Kitabı oku: «The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret», sayfa 24

CHAPTER XXIV

Sydney could not wait until the hour for luncheon next day. She was terribly afraid that Captain Ernscliffe might by some means secure a meeting with La Reine Blanche, and that the fatal truth might be revealed, to the utter destruction of the frail superstructure of her own happiness.

He had not been back to the house since he had left her to return to the theater the night before, and the most dreadful fancies continually darted through her mind.

It was impossible for her to wait until the hour her sister had specified. As early as ten o'clock she entered the hotel and was shown into the parlor of the great actress.

Queenie was at home. She had just returned from an early rehearsal at the theater, and lay resting on a low divan of cushioned blue satin.

She wore a trained dress of black velvet and satin, with creamy-hued laces at the wrists, and a fichu of the rarest old lace fastened at her throat by a brooch of dead gold. A single cluster of white hyacinth was fastened in with the lace, and filled the room with its subtle, delicious fragrance.

Her abundant, golden hair was braided into a coronet and confined with a comb of pearl. In spite of an almost marble pallor, and a look of terrible suffering, she appeared as lovely as Sydney had ever seen her.

At the entrance of her rival she lifted her head, and with a faint sigh motioned her to a seat near her.

"You come early," she said.

"I could not wait," Sydney answered. "I was too impatient. You have not spoken with—with–"

"Our husband!" said the actress, filling up the embarrassed pause with a faint and mirthless laugh. "No, Sydney, I have not spoken with him. I saw him on the pavement this morning when I left the theater, but I drew down my veil and looked another way."

The look of dread in Sydney's dark eyes softened into relief.

"Oh, Queenie," she exclaimed, "if you only would go away from here without speaking to him! Think of the consequences that would follow such a revelation—the nine days' wonder over you, the shame, the despair, the utter desolation for me! Oh, Queenie, if you would but go away with your secret untold, and leave my husband."

Queenie's red lips curled scornfully.

"Ah! Sydney," she said, "you were always selfish. You think only of yourself. You would sacrifice my happiness to your own."

"Your happiness, Queenie? Ah! what happiness could it give you to be re-united to Lawrence Ernscliffe? You never professed to love him!"

A crimson blush rose into Queenie's cheek. She put up her small hand to hide it; but when it fell to her side again the warm color had not faded. It seemed but to burn the brighter as she said in a low and earnest voice:

"No, Sydney, I never professed to love him. I do not think I loved him when I promised to marry him. And yet, in the few weeks that intervened before he led me to the altar, I learned to love him with as deep and fond a love as the most exacting heart could have asked for. Time, silence and suffering have but deepened and intensified that passion, until it has become like the very pulse of my heart. He is the one dear thing to me, yet you ask me to give him to you."

"You have your art—your profession. Surely you love that," said Sydney, anxiously.

"It has been but the means to an end," replied Queenie. "It has never filled but half my heart. The other half has never been at rest. It has always been seeking its lost mate. How could I give him up now that I have found him?"

"You mean to take him from me, then?" said Sydney, with a dangerous gleam of hatred firing into her black eyes.

La Reine Blanche did not answer. The blush had faded from her cheeks, and left them deathly pale.

Sydney could read nothing of her thoughts in the blue eyes, half veiled by the sweeping lashes. She moved restlessly in her chair.

"You promised to tell me your story," she said, coldly and sharply. "I am here to listen."

The faded color rushed back in crimson waves to Queenie's face. She looked up into the proud, scornful features of her sister.

"I am going to keep my word," she said, "and yet, Sydney, will you believe me when I tell you that I would rather tell my story to any other person on earth than you? Yes, I think I could sooner tell Lawrence Ernscliffe himself. I do not believe that anyone else would judge me as harshly and unpityingly as you will do—not even a stranger."

She was silent a moment, and lay still, shading her face with one small, white hand that sparkled with diamonds; then, as Sydney made no answer, she said, with a visible effort:

"Where shall I begin, Sydney?"

"At the beginning," answered Sydney, curtly.

"I must go back four years, then," said Queenie. "Sydney, do you remember the day that I sold my painted fan that Uncle Robert gave me to buy a tarleton dress to wear to Mrs. Kirk's grand ball?"

"Yes, I remember."

