On those occasions when Susan Riley obtained the usual forty-eight hours' leave of absence from the hospital, it was her custom to pass most of this time in the company of her lover the barrister.
Now, it happened on the night that Dr. Duncan had come across his old friend at the Albion, the latter had made an appointment with his mistress to take her to the theatre after a dinner at a restaurant.
He had given her the set of keys to his chambers, so that she might let herself in at six o'clock, and there await his coming.
Susan arrived at the appointed hour. Hudson was generally punctual when he had to meet her; but seven o'clock passed, then eight, and yet he did not come, so that Susan, who had first felt only extremely angry at his delay, began to be fearful of some disaster.
This is what had occurred. At three o'clock in the afternoon, for the first time for three long years, the man had caught a glimpse of Mary Grimm as she was walking down Oxford Street.
He recognised her at once. The sight brought back to him a host of memories and regrets. His mind, weakened and excitable from habitual alcoholism, was altogether unbalanced by this meeting.
A senseless passion—such as are the curse of such enfeebled brains, in which all the emotions are exalted to the vergeof madness—possessed him. It was not that he had, through all these years, nursed any love for the young girl whom he had only seen for a few hours altogether. He had almost forgotten her. He had long since given up thinking about her.
But now, no sooner did he perceive her, than he felt as if she had been all the world to him ever since that strange adventure in the Temple. He really believed that this had been the case; and the mad delusion took command of him and carried him away with it. He loved her—her only, he thought—the dear little girl who had passed that evening with him in his rooms—Oh! so long ago, it appeared now to him, not in years though, but in change of nature. Yes, he was sunk now beyond redemption, he was utterly lost—a degraded wretch—so he dared not go up to her and speak to her; he was too foul a thing to approachher—and he almost burst into hysterical tears, as he turned his back to her while she passed him, that she might not see his face; and then he walked away in an opposite direction—whither he cared not—in that condition when all good has abandoned the soul of a man, and it is empty, and will only open to devils.
He no longer thought of his mistress, his beloved Edith, or of his engagement with her. He went into refreshment bar after refreshment bar, asking at each for brandies, which he swallowed neat and at a gulp one after the other; so that men looked askance at him, and the bar-maids who served him pitied him, and begged him to drink no more.
He did not become drunk, he was beyond that stage; but a fierce despairing sullenness seized him and was expressed in his features, which were now as pale as death, with two large eyes blazing out from darkened circles.
And so on and on, hour after hour, until the time when we left him outside the Albion, running away from the one human being who wished to befriend him.
All this while Susan Riley, in no contented mood, was waitingfor him in his chambers, which appeared cheerless enough, for no fire was burning in the grate, and she could find but one candle to place on the table, whose light only threw out in stronger gloom the dark wainscotting and sombre-coloured furniture.
As the tedious hours went by, she paced up and down the rooms, and sat down in turns. She took down book after book from his shelves but could find nothing to interest her. Then she opened his drawers and desks, and looked over some of Hudson's private papers. This was a favourite amusement of hers when she was left alone in his chambers; and she had contrived, by reading his letters whenever she had an opportunity, to learn a good deal about his family, and pecuniary prospects.
She was examining the contents of a desk, turning over some manuscript, poems, and articles in a cursory fashion, when her eye happened to fall on the title of one of these, "La Fille de Marbre."
"Dear me!" she said to herself, "here is a poem addressed to me. He told me the other day, when he was in bad a humour, that I reminded him of the heroine of a French novel he had been reading—'La Fille de Marbre.' I begin to think he almost sees through me sometimes now, and does not consider me quite such a perfect being as he did. I will read this 'Fille de Marbre,' and see what nonsense he has been writing about me. I may learn something about the true state of his sentiments."
There was an amused smile on her face as she read the barrister's latest poetical production:—
"LA FILLE DE MARBRE."I.THEN."Children of pleasure are we: the whole of our life is a play;With white breasts, music, and wine we while the hours away.You scorn and revile us and hate us, would put us to torture and shame,You virtuous! Ah, well! We will not pause in the game,To be bitter in our turn on you and wax hot. Not we! for we knowLife is too short for such folly. Away all pother and woe!Think not of the After! Drink deep of the Present! This world's good enough;Has infinite sweets: fool he that follows the way that is rough!"The maudlin sage drones out, 'All pleasure is vain.' Let him try!He will weep and rend his clothes with regret that he did denyThese rapturous joys to himself through so many pitiful years.What do we know of the After? Why brood upon it with fears?The Now is enough for the wise. Come, ye daughters of joy!Help me to live as one should. Let thy white feet glance in my hall:Of all the gifts of the good gods, ye are the sweetest of all!"Hark to the sour recluse! He says, 'Woman's a perilous toy,'That 'the girl is selfish and false, and follows the luck of the dice,Smells gold afar off as a vulture, with caresses feigned for the rich,And when the gold is all gone will let her love die in a ditch.'"A liar! a coward he! that fears what he does not know.'Tis the cold, not the fierce Bacchante's blood, the red gold mastereth so."For we too have died for each other—we 'selfish' children of vice,Our passionate kisses are warm, yea warmer than virtue can tell.Ho! ho! while I live, I will live, nor give thought to God or his hell!"II.NOW."Cold is the wind and the rain of the autumn night in the street.My rags are so thin. Chill death ascends from my sodden feet.Up to my heart. What care I? For I can laugh at the cold.My head is hot; my blood boils. I have just met a friend of old.I was proud, I was dying for food, yet dared not beg for a crust;But he asked me to drink, and I drank—and now I feel as a god,As a god who has something to give, and so can rule with a nod."I stand by a well-known house, a house of gambling and lust,Where in the bright-lit rooms, men flushed with the fever of playWin and lose. If they win, the she-devils rake it away.Win and lose. If they lose, they must out in the cold and die;Or if they be callous and tough, why, then become even as I."Ah, me! for yon beautiful woman. Ah, me! for the passionless martAh, me! for the soft, warm flesh that covers the cold, hard heart.Hewas lucky to-night at play; look at her wanton grace:The kisses, the toying hands, the flushed and amorous face,The moist lips lying of love!—she will lead him up to the gateOf Ruin and Death and Hell, and leave him there to his fate.With a low and musical laugh, as of silver as hard and as cold,At his folly to thinkshecould love—she has treated so many of old."For is it not true that every gem your round white limbs do bear,And every star that shines in the night of your ebon hair,Was bought with a good man's soul? Each is a trophy sweetOf a noble life that was trampled under your delicate feet.The wine of your mouth is poison unto the fool that sips;Your fair white bosom is bruised, but not with a baby's lips,Child never drew life from those breasts, no gentle mother thou art,No, nor woman! warm blood of a woman ne'er fed such a pitiless heart."And now from the steps of the house I see her descending again,Again after years, and there gnaws at my heart a twinge of an ancient pain:See!