"They are family papers," she said. "I--I don't understand them. I will look over them."
She gathered up the papers abruptly, and left the room. As the door closed after her Hilda sat looking at the place where she had vanished, with a very singular smile on her face.
For the remainder of that day Zillah continued shut up in her own room. Hilda went once to ask, in a voice of the sweetest and tenderest sympathy, what was the matter. Zillah only replied that she was not well, and was lying down. She would not open her door, however. Again, before bedtime, Hilda went. At her earnest entreaty Zillah let her in. She was very pale, with a weary, anxious expression on her face.
Hilda embraced her and kissed her.
"Oh, my darling," said she, "will you not tell me your trouble? Perhaps I may be of use to you. Will you not give me your confidence?"
"Not just yet, Hilda dearest. I do not want to trouble you. Besides, there may be nothing in it. I will speak to the Earl first, and then I will tell you."
"And you will not tell me now?" murmured Hilda, reproachfully.
"No, dearest, not now. Better not. You will soon know all, whether it is good or bad. I am going back to Chetwynde to-morrow."
"To-morrow?"
"Yes," said Zillah, mournfully. "I must go back to end my suspense. You can do nothing. Lord Chetwynde only can tell me what I want to know. I will tell him all, and he can dispel my trouble, or else deepen it in my heart forever."
"How terrible! What a frightful thing this must be. My darling, my friend, my sister, tell me this--was it that wretched paper?"
"Yes," said Zillah. "And now, dearest, goodnight. Leave me--I am very miserable."
Hilda kissed her again.
"Darling, I would not leave you, but you drive me away. You have no confidence in your poor Hilda. But I will not reproach you. Goodnight, darling."
"Good-night, dearest."
CHAPTER XVIII.
A SHOCK.
The discovery of these papers thus brought the visit to Pomeroy Court to an abrupt termination. The place had now become intolerable to Zillah. In her impatience she was eager to leave, and her one thought now was to apply to Lord Chetwynde for a solution of this dark mystery.
"Why, Zillah," he cried, as she came back; "what is the meaning of this? You have made but a short stay. Was Pomeroy Court too gloomy, or did you think that your poor father was lonely here without you? Lonely enough he was--and glad indeed he is to see his little Zillah."
And Lord Chetwynde kissed her fondly, exhibiting a delight which touched Zillah to the heart. She could not say any thing then and there about the real cause of her sudden return. She would have to wait for a favorable opportunity, even though her heart was throbbing, in her fierce impatience, as though it would burst. She took refuge in caresses and in general remarks as to her joy on finding herself back again, leaving him to suppose that the gloom which hung around Pomeroy Court now had been too oppressive for her, and that she had hurried away from it.
The subject which was uppermost in Zillah's mind was one which she hardly knew how to introduce. It was of such delicacy that the idea of mentioning it to the Earl filled her with repugnance. For the first day she was distrait and preoccupied. Other days followed. Her nights were sleepless. The Earl soon saw that there was something on her mind, and taxed her with it. Zillah burst into tears and sat weeping.
"My child," said the Earl, tenderly. "This must not go on. There can not be anything in your thoughts which you need hesitate to tell me. Will you not show some confidence toward me?"
Zillah looked at him, and his loving face encouraged her. Besides, this suspense was unendurable. Her repugnance to mention such a thing for a time made her silent; but at last she ventured upon the dark and terrible subject.
"Something occurred at Pomeroy Court," she said, and then stopped.
"Well?" said the Earl, kindly and encouragingly.
"It is something which I want very much to ask you about--"
"Well, why don't you?" said Lord Chetwynde. "My poor child, you can't be afraid of me, and yet it looks like it. You are very mysterious. This 'something' must have been very important to have sent you back so soon. Was it a discovery, or was it a fright? Did you find a dead body? But what is that you can want to ask me about? I have been a hermit for twenty years. I crept into my shell before you were born, and here I have lived ever since."
The Earl spoke playfully, yet with an uneasy curiosity in his tone. Zillah was encouraged to go on.
"It is something," said she, timidly and hesitatingly, "which I found among my father's papers."
Lord Chetwynde looked all around the room. Then he rose.
"Come into the library," said he. "Perhaps it is something very important; and if so, there need be no listeners."
