Vampire Books Online / The Blood of the Vampire: Part 4

Chapter 16

Doctor Phillips was a great favourite with the beau sexe. He was so mild and courteous, so benevolent and sympathetic, that they felt sure he might be trusted with their little secrets. Women, both old and young, invaded his premises daily, and therefore it was no matter of surprise to him, when, whilst he was still occupied with his breakfast on the morning following Harriet Brandt’s flight from the Red House, his confidential servant Charles announced that a young lady was waiting to see him in his consulting room.

“No name, Charles?” demanded the doctor.

“No name, Sir!” replied the discreet Charles without the ghost of a smile.

“Say that I will be with her in a minute!”

Doctor Phillips finished his cutlet and his coffee before he rose from table. He knew what ladies’ confidences were like and that he should not have much chance of returning to finish an interrupted meal.

But as he entered his consulting room, his air of indifference changed to one of surprise. Pacing restlessly up and down the carpet, was Harriet Brandt, but so altered that he should hardly have recognised her. Her face was puffy and swollen, as though she had wept all night, her eyelids red and inflamed, her whole demeanour wild and anxious.

“My dear young lady—is it possible that I see Miss Brandt?” the doctor began.

[Pg 270]

She turned towards him and coming up close to his side, grasped his arm. “I must speak to you!” she exclaimed, without further preliminary, “you are the only person who can set my doubts at rest.”

“Well! well! well!” he said, soothingly, for the girl looked and spoke as though her mind were disordered. “You may rely that I will do all I can for you! But let us sit down first!”

“No! no!” cried Harriet, “there is no time, I cannot rest; you must satisfy my mind at once, or I shall go mad! I have not closed my eyes all night—the time was interminable, but how could I sleep! I seemed to be torn in pieces by ten thousand devils!”

“My dear child,” said Doctor Phillips, as he laid his hand on hers and looked her steadily in the face, “you are over-excited. You must try to restrain yourself.”

He went up to a side table and, pouring out some cordial, made her drink it. Harriet gulped it down, and sank back exhausted in a chair. She was weak and worn-out with the excitement she had passed through.

“Come! that is better,” said the doctor, as he saw the tears stealing from beneath her closed eyelids, “now, don’t hurry yourself! Keep quiet till you feel strong enough to speak, and then tell me what it is that brings you here!”

The allusion appeared to stir up all her misery again. She sat upright and grasped the doctor by the arm as she had done at first.

“You must tell me,” she said breathlessly, “you must tell me all I want to know. They say you knew my father and mother in Jamaica! Is that true?”

The old doctor began to feel uncomfortable. It is[Pg 271] one thing to warn those in whom you are interested against a certain person, or persons, and another to be confronted with the individual you have spoken of, and forced to repeat your words. Yet Doctor Phillips was innocent of having misjudged, or slandered anyone.

“I did know your father and mother—for a short time!” he answered cautiously.

“And were they married to each other?”

“My dear young lady, what is the use of dragging up such questions now? Your parents are both gone to their account—why not let all that concerned them rest also?”

“No! no! you forget that I live—to suffer the effects of their wrong-doing! I must know the truth—I will not leave the house until you tell me! Were they married? Am I a—a—bastard?”

“If you insist upon knowing, I believe they were not married—at least it was the general opinion in the Island. But would not Mr. Tarver be the proper person to inform you of anything which you may wish to know?”

Harriet seized his hand and carried it to her forehead—it was burning hot.

“Feel that!” she exclaimed, “and you would have me wait for weeks before I could get any satisfaction from Mr. Tarver, and not then perhaps! Do you think I could live through the agony of suspense. I should kill myself before the answer to my letter came. No! you are the only person that can give me any satisfaction. Madame Gobelli told me to ask you for the truth, if I did not believe her!”

“Madame Gobelli,” reiterated the doctor in surprise.

“Yes! I was staying with her at the Red House[Pg 272] until last night, and then she was so cruel to me that I left. Her son Bobby is dead, and she accused me of having killed him. She said that my father was a murderer and my mother a negress—that they were both so wicked that their own servants killed them, and that I have inherited all their vices. She said that it was I who killed Mrs. Pullen’s baby and that I had vampire blood in me, and should poison everyone I came in contact with. What does she mean? Tell me the truth, for God’s sake, for more depends upon it than you have any idea of.”

“Madame Gobelli was extremely wrong to speak in such a manner, and I do not know on what authority she did so. What can she know of your parents or their antecedents?”

“But you—you—” cried Harriet feverishly, “what do you say?”

Doctor Phillips was silent. He did not know what to say. He was not a man who could tell a lie glibly and appear as if he were speaking the truth. Patients always guessed when he had no hope to give them, however soothing and carefully chosen his words might be. He regarded the distracted girl before him for some moments in compassionate silence, and then he answered:

“I have said already that if a daughter cannot hear any good of her parents, she had better hear nothing at all!”

“Then it is true—my father and mother were people so wicked and so cruel that their names are only fit for execration. If you could have said a good word for them, you would! I can read that in your eyes!”

[Pg 273]

“The purity and charity of your own life can do much to wipe out the stain upon theirs,” said the doctor. “You have youth and money, and the opportunity of doing good. You may be as beloved, as they were——”

“Hated,” interposed the girl, “I understand you perfectly! But what about my possessing the fatal power of injuring those I come in contact with! What truth is there in that? Answer me, for God’s sake! Have I inherited the vampire’s blood? Who bequeathed to me that fatal heritage?”

“My dear Miss Brandt, you must not talk of such a thing! You are alluding only to a superstition!”

“But have I got it, whatever it may be?” persisted Harriet. “Had I anything to do with the baby’s death, or with that of Bobby Bates? I loved them both! Was it my love that killed them? Shall I always kill everybody I love? I must know—I will!”

“Miss Brandt, you have now touched upon a subject that is little thought of or discussed amongst medical men, but that is undoubtedly true. The natures of persons differ very widely. There are some born into this world who nourish those with whom they are associated; they give out their magnetic power, and their families, their husbands or wives, children and friends, feel the better for it. There are those, on the other hand, who draw from their neighbours, sometimes making large demands upon their vitality—sapping their physical strength, and feeding upon them, as it were, until they are perfectly exhausted and unable to resist disease. This proclivity has been likened to that of the vampire bat who is said to suck the breath of its victims. And[Pg 274] it was doubtless to this fable that Madame Gobelli alluded when speaking to you.”

“But have I got it? Have I got it?” the girl demanded, eagerly.

The doctor looked at her lustrous glowing eyes, at her parted feverish lips; at the working hands clasped together; the general appearance of excited sensuality, and thought it was his duty to warn her, at least a little, against the dangers of indulging such a temperament as she unfortunately possessed. But like all medical men, he temporised.

“I should certainly say that your temperament was more of the drawing than the yielding order, Miss Brandt, but that is not your fault, you know. It is a natural organism. But I think it is my duty to warn you that you are not likely to make those with whom you intimately associate, stronger either in mind or body. You will always exert a weakening and debilitating effect upon them, so that after a while, having sapped their brains, and lowered the tone of their bodies, you will find their affection, or friendship for you visibly decrease. You will have, in fact, sucked them dry. So, if I may venture to advise you I would say, if there is any one person in the world whom you most desire to benefit and retain the affection of, let that be the very person from whom you separate, as often as possible. You must never hope to keep anyone near you for long, without injuring them. Make it your rule through life never to cleave to any one person altogether, or you will see that person’s interest in you wax and wane, until it is destroyed!”

[Pg 275]

“And what if I—marry?” asked Harriet, in a strained voice.

“If you insist upon my answering that question, I should advise you seriously not to marry! I do not think yours is a temperament fitted for married life, nor likely to be happy in it! You will not be offended by my plain speaking, I hope. Remember, you have forced it from me!”

“And that is the truth, medically and scientifically—that I must not marry?” she repeated, dully.

