“Nature could bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell full upon the point upturned to receive her.
“A groan; then a gasping sigh from him, and silence settled upon the room and upon my heart, and so far as I knew upon the whole created world.
* * * *
“That is my story, friends. Do you wonder that I have never been or lived like other men?”
After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn went on, to say:
“I don’t think I ever had a moment’s doubt that my parents both lay dead on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself—which may have been soon, and may not have been for a long while—the lightning had ceased to flash, leaving the darkness stretching like a blank pall between me and that spot in which were concentrated all the terrors of which my imagination was capable. I dared not enter it. I dared not take one step that way. My instinct was to fly and hide my trembling body again in my own bed; and associated with this, in fact dominating it and making me old before my time, was another—never to tell; never to let any one, least of all my grandfather—know what that forbidden room now contained. I felt in an irresistible sort of way that my father’s and mother’s honour was at stake. Besides, terror held me back; I felt that I should die if I spoke. Childhood has such terrors and such heroisms. Silence often covers in such, abysses of thought and feeling which astonish us in later years. There is no suffering like a child’s, terrified by a secret which it dare not for some reason disclose.
“Events aided me. When, in desperation to see once more the light and all the things which linked me to life—my little bed, the toys on the window-sill, my squirrel in its cage—I forced myself to retraverse the empty house, expecting at every turn to hear my father’s voice or come upon the image of my mother—yes, such was the confusion of my mind, though I knew well enough even then that they were dead and that I should never hear the one or see the other. I was so benumbed with the cold in my half-dressed condition, that I woke in a fever next morning after a terrible dream which forced from my lips the cry of ‘Mother! Mother!’—only that.
“I was cautious even in delirium. This delirium and my flushed cheeks and shining eyes led them to be very careful of me. I was told that my mother was away from home; and when after two days of search they were quite sure that all effort to find either her or my father were likely to prove fruitless, that she had gone to Europe where we would follow her as soon as I was well. This promise, offering as it did, a prospect of immediate release from the terrors which were consuming me, had an extraordinary effect upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was well now and ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse equable, and my whole condition wonder fully improved, and attributing it, as was natural, to my hope of soon joining my mother, advised my whim to be humoured and this hope kept active till travel and intercourse with children should give me strength and prepare me for the bitter truth ultimately awaiting me. They listened to him and in twenty-four hours our preparations were made. We saw the house closed—with what emotions surging in one small breast, I leave you to imagine—and then started on our long tour. For five years we wandered over the continent of Europe, my grandfather finding distraction, as well as myself, in foreign scenes and associations.
“But return was inevitable. What I suffered on reentering this house, God and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery been made in our absence; or would it be made now that renovation and repairs of all kinds were necessary? Time finally answered me. My secret was safe and likely to continue so, and this fact once settled, life became endurable, if not cheerful. Since then I have spent only two nights out of this house, and they were unavoidable. When my grandfather died I had the wainscot door cemented in. It was done from this side and the cement painted to match the wood. No one opened the door nor have I ever crossed its threshold. Sometimes I think I have been foolish; and sometimes I know that I have been very wise. My reason has stood firm; how do I know that it would have done so if I had subjected myself to the possible discovery that one of both of them might have been saved if I had disclosed instead of concealed my adventure.”
* * * *
A pause during which white horror had shone on every face; then with a final glance at Violet, he said:
“What sequel do you see to this story, Miss Strange? I can tell the past, I leave you to picture the future.”
Rising, she let her eye travel from face to face till it rested on the one awaiting it, when she answered dreamily:
“If some morning in the news column there should appear an account of the ancient and historic home of the Van Broecklyns having burned to the ground in the night, the whole country would mourn, and the city feel defrauded of one of its treasures. But there are five persons who would see in it the sequel which you ask for.”
When this happened, as it did happen, some few weeks later, the astonishing discovery was made that no insurance had been put upon this house. Why was it that after such a loss Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed to renew his youth? It was a constant source of comment among his friends.
VIOLET STRANGE IN “VIOLET’S OWN”
“It has been too much for you?”
“I am afraid so.”
It was Roger Upjohn who had asked the question; it was Violet who answered. They had withdrawn from a crowd of dancers to a balcony, half-shaded, half open to the moon—a balcony made, it would seem, for just such stolen interviews between waltzes.
