The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret

But there was one thing that was palpable to all who saw her off the stage and divested of the trickery of paint and cosmetics. La Reine Blanche was fading like the frailest summer flower. The lily bloomed on her cheek instead of the rose.

Under her large, blue eyes lay purple shadows, darker and deeper than those cast by the drooping lashes. A look of patient suffering crept about the corners of her lips and hid in her eyes. Her smiles were sadder and more pathetic than sighs, her form grew slighter and more ethereal in its perfect grace, her step lost its lightness and elasticity. Some said that the beautiful actress was dying of a broken heart, others said that she was falling into a consumption.

She heard these things and made no outward sign, but inwardly she said to herself:

"They are both right and wrong. I am dying because I have nothing left to live for. I have toiled and hoped for years. I have studied and practiced to get money to carry me over the wide world in search of the one true heart that was mine only, and now that I have found it I have had to give it away. I cannot endure it; I am not strong enough. There is nothing left me but to die!"

She thought of some sorrowful lines she had somewhere read and mournfully repeated them:

"Much must be borne which is hard to bear,Much given away which it were sweet to keep.God helps us all! who need indeed His care;And yet I know the Shepherd loves His sheep."

Those flying rumors and reports only served to make Madame De Lisle more popular. She was the rage. She played to densely packed houses every night.

Flowers rained upon her. The costliest gifts of jewels and rare bric-a-brac were sent to her from such unknown sources that she could neither refuse nor send them back as she would otherwise have done. There was always a great throng of people waiting to see her step into the carriage every night.

But in all that throng La Reine Blanche never saw but one face. There was one man who always held the same position beside her carriage door. He never spoke to her, he never touched her, but stood there patiently every night, thrilled to the depths of his soul if the hem of her perfumed robe but brushed him in passing.

Some weird fascination utterly beyond her power of resistance always impelled her to meet his glance, and the fire in his beautiful, dark eyes; the passionate love, the terrible pain, the bitter reproach were killing her slowly but surely.

And Lawrence Ernscliffe was going mad. He had no life, no thought, no hope outside the beautiful woman whom he had claimed for his wife, and who had so coldly denied him.

He haunted her like her own shadow. Go where she would she saw him, look where she would she met only the eyes of the man she loved and to whom she belonged by the dearest tie on earth.

He forgot Sydney utterly, or if he ever remembered her it was only with scorn. Her terrible sin had placed her beyond the pale of his tenderness forever. No reasoning, no sophistry could have convinced him that the beautiful actress was not his own wife whom he had lost in the very moment that made her his bride.

He could not have explained himself. He did not understand at all the mysterious chance which had brought it about, yet he knew in his own heart that the woman whom he had seen in her coffin once had been restored to life again, and that the only bar to their happiness now was Sydney, whom he had married through a simple impulse of pity.

CHAPTER XXX

It was the last night of Madame De Lisle's engagement. She would make her final appearance before the world in the beautiful tragedy of "King Lear." To-morrow she would retire to the conventional cloister forever.

The theater was so densely packed that there was scarcely standing-room on this her farewell night.

Lord Valentine and his wife and mother-in-law were in his box from which they had scarcely missed a night of the three weeks.

Besides Mrs. Lyle's passionate love of the drama there was a subtle fascination in Madame De Lisle's strange resemblance to her youngest daughter that impelled her thither every night to gaze upon her with eyes that never wearied in looking on her loveliness. She could not have told why it was, but she was vaguely conscious of a troubled tenderness about her heart whenever she looked at the fair young creature and heard the talk of her going into a convent.

"She makes me think of poor Queenie," she whispered to Georgina that night. "I cannot help feeling sorry for her, she is so like what she was."

"The resemblance is startling, indeed," Lady Valentine whispered back, "but don't let Sydney hear you, mamma. She does not like to hear about it."

Sydney made no sign, but she knew very well what they were talking of.

She came to the theater every night, though she hated to be there. Jealousy drove her to look on her rival's face every night that she might also watch her husband.

Poor Sydney! She sat there pale and haggard, and wretched in her white satin and diamonds, looking with jealous, suspicious eyes at the beautiful and gentle "Cordelia," hating her for the fairness that Lawrence Ernscliffe loved.

