Kitabı oku: «The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret», sayfa 26
CHAPTER XXXI
That wild and piercing cry penetrated to many ears. The manager and the actress heard it where they stood conversing together, and though Queenie did not know that it was Sydney's voice, still she grew pale as death, and an indefinable fear crept coldly around her heart. The manager put her into a chair, for he saw that she could not stand.
"Stay here until I return," he said, "I will go and see what has happened."
He hurried round to the western door from which the sound had seemed to proceed.
A little knot of theater attaches had preceded him. They were gathered round the prostrate form, and one had unwound the shrouding veil from her pale face and exposed it to the air and light. Her dark eyes were staring upward with a look of pain and horror in their starry depths, her face was ashen white, her lips quivered with faint, anguished moans, and her white, jeweled hands worked convulsively at the hilt of the dagger whose deadly blade was buried in her breast.
She looked up at the manager as he bent over her. A gleam of recognition came into her eyes.
"I am dying," she said, in a faint, gasping voice. "Let someone go into the theater and bring Captain Ernscliffe! Don't let anyone else know I am here! Queenie—I mean—Madame De Lisle—must not know! Let the play go on."
At that moment they brought a physician, summoned in haste from his seat in the theater. He knelt down and tried to draw the dagger from her breast, but desisted in a moment and shook his head ominously.
"Tell me the truth," she moaned. "How many minutes have I to live?"
The physician looked down at her with a grave pity in his kindly eyes.
"Only as long as the dagger remains in the wound," he answered, gently. "When that is removed you will bleed to death in a minute."
She clasped both hands around the murderous steel as if to drive it deeper into her heart.
"Let it remain there, then," she gasped, "I have something to say before—I go hence!"
"Great Heaven! who has done this?" exclaimed a shocked voice.
They all looked around. It was Captain Ernscliffe who spoke. He knelt down by his wife and looked at the murderous dagger whose hilt she grasped, with eyes full of horror. The pain in her face softened. She put out one hand to him, and he clasped it in his own.
"Lawrence—I have been—cruelly murdered!" she moaned. "Let someone take my dying deposition."
The manager hurriedly produced pencil and paper.
"I went into Madame De Lisle's dressing-room," she began. "She had not come in, and I waited a little while, wishing to speak to her. Have you put that down?"
The manager replied in the affirmative.
"I saw a sealed letter lying on the table," she went on slowly and painfully; "I was jealous of Madame De Lisle, to whom it was addressed. I thought my husband had written it. I opened it—I—read it."
The physician stopped her a minute to pour a few drops of something between her panting lips. Then she went on:
"It was only a line imploring her to meet him for a moment at the western door. No name was signed, but I was foolish enough to believe it was—my husband."
Her dark eyes lifted to his a moment with a mute appeal for forgiveness in their dusky depths. He pressed her hand and murmured:
"My poor Sydney!"
She lay still a moment while great drops of dew beaded her white brow, forced out by her terrible suffering.
"Can we do nothing to help her?" Captain Ernscliffe inquired anxiously, as he pillowed the dark head gently on his arm.
The physician shook his head gravely.
"No—nothing," Sydney answered him herself. "Only stay by me—till the last. Let me finish my story."
Captain Ernscliffe wiped the cold dews of death from her brow and she continued:
"I took Madame De Lisle's cloak and put it over my dress, I tied her veil about my head and face, and—and—went to the western door—myself! Oh! God, this dagger, how it hurts my side!"
A few moans of terrible agony, then she went on, gaspingly:
"There was a tall, dark man outside the door—he said: 'Is it you, Queenie?' Then I saw my mistake—it was not my husband! But I—thought—I might learn—some fatal secret of hers—so I answered yes."
She shuddered from head to foot and a groan of mortal agony broke from her white lips.
"That falsehood sealed my doom! He sprang forward without a word, buried this dagger in my breast, and fled. It was Madame De Lisle's enemy. I know now. I received in my heart the stroke that was meant for hers."
She paused, then repressing a groan of pain, said feebly:
"Have you written it all down?"
"Yes, madam," the manager answered.
"Very well. I want you all to go away now—I want to be alone—with my husband. Don't let anyone else know I am here. The play must not be stopped. Let him be all mine a little longer!"
They turned away in wonder at her strange words, and left her lying there supported on her husband's arm—the beautiful woman with the diamonds in her dark hair, and the dagger's hilt above her heart, her white hand grasping it convulsively while she panted forth to him her strange story in the briefest words she could find, for her strength was ebbing fast, and her pain was becoming almost unendurable.
