Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
Her even, level voice had an implacable ring to it. Cylmer, disgusted
with himself, went off on a new tack.
“You looked so tired that night, and so childlike,” he said, with a
little pause before the last word. Ismay turned on him, her eyes full
of somber fire.
“You thought me some little milliner,” she cried superbly. “Yet you
treated me there like a lady, while to-day----” she shrugged her lovely
shoulders as though she were at a loss for words. Yet presently, as she
went on, her tone softened.
“I had run away that night. I had just come home from school and had no
dresses fit to wear. My mother had some one to dinner, and I was too
shabby to be seen. It was dull sitting alone, so I took all the money I
had and went out. The reason I was hungry was that I wouldn’t eat the
dinner that was sent up to me; it was horrid,” with a little laugh.
“But it was a mad thing to do; don’t you know that?” he said
wonderingly.
“I didn’t then; I do now.” Her self-possession had come back to her;
her smile had that indefinite womanly quality in it that had struck him
long ago, when he had been puzzled as to her age.
“You mean I have taught you this morning! Will you give me leave to try
and make you forget that?”
“You may never see me again.”
“I will if you do not move to another planet,” remarked Mr. Cylmer
deliberately, “or tell the butler you are never at home to me.”
“I cannot do either,” she said, with an indifference that he never
dreamed was imitation. “I have no butler, for one thing, and I don’t
mean to die if I can help it.”
“My dear little lady, I didn’t mean that.”
“Didn’t you? I do! I have a horror of dying.” She shivered suddenly, as
if neither the afternoon nor the quick blood in her veins could warm
her. “To die, and be put in the cold, damp earth, and not even know
the sun shone over your grave! I often think of it, just because it
terrifies me.”
“You have all your life to live first,” he said, with a wandering
glance at her. She piqued him with her changes of mood.
“Life is very amusing,” she observed calmly. “You see so much you are
not meant to see. Now I saw why you kissed me just now.”
Mr. Cylmer’s bronzed cheek showed a faint trace of red.
“I was an ungentlemanly beast,” he cried hotly. “Be kind and let us
forget it.”
Ismay looked at him, and once more her beauty startled him.
“Forget it, by all means--if you can!” she retorted. “But I don’t think
you will. Good-by, I am going home now.” And before he could speak she
had slipped through a gap in the hedge, which, she had seen as he came,
led by a short cut to Marchant’s Hold.
“But you haven’t even told me your name, or how you know mine, or where
you live,” Mr. Cylmer spoke to the empty air apparently, but a light
laugh, sweet as spring, answered him from the other side of the hedge.
“You can find out all those things by diligence,” returned a voice full
of mockery.
Mr. Cylmer scrambled hastily through the gap in the hedge, reins in
hand, and his horse’s head pushing through behind him.
“You’d better tell me,” he observed calmly. “I might tell, you know,
how you went to see the world one night.”
“Ah, but you won’t!” She was suddenly radiant, suddenly conscious that
nothing on earth would have bound him to her like that kiss. “You have
too much honor, Mr. Cylmer. Now, I have no honor at all. I could tell
my mother that you spoke to me without any introduction.”
He laughed, his eyes very sweet and kindly, as he said: “You won’t,
will you?”
“No,” she answered slowly, “and if you ever meet me it must be for the
first time. You won’t stammer and be surprised or anything, will you?”
“No, I think I can promise you that,” he said bluntly. “Only let me see
you; it was chaff, you know, about my telling tales.”
The girl looked at him with hard scrutiny, and as he met her eyes he
could have cut his hand off for this morning’s work. For her face was
strangely innocent, and pitifully young to be that of a girl who was
allowed to wander about by herself to a music-hall.
“My dear little lady,” he said slowly, “do you know that I can never
forgive myself? I don’t deserve your ever speaking to me or trusting me
again. And yet, I ask you to let me be your friend. Will you?”
A little quiver shook her. Would he really be her friend? Yet, after
all, why not? But like a dream there rose before her the image of
Cristiane le Marchant, young, lovely, and rich; behind that the vision
of Marcus Wray, his thick red lips mocking her in her fancy. What could
either of them have to do with Miles Cylmer? Yet she was cold with
fright, standing there in the winter sun, lest Cristiane le Marchant
might have more of Cylmer’s heart than she knew, and lest Marcus
Wray might find her hiding-place with his secret that could make her
forswear the sight of Cylmer’s face for very terror.
She drew a sharp breath.
Cylmer’s face grew blank as he looked at her.
“You won’t! You can’t forgive me?” he said gently. “Very well.”
Ismay put her hand in his, but with the gesture of a woman, not a girl.
“Be my friend, then!” she said slowly. “Promise me that you will
believe in me, and trust me. No one ever did that.”
“I will trust you through anything,” he said, puzzled. “It is a
bargain; you are to forgive me, and I am to be your friend for always.”
He clasped her hand hard, as if it were the hand of a comrade, and the
blood came red to her cheek.
“Won’t you tell who you are?” he asked, smiling at the fancy that kept
her nameless, as he released her hand.
“Don’t look so startled, it’s only the station bus!” For there was a
sound of wheels on the road behind him. It was a long instant before
she answered, and when she spoke she looked no longer the same girl.
“I am no one--of any importance,” she said, with a languid nod; then
she turned away and was gone without even a good-by.
Cylmer was forced to go through the hedge, outside of which his horse
was fretting and plunging with impatience.
