A DOUBLE LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9154, 8 September 1888, Page 3 (Supplement)

A DOUBLE LIFE.

BY HELEN CRAMPTON DALE.

CHAPTER XXXIII. "heed out we are, my heart and X."

Mademoiselle has slipped out of her arms, and is looking at her with a face as white as carven pearllooking at her with eyes dilated and lips compressed—half dazed, half horrified by the one darkly dreadful thought that rushes in an instant across her reeling brain.

Whether it is one second or sixty that she kneels thus, before she can find breath to speak, she never knows. Yesterday, she remembers, she sorrowed that there were no little children over whom she might watch, and in whose minds she might keep green the memory of their mother after she had gone ; but to-day In the face of that awful thought, she blesses Ood that Norma Dane is childless.

Secretconfession—forgive you !" she says, after a pause, conscious that she must 3ay something, but not knowing what. " Oh, Norma, what need have you to ask forgiveness at my hands ? What" "Hush!" breaks in Norma very softly, turning away her face and glancing out at the sky, where the ruddy splendours of sunset are fast giving place to the faint azalea

tints of the after-glow. " Ask nothing now, but read when lam gone. I have said that I feel it sinful to carry a secret to the grave, and for that I have written those pages. Take them, dear. You are free to open them when I am gone, and I know you will not before. But nark ! they are rolling the piano to the window. Kiss me and go." Mademoiselle rose with the packet in her hand, and stooping, dropped a kiss upon that white and haggard face. " How cold your lips are, dear," murmured Norma, huskily. "It was like a kiss of icc."

Mademoiselle made no reply. With the slow, mechanical tread of a sleep-walker, she crossed the room and passed out into the silent, shadowy hall. The gilded hangings, the pictures and the statuary seemed all jumbled and confused ; a deathly weakness was in her heart, a deathly faintness in her brain ; she closed the door, staggered toward the staircase, and leaning against the baluster, stared at the packet in her hand. A secret—a confession — something she had a right to know. She tried to think, tried to fight off that awful conviction ; but it was there, looking her in the face, staring down into her soul. Archer Blake had told her that Iladley, the detective, swore there had been a woman in the grounds at Darkendale that night of the tragedy. Oh, most merciful God ! what if there was a taint of insanity in the Tressylian blood, what if Norma—" She throttled the cry that rose to her lips, and cowered again before that awful thought.

"Mad!" she said, as she turned and groped her way down the stairs, "mad! then or now, or else—l am !" **»*♦*

For five long minutes after the door had closed, Norma Dane never stirred, never shifted her eyes from that lading light, where the dusk was fast shutting down over the spires of London, and the first movement she made, the first cry she uttered, was when the notes of the piano rolled up to her, and mademoiselle's voice floated out on the silent summer twilight. "' In the Gloaming !' " she cried out, with a sharp cry of pain. " Oh, why does she choose that song—why does she sing that sorrowful thing at this hour ? God be merciful to me ! how long must I sutler like this before the end ? i thought once it would kill me, that it could not fail to strike me down, and yet I linger—linger 'in the gloaming,' when I want so much to die." The piteous, weak voice broke with a note of pain, and turning away her head she wept forlornly, with her face buried in her pillow, and her hands locked over her head.

Through the open windows of the musicroom, the prima donna?* voice soared up to her, full of a pathos that stung her as she listened, until she crawled from her chair and slid he bolt, afraid lest Madame Bonvarde should come in and lind her thus.

"In tin; gloaming, oh, my darling ! Think not bitterly of me. Though 1 passed away in silence l.eft you lonely, set you free ! For my heart was crushed with longing ; What had been could never be, It was best to leave you thus, dear, Host for you, and best for me!"'

