 | CHAPTER XXX.
DENSDETH'S DARK ROOM. Cecil Dreeme |  |
30. CHAPTER XXX.
DENSDETH'S DARK ROOM.
We were now upon the pavements. Conversation
ceased. The broad facts had been stated.
The myriad details must wait for quieter hours.
We were grave and expectant, for in the mind
of each was an unspoken dread that all our sorrow
was not over.
Churm drove hard. It was chilly sunset, a
melancholy lurid twilight of March, when we
turned out of Mannering Place and drew up in
front of Chrysalis. Alternate thaw and freezing
had fouled the snow in Ailanthus Square. It
lay in patches, streaked with dirt of the city,
and between was the sodden grass, all trampled
uneven and stiffening now with the evening frost.
“The world never looked so dreary,” said I.
“This is the very end of bitter winter,” said
Cecil; “let us hope now for brighter spring at
hand. We will create it in ourselves.”
“Yes,” said Churm, whistling for his groom.
“We must not let forlornness come upon us
Byng, you had better take your friend Cecil
Dreeme up to your palace-chamber, while I go
round to the Minedurt, with Locksley, and have
dinner brought. We all need it, after the drive
and the day.”
Dreeme and I climbed the broad staircase.
We walked those few steps along the corridor to
my door. It was almost dusk. As we passed
the door of Densdeth's dark room, each was conscious
anew how death had freed the world from
that demon influence. We seemed to breathe
freer.
We entered my great chamber. It was already
sombre with the shades of evening. Only a dim
light came through the mullioned and trefoiled
windows. I established my guest in an arm-chair.
She dropped the hood of her cloak. I
smiled to notice the masculine effect of her crisp
curling black hair. She perceived my feeling,
and smiled also. A quiet domestic feeling seemed
to grow up between us. I busied myself in
reviving the fire from its ashes.
Cecil sat silent. Neither was yet at home in
our new relation. I made occupation, to fill a
silence I shrank from breaking with words, by
examining the letter-box at my door.
There was the evening paper in the box. To-morrow
it would be filled with staring capitals,
Densdeth and the exposing of Huffmire.
There were sundry cards in the box; cards of
lounging men about town, who had come to kill
a half-hour at my expense; a card from a friend
of Stillfleet's from Boston, asking permission to
recover his dress coat and waistcoat, deposited in
some drawer of Rubbish Palace when he came
last a-wooing; a card from Madame de Nigaud,
with — “Oysters and Frezzaniga at ten. Come,
or I cut you!” — cards to the balls after Lent; a
tailor's bill; a club notice; a ticket for a private
view of Sion's new statue of Purity.
There was also a billet addressed to me in a
hand I seemed to know.
“There is what the world had to say to me
this afternoon,” I said, handing the cards to Cecil
Dreeme.
I walked toward the window for more light to
read my billet; also to hide my face while I read.
For I knew the hand of the address.
It was Emma Denman's.
It cost me a strong effort to tear open that
slight missive. I knew not what I dreaded; but
I was aware of a miserable terror, lest the sister
should come between me and Cecil Dreeme,
blighting both.
So I opened the letter, and began to read it,
with hasty intentness, by that dim light through
inner meaning, and anticipated some sorrowful,
some pitiful confession at the close, I read more
slowly, not to lose the significance of a word.
The light faded rapidly, and each syllable was
harder to decipher; and yet each, as I comprehended
it, seemed to trail away and write itself
anew on the dimness before me, in ineffaceable
letters of fire.
This was the letter.
“Robert, good-bye! I could not see you face
to face again, — I that have almost betrayed you
with my sin.
“But you shall be safe from any further treachery
of mine, and for the deep dread I have of
myself, lest I again become a traitor to some
trusting soul, I shall put any further evil work in
this world out of my power.
“I tried — God knows I tried for myself and
you — to keep away from between us any other
sentiment than liking and simple good-will. But
I could not withhold myself from loving you.
It was my destiny first to be taught what love
meant through you, and so to learn that I must
never hope for love — for true love — in this
waste misery of my ruined earthly life. I could
not check you from loving me with that hesitating
love you have given. I knew, O Robert! I
abandonment. I felt the want in myself you
dimly and far away perceived. I was conscious
in my whole being of the taint that repelled you.
“And yet sometimes — forgive me, for I hate
myself, I loathe myself — I was willing to accept
the success of my lie, my acted lie. I knew my
power over you, and saw that it was greater
because you had a doubt to overcome. Alas for
me for such dishonor! But I yielded to the
sweet delusion that I could repair the past, that
by future truth to you I could annihilate the
falsehood in me, upon which any love of yours
must be based.
“And then, too, Robert, — for such is the
cruel despotism of deceit, — I have found a base
joy in my power to charm you, so that you forgot
everything in my society. I have even felt
a baser pleasure in keeping higher and holier
aspirations away from your soul, lest you should
become too sensitive, and so know me too well.
