Kitabı oku: «An Old Man's Darling», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XXX

"Quelle horreur, Felise! that was a shocking denouement to-night. We tremble on the brink of a volcano."

Mrs. Arnold and her daughter were rolling homeward in their luxurious carriage from the masquerade ball at Colonel Carlyle's chateau, and the elder lady's remark was uttered in a tone of trepidation and terror.

But Felise leaning back in her corner among the silken cushions in the picturesque costume of a fortune-teller, only laughed at her terror—a low and fiendish laugh that expressed unqualified satisfaction.

"Ma mere, was Leslie Dane's resurrection a great surprise to you?" she inquired, with a covert sneer.

"A great surprise, and a terrible shock to me, too," the lady answered. "Of course, after believing him dead so long, it is very inconvenient to have him come to life again—as inconvenient for Colonel Carlyle and his wife as for us."

And again Felise laughed mockingly, as if she found only the sweetest pleasure in her mother's words.

"Felise, I cannot understand you," exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, anxiously. "Surely you forget the peril we are in from this man's resurrection from the grave where we thought him lying. I thought you would be as much surprised and frightened at this dreadful contretemps as I am."

"I have known that Leslie Dane was living all these three years," answered Miss Herbert, as coolly as before.

"Then the paper you showed to me and to Bonnibel must have been a forgery!'

"It was. I had the notice of Leslie Dane's death inserted myself."

The carriage paused at their hotel, and they were handed out.

Mrs. Arnold followed her daughter to her own apartments.

"Send your maid away, Felise. I must talk to you a little," she said.

Felise had a French maid now instead of Janet, who had resolutely declined to cross the ocean with her.

"Finette, you may go for awhile," she said. "I will ring when I need you."

The maid courtesied and went away.

Felise motioned her mother to a chair, and sank into another herself. Mrs. Arnold seated herself and looked at her daughter searchingly.

Mrs. Arnold took up the conversation where it had been dropped when they left the carriage.

"You say you forged the notice of Leslie Dane's death in the newspaper," she said. "Of course you had some object in doing that, Felise."

"Yes, of course," with another wicked laugh. "It was to further the revenge of which I have had so sweet a taste to-night."

"So what has happened to-night is only what you have intended and desired all along?"

Felise bowed with the grace of a duchess.

"Exactly," she answered, with a triumphant smile. "I have been planning and scheming over two years to bring about the consummation of to-night."

"It was cleverly planned and well executed," Mrs. Arnold said, admiringly; "but is it quite finished? Of course Colonel Carlyle does not know the truth yet."

"He knows that Leslie Dane was a former lover of his wife; he witnessed their meeting to-night. That of itself was enough to inflame his jealous passions to the highest degree, and make him wretched. I rely upon Bonnibel herself to finish my work."

"Upon Bonnibel! How will she do it?"

"You know her high and overstrained sense of honor, mother. Of course she will not remain with Colonel Carlyle, now that she knows she is not his wife. There is but one course open to her. She will fly with Leslie Dane, and leave a note behind her revealing the whole truth to him."

"Are you sure she will, Felise?"

"I am quite certain, mother. That is the only orthodox mode for such a heroine of romance as your husband's niece. To-morrow Leslie Dane and his silly young wife will have flown beyond pursuit and discovery, yet neither one can be happy. The years in which she has belonged to Colonel Carlyle will be a blight and a blot upon her fair fame that she can never forget, while Leslie Dane, with the passions of manhood burning in his veins, cannot forget and will scarcely forgive it. They cannot be happy. My revenge has struck too deep at the root of that evanescent flower that the world calls happiness. And Colonel Carlyle is the proudest man on earth. Think you that he can ever hold up his head again after the shame and disgrace of that dreadful blow?"

"Scarcely," said Mrs. Arnold, echoing her daughter's laugh with one as cold and cruel. "You have taken a brave revenge, Felise, for Colonel Carlyle's wrongs against you, and if all goes as you have planned, I shall be proud of your talents and rejoice in your success. But my mind misgives me. Suppose some officious American here—and you know there are plenty such now sojourning in Paris—should remember Leslie Dane and arrest him for my husband's murder?"

For a moment Felise Herbert grew pale, and an icy hand seemed tugging at her heart-strings.

"I do not have the least apprehension of such a calamity," she answered, throwing off the chill presentiment with an effort. "I feel sure that Leslie Dane and his Bonnibel will be far beyond pursuit and detection before to-morrow night. And you will infinitely oblige me by keeping your doleful croaking to yourself, mother."

Mrs. Arnold looked at her watch and rose wearily.

