A Terrible Secret

M >> May Agnes Fleming >> A Terrible Secret

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Produced by Wendy Crockett, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

A TERRIBLE SECRET.

A Novel.

BY

MAY AGNES FLEMING,

To

CHRISTIAN REID,

AUTHOR OF

"VALERIE AYLMER," ETC.,

AS A

TOKEN OF ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM,

THIS

STORY IS DEDICATED.

MAY AGNES FLEMING.

BROOKLYN,

_September_, 1874.

CONTENTS.

I.--Bride and Bridegroom Elect
II.--Wife and Heir
III.--How Lady Catheron came Home
IV.--"I'll not Believe but Desdemona's Honest"
V.--In the Twilight
VI.--In the Moonlight
VII.--In the Nursery
VIII.--In the Darkness
IX.--From the "Chesholm Courier"
X.--From the "Chesholm Courier"--Continued
XI.--"Ring out your Bells! Let Mourning Shows be Spread!"
XII.--The first Ending of the Tragedy

PART II.

I.--Miss Darrell
II.--A Night in the Snow
III.--Trixy's Party
IV.--"Under the Gaslight"
V.--Old Copies of the "Courier"
VI.--One Moonlight Night
VII.--Short and Sentimental
VIII.--In Two Boats
IX.--Alas for Trix
X.--How Trix took it
XI.--How Lady Helena took it
XII.--On St. Partridge Day
XIII.--How Charley took it
XIV.--To-morrow
XV.--Lady Helena's Ball
XVI.--"O My Cousin Shallow-hearted!"
XVII.--"Forever and Ever"
XVIII.--The Summons
XIX.--At Poplar Lodge
XX.--How the Wedding-day Began
XXI.--How the Wedding-day Ended
XXII.--The Day After
XXIII.--The Second Ending of the Tragedy

PART III.

I.--At Madame Mirebeau's, Oxford Street
II.--Edith
III.--How they Met
IV.--How they Parted
V.--The Telling of the Secret
VI.--The last Ending of the Tragedy
VII.--Two Years After
VIII.--Forgiven or--Forgotten?
IX.--Saying Good-by
X.--The Second Bridal
XI.--The Night
XII.--The Morning

CHAPTER I.

BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM ELECT.

Firelight falling on soft velvet carpet, where white lily buds trail
along azure ground, on chairs of white-polished wood that glitters
like ivory, with puffy of seats of blue satin; on blue and gilt
panelled walls; on a wonderfully carved oaken ceiling; on sweeping
draperies of blue satin and white lace; on half a dozen lovely
pictures; on an open piano; and last of all, on the handsome, angry
face of a girl who stands before it--Inez Catheron.

The month is August--the day the 29th--Miss Catheron has good reason
to remember it to the last day of her life. But, whether the August
sun blazes, or the January winds howl, the great rooms of Catheron
Royals are ever chilly. So on the white-tiled hearth of the blue
drawing-room this summer evening a coal fire flickers and falls, and
the mistress of Catheron Royals stands before it, an angry flush
burning deep red on either dusk cheek, an angry frown contracting her
straight black brows.

The mistress of Catheron Royals,--the biggest, oldest, queerest,
grandest place in all sunny Cheshire,--this slim, dark girl of
nineteen, for three years past the bride-elect of Sir Victor Catheron,
baronet, the last of his Saxon race and name, the lord of all these
sunny acres, this noble Norman pile, the smiling village of Catheron
below. The master of a stately park in Devon, a moor and "bothy" in
the highlands, a villa on the Arno, a gem of a cottage in the Isle of
Wight. "A darling of the gods," young, handsome, healthy; and best of
all, with twenty thousand a year.

She is his bride-elect. In her dark way she is very handsome. She is
to be married to Sir Victor early in the next month, and she is as
much in love with him as it is at all possible to be. A fair fate
surely. And yet while the August night shuts down, while the wind
whistles in the trees, while the long fingers of the elm, just outside
the window, tap in a ghostly way on the pane, she stands here, flushed,
angry, impatient, and sullen, her handsome lips set in a tight, rigid
line.

She is very dark at all times. Her cousin Victor tells her, laughingly,
she is an absolute nigger when in one of her silent rages. She has
jet-black hair, and big, brilliant, Spanish eyes. She _is_ Spanish.
Her dead mother was a Castilian, and that mother has left her her
Spanish name, her beautiful, passionate Spanish eyes, her hot,
passionate Spanish heart. In Old Castile Inez was born; and when
in her tenth year her English father followed his wife to the grave,
Inez came home to Catheron Royals, to reign there, a little,
imperious, hot-tempered Morisco princess ever since.

