[image]"'I wish to speak to you of my poor murdered friend.'"A Woman Martyr.Page 216CHAPTER XXVIf the duke's pale, wrathful valet had suddenly changed into the grinning skeleton which had seemed to Joan to mock and gird at her that night when she replaced the poison bottle in the cupboard after pouring its contents into Victor Mercier's brandy, she could hardly have shrunk back more absolutely terror-stricken.At first she gazed, speechless, at Paul Naz's set, ghastly face, with those pale blue eyes flashing menace and scorn. Then that up-leaping instinct within her to defend herself came to her rescue."Are you mad, sir, to speak to me like this?" she haughtily said. "Leave me. If you presume to insult me, I will call for help."For a moment her daring, her defiance, staggered Paul. Meanwhile, the sudden pallor of her beautiful features, the agony in her dark eyes, had strengthened his gradually formed, but confident, belief that Victor Mercier had been merely shielding a woman when he spoke of the Thornes owing money to his late father, and that he and Joan were either lovers, or had been so. Men did not dress up as men-servants to meet a woman who merely had some cash to repay. Then, he had seen other symptoms in Victor. He believed, when he had read the account of the inquest, that either Victor held Joan's promise of marriage, or that she was his secret and abandoned wife. To the story Victor had told Vera he attached but little significance. Men said such things sometimes to girls to cover unpalatable facts they need not be told.Then, an interior conviction seemed to assert itself. "This is the woman," cried his soul. He gazed steadily at Joan."Mademoiselle, I am sorry to speak like this, but I know you knew my poor murdered friend well," he began in a low tone. "God forgive me if I misjudge you! But I feel you have been cruel to him. Time will show. Meanwhile, I wish to say to you that I will do nothing against you if you do not bring this noble gentleman I hear you are to marry to shame. I leave justice to the Creator, who invented it."With which he made her a slight bow, turned, and stalked out of the conservatory. She sank into a seat breathless, and stared vacantly at the place where he had stood, for she seemed to see that white, scornful face with the pale blue eyes which to her excited fancy had been ablaze with lurid fire, still.All was over, then! The mirage of happiness was a mockery. She was once more plunged, steeped, in the atmosphere of crime."I see," she told herself, in her mental writhings under this new scorch of pain. "He is a Frenchman; he is--was--Victor's accomplice, his spy. He told Victor of Vansittart. He has been watching me."Her first insane idea was to tell the duke that his trusted servant was the miserable spy of unscrupulous wretches. Second thoughts said "madness! Keep it to yourself. What can the man do? He knows nothing of your visit to Hay thorn Street. If you say, or suggest, he is a spy, you arouse suspicions."Upon these second thoughts she acted. She controlled her emotions, summoning all her force, her self-possession, to her aid. There was a long mirror in the corner. She composed her features and rubbed her cheeks and lips before it, regaining a semblance of composure and ordinary appearance only just in time, for as she leant back in her chair slowly fanning herself Vansittart came in, looking grave, troubled, although he smiled as their eyes met. Hadheseen or heard anything peculiar?"Is it a breach of confidence to ask what his Grace wanted you for?" she asked, assuming a sprightly manner which shocked her even as she did so."Not at all," he said, a little abruptly; "something about a wedding present."Then a manservant entered with a tray of champagne and the menu card, and until she had been revived by the food she forced herself to eat, and the champagne Vansittart insisted upon her drinking, she asked no more. But, in her strained state, her lover's pre-occupation was unbearable.Desperate, she determined to know the worst. "Tell me," she began, leaning her fair elbow on the table and looking pleadingly into his face with those bewilderingly beautiful eyes. "You know you yourself proposed we should share our secrets. And, from your manner, I know--I am positive--the duke said something more than about a wedding present.""If he did, it was nothing of any consequence," he fondly returned, gazing tenderly at the lovely face which was his whole world. "I would tell you at once, only you are such a sweet, innocent, sensitive darling, so utterly unsophisticated, unused to this rough planet and its still rougher inhabitants--you would make a mountain of what is far less than a mole-hill in one's way.""What is it?' I would rather, really I would, know." She gave him a coaxing glance."Well, it is this," he replied, hardly. "Very little to annoy one. Only I am so absurdly vulnerable, that the merest breath which affects the subject of our marriage seems to shrivel me up. It is those wretched clubs; at least, the miserable gossip which the riffraff of the clubs seem to batten and fatten upon, drivelling, disappointed, soured units of humanity that they are! They seem to be prognosticating that our wedding will not 'take place,' because I have a secret wife somewhere, who is likely to turn up. Do you suspect me, darling?"Her joyous laugh, born of infinite relief, almost startled him. When he reached his bachelor domain that night, and recalled the events of the evening, the sweetest delight of all was to remember how his beautiful darling took his hands, and with eyes brimming with love, drew him to her and nestled in his arms as some faithful dove might have flown confidently to his shoulder. That ensuing brief--all too brief--half hour, when, by their world seemingly forgot, and certainly their world forgetting, they interchanged tender words and still tenderer embraces, seemed to his passion-stricken nature to have so riveted them to each other that the very machinations of hell itself bid fair to be powerless to part them."Her absolute innocence makes her so immeasurably sweeter than all the other women," he told himself, as he stalked about his rooms in a hyper-ecstatic mood. "It is that which makes her so unsuspicious, so trusting. Now, if I had told something of what the duke said to me to an ordinary woman, she would have suspected me of goodness knows what in the past. She might have concealed it, but I should have known that she did. I believe it is my darling's being so 'unspotted from the world' which influenced me to love her as I do. Oh, may I be worthy of being her guardian; for my past is not the fair, white, unsullied page that hers is! No man's can be."* * * * *When the young doctor she had fetched in her frantic fear the night of Mercier's death, after finding Victor insensible upon the sofa, came to Vera in the little sitting room where she was kneeling at her poor trembling old stepmother's side and telling her with the assurance of desperation that Victor must, would, soon be better--why should he not be? He had never been subject to fits. He was so well-knit, so strong, so athletic--she gave the intruder an imperious gesture, and, springing up, led him out of the room, and, closing the door, leant against the lintel, and gazed at him with such wild agony that he flinched, alarmed. She looked uncanny, and at such a crisis it was disturbing."I know. He is dead!" she resolutely said. "But, for God's sake, have mercy on his poor old mother. He is all she has in life. There will be an inquest? So much the better. Now go in to her, and tell her he is very ill, and must be left to you and me."The young practitioner demurred. His private opinion was that people ought to "face their fate." He was fresh from the hospitals.But there was something witchlike about this girl. She commanded the wistful, shivering John Dobbs, a mild specimen indeed of the genus medico, to remain and solace her stepmother with as many white lies as he could generate at the moment; then, over-riding the objections of old Doctor Thompson, who, returning home and hearing of her wild condition from his house-maid, had proceeded to Haythorn Street at once, she insisted on accompanying them into the room where the dead man lay with that calm, sphinx-like smile upon his handsome lips, and remaining there until Doctor Thompson actually took her by the shoulder and, turning her out, locked the door.But, like some faithful dog, she remained outside. She watched them seal up the room in a dead silence. After tenderly assisting her stepmother to bed, weaving fictions the while--"Victor was in bed and asleep, the doctors had gone, and their one direction was he should not be disturbed; his very existence depended upon his being kept quiet," etc.--she returned to her post, and spent the night crouched upon the landing, her cheek against the sealed door."My heart is dead; my life went with his," she told herself. "What there remains of me is left to find the woman who murdered him, and to bring her to justice."CHAPTER XXVIOld Doctor Thompson sat up in his study, smoking and listening to his nephew's theories anent Victor Mercier's death, while Vera, sleepless in her anguish, remained sifting her suspicions throughout that dismal night, limply leaning up against the sealed door which so cruelly barred her out from that silent room where her beloved lay on the sofa in the mystic sleep of death. "I have to revenge his murder--for he has been drugged--poisoned--I could swear it!" she told herself, over and over again. "That woman I saw--tall, well-dressed--stalking off--and staggering--she is the one who has killed him! It is she I must find--God help me!"How impotent she felt, when all Mercier's belongings were under lock, key, and seal!But she had enough to occupy her. The unhappy old mother was in a helpless state of grief--she alone had to "do for the household," since they kept no regular servant. Then, when she sent in her resignation, her admirer, the stage manager, Mr. Howard, urged the proprietors of the touring company to refuse to accept it. She had to go off and almost beg release upon her knees.Then came the day of the inquest, and her statement; the grudgingly admitted verdict, and the consequent release from endurance of the worst of the bondage.The purses of gold were all that they found which pointed to any one's visit the night of Mercier's death; and even Vera, despite her intense anxiety to find a clue which would bring her face to face with the wife he had told her of, the "hag," the "cat," whom he had spoken of so vindictively as the only barrier between them, could but think that the money might have been locked up in his desk since his return. He had spoken of possessing ample means for the immediate present, and had spent lavishly upon her of late.They searched high and low, the poor mother clinging to the relics of the only son whose heir she was, as she had few relatives belonging to her, and his father, her first, cruel spouse, had no kith and kin that he had cared to acknowledge. But while they found more money--neither in boxes, nor chests of drawers, or pockets, did they come across any traces bearing upon the part of his life they knew nothing about. The letters and papers in his desk and trunk related to past business abroad, alone.The funeral was a plain, but good one. It was a wet, gloomy day when the hearse bearing the brown oaken coffin decorated with wreaths bought lavishly by Vera, and a few modest ones sent by the doctor's wife and some sympathizing neighbours, made its way slowly through the gaping crowd in Haythorn Street and the immediate neighbourhood, and proceeded more briskly northwards. Vera sat back in the first of the two funeral carriages--the two doctors were in the second--and as she vainly strove to comfort her weeping old step-mother, she gazed sternly out upon the familiar roads with a strange wonder at the ordinary bustle and movement. Life was