"It is almost morning," she said; "I think I will retire. Good-night, my dear, and pleasant dreams."

"They cannot fail to be pleasant!" answered Felise, with her mocking, triumphant laugh.

But her dreams were all waking ones.

She was too triumphant and excited to sleep.

"This is a happy, happy night for me!" she exclaimed again and again.

CHAPTER XXXI

Bonnibel was completely crushed by the knowledge that Colonel Carlyle had put into execution his threat of making her a prisoner.

For a moment she ran wildly about the room, passionately seeking some mode of egress, filled with the impulse of seeking and following her poor, maltreated Lucy.

But no loophole of escape presented itself.

Her suite of rooms, boudoir, dressing-room, and sleeping-apartment, all communicated with each other, but only one opened into the hall, or presented any mode of egress from her imprisonment. Of this room, the boudoir which she then occupied, Colonel Carlyle had taken the key. She was in an upper story, many feet from the ground, or she would have jumped from the window in her desperation. As it was she could do nothing. She threw herself down upon the floor, crushing her beautiful ball-dress with its grasses and lilies, and wept unrestrainedly.

The slight form heaved and shook with emotion, the tears rained from her eyes in a torrent. At length, worn out with passionate weeping, and overcome by the "dumb narcotic influence of pain," she fell asleep where she lay on the floor, her wet cheek pillowed on her little hand, her golden hair floating about her in "sad beauty."

Thus Colonel Carlyle found her when he entered, late that morning. He was honestly shocked at the sight, for he had supposed that she would yield gracefully to the inevitable, and retire to her sleeping-apartment without more ado when she found how inflexible a will he was possessed of. Instead, here she lay prostrate on the rich velvet carpet of the boudoir, still attired in her ball-dress, the traces of tears on her pale cheeks, and her restless slumber broken by sobs and moans that shook her slight form like a wind-shaken-willow.

He stood still looking down at her, while pity vainly struggled against the fierce anger and resentment burning hotly in his heart.

"She can grieve for him like this," he muttered bitterly, and lifted her, not rudely, but yet unlovingly, and laid her down upon a silken sofa.

The movement disturbed her, and for a moment she seemed about to wake; but the heavy lethargy of her troubled sleep overpowered her.

Colonel Carlyle stood silently watching her for a little while, marveling at her beauty even while he felt angry with her for the uncontrollable emotion that had touched her fairness with the penciling of grief. Then, with a deep yet unconscious sigh, he kissed her several times and went softly away. It was noon when she started up from her restless slumbers, pushing off the silken coverlet that had been carefully spread over her.

She sat up, pressing her hand upon her aching temples, and looked about the room with dazed, half-open eyes. For the moment she had forgotten her trouble of the previous night, and fully expected to see her faithful Lucy Moore keeping her patient vigil by the couch of her weary mistress. But memory returned all too swiftly. The kind, loving face of Lucy did not beam its welcome upon her as of old. Instead, the cold, hard face of a smartly-dressed, elderly Frenchwoman looked curiously at her as the owner rose and courtesied.

"I am the new maid, madam," she explained. "I hope madam feels better."

Bonnibel stared at her in bewilderment.

"Where is Lucy? I want Lucy," she said almost appealingly.

"Madam, I knows nothing of Lucy," she answered. "Monsieur le colonel, the husband of madam, engage me to attend upon madam. I will remove your ball dress, s'il vous plait."

With those words the whole bitter truth rushed over Bonnibel's mind. A low, repressed cry, and she fell back on the sofa, again hiding her convulsed face in her hands.

"Madam, you make yourself more sick by dis emotion," said the new maid in her broken English. "Allow me to bring you someding to break your fast—some chocolate, a roll, a bit of broiled bird."

"I want nothing," Bonnibel answered, bitterly at first, but the next moment she sat up and struggled to regain her composure.

"What is your name, my good woman?" she inquired.

"Dolores, madam, at your service," said the maid, with one of her low courtesies, "Dolores Dupont."

Bonnibel rose and moved slowly toward her dressing-room.

"Dolores," she said, "you may come and remove this robe. I was very tired last night, and my maid having left me, I fell asleep in my ball costume."

Dolores deftly removed the crushed and ruined robe, and substituted a dressing-gown, while she brushed and arranged the beautiful golden hair that was straying on her shoulders in wild disorder.

"It is the most beautiful hair in de world," she said. "Dere are many ladies would give a fortune to have it on deir own heads."

But Bonnibel did not heed the praise. She had no thought or care for her beauty now. She only said, listlessly:

"Never mind removing the dressing-gown, Dolores, I will lie down again. I am very tired."

