CHAPTER XVIII.
IN THE PICTURE-GALLERY.
Mr. Parmalee, true to his promise, presented himself at the earliest admissible hour next day with all the apparatus of his art.
So early was it, indeed, that Sybilla was just pouring out the baronet's first cup of tea, while he leisurely opened the letters the morning mail had brought.
Lady Kingsland complained of a bad headache, her husband said, and would not leave her room until dinner.
Sir Everard made this announcement, quietly opening his letters. Sybilla looked at him with gleaming eyes. The time had come for her to begin to lay her train.
My lady had ascended to her room immediately upon the departure of the American, the preceding day, and had been invisible ever since. That convenient feminine excuse, headache, had accounted for it, but Sybilla Silver knew better. She had expected her to breakfast this morning, and she began to think Mr. Parmalee's little mystery was more of a mystery than even she had dreamed. The man's arrival gave her her cue.
"Our American friend is a devotee of art, it seems," she said, with a light laugh. "He lets no grass grow under his feet. I had no easy task to restrain his artistic ardor during your absence. I never knew such an inquisitive person, either; he did nothing but ask questions."
"A national trait," Sir Everard responded, with a shrug. "Americans are all inquisitive, which accounts for their go-aheadativeness, I dare say."
"Mr. Parmalee's questions took a very narrow range; they only comprised one subject—you and my lady."
The young baronet looked up in haughty amaze.
"His curiosity on this subject was insatiable; your most minute biography would not have satisfied him. About Lady Kingsland particularly—in point of fact, I thought he must have known her in New York, his questions were so pointed, and I asked him so directly."
"And what did he say?"
"Oh, he said no," replied Sybilla, lightly, "but in such a manner as led me to infer yes. However, it was evident, yesterday, that my lady had never set eyes on him before; but I did fancy, for an instant, she somehow recognized that picture."
"What picture?" asked the baronet, sharply.
"That last portrait he showed her," Miss Silver answered. "Yet that may have been only fancy, too."
"Then, Miss Silver, have the goodness to indulge in no more such fancies. I don't care to hear your suspicions and surmises, and I don't choose to have my wife so minutely watched. As for this too inquisitive Yankee, he had better cease his questions, if he wishes to quit England with sound bones!"
He arose angrily from the table, swept his letters together, and left the room. But his face wore a deep-red flush, and, his bent brows never relaxed. The first poisonous suspicion had entered his mind, and the calm of perfect trust would never reign there again.
Sybilla gazed after him with her dark, evil smile.
"Fume and fret as you please, my dear Sir Everard, but this is only sowing the first seed. I shall watch your wife, and I will tell you my suspicions and my fancies, and you will listen in spite of your uplifted sublimity now. Jealousy is ingrained in your nature, though you do not know it, and a very little breath will fan the tiny coal into an inextinguishable flame."
She arose, rang the bell for the servant to clear the table, shook out her black silk robe, and went, with a smile on her handsome face, to do the fascinating to Mr. Parmalee.
She found that cautious gentleman busily arranging his implements in the picture-gallery, preparatory to taking sundry views of the noble room. He nodded gravely to the young lady, and went steadfastly on with his work.
"You certainly lose no time, Mr. Parmalee," Miss Silver said. "I was remarking to Sir Everard at breakfast that you were a perfect devotee of art."
"How does the baronet find himself this morning?" he asked.
"As usual—well."
"And her ladyship?" very carelessly.
"Her ladyship is not well. I'm afraid your pretty pictures disagreed with her, Mr. Parmalee."
"Hey?" said the artist, with a sharp, suspicious stare.
"She was perfectly well until you showed them to her. She has been ill ever since. One must draw one's own inference."
Mr. Parmalee busied himself some five minutes in profound silence.
Then—
"Where is she to-day? Ain't she about?"
"No. I told you she was ill. She complained of headache after you left yesterday, and went up to her own room. I have not seen her since."
Mr. Parmalee began to whistle a negro melody, and still went industriously on with his work.
"I don't think nothing of that," he remarked, after a prolonged pause. "Fine ladies all have headaches. Knowed heaps of 'em to home—all had it. You have yourself sometimes, I guess."
"No," said Sybilla; "I'm not a fine lady. I have no time to sham headaches, and I have no secrets to let loose. I am only a fine lady's companion, and all the world is free to know my history."
And then Miss Silver looked at Mr. Parmalee, and Mr. Parmalee looked at Miss Silver, with the air of two accomplished duelists waiting for the word.
"He's as sharp as a razor," thought the lady, "and as shy as a partridge. Half measures won't do with him. I must fight him on his own ground."
"By jingo! she's as keen as a catamount!" thought the gentleman, in a burst of admiration. "She'll be a credit to the man that marries her. What a pity she don't belong down to Maine. She's a sight too cute for a born Britisher."
There was a long pause. Miss Silver and Mr. Parmalee looked each other full in the eye without winking. All at once the gentleman burst out laughing.
"Get out!" said Mr. Parmalee. "Go 'long—do! You're too smart for this world—you are, by gosh! Miss Sybilla Silver."
"Almost smart enough for a Yankee, Mr. Parmalee, and wonderfully good at guessing."
"Yes? And what have you guessed this time?"
"That you have Lady Kingsland's secret; that that portrait—the last of the five—is the clew. That you hold the baronet's bride in the hollow of your hand!"
She spoke the last words close to his ear, in a fierce, sibilant whisper. The American actually recoiled.
"Go 'long!" repeated Mr. Parmalee. "Don't you go whistling in a fellow's ear like that, Miss S.; it tickles. Got any more to say?"
"Only this: that you had better make a friend of me, Mr. Parmalee."
"And if I don't, Miss S.? If I prefer to do as we do in euchre, 'go it alone'—what then?"
"Then!" cried Sybilla, with a blaze of her black eyes, "I'll take the game out of your hands. I'll foil you with your own weapons. I never failed yet. I'll not fail now. I'm a match for a dozen such as you!"
