CHAPTER XXIII.
IN THE SECRET CHAMBER
Have only twenty-four hours elapsed? Is it but yesternight that all the terrible events took place, the memory of which are now making my frame tremble? So the clock says, and yet how hard it is to believe it. Madame Letellier— But I will preserve my old method. I will not anticipate events, but relate them as they occurred.
To go back then to the note which I received from madame. I did not like it. I did not see its consistency, and I did not mean to be its dupe. If she intended remaining in the oak parlor, then over the oak parlor I would keep watch; for from her alone breathed whatever danger there might be for any of us, and to her alone did I look for the explanation of her mysterious presence in a spot that should have held a thousand repellent forces for her and hers. As for her sudden illness, that was nonsense. She was as well as I was myself. Had I not seen her standing at the window an hour or two before?
But here I made a mistake. Madame was really ill, as I presently had occasion to observe. For not only was a physician summoned, but word came that she wished to see me, also; and when I went to her room I found her in bed, her face pallid and distorted with pain, and her whole aspect betraying the greatest physical suffering.
It was a rheumatic attack, affecting mainly her right limb, and made her so helpless that, for a moment, I stood aghast at what looked to me like a dispensation of Providence. But in another instant I began to doubt again; for though I knew it was beyond anybody's power to simulate the suffering under which she evidently labored, I was made to feel, by her penetrating and restless looks, that her mind retained its hold upon its purpose, whatever that purpose might be, and that for me to relax my vigilance now would be to give her an advantage that would be immediately seized upon.
I therefore held my sympathies in check; and, while acting the part of the solicitous landlady, watched for that glance or word which should reveal her secret intentions. Her daughter, whose eyes were streaming with tears, stood over her like a pitying angel, and not till we had done all we could to relieve her mother, and subdue her pain, did she allow her longing eyes to turn toward the clock that beat out the passing moments with mechanical precision. It was just a quarter to nine.
The mother saw that glance, and hid her face for a moment; then she took mademoiselle by the hand, and drawing her down to her, whispered audibly:
"I expect you to keep your appointment. Mrs. Truax will send one of the girls to sit with me. Besides, I feel better, and as if I could sleep. Only remember your promise, dear. No look, no hint of your feelings."
Mademoiselle flushed scarlet. Stealing a look at me, she drew back embarrassed, but oh! how joyous. I felt my old heart quiver as I surveyed her, and in spite of the dread form of the redoubtable woman stretched before me, in spite of the grewsome room and its more than grewsome secrets, something of the fairy light of love seemed to fall upon my spirit and lift the darkness from the place for one short and glowing moment.
"Look in the glass," the mother now commanded. "You need to tie up your curls again and to put a fresh flower at your throat. I do not wish you to show weariness. Mrs. Truax"—these words to me in low tones, as her daughter withdrew to the other side of the room—"you received my note?"
I nodded.
"You will do what I ask?"
I nodded again. Deliberate falsehood it was, but I showed no faltering.
"Then I will excuse you now."
I rose.
"And do not send any one to me. I wish to sleep, and another's presence would disturb me. See, the pain is almost gone."
She did look better.
"Your wishes shall be regarded," I assured her. "If you do feel worse, ring this bell and Margery will notify me." And placing the bell rope near her hand, I drew back and presently quitted the room.
Lingering in the hall just long enough to see the lovely Honora flit across the threshold of the sitting-room which I had purposely ordered vacant for her use, I hurried to my room.
It was dark, dark as the secret chamber into which I now stole with the lightest and wariest of steps. Horror, gloom, and apprehension were in the air, which brooded stiflingly in the narrow spot, and had it not been for the righteous purpose sustaining me, I should have fallen at this critical moment, crushed beneath the terrible weight of my own feelings.
But one who has to listen, straining every faculty to catch the purport of what is going on behind an impenetrable wall, soon forgets himself and his own sensations. As I pressed my ear to the wall and caught the sound of a prolonged and painful stir within, I only thought of following the movements of madame, who, I was now sure, had left her bed and was dragging herself, with what difficulty and distress I could but faintly judge by the involuntary groans which now and then left her, across the floor toward the door, the key of which I presently heard turn.
