Chapter Sixteen.
“Dead? Dead to you? Pierce, speak to me,” cried Jenny. “What do you mean?”
“What I say. They are a curious mixture of weakness and duplicity.”
“Who are, dear?” said Jenny, with a warm colour taking the place of the pallor which her brother’s words had produced. “Why will you go on talking in riddles?”
“Women. Their soft, quiet ways force you to believe in them, and then comes some sudden enlightening to prove what I say.”
Jenny caught him by the shoulder as he sat in his chair, looking ghastly.
“Tell me what you mean,” she cried excitedly.
“Only the falling to pieces of your castle in the air,” he said, with a mocking laugh. “The marriage you arranged between the pauper physician and the rich heiress. I can easily be strictly honorable now.”
“Will you tell me what you mean, Pierce?” cried the girl, angrily. “What has happened? Is someone ill at the Manor House?”
“No,” he said, bitterly.
“Then why were you sent for?”
“To see an imaginary patient.”
“Pierce, if you do not wish me to go into a fit of hysterical passion,” cried the girl, “tell me what you mean. Why—were—you—sent—for?”
“Because,” replied Leigh, imitating his sister’s manner of speaking, “Mise—Katherine—Wilton—and—Mr Claud—were—supposed—to—be—lying—speechless in their rooms, and—ha-ha-ha! their doors could not be forced.”
“Pierce, what is the matter with you?” cried Jenny, excitedly; “do you know what you are saying?”
“Perfectly,” he cried, his manner changing from its mocking tone to one of fierce passion. “When I reached the place, a way was found in, and the birds were flown.”
“Birds—flown,” cried Jenny, looking more and more as if she doubted her brother’s sanity; “what birds?”
“The fair Katherine, and that admirable Crichton, Claud.”
“Flown?” stammered Jenny, who looked now half stunned.
“Well, eloped,” he cried, savagely, “to Gretna Green, or a registry office. Who says that Northwood is a dull place, without events?”
“Kate Wilton eloped with her cousin Claud!”
“Yes, my dear,” said Pierce, striving hard to speak in a careless, indifferent tone, but failing dismally, for every word sounded as if torn from his breast, his quivering lips bespeaking the agony he felt.
There was silence for a few moments, and then Jenny exclaimed:
“Pierce, is this some cruel jest?”
“Do I look as if I were jesting?” he cried wildly, and springing up he cast aside the mask beneath which he had striven to hide the agony which racked him. “Jesting! when I am half mad with myself for my folly. Driveling pitiful idiot that I was, ready to believe in the first pretty face I see, and then, as I have said, I find how full of duplicity and folly a woman is.”
“Mind what you are saying, Pierce,” cried his sister, who seemed to be strangely moved; “don’t say words which will make you bitterly repent. Tell me again; I feel giddy and sick. I must be going to be taken ill, for I can’t have heard you aright, or there must be some mistake.”
“Mistake!” he cried, with a savage laugh. “Don’t I tell you—I have just come from there? Has not old Wilton hid me keep silence? And I came babbling it all to you.”
“Stop!” said Jenny thoughtfully; “Kate could not do such a thing. When was it?”
“Who can tell?—late last night—early this morning. What does it matter?”
“It is not true,” cried Jenny, with her eyes flashing. “How dare you, who were ready to go down on your knees and worship her, utter such a cruel calumny.”
“Very well,” he cried bitterly; “then it is not true; I have not been there this morning, and have not looked in their empty rooms. Tell me I am a fool and a madman, and you will be very near the truth.”
“I don’t care,” cried Jenny angrily; “and it’s cruel—almost blasphemous of you to say such a thing about that poor sweet girl whom I had already grown to love. She elope with her cousin—run away like a silly girl in a romance! It is impossible.”
“Yes, impassible,” he said mockingly, as he writhed in his despair and agony.
“Pierce, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. There! I can only talk to you in a commonplace way, though all the time I am longing for words full of scorn and contempt with which to crush you. No, I’m not, my poor boy, because I can see how you are suffering. Oh, Pierce! Pierce!” she continued, sobbing as she threw her arms about his neck; “how can you torture yourself so by thinking such a thing of her?”
“Good little girl,” he said tenderly, moved as he was by her display of affection. “I shall begin to respect myself again now I find that my bright, clever little sister could be as much deceived as I.”
“I have not been deceived in her. She is all that is beautiful, and good, and true. Of course, I believe in her, and so do you at heart, only you are half mad now, and deceived.”
“Yes, half mad, and deceived!”
“Yes. There is something behind all this—I know,” cried Jenny, wildly. “They have persecuted her so, and encouraged that wretched boy to pay her attentions, till in despair she has run away to take refuge with some other friends.”
“With Claud Wilton!” said Pierce, bitterly.
“Silence, sir! No. Women are not such weak double-faced creatures as you think. No, it is as I say; and oh! Pierce, dear, he was out late last night, and when he got back found her going away and followed her.”
“Fiction—imagination,” he said bitterly. “You are inventing all this to try and comfort me, little woman, but your woven basket will not hold water. It leaks at the very beginning. How could you know that he was out late last night?”
Jenny’s cheeks were scarlet, and she turned away her face.
“There, you see, you are beaten at once, Jenny, and that I have some reason for what I have said about women; but there are exceptions to every rule, and my little sister is one of them. I did not include her among the weak ones.”
To his astonishment she burst into a passionate storm of sobs and tears, and in words confused and only half audible, she accused herself of being as weak and foolish as the rest, and, as he made out, quite unworthy of his trust.
“Oh! Pierce, darling,” she cried wildly, as she sank upon her knees in front of his chair; “I’m a wicked, wicked girl, and not deserving of all you think about me. Believe in poor Kate, and not in me, for indeed, indeed, she is all that is good and true.”
“A man cannot govern his feelings, Sissy,” he said, half alarmed now at the violence of her grief. “I must believe in you always, as my own little girl. How could I do otherwise, when you have been everything to me for so long, ever since you were quite a little girl and I told you not to cry for I would be father and mother to you, both.”
“And so you have been, Pierce, dear,” she sobbed, “but I don’t deserve it—I don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t deserve to have such a loving little companion,” he said, kissing her tenderly. “Haven’t I let my fancy stray from you, and am I not being sharply punished for my weal mess?”
She suddenly hung back from him and pressed her hair from her temples, as he held her by the waist.
“Pierce!” she said sharply, and there was a look of anger in her eyes, “he is a horrid wretch.”
“People do not give him much of a character,” said Leigh bitterly, “but that would be no excuse for my following him to wring his neck.”
“I believe he would be guilty of any wickedness. Tell me, dear; do you think it possible—such things have been done?”
“What things?” he said, wondering at her excited manner.
“It is to get her money, of course; for it would be his then. Do you think he has taken her away by force?”
Leigh started violently now in turn, and a light seemed to flash into his understanding, but it died out directly, and he said half pityingly, as he drew her to him once again:
“Poor little inventor of fiction,” he said, with a harsh laugh. “But let it rest, Sissy; it will not do. These things only occur in a romance. No, I do not think anything of the kind; and what do you say to London now?”