She did not come alone. A big boy of twelve, with a shock head of
blue-black hair, two wild, glittering black eyes, and a diabolically
handsome face, came with her. It was her only brother Juan, an imp
incarnate from his cradle. _He_ did not remain long. To the
unspeakable relief of the neighborhood for miles around, he had
vanished as suddenly as he had come, and for years was seen no more.

A Moorish Princess! It is her cousin and lover's favorite name for her,
and it fits well. There is a certain barbaric splendor about her as
she stands here in the firelight, in her trailing purple silk, in the
cross of rubies and fine gold that burns on her bosom, in the yellow,
perfumy rose in her hair, looking stately, and beautiful, and
dreadfully out of temper.

The big, lonesome house is as still as a tomb. Outside the wind is
rising, and the heavy patter, patter, of the rain-beats on the glass.
That, and the light fall of the cinders in the polished grate, are the
only sounds to be heard.

A clock on the mantel strikes seven. She has not stirred for nearly an
hour, but she looks up now, her black eyes full of passionate anger,
passionate impatience.

"Seven!" she says, in a suppressed sort of voice; "and he should have
been here at six. What if he should defy me?--what if he does not come
after all?"

She can remain still no longer. She walks across the room, and she
walks as only Spanish women do. She draws back one of the
window-curtains, and leans out into the night. The crushed sweetness
of the rain-beaten roses floats up to her in the wet darkness. Nothing
to be seen but the vague tossing of the trees, nothing to be heard but
the soughing of the wind, nothing to be felt but the fast and still
faster falling of the rain.

She lets the curtain fall, and returns to the fire.

"Will he dare defy me?" she whispers to herself. "Will he dare stay
away?"

There are two pictures hanging over the mantel--she looks up at them
as she asks the question. One is the sweet, patient face of a woman of
thirty; the other, the smiling face of a fair-haired, blue-eyed,
good-looking lad. It is a _very_ pleasant face; the blue eyes look
at you so brightly, so frankly; the boyish mouth is so sweet-tempered
and laughing that you smile back and fall in love with him at sight.
It is Sir Victor Catheron and his late mother.

Miss Inez Catheron is in many respects an extraordinary young
lady--Cheshire society has long ago decided that. They would have been
more convinced of it than ever, could they have seen her turn now to
Lady Catheron's portrait and appeal to it aloud in impassioned words:

"On his knees, by your dying bed, by your dying command, he vowed to
love and cherish me always--as he did then. Let him take care how he
trifles with that vow--let him take care!"

She lifts one hand (on which rubies and diamonds flash) menacingly,
then stops. Over the sweep of the storm, the rush of the rain, comes
another sound--a sound she has been listening for, longing for,
praying for--the rapid roll of carriage wheels up the drive. There can
be but one visitor to Catheron Royals to-night, at this hour and in
this storm--its master.

She stands still as a stone, white as a statue, waiting. She loves him;
she has hungered and thirsted for the sound of his voice, the sight of
his face, the clasp of his hand, all these weary, lonely months. In
some way it is her life or death she is to take from his hands
to-night. And now he is here.

She hears the great hall-door open and close with a clang; she hears
the step of the master in the hall--a quick, assured tread she would
know among a thousand; she hears a voice--a hearty, pleasant, manly,
English voice; a cheery laugh she remembers well.

"The Chief of Lara has returned again."

The quick, excitable blood leaps up from her heart to her face in a
rosy rush that makes her lovely. The eyes light, the lips part--she
takes a step forward, all anger, all fear, all neglect forgotten--a
girl in love going to meet her lover. The door is flung wide by an
impetuous hand, and wet and splashed, and tall and smiling, Sir Victor
Catheron stands before her.

"My dearest Inez!"

He comes forward, puts his arm around her, and touches his blonde
mustache to her flushed cheek.

"My dearest coz, I'm awfully glad to see you again, and looking so
uncommonly well too." He puts up his eye-glass to make sure of this
fact, then drops it "Uncommonly well," he repeats; "give you my word
I never saw you looking half a quarter so handsome before in my life.
Ah! why can't we all be Moorish princesses, and wear purple silks and
yellow roses?"

He flings himself into an easy-chair before the fire, throws back his
blonde head, and stretches forth his boots to the blaze.

"An hour after time, am I not? But blame the railway people--don't
blame _me_. Beastly sort of weather for the last week of August--cold
as Iceland and raining cats and dogs; the very dickens of a storm,
I can tell you."