"I believe, in my soul, you are!" exclaimed the artist, in a burst of admiring enthusiasm. "You're the real grit, and no mistake. I do admire spunky girls—I do, by jingo! I always thought if I married and fetched a Mrs. George Washington Parmalee down to Maine, she'd have to be something more than common. And you're not common, Miss S.—not by a long chalk! I never met your match in my life."
"No?" said Sybilla, "not even 'down to Maine?'"
"No, by George! and we raise the smartest kind of girls there. Now, Miss Silver, supposing we go partners in this here concern, would you be willing to go partners with a fellow for life? I never thought to marry an English woman, but I'll marry you to-morrow, if you'll have me. What d'ye say? Is it a go?"
"You don't mean it, Mr. Parmalee?" as soon as she could speak.
"I do!" said Mr. Parmalee, with emphasis. "Laugh, if you like. It's kind of sudden, I suppose, but I've had a hankering after you this some time. You're a right smart kind of girl, and jest my style, and I like you tip-top. The way you can roll up them black eyes of yours at a fellow is a caution to rattlesnakes. Say, is it a go?"
Sybilla turned away. Her dark cheeks reddened. There was a moment's hesitation, then she turned back and extended her hand.
"You are not very romantic, Mr. Parmalee. You don't ask me for my love, or any of that sentimental nonsense," with a laugh. "And you really mean it—you really mean to make Lady Kingsland's poor companion your wife?"
"Never meant anything more in my life. It is a go, then?"
"I will marry you, Mr. Parmalee, if you desire it."
"And you won't go back on a fellow?" asked Mr. Parmalee, suspiciously.
"You're not fooling me just to get at this secret, are you?"
Sybilla drew away her hand with an offended air.
"Think better of me, Mr. Parmalee! I may be shrewd enough to guess at your secret without being base enough to tell a deliberate lie to know it. I could find it out by easier means."
"I don't know about that," said the artist, coolly. "It ain't likely Lady Kingsland would tell you, and you couldn't get it out of me, you know, if you was twice as clever, unless I chose. But I want you to help me. A man always gets along better in these little underhand matters when he's got a woman going partners with him. I want to see my lady. I want to send her a note all unbeknown to the baronet."
"I'll deliver it," said Sybilla, "and if she chooses to see you, I will manage that Sir Everard will not intrude."
"She'll see me fast enough. I thought she'd want to see me herself before this, but it appears she's inclined to hold out; so I'll drop her a hint in writing. If the mountain won't come to what's-his-name—you know what I mean, Miss Silver. I suppose I may call you Sybilla now?"
"Oh, undoubtedly, Mr. Parmalee! But for the present don't you think—just to keep people's tongues quiet, you know—had we not better keep this little private compact to ourselves? I don't want the gossiping servants of the house to gossip in the kitchen about you and me."
"Just as you please. I don't care a darn for their gossiping, though. And now about that little note. I want to see my lady before I explain things to you, you know."
"And why? You don't intend to tell her I am to be taken into your confidence, I suppose?"
"Not much!" said Mr. Parmalee, emphatically. "Never you mind, Sybilla. Before you become Mrs. P., you'll know it all safe enough. I'll write it at once."
He took a stumpy lead-pencil from his pocket, tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, and wrote these words:
MY LADY,—You knew the picture, and I know your secret. Should like to see you, if convenient, soon. That person is in London waiting to hear from me.
Your most obedient,
G. W. PARMALEE.
The photographer handed the scrawl to Sybilla.
"Read it."
"Well?" she said, taking it all in at a glance.
"Give her this. She'll see me before I leave this house, or I'm much mistaken. She's a very proud lady, this baronet's bride; but for all that she'll obey G. W. Parmalee's orders, or he'll know the reason why."
CHAPTER XIX.
MISS SILVER PLAYS HER FIRST CARD.
It was all very well for Sir Everard Kingsland to ride his high horse in the presence of Miss Sybilla Silver, and superbly rebuke her suspicions of his wife, but her words had planted their sting, nevertheless.
He loved his beautiful, imperious, gray-eyed wife with so absorbing and intense a love that the faintest doubt of her was torture inexpressible.
"I remember it all now," he said to himself, setting his teeth; "she was agitated at sight of that picture. She turned, with the strangest look in her face I ever saw there, to the American, and rose abruptly from the table immediately after. She has not been herself since; she has not once left her room. Is she afraid of meeting that man? Is there any secret in her life that he shares? What do I know of her past life, save that she has been over the world with her father? Good Heaven! if she and this man should have a secret between them, after all!"
The cold drops actually stood on his brow at the thought. The fierce, indomitable pride of his haughty race and the man's own inward jealousy made the bare suspicion agony. But a moment after, and with a sudden impulse of generous love, he recoiled from his own thoughts.
"I am a wretch," he thought, "a traitor to the best and most beautiful of brides, to harbor such an unworthy idea! What! shall I doubt my darling girl because Sybilla Silver thinks she recognized that portrait, or because an inquisitive stranger chooses to ask questions? No! I could stake my life on her perfect truth—my own dear wife."
Impulsively he turned to go; at once he must seek her, and set every doubt at rest. He ascended rapidly to her room and softly tapped at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again; still no response. He turned the handle and went in.
She was asleep. Lying on a sofa, among a heap of pillows, arrayed in a white dressing-gown, her profuse dark hair all loose and disordered, Lady Kingsland lay, so profoundly sleeping that her husband's knocking had not disturbed her. Her face was as white as her robe, and her eyelashes were wet, as though she had cried herself to sleep like a child.
"My love! my darling!" He knelt beside her and kissed her passionately. "And to think that for one second I was base enough to doubt you! My beautiful, innocent darling, slumbering here, like a very child! No earthly power shall ever sunder you and me!"