"That was the beginning, Sydney. I saw a gentleman in the store where I sold my fan—the handsomest man I ever saw in my life—tall, dark, elegant. He looked me straight in the face as I left the store, and my foolish heart fluttered into my mouth. You know I was very young and romantic at that time—both things of which I cannot accuse myself now," added Queenie, thinking sagely that her present twenty-one years made her quite elderly.

"Yes," said Sydney, curtly.

"The man bought my fan as soon as I left the store; then he followed me. I did not know these things then, but I learned them afterward. Perhaps you remember that 'an unknown admirer' sent the fan back to me?"

"Yes," said Sydney, curtly.

"You remember also, Sydney, that every day an elegant bouquet, formed of the choicest hot-house flowers, came to me from the same unknown source?"

Sydney nodded an affirmative answer.

"I was very young and foolish in those days," said Queenie, with a sigh. "I do not suppose that any girl ever lived more silly and romantic than I was. I brooded day and night over the mysterious donor of the fan and flowers. All my secret thoughts were of him. I felt quite sure in my own mind that the handsome man who had looked at me so admiringly in the fancy store was my unknown admirer. I expected daily to meet him somewhere in the haunts of the gay society in which I had become somewhat of a belle. You remember, Sydney?"

Sydney did not answer, and she went on, slowly:

"I did not meet him in society; but after a time we met in a public park. I was walking there alone. I slipped and fell, spraining my ankle severely. A gentleman rushed to my assistance. It was the handsome stranger of whom I had dreamed so much that I had become perfectly infatuated with him. He placed me in a carriage and took me home. You were all out that day, and I never told of that event in my life through some undefined fear of censure. That was where my fault began—in that first act of secrecy."

She paused a moment, and a heart-wrung sigh drifted over her pale and quivering lips.

Sydney sat perfectly still, regarding her with stern, unpitying eyes, as though they were strangers instead of sisters whom the same mother had nursed on her breast.

"We met again and again," said Queenie, slowly. "Always by accident, it seemed at first, Sydney, and I am quite sure it was accident on my part; but I know now that it was by design on the part of Mr. Vinton. He wooed me in the most romantic fashion. Flowers and poetry were the vehicles through which he conveyed his sentiments, until at last grown bolder, he openly avowed his love for me."

"You must have been very forward to have encouraged him to a declaration so soon," said Sydney, with a sneer.

"Sydney, I declare to you I was not. Oh! if you knew Leon Vinton as I do now, you would know that I was not—you would know that the more timid and shrinking the dove the more fierce and unrelenting would be his pursuit," exclaimed Queenie, with a scarlet blush at her sister's cruel charge.

"I knew, of course," she continued, after a moment's thoughtful pause, "home was the proper place for my lover to woo me. I said as much to him. His ready excuse appeared perfectly sufficient in my silly eyes. He told me that he was a foreigner of high birth and rank, exiled from his native land through a political offense and that he had heard that my father was bitterly opposed to all foreigners. He, therefore, felt it to be quite hopeless to seek for the entree to my father's house. Little simpleton that I was, I swallowed the whole stupendous lie because it was baited with the one single grain of truth—namely, the well-known fact that my father was bitterly prejudiced against all persons of foreign birth. I believed all he told me, and, worse than all, I believed that I was deeply and devotedly in love with him. That was the blind mistake of my life, Sydney. Now I know that I was not in love with the man. It was the romance and poetry of his manner of wooing me, the mystery that surrounded him with an atmosphere of ideality that fascinated and infatuated me. I was very young and romantic, as he well knew when he set his artful trap for me. He knew too well how to bait it. It was only the wooing that I loved when I thought it was the wooer."

Her voice broke a moment, and she buried her face in her hands.

Sydney offered no comment, but sat as still and silent as a statue, regarding her intently.

"Yet, why do I linger over those fatal hours?" resumed Queenie, with a heavy sigh. "They can have but little interest for you. I will briefly relate what came after. You remember, Sydney, how I left you all the day we started to Europe on the pretense of returning to remain with papa?"

"Yes," Sydney answered, in a tone of scorn.

"It was a preconcerted plan," said the actress, dropping her eyes in shame and remorse. "In less than an hour after I left you, Sydney, I met Leon Vinton and was married to him."

"Married to him!" exclaimed Sydney, incredulously.

