brunt of
his sin.
“The coward, the villain,” he said to himself many times, and he was
half tempted to take the wretch by the throat and throttle him until he
confessed the truth.
But calmer thoughts prevailed. He knew that it was necessary to hide
the suspicions he had once imprudently uttered, or Ferris would fly
with his guilty secret to the uttermost ends of the earth.
“I must bide my time. I must watch and wait even though my little Nina
is calling me to join her in the other world,” he thought, and no
prescience came to him that Nina still dwelt upon this lower earth,
and that by one of the strange and wondrous operations of the mind a
miracle had been accomplished--that Nina, kneeling on the hard floor
of her cruel prison cell, her pride, her resentment, her coldness all
beaten down by her unutterable woe, had sent her soul’s cry for him
ringing across leagues of sea and land that divided them, ringing on,
and on, and on, until it reached his heart.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE PRISON.
Innocently and ignorantly Nina had walked into a terrible trap on the
night when she re-entered her home at Selwyn Heights. Before the day
dawned information of her return was lodged with the authorities. Her
arrest followed quickly, just as she was about to make her escape.
Her youth, her beauty, her wealth were all powerless to save her now.
The yawning doors of a prison received her within their gloomy embrace,
she who had been cradled among the roses and lillies of life now became
the inmate of a prison cell.
It was hard, it was bitter, it was cruel, but she had no redress.
Shivering, trembling, dazed with fear and terror, she was led away like
a lamb to the sacrifice. Her friends were half-mad with grief and dread.
Upon the dastardly wretch who had betrayed her presence at Selwyn
Heights, Miss Drusilla Strangemore called down the deepest vengeance of
heaven.
But the identity of the traitor was wrapped in impenetrable mystery.
She called around her the whole small staff of servants at Selwyn
Heights, and after delivering a scathing exordium that she hoped would
scorch the conscience of the guilty party, she called upon each one
individually to confess the truth.
If the occasion had not been so solemn the scene would have been
ludicrous, so fierce and animated were Miss Strangemore’s gestures, and
so vehement her injunctions that the truth and nothing but the truth
be told.
But one after another, solemnly, indignantly, even with tears in their
eyes, the little group protested innocence of the alleged fault, and
swore anew unswerving love and fidelity to their young and hapless
mistress.
The old maid was in despair at the result of her inquiries.
“But you know it was one of you, _certainly_,” she said, at last.
“And I shall keep such a close watch upon you all that I’ll be bound
to catch the guilty one at last. So whichever one of you it was that
played the part of Judas, I want you to go away from Selwyn Heights and
never darken these doors again!”
But no one offered to go, and no one went. Each and all were indignant
at her suspicions.
“Miss Strangemore ought to know us better than to think that we could
betray our sweet young mistress,” they said. “Why, we’ve been here ever
since she was a little girl, and we love every hair of her head better
than our own.”
So the mystery remained a mystery still, although Miss Drusilla
sternly flouted Kitty’s belief in the innocence of the servants.
“It stands to reason that it was one of them, Kitty. There was no one
else that knew she was here and alive.”
“Oh, Miss Strangemore, I can’t go to think that one of them servants
that loved her as much as you and I did, could have turned against
her. I’d sooner think it was that horrible ghost that done it all,”
protested the maid.
Miss Drusilla tried to transfix her with the lightning of her eyes.
“What ghost?” she inquired, coldly, and Kitty answered, firmly:
“Mrs. St. Alban’s ghost, ma’am, that Miss Nina saw that night as well
as myself.”
“Do you want me to think you’re a fool, Kitty, believing in ghosts in
this practical nineteenth century?” exclaimed the old maid, severely.
Kitty remained unshaken in her belief, despite the fulminations of the
old lady.
“I’m sorry for any one to think hard of me and call me names, but all
the same I know that Mrs. St. Alban’s spirit _did_ come back every
night almost to Selwyn Heights,” she said. “Almost every one of the
servants heard it and caught glimpses of it, and at first they said it
was Miss Nina because it always went into her room. So I said if my
dear dead mistress walks it’s because she has something on her mind
she wants to reveal, and so I slept in her dressing-room that night so
that she might find me waiting for her, ready to hear the secret that
troubled her spirit.”
Miss Drusilla gave an audible sniff, but Kitty continued, undauntedly:
“Well, I did sleep on the sofa in her dressing-room with the doors
open, and sure enough she came. Thinks I to myself, poor darling, I’ve
caught you, and I lay still and watched her with little creeping chills
running down my back. It seemed strange to see a ghost light a candle,
and unlock a jewel case with a key that had been missing so long. And
then when she pulled out the shining jewels and talked aloud in dear
Miss Nina’s voice it seemed stranger to me than ever and quite natural,
too, so that presently the chill stopped creeping down my back, and I
began to want to touch my pretty darling. I stole softly into the room
and put both arms tightly around her, and then I found out that it was
not a ghost but my mistress, living, and breathing, and struggling
desperately to get away from me. But I held her tight and lighted the
candle that she had put out. It was just at that moment that the door
opened wide, and Mrs. St. Alban, natural as life in her white dress and
loose hair, looked in at us.”
“Pooh, it was only your fancy. The door was not fastened tight, and a
gust of wind tore it open,” exclaimed the spinster. “Then you imagined
all the rest.”
“But Miss Nina saw it, too, and she was not frightened and did not
imagine it, for she did not know that that wicked woman was dead,”
Kitty replied.
“It was her fancy, nevertheless. She was thinking about the woman that
had caused her so much trouble, and so it was easy for her to fancy
that she saw her,” declared Miss Drusilla, who was determined not to
give in to Kitty’s notion. To do her justice she really believed that
the alleged ghost was merely a figment of imaginations stimulated too
high by the recent tragedy.
But the maid
“Convinced against her will
Was of the same opinion still.”
“Miss Drusilla, you may think what you please, ma’am, but I’m sure I’m
right,” she said, respectfully. “And if such a thing could be, I’d
believe that that dreadful woman came back every night to watch for my
poor darling, Miss Nina, and that _she_ caused her arrest that awful
morning.”
“Your ghosts would seem at least to be very practical beings, Kitty,”
said the spinster, with a faint glimmer of amusement.
“Yes ma’am, and isn’t it strange that since that night no one has seen
nor heard the ghost? Doesn’t it seem like she could not rest until she
had worked evil to my mistress, and that now she rests quiet in her
grave at last?” said Kitty, with something like awe, and the old maid
finding her so “set in her way” desisted in disgust from the attempt to
convert her into a reasonable creature.
“‘Ignorance is the mother of superstition,’” she enunciated, loftily,
and so dropped the subject.
She went to Baltimore, sought out the Fieldings, told them her story,
and heard theirs. They were agonized over the dreadful fate that had
overtaken the lovely, and hapless young girl. Too late they repented
the silence they had kept out of their great love and sympathy.
“Better to have told her the hard truth than that this should have
happened,” said the doctor.
“But who would have dreamed of her returning to Selwyn Heights, the
place of all others we supposed she would wish to avoid?” wept Minnie
Fielding.
When Miss Drusilla told her the truth----that Nina had ventured home to
procure money to give to her kind friends, they were full of remorse
and despair. They understood all, then. They knew that their innocent,
kindly meant words had been overheard by the invalid girl. Those words
had driven her away, hurried her to her wretched fate.
Gentle Mrs. Fielding wept and sobbed inconsolably.
“I will devote my life to her service,” said the doctor, soothing his
sobbing wife. “You will need a man to help you and advise you in your
dreadful position, Miss Strangemore. Pray command me in any and every
way.”
“I don’t think much of men usually,” the spinster replied, candidly.
“It was a man that brought all this trouble upon Nina, and I like the
sex that much less for his fault. But I believe that you are as good a
man as there is, Doctor Fielding, and since I must have a man’s help, I
will accept your offer.”
The doctor who had understood from his wife some of Miss Strangemore’s
peculiarities, only smiled at this characteristic acceptance of his
offer.
“I thank you for your kindly spoken compliment, and will endeavor to
deserve it,” he said. “And now we must set straight to work in behalf
of our poor young friend. I suppose the first thing will be to procure
a good lawyer.”
“The best that can be had,” assented Miss Drusilla. “She has plenty of
money, and you may spend it like water to secure her acquittal.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
NINA’S DESPAIR.
Doctor Fielding secured one of the ablest lawyers in the country as
Nina’s counsel. He carefully collected all the evidence for and against
her. He weighed it carefully, and the result did not please him.
“The case looks very unfavorable to my client,” he admitted frankly to
the doctor. “I can see but one chance for her acquittal in the awful
array of damning evidence against her.”
“And that chance?”
“Is the chance of proving an _alibi_ at the hour of the murder,”
answered Mr. Davenport, the lawyer, gravely and decidedly.
“I fear that it will be impossible to do that,” Doctor Fielding
answered with a heavy sigh, and from that moment hope began to fail in
his breast.
“You told me that you saved her from attempted suicide that night.
Surely you must have some idea of the time when it occurred,” said Mr.
Davenport.
“It must have been near midnight, although I cannot tell exactly. But
I remember that every person on the yacht had retired hours before and
left me alone upon the deck, with my solitary cigar.”
“You say that Captain Travers assisted you in the rescue of the young
lady that night. Might he not remember the exact hour at which the
attempted suicide occurred?”
“Captain Travers is dead,” replied the doctor, despondently.
“Dead!” exclaimed the lawyer, with a start.
“Yes, he died very suddenly of apoplexy in a few days after the tragedy
at Selwyn Heights.”
“And the young lady herself--has she no knowledge of the hour at which
she left her home?” the lawyer anxiously inquired.
“I do not believe that she has, but it would perhaps be better to ask
her,” Doctor Fielding replied.
So they went to see Nina in her prison cell.
Up to that moment Mr. Davenport had had a private opinion that his
client was guilty. Everything looked so black against her, the evidence
was so conclusive there scarcely seemed room for doubt. It all seemed
to have come about so naturally, her jealousy of the dead woman,
her passionate anger and open resentment seemed to have led up so
inevitably to the crime of murder that Mr. Davenport had decided in his
mind that his client had scarcely the shadow of a case.
But all this was before he had seen Nina Strangemore.
After they went to the prison, after he beheld the lovely, hapless
creature whose life, as it were, seemed hanging on his hands, a great
revulsion of feeling came over the lawyer.
He said to himself that although he might never be able to prove her
innocence in a court of law, that the angels in heaven were not more
pure and guiltless than this martyred girl.
And yet she could throw no light on the subject which involved so much
to her.
“No, I cannot remember,” she said, hopelessly, when he entreated her
to try to recall the hour when she had left her home. “It might have
been midnight, or it might have been earlier, I do not know how long
I sat there dazed and wretched after Mrs. St. Alban’s cruel words to
me. I was too miserable to note the lapse of time. When I had decided
despairingly in my mind that I would drown myself, I rose, wrote a
brief note which I left for my husband, mechanically donned some dark
clothing, and went away. It was quite late, I suppose. I heard and saw
no one, and the lights were all out in the house.”
“Try to think now,” he urged. “Did you not look at your watch before
leaving? Most persons do so mechanically before going out.”
“I did not,” she replied.
He did not tell her how hopeless all this made her case appear. He did
not have the heart to do so. The beautiful, anguished young face had
touched him beyond words. He vowed to himself that he would do all that
he could to help her, but he did not believe that he could do much.
But although he did not tell her in what deadly peril she stood, Nina
knew more than he guessed. Kitty’s anxious words to her the night she
returned had disclosed to her her danger. When they had left her alone
again in her gloomy cell, she sank upon her knees with a passionate cry
wrung from the depths of her crushed and despairing young heart.
“Talbot, my husband, come to me! I need you!”
With a passionate yearning beyond all telling, Nina longed for her
husband now. Her heart turned to him instinctively, feeling that his
place was by her side in this hour of her terrible trial.
“Even although he did not love me he would not willingly let me perish
like this,” she thought, and it seemed to her that Talbot if he had
been there could have done more for her than anyone else. It seemed to
her that he had more power than any other man.
But he was far away from her, the husband whom she had loved so dearly
for five long years, for whom she had waited so patiently, and whose
coming at last had brought her such terrible woe. Like a mocking echo
the words of her old song rose in her memory:
“If he would come, to-day, to-day, to-day,
Oh, what a day to-day would be!
But now he’s away, miles and miles away
From me across the sea.
“Oh, little bird, flying, flying, flying,
To your nest in the warm west,
Tell him as you pass that I am dying,
As you fly home to your nest.”
A bitter shame and dread were upon the girl as she shrinkingly
contemplated the close of her trial. She had not been afraid to die at
her own hands, but the horror, the disgrace of her impending doom shook
her soul to its center.
“To die on the scaffold--oh, I cannot bear it! How can they do it
when I am innocent?” she wept, over and over, and it seemed to her
that she would die of terror and shame even before the day appointed
for her trial--a day that was indefinitely postponed because it was
so difficult to find a jury. This case had been discussed months
before by the public, and it was a horrible fact that scarcely a man
could be found who had not already expressed his opinion upon it, an
opinion almost always adverse to the unhappy prisoner. So while the law
tarried, gathering together its terrible weapons of prosecution, Nina
languished in prison, and by some mysterious psychic force the yearning
cry of her soul made itself audible to Talbot far across the sea:
“Talbot, my husband, come to me, I need you!”
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE TRIAL.
The slow days waned and faded, and Nina seemed fading with them,
so pallid and hollow grew her cheek, so large and dark her sweet,
sad eyes. It was summer now, but little of its bloom and fragrance
penetrated the gloomy cell where she was immured. Miss Strangemore and
faithful Kitty had taken lodgings near the prison and visited her every
day. They would have remained with her all the time but this was not
allowable.
Miss Drusilla was nearly crazed with grief and horror over Nina’s
trouble. She would have given a year out of her life to have known
where to find Talbot Strangemore.
She knew that he ought to be there, that it was simply terrible for
him to be absent in this hour of Nina’s supreme peril, and she had,
besides, an innate knowledge that in spite of all her cruel wrongs the
unhappy girl secretly longed for her husband’s presence. It seemed to
them both that Talbot, knowing that she had come to this awful strait
by his weakness and folly, would put forth a superhuman effort to save
her.
But if the exiled husband had been dead and buried he could not
have remained more silent to all the efforts that were made to find
him. Miss Drusilla wrote to the American Consuls at all the foreign
countries. She advertised in the leading papers at home and abroad. She
made every possible effort to communicate with the wanderer, but dead
silence rewarded her in every instance. And meantime a jury had been
convened, and the day of Nina’s trial had been set.
Oh, that awful day of fate! The frail, weak, shuddering girl wondered
how she should live through it when they led her into court to face all
those cold, curious faces. A low murmur ran from lip to lip, and the
frightened creature believed that it was a whisper of execration. She
sank shivering into her seat.
“This is what her love for a man has brought her to, poor innocent,
suffering child! I wish that all the men were swept from the face of
the earth,” muttered Miss Strangemore in bitter wrath, as she sat down
beside her niece, and glowered in impatient anger at judge and jury.
Then the trial began.
No such romantically tragic case had been before the public for years.
The beauty, the youth, the great wealth, the high standing of the
prisoner at the bar made a great sensation. The court-room was packed
with interested people. Marmaduke Cameron and his yachting friends
greatly to their chagrin had been summoned as witnesses to the
prosecuting attorney. Cameron indeed was the most important witness,
for it was he who had taken down Mrs. St. Alban’s dying deposition.
“I wish that I had been a thousand miles away that fatal night. It goes
to my heart to testify against that lovely forlorn young creature.
Even if she killed Mrs. St. Alban it was because she was driven mad by
jealousy and disappointed love,” he whispered to Virgie Mason, who was
bathed in tears over Nina’s fate.
“But she did not do it, oh, no, no, no, I will never believe that she
did,” sobbed the fair and gentle girl “And it almost breaks my heart
to think that they have made Helen and me come here to repeat all
the things she said that night when Sibyl had driven her mad by her
heartless coquetries with Mr. Strangemore. I know she did not mean half
that she said, and it seems cruel for us to have to tell it for the
purpose of condemning her.”
But they had no choice in the matter. They were compelled to obey the
stern mandate of the law.
Nina’s lawyer argued her case in his best and most forcible style.
He brought witnesses to testify to the sweet and gentle nature of
the accused. No one that knew her believed that she was guilty. They
knew that it was impossible for her to have committed such an act. He
admitted that she had had great provocation to anger, and that she had
called down the vengeance of heaven upon her triumphant and insolent
rival, but he said that the very fact that she had called upon heaven
to avenge her wrongs proved that she had not attempted to take the
punishment of the cruel coquette into her own young hands. Nay, she
had gone away and made two attempts at suicide in order to free her
unloving husband that he might be happy with the woman he preferred
beyond her. He harangued the court for several hours, and after a
brilliant, but almost hopeless effort sat down to listen to the closing
speech of the prosecution.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE LETTER.
In the slight confusion that ensued upon the closing of the speech for
the defense, Virgie Mason and Helen Starr obtained permission to speak
to the prisoner.
With bitter tears they kissed the fair young face whose expression of
hopeless woe almost broke their hearts. They implored her to forgive
them because they had been brought to court to testify against her.
“We would not have come if we could have helped it,” they said, and
Virgie added, indignantly: “I think it’s real mean to make us come
against our will, and I for one sha’n’t tell them anything I can help!”
“Nor I,” said Helen.
But these two fair young girls had never been in a witness box and
did not know that they would be subjected to so rigid an examination
that they would be sure to tell all they knew. They were indignant
when their turn came at the searching questions asked them by the
prosecution, and try as they would they could not avoid giving a
full and detailed account of the scene in the drawing room at Selwyn
Heights, a few hours before the terrible tragedy. Virgie cried out
impulsively:
“Nina did not mean to hurt her, I am sure, for she called on heaven to
punish her for her sin, and if she meant to commit a crime she could
not have taken the name of heaven upon her lips.”
Miss Strangemore, even, was compelled to go upon the stand and repeat
the particulars of the drawing-room scene. Oh, cruel fate, the victim
said to herself when even her friends were compelled to condemn her out
of their own lips.
