Kitabı oku: «Laurel Vane; or, The Girls' Conspiracy», sayfa 18

CHAPTER LXII

St. Leon Le Roy—what had brought him here at this moment of all others? What strange trick did fate mean to play her in thus surrounding her all in a moment, as it were, with these people who had had so malign an influence upon her past? Her heart beat with deadly fear. One white, ringed hand furtively sought her uncle's arm and clung to it as if to save herself from falling to the floor. Through the wild rhythm of the dance music, through the measured echo of the flying feet of the waltzers, she instinctively felt him pausing before her—she heard Mrs. Wentworth's voice, saying, with a strange, sweet ring in it:

"Mr. Le Roy, this is my dear friend, Mrs. Lynn."

Laurel could not speak for a moment. A deadly fear possessed her. She heard a clear, calm, self-possessed voice saying, kindly:

"Mrs. Lynn and I have met before. We are neighbors at our homes on the Hudson."

She did not look up, but she saw his strong, shapely white hand held out to her, and as she laid her own within it, his gentle pressure seemed to say dumbly:

"Do not be afraid, dear. They shall not surprise me into betraying your strange secret."

Laurel could not speak for a moment. Happily, Beatrix broke the silence by exclaiming, in a voice from which she could not keep the ring of disappointment.

"Neighbors and acquaintances! And I did not dream that you had met before!"

The whole fabric of the pretty romance she had been building up was destroyed in a moment, like "the baseless fabric of a dream." She felt like bursting into tears of disappointment. What beautiful hopes she had built upon Mrs. Lynn's resemblance to Laurel Vane! And oh, if Mr. Le Roy and the novelist could guess how she and her father had plotted to bring them together, how angry they would be. While these vexatious thoughts rushed over her, she heard Mrs. Lynn saying in a cool, calm, almost indifferent voice:

"Yes, Mrs. Wentworth, my uncle's home on the Hudson adjoins Eden. While we sojourned there this summer we had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Le Roy and his mother."

And in the next breath Mr. Le Roy said, suavely:

"Will you give me this waltz, Mrs. Lynn?"

She laid her gloved hand on his arm, and they were whirled away to the rhythm of the delicious waltz music. Who could tell how quickly Laurel's heart beat as she "felt her true love's arm round her once again"?

Beatrix, with her father and husband, stood gazing a little blankly at the graceful forms of the handsome, well-matched pair. All three were bitterly disappointed at the prosaic ending of the pretty romance they had built up, and of which they had confidently expected to behold the delightful dénouement.

But the most amazed of all were Mrs. Merivale, and her coadjutor in malice, Ross Powell. They had stood near enough to witness the meeting between Mr. Le Roy and Mrs. Lynn, and, while filled with rage at the sight, they had been utterly confounded at the result.

Mr. Le Roy's cool declaration, "We have met before," Mrs. Lynn's apparent calmness and insouciance, astounded them. They looked into each other's eyes in wonder and amaze, and Ross Powell asked, hoarsely:

"What does it mean?"

"What, indeed?" she echoed. "Is the man blind, or are they acting a part?"

He seized upon the idea quickly.

"They are acting a part," he said. "I could swear that Mrs. Lynn is Laurel Vane, and, of course, her own husband could not be deceived in her identity. Decidedly they are playing a part. But why? Have you any idea?"

"I cannot imagine," she replied. "And yet I would have the world to know. Is he still angry with her? Is it possible he can recognize her and not choose to claim her?"

"Is it possible that he is mad?" he asked, contemptuously. "No; there is something deeper than that behind their masquerading. Why, she is simply peerless! What man in his senses could behold her and not claim her, knowing her his?"

The yearning in his voice made her bitterly angry. How she hated that beauty that made men mad for her sake!—that satin-smooth skin, those great, wine-dark eyes, that golden hair, that fire and soul that made Mrs. Lynn so peerless, doubly crowned, doubly laureled by both beauty and intellect!

