The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Charlotte Mary Brame (books to read romance .txt) 📗

wife just like your own," I said, and the words came back to me afterward with a fervent prayer of "Heaven forbid!--may Heaven forbid!"

"I shall never marry now, Lance," I said. "The only woman I could ever love is dead to me."

He looked at me very earnestly.

"I wish you would forget all about her, John. She was not worthy of you."

"Perhaps not," I replied; "but that does not interfere with the love."

"Why should you give all that loving heart of yours to one woman, John?" he said. "If one fails, try another."

"If your Frances died, should you love another woman?" I asked.

"That is quite another thing," he said, and I saw in his heart he resented the fact that I should place the woman who had been faithless to me on an equality with his wife. Poor Lance!


CHAPTER VI.


As we drew near the house on our return, the first dinner-bell was ringing.

"We have twenty minutes yet," said Lance; "you will just have time to say a few words to Frances; she is sure to be in the drawing-room."

We went there. When the door was opened I saw a magnificent room--long, lofty and bright, so cheerful and light--with such beautiful furniture, and such superb hangings of white and gold. I was struck as I had never been by any room before. The long French windows, opening like glass doors, looked over a superb flower-garden, where flowers of every hue were now in blossom.

The room was full of sunlight; it faced the west, and the sun was setting. For a few moments my eyes were dazzled; then as the golden haze cleared, I saw a tall figure at the other end of the room, a beautiful figure, dressed in a long robe of blue, with a crown of golden brown hair; when she turned suddenly to us, I saw that she carried some sprays of white hawthorn in her hand. At first my attention was concentrated on the golden hair, the blue dress, the white flowers; then slowly, as though following some irresistible magnetic attraction, my eyes were raised to her face, and remained fixed there. I have wondered a thousand times since how it was that no cry escaped my lips--how it was that none of the cold, sick horror that filled my whole heart and soul did not find vent in words. How was it? To this moment I cannot tell. Great Heaven! what did I see? In this beloved and worshiped wife--in this fair and queenly woman--in this tender and charitable lady, who was so good to the fallen and miserable--in this woman, idolized by the man I loved best upon earth, I saw the murderess--the woman who had dropped the little bundle over the railing into the sea.

It was she as surely as heaven shone above us. I recognized the beautiful face, the light golden hair, the tall, graceful figure. The face was not white, set desperate now, but bright, with a soft, sweet radiance I have seen on the face of no other woman living. For an instant my whole heart was paralyzed with horror. I felt my blood grow cold and gather round my heart, leaving my face and hands cold. She came forward to greet me with the same graceful, undulating grace which had struck me before. For a moment I was back on the Chain Pier, with the wild waste of waters around me, and the rapid rush of the waves in my ear. Then a beautiful face was smiling into mine--a white hand, on which rich jewels shone, was held out to me, a voice sweeter than any music I had ever heard, said:

"You are welcome to Dutton, Mr. Ford. My husband will be completely happy now."

Great Heaven! how could this woman be a murderess--the beautiful face, the clear, limpid eyes--how could it be? No sweeter mouth ever smiled, and the light that lay on her face was the light of Heaven itself. How could it be?

She seemed to wonder a little at my coldness, for she added:

"I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you, and Lance has thought of nothing else during the last week."

I wonder that I didn't cry out, "You are the woman who drowned the little child off the Chain Pier." It was only the sight of Lance's face that deterred me. I had some vague, indistinct notion of what those words would be to him.

"What is the matter, John?" asked Lance, impatiently. "The sight of my wife's face seems to have struck you dumb."

"It must be with admiration, then," I said, making a desperate effort to recover myself. "I could almost think I had seen Mrs. Fleming's face before."

She looked at me frankly, and she laughed frankly.

"I have a good memory for faces," she said; "and I do not remember to have seen yours."

There was no shadow of fear or of any effect at concealment; she did not change color or shrink from me.

Lance laughed aloud.

"I wonder no longer at your being a bachelor," he said; "if the sight of a beautiful face produces such a strange effect on you. You must deal gently with him, Frances," he said to his wife; "his nerves are weak--he cannot bear much at a time."

"I promise to be very gentle," she said; and the music of that low, caressing voice thrilled my very heart. "I think," she continued, "that Mr. Ford looks very tired, Lance, pale and worn. We must take great care of him."

"That we will," was the hearty reply.

