Chapter Ten.My Own Confession.The “Lion” Inn was a pleasant, old-fashioned little hostelry overlooking the bay, with Bournemouth beyond the distant haze. My room was small and clean, with white dimity curtains and hangings, and framed religious texts upon the walls. As I sat at the window in the hour before my dinner was ready, I reflected upon the strange incidents of those past few days—a chain of curious circumstances that seemed to enmesh and to entangle me.Lucie Miller—the girl whose peril was such a mysterious and yet deadly one—had actually known my Ella. That very fact seemed somehow as a further link between us. What, I wondered, did she know of those later days of my dead love’s life? To me they were shrouded in mystery.That cold winter’s night in damp, dismal London, when I had met her in secret at the corner of Queen’s Gardens, would ever remain in my memory. She was staying with an aunt in Porchester Terrace, and we had always preserved the secret of our affection. She came dressed in black, wearing a thick veil and carrying a muff in which was a bunch of violets. Her voice, when I greeted her, was, alas! not the same. Quick to recognise that something had occurred, I inquired the reason. Had she had any difference with her father or her aunt—as she sometimes had? No, she said, shaking her head, it was not that.And then, almost in silence, we strolled on side by side over those wet shining London pavements through the quieter streets and squares of Bayswater, while I glanced wonderingly at her face showing pale behind her spotted veil. At last her trembling hand suddenly rested upon my wrist, and halting she turned to me. In hoarse tones quite unusual to her she blurted forth the truth—the bitter truth that froze my heart. I remember even the spot where we stood, beside a red letter-box at the corner of Chepstow Place. There the greatest blow of all my life fell upon me; and we parted.I went straight along the Westbourne Grove, blinded by tears. She was to wed the very last man she ought to have chosen. The coarse, fat-necked parvenu had bought her from her father with his gold won in gambles on the Stock Exchange. Yes, my Ella, my sweet-faced love, was not satisfied with the prospect of being the wife of a man comfortably off. Like so many other girls who are dazzled by the lights of life, she longed to shine as a hostess, to wear Paquin frocks and have her portraits in the papers. I was deeply disappointed with her, for, fool that I was, I really believed that she honestly loved me. How often, alas! is a man deceived! I was but one of thousands, after all. And yet I had adored her with all my heart and all my soul.Away in the country the very song of the birds seemed to be in praise of her—she whose beauty was sweet and delicate as the petals of the flowers; chaste and sweet as the rose itself. Love to the looker-on may be blind, unwise, unworthily bestowed, a waste, a sacrifice, a crime; yet none the less is love the only thing that, come weal or woe, is worth the loss of every other thing; the one supreme and perfect gift of earth in which all common things of daily life become transfigured and divine.I was crushed, benumbed, broken. At first my brain refused to accept her declaration that that meeting was to be our last, until she told me the truth in all its hideous detail, and that on the morrow her engagement was to be announced in theMorning Post. I opened my lips to upbraid her, but my tongue refused to utter a syllable of reproach. I only bit my lips in silence. Ah! yes, I loved her!—I loved her!From that moment we never again met. Next day I saw the announcement in the papers, and, disappointed and heart-broken, I went abroad, and it was a year after when one of my intimate friends, Jack Davies, a lieutenant on board theCornwall, in a letter which I received at a lonely post-house on the snow-bound road in the extreme north of Russia, wrote those words which caused my heart to burst within me:—“You recollect little Ella Murray, who was, with her stepmother, up at the Grainger’s shoot two years ago? The poor little girl was engaged to some City fellow, an entire outsider, I heard, but I hear she caught typhoid at a hotel in Sheringham and died six months ago. A pity, isn’t it? I rather liked her—so did you, I remember.”I stood at the door of that filthy, log-built place with the letter in my hand, gazing across the great snow-covered plain with its long row of telegraph-wires and verst-posts stretching away from Pokrovskoi to the grey horizon. My big bearded driver whispered to the post-house keeper, for both saw that I had received bad news. The man in sheepskins who kept the place went in without a word and returned with a glass of vodka. I recognised his kindly thought, gulped down the spirit, and mounting into the sledge drove on—on, whither I did not care. Ella—my own dear Ella was dead!All this came back vividly to me on that evening as I ate my dinner alone in the little inn at Studland, and then in the golden sunset strolled by the sea—that same wide, mysterious sea beside which I had so long ago declared my love. She lived then, smiling, sighing, loving. But now, alas! she was no more. Of her memory there only remained that shadowy picture that I had seen in Miller’s drawing-room, the portrait of the dead that smiled upon me in such mocking happiness.I threw myself upon a bank and watched the glorious crimson and purple of the summer afterglow. Yes, the face of the world was for me now changed. The past had been full enough of bitterness, what, I wondered, did the future contain? Ah! if I could have but known at that moment! Yet perhaps after all the Divine power is merciful in keeping from us the happiness and tragedy that lie before.Till the summer twilight darkened into night I sat therefore before the sea, smoking and thinking. The dark vista of silent waters before me harmonised with my thoughts. Mine was, alas! a wasted, useless life, I had never known one moment’s financial worry, and yet I had somehow never found happiness. In my life where I might be, at home or abroad, there was always something wanting—the love of a good woman.Through the following day I idled, mostly in the Lion, for it was too hot for walking. But at half-past two I sauntered to the station and, unseen by Lucie, I saw her alight from the train from London, climb into the smart dogcart that was awaiting her, and drive away in the direction of the Manor.Then when I returned and had my tea I remarked casually to the stout, round-faced innkeeper:—“I hear that Mr Miller is at the Manor House just now. I learnt so yesterday.”“An’ so did I,” was his reply. “Dear me! wonders ’ull never cease. Fancy Mr Miller coming back again! An’ they say that Miss Lucie’s a-comin’, too.”“Is she his daughter?” I inquired, as though in ignorance.“Of course she is; an’ a very good girl, too. When she’s ’ere—which ain’t very often, more’s the pity—she does a great deal of good in the village—visits the old people, looks after the coal club, and gives away quite a lot of money to the deserving people who are destitute. I only wish there were more like ’er in these ’ere parts.”“Does she often come here?”“Oh! two or three times a year,” answered the landlord. “Some say she lives up in London with ’er aunt, and others declare that she’s mostly abroad with ’er father. I believe the latter story. She ’as a foreign way about ’er, and I’ve ’eard the servants say as ’ow all ’er things are made abroad.”“Then nobody knows her address?” I said.“Seems not. But she’s very fond of ’er father, and no doubt is always with him.”“Do they have many friends at the Manor when Mr Miller and his daughter are at home?”“Not many. Dr Haviland often dines with ’em.”“I don’t mean local friends—visitors from London.”“Very few. I’ve known one or two, but they’ve all been forriners. Mr Miller seems to like them forriners some’ow. But I don’t,” declared the old fellow. “They’re too infernal polite and sleeky for me. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em for a pint o’ beer.”“They were gentlemen, I suppose?”“Oh, dear, yes—full of fine graces and fine manners. They wore shoes like women, and shirts pleated like women’s blouses—great swells, I can assure you.”“You never heard of any of their names?”“No, how was I to ’ear? Once two of ’em came in one hot day and jabbered, sayin’ ‘boch! boch!’ an’ grinnin’ all over their faces. It was quite a long time before I discovered that they wanted two half-pints o’ bitter. I supposebochis what they calls it in French.”“Yes,” I laughed. “You’re quite right.”The strangers had evidently been French, I reflected. Had they been Italian they would have asked forbirra.Regarding Lucie, I learnt that on several occasions, while she had been at home, a young, black-moustached foreigner had been guest at the Manor, and that she frequently drove him out in the dogcart. My host did not know the visitor’s name. He described him, however, as tall and thin with a narrow hatchet face, black eyes and moustaches that turned up at the ends.“They passed up and down the village once or twice on their way to the post-office, and I ’eard ’em talking in some gibberish,” added the old fellow, as he raised his tankard to his lips. Like all his race in the rural districts, he had no love for the foreigner, be he whatever he might. In his estimation every person from beyond the Channel was “a froggie.”That evening I went for my usual lonely stroll by the sea, while all next day I spent in watchful vigil in the vicinity of the Manor. Though for hours I idled concealed in the park, within view of the stately old home of the Millers, my patience was unrewarded. No sign of Lucie did I see, either at any of the windows or in the old rose-garden.Next evening, however, having learnt from the landlord that she was much interested in a decrepit old woman who had been her nurse, and who lived in a cottage at the farther end of Studland, I idled in wait for her in a narrow green lane which ran at the back of the church, and was at length rewarded by seeing her approaching. She was dressed in white muslin with a large lace garden hat, and beside her walked her pet dog, a beautiful fawn collie.Boldly I went towards her, my hat in my hand in respectful greeting.In an instant she recognised me, and drew back, half in surprise, half in alarm.Her countenance went white as death.“You—Why—Mr Leaf!” she gasped, attempting to smile. “Only fancy—to meet you here!”“Miss Miller,” I said calmly, taking the hand she offered me, and glancing around in order to see that we were not observed, “I came here on purpose to meet you—to speak with you!”“With me?” she cried in cold surprise, her brows contracting in marked displeasure. “What have you to say? Explain quickly, for we must not be seen together here.” And I recognised from her trembling lips how anxious and agitated she had become. She was in some great fear. I was convinced of that.She tried to smile me welcome, but it died from her white lips. The expression upon her face told me that she was in deadly fear lest I should discover her secret.I was, I felt certain, the very last person whom she desired to meet.The very fact of my presence there told her that I knew something concerning her—something concerning the past that she intended at all costs to hide from me.
