Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
round her and kissed her.
Mrs. Trelane gazed at her stupidly.
“What’s the matter?” she drawled. “Why do you greet me as if I had been
buried for years? This isn’t the resurrection day.”
Ismay smiled wickedly. It was more like the day of judgment, to her
mind.
“What on earth have you been shutting yourself up for?” Mrs. Trelane
inquired crossly. “And why didn’t you answer last night when there was
all that fuss? You must have heard me knocking.”
“What fuss? I told you long ago I wouldn’t open my door at night. I was
tired, too. I wanted to rest.”
“You don’t look as if repose had agreed with you,” said her mother
acidly. “Your face is blazing, and I don’t see how you could rest with
Cristiane screaming. Don’t you want any breakfast?”
“I’ve had it,” shortly, curiosity overwhelming her. “What was she
screaming about?”
“That ghost of yours and Thomas’,” she began contemptuously, but her
face fell. “It’s too queer to be nice in this big house at night,” she
added, closing the door behind her and sitting down. “I don’t wonder
the girl screamed. I was frightened to death.”
“My ghost couldn’t have frightened you last night!” For her life, Ismay
could not help the retort, but she was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the ghost, then,” quite unconscious of the significance of the
girl’s manner. “You were shut up in here, and I went to bed early.
Marcus and Cristiane stayed down-stairs----”
“You left them together?” Ismay broke in with real dismay, for
Cristiane had probably profited by the opportunity to air Ismay’s
acquaintance with Cylmer.
“I’m not Providence!” said the woman smartly; “and, besides, I had
neuralgia. At all events they sat up late, and when they came up-stairs
they heard that music. Marcus, of course, didn’t know Cristiane had
never heard about it, and he told her Thomas’ nonsense about the ghost.”
“How did he know about it?”
“Oh, I told him! I was frightened one night myself. Ismay,” her face
changing, “as sure as I see you this minute, I heard those awful steps,
coming closer and closer, till I was paralyzed with fear. And, later
on, Marcus went up-stairs to see who was playing that piano, and his
candle went out the moment he entered the room.”
“I told you this wasn’t a nice house at night. But go on. What happened
last night?”
“Well, Cristiane had hysterics--you must have heard her; declared her
father couldn’t rest in his grave, and what not. She nearly choked
Marcus holding on round his neck, so that he couldn’t go up and see. I
couldn’t stop her, and up came Thomas, half-dressed, and Jessie, and
altogether we got Cristiane to stop her shrieking.
“Then Marcus ran up-stairs, and Thomas after him, begging him to let
the room alone. ‘There was a curse on it.’”
“Well, did he?” with sudden interest.
“That’s the queer part. When he got up there the door was locked, and
Thomas said he hadn’t locked it. Marcus was going to break open the
door, and I thought the old man would have killed him. He said that his
dead master’s orders were that no one was to enter that room, and he
was there to see them obeyed. Even Marcus had to give in to him.”
“Good for Thomas!” the girl observed quietly. “Was the spirit playing
all this time?”
“No; it was quieter than the grave. So Marcus shrugged his
shoulders--you know how he does--and we came down-stairs again. There
wasn’t another sound all night. But to-night he and Cristiane are going
up to investigate after Thomas is in bed. They planned it at breakfast,
and she’s going to get a key. I don’t know what Marcus is up to, for
I don’t think he believes in ghosts. I suppose it will be a good
opportunity for flirtation, for lately I think he’s made up his mind to
marry her.”
“To-night, are they?” For some unknown reason Miss Trelane leaned back
in her chair and laughed, wrinkling up her eyes deliciously.
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll marry her,” she remarked. “You forget he means
to marry me.”
Mrs. Trelane flushed under her powder.
“How do you know?” she said, with sudden suspicion.
“If I don’t know it’s not for want of hearing,” the retort remarkably
misleading in its truth.
“Oh, mother, how I hate him, don’t you? He has been our evil genius
ever since Abbotsford was murdered.”
“I hate him well enough,” said her mother sullenly; “but I don’t want
him to tell I took those diamonds. I could never prove myself innocent
of the other, if it came out that it was I who took those.”
“And yet you are innocent. You haven’t blood enough to sin--like that.”
“Have you?” asked the woman, aghast, for the cold, queer eyes were a
thing to shudder at.
“I wouldn’t murder; it’s generally so messy. But I could stand by if I
hated a man, and see him commit a murder, just so that I might see him
hanged for it. And so,” very deliberately, “would you!”
“Ismay, you know?” the wretched woman, whose cunning had failed her,
crouched abjectly in her chair, as she whispered the words.
“I know nothing; neither do you,” Ismay rejoined sternly. “But he
would--hang!” The words came out slowly, separately, like the blows of
a hammer.
“I couldn’t see it,” the woman was sobbing wildly, the girl’s face set
like a rock. “Besides, he’d tell before he died--about the diamonds--it
wouldn’t be safe. Ismay, Ismay, you’re stronger than I ever was. For
God’s sake, save me from myself!”
And it was the mother who bore her who was agonized at her daughter’s
feet, who prayed to her for help against herself.
“Save me from myself!” the girl repeated mechanically. Was that her own
prayer, too? She trembled, and did not know.
The next instant she was kneeling by her mother’s chair.
“Mother, don’t look like that; don’t speak like that,” she implored,
and even Miles Cylmer would not have known the voice was hers. “I did
not mean it. I only said it from wickedness.”
