CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WIDOWED BRIDEGROOM.

"One fatal remembrance, one sorrow which throws Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes, To which life nothing darker or brighter can bring, For which joy has no balm, and affliction no sting."--MOORE.

And where, meantime, was he, whose headstrong passions had brought about this catastrophe? Where was Willard Drummond?

In his far-off Virginia home, he had seen the last remains of his only surviving parent laid in the grave, and found himself the sole possessor of an almost princely fortune. And now, in deepest mourning, and with a brow on which rested still the sad shadow of that newly closed grave, he turned his face, once more toward the house of Sibyl Campbell.

A complete change--a total revulsion of feeling had taken place within him during the last few days. The awful presence of death had hushed the clamorous voices of passion and ambition, and awoke within him the deepest feelings of remorse for the unmanly part he had acted.

All his sophistries and specious reasonings were swept away by that dying-bed; and he felt, in its fullest force, how base and unworthy had been his conduct. He felt it was his imperative duty, in spite of love and wounded honor, to renounce Sibyl Campbell forever; and, let the consequences be what they might, to tell her all. It would be a bitter humiliation to him, it would bring life-long sorrow to her, but there was no alternative. He shrank from the thought of the terrible outburst of passion his confession would be received with; but better this than the shame and disgrace of wedding the husband of another.

Christie was his wife--his patient, loving little wife--and, as such, must be acknowledged before the world; and with the resolution of following the promptings of his better nature, despite all obstacles, he reached Westport, one lowering autumn day, and, weary and travel-stained, entered the "Westbrook House."

The first person on whom his eyes rested, as he went in, was Captain Guy Campbell, sitting at a table sipping his coffee and glancing over the morning paper.

The noise of his entrance made Captain Guy look up; and, starting to his feet, he caught his hand and shook it heartily, while he exclaimed:

"Drummond, my old friend! delighted to have you here with us again. Here, sit down. Have you breakfasted?"

"No, I have only just arrived. How are all my friends--your sister and the Brantwells?" said Willard, taking the proffered seat.

"All well; though Sibyl has been worrying herself to a skeleton about that sad affair on the island. You have heard of it, I suppose?"

"No; what sad affair?" said Willard, with a start.

"Why, the death of little Christie, to be sure! It is very singular you have not heard of it. The papers are all full of it; but--good heavens! my dear fellow--what is the matter? are you ill?" said Captain Campbell, rising in alarm.

Reeling, as though he had received a spear-thrust through his heart, Willard Drummond sprang to his feet, and with a face deadly white, grasped his friend by the arm, and said, in a choking voice:

"_Dead_, did you say? Christie dead? How? when? where? Of what did she die?"

"Really, Drummond, this agitation is most unaccountable," said Captain Campbell, slowly, and in extreme surprise.

"Dead! dead!" said Drummond, unheeding his words. "Great Heaven!--speak and tell me--how was it? when was it? Where did she die?"

"On the island. This is most extraordinary," replied Captain Campbell, looking at the pale, agitated face before him, in still increasing surprise.

"Oh, Captain Campbell!" exclaimed Willard, in bitter sorrow, "if you call yourself my friend, do not keep me in suspense now--tell me all. How did she die?"

"It is very extraordinary, all this!" said the astonished young captain, who was quite unprepared for such an outburst of feeling from the usually gay, nonchalant Willard Drummond. "Then you have not heard she was--"

"What?"

"Murdered!" said Captain Campbell.

"Murdered! Oh, Heaven!"

And with a deep groan that seemed tearing its way up through his anguished heart. Willard sank into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

Captain Campbell looked at him with the most unbounded amazement.

"Well, upon my soul!" he broke out at length, "if this doesn't surpass anything I ever dreamed of! I can understand feeling sorry and horrified at so atrocious a deed--I felt all that myself; but to take on in this way, is something beyond me, I must confess. Waiter, more coffee."

"Campbell, tell me all," said Willard, springing up and fiercely dashing back his long, black hair. "Who could have committed so base, so atrocious a deed? Oh! can there exist a being on earth, capable of committing so infernal a crime? Who is it?--speak and tell me; and may Heaven's heaviest curses rest upon him, now and for all eternity! Who had the heart to hurt one hair of her gentle head?"

"Drummond, my dear fellow, what means all this violent agitation? What was little Christie to you?"

The keen, searching look, the meaning tone, and probing question, brought him from his fierce outburst of remorse and anguish to a sense of the presence in which he stood. This was not the time or place for the revelation; nor was it to Captain Guy Campbell, that revelation was destined to be made. Controlling his agony of bitter sorrow, and still more bitter remorse, and feeling the necessity of calmly hearing all, by a tremendous effort, he subdued his fiercely excited feelings, and dropped in his seat, and said, while he shaded his face with his hands:

"To me--to me? Nothing; yet I felt toward her almost as if she were my sister. When last I left her she was full of life, and youth, and vigor; and now, now to hear so suddenly that she is dead--and murdered! She--sweet, fair, and gentle as an angel, to meet such a fate! Oh, Campbell! is it not enough to drive one mad to think of it?"