The “Lion” Inn was a pleasant, old-fashioned little hostelry overlooking the bay, with Bournemouth beyond the distant haze. My room was small and clean, with white dimity curtains and hangings, and framed religious texts upon the walls. As I sat at the window in the hour before my dinner was ready, I reflected upon the strange incidents of those past few days—a chain of curious circumstances that seemed to enmesh and to entangle me.
Lucie Miller—the girl whose peril was such a mysterious and yet deadly one—had actually known my Ella. That very fact seemed somehow as a further link between us. What, I wondered, did she know of those later days of my dead love’s life? To me they were shrouded in mystery.
That cold winter’s night in damp, dismal London, when I had met her in secret at the corner of Queen’s Gardens, would ever remain in my memory. She was staying with an aunt in Porchester Terrace, and we had always preserved the secret of our affection. She came dressed in black, wearing a thick veil and carrying a muff in which was a bunch of violets. Her voice, when I greeted her, was, alas! not the same. Quick to recognise that something had occurred, I inquired the reason. Had she had any difference with her father or her aunt—as she sometimes had? No, she said, shaking her head, it was not that.
And then, almost in silence, we strolled on side by side over those wet shining London pavements through the quieter streets and squares of Bayswater, while I glanced wonderingly at her face showing pale behind her spotted veil. At last her trembling hand suddenly rested upon my wrist, and halting she turned to me. In hoarse tones quite unusual to her she blurted forth the truth—the bitter truth that froze my heart. I remember even the spot where we stood, beside a red letter-box at the corner of Chepstow Place. There the greatest blow of all my life fell upon me; and we parted.
I went straight along the Westbourne Grove, blinded by tears. She was to wed the very last man she ought to have chosen. The coarse, fat-necked parvenu had bought her from her father with his gold won in gambles on the Stock Exchange. Yes, my Ella, my sweet-faced love, was not satisfied with the prospect of being the wife of a man comfortably off. Like so many other girls who are dazzled by the lights of life, she longed to shine as a hostess, to wear Paquin frocks and have her portraits in the papers. I was deeply disappointed with her, for, fool that I was, I really believed that she honestly loved me. How often, alas! is a man deceived! I was but one of thousands, after all. And yet I had adored her with all my heart and all my soul.
Away in the country the very song of the birds seemed to be in praise of her—she whose beauty was sweet and delicate as the petals of the flowers; chaste and sweet as the rose itself. Love to the looker-on may be blind, unwise, unworthily bestowed, a waste, a sacrifice, a crime; yet none the less is love the only thing that, come weal or woe, is worth the loss of every other thing; the one supreme and perfect gift of earth in which all common things of daily life become transfigured and divine.
I was crushed, benumbed, broken. At first my brain refused to accept her declaration that that meeting was to be our last, until she told me the truth in all its hideous detail, and that on the morrow her engagement was to be announced in theMorning Post. I opened my lips to upbraid her, but my tongue refused to utter a syllable of reproach. I only bit my lips in silence. Ah! yes, I loved her!—I loved her!
From that moment we never again met. Next day I saw the announcement in the papers, and, disappointed and heart-broken, I went abroad, and it was a year after when one of my intimate friends, Jack Davies, a lieutenant on board theCornwall, in a letter which I received at a lonely post-house on the snow-bound road in the extreme north of Russia, wrote those words which caused my heart to burst within me:—
“You recollect little Ella Murray, who was, with her stepmother, up at the Grainger’s shoot two years ago? The poor little girl was engaged to some City fellow, an entire outsider, I heard, but I hear she caught typhoid at a hotel in Sheringham and died six months ago. A pity, isn’t it? I rather liked her—so did you, I remember.”
I stood at the door of that filthy, log-built place with the letter in my hand, gazing across the great snow-covered plain with its long row of telegraph-wires and verst-posts stretching away from Pokrovskoi to the grey horizon. My big bearded driver whispered to the post-house keeper, for both saw that I had received bad news. The man in sheepskins who kept the place went in without a word and returned with a glass of vodka. I recognised his kindly thought, gulped down the spirit, and mounting into the sledge drove on—on, whither I did not care. Ella—my own dear Ella was dead!
All this came back vividly to me on that evening as I ate my dinner alone in the little inn at Studland, and then in the golden sunset strolled by the sea—that same wide, mysterious sea beside which I had so long ago declared my love. She lived then, smiling, sighing, loving. But now, alas! she was no more. Of her memory there only remained that shadowy picture that I had seen in Miller’s drawing-room, the portrait of the dead that smiled upon me in such mocking happiness.
I threw myself upon a bank and watched the glorious crimson and purple of the summer afterglow. Yes, the face of the world was for me now changed. The past had been full enough of bitterness, what, I wondered, did the future contain? Ah! if I could have but known at that moment! Yet perhaps after all the Divine power is merciful in keeping from us the happiness and tragedy that lie before.
Till the summer twilight darkened into night I sat therefore before the sea, smoking and thinking. The dark vista of silent waters before me harmonised with my thoughts. Mine was, alas! a wasted, useless life, I had never known one moment’s financial worry, and yet I had somehow never found happiness. In my life where I might be, at home or abroad, there was always something wanting—the love of a good woman.
Through the following day I idled, mostly in the Lion, for it was too hot for walking. But at half-past two I sauntered to the station and, unseen by Lucie, I saw her alight from the train from London, climb into the smart dogcart that was awaiting her, and drive away in the direction of the Manor.
Then when I returned and had my tea I remarked casually to the stout, round-faced innkeeper:—
“I hear that Mr Miller is at the Manor House just now. I learnt so yesterday.”
“An’ so did I,” was his reply. “Dear me! wonders ’ull never cease. Fancy Mr Miller coming back again! An’ they say that Miss Lucie’s a-comin’, too.”
“Is she his daughter?” I inquired, as though in ignorance.
“Of course she is; an’ a very good girl, too. When she’s ’ere—which ain’t very often, more’s the pity—she does a great deal of good in the village—visits the old people, looks after the coal club, and gives away quite a lot of money to the deserving people who are destitute. I only wish there were more like ’er in these ’ere parts.”
“Does she often come here?”
“Oh! two or three times a year,” answered the landlord. “Some say she lives up in London with ’er aunt, and others declare that she’s mostly abroad with ’er father. I believe the latter story. She ’as a foreign way about ’er, and I’ve ’eard the servants say as ’ow all ’er things are made abroad.”
“Then nobody knows her address?” I said.
“Seems not. But she’s very fond of ’er father, and no doubt is always with him.”
“Do they have many friends at the Manor when Mr Miller and his daughter are at home?”
“Not many. Dr Haviland often dines with ’em.”
“I don’t mean local friends—visitors from London.”
“Very few. I’ve known one or two, but they’ve all been forriners. Mr Miller seems to like them forriners some’ow. But I don’t,” declared the old fellow. “They’re too infernal polite and sleeky for me. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em for a pint o’ beer.”
“They were gentlemen, I suppose?”
“Oh, dear, yes—full of fine graces and fine manners. They wore shoes like women, and shirts pleated like women’s blouses—great swells, I can assure you.”
“You never heard of any of their names?”
“No, how was I to ’ear? Once two of ’em came in one hot day and jabbered, sayin’ ‘boch! boch!’ an’ grinnin’ all over their faces. It was quite a long time before I discovered that they wanted two half-pints o’ bitter. I supposebochis what they calls it in French.”
“Yes,” I laughed. “You’re quite right.”
The strangers had evidently been French, I reflected. Had they been Italian they would have asked forbirra.
Regarding Lucie, I learnt that on several occasions, while she had been at home, a young, black-moustached foreigner had been guest at the Manor, and that she frequently drove him out in the dogcart. My host did not know the visitor’s name. He described him, however, as tall and thin with a narrow hatchet face, black eyes and moustaches that turned up at the ends.
“They passed up and down the village once or twice on their way to the post-office, and I ’eard ’em talking in some gibberish,” added the old fellow, as he raised his tankard to his lips. Like all his race in the rural districts, he had no love for the foreigner, be he whatever he might. In his estimation every person from beyond the Channel was “a froggie.”
That evening I went for my usual lonely stroll by the sea, while all next day I spent in watchful vigil in the vicinity of the Manor. Though for hours I idled concealed in the park, within view of the stately old home of the Millers, my patience was unrewarded. No sign of Lucie did I see, either at any of the windows or in the old rose-garden.
Next evening, however, having learnt from the landlord that she was much interested in a decrepit old woman who had been her nurse, and who lived in a cottage at the farther end of Studland, I idled in wait for her in a narrow green lane which ran at the back of the church, and was at length rewarded by seeing her approaching. She was dressed in white muslin with a large lace garden hat, and beside her walked her pet dog, a beautiful fawn collie.
Boldly I went towards her, my hat in my hand in respectful greeting.
