Kitabı oku: «The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret», sayfa 23
CHAPTER XXI
It is some time since we have seen Mrs. Lyle and her elder daughter.
We must seek them now in one of "the stately homes of England."
They are the guests of Lady Valentine at her elegant residence in the most fashionable quarter of London.
Nearly four years have elapsed since we first met the Lyles and heard the spirited discussion over little Queenie's first ball and Sydney's old green silk dress.
Sydney and Georgina would not need to scrimp little Queenie's share of finery to bedeck themselves now were she living.
Georgina's husband is wealthy and indulgent, and "Uncle Robert," the beneficent friend of their earlier days, has charged himself with Sydney's support ever since her father died until recently, when she has married a wealthy man.
Mrs. Lyle lives with Georgina, and still enjoys the whirl of fashionable life as much as ever—indeed more than ever, for now there is no vexing question relative to the girls' finery disturbing her placid mind.
It is a chilly morning in mid-winter, and the three ladies are sitting in a pleasant morning-room, Georgina, grown plump and indolent, idly reclining in an easy-chair, with her dimpled white hands lazily folded over her silken lap, Mrs. Lyle perusing a morning paper, and Sydney gazing restlessly out of the window—watching, perhaps, for her husband—the honeymoon is not a month old yet, and she is naturally impatient at his absence.
Into this quiet scene enters Lord Valentine and tosses some cards into his wife's lap.
"Tickets for La Reine Blanche to-night," he says.
All three ladies utter a cry of delight.
"At last," exclaims Mrs. Lyle, in a spasm of anticipation.
"Yes, at last," laughs my Lord Valentine. "The great American actress will play at the theater to-night, and we shall have a chance to see if she is really as great an artiste as Madame Rumor reports."
"Here is a paragraph regarding her now," says Mrs. Lyle, and taking up the paper, she reads aloud:
"The beautiful and gifted young American actress, Madame Reine De Lisle, will make her debut before a London audience to-night in the great emotional play of 'Romeo and Juliet.' The fame of this wonderful artiste has preceded her to England, and all lovers of the drama are on the qui vive for the first appearance of La Reine Blanche, as her admirers call her."
"La Reine Blanche," said Lord Valentine's little sister, looking up from her volume of history as she sat in a corner by the fire. "La Reine Blanche—that means 'the white queen.' They used to call Mary Queen of Scots La Reine Blanche, because she was so fair and lovely, and because she wore a white dress when she was in mourning. I have just been reading about her in my history. I wonder if this great actress is beautiful also?"
"She is said to be the most beautiful blonde in the world, Alice," said Lord Valentine, smiling down at the little school-girl.
A slight cloud has shadowed the brightness of Lady Valentine's face while little Lady Alice is speaking. She leans toward her mother, and says in a slightly lowered voice, but one which is distinctly audible to Sydney:
"Alice's French recalls my own, mamma. Have you ever thought what the name of this great tragedy queen, if rendered into English, would be?"
"Reine De Lisle," repeated Mrs. Lyle, musingly.
Then she gives a great start.
"It would be—ah, it would be Queen Lyle!"
"Exactly," says Georgina. "Quite an odd coincidence. Is it not?"
She leans back in her seat with a thoughtful look on her pretty pink and white face.
Old times and old interests crowd into her mind with the memory of her younger sister. Time has thrown a veil over Queenie's faults and follies, and Georgina recalls her now with a softening remembrance, and half regrets the scorn she cast upon her when she returned to them so strangely.
"But ah! that missing year," she asks herself, as she has done many times before. "Where was it spent?"
Sydney had risen at the first mention of Queenie's name and swept out of the room. Neither time nor change had softened her hatred and resentment against poor little Queenie.
She had hated her beautiful sister while living, and she hated her, even in her grave, so bitterly that she could not endure the mention of her name even now when years had come and gone.
CHAPTER XXII
"Let us go home, mother, I am tired already. The play is sickening; I always thought so."
It is Sydney who speaks, and her voice is full of restless discontent.
She is in a box at the theater, looking brilliantly beautiful in black velvet and diamonds.
The place is packed from pit to dome; but in the dazzling rows of fair faces, there is not one handsomer than hers, even now when it is marred by that look of impatience, almost anger, that rests upon it like a threatening cloud upon a summer sky.
