The Forsaken Inn Part 26

But the events of the night are not over. As soon as I had seen mademoiselle comfortably ensconced in my old room up stairs, I returned to the sitting room, where the marquis still lingered. He was standing in the window when I entered, and turned with quite a bright face to greet me. But that brightness soon vanished as he met my glance, and it was with something like dismay that he commented upon my paleness, and asked if I were ill.

I told him I was ill at ease; that events of a most serious nature were transpiring in the house; that he was concerned in them heavily, grievously; that I could not rest till I had taken him into my confidence, and shown him upon what a precipice he was standing.

He evidently considered me demented, but as he looked at me longer, and noted my steady and unflinching gaze, he gradually turned pale, and uttered, in irrepressible anxiety, the one word--"Honora!"

"Miss Urquhart is well," I began, "and is as ignorant as yourself of the shadows that hover over her. She is all innocence and truth, sir. Honor, candor and purity dwell in her heart, and happiness in her eyes. Yet is that happiness threatened by the worst calamity that can befall a sensitive human being, and if you hold her in esteem--"

"_Ma foi!_" he broke in, with violent impetuosity. "I do not esteem her; I love her. What are these dreadful secrets? How is her happiness threatened? Tell me without hesitation, for I have entreated her to be my wife, and she--"

"She thinks it is a parent's whim, alone, which keeps her from responding fully to your wishes," I finished. "But madame's objections have deeper ground than that. Miserable woman as she is, she has some idea of honor left. She knew her daughter could not safely marry into a high and n.o.ble family, and so--"

"What is this you say?" came again in the quick and hurried tones of despair. "Mrs. Urquhart--"

"Wait," I broke in. "You call her Mrs. Urquhart, but she has no claim to that t.i.tle. She and Edwin Urquhart have never been married."

He recoiled sharply, with a gesture of complete disbelief.

"How do you know?" he demanded. "They are strangers to you. I have known them in their own home. All the world credits their marriage, and--"

"All the world does not know what transpired in this house sixteen years ago, when Edwin Urquhart stopped here with his bride on his way to France."

He stared, seemed shaken, but presently hastened to remark:

"Ah, madame, you acknowledge that she is his wife. You said bride. One does not call a woman by that name without acknowledging a marriage service."

"The woman he brought here was his bride. Edwin Urquhart is no common criminal, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."

It was hard to make him understand. It was hard to undermine his trust, step by step, inch by inch, till he found no hope, no shred of doubt to cling to. But it had to be done. If only to avert worse calamities and more heart-rending scenes, he must know at once, and before he took another step in relation to Miss Urquhart, just what her position was, and to what shame and suffering he was subjecting himself by accepting her love and pledging his own.

The task was not done till I had shown him this diary of mine, and related all that had just occurred in the room below. Then, indeed, he seemed to comprehend his position, and completely crushed and horror-stricken, subsided into a dreadful silence before me, the lines of years coming into his face as I watched him, till he became scarcely recognizable for the lordly and light-hearted cavalier whose dreams of love I had so fearfully interrupted some half hour or so before. From this lethargy of despair I did not seek to rouse him. I knew when he had anything to say he would speak, and till he had faced the situation and had made up his mind to his duty, I could wait his decision with perfect confidence in his fine nature and nice sense of honor.

You may, therefore, imagine my feelings when, after a long delay--an hour at least--he suddenly remarked:

"We have been a proud family. From time immemorial we have held ourselves aloof from whatever could be thought to stain our honor or impeach our good name. I cannot drag the unfathomable disgrace of all these crimes into a record so pure as that of the Roche-Guyon race.

Though I had wished to bestow upon my wife a name and position of which she could be proud, I must content myself with merely giving her the comfort of a true heart and such support as can be provided by a loving but unaccustomed hand."

"Marquis--" I commenced.

But he cut my words short with a firm and determined gesture.

"My name is Louis de Fontaine," he explained. "Henceforth my cousin will be known as the marquis. It is the least I can do for the old French honor."

'Twas so simply, so determinedly done that I stood aghast as much at the serenity of his manner as the act which required such depth of sacrifice from one of his traditions and rearing.

"Then you continue to consider yourself the suitor of Miss Urquhart," I stammered. "You will marry her, though her parents may be called upon to perish upon the scaffold in an ignominy as great as ever befell two guilty mortals?"

The answer came brokenly, but with unwavering strength:

"Did you not say that she was innocent? Is she to be crushed beneath the guilt of her parents? Am I to take the last prop from one so soon to be bereft of all the supports upon which she has leaned from infancy? If I cling to her, she may live through her horror and shame; but should I fail her--great heavens! would we not have another life to answer for before G.o.d? Besides," he added, with the simplicity which marked his whole bearing, "I love her. I could not do otherwise if I would."

