"Oh, thank heaven!" and, totally overcome, she sank for the first time in her life, almost fainting into her seat.
Richmond looked at her with deep, scornful eyes.
"_You_ to thank Heaven!--_you_ to take that name on your lips!--you, who this night attempted a murder! Oh, woman do you not fear the vengeance of that Heaven you invoke!"
"Oh, Richmond! spare me not. I deserve all you would say. Oh! in all this world there is not another so lost, so fallen, so guilty as I."
"You are right, there is not; for one who would attempt the life of a young and innocent girl must be steeped in guilt so black that Hades itself must shudder. Had you caused the death of Frederica Richmond, as you tried to, I myself would have gone to the nearest magistrate, had you arrested, and forced you off this very night to the county jail. I would have prosecuted you, though every one else in the world was for you; and I would have gone to behold you perish on the scaffold, and then--and then only--felt that justice was satisfied."
She almost shrieked, as she covered her face with her hands from his terrible gaze, but, unheeding her anguish, he went on in a calm, pitiless voice:
"You, one night not long since, told me you wished you had never married me. That you really ever wished it I do not now believe; for one who could commit a cold-blooded murder would not hesitate at a lie--a _lie_.
Do you hear, Georgia? But I tell you now, that I wish I had been dead and in my grave ere I ever met Georgia Darrell!"
"Oh, Richmond! Spare me! spare me!" she cried, in a dying voice.
"No; I am like yourself--I spare not. You have merited this, and a thousand times more from me, and you shall listen now. That you married me for my wealth and for the power it would give you, I know only too well. You were an unnatural child, and I might have known you would be an unnatural woman; but I willfully blinded my eyes, and believed what you told me that accursed night on the sea-sh.o.r.e, and I married you--fool that I was! I braved the scorn of the world, the sneers of my friends, the just anger of my mother, and stooped--are you listening, Georgia?--and _stooped_ to wed you. And now I have my reward."
"Oh, Richmond! I shall go mad!" she wailed, writhing in her seat, and feeling as if every fiber in her heart were tearing from its place, so intense was her anguish.
But still the clear, clarion-like voice rang out on the air like a death-bell, cold, calm, and pitiless as the grave:
"Once, in one of your storms of pa.s.sion, madam, you asked me why I married you. Now I answer you: because I was mad, demented, besotted, crazed, or I most a.s.suredly should never have dreamed of such a thing.
Perhaps you wish I had not, for then the gallant sailor you admire so much might have taken it into his hair-brained head to do what I did in a fit of insanity--for which a life of misery like this is to atone--and married you. That I have deprived you of this happiness, I deeply regret; for, madam, much as you may repent this marriage, you can never, _never_ repent it half as much as I do now."
She had fallen at his feet, whether from physical weakness, or whether she had writhed there in her intolerable agony, he did not know, and, at that moment, did not care. He stepped back, looked down upon her as she lay a moment, and went on:
"I fancied I loved you well enough then to brave the whole world for your sake; but that, like all the rest of my short brain-fever, has completely pa.s.sed away. What feeling can one have for a murderess--for such in heart you are--but one of horror and loathing?"
She sprang to her feet with a moaning cry, and stood before him with one arm half raised; her lips opened as if to speak, but no voice came forth.
"Hear me out, madam," he interposed, waving his hand, "for it is the last time, perhaps, you will ever be troubled by a word from me. You have driven my guests from my house, you have eternally disgraced me, and, lest you should murder the very servants next, must not be allowed to go free. While a friend of mine resides under this roof you shall remain locked a close prisoner in your room, as a lunatic too dangerous to be at large. And if that does not subdue the fiend within you, one thing yet remains for me to do--that I may go free once more."
He paused, and the rage he had subdued by the strength of his mighty will all along, showed now in the death-like whiteness of his face, white even to his lips, like the white ashes over red-hot coals.
Again her arm was faintly raised, again her trembling lips parted, but the power of speech seemed to have been suddenly taken from her. No sound came forth.
"What I allude to will make me free as air--free as I was before I met you--free to bring another mistress to Richmond House before your very eyes. Money will procure it, and of that I have enough. I allude to a _divorce_--do you know what that means?"
Yes, she knew. Her arms dropped by her side as if she had been suddenly stricken with death, the light died out in her eyes, the words she would have uttered were frozen on her lips, and, as if the last blow she could ever receive had fallen, she laid her hand on her heart and lifted her eyes, calm as his now, to his face.
