Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
police, and the countryside?” she said scathingly. To hear her cut
Cylmer to the quick.
“That is what I will not do. To my shame, I will help you both to go.
I will let my friend lie unavenged. I will balk the investigation--if
I can, and for my shame I shall know I am a party to a crime. This is
what I came to tell you. It is not safe to stay here a day. You have
that scarab, but by this time a description of it is with all the
police in England, and any day they may be on you. If they ask me again
on my oath if I can identify that photograph, what can I answer? For I
saw your mother in that very attitude, that very dress, admiring her
reflection in a mirror last night. If you want money I will give it to
you; but make an excuse to Cristiane, and get your mother away. Let me
never see her again, that I may forget her.”
“And me? You would forget me?” her voice oddly flat and lifeless.
“Forget you? I would give my soul if I could,” simply. But there was
nothing in his bearing to comfort her.
“You don’t love me--now?” She persisted.
“No, not now. It will hurt you very little, as you have Wray.” There
was no taunt in his voice, only misery and conviction.
She sat, dumb and quivering.
“If you ever loved me, go!” he cried. “Can’t you see that any hour you
may be tracked?”
Like lightning she was on her feet, facing him. Her eyes were splendid
in the dusk, her beauty appalling as she spoke.
“If I ever loved you!” she cried. “I, who loved you as a nun adores
the cross; who was wicked, heartless, altogether evil, till you made me
see that truth and goodness were things to live and die for! It was for
your sake I fought for my mother. I hated her till I knew you; now I
pity her with all my heart.
“Miles, if you listen now, I can tell you what would make even you
pitiful. I can show you what a lying truth yesterday was--only hear me.”
“I would not believe you,” he cried wretchedly. “I should go home and
know it was only another act in the play; that you----”
With a gesture she stopped him; she had raised both her hands with a
movement that was magnificent. She spoke solemnly, as a priest who
calls down the wrath of God.
“Then it is on your head,” she said, and he could but just hear her.
“The sin, the crime, all that will come if you send me away. If I go
from you it will be to become all you think me; neither truth nor honor
nor pity will ever spring in me again. You will hear of me, and know
that it was you who made me that thing that I shall be; the memory of
it shall haunt you in life; it will cry out against you at the judgment
day.
“As for my mother”--superb, powerful, she held him with her eyes--“I
will bring that crime home--but not to my mother. I would have told
you all the truth to-day, but you sealed my lips. I could tell you of
a thing so wicked that even I could not see it done--but why should I
warn you, when you think I am a liar?”
“My God, Ismay! What are you saying?” A thought so awful in his mind
that he caught her by the arm till her flesh was bruised.
“Let me go!” She wrenched herself free. “God--I believed in no God
till I knew you. Now, I believe, and as He hears me, I swear the day
will come when for this day’s work you could kill yourself. No, don’t
answer; don’t speak!” contemptuously. “By and by you will know that
once I was true, and by then I shall be a thing to shudder at, with
death on my hands----” Her voice broke wildly. “But the guilt of it
will be on you. I wash my hands of it. Take your ring. I was never fit
to wear it. But when I am dead and in hell, you can remember that you
put me there.”
“Tell me what you mean!” authoritatively.
“I came to tell you--and you would not hear me. Now it is too late.”
All her excitement was gone, her words were as quick and irrevocable as
Fate.
“Ismay, love!” the man fairly groaned. “Do you mean me to believe all
you’ve been saying? Wait a minute; speak to me; forget everything but
that I loved you and you drove me mad!”
“Loved me? A thief, a liar, the daughter of a murderess, whose name is
a byword!” Her voice rang out clear and wicked.
“Oh, no, Mr. Cylmer! You did not love me. You thought you loved me
yesterday. Farewell!”
His ring lay unheeded on the ground between them, as he sprang to stop
her. But she was quick and elusive as a shadow. Cylmer, his courage
gone, his heart faint within him, leaned on the stile, as weak as a
woman.
In all her words there had been only one meaning to him. It was she
who had done it, and not her mother. And it was he who had stirred the
lagging investigation to fresh life.
Girl, sorceress, woman! Whatever she was, she had been a child in his
hands till to-day. And it was he who had set the noose about her neck!
“Ismay!” he sobbed once sharply, as a man does, from his very heart’s
core.
Her blood would be on his head, and he loved her still. And yet she had
been right. Not all she could have said or sworn would have blotted out
those facts that, true or false, stood out so blackly against her.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A NIGHT’S WORK.
White, tense, her nerves like an overstrung bow that goes near to
breaking, Ismay ran through the dark to Marchant’s Hold. And as she
entered the great hall door any pity that might have lingered in her
breast was killed.
Cristiane stood by the fire, dressed for dinner, her bare arms very
fair against her black dress.
“What! alone, and so late. Wouldn’t he even see you home to-night?” she
laughed, for Ismay’s face was not hard to read.
“He? Who do you mean?” She did not look a thing to play with as she
stopped short before the girl who mocked her.
“Miles, of course. Wasn’t he nice to you, Ismay? Or did that card I
never got stick in his throat?”
That card! So when she lost it, Cristiane had found it. It was she who
had given it to Cylmer. She who had told everything.
“You did it. You!” She could hardly speak.
