Kitobni o'qish: «The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret»

THE BRIDE OF THE TOMB; OR, LANCELOT DARLING'S BETROTHED

By MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER

CHAPTER I

Sweet Lily Lawrence had committed suicide!

Oh! impossible! A girl so young, so gifted, so lovely, the darling of her father's heart, the idol of her brilliant lover, the heiress of a splendid fortune—what had she to do with the grim king of terrors? Death to her was an enemy to be shunned and dreaded rather than a lover to be courted.

And to-morrow was her bridal day!

Yet there she lay prone on the velvet carpet, with its delicate pattern of myosotis, and the soft light of the June morning shining through the open window on the still form, robed in creamy white satin and priceless lace, the fair hair streaming across the floor, the turquoise blue eyes wide-open with a look of unutterable horror frozen in their upward stare, the small and dimpled white hand clinching tightly a tiny jeweled dagger whose murderous thrust had left a ghastly, gory, crimson stain on the snowy satin lace above her heart. By that crimson stain death claimed her for his own—the fairest bride the grim monarch ever took to his icy arms.

A thrill of universal horror ran through the great city where she had been known and loved, not more for her beauty and wealth than for her sweet and gentle character. Friends came and went through the portals of Banker Lawrence's splendid brown stone mansion on Fifth avenue for a sight of the beautiful suicide who had been expected to appear so soon as a happy bride. Mr. Lawrence, the bereaved and sorely stricken father, appeared like one dazed with grief and horror. Ada, his younger and only remaining daughter, was confined to her room in strong hysterics, attended by the maids. Mrs. Vance, the beautiful widow of a second cousin of Mrs. Lawrence, a lady who made her home at the banker's, was the only one in the house who retained sufficient calmness to attend to anything at all. It was she who kept back the curious throng of the news-seekers who would fain have invaded the mansion. It was she who talked with sympathizing friends, breaking now and then into a heart-wrung sob, and hiding her eyes in her damp lace handkerchief.

"Oh, doctor," she cried, as the physician who had been hastily summoned after the shocking discovery, bent over the pale form trying to see if any spark of life remained—"oh, doctor, she is not really dead, is she? Surely our darling Lily is not gone from us forever!"

The physician looked up curiously at the dark, beautiful face of the speaker now convulsed with grief and horror. He bent again over the recumbent form, closely examining the beautiful white features of the girl, touched her wide-open eye-lids, felt her tightly clenched hands carefully, and laid his ear over the still breast whose crimson blood had stiffened the bridal robe above the tender heart so lately bounding with the joyous pulses of youth and hope and perfect happiness.

"I am sorry to say," he answered, rising and looking down with a pale face and trembling hands, "that Miss Lawrence is, indeed, no more. Life has been extinct for hours."

A few hours later a coroner's inquest was held over the remains. Mrs. Vance, Miss Ada Lawrence, and the deceased girl's waiting-maid were the three who had seen Lily Lawrence last in life. Their testimony was accordingly taken.

The maid deposed that on the night on which the fatal event had transpired her mistress had kept her in her room until about eleven o'clock, for the purpose of making some trifling alterations in the fit of the elegant white satin bridal robe.

While thus engaged Miss Ada Lawrence and Mrs. Vance had come in for a chat with Miss Lawrence. Miss Ada, a young school-girl, and fond of finery, had persuaded her sister to don the beautiful dress and veil.

After staying awhile and admiring the loveliness of Miss Lawrence, the maid had been dismissed, her young mistress saying that she would herself remove the dress, having already laid aside the veil and wreath of orange blossoms.

She (the maid) had accordingly bidden the ladies good-night. The next morning, as usual, she had gone at eight o'clock to call her young mistress. She had found the door locked on the inside.

In response to repeated knocks and calls no answer had been elicited, and becoming frightened she had repeated the fact to the family, who were just assembling at breakfast. Mr. Lawrence had caused the door to be forced immediately. On entering they had found Miss Lawrence lying dead upon the floor, arrayed in her bridal dress, and clutching in her right hand a small, jeweled dagger.

She was asked here by the coroner if the dagger had belonged to Miss Lawrence. She answered in the affirmative, saying that Mrs. Vance had presented it to her a few days before as a bridal present, and that it had lain on the dressing-table ever since as an ornament.

Being asked why they had supposed it to be suicide instead of murder, the affectionate girl burst into tears, and replied that her sweet young mistress had not an enemy on earth, so that no one could have murdered her for malice; and that none of her splendid jewelry or bridal presents had been touched, so that no one could have murdered her for gain; and that the natural inference was that Miss Lawrence had taken her own life with her own weapon.

