CHAPTER IV.
AN UNINVITED GUEST.
Sir Jasper Kingsland stood moodily alone. He was in the library, standing by the window—that very window through which, one stormy night scarcely a month before, he had admitted Achmet the Astrologer. He stood there with a face of such dark gloom that all the brightness of the sunlit April day could not cast one enlivening gleam.
He stood there scowling darkly upon it all, so lost in his own somber thoughts that he did not hear the library door open, nor the soft rustle of a woman's dress as she halted on the threshold.
A fair and stately lady, with a proud, colorless face lighted up with pale-blue eyes, and with bands of pale flaxen hair pushed away under a dainty lace cap—a lady who looked scarce thirty, although almost ten years older, unmistakably handsome, unmistakably proud. It was Olivia, Lady Kingsland.
"Alone, Sir Jasper!" a musical voice said. "May I come in, or do you prefer solitude and your own thoughts?"
The sweet voice—soft and low, as a lady's voice should be—broke the somber spell that bound him. He wheeled round, his dark, moody face lighting up at sight of her, as all the glorious morning sunshine never could have lighted it. That one radiant look would have told you how he loved his wife.
"You, Olivia?" he cried, advancing. "Surely this is a surprise! My dearest, is it quite prudent in you to leave your room?"
He took the slender, white-robed figure in his arms, and kissed her as tenderly as a bridegroom of a week might have done. Lady Kingsland laughed a soft, tinkling little laugh.
"A month is quite long enough to be a prisoner, Jasper, even although a prisoner of state. And on my boy's christening fete—the son and heir I have desired so long—ah, surely a weaker mother than I might essay to quit her room."
The moody darkness, like a palpable frown, swept over the baronet's face again at her words.
"Is he dressed?" he asked.
"He is dressed and asleep, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon, his godmother and godfather, are hovering over the crib like twin guardian angels. And Mildred sits en grande tenue on her cricket, in a speechless trance of delight, and nurse rustles about in her new silk gown and white lace cap with an air of importance and self-complacency almost indescribable. The domestic picture only wants papa and mamma to make it complete."
She laughed as she spoke, a little sarcastically; but Sir Jasper's attempt even to smile was a ghastly failure.
Lady Kingsland folded both her hands on his shoulder, and looked up in his face with anxious, searching eyes.
"What is it?" she asked.
The baronet laughed uneasily.
"What is what?"
"This gloom, this depression, this dark, mysterious moodiness. Jasper, what has changed you of late?"
"Mysterious moodiness! changed me of late! Nonsense, Olivia! I don't know what you mean."
Again he strove to laugh, and again it was a wretched failure.
Lady Kingsland's light-blue eyes never left his face.
"I think you do, Jasper. Since the night of our boy's birth you have been another man. What is it?"
A spasm crossed the baronet's face; his lips twitched convulsively; his face slowly changed to a gray, ashen pallor.
"What is it?" the lady slowly reiterated. "Surely my husband, after all these years, has no secrets from me?"
The tender reproach of her tone, of her eyes, stung the husband, who loved her, to the quick.
"For God's sake, Olivia, don't ask me!" he cried passionately. "It would be sheerest nonsense in your eyes, I know. You would but laugh at what half drives me mad!"
Jasper!"
"Don't look at me with that reproachful face, Olivia! It is true. You would look upon it as sheerest folly, I tell you, and laugh at me for a credulous fool."
"No," said Lady Kingsland, quietly, and a little coldly. "You know me better. I could never laugh at what gives my husband pain."
"Pain! I have lived in torment ever since, and yet—who knows?—it may be absurdest jugglery. But he told me the past so truly—my very thoughts! And no one could know what happened in Spain so many years ago! Oh, I must believe it—I can not help it—and that belief will drive me mad!"
Lady Kingsland stood looking and listening, in pale wonder.
"I don't understand a word of this," she said, slowly. "Will you tell me, Sir Jasper, or am I to understand you have secrets your wife may not share?"
"My own dear wife," he said—"my best beloved—Heaven knows, if I have one secret from you, I keep it that I may save you sorrow. Not one cloud should ever darken the sunshine of your sky, if I had my way. You are right—I have a secret—a secret of horror, and dread, and dismay—a terrible secret that sears my brain and burns my heart! Olivia, my darling, its very horror prevents my telling it to you!"
"Does it concern our boy?" she asked, quickly.
