Kitabı oku: «The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret», sayfa 25

CHAPTER XXVII

"Drink your wine, Queenie," repeated Sydney, in a slightly impatient voice.

The beautiful actress struggled up to a sitting posture and looked into her sister's face.

"Good Heaven, Sydney, what ails you?" she said. "You look positively ghastly. This interview has been too much for you. I entreat you to drink the wine yourself."

But Sydney shook her head, although she was trembling like a leaf and her face was ashen white. She could scarcely keep from spilling the wine, the glass wavered so unsteadily in her hand.

"I insist upon it," said Queenie. "You need a restorative as much as I do. Drink that yourself and give me another glass."

A frightened look came into Sydney's eyes. Was it possible that Queenie had been watching her from under the hands that covered her face?

"I—I assure you I do not need it in the least," she faltered; "you looked so ghastly yourself, lying there, that I was frightened, but my nervousness is quite over now. Pray drink it yourself. I am anxious to see you revive enough to continue your story."

Queenie took the wine-glass in her hand and raised it to her lips.

Sydney watched her with parted lips and burning eyes. Her heart gave a bound of joy as her unfortunate sister touched the fatal draught with her beautiful lips.

They were so absorbed that they had not heard a rapping at the door. Both were quite unconscious that the person seeking admittance had grown impatient and recklessly turned the handle.

But little as they dreamed of such a thing, it was true. Sydney's dreadful crime had had an unthought-of spectator. A man had stood just inside the room and watched her with wild, astonished, horrified eyes.

As Queenie was about to drink the wine he rushed forward and violently struck the glass from her hand. It fell to the floor, shattered into a hundred fragments, the ruby wine splashing over the rich carpet.

The actress sprang to her feet and confronted the daring intruder.

"Lawrence Ernscliffe!" she gasped.

"Lawrence Ernscliffe!" echoed Sydney, in a voice of horror.

"Yes, Lawrence Ernscliffe," he answered, looking at Queenie.

He seemed to have no eyes for anyone but her, although his second wife stood just at his elbow.

"Why are you here?" demanded the actress, haughtily.

The tall, handsome man looked at her in astonishment.

"Madam, you permitted me to call," he said, "and this is the hour you specified. I knocked, but no one came; then I opened the door and entered."

The pride and anger on the lovely face before him softened strangely.

"That is true, I had quite forgotten it," she said. "But then your rudeness in striking the glass from my hand—how do you account for that? What did you mean by it?"

Her beautiful eyes were looking straight into his—the dusky, pansy-blue eyes of the lost bride whom he had worshiped so madly.

His reason seemed to reel before that wonderful resemblance, his heart was on fire with the passion she roused within him; yet through it all he had a vague feeling that he must shield Sydney, that he must not betray her to the beautiful woman whom she had wronged.

His dark eyes fell before her steady gaze, his cheek reddened, his tongue felt thick when he tried to speak.

Sydney's heart was beating almost to suffocation, while he stood thus hesitating. She knew when he struck the glass from Queenie's hand that he had witnessed her dastardly crime.

She wondered if his mad passion for the beautiful actress would lead him to betray her—his wife!

In her terror and desperation she grasped his arm and looked up pleadingly into his face.

Captain Ernscliffe looked down at her—oh! the withering scorn, the just horror of that look.

She shrank back abashed before it, but he slowly shook his head.

She was safe—he could not forget that she bore his name, however unworthily.

"I ask you again, sir," said the actress, in a voice that demanded reply, "why did you strike the glass from my hand?"

"Madam, I—I—pardon me, I was excited, I knew not what I did!" he stammered, not daring to meet her searching gaze.

Suddenly Queenie uttered a cry of grief and terror. A little pet dog had left his cushion in the corner and lapped up the spilled wine from the floor with its tiny, pointed tongue.

Now, after a few, unsteady motions, and two or three whining moans of pain, it uttered one sharp, despairing yelp, rolled over upon the carpet and expired.

After Queenie's one terrified cry a dead silence reigned throughout the room.

Sydney dropped into a chair, trembling so that she could not stand, and put her hands before her face. Her sin had found her out.

Queenie would certainly revenge herself now by revealing her identity. What mercy could she expect from the sister she had hated and tried to murder?