—still she is fair! nay, yet fairer! I gaze, as she pauses awhileTo draw a delicate glove on a hand that has toyed with mine.Lo, from the perfect lip there dies the last shade of a smile,A smile for the fool she has left, drunk with gaming and wine.Alas! for that lip and that hand, and those heavy-fringed, amorous eyes.Oh, the days of passion that were—the days I believed in thy sighs—The days when I loved thee so—as now, I hate and despise.And, lo! I seek in vain to trace on thy mouth, in thine eyes,Alittleremorse, alittleof woman. Thou knowest well to hideAll feeling; but when awake, and thy lover sleeps by thy side,Does a serpent gnaw at thy bosom, a shade chill thy heart? Is thy brow,When thou sittest alone, as unruffled, as coldly tranquil as now?... Fool to ask! Heart she has not. Had she ever so little a one,'Twould have seared and wrinkled her beauty with thought of the ill she has done."She has gone! and I stand alone in the rainy, desolate street.Is it famine or wine?—but never before did my heart so madly beat,And this pain of my whirling brain: the keen, quick sense of myNow!Unpitied—self-unpitying—I know my want is my guilt.I feel no remorse for the past—the cup was wantonly spilt.I do not want pity—I havenocontrition. Knowing all that I know,Had I aught—why, then, that—and my life—and my soul—I'd stake at a throw,On the chance of winning once more sufficient to buy her kiss,To buy the dear false smile—the sweet lies whispered low,With the poisoned wine of her lips to drug the memories of this,Till the lies seemed delicious truths...."... Iwillforget all that I know,Oh, my love! and only remember how wondrously sweet thou art.Ah, yes! Thou lovest me well; let me die in one long embrace.Draw thee closer, yet closer. Let me feel thy breath on my face;Let us forget all things save our love—yes, even till we dieIn dreams of impossible joys, of more than human delight,Each sweet, passionate secret wringing from love, you and I.Through the mystical garden of Eros, hand in hand we will go,Plucking the magical fruits that poison the human heart.And what if they do? Why we care not! While we live let us live!We have ate of the magical fruit; we are drunk, and can no more strive.So hail, mad excesses of pleasure! In spite of cold virtue; in spiteOf Hell, let us know once again,onehour as we used to know!"... But why art thou gone in the darkness?... A dream!... My brain swims to-night.Hunger may be, or madness.... Ah, this pain at my heart.... Let me go!It is death ... death in the streets.... Well, I care not—it is better so."
"Children of pleasure are we: the whole of our life is a play;With white breasts, music, and wine we while the hours away.You scorn and revile us and hate us, would put us to torture and shame,You virtuous! Ah, well! We will not pause in the game,To be bitter in our turn on you and wax hot. Not we! for we knowLife is too short for such folly. Away all pother and woe!Think not of the After! Drink deep of the Present! This world's good enough;Has infinite sweets: fool he that follows the way that is rough!
"The maudlin sage drones out, 'All pleasure is vain.' Let him try!He will weep and rend his clothes with regret that he did denyThese rapturous joys to himself through so many pitiful years.What do we know of the After? Why brood upon it with fears?The Now is enough for the wise. Come, ye daughters of joy!Help me to live as one should. Let thy white feet glance in my hall:Of all the gifts of the good gods, ye are the sweetest of all!
"Hark to the sour recluse! He says, 'Woman's a perilous toy,'That 'the girl is selfish and false, and follows the luck of the dice,Smells gold afar off as a vulture, with caresses feigned for the rich,And when the gold is all gone will let her love die in a ditch.'
"A liar! a coward he! that fears what he does not know.'Tis the cold, not the fierce Bacchante's blood, the red gold mastereth so.
"For we too have died for each other—we 'selfish' children of vice,Our passionate kisses are warm, yea warmer than virtue can tell.Ho! ho! while I live, I will live, nor give thought to God or his hell!"
"Cold is the wind and the rain of the autumn night in the street.My rags are so thin. Chill death ascends from my sodden feet.Up to my heart. What care I? For I can laugh at the cold.My head is hot; my blood boils. I have just met a friend of old.I was proud, I was dying for food, yet dared not beg for a crust;But he asked me to drink, and I drank—and now I feel as a god,As a god who has something to give, and so can rule with a nod.
"I stand by a well-known house, a house of gambling and lust,Where in the bright-lit rooms, men flushed with the fever of playWin and lose. If they win, the she-devils rake it away.Win and lose. If they lose, they must out in the cold and die;Or if they be callous and tough, why, then become even as I.
"Ah, me! for yon beautiful woman. Ah, me! for the passionless martAh, me! for the soft, warm flesh that covers the cold, hard heart.Hewas lucky to-night at play; look at her wanton grace:The kisses, the toying hands, the flushed and amorous face,The moist lips lying of love!—she will lead him up to the gateOf Ruin and Death and Hell, and leave him there to his fate.With a low and musical laugh, as of silver as hard and as cold,At his folly to thinkshecould love—she has treated so many of old.
"For is it not true that every gem your round white limbs do bear,And every star that shines in the night of your ebon hair,Was bought with a good man's soul? Each is a trophy sweetOf a noble life that was trampled under your delicate feet.The wine of your mouth is poison unto the fool that sips;Your fair white bosom is bruised, but not with a baby's lips,Child never drew life from those breasts, no gentle mother thou art,No, nor woman! warm blood of a woman ne'er fed such a pitiless heart.
"And now from the steps of the house I see her descending again,Again after years, and there gnaws at my heart a twinge of an ancient pain:See!—still she is fair! nay, yet fairer! I gaze, as she pauses awhileTo draw a delicate glove on a hand that has toyed with mine.Lo, from the perfect lip there dies the last shade of a smile,A smile for the fool she has left, drunk with gaming and wine.Alas! for that lip and that hand, and those heavy-fringed, amorous eyes.Oh, the days of passion that were—the days I believed in thy sighs—The days when I loved thee so—as now, I hate and despise.And, lo! I seek in vain to trace on thy mouth, in thine eyes,Alittleremorse, alittleof woman. Thou knowest well to hideAll feeling; but when awake, and thy lover sleeps by thy side,Does a serpent gnaw at thy bosom, a shade chill thy heart? Is thy brow,When thou sittest alone, as unruffled, as coldly tranquil as now?... Fool to ask! Heart she has not. Had she ever so little a one,'Twould have seared and wrinkled her beauty with thought of the ill she has done.
"She has gone! and I stand alone in the rainy, desolate street.Is it famine or wine?—but never before did my heart so madly beat,And this pain of my whirling brain: the keen, quick sense of myNow!Unpitied—self-unpitying—I know my want is my guilt.I feel no remorse for the past—the cup was wantonly spilt.I do not want pity—I havenocontrition. Knowing all that I know,Had I aught—why, then, that—and my life—and my soul—I'd stake at a throw,On the chance of winning once more sufficient to buy her kiss,To buy the dear false smile—the sweet lies whispered low,With the poisoned wine of her lips to drug the memories of this,Till the lies seemed delicious truths....
