Kitabı oku: «The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret», sayfa 17

CHAPTER III

"Who is the young debutante, Miss Lyle?"

Sydney Lyle, coming down the long ball-room on the arm of the most distinguished man in the room, looked up with ill-concealed annoyance at his words.

She followed his glance, and saw little Queenie standing in the center of a group of admirers, fluttering her satin fan with the grace of an embryo coquette. The girl looked lovely as a dream in her thin, white dress, with its multitudinous puffings and frillings.

It was looped here and there with natural rosebuds, and she wore her set of pearls clasped round her white throat and wrists, while her golden hair rippled to her waist in a shower of natural ringlets. Anything more sweetly fair and happy could scarcely be imagined than Queenie, as she stood there, warm and flushed from the dance, and enjoying, with all the keenness of youth and novelty, the honied flatteries of the little court around her. An irrepressible pang of jealousy gave a touch of sharpness to Sydney's voice, as she answered:

"That is my sister Queenie, Captain Ernscliffe—a willful child who ought to be in the school-room this moment, but who has persuaded mamma to let her come here instead."

"Ah! your sister," said Captain Ernscliffe. "I might have known it by her beauty. She has lived near the rose," and he pointed the compliment by a meaning glance that made Sydney blush. "You will introduce me, Miss Lyle?"

"Certainly." Sydney answered, and pausing beside Queenie, she said, carelessly:

"Captain Ernscliffe, this is my sister, Queenie. If she should shock you by her outre manners, please remember that she is but a child and quite unaccustomed to appear in society."

Captain Ernscliffe bowed low over the white-gloved hand of the enchanting little beauty, and Queenie looked up at him and said, with a flash of wrath against Sydney:

"You need not believe Sydney, when she tells you I am nothing but a child, Captain Ernscliffe. I am seventeen years old, and I know how to behave myself just as well as any young lady of my age, in spite of Sydney's warning."

The gentleman saw that the young heart was sorely wounded, despite her quick assumption of dignity, and hastened to say, consolingly:

"I can well believe you, Miss Queenie, for I see there is but one unanimous opinion among the gentlemen. You are the belle of the ball."

Sydney passed on with the words rankling in her heart, though she knew that they were true. Among all the beautiful women present, in their cosily dresses and splendid jewels, little Queenie, with her sunny smile and her cheap, white tarleton dress, was the most admired and sought after.

The women who envied her fresh, young loveliness sneered at the simple dress, but the men—bless their ignorant hearts—did not know whether the snowy mist that floated about her cost a hundred dollars or five. They only saw that her face was the fairest, her eyes the brightest, her voice the sweetest of any in the room. Mrs. Lyle saw the sensation she created, and straightway began to lay matrimonial plans for her.

"Sydney and Georgina are both handsome and stylish, yet they are very slow in marrying off well," she said to herself, with a sigh. "Perhaps I shall have better luck with my willful Queenie. There is that rich Ernscliffe with her now. He is a splendid catch, but then, Sydney has had her heart set on him this long while. She would be very angry if Queenie were to rival her."

In the meantime little Queenie was clapping her tiny hands and saying, in a voice full of girlish pleasure:

"The belle of the ball, Captain Ernscliffe? Oh, how nice that is! I love for people to like me, yet Syd and George said that no one would look at me in this cheap dress, that I bought for five dollars and made with my own hands."

"It is the prettiest dress in the rooms. I had no idea but that it cost at least a hundred dollars," said Captain Ernscliffe, regarding the fairy-like puffs attentively. "And your bouquet, as the ladies say, is too sweet for anything. Was it a tribute from some admirer?"

She blushed and smiled, and lifted the fragrant triumph of the floral art to her sweet face.

"You have guessed right," she said. "It was handed in at our door this evening, with the compliments of an unknown admirer."

"The fellow had fine taste anyway," laughed the captain, "both in the selection of the flowers and their recipient."

"Thank you," answered Queenie, demurely, looking up with a smile, and dropping her lashes very quickly a minute after, for something in the glance of his dark eyes sent a blush to her cheek and made her silly little heart thrill strangely.