"I understand your reluctance to explain yourself now, sir," said the voice of the actress, falling on her ears like the knell of doom. "You would shield your wife!"

He did not answer. His head was bowed on his breast, his handsome, high-bred face was pale with emotion. She went on coldly after a moment's pause:

"I thank you, Captain Ernscliffe, for the ready hand that struck the poisoned wine from my lips, although my life is so valueless to me that it was scarcely worth the saving. But now will you withdraw and leave me to deal with this lady?"

Sydney glanced up through the fingers that hid her shamed face. What did Queenie mean to do? Was it possible that she would not reveal her identity to her husband?

"Madam," he remonstrated, "you were willing to accord me an interview. Surely you will not send me away like this. I cannot go until I have told you why I am here!"

The resolution in his voice alarmed her. She stepped back a pace and stood looking at him with parted lips and burning eyes, her face as white as marble against the background of her rich but somber velvet robe, her loosened, golden hair falling around her like a veil of light.

"We—I—that is—you can have nothing to say to me that I wish to hear!" she panted. "Pray go—let us part as we met—strangers!"

He looked at her with a strange light in his dark eyes, a warm flush creeping into his face.

Sydney watched him with wild, fascinated eyes. What would he say to this speech of the actress?

"We have not met as strangers—we cannot part thus!" he answered firmly. "Surely my eyes and my heart cannot both deceive me! La Reine Blanche, you are my lost wife, Queenie!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

You might have heard a pin drop in the room, so utter was the silence that followed Captain Ernscliffe's bold declaration.

Sydney remained crouching in her chair, watching the two chief actors in this drama in real life, with wild, fascinated eyes, feeling that her whole future hung trembling in the balance on the answer that must fall from her sister's lips.

Queenie seemed stricken dumb by the words of Captain Ernscliffe. She stared at him speechlessly, her white teeth buried in her crimson lips, her hands clenched tightly together.

"Queenie, you cannot deny it," he went on passionately, seeing that she could not, or would not speak. "Although I thought you dead, although the last time I beheld your sweet face it was under the shadow of the coffin-lid, yet I could swear that the lost bride whom I deemed an angel in Heaven, still walks the earth under the name of Reine De Lisle!"

Still she did not answer, still she stood there pale and statue-like, all the life that was left in her seeming concentrated in the burning gaze she fixed upon his face.

He ventured to come a little nearer, he touched the white, jeweled hands that were locked so tightly together. He altogether forgot Sydney crouching silently in the great arm-chair. He took up a long, curling tress of the golden hair and pressed it to his lips.

"My darling!" he cried, "speak to me! Tell me by what strange mystery you were resurrected and restored to my heart! Why have you remained so long away from me?"

The touch of his hands and lips seemed to galvanize her into life. She pushed him away and sprang to Sydney's side.

"Madam," she cried indignantly, "what ails your husband? Is he mad? Why does he claim me as his wife?"

Sydney's heart gave one wild, passionate throb of joy. Queenie had declared herself. She would renounce her husband! Taking the cue instantly, she sprang up and fixed a pleading gaze on the beautiful white face of the actress.

"Oh! Madame De Lisle, forgive him," she cried. "You are the living image of his first wife, whom he adored, and who died at the altar. Your perfect resemblance to her has driven him mad!"

He looked from one to the other—the dark, radiant brunette, the lily-white blonde, each so perfect in her type—and his heart sank heavily.

Had they conspired to deceive him, or was this wonderful resemblance to his lost bride but a mere coincidence—a will-o'-the-wisp, an ignis fatuus, to lead his heart and his reason astray?

"Cease, Sydney!" he said sternly. "She cannot deny it, she will not utter such a stupendous falsehood. My heart is too true a monitor to lead me astray! It never throbbed as it does now in the presence of any woman on earth but Queenie Lyle!"

How noble and handsome he looked as he stood there, pleading for his love with all his tender, passionate heart shining in his dark eyes.

The actress gave one look at him, then turned away and walked to the further end of the room.

She could not bear the mute, agonizing appeal in his beautiful, troubled, dark eyes. Sydney sprang to his side and clasped her hands about his arm.

