While Mr. Marchand was giving some order to his steward, the beautiful girl at his other hand leaned toward him, and also whispered confidentially in his ear: "Dr. Graham, if you really are my brother's friend, I pray you watch him closely, and tell me at some future time if you have any fears—any suspicions of—Oh, I implore you, sir, do not deceive me!"
Her eyes were filled with tears, her voice choked.
The thing was absurd. Its ludicrous aspect struck the listener, almost forcing him to laugh; while the tears, at the same time, arose responsive in his own eyes.
A clock on the mantel chimed nine. The steward placed on the board the last delicacies of the feast,—Neapolitan creams and orange-water ice.
"Edith chooses luscious things like creams," remarked her brother. "Which will you have, doctor? As for me, I prefer ices; they cool my warm blood, which is fierce like tropic air. Ah, this is delicious! I am feverish, I believe; and the scent of the orange brings back visions of our dear island home."
He paused, as if his mind were again on the vine-clad hills of the "blessed isle." Then he spoke, suddenly,—
"Edith, have some of this?"
She smiled, shaking her head.
"But you must. I insist. You need it. Don't you agree with me, doctor, that it is just what she requires?"
He spoke in a rising key, with a rapid accent. Edith reached forth her hand, and took the little dish of orange ice. It shook like a lily in the wind; but she said, softly and with apparent calmness,—
"Anything to please you, brother. I will choose this every day if you think it good for me."
He gave her a satisfied look. Then there was a brief silence, which their guest was about to dissipate with a playful remark, when St. Victor turned abruptly to the steward,—
"Thompson," he cried, "now bring in the skeleton!"
"What, sir?" stammered the astonished servant.
"Bring in the skeleton, I said. Do you not know that the Egyptians always crown their feasts with a death's head? Bring it in, I say, and place it—there!"
Half-rising in his seat, he pointed to the vacant space behind his sister's chair.
The man now smiled, thinking his master jested; but his expression grew more questioning and anxious as the bright eyes turned upon him glittering in anger.
"Why am I not obeyed? Bring in the skeleton, I repeat, and place it behind my sister's chair. It is in the house; you will have no difficulty in finding it. It has lurked here long. I have been aware of its presence these many months,—always following, following my dear Edith,—a shadow in her steps. You see how young and fair she is; but it is all hollow—ashes—coffin-dust! She does not know of it; she has never even turned her head when it lurked behind her; but to-night she must make its acquaintance. It will not longer be put off. Our feast is nearly over. Bring it in, Thompson, and we will salute it."
The steward, with a puzzled look, turned from one to another of the company. Miss Marchand had risen to her feet, and was regarding her brother with terrified eyes, stretching out her hands toward him. The doctor, too, arose, not in excitement, but with commingled pain and resolution stamped upon his features; while his gaze rested upon the face of St. Victor until the eyes of the young man were riveted and arrested by the doctor's demeanor. A flush then diffused itself gradually over Marchand's pale countenance; his thin nostrils quivered; his fingers twitched and trembled and sought his bosom, as if in search of something concealed there. Then he laughed once more that short, nervous laugh so significant to the physician's ears, and cried, in a high tone,—
"So, Edith, you did not know that you were going mad? I did. I've watched you night and day this long time. I have all along been afraid it would end as it has—on Christmas night. That was the day our father tried to murder our mother. An anniversary, then, we have to-night celebrated. Ha, ha! And you didn't know the skeleton was awaiting admittance to the banquet!"
His eyes gleamed with a light at once of delight and with malice; but he quietly added,—
"But I shall not harm you, you demented thing, you beautiful insanity. There! doctor, didn't I tell you to watch her—to read her—to comprehend the subtle thing? So full of art and duplicity! But look at her now—now! She is as mad as the serpent which has poisoned itself with its own fangs—mad—mad! O God! has it come to this? But, I knew it—knew the skeleton was her skeleton—the bones without her beautiful flesh. We've had enough of it now. Take it away, Thompson,—hurry it away!"
"Appear to obey him. Pretend that you take something from the room," said Dr. Graham, in an undertone, to the servant, while St. Victor's eyes were fixed glaring and lurid upon his trembling, agonized, speechless sister.
The skeleton had, in truth, appeared at the Christmas feast.
Laying his hand firmly upon the young man's wrist the doctor said,—
"Mr. Marchand, you're not well, to-night. You are over-fatigued. Shall we go upstairs?"
St. Victor's quickly flashing gaze was met by that clear, resolute, almost fierce response in the physician's eye, before which he hesitated, then shrank. The madman had his master before him.
"You are right. I am not very well; my head aches; I'm worn out with this trouble about Edith, doctor. Do you think it is hopeless? She had better come with us. I don't like to leave her alone with that hideous shape at her back."
Obeying the gentle but firm pull upon his wrist, the brother turned to leave the room, looking back wistfully upon his sister. She was following them with clasped hands, and a face from which all youth and color had fled. St. Victor suddenly paused, gave a scream like the cry of a panther, wrenched himself quickly from the grasp upon his arm, and, in an instant, his teeth were buried in the white shoulder of his sister. But only for an instant, for almost as quickly as the madman's movement had been the doctor's. One terrible blow of his fist sent the maniac to the floor like a clod.
"O doctor! why did you do it?"
"To save your life, Miss Marchand."
"Poor St. Victor! His fate is on him at last."
Her voice was calm in its very despair. She sank down beside the senseless man, lifting the worn, white face to her lap and covering it with kisses. "I saw it,—yet I did not think it would come so soon. O God! be pitiful! Have I not prayed enough?"
The lips of the injured man began to quiver. "We must bind him and get him to bed before he fully recovers," said the doctor, lifting Edith to her feet. "Here, Thompson, help me to carry him to his bed."
When the maniac recovered consciousness fully, his ravings were fearful. It was the malady of frenzy in its most appalling condition. The extent of the mental wreck Dr. Graham had, for the last half hour of the feast, been trying to fathom. When he dealt that dreadful blow he knew the wreck was complete: reason had gone out forever with that panther-like shriek. All that could be done was to secure the maniac against injury to himself or others, and to administer such anti-spasmodics or anæsthetics as, in some degree, would control the paroxysms.
Poor St. Victor! So young, so gifted, so blest with worldly goods; his fate was upon him, as Edith had said.
From that hour he had but brief respite from torment. Not a gleam of sanity came from those fiery eyes; all was fierce, untamable, inhuman, as if the life had been one of storm and crime, instead of peace and purity. Did there lay upon that racking bed a proof of the natural depravity of the creature man, when the creature was uncontrolled by a reasoning, responsible will? Or, was it not rather a proof that the mental machine was in disorder, by a distention of the blood-vessels and their engorgement in the brain,—that cerebral excitement was a purely physical phenomenon, dependent upon simple, physical causes, which science some day shall define and skill shall counteract?
Happily,