Poor, wretched woman, what fear was in her heart as she strove to utter words of confidence. He saw her apprehensions, and drawing her toward him, whispered loving words, and showered burning kisses on her brow. She leant her head on his breast, and her long hair fell over his arm as she lay like a child in his embrace.
A few minutes later the library was empty, when the curtains that shrouded a recess near where the lovers had sat were drawn back, and Sir John Daventry emerged from his concealment. His countenance betrayed little of what passed within; every other feeling was swallowed up in a thirst for revenge—a thirst that would have risked life itself to accomplish its object—for his suspicions had gone beyond the truth, black, dreadful as was that truth to a husband's ears, and he fancied that his unborn infant owed its origin to Charles Mardyn; when, for that infant's sake, where no other consideration could have restrained her, Lady Alice had endured her woman's wrong, and while confessing her love for Mardyn, refused to listen to his solicitations, or to fly with him; and the reference she had made to this, and which he had overheard, appeared to him but a base design to palm the offspring of her love to Mardyn as the heir to the wealth and name of Daventry.
It wanted now but a month of Lady Alice's confinement, and even Mardyn and Clara were perplexed and indecisive as to the effect their stratagem had upon Sir John. No word or sign escaped him to betray what passed within—he seemed stricken with sudden age, so stern and hard had his countenance become, so fixed his icy calmness. They knew not the volcanoes that burned beneath their undisturbed surface. A sudden fear fell upon them; they were but wicked—they were not great in wickedness. Much of what they had done appeared to them clumsy and ill-contrived; yet their very fears lest they might be seen through urged on another attempt, contrived to give confirmation to Sir John's suspicions, should his mind waver. So great at this time was Mardyn's dread of detection that he suddenly left the Hall. He know Sir John's vengeance, if once roused, would be desperate, and feared some attempts on his life. In truth his position was a perilous one, and this lull of fierce elements seemed to forerun some terrible explosion—where the storm might spend its fury was as yet hid in darkness. Happy was it for the Lady Alice Daventry that she knew none of these things, or hers would have been a position of unparalleled wretchedness, as over the plotters, the deceived, and the foredoomed ones, glided on the rapid moments that brought them nearer and nearer, till they stood on the threshold of crime and death.
And now, through the dark channels of fraud and jealousy, we have come to the eve of that strange and wild page in our story, which long attached a tragic interest to the hails of Daventry, and swept all but the name of that ancient race into obscurity.
On the fifteenth of December, Lady Alice Daventry was confined of a son. All the usual demonstrations of joy were forbidden by Sir [pg 647] John, on the plea of Lady Alice's precarious situation. Her health, weakened by the events of the past year, had nearly proved unequal to this trial of her married life, and the fifth morning after her illness was the first on which the physician held out confident hopes of her having strength to carry her through. Up to that time the survival of the infant had been a matter of doubt; but on that morning, as though the one slender thread had bound both to existence, fear was laid aside, and calmness reigned through the mansion of Daventry. On that morning, too, arrived a letter directed to “The Lady Alice Daventry.” A dark shade flitted over Sir John's face as he read the direction; then placing it among his other letters reserved for private perusal, he left the room.
The day wore on, each hour giving increasing strength to the Lady Alice and her boy-heir. During its progress, it was noticed, even by the servants, that their master seemed unusually discomposed, and that his countenance wore an expression of ghastly paleness. As he sat alone, after dinner, he drank glass after glass of wine, but they brought no flush to his cheek—wrought no change in his appearance; some mightier spirit seemed to bid defiance to the effects of drink. At a late hour he retired to his room. The physician had previously paid his last visit to the chamber of his patient; she was in a calm sleep, and the last doubt as to her condition faded from his mind, as, in a confident tone, he reiterated his assurance to the nurse-tender “that she might lie down and take some rest—that nothing more was to be feared.”
The gloom of a December's night had closed, dark and dreary, around the Hall, while, through the darkness, the wind drove the heavy rain against the easements; but, undisturbed by the rain and winds, the Lady Alice and her infant lay in a tranquil sleep; doubt and danger had passed from them; the grave had seemed to yawn toward the mother and child, but the clear color on the transparent cheek, the soft and regular breathing caught through the stillness of the chamber, when the wind had died in the distance, gave assurance to the nurse that all danger was past; and, wearied with the watching of the last four nights, she retired to a closet opening from Lady Alice's apartment, and was soon buried in the heavy slumber of exhaustion.
