"SHE GLIDED INTO OUR PRESENCE IN ONE RAPTUROUS WHIRL""SHE GLIDED INTO OUR PRESENCE IN ONE RAPTUROUS WHIRL"
"He was standing in the window of the large but unlovely room, drumming restlessly on the panes before him. As the light struck his head it brought to view the silver rapidly making its way through the dark locks he had been accustomed to pride himself upon, and a pang struck me at this sight, which made me quite dumb for the instant. I felt as if I, and not she, had been dancing over his heart. Then my ever-present thought of the woman I had sworn to cherish returned and held me steady while he said:
"'It is well that I have seen your wife once when the full spell was upon her. Now I know what has come into the Gillespie family. Leighton, do you love this woman?'
"'Enough to bear your condemnation if you choose to condemn us,' I assured him.
"'Then take her away out of my sight and from the possible sight of my growing grandchild. A dancing menad can be no mother to Claire.'
"'I will take her away,' I promised him. 'When this place has done all for her it can, I will carry her where she can offend no one but strangers.'
"'I would suggest an asylum,' he muttered. It was the only unjust thing I ever knew him to propose.
"'She is not insane,' I objected.
"'She is not sane,' he rejoined. 'No opium-eater is. But I will not force your conscience; only—let me never again see her in our home in Fifth Avenue.Youwill always be welcome.'
"I could not retort that I would enter no house from which she was thus peremptorily excluded. The house in Fifth Avenue was my home, the home of my child; and about it clustered every dear association of my heart save those connected with my unhappy love.
"'A man who marries for a whim must expect unpleasant results,' my father resumed. 'You shall have what money you need for her establishment elsewhere; but this hemisphere is too narrow to harbour both her and myself. Go to Europe, Leighton; there is more room there for your wife to dance in.'
"And I meant to follow this suggestion, but her health was not good enough for me to risk a voyage at this juncture, and we drifted West and put up at a place called Mountain Springs. It was during our stay there, that, so far as the world is concerned,the story of my married life ended. But for me it had only begun. The facts regarding my wife and her connection with that great catastrophe which robbed more than one household of wife and mother differed much in reality from those reported to the world and accepted by my own family. She did not perish in that wreck, though I thought she had, and mourned her loss for many months. She had merely taken advantage of the circumstances to effect another escape. How, I will endeavour to relate, hard as it is to disclose the failings of one so dear to me.
"My wife, whose natural longings had been modified rather than extinguished by her experiences at the sanitarium, soon awakened to the old sense of restraint and a desire to enjoy again the irresponsibilities of her early Bohemian life. But having gained wisdom by her past experiences, she allowed no expression of her feelings to escape her; and, relying on the effect produced upon me by her apparent content, merely asked the privilege of enjoying the sports indulged in by the other boarders. Fearing to cross her too much, I gave her all possible liberty, but when she begged to go on a certain excursion—the excursion which ended so disastrously for all concerned—I felt forced to refuse her, for I had made an arrangement that day which would prevent me from accompanying her. However, after repeated solicitation, I yielded to her importunities and gave her my consent, at which she showed much joy, and lavished many expressions of fondness upon me. Had my suspicions not been lulled by the undisturbed peacefulness of the last few months,these open demonstrations of affection might have occasioned me some alarm, for they were not without a suggestion of remorse. But I mistrusted nothing; I was too happy, and when I parted from her it was with the full intention of sacrificing for her pleasure the first real business engagement I had ever entered upon. But I did not carry out this impulse; I merely made arrangements for the train to stop for me at the little station on the mountains where my affairs led me. But I did not confide this plan to her till I was upon the point of leaving. Then I told her she might look for me on the train immediately after passing Buckley, and while I wondered at the way she received my words, I thought the embarrassment she showed was due to surprise. Alas! it sprang from much deeper sources. She had planned to leave me again, this time forever; and, baffled as she thought in the attempt, she succumbed for a little while to despair. Then her fertile brain suggested an expedient. Two trains left Mountain Springs that morning, one north and one south. She would take the southern train, and lest she should be prematurely discovered in her flight and so be followed before she had found a refuge, she prevailed upon a girl over whom she had some influence, to exchange garments with her and take her place among the excursionists. She little dreamed what lay before those excursionists. As little did I realise that it was in behalf of a stranger I entered upon that mad chase after the runaway cars I had seen slip from the engine and go crashing down towards the train on which I believed my wifeto be. I knew those cars to be loaded with dynamite, for