Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
“Ismay! Is she--dying?” his tongue cleaving to his mouth.
The little doctor laid a hand on Cylmer’s shoulder.
“Dying! No; she’s saved.” For with a steady hand the nurse was putting
more wine to the lips that closed now on the spoon.
With a little sigh Ismay Trelane opened her eyes.
The shock in her brain had made her forget all recent things--Marcus
Wray, Davids, her quarrel with Cylmer, were all gone from her mind, as
a slate is sponged off. All she saw was the man she loved bending over
her, holding her hands.
With a heavenly smile of rest and peace she smiled at him.
“Miles,” she whispered. “My Miles!”
“Lie still, my heart! I’m here,” he answered simply.
“Hold my hand,” she sighed, and closed her eyes happily, in a sleep
that was sweet and natural.
And, kneeling by her bed, he held that hand he loved, till with the
hours he, too, slept.
When she woke again it was he who fed her, and then, and not till
then, he went away, cramped and stiff, but happy as he had not been in
his life.
As he washed and dressed himself in the clothes that had come for him
from Cylmer’s Ferry, he heard a whispered conversation at his door,
then a knock that made him leap to open it. Was Ismay worse?
But it was not Ismay.
A man stood on the threshold--two men.
Mr. Bolton, the lawyer, and another--bearded, thin, but hale and
strong. And yet Cylmer could not believe his senses. Had his long
watching made him see visions?
“Gaspard!” he cried, wondering who this man could be that was so like
the man that was in his grave. “Not Gaspard--but who?”
“It’s I, fast enough,” the man answered simply. “Let us in. I only got
to England to-day.”
“To England?” Cylmer started foolishly. “But----”
“But I was never killed, and never buried. I had lent my coat to a
Frenchman, and they buried what was left of him for me. I came to
myself and wandered away, quite cracked. When I woke up I was in bed in
a cottage, and a woman was looking after me. I didn’t know my own name,
even, and I was in hideous pain.
“I lay like that for I don’t know how long. When I came to myself they
told me I was in the lodge of the country-house of the Duke of Tours,
and that he, on hearing a man was ill there, had sent his doctor from
Paris. He had done an operation that meant kill or cure, and it was
cure.”
“But Bolton told me you were dying of heart-disease?”
“So my doctors thought, but this one was young and very clever. He
thought it was something else, and it was. He cut it away. That’s all.”
He smiled in Cylmer’s puzzled face.
“But the railway people. How was it they didn’t know?”
Sir Gaspard laughed out.
“You’re very anxious I should be an impostor. Did you wish to marry my
heiress?” he cried cheerfully. “There was no mark or wound on me; the
woman never connected me with the accident to the train, nor did any
one, till I was recovered and able to tell them. It was all so simple
that no one ever thought of it.”
“You never wrote,” wonderingly.
“No! I couldn’t have waited for the answer. When I was fit to write I
was fit to travel, so I came straight to Bolton, here, and he told me
things that brought me home on the double-quick. It’s all too awful.
And to think it was that will I made that was such a pitfall! Will that
poor child die?”
“No.” Cylmer put down the hair-brush he had all the time been holding.
“Thank God, no!” he said slowly. “For I am going to marry her.”
“Marry her.” It took all Sir Gaspard could do not to exclaim in
amazement. “Marry the daughter of a woman not yet out of suspicion of
murder, with the theft of the diamonds on her to a certainty!”
Cylmer nodded.
“Wait. I’ll tell you all,” he said, and Sir Gaspard listened in wonder.
“Marry her,” he had said, as though she were a leper, and but for her
Cristiane would be cold in her grave. He stretched out his hand and
took Cylmer’s in a clasp of gratitude, without a spoken word.
“Have you seen Cristiane?” For the first time Cylmer thought of her.
Sir Gaspard smiled.
“Didn’t you hear us in the passage?” he asked. “I only persuaded her to
leave me for ten minutes by saying that you were certain to come to the
door half-dressed. She’s wild with joy; she can hardly believe in me
yet.”
“She missed you.” And if the tone was dry Sir Gaspard did not notice
it. Not yet could Mr. Cylmer bear any good-will to Cristiane.
Only one thing troubled Cylmer now. With Sir Gaspard’s return things
were smoothed out, indeed, all but this. It hung over him more and more
heavily as Ismay grew better, and at last could talk to him.
Those stolen diamonds that could not be explained away! His mind was
full of them as he sat with Ismay alone in her sitting-room. But he
kept his trouble off his lips, and talked of other things that he might
not see it reflected in her eyes.
“You never asked me how I managed the ghost-music,” she said suddenly,
with her old, lovely smile, that was so much more wistful than of old.
“No. How did you? For it played of itself before you meddled with it,
Thomas says.”
“I went up one night to see, and I was frightened out of my life, at
first. And then I found out. There was a spring--just a simple little
spring--so light that the weight of a rat on it could set the thing
going. And there were plenty of rats there. It was just an ordinary
old-fashioned spinet till the spring touched the mechanism, then it
played of itself. While it was playing like that you could not sound a
note on it. Afterward, when the tune was done, you could play. I made
a dress like the ghost’s, or the picture that was supposed to be the
ghost’s, so that if any one met me in the passages they would scream
and run. And I found out he meant to murder Cristiane while I was
behind the library door.”
