The Mississippi Bubble Part 13

"Tell me, then, why should I be here?" burst out the girl. "What is it to me? Why should I care what the Lady Catharine says or does? Why should I risk my own name to come of this errand in the night? Now let me pa.s.s, for I shall leave you."

Tho swift jealous rage of Mary Connynge was unpremeditated, yet nothing had better served her real purpose. The stubborn nature of Law was ever ready for a challenge. He caught her arm, and placed her not unkindly upon the chair.

"By heaven, I half believe what you say is true!" said he, as though to himself.

"Yet you just said 'twas false," said the girl, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

"I meant that what you add is true, and hence the first also must be believed. Then you saw my message?"

"I did, since it so fell out."

"But you did not read the real message. I asked no aid of any one for my escape. I but asked her to come. In sheer truth, I wished but to see her."

"And by what right could you expect that?"

"I asked her as my affianced wife," replied John Law.

Mary Connynge stood an inch taller, as she sprang to her feet in sudden scorn and bitterness.

"Your affianced wife!" cried she. "What! So soon! Oh, rare indeed must be my opinion of this Lady Catharine!"

"It was never my way to waste time on a journey," said John Law, coolly.

"Your wife, your affianced wife?"

"As I said."

"Yes," cried Mary Connynge, bitterly, and again, unconsciously and in sheer anger, falling upon that course which best served her purpose.

"And what manner of affianced wife is it would forsake her lover at the first breath of trouble? My G.o.d! 'tis then, it seems to me, a woman would most swiftly fly to the man she loved."

John Law turned slowly toward her, his eyes scanning her closely from top to toe, noting the heaving of her bosom, the sparkling of her gold-colored eye, now darkened and half ready to dissolve in tears. He stood as though he were a judge, weighing the evidence before him, calmly, dispa.s.sionately.

"Would you do so much as that, Mary Connynge?" asked John Law.

"I, sir?" she replied. "Then why am I here to-night myself? But, G.o.d pity me, what have I said? There is nothing but misfortune in all my life!"

It was one rebellious, unsubdued nature speaking to another, and of the two each was now having its own sharp suffering. The instant of doubt is the time of danger. Then comes revulsion, bitterness, despair, folly.

John Law trod a step nearer.

"By G.o.d! Madam," cried he, "I would I might believe you. I would I might believe that you, that any woman, would come to me at such a time! But tell me--and I bethink me my message was not addressed, was even unsigned--whom then may I trust? If this woman scorns my call at such a time, tell me, whom shall I hold faithful? Who would come to me at any time, in any case, in my trouble? Suppose my message were to you?"

Mary Connynge stirred softly under her deep cloak. Her head was lifted slightly, the curve of cheek and chin showing in the light that fell from the little lamp. The ma.s.ses of her dark hair lay piled about her face, tumbled by the sweeping of her hood. Her eyes showed tremulously soft and deep now as he looked into them. Her little hands half twitched a trifle from her lap and reached forward and upward. Primitive she might have been, wicked she was, sinfully sweet; and yet she was woman.

It was with the voice of tears that she spoke, if one might claim vocalization for her speech.

"Have I not come?" whispered she.

"By G.o.d! Mary Connynge, yes, you have come!" cried Law. And though there was heartbreak in his voice, it sounded sweet to the ear of her who heard it, and who now reached up her arms about his neck.

"Ah, John Law," said Mary Connynge, "when a woman loves--when a woman loves, she stops at nothing!"

CHAPTER XV

IF THERE WERE NEED

Time wore on in the ancient capital of England. The tramp of troops echoed in the streets, and the fleets of Britain made ready to carry her sons over seas for wars and for adventures. The intrigues of party against party, of church against church, of Parliament against king; the loves, the hates, the ambitions, the desires of all the city's hurrying thousands went on as ever. Who, then, should remember a single prisoner, waiting within the walls of England's jail? The hours wore on slowly enough for that prisoner. He had faced a jury of his peers and was condemned to face the gallows. Meantime he had said farewell to love and hope and faithfulness, even as he bade farewell to life. "Since she has forsaken me whom I thought faithful," said he to himself, "why, let it end, for life is a mockery I would not live out." And thenceforth, haggard but laughing, pale but with unbroken courage, he trod on his way through his few remaining days, the wonder of those who saw him.