“I think it would be unadvisable, but everyone must judge for himself in such matters. But marriage is not, after all, the ultimatum of earthly bliss, Miss Brandt! Many married couples would tell you it is just the reverse. And with a fortune at your command, you have many pleasures and interests quite apart from that very over-rated institution of matrimony. But don’t think I am presuming to do more than advise you. There is no real reason—medical or legal—why you should not choose for yourself in the matter!”

“Only—only—that those I cling to most nearly, will suffer from the contact,” said Harriet in the same strained tones.

“Just so!” responded the doctor, gaily, “and an old man’s advice to you is, to keep out of it as he has done! And now—if there is anything more—” he continued, “that I can do for you——”

“Nothing more, thank you,” replied the girl rising, “I understand it all now!”

“Will you not see your old friend, Mrs. Pullen, before you go?” asked the doctor. “She and her husband are staying with me!”

[Pg 276]

“Oh! no, no,” cried Harriet, shrinking from the idea, “I could not see her, I would rather go back at once!”

And she hurried from the consulting-room as she spoke.

Doctor Phillips stood for a while musing, after her departure. Had he done right, he thought, in telling her, yet how in the face of persistent questioning, could he have done otherwise? His thoughts were all fixed upon Ralph Pullen and the scenes that had taken place lately with him, respecting this girl. He did not dream she had an interest in Anthony Pennell. He did not know that they had met more than once. He thought she might still be pursuing Ralph; still expecting that he might break his engagement with Miss Leyton in order to marry herself; and he believed he had done the wisest thing in trying to crush any hopes she might have left concerning him.

“A most dangerous temperament,” he said to himself as he prepared to receive another patient, “one that is sufficient to mar a man’s life, if not to kill him entirely. I trust that she and Captain Pullen may never meet again. It was evident that my remarks on marriage disappointed the poor child! Ah! well, she will be much better without it!”

And here the discreet Charles softly opened the door and ushered in another lady.

An hour later, Anthony Pennell, who had projected a visit to the Red House that afternoon, received a note by a commissionaire instead, containing a few, hurried lines. “Come to me as soon as you can,” it said, “I have left Madame Gobelli. I am at the Langham Hotel, and very unhappy!” Needless to say that ten minutes[Pg 277] after the reception of this news, her lover was rushing to her presence, as fast as hansom wheels could take him.

He was very desperately and truly in love with Harriet Brandt. Like most men who use their brains in fiction, his work, whilst in course of progression, occupied his energies to such an extent that he had no time or thought for anything else. But the burden once lifted, the romance written, the strain and anxiety removed, the pendulum swung in the other direction, and Anthony Pennell devoted all his attention to pleasure and amusement. He had been set down by his colleagues as a reserved and cold-blooded man with regard to the other sex, but he was only self-contained and thoughtful. He was as warm by nature, as Harriet herself, and once sure of a response, could make love with the best, and as he flew to her assistance now, he resolved that if anything unpleasant had occurred to drive her from the Red House, and launch her friendless on the world, he would persuade her to marry him at once, and elect him her protector and defence.

His fair face flushed with anticipation as he thought of the joy it would be to make her his wife, and take her far away from everything that could annoy or harass her.

Having arrived at the Langham and flung a double fare to the cab-driver, he ran up the high staircase with the light step of a boy, and dashed into Harriet’s private room. The girl was sitting, much as she had done since returning from her interview with the doctor—silent, sullen, and alone, at war with Heaven and Destiny and all that had conduced to blight the brightest hopes she had ever had.

“Hally, my darling, why is this?” exclaimed Pennell,[Pg 278] as he essayed to fold her in his arms. But she pushed him off, not unkindly but with considerable determination.

“Don’t touch me, Tony!—don’t come near me. You had better not! I might harm you!”

“What is the matter? Are you ill? If so, you know me too well to imagine that I should fear infection.”

“No! no! you do not understand!” replied Harriet, as she rose from her seat and edged further away from him, “but I am going to tell you all! It is for that I sent for you!”

Then, waving him from her with her hand, she related the whole story to him—what the Baroness had accused her of, and what Doctor Phillips had said in confirmation of it, only that morning. Pennell had heard something of it before, through Margaret Pullen, but he had paid no attention to it, and now, when Harriet repeated it in detail, with swollen eyes and quivering lips, he laughed the idea to scorn.

“Pooh! Nonsense! I don’t believe a word of it,” he exclaimed, “it is a parcel of old woman’s tales. Phillips should be ashamed of himself to place any credence in it, far more to repeat it to you! Hally, my darling! you are surely not going to make yourself unhappy because of such nonsense. If so, you are not the sensible girl I have taken you for!”

“But, Tony,” said the girl, still backing from his advances, “listen to me! It is not all nonsense, indeed. I know for myself that it is true! Having been shut up for so many years in the Convent dulled my memory for what went before it, but it has all come back to me now! It seems as if what Madame Gobelli and Doctor Phillips have said, had lifted a veil from my eyes, and I[Pg 279] can recall things that had quite escaped my memory before. I can remember now hearing old Pete say, that when I was born, I was given to a black wet nurse, and after a little while she was taken so ill, they had to send her away, and get me another, and the next one—died! Pete used to laugh and call me the puma’s cub, but I didn’t know the meaning of it, then. And—Oh! stop a moment, Tony, till I have done—there was a little white child, I can see her so plainly now. They called her little Caroline, I think she must have belonged to the planter who lived next to us, and I was very fond of her. I was quite unhappy when we did not meet, and I used to creep into her nursery door and lie down in the cot beside her. Poor little Caroline! I can see her now! So pale and thin and wan she was! And one night, I remember her mother came in and found me there and called to her husband to send the ‘Brandt bastard’ back to Helvetia. I had no idea what she meant, but I cried because she sent me home, and I asked Pete what a bastard was, but he would not tell me. And,” went on Harriet in a scared tone, “little Caroline died! Pete carried me on his shoulder to see the funeral, and I would not believe that Caroline could be in the narrow box, and I struck Pete on the face for saying so!”

“Well! my darling! and if you did, are these childish reminiscences to come between our happiness? Why should they distress you, Hally? Madame Gobelli’s insolence must have been very hard to bear—I acknowledge that, and I wish I had been by to prevent it, but you must make excuses for her. I suppose the poor creature was so mad with grief that she did not know[Pg 280] what she was saying! But you need never see her again, so you must try to forgive her!”

“But, Anthony, you do not understand me! What the Baroness said was true! I see it now! I killed Bobby!”

“My dearest, you are raving! You killed Bobby! What utter, utter folly! How could you have killed Bobby?”

Harriet passed her hand wearily across her brow, as if she found it too hard to make her meaning plain.

“Oh! yes, I did! We were always together, in the garden or the house! And he used to sit with his head on my shoulder and his arm round my waist, I should not have allowed it! I should have driven him away! But he loved me, poor Bobby, and it will be the same, Doctor Phillips says, with everybody I love! I shall only do them harm!”

“Hally! I shall begin to think in another moment that you are ill yourself—that you have a fever or something, and that it is affecting your brain!”

“There was a sister at the Convent, Sister Theodosia, who was very good to me when I first went there,” continued the girl in a dreamy voice, as if she had not heard his words; “and she used to sit with me upon her lap for hours together, because I was sad. But she grew ill and they had to send her away up to the hill, where they had their sanatorium. That made the fourth in Jamaica!”

“Now! I will not have you talk any more of this nonsense,” said Pennell, half annoyed by her perseverance, “and to prove to you what a little silly you are to imagine that everyone who falls ill, or dies, or who comes within the range of your acquaintance, owes it to your[Pg 281] influence, tell me how it is that your father and mother, who must have lived nearer to you than anybody else, did not fall sick and die also.”

“My parents saw less of me than anybody,” replied Harriet, sadly, “they were ashamed of their ‘bastard’, I suppose! But old Pete loved me, and took me with him everywhere, and he didn’t get sick,” she concluded, with a faint smile.