“Did you know Wray made Sir Gaspard’s will?”
She nodded.
“I heard him say so.”
“And for fear it should go wrong he forged another,” Cylmer went on.
“Don’t look sad, darling. He deserves everything.”
But she shivered.
“It has all been such a nightmare. I wish I had had no hand in it.
Miles, can you truly love a girl like me?” She was earnest, pale, as
she looked at him.
He kissed the hand that was in his, where a new ring shone.
“Who nearly gave her life twice for another’s,” he said, with adoration.
“I liked her, in a way. Till she told you things.”
She hid her face on his arm. “Miles, do you know I meant to let her
die the last time? You were my world--she had taken you from me.”
“You never meant it, my heart,” he whispered. “You only thought so.”
“And I stole that card of yours, so that you might come to me.”
Cylmer lifted the head that lay so low, and looked straight into her
shamed eyes.
“Do you think a hundred cards would have mattered, if I had loved her?”
he demanded. “You were mine, and I was yours, from the first hour,
though I was too blind to know.”
“But I meant when I left you to live----” He stopped her words on her
lips.
“Let me forget--that day!” he begged, “for it was I who was to blame.
If you had slipped from me your life would have been on my head.”
She looked at him with a curious pride.
“Miles,” she said slowly, “I am my mother’s daughter still, and there
are the diamonds!”
The man caught her close and hard.
“If they were all the world it would not matter,” he said stoutly.
“If I had only seen you and passed by,” his voice full of love, of
reverence, “I should be proud of having once seen you, my witch that
was so true.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DIAMONDS.
“If you owed him no ill-will, why did you steal those diamonds?”
The court-room was crowded, packed with idle people come to see a man
tried for his life.
It was more exciting than a theater, for the drama was real.
Among them were perhaps a dozen people who sickened at the hideous
scene. Sir Gaspard, Mr. Bolton, Cylmer--turned away from the man in
the dock as his crimes were brought before him. Utterly hopeless, he
was venomous still. Not a question that could humiliate Helen Trelane
had his counsel spared her. Cylmer wondered at her courage as she stood
in the witness-stand. Pale, perfectly dressed, she stood unmoved, as
the question of the diamonds was asked.
Neither Ismay nor Cristiane were there, and Cylmer was thankful. At
least they would not see the spectacle of a woman shamed before the
world.
He started at the sound of Mrs. Trelane’s voice, as she answered the
question, her words distinct in the close hush.
“I took them,” she said softly, “because they were mine! He sent for me
to give them to me. This note”--taking it from her pocket--“was on the
table.”
There was absolute silence in court while the few lines were read aloud:
“DEAR HELEN: I can’t forget last night. Will you take these and wear
them or sell them, as you like, in memory of our friendship. Yours
faithfully,
“ABBOTSFORD.
“P. S.--I wrote this, meaning to send the diamonds, but I have let it
stand, even now that you are coming to see me. You know I never was
much good at talking, and I might not get it said.”
“Why did you not produce this at the time?” Wray’s counsel asked
sharply.
“Because I was afraid! I thought I could not clear myself of the
murder,” she answered simply.
Turning, she met the eyes of the prisoner at the bar, and for all his
desperate straits he smiled with understanding. She was Helen Trelane
still, adventuress to the bone. He knew quite well that she had stolen
that note.
He had stuffed it into his pocket that day at Abbotsford’s, and had
not burned it for the pure pleasure of having in his hands the proof
that she was really not guilty; afterward, when Sir Gaspard’s will had
delivered her into his hands, he had kept it still, so that when all
was done and Ismay was his he could bring it out and laugh in their
faces. But he dared not say so now. It would only make his case more
black, his conduct more cold-blooded. And he could not see how she
had obtained it; so that his bare word would go for nothing. She had
outwitted him, and he made her a slight ironical sign of admiration
with his eyes.
And yet it was simple enough.
When Davids and his men searched Wray’s room at Marchant’s Hold, they
had never thought of a black frock coat that the housemaid had taken
to replace a button. When he was gone the girl had taken it to Mrs.
Trelane, and she had flung it on her bed with loathing, since it
was his. When the girl was gone she picked it up gingerly, to feel
something in the pocket, and so she found her salvation. She had
avoided people after that, not from terror, but to laugh at them in her
sleeve.
And in the very face of the man who knew the note was stolen, she
left the witness-stand without a stain. He cared but little. He was
defeated, his case hopeless, and he was weary of the court, the curious
faces. Since it must all come out, it should come of his own free will.
His counsel gasped as the prisoner leaned forward and asked leave of
the judge to make a statement.
“My lord,” he began; he looked about him listlessly, as if he had very
little interest in his own words, “we have been here a long time, and
I for one am weary. The facts are these: I had lived on Abbotsford for
years, call it chantage, if you like. I lived on him. It was said he
hated women; he had reason. He had been trapped into a marriage with
a woman who was the worst of her sex. She was married already, but no
one knew that but I, for she was my wife.” His insolent, deliberate
voice paused an instant. “I was his best man, and the only witness of
his marriage with a woman whose very existence disgraced him. He paid
me to hold my tongue. But I drove him too far. He found the whole thing