CHAPTER XII
One of Earl Fairvale's favorite amusements was riding on horseback. He had a passion for fast horses. He might often be seen mounted on some spirited and superb animal, riding in the "Row" by his daughter's side, who was herself a finished horsewoman.
Sometimes he drove a four-in-hand. Often he might be seen tearing along at a wild and break-neck pace on some fiery-looking horse that ordinary people would shudder to look at. But the earl did not know the name of fear. He seemed to take a reckless delight and gloomy satisfaction in those wild, John Gilpin-like races, at which others trembled with dread. He laughed at the fears of his daughter and her friends, and disregarded their entreaties.
Sir Harry Clive came home one day, his fine face clouded with anxiety.
"The earl has bought a new horse," he said. "It is a beautiful creature, black as night, glossy as satin, clean-limbed, superb, but with the most vicious eye conceivable, and a fiery temper. They call him King."
"I suppose there is no danger to the earl," said his wife. "He has a marvelous control over his horses. They seem to obey the least touch of his hand or sound of his voice."
"This animal he has now is not like to be tamed so easily," Sir Harry answers, gravely. "It is said that he threw his last master and killed him. Indeed, Nella, you could not imagine a more devilish-looking creature than this beautiful King. I told Fairvale that its true name ought to be the Black Devil, for I am sure he looks like one."
Lady Clive shudders.
"Has the earl tried him yet?" she inquires.
"He started out upon him an hour ago," Sir Harry answers. "There were a score of us who tried to persuade him not to mount the fiery creature. But he laughed at our fears, and went off in gallant style. King tried to prevent him from mounting, but he succeeded in first-rate style. Yet I doubt," gloomily, "if he ever returns alive."
"What will Lady Vera say? She has been so anxious over him, so nervous of late," sighs Lady Clive.
"You need not tell her," he answers. "No need to alarm her needlessly. After all, our forebodings may be vain. Fairvale is the most fearless and accomplished rider I ever saw. He may even conquer King."
But even then the loud and startling peal of the door-bell rings like a wild alarm through the house.
Sir Harry's fears have had only too good a foundation. They have picked up the earl from the hard and flinty pavement, where the maddened brute had flung him, and brought him home bleeding, senseless—mortally injured, all the surgeons agree.
And Lady Vera? The shock of the awful tidings had almost rent her heart in twain. Passing from one swoon into another, she lies on her couch, white and horror-stricken, shuddering sighs heaving her breast. At last they come to tell her that the awful stupor is over. He is conscious, and has asked for her.
"How long?" she asks, faintly, for they have told her that his hours are numbered.
"Calm yourself, for he cannot bear the least excitement."
But when Vera goes into his presence, and sees him lying so marble-white, with the black hair tossed back from the high, pale brow, and the eager, asking eyes fixed upon her anguished face, a great, choking knot rises into her throat—it seems as if she will choke with the violence of her repressed emotion.
"Father!" she wails, with a world of grief in that one word, and falls on her knees by his bed-side.
"I am going from you, dear," he answers, with the strange calmness of the dying. "The black river of death yawns at my feet. The pale and mystic boatman is waiting to row me over. Already the cold waves splash over me. Vera!"
"Father," she answers, placing her hand in the cold one feebly groping for it.
His hollow, dark eyes roll around the room.
"Are we alone?"
"Alone," she answers, for all the kindly watchers have withdrawn, leaving father and child to the sweet solace of this last moment together, undisturbed by alien eyes.
The dark eyes seek hers—sad, wistful, full of vain remorse.
"Vera, I was reckless, mad, defiant of fate. I have thrown my life away, my poor, blighted life. Can you forgive me, my poor, orphaned girl?"
Only her stifled sobs answer him.
"I did not mean it, Vera. I was tormented by my burning thoughts, and I only sought diversion. I thought I could hold the fiery brute in check. But the devil threw me. No matter; I am to blame. I was too reckless. But you forgive me, darling?"
She kisses him because she cannot speak.