When all the witnesses had been examined the speech for the prosecution
began. This lawyer honestly believed that the prisoner at the bar was
guilty, and he tried his best to convince the judge and jury that it
was so.
He said that the evidence against Mrs. Strangemore did not rest wholly
upon the dying deposition of the murdered lady. The murderess had
dropped a letter upon the floor of Mrs. St. Alban’s room in her hurried
flight--a letter written that night by Mr. Strangemore to his wife, and
which he told some one afterward he had slipped under the door of her
chamber.
There was a piercing cry in the court-room. Nina sprang upon her feet
pale as death, wild, excited.
“I never received that letter, I never even heard of it. Where is it
now?” she cried, in deep agitation.
Mr. Davenport hastened to her side. The counsel for the prosecution was
about to read Talbot Strangemore’s letter, dated on the night of the
tragedy, in open court.
Nina leaned forward with parted lips and eager eyes to listen. Her veil
was pushed carelessly back, and people gazed in wonder at the lovely
_spirituelle_ face, marveling that one so young and fair with the
expression of a suffering angel, could be in reality a crime-stained
sinner.
But she did not heed them. In that moment when they were trying her
for life or death, when there seemed to be no hope for her in earth or
heaven, when the black shadow of the scaffold hung gloomily over her
fair young head, there came to Nina Strangemore a moment of supreme and
perfect joy--a moment of bliss all the fairer from contrast with the
gloom that had encompassed her, a glimpse from out all the horror of a
Hades at lost Heaven.
The counsel for the prosecution was reading aloud in a cold
dispassionate voice:
“Nina, my beloved, my darling wife, on my knees I beg you to forgive
me for the folly and madness of which I have been guilty. Oh, if
you could know how remorseful, how shame-stricken, how penitent I
feel, you could not help but pardon me. I am not worthy of you, my
beautiful wife, but I love you with a deep and passionate love that
sprung into full growth the first moment I saw you that night with
the orange-blossoms on your hair and breast. In that very moment my
mad penchant for a fair coquette died an instant death, slain by the
glances of your innocent eyes. I know now that she was not worthy the
foolish passion I wasted on her for years, and I beg your pardon for
permitting her presence beneath your roof. Oh, my sweet and deeply
injured wife, I can explain all if you will grant me an interview
to-night, to-morrow, or at any time you may select. I shall not sleep
to-night. I shall wait in my room, hoping that you will send me word
that I may come to you and plead my cause. Oh, my bride, my wife,
do not be hard upon me, do not judge me as I deserve. Only remember
my love and my repentance that I place humbly at your feet, hoping
prayerfully that you will accept them, and that you will give me a
chance to win your forgiveness and then your love, my beautiful fate!
Remember I am waiting for a single word from your lips, Nina, and be
merciful to me although my past egregious folly merits no mercy at
your pure hands.
TALBOT STRANGEMORE.”
It seemed like sacrilege to read that letter fresh from the heart of
the repentant and shame-stricken husband, to that eager, gaping throng.
Murmurs of pity, of sorrow, some few of derision, ran from lip to lip.
Those who believed that Nina was guilty thought worse of her than
before. Surely when she read that letter, when she learned that her
husband’s heart had returned to her, she ought to have spared that
poor, pretty butter-fly Sibyl St. Alban. It was enough to triumph over
her without taking her life in revenge for the past.
Through all the reading of that long letter Nina did not stir nor
speak. She leaned slightly forward with her small hands loosely clasped
in her lap, her lips parted just enough for one to catch the glitter
of small, pearly white teeth, her eager eyes fixed upon the reader. A
loose tress of golden hair had strayed over her shoulder and lay like a
sunbeam against her black dress. There was an expression upon her face
that puzzled the gazers, an expression so rapt, so intense, that they
held their breath in wonder.
“She looks positively radiant, like one in a happy dream,” they said,
and it was true, for a soft flush had risen into the wan face, and the
dark eyes beamed with light--the light of an overwhelming joy.
“He loved me--my husband loved me,” she said to her beating heart,
whose pulses rose to flood-tide with this joyous revelation. “Oh, what
a cruel fate it was that kept that letter away from me that night! How
did I miss finding it? How came it to be lying on the floor in Sibyl
St. Alban’s room?”
And suddenly like a flash of light the reason came to her mind.
Before any one could stay her, she rose in her seat, she flashed her
blazing dark eyes upon judge and jury, she shook her white hand at the
counsel who was going on with his accumulated evidence against her,
ruthlessly trying to rob her of her young life.
“Hush,” she said. “Listen to me, for I must speak,” and in sheer wonder
he obeyed her.
“I never received that letter,” she went on. “If I had done so the
whole current of my life would have been changed. If I had received
that letter, if I had known that my husband loved me, I should not have
gone away. I should have granted the interview he asked, I should have
forgiven him and loved him, and I should have forgiven Sibyl St. Alban,
too, for I could not have held resentment for any one in my great
happiness.”
A subdued murmur of pity and sympathy ran through the throng like an
electric current. There were some there who pitied the girl and did
not believe her guilty. These had tears in their eyes and their hearts
ached for the hapless, beautiful creature who went on thrillingly:
“I am quite sure I can tell you why I never received that letter. You
say that my husband pushed it under my door that night. Well, Sibyl
St. Alban came to my room that night to goad me to despair by her
cruel words. She told me that my husband wanted a divorce from me that
he might marry her. I could not bear the thought of such a disgrace
touching one of the proud Selwyns, I said to myself that I would fling
myself from the bluff into the sea, and so free him from his fetters.
I told her to be easy, she should soon have Talbot, and then I sent
her away. Oh, God, I remember now that when she reached the door she
stooped down for a single moment, and I believed that she had merely
stumbled. But now it all comes over me, the cruel, cruel truth! While
she talked to me the letter had been slipped beneath the door, and in
her anger and malice she carried it away to her own room and left it
there to wreak its mission of vengeance upon me.”
She turned her wild, bright eyes upon the solemn faces of the jurymen.
“Have pity upon me,” she cried to them faintly. “Do not let them swear
away my life upon the evidence of that letter which my husband meant to
be as the dove with the olive branch. I swear to you that I never saw
that letter till this moment, and that Sibyl St. Alban herself carried
it to her room that fatal night leaving me in blind ignorance that she
was robbing me of a treasure more precious than gold!”
And then she turned back to the lawyer and held out her hand.
“It is mine. Give it to me,” she said, imperiously, and he leaned
forward and placed it in the clasp of the trembling little fingers.
Something like a spasm of delight shook the frail young form as she
held for the first time in her hands the letter so full of sweet
assurances of Talbot’s love. Then, oh, matchless woman’s love, the girl
standing there with the black shadow of the scaffold lowering over her
golden head, in deadly peril of her life through her husband’s sin,
lifted to her quivering lips that strangely found treasure and kissed
it once, twice, thrice!
There was a moment’s breathless pause of wonder, sorrow, pity, then an
uncontrollable thunder of applause shook the court-house to its center.
The heart of humanity had been thrilled to its core by this impulsive
emotion. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
Mr. Davenport drew his client to a seat in a glow of satisfaction,
feeling that the incident of the letter had done more for her cause
than all his powerful speech. Alas, the counsel had not done haranguing
the jury yet.
Order was restored as soon as possible, and the lawyer resumed his
speech. But he had not spoken ten words before another interruption
occurred.
Kitty May, Mrs. Strangemore’s maid, who had come into court with her
and Miss Drusilla, suddenly uttered a piercing shriek, and fainted.
“The devil take the women’s tongues,” savagely muttered the lawyer who
was again compelled to suspend his speech until the unconscious maid
was carried out of court into the fresh air.
Full of wonder and vexation Miss Drusilla Strangemore followed the
bearers to the door. She was quite indignant with Kitty May for having
nerves and fainting away just like a fine lady.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE GHOST AGAIN.
They laid Kitty May down in the fresh air and bathed her face and hands
in cold water. Under this vigorous treatment she soon gasped and opened
her eyes. Miss Drusilla who had been bending solicitously over her,
immediately relaxed her anxiety and assumed an expression of acerbity.
“Kitty May, I should like to know what you mean by such foolishness,”
she exclaimed, severely.
Kitty’s eyes flared open with a dazed look upon Miss Drusilla’s face.
“Oh, Miss Strangemore, please don’t be angry. I couldn’t help it,” she
faltered, “I was so frightened. Didn’t you see it yourself, dear Miss
Drusilla?”
“See what, girl? What are you talking about anyway?”
Kitty raised herself to a sitting posture and swept a startled glance
around her. Then a sigh of relief escaped her lips.
“It is gone, it is not here. But I saw it as plain as day in the court
room! Oh, Miss Drusilla,” she added, in a whisper, “it was Mrs. St.
Alban’s ghost again! I saw it right there among a crowd of people. She
was holding a little black veil away from her face and glaring at Miss
Nina fit to kill her! Oh, me, what have I ever done to that woman that
she should haunt me so?” moaned Kitty, despairingly.
“You are crazy, Kitty! you imagined the whole thing or else you
have been deceived by a resemblance,” cried the spinster, in great
displeasure. “Come right back into the court-house and point out to me
furtively the woman you took for Sibyl St. Alban. I’ll warrant it is a
creature of flesh and blood, and that some trivial likeness has misled
you.”
They went back quietly to the crowded room where silence had been
restored and the counsel had gone on with his speech to the judge and
jury, while the prisoner sat pale and drooping like a broken flower
before them. They sat down softly, and then the maid lifted her eyes
half fearfully to the distant spot where she had seen a black-clad
figure sitting with a face like Sibyl St. Alban’s, glaring defiance
upon Nina when she kissed her husband’s letter.
When she had looked, she gave a sigh of blended disappointment and
relief.
Among the closely crowded benches the seat where she had seen the
ghostly figure sitting was empty. The woman had disappeared.
“Now where is the ghost, you silly thing?” whispered the stern old
maid, and Kitty could only nervously indicate the vacant seat and
whisper that it had disappeared.
“It was only your fancy at first. You ought to be ashamed of yourself,
making such a scene for nothing,” returned the lady, tartly, and she
turned her back upon the girl and gave her indignant attention to the
speech of the counsel for the prosecution.
It was said then and afterward that the able lawyer had never made
a more brilliant and effective speech. He brought all his learning,
all his eloquence, all his power to bear. He asked the jury to look
at the facts as they were, not in the distorted light in which Mrs.
Strangemore’s lawyer had presented them. Mr. Davenport had asked them
to remember the youth, the beauty, the high position of the accused.
He desired to remind them that Mrs. St. Alban had been young, lovely,
and wealthy too. Life had been as sweet to her as to the cruel girl
who had sent her out of it into the darkness of the tomb. He said
that Sibyl St. Alban had not been a guilty woman, only a thoughtless
one. She had been the betrothed of Talbot Strangemore when he was a
college student, and after a lover’s quarrel, in a fit of pique, he had
thoughtlessly acceded to his parent’s wish that he should marry the
child-heiress, Nina Selwyn. When in after years the estranged lovers
met again, all their old tenderness revived, but the man was the most
to blame, because he had fostered Sibyl St. Alban’s love, declaring
that he would procure a divorce from his childish bride and marry her.
Nina Selwyn had been the marplot in their whole romantic history. She
had parted them first, and then murdered the lovely, hapless young
widow, whose only fault was that she loved the man who should by every
law, human and divine, have been her husband instead of Nina Selwyn’s.
He went on at length, making a martyr of Sibyl St. Alban, and a human
fiend of Nina until he had exhausted the vocabulary of his eloquent
denunciations, and when he sat down and the jury filed out slowly one
by one, no one doubted what the verdict would be.
Nina had sat and listened to him with a pale, indignant, dismayed face.
That any one could have the heart to so denounce her, misrepresent her,
and abuse her, seemed horrible indeed to the innocent and ignorant
young girl so unversed in the ways of the world. She clung convulsively
to Kitty, and the bitter tears rolled slowly down her cheeks as she
heard him seemingly with malice prepense, arguing her young life away,
and dooming her to a terrible, shameful death.
“I cannot die now, I must live for Talbot’s sake, for he loves me, and
it would grieve him to know that I died such a terrible death,” she
had been saying over and over to herself, in the blissful emotion born
of the letter she clutched tightly in her hand, and the man’s dreadful
denunciatory words thrilled her with horror.
She turned her great haggard dark eyes upon the faces of the jurymen
and scanned them piteously as if trying to read their inmost hearts.
“Oh, Kitty, will they believe that I am as bad as that man says I
am? Will they say that I am guilty, and condemn me to be hung?” she
whispered to her attendant, with an awful shudder.
Kitty pressed the clinging, trembling white fingers fondly in her own.
“No, no, darling, they could not be so cruel,” she whispered back, and
she tried to explain to the trembling, frightened girl that it was
the duty of the prosecuting attorney to make the case out as bad as
possible, but that the jurymen were not bound to believe him, and that
the verdict rested with them alone.
But the long, labored speech, bristling with satire and acrimony, was
over at last. The charge to the jurymen had been given, and they had
filed out with solemn faces, on their errand of life and death. The
court sat waiting in silence or with subdued murmurs of converse for
the verdict.
And to Talbot Strangemore so far away from home there came no
prescience of that awful twilight hour when his beautiful bride sat
in the midst of that awful throng, waiting to know whether they were
going to set her free to wait for her husband’s home-coming, or whether
they were going to kill her for a crime she had never committed.
* * * * *
It seemed to Nina a long, long time while she waited there in the great
suffocating court-room crowded full of men and women, all so eager to
know whether the law was going to let her live or die, that they did
not go home to their suppers, but waited long after the night fell,
unwilling to go away until they knew what her fate would be.
Miss Strangemore and Kitty and the Fieldings prayed silently; Nina
sat still as a marble statue, holding tightly clasped in her hands
her husband’s letter and a bouquet of white roses and heliotrope that
Minnie Fielding had given her. In the dense, suffocating air of the
court room that warm June night the fragrance of the flowers was strong
and almost oppressive, but she held them in an almost mechanical grasp,
while her thoughts wandered far from the scene and tried to fancy where
Talbot could be in this hour of her humiliation and awful peril.
“Oh, if I had only known that he repented his folly, and that he loved
me that night, I would not have run away,” she said over and over to
herself. “But that dreadful woman carried away his letter and so ruined
my whole life. Oh, how wicked she was, and what cruel falsehoods she
told me, for in the light of this letter everything she told me was a
lie. Oh, I wish that I could see my husband once more even if I have to
die, to tell him how dearly I loved him all the while, and how I love
him still, although my love has only brought me the cruelest sorrow and
shame!”
It was almost like a religion to her, this love that the dying woman
had solemnly bade her give to Talbot Strangemore. It had an element of
sacredness in it. Heretofore it had been all sacredness and sorrow. Now
it had a thrill of joy and passion in it. Talbot, her husband, loved
her back again, and would have wished no higher joy than to have her
for his bride. She said the words over to herself many times, and her
senses reeled with the joy of the thought until at moments she forgot
the deadly peril that hung over her, and remembered only her husband
and their mutual love.
“He loves me, and he would grieve if I died,” she said, and there was
so much gladness in the thought that she prayed heaven passionately
that she might live to be happy with him yet. She repeated to herself
some lines read long ago, and vaguely remembered:
“Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead,
Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine,
And would the sun for thee more coldly shine,
Because of grave-damps falling round my head?
I marveled, my Beloved, when I read
Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine----
But ... _so_ much to thee? Can I pour thy wine
While my hands tremble? Then my soul, instead
Of dreams of death resumes life’s lower range!”
The hours waned. People grew impatient in the hot close air, waiting
for the verdict. How long the jury stayed! It was past ten o’clock.
Minnie Fielding pressed close to her friend and former pupil’s side.
She pressed her hand over the small white one that held Talbot’s
letter. It was cold as ice, but Nina’s cheeks were flushed, and her
eyes were bright and burning.
“Oh, my darling how cold your hands are, but your face is on fire. This
suspense is killing you,” she said.
But Nina shook her head.
“No,” she whispered, “I am not impatient. Oh, Mrs. Fielding, do not
laugh at me, please, but in thinking of my letter I forget now and then
why I am here, and what I am waiting for. I am like a man drunken with
strong, new wine.”
The hot tears crowded into the gentle lady’s eyes. She was about to
speak but the words died on her lips, chilled by a fateful sound.
The long vigil of blended hope and fear was over. The jurymen were
returning to the court-room.
Out of doors the heat of the summer night was dissolving in heavy
clouds and pattering rain-drops. A peal of thunder shook the heavens,
and the fierce bright lightning flashed into the room like a
sword-point, keen, blue, intense, as the judge arose to receive the
verdict.
“Guilty of murder in the first degree.”
* * * * *
They had scarcely dared to hope for anything better since the
prosecuting attorney’s speech, but their hearts thrilled with anguish
as the fatal words were spoken.
They could not look for a moment at the beautiful girl who had so
longed to live because she had found out at last that her husband loved
her. A faint cry of mortal agony had escaped her lips, and then she
remained still as a statue, but holding still in her tight clasp the
letter that had suddenly transformed this earth she was doomed to leave
so soon into an Eden. But after that faint cry of startled horror, not
a word escaped her lips.
Men and women gazed at her in pity and curiosity, and their hearts
ached within them at the sight of the slight, dark figure, with the
letter in one hand and the flowers in the other, standing there so
quietly before the judge while his stern, judicial lips slowly and
solemnly pronounced sentence of ignominious death upon her.
* * * * *
It was over, and the curious crowd were leaving the court-room
pell-mell, heedless of the rain-storm raging outside, in their
eagerness to breathe the fresh air again. In the tumult, while the
crowd was pressed close to her, Kitty May fancied she heard a low,
demoniac laugh of exultant triumph close to her ear. She turned around
quickly, but there was no one beside her. In the same moment she saw
Nina looking up at her with wild, scared eyes.
“Oh, Kitty, surely that was a fiend that laughed,” she whispered, and
the maid groaned to herself:
“My God, we both are haunted by the ghost of that murdered woman!”