it was in connection with this fact I had come to this place, and the thought that they were destined to prove the destruction of the life I so much prized maddened me to such an extent that it was a mere matter of instinct for me to leap upon the engine I saw bounding to her rescue. Had time been given me to think, I might not have shown such temerity, for I knew nothing of a fireman's duties or what would be expected of me by the engineer. But I did not pause to think; I only stood ready to hazard my life for the woman I loved,—the woman whom I believed to be on the train I even then could see advancing up the valley. Of that ride, its swirl and whirlwind rush, I remember little; every thought, every fear, was engrossed in the one question, How were we to save that train? But two methods suggested themselves to me in my ignorance and isolation from the brave engineer. Either we must overtake the cars and by coupling to them stay their downward rush to the main track below—a trick I did not understand—or we must crush so fiercely into them as to explode the dynamite with which they were loaded before they had a chance to collide with the advancing train. That the latter catastrophe did not happen was not owing to any precaution on my part, for I do not remember that I had the least dread of personal destruction. As I have just said, my one thought, my only thought in that dizzy descent, was to save her. And I failed to do it; or so I had reason to think. As you remember, all our efforts were in vain; the unspeakable occurred, andwreck, death, and disaster met my eyes when, after a period of blank darkness, I rose from the ground where I had been hurled by the force of that dynamite explosion. Amid this wreck, in face of this death, I plunged in my search for her, and, as I believed, found her. A loving husband cannot be deceived in his wife's clothes, and the fragments I handled told their tale, as I thought, only too well. But, as you now know, it was not my wife who wore these clothes, though we buried her as such, and I mourned my lost love as no one who has not fixed his whole heart upon one object can possibly understand.
"My father, whose relief at this release can be readily imagined, endeavoured to calm my grief, not by sympathy, for that he could not feel, but by an unvarying kindness which assured me that, now that this obstacle to a right understanding between us had been removed, I might hope for the establishment of more cordial relations between us. I was older now, and he more considerate of my many uncongenial ways and habits; besides, Claire made a tender bond between us, and with one of her baby smiles healed many a breach that might otherwise have separated us.
"I began to be content, when, having some business in a strange quarter of the city, I chanced to walk down East Fourteenth Street. It was a holiday of some kind and there had been a procession. The stir in the streets was just what usually follows the breaking up of long lines of people. But this did not disturb me. Claire had been unusuallyengaging that morning, and I was just rejoicing in the memory of her innocent prattle, when the band in the far distance broke out into a merry strain, and I saw on the sidewalk before me a cluster of people separate into a sort of ring, in the middle of which a woman stood poised with swaying arms, so like the image that was day by day receding farther and farther into the deep recesses of my memory, that a species of faintness came over me and I drew back, sick and half-blinded, directly in the path of the people pressing in my rear. This caused me to receive a push from behind which effectually roused me and gave me strength to look again at one who could recall my lost Mille-fleurs. I expected—how could I expect anything else?—to be met by a strange face and an unknown smile. But it washerface,hersmile; and the figure, clad in such clothes as I had never, even in my worst dreams, associated with the woman to whom I had given my name, washers. Had God made two such women? Two with such eyes, such hair, such instincts, and such genius? Was this a sister of Mille-fleurs; a twin of my lost darling, of whose existence I had never heard? God grant not! I had buried Mille-fleurs, and with her, memories which this creature would only bring back to the destruction of my peace. I dared not give way for one instant to the thought that this likeness was anything but a passing illusion which the next moment would dispel. I dared not for my life. And yet I stood staring; hearing and not hearing the shouts of wild applause rising around me, and was looking, yes, looking directly into her eyes,when they suddenly turned my way in startled recognition. It was Mille-fleurs! Mille-fleurs! The woman I had buried was a stranger, and she who was making pastime for the passing crowd wasmy wife!
"I made no scene. I accepted the fact as we accept any unforeseen catastrophe that comes upon us unawares, tearing up our peaceful present and making a chaos of the future. As she was still dancing, though fitfully and with curious breaks, I stopped her by my steady look and held her so, till the crowd had melted away sufficiently for me to take her by the hand and lead her under the cover of the first small shop we came to. Then I questioned her closely, and, when I understood all, asked her if she would go with me and be clothed and fed. She answered with a startled look. 'I cannot!' she cried, and wearily drooped her head. 'I am not worthy.'