going on as usual, although Victor Mercier's strong, buoyant spirit was quenched. They laughed and talked and screamed and whistled, those crowds, while he lay still and white within his narrow coffin under the flowers, his pale lips sealed for ever in that strange, wistful, unearthly smile."But they have not heard the last of him," she grimly thought. "The last will be far, far more startling than the first!"Let him be laid to rest, and she would rouse like a sleeping tigress awakened to the defence of her young, and finding that wife of his, bring her to justice.The belief that that woman had secretly visited him, and that by her means he had had his death-dose, strengthened every moment until it became a rigid, fixed idea. All had seemed to point to it. His careful dress to receive his visitor, the embroidered shirt, the diamond stud, the white flower in his button-hole, a costume assumed after she had left him in his ordinary day suit. Then his shutting the cat into the parlour was doubtless lest she should cover his visitor with her hairs--and the cat only affected women, and had a trick of jumping up on feminine laps."There is justice in heaven, so I shall find some clue to her," thought she, as they passed the stone-mason's yards on the cemetery road. The words haunted her--"Vengeance is Mine! I will repay, saith the Lord." They should be inscribed on his tomb.Presently the horses slackened in their speed--they proceeded at a funeral pace--then they stopped. They were at the cemetery gates. Vera heard the distant tolling of the bell. It had been like this when her own father was buried, in whose grave for two Victor was to lie."I must bear up," said the aged woman who leant against her, with a gasping sob. "Victor would not like to see me cry." And she tried to give a broken-hearted smile."No, mother," said the girl tenderly. But she was not really touched--it was as if her heart were turned to stone.The funeral train went on with a jerk. A returning empty hearse scampering home the wrong way had been the temporary obstruction. Graves, rows of crosses and headstones--ponderous marble and granite tombs--the world of the dead was a well-peopled one. They halted--one of the solemn undertaker's men came and let down the steps. There was the coffin--The beautiful words fell unheeded on Vera's ears. She was intent upon a small, pale man with fair hair, in black, who had joined them. Who was he? Was he the intimate friend Victor had casually spoken of?As they stood in the narrow pews of the mortuary chapel, the first ray of sunshine which had pierced the clouds that day fell upon the close-cut hair of Paul Naz, who had determined not only to see the last of the friend anent whose fate he had such gruesome, horrible misgivings, but to offer his friendship to the charming young actress whom he now knew to have been more to the dead man than mere step-sister-in-law; and Vera said to herself, "It is an omen!"As they stepped slowly out, following the coffin, she almost staggered as she vainly tried to support her half-fainting step-mother. Paul Naz helped her with a "Pardon, mademoiselle! I am his friend!" and she gave him a grateful glance.They were at the grave. The clergyman was reading "He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower--" ... A thrush carolled loudly on a neighbouring bush. The sunlight broke through and shone upon the brass handles of the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. "My beloved, I will only live to avenge you, and take care of mother," murmured Vera, as she left the grave, and following her stepmother, who leant on Paul Naz's arm, listened to his affectionate talk of the dead man."I loved him, mademoiselle! And if I can help you, I beg you to send to me!" he said, earnestly, giving her a meaning, almost appealing look after he had helped Victor's mother into the carriage. Then he stood, bare-headed, and gravely watched them depart."He suspects!" Vera told herself, feverishly, as they drove home. "Perhaps--oh, if it only is so! He knows something!"Back in the empty house, she coaxed her step-mother to bed, and was proceeding to give orders to the charwoman about the tidying-up of the place, when there was a vigorous pull of the bell."I will see to it," she said to the woman. Proceeding to the hall-door and opening it, she was confronted with the landlady of the next-door lodging-house--a Mrs. Muggeridge, whose fowls had been harassed by the tortoise-shell cat, after which there had been ructions, and each house had cut its neighbour dead."I am sure I don't wish to hurt your feelings, or to intrude, Miss Anerley, but my mind is that troubled I must speak to you," said the old woman, who was stout and asthmatic, and looked pale and "upset." "I hope your poor mar is all right?""Yes, thanks! Will you come this way?" said Vera, who felt somewhat as a war-horse hearing the bugle, for she hoped to "hear something," and she conducted her visitor into the little parlour and closed the door.Mrs. Muggeridge pantingly, with many interpolations, told her tale. She had a country girl as servant, "Sar' Ann, as good a gal as ever lived." Still, it seemed that Sar' Ann was human, and could err. The day after the murder, "as they did call it, and as some calls it now, in spite of that there crowner, Sar' Ann was took with hysterics, and giv' warnin'.""Which I took. As I says to Sar' Ann, 'I don't want any one 'ere as ain't comfortable.' And she was right down awful, that girl was. One night I took and made 'er tell me what it was, and I'm goin' to tell you, now! For the very mornin' after--I suppose because I told her what she said to me she might have to tell to a Judge and jury, she ran away. She got the milkman to give a lift to her box, and when I got up, expectin' to find the kettle boilin', she was off and away into space--and there she is--like one of them Leonines as they talk of, but we never sees, Miss Anerley! It'll take a detective to find her, if so be as she should be called up to say what she says to me!"CHAPTER XXVIIMrs. Muggeridge paused, and had a fit of coughing. Vera waited with the patience which seemed part of her dogged resolve to avenge Victor's death."Yes?" she said mildly, as Mrs. Muggeridge wiped her eyes."Where was I? Oh! About Sar' Ann making tracks like that. Well, if I tell you what she told me, and ease my conscience like, will you give me your word, Miss Anerley, as no harm shall come to the girl? Poor, unfortunate girl! I'm glad as it wasn't me! You promise? Well, it was like this: My first-floor front, what corresponds with yours where your gentleman lodges what's been away for his Ma's funeral, is occupied by a gent in the City, what leaves a lot of vallables about as I don't harf like having the charge of. So, when I'm goin' out, I locks up his room, if so be as 'e ain't at 'ome, and puts the key where he knows how to find it. Now, we was all out except Sar' Ann the night of the murd--oh, well, the night Mr. Musser died: I was at the horspital entertainment along with the rest. So what must my lady needs do, but get that key--sly puss! she must have watched and found out where I put it--and go up into Mr. Marston's room to fiddle about with his things. I believe she spent the evenin' there. At all events, when she was a-sitting at the window, peepin' out, she sees a tall lady come along, and disappear into your house. She did think it queer, knowin' or suspectin' as you was all out! So she listened, and small blame to 'er, as I told the girl! She listens--and she swore to me she could 'ear two voices in the next room, a man's and a woman's. She sat there listenin' for a hour or more after dark, and they was talkin'--sometimes loud--but she couldn't distinguish the words. And then there was quiet-like, and she wondered what had become of 'em--so she was peerin' out of window when out comes the tall lady, shuts the door, and makes off. Your 'ansom drove up at the same time, and she declared to me she see the lady stop short and stare at you! There now!"Vera's thoughts, spurred by the excitement of such important, unexpected evidence, worked with lightning rapidity. Even as she listened with concentrated attention, she was warning herself to be cautious. If her suspicions that Victor was foully murdered were shared by others, the criminal might be forewarned, and escape her doom.So she gave a sad, incredulous smile, and shrugged her shoulders. "My dear Mrs. Muggeridge, your girl ran away because she was a wretched story-teller, and was afraid of being called to account!" she dryly returned. "The voices, the tall lady--everything--is pure invention! Surely I ought to know? The only fact is that I came home in a hansom. You said she was hysterical. It is a pity her perverted ideas were on the subject of my dear, dead brother!""Brother? I read as you said at the crowner's quest that he was your sweetheart!" exclaimed Mrs. Muggeridge, vulgarly. She had confidently expected to become one of the chiefdramatis personæin the gruesome tragedy at number Twelve, and her disappointment exasperated her. "And as for my poor Sar' Ann bein' a story-teller, allow me to tell you as she's never told a lie to my knowledge! Stealin' the key? Gals will be gals! Let me giv' you a word of warnin', Miss Vera Anerley, or whatever you call yourself. Your best plan'll be to find Sar' Ann--I can't, my respectable house is ruined by bein' next door to a disreputable hole where people comes to sudden deaths and their friends want it hushed up--I've to see about movin' as soon as I've got over the shock it's been to me to be next door to such a orful thing--but if you don't find Sar' Ann and let 'er help to discover the lady what murdered your sweetheart, p'raps you'll find yourself havin' the cap fitted to you, maybe! So there! Ere's Sar' Ann's larst address, to show as I don't bear no malice, and wish your poor old Mar well--I never had no call to complain of'er--but though I knows as Sar' Ann come original from Oxfordshire, that's all I do know."Mrs. Muggeridge huffily made her exit, giving a contemptuous little shake of her skirts and a backward glance of defiance as she issued forth, and down the steps of the offending house.Vera closed the door upon her and for some moments seemed riveted to the spot, her thoughts awhirl. If she could have known that where she stood, contemplating vengeance, fiercely if voicelessly praying for justice, the girl who had been her lover's legal wife, the girl who had drugged him and brought about his death, had stood unconsciously listening for his last breaths, that she might return and steal the documents which incriminated her!But no voices came from out the walls, the ticking of the clock had no sinister meaning. She heard the charwoman singing some common music-hall tune to herself as she swept. Swish, swish, went the irritating broom--then an organ began to play aggressively at the end of the street--a chorus from a comic opera she had heard one night, nestling against Victor in the dress circle of a suburban theatre.She shuddered and wrung her hands. Why was life so ghastly, so full of horror, of terror? But she must not stand there, letting the precious moments go idly, fruitlessly by."I must have help," she told herself. "Alone, I can do nothing. I will write to Mr. Naz, and ask him to come and see me."Writing an ordinary little note, merely asking Paul conventionally if he could make it convenient to name some time to visit them, it would comfort her and Victor's poor mother to see one who had been a good friend of their loved one's--then going out to post it at the nearest pillar-box--restored her outward, if not her inward equanimity. She spent the day literally setting the house in order--assembling all Victor's belongings in the attic lumber-room, to be thoroughly searched by her on the morrow.Early the following morning an empty hansom drove up, bearing a little note from Paul. Would twelve o'clock suit her to see him? And