Captain Ernscliffe only smiled like one used to such effects. He was a bachelor, and thirty years old, and women called him a flirt. Be that as it may, he was as handsome as a prince, and knew how to make women's lashes flutter down upon cheeks that blushed crimson under his glance.

"What an innocent little darling she is," he thought, to himself. "How different from her sisters, and from the girls one meets usually in society! One might well resign all the liberties of bachelorhood to win and wear so sweet a flower." "Doubtless you have woven a pretty web of romance about the unknown giver of your flowers, Miss Lyle," he said, jestingly.

She had pressed the flowers to her lips unconsciously, and at his words she started and smiled, and looked up to reply with the brightest face he had ever looked upon. But suddenly, before a single word left her lips, her aspect changed strangely and marvelously. Her cheeks and lips grew white as death, her eyes grew wild with horror, and she swept her hand across her brow as if to dispel some horrid vision. Her form trembled like a leaf in a storm, and with a wild, inarticulate cry she wavered and fell in a lifeless heap at Captain Ernscliffe's feet.

It was all so sudden that Captain Ernscliffe lifted her up and carried her through the low window out on the balcony before anyone had noticed her fall. He laid her down on a rustic lounge, turned her white face up to the air, and went and called her mother very quietly.

"Oh! Captain Ernscliffe, is she dead?" exclaimed Mrs. Lyle, wringing her hands in terror.

"Oh! no, she has only fainted, I think. The rooms were too warm, perhaps. See, she is already reviving in the cooler air out here."

The girl's breath came fluttering back in a long, quivering sigh. She caught Captain Ernscliffe's arm and half-lifted herself without seeming to notice her mother.

"Oh! Captain Ernscliffe, did you see it?" she gasped, rather than spoke.

"Did I see what?" he inquired, rather blankly.

"The horrid vision that came between me and the flowers and made me faint," she answered, sitting up and looking at him in surprise.

"My dear young lady, there was nothing to see, only the dancers. You were tired and excited, and the heat overcame you. You are unaccustomed to the crush and excitement of balls, you know."

"And you saw nothing but the dancers?" she said to him, shivering as she spoke, like one in a chill, and passing her hand before her eyes.

"Nothing, I assure you," he answered, gravely.

"What did you see, Queenie?" inquired Mrs. Lyle, coming forward.

"Oh! mamma, is that you?" Little Queenie reached out her white arms, twined them about her mother's neck, and sank on her bosom trembling and shivering, and moaning faintly: "Oh! mamma! mamma!"

"My dear, my dear, compose yourself. You are nervous and hysterical," remonstrated Mrs. Lyle. "See, you are distressing Captain Ernscliffe very much."

Little Queenie hushed her sobs and looked up at the gentleman, who did indeed look anxious and distressed.

"What was it you saw, Miss Lyle?" he inquired, gently.

"Perhaps you will not credit it," she said, lifting her white, awe-stricken face in the moonlight that flooded the balcony, "but, Captain Ernscliffe, just as I looked up from my flowers to speak to you, the whole scene of the ball faded out into blackness, and then I saw a vision come before me in its place."

She paused, shuddered visibly, then resumed:

"I saw a thick, dark wood before me with the rain-drops falling down through the leaves of the trees. I saw a tall man with his back to me, and close by that man was a grave—a shallow grave, so shallow that it could not hide the girl that lay within it, for the wind and the rain had beaten away the earth and the dead leaves with which the man had covered her. I saw her awfully white, dead face upturned to the light, and there were cruel black marks around her throat as if someone had choked her—and a purple wound on her brow."

"My darling, it was only your excited imagination," said Mrs. Lyle, soothingly.

"Oh, no, I saw it quite plainly," answered little Queenie, with a sharp wail of anguish; "and, oh, mamma, mamma, the face of that dead girl was just exactly like mine!"

CHAPTER IV

"I always knew you were a little simpleton, Queenie, but I never thought you could be so foolish and ungrateful as this! No girl in her senses would refuse the chance of spending Captain Ernscliffe's money!"

