CHAPTER XXVIII
Previous to Leslie Noble's visit to Countess Vera he has been the hero of an excited scene at Darnley House.
Since the night of Mrs. Vernon's party, Ivy has been, for the most part of the time, raving in angry hysterics, which Mr. Noble makes no smallest attempt to soothe or soften. In fact, he spends almost all of his time away from home, and a quiet as of the tomb seems to have fallen over the magnificent mansion with its splendid furniture and large retinue of servants. No one calls, no further invitations pour in upon them. Society seems to have tacitly turned the cold shoulder to them in their defeat and disgrace.
The rage, the shame, the humiliation of Mrs. Cleveland's mind no tongue can tell.
From the grave in which he lies moldering back to his kindred clay, her enemy has reached out an icy, skeleton hand, and struck the brimming cup of pride and triumph ruthlessly from her lips.
Through the agency of his child, the beautiful daughter she had hated so bitterly, he had avenged his terrible wrongs. There is murder in Marcia Cleveland's heart as she writhes under the retributive hand of justice. Fain would she grip her strong, white fingers around Vera's delicate throat, and press the life out, or plunge a dagger in her tender breast, or press a poisoned cup to those beautiful lips that had condemned her in such scornful phrases.
On the morning of that day when Leslie Noble has his interview with Lady Vera, Mrs. Cleveland is sitting alone with Ivy in a small, daintily-furnished morning-room that opens from the library.
They are anxiously discussing their situation and prospects, for it is impossible to conceal from themselves that Mr. Noble is dazzled by the prospect opening before him, and that the severance of the tie that has bound him to the shrewish Ivy is more agreeable to his mind than otherwise.
"Will he desert me, do you think, mamma? He used to love me, you remember," exclaims the fair termagant, trying to whisper comfort to her foreboding heart.
Mrs. Cleveland laughs, a low, bitter, sarcastic laugh.
"You do well to say once," she answers, "for whatever love he might have had for you in the past, you have killed it long ago by your foolish extravagance, your violent temper and self-will."
"Who incited me to it all, I wonder?" her daughter cries, turning her head angrily. "Who was it that told me to have my own way and defy him, since being my husband, he was perforce compelled to bear with me? Who but you, who now turn around and taunt me with the result of your teachings?"
"Well, well, and I was right enough." Mrs. Cleveland replies, coolly, justifying herself. "Of course I could not foresee how things would fall out, or I should have counselled you to keep your husband's love at all events. He might then have made some fight against this Countess Vera's claim. As it is–"
She pauses with a hateful, significant "hem."
"As it is," Ivy repeats after her, shortly. "Well, go on. Let us have the benefit of your opinion."
"He will be glad of any excuse to shake you off," finishes her mother.
"But he shall not do it," Ivy cries out, furiously, and brandishing her small fist as if at some imaginary foe. "I will stick to him like a burr. I am his wife. The woman that claims him is a hateful impostor. No one will make me believe that Vera Campbell's bones are not lying in the grave where we saw her buried three years ago."
"Perhaps this will convince you," exclaims a loud, triumphant voice, and Leslie Noble, striding suddenly into the room, holds an open paper before her eyes. It is the cablegram from Washington, telling him that the coffin beneath the marble monument is empty—that the bride he buried three years ago has escaped from her darksome prison house of clay.
"Do you believe now?" Leslie Noble demands, with something of insolent triumph in his voice and bearing as the two women crowd nearer and scan the fatal cablegram with dilated eyes and working faces.
Mrs. Cleveland answers, stormily:
"No, we do not believe such a trumped-up falsehood—not for an instant. I see how it is. You have lent yourself to a wicked plan in order to free yourself from poor innocent Ivy, whose greatest weakness has ever been her fondness for you, wicked and treacherous deceiver that you are! You strive for a high prize, in unlimited wealth and the greatest beauty in England. But you will see whether Ivy will tamely endure desertion and disgrace. She declares that she will not give you up, and I shall uphold her in that resolution!"