Doctor Fielding came to lead Nina to the carriage that was to convey
her back to prison.
“Do not be frightened, my child,” he whispered, as he drew the small
hand tenderly through his arm. “You have three months yet, and I intend
to move heaven and earth to secure a pardon for you.”
CHAPTER XXXIX.
NINA FORGIVES TALBOT.
“Oh, Aunt Drusilla, you must find my husband for me now. I cannot die
without seeing him again. He loves me, and only think how he would
feel if he came back again after long months and years had passed,
and they told him what a terrible death I had died,” exclaimed Nina,
passionately, the day after her sentence of death had been pronounced.
A very madness of despair had taken possession of the wretched young
creature. She was drowned in bitter tears of woe and pain.
“Until I knew that Talbot loved me I could have borne to die,” she
said. “But now, oh, now, it is too hard to bear. Oh, if my life could
be spared to me, how happy I should be when my husband came home again!
There would be no more sorrow, nor regrets, no cruel misunderstandings,
but only heavenly peace and happiness. And then, perhaps, after awhile
we might find out the real murderer of Sibyl St. Alban. I would give
half my fortune to find out who murdered the poor lady that Talbot once
loved. Perhaps it was some jealous lover, goaded to madness by her open
flirtations,” she added, little dreaming how near her fancy had hit the
truth.
The whole passionate plaint of her heart was to see her husband again
before the awful sentence of the law was carried out against her.
Something told her that Talbot would not let them kill her for a crime
that she had never committed although the jury men had said that she
had.
“I am innocent, and Talbot will not let them murder me in cold blood,”
she said, passionately. “Oh, Aunt Drusilla, send some one to bring him
to me before it is too late!”
“Oh, my darling, if I only knew where to send for him how gladly would
I do so,” sighed the poor old lady, whose heart was nearly broken by
this dreadful tragedy.
“I have heard that money will do almost anything. I will give all that
I am worth to any one who will bring Talbot to me before that fatal
25th of July,” shuddered Nina.
It seemed as if neither love nor money could do anything in this case.
Talbot Strangemore’s whereabouts were wrapped in the densest mystery.
If the earth or the sea had opened and closed over him he could not
have remained more silent to the appeals that went abroad for him.
Everyone agreed that it was simply dreadful that Strangemore’s young
wife should perish so miserably while he remained abroad in utter
ignorance of her fate. Mr. Davenport advised that a detective be sent
in search of him. Nina sprang eagerly at the suggestion and desired
that two should go.
So they sent two men across the sea in search of the exile, but the
slow days dawned and waned and no tidings came to hint at their
success. Meanwhile hope began to fade in the hearts of those at home.
The pale young prisoner grew frailer and whiter daily, until life
seemed to hang upon a thread so slender that her friends doubted if she
would survive until that fatal 25th of July. They brought her books
and flowers to beguile the weary time. She only wept over the sweet
blossoms that recalled to her the days when she was free and happy. Of
the books she chose only the sweetest and saddest love-stories, and the
most melancholy poems.
Minnie Fielding came to see her just as often as they would admit her.
To this gentle woman, her old friend and teacher, Nina showed the
sadness of her heart as she did to no one else.
“I have read all the books and the stories, but I cannot find among
them all a single story as sad as mine,” she said, “I do not believe
that any woman’s love ever had as sad an ending as mine. I loved my
husband for five long years tenderly and truly, and all the while he
was far away from me and hating the fetters that bound him to me, his
heart given to another woman. At last when he came home and I learned
the bitter truth, Fate played me one of her cruelest tricks. He learned
to love me, and I missed the knowledge until all too late. If I die
upon the scaffold it will not be because I am a sinner, for my hands
are clear of Sibyl St. Alban’s blood. It will be because I loved so
deeply, and because my jealous pain drove me momentarily mad.”
She opened one of her books of poems, and read aloud:
“Let him stand
In my thoughts untouched by blame,
Could he help it if my hand
He had claimed with hasty claim?
That was wrong, perhaps--but then
Such things be--and will again!
Women cannot judge for men.”
Mrs. Fielding kissed the poor, pale lips tenderly. “Poor darling! So
you forgive him all the sorrow his weakness and folly brought upon
you,” she said.
“Yes, because he loved me at the last,” Nina answered. “Oh, Mrs.
Fielding, that lawyer was unjust to me, when he said that I had parted
Talbot from his love. They were parted before he came home from
college. I heard him tell Aunt Drusilla that she had thrown him over to
marry a rich old man.”
“She was a bad woman, and Mr. Strangemore was weak indeed to fall a
victim to her wiles again. You are very good to forgive him, dear,”
said Mrs. Fielding. “Many women in your place would hate him.”
“I thought that I did at first,” Nina answered. “My pride, my
resentment rose up in arms against him, and I said, I will never
forgive him for his sin. But then I remembered that his dying mother
had solemnly bound me to love him, and so I could not take my heart
away from him even if I would. And, oh, Mrs. Fielding, I had loved him
for five long years, and it was not easy to hate him then. Even if I
had tried ever so hard I could not have done it. I think my love was
deep enough to have pleased even a poet,” and she read again from her
book:
“Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love as the angels may
With the breath of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behooving and unbehooving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past
Oh, never call it loving!”
“Oh, what a future of happiness Talbot Strangemore blighted by his
folly,” Mrs. Fielding thought, gazing at the fair, young face and
listening to the tender, musical voice. “One heart like Nina’s, so
fresh, so pure, so true, is worth a hundred fickle coquettes like Sibyl
St. Alban.”
And she could not help from despising Talbot Strangemore a little for
his folly. But then she did not know how the beautiful coquette had
lured him on and on, until she had fatally wrecked his happiness.
* * * * *
The flowers bloomed, the birds sang, the gay pageant of the summer
moved on. Nina’s brief respite was almost over.
And every application for pardon, every prayer for a commutation of the
sentence, every entreaty for a longer respite even, had been refused!
They had no longer any hope.
It seemed that public opinion was terribly against the beautiful young
prisoner. The governor was afraid to show her even the slightest favor,
lest it should be said that he had been tempted by the glitter of her
gold. He must let the law take its due course.
There was no longer any hope, no longer any time even, for the last day
of her life was ended and at sun rise she must die--die an ignominious
death upon the scaffold, she the young, the pure, the lovely, the last
descendant of the proud old Selwyn race!
Only yesterday she had made her will. She had given ten thousand
dollars to Miss Drusilla, ten thousand to her faithful maid, Kitty, ten
thousand to her dear friends, the Fieldings, and she had gratefully
remembered her lawyer, her minister, her servants, and given all
the rest to Talbot. At night the silver-haired old minister who had
baptized her when she was a baby, who had received her into his church,
who had married her to Talbot Strangemore, and who had always watched
tenderly over her orphan girlhood, had administered the sacrament to
her and a few chosen friends, had blessed her, and gone away to return
at daylight. All of earth was over now, and the dawn of the new day was
rising fairly upon the closing scene in the tragedy of her brief life.
CHAPTER XL.
IN EGYPT.
It was no wonder that Miss Strangemore’s and the lawyer’s efforts to
find Talbot Strangemore had so persistently failed, for, following the
bent of Oswald Ferris, he had penetrated the wilds of Egypt.
Since that day when Talbot Strangemore had sternly accused him of the
murder of Sibyl St. Alban, Oswald Ferris had been a changed man, to the
one whom he had once denominated his friend.
A terrible fear had come over him that was not dissipated by the
efforts Strangemore constantly made to place him at his ease, and to
obliterate from his mind the impression made by his rash and startling
accusation.
When they had first gone abroad, Strangemore hating himself for the
evil he had wrought, remorseful, wretched, and heartbroken, unfitted by
his incurable despair for the society of his fellow-beings, had longed
with bitter impatience to forsake this self-imposed companion. Their
positions were now reversed.
Oswald Ferris under the impulse of a terrible fear that made the
blood run coldly through his veins, was determined to fly from Talbot
Strangemore’s suspicious companionship and hide himself in the remotest
accessible spot on earth. He feared and distrusted the man who had so
great an interest in finding out the real murderer of Sibyl St. Alban.
“He cannot fool me now by his apparent cordiality and friendship,” he
muttered, uneasily to himself, “I must go away from him, or he will
track me to my doom. By my foolish outburst against Sibyl St. Alban
that day I have roused his suspicion, and the instinct of the hound
will never be diverted until he runs his prey to earth. I will not
remain with him. I must find some plausible excuse for going on alone.”
Talbot Strangemore on the other hand was equally determined not to lose
sight of his companion.
He had not a single doubt over Sibyl St. Alban’s murderer. He believed
firmly that the hand of Oswald Ferris had struck that fatal dagger into
the false breast of the woman who had played with his heart for pastime
and flung it away like a broken toy.
“He is the murderer, and in time I will bring it home to him. And to
further that end I will never lose sight of him, never permit him to
leave me, until I have obtained proofs of his crime. I will be like
a blood-hound upon his track until the memory of my injured martyred
bride shall be cleared from the foul blot cast upon it by Sibyl St.
Alban’s falsehood and Oswald Ferris’ cowardly silence,” he swore to
himself.
In the meantime Ferris proposed all kinds of impracticable trips
and plans in the hope that his companion in misery would desert
his standard and leave him alone. He was tempted often to desert
Strangemore and fly beyond his reach, but he dared not yield to
the temptation for fear of confirming the suspicion he had already
awakened. His sense of guilt made him a miserable coward.
And Strangemore in those days was imperturbably good-natured. He
acceded to everything Ferris proposed. His most impracticable schemes
and plans were met with careless raillery and final acquiescence.
“Where thou goest I will go,” Strangemore said to him one day, with
a veiled significance, that thrilled the coward’s heart with deadly
terror. He grew desperate.
“The best of friends must part,” he said to Strangemore, veiling his
uneasiness under a light laugh. “To-morrow I shall bid you farewell,
‘it may be for years and it may be forever.’ I have joined a party
going on an exploring tour into Egypt and Africa.”
Strangemore stared at him a moment, then he gave a reckless laugh.
“There is nothing that would please me better than such a tramp,” he
said. “Fancy gazing at the sphinx in Egypt, then shooting lions and
tigers in the African jungles. Your friends must take me, too, Ferris,
I would not miss the sport for the world!”
Ferris turned upon his heel with a muttered imprecation, and a frown as
black as night.
“Your doom be on your own head, my implacable blood-hound,” he raged
within himself, “I owe you no pity and no mercy. You took Sibyl from
me, and now you have chosen to hunt me down because I revenged myself
for her cursed falsity. So be it, my handsome Irresistable, but you
have sealed your own fate. You will never come out of the African
jungles alive. You will be the first tiger slain!”
* * * * *
So it fell out that in those golden May days while Nina was being
tried for her life, the two men who had such a terrible interest in
each other sat by night around their camp-fires amid Egyptian wilds,
and thought awake, and sleeping dreamed, of the two fair women who had
so blended with the current of their lives that they were exiles now
for their sakes--the one dead by the assassin’s stroke, the other by
the work of a doom self-sought. And who could measure the agonizing
remorse that preyed upon these two men’s hearts.
Not Talbot Strangemore surely, the victim of a mad remorse that
“spurned atonement’s power.” A ghost went with him through those days
and nights of reckless tramping and suicidal exposure. It was the ghost
of the fair and trusting bride his sin had slain. And ever and always
the white arms beckoned him, the dark eyes prayed him, the faint voice
appealed to him to come to her. He had one answer always to excuse his
tarrying:
“Wait a little while, my darling, until I have brought home his guilt
to Sibyl’s murderer, and cleared your memory from all stain, and then I
will hasten to greet you in the spirit land.”
Only for that mission that held him back, Talbot Strangemore would have
sought death even as Nina had sought it. He was unutterably wretched,
remorseful beyond all telling, and his love for the young bride, loved
too late, was deeper than all. The passionate, despairing strength of
his love for the dead girl startled him by its yearning force.
“I never knew that I could love like this,” he said to himself, in
wonder. “Surely the fancy I had for Sibyl was but a fancy compared with
this, it was:
‘Like moonlight unto sunlight,
Like water unto wine.’”
CHAPTER XLI.
FERRIS GROWS DESPERATE.
The gay party of travelers whom Strangemore and Ferris had joined did
not think they had gained much by the accession to their numbers.
Strangemore was gloomy, thoughtful, grave, and appeared to be totally
wrapped up in some absorbing theme within himself.
Ferris was moody and boisterously gay by fits and starts. He was
“everything by turns and nothing long.” The travelers decided among
themselves that these two brilliant and accomplished men had something
out of the common the matter with them. They looked like men with
secrets on their minds, they seemed fit for treasons, stratagems, and
spoils.
If any one had told them the actual truth--that one of these men was a
cruel murderer--that he had ruthlessly killed a beautiful woman because
she had played with his heart like the foolish butterfly that she
was--and that the other man had been so foolish and so weak that he had
driven the fairest and most loving wife in the world to her death, they
would not have wondered at their grave looks, they would have recoiled
from them in horror and contempt and fear. But there was no one near to
betray these vital secrets, and so Strangemore and Ferris remained with
the party, each a silent vigilant spy upon the movements of the other,
and sometimes a terrible, murderous gleam flashed into the gloomy
cavernous orbs of Ferris that boded no good to the man who was tracking
him down.
“If I could only find him alone in some distant lonely spot out of
sight and sound of all the others, his soul should soon follow that of
Sibyl St. Alban to Hades!” he would mutter vindictively.
He knew that Strangemore watched him unrelentingly, unremittingly, for
some token of his hidden sin. He knew that when for very weariness he
fell asleep beneath the Egyptian stars on the banks of “old Nilus”
that his enemy listened breathlessly to the mutterings of his slumber,
longing for him to betray himself in his feverish dreams of the past. A
mad hatred for Talbot Strangemore grew within him. A thousand times he
wished him dead.
“He is the only living being that suspects me, and in time he will
track me down,” he thought, fearfully. “One or the other of us must
die, and that soon.”
Yet he shuddered when he thought of imbruing his hands again in human
blood.
“I do not want to kill him. I wish to heaven that he would go away and
forsake his deadly purpose, so that I need not be compelled to destroy
him to save myself,” he thought, shudderingly, while his brow was
beaded with the cold dews of horror.
In the long, horror-haunted nights and days he cursed the memory of the
fair coquette who had driven him mad with her sweet words and smiles
until he had forgotten everything but his burning pain and his thirst
for revenge.
“I loved her, but I killed her. Ah, how horrible it is to love with
such madness that one slays the heartless fair one who has wrought him
woe!” he thought.
He wearied of the idle dalliance of their life in Egypt. He longed to
push on to Africa where the men talked of hunting lions and tigers.
“That will be the sport for me,” he said to himself. “In the keen ardor
of such pursuits, I may forget myself and forget her whom in my madness
I slew.”
But his comrades could not be induced to hasten their march into
Africa. They had left one of their number sick in England and they
could go no further without him.
“We promised to wait for him here,” they said, “and we cannot afford to
leave him. He is a noted hunter. He has been in Africa before, and he
knows the route.”
Strangemore and Ferris did not take much interest in the expected
new-comer, until one day when they heard quite incidentally that he was
an American.
“But he will never return to his native land,” they said. “He is a
misanthrope and a woman-hater. His life has been blasted by the falsity
of his once idolized wife, and he has forsworn his country forever,”
and then the two listeners felt as if they held some kinship with the
absent man.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE NAYA HAYE.
“If your friend does not come soon, gentlemen, I shall have to cut
the country, even at the risk of losing your society. The Khamsin is
getting to be more than I can bear,” Oswald Ferris said one night,
as they lingered under the palm trees that skirted the camp that was
pitched near the shores of the Nile in Upper Egypt.
The dozen men who composed the party were disposed in various
picturesque attitudes about the camp. The sport of the day had been
fishing, and several were collected around a huge fire preparing
supper, the air being highly impregnated with the odor of broiling
fish. The clear soft moonlight and starlight glimmered down upon the
animated scene, upon the stalwart forms and handsome faces of the men
who were laughing and jesting in high enjoyment of the scene and the
hour, unmindful of the grave, preoccupied faces of the two Americans
whom they had become habituated to regard as deaths heads at the feast.
Leaning lightly against a stately palm tree gazing in the brilliant
moonlight at the lotus lillies rocking on the breast of the storied
Nile, was Talbot Strangemore. He had been thinking sadly of his
beautiful dead bride, but at those words from Oswald Ferris he turned
his head and looked at him.
Khamsin--the hot wind from the desert--had been blowing several weeks
now, and as Ferris said, it was hard to bear. It was oppressive and
unhealthy in the extreme, and every one began to chafe at the delay.
The sweltering days and nights made them hot and impatient, but until
now no one had spoken out his discontent.
The chief laughed good-naturedly at the complaint of Ferris.
“You are right, Ferris. The Khamsin is hard to bear,” he said. “One
seems to scorch and shrivel in the intense heat. I cannot imagine what
detains John Armstrong so long. We expected he would have joined us
several weeks ago. If he does not put in an appearance by to-morrow, I
think we shall have to give him up and cut the country as you say. We
cannot remain but a short while longer any-way, for it will soon be the
season for the annual inundation of the country by the over-flow of the
Nile.”
“You cannot get away too soon to please me!” growled Ferris. And the
good-natured Wilson said again, “We will wait until to-morrow anyway,”
and dropped the subject.
It was late when they retired that night, and before any one had closed
his eyes in sleep a piercing cry of horror startled the camp.
In an instant every man had sprung from his rude camp-bed to the ground.
“What is it?” they began to exclaim, and some one answered, quickly:
“It was Strangemore that shouted. Let us see what ails him.”
Pale as a ghost and shivering with horror, Talbot was standing by his
couch holding one end of the coverlet clutched in his hand. He turned
his burning eyes upon them.
“There was an asp in my bed--see!” he said, hoarsely.
And there, sure enough, upon the white bed lay the famed serpent that
brought welcome death to beauteous, conquered Cleopatra--but this one
was dead--slain in all its deadly power by a heavy blunt instrument
that Talbot still held mechanically in his hand.