would she send an answer by the cab?She wrote a few lines in affirmative reply; then, after seeing her step-mother comfortably established on the sitting-room sofa where she and Victor had revelled in each other's society that night of happiness after the performance--the night he first showed her his somewhat sudden passion for her in all its fulness--she stole away upstairs to the attic to put away the relics of the dead man.She had cleared her two best trunks; and in these she meant to store everything he had left--clothes, books, pipes. The money had been placed in a bank in her step-mother's name. A lawyer friend of Doctor Thompson had acted for them, and had simplified everything.The little room was hot. She opened the window wide, drew down the tattered old green blind, and set to work shaking, folding, and arranging Victor's clothes.How like him it was to have shirts that a French marquis would hardly have disdained! As she laid them away with as tender and reverent a touch as that of a bereaved mother storing away the little garments of a loved, lost infant, she almost broke down. But she took herself sternly to task, repressed her melting mood, and reminded herself that a strong man's work--the bringing a criminal to book--was hers. Any and every womanish weakness must be sternly disallowed.One trunk was soon full of linen and odds and ends. This she locked, and proceeded to fill the next. The books came first--mere remnants of volumes, mostly French, with morsels of yellow paper cover adhering to them. But--strongly redolent of tobacco, she put them carefully in a layer beside the cases of pipes, and the odd-looking curios he had collected. They seemed almost part of him, somehow, those pipes. That they should be there, smelling of the weed he had smoked, and he should be mouldering in his grave in that densely populated cemetery! She shuddered. Her hand trembled: she picked up a yellow volume,Quatre Femmes et un Perroquet, with eyes brimming over with tears, picked it up carelessly; something fell out.Something? Two things--one, a soiled little photograph. As she seized it her tears dried--her eyes burned. It was the photograph of three girls.Evidently an amateur attempt--badly mounted. Three girls in summer frocks and aprons, two standing, one seated on a bench--in front there was grass--at the back, part of a brick house and some shrubs.Fiercely, with intense anxiety, she stared at the three faces. Two were round and plain: these belonged to the girls--fifteen or sixteen years of age at the utmost--who were standing. The face of the seated girl was a beautiful one: full of sweet pathos, and yet with a tender happy smile about the mouth."Too young to be that awful woman," she mused, crouching on the floor, and gazing. Still, one of them might have been her daughter. The woman, by his account, had been older than Victor, possibly a widow with a child, or children.She was so absorbed in contemplation that she forgot the other "thing" which had fallen from the book, until, as she laid aside the triple portrait and began to resume her task, she saw it and pounced upon it--darted upon it like a serpent upon its prey--for it was a letter, and in a feminine handwriting.A letter--soiled, its edges worn--it almost fell to pieces as she touched it. Yet it was, by its date, written but a few years previously.The hand-writing was unformed. But it was unmistakably a love-letter."Dearest Victor," it ran. "I am longing to see you quite as much as you are wishing to see me. You say, if I cannot answer your question to me the other night you would rather not see me any more! It has made me very unhappy. You see, I am so young to be married. Then, if I did what you say, it would kill my poor mother, who is so very ill. But I do love you, Victor! I dream of you nearly every night. Sometimes you are Manfred, sometimes Childe Harold, and last night you were Laon and I was your 'child Cythna!' It was so sweet--we were lying side by side on a green hill, your eyes gazing into mine, and I seemed to hear some one singing 'Oh, that we two were maying'! Dear Victor, I must do all you ask: I could not bear not to see you again! It would break my heart!Your promised wife,JOAN."CHAPTER XXVIIIWas the loving, foolish "Joan" the woman he had married? The woman she had seen coming down Haythorn Street as she drove up? Or was she "another woman" altogether?She gazed fiercely at the sweet face in the photograph. It seemed to gaze blandly, calmly, back."Oh, God! What shall I do?" she wailed, grovelling on the floor in her despair. The anguish of discovery that another had reigned over his affections, and so lovely a rival, was almost unbearable. Still, selfish misery was soon extinguished by the greater, sterner passion which possessed her--her grim purpose of revenge, or as she chose to consider it, the just punishment of the one who had, she believed, poisoned her beloved.It was not like Victor to take a noxious drug, nor was he suicidal in feeling. He loved life! He was all gaiety and careless enjoyment of the passing hour, when he was not white-hot with passion.But could he have lied to her about the age of his "wife"? Then, gazing once more at the face in the photograph, she miserably told herself that that girl could not be termed "hag" and "cat." No, there must be two women! And yet--and yet--She started. There was a knock and a ring. It could not be Mr. Naz! She glanced interrogatively at the little silver watch she wore which had been her own mother's. It told her that it was half-past eleven. She ran into the front attic--her and her step-mother's bedroom--and looked out of the window. There was a hansom at the door. A man stood on the step below.She ran downstairs and opened the hall door. It was Paul--pale, serious, faultlessly dressed in half mourning. He bowed low as he took off his hat, and apologized for being early. He was not his own master! He thought of "wiring to her," but his anxiety for an interview urged him not to postpone his visit."Come in," said Vera, in a low voice. "My mother is in there, and I want to see you alone," she added, as she cautiously closed the door. "I had better tell her you are here, though. Do you mind coming up to the lumber room, where I am looking through Victor's things? There is nowhere else.""Anywhere--where we can be alone, Miss Anerley," he gravely said--thinking that if ever human agony had been fully seen in a woman, it was now, in this fragile girl with the pale face drawn with anguish, the great eyes luminous with wild desperation.He admired her for her self-possession, as he heard her ringing voice telling her step-mother, who was somewhat hard of hearing, that "Victor's kind friend, Mr. Naz, was here, and she would bring him to see her presently--she would first take him upstairs to choose something of dear Victor's as a keepsake.""She is an actress, of course," he told himself, as he ascended the oil-cloth-covered stairs after her--how strange were these sordid surroundings of a man who had claims upon the wealthy, luxurious Sir Thomas Thorne and his family! "But there is only a little of the actress--the rest is woman--passionate woman!"Vera mutely conducted him into the disordered lumber-room, amid the dusty boxes and old baskets, where the two open trunks were standing."I have been searching his things," she began, abruptly."Yes?" he answered, tentatively."Perhaps you can tell me who these are?" She dipped into a trunk and handed Paul the photograph of the three young girls.At a glance he saw the subject. "My sight is not very good, I will take it to the light," he said, moving to the window, holding back the blind, and examining the portrait with his back to her.Heavens! For a moment, as he saw the lovely face of the seated girl, he felt as if some one had given him a blow. There was only one Joan Thorne! To mistake that face was impossible.Regaining his composure with a stern effort of will--for he must not "give his friend away," especially now that he was one of the helpless dead--he turned to Vera."I don't understand! Who are these persons?" he asked, as if mystified."That is what I want to find out!" she cried, passionately. "Mr. Naz--I know, I feel, my dearest Victor was murdered! He never took that morphia himself! It was given him--and--by a woman! I should know her again--I should, I am sure I should! It was she I saw coming away from the house that night. I said nothing about it at the inquest, for fear of dishonouring my dearest; it was she the servant next door heard talking to him, and saw coming out of the house--the landlady has just been in to tell me about it! The girl will swear to it--when we get her--she was so frightened about it she has run away! Mr. Naz, you were his friend, surely, surely you will not rest till his murderess is found and punished? I demand it of you!"Her great sapphire eyes gleamed--she was impressive in her intensity. Paul's fair hair seemed to bristle on his head. Victor had always fascinated--influenced him--his mantle seemed to have fallen on his beloved's shoulders."I don't understand," he stammered, taking refuge, for safety, in apparent bewilderment; although even as she had clamoured her new evidence with seeming incoherence, he saw all the damning circumstances in their most fatal light: Joan Thorne's portrait, Victor's curious suggestions about the Thorne family being in his power; Miss Thorne's secret expeditions with her maid Julie, his betrothed, whose acquaintance, although it had led to his really caring for her, had been made by him at Victor's suggestions; the admission of Victor's that he was married; then this new and startling evidence--and Miss Thorne's ghastly, horror-stricken face when he, only half believing she was the womanliéewith the dead man, only half-suspecting that she might have been instrumental in his destruction, boldly taxed her with it at the Duke of Arran's ball, when alone with her for a few moments in the conservatory."You don't understand?" She spoke bitterly. "You are no friend of his, then! You would leave him--in his tomb--killed, murdered--his murderess at large!""What good could it be to him, now?" he said, firmly, almost impressively. "Can we follow the spirits we have lost, and do anything for them? Might not cruelty to others hurt them? How can we tell?""Cruelty to others!" she cried, wildly. "Understand, Mr. Naz! I know his love--his Joan! I will soon be on her track! If you will not help me, I will go to the detectives!"In her almost frenzy of mingled love for the dead man, and hate of her rival, the woman who had been with him the night he died, she hazarded a chance shot, and even as she did so, she rejoiced. For the bullet had found its mark. Paul's face fell--there was an expression of dismay in the eyes which were almost fearfully watching her."No, no! You must not do that!" he slowly said. "I do not know what my poor friend may have told you, but remember a man is sometimes betrayed into a little exaggeration----""I have her letter," said she, exultant, yet calm. "I have plenty of evidence to give the detectives. I will not trouble you, Mr. Naz!" She glanced scornfully at him.What was he to do? Abandon Joan Thorne to this infuriated, outraged, therefore unscrupulous rival, and a horde of professional detectives, who would show little or no mercy? His whole somewhat chivalrous being revolted against it. When he left Haythorn Street half-an-hour later he had pledged himself by all he held sacred to assist Vera in discovering the real story of Victor Mercier's untimely end, and acting upon it, whatever it might prove to be.