Kitabı oku: «The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret», sayfa 20

CHAPTER XII

Queenie heard the key grate in the lock and sprang up, uttering wild shrieks of passion and despair, almost beside herself with the horror of her new situation.

But no response came to her frenzied screams and cries. Perhaps those gilded walls had echoed such wails of agony before, and the hearts of those who heard them had grown callous with long familiarity.

She ran up and down the room like one mad, alternately skrieking and beating upon the locked door, until she fell upon the floor, conquered by sheer exhaustion.

She lay there awhile, then sprang up restlessly again.

"I will endure it no longer," she said, passionately; "I will throw myself down from the window and kill myself!"

Full of that wild, suicidal resolve, she ran to the window and pushed up the sash.

The night was far spent, and that awful darkness that comes just before dawn obscured everything, its blackness intensified by the drizzling rain that still poured steadily down.

Queenie fell upon her knees with the rain beating in upon her white face and long, flowing hair, and clasped her little hands together as her father had taught her to do when she was but a toddling baby-girl.

"Oh, God!" she prayed, lifting her lovely, despairing face to the dark sky as if to catch a glimpse of the all-merciful Father to whom she appealed. "Oh, God, pity and forgive me for sending my soul uncalled for before its divine Maker. And, Heavenly Father, whatever of wrong I have committed, do Thou pity and pardon it. That sin with which I stand charged Thou knowest I would have died a thousand deaths rather than willfully commit it, and–"

She paused, overcome by agonized recollections, and rising, peered out into the darkness below.

"In the morning when he comes out into the garden," she said, "he will find my poor, crushed, bleeding body lying beneath this window. Surely, then, when his murderous hate has driven me to self-destruction, his revenge will be complete!"

She placed her hand on the sill of the window, and leaned forward for the fatal spring that was to end her earthly sorrows.

How slight a thing can distract our attention even in the most absorbing moments of our lives.

Queenie's hands fell upon a cold, wet mass of leaves, and a gust of intoxicating perfume blew into her face. She immediately drew back.

She had suddenly remembered that some thickly twisted vines of ivy and sweet-scented honeysuckle were trained up to her window in the second story.

A thought, as sudden as an inspiration, darted into her mind.

Instead of dashing her brains out on the hard ground below, why not escape down this ladder of vines to love and happiness again?

"I will do it," she said to herself. "I will go back to my husband. I will tell him I was stolen from my grave, and that I revived in the fresh air, and life came back to me in its full tide. Oh! how glad he will be to see me—my poor Lawrence. He loved me so dearly!"

In the swift revulsion of feeling from despair and desperation to love and hope again she gave way to a burst of hysterical tears.

"I must not stay here to weep," she said, at length, brushing the crystal drops away from her cheeks. "I must be far on my way to my husband before he discovers my escape."

She took up the thick, hooded waterproof cloak that lay on a chair, and wrapped it around her.

"This will never do," she said, seeing the long train of her splendid dress sweeping from beneath the hem of the cloak. "I must not be seen going into the city in this plight."

She took off the cloak and tucked up the long train and pinned it securely around her, resumed the waterproof, and climbed up into the window.

"Farewell, Leon Vinton," she said. "Pray God I may never look on your evil face again!"

She took a firm hold of the thick body of the vine with both hands, and with a slight shudder swung herself forward into the darkness.

The vine swayed and creaked with her weight, and for one dreadful moment she thought she should be precipitated to the ground to the death which a moment before she had courted, but which now, in the new dawn of hope, she shunned. The shower of rain-drops, shaken down from the leaves into her face, almost took her breath away. The wild wind tossed her from side to side like a feather as she clung to her frail support.

"I shall surely be killed," she said to herself in terror.

But no—the delicate reed to which she had trusted her existence did not fail her. She waited breathlessly a moment, then feeling that it still held secure, she cautiously slipped one hand and then the other down to a lower hold on the body of the vine. In that way, with many frightened heart-beats, with sore and bleeding hands, and at infinite pains, she at length accomplished the descent, and stood upon the ground enfolded like a mantle by the thick darkness and pouring rain.

At the gate she paused again, and looked up at one window in a wing of the house where a night-light glimmered faintly.