As for Mary Connynge, surely she had matters enough which were best kept secret in her own soul. While Lady Catharine was hoping, and praying, and dreaming and believing, even as the roses left her cheek and the hollows fell beneath her eyes, she saw about her in the daily walks of life Mary Connynge, sleek and rounded as ever. They sat at table together, and neither did the one make sign to the other of her own anxiety, nor did that other give sign of her own treachery. Mary Connynge, false guest, false friend, false woman, deceived so perfectly that she left no indication of deceit. She herself knew, and blindly satisfied herself with the knowledge, that she alone now came close into the life of "Beau" Law, the convict; "Jessamy" Law, the student, the financier, the thinker; John Law, her lord and master. Herein she found the sole compensation possible in her savage nature. She had found the master whom she sought!

Cynically mirthful or irreverently indifferent, yet never did her master's strength forsake him, never did his heart lose its undauntedness. And when he bade Mary Connynge do this or that she obeyed him; when he bade her arise she arose; at his word she came or departed.

A dozen nights in the month she was absent from the house of Knollys. A dozen nights Will Law was cozened into frenzy, alternating between a heaven of delight and a h.e.l.l of despair, and ignorant of her twofold duplicity. A dozen nights John Law knew well enough where Mary Connynge was, though no one else might know. There was feminine triumph now in full in the heart of this Mary Connynge, who had gone white with rage at the sight of a rose offered across her face to another woman. Had she not her master? Was he not hers, all hers, belonging in no wise to any other?

For the future, Mary Connynge did not ponder it. An ephemera, once buried generations deep in the mire and slime of lower conditions, and now craving blindly but the sunlight of the day, she would have sought the deadly caress of life even though at that moment it had sealed her doom. Foolish or wise, she was as she was; since, under our frail society, life is as it is.

Only at night, on those nights when she was sleepless on her own couch beneath the roof of Catharine Knollys, did Mary Connynge allow herself to think. Tell, then, ye who may, whether or not she was a mere survival of some forgotten day of the forest and the glade, as she lay with her hands clasped in brief moments of emotion. Surely she hoped, as all women hope who love, that this might endure for her forever. Yet the next moment there came the thought that inevitably it all must end, and soon. Then her hand clenched, her eyes grew dry and brilliant. She said to herself: "There is no hope. He can not be saved! For this short period of his life he shall be mine, all mine! He shall not be set free!

He shall not go away, to belong, at any time, in any part, to any other woman! Though he die, yet shall he love me to the end; me, Mary Connynge, and no other woman!"

Now, under this same roof of Knollys, separated by but a few yards of s.p.a.ce, there lay another woman, thinking also of this convict behind the prison bars. But this was a woman of another and a n.o.bler mold. Into the heart of Catharine Knollys there came no mere mad selfishness of desire, yearn though she did in every fiber of her being since that first time she felt the mastering kiss of love. There was born in her soul emotion of a higher sort. The Lady Catharine Knollys prayed, and her prayer was not that her lover should die, but that he might live; that he might be free.

Nor was this hope left to wither unnourished in the mind of the high-bred and courageous English girl. Alone, without confidant to counsel her, with no woman friend to aid her, the Lady Catharine Knollys backed her own hopes and wishes with resource and energy. There came a time, perilously late, when a faint rose showed once more in her cheek, long so worn, a faintly brighter light glowed in her deep eye.

When Sir Arthur Pembroke received a message from the Lady Catharine Knollys advising him that the latter would receive him at her home, it was left for the impulses, the hopes, the imaginings of that modest young n.o.bleman to establish a reason for the message. Puzzling all along his rapid way in answer to the summons, Sir Arthur found the answer which best suited his hopes in the faint flush, the brightened eye of the young woman who received him.

"Lady Catharine," he began, impetuously, "I have come, and let me hope that 'tis at last to have my answer. I have waited--each moment has been a year that I have spent away from you."

"Now, that is very pretty said."

"But I am serious."

"And that is why I do not like you."

"But, Lady Catharine!"

"I should like it better did you but continue as in the past. We have met on the Row, at the routs and drums, in the country; and always I have felt free to ask any favor of Sir Arthur Pembroke. Why could it not be always thus?"

"You might ask my very life, Lady Catharine."

"Ah, there it is! When a man offers his life, 'tis time for a woman to ask nothing."

She turned from the open window, her att.i.tude showing an unwonted weakness and dejection. Sir Arthur still stood near by, his own face frowning and uncertain.

"Lady Catharine," he broke out at length, "for years, as you know, I have sought your favor. I have dared think that sometime the day would come when--my faith! Lady Catharine, the day has come now when I feel it my right to demand the cause of anything which troubles you. And that you are troubled is plain enough. Ever since this man Law----"

"There," cried Lady Catharine, raising her hand. "I beg you to say no more."