CHAPTER XXXVI.
PRINCE DUMPLING.
AtCharing Cross, soon after the defeat and dispersion of the rebels, I had caught sight of a face which set my heart beating wildly—the proud, pale face of Kate, who was sitting at the window of a hotel. Sending up my name, I was at once admitted, Kate clinging to me, and crying over me, as if I were a soldier returned from the wars.
"I won't leave you again, darling," I said, "no matter what you or your aunt may command or urge. How is that kindest of friends of mine?"
"I haven't seen her since soon after you—you—you—left us," was the reply. "She went away by herself on some important business, and was to have returned to-day to Taunton Square, where I have been staying for the last week by myself. But something happened there that—that frightened and upset me, Max dear, so I came on here, and left word to Aunt Clara where to find me. Ah! here she is."
Miss Clara kissed first Kate and then me, after which, turning to her niece, she said:
"What was it that frightened you and drove you away from Taunton Square? The rioters?"
"No, aunt. I—I—hardly know how to tell you and Max. It was so terrible. It was—it was—the Dumpling."
"The Dumpling!" exclaimed Miss Clara and I together.
"Yes, the Dumpling," replied Kate, putting her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out some hateful vision. "I wasn't so much afraid of him as of what I saw in his eyes—that awful picture——"
"I have something to tell you about him myself," said Miss Clara, quietly. "Something that it is time both you and Max knew. But, first, let us hear your story."
"I was sitting alone one evening in the dark in the conservatory," said Kate, "and feeling suddenly cold and frightened—I did not know at what—I put out a hand and switched on the electric light. There, glaring in at me from the window outside, I saw a man's face. It was the man Max called the Dumpling. I recognised him at once by the description. Theface was gone almost as I looked, but before it went I saw a picture in its eyes—a picture that seemed to be—that something tells mewastrue, but is so awful that I can hardly bear to think, still less to speak, of it. But speak of it I must, for I can bear the suspense no longer.
"I saw myself as a girl, standing in a church before an altar, being married to this terrible man! Aunt, darling! Tell me it was all a dream, and that it isn't true. It seemed hideously, cruelly true as I saw it; and I know, now, that I have seen him before—that the man is no stranger to me, and that I knew him long ago."
"Yes, darling," said the elder Miss Carleton, taking the sobbing girl in her arms, "it is quite true. Listen, and you shall hear the facts. I can tell them in a very few words. You were a mere girl of seventeen at a boarding school in America when you first met this man. He was one of the masters, and was known as 'The Prince,' because he claimed to be a son of Napoleon the Third, and, in fact, I believe there was truth in his claim. But he fell desperately in love with you, and you, an innocent girl, with no thought of husband or love-making,laughed at him. All this you will remember yourself. What you will not remember is that the man, who has strange occult powers, hypnotised or mesmerised you one day, and when you were in that state, and did not know what you were doing, compelled you to go through the form of marriage with him. I was staying in the neighbourhood of the school at the time, so as to be near you, your dear mother being recently dead; and hearing that you had been seen going out with 'The Prince'—no one knew why—I found out in what direction you and he had gone, and followed, for I disliked and distrusted him from the first. But I was too late. The ceremony was over. You were—and, I fear, are—the man's wife. Even if we had gone to law, to attempt to upset the marriage, we might not have won, for hypnotic influence is hard to prove in the unsympathetic atmosphere of the law courts, and, even if we had won, the scandal and shock might have killed you, for you were already worn to a shadow by fretting for your mother. I shrank from the thought of such a scandal, as I knew you would have shrunk; and, rightly or wrongly, I did what seemed bestto me under the circumstances. I am not long in making up my mind, and, my mind once made up, I do not hesitate to act.
"You were sitting, white and trembling, in a pew near the door. 'The Prince' had followed the minister into an inner room or vestry, perhaps to pay the fee. The key of the vestry door was on the outside. Without a moment's hesitation I turned the key, locking the two of them in, so as to give us a few minutes in which to get away. Then I got you out, half supporting you, half carrying you, to where my own carriage was waiting, lifted you in, jumped in myself, and told the coachman to drive with all possible speed to the railway station. Here we were just in time to catch an express to New York, and when you recovered from the mesmeric state into which you had been thrown, and I found that you knew nothing of what had happened, I determined to keep my own counsel, and have told no one—not even your own father—the facts. From New York we went next day to Europe, travelling from country to country, so that the villain who had ruined your life might never find you. I had hoped that he was long since dead, and it was onlywhen Max was telling us of the Dumpling's claim to be Napoleon that the horrible possibility—a possibility which afterwards became a certainty—occurred to me.
"Even in those far-away days he had dreams of a revolution which he was one day to accomplish in England; even then he was passionately in sympathy with the poor, and talked about them exactly as he talked to Max. I recognised, from Max's description, the man whom he called 'The Dumpling,' as the man you and I had long ago known as 'The Prince,' and realised that he had tracked us at last. That was why Max saw him shadowing the house, and that is why you saw his face watching you through the window-pane. That was why I sent Max away, for while that man lives you can never be Max's wife."
"Sheshallbe my wife," I interrupted, "if only she will consent to do me such high honour; for be this man 'Prince,' or be he 'Dumpling,' he has no power to come between Kate and me. You have told your story—now listen to mine."