"Farewell, Leon Vinton," she said, again. "May the vengeance of God be swift to overtake and punish you for your awful sins!"

She opened the gate softly and stepped out into the wet and slushy road, wetting her thin, white satin slippers and silk stockings through and through at the first step. She did not care for it, she scarcely felt it, her heart was beating so quick and fast with joy.

"I am free!" was the exultant cry of her heart. "I am free—I am going back to my husband. I shall tell him how fondly I have learned to love him since I promised to be his wife. I will cling so closely to his side that Leon's vindictive rage can never touch me!"

She pushed on steadily through the mud and water, her long garments speedily becoming soaked with the watery elements and greatly impeding her ease and rapidity of motion, while her heart began to beat wildly with terror at the darkness, the desolation and loneliness of the country road.

"I am very tired," she moaned, after traveling what seemed to her a long distance. "It is five miles to the city. I must have come two miles at least. I wonder if I can hold out to get there. My feet are so heavy with the mud and the water that I can scarcely lift them. I must sit down here and rest myself one minute—only one little minute!"

She dropped down like a log on the grass by the side of the road, and the first pale beams of the watery dawn just breaking in the east, showed her deathly-white face just fading into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XIII

When Queenie threw herself down upon the wet grass in a weariness so utter that she could no longer hold her aching limbs upright, she had thought that a minute of rest would put new strength into her exhausted frame, and enable her to pursue her journey.

But exhausted nature could bear no more. Her unbroken fast of nearly three days, and her wet and draggled condition combined to weaken and depress her. Her limbs trembled under her, and when she fell down for one minute's rest, a deep unconsciousness stole upon her, wrapping her senses in lethargy. Her last conscious thought was one of agonized terror, lest ere she revived her enemy should discover her escape, and set out to trace her.

While she lay there mute and still, the dawn began to grow brighter in the east, the rain slackened, and a few pale beams of sunshine striking upon the scene, showed that she had fallen almost at the gate of a little farm-house from whose chimneys the blue smoke curled cheerfully up, showing that the inhabitants were already up and about their daily labors.

Presently a middle-aged man, in the rough, coarse garb of a farmer came out of the house and strode down to the gate, whistling a merry tune, and snapping and cracking the great leathern whip he carried in his hand.

As he stepped outside the gate his cheerful whistle suddenly ended in an exclamation of terror.

His glance had fallen on the still form lying just outside the gate, with its lovely, white face and closed eyes upturned to the light.

He stood still a moment, looking down at her in awe and consternation.

"What a pretty young un," he said, aloud, "And she's dead, I mistrust—stone dead!"

The next moment he leaned over the gate and called loudly:

"Wife, wife, come out!"

The door opened and a middle-aged, pleasant-looking woman appeared. She was flushed as if she had been over the fire, and held some small cooking utensil in her hand.

"Well, Jerry," she said, "what do you want now?"

"Come out and see," he answered.

"Well, but I can't leave the cakes," said she, intent on her housewifely cares; "they will burn."

"Tell Jennie to mind the gridiron," he said, "and do you come out to me."

She went in and reappeared after a minute, coming down the path with her homely check apron thrown over her head.

"What now, Jerry?" she said, half-pettishly, half good-naturedly. "What is lost this morning? A pity I have to mind the farm-tools as well as the frying-pans!"

Jerry, whom this home thrust betrayed to be a good-natured, shiftless fellow, dependent on his better-half's more orderly ways, looked up to laugh, then checked himself, awed by the presence of that still form at his feet.

"There's naught misplaced this time, my dear," he said; "you shouldn't be forever twitting a poor, careless fellow with his faults."

"What is't amiss, then?" she said, as she came up to the gate.

"Look there!" he answered, pointing down. "A poor tramp dead in the road!"

The good woman looked, started, and her healthy, red cheeks turned white.

"Oh, my Heavenly Father!" she ejaculated. "Who is't, Jerry?"

"How should I know, woman?" asked her husband. "I've but just stepped outside the gate and found her."

"And is she really, truly dead, Jerry?"

"She looks like it," he said. "But stoop down and feel of her heart, Jane. See if it beats."

The woman came out of the gate, and bending down, put her hand half-timorously inside of Queenie's cloak and felt her heart.