* * * * *When Joan, at the Duchess of Arran's ball, had, with the most violent effort of will, played her dismal part, acted, feigned enjoyment of her last dances with Vansittart, beguiled him with well-simulated smiles, and sternly resisted the awful inward fear awakened by Paul Naz's daring words and sinister demeanour, she almost collapsed. Then, left alone in her room, the prattling Julie gone, her night light flickering, she sat up in bed confronted by the new, hideous fact.Paul Naz suspected her! He knew of her affair with Victor Mercier! He had identified her with the "hag" wife that girl Victor loved had spoken of at the inquest!What more did he know?The cold beads stood out on her brow. The innate conviction she now knew that she had felt from the very beginning of her love for Vansittart--the conviction that it would lead to her doom--arose within her like some unbidden phantom.What doom? Public shame and the hangman? Or the utter loss of Vansittart's love? One seemed as terrible a retribution as the other."But--do I deserve such an awful punishment for what was done in ignorance, my fancying myself in love with Victor, and being talked into marrying him at the registrar's?" she asked herself, with sudden fierce rebellion against fate. "Do I even deserve it for drugging him to take possession of my letters? What had he not threatened me with? And I never meant to kill him! I am sure I would rather have died than that!"Again, a passionate instinct of self-defence as well as of self-preservation came to her rescue. As she lay there among the shadows in the silent night, with no sound but the distant rumble of belated vehicles, and the measured footsteps of the policeman as he went his round upon the pavements below breaking the stillness, she determined, once and for all, to kill the past."It shall be dead!" she told herself, sternly. "I will have no more of it! If any one or anything belonging to it crops up, I will defy, deny, ignore, resist to the death! No one saw me--no one can really hurt me! I have had enough of misery and wretchedness--I will--yes, Iwill--be happy--and no one in the world shall prevent me!"CHAPTER XXIXThe morning after the Duchess of Arran's ball Lord Vansittart was seated at his breakfast, theTimespropped up in front of him, when a ring of the hall-door bell was followed by a man-servant's entrance with a telegram.Since his engagement to Joan, he had been singularly nervous--her changeful moods were hardly calculated to soothe a lover! He regarded the buff-coloured envelope askance.Still his tone was cheerful as he said. "No answer." The message was from Joan; but there was nothing alarming in it. The few words were merely "Come as early as you can."In a very few minutes after its delivery at his house, he had given his brief orders to the household for the day, had carelessly said he did not know when he should return, or if he would be home before night except, perhaps, to dress--and without waiting for a conveyance of his own--there would be delay if he sent down to the stables--he was out, striding along the pavement until he met a hansom, which he chartered with promise of an extra tip for quick driving."Miss Thorne is in her boudoir, my lord," said the porter, when he alighted at the house. Evidently the order had been given to that effect. The groom of the chambers bowed respectfully, but was easily waved aside. Vansittart crossed the hall and sprang up the stairs as only one of the family might do without disregard of theconvenances.Tapping eagerly at Joan's boudoir door, his attentive ear heard a footstep, the door was opened by Joan herself. She was in the pink and whitedeshabilléshe had worn the happy day she had first admitted that she loved him sufficiently to marry him. But now, her beauty seemed in his fond eyes increased by the natural arrangement of the wealth of beautiful hair which was unbound and, merely confined with a ribbon, floated about her shoulders like a veil of golden strands.She drew him into the room and blushed, as she said she had not expected him so early."I had to write to my bridesmaids about their frocks," she began, nestling to him. "I meant to have my hair done before you came----"For answer he seated himself and drawing her to him, kissed the shining tresses and held them ecstatically in his hand. Their soft touch seemed to fire his emotions."Do you know you seem unreal, you are so beautiful?" he said, passionately, lifting her chin and gazing intently at her delicate lovely features and the rich brown eyes which to his delight looked more calmly than usual into his. "You make me feel--as if--when I get possession of you--you must vanish into thin air--you are an impossibility--a mocking spirit, who will disappear with elfish laughter.""Don't rave!" she fondly said, returning his kiss. "Or you will make me rave! And to rave is not to enjoy oneself! Dear, I asked you to come early--I want to spend every moment of my life with you--from this--very--minute! Why should we be separated? You know what you told me--that they were telling each other falsehoods about you at the clubs--so our being always together will be like killing two birds with one stone! It will make me happy, and give the lie to their wicked calumnies! Do you mind?""Do--I--mind?" He kissed her brow, lips, hair, again and again. "Am I not yours--more yours than my own--all yours through time into eternity?""For worse as well as for better?" She had said the words before she remembered her terrible dream--when the judge who was condemning her to be hanged had upbraided her for not having fulfilled her wifehood; as they escaped her lips she recollected, and shuddered. "You think me better than I am, dearest! I am human--erring----""I--know--what you are!" he passionately exclaimed. He was plunged in a lover's fatuous ecstasy. It was half an hour before Joan could get away to put on her habit. She meant to ride to Crouch Hill to hear her old nurse's opinion of what had occurred. Mrs. Todd had not known Victor's name--she would not have identified "The Southwark Mystery," as the newspapers termed it, with herself and her wretched entanglements. She would tell her that Victor was dead, and hear what she would say to it.While she was dressing, Vansittart went back to his stables, and waiting while the grooms equipped his now staid, but once almost too mettlesome grey horse "Firefly," returned to find Joan's pretty "Nora" waiting at the door, held, as well as his own horse, by her groom. He had barely dismounted when she issued from the house, a dainty Amazon from head to foot, and tripped down the steps, smiling at him. "Why did you ride your old grey?" she asked, as she sprang lightly into the saddle."Why?" he repeated, as he arranged her habit, and thrilled as he held her little foot for one brief moment in his hand. "Because I am so madly in love with you to-day that I cannot trust myself on any horse but the soberest and most steady-going in the stables! I am particularly anxious not to bring my 'violent delights' to a 'violent end' by breaking my neck!"They rode off through the sweet summer morning, he so bathed in actual joy, as well as fired by the anticipatory delights of life with Joan for his wife, that in his blissful mood he could have enwrapt the whole of humanity in one vast embrace--Joan abandoning herself with all the force of her will to the natural instincts that underlay all ordinary, acquired emotions.During her long self-colloquy she had deliberately burrowed, mentally, below her civilized being, and sought these. She had told herself that the primary instincts of woman were wifedom and motherhood. For the present--until she was reassured anent her safety by time and the course of events--she would listen to no others.The two lovers--so near in seeming, so far asunder in reality, divided as they were by a hideous secret--rode gleefully on, rejoicing in their youth and love, making delicious plans for their future together, gloating over their coming joys from different standpoints, but with equal ardour."And for to-day," said Joan, as they rode under a canopy of boughs in one of the country lanes still undesecrated by the ruthless hands of the suburban builder, "and not only for to-day, but most days, I want to see how the other half of humanity lives, dearest! Before I am Lady Vansittart, I want to see the life that commoners enjoy! I want to dine out with you, at restaurants, and go to the theatre with you, and, in fact, be alone with you in crowds who neither know nor care who we are, or what we are doing!"Vansittart, albeit slightly puzzled, readily acquiesced. When they drew rein at Mrs. Todd's cottage, it was settled that they were to use a box he had taken for the first night of a new play brought out by a manager who was an acquaintance of his, dining first at a restaurant Joan selected as being one not affected by their circle.Joan entered the cottage and saw the dark old woman totter to meet her, eagerness in her trembling limbs and brilliant, searching eyes, with a feeling of sickly dismay. Last time she stood here Victor was alive; since then she had killed him! Involuntarily she gave a little moan of pain."My dearie, my lamb, what is it?" The aged nurse was terribly agitated as she caressed and tried to console the only creature she really loved on earth, who had sunk crouching at her feet. "Is it--come, tell Nana--you know I would die this minnit for you, lambie--tell me if that fellow is alive and annoying you in any way, for, as I sit here, if he is, I'll tell of him! I'll set the police upon him!""Don't," said Joan, chokingly, clasping her knees. For the first time she seemed to realize what she had done. "He is dead!""Thank God for that!" cried the old woman, in an access of fervour. "He is just, I will say that, if He's sent that blackguard to the only place he's fit for, instead of leaving him here to worry innocent folks as 'ud do their Maker credit if they was only let alone! And now you can be my Lady, and go to Court with as big a crown and as long a train as the best of the lot, duchesses and all! And you can bring little lords and ladies into the world to be brought up proper by head nurses and then send them to colleges, and make real gentlemen of 'em! The Lord knows what he is about! There ain't a God for nothin'!"After the first thrill of something akin to horror at Mrs. Todd's grotesque rejoicing, Joan put aside her questioning as to "how the brute came to his end" by asking her if she would like to see Vansittart, and he, in his rapt adoration, eager to have to do with every detail of his beloved one's life, was only too ready to be curtsied to and congratulated and blest."She is a good old soul, darling, we must look after her," he feelingly said, as he waved farewell presently to the tall old crone watching them from her doorstep as they rode slowly up the road. "And now, where shall we go?"After one of Joan's scampering rides they returned home, spent the afternoon in sweet talk in her boudoir, then Joan retired to dress--donning her plainest black evening frock and simplest ornaments--and he paid a flying visit to his house to dress also, returning to fetch her, as she had bidden him, in an ordinary hansom."I mean to enjoy myself to-night!" she gaily said. She insisted on feeling gay--insisted to herself. Presents were arriving in battalions, boxes of exquisite garments were delivered with a monotonous regularity. She had chosen the restaurant they would dine at, she was also to select the menu. As they alighted at the door, a man, who was about to enter, halted, and smiled as he lifted his hat."Who is that?" she asked as they went in."A very clever fellow, the dramatic critic of theParthenon," he returned. "I will introduce him to you."
[image]"'I wish to speak to you of my poor murdered friend.'"A Woman Martyr.Page 216
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"'I wish to speak to you of my poor murdered friend.'"A Woman Martyr.Page 216
CHAPTER XXV
If the duke's pale, wrathful valet had suddenly changed into the grinning skeleton which had seemed to Joan to mock and gird at her that night when she replaced the poison bottle in the cupboard after pouring its contents into Victor Mercier's brandy, she could hardly have shrunk back more absolutely terror-stricken.
