“... right under the fall, and as secret as you could wish. You can see through, like as if you were behind a window and the rain coming down in sheets outside, and there’s no more sound to be heard than with that. It’s just shut away from there, the noise I mean, and all you can hear is a drone like a hive, and all you can see is the trees and the hills pulled crooked, like we saw ourselves in that looking-glass in the confectionier’s at Swanage don’t you remember how we laughed George? There is a fellow here Antonio Geoletti that acts as our guide and cetera and that would give his ears I expect to know of it for the sake of tips. But I’ve a fancy to keep it to myself such fun, and not tell anyone of it unless perhaps you-know-who, and perhaps if he’s good my tutormisterCecil Mansel Delane oh lawk!—but wait a minute. Geoletti’s a great rascal but I like him—always a little attracted to rogues you know George, and he shall hear of it too before we go. But now I’ve got something to tell you only don’t blab to the Governor. George, my boy, I’ve found out that Delane isn’t my tutor’s name at all, but Dalston is—Mark Dalston. There was a young fellow Bruno Travers passed through here, and recognised him for a master he’d been under at some Grammar School or other Clapham I think it was, and he called him to his face and Delane had to own up. There was only us three together, and my tutor admitted that his name was Dalston right enough, and that he’d only taken up the other for its seeming more marketable to a man with his ambitions, sounded good familyish and all that, and he asked us not to give him away and we promised. But Travers didn’t believe a word of his reason, and told me so in private. He said he’d go nap that it was to escape the consequences of an intrigue with some girl in Clapham, this Mark Dalston being a pretty rapid lot, and known for it to some of the young gentlemen that he coached. I don’t know, but I’ve had my suspicions, especially in his making those eyes at you-know-who for her looks and the rest. But mum’s the word. I shall want all my nerve when the time comes for an explanation and it can’t be long now, oh lawky lawky!—Your affectionate friend,Charles Skene.”
“... right under the fall, and as secret as you could wish. You can see through, like as if you were behind a window and the rain coming down in sheets outside, and there’s no more sound to be heard than with that. It’s just shut away from there, the noise I mean, and all you can hear is a drone like a hive, and all you can see is the trees and the hills pulled crooked, like we saw ourselves in that looking-glass in the confectionier’s at Swanage don’t you remember how we laughed George? There is a fellow here Antonio Geoletti that acts as our guide and cetera and that would give his ears I expect to know of it for the sake of tips. But I’ve a fancy to keep it to myself such fun, and not tell anyone of it unless perhaps you-know-who, and perhaps if he’s good my tutormisterCecil Mansel Delane oh lawk!—but wait a minute. Geoletti’s a great rascal but I like him—always a little attracted to rogues you know George, and he shall hear of it too before we go. But now I’ve got something to tell you only don’t blab to the Governor. George, my boy, I’ve found out that Delane isn’t my tutor’s name at all, but Dalston is—Mark Dalston. There was a young fellow Bruno Travers passed through here, and recognised him for a master he’d been under at some Grammar School or other Clapham I think it was, and he called him to his face and Delane had to own up. There was only us three together, and my tutor admitted that his name was Dalston right enough, and that he’d only taken up the other for its seeming more marketable to a man with his ambitions, sounded good familyish and all that, and he asked us not to give him away and we promised. But Travers didn’t believe a word of his reason, and told me so in private. He said he’d go nap that it was to escape the consequences of an intrigue with some girl in Clapham, this Mark Dalston being a pretty rapid lot, and known for it to some of the young gentlemen that he coached. I don’t know, but I’ve had my suspicions, especially in his making those eyes at you-know-who for her looks and the rest. But mum’s the word. I shall want all my nerve when the time comes for an explanation and it can’t be long now, oh lawky lawky!—Your affectionate friend,
Charles Skene.”
My hand, with the letter in it, dropped to my side. Luck! Was this still Luck, or a fierce and merciless fatality? It had answered clear on my cry for light long uttered—an echo returned from a vast distance. “To escape the consequences of an intrigue with some girl.” Oh! an excellent shot, Mr Travers—an intrigue with Lady Skene,néeCarey, that was to say. It was Dalston himself all the while, and I had been looking over his head for the principal. There could be no doubt about it. Here was the explanation of the beast’s hold on that wretched lady—a grip doubly dastard, since, it would seem, he had repudiated his responsibility for her shame only so long as he saw the opposite to any profit in admitting it. Could there be in hell a hound more abject?