This done, a heavy silence followed, then the slow, dragging sound began again, interrupted now by weary pants and heavy sobs that at first chilled me and then shook me with such fear that it was with difficulty that I could retain my place against the wall. She was crawling in my direction, and at each instant I heard the pants grow louder.
I gradually withdrew, step by step, till I found myself pressed up against the wall in the remotest corner I could find. And here was I standing, enveloped in darkness and dread, when the sounds changed to that of a shuddering, rushing noise which I had heard once before in my life, and from a narrow gap through which the faint light in the room beyond dimly shone in a thread of lesser darkness, the aperture grew, till I could feel rather than see her form, crawling, not walking, through the opening, and hear, distinct enough, her horrible, gurgling tones as she murmured:
"I shall have to grope for what I want—touch it, feel it, for I cannot see. O God! O God! What horror! What punishment!"
Nearer, nearer over the floor she came, dragging her useless limb behind her. Her outstretched arm groped, groped about the floor, while I stood trembling and agonized with horror till her hand touched the skirt of my dress, when, with a great shriek of suddenly liberated feeling, I pushed her from me, and crying out, "Murderess! do you seek the bones of your victim?" I flung open the door against which I stood and let the light from my own room stream in upon us two.
Her face as I saw it at that moment has never left my memory. She had fallen in a heap at my first move, and now lay crushed before me, with only her wide-staring eyes and shaking lips to tell me that she lived.
"You thought I did not know you," I burst forth. "You thought, because I had never seen your face, you could come back here, bringing your innocent daughter with you, and cast yourself into the very atmosphere of your crime without awakening the suspicion of the woman whose house you had made a sepulcher of for so many years. But crime was written too plainly on your brow. The spirit of Honora Urquhart, breaking the bounds of this room, has walked ever beside you, and I knew you from the first moment that you strayed down this hall."
Broken sounds, unintelligible murmurings, were all that greeted me.
"You are punished," I went on, "in the misery of your daughter. Nemesis has reached you. The blood of Honora Urquhart has called aloud from these walls, and not yourself only, but the still viler being whose name you have so falsely shared, must answer to man and God for the life you so heartlessly sacrificed and the rights you so falsely usurped."
"Mercy!" came in one quick gasp from the crushed heap of humanity before me.
But I was inexorable. I remembered Honora Urquhart's sweet face, and at that moment could think of nothing else. So I went on.
"You have had years of triumph. You have borne your victim's name, worn your victim's clothes, sported with your victim's money. And he, her husband, has looked on and smiled. Day after day, month after month, year after year, you have gone in and out before your friends, unmolested and unafraid; but God's vengeance, though it halts, is sure and keen. Across land and across water the memories of this room have drawn you, and not content with awakening suspicion, you must make suspicion certainty by moving a spring unknown even to myself, and entering this spot, from which the bones of your victim were taken only two months ago, Marah Leighton!"
Moved by the name, she stood up. Tottering and agonized with pain, but firm once more and determined, she towered before me, her face turned toward the room she had left, her hand lifted, her whole attitude that of one listening.
"Hark!" she cried.
It was a knock, a faint, low, trembling knock that we heard, then the word "Mamma" came in muffled accents from the hallway.
A convulsion crossed the countenance of the miserable woman before me.
"Oh, God! my daughter, my daughter!" she cried. And falling at my feet, she groveled in anguish as she pleaded:
"Will you kill her? She knows nothing, suspects nothing. The whole fifteen years of her life are pure. She is a flower. I love her—I love her, though she looks like the woman I hated and killed. She bears her name—why, I do not know—I could not call her anything else; she is my living reproach, and yet I love her. Do you not see it was for her I crossed the water, for her I plunged my living hand into this tomb to learn if our secret had ever been discovered, and if there was any hope that she might yet be made happy? Ah, woman, woman, you are not a wretch—a demon! You will not sentence this innocent soul to disgrace and misery. Even if I must die—and I swear that I will die if you say so—leave to my child her hopes; keep secret my sin, and take the blessing of the most miserable being that crawls upon the earth, as a solace for your old age. Hear me; hear a wretched mother's plea—"
"It is too late," I broke in. "Even were I silent there are others upon your track. I doubt if your husband does not already know that the day of his prosperity is at an end."
