CHAPTER VII.
A MAD MISTAKE.
Rosamond Arleigh opened her eyes. It was as still as death within the room which had been prepared to receive her body. The mirrors were draped in white; there were bouquets of white flowers, white roses, bridal wreath, and lilies, pure white, and long-throated, pink-tinted lilies. A faint, sickening perfume pervaded the apartment, and over the whole house a dead silence rested.
How long she had lain in that state she did not know. She had been dimly conscious of Violet’s presence there, knew that the girl was sobbing forth her name, calling upon her mother to come back to her, to stand at her side in the hard battle with the cold, cruel world. Come back to her! Where had she, Rosamond, been? For a whole hour she had lain there without moving a muscle, her thoughts—strange, wild, disconnected—wandering back over the past, trying to disentangle the threads, and smooth out the fabric of her life; but all was confused, dim, irregular. All at once the sound of a voice fell upon her ears, speaking in low, eager tones; it was Doctor Danton.
“I wonder what Jack Danton is doing here?” Mrs. Arleigh said to herself, with a hazy impression that the hour was very late. “I believe he is speaking to Violet. Poor child, she ought to be in bed. She must be greatly fatigued after—after her ball.”
The ball! There! She has come back to first principles now; and now Rosamond Arleigh begins to untangle the web which is woven about her brain. She remembers the scene in her own sitting-room between herself and Gilbert Warrington. She recalls it all, every word, every look, every gesture. It struck home to her understanding, her memory, with the sharpness of a knife. The poor woman uttered a low cry, and struggled to a sitting posture.
Doctor Danton had by this time induced Violet to go to bed, and he had returned to the next room and the company of Dunbar, closing the door of communication between the two apartments.
Rosamond sat up on the flower-strewn couch and stared wildly about her. Was she dead? Was her body really bereft of life; and this, that was thinking and troubling itself so, was it her freed spirit, anxious to soar away, yet earth-bound still? It was a strange, a grewsome thought.
Trembling like a leaf, she rose to her feet. They had arranged the supposed dead body in a simple robe of snowy lawn trimmed with lace. There was nothing suggestive of a shroud in the garment, yet Rosamond’s eyes, as they rested upon it, closed involuntarily, and a shudder passed over her. A swift, wild thought flashed into her brain. Remember, it was not yet quite clear, nor had she recovered entirely from the effects of her recent attack and the strange experience which had followed it. Let any woman, no matter how strong her nerves, open her eyes and realize that the world believes her dead, that she is robed for the grave, and over in a corner of the room her coffin stands waiting to receive her body, and my word for it, she would be guilty of quite as insane conduct as that of which Rosamond Arleigh is guilty now.
And the circumstances which surround Rosamond were so strange and unusual, she had become the victim of such remarkable events, so wildly romantic, no wonder her weak nerves had failed her now and she had given way. Her brain was giddy with the crowd of thoughts and fancies which beset it; she was possessed of but one aim—a wild, mad resolution to escape forever from Gilbert Warrington’s power—even though to do this—to gain her freedom—she would only find it in the grave.
She wrung her white hands frantically.
“He has blighted my whole life, and I hate him!” she moaned. “I will escape from him now while I can. He will return here in the morning, and—and I must be gone. He has hounded me down, blackened my life with that awful story of disgrace and shame. I must get away from here, I must escape him, or I shall die indeed. He thinks me dead now, and indeed I would be if I had not had the strength and courage to empty the contents of the chloral bottle upon the floor when he pressed it to my lips. I will try to escape; I must. I will go to Yorke Towers; it is there that I must seek for those papers, there, where Harold Arleigh—oh, Harold, Harold, my darling!—lived at the time to which Gilbert Warrington refers. For Yorke Towers was long in possession of the Arleighs. I think that is the real cause of Helen Yorke’s ill-concealed dislike for me. But outwardly she is my friend, and I am certain she can not refuse to aid me if I lay the case before her and beg her to do so. Even her jealousy of the Arleighs must disappear in the presence of this great calamity. Yes, I will go to Yorke Towers to-night, and Gilbert Warrington will never find me, never dream that I am hidden away at Yorke Towers, or that I still live!”
