Kitabı oku: «Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889», sayfa 12

He turned quickly and crept to the bedside, a desperate expression kindling in his haggard eyes as they rested upon the sleeping girl.

"Whether the issue proves me to be clairvoyant or brands me with falsehood, I must establish mental aberration in my patient, or lose my prize," he muttered; "I have burned my bridges and there is no retreating now!"

Scarcely had the incoherent words escaped his lips ere a clock tolled midnight and simultaneously the sound of wheels upon the terrace disturbed the peaceful course of night.

Thereupon followed the confusion of the muffled unclosing and closing of doors, excited voices and hurrying footsteps.

The sleeper stirred and moaned. Morton drew himself up into an attitude of unconscious defence, vaguely preparing himself for menace or attack, and in the next instant the door was thrust open to admit Colston Drummond.

No need to glance twice at the handsome face in order to guess the ungovernable anxiety and disarray that possessed the young lover.

"Is she alive?" he gasped, advancing into the middle of the chamber.

For answer, Morton imperiously waved him back in silence.

"No, no!" he cried, "give me some satisfaction! Tell me at least that I have not arrived too late! In God's name, why do you not speak?"

Barring his impetuous passage to the bedside, even laying detaining hands upon Drummond's shoulders, Morton was about to reply, when a low cry disturbed the ominous pause.

Snatched from her profound slumber and unobserved, Romaine Effingham had struggled up to a sitting posture and straightway fallen back with the cry which had startled the silence.

"Oh, why will you torture me?" she moaned piteously, flinging her arms across her face as if in desperate effort to shut out the sight of some uncanny apparition; "take him – take him away and let me – rest! In mercy, let me rest!"

"Romaine! Great heaven! what does this mean?"

"Silence!" commanded Morton, releasing his hold and retreating a step, while a gleam of triumph flickered for one brief moment in his sunken eyes; "Mr. Drummond, if you have any respect for the life of Miss Effingham, you will instantly leave this room!"

"Her life?" echoed Drummond in suspense, "it appears to me rather as if her reason were in jeopardy!"

"You are right," came the firm response, "her reason is gone – she is mad!"

CHAPTER V

"She is abused, stolen from me, and corrupted by spells and medicines bought of mountebanks."

"A day in April never came so sweet to show how costly summer was at hand," may be quoted as applicable to the rare dawn that succeeded that night of mystic import at Belvoir. The whole world seemed instinct with the smile of jocund spring. The dreary night had wept itself away, leaving its tears to jewel each new-born blade of grass. High up upon the spacious lawn crocuses fluttered their imperial raiment while snowdrops nodded and shook their bells as the bland wind swept by. The brook, swollen to a ruffled sea that inundated the low-land meadows, swirled through the willow-copse plumed to its crest with golden down in token of its glad revival. The trees stretched forth their yearning arms green with enamel of new buds; and over all the sun, rejoicing in release, shot his bright lances into nook and dell where lurked the mists of yesterday.

Yet, despite the allurements of the outer world, the inmates of Belvoir House remained invisible, and the stately white columns were left to mount guard over their sharply defined shadows along the sunny piazza.

Within the mansion much of the silence and gloom of the preceding night prevailed. Breakfast had been prepared as usual, but the appointed hour had passed unheeded, a significant fact in a household of such rigid regulation. By and by, however, a rustle upon the staircase announced the appearance of Mrs. Effingham.

Meeting a servant upon the way, the lady inquired where she should find Mr. Drummond; the man replied that he was closeted in the library with his young master, Hubert.

Thither she went directly, entering suddenly, and surprising the young gentlemen in the depths of earnest conversation.

"You have seen Romaine?" they inquired simultaneously.

"Yes, I have just left her."

"How is she?"

"Apparently safe."

Thereupon a strained silence ensued, during which Drummond led Mrs. Effingham to a divan and seated himself beside her, while Hubert watched the pair with an intentness that reflected the motive of his interrupted conversation with his future brother-in-law.

Colston Drummond was the first to break the silence.

"How do you find Romaine?" he asked.

The lines of anxious care deepened upon the lady's face as she replied.

"I have said that I consider her perfectly safe."

"Mentally as well as physically?"

"How can I tell? As yet I have seen no signs of derangement in her."

"Ah!" exclaimed Drummond, eagerly, "then you refuse to credit his announcement that she is mad!"

"If you mean Loyd, I believe that he has spoken in accordance with his convictions."

"He may be mistaken," was the terse reply.

Serena Effingham glanced in a startled way from one to the other of the young men, and it was Hubert who came to her relief.