The young lady had seemed much as usual in her manner when she last saw her, had betrayed no undue agitation of mind and was only anxious about the fit of the bridal robe in which she was to appear on the morrow. The maid was suffered to leave the stand, on which Miss Ada Lawrence, dreadfully nervous and agitated, was led in and took her place.

Her testimony was merely a corroboration of the maid's. She had left the room in Mrs. Vance's company shortly after the maid's dismissal. Both had kissed her good-night and left her standing at the mirror smiling at her lovely reflection. Lily had seemed in good health and spirits. She did not know of any reason for her sister's committing suicide; but as she had no enemies, and nothing had been touched in the room, it was the natural inference. She had not seen her sister again until the next morning, when she lay cold and dead in the middle of her room.

Mrs. Vance gave substantially the same testimony, with the addition that she had heard Miss Lawrence lock her room door after their departure. She knew of no cause that could have driven the young girl to take her own life. For a few months past she had noticed that Lily had strange fits of depression and abstraction. She had thought then that some secret sorrow preyed on the mind of her cousin, but she did not know of what nature. She was suffered to retire, her agitation growing uncontrollable, while many admiring glances followed her graceful form as she swept from the room.

Dr. Pratt was next called to the stand. He was a tall, dark, sinister-looking man, with restless black eyes and nervous manner. He gave his testimony briefly and to the point.

He was not Mr. Lawrence's family physician. He was riding past the house on his way to visit a patient when he had been suddenly called in by the summons of a domestic who rushed frantically into the street after him. He had gone into Miss Lawrence's room, where he found the family assembled and indulging in the wildest grief. The young bride-elect lay dead upon the floor, grasping a small dagger in her right hand. Upon examination he found that life had been extinct for eight or nine hours. He thought that death must have been instantaneous with the dagger-thrust. From the pose of the body and the position of the right arm and hand, together with the direction of the deadly weapon, all the probabilities pointed to an act of self-destruction.

A few more witnesses were examined, but nothing new was elicited, and the jury retired to consult.

The verdict was given to the effect that "Miss Lawrence came to her death by a dagger-thrust inflicted by her own hand—probably under a temporary aberration of mind."

CHAPTER II

Doctor Pratt attended the funeral of Miss Lawrence, looking grave and sad, and dignified as the mournful occasion demanded. His restless eyes took in every detail, noted the grief of the mourners and friends, peered beneath the heavy crape veil of handsome Mrs. Vance, noted the absence of the bereaved bridegroom-elect; he even entered the gloomy vault and stood by the open coffin among the friends who were taking their last look at the pallid features of the beautiful suicide whose golden hair strayed over the white satin pillow, mingling with fragrant rosebuds and lilies.

After the funeral was over he drove to a fashionable street, and stopping at a fine hotel, sent up his card to a person whom he designated as Mr. Colville.

After a brief delay he was shown up to that gentleman's room.

Mr. Colville was a rather handsome but dissipated-looking man, of perhaps forty years. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion, and the elegance of his apparel, his costly diamonds, as well as the luxuriousness of the furniture about him, betokened a man of wealth and ease.

He removed his cigar from his dark mustached lips, and said, with a light laugh:

"Ah, Pratt, what deviltry are you up to now?"

"I have just come from attending a funeral," Doctor Pratt answered sedately, as he seated himself in a satin-cushioned arm-chair.

"A funeral!" Mr. Colville started and grew pale. "Was it that of—of Miss Lawrence?"

"The same," was the calm reply.

"Ah! beautiful Lily—so you are gone to be the bride of death—to be clasped to her icy heart! Well, better so," said Colville, bitterly.

"I wonder at your coldness," said Doctor Pratt, eying him keenly. "I thought you loved her to desperation."

"Man, man—I did, I did!" cried out Colville, starting up and pacing the floor wildly, "but what of that? She would not have my love. She laughed it to scorn, and was about to give herself to my haughty rival. Great Heaven! I was nearly crazed by the knowledge. It was a happy madness that armed her hand against her own life! I am glad she is dead. I would rather she were the prey of the worm than given to the arms of another."

"Sit down, sit down," said the physician, shortly. "Calm yourself, or you will fall in a fit as did your horror-struck rival on hearing the dreadful news of her death."

"Fell in a fit, did he?" said Colville, stopping short in his hurried walk. "I wish he had died. But, no! he might have rejoined her then in some better land than this."

"If there be a better land, which I doubt," said Pratt, with a cold sneer.

Colville threw himself down into an arm-chair and looked moodily across at the physician.

