Kitabı oku: «An Old Man's Darling», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXVII

Colonel Carlyle would fain have lingered in Bonnibel's apartment and asked for some explanation of her fainting spell, which he was convinced was the result of her meeting with the artist, although her simple assertion of striking her head against the jardiniere had deceived all others except himself, as it might have deceived him but for the warning of the masked sibyl.

But it was quite true that she had hurt her head, and when the faithful Lucy parted the thick locks and began to dress the slight wound, her young mistress turned so ghastly pale and closed her eyes so wearily that the jealous old man saw that it was no fitting time for recrimination, and went away to attend to his guests, half-resolved to have it out with the artist himself.

But calmer thoughts stepped in and forbade this indulgence of his spleen. After all, what could he say to the young man? What did he know wherewith to accuse him? His anonymous informant had only said that his wife and the artist had been former lovers. What, then? How the gay world would have laughed if he picked a quarrel with the lion of the hour on such a charge as that.

Many of the women whom Colonel Carlyle knew would have deemed it an honor to have been loved either in the past or present by the gifted artist. No, there was nothing he could say to the man on the subject, yet he determined that he would at least watch him closely, and if—if there should be even the faintest attempt on his part to revive the intimacy of the past, then woe unto him, for Colonel Carlyle was nerved to almost any act of frenzy.

Bonnibel lifted her head when the colonel was gone and looked at her faithful attendant with a face on which death itself seemed to have set its seal.

"Oh, me! Miss Bonnibel, you are as white as a ghost," exclaimed Lucy. "And no wonder! It is a bad cut, though not very deep. Does it hurt you very much?"

"What are you talking of, Lucy? What should hurt me?" inquired her mistress in a wild, startled tone, showing that she had quite forgotten her wound.

"Why, the cut on your head, to be sure," said Lucy in surprise.

"Oh! Heaven, I had forgotten that," moaned the poor young creature. "I do not feel the pain, Lucy, for the wound in my heart is much deeper. It is of that only I am thinking."

She bowed her face in her hands and deep, smothered moans shook her from head to foot. The delicate frame reeled and shook with emotion like some slender reed shaken by a storm.

Lucy knelt down at her feet and implored her mistress to tell her what she could do to help her in her trouble, whatever it might be.

"Miss Bonnibel," she urged, "tell me something that I can do for you—anything, no matter what, to help you out of your trouble if I can."

Bonnibel hushed her sobs by a great effort of will, and looked down at the faithful creature.

"Bring me my writing-desk, Lucy," she said, "and I will tell you what you can do for me."

Lucy complied in wondering silence.

Bonnibel took out a creamy white sheet, smooth as satin, and wrote a few lines upon it with a shaking hand. Then she dashed her pen several times through the elaborate monogram "B.C." at the top of the sheet.

"Lucy," she said, as she inclosed her note in an envelope and hastily addressed it, "do you remember a gentleman who used to visit at Sea View before my Uncle Francis died—a Mr. Dane?"

"Perfectly well, ma'am," Lucy responded, promptly. "He was an artist."

"Yes, he was an artist. Should you know him again, Lucy?"

"I think I should, ma'am. He was very handsome, with dark eyes and hair," said the girl, who was by no means behind her sex in her appreciation of manly beauty.

"He is down-stairs now, Lucy—he is one of our guests to-night," said Bonnibel, with a heavy sigh.

"Is it possible, ma'am?" exclaimed the girl, in surprise. "I thought—at least I heard—Miss Herbert's maid told me a long while ago that Mr. Dane was dead."

"There was some mistake," answered Bonnibel, drearily. "He is alive—I have seen him. And now, Lucy, I will tell you what I wish you to do."

The girl stood listening attentively.

"You will take this note, my good girl, and go down-stairs and put it in the hands of Mr. Dane, if you can find him. Try and deliver it to him unobserved, and bring me back his answer."

"I will find him if he is to be found anywhere," said Lucy, taking the note and departing on her secret mission.

Leslie Dane's first passionate impulse after his abrupt meeting with his lost wife was to leave the house which sheltered her false head.

But as he was about to put his resolve into execution he was accosted by a group of ladies and detained for half an hour listening to an idle hum of words, from which he longed to tear himself away in the frenzy of scorn and indignation which possessed him.

At length he excused himself, and was about passing through the deserted hall on his way out when he encountered Bonnibel's maid.