"It is a sad thing, I must confess," said Captain Campbell, who, being the most unsuspicious of human beings, received this explanation as perfectly satisfactory; "and no one but a demon in human form could have perpetrated the deed!"

"Who is the murderer?" said Drummond, in a deep, hollow voice.

"That cannot be discovered. The island, and every place else, I believe, has been searched; but no clew to his hiding-place can be found. Regards have been offered, the police put on the track, but all in vain."

"When was the diabolical crime committed?"

"The very night you left N----. You remember the terrific storm of that night! Somewhere about midnight, it is supposed, poor Christie was assassinated. The deed was committed somewhere near the shore; and as the tide was very high, the body, if left on the rocks, must have been swept away. What could have brought Christie from the house at such an hour, and in such a storm, unless she had been forcibly carried out, is a mystery still unsolved."

In spite of all his efforts, another anguished groan broke from the tortured heart of Willard Drummond. The thought of his note appointing that fatal meeting! Oh, too well he knew what had brought her there; and a pang, keener than death, pierced his soul as he thought of that slight, delicate girl plunging through all that howling tempest to meet him!

"Who was on the island at the time?" he asked, after a pause.

"No one but Mrs. Tom and Carl and one or two negroes; and--yes, now I think of it, Sibyl was there too."

"Sibyl?" said Willard, with a start.

"Yes; she went over shortly after you went away. Poor Christie, it seems, wanted her for something, and sent her a note. What it contained I cannot say; but it seemed to agitate Sibyl as I have seldom seen her agitated before; and the result of it was that she insisted, despite the gathering storm, on going to the island that night."

What was the thought that made Willard Drummond turn so ghastly at that moment?

Had Christie, in that note, revealed their marriage? and had Sibyl, in a fit of passion--he shrank in horror, in loathing of himself at the terrible thought that the arch-fiend suggested at that moment. Wild, vindictive, passionate, frenzied in her rage, he knew her to be; but, oh! never, never could even her terrific passion carry her so far away as to raise her hand against that gentle child's life. But who could have done it? Christie, the unknown island-girl, had not an enemy in the world except Sibyl; and she, in violent agitation, had braved storm, and danger, and death to reach the island that night. Oh, horrible thought! With his brain reeling with conflicting emotions, he felt for the moment as if his very reason was leaving him.

Captain Campbell, sitting placidly before him, sipping his coffee, saw nothing of what was passing in Drummond's thoughts; and setting his unexpected emotion down, partially, to the morbid state of his mind since his father's death, and the want of rest, arose and said:

"My dear Drummond, you must be tired and worn out with your journey. You had better retire at once. I will call here this afternoon again. When do you intend visiting N----?"

"Any time, to-day, to-morrow, immediately," answered Drummond, incoherently, scarcely conscious of what he said.

"I am going there to-morrow. What say you to going then?" said his companion, with a stare of surprise.

"I shall be at your service," said Drummond, striving to rally himself. "What with fatigue and all, I am rather bewildered as yet; but I trust by that time to be far enough recruited to pay my _devoirs_ to the ladies at the parsonage."

"Very strange, I must say!" mused Captain Campbell, as he ran down the steps and entered the crowded street. "Very strange, indeed, that the news of little Christie's death should so affect him. I had some notion once that Sibyl was a little jealous of Christie; and, faith, I begin to think she may have had some cause for it. But, perhaps, I wrong Drummond after all. He is not very excitable usually, I know; but his mind being unusually troubled, Christie's dreadful death may have given him a shock. He dare not trifle with Sibyl; if he does, he will feel the weight of a Campbell's vengeance!"

Willard meantime had secured a private room, and was pacing up and down, and striving to collect his thoughts. The first shock was over--the first thrill of horror at the news was past; and though sorrow for her fate, and bitter remorse for what he himself had done still remained, he could not suppress something very like a feeling of relief.

Alas for all his good resolutions! Gone were they now, as the fading sunlight flies before the approach of night; and his love, his hopes, his desires are in the ascendant again. Perhaps he was not altogether to blame for the fickleness of his nature. Perhaps most of it might be owing to his education, to those with whom he had mingled, and the world for which alone he had ever lived.

