CHAPTER XII.
"But shapes that come not at an earthly call
Will not depart when mortal voices bid."
The augury of the preceding day's perfection proved correct—Romaine's nuptial morn came up, veiled in murky clouds that promised a period of dismal rain. The very face of nature, of late so bright and jocund, suffered an obscuration that left it gray and drear. By sun-rise the mists crept swiftly up the hill-sides, revealed the verdant landscape for a moment, and then, as their custom is, descended in a persistent, chilling downpour.
Morton and Hubert were the only members of the household to meet at the breakfast-table, which the butler had striven to render resplendent, in honor of the occasion, by masses of ghastly Freesia and Narcissi.
The conversation of the two men during the repast was desultory in the extreme. There were dark rings around Morton's eyes, which betrayed a sleepless night; he was nervous and constrained in manner, while the wan pallor of his face contrasted sharply with the unrelieved blackness of his garments. It was with evident relief that the brothers-elect left the table and separated by tacit consent.
It had been agreed that the ceremony should be solemnized in the conservatory at noon, after which the wedded pair should at once be driven to Morton's house in the city. The preparations were of the simplest description, if the mere removal of the rustic seats from the conservatory could be considered such.
To be sure, as the appointed hour drew nigh, various wines were placed upon the sideboard in the dining-room, where a bridal-cake occupied the centre of the table, upon which lay bride-roses and lilies-of-the-valley in richly fragrant garlands. Servants in holiday attire went hither and thither with muffled step; otherwise the house maintained the most sepulchral silence. No sound of approaching equipage disturbed the rainy day without; even the birds restrained their plaintive twitter beneath the dripping leaves. It was as if some invisible dead lay in state during that ominous lull which precedes the arrival of the mourners.
Left to himself, Morton paced to and fro in the library. He grew calmer, but by degrees more pallid, as the hours wore to noon, until, when the clergyman was ushered into his presence, his stern composure impressed the man of God as most extraordinary. It was only when the slowly chiming clocks proclaimed the appointed hour, that Morton evinced the least animation. He sprang from his chair, while a hectic glow flashed into his face, and motioned the clergyman to follow him. Scarcely had they entered the conservatory when Romaine appeared, leaning heavily upon her brother's arm, and similarly supported upon the other side by her mother. A very bride of death she looked, her splendid attire rather heightening than relieving her pallor. She wore no jewels, as she had once proposed to do; and she had no need for them, since, if ever loveliness needed not the foreign aid of ornament, but was, when unadorned, adorned the most, Romaine Effingham in her bridal hour proved an exemplar.
They guided her faltering steps forward and gave her into Morton's keeping. He received her with feverish eagerness, and she seemed to thrill beneath his touch as he murmured some word into her ear that summoned the phantom of an answering smile.
Thereupon ensued an ominous pause, broken only by the servants as they grouped themselves at a respectful distance, and by the pitiless patter of the rain upon the glazed roof overhead.
Then the solemn words were pronounced which made the twain one—pronounced to the last Amen, without let or hindrance, and Romaine Morton turned to her husband to receive his kiss. She seemed strong and relieved in spirit as she accepted the tearful embraces of her mother and brother, betraying the while her haste to escape from the thraldom of her nuptial robes, and to be gone to meet the new life upon the threshold of which she stood.
During the progress of her change of costume she seized her opportunity, when unheeded by her mother, to slip a note, addressed to Colston Drummond, into her maid's hand, with the whispered petition that it be delivered as soon as she had left the house. And the loyal little confederate was already upon her way to Drummond Lodge as the carriage containing the wedded pair dashed into the sodden country road that led citywards.
It is needless to state that that day had proved the heaviest of Colston Drummond's existence. It is true that he had brought himself to that pitch of resignation which closely resembles apathy, but he suffered none the less the dull misery that inevitably succeeds acute anguish.
Though he was in ignorance of the hour which should make the idol of his life another's, it was enough that his doom was destined to be sealed at some period of the fatal span between sunrise and sunset. In accordance with his wishes, he had been left in undisturbed solitude during the morning hours, and, as he took no heed of the flight of time, the servant who intruded to announce the messenger from Belvoir found him stretched upon a divan in his sanctum, where he had received Morton that night, long weeks before.