“Great God, how did it come there?” Wilson cried, excitedly, and then
he suddenly saw a small, strong wooden box protruding from the pillow.
He snatched it hurriedly out.
“Why this is my own box,” he said. “The box where I had placed a
specimen of the deadly asp, _naya haye_, in order to take it to a
museum in England. It is empty. A hole has been drilled in the side and
lightly covered with thin pasteboard through which the serpent has made
its way. Great heavens, it looks like a premeditated deed! What does it
mean, Strangemore?”
“Some one has tried to kill me,” Talbot answered, hoarsely. “When I
threw back the cover the asp lay coiled in my bed. Fortunately the
moonlight was so clear and brilliant that I distinguished the horrible
serpent and quickly snatched up this heavy bolt and dispatched him.”
He was shuddering with horror. The shock to his nerves had been great,
and his eyes gleamed wildly out of his marble white features as he
looked around upon their horror-struck faces. He saw that only one was
missing.
Suddenly Wilson exclaimed:
“Ferris was looking at the asp in the box this evening. Where is he
now?”
They found him lying quietly in bed and apparently asleep. The men
shook him roughly.
“He must be dead or he could not have slept through the uproar we have
made,” they said.
But at their rough handling he started, broad awake, sat up in bed, and
gazed at them in a dull, dazed way.
“What is it? Why have you wakened me? Has anything happened?” he
stammered.
Wilson took him firmly by the shoulder.
“Yes, something has happened,” he said, sharply. “Ferris, you were
looking at the asp in the box this evening. What did you do with it?”
Ferris looked at him in wonder.
“I did nothing with it. I was merely peering through the glass top at
your dangerous pet, and I came away and left it under the great rock
where you always keep it. Has it gotten away from you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Wilson answered.
“Well, I always told you it would, you know, and I am glad it has done
so at last without harming any one, as I always had the most horrible
fears that it would do.”
“But the strangest part of it all was, that when it made its marvelous
escape it carried my box with it,” said Wilson, drily.
“No,” exclaimed Oswald Ferris.
“Yes, and the strangest part of it yet was that the asp, box and all,
went and hid under the pillow of Talbot Strangemore, your friend. And
this same cunning serpent of old Nile cut a hole in the side of the box
which he covered with thin paste-board in order to make his exit easy
at the right moment.”
In the brilliant moonlight that flooded the scene with radiance he saw
the men’s faces gazing at him with dark threatening looks that made the
blood run coldly through his veins.
He gave a gasp and a shiver and tried to brave it out.
“You are jesting with me, surely, and it is an unseemly hour for
pleasantries,” he said, in a tone bristling with offense. “Have you
wakened me from sleep at midnight to tell me this ridiculous tale?”
Wilson gave him a glance of flashing contempt. The men crowded closely
around him, casting scornful looks upon Ferris, while Wilson, who
seemed to have constituted himself the spokesman, said, sarcastically:
“Is there anything ridiculous in the fact that Strangemore found that
horrible poisonous serpent coiled in his bed when he was about to
retire?”
“In his bed, oh, horrible! Then poor Strangemore must be dead,” Ferris
exclaimed, in well simulated distress and horror, but with a wild throb
of gladness and relief at his heart.
No one said yea or nay at his words, but Wilson continued, sternly:
“I am forced to believe that you, Ferris, placed that serpent in
Strangemore’s bed with murderous intent, although you have pretended to
be his friend. We have watched you two Americans, I and my comrades,
and we know that you two are linked together by some mysterious bond,
and that you mutually hate each other. Is it not so, my men?”
“Aye! Aye! Aye!” rang shrilly on the hot sweltering air of the June
night.
“I know that you took away the box with the asp this evening,” Wilson
went on, “I said nothing for I believed that you had done it for a mere
joke to alarm me over the loss of my deadly pet. But this horrible
_eclaircissement_ to-night has taught me better. You deliberately laid
your plans for the death of Talbot Strangemore, whom you both hate
and fear for some unexplained cause. Do you dare deny your murderous
attempt?”
“I dare deny it because I am innocent. I had no cause of quarrel with
Strangemore. He was my friend,” asserted Ferris boldly, yet inwardly
quaking with fear.
“You are a liar!” Wilson cried stormily, and one after another the
voices of the men caught it up and the fierce accusation rang out upon
the air.
Someone ran and brought Strangemore and placed them face to face. The
would-be murderer recoiled with a cry of fear when he beheld his living
foe.
“Strangemore, I thought you dead!” he exclaimed, and the other
answered, with limitless contempt:
“It is not your fault that I am alive!”
“Speak, Strangemore,” cried the leader. “Do you believe that this
coward and villain quaking here, placed that serpent in your bed with
the deliberate intention of destroying you?”
There was a moment of the deepest, most intense silence, and then
Talbot Strangemore lifting his hand solemnly to heaven, answered firmly:
“Before God I believe it.”
“That is enough,” said the spokesman, and he turned back to Ferris who
had broken into fierce denials and imprecations.
“Listen,” he said. “In your own land they have a terrible and summary
method of punishing offenders such as you are--men guilty of the
blackest treason and iniquity. I confess that in your case I could
contemplate that method with unalloyed satisfaction. I see no reason
why we foreigners here under the distant skies of Egypt should not have
recourse to American methods to punish this native of a land which
he has dishonored. My comrades, what say you? Shall we not resolve
ourselves into a court of Judge Lynch?”
“Aye, aye,” the answer rang loudly, with but two dissenting voices,
and those two the would-be murderer’s and his noble victim. But in the
next moment the exciting scene came to an abrupt pause by a sudden
interruption.
“Ho, ho, ho!” rang two blended voices, startling the actors in the
drama being played, and looking quickly around they confronted two
strong men who had stolen unobserved upon them.
“What, John Armstrong and his servant!” they cried, and forgetting
Ferris and his sin for a moment, they gathered around the new comer
plying him with eager questions.
Oswald Ferris drew a long breath of relief and crouched upon the ground
by the side of the camp-bed, hoping that the coming of the long
expected Armstrong would turn the thoughts of his stern judges in some
more kindly direction.
He knew that it would be worse than useless to endeavor to escape, and
cursing his evil luck, he waited in dead silence, and with the cold dew
of terror beading his brow, for the finale of his attempted crime.
“Curse me, what a bungler I was,” he said, “I was sure that the serpent
would do its deadly work surely, and then I would have removed the
tell-tale box and with it all trace of my crime. Fate has played
me a cursed trick, and I shall most probably pay the penalty of my
mistake with my life. So, Sibyl, you will be avenged after all, and my
vengeance upon you will have been the primal cause of my own death.”
It was horrible sitting there so still under the burning stars of Egypt
and looking death in the face. Oh how he cursed the memory of the woman
who through love had brought all this awful doom upon him. It was most
unfortunate that the light coquette had ever crossed his path. His
passionate, intense nature, fierce and jealous to the last degree had
staked everything upon her, and the loss of her had made him a fiend.
Everything good and noble had seemed to die within him. Like the hot
Khamsin as it swept across the desert plains blighting and burning
everything in its destructive course, so incurable despair had burned
away everything that had been noble within him.
CHAPTER XLIII.
JUDGE LYNCH.
When John Armstrong had satisfied the curiosity of his friends over his
long delay, and given them letters and news from home he claimed the
right to ask some questions himself. He was exceedingly anxious to know
the meaning of the dramatic scene he had come upon so unexpectedly.
Thus recalled to the terrible transgression of Ferris, the men resumed
their scowling looks again, and low, threatening murmurs ran around the
circle.
“I can tell you the story in a nut-shell,” answered Harvey Wilson.
“When we left England there were two men, compatriots of your own,
who joined our party. Observation has shown us that though ostensibly
friends they were secretly at war with each other. To-night we detected
one in an attempt to destroy the other by placing an asp in his bed.”
“Horrible!” ejaculated John Armstrong. “And you say he was a compatriot
of my own. What is his name?”
“Oswald Ferris. Do you know him?” inquired one of the party, curiously.
Mr. Armstrong shook his head.
“No, I have never heard the name before, and I am very sorry that he is
a countryman of mine. But what were you about to do with the traitorous
wretch when I came upon the scene?”
“We were going to try him in a court of Judge Lynch,” Wilson replied,
steadily, and the listener shuddered and then laughed.
“What! Judge Lynch in Egypt! You are making progress indeed,” he said.
“But did the other man die of the sting of the asp?” he inquired.
“No, because he was fortunate enough to detect the serpent and kill
it before he sprang into the bed. But his escape does not lessen the
sin of Ferris. He intended to destroy his victim, and it was only the
bright moonlight that showed Strangemore the serpent, and enabled
him to escape it, and thus saved his life. But Ferris is at heart a
murderer still, and the best thing we can do is to destroy him just as
Strangemore did the deadly serpent.”
“Strangemore! Did you say Strangemore?” exclaimed Mr. Armstrong,
starting to his feet. In the clear bright moonlight they saw that he
had grown suddenly pale and excited looking.
“That was what I said,” Harvey Wilson answered. “What ails you,
Armstrong? Do you know the man?”
“Yes,--no. Where is he? Let me see the man?” said John Armstrong,
hastily, and with strong excitement.
They looked around for Talbot Strangemore, and found that he had gone
and laid down upon his bed. Several of the men went after him.
“Mr. Armstrong is very anxious to meet you,” they said, and he readily
accompanied them to the spot where the others were anxiously waiting.
John Armstrong, himself a handsome specimen of athletic manhood,
looked curiously at the newcomer as they went through the ceremony of
introduction.
He saw a tall, finely formed man, with a noble, handsome face, and dark
eyes full of fire and strength and brooding passion. He said to himself
that he had never in all his life beheld a more splendidly handsome man
nor one with more courteous, stately grace than this one whom Oswald
Ferris had tried to murder.
They shook hands cordially, and then Mr. Armstrong said with an
impatience too fiery to brook delay:
“Is your name Talbot Strangemore?”
A slight air of wonder came over the face of the other, but he answered
frankly:
“Yes.”
“And you are an American?”
“Yes--like yourself whom I am most happy to claim as my countryman,”
answered Talbot Strangemore, with cordial grace.
“Thanks,” answered Mr. Armstrong, barely noticing the compliment in his
haste to get on. “Tell me,” he continued, anxiously. “Do you live in
Maryland? Is your home at Selwyn Heights on the bay?”
In the brilliant midnight moonlight he saw an almost tragical emotion
surge over the pale, handsome face of Talbot Strangemore. In a hoarse
voice half-strangled by pain and shame he answered:
“Yes.”
CHAPTER XLIV.
ARMSTRONG’S NEWS.
That moment was one destined to be a fadeless memory in the life of
Talbot Strangemore. In his after years there was no moment in which
he could not by simply shutting his eyes, recall the time and place
and scene--the strange, wierd camping ground beneath the tropical
palm-trees and luxuriant vegetation, the mystic murmur of old Nile
as it flowed between its banks in its grand strength and power, the
hot breath of the Khamsin as it swept across the desert and burned
their faces, and the glorious moonlight that lighted the whole scene
into mystic, solemn splendor with dark shadows here and there cast
fantastically by the stately palms. Blending with the tropical scene
were the eager excited faces of the men, and high over all rose the
voice of John Armstrong as he exclaimed earnestly, and with a note of
strong indignation in his clear, high voice:
“My God, then, man, why do you dally in Egypt, when you are so sorely
needed at home? Do you not know that there is a price set upon your
head?”
A low hum of wonder and execration rose from the group of men. They
believed that they had suddenly discovered another criminal.
But the next words of John Armstrong quickly undeceived them.
“Do not be too hasty, comrades,” he said, looking round at them with a
smile, “You have not unearthed another murderer to-night. It is true
that this man is sadly wanted at home, and that there is a large reward
offered for his apprehension. There are two detectives hunting him all
over Europe, and the papers of Europe and America all contain personals
inquiring for him. But in spite of all this flurry to apprehend him,
this man although he has committed a cruel wrong, has done no sin that
the law can reach with its august lash of justice!”
Strangemore regarded him in a strange dazed silence, while the others
clamorously demanded to know what he had done.
John Armstrong answered with an inflection of scorn in his voice:
“He broke his young wife’s heart by his foolish infatuation for another
woman!”
The man before him bowed his handsome head in bitter remorse and shame.
“You are right,” he murmured, lowly and mournfully. “I am a wretch
whose guilt, while it is beyond the pale of the law, carries with it
its own whip-lash of retribution and remorse. I broke my darling’s
heart by my foolish passion for a vain coquette, and although she died
by her own hand I am as guilty of her death as if I had poured the
poison into her cup and pressed it to her lips with my own hand!”
They saw that he was in terrible earnest, that his heart was crushed
within him by remorse and despair, and their first impulse of scorn and
contempt softened into the gentler emotion of pity. Armstrong said
with decided kindness in his voice:
“I am glad to see that you are genuinely remorseful and repentant over
your fault, Strangemore. But cheer up, man. You may yet be able to
redeem your self from the blight of your thoughtless folly.”
In the moonlight Strangemore lifted his dark, sad eyes, and looked
drearily into Armstrong’s face.
“Redeem myself--and Nina _dead_!” he said, reproachfully.
Armstrong answered, impressively:
“You made a terrible mistake in leaving your home as you did. Your wife
is not _dead_.”
“Not dead!” Strangemore shouted, hoarsely, and there was such a passion
of joy and amazement in his voice that it touched a responsive chord of
gladness in every manly breast.
“Not dead,” John Armstrong answered, gravely, and solemnly. “But
she needs your presence, Talbot Strangemore, for she is in the most
terrible peril at the hands of the law. She is in prison now and
condemned to be hanged on the 25th of July for the murder of her
beautiful rival, Mrs. St. Alban!”
CHAPTER XLV.
TALBOT LEARNS ALL.
Talbot Strangemore thought that he had suffered before, but no such
terrible moment as this had ever come to him until now when John
Armstrong’s words rang in his ears like the trump of doom. They struck
him with all the suddenness of a dreadful blow, depriving him all at
once of power, strength and volition. He reeled and staggered dizzily
like one drunken, and if the men had not come to his assistance he
would have fallen like one dead, to the earth.
“You broke it to him too abruptly,” said Harvey Wilson,
compassionately, as he brought water and bathed the face of the almost
swooning man.
“I am sorry, but I did not know that he would take it so hard,”
Armstrong answered.
“Did you think I had no soul and no conscience, then?” demanded
Strangemore, glancing weakly up at him from the chair where they had
placed him. “Oh, my God, sir, did you mean the horrible words you
spoke to me, or was it but an unseemly jest?”
“Unhappily it was the bitter truth, although had I been more discreet I
might have chosen my words so as not to shock you so much. But I will
not ask you to believe my unsupported testimony. I have with me some
London and New York papers, containing the whole story.”
He made a sign to his servant to unstrap his portmanteau, and bring
the papers. Someone struck a light, and with a shaking hand Talbot
Strangemore unfolded them. They rehearsed the whole tragic story,
thrillingly. There could no longer be any doubt in his mind. His
lovely girl-bride, Nina, whom he had so cruelly wronged and whom he
thought had died the death of the suicide, had twice been saved from
self-destruction only to meet a terrible doom upon the scaffold--dying
for the crime of another.
He crushed the papers fiercely in his hand and staggered past them to
the place where Oswald Ferris still crouched, wild-eyed, and in mortal
terror of his life.
He bent down and hissed fiercely in the ear of the cowering wretch:
“Did you hear what they were saying? Nina, my young wife, was not dead
as we supposed. She lives--lives, do you hear?--And she is in prison,
my innocent, pure-hearted darling--in prison, and condemned to be hung
for the murder of Sibyl St. Alban!”
Oswald Ferris shrank from the fiery lightning of his eyes, but he
answered, sullenly:
“Yes, I know. I heard it all.”
“You heard it all? Then what have you to say?” demanded Talbot
Strangemore, stormily.
“I have nothing to say. What does it matter to me that your wife will
have to swing for her crime?” Ferris answered, with the brutal laugh of
a fiend in Hades.
“Wretch! Coward! Liar!” Strangemore panted, springing toward him, and
his two strong white hands leaped at the throat of Ferris and closed
upon it with a strangling grasp.
The face of the wretch grew swollen and livid, his fierce eyes seemed
to start from his head, he uttered fearful inarticulate sounds
of rage, fear, and suffering. Presently he grew still, and only a
smothered gasp seemed to issue from his purple, foam-flecked lips. In a
moment all would have been over, and his crime-stained soul would have
been hurled unshriven at the judgment seat, but in that fateful moment
the locked hands of Strangemore fell apart suddenly, and he reeled
backward from the wretch with a cry that shrilled to the very heavens:
“My God, am I gone mad with the horror of this night that I was about
to sink my soul to the level of this fiend’s?”
Ferris glared at him with sullen rage and relief.
“Let there be no more talk of Judge Lynch, now. You have attempted my
life, even as I did yours. We are quits, now,” he exclaimed.
“No, we are not quits yet--never until I wring from your cursed
cowardly lips the confession of the terrible crime for which my
innocent young wife is condemned to suffer death!” Talbot Strangemore
answered, with terrible wrath.
CHAPTER XLVI.
TALBOT ACCUSES FERRIS.
Full of wonder and surprise the men gathered around them. They did not
understand the new complication of affairs.
“What is the meaning of this?” they asked, and Ferris answered with
triumphant malice:
“Strangemore attempted to choke me, and but for my superior strength
with which I threw off the villain’s grasp I must have been a dead man
now!”
Talbot Strangemore looked at him with superb scorn, and hissed out the
single word:
“Liar!”
“What, do you deny that you attempted to strangle me?” said Ferris, in
pretended amazement and reproach.
“I deny that I was prevented from doing so by any superior strength
on your part. I simply desisted myself because I suddenly realized to
what enormities my frenzy was driving me,” Talbot Strangemore answered,
folding his arms across his broad breast, and looking at the man
before him with proud, defiant scorn.
Ferris laughed aloud, a low jarring gurgle of sarcastic ridicule.