Mrs. Lyle, a passionate lover of the drama, turns a look of dismay upon her handsome daughter.
"Oh, not yet," she said quickly. "I would not miss seeing the play through for anything!"
"You have seen it often enough before," objects Sydney. "But if you are determined to stay I will go alone, if Lord Valentine will put me into the carriage."
"Don't go yet," says Lord Valentine, turning his eyes a moment from the stage to glance at his sister-in-law a trifle impatiently. "At least wait until Ernscliffe comes."
"He does not appear to be coming at all. I will not wait for him," Sydney answers, and the look of discontent deepens into downright vexation.
At that moment the box door opens and a gentleman comes up behind her chair.
Georgina turns quickly.
"Ah, Captain Ernscliffe, you are just in time," she says. "Here is Sydney trying to persuade us to go home before the play is half over. Perhaps you can induce her to wait."
Sydney looks up to him and a tender smile curves her crimson lips.
"You are late," she murmurs.
"I was detained," he answers, carelessly. "How are you enjoying the performance of the great actress?"
Her lip curls scornfully.
"Not at all. I am tired of the whole sickening thing. Will you take me home?"
"Is the balcony scene over yet?" he asks.
"Oh, no," Lady Valentine answers; "only the first act."
"Do you really want to go, Sydney?" he asks.
"I really want to go," she answers, rising and drawing her opera cloak about her white shoulders.
He gives her his arm in silence, and leads her away, puts her into the carriage, and they are whirled rapidly homeward; but when he sees her safely inside Lord Valentine's handsome house he turns to go back.
"You will not leave me?" Sydney says, pleadingly, and laying her white, jeweled hand on his black coat sleeve.
"I wish to see the play out," he answers, with a touch of impatience in his voice.
"I assure you it is not worth seeing. The acting is merely mediocre. Madame De Lisle has been greatly over-rated," she urges, with a tone of anxiety in her voice, as she looks down, almost afraid that he will detect the falsehood she is telling in her eager face.
"You make me more curious than ever," he answers, lightly. "I must certainly see her and judge for myself. Perhaps the wonderful beauty over which men rave so much has blinded the judgment of the critics. Au revoir!"
He frees himself from her clasp gently but firmly, and runs down the steps.
Sydney stands as he has left her, the rich cloak falling from her shoulders, her hands clasped before her, a tearless misery looking forth from her dark eyes.
"I have lied to him and gained nothing by it," she murmurs, in a passionate undertone. "He will go back there, he will see that terrible resemblance that shocked us all, and he will be reminded of the one whom I wish him to forget. Oh, it is a dreadful coincidence! The same name, the same face, the same voice! If we had lost her in any way save by death, I could have sworn that it was Queenie herself that I saw to-night dancing on the stage at Lady Capulet's ball."
Captain Ernscliffe hastened back to the theater, anxious to be in time for the second act, which is a favorite with all admirers of "Romeo and Juliet."
Lord Valentine glances around as he enters the box and drops into a chair.
"Ah, Ernscliffe," he says; "just in time. The balcony scene is on."
Ernscliffe leans forward, scanning the stage eagerly, and quite unconscious that his three companions in the box are regarding him with curious eyes, anxious to note what impression the great actress would produce upon him.
He sees the sighing Romeo walking about and soliloquizing in the garden of the hostile Capulet, the gentle Juliet in the balcony above him. His dark eyes rest on her for a moment; then he gives a violent start.
"Heaven!" he mutters under his breath, and grows pale beneath his olive skin.
"He can see the likeness, too," Lady Valentine whispered to her mother.
Rapt, spellbound, like one in a bewildering dream, Captain Ernscliffe bends forward, the deep pallor of painful emotion on his dusk, handsome face, his dark eyes fixed on the hapless young Juliet in a wild, astonished, incredulous gaze as she leans upon the balcony, murmuring words of love to handsome young Romeo in the garden beneath. It was no wonder, for Juliet, in her fair, young beauty, her misty, white robe, looped with rosebuds, her floating curls of gold, is the exact and perfect counterpart of Queenie Lyle when he first met her at Mrs. Kirk's grand ball. Not a tone of her voice, not a curve of her lip, not the fall of a ringlet differs from the lovely girl who had won his heart that never-to-be-forgotten night—the peerless bride that death had torn from his arms in the very moment that he claimed her as his own!
