PART IV.
Oh, linger by my side to-night,The hour will soon be pastWhen I shall turn and gaze againTo look on thee my last.
Oh, linger by my side to-night,The hour will soon be pastWhen I shall turn and gaze againTo look on thee my last.
Oh, linger by my side to-night,The hour will soon be pastWhen I shall turn and gaze againTo look on thee my last.
Oh, linger by my side to-night,
The hour will soon be past
When I shall turn and gaze again
To look on thee my last.
—Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
The shaded night-lamp glimmered softly in the large, oak-paneled room where the recumbent form of a man lay extended on a large, old-fashioned bed. Heavy curtains of crimson damask were pushed back over the gilded canopy, and brought out in pale relief the white, pain-drawn face of the sufferer. The physician stood by with finger on the sick man’s wrist. An old man and his elderly wife were the only other occupants of the room.
Presently the door swung lightly ajar, and the faint light shone on the faces of Lady Edith and her brother as they crossed the room to the bedside.
Poor Edith! She threw out her hands with a smothered moan of despair, and the heavy cloak fell from her shoulders, revealing her exquisite dinner gown of white lace. Priceless pearls gleamed on her neck, and her wealth of golden ringlets fell around her in sad beauty as she bent over her lover.
“Edith, dear Edith, I am glad you have come in time,” he whispered, faintly. “Tell her, Uncle Jamie, before it is too late. But place her chair close by my side. Let me see her now all the while until the last.”
They obeyed his wish, and Edith sitting still, with her hand clasped in the weak one of her lover, listened to a story told in the quivering voice of the old man—a story of wrong and treachery to the dead and to the living—a wrong done to a brother’s orphan heir and repented of, alas! too late.
“I deserted the infant boy—put him in a foundling asylum without a name. His father had been a wealthy man, and I wanted the child’s fortune. So I announced that the little Douglas was dead, and there being no near relatives to inquire into its fate, my scheme succeeded well. My wife and I have enjoyed our ill-gotten gains for twenty-five years, but we always kept cognizant of my nephew’s whereabouts, meaning when we died to right the cruel wrong we had done to the orphan boy. Alas, alas!” moaned the old man in futile sorrow.
“Leave us now,” said the weak voice from the bed, and the old man moved away, leaving Edith alone by the side of the beloved one drifting away from her so swiftly out on the shoreless waters of Eternity.
She bent over him, brushing the dark curls back from his white brow, a world of love in her tender eyes.
The clasp of his hand tightened on hers, and he murmured:
“My darling, I have so much to tell you. They have told me such strange things to-day. Have you ever heard that strange tradition of the Chilton race—the Minstrel’s Curse?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “But, my own dear love, I pray you forgive me the doom I have brought upon you. Never until yesterday, was I told that strange story—yesterday when it was all too late.”
Oh, the love and sorrow in the sad dark eyes looking into hers, they almost broke her heart.
“Oh, my own love, how could I blame you?” whispered the dying man, “I would have given my life at any moment to win your heart. And it is mine, although I must leave you soon, for the doctor has told me, I cannot live until to-morrow’s sunset.”
“Oh, no, no, no!” she sobbed, bitterly.
“Be calm, Edith, for I have such good news for you. I, your beloved, have it in my power to end the curse that has darkened the lives of so many fair women of the Chilton race. Do you guess how?”
She shook her golden head, gazing at him with dilated blue eyes.
Smiling faintly at her wonder, he continued:
“I want you to become my wife for the few hours I have to live. Will you, Edith?”
It was too solemn an hour for girlish coquetry. Edith gave him a frank, sweet assent, and sealed it with a tender kiss.
There was silence for awhile—the eloquent silence of love—between them; then he spoke again:
“But you have not asked me, Edith, how I have power to end the Minstrel’s Curse. Listen, dear. It is to be accomplished by your marriage with me.”
“I do not understand,” Lady Edith answered, with puzzled eyes.
“It is this way, my darling. You are the namesake and descendant of Lady Edith, the minstrel’s beautiful love of two centuries ago, and I am really and truly a descendant of the only brother of the minstrel, and namesake of——”
“Douglas North!” she cried, in startled tones.
“Yes, Edith, and ‘knew it not’ until to-day, when my uncle’s grief and repentance at my untimely end caused him to confess the truth to me. And ‘unknowing whence I came,’ I loved you, dearest, so it only remains for us to wed to fulfill the last clause of the doomed minstrel’s weird prophecy.”
“Not the last,” she wept, sadly. “They were to be happy, you know.”
“And shall we not be happy, dearest? You on earth rejoicing that you have delivered future generations of the great Chilton race from that dread curse, and I—happy”—his voice broke slightly—“in heaven.”
