“Tell her Margery’s mother is here, and very anxious to see her,” Mrs. La Rue said; and with a bow, Pierre departed, leaving her alone in the hall.
He had not asked her to sit down, but she felt too faint and tremulous to stand, and, sinking into a chair, leaned her head against the hat-stand, and shutting her eyes, waited as people wait for some great shock or blow which they know is inevitable. How long Pierre was gone she could not guess, for she was lost to all consciousness of time, and was only roused when he laid his hand upon her shoulder and demanded what was the matter, and if she were sick. Then she looked up, and showed him a face so white, so full of pain, and dread, and horror, that he asked her again what was the matter.
“Nothing, nothing,” she answered, sharply. “Tell me what did she say? Will she see me?”
“She bade me tell you she could not see you, but if your errand was very particular or concerned Miss Margery, you were to give it to me,” Pierre replied, and in an instant the whole aspect of the woman changed, the deathly pallor left her face, and the look of dread and anguish was succeeded by one of intense relief as she exclaimed:
“Thank God! thank God! for I could not have borne it. I could not have done it at the last, and now I know it is not required of me. I have no errand, no message; good-morning,” and she darted from the door, while Pierre looked wonderingly after her, saying to himself, “I believe the woman is crazy.”
And in good truth insanity would best describe Mrs. La Rue’s condition of mind as she sped down the winding hills and across the causeway, until the bridge was reached, and then she paused, and leaning far over the railing looked wistfully down into the depths below, as if that watery bed would be most grateful to her. Suicide was something of which Mrs. La Rue had thought more than once. It was the phantom which at times haunted her day and night, and now it looked over her shoulder and whispered:
“Why not end it now and forever? Better to die than live to ruin that young life, and know yourself loathed and despised by the creature you love best. Sometime in your fits of conscientiousness you will tell, as you were tempted to do just now, and then——”
Mrs. La Rue gave a long, gasping shudder as she thought, “What then?” and leaned still farther over the parapet beneath which the waters of the Chicopee were flowing so sluggishly.
“Yes, better die before I am left to tell and see the love in Margery’s face turn to bitter hatred. Oh, Margery, my child. Mine, by all that is sacred! I cannot die and go away from her forever, for if there be a hereafter, as she believes, we should never meet again. Her destiny would be Heaven, and mine blackness and darkness of despair, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched! She read me that last night, little dreaming that I carry about with me the worm which dieth not, and have carried it so many years, and oh, how it does gnaw and gnaw at times, until I am tempted to shriek out the dreadful thing. Oh, God, forgive me, and help me to hold my tongue, and keep the love of Margery.”
She had drawn back from the railing by this time and, gathering her shawl around her, she started for home, where she found Margery in the reception-room alone, busily engaged on a dark-blue silk, which Anna Ferguson had deigned to give her to make, and for which she was in a hurry. She had been there that morning to see about it, and had found a great deal of fault with some trimming which she had ordered herself, and had insisted that the dress must be finished by twelve o’clock, as she was going with Major Lord Rossiter to West Merrivale to see a base-ball match on the Common.