A Terrible Secret - May Agnes Fleming (best ebook reader txt) 📗

years I don't think I have been unhappy."

She sighed and looked out at the dull, rain-beaten day. The young man listened in profound pity and admiration. Not unhappy! Branded with the deadliest crime man can commit or the law punish--an exile, a recluse, the life-long companion of an insane man and two old servants! No wonder that at forty her hair was gray--no wonder all life and color had died out of that hopeless face years ago. Perhaps his eyes told her what was passing in his mind; she smiled and answered that look.

"I have not been unhappy, Victor; I want you to believe it. Your father was always more to me than all the world beside--he is so still. He is but the wreck of the Victor I loved, and yet I would rather spend my life by his side than elsewhere on earth. And I was not quite forsaken. Aunt Helena often came and brought you. It seems but yesterday since I had you in my arms rocking you asleep, and now--and now they tell me you are going to be married."

The sensitive color rose over his face for a second, then faded, leaving him very pale.

"I was going to be married," he answered slowly, "but she does not know this. My father lives--the title and inheritance are his, not mine. Who is to tell what she may say now?"

The dark, thoughtful eyes looked at him earnestly.

"Does she love you?" she asked; "this Miss Darrell? I need hardly inquire whether _you_ love her."

"I love her so dearly that if I lose her--" He paused and turned his face away from her in the gray light. "I wish I had known this from the first; I ought to have known. It may have been meant in kindness, but I believe it was a mistake. Heaven knows how it will end now."

"You mean to say, then, that in the hour you lose your title and inheritance you also lose Miss Darrell? Is that it?"

"I have said nothing of the kind. Edith is one of the noblest, the truest of women; but can't you see--it looks as though she had been deceived, imposed upon. The loss of title and wealth would make a difference to any woman on earth."

"Very little to a woman who loves, Victor. I hope--I hope--this young girl loves you?"

Again the color rose over his face--again he turned impatiently away.

"She _will_ love me," he answered; "she has promised it, and Edith Darrell is a girl to keep her word."

"So," Miss Catheron said, softly and sadly, "it is the old French proverb over again, 'There is always one who loves, and one who is loved.' She has owned to you that she is not in love with you, then? Pardon me, Victor, but your happiness is very near to me."

"She has owned it," he answered, "with the rare nobility and candor that belongs to her. Such affection as mine will win its return--'love begets love,' they say. It _must_."

"Not always, Victor--ah, not always, else what a happy woman _I_ had been! But surely she cares for no one else?"

"She cares for no one else," he answered, doggedly enough, but in his inmost heart that never-dying jealousy of Charley Stuart rankled. "She cares for no one else--she has told me so, and she is pride, and truth, and purity itself. If I lose her through this, then this secret of insanity will have wrecked forever still another life."

"If she is what you picture her," Inez said steadily, "no loss of rank or fortune would ever make her give you up. But you are not to lose either--you need not even tell her, if you choose."

"I can have no secrets from my plighted wife--Edith must know all. But the secret will be as safe with her as with me."

"Very well," she said quietly; "you know what the result will be if by any chance 'Mrs. Victor' and Inez Catheron are discovered to be one. But it shall be exactly as you please. Your father is as dead to you, to all the world, as though he lay in the vaults of Chesholm church, by your mother's side."

"My poor mother! my poor, murdered, unavenged mother! Inez Catheron, you are a noble woman--a brave woman; was it well to aid your brother to escape?--was it well, for the sake of saving the Catheron honor and the Catheron name, to permit a most cruel and cowardly murder to go unavenged?"

What was it that looked up at him out of her eyes? Infinite pity, infinite sorrow, infinite pain.

"My brother," she repeated softly, as if to herself; "poor Juan! he was the scapegoat of the family always. Yes, Sir Victor, it was a cruel and cowardly murder, and yet I believe in my soul we did right to screen the murderer from the world. It is in the hands of the Almighty--there let it rest."

There was a pause--then:

"I shall return with you to London and see my father," he said, as one who claims a right.

"No," she answered firmly; "it is impossible. Stay! Hear me out--it is your father's own wish."

"My father's wish! But--"

"He cannot express a wish, you would say. Of late years, Victor, at wide intervals, his reason has returned for a brief space--all the worse for him."

"The worse for him!" The young man looked at her blankly. "Miss Catheron, do you mean to say it is better for him to be mad?"

