There was a dead silence for a moment, as Mrs. Mason relapsed into convulsive sobbing, and everyone looked into each other’s frightened face. Douglas leaned on Lennox, as if all the strength had gone out of him, and George stood aghast. Mrs. Vane alone seemed self-possessed, though an awful anxiety blanched her face, and looked out at her haggard eyes.
“What did you see in the hall?” she asked of Douglas. Briefly he told the incident, and Lady Lennox clasped her hands in despair, exclaiming, “She has destroyed herself, and that was her farewell.”
“Your ladyship is mistaken, I hope, for among the wild things she said this afternoon was a longing to go home at once, as every hour here was torture to her. She may have attempted this in her delirium. Look in her wardrobe, Mrs. Mason, and see what clothes are gone. That will help us in our search. Be calm, I beg of you, my lady; I am sure we shall find the poor girl soon.”
“It’s no use looking, ma’am; she’s gone in the clothes she had on, for she wouldn’t let me take ’em off her. It was a black silk with crepe trimmings, and her black mantle’s gone, and the close crepe bonnet. Here’s her gloves just where they dropped when we laid her down in her faint.”
“Is her purse gone?” asked Mrs. Vane.
“It’s always in her pocket, ma’am; when she drives out, she likes to toss a bit of money to the little lads that open gates, or hold the ponies while she gets flowers, and such like. She was so generous, so kind, poor dear!”
Here Harry came in, saying that no trace of the lost girl was visible in the house. But as he spoke, Jitomar’s dark face and glittering eyes looked over his shoulder with an intelligent motion, which his mistress understood, and put into words.
“He says that one of the long windows in the little breakfast room is unfastened and ajar. Go, gentlemen, at once, and take him with you; he is as keen as a hound, and will do good service. It is just possible that she may have remembered the one o’clock mail train, and taken it. Inquire, and if you find any trace of her, let us know without delay.”
In an instant they were gone, and the anxious watchers left behind traced their progress by the glimmer of the lantern, which Jitomar carried low, that he might follow the print her flying feet had left here and there in the damp earth.
A long hour passed, then Harry and the Indian returned, bringing the good news that a tall lady in black had been seen at the station alone, had not been recognized, being veiled, and had taken the mail train to London. Douglas and Lennox had at once ordered horses, and gone with all speed to catch an early train that left a neighboring town in an hour or two. They would trace and discover the lost girl, if she was in London.
“There can be no doubt that it was she, no lady would be traveling alone at such an hour, and the station people say that she seemed in great haste. Now let us compose ourselves, hope for the best, and comfort her poor aunt.”
As Mrs. Vane spoke, Harry frankly looked his admiration of the cheerful, courageous little woman, and his mother took her arm, saying affectionately, “My dear, what should we do without you? For you have the nerves of a man, the quick wit of a woman, and presence of mind enough for us all.”
The dreary day dawned, and slowly wore away. A dull rain fell, and a melancholy wind sighed among the yellowing leaves. All occupations flagged, all failed, except the one absorbing hope. The servants loitered, unreproved, and gossiped freely among themselves about the sad event. The ladies sat in Mrs. Berkeley’s room, consoling her distress, while Harry haunted the station, waiting for an arrival or a telegram. At noon the letter came.
“The lady in black not Diana. On another scent now. If that fails, home at night.”
No one knew how much they leaned upon this hope, until it failed and all was uncertainty again. Harry searched house, garden, park, and riverside, but found no trace of the lost girl beyond the point where her footprints ended on the hard gravel of the road. So the long afternoon wore on, and at dusk the gentlemen returned, haggard, wet, and weary, bringing no tidings of good cheer. The lady in black proved to be a handsome young governess, called suddenly to town by her father’s dangerous illness. The second search was equally fruitless, and nowhere had Diana been seen.
Their despondent story was scarcely ended when the bell rang. Every servant in the house sprang to answer it, and every occupant of the drawing room listened breathlessly. A short parley followed the ring; then an astonished footman showed in a little farmer lad, with a bundle under his arm.
“He wants to see my lady, and would come in,” said the man, lingering, as all eyes were fixed on the newcomer.
The boy looked important, excited, and frightened, but when Lady Lennox bade him to do his errand without fear, he spoke up briskly, though his voice shook a little, and he now and then gave a nervous clutch at the bundle under his arm.
“Please, my lady, Mother told me to come up as soon as ever I got home, so I ran off right away, knowing you’d be glad to hear something, even if it weren’t good.”
“Something about Miss Stuart, you mean?”
“Yes, my lady, I know where she is.”
“Where? Speak quickly, you shall be paid for your tidings.”
“In that pit, my lady,” and the boy began to cry.
“No!”
Douglas spoke, and turned on the lad a face that stopped his crying, and sent the words to his lips faster than he could utter them, so full of mute entreaty was its glance of anguish.
“You see, sir, I was here this noon, and heard about it. Mrs. Mason’s dream scared me, because my brother was drowned in the pit. I couldn’t help thinking of it all the afternoon, and when work was done, I went home that way. The first thing I saw were tracks in the red clay, coming from the lodge way. The pit has overflowed and made a big pool, but just where it’s deepest, the tracks stopped, and there I found these.”