"Well, what have you come after?" he asked, abruptly and testily. "You have put me up to so many devilish schemes that I always expect some villany when I see your satanic countenance."

"I have put my freedom in jeopardy this week for the sake of your happiness," Doctor Pratt answered with assumed indifference, "but if you take such a high tone I can leave with my secret untold."

"A secret!" said Colville, looking up with some interest; "your secrets are always worth hearing, doctor. Let me have it, I beg you."

"This one is worth hearing, any way," said Doctor Pratt grimly, and, rising, he turned the door-key in the lock, after looking out suspiciously into the wide hall. Returning, he drew his chair close to Colville's and continued, calmly: "I cannot afford to give you this secret, Colville, I will sell it to you for the pretty little sum of ten thousand dollars—a mere bagatelle, that, to a man of your wealth."

"Ten thousand dollars! is the man mad?" muttered Colville. "Why, man alive, there is not a secret under the sun I would pay that much for!"

"Is there not?" smiled the other, and bending a little nearer he whispered in low, impressive accents: "What would you give me, Harold Colville, if I could take Lily Lawrence from her coffin to-night, cheat the grave-worm of its prey, and give her to your arms, warm, living, beautiful—dead to all the world, alive only to you?"

"Great Heaven! the half of my fortune were not too great a price for such a miracle," breathed Colville, excitedly. "But, Pratt, you are raving! Even your skill, great though I own it to be, could not accomplish that, unless you are leagued with the devil, as I have often suspected you are."

"Thanks," said the grim physician, curtly, then interrogated calmly: "So ten thousand dollars would not weigh much in the scale against Lily Lawrence living?"

"Not a feather's weight! I would give it to you freely, gladly, but, Pratt, you cannot do it!"

"I can do it! Listen to me, Colville," he whispered breathlessly. "Lily Lawrence lies in her coffin to-night, to all the world dead: but to me she is a living woman, and as such may be resurrected."

"But how—why–"

"Be calm, I will explain all. When her lifeless form was discovered I was hastily called in. I went; I carefully examined the body, which lay, to all appearance, cold and dead. I found an almost imperceptible warmth about her heart, a tinge of color in the palms of her hands, and a vacant stare in the eyes resembling death, but which might be only produced by that rare and strange disease known to medical men as 'catalepsy.' There was a slight flesh-wound about the heart; but the blow had been struck by such a trembling hand that it had failed to penetrate a vital part, and the dreadful shock of the attempted murder (for I do not believe in the sapient jury's verdict of suicide) threw the poor girl into a state of syncope, or catalepsy, so closely resembling death that it deceived all but my professional eyes."

"Yet you suffered them to entomb a living woman?"

"For your sake, remember, Colville; for as I knelt by the beautiful creature, half stunned by my startling discovery, the thought of you darted into my head like an inspiration. I remembered what you must suffer if she lived to bless your rival with her love. I said to myself—It will be several days, most likely, before she rouses from this trance of death. Let them bury her, and make to themselves other idols. In the meantime I will resurrect her, give her to Colville's eager arms, and earn his eternal gratitude as well as a more substantial fee for myself."

"Pratt, you are a demon!"

"Is that the way you thank me for my friendship?"

"No, oh, no; you have done well—you have done right, and you shall have your reward. But, Heavens! to think of her lying there in her living beauty among the skeletons and the worms—perhaps even now she is waking amid those gloomy shades! Ugh!" he shuddered, and started from the chair.

"No danger, I think," said the dark physician, smiling contemptuously; "I observed her closely this evening, and there were no signs of reviving. Patience, my friend, I bribed the old sexton, I have the key to the vault. In a few hours it will be night, and then we will bear away your drooping Lily to revive beneath the sunshine of your love."

"But where can we take her? If the theft is discovered there will be a hue and cry raised about the body."

"I know of a safe place. You remember the old couple in the suburbs? the same who kept poor Fanny till her ravings ended in her death?"

"Oh, God! do not remind me of such horrible things—let the dead past lie! Yes, I remember!"

"We will take her there. I have been to see them, and prepared them for our coming. You will have to pay heavily, of course, but you will not mind that in such a cause. Now, then, will you go with me to the graveyard to-night?"

"I will, and may the devil, who certainly helps you in your evil deeds, doctor, aid us both in this precarious scheme, and restore my living love to my devoted arms!"

"Amen!" breathed Doctor Pratt piously.

CHAPTER III

It was the day following the funeral of sweet Lily Lawrence—a sunny day, fragrant and bloomy with the wealth of summer. Outside of Mr. Lawrence's stately mansion in the handsome grounds enclosing it, flowers blossomed, the fountain threw up its diamond spray, and birds twittered and chirped.

