CHAPTER XXVII.
TRUTH THAT LIED!
It was all so black, so terribly obvious as he looked at it.
Cylmer thought long that night, in a weary circle that led back to the same horror. The original of that photograph had been Mrs. Trelane, and if Abbotsford’s death lay at her door, Ismay had known it. That little cry of hers came back to him.
“I never saw it before.”
A lie and a foolish one, that looking back was damning.
And Wray--she could deceive him for a brute like that?
And then there rushed over him the awful thought of the disgrace to come; the wheels that he had set in motion that were even now out of his power to stop. Even in his disenchantment, with that raging pain at his heart that she was false who seemed so true, he was glad that that one clue, that one fatal bit of evidence, the blue-green beetle, was in her hands. The detectives would never see it again; Mrs. Trelane warned in time, would destroy it and the bracelet he was certain it had belonged to--and Ismay.
“Ismay can be consoled by Mark.” Yet at the thought his forehead was wet. He would have given his soul not to have seen her to-night, to have gone on believing in her; as he would never believe in any one again.
And yet it had all been so simple; if fate had not played into the spiteful hands of Cristiane le Marchant, would have been another link to bind him to the girl who for his sake was fighting with the world against her.
At eight o’clock Ismay had waked from a long sleep; waked weary and languid in body, but with her brain more quick and clear than it had been for two days. She was alone, and she lay for a little, thinking, remembering.
What had made her so drowsy, so strange all that day? Had Wray, to keep her out of the way, given her anything?
“There was only breakfast, he couldn’t!” she reflected. “We all had the same, even my coffee Thomas poured out at the sideboard. Besides, he doesn’t suspect me at all, thanks to Thomas’ version of my midnight promenades.” She smiled to herself.
Had not Thomas met her face to face one night, and had not Jessie told her in deepest secrecy of how the lady had walked, with the very blood-stain that was the mark of her crimes on her breast! That blood-stain she had made in sewing her ghost’s gown, with fingers that were torn by Cylmer’s roses.
“Jessie.” Conviction flashed over her at the woman’s name.
Jessie had put her early tea down outside the door this morning. Ismay was sleepy and too lazy to get up and let the woman in.
“I said to leave it, and I heard her go away,” she thought. “When I took it in it was cold, and I thought it wasn’t nice, but I drank it. He had plenty of time to put anything in it. If he passed and saw it there he would not hesitate one second. Even if he did not suspect me he may have been determined I should have to stay at home. One more score against him.”
Her anger lent her strength. She got out of bed and clothed herself in a warm dressing-gown, utterly heedless of the doctor’s orders. Something that was not herself made her think of the scarab and Marcus Wray. Could she have in her very hands the destruction of her enemy, and not know it?
She took it out of its hiding-place, and saw the flash of Cylmer’s ring, where it lay beside it.
When Marcus Wray was routed, she could put it on--she turned away that she might not see it, but the sight of it had deepened her hatred of the man who stood between her and happiness, whom, for her mother’s sake, she dared not defy.
A step outside startled her. She had just time to throw the scarab into the drawer and lock it, when her mother was in the room.
Her mother in white, in that very gown she should have burned, long ago!
“Why are you up? You’ll kill yourself!” Mrs. Trelane said sharply.
“I’m all right. I couldn’t stay in bed. Mother, in Heaven’s name, why have you got on that?” she pointed like an accusing judge at the tawdry white dress.
“Because I was sick of looking like a fright in black. It shows out every line in my face. And there’s no one here but Marcus.”
“Who is your worst enemy,” helplessly. “And it isn’t decent, with Sir Gaspard not dead a month.”
“Oh, bother! I told Cristiane my black one was torn,” lightly. “But Ismay, are you really quite well? I was terrified about you this morning!”
“Terrified!” Ismay threw back her head with her old laugh of mockery. She knew quite well the depth of that terror. A horrible sight, the awe of death that lies in all of us; but if death had been there her mother would have dried her tears as useless, aging things; forgotten her daughter as soon as the earth had closed over her.
“If you are going to be so brutal I shall go away,” Mrs. Trelane said angrily. “If you have no feelings you might give me credit for some.”
“Don’t go.” Ismay caught her dress. “Come into the sitting-room. Tell me about this morning--what happened, who carried me home?”