"... Iwillforget all that I know,Oh, my love! and only remember how wondrously sweet thou art.Ah, yes! Thou lovest me well; let me die in one long embrace.Draw thee closer, yet closer. Let me feel thy breath on my face;Let us forget all things save our love—yes, even till we dieIn dreams of impossible joys, of more than human delight,Each sweet, passionate secret wringing from love, you and I.Through the mystical garden of Eros, hand in hand we will go,Plucking the magical fruits that poison the human heart.And what if they do? Why we care not! While we live let us live!We have ate of the magical fruit; we are drunk, and can no more strive.So hail, mad excesses of pleasure! In spite of cold virtue; in spiteOf Hell, let us know once again,onehour as we used to know!
"... But why art thou gone in the darkness?... A dream!... My brain swims to-night.Hunger may be, or madness.... Ah, this pain at my heart.... Let me go!It is death ... death in the streets.... Well, I care not—it is better so."
"Very pretty indeed," said Susan to herself, when she had read this poem; "very pretty, though I can't help thinking some of the ideas are hardly original. I wonder if I am the heroine, if I am this lovely 'Fille de Marbre?' I'm afraid he's hit me off pretty well. Clever of him; yet, after all, he must be the greater fool to stick to me if he knows me so well. Yes, he is evidently beginning to understand me. I must look out."
She took the manuscript up again and re-read some of it. "Yes, my man! you were certainly thinking of yourself when you wrote this," she reflected; "you are just the weak, passionate fool described here. You are going to the dogs pretty fast. Who knows that you too will not die like a rat in the streets?"
She glanced at the clock and started to see how late it was. "Where can he be? I believe I am getting superstitious; sitting all alone in this dark room is enough to give one the jumps; but somehow I can't help feeling that there is something ominous in this ridiculous poem I have been reading. 'Death, death in the streets.... Well, I care not; it is better so.' Pooh! what nonsense! I am a fool," she shivered and looked uneasily around the room; then she rose from herchair, and, drawing aside the curtain, peered out of the window at the deserted court. "Where can he be? He has never been late like this before. He has been drinking like a madman for the last few days. Who knows?—perhaps he may have foretold his own end in those verses. He may even now be dying.... But this is sheer folly; he can look after himself. But I must get rid of these blues. Ah! here is his beloved brandy bottle."
With the aid of some spirits and water, she contrived to dispel her nervousness. But still he did not come. She fidgeted about the rooms vainly seeking something to amuse her. At intervals she would walk up to the mirror, and contemplate the image of her face with a close scrutiny to see how the wrinkles about her eyes were getting on—a common trick of this unfortunate being, whose whole pleasure in life, whose every interest hung on her youth and beauty, who was haunted by the perpetual dread of age and ugliness.
For six hours she waited in the chambers, but she would not go—she would see the end of this.
One o'clock boomed out in melancholy tones from the spire of St. Clements, answered by Big Ben in the distance, and a dozen city churches. A quarter of an hour afterwards there was a hurried rush of someone up the stairs, then a long fumbling at the keyhole.
She went to the door and opened it, and the aspect of her lover, as he stood there with the light of the passage lamp falling on his distorted features was so terrible, that she shrunk back in fear.
"Don't be frightened, Edith, I won't hurt you—only drunk," and he laughed discordantly as he pushed by her without further greeting, without offering to kiss her, for which last omission she was thankful.
He entered the sitting-room, threw himself into a chair by the table, and buried his head in his hands, as he placed his elbows on the wine-stained mahogany.
What a contrast between this scene and one three years before! The chambers were the same, though not so tidy as of old; then it was summer. It was now winter, with no fire in the grate, and a cheerless look about the place. Then there were two, a man and a woman together—a man young, in the prime of life, happy, hopeful, and a girl of noble instincts, and lovely as the young Aphrodite. Now it was the same man but how changed, how fallen! and the woman was another—the evil genius of the man, just as the first woman might have been his good genius.
Susan stood by him for some minutes without speaking, too terrified to bring out the nasty little speech she had meditated before he came in.
At last she touched him on the shoulder. "Tommy, dear, you are ill."
He raised his head and stared at her with a look in which there was no recognition, and quite empty of its usual love, and said angrily, "Ill—not at all—who the deuce are you?—where's the brandy?"
He rose and walked to the cupboard, took out the decanter of brandy and a tumbler, which he half-filled and drank off.
"Oh, Tommy!" she cried, much alarmed and seizing him by the arm. "For God's sake don't go on like this—go to bed—I will watch by you, love."
He flung her from him, and glaring at her savagely and sullenly, cried, "Love! love! what do you mean by calling me that? Who are you to use that word? I have only got one love and she is dead. Ha! ha! and I killed her—yes, killed her, do you hear that?"
"No! no! darling," she exclaimed clasping him in her arms. "Look at me, I am your love."
"You!—not you—I don't know you—she was nothing like you—you are not Mary."
"Now dear, be quiet. Don't be so foolish; you are onlyputting on all this to frighten me. You'll be sorry to-morrow that you have been so unkind to your little sweetheart—when you come to your senses. Now dear, do go to bed, and don't talk any more nonsense about your Mary."
"Don't mentionhername!" he almost screamed. "Mary! Mary! O God! if she could see me now—Mary—a saint not anything like you—Mary. She died three years ago, here in these rooms—and I saw her ghost this afternoon—I killed her—the only thing I loved, and I killed her—Oh! oh!"
"No dear, she is not dead—are you sure her name was Mary—was it not Edith? Come think now—look at me, my poor old boy," and she pressed his head to her bosom and stroked his hair softly with her hand, in the hopes of soothing him somewhat.
"Edith be damned!" he shouted at the top of his voice, as he threw her off once more. "No, it was Mary.—Her name was Mary Grimm, and she is dead! dead! dead!"
"Mary Grimm!" said the woman in a low voice between her clenched teeth—"did you say Mary Grimm?"
"Yes, Mary Grimm—an angel whose name your mouth should not pollute by mentioning."
"Mr. Hudson, do you remember who I am?"
"I do, I do. Do you think I don't see through your wicked heartless wiles. I never loved you really. I was mad for a moment—a drunken affection—blind with drink. I have only made a beast of myself with you—but Mary!—Oh, I loved her, as no man ever loved before."
The woman stood before him, very pale now, biting her lips to conceal her malice and rage—she hated as well as despised this fool now.
"What do you mean by saying such things—are you mad, man?"
"I mean what I say."
"Very good. You know a woman can never forget or forgive such words as you have spoken to me."
"I don't care a damn, if you don't!" cried Hudson.
