The Living Link Part 53

After this marriage she took a violent dislike to her husband, and pretended to be ill, or perhaps suffered real illness, the natural result of her fierce, unbridled temper. Her husband found it impossible to live with her. The few interviews which they had were very stormy.

Over and over again she threatened his life. At length she beguiled him into the park on some unknown pretext, and there, with that dagger which she had so often flourished in his face, she shed that very _"heart's blood"_ which she had threatened to take. The murder was evidently a preconcerted act. She must have done it deliberately, for she had prepared the means of secret escape. She deliberately tried to conceal her act, and after removing his head, and burying it, she had thrown the body into the old well. But _"murder will out,"_ etc., etc.; and with this and other similar maxims Edith's condemnation was settled by the public mind.

Thus Edith was in prison, held there under a terrible charge, for which there was proof that was appalling in its character. The body found and identified seemed to plead against her; circ.u.mstances inculpated her; motives were a.s.signed to her sufficiently strong to cause the act; her own words and acts all tended to confirm her guilt.

After all, however, this last blow was not so crus.h.i.+ng a one as some others which she had received in the course of her life. The most terrible moment perhaps had been that one when she was taken and confronted with the horrible remains. After that shock had subsided she rallied somewhat; and when her arrest took place she was not unprepared.

If the shock of the arrest had thus been less severe than might be supposed, so also was she less affected by her imprisonment than another person would have been in such a situation. The reason of this is evident. She had endured so much that this seemed an inferior affliction. The anguish which she had known could not be increased by this. At Dalton Hall she had become habituated to imprisonment, and of a far more galling kind to her than this. She had been in the power of a tyrant, at his mercy, and shut out from all means of communicating with the world at large. Her soul had perpetually fretted and chafed against the barriers by which she was confined, and the struggle within herself was incessant. Afterward there had been the worse infliction of that mock marriage, and the unspeakable dread of a new tyrant who called himself her husband. No prison could equal the horrors which she had known at Dalton Hall. Here in the jail her situation was at least known.

From Wiggins she was saved; from her false husband rescued forever. She was now not in the power of a private tyrant, exercising his usurped authority over her from his own desire, and with his will as his only law; but she was in the hands of the nation, and under the power of the national law. So, after all, she knew less grief in that prison cell than in the more luxurious abode of Dalton Hall, less sorrow, less despair. Her mood was a calm and almost apathetic one, for the great griefs which she had already endured had made her almost indifferent to anything that life might yet have to offer.

Two days after her arrest word was brought to Edith that a lady wished to see her. Full of wonder who it could be, and in doubt whether it could be Miss Plympton, or only Mrs. Dunbar, Edith eagerly directed that the visitor should be admitted.

Thereupon a lady dressed in black entered the chamber. A heavy black veil was over her face, which she raised as she entered, and stood before Edith with downcast eyes.

There was something in that face which seemed strangely familiar to Edith, and yet she found herself quite unable to think who the lady could be. She thought over all the faces that she had known in her school days. She thought over the faces at Dalton Hall. Suddenly, as the lady raised her eyes, there was an additional revelation in them which at once told Edith all.

She started back in amazement.

"Lieutenant Dudleigh!" she cried.

The lady bowed her head, and said, in a low voice,

"Fortescue is my real name."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BUT EVEN NOW I WOULD BE WILLING TO DIE FOR HIM."]

A suspicion of this sort had once flashed across Edith's mind. It was during the altercation at the Dalton chapel. Still, as this suspicion was thus confirmed, her surprise was extreme, and she said not a word, but looked steadily at her. And in the midst of other thoughts and feelings she could not help seeing that great changes had come over Miss Fortescue, as she called herself, in addition to those which were consequent upon her resumption of feminine attire. She was pale and thin, and looked ten years older than she used to look. Evidently she had undergone great suffering. There were marks of deep grief on her face. Much Edith marveled to see that one who had acted so basely was capable of suffering such grief. She could not help being reminded of that expression which she had seen on this same face when they were arranging that false marriage; but now that deep remorse which then had appeared seemed stamped permanently there, together with a profound dejection that was like despair. All this was not without its effect on Edith. It disarmed her natural indignation, and even excited pity.

"Miss Dalton," said the visitor, in a voice that was quite different from the one which she remembered--a voice that was evidently her natural one, while that other must have been a.s.sumed--"Miss Dalton, I have come to try to do something, if possible, toward making amends for--for a frightful injury. I know well that amends can never be made; but at least I can do a little. Will you listen to me for a few moments, not with regard to me, but solely for your own sake?"

