Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
thinking, thinking; her eyes gleaming green in the darkness like a
watching leopard’s, that waits to kill.
“What shall I do? I can’t let mother know I heard--she would tell him,
and I wouldn’t have any chance.” Her anguish almost broke out into a
cry. “Oh! what have I done to have such a mother?”--her teeth gritting
as she kept back the words. “And he will marry me then, will he? He
will marry a dose of poison, and I will hang for it first! To sit there
in cold blood and talk of murder--and she so young.” She rocked to and
fro. Cristiane le Marchant was in her way, but that was a thing to
fight and triumph over. Not even to marry Miles Cylmer would Ismay let
that awful scheme of death be played out.
And her mother had begged to him, not defied him; that cry of “Mark,
Mark!” still rang in the daughter’s ears. Could it be true what he
said, that it was she who had poisoned Abbotsford? Had her mother
managed to deceive even her when she swore she had no hand in it?
“I will find out!” The girl’s dumb lips were awful in the dusk. “I will
make Marcus Wray a thing the world shudders at before I am done. I will
take care of Cristiane,” she moaned sharply, remembering how she had
said these very words to Cylmer.
“Oh, you’ll love me in the end,” she panted, as though he could hear
the thought in her brain. “I would die for you; surely you’ll love me
in the end!”
Frightened at her own passion, she got up in the dark and bathed her
face in cold water, and washed the hands that were soiled from the dust
in her ambush. Her mother would wonder, if she came in before dinner
and found her in a dress all gray with dust.
She made a careful toilet, that she might be ready when the gong rang
for dinner, and looked at herself in the glass. But her own eyes were
dreadful to her, for they were the eyes of a hunted beast at bay. She
turned quickly from the glass. She could not think if she saw her own
face, and think she must before she had to meet Marcus Wray.
She opened the window to the bitter winter air, and its chill cleared
her brain.
First, there was that matter of Lord Abbotsford, and the hold it had
given Wray on her mother. He must have proof of what the latter denied,
or she would not be in such terror of him. The thought brought no new
terror to Ismay Trelane; true or not, the accusation was Marcus Wray’s
weapon, and she must look for one of her own that would turn its edge.
Then there was Cylmer. He, too, would be against her mother if he knew
all, and Wray would stick at nothing if he once knew that Ismay loved
another man. He must know nothing of Cylmer; yet, if he stayed here,
how was he to be kept in the dark?
And Cristiane? Suppose Ismay’s dull suspicion were true, and Cylmer
loved her, why should she live to come between him and Ismay Trelane?
The girl, sitting, with clenched hands, on her bed, answered her own
question.
“Because I hate, hate, hate Marcus Wray!” she whispered hoarsely.
“Because he shall never have a penny of Sir Gaspard’s money, nor my
little finger, to call his own. I must carry my own sins. I will not be
made to help carry Marcus Wray’s! Cristiane----” She went to the glass
again, and this time she did not flinch. “Cristiane cannot keep any man
from me! I will have it all, all, from marrying Miles Cylmer to beating
Marcus Wray at his own game.”
For there faced her in the glass her own beauty, strange and glorious.
Not a curve of her milky cheeks, a wave of her flax-white hair, a line
of her scarlet mouth was lost on her. She gazed steadily into her own
eyes in the mirror till it seemed as if a soul not her own gazed back
at her from them. They were no longer the eyes of Ismay Trelane, a girl
not eighteen years old, but those of a woman who had lived and loved
and known the very wisdom of earth long ago, when the world was very
young.
The old, old smile curved the girl’s lips as she turned away.
There was her weapon to fight Marcus Wray--her beauty, her wits, her
self-reliance that should never again fail her as it had failed her
to-day.
“I shall manage them all!” She flung back her lovely head triumphantly,
securely. “Who is Cristiane that I should be afraid of her, when he can
look at me? She shall help me with him! She shall be the bait that will
bring him to me. And I will not go to him with blood on my hands to
save Marcus Wray.”
Not even to herself would she own that in spite of herself Cristiane
had grown dear to her, for to care for any one but oneself and a man
was to be a fool, to Ismay Trelane. Her mother--bah! Her mother was
safe enough while her enemy was playing for such high stakes.
The only danger was lest Wray might think things about Cylmer, and
forget his caution in a mad rage of jealousy. That thick, yellow skin,
those dark red lips bore the very trade-mark on them of the most
ungovernable passion in the world.
“It is I who must take care of that,” Ismay mused. “And before I am
done, it is Marcus Wray that shall tremble for his skin, not I, nor my
mother, nor Cristiane.”
She went down-stairs as calm as a lake at dawn; cool and silent
she bowed to Marcus Wray where he stood with her mother in the
drawing-room, dressed for dinner.
She had never seen him in evening clothes, and he was more repulsive in
the plain black and white than she had ever dreamed he could be.
“What! You don’t shake hands?” he said, with amusement.
Cristiane was not coming down, and Mrs. Trelane looked at her daughter
as if she longed to slap her.
“Don’t be silly, Ismay!” she snapped.
“Let her alone,” Wray said quietly. “It will come to the same thing in
the end. The harder it is to get a thing, the more I enjoy it.”
Even Mrs. Trelane felt cold at his hideous, gloating look at her
daughter, but Ismay glanced at him with calm distaste, to which her
beauty lent a sting.
