The Oyster Part 54

"Ah!" The greyness slipped from Denise's cheeks. The dead cannot speak.

After all, she was to escape.

Then, his big bulk filling the door, her husband came in, Carteret following.

"Oh! oh!" she cried, and held her hands out, sobbing. "Oh, Cyrrie! the boy and poor Esme. She died to save him. Oh!"

"You can go, Mrs Stanson." The sick fear crept back to Denise Blakeney's heart. "Yes, Cyrrie is gone; and now, Denise, you will tell the truth."

"The truth," she faltered. "I--and I am so miserable."

"You'll tell how you gave those diamonds to Mrs Carteret. You'll publish it in the big papers. That is one part--and then ... now the rest of the truth," he thundered. "Oh, you two poor fools."

"But, Cyril--what else?"

"All the rest," came quickly. "Of Italy and Esme Carteret's child."

It was over. Denise tottered to a chair, sat there staring; her punishment had fallen at last.

Then, faltering, stumbling, yet afraid to lie, Denise Blakeney told the story. Of Esme's fear of poverty; of her own wish for a child. "And then it was arranged," she said; "we changed names. The boy was Esme's.

Luigi Frascatelle, the doctor, can tell you."

"The big, splendid boy was yours, Carteret; the poor, puny mite mine,"

said Cyril Blakeney, bitterly. "Well done, Denise! When a foolish girl was hysterical, foolish, as women are at these times, you advised her well. Lord! I know what she felt when I've seen her looking, looking at her own boy, with heartbreak in her eyes. I've wondered, but did not understand then. It was a pretty plot, milady, to fool me back to an untrue wife. Carteret, we are no judges to blame these two, but one has known her punishment, and one has not."

"Cyril!" sobbed Denise, "have pity! It was for you."

"For me? Pardon me, for my name and my position, knowing that I meant to rid myself of you," he answered coldly. "Carteret, Miss Reynolds is with your dead wife--go to her."

"Cyril," moaned Denise again. "You'll not expose me, for the boy's sake."

She was on her knees by Cyril's side, sobbing, entreating.

"That is for Carteret to decide," he answered. "Go to your room; you will only excite the child."

In the days to come, Denise, fighting for her delicate boy's life, knew no open disgrace. One poor foolish woman had borne it all and died; but the other left behind knew the misery of daily fear. She was a cipher, given no trust or belief; and with her always was the dread that as Cecil grew older he would be taken from her.

Cyril Blakeney, an embittered man, never forgave her.

Denise came to him the evening of Esme's death to ask what he would do.

He was writing, making arrangements for the funeral.

"You let a woman be disgraced before the world, you let that boy whom you disliked go into danger where no baby should have gone," he said.

"But you are Cecil's mother--so keep the position you schemed for--and no more."

The big man went back to his loneliness; he had loved strong Cyril, had dreamt of a boy who would run and shoot and swim and ride; and now, Cecil, injured by his fall from the cliff, would be lame for life.

Esme sleeps in a graveyard by the sea; close by her a little grave with "Cyril, drowned the 21st of April," on it. And on her tombstone is the inscription: "She gave her life to save a child's."

Estelle and Bertie, living in the quiet country, happy, yet with a shadow of regret ever with them, guessed, as they came often to the grave, what the weak girl must have suffered.

"Judge no human being until you know the truth," said Bertie once, "for misery rode poor Esme with a sharp spur across the thorns of recklessness. Poor b.u.t.terfly, whose day of fluttering in the sunlight was so short."

Yet, even with the shadow behind them, two of the players are happy, every-day man and woman with troubles and joys.

THE END