Queenie's sacrifice, made at so costly a price to herself, had utterly failed to purchase her sister's happiness.

Captain Ernscliffe had a seat in another part of the house where Sydney could watch his every movement. Her heart swelled with bitter pain and passionate anger as she looked at him. He did not even seem to know that she was there. His dark, melancholy eyes never once moved from the graceful form of the unhappy "Cordelia" as she acted her part on the stage. When the curtain fell he dropped his eyes and never looked up again until his beautiful idol reappeared.

La Reine Blanche had never acted better. She gave her whole attention to her part. She did not seem to see that one pair of eyes had watched her with such wild entreaty and passionate love in their beautiful depths.

There was one box at which she never looked but once, and it was when, in obedience to her husband's command, "Bid farewell to your sisters," she slowly repeated:

"'Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyesCordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;And, like a sister, am most loth to callYour faults as they are named. Love well our father:To your professed bosoms I commit him;But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,I would prefer him to a better place.So farewell to you both.'"

Everyone in the house saw her brilliant eyes fixed on Lord Valentine's box as she repeated those words, but perhaps no one but the actress herself saw that Sydney's eyes drooped in shame and confusion, while a scarlet blush stained her cheek.

Ah, she, and no other, comprehended the bitter meaning of Queenie's words as she fixed her blue eyes mournfully on the sister who had wronged her so deeply.

"This is her last night," Sydney murmured to herself, "but is it true that she will go into a convent? I must see her, I must know the truth for certain. I will go round to her dressing-room and ask her."

When the act was over she complained of sickness and asked Lord Valentine to take her down to the carriage.

Lord Valentine complied and left her sitting in the carriage, the coachman mounting to his box.

But in a moment, before the two prancing horses had started, Sydney slipped out of the carriage so noiselessly that the man drove on never dreaming but that she was shut up within.

Then she ran round breathlessly to the private entrance of the theater. She told the man who kept the door that she had an engagement with Madame De Lisle and desired him to show her to that lady's dressing-room.

Two minutes later she found herself alone in the small apartment where the actress changed her costumes for the different acts and scenes.

Queenie had not yet come in. The manager had detained her a few minutes and Sydney had time to draw breath and look about her while she waited for her sister.

There was not much to see. The room was dingy and sparely furnished, as the dressing-room of a theater is apt to be.

Costumes were laid over the backs of chairs, and the maid who should have been guarding them was "off duty," gossiping, no doubt, with some humble attache of the place. There was little to interest one, and Sydney grew impatient.

Suddenly she saw a letter lying carelessly on the toilet table. She took it up and looked at it.

It was addressed to Madame De Lisle, and had never been unsealed.

"It has been left here during the first act, and Queenie has never seen it," she said to herself. "It looks like my husband's writing. I will see what he has to say to her."

Recklessly, desperately, she tore it open, and drew out the sheet of note paper.

"My Darling," it said simply, "meet me at the western door after the first act is over. I must see you a moment."

No name was signed to the mysterious note, but Sydney felt sure that it was her husband's writing.

"Queenie has deceived me," she said to herself, angrily. "She is in collusion with Lawrence. I might have known she would play me false!"

She looked about her hurriedly. A long, black silk circular, lined with fur, hung over a chair. She put it on over her white dress, caught up a thick veil, winding it about her head and face, and hurried out to the retired western door.

Outside in the darkness stood a tall, muffled form.

"Queenie, is it you?" he said in unfamiliar tones.

In a moment she realized her mistake. It was not her husband, but in the hope of unearthing some fatal mystery, she said softly:

"Yes, it is Queenie."

These words sealed her doom. The man sprang forward and caught her by the arm.

Something bright and slender gleamed an instant in his upraised hand and then was sheathed in her heart.

As her terrible scream of agony divided the shuddering air, he turned and fled from the scene of his crime.

But poor Sydney, the victim of her own misguided passion lay there dying, with the deadly steel of the assassin sheathed in her jealous breast.