"Oh! Lawrence," she cried. "You break my heart! I tremble for your reason. Oh! pray, pray, come away from here! Madame De Lisle is very angry with you for your persistence in your strange mistake. You intrude upon her hours for study and practice. Will you not come away with me?"

He looked down at her suspiciously, without stirring from the spot.

"Sydney, if indeed I am mistaken," he said, "why are you here? If this lady is not your sister, what have you to do with her? Why," he lowered his voice slightly, "why did you seek to remove her from your path?"

Sydney dropped her eyes and turned crimson.

"Oh, Lawrence," she said, "she is not my sister, but she is my rival. I know all that passed last night, I know that she has won your heart from me."

"It was never yours, Sydney," he answered firmly. "I married you because you loved me, and were unhappy without me; but you never held my heart. I have never loved but one woman on earth. I told you that before I made you my wife."

The listener's heart gave one great bound of joy. He loved her still—he had never loved but her. Why should she sacrifice herself and him for the doubtful good of Sydney's happiness?

A great wave of pity for herself and for her true, loyal husband swept over her heart.

She made a quick step toward him as if to throw herself upon his breast, then shrank back into herself, deterred by the agonised appeal in the eyes of Sydney, who seemed to divine her purpose.

"Oh! Lawrence," entreated Sydney, "pray go away from here. Madame De Lisle grows impatient."

The actress swept across the room, turned the handle of the door, and held it open.

"Mrs. Ernscliffe is right," she said in a cold, hard tone, "I am both weary and impatient. I can bear no more. This trespass on my time and patience is inexcusable. Will it please you to go now, sir?"

Lawrence Ernscliffe advanced and stood before her in the doorway. She could not bear the passionate pain and reproach in the beautiful eyes he fastened on her face. Her gaze wavered and fell before his.

"Queenie," he said, slowly and sadly, "you have not deceived me! You cannot deny that you are my own! Your soul is too white and pure to suffer such a falsehood to stain your lips! Yet you will not let me claim you, you are sacrificing your happiness and mine for a mere chimera! I understand it all. Sydney has asked for the sacrifice and you have made it. It is for her sake!"

He bent down, lifted a spray of white hyacinth that had fallen from the lace on her breast to the floor, pressed it to his lips, and silently withdrew.

Queenie closed the door upon his retreating form and turned back to her sister.

"He was right," she said slowly, "I have sacrificed my happiness and his for your sake, Sydney."

Sydney lifted her heavy eyes and looked at her without speaking. Queenie went on slowly: "This is my revenge, Sydney: you have scorned and insulted me, you have branded me with a cruel name, you have tried to poison me—me, the little sister you loved and petted when we were children at our mother's knee! Yet, for the sake of those old days, and the love we had for each other then, I forgive you—nay, more, I make the sacrifice you were cruel enough to ask of me. I resign the one being whom I have sought for years—the one thing dear to me upon earth. I give you the pulse of my heart, the life of my life, the soul of my soul!"

Cold and white as marble in her sublime self-abnegation, she pointed to the door.

"Go," she said, "I can bear no more!"

Sydney obeyed her without a word.

Then the beautiful queen of tragedy, the lovely woman who counted her admirers by the hundreds, knelt down upon the floor, and lifted her white, despairing face to Heaven.

"Oh! God," she moaned, "If indeed I am a sinner, as she said, surely this great and bitter sacrifice for another's sake must win for me the pity and pardon of Heaven!"

CHAPTER XXIX

The three weeks of La Reine Blanche's London engagement were drawing to a close.

She had achieved a brilliant success. Her beauty and her genius were the themes of every tongue.

Her admirers were legion. She had a score of wealthy and titled lovers. It was even said that a noble and well-known duke had proposed to marry her, and met with a cold and haughty refusal.

The managers of the theater where she was playing tried to secure her for another month. It would be worth a fortune to them, they said, and they allowed her to make her own terms.

To their consternation she utterly declined a longer engagement and announced her intention to retire from the stage.

The managers were astounded. What! retire from the stage in the zenith of her fame, with all her gifts of youth, beauty and genius. It was too dreadful. Yet in spite of their remonstrances she persevered. She canceled at a tremendous cost an engagement she had made with a Parisian manager. A whisper was circulated and began to gain credence that the beautiful tragedienne was about to enter a convent and take the veil for life.