Lord Eustace came over to them, grave, tender, thoughtful.
“They have told me everything, my poor Douglas;” he bent compassionately over the sufferer. “The earl will give his consent, I know. I am going to him now. I will leave my sister to nurse you.”
The earl did not refuse, you may be sure, and the next morning there was a quiet, solemn marriage in the sick-room, where Lady Edith Chilton gave heart and hand to Douglas North, and so ended the Minstrel’s Curse. Old Katharine was there, weeping for blended joy and sorrow—joy that the curse was void forever, sorrow that bonny Douglas North must die and leave his young bride desolate.
But physicians are not always infallible, or perhaps love has some potent power that can conquer death.
Douglas North did not die of the wound he had received from the unknown courtier. I will show you one more picture of his life ere I write that solemn word, the End.
It is almost the same picture you saw in the beginning. He is sitting with Lady Edith at the grand piano in the Chilton drawing room, his fingers wandering softly over the pearl keys. He has inherited, not only the name but the musical talent of his ancestor, Douglas North. He looks very handsome, very distinguished to the fair young wife by his side.
How lovely she is, with her golden tresses floating over her white robe like a halo of light!
He looks at her in passionate admiration.
“My darling, you are beautiful as an angel!” he says.
“Did I ever!” cries a shocked voice, and old Katharine, passing by, shakes her head at the married lovers. “Mr. Douglas North, that’s simple profanity, calling your wife an angel. You’ll be punished for it,” she said.
Lady Edith’s sweet, ringing laugh woke all the echoes in the long, magnificent room.
“Nurse Kathie will never be anything but a croaker,” she says.
“Giddy children, silly children!” responds the old crone, passing out.
Lord Eustace enters with his usual companion, a book, his fine, scholarly face lighted up with pleasure.
“Katharine has made me a present,” he said, showing an old moth-eaten volume. “Here, it is—full of marvelous traditions of the Chilton race, and last but not least, The Ministrel’s Curse.”
Lady Edith shuddered at the words, but Douglas North took the book and read the quaint verses with deep interest.
“‘And Douglas and his love shall know the bliss I was denied,’” he repeats, in a musing tone. “Well, Edith the prophecy comes true. We are indeed blest,” and he returns the volume to its proud owner with a sigh to the memory of his fated ancestor and the lovely lady whom he loved. “By the way,” he added, “I have never heard what became of that fair Lady Edith.”
“Oh,” says Lord Eustace, “she married an earl, as this musty chronicle relates; but it says, also, that she died three years after of a broken heart.”
“Eustace,” calls his uncle’s voice in the hall, “here is that box of new books you ordered from London.”
The book-worm rushes out in eager haste, and Douglas, drawing his wife to his heart, kisses off the dew of tears from her lashes.
“They are at rest after their blighted life,” he whispers, reverently.
“Sing for me, Douglas dear. Sing something sad, and sweet, and tender.”
A smile, half-sad, half-mischievous, dawned in his dark eyes as he touched the keys with skillful fingers, and sang with his heart in his voice the last verse of that sweet love song, over which he and Lady Edith had quarreled when we first saw them:
“When, Mary, thy love is at rest.His harp all unstrung in thy bowers;And others like him, but more blest,Shall seek to beguile thy lone hours,Thou wilt think of the days of lang syne,When Holyrood echoed the strain;And your voice sweetly mingled with mineAs it never shall mingle again!”
“When, Mary, thy love is at rest.His harp all unstrung in thy bowers;And others like him, but more blest,Shall seek to beguile thy lone hours,Thou wilt think of the days of lang syne,When Holyrood echoed the strain;And your voice sweetly mingled with mineAs it never shall mingle again!”
“When, Mary, thy love is at rest.His harp all unstrung in thy bowers;And others like him, but more blest,Shall seek to beguile thy lone hours,Thou wilt think of the days of lang syne,When Holyrood echoed the strain;And your voice sweetly mingled with mineAs it never shall mingle again!”
“When, Mary, thy love is at rest.
His harp all unstrung in thy bowers;
And others like him, but more blest,
Shall seek to beguile thy lone hours,
Thou wilt think of the days of lang syne,
When Holyrood echoed the strain;
And your voice sweetly mingled with mine
As it never shall mingle again!”
Transcriber’s Notes:This story was originally serialized in Norman L. Munro’sNew York Family Story Paper, volume XIX, numbers 952-955 (January 2-23, 1892).A table of contents has been added by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Transcriber’s Notes:
This story was originally serialized in Norman L. Munro’sNew York Family Story Paper, volume XIX, numbers 952-955 (January 2-23, 1892).
A table of contents has been added by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.