Lucy had, like many illiterate persons, a keen recollection of faces. She knew the artist immediately.

"You are Mr. Dane," she said, going up to him after a keen glance around to see if she were unobserved.

"Yes," he answered, looking at her in wonder.

"I have a note for you, sir. Please read it and give me an answer at once."

He took it, tore off the envelope, and read the few lines that Bonnibel had penned, while a frown gathered on his brow.

"Well, sir?"

"Wait a moment."

He took a gold pencil from his pocket and hastily scribbled a few lines on the back of Bonnibel's sheet. Lucy, watching him curiously under the glare of gas-light, saw that he was deadly pale, and trembled like a leaf.

"Give this to your mistress," he said, putting the sheet back in the torn envelope, "and tell her that I am gone."

He turned away and walked rapidly out of sight.

Lucy sighed, she could not have told why, and turned back along the hall.

"Hold, girl!" exclaimed a hoarse, passionate voice behind her.

She turned in a fright, and saw Colonel Carlyle just behind her, his features distorted by rage and passion. He caught her arm violently and tore the note from her grasp.

"I will myself deliver this note to your mistress," he said, "and as for you, girl, go!"

He dragged her along the hallway to the open door, and pushed her out violently into the street, bareheaded and with no wrapping to protect her frail, womanly form from the rigors of the wintry night.

"Go, creature!" he thundered after her, "go, false minion of a false woman, and never darken these doors again with your hated presence!"

Lucy sank down upon the wet and sleety pavement with a moan of pain, and Colonel Carlyle closed and locked the door upon her defenseless form.

Rage had transformed the courteous old man into something more fiend-like than human.

As soon as he had disposed of his wife's attendant so summarily he turned his attention to the note he had wrested from her reluctant grasp.

Retiring into a deserted ante-room he opened and read it as coolly as if it had been addressed to himself.

What he read caused the veins to start out upon his forehead like great twisted cords, and his lips to writhe, while his face grew purple, and his eyes almost started from their sockets.

Bonnibel had written:

"Leslie, forgive me if you can. Before God, I wronged you innocently! I thought you dead! If there is one spark of pity or honor in your breast keep my secret. It would kill me to have it known to the world! I will go away from here and hide myself in obscurity forever! Of course I cannot remain with Colonel Carlyle a day longer. You seemed very angry to-night—your eyes flashed lurid lightnings upon me. I pray you, do not believe me willfully guilty—do not betray me for the sake of revenge! The shame, the horror, the disgrace of our fatal secret will kill me soon enough.

Bonnibel."

Looking at the top of the page he saw that she had dashed her pen several times through her monogram. He gnashed his teeth at the sight.

"What could she possibly mean by it?" he asked himself, as he turned the sheet and read the artist's reply:

"Do not fear for your proud position, Bonnibel. Mine is the last hand upon earth that would drag you down from it! Pursue your wonted way in peace and serenity. You need not go away—that is for me to do. God knows I would never have come here to-night had I dreamed of meeting you! But try to forget it! To-morrow I shall have passed out of your life forever, and that most deplorable secret will be as safe with me as if I really were dead!

Leslie Dane."

Colonel Carlyle crumpled those strange, unfathomable notes into his breast-pocket, and went out with ominous calm to bid adieu to his parting guests.

They had enjoyed themselves so much, they said, and with many regrets for Mrs. Carlyle's unfortunate accident they hastened their departure.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Bonnibel sat crouching in her chair, a prey to the most hopeless misery, waiting for Lucy's return.

She was stunned and bewildered by the force and suddenness of the blow that had stricken her.

One tangible thought alone ran through the mass of confused and conflicting feeling.

It was that she must fly, at all hazards, from her humiliating position in Colonel Carlyle's house.

She did not know where she would go, or how she would manage her flight. She would leave it all to Lucy.

The girl was clear-headed and intelligent. They would go away together, and Lucy would find a hiding-place somewhere for her wretched head.

But, oh! the shame, the misery of it all!

Leslie Dane was alive, yet she who was his wife in the sight of Heaven dare not rejoice in the knowledge. His resurrection from his supposed death had fixed a blighting hand upon her beautiful brow.

"Oh, God!" she moaned, wringing her white hands helplessly, "what have I done to deserve this heavy cross?"