“You hear him, gentlemen of the jury,” he exclaimed. “It is a very
plausible tale, is it not?”
They gazed in wonder, scarce knowing what to say. All had witnessed
the attack, but it was not easy to determine whether Strangemore had
desisted himself or been forced to do so by the superior strength of
the other.
John Armstrong looked at the colorless, convulsed face of hapless
Nina’s husband. Somehow he was prepossessed in favor of the man, in
spite of the harsh opinion he had held before meeting him.
“Why did you attack him?” he said.
“He intimated that my unfortunate and innocent young wife was guilty
of the crime with which she is charged,” Talbot Strangemore answered,
angrily.
“And you do not believe that she is guilty?” asked Mr. Armstrong,
watching his face, narrowly.
“Great heavens, no. Could one believe an angel guilty of murder?
No sooner could I believe that my fair, wronged Nina committed that
terrible deed!”
“Perhaps you have some idea whom the real culprit may be?” said Harvey
Wilson, curiously.
“Yes, I have an idea, and I have been on the track of the man I suspect
of the murder for many weeks now, but I have failed as yet to fasten
his guilt upon him,” Talbot Strangemore answered, with deep despondency.
The listeners started and looked at each other significantly. The
coming of John Armstrong had let in a flood of light upon the
mysterious shadow that seemed to hang over the lives of these two men.
They began dimly to scent a tragedy.
“You say that you are on the track of the real murderer now. Is he then
in Egypt?” inquired Mr. Armstrong, gravely.
“Yes, he is in Egypt; but gentlemen, let me tell you a little story
that will throw light upon this subject which seems to possess a great
interest for you all.”
All agreed that they were deeply interested, and anxious to hear the
story he had to tell. They forgot that it was long past midnight and
that they had had no sleep that night. They gathered around Talbot
Strangemore and waited anxiously for what he was going to say, while
Ferris glared at them with the fury of a baffled tiger.
“I am not going to talk about myself,” said Talbot Strangemore. “My
guilt and sin toward my fair and faithful young bride admits of no
excuse or palliation. It is of that other one I would speak. The woman
whose beauty cursed and ruined my life!”
“And mine!” Oswald Ferris ejaculated, under his breath.
“Two years ago, when I first met Mrs. St. Alban after her widowhood she
had another lover,” went on Talbot. “He was fine-looking, brilliant in
conversation, with many intellectual attainments, and a favorite with
men. I will do him the credit to say that if he had never come under
the fatal sway of that arch coquette he might have been a good man--at
least he might not have gone very far wrong.”
He looked straight at Ferris and did not flinch at the angry
threatening glare of his eyes.
“But Sibyl St. Alban taught to this strong, fiery brilliant spirit
all the madness of love,” he went on. “She made him the slave of her
imperious will and idle caprices, and with her soft words and tender
smiles she made him believe that she loved him in return and promised
him her hand in marriage. It was while he was reveling in his Fool’s
Paradise that I came upon the scene.”
A low, smothered execration came from the bearded lips of Oswald Ferris.
“The papers have told my own story so plainly that I need scarcely
rehearse it,” he said, with faint bitterness. “Sibyl and I had been
lovers once in my college days when she was the poor professor’s
daughter and I a student with a small income--so small that it did not
tempt Sibyl to keep her troth to me when a richer man tempted her with
his gold. She threw me over heartlessly, and I went home and married
Nina Selwyn the little stepdaughter of my dying mother. I went abroad
after my mother’s death and left my little child-bride in the care of
my aunt. Three years later when I was thinking of returning to my home
an evil chance threw me in Sibyl St. Alban’s way again!”
“An evil chance for all,” muttered Oswald Ferris in his beard.
“If I had not been a vain weak fool, nothing would have happened as
it did then,” Talbot continued, bitterly. “I should have known better
by my experience of the past, but I fell straight into the glamour of
her toils again. She threw over the lover of whom I have spoken, as
heartlessly as she had once done me. She ignored him as if he had never
existed. He bore all in gloomy silence, but with inward rage and fierce
resentment that was all the deeper because he bore his cruel injury in
silence, brooding upon it when alone and yearning for revenge upon the
heartless coquette who had ruined his peace of mind.”
Instinctively every eye turned upon Oswald Ferris, and while they gazed
upon his craven face Talbot Strangemore asked, with bitter emphasis:
“Is it not more likely, gentlemen, that Sibyl St. Alban met her
death at the hands of that enraged and vengeful lover than from the
fair, weak girl whose jealousy was manifested with simple childish
directness, not endured with the deep, silent cunning of the man’s
vindictive nature?”
He turned his flashing dark eyes upon their eager, interested faces,
and instantly every man’s hand went up in the air, and every man’s
voice answered in the affirmative.
Oswald Ferris regarded the spirited demonstration with an uneasiness
that he vainly strove to hide. He had seen the men’s eyes turned upon
him in suspicion and distrust, and the terrible dread upon his mind
grew greater every moment.
He could not avoid saying, with a convulsive sneer:
“Mr. Strangemore has omitted the most important fact in his whole
story. Is the dying testimony of the murdered woman to be wholly
disregarded? Sibyl St. Alban declared that Mrs. Strangemore killed her.”
“And perjured her soul by the declaration,” affirmed Talbot
Strangemore, bitterly. “She hated my innocent Nina, and so to take
revenge upon her she blackened her own soul and condemned it to Hades
by her lying deposition. She had first worked upon Nina’s feelings
until the girl had fled from her home, and I believe Mrs. St. Alban was
cognizant of that fact before she was murdered, and so in her dying
hours took her fatal revenge, choosing to shield the man who had killed
her at the expense of my poor young wife!”
“The theory looks very plausible, certainly,” said Mr. Armstrong,
with subdued bitterness, born of his own consciousness of wrong and
suffering. “There is nothing too monstrous for a bad woman to do to
further the ends of her despotic will.”
“Nothing!” echoed Talbot Strangemore, and suddenly one of his comrades
said to him, significantly:
“And this slighted lover, this angry man whom you suspect of Mrs. St.
Alban’s murder, where is he now?”
Talbot Strangemore drew his breath hard for a moment between his
compressed lips. The question was taken up and repeated from lip to lip:
“You say that you have been upon the track of the murderer for many
weeks. Where is he now?”
He answered, pointing a scornful finger at the cowering wretch before
him:
“Behold him in Oswald Ferris!”
CHAPTER XLVII.
RALPH ST. ALBAN.
A snarl of tiger like rage and hate came from the lips of Ferris at
those few emphatic words from the lips of his foe. He growled, hoarsely:
“Curse you forever for that base lie! How dare you thus condemn an
innocent man?”
Talbot Strangemore did not answer him. He was looking at his comrades.
“You know now, my friends, why the asp was placed in my bed to-night.
Oswald Ferris knew that I suspected him and that I would follow him
from one end of the earth to the other to convict him of his sin and
clear the memory of my martyred bride, so he took that means of ridding
himself of his foe.”
“It is false, false!” the accused ground out between his clenched
teeth, vindictively, but no one paid any regard to his denials. Every
man was against him. The terrible purpose that had been frustrated by
the arrival of John Armstrong flamed up into their minds again.
“Lynch law is too good for this villain!” they shouted, angrily.
Oswald Ferris sprang up, he caught John Armstrong hurriedly by the arm.
“Do not let this horrible thing go on, do not let them murder me,” he
cried, imploringly.
Armstrong shook himself scornfully free.
“What can I say or do to prevent them from carrying out their threat?
You have shown yourself such a wicked wretch that the injuries of your
victims cry out against you for vengeance!” he said.
“But I tell you solemnly that I have injured no one. The evidence
against me is all of a purely circumstantial nature. You say yourself
that Mrs. Strangemore has been proven guilty of the murder of Sibyl St.
Alban. That fact clears me fairly from Strangemore’s idiotic charge.
For the other, no one can swear that I placed the serpent in his bed.
They merely supposed so from the fact that Wilson saw me looking at
his pet asp last evening. I ask you, are these baseless accusations
sufficient evidence for Judge Lynch to proceed upon?” clamored Ferris,
sharply.
“He took away the box with the asp and I could swear that he placed it
under the pillow of Strangemore. He is a guilty wretch, and deserves
to have summary justice executed upon him!” exclaimed Harvey Wilson,
threateningly.
“We will take him out to the highest palm-tree we can find and swing
him from the end of a rope,” shouted the men.
“We will thus avenge the murder of Mrs. St. Alban and the attempted one
of Talbot Strangemore,” added Harvey Wilson.
“No, no, no,” shrieked Ferris, and again he clutched Mr. Armstrong’s
arm, imploringly.
“For God’s sake, exert your influence and save me from the fury of this
mob!” he cried. “You will not permit them to commit a cold blooded
murder!”
But John Armstrong had become thoroughly imbued with the belief in
his guilt, and his indignation ran as high as that of the others. He
resolutely refused to speak one word to the excited and angry men.
“You overrate my influence,” he said, coldly. “What can the word of one
man avail against a determined mob?”
“Then help me to fight for my life and I will at least sell it at as
dear a cost as possible,” exclaimed the shuddering victim, to whom
retribution was now hastening on.
“I will have nothing to do with the matter. I believe it was all
settled before I came upon the scene and I have no wish to meddle with
the decision of the self-constituted judge and jury,” Mr. Armstrong
replied, decisively, and then, suddenly bursting into a gust of
passion, he added, furiously:
“Rather would I see you hanged for the murder of that poor soulless
butterfly, Sibyl St. Alban, than lift a finger to save you! Man, do you
guess who I am whom you are begging to save you from the consequences
of your double sin?”
Every one stared in amazement at this sudden change of manner in one
whom they had always known as cold, reserved and proud. Oswald Ferris
stammered, faintly:
“I know nothing of you except your name!”
A strange, cold smile curled the lips of John Armstrong.
“No, you do not even know my name,” he said. “I am not John Armstrong
as I call myself, and as these trusty comrades call me and believe me.
I am a man supposed to be dead, a man to whom a costly monument has
been erected by his widow. I am a man whose happiness was ruined like
yours by Sibyl St. Alban, but who did not have the cruelty that you
did, to kill her for her sin!”
What dazed, wondering faces that moon of Egypt shone upon as they
crowded around the excited speaker. Oswald Ferris cried, blankly:
“You are not John Armstrong--then who are you?”
“I am Ralph St. Alban, the husband of the woman whom you ruthlessly
murdered,” the man answered, unhesitatingly.
No one spoke for a moment, so great was the shock of wonder. Then
Talbot Strangemore sprang forward, hastily, and faced the speaker.
“Let me see if you speak the truth,” he cried. “I knew Ralph St. Alban,
and I hated him once because he took Sibyl from me. The years have
changed you, but, yes, I remember you now. You are indeed St. Alban,
but how have you come to life again from the grave where they laid you?”
In the moonlight a weary smile flickered over Ralph St. Alban’s thin,
worn face.
“I was never dead,” he said. “I was half maddened by Sibyl’s coquetries
and cruelty. She was vain, light, false, falser than all fancy fathoms,
falser than all songs have sung! I soon learned that she did not love
me. She actually disliked and defied me. Her brilliant successes in the
social world filled her with such intoxicating triumph that she had
no other thoughts but to ruin the peace of other women and to break
men’s hearts as well. With all her folly and wrongdoing I adored her,
but no expostulation availed to turn her from her wild career. Then my
love changed to hatred and despair. I might have divorced her and so
freed myself from the incubus she had become upon me, but I was too
proud to drag my name through the scandal of a divorce court. After
wretched days and nights while my life was a torture to me I hit upon
a startling plan to free myself from her. With the aid of a party
too heavily bribed to betray me, I carried out my plan. The man that
dropped dead suddenly in the street was not Ralph St. Alban, but a
dead man from the morgue, dressed in my clothes, and propped up in my
carriage, from which, of course, he tumbled lifeless into the street
when the driver opened the door. But I practised the fraud triumphantly
upon everybody, and while Sibyl was ordering the grand monument for
my grave I was _en route_ for Egyptian deserts. I had been in Egypt
as a boy with my father who was a noted traveler, and in my misery my
thoughts turned thitherward again. You know it has been written,” he
added, with a cold, sad smile, “that ‘he who has drunk of the Nile will
always long to return and drink of its waters again.’”
Every one was gazing at him in wonder and amazement while he talked,
and seeing this, he turned suddenly upon Oswald Ferris and said,
hoarsely:
“Now you know why I will not help you, why I am ready to see you
perish. It was my wife whom you slew in your murderous wrath, and
for this I hate and loathe you. She had wronged me more than any
human being on earth, but I never once thought of ending her frail,
butterfly existence by violence. I exiled myself for her sake, and left
her to the pleasures that tempted her, the pleasures she could buy with
the gold for which she had sold herself to me. And, God help me, some
of the love I once bore her lingers in me yet, and prompts me to pity
her for her terrible fate, and to hate you because your cruel hand
plunged the murderous dagger into the white breast that was once mine!”
He paused, and one of those men who loved him as chosen comrades love
each other, called out furiously:
“He shall pay for his devil’s crime with his worthless life!”
Those words were the signal for an attack upon Ferris.
The men sprang at him in a body, and in spite of his desperate
struggles and outcries they succeeded in pinioning his arms and legs
so that it was impossible for him to move from the spot. During the
enactment of the dreadful scene, Talbot Strangemore, Ralph St. Alban,
and Harvey Wilson stood apart with folded arms and gloomy brows looking
on.
A great struggle was going on in Talbot Strangemore’s mind.
Pity and humanity alike prompted him to rescue Oswald Ferris from the
wrath of the justly angry mob, while at the same time the natural
indignation and resentment within him held him sternly back.
“He deserves his fate,” clamored justice. “Think of Sibyl St. Alban’s
dreadful death, and of Nina’s unmerited disgrace and suffering with the
shadow of the scaffold looming over her golden head. Let him die the
most ignominious death possible, and even then he would scarcely have
atoned for his sins.”
And yet his better nature revolted against the horrible deed they were
going to do out there beneath the palms of old Egypt with the murmur
of the storied Nile in their ears. It was a horrible thing after all,
he thought, to thrust a guilty, craven, crime-stained soul out of its
earthly tabernacle and send it wandering through space to the terrors
of judgment. Unconsciously he lifted his eyes to the sky. The blue
dome sprinkled with innumerable stars, and the great calm moon rolling
through illimitable space, suggested heavenly witnesses.
He shuddered through his whole frame.
“Do God’s angels behold this scene?” he asked himself in fear and
dread, for already the men had selected a rope and a tree, and without
even the formal ceremony of a mock trial were about to lead their
captive to his doom.
Suddenly even as they had dragged him to the chosen spot and were
adjusting the terrible slip-knot about his neck, Talbot Strangemore
stepped boldly forward, held up his hand, and hoarsely shouted:
“Hold!”
They desisted from their awful occupation a moment to look around in
amazement.
“Say your prayers if you know any, quick now, while we see what
Strangemore wants,” one said, carelessly, to the prisoner, while
another asked:
“Well, what is it you wish, Strangemore?”
He answered, eagerly.
“Grant me this great boon. Spare the life of your victim!”
There ensued a moment of ominous, unbroken silence. While it lasted
Talbot Strangemore advanced through the little group of men that
surrounded the prisoner. He put up his hand and touched the rope about
his neck.
“Let me take this away, please. Let us be men, not devils,” he said,
boldly.
There was a low murmur of anger and dissatisfaction. Harvey Wilson
advanced a step nearer.
“Better leave them alone, Stangemore,” he said. “The villain richly
merits his fate, and the men will not easily be balked of executing
justice upon him.”
“But surely they will listen to me,” Talbot said. “Remember I am the
one most deeply wronged, and they must hear me when I beg for mercy and
not justice for Oswald Ferris.”
“You would have us let him go?” one asked.
“Yes, because I want him to live. I have a great boon to ask of him,
and I believe that surely if you spare his life at my request he will
have mercy upon me!”
They stood round about the prisoner listening silently for Talbot’s
further speech.
“Friends and comrades,” he continued, “At the dawn of day I must leave
you to journey back to my own land to my wife who lies in prison
in deadly peril of her life. But even when I go how can I deliver
her from the fatal power of the law unless I can carry with me the
confession of the real murderer of poor erring Sibyl St. Alban?”
CHAPTER XLVIII.
FLIGHT INTO THE DESERT.
A ringing cry went up from the group of men.
“We will make him confess the truth before we hang him!” they
exclaimed, and Ferris who had been listening in silent hopefulness to
the colloquy, uttered a howl of rage and fear at learning from those
words how determined they were to destroy him.
They crowded Strangemore on one side and said to the prisoner:
“Will you give us a written confession of the murder of Mrs. St. Alban
before we hoist you up?”
His face grew dark with vindictive defiance.
“I did not kill her and I will not confess to a lie!” he replied,
boldly.
They whispered among themselves several minutes and then they came back
to him.
“Will you confess to the murder if we spare your life in return for
it?” they asked him, and he burst into a fit of hoarse, dreadful
laughter.
“Truly you are terrible tempters,” he said. “You offer me death on the
one hand, life and perjury on the other. I am reminded of a certain
mythical personage with a cloven hoof who tempted a divine One in the
centuries gone by the promise of all things if he would fall down and
worship him. But let that pass. Listen to me, my recreant comrades!
Listen to me, Talbot Strangemore, while I ask you of what avail would
be a confession wrested from me under peril of ignominious death?
What court and jury in the realms of free America would accept such a
confession at any value if you said to them, ‘We told Oswald Ferris
that if he would confess that he murdered Sibyl St. Alban we would
spare his life, if not we would hang him to the nearest tree!’ Ha, ha,
I think I hear them crying down as a falsehood a confession that a
frightened man made to save his life from the violence of an infuriate
mob!”
They all remained silent through sheer mortification and
disappointment. They knew that every word he had spoken was true. No
enlightened jury would pay any attention to a confession extorted from
a man under peril of death.
