Jerry was in high glee, for everybody liked him, and the tips he got were enough to have turned any ordinarily lucky schoolboy green with envy. His holidays were almost over, and no doubt some of the school-chums of whom he spoke to me would soon show him how to get rid of his pocket-money.
The Earl of Greatlands excused himself somewhat earlier than had been expected, on the plea of feeling the need of half an hour’s quiet, as he was considerably out of sorts. “It will be time enough for you to get into your traveling dress in three-quarters of an hour, dear,” he said to Belle, whom he kissed again with all the ardor of a lover. Then he went up to his room, while Belle supported her honors a while longer in a manner that won admiring encomiums from certain individuals of the toadying order, who never lose an opportunity of flattering their superiors in station. When at last the bride went upstairs, she had little time to spare for dressing, but declined to take her two bridemaids with her to facilitate the process.
A minute later Marvel, who had accompanied his master to Moorbye, rushed into the room in which the rest of us were toying with time, and, throwing his hands up with a despairing gesture, screamed rather than shouted his dreadful tidings—
“My master is dead!”
That was what he had to tell us, and a moment later all was confusion and excitement, which was augmented by the sound of despairing shrieks from above.
In common with others, my first impulse was to rush upstairs to Belle’s room. I arrived first, and found her standing in the middle of the floor, alternately screaming and laughing, both screams and laughter being such as can but proceed from the tortured bosom of insanity. Beside her, on the floor, lay an open letter. I instinctively picked it up and hid it in my pocket before any one else saw it. I knew, without being told, that whatever awful tragedy had taken place in the next room was explained in that letter, and that it was the reading of it which had driven my sister mad.
There were plenty of affectionate hands ready to help the stricken bride, and plenty of loving hearts that would fain have lightened her woe. But the blow had been too awful in its suddenness, and had struck when she was least prepared for it, just when she was at the zenith of her triumph and satisfaction. It had extinguished forever the light of reason from that beautiful face, and had transformed the erstwhile smiling bride into a hopeless maniac.
Strangely enough, she seems to have forgotten the present, and all memory of aught connected with the family of Greatlands has been wiped off her darkened mind. She will never betray the part she bore in that other tragedy, and the world speaks very pityingly of the beautiful girl whose mental and social life ended on the very day which had witnessed the climax of her ambition.
The new Earl of Greatlands, being tender and pitiful, would have established his father’s bride of an hour in the dower-house, surrounded by such comforts as she is capable of enjoying. But to this plan neither my father nor Lady Elizabeth were willing to consent, and she still lives at Courtney Grange, one of the saddest wrecks of humanity it is possible to meet with. Interest in her surroundings she takes none, but will sit and babble by the hour of the time when she was a little one, and had no greater trouble than to please an indulgent governess.
My father has aged very much of late, and always bears about him the impress of one who has been cruelly stricken by fate. He had almost worshiped his eldest daughter, in whom he saw nothing but physical, mental and moral perfection. To gaze upon her as she is, and to contrast her present condition with what might have been, is a daily torture to him, which robs his life of much of its former animation and spirit. Seeing how he takes the changed order of things to heart, I often feel thankful that he is quite unsuspicious of the fact that, but for herself, Belle might now have been happy in the love of husband and children, even as I am.