With face blanched and eyes still full of terror, her ladyship looked at the dark, contemptuous, resolute speaker.
"And if this be true--your horrible surmise; mind, I don"t admit that it is--would _that_ be any excuse for Victor"s conduct in leaving you?"
"No!" Edith answered, her eyes flashing, "none! Having married me, not ten thousand family secrets should be strong enough to make him desert me. If he had come to me, if he had told me, as he was bound to do before our wedding-day, I would have pitied him with all my soul; if anything could ever have made me care for him as a wife should care for a husband, it would have been that pity. But if he came to me now, and knelt before me, imploring me to return, I would not. I would die sooner!"
She was walking up and down now, gleams of pa.s.sionate scorn and rage in her dark eyes.
"It is all folly and balderdash, this talk of his love for me making him leave me. Don"t let us have any more of it. No secret on earth should make a bridegroom quit his bride--no power on earth could ever convince me of it!"
"And yet," the sad, patient voice of poor Lady Helena sighed, "it is true."
Edith stopped in her walk, and looked at her incredulously.
"Lady Helena," she said, "you are my kind friend--you know the world--you are a woman of sense, not likely to have your brain turned with vapors. Answer me this--Do you think that, acting as he has done, Sir Victor Catheron has done right?"
Lady Helena"s sad eyes met hers full. Lady Helena"s voice was full of pathos and earnestness, as she replied:
"Edith, I am your friend; I am in my sober senses, and, I believe in my soul Victor has done right."
"Well," Edith said after a long pause, during which she resumed her walk, "I give it up! I don"t understand, and I never shall. I am hopelessly in the dark. I can conceive no motive--none strong enough to make his conduct right. I thought him mad; you say he is sane. I thought he did me a shameful, irreparable wrong; you say he has done right. I will think no more about it, since, if I thought to my dying day, I could come no nearer the truth."
"You will know one day," answered Lady Helena; "on his death-bed; and, poor fellow, the sooner that day comes the better for him."
Edith made an impatient gesture.
"Let us talk about it no more. What is done is done. Whether Sir Victor Catheron lives or dies can in no way concern me now. I think, with your permission, I will go back to my room and try to sleep away this dismal day."
"Wait one moment, Edith. It was on your account Victor came here last night to talk over the arrangements he was making for your future."
A curious smile came over Edith"s lips. She was once more back at the window, looking out at the rain-beaten day.
"My future!" she slowly repeated; "in what possible way can my future concern Sir Victor Catheron?"
"My child, what a question! In every way. You are honest enough to confess that you married him--poor boy, poor boy--for his rank and rent-roll. _There_, at least, you need not be disappointed. The settlements made upon you before your marriage were, as you know, liberal in the extreme. In addition to that, every farthing that it is in his power to dispose of he intends settling upon you besides. His grandmother"s fortune, which descends to him, is to be yours. You may spend money like water if it pleases you--the t.i.tle and the wealth for which you wedded are still yours. For himself, he intends to go abroad--to the East, I believe. He retains nothing but what will supply his travelling expenses. He cannot meet you--if he did, he might never be able to leave you. O Edith, you blame him, you hate him; but if you had only seen him, only heard him last night, only knew how inevitable it is, how he suffered, how bitterer than death this parting is to him, you would pity, you would forgive him."
"You think so," the girl said, with a wistful, weary sigh. "Ah, well, perhaps so. I don"t know. Just now I can realize nothing except that I am a lost, forsaken wretch; that I _do_ hate him; that if I were dying, or that if he were dying, I could not say "I forgive you."
As to his liberality, I never doubted that; I have owned that I married him for his wealth and station. I own it still; but there are some things not the wealth of a king could compensate for. To desert a bride on her wedding-day is one of them. I repeat, Lady Helena, with your permission, I will go to my room; we won"t talk of my future plans and prospects just now. To-morrow you shall know my decision."
She turned to go. The elder woman looked after her with yearning, sorrowful eyes.
"If I knew what to do--if I knew what to say," she murmured helplessly.
"Edith, I loved him more dearly than any son. I think my heart is breaking. O child, don"t judge him--be merciful to him who loves you while he leaves you--be merciful to me whose life has been so full of trouble."
Her voice broke down in a pa.s.sion of tears. Edith turned from the door, put her arms around her neck and kissed her.
"Dear friend," she said; "dear Lady Helena, I pity _you_ from the bottom of my heart. I wish--I wish I could only comfort you."
"You can," was the eager answer. "Stay with me, Edith; don"t leave me alone. Be a daughter to me; take the place of the son I have lost."
But Edith"s pale, resolute face did not soften.
"To-morrow we will settle all this," was her reply. "Wait until to-morrow."