“Of course not! See! what rubbish you have been talking—making yourself and me unhappy for nothing at all! So now let me take you in my arms and kiss the remembrance of it away!”

He was about to put his suggestion into execution, but she still shrank from him.

“No! no! indeed you must not! It is all true! I cannot forget Olga Brimont, and Mrs. Pullen, and the baby, and poor Bobby! It is true, indeed it is, and I have been accursed from my birth.”

And she burst into a torrent of passionate tears.

Pennell let her expend some of her emotion, before he continued,

“Well! and what is to be the upshot of it all!”

“I must part from you,” replied the girl, “Indeed, indeed I must! I cannot injure you as I have done others! Doctor Phillips said I was not fit for marriage—that I should always weaken and hurt those whom I loved most—and that I should draw from them, physically and mentally, until I had sapped all their strength—that I have the blood of the vampire in me, the vampire that sucks its victims’ breaths until they die!”

“Doctor Phillips be damned!” exclaimed Pennell, “what right has he to promulgate his absurd and untenable[Pg 282] theories, and to poison the happiness of a girl’s life, with his folly? He is an old fool, a dotard, a senseless ass, and I shall tell him so! Vampire be hanged! And if it were the truth, I for one could not wish for a sweeter death! Come along, Hally, and try your venom upon me! I am quite ready to run the risk!”

He held out his arms to her again, as he spoke, and she sank on her knees beside him.

“Oh! Tony! Tony! cannot you read the truth? I love you, dear, I love you! I never loved any creature in this world before I loved you. I did not know that it was given to mortals to love so much! And my love has opened my eyes! Sooner than injure you, whom I would die to save from harm, I will separate myself from you! I will give you up! I will live my lonely life without you, I could do that, but I can never, never consent to sap your manhood and your brains, which do not belong to me but to the world, and see you wither, like a poisoned plant, the leaves of which lie discoloured and dead upon the garden path.”

Never in the course of their acquaintanceship had Harriet Brandt seemed so sweet, so pathetic, so unselfish to Anthony Pennell as then. If he had resolved not to resign her from the first, he did so a thousand times more now. He threw his arms around her kneeling figure and lowered his head until it lay upon the crown of her dusky hair.

“My darling! my darling! my own sweet girl!” he murmured, “our destinies are interwoven for ever! No one and nothing shall come between us! You cannot give me up unless you have my consent to doing so. I[Pg 283] hold your sacred promise to become my wife, and I shall not release you from it!”

“But if I harmed you?” she said fearfully.

“I do not believe in the possibility of your harming me,” he replied, “but if I am to die, which is what I suppose you mean, I claim my right to die in your arms. But whenever it happens, you will have neither hastened, nor retarded it!”

“Oh! if I could only think so!” she murmured.

“You must! Why cannot you trust my judgment as much as that of Madame Gobelli or old Phillips—a couple of mischief-makers. And now, Hally, when shall it be?”

“When shall ‘what’ be?” she whispered.

“You know what I mean as well as I do! When shall we be married? We have no one to consult but ourselves! I am my own master and you are alone in the world! These things are very easily managed, you know. I have but to go to Doctors’ Commons for a special license to enable us to be married at a registrar’s office to-morrow. Shall it be to-morrow, love?”

“Oh! no! no! I could not make up my mind so soon!”

“But why not? Would you live in this dull hotel all by yourself, Hally?”

“I do not know! I am so very unhappy! Leave me, Anthony, for God’s sake, leave me, whilst there is time! You do not know the risk you may be running by remaining by my side! How can I consent to let you, whom I love like my very life, run any risk for my sake! Oh! I love you—I love you!” cried the impassioned girl, as she clung tightly to him. “You are my lord and master and my king, and I will never, never[Pg 284] be so selfish as to harm you for the sake of my own gratification. You must go away—put the seas between us—never see me, never write or speak to me more—only save yourself, my beloved, save yourself!”

He smiled compassionately, as he would have smiled at the ravings of a child, as he raised her from her lowly position and placed her in a chair.

“Do you know what I am going to do, little woman?” he said cheerfully. “I am going to leave you all alone to think this matter over until to-morrow. By that time you will have been able to compare the opinions of two people who do not care a jot about you, with those of mine who love you so dearly. Think well over what they have said to you, and I have said to you, and you have said to me! Remember, that if you adhere to your present determination, you will make both yourself and me most unhappy, and do no one any good. As for myself, I venture to say that if I lose you my grief and disappointment will be so great, that, in all probability, I shall never do any good work again. But be a sensible girl—make up your mind to marry me, and give the lie to all this nonsense, and I’ll write a book that will astonish the world! Come, Hally, is it to be ruin or success for me?—Ruin to spend my life without the only woman I have ever cared for, or success to win my wife and a companion who will help me in my work and make my happiness complete?”

He kissed her tear-stained face several times, and left her with a bright smile.

“This time to-morrow, remember, and I shall come with the licence in my pocket.”

Chapter 17

Doctor Phillips did not meet Margaret and her husband until luncheon time and then they were full of an encounter which they had had during their morning walk.

“Only fancy, Doctor!” exclaimed Margaret, with more animation than she had displayed of late, “Arthur and I have been shopping in Regent Street, and whom do you think we met?”

“I give it up, my dear,” replied the doctor, helping himself to cold beef. “I am not good at guessing riddles.”

“Ralph and Elinor! They had just come from some exhibition of pictures in New Bond Street, and I never saw them so pleased with each other before. Ralph was looking actually ‘spooney’, and Elinor was positively radiant.”

“Souvent femme varie,” quoted Doctor Phillips, shrugging his shoulders.

“Oh! but, Doctor, it made Arthur and me so glad to see them. Elinor is very fond of Ralph, you know, although she has shewn it so little. And so I have no doubt is he of her, and there would never have been any unpleasantness between them, if it had not been for that horrid girl, Harriet Brandt.”

“It is not like you, my dear Margaret, to condemn[Pg 286] anyone without a hearing. Perhaps you have not heard the true case of Miss Harriet Brandt. Although I am glad that Ralph has disentangled himself from her, I still believe that he behaved very badly to both the young ladies, and whilst I am glad to hear that Miss Leyton smiles upon him again, I think it is more than he deserves!”

“And I agree with you, Doctor,” interposed Colonel Pullen, “I have never seen this Miss Brandt, but I know what a fool my brother is with women, and can quite understand that he may have raised her hopes just to gratify his own vanity. I have no patience with him.”

“Well! for Miss Leyton’s sake let us hope that this will be his last experience of dallying with forbidden pleasures. But what will you say when I tell you that one of my visitors this morning has been the young lady in question—Miss Brandt!”

“Harriet Brandt!” exclaimed Margaret, “but why—is she ill?”

“Oh! no! Her trouble is mental—not physical.”

“She is not still hankering after Ralph, I hope.”

“You are afraid he might not be able to resist the bait! So should I be. But she did not mention Captain Pullen. Her distress was all about herself!”

“Oh! do tell me about it, Doctor, if it is not a secret! You know I have a kind of interest in Harriet Brandt!”

“When she does not interfere with the prospects of your family,” observed the doctor, drily, “exactly so! Well, then, the poor girl is in great trouble, and I had very little consolation to give her! She has left Madame Gobelli’s house. It seems that the old woman insulted her terribly and almost turned her out.”

[Pg 287]

“Oh! that awful Baroness!” cried Margaret; “it is only what might have been expected! We heard dreadful stories about her at Heyst. She has an uncontrollable temper and, when offended, a most vituperative tongue. Her ill-breeding is apparent at all times, but it must be overwhelming when she is angry. But how did she insult Miss Brandt?”

“You remember what I told you of the girl’s antecedents! It appears that the Baroness must have got hold of the same story, for she cast it in her teeth, accusing her moreover of having caused the death of her son.”

