The dagger was still wet with her blood. "Her blood!--Oh, G.o.d!-her blood!--hers! All mine in life, and yet never so much mine as now--mine in death!--all mine! mine! And she was not afraid--not the least afraid!
Her eyes had room only for her overwhelming love--love--just love, no fear, even that hour when face to face with the Great Mystery. And this was her blood--_hers!_"
He believed that she had been glad to die. He believed--oh, he was sure, that death in his arms--and from his hand--had been sweeter than life could have been--with that wretch--and always without him--her lover!
Yes, she had been glad to die. She had been grateful for her escape! And again the dagger drew his fascinated gaze and wrung from his lips the cry, "Her blood--hers! G.o.d in Heaven! Her blood!--hers!"
He put his hand to his head with an inarticulate cry of bewilderment.
Then, with one supreme effort, he began to stagger hastily but noiselessly about the room. The servants of the house were already astir, and the day would soon be here. He put his sacred letters carefully away, and destroyed all worthless papers, mechanically, but still methodically.
Then he hastily scribbled a few lines, and laid them beside his letters, for Verdayne would be with him now in a few hours. His father--yes, his own father! How he would like to see him once more--just once more--with the knowledge of their relationship as a closer bond between them--to talk about his mother--his beautiful, queenly mother--and her wonderful, wonderful love! Yet--and he sighed as he thought of his deserted kingdom--after all, all in vain--in vain! It was not to be--all that glory--that triumph! Fate had willed differently. He was obeying the Law!
And his mother would not fail to understand. Verdayne must have loved his mother like this! O G.o.d, Love was a fearful thing, he thought, to wreck a life--a terrible thing, even a hideous thing--but in spite of everything it was all that was worth living for--and dying for!
The storm had spent its fury now, and only the steady drip, drip of the rain reminded him of the falling of tears.
"Opal!" he groaned, "Opal!" And he threw himself upon the bed, clasping his dagger in uncontrollable agony. "O life is cruel, hard, bitter! I"ll none of it!--we"ll none of it, you and I!" His voice grew triumphant in its raving. "It was worth all the cost--even the sorrow and death! But the end has come! Opal! Opal! I am coming, sweet!--coming!"
And the dagger, still red with the blood of his darling, found its unerring way to his own heart; and Paul Zalenska forgot his dreams, his ambitions, his love, his pa.s.sion, and his despair in the darkness and quiet of eternal sleep.
"_Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord._"
CHAPTER XXIX
Sir Paul Verdayne reached Lucerne on the afternoon of the next day. He was as eager as a boy for the reunion with his son. How he loved the Boy--his Boy--the living embodiment of a love that seemed to him greater than any other love the world had ever known.
The storm had ceased and in the brilliancy of the afternoon sunshine little trace of the fury of the night could be seen. Nature smiled radiantly through the tear-drops still glistening on tree and shrub and flower, like some capricious coquette defying the world to prove that she had ever been sad.
To Sir Paul, the place was hallowed with memories of his Queen, and his heart and soul were full of her as he left the train. At the station Vasili awaited him with the news of the double tragedy that had horrified Lucerne.
In that moment, Sir Paul"s heart broke. He grasped at the faithful servitor for a support the old man was scarce able to give. He looked up into the pitying face, grown old and worn in the service of the young King and his heart thrilled, as it ever thrilled, at the sight of the long, cruel scar he remembered so well--the scar which the Kalmuck had received in the service of his Queen, long years before.
Sir Paul loved Vasili for that--loved him even more for the service he had done the world when he choked to death the royal murderer of his Queen, on the fatal night of that tragedy so cruelly alive in his memory. He looked again at the scar on the swarthy face, and yet he knew it was as nothing to the scar made in the old man"s heart that day.
In some way--they never knew how--they managed to reach the scene of the tragedy, and Sir Paul, at his urgent request, was left alone with the body of his son.
Oh, G.o.d! Could he bear this last blow--and live?
After a time, when reason began to re-a.s.sert itself, he searched and found the letters that had told the Boy-king the story of his birth. Was there no word at all for him--his father?--save the brief telegram he had received the night before?
Ah, yes! here was a note. His Boy had thought of him, then, even at the last. He read it eagerly.
