A Terrible Secret Part 53

"Wait," he said painfully; "don't touch me; don't speak to me. Wait.

Sit down; don't kneel there. You don't know what you are about to hear.

Inez, tell him now."

She closed the door--still with that changeless face--and locked it.

It seemed as though, having suffered so much, nothing had power to move her outwardly now. She placed a chair for Lady Helena away from the bed--Lady Helena, who had stood aloof and not spoken to the dying man yet. She placed a chair for Sir Victor, and motioned him to seat himself, then drew another close to the bedside, stooped, and kissed the dying man. Then in a voice that never faltered, never failed, she began the story she had to tell.

Half an hour had pa.s.sed. The story was told, and silence reigned in the darkened room. Lady Helena still sat, with averted face, in her distant seat, not moving, not looking up. The dying man still lay gazing weirdly upon his son, death every second drawing nearer and more near. Inez sat holding his hand, her pale, sad face, her dark, pitying eyes turned also upon his son.

That son had risen. He stood up in the centre of the room, with a white, stunned face. What was this he had heard? Was he asleep and dreaming?--was it all a horrible, ghastly delusion?--were they mocking him? or--O gracious G.o.d! was it _true_?

"Let me out!" They were his first words. "I can't breathe--I am choking in this room! I shall go mad if you keep me here!"

He staggered forward, as a drunken man or a blind man might stagger, to the door. He unlocked it, opened it, pa.s.sed out into the pa.s.sage, and down the stairs. His aunt followed him, her eyes streaming, her hands outstretched.

"Victor--my boy--my son--my darling! Victor--for the love of Heaven, speak to me!"

But he only made a gesture for her to stand back, and went on.

"Keep away from me!" he said, in a stifled voice; "let me think! Leave me alone!--I can't speak to you yet!"

He went forward out into the wet daylight. His head was bare; his overcoat was off; the rain beat unheeded upon him. What was this--what was this he had heard?

He paced up and down under the trees. The moments pa.s.sed. An hour went; he neither knew nor cared. He was stunned--stunned body and soul--too stunned even to think. His mind was in chaos, an awful horror had fallen upon him; he must wait before thought would come. Whilst he still paced there, as a stricken animal might, a great cry reached him.

Then a woman's flying figure came down the path. It was his aunt.

"Come--come--come!" she cried; "he is dying!"

She drew him with her by main force into the house--up the stairs--into the chamber of death. But Death had been there before them. A dead man lay upon the bed now, rigid and white. A second cry arose--a cry of almost more than woman's woe. And with it Inez Catheron clasped the dead man in her arms, and covered his face with her raining tears.

The son stood beside her like a figure of stone, gazing down at that marble face. For the first time in his life he was Sir Victor Catheron.

CHAPTER XX.

HOW THE WEDDING-DAY BEGAN.

Six days later, Sir Victor Catheron and his aunt came home. These six days had pa.s.sed very quietly, very pleasantly, to Edith. She was not in the least lonely; the same sense of relief in her lover's absence was upon her as she had felt at Torquay. It seemed to her she breathed freer when a few score miles lay between them. She had her pet books and music, and she read and played a great deal; she had her long, solitary rambles through the leafy lanes and quiet roads, her long drives in the little pony phaeton her future husband had given her.

Sometimes Lady Gwendoline was her companion; oftener she was quite alone. She was not at all unhappy now; she was just drifting pa.s.sively on to the end. She had chosen, and was quietly abiding by her choice; that was all. She caught herself thinking, sometimes, that since she felt so much happier and freer in Sir Victor's brief absences, how was she going to endure all the years that must be pa.s.sed at his side? No doubt she would grow used to him after a while, as we grow used and reconciled to everything earthly.

One circ.u.mstance rather surprised her: during those six days of absence she had received but one note from her lover. She had counted at least upon the post fetching her one or two per day, as when at Torquay, but this time he wrote her but once. An odd, incoherent, hurried sort of note, too--very brief and unsatisfactory, if she had had much curiosity on the subject of what was going on at St. John's Wood. But she had not. Whether his father lived or died, so that he never interfered with her claim to the t.i.tle of Lady Catheron in the future, Miss Darrell cared very little. This hurried note briefly told her his father had died on the day of their arrival; that by his own request the burial place was to be Kensal Green, not the Catheron vaults; that the secret of his life and death was still to be kept inviolate; and that (in this part of the note he grew impa.s.sionedly earnest) their marriage was not to be postponed. On the third of October, as all had been arranged, it was still to take place. No other note followed. If Miss Darrell had been in love with her future husband, this profound silence must have wounded, surprised, grieved her. But she was not in love. He must be very much occupied, she carelessly thought, since he could not find time to drop her a daily bulletin--then dismissed the matter indifferently from her mind.

Late in the evening of the sixth day Sir Victor and Lady Helena returned home.

Edith stood alone awaiting them, dressed in black silk, and with soft white lace and ruby ornaments, and looking very handsome.

Her lover rushed in and caught her in his arms with a sort of rapturous, breathless delight.

"My love! my life!" he cried, "every hour has been an age since I said good-by!"

She drew herself from him. Sir Victor, in the calm, courteous character of a perfectly undemonstrative suitor she tolerated. Sir Victor in the role of Romeo was excessively distasteful to her. She drew herself out of his arms coldly and decisively.

"I am glad to see you back, Sir Victor." But the stereotyped words of welcome fell chill on his ear. "You are not looking well. I am afraid you have been very much hara.s.sed since you left."

Surely he was not looking well. In those six days he had grown more than six years older. He had lost flesh and color; there was an indescribable something in his face and expression she had never seen before. More had happened than the death of the father he had never known, to alter him like this. She looked at him curiously. Would he tell her?

He did not. Not looking at her, with his eyes fixed moodily on the wood-fire smoldering on the hearth, he repeated what his letter had already said. His father had died the morning of their arrival in London; they had buried him quietly and un.o.btrusively, by his own request, in Kensal Green Cemetery; no one was to be told, and the wedding was not to be postponed. All this he said as a man repeats a lesson learned by rote--his eyes never once meeting hers.

She stood silently by, looking at him, listening to him.

Something lay behind, then, that she was not to know. Well, it made them quits--she didn't care for the Catheron family secrets; if it were something unpleasant, as well _not_ know. If Sir Victor told her, very well; if not, very well also. She cared little either way.

"Miss Catheron remains at St John's Wood, I suppose?" she inquired indifferently, feeling in the pause that ensued she must say something.

"She remains--yes--with her two old servants for the present. I believe her ultimate intention is to go abroad."

"She will not return to Ches.h.i.+re?"

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

"She will not return to Ches.h.i.+re. 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 inc.u.mbent 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.