"I have lost my life," he murmurs, sadly; "lost it before my work on earth was done. My daughter, you recall what I said to you so short a while ago?"
She shivers, and lifts her dark, foreboding eyes to his face.
"Yes, father."
"Bring me the Bible from yonder stand, dear. You must swear a solemn oath."
The beautiful young face quivers with nameless dread and fear.
"Oh, father," she prays, with lifted hands and streaming eyes, "leave it to Heaven!"
The dark eyes, fast glazing over with the film of death, grow hard and stern.
"Vera, child of my martyred wife, will you be false to your father's dying trust? Will you refuse to obey his dying commands?"
"No, father, no," she weeps.
"Then place your hand on this Bible, my darling."
Silently she obeys him, the pale, chill light of the waning day glimmering in on her ghost-like, pallid face, and the dark eyes full of pain and despair.
And the voice of the dying man rises strangely on the utter stillness.
"Swear, Vera, swear by all your hopes of happiness, that you will punish Marcia Cleveland through her dearest affections, that at any cost to yourself you will avenge your mother's wrongs!"
A gasp; the words die on Lady Vera's parched tongue.
"Speak, my little countess. Repeat my words," he urges, anxiously.
With a terrible effort she murmurs them over:
"I swear, by all my hopes of happiness, that I will punish Marcia Cleveland through her dearest affections; that at any cost to myself I will avenge my mother's wrongs!"
She glances down at the loved face for his smile of approval. An icy hand seems to clutch her heart. Her father has died as the last words left her lips—died with a smile of triumph on his marble-white face!
One piercing cry of anguish, and the Countess of Fairvale falls lifeless across the still warm body of the dead.
CHAPTER XIII
Long days of illness for Lady Fairvale follow upon the tragic episode of her father's death.
Nights and days go by like utter blanks to her, with only slightly recurring intervals of consciousness. It has been a great shock to her, this swift and terrible rending apart of the last filial tie earth holds for her. Near kindred she has none. Her father's death has seemed to leave her utterly alone on earth. It is true there is some distant cousin and heir-at-law who would, no doubt, take it as a favor if she would die and leave him title and estates, but him she knows not.
"There is no one living who has the least claim upon my affection," she thinks, forlornly, to herself that day, when, with agonized heart she bends to press the last farewell kiss on her father's marble lips; but even with the words a sudden memory stabs her heart and crushes her senseless to the floor with the silent whisper of one name—Leslie Noble!
That feared and dreaded name has power to blanch poor Vera's cheek and drive the blood from her heart at any moment.
"What if, dazzled by my wealth and title, he should come and claim me?" is her dreadful thought, never dreaming of that stately monument in fair and flowery Glenwood, on which Leslie Noble has caused to be inscribed the simple name of:
"VERA,
WIFE OF LESLIE NOBLE
Died, – —th, 18—; aged 17."
thus trying to atone to the dead in some slight measure for the pitiful, unmanly cowardice that had driven her desperate.
But after that terrible brain fever, that great struggle between the opposing forces of life and death, Vera lies still upon her couch with wide, dark eyes that look out from her small, white face drearily upon the world—the great, wicked world in which, though she has so much wealth and power, she cannot claim so much as a single true friend.
"Unless Lady Clive be one," she muses, "and—and," but then she stops, and takes herself to task because she has so strangely thought of Captain Lockhart just then.
"Where can he be?" she wonders. "Perhaps he has taken himself off to livelier quarters. The house must have been as dull as a tomb while I lay so ill. I wonder if Lady Clive will ever forgive me for spoiling her 'season' like this."
She propounds this latter question gravely to Lady Clive herself, who responds with an encouraging smile, and the gay little answer:
"I will try."
But when she sees how pale and wistful is Countess Vera's lovely face, she folds her in her arms and kisses her.
"My dear, do not give a thought to that," she says. "There is nothing to forgive, believe me. I am very glad that you were with us when you fell sick. I have nursed you with all the love and tenderness I could have given a sister."