"I thought you hated her!" she said, scornfully.

"So I do. I hate her and I love her in the same breath. Can you understand the feeling?" he asked, hoarsely, and almost under his breath.

"Yes, I understand," she answered, with subdued bitterness.

"The first sight of her lovely face stirred all the old passion within me, and yet I hate her, too," he said, darkly. "I cannot bear that that purse-proud aristocrat should win her back. I could sooner bear to strike her dead at his feet than to see them happy together!"

He stood glowering at the graceful figure as it whirled down the long ball-room in the clasp of St. Leon Le Roy's arm. All the worst passions of his nature were roused by the sight. The first sight of Laurel in all her womanly beauty had kindled anew the fires of his passion for her, while his resentment at her scorn burned to fever heat. He had spoken the truth when he said that he hated and loved her in the same breath.

Mrs. Merivale gazed at him with quickened breath and evilly flashing eyes. She had set herself the deliberate task of arousing all the worst instincts of this wicked and undisciplined nature. Through Ross Powell she would have her revenge on those two whom she hated. He was the blind instrument in her hands to work out her wicked will.

"I do not blame you, Mr. Powell," she said, in a tone of gentlest sympathy. "I know that men feel deeply and strongly on such subjects, and I can imagine what it must be to see the woman one loves beloved by another man and loving him in return. It must almost drive one to madness. It must be the refinement of torture."

"It is hell!" he muttered back, hoarsely, and with concentrated bitterness and despair.

"It would be easier to see her dead, I fancy," pursued the wily tempter, softly. "Death is a grim bridegroom, but better the gloom of the grave than a hated bridegroom's arms!"

"You are right," he muttered; "I hate them both, and I swear they shall not be happy together! What think you, Mrs. Merivale—is there any chance of a reconciliation?"

"Look!" she answered.

Mr. Le Roy and Laurel had slipped out of the circle of dancers and were leaving the ball-room arm in arm. Mrs. Merivale laughed a hateful, significant laugh.

"They are going out on the shore," she said. "We all know the romantic, softening influences of moonlight, music and love. They will no longer be able to keep up the farce as strangers. They will be melted by the soft influences of the night and fall into each other's arms. Finis! reconciliation, renewed vows of love, beatific happiness!"

Half maddened by her words, he ground his teeth over a fierce and bitter oath, and shaking her hand from his arm, strode out of the room with "the fires of hell" in his heart.

CHAPTER LXIII

Mr. Le Roy and Laurel had indeed gone out upon the shore. He had invited her to do so, and she had complied, for she was full of half-angry wonder as to what had brought him there. She was frightened too, when she found herself surrounded by all those people who belonged to her past. She asked herself if it could have happened by simple chance. She was frightened. She felt like some hunted creature brought to bay.

She tried to shake off her feelings of mingled terror and annoyance, bravely assuring herself that there existed no cause for them.

"I have done nothing—these people have naught to do with me. I am foolish to feel afraid when I see them all around me," she repeated to herself.

When she tried to analyze her feelings, she found that it was only Ross Powell who inspired her with such terror. She was not afraid of Mrs. Merivale. She simply despised her; and, secure in her fancied incognito, she did not feel apprehensive concerning the desire of the jealous woman to work her ill. It was only Powell of whom she felt afraid. His evil, exultant glance had assured her that he knew her, and she had already had evidence of his willingness to destroy every hope of her life so far as lay in his power. It was wholly through dread of his haunting glance that she accepted Mr. Le Roy's invitation to leave the crowded ball-room and go out upon the shore; and once away from the baleful presence of the enemy she feared and dreaded, she dismissed him wholly from her thoughts, and gave herself up to the secret, trembling joy of St. Leon's presence. Her heart was a traitor to her will. It exulted in his nearness despite her reason, that told her they were better apart if she meant to carry out her vow of pride and scorn.