In an instant she recognised me, and drew back, half in surprise, half in alarm.
Her countenance went white as death.
“You—Why—Mr Leaf!” she gasped, attempting to smile. “Only fancy—to meet you here!”
“Miss Miller,” I said calmly, taking the hand she offered me, and glancing around in order to see that we were not observed, “I came here on purpose to meet you—to speak with you!”
“With me?” she cried in cold surprise, her brows contracting in marked displeasure. “What have you to say? Explain quickly, for we must not be seen together here.” And I recognised from her trembling lips how anxious and agitated she had become. She was in some great fear. I was convinced of that.
She tried to smile me welcome, but it died from her white lips. The expression upon her face told me that she was in deadly fear lest I should discover her secret.
I was, I felt certain, the very last person whom she desired to meet.
The very fact of my presence there told her that I knew something concerning her—something concerning the past that she intended at all costs to hide from me.
Chapter Eleven.Lucie is Confidential.“This is not altogether an accidental meeting, Miss Miller,” I confessed at once to her. “The fact is I have waited in vain for your return to Granville Gardens, and at length have thought it wise to come here in search of you.”“Who told you that we lived here?” she inquired breathlessly.“No one told me, I discovered the fact quite accidentally,” was my answer. “Remember that your family is an old one, and in Debrett, therefore it was easy to find out the home of the Dorsetshire Millers.” My rather plausible explanation apparently satisfied her, for looking sharply around, she said:—“If we are to talk, Mr Leaf, let us cross yonder stile and slip across the fields. We shall not be seen there.” So I helped her over the stile she indicated and we passed together along a steep path beside a high hawthorn hedge, and a few minutes later descended into the hollow where the village and sea were lost to view.“I certainly expected you to return,” I said, half reproachfully. “I believed that you would wish to hear something further regarding the dead man. You refused to tell me his name, but I have discovered it. He was Nardini, the absconding ex-Minister of Justice in Rome.”“Who told you so?” she inquired, looking at me with considerable suspicion.“I took possession of his papers. They explained everything,” I replied simply. “And now,” I added, “the reason I am here is to inquire if I can assist you in any way, and to repeat my readiness to do so.”“No,” she answered, shaking her head sadly. “No assistance that you could render me, Mr Leaf, would, I regret to say, be of any avail,” and I saw tears welling in her eyes.“But you must not give up like this,” I urged. “You must endeavour to shield yourself, even if you fail, after all. The man is dead; his mouth is closed.”“Ah, yes. That is just it. If he lived he might, perhaps, have had compassion upon me.”“He refused to tell the truth—that you were at his villa at Tivoli on that evening, and therefore could not have been in Rome, eh?”She halted, glaring at me open-mouthed. She saw that I knew the truth, and after a few moments’ silence with her eyes fixed upon mine, she exclaimed in a low, hoarse voice:—“He preserved silence because he dared not tell the truth. He was a cur and a coward.”“And also a thief, it would seem,” I added.“Yes—you have seen what the papers are saying about him, I suppose? The police are searching for him all over Europe. They have no idea that he is already dead and buried.”“Perhaps it is as well; otherwise the papers would have fallen into their hands. As it is I took possession of them all and restored them to the Italian Embassy—all but this,” and I drew out her letter of appeal, and, opening it, handed it to her.She glanced at it, crushed it in her hand with a sigh, her dark eyes still fixed upon mine, as though she were trying to read my innermost thoughts.“Who are your enemies?” I asked in a kindly tone of sympathy. “Tell me, Miss Miller, what have they alleged against you?”Her brows again contracted. She set her lips hard but remained silent, determined not to satisfy me regarding the charge against her.I pressed her to speak, but she was firm and quite immovable.“Now that Nardini is dead I am helpless in the hands of my unscrupulous enemies,” was her low, inert answer.“That letter is best destroyed,” I said. Then with murmured thanks she tore it into tiny fragments and scattered it to the wind which carried the pieces away across the wide field of ripe corn.I told her nothing of the yellow document, that hideous record which Nardini had preserved with her letter.On the contrary, I implored her pardon for my visit and for my piece of audacious imposture, and, as we walked on together, explained how her father and myself had become friends.At first she seemed full of fear and suspicion, but gradually, as I gave a full description of how Miller had taken me over the house to see the pictures and antiques, and she saw how enthusiastic I was over the beautiful old place, she became reassured. Did she know the secret of her father’s double life? In any case I could see that she was prepared to go to any length in order to shield him.“I expect my aunt has been very much puzzled by your card,” she said. “She will probably be wondering whoever you can be.”“If you so desire, Miss Miller, you can explain to your aunt that I am a friend of yours, and that by a mistake of the servant the card was sent to her.”“A most excellent excuse,” she laughed. “I’ll tell her so, and then if you are still remaining here over to-morrow, perhaps you will call.”“I shall be only too delighted,” I assured her. “Your father I found a most charming man—almost as charming as his daughter.”“Now no compliments please, Mr Leaf,” she exclaimed, flushing slightly.“It is not an idle one, I assure you,” I said. “The compliment is equally to your father as to yourself.” And then we strolled forward again along the banks of a small rippling brook overhung by willows and hawthorns. Was it possible that she, so full of grace and sweetness, was actually the woman who Sammy had declared her to be? No, I could not bring myself to believe it. She spoke with such feeling and sympathy, and she was so full of an ineffable charm that I refused to believe that she was a mere adventuress assisting her father in his direction of some ingenious gang of thieves who worked in secret.Her father, too, was the very last man whom I should have believed to be an adventurer had not the proof been so plain. Was not that appeal of Lucie’s to Nardini an ugly and suspicious truth?The more suspicious, too, that she would give me no idea of the allegation against her. She evidently feared lest I should make inquiry and discover the disgraceful truth.Presently, as we came to a bend in the stream where the water was deeper, its unruffled surface shining like a mirror, I halted, and looking straight into her face, said:—“Miss Miller, yesterday at your house I made a discovery—one that utterly astounded me.”Her countenance went ashen grey.“A discovery!” she faltered. “What—what do you mean?”Instantly I saw that I had quite unintentionally alarmed her and hastened to set her at her ease.“I saw upon a table in your drawing-room the photograph of a very dear friend—Ella Murray. She was your friend, so your father told me. How curious that we should both have been acquainted with her!”“Oh! Ella! Did you really know poor Ella?” she exclaimed quickly, reassured that my discovery was not of a compromising character.“I knew her very well indeed,” was my slow response. “When were you acquainted with her?”“Oh! years ago. We were together at the Sacré Coeur at Evreux, and both left the convent the same year. She was my most intimate friend, and once or twice came with me here, to Studland, when we had our holidays together.”“She actually visited here!” I exclaimed in surprise.“Several times. Mr Murray was my father’s friend. As you know, he lived at Wichenford, in Worcestershire. Then we went to reside entirely abroad, and for quite a long time, a year or more, I lost sight of her. She was very beautiful. From a child her wonderful face was everywhere admired. In the convent we girls nicknamed her ‘The Little Madonna,’ for she bore a striking likeness to the Van Dyck’s Madonna in the Pitti in Florence, a copy of which hung in the convent chapel.”“Ah, of course!” I cried. Now that she recalled that picture, I recognised the extraordinary likeness. Perhaps you, who read this chronicle of strange facts, know that small canvas a foot square which hangs in a corner of one of the great gold-ceilinged salons, almost unnoticed save by the foreign art enthusiast. The expression of sweetness and adoration distinguishes it as a marvellous work. “What do you know further concerning her?” I asked. “Tell me all—for she was my friend.”“About a year before we went to live at Enghien, near Paris, Mrs Murray died. Then her father let Wichenford Place to an American, and went to Australia for a sea-trip, leaving Ella in charge of an old aunt who lived in London. I saw her once, at her aunt’s house in Porchester Terrace. She was very unhappy, and when I asked her the reason she told me in bitter tears that she loved a man who adored her in return. She would not tell me the man’s name, but only said that her father and her aunt were compelling her to marry a wealthy elderly man who was odious, and whom she hated. Poor little Ella! I pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but it was quite useless, for that very evening her father, who was then back in London, compelled her to go out and meet her secret lover and give him hiscongé. Who he was or what became of him I do not know. I only know that she loved him as dearly as any woman has ever loved a man—poor little Ella!”I stood before her motionless, listening to those words. Was this true? Had Fate any further shaft of bitterness to thrust into my already broken heart?“Miss Miller!” I managed to exclaim, in a very low voice I fear, “what you tell me is utterly astounding. You know the man who loved Ella Murray. He was none other than myself—I who loved her, ay better than my own life—I who received that dismissal from the sweet lips that I so adored—the lips that I now know were compelled to lie to me.”“You—Mr Leaf!” she cried. “Impossible. You were actually Ella’s secret lover!”“Ah, yes! God alone knows how I have suffered all these years,” I said, half-choked. “You were her friend, Miss Miller, therefore you will forgive me if even to-day I wear my heart upon my sleeve. You will say, perhaps, that I am foolish, yet when a man loves a woman honestly, as I did, and he craves for affection and happiness, the catastrophe of parting is a very severe one—often more so to the man than to the woman. But,” I added quickly, “pardon me, I am talking to you as though you were as old as myself. You, at your age, have never experienced the bitterness of a blighted love.”“Unfortunately I have,” she answered, in a low, trembling voice. “I, too, loved once—and only once. But, alas! after a few short weeks of affection, of a bliss that I thought would last always, the man I loved was cruelly snatched from me for ever.” And she sighed and tears welled in her fine eyes, as she looked aimlessly straight before her—her mind filled with painful recollections.She told me no more, and left me wondering at the secret love romance that, to my great surprise, seemed to have already hardened her young heart.Every girl, even in her school years, has her own little affair of the heart, generally becoming hopelessly infatuated with some man much her senior, who is in ignorance of the burning he is awakening within the girlish breast. But hers was, I distinguished, a real serious affection, one which, like my own, had ended in black grief and tragedy.But she had told me one truth—a ghastly truth. I had misjudged my dear dead love! She had still loved me—she had still been mine—in heart my own!