"Father--dear Father--you who alone of all the world can understand--forgive and pity your son who has found the cross too heavy--the crown too th.o.r.n.y--to bear! I go to join my unhappy mother across the river that men call death--and there together we shall await the coming of the husband and father we could neither of us claim in this miserable, gray old world. Father Paul--dearest and best and truest of fathers, your Boy has learned with you the cost of love, and has gladly paid the price--"sorrow and death!""
He bent again over the cold form, he pushed aside the cl.u.s.tering curls, and kissed again and again, with all the fervor and pain of a lifetime"s repression, the white marble face of his son.
And a few words of that little note rang in his ears unceasingly--"dearest, and best, and _truest_ of fathers!" _Truest of fathers_! Ah, yes! The Boy--his Boy--had understood!
And the scalding tears came that were his one salvation, for they washed away for a time some of the deadly ache from his bereaved heart.
When the force of his outburst was spent, Sir Paul Verdayne mastered himself resolutely. There was much to be done. It was indeed a double torture to find such an affliction here, of all places under Heaven, but he told himself that his Queen would have him brave and strong, and master his grief as an English gentleman should. And her wishes were still, as they had ever been, the guide of his every thought and action.
One thing he was determined upon. The world must never know the truth.
To be sure, Sir Paul himself did not know the secret of that one day. He could only surmise. Even Vasili did not know. The Boy had cleverly managed to have the day, as he had the preceding one, "all to himself,"
as he had informed Vasili, and Opal had been equally skillful in escaping the attendance of her maid. They had left the hotel separately at night, in different directions, returning separately at night. Who was there to suspect that they had pa.s.sed the day together, or had even met each other at all? Surely--no one!
And what was there for the world to know, in the mystery of their death?
Nothing! They were each found alone, stabbed to the heart, and the dagger that had done the deed had not even been withdrawn from the body of the Boy, when they found him. Sir Paul and Vasili had recognized it, but who would dare to insinuate that the same dagger had drunk the blood of the young American lady, or to say whose hand had struck either blow?
It was all a mystery, and Sir Paul was determined that it should remain so.
Money can accomplish anything, and though all Europe rang with the story, no scandal--nor hint of it--besmirched the fair fame of the unhappy Boy and girl who had loved "not wisely, but too well!"
There had, indeed, been for them, as they had playfully said--"No to-morrow!"
And Sir Paul Verdayne, kneeling by the bier, with its trappings of a kingdom"s mourning, which hid beneath its rich adornment all the joy that life for twenty years had held for him, felt for the first time a sense of guilt, as he looked back upon his past.
He did not regret his love. He could never do that! Truly, a man and a woman had a right to love and mate as they would, if the consequences of their deeds rested only upon their own heads. But to bring children into the world, the fruit of such a union, to suffer and die, "for the sins of the fathers," as his son had suffered and died--there was the sin--a selfish, unpardonable sin! "And the wages of sin is death."
He had never felt the truth before. He had been so happy in his Boy, and so proud of his future, that there had never been a question in his mind. But now he was face to face with the terrible consequences.
"Oh, G.o.d!" he cried, "truly my punishment is just--but it is greater than I can bear!"
The Crown Novels
=HER SOUL AND HER BODY, By Louise Closser Hale=
The struggle between the spirit and the flesh of a young girl early in life compelled to make her own way. Exposed to the temptations of life in a big city, the contest between her better and lower natures is described with psychological a.n.a.lysis and tender sympathy. Absorbingly interesting.
=h.e.l.l"S PLAYGROUND, by Ida Vera Simonton=
This book deals with primal conditions in a land where "there ain"t no ten commandments"; where savagery, naked and unashamed, is not confined to the blacks. It is a record of the life in the African tropics and it is a powerful and fascinating story of a scene that has rarely been depicted in fiction.
=THE MYSTERY OF No. 47, by J. Storer Clouston=
This is a most ingenious detective story--a thriller in every sense of the word. The reader is led cleverly on until he is at a loss to know what to expect, and, completely baffled, is unable to lay the book down until he has finished the story and satisfied his perplexity.
=THE SENTENCE OF SILENCE, by Reginald Wright Kauffman=