The Forsaken Inn Part 27

"Ah, he!" was the bitter e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"Or if she," I proceeded, "were bound by no ties appealing to the sympathies! But she is a mother--"

"Good G.o.d!"

I had not thought it would affect him so, and stood appalled.

"A mother!" he repeated; "she! she! the tigress, the heartless one, with no more soul than the naked dagger I should have plunged into her breast and did not! Great Heaven! and this child has lived, I suppose; is grown up and--and--"

"Is the sweetest, purest, most unworldly of beautiful women that these eyes have ever rested upon."

I thought he would spring upon me, he leaned forward with so much impetuosity.

"How do you know?" he asked, and my heart stood still at the question.

"Because I have seen her," I presently rejoined. "Because I have had opportunities for studying her heart. She is called Honora, and she is like Miss Dudleigh, only more beautiful and with more claims to what is called character."

He did not seem to take in my words.

"You have been to France?" he declared.

"No," I corrected; "Miss Urquhart has been here."

He fell back, then started forward again, opened his lips and stared wildly, half fearfully about the room.

"Here?" he repeated, evidently overcome at the idea. "Why did they send her here? I should as soon have expected them to send her into the murk of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent girl, you say, and sent here?"

"They had reason; besides, she did not come alone."

This time he understood me.

"Oh!" he shrieked, "she in the house. I might have known it," he went on more calmly; "I did, only I would not believe it. Her crime has drawn her to the place of its perpetration. She could not resist the magnetic influence which all places of blood have upon the guilty. She has come back! And he?"

I shook my head.

"The man had less courage," I declared. "Perhaps because he was more guilty; perhaps because he had less love."

"Love?"

"It was love for the daughter which drew the mother here, not the spell of her crime or the accusing spirit of the dead. The woman who wronged you has some heart; she was willing to risk detection, and with it her reputation and life, to see if by any possibility she could venture to give happiness to the one being whom she really loves."

"Explain; I do not understand. How could she hope to find happiness for her child here?"

"By settling the question which evidently tortured her. By determining once for all whether the crime of sixteen years back had ever been discovered, and if she found it had not, to satisfy at once her own pride and her daughter's heart by giving that daughter to as n.o.ble a gentleman as ever carried a sword."

"And they are here now?"

"They are here."

"And she has discovered--"

"The futility of all her hopes."

He drew back, and his heavy breath echoed in deep pants through the room.

"What an end for Marah Leighton!" he gasped.

"What an end! And she is here!" he went on, after a moment of silent emotion--"under this roof! No wonder I felt myself called hither. And she knows her crime is detected? How came she to know this? Did you recognize her and tell her?"

"I recognized her and told her. There was no other course. We met in the secret chamber, whither she had come to make her own terrible investigations; and the sight of her there, on the spot where she had left the innocent to die, was too much for my sense of justice. I accused her to her face, and she crouched before me as under the lash.

There was no possibility of denial after that, and she now lies--"

"Wait!" he cried, catching me painfully by the arm. "When was this day?

To-day--to-night?"

"Not two hours ago."

His brow took on a look of awe.

"You see," he murmured, "she has power over me yet. When her hope broke, something snapped within me here. I abhor her, but I feel her grief. She was once all the world to me."

I recognized his right to emotion, and did not profane it by any words of mine. Instead of that I sought to leave him, but he would not let me go till he had asked me another question.

"And the daughter?" he urged. "Does she know of the opprobrium which must fall upon her head?"

"She sleeps," I replied, "with a smile of the shyest delight upon her lips. Her lover has followed her to this place, and the last words she heard to-night were those of his devotion. Her suffering must come to-morrow; yet it will be mitigated, for he will not forsake her, whatever shame may follow his loyalty. I have his word for that."

"Then the earth holds two lovers," was Mark Felt's rejoinder. "I thought it held but one." And with a sigh he let go my arm and turned to the window, with its background of driving rain and pitiless flashes of lightning.

I took the opportunity to excuse myself for a few minutes, and hurrying again into the hall, hastened, with nervous fear and an agitation greatly heightened by the unexpected interview I had just been through, to the now oft-opened door leading into the oak parlor.

I found it closed but not locked, and pushing it open, listened for a moment, then took a glance within. All was quiet and ghostly. A single candle guttering on the table at one end of the room lent a partial light by which I could discern the funereal bed and the other heavy and desolate-looking articles of furniture with which the room was enc.u.mbered. Honora's flowers, withering on the window seat, spoke of tender hopes not yet vanished from her tender dreams, but elsewhere all was hard, all was dreary, all was inexorably forbidding and cold. I shuddered as I looked, and shuddered still more as I approached the bed and paused firmly before it.

"Madame Letellier"--it was the only name by which I could bring myself to address her at that instant--"there is one gleam of brightness in your sky. The marquis knows the story of your guilt, yet consents to marry your daughter."

I received no reply.

Shaken by fresh doubts, and moved by an inexplicable terror, I stood still for a moment gathering up my strength, then I repeated my words, this time with sharp emphasis and scarcely concealed importunity.

"Madame," said I, "the marquis knows your guilt, yet consents to marry your daughter."

But the silence within remained unbroken, and not a movement displaced the somber falling curtains.

Agitated beyond endurance, I stretched forth my hands and drew those curtains aside. An unexpected sight met my eyes. There was no madame there; the bed was empty.

CHAPTER XXVI.