“This is not altogether an accidental meeting, Miss Miller,” I confessed at once to her. “The fact is I have waited in vain for your return to Granville Gardens, and at length have thought it wise to come here in search of you.”
“Who told you that we lived here?” she inquired breathlessly.
“No one told me, I discovered the fact quite accidentally,” was my answer. “Remember that your family is an old one, and in Debrett, therefore it was easy to find out the home of the Dorsetshire Millers.” My rather plausible explanation apparently satisfied her, for looking sharply around, she said:—
“If we are to talk, Mr Leaf, let us cross yonder stile and slip across the fields. We shall not be seen there.” So I helped her over the stile she indicated and we passed together along a steep path beside a high hawthorn hedge, and a few minutes later descended into the hollow where the village and sea were lost to view.
“I certainly expected you to return,” I said, half reproachfully. “I believed that you would wish to hear something further regarding the dead man. You refused to tell me his name, but I have discovered it. He was Nardini, the absconding ex-Minister of Justice in Rome.”
“Who told you so?” she inquired, looking at me with considerable suspicion.
“I took possession of his papers. They explained everything,” I replied simply. “And now,” I added, “the reason I am here is to inquire if I can assist you in any way, and to repeat my readiness to do so.”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head sadly. “No assistance that you could render me, Mr Leaf, would, I regret to say, be of any avail,” and I saw tears welling in her eyes.
“But you must not give up like this,” I urged. “You must endeavour to shield yourself, even if you fail, after all. The man is dead; his mouth is closed.”
“Ah, yes. That is just it. If he lived he might, perhaps, have had compassion upon me.”
“He refused to tell the truth—that you were at his villa at Tivoli on that evening, and therefore could not have been in Rome, eh?”
She halted, glaring at me open-mouthed. She saw that I knew the truth, and after a few moments’ silence with her eyes fixed upon mine, she exclaimed in a low, hoarse voice:—
“He preserved silence because he dared not tell the truth. He was a cur and a coward.”
“And also a thief, it would seem,” I added.
“Yes—you have seen what the papers are saying about him, I suppose? The police are searching for him all over Europe. They have no idea that he is already dead and buried.”
“Perhaps it is as well; otherwise the papers would have fallen into their hands. As it is I took possession of them all and restored them to the Italian Embassy—all but this,” and I drew out her letter of appeal, and, opening it, handed it to her.
She glanced at it, crushed it in her hand with a sigh, her dark eyes still fixed upon mine, as though she were trying to read my innermost thoughts.
“Who are your enemies?” I asked in a kindly tone of sympathy. “Tell me, Miss Miller, what have they alleged against you?”
Her brows again contracted. She set her lips hard but remained silent, determined not to satisfy me regarding the charge against her.
I pressed her to speak, but she was firm and quite immovable.
“Now that Nardini is dead I am helpless in the hands of my unscrupulous enemies,” was her low, inert answer.
“That letter is best destroyed,” I said. Then with murmured thanks she tore it into tiny fragments and scattered it to the wind which carried the pieces away across the wide field of ripe corn.
I told her nothing of the yellow document, that hideous record which Nardini had preserved with her letter.
On the contrary, I implored her pardon for my visit and for my piece of audacious imposture, and, as we walked on together, explained how her father and myself had become friends.
At first she seemed full of fear and suspicion, but gradually, as I gave a full description of how Miller had taken me over the house to see the pictures and antiques, and she saw how enthusiastic I was over the beautiful old place, she became reassured. Did she know the secret of her father’s double life? In any case I could see that she was prepared to go to any length in order to shield him.
“I expect my aunt has been very much puzzled by your card,” she said. “She will probably be wondering whoever you can be.”
“If you so desire, Miss Miller, you can explain to your aunt that I am a friend of yours, and that by a mistake of the servant the card was sent to her.”
“A most excellent excuse,” she laughed. “I’ll tell her so, and then if you are still remaining here over to-morrow, perhaps you will call.”
“I shall be only too delighted,” I assured her. “Your father I found a most charming man—almost as charming as his daughter.”
“Now no compliments please, Mr Leaf,” she exclaimed, flushing slightly.
“It is not an idle one, I assure you,” I said. “The compliment is equally to your father as to yourself.” And then we strolled forward again along the banks of a small rippling brook overhung by willows and hawthorns. Was it possible that she, so full of grace and sweetness, was actually the woman who Sammy had declared her to be? No, I could not bring myself to believe it. She spoke with such feeling and sympathy, and she was so full of an ineffable charm that I refused to believe that she was a mere adventuress assisting her father in his direction of some ingenious gang of thieves who worked in secret.
Her father, too, was the very last man whom I should have believed to be an adventurer had not the proof been so plain. Was not that appeal of Lucie’s to Nardini an ugly and suspicious truth?
The more suspicious, too, that she would give me no idea of the allegation against her. She evidently feared lest I should make inquiry and discover the disgraceful truth.
Presently, as we came to a bend in the stream where the water was deeper, its unruffled surface shining like a mirror, I halted, and looking straight into her face, said:—
“Miss Miller, yesterday at your house I made a discovery—one that utterly astounded me.”
Her countenance went ashen grey.
“A discovery!” she faltered. “What—what do you mean?”
Instantly I saw that I had quite unintentionally alarmed her and hastened to set her at her ease.
“I saw upon a table in your drawing-room the photograph of a very dear friend—Ella Murray. She was your friend, so your father told me. How curious that we should both have been acquainted with her!”
“Oh! Ella! Did you really know poor Ella?” she exclaimed quickly, reassured that my discovery was not of a compromising character.
“I knew her very well indeed,” was my slow response. “When were you acquainted with her?”
“Oh! years ago. We were together at the Sacré Coeur at Evreux, and both left the convent the same year. She was my most intimate friend, and once or twice came with me here, to Studland, when we had our holidays together.”
“She actually visited here!” I exclaimed in surprise.
“Several times. Mr Murray was my father’s friend. As you know, he lived at Wichenford, in Worcestershire. Then we went to reside entirely abroad, and for quite a long time, a year or more, I lost sight of her. She was very beautiful. From a child her wonderful face was everywhere admired. In the convent we girls nicknamed her ‘The Little Madonna,’ for she bore a striking likeness to the Van Dyck’s Madonna in the Pitti in Florence, a copy of which hung in the convent chapel.”
“Ah, of course!” I cried. Now that she recalled that picture, I recognised the extraordinary likeness. Perhaps you, who read this chronicle of strange facts, know that small canvas a foot square which hangs in a corner of one of the great gold-ceilinged salons, almost unnoticed save by the foreign art enthusiast. The expression of sweetness and adoration distinguishes it as a marvellous work. “What do you know further concerning her?” I asked. “Tell me all—for she was my friend.”
“About a year before we went to live at Enghien, near Paris, Mrs Murray died. Then her father let Wichenford Place to an American, and went to Australia for a sea-trip, leaving Ella in charge of an old aunt who lived in London. I saw her once, at her aunt’s house in Porchester Terrace. She was very unhappy, and when I asked her the reason she told me in bitter tears that she loved a man who adored her in return. She would not tell me the man’s name, but only said that her father and her aunt were compelling her to marry a wealthy elderly man who was odious, and whom she hated. Poor little Ella! I pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but it was quite useless, for that very evening her father, who was then back in London, compelled her to go out and meet her secret lover and give him hiscongé. Who he was or what became of him I do not know. I only know that she loved him as dearly as any woman has ever loved a man—poor little Ella!”
I stood before her motionless, listening to those words. Was this true? Had Fate any further shaft of bitterness to thrust into my already broken heart?
“Miss Miller!” I managed to exclaim, in a very low voice I fear, “what you tell me is utterly astounding. You know the man who loved Ella Murray. He was none other than myself—I who loved her, ay better than my own life—I who received that dismissal from the sweet lips that I so adored—the lips that I now know were compelled to lie to me.”
“You—Mr Leaf!” she cried. “Impossible. You were actually Ella’s secret lover!”
“Ah, yes! God alone knows how I have suffered all these years,” I said, half-choked. “You were her friend, Miss Miller, therefore you will forgive me if even to-day I wear my heart upon my sleeve. You will say, perhaps, that I am foolish, yet when a man loves a woman honestly, as I did, and he craves for affection and happiness, the catastrophe of parting is a very severe one—often more so to the man than to the woman. But,” I added quickly, “pardon me, I am talking to you as though you were as old as myself. You, at your age, have never experienced the bitterness of a blighted love.”