A pair of deriding black eyes flashed upon him through the partly open door—a pair of greedy ears drank in the softly murmured words. Sybilla Silver, hastening along with the artist's little note, had caught sight of the baronet entering his wife's room. She tapped discreetly at the door, with the twisted note held conspicuously in her hand.
Sir Everard arose and opened it, and Miss Silver's sudden recoil was the perfection of confusion and surprise.
"I beg your pardon, Sir Everard. My lady is—is she not here?"
"Lady Kingsland is asleep. Do you wish to deliver that note?"
With a second gesture of seeming confusion, Sybilla hid the hand which held it in the folds of her dress.
"Yes—no—it doesn't matter. It can wait, I dare say. He didn't mention being in a hurry."
"He! Of whom are you speaking, Sybilla?"
"I—I chanced to pass through the picture-gallery five minutes ago, Sir Everard, and Mr. Parmalee asked me to do him the favor of handing this note to my lady."
Sir Everard Kingsland's face was the face of a man utterly confounded.
"Mr. Parmalee asked you to deliver that note to Lady Kingsland?" he slowly repeated. "What under heaven can he have to write to my lady about?"
"I really don't know, Sir Everard," rejoined Sybilla, "I only know he asked me to deliver it. He had been looking for my lady's maid, I fancy, in vain. It is probably something about his tiresome pictures. Will you please to take it, Sir Everard, or shall I wait until my lady awakes?"
"You may leave it."
He spoke the words mechanically, quite stunned by the overwhelming fact that this audacious photographic person dared to write to his wife. Miss Silver passed him, placed the twisted paper on one of the inlaid tables, and left the room with a triumphant light in her deriding-black eyes.
"I have trumped my first trick," Sybilla thought, as she walked away, "and I fancy the game will be all my own shortly. Sir Everard will open and read Mr. Parmalee's little billet-doux the instant he is alone."
But just here Sybilla was mistaken. Sir Everard did not open the tempting twisted note. He glanced at it once as it lay on the table, but he made no attempt to take it.
"She will show it to me when she awakes," he said, with compressed lips, "and then I will have this impertinent Yankee kicked from the house."
He sat beside her, watching her while she slept, with a face quite colorless between conflicting love and torturing doubt.
Nearly an hour passed before Harriet awoke. The great dark eyes opened in wide surprise at sight of that pale, intense face bending so devotedly over her.
"You here, Everard?" she said. "How long have I been asleep? How long have you been here?"
"Over an hour, Harrie."
"So long? I had no idea of going asleep when I lay down; but my head ached with a dull, hopeless pain, and—What is that?"
She had caught sight of the note lying on the table.
"You will scarcely believe it, but that stranger—that American artist—has had the impertinence to address that note to you. Sybilla Silver brought it here. Shall I ring for your maid and send it back unopened, and order him out of the house for his pains?"
"No!" said Harriet, impetuously. "I must read it."
She snatched it up, tore it open, and, walking over to the window, read the scrawl.
"Harriet!"
She turned slowly round at her name spoken by her husband as that adoring husband had never spoken it before.
"Give me that note."
He held out his hand. She crushed it firmly in her own, looking him straight in the eyes.
"I can not."
"You can not?" he repeated, slowly, deathly pale. "Do I understand you
aright, Harriet? Remember, I left that note untouched while you slept.
No man has a right to address a note to my wife that I may not see.
Show me that paper, Harriet."
"It is nothing"—she caught her breath in a quick, gasping, affrighted way as she said it—"it is nothing, Everard! Don't ask me!"
"If it is nothing, I may surely see it. Harriet, I command you! Show me that note!"
The eyes of Captain Hunsden's daughter inflamed up fierce and bright at sound of that imperious word command.
"And I don't choose to be commanded—not if you were my king as well as my husband. You shall never see it now!"
There was a wood-fire leaping up on the marble hearth.
She flung the note impetuously as she spoke into the midst of the flames. One bright jet of flame, and it was gone.
Husband and wife stood facing each other, he deathly white, she flushed and defiant.
"And this is the woman I loved—the wife I trusted—my bride of one short month."
He had turned to quit the room, but two impetuous arms were around his neck, two impulsive lips covering his face with penitent, imploring kisses.
"Forgive me—forgive me!" Harriet cried. "My dear, my true, my cherished husband! Oh, what a wicked, ungrateful creature I am! What a wretch you must think me! And I can not—I can not—I can not tell you."
She broke out suddenly into a storm of hysterical crying, clinging to his neck.
He took her in his arms, sat down with her on the sofa, and let her sob herself still.
"And now, Harriet," he said, when the hysterical sobs were hushed, "who is this man, and what is he to you?"
"He is nothing to me—less than nothing! I hate him!"
"Where did you know him before?"
"Know him before?" She sat up and looked him half angrily in the face. "I never knew him before! I never set eyes on him until I saw him here."
Sir Everard drew a long breath of relief. No one could doubt her truth, and his worst suspicion was at rest.
"Then what is this secret between you two? For there is a secret,
Harriet."
"There is."
"What is it, Harriet?"
"I can not tell you."
"Harriet!"
"I can not." She turned deathly white as she said it. "Never, Everard! There is a secret, but a secret I can never reveal, even to you. Don't ask me—don't! If you ever loved me, try and trust me now!"
There was a blank pause. She tried to clasp him, but he held her sternly off.
"One question more: You knew this secret before you married me?"
"I did."
"For how long?"
"For a year."
"And that picture the American showed you is a picture you know."
She looked up at him, a wild startled light in her great gray eyes.
"How do you know that?"
"I am answered," he said. "I see I am right. Once more, Lady
Kingsland," his voice cold and clear, "you refuse to tell me?"
"I must. Oh, Everard, for pity's sake, trust me! I can not tell you—I dare not!"
"Enough, madame! Your accomplice shall!"
He turned to go. She made a step between him and the door.
"What are you going to do? Tell me, for I will know!"