“He is right,” said Talbot Strangemore. “If he made a full confession
in order to escape punishment it would not avail my little Nina in her
terrible strait. Do you not see, comrades, that you must not take his
life because it is worth too much to me? Let him live I pray you, until
he repents his sin, or until I can bring it home to him!”
So dark and threatening were the frowns the men cast upon Ferris that
if looks could have killed, Talbot Strangemore’s prayer would have
availed nothing against their deadly wrath. But they drew aside again
and consulted together. Presently one who had been chosen as spokesman
approached Ferris and Strangemore where they stood side by side beneath
the stately palm-tree, selected for so dreadful a purpose.
“We cannot decide in so great haste to release the prisoner,” he said.
“But we will reprieve him until noon to-morrow, and in the morning we
will give him a fair, impartial trial that shall decide the case. In
the mean time we will hold him under arrest.”
“Thanks for even that respite. I am sure you will consider the case
with cooler heads to-morrow,” Strangemore answered, and with his own
hands he removed the rope from the neck of his foe, and loosened the
painful thongs that bound him.
Too sullen and enraged to utter a word of thanks for this signal
interposition in his favor, Oswald Ferris retired to his couch, where
he threw himself angrily down and was soon seemingly lost to everything
mundane in a deep slumber.
The men all weary with the vigils and excitements of the night followed
his example after appointing a posse to guard the prisoner. These few
unused to keeping vigil and oppressed with the hot, breathless air,
soon slumbered at their posts and the dawn already near broke without
rousing one of the camp from the lethargy that seemed to have fallen
upon them.
But though seemingly wrapped in the embrace of Morpheus there were two
whose minds were too terribly active for repose. They were Oswald
Ferris and Talbot Strangemore.
Strangemore had thrown himself down like the rest upon his rude
camp-bed and closed his eyes, but not in sleep.
His mind momentarily diverted from the contemplation of Nina’s peril by
the episode just related, now recurred with agonizing persistency to
her, his beautiful, deeply wronged, and too lately loved wife.
He longed for wings that he might fly to her side, and whisper in her
ears while he held her close to his throbbing heart, the story of the
deep all-absorbing devotion he felt for her.
“I must go home to her at once, and I will move heaven and earth but
that I will secure her acquittal,” he vowed to himself.
It lacked scarce an hour to dawn, but in the burning impatience that
possessed him it seemed that the night would never pass, but at last
the “stars paled their ineffectual fires,” the dark hour before the
dawn came and passed, the grey gleam of the new day appeared in the
orient east, and he sprang impatiently from his couch.
“I can dally here no longer. Every hour is an eternity of woe, while I
linger!” he exclaimed.
He went to rouse Harvey Wilson to ask him if he could have a guide as
far as Khartoom.
Wilson sprang to his feet, rubbing his sleepy eyes.
“A guide? Why of course--” he began, and even while he spoke he looked
over toward the posse whom he had set to guard Oswald Ferris. Every man
was sleeping serenely on his post.
He looked past them at the camp-bed where Ferris usually slept--it was
empty!
With a ringing cry he roused the camp from the weary slumber that
brooded peacefully over it.
“Wake, every one of you,” he cried, hoarsely. “The guard have slept
upon their posts and the prisoner has fled into the desert!”
CHAPTER XLIX.
TORN BY WOLVES.
In the early dawn of the new day a small, determined band moved out of
the camp in search of the missing man.
In spite of his anxiety to be gone Talbot Strangemore decided not to
leave until he learned the fate of Ferris. Bad and cruel as the man
had shown himself his heart revolted from leaving him to the certain
doom that awaited him if caught by the incensed party who had set forth
in search of him. He therefore joined the company going out, with the
inward determination of rescuing the runaway from violence if he could.
Something of irresistible pity mingled with his thoughts for he knew
that the man must have been a victim to a deadly fear indeed to have
ventured out alone into the Egyptian desert in order to escape his
enemies. The desert was known to be infested with wolves, hyenas, and
lesser beasts of prey. How horrible if he should be attacked by these
creatures alone and unaided.
A vague presentiment of horror crept into his thoughts. He was very
quiet as they moved on mile after mile, and his thoughts were strangely
blended. Past and present mingled with his teeming fancies. While he
tried to think of Nina’s terrible grief and peril now, he found his
thoughts wandering back to the child Nina who had been so fond of him
in his boyish days, and the memory of her childish love smote him with
bitter reproach.
“From first to last she has been fond of me and true to me,” he said to
himself. “And I, how have I deserved the gift of her heart and life?
I have been a traitor to her trust, an incubus, a marplot. But for my
mother’s mistaken kindness the child might have had a life all sunshine
and beauty. She had wealth and honor and many friends. These would have
made her life a dream of happiness but for me--me, who have blighted
and ruined it all, who have darkened her young days with shame and
sorrow, and perhaps a horrible doom. Oh, better for her had she never
seen me!”
Before his mind’s eye came a vision of Nina as he had seen her first on
the day of his home coming to Selwyn Heights with his sore, rebellious
heart.
“What a grey day it was,--grey sky, grey sea, grey hills in the
background. Nothing bright in all the picture except Nina in her
crimson dress, and with her proud, lovely face, and great wistful
dark eyes. Ah, it was a grey day for her, too, poor child. A black
day--black with the shadow of creeping horror! Oh, God forgive me for
the weakness and folly that wrought all her woe!”
He felt like shrieking aloud as he saw in memory the lovely white
figure that had come to him in the drawing room that night, and fancied
that lissom bride-like figure upon the awful black scaffold.
“They shall not murder her, my love, my bride,” he swore, frantically
to himself. “I will snatch her from the arms of the law, aye, from the
arms of death itself, or failing, I will die with her and beside her,
and my death may be some atonement for my fault.”
Oh, the sadness, the madness, of a love felt too late! Talbot
Strangemore knew it all now as he journeyed mechanically on while that
lovely, bride-like figure of Nina kept pace with his dreadful thoughts
of her impending doom.
“Do I hear her sing as of old,
My bird with the shining head,
My own dove with the tender eye?
But there rings on a sudden a passionate cry,
There is some one dying or dead.
And a sudden thunder is rolled:
For a tumult shakes the city
And I wake, my dream is fled;
In the shuddering dawn behold,
Without knowledge, without pity
By the curtains of my bed
That abiding phantom cold.”
Lost in his own thronging thoughts he has unconsciously lagged behind
the others until the murmur of their voices falls but indistinctly on
his ears.
But suddenly he is startled from his dreamy trance of painful thought,
by a loud cry of alarm mingled with unmistakable horror and dismay.
Looking ahead of him he sees that the party of men have come to an
abrupt halt and are huddled around something that seems to be lying in
a heap upon the ground.
Strangemore’s heart gives a quick throb. His fears for Ferris rush over
him with renewed force.
Hastening his footsteps, he seeks the scene, but before he reaches it
the echo of horrified words apprises him that something very terrible
has happened.
“Poor fellow, what a terrible retribution has overtaken him,” one is
saying, as Talbot comes up and pushes his eager way into the group.
Then although his nerves are strong and his heart brave, Talbot
Strangemore reels backward a moment, and a deadly faintness and
sickness comes over him, for the sight upon which his eyes have fallen
is one to chill the stoutest heart.
The earth for yards around is splashed with blood and gore. Two great
fierce looking wolves lie dead in a horrid crimson pool, and close
beside them the body of a man, his blood-spattered garments almost
torn from his form by their horrid fangs. He has fought bravely for
his life as is shown by the gaping wounds of his two vanquished foes,
and by the crimson blade of the long, keen knife lying near to his
hand. But strangest sight of all the dread scene was that in one hand
of the dead man was extended a sheet of paper from his note book,
while a pocket pen lay as if it had fallen from his grasp. With it he
had traced in the crimson fluid formed by his spouting life-blood, a
few lines of incoherent confession. All seemed to shrink from that
blood-written note on which the awful ink was scarcely dry, and one man
kneeling on the wet ground, and bending closely over, read it aloud:
“Torn by wolves--fought vainly for life. This is my last dying
confession. I, Oswald Ferris, killed Sibyl St. Alban. I was crazed by
jealousy, and stabbed her to the heart with a dagger. I placed the
asp in Talbot Strangemore’s bed, too. I wished to kill him because he
suspected me of the murder. I am going fast. But a few more minutes
remain. May God pardon my sinful soul, and guide this confession to
the hands of Talbot Strangemore in time to save his innocent wife
from suffering death on the scaffold for my crime.
“OSWALD FERRIS.”
All present stood rooted to the ground in silent horror gazing at the
bloody victim of the ravening wolves. He seemed almost sacred in their
eyes now, having suffered such awful retribution for his sins.
Presently Harvey Wilson said in low, awed tones:
“The paper belongs to you, Strangemore. Take it.”
So Talbot Strangemore advanced and with an awful shudder took up the
blood written confession that meant deliverance from her awful peril,
life and love and happiness to Nina Strangemore. He said, reverently,
and with bent head:
“My God, I thank thee.”
And a moment later as he ran his eyes over the paper, he added:
“He must have died but a few minutes ago, for the blood is not yet dry
upon the paper. Perhaps life yet lingers. Will not Doctor Lewis see?”
The physician bent down assuming his formal professional air, and made
a brief examination. He started and uttered a cry of surprise.
“His heart beats faintly. He is not dead, but in a terribly death like
swoon.”
When they found that life still lingered they tore their handkerchiefs
into strips and bound up his dreadful wounds. The physician applied
restoratives. So great a sympathy does the sight of suffering stir in
the human breast, that those who had been the most anxious to see him
hanged last night now vied with each other in efforts to restore Oswald
Ferris to life.
And after a while their assiduity was rewarded, for with a long shiver
from head to foot he opened his eyes and gazed around him. When he saw
them all gazing at him with kind, anxious eyes, he was amazed.
“I thought I had died,” he said, in a weak voice. “But how came you all
here?”
In the face of the actual pity and sympathy with which they now
regarded him it was rather embarrassing to own the truth, but there was
nothing else to do, really, and so, as he hastily compounded something
out of his convenient pocket case of medicines, Doctor Lewis said,
soothingly:
“Well, the truth is, my poor fellow, we are here because we came out
to look for you, and deuced lucky for you that we found you, too, for
otherwise you must have perished unaided!”
An expression of deep bitterness came over the face of the wounded man,
and he turned impatiently from the potion Doctor Lewis extended to him.
“You are determined not to cheat yourselves of the pleasure of
stringing me up to a tree,” he moaned, weakly, yet sarcastically.
Harvey Wilson came forward with rather a shamed look on his manly,
bronzed face.
“You are quite safe from our vengeance now,” he said. “Get well as fast
as you please, Ferris, and no one will molest you for what you have
done. These horrible creatures with their dreadful fangs have made us
ashamed of having nearly been human wolves. Henceforth, we will leave
vengeance to Him who has said, ‘Vengeance is mine.’”
“And,” said Doctor Lewis, briskly, “We must construct a litter to carry
this wounded man back to camp. He will need careful nursing if he
recovers.”
“I shall not recover--I do not wish to recover,” Ferris answered. “Do
not trouble yourselves to take me back to camp. In a few hours I shall
be dead.”
Then he looked suddenly at his right hand.
“I had a letter,” he said. “When I found that I was dying I wrote down
the truth with a pen dipped in my heart’s blood. Did anyone find my
confession?”
Talbot Strangemore came forward at those anxious words.
“I have it here, my poor fellow,” he said, gently, and he stooped and
pressed his hand, adding, gratefully, “Thank you for remembering me
when you believed that you were dying.”
CHAPTER L.
JOURNEYING HOMEWARD.
In spite of Ferris’s objection they carried him back to camp carefully
on a litter. Ralph St. Alban and a few others who had stayed behind
were amazed when they bore that burden into camp. They shuddered when
they learned how he had come by those terrible wounds.
“It is very unlikely that he will recover, but I shall do all that
human skill can do for the poor fellow,” said Doctor Lewis.
When Talbot Strangemore had seen the wounded man made comfortable, he
again renewed his request for a guide to Khartoom.
“It lacks barely a month to that terrible day,” he said, shudderingly.
“I shall have to make all haste to reach home in time to save my
darling.”
He was surprised and pleased when Harvey Wilson said, diffidently:
“I will go with you, myself, Strangemore, if you will have my company.”
“To Khartoom?” asked Talbot.
“Yes--and to America, too,” answered the gallant Englishman. “You will
need a friend, a witness, perhaps, and if you will have me I will go
with you, most willingly.”
His offer was gratefully accepted, and they made hasty preparations for
leaving. Oswald Ferris watched their leave-takings with wistful eyes.
When Talbot came to bid him farewell he whispered, faintly:
“Ask her--your beautiful bride--to forgive me for all that I caused
her to suffer. Tell her that in dying, I repented my sin and all the
suffering it brought upon others. I wish now that I had let poor
heartless Sibyl live out the brief summer of her butterfly existence.
And you, Strangemore, you can forgive me for what I did to you?”
Gazing at the poor suffering face on which the grey pallor of death
seemed already settling, Strangemore felt that this was no time to
harbor resentment. He gave his hand to his late foe in token of his
hearty forgiveness, and commending him to the care of his comrades,
bade him a last adieu and passed out of his sight with Harvey Wilson,
taking the road for Khartoom where they would find transportation to
England.
With what burning impatience he contemplated the days and weeks that
must elapse before he reached the side of his doomed Nina!
“But I shall save her at last. Oh, how glad I am that fate having
first made me the cause of her unhappiness, has now selected me as the
instrument to deliver her from her peril,” he said to himself, gladly,
and it seemed to him that this would be something like an atonement to
Nina.
“When I tell her that although I thought she was dead I followed Ferris
like a bloodhound to obtain proof of his guilt in order to clear her
memory from all stain, when I tell her that I have traveled night and
day to bring her the news of her release, when I tell her, above all,
that I love her with such a love as until now I never knew, perhaps
she will find it in her tender heart to forgive my madness and to be
friends with me again, and--who knows?--in time, perhaps,--even if it
were years I would be patient--I may teach her to give me back the love
I slighted and scorned in the days when the poison of a false woman’s
love worked in my veins,” he thought.
But though he tried to teach himself to be hopeful, there was a
brooding fear in his heart. What if Nina were wounded beyond all
reparation? What if she refused her forgiveness to him, and withdrew
herself from him forever? He could not contemplate the thought with any
equanimity. It sent cold thrills of anguish running over his frame.
“For years a measureless ill,
For years, forever, to part.”
“I could not bear it, and she will not be so cruel, surely, my little,
tender-hearted Nina,” he said over and over to himself, and Harvey
Wilson found him but a dull companion, for he moved and spoke like one
in a dream, and he had but one thought, and that was to hasten all the
time. He barely gave himself time to eat, and sleep was a luxury that
he seldom knew.
“Tired nature’s sweet restorer--balmy sleep,
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes
And lights in lids unsullied with a tear.”
Fortunately they had no delays in reaching England, and when they
arrived in London at last Talbot Strangemore did not stop to rest an
hour. They were so fortunate as to find a steamer within an hour of
sailing, and they embarked with her for their tour across the broad
Atlantic.
When they were fairly launched upon the blue waves Talbot counted what
days of grace remained to him. If they made the trip successfully in
ten days, as the captain expected to do, he would get to Baltimore in
time to stay the execution of the death-warrant. They had started on
the 13th of July. On the 25th Nina Strangemore was to suffer death for
a crime she had never committed.
“My God, if anything should happen to delay us,” Talbot groaned to his
friend in agony of spirit.
“We will hope and pray for the best,” Harvey Wilson answered,
sympathizingly.
He told his friend’s story to the captain and passengers. Their deepest
sympathy was excited for the worn, haggard, anxious-looking man who
leaned listlessly over the vessel’s side day by day, looking into the
foam-capped waves as if into a grave, and whose only interest centered
in the weather, who grew frantic almost if a cloud no bigger than a
man’s hand came over the sun, and who could not rest for studying the
stars by night.
Seeing how great and terrible was the anxiety of his passenger, the
noble Christian commander was moved to pity and sympathy. Every morning
and night he assembled the crew and passengers together and read from
the prayer book the prayers for fair weather and a safe and speedy
voyage. Everyone responded with full hearts and overflowing sympathy
to the prayer.
Surely heaven heard and answered those appeals so full of faith and
hope. Through that whole anxious voyage the elements smiled upon the
flight of White Wings, as the gallant ship was called. The sun shone
by day, the stars beamed by night. Only one untoward event occurred in
the whole trip. By some accident a part of the ship was broken that
caused her to sail just a little more slowly, and the trip to New York
consumed eleven days instead of ten as they had expected.
“I have only one day now,” Talbot said to his friend, with a look of
terror on his haggard, pain-drawn face. “Let us go now and ask a lawyer
what I must do to effect the release of my darling.”
They went immediately from the ship to a lawyer. He told them briefly
what to do.
“You must place your evidence before the governor of Maryland and get
him to sign a warrant for the pardon of Mrs. Strangemore.”
And then he added:
“It is most unfortunate for you that the governor is not at home now.
I read in my morning paper that he had left Saturday for Old Point
where he expected to spend several weeks at the Hygeia.”
“My God,” Talbot Strangemore cried, and, dizzy with despair, he
reeled backward, and would have fainted but that they hastily brought
restoration for his overtasked nerves.
“What shall we do now?” asked Harvey Wilson, pale too, with the anxiety
of the moment.
The learned lawyer drew his brows thoughtfully together.
“It is an unprecedented case. I must think it over a moment,” he said.
While he walked nervously up and down and pondered the case the two men
looked at their watches.
It was almost noon.
Strangemore’s hollow groan of misery startled the lawyer. He looked up
with an air of pity on his hard lined face.
“There is only one thing possible,” he said.
“And that?” Harvey Wilson asked, hoarsely, for the parched lips of his
friend refused to utter a word.
“Telegraph to the governor of Maryland at Old Point, a brief statement
of the urgency of your case and ask him to meet you in Baltimore by the
earliest route to-night.”
“How soon?” Talbot articulated with feverish lips.
The lawyer hastily consulted a schedule that hung against the wall of
his office. A smothered cry of dismay came from his lips.