“Yes, it was I,” cheerfully. “You see, I am not such a baby, after all.
But, cheer up. He will come back to-morrow. He won’t mind little things
like those.”
“You took him to my door last night.” But it was not a question, only a
statement.
“I withdrew him at once, promptly, when I saw it was a mistake,” calmly.
And this was the girl whom only yesterday she had nearly died to save!
Well, that was over. She could die now, as she pleased. No more would
an arm be stretched out to protect her. Never again would a mock ghost
play the spy on Marcus Wray.
Her eyes were very steady, very evil, as she looked up.
“I took that card, and I am very sorry I did,” she answered quietly.
“He would have loved me without it. You can think of that for your
pains.”
Cristiane was suddenly afraid, but she gave a last fling.
“Did he love you very much to-day?” she asked involuntarily.
Ismay’s face hardened like stone.
“You are what people call good,” she said slowly; “and I was sorry for
you. I did my best for you--in a fashion. Stand still and let me look
at you--for I may never see you again.”
Something in her eyes made Cristiane cold.
“What do you mean?” she shrieked. “Are you going away?” She sprang
forward, and took Ismay’s hand, but the girl shook her off.
“I am going to bed,” she said shortly. “Tell them not to disturb me. I
stole your note, Cristiane, but you are revenged. You have stolen from
me enough to make me go to bed without my dinner.”
Lightly, pitilessly, she nodded as she turned away. Let Marcus do what
he liked, it was nothing to her that he should have one more sin on
his shoulders. For if ever a woman was mad with misery, it was Ismay
Trelane that night.
Still in her outdoor dress she sat crouched on her bed, motionless as
a panther who waits to spring, death-driven, almost hopeless. In the
house the gong sounded for dinner; a servant came to the door, and was
sent petulantly away. Mrs. Trelane, all silks and rustle, knocked in
annoyance.
“Aren’t you coming down?” she cried.
“No. Please go away and leave me alone. I shall be all right in the
morning. I’m tired,” with a tearless sob.
She was weary to the bone. The shock of yesterday had borne hard on her
vigorous young body; the shock of to-day had withered her very soul.
She was faint for want of food, but she could not break bread with
Cristiane or Marcus Wray, and yet she must eat, or this night’s work
would never be done.
At a tap on her door she opened it, to see Jessie; Jessie, who honestly
loved her for many a kind word given when Cristiane had been cruelly
sharp with the faithful soul.
“I brought some soup and wine, Miss Ismay,” she said. “Are you sick?
You’re that pale.”
At the only kind word she had heard all day Ismay Trelane stooped and
kissed the honest, fresh cheek of the servant-woman.
“No, I’m tired,” she said slowly. “Make them let me be till the
morning. Promise, Jessie.”
“Will I get you to bed?” confused at the honor done her. “Will I fetch
Miss Cristiane?”
“Don’t fetch any one, and I’ll lock my door now. I’m afraid of that
ghost.”
“She don’t walk so early,” said the woman, with simple belief. “Good
night, Miss Ismay. I’ll not come in the morning till you ring.”
Ismay laughed.
“That’s a good soul,” she said. “Let me sleep--till I ring.”
Jessie would scarcely have known her ten minutes later, as she stood in
front of her glass, putting on the old clothes some mood had made her
bring with her to Marchant’s Hold.
Shabby, ugly, too short, the dress hung on her, the old-fashioned hat
set absurdly on her head. But there was color in her face from the soup
and wine, as she put into a safe hiding-place in her coat the scarab
that was all the clue she had.
“Vulgar cuff-links are a very small thing to go on,” she reflected;
“but I will try, and in the meantime Cristiane and Miles can find out
what sort of a house this is without me. I don’t think they’ll have
long to wait, either.”
She looked doubtfully at the few coins she had, as she put them into
her pocket.
“If they’re not enough, looking at them won’t help,” she thought. “They
will get me there, and that’s all I care for. If I fail I am not likely
to need any. If I don’t fail”--she laughed--“some one else will pay my
fare for the last time to Marchant’s Hold.”
She opened her door noiselessly and listened. There was only the
cheerful clink that came intermittently from the dining-room. There was
not a step or a sound on her floor.
Without a click to betray her, she locked her door behind her,
pocketing the key. Her room was in darkness, and no one would know the
key was gone till late in the morning; when it did not matter if the
whole world knew.
“Marcus may be certain I’ve gone to London, but it will take a cleverer
man than Marcus to find me,” she thought, as she went softly down the
stairs. The dining-room door was closed, the servants safe inside, the
front door swung noiselessly on its hinges as she slipped out unseen,
and closed it behind her without one telltale sound.
In the dark she stood looking at the house, with curiously hard eyes.
She was free. She was going to London with that scarab in her pocket,
to bring home his crime to the man who did it. Going alone, almost
penniless, to the cold winter streets, friendless, powerless, but
determined. And she left behind her, at the mercy of the merciless,
the girl whose only protection she had been. Left her with scarcely a
thought, without pity, with nothing in her hand but the one purpose--to
clear her mother before Cylmer and the world, to get out of Wray’s
power forever.
A train would leave the station for London at half-past nine. At twelve
o’clock she would be there, with just one night’s start of Marcus
Wray. One night in which to ruin him. The girl’s lips tightened as she
hurried along her lonely road.