“Madame Gobelli’s son? What! Bobby—Oh! you do not mean to say that Bobby—is dead?”

“Yes! There was but one son, I think! He died yesterday, as I understood Miss Brandt. And the mother in her rage and grief turned upon the poor girl and told her such bitter truths, that she rushed from the house at once. Her visit to me this morning was paid in order to ascertain if such things were true, as the Baroness, very unjustifiably I think, had referred her to me for confirmation.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“What could I tell her? At first I declined to give an opinion, but she put such pertinent questions to me, that unless I had lied, I saw no way of getting out of it. I glossed over matters as well as I could, but even so, they were bad enough. But I impressed it upon her that she must not think of marrying. I thought it the best way to put all idea of catching Captain Pullen out of her mind. Let him once get safely married, and she can decide for herself with regard to the next. But at[Pg 288] all hazards, we must keep Ralph out of her way, for between you and me and the post, she is a young woman whom most men would find it difficult to resist.”

“Oh! yes! she and Ralph must not meet again,” said Margaret, dreamingly. Her thoughts had wandered back to Bobby and Heyst, and all the trouble she had encountered whilst there. What despair had attacked her when she lost her only child, and now Madame Gobelli—the woman she so much disliked—had lost her only child also.

“Poor Madame Gobelli!” she ejaculated, “I cannot help thinking of her! Fancy Bobby being—dead! And she used to make him so unhappy, and humiliate him before strangers! How she must be suffering for it now! How it must all come back upon her! Poor Bobby! Elinor will be sorry to hear that he is gone! She used to pity him so, and often gave him fruit and cakes. Fancy his being dead! I cannot believe it.”

“It is true, nevertheless! But it is the common lot, Margaret! Perhaps, as his mother used to treat him so roughly, the poor lad is better off where he is.”

“Oh! of course, I have no doubt of that! But he was all she had—like me!” said Margaret, with her eyes over-brimming. Her husband put his arms round her, and let her have her cry out on his shoulder.

Then, as he wiped her tears away she whispered,

“Arthur, I should like to go and see her—the Baroness, I mean! I can sympathise so truly with her, I might be able to say a few words of comfort!”

“Do as you like, my darling,” replied Colonel Pullen, “that is, if you are sure that the woman won’t insult you, as she did Miss Brandt!”

[Pg 289]

“Oh! no! no! I am not in the least afraid! Why should she? I shall only tell her how much I feel for her own our common loss——”

She could not proceed, and the doctor whispered to the Colonel.

“Let her do as she wishes! The best salve for our own wounds is to try and heal those of others.”

Margaret rose and prepared to leave the room.

“I shall go at once,” she said, “I suppose there is no chance of my meeting Harriet Brandt there!”

“I think not! She told me she had left the Red House for good and all, but she did not say where she was staying! Though, after all, I think she is in most want of comfort of the two.”

“Oh! no!” replied Margaret, faintly, “there is no grief like that of—of—” She did not finish her sentence, but left the room hastily in order to assume her walking things.

“Will she ever get over the loss of her child?” demanded Colonel Pullen, gloomily. The doctor regarded him with a half-amused surprise.

“My dear fellow, though it is useless to preach the doctrine to a bereaved mother, the loss of an innocent baby is perhaps the least trying in the category of human ills. To rear the child, as thousands do, to be unloving, or unsympathetic, or ungrateful, is a thousand times worse. But it is too soon for your dear wife to acknowledge it. Let her go to this other mother and let them cry together. It will do her all the good in the world!”

And the doctor, having finished his luncheon, put on his top-coat and prepared to make a round of professional calls.

[Pg 290]

Margaret came back ready for her visit.

“I shall not offer to go with you, darling,” said the Colonel, “because my presence would only be inconvenient. But mind you keep the cab waiting, or you may find some difficulty in getting another in that district. What address shall I give the driver?”

“First to our florist in Regent Street that I may get some white flowers.”

In another minute she was off, and in about an hour afterwards, she found herself outside the Red House, which looked gloomier than ever, with all the blinds drawn down. Margaret rang the front door bell, which was answered by Miss Wynward.

“Can I see Madame Gobelli?” commenced Margaret, “I have just heard the sad news, and came to condole with her!”

Miss Wynward let her into the hall and ushered her into a side room.

“You will excuse my asking if you are a friend of her ladyship’s,” she said.

“I can hardly call myself a friend,” replied Margaret, “but I stayed with her in the same hotel at Heyst last summer, and I knew the dear boy who is dead. I was most grieved to hear of his death, and naturally anxious to enquire after the Baroness. But if she is too upset to see me, of course I would not think of forcing my presence upon her!”

“I don’t think her ladyship would object to receiving any friend, but I am not sure if she would recognise you!”

“Not recognise me? It is not three months since we parted.”

[Pg 291]

“You do not understand me! Our dear boy’s death was so sudden—I have been with him since he was five years old, so you will forgive my mentioning him in such a fashion—that it has had a terrible effect upon his poor mother. In fact she is paralysed! The medical men think the paralysis is confined to the lower limbs, but at present they are unable to decide definitely, as the Baroness has not opened her lips since the event occurred.”

“Oh! poor Madame Gobelli!” cried Margaret, tearfully, “I felt sure she loved him under all her apparent roughness and indifference!”

“Yes! I have been with them so long, that I know her manner amounted at times to cruelty, but she did not mean it to be so! She thought to make him hardy and independent, instead of which it had just the opposite effect! But she is paying bitterly for it now! I really think his death will kill her, though the doctors laugh at my fears!”

“I—I—too have lost my only child, my precious little baby,” replied Margaret, encouraged by the sympathetic tenderness in the other woman’s eyes, “and I thought also at first that I must die—that I could not live without her—but God is so good, and there is such comfort in the thought that whatever we may suffer, our darlings have missed all the bitterness and sin and disappointments of this world, that at last—that is, sometimes—one feels almost thankful that they are safe with Him!”

“Ah! Madame Gobelli has not your hope and trust, Madam!” said Miss Wynward, “if she had, she would be a better and happier woman. But I must tell you[Pg 292] that she is in the same room as Bobby! She will not be moved from there, but lies on the couch where we placed her when she fell, stricken with the paralysis, gazing at the corpse!”

“Poor dear woman!” exclaimed Margaret.

“Perhaps you would hardly care to go into that room!”

“Oh! I should like it! I want to see the dear boy again! I have brought some flowers to put over him!”

“Then, what name shall I tell her ladyship?”

“Mrs. Pullen, say Margaret Pullen whose little baby died at Heyst—then I think she will remember!”

“Will you take a seat, Mrs. Pullen, whilst I go upstairs and see if I can persuade her to receive you?”

Margaret sat down, and Miss Wynward went up to the chamber which had once been Bobby’s. On the bed was stretched the body of the dead boy, whilst opposite to it lay on a couch a woman with dry eyes, but palsied limbs, staring, staring without intermission at the silent figure which had once contained the spirit of her son. She did not turn her head as Miss Wynward entered the room.

“My lady,” she said, going up to her, “Mrs. Pullen is downstairs and would like to see you! She told me to say that she is Margaret Pullen whose baby died in Heyst last summer, and she knew Bobby and has brought some flowers to strew over his bed. May she came up?”

But she received no answer. Madame Gobelli’s features were working, but that was the only sign of life which she gave.

“Mrs. Pullen is so very sorry for your loss,” Miss Wynward went on, “she cried when she spoke of it,[Pg 293] and as she has suffered the same, I am sure she will sympathise with you. May I say that you will see her?”

Still there was no response, and Miss Wynward went down again to Margaret.

“I think you had better come up without waiting for her consent,” she said, “if seeing you roused her, even to anger, it would do her good. Do you mind making the attempt?”

“No,” replied Margaret, “but if the Baroness gets very angry, you must let me run away again. I am quite unequal to standing anything like a scene!”