"Colley has been urging the necessity of calling in another physician," he explained. "But I tell him, mother, that we have reason to have implicit faith in Loyd's ability; besides, it would seem like insult to send for any one now that she is out of danger."

Drummond passed his hand over his curling hair with a gesture eloquent of impatient doubt.

"Of course, I will not interfere if you are satisfied," he said. "But I beg you to answer me one question, for I feel that I shall never sleep, nor rest in peace until it is answered."

"What is it, my dear boy?" inquired Mrs. Effingham.

"You will grant me that Romaine is my affianced wife?" he demanded.

"No one disputes that point."

"And she loves me with her whole heart and soul? No, you need not answer that question! Here upon my heart lies her last letter, written within the month. I want no better evidence that she is mine, as truly as woman was ever man's."

"Well? What more do you ask?"

"What more?" he cried excitedly. "I ask why she screamed at sight of me last night, crying piteously, 'Why will you torture me? Take him away and let me rest!' Can you explain such words upon her lips, and at sight of me?"

"She was not herself, Colston. Her attitude towards you is proof that her mind is indeed deranged."

He shook his head dejectedly.

"You have just told me that as yet you have seen no signs of derangement in her," he said. "Tell me, if you can, why she should seem insane to me, yet sane to you?"

At this juncture Serena Effingham turned to Drummond and flung her arms about his neck.

"My darling boy," she murmured, gently; "for you are that, and ever will be to me. You are worn out with fatigue and excitement. The shock of finding Romaine so ill, after your long and hopeful journey, has completely unhinged you. But I sympathize with you. Remember, that my love for her is akin to yours, and remember, too, that God is good; and I believe that, if we pray unceasingly, He in His mercy will give her back to us, sane and whole again."

He stooped and kissed her up-turned forehead, as he replied,

"God bless you, dear mother. I would that my faith were such as yours!"

Then, releasing himself from the lady's embrace, he rose, adding,

"I am going to breakfast with my mother at Drummond Lodge. Meanwhile, watch Romaine! I shall return later in the day and shall depend upon an interview with her."

"Which I may almost promise shall be granted you."

The voice that uttered these unexpected words was low of pitch yet startlingly sonorous; indeed, so unprepared were the trio for the sudden intrusion, that they were quite thrown off their guard, and turned about in some disarray.

Doctor Loyd Morton proved to be the intruder. He stood upon the threshold of the apartment, parting the drapery with one outstretched hand, while the extreme pallor of his countenance, the firmness of his glance, as well as his pronounced dignity of mien, failed not to impress his beholders.

Divining that the situation threatened to become strained, Mrs. Effingham remarked quickly,

"We have been waiting for you to breakfast with us, Loyd." Then turning to Drummond, she added, "We shall look for you at dinner, Colston. Always bear in mind that you are at home at Belvoir."

Drummond bowed in silence, and with one glance at Morton, who had advanced a step, still holding the drapery, he passed into the hall, accompanied by Hubert.

The moment the drapery fell into place again, Serena Effingham advanced impulsively and kissed Morton with the maternal fervor which had ever been her wont with him.

"What a debt we owe you, Loyd, dear," she murmured beneath her breath, while her eyes lingered upon the swaying folds that hid Drummond from her view.

"Address your thanks to God," he replied, steadily, holding her in his arms.

"You have saved her life!"

"Say rather that He has spared her."

"She would have died had you not come to us."

The firmness of his glance never wavered for an instant as he answered,

"That is true; but we must bear in mind that I am but an instrument in the hands of the Almighty."

And his words were uttered with as sincere a conviction as had ever possessed him. However deeply he may have been impressed by the questionable part he was enacting, he was satisfied that Romaine Effingham would have been laid beside her father and brother in the tomb but for his influence, at the moment of the crisis. Through his interposition, he told himself, her body had been saved; with the fate that had befallen her soul he was not concerned. In a series of gyrations, never-ending in their recurrence, the words seemed to dance through his brain, "A body is theirs, a soul is mine; a soul is mine, a body is theirs," and so on, and on, and on, with incessant swirl and swing until, dazed and confused, he was forced to seek the palliative of fresh air under pretence of making a hasty round of visits upon his patients.

Meanwhile, above stairs in her dainty chamber, Romaine had been clothed in a robe of delicate texture, snowy as the billowy rifts of swan's-down that strayed about the neck and down the front, and had been placed in the azure depths of silken cushions upon a lounge that stood where the flood of genial sunshine streamed in. Beside her a huge cluster of mingled Freesia and golden jonquils spent their rich fragrance upon the air, conjuring, as it were, a hint of the exuberant spring-tide within the house. A very festival of warmth and light seemed to hold the chamber beneath its inspiring spell, calling forth ethereal tones in the blues of the rugs and hangings, and investing the silver upon the toilet-table with a quite magical glitter.