"I shall bathe your head with the eau de cologne—shall I?" the maid inquired.

"No, no, only let me rest."

"You will breakfast, at least, madam?" the woman persisted.

"Not now, Dolores. I wish for nothing but rest," she said, as she passed into her boudoir and lay down again upon the sofa.

The maid followed after her.

"I should wish your keys, madam, to pack your trunks," she said, solicitously.

"To pack my trunks!" exclaimed the mistress, in surprise. "Why should you wish to do that, Dolores?"

Dolores looked back at her in surprise also.

"For your journey, of course, Madam Carlyle," she said. "Monsieur, your husband, tells me dat Paris do not agree with your health, and dat he removes you dis day to his palace in Italy on de Bay of Naples."

CHAPTER XXXII

Alas for that one triumphant night of Felise Herbert. It was succeeded by a day of disappointment.

It was scarcely noon before she heard that Colonel Carlyle had caused the arrest of Leslie Dane upon the charge of murdering Mr. Arnold, and that he had been committed to prison to await a requisition from the governor of New Jersey, in which State the deed had been committed. Mrs. Arnold entering her room in a tremor of nervous agitation, found her pacing the floor, wildly gesticulating, and muttering to herself, in terms of the fiercest denunciation, anathemas against Colonel Carlyle.

"The miserable old dotard!" she exclaimed, furiously. "To think that his madness should have carried him to such lengths! Just when I felt so sure of my revenge he has balked me of my satisfaction and imperiled my safety by his jealous madness!"

"Felise, you have heard all, then?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, anxiously.

Felise turned her blazing dark eyes toward her mother, and Mrs. Arnold shuddered.

"All, all!" she echoed passionately; "ill news flies apace!"

"Felise, I feared this!" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold. "You were over-confident last night. Who could tell what form that old man's madness would take?"

"Who, indeed!" cried her daughter passionately. "And yet my theory seemed so plausible—who could have dreamed of its failure? But for him all would have gone as I planned it! But you cannot dream, mother, what that besotted old villain had the audacity to do!"

"It is not possible he suspected your complicity in the affair, Felise—he has taken no steps against us?" wildly questioned the mother as she sank into a chair half-fainting with terror.

"No, no, he has not done that, mother—his deviltry took another form."

"What, then, my dear? Oh! Felise, do sit down and calm yourself, and let us talk this matter over quietly," implored Mrs. Arnold anxiously.

"Calm myself—ha, ha, ha, when the blood in my veins has turned to molten fire, and is burning me to ashes! You are an iceberg, mother, with your cold words and calm looks, but you cannot put out the fire that is raging within me! Surely I must be wholly my father's child! There is nothing of you about me—nothing!"

"Yes, she is like her father—the more pity! For there was madness in his blood," Mrs. Arnold muttered inaudibly; "and I, oh! God—all my life I have fostered her evil passions, in my greed of gold, until now, when her reason totters on the brink of insanity. Oh! that I might undo my part in this fearful tragedy, and save her from the gulf that yawns beneath her feet!"

Overcome by her late remorse and terrible forebodings, she hid her face in her hands while a nervous trembling seized upon her from head to foot. Felise paused in her frenzied walk and eyed her curiously.

"Mother, are you turning coward in the face of danger?" she asked, with a ring of contempt in her voice.

There was no reply. The bowed face still rested on the trembling hands, the form still shook with nervous terror. Something in the weakness and forlornness of that drooping attitude in the mother who had subordinated everything else to her daughter's welfare, struck like a chill upon Felise, and partially tamed the devil raging within her. She spoke in a gentler tone:

"Rouse yourself, mother. See! I have quite sobered down, and am ready to discuss the matter as calmly and dispassionately as you could wish. Ask what you please, and I will answer."

Mrs. Arnold looked up, taking new heart as she saw that Felise still retained the power to subdue her fiery passions.

"Then tell me, dear, what else Colonel Carlyle has done besides causing Leslie Dane's arrest," said her mother.

Felise grasped the arms of her chair and held herself within it by a frenzied effort of will. Her voice was low and intense as she answered:

"Mother—he found out that Bonnibel was about to fly from him last night—just as I told you she would, you remember—and he—he actually locked her into her rooms, turned Lucy Moore, her maid, into the street—and is keeping his wife a prisoner to prevent her escape."

Mrs. Arnold was too astonished to speak for a minute or two. At length she found voice to utter:

"How know you that, Felise?"

"I have a spy in the chateau, mother—nothing that transpires there remains long unknown to me," returned the daughter, calmly.

Again there was momentary silence and surprise. Mrs. Arnold's weaker nature was sometimes confounded by a new discovery of her daughter's powerful capabilities for evil.