Why should Countess Vera's heart beat so fast at the thought of being Lady Clive's sister, and why should her pale cheeks flush, and the grateful words falter on her lips?
"We all love you," her friend goes on kindly. "The children have been dolorous over you. 'When will Vera come and see us again?' they ask every day. Have you looked at the pretty bouquets they sent in for you this morning?"
Lady Vera smiles assent. Fresh flowers are brought to her room every morning, and they tell her the children send them. But there are only three children, and always four bouquets. Vera asks no questions but she knows that the fourth one is always the largest and sweetest. To-day it is of crimson rose-buds, mixed with heliotrope and pansies, for there is always some blending of her favorite flower.
"You do not know how much we miss you from our home circle," the charming Lady Clive resumes, vivaciously. "You must not leave us when you get well, dear. Make your home with us until you get settled for life. You will be so lonely if you try to live alone with a chaperon. Won't you promise to stay?"
"I will think of it," Lady Vera answers, gratefully, while tears rise to her dark eyes.
Lady Clive comes to sit with her often, sending away the prim nurse, and installing herself in her place. She chats vivaciously, retailing bits of society gossip, telling of all the great people who have left cards of condolence for the young countess, of the lovers who are all desoles over her illness; of Sir Harry's regret and the children's clamorous despair. But, strange to say, she utterly forgets the existence of her brother, Captain Lockhart, or, perhaps, deems the subject uninteresting to her guest.
He has gone away, Lady Vera tells herself; yet she, in some vague way, feels that he has not. She hears a step in the hall outside her door sometimes—a manly step that is not Sir Harry Clive's, but which has a firm, remembered ring in it that has power to send the warm blood flying from her heart to her face.
When she is well enough to sit up in her white dressing-gown, lying back in a great, cushioned arm-chair, the children are admitted to see her. They spend a noisy five minutes with their friend, then the nurse bundles them out, closing the door on their clamorous tongues, but not so quickly but that Countess Vera catches Mark's disgusted dictum in the hall:
"Oh, Uncle Phil! Vera isn't a bit pretty any more. Her face is all white and thin, and her eyes are so big."
So he is here. Her subtle intuitions had been right.
Impulsively she turns to the prim old nurse.
"Open that door, and ask Captain Lockhart to come in here."
He comes, eager, smiling, filled with wonder, yet outwardly calm.
"You are very kind; you permit me to share the children's treat," he says. "May I–" then he pauses, confused.
"Look at me? yes, do," she says, crimsoning painfully. "I want you to tell me—is it true what Mark said—that I am not pretty any more?"
The blue eyes meet hers with the old, strange look that always made her heart beat against her will.
"Mark is a little dunce," he answers, smiling. "He has no eye for anything but roses. I assure you, Lady Vera, that you are as beautiful in your pallor and delicacy as you were in health. More beautiful to me," he adds, his voice falling slightly lower "because now you are kind."
"Kind!"
She arches her dark brows slightly in surprise.
"Yes," he answers. "Did you not know how I have been longing for a sight of your face, Lady Vera? But I dared not ask, and now you allow me to see you of your own free will. You cannot guess how much I thank you."
His voice trembles with feeling. The countess, blushing in spite of herself, tries to make light of it all.
"I did not think of les proprietes when I called you in here," she stammers. "My vanity was so alarmed by Mark's terrible speech that I forgot everything. I think you must go now."
But he lingers.
"Won't you come down into the library?" persuasively. "We could all amuse you there. You could lie on the sofa with a warm shawl over you, and we would read aloud to you, or sing, or play—whatever pleased you most. It must be dull for you here with your sick fancies. Will you come?"
What an atmosphere of cheerfulness he has brought into the sick-room.
Lady Vera's heart that has lain numb and chill, and hopeless in her breast so long, seems to warm itself to life again in the sunlight of his smile.
"I will go, if Lady Clive thinks it prudent," she declares.