"I am going to the man who shares your guilty secret, madame; and, by the Heaven above us, I'll have the truth out of him if I have to tear it from his throat! Out of my way, before I forget you are a woman and strike you down at my feet!"
She staggered back, with a low cry, as if he had struck her indeed. He strode past, his eyes flashing, his face livid with jealous rage, straight to the picture-gallery.
A door at the opposite side of the corridor stood ajar. Sybilla Silver's listening cars heard the last fierce words, Sybilla Silver's glittering black eyes saw that last passionate gesture of repulsion. She saw Harriet, Lady Kingsland—the bride of a month—sink down on the oaken floor, quivering in anguish from head to foot; and her tall form seemed to tower and dilate with diabolical delight.
"Not one year," she cried to her exultant heart—"not one month will I have to wait for my revenge! Lie there, poor fool! and suffer and die, for what I care, while I go and prevent your madly jealous husband from braining my precious fiancé. There is to be blood on the hands and the brand of Cain on the brow of the last of the Kingslands, or my oath will not be kept; but it must not be the ignoble blood of George Washington Parmalee!"
CHAPTER XX.
MR. PARMALEE SWEARS VENGEANCE.
Sir Everard strode straight to the picture-gallery, his face pale, his eyes flashing, his hands clinched.
His step rang like steel along the polished oaken floor, and there was an ominous compression of his thin lips that might have warned Mr. Parmalee of the storm to come. But Mr. Parmalee was squinting through his apparatus at a grim, old warrior on the wall, and only just glanced up to nod recognition.
"Morning, Sir Everard!" said the artist, pursuing his work. "Fine day for our business—uncommon spring-like. You've got a gay old lot of ancestors here, and ancestresses; and stunningly handsome some of 'em is, too."
"Spare your compliments, sir," said the baronet, in tones of suppressed rage, "and spare me your presence here for the future altogether! The sooner you pack your traps and leave this, the surer you will be of finding yourself with a sound skin."
"Hey?" cried Mr. Parmalee, astounded. "What in thunder do you mean?"
"I mean that I order you out of my house this instant, and that I'll break every bone in your villainous carcass if ever I catch you inside my gates again!"
The artist dropped his tools and stood blankly staring.
"By ginger! Why, Sir Everard Kingsland, I don't understand this here! You told me yourself I might come here and take the pictures. I call this doosed unhandsome treatment—I do, going back on a feller like this!"
"You audacious scoundrel!" roared the enraged young lord of Kingsland, "how dare you presume to answer me? How dare you stand there and look me in the face? If I called my servants and made them lash you outside the gates, I would only serve you right! You low-bred, impertinent ruffian, how dare you write to my wife?"
"Whew!" he whistled, long and shrill, "that's it, is it? Look here, Sir Everard, don't you get so tearin' mad all for nothing. I didn't write no disrespect to her ladyship—I didn't, by Jupiter! I jest had a little request to make, and if I could have seen her ladyship I wouldn't have writ at all, but she kept out of my way, and—"
"You scoundrel!" cried the passionate young baronet, white with fury, "do you mean to say my wife kept out of your way—was afraid of you?"
"Exactly so, squire," replied the imperturbable foreigner. "She must 'a' known I had something to say to her yesterday when I—— Well, she knowed it, and she kept out of my way—I say it again."
"And you dare tell me there is a secret between my wife and you? Are you not afraid I will throw you out of yonder window?"
Mr. Parmalee drew himself stiffly up.
"Not if I know myself! That is a game two can play at. As for the secret," with a sudden sneer, "I ain't no desire to keep it a secret if your wife ain't. Ask her, Sir Everard, and if she's willing to tell you, I'm sartin I am. But I don't think she will, by gosh!"
The sneering mockery of the last taunt was too much for the fiery young prince of Kingsland. With the yell of an enraged tiger he sprung upon Mr. Parmalee, hurled him to the ground in a twinkling, and twisted his left hand into Mr. Parmalee's blue cotton neckerchief, showering blows with his right fast and furious.
The attack was so swift and savage that Mr. Parmalee lay perfectly stunned and helpless, turning unpleasantly black in the face, his eyes staring, the blood gushing.
Kneeling on his fallen foe, with fiery face and distended eyes, Sir Everard looked for the moment an incarnate young demon. It flashed upon him, swift as lightning, in his sudden madness, what he was about.
"I'll murder him if I stay here," he thought; and as the thought crossed his mind, with a shriek and a swish of silk, in rushed Miss Silver and flung herself between them.
"Good Heaven! Sir Everard, have you gone mad? In mercy's name, stop before you have quite murdered him!"
"Dog—cur!" he cried. "Get up and quit my house, or, by the living light above us, I'll blow your brains out as I would a mad hound's!"
He swung round and strode out of the picture-gallery, and slowly, slowly arose the prostrate hero, with bloody face and blackened eyes.
"Get up, Mr. Parmalee," she said, "and go away at once. The woman at the lodge will give you soap and water and a towel, and you can make yourself decent before entering the village. If you don't hurry you'll need a guide. Your eyes are as large as bishop pippins, and closing fast now."
She nearly laughed again, as she assisted her slaughtered betrothed to his feet Mr. Parmalee wiped the blood out of his eyes and looked dizzily about him.
"Where is he?" he gasped.
"Sir Everard? He has gone, I believe he would have killed you outright only I came in and tore him off. What on earth did you say to infuriate him so?"
"I say?" exclaimed the artist, fiercely. "I said nothing, and you know it. It was you, you confounded Delilah, you mischief-making deceiver, who showed him that air note!"
"I protest I did nothing of the sort!" cried Sybilla, indignantly. "He was in my lady's room when I entered, and he saw the note in my hand. She was asleep, and I tried to escape and take the note with me, but he ordered me to leave it and go. Of course I had to obey. If he read it, it was no fault of mine; but I don't believe he did. You have no right to blame me, Mr. Parmalee."
