White Lies Part 56

Horror! It was her husband's face.

At first she was quite stupefied, and looked at it with soul and senses benumbed. Then she trembled, and put her hand to her eyes; for she thought it a phantom or a delusion of the mind. No: there it glared still. Then she trembled violently, and held out her left hand, the fingers working convulsively, to Rose, who was still singing.

But, at the same moment, the mouth of this face suddenly opened in a long-drawn breath. At this, Josephine uttered a violent shriek, and sprang to her feet, with her right hand quivering and pointing at that pale face set in the dark.

Rose started up, and, wheeling her head round, saw Raynal's gloomy face looking over her shoulder. She fell screaming upon her knees, and, almost out of her senses, began to pray wildly and piteously for mercy.

Josephine uttered one more cry, but this was the faint cry of nature, sinking under the shock of terror. She swooned dead away, and fell senseless on the floor ere Raynal could debarra.s.s himself of the screen, and get to her.

This, then, was the scene that met Edouard's eyes. His affianced bride on her knees, white as a ghost, trembling, and screaming, rather than crying, for mercy. And Raynal standing over his wife, showing by the working of his iron features that he doubted whether she was worthy he should raise her.

One would have thought nothing could add to the terror of this scene.

Yet it was added to. The baroness rang her bell violently in the room below. She had heard Josephine's scream and fall.

At the ringing of this shrill bell Rose shuddered like a maniac, and grovelled on her knees to Raynal, and seized his very knees and implored him to show some pity.

"O sir! kill us! we are culpable"--

Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! pealed the baroness's bell again.

"But do not tell our mother. Oh, if you are a man! do not! do not! Show us some pity. We are but women. Mercy! mercy! mercy!"

"Speak out then," groaned Raynal. "What does this mean? Why has my wife swooned at sight of me?--whose is this child?"

"Whose?" stammered Rose. Till he said that, she never thought there COULD be a doubt whose child.

Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring!

"Oh, my G.o.d!" cried the poor girl, and her scared eyes glanced every way like some wild creature looking for a hole, however small, to escape by.

Edouard, seeing her hesitation, came down on her other side. "Whose is the child, Rose?" said he sternly.

"You, too? Why were we born? mercy! oh! pray let me go to my sister."

Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! went the terrible bell.

The men were excited to fury by Rose's hesitation; they each seized an arm, and tore her screaming with fear at their violence, from her knees up to her feet between them with a single gesture.

"Whose is the child?"

"You hurt me!" said she bitterly to Edouard, and she left crying and was terribly calm and sullen all in a moment.

"Whose is the child?" roared Edouard and Raynal, in one raging breath.

"Whose is the child?"

"It is mine."

CHAPTER XX.

These were not words; they were electric shocks.

The two arms that gripped Rose's arms were paralyzed, and dropped off them; and there was silence.

Then first the thought of all she had done with those three words began to rise and grow and surge over her. She stood, her eyes turned downwards, yet inwards, and dilating with horror.

Silence.

Now a mist began to spread over her eyes, and in it she saw indistinctly the figure of Raynal darting to her sister's side, and raising her head.

She dared not look round on the other side. She heard feet stagger on the floor. She heard a groan, too; but not a word.

Horrible silence.

With nerves strung to frenzy, and quivering ears, that magnified every sound, she waited for a reproach, a curse; either would have been some little relief. But no! a silence far more terrible.

Then a step wavered across the room. Her soul was in her ear. She could hear and feel the step totter, and it shook her as it went. All sounds were trebled to her. Then it struck on the stone step of the staircase, not like a step, but a knell; another step, another and another; down to the very bottom. Each slow step made her head ring and her heart freeze.

At last she heard no more. Then a scream of anguish and recall rose to her lips. She fought it down, for Josephine and Raynal. Edouard was gone. She had but her sister now, the sister she loved better than herself; the sister to save whose life and honor she had this moment sacrificed her own, and all a woman lives for.

She turned, with a wild cry of love and pity, to that sister's side to help her; and when she kneeled down beside her, an iron arm was promptly thrust out between the beloved one and her.

"This is my care, madame," said Raynal, coldly.

There was no mistaking his manner. The stained one was not to touch his wife.

She looked at him in piteous amazement at his ingrat.i.tude. "It is well,"

said she. "It is just. I deserve this from you."

She said no more, but drooped gently down beside the cradle, and hid her forehead in the clothes beside the child that had brought all this woe, and sobbed bitterly.

Then honest Raynal began to be sorry for her, in spite of himself. But there was no time for this. Josephine stirred; and, at the same moment, a violent knocking came at the door of the apartment, and the new servant's voice, crying, "Ladies, for Heaven's sake, what is the matter?

The baroness heard a fall--she is getting up--she will be here. What shall I tell her is the matter?"

Raynal was going to answer, but Rose, who had started up at the knocking, put her hand in a moment right before his mouth, and ran to the door. "There is nothing the matter; tell mamma I am coming down to her directly." She flew back to Raynal in an excitement little short of frenzy. "Help me carry her into her own room," cried she imperiously.

Raynal obeyed by instinct; for the fiery girl spoke like a general, giving the word of command, with the enemy in front. He carried the true culprit in his arms, and laid her gently on her bed.

"Now put IT out of sight--take this, quick, man! quick!" cried Rose.

Raynal went to the cradle. "Ah! my poor girl," said he, as he lifted it in his arms, "this is a sorry business; to have to hide your own child from your own mother!"

"Colonel Raynal," said Rose, "do not insult a poor, despairing girl.

C'est lache."

"I am silent, young woman," said Raynal, sternly. "What is to be done?"