Chapter XI: Book III: Uncle and Niece (1)

XXVI.

THE WHITE POWDER.

It was nine o'clock in the morning, and Hermione stood in the laboratory window overlooking the street. Pale from loss of sleep and exhausted with the fever of anxiety which had consumed her ever since she had despatched her letter to Mr. Etheridge, she looked little able to cope with any disappointment which might be in store for her. But as she leaned there watching for Frank, it was evident from her whole bearing that she was moved by a fearful hope rather than by an overmastering dread; perhaps because she had such confidence in his devotion; perhaps because there was such vitality in her own love.

Her manner was that of one who thinks himself alone, and yet she was not alone. At the other end of the long and dismal apartment glided the sly figure of Huckins. No longer shabby and unkempt, but dressed with a neatness which would have made his sister Cynthia stare in amazement if she could have risen from her grave to see him, he flitted about with noiseless tread, listening to every sigh that escaped from his niece's lips, and marking, though he scarcely glanced her way, each turn of her head and each bend of her body, as if he were fully aware of her reasons for standing there, and the importance of the issues hanging upon the occurrences of the next fifteen minutes.

She may have known of his presence, and she may not. Her preoccupation was great, and her attention fixed not upon anything in the room, but upon the street without. Yet she may have felt the influence of that gliding Evil, moving, snake-like, at her back. If she did she gave no sign, and the moments came and went without any change in her eager attitude or any cessation in the ceaseless movements with which he beguiled his own anxiety and the devilish purposes which were slowly forming themselves in his selfish and wicked mind.

At length she gave a start, and leaned heavily forward. Huckins, who was expecting this proof of sudden interest, paused where he was, and surveyed her with undisguised eagerness in his baleful eyes, while the words "She sees him; he is coming" formed themselves upon his thin and quivering lips, though no sound disturbed the silence, and neither he nor she seemed to breathe.

And he was right. Frank was coming down the street, not gayly and with the buoyant step of a happy lover, but with head sunk upon his breast and eyes lowered to the ground. Will he lift them as he approaches the gate? Will he smile, as in the olden time--the olden time that was yesterday--and raise his hand towards the gate and swing it back and enter with that lightsome air of his at once protecting and joy-inspiring? He looks very serious now, and his steps falter; but surely, surely, his love is not going to fail him at the crisis; surely, surely, he who has overlooked so much will not be daunted by the little more with which she has tried his devotion; surely, surely---- But his eyes do not lift themselves. He is at the gate, but his hand is not raised to it, and the smile does not come. He is going by, not on the other side of the street, but going by, going by, which means----

As the consciousness of what it did mean pierced her heart and soul, Hermione gave a great cry--she never knew how great a cry--and, staring like one demented after the beloved figure that in her disordered sight seemed to shrink and waver as it vanished, sank helpless upon the window sill, with her head falling forward, in a deadly faint.

Huckins, hearing that cry, slowly rubbed his hands together and smiled as the Dark One might smile at the sudden downfall of some doubtful soul. Then he passed softly to the door, and, shutting it carefully, came back and recommenced his restless pacings, but this time with an apparent purpose of investigation, for he opened and shut drawers, not quietly, but with a decided clatter, and peered here and there into bottles and jars, casting, as he did so, ready side-glances at the drooping figure from which the moans of a fatal despair were now slowly breaking.

When those moans became words, he stopped and listened, and this was what he heard come faltering from her lips:

"Twice! twice! Once when I felt myself strong and now when I feel myself weak. It is too much for a proud woman. I cannot bear it."

At this evidence of revolt and discouragement, Huckins' smile grew in its triumph. He seemed to glide nearer to her; yet he did not stir.

She saw nothing. If she had once recognized his presence, he was to her now as one blotted from existence. She was saying over and over to herself: "No hope! no hope! I am cursed! My father's hate reaches higher than my prayers. There is no escape; no love, no light. Solitude is before me; solitude forever. Believing this, I cannot live; indeed I cannot!"

As if this had been the word for which he was waiting, Huckins suddenly straightened up his lean figure and began himself to talk, not as she did, in wild and passionate tones, but in low, abstracted murmurs, as if he were too intent upon a certain discovery he had made to know or care whether there was or was not any one present to overhear his words.

And what did he say? what could he say at a moment like this? Listen and gauge the evil in the man, for it is deep as his avarice and relentless as his purpose to enjoy the riches which he considers his due. He is standing by a cabinet, the cabinet on the left of the room, and his hand is in a long and narrow drawer.

"What is this?" (Mark the surprise in his tone.) "A packet labelled _Poison_? This is a strange thing to find lying about in an open drawer. _Poison!_ I wonder what use brother Cavanagh had for poison?"

He pauses; was it because he had heard a moan or cry break from the spot where Hermione crouched against the wall? No, there was silence there, a deep and awful silence, which ought to have made the flesh creep upon his bones, but which, instead, seemed to add a greater innocence to his musing tones.