She took up her cloak and hat, stood for a few moments looking fixedly at him, the very picture of intense hate, and hissed through her teeth, "I leave you—madman! Idiot! You will have the horrors soon, and perhaps then you will see faces more pitiless and loathsome than even mine—I leave you to enjoy yourself with them. Good-bye, dear, good-bye!" and she left his rooms.
When she had got out of the gate at the top of Middle Temple Lane into Fleet Street, she did not immediately leave the spot, but stood a few moments considering her position. She knew the man she had left was on the verge of a severe attack of delirium tremens. She thought it highly probable that in his present condition he would not remain alone in his chambers, but would soon be driven out by the fever within him once more into the deserted streets. She would wait and watch his proceedings from a safe distance. It would be amusing. So with this object in view she crossed to the other side of the road and stood there.
Her surmise was correct. She had not to wait many minutes. The gate swung open, and the barrister staggered out. The porter looked out after him for a few seconds, and then closed the door again.
Hudson did not perceive her. A new mood was on him. He walked slowly along Fleet Street westwards, his eyes turned to the ground.
Suddenly a fantastic idea seized his ever-changing mind. He would go down Devereux Court. He would look at the doorway in which he had first found Mary Grimm.
Susan Riley followed him afar off, like a vulture waiting till its prey fall.
At last he came to the dark doorway, and then followed a strange scene, which the observer, not having the clue to it, merely set down to the unreasoning frenzy of one mad with drink.
The poor wretch sobbed aloud. He threw out his arms towards the door, and kissed the panels against which the young girl had crouched in that summer evening long ago. Then with a cry he cast himself on the ground and kissed the stones on which her feet had trod.
It often happens that when a mind is in the condition his was in then, exalted by disease, it will for a moment become unnaturally clear and acute, capable of suffering impossible to the sane. So there arose suddenly to his crazed mind so vivid a vision of his past—of what might have been—of what was, so terrible a contrast, that in his anguish and despair he deliberately dashed his head violently three times against the stone column of the house; then he rose up to his full height, the blood streaming down his features, gazed wildly round for a few seconds, and fell down on his face, insensible.
Susan Riley, pale, calm, with a bitter smile on her mouth, watched all this. Then she went to him, turned his face upwards, and gazed at it with the same unmoved expression; that once noble face, now distorted, hideous, with the locks steeped with blood lying on the brow, and the red stream trickling over it.
"Faugh!" she said to herself, "what a beast a man can make of himself!" Then she deliberated for a short time what she should do next.
Of a sudden, a triumphant smile broke out on her face; she laughed low: "Oh, it is too good," she thought, "what a capital idea—what a scene we will have!"
She looked around her stealthily to see that no one was by; then she drew a small hypodermic syringe from her pocket, and standing under the lamp by the Temple gate carefully filled it from a bottle of straw-coloured fluid. After another careful look up and down the two streets, and at all the windows that commanded a view of the scene, she approached the insensible man. She stooped down and bared his left arm, thenwith one hand she took up a bit of the fleshy part of it, with the other she pushed the fine tube under the skin, and slowly pressed down the piston.
She held it there for a few seconds, then withdrew it, and placed it again in her pocket.
"Number one!" she muttered to herself. "Ah, Mary! so quiet and yet so sly; I shouldn't have thought it of you. You have robbed me of this fool. I believe you are trying to rob me of that prig, Dr. Duncan. We shall see, my girl, who wins in this game. I never liked you; now I hate you, and that's bad for you. I flatter myself I'm a dangerous person to make an enemy of—subtle and unscrupulous enough anyhow. Yes, Susie dear, you are decidedly dangerous."
Then she walked up to Fleet Street and found a policeman. She informed him that there was a man who had been seized by a fit at the bottom of the court.
The policeman accompanied her to the spot, and examined the prostrate form by the light of his bull's eye.
"He's only drunk," he said at last. "He's fallen down and cut his face a bit; nothing serious. We'll take him to the lock up."
Susan stooped and pretended to feel the barrister's pulse. "Policeman," she cried, "you must do nothing of the kind. He is not drunk, but seriously ill. I am an hospital nurse, and understand this case. He must be removed to the hospital at once, and without delay; do you hear? It is a question of life and death! Get a cab and drive him to the —— hospital; it is my hospital. There will be a doctor in attendance there who will save him, if any one can."
The constable still hesitated; but when the sergeant came up her earnestness overcame the doubts of both, and her advice was followed.
She saw her lover carried off, and then she walked away to a lodging where she was known, and where they would put herup for the night. She was too excited to feel any fear for the consequences of her act as yet. "Yes, it will be too delightful," she said to herself as she went along. "I will send Miss Mary her old sweetheart."
The barrister had not been so far from being the prophet of his own fate, when he penned those verses to "La Fille de Marbre."
On losing sight of the barrister, Dr. Duncan returned to the hospital, hurried over certain professional duties which he could not neglect, and then went off to Hudson's rooms in the Temple in the hope that his friend had found his way home. He did not forget to take with him some sedative drugs, which he knew the unfortunate man would most certainly be in need of.
He did not reach the Temple until three in the morning.
On mounting the stairs he found both doors of the chambers wide open, for Hudson had not thought of closing them after him when he rushed out in his mad frenzy.
The doctor entered the rooms; they were deserted. He looked around him and saw the half empty brandy bottle on the table. The mirror over the mantel-piece was broken, and fragments of the glass were lying on the floor; the madman, after Susan had left him, seeing his own image in the mirror, had mistaken it for some other person, and had thrown a chair at it. The candle was still burning, a fact which proved to the doctor that his friend had been in his chambers, since he left him outside the Albion.
Dr. Duncan went out, and on inquiring of the porter at the Middle Temple gate learned that Hudson had left the Temple nearly two hours before.
Alarmed for his friend's safety, he returned to the chambers, and passed the rest of the night there, vainly waiting for him.
Morning came, and he could stay no longer; he would be soon due at the hospital, so he called on a barrister whom he knew to be a friend of Hudson's, put the whole circumstances before him, and persuaded him to watch for the return of the man to his chambers, and see that the proper steps were taken for his safety.
On going out, he found that he had still some little time to spare, and it occurred to him that he would not walk directly to the hospital, but take a road on which he thought he might probably meet Mary Grimm on her way to the same destination. He knew it was about the hour that she usually started from home.
He had been very anxious to find an opportunity of speaking again to her in private. He determined to discover what were her objections to accepting his love, and whether they were really insuperable.
He walked on, until he reached the street in which she lived without encountering her; so he stood at the end of it, waiting till she came out, his heart beating with excitement.
He stood there several minutes, then looking at his watch he saw it was later than he had imagined; and thinking that he must have missed her, he was about to turn away sick at heart with disappointment, when suddenly he perceived her well-known figure approaching him.
When she saw him, her feelings were as strongly stirred as were his own, and her face lost all its colour.
They shook hands in silence, each conscious that the other was too deeply moved for language.
