CHAPTER XVIII.

A LOYAL HEART.

The dying woman’s voice was shrill with agony.

Italy shook her head, but she thought thrillingly:

“He must have told his mother of his love for me, he must have left me word to cherish his memory until we meet in heaven.”

Mrs. Murray thrust her hand beneath the pillow and dragged out a letter. She flung it with a groan into the girl’s lap, then buried her convulsed face in the pillows, her form heaving with long, shuddering sighs.

The letter rustled in Italy’s trembling white hand, the wind outside gathered itself for a stupendous effort, and roared and shrieked around the gables like a company of demons, the hollow waves boomed on the shore like ghostly voices of the drowned, but Italy heard and saw nothing else but the letter in her hand, the white page with the black words on its whiteness, each individual letter seeming like a little black fiend setting an awful seal of shame on the whiteness of Francis Murray’s life. For the letter was a confession of crime.

At last Mrs. Vale was vindicated, at last the world that had wronged her by its hideous judgments would behold her life truly as that of a martyr. That tender white hand had never driven home the dagger in the breast of the husband she loved. No, it was a man’s strong hand--the hand of his impecunious kinsman, Francis Murray.

Maddened by a refusal of a monetary favor, and envious of the rich man’s wealth, he had struck an impulsive blow that stretched Ronald Vale dead at his feet. Then the poor young man on whom the sun had set in sullen, desperate poverty found himself at day-dawn a millionaire with his hideous crime unsuspected and the finger of suspicion pointing at his victim’s beautiful young wife.

It was a story to make the angels weep, the story of that young wife’s martyrdom, and briefly told as it was by the dying criminal, it moved the heart to alternate horror and pity--horror for the man, pity for the woman robbed at one fell stroke of all life’s joys except her dark-eyed child. And at the end of this dark confession of sin ran the closing sentence:

“Mother, I send this to you because I know not if Italy Vale was saved or not from the wreck that caused my death. If she be alive send for her and let her read this letter and clear her mother’s memory from all stain. If she be dead this duty falls on you. Fail not to perform it under penalty of the solemn curse of your erring son, now passing to his last dread account with Heaven.

FRANCIS MURRAY.”

She sat like one turned to stone with her staring eyes fixed on that name--that name written with a trembling, dying hand, yet unmistakably the chirography of Francis Murray.

Oh, fiend, fiend! And there lay his proud mother dying of horror at the revelation of his monstrous crime!

The war of the elements outside increased in demoniac fury. The lightning flashed, the thunder pealed, the rain drove in torrents against the walls, but blind and deaf to it all the one woman lay shuddering with her face in the pillows, the other sat in her chair, her eyes agleam with somber light, her face pallid, her lips curled with some strange, overmastering emotion.

Suddenly she leaned forward, and almost rudely shook the woman among the pillows. Fire flashed from her splendid Oriental eyes, burning words leaped to her lips:

“Mrs. Murray, I am ashamed of you!” she cried angrily. “You are his mother, yet you can believe this cruel thing of your noble son! Then you never loved him, never! But I--I loved him, and I denounce this letter as a forgery, a black and cruel falsehood!”

Those passionate reproaches broke upon the elder woman’s senses with the force of an electric shock. Wildly she sprang upright, wildly she looked at the beautiful young creature who had torn in a hundred pieces that fatal letter, and flung them in a fury of scorn upon the velvet carpet.

Italy had sprung from her chair and was standing over her, her lips quivering with feeling, her eyes flashing.

“I had not believed this of you, Mrs. Murray,” she repeated reproachfully. “Did you not know him as the soul of kindliness, truth, and honor? Was he not your boy, your Frank, whose sunny curls lay on your breast in infancy, your son, whose strong arms supported your declining years so gently? Tell me--did you ever know Francis Murray to be guilty of one unworthy or ignoble action?”

“No, oh, no, no!” cried out the startled woman eagerly.

“You did not? In all his thirty-three years of life? Yet you could listen to the slanderer’s tale; you could credit this cruel forgery! Oh, Mrs. Murray! I am ashamed of your credulity!” flashed out Italy, with stormy emotion.