"I suppose it was what was left after some old experiment. It is very dangerous stuff. I should not like to drop these few grains of white powder upon my tongue, unless I wanted to be rid of all my troubles. Guess I had better shake the paper out of the window, or those girls will come across it some day, and may see that word Poison and be moved by it. Life in this house hasn't many attractions."

Any sound now from that dim, distant corner? No, silence is there still; deadly silence. He smiles darkly, and speaks again; very low now, but oh, how clearly!

"But what business is it of mine? I find poison in this drawer, and I leave it where I find it, and shut the drawer. It may be wanted for rats, and it is always a mistake for old folks to meddle. But I should like to; I'd like to throw this same innocent-looking white powder out of the window; it makes _me_ afraid to think of it lying shut up here in a drawer so easily opened---- My child! Hermione!" he suddenly shrieked, "what do you want?"

She was standing before him, a white and terrible figure.

"Nothing," came from her set lips, in a low and even tone; but she laid one hand upon the drawer he had half shut and with the other pointed to the door.

He shrank from her, appalled perhaps at his work; perhaps at her recognition of it.

"Don't," he feebly protested, shaking with terror, or was it with a hideous anxiety? "There is poison in that drawer; do not open it."

"Go for my sister," was the imperious command. "I have no use for you here, but for her I have."

"You won't open that drawer," he prayed, as he retreated before her eyes in frightened jerks and breathless pauses.

"I tell you I do not need you," she repeated, her hand still on the drawer, her form rigid, her face blue-white and drawn.

"I--I will bring Emma," he faltered, and shambled across the threshold, throwing back upon her a look she may have noted and may not, but which if she had understood, would certainly have made her pause. "I will go for Emma," he said again, closing the door behind him with a touch which seemed to make even that senseless wood fall away from him. Then he listened--listened instead of going for the gentle sister whose presence might have calmed the turbulent spirit he had just left. And as he listened his face gradually took on a satisfied look, till, at a certain sound from within, he allowed his hands the luxury of a final congratulatory rub, and then gliding from the place, went below.

Emma was standing in the parlor window, fixed in dismay at the sight of Frank's going by without word or look; but Huckins did not stop to give her the message with which he had been entrusted. Instead of that he passed into the kitchen, and not till he had crossed the floor and shambled out into the open air of the garden did he venture to turn and say to the watching Doris:

"I am afraid Miss Hermione is not quite well."

XXVII.

THE HAND OF HUCKINS.

Frank exhausted his courage in passing Hermione's door. When he heard the cry she gave, he stopped for a moment, then rushed hastily on, not knowing whither, and not caring, so long as he never saw the street or the house or the poplars again.

He intended, as much as he intended anything, to take the train for New York, but when he came sufficiently to himself to think of the hour, he found that he was in a wood quite remote from the station, and that both the morning and noon trains had long since passed.

It was not much of a disappointment. He was in that stage of misery in which everything seems blurred, and life and its duties too unreal for contemplation. He did not wish to act or even to think. The great solitude about him was more endurable than the sight of human faces, but I doubt if he would have been other than solitary anywhere, or seen aught but her countenance in any place where he might have been.

And what made this the more torturing to him was the fact that he always saw her with an accusing look on her face. Never with bowed forehead or in an attitude of shame, but with the straightforward aspect of one utterly grieved where she had expected consideration and forbearance. This he knew to be a freak of his fancy, for had he not her words to prove she had merited his condemnation? But fancy or not, it followed him, softening unconsciously his thought of her, though it never for an instant weakened his resolve not to see her again or exchange another word with one whose conscience was laden with so heavy a crime.

The wood in which he found himself wandering skirted the town towards the west, so that when, in the afternoon, hunger and weariness drove him back to the abodes of men, he had but to follow the beaten track which ran through it, to come out at the other end of the village from that by which he had entered.

The place where he emerged was near a dark pool at the base of the hill on which was perched the Baptist church.

As he saw this pool and caught a sight of the steeple towering above him in the summer sky, he felt himself grow suddenly frantic. Here she had stood with Emma, halting between life and death. Here she had been seized by her first temptation, and had been saved from it only to fall into another one immeasurably greater and more damning. Horrible, loathsome pool! why had it not swallowed her? Would it not have been better that it had? He dared to think so, and bent above its dismal depths with a fascination which in another moment made him recoil and dash away in horror towards the open spaces of the high-road.

Edgar had just come in from his round of visits when Frank appeared before him. Having supposed him to be in New York, he uttered a loud exclamation. Whereupon Frank exclaimed:

"I could not go. I seemed to be chained to this place. I have been wandering all day in the woods." And he sank into a chair exhausted, caring little whether Edgar noted or not his weary and dishevelled appearance.

"You look ill," observed the Doctor; "or perhaps you have not eaten; let me get you a cup of coffee."

Frank looked up but made no further sign.

"You will stay with me to-night," suggested Edgar.

"I am chained," repeated Frank, and that was all.

