CHAPTER XXVIIA GREAT DISCOVERY.
Oh, fatal opportunity!That work’st our thoughts into desires, desiresTo resolutions; and these being ripe and ready,Then giv’st them birth and brings’t them forth to action.—Denham.
Oh, fatal opportunity!That work’st our thoughts into desires, desiresTo resolutions; and these being ripe and ready,Then giv’st them birth and brings’t them forth to action.—Denham.
Oh, fatal opportunity!That work’st our thoughts into desires, desiresTo resolutions; and these being ripe and ready,Then giv’st them birth and brings’t them forth to action.—Denham.
Oh, fatal opportunity!
That work’st our thoughts into desires, desires
To resolutions; and these being ripe and ready,
Then giv’st them birth and brings’t them forth to action.—Denham.
The means that fortune yields must be embracedAnd not neglected; else if fortune would,And we will not, her offers we refuse,And miss the means of action and success.—Shakspeare.
The means that fortune yields must be embracedAnd not neglected; else if fortune would,And we will not, her offers we refuse,And miss the means of action and success.—Shakspeare.
The means that fortune yields must be embracedAnd not neglected; else if fortune would,And we will not, her offers we refuse,And miss the means of action and success.—Shakspeare.
The means that fortune yields must be embraced
And not neglected; else if fortune would,
And we will not, her offers we refuse,
And miss the means of action and success.—Shakspeare.
She whom they had sought so vainly, lay there, doubled up, on the floor, and partly covered by the dropping folds of the curtain.
“Oh, master! Oh, sir! She is dead! She is murdered! She is, indeed, sir, and the thieves have been in anddone it!” cried Pina, recovering her voice and wringing her hands in grief and terror.
And her dreadful words seemed to be true.
Mr. Lyon could not speak. He silently lifted the lifeless form, and shuddering to see how helplessly the head and limbs fell over his arms, he bore it into the drawing-room, and laid it on the sofa.
Pina followed him, and stood sobbing and wringing her hands.
He knelt down by the body and gazed on the marble face, the half-open eyes, and the rigid lips drawn tightly from the white and glistening teeth.
He hastily unfastened the front of her dress, and put his hand in her bosom to feel if her heart yet beat. It seemed still.
He put his ear down to listen if her lungs yet moved. They were motionless.
He felt her hands and feet. They were cold and stiff.
Then he arose and stood gazing upon the body.
“Oh, is she dead? Is you sure?” inquired Pina, with tears streaming down her face.
“Yes. She seems to have been dead some hours;” groaned Alexander, with his own face as white as that of the lifeless form before him.
“Oh, master! Oh, sir! The thieves broke in and done it, didn’t they? Didn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Lyon, speaking slowly and softly. “There is no evidence of the late presence of thieves in the house. Nothing as yet is missing. And there is no sign of blood upon her clothing.”
“Oh, master, but her dress is black, and wouldn’t show it plain.”
Alexander knew this to be true, and he also knew that some wounds bleed only inwardly. So he began to examine her body. First he unloosed her beautiful hair, and ran hisfingers through its tresses, and felt all over her head. But apparently she had received no sort of injury there.
While he was proceeding with this inspection, Pina suddenly started up and ran out of the room.
He made a most careful examination, but found no mark of violence upon her person.
And yet he thought she must have come to her death suddenly and violently; since she had been alive and in her usual health between ten and eleven o’clock on the preceding evening, and now was dead, and apparently had been so for several hours.
He had scarcely finished his examination, when Pina rushed back into the room, holding a fragment of looking-glass in her hand, and exclaiming eagerly:
“Try this! Oh, dear master, try this! Lay it to her lips and hold it there a minute or so, and if there’s any moisture on it, it is a sign that there’s a little life left, and where there’s life, you know, if there’s ever so little, there’s hope.”
Mr. Lyon silently took the piece of glass, and laid it flat with the bright side to the cold lips, and stood watching the result.