Like one in a dream he listened and looked. He heard Romeo exclaim in deep and passionate accents:
"'Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—'"
And Juliet interrupted in those silver-sweet tones so strangely familiar to his ear:
"'Oh! swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.'"
With those words:
"Oh! swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon,"
Juliet raised her eyes that had been downcast and fixed on her lover, and looked upward as if to gaze upon the fair orb of which she spoke.
In that moment her dark-blue eyes, shining like stars of the night, encountered the fixed and passionate gaze of the handsome man in the box above her. She started—it was not his dreaming fancy—it was too palpable to all—recovered herself with an effort, and went on in a voice that trembled in spite of her brave endeavor:
"'That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.'"
"Great God! It is Queenie herself! Do the dead come back from the grave? I must see her, speak to her!" exclaimed Captain Ernscliffe, in a passionate undertone, as he sprang up and turned toward the box door.
Lord Valentine, who had watched him attentively, caught him by the arm.
"Ernscliffe, are you mad? We all see the resemblance. It is accidental, of course. What would you do?"
Ernscliffe shook off his grasp roughly.
"Yes, I am mad!" he exclaimed, "for I believe that the dead is alive, and that yonder Juliet is my lost bride, Queenie Lyle!"
He opened the box door with a shaking hand and rushed wildly out.
La Reine Blanche went on with her part and acted more brilliantly than ever. She surpassed herself. She seemed under the influence of some strong excitement that lent new power and force to her superb rendition of Juliet. The vast and brilliant audience was fairly carried away.
At the close of the second act flowers fairly rained upon her. She was called back before the curtain and the thunders of applause shook the building.
Then the manager came to her with a little bit of pasteboard in his hand.
"Madame De Lisle," he said, "there is a gentleman outside who is so opportune in his desire to see you that I was forced to bring you his card, although I know you always refuse to make men acquaintances."
She took the card and read the name:
"Lawrence Ernscliffe."
"Will you see him?" asked the manager, seeing that she stood silent as if hesitating.
"No, no," she answered. "Tell him he must excuse me—I have to dress for my part in the third act."
The manager turned away and the beautiful actress pressed her lips passionately upon the insensible little bit of pasteboard she held in her white and jeweled hand.
"At last, at last!" she murmured, "yet I must not meet him to-night. I could not go on with my part—it would unfit me for anything. I must postpone my long-sought happiness yet a little longer. To-morrow—ah, to-morrow!"
She walked up and down, pressing her hands on her wildly beating heart as if to still its convulsive throbs.
"They say that happiness never kills," she said. "If it were otherwise I should feel afraid—my heart aches with joy—it seems as if it would burst, it is so full of happy emotion!"
She went back on the stage and a timid glance showed her Lawrence Ernscliffe back in the box looking terribly restless and disappointed. She was afraid to meet his eyes again, but she knew that he watched her through every scene, devouring every movement with passionate, yearning eyes.
At the close of the act she saw a lovely bouquet thrown from his hand, and picking it up she discovered a tiny note among the flowers.
When the curtain fell she read the hastily penciled lines:
"Madame De Lisle:—For God's sake let me see you, if only for a moment. I must speak to you; I shall go mad if you don't take pity on my anxiety and grant an interview to
"Lawrence Ernscliffe."
Tears came into the eyes of the beautiful actress as she read those lines; but when after another act the same card was handed her, she again refused to see the writer on pretence of dressing for her next appearance.
"To-morrow," she murmured to herself, "I will see him. To-night I cannot, I am utterly exhausted, I must have rest."
When the play was over she came out on the arm of the manager, her maid on the other side of her. As she stepped into her carriage she saw a dark, handsome face regarding her earnestly and a little reproachfully. The closing door sent it from sight, and she was whirled away to her hotel. She did not know that Captain Ernscliffe had sprung into a cab and followed her.
Neither did Captain Ernscliffe know that a mysterious-looking lady, heavily cloaked and veiled, had gotten into another cab and followed him.
It was Sydney, driven to desperation by her jealous misery.
She had returned to the theater sub rosa, and been a witness to Captain Ernscliffe's agitated recognition of the actress, and his subsequent persistent attempt to secure an interview with her. Heedless of everything, and rendered reckless by her indefinable dread of some impending evil, she determined to follow him and prevent, if possible, an interview between him and the brilliant actress who so strikingly resembled his lost and lamented bride.
