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

ultimate intention is to go abroad."

"She will not return to Cheshire?"

A spasm of pain crossed his face; there was a momentary contraction of the muscles of his mouth.

"She will not return to Cheshire. All her life she will lie under the ban of murder."

"And she is innocent?"

He looked up at her--a strange, hunted, tortured sort of look.

"She is innocent."

As he made the answer he turned abruptly away. Edith asked no more questions. The secret of his mother's murder was a secret she was not to hear.

Lady Helena did not make her appearance at all in the lower rooms, that night. Next day at luncheon she came down, and Edith was honestly shocked at the change in her. From a hale, handsome, stately, upright, elderly lady, she had become a feeble old woman in the past week. Her step had grown uncertain; her hands trembled; deep lines of trouble were scored on her pale face; her eyes rarely wandered long from her nephew's face. Her voice took a softer, tenderer tone when she addressed him--she had always loved him dearly, but never so dearly, it would seem, as now.

The change in Sir Victor was more in manner than in look. A feverish impatience and restlessness appeared to have taken possession of him; he wandered about the house and in and out like some restless ghost. From Powyss Place to Catheron Royals, from Catheron Royals to Powyss Place, he vibrated like a human pendulum. It set Edith's nerves on edge only to watch him. At other periods a moody gloom would fall upon him, then for hours he sat brooding, brooding, with knitted brows and downcast eyes, lost in his own dark, secret thoughts. Anon his spirits would rise to fever height, and he would laugh and talk in a wild, excited way that fixed Edith's dark, wondering eyes solemnly on his flushed face.

With it all, in whatever mood, he could not bear her out of his sight. He haunted her like her shadow, until it grew almost intolerable. He sat for hours, while she worked, or played, or read, not speaking, not stirring--his eyes fixed upon her, and she, who had never been nervous, grew horribly nervous under this ordeal. Was Sir Victor losing his wits? Now that his insane father was dead and buried, did he feel it incumbent upon him to keep up the family reputation and follow in that father's footsteps?

And the days wore on, and the first of October came.

The change in the young baronet grew more marked with each day. He lost the power to eat or sleep; far into the night he walked his room, as though some horrible Nemesis were pursuing him. He failed to the very shadow of himself, yet when Lady Helena, in fear and trembling, laid her hand upon his arm, and falteringly begged him to see a physician, he shook her off with an angry irritability quite foreign to his usual gentle temper, and bade her, imperiously, to leave him alone.

The second of October came; to-morrow would be the wedding-day.

The old feeling of vagueness and unreality had come back to Edith. Something would happen--that was the burden of her thoughts. To-morrow was the wedding-day, but the wedding would never take place. She walked through the glowing, beautiful rooms of Catheron Royals, through the grounds and gardens, bright with gay autumnal flowers--a home luxurious enough for a young duchess--and still that feeling of unreality was there. A grand place, a noble home, but she would never reign its mistress. The cottage at Carnarvon had been weeks ago engaged, Sir Victor's confidential servant already established there, awaiting the coming of the bridal pair; but she felt she would never see it. Upstairs, in all their snowy, shining splendor, the bridal robe and veil lay; when to-morrow came would she ever put them on, she vaguely wondered. And still she was not unhappy. A sort of apathy had taken possession of her; she drifted on calmly to the end. What was written, was written; what would be, would be. Time enough to wake from her dream when the time of waking came.

The hour fixed for the ceremony was eleven o'clock; the place, Chesholm church. The bridemaids would arrive at ten--the Earl of Wroatmore, the father of the Ladies Gwendoline and Laura Drexel, was to give the bride away. They would return to Powyss Place and eat the sumptuous breakfast--then off and away to the pretty town in North Wales. That was the programme. "When to-morrow comes," Edith thinks, as she wanders about the house, "will it be carried out?"

It chanced that on the bridal eve Miss Darrell was attacked with headache and sore throat. She had lingered heedlessly out in the rain the day before (one of her old bad habits to escape from Sir Victor, if the truth must be told), and paid the natural penalty next day. It would never do to be hoarse as a raven on one's wedding-day, so Lady Helena insisted on a wet napkin round the throat, a warm bath, gruel, and early bed. Willingly enough the girl obeyed--too glad to have this last evening alone. Immediately after dinner she bade her adieux to her bridegroom-elect, and went away to her own rooms.

The short October day had long ago darkened down, the curtains were drawn, a fire burned, the candles were lit. She took the bath, the gruel, the wet napkin, and let herself be tucked up in bed.

"Romantic," she thought, with a laugh at herself, "for a bride."

Lady Helena--was it a presentiment of what was so near?--lingered by her side long that evening, and, at parting, for the first time took her in her arms and kissed her.

"Good-night, my child," the tender, tremulous tones said. "I pray you make him happy--I pray that he may make _you_."