To this final word I could make no rejoinder. With a reverence unmingled with the taint of compa.s.sion, I took my departure, and being anxious by this time to know how my young charge was bearing her seclusion, I went to the room where I had left her, and softly opened the door.

CHAPTER XXV.

MARK FELT.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S]

Subjected as I have been in the last three hours to distress and turmoil, I was delighted to find mademoiselle asleep, and to behold her peaceful face. Gazing at it, and noting the happy smile which unconsciously lingered on her lips, I could not but feel that, despite the hideous revelations which lay before her, her lot was an enviable one, allied as it promised to be with that of one of such high principles as the marquis. Though I am old now and have had my day, the love of the innocent and pure is sacred to me, and in this case it certainly has the charm of a spotless lily blooming in the jaws of h.e.l.l.

As it was late and I was almost exhausted, I began to think of rest. But my uneasiness in regard to madame would not let me sleep till I had made another visit to her room. So, leaving the gentle sleeper lapped in serenest dreams, I proceeded to descend once more. As I pa.s.sed the great clock on the stairs, I noticed that it was almost midnight and began to hasten my steps, when I heard a loud knock at the front door.

This is not an infrequent sound with us, but it greatly startled me this night. I even remember pausing and looking helplessly up and down the hall, as if it were a question whether I should obey the unwelcome summons. But such knocking as speedily followed could not be long ignored. So, subduing my impatience, I hastened to the door, and unlocking it, threw it open. A gust of rain and wind greeted me.

This was my first surprise, for I had not even noticed that the weather was unpleasant, so completely had I been absorbed by what had been going on in the house. My next was the bearing and appearance of the stranger who demanded my hospitality. For though both face and form were unknown to me, there was that in his aspect which stirred recollections not out of keeping with the unhappy subject then occupying all my thoughts. Yet I could not speak his name, or put into words the antic.i.p.ations that vaguely agitated me, and led him through the hall and into the comfortable sitting room so lately vacated by the marquis, with no more distinct impression in my mind than that something was about to happen which would complete rather than interrupt the horrors of this eventful night.

And when the light fell full upon him, and I could see his eager eyes, this feeling increased, and no sooner had his cloak fallen from his shoulders and his hat left his head, than I recognized the prominent jaw and earnest face, and putting no curb on my impetuosity, I exclaimed at once, and without a doubt:

"Mr. Felt!"

The utterance of this name seemed to cause no surprise to my new guest.

"The same," he replied; "and you are Mrs. Truax, of course. Mr. Tamworth has described you to me, also this inn, till I feel as if I knew its every stone. I did not wish to visit it, but I could not help myself. An unknown influence has been drawing me here for days, and though I resisted it with all my strength, it finally became so powerful that I rose from my bed at night, saddled my horse, and started in this direction. I have been twenty hours on the road, but part of these I have spent in the thicket just over against you on the opposite side of the road. For the sight of the house awakened in my mind such a disturbance that I feared to show myself at the door. A voice out of the air seemed to cry, 'Not yet! not yet!' Nevertheless I could not go back nor leave the spot, which, once seen, possessed for me a fatal fascination."

I was speechless. Good G.o.d! were the old psychological influences at work, and had they acted upon him at forty miles distance?

"You come from Albany?" I at last stammered forth. "You must have had a wet time of it; it storms heavily, I see."

"Storms?" he repeated, glancing at the cloak he had thrown off. "Great Heaven! my cloak is saturated, and I did not even know it rained. A touch of the old spell," he murmured. "Something is about to happen to me; something has drawn me with purpose to this house."

I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what that something was?

"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted air of one recalling an experience, "I felt a pang shoot through my breast. I had been looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere about the building a light seemed to go out, for a pall of darkness suddenly settled upon it, simultaneously with the cessation of that imaginary cry which had hitherto detained me. Where was that light, Mrs. Truax, and what has happened here that I should feel myself called upon to cross this threshold to-night?"

I did not answer at once, for I was trembling. Was I to be subjected to another such an ordeal as I had experienced earlier in the evening and be forced to prepare, by such means as lay in my power, a much abused man for a most dreadful revelation? It began to look so.

"What has called me here?" he repeated. "Danger to her or death to him?

They are thousands of miles away, and Tamworth could not have yet reached them, but peril of some deadly nature menaces them, I know. A stroke has gone home to him or her, and it is in this place I am to learn it; is it not so, Mrs. Truax?"

"Perhaps," I tremblingly a.s.sented. "There is a gentleman here from France who may be able to tell you something of the man and the woman you mean. Would it affect you very much to hear disastrous news of them?"

"I cannot say," he answered; "it should not. Mr. Tamworth tells me that he has acquainted you with the story of my life. Do you think I should feel overwhelmed at any retribution following a crime that was committed almost as much against me as against the pure and n.o.ble being who was the visible sufferer?"

"I shrink from answering," I returned; "the human heart is a curious thing. If he alone were to suffer--"