Promptly recognizing the maid, he sprang to his feet, breathlessly demanding the object of her visit.
"I am the bearer of a note from my mistress, sir," the girl replied.
"From Mrs. Effingham?"
"From Mrs. Morton, sir."
He wavered for an instant, but, quickly recovering himself, he groaned,
"Then the marriage has taken place?"
"It has, sir."
"Then what can she want of me?" he muttered inaudibly, as he accepted the missive and broke the seal.
He read Romaine's letter to the close with no outward sign of emotion, beyond a trembling of the hands, which he was powerless to repress. Suddenly, however, he raised his eyes, and there was the fire of an invincible resolution in their depths as he demanded,
"Mrs. Morton has left Belvoir?"
"Yes, sir, more than an hour ago."
"Have you an idea where she has gone?"
"To Doctor Morton's house in the city."
"Thank you—stay; you will be faithful to your mistress and—and to me," he added gently, "and you will keep your errand a secret?"
"You may trust me, sir."
"I shall not forget you."
Once more alone, he hastened to a window and dashed aside the draperies, the better to secure the sickly light that filtered in.
"She has set my soul on fire!" he panted. "O Romaine, Romaine, it had been wiser to let me live out my allotted time and die in my enforced resignation!"
Then his eyes fled over the lines which Romaine had penned, and which ran as follows:
"My dream is dispelled. I have awakened to the reality. God help me! Was it His will that I should have met you in the eleventh hour? To what purpose? Why could I not have slept on, even unto the end? I have been roused too late. In one hour I shall be a wife; and, with God's help I will prove myself worthy the name. But—O my friend, why should I have fallen the prey of such an inscrutable fate? You have said that some day we shall know. Your words will comfort me and give me strength to bear my burden without repining. I shall try to sleep and dream again, for such is my only refuge. God be with you."
He crushed the sheet within his palms, while the panoplies about the apartment rang with his exultant cry:
"She loves me! Thank God, it is not too late for righteous interference so long as she remains a wife in name only! There are hours between this and night, and all I ask is minutes in which to accomplish her salvation! Come what may, I will go to her!"
Meanwhile, Morton and his bride had sped over the intervening distance and found themselves safely housed against the storm in his renovated mansion in the city. Blinds and draperies had been raised to admit such light as there was; rare exotics spent their fragrance upon the genial air; and a repast of exceeding daintiness had been spread for their refreshment. Everything had been done which a refined forethought could suggest—in a word, the cage had been exquisitely gilded, and was in all respects worthy of the bird.
Beneath the mystic spell of his presence, Romaine had recovered her composure, and appeared to all intents and purposes her happiest self. Like a pair of joyous children they wandered from room to room, admiring the new splendors; and thus, in due course, they entered the apartment where, enthroned above the mantel and garlanded with pale blush roses, hung the portrait of Paula. Morton led his wife to a point of vantage, and bid her look upward, riveting his eyes upon her face the while with a hungry longing.
Before the blonde loveliness of the Saxon girl, Romaine paled, while a shudder rent her from head to foot. She sighed heavily, and turned to Morton with a piteous gesture.
"My dear Loyd," she murmured sadly, "never again call me Paula."
He recoiled from her as though each innocent word had stung him to the quick.
"My God!" he cried, "if I thought—" when he checked himself before her look of abject terror, came to her, and took her in his arms. "My darling," he faltered, "if you only knew what agony the mere suspicion of your doubt causes me, you would have pity upon me!"
He spoke with such suppressed passion, with such wild anguish in his haggard eyes, that her alarm faded to helpless amazement.
"I have expressed no doubt," she murmured; "what can you mean?"
"Oh, I do not know," he moaned. "Perhaps I am not quite myself; all the happiness of this day has unnerved me. But—but you bid me never to call you Paula again; what do you mean?"
"Why, simply that I am so inferior to her in loveliness," she answered with a flurried smile.