"God knows what passed through my mind then. I stood there in the wretchedness of this low shop, beside a counter from which the smell of stale tobacco rose in nauseous fumes, together with the sickening smell of partially decayed fruits—a flower in my button-hole (put there by little Claire), and before me this woman, loved as few of earth's best and worthiest have been, telling me with trembling lips what explained her rags, the degradation which had fallen on her beauty, and the whole pitiable downfall of a womanhood which once struck my heart as ideal and worthy of a man's unselfish worship.
"Drawing the flower from my button-hole, Icrushed it in my hand. If I could have donned the clothes of some of the men lolling about us in greedy curiosity, I would have done so at that moment, if only the contrast between our outer selves might have been less apparent. But this was impossible, and I could only stand in silence in face of this wreck of bygone delights, and in one moment and under the gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes peering from behind the counter and gaping in at the doorway, live down my bitter humiliation at this untoward resurrection of a love I had learned to rejoice in as buried. For this was no wretched waif of the streets I could pity and leave. This was my wife, the mother of my child; the woman whom I had once vowed to hold in honour to the end, and to succour, no matter what her need or to what degradation she might come. Besides, there was an appeal in her drooping attitude and quivering mouth which touched my heart in spite of my judgment. I felt her misery as I had never felt my own; a misery all the more pronounced because of the joy so openly preceding it; and, feeling a fresh thrill in the old cord of union that had made our hearts one, I quietly asked her if she had lost all love for me. She gave me one quick look; and I saw her eye quicken as she softly faltered, 'No. Only,' she made haste to add, 'I cannot live in big houses under the eyes of people who think my ways odd and wrong. If you take me back to him I cannot help going wrong again. But I would like something pretty to wear and something good to eat.'
"I took her to an East Side hotel. I bought herclothes and gave her food, over which she laughed like a child. Then I told her what I meant to do for her. I would buy her a home in a pretty country place, where she need not fear intruding eyes. There she should live with some woman I could trust and who would be kind to her. A piano, music, flowers, books—she should have all, and if, in the course of time, she came to wish it, I would bring our child to see her. Did she think she could be contented in a home like this? Wouldn't it be better than the cold and squalor of the streets and these wild dances before unsympathetic eyes?
"She answered with a burst of affection which was real enough at the time; then asked if I was going to let my father know she was living. This brought to light the spectre which had stood over against us ever since I first recognised her as the woman I had sworn to love and cherish. Could I tell my father? Could I bring down again upon myself the old coldness, the old distrust, the old sense of a division that was gall to me because of the reverence and love I naturally felt for him?
"I could not; I recognised the cowardice of it, but I could not. I was ready to give her succour; I was ready to devote time, money, and care to her establishment and well-being; I could deny myself the pleasures and pursuits natural to men of my age, and even the uninterrupted enjoyment of the home I had come to prize, but I could not tell my father that the wild-eyed creature he was forcing himself to forget, still lived, and might any day bring down fresh humiliation upon him.
"She saw my doubt and smiled as in the early days of her untrammelled youth.
"'Better so,' she cried; 'then if I fail to be good it will not so much matter. And I may fail; it is in my blood, Leighton; in my unfortunate Bohemian blood. Oh, why did you ever care for me?'
"Such gusts of feeling and regret over the havoc she had caused were common to her. They made it impossible for me to hope in her ultimate restoration to respectability and a quiet life. But, alas! they were but gusts, and after a few months of peaceful harbourage in the rose-covered cottage I found for her, she fled from me again and was lost foryears. But I never ceased searching for her. The unrest of knowing she was restless under the roof I had provided for her was nothing to the restlessness of not knowing where she was and in what misery and under what deprivation she was pining away in the dark holes where alone she could find refuge. I have sat hours under my father's eye, talking of stocks and bonds and railway shares, while my every thought and feeling were with her whom in my fancy I saw wandering from river to river, in dark nights and in cold;—rain on the pavements or slush in the streets,—drawing up to lighted doors for warmth or hiding her brown head with its flying curls under sheds a dog might be glad to fly from.