And to what, but a day earlier, had my inquiries been tending—to proof of what relationship with this infamous creature? That fable, thank God, was discounted before even realised by me. And yet for what alternative? There was none that I could see. If he was not trading upon her belief that I was his child, their child, what subtler knowledge helped him to her bleeding? Could it be one that turned upon the question of my apparent resurrection from the grave? Was I, perhaps, a changeling? It seemed incredible. To whose possible interest could it have been to substitute a living child for a dead one? Not to his assuredly—a piece of good fortune it would have appeared to him in those days, that fruit of his villainy perished and removed. To his victim’s, then? to her mother’s? There was more plausibility there. Yet I could not conceive Lady Skene a party to any such fraud; and yet again his discovery of the imposition, had it been committed, would not have weakened his hold on her—rather substantiated it.Hadshe done this thing, or her mother for her, in order to levy false tax on the father of her dead child?
It was a horrible thought. All night I sat out by the fire, hating it, and dismissing, and returning to it. The coincidence of this Dalston’s double connection with the family hardly occurred to me. And yet it was a coincidence, as strange as any that the annals of villainy can record. But then Coincidence is the father of Luck.
This strange, strange letter! this old young voice from the clouds, dropping upon me all in an unexpected moment like a ghostly message from Thibet. It must have its meaning in the sequences of Fate—must have been meant to have. That the fellow should have been young Skene’s tutor—his monitor, great God! a vulgar intrigant, with a past, hardly past indeed, and caught, in despite of it, making eyes at “you-know-who”! You-know-who? How odd and plaintive sounded the arch allusion down all that flight of years, like a strange voice laughing very faint in distant attics. Poor little you-know-who! What had been thy pretty name and station, and to whose confidence was this cryptic reference to thee entrusted?
I bent on the thought, and picked up the fallen book from the floor. It was one of those with which Lord Skene had furnished me from the library of his deceased young neighbour—a volume of “Armadale” by Wilkie Collins. I remember it well, a story containing a mystery something analogous with that which was vexing my life. Turning to the title-page, I found inscribed on it a name, George Thesiger—the George, without doubt, of the letter. And he, too, was dead—no hope of enlightenment there—had closed the book perhaps for the last time on a mystery more real and tragic than any contained in its pages. They must have been close friends, those two. I put the book gently away, and fell into frowning thought again. Not all I could learn or discover had brought me one step nearer the truth of my own identity. I might trace out others; myself I could not trace. My name, like Peter Schlemihl’s body, threw no shadow.
I suppose, in the end, I must have fallen asleep where I sat, for I was suddenly conscious of the sound of voices outside the lodge. I rubbed my eyes—it was broad daylight in the room, and shiveringly cold. I staggered to my feet, a stale spectre of nightmare, and walked unsteadily to the window. There was a thin fleece of snow fallen on the grass, and sharply defined on it stood the figures of Johnny and Miss Christmas.
Now I don’t know what influence was at work in me; but quite suddenly and strangely, seeing the girl, my eyes flushed hot and wet. I set my teeth, and gave myself a good curse for my folly; but there it was, and I could not but be conscious of a fierce pleasure in it. I suppose I had been a bit overwrought—spectre-ridden; and this vision touched me like balm. I felt like one who wakes from a dream of damnation to hear the birds singing. She was so young and happy and fresh; so detached from the sordid realism of my story; so remote from me at last. I had never thought her worth my consideration until she was risen above it; and now I was feeling like a child, who, having wandered in the track of some absorbing interest, wakes to the sudden realisation that he is lost. It was just the primal need bubbling in me. My mother was taken from me, true; but perhaps the more for that did I wail for a skirt to cling to.
The two seemed to be in intimate talk, and Johnny’s strained squeak of a laugh reached me irresistibly. A misty sun jewelled the snow, and there were flowers sparkling, and fountains showering, and the rich throats of birds choiring among the trees—but all only in seeming; for love full-hearted has but to look down, and there is a garden sprung about her feet.