Lady Clive—that astute general—on being consulted, puts on the gravest face over her well-pleased mind, and declares that Lady Vera may venture to-morrow, perhaps, and so gives Captain Lockhart twenty-four hours of the pleasures of anticipation, which philosophers declare exceed those of reality.
With to-morrow begins a love-idyl, one of the sweetest ever enacted, perhaps, and the most innocent, for Lady Vera is unconscious of it all, nor dreams that love is near. Captain Lockhart is no bold nor intrusive lover. He does not weary Lady Vera with his company or attentions, oftener than not leaving her to the companionship of his sister. But when he enters the room it is always brighter for his coming; when he reads, the volume gains a new interest; when he sings, she lies with closed eyelids, and wonders why she had ever fancied she would dislike this pleasant, agreeable gentleman, with his handsome face, his scholarly mind and chivalrous manner.
"It is very pleasant having such a friend," she thinks, within her innocent, unconscious heart. "I was so lonely losing dear papa, and having not one true heart to turn to in my sorrow."
A remembrance of her oath of vengeance comes into her mind, and a troubled look sweeps over the fair, young face. It weighs upon her like a burden—the legacy of hate her dying father has left her. How shall she ever keep her vow?
"Shall I go to America and seek my enemies who are so securely hidden away that even detectives cannot find them?" she asks herself. "Or shall I lie passive and wait? and when found, how shall I strike Marcia Cleveland's cruel heart?"
Alas! poor Vera, if you only knew the dreadful truth. If you only guessed how, in wounding your enemy's heart, you must fatally stab your own, you might pray to die now while the pulses of life are low, ere life became a living death. Well for us that:
"Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate."
And the pretty idyl goes on. Lady Vera's morbid thoughts are drawn out of herself, and lifted to a higher plane by Philip Lockhart's cheerful, active mind. The weeks round into a month, and she is almost well again. The color and roundness of youth have come back to her cheek, the light of a strange, new, unconscious happiness is dawning in the darkness of her eyes.
CHAPTER XIV
Far away from the spot where Countess Vera broods over her oath of vengeance, in far America, away in the green heart of the langourous south, is the white marble palace where Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter dwelt, hidden from the knowledge of the man they had wronged, and who had sworn to bring home to them the ruin they had wrought.
To-day, a lovely morning in the autumn of that summer in which the Earl of Fairvale died, Mrs. Cleveland comes out on the piazza of her stately southern home, with a frown upon her brow. Behind her, in the magnificent saloon she has just quitted, high words are raging.
"You never loved me, or you would do as I wish you," wails the weak voice of Ivy to her husband, as, dissolved in tears, she flings herself upon a costly sofa.
"I begin to think I never did, but all the same you and your mother have ruined me by your cursed extravagance. I have not a thousand dollars to my name in bank. This place will have to be sold and we can live on the proceeds a little longer, perhaps," Leslie Noble answers, in a sharp, high-pitched voice, as he strides up and down the floor, cursing within his heart the weak fancy that had led him to marry this shrewish creature.
"Ruined! I do not believe one word of it!" Mrs. Noble breaks out, starting up and glaring at him with her pale, blue eyes. "It is a falsehood you have trumped up to keep from taking mamma and me to Europe where our hearts are just breaking to go! You know very well we have not spent a fortune in the little year and a half we have been married. We couldn't have done it."
"We have done it, anyhow," he answers, sullenly. "It was no difficult manner, considering the way in which you and your mother have forced me to live. Furniture fit for a palace, jewels costly enough for a queen, entertainments costing thousand of dollars, recklessly repeated over and over. We are at the end of the line at last, and you may yet have to take in washing for a living."
"You brute!" she exclaims, flashing him a glance of wrath and scorn. "To begrudge us the pleasant time we have had! I did not know you could be so mean and stingy! Of course I knew that your bachelor uncle in Philadelphia—the one you are named for—would leave you his money when he died. I wish he would die now. He's mortally slow about it. I should think he must be a hundred years old."
