CHAPTER XXIII.
IN THE CORRIDOR.
Silence! The moonlight, glinting down through the magnolia boughs, showed two still figures standing there like statues. Jessie’s eyes were fixed upon the ground; her graceful figure trembled perceptibly; her two white hands were clasped tightly together. No sound to break the silence, only the distant ripple of the shining river gliding on in the moonlight. And then, all at once, just over their heads, a mocking-bird burst forth into a perfect shower of song. Clear, sweet, and silvery it rose and fell upon the silence like fairy music, faint and soft, in a tender minor key, then, soaring aloft, was lost in the heavens.
Will’s voice broke in upon the silence which followed as the bird flew swiftly away.
“Jessie”—his voice trembled audibly—“I am very glad—I can not say how glad!—to see you once more. I have come to say good-bye!”
“Good-bye?” The word fluttered from her lips in a broken whisper. “To—say—good-bye?”
Then, with a sudden return of the olden pride, she straightened her graceful form, and the big gray eyes met Will Venners’ gaze, clear and calm and straight-forward, without a shadow or a shrinking.
“Yes, I am come to bid you farewell. Let us sit down here, Jessie. It is a lovely night—a divine night!—and I suppose it will be a long time—a very long time, perhaps—before you and I will sit side by side again; perhaps never—that is for you to say.”
She cast a swift glance into his eager, impassioned face, and her eyes drooped once more.
“For me to say?” she repeated, falteringly. “I have nothing to say in the matter, Captain Venners.”
“Jessie, see here!” He flashed about and caught her hand in a swift, warm pressure. “I can bear this no longer, and I will not! Either you love me or you do not. Tell me the truth. I can try to bear disappointment like a man. It will be very, very hard, but it must be as you say. Listen, Jessie, and let me tell ‘the story of my thralldom.’ I love you—love you with all my heart and soul. I have been a wild sort of a fellow, flirting with every passably pretty woman who was silly enough to let me. I have flirted away my best days in this idle pastime, and have won for myself the unenviable reputation of a flirt; but lately I have awakened to a new life, new hopes, new ambition—say, rather, for the first time, real ambition. A feeling of disgust and aversion for my career as a trifler has taken possession of me. I feel the need of a real aim, a true object in existence. I have at last found the missing joy of my life which my heart has ever been seeking. In other words, I have learned to love with all my heart and strength—you! Is my love in vain, my darling? Is there no answering chord in your dear heart, no hope for me? Answer me, Jessie; for I am very, very unhappy in this long suspense.”
How could she doubt him? his pale, earnest face; the dark, passionate eyes, eager and beseeching, bent upon her own; the whole attitude of the man breathing the true, unchanging love which filled his heart.
Yet how could she believe him? Before her memory there danced a tantalizing vision—innumerable well-known flirtations, every one of which might mean as much as this, and more.
How did she know? She would not be the first woman who had been deceived by a man, and misled by specious pleading to her own unhappiness. She was not the first, and she would not be the last.
And Will Venners was so much sought after and admired, and so welcome in society, while she—what was she but a poor girl, a hired companion, paid the same as Betty Harwood, or any other hireling at Yorke Towers?
Jessie Glyndon was proud—very proud; and she felt a horrible fear that Will Venners was merely trifling with her, just for idle pastime. It might be amusement for him, but for her it would be death—worse than death; for Jessie Glyndon was the sort of woman who could not endure the burden of life if once deprived of love. She was all alone in the world, and accustomed to her cold, loveless existence; but once let the sun of affection arise upon her life, its setting would mean her utter ruin and destruction. Better to grope on in the darkness in her lonely way than to reach out and gather the proffered flower of love, only to see it wither in her grasp.
Jessie could not believe, with the poet, that—
“’Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.”
She knew all that love would mean to her if once she should gain it; and to lose it would leave her bankrupt indeed. And this love which Will Venners was proffering her—how did she know, how could she be certain that it would be firm and stable? How did she know that it would last?
She sat still and white in the moonlight, and Will’s hand held hers and his eyes were fixed upon her pale, calm face.
“Jessie,” he whispered, softly, bending his handsome head a little nearer, “you surely are not altogether indifferent to me? Surely you care a little for me, or have I been a conceited fool to imagine such a thing possible? I have thought of you by night and day; I wrote to you, but received no reply; I have thought and thought, and tried to find some way to your heart, but you have seemed so cold, and hard, and stern, that I began to despair. And then I concluded to go away; to leave you and the sight of you forever; to say good-bye to my home here, and return no more. For it all seemed so hopeless—this love of mine. But at the last moment my courage failed me. I must see you and tell you good-bye, even though you spurn me from you, Jessie. I leave it all in your hands—my life—my love—my future. What are you going to do with me?”
She lifted her eyes to his face. Strange that she could not still that unquiet voice in her heart which kept whispering of perfidy and deception, and reminding her of the endless flirtations in which Will Venners had engaged until he was past master in the art.
“Answer me, Jessie!” he pleaded, softly, “do you care—or——”
He never finished, for across his words there came a strange interruption. A wild shriek resounded through the silence—a piercing, awful shriek. It came from the house—from the upper windows, not far from where the two were sitting—from Mrs. Yorke’s chamber. Jessie started to her feet, pale and trembling.
“It is Mrs. Yorke!” she cried. “Oh, heavens! what has happened? I ought not to have left her so long. Let me go, Captain Venners—let me go!” (for he had caught her hand as though to detain her). “I should not have left my post so long. Let me go, Will, darling!”
The last word scarcely articulated as she wrenched her hand from his eager clasp. But softly as the word was faltered forth, Will heard it; he dropped the little hand, but not until he had hastily pressed it to his lips.
Like a wild creature, Jessie fled to the house, followed by Will, in no very enviable frame of mind. In after years, looking back upon that moment, Will Venners was wont to say that only the thought of the lone whispered word that Jessie had let fall had kept him from some desperate deed.
In the meantime, let us go back to the time when Violet had left the lovers alone under the magnolia-tree, with the prospect of a speedy explanation. She entered the house and went hastily up the great winding staircase to Mrs. Yorke’s room.
The upper corridor was quite dark, for the lamps had not been lighted. The house was very still. She could hear distinctly Leonard’s voice in the drawing-room below, reading aloud to Mrs. Rutledge and Hilda—
“‘Sweet is true love, though given in vain—in vain!’”
All the rest of the house was wrapped in profound quiet as Violet turned down the corridor in the direction of Mrs. Yorke’s room. She was thinking to herself that if the sick woman would allow her to take Jessie’s place that night, she would try hard to make Mrs. Yorke like her, and for Leonard’s sake, who knew but that she might be beguiled into a more tender feeling for her future daughter-in-law.
As Violet hastened down the corridor, she saw two dark forms standing in the passage which led to the east chamber. Trembling with terror, she halted to see what they were.
Through the gloomy shadows she was able at last to distinguish that it was a man and a woman—Betty Harwood and Gilbert Warrington. And as Violet paused, trembling and faint, she heard the man say softly:
“Well, kill her, then! After all, it would only be legalized murder.”