“You will have but to quit the room. Whatever her ladyship may say she cannot move from her couch. She attacked poor Miss Brandt most unwarrantably last evening, but that was in the first frenzy of her grief. She is quite different now!”

“Poor woman!” again ejaculated Margaret, as she followed Miss Wynward, not without some inward qualms, to the presence of Madame Gobelli. But when she caught sight of the immovable figure on the couch, all her fear and resentment left her, overcome by a mighty compassion. She went straight up to the Baroness and bending down tenderly kissed her twitching face.

“Dear Madame,” she said, “I am—we all are—so truly sorry for your grievous loss. It reminds me of the bitter time, not so long ago, you may remember, when I lost my darling little Ethel, and thought for the while that my life was over! It is so hard, so unnatural, to us poor mothers, to see our children go before ourselves! I can weep with you tear for tear! But do remember—try to remember—that he is safe—that though you remain here with empty arms for a while, death can no[Pg 294] more take your boy from you, than a veil over your face can take God’s light from you. He is there, dear Madame Gobelli—just in the next room with the door closed between you, and though I know full well how bitter it is to see the door closed, think of the time when it will open again—when you and I will spring through it and find, not only our dear Bobby and Ethel, but Christ our Lord, ready to give them back into our arms again!”

The Baroness said nothing, but two tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her flabby cheeks. Margaret turned from her for a minute and walking up to the bed, knelt down beside it in prayer.

“Dear Christ!” she said, “Thou Who knowest what our mothers’ hearts are called upon to bear, have pity on us and give us Thy Peace! And open our eyes that we may gather strength to realise what our dear children have escaped by being taken home to Thee—the sin, the trouble, the anxiety, the disappointment—and make us thankful to bear them in their stead, and give us grace to look forward to our happy meeting and reunion in the Better Land.”

Then she rose and bent over the dead boy.

“Dear Bobby!” she murmured, as she kissed the cold brow, and placed the white blossoms in his hands and round his head. “Good-bye! I know how happy you must be now, in company with the spirits of all those whom we have loved and who have gone home before us—how grateful you must feel to the dear Redeemer Who has called you so early—but don’t forget your poor mother upon earth! Pray for her, Bobby,—never cease to ask our dear Lord to send her comfort[Pg 295] and peace and joy in believing. For His own dear sake. Amen!”

When she turned again, the Baroness’s cheeks were wet with tears and she was stretching forth her arms towards her.

“Oh!” she gasped, as Margaret reached her side, “I am a godless woman—I am a godless woman!”

“No! no! my dear friend, we are none of us godless,” replied Margaret, “we may think we are, but God knows better! We may forsake Him, but He never forsakes us! We should never be saved if we waited till we wanted to be so. It is He Who wants us—that is our great safeguard! He wanted our two dear children—not to spite us, but to draw us after them. Try to look at it in that light, and then Bobby’s death will prove your greatest gain.”

“I am a godless woman,” repeated the Baroness, “and this is my punishment!” pointing to the bed. “I loved him best of all! My ’eart is broken!”

“So much the better, if it was a hard heart,” rejoined Margaret, smiling. “Who was it that said, ‘If your heart is broken, give the pieces to Christ and He will mend it again’? Never think of Bobby, dear Madame Gobelli, except as with Christ—walking with Him, talking with Him, learning of Him and growing in grace and the love of God daily! Never disassociate the two memories, and in a little while you would hate yourself if you could separate them again. God bless you! I must go back to my husband now!”

“You will come again?” said the Baroness.

“I am afraid I shall have no time! We sail for India on Saturday, but I shall not forget you. Good-bye,[Pg 296] Bobby,” she repeated, with a last look at the corpse, “remember your mother and me in your prayers.”

As Miss Wynward let her out of the Red House, she remarked,

“I could never have believed that anyone could have had so much influence over her ladyship as you have, Mrs. Pullen. I hope you will come again.”

“I shall not be able to do so. But Madame Gobelli will have you to talk to her! You live here altogether, do you not?”

“I have lived here for many years, but I am on the point of leaving. Bobby was my only tie to the Red House, or I should have gone long ago.”

“But now that the Baroness is so helpless surely you will delay your departure until she no longer needs you.”

“I shall not leave her until she has secured a better woman in my stead. But to tell you the truth, I am going to be married, Mrs. Pullen, and I consider my first duty is towards my future husband and his parents who are very old!”

“Oh! doubtless! May I ask his name?”

“Captain Hill! He lives in the next house to this—Stevenage! You are surprised, perhaps, that a man who has been in the army should marry a poor governess like myself. That is his goodness. I know that I am worn and faded and no longer young—thirty-three on my last birthday—but he is good enough to care for me all the more for the troubles I have passed through. Mine has been a chequered life, Mrs. Pullen, but I have told Captain Hill everything, and he still wishes to make me his wife! I ought to be a happy woman for the future, ought I not?”

[Pg 297]

“Indeed yes,” said Margaret, heartily, “and I sincerely hope that you may be so! But I can’t help thinking of poor Madame Gobelli! Is the Baron good to her?”

“Pretty well!” answered Miss Wynward, “but he is very stolid and unsympathetic! It is strange to think that her heart must have been bound up in that boy, and yet at times she was positively cruel to him!”

“It has all been permitted for some good purpose,” said Margaret, as she bade her farewell, “perhaps her remorse and self-accusation are the only things which would have brought her down upon her knees.”

She returned home considerably saddened by what she had seen, but in three days she was to accompany her husband to India, and in the bustle of preparation, and the joy of knowing that she was not to be separated from him again, her heart was comforted and at peace. Never once during that time did she give one thought to Harriet Brandt. Miss Wynward had hardly mentioned her name, and no one seemed to know where she had gone. The girl had passed out of their lives altogether.

Margaret only regretted one thing in leaving England—that she had not seen Anthony Pennell again. Colonel Pullen had called twice at his chambers, but had each time found him from home. Margaret wanted to put in a good word for the Baroness with him. She thought perhaps that he might see her, after a while, and speak a few words of comfort to her. But she was obliged to be content with writing her wishes in a farewell letter. She little knew how hardened Anthony Pennell felt, at that moment, against anyone who had treated the woman he loved in so harsh a manner.

[Pg 298]

Harriet Brandt spent the time, after her lover had left her to think over and decide upon their mutual fate, in walking up and down the room. She was like a restless animal; she could not stay two moments in the same place. Even when night fell, and the inhabitants of the Langham Hotel had retired to rest, she still kept pacing up and down the room, without thinking of undressing herself or seeking repose, whilst her conscience wrestled in warfare with her inclinations. Her thoughts took her far, far back to the earliest remembrance of which her mind was capable. She thought of her hard, unfeeling, indifferent father—of her gross, flabby, sensual mother—and shuddered at the remembrance! What had she done?—she said to herself—wherein had she sinned, that she should have been cursed with such progenitors? How had they dared to bring her into the world, an innocent yet hapless child of sin—the inheritor of their evil propensities—of their lust, their cruelty, their sensuality, their gluttony—and worst of all, the fatal heritage that made her a terror and a curse to her fellow-creatures? How dared they? How dared they? Why had God’s vengeance not fallen upon them before they had completed their cruel work, or having accomplished it, why did He not let her perish with them—so that the awful power with which they had imbued her, might have been prevented from harming others?

Harriet thought of little Caroline; of her two nurses; of Sister Theodosia—of Mrs. Pullen’s baby; of Bobby Bates; until she felt as though she should go mad. No! no! she would never bring that curse upon her Beloved; he must go far away, he must never see her again, or[Pg 299] else she would destroy herself in order that he might escape!

But if she persuaded Anthony to consent to her wishes—if she insisted upon a total separation between them, what would become of her? What should she do? She had no friends in England; Madame Gobelli had turned against her—she was all alone! She would live and die alone. How should she ever get to know people, or to obtain an entrance to Society. She would be a pariah to the end of her life! And if she did surmount all these obstacles, what would be the result, except a repetition of what had gone before? Strangers would come to know her—to like her—would grow more intimate, and she would respond to their kindness—with the same result. They would droop and fail, die perhaps, like Bobby and the baby—find out that she was the cause, and shun her ever after.