Saying this he led the way in silence, followed by Zillah. Arriving there he motioned Zillah to a seat, and took a chair opposite hers, looking at her with a glance of perplexity and curiosity. Amidst this there was an air of apprehension about him, as though he feared that the secret which Zillah wished to tell might be connected with those events in his life which he wished to remain unrevealed. This suspicion was natural. His own secret was so huge, so engrossing, that when one came to him as Zillah did now, bowed down by the weight of another secret, he would naturally imagine that it was connected with his own. He sat now opposite Zillah, with this fear in his face, and with the air of a man who was trying to fortify himself against some menacing calamity.
"I have been in very deep trouble," began Zillah, timidly, and with downcast eyes. "This time I ventured into dear papa's study--and I happened to examine his desk."
She hesitated.
"Well?" said the Earl, in a low voice.
"In the desk I found a secret drawer, which I would not have discovered except by the merest chance; and inside of this secret drawer I found some papers, which--which have filled me with anxiety."
"A secret drawer?" said the Earl, as Zillah again paused. "And what were these papers that you found in it?" There was intense anxiety in the tones of his voice as he asked this question.
"I found there," said Zillah, "a paper written in cipher. There was a key connected with it, by means of which I was able to decipher it."
"Written in cipher? How singular!" said the Earl, with increasing anxiety. "What could it possibly have been?"
Zillah stole a glance at him fearfully and inquiringly. She saw that he was much excited and most eager in his curiosity.
"What was it?" repeated the Earl. "Why do you keep me in suspense? You need not be afraid of me, my child. Of course it is nothing that I am in any way concerned with; and even if it were--why--at any rate, tell me what it was."
The Earl spoke in a tone of feverish excitement, which was so unlike any thing that Zillah had ever seen in him before that her embarrassment was increased.
"It was something," she went on, desperately, and in a voice which trembled with agitation, "with which you are connected--something which I had never heard of before--something which filled me with horror. I will show it to you--but I want first to ask you one thing. Will you answer it?"
"Why should I not?" said the Earl, in a low voice.
"It is about Lady Chetwynde," said Zillah, whose voice had died away to a whisper.
The Earl's face seemed to turn to stone as he looked at her. He had been half prepared for this, but still, when it finally came, it was overwhelming. Once before, and once only in his life, had he told his secret. That was to General Pomeroy. But Zillah was different, and even she, much as he loved her, was not one to whom he could speak about such a thing as this.
"Well?" said he at last, in a harsh, constrained voice. "Ask what you wish."
Zillah started. The tone was so different from that in which Lord Chetwynde usually spoke that she was frightened.
"I--I do not know how to ask what I want to ask," she stammered.
"I can imagine it," said the Earl. "It is about my dishonor. I told General Pomeroy about it once, and it seems that he has kindly written it out for your benefit."
Bitterness indescribable was in the Earl's tones as he said this. Zillah shrank back into herself and looked with fear and wonder upon this man, who a few moments before had been all fondness, but now was all suspicion. Her first impulse was to go and caress him, and explain away the cipher so that it might never again trouble him in this way. But she was too frank and honest to do this, and, besides, her own desire to unravel the mystery had by this time become so intense that it was impossible to stop. The very agitation of the Earl, while it frightened her, still gave new power to her eager and feverish curiosity. But now, more than ever, she began to realize what all this involved. That face which caught her eyes, once all love, which had never before regarded her with aught but tenderness, yet which now seemed cold and icy--that face told her all the task that lay before her. Could she encounter it? But how could she help it? Dare she go on? Yet she could not go back now.
The Earl saw her hesitation.
"I know what you wish to ask," said he, "and will answer it. Child, she dishonored me--she dragged my name down into the dust! Do you ask more? She fled with a villain!"
That stern, white face, which was set in anguish before her, from whose lips these words seemed to be torn, as, one by one, they were flung out to her ears, was remembered by Zillah many and many a time in after years. At this moment the effect upon her was appalling. She was dumb. A vague desire to avert his wrath arose in her heart. She looked at him imploringly; but her look had no longer any power.
"Speak!" he said, impatiently, after waiting for a time. "Speak. Tell me what it is that you have found; tell me what this thing is that concerns me. Can it be any thing more than I have said?"
Zillah trembled. This sudden transformation--this complete change from warm affection to icy coldness--from devoted love to iron sternness--was something which she did not anticipate. Being thus taken unawares, she was all unnerved and overcome. She could no longer restrain herself.
"Oh, father!" she cried, bursting into tears, and flinging herself at his feet in uncontrollable emotion. "Oh, father! Do not look at me so--do not speak so to your poor Zillah. Have I any friend on earth but you?"
