Kitabı oku: «Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXXV

"You have kept me waiting, Julius."

Mrs. Stuart spoke impatiently. She had been waiting some time at the end of the myrtle avenue among its deepest shadows and her temper was not sweetened by the delay.

"I beg your pardon," Mr. Revington replied, "I was smoking a cigar with your husband and could not come any sooner."

He paused a moment, and then added in a rather complaining tone:

"I could not imagine what you wanted of me, anyhow."

"Could you not?" she inquired, with a smothered sneer. "Well, sit down here on this quiet seat and I will tell you."

They seated themselves and began talking softly, unconscious that in the long grass just beyond the thick belt of shrubbery that inclosed the myrtle avenue, a man had flung himself down full length, so absorbed in his own painful thoughts as to be for the moment unaware of their presence.

Suddenly he became aware of the murmuring sound of voices. His first impulse was to rise and leave the spot, but in the next he decided that it would startle the speakers and draw down their ill-will perhaps upon himself.

"Some of the servants out sparking," he laughed to himself. "I will not disturb them. They will be none the worse for my presence."

So he laid his head down again upon his arm, and relapsed into his painful musing.

"I will tell you what I have to say to you, Julius," repeated Mrs. Stuart. "I wish to ask you who is this girl, Irene?"

Julius Revington gave a violent start in the darkness.

"My dear madame, how should I know?" he exclaimed.

"She has promised to be your wife, and it is very likely that she has confided the story of her past to you," replied Mrs. Stuart.

"You are mistaken in the supposition. She has steadily declined any such confidence. I have taken her upon her own merits, mystery and all," he replied.

There was a moment's pause. Their faces were in shadow, and Mrs. Stuart devoutly wished that she could pierce the veil of the darkness, and read upon his weak face whether or not he was deliberately trying to deceive her.

"Perhaps you have formed some opinion of your own," she said.

"I have had no clew upon which to base an opinion," he replied.

"Have you ever seen the pictures in her locket?" she inquired.

Taken by surprise, he stammered faintly: "Ye-es, once, by the merest accident."

"You recognized them?" she asked, coldly.

"How should I?" he asked, startled.

"Why should you not?" she mimicked. "Julius, do not try to beat about the bush with me. I am in desperate earnest. I will not be put off by lies and evasions! You have seen Elaine Brooke's portrait; therefore you must have recognized the face in Irene's locket as hers."

"And if I did?" he asked, sullenly.

"You must have guessed at the girl's name. You could not have helped it. It is written on her face. You know whom she is, but you are trying to deceive me. You know that you are," she said, passionately.

He saw that he had to deal with a passionate, jealous woman, and that his game was all up, so far as concealment of his plans was concerned.

"I shall be forced to admit what I cannot deny," he told himself, grimly.

Aloud, he asked, in a tone of forced suavity: "Whom do you say that the girl is, Mrs. Stuart?"

She bent toward him and answered in a hissing whisper of anger and hate:

"She is the daughter of Clarence Stuart and his first wife, Elaine Brooke."

A cry of dismay and surprise came from his lips.

"You dare not deny it," she hissed.

"I do not intend to. It is quite true," he replied, doggedly.

"I knew it! How I hate her!" exclaimed Mrs. Stuart, vindictively. "Would to God she had perished in the sea that day! From the very first I hated her even before I dreamed of her identity!"

And for a few moments the air was filled with the sharp ravings of her anger and bitter hatred.

"How have you learned so much?" inquired Julius Revington, curiously, for he had fancied that the mystery surrounding Irene was impenetrable to all but himself.

"No matter. I am not blind to anything around me. I carry too terrible a secret in my breast to run the risk of its detection. I must guard it at every point," she replied. "Can you guess what question I am about to ask you, Julius Revington? You cannot? It is this, then, and mind that you answer me truly. Do you intend to turn traitor?"

CHAPTER XXXVI

"Traitor? What do you mean?" stammered Julius Revington.

"You know well enough what I mean," flashed Mrs. Stuart angrily. "You are going to marry that girl, and of course her welfare will be yours. It will be to your interest to betray me. Do you intend to reveal the secret and drive me and Lilia out into the world nameless and disgraced– through no fault of mine, remember, but through the sin of that old dotard who should have carried his miserable secret to the grave with him?"

