Cobwebs and Cables Part 10

"For the children's sake," she murmured, still looking away from him; "yes! and for the sake of our name, your father's name, and mine. I thought to bring honor to it, and you have brought flagrant dishonor to it."

"That can never be wiped away," he added.

"Never!" she repeated.

As if exhausted by these pa.s.sionate words, they fell again into silence.

The murmur of whispered prayers was about them, and the faint scent of incense floated under the arched roof. A gleam of morning light, growing stronger, though the sun was still far below the eastern mountains, glittered through a painted window, and threw a glow of color upon them.

Roland saw her standing in its many-tinted brightness, but her wan and sorrowful face was not turned to look at him. He had not caught a glance from her yet. How vividly he remembered the first moment his eyes had ever beheld her, standing as she did now on these very altar steps, with uplifted eyes and a sweet seriousness on her young face! It was only a poor village church, but it was the most sacred spot in the whole world to him; for there he had met Felicita and received her image into his inmost heart. His ambition as well as his love had centred in her, the penniless daughter of the late Lord Riversford, an orphan, and dependent upon her father's brother and successor. But to Roland his wife Felicita was immeasurably dearer than the girl Felicita Riversford had been. All the happy days since he had won her, all the satisfied desires, all his successes were centred in her and represented by her.

All his crime too.

"I have loved you," he cried, "better than the whole world."

There was no answer by word or look to his pa.s.sionate words.

"I have loved you," he said, more sadly, "better than G.o.d."

"But you have brought me to shame!" she answered; "if I am tracked here--and who can tell that I am not?--and if you are taken and tried and convicted, I shall be the wife of the fraudulent banker and condemned felon, Roland Sefton. And Felix and Hilda will be his children."

"It is true," he groaned; "I could not escape conviction."

He buried his face in his hands, and rested them on the altar-rails. Now his bowed-down head was immediately beneath her eyes, and she looked down upon it with a mournful gaze; it could not have been more mournful if she had been contemplating his dead face lying at rest in his coffin.

How was all this shame and misery for him and her to end?

"Felicita," he said, lifting up his head, and meeting the sorrowful farewell expression in her face, "if I could die it would be best for the children and you."

"Yes," she answered, in the sweet, too dearly loved voice he had listened to in happy days.

"I dare not open that door of escape for myself," he went on, "and G.o.d does not send death to me. But I see a way, a possible way. I only see it this moment; but whether it be for good or evil I cannot tell."

"Will it save us?" she asked eagerly.

"All of us," he replied. "This stranger, whose corpse I have just left--n.o.body knows him, and he has no friends to trouble about him--shall I give to him my name, and bury him as myself? Then I shall be dead to all the world, Felicita; dead even to you; but you will be saved. I too shall be safe in the grave, for death covers all sins. Even old Clifford will be satisfied by my death."

"Could it be done?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes," he said; "if you consent it shall be done. For my own sake I would rather go back to England and deliver myself up to the law I have broken. But you shall decide, my darling. If I return you will be known as the wife of the convict Sefton. Say: shall I be henceforth dead forever to you and my mother and the children? Shall it be a living death for me, and deliverance and safety and honor for you all? You must choose between my infamy or my death."

"It must be," she answered, slowly yet without hesitation, looking away from him to the cross above the altar, "your death."

A shudder ran through her slight frame as she spoke, and thrilled through him as he listened. It seemed to them both as if they stood beside an open grave, on either side one, and parted thus. He stretched out his hand to her, and laid it on her dress, as if appealing for mercy; but she did not turn to him, or look upon him, or open her white lips to utter another word. Then there came more stir and noise in the church, footsteps sounded upon the pavement, and an inquisitive face peeped out of the vestry near the altar where they stood. It was no longer prudent to remain as they were, subject to curiosity and scrutiny. Roland rose from his knees, and without glancing again toward her, he spoke in a low voice of unutterable grief and supplication.

"Let me see you and speak to you once more," he said.

"Once more," she repeated.

"This evening," he continued, "at your hotel."

"Yes," she answered. "I am travelling under Phebe Marlowe's name. Ask for Mrs. Marlowe."

She turned away and walked slowly and feebly down the aisle; and he watched her, as he had watched the light tread of the young girl eleven years ago, pa.s.sing through alternate sunshine and shadow. There was no sunshine now. Was it possible that so long a time had pa.s.sed since then?

