CHAPTER LXII.
If Norman believes that the spell of his love is strong enough to trace Sweetheart in her flight, he is mistaken. Days elapse, and he has not found the first clew. If she has left the city, he can not ascertain by what route, and if she isstill in Jacksonville, she is hidden so cleverly that a private detective can not find her out. She is quite gone out of her husband’s life—gone as mysteriously as she had come into it first sixteen years ago a little golden-haired fairy.
A chill runs over him as the fact strikes him. There had always been a mystery about Sweetheart’s origin. Would the same mystery follow her disappearance? Beautiful and gifted beyond most mortals, was she some fairy changeling lent him awhile to brighten his life, then snatched away forever to her immortal sphere? He had never been accounted superstitious, but a thrill of fear ran over him as he recalled a pretty Shetland fairy-tale he had often read, wherein the fairy bride, won at first from the sea, had deserted her husband and returned to her home among the coral caves:
“Days of delightAmong my gorgeous coral halls,Where never a child’s footstep falls,Never is heard one loving voice,But all is mirth and mad rejoice.”
“Days of delightAmong my gorgeous coral halls,Where never a child’s footstep falls,Never is heard one loving voice,But all is mirth and mad rejoice.”
“Days of delightAmong my gorgeous coral halls,Where never a child’s footstep falls,Never is heard one loving voice,But all is mirth and mad rejoice.”
“Days of delight
Among my gorgeous coral halls,
Where never a child’s footstep falls,
Never is heard one loving voice,
But all is mirth and mad rejoice.”
He swept his white hand wearily across his brow as if to clear away these mists of fancy.
“Sweetheart, you never would have deserted me!” he cried, in his anguish. “Oh, my love, my love, come back to me!”
But, although the search for Sweetheart baffled every one who undertook it, Norman was more fortunate as regarded his mother. He found her where Camille had declared she was—at the cabin of Nance, the whilom chamber-maid at Verelands. The negro girl had degenerated into a thriftless, lazy sloven, much addicted to drink, and sprung eagerly at any chance that offered money without work, so she accepted Camille’s golden bribe, even though it was offered for the injury of the old mistress who had in past days been most generous and kind to her servant. But Nance had all the proverbial ingratitude of the negro race, and did not hesitate to bind the aristocratic lady tightly down upon a low cot-bed, where, after placing a sufficient quantity of water and coarse food within easy reach, she left her to her fate, locking the doors of the cabin and beating a hasty retreat to another city—for she well knew that, when this outrage was discovered, her punishment would be little short of lynching.
Here, after she had been imprisoned for a week, Norman de Vere found his beloved and revered mother ill unto death with fever and raving in delirium. Too low to be removed, he had to fit the cabin up as comfortably as possible for transientoccupancy. Here he remained with some trusty servants in the squalid negro cabin, nursing his mother, while up at Verelands, his beautiful home, the fiendish Camille held complete sway, and the city rang with the story of the wicked revenge she had taken on her husband for his obstinacy in refusing to forgive her for a harmless flirtation. There were many who condemned her, but a few people sympathized with her, saying that Norman had been too hard upon her and deserved his punishment. A few people even called out of curiosity, but Finette sent them curtly away with the excuse that her mistress was ill and could see no one. This was not a falsehood, for Camille really lay upon Sweetheart’s pretty bed from day to day, raging, raving in alternate hatred and despair, realizing, after her long plotting for vengeance, that her triumph had left her ruined life waste and empty as before of the one blessing she had craved so madly—the love of the man whom she had turned against her by her terrible crime. Finette was changing daily, too. Her once cringing manner had turned to insolence, and she affected to tremble every time the door-bell rang, vowing that she listened daily for the officers to come and arrest her mistress for the murder with which Norman de Vere had charged her. In vain Camille protested her innocence, for her scared eyes betrayed her guilt. She had seen the murdered Robert Lacy so often in her dreams that she began to fancy he haunted her, and could not bear for the maid to leave her alone for a minute in the beautiful room where she had once been so wildly happy, but which now seemed peopled with fiends from Hades, grinning at her from over one another’s shoulders.
Lying there, watched by the sullen, insolent creature who had aided and abetted her in all of her cruel, wicked schemes for the sake of the golden bribe she offered, what visions came to Camille, the proud beauty whose unbridled passions had made shipwreck of her life! Visions of the past and of the glorious opportunities for happiness she had wasted and flung into the yawning pit of sin. Beautiful, rich, madly beloved—she had been all these, yet now she lay shivering, terrified, friendless, waiting, fearing, dreading the—prison cell.
Yes, she could think of nothing else but Norman’s mad threat that now he would betray the dark secret kept so long, and so free himself from the incubus she had made of herself, and punish her for the sorrow she had brought upon those dearer to him than his own life.
“Will he do it? Can he doom me to the gallows-tree?” the half-mad creature asked herself hourly; and as each day rolledaway she began to feel more secure. “He can not do it, much as he hates me. I know he could not harm me, even for her sake. The past makes me sacred in his eyes still,” she began to think with keen triumph in her power.