A pause. It seemed to Guy Kenmore that they must hear his heart beating so near them in the stillness. He was thoroughly aroused now, but he could not believe that it was wrong to listen. On the contrary he blessed the fancy that had led him out into the cool night air.

Julius Revington made no reply to Mrs. Stuart's half-piteous appeal.

"Cannot you speak?" she cried out, sharply. "Are you too cowardly to own your vile intentions?"

"You use strong terms, Mrs. Stuart," he said, sullenly. "Is it a vile act to carry out the sacred commands of a dying man? To restore to Clarence Stuart the last love of his youth? To give honor and happiness to a wronged woman? To restore her unhappy child to her father's name and love?"

"Then you do intend to do so! Wretch!" cried the lady, bitterly; then she broke down, sobbing in an abandonment of despair: "Oh, Lilia, Lilia, my poor, fragile darling! This will kill you!"

Julius Revington sat sullenly silent, ashamed of being found out in his designs, yet by no means ready to forego them.

"And you promised to keep the secret for me. You took my bribes, and swore you would never tell the truth to Clarence! You are a perjured villain!" upbraided the lady, violently.

"And you are a–". He bent and whispered the last word in her ear in a tone of threatening. "Beware how you call names, my lady! I am not to be abused and bullied, remember that!"

A wail of pain broke from her lips.

"It was for Lilia's sake," she moaned. "My proud, beautiful child, how could she bear shame and disgrace? Oh, Julius Revington, I would go down on my knees to you, I would bless you forever, I would deem you the noblest man on earth, if you would spare me and my Lilia this shame and ignominy!"

"Irene has lived under the shadow of shame and ignominy all her life. It is her turn now," he retorted, sullenly.

"Does she suspect the truth?" she asked, anxiously.

"No," he replied, ashamed of the bribe he had held out as the means of winning his lovely betrothed.

"She need not ever know. Oh, Julius, why cannot you marry her, and take her away, far away, and leave us in peace?" she cried, miserably.

"You forget that she is the legal heir to her father's fortune," he retorted, with coarse significance.

"Ah! that is the object," she cried. "You are poor, and you cannot forego your grip on the Stuart fortune. Oh, Julius, I bought your silence once; let me do so again."

"It would be at a costly price," he said, in a hard, snappish voice.

"At any price!" she cried, desperately. "Listen, Julius. My own private fortune is as large as Mr. Stuart's. I have complete control of it. I will portion you off handsomely, if you will keep the secret and take Irene away from here—far away—where she can never trouble my peace again. Oh, for pity's sake, Julius, grant my prayer!" She threw herself desperately on the ground and clasped his knees despairingly. "It can matter little to you. You will have the woman you love; and I swear that you shall receive from me as much money as Mr. Stuart would leave her. Will you do this, Julius, for Lilia's sake? If you refuse, it will be the death-warrant of my child!"

"Since you put it like that, I suppose I must yield the point. I do not want to kill the child," he muttered. "But it is hard on Irene, and if a large slice of your fortune isn't handed out, you needn't count on my silence!"

"As much as you wish," she cried, eagerly; "and, oh, Julius, you will marry her as quick as possible—to-morrow—next week—the earliest moment she will consent! And let your wedding tour be to the other end of the world!" she added, feverishly.

"I do not care how far it be so that I have beautiful Irene for my companion, and a large bank account to draw on," Julius Revington answered, with a coarse laugh.

"And this contemptible creature is the man Irene loves, the man she would wed," Guy Kenmore said to himself in bitter disgust.

CHAPTER XXXVII

"What am I to do?" Irene asked herself that night when she was alone in the quiet and seclusion of her chamber.

She had laughed and sung and jested while Guy Kenmore's eyes were upon her, and feigned an indifference she was very far from feeling. But now she had to tear off the mask so proudly worn, and face her fate.

