Lady Kingsland, kneeling in tearless grief by her husband"s side, bent over him to catch the faint whisper.
"My dearest, I am here. What is it?"
"Where is Everard?"
Everard Kingsland, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, handsome boy, lifted his head from the opposite side. It was a handsome, high-bred face--the ancestral face of all the Kingslands--that of this twelve-year-old boy.
"Here, papa!"
"My boy! my boy! whom I have loved so well--whom I have shielded so tenderly. My precious, only son, I must leave you at last!"
The boy stifled a sob as he bent and kissed the ice-cold face. Young as he was, he had the gravity and self-repression of manhood already.
"I have loved you better than my own life," the faint, whispering voice went on. "I would have died to save you an hour of pain. I have kept the one secret of my life well--a secret that has blighted it before its time--but I can not face the dread unknown and bear my secret with me. On my death-bed I must tell all, and my darling boy must bear the blow."
Everard Kingsland listened to his father"s huskily murmured words in boyish wonderment. What secret was he talking of? He glanced across at his mother, and saw her pale cheeks suddenly flushed and her calm eyes kindling.
"No living soul has ever heard from me what I must tell you to-night, my Everard--not even your mother. Do not leave me, Olivia. You, too, must know all that you may guard your son--that you may pity and forgive me. Perhaps I have erred in keeping any secret from you, but the truth was too horrible to tell. There have been times when the thought of it nearly drove me mad. How, then, could I tell the wife I loved--the son I idolized--this cruel and shameful thing?"
The youthful Everard looked simply bewildered--Lady Kingsland excited, expectant, flushed.
She gently wiped the clammy brow and held a reviving cordial to the livid lips.
"My dearest, do not agitate yourself," she said. "We will listen to all you have to say, and love you none the less, let it be what it will."
"My own dear wife! half the secret you know already. You remember the astrologer--the prediction?"
"Surely. You have never been the same man since that fatal night. It is of the prediction you would speak?"
"It is. I must tell my son. I must warn him of the unutterable horror to come. Oh, my boy! my boy! what will become of you when you learn your horrible doom?"
"Papa," the lad said, softly, but growing very white, "I don"t understand--what horror? what doom? Tell me, and see how I will bear it. I am a Kingsland, you know, and the son of a daring race."
"That is my brave boy! Send them out of the room, Olivia--priest, doctor, Mildred, and all--then come close to me, close, close, for my voice is failing--and listen."
Lady Kingsland arose--fair and stately still as twelve years before, and eminently self-sustained in this trying hour. In half a minute she had turned out rector, physician, and daughter, and knelt again by that bed of death.
"The first part of my story, Olivia," began the dying man, "belongs to you. Years before I knew you, when I was a young, hot-headed, rashly impulsive boy, traveling in Spain, I fell in with a gang of wandering gypsies. I had been robbed and wounded by mountain brigands; those gypsies found me, took me to their tents, cared for me, cured me. But long after I was well I lingered with them, for the fairest thing the sun shone on was my black-eyed nurse, Zenith. We were both so young and so fiery-blooded, so--Ah! what need to go over the old, old grounds? There was one hour of mad, brief bliss, parting and forgetfulness. I forgot. Life was a long, idle summer holiday to me.
But she never forgot--never forgave! You remember the woman, Olivia, who burst into the church on the day of our boy"s christening--the woman who died in the s.e.xton"s house? That woman was Zenith--old and withered, and maddened by her wrongs--that woman who died cursing me and mine. A girl, dark and fierce, and terrible as herself, stood by her to the last, lingered at her grave to vow deathless revenge--her daughter and mine!"
The faint voice ceased an instant. The fluttering spirit rallied, and resumed:
"I have reason to know that daughter was married. I have reason to know she had a child--whether boy or girl I can not tell. To that child the inheritance of hatred and revenge will fall; that child, some inward prescience tells me, will wreak deep and awful vengeance for the past. Beware of the grandchild of Zenith, the gypsy--beware, Olivia, for yourself and your son!"
"Is this all?" Olivia said, in a constrained, hard voice.