Suddenly it struck me, Had this little diffidence been so wrought through with passion as to have dared, on short acquaintance, the most audacious throw a man can stake his all on? If it were so, it would seem that fortune had favoured the bold, for the couple appeared to be already on terms as happy as familiar. And why not? Johnny was no nameless, penniless bastard; but a lord of acres, with a stake in the land and a right to sue to honour. He was my friend, moreover, and not to be grudged by me any such triumph. I trusted, I saw no reason to doubt, that they would prove an excellent match; and, in the midst of that very Christian reflection, was planning how to get rid of the little man with all possible despatch.
Why?
Il y a quelque chose qui couve, says a French idiom.
Now all in a moment I realised that I was in a measure spying—a trick grown obnoxious to me. I turned from the window, and went resolutely out into the open. They saw me at once, and Johnny hurried up with his greeting, and a rather shameful face, I thought.
“I was coming to see you, and met Miss Christmas in the grounds,” he said. “We supposed you were still away, old fellow, as there was no sign of your moving in there.”
“Why should there be at this hour?”
“This hour? Don’t you know it’s near midday?”
“No, by the Lord—is it! What a sleep I’ve had.”
I turned to Miss Christmas.
“Did you want me for anything?” I asked.
“No,” she said, in one hard little icicle of a word. She turned to Johnny, and the sunlight broke on her face.
“I must go back now,” she said, “but I daresay we shall meet again.”
I went to her as she turned, and spoke low in her ear—two words, “I’m sorry.” She appeared to start; but she gathered her skirts up, and went off through the woods, without an acknowledgment of any sort. I took Johnny’s arm persuasively, as we walked back to the lodge together.
“Am I to congratulate you, old man?”
He flushed to fire.
“Don’t bait me, Dick. I—I don’t think I can bear it. If a year’s devotion would win me just the permission to kiss her little hand.”
“No more than that?”
“No more. What right haveIto dream of such a thing!”
He was so obviously moved that I had not the heart to banter him, if I had the inclination. I don’t know about that. I felt of a sudden some sympathy with his diffidence, and all on my own account. What right had he, certainly? Material fortune was not to stand for everything in this world. I was in no mind to let it in my misanthropy; in no mood, with my new sense of independence, to allow myself to be relegated to the ranks of the of-no-accounts. I could still be a dog in the manger, it seemed. And yet my heart was soft with a superior affection for this old chum of mine.
“Johnny,” I said, as I laid and lit the fire, “are you still in the mind to help me?”
“Am Inot!” he answered. “Only tell me how.”
I turned round, inspired, with the match in my hand.
“Watch old Pugsley.”
He gave a chirp.
“The parson?”
“Yes, Pugsley.”
He beamed on me delighted.
“Of course,” he said; “why didn’t I ever think of that? If I could only catch those two talking together now, I might get at something valuable.”
“Which two?” I asked.
It appeared that he meant Dalston and Pugsley. Somehow he had got it into his head that they were in league to keep me out of the Skene succession, by pretending that I was not the lawful son of my mother. So much for my power of trenchant summarising. It did not really matter a bit, so long as I could put him harmlessly out of the way. My shot for the parson was quite a happy one. Pugsley would never apprehend that he was being watched; and if he did suspect it, his conceit would put it down to the fascination of his apostolic person.
“Very well,” I said. “Pugsley’s your quarry. Don’t wander much from those preserves. Besides, you know, it will employ you about the neighbourhood, and you’d like that.”
“Of course I should.”
“But there mustn’t be any suspicion of our colluding. You must keep away fromme, and only communicate by letter.”
He jumped to his feet in excitement.
“I’ve got it. We’ll have a code. I’ll telegraph to you, Dick.”
“All right. Hit out your code.”
I left him presently busy over it, full of a shrewd importance. There was a purpose I had in my mind, some information I was hot to obtain, and my eagerness emboldened me to seek it at headquarters.
Lord Skene received me very genially in his study. He was dressed in a suit of new tweeds, and looked as fresh and dapper as a boy on his honeymoon.
“Well, Gaskett,” he said, “what is it?”
I held out to him, title-page open, the book in which I had found the letter the night before.
“Yes?” he said, with a sort of curious dryness. “George Thesiger.”
“He’s dead, sir?”
“Yes, he’s dead.”
