The Baronet's Bride Part 38

As if some inward prescience told him they were there, the man lifted his hat at that very instant, and plainly showed his face.

"The Hamerican, by Jove!" gasped the horrified valet. Sybilla Silver's eyes blazed like coals of fire, and the demoniac smile, that made her brilliant beauty hideous, gleamed on her lips.

She grasped the man's arm with slender fingers of iron, and stood gloating over the scene.

Not one word could they hear--the distance was too great--but they could see my lady's pa.s.sionate gestures; they could see the white hands clasp and cover her face; they could see her wildly excited, even in that dim light. And once they saw her take from her pocket her purse, and pour a handful of s.h.i.+ning sovereigns into Mr. Parmalee's extended hand.

Nearly an hour they had stood, petrified gazers, when they were aroused as by a thunder-clap. A horse came galloping furiously up the avenue, as only one rider ever galloped there. Sybilla Silver just repressed a scream of exultation--no more.

"It is Sir Everard Kingsland!" she cried, in a whisper of fierce delight, "in time to catch his sick wife in the Beech Walk with the man he hates!"

CHAPTER XXIII.

MY LADY'S SECRET.

It was quite dark before prudent Mr. Parmalee, notwithstanding Sybilla's a.s.surance that the baronet was away from home, ventured within the great entrance gates of the park. He was not, as he said himself, a coward altogether; but he had a lively recollection of the pummeling he had already received, and a wholesome dread of the scientific hitting of this strong-fisted young aristocrat. When he did venture, his coat-collar was so pulled up that recognition was next to impossible.

Mr. Parmalee, smoking a cigar, made his way to the Beech Walk, and leaning against a giant tree, stared at the moon, and waited. The loud-voiced turret clock struck eight a moment after he had taken his position.

"Time is up," thought the photographer. "My lady ought to be here now.

I'll give her another quarter. If she isn't with me in that time, then good-bye to Lady Kingsland and my keeping her secret."

Ten minutes pa.s.sed. As he replaced his watch a light step sounded on the frozen snow, a shadow darkened the entrance, and Lady Kingsland's pale, proud face looked fixedly at him in the moonlight. He took off his hat and threw away his half-smoked cigar.

"My Lady Kingsland!"

She bowed haughtily, hovering aloof.

"You wished to see me, Mr. Parmalee--that is your name, I believe.

What is it you have to say to me?"

"I don't think you really need to ask that question, my lady. You know as well as I do, or I'm mistaken."

"Who are you?" she demanded, impatiently, impetuously. "How do you come to know my secret? How do you come to be possessed of that picture?"

"I told you before. She gave it to me herself."

"For G.o.d's sake, tell me the truth! Don't deceive me! Do you really mean it? Have you really seen my----"

She stopped, shuddering in some horrible inward repulsion from head to foot.

"I really have," rejoined Mr. Parmalee. "I know the--the party in question like a book. She told me her story, she gave me her picture herself, of her own free will, and she told me where to find you. She is in London now, all safe, and waiting--a little out of patience, though, by this time, I dare say."

"Waiting!" Lady Kingsland gasped the word in white terror. "Waiting for what?"

"To see you, my lady."

There was a blank pause. My lady covered her face with both hands, and again that convulsive shudder shook her from head to foot.

"She is very penitent, my lady," Mr. Parmalee said, in a softer tone.

"She is very poor, and ill and heart-broken. Even you, my lady, might pity and forgive her if you saw her now."

"For Heaven's sake, hus.h.!.+ I don't want to hear. Tell me how you met her first. I never heard your name until that day in the library."

"No more you didn't," said the artist. "You see, my lady, it was pure chance-work from first to last. I was coming over here on a little speculation of my own in the photographic line, and being low in pocket and pretty well used to rough it, I was coming in the steerage. There was a pretty hard crowd of us--Dutch and Irish and all sorts mixed up there--an' among 'em one that looked as much out of her element as a fish out of water. Any one could tell with half an eye she'd been a lady, in spite of her shabby duds and starved, haggard face. She was alone. Not a soul knew her, not a soul cared for her, and half-way across she fell sick and had like to died."

