"You shall see her. It is for that she has remained. Stay here; I will send her to you. She deserves your thanks, though all thanks are but empty and vain for such a life-long martyrdom as hers."
She left him hastily. Profound silence fell. He turned and looked out at the fast-falling rain, at the trees swaying in the fitful wind, at the dull, leaden sky. Was he asleep and dreaming? His father alive! He sat half dazed, unable to realize it.
"Victor!"
He had not heard the door open, he had not heard her approach, but she stood beside him. All in black, soft, noiseless black, a face devoid of all color; large, sad, soft eyes, and hair white as winter snow--that was the woman Sir Victor Catheron saw as he turned round.
The face, with all its settled sadness and pallor, was still the face of a beautiful woman, and in weird contradiction to its youth and beauty, were the smooth bands of abundant hair--white as the hair of eighty. The deep, dusk eyes, once so full of pride and fire, looked at him with the tender, saddened light, long, patient suffering had wrought; the lips, once curved in haughtiest disdain, had taken the sweetness of years of hopeless pain. And so, after three-and-twenty years, Victor Catheron saw the woman, whose life his father"s falsity and fickleness had wrecked.
"Victor!"
She held out her hand to him shyly, wistfully. The ban of murder had been upon her all these years. Who was to tell that in his inmost heart he too might not brand her as a murderess? But she need not have doubted. If any suspicion yet lingered in his mind, it vanished as he looked at her.
"Miss Catheron!" He grasped her hand, and held it between both his own.
"I have but just heard all, for the first time, as you know. That my father lives--that to him you have n.o.bly consecrated your life. He has not deserved it at your hands; let my father"s son thank you with all his soul!"
"Ah, hush," she said softly. "I want no thanks. Your poor father! Aunt Helena has told you how miserably all _his_ life has been wrecked--a life once so full of promise."
"She has told me all, Miss Catheron."
"Not Miss Catheron," she interposed, with a smile that lit her worn face into youth and beauty; "not Miss Catheron, surely--Inez, Cousin Inez, if you will. It is twenty-three years--do you know it?--since any one has called me Miss Catheron before. You can"t fancy how oddly it sounds."
He looked at her in surprise.
"You do not bear your own name? And yet I might have known it, lying as you still do--"
"Under the ban of murder." She shuddered slightly as she said it. "Yes, when I fled that dreadful night from Chesholm prison, and made my way to London, I left my name behind me. I took at first the name of Miss Black. I lived in dingy lodgings in that crowded part of London, Lambeth; and for the look of the thing, took in sewing. It was of all those years the most dreary, the most miserable and lonely time of my probation. I lived there four months; then came the time of your father"s complete restoration to bodily health, and confirmation of the fear that his mind was entirely gone. What was to be done with him?
Lady Helena was at a loss to know. There were private asylums, but she disliked the idea of shutting him up in one. He was perfectly gentle, perfectly harmless, perfectly insane. Lady Helena came to see me, and I, pining for the sight of a familiar face, sick and weary to death of the wretched neighborhood in which I lived, proposed the plan that has ever since been the plan of my life. Let Lady Helena take a house, retired enough to be safe, sufficiently suburban to be healthy; let her place Victor there with me; let Mrs. Marsh, my old friend and housekeeper at Catheron Royals, become my housekeeper once more; let Hooper the butler take charge of us, and let us all live together. I thought then, and I think still, it was the best thing for him and for me that could have been suggested. Aunt Helena acted upon it at once; she found a house, on the outskirts of St. John"s Wood--a large house, set in s.p.a.cious grounds, and inclosed by a high wall, called "Poplar Lodge." It suited us in every way; it combined all the advantages of town and country. She leased it from the agent for a long term of years, for a "Mr. and Mrs. Victor," Mr. Victor being in very poor health. Secretly and by night we removed your father there, and since the night of his entrance he has never pa.s.sed the gates. From the first--in the days of my youth and my happiness--my life belonged to him; it will belong to him to the end. Hooper and Marsh are with me still, old and feeble now; and of late years I don"t think I have been unhappy."
She sighed and looked out at the dull, rain-beaten day. The young man listened in profound pity and admiration. Not unhappy! Branded with the deadliest crime man can commit or the law punish--an exile, a recluse, the life-long companion of an insane man and two old servants!
No wonder that at forty her hair was gray--no wonder all life and color had died out of that hopeless face years ago. Perhaps his eyes told her what was pa.s.sing in his mind; she smiled and answered that look.
"I have not been unhappy, Victor; I want you to believe it. Your father was always more to me than all the world beside--he is so still.