She did not deny it when people questioned her, but she would not tell the reason why she was about to take such a strange step.

She only smiled sadly when they remonstrated with her, but she would never tell why she was about to immure herself, with all her gifts of beauty, youth and genius, in a living tomb.

But there was one thing that was palpable to all who saw her off the stage and divested of the trickery of paint and cosmetics. La Reine Blanche was fading like the frailest summer flower. The lily bloomed on her cheek instead of the rose.

Under her large, blue eyes lay purple shadows, darker and deeper than those cast by the drooping lashes. A look of patient suffering crept about the corners of her lips and hid in her eyes. Her smiles were sadder and more pathetic than sighs, her form grew slighter and more ethereal in its perfect grace, her step lost its lightness and elasticity. Some said that the beautiful actress was dying of a broken heart, others said that she was falling into a consumption.

She heard these things and made no outward sign, but inwardly she said to herself:

"They are both right and wrong. I am dying because I have nothing left to live for. I have toiled and hoped for years. I have studied and practiced to get money to carry me over the wide world in search of the one true heart that was mine only, and now that I have found it I have had to give it away. I cannot endure it; I am not strong enough. There is nothing left me but to die!"

She thought of some sorrowful lines she had somewhere read and mournfully repeated them:

 
"Much must be borne which is hard to bear,
Much given away which it were sweet to keep.
God helps us all! who need indeed His care;
And yet I know the Shepherd loves His sheep."
 

Those flying rumors and reports only served to make Madame De Lisle more popular. She was the rage. She played to densely packed houses every night.

Flowers rained upon her. The costliest gifts of jewels and rare bric-a-brac were sent to her from such unknown sources that she could neither refuse nor send them back as she would otherwise have done. There was always a great throng of people waiting to see her step into the carriage every night.

But in all that throng La Reine Blanche never saw but one face. There was one man who always held the same position beside her carriage door. He never spoke to her, he never touched her, but stood there patiently every night, thrilled to the depths of his soul if the hem of her perfumed robe but brushed him in passing.

Some weird fascination utterly beyond her power of resistance always impelled her to meet his glance, and the fire in his beautiful, dark eyes; the passionate love, the terrible pain, the bitter reproach were killing her slowly but surely.

And Lawrence Ernscliffe was going mad. He had no life, no thought, no hope outside the beautiful woman whom he had claimed for his wife, and who had so coldly denied him.

He haunted her like her own shadow. Go where she would she saw him, look where she would she met only the eyes of the man she loved and to whom she belonged by the dearest tie on earth.

He forgot Sydney utterly, or if he ever remembered her it was only with scorn. Her terrible sin had placed her beyond the pale of his tenderness forever. No reasoning, no sophistry could have convinced him that the beautiful actress was not his own wife whom he had lost in the very moment that made her his bride.

He could not have explained himself. He did not understand at all the mysterious chance which had brought it about, yet he knew in his own heart that the woman whom he had seen in her coffin once had been restored to life again, and that the only bar to their happiness now was Sydney, whom he had married through a simple impulse of pity.

CHAPTER XXX

It was the last night of Madame De Lisle's engagement. She would make her final appearance before the world in the beautiful tragedy of "King Lear." To-morrow she would retire to the conventional cloister forever.

The theater was so densely packed that there was scarcely standing-room on this her farewell night.

Lord Valentine and his wife and mother-in-law were in his box from which they had scarcely missed a night of the three weeks.

Besides Mrs. Lyle's passionate love of the drama there was a subtle fascination in Madame De Lisle's strange resemblance to her youngest daughter that impelled her thither every night to gaze upon her with eyes that never wearied in looking on her loveliness. She could not have told why it was, but she was vaguely conscious of a troubled tenderness about her heart whenever she looked at the fair young creature and heard the talk of her going into a convent.

"She makes me think of poor Queenie," she whispered to Georgina that night. "I cannot help feeling sorry for her, she is so like what she was."

"The resemblance is startling, indeed," Lady Valentine whispered back, "but don't let Sydney hear you, mamma. She does not like to hear about it."

Sydney made no sign, but she knew very well what they were talking of.

She came to the theater every night, though she hated to be there. Jealousy drove her to look on her rival's face every night that she might also watch her husband.