“Oh! God!” cried Harriet in her perplexity and anguish, “I am accursed! My parents have made me not fit to live!”

She passed that night through the agonies of Death—not the death that overtakes the believer in a God and a Future—but the darkness and uncertainty that enwraps the man who knows he is full of sin and yet has no knowledge that His Lord has paid his debt to the uttermost farthing—the doubt and anxiety that beset the unbeliever when he is called upon to enter the dark Valley. The poor child saw her destiny entangling her as in a net—she longed to break through it, but saw no means of escape—and she rebelled against the cruel lot that heredity had marked out for her.

[Pg 300]

“Why am I to suffer?” she exclaimed aloud; “I have youth and health and good looks, and money—everything, the world would say, calculated to make my life a pleasant one, and yet, I am tortured by this awful thought—that I must keep aloof from everybody, that I am a social leper, full of contagion and death! Doctor Phillips said that the more I loved a person, the more I must keep away from him! It is incredible! unheard-of! Could he have had any motive in saying such a thing?”

The remembrance of her flirtation with Ralph Pullen recurred to her mind, and she seized it, as a drowning man clutches at a straw.

“Was it a plant, after all? Did the old man want to put me off the track of Captain Pullen? Margaret Pullen is staying in the house—he said so—had she asked him to get rid of me if possible? After all, am I torturing myself by believing the story of my fatal power to be true, when it was only a ruse to get rid of me? The Baroness said the same thing, but she was mad about poor Bobby and would have said anything to annoy me—and, after all, what does it amount to? The baby died in teething—heaps of babies do—and Bobby was consumptive from the first—I have heard Miss Wynward say so, and would have died anyway, as he grew to be a man and had larger demands made upon his physical strength. And for the others—what happened to them, happens to all the world. It is fortune de guerre; people drop every day like rotten sheep;—everyone might accuse himself of causing the death of his neighbour. I have been frightening myself with a chimera. Anthony said so, and he must know better than I! And[Pg 301] I can’t give up Tony—I can’t, I can’t, I can’t! It is of no use thinking of it! Besides, he wouldn’t let me! He would never leave me alone, until I had consented to marry him, so I may as well do it at the first as at the last.”

But the tide of triumphant feeling would be succeeded by a wave of despondency, which threatened to upset all her casuistry.

“But if—if—it should be true, and Anthony should—should—Oh! God! Oh! God! I dare not think of it! I will kill myself before it shall occur.”

When the morning dawned it found her quite undecided—lamenting her unfortunate fate one instant, and declaring that she could never give up her lover the next. She tore off her clothes and took a cold bath, and re-robed herself, but she was looking utterly ill and exhausted when Pennell burst in upon her at eleven o’clock.

“Well, darling,” he exclaimed, “and have you made up your mind by this time? Which death am I to die?—suffocated in your dear embrace, or left to perish of cold and hunger outside?”

“O! Tony,” she cried, throwing herself into his arms, “I don’t know what to say! I have not closed my eyes all night, trying to decide what will be for the best. And I am as far off as ever—only I can never, never consent to do anything that shall work you harm!”

“Then I shall decide for you,” exclaimed her lover, “and that is that you make me and yourself happy, and forget all the rubbish these people have been telling you! Depend upon it, whatever they may have said was for[Pg 302] their own gratification, and not yours, and that they would be quick enough to accept the lot that lies before you, were it in their power!”

“I have been so lonely and friendless all my life,” said Harriet, sobbing in his arms, “and I have longed for love and sympathy so much, and now that they have come to me, it is hard, Oh! so hard, to have to give them up.”

“So hard, Hally, for me, remember, as well as yourself, that we will not make the attempt. Now, I want you to place yourself in my hands, and start for Paris to-night!”

“To-night?” she cried, lifting such a flushed, startled, happy face from his breast, that he had no alternative but to kiss it again.

“Yes! to-night! What did I tell you yesterday—that I should come with the ring and the license in my pocket! I am as good as my word, and better—for I have given notice to the registrar of marriages in my district, that he is to be ready for us at twelve o’clock to-day. Am I not a good manager?”

“Tony! Tony! but I have not made up my mind!”

“I have made it up for you, and I will take no refusal! I have calculated it all to a nicety! Married at twelve—back here at one for lunch—a couple of hours to pack up, and off by the four o’clock train for Dover—sleep at the Castle Warden, and cross to-morrow to Paris! How will that do, Mrs. Pennell, eh?”

“Oh! ought I to do it, ought I to do it?” exclaimed Harriet, with a look of despair.

“If you don’t I’ll shoot myself. I swear it!”

[Pg 303]

“No! no! darling, don’t say that! It is of you alone that I am thinking! God forgive me if I am doing wrong, but I feel that I cannot refuse you! Take me and do with me as you think best.”

After which it came to pass, that Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Pennell started in very high spirits for Dover, by the four o’clock train that afternoon.

Chapter 18

A fortnight afterwards, the married couple found themselves at Nice. Much as has been said and sung of the lune de miel, none ever surpassed, if it ever reached, this one in happiness. Harriet passed the time in a silent ecstasy of delight. Her cup of bliss was filled to overflowing; her satisfaction was too deep for words. To this girl, for whom the world had been seen as yet only through the barred windows of a convent—who had never enjoyed the society of an intellectual companion before; who had viewed no scenery but that of the Island; seen no records of the past; and visited no foreign capital—the first weeks of her married life were a panorama of novelties, her days one long astonishment and delight.

She could not adore Anthony Pennell sufficiently for having afforded her the opportunity of seeing all this, and more especially of feeling it. The presents he lavished upon her were as nothing in her eyes, compared to the lover-like attentions he paid her; the bouquets of flowers he brought her every morning; the glass of lemonade or milk he had ready to supply her need when they were taking their excursions; the warm shawl or mantle he carried on his arm in the evenings, lest the air should become too chilly for her delicate frame after sunset. Money Harriet had no need of, but[Pg 305] love—love she had thirsted for, as the hart thirsts for the water-streams, yet had never imagined it could be poured out at her feet, as her husband poured it now.

And Pennell, on the other hand, though he had been much sought after and flattered by the fair sex for the sake of the fame he had acquired and the money he made, had never lost his heart to any woman as he had done to his little unknown wife. He had never met anyone like Hally before. She combined the intelligence of the Englishwoman with the espièglerie of the French—the devotion of the Creole with the fiery passion of the Spanish or Italian. He could conceive her quite capable of dying silently and uncomplainingly for him, or anyone she loved; or on the other hand stabbing her lover without remorse if roused by jealousy or insult.

He was hourly discovering new traits in her character which delighted him, because they were so utterly unlike any possessed by the women of the world, with whom he had hitherto associated. He felt as though he had captured some beautiful wild creature and was taming it for his own pleasure.

Harriet would sit for hours at a time in profound silence, contemplating his features or watching his actions—crouched on the floor at his feet, until he was fain to lay down his book or writing, and take to fondling her instead. She was an ever-constant joy to him; he felt it would be impossible to do anything to displease her so long as he loved her—that like the patient Griselda she would submit to any injustice and meekly call it justice if from his hand. And yet he knew all the while that the savage in her was not tamed—that at any moment, like the domesticated lion or tiger, her nature[Pg 306] might assert itself and become furious, wild and intractable. It was the very uncertainty that pleased him; men love the women of whom they are not quite certain, all the more. From Nice they wandered to Mentone, but the proximity of the Monte Carlo tables had no charm for Anthony Pennell. He was not a speculative man: his brain was filled with better things, and he only visited such places for the sake of reproduction. Although the autumn was now far advanced, the air of Mentone was too enervating to suit either of them, and Pennell proposed that they should move on to Italy.

