I feel her!
She is on the stairs! she is at the door! she—” a low, shuddering sigh of longing and despair finished the sentence: the door opened, and Mary Leavenworth stood before us!
It was a moment to make young hairs turn gray.
To see her face, so pale, so haggard, so wild in its fixed horror, turned towards Henry Clavering, to the utter ignoring of the real actor in this most horrible scene! Trueman Harwell could not stand it.
“Ah, ah!” he cried; “look at her! cold, cold; not one glance for me, though I have just drawn the halter from her neck and fastened it about my own!”
And, breaking from the clasp of the man who in his jealous rage would now have withheld him, he fell on his knees before Mary, clutching her dress with frenzied hands.
“You shall look at me,” he cried; “you shall listen to me!
I will not lose body and soul for nothing.
Mary, they said you were in peril!
I could not endure that thought, so I uttered the truth,—yes, though I knew what the consequence would be,—and all I want now is for you to say you believe me, when I swear that I only meant to secure to you the fortune you so much desired; that I never dreamed it would come to this; that it was because I loved you, and hoped to win your love in return that I—”
But she did not seem to see him, did not seem to hear him.
Her eyes were fixed upon Henry Clavering with an awful inquiry in their depths, and none but he could move her.
“You do not hear me!” shrieked the poor wretch. “Ice that you are, you would not turn your head if I should call to you from the depths of hell!”
But even this cry fell unheeded.
Pushing her hands down upon his shoulders as though she would sweep some impediment from her path, she endeavored to advance.
“Why is that man here?” she cried, indicating her husband with one quivering hand. “What has he done that he should be brought here to confront me at this awful time?”
“I told her to come here to meet her uncle’s murderer,” whispered Mr. Gryce into my ear.
But before I could reply to her, before Mr. Clavering himself could murmur a word, the guilty wretch before her had started to his feet.
“Don’t you know? then I will tell you.
It is because these gentlemen, chivalrous and honorable as they consider themselves, think that you, the beauty and the Sybarite, committed with your own white hand the deed of blood which has brought you freedom and fortune.
Yes, yes, this man”—turning and pointing at me—“friend as he has made himself out to be, kindly and honorable as you have doubtless believed him, but who in every look he has bestowed upon you, every word he has uttered in your hearing during all these four horrible weeks, has been weaving a cord for your neck—thinks you the assassin of your uncle, unknowing that a man stood at your side ready to sweep half the world from your path if that same white hand rose in bidding.
That I—”
“You?”
Ah! now she could see him: now she could hear him!
“Yes,” clutching her robe again as she hastily recoiled; “didn’t you know it?
When in that dreadful hour of your rejection by your uncle, you cried aloud for some one to help you, didn’t you know—”
“Don’t!” she shrieked, bursting from him with a look of unspeakable horror. “Don’t say that!
Oh!” she gasped, “is the mad cry of a stricken woman for aid and sympathy the call for a murderer?” And turning away in horror, she moaned: “Who that ever looks at me now will forget that a man—such a man!—dared to think that, because I was in mortal perplexity, I would accept the murder of my best friend as a relief from it!” Her horror was unbounded. “Oh, what a chastisement for folly!” she murmured. “What a punishment for the love of money which has always been my curse!”
Henry Clavering could no longer restrain himself, leaping to her side, he bent over her.
“Was it nothing but folly, Mary?
Are you guiltless of any deeper wrong?
Is there no link of complicity between you two?
Have you nothing on your soul but an inordinate desire to preserve your place in your uncle’s will, even at the risk of breaking my heart and wronging your noble cousin?
Are you innocent in this matter?
Tell me!” placing his hand on her head, he pressed it slowly back and gazed into her eyes; then, without a word, took her to his breast and looked calmly around him.
“She is innocent!” said he.
It was the uplifting of a stifling pall.
No one in the room, unless it was the wretched criminal shivering before us, but felt a sudden influx of hope.
Even Mary’s own countenance caught a glow.
“Oh!” she whispered, withdrawing from his arms to look better into his face, “and is this the man I have trifled with, injured, and tortured, till the very name of Mary Leavenworth might well make him shudder?
Is this he whom I married in a fit of caprice, only to forsake and deny?
Henry, do you declare me innocent in face of all you have seen and heard; in face of that moaning, chattering wretch before us, and my own quaking flesh and evident terror; with the remembrance on your heart and in your mind of the letter I wrote you the morning after the murder, in which I prayed you to keep away from me, as I was in such deadly danger the least hint given to the world that I had a secret to conceal would destroy me?
Do you, can you, will you, declare me innocent before God and the world?”
“I do,” said he.
A light such as had never visited her face before passed slowly over it.
“Then God forgive me the wrong I have done this noble heart, for I can never forgive myself!
Wait!” said she, as he opened his lips. “Before I accept any further tokens of your generous confidence, let me show you what I am.
You shall know the worst of the woman you have taken to your heart.
Mr. Raymond,” she cried, turning towards me for the first time, “in those days when, with such an earnest desire for my welfare (you see I do not believe this man’s insinuations), you sought to induce me to speak out and tell all I knew concerning this dreadful deed, I did not do it because of my selfish fears.
I knew the case looked dark against me.