He give the fire a poke, the light leaps up and illumines his handsome
face. He is very like his picture--a little older--a little
worn-looking, and with man's "crowning glory," a mustache. The girl
has moved a little away from him, the flush of "beauty's bright
transcient glow" has died out of her face, the hard, angry look has
come back. That careless kiss, that easy, cousinly embrace, have told
their story. A moment ago her heart beat high with hope--to the day of
her death it never beat like that again.

He doesn't look at her; he gazes at the fire instead, and talks with
the hurry of a nervous man. The handsome face is a very effeminate
face, and not even the light, carefully trained, carefully waxed
mustache can hide the weak, irresolute mouth, the delicate,
characterless chin. While he talks carelessly and quickly, while his
slim white fingers loop and unloop his watch-chain, in the blue eyes
fixed upon the fire there is an uneasy look of nervous fear. And into
the keeping of this man the girl with the dark powerful face has given
her heart, her fate!

"It seems no end good to be at home again," Sir Victor Catheron says,
as if afraid of that brief pause. "You've no idea, Inez, how uncommonly
familiar and jolly this blue room, this red fire, looked a moment ago,
as I stepped out of the darkness and rain. It brings back the old
times--this used to be _her_ favorite morning-room," he glanced at
the mother's picture, "and summer and winter a fire always burned
here, as now. And you, Inez, _cara mia_, with your gypsy face, most
familiar of all."

She moves over to the mantel. It is very low; she leans one arm upon
it, looks steadily at him, and speaks at last.

"I am glad Sir Victor Catheron can remember the old times, can still
recall his mother, has a slight regard left for Catheron Royals, and
am humbly grateful for his recollection of his gypsy cousin. From his
conduct of late it was hardly to have been expected."

"It is coming," thinks Sir Victor, with an inward groan; "and, O Lord!
_what_ a row it is going to be. When Inez shuts her lips up in that
tight line, and snaps her black eyes in that unpleasant way, I know
to my cost, it means 'war to the knife.' I'll be routed with dreadful
slaughter, and Inez's motto is ever, 'Woe to the conqueror!' Well,
here goes!"

He looks up at her, a good-humored smile on his good-looking face.

"Humbly grateful for my recollection of you! My dear Inez, I don't
know what you mean. As for my absence--"

"As for your absence," she interrupts, "you were to have been here, if
your memory will serve you, on the first of June. It is now the close
of August. Every day of that absence has been an added insult to me.
Even now you would not have been here if I had not written you a
letter you dare not neglect--sent a command you dare not disobey. You
are here to-night because you dare not stay away."

Some of the bold blood of the stern old Saxon race from which he
sprung is in his veins still. He looks at her full, still smiling.

"Dare not!" he repeats. "You use strong language, Inez. But then you
have an excitable sort of nature, and were ever inclined to hyperbole;
and it is a lady's privilege to talk."

"And a man's to act. But I begin to think Sir Victor Catheron is
something less than a man. The Catheron blood has bred many an outlaw,
many bitter, bad men, but to-day I begin to think it has bred
something infinitely worse--a traitor and a coward!"

He half springs up, his eyes flashing, then falls back, looks at the
fire again, and laughs.

"Meaning me?"

"Meaning you."

"Strong language once more--you assert your prerogative royally, my
handsome cousin. From whom did you inherit that two-edged tongue of
yours, Inez, I wonder? Your Castilian mother, surely; the women of our
house were never shrews. And even _you_, my dear, may go a little
too far. Will you drop vituperation and explain? How have I been
traitor and coward? It is well we should understand each other fully."

He has grown pale, though he speaks quietly, and his blue eyes gleam
dangerously. He is always quiet when most angry.

"It is. And we shall understand each other fully before we part--be
very sure of that. You shall learn what I have inherited from my
Castilian mother. You shall learn whether you are to play fast and
loose with me at your sovereign will. Does your excellent memory still
serve you, or must I tell you what day the twenty-third of September
is to be?"

He looks up at her, still pale, that smile on his lips, that gleam in
his eyes.

"My memory serves me perfectly," he answers coolly; "it was to have
been our wedding-day."

_Was to have been_. As he speaks the words coldly, almost cruelly,
as she looks in his face, the last trace of color leaves her own. The
hot fire dies out of her eyes, an awful terror comes in its place.
With all her heart, all her strength, she loves the man she so
bitterly reproaches. It seems to her she can look back upon no time in
which her love for him is not.

And now, it _was_ to have been!

She turns so ghastly that he springs to his feet in alarm.

"Good Heaven, Inez! you're not going to faint, are you? Don't! Here,
take my chair, and for pity's sake don't look like that. I'm a wretch,
a brute--what was it I said? Do sit down."

