UNDER A STRANGE MASK.

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 339, 10 September 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

UNDER A STRANGE MASK.

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RY FRAMv BARRETT. CHAPTER XII. MARIAN LHAUNS THE SECRKT. Meanwhile Redlands had gone on to the Court. Miss Sylvester was in her room ; he was shown into the little living-room. Presently Mirian came down as white as a ghost. Kedlands could see that as plainly as he could feel the icy coldness of her little hand as he took it albeit, forseeing how she would dread the light falling on her face, he had thoughtfully lowered the shade over the lamp and turned down the wick. Still holding her cold little hand, he led her to a seat before the lire, saying how chill the evenings were now, and then he stirred the fire, and began to rattle on about his works as if he was so engrossed in his own efforts that he did not perceive her unusual silence though it struck him with pity and fear. Poor Marian heard his pleasant voice without distinguishing his words, as one may hear music whilst the attention is fixed upon a book. She was wondering how she could get through what lay before her. Other woman would have excused themselves on some pretext, but she was not one to shirk a duty because it was unpleasant. For her there was but one way of doing a thing, and that was the straight forward way. ' George,' she said, whon he paused, laying down the poker, ' I am going away.' ' Going away, love V he said, his voice dropping to a lower pitch and faltering more than hers—' going awav V

« Yes—I —I have packed up my little belongings, and I am going away to night.' ' Then I will go with you, dear,' he said, ' wherever you go.' ' No, George, you must stay here. Our paths no longer run side by side. A great misfortune has happened to me. SoeclilF is no longer mine; I have nothing in the world.' ' Why, that's as much as I thought you possessed when T fell in love with you, darling,' said he, taking her hand gently. 'lt was but a little schoolmistress I sought to make my wife, aud you are still that—and all the world to me.'

He spoke with such infinite tenderness that her heart rose above all its grief in joy to have the love of such a gentleman. Rising is he spoke he h If rested himself on the arm of her chair, and putting his hand round her waist, drew her towards his bent head. She looted up with a little inurmur of passionate delight, and yield her cheek to his lips—feeling only, not thinking at all. But in a moment her clear reason asserted itself, and she knew she was.wrong to yielded to her heart that she must break the gentle bond between herself and him, and separate for ever. She drew herself away. ' Sit there,' she said softly, pointing to his chair. lie obeyed. ' That is our farewell, George,' she said. ' When I said I was going away, I meant from you. I was not thinking of Soeclifl; that is a loss I cannot feel yet awhile.' Could she more plainly tell him how she loved him—how he had absorbed her whole heart?

1 And when I tell you that,' she continued, feeling the admission she had made ef her great love for him, 'you will understand that in bidding you farewell my motive is not caprice, not trivial, not of a nature that may be overcome by argument, by persuasion, or any influence whatever that could be brought to bear upon it. Ho you understand me?' ' Yes,' said he, ' I know you too •well to think you would break my heart for nothing.' 'Oh, George,' she cried, 'don't tell me it will break your heart; or how shall I, a girl, keep mine whole to meet my trouble bravely f He got up and walked across the room, that she might not see how he was unmanned —biting his quivering lip and gulping down the sob that rose in his throat, as he thought of losing for ever this dear girl, whose beauty, and sweetness, and goodness had never yet seemed so divinely perfect. And she, keeping her moist and quivering hands closo-clenched in her lap, bowed her head, while the tears dropped one by one upon her knees.

He thought of ber in the midst of his own selfish passion—ho gauged her woe by that in his own breast—he must put an end to her terrrib'.e ordeal, and tear himself quickly away to give repose to that pour stricken heart.