"It has happened to me often to be in the presence of women, at church or concert or festival, and with their eyes on my face and the perfume of their presence floating about me, to behold in my mind's perspective a solitary figure poised on the edge ofsome dock, in whose lifted arms and upstrained countenance I read despair, the despair that leads to death; and, forgetting where I was and to whom my words were due, have rushed out to do—what? Wander those down-town streets and the bleak places I had seen in my fancy, in the hope of coming once again upon the being who, unaccountably to myself, still held the cord whose other end was bound indissolubly to my heart. What wonder that I was looked upon as eccentric, moody, strange, or that my father, who naturally explained these freaks according to his own lights, showed displeasure at my unaccountable whims? Yet I went on with my search, and finally the day arrived when my perseverance was rewarded and I came upon her once again.
"She was in a low dance-hall, but she was not dancing. She was simply gazing at another woman attempting those dizzy whirls which, under the sway of her own genius, had once attracted the applause of a different crowd from this. There was infinite longing in her eyes, mixed with the sadness which will sometimes creep over those who are homeless through their own choice. When she saw me, and this was perhaps sooner than was best for either herself or me, I saw the old look of terror rise in her eyes, but mingled with it was a certain recognition of my faithfulness and self-forgetful care for her which melted the ice about my heart and reawakened the old hope for her. But she did not follow me when I beckoned her out; nor could I induce her to do so without risking a scene which would necessarilyattract all eyes to us. But she promised, if I gave her money, to return the next day to the little house in New Jersey.
"And she did; but her stay was short, and it became a common thing for her to drift back there for a day or so, and then to flee away again, to return when the fancy seized her or the devils of discomfort drove her to seek a respite from the horrors which had now become for her synonymous with freedom.
"She always found something to reward her for these visits; some surprise in the shape of a new article or some fresh source of amusement. Money to me was only valuable as it gave me power to rivet another link to the chain with which I endeavoured to hold her to a better life; and though I knew the false construction which might be put upon these expenditures, not only by my father but others, I spared no means, stopped at no extravagance which might add one more allurement to the nest I had made for my weary and bedraggled one.
"The woman who had orders to keep this house in a continual state of readiness for its fitful visitant was as discreet as she was sympathetic. She may have surmised my secret, or she may have supposed all these efforts the result of an ill-conceived philanthropy.
"I could never tell by her manner. But I knew she treated my poor one well. Time after time has she opened the door to a disordered and dishevelled creature, whom next morning I found sitting in a bower of roses, fitted out in dainty cashmeres, andwith her long locks combed till they shone and shone again. Nay, I have come upon her on her knees before the bruised and frozen feet upon which she was thrusting slippers of downy softness, which made my darling laugh until their very softness became a burden, and she threw them off to dance. I have never lingered over these sights, but I have imagined them over and over with tear-filled eyes, for, explain it as you will, every backward slip made by my darling toward the precipice I ever saw yawning for her strengthened the hold she had upon my heart, till the pity with which I regarded her filled my whole bosom to bursting.
"But the wild hawk cannot be tamed. She would vanish from our care just when we thought it was becoming dear to her, and my wild pursuit would begin again, to be followed by chance findings and renewed disappointments. She was not to be held, though in the hope of doing so I have spent many stolen hours in the little house, reading to her, talking to her, playing with her, sacrificing my good name and the regard of my relatives just to win back one innocent look to her face and keep her amused and contented without the help of the accursed drug. She slipped away from us in spite of all our efforts, and during this last year returned only once.
"Yet I think she has felt more drawn to me this year than in all the time of our marriage. But she felt her unworthiness more. She had listened to the hymns sung by the Salvation Army on some of the down-town corners, and, being susceptible to impressions ofthis nature, had followed the singers into their halls and heard some of the good words that are uttered there. Sometimes, I am told, she laughed at what she heard, but oftener was seen to cry, and once she herself sang till, as they said, the very heavens seemed to open. When I heard this, I could not keep away from these meetings, though I never came upon her at any one of them either on the East or West side. She seemed to anticipate my approach there as elsewhere, for often have I been assured that she had just that minute gone out, and must be somewhere near, though I never succeeded in finding her.
"This looked to me then like hate, but now I think it was simply shame; for when she knew that death was upon her she sent for me; and, seeing the old look of forbearance on my face, she threw up her wasted arms, and, panting like a child who has reached its mother's arms at last, turned her tired, tired face towards my breast with a feeble 'Forgive!' and died.