He has taken her in his arms. In the days that are gone he has been
very fond, and a little afraid of his gipsy cousin. He is afraid
still--horribly afraid, if the truth must be told, now that his
momentary anger is gone.

All the scorn, all the defiance has died out of her voice when she
speaks again. The great, solemn eyes transfix him with a look he
cannot meet.

"_Was to have been_," she repeats, in a sort of whisper; "was to
have been. Victor, does that mean it never _is_ to be?"

He turns away, shame, remorse, fear in his averted face. He holds the
back of the chair with one hand, she clings to the other as though it
held her last hope in life.

"Take time," she says, in the same slow, whispering way. "I can wait.
I have waited so long, what does a few minutes more matter now? But
think well before you speak--there is more at stake than you know of.
My whole future life hangs on your words. A woman's life. Have you
ever thought what that implies? 'Was to have been,' you said. Does
that mean it never is to be?"

Still no reply. He holds the back of the chair, his face averted, a
criminal before his judge.

"And while you think," she goes on, in that slow, sweet voice, "let me
recall the past. Do you remember, Victor, the day when I and Juan came
here from Spain? Do you remember me? I recall you as plainly at this
moment as though it were but yesterday--a little, flaxen-haired,
blue-eyed boy in violet velvet, unlike any child I had ever seen
before. I saw a woman with a face like an angel, who took me in her
arms, and kissed me, and cried over me, for my father's sake. We grew
up together, Victor, you and I, such happy, happy years, and I was
sixteen, you twenty. And all that time you had my whole heart. Then
came our first great sorrow, your mother's death."

She pauses a moment. Still he stands silent, but his left hand has
gone up and covers his face.

"You remember that last night, Victor--the night she died. No need to
ask you; whatever you may forget, you are not likely to forget
_that_. We knelt together by her bedside. It was as this is a stormy
summer night. Outside, the rain beat and the wind blew; inside, the
stillness of death was everywhere. We knelt alone in the dimly-lit
room, side by side, to receive her last blessing--her dying wish.
Victor, my cousin, do you recall what that wish was?"

She holds out her arms to him, all her heart breaking forth in the cry.
But he will neither look nor stir.

"With her dying hands she joined ours, her dying eyes looking at
_you_. With her dying lips she spoke to you: 'Inez is dearer to me
than all the world, Victor, except you. She must never face the world
alone. My son, you love her--promise me you will cherish and protect
her always. She loves you as no one else ever will. Promise me,
Victor, that in three years from to-night you will make her your
wife.' These were her words. And you took her hand, covered it with
tears and kisses, and promised.

"We buried her," Inez went on, "and we parted. You went up to Oxford;
I went over to a Paris _pensionnat_. In the hour of our parting we
went up together hand in hand to her room. We kissed the pillow where
her dying head had lain; we knelt by her bedside as we had done that
other night. You placed this ring upon my finger; sleeping or waking
it has never left it since, and you repeated your vow, that that
night three years, on the twenty-third of September, I should be
your wife."

She lifts the betrothal ring to her lips, and kisses it. "Dear little
ring," she says softly, "it has been my one comfort all these years.
Though all your coldness, all your neglect for the last year and a
half, I have looked at it, and known you would never break your
plighted word to the living and the dead.

"I came home from school a year ago. _You_ were not here to meet and
welcome me. You never came. You fixed the first of June for your
coming, and you broke your word. Do I tire you with all these details,
Victor? But I must speak to-night. It will be for the last time--you
will never give me cause again. Of the whispered slanders that have
reached me I do not speak; I do not believe them. Weak you may be,
fickle you may be, but you are a gentleman of loyal race and blood;
you will keep your plighted troth. Oh, forgive me, Victor! Why do you
make me say such things to you? I hate myself for them, but your
neglect has driven me nearly wild. What have I done?" Again she
stretches forth her hands in eloquent appeal. "See! I love you. What
more can I say? I forgive all the past; I ask no questions. I believe
nothing of the horrible stories they try to tell me. Only come back to
me. If I lose you I shall die."

Her face is transfigured as she speaks--her hands still stretched out.

"O Victor, come!" she says; "let the past be dead and forgotten. My
darling, come back!"

But he shrinks away as those soft hands touch him, and pushes her off.

"Let me go!" he cries; "don't touch me, Inez! It can never be. You
don't know what you ask!"

He stands confronting her now, pale as herself, with eyes alight. She
recoils like one who has received a blow.

"Can never be?" she repeats.

"Can never be!" he answers. "I am what you have called me, Inez, a
traitor and a coward. I stand here perjured before God, and you, and
my dead mother. It can never be. I can never marry you. I am married
already!"