Crouched on the floor, and huddled down like a culprit, Norma Dane heard those words, and the cry like the wail of a soul going out wrung its passage through her lips. " ' Best for you and best for me,' Neil !" she cricd out, locking her hands and rocking to and fro. "I know it, my darling—l have known it so long, but God will not take me. lam not deaf—l am not blind. I have been facing my doom for mere than six weeks, and the knowledge will not kill me. 1 thought it would — I thought I could not survive it one hour, and yet my heart will not break. Oh, God ! let me die —please, please let me die ! I have lost my husband's love — have lost the only thing I ever had to live tor, and, oh, I want so much to diel want so much to die !"

CHAPTER XXXIV. " FOr. ALL IS CI.FAR THAT ONCE WAS DA IIK !" " A penny for your thoughts, mademoiselle. They must be pleasant ones, I fancy, to hold you silent so long." « Idelette, leaning forward with one arm resting on tho keys of the piano and her eyes fixed sightlessly upon the stretch of lawn that lay beyond the open windows of the music room, started suddenly as these words put an abrupt end to her reverie, and turning upon the revolving stool, glanced up with a wretched attempt at a smile. " I bf-jr your pardon, but — were you speaking, Mr. Dane ?"' she stammered, letting her eyes fall the instant they encountered his, while a dash of colour just fluttered through her face and then vanished, leaving it pearl-pale from brow to chin. " I was deeply interested in—in that clump of copper-beeches down by the gates. Singular trees, are they not? One might almost fancy the leaves were fashioned of rubies when the light strikes through them. I am fond of copper-beeches, and they always claim my attention." "And in the present instance they have held it exactly twelve minutes," responded Dane, laughingly, as he glanced at the dial of the clock on the mantel. "I think I should call that sort of fondness a fascination, forever since you concluded 'In the Gloaming' (and how you did sing it, mademoiselle !) you have been sitting there, and staring out of the window as though you had forgotten all the world save those thrice-blessed trees. I have addressed you twice, and only now you hear !" There was a sort of reproach in the voice that said this—a sort of " And-you-could-forget-mv-very-existence-so-easily ?" tone, that mademoiselle was quick to catch and resent.

" One cannot always rule one's thoughts, Mr. Dane, and I believe I have already stated that I am fond of copper beeches !" she responded, frigidly, rising and making a movement to close the piano. " What I am fond of generally claims my attention to the exclusion of all other things. It is not complimentary, to be sure, but it is human, and I claim to bo intensely human, even though we are host and guest, Mr. Dane."

It was a sharp reproof, given out of her resolve to disenchant him, if possible, but it is doubtful if she could have chosen a more luckless reply, for it was a tacit admission that she understood that unspoken reproach, and in an instant she realised her mistake.

"You human!" he said, taking a stop forward, a red mark, broad and long, rushing across his forehead. " I wonder who will dare to claim it? Human ! You are a siren—an enchantress —an angel—a— Oh, forgive me !"—with a sudden start of recollection and a wretched attempt at a laugh. " You see, I have fallen into the fashion of believing, like the rest of the world, that you must be more than mortal to possess such a voice, mademoiselle. lam a poor hand at compliments, you see, and" —desperately—" please set me back into my senses by singing once more. They say that like cures like; be merciful, then, and sing acrain." Mademoiselle had stepped quickly back as he advanced, and now stood looking down at the floor, the colour coming and going in her face, one ringed hand shut over the packet that lay like an oppressive weight upon her heart, and a sickening sensation coming and going through her reeling brain. That he had been upon the very verge of declaring again what he had declared upon the Baymonth Blulls five years ago, she fully realised ; that one word, one look from her would let loose the dammed-up torrent, and sweep reason and honour before it, she knew also, but now, as then, the memory of her sister came between them, and gave her strength.

"I should be happy to oblige you," she said, in a frigid voice, " but I have an engagement with my mantuamaker at six, and if I delay another moment I shall be late, which means a delay in the completion of costumes I must have. You see, lam as human as I have told you. I cannot sacrifice my dresses even for friendship's sake. To-night—to-morrow—some other time I will sing ; just now I dare not. Besides, your wife may be sleeping, and we must remember her always. May I beg you to excuse me if I retire ?"