Three months had elapsed since the grand ball at Mrs. Kirk's, and Queenie Lyle was arraigned before the bar of maternal justice. Little Queenie had spent those three months in a perfect whirl of excitement, pleasure and conquest. And now Captain Ernscliffe, the irresistible, the invincible, had surrendered at discretion, and actually proposed to marry her! And little Queenie Lyle had had the audacity to refuse the honor.

"To think," went on Mrs. Lyle, reproachfully, "how we have humored and indulged you the last three months, and all for this! You have been to all the balls and parties worth going to—you have had nice dresses and laces—and we all thought you would marry off well, and rid your papa of one of his expensive daughters—yet last month you refused that rich old Myddleton! I did not care as much for that, for I saw that Ernscliffe was madly in love, and thought you would be sure to accept him. Yet now you have actually refused him, too, you wicked, ungrateful girl!"

"Mamma, mamma," pleaded Queenie, with a quivering lip, "do not be angry with me. I could not marry Captain Ernscliffe, because I do not love him."

"Then if you do not love him you can never love anyone," exclaimed Mrs. Lyle. "He is handsome, accomplished, wealthy; and there's not a girl I know but would jump at your chance, Sydney not excepted."

"Sydney loves him, mamma—let her marry him."

"She cannot get him—more's the pity. I wish he had fancied her instead of you," said Mrs. Lyle, sharply.

"I wish so too mamma. I am very sorry for Sydney, and for Captain Ernscliffe, too," said Queenie, with a long, quivering sigh.

"You had better be sorry for yourself, foolish girl; you have thrown away the best chance for marrying that you ever will have!" exclaimed Mrs. Lyle, angrily, for she was deeply chagrined at Queenie's willful disregard of her best interests.

To her surprise Queenie threw herself down at her feet and began to sob wildly.

"Mamma, I am sorry for myself," she moaned, faintly, "so sorry that I wish I were dead!"

"For shame, Queenie, to go into such a passion because I scolded you! Get up and stop making a baby of yourself," said her mother severely.

Little Queenie dried her eyes at that sharp reproof and went on with her packing, which Mrs. Lyle's entrance had interrupted, for they were to sail for Europe that week, and the house was "topsy-turvey" with their preparations.

Her mother sat moodily watching her as she folded silks and laces, and packed them away securely in the great Saratoga trunk.

"What have you in that box, Queenie?" she inquired, seeing the girl put a box in the trunk with a half-conscious glance. "You look as if you were smuggling something."

Queenie blushed violently, and Mrs. Lyle saw that she trembled as she answered falteringly:

"Nothing of any importance, I assure you, mamma."

"Let me see," said Mrs. Lyle, resolutely, and she took the box from the trunk and lifted the lid. "Why, what have we here? Flowers—withered flowers! Queenie, why upon earth are you keeping these dead, ill-smelling things? Throw them out of the window."

"Oh, no, mamma," cried Queenie, blushing very much and trying to take the box from her mother's hand.

But Mrs. Lyle held on to the box and took out three bouquets of withered flowers, and three cards that lay in the bottom of the box. She read aloud:

"From an unknown admirer of Miss Queenie Lyle."

"Oh dear, dear," said Mrs. Lyle, impatiently; "now I begin to understand. These flowers, which were sent by some impudent fellow, have made a fool of you, Queenie. You have been building a romance over him, and that is why you have no eyes for better men. Tell me the truth now, Queenie; do you know who sent you these flowers?"

"How should I know, mamma?" asked the girl, evasively, and turning her crimson face away from her mother's keen scrutiny. "You see he writes himself unknown."

"Well, known or unknown, here is an end to that foolishness," said Mrs. Lyle, crossing the room and tossing the luckless flowers out of the window. "I did not know you were so silly and romantic, Queenie, as to carry a bunch of dead flowers to Europe."

Queenie stamped her little foot on the floor, and her eyes flashed fire.

"Mamma, you had no right to throw my flowers away!" she passionately exclaimed. "Papa would never have intermeddled with my affairs like that!"

Mrs. Lyle dropped into a chair and buried her face in her hands.

"To think that I should have a child that would treat me so disrespectfully," she sighed.

"What has mamma been doing to my little pet?" asked Mr. Lyle, entering quietly and unexpectedly, as he always did.