And all through that day that seemed unending, Ismay Trelane, eating,
drinking, talking, was fighting a battle between the good and evil in
her soul.
Desperately, she thrust aside the importunate cry that rose in her
mind, bidding her kneel down and cry it aloud with her lips.
“Save me from myself!”
Fiercely, she tried to kill the best impulse of her life, and harden
her heart for the end.
Cristiane, dead, could never get Cylmer back again, and Marcus Wray was
doomed already.
CHAPTER XXXII.
“THE DEED IN THE DARK.”
The house was dark as the grave; quiet as death. From somewhere a clock
struck the hour with one solemn stroke, that clanged and echoed through
the silent halls.
Mrs. Trelane, lying sleepless in her bedroom, where she had been sent
like a beaten dog by one glance from Wray, sprang up with causeless
terror. Only the remembrance of Ismay’s locked door kept her from
running to the girl for companionship, but she dared not stand outside
that door, even for one minute, and knock in vain, with perhaps those
awful steps behind her.
Cowering in her pillows, she listened, but heard no more. Even to
herself she would not own that what she feared was not so much the
ghost, as what Marcus Wray might be going to do this night in the dark.
For she had seen him look once at Cristiane that day, and the look held
death in it.
Once, earlier in the night, she had fancied she heard the noiseless
tread of cautious feet, as though people passed her door silently. She
had looked out, then, and seen nothing but Ismay, pale as death itself,
standing alone in the still lighted hall.
“What’s the matter?” the girl said. “Don’t say you want me, because
I’m going to bed,” and she went into her room and locked the door
carelessly, as though death and retribution were left outside.
There were quiet steps again now, but Mrs. Trelane’s fingers were in
her ears, and she never heard them.
Marcus Wray and Cristiane had come up silently, he with a light in one
hand, the other round Cristiane’s waist, that terror might not make
her break away from him.
Frightened she was, but like a child who enjoys a game that startles
it, but also a little afraid of the arm that was so grimly protective.
It was amusing to be hunting ghosts at night with a man who was in love
with you; but it was also, somehow, disquieting.
There was not a sound as they stood at the turn of the stairs, with
only half a dozen more steps to mount to the hall the haunted room
opened from. Wray stopped, candle in hand. It was no ghost-hunting that
had brought him up here at the dead of night.
“Why didn’t you go on?” she whispered.
He kissed her, almost savagely.
“I don’t hear anything. I’m waiting for the music.”
“Oh, I’m frightened of it! I don’t want to hear it. Let us go down.”
Their voices were echoing in the hall above as in a whispering gallery.
“Down!” The man held his candle aloft, and looked down the well of the
stairs. Down, down, it went till his eye lost in the blackness the hard
oak floor of the great hall below. There was no one to see him, and his
face was the face of a devil. He set his candle on the stair.
“You can go down--presently,” he answered recklessly. He took a sharp
sideways step so that she was pressed near the banister. Far below
he saw the light of a candle. Thomas was carrying it, the old man
was coming up-stairs. It was all the better; an accident, without a
witness, sometimes smelled of murder. How slowly Thomas was mounting
the stairs! If some one in the hall above had seen Wray’s face, the
glare in his eyes, and caught their breath in swift horror, there might
have been precisely the little sound that reached Cristiane’s ears.
“What was that? I heard a noise,” she whispered, gazing up the stairs
with great, startled eyes.
“Nothing!” said Wray furiously. Thomas was nearly up now.
“Cristiane!” Wray cried at the top of his voice: “what are you doing up
here? There’s no ghost, don’t run. For God’s sake, take care of those
banisters--they’re rotten!” and with God’s name on his lips in the lie
that was to make Thomas a witness who would clear him, he shoved her
suddenly, savagely, against the banisters, that were frail as reeds
with dry rot.
Cristiane screamed the long, wild cry of a woman in the last pinch of
fear.
“Help me!” she shrieked again, and for one second his grasp of her
relaxed. She had fallen flat on the stairs, still pressed against the
banisters where they were socketed in the steps.
Wray put his shoulder against the rail; it cracked, crashed, with half
the uprights, down into the awful depths below. Only half-against the
splintered lower part Cristiane lay huddled.
With an inarticulate curse, Marcus Wray stooped to do deliberate
murder, to pick up the girl, whose only sin was her wealth and her
defenselessness. Thomas was not come yet; there was no witness.
But was there?
Who was that who stood just above him, in a curious white satin gown,
marked with blood on the breast? Who stood dead-white through her
flimsy gauze veil, her eyes burning like cold, green flames?
He looked, he sprang, kicking over the candle so that there was
darkness. But in that one glance he had known her. It was Ismay who
had played the ghost. Ismay who had seen him now! Beyond himself with
rage and terror, he leaped after her in the dark. In the dark she ran,
voiceless, weakened by the long strain on her, the horror of what she
had been within an ace of allowing to be done.
A square of moonlight marked the open door that was her safety. She
leaped to it, but Marcus Wray was quicker still. Her flying dress
caught round her feet as he seized it. She fell headlong on the hard,
oak threshold, her head striking it with a dull and awful sound.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
“HEAVENLY TRUE.”
Over that quiet body, that had been so quick to dare and do, and need
do neither any more, a furious struggle in the dark, of three men