She did not wait for him to answer, she did not look at him even, but closing the piano as she spoke, she went straight by him to the door, and parting the portiere stepped out and left him.

It had been a brief struggle, but a desperate one ; for never yet had he come so near uttering what she had seen in his eyes so often. He had looked his love before, now he had almost told it.

"God have mercy upon him and me !" she muttered as she went swiftly up the stairs to her own apartments. "It is the first stone removed from the foundation, and

others will follow until the structure must fall, if something does not occur to part us soon. He has broken the ice to-day, and every day hereafter we two are in deadly peril so long as I remain under this roof. I must go—there is no help for it. I must leave Oakhurst before this week is over, no matter at what risk. Archer Blake shall no longer force me to remain here. He must take me awayhe must—he must!" She was fast growing hysterical, but fortunately she had reached the door of her apartments by this time, and entering she threw herself upon a divan and buried her face in the cushions. The experiences of the day had been too much for her, and her brain was in a whirl.

"Sorrow! sorrow! wherever I go," she cried out despairingly. "Are there some women who carry a curse with them ? and am I one of them, I wonder? Why did I come to this house ? Why did I come back into his life to spoil it and my own? What was there—oh, what was there in my mother's blood to breed such a curse as has fallen upon her two children? For me, • a shame as irrevocable as it is awful; for Norma— Oh, no, no, no ! I can't; believe it. It is too horribletoo horrible ! and yet—" Her voice seemed to catch suddenly and refuse to obey her ; she sat bolt upright with a shuddering start, and took the folded packet from her bosom. "Her confessionher secret—something I have a right to know !" she said presently. " Those were her words. A secret I had a right to know ; and yet she could not bear to look into my eyes and tell me, she could only leave the record to be read after her death. Oh, my sister, my sister !is itcan it be true ? This horrible suspicion I can neither throttle nor put down ? A woman was in the garden that night, they say, and that womanwho was she ? Oh, I cannot, dare not give myself an answer; but my heart sickens, my brain grows numb. Pray God it may be years before I break the seal of this paper, and learn the dreadful thing it has to tell! I must hide it somewhere, for I believe that I shall go mad if I look upon it longer. Where shall I pub it ? In one of my trunks ? Yes, yes—that will do. It will be safe there."

The trunks were in the small room adjoining the bedchamber. She rose quickly, found her keys, went hastily in the luggage room, and unlocking one of the trunks, laid the packet away. " Would to Heaven I could as easily lock up my thoughts," she groaned as she went back to her boudoir and threw the keys upon her dressing-table. "It would be a relief to be able to forget the past for one brief hour—a God-given blessing to forget the role 1 am playing, and feel that for once 1 might cease to be guarded in every word, cease to dread discovery, and draw one free breath before I die. But it is not to be ! Even now I must go out of my way to preserve the deception, and give a semblance of truth to the falsehood I was forced to utter when I excuscd myself from singing for him, and prolonging the perlious situation in which wo both stood. I have no engagement with my mantuamaker, but I must go out in order to give colour to the lie. Oh ! lam sick of itsick of it! Would to Heaven I might change places with Norma, for I have nothing to live for, and I should be glad to die !"

'there was nothing pathetic in the voice that said this. She spoke the words with that calm, apathetic tone which is the surest indication of despair, and, removing her silken jiefjlitjee, tossed it aside and began wearily to don a walking costume. " Perhaps the air will benefit me," she muttered, as she adjusted her hat and tied on a thick, dark veil—not that there was any real necessity for it, but that she wished to escape being recognised and stared at as she walked through the streets. She had an intense abhorrence of all that savoured of notoriety, and the popularity of Idelette, the prima donna, was such that every gamin knew her face from the pictures in the shop windows, and of two evils surely it were better to be laughed at as a possible lunatic for wearing a veil in midsummer, than to be stared at and followed and pointed out as the reigning favourite of the footlights, " Perhaps the air will benefit me, and help me drive out this horrible suspicion. Wretch that I am to harbour it for an instant. Norma mad ! Norma kill—- Oh, I must not think of it; I must not. It is too horrible for hate to suggest, much less love, and yet that woman in the garden, the woman who wore the grey shawl ! Who and what was she? If I could only convince myself that there was no possibility of Norma having left her room from the time she sprained her ankle, if—" She stopped abruptly, and a faint, hectic flush suffused her cheeks.

