A Terrible Secret: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

Madame had no wish to lose her very best seamstress, so Miss Stuart had her way. The sentimental Frenchwoman's own idea was that Miss Stuart was a young person of rank and position, who owing to some ill-starred love affair had been obliged to run away and hide herself from her friends. However as her hopeless passion in no way interfered with her dressmaking ability, madame kept her suspicions to herself and retained her in the workroom.

And so after weary months of pain, and shame, and despair, Edith had come safely to land at last. For the past five months her life had flowed along smoothly, dully, uneventfully—going to her work in the morning, returning to her lodgings at night—sometimes indulging in a short walk in the summer twilight after her tea; at other times too wearied out in body and mind to do other than lie down on the little hard bed, and sleep the spent sleep of exhaustion. That was her outer life; of her inner life what shall I say? She could hardly have told in the after-days herself. Somehow strength is given us to bear all things and live on. Of the man she had married she could not, dare not think—her heart and soul filled with such dark and deadly hatred. She abhorred him,—it is not too much to say that. The packet of treasured letters written in New York so long—oh, so long ago! it seemed—became the one spot of sunshine in her sunless life. She read them until the words lost all meaning—until she knew every one by heart. She looked at the picture until the half-smiling eyes and lips seemed to mock her as she gazed. The little turquoise broach with the likeness, she wore in her bosom night and day—the first thing to be kissed in the morning, the last at night. Wrong, wrong, wrong, you say; but the girl was desperate and reckless—she did not care. Right and wrong were all confounded in her warped mind; only this was clear—she loved Charley as she had never loved him before she became Sir Victor Catheron's bride. He scorned and despised her; she would never look upon his face again—it did not matter; she would go to her grave loving him, his pictured face over her heart, his name the last upon her lips.

Sometimes, sitting alone in the dingy London twilight, there rose before her a vision of what might have been: Charley, poor as he was now, and she Charley's wife, he working for her, somewhere and somehow, as she knew he gladly would, she keeping their two or three tiny rooms in order, and waiting, with her best dress on, as evening came, to hear his step at the door. She would think until thought became torture, until thought became actual physical pain. His words, spoken to her that last night she had ever spent at Sandypoint, came back to her full of bitter meaning now: "Whatever the future brings, don't blame me." The future had brought loneliness, and poverty, and despair—all her own fault—her own fault. That was the bitterest sting of all—it was her own work from first to last. She had dreaded poverty, she had bartered her heart, her life, and him in her dread of it, and lo! such poverty as she had never dreamed of had come upon her. If she had only been true to herself and her own heart, what a happy creature she might have been to-day.

But these times of torture were mercifully rare. Her heart seemed numb—she worked too hard to think much—at night she was too dead tired to spend the hours in fruitless anguish and tears. Her life went on in a sort of treadmill existence; and until the coming of Inez Catheron nothing had occurred to disturb it.

Her heart was full of bitter tumult and revolt as she went back to her work. The dastard! how dared he! He was dying, Inez Catheron had said, and for love of her. Bah! she could have laughed in her bitter scorn,—what a mockery it was! If it were true, why let him die! The sooner the better—then indeed she would be free. Perhaps Edith had lost something—heart, conscience—in the pain and shame of the past. All that was soft and forgiving in her nature seemed wholly to have died out. He had wronged her beyond all reparation—the only reparation he could make was to die and leave her free.

Madame's young women were detained half an hour later than usual that evening. A great Belgravian ball came off next night, and there was a glut of work. They got away at last, half fagged to death, only to find a dull drizzling rain falling, and the murky darkness of early night settling down over the gas-lit highways of London. Miss Stuart bade her companions a brief good-night, raised her umbrella, and hurried on her way. She did not observe the waiting figure, muffled from the rain and hidden by an umbrella, that had been watching for her, and who instantly followed her steps. She hurried on rapidly and came at last to a part of the street where it was necessary she should cross. She paused an instant on the curbstone irresolute. Cabs, omnibuses and hansoms were tearing by in numbers innumerable. It was a perilous passage. She waited two or three minutes, but there was no lull in the rush. Then growing quite desperate in her impatience she started to cross. The crossing was slippery and wet.

"I say! look out there, will you!" half a dozen shrill cabbies called, before and behind.

She grew bewildered—her presence of mind deserted her—she dropped her umbrella and held up her hands instinctively to keep them off. As she did so, two arms grasped her, she felt herself absolutely lifted off her feet, and carried over. But just as the curbstone was reached, something—a carriage pole it appeared—struck her rescuer on the head, and felled him to the ground. As he fell, Edith sprang lightly out of his arms, and stood on the pavement, unhurt.

The man had fallen. It was all the driver of the hansom could do to keep his horse from going over him. There was shouting and yelling and an uproar directly. A crowd surrounded the prostrate man. X 2001 came up with his baton and authority. For Edith, she stood stunned and bewildered still. She saw the man lifted and carried into a chemist's near by. Instinctively she followed—it was in saving her he had come to grief. She saw him placed in a chair, the mire and blood washed off his face, and then—was she stunned and stupefied still—or was it, was it the face of Sir Victor Catheron?

It was—awfully bloodless, awfully corpse-like, awfully like the face of a dead man; but the face of the man whose bride she had been ten months ago—the face of Sir Victor Catheron.