A little maid, meek-eyed as any dove, went here and there with noiseless step, putting the finishing touches to the final arrangement of the room. Now and again she would cast a dutiful glance towards the couch whereon lay her fair young mistress, with eye-lids drooping until the dark lashes rested upon her pale cheeks, her slender fingers interlaced upon her breast.

There were sparrows chirping somewhere about the casements, while from the distance the hum of pastoral life came drowsily to the ear.

The little maid fluttered her plumed brush about a Dresden cavalier, ruthlessly smothering a kiss that he had been vainly endeavoring for years to blow from the tips of his effeminate fingers to a mincing shepherdess, beyond the clock upon the mantle. In due time she relieved the love-lorn knight and fell upon his inamorata, favoring her with the same unceremonious treatment. The clock chimed twelve to the accompaniment of a brief waltz, presumably executed upon the lute of the china goat-herd that surmounted the time-piece, and at the same moment Romaine Effingham stirred. In an instant the faithful watcher was beside the couch.

"Miss Romaine!" she breathed, "it is I, Joan. Can I do anything for Miss Romaine?"

One of the slender hands was raised and rested lightly upon the little maid's head.

"Yes," was the low reply. "You may find him and send him to me."

"Who, Miss Romaine? Mr. Hubert?"

"No."

"Mr. Drummond?"

"No, no," emphatically, but not impatiently.

"Ah! I know – Doctor Morton?"

"Oh, yes!" with a sigh. "Loyd; go and find him."

"Yes, Miss Romaine."

But instead of Loyd Morton it was Serena Effingham who had hastened promptly to her daughter's side.

"Here I am, dear," she said, stooping to caress the fair low brow. "I have been besieged by callers to inquire for you, but from this moment I will deny myself to everyone until you are quite strong and well again."

"But I sent for Loyd," persisted the girl, in the same calm tone.

"Loyd has gone to visit his patients, my darling; but you may depend upon it he will not be gone long."

"I hope not. O, how devoted he is! Why, it is to him that I owe my life, for he has brought me back to life; and yet – and yet how strange it seems that I cannot recollect where I have been in all this time!"

"Dearest child, do not distress yourself," urged the mother anxiously; "you will recall everything in time and all will be well."

"Ah, but it is not distress to me! It was like a dream of heaven when I heard his voice calling me to come out of the shadow into the radiance that his dear face shed about me! Oh, there can be no death where he is, and no sorrow while he is by!"

She smiled as one smiles in sleep, and let her eye-lids droop until the lashes cast their shadow.

Each of the strange words deepened the pallor upon Serena Effingham's face, a sign of anxious care, perhaps not wholly due to her consciousness of the fact that her daughter was actually under the spell of a gentle hallucination; as a matter of fact it pained her that that hallucination had taken a course somewhat at variance with Drummond's interests.

As she had determined, from that moment she devoted herself to Romaine. The greater part of the time the girl slept soundly; during the intervals of wakefulness she seemed happy and at perfect peace within herself. Occasionally she would break her complacent silence by inquiries for Morton; otherwise she appeared inclined to enter into no sort of converse.

Such nourishment as was offered her she accepted with relish, remarking once, with a fleeting smile, "I have seen enough of death for one lifetime; and I want to live, since I have so much to live for."

Plainly her volition materially assisted her convalescence, which was rapid – visible almost from hour to hour. And thus the uneventful afternoon waned to early evening. The goat-herd rehearsed his brief waltz over and over again, and the sun went westward, withdrawing his rays from the silken hangings and the silver upon the toilet-table.

Lacking in incident as the day had proved at Belvoir, to Loyd Morton it had been an epoch of emotions such as he had never dreamed of realizing.

Upon leaving Belvoir, he had gone directly to his house in town, into which he admitted himself with a latch-key. The object of his haste was to place himself before a portrait of his wife which hung in a room held sacred to her memory. Here, amid a thousand mementos of the happy past, it was his custom to sit during his leisure hours, brooding upon the wreck that had overtaken him.

To-day, however, he entered the mortuary apartment with buoyant step, wafting a smiling kiss up at the fair-haired Gretchen that gazed upon him from her frame above the mantel-piece. He flung wide the windows and blinds, even sweeping back the draperies, that the April sun might beam in and rob the place of shadow.