He stares at her a moment with an expression of fiery scorn and anger, then answers scathingly:
"I am sorry to hear that Ivy is so lost to self-respect as to wish to still live with a man who is bound to her only by a tie of the deepest dishonor and disgrace. But her intentions or yours can make not the slightest difference in what I am going to do. For more than two years I have been the meek slave of you and of Ivy—driven as bond slave was never driven before the triumphal car of your imperious will! You have recklessly dissipated my fortune, defied my warnings, trampled my wishes under foot, shown me all too plainly for mistake that I was married for my money, not at all for myself. The hour of my release has come at last, and with unfeigned gladness I throw off the yoke that has long been too heavy for endurance!"
They stare at him mutely—Mrs. Cleveland purple with rage, Ivy gasping for breath, and preparing to go off into furious hysterics. He takes advantage of the momentary lull in their wrath to proceed, determinedly:
"You must understand by this, Ivy, that as you are no longer my wife, indeed, never have been, that I will not again recognize you as such, and that an immediate separation is desirable. You have so beggared me by your extravagance that it is impossible for me to follow the generous dictates of my heart which would prompt me to bestow a goodly sum upon you. But I shall give you a check for a thousand dollars, and you may retain your dresses and jewels, by the sale of which you may realize a very neat little fortune. I have no more to say beyond expressing the hope that you will leave Darnley House by to-morrow and seek other quarters. I shall not return until you are gone."
While speaking he has laid with elaborate politeness a folded check by Ivy's elbow, and with a formal bow which includes both ladies in its mocking complaisance, he quits the room and the house, to seek that interview with Lady Vera which we have recorded in our last chapter.
"Deserted! Repudiated! Driven from home!" shrieks out Ivy, finding voice at last, and springing tragically to her feet. "Mamma, what shall we do now? Where shall we go?"
"We will go nowhere," Mrs. Cleveland answers, determinedly. "This is your home, and here we shall stay! I defy Leslie Noble to oust us from Darnley House. It will take something more than a cablegram and the oath of a countess to prove that you are not Leslie Noble's wife. Why, her own denial that she was ever buried proves that she is not Vera Campbell. How could she be ignorant of such a tragic event in her own life? No, no, Ivy, we will not quit Darnley House yet. Leslie Noble is not so easily rid of us as he fondly thinks. Darnley House is not ready to receive Countess Vera as its mistress yet. We will hold the fort."
Mrs. Cleveland is equal to most emergencies.
Confident in this knowledge she settles herself to abide by her decision. But in this case it turns out that she has reckoned without her host.
A week passes. Such a week as Mrs. Cleveland and Ivy have seldom spent, so quiet, so void of callers and excitement as it is. They have commenced by taking their usual daily drive, but before the week is out they discontinue it. Such curious, insolent glances follow them, such cold, averted looks meet them.
The fickle world that smiled on them its sweetest so lately, has only frowns and shrugs, and whispered detractions now.
Even Mrs. Cleveland's iron assurance quails before the storm of public disapproval, and she decides to hide her diminished head in the luxurious shades of Darnley House.
Of even this solace she is soon bereft.
A freezingly-polite letter arrives from the master of the mansion, desiring to know when they propose to vacate his premises. Mrs. Cleveland and Ivy return a prompt defiance to this inquiry, stating that they do not intend to leave at all.
And now the trodden worm turns with a vengeance.
On the following day all the servants of Darnley House leave in a body, after informing their mistress of their discharge by Mr. Noble. They decline to be re-engaged by Mrs. Noble, and Mrs. Cleveland hints bitterly at bribery on the part of her whilom son-in-law.
On the same day arrives a concise statement from Mr. Noble to the effect that a public sale of the house and its effects is advertised for the third day of that week. He is outdoing even themselves in cool, relentless malice.
"We shall have to go. We have been fairly whipped out by that scheming villain," Mrs. Cleveland groans, in indescribable wrath, and bitterness of spirit, and Ivy, throwing herself down on her satin couch, hurls bitter maledictions on Leslie Noble's name, and wishes him dead a hundred times.
But all their combined rage cannot hinder the course of events. So on the morning of the sale, just as a few curious strangers begin to invade the splendid drawing-rooms, Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter are quietly driven away in a closed carriage.
