A Terrible Secret Part 3

"What then?" He is white to the lips with jealous rage and fear. "This then--_you should never again be wife of mine_!"

"Victor!" she puts out her hands as if to ward off a blow, "don't say that--oh, don't say that! And--and it isn't true--he never was a lover of mine--never, never!"

She bursts out with the denial in pa.s.sionate fear and trembling. In all her wedded life she has never seen him look, heard him speak like this, though she has seen him jealous--needlessly--often.

"He never was your lover? You are telling me the truth?"

"No, no--never! never, Victor--don't look like that! Oh, what brought that wretched picture here! I knew him slightly--only that--and he _did_ give me his photograph. How could I tell he was the wretch you say he is--how could I think there would be any harm in taking a picture? He seemed nice, Victor. What did he ever do?"

"He seemed nice!" Sir Victor repeated, bitterly; "and what did he ever do? What has he left undone you had better ask. He has broken every command of the decalogue--every law human and divine. He is dead to us all--his sister included, and has been these many years. Ethel, can I believe--"

"I have told you, Sir Victor. You will believe as you please," his wife answers, a little sullenly, turning away from him.

She understands him. His very jealousy and anger are born of his pa.s.sionate love for her. To grieve her is torture to him, yet he grieves her often.

For a tradesman's daughter to marry a baronet may be but one remove from paradise; still it is a remove. And the serpent in Lady Catheron's Eden is the ugliest and most vicious of all serpents--jealousy. He has never shown his green eyes and obnoxious claws so palpably before, and as Sir Victor looks at her bending over her baby, his fierce paroxysm of jealousy gives way to a fierce paroxysm of love.

"Oh, Ethel, forgive me!" he says; "I did not mean to wound you, but the thought of that man--faugh! But I am a fool to be jealous of you, my white lily. Kiss me--forgive me--we'll throw this snake in the gra.s.s out of the window and forget it. Only--I had rather you had told me."

He tears up the wretched little mischief-making picture, and flings it out of the window with a look of disgust. Then they "kiss and make up,"

but the stab has been given, and will rankle. The folly of her past is doing its work, as all our follies past and present are pretty sure to do.

CHAPTER III.

HOW LADY CATHERON CAME HOME.

Late in the afternoon of a September day Sir Victor Catheron, of Catheron Royals, brought home his wife and son.

His wife and son! The county stood astounded. And it had been a dead secret. Dreadful! And Inez Catheron was jilted? Shocking! And _she_ was a soap-boiler's daughter? Horrible! And now when this wretched, misguided young man could keep his folly a secret no longer, he was bringing his wife and child home.

The resident gentry sat thunderstruck. Did he expect they could call?

(This was the gentler s.e.x.) Plutocracy might jostle aristocracy into the background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be positive there had been a marriage at all. And poor Inez Catheron! Ah it was very sad--very sad. There was a well-known, well-hidden taint of insanity in the Catheron family. It must be that latent insanity cropping up. The young man must simply be mad.

Nevertheless bells rung and bonfires blazed, tenantry cheered, and all the old servants (with Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, and Mr. Hooper, the butler, at their head) were drawn up in formidable array to receive them. And if both husband and wife were very pale, very silent, and very nervous, who is to blame them? Sir Victor had set society at defiance; it was society's turn now, and then--there was Inez!

For Lady Catheron, the dark, menacing figure of her husband's cousin haunted her, too. As the big, turreted, towered, ivied pile of stone and mortar called Catheron Royals, with its great bell booming, its Union Jack waving, reared up before the soap-boiler's daughter--she absolutely cowered with a dread that had no name.

"I am afraid!" she said. "Oh, Victor, I am afraid!"

He laughed--not quite naturally, though. If the painful truth must be told of a baronet and a Catheron, Sir Victor was afraid, too.

"Afraid?" he laughed; "of what, Ethel? The ghost of the Gray Lady, who walks twice in every year in Rupert's Tower? Like all fine old families, we have our fine old family ghost, and would not part with it for the world. I'll tell you the legend some day; at present 'screw your courage to the sticking place,' for here we are."

He descended from the carriage, and walked into the grand manorial hall, vast enough to have lodged a hundred men, his wife on his arm, his head very high, his face very pale. She clung to him, poor child!

and yet she battled hard for her dignity, too. Hat in hand, smiling right and left in the old pleasant way, he shook hands with Mrs. Marsh and Mr. Hooper, presented them to my lady, and bravely inquired for Miss Inez. Miss Inez was well, and awaiting him in the Cedar drawing-room.

They ascended to the Cedar drawing-room, one of the grandest rooms in the house, all gilding and ormolu, and magnificent upholstery--Master Baby following in the arms of his nurse. The sweet face and soft eyes of Lady Catheron had done their work already in the ranks of the servants--she would be an easier mistress to serve than Miss Inez.