There was an awkward silence for a moment; then Queenie said, with her sweet face turned away:

"Mamma has been scolding me because I would not marry Captain Ernscliffe."

"Your papa would do well to scold you also," flashed Mrs. Lyle. "After all your father's goodness to you, and your pretense of loving him so well, to think that you would throw away your chance of helping him in his old age. I have no patience with such folly!"

"Papa, you are not angry with me, are you?" asked his daughter, turning her soft, beseeching eyes, now swimming in tears, upon his kind yet troubled face. "I could not marry Captain Ernscliffe, papa, because I do not love him."

"Love," sneered Mrs. Lyle, scornfully. "Love is the last thing to be considered nowadays!"

Papa drew the tearful pleader down by his side on the lounge, and smoothed away the disheveled golden ringlets from the flushed little face.

"No, dear, I am not angry with you," he said. "It is true that my business affairs are tottering on the verge of failure, and if you had accepted the captain he might have helped me to tide over the crisis, but I would not have you sacrifice yourself, my pet, for I would be loth to part from you even if you went willingly and happily to another home. But let us hope for the best. Now that your Uncle Rob is about to take my expensive family off my hands for a year, I may be able to save some money and get straight again."

Three days later Mrs. Lyle and her three fair and charming daughters stood on the deck of the Europa bound for their long and anxiously anticipated continental tour.

CHAPTER V

"How I miss them all," Mr. Lyle said to himself often and often in the long year while his family were absent, and he went home every night to his solitary supper and lonely newspaper. "I would give anything to see my little Queenie, or even to get a letter from her. Strange that she does not write to me. And mamma, too, in her brief letters never says a word about Queenie, though she must know that I want to hear something about my little one. She always says that the girls are well and enjoying themselves, but she never goes into particulars."

It was quite true. The Lyles were traveling from place to place, and Mrs. Lyle, never fond of writing, always dropped the briefest of notes to her husband, and invariably informed him that he need not reply, for they were constantly on the wing and could not tell him where to direct his letter so that it would reach them. She spoke of the girls casually, never naming them in particular save once in her first letter when she said that "Robert was much disappointed, and even vexed at Queenie's defection."

Mr. Lyle puzzled a great deal over those words at first, and at last concluded that Mrs. Lyle referred to Queenie's rejection of Captain Ernscliffe.

Robert Lyle was a younger brother of Mr. Lyle, and had inherited a large fortune from a deceased uncle. He was an invalid, and spent most of his time abroad from whence many fine presents found their way to his elder brother's family in America.

Mr. Lyle felt rather vexed that Robert should have blamed little Queenie for her course in regard to Captain Ernscliffe.

"The child is too young to be forced into a loveless marriage," he said to himself. "I hope she will marry money some day, for I know how sad the lack of it is, but I hope it may be a love-match, too."

The longing for his little girl was very strong upon him one night as he sat in his quiet library trying to interest himself in the daily paper—so strong that he laid the paper down, and rested his head a little wearily on his hands.

"It is six months since they went away," he said. "How long it seems, and how much I want to see my little Queenie. It is strange, but ever since she was born I have loved her better than the other children."

Something like a quivering sigh sounded faintly through the room. He looked up quickly, but he was quite alone.

"I am growing fanciful in my old age and solitude," he thought, and dropped his head again upon his hands.

Again that soft, low sigh went trembling through the room.

This time some strange instinct drew his eyes to the window, and he sprang to his feet with a smothered cry. A sweet, white face, framed in golden hair, was pressed against the window-pane looking at him, with dark eyes full of love and sorrow—the beautiful face of his absent daughter, Queenie.

"She has come home—my darling!" he cried joyfully, and rushed to the window and threw up the sash.

But in that moment the lovely young face had disappeared.

"Queenie, my love—where are you?" he called. "Do not tease your poor old papa!"

But silence and darkness answered him only. He went out into the garden and wandered about in the shrubbery, calling, softly.

"Queenie, Queenie!"

But echo only answered him.

He went back sadly into the house and thought over the perplexing mystery.

"She is dead," he said, at last; "I have seen her spirit. She has come to me from far-off foreign lands to bid me an eternal farewell. Oh, Queenie, Queenie, my lost darling!"