With a look of sincerest compassion the Doctor quietly left the room. He had his own griefs, but he could master them; beside, the angel of hope was already whispering sweet messages to his secret soul. But Frank's trouble was beyond alleviation, and it crushed him as his own had never done, possibly because in this case his pride was powerless to sustain him. When he came back, he found Frank seated at the desk poring over the fatal letter. He had found the key of the drawer lying where he had left it, and, using it under a sudden impulse, had opened the drawer and taken out the sheets he had vowed never to touch again.

Edgar paused when he saw the other's bended head and absorbed air, and though he was both annoyed and perplexed he said nothing, but set down the tray he had brought very near to Frank's elbow.

The young lawyer neither turned nor gave it any attention.

Edgar, with the wonted patience of a physician, sat down and waited for his friend to move. He would not interrupt him, but would simply be in readiness to hand the coffee when Frank turned. But he never handed him that cup of coffee, for suddenly, Frank, with a wild air and eyes fixed in a dazed stare upon the paper, started to his feet, and uttering a cry, began turning over the two or three sheets he was reading, as if he had made some almost incomprehensible discovery.

"Edgar, Edgar," he hurriedly gasped, "read these over for me; I cannot see the words; there is something different here; we have made a mistake! Oh, what has happened! my head is all in a whirl."

He sank back in his chair. Edgar, rushing forward, seized the half dozen sheets offered him and glanced eagerly over them.

"I see no difference," he cried; but as he went on, driven by Frank's expectant eye, he gave a surprised start also, and turning back the pages, read them again and again, crying at last:

"We must have overlooked one of these sheets. We read her letter without this page. What a mischance! for with these words left in it is no longer a confession we have before us, but a narrative. Frank, Frank, we have wronged the girl. She has no crime to bemoan, only a misery to relate."

"Read it aloud," broke from Frank's lips. "Let me hear it from your mouth. How could we have overlooked such a page? Oh, my poor girl! my poor girl!"

Edgar, beginning back a page or two from the one which had before escaped their attention, read as follows. The portion marked by brackets is the one that was new to both their eyes:

"But before the doctor appeared that morning father had called
me for the third and last time to his side.

"'I wish to see my eldest daughter alone,' he declared, as Emma
lingered and Doris hovered about the open door. They at once
went out. 'Now shut the door,' said he, as their footsteps were
heard descending the stairs.

"I did as I was bid, though I felt as if I were shutting myself
in with some horrid doom.

"'Now come in front of me,' he commanded. 'I want to look at
you; I have just five minutes left in which to do it.'

"'Five minutes!' I repeated hoarsely, creeping round with
tottering and yet more tottering steps to where he pointed.

"'Yes; the poison has done its work at last. At eight o'clock I
shall be dead.'

"'Poison!' I shrieked, but in so choked a tone the word sounded
like a smothered whisper.

"But he was alarmed by it for all that.

"'Do not tell the world,' he cried. 'It is enough that you know
it. Are you pleased that you have driven your father to
self-destruction? Will it make your life in this house, in which
you have vowed to remain, any happier? I told you that your sin
should be on your head, and it will be. For, listen to me: now
in this last dreadful hour, I command you, heartless and
disobedient one, to keep that vow. By this awful death, by the
despair which has driven me to it, beware of leaving these
doors. In your anger you swore to remain within these walls; in
your remorse see that you keep that oath. Not for love, not for
hatred, dare to cross the threshold, or I will denounce you in
the grave where I shall be gone, and my curse shall be upon
you.'

"He had risen in his passion as he uttered these words, but he
sank back as he finished, and I thought he was dead.

"Terrified, crushed, I sank upon my knees, having no words with
which to plead for the mercy for which I now longed. The next
minute a horrible groan burst upon my ear.

"'It eats--it burns into my vitals. The suffering has
come,--the suffering which I have often noted with unconcern in
the animals upon which I had tested it. I cannot bear it; I had
rather live. Get me the antidote; there, there in the long,
narrow drawer in the cabinet by the wall! Not there, not there!'
he shrieked, as I stumbled over the floor, which seemed to rise
in waves beneath my feet. 'The other cabinet, the other drawer;
_you are where the poison is_.'

"I halted; weights seemed to be upon my feet; I could not move.
He was writhing in agony on the floor; he no longer seemed to
know where I stood.

{ "'The antidote!' he moaned, 'the antidote!' }
{ I burst the bonds which held me, and leaving open }
{ the drawer which I had half pulled out in my eagerness }
{ to relieve him, I rushed across the room to the }
{ cabinet he had pointed out. }
{ }
{ "'The long drawer,' he murmured, 'the one }
{ like the other. Pull it hard; it is not locked!' }
{ }
{ "I tried to do as he commanded, but my hand }
{ slid helplessly from drawer to drawer. I could }
{ hardly see. He moaned and shrieked again. }
{ }
{ "'The long one, I say, the long one!' }
{ }
{ "As he spoke my hand touched it. }
{ }
{ "'I have it,' I panted forth. }

"'Open it--the drawer,' he cried. 'Bring me what is in it.'

"I reached out my hand; heaven and earth seemed to stand still;
red lights danced before my eyes; I drew out the drawer.

"'Quick, quick, the powder!' he moaned; 'fetch it!'