"You cannot know the heart of a man who has followed his lost lamb for years through tangled thickets and by headlong precipices, and it may seem strange for me to pour into ears so hardened and necessarily so unsympathetic the sacred secrets of my soul. But my position is a strange one and my story one that must be told in its entirety for you to understand why that smile upon her face is so much to me that my sole prayer at this time is to be allowed to remain in sight of it for one hour. She has loved me always; not as I loved her, not to the point of saving me one heartache or sparing me one erratic impulse of her ungoverned nature, but still betterthan I feared; better than her conduct would show. For when I came to lay her head down again upon its pillow, I found tied about her neck and fast clutched in her chilling palm,this.
"Our wedding ring," he murmured. "She might have pawned it for a dollar during any of the many crises of her miserable life."
He paused, put the token back in his breast, and added but one more word. "When she was alive and well, with vigour in her dancing foot, and a deathless unrest in her gypsy heart, she chafed at my presence and fled from my protection. But when the final shadow settled and she felt all other props give way, then her poor arms rose in recognition of the love which had never failed her." There was an indescribable tone of triumph in his tones. "She had need of me in her dying hours; she smiled——"
He paused, and his eyes, which had been fixed on her form, rose instinctively, not to the dingy rafters overhead, but to the heaven he saw above those rafters. For him her spirit had fled upward. Whatever we might think of her, to him she was henceforth a being blessed and gathered into a refuge from which she would nevermore seek or wish to escape.
It was hard to break into this calm hopefulness with words of stern or sinister meaning. But Mr. Gryce had no choice.
"What, then, is your special desire?" asked that officer.
Mr. Gillespie's eyes fell, and for a moment he stood thinking, then he said;
"I have retribution to make to her memory. I wish to take her to my own house and bury her from there as my wife. The humiliation from which my pride recoiled in the old days has been meted out to me ten-fold. I no longer wish to evade my responsibilities."
His expression as he said this was very different from the smile I had surprised on his face the night he stooped over his dead father. Yet the one brought up the other, and, in a measure, acted as a mutual interpretation. By means of it and the determination he had just expressed, I could comprehend the feeling of that moment, when with police in the house and the whole family subjected to a suspicion which involved it in the utmost disgrace, he contemplated the features of the man whose pride found the hemisphere in which he lived too small to hold both himself and the daughter whose worst fault was a proclivity to dance and sing.
Mr. Gryce, who had no such memories to reconcile, was meanwhile surveying the young man with a curious hesitation.
"I regret," said he, "the presence of an obstacle to your very natural wish to bury your wife from your own house. Mr. Gillespie, it is my duty to inform you that we are not here on a simple errand of surveillance: my orders were to arrest you on the charge of murdering your father."
I
would rather have been spared the pain of that moment. Mr. Gryce had virtually promised that I should not be present at Mr. Gillespie's arrest, but I presume he forgot not only his promise but my very existence in the unexpected interest of this extraordinary situation. Mr. Gillespie, who at another time might have succumbed to the emotion of seeing himself singled out from his brothers on the charge which had hitherto involved them all, was already in a state of too much agitation to make much demonstration over this fresh humiliation. Nevertheless it became evident, from the droop of his arms and the general air of discouragement which crept into his whole bearing, that the iron had entered his soul and the climax of his many woes had been reached.
"I hoped for other results when I entered upon my long and painful story," he remarked. "Certainly you have found me able to account for much that has seemed anomalous in my relations to my father and the attitude I have been compelled to preserve towards society. I am surprised that anyone should continue to regard me as having had anything to do with my father's unhappy death. May I ask what special evidence you imagine yourselves to have against me? I may be able to refute it with a word."
This was more than Mr. Gryce could grant, and he said so, though with less imperturbability of manner than usual. "I am under orders to bring you into the presence of the District Attorney," he explained, "who will use his own discretion in the matter of having you detained. Will you accompany me quietly, leaving the care of your wife to Mr. Outhwaite, who, I am sure, will follow your wishes in the choice of such assistants as he may think necessary to employ?"
The look he received in return was eloquent in its appeal, but Mr. Gryce knew no relenting where his duty was concerned, and, recognising this, Mr. Gillespie took a fresh resolve and boldly said:
"You have discovered that I carried a bottle of prussic acid into my father's house the day before he died. Shall I tell you where I procured it? From the hand of her who lies here. I found it tied about her neck, when, after months of fruitless search, I was led to investigate Mother Merry's lodging-house. She was asleep when I discovered it; asleep in a way I always found it impossible to break, and the shock of finding her in quiet possession of what I instinctively knew to be poison maddened me to such an extent that I tore the phial away from her and put in its place a roll of bank-notes. These were probably stolen from her, as no proof remains of her having used them; but the bottle I carried away, having impulsively thrust it into my trousers' pocket at the first intimation I received of a raid being made upon the place by the police."
