Dora Thorne Part 48

Lord Earle took the letter from his hands--he tried to open it, but the trembling fingers seemed powerless. He signed to Hewson to leave the room, and, placing the letter upon the table, resumed his melancholy watch. But in some strange way his thoughts wandered to the missive.

What might it not contain, brought to him, too, in the solemn death chamber? He opened it, and found many sheets of closely covered paper.

On the first was written "The Confession of Hugh Fernely."

The name told him nothing. Suddenly an idea came to him--could this confession have anything to do with the fate of the beloved child who lay before him? Kneeling by the dead child's side, he turned over the leaf and read as follows:

"Lord Earle, I am dying--the hand tracing this will soon be cold.

Before I die I must confess my crime. Even now, perhaps, you are kneeling by the side of the child lost to you for all time. My lord, I killed her.

"I met her first nearly three years ago, at Knutsford; she was out alone, and I saw her. I loved her then as I love her now. By mere accident I heard her deplore the lonely, isolated life she led, and that in such terms that I pitied her. She was young, beautiful, full of life and spirits; she was pining away in that remote home, shut out from the living world she longed for with a longing I can not put into words. I spoke to her--do not blame her, she was a beautiful, ignorant child--I spoke to her, asking some questions about the road, and she replied. Looking at her face, I swore that I would release her from the life she hated, and take her where she would be happy.

"I met her again and again. Heaven pardon me if I did my best to awake an interest in her girlish heart! I told her stories of travel and adventure that stirred all the romance in her nature. With the keen instinct of love I understood her character, and played upon its weakness while I wors.h.i.+ped its strength.

"She told me of a sad, patient young mother who never smiled, of a father who was abroad and would not return for many years. Pardon me, my lord, if, in common with many others, I believed this story to be one to appease her. Pardon me, if I doubted as many others did--whether the sad young mother was your wife.

"I imagined that I was going to rescue her from a false position when I asked her to be my wife. She said her mother dreaded all mention of love and lovers, and I prayed her to keep my love a secret from all the world.

"I make no excuses for myself; she was young and innocent as a dreaming child. I ought to have looked on her beautiful face and left her. My lord, am I altogether to blame? The lonely young girl at Knutsford pined for what I could give her--happiness and pleasure did not seem so far removed from me. Had she been in her proper place I could never have addressed her.

"Not to you can I tell the details of my love story--how I wors.h.i.+ped with pa.s.sionate love the beautiful, innocent child who smiled into my face and drank in my words. I asked her to be my wife, and she promised. My lord, I never for a moment dreamed that she would ever have a home with you--it did not seem to me possible. I intended to return and marry her, firmly believing that in some respects my rank and condition in life were better than her own. She promised to be true to me, to love no one else, to wait for me, and to marry me when I returned.

"I believe now that she never loved me. My love and devotion were but a pleasant interruption in the monotony of her life. They were to blame also who allowed her no pleasures--who forced her to resort to this stolen one.

"My lord, I placed a ring upon your daughter's finger, and pledged my faith to her. I can not tell you what my love was like; it was a fierce fire that consumed me night and day.

"I was to return and claim her in two years. Absence made me love her more. I came back, rich in gold, my heart full of happiness, hope making everything bright and beautiful. I went straight to Knutsford--alas! she was no longer there! And then I heard that the girl I loved so deeply and so dearly was Lord Earle's daughter.

"I did not dream of losing her; birth, t.i.tle, and position seemed as nothing beside my mighty, pa.s.sionate love. I thought nothing of your consent, but only of her; and I went to Earlescourt. My lord, I wrote to her, and my heart was in every line. She sent me a cold reply. I wrote again; I swore I would see her. She sent her sister to me with the reply. Then I grew desperate, and vowed I would lay my claim before you. I asked her to meet me out in the grounds, at night, unseen and unknown. She consented, and on Thursday night I met her near the shrubbery.

"How I remember her pretty pleading words, her beautiful proud face!