"What must Bonnibel's feelings be under the circumstances?" she exclaimed at last.

"I cannot imagine," was the dry response.

"Will she confess the truth to him, do you think?"

"I cannot tell; I hope she will not," said Felise with strong emphasis.

"I thought you wished him to know the truth. Was not that a part of your cherished scheme of revenge?"

"Yes, it was, but 'there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,' you know. And now that he has prevented her escape with Leslie Dane, and caused the artist's arrest, the only chance of safety for you and me lies in his keeping her a close prisoner until the trial is over."

"What can that avail us, Felise?"

"Can you not see?" exclaimed Felise impatiently. "Leslie Dane must be sacrificed to save us. He must be convicted by circumstantial evidence, and punished. Bonnibel is the only person who could prove his innocence. Let her keep out of the way and all will go well with us. Should she appear at the trial then discovery and ruin stare us in the face."

"But you forget, my dear, that Leslie Dane can prove his own alibi by the minister who married him that night, even though we could procure Bonnibel's silence."

Felise laughed heartlessly.

"Yes, he could, certainly, but the question is, would he? I am quite sure he would not."

"But why should he be silent when his life would most probably pay the forfeit?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, with a slight shudder.

"Mother, there are men who would die for an over-strained point of honor. From all that I can gather from his intercepted letters, Leslie Dane is precisely that sort of a man. He is a Southerner, you know—a Floridian. You have been in the South, and you know that its natives are proud, chivalrous, honorable to the highest degree! Well, he can have no means of knowing that Bonnibel is imprisoned by her husband—of course the proud old colonel will keep that fact a dead secret, and invent some plausible excuse for her retirement from society. The artist can therefore attribute her absence from the trial to but one thing."

"And that?" queried Mrs. Arnold.

"He will think that Bonnibel is silent because she would sooner sacrifice him than lose her prestige in society, and her brilliant position as the wife of Colonel Carlyle. He will scorn to betray her secret, and will go to his death with the self-sacrifice of a martyr."

"But suppose Colonel Carlyle should let Bonnibel go free? What then?"

Felise laughed softly.

"He will not do so, mother. I have sent him an anonymous letter to-day that will fairly madden him with jealousy. He will never unlock her prison-door until the grass is growing over the handsome face of Leslie Dane."

CHAPTER XXXIII

Within the gloomy cell of a French prison Leslie Dane was seated on a low cot-bed, looking out through the narrow, grated window at the blue and sunny sky of France. The young artist looked haggard and wan in the clear light of the pleasant day, for though it was winter the rigors of that season had not yet set in. His dark eyes had a look of suffering and despair in their beautiful depths, and his lips were set in a weary line of pain. It was the day after his incarceration, and he had spent a wretched, sleepless night, almost maddened by the horror of his fearful situation. Suddenly the heavy key turned in the iron door; it swung open to admit a visitor, and then the jailer closed and re-locked it, shutting into the gloomy cell the blonde face of Carl Muller.

"Bon jour," he said, with his debonair smile that seemed to light the gloomy place like a beam of sunshine. "How goes it, mon ami?"

A gleam of pleasure shone faintly over his friend's haggard features.

"Is it you, Carl?" he said; "I thought you had deserted me!"

"Ingrate, could you think it?" responded Carl. "I was busy yesterday trying to find out some particulars of this mysterious affair, and they would not admit me last night. I came this morning as soon as they would let me in."

"Thanks Carl; I might have known you were true as steel. And yet there is so much falsity and treachery on earth, how could I be sure of your loyalty? Have you learned anything?"

"Your accuser is the American, Colonel Carlyle," was the startling reply.

"My God!" exclaimed Leslie Dane, with a violent start; and then he added in a passionate tone, and half to himself: "Has he not already wronged me beyond all forgiveness?"

"He seems to have pushed it forward with the greatest malignity," continued Carl. "There are other countrymen of yours here in this city who declare they knew of the foul charge against you, yet they say that the verdict against you was given on purely circumstantial evidence, and that, such being the case, they did not intend to molest you, believing that you might after all be innocent of the crime. But Colonel Carlyle has pushed the affair in a way that seems to indicate a personal spite against you."

Leslie's broad, white brow clouded over gloomily.

"It is true, then, that there is such a charge against me. I fancied there must be some mistake. The whole affair seemed too monstrous for belief, yet you say it is a stern fact. It is so inexplicable to me, for I swear to you, Carl, that up to the very moment of my arrest yesterday I did not know that Francis Arnold was dead."

"And I believe you, Leslie, as firmly as I believe in the purity of my mother away off in my beloved Germany. I know you never could have been guilty of such a foul crime."