She gave a low cry, and tottered from the place. Entering her own room, she threw herself upon the bed. I followed, drawing the curtains about her. Then closing the door of communication between the oak parlor and the chamber beyond, I passed to the door behind which we could yet hear her daughter's soft voice calling, and, unlocking it, let the radiant creature in.
"Oh, mamma!" she began, "I could not keep my word—"
But here I held up my hand, and drawing her softly out, told her that her mother needed rest just now, and that if she would come to my room for a little while it would be best; and so prevailed upon her that she promised to do what I asked, though I saw her cast longing glances through the partly opened door toward the somber bed so like a tomb, and which at that moment was a tomb, had she known it—a tomb of hope, of joy, of peace for evermore.
I was just going out, when a slight stir detained me. Looking back, I saw a hand thrust out from between the falling curtains. Just a hand, but how eloquent it was! Pointing it out to mademoiselle, I said:
"Your mother's hand. Give it a kiss, mademoiselle, but do not part the curtains."
She smiled and crossed to that ominous bed. Kneeling, she kissed the hand, which thereupon raised itself and rested on her head. In another instant it was drawn slowly away, and, with a startled look, the half-weeping daughter rose and glided again to my side.
As I closed the door I thought of those words: "And the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation."
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MARQUIS
But the events of the night are not over. As soon as I had seen mademoiselle comfortably ensconced in my old room up stairs, I returned to the sitting room, where the marquis still lingered. He was standing in the window when I entered, and turned with quite a bright face to greet me. But that brightness soon vanished as he met my glance, and it was with something like dismay that he commented upon my paleness, and asked if I were ill.
I told him I was ill at ease; that events of a most serious nature were transpiring in the house; that he was concerned in them heavily, grievously; that I could not rest till I had taken him into my confidence, and shown him upon what a precipice he was standing.
He evidently considered me demented, but as he looked at me longer, and noted my steady and unflinching gaze, he gradually turned pale, and uttered, in irrepressible anxiety, the one word—"Honora!"
"Miss Urquhart is well," I began, "and is as ignorant as yourself of the shadows that hover over her. She is all innocence and truth, sir. Honor, candor and purity dwell in her heart, and happiness in her eyes. Yet is that happiness threatened by the worst calamity that can befall a sensitive human being, and if you hold her in esteem—"
"Ma foi!" he broke in, with violent impetuosity. "I do not esteem her; I love her. What are these dreadful secrets? How is her happiness threatened? Tell me without hesitation, for I have entreated her to be my wife, and she—"
"She thinks it is a parent's whim, alone, which keeps her from responding fully to your wishes," I finished. "But madame's objections have deeper ground than that. Miserable woman as she is, she has some idea of honor left. She knew her daughter could not safely marry into a high and noble family, and so—"
"What is this you say?" came again in the quick and hurried tones of despair. "Mrs. Urquhart—"
"Wait," I broke in. "You call her Mrs. Urquhart, but she has no claim to that title. She and Edwin Urquhart have never been married."
He recoiled sharply, with a gesture of complete disbelief.
"How do you know?" he demanded. "They are strangers to you. I have known them in their own home. All the world credits their marriage, and—"
"All the world does not know what transpired in this house sixteen years ago, when Edwin Urquhart stopped here with his bride on his way to France."
He stared, seemed shaken, but presently hastened to remark:
"Ah, madame, you acknowledge that she is his wife. You said bride. One does not call a woman by that name without acknowledging a marriage service."
"The woman he brought here was his bride. Edwin Urquhart is no common criminal, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."
It was hard to make him understand. It was hard to undermine his trust, step by step, inch by inch, till he found no hope, no shred of doubt to cling to. But it had to be done. If only to avert worse calamities and more heart-rending scenes, he must know at once, and before he took another step in relation to Miss Urquhart, just what her position was, and to what shame and suffering he was subjecting himself by accepting her love and pledging his own.