"I'll be even with him for this, the insulting young aristocrat! I'll not spare him now! I'll spread the news far and wide; the very birds in the trees shall sing it, the story of his wife's shame! I'll lower that cursed pride of his before another month is over his head, and I'll have his handsome wife on her knees to me, as sure as my name's Parmalee! He knocked me down, and he beat me to a jelly, did he? and he ordered me out of his house; and he'll shoot me like a mad dog, will he? But I'll be even with him; I'll fix him off! I'll make him repent the day he ever lifted his hand to G. W. Parmalee!"
"So you shall. I like to hear you talk like that. You're a glorious fellow, George, and Sybilla will help you; for, listen"—she came close and hissed the words in a venomous whisper—"I hate Sir Everard Kingsland and all his race, and I hate his upstart wife, with her high and mighty airs, and I would see them both dead at my feet with all the pleasure in life!"
"You get out!" rejoined Mr. Parmalee, recoiling and clapping his hand to his ear. "I told you before, Sybilla, not to whistle in a fellow's ear like that. It goes through a chap like cold steel. As to your hating them, I believe in my soul you hate most people; and women like you, with big, flashing black eyes, are apt to be uncommon good haters, too. But what have they done to you? I always took 'em to be good friends to you, my girl."
"You have read the fable, Mr. Parmalee, of the man who found the frozen adder, and who warmed and cherished it in his bosom, until he restored it to life? Well, Sir Everard found me, homeless, friendless, penniless, and he took me with him, and fed me, clothed me, protected me, and treated me like a sister. The adder in the fable stung its preserver to death. I, Mr. Parmalee, if you ever feel inclined to poison Sir Everard, will mix the potion and hold the bowl, and watch his death-throes!"
"Go along with you!" said the American, beginning to collect his traps. "You're a bad one, you are. I don't like such lingo—I don't, by George! I never took you for an angel, but I vow I didn't think you were the cantankerous little toad you are! I don't set up to be a saint myself, and if a man knocks me down and pummels my innards out for nothin', I calculate to fix his flint, if I can; but you—shoo! you're a little devil on airth, and that's my opinion of you."
"With such a complimentary opinion of me, then, Mr. Parmalee, I presume our late partnership is dissolved?"
"Nothing of the sort! I like grit, and if you've got rayther more than your share, why, when you're Mrs. Parmalee it will be amusing to take it out of you. And now I'm off, and by all that's great and glorious, there'll be howling and gnashing of teeth in this here old shop before I return."
"You go without seeing my lady, then?" said Sybilla.
"My lady's got to come to me!" retorted the artist, sullenly. "It's her turn to eat humble pie now, and she'll finish the dish, by George, before I've done with her! I'm going back to the tavern, down the village, and so you can tell her; and if she wants me, she can put her pride in her pocket and come there and find me."
"And I, too?" said Sybilla, anxiously. "Remember your promise to reveal all to me, George. Am I to seek you out at the inn, too, and await your sovereign pleasure?"
She laid her hands on his shoulders and looked up in his face with eyes few men could resist. They were quite alone in the vast hall—no prying eyes to see that tender caress. Mr. Parmalee was a good deal of a stoic and a little of a cynic; but he was flesh and blood, as even stoics and cynics are, and the man under sixty was not born who could have resisted that dark, bewitching, wheedling, beautiful face.
The American artist took her in his long arms with a vigorous hug, and favored her with a sounding kiss.
"I'll tell you, Sybilla. Hanged if I don't believe you can twist me round your little finger if you choose! You're as pretty as a picture—you are, I swear and I love you like all creation; and I'll marry you just as soon as this little business is settled, and I'll take you to Maine, and keep you in the tallest sort of clover. I never calk'lated on having a British gal for a wife; but you're handsome enough and spunky enough for a president's lady, and I don't care a darn what the folks round our section say about it. I'll tell you, Sybilla; but you mustn't split to a living soul, or my cake's dough. They say a woman can't keep a secret; but you must try, if you should burst for it. I reckon my lady will come down handsomely before I've done with her, and you and me, Sybilla, can go to housekeeping across the three thousand miles of everlasting wet in tip-top style. Come to-night; you've got to come to me now."
"I suppose I will find you at the inn?"
"I suppose so. 'Tain't likely," said Mr. Parmalee, with a sulky sense of injury, "you'll find me prancing up and down the village with this here face. I'll get the old woman to do it up in brown paper and vinegar when I go home, and I'll stay abed and smoke until dark. You won't come afore dark, wilt you?"
"No; I don't want to be recognized; and you must be prepared to come out with me when I do. I'll disguise myself. Ah! suppose I disguise myself in men's clothes? You won't mind, will you?"
"By gosh! no, if you don't. Men's clothes! What a rum one you are, Miss Silver? Doosed good-looking little feller you'll make. But why are you so skeery about it?"
"Why? Need you ask? Would Sir Everard permit me to remain in his house one hour if he suspected I was his enemy's friend? Have you any message to deliver to my lady before we part?"
"No. She'll send a message to me during the day, or I'm mistaken. If she don't, why, I'll send one back with you to-night. By-bye, Mrs. Parmalee that is to be. Take care of yourself until to-night."
The gentleman walked down the stair-way alone toward a side entrance. The lady stood on the landing above, looking after him with a bitter, sneering smile.
"Mrs. Parmalee, indeed! You blind, conceited fool! Twist you round my little finger, can I? Yes, you great, hulking simpleton, and ten times better men! Let me worm your secret out of you—let me squeeze my sponge dry, and then see how I'll fling you into your native gutter!"
Mr. Parmalee, on his way out, stopped at the pretty rustic lodge and bathed his swollen and discolored visage. The lodge-keeper's wife was all sympathy and questions. How on earth did it happen?
"Run up against the 'lectric telegraph, ma'am," replied Mr. Parmalee, sulkily; "and there was a message coming full speed, and it knocked me over. Morning. Much obliged."
He walked away. Outside the gates he paused and shook his clinched fist menacingly at the noble old house.