He went up to the side of her chair and laid his hand gently on he^bead —thinking think that his fillers were never again to teel that soft, cool, waving hair. 4 1 will not ayk you to toll me why vfe must part, lovo ; you have said we must. It is now for me to say, ' ] am going away ; farewell.' He took his hand from the dear head, and yet paused an instant, hoping to catch one last sound of that voice which was the heavenliest music to his ear. But she could not speak. ' Farewell/ died upon her lips. Hut oh ! her generous soul

rose in reproach against letting him go away thus, without a farewell, though reason might have whispered, 'lt is best so.' .She was wise and good, obedient to the teaching of her conscience, but with all that she was intensely human. 80 with the swift impulse of love she sprang to her feet, dashing the tears from her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and with an inarticulate cry of mingled love, and joy, and sorrow, she threw herself in his arms, and swallowing her grief, she murmured in a sentence broken with the kisses she pressed upon his lips—- ' Good-bye—dear, dear love—l cannot ask you to forget me. I cannot wish that you should ; but all through life, dear, I'll pray for your happiness —to the end.' And then she unclasped her hands from his neck and ran away, sobbing, into the darker end of the room.

CHAFTAU XIV. —MARIAN GOES AWAY.

It was about eight o'clock when I heard a carriage pull up before my door, followed by a ring at the bell.

'N ow, is that Lestrange or Redlands !' I asked myself, as I hurried to the door. It was neither. Marian stood before me. Her face was white, her poor eyes swollen and red, but she was quite cairn. 1 1 want to speak to you, Mr Keene,' said she, 'and there is but little time. I am going away by the train that leaves at nine o'clock.'

I Jed her into my sitting-room, where there was a good cheerful fire, anJ closed the door. ' Don't say a word, my dear,' said I, goins to the little corner cupboard in which I kept my creature comforts. ' Not a word till we've had something to strengthen you. I see that something extraordinary has happened to decide you upon making a journey at this time of the night, and your face tells me that you are in distress. There, drink that, and then I'll listen to all you have to tell rue, and help you to the utmost of my ability.' Poor soul ! she had no heart to touch the cordial, but I insisted, and I do believe it gave her a little strength ; for, after a shuddering sigh, like that of a child who has been crying, and bending her head in silence for a moment over her tightly-clasped hands, she looked up at me with an expression in her thin pale face of determination to go through her task bravely. ' No w, my dear,' said I, ' let me know why you have left the Court at this hour V

I cannot stay another hour under that roof with my grandfather —' Where I have put a dash, she paused, as if she could not bring herself to speak of him. 1 I am not surprised—not a bit,' said I. ' 1 wonder you have stood it so long. I couldn't. A more appalling spectacle of human ruin—of a wrecked body and a wrecked mind, I never saw—outside of a lunatic asylum.' She looked at me eagerly as she asked if I believed ho was insane. ' I should not like to say so unless I saw good reason,' said I. 'But the slight interview I had with him confirmed the suspicion I had previously formed from his strange mode of living during the past fifty-years, and the nature of his communications with me and your father. There is the strongest evidence that he is suffering from some form of mental hallucination : that he is, in fact, a monomaniac' She reflected some moments, and then shaking her head, said—- ' All that may be accounted for in another way. I have seen ' —she paused, and covered her face with her hands, as if to shut out some hideous sight,. I drew my chair nearer, and putting my hand on her arm, and then taking ber hand, which I kept in mine, I said, • Tell me what you have seen, and trust to my impartial judgment.' • When Mr Lestrange left the house this morning,' she said in a low voice, and with an effort, ' he locked my grandfather in his room, and took away the key. His room is the first one on the east side of tho house over the drawing-room. About an hour after Mr Lestrange had left, Mary, the housemaid, came to me, trembling and speechless with fright, and sat down in a chair in the library where I was sitting while Lydia, the cook, stood in the doorway clutching the door, and looking over her shoulder up the great stairs, with a face as ashlypale as Mary's. ' There it is again,' she cried, and coming into the room, shut the door. With the greatest ditliculty I got them to tell me what it was that alarmed them. They told me there was somebody in the old rooms in tho west side of the house, which as you know, is shut up, ami has not been opened within my remembrance. Mary, who had been dusting the stairs, was the first to hear sounds there, and she fetched her fellow-servants. They both now declared they had heard a voice moaning and furniture moving in the room where, long ago, Lord Badlands,'—she stopped. ' Died.' said I, supplying a word for of that she could not speak, ' Yes ; go on.' ' To satisfy them that there was nothing to fear, rather than to convince myself, I went o.i to the stairs, and there I stopped, for unmistakable sounds were coming