“Oh, sir, I’m glad I happened to think of it! I know’d a woman, I did, who fell down into a fit, and lay for dead all day long; for her breath had stopped, and her heart had stopped, and she was cold and stiff; and they were going to lay her out, when somebody said ‘try a glass,’ and so they tried it, and sure enough, after they held it over her lips a little while, there was a moisture on it, and so they knew she still breathed ever so little, though they couldn’t perceive it in any other way but by the glass—and so—”
“Hush, stop,” said Mr. Lyon, interrupting the garrulous girl, and examining the glass.
There was a dimness on its bright surface.
“You are right. Life is not yet quite extinct. She still breathes slightly.”
“Oh, sir, I’m so glad! I feel as glad as if—”
“Hurry and make a fire in her bed-chamber, while I carry her up stairs,” said Mr. Lyon, again interrupting the stream of the girl’s talk.
Pina flew down stairs to get kindling wood, and to startle her brother with the news that their mistress had been found in a fainting fit so deep that she seemed dead, or dying, at the last gasp, and it was doubtful whether she would ever come out of it.
Meanwhile, Alexander lifted the insensible form and carried it up stairs, to the bed-chamber, and laid it on the bed.
Pina soon came in with the kindling wood and rapidly revived the fire that had not yet gone out.
Then, while her master ran down stairs and searched for restoratives, she undressed her mistress and put her between soft, warm blankets, in the bed, and began to rub her hands and feet in the hope of restoring the arrested circulation.
Mr. Lyon returned with brandy and ammonia, and then master and maid used the most vigorous means for recovering the unconscious sufferer.
For nearly two hours they worked over her; but their efforts seemed utterly unavailing.
At length when they were almost ready to give over in despair, Alexander perceived a slight fluttering near the heart of his wife. With revived hope, he redoubled his efforts and soon had the satisfaction of seeing further signs of returning life. Her chest labored and heaved; her lips trembled and parted; and then she gasped and opened her eyes.
“Drusa, Drusa, my darling, do you know me?” he inquired, looking anxiously in her face.
But she only gazed at him, with wide open, soft inexpressive eyes, without replying.
He hastily mixed a little ammonia and water and raised herhead and put the cordial to her lips. She drank it mechanically; but it immediately revived her.
“Drusa, my little Drusa, do you know me now?” he inquired, setting the glass aside and bending over her.
She looked at him with infinite love, put her arms up around his neck, drew his head down to hers and kissed him tenderly.
He returned her soft caresses, for while he gazed on her sweet, patient, loving face, and reflected that she was just rescued, as it were, from the jaws of death, he felt all his compassion, if not his affection for her, revived.
“What caused your swoon, my little Drusa?” he inquired.
But a spasm of pain, or fear, passed over her face and form, and she shuddered and closed her eyes.
“Beg your pardon, sir, but if I was you, I wouldn’t ask no questions yet,” said Pina in a low respectful voice.
“You are right again,” he answered.
And he contented himself with sitting by his wife’s bed and holding her hand, and occasionally bending down and kissing her forehead.
“If you please sir, to let me go down and bring my mistress up a cup of strong tea and a bit of dry toast, I think if she could be got to take it, it would do her good,” said Pina.
“Go then,” replied Mr. Lyon.
And as the girl left the room, he stooped and whispered to his wife.
“I hope you are better, love.”
“Yes,” she answered.
“I will not try your strength with questions, now; but as soon as you are able, you will tell me what caused your deep swoon.”
She drew his head down to hers and answered in a low, faint voice:
“It was the face at the window.”
“The face at the window! again last night.”
She nodded; and her lips grew so white and her eyes so wild with terror, that he hastened to soothe her.
“There, there is no danger now, my little Drusa! I am here by your side. Compose yourself for the present, and when you have quite recovered you shall tell me all about it, and the affair shall be investigated.”
He laid his hand upon her brow; and she with a sigh of relief, closed her eyes.
Presently Pina came in with a little tray upon which stood a cup of tea and a small piece of dried toast.
At Alexander’s entreaty and with his assistance, Drusilla sat up and drank the tea and ate the toast, and then sank back upon her pillow and after a while, with her hand in his, fell into a natural and refreshing sleep.