She leaned upon his arm, and they walked silently through the lovely moonlight down to the wave-washed shore. Laurel's heart beat quick and fast against her husband's arm. The beauty of the moonlight and the sea, the mellow notes of the dance-music, all had their own effect upon her. Mrs. Merivale had rightly estimated each as a softening influence. It was such a night as Emma Alice Browne describes in her sweet poem, "The Bal-Masque."

 
"Before us, bathed in pearly light,
A reach of ocean heaved and rolled,
Girt with the purple zone of night,
And clasped with one pale glint of gold.
 
 
"Behind us, in the gay saloon,
The flutes wailed out their sweet despair;
The passionate viols sobbed in tune,
The horns exulted, and the air
Pulsed with the low, mellifluous beat
Of dimpling waves and dancing feet."
 

St. Leon looked down into the beautiful face that was so maddeningly fair in the soft light, and his heart swelled with a great despair. To think that she had once been his, that that peerless form had rested in his arms, that sweet face slept upon his breast! And now—divided by a woman's pride, they were as widely severed as if Jean Ingelow's "vast, calm river, so dread to see," rolled its rushing waves between their hearts.

Standing thus, arm in arm, each heart busy with its deep emotions, neither heard the furtive steps creeping slowly up behind them, neither saw the cruel, jealous face with its wild eyes glaring upon them, neither saw the gleam of the slender dagger clutched in the murderous hand, neither dreamed of the man who lurked behind them, nor of the woman who followed at a safe distance, eager to sate her vengeance in the sight of her rival's heart's blood.

"Mrs. Lynn, you are angry with me because I am here," said St. Leon, half-questioningly.

"No," she answered, without removing her eyes from the moon-gilded waves that broke at her feet in snowy surf. She felt too weak to meet the mute pleading of those eyes she loved so madly.

"You think that I have followed you here," he went on, sadly. "But you are wrong. Much as I might have wished to do so, dear as your presence is to me, I could never—"

The deprecating words were never finished. A terrible form flashed suddenly before them, a terrible face gleamed in the light dagger flashed upward in the air, and a voice, hoarse with misery and madness, rang out fiercely:

"Die, Laurel Vane—die!"

The dagger glittered against her snowy breast, the hand of the frenzied madman would have driven it swiftly home but all in an instant she was caught away, and the descending blade was sheathed in another breast—the broad breast of St. Leon Le Roy. The arms that had closed wildly around Laurel for a moment fell away from her, and he dropped on the sands at her feet, the hot blood spurting from his heart, and deepening the rosy hem of her satin robe to a horrible crimson, while her agonized cry rent the summer night: "Oh, St. Leon, you have died for me!"

CHAPTER LXIV

"You have died for me!" the stricken wife repeated, and then, overcome with horror, she knelt down beside the dead man, and with her arms about him, and her head upon his breast, she relapsed into unconsciousness almost as deep as death.

Ross Powell stood still a moment, like one frozen with horror. That maddened cry from the lips of the woman he would have slain rang fearfully in his ears, he realized in a moment to what fearful lengths he had been driven by his own jealous passion and the specious temptations of Mrs. Merivale. He had slain his hated rival, but he had brought down retribution on his own head, for Laurel's wild shriek of despair had echoed loudly back to the hotel, and already a score of people were rushing to the scene. Startled, terrified, the murderer made a wild rush forward, still clutching in his hand the bloody dagger, but before he had run a dozen paces he was brought to a stop by the sudden apparition of a white-faced woman who flung herself wildly before him, hissing out, in tones of blended wrath and horror, a terrible malediction upon his head:

"Murderer! you have slain him! How dared you, how dared you? May Heaven's curses light upon your head! May you swing from the hangman's rope! May perdition seize your soul!"

She must have been mad, for she flung herself before him, she barred his way, she clung to him with her desperate white arms, heedless of his curses and remonstrances, terribly intent on delivering him up to justice, and so punishing him for the mad mistake he had made in slaying the husband and sparing the wife!