And from that night Mr. Lyle began to grow old and broken. He could neither eat, nor sleep, nor rest until he heard from his wife again.

In a month one of her short, careless epistles came to hand. She said, as usual, that the girls were well and enjoying themselves very much, and added that Georgina had caught a beau, and was apt to make a splendid match.

"She is living, then, my little pet!" exclaimed the doting old father, in delighted surprise, "and yet I surely saw her spirit face looking in upon me that night. It was a warning—or a token of sorrow."

And the burden of heaviness still clung about his heart, and the shadow brooded in his kindly blue eyes until Mrs. Lyle wrote at last that they were coming home on the Europa the next month.

It was a dark and stormy night when the Lyles came home again. Mr. Lyle had not known when the Europa would be in, so they took him by surprise when they drove up to the door that night. It was verging on to midnight and the domestics were all asleep, but Mr. Lyle was still up, poring over an account book.

"This is a joyful surprise!" he exclaimed, as he led the way to the drawing-room and turned up the gas that he might look at their sweet faces clearly.

Mrs. Lyle fell on his neck and embraced him, and Sydney, then Georgina, glided forward and touched his cheek with their lips. He looked behind them for the little one whom he had thought would be first to embrace him.

"Queenie—where is Queenie?" he asked.

Mrs. Lyle, slowly drawing off her gray kid gloves, looked at him in some surprise.

"Bless the darling—is she not asleep?" she said. "It was so late and stormy that we expected you would all be in bed and asleep."

The rain beat dismally outside, the wind howled like a demon in despair. Something of the chill and coldness outside seemed to strike to the man's heart as he said quickly:

"The servants are all asleep—but Queenie—she is with you, of course?"

"Why do you say of course, papa?" said Sydney. "Did Queenie come down to the steamer to meet us in this dreadful storm?"

Mr. Lyle looked bewildered.

"Sydney," he exclaimed hoarsely, "did not Queenie come home with you from Europe?"

"Why, Papa, Queenie did not go with us, you know," said Georgina, coming forward, and laying her hand on his arm. "She came back to stay with you. Is she not at home?"

Mr. Lyle dropped back into a chair, and wrung his hands like one distracted.

"My God!" he exclaimed. "You torture me with your inexplicable words. I tell you I have never laid eyes on Queenie, living, since I bade her good-bye on the deck of the Europa a year ago."

"My God!" screamed Mrs. Lyle, falling down upon the floor, while Sydney and Georgina looked like statues of horror, "what has become of my little Queenie?"

"Papa," said Sydney, in a trembling voice, "there is some dreadful mystery here. Queenie did not go to Europe with us. After you bade us good-bye that day on the steamer, she cried and wept, and almost went into hysterics, begging mamma to let her go back and stay with you, instead of going to Europe. She was so unmanageable that mamma consented at last, and she and her trunks were put on shore, and we went aboard without her. Did she not come home to you?"

"No, never," groaned the wretched father, like one demented. "I have never seen her since that day. Oh, Queenie, my lost darling, where are you?"

For a moment there came no answer to the question. They stood around spellbound with horror, while a peal of awful thunder reverberated outside and seemed to shake the house from its foundations. The next moment the door was burst violently open, and the dripping figure of a woman rushed into the room.

"Queenie!" burst from the quivering lips of the unhappy father.

Yes, it was Queenie, but oh, how terribly changed! Her streaming golden hair, matted with mold and dead leaves, hung wet and cold over her shoulders. Her dress of dark silk was stained with great patches and wisps of dead autumn leaves. The tight bodice, open at the top, exposed her throat, which—oh, Heaven!—was marked round and round with the purple and red print of finger-marks as though she had been strangled.

Her face was white as death, showing the plainer for its whiteness a mark upon her brow above her eyes—the horrible purple print of a man's boot heel on the tender flesh, from which a thin stream of blood trickled down on her ghastly face. A fearful—fearful apparition, strangely unlike little Queenie of other days. Yet it was Queenie, for she staggered blindly forward, and panting out: "Papa, papa, forgive!" fell in a lifeless heap at his feet.