Now, as it happened, Roger’s face was in the shadow, but Violet’s in the full light. Very sweet it looked, very ethereal, but also a little wan. He noticed this and impetuously cried:
“You are pale; and your hand! see, how it trembles!”
Slowly withdrawing it from the rail where it had rested, she sent one quick glance his way and, in a low voice, said:
“I have not slept since that night.”
“Four days!” he murmured. Then, after a moment of silence, “You bore yourself so bravely at the time, I thought, or rather, I hoped, that success had made you forget the horror. I could not have slept myself, if I had known—”
“It is part of the price I pay,” she broke in gently. “All good things have to be paid for. But I see—I realize that you do not consider what I am doing good. Though it helps other people—has helped you—you wonder why, with all the advantages I possess, I should meddle with matters so repugnant to a woman’s natural instincts.”
Yes, he wondered. That was evident from his silence. Seeing her as she stood there, so quaintly pretty, so feminine in look and manner—in short, such a flower—it was but natural that he should marvel at the incongruity she had mentioned.
“It has a strange, odd look,” she admitted, after a moment of troubled hesitation. “The most considerate person cannot but regard it as a display of egotism or of a most mercenary spirit. The cheque you sent me for what I was enabled to do for you in Massachusetts (the only one I have ever received which I have been tempted to refuse) shows to what extent you rated my help and my—my expectations. Had I been a poor girl struggling for subsistence, this generosity would have warmed my heart as a token of your desire to cut that struggle short. But taken with your knowledge of my home and its luxuries, it has often made me wonder what you thought.”
“Shall I tell you?”
He had stepped forward at this question and his countenance, hitherto concealed, became visible in the moonlight. She no longer recognized it. Transformed by feeling, it shone down upon her, instinct with all that is finest and best in masculine nature. Was she ready for this revelation of what she had nevertheless dreamed of for many more nights than four? She did not know, and instinctively drew herself back till it was she who now st
ood in the semi-obscurity made by the drooping vines. From this retreat, she faltered forth a very tremulous No, which in another moment was disavowed by a Yes so faint it was little more than a murmur, followed by a still fainter, Tell me.
But he did not seem in any haste to obey, sweetly as her low-toned injunction must have sounded in his ears. On the contrary, he hesitated to speak, growing paler every minute as he sought to catch a glimpse of her downcast face so tantalizingly hidden from him. Did she recognize the nature of the feelings which held him back, or was she simply gathering up sufficient courage to plead her own cause? Whatever her reason, it was she, not he, who presently spoke saying as if no time had elapsed:
“But first, I feel obliged to admit that it was money I wanted, that I had to have. Not for myself. I lack nothing and could have more if I wished. Father has never limited his generosity in any matter affecting myself, but—” She drew a deep breath and, coming out of the shadow, lifted a face to him so changed from its usual expression as to make him start. “I have a cause at heart—one which should appeal to my father and does not; and for that purpose I have sacrificed myself, in many ways, though—though I have not disliked my work up to this last attempt. Not really. I want to be honest and so must admit that much. I have even gloried (quietly and all by myself, of course) over the solution of a mystery which no one else seemed able to penetrate. I am made that way. I have known it ever since—but that is a story all by itself. Some day I may tell it to you, but not now.”
“No, not now.” The emphasis sent the colour into her cheek but did not relieve his pallor. “Miss Strange, I have always felt, even in my worst days, that the man who for selfish ends brought a woman under the shadow of his own unhappy reputation was a man to be despised. And I think so still, and yet—and yet—nothing in the world but your own word or look can hold me back now from telling you that I love you—love you notwithstanding my unworthy past, my scarring memories, my all but blasted hopes. I do not expect any response; you are young; you are beautiful; you are gifted with every grace; but to speak—to say over and over again, ‘I love you, I love you!’ eases my heart and makes my future more endurable. Oh, do not look at me like that unless—unless—”
But the bright head did not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and driven out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step passionately forward, when, seized by fresh compunction, he hoarsely cried:
“It is not right. The balance dips too much my way. You bring me everything. I can give you nothing but what you already possess abundance—love, and money. Besides, your father—”
She interrupted him with a glance at once arch and earnest.