Then the doctor spoke words simple in themselves, and with a calm voice; but yet they seemed to her to breathe forth all the passion that a human being under that fiercest spell of love can feel.
"I knew that you walked by this road to the hospital. I have come here to meet you, Miss King."
Mary answered nothing. He continued, "I have come to see you, to speak to you. No, let us go this way," and he turned off into a road, which was not the direct one to the hospital, but which led through the neighbouring park, and was little frequented by pedestrians at that early hour, so afforded opportunity for undisturbed conversation.
They walked on side by side for some minutes without either speaking.
"Mary!" then said the doctor—"you must let me call you Mary, even if I am only to be your friend—I have so longed to see you by yourself, to learn from your lips what my fate is to be!"
The girl walked firmly on, but with downcast eyes, hardly seeing whither she went, but guiding herself in some strange way by the consciousness of the one who walked by her side.
After a pause he continued: "Mary, you know that I love you. I must know—you must tell me—if it is altogether impossible for you to return that love."
"Altogether impossible," she replied, in a scarcely audible voice.
"Altogether!" he repeated after her in a dazed way. "Then I have nothing more to live for. Oh, pardon me, Miss King! Why should I speak to you of my happiness or misery? What a selfish being I am, even in my love for you? And yet I do not think that it is altogether selfish. I know that I would willingly endure endless misery if by that I could lighten your burden, my child. Mine is a love that, be it selfish or unselfish, fills my whole being. Oh, Mary! cannot you love me a little? I would so endeavour to make your life a happy one."
His voice was subdued, but full of profound tenderness, and it pierced Mary's heart with a sharp pain.
"I know it—I know it," she whispered; "but, oh! it is impossible, quite impossible."
They were now on a lonely path among the bushes of the park. They came to a seat under a tree; Dr. Duncan sat down on it and Mary sat by him.
"I cannot at all understand your meaning, Mary," he said sadly.
"Oh why do you love me?" she cried in tones of anguish, "why do you love me? Try and put me out of your heart. If you only knew my heart you would do so at once."
He looked at her for a few moments, then asked in despair, "Do you dislike me?"
"Dislike you!" and she raised her head and looked into his eyes as she exclaimed the words. "Dislike you! How can I dislike you who are so kind to me? Ah no! Dr. Duncan—it is not that; but have mercy on me—you are torturing me. It can never be—never—never—I cannot love you. There is something between us, something awful, and you must not ask me what it is!"
She looked so wildly as she spoke that the suspicion of insanity again flashed across the doctor's mind, but he felt that whatever this burden of hers might be, it could only increase the vehemence of his love by deepening his pity.
"Mary!" he said, "this love is too great a matter to be trifled with. We must understand each other. Are you right in throwing this love of mine away? Oh think! if you do love me—and I sometimes half believe you do—is it right to allow this fearful something whatever it is to separate us? Why, what should separate us? If you have any great sorrow, if you are persecuted by any enemy, if there is any horrible secret that torments you, so much the more reason that you should allow the one who loves you, and whom you love, to help you, to defend you, and ward these off. Mary! Mary! believe me, you said the other day that I should loathe you did I know what this secret of yours was. Believe me, whatever it was, I could do no less than feel for you the more, love you the more. For heaven's sake, Mary! let nothing stand between us."
She looked at him with a terrified air, and said, "And supposing that I had committed some abominable crime—what then?"
"What then? I should protect you, fold you to my arms, and help to soften your bitter remorse into sweet repentance. I would share your agony and delight in doing so. Whatever this secret is, it would but deepen the sympathy between us. Oh, Mary! Love can cure every wound."
"Oh, mercy!" she cried in tones of anguish. "Dr. Duncan! Dr. Duncan! do not talk to me like this. I shall go mad if you do. I tell you again I can never know love—never! never! I am the most miserable creature on earth, and I cannot tell you why."
He seized her arm in his passion, and said in a voice fierce and tremulous: "Mary! Mary! this is all wrong. You are throwing away your whole life's happiness for an utterly false idea. Oh, my sweet love, tell me all! tell me all! I repeat from my heart, that nothing you could possibly disclose can lessen my affection. Put the idea altogether out of your mind that whatever you tell me can make any difference. Mary! were you the lowest of creatures, I would love you all the more. It would be all the sweeter to know that I had saved you. Whatever you are, I am your lover, your slave. Ah, Mary! with such a love as ours will be, we will be the happiest of people. In spite of anything that has been, you will be all the world to me until death, Mary!—until death."
The man had made the girl's heart thrill responsive to his own great passion, and she could conceal this no longer. "Oh, spare me! spare me!" she whispered.
"Then you do love me," he exclaimed.
She closed her eyes as she spoke in a dreamy voice. "Oh, spare me! this will kill me. Oh, my love! for I do love you—as I can scarcely believe woman ever loved man before—you don't know what you ask."
He folded her in his arms and kissed her lips, but she turnedfrom him, and rising from the seat stood before him very pale, and trembling, while the secret thoughts of her heart, that she would fain have hidden for ever, but could not in that weak moment conceal, were revealed to him in her passionate words. "Yes, I love you! I will die soon, so it cannot matter much that I tell you this. I love you! but this must be the last time I see you. We two cannot love each other—oh, that I could tell you: and then be clasped in your arms and die there straightaway—die in your arms dear!—for I cannot tell you and live. Oh, how delicious it would be—oh, my love!" she clenched her fists and looked up to the skies—"do not raise these visions of Paradise to me—only to madden me with the contrast between them and what must be—glimpses of Heaven through the black clouds of Hell."
She paused and began to weep.
Her lover stood by her with both her hands in his.
He was about to say what little he could to comfort her, when she snatched her hands from his and exclaimed, as she wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, "Come away, let us go, Dr. Duncan. I can bear no more of this."
They walked along the path in silence for a few minutes, she with a heart aching with its misery, he puzzled, not knowing what to make of her behaviour, and feeling a strange mixture of joy and sorrow.
At last he spoke, and there was a triumphant ring in his voice. "Mary, youshallbe mine! We love each other. In that all-absorbing love we will forget all your secret whatever it may be." He went on in fierce accents, carried away by his passion. "Yes, Mary! in spite of crime, or madness, or the power of hell, it shall be—Oh, my dear! my dear!..."
At that moment Mary interrupted him with a slight exclamation, and at the same time put her hand on his arm in order to draw his attention.
He looked up and saw very inopportunely tripping towardsthem, with her usual jaunty step, the plump figure of Susan Riley.
This young lady's keen glance detected in the looks of the two lovers that some serious conversation had been going on.
"Good morning, doctor," she said as he lifted his hat and bowed. "Good morning, Mary. Good gracious! how glum you look. You seem quite ill; doesn't she, doctor? Why, what's the matter with you?"
"I am perfectly well, thank you, Susan."
"I think Miss King requires a change."
"I have told her so," remarked Dr. Duncan.