"What am I to do?" she asked herself, miserably, as she walked up and down the floor in her pretty blue dressing-gown, with her white hands twisted together in a childish fashion she had. "I do not believe the heroine of the most impossible novel was ever placed in a more harrowing situation. Here am I betrothed to the villain of the story, when my husband, whom I believed to be dead, unexpectedly pops upon the scene. And instead of his appearance simplifying matters, it tangles them into a Gordian knot, and I can only ask myself what I shall do!"

She laughed—a mocking, mirthless little laugh that startled a dozen eerie little echoes in the corners of the room.

"Heigh-ho! I know what I would do if he loved me," she said to herself, wistfully, "I would fly to my husband's arms, and defy Julius Revington to do his worst. I would say to him proudly, I have here an honest name, and a true love of which your machinations cannot deprive me!"

The quick tears started out beneath her golden-brown lashes.

"Alas, alas! he does not love me," she sighed. "Why should he do so? He never saw me but once before last night. It was my own willful folly that led him into that dreadful marriage. I doubt not he was glad when he thought that my reckless suicide had broken the fetters that had bound him. Last night he pretended not to know me, yet he could hardly have been ignorant of my identity. He could not have forgotten my face so soon. It is a fair one, they say—yet not fair enough to have won his heart."

That momentous question, "What am I to do?" echoed drearily in her heart. She could find no answer to it; she could think of no refuge from her sorrow. For the first time since that awful night in the cold, dark waves, she wished that the friendly plank had not drifted to her reach—that she had perished miserably then rather than have lived to find herself in this terrible strait.

"I cannot marry Mr. Revington now," she thought. "I must take back my promise of yesterday, with no reason save that of a woman's fickleness. He will be very angry; he will tell my miserable story to Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Leslie, to all of these people that sneer at the mystery that enshrouds my past. What shall I do?"

A passionate shame surged over her at the thought of the cold looks and sneering words that would be thrown at her when her discarded suitor should tell these strangers that her mother was a dishonored woman, and that she, her child, had no right to her father's name. She fancied that Mrs. Leslie and Mr. Stuart, the only two friends she had, would be turned against her, too. She would be utterly alone and wretched—friendless and forsaken.

"And yet I cannot be sorry that Guy Kenmore lives," she murmured. "Though he hate me and deny me; though he bring down shame and sorrow on my head, I must still be glad that he did not perish in the cold and dark waves. How strange it seems that only twenty-four hours ago I wept him dead, and now I weep him living. Alas! living or dead, he is lost to me the same. I must ever remain an unloved, unacknowledged bride."

Worn out by the weary vigils of the past two nights she threw herself down on the bed, dressed as she was, and fell into an exhausted slumber. She slept late and dreamlessly, and when she opened her bewildered blue eyes the next morning upon the beautiful sunny day no answer had come to the question that vexed her brain last night.

But in the golden light of the new day her woful strait did not look so grievous as it did last night. A feverish hope sprang up in her heart that God would befriend her in her sorrow and helplessness and show her some way out of her trouble.

When she had made her simple, pretty toilet, and gone down-stairs, she found that everyone had breakfasted except Mr. Revington, who had sentimentally waited for her. She swallowed her breakfast with what appetite she could, and then he asked her to take a walk with him.

"All the ladies of the family are out in the garden," he said. "Mrs. Leslie and her admirer, Mr. Kenmore, have been out almost an hour. That will be a match, I think."

"I think you are mistaken," Irene answered, almost angrily.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Irene brought her shady sun-hat and went out into the beautiful garden with her lover. Mr. Revington carried his guitar, thinking that he would beguile the hours with music.

They went to Irene's favorite seat under the orange trees, where she could watch the river gliding past. She was very languid and quiescent this morning, the natural result of last night's emotion. She said to herself that she would make no struggle against her fate to-day; she would just drift quietly with the tide and see where it would bear her.

She little dreamed what subject was agitating Mr. Revington's mind.

He was full of the new idea Mrs. Stuart had suggested, and had brought his betrothed out expressly to ask her to name an early day for their marriage.

Some little remorse for the treachery he meditated toward her disturbed his mind, but it was not deep enough to cause him to repent of the promise Mrs. Stuart had exacted from him. Once he was safely married to beautiful Irene he intended to invent some plausible story of losing the documents he had promised her as proving her mother's honorable marriage. Oh, he would manage cleverly enough. Once bound to him Irene could not help herself, doggedly reasoned the dastard.

