Countess Vera 7

Countess Vera 7

"Lawrence Campbell!"

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

 

After that one shriek of surprise and almost terror, Mrs. Cleveland

remains silent, devouring the man's face with a gaze as fixed and

burning as his own. Ivy, in her corner, is forgotten by her mother, and

unnoticed by the stranger.

 

"Yes, Lawrence Campbell," he answers her in a deep, hoarse voice, that

thrills to the hearts of the listeners. "Are you glad to see me, Mrs.

Cleveland?"

 

"Glad!" she shudders, in an indescribable voice.

 

"After these long years," he pursues, speaking under the spur of

some deep, overmastering agitation, "I have come back to curse you,

traitorous, false-hearted woman, and to make atonement."

 

"Atonement!" she falters, with a start of fear.

 

"Yes, Marcia Cleveland, atonement," he bursts out passionately. "Tell

me, where is the dear, true angel-wife whom I was led to believe false

and unfaithful to me, through your heartless machinations. At last I

know the truth, at last I know you, devil that you are! You maligned

the truest, purest, gentlest woman that ever lived! Your own sister,

too--the beautiful, innocent child that was left to your charge by her

dying parents. God only knows what motive you had for your terrible

sin."

 

She glares at him with fiery eyes from which the momentary fear has

fled, leaving them filled with the mocking light of a wicked triumph.

 

"_You_ should have known my motive, Lawrence Campbell," she bursts out,

passionately. "When I first met you in society, the plain, untitled

English gentleman, I was a young, beautiful, wealthy widow, and by your

attentions and visits you led me to believe that you loved me.

 

"Then Edith came home from her boarding-school, and with her baby-face

and silly school-girl shyness won you from me. You married her, and

the very torments of the lost were mine, for I loved with a passion

of which she, poor, weak-natured creature, could never dream. Did you

think I could tamely bear the slight that was put upon me? No, no, I

swore revenge--a deep and deadly revenge, and I have had it; ha, ha! a

costly cup, full to the brim and running over!"

 

She pauses with a wild and maniacal laugh. The man stares at her with

starting eyes and a death-white face. The enormity of the wrong that

has been done him seems to strike him dumb.

 

"I have had a glorious revenge," she goes on, wildly, seeing that he

cannot speak; "you fell an easy prey to my plan of vengeance through

your foolish and ridiculous jealousy. Through the efficient help of a

poor, weak fool who loved me I made you believe Edith false and vile,

and taunted you into deserting her! Have you suffered? Ah, God, so did

I! I was on fire with jealousy and hate. Every pang I made you and

Edith suffer was like balm to my heart. I parted you, I came between

your wedded hearts, and made your life and hers a hell! Aye, and your

child's, too--ha, ha, I made her weep for the hour in which she was

born!"

 

She tosses her white arms wildly in the air, and laughs low and

wickedly with the glare of malice and revenge in her flashing, black

eyes. She is transformed from the handsome, clever woman of the world

into a mocking devil. Even Ivy, who knows her mother's heartlessness as

none other know, stares with distended eyes at the infuriated woman.

She involuntarily recalls a verse she has somewhere read:

 

"Earth has no spell like love to hatred turned,

And hell no fury like a woman scorned."

 

"My child," the man breaks out, with a yearning heart-hunger in his

melancholy eyes. "She lives then--my child, and Edith's! Oh, God,

will she ever forgive me the wrong I have done her mother? Speak,

woman--devil, rather--and tell me where to find my Edith and her little

one!"

 

"Little one!" mocks Mrs. Cleveland, scornfully. "Do you forget,

Lawrence Campbell, that seventeen years have come and gone since you

deserted Edith and her unborn child?"

 

"No, I am not likely to forget," he answers, with the bitterness of

remorse in his low voice. "The child must be a woman now. But I will

atone to Edith and her child for all I have made them suffer through

your sin. I am rich, now, and I have fallen heir to a title in my

native land. Edith will be a countess, our child a wealthy heiress.

And I will make them happy yet. My heart is young, although my hair is

gray. I love my wife yet, with all the fire of youth. Tell me where

to find them, Marcia Cleveland, and for that one act of grace, I will

forgive you all the black and sinful past."

 

He pauses, with his hollow, burning eyes fixed eerily upon her, waiting

her reply. The autumn winds wail sharply round the house, the chilly

rain taps at the window pane with ghostly fingers, as if to hint of

those two graves lying side by side under the cold and starless sky of

night.

 

"Tell me," she says, putting aside his questions scornfully. "How did

you learn that I had deceived you?"