She clasped his thin, white hands in hers, while hot tears fell upon them. But the Earl sat unmoved, and changed not a muscle of his countenance. He waited for a time, taking no notice of her anguish, and then spoke, with no relaxation of the sternness of his tone.
"Daughter," said he, "do not become agitated. It was you yourself who brought on this conversation. Let us end it at once. Show me the papers of which you speak. You say that they are connected with me--that they filled you with horror. What is it that you mean? Something more than curiosity about the unhappy woman who was once my wife has driven you to ask explanations of me. Show me the papers."
His tone forbade denial. Zillah said not a word. Slowly she drew from her pocket those papers, heavy with fate, and, with a trembling hand, she gave them to the Earl. Scarcely had she done so than she repented. But it was too late. Beside, of what avail would it have been to have kept them? She herself had begun this conversation; she herself had sought for a revelation of this mystery. The end must come, whatever it might be.
"Oh, father!" she moaned, imploringly.
"What is it?" asked the Earl.
"You knew my dear papa all his life, did you not, from his boyhood?"
"Yes," said the Earl, mechanically, looking at the papers which Zillah had placed in his hand; "yes--from boyhood."
"And you loved and honored him?"
"Yes."
"Was there ever a time in which you lost sight of one another, or did not know all about one another?"
"Certainly. For twenty years we lost sight of one another completely. Why do you ask?"
"Did he ever live in London?" asked Zillah, despairingly.
"Yes," said the Earl; "he lived there for two years, and I scarcely ever saw him. I was in politics; he was in the army. I was busy every moment of my time; he had all that leisure which officers enjoy, and leading the life of gayety peculiar to them. But why do you ask? What connection has all this with the papers?"
Zillah murmured some inaudible words, and then sat watching the Earl as he began to examine the papers, with a face on which there were visible a thousand contending emotions. The Earl looked over the papers. There was the cipher and the key; and there was also a paper written out by Zillah, containing the explanation of the cipher, according to the key. On the paper which contained the key was a written statement to the effect that two-thirds of the letters had no meaning. Trusting to this, Zillah had written out her translation of the cipher, just as Hilda had before done.
The Earl read the translation through most carefully.
"What's this?" he exclaimed, in deeper agitation. Zillah made no reply. In fact, at that moment her heart was throbbing so furiously that she could not have spoken a word. Now had come the crisis of her fate, and her heart, by a certain deep instinct, told her this. Beneath all the agitation arising from the change in the Earl there was something more profound, more dread. It was a continuation of that dark foreboding which she had felt at Pomeroy Court--a certain fearful looking for of some obscure and shadowy calamity.
The Earl, after reading the translation, took the cipher writing and held up the key beside it, while his thin hands trembled, and his eyes seemed to devour the sheet, as he slowly spelled out the frightful meaning. It was bad for Zillah that these papers had fallen into his hands in such a way. Her evil star had been in the ascendant when she was drawn on to this. Coming to him thus, from the hand of Zillah herself, there was an authenticity and an authority about the papers which otherwise might have been wanting. It was to him, at this time; precisely the same as if they had been handed to him by the General himself. Had they been discovered by himself originally, it is possible--in fact, highly probable--that he would have looked upon them with different eyes, and their effect upon him would have been far otherwise. As it was, however, Zillah herself had found them and given them to him. Zillah had been exciting him by her agitation and her suffering, and had, last of all, been rousing him gradually up to a pitch of the most intense excitement, by the conversation which she had brought forward, by her timidity, her reluctance, her strange questionings, and her general agitation. To a task which required the utmost coolness of feeling, and calm impartiality of judgment, he brought a feverish heart, a heated brain, and an unreasoning fear of some terrific disclosure. All this prepared him to accept blindly whatever the paper might reveal.
As he examined the paper he did not look at Zillah, but spelled out the words from the characters, one by one, and saw that the translation was correct. This took a long time; and all the while Zillah sat there, with her eyes fastened on him; but he did not give her one look. All his soul seemed to be absorbed by the papers before him. At last he ended with the cipher writing--or, at least, with as much of it as was supposed to be decipherable--and then he turned to the other papers. These he read through; and then, beginning again, he read them through once more. One only exclamation escaped him. It was while reading that last letter, where mention was made of the name Redfield Lyttoun being an assumed one. Then he said, in a low voice which seemed like a groan wrung out by anguish from his inmost soul:
"Oh, my God! my God!"