It was midnight when the three vehicles drew up before the grand entrance of the hotel where La Reine Blanche had her elegant suite of apartments. She was crossing the pavement on the arm of her elderly duenna when a light touch arrested her footsteps. She turned and looked into the face of Captain Ernscliffe. It was white, wild, eager.
"One word, if you please, Madame De Lisle," he exclaimed, in an eager, agitated voice.
She paused a moment and clung tremblingly to the arm of her attendant.
"That is impossible to-night, sir," she answered in a low, constrained voice. "Call on me to-morrow at noon. I will hear you then."
Without another word she turned and fled up the steps. He stood looking at her blankly a moment, then re-entered his cab and was driven away. He did not notice the heavily-draped figure of a woman that had stood almost at his elbow, and that now ran lightly up the hotel steps, into the wide, lighted hall.
CHAPTER XXIII
La Reine Blanche went directly to her dressing-room, where her maid divested her of her heavy wrappings and out-door costume, and substituted a dressing-gown of white Turkish silk confined at the waist by gold cord and tassels. Then she took down the burnished golden hair, and prepared to brush and plait it for the night.
As she took up the pearl-handled brush there came a timid, hesitating rap at the outer door. Madame De Lisle started and trembled.
"Admit no one to-night, Elsie," she said, nervously, as the maid turned toward the door.
Elsie came back in a minute with a penciled slip of paper. Her mistress took it, and read these words:
"Will Madame De Lisle accord the favor of a brief interview to a lady who calls on important business?"
"A lady—at this time of the night!" said La Reine Blanche, lifting her arched brows very slightly.
"Yes, madam, a real lady—at least she spoke and moved like one," replied Elsie, respectfully.
"Tell her I can see no one to-night. I am too weary; she must call another time," said the actress, in an agitated voice.
Elsie turned away with the message, but before she reached the door she was confronted by the lady, who had heard the refusal and entered in spite of it.
She advanced into the room, and stood before the actress, who had risen from her seat and leaned against a chair, her golden hair falling about her like a misty veil.
"Madame De Lisle," said the intruder, in a slightly tremulous voice, "I entreat you to pardon this untimely intrusion. Will you send your maid away, that I may plead my justifiable excuse?"
La Reine Blanche motioned to the maid to withdraw into an inner room at the pleasure of her visitor. Then she looked wistfully at the lady, who had thrown off her concealing hood and cloak, and stood revealed in all her majestic beauty, clothed splendidly in black velvet and sparkling diamonds.
"You are surprised to see me here?" said Sydney, interrogatively.
The actress bowed silently. She seemed like one stricken dumb and incapable of speech.
"You were annoyed this evening by the persistent attempts of a gentleman to obtain speech with you," went on Sydney.
Again Madame De Lisle bowed silently. She seemed like one dazed, and stood regarding her visitor without remembering that courtesy required her to offer her a seat.
"It is of that I wish to speak, madam. I heard you tell him he might call on you to-morrow at noon. I beg you, Madame De Lisle, to recall that permission, and to utterly decline the acquaintance of Lawrence Ernscliffe now and forever."
The failing senses of La Reine Blanche seemed to return to her with a gasp. She straightened her drooping figure and looked haughtily at the speaker.
"May I inquire why you proffer such a singular request?" she asked, coldly.
"Is it necessary that I should explain my motive for the request? If I do so, it will be at the expense of some humiliation to myself," said the visitor, and a faint flush colored her handsome, high-bred face.
For a moment they stood regarding each other fixedly—the handsome brunette in her velvet and diamonds, the lily-white blonde in her sweeping robe and veil of golden hair, looking like a "white queen" indeed.
Then the actress said, in a voice full of veiled passion and almost defiance:
"It would take a strong motive indeed to cause me to decline the acquaintance of Lawrence Ernscliffe. Let me know your reason that I may judge if it be potent enough to secure your wish."
With a swift rush forward Sydney fell on her knees before the beautiful woman.
"Madame De Lisle," she said, pleadingly, "I humble myself before you to beg for my happiness! I love Lawrence Ernscliffe; I hoped I was winning his love in return until he saw you on the stage to-night. Your beauty, your splendid acting, above all, your striking resemblance to one he has loved and lost, took his heart by storm. He is carried away by this mad and wicked infatuation. Nothing but a studied coldness from you can check this mad passion. Will you, now that I have told you all, do as I have begged you?"
