Anna Katharine Green

“ Don't sob, mamma, dear; let me hold you—so; now lay your cheek against mine and simply love me. I will lie quite still and ask no questions, and you will rest, too; and God will bless us, as he always blesses the loving and the true."
But madame did not comply with this endearing request. Satisfying her daughter with a few kisses and some words that the paroxysm of her grief was past, she resumed her walk up and down the room, pausing every now and then as if to listen, and hastily resuming her walk as some slight exclamation from the bed assured her that mademoiselle was not yet asleep. ”

“ A fine woman, Madame Letellier. Must be much admired in her own land?"
He seemed to have no reason for resenting my curiosity.
"She is," was his quick reply. "She is not only admired, but respected. I have never heard her name mentioned but with honor. I am happy to be known as her friend."
I gave him one quick look. Good God! What lay before this man! And he so unconscious! I felt like wishing the inn would fall to atoms before our eyes, crushing beneath it the sin of the past and his false hopes for the future. He saw nothing. ”

“ Meanwhile do there hide in any part of this wicked world two hearts which throb with unusual terrors this night? Or does there pass across the mirror of a guilty memory any unusual shapes of horror prognostic of detection and coming punishment? It would comfort my uneasy heart to know; for the spirit of vengeance has seized upon me, and my house will never seem washed of its stain, or my conscience be quite at rest as to the past, till that vile man and woman pay, in some way, the penalty of their crime. ”

“ I have worshiped her, pardoned her, dreamed of her for fifteen years in solitudes dedicated to God! O Creator of all good! What sacrilege I have committed! How shall I ever atone for a manhood wasted on a dream, and for thoughts that must have made the angels of Heaven veil their faces in wonder and pity.
"You must have a story to tell," he now said, turning toward me, with the first look of natural human curiosity which I had seen in his face since I came.
"Yes," said I, "I have; but it will not serve to lessen your horror; it will only add to it." ”

“ She even found a smile to bestow upon me; and was it a tear? Could it have been a tear I saw for a moment glisten in her eye as she turned half petulantly, half imperiously away? I have never known, but the very suspicion filled my heart to overflowing, and the great sobs rose in my breast; and—fool that I was—I was about to beg her pardon, when she gave me one other look, and I merely faltered out:
"'Where will you find another love like mine, Marah? If you got your gold, you would soon miss something which only comes with love. ”

“ He evidently considered me demented, but as he looked at me longer, and noted my steady and unflinching gaze, he gradually turned pale, and uttered, in irrepressible anxiety, the one word—"Honora!" [313]
"Miss Urquhart is well," I began, "and is as ignorant as yourself of the shadows that hover over her. She is all innocence and truth, sir. Honor, candor and purity dwell in her heart, and happiness in her eyes. Yet is that happiness threatened by the worst calamity that can befall a sensitive human being, and if you hold her in esteem—"
"Ma foi!" he broke in, with violent impetuosity. ”

“ What boundless misery! what unfathomable passion! what hopeless despair!
"If he were unworthy!" her daughter here exclaimed.
"It you could point to anything he lacks. But he has wealth, a noble name, a face so handsome that I have seen both you and papa look at him in admiration; and as for his mind and attainments, are they not superior to those of all the young men who have ever visited us? Mamma, mamma, you are so good that you require perfection in a son-in-law. But is he not as near it as a man may be? Tell me, darling, for in my dreams he always seems so." ”

“ It is so sweet to enshrine you in such a pure romance, mamma. Though you have been married sixteen years—ah, how old I am!—I see you sit and look at papa sometimes, for a long, long time without speaking, and though you do not smile, I think, 'She is dreaming of the days when life was pure joy, because it was pure love,' and I long to ask you to tell me about those days, because I am sure, if you did, you would tell me the sweetest story of mutual love and devotion. ”

“ His eyes were bright; his smile beaming; [295] his bearing full of hope. Now and then his glance would steal toward the door or through the open windows, as if he longed to catch a glimpse of some passing face or form; and at last, swayed by that sympathy which we women all feel for true love in man or woman, I asked him to accompany me into the garden, promising him a view that would certainly delight him. As the garden was plainly visible from the oak parlor, you can readily understand to what view I alluded. But he had no suspicion of my meaning, and followed me with some reluctance. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII. A SUDDEN BETROTHAL.
"As for myself," continued Mark Felt, "I stood crushed, and after the first torrent of emotion had swept by, lifted my head like a drowning man and looked wildly about, as if, in the catastrophe which overwhelmed me, all nature must have changed, and I should find myself in a strange place. The sight of the door through which Marah Leighton had passed stung me into tortured existence again. With a roar of passion and hate I sprang toward it, burst it open, and passed in. ”

“ And I felt my first movement of pity for her.
Alas! does that unrest spring from premeditated or already accomplished guilt? Whichever it [245] may be—and I am ready to believe in either or both—she is a burdened creature, and the weight of her fears or her intentions lies heavily upon her. But she hides the fact with consummate address, and when under the eyes of people smiles so brightly and conducts herself with such a charming grace that half the guests that come and go consider her as lovely and more captivating than her daughter. ”