"A thousand thanks for your noble confidence, Carl. Now I know that I have at least one true friend on earth. I was rather cynical in such matters before. A sad experience had taught me to distrust everyone," exclaimed Leslie, as he warmly grasped the young German's hand. "But what reason do they assign for my alleged commission of the crime?"

"They told me," said Carl, hesitatingly, "that you were poor and unknown, and aspired to the hand of the millionaire's beautiful and high-born niece. Mr. Arnold, they said, declined your suit for the young lady's hand, and you became enraged and left him, uttering very abusive language coupled with threats of violence. He was murdered while sleeping in his arm-chair that night on his piazza, and it was supposed that you had stealthily returned and wreaked your vengeance upon him."

"My God!" said Leslie Dane, "they have made out a black case against me, indeed. But upon whose circumstantial evidence was my conviction based?"

"Mrs. Arnold, the wife of the murdered man, and his step-daughter, Miss Herbert, heard and witnessed the altercation from their drawing-room windows. Their evidence convicted you, it is said."

"My soul!" exclaimed the unhappy prisoner to himself. "Bonnibel was there; she at least knew my innocence, yet she spoke no word to clear me from that most foul aspersion! And yet I could have sworn that she loved me as her own life. Oh, God! She was falser than I could have dreamed. But, oh, that angel face; those beguiling lips—how can they cover a heart so black?"

"Come, come, mon ami, don't give up like this," said Carl, distressed by the sight of his friend's uncontrollable emotion. "It is a monstrous thing, I know, and will involve no end of time and worry before you get clear, of course, but, then, there is no doubt of your getting off—you have only to prove your innocence, and you can easily do that, you know. So let's take it as a joke, and bear it bravely. Do you know I mean to cross the ocean with you, and see the farce played out to the end? Then you shall take me around, and do the honors of your native land."

Leslie looked at the bright, buoyant face of the German artist as he spoke so cheerily, and a suspicious moisture crept into his dark eyes. He dashed his hand across them, deeming it unmanly weakness.

"Oh! Carl," he exclaimed, remorsefully, "how little I have valued your friendship, yet how firm and noble it has proved itself in this dark and trying hour! Forgive me, my friend, and believe me when I say that I give you the sole affection and trust of a heart that heretofore has trusted nothing of human kind, so basely had it been deceived. I thank, I bless you for that promise to stand by me in my trial! And now I will do what I should have done long ago if I had known the value of your noble heart. I will tell you my story, and you shall be my judge."

Word for word, though it gave him inexpressible pain to recall it, he went over the story of his love for Bonnibel Vere, and her uncle's rejection of his suit, and the high words that passed between them. He passed lightly over their farewell, omitting but one thing. It was the story of their moonlight sail and secret marriage. That story was sealed within his breast. He would have died before he would have revealed Bonnibel's fatal secret to any living soul.

"I left Cape May, where they were summering, on the midnight train," he concluded, "and the next day I sailed from New York for Europe. I never heard from Francis Arnold or his niece again. She had promised to be faithful to our love, but though I wrote to her many times I never received one line in return until that fatal note which you remember. In it she wrote me that she loved another."

"Perfidious creature!" muttered Carl.

"I never heard of her again," continued Leslie, "until, to my unutterable surprise, I met her as the wife of Colonel Carlyle."

"And it is for one so false and cruel that you rest under this dreadful charge," exclaimed the German. "But, please God, you will soon be cleared from it. Of course you will have no difficulty in proving an alibi. That is all you need to clear you."

But Leslie did not answer, and his friend saw that he was pale as death.

"Of course you can prove an alibi—cannot you, Leslie?" he asked, with a shade of anxiety in his tone.

But Leslie looked at him with a gleam of horror in his dark eyes, and his voice shook with emotion as he answered:

"No, Carl, I cannot!"

Carl Muller started as though a bullet had struck him.

"Leslie you jest," he exclaimed, hoarsely. "Of course you can prove where you were at that exact time when the murder took place. Your safety all hinges upon that. Do you not remember where you were at that time?"

"Ah, Heaven, do I not remember? Every moment of that time is indelibly stamped upon my memory," groaned the unhappy prisoner.

"Then why do you talk so wildly, my dear fellow? All you have to do is to tell where you were at that time, and produce even one competent witness to prove it."

"I cannot do it!" Leslie answered, gravely.

"But, good Heavens, man, your life may have to pay the forfeit if you fail to establish an alibi at the trial."

"I must pay the forfeit, then. Carl, I choose death rather than the only available alternative," was the inscrutable and final reply.