“Let us go to dinner,” she said, as if he were beneath any direct reply.
And as she sat at his right hand, opposite her mother, not even the
luck of Marcus Wray could warn him that a white adder, with gleaming
emerald eyes, coiled up to spring, would have been a safer neighbor for
him than Ismay Trelane.
CHAPTER XVI.
CIRCE’S EYES.
Nothing in the whole house was good enough for Marcus Wray. Ismay saw
that as soon as she came down to breakfast.
Cristiane, behind the great urn, was changed from yesterday; a peace
was on her face, and for the first time since the news of her father’s
death her eyes bore no traces of a night spent in tears. Marcus Wray
had built better than he knew when he came as the one friend who had
done the very last things for Gaspard le Marchant. The news had spread
like wild-fire through the household. Thomas, the old butler, waited
on the strange gentleman from London with a noiseless assiduity he had
never shown to either of the Trelanes.
“Must you go this morning?” Cristiane said wistfully. “I suppose there
is very little temptation to stay in a quiet house like this!”
“There is every temptation,” Wray returned, with the frankness that was
so good an imitation, “to a tired man who has found old friends here
and the kindest of hospitality”--with a glance at Cristiane that made
Ismay wince. “But I am afraid I must go and look after my bread and
butter. I am one of the working-classes, Miss Le Marchant.”
“But you don’t work always! If you have a Saturday and Sunday to spare,
will you remember you are wanted here?”
For the man seemed a link with her dead father that she could not lose.
Wray glanced at Mrs. Trelane.
“Cristiane is right, Mr. Wray,” she said. “We shall always be glad to
see you, though, of course, at present we do not see any one but old
friends.”
“Well, we live and learn,” reflected Ismay. “Fancy mother saying she
will be glad to see that man. She must be in a blue fright.”
She heard in utter silence an arrangement made which would bring Marcus
Wray from London on the next Saturday fortnight. She had that much time
in which to see Cylmer.
In the morning sunshine what she had overheard last night in the dusk
seemed monstrous and absurd. Yet there sat the man whose profession
was blackmail, and there sat the woman who feared him, pale, worn, and
harried, in the dainty breakfast-room.
“There’s plenty of time, that is the only thing,” Ismay thought, as she
saw Cristiane leave the room with Wray and go out by the window onto
the terrace. The morning was almost warm, and they walked up and down
there, like old friends, a hideous sight to the girl who watched them
over her empty teacup.
“Plenty of time; he is too clever to hurry and make a scandal in the
country.” She wondered morbidly how he would set about his hideous end
when the time was ripe.
“Nonsense!” she said to herself smartly. “I shall have the upper hand
long before that, though I don’t know how yet.”
She rose quickly and went out through the open French window. Cristiane
was alone now, and Ismay had no mind for a solitary conversation with
Mr. Wray, who had come into the house by the hall door to get ready for
his train.
“Mother can talk to him if she chooses, not I!” she thought, with
a shrug of her shoulders. “I am a fool to mix myself up in it, I
believe, and yet I haven’t much choice. Some one must look after this
baby”--with a grudging glance at the girl whose bare head shone ruddy
in the winter sun.
Cristiane slipped her arm through Ismay’s, a trick the latter hated,
yet she dared not take away her arm.
“I feel so much better, Ismay,” she said softly, “as if I had been near
father. That friend of your mother’s has been very kind.”
“Very,” said Ismay dryly.
“Don’t you like him?”
“I don’t like him at all. But, of course, he has been very kind to you.”
“What is the matter with him?” Cristiane was up in arms at once.
“Nobody who wasn’t nice would do all he has done for utter strangers.
You have no real reason for disliking him, have you?”
“A very small one,” Miss Trelane returned calmly. “I’ll tell it to you
some day--perhaps.”
“Well, I have a very big reason for liking him, and I think you’re
rather horrid about it,” she replied injuredly. “Don’t you want him to
come back again?”
“Not particularly,” said the girl, with an inward longing that he might
break his neck on the way to the station.
Cristiane laughed.
“How funny you are! You look at the man as if he were a toad, and you
only say ‘not particularly’ when I ask you if you mind his coming here.”
“Well, then, I am sorry you asked him, if you must know.”
“I wanted him,” Cristiane rejoined obstinately, “and I should be very
ungrateful if I didn’t.”
Ismay laughed; it was safer not to go any further, and there would be
no good in driving Cristiane.
“Gratitude is a vice; you never know where it may lead you,” she
remarked. “He is coming to say good-by to you. I shall go in;” and
she vanished. A thrill of relief went through her when she heard the
crunching of wheels over the gravel as Marcus Wray drove off. When
their last sound had died away, she stepped out on the terrace again
and stood staring, with an incredulous joy that was almost pain.
Mr. Cylmer was coming up the avenue, a sight to make any woman look
with pleasure at him, in his spotless breeches and boots, and the
scarlet coat that showed to the utmost advantage every line of his
strong, splendid figure. He was walking and leading a very lame horse.
“Why, here’s Miles!” Cristiane cried wonderingly. “And his horse can
hardly crawl. I wonder what is the matter.”
She forgot there had been any gap in his coming and going to Marchant’s
Hold; his arriving at this unseemly hour was so like the old days, when
he had always been welcome.
“What on earth has happened to you?” she called, as he came nearer.
“Molly strained her shoulder at the bank down by your outfields,” he