CHAPTER XXIX
"I shall have to leave London," Lady Vera says, desperately, when rumor has wafted to her ears the story of Leslie Noble's cavalier treatment of Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter. "I am afraid—horribly afraid of that man. His parting threat still rings in my ears."
"You need not be afraid while you are with us," Lady Clive exclaims, vivaciously. "Do you think we would ever let the mean wretch come near you again?"
But Lady Vera, coloring deeply, explains:
"He has other methods of annoying me besides his presence. Already I have received several letters from him, some of a wheedling, persuasive nature, others filled with offensive threats."
Sir Harry looks up from his paper.
"Shall I horsewhip the scoundrel for you, Lady Vera?" he asks, indignantly. "It would give me the greatest pleasure."
She shrinks, sensitively, from this offered championship.
"No, no, for it would only make the affair more notorious. And I am afraid it has been talked about already—has it not, Sir Harry?" she asks, with a painful blush on her shamed face.
"Yes, rather," he admits, reluctantly.
"And I have been afraid even to look into the papers," she pursues. "I thought it might have gotten into them. Has it, Sir Harry?"
He answers "yes" again with sincere reluctance, and Lady Vera hides her face in her hands a moment, while crimson blushes of shame burn her fair cheeks. She thinks to herself that she would gladly have died rather than have encountered all this.
"But they do not say any harm of you, dear—you mustn't think that," said Lady Clive, kindly. "And they all sympathize with you. Your friends call on you every day, only you decline to see them, you know. But every one is so sorry for you, and has cut those people—your enemies, I mean, Vera—quite dead."
"Noble has turned them out of Darnley House, bag and baggage. Had to sell the place over their heads to oust them," says Sir Harry.
"Is it not strange that I should have taken such an antipathy to them when I first met them abroad? Experience has so fully justified me that I shall plume myself hereafter on being a person of great discernment," laughs Lady Clive.
Lady Vera sighs and is silent. Her heart is very sore over the parting with her lover, and the notoriety that the keeping of her oath has brought down upon her. Fain would she bow her fair head in some lone, deserted spot, and die of the shame and misery that weighs upon her so heavily.
"After all I believe I should be safer and happier at Fairvale Park," she says, after a moment. "I have a feeling of dread upon me here. I am growing nervous, perhaps, but I am actually afraid of Leslie Noble. I seem to be haunted by his baleful presence. Yesterday evening when I went for a short walk, I fancied my footsteps were dogged by a man, though I could not make out his identity through my thick veil. But I was frightened homeward very fast by an apprehension that it was Mr. Noble. I should breathe more easily out of London. Could I persuade you, Lady Clive and Sir Harry, to forego the delights of the season, and come down to the country with me?"
Sir Harry gives his wife a quick telegraphic signal of affirmation, and she assents smilingly.
"I am sure I shall be delighted," she declares. "And Sir Harry is usually of the same mind as I am. It must be perfectly lovely now down at Fairvale. And the children would be delighted, I know."
"I am all the more willing to accept Lady Vera's invitation to Fairvale, because I think it necessary that she should examine her father's letters and papers if he has left any," declares Sir Harry, diffidently. "If he has left any confession bearing on the subject of her supposed death and burial, it is most important that she should be in possession of it."
"Why?" asks the young countess, looking at him with a slightly startled air.
"For this reason," he answers. "In the face of your enemies' confident assertion of Vera Noble's death and burial, and your own denial of it, matters have assumed a strange aspect! Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter declare you to be an impostor whom the Earl of Fairvale has palmed off as his child. There are some who could very easily be brought to believe that story."
"Whom?" Lady Vera asks, wonderingly.
"The person who would be most benefited if such a charge could be proven true—the next heir to the title and estates of Fairvale," Sir Harry answers, gravely.
"Oh, dear!" cries Lady Clive, anxiously, and Vera says, with paling lips:
"You do not mean that—that–"
"I ought to tell you, Lady Vera, what I have heard," he answers, interrupting her incoherent question. "Shall I do so?"
"Yes, pray do," she answers.