“ I must talk, then, to thee, unknown reader of these lines, and declare on paper what I have said a thousand times to myself—what a mystery this whole matter is, and how little probability there is of our ever understanding it! Why was it that Edwin Urquhart, if he loved one woman so well that he was willing to risk his life to gain her, would subject himself to the terrors which must follow any crime, no matter how secretly performed, by marrying a woman he must kill in twenty-four hours? ”

“ To drag into light the skeleton of old days, and by the light thus thrown upon it to see that it is only a skeleton, that, once beheld, should be buried and its old bones forgotten. You are too much of a man, Felt, to waste away in these wilds. Come! forget I am a stranger, and relieve yourself and me by opening these tablets you speak of, even if it does cost you a pang of the old sorrow. The talk we have had has already made a flutter in the long-closed leaves, and should I leave you this minute you could not smother the thoughts and memories to which our conversation has given rise. ”

“ In another five minutes we were in the street, with half Paris surging about us, but before the crowd had quite seized upon me, he had found time to whisper in my ear:
"'I am the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon. It will always be a matter of thankfulness to me that I was not left to sacrifice the fairest woman in the world to the rescue of a thankless coward.'
"Mamma, do you blame me for giving such a man my heart, and do you wonder that what I have dedicated to this hero I can never yield to any other man?" ”

“ She looks like a queen, but like a queen who has known not only grief, but love. There is nothing of despair in her glance, rather a lofty hope, and when her affections are touched, or her enthusiasm roused, she smiles with such a heavenly brightness in her countenance, that I think there is no fairer woman in the world, as I am assured there is none worthier. ”

“ Some years ago I had occasion to spend a night in an inn not unlike this, on Long Island. I was alone, but there was a merry crowd in the tap room, and being fond of good company, I presently found myself joining in the conversation. The talk was of inns, and many a stirring story of adventure in out-of-the-way taverns did I listen to that night before the clock struck twelve. Each man present had some humorous or thrilling experience to relate, with the exception of a certain glum and dark-browed gentleman, who sat somewhat apart from the rest, and who said nothing. ”

“ Day after day, month after month, year after year, you have gone in and out before your friends, unmolested and unafraid; but God's vengeance, though it halts, is sure and keen. Across land and across water the memories of this room have drawn you, and not content with awakening suspicion, you must make suspicion certainty by moving a spring unknown even to myself, and entering this spot, from which the bones of your victim were taken only two months ago, Marah Leighton! ”

“ I invariably see her there; and remembering that her daughter is ill, remembering that in my hearing she promised that daughter that she would not leave her again, I feel impelled at times to remind her of the fact, and see what reply will follow. But I know. She will say that she is not well herself; that the breeze from the river does her good; that she loves nature, and sleeps better after a ramble under the stars. I cannot disconcert her—not for long—and I cannot compete with her in volubility and conversational address, so I will continue to play a discreet part and wait. ”

“ But she was not happy nor at her ease, and wore, instead of the quiet and commanding look of the great lady, such an expression of secret dread that I almost forgot my position of landlady, and should certainly, if he had not been there, fallen at her side and taken her poor, forsaken head upon my breast. But that silent, immovable form, sitting statue-like beside his big box, smiling, for aught I knew, but if so, breathing out a chill that forbade all exhibition of natural feeling, held me in check, as it held her, so that I merely inquired whether there was anything I could do for her ”

“ Gazing at it, and noting the happy smile which unconsciously lingered on her lips, I could not but feel that, despite the hideous revelations which lay before her, her lot was an enviable one, allied as it promised to be with that of one of such high principles as the marquis. Though I am old now and have had my day, the love of the innocent and pure is sacred to me, and in this case it certainly has the charm of a spotless lily blooming in the jaws of hell. ”

“ I could not believe that any man could be so void of mercy, or any woman so lost to every instinct of decency, as to plan, and then coolly carry out to the end, a crime so unheard of in its atrocity. There must be some other explanation of the facts before us. Why, the date in the ring is enough. If that speaks true, the marriage between Edwin Urquhart and the gentle Honora was but a day old, and even the worst of men take time to weary of their wives before they take measures against them. Yet, the look and manner of the man! ”

“ Several times before the day was over did I return to the secret chamber and bend my ear to the wall. But in no instance did I linger long, for if the two ladies spoke at all it was on trivial subjects, and in such tones as indicated that neither their passions nor any particular interests were engaged. For such talk I had no ear.
"It will not be always so," I thought to myself. "When night comes and the heart opens, they will speak of what lies upon their minds." ”

“ It was dark, dark as the secret chamber into which I now stole with the lightest and wariest of steps. Horror, gloom, and apprehension were in the air, which brooded stiflingly in the narrow spot, and had it not been for the righteous purpose sustaining me, I should have fallen at this critical moment, crushed beneath the terrible weight of my own feelings.
But one who has to listen, straining every faculty to catch the purport of what is going on behind an impenetrable wall, soon forgets himself and his own sensations. ”

“ It must have some wonderful secret, then. What is it, Mrs. Truax? Do you own a banshee? Have you a—"
"Mamma, you hurt me!"
The cry was involuntary. Madame had caught her daughter by the hand and was probably unaware what passion she had put into her clasp. Mademoiselle Letellier blushed again at the sound of her own voice, and prayed her mother's pardon with the most engaging of smiles. As she did so, I caught a glimpse of that mother's face. It was white as death. "Decidedly, she knows more than she ought to," thought I. "And yet she wants to know more. ”