CHAPTER XVII.

MRS. MURRAY’S ANGUISH.

Italy Vale waited with burning impatience for Mr. Gardner’s decision.

The day waned to its close, the purple shades of early twilight darkened, and the silver sickle of a new moon rose in the opal sky, still no word, no answer. She had been pacing the floor of her room for hours with a pale face and a wildly throbbing heart.

“Why does he delay like this when he knows how impatient I am? Is it possible he can have forgotten?” she cried resentfully, pushing back the dark curls from her brow that burned with a feverish heat.

At that moment Mrs. Mays tapped lightly on the door.

“He is come,” she thought gladly, and sprang to open it.

“Miss Vale,” said the kindly landlady, “there is a messenger-boy below from a law-office wishing to see you.”

With a low cry of something like terror, Italy started back, her face paling to a ghastly hue.

She thought of what Isabel Severn had told her about the office-boy at Mr. Gardner’s, who was watching for her face and would know it anywhere again.

“I must not let him see me,” she told herself wildly.

“Why, what is the matter, my dear young lady? You seem to be frightened!” exclaimed Mrs. Mays, in a tone of surprise that put Italy quickly upon her guard. She exclaimed with a groan:

“Oh, no, Mrs. Mays, I am not frightened, but I have a severe attack of facial neuralgia, and am suffering too much to see any one, or at least a stranger. Will you not do me the kindness to go down and tell the boy that if he has a letter or message for me he must deliver it to you?”

“Certainly, my dear,” and she bustled away, while Italy murmured bitterly:

“Mr. Gardner refuses my prayer. That is why he sends a message instead of coming himself. He cannot meet my reproaches.”

She was right, for presently Mrs. Mays returned with a letter, saying:

“The boy went away without waiting for an answer.”

Then, seeing that the young girl preferred to be alone, she withdrew, after saying kindly:

“If there is anything I can do for your dreadful neuralgia, ring your bell, and I will come at once.” Italy thanked her, with a blush stealing over her face at the falsehood she had uttered.

“To what depths I have fallen in this cruel necessity for caution,” she thought sadly, and tore open her note. She read:

“MY DEAR MISS VALE: After a careful review in my mind of all that I know and all that you said to me yesterday morning, my opinion of the case remains unchanged.

“I believe that the wisest plan for you is to remain satisfied with the jury’s verdict given long ago in your mother’s case. That verdict declared her innocent, or, at least, gave her the benefit of a doubt. But should you investigate too closely it might result in her conviction. She is dead, so it cannot harm her, only to blacken her memory still deeper. All the obloquy would fall on you, her helpless orphan child. Knowing this to be true, and feeling the sincerest friendship for you, I must refuse to assist you in your own destruction.

“I advise you earnestly to let the whole matter drop, and devote your mind to other things more suitable and natural to a young girl than this morbid state of feeling.

“I have spoken to my wife about you. She is deeply interested, and will call upon you to-morrow to request you to become our guest for a while. I hope that you will consent to do so. We will do all in our power to further your comfort and your pleasure.

“Cordially your friend, MARK L. GARDNER.”

A moan of the cruelest disappointment came from Italy’s pale lips, and she tore the lawyer’s letter into fragments and trampled it beneath her feet.

“Thus do I scorn his advice,” she thought bitterly, and she resolved that on the morrow she would seek a good lawyer and employ his services.

She scorned the idea that investigation would fix the crime either upon her mother or Francis Murray. Her heart spoke loudly for the man who had been so kind to her, and whose thrilling words rang in her memory night and day:

“Italy, love, darling!”

“He loved me--loved me in spite of my suspicions of him. He was grand and noble--he could love me in spite of all my wilfulness and my scorn of him! Ah, but I must forget all that! My heart owned him for its master. Oh, God, send him back to me that I may tell him how I wronged him, and that I love him now and pray for his pardon!” sobbed Italy, in an abandonment of bitter grief.

Ah, how cruel it is to love with all one’s heart some dear object that is removed from us by all the breadth of earth and heaven, how cruel when the heart swells with love that can never be uttered, when the yearning arms fall listless, empty of caresses.