The task was not done till I had shown him this diary of mine, and related all that had just occurred in the room below. Then, indeed, he seemed to comprehend his position, and completely crushed and horror-stricken, subsided into a dreadful silence before me, the lines of years coming into his face as I watched him, till he became scarcely recognizable for the lordly and light-hearted cavalier whose dreams of love I had so fearfully interrupted some half hour or so before. From this lethargy of despair I did not seek to rouse him. I knew when he had anything to say he would speak, and till he had faced the situation and had made up his mind to his duty, I could wait his decision with perfect confidence in his fine nature and nice sense of honor.
You may, therefore, imagine my feelings when, after a long delay—an hour at least—he suddenly remarked:
"We have been a proud family. From time immemorial we have held ourselves aloof from whatever could be thought to stain our honor or impeach our good name. I cannot drag the unfathomable disgrace of all these crimes into a record so pure as that of the Roche-Guyon race. Though I had wished to bestow upon my wife a name and position of which she could be proud, I must content myself with merely giving her the comfort of a true heart and such support as can be provided by a loving but unaccustomed hand."
"Marquis—" I commenced.
But he cut my words short with a firm and determined gesture.
"My name is Louis de Fontaine," he explained. "Henceforth my cousin will be known as the marquis. It is the least I can do for the old French honor."
'Twas so simply, so determinedly done that I stood aghast as much at the serenity of his manner as the act which required such depth of sacrifice from one of his traditions and rearing.
"Then you continue to consider yourself the suitor of Miss Urquhart," I stammered. "You will marry her, though her parents may be called upon to perish upon the scaffold in an ignominy as great as ever befell two guilty mortals?"
The answer came brokenly, but with unwavering strength:
"Did you not say that she was innocent? Is she to be crushed beneath the guilt of her parents? Am I to take the last prop from one so soon to be bereft of all the supports upon which she has leaned from infancy? If I cling to her, she may live through her horror and shame; but should I fail her—great heavens! would we not have another life to answer for before God? Besides," he added, with the simplicity which marked his whole bearing, "I love her. I could not do otherwise if I would."
To this final word I could make no rejoinder. With a reverence unmingled with the taint of compassion, I took my departure, and being anxious by this time to know how my young charge was bearing her seclusion, I went to the room where I had left her, and softly opened the door.
CHAPTER XXV.
MARK FELT
SUBJECTED as I have been in the last three hours to distress and turmoil, I was delighted to find mademoiselle asleep, and to behold her peaceful face. Gazing at it, and noting the happy smile which unconsciously lingered on her lips, I could not but feel that, despite the hideous revelations which lay before her, her lot was an enviable one, allied as it promised to be with that of one of such high principles as the marquis. Though I am old now and have had my day, the love of the innocent and pure is sacred to me, and in this case it certainly has the charm of a spotless lily blooming in the jaws of hell.
As it was late and I was almost exhausted, I began to think of rest. But my uneasiness in regard to madame would not let me sleep till I had made another visit to her room. So, leaving the gentle sleeper lapped in serenest dreams, I proceeded to descend once more. As I passed the great clock on the stairs, I noticed that it was almost midnight and began to hasten my steps, when I heard a loud knock at the front door.
This is not an infrequent sound with us, but it greatly startled me this night. I even remember pausing and looking helplessly up and down the hall, as if it were a question whether I should obey the unwelcome summons. But such knocking as speedily followed could not be long ignored. So, subduing my impatience, I hastened to the door, and unlocking it, threw it open. A gust of rain and wind greeted me.
This was my first surprise, for I had not even noticed that the weather was unpleasant, so completely had I been absorbed by what had been going on in the house. My next was the bearing and appearance of the stranger who demanded my hospitality. For though both face and form were unknown to me, there was that in his aspect which stirred recollections not out of keeping with the unhappy subject then occupying all my thoughts. Yet I could not speak his name, or put into words the anticipations that vaguely agitated me, and led him through the hall and into the comfortable sitting room so lately vacated by the marquis, with no more distinct impression in my mind than that something was about to happen which would complete rather than interrupt the horrors of this eventful night.
