CHAPTER V.
ZENITH'S MALEDICTION.
A dead pause of blank consternation; the faces around a sight to see; horror and wonder in every countenance—most of all in the countenance of Sir Jasper Kingsland.
The clergyman was the first to speak.
"The woman is stark mad," he said. "We must see about this. Such violent lunatics must not be allowed to go at large. Here, Humphreys, do you and Dawson lift her up and carry her to my house. It is the nearest, and she can be properly attended to there."
"You know her, Sir Jasper, do you not?" asked Lady Helen, with quick womanly intuition.
"Know her?" Sir Jasper replied, "know Zenith? Great Heaven! I thought she was dead."
The Reverend Cyrus Green and Lady Helen exchanged glances. Mr. Carlyon looked in sharp surprise at the speaker.
"Then she is not mad, after all! I thought she mistook you for some one else. If you know her, you have the best right to deal with her. Shall these men take her to Kingsland Court?"
"Not for ten thousand worlds!" Sir Jasper cried, impetuously. "The woman is nothing—less than nothing—to me. I knew her once, years ago. I thought her dead and buried; hence the shock her sudden entrance gave me. A lunatic asylum is the proper place for such as she. Let Mr. Green send her there, and the sooner the better."
The Reverend Cyrus Green looked with grave, suspicious eyes for a moment at the leaden face of the speaker.
"There is wrong and mystery about this," he thought—"a dark mystery of guilt. This woman is mad, but her wrongs have driven her mad, and you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, are her wronger."
"It shall be as you say, Sir Jasper," he said, aloud; "that is, if I find this poor creature has no friends. Are you aware whether she has any?"
"I tell you I know nothing of her!" the baronet cried, with fierce impatience. "What should I know of such a wretch as that?"
"More than you dare tell, Sir Jasper Kingsland!" cried a high, ringing voice, as a young woman rushed impetuously into the church and up the aisle. "Coward and liar! False, perjured wretch! You are too white-livered a hound even to tell the truth! What should you know of such a wretch as that, forsooth! Double-dyed traitor and dastard! Look me in the face and tell me you don't know her!"
Every one shrunk in terror and dismay; Sir Jasper stood as a man might stand suddenly struck by lightning. And if looks were lightning, the blazing eyes of the young woman might have blasted him where he stood. A tall and handsome young woman, with black eyes of fire, streaming, raven hair, and a brown gypsy face.
"Who are you, in mercy's name?" cried the Reverend Cyrus Green.
"I am the daughter of this wretch, as your baronet yonder is pleased to call my mad mother. Yes, Mr. Green, she is my mother. If you want to know who my father is, you had better ask Sir Jasper Kingsland!"
"It is false!" the baronet cried, "I know nothing of you or your father. I never set eyes on you before."
"Wait, wait, wait!" the Reverend Cyrus Green cried, imploringly. "For Heaven's sake, young woman, don't make a scene before all these listeners. We will have your mother conveyed into the vestry until she recovers; and if she ever recovers, no time is to be lost in attending to her. Sir Jasper, I think the child had better be sent home immediately. My lady will wonder at the delay."
A faint wail from the infant lying in the nurse's arms seconded the suggestion. That feeble cry and the mention of his wife acted as a magic spell upon the baronet.
"Your mad intruders have startled us into forgetting everything else.
Proceed, nurse. Lady Helen, take my arm. Mr. Carlyon, see to Mildred.
The child looks frightened to death, and little wonder!"
"Little, indeed!" sighed Lady Helen. "I shall not recover from the shock for a month. It was like a scene in a melodrama—like a chapter of a sensation novel. And you know that dreadful creature, Sir Jasper?"
"I used to know her," the baronet said, with emphasis, "so many years ago that I had almost forgotten she ever existed. She was always more or less mad, I fancy, and it seems hereditary. Her daughter—if daughter she be—seems as distraught as her mother."
"And her name, Sir Jasper? You called her by some name, I think."
"Zenith, I suppose. To tell the truth, Lady Helen, the woman is neither more nor less than a gypsy fortune-teller crazed by a villainous life and villainous liquor. But, for the sake of the days gone by, when she was young and pretty and told my fortune, I think I will go back and see what Mr. Green intends doing with her. Such crazy vagrants should not be allowed to go at large."
The light tone was a ghastly failure, and the smile but a death's-head grin. He placed Lady Helen in the carriage—Mr. Carlyon assisted the nurse and little Mildred. Then Sir Jasper gave the order, "Home," and the stately carriage of the Kingslands, with its emblazoned crest, whirled away in a cloud of dust. For an instant he stood looking after it.
