Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
from me?” softly. “I don’t think I should like that.”
“I’m never going to hide anything from you,” he cried, with love in his
voice. “But there isn’t much to tell.”
She listened with a heart like ice as he told her all that she knew so
well--the missing photograph, the money, the diamonds--she had to hold
herself hard not to forestall him as he talked. Would he never come to
something new? But when he came to it she was thankful for the darkness
that hid her face.
“The diamonds vanished utterly,” he was saying; “but the other day, one
of them, a very curious stone, with a pink tinge in it, turned up in
Amsterdam. The tracing of it will be long, but certain in the end; it
will ruin the man or woman who took it.”
“Or woman!” The interruption was nearly a cry. “What woman would do
such things?”
“It looked as if a woman had taken away the photograph.” He drew her
closer. “Look out, the path is slippery!”
“Very slippery,” said Ismay Trelane, keeping down the dry sob in her
throat. Slippery, and on the very edge of doom, this path that she must
walk to the end.
“You see, there must have been a woman in it somewhere, for Abbotsford
was going to be married, and he was leaving all the people he had been
friendly with, and arranging all his affairs.”
“Say it plainly,” said the old Ismay Trelane, who had been brought up
to uncanny knowledge.
“I can’t say it--to you,” Cylmer returned, with shame.
“Go on, then, I know what you mean. Let us say the photograph was the
woman’s he was leaving for his wife.”
“Then, don’t you see, it must have either been she or some man for her
who came back and took it.”
“I think it must have been a man!” Her voice through her white lips
sounded almost indifferent. “A woman would not dare.”
“Whichever it was, they were mad to take the diamonds. I don’t know,”
he continued, “that it’s going to make much difference. The diamonds
may be traced, of course, but they are not the clue I spoke about.
Kivers tells me there was something found in the room when they were
getting things ready for the new Lord Abbotsford’s family. It will
probably show clearly enough whether the murderer was a man or not.”
“Something found! What, I wonder?” like lightning she was going over
that day. Her mother had not dropped or lost anything; she could not
have, or she would have missed it, and said so, Ismay thought, in new
terror. “Why must it belong to the man who killed him? What was found,
I mean? Fifty people may have been in and out of that room since he
died.”
“No one has; it was locked and sealed after the inquest by my--the
detective,” quickly correcting himself. “It was only opened two days
ago by him, when he made a last search, before giving up hope, and
before the new family came to him. And in the last search he found
something.”
“What?” Her impatience made her eyes burn in the dusk.
“That’s what I’m going up to see. ‘A trinket, or a part of one,’ he
said.”
“A trinket!” involuntarily the words escaped her, with an anxiety that
was pain. Yet she was sure that her mother had not lost anything that
awful day, unless--she had not known she did!
“It may be something I have seen before,” said Cylmer coolly, and once
more that hand of ice was on her heart. “So I shall go up to-morrow.”
“To-morrow!” What should she do all the long day when he was gone. When
each minute might be bringing detection nearer? “You won’t stay long?”
she added imploringly. “You’ll come back?”
“As soon as I possibly can; the next day at farthest. Shall you miss
me?”
“Miss you!” She gathered all her strength and laughed lightly, without
a trace of care. “I have not had you long enough to miss you.”
They were close to Marchant’s Hold now. The lighted lamps shone rosy
from the drawing-room windows, and she kept carefully out of the
patches of light on the gravel where they stood.
“I shall miss you, then, every second! And, look here, Ismay! I hate
the business. I only do it because he was my friend, and I feel bound
to it. Do you understand?”
“I dare say you will hate it more before it is done,” she said, as if
in idleness, and afterward he remembered, when the stone he had set
rolling threatened to crush all he loved on earth. “But it interests me
in a dreadful sort of way. When you come back you will tell me what
you found, won’t you? I won’t tell. It shall be your secret, like your
loving me is mine.”
“I’ll tell you anything you ask,” he said tenderly. “But I wish you
would let me have my way, and be engaged to you openly. I would like to
go in and tell Cristiane now!” He moved toward the great door with so
much purpose that she flew after him.
“No, no!” she cried. “Mother hates you; she’d send me away straight
off; you’d never see me again. If you tell it means that I shall
suffer.”
“Then I’ll wait forever.” In the shadow of an evergreen he caught her
to him, as a man holds his only love on earth. “Till you tell me to
speak I will hold my tongue. Will that satisfy you? And, instead of my
coming to Marchant’s Hold, will you meet me at the stile, at five, the
day after to-morrow? It will be best, if we are to keep our secret.”
She gave a long sigh of relief, resting for perhaps the last time
against the strong shoulders of the man who might know things when he
came from London that would part them forever.
“That is all I want,” she said; “just to let no one know but us two! I
must go now; good-by.”
“But I want to come in.” He had not let her go.
She smiled in the darkness.
“And even Thomas would know from your face! And how should I look
coming home at this hour with you?”
“You are too worldly-wise. How do you know all these things?”
half-proud of her shrewdness and sense. “You’re too young to know them.”
“Sometimes I feel old, so old,” she answered gravely, “as if I had
lived lives and lives.”
