Chapter 31

THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR.

But we must now return to Gerelda. She fell back, pale and trembling, among the cushions of the carriage, her brain in a whirl, her heart panting almost to suffocation.

At the entrance gate of the old mansion, Gerelda dismissed the cab. Stealing around by the rear wall, she entered the grounds by an unused gravel walk, and gained the arbor. Then she crept up to one of the windows whose blind had swung open from a fierce gust of wind. The room into which she gazed had not changed much. A bright fire glowed cheerily in the grate, its radiance rendering all objects about it clear and distinct.

She distinguished two figures standing hand in hand in the softened shadows. The girl's face, radiant with the light of love, was upturned toward the handsome one bending over her. He was talking to her in the sweet, deep musical voice Gerelda remembered so well.

She saw the girl lay one little hand caressingly on his arm, and droop her pretty, golden head until it nearly rested on his broad shoulder. Then Gerelda heard him say, "I have in my pocket the wedding-gift with which I am to present you. It is not so very costly, but you will appreciate it, I hope," disclosing as he spoke a ruby velvet case, the spring of which he touched lightly, and the lid flew back, revealing a magnificent diamond necklace and a pendant star.

"Oh, Hubert, you can not mean that that is for me!" cried Jessie.

But the second dinner-bell rang, and ere the sound died away, Mrs. Varrick and a few guests entered the room. All further private conversation was now at an end, but from that moment all sights and sounds were lost to the creature outside. She had fallen in a little dark heap on the ice-covered porch, lost to the world's misery in pitiful unconsciousness.

The house was wrapped in darkness when she woke to consciousness. Gerelda struggled to her feet, muttering to herself that it was surely death that was stealing slowly but surely over her.

Slowly, from over the distant hills, she heard some church-clock ring out the hour. "Eleven!" she counted, in measured strokes. As the sound died away, Gerelda crept round the house to the servants' entrance.

To her intense delight, the door yielded to her touch, and Gerelda glided noiselessly across the threshold. The butler sat before the dying embers of the fire, his paper was lying at his feet, and his glasses were in his lap. So sound was his slumber that he did not awaken as the door opened. Gerelda passed him like a shadow and gained the door-way that led into the corridor.

She knew Hubert's custom of going to the library long after the rest of the family had retired for the night. She would make her way there, and confront him. As she reached the door she heard voices within. She recognized them at once as Hubert's and his mother's.

She crouched behind the heavy velvet _portières_ of the arched door-way, until his mother should leave.

"Good-night again, Hubert," the mother said.

"Good-night mother," he answered.

He flung himself down in the soft-cushioned arm-chair beside the glowing grate, drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it, dreamily watching the curling rings. Suddenly he became aware that there was another presence within the room beside his own.

His eyes became riveted upon a dark object near the door-way. It occurred to him how strangely like a woman the dark shadow looked.

And as he gazed, lo! it moved, and to his utmost amazement, advanced slowly toward him. For an instant all his powers seemed to leave him.

"Gerelda, by all that's merciful," he cried.

"Yes, it is I, Gerelda!" she cried, hoarsely, confronting him. "I have come back from the grave to claim you!"

She did not heed his wild cry of horror, but went on, mockingly: "You do not seem pleased to see me, judging from your manner."

For an instant the world seemed closing around Hubert Varrick.

She cried, "I repeat that I am here to claim you!" flinging herself in an arm-chair opposite him.

"Now that your wife is with you once again, you are saved the trouble--just, in time, too--of wedding a new one;" adding: "You are not giving me the welcome which I expected in my husband's home. Turn on the lights and ring for every one to come hither!" she said. "If you refuse to ring the bell, I shall."

Hubert Varrick cried out that he could not bear it; he pleaded with her to leave the house with him; that since Heaven had brought her back to him, he would make the best of it; all that he would ask would be that she should come quietly away with him.

This did not suit Gerelda at all; she had set her heart upon abusing Jessie Bain, and she would brook no refusal. She sprang hastily for the bell-rope. Divining her object, he caught her arm.

If he had not been so intensely excited he would have realized, even in that dim light, that there was something horribly wrong about her; that once more reason, which had been until so lately clouded, wavered in the balance.

"Unhand me, or I shall scream!" she cried.

Varrick placed one hand hurriedly over her mouth, in his agony, hardly heeding what he was doing.

"For the love of Heaven, I beg you to listen to me!" he cried. "You must--you shall!"

She sprang backward from him, falling heavily over one of the chairs as she did so. There was a heavy thud which awakened with a start the sleeping butler on the floor below. With one bound he had reached the door that opened upon the lower corridor.

"Thieves! robbers!" he ejaculated under his breath.

His first impulse was to cry aloud, but the next moment it occurred to him that the better plan would be to break upon the midnight intruder unawares, and assist his master in vanquishing him. The door was ajar, and in the semi-darkness he beheld Hubert Varrick, his master, struggling desperately with some dark, swaying figure. In that same instant Varrick tripped upon a hassock and fell backward, striking his head heavily against the marble mantel.

The butler lost no time. Quick as a flash he had cleared the distance between the door-way and that other figure--which attempted to clutch at him in turn--and raising the knife he had caught up from the table of the room below, he buried it to the hilt in the swaying, writhing form. The next instant it fell heavily at his feet. A moan, that sounded wonderfully like a woman's, fell upon his horrified ear.

Varrick did not rise, though the terrified butler called upon him vehemently. He had the presence of mind, even in that calamity, to turn on the gas, and as a flood of light illumined the scene, he saw that it was a _woman_ lying at his feet--ay, a woman into whose body he had plunged that fatal knife!--while his master lay unconscious but a few feet distant.

"Help! I am dying!" gasped the woman.