Italy wept bitterly that Francis Murray was dead, for now she knew that she loved him with her whole heart, that to him had been given the devotion Emmett Harlow had prayed for in vain.

Alas! she would almost have been willing to die rather than face the hour that was hastening on so fast with its agony of keen despair. But even as she wept in her desolation there was coming up the steps a woman warmly wrapped from the cold of the autumn night in heavy furs and shawls. She rang the bell, and asked for Miss Vale.

“Miss Vale is very sick with a neuralgic attack. I do not believe she will be willing to see you, so if you have any message send it by me,” replied Mrs. Mays, mindful of the fate of the office-boy.

The woman, who had the air and bearing of a clever lady’s-maid, handed her a letter.

“I will wait for the answer, please, ma’am,” she said, sitting down in the hall.

And again Mrs. Mays tapped at the door of her boarder and handed in a letter.

“The woman that brought it is waiting for an answer,” she said, a little curiously, for two letters in one evening both coming by messenger, seemed rather mysterious.

“Come in, Mrs. Mays, and wait a moment. I dare say it is Miss Audenreid’s maid with a note from her mistress. Perhaps she wants me to go with her to the theater to-night, but I am not well enough,” answered Italy calmly.

She broke the seal of the letter and read the contents with startled eyes. It was from Mrs. Murray, but the writing was so blurred and blotted as to be almost illegible, being evidently written under the stress of strong excitement. It began abruptly:

“Italy Vale, if you have any forgiveness in your heart for the heartless treatment of a woman who was half-crazed with grief, come to me to-night. I have sent my maid to bring you, and she will take care of you. Come quickly, for I have startling news for you, and I must tell it soon, for I feel death hastening on, and when I have told it I must lie down and die!”

The letter fell from Italy’s shaking hand, and she turned a face of wild despair upon the kindly landlady.

“I have--bad news--Mrs. Mays,” she faltered, and the kind soul took her in her arms and held the dark head tenderly on her breast.

“Poor dear--poor dear,” she murmured, and caressed her as if she had been her own dark-haired Isabel.

Italy lay quiescent several moments, her heart beating wildly against Mrs. Mays’ supporting arm. She knew quite well from that grief-stricken message that Mrs. Murray must have news of her son’s death. There was no longer any hope.

“Perhaps you would like to see the woman, my dear?” suggested Mrs. Mays kindly.

“Yes, oh, yes, send her to me, please. She is sent to take me to the death-bed of my friend, her mistress,” faltered Italy, weakly, and the kind soul placed her on a sofa, picked up the fallen letter, and putting it in the owner’s hand, went down-stairs again.

Italy, with her hand over her eyes, sobbed bitterly.

“Dead, dead, dead, my noble friend! Ah! no wonder that his mother’s heart is broken.”

“Don’t take it so hard, dear Miss Vale,” murmured a kind, sympathetic voice, and dropping her hand, she saw the face of Mrs. Murray’s maid, an intelligent middle-aged woman, who had shown her much kindness while she was at The Lodge.

This woman now continued:

“It is dreadful, isn’t it, her getting reliable news of her son’s death! and all of us hoping and praying that he would turn up alive and well some day. But that hope is over now, and she took to her bed the minute she got the news. But she wants you. She says she’s dying, but she can’t die till she’s seen your face again. I had to go to Mrs. Dunn’s to find out your address, and it’s getting late, so if you please, I’ll help you dress, so we can get back to Winthrop as soon as possible to my poor, dear, suffering mistress.”

Mrs. Murray did indeed look like a dying woman as she lay there panting on her bed when Italy entered softly, having removed her hat and wraps in her own room, where the maid had first conducted her.

Ordinarily the meeting must have been an embarrassing one to both women.

They had never looked on each other’s faces since the day when Mrs. Murray had forbidden Italy to go to the moonlight party. A few days later she had left The Lodge by Mrs. Murray’s desire, and their life-paths had run in separate ways.

But now the sympathy of a common sorrow had drawn the two hearts together so closely that it was almost like a meeting of mother and daughter.