But somehow he did not find it easy to broach the subject uppermost in his thoughts. Irene was grave and distrait this morning, with a chilly reserve about her that did not court lover-like advances. All her bright spirits and coquettish wiles of last night had vanished. He was dismayed at her relapse into her old, ennuyed self. She would not encourage his advances. She was absolutely frigid.

So he was obliged to plunge into the subject with an inward shiver like one about taking a bath in ice-cold water.

"My darling, can you guess what I am going to ask you this morning?" he ventured.

She looked at him with a crimsoning face and flashing eyes.

"I wish you would not call me names, Mr. Revington," she said, with petulant dignity.

"Names!" he echoed, blankly.

"Yes," she replied, loftily. "Darling, and all such names as belong to the jargon of love, I heartily despise, and I must beg you to spare me their infliction."

"But you have promised to marry me, Irene," he expostulated.

"I have not promised to love you, though," she retorted with spirit. "Please remember that, Mr. Revington, and spare me your love-sick phrases!"

He stared at her, angered and abashed. Her purple-blue eyes sparkled with scorn, her sweet, red lips were curled disdainfully. He kept down his bitter anger with an effort, remembering the boon he wished to crave.

"Do not forget that our compact was a mere matter of the bargain and sale of the secret you held," Irene continued, bitterly. "You drove me into it by your threats of disgracing me in the eyes of the world. Let us keep to the letter of our bargain. You will never have any terms of endearment from me, and I expect and desire none from you. On such terms they are simply revolting."

"As you will," he retorted, in sullen wrath. "But I cannot see what you expect to gain by your stand-off and let-alone policy. I shall be your husband all the same, and instead of having me for your devoted slave, you will make me a tyrannical master."

A queer little smile curled her lips. Her heart beat with a sudden exultant thought.

Fate had placed it out of her power to sacrifice herself for her mother's sake. She could not but be glad, although her heart bled for that mother's griefs and wrongs.

"Shall I tell him?" she asked herself, almost tempted to defy him then and there.

Her weak heart failed her at the thought of the story the wretch would pour into Mrs. Leslie's ears. How would she meet pity and contempt in those dear eyes that had looked at her so kindly.

"I will wait. I cannot tell him yet," she concluded, weakly.

But his next words fell like a thunder-clap on her startled hearing. "Irene, I wish you would name an early day for our marriage," he said.

"Early," she stammered, taken aback.

He smiled grimly.

"Yes, it's a mere bargain, you know, and, like all business compacts, should be ratified early."

She quivered all over with resentment at his tone, but she held her peace.

"Not yet," she answered to her beating heart that longed to defy him.

"It seems to me that in your peculiar situation, being a mere dependent on Mrs. Leslie's charity, that the sooner you have a home and a husband the better for you," he continued, coarsely. "I am most anxious to take you back to your mother with the good tidings we have to carry her. Do you remember, Irene, that the longer you delay our marriage the more you prolong your mother's pain?"

"I remember," she said, in a stifled voice.

"Then will you not consent to name this day week for our wedding-day?

"So soon? No, I will not," she flashed back, in indignant surprise.

"For your mother's sake," he pleaded artfully.

"Not for an angel's sake!" declared Irene angrily.

Her lover was dumfounded at this indignant denial.

"How soon, then, can I count upon your fulfilment of your promise?" he demanded, in a crestfallen tone.

The girl's red lips trembled with the defiant answer, "Never," but she bit them hard to keep back the passionate word. She knew his power, and though she felt that the threatening sword that hung over her head must fall at last, she dreaded to utter the word that must precipitate its downfall.

"I have not thought about that matter yet," she said, determined to temporize with the wretch, and gain a few days' respite. "I supposed it lay far away in the future. I hoped so at least."

"I hope you will give it your earliest attention, then," he replied, sullenly. "I have no mind to wait long, I can assure you."

"How long will be the limit of your patience?" she inquired sarcastically.

"I shall wait two weeks on your pleasure. If you are not ready then to keep your promise I shall throw prudence to the winds and reveal all," he answered, stung by her scorn and goaded to retaliation.