 

"From the dying lips of your tool--Egbert Harding. He was in

London--dying of the excesses brought on by a fast and wicked life.

At the last he repented of his sins, afraid to face the God whom his

wicked life had outraged. He sent for me and confessed all--how he had

lent himself to your diabolical plan to dupe and deceive me. He swore

to me that my beautiful Edith was as innocent as an angel. I left him,

poor, frightened, despairing wretch, at his last gasp, and came across

the seas to seek for you and my wronged wife. Tell me, Marcia, for I

can wait no longer; my heart is half-broken with grief and suspense.

Where shall I find my wife and child?"

 

"_In their graves_!" she answers, with the hollow and exultant laugh of

a fiend.

 

Lawrence Campbell reels backward as if some invisible hand had smitten

him across the face. He throws up his thin, white, quivering hands in

the air, as though in the agonies of death. But in a moment he rallies

himself and looks at the tormenting fiend with lurid, blazing eyes.

 

"You lie!" he exclaims, hoarsely. "You are false to the core of your

heart, Marcia. I will not believe you. God, who knows how much I have

suffered, would not afflict me so cruelly. I ask you again--where are

they?"

 

"And I tell you they are _dead_!" she answers, hoarsely. "If you will

not believe me, go to Glenwood. You know our family burial-plot. There

you will find two new-made graves. Ask the sexton whose they are, and

he will tell you Mrs. Campbell's and her daughter Vera's. Your wife

died three nights ago--died of a broken heart, while I, her sister who

hated her, was dancing at a ball! Your daughter, Vera, died the night

before last by her own hand--died the death of the suicide! Ha, ha!"

she laughed, sneeringly, "have I not had a glorious revenge for my

slighted love?"

 

"I will not believe you--I cannot. It is too terrible," Lawrence

Campbell moans, with his hands pressed to his head, and a dazed look in

his great, black eyes.

 

"You may, for it is true," exclaims Ivy, coming forward into the light,

with a wicked triumph in her pale-blue eyes. "If you will not believe

my mother, go to the graveyard and see, as she bade you."

 

He lifts his eyes and stares at her a moment, a white, dizzy horror

on his face. The next moment he reels forward blindly, like some

slaughtered thing, and falls in a white and senseless heap upon the

floor.

 

"You have killed him, too, mamma," Ivy exclaims, exultantly.

 

The heartless woman, turning around, spurns the fallen body with her

foot.

 

"A fit ending to the tragedy," she utters, cruelly. "Ring the bell for

a servant, Ivy."

 

In a moment a white-aproned menial appears in the room. Mrs. Cleveland

looks at him frowningly.

 

"John, who admitted this drunken fellow into the house?" she inquires,

sharply.

 

"I did, madam. He said he was an old friend of yours," the man answers

respectfully. "Is anything wrong about it, madam? He seems," bending

over him, "to be dead."

 

"Dead drunk," the woman utters, scornfully. "Drag him out of the house,

John, and throw him into the street."

 

The man stares in consternation.

 

"It's pouring down rain, ma'am," he exclaims, deprecatingly, "and

pitchy dark. Hadn't I best call the police?"

 

"Do as I bid you," Mrs. Cleveland storms. "Throw him into the street,

and leave him there. And mind how you admit such characters into the

house again, or you may lose your place!"

 

She stands still with lowering brows, watching the man as he executes

her orders, dragging the heavy, unconscious form from the room, and

along the hall to the door.

 

When the lumbering sound has ceased, and the heavy clang of the outer

door grates sharply on the silence, she draws a deep breath of relief.

 

"Now I know why you always hated Vera and her mother so much," Ivy

exclaims. "Why did you never tell me, mamma?"

 

"It was no business of yours," Mrs. Cleveland answers, sharply.

 

"Oh, indeed, we are very lofty!" Ivy comments, impudently.

 

Mrs. Cleveland makes her no answer. She has sunk into the depths of a

velvet-cushioned chair, and with lowered eyelids and protruding lips

seems to be grimly brooding. Her form seems to have collapsed and grown

smaller, her face is ashy white.

 

"You are a smarter and wickeder woman than I gave you credit for," Ivy

resumes, curiously. "So, then, the tale you told Leslie Noble about

Vera's dissipated father was altogether false."

 

"Yes," her mother mutters, mechanically.

 

But presently she starts up like one in a panic.

 

"Ivy, we must go away from here," she exclaims, in a strange and

hurried voice. "I am afraid to stay."

 "Afraid of what?" Ivy queries, impatiently.