"Did I ask, did I expect, you to look like her?" he demanded fiercely. "Can you not understand that the flesh is dust, and to dust returns; but the soul is immortal? Paula's body is dust, but her immortal soul lives—lives, not in the realms of bliss to which it fled, released, but—where does it live to-day, at this very instant? I want to hear you tell me!"
He caught her delicate shoulders between his strong white hands and glared like some ravenous animal into her startled face.
"Answer me!" he commanded.
"O Loyd," she wailed, "how wildly you speak! How can I tell where her soul may be, since I can see no reason why it should not be in heaven!"
"If it is in heaven," he cried, thrusting her violently from him, "then am I in hell!"
With a stifled cry, poor Romaine staggered to a chair and sank upon it, overcome by the conviction that she had allied herself to a madman.
And in the ominous pause that ensued, a light rap sounded upon the closed door.
With a muttered ejaculation Morton pulled himself together and went to inquire into the untimely intrusion. Upon opening the door, he found his man upon the threshold, stammering some words of apology, which were summarily cut short.
"What do you want?" Morton demanded sternly.
"There is a lady in the office, sir."
"Where are your wits, that you have forgotten your orders? I am not at home to patients."
"But she has called repeatedly, sir."
"Send her to Doctor Chalmers, my colleague."
"She declares that she will not leave without seeing you. Here is her card."
The sight of that graven name seemed for an instant to petrify the beholder, and several seconds elapsed ere he was able to command himself sufficiently to speak.
Going to his shrinking wife, he raised her hand and pressed it to his lips in a way that was infinitely pathetic.
"I must leave you for a moment, to attend to an urgent case," he whispered; "and while I am gone, I beseech you to pardon a love which transcends all bounds. Some day you will understand all I have suffered. Be lenient with me, for I am an object for pity!"
In the dimness of his office, which had undergone no renovation and no decoration, he found himself confronted by the tall and slender figure of a woman whom he knew full well. The veil had been raised from before the appealing beauty of the face which bore but slight traces of alteration since last he looked upon Margaret Revaleon!
His greeting was of so cordial a nature as to preclude all attempt on the part of his visitor to apologize for her intrusion.
"I am more than glad to see you, Mrs. Revaleon," he exclaimed, excitedly; "your visit is most opportune. For the past week you have been omnipresent in my thoughts. Who shall say that I am not developing something of your own peculiar clairvoyance?"
"I trust not," she said, regarding the speaker with apparent uneasiness.
But he continued, with precipitate heedlessness,
"And how do you find yourself since last we met?"
"My condition remains unchanged," replied the woman. "Indeed, I am satisfied that I have developed into what is popularly known as a spiritualistic medium. But I am wretched at the thought of being the unwilling possessor of this so-called odyllic power; and I have come to you again to beseech you to treat me for a malady which I am convinced you can cure if you will."
Yielding to his adroit guidance, Margaret Revaleon found herself once more seated in the luxurious patient's chair, while the young doctor seated himself before her with his back to the light.
Thus advantageously placed, he replied with a smile,
"Indeed, my dear madam, you overestimate my ability. I do not profess electro-biology. In order to do so, I should be obliged to enter upon an exhaustive course of reading of Reichenbach and his disciples. In point of fact, I have no sympathy with the believers in mesmerism and its concomitant fancies."
"No?" she answered dreamily, that singular absence of inspection dulling her tawny eyes. "Do you know, doctor, that I am impressed to tell you that you are possessed of the mesmeric power to an extraordinary degree?"
He winced consciously, but rejoined soothingly, doing his utmost to increase the stupor which was fast gaining command of his visitor,
"It may be as you say; it is certainly a power second only to your own. What else have you to impart? Anything that you might say, I should regard as oracular."
He thrilled from head to foot with a sense akin to sickening faintness, as he saw her eye-lids slowly droop while she extended her slim, white hands to him.
"Give me your hands," she murmured; "oh, dear, dear, dear! Stand back; do not crowd so! How many there are here!—Ah!"