At first she gazed, speechless, at Paul Naz's set, ghastly face, with those pale blue eyes flashing menace and scorn. Then that up-leaping instinct within her to defend herself came to her rescue.
"Are you mad, sir, to speak to me like this?" she haughtily said. "Leave me. If you presume to insult me, I will call for help."
For a moment her daring, her defiance, staggered Paul. Meanwhile, the sudden pallor of her beautiful features, the agony in her dark eyes, had strengthened his gradually formed, but confident, belief that Victor Mercier had been merely shielding a woman when he spoke of the Thornes owing money to his late father, and that he and Joan were either lovers, or had been so. Men did not dress up as men-servants to meet a woman who merely had some cash to repay. Then, he had seen other symptoms in Victor. He believed, when he had read the account of the inquest, that either Victor held Joan's promise of marriage, or that she was his secret and abandoned wife. To the story Victor had told Vera he attached but little significance. Men said such things sometimes to girls to cover unpalatable facts they need not be told.
Then, an interior conviction seemed to assert itself. "This is the woman," cried his soul. He gazed steadily at Joan.
"Mademoiselle, I am sorry to speak like this, but I know you knew my poor murdered friend well," he began in a low tone. "God forgive me if I misjudge you! But I feel you have been cruel to him. Time will show. Meanwhile, I wish to say to you that I will do nothing against you if you do not bring this noble gentleman I hear you are to marry to shame. I leave justice to the Creator, who invented it."
With which he made her a slight bow, turned, and stalked out of the conservatory. She sank into a seat breathless, and stared vacantly at the place where he had stood, for she seemed to see that white, scornful face with the pale blue eyes which to her excited fancy had been ablaze with lurid fire, still.
All was over, then! The mirage of happiness was a mockery. She was once more plunged, steeped, in the atmosphere of crime.
"I see," she told herself, in her mental writhings under this new scorch of pain. "He is a Frenchman; he is--was--Victor's accomplice, his spy. He told Victor of Vansittart. He has been watching me."
Her first insane idea was to tell the duke that his trusted servant was the miserable spy of unscrupulous wretches. Second thoughts said "madness! Keep it to yourself. What can the man do? He knows nothing of your visit to Hay thorn Street. If you say, or suggest, he is a spy, you arouse suspicions."
Upon these second thoughts she acted. She controlled her emotions, summoning all her force, her self-possession, to her aid. There was a long mirror in the corner. She composed her features and rubbed her cheeks and lips before it, regaining a semblance of composure and ordinary appearance only just in time, for as she leant back in her chair slowly fanning herself Vansittart came in, looking grave, troubled, although he smiled as their eyes met. Hadheseen or heard anything peculiar?
"Is it a breach of confidence to ask what his Grace wanted you for?" she asked, assuming a sprightly manner which shocked her even as she did so.
"Not at all," he said, a little abruptly; "something about a wedding present."
Then a manservant entered with a tray of champagne and the menu card, and until she had been revived by the food she forced herself to eat, and the champagne Vansittart insisted upon her drinking, she asked no more. But, in her strained state, her lover's pre-occupation was unbearable.
Desperate, she determined to know the worst. "Tell me," she began, leaning her fair elbow on the table and looking pleadingly into his face with those bewilderingly beautiful eyes. "You know you yourself proposed we should share our secrets. And, from your manner, I know--I am positive--the duke said something more than about a wedding present."
"If he did, it was nothing of any consequence," he fondly returned, gazing tenderly at the lovely face which was his whole world. "I would tell you at once, only you are such a sweet, innocent, sensitive darling, so utterly unsophisticated, unused to this rough planet and its still rougher inhabitants--you would make a mountain of what is far less than a mole-hill in one's way."
"What is it?' I would rather, really I would, know." She gave him a coaxing glance.
"Well, it is this," he replied, hardly. "Very little to annoy one. Only I am so absurdly vulnerable, that the merest breath which affects the subject of our marriage seems to shrivel me up. It is those wretched clubs; at least, the miserable gossip which the riffraff of the clubs seem to batten and fatten upon, drivelling, disappointed, soured units of humanity that they are! They seem to be prognosticating that our wedding will not 'take place,' because I have a secret wife somewhere, who is likely to turn up. Do you suspect me, darling?"
Her joyous laugh, born of infinite relief, almost startled him. When he reached his bachelor domain that night, and recalled the events of the evening, the sweetest delight of all was to remember how his beautiful darling took his hands, and with eyes brimming with love, drew him to her and nestled in his arms as some faithful dove might have flown confidently to his shoulder. That ensuing brief--all too brief--half hour, when, by their world seemingly forgot, and certainly their world forgetting, they interchanged tender words and still tenderer embraces, seemed to his passion-stricken nature to have so riveted them to each other that the very machinations of hell itself bid fair to be powerless to part them.
"Her absolute innocence makes her so immeasurably sweeter than all the other women," he told himself, as he stalked about his rooms in a hyper-ecstatic mood. "It is that which makes her so unsuspicious, so trusting. Now, if I had told something of what the duke said to me to an ordinary woman, she would have suspected me of goodness knows what in the past. She might have concealed it, but I should have known that she did. I believe it is my darling's being so 'unspotted from the world' which influenced me to love her as I do. Oh, may I be worthy of being her guardian; for my past is not the fair, white, unsullied page that hers is! No man's can be."
* * * * *
When the young doctor she had fetched in her frantic fear the night of Mercier's death, after finding Victor insensible upon the sofa, came to Vera in the little sitting room where she was kneeling at her poor trembling old stepmother's side and telling her with the assurance of desperation that Victor must, would, soon be better--why should he not be? He had never been subject to fits. He was so well-knit, so strong, so athletic--she gave the intruder an imperious gesture, and, springing up, led him out of the room, and, closing the door, leant against the lintel, and gazed at him with such wild agony that he flinched, alarmed. She looked uncanny, and at such a crisis it was disturbing.
"I know. He is dead!" she resolutely said. "But, for God's sake, have mercy on his poor old mother. He is all she has in life. There will be an inquest? So much the better. Now go in to her, and tell her he is very ill, and must be left to you and me."
The young practitioner demurred. His private opinion was that people ought to "face their fate." He was fresh from the hospitals.
But there was something witchlike about this girl. She commanded the wistful, shivering John Dobbs, a mild specimen indeed of the genus medico, to remain and solace her stepmother with as many white lies as he could generate at the moment; then, over-riding the objections of old Doctor Thompson, who, returning home and hearing of her wild condition from his house-maid, had proceeded to Haythorn Street at once, she insisted on accompanying them into the room where the dead man lay with that calm, sphinx-like smile upon his handsome lips, and remaining there until Doctor Thompson actually took her by the shoulder and, turning her out, locked the door.
But, like some faithful dog, she remained outside. She watched them seal up the room in a dead silence. After tenderly assisting her stepmother to bed, weaving fictions the while--"Victor was in bed and asleep, the doctors had gone, and their one direction was he should not be disturbed; his very existence depended upon his being kept quiet," etc.--she returned to her post, and spent the night crouched upon the landing, her cheek against the sealed door.
"My heart is dead; my life went with his," she told herself. "What there remains of me is left to find the woman who murdered him, and to bring her to justice."
CHAPTER XXVI
Old Doctor Thompson sat up in his study, smoking and listening to his nephew's theories anent Victor Mercier's death, while Vera, sleepless in her anguish, remained sifting her suspicions throughout that dismal night, limply leaning up against the sealed door which so cruelly barred her out from that silent room where her beloved lay on the sofa in the mystic sleep of death. "I have to revenge his murder--for he has been drugged--poisoned--I could swear it!" she told herself, over and over again. "That woman I saw--tall, well-dressed--stalking off--and staggering--she is the one who has killed him! It is she I must find--God help me!"
How impotent she felt, when all Mercier's belongings were under lock, key, and seal!
But she had enough to occupy her. The unhappy old mother was in a helpless state of grief--she alone had to "do for the household," since they kept no regular servant. Then, when she sent in her resignation, her admirer, the stage manager, Mr. Howard, urged the proprietors of the touring company to refuse to accept it. She had to go off and almost beg release upon her knees.
Then came the day of the inquest, and her statement; the grudgingly admitted verdict, and the consequent release from endurance of the worst of the bondage.
The purses of gold were all that they found which pointed to any one's visit the night of Mercier's death; and even Vera, despite her intense anxiety to find a clue which would bring her face to face with the wife he had told her of, the "hag," the "cat," whom he had spoken of so vindictively as the only barrier between them, could but think that the money might have been locked up in his desk since his return. He had spoken of possessing ample means for the immediate present, and had spent lavishly upon her of late.
They searched high and low, the poor mother clinging to the relics of the only son whose heir she was, as she had few relatives belonging to her, and his father, her first, cruel spouse, had no kith and kin that he had cared to acknowledge. But while they found more money--neither in boxes, nor chests of drawers, or pockets, did they come across any traces bearing upon the part of his life they knew nothing about. The letters and papers in his desk and trunk related to past business abroad, alone.
The funeral was a plain, but good one. It was a wet, gloomy day when the hearse bearing the brown oaken coffin decorated with wreaths bought lavishly by Vera, and a few modest ones sent by the doctor's wife and some sympathizing neighbours, made its way slowly through the gaping crowd in Haythorn Street and the immediate neighbourhood, and proceeded more briskly northwards. Vera sat back in the first of the two funeral carriages--the two doctors were in the second--and as she vainly strove to comfort her weeping old step-mother, she gazed sternly out upon the familiar roads with a strange wonder at the ordinary bustle and movement. Life was going on as usual, although Victor Mercier's strong, buoyant spirit was quenched. They laughed and talked and screamed and whistled, those crowds, while he lay still and white within his narrow coffin under the flowers, his pale lips sealed for ever in that strange, wistful, unearthly smile.