The blow has fallen--the horrible, brutal blow. She stands looking at
him--she hardly seems to comprehend. There is a pause--the firelight
flickers, they hear the rain lashing the windows, the soughing of the
gale in the trees. Then Victor Catheron bursts forth:

"I don't ask you to forgive me--it is past all that. I make no excuse;
the deed is done. I met her, and I loved her. She has been my wife for
sixteen months, and--there is a son. Inez, don't look at me like that!
I am a scoundrel, I know, but--"

He breaks down--the sight of her face unmans him. He turns away, his
heart beating horribly thick. How long the ghastly pause that follows
lasts he never knows--a century, counting by what he undergoes. Once,
during that pause, he sees her fixed eyes turn slowly to his mother's
picture--he hears low, strange-sounding words drop from her lips:

"He swore by your dying bed, and see how he keeps his oath!"

Then the life that seems to have died from her face flames back.
Without speaking to him, without looking at him, she turns to leave
the room. On the threshold she pauses and looks back.

"A wife and a son," she says, slowly and distinctly. "Sir Victor
Catheron, fetch them home; I shall be glad to see them."

CHAPTER II.

WIFE AND HEIR.

In a very genteel lodging-house, in the very genteel neighborhood of
Russell Square, early in the afternoon of a September day, a young
girl stands impatiently awaiting the return of Sir Victor Catheron.
This girl is his wife.

It is a bright, sunny day--as sunny, at least, as a London day ever
can make up its mind to be--and as the yellow, slanting rays pour in
through the muslin curtains full on face and figure, you may search
and find no flaw in either. It is a very lovely face, a very graceful,
though petite figure. She is a blonde of the blondest type: her hair
is like spun gold, and, wonderful to relate, no Yellow Wash: no Golden
Fluid, has ever touched its shining abundance. Her eyes are bluer than
the September sky over the Russell Square chimney-pots; her nose is
neither aquiline nor Grecian, but it is very nice; her forehead is low,
her mouth and chin "morsels for the gods." The little figure is
deliciously rounded and ripe; in twenty years from now she may be a
heavy British matron, with a yard and a half wide waist--at eighteen
years old she is, in one word, perfection.

Her dress is perfection also. She wears a white India muslin, a marvel
of delicate embroidery and exquisite texture, and a great deal of
Valenciennes trimming. She has a pearl and turquoise star fastening
her lace collar, pearl and turquoise drops in her ears, and a half
dozen diamond rings on her plump, boneless fingers. A blue ribbon
knots up the loose yellow hair, and you may search the big city from
end to end, and find nothing fairer, fresher, sweeter than Ethel, Lady
Catheron.

If ever a gentleman and a baronet had a fair and sufficient excuse for
the folly of a low marriage, surely Sir Victor Catheron has it in this
fairy wife--for it is a "low marriage" of the most heinous type. Just
seventeen months ago, sauntering idly along the summer sands, looking
listlessly at the summer sea, thinking drearily that this time next
year his freedom would be over, and his Cousin Inez his lawful owner
and possessor, his eyes had fallen on that lovely blonde face--that
wealth of shining hair, and for all time--aye, for eternity--his fate
was fixed. The dark image of Inez as his wife faded out of his mind,
never to return more.

The earthly name of this dazzling divinity in yellow ringlets and pink
muslin was Ethel Margaretta--Dobb!

Dobb! It might have disenchanted a less rapturous adorer--it fell
powerless on Sir Victor Catheron's infatuated ear.

It was at Margate this meeting took place--that most popular and most
vulgar of all English watering-places; and the Cheshire baronet had
looked just once at the peach-bloom face, the blue eyes of laughing
light, the blushing, dimpling, seventeen-year-old face, and fallen in
love at once and forever.

He was a very impetuous young man, a very selfish and unstable young
man, with whom, all his life, to wish was to have. He had been spoiled
by a doting mother from his cradle, spoiled by obsequious servants,
spoiled by Inez Catheron's boundless worship. And he wished for this
"rose of the rose-bud garden of girls" as he had never wished for
anything in his two-and-twenty years of life. As a man in a dream he
went through that magic ceremony, "Miss Dobb, allow me to present my
friend, Sir Victor Catheron," and they were free to look at each other,
talk to each other, fall in love with each other as much as they
pleased. As in a dream he lingered by her side three golden hours, as
in a dream he said, "Good afternoon," and walked back to his hotel
smoking a cigar, the world glorified above and about him. As in a
dream they told him she was the only daughter and heiress of a
well-to-do London soap-boiler, and he did not wake.

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