“He will reach the city at about the same time as yourselves--between
four and five o’clock in the morning,” he said.
“And to-morrow is the fatal day?” Harvey Wilson whispered very low with
a pitying glance at his friend.
The lawyer hurriedly took up a paper from his desk and ran his eyes
over a largely lettered column.
“To-morrow, the 25th--yes, at seven o’clock in the morning,” he
answered, with professional brevity, and then here was an awful pause.
Harvey Wilson looked at his friend. He was shuddering from head to
foot, and seemed about to fall. An awful pallor like the greyness of
coming death covered his face.
“Strangemore, bear up, for heaven’s sake? Don’t give up now, don’t sink
when every moment is worth its weight in gold to us. Think of Nina’s
peril!” he implored, touching his arm, gently.
The half-closed eyes flared open widely. Talbot answered, with feverish
incoherency:
“Lead on, Wilson, I shall not sink, never fear. I will go through fire
and water to save her, my martyred love, my wronged darling!”
“Will you come with us to the nearest telegraph office?” Wilson asked
the lawyer.
“Willingly,” he answered.
They put on their hats and went out. The day was beautiful and bright,
but they paid no heed to it. The faces of the hurrying throng seemed
like faces seen in dreams to Talbot Strangemore. The world seemed
full of shadows, blackest and darkest of all the shadow of that awful
scaffold that to-day they were building in far off Baltimore for Nina,
his fair young wife whose summers had not yet reached nineteen. They
went to the telegraph office and dictated their urgent message to the
governor of Maryland asking him to come home that night. Then they went
to a railway station and took the earliest train for Baltimore. The
interested lawyer accompanied them of his own will, anxious to see the
end of what might be a woeful tragedy.
CHAPTER LI.
ON THE SCAFFOLD.
“The last hour of my life!” said Nina Strangemore, solemnly, and with
an awful shudder.
It was the morning of the 25th of July and already the merciless hands
of time were pointing to the seventh hour. She stood trembling among
the little group of beloved friends who thronged the narrow cell to bid
a last good-by to the lovely girl going forth to meet ignominious death
at the strong arm of the law.
She had chosen for her dress this morning a long clinging black velvet
gown from which her pale face gleamed with marble whiteness and
delicacy. Her rippling, waving, golden hair had been gathered into a
gleaming braid at the back of her small head, and the unusual style
of coiffure, while it lent added dignity and gravity to her youthful
beauty, also showed a new charm in the stately grace of the white neck
and delicate shell-like ears. She was changed greatly, but none the
less beautiful for the cruel tragedy and the waves of anguish that had
swept across her life. Sorrow and suffering had etherealized her beauty
until it was almost unearthly.
She lifted her great dark eyes heavy with despair, and looked into the
blanched faces of her friends.
“The last hour of my life!” she repeated, solemnly, and with something
like awe in her quivering voice.
It was terrible to her, so young, so lovely, so loving, with such a
beautiful life lying before her, to be cut off abruptly from it all, to
be standing there face to face with death and the other world. They all
felt the full force of the fact, and for a moment no one could answer
her. Only the silver haired minister said with a quiver in his reverent
voice:
“The last of earthly life, dear daughter, but the beginning of a more
blessed one eternal in the heavens.”
Then he knelt down and prayed for the young soul about to be torn from
its earthly tabernacle, for the husband who was an exile in foreign
lands knowing nothing of the terrible doom hanging over his wife, for
the friends who were rendered desolate by her loss, and lastly for the
judge and jury who had ordered this judicial murder, and for all those
concerned in it, and when he had again commended Nina’s soul to heaven
and uttered in a quivering voice the last amen, the sheriff came in to
conduct his prisoner to the scaffold.
Then there ensued a scene of bitter grief and excitement.
Minnie Fielding and Virgie Mason fell fainting to the floor. Helen
Starr went into strong hysterics, Kitty, the maid, sobbed from the
depths of a breaking heart, while Miss Drusilla with a heart as sore
as any repressed her emotion with an iron will, and stood gravely and
tenderly by the side of the girl who was the only creature upon earth
she loved and cared for.
“And when they have killed my innocent white lamb I shall die of
grief,” she said to herself. “But now I will be calm for my poor Nina’s
sake. I will not be fainting and shrieking like these poor hysterical
women, and disturbing the child when she is trying to fix her thoughts
on heaven.” So she walked to the foot of the scaffold with her arms
around the poor trembling child, who whispered forlornly in her ear:
“Dear Aunt Drusilla, I wonder how long it will be after I am dead
before Talbot learns the terrible truth? Do you think he will come back
soon?”
“He did not talk as if he would ever come back, dear, I believe he will
be an exile all his life,” Miss Drusilla answered.
“I hope so. I hope he will never come back after I am dead. I should
not like for him to know that I died--like this!” moaned the girl. “I
hope he will never know the dreadful truth, never, until he comes to
heaven and finds me there waiting.”
“But if he should come home, Nina, and have to hear the cruel truth?
What can I say to him, darling? Will you leave him one last word?”
She looked anxiously into the beautiful agitated young face, wondering
if in this last terrible hour the young wife’s love and tenderness for
the husband who had brought her such sorrow would fail her.
“For myself I shall always hate my nephew, Talbot Strangemore,” the
spinster vowed, grimly to herself.
Nina clung to her convulsively, and sobbed through bitter tears:
“Tell him that I loved him and forgave him!”
And then she suddenly lifted her eyes and saw the great black scaffold
looming in horrible menace above her head.
* * * * *
A faint cry of mortal agony came from Nina’s lips. Her head drooped a
moment on her breast.
* * * * *
A low murmur of pity and sorrow rose upon the soft air of the summer
morning from the lips of those who had sought the court yard of the
jail to witness the execution that was the theme of every tongue and
the topic of every newspaper. Although popular opinion adjudged her
guilty of the murder, there was a great amount of pity and sympathy
felt for her. She was so young and lovely, and she had had such
terrible provocation, they said.
But pity and sorrow and sympathy and even the most faithful love had
proved futile to save her from her dreadful fate. Doctor Fielding and
her lawyer had done all that lay in human power to secure her pardon,
but Governor Steele had steadily refused even a reprieve. He believed
that she was guilty, and his stern sense of duty forbade him to temper
justice with mercy.
So, on this golden summer morning when the world was at its fairest,
when the roses and lillies were blooming, when the birds were singing
and the tiniest little brooks were laughing with delight, they had come
here to see her die.
And all said to each other that they were sorry for her--that she was
too young and beautiful to have been such a sinner and to have to die
for her sin. When that low moan of agony issued from her lips and her
fair head dropped for a moment on her breast every heart was shaken
to its center--every heart save the one that beat in the breast of
a slender, blue-eyed lad who had pressed almost to the foot of the
scaffold in his eagerness to see and hear all. On the half-averted face
of this handsome fair-haired lad there was a glittering smile of almost
demoniac triumph. His eyes laughed with delight. He appeared like a
human vampire delighting in the scent of blood.
But he took care that no one should catch the expression of evil joy
upon his face. He held his white handkerchief over his face, and peered
above it with those wicked, laughing blue eyes at the tall scaffold and
the shrinking victim whom they were now leading up the steps.
She stood there before them all, a sight to make the angels weep for
pity, with that horrible rope about that beautiful white neck that they
were about to break, and her face shining above it like a tender white
flower crowned with gold, while Kitty May’s loud wails of despair rose
up from the foot of the gallows and almost drowned the broken prayer of
the aged minister.
From the street outside there suddenly arose a hubbub of noise and
confusion. The clatter of a vehicle driven at break-neck pace grated on
the flinty pavement, and loud, excited voices were distinctly heard.
No one paid much heed to it. All thought that there were some more
people clamoring to get in at the iron-barred gate for a peep at the
terrible show.
The official advanced shrinkingly to place the black cap over Nina’s
face and cover its marvelous beauty, so soon to be blighted, from the
view of the curious crowd.
A piercing shriek broke from those death white lips at that awful
moment. She tried to lift her poor pinioned hands and wave him off. He
retreated a step, full of grief and repugnance at his dreadful task.
“Oh, not yet,” she cried to him, lifting to his her imploring eyes
shining like black jewels through a rain of terrified tears, “Oh, not
yet! Give me just one minute more of life that I may gaze upon the
beautiful world I am going to leave!”
The time was up but he could not refuse that thrilling prayer. He had
a daughter of his own at home--a gentle dark-eyed girl no older than
this one who pleaded with him so frantically for just one minute more
of life. He thought of that child, and his heart swelled within him at
the exigencies of his terrible duty.
“One moment, then, my poor girl,” he said, huskily, and stood waiting
while she looked with straining, tear-dimmed gaze upon the earth and
sky.
In that moment while she gazed the air was rent by a shout from myriad
throats outside the prison walls--a shout of triumph and exultation.
The iron gates flew open, and three men rushed into the enclosure
pushing aside the crowd, and making their way to the scaffold. The
prison official and many others recognized the tall form and stern face
of Governor Steele in the foremost figure. As he ran he waved a white
paper in his upraised hand, and shouted in clarion tones:
“_For God’s sake, hold! The prisoner is pardoned!_”
At that wild shout outside, and the hubbub that arose within the prison
yard, Nina’s dark eyes came back in bewilderment from the clear blue
heaven where they had yearningly fixed themselves. Her glance fell
on the men who were rushing toward her and then for an instant of
delirious joy she believed that the longing wish of her heart had
embodied itself in a ghostly shape, for she was gazing once more upon
the face of her husband, Talbot Strangemore, and he looked more like
a dead than a living man, so worn was he with grief and woe, and so
pallid with fear and horror.
He gained the scaffold, he ran up the steps, and with a muttered
malediction he tore the dreadful rope from her white neck.
“Nina, my darling, I have saved you!” he cried, encircling her frail
form with his tender arms, and, dizzy with joy, she fell forward
unconscious on his breast.
* * * * *
No one noticed at first in the terrible excitement of the whole
affair that Kitty May had suddenly turned around and grappled with a
slim, dandy looking youth who had been looking at the prisoner on the
scaffold almost over the maid’s shoulder. She had suddenly whirled
herself about and grasped the elegant youth by the waist, and despite
the frantic efforts he made to escape, Kitty held him tightly in her
strong young arms and they rolled upon the ground together, while
Kitty shouted, frantically. “Help! help! Don’t let him get away. It’s
Sibyl St. Alban, that she-devil dressed up in boy’s clothes! She isn’t
dead, but alive, and as wicked as ever!”
CHAPTER LII.
SIBYL’S PUNISHMENT.
Several men went to Kitty May’s assistance, and helped her to secure
the handsome young dude. Having lost his hat in the _mélee_ with the
maid it was discovered that a quantity of pretty flaxen hair had been
rolled in a twist on the top of his head and adroitly covered by a fair
wig. The wig having been torn off, the long hair rolled luxuriantly
over his shoulders, and he stood confessed--a woman!
“Didn’t I tell you ’twas Sibyl St. Alban?” cried Kitty, puffing and
blowing with her valiant exertions but triumphant. “Oh, you wretch, you
she-devil, you! Do you know what they ought to do with you now? They
ought to take you up on the gallows there and hang you till you’re
dead for the awful slanders you uttered against my angel mistress! How
did you get out of your grave anyhow, and come back to curse the earth
again?”
“You lie. I am not Sibyl St. Alban,” answered the elegant youth; but
denial was useless. There were many present who had seen the pretty
belle, Mrs. St. Alban, and who now identified her instantly. Murmurs
of wonder and execration arose on every hand, but all became suddenly
silent as Governor Steele mounted the scaffold and asked for the
attention of the crowd.
They gave him one ringing cheer and then remained respectfully silent.
In brief eloquent language he told them all the truth--he told them of
the jealous lover who had killed his fickle love, and who in his dying
hour, torn by the fierce wolves of far-off Egypt, had written down a
confession of the truth in his heart’s blood. He held up the paper with
the dark crimson letters upon it to their view, and Sibyl St. Alban who
had stood without a shudder to see her innocent rival die a shameful
death, reeled and fainted at the appalling sight of the evidence
against her, written in the heart’s blood of Oswald Ferris.
They carried her into the prison--into the very cell where Nina had
languished away hopeless months of anguish--and laid her down to
recover from the swoon into which she had fallen.
When she recovered all her bravado and defiance had vanished. The sight
of the gloomy cell in which she was lying filled her with terror and
disgust. Seeing how useless was all denial, and in hope of escaping
from the power of the law, she was ready to confess all.
“My wound was not mortal,” she said, “and I discovered the fact in a
few minutes after Oswald Ferris had left the room. Then a diabolical
plot entered my head. My love for Talbot Strangemore had turned to
bitterest hate, for he told me that night in the conservatory at Selwyn
Heights, where I got up a scene to make his wife jealous, that he had
discovered that his fancy for me was the merest fancy after all, and
that he had never loved until he met his beautiful bride the night
of his return home. He begged me to forget our foolish and wicked
love-dream, and to go away from Selwyn Heights and leave him in peace
to woo and win his gentle girl-bride. Oh, how I hated him, then, and
I could have killed him on the spot, but happening to turn my head, I
saw Nina looking in at the door, and I instantly threw my arms around
him and laid my head on his breast, arousing her anger to such a degree
that she accused me before them all of taking her husband from her.
Well, I had my revenge. I went to her room that night and goaded her to
madness until she promised to leave Talbot free to marry me. I watched
until I saw her leave her home, then I retired to bed, gloating over
the misery I had caused Talbot and Nina in thus separating them. I fell
asleep and knew no more until I felt the assassin’s knife enter my
breast, and waking in fear and agony, I recognized the desperate man
with whom I had coquetted so heartlessly. He fled, and when my loud
shrieks brought assistance I did not choose to betray Oswald Ferris,
for then I should have had to own that I had driven him to frenzy by my
falsity. I had stolen a letter from Nina’s door that night and brought
it away with me. When they found it and wondered over it, I at once
conceived the plan that I afterward carried into execution. Thirsting
for vengeance on those whom I hated so bitterly I charged Nina with the
murder, knowing that her flight would lend color to the accusation.
Afterwards I bribed the physician who was called to attend me, and with
his help I carried out my daring scheme. I apparently died and was
buried, but he resurrected me secretly, and I went on then alone with
the plan I had laid out. I haunted Selwyn Heights, playing ghost, until
I caught Nina home again, and then I caused her arrest in a few hours
of her return.”
“My God, and to think that I ever fancied I loved such a fiend!” she
heard a voice exclaim, in accents of the most passionate self-contempt.
She turned her head and saw Talbot Strangemore sitting just inside the
cell, with Nina beside him. On her wasted, yet still lovely face was a
look of such rare and perfect happiness, that the guilty woman gnashed
her teeth in rage and despair.
“You have foiled me, Talbot Strangemore, and, oh, how I hate you both!”
she hissed, with the venom of a serpent.
“Fortunately your hatred has no further power to harm us,” he replied,
coldly; and she saw the re-united husband and wife look into each
other’s eyes with a tenderness that almost maddened her.
“Well, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I never lost an
opportunity of harming you both while I had the power,” she said,
sullenly. “I laid my plans long before I came to Selwyn Heights. Do
you know,” she said, bitterly, looking at Nina, “why you received no
letters from your husband for two years before he came home? It was
because I intercepted them all, using my influence over Oswald Ferris
as a cat’s-paw to secure the letters before they were sent on shore and
posted. Oh, I hated you, Nina Strangemore, long before I ever saw you,
because you had married the only man I ever loved in my life. I was
determined to separate you from him if possible, but I suppose,” she
added, sullenly, “that there is more mysterious force in the marriage
bond than I ever suspected. The moment he saw you he was attracted by
you, and that moment made of me a devil. I hated you so much that I
came to see you hung to-day, without the least twinge of conscience or
compunction!”
Nina shivered, and leaned more closely on the strong arm that supported
her.
“Yes, and my only regret is that Talbot’s coming was not delayed a
little longer, so that you might have been dead before he came,” added
the wicked woman.
“Oh, Sibyl, I did not know you could be so cruel and wicked!” cried a
fresh young voice, indignantly, and Mrs. St. Alban saw Virgie Mason
leaning on the arm of Marmaduke Cameron, and looking at her with
reproach and scorn on her frank young face. Beyond her was Helen Starr,
with Virgie’s handsome young brother. Both their faces expressed
amazement and contempt.
“Dear me,” she cried, with a wretched attempt at sarcastic mirth. “So
you are all here to witness my downfall? It is quite a melodramatic
performance, is it not, but with the villain left out, as Oswald
Ferris, who tried to murder me, is absent, and dead, let us hope, from
the fangs of the Egyptian wolves.”
They gazed at her in disgust and abhorrence. Her appearance in her
improper attire brought blushes to the cheeks of the fair young
girls. They withdrew in disgust, and Sibyl raved when she found that
she would not be permitted to leave the cell also. She was retained
in durance vile to stand trial for the crime she had committed in
conspiring against the life of Nina Strangemore by her novel and
terrible plot.
If popular indignation had had its way, Sibyl St. Alban would have
suffered death on the scaffold from which our beautiful, innocent
Nina had been so opportunely saved, but a jury more merciful than
the one that had tried Nina, awarded her a long term of years in the
penitentiary. We will forestall time by informing our readers that she
died before her sentence had expired, so she was never let loose upon
the world again, to do evil with her wonderful beauty and her false
heart.
Her co-conspirator, the physician, hearing of the arrest of Mrs. St.
Alban, and her confession implicating himself, escaped the punishment
due to his sin by a hasty flight to a foreign land, with his ill-gotten
gains, the fruits of his crime.
Harvey Wilson and Talbot Strangemore never betrayed the fact of Ralph
St. Alban’s existence in Egypt to those who believed him dead, but they
lost no time in writing tidings to him under his assumed name of John
Armstrong of all that had happened in Baltimore.
Several months elapsed before John Armstrong’s answer was received.
Then it contained a bit of news that astonished them.
Oswald Ferris had not died after all. He had survived his terrible
wounds and was well and strong again. He had bitterly repented his
sins, and the tidings that he had not killed Sibyl St. Alban after all
had made a new man of him.