And when the light fell full upon him, and I could see his eager eyes, this feeling increased, and no sooner had his cloak fallen from his shoulders and his hat left his head, than I recognized the prominent jaw and earnest face, and putting no curb on my impetuosity, I exclaimed at once, and without a doubt:
"Mr. Felt!"
The utterance of this name seemed to cause no surprise to my new guest.
"The same," he replied; "and you are Mrs. Truax, of course. Mr. Tamworth has described you to me, also this inn, till I feel as if I knew its every stone. I did not wish to visit it, but I could not help myself. An unknown influence has been drawing me here for days, and though I resisted it with all my strength, it finally became so powerful that I rose from my bed at night, saddled my horse, and started in this direction. I have been twenty hours on the road, but part of these I have spent in the thicket just over against you on the opposite side of the road. For the sight of the house awakened in my mind such a disturbance that I feared to show myself at the door. A voice out of the air seemed to cry, 'Not yet! not yet!' Nevertheless I could not go back nor leave the spot, which, once seen, possessed for me a fatal fascination."
I was speechless. Good God! were the old psychological influences at work, and had they acted upon him at forty miles distance?
"You come from Albany?" I at last stammered forth. "You must have had a wet time of it; it storms heavily, I see."
"Storms?" he repeated, glancing at the cloak he had thrown off. "Great Heaven! my cloak is saturated, and I did not even know it rained. A touch of the old spell," he murmured. "Something is about to happen to me; something has drawn me with purpose to this house."
I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what that something was?
"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted air of one recalling an experience, "I felt a pang shoot through my breast. I had been looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere about the building a light seemed to go out, for a pall of darkness suddenly settled upon it, simultaneously with the cessation of that imaginary cry which had hitherto detained me. Where was that light, Mrs. Truax, and what has happened here that I should feel myself called upon to cross this threshold to-night?"
I did not answer at once, for I was trembling. Was I to be subjected to another such an ordeal as I had experienced earlier in the evening and be forced to prepare, by such means as lay in my power, a much abused man for a most dreadful revelation? It began to look so.
"What has called me here?" he repeated. "Danger to her or death to him? They are thousands of miles away, and Tamworth could not have yet reached them, but peril of some deadly nature menaces them, I know. A stroke has gone home to him or her, and it is in this place I am to learn it; is it not so, Mrs. Truax?"
"Perhaps," I tremblingly assented. "There is a gentleman here from France who may be able to tell you something of the man and the woman you mean. Would it affect you very much to hear disastrous news of them?"
"I cannot say," he answered; "it should not. Mr. Tamworth tells me that he has acquainted you with the story of my life. Do you think I should feel overwhelmed at any retribution following a crime that was committed almost as much against me as against the pure and noble being who was the visible sufferer?"
"I shrink from answering," I returned; "the human heart is a curious thing. If he alone were to suffer—"
"Ah, he!" was the bitter ejaculation.
"Or if she," I proceeded, "were bound by no ties appealing to the sympathies! But she is a mother—"
"Good God!"
I had not thought it would affect him so, and stood appalled.
"A mother!" he repeated; "she! she! the tigress, the heartless one, with no more soul than the naked dagger I should have plunged into her breast and did not! Great Heaven! and this child has lived, I suppose; is grown up and—and—"
"Is the sweetest, purest, most unworldly of beautiful women that these eyes have ever rested upon."
I thought he would spring upon me, he leaned forward with so much impetuosity.
"How do you know?" he asked, and my heart stood still at the question.
"Because I have seen her," I presently rejoined. "Because I have had opportunities for studying her heart. She is called Honora, and she is like Miss Dudleigh, only more beautiful and with more claims to what is called character."
He did not seem to take in my words.
"You have been to France?" he declared.
"No," I corrected; "Miss Urquhart has been here."
He fell back, then started forward again, opened his lips and stared wildly, half fearfully about the room.
"Here?" he repeated, evidently overcome at the idea. "Why did they send her here? I should as soon have expected them to send her into the murk of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent girl, you say, and sent here?"
"They had reason; besides, she did not come alone."
