The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie's Part 20

Even the lips, once so rosy and smiling with their arch dimpled corners, have taken on an expression of pain and endurance pitiful to see in one so young and fair.

The small white hands, growing thin and weak, are listlessly folded across her lap, while she looks wearily at the smouldering ashes of a fire that had been kindled on the hearth that morning, for the September mornings are chilly and the girl's enfeebled frame feels cold keenly.

Thus the two confederates found her when, after a premonitory rap, they unlocked the door and entered. She looked up and her white face blanched still whiter at their presence, but beyond that she took no notice save in a fixed and slightly scornful curl of the lip.

"I trust that I find you well, Miss Lawrence," said her suitor, with an air of devotion.

"Is it possible I should feel well after subsisting for a month on bread and water?" asked the girl, in a languid voice of unutterable contempt.

"Lily, forgive me, but you force me to adopt these stringent measures.

It is my love that drives me thus to extremes in hope of forcing your consent at last. Oh! why will you not relent and make yourself comfortable, and me the happiest of men?" cried Colville, imploringly, as he tried to take her hand in his own. But she drew it away with a gesture of contempt and repugnance to his touch and he desisted. Dr.

Pratt withdrew to the window and appeared to ignore the conversation.

"Lily," continued Colville, seeing that she made no motion of replying, "you have now had a month for contemplation and sober reflection. Surely you have profited by the thoughts that must have a.s.sailed you in that time. Do you now consent to become my wife?"

"Mr. Colville, I have not changed my mind at all," replied Lily, coldly and firmly.

"But come, now, my dear girl," urged Colville, who had been persuaded by Dr. Pratt to try a little kind persuasion instead of such violent threatenings; "come, now, my dear girl, why should you persist in your first ill-considered rejection of my suit? Look at the matter calmly and dispa.s.sionately, and weigh all the advantages in my favor. I am not a bad-looking man, nor an old man. I have a splendid income and I love you to distraction. I would spend all my life in making you happy. This is your one chance of happiness. On the other hand there is nothing but captivity and starvation. Were it not better to become my wife?"

"No!" answered Lily, firmly.

"You are very candid, at least, if not very flattering," said Colville, bitterly.

Lily regarded him sadly and calmly. She could pity him when he showed some sign of feeling. She only hated and feared him when he descended to abuse and threatening.

"Mr. Colville," said she, in her soft, flute-like voice, "I am very sorry for you if you love me as you say you do. I pity you from my heart, but if I yielded to your wish and became your wife I could bring you no happiness. I do not love you, and I should hate you then for the means you used to win me. Oh! believe me, your persistence is unwise and foolish. Let me go away from here, I beg you, to my home and my friends.

I will not betray your complicity in my abduction. I will suffer you and your friend there to invent whatever plausible tale you please, and I will try to palm it off on my friends for the truth. See, I bear you no malice for the cruelty and injustice I have suffered at your hands. I am willing to forgive you everything if you will but restore my freedom!"

"You waste your breath in such appeals, Lily--I will never let you go!"

said Colville, inflexibly.

"Oh! I beseech you do not kill me with such refusals," cried Lily, wildly. She slipped from her chair and knelt before him, clasping her fragile white hands in an agony of appeal, and lifting her wan, white face imploringly. "See, I kneel to you. My spirit is broken, my pride is humbled in the dust; I am starving, dying here. I beg you for the poor boon of my liberty and life!"

He stood still with folded arms regarding her as she knelt, while a cold and cruel smile curled the corners of his thin lips. Her pitiful appeal made no impression on him; he was not moved by the sight of her fragile face and hands, wasted into pallor and wanness through his cruelty. His answer fell on her quivering nerves as cruelly as the lash cuts into human flesh.

"Kneel, if it relieves your feelings, but do not suppose that your humility can weaken my resolution, which is as fixed as adamant. And hear me now, proud girl, and remember that I mean what I say. I shall yet give you time to change your mind. I am merciful to you because I love you. But if time does not weaken your perversity, so surely as I live I will make you repent your obstinacy. The time will come when you will kneel to me more prayerfully than you now do, and implore me to marry you and save your honor!"

"Never!" she cried, springing to her feet and waving her white hands aloft like some beautiful, inspired prophetess. "Never! Before that day comes I will die by my own hand! And, Harold Colville, while you exult in your wickedness, remember that there is a G.o.d above who punishes the guilty for their evil deeds. Nemesis shall yet overtake you--it is written!"