"I'll pay you out, my fine feller, if ever I get a chance! You're a very great man, and a very proud man, Sir Everard Kingsland, and you own a fine fortune and a haughty, handsome wife, and G. W. Parmalee's no more than the mud under your feet. Very well—we'll see! 'Every dog has his day,' and 'the longest lane has its turning,' and you're near about the end of your tether, and George Parmalee has you and your fine lady under his thumb—under his thumb—and he'll crush you, sir—yes, by Heaven, he'll crush you, and strike you back blow for blow!"
True to his word, ho ordered unlimited supplies of brown paper and vinegar, rum and water, pipes and tobacco, swore at his questioners, and adjourned to his bedroom to await the coming of nightfall and Sybilla Silver.
The short winter day wore on. A good conscience, a sound digestion, rum and smoke ad libitum, enabled our wounded artist to sleep comfortably through it, and he was still snoring when Mrs. Wedge, the landlady, came to his bedside with a flaring tallow candle, and woke him up.
"Which I've been a-knockin' and a-knockin'," Mrs. Wedge cried, shrilly, "fit to knock the skin off my blessed knuckles, Mr. Parmalee, and couldn't wake you no more'n the dead. And he's a-waitin' down-stairs, which he won't come up, but says it's most particular, and must see you at once."
"Hold your noise!" growled the artist, tumbling out of bed. "What's o'clock? Leave that candle and clear out, and tell the young feller I'll be down in a brace of shakes."
"I couldn't see him," replied Mrs. Wedge, "which he's that muffled up in a long cloak and a cap drawed down that his own mother herself couldn't tell him hout there in the dark. Was you a-expectin' of him, sir?"
"That's no business of yours, Mrs. Wedge," the American answered, grimly. "You can go."
Mrs. Wedge departed in displeasure, and tried again to see the muffled stranger. But he was looking out into the darkness, and the good landlady was completely baffled.
She saw her lodger join him; she saw the hero of the cloak take his arm, and both walk briskly away.
"By George! this is a disguise!" exclaimed Mr. Parmalee. "I wouldn't recognize you at noonday in this trim. Do you know who I took you for until you spoke?"
"Whom?"
"Sir Everard himself. You're as like him as two peas in that rig, only not so tall."
"The cloak and cap are his," Miss Silver answered, "which perhaps accounts—"
"No," he said, "there's more than that. I might put on that cap and cloak, but I wouldn't look like the baronet. Your voices sound alike, and there's a general air—I can't describe it, but you know what I mean. You're no relation of his, are you, Sybilla?"
"A relation of the Prince of Kingsland—poor little Sybilla Silver! My good Mr. Parmalee, what an absurd idea! You do me proud even to hint that, the blue blood of all the Kingslands could by any chance flow in these plebeian veins! Oh, no, indeed! I am only an upper servant in that great house, and would lose my place within the hour if its lordly master dreamed I was here talking to the man he hates."
"And my lady, any news from her?"
"Not a word. She came down to dinner beautifully dressed, but white as the snow lying yonder. She and Sir Everard dined tête-à-tête. I take my meals with the housekeeper, now," smiling bitterly. "My Lady Harriet doesn't like me. The butler told me they did not speak six words during the whole time of dinner."
"Both in the sulks," said Mr. Parmalee. "Well, it's natural. He's dying to know, and she'll be torn to pieces afore she breathes a word. She's that sort. But this shyin' and holding off won't do with me. I'm getting tired of waiting, and—and so's another party up to London. Tell her so, Sybilla, with G. W. P.'s compliments, and say that I give her just two more days, and if she doesn't come to book before the end of that time, I'll sell her secret to the highest bidder."
"Yes!" Sybilla said, breathlessly; "and now for that secret, George!"
"You won't tell?" cried Mr. Parmalee, a little alarmed at this precipitation. "Say you won't—never—so help you!"
"Never—I swear it. Now go on!"
* * * * *
An hour later, Sybilla Silver, in her impenetrable disguise, re-entered Kingsland Court. No one had seen her go—no one saw her return. She gained her own room and took off her disguise unobserved.
Once only on her way to it she had paused—before my lady's door—and the dark, beautiful face, wreathed with a deadly smile of hate and exultation, was horribly transformed to the face of a malignant, merciless demon.
CHAPTER XXI.
A STORM BREWING.
Sir Everard Kingsland was blazing in the very hottest of the flame when he tore himself forcibly away from the artist and buried himself in his study. The unutterable degradation of it all, the horrible humiliation that this man and his wife—his—were bound together by some mysterious secret, nearly drove him mad.
"Where there is mystery there must be guilt!" he fiercely thought. "Nothing under heaven can make it right for a wife to have a secret from her husband. And she knew it, and concealed it before she married me, and means to deceive me until the end. In a week her name and that of this low-bred ruffian will be bandied together throughout the country."
And then, like a man mad indeed, he tore up and down the apartment, his hands clinched, his face ghastly, his eyes bloodshot. And then all doubts and fears were swept away, and love rushed back in an impetuous torrent, and he knew that to lose her were ten thousand times worse than death.
"My beautiful! my own! my darling! May Heaven pity us both! for be your secret what it may, I can not lose you—I can not! Life without you were tenfold worse than the bitterest death! My own poor girl! I know she suffers, too, for this miserable secret, this sin of others—for such it must be. She looked up in my face with truthful, innocent eyes, and told me she never saw this man until she met him that day in the library, and I know she spoke the truth! My love, my wife! You asked me to trust you, and I thrust you aside! I spoke and acted like a brute! I will trust you! I will wait! I will never doubt you again, my own beloved bride!"
And then, in a paroxysm of love and remorse, the young husband strode out of the library and upstairs to his wife's room. He found her alone, sitting by the window, in her loose white morning-robe, a book lying idly on her knee, herself whiter than the dress she wore. She was not reading, the dark eyes looked straight before them with an unutterable pathos that it wrung his heart to see.