But within the house all was silence and gloom. Mr. Lawrence was shut up in the library alone with his grief; Ada Lawrence lay ill of a low, nervous fever, induced by her poignant sorrow, and Mrs. Vance sat in the drawing-room alone, nervous and ill, and starting at every trivial sound.

The stately-looking widow was very handsome this morning. She wore a dress of thin black grenadine, relieved by creamy old lace at throat and wrists, and delicate ribbons of heliotrope color. Her wavy black hair was braided about her small head like a coronet, and a cluster of heliotrope blossoms nestled in its silken darkness.

A faint roseate bloom tinted her lips and cheeks, and hightened by contrast the restless brightness of her full, dark eyes, and the whiteness of her low brow. She was fully thirty-five years old, but nature and art had combined so gracefully in her make-up that she did not appear twenty-five.

A sudden peal of the door-bell made her spring up suddenly in nervous terror of she scarce knew what. She had hardly reseated herself when an obsequious servant ushered in a tall, exceedingly distinguished-looking young man. It was Lancelot Darling, the betrothed lover of the dead girl.

He was a splendidly handsome and imposing gentleman, but his elegant dress was disordered, his face was pale, almost to the verge of ghastliness, his large, brilliant dark eyes were so wild in their expression of grief that they almost seemed to glare upon the lady who advanced toward him with extended hands.

"Mr. Darling," she murmured in a low tone of surprise and pleasure. "You are better, you are able to be out."

He pressed her hand speechlessly, and tottered to a sofa, falling heavily upon it while his eyes closed for a minute. In a fright at the look of exhaustion on his white face, Mrs. Vance darted from the room, soon returning with a glass of cordial.

She lifted his head on her arm and pressed the goblet to his lips, trembling excessively the while. In a moment he revived, and rising on his elbow looked up while a faint flush mounted to his white forehead.

"Pardon me," he said, in a broken voice. "This is unmanly, I know, but I have been very ill, Mrs. Vance, and I am weak still—and it is hard, oh! so hard to come here like this!" He sat up, pushing the dark locks back from his brow, while a shudder ran through his strong frame.

"Believe me, I sympathize with you, I grieve with you," murmured the lady in silvery tones. "Our poor, lost Lily!" and her face was hidden in her handkerchief while a sob seemed to shake her graceful form.

"They say she died by her own hand," he cried, excitedly. "My God! what mystery is here, Mrs. Vance? What hidden cause drove the girl who was almost my wife to that fearful deed?"

"Did you suspect no cause?" asked she, looking at him sadly.

"None—there could be none. Young, beautiful, loving and beloved, she had no cause for sorrow."

"So it seemed to you," she answered, in low, soft tones, looking down as if she could not bear the anguish written on his features; "but strange as it may seem, Lily had some trouble unknown to us all, but which I suspected months ago. She had strange moods of deep depression and abstraction, followed by a feverish, unnatural gaiety. My suspicion of some mysterious trouble weighing on her heart was only confirmed by her sad and tragic death."

"Of what nature did you suspect her mysterious trouble to be?" asked the young man, looking at her in surprise and anxiety.

"I had nothing but conjecture to build on," said she, reluctantly. "It would be cruelty to harrow your soul with suspicions that may be baseless."

"But I insist on your telling me," said he, with unconscious imperiousness of tone and look.

"I fancied—mind, I only fancied," said she, deprecatingly, "that Lily, though betrothed to you, had conceived an unrequited attachment for another, or that perhaps she was the victim of some boarding-school entanglement which threatened to mar her happiness."

"Oh, impossible!" he answered, decisively. "Lily had no silly school-girl entanglements. She told me so. And she loved me alone—loved me as devotedly as I loved her—I am perfectly certain of that. No, Mrs. Vance, you are mistaken. The theory of the jury is the only one I can accept. The fatal deed must have been committed under a temporary aberration of mind."

The sudden entrance of Mr. Lawrence checked the mournful expression that rose to her lips.

As the two men shook hands in silence, each noted the ravages grief had made in the other.

Mr. Lawrence's portly form was bowed feebly, his genial face was seamed with lines of grief and care, while premature silver threads shone amid his chestnut-brown hair.

The ghastly pallor of Lancelot Darling, his wild eyes, his trembling hands, attested how maddening and soul-harrowing was his despair.

"Lance, my poor boy, you have been ill," said the banker, in a gentle tone of sympathy.

"Yes, I have been ill," said Lancelot, brokenly; then almost crushing the banker's hand in his strong, unconscious grasp, he broke out wildly: "Mr. Lawrence, I have come here to beg a favor of you."