"Good God, Ivy! what a heartless and mercenary woman you are!" her husband cries, stormily. "That poor old man, my uncle, who never harmed living soul, how dare you wish for his death? Upon my soul, I am tempted to write to him to leave his money to some orphan asylum or art gallery just to disappoint your hopes."
"You would not dare!" she sobs, hysterically.
"Try me too far, and see what I will not dare," he answers, threateningly, and she stops her sobbing and looks up, fearfully, at the dark, handsome face bent sternly upon her with two smouldering fires in his gloomy black eyes.
It is not as handsome and refined a face as Leslie Noble could boast of two years ago. There are lines of dissipation on it. There is a certain hardness and coarseness upon it, as if engendered by ill-nature and the free indulgence of evil passions. Association with such a woman as Ivy Cleveland would naturally bring that look into a man's face. Coarse, selfish, and unprincipled herself, she has dragged the man's weak, easily-moulded nature down upon a level with her own.
"When I married you, Ivy," pursues Mr. Noble, "I desired to take you to Europe on a bridal tour, but you and your mother, for no earthly reason that I can imagine, declined to go. You refused my offers to take you to my own home in Philadelphia, preferring, as you said, the sunny south for a home. Now you have changed your minds, and declare American life monotonous and unendurable, and fancy you would like to figure in the courts of Europe. You had just as well cry for the moon. You have recklessly dissipated your own property and mine, and must bear the consequences. I cannot afford to take you abroad, and I do not desire to be badgered about it any longer."
"You shall hear about it day and night until I get my wish," Ivy cries, with passionate defiance. "Sell this house and all our fine furniture if you choose. It will bring enough with what you have in bank to afford us a brilliant season in London. Then by the time we return old Noble will have died, perhaps, and left us his fortune."
"Did I not tell you I will not have Uncle Leslie's death counted on so coarsely?" cries Mr. Noble, furiously. "You are a perfect harpy."
"And you are a brute!" Mrs. Noble retorts. "Aren't you ashamed to call your wife such names? and you pretended to be in love with me when you married me, you cruel, unfeeling wretch!"
"You dropped your mask as soon as I made you my wife, and showed me what you really were," Leslie Noble answers, with bitter anger and scorn. "I was only a tool for you, and a stepping-stone to power. Your mother's money was well-nigh exhausted, and you married me so that you could squander mine. Then, too, you have the most horrible temper in the world. Do you think any man could continue to love such a woman?"
"How dare you talk to poor, dear Ivy so cruelly?" Mrs. Cleveland exclaims, stepping back through the low, French window, and glaring at her son-in-law with tigerish hate in her keen, black eyes. "You have frightened her into hysterics, you unfeeling wretch!"
"I would thank you not to interfere between me and my wife," he answers, stung to defiance by the insolence of both mother and daughter. "You have always thrust yourself into my affairs. You have been the power behind the throne and moved Ivy like a puppet at your will. I wish to Heaven you would go away and leave us to fight our own battles. It would be something to be rid of even one of you!"
A scream of rage from Ivy, who proceeds to roll on the floor in violent hysterics. Such scenes as these are of frequent occurrence, but Mr. Noble has seldom spoken his mind so plainly, especially on the subject of his mother-in-law. There is no telling what might have happened, for Mrs. Cleveland looks furious enough to spring upon the offender and rend him limb from limb, but at this moment there appears upon the scene a messenger with one of those yellow-covered envelopes which carry joy or sorrow to so many hearts.
"A telegram," Mr. Noble exclaims, and tears it hurriedly open.
As he reads, a look of sorrow, strangely blended with relief, comes out upon his features. His wife, forgetful of her sham hysterics, springs up and regards him, intently.
"A telegram! From whom? And what does it mean?" she exclaims.
"It is from my lawyer," Mr. Noble answers, bitterly, "and it means that the devil takes care of his own so well that you will be able to gratify your latest whim. My uncle is dead and has left me his whole fortune."
"Glorious news!" Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter echo with one accord.