"I was staring at him, but my hand groped in the drawer. I felt
a little packet of powder; I took it and crossed the room. As
soon as I was near him he stretched out his hand and grasped it.
I saw him empty it into his mouth; at the same instant his eyes
fixed themselves in horror on the drawer I had left open behind
me, the drawer in which the poison was kept.

"'Curse you for a ----' He never said what. With this broken
imprecation upon his lips, he sank back upon the floor, dead."

"God, what a difference!" cried Edgar. But Frank, trembling from head to foot, reached out and took the sheets, and laying them on the desk before him, buried his face in them. When he looked up again, Edgar, for all his own relief, was startled by the change in him.

"Her vindication comes late," said he, "but I will go at once and explain----"

"Wait; let us first understand how we both were led to make such a mistake. Could the leaves have stuck together?"

There were no signs of this having happened. Yet who could say that this was not the real explanation of the whole matter? The most curious feature of the occurrence was that just the missing of that one sheet should have so altered the sense of what they read. They did not know then or ever that this very fact had struck Huckins also in his stolen reading of the same, and that it had been his hand which had abstracted it and then again restored it when he thought the mutilated manuscript had done its work. They never knew this, as I say, but they thought the chance which had occurred to them a very strange one, and tried to lay it to their agitation at the time, or to any cause but the real one.

The riddle proving insolvable, they abandoned it, and Frank again rose. But Edgar drawing his attention to the few additional sheets which he had never read, he sat down again in eagerness to peruse them. Let us read them with him, for in them we shall find the Hermione of to-day, not the angry and imperious woman upon whom her father revenged himself by a death calculated to blot the sun from her skies and happiness from her heart forever.

"When Emma came to the room she discovered me kneeling, rigid
and horror-stricken, above my father's outstretched form. She
says that I met her eyes with mine, but that there was no look
of life within them. Indeed, I was hardly alive, and have no
remembrance of how I was taken from that room or what happened
in the house for hours. When I did rouse, Emma was beside me.
Her look was one of grief but not of horror, and I saw she had
no idea of what had passed between my father and myself during
the last few days. Dr. Dudgeon had told her that our father had
died of heart-disease, and she believed him, and thought my
terror was due to the suddenness of his end and the fact that I
was alone with him at the time.

"She therefore smiled with a certain faint encouragement when I
opened my eyes upon her face, but pushed me back with gentle
hand when I tried to rise, saying:

"'All is well with father, Hermione,--so think only of yourself
just now; I do not think you are able to get up.'

"I was only too happy not to make the effort. If only my eyes
had never opened! If only I had sunk from unconsciousness into
the perfect peace of death! But even that idea made me quake.
_He_ was _there_, and I had such a horror of him, that it seemed
for a moment that I would rather live forever than to encounter
him again, even in a world where the secrets of all hearts lie
open.

"'Did not father forgive you?' murmured Emma, marking perhaps
the expression of my face.

"I smiled a bitter smile.

"'Do not ever let us talk about father,' I prayed. 'He has
condemned me to this house, and that will make me remember him
sufficiently without words.'

"She rose horror-stricken.

"'O Hermione!' she murmured; 'O Hermione!' and hid her face in
her hands and wept.

"But I lay silent, tearless.

"When the funeral procession passed out of the house without
us, the people stared. But no thought of there being anything
back of this seeming disrespect, save the caprice of two very
whimsical girls, seemed to strike the mind of any one. The paper
which had held the antidote I had long ago picked up from the
laboratory floor; while the open drawer with the packet in it
marked _Poison_ had doubtless been shut by Doris on her first
entrance into the room after his death. For I not only found it
closed, but I never heard any one speak of it, or of any
peculiar symptoms attending my father's death.

"But the arrow was in my heart for all that, and for weeks my
life was little more than a nightmare. All the pride which had
upheld me was gone. I felt myself a crushed woman. The pall
which my father had thrown over me in his self-inflicted death,
hung heavy and stifling about me. I breathed, but it seemed to
be in gasps, and when exhausted nature gave way and I slept, it
was to live over again in dreams those last fearful moments of
his life, and hear, with even more distinctness than in my
waking hours, the words of the final curse with which he sank to
the floor.

"I had not deserved it--that I felt; but I suffered all the
same, and suffered all the more that I could take no confidant
into my troubles. Emma, with her broken life, had had
disappointments enough without this revelation of a father's
vindictiveness, and though it might have eased me for the moment
to hear her words of sympathy, I knew that I should find it
harder to face her day by day, if this ghost of horror once rose
between us. No; the anguish was mine, and must be borne by me
alone. So I crushed it down into my heart and was silent.

"Meantime the command which had been laid upon me by my father,
never to leave the house, was weaving a chain about me I soon
found it impossible to break. Had I immediately upon his death
defied his will and rushed frenziedly out of the gate, I might
have grown to feel it easy to walk the streets again in the face
of a curse which should never have been laid upon me. But the
custom of obeying his dying mandate soon got its hold upon me,
and I could not overcome it. At the very thought of crossing the
threshold I would tremble; and though when I looked at Emma
heroically sharing my fate without knowing the reasons for my
persistency, I would dream for a moment of breaking the spell
those dying lips had laid upon me, I always found myself drawing
back in terror, almost as if I had been caught by fleshless
fingers.