"All I have to say to you--the rest is for Everard. My son, on the night of your birth an Eastern astrologer came to this house and cast your horoscope. He gave that horoscope to me at day-dawn and departed, and from that hour to this I have neither seen nor heard of him.
Before reading your future in the stars he looked into my palm and told me the past--told me the story of Zenith and her wrongs--told me what no one under heaven but myself knew. My boy, the revelation of that night has blighted my life--broken my heart! The unutterable horror of your future has brought my gray hairs to the grave. Oh, my son! what will become of you when I am gone?"
"What was it, papa?" the lad asked. "What has the future in store for me?"
A convulsive spasm distorted the livid face; the eye-b.a.l.l.s rolled, the death-rattle sounded. With a smothered cry of terror Lady Kingsland lifted the agonized head in her arms.
"Quick, Jasper--the horoscope! Where?"
"My safe--study--secret spring--at back! Oh, G.o.d, have mercy--"
The clock struck sharply--twelve. A vivid blaze of lambent lightning lighted the room; the awful death-rattle sounded once more.
"Beware of Zenith"s grandchild!"
He spoke the words aloud, clear and distinct, and never spoke again.
Many miles away from Kingsland Court, that same sultry, oppressive midsummer night a little third-rate theater on the Surrey side of London was crowded to overflowing. There was a grand spectacular drama, full of transformation scenes, fairies, demons, spirits of air, fire, and water; a brazen orchestra blowing forth, and steam, and orange-peel, and suffocation generally.
Foremost among all the fairies and nymphs, noted for the shortness of her filmy skirts, the supple beauty of her shapely limbs, her incomparable dancing, and her dark, bright beauty, flashed La Sylphine before the foot-lights.
The best _danseuse_ in the kingdom, and the prettiest, and invested with a magic halo of romance, La Sylphine shone like a meteor among lesser stars, and brought down thunders of applause every time she appeared.
The little feet twinkled and flashed; the long, dark waves of hair floated in a shining banner behind her to the tiny waist; the pale, upraised face--the eyes ablaze like black stars! Oh, surely La Sylphine was the loveliest thing, that hot June night, the gas-light shone on!
The fairy spectacle was over--the green drop-curtain fell. La Sylphine had smiled and dipped and kissed hands to thundering bravos for the last time that night, and now, behind the scenes, was rapidly exchanging the spangles and gossamer of fairydom for the shabby and faded merino shawl and dingy straw hat of every-day life.
"You danced better than ever to-night, Miss Monti," a tall demon in tail and horns said, sauntering up to her. "Them there pretty feet of your"n will make your fortune yet, and beat f.a.n.n.y Ellsler!"
"Not to mention her pretty face," said a brother fiend, removing his mask. "Her fortune"s made already, if she"s a mind to take it.
There"s a gay young city swell a-waiting at the wings to see you home, Miss Monti."
"Is it Maynard, the banker"s son?" she asked.
The second demon nodded.
"Then I must escape by the side entrance. When he gets tired waiting, Mr. Smithers, give him La Sylphine"s compliments, and let him go."
She glided past the demons down a dark and winding staircase, and out into the noisy, lighted street.
The girl paused an instant under a street-lamp--she was only a girl--fifteen or sixteen at most, though very tall, with a bright, fearless look--then drawing her shawl closely round her, she flitted rapidly away.
The innumerable city clocks tolled heavily--eleven. The night was pitch-dark; the sheet-lightning blazed across the blackness, and now and then a big drop fell. Still the girl sped on until she reached her destination.
It was the poorest and vilest quarter of the great city--among reeking smells, and horrible sounds, and disgusting sights. The house she entered was tottering to decay--a dreadful den by day and by night, thronged with the very sc.u.m of the London streets. Up and up a long stair-way she flew, paused at a door on the third landing, opened it, and went in.
It was a miserable room--all one could have expected from the street and the house. There was a black grate, one or two broken chairs, a battered table, and a wretched bed in the corner. On the bed a woman--the ghastly skeleton of a woman--lay dying.
The entrance of La Sylphine aroused the woman from the stupor into which she had fallen. She opened her spectral eyes and looked eagerly around.
"My Sunbeam! is it thou?"