ftom the old room. I heard the window shutters thrown back and the sash lifted. The terri6ed girls, with a scream, ran downstairs and slammed the kitchen door, as if they expected to have their lives taken.

1 The old room, as perhaps you know, adjoins the great room occupied by Mr Sylvester ; both look on to the lawn. I saw what had happened : my grandfather had found some means of getting from his room into the next. That explained all; but as Mr Lestrange had always taken the precaution to fasten him in whenever he left the house, there was good reason to suppose that it was uns*fe to give him liberty : the raising of the window sash increased my alarm for his safety. I saw that it was my duty to go at once to him, and stop with him until Mr Lestrange's return.

' The keys of the old room were in a box in the library : I got them and as bravely as I could went up and unfastened the" 4 door. The light was streaming through the open window. At first I saw no one. I had time to glance round the great ghostly room. It was just as it had been left ; a ewer stood by the washstand, a towel lay on the floor, there was a comb and brush upon the toilet table. The bed was half stripped ; the heavy hangings were drawn back; a pillow lay on the floor. The room looked as if it might have been occupied last night but for the drab coating of dust that lay upon everything. ' It was so still, that I was scared when a voice from beyond the bed whispered ' Marian ' '[ looked intently, and saw a hideous head peeping out from the dark hangings. It was my grandfather. His face was painted as I had seen it at lunch, but his wig was removed, and the look of that perfectly bare skull, with the madeup face below, was indescribably horrible. I shrank back, with diffculty suppressing a cry. He held up his ringed finger warningly, and creeping stealthily from beyond the hangings, came towards me. He wore his great fur dressinggown, but it was open at the throat, and his stiff white collar was loose as though he had torn it away to get breath. I was terribly frightened—partly by his stealthy movements; I had a silly fear that he might do me' some injury—it was a stupid dread, but I could not resist it.

' Where is Lestrange !' he whispered, turning his eyes towards the door beside me.

' He is gone out,' said I

•Then, now is my opportunity. I will tell you all while I may. Let him do what he will when he finds it out. He has silenced me with threats, he has used drugs, he has locked me up, that I might not speak. But I am more cunning than he. I have planned this return to England that I might rid my conscience of its load, and now is my time. Oh, I have watched and waited for this opportunity. Look ! I came through there from the room he locked me in—he pointed beyond the bedstead and I saw an opening not more than a foot in width, and live in height. ' I knew the trick of it after fifty years—fifty years ! I put my finger on the spring as surely as if I had used it every day those fifty years—as 1 have in my memory—in my head here !' and he covered his bare head with his hands. 1 Bedlands showed me the way to open the door as we shook hands and said ' good-night' —fifty years ago. He slept in this room —fifty years ago : I slept in the next—fifty years ago. ' Slept!' that is a facon de purler, I never closed my eyes, but walked to and fro in that room thinking of him and his, and how easily I might get rid of the one, and obtain the other.