"And so the weeks passed and we settled into the monotonous
existence of an uninterrupted seclusion. What had been the
expression of my self-will, became now a species of expiation.
For though I had not deserved the awful burden which had been
imposed upon me of a father's death and curse, I had deserved
punishment, and this I now saw, and this I now endeavored to
meet, with something like the meekness of repentance. I accepted
my doom, and tried not to dwell so much upon my provocations as
upon the temper with which I met them, and the hardness with
which I strove to triumph over my disappointments. And in doing
this I became less hard, preparing my heart, though I did not
know it, for that new seed of love which fate was about to drop
into it.

"Mr. Etheridge, I have told you all my story. If it strikes you
with dismay and you shrink in your noble manhood from a woman
whom, rightfully or wrongfully, is burdened with the weight of a
father's death, do not try to overcome that shrinking or defy
that dismay. We could never be happy if you did. Nothing but
whole-souled love will satisfy me or help me to forget the
shadows that bear so heavily upon my head. You say you love me,
but your emotions upon reading this letter will prove to
yourself what is the true strength and nature of your feelings.
Let them, then, have their honest way. If they are in my favor I
shall be the happiest girl alive, but if they lead you to go by
on the other side of the street, then will I strive to bear this
sorrow also, as one who has been much to blame for the evils
which have befallen her."

That was all. As Frank folded the last sheet and put it and the rest quietly away in his pocket, Edgar saw, or thought he saw, that happier hours were about to dawn for Hermione Cavanagh. It made him think of his own love and of the claims of the gentle Emma.

"Frank," said he, with the effort of a reticent man compelled at last to make an admission, "if you are going to the Cavanaghs, I think--I--will--go--with you."

Frank started and leaped forward warmly with outstretched hand. But before their two palms could meet, the door was violently opened and a messenger came panting in with the announcement:

"Dr. Sellick's wanted. Hermione Cavanagh is at the point of death."

XXVIII.

IN EXTREMITY.

Frank and Edgar were equally pale as they reached the Cavanagh house. No time had been lost on the way, and yet the moments had been long enough for them both to be the prey of the wildest conjectures. The messenger who had brought the startling news of Hermione's illness knew nothing concerning the matter beyond the fact that Doris, their servant, had called to him, as he was passing their house, to run for Dr. Sellick, as Miss Hermione was dying. They were therefore entirely in the dark as to what had happened, and entered the house, upon their arrival, like men for whom some terrible doom might be preparing.

The first person they encountered was Huckins. He was standing in the parlor window, rubbing his hands slowly together and smiling very softly to himself. But when he saw the two young men, he came forward with a cringing bow and an expression of hypocritical grief, which revived all Frank's distrust and antipathy.

"Oh, sir," he exclaimed to Frank, "you here? You should not have come; indeed you should not. Sad case," he added, turning to the Doctor; "very sad case, this which we have upstairs. I fear we are going to lose the dear young lady." And he wiped his half-shut eyes with his fine white handkerchief.

"Let me see her; where is she?" cried the Doctor, not stopping to look around him, though the place must have been full of the most suggestive associations.

"Doris will show you. She was in the laboratory when I saw her last. A dangerous place for a young lady who has been jilted by her lover!" And he turned a very twinkling eye on Frank.

"What do you mean?" cried Frank. "The laboratory! The place where---- O Edgar, go to her, go at once."

But Edgar was already half-way upstairs, at the top of which he was met by Doris.

"What is this?" he cried. "What has happened to Miss Cavanagh?"

"Come and see," she said. "O that she should go out of the house first in this way!"

Alarmed more by the woman's manner than her words, Dr. Sellick hurried forward and entered the open laboratory door almost without realizing that in another instant he would be in the presence of Emma. And when he did see her, and met the eyes he had not looked into since that night a year before when she listened to his vows with such a sweet and bashful timidity, he hardly felt the shock of the change observable in her, for the greater shock her sister's appearance inspired. For Hermione lay on that same old couch which had once held her father, ill to speechlessness, and though the Doctor did not know what had brought her to this condition, he began to suspect and doubt if he were in time to revive her.

"What has she taken?" he demanded. "Something, or she would not be as low as this without more warning."

Emma, quaking, put a little piece of paper in his hand.

"I found this in her pocket," she whispered. "It was only a little while ago. It is quite empty," said she, "or you would have had two patients."

He stared at her, hardly taking in her words. Then he leaped to the door.

"Frank," he cried, tossing down a slip of paper on which he had hastily written a word, "go with this to the druggist at once! Run, for moments are precious!"

They heard a shout in answer; then the noise of the front door opening and shutting, and the sound of rapidly departing steps.

"Thank God!" the young physician murmured, as he came back into the laboratory, "that I studied chemistry with Mr. Cavanagh, or I might not know just what antidote was required here."