“Mr. Cylmer. Tell me, Ismay,” with quiet curiosity, “how well do you know him? He looked like death when he carried you. And how did he happen to be there?”
“He just, happened, I suppose,” provokingly.
“And I don’t suppose I was an engaging sight. What did Cristiane do?”
“Had hysterics, I think. I wasn’t listening. I thought you were dead; so did Marcus.”
“You didn’t let him touch me?
“He went straight off for the doctor. It was that man Cylmer who got you out of the water.”
“That man Cylmer!” The girl flushed with pride and joy. How she would thank him when she saw him, with the strong arm that had saved her close about her shoulders.
“Marcus wants to see you. That’s why I came up,” Mrs. Trelane remarked. “Do be civil to him, Ismay, he tried to help you.”
“Me? yes?” enigmatically, and her mother shivered with a suspicion of the girl’s knowledge, that died on the instant at her placid face.
“See me?” Ismay amended. “Very well, send him up. No, don’t stay! I’ll be civil, you needn’t worry.”
Her eyes alert, her cheek feverish, she watched him come in.
“What do you want?” she inquired calmly, as he hesitated on the threshold.
“To see for myself that you’re all right,” his cold sneering manner all gone. “Ought you to be up? But you look quite well, quite yourself.”
“I am quite myself. What made you think I shouldn’t be?” she said dryly.
“The shock, the wetting,” he hesitated.
“Neither the shock nor the wetting have affected me,” she assured him.
Could she suspect anything about that tea? he gave her a searching glance with narrowed eyes. But her face was as openly hostile as usual, with no underlying doubt.
“If you’re going to stay, sit down,” she yawned laughingly. “You make me nervous fidgeting there by the door.”
He drew a chair near to her sofa, and she let her eyes close sleepily. Through their dark fringes they looked him all over searchingly. Evening clothes, a shirt and collar as immaculate as usual, a neat black tie, two pearl studs, rather flawed and too large. So he had a taste for jewels.
His hands, long, deceitful, cruel, lay on his knees. On one of them was a diamond ring, too big for a man, too sparkling.
“His cuffs!” she thought, with inspiration. But they were hidden under his black coat-sleeve. One day she had laughed at Cylmer’s plain mother-of-pearl cuff-studs, and he had said that there was nothing a man was so wedded to as a peculiar kind of cuff-stud.
“If he wears links, he always wears links, generally of the same pattern. If he wears studs, he never changes the make.”
The blood beat hard in her temples. That bluey-green Egyptian beetle could well have been half of a cuff-link, florid, expensive, odd, as were those shirt-studs of pearls and greenish gold.
“Why are you so thoughtful, Ismay? Why will you go on hating me?” Wray asked slowly. “Don’t you know it’s no use?”
There was a biting answer on her tongue, but she kept it back. She must say something--anything--that would make him hold out his hand to her with a sharp, hasty gesture that would clear his shirt-cuff, links upward, from his sleeve.
“And if I did not hate you, what would you do for me?” she moved her hand toward him as if by accident.
The next instant he had seized it, was holding it in a grasp that was loathsomely hot and strong. Words she did not listen to poured in a low whisper from his lips. Intent, her face alight with eagerness, she was gazing at his wrist, moving her hand till his lay palm upward under hers.
But if she expected to see the scarabs, of which she had one, she was wrong. And yet her heart leaped. For he did wear links, not studs, and they were showy and costly. Ovals of pink coral set round with seed pearls.
As she gazed, his low voice in her ears killed the sound as Cristiane parted the curtain. Wray, with his back to the door and off his guard, saw nothing, and Cylmer, cut to the heart, had seen enough.
If Cylmer had been one moment later he would have seen her snatch her hand away; wipe it with insolent care on her handkerchief; laugh, with utter scorn in Marcus Wray’s furious face, as, her aim attained, she spoke out:
“You might give me the whole earth, and I should hate you,” she cried out with insane bravery. “I hate death, but I would die before I married a man like you!”
Dazed, taken aback, he looked at her.
“You can go,” she said, smiling like Circe, treacherous and merciless; “I’m done with you.”
In the long moment’s pause a door shut somewhere, and she could not know it was Miles, going away. And Wray did not hear it. His hands trembled, his face full of evil, he looked down at her insolent beauty.
“But I am not done with you,” he said very low.