"By-the-bye, Mary!" exclaimed Susan, "something very curious has happened which concerns you. An old friend of yours has been asking for you."
"An old friend of mine?"
"Yes! and a gentleman, too; but I will not keep you in suspense. They brought in a man suffering from delirium tremens last night, a very bad case. He is a young man, and has the appearance of a gentleman. No one knows who he is. He has no card on him: his linen is unmarked. Well, he called out your name several times this morning."
"My name!"
"Yes; called out 'Mary Grimm!' 'Mary Grimm!' a dozen times, at least. Now, yours is not such a common name, is it?" As she spoke the woman's eyes twinkled with malice.
Dr. Duncan looked from one to the other. What Susan had said puzzled and disturbed him. Was this the clue to Mary's secret, he wondered. She called her Mary Grimm, too; whyGrimm?
Mary divined his thoughts, and turning to him said simply, "Iwascalled 'Grimm.' That was my real name, but when my aunt adopted me I took her name." Then addressing Susan, "I cannot conceive who this poor man can be, for I am not awarethat I know any gentlemen, even by sight, except the doctors and students at the hospital."
Mary instinctively knew what suspicions were passing through her lover's mind, but conscious of her innocence she spoke without exhibiting any signs of confusion. His mind was much relieved by her words. "No, it is not a man that is between us," he said to himself.
Then suddenly he called to mind the adventures of the previous night. "How old would you take this man to be?" he asked anxiously of Susan.
"About thirty," was the reply.
He quickened his pace unconsciously, and did not speak again till they were at the gate of the hospital.
Then he turned to Mary and said, "I will go and see this poor fellow myself first; then I will come for you. You may be able to identify him."
The three entered the hospital together.
Dr. Duncan went into the private ward in which the man lay. He found him asleep and breathing stertorously. Drugs had done their work for the time.
The nurse who was in attendance on him had left his bedside a few minutes before, so the doctor was alone with the sick man.
He approached the bed. It was as he expected. He recognised Hudson's face at once, partly concealed though it was by the bandages that had been placed on the wounds the barrister had inflicted on himself against the stones of Devereux Court.
He re-arranged the pillow of the insensible man, and then stood by him a few moments, contemplating the altered features of his old school-fellow.
Dr. Duncan was anything but a religious man, but the idea came to him then to do a thing which he had not perhaps done for several years.
Recent circumstances had made the strong wilful man feel as a little child again. He knelt down by the bedside of his friend and prayed for him, or rather did something very like it; for his thoughts as he knelt were not framed into distinct language.
Nowordscame to his mind, but he was filled with a vague aspiration, a sense of his own weakness, a consciousness of higher things, a confident belief that the Universal Mercy would have a pity for his poor friend infinitely greater than was even his own pity—a prayer without a petition, without words, or even distinct ideas, but perchance a true prayer for all that.
When the barrister came to consciousness, he found himself lying in a bed in an unfamiliar place, a small, light-coloured room, with only the most indispensable articles of furniture in it. His brain was too deranged by the effect of the poison to allow him to speculate where he might be and how he got there. To think was agony, and sent his head whirling round with a dizzy sickness and horror.
His reason returned to him in fitful glimpses only, and then he realised that he was in a room, in bed, and that people who were strangers to him came in and out. But all around him was changing and indistinct and full of confused noise, and the bed and room seemed to shake and heave beneath him as if he were on some small craft tossing on a stormy sea.
Then all the real faded away from his vision, and his mind set forth to travel through a land of phantoms.
The delusions of delirium vary much with the individual. The finer the fabric of the mind, the more vivid, the less gross become the wandering fancies; and all the learning and experiences and ideas of its past are wrought by the disordered brain into long and complicated histories of agony, all the store-house of the memory is ransacked for instruments of torture.
Again, it may have happened in his case that the poison administered by Susan Riley in some way modified the effects of the alcohol; but, whatever the cause, his delirium did notassume the form generally produced by drink. He passed through a long series of strange and highly imaginative dreams, all full of terrible and consistent adventures of calamity; and the key-note of every one of these dreams wasWOMAN. In every one was some beautiful evil female form that tempted him on into varieties of new and indescribably horrible ruin. The dominant idea, the morbid bias of his mind, coloured each delusion.
A desolate coast in the extreme sad North; along the sea stretches a narrow beach of black rocks; behind this tower huge mountains, bare of any vegetation, cloven by black ravines streaked here and there with the ghastly white snow. It is the region of eternal death, of endless winter sprinkling daily snows to be the sport of the Arctic hurricane.
A leaden-coloured sea moans incessantly on the dismal beach, and on it sail fast to the southward, silently, great icebergs riven from the mountains by the storms. And beyond the lea of the shore, the sea breaks and shivers beneath the keen blast that sweeps down the dayless gorges from the awful glaciers. And there is no horizon anywhere around, for above is a sky of rolling clouds through which the sun never shines, and the mists of the mountain-tops mingle with the clouds of the sky, and so, too, does the sullen haze that lies on the grey sea. It is the region of death—no life, no light, no love.
On the black rocks between the mountains and the sea, a wretched man is lying. The deadly cold wind blows through him, but he cannot die. It seems to him that he has lain there for ages, and will lie there for evermore, away from all things human; and there is not even so much as a flower to comfort the castaway—no life, no light, no love.
Of a sudden, a faint pink flush illumines the northern sky.
Hope comes back doubtfully to his despairing soul. He raises himself on his elbows, and looks with straining eyes up the icy north wind at the new light.
The rosy light deepens and collects into a form, first thin and vague as a ghost, then gradually becoming distinct and solid.
There is standing before him the figure of a woman, a gigantic woman, whose head reaches to the clouds—a Titan. Her beauty is beyond the beauty of earth. Her massive rosy limbs are more delicious than ever Greek sculptor dreamt of, and her long, fair locks blow out all over the heavens, crowning her head with a golden halo.
Her lips are red and voluptuous, and pleasure sparkles in her eyes.
She does not look down at the man, but gazes far away over the mountains and the seas towards the South.
A breath of hope thaws the despair in his soul. Life and light and love are coming back to the regions of death.
He lies there at her feet and looks up, and his spirit is filled with the sense of her beauty. His soul is faint with an impossible love for her, a love greater than the awe he feels in the presence of the goddess. He lies prone on the ground and longs that her great white feet may crush him, and that he may die at once. To be killed by her were sweet!
Oh, that he were not a pigmy! that he, too, were a god, and might become fit mate of hers, might know her love!
His desire, his intense aspiration reaches her. The Titan looks down upon him with a smile whose meaning he cannot understand; then she stoops and touches his heart with her hand.
At that moment his wish commences to be realised. He feels that his body is extending rapidly; his stature is becoming that of a god.
