Part 1 (1/2)
A Terrible Secret.
by May Agnes Fleming.
CHAPTER I.
BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM ELECT.
Firelight falling on soft velvet carpet, where white lily buds trail along azure ground, on chairs of white-polished wood that glitters like ivory, with puffy of seats of blue satin; on blue and gilt panelled walls; on a wonderfully carved oaken ceiling; on sweeping draperies of blue satin and white lace; on half a dozen lovely pictures; on an open piano; and last of all, on the handsome, angry face of a girl who stands before it--Inez Catheron.
The month is August--the day the 29th--Miss Catheron has good reason to remember it to the last day of her life. But, whether the August sun blazes, or the January winds howl, the great rooms of Catheron Royals are ever chilly. So on the white-tiled hearth of the blue drawing-room this summer evening a coal fire flickers and falls, and the mistress of Catheron Royals stands before it, an angry flush burning deep red on either dusk cheek, an angry frown contracting her straight black brows.
The mistress of Catheron Royals,--the biggest, oldest, queerest, grandest place in all sunny Ches.h.i.+re,--this slim, dark girl of nineteen, for three years past the bride-elect of Sir Victor Catheron, baronet, the last of his Saxon race and name, the lord of all these sunny acres, this n.o.ble Norman pile, the smiling village of Catheron below. The master of a stately park in Devon, a moor and ”bothy” in the highlands, a villa on the Arno, a gem of a cottage in the Isle of Wight. ”A darling of the G.o.ds,” young, handsome, healthy; and best of all, with twenty thousand a year.
She is his bride-elect. In her dark way she is very handsome. She is to be married to Sir Victor early in the next month, and she is as much in love with him as it is at all possible to be. A fair fate surely. And yet while the August night shuts down, while the wind whistles in the trees, while the long fingers of the elm, just outside the window, tap in a ghostly way on the pane, she stands here, flushed, angry, impatient, and sullen, her handsome lips set in a tight, rigid line.
She is very dark at all times. Her cousin Victor tells her, laughingly, she is an absolute n.i.g.g.e.r when in one of her silent rages. She has jet-black hair, and big, brilliant, Spanish eyes. She _is_ Spanish.
Her dead mother was a Castilian, and that mother has left her her Spanish name, her beautiful, pa.s.sionate Spanish eyes, her hot, pa.s.sionate Spanish heart. In Old Castile Inez was born; and when in her tenth year her English father followed his wife to the grave, Inez came home to Catheron Royals, to reign there, a little, imperious, hot-tempered Morisco princess ever since.
She did not come alone. A big boy of twelve, with a shock head of blue-black hair, two wild, glittering black eyes, and a diabolically handsome face, came with her. It was her only brother Juan, an imp incarnate from his cradle. _He_ did not remain long. To the unspeakable relief of the neighborhood for miles around, he had vanished as suddenly as he had come, and for years was seen no more.
A Moorish Princess! It is her cousin and lover's favorite name for her, and it fits well. There is a certain barbaric splendor about her as she stands here in the firelight, in her trailing purple silk, in the cross of rubies and fine gold that burns on her bosom, in the yellow, perfumy rose in her hair, looking stately, and beautiful, and dreadfully out of temper.
The big, lonesome house is as still as a tomb. Outside the wind is rising, and the heavy patter, patter, of the rain-beats on the gla.s.s.
That, and the light fall of the cinders in the polished grate, are the only sounds to be heard.
A clock on the mantel strikes seven. She has not stirred for nearly an hour, but she looks up now, her black eyes full of pa.s.sionate anger, pa.s.sionate impatience.
”Seven!” she says, in a suppressed sort of voice; ”and he should have been here at six. What if he should defy me?--what if he does not come after all?”
She can remain still no longer. She walks across the room, and she walks as only Spanish women do. She draws back one of the window-curtains, and leans out into the night. The crushed sweetness of the rain-beaten roses floats up to her in the wet darkness. Nothing to be seen but the vague tossing of the trees, nothing to be heard but the soughing of the wind, nothing to be felt but the fast and still faster falling of the rain.
She lets the curtain fall, and returns to the fire.
”Will he dare defy me?” she whispers to herself. ”Will he dare stay away?”
There are two pictures hanging over the mantel--she looks up at them as she asks the question. One is the sweet, patient face of a woman of thirty; the other, the smiling face of a fair-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking lad. It is a _very_ pleasant face; the blue eyes look at you so brightly, so frankly; the boyish mouth is so sweet-tempered and laughing that you smile back and fall in love with him at sight.
It is Sir Victor Catheron and his late mother.
Miss Inez Catheron is in many respects an extraordinary young lady--Ches.h.i.+re society has long ago decided that. They would have been more convinced of it than ever, could they have seen her turn now to Lady Catheron's portrait and appeal to it aloud in impa.s.sioned words:
”On his knees, by your dying bed, by your dying command, he vowed to love and cherish me always--as he did then. Let him take care how he trifles with that vow--let him take care!”
She lifts one hand (on which rubies and diamonds flash) menacingly, then stops. Over the sweep of the storm, the rush of the rain, comes another sound--a sound she has been listening for, longing for, praying for--the rapid roll of carriage wheels up the drive. There can be but one visitor to Catheron Royals to-night, at this hour and in this storm--its master.
She stands still as a stone, white as a statue, waiting. She loves him; she has hungered and thirsted for the sound of his voice, the sight of his face, the clasp of his hand, all these weary, lonely months. In some way it is her life or death she is to take from his hands to-night. And now he is here.
She hears the great hall-door open and close with a clang; she hears the step of the master in the hall--a quick, a.s.sured tread she would know among a thousand; she hears a voice--a hearty, pleasant, manly, English voice; a cheery laugh she remembers well.
”The Chief of Lara has returned again.”