"Come, come, Miss Lawrence, you overrate your strength by this senseless ranting," said Doctor Pratt, coming forward and reseating her with gentle force. "Remember, you are very weak. You have never fully recovered from the effects of your wound and your subsequent fast during the cataleptic state that succeeded it. Illness and deprivation have sapped your strength and dimmed your beauty until there will soon be nothing left of the fairness that now holds Mr. Colville's heart.

Believe me, your wisest course is to yield now, marry Mr. Colville, and set about the restoration of your health by travel, recreation and generous living. A few more months of this reckless obstinacy will break down your const.i.tution irrevocably."

"I thank you for that a.s.surance," she answered, exultingly. "Perhaps death will come to me of his own accord, and save me from the sin of taking my own life and sending my soul, trembling and uncalled, before its dread Creator!"

"You do not mean what you say, Miss Lawrence. You are too young and lovely to welcome death. Life holds many attractions for you even as the wife of the despised Mr. Colville."

"I do not think so," she answered, briefly.

"Well, well, your mind will change perhaps; and in that laudable desire we will take leave of you for awhile," said the doctor, turning off with a sardonic bow.

"And do me the favor of never returning," said Lily, angrily. "You can never change my decision, and if I am doomed to wear out the remnant of my days here, let me at least be spared the sight of your hated faces again!"

"You ask too much," said Colville, airily. "Captives are not permitted to make their own conditions, or select their visitors. Adieu, obdurate fair one."

His gaze lingered on her a moment, noting her beauty and grace which still shone pre-eminent, though her beautiful coloring was all faded and gone, and she looked like a picture looked at by moonlight alone with all the bright tints of daylight invisible. Loving her for her beauty, and hating her for her scorn, he went away, but carried the picture in his heart, at once a joy and a torment, for his conscience could not but reproach him for the change that was so sadly visible in her fragile, drooping form.

Lily remained sitting motionless in her chair, lost in painful revery, until twilight filled the room with shadows. The room grew chilly, and she shivered now and then in her thin dress, but she never stirred until old Haidee entered with a light and supper, the latter consisting of a scanty portion of dry bread and a pitcher of water. Lily cast a glance of loathing upon the food and turned away. Her weak appet.i.te could not relish the dry bread, and it often was taken away untasted.

"Haidee, I wish you would light a fire," said she, shivering in the chilly atmosphere. "The night is cool, and I am very thinly clad."

"There will be no fire to-night," said Haidee, curtly. "If you are cold go to bed and cover up under the bed-clothes."

"At least bring me a shawl to wrap about my shoulders," pleaded the girl.

"Not a rag," retorted the old woman, whose sharp temper was even more acid than usual to-night on account of her rencontre that evening.

"Does Mr. Colville wish me to suffer from cold as well as hunger?"

inquired Lily, bitterly.

"I wish it whether he does or not!" answered Haidee, viciously.

"What noise was that I heard this evening?" inquired Lily, looking curiously at the old woman. "I was very much frightened by a succession of screams and oaths as if people were fighting--ah, and now that I look at you, Haidee, I see that there is something the matter with your face."

"Old Peter whipped me, if you must know the truth," snapped the witch.

"Whipped you!" said Lily, with an incredulous look; "oh, no, he would not whip his wife, would he?"

"Yes, he would, and did," retorted Haidee, with a grim sort of smile, as if she took a certain sort of pride in Peter's ferocity. "Oh, we think nothing of a rough-and-tumble fight now and then. Sometimes I get the better of him, sometimes he overpowers me, but it's often an even thing.

Old Peter is a ferocious one, I can tell you. If you had knocked him down as you did me the time you escaped, he would have killed you when they brought you back."

Lily shuddered at this intimation of Peter's cruelty.

"Haidee, I did not mean to hurt you that day," said she, earnestly. "I would not hurt the meanest thing that lives if I could help it. I only pushed you to throw you off your balance, so that I might get away."

"You had better eat your supper," said Haidee, not caring to recall that day, for she still harbored a furious resentment against the girl on the score of it, and often felt tempted to wreak revenge upon her. "You had better eat your supper, for old Peter will be angry with you if you keep him waiting outside the door so long."

"Take the bread away. I cannot eat any to-night," answered Lily, with a hopeless sigh.

CHAPTER XX.

The autumn sunlight fell goldenly on the handsome face and form of Lancelot Darling as he stood on the broad marble steps of the grand hotel where he boarded, his glance roving carelessly up and down the crowded street.

Our hero was that _rara avis_ whose species is almost extinct at the present day--a young man of wealth and fashion, yet totally unspoiled by the flattery and adulation of the world.

Carefully raised by judicious parents, whom he had unhappily lost by death in the dawn of manhood, he had been shielded from many temptations that would have a.s.sailed one less carefully guarded than this only and beloved child of fond and doting parental care.