“I’d swear she never kissed a man before,” he mused as he mounted. “And
she’s right, I can’t forget it. I wonder who she’s staying with.” Not
for a moment connecting her with the strange woman at Marchant’s Hold.
Yet the girl in his thoughts had at that moment forgotten all about him.
She was running swiftly toward Marchant’s Hold, with a deadly terror
at her heart. It was senseless, unreasonable, yet the glimpse she had
had through the hedge of the occupant of the station bus was so like a
glimpse of Marcus Wray that she had turned sick.
It was like waking from a dream of warmth and happiness, to find death
in the house. Yet it could not be that Wray had found them.
“He would never think of us in a respectable house,” she thought, as
she hurried on.
“But if he did, we have no more diamonds; we can’t buy him off any
more.”
She reached an open field, below her in the level valley rose the
strong towers of Marchant’s Hold, with the flag of England’s glory
flying on the highest of them. As she looked the flag went suddenly
down to half-mast. Some one, a Le Marchant born, must be lying dead!
Ismay Trelane, who hated death, would have stayed away for hours, but
she dared not. With lagging feet she came at last to the great hall
door, with its motto over it: “What Marchant held let Marchant hold,”
its pride a mockery, grim and trenchant, for there was a streamer of
crape on the door-handle.
A deadly terror of being out there alone came over her. She pulled
desperately at the door-handle. If she had seen Marcus Wray he would be
on his way to Marchant’s Hold; she would die if he came and caught her
here alone.
“Thomas,” she cried. “What’s the matter?”
The old butler who let her in could hardly answer.
“My master’s dead, Miss Trelane,” he whispered, “killed in a railway
accident.”
“Dead!” she fairly staggered. That would mean turning out into the
world again. She ran wildly past him up-stairs to her mother’s room.
CHAPTER XI.
A NET FOR HER FEET.
Mrs. Trelane, her face drawn and gray, stood staring out of the window.
As Ismay returned she turned with sharp relief.
“Where have you been? Why did you go out like that and stay so long?”
she demanded fiercely. “I have been almost wild here, with no one to
speak to. Do you know that we’re ruined? That Sir Gaspard is dead?”
The girl nodded.
“I saw the flag half-mast--I asked Thomas.” Her face was suddenly very
tired. “How did you hear--and are you sure it’s true?”
“True enough. Look here.” She tossed a telegram toward the girl, who
caught the fluttering paper deftly.
“From Bolton & Carey to Mrs. Trelane,” the message ran. “Fatal accident
on the railway just before Aix. Have received wire that Sir Gaspard
le Marchant and servant are among those killed, and fear there is no
doubt it is not true. Break news to daughter. Will send particulars as
soon as they can be obtained.”
“How did they know you were here?”
“Sir Gaspard told them I was to be here during his absence. I know Mr.
Bolton--or I did when I was Helen le Marchant,” impatiently. “There’s
no mystery about that.”
“Have you told Cristiane?”
“No!” Mrs. Trelane flung herself into a chair and twisted her smooth
fingers uneasily. “She’s asleep. She came in dead tired and lay down.
Her maid is watching to tell her when she wakes. How can I tell her? If
I do it, it will make her hate me.”
With quick contempt Ismay glanced at her.
“On the contrary, it may be your only chance with her,” she said
angrily. “Tell me, had you any arrangement, any bargain, with Sir
Gaspard?”
“None,” with a sullen shake of the head. “We were asked here on a
visit, you and I, ’till things could be arranged,’ he said. But I know
that we were here on approval, if you like to call it so. If the girl
liked us we were to stay on indefinitely----”
“And you sit here when you know that, and run the chance of having that
maid whom she has had for years tell her that her father is dead!”
Ismay flung out her hands in exasperation. “Can’t you see that if any
one tells her but you or I we shall be outside of it all to Cristiane?
Move, please.” Mrs. Trelane’s chair blocked her path to the door. “I’m
going to tell her this minute.”
With the grace of an angry animal, she was out of the room and up the
corridor to Cristiane’s door. Jessie, the girl’s own maid, opened it,
her face swelled with crying.
“She’s asleep still, the poor lamb!” the woman whispered.
With unnatural strength Ismay kept the contempt from her face; the
woman was in a very luxury of woe, and would have blurted out her bad
news, without doubt, the very instant her mistress awoke. What luck
that she had come home in time!
“Oh, Jessie!” she said softly. “It’s so dreadful. And you must be
tired. Go and get your tea, and I’ll stay till you come back.”
Jessie cast a glance backward at the bed.
Cristiane, in a white dressing-gown, slept like a baby, her rose-leaf
lips just parted, her lovely cheek flushed. There was no sign of her
waking till dinner, and down-stairs there would be tea and muffins, and
solemn waggings of the head. Cook would be telling her dreams--she was
a great one for dreams. The prospect was too tempting.
“Thank you, miss,” she said. “I’d be glad of a cup of tea. I’ll be back
in a jiffy; long before she wakes.”
“Then you’ll be a clever woman, my good Jessie!” the girl thought, as
she nodded and passed silently by the woman, who stood respectfully out
of her way.
She looked around the room, where a fire burned softly between brass
andirons, where the floor was covered with a pale-blue and rose carpet,
and the walls hung with blue silk that was covered with pink roses. At
the side of the bed, where she might slip her bare feet upon it as she