She lingered yet a little longer--her heart seemed full, her eyes were shining through tears. Words seemed trembling on her lips--words she had not courage to say. For Edith, surprised and moved, she put her arms round the kind old neck, and laid her face for a moment on the genial old bosom.

"I will try," she whispered, "dear, kind Lady Helena--indeed I will try to be a good and faithful wife."

One last kiss, then they parted; the door closed behind her, and Edith was alone.

She lay as usual, high up among the billowy pillows, her hands clasped above her head, her dark, dreaming eyes fixed on the fire. She looked as though she were thinking, but she was not. Her mind was simply a blank. She was vaguely and idly watching the flickering shadows cast by the firelight on the wall, the gleam of yellow moonlight shimmering through the curtains; listening to the faint sighing of the night wind, the ticking of the little fanciful clock, to the pretty plaintive tunes it played before it struck the hours. Nine, ten, eleven--she heard them all, as she lay there, broad awake, neither thinking nor stirring.

Her maid came in for her last orders; she bade the girl good-night, and told her to go to bed--she wanted nothing more. Then again she was alone. But now a restlessness, as little to be understood as her former listless apathy, took hold of her. She could not lie there and sleep; she could not lie there awake. As the clock chimed twelve, she started up in bed in a sudden panic. Twelve! A new day--her wedding day!

Impossible to lie there quiet any longer. She sprang up, locked her door, and began, in her long, white night-robe, pacing up and down. So another hour passed. One! One from the little Swiss musical clock; one, solemn and sombre, from the big clock up in the tower. Then she stopped--stopped in thought; then she walked to one of her boxes, and took out a writing-case, always kept locked. With a key attached to her neck she opened it, seated herself before a table, and drew forth a package of letters and a picture. The picture was the handsome photographed face of Charley Stuart, the letters the letters he had written her to Sandypoint.

She began with the first, and read it slowly through--then the next, and so on to the end. There were over a dozen in all, and tolerably lengthy. As she finished and folded up the last, she took up the picture and gazed at it long and earnestly, with a strangely dark, intent look. How handsome he was! how well he photographed! that was her thought. She had seen him so often, with just this expression, looking at her. His pleasant, lazy, half-sarcastic voice was in her ear, saying something coolly impertinent--his gray, half-smiling, half-cynical eyes were looking life-like up at her. What was he doing now? Sleeping calmly, no doubt--she forgotten as she deserved to be. When to-morrow came, would he by any chance remember it was her wedding-day, and would the remembrance cost him a pang? She laughed at herself for the sentimental question--Charley Stuart feel a pang for her, or any other earthly woman? No, he was immersed in business, no doubt, head and ears, soul and body; absorbed in dollars and cents, and retrieving in some way his fallen fortunes--Edith Darrell dismissed contemptuously, as a cold-blooded jilt, from his memory. Well, so she had willed it--she had no right to complain. With a steady hand she tied up the letters and replaced them in the desk. The picture followed. "Good-by, Charley," she said, with a sort of smile. She could no more have destroyed those souvenirs of the past than she could have cut off her right hand. Wrong, you say, and shake your head. Wrong, of course; but when has Edith Darrell done right--when have I pictured her to you in any very favorable light? As long as she lived, and was Sir Victor's wife, she would never look at them again, but destroy them--no, she could not do that.

Six! As she closed and locked the writing-case the hour struck; a broad, bright sunburst flashed in and filled the room with yellow glory. The sun had risen cloudless and brilliant at last on her wedding-day.


CHAPTER XXI.

HOW THE WEDDING-DAY ENDED.

She replaced the desk in the trunk, and, walking to the window, drew back the curtain and looked out. Over emerald lawn and coppice, tall trees and brilliant flowers, the October sun shone gloriously. No fairer day ever smiled upon old earth. She stood for an instant--then turned slowly away and walked over to a mirror--had her night's vigil made her look wan and sallow? she wondered. No--she looked much as usual--a thought paler, perhaps, but it is appropriate for brides to look pale. No use thinking of a morning nap under the circumstances--she would sit down by the window and wait for them to come. She could hear the household astir already--she could even see Sir Victor, away in the distance, taking his morning walk. How singularly haggard and wan he looked, like anything you please except a happy bridegroom about to marry the lady he loves above all on earth. She watched him with a gravely thoughtful face, until at last he disappeared from view among the trees.

Seven o'clock! Eight o'clock! Edith's respite was ended, her solitude invaded at last. There was a tap at the door, and Lady Helena, followed by Miss Darrell's maid, entered.

Had they all kept vigil? Her ladyship, in the pitiless, searching glare of the morning sun, certainly looked much more like it than the quiet bride. She was pale, nervous, agitated beyond anything the girl had ever