Those words recalled his scattered senses. Self-preservation is strong within us all. As in a glass, darkly, the terrified butler, realizing what he had done, saw arrest and prison before him, and realized that the gallows yawned before him in the near future.

The thought came to him that there was but one thing to do, and that was to make his escape.

Every moment was precious. His strained ear caught the sound of a commotion on the floor above. He knew in an instant more they would find him there with the tell-tale knife, dripping with blood, in his hand.

He flung it from him and made a dash from the room. It was not a moment too soon, for the opposite door, which led to the private stair-way, had barely closed after him ere the sound of approaching footsteps was plainly heard hurrying quickly toward the library.

In that instant Hubert Varrick--who had been dazed by his fall, and the terrible blow on his head caused by striking it against the mantel--was struggling to a sitting posture. Varrick had scarcely regained his feet ere the _portières_ were flung quickly aside, and his mother and half a dozen servants appeared.

A horrible shriek rent the air as Mrs. Varrick's eyes fell upon her son, and the figure of a woman but a few feet from him with a knife lying beside her.

"What does it mean?" cried Mrs. Varrick.

He pointed to the fallen figure.

"Gerelda has come back to torture me, mother!" he cried.

By a terrible effort Gerelda struggled to her knees.

"Hear me, one and all!" she cried. "Listen; while yet the strength is mine, I will proclaim it! See, I am dying--that man, my husband, is my murderer! He murdered me to keep me from touching the bell-rope--to tell you all I was here!"

With this horrible accusation on her lips, Gerelda sunk back unconscious.

Who shall picture the scene that ensued?

"It is false--all false--so help me Heaven!" Hubert panted. That was all that he could say.

The sound of the commotion within had reached the street, and had brought two of the night-watchmen hurrying to the scene. Their loud peal at the bell brought down a servant, who admitted them at once. In a trice they had sprung up the broad stair-way to the landing above, from whence the excited voices proceeded, appearing on the threshold just in time to hear Gerelda's terrible accusation. Each laid a hand on Hubert Varrick's shoulder.

"You will have to come with us," they said.

Mrs. Varrick sprung forward and flung herself on her knees before them.

"Oh, you must not, you shall not take him!" she cried; "my darling son is innocent!"

It was a mercy from Heaven that unconsciousness came upon her in that moment and the dread happenings of the world were lost to her. There were the bitterest wailings from the old servants as the men of the law led Hubert away.

In the excitement no one had remembered Gerelda; now the servants carried her to a _boudoir_ across the hall, and summoned a doctor.

"If this poor girl recovers it will be little short of a miracle," he said.

Through all this commotion Jessie Bain slept on, little realizing the tragic events that were transpiring around her. No one thought of awakening her. The sun was shining bright and clear when she opened her eyes on the light the next morning.

How strangely still the house seemed! For a moment Jessie was bewildered. Had it not been that the sun lay in a great bar in the center of the room--and it never reached this point until nearly eight in the morning--she would have thought that it was very, very early.

"My wedding-day!" murmured the girl, slipping from her couch and gazing through the lace-draped windows on the white world without. But at that moment a maid entered and she told Jessie Bain the story of the tragedy.

A thunder-bolt from a clear sky, the earth suddenly opening beneath her feet, could not have startled Jessie Bain more. A few minutes later she recovered her composure and hurried to Mrs. Varrick's room.

Mrs. Varrick reached out her hand to Jessie, and the next moment they were sobbing wildly in each other's arms. Little by little the girl's noble spirit in all its grandeur gained the ascendency. Slowly she turned to the housekeeper, who was sobbing over the fact that there was no one to take care of Hubert's wife, until a trained nurse the doctor had expected should arrive.

"She shall be _my_ care," said Jessie, determinedly. "I will go to her at once; lead the way, please."

Who shall picture the dismay of Jessie when she looked upon the face of the woman who had come between her and the man she was to have wedded that day and found that it was the very creature whom she herself had sheltered--the girl whom she had known as Margaret Moore?

The doctor was greatly moved at the heroic stand Jessie Bain proposed to take in nursing her rival back to health and strength.

"Not one woman in a thousand would do it," he declared. "May Heaven bless you for it! Besides," he added in a low, grave voice, "you could serve poor Hubert Varrick in no better way than by restoring her. If she dies it will go hard indeed with young Varrick."

Jessie realized this but too well, and bent all her energies to nurse her back to health and strength, though what she suffered no one in this world could tell.

If Margaret recovered, she knew that she would go away with Hubert. He might not love her, but he would be obliged to live his whole life out with her. If she died, he would hang for it. Better that he should live, even with the other one, than die.

Her heart went out to Hubert Varrick in the bitterest of sorrow. She realized what he must be suffering. She would have flown to him on the wings of love, but she dared not.

She wrote a letter to him for his mother, at her dictation, adding a little tear-blotted postscript of her own, making no mention of her own great love and the sorrow that had darkened her young life. In that letter she urged him to keep up brave spirits; that everything was being done for Gerelda, his wife, that could be done; that she was sitting up night and day nursing her.

When Hubert Varrick received that tear-stained missive, in the loneliness of his desolate cell he bowed his head and wept like a child, crying out to Heaven that he was surely the most wretched man on God's earth.

He tried to think out all the horrors of that bitter midnight tragedy, which seemed more like a dream to him than a reality. He could not understand how Gerelda came by that wound, unless, through her terrible rage, she had attempted to take her life by her own hand; and through the same intense rage, strong even in death, wanted to persecute him even after she had known that her moments were numbered.

As for Gerelda, her life hung by the slenderest of threads for many days after, and during these anxious hours no one could induce Jessie Bain to leave her bedside. But at last the hour came when the doctors pronounced Gerelda out of danger.