Her brain, dazed and weak, was incapable of sound reasoning. She was nearly bereft of reasoning powers, and on the very verge of insanity. Small wonder that her actions were henceforth those of a maniac. Had she only known it, there were true hearts and helping hands in the very next room, eager and anxious to strike a blow for her sake. But she did not know, and so, like many another short-sighted mortal, looked far away for that which was within her reach. And so the mad mistake was made which neither time nor endeavor could rectify. Slowly and feebly she staggered across the room. In her white robe she looked like a spirit. Her eyes fell upon a long, dark cloak which Doctor Danton had placed upon a chair, and which he had intended to wrap about her when he would carry her out to the waiting carriage. She remembered in a hazy sort of way that she had heard Doctor Danton say something about his carriage in waiting at the rear entrance of The Oaks, and the swift determination formed itself within her brain to reach the carriage and order the driver to drive her over to Yorke Towers. Once there——
Her bewildered brain could go no further in the reasoning process; but something, she knew not what, urged her on to reach Yorke Towers that night.
Something! Was it fate?
Slowly and hesitatingly, trembling like an aspen, Rosamond threw the cloak about her shoulders and drew the hood over her head; then, with wavering, uncertain steps, her feet clad only in thin silk stockings and dainty slippers, she made her way over to the window, which stood open and led out upon the lawn. She stepped forth into the cool, calm night. The soft air fanned her cheeks and made her brain grow clearer.
She glanced swiftly, with eyes full of terror, up at the house—her own home, from which she was flying as from a pestilence, turning her back upon her best, her only friends, in the mad delirium of her clouded intellect.
Drawing the cloak closely about her, she darted away like a bird in the direction of the rear entrance to the grounds of The Oaks.
Just outside the windows of the room where she had been lying, to all appearance dead, there was a tiny arbor covered with honeysuckle all in bloom. Within the arbor the dark figure of a man had been sitting for the last hour or two, buried in meditation and cigar-smoke. Now, as the slight form wrapped in the long, dark cloak stepped softly from the window, and the gleaming lamp-light from within the room streamed full across her face, he started to his feet with a stifled exclamation. He tossed his half-smoked cigar into the shrubbery near, and turning upon his heel, followed the flying figure with long, hurried strides.
She never dreamed that she was pursued. If she had, she would have fallen dead at his feet, for life was burning with but a feeble flame within her heart. Poor Rosamond could not endure much more. But, blissfully unconscious, she made her way straight on with surprising celerity for one who had lain for hours in a comatose condition—on, on, until at last the rear entrance was safely gained. She opened the little gate with swift, eager hands; and the moment consumed in this action gave her pursuer time to reach her side, only he kept hidden from view, and she never for a moment suspected that she was not alone. Over and over she kept whispering to herself, as her clouded brain revolved the situation:
“I must get away—anywhere, anywhere! I must not stay here, for Gilbert Warrington will find me, and he will claim me. And, oh, God, I would far rather be dead than his wife! Yorke Towers is my safe refuge. Surely, Helen Yorke will help me to hide from Gilbert Warrington, and to find the lost papers which will give me back my own again. There is a room at Yorke Towers called the haunted room. If only she will let me stay there and hide, I shall be safe—safe—safe! But here I would be persecuted until I would have to take my own life to escape from him. I must reach Yorke Towers to-night. I must—I must!”
She had unfastened the little gate at last, and flitted through like a bird. Her pursuer darts after her, and closing the gate, locks it, and flings the key far out into the little strip of woodland which belts the road.
It was still as death out here, only the occasional cry of a belated night-bird and the monotonous cheep, cheep, cheep of a cricket hidden in the tall grass near by to break the silence.
On, like a wild creature—for she is afraid of the night and the lonely darkness—Rosamond Arleigh flies; the man who is in pursuit of her keeps close in her wake—on, on!
Half hidden by a clump of great live-oaks, Doctor Danton’s carriage stands patiently waiting, its driver, Tom, a faithful negro, nodding upon the box.
All at once Tom became conscious of a slight, dark-robed figure, and a woman’s voice broke the silence, calling swiftly, softly:
“Drive me to Yorke Towers at once. Quick, quick! Lose no time!”
Then the dark-robed figure stepped swiftly, noiselessly—“jes’ like a ghos’!” so poor Tom was wont to declare—into the carriage, and the door was shut.
Tom gathered up his reins obediently, and turned his horses’ heads about. But at that moment a stinging blow descended upon his head; heaven and earth seemed to come together with a shock. Some one, or something—for Tom afterward described the apparition as a tall black man, with fiery eyes and a tail; in fact, a veritable Satan—seized him in an iron grip, and he felt himself descending rapidly earthward. Another concussion, as something struck him upon the head and chest, then darkness—the very blackness of darkness—gathered over him, and Tom knew no more.
Prone upon the ground, under the clump of oaks, he lay until he was rescued later on by Doctor Danton and Dunbar.
In the meantime, the tall dark figure that had pursued Rosamond Arleigh from the grounds of The Oaks and into the carriage had mounted on the box in Tom’s place, and was driving Doctor Danton’s horses like mad—but not in the direction of Yorke Towers.