"My love! my life!" He had her in his strong arms, strained to his breast as if he never meant to let her go. "My own dear Harrie! Can you ever forgive me for the brutal words I used—for the brutal way I acted?"
"My Everard! my beloved husband! My darling! my darling! You are not—you will not be angry with your poor little Harrie?"
"I could not, my life! What is the world worth to us if we can not love and trust? I do love you, God alone knows how well! I will trust you, though all the world should rise up against you!"
"Thank Heaven! thank Heaven! Everard, dearest, I can not tell you—I can not—how miserable I have been! If I lost your love I should die! Trust me, my husband—trust me! Love me! I have no one left in the wide world but you!"
She broke down in a wild storm of womanly weeping. He held her in silence—the hysterics did her good. He only knew that he loved her with a passionate, consuming love, and not ten million secrets could keep them apart.
Presently she raised her head and looked at him.
"Everard, have you—have you seen that man?"
His heart contracted with a sudden sharp pang, but he strove to restrain himself and be calm.
"Parmalee? Yes, Harrie; I left him not an hour ago."
"And he—Everard—for God's sake—"
"He told me nothing, Harrie. You and he keep your secrets well. He told me nothing, and he is gone. He will never come back here more."
He looked at her keenly, suspiciously, as he said it. Alas! the intermittent fever was taking its hot fit again. But she dropped her face on his shoulder and hid it.
"Has he left the village, Everard?" very faintly.
"I can not say. I only know I have forbidden him this place," he replied. "Harrie, Harrie, my little wife! You are very merciless! You are torturing me, and I—I would die to save you an instant's pain!"
At that eloquent cry she slipped out of his arms and fell on her knees before him, her clasped hands hiding her face.
"May God grant me a short life!" was her frenzied cry, "for I never can tell you—never, Everard, not on my dying bed—the secret I have sworn to keep!"
"Sworn to keep!" It flashed upon him like a revelation. "Sworn to whom? to your father, Harrie?"
"Do not ask me! I can tell you nothing—I dare not! I am bound by an awful vow! And, oh, I think I am the most wretched creature in the wide world!"
He raised her up; he kissed the white, despairing face again and again—a rain of rapturous kisses. A ton weight seemed suddenly lifted off his heart.
"I see it all," he cried—"I see it all now! Fool that I was not to understand sooner. There was some mystery, some guilt, perhaps, in Captain Hunsden's life, and he revealed it to you on his death-bed, and made you swear to keep his secret. Am I not right?"
She did not look up. He could feel her shivering from head to foot.
"Yes, Everard."
"And this man has in some way found it out, and wishes to trade upon it, to extort money from you? I have often heard of such things. Am I right again?"
"Yes, Everard," very faint and sad.
"Then, my own dearest, leave me to deal with him; see him and fear him no more. I will seek him out. I will not ask to know it. I will pay him his price and send him about his business."
He rose as he spoke. But Harriet clung to him with a strange, white face.
"No, no, no!" she cried. "It would not do. You could not satisfy him. You don't know—" She stopped distractedly. "Oh, Everard, I can't explain. You are all kindness, all generosity, all goodness; but I must settle with this man myself. Don't go near him—don't ask to see him. It could do no good."
"I am not right, then, after all. The secret is yours, not your father's?"
"Do not ask me! If the sin is not mine, the atonement—the bitter atonement—is, at least. Everard, look at me—see! I love you with all my heart. I would not tell you a lie. I never committed a deed, I never indulged a thought of my own, you are not free to know. I never saw this man until that day in the library. Oh, believe this and trust me, and don't ask me to break my oath!"
"I will not! I believe you; I trust you. I ask no more. Get rid of this man, and be happy once again. We will not even talk of it longer; and—will you come with me to my mother's, Harrie? I dine there, you know, to-day."
"My head aches. Not to-day, I think. What time will you return?"
"Before ten. And, as I have a little magisterial business to transact down in the village, it is time I was off. Adieu, my own love! Forget the harsh words, and be my own happy, radiant, beautiful bride once more."
She lifted her face and smiled—a smile as wan and fleeting as moonlight on snow.
Sir Everard hastened to his room to dress, striving with all his might to drive every suspicion out of his mind.
And she—she flung herself on the sofa, face downward, and lay there as if she never cared to rise again.
"Papa, papa!" she wailed, "what have you done—what have you done?"
All that day Lady Kingsland kept her room. Her maid brought her what she wanted. Sir Everard returned at the appointed hour, looking gloomy and downcast.
His evening at his mother's had not been a pleasant one—that was evident. Perhaps some vague hint of the darkening mystery had already reached The Grange.
"My mother feels rather hurt, Harrie," he said, somewhat coldly, "that you did not accompany me. She is unable to call on you, owing to a severe cold. Mildred is absorbed in waiting upon her, and desires to see you exceedingly. I promised them we would both dine there tomorrow and spend the evening."
"As you please, Everard," she said, wearily. "It is all the same to me."
She descended to breakfast next morning carefully dressed to meet the fastidious eye of her husband. But she ate nothing. A gloomy presentiment of impending evil weighed down her heart. Her husband made little effort to rouse her—the contagious gloom affected him, too.
"It is the weather, I dare say," he remarked, looking out at the bleak, wintery day, the leaden sky, the wailing wind. "This February gloom is enough to give a man the megrims. I must face it, too, for to-day I 'meet the captains at the citadel'—that is to say, I promised to ride over to Major Warden's about noon. You will be ready, Harrie, when I return to accompany me to The Grange?"
She promised, and he departed; and then Lady Kingsland ascended to her own apartment.
While she stood there, gazing at the gray desolation of the February morning, there was a soft tap at the door.
"Come in!" she said, thinking it her maid; and the door opened, and
Sybilla Silver entered.