"But they have not heard the last of him," she grimly thought. "The last will be far, far more startling than the first!"
Let him be laid to rest, and she would rouse like a sleeping tigress awakened to the defence of her young, and finding that wife of his, bring her to justice.
The belief that that woman had secretly visited him, and that by her means he had had his death-dose, strengthened every moment until it became a rigid, fixed idea. All had seemed to point to it. His careful dress to receive his visitor, the embroidered shirt, the diamond stud, the white flower in his button-hole, a costume assumed after she had left him in his ordinary day suit. Then his shutting the cat into the parlour was doubtless lest she should cover his visitor with her hairs--and the cat only affected women, and had a trick of jumping up on feminine laps.
"There is justice in heaven, so I shall find some clue to her," thought she, as they passed the stone-mason's yards on the cemetery road. The words haunted her--"Vengeance is Mine! I will repay, saith the Lord." They should be inscribed on his tomb.
Presently the horses slackened in their speed--they proceeded at a funeral pace--then they stopped. They were at the cemetery gates. Vera heard the distant tolling of the bell. It had been like this when her own father was buried, in whose grave for two Victor was to lie.
"I must bear up," said the aged woman who leant against her, with a gasping sob. "Victor would not like to see me cry." And she tried to give a broken-hearted smile.
"No, mother," said the girl tenderly. But she was not really touched--it was as if her heart were turned to stone.
The funeral train went on with a jerk. A returning empty hearse scampering home the wrong way had been the temporary obstruction. Graves, rows of crosses and headstones--ponderous marble and granite tombs--the world of the dead was a well-peopled one. They halted--one of the solemn undertaker's men came and let down the steps. There was the coffin--
The beautiful words fell unheeded on Vera's ears. She was intent upon a small, pale man with fair hair, in black, who had joined them. Who was he? Was he the intimate friend Victor had casually spoken of?
As they stood in the narrow pews of the mortuary chapel, the first ray of sunshine which had pierced the clouds that day fell upon the close-cut hair of Paul Naz, who had determined not only to see the last of the friend anent whose fate he had such gruesome, horrible misgivings, but to offer his friendship to the charming young actress whom he now knew to have been more to the dead man than mere step-sister-in-law; and Vera said to herself, "It is an omen!"
As they stepped slowly out, following the coffin, she almost staggered as she vainly tried to support her half-fainting step-mother. Paul Naz helped her with a "Pardon, mademoiselle! I am his friend!" and she gave him a grateful glance.
They were at the grave. The clergyman was reading "He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower--" ... A thrush carolled loudly on a neighbouring bush. The sunlight broke through and shone upon the brass handles of the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. "My beloved, I will only live to avenge you, and take care of mother," murmured Vera, as she left the grave, and following her stepmother, who leant on Paul Naz's arm, listened to his affectionate talk of the dead man.
"I loved him, mademoiselle! And if I can help you, I beg you to send to me!" he said, earnestly, giving her a meaning, almost appealing look after he had helped Victor's mother into the carriage. Then he stood, bare-headed, and gravely watched them depart.
"He suspects!" Vera told herself, feverishly, as they drove home. "Perhaps--oh, if it only is so! He knows something!"
Back in the empty house, she coaxed her step-mother to bed, and was proceeding to give orders to the charwoman about the tidying-up of the place, when there was a vigorous pull of the bell.
"I will see to it," she said to the woman. Proceeding to the hall-door and opening it, she was confronted with the landlady of the next-door lodging-house--a Mrs. Muggeridge, whose fowls had been harassed by the tortoise-shell cat, after which there had been ructions, and each house had cut its neighbour dead.
"I am sure I don't wish to hurt your feelings, or to intrude, Miss Anerley, but my mind is that troubled I must speak to you," said the old woman, who was stout and asthmatic, and looked pale and "upset." "I hope your poor mar is all right?"
"Yes, thanks! Will you come this way?" said Vera, who felt somewhat as a war-horse hearing the bugle, for she hoped to "hear something," and she conducted her visitor into the little parlour and closed the door.
Mrs. Muggeridge pantingly, with many interpolations, told her tale. She had a country girl as servant, "Sar' Ann, as good a gal as ever lived." Still, it seemed that Sar' Ann was human, and could err. The day after the murder, "as they did call it, and as some calls it now, in spite of that there crowner, Sar' Ann was took with hysterics, and giv' warnin'."
"Which I took. As I says to Sar' Ann, 'I don't want any one 'ere as ain't comfortable.' And she was right down awful, that girl was. One night I took and made 'er tell me what it was, and I'm goin' to tell you, now! For the very mornin' after--I suppose because I told her what she said to me she might have to tell to a Judge and jury, she ran away. She got the milkman to give a lift to her box, and when I got up, expectin' to find the kettle boilin', she was off and away into space--and there she is--like one of them Leonines as they talk of, but we never sees, Miss Anerley! It'll take a detective to find her, if so be as she should be called up to say what she says to me!"
CHAPTER XXVII
Mrs. Muggeridge paused, and had a fit of coughing. Vera waited with the patience which seemed part of her dogged resolve to avenge Victor's death.
"Yes?" she said mildly, as Mrs. Muggeridge wiped her eyes.
"Where was I? Oh! About Sar' Ann making tracks like that. Well, if I tell you what she told me, and ease my conscience like, will you give me your word, Miss Anerley, as no harm shall come to the girl? Poor, unfortunate girl! I'm glad as it wasn't me! You promise? Well, it was like this: My first-floor front, what corresponds with yours where your gentleman lodges what's been away for his Ma's funeral, is occupied by a gent in the City, what leaves a lot of vallables about as I don't harf like having the charge of. So, when I'm goin' out, I locks up his room, if so be as 'e ain't at 'ome, and puts the key where he knows how to find it. Now, we was all out except Sar' Ann the night of the murd--oh, well, the night Mr. Musser died: I was at the horspital entertainment along with the rest. So what must my lady needs do, but get that key--sly puss! she must have watched and found out where I put it--and go up into Mr. Marston's room to fiddle about with his things. I believe she spent the evenin' there. At all events, when she was a-sitting at the window, peepin' out, she sees a tall lady come along, and disappear into your house. She did think it queer, knowin' or suspectin' as you was all out! So she listened, and small blame to 'er, as I told the girl! She listens--and she swore to me she could 'ear two voices in the next room, a man's and a woman's. She sat there listenin' for a hour or more after dark, and they was talkin'--sometimes loud--but she couldn't distinguish the words. And then there was quiet-like, and she wondered what had become of 'em--so she was peerin' out of window when out comes the tall lady, shuts the door, and makes off. Your 'ansom drove up at the same time, and she declared to me she see the lady stop short and stare at you! There now!"
Vera's thoughts, spurred by the excitement of such important, unexpected evidence, worked with lightning rapidity. Even as she listened with concentrated attention, she was warning herself to be cautious. If her suspicions that Victor was foully murdered were shared by others, the criminal might be forewarned, and escape her doom.
So she gave a sad, incredulous smile, and shrugged her shoulders. "My dear Mrs. Muggeridge, your girl ran away because she was a wretched story-teller, and was afraid of being called to account!" she dryly returned. "The voices, the tall lady--everything--is pure invention! Surely I ought to know? The only fact is that I came home in a hansom. You said she was hysterical. It is a pity her perverted ideas were on the subject of my dear, dead brother!"
"Brother? I read as you said at the crowner's quest that he was your sweetheart!" exclaimed Mrs. Muggeridge, vulgarly. She had confidently expected to become one of the chiefdramatis personæin the gruesome tragedy at number Twelve, and her disappointment exasperated her. "And as for my poor Sar' Ann bein' a story-teller, allow me to tell you as she's never told a lie to my knowledge! Stealin' the key? Gals will be gals! Let me giv' you a word of warnin', Miss Vera Anerley, or whatever you call yourself. Your best plan'll be to find Sar' Ann--I can't, my respectable house is ruined by bein' next door to a disreputable hole where people comes to sudden deaths and their friends want it hushed up--I've to see about movin' as soon as I've got over the shock it's been to me to be next door to such a orful thing--but if you don't find Sar' Ann and let 'er help to discover the lady what murdered your sweetheart, p'raps you'll find yourself havin' the cap fitted to you, maybe! So there! Ere's Sar' Ann's larst address, to show as I don't bear no malice, and wish your poor old Mar well--I never had no call to complain of'er--but though I knows as Sar' Ann come original from Oxfordshire, that's all I do know."
Mrs. Muggeridge huffily made her exit, giving a contemptuous little shake of her skirts and a backward glance of defiance as she issued forth, and down the steps of the offending house.
Vera closed the door upon her and for some moments seemed riveted to the spot, her thoughts awhirl. If she could have known that where she stood, contemplating vengeance, fiercely if voicelessly praying for justice, the girl who had been her lover's legal wife, the girl who had drugged him and brought about his death, had stood unconsciously listening for his last breaths, that she might return and steal the documents which incriminated her!
But no voices came from out the walls, the ticking of the clock had no sinister meaning. She heard the charwoman singing some common music-hall tune to herself as she swept. Swish, swish, went the irritating broom--then an organ began to play aggressively at the end of the street--a chorus from a comic opera she had heard one night, nestling against Victor in the dress circle of a suburban theatre.
She shuddered and wrung her hands. Why was life so ghastly, so full of horror, of terror? But she must not stand there, letting the precious moments go idly, fruitlessly by.
"I must have help," she told herself. "Alone, I can do nothing. I will write to Mr. Naz, and ask him to come and see me."
Writing an ordinary little note, merely asking Paul conventionally if he could make it convenient to name some time to visit them, it would comfort her and Victor's poor mother to see one who had been a good friend of their loved one's--then going out to post it at the nearest pillar-box--restored her outward, if not her inward equanimity. She spent the day literally setting the house in order--assembling all Victor's belongings in the attic lumber-room, to be thoroughly searched by her on the morrow.