"Curses on it!" he muttered between set teeth. "After all these years, are those dead doings to be flung in my face? I thought her dead and gone; and lo! in the hour of my triumph she rises as if from the grave to confound me. Her daughter, too! I never knew she had a child! Good heavens! how these wild oats we sow in youth flourish and multiply with their bitter, bad fruit!"
He turned and strode into the vestry. On the floor the miserable woman lay, her eyes closed, her jaw fallen. By her side, supporting her head, the younger woman knelt, holding a glass of water to her lips. The Reverend Cyrus Green stood gravely looking on.
"Is she dead?" Sir Jasper asked, in a hard voice.
It was to the clergyman he spoke, but the girl looked fiercely up, her tones like a serpent's hiss.
"Not dead, Sir Jasper Kingsland! No thanks to you for it! Murderer—as much a murderer as if you had cut her throat—look on her, and be proud of the ruin you have wrought!"
"Silence, woman!" Mr. Green ordered, imperiously. "We will have none of your mad recriminations here. She is not dead, Sir Jasper, but she is dying, I think. This young woman wishes to remove her—whither, I know not—but it is simply impossible. That unfortunate creature will not be alive when to-morrow dawns."
"What do you propose doing with her?" the baronet asked, steadily.
"We will convey her to the sexton's house—it is very near. I have sent Dawson for a stretcher; he and Humphreys will carry her. This young woman declines to give her name, or tell who she is, or where she lives."
"Where I live is no affair of yours, if I can not take my mother there," the young woman answered, sullenly. "Who I am, you know. I told you I am this woman's daughter."
"And a gypsy, I take it?" said Mr. Green.
"You guess well, sir, but only half the truth. Half gypsy I am, and half gentlewoman. A mongrel, I suppose, that makes; and yet it is well to have good blood in one's veins, even on the father's side."
There was a sneering emphasis in her words, and the snaky black eyes gleamed like daggers on the baronet.
But that proud face was set and rigid as stone now. He returned her look with a haughty stare.
"It is a pity the whipping-post has been abolished," he said, harshly. "Your impertinence makes you a fit subject for it, mistress! Take care we don't commit you to prison as a public vagrant, and teach that tongue of yours a little civility when addressing your betters."
"My betters!" the girl hissed, in a fierce, sibilant whisper. "Why, yes, I suppose a daughter should look upon a father in that light. As to the whipping-post and prison, try it at your peril! Try it, if you dare, Sir Jasper."
Before he could speak the door opened, and Dawson entered with the stretcher.
"Lay her upon it and remove her at once," the rector said. "Here, Humphreys, this side. Gently, my men—gently. Be very careful on the way."
The two men placed the seemingly lifeless form of Zenith on the stretcher and bore her carefully away.
The daughter Zara followed.
"She will not live until to-morrow morning," the rector said; "and it is better so, poor soul! She is evidently hopelessly insane."
"And the daughter appears but little better. By the way, Mr. Green,
Lady Kingsland desires me to fetch you back to dinner."
The rector bowed.
"Her ladyship is very good. Has your carriage gone? I will order out the pony-phaeton, if you like."
Ten minutes later the two gentlemen were bowling along the pleasant country road leading to the Court. It was a very silent drive, for the baronet sat moodily staring at vacancy, his mouth set in hard, wordless pain.
"They will tell Olivia," he was thinking, gloomily. "What will she say to all this?"
But his fears seemed groundless. Lady Kingsland treated the matter with cool indifference. To be sure, she had not heard quite all. A madwoman had burst into the church, had terrified Lady Helen pretty nearly to death with her crazy language, and had tried to tear away the baby. That was the discreet story my lady heard, and which she was disposed to treat with calm surprise. Baby was safe, and it had ended in nothing; the madwoman was being properly cared for. Lady Kingsland quietly dismissed the incident altogether before the end of dinner.
The hours of the evening wore on—very long hours to the lord of Kingsland Court, seated at the head of his table, dispensing his hospitalities and trying to listen to the long stories of Mr. Carlyon and the rector.
It was worse in the drawing-room, with the lights and the music, and his stately wife at the piano, and Lady Helen at his side, prattling with little Mildred over a pile of engravings. All the time, in a half-distracted sort of way, his thoughts were wandering to the sexton's cottage and the woman dying therein—the woman he had thought dead years ago—dying there in desolation and misery—and here the hours seemed strung on roses.
It was all over at last. The guests were gone, the baby baronet slept in his crib, and Lady Kingsland had gone to her chamber. But Sir Jasper lingered still—wandering up and down the long drawing-room like a restless ghost.
A clock on the mantel chimed twelve. Ere its last chime had sounded a sleepy valet stood in the doorway.
"A messenger for you, Sir Jasper—sent by the Reverend Mr. Green.
Here—come in."
Thus invoked, Mr. Dawson entered, pulling his forelock.
"Parson, he sent me, zur. She be a-doying, she be."