Ah, how terrible is this corruption of a hidden
sin! It has made me the foe of purity, eager to
drag others down to my level.
“And yet I have agonized against it. More
steadily, Robert, since you came. Why did you
not come years ago? Why were you ever away?
I do not feel my nature wholly base. It seems
to me that I might have been noble, if I had been
be guarded, self-guarded, when this life I loathe
is past, and that other life begun, with all my
stern experience.
“You will not despise me. I know that it is
braver to speak than to be silent; and then this
struggle to be true with you helps me in the
greater struggle to be true with God. Do not
despise me, Robert! I saw what was in your
mind when we parted. It is so. I might deceive
you now. I might trifle away your suspicions;
I might repel them with indignation. I will not.
They are just.
“It is said. I shall die happier. I must die.
I cannot trust myself. I cannot bear to act my
daily lie before the world. I might again deceive,
and again see the same misery in another I
have seen in you, — again see a look of love
grow cold, — again see doubt creep in and murder
faith. I cannot trust myself. I might love
you with all my heart, and yet go miserably
yielding to a temptation. And so good-bye to
my life, and all my womanly hopes!
“Ah Robert, if I could but have escaped that
prying spirit of evil, — that one fatal being who
mastered me with the first look, who saw the
small germ of a bad tendency in me, and nurtured
it!
“But do not believe that I was to be so base
ever. Her nature was a constant reproach to
mine. But I should have saved her from the
infamy of her marriage. I should, — O yes! I
thank God that I had emancipated myself enough
for that. I should have saved her; but while
I was struggling with my dread of shame, my
pride, and all the misery of an avowal, — while I
was weeping and praying, and gaining strength
to be as sisterly as I could be so late, — she was
drowning! And so her sweet, innocent life perished,
and the fault was mine, — the fault was
mine, that I had not long before told her such
a marriage would be sacrilege.
“I have had a bitter burden to bear since then,
— a wearing weight of repentance. Ah! if my
sister could have lived, I might have shown her
that I was worthy of her love. I might have
wrought her to forget those years of alienation,
— all my fault, and never fault of hers, — my
noble, hapless sister! A heavy burden of shame
and self-disgust! And heavier, heavier, since
you came; — heavier, because, as I have learned
to know what true love means, and to despair of
ever being worthy of it, the reaction of hopelessness
has almost driven me to utter self-abandonment,
and that miserable comfort of recklessness.
And so I die, lest I might fail my nobler nature,
and pass into the ranks of the tempters.
“My father will not miss me. You will think
pityingly of me, Robert. It is not for a dread
of a lonely and sorrowful life that I die, but to
save others from the contamination of my sin.
“I shall not sully this innocent roof with my
death. I die in a place where I have the right
to enter. My death there shall atone for my
crime there. It is near you, Robert, and I could
wish, if you can forgive and pity me, that you
first would find me, in the dark room next to
yours, and be a little tender with the corpse my
purified spirit will have abandoned. Good-bye!
“Oh, Cecil!” I cried, “your sister!”
I sprang toward the door of my lumber-room.
Beside it stood a suit of ancient armor, staring
with eyeless eyes, and in its iron fingers it held
a heavy mace of steel, — a terrible weapon, with
its head studded with spikes, and rusty with old
stains, perhaps of Paynim blood. I snatched it,
drew my bolts, and smote with all my force at the
inner lock of the door of Densdeth's dark room.
A few such blows, the fastenings tore away,
and the door flung open. I entered, and Cecil
Dreeme was at my side.
It was a small room, but lofty as mine. By
that faint light of impeded twilight, coming
through my narrow windows, I could see that
its furniture was a very dream of luxury.
But it was not the place that we noticed, —
for there in the dimness we could discern the
figure of a woman, seated in an arm-chair, gazing
at us with a pale, dead face.
“Emma, Emma!” cried Cecil Dreeme.
She did not speak, — that dead form had given
up its last words in the letter to me. The sickly
odor of a deadly drug filled the room, mingling
with the perfume I had noticed. She seemed to
have been some hours dead, and sitting there
alone, unforgiven by man.
We stood looking at her. It was pitiful. Her
beauty wasted thus! Her life self-condemned to
this drear death, lest her soul perish with the
taint of sin!
I kissed her forehead; then pressed my lips
chilled to Cecil's cheek.
“She is our sister, Cecil,” I whispered.
“Our sister, Robert, — our sister, forgiven and
beloved.”
And so with clasped hands we knelt beside our
sister, and in silence prayed for strength in the
great battle with sin and sorrow, through the
solemn days of our life together.
| CHAPTER XXX.
DENSDETH'S DARK ROOM. Cecil Dreeme | |