“May I ask, sir—pray forgive me—was he a great friend of——”
I glanced up at the portrait—the bright young face hanging on the wall opposite him.
“Of Charlie’s?” he said, but with a certain restraint. “O yes! Charlie and he were immense friends.”
I was silent a moment, struggling with my difficulty. He appeared to watch me, even with a painful interest.
“What’s on your mind, Richard?” he said at last.
The kind tone, the unwonted familiarity, loosened my speech. After all, was I not striking for the honour, the happiness of this good soul, to whom I owed all that of genial tolerance which had accepted and endured me?
“Can you tell me, sir,” I burst out with, in broken sentences—“will you tell me—I know I have no right to ask—the—the circumstances of—I really have my reasons, sir—I would not venture otherwise—the—the pain—and the impertinence——”
He put his hand across his eyes, and answered me quietly without looking up.
“What is it you wish to know?”
“Only this, sir,” I said. “The man—his tutor—Delane——”
“Yes?”
“Did you ever see him?”
“No. I was on circuit at the time. He was engaged by my sister, Lady Thorold, in answer to an advertisement.”
“And Lady Thorold is dead too?”
“Yes.”
Seeing I did not answer, he added voluntarily after a moment:
“Delane was the last to—to see and speak with my boy. They had parted on the hillside, and Charlie went on alone—a reckless fellow: always a reckless fellow. The man himself I never saw or spoke to. His depositions were sent me by Lady Thorold, who represented me out there. I was too ill to go myself. When I did, Delane had disappeared beyond tracing—not that I could have any object in wishing to see him, beyond a morbid sickness to dwell upon things best accepted and forgotten. They had been on the best of terms, as I understood, and Lady Thorold was struck with his genuine grief over the catastrophe. What makes you curious about him, Gaskett?”
What, indeed? This man in sympathy with grief and stricken hearts! this abject cur a disinterested mourner! What made me curious? How could I answer? It had been hardly in expectation of learning anything to Delane’s discredit. Scoundrels, to the simplest understanding, do not prevail by making a boast of their characteristic qualities. Yet I had been curious; and how to explain myself without self-committal was the difficulty. I sorrowed for this unsuspecting faith; I sorrowed for the wretched woman, whose sin, long past and long repented, was threatening to engulf in ruin all that it had sinned to gain. And yet, for some incalculable reason, I felt myself destined to be the minister of that Nemesis, whether to launch or withhold, to baffle or direct, I could not tell. But a sense of unrealised, indefinite power drove me on. I dwelt a little on my answer before I spoke.
“Iamcurious, sir. I will tell you the truth. I found a letter—or part of a letter—in this book last night. It was written by your son—apparently to Mr Thesiger himself—and there were some references in it to Mr Delane. They set me speculating, that’s all. I will beg you, sir, not to ask me to show you the letter—not just at present anyhow. I don’t fancy, from what I can gather, that the man was altogether what you supposed him to be. But I would rather pursue my inquiries independently; I would rather bring down my quarry before boasting of my skill.”
He was obviously startled and perturbed. He shifted some papers on his table, and his lips were not quite steady as he looked up at me.
“Quarry and skill!” said he. “This sounds all very formidable, Gaskett. I will not ask to see the letter, since you wish it, but——”
“I believe, sir,” I said impulsively, “that the man was a villain.”
He buried his face in his hands a minute.
“What do you want me to do?” he said suddenly. “When do you propose enlightening me?”
“When I have my case, sir.” He smiled faintly. “I ask you in the meantime to accept me for your counsel, and to believe that it is your interests alone which I have at heart.”
A longish silence ensued. Then he sighed.
“It is all very mysterious; but—have it as you will. You—you won’t, I trust, keep me longer than necessary in this state of suspense?”
Though he essayed to dismiss the matter lightly, I knew that I had greatly disturbed him. The dogs of doubt, of suspicion, of some formless apprehension, were awake in him. It grieved me to the soul so to leave him; but I felt that for the moment I had no choice. I must at least face his unhappy wife, offer her the chance of defence, explanation, before I decided upon my course.
I found Johnny triumphant in the completion of his code. It was, numerically, simplicity itself; but the ingenuity of its parts was devastating. Thus, for example, Dalston was Dalston junction, was points, was a pointer, was a dog. ThereforeDogrepresented Dalston.