He knew instantly who the man meant.
"And she wishes to see me?"
"She calls for you all the time, zur. She be a-doying uncommon hard.
Parson bid me come and tell 'ee."
"Very well, my man," the baronet said. "That will do. I will go at once. Thomas, order my horse, and fetch my riding-cloak and gloves."
The valet stared in astonishment, but went to obey. It was something altogether without precedent, this queer proceeding on the part of his master, and, taken in connection with that other odd event in church, looked remarkably suspicious.
The night was dark and starless, and the wind blew raw and bleak as the baronet dashed down the avenue and out into the high-road. He almost wondered at himself for complying with the dying woman's desire, but some inward impulse beyond his control seemed driving him on.
He rode rapidly, and a quarter of an hour brought him to the sexton's cottage. A feeble light glimmered from the window out into the blackness of the night. A moment later and he stood within, in the presence of the dying.
The Reverend Cyrus Green sat by the table, a Bible in his hand. Kneeling by the bedside, her face ghastly white, her burning black eyes dry and tearless, was the young woman. And like a dead woman already, stretched on the bed, lay Zenith.
But she was not dead. At the sound of the opening door, at the sound of his entrance, she opened her eyes, dulling fast in death, and fixed them on Sir Jasper.
"I knew you would come," she said, in a husky whisper. "You dare not stay away! The spirit of the dying Zenith drove you here in spite of yourself. Come nearer—nearer! Sir Jasper Kingsland, don't hover aloof. Once you could never be near enough. Ah, I was young and fair then! I'm old and ugly now. Come nearer, for I can not speak aloud, and listen. Do you know why I have sent for you?"
He had approached the bedside. She caught his hand and held it in a vise-like clutch.
"No," he said, recoiling.
"To give you my dying malediction—to curse you with my latest breath! I hate you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, falsest of all mankind! and if the dead can return and torment the living, then do you beware of me!"
She spoke in panting gasps, the death-rattle sounding in her skinny throat. Shocked and scandalized, the rector interposed:
"My good woman, don't—for pity's sake, don't say such horrible things!"
But she never heeded him.
"I hate you!" she said, with a last effort. "I die hating you, and I curse you with a dying woman's curse! May your life be a life of torment and misery and remorse! May your son's life be blighted and ruined! May he become an outcast among men! May sin and shame follow him forever, and all of his abhorred race!"
Her voice died away. She glared helplessly up from the pillow. A deep, stern, terrible "Amen!" came from her daughter's lips; then, with a spasm, she half leaped from the bed, and fell back with a gurgling cry—dead!
"She is gone!" said the rector, with a shudder. "Heaven have mercy on her sinful soul!"
The baronet staggered back from the bed.
"I never saw a more horrible sight!" continued the Reverend Cyrus. "I never heard such horrible words! No wonder it has unmanned you, Sir Jasper. Pray sit down and drink this."
He held out a glass of water. Sir Jasper seized and drank it, his brain reeling.
With stoical calm, Zara had arisen and closed the dead woman's eyes, folded the hands, straightened the stiffening limbs, and composed the humble covering. She had no tears, she uttered no cry—her face was stern as stone.
"Better stay in this ghastly place no longer, Sir Jasper," the rector suggested. "You look completely overcome. I will see that everything is properly done. We will bury her to-morrow."
As a man walks in a dreadful dream, Sir Jasper arose, quitted the room, mounted his horse, and rode away.
One dark, menacing glance Zara shot after him; then she sat stonily down by her dead. All that night, all next day, Zara kept her post, neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping. Dry and tearless, the burning black eyes fixed themselves on the dead face, and never left it.
When they put the dead woman in the rude board coffin, she offered no resistance. Calmly she watched them screw the lid down—calmly she saw them raise it on their shoulders and bear it away. Without a word or tear she arose, folded her cloak about her, and followed them to the church-yard.
One by one the stragglers departed, and Zara was left alone by the new-made grave. No, not quite alone, for through the bleak twilight fluttered the tall, dark figure of a man toward her. She lifted her gloomy eyes and recognized him.
"You come, Sir Jasper," she said, slowly, "to see the last of your work. You come to gloat over your dead victim, and exult that she is out of your way. But I tell you to beware! Zenith in her grave will be a thousand times more terrible to you than Zenith ever was alive!"
The baronet looked at her with a darkly troubled face.
"Why do you hate me so?" he said. "Whatever wrong I did her, I never wronged you."
"You have done me deadly wrong! My mother's wrongs are mine, and here, by her grave, I vow vengeance on you and yours! Her dying legacy to me was her hatred of you, and I will pay the old debt with double interest, my noble, haughty, titled father!"
She turned with the last words and sped away like an evil spirit, vanishing in the gloom among the graves.