The manager went back to the actress and told her some plausible tale to allay her fears, and, as Sydney had wished, "the play went on." The foolish, fond old "Lear" ranted and raved his little hour, the cruel sisters of "Cordelia"—even poor "Cordelia" herself—all died their mimic deaths upon the stage—little dreaming that a tragedy in real life had been enacted so close and so near, and that poor, erring Sydney lay dead beneath the same roof where the vast throng of people wept and applauded at the superb rendition of Shakespeare's grand creation, "King Lear."
Yet so it was, for when Sydney had faltered out her mournful story, she looked up at Captain Ernscliffe and said with a quivering sigh:
"I have done now, Lawrence, and the pain is so great I cannot bear it any longer! Will you draw the dagger from my wound and let me die?"
But he shrank back aghast at her words.
"Oh, Sydney, don't ask me! Will you not see them all first, and say good-bye—your mother, your sisters?'
"No, no, I want—none—but you," she moaned, "and, oh, my God, how terrible the pain is! Yet, Lawrence—I will stay yet a little longer—I will try to bear it still, if you will kneel down there and pray for me! I am such a sinner, I am almost afraid to die!"
"Do you repent, Sydney?" he asked, gently.
"Do I?" she wailed; "oh, my God, yes! I am sorry for it all, now! Tell her I tried to make atonement at the last. She will forgive me. Little Queenie was always very tender-hearted. Pray for me now—ask God to forgive me, too."
He bowed his head and prayed fervently for the welfare of the soul about to be launched upon the shoreless waters of eternity.
When the low "amen" vibrated on the night air, she looked up and said moaningly:
"Have you forgiven me, too, Lawrence?"
He bent and kissed the poor, pale, quivering lips.
"All is forgiven, Sydney," he answered, gently.
"Then call the physician," she moaned. "Let him draw this cruel steel from—my breast! I cannot—bear it—any longer!"
But the physician recoiled as Captain Ernscliffe had done when she told him what she wished him to do.
"I should feel like a murderer," he gasped. "You could not live a minute after the blade was drawn out of your breast."
She turned away from him and put out her hand to the man she loved so madly.
"Farewell, Lawrence," she said. "Think of me sometimes as of one who—loved you—'not wisely, but too well!'"
Then, before they even guessed what she was about to do, she clasped both hands about the dagger's hilt, and with a terrible effort wrenched it from her breast and threw it far from her. Her heart's blood spurted out in a great, warm, crimson tide over the bodice of her white satin dress, she quivered from head to foot, and died with her dim eyes fixed in a long, last look of love on Lawrence Ernscliffe's handsome face.
When the play was over, and the beautiful actress was leaving the theater for the last time, someone touched her arm and detained her. She looked up into the pale face of Captain Ernscliffe.
"Nay, Queenie," he said gently, "you need not shrink from me now. Sydney has confessed all."
She looked up at him in wonder as he drew her hand lovingly within his arm.
"She has given you up to me, and you know all?" she repeated, like one dazed.
"Yes, Queenie, I know all, and I am yours alone now, for—prepare yourself for a great shock, my darling—your sister, Sydney, is dead!"
CHAPTER XXXII
"Dead!" exclaimed Queenie, with a start of horror; "oh, no, that cannot be! It is but a little while since I saw her living and beautiful under this roof!"
"Her body is here still, Queenie, but her soul has fled to the God who gave it," he answered solemnly.
She trembled like a leaf in a storm at that grave assurance.
"Queenie, let me take you back to your dressing-room," he said. "Stay there a little while until I come for you."
Utterly unnerved by the shock of his revelation, she suffered him to lead her back. He left her at the door of her room and went out to seek Lord Valentine.
He had just put his wife and mother-in-law into the carriage, and stood talking with the driver on the pavement.
"Yes sir," the man was saying, "you know you brought her out and put her into the carriage yourself, and I jumped up on the box and drove right off. But when I got to Valentine House, my lord, the carriage was empty. Yet I could swear to you, my lord, that the carriage was never stopped an instant between here and home."
"Come with me, my lord," said Captain Ernscliffe, in a whisper, as he touched his arm, "I will explain the mystery."
"Very well. Let the carriage wait until I return," he said to the man as he walked away with his brother-in-law.
Captain Ernscliffe led him back into the theater where Sydney lay still and cold in death, watched by the manager and several of the theater employes. They had lifted the body and laid it on a pile of silken cushions, to remain until it had been viewed by the coroner, who had been immediately notified of the terrible event.
At a whispered request the manager gave the paper containing the dying deposition of Sydney into Ernscliffe's hands, and he in turn passed it over to Lord Valentine.
"Great Heaven! this is terrible," he exclaimed, looking down at the rigid form of his sister-in-law. "What is to be done? Who will break the news to her mother and sister?"