She asked me to release her. She said that it had all been child's play--a foolish mistake--and that if I would give her her freedom from a foolish promise she would always be my friend. At first I would not hear of it; but who could have refused her? If she had told me to lie down at her feet and let her trample the life out of me, I should have submitted.

"I promised to think of her request, and we walked on to the border of the lake. Every hair upon her head was sacred to me; the pretty, proud ways that tormented me delighted me, too. I promised I would release her, and give her the freedom she asked, if she told me I was not giving her up to another. She would not. Some few words drove me mad with jealous rage--yes, mad; the blood seemed to boil in my veins.

Suddenly I caught sight of a golden locket on her neck, and I asked her whose portrait it contained. She refused to tell me. In the madness of my rage I tried to s.n.a.t.c.h it from her. She caught it in her hands, and, shrinking back from me, fell into the lake.

"I swear it was a sheer accident--I would not have hurt a hair of her head; but, oh! My lord, pardon me--pardon me, for Heaven's sake--I might have saved her and I did not; I might have plunged in after her and brought her back, but jealousy whispered to me, 'Do not save her for another--let her die.' I stood upon the bank, and saw the water close over her head. I saw the white hand thrown up in wild appeal, and never moved or stirred. I stood by the lake-side all night, and fled when the morning dawned in the sky.

"I killed her. I might have saved her, but did not. Anger of yours can add nothing to my torture; think what it has been. I was a strong man two days since; when the sun sets I shall be numbered with the dead. I do not wish to screen myself from justice. I have to meet the wrath of Heaven, and that appalls me as the anger of man never could.

Send the officers of the law for me. If I am not dead, let them take me; if I am, let them bury me as they would a dog. I ask no mercy, no compa.s.sion nor forgiveness; I do not merit it.

"If by any torture, any death, I could undo what I have done, and save her, I would suffer the extremity of pain; but I can not. My deed will be judged in eternity.

"My lord, I write this confession partly to ease my own conscience, party to s.h.i.+eld others from unjust blame. Do not curse me because, through my mad jealousy, my miserable revenge, as fair and pure a child as father ever loved has gone to her rest."

So the strange letter concluded. Lord Earle read every word, looking over and anon at the quiet, dead face that had kept the secret hidden.

Every word seemed burned in upon his brain; every word seemed to rise before him like an accusing spirit.

He stood face to face at last with the sin of his youth; it had found him out. The willful, wanton disobedience, the marriage that had broken his father's heart, and struck Ronald himself from the roll of useful men; the willful, cruel neglect of duty; the throwing off of all ties; the indulgence in proud, unforgiving temper, the abandonment of wife and children--all ended there. But for his sins and errors, that white, still figure might now have been radiant with life and beauty.

The thought stung him with cruel pain. It was his own fault. Beatrice might have erred in meeting Hugh Fernely; Fernely had done wrong in trying to win that young child-like heart for his own; but he who left his children to strange hands, who neglected all duties of parentage, had surely done the greatest wrong.

For the first time his utter neglect of duty came home to him. He had thought himself rather a modern hero, but now he caught a glimpse of himself as he was in reality. He saw that he was not even a brave man; for a brave man neglects no duty. It was pitiful to see how sorrow bent his stately figure and lined his proud face. He leaned over his dead child, and cried to her to pardon him, for it was all his fault.

Lady Helena, seeking him in the gloom of that solemn death chamber, found him weeping as strong men seldom weep.

He did not give her the letter, nor tell her aught of Hugh Fernely's confession. He turned to her with as sad a face as man ever wore.

"Mother," he said, "I want my kinsman, Lionel Dacre. Let him be sent for, and ask him to come without delay."

In this, the crowning sorrow of his life, he could not stand alone. He must have some one to think and to plan for him, some one to help him bear the burden that seemed too heavy for him to carry. Some one must see the unhappy man who had written that letter, and it should be a kinsman of his own.