Early the following morning an empty hansom drove up, bearing a little note from Paul. Would twelve o'clock suit her to see him? And would she send an answer by the cab?
She wrote a few lines in affirmative reply; then, after seeing her step-mother comfortably established on the sitting-room sofa where she and Victor had revelled in each other's society that night of happiness after the performance--the night he first showed her his somewhat sudden passion for her in all its fulness--she stole away upstairs to the attic to put away the relics of the dead man.
She had cleared her two best trunks; and in these she meant to store everything he had left--clothes, books, pipes. The money had been placed in a bank in her step-mother's name. A lawyer friend of Doctor Thompson had acted for them, and had simplified everything.
The little room was hot. She opened the window wide, drew down the tattered old green blind, and set to work shaking, folding, and arranging Victor's clothes.
How like him it was to have shirts that a French marquis would hardly have disdained! As she laid them away with as tender and reverent a touch as that of a bereaved mother storing away the little garments of a loved, lost infant, she almost broke down. But she took herself sternly to task, repressed her melting mood, and reminded herself that a strong man's work--the bringing a criminal to book--was hers. Any and every womanish weakness must be sternly disallowed.
One trunk was soon full of linen and odds and ends. This she locked, and proceeded to fill the next. The books came first--mere remnants of volumes, mostly French, with morsels of yellow paper cover adhering to them. But--strongly redolent of tobacco, she put them carefully in a layer beside the cases of pipes, and the odd-looking curios he had collected. They seemed almost part of him, somehow, those pipes. That they should be there, smelling of the weed he had smoked, and he should be mouldering in his grave in that densely populated cemetery! She shuddered. Her hand trembled: she picked up a yellow volume,Quatre Femmes et un Perroquet, with eyes brimming over with tears, picked it up carelessly; something fell out.
Something? Two things--one, a soiled little photograph. As she seized it her tears dried--her eyes burned. It was the photograph of three girls.
Evidently an amateur attempt--badly mounted. Three girls in summer frocks and aprons, two standing, one seated on a bench--in front there was grass--at the back, part of a brick house and some shrubs.
Fiercely, with intense anxiety, she stared at the three faces. Two were round and plain: these belonged to the girls--fifteen or sixteen years of age at the utmost--who were standing. The face of the seated girl was a beautiful one: full of sweet pathos, and yet with a tender happy smile about the mouth.
"Too young to be that awful woman," she mused, crouching on the floor, and gazing. Still, one of them might have been her daughter. The woman, by his account, had been older than Victor, possibly a widow with a child, or children.
She was so absorbed in contemplation that she forgot the other "thing" which had fallen from the book, until, as she laid aside the triple portrait and began to resume her task, she saw it and pounced upon it--darted upon it like a serpent upon its prey--for it was a letter, and in a feminine handwriting.
A letter--soiled, its edges worn--it almost fell to pieces as she touched it. Yet it was, by its date, written but a few years previously.
The hand-writing was unformed. But it was unmistakably a love-letter.
"Dearest Victor," it ran. "I am longing to see you quite as much as you are wishing to see me. You say, if I cannot answer your question to me the other night you would rather not see me any more! It has made me very unhappy. You see, I am so young to be married. Then, if I did what you say, it would kill my poor mother, who is so very ill. But I do love you, Victor! I dream of you nearly every night. Sometimes you are Manfred, sometimes Childe Harold, and last night you were Laon and I was your 'child Cythna!' It was so sweet--we were lying side by side on a green hill, your eyes gazing into mine, and I seemed to hear some one singing 'Oh, that we two were maying'! Dear Victor, I must do all you ask: I could not bear not to see you again! It would break my heart!
JOAN."
CHAPTER XXVIII
Was the loving, foolish "Joan" the woman he had married? The woman she had seen coming down Haythorn Street as she drove up? Or was she "another woman" altogether?
She gazed fiercely at the sweet face in the photograph. It seemed to gaze blandly, calmly, back.
"Oh, God! What shall I do?" she wailed, grovelling on the floor in her despair. The anguish of discovery that another had reigned over his affections, and so lovely a rival, was almost unbearable. Still, selfish misery was soon extinguished by the greater, sterner passion which possessed her--her grim purpose of revenge, or as she chose to consider it, the just punishment of the one who had, she believed, poisoned her beloved.
It was not like Victor to take a noxious drug, nor was he suicidal in feeling. He loved life! He was all gaiety and careless enjoyment of the passing hour, when he was not white-hot with passion.
But could he have lied to her about the age of his "wife"? Then, gazing once more at the face in the photograph, she miserably told herself that that girl could not be termed "hag" and "cat." No, there must be two women! And yet--and yet--
She started. There was a knock and a ring. It could not be Mr. Naz! She glanced interrogatively at the little silver watch she wore which had been her own mother's. It told her that it was half-past eleven. She ran into the front attic--her and her step-mother's bedroom--and looked out of the window. There was a hansom at the door. A man stood on the step below.
She ran downstairs and opened the hall door. It was Paul--pale, serious, faultlessly dressed in half mourning. He bowed low as he took off his hat, and apologized for being early. He was not his own master! He thought of "wiring to her," but his anxiety for an interview urged him not to postpone his visit.
"Come in," said Vera, in a low voice. "My mother is in there, and I want to see you alone," she added, as she cautiously closed the door. "I had better tell her you are here, though. Do you mind coming up to the lumber room, where I am looking through Victor's things? There is nowhere else."
"Anywhere--where we can be alone, Miss Anerley," he gravely said--thinking that if ever human agony had been fully seen in a woman, it was now, in this fragile girl with the pale face drawn with anguish, the great eyes luminous with wild desperation.
He admired her for her self-possession, as he heard her ringing voice telling her step-mother, who was somewhat hard of hearing, that "Victor's kind friend, Mr. Naz, was here, and she would bring him to see her presently--she would first take him upstairs to choose something of dear Victor's as a keepsake."
"She is an actress, of course," he told himself, as he ascended the oil-cloth-covered stairs after her--how strange were these sordid surroundings of a man who had claims upon the wealthy, luxurious Sir Thomas Thorne and his family! "But there is only a little of the actress--the rest is woman--passionate woman!"
Vera mutely conducted him into the disordered lumber-room, amid the dusty boxes and old baskets, where the two open trunks were standing.
"I have been searching his things," she began, abruptly.
"Yes?" he answered, tentatively.
"Perhaps you can tell me who these are?" She dipped into a trunk and handed Paul the photograph of the three young girls.
At a glance he saw the subject. "My sight is not very good, I will take it to the light," he said, moving to the window, holding back the blind, and examining the portrait with his back to her.
Heavens! For a moment, as he saw the lovely face of the seated girl, he felt as if some one had given him a blow. There was only one Joan Thorne! To mistake that face was impossible.
Regaining his composure with a stern effort of will--for he must not "give his friend away," especially now that he was one of the helpless dead--he turned to Vera.
"I don't understand! Who are these persons?" he asked, as if mystified.
"That is what I want to find out!" she cried, passionately. "Mr. Naz--I know, I feel, my dearest Victor was murdered! He never took that morphia himself! It was given him--and--by a woman! I should know her again--I should, I am sure I should! It was she I saw coming away from the house that night. I said nothing about it at the inquest, for fear of dishonouring my dearest; it was she the servant next door heard talking to him, and saw coming out of the house--the landlady has just been in to tell me about it! The girl will swear to it--when we get her--she was so frightened about it she has run away! Mr. Naz, you were his friend, surely, surely you will not rest till his murderess is found and punished? I demand it of you!"
Her great sapphire eyes gleamed--she was impressive in her intensity. Paul's fair hair seemed to bristle on his head. Victor had always fascinated--influenced him--his mantle seemed to have fallen on his beloved's shoulders.
"I don't understand," he stammered, taking refuge, for safety, in apparent bewilderment; although even as she had clamoured her new evidence with seeming incoherence, he saw all the damning circumstances in their most fatal light: Joan Thorne's portrait, Victor's curious suggestions about the Thorne family being in his power; Miss Thorne's secret expeditions with her maid Julie, his betrothed, whose acquaintance, although it had led to his really caring for her, had been made by him at Victor's suggestions; the admission of Victor's that he was married; then this new and startling evidence--and Miss Thorne's ghastly, horror-stricken face when he, only half believing she was the womanliéewith the dead man, only half-suspecting that she might have been instrumental in his destruction, boldly taxed her with it at the Duke of Arran's ball, when alone with her for a few moments in the conservatory.
"You don't understand?" She spoke bitterly. "You are no friend of his, then! You would leave him--in his tomb--killed, murdered--his murderess at large!"
"What good could it be to him, now?" he said, firmly, almost impressively. "Can we follow the spirits we have lost, and do anything for them? Might not cruelty to others hurt them? How can we tell?"
"Cruelty to others!" she cried, wildly. "Understand, Mr. Naz! I know his love--his Joan! I will soon be on her track! If you will not help me, I will go to the detectives!"
In her almost frenzy of mingled love for the dead man, and hate of her rival, the woman who had been with him the night he died, she hazarded a chance shot, and even as she did so, she rejoiced. For the bullet had found its mark. Paul's face fell--there was an expression of dismay in the eyes which were almost fearfully watching her.
"No, no! You must not do that!" he slowly said. "I do not know what my poor friend may have told you, but remember a man is sometimes betrayed into a little exaggeration----"
"I have her letter," said she, exultant, yet calm. "I have plenty of evidence to give the detectives. I will not trouble you, Mr. Naz!" She glanced scornfully at him.
What was he to do? Abandon Joan Thorne to this infuriated, outraged, therefore unscrupulous rival, and a horde of professional detectives, who would show little or no mercy? His whole somewhat chivalrous being revolted against it. When he left Haythorn Street half-an-hour later he had pledged himself by all he held sacred to assist Vera in discovering the real story of Victor Mercier's untimely end, and acting upon it, whatever it might prove to be.