"Briefly, then, Raleigh Gilmore, the next heir, has come up to London, summoned doubtless by the vindictive Clevelands, and has been interviewing some eminent lawyers. Seeing that he has lived for ten years or more on his small estate in the country without ever setting foot in London, this present move on his part has a suspicious look. You may apprehend a suit against you at any time, so it behooves you to muster all the evidence you can on this weak point in your history."
Lady Vera sits silent before this new, impending calamity with folded hands, her color coming and going fitfully, her dark eyes fixed steadfastly on the floor. Perhaps she does not realize in all its intensity this new horror. The pain she has already endured has numbed her feelings, or rendered her impervious to future sufferings.
"You understand, do you not, Lady Vera," Sir Harry pursues, calling her attention reluctantly, "that your denial of ever having been buried makes a fearfully weak point in your case, should it ever be contested? All the evidence adduced goes to prove that Vera Campbell Noble really died to all appearance, and was buried. If you are compelled by law to prove your identity with that Vera, you will have to admit that burial, and prove your resurrection. Otherwise—I am telling you this in the greatest kindness, remember, dear Lady Vera—you may be branded as an adventuress and impostor, and ruthlessly bereft of the goodly heritage of Fairvale."
She lifts her heavy eyes from the blank contemplation of the carpet, and looks at him thoughtfully.
"You do not believe me an impostor, do you, Sir Harry?" she asks, sadly.
"Not for an instant," replies the baronet, warmly.
"Do you, Lady Clive?"
"No, indeed, my dearest girl," replies her friend, with an emphatic caress.
"Did Colonel Lockhart, before he went away?" she asks, with blushing hesitation.
"Not at all," Sir Harry answers, decidedly.
"Then surely no one will believe it," she says, thoughtfully. "You remember Vera Campbell's grave has been found empty."
"Yes, but you remember you may be called on to prove your identity with Vera Campbell," he answers, gravely.
"Leslie Noble unhesitatingly acknowledges me as his wife," she argues.
"I do not know whether that fact would weigh strongly with a jury," he answers, thoughtfully. "To claim you, Lady Vera, so young, so lovely, above all, so wealthy, as his wife, cannot be without its subtle temptation to such a man as Leslie Noble. Rumor says that the Clevelands have almost beggared him by their lavish and ruinous extravagance, and that he hated the woman who bore his name. What more natural than that he should jump at the choice of exchanging his crumbling fortunes and despised partner for rank and wealth, and beauty and youth? Though I do not doubt your identity for one moment, Lady Vera, I am convinced that it could scarcely be proved in a court of law by the oath of Leslie Noble."
As he pauses, coloring, and deeply sorry that it has seemed necessary to speak so plainly to her whom fate has already so rudely buffeted, she looks up at him with forced calmness and self-restraint.
"What, then, do you deem it necessary that I should do in my own defense, Sir Harry?" she inquires.
"In times of peace prepare for war," he quotes, sententiously. "Do not understand me to mean that I apprehend immediate trouble, Lady Vera. Perhaps in my friendliness and interest in you, I have magnified the danger. But I would advise that you be ready in case an attack is made. And the first step I would advise is to thoroughly examine the papers left by your father, the late earl. I can only think that he concealed the truth from you from fear of shocking your sensitive mind too greatly. But I can scarcely credit that he would fail to leave on record the narrative of so strange and important an event in your life. I say, therefore, if such a document be in existence, it is judicious that you should put yourself in immediate possession of it."
Lady Vera, rising impulsively, goes over to this true and noble friend, and presses his hand warmly between both her own soft, white ones.
"Sir Harry, I do not know how to thank you for the friendship you are proving so nobly," she murmurs, tearfully. "But I will pray God nightly to bless you for standing by me so nobly in my hour of trial and sorrow."
"Tut—tut, I need no thanks," the baronet answers, brushing a suspicious moisture away from his eyes. "How can I help being kind to Nella's best loved friend, and her brother's sweetheart? You need not blush, my dear, for I hope Providence may soon translate Leslie Noble to some higher sphere, and give you and Phil leave to be happy. And until then I will do the best I can for your comfort. In furtherance of that end I propose that Nella and the children shall be in readiness to accompany you to Fairvale to-morrow."
