Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
must not be allowed to see Cristiane while that scribbled card of his
reposed in Ismay’s pocket. His hand had written it, and Ismay Trelane
had lacked strength to burn the dangerous thing.
“Even if he does tell her he’s called twice, she won’t believe him
now!” she reflected, pausing at the library door.
It was shut. From inside came a murmur of voices. Cristiane’s strained,
wild, almost joyful; then another--oh! it was not Miles Cylmer’s.
Sick with terror, Ismay clung to the door-handle. Whose voice was it
that she heard, cold, suave to oiliness? Surely she was dreaming; it
could not be that voice here!
“Tell me, tell me everything!” Cristiane was crying, but her voice,
broken and piercing, was distinct to the girl whose feet were failing
under her.
“All I know.” The answer was plain, and conviction struck heavy at
Ismay’s heart.
It was he, Marcus Wray! But how had he got here, and what was he
telling Cristiane? His voice went on low and smooth, his words she
could not hear. And she dared not go in; she, Ismay Trelane, who had
said she feared nothing, was cold with fear now. She got up-stairs,
her knees trembling under her as she stumbled into the room where Mrs.
Trelane sat, gloating over her toilets.
The blood gone from her cheek, her heart hammering at her side, Ismay
clutched her by the shoulder, her shut throat so dry that she could not
speak.
“Are you crazy?” Mrs. Trelane cried angrily. “You hurt me; let me go.”
Ismay shook her fiercely.
“Go down, quick!” she muttered. “He’s there with Cristiane. He’s
telling her something--it must be about us. You must go and stop him.”
“Him! Who?”
Ismay’s grasp slackened.
“Marcus Wray.”
For a minute they looked at each other, the elder woman’s face turning
from unbelief to gray despair. How had her enemy found her?
“Go! There’s no time to waste,” the girl said sharply. “I knew he’d
hunt us down. I didn’t think it would be so soon.”
Mrs. Trelane drew a long breath.
“Perhaps he will find it is different now,” she said. “We can keep him
quiet with money; oh, I know we can!”
“It may be too late--now. And you once kept him quiet with
diamonds!”--contemptuously.
“I’ll do what I can.”
She was not so frightened as Ismay, though she knew Marcus Wray.
Startled she was at his finding her, yet surely now that she had money
and position she could make terms with a man who lived by his wits. A
sense of power had grown in her since the day she had looked defiance
into Miles Cylmer’s eyes; she felt strong now, even for Marcus Wray,
as she opened the library door and went in gracefully, languidly, as
though she expected nothing.
Yet what she saw was staggering enough. Marcus Wray, in the flesh, sat
with his back to her, faultlessly dressed, as usual, his black hair
brushed to satin. Facing him was Cristiane, her checks crimson, her
violet eyes shining softly, the dyes of one moved to the depths.
“Dear Mrs. Trelane”--the girl had started up and run to her--“I was
just going to send for you. This gentleman has been telling me things
I--I was sick to hear.”
Helen Trelane’s upper lip was wet.
“What things, dear?” she managed to say, as Marcus Wray turned round
and faced her. Cristiane’s hand was cold in hers, and the touch brought
back the deadly chill of Abbotsford’s hand as he lay in the little
rose-colored room. But she would not wait for an answer.
“Mr. Wray!” she exclaimed; and, to her credit, there was pleased
surprise in her voice. “You here? I did not know you knew my little
ward!”
Marcus Wray came forward and took the loose, lifeless hand that she
could not make steady, Cristiane clinging to the other the while.
“It is an unexpected pleasure for me,” he murmured, with smooth
untruth. “I did not know Miss Le Marchant was your ward. I came to tell
her”--he paused almost imperceptibly, noting the tiny drops round Helen
Trelane’s mouth--“that I was with her father--at the end.”
His eyes were on hers, in cold warning; yet, in spite of the hidden
threat there, the woman breathed again. At least, he had not been
telling Cristiane of Abbotsford--and the diamonds.
“I did not know you knew Mrs. Trelane.” Cristiane glanced wonderingly
from one to the other.
“You see, Miss Le Marchant,” he said courteously, “Mrs. Trelane and I
have been--friends--for some years.”
“We have known each other--well, for a long time.” For her life, Helen
Trelane could not keep the angry scorn from her voice, but Cristiane
was not woman enough to hear it.
“I am so glad,” she said, with a little sigh of pleasure, “for now
perhaps Mr. Wray will spend the night. I have so much to ask him--it
seems like a last message”--with a quiver of her lovely lips--“from
daddy.”
Mrs. Trelane sat down, Cristiane beside her, on the wide sofa by the
fire. Her brain was whirling. Was it possible that Marcus Wray was
telling the truth, or was it all a lie to get into the house?
“Please tell it all again,” Cristiane said pleadingly, and Marcus
Wray obeyed her, the story of the accident to the train only slightly
altered by his being with Sir Gaspard, having accompanied him from
Paris, instead of having followed him in that lucky last carriage.
“It was all so quick he felt nothing,” he ended gently. “I would have
saved him if I could.”
“Have you been in Aix ever since?” Mrs. Trelane asked dryly.
Marcus Wray made his last, best point with Cristiane.
“I have been to Rome,” he responded. “There was a telegram from Sir
Gaspard’s lawyers that he should be buried there, and I, as his only
friend, went, too, and saw him laid in his last resting-place. He had
told me, in Paris, that he would like to be buried in Rome----”
“But was he ill in Paris?” Cristiane cried.
“Very ill, I am afraid,” Wray answered gently. “He spoke of his wish,
at all events, and so I saw that it was fulfilled.” He drew out a
pocketbook and took some violets from it that were sweet still.