He thought of Sibyl. That momentary suspicion was quiet, and he hated himself for having indulged it an instant. No; terrific as he knew her to be, when her deep passion was roused, he felt that not on Christie--guileless, inoffensive Christie--would fall her vengeance, but on him, who rightly deserved it. His glorious, high-spirited Sibyl, the descendant of a daring, chivalrous race, would not stoop to slay a weak, unprotected girl like this. There was no obstacle now to prevent his marriage; she might lawfully become his wife, when his period of mourning was past. There was a thrill of secret joy in his heart at the thought; but the sad, reproachful face of Christie rose like a vision before him, and with a shudder he sat down, while remorse again tugged at his heart-strings.

So passed the morning; and when Captain Campbell entered his room again, he found him, though outwardly calm and composed, pale, with many conflicting emotions.

Before he left, it was arranged that they should set out together the following day for N----.

And the next morning the two young men started for the residence of the Brantwells.

They reached it late the same afternoon, and were warmly welcomed by good Mrs. Brantwell. Sibyl, thinner and paler than Willard had ever beheld her, flushed with pleasure as he embraced her, and took a seat by her side.

He looked earnestly in her face; but he read nothing there save deep, subdued sadness; no guilt lingered on that broad, queenly brow, or in those clear, bright eyes.

As a matter of course, the conversation first turned on Christie, and her melancholy fate.

"You have heard it, no doubt, Mr. Drummond," said Mrs. Brant well.

"From my friend Captain Campbell--yes, madam," he answered, gravely, but calmly.

Sibyl's keen eyes were bent with ill-concealed anxiety upon him, and she drew a deep breath of relief as she noted his quiet gravity, as if a heavy load had been lifted off her breast.

"Poor Mrs. Tom!" sighed the minister's wife, "she is indeed to be pitied. I urged her to quit that lonesome island, and we would provide for her somewhere here, but she refused; and says that the only comfort she has now is in watching the waves under which her darling Christie is buried."

A faint shudder passed over Drummond's frame, in spite of himself, at her words.

"By the way, Mr. Brantwell," said Captain Campbell, "where are the Courtneys? They were speaking of going away somewhere when last I was here."

"Yes, they have gone home. Mr. Courtney was in very poor health; and even Mrs. Courtney, poor thing! seemed to have lost most of her high spirits, and was glad to be on the wing again," replied Mrs. Brantwell.

During this short dialogue, Sibyl and Willard were conversing together in low tones.

"And so your resolution is really to go abroad?" said Sibyl, lifting her dark eyes anxiously to his face.

"Yes--but for some months only; and the project gives me pleasure in the thought alone that, in so doing, I will not be separated from you."

"No! and how?" she said, in surprise.

"Then you are not aware that your brother, having completed all his business, and refitted his vessel, is about to take you with him again to England?"

"I was really quite ignorant of that fact."

"Well, so it is. We all start together in three weeks' time, I believe."

A flush of pleased surprise passed over Sibyl's pale face.

"Then, in that case, I shall have an opportunity of accomplishing my long-cherished wish of visiting Italy. I have long and ardently desired to see that beautiful land."

"And after that, fairest Sibyl?"

"I shall return home."

"And what then, beautiful one?"

"'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,'" quoted Sibyl, with a smile. "Who knows what the future may bring forth?"

"Let me tell you, beautiful Sibyl," said Drummond, in the low, musical tones that had so often thrilled to her inmost heart. "After that may I claim this little hand as mine? Say, fairest Sibyl, may I look forward to our return to claim my bride?"

She lifted her eyes to the handsome face bending over her, so full of perfect love and devotion now; and, like the frank glorious creature she was, she laid her hand in his, and said:

"Yes."

"Why, Sibyl, my dear," broke in the voice of Mrs. Brantwell at this interesting juncture, in tones of deepest dismay, "do you know what Guy says? All three of you are to start off on a wild-goose chase to Europe, instead of settling down and behaving yourselves, as sensible Christians should. It's really quite abominable, and I, for one, have set my face against it; and I am sure, Sibyl, you'd agree with me."

"Really, my dear Mrs. Brantwell," said Sibyl, smiling, "I am afraid I cannot. I wish to go quite as much as Guy."

"You do?" exclaimed the minister's wife. "Well, upon my word, if this is not too provoking! It all comes of having a taste for rambling, and being male and female sailors, the whole of you! I always thought sailors were vagabonds on the face of the earth, without any settled place of abode, and I'm sure of it now. You don't expect to be able to go in three weeks, I should hope?"

"Yes, of course, I do. What's to hinder?" said Sibyl. "I am not a fine lady, you know, and don't require two or three dozen trunks packed before I start. So, Captain Campbell, though you did not do me the honor of consulting me before all your arrangements were made, I shall reserve my wounded pride and indignation to another season, and be ready to go with you at a moment's warning."

Mrs. Brantwell expostulated in vain. Sibyl would go; but promised faithfully to return within nine months, at farthest.

And so, three weeks later, our trio stood on the deck of the Evening Star, "outward bound."