CHAPTER XXVII. LUCRETIA REGAINS HER SON.
It seemed as if now, when danger became most imminent and present, thatthat very danger served to restore to Lucretia Dalibard her faculties,which during the earlier day had been steeped in a kind of drearystupor. The absolute necessity of playing out her execrable part withall suitable and consistent hypocrisy, braced her into iron. But thedisguise she assumed was a supernatural effort, it stretched to crackingevery fibre of the brain; it seemed almost to herself as if, her objectonce gained, either life or consciousness could hold out no more.
A chaise stopped at the porch; two gentlemen descended. The elder pausedirresolutely, and at length, taking out a card, inscribed "Mr. WalterArdworth," said, "If Madame Dalibard can be spoken to for a moment, willyou give her this card?"
The footman hesitatingly stared at the card, and then invited thegentleman into the hall while he took up the message. Not long had thevisitor to wait, pacing the dark oak floors and gazing on the fadedbanners, before the servant reappeared: Madame Dalibard would see him.He followed his guide up the stairs, while his young companion turnedfrom the hall, and seated himself musingly on one of the benches on thedeserted terrace.
Grasping the arms of her chair with both hands, her eyes fixed eagerlyon his face, Lucretia Dalibard awaited the welcome visitor.
Prepared as he had been for change, Walter was startled by the ghastlyalteration in Lucretia's features, increased as it was at that moment byall the emotions which raged within. He sank into the chair placed forhim opposite Lucretia, and clearing his throat, said falteringly,--
"I grieve indeed, Madame, that my visit, intended to bring but joy,should chance thus inopportunely. The servant informed me as we came upthe stairs that your niece was ill; and I sympathize with your naturalanxiety,--Susan's only child, too; poor Susan!"
"Sir," said Lucretia, impatiently, "these moments are precious. Sir,sir, my son,--my son!" and her eyes glanced to the door. "You havebrought with you a companion,--does he wait without? My son!"
"Madame, give me a moment's patience. I will be brief, and compress whatin other moments might be a long narrative into a few sentences."
Rapidly then Walter Ardworth passed over the details, unnecessary now torepeat to the reader,--the injunctions of Braddell, the delivery of thechild to the woman selected by his fellow-sectarian (who, it seemed, byJohn Ardworth's recent inquiries, was afterwards expelled the community,and who, there was reason to believe, had been the first seducer of thewoman thus recommended). No clew to the child's parentage had been givento the woman with the sum intrusted for his maintenance, which sum hadperhaps been the main cause of her reckless progress to infamy and ruin.The narrator passed lightly over the neglect and cruelty of thenurse, to her abandonment of the child when the money was exhausted.Fortunately she had overlooked the coral round its neck. By that coral,and by the initials V. B., which Ardworth had had the precaution to haveburned into the child's wrist, the lost son had been discovered; thenurse herself (found in the person of Martha Skeggs, Lucretia's ownservant) had been confronted with the woman to whom she gave the child,and recognized at once. Nor had it been difficult to obtain from her theconfession which completed the evidence.
"In this discovery," concluded Ardworth, "the person I employed met yourown agent, and the last links in the chain they traced together. But tothat person--to his zeal and intelligence--you owe the happiness Itrust to give you. He sympathized with me the more that he knew youpersonally, felt for your sorrows, and had a lingering belief that yousupposed him to be the child you yearned for. Madame, thank my son forthe restoration of your own!"
Without sound, Lucretia had listened to these details, though hercountenance changed fearfully as the narrator proceeded. But now shegroaned aloud and in agony.
"Nay, Madame," said Ardworth, feelingly, and in some surprise, "surelythe discovery of your son should create gladder emotions! Though,indeed, you will be prepared to find that the poor youth so reared wantseducation and refinement, I have heard enough to convince me that hisdispositions are good and his heart grateful. Judge of this yourself; heis in these walls, he is--"
"Abandoned by a harlot,--reared by a beggar! My son!" interruptedLucretia, in broken sentences. "Well, sir, have you discharged yourtask! Well have you replaced a mother!" Before Ardworth could reply,loud and rapid steps were heard in the corridor, and a voice, cracked,indistinct, but vehement. The door was thrown open, and, half-supportedby Captain Greville, half dragging him along, his features convulsed,whether by pain or passion, the spy upon Lucretia's secrets, thedenouncer of her crime, tottered to the threshold. Pointing to where shesat with his long, lean arm, Beck exclaimed, "Seize her! I 'cuse her,face to face, of the murder of her niece,--of--of I told you, sir--Itold you--"
"Madame," said Captain Greville, "you stand charged by this witnesswith the most terrible of human crimes. I judge you not. Your niece,I rejoice to bear, yet lives. Pray God that her death be not tracedto those kindred hands!" Turning her eyes from one to the other with awandering stare, Lucretia Dalibard remained silent. But there was stillscorn on her lip, and defiance on her brow. At last she said slowly, andto Ardworth,--
"Where is my son? You say he is within these walls. Call him forth toprotect his mother! Give me at least my son,--my son!"
Her last words were drowned by a fresh burst of fury from her denouncer.In all the coarsest invective his education could supply, in allthe hideous vulgarities of his untutored dialect, in that uncurbedlicentiousness of tone, look, and manner which passion, once aroused,gives to the dregs and scum of the populace, Beck poured forth hisfrightful charges, his frantic execrations. In vain Captain Grevillestrove to check him; in vain Walter Ardworth sought to draw him fromthe room. But while the poor wretch--maddening not more with theconsciousness of the crime than with the excitement of the poison inhis blood--thus raved and stormed, a terrible suspicion crossed WalterArdworth; mechanically,--as his grasp was on the accuser's arm,--hebared the sleeve, and on the wrist were the dark-blue letters burnedinto the skin and bearing witness to his identity with the lost VincentBraddell.
"Hold, hold!" he exclaimed then; "hold, unhappy man!--it is your motherwhom you denounce!"
Lucretia sprang up erect; her eyes seemed starting from her head. Shecaught at the arm pointed towards her in wrath and menace, and there,amidst those letters that proclaimed her son, was the small puncture,surrounded by a livid circle, that announced her victim. In the sameinstant she discovered her child in the man who was calling down uponher head the hatred of Earth and the justice of Heaven, and knew herselfhis murderess!
She dropped the arm, and sank back on the chair; and whether the poisonhad now reached to the vitals, or whether so unwonted a passion in sofrail a frame sufficed for the death-stroke, Beck himself, with a low,suffocated cry, slid from the hand of Ardworth, and tottering a stepor so, the blood gushed from his mouth over Lucretia's robe; his headdrooped an instant, and, falling, rested first upon her lap, then struckheavily upon the floor. The two men bent over him and raised him intheir arms; his eyes opened and closed, his throat rattled, and as hefell back into their arms a corpse, a laugh rose close at hand,--it rangthrough the walls, it was heard near and afar, above and below; not anear in that house that heard it not. In that laugh fled forever, tillthe Judgment-day, from the blackened ruins of her lost soul, the reasonof the murderess-mother.