CHAPTER XXVIII.

“MY NAME IS YESTERDAY.”

Ismay was gay as any lark that next morning. Her path, that had been so hard to tread, seemed sure and easy now; her course of action plain. When Miles came, as of course he would come to see how she was, she would tell him all--everything. With those showy cuff-links of Marcus Wray’s in her remembrance, that broken jewel in her keeping, that had never been her mother’s, she had something to go on. Miles should know all; she would keep nothing back, and then they two, together, should bring guilt home to Marcus Wray.

For, with the certainty of a person whose intuitions are never wrong, she was sure that it was he who had poisoned Abbotsford, he who had managed so cleverly that if anything were discovered, it was Mrs. Trelane who should bear the whole brunt.

But the morning passed, and no Miles. The waiting, the hope deferred, made her pale. And there was too much at stake--she could not afford to wait. She slipped out to the stable and sent a groom with a note.

“Please come to the stile at four. I’m quite well to-day, and I must see you. I have something to tell you.

“ISMAY.”

Something to tell him! Cylmer’s face hardened as he read. He heard beforehand the smooth, plausible story she would have made ready when Cristiane--as Cristiane was sure to do--had told her of the night before.

“I won’t go. I can’t see her,” he thought wretchedly, and yet his longing was too much for him. He would see her once more--once more feast his eyes on her fatal beauty that had weaned him from all simple loves forever; he would tell her that he knew, and bid her save herself and her mother, and go.

“I will be there at four,” he wrote, without beginning or signature, and Ismay as she read it only thought how careful he was to write nothing that could matter if other hands opened his note.

“He hates writing. He never even says he is glad I’m all right.” She kissed the little note before she burned it, not thinking that never again would Miles Cylmer write to Ismay Trelane.

She evaded the others that afternoon with some trouble, so that she was late at the stile. Miles was there before her, very tall, very handsome in the gray light. For the day was thawing drearily.

“Miles”--her voice rang out sweetly, joyfully, as he had heard it in his dreams--“I’m here! I’m quite well. Aren’t you glad?” She stopped abruptly as she reached his side, saw his face. “Miles, what’s the matter?” An agony of terror such as all her hunted life had never known made her dizzy as she looked.

He could not answer. He was fighting with that worst pain on earth when a man has learned to distrust and hate all that has been most dear and sweet and true.

“Are you sorry you saved me?” She tried hard for his old light mirth. “Is that it?”

Cylmer shivered. Truly he would rather she had died than that he should have known this of her.

“I don’t know,” he said under his mustache, never moving a step toward her, his hands, that were wont to clasp hers so eagerly, lax at his sides.

“What’s the matter? Look at me,” she cried desperately. “Why are you like this, when I’ve come all this way to tell you something that will take all my courage to tell?”

“Then you can spare your courage, for I know.”

“Know! You can’t.” She was panting, wild. “What can you know that has changed you so?”

“I know that it was your mother’s whose photograph was in Abbotsford’s room,” he said hoarsely.

“I know why you fainted here in my arms when I talked of it. I know how you and she have made a fool of me; how you have deceived me for Wray.”

“Wray!” She stared aghast. What did he mean?

“I saw you last night--with Wray.”

And at the look on his face the girl’s heart died within her.

“You saw me?” Ismay repeated. “Last night--with Marcus Wray?”

“Last night,” he echoed, “with Marcus Wray. He was alone with you in your sitting-room, holding your hand. And you, who say you hate him, lay looking at him so intently that you never knew I was there.”

“You were there!”--her eyes wide, dilated, were almost stupid as she stared at him. “What brought you there?”

“To see you! But as it was an inconvenient moment”--with a short, angry laugh--“I did not intrude.”

“Miles,” she cried, “I had a reason; I held his hand for a purpose.”

“I do not doubt it; you always have, I should fancy,” he said bitterly. “Had you the same purpose in the morning, when you let him kiss you in the hall, where the whole house might see?”

“Kiss me? He never kissed me.” Her lips, no longer scarlet, were parted, her forehead suddenly livid.

Kissed her, Marcus Wray? With a sudden dread she remembered she had dreamed of Cylmer, felt the tweed of his coat under her cheek.

“Miles! Miles!”--with a revulsion that was agony. “I was asleep. I thought, I dreamed”--faltering--“it was you.”

“You forget, he never kissed you”--disdainfully. “You say you slept. Do you think I, who loved you, would take advantage of your sleep to kiss you? But why talk of it”--with a quick, slighting motion of his hand--“since it is true?”

Yes, it was true. Just as holding his hand last night was true, and yet hell was no falser.

“Who told you?” she asked quietly, without denial or protest.

“The person who saw you. And because I would not believe I went up-stairs to see you, and I saw--but I did not come to talk of what you know so thoroughly.”

“Then why did you come?” For the first time her voice was unsteady. To his informant, as to Wray’s kisses, she never gave a thought; any one might have seen her as she slept.

“I came to tell you that I knew it all, everything; that I see now that from the first day you have been your mother’s daughter. Forgive my rudeness; it is an easy way--of putting it.”

“I don’t understand.” How cold it was growing, and how dark, she thought irrelevantly. Why could he not finish and go?

He pulled a card from his pocket.

“Who kept this from Cristiane?” he said roughly. “Was it you?”

“So you want to go back to your Cristiane?” For one second her eyes flashed.

“I don’t care if I never see her again”--impatiently. “Yesterday, God forgive me, I would have let her die for you.”

Yesterday! The utter change in his voice hurt.

“Don’t you see it isn’t Cristiane who is in question? It’s what you did, or did not. Tell me, did you keep that card?”