Great Heaven! was it a murderess standing there, with that sweet look of compassion on her beautiful face? Could this woman, who looked pitifully on me, a grown man, drown a little child in the deep sea? Were those lips, littering kindly words of welcome, the same that had cried in mad despair, "Oh, Heaven! if I dare--if I dare?" I could have killed myself for the base suspicion. Yet it was most surely she!

I stooped to pick up the white hawthorn she had dropped. She took it from me with the sweetest smile, and Lance stood by, looking on with an air of proud proprietorship that would have been amusing if it had not been so unutterably pitiful.

While my brain and mind were still chaos--a whirl of thought and emotion--the second dinner-bell rang. I offered her my arm, but I could not refrain from a shudder as her white hand touched it. When I saw that hand last it was most assuredly dropping the little burden into the sea. Lance looked at us most ruefully, so that she laughed and said:

"Come with us, Lance."

She laid her other hand on his arm, and we all three walked into the dining-room together.

I could not eat any dinner--I could only sit and watch the beautiful face. It was the face of a good woman--there was nothing cruel, nothing subtle in it. I must be mistaken. I felt as though I should go mad. She was a perfect hostess--most attentive--most graceful. I shall never forget her kindness to me any more than I shall forget the comeliness of her face or the gleam of her golden hair.

She thought I was not well. She did not know that it was fear which had blanched my face and made me tremble; she could not tell that it was horror which curdled my blood. Without any fuss--she was so anxiously considerate for me--without seeming to make any ceremony, she was so gracefully kind; she would not let me sit in the draughts; with her own hands she selected some purple grapes for me. This could never be the woman who had drowned a little child.

When dinner was over and we were in the drawing-room again, she drew a chair near the fire for me.

"You will laugh at the notion of a fire in May," she said; "but I find the early summer evenings chilly, and I cannot bear the cold."

I wondered if she thought of the chill of the water in which she had plunged the little child. I looked at her; there was not even a fleeting shadow on her face. Then she lingered for half a minute by my side.

As she drew near to me, I felt again that it was utterly impossible that my suspicions could be correct, and that I must be mistaken.

"I hope," she said, "you will not think what I am going to say strange. I know that it is the custom for some wives to be jealous of their husband's friends--some might be jealous of you. I want to tell you that I am not one of that kind. I love my husband so utterly, so entirely, that all whom he loves are dear to me. You are a brother, friend, everything to him--will you be the same to me?"

A beautiful woman asking, with those sweet, sensitive lips, for my friendship, looking at me with those calm, tender eyes, asking me to like her for her husband's sake--the sweetest, the most gracious, the most graceful picture I had ever seen. Yet, oh, Heaven! a murderess, if ever there was one! She wondered why I did not respond to her advances. I read the wonder in her face.

"You do not care for hasty friends," she said. "Well, Lance and I are one; if you like him, you must like me, and time will show."

"You are more than good to me," I stammered, thinking in my heart if she had been but half as good to the little helpless child she flung into the sea.

I have never seen a woman more charming--of more exquisite grace--of more perfect accomplishment--greater fascination of manner. She sang to us, and her voice was full of such sweet pathos it almost brought the tears in my eyes. I could not reconcile what I saw now with what I had seen on the Chain Pier, though outwardly the same woman I had seen on the Chain Pier and this graceful, gracious lady could not possibly be one. As the evening passed on, and I saw her bright, cheerful ways, her devotion to her husband, her candid, frank open manner, I came to the conclusion that I must be the victim either of a mania or of some terrible mistake. Was it possible, though, that I could have been? Had I not had the face clearly, distinctly, before me for the past three years?

One thing struck me during the evening. Watching her most narrowly, I could not see in her any under-current of feeling; she seemed to think what she said, and to say just what she thought; there were no musings, no reveries, no fits of abstraction, such as one would think would go always with sin or crime. Her attention was given always to what was passing; she was not in the least like a person with anything weighing on her mind. We were talking, Lance and I, of an old friend of ours, who had gone to Nice, and that led to a digression on the different watering places of England. Lance mentioned several, the climate of which he declared was unsurpassed--those mysterious places of which one reads in the papers, where violets grow in December, and the sun shines all the year round. I cannot remember who first named Brighton, but I do remember that she neither changed color nor shrank.

"Now for a test," I said to myself. I looked