"Yes—no—yes, it does beat just the leastest bit," she said. "Poor creature! Take her up and carry her into the kitchen, Jerry. Perhaps we may revive her."

"That's like your good heart, Jane," said the farmer, as he lifted up the limp form and conveyed it into the kitchen.

A rosy, exceedingly pretty, dark-eyed girl who was busily frying corn-cakes over the fire came forward with an exclamation of surprise as he laid his burden down upon the lounge that stood in one corner.

"Never mind the cakes, Jennie," said her mother. "Come and lend a hand to save a poor creetur as your father found perishin' in the road."

"What can I do, mother?" asked the girl.

"Take them muddy things off her feet, and rub the poor creetur's limbs dry," said the good woman, busying herself in removing the wet cloak, "I declare to gracious!" she said, after a moment. "How blind men are. Jerry called her a tramp. Look at them rings on her fingers! Look at that dress, fine enough for the finest bride! Is that the way tramps dress, Mr. Thorn?"

"She's of the finest quality, mother," said the girl called Jennie. "Her slippers are white satin, her stockings pure silk, and worked all over with flowers."

"Never mind the shoes and the stockings, Jennie," said her father, "but rub the little un's feet. See how cold and blue they are."

Thus adjured, Jennie brought a warm flannel cloth, and began to rub the icy little feet of the wayfarer, while her mother brought strong camphor and bathed the pale face; now and then applying a bottle of ammonia to her nostrils.

Under this vigorous treatment, and the revivifying heat of the room, the patient's heart began to beat quicker, and a faint, thread-like pulse to flutter in her blue-veined wrist.

"Poor soul!" exclaimed Mrs. Thorn. "I do wonder how she came to be out in such a storm? All in her party dress, too! She'd be as pretty as a pink, with her eyes open, and a bit more color in her cheeks."

The farmer now approached with a cup of warm coffee and a teaspoon.

"Belike she needs summat to warm her up," he said. "Take the spoon, Jane, and force a wee bit of coffee between her lips."

Mrs. Thorn did as requested, but with no visible result for the better. The patient still lay with closed eyes and lips, showing no sign of life, save in the tremulous beat of her heart and the faint, faint pulse of her wrist.

Mrs. Thorn still worked patiently over her, but at the end of an hour looked disheartened.

"I mistrust that this is a case for the doctor," she said; "we have done what we could, but all to no use."

"I could bring a doctor, but who's to pay him?" said the farmer. "We have no money, Jane, and Jennie's out of work."

"The lady could pay him, herself," suggested Jennie. "There's them rings on her fingers worth a mint of money."

"Yea, that's so," said the mother. "Go and get the doctor, Jennie. The lady will die, I'm afraid, if she lays in this state much longer."

"I'll go and bring Dr. Pillsbury, then," said the farmer, going out, followed by repeated injunctions from his wife to hurry.

"There's not a minute to lose," she said. "Even now it may be too late to raise the poor creetur to life again, so low as she has sunk."

CHAPTER XIV

Farmer Thorn stepped out of the gate, and was about to proceed on his way, when his attention was arrested by the rather unusual sight of a gentleman tearing madly along the road on a fine black horse.

The farmer was so impressed with the parting injunction of his wife as to the necessity of a physician's immediate presence, that a wild fancy that this hurrying horseman might belong to the medical fraternity darted directly into his mind.

He accordingly lifted his hand as a signal for the impetuous rider to pause.

The gentleman checked his impatient steed, and inquired with a smothered oath.

"What the deuce is your business with me? I'm in a devil of a hurry!"

"I mistrusted you might be a doctor?" said the farmer, inquiringly.

"The devil! Who's sick?" was the exceedingly civil rejoinder.

"A strange lady that we found in the road this morning. She's like to die," said Mr. Thorn.

In the twinkling of an eye the rider was off his horse, with the bridle thrown over his arm.

"Yes, I'm a doctor," he said, briskly. "Here, tie up my horse, and let me see the patient at once."

Mr. Thorn was so impressed by the confident air of the man that he readily obeyed the somewhat arrogant command, and Mrs. Thorn and Jennie were somewhat surprised at his quick return, accompanied by an utter stranger.