“Unfortunately I have,” she answered, in a low, trembling voice. “I, too, loved once—and only once. But, alas! after a few short weeks of affection, of a bliss that I thought would last always, the man I loved was cruelly snatched from me for ever.” And she sighed and tears welled in her fine eyes, as she looked aimlessly straight before her—her mind filled with painful recollections.
She told me no more, and left me wondering at the secret love romance that, to my great surprise, seemed to have already hardened her young heart.
Every girl, even in her school years, has her own little affair of the heart, generally becoming hopelessly infatuated with some man much her senior, who is in ignorance of the burning he is awakening within the girlish breast. But hers was, I distinguished, a real serious affection, one which, like my own, had ended in black grief and tragedy.
But she had told me one truth—a ghastly truth. I had misjudged my dear dead love! She had still loved me—she had still been mine—in heart my own!
Chapter Twelve.In which a Strange Thing Happens.“If your love has ended in tragedy, as mine has done, then we can surely sympathise with each other, Miss Miller,” I said, looking into her tearful eyes. “You know well how I have suffered. I believed that Ella really preferred that man to myself, and what you have now told me amazes me. I believed that she was false to me—and yet you tell me that she was true. Ah! how dearly I loved her! I do not believe that any man ever loved a woman so fondly, and with such fierce passion as I did. I was hers—body and soul. My love for her was that deep, all-consuming affection which sometimes makes a man as wax in a woman’s hands—to be moulded for good or for evil as she wills it. I lost all count of time, of friends, of everything, for I lived only for her. The hours when we were parted were to me like years, her words were music, her smiles the sunlight of my life, her sighs the shadows, her kisses the ecstatic bliss of terrestrial paradise in which I lived. Ah! yes, you who have loved and lost can well understand all that her love meant to me—you can understand why one dark foggy night I stood upon Charing Cross platform and swore an oath that never again would I put foot in the country which, though my native land, held for me only a poignant memory.”“Yes,” she answered, with a slight sigh, “I quite understand how you must have suffered. Yet how strange it is that you should actually have been Ella’s lover—the man who she declared to me was the only one she would ever love. I did not know you, of course, yet I sympathised with you when she told me that she was going that evening to meet you, and to lie to you under compulsion.”“But why—why did she consent to do this?” I asked.“She confessed to me the reason. She spoke in confidence, but now that it is all past, I may surely tell you. The fact was that her father, owing to the great depreciation in the value of land, had got into the hands of the Jews, and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Blumenthal, who had lent him a large sum upon mortgage, had offered to return the deeds on the day that he married Ella.”“Then she actually sacrificed herself to save her father!” I cried.“Without a doubt. And what a sacrifice! She loved you, Mr Leaf, and yet she dismissed you in order to save her father from ruin.”“Blumenthal was a brute to have ever suggested such a condition,” I declared savagely. “I never saw him. What kind of man was he? Did you meet him?”“Yes. He was at Porchester Terrace on the afternoon when I called,” she replied. “A short, stout, black-whiskered man, of a decidedly Hebrew cast. He was dressed loudly and wore a white waistcoat with heavy gold albert—a typical City man such as one sees in Cornhill or Lothbury.”“She showed no sign of affection towards him?”“None whatever. He was introduced to me by Mr Murray as Ella’s affianced husband, and I was, of course, amazed that she should entertain a spark of affection for him. But half an hour later, when we were alone, she confessed in tears everything to me, just as I have related it to you.”“Well, you utterly astound me,” was all I could exclaim.What she had revealed to me placed my little Ella in an entirely new light. I never dreamed of her self-martyrdom. I sighed heavily, and a big lump arose in my throat as I reflected that, perhaps, after all death was preferable to life with a man whom she could not love.The calm twilight was deepening into night, and the silence was broken only by the low murmuring of the water, the swift swish of some rat or water-hen in the rushes startled at our presence, and the dismal cry of a night-bird in the willows on the opposite bank.“Did you hear nothing more of Ella after that day at Porchester Terrace—that 12th of November that was, alas! fatal to my happiness?”“She wrote to me twice. One letter I received in Rome a month afterwards, and the second followed me about some weeks, and at last found me at Lindau, on the Lake of Constance. Both letters were full of her own unhappiness. In the first she reproached herself bitterly for having lied to the man she really loved—though she never mentioned your name—and said that she was back at Wichenford, but for her the world was dead. The man whom she had dismissed had left her in disgust and despair and had gone abroad, whither she knew not. A friend of yours had, it seemed, told her that you had gone to Algeria, and her letter concluded with the words: ‘I am alone to blame for this, yet how could I, in the circumstances, have acted otherwise?’”“And the second letter?” I asked eagerly.“It was written a month later, from Blumenthal’s shooting-box near Blair Athol. She and her father were guests there at the great house-party consisting mostly of wealthy City men and their wives. She described it and said how she hated it all. She had, she told me, tried to escape. She had even thought of writing to you to tell you the truth and ask your counsel, yet what use was it when she knew that she must save her father from the ruin that threatened. Wichenford Place had been the home of the Murrays ever since the days of James the First, when the King himself, granted it to his faithful partisan, Donald Murray of Parton, in Dumfriesshire. No Murray had ever before mortgaged it, therefore it was clearly her duty to her family to redeem it from the hands of usurers and vandals, even at cost of her own happiness.”“A noble sacrifice!” I sighed.“Yes, Mr Leaf. She was a noble girl,” declared my handsome companion. “I, who knew her through ten years or so, knew her, perhaps, better than even you yourself did. The Little Madonna was never accused of an unkind or unjust action.”“And after that letter?”“A few months later she came to visit us at Enghien. She and her father were in Paris, where she was buying her trousseau. But she made no mention of Blumenthal. Afterwards we were continually moving from place to place, and if she wrote, her letter never reached me. I heard no more.”A long deep silence fell between us. We were still standing there in the grey twilight at a small gate that led into the next field, our path still continuing beside the stream.“Strange that it should be I who should tell you the truth,” she remarked, almost as though speaking to herself. “You, a perfect stranger, offered to do me a service—indeed you have done me a very great service by restoring that letter to me—and in return, I have been able to tell you the truth regarding your lost love,” and she looked into my face with her sad, serious eyes.“Yes, it is indeed curious,” I said. “Our circumstances are, in a measure, identical. We have both been the victims of dire misfortunes, both broken by the tragedy of an unhappy love. But you have told me hardly anything concerning yourself,” I added.The laces of her muslin blouse rose slowly and fell again. In that dim light I detected a hardness at the corners of her mouth, a hardness that, to me, was all-sufficient proof of the bitterness wearing out her young heart.“Myself!” she echoed sadly. “What need I say about myself? It is of the past, and the memory of it all is a very bitter one. Like you, I believed that happiness was to be mine, the more so, because my father entirely approved of our union. He made confidential inquiries concerning him, and found that he was all that he represented himself to be. But love and happiness were not for me. I, alas! am one of those who are debarred the sweetness of life,” she added hoarsely, her small white hands clenching themselves, as thoughts of the past crowded upon her.For some time we were again silent. I was anxious to know the truth of the love romance of my sweet-faced little friend—the girl whom Sammy had denounced as an adventuress. Yet surely there was nothing of the adventuress about her as she stood there in her plain white frock amid that purely English scene. I glanced at her countenance and saw that it was pale and agitated, and that her nervous lips were trembling. Her chin had sunk upon her breast and she stood deep in thought as though unconscious of my presence.“Where did it occur? Here?”“No, abroad,” she answered, in a thin, mechanical voice. “I met him when we were living at Enghien, and from the first moment of our meeting we discovered that by some strange magnetism we were drawn irresistibly together. He was a foreigner, it is true, but his mother had been English, and his father was a Chilian.”“Chilian!” I cried, in a voice of surprise. But she never guessed the reason of my amazement.“Yes. My father discovered that we met in secret, and then invited him to dine with us. From that evening he came daily out from Paris, and we used to spend each afternoon boating on the lake or playing tennis on the island. Before long we had pledged our love, and then commenced days of bliss such as I had never before experienced. I knew at last what was meant by perfect happiness, for we adored each other. I loved him just as dearly as Ella loved you. I would have died for him. Yet in all too short a time the blow fell upon me—the blow that has crushed all life from me, that has already made me a world-weary woman before my time.”“And what was the end?” I asked with deep sympathy, yet, alas! knowing too well the story of the tragedy.“The end—ah?” she sighed. “How can I tell you? On the very night when we had secretly fixed the date of our marriage—a night when my father invited several friends to dine—he returned to Paris, and—” but she broke off short and burst into a wild passion of tears.For some time I waited, my hand placed tenderly upon her shoulder, striving to comfort her, and urging her to bear up against her heavy burden of trouble. Then at last when she grew calm again, she said in a hard tone:—“On his return to Paris he found that during his absence thieves had obtained access to his room at the hotel, and securities for a very large amount, for the safe custody of which he was personally responsible, had been stolen. He saw that his own honour was at stake, that he alone was to blame for not leaving them in the bank, and in a fit of despondency—a mad paroxysm of temporary insanity—he took out his revolver and ended his life. I only knew of it four days after, when I chanced to read of it in theIndépendance Belge, for early on the morning following the dinner, my father had received a telegram and been compelled to go to Brussels, and I accompanied him. Before I knew the awful truth, poor Manuel was already dead and buried! Since that day,” she added bitterly, “all hope of happiness has been crushed within me. I know now that the love of an honest man is not for me.”I made no response. I was too absorbed in my own thoughts. Every word of hers bore out Sammy’s story, yet I saw that she herself was innocent of the foul plot which had, as a sequel, the suicide of the poor girl’s lover.Miller knew the truth; he was, indeed, in all probability the instigator of the ingenious theft that had had such a tragic sequel.In silence I held the small gate open for her, and together we passed on along the path beside the winding stream. Both our hearts were too full for words after that unusual exchange of confidences.Of a sudden before us, advancing in our direction, there appeared the figure of some one in the shadow beneath the trees.Lucie detected it at the same instant as myself, and halting drew back in quick alarm.“We must not be seen here together,” she gasped. “People would talk, and it would quickly get to my father’s ears.”“And what harm if it did?” I asked, but ere she could reply a strange thing happened—an incident more startling and more amazing than any I could have ever imagined in my wildest dreams.I held my breath, and stood rooted to the spot.
