Chapter XXX: A Ghostly Laugh

Miss Drusilla was so angry with Lucy for blurting out the truth to Nina that she drove her out of the room.

“You have killed the poor child with your long tongue!” she exclaimed.

Lucy sobbed and protested that she had not wished to hurt her darling Miss Nina, but Miss Strangemore sent her out with the others, and followed them a minute after with a grave, portentous face.

“Mind,” she said, shaking her long, slim finger at the staring frightened group, “not a word of what has happened outside this house! Listen to me, all of you women, and Jack there, too. I do not want any of you to open your lips to any one on the subject of Mrs. Strangemore’s return. No one outside this house must know that your young mistress is alive and that she has come back to Selwyn Heights. Her presence here must be kept perfectly secret. I know that this silence will be hard upon you, for women have long tongues, but it is necessary to the safety of your mistress that you keep her secret.”

“I’d have my right arm cut off before I’d tell,” exclaimed Jack the boy of all work, loyally, for he worshiped the beautiful young mistress who was always kind and pleasant to him.

“And I, and I”--came the quick response from all, and though Miss Strangemore had small faith in humanity in general she believed in the promises of these simple, humble servants. She knew that each one worshiped their gentle, indulgent, young mistress.

“Very well,” she said, “I am glad to see that you are all disposed to obey orders, and if you all keep your word I will see that you each receive a nice present for doing your duty. Now go back to your beds and don’t stand gaping in the halls, gossiping, and looking for Mrs. St. Alban’s ghost. She does not walk at all. It was only Nina’s and Kitty’s fancy. Dead people don’t come back to earth, for if they get to heaven they don’t want to return, and if the devil gets ’em he won’t let ’em, and I am pretty sure he got Sibyl St. Alban!”

And leaving her startled hearers, shivering and gaping in a huddled-together group, the stern female returned to the room where she had left Kitty applying restoratives to her mistress.

But none of her remedies had taken effect as yet. Nina still lay upon the floor, her beautiful, rigid face upturned to the light with no more signs of life upon it than if she had been a corpse. Kitty was silently weeping over her.

“Oh, Miss Drusilla, I can’t bring her to. She is dead, surely,” she sobbed. “She was weak and faint. She told me that she had been ill a long time, and so she could not bear the shock of Lucy’s words. They have killed her, my poor young mistress.”

“No, Kitty, I do not believe that she is dead. She is in a deep swoon, that is all. But we must do the best we can for her ourselves. We cannot call a doctor. You understand me, Kitty?” said Miss Drusilla, and in the dim light they looked at each other across the lifeless body with awed eyes.

“You mean”--Kitty said, with a shudder.

“That the horrible malice, the dying falsehoods of Sibyl St. Alban have ruined Nina’s life. Oh, what a wicked woman she must have been to die with a lie upon her lips to gratify her jealous malice! If it were known that Nina were alive, that she had come home to Selwyn Heights, she would be arrested for murder!”

Was it only their fancy, or did a low laugh of horrible, unearthly, exultant malice echo through and through the room, seeming to come from the other side of the door? Kitty was a devout Catholic. She crossed herself when she heard it.

“The saints preserve us!” she cried. “Did you hear the ghost laughing, Miss Drusilla?”

“Kitty, you’re a fool! ’Twas nothing but the wind in the gables,” the lady cried, sharply, but she went quickly to the door and threw it wide open.

“There’s nothing there,” she said, triumphantly, and Kitty did not know that she was shuddering in spite of her pretended bravado, and that that eerie, mocking laugh still rang in her ears. “Mind,” she continued, sharply, “don’t you tell the servants you fancied you heard something. They’ll be leaving the house in a body if you tell them any more ghost tales.”

“I’ll not breathe a word to them, ma’am,” answered trembling, frightened Kitty.

“And now let us do what we can for this poor, unhappy girl,” continued Miss Drusilla, calmly. “Let us take this tight dress off and put on her night-gown and lay her in bed. I think she is going to revive presently.”

“The saints grant it,” prayed Kitty, and Miss Drusilla replied, rather bitterly:

“Perhaps the saints would be in better business if they took her home to glory. Even if she lives what will she do with her blighted future? She will have to fly from justice, a poor, hunted creature! All the world believes her guilty of Mrs. St. Alban’s death!”

And while she busied herself with tender assiduity to bring back the suspended life of the girl, she told herself that she was doing wrong, that Nina was better off dead than to awake to the doom that menaced her.

