Ellen Percy; or, The Memoirs of an Actress — page 49: what you’re looking at

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36 ELLEN PERCY; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF AN ACTRESS. “TI stood upon the threshold for upwards of a minute,” she continued, “ contemplating that spec- tacle; and then suddenly recollecting the last in- junction my mistress had given, I hastened to Mr. St. Clair’s room to inform him that all was over. I cannot tell you, Miss Percy, with what a wild rapidity he flew to the chamber where his wife lay: he shut himself in there—for several minutes he remained alone with the corpse—and when he came forth, he had the little rosewood box in his hand. He was very, very pale; but he was not then weeping. He muttered some words to me in a broken voice; I could not exactly catch their sense—but methought he said some- thing to the effect that the faded flower contained in that box should be cherished by him to the end of his life, as it was found upon the bosom of his beloved and lamented Zarah.” The maid ceased speaking—and I was plunged into the most painful meditations ; for only too able was I to furnish a fearful clue to the mystery of that white rose. At length, after a long pause, I asked, “ And what said the physicians relative to the death of your mistress P” “They expressed some little surprise that it should haye taken place so suddenly,” answered the maid; “ but they spoke of the shock which her nervous system had sustained—and what else they said I know not, for my mind was too much distressed to enable me to devote much attention to them. They soon took their departure ; for, alas! Miss Percy, their patient was gone, and all their skill had been unavailing to arrest the ap- proach of death! I believe there is to be a splen- did funeral * “ No doubt of it! no doubt of it!’ I said, with some degree of bitterness, though the maid per- ceived it not—but at the same time I remembered the parting words which Zarah had addressed to me in reference to her husband. The confidential maid of the late Mrs. St. Clair remained with me a little time longer in conver- sation ; and then she went away. When I was by myself, I reflected on all that had taken place and on everything that I had just heard. I must describe the nature of my medita- tions to my readers. I felt convinced that Zarah kad perished by suicide—that she had poisoned herself by means of that white rose the deadly secret of which had been acquired in foreign parts by her criminal grandmother! But that the allu- sions she had thrown out in reference to a fatal as- sociation between that rose and her own mother’s fate, were pure fictions in order to prevent her maid from suspecting anything strange, I was equally well convinced ;—and the same degree of certi- tude did I entertain in reference to the complicity of St. Clair in his wife’s self-destruction, The physicians were no doubt right when they had asserted that her naturally vigorous constitution would have enabled her to triumph over the shock which her nerves had sustained: but Zarah was not the being who could consent to live with ruined beauty—a disfigured, hideous, loathsome- looking creature! Thus she had all along, from the moment of the outrage, contemplated self- destruction. She knew that the white rose would prove most fatally efficient in enabling her to ac- complish her deadly purpose, and that no suspi- cion of suicide would remain behind. She doubt- less knew likewise that her husband had one of those fatal flowers in his possession, and that he would only too gladly place it at her disposal when finding that it was to rid him for ever of the wife whom he hated. That these conjectures on my part were borne out by facts, was sufficiently evi- dent, inasmuch as portions of the tale which I had just heard from the lady’s-maid confirmed every- thing in this respect. In the last hour of his wife’s existence St, Clair had fetched something from his own room. What could this something be unless it was the rosewood box which the maid had subsequently taken from the bureau ?P—and how could the key of the bureau have been under Zarah’s pillow unless her husband had himself given if to her to place there? Besides, the in- junctions which Zarah had given to me, and the observance of which she had enjoined almost with her last breath through the medium of her maid, proved that she contemplated suicide at the time. Her object was to prevent me from giving pub- licity to any facts which might prove that she had sought relief in self-destruction from the calamity which had overtaken her. She had enjoined me that when she should be no more, I would not breathe a syllable in any way calculated to taint her memory—that I would remain altogether silent in respect to her—that I would abstain from any comment which my knowledge of past circumstances might possibly suggest—and that if Ispoke of her at all, it would only be with the sympathizing regretfulness of a friend. And then too, she had so earnestly enjoined me not to en- tertain any suspicion injurious to her husband, no matter what might be the circumstances attending her last moments ; and she had so skilfully con- trived everything that St. Clair should not even be in the room with her when she inhaled the fatal poison of the white rose. Yes—it was all a deliberate calculation on her part,—a tissue of proceedings woven with a horrible calmness by a woman whose strength of mind had endured until the very last! And so skilfully were these ar- rangements combined—with such a fearful clear- ness of intellect were they all conducted—that the very physicians themselves were cheated into the belief of a natural death, and the confidential maid utterly failed to suspect that there was aught sinister! She simply looked upon the closing scene as superstitiously strange and affect- ing; and as if dissimulation were most fully to crown the extraordinary drama, the grief of the widowed husband was s0 well assumed that it passed for genuine. I was shocked and appalled at the whole tre- mendous tragedy. I, the constant actress in tragedies upon the stage, shrank with feelings of indescribable horror from this tragedy of real life ! It looked like an awful dream—a tremendous ee 6 nal fne D vision impossible of realization: and yet it was all. true! But after a little while I reflected even still more deeply upon the details of the occur- rence, and upon the minutest springs of action which had influenced the perished Zarah. An immense ambition and a high degree of vanity had for a while past been the influences that ruled her. She found herself the envied wife of the Right Honourable Edwin St. Clair, a Cabinet Minister, and one of the most rising statesmen of the day. Life had charms only so long as her JOO (¢(@) ‘e. CS (E(@)