“If your love has ended in tragedy, as mine has done, then we can surely sympathise with each other, Miss Miller,” I said, looking into her tearful eyes. “You know well how I have suffered. I believed that Ella really preferred that man to myself, and what you have now told me amazes me. I believed that she was false to me—and yet you tell me that she was true. Ah! how dearly I loved her! I do not believe that any man ever loved a woman so fondly, and with such fierce passion as I did. I was hers—body and soul. My love for her was that deep, all-consuming affection which sometimes makes a man as wax in a woman’s hands—to be moulded for good or for evil as she wills it. I lost all count of time, of friends, of everything, for I lived only for her. The hours when we were parted were to me like years, her words were music, her smiles the sunlight of my life, her sighs the shadows, her kisses the ecstatic bliss of terrestrial paradise in which I lived. Ah! yes, you who have loved and lost can well understand all that her love meant to me—you can understand why one dark foggy night I stood upon Charing Cross platform and swore an oath that never again would I put foot in the country which, though my native land, held for me only a poignant memory.”
“Yes,” she answered, with a slight sigh, “I quite understand how you must have suffered. Yet how strange it is that you should actually have been Ella’s lover—the man who she declared to me was the only one she would ever love. I did not know you, of course, yet I sympathised with you when she told me that she was going that evening to meet you, and to lie to you under compulsion.”
“But why—why did she consent to do this?” I asked.
“She confessed to me the reason. She spoke in confidence, but now that it is all past, I may surely tell you. The fact was that her father, owing to the great depreciation in the value of land, had got into the hands of the Jews, and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Blumenthal, who had lent him a large sum upon mortgage, had offered to return the deeds on the day that he married Ella.”
“Then she actually sacrificed herself to save her father!” I cried.
“Without a doubt. And what a sacrifice! She loved you, Mr Leaf, and yet she dismissed you in order to save her father from ruin.”
“Blumenthal was a brute to have ever suggested such a condition,” I declared savagely. “I never saw him. What kind of man was he? Did you meet him?”
“Yes. He was at Porchester Terrace on the afternoon when I called,” she replied. “A short, stout, black-whiskered man, of a decidedly Hebrew cast. He was dressed loudly and wore a white waistcoat with heavy gold albert—a typical City man such as one sees in Cornhill or Lothbury.”
“She showed no sign of affection towards him?”
“None whatever. He was introduced to me by Mr Murray as Ella’s affianced husband, and I was, of course, amazed that she should entertain a spark of affection for him. But half an hour later, when we were alone, she confessed in tears everything to me, just as I have related it to you.”
“Well, you utterly astound me,” was all I could exclaim.
What she had revealed to me placed my little Ella in an entirely new light. I never dreamed of her self-martyrdom. I sighed heavily, and a big lump arose in my throat as I reflected that, perhaps, after all death was preferable to life with a man whom she could not love.
The calm twilight was deepening into night, and the silence was broken only by the low murmuring of the water, the swift swish of some rat or water-hen in the rushes startled at our presence, and the dismal cry of a night-bird in the willows on the opposite bank.
“Did you hear nothing more of Ella after that day at Porchester Terrace—that 12th of November that was, alas! fatal to my happiness?”
“She wrote to me twice. One letter I received in Rome a month afterwards, and the second followed me about some weeks, and at last found me at Lindau, on the Lake of Constance. Both letters were full of her own unhappiness. In the first she reproached herself bitterly for having lied to the man she really loved—though she never mentioned your name—and said that she was back at Wichenford, but for her the world was dead. The man whom she had dismissed had left her in disgust and despair and had gone abroad, whither she knew not. A friend of yours had, it seemed, told her that you had gone to Algeria, and her letter concluded with the words: ‘I am alone to blame for this, yet how could I, in the circumstances, have acted otherwise?’”
“And the second letter?” I asked eagerly.
“It was written a month later, from Blumenthal’s shooting-box near Blair Athol. She and her father were guests there at the great house-party consisting mostly of wealthy City men and their wives. She described it and said how she hated it all. She had, she told me, tried to escape. She had even thought of writing to you to tell you the truth and ask your counsel, yet what use was it when she knew that she must save her father from the ruin that threatened. Wichenford Place had been the home of the Murrays ever since the days of James the First, when the King himself, granted it to his faithful partisan, Donald Murray of Parton, in Dumfriesshire. No Murray had ever before mortgaged it, therefore it was clearly her duty to her family to redeem it from the hands of usurers and vandals, even at cost of her own happiness.”
“A noble sacrifice!” I sighed.
“Yes, Mr Leaf. She was a noble girl,” declared my handsome companion. “I, who knew her through ten years or so, knew her, perhaps, better than even you yourself did. The Little Madonna was never accused of an unkind or unjust action.”
“And after that letter?”
“A few months later she came to visit us at Enghien. She and her father were in Paris, where she was buying her trousseau. But she made no mention of Blumenthal. Afterwards we were continually moving from place to place, and if she wrote, her letter never reached me. I heard no more.”
A long deep silence fell between us. We were still standing there in the grey twilight at a small gate that led into the next field, our path still continuing beside the stream.
“Strange that it should be I who should tell you the truth,” she remarked, almost as though speaking to herself. “You, a perfect stranger, offered to do me a service—indeed you have done me a very great service by restoring that letter to me—and in return, I have been able to tell you the truth regarding your lost love,” and she looked into my face with her sad, serious eyes.
“Yes, it is indeed curious,” I said. “Our circumstances are, in a measure, identical. We have both been the victims of dire misfortunes, both broken by the tragedy of an unhappy love. But you have told me hardly anything concerning yourself,” I added.
The laces of her muslin blouse rose slowly and fell again. In that dim light I detected a hardness at the corners of her mouth, a hardness that, to me, was all-sufficient proof of the bitterness wearing out her young heart.
“Myself!” she echoed sadly. “What need I say about myself? It is of the past, and the memory of it all is a very bitter one. Like you, I believed that happiness was to be mine, the more so, because my father entirely approved of our union. He made confidential inquiries concerning him, and found that he was all that he represented himself to be. But love and happiness were not for me. I, alas! am one of those who are debarred the sweetness of life,” she added hoarsely, her small white hands clenching themselves, as thoughts of the past crowded upon her.
For some time we were again silent. I was anxious to know the truth of the love romance of my sweet-faced little friend—the girl whom Sammy had denounced as an adventuress. Yet surely there was nothing of the adventuress about her as she stood there in her plain white frock amid that purely English scene. I glanced at her countenance and saw that it was pale and agitated, and that her nervous lips were trembling. Her chin had sunk upon her breast and she stood deep in thought as though unconscious of my presence.
“Where did it occur? Here?”
“No, abroad,” she answered, in a thin, mechanical voice. “I met him when we were living at Enghien, and from the first moment of our meeting we discovered that by some strange magnetism we were drawn irresistibly together. He was a foreigner, it is true, but his mother had been English, and his father was a Chilian.”
“Chilian!” I cried, in a voice of surprise. But she never guessed the reason of my amazement.
“Yes. My father discovered that we met in secret, and then invited him to dine with us. From that evening he came daily out from Paris, and we used to spend each afternoon boating on the lake or playing tennis on the island. Before long we had pledged our love, and then commenced days of bliss such as I had never before experienced. I knew at last what was meant by perfect happiness, for we adored each other. I loved him just as dearly as Ella loved you. I would have died for him. Yet in all too short a time the blow fell upon me—the blow that has crushed all life from me, that has already made me a world-weary woman before my time.”
“And what was the end?” I asked with deep sympathy, yet, alas! knowing too well the story of the tragedy.
“The end—ah?” she sighed. “How can I tell you? On the very night when we had secretly fixed the date of our marriage—a night when my father invited several friends to dine—he returned to Paris, and—” but she broke off short and burst into a wild passion of tears.