Edith said nothing, but bowed her head slightly. She did not yet know how far this betrayer might be sincere, and wished to hear and judge for herself.

"Will you let me, first of all, make a confession to you of my great sin?" she continued, slowly and painfully. "You will understand better your own present situation. I a.s.sure you it will be a help to you toward freeing yourself. I don't ask you to believe--I only ask you to listen."

Edith again bowed.

"I will tell you all, then. I was an actress in London; my name was Fortescue. I was a celebrity at Covent Garden. It was there that I first met Captain Dudleigh. I need say no more about him than this: I loved him pa.s.sionately, with a frenzy and a devotion that you can not understand, and my fate is this--that I love him yet. I know that he is a coward and a villain and a traitor, but even now I would be willing to die for him."

The voice was different--how different!--and the tone and manner still more so. The careless "Little Dudleigh" had changed into a being of pa.s.sion and ardor and fire. Edith tried to preserve an incredulous state of mind, but in vain. She could not help feeling that there was no acting here. This at least was real. This devoted love could not be feigned.

"He swore he loved me," continued Miss Fortescue. "He asked me to be his wife. We were married."

"Married!" cried Edith, in a tone of profoundest agitation.

"Yes," said Miss Fortescue, solemnly, "we were married. But listen. I believed that the marriage was real. He told some story about his friends being unwilling--about his father, who, he said, would disown him if he found it out. He urged a private marriage, without any public announcement. He knew a young clergyman, he said, who would do him that favor. For my part I had not the slightest objection. I loved him too well to care about a formal wedding. So we were married in his rooms, with a friend of his for witness.

"He set up a modest little house, where we lived for about a year. At first my life was one of perfect happiness, but gradually I saw a change coming over him. He was terribly in debt, and was afraid of utter ruin.

From hints that dropped from him, I began to suspect that he meditated some sort of treachery toward me. Then, for the first time, I was alarmed at the privacy of our marriage. Still, I was afraid to say any thing to him, for fear that it might hasten any treachery toward me which he might meditate. I loved him as dearly as ever, but I found out that he was base and unprincipled, and felt that he was capable of any thing. I had to content myself with watching him, and at the same time tried to be as cheerful as possible.

"At length he heard about you, and came to Dalton. His father sent him, he said. I followed him here. At first he was angry, but I persuaded him to take me as an a.s.sistant. He did not want to be known at the Hall, for he wished to see first what could be done with Wiggins. He made me disguise myself as a man, and so I called myself Lieutenant Dudleigh. He went to Dalton Hall, and discovered that the porter was some old criminal who had done his crime on the Dudleigh estates--poaching, I think, or murder, or both. On seeing Wiggins, he was able to obtain some control over him--I don't know what. He never would tell me.

"By this time I found out what I had all along suspected--that he came here for your sake. He was terribly in debt. A dark abyss lay before him. He began to feel me to be an inc.u.mbrance. He began to wish that he was a free man, so that he might marry you. I saw all this with a grief that I can not tell.

"We made several calls on you. I went as his mother, Mrs. Mowbray."

"Mrs. Mowbray! You!" exclaimed Edith, in wonder.

"Did I act my part well?" said Miss Fortescue, mournfully. "It was an easy enough part. I believe I succeeded in making myself utterly detestable. Captain Dudleigh was bitterly vexed at my manner. He wanted me to gain your confidence. That, however, I could not yet bring myself to do. His own intercourse with you was even worse. Your attempt to escape was a terrible blow to his hopes. Yet he dared not let you escape. That would have destroyed his plans utterly. You would have gone to your friends--to Miss Plympton--and you would have found out things about him which would have made his projects with reference to you out of the question."

"Miss Plympton!" cried Edith. "How could I have gone to her? She is away."

"That was one of my lies," said Miss Fortescue. "Unfortunately, she is really ill, but she is still in the country, at her school. I myself went there to tell her about you only two days ago, but found that she had been ill for some time, and could not see any one."

Edith sighed heavily. For an instant hope had come, and then it had died out.

"He made me go again to see you, but with what result you know. I was fairly driven away at last. This made him terribly enraged against you and against me, but I quieted him by reminding him that it was only his own fault. It brought about a change in his plans, however, and forced him to put me more prominently forward. Then it was that he devised that plan by which I was to go and win your confidence. I can not speak of it; you know it all. I wish merely to show you what the pressure was that he put on me.