With a sudden gesture of the arm, he shook out the bundle; a torn mantle, heavily trimmed, and a crushed crepe bonnet dropped upon the floor. Lady Lennox sank back in her chair, and George covered up his face with a groan; but Earl stood motionless, and Mrs. Vane looked as if the sight of these relics had confirmed some wordless fear.
“Perhaps she is not there, however,” she said below her breath. “She may have wandered on and lost herself. Oh, let us look!”
“She is there, ma’am, I see her sperrit,” and the boy’s eyes dilated as they glanced fearfully about him while he spoke. “I was awful scared when I see them things, but she was good to me, and I loved her, so I took ’em up and went on round the pool, meaning to strike off by the great ditch. Just as I got to the bit of brush that grows down by the old clay pits, something flew right up before me, something like a woman, all black but a white face and arms. It gave a strange screech, and seemed to go out of sight all in a minute, like as if it vanished in the pits. I know it warn’t a real woman, it flew so, and looked so awful when it wailed, as Granny says the sperrits do.”
The boy paused, till Douglas beckoned solemnly, and left the room with the one word “Come.”
The brothers went, the lad followed, Mrs. Vane hid her face in Lady Lennox’s lap, and neither stirred nor spoke for one long dreadful hour.
“They are coming,” whispered Mrs. Vane, when at length her quick ear caught the sound of many approaching feet. Slowly, steadily they came on, across the lawn, up the steps through the hall; then there was a pause.
“Go and see if she is found, I cannot,” implored Lady Lennox, spent and trembling with the long suspense.
There was no need to go, for as she spoke, the wail of women’s voices filled the air, and Lennox stood in the doorway with a face that made all question needless.
He beckoned, and Mrs. Vane went to him as if her feet could hardly bear her, while her face might have been that of a dead woman, so white and stony had it grown. Drawing her outside, he said, “My mother must not see her yet. Mrs. Mason can do all that is necessary, if you will give her orders, and spare my mother the first sad duties. Douglas b
ade me come for you, for you are always ready.”
“I will come; where is she?”
“In the library. Send the servants away, in pity to poor Earl. Harry can’t bear it, and it kills me to see her look so.”
“You found her there?”
“Yes, quite underneath the deepest water of the pool. That dream was surely sent by heaven. Are you faint? Can you bear it?”
“I can bear anything. Go on.”
Poor Diana! There she lay, a piteous sight, with stained and dripping garments, slimy weeds entangled in her long hair, a look of mortal woe stamped on her dead face, for the blue lips were parted, as if by the passage of the last painful breath, and the glassy eyes seemed fixed imploringly upon some stern specter, darker and more dreadful even than the most desperate death she had sought and found.
A group of awestricken men and sobbing women stood about her. Harry leaned upon the high arm of the couch where they had laid her, with his head down upon his arm, struggling to control himself, for he had loved her with a boy’s first love, and the horror of her end unmanned him. Douglas sat at the head of the couch, holding the dead hand, and looking at her with a white tearless anguish, which made his face old and haggard, as with the passage of long and heavy years.
With an air of quiet command, and eyes that never once fell on the dead girl, Mrs. Vane gave a few necessary orders, which cleared the room of all but the gentlemen and herself. Laying her hand softly on Earl’s shoulder, she said, in a tone of tenderest compassion, “Come with me, and let my try to comfort you, while George and Harry take the poor girl to her room, that these sad tokens of her end may be removed, and she made beautiful for the eyes of those who loved her.”
He heard, but did not answer in words, for waving off the brothers, Earl took his dead love in his arms, and carrying her to her own room, laid her down tenderly, kissed her pale forehead with one lingering kiss, and then without a word shut himself into his own apartment.
Mrs. Vane watched him go with a dark glance, followed him upstairs, and when his door closed, muttered low to herself, “He loved her better than I knew, but she has made my task easier than I dared to hope it would be, and now I can soon teach him to forget.”
A strange smile passed across her face as she spoke, and still, without a glance at the dead face, left the chamber for her own, whither Jitomar was soon summoned, and where he long remained.
Chapter VII
THE FOOTPRINT BY THE POOL
THREE sad and solemn days had passed, and now the house was still again. Mr. Berkeley had removed his wife, and the remains of his niece, and Lennox had gone with him. Mrs. Vane devoted herself to her hostess, who had been much affected by the shock, and to Harry, who was almost ill with the excitement and the sorrow. Douglas had hardly been seen except by his own servant, who reported that he was very quiet, but in a stern and bitter mood, which made solitude his best comforter. Only twice had he emerged during those troubled days. Once, when Mrs. Vane’s sweet voice came up from below singing a sacred melody in the twilight, he came out and paced to and fro in the long gallery, with a softer expression than his face had worn since the night of Diana’s passionate farewell. The second time was in answer to a tap at his door, on opening which he saw Jitomar, who with the graceful reverence of his race, bent on one knee, as with dark eyes full of sympathy, he delivered a lovely bouquet of the flowers Diana most loved, and oftenest wore. The first tears that had been seen there softened Earl’s melancholy eyes, as he took the odorous gift, and with a grateful impulse stretched his hand to the giver. But Jitomar drew back with a gesture which signified that his mistress sent the offering, and glided away. Douglas went straight to the drawing room, found Mrs. Vane alone, and inexpressibly touched by her tender thought of him, he thanked her warmly, let her detain him for an hour with her soothing conversation, and left her, feeling that comfort was possible when such an angel administered it.