Something pathetic in the woman's humility touched a pitying chord in the heart of La Reine Blanche. She took her gently by the hand and placed her in a chair.
"You say that I resemble one whom he has loved and lost," she said. "Who was she?"
"She was his bride," answered Sydney, "his bride and my sister. She died at the altar. But I had the better claim upon him. He admired me and I believe he would have loved and married me if he had not inopportunely met her. But, as I have told you, she died. Now, after years, I had almost won his love again when you came here with her face and won him from me! It is almost as if the dead had come back."
La Reine Blanche looked at her with a strange smile.
"I have heard it said," she remarked, "that if the dead could come back after a few years they would find their places filled, their names forgotten, and themselves unwelcome."
Sydney gave her a keen glance, half-frightened, half-defiant.
"Madam, that is true," she said. "If my sister could come back to us we could not help being sorry. She was a trouble and disgrace to us while living, and we cannot help feeling relieved that the grass is growing over all her faults and follies."
"You did not love your sister?" said the actress, with her blue eyes blazing like stars.
Sydney looked at her with a flash of hatred in her dusky orbs.
"Madam," she said, "could you love the thing that stood between you and your happiness?"
They looked at each other a moment in silence, and the flashing eyes of the beautiful actress seemed to burn into Sydney's heart. A sudden horrible fear darted into her mind.
"Has the dead come back?" she asked herself. "Oh! no, it cannot be!"
"You will not answer me," she said, wildly. "Oh, Madame De Lisle, be generous! You have lovers by the score; they tell me you have refused to marry a duke. One heart more or less cannot matter to you. You must not take my Lawrence from me! He is my all!"
"Your all!" exclaimed La Reine Blanche, with a curling lip. "Lady, you prate of your love for Lawrence Ernscliffe, you tell me that he is your all! You tell me what he is to you—will you tell me what you are to him?"
There was a tone of triumph in her sweet, incisive voice as she confronted her visitor.
"Madam," said Sydney, proudly and haughtily, "he is my husband—I am his wife!"
"His wife! Oh! my God!"
It was the cry of a breaking heart that cleft the midnight air. The actress staggered backward, tried to catch at a chair to save herself from falling, and then dropped heavily to the floor and laid there without a sign of life.
Elsie came rushing in from the next room, frightened at the sound.
"Oh, my poor mistress—you have killed her!" she cried.
"It is nothing but a swoon—she will soon revive," was the contemptuous answer.
But in her heart Sydney prayed, "Oh, that it might be death!"
But the impious prayer was not answered thus. Elsie's energetic efforts soon restored her mistress to consciousness, and lying languidly on a silken divan, she turned her beautiful eyes back to Sydney's face.
"You may retire again," Sydney said to the maid. "We have much still to say to each other."
The maid was about to refuse, but an imperative command from her mistress caused her to retire at once. Then the two beautiful women looked at each other with ominous glances.
"So you are Queenie herself? I thought as much," exclaimed Sydney, in a hissing tone of hate.
"Yes, I am Queenie," answered the actress, coolly. "I have come back from the grave, Sydney; but it seems that I have neither name nor place in the hearts that once were mine!"
"No, and never shall have!" exclaimed Sydney, passionately, to herself, but aloud she said, in a voice that she strove to render calm and controlled:
"Will you tell me why you are here?"
"I am here to claim my husband!" answered Queenie, promptly and firmly.
If a look could have killed, Queenie Ernscliffe would have been stricken dead at her sister's feet.
"You will have to prove a few things before you accomplish your purpose," she retorted.
"I can prove all that is necessary," was the calm reply.
"Can you justify yourself in the matter of that shameful hidden year in your life of which I shall surely inform Captain Ernscliffe?" asked Sydney, malevolently.
"Sydney, forbear," exclaimed the actress, lifting her hand as if to ward off some cruel blow. "I have borne all that I can bear to-night! You must leave me now. Come and lunch with me to-morrow, and you shall hear the story of that missing year—you shall judge whether I can justify myself in the eyes of my husband."
"Will you promise not to see him until after that?" asked Sydney, anxiously, as she turned to go.
"Yes, I will promise," answered Queenie.