Mrs. Murray’s awfully pale and changed face turned in mute agony to the girl, and she half-extended her arms. Italy with a heart-breaking sob rushed to the bed, and, falling on her knees, clung to the stricken mother, pressing on her corpselike cheek a mute caress.

The sympathetic maid withdrew, leaving them alone together to mingle their bitter sobs, and for a few minutes nothing was heard but those low and mournful sounds of a mother weeping for her son, and a young girl for her lover.

It was sad enough to move heaven and earth to pity.

At length Italy sobbed in a choking voice:

“Oh, can you forgive me for my share in his death? Oh, if only I had not gone with him that night--if only----” her voice broke with the convulsive heaving of her breast.

But all at once Mrs. Murray writhed herself out of the loving arms that held her, and groaned in an agonized voice:

“You would not speak like that if you _knew_! You would not kiss me as you did just now. You would hate me--hate me for my son’s sake!”

Her blue eyes, so dim already with bitter tears, overflowed in streams that ran in rivers down her pallid checks. She raised herself up in bed and clasped her pale hands together as she repeated:

“You would hate us both, Italy Vale--hate us for the wrecking of your young life, for your father’s death, and your mother’s long agony. Alas! alas! alas! that I have lived to see this hour!”

Her agony was piteous, and Italy stared at her in dismay. What could she mean?

“Do you see how ill I look, Italy?” continued the half-frenzied woman. “Well, I am dying, surely dying. My heart broke when I read that letter from my son, and I seemed only living longer just to send for you and to tell you, as he bade me--oh, my God!--that terrible story.”

“You have a letter from _him_--oh, then he lives, he lives!” Italy exclaimed joyfully.

“No, child, my son is dead. And it is better so--better had he died in his helpless infancy than lived to work such irredeemable woe!” answered Mrs. Murray distractedly.

Then as she saw the wonder in the young girl’s beautiful, pale face, she tried to calm herself.

“Ah, you think me mad!” she sighed. “You have no thought of the horror that has come to me, and that is coming to you. But no, no, to you it will be joy. The shadow of sin will be lifted from your mother’s memory; the world will revere her as a martyr, while they execrate my son as a demon! Ah, God! if only I might die with this story untold. But, no, no, it is my duty to speak, though the words blast my lips--to speak, and then die of the deadly dart that is rankling in my heart!”

It was terrible to witness the agitation of this formerly cold, proud woman, who bore herself usually with the calm hauteur of a duchess. It mystified Italy more and more. She began to think that Francis Murray’s death had driven his mother insane.

“Dear Mrs. Murray, calm yourself,” she faltered. “Be brave, be courageous. You do not know what hard and cruel things you have been saying of your noble son!”

“My noble son! Oh, Heaven!”

And the rising wind that began to shriek dismally around the house answered with a moan like a lost soul in pain.

A storm was rising. Old Neptune was abroad on the waves. The hoarse murmur of the ocean as it broke in loud, sharp reports upon the beach came in regular beats to their ears, with that subtile sense of trouble always inspired by an angry sea.

“Come and sit in this chair close by the bed, Italy, and I will tell you of my son’s death,” said Mrs. Murray, making a fierce effort to control her overmastering agitation.

Italy obeyed her, but she said tenderly:

“Dear Mrs. Murray, do not speak of it to-night; you are too ill. I can wait until to-morrow.”

“To-morrow I shall be dead. I must tell you now and quickly, for I must not die like a coward and leave that secret untold. I must obey the dying command of my son and reveal it all to you--it is your due, my dear girl--only--only you must not exult in my presence, Italy, because I could not bear it!”

And while the wind roared and the sea moaned outside, and Italy gazed at her with somber, wondering dark eyes, she began:

“At sunset to-day there came to me a rough sailor with a letter and a story. That night when the little dory was cut in twain by a large vessel, my son was picked up by the crew with a dreadful wound upon his head. He lived but a few hours, but before he died he dictated a letter to the surgeon for me, and made them promise to deliver it on their return from Buenos Ayres. To-day the sailor brought me the letter signed by my son’s dying hand, and addressed by him. Oh, Italy, can you guess what he wrote?”