Mr. Parmalee paused. My lady stood before him, ashen, white to the lips, listening with wild, wide eyes.

"Go on," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Well, my lady," Mr. Parmalee resumed, modestly, "I'm a pretty rough sort of a fellow, as you may see, and I hain't never experienced religion or that, and don't lay claim to no sort of goodness; but for all that I've an old mother over to home, and for her sake I couldn't stand by and see a poor, sufferin' feller-critter of the female persuasion and not lend a helping hand. I nussed that there sick party by night and by day, and if it hadn't been for that nussin' and the little things I bought her to eat, she'd have been under the Atlantic now, though I do say it."

My lady held out her hand, aglitter with rich rings.

"You are a better man than I took you for," she said softly. "I thank you with all my heart."

Mr. Parmalee took the dainty hand, rather confusedly, in his finger-tips, held it a second, and dropped it.

"It was one night, when she thought herself dying, that she told me her story--told me everything, my lady--who she had been, who she was, and what she was coming across for. My lady, n.o.body could be sorrier than she was then. I pitied her, by George, more than I ever pitied any one before in my life. She had been unhappy and remorseful for a long time, but she was in despair. It was too late for repentance, she thought. There was nothing for it but to go on to the dreadful end.

Sometimes, when she was almost mad, she--well, she took to drink, you know, and he wasn't in any way a good or kind protector to her--Thornd.y.k.e wasn't."

My lady flung up both arms with a shrill scream.

"Not that name," she cried--"not that accursed name, if you would not drive me mad!"

"I beg your pardon!" said Mr. Parmalee; "I won't. Well, she heard of your father's death--_he_ told her, you see--and that completed her despair. She took to drink worse and worse; she got out of all bounds--sort of frantic, you see. Twice she tried to kill herself--once by poison, once by drowning; and both times he--you know who I mean--caught her and stopped her. He hadn't even mercy enough on her, she says, to let her die!"

"For G.o.d's sake, don't tell me of those horrors!" my lady cried, in agony. "I feel as though I were going mad."

"It is hard," said the artist, "but I can't help it--it's true, all the same. She heard of your marriage to Sir Everard Kingsland next. It was the last thing he ever taunted her with; for, crazed with his jeers and insults, she fled from him that night, sold all she possessed but the clothes on her back, and took pa.s.sage for England."

"To see me?" asked Harriet, hoa.r.s.ely.

"To see you, my lady, but all unknown. She had no wish to force herself upon you; she only felt that she was dying, and that if she could look on your face once before she went out of life, and see you well, and beautiful, and beloved, and happy, she could lie down in the dust at your gates and die content.

"She made me write you a line or two that night," continued Mr.

Parmalee--"that night which she thought her last--and she begged me to find you and give it to you, with her picture. I have it yet; here they are, both."

He drew from his pocket the picture and a note, and gave them into my lady's hand.

"She didn't die," he resumed; "she got better, and I took her to London, left her there, and came down here. Now, my lady, I don't make no pretense of being better than I am; I took this matter up in the way of speculation, in the view to make money out of it, and nothing else.

I said to myself: 'Here's this young lady, the bride of a rich baronet; it ain't likely she's been and told him all this, and it ain't likely her pa has died and left her ignorant of it. Now, what's to hinder my making a few honest pounds out of it, at the same time I do a good turn for this poor, sufferin'. sinful critter here? That's what I said, my lady, and that's what I am here for. I'm a poor man, and I live by my wits, and a stroke of business is a stroke of business, no matter how far it's out of the ordinary run. Your husband don't know this here story; you don't want him to know it, and you come down handsomely and I'll keep your secret."

"You have rather spoiled your marketable commodity, then, Mr. Parmalee.

It would have paid you better not to have shared your secret with Sybilla Silver."