"I met a doctor right at the gate, wife," he explained; "so I did not go for Dr. Pillsbury."

"Here's your patient, sir," said Mrs. Thorn, turning back the gay patchwork counterpane, in which she had carefully enveloped the unconscious Queenie.

What was her surprise to see him fall upon his knees and clasp his hands, while his dark, handsome features became luminous with mingled joy and sorrow.

"Oh, my dear sister, my sweet, unhappy girl!" he exclaimed, "is it thus I find you. Oh! madam, is she indeed dead?" he inquired, turning sadly to Mrs. Thorn.

"Her heart beats just a little, sir," said Mrs. Thorn, looking at him in surprise.

"Do you know the lady, sir?" asked Jennie Thorn, a little timidly.

The man turned around, and looked at the farmer's exceedingly pretty daughter with a furtive look of admiration. Instead of answering her he spoke to the farmer.

"Your daughter, I suppose, sir?"

"Yes, sir, my daughter Jennie," said the farmer, with a glance of pride at his pretty daughter. "She's been out at service this three years, sir, but at present she's out of a place."

"Ah!" he said, politely; then turning back to the motionless form before him, he said: "Yes, Miss Jennie, I know this lady. She is my own sister. Unfortunately she is insane—driven mad by an unhappy love affair. She persists in dressing herself in white and calling herself a bride. This morning, just before daybreak, she escaped from us, and I have been seeking her everywhere. It was a fortunate chance that led me here.

"Do you think that she will revive, sir?" inquired Mrs. Thorn, who was watching the patient anxiously.

He turned and laid his hand over the girl's heart, knitting his brows with an air of medical wisdom.

"Oh, yes," he said, confidently. "There is life here yet. She is weak and exhausted, having eaten but little for several days. Have you tried forcing a little wine between her lips?"

"No; we had none," apologized the farmer; "we are but poor folks."

Pretty Jennie Thorn blushed and looked away at her father's frank admission. She felt ashamed of their poverty before the haughty glance of the handsome stranger.

The man took a little cut-glass flask with a golden stopper from his pocket. It was full of wine, and he lifted Queenie's head on his arm, poured a few drops between her pale lips and suffered them to trickle down her throat. He repeated the operation several times, then laid her head gently back on the pillow.

"You will soon see her rally now," he said, looking at Jennie with a smile. "And now I must be making arrangements to take my poor little sister home again."

A startled cry came from the lips of the invalid.

The man's last words had penetrated her reviving senses.

She raised herself on her arm and looked about her at the unfamiliar room and the strange faces around her.

"Leon Vinton, you here?" she exclaimed in a piteous tone. "Oh, Heaven, where am I?"

"We are all friends, miss," said Mrs. Thorn, soothingly. "You fell exhausted by the roadside, and we took you in and cared for you until your brother came along and found you here."

Queenie's eyes flashed scornfully into Leon Vinton's face.

"Does he say that he is my brother?" she demanded, pointing her finger at him and looking at Mrs. Thorn.

"Yes, miss," answered the woman.

"He lies!" exclaimed Queenie, passionately, gaining strength with her anger. "I am nothing to him, nothing! He is trying to deceive you that he may get me into his power!"

Leon Vinton sighed mournfully, and shook his head as he looked around at the girl's auditors.

"Ah, my friends, I told you she was mad," he said, sadly. "You see she denies her own brother!"

"You are not my brother, villain!" exclaimed Queenie, angrily; and looking round at the others, she said: "My good friends, do not believe this man—I am no relative of his, and he is trying to deceive you, and get me into his power to torture my life out! Oh, sir, I appeal to you, and to you, madam, also, to protect me from this villain. Drive him forth this moment from this honest house whose pure air he pollutes with his foul presence!"

The farmer and his wife began to cast dark looks at Leon Vinton, so impressed were they with the earnestness of the girl's words and looks. They began to think it was the truth she spoke instead of the ravings of madness. The arch villain soon saw that they were inclined to doubt his word, and threw fresh earnestness and eloquence into his dramatic manner.