Then she was gone--shut up and locked in her own room. She did not descend to either luncheon or dinner--one of the housemaids served her in her dressing-room. And Lady Helena, alone and miserable, wandered uneasily about the lower rooms, and wondered how she spent that long rainy day.
She spent it busily enough. The plain black box she had brought from New York, containing all her earthly belongings, she drew out and packed. It was not hard to do, since nothing went into it but what had belonged to her then. All the dresses, all the jewels, all the costly gifts that had been given her by the man she had married, and his friends, she left as they were. She kept nothing, not even her wedding-ring: she placed it among the rest, in the jewel casket, closed and locked it. Then she wrote a letter to Lady Helena, and placed the key inside. This is what she said:
"DEAR FRIEND: When you open this I shall have left Powyss Place forever. It will be quite useless to follow or endeavor to bring me back. My mind is made up. I recognize no authority--nothing will induce me to revoke my decision. I go out into the world to make my own way. With youth, and health, and ordinary intelligence, it ought not to be impossible. The things belonging to me when I first came here I have packed in the black box; in a week you will have the kindness to forward it to the Euston station. The rest I leave behind--retaining one or two books as souvenirs of _you_. I take nothing of Sir Victor Catheron"s--not even his name. You must see that it is utterly impossible; that I must lose the last shred of pride and self-respect before I could a.s.sume his name or take a penny belonging to him. Dear, kind Lady Helena good-by. If we never meet again in the world, remember there is no thought in my heart of you that is not one of affection and grat.i.tude. EDITH."
Her hand never trembled as she wrote this letter. She placed the key in it, folded, sealed, and addressed it. It was dark by this time. As she knelt to cord and lock her trunk, she espied the writing-case within it. She hesitated a moment, then took it out, opened it, and drew forth the packet of Charley Stuart"s letters. She took out the photograph and looked at it with a half-tender, half-sad smile.
"I never thought to look at you again," she said softly. "You are all I have left now."
She put the picture in her bosom, replaced the rest, and locked the trunk, and put the key in her purse. She sat down and counted her money. She was the possessor of twelve sovereigns--left over from Mr.
Stuart, senior"s, bounty. It was her whole stock of wealth with which to face and begin the world. Then she sat down resolutely to think it out. And the question rose grim before her, "What am I to do?"
"Go out into the world and work for your daily bread. Face the poverty you have feared so much, through fear of which, two days ago, you sold yourself. Go to London--it is the centre of the world; lose yourself, hide from all who ever knew you. Go to London. Work of some kind can surely be had by the willing in that mighty city. Go to London."
That was the answer that came clearly. She shrank for a moment--the thought of facing life single-handed, poor and alone in that great, terrible, pitiless city, was overwhelming. But she did not flinch from her resolve; her mind was made up. Come woe, come weal, she would go to London.
An "A. B. C." railway guide lay on the table--she consulted it. A train left Chester for London at eight o"clock, A. M. Neither Lady Helena nor any of her household was stirring at that hour. She could walk to Chesholm in the early morning, get a fly there and drive to the Chester station in time. By four in the afternoon she would be in London.
No thought of returning home ever recurred to her. Home! What home had she? Her step-mother was master and mistress in her father"s house, and to return, to go back to Sandypoint, and the life she had left, was as utter an impossibility almost as though she should take a rope and hang herself. She had not the means to go if she had desired, but that made no difference. She could never go back, never see her father, or Charley, or Trixy more. Alone she must live, alone she must die.
The flood-gates were opened; she suffered this last night as women of her strong, self-contained temperament only suffer.
"Save me, O G.o.d! for the waters are come into my soul!" That was the wild, wordless prayer of her heart. Her life was wrecked, her heart was desolate; she must go forth a beggar and an outcast, and fight the bitter battle of life alone. And love, and home, and Charley might have been hers. "It might have been!" Is there any anguish in this world of anguish like that we work with our own hands?--any sorrow like that which we bring upon ourselves? In the darkness she sank down upon her knees, her face covered with her hands, tears, that were as dreadful as tears of blood, falling from her eyes. Lost--lost! all that made life worth having. To live and die alone, that was her fate!
So the black, wild night pa.s.sed, hiding her, as miserable a woman as the wide earth held.
The gray dawn of the dull October morning was creeping over the far-off Welsh hills as Edith in shawl and hat, closely veiled, and carrying a hand-bag, came softly down the stairs, and out of a side door, chiefly used by the servants. She met no one. Noiselessly she drew the bolt, opened the door, and looked out.
It was raw and cold, a dreary wind still blowing, but it had ceased to rain. As she stood there, seven struck from the turret clock. "One long, last, lingering look behind"--one last upward glance at Lady Helena"s windows.
"Good-by!" the pale lips whispered; then she pa.s.sed resolutely out into the melancholy autumn morning and was gone.
PART III