CHAPTER XXXI

That wild and piercing cry penetrated to many ears. The manager and the actress heard it where they stood conversing together, and though Queenie did not know that it was Sydney's voice, still she grew pale as death, and an indefinable fear crept coldly around her heart. The manager put her into a chair, for he saw that she could not stand.

"Stay here until I return," he said, "I will go and see what has happened."

He hurried round to the western door from which the sound had seemed to proceed.

A little knot of theater attaches had preceded him. They were gathered round the prostrate form, and one had unwound the shrouding veil from her pale face and exposed it to the air and light. Her dark eyes were staring upward with a look of pain and horror in their starry depths, her face was ashen white, her lips quivered with faint, anguished moans, and her white, jeweled hands worked convulsively at the hilt of the dagger whose deadly blade was buried in her breast.

She looked up at the manager as he bent over her. A gleam of recognition came into her eyes.

"I am dying," she said, in a faint, gasping voice. "Let someone go into the theater and bring Captain Ernscliffe! Don't let anyone else know I am here! Queenie—I mean—Madame De Lisle—must not know! Let the play go on."

At that moment they brought a physician, summoned in haste from his seat in the theater. He knelt down and tried to draw the dagger from her breast, but desisted in a moment and shook his head ominously.

"Tell me the truth," she moaned. "How many minutes have I to live?"

The physician looked down at her with a grave pity in his kindly eyes.

"Only as long as the dagger remains in the wound," he answered, gently. "When that is removed you will bleed to death in a minute."

She clasped both hands around the murderous steel as if to drive it deeper into her heart.

"Let it remain there, then," she gasped, "I have something to say before—I go hence!"

"Great Heaven! who has done this?" exclaimed a shocked voice.

They all looked around. It was Captain Ernscliffe who spoke. He knelt down by his wife and looked at the murderous dagger whose hilt she grasped, with eyes full of horror. The pain in her face softened. She put out one hand to him, and he clasped it in his own.

"Lawrence—I have been—cruelly murdered!" she moaned. "Let someone take my dying deposition."

The manager hurriedly produced pencil and paper.

"I went into Madame De Lisle's dressing-room," she began. "She had not come in, and I waited a little while, wishing to speak to her. Have you put that down?"

The manager replied in the affirmative.

"I saw a sealed letter lying on the table," she went on slowly and painfully; "I was jealous of Madame De Lisle, to whom it was addressed. I thought my husband had written it. I opened it—I—read it."

The physician stopped her a minute to pour a few drops of something between her panting lips. Then she went on:

"It was only a line imploring her to meet him for a moment at the western door. No name was signed, but I was foolish enough to believe it was—my husband."

Her dark eyes lifted to his a moment with a mute appeal for forgiveness in their dusky depths. He pressed her hand and murmured:

"My poor Sydney!"

She lay still a moment while great drops of dew beaded her white brow, forced out by her terrible suffering.

"Can we do nothing to help her?" Captain Ernscliffe inquired anxiously, as he pillowed the dark head gently on his arm.

The physician shook his head gravely.

"No—nothing," Sydney answered him herself. "Only stay by me—till the last. Let me finish my story."

Captain Ernscliffe wiped the cold dews of death from her brow and she continued:

"I took Madame De Lisle's cloak and put it over my dress, I tied her veil about my head and face, and—and—went to the western door—myself! Oh! God, this dagger, how it hurts my side!"

A few moans of terrible agony, then she went on, gaspingly:

"There was a tall, dark man outside the door—he said: 'Is it you, Queenie?' Then I saw my mistake—it was not my husband! But I—thought—I might learn—some fatal secret of hers—so I answered yes."

She shuddered from head to foot and a groan of mortal agony broke from her white lips.

"That falsehood sealed my doom! He sprang forward without a word, buried this dagger in my breast, and fled. It was Madame De Lisle's enemy. I know now. I received in my heart the stroke that was meant for hers."

She paused, then repressing a groan of pain, said feebly:

"Have you written it all down?"

"Yes, madam," the manager answered.

"Very well. I want you all to go away now—I want to be alone—with my husband. Don't let anyone else know I am here. The play must not be stopped. Let him be all mine a little longer!"