The blue eyes and the black ones met for a moment—one pair cold and incredulous, the others full of raging scorn.

"Sydney, you are cruel!" exclaimed Queenie, indignantly. "How else should I have gone away with him? I was as pure and innocent as a little child. There was not a thought of evil in my heart. I would have died the most horrible death that could be conceived of before I would have willfully sinned."

"Why, then, did you not confess the truth when you came home?" asked Sydney. "If you were married, where was your husband? Why did you suffer us to think worse things of you?"

"Wait until I have finished my story, Sydney, then you will understand why," answered Queenie, mournfully. "We were married, as I told you," she continued. "We went to live in a beautiful cottage on the banks of the river, about five miles from the city where we lived. My husband appeared to be a man of wealth and taste. My home was splendidly furnished. I had servants to wait upon me, the best of everything to eat and wear. He appeared to be perfectly devoted to me. I had but two things to complain of. One was the utter seclusion in which we lived. He went into no society, and we saw no company—not a single person ever visited us. I rode out in a carriage with Mr. Vinton sometimes. Once we went to the theater near my old home, and an irresistible desire seized upon me to look upon the face of my father once more. Mr. Vinton had always sternly forbidden me to venture near my home, but I eluded him somehow in the crush coming out of the theater, and ran homeward with flying footsteps. I looked into the window, Sydney. It was late, but I saw papa. He was sitting, sad and alone, thinking, perhaps, of his absent dear ones. He looked so old and broken it almost broke my heart."

CHAPTER XXV

Queenie paused a moment, and Sydney saw that warm, passionate tears were streaming down her cheeks. The sight awoke no pity in the heart of the elder sister. It seemed to her that her hatred was simply measureless for the beautiful young sister who, living or dead, held Lawrence Ernscliffe's heart.

"Papa looked up and saw me," continued Queenie, brushing away the crystal drops with her perfumed handkerchief. "He took me for a ghost, I think. I ran away and met Mr. Vinton coming after me. He was very angry with me, and I promised him I would not venture near the place again. Poor papa! As I went away I heard him wandering in the garden, calling my name. I longed to turn back and throw my arms about his neck. I often begged Mr. Vinton to allow me to make known our marriage to papa and trust to his kind heart to forgive us, but he always refused angrily. He had a terrible temper—a sleeping devil coiled within his heart."

"You said that you had but two things to complain of," suggested Sydney. "You have named but one."

"The other was Mr. Vinton's frequent absence from me. He spent more than half his time in the city, and I passed more than half my time alone, save for the company of his housekeeper, a wicked woman, whom I cordially detested. When I complained of his long absence, he represented that business detained him from my side, but when I ventured to inquire into the nature of his business, he almost rudely informed me that it was no part of my province to inquire into his affairs. I asked him no more questions, and I do not know to this day what engaged his time and attention, nor what was the source of his apparent wealth.

"We had been married almost a year," she continued, after a slight pause, "when I began to notice that Mr. Vinton grew cold and careless to me, and his mysterious absences became longer and more frequent. In my loneliness and isolation I began to pine more and more for papa, whose sad and troubled face, as I saw it last, when I looked into the window that night, haunted me persistently. To my surprise, Mr. Vinton ceased to chide me for indulging in my grief, and pretended to be willing to reveal our marriage to papa and beg his forgiveness. In my joy at this assurance, I threw my arms around his neck, and kissed him as fondly as I had ever done in the first days of our union. That evening he ordered out the phaeton to take me home to papa. You know how fond I was of papa, Sydney—you can imagine my happiness."

Sydney only bowed coldly in reply.

"'I am going to take you home by a new route,' Mr. Vinton said to me, turning the phaeton into a lonely, unfrequented road. In my joy at going back to papa, I consented without a thought of the oddity of the words. I only said to him: 'Do not make it a longer route, dear Leon. I am so impatient to see papa again.'"

She was growing more excited now. She rose from her reclining position, and sitting upright, looked at Sydney with scarlet cheeks and burning, violet eyes. She was dazzlingly beautiful in this new phase.

Her fair, expressive face, and graceful, white throat rose from the rich and somber setting of black velvet like some rare flower. Her voice sounded like a wail of the saddest music.