But now a fantastic and horrible idea seizes him. As he grows larger and larger, his senses, his consciousness, spreading through the mass, dilute lessen. As he increases in bulk, vitality diminishes; the numbness and coldness of death comes gradually on him.
As his senses dim, the Titan woman fades away into mist, and all is darkness. He can no longer hear the sound of the waves, and his body still increases till it becomes as a vast mountain, the extremes of which are so far off as to be almost out of sensation.
Possessed by this fearful delusion, mathematical calculations kept running through the barrister's disordered brain—distracting sums ever repeating themselves, and he could not shake them off.
Life, the wild train of his reasoning ran on continually. "Life filling one body—the body doubles in size—then the life is half as strong. Now my body is three times as big—life is three times as weak—now five times—six times—now a hundred times. Oh, this numbness is reaching my heart! Oh, this horrible, horrible death!" and his frame shook and his muscles were drawn up in hard knots, and great beads of sweat rolled down his agonised features.
Then a hand that waited on him unseen took a cup in which some white crystals had been dissolved and placed it to his lips.
As his teeth rattled against it, he drank the draught fiercely, as if for life, though he knew not what he did.
His delusions then became softer, even happy, as of one under the influence of opium.
He saw around him an immense landscape—plains and rivers and hills spreading for hundreds of leagues beneath a blue sky—a nature bathed in a pellucid atmosphere that lent all a beauty beyond earth. Scattered over the plain were many cities, and by merely willing it he found himself walking within any of them—strange, beautiful cities of bright colour, whose banner-hung streets were thronged with processions of people clad in a medieval costume. The quaintness of an olden time was over all.
All these processions tripped on to one tune, a tune to which they sang a song in an unknown language—a song low, monotonous, sweet; and the church bells rang out the same tune perpetually, and the very air shook to it, and the trees waved to it, and so did the banners that hung from the houses; and all his own words and thoughts ran on ever to the same jingle without his power to prevent it.
Then he turned off from the main into the side streets, tempted by the glance of a white-faced woman with a face of marvellous beauty, fascinating, yet ominous, with immovable, inscrutable expression of features.
Knowing that he was plunging into danger, horror, death, he yet followed recklessly, led on by the magic of the woman. And from one side street she would turn off at right angles into another, and from that to another, and so on; and each street was narrower than the last and more gloomy. The brightness and loveliness of the main thoroughfares was not in these. There were no longer the gaily-dressed throngs and the harmony of that universal tune; but these streets were silent, deserted, with dark, moss-grown pavements, in which here and there were pools of black water. The grim houses rose on either side storey upon storey of black, hideous stones, ancient, rotten, crumbling with age; and each storey overlapped the lower, till the upmost of either side of the street met, high, high up, rickety structures of rotten wood from which black rags flaunted. And for thirty feet or so up, there were no windows to these houses—bare, leaning walls alone. After that were the windows, irregular in size and in position, with wooden balconies running along them carved into shapes of grinning monsters.
As he advanced from narrower street to narrower, the silence and the sense of impending horror intensified. And the woman brought him to a crevice half-way up in a sort of battlement; a recess which seemed to be her bower wherein to receive her lovers—a foul recess where was a pile of bones, and where thedark mould was discoloured with soaking blood. Then she stopped, turned and looked him in the face; for the first time her features moved—relaxed into a smile, he fled shrieking.
Again in those horrible narrow stifling alleys, which became darker and filthier as he went on; and though he met no one in them, yet he saw that from each of the innumerable windows there looked out at him the beautiful, melancholy, deadly-white face of a woman, with black eyes as of a basilisk burning out of it.
None of the women spoke, or moved, or beckoned, or looked glad or wroth.
But he knew, as he passed by them, that they came down the stairs of their houses behind him and followed him. He could not see them or hear them, but he felt their terrible presence. They poured out behind him, silent, invisible crowds ever increasing.
He rushed on, but the streets were still ever narrower and loftier; oh, the deadly fear that was on him, the desire to find escape to the broad, bright streets again, and flee this horrible thing!
But he could not—it was not to be—not broader but ever narrower were the foul alleys that he hurried through. Would he never come out to the light? Was he altogether cut off? Would he reach some blind alley and be at the mercy of the pursuing crowd?
At last the streets were so narrow that the houses altogether joined. He found himself no longer on the stone pavements, but going through the crazy houses themselves. He passed along old wooden corridors that shook and crumbled beneath his tread, while below were black depths of rushing water—open sewers whose filth was alive with fearful reptiles; then along great galleries, and through rooms; door after door, yet no escape for the phantom-pursued wretch. And the rooms were of all characters, but all deserted and all terrible to thefancy. Now he was in a garret with noisome walls, with their dirty paper torn, waving in a cold wind, and hideous vermin crawling over it; now in a magnificent boudoir with sofas of purple pile and great mirrors, and a thousand nicknacks glittering with diamonds, a chamber heavy with voluptuous odours, fit nest for some loveliest, young Hetaira or Cleopatra's self, but always with some unspeakable loathsome thing in it; then into cellars, foul charnel-houses strewed with bones—bones of men that a voice within him told had been former victims of the horror, even as he should be—and so on and on and on before the nameless terror, fleeing from the unseen women that were ever noiselessly following.
At last he felt a breath of fresh air on his cheek. O, God, was it escape at last?
No! No! He was at the end of an alley, but it terminated on the foul mud of a river bank, a broad, dark river—no escape, and the crowd behind neared—neared—they had surrounded him—seized him....
Once more the precious crystals calmed the overwrought brain for awhile.
The mouth of a pit—a pit of endless depths of suffocating darkness, and this darkness and the suffocating poisonous density of the air of it increased with the depth.
A pit of indefinite breadth, it might be a hundred miles or a hundred yards or of no breadth at all, for it was in a realm beyond the limits of space.
In the middle of the pit—that is at an equal distance from the edges, and on a level with them—the wretch was poised.
He breathed labouriously—a difficult painful expiration, an agonising inspiration; and as he breathed out the air he sank—sank into the darkness of the pit—down into the suffocating darkness, into horror and death.
Then he gasped for life; drank the difficult thick air and rose again to the surface; with each expiration sinking, with each inspiration rising to the lighter air of the surface.
There was present to him all the agony of the drowning with a horror such as no death can give. But when he rose, he was not able to stay above the pit long; for he could not hold his breath—after a few minutes he was forced to breathe out—breathe out and sink down—down into that unutterable horror.
And the whole mouth of the pit was domed with a gigantic dome of millions of human heads, grinning, laughing, jeering at the wretch; mocking him that he could not stay on the surface but must breathe out and sink again—the heads of beautiful, bad women, some that he recognised as erst the companions of his orgies, the hideous heads too of satyr-like old men, that shook with palsy as they grinned with lust, in which he seemed to recognize his own distorted likeness; and heads of horrible things not describable in the language of the sane world.
So up and down he rose and fell between the grinning faces and the suffocating darkness, each time weaker, more unable to fight upwards to life, each time sinking deeper, staying longer in the stifling depths.
