The Cryptogram: A Novel

by James De Mille

In that delirium her thoughts wandered over those scenes which for the past few months had been uppermost in her mind. Now she was shut up in her chamber at Chetwynde Castle reading the Indian papers; she heard the roll of carriage wheels; she prepared to meet the new-comer face to face. She followed him to the morning-room, and there listened to his fierce maledictions. On the occasion itself she had been dumb before him, but in her delirium she had words of remonstrance. These words were expressed in every varying shade of entreaty, deprecation, conciliation, and prayer. Again she watched a stern, forbidding face over the dinner-table, and sought to appease by kind words the just wrath of the man she loved. Again she held out her hand, only to have her humble advances repelled in coldest scorn. Again she saw him leave her forever without a word of farewell--without even a notice of his departure, and she remained to give herself up to vengeance.

That delirium carried her through many past events. Gualtier again stood up before her in rebellion, proud, defiant, merciless, asserting himself, and enforcing her submission to his will. Again there came into her room, suddenly, and like a spectre, the awful presence of Mrs. Hart, with her white face, her stern looks, her sharp inquiries, and her ominous words. Again she pursued this woman to her own room, in the dark, and ran her hands over the bed, and found that bed empty.

But Lord Chetwynde was the central object of her delirious fancies. It was to him that her thoughts reverted from brief wanderings over reminiscences of Gualtier and Mrs. Hart. Whatever thoughts she might have about these, those thoughts would always at last revert to him. And with him it was not so much the past that suggested itself to her diseased imagination as the future. That future was sufficiently dark and terrible to be portrayed in fearful colors by her incoherent ravings. There were whispered words--words of frightful meaning, words which expressed those thoughts which in her sober senses she would have died rather than reveal. Had any one been standing by her bedside who knew English, he might have learned from her words a story of fearful import--a tale which would have chilled his blood, and which would have shown him how far different this sick woman was from the fond, self-sacrificing wife, who had excited the sympathy of all in the hotel. But there was none who could understand her. The doctor knew no language beside his own, except a little French; the maids knew nothing but German. And so it was that while Hilda unconsciously revealed the whole of those frightful secrets which she carried shut up within her breast, that revelation was not intelligible to any of those who were in contact with her. Well was it for her at that time that she had chosen to come away without her maid; for had that maid been with her then she would have learned enough of her mistress to send her flying back to England in horror, and to publish abroad the awful intelligence.

Thus a week passed--a week of delirium, of ravings, of incoherent speeches, unintelligible to all those by whom she was surrounded. At length her strong constitution triumphed over the assaults of disease. The fever was allayed, and sense returned; and with returning sense there came the full consciousness of her position. The one purpose of her life rose again within her mind, and even while she was too weak to move she was eager to be up and away.

"How long will it be," she asked of the doctor, "before I can go on my journey?"

"If every thing is favorable, miladi," answered the doctor, "as I hope it will be, you may be able to go in about a week. It will be a risk, but you are so excited that I would rather have you go than stay."

"A week! A week!" exclaimed Hilda, despairingly. "I can not wait so long as that. No. I will go before then--or else I will die."

"If you go before a week," said the doctor, warningly, and with evident anxiety, "you will risk your life."

"Very well then, I will risk my life," said Hilda. "What is life worth now?" she murmured, with a moan of anguish. "I must and will go on, if I die for it--and in three days."

The doctor made no reply. He saw her desperation, and perceived that any remonstrance would be worse than useless. To keep such a resolute and determined spirit chained here in a sick-chamber would be impossible. She would chafe at the confinement so fiercely that a renewal of the fever would be inevitable. She would have to be allowed her own way. Most deeply did he commiserate this devoted wife, and much did he wonder how it had happened that her husband had gone off from her thus, at a time when he himself was threatened with illness. And now, as before, those kindly German hearts in the hotel, on learning this new outburst of conjugal love, felt a sympathy which was beyond all expression. To none of them had there ever before been known any thing approaching to so piteous a case as this.