This time he understood me.
"Oh!" he shrieked, "she in the house. I might have known it," he went on more calmly; "I did, only I would not believe it. Her crime has drawn her to the place of its perpetration. She could not resist the magnetic influence which all places of blood have upon the guilty. She has come back! And he?"
I shook my head.
"The man had less courage," I declared. "Perhaps because he was more guilty; perhaps because he had less love."
"Love?"
"It was love for the daughter which drew the mother here, not the spell of her crime or the accusing spirit of the dead. The woman who wronged you has some heart; she was willing to risk detection, and with it her reputation and life, to see if by any possibility she could venture to give happiness to the one being whom she really loves."
"Explain; I do not understand. How could she hope to find happiness for her child here?"
"By settling the question which evidently tortured her. By determining once for all whether the crime of sixteen years back had ever been discovered, and if she found it had not, to satisfy at once her own pride and her daughter's heart by giving that daughter to as noble a gentleman as ever carried a sword."
"And they are here now?"
"They are here."
"And she has discovered—"
"The futility of all her hopes."
He drew back, and his heavy breath echoed in deep pants through the room.
"What an end for Marah Leighton!" he gasped.
"What an end! And she is here!" he went on, after a moment of silent emotion—"under this roof! No wonder I felt myself called hither. And she knows her crime is detected? How came she to know this? Did you recognize her and tell her?"
"I recognized her and told her. There was no other course. We met in the secret chamber, whither she had come to make her own terrible investigations; and the sight of her there, on the spot where she had left the innocent to die, was too much for my sense of justice. I accused her to her face, and she crouched before me as under the lash. There was no possibility of denial after that, and she now lies—"
"Wait!" he cried, catching me painfully by the arm. "When was this day? To-day—to-night?"
"Not two hours ago."
His brow took on a look of awe.
"You see," he murmured, "she has power over me yet. When her hope broke, something snapped within me here. I abhor her, but I feel her grief. She was once all the world to me."
I recognized his right to emotion, and did not profane it by any words of mine. Instead of that I sought to leave him, but he would not let me go till he had asked me another question.
"And the daughter?" he urged. "Does she know of the opprobrium which must fall upon her head?"
"She sleeps," I replied, "with a smile of the shyest delight upon her lips. Her lover has followed her to this place, and the last words she heard to-night were those of his devotion. Her suffering must come to-morrow; yet it will be mitigated, for he will not forsake her, whatever shame may follow his loyalty. I have his word for that."
"Then the earth holds two lovers," was Mark Felt's rejoinder. "I thought it held but one." And with a sigh he let go my arm and turned to the window, with its background of driving rain and pitiless flashes of lightning.
I took the opportunity to excuse myself for a few minutes, and hurrying again into the hall, hastened, with nervous fear and an agitation greatly heightened by the unexpected interview I had just been through, to the now oft-opened door leading into the oak parlor.
I found it closed but not locked, and pushing it open, listened for a moment, then took a glance within. All was quiet and ghostly. A single candle guttering on the table at one end of the room lent a partial light by which I could discern the funereal bed and the other heavy and desolate-looking articles of furniture with which the room was encumbered. Honora's flowers, withering on the window seat, spoke of tender hopes not yet vanished from her tender dreams, but elsewhere all was hard, all was dreary, all was inexorably forbidding and cold. I shuddered as I looked, and shuddered still more as I approached the bed and paused firmly before it.
"Madame Letellier"—it was the only name by which I could bring myself to address her at that instant—"there is one gleam of brightness in your sky. The marquis knows the story of your guilt, yet consents to marry your daughter."
I received no reply.
Shaken by fresh doubts, and moved by an inexplicable terror, I stood still for a moment gathering up my strength, then I repeated my words, this time with sharp emphasis and scarcely concealed importunity.
"Madame," said I, "the marquis knows your guilt, yet consents to marry your daughter."
But the silence within remained unbroken, and not a movement displaced the somber falling curtains.
Agitated beyond endurance, I stretched forth my hands and drew those curtains aside. An unexpected sight met my eyes. There was no madame there; the bed was empty.