Once more the hand that ministered unseen, placed the glass to his chattering teeth; the crystals again did their blessed work, and his delirious fancy changed. He was in an old ivy-grown parsonage in a pleasant, western village among hills and apple-orchards; a child once more in his old home. He wandered up the valley, by the crystal trout-streams, between the heathery hills; a child so glad, so pure, and he wept bitterly for the very delight of the flowers and all the beauty of the land, wept, though so simple and innocent; with a foreboding of future sin and misery and vain, vain, regrets.
Then the clouds darkened and gathered, and a girl walked towards him by the river bank, a beautiful girl with golden hairand purple eyes, with a great sorrow in her young face—and she passed, seeing him not, turning not aside, though he stretched out his hands in passionate yearning and pleading—but he could not step one step towards her, nor could he cry out to her to stay, though he knew that she alone could save him.
Then another woman followed, beautiful also, but with the eyes of a snake; and she saw him and looked into him till his heart chilled and his veins tingled, but with a terrible fascination. To look at her, to love her was death; but he would look and love notwithstanding, and die with a laugh of joy on his lips.
"This is the poor wretch, Mary. He is asleep now. Do you think you can recognize who it is?"
It was Susan who spoke; she and Mary were standing alone by the bed-side of the unconscious Hudson.
Mary scanned his features closely—a look of pity on her face; but in reply to the other's question, shook her head—she did not know him.
"Yet from what he said this morning he evidently knows you," went on Susan.
"I cannot remember the face—and yet there is something in it"—Mary said, doubtfully, as she paused to consider again the altered features.
"I think I know what he is," interrupted Susan. "I made out from his ravings that he was a barrister."
"A barrister!" cried Mary, and she started back and her cheek blanched. Yes! she knew him now. And was this poor wretch so changed, so degraded, indeed the bright, young man who had first befriended her?
"Oh, Susan, I know who it is now. Poor fellow! poor fellow! I have not seen him for years—Then he was so different, so noble. Oh! what could have caused this? He was my first friendin the world, when I had no others and was sorely in need of one! Oh! what can I do? what can I do?" and she wrung her hands with anguish. "Oh, Susan! if I had but known of this."
Susan interrupted her. "If you had but known you might have prevented this. Yes! I dare say."
"What did the doctor say, Susan? Will he recover?"
"The doctor says the case is a bad one; but then the man is young, so there is hope of recovery, unless—unless something happens to complicate the mischief."
So strange was the tone in which the woman uttered these last words, that Mary turned round and looked at her, and felt a great terror creep over her when she perceived the glitter in her eye and the sinister smile about her mouth.
Even a coward will become recklessly brave when possessed by some strong passion. Susan was at heart a coward, yet she now did what she well knew was an extremely imprudent thing. She could not control herself; her malice overcame her fear of consequences. She so hated Mary, the girl who she believed had robbed her of two lovers, that she could not resist the dear temptation of torturing her, of watching her agony as she played with her feelings like a cat with a mouse, though she was aware how perilous the amusement was. So she went on with a voice that could scarcely conceal her delightful sense of triumphant cruelty.
"Now, Mary, listen carefully to what I am saying—I know who this old lover of yours is. We of the Inner Six know everything. Nothing can escape our vigilance—no treason especially"—and she looked earnestly into the other eyes. "This Mr. Thomas Hudson—you see I know him—has just come into a considerable fortune—poor fool, if he had but known it! His uncle died two days ago. It's a pity you did not know that, is it not, Mary?"
"I don't know what you mean," exclaimed the girl, "andI don't understand how you can speak in so heartless a manner. Has this man ever done you any injury?"
"That is not the question, my dear Mary," said the woman in bland tones. "Now follow me carefully and don't interrupt. This Mr. Hudson, you see, is now entitled to a large landed estate. Now Mr. Hudson may marry, may have children, may leave tyrants after him to hold the people's land. We should have to remove those children, should we not, Mary?"
Mary made no reply, so Susan, after a pause, continued: "But, on the other hand, if Mr. Hudson happened to die now, the estate would go to a certain old gentleman who is over seventy. This old gentleman is unmarried, and is hardly likely to beget children if he does marry; so when he dies in his turn, there will be no descendant of his to take the land, and so it will revert to the State—that is, unless he dies before this new Landed Property Act is passed, and becomes law—an improbable contingency; as next session of Parliament will certainly settle that—you follow me, don't you, Mary?"
Mary, scarcely knowing what she did, replied with an affirmative motion of the head, but she said nothing.
Susan proceeded: "Now, Mary, this is the question: which will be the better plan, to put this Thomas Hudson out of the way now, and so secure this property to the people by one stroke, or to wait till by-and-bye and then contrive, not without much danger and difficulty, perhaps, to put away his children? I consult you because I look on you as one of the cleverest members of the Sisterhood. Let us have the benefit of your opinion."
The malicious woman never took her glittering eyes off the girl as she said these words, and waited for an answer.
But the girl only trembled, and turned deadly pale, staring at the other with fixed dilated eyes. She could not speak, for she felt a strange numbness creeping over her whole body, gradually intensifying, and paralysing her every sense.
Susan left her in suspense for a minute or so, gloating over the agony of her rival, and then continued in a cold voice, calmer and more deliberate than most women would employ when discussing how a gown was to be made up, or some such equally important matter:
"To me it seems absurd to miss such a glorious chance. What an opportunity, too, of watching the working of Jane's poison! So I have—look here, dear—" She raised one sleeve of the man's shirt, and pointed to a small blue spot, surrounded by a slightly inflamed circle, which stood out in contrast to the white flesh.
Susan then looked up with a smile into the girl's face, but when she perceived the expression on it, she felt frightened at what she had done; for Mary was gazing straight in front of her with a fixed stupid stare, as if not understanding what she heard or saw. Susan dropped the man's arm and ran towards her, just in time to support her as she fell fainting to the ground.
Having now satisfied her malice, the cowardly element of the woman's nature came to the front again. She shook with fear, and cursed her folly at having told this thing to Mary; why, the girl in her hysterical weakness, or in the delirium that might come of this shock, might easily reveal the whole transaction.
She laid Mary down on the floor, and stood staring at her without rendering any assistance for a few minutes. In her fear, she had lost all her presence of mind. Then somewhat recovering herself, she was about to employ measures to bring the girl back to consciousness, when her eyes happened to fall on the barrister.
One of his eyes was covered by the bandage across his forehead, but the other was open wide, staring fixedly at her out of the pale face, while his swollen lips moved, as if trying to give utterance to words, but unable to do so.
The sudden sight of this, the suspicion that he had perhaps overheard and understood all that she had revealed to Mary, completely unnerved her, and in the shock of the moment she screamed aloud, so that Dr. Duncan and one or two others hearing the cry ran into the ward.