"Yes!" with a groan. "Now you can understand its full terror. It menaces the son I love more than life. I thought to keep it from you; I tried to appear unchanged; but it seems I have failed miserably."
"And you will not tell me what this secret is?"
"I dare not! I would not have you suffer as I suffer."
"A moment ago you said I would laugh at it and you. Your terms are inconsistent, Sir Jasper."
"Spare me, Olivia!—I scarce know what I say—and do not be angry."
She drew her hands coldly and haughtily away from his grasp. She was a thoroughly proud woman, and his secrecy stung her.
"I am not angry, Sir Jasper. Keep your secret, if you will. I was foolish enough to fancy I had right to know of any danger that menaces my baby, but it appears I was mistaken. In half an hour the carriages will start for the church. You will find us all in the nursery."
She was sweeping proudly away in silent anger, but the baronet strode after her and caught her arm.
"You will know this!" he said, huskily. "Olivia, Olivia! you are cruel to yourself and to me, but you shall hear—part, at least. I warn you, however, you will be no happier for knowing."
"Go on," she said, steadily.
He turned from her, walked to the window, and kept his back to her while he spoke.
"You have no faith in fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers, and the like, have you, Olivia?"
"Most certainly not!"
"Then what I have to say will scarcely trouble you as it troubles me—for I believe; and the prediction of an astrologer has ruined my peace for the past month."
"Is that all? The mountain in labor has brought forth a mouse. My dear Sir Jasper, how can you be so simply credulous?"
"I knew you would laugh," said Sir Jasper, moodily; "I said so. But laugh if you can. I believe!"
"Was the prediction very terrible, then?" asked his wife, with a smile.
"Pray tell me all about it."
"It was terrible," her husband replied, sternly. "The living horror it has cast over me might have told you that. Listen, Olivia! On that night of our baby boy's birth, after I left you and came here, I stood by this window and saw a spectral face gleaming through the glass. It was the face of a man—a belated wayfarer—who adjured me, in the Savior's name, to let him in."
"Well, you let him in, I suppose?"
"I let him in—a strange-looking object, Olivia, like no creature I ever saw before, with flowing beard and hair silver-white—"
"False, no doubt."
"He wore a long, disguising cloak and a skull-cap," went on Sir Jasper, "and his face was blanched to a dull dead white. He would have looked like a resuscitated corpse, only for a pair of burning black eyes."
"Quite a startling apparition! Melodramatic in the extreme! And this singular being—what was he? Clairvoyant, astrologer, what?"
"Astrologer—an Eastern astrologer—Achmet by name."
"And who, probably, never was further than London in his life-time. A well-got-up charlatan, no doubt."
"Charlatan he may have been; Englishman he was not. His face, his speech, convinced me of that. And, Olivia, charlatan or no, he told me my past life as truly as I knew it myself."
Lady Kingsland listened with a quiet smile.
"No doubt he has been talking to the good people of the village and to the servants in the house."
"Neither the people of the village nor the servants of the house know aught of what he told me. He showed me what transpired twenty years ago.
"Twenty years ago?"
"Yes, when I was fresh from Cambridge, and making my first tour. Events that occurred in Spain—that no one under heaven save myself can know of—he told me."
"That was strange!"
"Olivia, it was astounding—incomprehensible! I should never have credited one word he said but for that. He told me the past as I know it myself. Events that transpired in a far foreign land a score of years ago, known, as I thought, to no creature under heaven, he told me of as if they had transpired yesterday. The very thoughts that I thought in that by-gone time he revealed as if my heart lay open before him. How, then, could I doubt? If he could lift the veil of the irrevocable past, why not be able to lift the veil of the mysterious future? He took the hour of our child's birth and ascended to the battlements, and there, alone with the stars of heaven, he cast his horoscope. Olivia, men in all ages have believed in this power of astrology, and I believe as firmly as I believe in Heaven."
Lady Kingsland listened, and that quiet smile of half amusement, half contempt never left her lips.
"And the horoscope proved a horrorscope, no doubt," she said, the smile deepening. "You paid your astrologer handsomely, I presume, Sir Jasper?"
"I gave him nothing. He would take nothing—not even a cup of water. Of his own free will he cast the horoscope, and, without reward of any kind, went his way when he had done."
"What did you say the name was?"
"Achmet the Astrologer."
"Melodramatic again! And now, Sir Jasper, what awful fate betides our boy?"
"Ask me not! You do not believe. What the astrologer foretold I shall tell no one."