The minutes passed slowly, but Lucy did not return. The little French pendule on the mantel chimed the quarters of the hour three times while Bonnibel sat drooping in her chair alone. Then the door was pushed rudely open and Colonel Carlyle entered.

In her dumb agony the creature failed to look up or even to distinguish the difference in the step of Colonel Carlyle.

"You saw him, Lucy?" she asked, without lifting her head.

There was no reply.

She looked up in surprise at the girl's silence and saw Colonel Carlyle standing in the center of the room regarding her fixedly.

Bonnibel had seen him jealous and enraged before, but she had never seen him look as he did then.

The veins stood on his forehead like thick, knotted cords. His face was purple with excitement, his eyes glared like those of a wild animal, his hands were clenched. It seemed as though he only restrained himself by a powerful effort of will from springing upon and rending her to pieces.

Thus convulsed and speechless he stood gazing down upon her.

"Oh, Colonel Carlyle, you are ill," she exclaimed, regarding him in terror. "Shall I not ring for assistance?"

He did not answer, but continued to gaze upon her in the same stony silence.

Fearing that he was suddenly seized with some kind of a fit, she sprang up and shook him violently by the arm.

But he shook off her grasp with such force and passion that she lost her balance and fell heavily to the floor.

Half stunned by the violence of the fall she lay quite still a moment, with closed eyes and gasping breath.

He looked at her as she lay there like a broken flower, but made no effort to assist her.

Presently the dark blue eyes flashed open and looked up at him with a quiet scorn in their lovely depths. She made no effort to rise, and when she spoke her voice startled him with its tragic ring.

"Finish your work, Colonel Carlyle," she said, in those deep tones. "I will thank you and bless you if you will strike one fatal blow that shall lay me dead at your feet."

Something in the words or the tone struck an arrow of remorse into his soul. He bent down and lifted the slight form, gently placing her back in her chair.

"Pardon me," he said, coldly, "I did not mean to hurt you, but you should not have touched me. I could not bear the touch of your hand."

She lifted her fair face and looked at him in wonder.

"Colonel Carlyle, what have I done to you?" she asked, in a voice of strange pathos.

"You have wronged me," he answered, bitterly.

Her face blanched to a hue even more deathly than before, at his meaning words. What did he suspect? What did he know?

"I know all," he continued, sternly.

For a moment she dropped her face in her hands and turned crimson from brow to throat under his merciless gaze, then she looked up at him proudly, and said, almost defiantly:

"If, indeed, you know all, Colonel Carlyle, you know, of a truth, that I did not wrong you willfully."

He was silent a moment, drawing her crumpled note from his breast and smoothing out the folds.

"This is all I know," he said, holding it up before her eyes. "This tells me that you have wronged me, that you have a dreadful secret—you and the man at whose feet you fainted to-night. You must tell me that secret now."

"Where did you get the note?" she panted, breathlessly.

"Perhaps the artist gave it to me!" he sneered.

"I will not believe it," she said, passionately. "Lucy—where is Lucy?"

"She is out in the street where I thrust her when I found her with this note," he answered, harshly. "It is enough that my roof must shelter a false wife, it shall not protect her false minion!"

"Out in the street!" gasped Bonnibel, hoarsely. "In the cold and the darkness. My poor Lucy! Let me go, too, then; I will find her and go away with her. We will neither of us trouble you!"

She was rushing to the door, but he pushed her back into her seat, locked the door and put the key into his pocket.

"We will see if you shall disgrace me thus," he cried out. "You would fly from me, you said. And where? Perhaps to the arms of your artist-lover! You would heap this disgrace on the head of an old man, whose only fault has been that he loved you too well and trusted you too blindly."

She shivered as he denounced her so cruelly; but not one word of defiance came from her pale, writhing lips. The fair face was hidden in her hands, the golden hair fell about her like a veil.

"But I will protect my honor," he continued, harshly. "I will see that you do not desert me and make my name a by-word for the scorn of the world. You shall stay with me, even though I am tempted to hate you; you shall stay with me if I have to keep you imprisoned to save my honor!"

She looked up at him wildly.

"Oh, for God's sake, let me go!" she said. "In pity for me, in pity for yourself, let me go away from you forever! It is wrong for me to stay—I ought to go, I must go! Let the world say what it will—tell them I am dead, or tell them I am mad, and chained in the walls of a mad-house! Tell them anything that will save your honorable name from shame, but let me go from under this roof, where I cannot breathe—where the air stifles me!"