On the third day, impelled by an unconquerable wish to revisit the lonely spot hereafter, and forever to be haunted by the memory of that tragic death, he stole out, unperceived, and took his way to the pool. It lay there dark and still under a gloomy sky, its banks trampled by many hasty feet; and in one spot the red clay still bore the impress of the pale shape drawn from the water on that memorable night. As he stood there, he remembered the lad’s story of the spirit which he believed he had seen. With a dreary smile at the superstition of the boy, he followed his tracks along the bank as they branched off toward the old pits, now half-filled with water by recent rains. Pausing where the boy had passed when the woman’s figure sprang up before him with its old-witch cry, Douglas looked keenly all about, wondering if it were possible for any human being to vanish as the lad related. Several yards from the clump of bushes and coarse grass at his feet lay the wide pit; between it and the spot where he stood stretched a smooth bed of clay, unmarked by the impress of any step, as he first thought. A second and more scrutinizing glance showed him the print of a human foot on the very edge of the pit. Stepping lightly forward, he examined it. Not the boy’s track, for he had not passed the bushes, but turned and fled in terror, when the phantom seemed to vanish. It was a child’s footprint, apparently, or that of a very small woman; probably the latter, for it was a slender, shapely print, cut deep into the yielding clay, as if by the impetus of a desperate spring. But whither had she sprung? Not across the pit, for that was impossible to any but a very active man, or a professional gymnast of either sex. Douglas took the leap, and barely reached the other side, though a tall agile man. Nor did he find any trace of the other leaper, though the grass that grew to the very edge of that side might have concealed a lighter, surer tread than his own.
With a thrill of suspicion and dread, he looked down into the turbid water of the pit, asking himself if it were possible that two women had found their death so near together on that night. The footprint was not Diana’s; hers was larger, and utterly unlike; whose was it, then? With a sudden impulse he cut a long, forked pole, and searched the depths of the pit. Nothing was found; again and again he plunged in the pole and drew it carefully up, after sweeping the bottom in all directions. A dead branch, a fallen rod, a heavy stone were all he found.
As he stood pondering over the mysterious mark, having recrossed the pit, some sudden peculiarity in it seemed to give it a familiar aspect. Kneeling down, he examined it minutely, and as he looked, an expression of perplexity came into his face, while he groped for some recollection in the dimness of the past, the gloom of the present.
“Where have I seen a foot like this, so dainty, so slender, yet so strong, for the tread was firm here, the muscles wonderfully elastic to carry this unknown woman over that wide gap? Stay! It was not a foot, but a shoe that makes this mark so familiar. Who wears a shoe with a coquettish heel like this stamped here in the clay? A narrow sole, a fairylike shape, a slight pressure downward at the top, as if the wearer walked well and lightly, yet danced better than she walked? Good heavens! Can it be? That word ‘danced’ makes it clear to me—but it is impossible—unless—can she have discovered me, followed me, wrought me fresh harm, and again escaped me? I will be satisfied at all hazards, and if I find her, Virginie shall meet a double vengeance for a double wrong.”
Up he sprang, as these thoughts swept through his mind, and like someone bent on some all-absorbing purpose, he dashed homeward through bush and brake, park and garden, till, coming to the lawn, he restrained his impetuosity, but held on his way, turning neither to the right nor the left, till he stood in his own room. Without pausing for breath, he snatched the satin slipper from the case, put it in his breast, and hurried back to the pool. Making sure that no one followed him, he cautiously advanced, and bending, laid the slipper in the mold of that mysterious foot. It fitted exactly! Outline, length, width, even the downward pressure at the toe corresponded, and the sole difference was to the depth of heel, as if the walking boot or shoe had been thicker than the slipper.
Bent on assuring hi
mself, Douglas pressed the slipper carefully into the smooth clay beside the other print, and every slight peculiarity was repeated with wonderful accuracy.
“I am satisfied,” he muttered, adding, as he carefully effaced both the little tracks, “no one must follow this out but myself. I have sworn to find her and her accomplice, and henceforth it shall be my life business to keep my vow.”
A few moments he stood buried in dark thoughts and memories, then putting up the slipper, he bent his steps toward the home of little Wat, the farmer’s lad. He was watering horses at the spring, his mother said, and Douglas strolled that way, saying he desired to give the boy something for the intelligence he brought three days before. Wat lounged against the wall, while the tired horses slowly drank their fill, but when he saw the gentleman approaching, he looked troubled, for his young brain had been sadly perplexed by the late events.
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