The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie's Part 59

Queenie fell upon her knees with the rain beating in upon her white face and long, flowing hair, and clasped her little hands together as her father had taught her to do when she was but a toddling baby-girl.

"Oh, G.o.d!" she prayed, lifting her lovely, despairing face to the dark sky as if to catch a glimpse of the all-merciful Father to whom she appealed. "Oh, G.o.d, pity and forgive me for sending my soul uncalled for before its divine Maker. And, Heavenly Father, whatever of wrong I have committed, do Thou pity and pardon it. That sin with which I stand charged Thou knowest I would have died a thousand deaths rather than willfully commit it, and----"

She paused, overcome by agonized recollections, and rising, peered out into the darkness below.

"In the morning when he comes out into the garden," she said, "he will find my poor, crushed, bleeding body lying beneath this window. Surely, then, when his murderous hate has driven me to self-destruction, his revenge will be complete!"

She placed her hand on the sill of the window, and leaned forward for the fatal spring that was to end her earthly sorrows.

How slight a thing can distract our attention even in the most absorbing moments of our lives.

Queenie's hands fell upon a cold, wet ma.s.s of leaves, and a gust of intoxicating perfume blew into her face. She immediately drew back.

She had suddenly remembered that some thickly twisted vines of ivy and sweet-scented honeysuckle were trained up to her window in the second story.

A thought, as sudden as an inspiration, darted into her mind.

Instead of dashing her brains out on the hard ground below, why not escape down this ladder of vines to love and happiness again?

"I will do it," she said to herself. "I will go back to my husband. I will tell him I was stolen from my grave, and that I revived in the fresh air, and life came back to me in its full tide. Oh! how glad he will be to see me--my poor Lawrence. He loved me so dearly!"

In the swift revulsion of feeling from despair and desperation to love and hope again she gave way to a burst of hysterical tears.

"I must not stay here to weep," she said, at length, brushing the crystal drops away from her cheeks. "I must be far on my way to my husband before he discovers my escape."

She took up the thick, hooded waterproof cloak that lay on a chair, and wrapped it around her.

"This will never do," she said, seeing the long train of her splendid dress sweeping from beneath the hem of the cloak. "I must not be seen going into the city in this plight."

She took off the cloak and tucked up the long train and pinned it securely around her, resumed the waterproof, and climbed up into the window.

"Farewell, Leon Vinton," she said. "Pray G.o.d I may never look on your evil face again!"

She took a firm hold of the thick body of the vine with both hands, and with a slight shudder swung herself forward into the darkness.

The vine swayed and creaked with her weight, and for one dreadful moment she thought she should be precipitated to the ground to the death which a moment before she had courted, but which now, in the new dawn of hope, she shunned. The shower of rain-drops, shaken down from the leaves into her face, almost took her breath away. The wild wind tossed her from side to side like a feather as she clung to her frail support.

"I shall surely be killed," she said to herself in terror.

But no--the delicate reed to which she had trusted her existence did not fail her. She waited breathlessly a moment, then feeling that it still held secure, she cautiously slipped one hand and then the other down to a lower hold on the body of the vine. In that way, with many frightened heart-beats, with sore and bleeding hands, and at infinite pains, she at length accomplished the descent, and stood upon the ground enfolded like a mantle by the thick darkness and pouring rain.

At the gate she paused again, and looked up at one window in a wing of the house where a night-light glimmered faintly.

"Farewell, Leon Vinton," she said, again. "May the vengeance of G.o.d be swift to overtake and punish you for your awful sins!"

She opened the gate softly and stepped out into the wet and slushy road, wetting her thin, white satin slippers and silk stockings through and through at the first step. She did not care for it, she scarcely felt it, her heart was beating so quick and fast with joy.

"I am free!" was the exultant cry of her heart. "I am free--I am going back to my husband. I shall tell him how fondly I have learned to love him since I promised to be his wife. I will cling so closely to his side that Leon's vindictive rage can never touch me!"

She pushed on steadily through the mud and water, her long garments speedily becoming soaked with the watery elements and greatly impeding her ease and rapidity of motion, while her heart began to beat wildly with terror at the darkness, the desolation and loneliness of the country road.

"I am very tired," she moaned, after traveling what seemed to her a long distance. "It is five miles to the city. I must have come two miles at least. I wonder if I can hold out to get there. My feet are so heavy with the mud and the water that I can scarcely lift them. I must sit down here and rest myself one minute--only _one little minute_!"

She dropped down like a log on the gra.s.s by the side of the road, and the first pale beams of the watery dawn just breaking in the east, showed her deathly-white face just fading into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XIII.

When Queenie threw herself down upon the wet gra.s.s in a weariness so utter that she could no longer hold her aching limbs upright, she had thought that a minute of rest would put new strength into her exhausted frame, and enable her to pursue her journey.

But exhausted nature could bear no more. Her unbroken fast of nearly three days, and her wet and draggled condition combined to weaken and depress her. Her limbs trembled under her, and when she fell down for one minute's rest, a deep unconsciousness stole upon her, wrapping her senses in lethargy. Her last conscious thought was one of agonized terror, lest ere she revived her enemy should discover her escape, and set out to trace her.

While she lay there mute and still, the dawn began to grow brighter in the east, the rain slackened, and a few pale beams of sunshine striking upon the scene, showed that she had fallen almost at the gate of a little farm-house from whose chimneys the blue smoke curled cheerfully up, showing that the inhabitants were already up and about their daily labors.

Presently a middle-aged man, in the rough, coa.r.s.e garb of a farmer came out of the house and strode down to the gate, whistling a merry tune, and snapping and cracking the great leathern whip he carried in his hand.

As he stepped outside the gate his cheerful whistle suddenly ended in an exclamation of terror.

His glance had fallen on the still form lying just outside the gate, with its lovely, white face and closed eyes upturned to the light.

He stood still a moment, looking down at her in awe and consternation.

"What a pretty young un," he said, aloud, "And she's dead, I mistrust--stone dead!"

The next moment he leaned over the gate and called loudly:

"Wife, wife, come out!"

The door opened and a middle-aged, pleasant-looking woman appeared. She was flushed as if she had been over the fire, and held some small cooking utensil in her hand.

"Well, Jerry," she said, "what do you want now?"

"Come out and see," he answered.

"Well, but I can't leave the cakes," said she, intent on her housewifely cares; "they will burn."

"Tell Jennie to mind the gridiron," he said, "and do you come out to me."

She went in and reappeared after a minute, coming down the path with her homely check ap.r.o.n thrown over her head.

"What now, Jerry?" she said, half-pettishly, half good-naturedly. "What is lost this morning? A pity I have to mind the farm-tools as well as the frying-pans!"

Jerry, whom this home thrust betrayed to be a good-natured, shiftless fellow, dependent on his better-half's more orderly ways, looked up to laugh, then checked himself, awed by the presence of that still form at his feet.

"There's naught misplaced this time, my dear," he said; "you shouldn't be forever twitting a poor, careless fellow with his faults."