Some author has said, "Great shocks kill weak minds, and stir strong ones with a calm resembling death." So it was now with Georgia; she had been stunned into calm--the calm of undying, life-long despair. She had believed and trusted all along--she had thought he loved her until now--and _now_!
What was there in her face that awed even him? It was not anger, nor reproach, nor yet sorrow. A thrill of nameless terror shot through his heart, and with the last cruel words all anger pa.s.sed away. He advanced a step toward her, as if to speak again, but she raised her hand, and lifting her eyes to his face with a look he never forgot, she turned and pa.s.sed from the room.
And Richard Wildair was alone. He had not meant one-half of what he had said in the white heat of his pa.s.sion, and the idea of a divorce had no more entered his head than that of slaying himself on the spot had. He had said it in his rage, none the less deep for being suppressed, and now he would have given uncounted worlds that those fatal words had never been uttered.
He went out to the hall, but she had gone--he caught the last flutter of her dress as she pa.s.sed the head of the stairs toward her own room.
"I ought not to have said that," he said uneasily to himself as he paced up and down. "I am sorry for it now. To-morrow I will see her again, and then--well, "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." I cannot live this life longer. I will not stay in Burnfield. I cannot stay. I shall go abroad and take her with me. Yes, that is what I will do. Travel will work wonders in Georgia, and who knows what happiness may be in store for us yet."
He walked to the window and looked out. The white snow lay in great drifts on every side, looking cold and white and death-like in the pale l.u.s.ter of a wintry moon. With a shudder he turned away, and threw himself moodily on a couch in the warm parlor, saying, as if to rea.s.sure himself:
"Yes, to-morrow I will see her, and all shall be well--to-morrow--to-morrow."
There was a paper lying on the table, and he took it up and looked lightly over it. The first thing that struck his eyes was a poem, headed:
"_To-morrow never comes_."
Richmond Wildair would have been ashamed to tell it, but he actually started and turned pale with superst.i.tious terror. It seemed so like an answer to his thoughts that startled him more than anything of the kind had ever done before.
To him that night pa.s.sed in feverish dreams. How pa.s.sed it with another beneath that roof?
At early morning he was awake. An unaccountable presentment of an impending calamity was upon him and would not be shaken off.
Scarcely knowing what he did, he went up to Georgia"s room, and softly turned the handle of the door. He had expected to find it locked, but it was not so; it opened at his touch, and he went in.
Why does he start and clutch it as if about to fall? The room is empty, and _the bed has not been slept in all night_.
A note, addressed to him, lies on the table. Dizzily he opens it, and reads:
"MY DEAREST HUSBAND: Let me call you so for this once, this last time--you are free! On this earth I will never disgrace you again.
May heaven bless you and forgive.
"GEORGIA."
She was gone--gone forever! Clutching the note in his hand, he staggered, rather than walked, down stairs, opened the door, and, in a cold gray of coming dawn, pa.s.sed out.
All around the stainless snow-drifts seemed mocking him with their white blank faces, lying piled as they had been last night when he had driven his young wife from his side. Cold and white they were here still, and Georgia was--where?
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DAWN OF ANOTHER DAY.
"Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only "It might have been."
G.o.d pity them both, and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall; For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these, "It might have been.""
WHITTIER.
In the dead of night--of that last, sorrowful night--a slight, dark figure had flitted from one of the many doors of Richmond House, fluttered away in the chill night round through the sleeping town. A visitor came to Miss Jerusha"s sea-side cottage that night, with a face so white and cold that the snow-wreaths dimmed beside it; the white face lay on the cold threshold, the dark figure was prostrate in the snow-drift before the door, and there the last farewell was taken while Miss Jerusha lay sleeping within. And then the dusky form was whirling away and away again like a leaf on a blast, another stray waif on the great stream of life.
Six pealed from the town clock of Burnfield. The locomotive shrieked, the bell rang, and the fiery monster was rushing along with its living freight to the great city of New York.
In the dusky gloom of that cold, cheerless winter morning the tall, dark form, all dressed in black and closely vailed had glided in like a spirit and taken her seat. m.u.f.fled in caps, and cloaks, and comforters, every one had enough to do to mind themselves and keep from freezing, and no one heeded the still form that leaned back among the cushions, giving as little sign of life as though it were a statue in ebony.