Her beautiful blue eyes flashed scorn and contempt upon him.

"Wretch," she cried, "how I hate you! Leave my presence instantly, and do not intrude upon me again to-day. I am free yet, and I will not tolerate you until I am compelled to do so. Go this instant!"

The flash of her eye assured him that prudence was the better part of valor. He rose angrily.

"Very well, since you choose to play the shrew!" he said, "enjoy your liberty while you may! I assure you it will not last long once you are legally mine!"

And with a muttered curse on his lips he stalked angrily away, his heart full of blended love and hate for his beautiful, disdainful betrothed.

CHAPTER XXXIX

"Mrs. Leslie, I want to ask you one question," said Guy Kenmore.

They two were walking in the wide, beautiful villa-garden among the roses and lilies and beautiful crimson flowers drooping from grand white marble vases. The sun shone on the beautiful terraced walks, on the sparkling fountains, and the glistening green leaves and golden fruit of the orange and lemon trees, the air perfumed with the fragrance of countless flowers.

Mrs. Leslie was walking by her friend's side looking thoughtfully down at the drifts of pink myrtle blossoms that blew across the path beneath her dainty feet. She looked up with a smile, and answered:

"As many as you please, Mr. Kenmore."

"Thank you," he replied, but for a moment he was silent over the momentous question that hovered on his lips. Looking at him curiously she saw that he was very pale and grave, with a fathomless sadness in the dark brown eyes usually so bright and laughing.

"It must be a very important question, you look so grave over it," she said.

"It is important," he replied, and then he went on, meditatively. "You told me, I believe, Mrs. Leslie, that Mr. Stuart's yacht left Richmond on the tenth of June?"

"Yes," she replied.

"The question I have to ask you is this: Did the yacht go steadily on that day and night, or did she stop at any landing on the Bay?"

Mrs. Leslie pursed up her pretty lips, and reflected.

"Let me see," she said. "Ah, yes, I remember. We did stop that night, about nine o'clock, at a landing in the Bay. It was at a place called Brooke's Wharf, and was noted for the fine fruit to be obtained there. I think it was at Mr. Revington's instance we stopped, and Mr. Stuart obtained a supply of the most luscious fruit."

Outwardly calm and composed, Guy Kenmore inwardly trembled with excitement. Was he about to find a clew to Ronald Brooke's slayer?

"Did anyone leave the yacht and go on shore?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes, we all did," said Mrs. Leslie, readily enough. "I mean all except the captain and crew. It was the most beautiful night I ever saw, I think. These Italian nights are not lovelier. We went on shore, and rambled about in the moonlight. I remember the night perfectly."

Ah! did he not, too, he groaned, silently, to himself. How vividly it all rushed over him. His careless visit to Bertha Brooke, from which so much had arisen. Memory recalled the lovely, willful girl, who had carried him off to the hall perforce that night, and he thought, with a softened tenderness, of the childish spite and self-will that had so vexed him then. Poor little Irene! she had suffered enough from Bertha's rage to atone for her willfulness. A feeling of pity and remorse mingled with the love he bore his hapless child-wife.

"Poor child! I was vexed and annoyed when I first found out the truth that we were legally married that night. It came upon me so suddenly, and I showed my feelings too plainly, and she—she was equally averse to having me for a husband. But, better, far better for her, if she had taken me at my word when I offered to make the best of my sad mistake than to have given her heart to that dandy jackanapes," he concluded, bitterly, for he had gauged the depth of Julius Revington at first sight, and the conspiracy he had overheard last night had filled him with horror and contempt for the traitor.

"To think that, she—my own beautiful and beloved wife—should turn coldly from me to lavish her precious love on a thing like that," he thought, jealously.

Mr. Kenmore, in his indolent way, though unconsciously to himself, had possessed some little complacent conceit of himself. His mirror had told him he was noble-looking and handsome, and women's eyes had repeated it. His progress through society had been a complete ovation to his pride and his vanity. Men had honored him for his manliness as much as for his great wealth, and women had angled for him as a most unexceptionable parti. But the complacent conceit that the world had fostered in him for years, had received a terrible blow from Irene's indifference and her palpable preference for the weakly-handsome, guitar-playing and tenor-singing Julius Revington.