“I had a talk with Father this morning. He came to my room, and—and it was very near being serious. Someone had told him I was doing things on the sly which he had better look into; and of course he asked questions and—and I answered them. He wasn’t pleased—in fact he was very displeased—I don’t think we can blame him for that—but we had no open break for I love him dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw that, and it helped, though he did say after I had given my promise to stop where I was and never to take up such work again, that—” here she stole a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her—“that I had lost my social status and need never hope now for the attentions of—of—well, of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you see,” her dimples all showing, “that I am not such a very good match for an Upjohn of Massachusetts, even if he has a reputation to recover and an honourable name to achieve. The scale hangs more evenly than you think.”
“Violet!”
A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper, airy as the breath of flowers rising from the garden below: “I have never known what happiness was till this moment. If you will take me with my story untold—”
“Take you! take you!” The man’s whole yearning heart, the loss and bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all spoke in that low, half-smothered exclamation. Violet’s blushes faded under its fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning towards him, she laid her two hands in his, and said with all a woman’s earnestness:
“I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have many more days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea. Such union as ours must be hallowed, because we have so many persons to make happy besides ourselves.”
* * * *
The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded sheets of closely written paper in his hand. They contained her story; let us read it with him.
DEAR ROGER—
I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke up shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation which no child should ever have heard was going on in the room where I lay. My father was talking to my sister—perhaps, you do not know that I have a sister; few of my personal friends do—and the terror she evinced I could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his displeasure.
There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with all its original vividness. There was no light in the room save such as the moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive in either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication and he in a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she listened to what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.
I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes; but she—she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she had stood in my mother’s stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I saw her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in a desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my throat closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor move head or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in the pillows.
For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their full purport. He had surprised her talking from her window to someone down below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out: “You have disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced your brother and your little sister. Was it not enough that you should refuse to marry the good man I had picked out for you, that you should stoop to this low-down scoundrel—this—” I did not hear what else he called him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had never seen her stoop except to tie my little shoes.
But when she cried out as she did after an interval, “I love him! I love him!” then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in dreadful pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy. “And I am going to marry him,” I heard her add, standing up, as she said it, very straight and tall.
Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in white and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at a wedding once and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and cake and—
But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and all the words which followed—words which burned their way into my infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never be eradicated. He spoke them—spoke them all; she never answered again after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had stood, on her bed alongside mine.
I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled under me. I wonder she did not hear it. But she heard nothing; and after awhile she was so still I fell asleep. But I woke again. Something hot had fallen on my cheek. I put up my hand to brush it away and did not know even when I felt my fingers wet that it was a tear from my sister-mother’s eye.
For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm was over my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not this time with my tremors only. And I was sorry and cried too until I dropped off to sleep again with her arm still passionately embracing me.
; In the morning, she was gone.
It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where Arthur and I were trying to play—trying, but not quite succeeding, for I had been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great respect in those days, what had happened the night before, and we had been wondering in our childish way if there would be a wedding after all, and a church full of people, and flowers, and kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had said No, it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry; and comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when the door opened and Father stepped in.
It was a great event—any visit from him to the nursery—and we both dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he was going to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as I had heard him scold our beautiful sister.
Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least hesitation he took the one step which placed him in front of me, where he stood waiting with his two little fists hanging straight at his sides but manfully clenched in full readiness for attack. That this display of pigmy chivalry was not quite without its warrant is evident to me now, for Father did not look like himself or act like himself any more than he had the night before.
However, we had no cause for fear. Having no suspicion of my having been awake during his terrible interview with Theresa, he saw only two lonely and forsaken children, interrupted in their play.
Can I remember what he said to us? Not exactly, though Arthur and I often went over it choked whispers in some secret nook of the dreary old house; but his meaning—that we took in well enough. Theresa had left us. She would never come back. We were not to look out of the window for her, or run to the door when the bell rang. Our mother had left us too, a long time ago, and she lay in the cemetery where we sometimes carried flowers. Theresa was not in the cemetery, but we must think of her as there; though not as if she had any need of flowers. Having said this, he looked at us quietly for a minute. Arthur was trying very hard not to cry, but I was sobbing like the lost child I was, with my cheek against the floor where I had thrown myself when he said that awful thing about the cemetery. She there! my sister-mother there! I think he felt a little sorry for me; for he half stooped as if to lift me up. But he straightened again and said very sternly:
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 221