The elder woman caught her breath pantingly, and a gleam of light flashed into her sunken, hopeless eyes.

“Get up from that bed, Mrs. Murray, for you must not die yet; you must live! live to hunt down the black-hearted schemer who plotted this vile deed! live to welcome your son back when he returns to brand this falsehood as a device of Satan!”

Oh! the light of hope that flashed into the hopeless eyes, the color that flushed the frozen cheek of the woman who had been dying one moment before of sheer despair and shame! She rose from the bed unaided--she who just now felt too weak to raise her hands--she fell on her knees and clasped Italy Vale with adoring arms, lifting to her a face radiant with joy. She cried eagerly:

“You _believe_ in him? you take his part! _you_, whom I expected to denounce him, and to rejoice that he was proved guilty that your mother’s memory might be cleared! Girl, girl! you are an angel!”

And Italy, stooping, pressed a reverent kiss on the gray hair of the woman kneeling in humble gratitude at her feet.

“No, madam; not an angel, but a very faulty human being,” she answered gently. “And one of my faults, if fault it be, is never to believe harm of one I love. And I--I loved Mr. Murray, although I did not realize it until he was dead, as I feared. Oh, do not think me bold for confessing this secret to you, his mother.”

“God bless you!” sobbed the woman who had once hated her so bitterly; and as Italy placed her gently in a chair, she added:

“Your faith in him makes me live again, drags me away from the dark shores of death, and the star of hope shines again for me. Oh, my noble, true-hearted girl, teach me some of your faith and confidence! That man--that sailor--how could he come to me with that story and that letter, signed by my son, if it was all a falsehood?”

Italy had drawn forward a low ottoman, and was sitting like a child at the lady’s feet. She answered with a question:

“Mrs. Murray, what were the names of the sailor and his vessel?”

“He did not tell me either.”

“Nor where to find him when you wanted his evidence to prove his story?”

“No, he simply gabbled over the tale like one reciting a lesson, and as I sank back, half-fainting, at the news of my son’s death, he thrust the letter rudely into my hand and hastened away.”

“And that letter, Mrs. Murray, did not contain the name of the vessel, nor of her captain, nor of the surgeon who wrote at your son’s dictation, nor of the sailor who was to bring it to you? Do you remember all these omissions?”

“Perfectly, now that you recall them to me, Italy, although I was so agitated by it all at first that I believed it blindly, and took no note of the suspicious omissions you have recalled to me. Dear child! how bright and clever you are! But, alas! how can you account for my son’s signature to the confession, and his hand again in the address upon the back?”

“Clever forgeries, dear madam, and perhaps we may some day unmask the wicked schemer who plotted this dastardly thing.”

“Oh, my darling girl, how good and noble you are! Can you ever forgive me for my cruelty and unkindness? Although it would never have happened but for the evil counsels of selfish friends,” sighed the lady remorsefully.

“Dear madam, I can well understand that, and there is no resentment in my heart. I wish only to be your friend!”

“My daughter!” cried Mrs. Murray tenderly, and pressed an impulsive kiss on the upraised white brow of the girl, casting aside forever all her unjust prejudices in her overflowing gratitude for her noble faith in Francis.

“Oh, my child, I should surely have died of this horror if you had not put new hope into my heart!” she cried. “Oh, Heaven, send me back my son that he may be happy with his mother and his wife! For he loved you, dear--he loved you well. I read his secret plainly.”

A flash of happy light gleamed in the girl’s eyes, but she said simply:

“I have the greatest faith that he will return to us some time. He may indeed have been saved by some outward-bound vessel, and in course of time may come back to us. Let us try to believe this, and never give up hope.”

“Then you must stay here with me, Italy, and keep the spark of hope alive in my despondent breast.”

“I will stay gladly if you wish me, for your friendship will be very precious to me, dear Mrs. Murray. And as for that forged confession, let us never speak of it to any one. Then the villain will know that his scheme has failed.”

“But, Italy, who could have hated my Frank so badly as to wish to blacken his memory with the foul stain of that awful crime?”