"A compound of the dandy and the villain—a man who can plan behind her back to rob her of the knowledge of her honorable name, who cares nothing for the grief and shame of her wronged mother! To think that she should love him! And most probably she hates me for having re-appeared when she believed me dead. I have a most disagreeable task before me, for I must prove to her the unworthiness of the villain on whom she has set her heart," he mused, gravely.

"Are you through with your questioning?" inquired Mrs. Leslie, noting his pre-occupied silence.

"Yes," he replied, adding, with a slight smile: "Perhaps you would like to ask me some questions now."

"Yes, I would," she smiled, with engaging frankness.

"I am ready to reply to you," he answered, cordially.

"Perhaps I shall startle you," she said; "I am going to ask you a leading question, as a lawyer would say. You must remember that I give you carte blanche not to answer it unless you wish."

"Thank you for the permission," he said. "Let me hear it."

She looked at him with an odd gleam in her bright, kindly eyes.

"It is this," she said. "I believe that you and Irene Berlin, my protege, have met before last night. Am I right?"

He looked at her with a curious, intent gaze.

"Mrs. Leslie," he said, "I can better answer that question if you will tell me whether I may count on your silence and friendship in the strange dilemma in which I find myself placed."

She put out her hand to him impulsively.

"No one can say that Laura Leslie ever failed them in the hour of trouble," she said, gravely. "You may count on my silence and my truest friendship if it can avail you."

He pressed her hand, gratefully. "It will be an incalculable benefit to me," he said. "Perhaps you can help me and advise me."

"I will do both if I can," replied the charming widow.

"Then I shall tell you my secret," he replied. "Mrs. Leslie, it was not mere chance as I pretended that brought me here last night. I have followed Clarence Stuart across the ocean on a self-appointed mission to right the wrongs of the innocent and bring the guilty to justice."

Looking at his grave, agitated face, she started and uttered a cry of comprehension.

"You come from Elaine Brooke– she lives!" she cried.

He started in his turn.

"What do you know?" he cried.

"No matter– I must hear your story first," she said. "And you have not answered my leading question yet."

"I will tell you my story, and then you may be able to answer it for yourself," he said.

They sought a beautiful, secluded spot where they were not likely to be interrupted or overheard, and Guy Kenmore confided to her sympathizing ears the story of that fatal tenth of June, when old Ronald Brooke had met his death and Irene Brooke had become his wife.

The lady listened with eager, breathless interest, with parted lips and shining eyes, and color that varied from white to red and red to white.

When he had finished he looked at her with something like a smile in his dark-brown eyes.

"Mrs. Leslie, I have given you my confidence now. Perhaps you can answer your own question."

She laughed, merrily.

"I can put two and two together as cleverly as any woman, I think," she replied. "And you have made this case quite clear. My pretty Irene is your wife."

"Yes," he replied. "And she is the daughter of Clarence Stuart."

"That is quite true," she answered. "I have suspected it before, now I am assured of the fact. No one will rejoice more over it than will Clarence Stuart, himself."

"I do not understand you," he replied, in a puzzled tone.

Mrs. Leslie found that she had a confidence to make too. She told him Mr. Stuart's sorrowful story, and he in turn related the conversation he had heard the night before. Many things were made clear to both by the confidence thus reposed in each other.

"It is as I supposed," Guy Kenmore said. "Clarence Stuart and his wife were foully deceived and separated by the machinations of old Mr. Stuart."

"And the whole secret of it lies in the possession of Julius Revington, and the proud usurper of Elaine Brooke's name and rights," added Mrs. Leslie.

"More than that," said he, with a shudder, "the death of old Ronald Brooke lies between those two."

She was silent a few moments, gravely reviewing the case. It was a baffling one, she confessed to herself, with a sigh.

"What shall we do?" she asked him, at last. "Shall we take Mr. Stuart and Irene into our confidence?"

"Not yet," he replied, thoughtfully. "Let us deal with Julius Revington first. We must study out a plan to bring that villain to confession."