A Terrible Secret Part 65

Yes, something had happened. He had never really held up his head after that second parting with Edith. For days he had lain prostrate, so near to death that they thought death surely must come. But by the end of a week he was better--as much better at least as he ever would be in this world.

"Victor," his aunt would cry out, "I wish--I _wish_ you would consult a physician about this affection of the heart. I am frightened for you--it is not like anything else. There is this famous German--do go to see him to please me."

"To please you, my dear aunt--my good, patient nurse--I would do much," her nephew was wont to answer with a smile. "Believe me your fears are groundless, however. Death takes the hopeful and happy, and pa.s.ses by such wretches as I am. It all comes of weakness of body and depression of mind; there's nothing serious the matter.

If I get worse, you may depend upon it, I'll go and consult Herr Von Werter."

Then it was that he began his nightly duty--the one joy left in his joyless life. Lady Helena and Inez returned to St. John's Wood. And Sir Victor, from his lodgings in Fenton's Hotel, followed his wife home every evening. It was his first thought when he arose in the morning, the one hope that upheld him all the long, weary, aimless day--the one wild delight that was like a spasm, half pain, half joy--when the dusk fell to see her slender figure come forth, to follow his darling, himself unseen, as he fancied, to her humble home. To watch near it, to look up at her lighted windows with eyes full of such love and longing as no words can ever picture, and then, shivering in the rising night wind, to hail a hansom and go home--to live only in the thought of another meeting on the morrow.

Whatever the weather, it has been said, he went. On many occasions he returned drenched through, with chattering teeth and livid lips.

Then would follow long, fever-tossed, sleepless nights, and a morning of utter prostration, mental and physical.

But come what might, while he was able to stand, he must return to his post--to his wife.

But Nature, defied long, claimed her penalty at last. There came a day when Sir Victor could rise from his bed no more, when the heart spasms, in their anguish, grew even more than his resolute will could bear. A day when in dire alarm Lady Helena and Inez were once more summoned by faithful Jamison, and when at last--at last the infallible German doctor was sent for.

The interview between physician and patient was long and strictly private. When Herr Von Werter went away at last his phlegmatic Teuton face was set with an unwonted expression of pity and pain.

After an interval of almost unendurable suspense, Lady Helena was sent for by her nephew, to be told the result. He lay upon a low sofa, wheeled near the window. The last light of the September day streamed in and fell full upon his face--perhaps that was what glorified it and gave it such a radiant look. A faint smile lingered on his lips, his eyes had a far-off, dreamy look, and were fixed on the rosy evening sky. A strange, unearthly, exalted look altogether, that made his aunt's heart sink like stone.

"Well?" She said it in a tense sort of whisper, longing for, yet dreading, the reply. He turned to her, that smile still on his lips, still in his eyes. He had not looked so well for months. He took her hand.

"Aunt," he said, "you have heard of doomed men sentenced to death receiving their reprieve at the last hour? I think I know to-day how those men must feel. My reprieve has come."

"Victor!" It was a gasp. "Dr. Von Werter says you will recover!"

His eyes turned from her to that radiant brightness in the September sky.

"It is aneurism of the heart. Dr. Von Werter says I won't live three weeks."

They were down in Cheshire. They had taken him home while there was yet time, by slow and easy stages. They took him to Catheron Royals--it was his wish, and they lived but to gratify his wishes now.

The grand old house was as it had been left a year ago--fitted up resplendently for a bride--a bride who had never come. There was one particular room to which he desired to be taken, a s.p.a.cious and sumptuous chamber, all purple and gilding, and there they laid him upon the bed, from which he would never rise.

It was the close of September now, the days golden and mellow, beautiful with the rich beauty of early autumn, before decay has come. He had grown rapidly worse since that memorable interview with the German doctor, and paralysis, that "death in life" was preceding the fatal footsteps of aneurism of the heart. His lower limbs were paralyzed. The end was very near now. On the last day of September Herr Von Werter paid his last visit.

"It's of no use, madame," he said to Lady Helena; "I can do nothing--nothing whatever. He won't last the week out."

The young baronet turned his serene eyes, serene at last with the awful serenity that precedes the end. He had heard the fiat not intended for his ears.

"You are sure of this, doctor? _Sure_, mind! I won't last the week out?"

"It is impossible, Sir Victor. I always tell my patients the truth.

Your disease is beyond the reach of all earthly skill. The end may come at any moment--in no case can you survive the week."

His serene face did not change. He turned to his aunt with a smile that was often on his lips now:

"At last," he said softly; "at last my darling may come to me--at last I may tell her all. Thank G.o.d for this hour of release. Aunt Helena, send for Edith at once."

By the night train, a few hours later, Inez Catheron went up to London. As Madame Mirebeau's young women a.s.sembled next morning, she was there before them, waiting to see Miss Stuart.

Edith came--a foreknowledge of the truth in her mind. The interview was brief. She left at once in company with Miss Catheron, and Madame Mirebeau's establishment was to know her no more.

As the short, autumnal day closed in, they were in Cheshire.

It was the evening of the second of October--the anniversary of the bridal eve. And thus at last the bride was coming home. She looked out with eyes that saw nothing of the familiar landscape as it flitted by--the places she had never thought to see more. She was going to Catheron Royals, to the man she had married a year ago.

A year ago! what a strange, terrible year it had been--like a bad dream. She shuddered as she recalled it. All was to be told at last, and death was to set all things even. The bride was returning to the bridegroom like this.

