Читать книгу The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret - Alex. McVeigh Miller - Страница 3

Doctor Pratt attended the funeral of Miss Lawrence, looking grave and sad, and dignified as the mournful occasion demanded. His restless eyes took in every detail, noted the grief of the mourners and friends, peered beneath the heavy crape veil of handsome Mrs. Vance, noted the absence of the bereaved bridegroom-elect; he even entered the gloomy vault and stood by the open coffin among the friends who were taking their last look at the pallid features of the beautiful suicide whose golden hair strayed over the white satin pillow, mingling with fragrant rosebuds and lilies.

After the funeral was over he drove to a fashionable street, and stopping at a fine hotel, sent up his card to a person whom he designated as Mr. Colville.

After a brief delay he was shown up to that gentleman's room.

Mr. Colville was a rather handsome but dissipated-looking man, of perhaps forty years. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion, and the elegance of his apparel, his costly diamonds, as well as the luxuriousness of the furniture about him, betokened a man of wealth and ease.

He removed his cigar from his dark mustached lips, and said, with a light laugh:

"Ah, Pratt, what deviltry are you up to now?"

"I have just come from attending a funeral," Doctor Pratt answered sedately, as he seated himself in a satin-cushioned arm-chair.

"A funeral!" Mr. Colville started and grew pale. "Was it that of—of Miss Lawrence?"

"The same," was the calm reply.

"Ah! beautiful Lily—so you are gone to be the bride of death—to be clasped to her icy heart! Well, better so," said Colville, bitterly.

"I wonder at your coldness," said Doctor Pratt, eying him keenly. "I thought you loved her to desperation."

"Man, man—I did, I did!" cried out Colville, starting up and pacing the floor wildly, "but what of that? She would not have my love. She laughed it to scorn, and was about to give herself to my haughty rival. Great Heaven! I was nearly crazed by the knowledge. It was a happy madness that armed her hand against her own life! I am glad she is dead. I would rather she were the prey of the worm than given to the arms of another."

"Sit down, sit down," said the physician, shortly. "Calm yourself, or you will fall in a fit as did your horror-struck rival on hearing the dreadful news of her death."

"Fell in a fit, did he?" said Colville, stopping short in his hurried walk. "I wish he had died. But, no! he might have rejoined her then in some better land than this."

"If there be a better land, which I doubt," said Pratt, with a cold sneer.

Colville threw himself down into an arm-chair and looked moodily across at the physician.

"Well, what have you come after?" he asked, abruptly and testily. "You have put me up to so many devilish schemes that I always expect some villany when I see your satanic countenance."

"I have put my freedom in jeopardy this week for the sake of your happiness," Doctor Pratt answered with assumed indifference, "but if you take such a high tone I can leave with my secret untold."

"A secret!" said Colville, looking up with some interest; "your secrets are always worth hearing, doctor. Let me have it, I beg you."

"This one is worth hearing, any way," said Doctor Pratt grimly, and, rising, he turned the door-key in the lock, after looking out suspiciously into the wide hall. Returning, he drew his chair close to Colville's and continued, calmly: "I cannot afford to give you this secret, Colville, I will sell it to you for the pretty little sum of ten thousand dollars—a mere bagatelle, that, to a man of your wealth."

"Ten thousand dollars! is the man mad?" muttered Colville. "Why, man alive, there is not a secret under the sun I would pay that much for!"

"Is there not?" smiled the other, and bending a little nearer he whispered in low, impressive accents: "What would you give me, Harold Colville, if I could take Lily Lawrence from her coffin to-night, cheat the grave-worm of its prey, and give her to your arms, warm, living, beautiful—dead to all the world, alive only to you?"

"Great Heaven! the half of my fortune were not too great a price for such a miracle," breathed Colville, excitedly. "But, Pratt, you are raving! Even your skill, great though I own it to be, could not accomplish that, unless you are leagued with the devil, as I have often suspected you are."

"Thanks," said the grim physician, curtly, then interrogated calmly: "So ten thousand dollars would not weigh much in the scale against Lily Lawrence living?"

"Not a feather's weight! I would give it to you freely, gladly, but, Pratt, you cannot do it!"

"I can do it! Listen to me, Colville," he whispered breathlessly. "Lily Lawrence lies in her coffin to-night, to all the world dead: but to me she is a living woman, and as such may be resurrected."

"But how—why–"

"Be calm, I will explain all. When her lifeless form was discovered I was hastily called in. I went; I carefully examined the body, which lay, to all appearance, cold and dead. I found an almost imperceptible warmth about her heart, a tinge of color in the palms of her hands, and a vacant stare in the eyes resembling death, but which might be only produced by that rare and strange disease known to medical men as 'catalepsy.' There was a slight flesh-wound about the heart; but the blow had been struck by such a trembling hand that it had failed to penetrate a vital part, and the dreadful shock of the attempted murder (for I do not believe in the sapient jury's verdict of suicide) threw the poor girl into a state of syncope, or catalepsy, so closely resembling death that it deceived all but my professional eyes."

"Yet you suffered them to entomb a living woman?"

"For your sake, remember, Colville; for as I knelt by the beautiful creature, half stunned by my startling discovery, the thought of you darted into my head like an inspiration. I remembered what you must suffer if she lived to bless your rival with her love. I said to myself—It will be several days, most likely, before she rouses from this trance of death. Let them bury her, and make to themselves other idols. In the meantime I will resurrect her, give her to Colville's eager arms, and earn his eternal gratitude as well as a more substantial fee for myself."

"Pratt, you are a demon!"

"Is that the way you thank me for my friendship?"

"No, oh, no; you have done well—you have done right, and you shall have your reward. But, Heavens! to think of her lying there in her living beauty among the skeletons and the worms—perhaps even now she is waking amid those gloomy shades! Ugh!" he shuddered, and started from the chair.

"No danger, I think," said the dark physician, smiling contemptuously; "I observed her closely this evening, and there were no signs of reviving. Patience, my friend, I bribed the old sexton, I have the key to the vault. In a few hours it will be night, and then we will bear away your drooping Lily to revive beneath the sunshine of your love."

"But where can we take her? If the theft is discovered there will be a hue and cry raised about the body."

"I know of a safe place. You remember the old couple in the suburbs? the same who kept poor Fanny till her ravings ended in her death?"

"Oh, God! do not remind me of such horrible things—let the dead past lie! Yes, I remember!"

"We will take her there. I have been to see them, and prepared them for our coming. You will have to pay heavily, of course, but you will not mind that in such a cause. Now, then, will you go with me to the graveyard to-night?"

"I will, and may the devil, who certainly helps you in your evil deeds, doctor, aid us both in this precarious scheme, and restore my living love to my devoted arms!"

"Amen!" breathed Doctor Pratt piously.