The White Virgin

He caught her wrist now so fiercely that the pain was almost unbearable, but she did not shrink. The suffering seemed to clear her brain, and in a flash she saw a horror that made her tremble.

“Clive,” she cried excitedly, “what are you going to do?”

He laughed bitterly.

“Perhaps what you think,” he said. “Likely enough. What should the man do to one who robs him twice. Why not? There is not room for two such brothers upon earth.”

She panted to speak, but no words came for a time, as with her wrist prisoned with a grasp of iron, she let him lead her back toward the cottage half a mile away – out now from the rock cutting, to where the stars shone down upon them with their calm, peaceful glimmer, as if there were no such thing as human passion upon earth.

At last she spoke.

“Clive, you will not hear me,” she pleaded now, as her womanly indignation was swept away by the great horror she saw looming up before her.

“No,” he said, “I will not hear you. I know enough. Are you trembling for your lover’s life?”

“Oh!” she ejaculated, and she made an effort to snatch away her wrist; but the ring around it grew tighter as they walked on now in silence, till in her dread, as the icy perspiration gathered upon her forehead, she stopped short and faced him.

“I would not speak,” she said, in a low hurried voice. “You should go on thinking me everything that was false and bad. I would not say a word to show how you are misjudging me.”

He laughed scornfully.

“But I will not have you go in your mad anger and ignorance to commit some act for which you would repent to your dying day.”

“Only a short time of suffering, perhaps,” he said mockingly.

“Oh, Clive! you of all men to misjudge me so,” she moaned. “Let me tell you all.”

“Hah!” he ejaculated, as he fiercely swung her round and continued his walk, half dragging her beside him as if she were a prisoner.

“You do not know, dear – there: I call you dear,” she whispered, in her sweet, soft, caressing voice. “You are hurting me terribly with your cruel grasp, but it is nothing to the agony you make me suffer by believing I could be so deceitful and base.”

He laughed mockingly again, and she drew in her breath with a low sigh, as a wave of hot indignation mastered her once more, and closed her lips.

But love prevailed once more. She stopped, and tried to fling herself upon his breast, clinging wildly to him with the arm that was free.

“No, no; Clive, my own love, my hero, I would rather that you killed me than believed all this.”

He repulsed her with a cry of disgust, and again there was the low sighing sound of her breath, but she went on again —

“I forgive you, dear,” she said hurriedly. “You are my own; I am yours. I gave myself heart and soul to you, Clive, and you shall hear me.”

He tried to drag her onward along the path, but she would not stir, and nothing but the most cruel violence would have moved her then, as she went on.

“Something tries to make me say ‘Go on in your disbelief, for you are cruel, and do not deserve my love!’ but I must, I will speak. Kill me, then, if you will not believe. It would be so easy. There,” she cried; and she took a step before him right to the edge of the path where the precipice went perpendicularly down to the rough stones among which the river gurgled three hundred feet below.

He made a snatch to drag her back, but she resisted him and stood firm.

“I was sitting at home – alone,” she said hurriedly, “when the man brought your message.”

“My message!” he cried, with a mocking laugh.

“Yes; your telegram with its few words which sent joy to my weary heart, as I waited for news of him I loved.”

“My telegram!” he said, with the same low, harsh laugh. “There, back home to your father, woman. I believed, but I am awake now, and can be fooled no more.”

She struggled with herself again, and panted wildly.

“You must, you shall believe me, dear. I forgive you all this because I know it is your great love for me, and you think I have deceived you. Yes; I know what you must feel, dear, and so I beat down all my cruel anger, and humble myself like this in my pity for you and despair. I read your dear words.”

“My words! I sent no telegram. I came down hurrying to be once more at the side of the woman who in my folly I believed to be a saint. I come and I find her clasped in the arms of my greatest enemy – my own brother – and you talk to me like this.”

She uttered a low, piteous wail, and the struggle within her was intense.

“Yes, it is true; you sent me that message – ‘Coming down by the three six train to Blinkdale. Meet me along the high path.’”

“It is false,” he cried hastily.

“No, no,” she cried, as her hand went to the bosom of her dress, and she snatched out a crumpled-up piece of paper. “Take it and read.”

He made a fierce clutch at the paper she held out in the darkness, half to take it, half to strike it from her hand, as only part of some miserable deceit, and the latter act was successful, for it fell down the side of the precipice – down toward the river surging on its way.

She muttered a wild cry, and then went on quickly.

“It was late – my father had gone out, but I would not disappoint you, Clive; and I came on, shivering as I found it would soon be dark; but I knew that your strong arms would soon be round me to protect me, and I hurried on, till there in the darkest part I felt that you were waiting for me, and – that is all.”

Her hurried, passionate words ceased, and she ended her explanation with those three feeble, lame, to him inconclusive, words. Then yielding herself to his pressure, she walked on by his side, broken, exhausted by her emotion, dumb now, as she waited for him to speak. She waited in vain till the river side was reached, and from lower down in the darkness there came a cheery whistle as the Major was returning from the long walk into which he had been drawn by his ill success.

Clive Reed’s nerves twitched, but he turned rapidly through the garden with Dinah half fainting, and ready to cling to one of the supports of the porch as he at last set her free.

“What – Clive – dearest,” she whispered faintly – “tell me – what are you going to do?”

He bent down with his lips close to her ear, and whispered sharply —

“Kill him – or he shall me.”

Then, with a hurried step he sprang up through the higher part of the garden in and out among the shrubs and bushes, climbed on to the very top, and struck out over the mountain slopes.

Dinah listened till the rustling sounds he made died away, and then, hot and trembling, she went up slowly to her room, and sat down with her face buried in her hands; but there was no relief – the source of her tears was dry.

Clive took a short cut across the rugged moorland, and twice over he narrowly escaped death. The first time he was pulled up short by coming violently in the darkness against the rough, unmortared wall built up round an ancient shaft on the mine land; and as he checked himself by grasping the loose stones, one of them fell over and went down and down, striking once against the side, and sending a chill through him as a reverberating roar came up, followed at a short interval by a dull echoing splash, after which he could hear the water hiss and suck against the sides, sending up strange whisperings, which sounded to his disturbed imagination like demoniacal confidences about Dinah Gurdon and his brother.

He hurried away, as another stone was dislodged, and the sullen plunge came to his ear when he was yards distant, tearing along in the most reckless way, to trip at last over a stone and fall headlong down one of the deep gully-like ravines with which the mountain land was scored.

He caught at a rough projection, against which he struck, and held on while a little avalanche of stones continued falling; then half-stunned and trembling from the shock, crept back again to proceed more cautiously along the edge of the gully, making for the path once more, fully awake now to the fact that it was utter madness to attempt to cross that region in the darkness.

“Not yet,” he muttered, with a savage laugh, “I must square accounts with brother Jessop first.”

Then he laughed as he wiped away the blood which had trickled down like perspiration from a cut in the forehead, and which came like a blessing in disguise, relieving, as it bled freely, the tension upon his overcharged brain; for if ever man was on the border-line which stretches between sanity and utter madness, Clive Reed was then.