"Look!" Emma whispered; "she moved, when you said the word _Frank_."

The Doctor leaned forward and took Emma's hand.

"If we can rouse her enough to make her speak, she will be saved. When did she take that powder?"

"I fear she took it this morning, shortly after--after nine o'clock; but she did not begin to grow seriously ill till an hour ago, when she suddenly threw up her arms and shrieked."

"And didn't you know; didn't you suspect----"

"No, for she said nothing. She only looked haggard and clung to me; clung as if she could not bear to have me move an inch away from her side."

"And how long has she been unconscious and in that clammy, cold sweat?"

"A little while; just before we sent for you. I--I hated to disturb you at first, but life is everything, and----"

He gave her one deep, reassuring look.

"Emma," he softly murmured, "if we save your sister, four hearts shall be happy. See if you can make her stir. Tell her that Frank is here, and wants to see her."

Emma, with a brightening countenance, leaned over and kissed Hermione's marble-like brow.

"Hermione," she cried, "Hermione! Frank wants you; he is tired of waiting. Come, dear; shall I not tell him you will come?"

A quiver at the word _Frank_, but that was all.

"It is Frank, dear; Frank!" Emma persisted. "Rouse up long enough just to see him. He loves you, Hermione."

Not even a quiver now. Dr. Sellick began to turn pale.

"Hermione, will you leave us now, just as you are going to be happy? Listen, listen to Emma. You know I have always told you the truth. Frank is here, ready to love you. Wake, darling; wake, dearest----"

There was no use. No marble could be more unresponsive. Dr. Sellick rushed in anguish to the door. But the step he heard there was that of Huckins, and it was Huckins' face he encountered at the head of the stairs.

"Is she dead?" cried that worthy, bending forward to look into the room. "I was afraid, _very_ much afraid, you could not do any good, when I saw how cold she was, poor dear."

The Doctor, not hearing him, shouted out: "The antidote! the antidote! Why does not Frank come!"

At that instant Frank was heard below: "Am I in time?" he gasped. "Here it is; I ran all the way"; and he came rushing up the stairs just as Huckins slipped from the step where he was and fell against him.

"Oh," whimpered that old hypocrite, "I beg your pardon; I am so agitated!" But his agitation seemed to spring mainly from the fact that the antidote Frank brought was in powder and not in a bottle, which might have been broken in their encounter.

Dr. Sellick, who saw nothing but the packet Frank held, grasped the remedy and dashed back into the room. Frank followed and stood in anguished suspense within the open doorway. Huckins crouched and murmured to himself on the stair.

"Can we get her to take it? Is there hope?" murmured Emma.

No word came in reply; the Doctor was looking fixedly at his patient.

"Frank," he said solemnly, "come and take her hand in yours. Nothing else will ever make her unlock her lips."

Frank, reeling in his misery, entered and fell at her feet.

"Hermione," he endeavored to say, but the word would not come. Breaking into sobs he took her hand and laid his forehead upon it. Would that anguish of the beloved one arouse her? Dr. Sellick and Emma drew near together in their anxiety and watched. Suddenly a murmur escaped from the former, and he bent rapidly forward. The close-locked lips were parting, parting so slowly, so imperceptibly, that only a physician's eye could see it. Waiting till they were opened enough to show the pearly teeth, he stooped and whispered in Frank's ear. Instantly the almost overwhelmed lover, roused, saw this evidence of existing life, and in his frenzied relief imprinted one wild kiss upon the hand he held. It seemed to move her, to reach her heart, to stay the soul just hovering on the confines of life, for the lips parted further, the lids of the eyes trembled, and before the reaction came, Dr. Sellick had succeeded in giving her a few grains of the impalpable powder he was holding.

"It will either kill or restore her," said he. "In five minutes we shall know the result."

And when at the end of those five minutes they heard a soft sigh, they never thought, in their sudden joy and relief, to look for the sneaking figure trembling on the staircase, who, at this first sign of reviving life in one he thought dead, slid from his station and went creeping down the stairs, with baffled looks that would have frightened even Doris had she seen them.

XXIX.

IN THE POPLAR WALK.

Two days had passed. Hermione was sitting in the cheerful sitting-room with the choicest of flowers about her and the breeze from the open window fluttering gayly in her locks. She was weak yet, but there was promise of life in her slowly brightening eye, and from the language of the smile which now and then disturbed the lines of her proud lips, there was hope of happiness in the heart which but two short days before had turned from life in despair.

Yet it was not a perfect hope, or the smiles would have been deeper and more frequent. She had held a long talk with Frank, but he had not touched upon a certain vital question, perhaps because he felt she had not yet the strength to argue it. He was her lover and anticipated marrying her, but he had not said whether he expected her to disobey her father and leave her home. She felt that he must expect this; she also felt that he had the right to do so; but when she thought of yielding to his wishes, the old horror returned to her, and a suffocating feeling of fear, as if it would never be allowed. The dead have such a hold upon us. As the pleasure of living and the ecstasy of love began to make themselves felt again in her weakened frame, she could not refrain from asking herself by what right she contemplated taking up the joys of life, who had not only forfeited them by her attempt at suicide, but who had been cursed by a father and doomed by his will to perpetual imprisonment. Had he not said, "Let not hatred, let not _love_, lead you to leave these doors"? How then presume to think of it or dream that she could be happy with such remembrances as hers ever springing up to blight her life? She wished, oh! how she wished, that Frank would not ask her to leave her home. Yet she knew this was weakness, and that soon, at the next interview, perhaps, she would have to dash his hopes by speaking of her fears. And so Hermione was not perfectly happy.