All the way from the station to the great house she never spoke a word. Her heart beat with a dull, heavy pain--pity for him--dread of what she was to hear. It was quite dark when they rolled through the lofty gates, up the broad, tree-shaded drive, to the grand portico entrance of the house.

"He is very low this evening, miss," Jamison whispered as he admitted them; "feverish and longing for her ladyship's coming. He begs that as soon as my lady is rested and has had some refreshment she will come to him at once."

Lady Helena met them at the head of the stairs, and took the pale, tired girl in her arms for a moment. Then Edith was in a firelit, waxlit room, lying back for a minute's rest in the downy depths of a great chair. Then coffee and a dainty repast was brought her. She bathed her face and hands, and tried to eat and drink. But the food seemed to choke her. She drank the strong, black coffee eagerly, and was ready to go.

Lady Helena led her to the room where he lay--that purple and gold chamber, with all its dainty and luxurious appointments. She shrank a little as she entered--she remembered it was to have been _their_ room when they returned from their bridal tour. Lady Helena just opened the door to admit her, closed it again, and was gone.

She was alone with the dying man. By the dim light of two wax tapers she beheld him propped up with pillows, his white, eager face turned toward her, the love, that not death itself could for a moment vanquish, shining upon her from his eyes. She was over kneeling by the bedside, holding his hands in hers--how, she could never have told.

"I am sorry--I am sorry!" It was all she could say. In that hour, in the presence of death, she forgot everything, her wrongs, her humiliation. She only knew that he was dying, and that he loved her as she would never be loved again in this world.

"It is better as it is," she heard him saying, when she could hear at all, for the dull, rushing sound in her ears; "far better--far better.

My life was torture--could never have been anything else, though I lived fifty years. I was so young--life looked so long, that there were times, yes, Edith, times when for hours I sat debating within myself a suicide's cowardly end. But Heaven has saved me from that.

Death has mercifully come of itself to set all things straight, and oh, my darling! to bring _you_."

She laid her face upon his wasted hand, nearer loving him in his death than she had ever been in his life.

"You have suffered," he said tenderly, looking at her. "I thought to shield you from every care, to make your life one long dream of pleasure and happiness, and see how I have done it! You have hated me--scorned me, and with justice; how could it be otherwise? Even when you hear all, you may not be able to forgive me, and yet, Heaven knows, I did it all for the best. If it were all to come over again, I could not act otherwise than as I have acted. But, my darling, it was very hard on you."

In death as in life his thoughts were not of himself and his own sufferings, but of her. As she looked at him, as she recalled what he had been only a year ago, in the flush and vigor and prime of manhood--it seemed almost too much to bear.

"Oh, Victor! hush," she cried, hiding her face again, "you break my heart!"

His feeble fingers closed over hers with all their dying strength--that faint, happy smile came over his lips. "I don't want to distress you,"

he said very gently; "you have suffered enough without that. Edith, I feel wonderfully happy to-night--it seems to me I have no wish left--as though I were sure of your forgiveness beforehand. It is joy enough to see you here--to feel your hand in mine once more, to know I am at liberty to tell you the truth at last. I have longed for this hour with a longing I can never describe. Only to be forgiven and die--I wanted no more. For what would life have been without you? My dearest, I wonder if in the dark days that are gone, whatever you may have doubted, my honor, my sanity, if you ever doubted my love for you?"

"I don't know," she answered, in a stifled voice. "My thoughts have been very dark--very desperate. There were times when there seemed no light on earth, no hope in Heaven. I dare not tell you--I dare not think--how wicked and reckless my heart has been."

"Poor child!" he said, with a touch of infinite compa.s.sion. "You were so young--it was all so sudden, so terrible, so incomprehensible.

Draw up that ha.s.sock, Edith, and sit here by my side, and listen. No, you must let go my hand. How can I tell whether you will not shrink from it and me with horror when you know all."

Without a word, she drew the low seat close to the bed, and shading her face with her hand, listened, motionless as a statue, to the brief story of the secret that had held them apart so long.

"It all begins," Sir Victor's faint, low voice said, "with the night of my father's death, three weeks before our wedding-day. That night I learned the secret of my mother's murder, and learned to pity my unhappy father as I had never pitied him before. Do you remember, Edith, the words you spoke to Lady Helena the day before you ran away from Powyss Place? You said Inez Catheron was not the murderer, though she had been accused of it, nor Juan Catheron, though he had been suspected of it--that you believed Sir Victor Catheron had killed his own wife. Edith, you were right. Sir Victor Catheron murdered his own wife!

"I learned it that fatal night. Lady Helena and Inez had known it all along. Juan Catheron more than suspected it. Bad as he was, he kept that secret. My mother was stabbed by my father's hand.

"Why did he do it? you ask. I answer, because he was mad--mad for weeks before. And he knew it, though no one else did. With the cunning of insanity he kept his secret, not even his wife suspected that his reason was unsound. He was a monomaniac. Insanity, as you have heard, is hereditary in our family, in different phases; the phase it took with him was homicidal mania. On all other points he was sane--on this, almost from the first, he had been insane--_the desire to take his wife's life_.

"It is horrible, is it not--almost incredibly horrible? It is true, nevertheless. Before the honeymoon was ended, his homicidal mania developed itself--an almost insurmountable desire, whenever he was alone in her presence, to take her life. Out of the very depth and intensity of his pa.s.sion for her his madness arose. He loved her with the whole strength of his heart and being, and--the mad longing was with him always, to end her life while she was all his own--in short, to kill her.