“These are from your mother’s grave”--his voice reverential, softly
thrilled, he put them into Cristiane’s hand. “And he lies beside her.”
But the tiny purple scented things fluttered to the ground, the very
flood-gates of her heart opened, she sobbed on Mrs. Trelane’s shoulder,
torn with her grief.
“Oh, if I could go, too!” she moaned. “Father, father, if I could go,
too.”
Mrs. Trelane caught the girl to her.
“Darling, don’t cry like that; please don’t!” she said authoritatively.
“Come with me; come to Ismay.”
She cast an indignant look at Marcus Wray. Why did he harrow the girl
with his lies?
“Don’t let him go,” Cristiane gasped. “I want to ask him something.”
“I will wait.” Marcus Wray’s voice and glance turned Mrs. Trelane’s
indignation to terror.
Somehow she got Cristiane up-stairs, with the aid of Jessie, who was
all sympathy at the quick words Mrs. Trelane whispered.
“My lamb, you must rest!” the woman said pityingly. “You shall see the
gentleman to-morrow. Come with Jessie now.”
As the girl went to her room, worn out, Mrs. Trelane forgot to send
Ismay to soothe her; forgot everything on earth but Marcus Wray.
Cristiane was out of the way; it did not matter where Ismay was.
She little knew how those early morning inspections of Ismay’s had
familiarized her with every room and nook and passage of the house. Nor
that a door opening into the library from the drawing-room was masked
by bookshelves on one side and curtains on the other, and had warped so
that it could never be quite closed from the weight of the shelves on
it. But Ismay knew!
Crouched tailor-fashion on the floor, she had heard from her
hiding-place every word of Marcus Wray’s, and her quick brain was
working, as she waited for her mother’s return, like a detective’s on a
clue.
“It was not to tell Cristiane that drivel that he came,” she thought
nervously, almost afraid to breathe, lest his quick ears should know
it. “There’s something more. Oh, I wish mother had listened to me and
never gone to Lord Abbotsford’s.”
Her mother’s voice cut on her ears as the door from the hall closed
behind her.
“You have nearly killed the girl with your lies,” she cried. “Why
couldn’t you come and ask for me, instead of playing a game like that?
I know quite well you came to see me.”
“You are--partially--right!” Cristiane would not have recognized the
voice, so slow and insulting. “I did come to see you. But I did not
tell lies, but truth--embroidered.”
“You knew I was here,” she retorted angrily. “You did!”
“I did”--with amused mockery.
“Then what do you want of me? Do your worst and go. I tell you I will
not live like this, to be bullied by you!”
“Whom once you bullied,” the man answered quietly. “Sit down, Helen,
and don’t scream your conversation. I am here as your friend.”
“My friend! How?”
But Ismay heard the soft rustle of silks as Mrs. Trelane sat down.
“I’ll tell you, only listen and be quiet. I was with Sir Gaspard
in Paris, but by chance, as a lawyer, not as his friend. Do you
understand?”
“No.” Very low, and it was well Ismay could not see how her mother was
cowering before Marcus Wray’s contemptuous eyes.
“Don’t you? Well, I made that will. Now, do you know what brought me
here?”
“To make me pay you to go away”--bitterly.
“No, not that. I do not mean to go away; and what good would the
pittance you could screw from five hundred a year be to me? I am going
to pay you short visits often; the girl likes me----”
“Mark,” she broke in, “what for? Why do you want to come to a dull hole
like this if it was not to get money out of me?”
A thought that sprang in her suddenly made her gasp, and then speak
louder.
“Or do you want to make love to Cristiane, and marry her, and have me
turned out by betraying all you know?”
“I don’t mean anything out of that exhaustive catalogue”--coolly.
“Let me recall a clause of the will to your memory: ‘If my daughter
Cristiane should die unmarried or without children, the property and
all moneys of which I am possessed shall go to my only remaining
relative, the aforesaid Helen Trelane, reverting on her decease to her
only daughter, Ismay Trelane.’ Now do you see my meaning?” His voice
was low as caution could make it; his eyes spoke terrors that could not
be said even to the wretched woman before him.
With a dreadful, strangled wail she was on her knees beside him.
“Mark, Mark! Would you make me a murderess?”
His eyes burned into hers as he stooped closer to her, where she shook
on her knees.
“What are you now, if I speak out?” he said slowly. “You can take your
choice.”
“I can’t do it! It would be madness. She is young. Oh! for God’s sake,
say you didn’t mean it.”
“Mean what? I said nothing. You need do nothing. But if that happens
you are free. Why, you fool! Do you think I want you to give her a
dagger?”
“Marry her; let me go, and marry her! You’d be rich!”
“I am going to marry Ismay,” said Marcus Wray.
CHAPTER XV.
COILED TO SPRING.
Just how long she sat crouched in the dark Ismay Trelane never knew.
She heard a bell ring and lamps brought that shone through the chink
straight on her. Then there was a tinkle of glasses, and, as a bottle
was opened with a sharp explosion, she dared to steal away.
“Oh, what wickedness! I never dreamed of such wickedness,” she thought,
gaining her own room and locking herself in, as though Wray might come
to seek her. “But he sha’n’t do it. I swear he sha’n’t do it, unless he
kills me first!”
For she knew that somewhere, somehow, death would be lurking in her own
house for Cristiane le Marchant; not now, but later on, when people had
ceased to talk of Sir Gaspard’s death, and his strange will.
Curiously enough, now that she knew the real danger, all her courage
had come back to her. It was with nerves of steel that she sat