They walked apart, and Captain Ernscliffe briefly told him the truth—that Madame Reine De Lisle was his lost wife, Queenie, and that Sydney's knowledge of that fact had maddened her with suspicion and jealousy, and driven her into the fatal error that had cost her her life.
"It is too wonderful to be true," said Lord Valentine. "I cannot believe that the woman I saw lying dead in her coffin has been so strangely resurrected. Surely, Ernscliffe, this beautiful actress has but traded on her wonderful resemblance to your lost bride, and deceived you and Sydney both. Have nothing to do with this beautiful siren."
Captain Ernscliffe looked at him half angrily.
"My Lord Valentine," he answered haughtily, "you charge her with that of which she is not guilty. She has not deceived us. She did not seek us; we sought her, and as long as Sydney lived she evaded the truth and would not acknowledge her identity to me, because my second wife had begged her to sacrifice herself for her sake. But come with me. Since you doubt her identity let us see if she will recognize you. If you appear as a stranger to her we may then afford to doubt her."
They went to Queenie's dressing-room and knocked on the door. She opened it and bade them enter in a faltering voice, with her cheeks bathed in tears, her blue eyes downcast and troubled.
"Queenie, look up," said Captain Ernscliffe. "Do you recognize this gentleman?"
The actress lifted her lovely eyes, dimmed with bitter weeping and looked at him. A gleam of recognition shone in her face.
"Yes," she answered, in her sweet, low voice. "It is Lord Valentine, who was married to my sister Georgina the night you married me."
Captain Ernscliffe flashed a triumphant look upon his brother-in-law.
"You see she knows all about us," he said. "Now you cannot but admit her identity. You must believe that she is my wife!"
Lord Valentine grew white and red by turns as he gazed upon the beautiful, queenly woman.
"I admit madam's wonderful beauty, her grace and her talent," he said, slowly, "and I will not deny her astonishing resemblance to your lost bride; but, Ernscliffe, I will not believe this trumped-up story of poor Queenie's resurrection. You are the victim of a monstrous fraud!"
Captain Ernscliffe's eyes blazed with anger.
"You deny that this is my wife?" he exclaimed, passionately.
Lord Valentine was silent a moment. After that brief pause for thought he answered, firmly:
"Yes, I utterly deny it. I will not believe in so stupendous a fraud as this one which is being perpetrated upon you. Madame De Lisle is a beautiful woman, and a great actress; but she is not the wife you buried years ago in Rose Hill Cemetery."
Queenie lifted her head and looked at him proudly, but she did not speak one word in her own defense. She did not need to do so. She had an eloquent defender by her side.
"Since you think thus," said Captain Ernscliffe, repressing his anger and excitement by a powerful effort of his will, "pray go to your wife and break the news of Sydney's tragic death to her and her mother. You may tell them also all that I have told you, and we will see if they will decide as you have done."
Lord Valentine bowed coldly and went away.
Captain Ernscliffe turned to the beautiful woman, who had fallen into a seat and buried her face in her jeweled hands.
"Queenie," he murmured.
She looked up at his inquiringly.
"Can you bear to hear the circumstances of your poor sister's death?" he asked, gently.
She bowed without speaking.
For answer he put into her hand Sydney's dying deposition, which Lord Valentine had returned to him.
She read it silently through. It dropped from her nerveless clasp, and she looked at him with a bitter pain in her white face.
"Oh, God, my poor, unhappy sister!" she moaned. "I have been the cause of her death."
"Say rather her own reckless passion was her doom," he answered, solemnly. "Do not accuse yourself, Queenie. She did not blame you. She was very sorrowful and repentant at the last. She wanted your forgiveness."
"Oh, my poor Sydney! She went mad for love," said Queenie, weeping.
"As I had almost done," he answered. "For, Queenie, I have been nearly beside myself these last few weeks. I knew you in spite of all your denials, and the bitterness of it all nearly broke my heart. But now I shall have my own again. Sydney wished it, dearest," he added, seeing a look of hesitancy on her face.
She did not answer, and her blue eyes drooped away from his fond glance.
He moved nearer and took her unresisting hand in his.
"Darling, forgive me for pressing it now in your grief and trouble, but tell me, shall it be as Sydney wished? Will you come back to my heart?"
"Perhaps you will not want me when I have told you all I have to tell," she answered, her sweet face crimson with painful blushes.
"There is nothing left for you to tell, my darling. Sydney has told me all," he answered, quickly.
"And you do not blame me? You are not angry with me?" she said, lifting her fair, troubled face with a look of wonder, mingled with relief.
"No, my sweet one. How could I blame you? It was like your sweet, impulsive self," he answered. "But tell me now, Queenie if you will–"
But at that moment the shrill scream of a woman broke the silence of the night, and Queenie sprang to her feet with a sob of grief and terror.