Turning to leave the room, she had glanced back and caught sight of something that sent a new thought circling through her brain. The windows of the boudoir were open, the cool, sweet summer breeze was floating up from the gardens, the slowly-creeping twilight was shutting down over the winding ways of the rosery, but it was not too dark for her to see a well-known figure flitting in and out among the bushes, and clipping great bunches of roses to garnish the diningtable and fill the vases in the music-room.

" She would know if I dared to question her," muttered Idelette. "Madame Benvarde would know, if anybody, whether Norma remained in her room all that night, but how could I question her upon the subject without exciting suspicion? What a wonderful woman she is—not alone in the mere matter of her wonderful voice, but in her marvellous power of endurance. No matter how late she may be detained.in the sick-room, no matter how exhausted she may be, half-an-hour's sleep seems to make a new woman of her. She was ill—wretchedly ill—last night, she was complaining of a sick headache, and said she must give up and go to bed for a time, when we sent word to her not to disturb Norma for a couple of hours, and now—look at her ! It is scarcely fifty minutes since then, and there she is gathering roses and looking as fresh and bright as a young girl. Oh, if I only dared speak with her, just to put to rest this horrible fancy ! " She and her mother 'were SO devoted to mine and— Her mother !"—with a sudden start. "Why could I not question her? It is past the change of the moon, when, as Fitine says, she is hopelessly idiotic, and if I tried, who knows what I might glean from her? She is not bright-witted enough to suspect my purpose : she will babble all she knows if 1 but lead her on, and if she does know of the woman who was in the garden that night— The wavering colour brightened in her cheeks, she caught her breath with one heavy, laboured gasp, paused a second irresolute, then with a sudden swing she turned and left the room.

"I will do it!" she muttered, as she hastened toward the spiral staircase. "There is nothing to lose and perhaps everything to gain. Yes, I will see Nichette. I will grasp the opportunity while she is alone, and who shall say what may become of it ?" Who indeed ?

Looking back upon to-day through the sunshine and shadow yet to come, she knew that the great turning point in her life's history owed its origin to that resolve. With fleet and nervous footsteps she hastened down the corridor to the spiral staircase, and slipping through the archway, began to climb up to the turret chamber.

The drowsy summer stillness which reigned over all the house was here intensified into an absolute hush.

Not a sound greeted her as she toiled on and up, and it might have been a tomb into which she was penetrating, so utterly absent were all signs and sounds of life when she reached the landing at the top of the staircase.

Pausing for a moment to throw back her veil before demanding admission, she tapped lightly upon the door. No answer—llo movement.

She tapped again with a like result, then again, and yet again without eliciting any response. " She may be deaf as well as idiotic, and possibly I might knock until doomsday without her knowledge," thought mademoiselle, and, placing her hand upon the doorknob, she gently turned it. The catch slipped back at her touch, and the door moved upon its hinges. She opened it wider, and stepped in. The woollen curtains were drawn over all the windows, the room was steeped in a gloomy dusk, and she had just opened her lips to speak when something appealed to her ear.

It was the deep, regular breathing of a sleeper, and the sound came not from the nner apartment where she had been told the demented nurse passed her time, but from a couch close to the door where she herself was now standing. Her eyes were fast becoming accustomed to the darkness.