“I must show you Venice and Rome before we return home, Hally,” he said, “and when I come to think of it, why should we return to England at all just yet? Why not winter in Rome? Richards is always advising me to take a good, long holiday. He says I overwork my brain and it reacts upon my body—what better opportunity could we find to adopt his advice? Hitherto I have pooh-poohed the idea! Wandering over a foreign country in solitary grandeur held no charms for me, but with you, my darling, to double the pleasure of everything, any place assumes the appearance of Paradise! What do you say, little wife? Shall we set up our tent South until the spring?”

“Don’t you feel well, Tony?” asked Harriet, anxiously.

“Never better in my life, dear! I am afraid you will not make an interesting invalid out of me. I am as fit as a fiddle. But I fancy my next novel will deal with Italy, and I should like to make a few notes of the spots I may require to introduce. It is nothing to take me away from you, darling. We will inspect the old places[Pg 307] together, and your quick eye and clear brain shall help me in my researches. Is it a settled thing, Hally?”

“O! yes, darling!” she replied, “anywhere with you! The only place I shall ever object to, will be the one where I cannot go with you.”

“That place does not exist on this earth, Hally,” said Pennell, “but if you are willing, we may as well start to-morrow, for if we leave it till too late, we shall find all the best winter quarters pre-engaged.”

He left the room, as she thought rather hurriedly, but as he gained the hotel corridor he slightly staggered and leaned against the wall. He had told his wife that he was quite well, but he knew it was not the truth. He had felt weak and enervated ever since coming to Mentone, but he ascribed it to the soft mild atmosphere.

“Confound this dizziness!” he said inwardly, as the corridor swam before his eyes, “I think my liver must be out of order, and yet I have been taking plenty of exercise. It must be this mild moist air. Heat never did agree with me. I shall be glad to get on. We shall find Florence cold by comparison.”

He descended to the bureau and announced his intention of giving up his rooms on the morrow, and then ordered a carriage and returned to take Hally out for a drive.

In Florence they procured rooms in a grand old palazzo, furnished with rococo chairs and tables, placed upon marble floors. Harriet was charmed and astonished by the ease with which they got everything en route, as though they possessed Aladin’s lamp, she told Pennell, and had but to wish to obtain.

“Ah! Hally!” said her husband, “we have something[Pg 308] better than the genie’s lamp—we have money! That is the true magician in this century. I am very thankful that you have a fortune of your own, my dearest, because I know that whatever happens, my girl will be able to hold her own with the world!”

Harriet grew pale.

“What could happen?” she stammered.

“My silly little goose, are we immortal?” he replied, “I make a first-rate income, my dear, but have not laid by enough as yet to leave you more than comfortably off, but with your own money——”

“Don’t speak of it, pray don’t speak of it!” she exclaimed, with ashen lips, and noting her distress, Pennell changed the subject.

“You are a lucky little woman,” he continued, “I wonder what some people would give to possess your income—poor Margaret Pullen for instance.”

“Why Mrs. Pullen in particular, Tony? Are they poor?”

“Not whilst Colonel Pullen is on active service, but he has nothing but his pay to depend upon, and whilst he can work, he must. Which means a residence in India, and perhaps separation from his wife and children—if he should lose his health, a compulsory retirement; and if he keeps it, toiling out there till old age, and then coming home to spin out the remainder of his life on an inadequate pension. A man who accepts service in India should make up his mind to live and die in the country, but so many accidents may prevent it. And at the best, it means banishment from England and all one’s friends and relations. Poor Margaret feels that severely, I am sure!”

[Pg 309]

“Has Mrs. Pullen many relations then?”

“She has a mother still living, and several brothers and sisters, besides her husband’s family. What a sweet, gentle woman she is! She was kind to you, Hally, was she not, whilst you were abroad?”

By mutual agreement they never spoke of Heyst, or the Red House, or anything which was associated with what Pennell called his wife’s infatuation regarding herself.

“Yes! she was very kind—at first,” replied Harriet, “until—until—it all happened, and they went to England. Oh! do not let us talk of it!” she broke off suddenly.

“No! we will not! Have you unpacked your mandoline yet, Hally? Fetch it, dear, and let me hear your lovely voice again! I shall get you to sing to me when I am in the vein for composing! You would bring me all sorts of beautiful ideas and phantasies!”

“Should I? should I?” exclaimed the girl joyfully. “Oh! how lovely! I should do a part of your work then, shouldn’t I, Tony?—I should inspire you! Why, I would sing day and night for that!”

“No! no! my bird, I would not let you tire yourself! A few notes now and then—they will help me more than enough. I must draw from you for my next heroine, Hally! I could not have a fairer model!”

“Oh! Tony!”

She rushed to him in the extremity of her delight and hid her face upon his breast.

“I am not good enough, not pretty enough! Your heroines should be perfect!”

[Pg 310]

“I don’t think so! I prefer them to be of flesh and blood, like you!”

He stooped his head and kissed her passionately.

“Hally! Hally!” he whispered, “you draw my very life away!”

The girl got up suddenly, almost roughly, and walked into the next room to fetch her mandoline.

“No! no!” she cried to herself with a cold fear, “not that, my God, not that!”

But when she returned with the instrument, she did not revert to the subject, but played and sang as usual to her husband’s admiration and delight.

They “did” Florence very thoroughly during the first week of their stay there, and were both completely tired.

“I must really stay at home to-morrow,” cried Hally one afternoon on returning to dinner, “Tony, I am regularly fagged out! I feel as if I had a corn upon every toe!”

“So do I,” replied her husband, “and I cannot have my darling knocked up by fatigue! We will be lazy to-morrow, Hally, and lie on two sofas and read our books all day! I have been thinking for the last few days that we have been going a little too fast! Let me see, child!—how long have we been married?”

“Six weeks to-morrow,” she answered glibly.

“Bless my soul! we are quite an old married couple, a species of Darby and Joan! And have you been happy, Hally?”

The tears of excitement rushed into her dark eyes.

“Happy! That is no word for what I have been, Tony; I have been in Heaven—in Heaven all the while!”

[Pg 311]

“And so have I,” rejoined her husband.

“I met some nuns whilst I was out this morning,” continued Hally, “the sisters of the Annunciation, and they stopped and spoke to me, and were so pleased to hear that I had been brought up in a convent. ‘And have you no vocation, my child?’ asked one of them. ‘Yes! Sister,’ I replied, ‘I have—a big, strong, handsome vocation called my husband.’ They looked quite shocked, poor dears, at first, but I gave them a subscription for their orphan schools—one hundred francs—and they were so pleased. They said if I was sick whilst in Florence, I must send for one of them, and she would come and nurse me! I gave it as a thanksgiving, Tony—a thanksgiving offering because I am so very happy. I am not a good woman like Margaret Pullen, I know that, but I love you—I love you!”

“Who said that you were not a good woman?” asked Pennell, as he drew her fondly to his side, and kissed away the tears that hung on her dark lashes.

“Oh! I know I am not. Besides, you once said that Margaret Pullen was the best woman you had ever known.”

“I think she is very sweet and unselfish,” replied Pennell musingly, “she felt the loss of her infant terribly, Doctor Phillips told me, but the way in which she struggled to subdue her grief, in order not to distress others, was wonderful! Poor Margaret! how she mourns little Ethel to this day.”

“Don’t! don’t!” cried Harriet in a stifled voice, “I cannot bear to think of it!”

[Pg 312]

“My darling, it had nothing to do with you! I have told you so a thousand times!”

“Yes! yes! I know you have—but I loved the little darling! It is dreadful to me to think that she is mouldering in the grave!”

“Come, child, you will be hysterical if you indulge in any more reminiscences! Suppose we go for a stroll through the Ghetto or some other antiquated part of Florence. Or shall we take a drive into the country? I am at your commands, Madam!”

“A drive, darling, then—a drive!” whispered his wife, as she left him to get ready for the excursion.