The final word was simply an exhalation. She slumbered profoundly, breathing stertorously at first, but swiftly relapsing into perfect calm. The trance had begun. The portals of eternity seemed to be widening. The solemnity of the moment was supreme.
Morton's features became rigid as he watched; his haggard eyes started from their sockets and the drops of an icy sweat pearled upon his brow. He had longed for this moment, and yet, now that it was his, he would have given his immortal soul to have been able to play the coward and escape the consequences.
In fact he did withdraw his hands from the slight grasp, but in the next moment he was held spell-bound, for Margaret Revaleon was speaking in that weirdly vaticinal tone.
"Who speaks? Who are you?" gasped Morton, once more grasping the outstretched hands.
"Her father. You should know me. I am Sidney—Sidney—"
"Sidney Effingham!"
"Yes, and I am called back to earth in spite of myself. There is trouble here among those I dearly love, and I am pained, disturbed in my happiness."
"Your widow and son are well," murmured Morton, profoundly awed by the impressive tone of the presence.
"Yes, yes; but Romaine! my daughter, where is she? She is no longer with her mother."
"Of course she is not!" exclaimed Morton; "is she not with you in heaven?"
The violence of the query appeared to disturb the medium; her eyelids fluttered and her breathing became labored, as though the conditions of the trance had been deranged. Presently, however, the transient agitation subsided and a name escaped her lips.
"Loyd!"
"Who speaks?" whispered Morton, vaguely conscious of a change of personality.
"How can you ask? Can you not guess?"
"No!" he cried wildly; "O God! I do not dare to guess, even to think! In heaven's name, do not tell me who you may be! and—and yet I must know! I am resolved to dare death itself to be satisfied! Who is it that speaks?"
"Paula, your wife—and I am waiting!"
The listening air seemed to cringe before the maddened shriek that filled the house.
Morton struggled to his feet and for a moment hovered above the quiescent figure beneath him with hands outstretched and hooked like the talons of a bird of prey; then with a groan he sank back into his chair; his arms fell like plummets at his sides and his head dropped forward upon his breast.
Meanwhile, in the luxurious chamber over which presided the radiant portrait of the dead, garlanded in roses, the unhappy bride paced to and fro, now wringing her delicate hands, and again dashing the terrified tears from her eyes. Each moment but served to increase her helpless alarm; she knew her husband's return to be immediate, at least inevitable, and yet she could not support the thought of his advent. In a word, the last shackle which bound her soul in mystic spell had fallen away, and she was herself again. It had required weeks to right the disordered brain and give it the strength requisite to battle with the mesmeric power of its master; but at last, late as it was, her mind had fully regained its normal functions.
In the midst of her pitiful quandary Romaine was startled by an impetuous step outside the closed door. She recoiled to the furthest corner of the room, and stood bracing her fainting body against the wall.
Contrary to her expectation it was Colston Drummond who flung wide the door and stood before her.
The revulsion of feeling well-nigh overpowered her, yet in some way she was able to demand, in answer to his passionate utterance of her name,
"Why are you here?"
"You forget that I can claim a husband's protection," she retorted valiantly.
"It is from him that I seek to protect you," Drummond exclaimed; "you should not have written to me as you did, should not have laid bare your tortured heart and revealed the secret which I have had every reason to suspect, which my great love for you divined long, long ago, if you did not wish me to fly to your rescue!"
She held up beseeching hands, as though she would ward off that which she would welcome, and cried piteously,
"Too late! It is too late!"
Whatever he might have said remained unuttered, since at the moment that frenzied cry reached their ears, freezing their blood with its baleful import.
"Merciful heaven!" gasped Romaine; "it is Loyd's voice! Something dreadful has occurred! Oh, prove yourself my protector, and come with me! Come, quick, quick!"
In the excitement of the moment, the brooding twilight, and their unfamiliarity with the house they lost much precious time. Indeed they were only guided at last to the grim little office by the sudden opening of a door through which the figure of a woman escaped and passed them in swift flight.
And then they entered in awed silence, to find the bridegroom sitting in the gloaming of his nuptial-day with pendent arms and sunken head, lost—
"In that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened!"
THE END.