Poor Sydney! She sat there pale and haggard, and wretched in her white satin and diamonds, looking with jealous, suspicious eyes at the beautiful and gentle "Cordelia," hating her for the fairness that Lawrence Ernscliffe loved.

Queenie's sacrifice, made at so costly a price to herself, had utterly failed to purchase her sister's happiness.

Captain Ernscliffe had a seat in another part of the house where Sydney could watch his every movement. Her heart swelled with bitter pain and passionate anger as she looked at him. He did not even seem to know that she was there. His dark, melancholy eyes never once moved from the graceful form of the unhappy "Cordelia" as she acted her part on the stage. When the curtain fell he dropped his eyes and never looked up again until his beautiful idol reappeared.

La Reine Blanche had never acted better. She gave her whole attention to her part. She did not seem to see that one pair of eyes had watched her with such wild entreaty and passionate love in their beautiful depths.

There was one box at which she never looked but once, and it was when, in obedience to her husband's command, "Bid farewell to your sisters," she slowly repeated:

 
"'Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyes
Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;
And, like a sister, am most loth to call
Your faults as they are named. Love well our father:
To your professed bosoms I commit him;
But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,
I would prefer him to a better place.
So farewell to you both.'"
 

Everyone in the house saw her brilliant eyes fixed on Lord Valentine's box as she repeated those words, but perhaps no one but the actress herself saw that Sydney's eyes drooped in shame and confusion, while a scarlet blush stained her cheek.

Ah, she, and no other, comprehended the bitter meaning of Queenie's words as she fixed her blue eyes mournfully on the sister who had wronged her so deeply.

"This is her last night," Sydney murmured to herself, "but is it true that she will go into a convent? I must see her, I must know the truth for certain. I will go round to her dressing-room and ask her."

When the act was over she complained of sickness and asked Lord Valentine to take her down to the carriage.

Lord Valentine complied and left her sitting in the carriage, the coachman mounting to his box.

But in a moment, before the two prancing horses had started, Sydney slipped out of the carriage so noiselessly that the man drove on never dreaming but that she was shut up within.

Then she ran round breathlessly to the private entrance of the theater. She told the man who kept the door that she had an engagement with Madame De Lisle and desired him to show her to that lady's dressing-room.

Two minutes later she found herself alone in the small apartment where the actress changed her costumes for the different acts and scenes.

Queenie had not yet come in. The manager had detained her a few minutes and Sydney had time to draw breath and look about her while she waited for her sister.

There was not much to see. The room was dingy and sparely furnished, as the dressing-room of a theater is apt to be.

Costumes were laid over the backs of chairs, and the maid who should have been guarding them was "off duty," gossiping, no doubt, with some humble attache of the place. There was little to interest one, and Sydney grew impatient.

Suddenly she saw a letter lying carelessly on the toilet table. She took it up and looked at it.

It was addressed to Madame De Lisle, and had never been unsealed.

"It has been left here during the first act, and Queenie has never seen it," she said to herself. "It looks like my husband's writing. I will see what he has to say to her."

Recklessly, desperately, she tore it open, and drew out the sheet of note paper.

"My Darling," it said simply, "meet me at the western door after the first act is over. I must see you a moment."

No name was signed to the mysterious note, but Sydney felt sure that it was her husband's writing.

"Queenie has deceived me," she said to herself, angrily. "She is in collusion with Lawrence. I might have known she would play me false!"

She looked about her hurriedly. A long, black silk circular, lined with fur, hung over a chair. She put it on over her white dress, caught up a thick veil, winding it about her head and face, and hurried out to the retired western door.

Outside in the darkness stood a tall, muffled form.

"Queenie, is it you?" he said in unfamiliar tones.

In a moment she realized her mistake. It was not her husband, but in the hope of unearthing some fatal mystery, she said softly:

"Yes, it is Queenie."

These words sealed her doom. The man sprang forward and caught her by the arm.

Something bright and slender gleamed an instant in his upraised hand and then was sheathed in her heart.

As her terrible scream of agony divided the shuddering air, he turned and fled from the scene of his crime.

But poor Sydney, the victim of her own misguided passion lay there dying, with the deadly steel of the assassin sheathed in her jealous breast.