It was three hours before they returned to their rooms in the old palazzo. Harriet was dull and somewhat silent, and Anthony confessed to a headache.

“I am not quite sure now,” he said, as they were dining, “whether a trip to Australia or America would not do us both more good than lingering about these mild, warm places. I think our constitutions both require bracing rather than coddling. Australia is a grand young country! I have often contemplated paying her a visit. What would you say to it, Hally?”

“I should enjoy it as much as yourself, Tony! You so often have a headache now! I think the drainage of these southern towns must be defective!”

“Oh! shocking! They are famous for typhoid and malarial fevers. They are not drained at all!”

“Don’t let us stay here long then! What should I do if you were to fall ill?”

“You are far more liable to fall sick of the two, my darling,” returned her husband, “I do not think your[Pg 313] beautiful little body has much strength to sustain it. And then what should I do?”

“Ah! neither of us could do without the other, Tony!”

“Of course we couldn’t, and so we will provide against such a contingency by moving on before our systems get saturated with miasma and mistral. Will you sing to me to-night, Hally?”

“Not unless you very much wish it! I am a little tired. I feel as if I couldn’t throw any expression into my songs to-night!”

“Then come here and sit down on the sofa beside me, and let us talk!”

She did as he desired, but Pennell was too sleepy to talk. In five minutes he had fallen fast asleep, and it was with difficulty she could persuade him to abandon the couch and drag his weary limbs up to bed, where he threw himself down in a profound slumber. Harriet was also tired. Her husband was breathing heavily as she slipped into her place beside him. His arm was thrown out over her pillow, as though he feared she might go to sleep without remembering to wish him good-night! She bent over him and kissed him passionately on the lips.

“Good-night, my beloved,” she whispered, “sleep well, and wake in happiness!”

She kissed the big hand too that lay upon her pillow and composed herself to sleep while it still encircled her.

The dawn is early in Florence, but it had broken for some time before she roused herself again. The[Pg 314] sun was streaming brightly into the long, narrow, uncurtained windows, and everything it lighted on was touched with a molten glory. Harriet started up in bed. Her husband’s arm was still beneath her body.

“Oh! my poor darling!” she exclaimed, as though the fault were her own, “how cramped he must be! How soundly we must have slept not to have once moved through the night!”

She raised Tony’s arm and commenced to chafe it. How strangely heavy and cold it felt. Why! he was cold all over! She drew up the bedclothes and tucked them in around his chin. Then, for the first time, she looked at his face. His eyes were open.

“Tony, Tony!” she exclaimed, “are you making fun of me? Have you been awake all the time?”

She bent over his face laughingly, and pressed a kiss upon his cheek.

How stiff it felt! My God! what was the matter? Could he have fainted? She leapt from the bed, and running to her husband’s side, pulled down the bedclothes again and placed her hand upon his heart. The body was cold—cold and still all over! His eyes were glazed and dull. His mouth was slightly open. In one awful moment she knew the truth. Tony was—dead!

She stood for some moments—some hours—some months—she could not have reckoned the time, silent and motionless, trying to realise what had occurred. Then—as it came upon her, like a resistless flood which she could not stem, nor escape, Harriet gave one fearful shriek which brought the servants hurrying upstairs to know what could be the matter.

[Pg 315]

“I have killed my husband—I have killed him—it was I myself who did it!” was all that she would say.

Of course they did not believe her. They accepted the unmeaning words as part of their mistress’s frenzy at her sudden and unexpected loss. They saw what had happened, and they ran breathlessly for a doctor, who confirmed their worst fears—the Signor was dead!

The old palazzo became like a disturbed ant-hill. The servants ran hither and thither, unknowing how to act, whilst the mistress sat by the bedside with staring, tearless eyes, holding the hand of her dead husband. But there were a dozen things to be done—half a hundred orders to be issued. Death in Florence is quickly followed by burial. The law does not permit a mourner to lament his Dead for more than four-and-twenty hours.

But the signora would give no orders for the funeral nor answer any questions put to her! She had no friends in Florence—for ought they knew, she had no money—what were they to do? At last one of them thought of the neighbouring Convent of the Annunciation and ran to implore one of the good sisters to come to their mistress in her extremity.

Shortly afterwards, Sister Angelica entered the bedroom where Harriet sat murmuring at intervals, “It is I who have killed him,” and attempted to administer comfort to the young mourner. But her words and prayers had no effect upon Harriet. Her brain could hold but one idea—she had killed Tony! Doctor Phillips was right—it was she who had killed Margaret Pullen’s baby and Bobby Bates, and to look further back, little Caroline, and now—now, her Tony! the light of her life, the passion of her being, the essence of all her joy—her hope[Pg 316] for this world and the next. She had killed him—she, who worshipped him, whose pride was bound up in him, who was to have helped him and comforted him and waited on him all his life—she had killed him!

Her dry lips refused to say the words distinctly, but they kept revolving in her brain until they dazed and wearied her. The little sister stood by her and held her hand, as the professional assistants entered the death chamber and arranged and straightened the body for the grave, finally placing it in a coffin and carrying it away to a mortuary where it would have to remain until buried on the morrow, but Harriet made no resistance to the ceremony and no sign. She did not even say “Good-bye” as Tony was carried from her sight for ever! Sister Angelica talked to her of the glorious Heaven where they must hope that her dear husband would be translated, of the peace and happiness he would enjoy, of the reunion which awaited them when her term of life was also past.

She pressed her to make the Convent her refuge until the first agony of her loss was overcome—reminded her of the peace and rest she would encounter within the cloisters, and how the whole fraternity would unite in praying for the soul of her beloved that he might speedily obtain the remission of his sins and an entrance into the Beatific Presence.

Harriet listened dully and at last in order to get rid of her well-intentioned but rather wearisome consoler, she promised to do all that she wished. Let the sister return to the Convent for the present, and on the morrow if she would come for her at the same time, she might take her back with her. She wanted rest and peace—she[Pg 317] would be thankful for them, poor Harriet said—only to-night, this one night more, she wished to be alone. So the good little sister went away rejoicing that she had succeeded in her errand of mercy, and looking forward to bearing the poor young widow to the Convent on the morrow, there to learn the true secret of earthly happiness.

When she had gone and the old palazzo was quiet and empty, the bewildered girl rose to her feet and tried to steady her shaking limbs sufficiently, to write what seemed to be a letter but was in reality a will.

“I leave all that I possess,” so it ran, “to Margaret Pullen, the wife of Colonel Arthur Pullen, the best woman Tony said that he had ever met, and I beg her to accept it in return for the kindness she showed to me when I went to Heyst, a stranger. Signed, Harriet Pennell.”

She put the paper into an envelope, and as soon as the morning had dawned, she asked her servant Lorenzo to show her the way to the nearest notary in whose presence she signed the document and directed him to whom it should be sent in case of her own death.

And after another visit to a pharmacien, she returned to the palazzo and took up her watch again in the now deserted bedchamber.

Her servants brought her refreshments and pressed her to eat, without effect. All she desired, she told them, was to be left alone, until the sister came for her in the afternoon.

Sister Angelica arrived true to her appointment, and went at once to the bedchamber. To her surprise she found Harriet lying on the bed, just where the corpse of Anthony Pennell had lain, and apparently asleep.

[Pg 318]

“Pauvre enfant!” thought the kind-hearted nun, “grief has exhausted her! I should not have attended to her request, but have watched with her through the night! Eh, donc! ma pauvre,” she continued, gently touching the girl on the shoulder, “levez-vous! Je suis là.”

But there was no awakening on this earth for Harriet Pennell. She had taken an overdose of chloral and joined her husband.

When Margaret Pullen received the will which Harriet had left behind her, she found these words with it, scribbled in a very trembling hand upon a scrap of paper.

“Do not think more unkindly of me than you can help. My parents have made me unfit to live. Let me go to a world where the curse of heredity which they laid upon me may be mercifully wiped out.”

THE END.