"'Dear wife,' said he to me one day, in his most affectionate tone--'my own Lucy, you know all about my affairs, and you know that I am utterly ruined. If I can not do something to save myself, I see no other resource but to blow my brains out. I will do it, I swear I will, if I can not get out of these sc.r.a.pes. My father will not help me. He has paid all my debts twice, and won't do it again. Now I have a proposal to make. It's my only hope. You can help me. If you love me, you will do so. Help me in this, and then you will bind your husband to you by a tie that will be stronger than life. If you will not do this simple thing, you will doom me to death, for I swear I will kill myself, or at least, if not that, I will leave you forever, and go to some place where I can escape my creditors.'

"This was the way that he forced his plan upon me. You know what it was.

I was to see you, and do--what was done.

"'You are my wife,' said he, earnestly. 'I can not marry her--I don't want to--but I do want to get money. Let me have the control of the Dalton estates long enough to get out of my sc.r.a.pes. You can't be jealous of her. She hates me. I hate her, and love you--yes, better than life. When she finds out that I am married to her she will hate me still more. The marriage is only a form, only a means of getting money, so that I may live with my own true wife, my darling Lucy, in peace, and free from this intolerable despair.'

"By such a.s.surances as these--by dwelling incessantly upon the fact that I was his wife, and that this proposed marriage to you was an empty form--upon your hate for him, and the certainty of your still greater hate, he gradually worked upon me. He appealed to my love for him, my pity for his situation, and to every feeling that could move me in his favor. Then it was that he told me frankly the name of the clergyman who had married us, and the witness. The clergyman's name was Porter, and the witness was a Captain Reeves. So, in spite of my abhorrence of the act, I was led at last, out of my very love to him, and regard for his future, to acquiesce in his plan. Above all, I was moved by one thing upon which he laid great stress.

"'It will really be for her benefit,' he would say. 'She will not be married at all. I shall take some of her money, certainly; but she is so enormously rich that she will never feel it; besides, if I didn't get it, Wiggins would. Better for her cousin to have it. It will be all in the family. Above all, this will be the means, and the only means, of freeing her from that imprisonment in which Wiggins keeps her. That is her chief desire. She will gain it. After I pay my debts I will explain all to her; and what is more, when I succeed to my own inheritance, as I must do in time, I shall pay her every penny.'

"By such plausible reasoning as this he drove away my last objection, and so, with out any further hesitation, I went about that task.

"But oh, how hard it was! Over and over again I felt like giving up. But always he was ready to urge me on, until at last it was accomplished, and ended as you remember."

Miss Fortescue paused here, and made no reply. Edith said not a word.

Why should she? What availed this woman's repentance now?

"I came here," continued Miss Fortescue at length, "first of all to explain this, but to tell you other things also. I must now tell you something which makes your position more painful than I thought it would be. I soon found out the full depth of Captain Dudleigh's villainy.

While I thought that you only were deceived, I found that I the one who was most deceived.

"After that marriage in the chapel we went back to Dalton, and there he abused me in the most frightful manner. He pretended to be enraged because I rebuked him in the chapel. His rage was only a pretense. Then it all came out. He told me plainly that my marriage with him was a mockery; that the man Porter who had married was not a clergyman at all, but a creature of his whom he had bribed to officiate; that Reeves was not a captain, and that his testimony in any case would be useless. All this was crus.h.i.+ng. It was something that was so entirely in accordance with my own fears that I had not a word to say. He railed at me like a madman, and informed me that he had only tolerated me here at Dalton so as to use me as his tool. And this was our last interview. He left me there, and I have never seen him since. He said he was your husband, and was going to live at Dalton. I could do nothing. I went, however, to the gates, got sight of Wiggins, and for your sake I told him all. I thought it was better for you to remain under the authority of Wiggins than to be in the power of such a villain as Captain Dudleigh. I told Wiggins also that I still had a hope that my marriage was valid. I went back at once to London, and tried to find out clergymen named Porter. I have seen several, and written to many others whose names I have seen on the church list, but none of them know any thing about such a marriage as mine. I began, therefore, to fear that he was right, and if so--I was not his wife."

Silence followed now for some time. Miss Fortescue was waiting to see the effect of her story, and Edith was meditating upon the facts with which this strange revelation dealt. Although she had been so great a sufferer, still she did not feel resentment now against this betrayer.

For this one was no longer the miserable, perfidious go-between, but rather an injured wife led to do wrong by the pressure put upon her, and by her own love.

"Then that was not a mock marriage?" said she at last.

"By justice and right it was no marriage," said Miss Fortescue; "but how the law may regard it I do not know."

"Has Sir Lionel been heard of yet?" asked Edith, after another pause.