"It is your mother, dearest. She is there with Sydney. Can you bear to go to her, Queenie? Perhaps it may comfort her to have one daughter restored to her in the hour that she has lost another."
"Yes, yes, I will go," she moaned, turning toward the door. He drew her hand into his and led her around to the fatal western door.
Mrs. Lyle was there, down on her knees by her dead daughter, weeping and mourning, and Georgina stood apart, sobbing in her husband's arms.
Queenie rushed forward and threw herself down by the side of the kneeling woman.
"Mamma, mamma," she sobbed, "let me comfort you a little. Sydney is dead, but Queenie has come back to you to try to fill her place."
Mrs. Lyle shook off the white arm that had been thrown around her neck and sprang to her feet.
"How dare you touch me?" she cried, "you whose siren wiles have wrought my daughter's death? Go away from me, vile imposter that you are! My daughter Queenie is dead."
"No, no, mamma, she lives; she was saved from death! Oh, let me tell you all! I am your daughter Queenie!" cried the actress, in a voice of passionate pleading, lifting her streaming eyes to her mother's face.
"Begone! You are no child of mine!" was the angry reply, as Mrs. Lyle drew away from her, disdainful of her very touch. "Oh, go! go! You have stolen Sydney's husband; you have caused her death; you cannot deceive me also. Will not someone take her away?"
Queenie stood still, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, listening to her mother's cruel words. Then she crossed over to Lady Valentine, who stood within the clasp of her husband's arms weeping bitterly.
"Georgie," she said, in a tremulous voice, "won't you speak to me? Don't you know me? Sydney recognized me and owned me for her sister, even though I stood in her way. Surely you will not disown me!"
Georgie lifted her head and looked at the beautiful pleader a moment in silence.
She was not a bad woman, this Lady Valentine, and for a moment an impulse of pity stirred her heart and prompted her to believe this strange story at which her husband had sneered, and which her mother affected to disbelieve.
If she had been left to herself the better impulse in her heart would have triumphed, perhaps. Even as it was a momentary tender remembrance came into her heart as she recalled the night of her father's and sister's death! She recalled his words:
"Georgie, forgive her; she was more sinned against than sinning. She went mad and avenged the wrong. Remember that when she comes back."
"How did he know she would come back?" thought Lady Valentine to herself, in wonder. "We all thought she was dead then. But perhaps dying eyes can see more clearly than others. Poor papa, must I go against his dying charge to me?"
Then she remembered what her husband had said to her a little while ago:
"Georgie, do not forget that you have married into a proud old family. Think of the disgrace to us all if you should own this impostor for your sister! True, she is beautiful and gifted, but what then? She is an actress! The men and women of our race do not descend to such. They amuse us on the stage—these clever people. We pay for our amusement, and that ends all. We have nothing in common. Do not allow this clever, deceitful woman to impose on you as she did on your brother-in-law."
Lady Valentine knew quite well what those words meant.
She was not to recognize the actress as her sister, no matter what she thought.
So she strangled the thrill of pity at her heart, and answered in a cold, hard voice, quite unlike her own:
"Go away, Madame De Lisle. You are no sister of mine!"
Queenie turned from her with a heart-wrung sigh and went back to her mother.
"Mamma, let me kiss you once," she said, "only once, dear mamma, before I go away! I have loved you so, I have hungered for you so these long years while I have been away from you! Let me even kiss your hand, mamma, and I will try to be content. Oh! surely you will show me a little kindness if only for papa's sake, who loved me so dearly!"
But the mother's heart was turned to stone. She thrust away the clinging hands, she spurned the tender, beseeching lips.
"Go away," she harshly reiterated, "you are no child of mine. My daughter Queenie is dead and buried!"
The discarded daughter knelt down by Sydney's beautiful, lifeless clay and took the cold hand in hers, then kissed the white, breathless lips.
"Good-bye, Sydney," she whispered against the icy cheek. "You were kinder to me than they. You sought to kill my body, but they have broken my heart!"
She rose, after one long look of grief and pain, and went back to Captain Ernscliffe.
"I have only you left, Lawrence," she said, mournfully.
"I will be father, mother, sister, husband—everything to you, my darling," he answered, fondly, as he drew her hand in his arm.
"Put me in the carriage now," she said. "I am very weary. I must go home."
"You will have to be present at the inquest to-morrow. Did you know that?" he said.
"Yes, I will be there. Good-night, Lawrence," she said, putting her hand out from the carriage window.
He clasped and kissed it, then after watching the carriage out of sight, went back to where the mourners kept their weary vigil by the side of the beautiful woman who had loved him so fondly and fatally.