' It was past midnight —fifty years ago—when I softly opened that door, as I opened it just now. The wax candle you see on the table behind you was alight—fifty years ago—l saw my friend—he lay on the bed—there—there V he whispered hoarsely, stretching his arm out with extended hand towards the bed, ' Sleeping heavily—his first sleep. There was water in that baain, where now there is only dust: that towel on the floor there lay on the chair—fifty years ago. I dipped it softly in the water ; feel it, it is not rough like those we use now but soft and limp. When it was heavy with water I took it over to the bed, and laid it over my friend's face without awaking aim. You see no barm in laying a wet towel over a sleeping man's face. Who would ! But I had learnt the effect of it from Defoe in his ' History of the Plague.' ' I took the money I had lent him, and for which I held his receipt, and put it up in the pocketbook in which I had brought it, but the box in which he had kept it I carried out of the house, weighted it with a stone, and dropped it in the well out there by the stables. There was a ladder there that I had observed the day before ; I set it against the window. I crept back into the house, shutting the door as I had found it, and came back to the room, I set the window open—fifty years ago —as I have set it open now, to mislead suspicion. The pulley squeaked as I raised the sash. It awoke Redlauds. I saw him dragging the

towel from his face : in another moment he would have discovered me. I snatched up the pillow and threw it upon his face to blind him while I. dashed across the room and extinguished the light. As I passed through the door I heard him call upon me—me his friend—to help him. When the door was closed I stood trembling in the next room. I heard him call me again. This is the truth. No one can say that I took his life. Yet the shock was fatal in its after-effect, and I am morally, though not actually, guilty. ' The next morning they found him dead ; they believed, as I intended them to believe, that thieves had broken in and stifled hini. No one suspected me. No one knows but you, and Le3trange, and I, that 1 was the thief—l the' Poor Marian could go no further, but hid her face once more in her quivering hands. 'My dear,' said I soothingly, 1 why should you distress yourself in this way ?' 1 He is my grandfather,' she said shuddering, ' What of that V said I ; ' there is nothing in this story but the perverted imagination of a madman. Whoever heard such a story ? Every days one reads in the papers of men accusing themselves of crimes they never committed. It is a most common form of insanity. Or Awdrcy will tell you so.' But she would not accept this explanation. The thins had been put before her in such vivid reality, supported by such strong circumstantial evidence, that it was impossible for her to believe it merely the result of mental disorder.

' Come, come,' I said : ' you think I have no right, upon such slight knowledge, to conclude that this terrible old man is insane ; but you are not more justified in thinking him sane upon the same superficial ground. It rests upon some one who has known him for a considerable time to decide whether this is or is not the mere result of association ; the effect of being shut up in a room so close, that in which the tragedy took place. And happily, we have such a person to refer to ; there is Lcstrange, who has waited on him night and day so long—he can give us the truth if any one can.' I said this, remembering that Lcstrange had promised to support the theory of old Sylvester's insanity, ' You believe,' she said slowly, ' that we may take his opinion as final and conclusive V

' Undoubtedly,' said I. 'We will ask him about it to-morrow.

' I have asked him already,' said she calmly. 1 Well, and what does he say V I asked hopefully. 1 He says,' said she, ' that there is not the slightest grouii'l for supposing him insane. J was thunderstruck 1

' He himself,' she continued, ' has not the slightest doubt of his guilt, and my grandfather has never swerved from the same story, and for years has been meditating a full confession, which he, Lestrange, has only been able to prevent by such means as my grandfather revealed to me.'

I could find never a word to say. This double-dealing of Lestrange's which I could not immediately explain, completely cut the ground from under me.

The timepiece on the mantel piece pointed to 8.40, Marian rose. 1 1 have told you all,' she said ; 'you know why I cannot stay another night at the Court. lam going to my aunt at Exeter. I have telegraphed to her, and she will meet mo at the station. I wanted to tell you all, because I know you love me well enough to do all in your power to shield him and me from public shame. I can do nothing ; I have left all behind but my clothes, and a few shillings to take me away.' I could no longer dissuade the poor girl from her purpose. With a sorrowful heart I put her in a comfortable carriage, and watcher! the train glide away ; albiet I made pretence to be mighty knowing and hopeful, as if I already saw a way out of the trouble, but did not like to disclose it prematurely. To tell the honest truth, I never felc so hopelessly helpless in all my life. (To be continued).