"Much better--such madness as his. He does not think--he does not suffer. Memory to him is torture; he loved your mother, Victor--and he lost her--terribly lost her. With memory returns the anguish and despair of that loss as though it were but yesterday. If you saw him as I see him, you would pray as I do, that his mind might be blotted out forever."

"Good Heaven! this is terrible."

"Life is full of terrible things--tragedies, secrets--this is one of them. In these rare intervals of sanity he speaks of you--it is he who directed, in case of your marriage, that you should be told this much--that you are not to be brought to see him, until--"

She paused.

"Until--"

"Until he lies upon his death-bed. That day will be soon, Victor--soon, soon. Those brief glimpses of reason and memory have shortened life. What he suffers in these intervals no words of mine can tell. On his death-bed you are to see him--not before; and then you shall be told the story of your mother's death. No, Victor, spare me now--all I can tell you I have told. I return home by the noon-day train; and, before I go, I should like to see this girl who is to be your wife. See, I will remain by this window, screened by the curtain. Can you not fetch her by some pretence or other beneath it, that I may look and judge for myself?"

"I can try," he said, turning to go. "I have your consent to tell her my father is alive? I will tell her no more--it is not necessary she should know _you_ are his keeper."

"That much you may tell her--it is her right. When I have seen her, come to me and say good-by."

"I shall not say good-by until I say it at Chester Station. Of course, I shall see you off. Wait here; if Edith is able to come out you shall see her. She kept her room this morning with headache."

He left her, half-dazed with what he had heard. He went to the drawing-room--the Stuarts and Captain Hammond were there--not Edith.

"Has Edith come down?" he asked. "I wish to speak to her for a moment."

"Edith is prowling about in the rain, somewhere, like an uneasy ghost," answered Trixy; "no doubt wet feet, and discomfort, and dampness generally are cures for headache; or, perhaps, she's looking for _you_."

He hardly waited to hear her out before he started in pursuit. As if favored by fortune, he caught a glimpse of Edith's purple dress among the trees in the distance. She had no umbrella, and was wandering about pale and listless in the rain.

"Edith," Sir Victor exclaimed, "out in all this downpour without an umbrella? You will get your death of cold."

"I never take cold," she answered indifferently. "I always liked to run out in the rain ever since I was a child. I must be an amphibious sort of animal, I think. Besides, the damp air helps my headache."

He drew her hand within his arm and led her slowly in the direction of the window where the watcher stood.

"Edith," he began abruptly, "I have news for you. To call it bad news would sound inhuman, and yet it has half-stunned me. It is this--my father is alive."

"Sir Victor!"

"Alive, Edith--hopelessly insane, but alive. That is the news Lady Helena and one other, have told me this morning. It has stunned me; I repeat--is it any wonder? All those years I have thought him dead, and to-day I discover that from first to last I have been deceived."

She stood mute with surprise. His father alive--madness in the family. Truly it would have been difficult for Sir Victor or any one else to call this good news. They were directly beneath the window. He glanced up--yes, a pale face gleamed from behind the curtain, gazing down at that other pale face by Sir Victor's side. Very pale, very set just now.

"Then if your father is alive, _he_ is Sir Victor and not you?"

Those were the first words she spoke; her tone cold, her glance unsympathetic.

His heart contracted.

"He will never interfere with my claim--they assure me of that. Alive in reality, he is dead, to the world. Edith, would it make any difference--if I lost title and estate, would I also lose _you_?"

The beseeching love in his eyes might have moved her, but just at present she felt as though a stone lay in her bosom instead of a heart.

"I am not a sentimental sort of girl, Sir Victor," she answered steadily. "I am almost too practical and worldly, perhaps. And I must own it would make a difference. I have told you I am not in love with you--as yet--you have elected to take me and wait for that. I tell you now truthfully, if you were not Sir Victor Catheron, I would not marry you. It is best I should be honest, best I should not deceive you. You are a thousand times too good for so mercenary a creature as I am, and if you leave me it will only be serving me right. I don't want to break my promise, to draw back, but I feel in the mood for plain speaking this morning. If you feel that you can't marry me on those terms--and I don't deserve that you should--now is the time to speak. No one will be readier than I to own that it serves me right."

He looked and listened, pale to the lips.

"Edith, in Heaven's name, do you _wish_ me to give you up?"

"No, I wish nothing of the sort. I have promised to marry you, and I am ready to keep that promise; but if you expect love or devotion from me, I tell you frankly I have neither to give. If you are willing still to take me, and"--smiling--"I see you are--I am still ready