At last the Earl finished examining the papers. He put them down feebly, and sat staring blankly at vacancy. He looked ten years older than when he had entered the dining-room. His face was as bloodless as the face of a corpse, his lips were ashen, and new furrows seemed to have been traced on his brow. On his face there was stamped a fixed and settled expression of dull, changeless anguish, which smote Zillah to her heart. He did not see her--he did not notice that other face, as pallid as his own, which was turned toward his, with an agony in its expression which rivaled all that he was enduring. No--he noticed nothing, and saw no one. All his soul was taken up now with one thought. He had read the paper, and had at once accepted its terrific meaning. To him it had declared that in the tragedy of his young life, not only his wife had been false, but his friend also. More--that it was his friend who had betrayed his wife. More yet--and there was fresh anguish in this thought--this friend, after the absence of many years, had returned and claimed his friendship, and had received his confidences. To him he had poured out the grief of his heart--the confession of life-long sorrows which had been wrought by the very man to whom he told his tale. And this was the man who, under the plea of ancient friendship, had bought his son for gold! Great Heaven! the son of the woman whom he had ruined--and for gold! He had drawn away his wife to ruin--he had come and drawn away his son--into what? into a marriage with the daughter of his own mother's betrayer.
Such were the thoughts, mad, frenzied, that filled Lord Chetwynde's mind as he sat there stunned--paralyzed by this hideous accumulation of intolerable griefs. What was Zillah to him now? The child of a foul traitor. The one to whom his noble son had been sold. That son had been, as he once said, the solace of his life. For his sake he had been content to live even under his load of shame and misery. For him he had labored; for his happiness he had planned. And for what? What? That which was too hideous to think of--a living death--a union with one from whom he ought to stand apart for evermore.
Little did Zillah know what thoughts were sweeping and surging through the mind of Lord Chetwynde as she sat there watching him with her awful eyes. Little did she dream of the feelings with which, at that moment, he regarded her. Nothing of this kind came to her. One only thought was present--the anguish which he was enduring. The sight of that anguish was intolerable. She looked, and waited, and at last, unable to bear this any longer, she sprang forward, and tore his hands away from his face.
"It's not! It's not!" she gasped. "Say you do not believe it! Oh, father! It's impossible!"
The Earl withdrew his hands, and shrank away from her, regarding her with that blank gaze which shows that the mind sees not the material form toward which the eyes are turned, but is taken up with its own thoughts.
"Impossible?" he repeated. "Yes. That is the word I spoke when I first heard that she had left me. Impossible? And why? Is a friend more true than a wife? After Lady Chetwynde failed me, why should I believe in Neville Pomeroy? And you--why did you not let me end my life in peace? Why did you bring to me this frightful--this damning evidence which destroys my faith not in man, but even in Heaven itself?"
"Father! Oh, father!" moaned Zillah.
But the Earl turned away. She seized his hand again in both hers. Again he shrank away, and withdrew his hand from her touch. She was abhorrent to him then!
He Sat Staring Blankly At Vacancy.
[Illustration: "He Sat Staring Blankly At Vacancy."]
This was her thought. She stepped back, and at once a wild revulsion of feeling took place within her also. All the fierce pride of her hot, impassioned Southern nature rose up in rebellion against this sudden, this hasty change. Why should he so soon lose faith in her father? He guilty!--her father!--the noble--the gentle--the stainless--the true--he! the pure in heart--the one who through all her life had stood before her as the ideal of manly honor and loyalty and truth? Never! If it came to a question between Lord Chetwynde and that idol of her young life, whose memory she adored, then Lord Chetwynde must go down. Who was he that dared to think evil for one moment of the noblest of men! Could he himself compare with the father whom she had lost, in all that is highest in manhood? No. The charge was foul and false. Lord Chetwynde was false for so doubting his friend.
All this flashed over Zillah's mind, and at that moment, in her revulsion of indignant pride, she forgot altogether all those doubts which, but a short time before, had been agitating her own soul --doubts, too, which were so strong that they had forced her to bring on this scene with the Earl. All this was forgotten. Her loyalty to her father triumphed over doubt, so soon as she saw another sharing that doubt.
But her thoughts were suddenly checked.