Lady Kingsland faced round and looked at her. How handsome she was! That was her first involuntary thought. Her sweeping black robes fell around her tall, regal figure with queenly grace, the black eyes sparkled with living light, a more vivid scarlet than usual lighted up each dusky cheek. She looked gloriously beautiful standing there. Mr. Parmalee would surely have been dazzled had he seen her.
There was a moment's pause. The two women eyed each other as accomplished swordsmen may on the eve of a duel. Very pale, very proud, looked my lady. She disliked and distrusted this brilliant, black-eyed Miss Silver, and Miss Silver knew it well.
"You wish to speak with me, Miss Silver?" my lady said, in her most superb manner.
"Yes, my lady—most particularly, and quite alone. I beg your pardon, but your maid is not within hearing, I trust?"
"We are quite alone," very coldly. "Speak out; no one can overhear you."
"I do not care for myself," Sybilla said, her glittering black eyes meeting the proud gray ones. "It is for your sake, my lady."
"For my sake!" in haughty amaze. "You can have nothing to say to me, Miss Silver, the whole world may not overhear. If you intend to be impertinent, I shall order you out of the room."
"One moment, my lady; you go too fast. The whole world may not overhear the message Mr. Parmalee sends you by me."
"Ah!" my lady recoiled as though an adder had stung her—"always that man! Speak out, then"—turning swiftly upon her husband's protégée—"what is the message this man sends me by you?"
"That if you do not meet him within two days, he will sell your secret to the highest bidder."
Sybilla delivered, word for word, the words of the American—cruelly, slowly, significantly—looking her still straight in the eyes. Those clear gray eyes flashed with a fierce, defiant light.
"You know all?" she cried.
Sybilla Silver bowed her head.
"I know all," she answered.
Dead silence fell. White as a dead woman, Lady Kingsland stood, her eyes ablaze with fierce, consuming fire. Sybilla made a step forward, sunk down before her, and lifted her hand to her lips.
"He told me all, my dear lady; but your secret is safe with me. Sybilla will be your true and faithful, though humble, friend, if you will let her. Dear Lady Kingsland, don't look at me with that stony, angry face. I have no wish but to serve you."
The gracious speech met with but an ungracious return. My lady snatched her hand away, as though from a snake, and gazed at her with flashing eyes of scorn and distrust.
"What are you to this man, Miss Silver?" she asked. "Why should he tell you?"
"I am his plighted wife," replied Sybilla, trying to call up a conscious blush.
"Ah, I see!" my lady said, scornfully. "Permit me to congratulate you on the excellent execution your black eyes have wrought. You are a very clever girl, Miss Silver, and I think I understand you thoroughly. I am only surprised you did not carry your discovery straight to Sir Everard Kingsland."
"Your ladyship is most unjust," Sybilla said, turning away, "unkind and cruel. I have delivered my message, and I will go."
"Wait one moment," my lady said, in her clear sweet voice, her proud face gleaming with a cynical smile. "Tomorrow evening it will be impossible for me to see Mr. Parmalee—there is to be a dinner-party at the house—during the day still more impossible. Since he commands me to see him, I will do so to-night, and throw over my other engagements. At eight this evening I will be in the Beech Walk, and alone. Let Mr. Parmalee come to me there."
A gleam of diabolical triumph lighted up the great black eyes of
Sybilla, but the profound bow she made concealed it.
"I will tell him, my lady," she said, "and he will be there without fail."
She quitted the room, closed the door, and looked back at it as Satan may have looked back at Eden after vanquishing Eve.
"My triumph begins," she said to herself. "I have caught you nicely this time, my lady. You and Mr. Parmalee will not be alone in the Beech Walk to-night."
Left to herself, Harriet stood for a moment motionless.
"She, too," she murmured, "my arch-enemy! Oh, my God, help me to bear it—help me to keep the horrible truth from the husband I love! She will not tell him. She knows he would never endure her from the hour she would make the revelation; and that thought alone restrains her. It will kill me—this agonizing fear and horror! And better so—better to die now, while he loves me, than live to be loathed when he discovers the truth!"
Sir Everard Kingsland, riding home in the yellow, wintery sunset, found my lady lying on a lounge in her boudoir, her maid beside her, bathing her forehead with eau-de-Cologne.
"Headache again, Harrie?" he said. "You are growing a complete martyr to that feminine malady of late. I had hoped to find you dressed and ready to accompany me to The Grange."
"I am sorry, Everard, but this evening it is impossible. Make my excuses to her ladyship, and tell her I hope to see her soon."
She did not look up as she said it, and her husband, stooping, imprinted a kiss on the colorless cheek.
"My poor, pale girl! I will send Edwards with an apology to The
Grange, and remain at home with you."
"No!" Harriet cried, hastily; "not on any account. You must not disappoint your mother, Everard; you must go. There, good-bye! It is time you were dressing. Don't mind me; I will be better when you return."
"I feel as though I ought not to leave you to-night," he said. "It seems heartless, and you ill. I had better send Edwards and the apology."
"You foolish boy!" She looked up at him and smiled, with eyes full of tears. "I will be better alone and quiet. Sleep and solitude will quite restore me. Go! Go! You will be late, and my lady dislikes being kept waiting."
He kissed her and went, casting one long, lingering backward look at the wife he loved. And with a pang bitterer than death came the remembrance afterward of how she had urged him to leave her that night.
Thus they parted—to look into each other's eyes no more, in love and trust for a dark and tragic time.
Sybilla Silver, standing at the house door, was gazing out, at the yellow February sun sinking pale and watery into the livid horizon tine, as the baronet ran down-stairs, drawing on his gloves. He paused, with his usual courtesy, to speak to his dependent as he went by.
"The sky yonder looks ominous," he said, "and this wailing, icy blast is the very desolation of desolation. There is a storm brewing."
Miss Silver's black eyes gleamed, and her white teeth showed in a sinister smile.
"A storm?" she repeated. "Yes, I think there is, and you will be caught in it, Sir Everard, if you stay late."