"If she ever _is_ mistress in her own house," thought Mrs. Marsh, who was "companion" to Miss Catheron as well as housekeeper; "and mistress she never will be while Miss Catheron is at the Royals."

The drawing-room was brilliantly lit, and standing in the full glare of the lamps--Inez. She was gorgeous this evening in maize silk, that was like woven sunshine; she had a white camelia in her hair, a diamond cross on her breast, scented laces about her, diamonds on her arms and in her ears. So she stood--a resplendent vision--so Sir Victor beheld her again.

He put up his hand for an instant like one who is dazzled--then he led forward his wife, as men have led on a forlorn hope.

"My cousin," he said, "my wife; Inez, this is Ethel."

There was a certain pathos in the simplicity of the words, in the tone of his voice, in the look of his eyes. And as some _very_ uplifted young empress might bow to the lowliest of her handmaidens, Miss Catheron bowed to Lady Catheron.

"Ethel," she repeated, a smile on her lips, "a pretty name, and a pretty face. I congratulate you on your taste, Victor. And this is the baby--I must look at him."

There was an insufferable insolence in the smile, an insufferable sneer in the compliment. Ethel had half extended a timid hand--Victor had wholly extended a pleading one. She took not the slightest notice of either. She lifted the white veil, and looked down at the sleeping baby.

"The heir of Catheron Royals," she said, "and a fine baby no doubt, as babies go. I don't pretend to be a judge. He is very bald and very flabby, and very fat just at present. Whom does he resemble? Not you, Victor. O, no doubt the distaff side of the house. What do you call him, nurse? Not christened yet? But of course the heir of the house is always christened at Catheron Royals. Victor, no doubt you'll follow the habit of your ancestors, and give him his mother's family name.

_Your_ mother was the daughter of a marquis, and you are Victor St.

Albans Catheron. Good customs should not be dropped--let your son's name be Victor _Dobb_ Catheron."

She laughed as she dropped the veil, a laugh that made all the blood in Sir Victor's body tingle in his face. But he stood silent. And it was Ethel who, to the surprise of every one, her husband included, turned upon Miss Catheron with flashing eyes and flushing cheeks.

"And suppose, he is christened Victor Dobb Catheron, what then? It is an honest English name, of which none of my family have ever had reason to feel ashamed. My husband's mother may have been the daughter of a marquis--my son's mother is the daughter of a tradesman--the name that has been good enough for me will be good enough for him. I have yet to learn there is any disgrace in honest trade."

Miss Catheron smiled once more, a smile more stinging than words.

"No doubt. You have many things yet to learn, I am quite sure. Victor, tell your wife that, however dulcet her voice may be, it would sound sweeter if not raised so _very_ high. Of course, it is to be expected--I make every allowance, poor child, for the failings of her--cla.s.s. The dressing-bell is ringing, dinner in an hour, until then--_au revoir_."

Still with that most insolent smile she bows low once more, and in her gold silk, her Spanish laces, her diamonds and splendor, Miss Catheron swept out of the room.

And this was Ethel's welcome home.

Just two hours later, a young man came walking briskly up the long avenue leading to the great portico entrance of Catheron Royals. The night was dark, except for the chill white stars--here under the arching oaks and elms not even the starlight shone. But neither for the darkness nor loneliness cared this young man. With his hands in his pockets he went along at a swinging pace, whistling cheerily. He was very tall; he walked with a swagger. You could make out no more in the darkness.

The great house loomed up before him, huge, black, grand, a row of lights all along the first floor. The young man stopped his whistling, and looked up with a smile not pleasant to see.

"Four years ago," he said, between his teeth, "you flung me from your door like a dog, most n.o.ble baronet, and you swore to lodge me in Chesholm jail if I ever presumed to come back. And I swore to pay you off if I ever had a chance. To-night the chance has come, thanks to the girl who jilted me. You're a young man of uncommonly high stomach, my baronet, proud as the deuce and jealous as the devil. I'll give your pride and your jealousy a chance to show themselves to-night."

He lifted the ma.s.sive bra.s.s knocker, and brought it down with a clang that echoed through the house. Then he began whistling again, watching those lighted, lace-draped windows.

"And to think," he was saying inwardly, "to think of our little Ethel being mistress here. On my word it's a lift in life for the soap-boiler's pretty daughter. I wonder what they're all about up there now, and how Inez takes it. I should think there must have been the d.i.c.kens to pay when she heard it first."

The heavy door swung back, and a dignified elderly gentleman, in black broadcloth and silk stockings, stood gazing at the intruder. The young man stepped from the outer darkness into the lighted vestibule, and the elderly gentleman fell back with a cry.

"Master Juan!"