Emma, on the contrary, was like a bird loosed from a cage. She sang, yes, sang as she flitted up and down the stairs, and once Hermione started and blushed with surprise as her voice in a merry peal of laughter came from the garden. Such a sound had not been heard in that house for a year; such a sound seemed an anomaly there. Yet how sweet it was, and how it seemed to lift the shadows.

There was another person who started as this unusual note of merriment disturbed the silence of the garden. It was Huckins, who was slowly walking up and down beneath the poplars. He was waiting for Doris, and this sound went through him like an arrow.

"Laughter," he muttered, shaking his trembling hands in menace towards her. "That is a sound I must crush. It speaks too much of hope, and hope means the loss to me of all for which I have schemed for years. Why didn't that poison work? Why did I let that doctor come? I might have locked the door against him and left them to hunt for the key. But I was afraid; that Etheridge is so ready to suspect me."

He turned and walked away from the house. He dreaded to hear that silvery sound again.

"If she had died, as I had every reason to suspect after such a dose, Emma would have followed her in a day. And then who could have kept me out of my property? Not Etheridge, for all his hatred and suspicion of me." He shook his hand again in menace and moved farther down the path.

As his small black figure disappeared up the walk Doris appeared at the kitchen door. She also looked cheerful, yet there was a shade of anxiety in her expression as she glanced up the walk.

"He says he is going away," she murmured. "The shock of Miss Hermione's illness was too much for him, poor man! and he does not seem to consider how lonesome I will be. If only he had asked me to go with him! But then I could not have left the young ladies; not while they stick to this old horror of a house. What is it, Miss Emma?"

"A four-leaved clover! one, two, _three_ of them," cried her young mistress from the lawn at the side of the house. "We are in luck! Times are going to change for us all, I think."

"The best luck we can have is to quit this house forever," answered Doris, with a boldness unusual on her lips.

"Ah," returned Emma, with her spirits a little dashed, "I cannot say about that, but we will try and be happy in it."

"Happy in it!" repeated Doris, but this time to herself. "I can never be happy in it, now I have had my dreams of pleasure abroad." And she left the kitchen door and began her slow walk towards the end of the garden.

Arrived at the place where Huckins waited for her, she stopped.

"Good afternoon," said she. "Pleasant strolling under these poplars."

He grunted and shook his head slowly to and fro.

"Nothing is very pleasant here," said he. "I have stood it as long as I can. My nieces are good girls, but I have failed to make them see reason, and I must leave it now to these two lovers of theirs to do what they can."

"And do you think they will succeed? That the young ladies will be influenced by them to break up their old habits?"

This was what Huckins did think, and what was driving him to extremity, but he veiled his real feelings very successfully under a doleful shake of the head.

"I do not know," said he. "I fear not. The Cavanagh blood is very obstinate, very obstinate indeed."

"Do you mean," cried Doris, "that they won't leave the house to be married? That they will go on living here in spite of these two young gentlemen who seem to be so fond of them?"

"I do," said he, with every appearance of truth. "I don't think anything but fire will ever drive them out of this house."

It was quietly said, almost mournfully, but it caused Doris to give a sudden start. Looking at him intently, she repeated "Fire?" and seemed to quake at the word, even while she rolled it like a sweet morsel under her tongue.

He nodded, but did not further press the subject. He had caught her look from the corner of his eye, and did not think it worth while to change his attitude of innocence.

"I wish," he insinuated, "there was another marriage which could take place."

"Another marriage?" she simpered.

"I have too much money for one to spend," said he. "I wish I knew of a good woman to share it."

Doris, before whose eyes the most dazzling dreams of wealth and consequence at once flashed, drooped her stout figure and endeavored to look languishing.

"If it were not for my duty to the young ladies," sighed she.

"Yes, yes," said he, "you must never leave them."

She turned, she twisted, she tortured her hands in her endeavor to keep down the evidences of her desire and her anxiety.

"If--if this house should be blown down in a storm or--or a fire should consume it as you say, they would have to go elsewhere, have to marry these young men, have to be happy in spite of themselves."

"But what cyclones ever come here?" he asked, with his mockery of a smile. "Or where could a fire spring from in a house guarded by a Doris?"

She was trembling so she could not answer. "Come out here again at six o'clock," said she; "they will miss me if I stay too long now. Oh, sir, how I wish I could see those two poor loves happy again!"

"How I wish you could!" said he, and there was nothing in his tone for her ears but benevolence.

As Huckins crept from the garden-gate he ran against Frank, who was on his way to the station.

