Countess Vera; or, The Oath of Vengeance. Alex. McVeigh Miller
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