The explanation was so natural, and the mannerin which it was made so convincing, that the detective's look and mine crossed, and I became assured that he as well as myself was beginning to give credence to this man.
"I can give no information of the use which was made of this drug after its introduction into my father's home, nor can I designate the hand which took it from my bureau where I placed it on emptying my pockets. My connection with it ended at the moment I speak of. I did not even think of it again till I came in from the meeting where I had vainly sought distraction, and found my father lying low and heard the cry of poison raised in the house."
"This would have been a welcome explanation at the time," commented Mr. Gryce. "Your delay has compromised you."
"So be it," was the short but proud reply which came from this singular man. "When you reflect that by the time I was able to satisfy myself that this bottle was missing from the place where I had left it, any attempt to exonerate myself would have been a virtual accusation of one of my two brothers, you will realise why I hesitated to speak then, and only bring myself to speak now under the compelling force of an interest greater than family pride or affection. In my desire to share the last offices which can be paid to my wife, I possibly show myself for the second time a coward."
Did he? Mr. Gryce did not seem to think so. The forehead of this aged detective was clearing fast, and he actually looked younger by ten years than whenhe entered this house. Yet his exactions remained the same, and Mr. Gillespie prepared to accommodate himself to them.
Meanwhile the incessant hammering of the rain on the roof had become less noticeable, and the drip, drip, on the sill without, less wearily persistent. There seemed, too, a diminution in the turbulence of the wind; the doors and windows did not rattle so loudly, and the worst noises in the yards below had ceased. Anxious to see if the storm was abating, I raised the window and looked out. Rushing clouds with great torn edges met my eye, and, below, a chaos of towering walls surrounding an abyss in which the imagination could picture nothing save a collection of foul yards and reeking alleys. Recoiling from a prospect which the condition of my mind and heart made more than usually gloomy, I turned back from the possible tragedies hidden behind those great walls to the actual one in which I had myself been forced to take so ungracious a part. Mr. Gillespie was waiting to speak to me.
"I am allowed to give you the names of such people as can best assist you in the removal of my wife," he remarked. "Here they are, together with the address in New Jersey where I wish her ultimately carried. Mr. Gryce will give you what further information you need——"
He placed a paper in my hand with a word of quiet thanks, to which I responded in the manner I felt would be most pleasing to Hope. Then he cast a glance at the detective.
"I have promised Mr. Gillespie the privilege ofpassing a moment in this room unseen and alone," observed that official, stepping towards the door.
I bowed and withdrew, shutting Mr. Gillespie in and ourselves out. Instantly all the noises in the house crowded clamorously to our ears. Laughter, singing, brawling, the screaming of children and the scolding of their distracted mothers, made a sort of pandemonium, which little harmonised with the mood induced by the pathetic story we had just heard. But it was not for us to be particular at such a moment, and I was glad that I had given no sign of my inward disturbance, when Mr. Gryce suddenly remarked:
"I am getting old." (His alert eye and attentive ear turned towards the room we had just left did not seem to indicate it.) "I find that such scenes make a deeper impression upon me than formerly. I no longer dwell on the skill it takes to bring them about, but rather muse upon the mistakes and woes of poor humanity which make them possible."
I wished to ask him what he thought of Mr. Gillespie's prospects, but he gave me no encouragement to do so, and we remained silent till the door reopened and Mr. Gillespie came out.
"I am ready now," he quietly informed us. "Mr. Outhwaite, I can trust you; and if Hope—" He stopped and looked the entreaty he dared not utter.
"I will tell her the whole story just as it has fallen from your lips. You wish me to?"
He signified his assent, but still looked wistful.
"When she has heard the true cause of the division which has taken place between you and othermembers of your family, she will act as her own kind heart will prompt her," I added.
He would have pressed my hand, but remembering his position as a prisoner, refrained.
"Let us go," he now said, in natural recoil from the noises which just then burst in renewed outcry from every quarter of the house.
Mr. Gryce gave a faint whistle. It was answered in the same guarded manner from below. At which the old detective turned to me with a few final directions, after which, with a promise to leave me well guarded, he made a gesture which Mr. Gillespie could not fail to understand. They began to descend. When Mr. Gillespie was half-way down, he gave one backward look at the door swaying between him and what he had loved best on earth; then he passed on, and I was left standing on that dingy landing, alone.