They turned away in wonder at her strange words, and left her lying there supported on her husband's arm—the beautiful woman with the diamonds in her dark hair, and the dagger's hilt above her heart, her white hand grasping it convulsively while she panted forth to him her strange story in the briefest words she could find, for her strength was ebbing fast, and her pain was becoming almost unendurable.

The manager went back to the actress and told her some plausible tale to allay her fears, and, as Sydney had wished, "the play went on." The foolish, fond old "Lear" ranted and raved his little hour, the cruel sisters of "Cordelia"—even poor "Cordelia" herself—all died their mimic deaths upon the stage—little dreaming that a tragedy in real life had been enacted so close and so near, and that poor, erring Sydney lay dead beneath the same roof where the vast throng of people wept and applauded at the superb rendition of Shakespeare's grand creation, "King Lear."

Yet so it was, for when Sydney had faltered out her mournful story, she looked up at Captain Ernscliffe and said with a quivering sigh:

"I have done now, Lawrence, and the pain is so great I cannot bear it any longer! Will you draw the dagger from my wound and let me die?"

But he shrank back aghast at her words.

"Oh, Sydney, don't ask me! Will you not see them all first, and say good-bye—your mother, your sisters?'

"No, no, I want—none—but you," she moaned, "and, oh, my God, how terrible the pain is! Yet, Lawrence—I will stay yet a little longer—I will try to bear it still, if you will kneel down there and pray for me! I am such a sinner, I am almost afraid to die!"

"Do you repent, Sydney?" he asked, gently.

"Do I?" she wailed; "oh, my God, yes! I am sorry for it all, now! Tell her I tried to make atonement at the last. She will forgive me. Little Queenie was always very tender-hearted. Pray for me now—ask God to forgive me, too."

He bowed his head and prayed fervently for the welfare of the soul about to be launched upon the shoreless waters of eternity.

When the low "amen" vibrated on the night air, she looked up and said moaningly:

"Have you forgiven me, too, Lawrence?"

He bent and kissed the poor, pale, quivering lips.

"All is forgiven, Sydney," he answered, gently.

"Then call the physician," she moaned. "Let him draw this cruel steel from—my breast! I cannot—bear it—any longer!"

But the physician recoiled as Captain Ernscliffe had done when she told him what she wished him to do.

"I should feel like a murderer," he gasped. "You could not live a minute after the blade was drawn out of your breast."

She turned away from him and put out her hand to the man she loved so madly.

"Farewell, Lawrence," she said. "Think of me sometimes as of one who—loved you—'not wisely, but too well!'"

Then, before they even guessed what she was about to do, she clasped both hands about the dagger's hilt, and with a terrible effort wrenched it from her breast and threw it far from her. Her heart's blood spurted out in a great, warm, crimson tide over the bodice of her white satin dress, she quivered from head to foot, and died with her dim eyes fixed in a long, last look of love on Lawrence Ernscliffe's handsome face.

When the play was over, and the beautiful actress was leaving the theater for the last time, someone touched her arm and detained her. She looked up into the pale face of Captain Ernscliffe.

"Nay, Queenie," he said gently, "you need not shrink from me now. Sydney has confessed all."

She looked up at him in wonder as he drew her hand lovingly within his arm.

"She has given you up to me, and you know all?" she repeated, like one dazed.

"Yes, Queenie, I know all, and I am yours alone now, for—prepare yourself for a great shock, my darling—your sister, Sydney, is dead!"

CHAPTER XXXII

"Dead!" exclaimed Queenie, with a start of horror; "oh, no, that cannot be! It is but a little while since I saw her living and beautiful under this roof!"

"Her body is here still, Queenie, but her soul has fled to the God who gave it," he answered solemnly.

She trembled like a leaf in a storm at that grave assurance.

"Queenie, let me take you back to your dressing-room," he said. "Stay there a little while until I come for you."

Utterly unnerved by the shock of his revelation, she suffered him to lead her back. He left her at the door of her room and went out to seek Lord Valentine.

He had just put his wife and mother-in-law into the carriage, and stood talking with the driver on the pavement.

"Yes sir," the man was saying, "you know you brought her out and put her into the carriage yourself, and I jumped up on the box and drove right off. But when I got to Valentine House, my lord, the carriage was empty. Yet I could swear to you, my lord, that the carriage was never stopped an instant between here and home."