"It was the cruelest lie a man ever told a woman, Sydney!" she went on, clasping and unclasping her white hands together in passionate excitement. "We never went near home. He never intended it. It began to rain soon, and we had no cover to the phaeton. We were passing through a thick wood, and he forced me to get out and stand under the trees under pretense of seeking shelter. Then, oh, Sydney, Sydney, with the chilly rain beating down upon us, and our feet half buried in the thick drifts of autumn leaves, he told me—oh, Sydney, can you guess what horrible thing that villain told me?"

The tears were falling down her cheeks like rain as she looked at her sister, but she, conjecturing the truth at once, answered, promptly and coldly:

"He told you that he had deceived you—that you were not his wife!"

"Yes, Sydney, that was what he told me," answered Queenie, with burning cheeks. "He said that the minister who united us was no more a minister than he was, and had only done it for a lark! He said he was tired of me and did not intend to charge himself with my support any longer, and that I might return to my father."

She stopped a moment and brushed away the tears that were coursing down her cheeks.

"Oh! how can I go on?" she exclaimed.

"I am impatient," remarked Sydney.

"I was fairly maddened by that cruel revelation," continued Queenie. "Oh, Sydney, may the dear Lord spare you from such suffering as was mine in that terrible hour! I went mad! All the softness of womanhood died out of me in the face of that cruel wrong! The instinct of the tigress sprang into my heart. I thirsted for Leon Vinton's blood. I cursed him. I rushed upon him and fastened my little, white fingers in his throat and tried to kill the wretch who had betrayed me."

"A murderess!" exclaimed Sydney, recoiling.

"My hands were all too weak and frail to wreak justice upon the villain," Queenie went on, heedless of her sister's ejaculation. "He pushed me off, he swore at me, he strangled me with his strong, white fingers, threw me down upon the earth and spurned me with his foot—aye, trampled upon me! You saw the purple print of his boot-heel on my brow, Sydney. It is here yet," she said, pushing back the fluffy waves of golden hair from her brow and showing the livid scar.

"After that I remember nothing more for several hours," she went on, seeing that Sydney made no answer, "and he must have thought that he had killed me, for when I came to myself I was lying in a grave, a very shallow grave. I was covered with fresh earth and dead leaves, which the hard and steady rain had partly beaten aside, leaving my face exposed. My murderer had not buried me deep enough. I sprang up out of the shallow hole in which he had laid me, my heart beating wildly with hatred and the thirst for revenge. All the hours of unconsciousness, all the rain and cold that had chilled my body had not cooled the fire of hate, the murderous instinct that possessed me. It seemed to me that nothing could wipe out my wrongs except Leon Vinton's blood."

"And this is the innocent little child that used to be my father's pet!" exclaimed the listener, with a shudder.

"Yes," said Queenie, mournfully. "It seems strange, does it not? I, who only four years ago was the petted child of my father's heart—now I am dead to all that once knew and loved me. I have gone wrong. I have wandered into strange paths. I have buried peace and joy. I have broken my father's heart—all for the sin of one man—man did I say? Nay, rather a devil in the guise of an angel of light!"

CHAPTER XXVI

If Sydney's heart had been less hard than marble she must have pitied the beautiful, unfortunate young sister so sadly rehearsing the story of her terrible wrongs.

But she uttered no word of sympathy or pity, she did not take the golden head upon her breast and weep over it as a loving sister would have done. She only said, in her cold, hard, jealous voice:

"Go on, Queenie. You went home to papa then?"

"No, I did not. I went back to the beautiful cottage where I had lived in a fool's Paradise one fatal year. Before I reached there I saw him standing alone on the banks of the river. I told you I thirsted for his blood. Nothing could have cooled the fire of my terrible hate but his life-blood poured out in a free libation. His back was turned to me, he neither saw nor heard me. I crept up behind him, I—oh, Sydney, do not look at me so! Remember it was not little Queenie, but a woman gone mad over her terrible wrongs. I could not help it. I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him down into the river!"

"You are even worse than I thought you, Queenie," exclaimed her sister; "yet you—a Magdalen, a murderess—you dared to come back to us and to marry Captain Ernscliffe!"

"I disclaim either of the hard names you have called me, Sydney," her sister answered, defiantly. "I have been deeply sinned against, but I have not sinned. I had no intention of evil when I eloped with Leon Vinton. I thought I was his wife when I lived with him. When I pushed him into the river it was a simple act of justice. If I had gone home to papa and told him my wrongs, and he had killed Leon Vinton, society would have applauded the act and any jury would have acquitted him. It was right for me to punish him. I gloried in the deed."