Alexander still watched her for five or ten minutes longer, and then after glancing up at the time-piece on the mantle shelf and seeing that it was nearly eleven o’clock he slipped his hand from hers, told Pina to take his place by the bedside, and then left the chamber.
He went down stairs into the drawing-room and rang the bell.
Leo answered it.
“Serve my breakfast immediately and then go and saddle my horse and bring him around to the door,” were Mr. Lyon’s directions.
Leo, much wondering that his master should leave his mistress at such a time, went out of the room to obey his orders.
Breakfast was soon served. Alexander dispatched it in haste, and then went up stairs to change his dress for his ride into town.
When he found himself alone in his dressing-room, all the embarrassments of his false position—forgotten duringthe exciting events that had followed his late arrival at home—were now recalled to mind.
In an hour or two he should meet his uncle and his cousin. The former would expect that he should make his proposal for immediate marriage with Anna, and the latter would be ready to meet it.
He might either make the anticipated proposal or omit to do it.
If he should make it, and his cousin should meet it favorably, the embarrassments of his position would be multiplied a thousand fold, for certainly he could not marry two wives; neither could he, after having committed himself by his proposal, confess his prior marriage.
If he should omit to make the proposal at all, such omission would subject him to suspicion and severe cross-examination by his uncle and the grandfather of his betrothed.
His first hope, then, was in being able to evade the dilemma by procrastination; and his second hope was that Anna herself might take the responsibility of insisting upon a further delay of the wedding.
As for his secret marriage with Drusilla, he was now resolved, come what might, that he would never reveal it; because he felt sure, if he should do so, that his uncle and cousin would both discard him, and she would become the wife of his rival.
But even in the midst of these evil thoughts, he started as an absent-minded walker might at seeing himself on the brink of a dreadful precipice,—yes, started with a sudden consciousness of what a villain he was growing to be—he who up to this time had been a man of stainless honor.
While agitated by these emotions, he was mechanically dressing himself. He went to his wardrobe to search for a thick coat, for the morning was still bitterly cold, and the overcoat that he had worn on the previous day and night had received some damage from Leo’s frantic pistol shots.
He took down coat after coat, but they were all too thin.
At length, far back in the wardrobe, he found one that he had not worn for many months. It belonged to the travelling suit that he had worn when he went to Alexandria to meet Drusilla and went to the parson to marry her.
With feelings of sadness, regret and compunction, he turned the garment about and looked at it. Then he carefully brushed it and put it on, buttoned it closely, and thrust both hands in his pockets to push them down. In doing so, he felt a folded paper. And in listless curiosity he took it out, opened it, and looked at it.
In an instant all his listlessness vanished. He held it from him, and gazed, and gazed at it with his eyes dilating, his lips parting, and his face blanching with what would have seemed at first view to be amazement and horror, but which soon proved to be delight and triumph.
He could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses. He suspected that he was dreaming. He pinched himself to prove that he was awake.
Then he suddenly dropped into a chair, waved the paper above his head, and burst into a loud laugh.
“Well,” he said, “if I had been the most consummate schemer that ever lived, I could not have plotted for myself better than fortune has planned for me. Now, then, Mr. Richard Hammond! Let us see now what are your prospects of ultimately winning the beauty and the heiress! But little Drusa! poor little Drusa! patient, loving little Drusa! Thank fortune that you neither know nor suspect anything of this matter! And youmustneither know nor suspect it yet awhile! For the knowledge, or even the very suspicion of this, would go near to kill you. Very, very gradually must you be prepared for it, my darling; very, very gently must the truth be broken to you, my poor little girl!”
He felt now no embarrassment as to his relations,present or prospective, with his betrothed and her grandfather. He was ready to propose to Anna the next day, and to marry her in a month after, if expedient.
For the paper that he had found in the pocket of his wedding coat, and now held in his hand, proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that his marriage with poor Drusilla was informal, null and void; that it had always been so, and that he was legally free to love and to wed whomsoever he should please.