He is but the wreck of the Victor I loved, and yet I would rather spend my life by his side than elsewhere on earth. And I was not quite forsaken. Aunt Helena often came and brought you. It seems but yesterday since I had you in my arms rocking you asleep, and now--and now they tell me you are going to be married."
The sensitive color rose over his face for a second, then faded, leaving him very pale.
"I was going to be married," he answered slowly, "but she does not know this. My father lives--the t.i.tle and inheritance are his, not mine. Who is to tell what she may say now?"
The dark, thoughtful eyes looked at him earnestly.
"Does she love you?" she asked; "this Miss Darrell? I need hardly inquire whether _you_ love her."
"I love her so dearly that if I lose her--" He paused and turned his face away from her in the gray light. "I wish I had known this from the first; I ought to have known. It may have been meant in kindness, but I believe it was a mistake. Heaven knows how it will end now."
"You mean to say, then, that in the hour you lose your t.i.tle and inheritance you also lose Miss Darrell? Is that it?"
"I have said nothing of the kind. Edith is one of the n.o.blest, the truest of women; but can"t you see--it looks as though she had been deceived, imposed upon. The loss of t.i.tle and wealth would make a difference to any woman on earth."
"Very little to a woman who loves, Victor. I hope--I hope--this young girl loves you?"
Again the color rose over his face--again he turned impatiently away.
"She _will_ love me," he answered; "she has promised it, and Edith Darrell is a girl to keep her word."
"So," Miss Catheron said, softly and sadly, "it is the old French proverb over again, "There is always one who loves, and one who is loved." She has owned to you that she is not in love with you, then?
Pardon me, Victor, but your happiness is very near to me."
"She has owned it," he answered, "with the rare n.o.bility and candor that belongs to her. Such affection as mine will win its return--"love begets love," they say. It _must_."
"Not always, Victor--ah, not always, else what a happy woman _I_ had been! But surely she cares for no one else?"
"She cares for no one else," he answered, doggedly enough, but in his inmost heart that never-dying jealousy of Charley Stuart rankled. "She cares for no one else--she has told me so, and she is pride, and truth, and purity itself. If I lose her through this, then this secret of insanity will have wrecked forever still another life."
"If she is what you picture her," Inez said steadily, "no loss of rank or fortune would ever make her give you up. But you are not to lose either--you need not even tell her, if you choose."
"I can have no secrets from my plighted wife--Edith must know all. But the secret will be as safe with her as with me."
"Very well," she said quietly; "you know what the result will be if by any chance "Mrs. Victor" and Inez Catheron are discovered to be one.
But it shall be exactly as you please. Your father is as dead to you, to all the world, as though he lay in the vaults of Chesholm church, by your mother"s side."
"My poor mother! my poor, murdered, unavenged mother! Inez Catheron, you are a n.o.ble woman--a brave woman; was it well to aid your brother to escape?--was it well, for the sake of saving the Catheron honor and the Catheron name, to permit a most cruel and cowardly murder to go unavenged?"
What was it that looked up at him out of her eyes? Infinite pity, infinite sorrow, infinite pain.
"My brother," she repeated softly, as if to herself; "poor Juan! he was the scapegoat of the family always. Yes, Sir Victor, it was a cruel and cowardly murder, and yet I believe in my soul we did right to screen the murderer from the world. It is in the hands of the Almighty--there let it rest."
There was a pause--then:
"I shall return with you to London and see my father," he said, as one who claims a right.
"No," she answered firmly; "it is impossible. Stay! Hear me out--it is your father"s own wish."
"My father"s wish! But--"
"He cannot express a wish, you would say. Of late years, Victor, at wide intervals, his reason has returned for a brief s.p.a.ce--all the worse for him."
"The worse for him!" The young man looked at her blankly. "Miss Catheron, do you mean to say it is better for him to be mad?"
"Much better--such madness as his. He does not think--he does not suffer. Memory to him is torture; he loved your mother, Victor--and he lost her--terribly lost her. With memory returns the anguish and despair of that loss as though it were but yesterday. If you saw him as I see him, you would pray as I do, that his mind might be blotted out forever."
"Good Heaven! this is terrible."
"Life is full of terrible things--tragedies, secrets--this is one of them. In these rare intervals of sanity he speaks of you--it is he who directed, in case of your marriage, that you should be told this much--that you are not to be brought to see him, until--"
She paused.
"Until--"
"Until he lies upon his death-bed. That day will be soon, Victor--soon, soon. Those brief glimpses of reason and memory have shortened life.