That profound sleep was rudely broken through by wild, loud cries, reaching over the rage of the elements, which had now risen to a storm. The terrified woman staggered to the bedroom, to witness there a fearful change—sudden, not to be accounted for. A night-lamp shed its dim light through the apartment on a scene of horror and mystery. All was silence now—and the Lady Alice stood erect on the floor, half shrouded in the heavy curtains of the bed, and clasping her infant in her arms. By this time the attendants, roused from sleep, had reached the apartment, and assisted in taking the child from its mother's stiff embrace; it had uttered no cry, and when they brought it to the light, the blaze fell on features swollen and lifeless—it was dead in its helplessness—dead by violence, for on its throat were the marks of strong and sudden pressure; but how, by whom, was a horrid mystery. They laid the mother on the bed, and as they did so, a letter fell from her grasp—a wild fit of delirium succeeded, followed by a heavy swoon, from which the physician failed in awaking her—before the night had passed, Lady Alice Daventry had been summoned to her rest. The sole clew to the events of that night was the letter which had fallen from Lady Alice; it the physician had picked up and read, but positively refused to reveal its contents, more than to hint that they betrayed guilt that rendered his wife and child's removal more a blessing than a misfortune to Sir John Daventry. Yet somehow rumors were heard that the letter was in Charles Mardyn's hand; that it had fallen in Sir John's way, and revealed to him a guilty attachment between Mardyn and his wife; but how it came into her hands, or how productive of such a catastrophe as the destruction of her infant, her frenzy, and death, remained unknown: but one further gleam of light was ever thrown on that dark tragedy. The nurse-tender, who had first come to her mistress's assistance, declared that, as she entered the room, she had heard steps in quick retreat along the gallery leading from Lady Alice's room, and a few surmised that, in the dead of night, her husband had placed that letter in her hand, and told her he knew her guilt. This was but conjecture—a wild and improbable one, perhaps.
Charles Mardyn came not again to the Hall. What he and Clara Daventry thought of what had passed, was known only to themselves. A year went on, and Clara and her father lived alone—a year of terror to the former, for from that terrible night her father had become subject to bursts of savage passion that filled her with alarm for her own safety: these, followed by long fits of moody silence, rendered her life, for a year, harassed and wretched; but then settling into confirmed insanity, released her from his violence. Sir John Daventry was removed to an asylum, and Clara was mistress of the Hall. Another year passed, and she became the wife of Charles Mardyn. It was now the harvest of their labors, and reaped as such harvests must be. The pleasures and amusements of a London life had grown distasteful to Mardyn—they palled on his senses, and he sought change in a residence at the Hall; but here greater discontent awaited him. The force of conscience allowed them not happiness in a place peopled with such associations: they were childless, they lived in solitary state, unvisited by those of their own rank, who were deterred from making overtures of intimacy by the stories that were whispered affixing discredit to his name; his pride and violent temper were ill fitted to brook this neglect; in disgust, they left Daventry, and went to Mardyn [pg 648] Park, an old seat left him by his mother, on the coast of Dorsetshire. It was wildly situated, and had been long uninhabited; and in this lonely residence the cup of Clara's wretchedness was filled to overflowing. In Mardyn there was now no trace left of the man who had once captivated her fancy; prematurely old, soured in temper, he had become brutal and overbearing; for Clara he had cast off every semblance of decency, and indifference was now usurped by hate and violence; their childless condition was made a constant, source of bitter reproach from her husband. Time brought no alleviation to this state of wretchedness, but rather increased their evil passions and mutual abhorrence. They had long and bitterly disputed one day, after dinner, and each reminded the other of their sins with a vehemence of reproach that, from the lips of any other, must have, overwhelmed the guilty pair with shame and terror. Driven from the room by Mardyn's unmanly violence and coarse epithets, Clara reached the drawing-room, and spent some hours struggling with the stings of conscience aroused by Mardyn's taunts. They had heard that morning of Sir John Daventry's death, and the removal of the only being who lived to suffer for their sin had seemed but to add a deeper gloom to their miserable existence—the time was past when any thing could bid them hope. Her past career passed through the guilty woman's mind, and filled her with dread, and a fearful looking out for judgment. She had not noticed how time had fled, till she saw it was long past Mardyn's hour for retiring, and that he had not come up stairs yet. Another hour passed, and then a vague fear seized upon her mind—she felt frightened at being alone, and descended to the parlor. She had brought no light with her, and when she reached the door she paused; all in the house seemed so still she trembled, and turning the lock, entered the room. The candles had burnt out, and the faint red glare of the fire alone shone through the darkness; by the dim light she saw that Mardyn was sitting, his arms folded on the table, and his head reclined as if in sleep. She touched him, he stirred not, and her hand, slipping from his shoulder, fell upon the table and was wet; she saw that a decanter had been overturned, and fancied Mardyn had been drinking, and fallen asleep; she hastened from the room for a candle. As she seized a light burning in the passage, she saw that the hand she had extended was crimsoned with blood. Almost delirious with terror, she regained the room. The light from her hand fell on the table—it was covered with a pool of blood, that was falling slowly to the floor. With a wild effort she raised her husband—his head fell on her arm—the throat was severed from ear to ear—the countenance set, and distorted in death.