There was some clamour and no little jeering in the rooms below as the detectives passed through them with their well-dressed prisoner; but these tokens of class animosity speedily weakened to a sullen growl, amidst which I thought I heard the rattling of departing wheels.
With a heart as heavy as the silence which now filled the house, I turned and went back into that room.
It was filled with moonlight. The candle from which the winding-sheet had long ago melted and run upon the table, had flickered out, but its fitful flame was not missed. The clouds which had seemed so impenetrable a short time before, had thinned out and parted till they flecked, rather than covered,the white disk of the moon, now revealed for the first time in days.
That storm and that clearing have never left my memory. As the last lingering shred of cloud drifted away, leaving the face of the moon quite clear, I found courage to look once more towards the bed.
There was a change there. She lay, not as before, with her features quite concealed, but with her face exposed save where the loose curls had forced their way across her cheeks and forehead. The coverlet, drawn close under her chin, hung smooth and decent to the floor, and across it lay stretched one white arm, upon the hand of which shone the wedding-ring which Leighton Gillespie had taken from her neck and placed there.
T
hat night was a busy one for me; nevertheless I found time to send a message to Hope, in which I begged her to read no papers till she saw me, and, if possible, to keep herself in her own room. To these hurried words I added the comforting assurance that the news I had to bring her would repay her for this display of self-control, and that I would not keep her waiting any longer than was necessary. But it was fully ten o'clock before I was able to keep this promise, and I found her looking pale and worn.
"I have obeyed you," she said, with an attempt at smiling as pitiful as it was ineffectual. "What has happened? Why did you not want me to see the papers or talk with Mrs. Penrhyn?"
"Because I wished to be the first to tell you the secret of Leighton Gillespie's life. It was not what was suggested to you by the discrepancies you observed between his character and life. He is sane as any man, but—" it was hard to proceed, with those eyes of unspeakable longing looking straight into mine—"but he has had great sorrows to bear, great suspenses to endure, a deception to keep up, not altogether justifiable, perhaps, but yet one that was not without some excuse. His wife—Did you ever see his wife?"
"No," she faltered.
"—Did not perish in that disaster of five years ago, as everyone supposed; and it was she——"
"Oh!" came in a burst of sudden comprehension from Hope, as she sank down out of sight among the curtains by the window. But the next moment she was standing again, crying in low tones in which I caught a note of immeasurable relief, "I thank God! I thank God!" Then the sobs came.
I noticed that, once she had taken in this fact of his personal rectitude, all fear left her as to the truth of the more serious charge against him. Even after I had explained to her how he came by the phial of poison, and how it was through his agency it came to be in his father's house, no doubt came to mar her restored confidence in this her most cherished relative. She even admitted that, now this one unexplainable point in his character had been made clear to her, she felt ready to meet any accusations which might be raised against him. "Let them publish their suspicions!" she cried. "He can bear them and so can I; for now that he has been proven a true man, nothing else much matters. I may blush at hearing his name,—it will be years, I think, before I shall overcome that,—but it will be because I failed to see in his kindness to me the sympathetic interest of one whose heart has been made tender towards women by his wild longing after the wandering spirit whom he called his wife."
Then she asked where I had placed Mille-fleurs (a name so natural to Millicent Gillespie that no other was ever suggested by her friends); and, having beentold where, said she would like to sit beside her until the time came to lay her in the garden of that little home from which all shadow was now cleared away save that of chastened sorrow.
As this was what Leighton Gillespie secretly wished, I promised to accompany her to New Jersey, and then, taking this pure-hearted girl by the hand, I asked:
"Have I performed my task well?"
Her answer was—but that is my secret. Small reason as it gave me for personal hope, I yet went from that house with my heart lightened of its heaviest load.
I did not read the papers myself that morning. I had little heart for a reporter's version of what had so thrilled me coming from Leighton's own lips. Merely satisfying myself that the latter was still in custody, I busied myself with what came up in my office, till the stroke of five released me to a free exercise of my own thoughts.