For some time I waited, my hand placed tenderly upon her shoulder, striving to comfort her, and urging her to bear up against her heavy burden of trouble. Then at last when she grew calm again, she said in a hard tone:—
“On his return to Paris he found that during his absence thieves had obtained access to his room at the hotel, and securities for a very large amount, for the safe custody of which he was personally responsible, had been stolen. He saw that his own honour was at stake, that he alone was to blame for not leaving them in the bank, and in a fit of despondency—a mad paroxysm of temporary insanity—he took out his revolver and ended his life. I only knew of it four days after, when I chanced to read of it in theIndépendance Belge, for early on the morning following the dinner, my father had received a telegram and been compelled to go to Brussels, and I accompanied him. Before I knew the awful truth, poor Manuel was already dead and buried! Since that day,” she added bitterly, “all hope of happiness has been crushed within me. I know now that the love of an honest man is not for me.”
I made no response. I was too absorbed in my own thoughts. Every word of hers bore out Sammy’s story, yet I saw that she herself was innocent of the foul plot which had, as a sequel, the suicide of the poor girl’s lover.
Miller knew the truth; he was, indeed, in all probability the instigator of the ingenious theft that had had such a tragic sequel.
In silence I held the small gate open for her, and together we passed on along the path beside the winding stream. Both our hearts were too full for words after that unusual exchange of confidences.
Of a sudden before us, advancing in our direction, there appeared the figure of some one in the shadow beneath the trees.
Lucie detected it at the same instant as myself, and halting drew back in quick alarm.
“We must not be seen here together,” she gasped. “People would talk, and it would quickly get to my father’s ears.”
“And what harm if it did?” I asked, but ere she could reply a strange thing happened—an incident more startling and more amazing than any I could have ever imagined in my wildest dreams.
I held my breath, and stood rooted to the spot.
Chapter Thirteen.Beneath the Love-Light.What followed was amazing, mystifying.With a loud cry that startled me the grey figure had come swiftly towards us, and I then saw that it was a woman.My companion and she flew into each other’s arms and exchanged wild joyful greetings, while I, catching sight of her face, stood there open-mouthed, breathless in sheer astonishment.At that moment I doubted whether I were actually sane and in possession of all my senses. I doubted even my own eyes. And had you been there, in my place, I think you also would have been dumbfounded.“Fancy you—of all persons in this whole world!” Lucie cried, then turning to me after kissing the newcomer with wild enthusiasm, she laughed, adding:—“This gentleman is not altogether a stranger, I believe?”The woman turned her flushed countenance to mine, and in the dim twilight our eyes met.She started back with a loud cry, then, next instant, dashed forward to me, grasping both my hands.“Ella!” I ejaculated. It was all I could say.“Godfrey!—you?”And she looked from me to Lucie inquiringly, for having met us walking at that hour by that lonely brook she doubtless believed us to be lovers.“I am Godfrey Leaf,” I said, grasping both her hands. “Yes, I cannot realise that you are really Ella—my own Ella—from the grave?” And I still stood there stupefied.“From the grave? What do you mean?” she asked, surprised.“They told me that you were dead,” I cried quickly. “They said that you had caught typhoid, and that it ended fatally.”“It is true that I had a bad attack of fever, and the doctors gave me up, yet somehow—I suppose by the perverseness of Fate, because I had no further desire to live—I recovered. But you were abroad constantly, and therefore heard nothing of me.”“I was in Russia when I received news of your death, Ella,” I said in a low voice, for there, in the presence of my love, I had become a changed man. “I have mourned for you until to-day.”“I had no idea of this!” she exclaimed. “I have been living in Ireland with my father. I have scarcely ever been in London since—since that night when we parted,” she faltered, lowering her eyes, as though fearing to meet my reproachful gaze.“And how came you here?” Lucie asked, as amazed as I was at her appearance.“We came over from Bournemouth to Swanage this afternoon, and it suddenly occurred to me to come and see if you were in England. I wanted to see the dear old Manor again—the house where you and I have spent so many very happy hours long ago. Minton did not recognise me at first, but when he did he told me that you had gone out to the village two hours ago. I then made inquiries as to the direction you had taken, and fortunately found you here.”“Then your father is now at Swanage?”“Yes. We are staying the night there. To-night a motor-car belonging to a friend of my father’s is coming from Winchester to take us for a trip through Devonshire and Cornwall.”“Well, Ella, you certainly gave us both a turn, appearing so suddenly,” declared Lucie. “Only half an hour ago we were speaking of you, and, like every one else, believed that you were dead.”“I wonder who started such a report?” she said. “Why did they say that I had died?”“To trace the source of a false report is always difficult,” I said. “Somebody surmises something and tells some one else, and the second person, in recounting it, declares the surmise to be the truth. It is almost always so.”“There certainly could be no motive in saying that Ella was dead, as far as I can see,” Lucie declared. “But,” she added, “why let us worry about the past? You have come back to us—back really from the grave.”“Yes,” I said, still holding her hand. “I believed, Ella, that you were dead long ago. The memory of that last night when we walked through the wet streets of Bayswater has ever remained a bitter one.”“No, no,” she cried. “Do not recall it. I, too, have suffered agonies of regret. Why is it that we meet again—like this?” and I noted that her splendid eyes were turned upon her friend in askance.Yes. She suspected that Lucie and I were lovers, and such a conclusion was, after all, but natural.“You are surprised, no doubt, to meet us together,” laughed Lucie. “But if you knew the truth regarding our acquaintance you would be even more surprised.”“Then Godfrey is not—”“He is certainly not my lover,” she exclaimed. “I may as well make that quite clear to you at once, dear. We came here because he had something to explain to me, and we naturally had no desire that the villagers should gossip.”My Ella turned again to me, and I saw that all anxiety had faded from her beautiful countenance. She was sweet and smiling—her old delightful self again.What had happened in those years I knew not. My love might be married, for aught I knew. She wore gloves, therefore I could not tell if her hand bore a wedding ring. She made no mention of Blumenthal, and I could not well inquire of him. So we were both of us somewhat restrained, neither knowing of the exact position of the other.I only knew that all the great passion I had entertained for her swelled within my heart, filling it to overflowing. The touch of her had thrilled me and I longed to kiss those sweet red lips once again—to repeat to her my love and to assure her that I was still unchanged.But with Lucie present I could say nothing. I could ask no question, nor could I make any declaration. Yet in those few moments I had been lifted from the depths of despair and despondency to the pinnacle of happiness.Ella, my well-beloved, still lived! And while she lived she was still mine in heart, even though, perish the thought, she might be wife of another.Darkness was now falling, yet there was still sufficient light to reveal her wondrous beauty. As she stood before me in her pale grey dress and large black hat I recognised that she had grown even more beautiful than she had been in the days of our love romance. Her figure was perfect in its symmetry; her countenance so lovely that even the uncommon beauty of Lucie paled before her. Those blue eyes that I knew were so unfathomable were turned upon me, and even there I saw in them the love-light that was unmistakable, that expression mysterious and indescribable that no woman is ever able to feign—the look, often unconscious, that tells a man that he is the object of passionate affection.My heart leapt within me with wild ecstasy, yet I could not speak.I only grasped her hand more tightly. Then in order to cover the emotion that I saw was rising within her, I turned and made a casual remark to Lucie that it was almost time we returned.“Of course,” she said quickly, recognising the situation. “You two have much to talk over alone. Let us go.”And together we moved forward along the path by, which my lost love had returned to me.How can I describe to you my feelings in those moments? Sometimes I found myself doubting whether it was not all some dream or some strange chimera of my unbalanced brain. But I held her hand, and found that it was real flesh and blood. My well-beloved still lived; she for whom I had mourned so long had returned, even more sweet and beautiful.The village bells were pealing, the ringers practising probably.“Hark!” I said, as I walked at her side, treading on air from sheer buoyancy of spirits. “They are joy bells, Ella. They ring because you have returned to me.” She laughed, turning those dear, wide-open eyes to mine, and said:—“How often have I wondered where you were, and whether—” and she paused without completing the sentence.“Whether what?”“Well—whether you had, after all, forgotten me,” she said. “I never dreamed that you believed me dead. I thought, of course, that if you really loved me, as you used to say, that you would surely write to me or endeavour to see me when you knew that, after all, I had not married that man.”“Then you did not marry Blumenthal after all!” I cried quickly. “Was the engagement broken off?”“Yes. Because of his ill-health. He released me when the doctors told him the truth—that he had only a few months to live. He died three months later.” And she grew silent again, and yet it seemed as if she wished to tell me something further. Indeed she was about to do so, but checked herself.“Well!” I asked, in order to allow her an opportunity to speak.“He was generous to me after all,” she went on. “The day before he died he sent for me, and I went and sat at his bedside. He knew his end was near, and after he had expressed deep regret that he had come between us—for he knew quite well that I loved you very dearly—he drew from beneath his pillow a large sealed envelope, making me promise to take it home, but not to open it until the day after his decease. Next day he died, and on the day following I broke the seals and discovered, to my amazement and joy, that he had presented me with the mortgage deeds of Wichenford. Some years before my father had mortgaged our old home to him, and those very deeds he had made my price as his wife.”“Then for the great injustice he did you, Ella, the fellow endeavoured to atone,” I said. “The mortgage, therefore, does not now exist.”“Of course not. I gave the deeds at once to my father, and they were that day destroyed, much to the chagrin of the heirs of the estate, who had long been scheming to become possessors of Wichenford.”“A most generous action,” Lucie declared.“Yes, whatever I may have said of him, and however much I have hated him in the past, I cannot help acknowledging that before his death he rendered me the greatest service.”“Yet you were prepared to perform a noble self-sacrifice, Ella,” I said, in a low, serious voice. “You kept your secret, and before we parted told me what was untrue. But Lucie has revealed to me the astounding truth. Only to-night, for the first time, have I realised all that your self-martyrdom meant—only to-night have I discovered that, after all, you still loved me just as fondly and with a passion just as fierce as my own—that even though engaged to Blumenthal your dear heart was still my own.”