"Come with me, my lord," said Captain Ernscliffe, in a whisper, as he touched his arm, "I will explain the mystery."

"Very well. Let the carriage wait until I return," he said to the man as he walked away with his brother-in-law.

Captain Ernscliffe led him back into the theater where Sydney lay still and cold in death, watched by the manager and several of the theater employes. They had lifted the body and laid it on a pile of silken cushions, to remain until it had been viewed by the coroner, who had been immediately notified of the terrible event.

At a whispered request the manager gave the paper containing the dying deposition of Sydney into Ernscliffe's hands, and he in turn passed it over to Lord Valentine.

"Great Heaven! this is terrible," he exclaimed, looking down at the rigid form of his sister-in-law. "What is to be done? Who will break the news to her mother and sister?"

They walked apart, and Captain Ernscliffe briefly told him the truth—that Madame Reine De Lisle was his lost wife, Queenie, and that Sydney's knowledge of that fact had maddened her with suspicion and jealousy, and driven her into the fatal error that had cost her her life.

"It is too wonderful to be true," said Lord Valentine. "I cannot believe that the woman I saw lying dead in her coffin has been so strangely resurrected. Surely, Ernscliffe, this beautiful actress has but traded on her wonderful resemblance to your lost bride, and deceived you and Sydney both. Have nothing to do with this beautiful siren."

Captain Ernscliffe looked at him half angrily.

"My Lord Valentine," he answered haughtily, "you charge her with that of which she is not guilty. She has not deceived us. She did not seek us; we sought her, and as long as Sydney lived she evaded the truth and would not acknowledge her identity to me, because my second wife had begged her to sacrifice herself for her sake. But come with me. Since you doubt her identity let us see if she will recognize you. If you appear as a stranger to her we may then afford to doubt her."

They went to Queenie's dressing-room and knocked on the door. She opened it and bade them enter in a faltering voice, with her cheeks bathed in tears, her blue eyes downcast and troubled.

"Queenie, look up," said Captain Ernscliffe. "Do you recognize this gentleman?"

The actress lifted her lovely eyes, dimmed with bitter weeping and looked at him. A gleam of recognition shone in her face.

"Yes," she answered, in her sweet, low voice. "It is Lord Valentine, who was married to my sister Georgina the night you married me."

Captain Ernscliffe flashed a triumphant look upon his brother-in-law.

"You see she knows all about us," he said. "Now you cannot but admit her identity. You must believe that she is my wife!"

Lord Valentine grew white and red by turns as he gazed upon the beautiful, queenly woman.

"I admit madam's wonderful beauty, her grace and her talent," he said, slowly, "and I will not deny her astonishing resemblance to your lost bride; but, Ernscliffe, I will not believe this trumped-up story of poor Queenie's resurrection. You are the victim of a monstrous fraud!"

Captain Ernscliffe's eyes blazed with anger.

"You deny that this is my wife?" he exclaimed, passionately.

Lord Valentine was silent a moment. After that brief pause for thought he answered, firmly:

"Yes, I utterly deny it. I will not believe in so stupendous a fraud as this one which is being perpetrated upon you. Madame De Lisle is a beautiful woman, and a great actress; but she is not the wife you buried years ago in Rose Hill Cemetery."

Queenie lifted her head and looked at him proudly, but she did not speak one word in her own defense. She did not need to do so. She had an eloquent defender by her side.

"Since you think thus," said Captain Ernscliffe, repressing his anger and excitement by a powerful effort of his will, "pray go to your wife and break the news of Sydney's tragic death to her and her mother. You may tell them also all that I have told you, and we will see if they will decide as you have done."

Lord Valentine bowed coldly and went away.

Captain Ernscliffe turned to the beautiful woman, who had fallen into a seat and buried her face in her jeweled hands.

"Queenie," he murmured.

She looked up at his inquiringly.

"Can you bear to hear the circumstances of your poor sister's death?" he asked, gently.

She bowed without speaking.

For answer he put into her hand Sydney's dying deposition, which Lord Valentine had returned to him.