Then came a long silence, a great suspense--the girl watching her mistress with open, frightened eyes; the woman sitting motionless with a fixed inscrutable look again on her features, as if absorbed in painfully intense thought.
But Catherine King was not thinking at all. The image of Mary, the touch of the dear hand, had fascinated her, had paralyzed her brain for the time. She was conscious of no mental operations; memory and emotion were effaced. Her mind was a blank, or rather in a state of expectant attention, waiting for some accident to wake it again to a rush of thought; like a magazine of powder, inactive till the spark should come.
Such a complete suspension of the mental faculties often succeeds to excessive excitement and conflict of ideas, only to precede another mightier wave of emotion, and fiercer gust of will, even as the calm precedes the storm.
Of a sudden the spark came, the mind was at work again. But a strange thing had come to pa.s.s. It seemed to Catherine as if her brain had become a mere machine. Will was dead; there was no deliberation, no weighing of conflicting motives; but some other power, some dominant idea that had come from outside, took the place of will, and worked the mind--drove it along one narrow groove, allowing it to go neither to the right nor to the left, but straight on, wandering into no side a.s.sociations, hindered by no opposing fears, hopes, or memories.
It was if some demon had possessed her, before whom her reason bowed, a demon whose biddings she must obey without resistance.
She felt as if the chord of volition had snapped in her brain, when this strong impulse fell on it. So without hesitation, or thought of consequences, she obeyed the impulse and spoke what she was compelled to--spoke in a dreamy pa.s.sionless voice at first, like one under the mesmeric influence. All the fierce love and all the fierce hate were slumbering for the time, the idea was alone in her mind.
She rose to her full height, and taking the girl"s hand again in hers, the words, unpremeditated by her, came forth slowly.
"Mary, you have left us, but you have not betrayed us. I know you too well to suspect you of that. You are free. It is unnecessary to release you from your promises to us--you are free without that. Oh, Mary! my heart is broken. We have failed--failed miserably. Our Society is broken up. When it came to action, the weak women would not support me. The very object of the Society is no more. Everything has gone wrong. The Act of Parliament relating to the Tenure of Land on which all our hopes hung will not be pa.s.sed after all. There are signs to show that the Radicals will not obtain that overwhelming majority we looked forward to at the coming elections. Our plans are postponed indefinitely, which means that all is lost. There is an accursed reaction in the country. It is all over, my scheme, my hopes. You are free--marry, do what you will.
You need not fear the weight of the secret any more. You need not tremble to read in the papers accounts of our doings. It is all over, and there is nothing left me now but to die."
Thus had Catherine King been driven by the irresistible power to tell this comforting lie to the girl; all the ideas and plans that filled her mind when she came down having vanished completely as if they had never been. And she said the very thing that was alone needed to make Mary really free and happy. The girl had no further cause to fear the secret.
It was a harmless secret now. The horrible work would not be done. Her conscience would not torment her for preserving a criminal silence, and so becoming the accomplice of a.s.sa.s.sins.
A light of supreme triumphant joy came to Mary"s eyes. She could not speak at first, so moved was she, but stood with her hands clasped together, trying to realize all that those precious words meant for her.
Then Catherine was inspired once more by the power to speak--to complete her work.
"Mary! you must promise me one thing. Kneel down, girl,--kneel and swear by the G.o.d in whom you now believe that you will keep this promise."
She spoke in a terrible voice that compelled obedience. It was not herself but _that_ which possessed her, that cried through her mouth in such commanding accents.
Mary knelt down, pale and trembling.
"I swear it," she whispered.
"Remember! as long as you live, if I, or any of the Sisterhood, at any time, invite you to visit them or meet them anywhere--you must not go.
Avoid us all for ever. If you act otherwise you will die."
"But, oh! dear mother! what a cruel promise to exact from me," and the girl embraced the woman. "I must see _you_, you cannot mean that."
Catherine drew herself back quickly, as if stung by the girl"s affection. "You have sworn," she interrupted her in a hoa.r.s.e voice. "I tell you girl that you will surely die if you do not observe that oath."
Mary approached as if to embrace her mistress once more, her arms stretched out towards her pleadingly; but Catherine seized, her by the arm and pushed her back savagely--she was coming to her senses, and began to realize all she had done.