"Oh, my darling, unfortunate little sister," he cried, dropping on one knee beside her, and trying to take her hands in his, "how it grieves me that your distraught mind should take me for the accursed villain who has destroyed your happiness forever—me, your devoted brother, whose whole life is devoted to your service!"

"Villain! wretch!" exclaimed Queenie, "out of my sight before I try to kill you! Oh, will no one drive the monster away?" she wildly cried.

"She grows violent," said Vinton, looking sadly around him. "I must remove her from here before her frenzy leads her to harm some of you. Have you any kind of a comfortable trap that I could take her home in?" he inquired, looking at the farmer.

"I will not go with you!" exclaimed the unhappy girl. "I am going home to my husband. You shall not prevent me! Oh, sir," she cried, turning her streaming eyes on Mr. Thorn's face, "you will not suffer this man to take me away from here! I assure you, I am no kin of his, and that he is seeking my destruction. Grant me the shelter of your roof, and your manly protection against this villain's arts, till I can send word to my father and my husband to come for me."

Mr. Thorn looked at the agonized face of the beautiful girl, and he could not believe that she was insane. There seemed too much "method in her madness." He cast a suspicious look on Vinton, and answered firmly:

"Be calm, lady. He shall not take you away without proof of what he says about you. I will protect you!"

"Oh, father! how can you presume to doubt the gentleman's word?" exclaimed Jennie Thorn impulsively, for the man's handsome face and consummate acting had quite won her young, impressionable heart over to his side.

Leon Vinton cast a grateful look upon her, throwing so much impressiveness into his look that she dropped her eyes and blushed deeply. In that moment the villain saw the impression he had made upon her innocent heart, and the simple, trusting girl was from that instant marked as his victim.

"Sir," he said, turning to the farmer, and speaking in an imperious tone, "do not you know that I can take legal means to punish you for thus depriving me of the custody of my insane sister?"

"I do not believe she is insane," said the farmer, doggedly. "Neither do I believe that she is your sister. And you can't take her away from here without proving your right."

"Well said, husband!" exclaimed Mrs. Thorn, approvingly, for her motherly heart was full of sympathy for the distressed girl, who had so touchingly implored her protection.

Queenie cast a look of heartfelt gratitude upon these homely friends, who had espoused her cause in so outspoken a way; but simple Jennie Thorn exclaimed quickly:

"Oh, mother! oh, father! I'm sure the gent speaks the truth. The lady must be crazy; for how else could she be wandering in the night and the storm, in her white dress and thin satin slippers?"

"Hold your peace, girl. This is a matter for wiser heads than yours!" answered her father, rather shortly; and Jennie subsided into silence, not, however, without receiving the reward in another beaming look of gratitude from the dark eyes of the man whom she was defending.

Mr. Vinton tried another tack. Finding the farmer's sense of justice impregnable to threats, he put his hand in his pocket, and withdrew it filled with gold pieces. He held them toward the man with a significant look.

"Put your gold back, sir," said the farmer, sturdily. "We are poor folks enough, but gold can't buy our honor!" and though he was but a poor tiller of the soil, his mien was princely as he thus defended his honor.

Leon Vinton's brow grew black as night. He muttered some inaudible curses between his teeth. Only his sense of policy restrained him from knocking Mr. Thorn down.

"What am I to do?" he said, with an air of great perplexity. "Here is my poor sister lying here needing the care of her friends, and the comforts and luxuries of her home. Yet you will not permit me to exercise my right to remove her."

"Prove your right, sir," said the farmer, firmly; "that's all I want you to do."

"And if I prove my right to remove her you will suffer me to do so?" asked Leon, after a moment's earnest thought.

"Why, of course, sir. I'd have no right to detain her after that."

"He cannot prove his right!" exclaimed Queenie, who had lain silent for some minutes.

"Have you an errand boy?" asked Vinton, disregarding the interruption.

Mr. Thorn went to the door, and called "Jotham," and the boy-of-all-work shambled in.

"Do you know a cottage on the banks of the river, two miles from here, Jotham?"

"Ya'as, sur," said the boy, broadly.

Leon Vinton wrote these words on a slip of paper:

"Take the carriage and come here immediately."

He directed the note to Mrs. Bowers, and gave it to the boy, with instructions to deliver it at the cottage by the river.