She must have been mad, or she would have known that he would not tamely submit to detention with the feet of the avengers gaining swiftly on his track, and his soul writhing in horror of the hangman's ghastly rope. He tried to thrust her from him, to tear away from the arms that held him in desperate bondage; he shouted hoarsely for her to let him go.

"Devil in woman's shape, it was you that tempted me!" he cried out, with a fierce, blood-curling oath. "Now let me go, or I swear I will kill you as I did him!"

She must have been mad, for she did not heed the threat—she only clung the tighter in spite of his frantic struggles to release himself from the arms that twined around him venomously, like living serpents in the deadly embrace of hate.

"I will never let you go—never!" she hissed out, madly, and in his frantic fear, hearing the steps of his pursuers coming nearer and nearer on his trail, he lifted the cruel dagger, still reeking with Le Roy's life-blood, and plunged it fiercely in her breast as it gleamed bare and white in the beautiful moonlight.

"Ah!" she gasped, and the white arms relaxed their hold, her body wavered and fell limply forward. He thrust it desperately from him, and sprung forward—free!

Free! but at what terrible cost to his soul. The woman whose low, soft whisperings had tempted him to murder, the woman who in her madness would fain have delivered him up to the law's vengeance, lay dead upon the shore, the cold, white moonlight shining down into her ghastly, staring eyes and pallid face. Retribution had overtaken her, and the fate she had plotted for another recoiled upon her own head. The serpent she had loosed to destroy another struck its deadly fangs into her own heart.

They lifted her up tenderly and pitifully, and bore her back to the hotel. They spoke of her with the gentlest pity and regret as the victim of a cruel murder, for no one ever knew the truth—no one guessed that she was to blame for the tragedy that had ended her life in so disastrous a fashion. The shadow of her sin never rested on her grave, for there was no one to betray her—Ross Powell was never apprehended. His deadly fear lent wings to his feet, and he escaped from his pursuers and made good his flight to a far-off land. He never returned to his native shore, he was never brought to justice. All his punishment came to him through his own coward conscience. The cruel whip-lash of remorse followed him through the world. The double murder he had committed lay like a mountain's weight upon his soul. He had been bad and wicked, but of his own self he would never have committed murder. He had been goaded into its commission by a temporary madness, and in time he repented most sincerely of his sin, and died in the humble hope of forgiveness by a merciful Redeemer.

CHAPTER LXV

And Laurel?

Full of wonder and pity and sympathy, they lifted the golden head from Le Roy's breast, and bore her away. No one dreamed that he had given his life to save hers. No one dreamed that she belonged to him by the dearest tie possible to mortals: no one knew that her rightful place was by his side, and the sealed lips did not open to claim her right, for they were pale and rigid as if the finger of eternal silence had been laid upon them.

Strangers' hands carried her back to the hotel, and the news of the dreadful tragedy spread far and wide. It excited the greatest wonder. It was so sudden, so strange, so mysterious. No one knew the murderer, and no one guessed the motive for his double crime—no one except, perhaps, Mr. Gordon, and he was wisely silent. He deemed it for the best.

But it created a great sensation. Mr. Le Roy was so well known as a gentleman of birth, culture, and wealth, and Mrs. Merivale as a woman of fashion, that the wonder and excitement were most intense. Popular indignation ran high against Ross Powell. If they had caught him, it is most probable that Judge Lynch would have been his executioner.

The sensation had its element of romance. It was whispered far and near that the beautiful belle, Mrs. Lynn, had fainted with her head upon Mr. Le Roy's breast. They told how her delicate laces had been crimsoned by his life blood, how she had looked like a dead woman when they lifted her up. When it became known, next day, that her excitement had culminated in an attack of brain fever, the interest and sympathy and curiosity ran higher and higher. People agreed that there must have been something between Mr. Le Roy and Mrs. Lynn. They deemed that they had been lovers.