Then he placed himself before the portrait, and thus addressed it, giving vent to his pent-up exaltation,

"I no longer beseech you to speak to me with those beloved lips," he cried, "nor to smile upon me with those eyes that heaven has tinted with its own blue! And yet I must adore your image, which, after all, is lost to me. But what care I, since your immortal soul actuates other lips to breathe your love for me, and kindles other eyes with that same deathless love when silence falls between us? O, Paula, my idol! tell me why I should be so infinitely blessed, when other men languish in their bereavement? Thou knowest now that I am as other men are – as full of frailty and sin as any; then, why am I favored with the lot of angels? O my God, it cannot be that I have died and this is heaven! – this being with you and yet not seeing you, this exquisite aggravation which is mingled agony and bliss! By some strange decree, you are with me again, yet I cannot see, I cannot touch, you. Am I perhaps in purgatory? Or, worse, what if I should wake to find myself in a Fool's Paradise! Heaven forbid; for that would drive me mad, and then my unbalanced spirit would wander gibbering through all eternity, and know you not! Oh, no, no, no! It is the magic of our great love that has united us in this communion, which ameliorates the misery of our transient separation, and I thank God for it! Another day, and mayhap I shall be with you indeed – in the spirit, in heaven! But, oh, my love, my life, my all in all, my divinity, never desert me! In mercy and in love remain with me until the hour of my release; then lead me back with thee!"

Thus more or less coherently he rambled on before the gazing portrait, in wild salutation and petition, until the sudden opening of the door hurled him from the heights of exaltation to earth.

Upon the threshold stood his man, amazed and at the same time abashed.

"You will excuse me, sir," he began brokenly; "but I had no idea you were in the house. I heard voices up here, and I thought thieves had got in, or – or that the place was haunted!"

"I suppose I have the right to come and go and speak in my own house as I choose?" retorted Morton testily, conscious of his inexplicable demeanor, and impotently furious accordingly. "Close the blinds and windows, and shut the room up. Have there been any calls?"

"No end of them, sir – and letters."

Glad to make his escape from a predicament that bordered too closely upon the ridiculous to be comfortable, Morton hastily descended to his office. In the ante-chamber, in which he had received Hubert Effingham on the preceding evening, he found ample affirmation of his man's statement that he had been sought during his absence. The slate was covered with names and requests, while upon a table lay a salver heaped with letters. These he mechanically examined until, at the very bottom of the heap, he came upon a missive which promptly arrested his attention. It was addressed in pencil and unsealed. A moment later and he had possessed himself of the startling information contained within.

He rang the bell in haste and excitedly anticipated the advent of his man by throwing open the door into the hall.

"When was this note left?" he demanded.

"Last evening, sir."

"At what hour?"

"Just before you left the house, sir, with Mr. Effingham."

"Before I left the house!" exclaimed Morton; "in heaven's name, why did you not bring it to me? It is a case of life and death! It should have been attended to without the loss of a moment. As I could not attend to it myself, I should have sent Chalmers in my place."

The poor man looked panic-stricken.

"You will excuse me, sir," he faltered, "but I knocked twice on the study-door while the messenger waited, but I got no response. I thought you couldn't come, so sent the messenger away."

"But why did you not give me the note before I went away with Mr. Effingham?"

"Well, the truth is, sir," stammered the man, "I had no idea you were going to leave during office-hours, so I just slipped down to finish a cup o' tea, and when I came up you were off and away."

"Fool! Do you know that your negligence may have cost Miss Casson her life?"

"Casson!" gasped the man, turning pale to the lips and staggering against the wall for support, "the Lord save us, sir; she's dead!"

"Dead!" echoed Morton, in horror.

"Dead, sir! They sent round word early this morning to say that she died at midnight sharp."

Morton staggered into his study, slamming the door in the man's face. He threw himself into the deep reclining-chair which Margaret Revaleon had occupied, and pressed his head between his hands in a desperate endeavor to collect his wits.

Hark! was it a repeating voice, or some mad phantasy, the coinage of his excited brain, that reproduced those thrilling words:

"You will be called to attend a dying woman, – you are called, already is the messenger here. A woman's soul is trembling upon the threshold of eternity. If you are alone with her when that soul takes wing, my spirit will instantly take its place – and your skill will do the rest. Accomplish the resurrection of that body and secure our further communion."

Two women were approaching the threshold of death and two messengers were waiting to summon him while those portentous words were being uttered! To which of the two should he have gone? Which one was intended, destined for the promised reincarnation?