Not the brave, sad young lover, fighting alone with his sorrow he must never know the tragedy of that brief life, to him her memory must be sacred and untarnished, unmarred by the knowledge of her folly.

Lady Helena was not long in discovering Lionel Dacre's whereabouts.

One of the footmen who had attended him to the station remembered the name of the place for which he had taken a ticket. Lady Helena knew that Sir William Greston lived close by, and she sent at once to his house.

Fortunately the messenger found him. Startled and horrified by the news, Lionel lost no time in returning. He could not realize that his beautiful young cousin was really dead. Her face, in its smiling brightness, haunted him. Her voice seemed to mingle with the wild clang of the iron wheels. She was dead, and he was going to console her father.

No particulars of her death had reached him; he now only knew that she had walked out in her sleep, and had fallen into the lake.

Twenty-four hours had not elapsed since Lord Earle cried out in grief for his young kinsman, yet already he stood by his side.

"Persuade him to leave that room," said Lady Helena. "Since our darling was carried there he has never left her side."

Lionel did as requested. He went straight to the library, and sent for Lord Earle, saying that he could not at present look upon the sad sight in the gloomy death chamber.

While waiting there, he heard of Lillian's dangerous illness. Lady Helena told him how she had changed before her sister's death; and, despite the young man's anger, his heart was sore and heavy.

He hardly recognized Lord Earle in the aged, altered man who soon stood before him. The long watch, the bitter remorse, the miserable consciousness of his own folly and errors had written strange lines upon his face.

"I sent for you, Lionel," he said, "because I am in trouble--so great that I can no longer bear it alone. You must think and work for me; I can do neither for myself."

Looking into his kinsman's face, Lionel felt that more than the death of his child weighed upon the heart and mind of Ronald Earle.

"There are secrets in every family," said Ronald; "henceforth there will be one in mine--and it will be the true story of my daughter's death. While I knelt yesterday by her side, this letter was brought to me. Read it, Lionel; then act for me."

He read it slowly, tears gathering fast in his eyes, his lips quivering, and his hands tightly clinched.

"My poor Beatrice!" he exclaimed; and then the strength of his young manhood gave way, and Lionel Dacre wept as he had never wept before.

"The mean, pitiful scoundrel!" he cried, angry indignation rising as he thought of her cruel death. "The wretched villain--to stand by while she died!"

"Hus.h.!.+" said Lord Earle. "He has gone to his account. What have you to say to me, Lionel? Because I had a miserable quarrel with my wife I abandoned my children. I never cared to see them from the time they were babes until they were women grown. How guilty am I? That man believed he was about to raise Beatrice in the social scale when he asked her to be his wife, or as he says, he would never have dreamed of proposing to marry my daughter. If he merits blame, what do I deserve?"

"It was a false position, certainly," replied Lionel Dacre.

"This secret must be kept inviolate," said Lord Earle. "Lord Airlie must never know it--it would kill Lady Helena, I believe. One thing puzzles me, Lionel--Fernely says Lillian met him. I do not think that is true."

"It is!" cried Lionel, a sudden light breaking in upon him. "I saw her with him. Oh, Lord Earle, you may be proud of Lillian! She is the n.o.blest, truest girl that ever lived. Why, she sacrificed her own love, her own happiness, for her sister! She loved me; and when this wedding, which will never now take place, was over, I intended to ask you to give me Lillian. One night, quite accidentally, while I was wandering in the grounds with a cigar, I saw her speaking to a stranger, her fair sweet face full of pity and compa.s.sion, which I mistook for love. Shame to me that I was base enough to doubt her--that I spoke to her the words I uttered! I demanded to know who it was she had met, and why she had met him. She asked me to trust her, saying she could not tell me. I stabbed her with cruel words, and left her vowing that I would never see her again. Her sister must have trusted her with her secret, and she would not divulge it."

"We can not ask her now," said Lord Earle; "my mother tells me she is very ill."