* * * * *
When Joan, at the Duchess of Arran's ball, had, with the most violent effort of will, played her dismal part, acted, feigned enjoyment of her last dances with Vansittart, beguiled him with well-simulated smiles, and sternly resisted the awful inward fear awakened by Paul Naz's daring words and sinister demeanour, she almost collapsed. Then, left alone in her room, the prattling Julie gone, her night light flickering, she sat up in bed confronted by the new, hideous fact.
Paul Naz suspected her! He knew of her affair with Victor Mercier! He had identified her with the "hag" wife that girl Victor loved had spoken of at the inquest!What more did he know?
The cold beads stood out on her brow. The innate conviction she now knew that she had felt from the very beginning of her love for Vansittart--the conviction that it would lead to her doom--arose within her like some unbidden phantom.
What doom? Public shame and the hangman? Or the utter loss of Vansittart's love? One seemed as terrible a retribution as the other.
"But--do I deserve such an awful punishment for what was done in ignorance, my fancying myself in love with Victor, and being talked into marrying him at the registrar's?" she asked herself, with sudden fierce rebellion against fate. "Do I even deserve it for drugging him to take possession of my letters? What had he not threatened me with? And I never meant to kill him! I am sure I would rather have died than that!"
Again, a passionate instinct of self-defence as well as of self-preservation came to her rescue. As she lay there among the shadows in the silent night, with no sound but the distant rumble of belated vehicles, and the measured footsteps of the policeman as he went his round upon the pavements below breaking the stillness, she determined, once and for all, to kill the past.
"It shall be dead!" she told herself, sternly. "I will have no more of it! If any one or anything belonging to it crops up, I will defy, deny, ignore, resist to the death! No one saw me--no one can really hurt me! I have had enough of misery and wretchedness--I will--yes, Iwill--be happy--and no one in the world shall prevent me!"
CHAPTER XXIX
The morning after the Duchess of Arran's ball Lord Vansittart was seated at his breakfast, theTimespropped up in front of him, when a ring of the hall-door bell was followed by a man-servant's entrance with a telegram.
Since his engagement to Joan, he had been singularly nervous--her changeful moods were hardly calculated to soothe a lover! He regarded the buff-coloured envelope askance.
Still his tone was cheerful as he said. "No answer." The message was from Joan; but there was nothing alarming in it. The few words were merely "Come as early as you can."
In a very few minutes after its delivery at his house, he had given his brief orders to the household for the day, had carelessly said he did not know when he should return, or if he would be home before night except, perhaps, to dress--and without waiting for a conveyance of his own--there would be delay if he sent down to the stables--he was out, striding along the pavement until he met a hansom, which he chartered with promise of an extra tip for quick driving.
"Miss Thorne is in her boudoir, my lord," said the porter, when he alighted at the house. Evidently the order had been given to that effect. The groom of the chambers bowed respectfully, but was easily waved aside. Vansittart crossed the hall and sprang up the stairs as only one of the family might do without disregard of theconvenances.
Tapping eagerly at Joan's boudoir door, his attentive ear heard a footstep, the door was opened by Joan herself. She was in the pink and whitedeshabilléshe had worn the happy day she had first admitted that she loved him sufficiently to marry him. But now, her beauty seemed in his fond eyes increased by the natural arrangement of the wealth of beautiful hair which was unbound and, merely confined with a ribbon, floated about her shoulders like a veil of golden strands.
She drew him into the room and blushed, as she said she had not expected him so early.
"I had to write to my bridesmaids about their frocks," she began, nestling to him. "I meant to have my hair done before you came----"
For answer he seated himself and drawing her to him, kissed the shining tresses and held them ecstatically in his hand. Their soft touch seemed to fire his emotions.
"Do you know you seem unreal, you are so beautiful?" he said, passionately, lifting her chin and gazing intently at her delicate lovely features and the rich brown eyes which to his delight looked more calmly than usual into his. "You make me feel--as if--when I get possession of you--you must vanish into thin air--you are an impossibility--a mocking spirit, who will disappear with elfish laughter."
"Don't rave!" she fondly said, returning his kiss. "Or you will make me rave! And to rave is not to enjoy oneself! Dear, I asked you to come early--I want to spend every moment of my life with you--from this--very--minute! Why should we be separated? You know what you told me--that they were telling each other falsehoods about you at the clubs--so our being always together will be like killing two birds with one stone! It will make me happy, and give the lie to their wicked calumnies! Do you mind?"
"Do--I--mind?" He kissed her brow, lips, hair, again and again. "Am I not yours--more yours than my own--all yours through time into eternity?"
"For worse as well as for better?" She had said the words before she remembered her terrible dream--when the judge who was condemning her to be hanged had upbraided her for not having fulfilled her wifehood; as they escaped her lips she recollected, and shuddered. "You think me better than I am, dearest! I am human--erring----"
"I--know--what you are!" he passionately exclaimed. He was plunged in a lover's fatuous ecstasy. It was half an hour before Joan could get away to put on her habit. She meant to ride to Crouch Hill to hear her old nurse's opinion of what had occurred. Mrs. Todd had not known Victor's name--she would not have identified "The Southwark Mystery," as the newspapers termed it, with herself and her wretched entanglements. She would tell her that Victor was dead, and hear what she would say to it.
While she was dressing, Vansittart went back to his stables, and waiting while the grooms equipped his now staid, but once almost too mettlesome grey horse "Firefly," returned to find Joan's pretty "Nora" waiting at the door, held, as well as his own horse, by her groom. He had barely dismounted when she issued from the house, a dainty Amazon from head to foot, and tripped down the steps, smiling at him. "Why did you ride your old grey?" she asked, as she sprang lightly into the saddle.
"Why?" he repeated, as he arranged her habit, and thrilled as he held her little foot for one brief moment in his hand. "Because I am so madly in love with you to-day that I cannot trust myself on any horse but the soberest and most steady-going in the stables! I am particularly anxious not to bring my 'violent delights' to a 'violent end' by breaking my neck!"
They rode off through the sweet summer morning, he so bathed in actual joy, as well as fired by the anticipatory delights of life with Joan for his wife, that in his blissful mood he could have enwrapt the whole of humanity in one vast embrace--Joan abandoning herself with all the force of her will to the natural instincts that underlay all ordinary, acquired emotions.
During her long self-colloquy she had deliberately burrowed, mentally, below her civilized being, and sought these. She had told herself that the primary instincts of woman were wifedom and motherhood. For the present--until she was reassured anent her safety by time and the course of events--she would listen to no others.
The two lovers--so near in seeming, so far asunder in reality, divided as they were by a hideous secret--rode gleefully on, rejoicing in their youth and love, making delicious plans for their future together, gloating over their coming joys from different standpoints, but with equal ardour.
"And for to-day," said Joan, as they rode under a canopy of boughs in one of the country lanes still undesecrated by the ruthless hands of the suburban builder, "and not only for to-day, but most days, I want to see how the other half of humanity lives, dearest! Before I am Lady Vansittart, I want to see the life that commoners enjoy! I want to dine out with you, at restaurants, and go to the theatre with you, and, in fact, be alone with you in crowds who neither know nor care who we are, or what we are doing!"
Vansittart, albeit slightly puzzled, readily acquiesced. When they drew rein at Mrs. Todd's cottage, it was settled that they were to use a box he had taken for the first night of a new play brought out by a manager who was an acquaintance of his, dining first at a restaurant Joan selected as being one not affected by their circle.
Joan entered the cottage and saw the dark old woman totter to meet her, eagerness in her trembling limbs and brilliant, searching eyes, with a feeling of sickly dismay. Last time she stood here Victor was alive; since then she had killed him! Involuntarily she gave a little moan of pain.
"My dearie, my lamb, what is it?" The aged nurse was terribly agitated as she caressed and tried to console the only creature she really loved on earth, who had sunk crouching at her feet. "Is it--come, tell Nana--you know I would die this minnit for you, lambie--tell me if that fellow is alive and annoying you in any way, for, as I sit here, if he is, I'll tell of him! I'll set the police upon him!"
"Don't," said Joan, chokingly, clasping her knees. For the first time she seemed to realize what she had done. "He is dead!"
"Thank God for that!" cried the old woman, in an access of fervour. "He is just, I will say that, if He's sent that blackguard to the only place he's fit for, instead of leaving him here to worry innocent folks as 'ud do their Maker credit if they was only let alone! And now you can be my Lady, and go to Court with as big a crown and as long a train as the best of the lot, duchesses and all! And you can bring little lords and ladies into the world to be brought up proper by head nurses and then send them to colleges, and make real gentlemen of 'em! The Lord knows what he is about! There ain't a God for nothin'!"
After the first thrill of something akin to horror at Mrs. Todd's grotesque rejoicing, Joan put aside her questioning as to "how the brute came to his end" by asking her if she would like to see Vansittart, and he, in his rapt adoration, eager to have to do with every detail of his beloved one's life, was only too ready to be curtsied to and congratulated and blest.
"She is a good old soul, darling, we must look after her," he feelingly said, as he waved farewell presently to the tall old crone watching them from her doorstep as they rode slowly up the road. "And now, where shall we go?"
After one of Joan's scampering rides they returned home, spent the afternoon in sweet talk in her boudoir, then Joan retired to dress--donning her plainest black evening frock and simplest ornaments--and he paid a flying visit to his house to dress also, returning to fetch her, as she had bidden him, in an ordinary hansom.
"I mean to enjoy myself to-night!" she gaily said. She insisted on feeling gay--insisted to herself. Presents were arriving in battalions, boxes of exquisite garments were delivered with a monotonous regularity. She had chosen the restaurant they would dine at, she was also to select the menu. As they alighted at the door, a man, who was about to enter, halted, and smiled as he lifted his hat.
"Who is that?" she asked as they went in.
"A very clever fellow, the dramatic critic of theParthenon," he returned. "I will introduce him to you."