CHAPTER XXX
Sadly and wearily enough Lady Vera goes to her room and her couch that night. Having disrobed and retired, she dismisses her maid to the dressing-room to complete the packing for to-morrow's flitting. Then, closing her heavy eyelids, she endeavors to woo sleep to her weary pillow.
Strange, shuddering sighs heave the fair breast as she lies there in the dim, half-light of the lowered lamp, with her fair arms tossed above her golden head, and the dark lashes drooping against the pale and lovely cheeks.
Sir Harry Clive's conversation has revived in her sensitive, imaginative mind all her horror of that strange, living entombment through which she has passed years ago, all unknown to herself by reason of her father's tender, shielding love.
"I have lain in the bosom of the dark earth, the coffin-lid has been fastened down upon my living breast, the cold, black clods have been heaped upon me; I have been buried alive. Oh, horrible!" she murmurs, aloud, and to her excited fancy it seems as if the echo of a low, diabolical laugh floats through the room.
She starts up on her elbow with a low and frightened cry.
"Elsie, did you speak? did you laugh?" she calls out to her maid in the dressing-room; but Elsie, absorbed in the prosaic business of packing, does not hear her voice, and in a moment the countess falls back upon her pillow, chiding herself for nervousness.
"It was a foolish fancy, merely," she tells herself. "I must not let my nervous thoughts run on like this through my terror of that mysterious burial. I will compose myself to sleep. The hour is getting late. Perhaps Elsie has finished her work and gone."
Once more she vainly tries to lose herself in sleep, but her heart beats in her ears, her temples throb, some strange, alien, agitating influence controls her mind, banishing rest and repose.
She puts her hands over her ears, in mortal dread of hearing that low, eerie, unearthly cackle of malicious mirth again, and shuts her eyes as if in dread of seeing some strange, unwelcome vision start out from the shadowy hangings of the darkened room.
"Surely I am going mad under the weight of my troubles," she says to herself, half-fearfully. "This sleeplessness, these weird, unearthly fancies must be the premonitions of reason tottering on its throne."
The minutes pass. Gradually Lady Vera becomes conscious of a delicate, subtle odor floating lightly through the room. She does not recognize it as a perfume. It is simply an odor, faintly sickening, yet strangely soothing to her excited senses. Her eyelids fall more heavily. She seems to sleep.
Sleeping, a hideous vision comes to Lady Vera. A dark-robed, creeping figure seems to start from the black shadows at the furthest corner of the room and float across the floor to her bedside.
It is the form of a tall woman, with a hooded head and masked face, but through the small holes of the mask two murderous black eyes glare hatred upon her, the malevolent eyes of Marcia Cleveland.
Vera tries to start, to cry out, but she is motionless, dumb, bound hand and foot by the spell of that subtle, sickening drug diffused through the room, and which grows stronger as Marcia Cleveland's snowy handkerchief flutters lightly in her hand.
All this Lady Vera notes in her strange dream, with feelings of unutterable horror and despair. She tries to awake, to open her dazed eyes fully, to utter some sound from her poor, parched lips, but they refuse to obey her will.
And still those murderous black eyes glare with devilish hatred upon her through the narrow slits in the mask.
Surely that evil glare is baleful enough to kill her of itself, Vera thinks despairingly, but even at that instant the woman's hand is drawn backward and upward, and in her murderous grasp glitters the flashing blade of a dagger poised above the bare, uncovered breast of the helpless victim, and this time with a last, vain, frenzied effort to call on God for protection, Vera loses sight and consciousness, and lies helpless at the mercy of her deadly foe.
The flashing steel glitters sharply in the air, nearer and nearer it descends over the victim, in another moment it will be sheathed in her heart, when a sudden cry rings through the room, swift footsteps cross the floor, strong arms seize the body of the murderess from behind and wrench her away from her helpless prey.
The gleaming dagger falls clanking to the floor. A man's voice, passionate, vibrant, intense, cleaves the shuddering air of the night.
"Devil! murderess! If you had slain my darling, that blade should have been sheathed in your own heart a moment later!"
It is the voice of Colonel Lockhart. Elsie, the maid, comes close behind him, and together they bind the would-be murderess with strong cords that prevent her attempted escape.