Could it be true that for ten years she had been his wife, and that the tie between them was forever dissolved? From this day he was to be dead to her and to all the world. He was about to pa.s.s voluntarily into a condition of death amid life, as utterly bereft of all that had once been his as if the grave had closed over him. Roland Sefton was to exist no more.

CHAPTER XV.

A SECOND FRAUD.

Roland Sefton went back to the room in which the corpse of the stranger was now lying. The women were gone, and he turned down the sheet to look at the face of the man who was about to bear his name and the disgrace of his crime into the safe asylum of the grave. It was perfectly calm, with no trace of the night's suffering upon it; there was even a faint vestige of a smile about the mouth, as of one who sleeps well, and has pleasant dreams. He was apparently about Roland's own age, and a description given by strangers would not be such as would lead to any suspicion that there could have been a mistake as to ident.i.ty. Roland looked long upon it before covering it up again, and then he sat down beside the bed and opened the pocket-book.

There were notes in it worth fifty pounds, but not many papers. There was a memorandum made here and there of the places he had visited, and the last entry was dated the day before at Engstlenalp. Roland knew every step of the road, and for a while he seemed to himself to be this traveller, starting from the little inn, not yet vacated by its peasant landlord, but soon to be left to icy solitude, and taking the narrow path along the Engstlensee, toiling up the Joch pa.s.s under the mighty Wendenstocke and the snowy t.i.tlis, clear of clouds from base to summit yesterday. The traveller must have had a guide with him, some peasant or herdsman probably, as far as the Trubsee Alp; for even in summer the route was difficult to find. The guide had put him on to the path for Engelberg, and left him to make his way along the precipitous slopes of the Pfaffenwand. All this would be discovered when an official inquiry was made into the accident. In the mean time it was necessary to invest this stranger with his own ident.i.ty.

There were two or three well-worn letters in the pocket-book, but they contained nothing of importance. It seemed true, what the dying man had said, that there was no link of kinship or friendship binding him specially to his fellow-men. Roland opened his own pocket-book, and looked over a letter or two which he had carried about with him, one of them a childish note from Felix, preferring some simple request. His pa.s.sport was there also, and his mother's portrait and those of the children, over which his eyes brooded with a hungry sorrow in his heart.

He looked at them for the last time. But Felicita's portrait he could not bring himself to give up. She would be dead to him, and he to her.

In England she would live among her friends as his widow, pitied, and comforted, and beloved. But what would the coming years bring to him?

All that would remain to him of the past would be a fading photograph only.

So long he lingered over this mournful conflict that he was at last aroused from it by the entrance of the landlord, and the mayor and other officials, who had come to look at the body of the dead. Roland's pocket-book lay open on the bed, and he was still gazing at the portraits of his children. He raised his sunburnt face as they came in, and rose to meet them.

"This traveller," he said, "gave to me his pocket-book as I watched beside him last night. It is here, containing his pa.s.sport, a few letters, and fifty pounds in notes, which he told me to keep, but which I wish to give to the commune."

"They must be taken charge of," said the mayor; "but we will look over them first. Did he tell you who he was?"

"The pa.s.sport discloses that," answered Roland; "he desired only a decent funeral."

"Ah!" said the mayor, taking out the pa.s.sport, "an English traveller; name Roland Sefton; and these letters, and these portraits--they will be enough for identification."

"He said he had no friends or family in England," pursued Roland, "and there is no address among his letters. He told me he came from India."

"Then there need be no delay about the interment," remarked the mayor, "if he had no family in England, and was just come from India. Bah! we could not keep him till any friends came from India. It is enough. We must make an inquiry; but the corpse cannot be kept above ground. The interment may take place as soon as you please, Monsieur."

"I suppose you will wish for some trifle as payment?" said the landlord, addressing Roland.

"No," he answered, "I only watched by him through the night; and I am but a pa.s.sing traveller like himself."

"You will a.s.sist at the funeral?" he asked.

"If it can be to-morrow," replied Roland; "if not I must go on to Lucerne. But I shall come back to Engelberg. If it be necessary for me to stay, and the commune will pay my expenses, I will stay."

"Not necessary at all," said the mayor; "the accident is too simple, and he has no friends. Why should the commune lose by him?"

"There are the fifty pounds," suggested Roland.

"And there are the expenses!" said the mayor. "No, no. It is not necessary for you to stay; not at all. If you are coming back again to Engelberg it will be all right. You say you are coming back?"

"I am sure to come back to Engelberg," he answered, with gloomy emphasis.