“And loved?” catching her jealously, as if they were not talking
nonsense. “And loved, Ismay?”
For answer her arms went round his neck in quick passion.
“I never loved any one on earth till I loved you,” she whispered.
“There is only you for me now, till I die. Even if you tire of me--or
hate me.”
She stepped away from him and into the house before he could answer,
before he could even tighten his arms to hold her. He turned away for
his long walk home with a strange loneliness, as if his very soul had
left him when Ismay went.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE DOG IN THE MANGER.
Could Cylmer have seen her through that night of wan fear? In and out
of her bed, like a restless ghost, she who had always before slept like
a baby; crouching sullenly over her fire, hardening her heart to meet
what must come; till a sudden thought would strike with an unendurable
pang of terror, and make her start to her feet and walk round and
round her room, wild and terrible in her beauty, all her flaxen hair
streaming over the face that was more white than her nightgown.
“Murder will out, and by to-morrow night he may have brought it home to
her! What shall I do? Oh! What shall I do?”
She stopped in front of the roses her lover had given her, and with
sudden frantic hands tore them to shreds; crimson petals, green leaves,
fluttered over her muslin night-dress; the thorns of the stripped
stalks tore her hands, wounded her bare white feet. As if the pain
had brought back her senses, she gave a long sigh, and stood quite
motionless; presently, she sat down very wearily on her tossed bed.
“I’m behaving like a fool!” she thought. “He will be back and tell me
what was found before the police act on it, or can get very far if they
do. And, for all I know, it may be the greatest piece of luck we could
have, and draw suspicion off on a false scent, and save us. I will get
out of him all they are doing in time to run, if we must”--she winced
in spite of herself--“but we won’t run while there is one chance left.
I can’t, I won’t, lose him!”
Her lips curved in that hard smile that could make even Mrs. Trelane
shrink. She rose and put on a thick dressing-gown. As calmly as if
it were broad daylight, and the proper time for sewing, Miss Trelane
opened a locked drawer, and took out a roll of material she had been at
some pains to obtain. She got down on the floor and cut out and sewed
hard for the next two hours, not that there was any haste to complete
her task, but for the solace of the effort. The thick softness of the
white satin she was working with made her frown with some emotion that
she fought down, for she thought of the dress that she would never wear
standing at the altar with the man she loved.
“Well, I can bear it as other women have before!” she thought grimly,
sewing with firm, practical fingers. “Thank fortune, all this wants is
good, solid basting that can’t come out! I would find no joy in sewing
my fingers off, even to get a hold on Marcus Wray.”
She gave a little stretch of fatigue, and surveyed her work when the
last stitch was in. Then she let her dressing-gown slip off her lovely
shoulders, and put on the dress she had so hastily run together.
“Lucky I haven’t to powder my hair!” she thought, as she piled it high
on her head deftly, without going near the glass. “Powder dropped on
Miss Le Marchant’s red felt stair carpets would be too remarkable even
for Thomas!” She stooped as she spoke, took a filmy white scarf, yards
long, from the open dresser, and put it over her head and round her
slim body, leaving the long wide ends to float gauzily behind her as
she walked over to the long glass set in her wardrobe.
And even she was startled at what she saw in the light of the nearly
burned-out candles.
Tall and strangely slender in the short-waisted, tight-skirted gown,
that clung to her shape, her pale face ghostly under the filmy crape
that veiled it, only her eyes burning dark, fiery, and revengeful,
to give it any semblance of life, she stood the living image of the
pictured woman up-stairs. In her bare feet she moved to and fro in
front of the glass, till she learned a movement that made her look as
if she floated rather than walked.
“That is all right, I think!” she mused. “Thomas and Jessie are
the only people I should ever be in danger of meeting, and I think
I am quite enough to make them howl and run, without stopping to
investigate. But as things are now I don’t feel so much interest in
sneaking round at night, trying to catch Marcus out. My parent’s neck
and my own happiness seem a trifle more important.”
She pulled off the old-fashioned frock as carelessly as she dared,
considering its frail putting together, and stuffed it and the scarf
into the drawer, picked up every thread and scrap of satin that might
betray her occupation, and burned them. She was asleep almost before
she had extinguished the candles and got her head on her pillow, and
as she slept the night skies burst in rain, and at the roar of the
downpour on the windows, the girl’s quiet face twitched with pain.
In her dream it was the noise of the crowd waiting to see her mother
hanged!
In the morning it still rained heavily. For one moment she hoped the
weather would keep Cylmer at home, but then she remembered that rich
people with closed carriages cared very little for rain and wind. And
she wanted him to go, the sooner she knew what had been found, the
better.
“Ismay!” Cristiane said at breakfast, “what have you been doing to your
poor hands?”
“Briars,” concisely.
“You shouldn’t try to pick those thorny rose-berries without gloves,
town child!”
And at the laughing voice Ismay shuddered. Truly, such as she had no
right with roses at all.
“What are we going to do all day?” pursued the heiress discontentedly,
the riches and luxury of her house being too old a story to enjoy of a
wet day. “Just look at the rain! Let’s go out, and get dripping.”