"It must indeed be a fatal secret that can make you rave so wildly," he answered, bitterly. "Let me hear it, Bonnibel, and judge for myself if it is sufficient to exile my wife from my home and heart."

She shivered at the words.

"Oh! indeed it is sufficient," she moaned, wringing her hands in anguish. "I implore you to let me go."

"Let me be the judge," he answered again. "Tell me your reasons for this wild step."

She was silent from sheer despair.

"Bonnibel, will you tell me the secret?" he urged, feverishly.

"I cannot. I cannot! Do not ask me!" she answered pleadingly.

"What if I demand it from Mr. Dane?" he said, threateningly.

"I do not believe he will tell you," she answered bitterly. "If he did you would regret that you learned it. Oh! believe me, Colonel Carlyle, that 'ignorance is bliss' to you in this case. Oh! be merciful and let me go!"

"Would you know what answer your artist lover sent to your wild appeal?" he exclaimed abruptly.

She looked at him wildly. He straightened out the sheet and read over the words that Leslie Dane had written, in a bitter, mocking tone.

"Leslie Dane," he repeated. "Leslie Dane! Why, this is the first time I have caught the villain's name aright! It seems familiar. I have heard it somewhere long ago—let me think."

In a sudden excess of excitement he dropped the note and paced furiously up and down the room. Bonnibel watched him forlornly under her drooping lashes.

He stopped suddenly with a violent start, and looked at her sternly.

"I have it now," he said triumphantly. "My God! it is worse than I thought; but when I knew his real name it all rushed over me! Yes, Bonnibel, I know the fatal secret now, that you, oh! my God, share with that miserable wretch!"

"Oh! no, you cannot know it," she breathed!

"I do know it," he answered sternly. "I remember it all now. Leslie Dane is that guilty man who rests at this moment under the charge of murdering your uncle!"

"It is false!" she exclaimed, confronting him indignantly. "No one ever breathed such a foul aspersion upon Leslie Dane but you!"

"Great God! do you deny it?" he exclaimed in genuine surprise and amazement. "Surely your brain is turned, Bonnibel. Everyone knows that Leslie Dane was convicted of the murder on circumstantial evidence; everyone knows that he fled the country and has been in hiding ever since. But the fatal charge is still hanging over his head."

"I have never heard such a thing before, never! And I would believe that Leslie Dane was guiltless in the face of all the evidence in the world! He is the very soul of honor! He could not do a cowardly act to save his life!" exclaimed Bonnibel, springing up in a fever of passionate excitement.

Colonel Carlyle was fairly maddened by her words.

"You shall see whether he be guilty or not," he exclaimed, leaving the room in a rage.

Bonnibel heard the key grate in the lock outside, and discovered, to her dismay, that she was Colonel Carlyle's prisoner in truth.

CHAPTER XXIX

"You went off from the ball in a hurry last night, Leslie. Why did you not stop for me?"

It was Carl Muller who spoke. He had come into Mr. Dane's rooms the morning after the ball and found him sitting over a cup of coffee, looking haggard and weary in the clear light of day.

"Excuse me, Carl," he responded. "The actual truth is, I forgot you. I was tired and wanted to come away, and I did so, sans ceremonie."

"Well, you look fagged and tired out, that's a fact. I never saw you look so ill. Have a smoke; it will clear the mist from your brain."

"Thank you, no," said the artist, briefly.

Carl sat down on a chair and hummed a few bars of a song while he regarded his friend in some surprise at his altered looks.

"I was sorry you went off without me, last night," he said presently. "I wanted to chaff you a little. Weren't you surprised and abashed when you found that the old woman whose portrait you declined to paint was the loveliest angel in the world?"

"It was quite a surprise," Mr. Dane said, sipping his cafe au lait composedly.

"Did you ever see such a beautiful young creature?" continued Carl, with enthusiasm.

"Yes," was the unexpected reply.

"You have!" exclaimed Carl; "I did not think it possible for two such divinities to exist upon this earth. Have the goodness to tell me where you ever saw Mrs. Carlyle's equal in grace and loveliness."

But Mr. Dane, who but seldom descended to Carl's special prerogative, poetry, sat down his cup and slowly repeated like one communing with himself:

 
"'I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move;
Such an one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.'"
 

"She is dead, then?" said Carl.

"She is dead to me," was the bitter reply.