"Name it," said Mr. Lawrence, kindly.

"I want the key of your vault. I want to see my Lily's face once more," he answered, in an imploring tone.

"Would it be well? Would it be wise?" asked the other in a tone of surprise and pain.

"I do not know, I do not ask," said Lancelot, impetuously. "I only know that my soul hungers for a sight of my darling's face. Do not refuse me, my friend. Let me see her once more before death has obliterated all her beauty!"

"Better think of her, Lance, as when you last saw her in life and health," said the banker uneasily. "She is already changed. You are too weak to bear the agitation that would ensue if I granted your request."

"You refuse me, then," said the young man in a voice of passionate grief. "She was to have been my wife ere now, yet you will not suffer me to press one last, long kiss on the cold lips of my darling."

"Oh, do not refuse him," cried Mrs. Vance, gliding forward and laying a persuasive little hand on the banker's arm. "Think of his bleeding heart and blighted hopes. Remember how fondly he loved her. Go with him to the vault, and show him our broken Lily lying asleep in the deep rest she coveted."

Lancelot's heavy, dark eyes flashed a look of gratitude upon the beautiful pleader as she ceased to speak.

The banker paused irresolutely.

"If I thought he could bear it," he murmured.

"I can bear it, I will!" said Lancelot, firmly. "Only grant my request."

"The sexton has the key of the vault," said Mr. Lawrence, yielding reluctantly. "I will go with you, Lance."

"Let it be at once then. My carriage is at the gate," said the half frenzied young lover, moving off after a slight bow to Mrs. Vance.

Mr. Lawrence followed him, the door was closed, and the handsome widow stood alone in the center of the splendid drawing-room. She took one or two turns up and down the room, her black dress trailing its gloomy folds over the rich carpet.

"Let him go," she said at last, pausing and clenching her delicate hands together. "Let him go! That marble mask of his beautiful love can but disenchant him. I have already dropped a suspicion of her love into his heart. He does not heed it yet, but no matter, it shall take root, it shall grow, it shall bear fruit an hundredfold! He shall turn to me yet. I love him with a love passing everything, and I will stop at nothing till I call him mine!"

She laughed aloud as the thought of her future triumph swept through her heart. It was a strange, eerie laugh—It sounded as if a beautiful fiend had laughed in Hades.

The elegant carriage, with its high stepping, spirited gray horses, bowled rapidly along the busy streets of New York, and at length paused before the beautiful cemetery in which Mr. Lawrence's vault was situated. The banker then stepped into the sexton's house where he called for the key of the vault. The sexton gave it to him with some surprise at the request, and the gentleman returned to Lancelot Darling who was impatiently pacing a graveled path in the "fair Necropolis of the dead."

The banker paused and laid his hand on the young man's arm.

"I have the key, Lance," he said, "but even now I wish I could persuade you not to enter the vault; I dread the effect on your already weak nerves. Remember what a difference there must be between the blooming Lily you last looked upon and the poor, faded flower in yon gloomy stone vault."

"Mr. Lawrence, you do but torture me," said the young man, with a gesture of wild despair. "However she may be changed let me see her. Yet I cannot believe that that beautiful face can be altered so soon. Cruel death would stay his defacing hand when he looked on such loveliness."

With a sigh of regret the elder man turned and walked on down the shady path. Lancelot followed him, taking no note of the beautiful day and the song of the birds and the fragrance of the rare flowers all around him. Over the low mounds everywhere gentle hands of affection had planted lovely flowers and shrubs, trying to make grim death beautiful. But he heeded them not as he stopped in front of the marble vault, guarded by a marble angel, and followed Mr. Lawrence into its dim recesses.

They walked down the echoing aisle, between rows of moldy, decaying coffins, and paused with beating hearts and labored breath beside a new casket, loaded with wreaths and crosses of fragrant white hot-house flowers.

The murky air of the charnel house was heavy with the scent of tube-roses, violets and pale white roses. With trembling hands they removed these tokens of affection, until the lid of the coffin was disclosed. With a shudder Lancelot read the inscription on the silver plate:

"Lily Lawrence

"Aged eighteen."

Mr. Lawrence drew out the silver screws and removed the lid.

"My God!" he cried, as he gazed within.

The costly casket was empty. The white satin cushioning that love had devised to make the bed of death a soft one, held the impress of her form, the pillow was lightly dented where her golden head had lain, but the cold form that rested there yesterday with white hands folded over the quiet heart, with pale lips shut over the woful secret of her death, that loved form was gone from their gaze.