The Earl, who had but lately shrunk away from her, now turned toward her, and looked at her with a strange, dazed, blank expression of face, and wild vacant eyes. For a moment he sat turned toward her thus; and then, giving a deep groan, he fell forward out of his chair on the floor. With a piercing cry Zillah sprang toward him and tried to raise him up. Her cry aroused the household. Mrs. Hart was first among those who rushed to the room to help her. She flung her arms around the prostrate form, and lifted it upon the sofa. As he lay there a shudder passed through Zillah's frame at the sight which she beheld. For the Earl, in falling, had struck his head against the sharp corner of the table, and his white and venerable hairs were now all stained with blood, which trickled slowly over his wan pale face.
CHAPTER XIX.
A NEW PERPLEXITY.
At the sight of that venerable face, as white as marble, now set in the fixedness of death, whose white hair was all stained with the blood that oozed from the wound on his forehead, all Zillah's tenderness returned. Bitterly she reproached herself.
"I have killed him! It was all my fault!" she cried. "Oh, save him! Do something! Can you not save him?"
Mrs. Hart did not seem to hear her at all. She had carried the Earl to the sofa, and then she knelt by his side, with her arms flung around him. She seemed unconscious of the presence of Zillah. Her head lay on the Earl's breast. At last she pressed her lips to his forehead, where the blood flowed, with a quick, feverish kiss. Her white face, as it was set against the stony face of the Earl, startled Zillah. She stood mute.
The servants hurried in. Mrs. Hart roused herself, and had the Earl carried to his room. Zillah followed. The Earl was put to bed. A servant was sent off for a doctor. Mrs. Hart and Zillah watched anxiously till the doctor came. The doctor dressed the wound, and gave directions for the treatment of the patient. Quiet above all things was enjoined. Apoplexy was hinted at, but it was only a hint. The real conviction of the doctor seemed to be that it was mental trouble of some kind, and this conviction was shared by those who watched the Earl.
Zillah and Mrs. Hart both watched that night. They sat in an adjoining room. But little was said at first. Zillah was busied with her own thoughts, and Mrs. Hart was preoccupied, and more distrait than usual.
Midnight came. For hours Zillah had brooded over her own sorrows. She longed for sympathy. Mrs. Hart seemed to her to be the one in whom she might best confide. The evident affection which Mrs. Hart felt for the Earl was of itself an inducement to confidence. Her own affection for the aged housekeeper also impelled her to tell her all that had happened. And so it was that, while they sat there together, Zillah gradually told her about her interview with the Earl.
But the story which Zillah told did not comprise the whole truth. She did not wish to go into details, and there were many circumstances which she did not feel inclined to tell to the housekeeper. There was no reason why she should tell about the secret cipher, and very many reasons why she should not. It was an affair which concerned her father and her family. That her own fears were well founded she dared not suppose, and therefore she would not even hint about such fears to another. Above all, she was unwilling to tell what effect the disclosure of that secret of hers had upon the Earl. Better far, it seemed to her, it would be to carry that secret to the grave than to disclose it in any confidence to any third person. Whatever the result might be, it would be better to hold it concealed between the Earl and herself.
What Zillah said was to the effect that she had been asking the Earl about Lady Chetwynde; that the mention of the subject had produced an extraordinary effect; that she wished to withdraw it, but the Earl insisted on knowing what she had to say.
"Oh," she cried, "how bitterly I lament that I said any thing about it! But I had seen something at home which excited my curiosity. It was about Lady Chetwynde. It stated that she eloped with a certain Redfield Lyttoun, and that the name was an assumed one; but what," cried Zillah, suddenly starting forward--"what is the matter?"
While Zillah was speaking Mrs. Hart's face--always pale--seemed to turn gray, and a shudder passed through her thin, emaciated frame. She pressed her hand on her heart, and suddenly sank back with a groan.
Zillah sprang toward her and raised her up. Mrs. Hart still kept her hand on her heart, and gave utterance to low moans of anguish. Zillah chafed her hands, and then hurried off and got some wine. At the taste of the stimulating liquor the poor creature revived. She then sat panting, with her eyes fixed on the floor. Zillah sat looking at her without saying a word, and afraid to touch again upon a subject which had produced so disastrous an effect. Yet why should it? Why should this woman show emotion equal to that of the Earl at the very mention of such a thing? There was surely some unfathomable mystery about it. The emotion of the Earl was intelligible--that of Mrs. Hart was not so. Such were the thoughts that passed through her mind as she sat there in silence watching her companion.
Hours passed without one word being spoken. Zillah frequently urged Mrs. Hart to go to bed, but Mrs. Hart refused. She could not sleep, she said, and she would rather be near the Earl.
Illustration (Untitled)
[Illustration.]