John Armstrong added that neither he nor Ferris would ever again return
to America. He was sorry for the terrible punishment his erring wife
had brought upon herself, but he could do no good to her by returning,
so he chose to remain dead forever to those whom he had once known.
Oswald Ferris wrote himself to Talbot Strangemore to express his joy
that Nina was saved from her terrible fate, to implore forgiveness
again and again, for his fault, and to assure them of his penitence and
shame.
Remembering all that had passed, and how Sibyl St. Alban had driven
the strong man mad, Talbot and his fair and happy young wife tried to
think of him as gently and mercifully as they could. He never returned
to his native land. He and Ralph St. Alban formed a strange bond of
friendship and companionship that endured until their death which
occurred long years after under the foreign skies that they had chosen
for home.
And now, having disposed of all our characters, reader, you think it is
time to write the Finis to this story. Nay, having followed our heroine
through the vicissitudes of her sorrow and deadly peril, we would fain
bask for a little while in the beautiful reflected sunshine of her
wonderful happiness.
CHAPTER LIII.
NINA’S HAPPINESS.
Talbot Strangemore felt that he could never be grateful enough to
Doctor Fielding, who had twice rescued Nina from the sin of self-sought
death, and so nobly cared for her in her sickness and sorrow
afterward. He knew that the physician was struggling hard to maintain
his family while he established his practice in the city, and he longed
to help him, but Doctor Fielding steadily refused all offers.
“It was only my duty in the first place,” he said, “and in the second
it was a pleasure, because I had done a kindness for the gentle pupil
whom my wife loved so dearly. No, the offer of a reward in such a case
is almost an insult. I can accept nothing but your friendship, and that
of Mrs. Strangemore, which I hope to enjoy all my life.”
But happy and generous Nina was not content to enjoy her happiness and
affluence alone, while those noble friends, who had done so much for
her, were fighting the battle of adversity, although its horrors were
softened by the sweetness of true and faithful love. She knew that
Doctor Fielding, both in her sickness and in her after imprisonment,
had been compelled to lose much time from his practice in order to
attend to her, and she was determined that he should not suffer for his
kindness.
So it was barely a week after Nina’s opportune rescue that Minnie
Fielding, looking out of her window one morning at the sound of wheels,
saw a dainty equipage pausing at her door, out of which stepped a
lovely vision in rich blue silk, with streaming azure ribbons and
creamy laces, her gold curls falling beneath a broad hat covered with
azure plumes. The large dark eyes were laughing with delight as they
were lifted to Minnie at the window.
“Come down!” she called, in her tender, musical voice, that had such a
note of happiness in it that it thrilled Minnie’s heart in unison.
“It is Nina--oh, how lovely she is in her new found happiness,” she
exclaimed, hastening down to meet her.
They were soon seated in the neat little parlor, with the baby, Nina’s
pretty little namesake, playing on the floor beside them.
“Oh, my darling girl, how beautiful and happy you look!” cried Mrs.
Fielding, gazing in irrepressible admiration at the charming face, that
with its radiant eyes and dimpling smiles and rose flushed cheeks did
not look much like the marble-pale one in the prison cell a week ago.
She was a perfect picture of grace and beauty and happiness now.
A pensive shade drifted for a moment over Nina’s fair young face.
“I _am_ happy,” she said, softly. “As happy as I was wretched a week
ago, and I cannot express my happiness in stronger terms than that.”
And a moment later she added: “And only think that but for Doctor
Fielding I might have been dead by my own hand and never have lived
to know that Talbot loved me, and that after my terrible trial a long
future of love and happiness lay before me. You must not be jealous,
dear, when I tell you that next to my own husband I shall always love
Doctor Fielding better than any other man on the earth because I owe
him so much.”
The sweet little lady only laughed at this impulsive outburst from her
beloved pupil.
“You may love my dear old darling as much as you please. I shall not be
jealous,” she said, brightly.
And then suddenly a graver look overspread Nina’s sparkling face.
“Mrs. Fielding, you know I made my will the 24th of July,” she said,
repressing a slight shiver.
“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Fielding answered.
“And I left you ten thousand dollars,” she said.
“No!” exclaimed Mrs. Fielding.
“Yes,” Nina answered with a smile, “I left legacies to a number of my
kind friends and the bulk of my great fortune to my husband.”
“Dear Nina, you were very generous. I knew that you had made your will
that day, but I had no thought that my name was mentioned in it,” said
the little lady.
“Did you really think I could be so ungrateful as to leave your name
out of my will after all the years of kindness I owe you, and all the
goodness of Doctor Fielding besides?” inquired Nina, with shining,
reproachful eyes.
“My dear girl, we had no thought of gain. We were acting solely from
love and duty.”
“Yes, I know how truly good and unselfish you are, and that Doctor
Fielding has refused to let my husband help him in any way. But shall I
tell you what we have decided to do?” asked Nina, with a pretty blush
drifting over her face as she pronounced the suggestive pronoun “we.”
Mrs. Fielding, stooping to caress the baby Nina, gave her an
affirmative smile.
“You know of course, that papa left me a great deal of money,” said
Nina. “Much more than Talbot and I shall ever use, and then there
will be plenty for our heirs if we ever have any,” the pretty blush
deepening to scarlet. “So we have decided to carry out the conditions
of my will just the same as if I had really died.”
“Oh, no, no, no! No one would expect it or _wish_ it!” cried Mrs.
Fielding, hastily.
“No one’s _wishes_ will be consulted,” exclaimed Nina, with a pretty,
imperious smile. “I am going to have my own way even if--even if my
friends get so angry they will never speak to me again. But you could
not be so cruel to me, no matter what I did, could you, my dear old
friend and teacher?” cried Nina, suddenly falling into the pretty
coaxing ways which she remembered had always vanquished gentle Miss
Minnie Selden in the by-gone days.
Mrs. Fielding looked at the girl with an affectionate smile and misty
eyes.
“It would be hard to be angry with you, dear, but I cannot permit such
lavish generosity,” she said.
“Talbot says,” said Nina, with a world of happy love-light irradiating
her exquisite face under the drooping blue plumes that shaded it, “that
as I have suffered so much, everyone ought to try to make me happy now.
He says he will not permit any one to refuse any request of mine if he
can prevent it. So, my dear old friend, there is ten thousand dollars
in bank to your credit, and here is your check-book. You must not
refuse it. It is for you and my little namesake, Nina. You know she is
so pale and puny that she ought to go to the mountains or the sea-shore
for the rest of the summer, so you must accept the legacy for baby’s
sake!”
CHAPTER LIV.
THE INVITATION.
When Nina went back to the hotel where she was staying after her
successful mission of love and generosity she found her husband
entertaining some callers who were anxiously awaiting her appearance.
They were her devoted friends, Virgie Mason and Helen Starr, attended
by their respective cavaliers Duke Cameron and Sydney Mason.
They had thought that Talbot Strangemore’s slighted bride was lovely
when they met her first at Selwyn Heights, but they thought her doubly
beautiful now with love and happiness brightening her face into
peerless beauty. Talbot Strangemore too, looked like a changed man,
so bright and handsome was the face that they had been wont to see
sad and weary and hopeless looking, in the days when he had been so
mad and foolish as to rebel against the fate that had given him this
charming bride. It was quite evident that he idolized Nina now, and
that she with the angelic forgiveness of woman had pardoned him for
the masculine folly that had so nearly ruined their lives.
“Are you going to the Governor’s reception to-night, Nina?” asked
Virgie. “But then of course you will be there as it is given in your
honor.”
“Yes, we are going,” said Talbot. “We did not care to attend, in fact
we were leaving town, but Governor Steele made such a point of it that
we could not well refuse especially as his motive was so kind, desiring
to atone to Nina for his harshness that he now sees in the light of the
most cruel injustice.”
“I am so glad you are going. We are all going, too. I have such a
pretty dress to wear--pink brocade and cream lace with moss rose-buds,
and our stately Helen will wear blue velvet and diamonds. What shall
you wear, Nina?” exclaimed the vivacious Virgie.
“White satin and lace and pearls, like a bride. This is really our
honey-moon you know,” said Talbot, answering for his wife.
He did not understand at first why the two girls blushed so rosily at
his words, but in a moment Duke Cameron said with an arch laugh:
“Apropos of brides, girls, it is a good time to get in the petition
that brought you here this morning.”
Virgie and Helen blushed more rosily than ever. Their attendant
cavaliers only laughed mischievously.
Nina looked brightly from one face to the other.
“What is it?” she asked, with her ready woman’s wit. “Are Virgie and
Helen going to be married?”
“We are all going to be married,” laughed Sydney Mason. “Helen and
I, and Duke and Virgie, and we have come to invite you to our double
wedding and to receive your congratulations.”
They were heartily offered amid a good deal of mirth and laughter, then
Duke Cameron said, gaily:
“But that is not all yet. As the ice is broken now, my bashful Miss
Virgie, perhaps you will tell the rest.”
“We are all going on a wedding tour of several months, in Duke’s yacht.
“A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!”
sang pretty Virgie, gaily.
“And,” said the more dignified Helen, “We want you and Mr. Strangemore
to go with us. Will you do so, dear Nina?”
The happy young wife looked wistfully at her husband. He smiled, for he
was already beginning to understand the expression of those soft dark
eyes.
“We thank you ever so much,” he began.
“Don’t say you will not go,” pouted Virgie.
“I think we must refuse,” he answered. “You see, Nina and I are
scarcely acquainted with each other yet, and we have planned to spend
our honey-moon quietly at Selwyn Heights, and make each other’s
acquaintance at our leisure. Does not this suit you best, Nina?”
“Yes,” she murmured, happily, and to their expressions of regret she
added:
“Some other time I will go with you with pleasure, but I think,” shily,
“I would rather stay at home now with Talbot. We have never been at
home much together since we were married, you know.”
Seeing how tranquilly happy they were alone, their friends forbore to
press the claim for their company.
CHAPTER LV.
“IT’S WE TWO FOR AYE.”
Nina and her husband were right. They were best alone for a time, and
in reality they needed no companionship but their own. They were all in
all to each other.
“It’s we two, it’s we two, it’s we two for aye,
All the world and we two, and Heaven be our stay,
Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride!
All the world was Adam once with Eve by his side.
“What’s the world, my lass, my love!--What can it do?
I am thine, and thou art mine; life is sweet and new.
If the world have missed the mark, let it stand by,
For we two have gotten leave and once more we’ll try.
“Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride!
It’s we two, it’s we two, happy side by side.
Take a kiss from me thy man; now the song begins:
All is made afresh for us, and the brave heart wins.
“When the darker days come, and no sun will shine,
Thou shalt dry my tears, lass, and I’ll dry thine.
It’s we two, it’s we two, while the world’s away,
Sitting by the golden sheaves on our wedding day.”
The beautiful Mrs. Strangemore with her romantic history, carried
Baltimore by storm on the night of the Governor’s reception. The best
people of the city had been bidden to honor her for whom barely a week
ago a scaffold had reared its ghastly front in the face of heaven. All
vied with each other to do her honor. It was a perfect ovation. People
went wild with enthusiasm over the peerless beauty that had been hidden
so long in the gloom of the prison cell. They raved over the gold hair,
the dark eyes, the perfect face with its rare red lips and sea-shell
coloring. The dress that Talbot had chosen for his darling was perfect
in its way. It was creamy satin embroidered in pearls and with
flouncings of costly lace. A rope of large moon-white pearls clasped
the slender white throat, and the bouquet she carried in her hand was
of fragrant pure white flowers. She looked bride-like, queen-like, and
even her own husband was amazed at the perfection of her beauty.
“Nina, you are as lovely as a queen,” he whispered to her, “I cannot
help thinking that my mother was wrong when she bound you to me in your
youth and innocence. She should have left you free to choose and be
chosen. You are a fitting mate for a king.”
She looked up with a shadow in her splendid eyes.
“Oh, Talbot do you regret that I belong to you, beyond all chance of
change?” she inquired.
“No, darling. I would not exchange you for a kingdom,” he replied.
His heart thrilled with happiness at the expression of radiant joy that
beamed upon her face. She stole her dainty hand into his one moment as
she said, softly:
“Then, Talbot, I would rather be your wife than a king’s.”
“Nina, you are an angel!” he exclaimed. “I believed that years must
elapse before you would pardon my fault and love me again, and yet you
have already filled my life with the bliss of your forgiving love. I do
not know how to thank you enough for the mercy you have shown me. May
God bless you forever, my sweet one.”
She looked at him with a pretty, pensive smile.
“Aunt Drusilla is quite disgusted with the readiness with which I have
pardoned you,” she observed. “She says if she had been in my place
she would have held you at arm’s length a year at least, before she
condescended to forgive you and love you again.”
“And what did you say to that old-maidish speech?” he inquired,
smilingly.
“I told her that she had never known what true love was, or she could
not have fancied a loving wife being hard and cold to her husband when
he came to her truly repentant for his fault.”
“Wise, loyal little wife!” he exclaimed, fondly. “And what did my aunt
say to that noble little speech?”
“She answered that it was quite true she had never known anything about
that kind of love and she hoped she never would, either, for women had
made themselves fools over men ever since the world began, and would
continue to do so to the end of the chapter.”
“It was most fortunate that she did not succeed in imbuing your mind
with her peculiar sentiments,” laughed Talbot Strangemore. “I shudder
to think of the risk I ran in leaving you to her care all those years.
She might have made a man-hater of you.”
“Never, for I was in love with my husband long before I ever saw his
Aunt Drusilla,” she answered, with a glance that set all his pulses
beating with rapture.
* * * * *
The day after the governor’s reception Talbot and Nina went home to
Selwyn Heights.
Miss Strangemore had preceded them several days in order to have
everything in readiness for their return. Kitty May had remained in
the city with her mistress, and had received her share of lionizing as
the brave girl who had captured Sibyl St. Alban in the jaunty dude’s
costume under which she had cleverly masked her identity.
Kitty had briefly narrated the manner in which she had been led to
suspect the identity of the false woman.
“You see I had seen her several times while she was playing ghost, and
was frightened out of my wits every time, so I began to expect to see
her, or to hear her dreadful laugh, everywhere I went. But that day
when they were about to hang my poor young mistress I forgot all about
the dreadful ghost that had frightened me so often. I was standing
as close to the gallows as I could get, sobbing and crying, when the
uproar began, and all at once I saw Mr. Strangemore brush past me, and
run up the steps and tear the rope from Miss Nina’s neck. I knew what
it all meant in a minute, and I believe I should have fainted with joy
only that at that moment I heard just behind me a smothered cry of
the bitterest rage and hate, and in the very voice of the ghost that
had haunted me ever since Mrs. St. Alban was buried. I turned sharply
around and saw her very face behind me although it was shaded by a
boy’s hat. I had always wanted to touch that ghost ever since the first
time I saw it, but it had always been too sharp for me. But this time
she was too close to flee. I whirled about and caught her in my arms,
and, lo, she wasn’t a ghost at all, but that living, breathing sinner!”
So Kitty had her share of newspaper fame when the wonderful story went
the rounds, and she enjoyed it mightily, too. She went to court to
testify against Mrs. St. Alban, and she was devoutly sorry that the
jury did not punish the sin of the beautiful conspirator by death.
“Lord bless you, there would be no more harm in putting that woman out
of the world, than there would be in killing a snake or a spider,” she
declared.
But the jury thought differently, perhaps, and so Kitty had to be
satisfied with the sentence of imprisonment for a term of years. When
she heard of her death in prison some years later, she said, soberly:
“I can’t say I’m sorry she died before it was time for her to come
back into the world again. Perhaps it was for the best. But I hope she
repented of her wickedness before it was too late.”
She was so anxious on this point that she paid a special visit to the
prison chaplain to inquire about it. He pleased her very much by the
information that Mrs. St. Alban had indeed repented of her sins, and
left her blessing to those whom she had so cruelly wronged.
Kitty did not share Miss Drusilla’s opinion that Nina had been in too
great haste to forgive her husband. She had heard from Harvey Wilson,
Mr. Strangemore’s friend, the whole story of Talbot’s discovery of the
real murderer, and his almost reckless haste to reach home with the
news, so she thought that Talbot’s repentence, and, above all, his
timely rescue of Nina at the last fatal moment, had fairly earned him
his wife’s pardon.
So they went home to Selwyn Heights, where they received a perfect
ovation, and where Nina’s old friend and playmate, Lion, almost went
mad over her return. He looked askance at Talbot at first, but he
soon came to understand that the obnoxious man stood very high in
the affections of his mistress, so after some jealous sulking, Lion
capitulated to the exigencies of the case, and himself adopted Talbot
as a favorite.
Miss Drusilla Strangemore did not give in so readily as the
Newfoundland in her anger against her nephew. In her character of a
man-hater, she maintained an animosity against him for some months.
But when she came to know Talbot better, when she understood that his
one great fault was counter-balanced by a thousand sterling virtues
and graces, she gradually softened, and all the more rapidly because
she saw that her favorite Nina was cruelly hurt by the coldness and
distrust displayed toward her husband.
The day came when Miss Drusilla made quite an exception in favor of
her nephew whom she declared far superior to the generality of men whom
she continued to despise with unabated vigor. She was almost as proud
as Nina herself when Talbot went into public life and rose rapidly from
one distinction to another until he became a senator in the halls of
the national capitol. Then Miss Drusilla said that there was really
more in her nephew than she had ever supposed, and Nina declared that
she was the happiest woman in the world, her love and her ambition both
being satisfied.
No honor that ever came to him ever made Talbot Strangemore so proud
and glad as those words from his wife’s lips. It was the aim of his
life to make her so happy that she would almost, if not quite, forget
the tragedy that had so nearly ended her sweet young life. When he
found that he had succeeded, that she had put away from her heart the
brooding shadow of the tragic past and lived only in the present and
the future, he said to himself that now he could ask no more of fate.
His cup was full to the brim.
THE END.
1886.
[Illustration: G.W. CARLETON & CO.]
1886.
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