Mrs. Wentworth did not return to New York the next day. She remained to nurse her ill and unconscious friend. Cyril Wentworth stayed also. Mr. Gordon went back, and brought his wife down to see her daughter. She was very willing to forgive her now. Years had softened her anger and resentment, and when she heard that Cyril Wentworth had proved himself worthy of her beautiful daughter she threw pride to the winds and forgave him, too. They had a very tender reconciliation—the mother and daughter—in the quiet room where Laurel lay ill unto death with brain fever, her beautiful golden hair cut close to her head, and cold, sparkling ice laid against the fevered brain to cool the subtle fire that burned in her veins.

Beatrix told her mother all that she suspected—that Mrs. Lynn was Laurel Le Roy—and Mrs. Gordon quite agreed with her. She had never forgotten the beautiful face of the girl who had deceived St. Leon Le Roy so bitterly. She recalled it again now, and she was sure that her daughter was right. There could not have been two such lovely faces in the world. She did not doubt that this was St. Leon's wife.

She forgave Laurel now for all that she had done. It was easy to forgive her now, when she lay so ill—perhaps dying. She and Beatrix vied with each other in the care of the invalid. They would not trust her wholly to the care of a hired nurse. Her life was too precious. Laurence and Trixy were left to the care of the nurses, and Beatrix gave all her care and thought to the invalid.

"I cannot do too much for her," said gentle Beatrix. "She was like an angel to me."

The day came at last when her patience and fidelity were rewarded. Laurel opened her eyes and looked up with the light of reason shining in her face. The crisis of her terrible delirium was past. She would recover.

She looked at Beatrix, and a faint flush stole into her pale face.

"Have I told all in my delirium?" she asked.

"You have told nothing. All your ravings have been of your books and of your child," Beatrix answered, gently.

A look of anxiety stole into the hollow, dark eyes.

"My little Laurie?" she said, wistfully.

"He is well and happy. He has been well cared for," answered Beatrix. "But I must not bring him to you yet; you are not strong enough. Can you wait?"

"Yes, I can wait," Laurel answered, patiently. Then she laid her thin, white hand on Beatrix's arm. "Can you forgive me?" she said. "I have been hard and proud and wicked. I have willfully deceived you; I am really Laurel Vane."

Beatrix bent and kissed the poor, pale lips that faltered over this humble confession.

"My dear, I have known it all the while," she said, simply.

"And you forgive me for my duplicity?" asked Laurel, in wonder.

"My dear, if you can forgive me all the sorrow my willful plot brought down upon your head, there is nothing I cannot forgive you," cried impulsive Beatrix.

"You were not to blame," Laurel answered, and the warm color drifted over her face as she went on, sadly: "It was all the fault of my mad love, Beatrix. I blame no one for my folly and sin. If I had gone away from Eden with Clarice Wells, nothing would have happened. I stayed, and brought down fate upon my own head—and his."

"A happy fate, my dear, if only you will be reconciled to him," said Beatrix, gently.

The dark eyes looked up at her, full of the pathos of regret and despair.

"Ah! now I understand all the pathos that lies in those words, too late," she said. "I was mad, I think—mad with my wounded love and pride. I denied my identity to him, I refused to listen to his repentance, I was cruelly hard and cold; and now my punishment has come. I repent, but he cannot hear me. My love cannot reach him, for he is dead."

"Dead! ah, no, my dear! Is it possible that you have been thinking so? He lives, he will soon be well and strong again if only you will forgive him."

Then she stopped suddenly, for Laurel's head had fallen back, her eyes were closed. The shock of joy had been too much. Laurel had quietly fainted.

When she came to herself again there was a strange resolute look in the dark eyes. She took Beatrix's hand and held it tightly in both her own as if she needed strength and support.

"He lives," she said, wildly. "Oh, how glad I am! Now I will make atonement to him! He would have given his life to save mine. I will give him more than my life."

"I do not understand you," said Beatrix, wonderingly.

"You shall know soon," said Laurel. "Dear Beatrix, do let me have Laurie a little while. I am sure it will not hurt me. I am stronger than you think!"