“I would sooner see her laid in her grave than dragged before a judge and jury to be tried for the murder of the bad and cruel woman who stole her husband and blighted all the happiness of her young life!” she said to herself, “And yet I would give worlds to see her cleared from the base accusation Sibyl St. Alban made against her in her dying hours. But there is no hope of that. The mystery will never be cleared away.”

When she looked at the rigid white face upon the bed and thought of the suffering that had come to this last fair descendant of the proud old Selwyns through her nephew’s sin she felt that she cordially hated Talbot Strangemore.

“If his mother could look down upon Nina now what must she think of her selfish work?” she thought, for she could not divest herself of the impression that her sister-in-law had acted from purely selfish considerations in bringing about Nina’s marriage with her son.

“Oh,” cried Kitty, and looking down at Nina, Miss Strangemore saw that her dark eyes had flared wide open and her lips parted with a gasp of returning consciousness.

She had come back to life, to consciousness, to sorrow. The two women there who loved this beautiful young creature better than they loved anything else on earth did not know whether to laugh or weep at her recovery.

But Kitty took the nerveless white hand in her own and kissed it warmly through falling tears, while the spinster scarcely less moved, but hiding her emotion better, continued to bathe Nina’s face and hands with delicate, pungent perfumes.

“Oh, Aunt Drusilla, I thought I was dying just now, and I was so glad, so glad, but now I am come back to life, and I could weep with the very sorrow of it,” shivered the wretched girl, “I--I--think something frightened me very much just now, but I cannot quite remember. My brain seems dazed. Some one said something just now, something very horrible! What was it, Kitty? tell me.”

“It was nothing, Miss Nina, dear, only your fancy,” soothed the maid. She could not summon courage to tell her the truth, she looked so frail and helpless, so like a broken flower, lying back among the pillows with her wan, white face and masses of disheveled golden hair that contrasted so strangely with her large, brilliant dark eyes, darker and larger than ever now as they stared perplexedly at the maid.

“But I am sure there was something,” she said, faintly, “I--I--shall remember it myself presently,” and suddenly like a flash of light memory came back.

She gave a long, low, shivering moan, and exclaimed:

“Some one--Lucy I think--said that I had killed Mrs. St. Alban.”

“No, no, dear,” her aunt answered. “Not quite that.”

“Something very like it, then. Now I remember it. Mrs. St. Alban made them write down that I, Nina, who never harmed the tiniest fly, even--that I had killed her.”

“We did not believe it, darling,” soothed Miss Drusilla.

“Did any one believe it?” Nina asked, and somehow Miss Drusilla quickly gathered the yearning thought in her young mind.

“Talbot did not believe it. He felt quite sure that you were innocent,” she replied, and she saw a look of relief pass quickly over the lovely face.

“But, oh, Nina, why did you go away that night?” continued her aunt.

“I went away to die, that Talbot might be free to marry the woman he loved so much,” answered the girl. “Oh, Aunt Drusilla, do not look so shocked! there was no other way for me. Talbot’s mother made me promise solemnly on her death-bed that I would always try to secure his happiness, that I would give him all my love and all my life. So when I found that his happiness could only be secured by a union with Mrs. St. Alban, what could I do but give him my life as I had promised Mamma?”

Miss Drusilla raised her hands and eyes to heaven in holy horror.

“Oh, you poor devoted child, Mrs. Selwyn did not mean that!” she cried. “She did not want you to kill yourself for the sake of that great, hulking, selfish fellow. She only meant for you to be true and faithful to him all your life, and to make him happy with your love.”

That view of the matter had never occurred to Nina. She lay looking at her aunt with a mild surprise in her eyes.

“And did you really try to kill yourself, poor darling?” cried Kitty.

“Yes, I threw myself into the water the night I ran away, but Doctor Fielding saw me and saved my life. He took me to Baltimore, and I ran away again and drank some laudanum, but he had followed me, and he frustrated my purpose again. So then I was very ill, and as soon as I grew better I came back here.”

“Repenting of your silliness in running away, and wishing to make it all up with Talbot?” Miss Drusilla inquired.

Nina blushed through all her pallor, but she answered, readily.

“No, indeed. It was no such pacific motive that brought me back. I came to get some money that I had hidden away in my jewel casket. Then I intended to steal away again unseen, but I was so unfortunate as to be caught by Kitty who would not let me go.”

“Do you mean to say that you intended to live your life out away from us, and never let us know you were living?”

Nina blushed and hung her head.

“Yes, for Talbot’s sake, you know,” she answered.