Sydney made a gesture of abhorrence.

"The only pity," continued the actress, passionately, "is that I did not succeed in my revenge. He rose upon the water once after I pushed him in, and saw me on the bank. Then he shook his fist at me and shouted, with his mouth full of water: 'If I live I will have revenge for this!' Then he went under again, and I ran away and went home to papa."

"Then he was not drowned, after all?" said Sydney.

"No, he was saved from a watery grave, and forthwith began to dog my footsteps again, though so cautiously that I never dreamed but that he was dead. The night I was married I saw him looking in the window at me, but I took him for a ghost or an illusion of fancy, never for a moment as a living creature. But in the moment that I was made a bride he sent me a bouquet. I inhaled the perfume and fell senseless. It was drugged with a powerful sleeping potion. I was not dead, only asleep and unconscious, when they buried me. Leon Vinton resurrected me that night, and confined me as a hated prisoner at the cottage to which he had taken me a happy, thoughtless young bride. That was his diabolical revenge. He knew where I was all the time, but he waited until the full cup of happiness was pressed to my lips, then dashed it away, and spilled the precious wine forever."

She looked at her elder sister with a tearless agony in her pansy-blue eyes, but Sydney only said, impatiently:

"I am anxious to hear how you happened to become such a noted actress."

"A few months after my supposed death, Leon Vinton was killed by the outraged father of a young girl whom he had basely betrayed. In the consequent excitement my prison door was left open, and I escaped and went back to the city, toiling on through the stormy, winter weather as though it was summer time, in my joy at the thought of going back to my home again."

She wrung her jeweled hands and groaned aloud.

"Oh, Heaven! how little I dreamed of the changes that awaited me in the home from which I had been carried a seeming corpse but a few months before. Papa was dead, the rest of you were gone to Europe; there were strangers in the house. Staggering blindly along, almost overwhelmed by the shock of my father's loss, I went to my husband's home. Alas! he, too, was traveling abroad. My last prop was swept from under me. I was homeless, friendless, penniless and forsaken in the great, heartless city, alone in the streets at night, beaten and tossed about by the wind and storm."

"Oh, if she had but died then!" breathed Sydney, inaudibly.

"Sydney, try to put yourself in my place for a moment. You who have lain in luxury's silken lap all your life—who have never known a sorrow. Think of your wronged little sister alone and friendless in the dark and dangerous streets of the city, buffeted by the wintery storms. Surely, then, you will feel some pity for all that I have endured."

Sydney would not even look at the sorrowful face; her ears were deaf to the tremulous, appealing voice.

"Go on with your story," she said, coldly. "These digressions are wearisome. What happened to you then?"

But Queenie had thrown herself back on the divan, with her white hands over her face, and for a moment a profound silence reigned throughout the room. The little French pendule on the mantel was ticking the hours toward noon, but neither of the two women, in their all-absorbing interest in the present, seemed to remember that the actress had made an appointment with Captain Ernscliffe at that hour. Presently Queenie spoke in a faint and mournful voice.

"Sydney, I cannot go on now; I am too faint and exhausted. These painful recollections have wearied and depressed me. Wait a little. I must rest."

"You have come so near to the end of the story, surely you can finish it now," objected Sydney, unfeelingly.

The actress did not speak for a moment; the small hands dropped away from her face, and she lay still, with her long-fringed lashes resting on her white cheek, a look of pain and exhaustion on her delicate lips.

Sydney rose and walked impatiently up and down the floor.

"Sydney," said her sister presently, "there is some wine and glasses on the cabinet there. Will you give me a few drops? Perhaps it may rally my fainting strength."

Sydney went to the cabinet and found a flask of port wine and delicate little crystal glasses.

She poured a little into a glass and looked over at her sister.

Her eyes were still closed, and she looked death-like and pallid as she lay there in her velvet dress and rich surroundings.

A terrible look came into Sydney's face. She put her hand into her bosom and drew out a little vial, unstoppered it, and poured a few drops into the wine.

Then she crossed the room to Queenie's side. Her eyes were burning with some inward fire.

"Here, Queenie," she said, "drink your wine."