How much nearer were we to the solution of this mystery than we had been the morning following Mr. Gillespie's death? Not much; and while Hope and possibly myself felt that the band of suspicion had narrowed in its circle, and by the exclusion of Leighton, whom we could no longer look upon as guilty, left the question of culpability to be settled between the two remaining sons of the deceased stockbroker, to the world in general and to the readers of sensational journals which now flooded the city with accounts of the most sacred incidents of Leighton Gillespie's past life he was still the man throughwhose agency the poison had entered the Gillespie house. Nor could we fail to see that the feeling called out by these tales of his domestic infelicities and the wild search in which most of his life had been passed had its reverse side for those people who read all stories of disinterested affection with doubt, and place no more faith in true religion than if the few bright spots made in the universal history of mankind by acts of unselfish devotion had no basis in fact, and were as imaginary as the dreams of poet or romancer.
That Leighton Gillespie had not been released after his conference with the District Attorney was proof that his way was not as clear before him as I had hoped. Yet I was positive that Mr. Gryce as well as Sweetwater shared my belief in his innocence; and while this was a comfort to me, I found my mind much exercised by the doubt as to what the next turn of the kaleidoscope would call up in this ever-changing case.
I had not seen Underhill in days, and I rather dreaded a chance meeting. He did not like Leighton, and would be the first to throw contempt upon any mercy being shown him on account of his faithful attachment to his disreputable wife. I seemed to hear the drawling query with which this favourite of the clubs would end any attempt I might make in this direction: "And so you think it probable that a man—a man, remember, with a child liable to flutter in and out of his room at all hours—would leave a phial of deadly poison on his dresser and never think of it again? Not much, old man.If he laid it down there, which I doubt, he took it up again. Don't waste your sympathy on a cad."
Yet I did; and to such an extent that I took a walk instead of going home and hearing these imaginary sentences uttered in articulated words. I walked up Madison Avenue, and, coming upon a store which had a reputation for an extra fine brand of cigars, I went in to buy one.
Have you ever greatly desired an event which your common sense told you was most unlikely to happen, and then suddenly seen it wrought out before you in the most unforeseen manner and by the most ordinary of means? From the first night of the tragedy with which these pages have been full, I had wished for an interview with the old butler, without witnesses, and as the result of a seeming chance. But I had never seen my way clear to this; and now, in this place and in this unexpected manner, I came upon him buying fruit at a grocer's counter.
I did not hesitate to approach him.
"How do you do, Hewson?" said I, with a kindly tap on his shoulder.
He turned slowly, gave me a look that was half an apology and half an appeal, then dropped his eyes.
"How do you do, sir?" said he.
"Been buying oranges for the family?" I went on. "Startling news, this! I mean the arrest of Mr. Gillespie's second son. I never thought of him as the guilty one, did you?"
The old butler did not break all up as I expected.He only shook his head, and, taking up the bundle which had just been handed him, remarked:
"We little know what's in the mind of the babies we dandle in our arms," and went feebly out.
I laid down a quarter, took a cigar from the case, forgot to light it, and sauntered into the street with it still in my hand. I felt thoroughly discouraged, and walked down the avenue in a sort of black mist formed of my own doubts and Hewson's calm acceptance of the guilt attributed to Leighton. But suddenly I stopped, put the cigar in my pocket, and exclaimed in vehement contradiction of my own uneasy thoughts: "Leighton Gillespie is as guiltless of his father's death as of other charges which have been made against him. I am ready to stake my own honour upon it," and went immediately to my apartments, without stopping, as I usually did, at Underhill's door.
I found a young man waiting for me in the vestibule. He had evidently been standing there for some time, for he no sooner heard my step than he gave a bound forward with the eager cry:
"It is I, sir,—Sweetwater."
He was a welcome visitor at that moment, and I was willing he should realise it.
"Come in; come in," I urged. "New developments, eh? Mr. Gillespie released, perhaps, or——"
"No," was his disappointing response as the door closed behind us and he sank into the chair I pushed forward. "Mr. Gillespie is still in detention and there are no new developments. But another day must not pass without them. I was witness to thesympathy you felt last night for the man who claimed the wretched being we saw before us for his wife; and, feeling a little soft-hearted towards him myself, I have come to ask you to lay your head with mine over this case in the hope that we two together may light upon some clue which will lead to his immediate enlargement. For I cannot believe him guilty; I just cannot. It was one of the others. But which one? I don't mean to eat or sleep till I find out."
"And Mr. Gryce?"
"He won't bother. Last night was too much for him, and he has gone home. The field is clear, sir, quite clear; and I mean to profit by it. Leighton Gillespie shall be freed in time to attend his wife's funeral or I will give up the detective business and go back to the carpenter's bench and my dear old mother in Sutherlandtown."