She glanced in the direction of the sound, dimly saw the figure of a woman lying fast asleep among the pillows, and, with a sigh of regret, turned to retrace her footsteps, when something brought her to a dead standstill with a sharp, stifled cry of amazement.

" No, it was no delusion. She could see quite clearly now; the curtained recess was empty, a white wig was hanging upon the back of the chair, kept for the madwoman's use, a loose, dark robe lay on the floor beside it, and— She turned and glanced at the bed where the sleeper lay, and almost screamed out with terror and surprise. The woman lay with her face averted, but the black dress and the white kerchief folded about her neck were enough to stamp her identity without the evidence of the cap and spectacles and wig that lay within reach of her hand.

Five minutes ago Mademoiselle Idelette had seen Fifine Benvarde in the rosery gathering flowers ; there had been neither time nor opportunity for the woman to have preceded her hither, but there, on the bed, fast asleep, Fifine Benvarde was lying now.

"Am I mad ? Have the horrors of this day turned my brain ? or is this only fancy ?" This was mademoiselle's first thought; her secondwas the window !

She glided to it noiselessly, parted the curtains, and looked down upon the garden. There were the winding walks of the rosery, there the parterres of gorgeous bloom, and there, in their midst, snipping the blossoms from their stems, Madame Benvarde still stood.

There are two Fifines and the double voice is explained?" she uttered in a smothered voice. " Most merciful Father, what does, what can it mean ? Two Fifines, and even Norma in ignorance of it. Oh, there must be some terrible reason for a secret as strange as this. Two Fifines—no Nichette, but two Fifinesmasking as one, to lose the identity of the other. It is a trick, a scheme to hide some dark secret, and this woman sleeping on the couch— Who is she ? What is she, that she wishes to hide herself under the mask of another? Just Heaven ! what if it be the woman who was in the garden that night at Darkendale ? What if this is the real murderess for whose . crime my name has been darkened ?"

The thought was like a shock, and for a moment she cowered down before it, the next she swept the curtains aside, letting 1 the twilight stream in upon the figure of the sleeper, and whirling she glanced at it. The faint, soft light fell full upon the close-cropped head and undisguised face. She saw it, recognised it—knew the truth, and reeling back stood rigid, voiceless, paralysed. The curtains fell from her hand and shut tliejtwilight out; she groped her way to the door, closed it silently, and like a thief in the night went stealthily down the spiral staircase —down the corridor and the stairs below, and so, out into the fast closing dusk, and turned her face toward the spires of London town.

There had been no startled shriek of recognition, and there was no outcry even now.

What she had seen had stricken her down like the Hail of fate, what she had thought had frozen every sense save the " soundless blab of the maddening brain." She went down the winding walk and out through the gates, more like an automaton than a living woman, and all the way that maddening brain ran riot with its awful:

" Alive—my mother alive ! I know the secretl know ' the woman in tho garden' —I know the assassin now ! My mother is alive—l have wronged Norma—my mother is alive!'

CHAPTER XXXV. AFTER MIDNIGHT.

The clock in St. Paul's striking eleven. That was the first thing that forced itself upon Idelette's attention, and with a start she threw back her veil and glanced around.

She knew where she was—in Regent's Park, sitting on one of the slatted benches ; but how did she get here When did she come ? When had she sunk down upon this seat ? How lon<r was it since she left Oakhurst and walked out of the St. John's Wood district?

It was twilight then—that she remembered—now it was eleven o'clock ; night had fallen, stars were agleam in the sky, and lamps were aglow in the city, but what a string of maddening circumstances had been crowded into her life since the sun went down. Eleven o'clock ! then she must have been sitting here five hours staring at the ;?ky, but seeing nothing, and yet it seemed to her but a minute since she stole out of the turret-chamber and that dull, befogged sensation shut down upon her brain.

The watchmen were blowing their whistles now to signal all visitors to depart. She could remain here no longer— must go. But where ? Not to Oakhurst— oh, no, no, no !