"Keep away, girl; keep away!" she almost shrieked. "You don"t know what I have sacrificed for your sake--accursed be the day I met you!--accursed be my own weakness! Keep away from me! Don"t come fawning on me or I will kill you."
Then without another word she turned and walked away rapidly through the woods and was lost to sight, leaving Mary confused, dazed, and full of compa.s.sion for the miserable woman whom she had loved so well; but after a few moments all other ideas vanished before the great happiness that had come to her.
_The shadow had gone._
Oh, the blessed relief to the poor distracted soul! It was too intense a joy for her to bear! She lay down on the gra.s.s, and sobbed wildly, until Mrs. White, who had become anxious about her, came and found her there. Then the girl rose, and placing her arms round her friend"s neck, cried with an hysterical laugh, "Dear, dear, Mrs. White! the kind G.o.d has answered your prayers for me."
That very evening, as soon as she reached Mrs. White"s cottage, Mary wrote her first letter to Dr. Duncan, the first love letter of her life.
It was a very short one.
"My love, Come to me as soon as you can,
"Your loving, "MARY."
CHAPTER XXIV.
DESPAIR.
"What have I done? what have I done? Am I mad?" asked the wretched woman of herself, as she rocked herself to and fro uneasily, sitting in an arm-chair by the fire. The weather was warm but Catherine King had lit the fire; she felt chilly and ill, and could not bear to be left alone in that still room without some moving thing by her, were it only the leaping flames.
It was early in the evening of the day after her interview with Mary Grimm. She sat in the little parlour of her house in Maida Vale gazing at the red embers, waiting for the arrival of the two leading Sisters of the Inner Circle. They were coming to learn from her own lips the result of her visit to Farnham, to prepare for the execution of the traitor.
How could she meet them, how to tell them what she had done? She could not herself distinctly call to mind how it had all happened. She had gone down to the country with a firm resolve, and had been driven by she knew not what to act in direct opposition to that resolve and strong desire. She had done what she now cursed herself for doing.
"Yes, I am mad--I must be mad to have done this thing!" she muttered to herself with impatient fury. "With my own hands I have ruined the Cause.
It is all over. I am mad."
As the time of the appointment drew near, the repugnance she felt to entering into a personal explanation with the Sisters intensified. No!
she dare not meet them--she would write to them; so she put on her bonnet and cloak, and was just about to leave the house when a ring came at the street bell, and the maid-servant announced Sisters Susan and Eliza.
"Good-evening, Sisters," said the Chief, "I did not expect you so soon; you are before your time."
"I think we are," said Sister Eliza. "The fact is, we were anxious to learn how you fared at the cottage yesterday."
"Fared!" exclaimed Catherine bitterly.
"Yes, Sister Catherine," Susan said, "we are very anxious to get that girl up here as soon as possible. For my part, I cannot feel safe as long as she is away."
"Then I am afraid you will never feel happy again, Sister Susan,"
Catherine replied with a mocking ring in her voice.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Susan.
"Sit down--sit down, Sisters! I think you had better hear the worst at once," said the Chief with a reckless laugh.
The other two women looked at each other when they heard these discouraging words; Susan"s face turned very pale.
Catherine observed her and laughed again. "No, no! Susan, it is not so bad as _you_ think--we are not betrayed--your pretty neck is not endangered _yet_."
The strange manner of the Chief--the savage despair of her tones were so different from anything they had ever noticed with her before, that the women were too startled to question her. They sat in awed silence while Catherine paced up and down the room restlessly. Suddenly she stopped, and turning to the elder of her two accomplices said, "Sister Eliza! I will tell you what I have done--I will hide nothing from you--I am too maddened to care what you may think. I know after this, all my influence will be lost, but it matters not now. I have seen Mary Grimm. I have done exactly the reverse of what I went down to do. I did not invite her to town--but I made her swear to keep out of our way. I have given her her freedom. I told her the Society was broken up, that we should need her no longer, I did all this--What do you think of it? Eh! What do you think of it?"
She spoke very rapidly and wildly; then she sat down in the chair by the fire and turned her head away from them.