What followed was amazing, mystifying.
With a loud cry that startled me the grey figure had come swiftly towards us, and I then saw that it was a woman.
My companion and she flew into each other’s arms and exchanged wild joyful greetings, while I, catching sight of her face, stood there open-mouthed, breathless in sheer astonishment.
At that moment I doubted whether I were actually sane and in possession of all my senses. I doubted even my own eyes. And had you been there, in my place, I think you also would have been dumbfounded.
“Fancy you—of all persons in this whole world!” Lucie cried, then turning to me after kissing the newcomer with wild enthusiasm, she laughed, adding:—
“This gentleman is not altogether a stranger, I believe?”
The woman turned her flushed countenance to mine, and in the dim twilight our eyes met.
She started back with a loud cry, then, next instant, dashed forward to me, grasping both my hands.
“Ella!” I ejaculated. It was all I could say.
“Godfrey!—you?”
And she looked from me to Lucie inquiringly, for having met us walking at that hour by that lonely brook she doubtless believed us to be lovers.
“I am Godfrey Leaf,” I said, grasping both her hands. “Yes, I cannot realise that you are really Ella—my own Ella—from the grave?” And I still stood there stupefied.
“From the grave? What do you mean?” she asked, surprised.
“They told me that you were dead,” I cried quickly. “They said that you had caught typhoid, and that it ended fatally.”
“It is true that I had a bad attack of fever, and the doctors gave me up, yet somehow—I suppose by the perverseness of Fate, because I had no further desire to live—I recovered. But you were abroad constantly, and therefore heard nothing of me.”
“I was in Russia when I received news of your death, Ella,” I said in a low voice, for there, in the presence of my love, I had become a changed man. “I have mourned for you until to-day.”
“I had no idea of this!” she exclaimed. “I have been living in Ireland with my father. I have scarcely ever been in London since—since that night when we parted,” she faltered, lowering her eyes, as though fearing to meet my reproachful gaze.
“And how came you here?” Lucie asked, as amazed as I was at her appearance.
“We came over from Bournemouth to Swanage this afternoon, and it suddenly occurred to me to come and see if you were in England. I wanted to see the dear old Manor again—the house where you and I have spent so many very happy hours long ago. Minton did not recognise me at first, but when he did he told me that you had gone out to the village two hours ago. I then made inquiries as to the direction you had taken, and fortunately found you here.”
“Then your father is now at Swanage?”
“Yes. We are staying the night there. To-night a motor-car belonging to a friend of my father’s is coming from Winchester to take us for a trip through Devonshire and Cornwall.”
“Well, Ella, you certainly gave us both a turn, appearing so suddenly,” declared Lucie. “Only half an hour ago we were speaking of you, and, like every one else, believed that you were dead.”
“I wonder who started such a report?” she said. “Why did they say that I had died?”
“To trace the source of a false report is always difficult,” I said. “Somebody surmises something and tells some one else, and the second person, in recounting it, declares the surmise to be the truth. It is almost always so.”
“There certainly could be no motive in saying that Ella was dead, as far as I can see,” Lucie declared. “But,” she added, “why let us worry about the past? You have come back to us—back really from the grave.”
“Yes,” I said, still holding her hand. “I believed, Ella, that you were dead long ago. The memory of that last night when we walked through the wet streets of Bayswater has ever remained a bitter one.”
“No, no,” she cried. “Do not recall it. I, too, have suffered agonies of regret. Why is it that we meet again—like this?” and I noted that her splendid eyes were turned upon her friend in askance.
Yes. She suspected that Lucie and I were lovers, and such a conclusion was, after all, but natural.
“You are surprised, no doubt, to meet us together,” laughed Lucie. “But if you knew the truth regarding our acquaintance you would be even more surprised.”
“Then Godfrey is not—”
“He is certainly not my lover,” she exclaimed. “I may as well make that quite clear to you at once, dear. We came here because he had something to explain to me, and we naturally had no desire that the villagers should gossip.”
My Ella turned again to me, and I saw that all anxiety had faded from her beautiful countenance. She was sweet and smiling—her old delightful self again.
What had happened in those years I knew not. My love might be married, for aught I knew. She wore gloves, therefore I could not tell if her hand bore a wedding ring. She made no mention of Blumenthal, and I could not well inquire of him. So we were both of us somewhat restrained, neither knowing of the exact position of the other.
I only knew that all the great passion I had entertained for her swelled within my heart, filling it to overflowing. The touch of her had thrilled me and I longed to kiss those sweet red lips once again—to repeat to her my love and to assure her that I was still unchanged.
But with Lucie present I could say nothing. I could ask no question, nor could I make any declaration. Yet in those few moments I had been lifted from the depths of despair and despondency to the pinnacle of happiness.
Ella, my well-beloved, still lived! And while she lived she was still mine in heart, even though, perish the thought, she might be wife of another.
Darkness was now falling, yet there was still sufficient light to reveal her wondrous beauty. As she stood before me in her pale grey dress and large black hat I recognised that she had grown even more beautiful than she had been in the days of our love romance. Her figure was perfect in its symmetry; her countenance so lovely that even the uncommon beauty of Lucie paled before her. Those blue eyes that I knew were so unfathomable were turned upon me, and even there I saw in them the love-light that was unmistakable, that expression mysterious and indescribable that no woman is ever able to feign—the look, often unconscious, that tells a man that he is the object of passionate affection.
My heart leapt within me with wild ecstasy, yet I could not speak.
I only grasped her hand more tightly. Then in order to cover the emotion that I saw was rising within her, I turned and made a casual remark to Lucie that it was almost time we returned.
“Of course,” she said quickly, recognising the situation. “You two have much to talk over alone. Let us go.”
And together we moved forward along the path by, which my lost love had returned to me.
How can I describe to you my feelings in those moments? Sometimes I found myself doubting whether it was not all some dream or some strange chimera of my unbalanced brain. But I held her hand, and found that it was real flesh and blood. My well-beloved still lived; she for whom I had mourned so long had returned, even more sweet and beautiful.
The village bells were pealing, the ringers practising probably.
“Hark!” I said, as I walked at her side, treading on air from sheer buoyancy of spirits. “They are joy bells, Ella. They ring because you have returned to me.” She laughed, turning those dear, wide-open eyes to mine, and said:—
“How often have I wondered where you were, and whether—” and she paused without completing the sentence.
“Whether what?”
“Well—whether you had, after all, forgotten me,” she said. “I never dreamed that you believed me dead. I thought, of course, that if you really loved me, as you used to say, that you would surely write to me or endeavour to see me when you knew that, after all, I had not married that man.”
“Then you did not marry Blumenthal after all!” I cried quickly. “Was the engagement broken off?”
“Yes. Because of his ill-health. He released me when the doctors told him the truth—that he had only a few months to live. He died three months later.” And she grew silent again, and yet it seemed as if she wished to tell me something further. Indeed she was about to do so, but checked herself.
“Well!” I asked, in order to allow her an opportunity to speak.
“He was generous to me after all,” she went on. “The day before he died he sent for me, and I went and sat at his bedside. He knew his end was near, and after he had expressed deep regret that he had come between us—for he knew quite well that I loved you very dearly—he drew from beneath his pillow a large sealed envelope, making me promise to take it home, but not to open it until the day after his decease. Next day he died, and on the day following I broke the seals and discovered, to my amazement and joy, that he had presented me with the mortgage deeds of Wichenford. Some years before my father had mortgaged our old home to him, and those very deeds he had made my price as his wife.”
“Then for the great injustice he did you, Ella, the fellow endeavoured to atone,” I said. “The mortgage, therefore, does not now exist.”
“Of course not. I gave the deeds at once to my father, and they were that day destroyed, much to the chagrin of the heirs of the estate, who had long been scheming to become possessors of Wichenford.”
“A most generous action,” Lucie declared.
“Yes, whatever I may have said of him, and however much I have hated him in the past, I cannot help acknowledging that before his death he rendered me the greatest service.”
“Yet you were prepared to perform a noble self-sacrifice, Ella,” I said, in a low, serious voice. “You kept your secret, and before we parted told me what was untrue. But Lucie has revealed to me the astounding truth. Only to-night, for the first time, have I realised all that your self-martyrdom meant—only to-night have I discovered that, after all, you still loved me just as fondly and with a passion just as fierce as my own—that even though engaged to Blumenthal your dear heart was still my own.”