And with a significant look Carl repeated the lines that came next to those that Leslie had quoted:

 
"'Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No, she never loved me truly; love is love forevermore.'"
 

"Forevermore," Leslie Dane repeated with something like a sigh.

He rose and began to pace the floor with bowed head and arms folded over his breast.

"Carl," he said suddenly, "I have had enough of Paris. Have you?"

"What, in seven days? Why, my dear fellow, I have just begun to enjoy myself. I have only had a taste of pleasure yet."

"I am going back to Rome to-day," continued Leslie.

"I should like to know why you have made this sudden decision, Leslie—for it is sudden, is it not?" asked Carl, pointedly.

Leslie Dane flushed scarlet, then paled again.

"Yes, it is sudden," he answered, constrainedly, "but none the less decisive. Don't try to argue me out of it, Carl, for that would be useless. Believe me, it is much better that I should go. I want to get to work again."

"There is something more than work at the bottom of this sudden move," said Carl Muller, quietly. "I don't wish to intrude on your secrets, mon ami, but I could tell you just why you are going back to Rome in such a confounded hurry."

"You could?" asked Leslie Dane, incredulously.

"You know I told you long ago, Leslie, that there is a woman at the bottom of everything that happens. There is one at the bottom of this decision of yours. You are running away from a woman!"

"The deuce!" exclaimed Leslie, startled out of his self-control by Carl Muller's point-blank shot; "how know you that?"

"I can put two and two together," the German answered, coolly.

Leslie looked at him with a question in his eyes.

"Shall I explain?" inquired Carl.

Leslie bowed without speaking.

"Well, then, last night, when we laid aside our masks I happened to be quite near to our lovely hostess, and a friend who was beside me immediately presented me."

"Well?" said Leslie Dane, with white lips.

"I was immediately impressed with the idea," continued Carl, "that I had met Mrs. Carlyle before. The impression grew upon me steadily during the minute or two while I stood talking to her, although I could not for the life of me tell where I had met her. But after I had left her side I stood at a little distance and observed her presentation to you."

Leslie Dane walked away to a window and stood looking out with his back turned to his friend.

"I saw her look at you, Leslie," Carl went on, "and that minute she fell back and fainted. They said that she struck her head against the jardiniere, which caused her to faint. But I know better. She may have struck her head—I do not dispute that—but the primal cause of her swoon was the simple sight of you!"

"I do not know why you should think so, Carl," said his friend, without turning round. "It is not plausible that the mere sight of a stranger should have thus overcome her. Am I so hideous as that?"

"You were not a stranger," said Carl, overlooking the latter query, "for in that moment when she bowed to you it flashed over me like lightning who she was. I was mistaken when I thought I had met her before. She was utterly a stranger to me. But I had seen her peerless beauty portrayed in a score of pictures from the hand of a master artist. It is no wonder the resemblance haunted me so persistently."

There was silence for a minute. Leslie did not move or speak.

"Leslie, you cannot deny it," Carl said, convincingly: "the beautiful Mrs. Carlyle is the original of the veiled portrait you used to keep in your studio, and which you allowed me to look at only on the occasion when you painted it out."

"I do not deny it," he said, in a voice of repressed pain. "What then, Carl?"

"This, mon ami—she was false to you! I do not know in what way, but possibly it was by selling herself for that old man's gold. You owe her no consideration. Why should you curtail your holiday and disappoint your friends and admirers merely because her guilty conscience feels a pang at meeting you? You two can keep apart. Paris is surely large enough for both to dwell in without jostling each other."

What Leslie Dane might have answered to this reasoning will never be a matter of history, for before he could open his lips to speak there was a thundering rap at the door.

In some suspense he advanced and threw it open.

Three or four officers of the French police, in their neat uniform, stood in the hallway without.

"Enter, gentlemen," he said, courteously, though there was a tone of surprise in his voice that they could not mistake.

Carl Muller, too, though he did not speak, rose from his seat and expressed his amazement by his manner.

The officers filed into the room gravely, closing the door after them. Then the foremost one advanced, with an open paper in his hand, and laid his hand firmly but respectfully on Leslie Dane's arm.

"Monsieur Dane," he said, in clear, incisive tones that fell like a thunder-clap on the hearing of the two artists—"Monsieur Dane, I arrest you for the willful murder of Francis Arnold at his home in America three years ago!"