"The carriage waits, my lady," a servant said, entering. "Lady Helen bade me remind you, my lady, it is time to start for church."
Lady Kingsland hastily glanced at her watch.
"Why, so it is! I had nearly forgotten. Come, Sir Jasper, and forget your fears on this happy day."
She led him from the room. Baby, in its christening-robes, slept in nurse's arms, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon stood impatiently waiting.
"We will certainly be late!" Lady Helen, who was god-mamma, said, fussily. "Had we not better depart at once, Sir Jasper?"
"I am quite at your ladyship's service. We will not delay an instant longer. Proceed, nurse."
Nurse, with her precious burden, went before. Sir Jasper drew Lady
Helen's arm within his own, and Mr. Carlyon followed with little
Mildred Kingsland.
Lady Kingsland watched the carriage out of sight, and then went slowly and thoughtfully back to her room.
"How extremely foolish and weak of Sir Jasper," she was thinking, "to pay the slightest attention to the canting nonsense of these fortune-telling impostors! If I had been in his place I would have had him horsewhipped from my gates for his pains. I must find out what this terrible prediction was and laugh it out of my husband's mind."
Meantime the carriage rolled down the long avenue, under the majestic copper-beeches, through the lofty gates, and along the bright sunlit road leading to the village.
In stole and surplice, within the village church, the Reverend Cyrus Green, Rector of Stonehaven, stood by the baptismal font, waiting to baptize the heir of all the Kingslands.
Stately, Sir Jasper Kingsland strode up the aisle, with Lady Helen upon his arm. No trace of the trouble within showed in his pale face as he heard his son baptized Everard Jasper Carew Kingsland.
The ceremony was over. Nurse took the infant baronet again; Lady Helen adjusted her mantle, and the Reverend Cyrus Green was blandly offering his congratulations to the greatest man in the parish, when a sudden commotion at the door startled all. Some one striving to enter, and some other one refusing admission.
"Let me in, I tell you!" cried a shrill, piercing voice—the voice of an angry woman. "Stand aside, woman! I will see Sir Jasper Kingsland."
With the last ringing words the intruder burst past the pew-opener, and rushed wildly into the church. A weird and unearthly figure—like one of Macbeth's witches—with streaming black hair floating over a long, red cloak, and two black eyes of flame. All recoiled as the spectral figure rushed up like a mad thing and confronted Sir Jasper Kingsland.
"At last!" she shrilly cried, in a voice that pierced even to the gaping listeners without—"at last, Sir Jasper Kingsland! At last we meet again!"
There was a horrible cry as the baronet started back, putting up both hands, with a look of unutterable horror.
"Good God! Zenith!"
"Yes, Zenith!" shrieked the woman; "Zenith, the beautiful, once!
Zenith, the hag, the crone, the madwoman, now! Look at me well, Sir
Jasper Kingsland—for the ruin is your own handiwork!"
He stood like a man paralyzed—speechless, stunned—his face the livid hue of death.
The wretched woman stood before him with streaming hair, blazing eyes, and uplifted arm, a very incarnate fury.
"Look at me well!" she fiercely shrieked, tossing her locks of old off her fiery face. "Am I like the Zenith of twenty years ago—young and beautiful, and bright enough even for the fastidious Englishman to love? Look at me now—ugly and old, wrinkled and wretched, deserted and despised—and tell me if I have not greater reason to hate you than ever woman had to hate man?"
She tossed her arms aloft with a madwoman's shriek—crying out her words in a long, wild scream.
"I hate you—I hate you! Villain! dastard! perjured wretch! I hate you, and I curse you, here in the church you call holy! I curse you with a ruined woman's curse, and hot and scathing may it burn on your head and on the heads of your children's children!"
The last horrible words aroused the listeners from their petrified trance. The Reverend Cyrus Green lifted up his voice in a tone of command:
"This woman is mad! She is a furious lunatic! Dawson! Humphreys! come here and secure her!"
"The child! the child!" she cried, with a screech of demoniac delight; "the spawn of the viper is within my grasp!"
One plunge forward and the infant heir was in her arms, held high aloft. One second later, and its blood and brains would have bespattered the stone floor, but Mr. Carlyon sprung forward and wrenched it from her grasp.
The two men summoned by the clergyman closed upon her and held her fast; her frantic shrieks rang to the roof. Then suddenly, all ceased, and, foaming and livid, she fell between them in a fit.