“I kept it,” very evenly. “I loved you, and I was afraid of her.”

“You loved me?” he laughed, unbelieving. “Why, you had only seen me once!” The contemptible thought of his money, his position, crowded into his brain and maddened him. “Oh, not me!” he ended in a tone that was an insult.

But she never noticed it.

She sat down on the stile, as if she were tired. That stile where the gate of heaven had been closed on her.

“So you came about that note and Wray!” she said. “Well, I did both things! What next?”

It was Cylmer’s turn to wince.

“This next,” he answered, and he could not meet her eyes, that once had been so sweet, so serene. “It was for your sake, because I pitied you, that I told nothing of all I knew about your mother. When you asked me, I was silent. And all the time you knew that she was not only unfit to have charge of an innocent girl, but was a murderess.”

“I thought so. Yes.”

“And then I loved you. And you used my love to find out what the police were doing. But even your nerves could not keep you from making mistakes. You fainted when I told you the police were on the murderer’s track, and I was too blind to know you had excellent reason. And because I was a fool I gave you that scarab, and I suppose you have profited by my folly, and destroyed the others, though you had ‘never seen it before!’”

“Miles, she is my mother.” Yet there was no pleading in her voice.

“And I thought I was your lover. But it seems I was mistaken. There is Wray. I will leave the field to him.”

For the first time her temper rose.

“And then you will tell what you know of my mother--and me--to the police, and the countryside?” she said scathingly. To hear her cut Cylmer to the quick.

“That is what I will not do. To my shame, I will help you both to go. I will let my friend lie unavenged. I will balk the investigation--if I can, and for my shame I shall know I am a party to a crime. This is what I came to tell you. It is not safe to stay here a day. You have that scarab, but by this time a description of it is with all the police in England, and any day they may be on you. If they ask me again on my oath if I can identify that photograph, what can I answer? For I saw your mother in that very attitude, that very dress, admiring her reflection in a mirror last night. If you want money I will give it to you; but make an excuse to Cristiane, and get your mother away. Let me never see her again, that I may forget her.”

“And me? You would forget me?” her voice oddly flat and lifeless.

“Forget you? I would give my soul if I could,” simply. But there was nothing in his bearing to comfort her.

“You don’t love me--now?” She persisted.

“No, not now. It will hurt you very little, as you have Wray.” There was no taunt in his voice, only misery and conviction.

She sat, dumb and quivering.

“If you ever loved me, go!” he cried. “Can’t you see that any hour you may be tracked?”

Like lightning she was on her feet, facing him. Her eyes were splendid in the dusk, her beauty appalling as she spoke.

“If I ever loved you!” she cried. “I, who loved you as a nun adores the cross; who was wicked, heartless, altogether evil, till you made me see that truth and goodness were things to live and die for! It was for your sake I fought for my mother. I hated her till I knew you; now I pity her with all my heart.

“Miles, if you listen now, I can tell you what would make even you pitiful. I can show you what a lying truth yesterday was--only hear me.”

“I would not believe you,” he cried wretchedly. “I should go home and know it was only another act in the play; that you----”

With a gesture she stopped him; she had raised both her hands with a movement that was magnificent. She spoke solemnly, as a priest who calls down the wrath of God.

“Then it is on your head,” she said, and he could but just hear her. “The sin, the crime, all that will come if you send me away. If I go from you it will be to become all you think me; neither truth nor honor nor pity will ever spring in me again. You will hear of me, and know that it was you who made me that thing that I shall be; the memory of it shall haunt you in life; it will cry out against you at the judgment day.

“As for my mother”--superb, powerful, she held him with her eyes--“I will bring that crime home--but not to my mother. I would have told you all the truth to-day, but you sealed my lips. I could tell you of a thing so wicked that even I could not see it done--but why should I warn you, when you think I am a liar?”

“My God, Ismay! What are you saying?” A thought so awful in his mind that he caught her by the arm till her flesh was bruised.

“Let me go!” She wrenched herself free. “God--I believed in no God till I knew you. Now, I believe, and as He hears me, I swear the day will come when for this day’s work you could kill yourself. No, don’t answer; don’t speak!” contemptuously. “By and by you will know that once I was true, and by then I shall be a thing to shudder at, with death on my hands----” Her voice broke wildly. “But the guilt of it will be on you. I wash my hands of it. Take your ring. I was never fit to wear it. But when I am dead and in hell, you can remember that you put me there.”

“Tell me what you mean!” authoritatively.

“I came to tell you--and you would not hear me. Now it is too late.” All her excitement was gone, her words were as quick and irrevocable as Fate.

“Ismay, love!” the man fairly groaned. “Do you mean me to believe all you’ve been saying? Wait a minute; speak to me; forget everything but that I loved you and you drove me mad!”

“Loved me? A thief, a liar, the daughter of a murderess, whose name is a byword!” Her voice rang out clear and wicked.

“Oh, no, Mr. Cylmer! You did not love me. You thought you loved me yesterday. Farewell!”

His ring lay unheeded on the ground between them, as he sprang to stop her. But she was quick and elusive as a shadow. Cylmer, his courage gone, his heart faint within him, leaned on the stile, as weak as a woman.

In all her words there had been only one meaning to him. It was she who had done it, and not her mother. And it was he who had stirred the lagging investigation to fresh life.

Girl, sorceress, woman! Whatever she was, she had been a child in his hands till to-day. And it was he who had set the noose about her neck!

“Ismay!” he sobbed once sharply, as a man does, from his very heart’s core.

Her blood would be on his head, and he loved her still. And yet she had been right. Not all she could have said or sworn would have blotted out those facts that, true or false, stood out so blackly against her.