No matter what came of it, she would never stand under the roof of that house again. She did not know where she should go, only that nothing could tempt her to go back there. She would die first.

She rose from the bench, sick and dizzy, and walked wearily out toward the lights of London.

" Were I sure I should not be rescued, I believe I would go down to the Thames embankment, like many another wretched woman in this great sink of iniquity, and put an end to everything by one plunge from the parapet!" she muttered, as she walked mechanically along. "I had so little to live for this morning, but I have less to-night! Oh, lam so sick of this life, so sick that I would be glad to exchange places with some convicted felon, and be sure that there would soon be an end to it all ! Born in sin of a professional blackleg and a murderess ? I wonder what depths of misery one must reach before shame kills, if I can live in the face of this ?

" Alive ! My mother alive and living under a mask—prowling away in the darkness to hide herself from justice—a tacit admission of her guilt ! A child might reason out the mystery from such a clue as that. She killed Arthur Tressylian through emotional insanity or through wrathno matter which—she killed him, and the story of her death was invented to screen her. Perhaps she did go to Nichette's cottage, as they say ; but cither she went there after the murder or she returned and committed it when the household was wrapped in sleep! "And she was once his wife! Poor mother, poor mother! I cannot cease to pity and love you even in the face of crime, it seems. You were mad — you must have been mad, for you were always the soul of tenderness and pity ; but mad or sane, the deed was done, and I would not go back to Oakhurst now and risk betraying your secret for the world. I should fear lest it might escape my lips in sleep, I should dread lest Archer Blake glean a clue from me and bend me to his will by threatening to denounce you. No, no, no. Let the end be what it will, let the past be what it may, you are my mother, and I cannot, will not denounce, or betray you !" She was firm in her resolution not to go back to Oakhurst, but where else to go, she could not reason now.

She seemed to have only one end in view —to wander from street to street, and think, think, think until heart and brain were both dizzy. "I must hide myself somewhere until I find out Archer Blake's address in Paris, and send him word where to seek me !" she muttered. " I might run away, but it would be labour lost. lam still under ago : he is still my legal guardian, and in a few brief days the Bow-street officers would unearth my hiding-place, and carry me back to him. There is only one way :To wait until I know where to write to him, and then anything so he takes me away from London at once. I will even consent to sing for another year, but go back to Oakhurst I never will. To-night I will walk the streets ; to-morrow I shall go to Paris and seek him, and once found—"

The sentence ended there, and in a manner that elicited a startled outcry from her lips. She had reached the corner of a crossing street, and had just turned it, when a man in a slouch hat bolted out of a doorway toward a hansom that was clattering by, and not seeing her, collided with her so violently that she was thrown to tha pavement.

" Beg your pardon ! I hope you are not hurt. Here, Mrs. Briody, look after the lady, and if there's any damage, let me •ow !" exclaimed the man, beckoning to a

woman who stood upon the threshold of the house he had just quitted; then, with a bound, he was off the walk, rushing after the vehicle, and calling, " Hi, there ! Hansom ! hi, hi ! I want you !" Mademoiselle had almost gained her feet, but she fell back now with a startled cry, and in an instant the woman in the doorway was at her side. Oh, my dear, my dear, I 'ope you're not 'urfc !" she exclaimed, stooping and assisting mademoiselle to rise. " Lawk ! but it was a 'bunk' now, warn't it? And I'll venture to say as you're pretty well shook up, pore thing !" Mademoiselle shook her head to signify that she was not injured, and turning her veiled face toward the runner, watched him until the hansom took him up and whirled him out of sight. No need to go to Paris now— need to seek for Archer Blake—she had found him.

"It was fate !" she murmured, and for once I owe it a good turn. Doubtless he has just returned to London, and is even now on his way to Oakhurst I" [To be continued.]

In the course of a few weeks the opening chapters of a new and interesting story, by a well-known author, will bo commenced in the .Auckland Weekly News.