"Oh, sir," he exclaimed, cringing, "I am sure I beg your pardon. Going up to town, eh?"

"Yes, and I advise you to do the same," quoth the other, turning upon him sharply. "The Misses Cavanagh are not well enough at present to entertain visitors."

"You are no doubt right," returned Huckins with his meekest and most treacherous aspect. "It is odd now, isn't it, but I was just going to say that it was time I left them, much as I love the poor dears. They seem so happy now, and their prospects are so bright, eh?"

"I hope so; they have had trouble enough."

"Um, um, they will go to Flatbush, I suppose, and I--poor old outcast that I am--may rub my hands in poverty."

He looked so cringing, and yet so saturnine, that Frank was tempted to turn on his heel and leave him with his innuendoes unanswered. But his better spirit prevailing, he said, after a moment's pregnant silence:

"Yes; the young ladies will go to Flatbush, and the extent of the poverty you endure will depend upon your good behavior. I do not think either of your nieces would wish to see you starve."

"No, no, poor dears, they are very kind, and the least I can do is to leave them. Old age and misery are not fit companions for youth and hope, are they, Mr. Etheridge?"

"I have already intimated what I thought about that."

"So you have, so you have. You are such a lawyer, Mr. Etheridge, such an admirable lawyer!"

Frank, disgusted, attempted to walk on, but Huckins followed close after him.

"You do not like me," he said. "You think because I was violent once that I envy these sweet girls their rights. But you don't know me, Mr. Etheridge; you don't know my good heart. Since I have seen them I have felt very willing to give up my claims, they are such nice girls, and will be so kind to their poor old uncle."

Frank gave him a look as much as to say he would see about that, but he said nothing beyond a short "What train do you take?"

As Huckins had not thought seriously of taking any, he faltered for a moment and then blurted out:

"I shall get off at eight. I must say good-by to the young ladies, you know."

Frank, who did not recognize this _must_, looked at his watch and said:

"You have just a half hour to get the train with me; you had better take it."

Huckins, a little startled, looked doubtfully at the lawyer and hesitated. He did not wish to arouse his antagonism or to add to his suspicion; indeed it was necessary to allay both. He therefore, after a moment of silent contemplation of the severe and inscrutable face before him, broke into a short wheedling laugh, and saying, "I had no idea my company was so agreeable," promised to make what haste he could and catch the six o'clock train if possible.

But of course it was not possible. He had his second interview with Doris to hold, and after that was over there were the young ladies to see and impress with the disinterested state of his feelings. So that it was eight o'clock before he was ready to leave the town. But he did leave it at that hour, though it must have been with some intention of returning, or why did he carry away with him the key of the side-door of the old Cavanagh mansion?

XXX.

THE FINAL TERROR.

A week went by and Frank returned to Marston full of hope and definite intention. He had notified the Surrogate of the discovery of the real heirs to the Wakeham estate, and he had engaged workmen to put in order the old house in Flatbush against the arrival of the youthful claimants. All that there now remained to do was to induce the young ladies to leave the accursed walls within which they had so long immured themselves.

Edgar was awaiting him at the station, and together they walked up the street.

"Is it all right?" asked Frank. "Have you seen them daily?"

"Every day but to-day. You would hardly know Emma."

"And--and Hermione?"

"She shows her feelings less, but she is evidently happier than she has been for a year."

"And her health?"

"Is completely re-established."

"Have you kept your word? Have you talked of everything but what we propose to do?"

"I never break my word."

"And they? Have they said anything about leaving the house, or of going to Flatbush, or--or----"

"No; they have preserved as close a silence as ourselves. I imagine they do not think it proper to speak till we have spoken first."

"It may be; but I should have been pleased if you could have told me that Hermione had been seen walking outside the gate."

"You would?"

"Yes. I dread the struggle which I now see before me. It is the first step which costs, and I was in hopes she would have taken this in my absence."

"Yes, it would have prevented argument. But perhaps you will not have to argue. She may be merely waiting for the support of your arm."

"Whatever she is waiting for, she takes her first step down the street to-night. What a new world it will open before her!" And Frank unconsciously quickened his pace.

Edgar followed with a less impatient step but with fully as much determination. Pride was mingled with his love, and pride demanded that his future wife should not be held in any bonds forged by the obstinacy or the superstitious fears of a wayward sister.

They expected to see the girls at the windows, but they found the shutters closed and the curtains drawn. Indeed, the whole house had a funereal look which staggered Frank and made even Edgar stare in astonishment. "It was not like this yesterday," he declared. "Do they not expect you?"

"Yes, if my telegram was delivered."

"Let us see at once what is the matter."

It was Doris who came to the door. When her eyes fell upon the two young men, especially upon Frank, her whole countenance changed.

"Oh, Mr. Etheridge, is it you?" she cried. "I thought--I understood----" She did not say what, but her relieved manner made quite an impression on Frank, although it was, of course, impossible for him to suspect what a dangerous deed she had been contemplating at that very moment.

"Are the young ladies well?" he asked, in his haste to be relieved from his anxiety.