Pugsley was a pug, was a pug-nose, was tip-tilted. ThereforeTiprepresented Pugsley.
Miss Christmas, of course, was Noel, was no-hell, which naturally was heaven, andHeavenwas Miss Christmas.
Lord Skene was a skein, was woolly, was a sheep, was a baa. ThereforeBaastood for Lord Skene.
His lady, by the same reasoning, was an ewe, and you being not-I, was knotty, which the point at issue was. ThereforePointrepresented Lady Skene.
I myself was Gaskett, was (what I hadn’t known; but Johnny was a learned and travelled little person) a piece of canvas used in furling sails, was a fastening, was aButton—and there I stop. I hadn’t the faintest conception of the use to which he proposed converting all these symbols; but he was very convinced of their necessity, and so I let the question go by default, and accepted a key.
He left me during the afternoon, to return, provisionally, to his inn in Footover, and I regret to say that I was never relieved over anything so much as over his departure. It was agreed that, until further notice from me, we were to hold no communication with one another unless in the code, and on that understanding we shook hands affectionately at the gate, and parted, strangers, beyond it.
Dear fervent little man. I wish I could have repaid your devotion as it deserved.
AsI turned to go in by the gate, a figure, coming hastily up the road from Market Grazing, made a gesture as if to detain me. I paused in surprise; and in another minute the woman, for a woman it was, had hurried to where I stood, and stopped. She was panting heavily, and she put a hand on her breast as if forcibly to control its spasms. She was very thin, and dowdy in appearance, and had on a thick grey veil, pulled down over her face. But, for all the close secrecy of that screen, I knew her at once. It was Mrs Dalston.
I suppose I ought to have felt some discomposure in her presence, seeing the nature of my thoughts about her husband. I was conscious of nothing, however, but an increased sense of the aversion with which she had at the first inspired me. There was something antipathetic to my nature in this barren reticence, in this material and intellectual threadbareness, one might call it, especially as contrasted with the showy qualities of her partner. I could not dissociate in the two the essential squalor, whether of soul or person, which goes with crime. It was part of the eternal tragedy of her colourlessness, it was a heart-rending consequence of her malleability, that she was thus moulded to repel where she most sought for sympathy. But how could I know that?
Now, to be conscious of these feelings in myself, and of the certainty that her hidden eyes, holding me at a disadvantage, were probing and interpreting them, filled me with a sort of helpless anger. I might even have been sharp, plain with her under the irritation, had she not suddenly taken the initiative. With a swift movement, she put a hand upon my arm, looking the while, quick and nervous, about her; and then she entreated me in a hoarse, small voice:
“Leave him alone; don’t watch him; what are you thinking of? He’ll not let his plans miscarry for such as you. I warn you. You’d better take my warning.”
I was so shocked, so dumfoundered, that for a moment I could answer her not a word. Here, it seemed, was the moral of all my self-pluming astuteness. But the lesson gripped me on the instant.
“You speak of Mr Dalston?” I said.
“Yes,” she answered. “He’s gone to London, or I shouldn’t have dared to venture this.” Even so, it seemed, the terrific spectre of him stalked her fancy, for the motion of her head never ceased to suggest a fearful watchfulness. “He knows that you are observing him—plotting against him, perhaps. There is never anything hidden from him long. You’ll be a fool if you don’t desist.”
“Why should he fear observation?” I muttered some commonplace about conscience.
“Why?” she said. “How can I tell? I know he’s here to carry out some scheme of force or fraud. I know he’s got some claim on Lady Skene. It’s all nothing to me. Where he goes, I go; and what he wills, that thing comes to happen. Do you wish to die yet—horribly, secretly, and no one guess how or where?”
“I neither wish nor intend to.”
“Intend? That sounds brave. You’ll need some bravery.”
“Is he capable of it—going to those lengths? Why do you tell me all this?”
“For yourself—not for him.”
“How have I earned your consideration?”
She seemed to look at me intently. Her hands sought my arms; but I backed instinctively from their touch. She stopped at once, and I was sorry. But not even this new aspect of her could conquer my repugnance.
“I have borne children,” she broke out strangely, “and they died—one after another they died, because I willed they should. I could be stronger than him in some things. And he begged and prayed me; but I would not; I willed them dead, and they died—each as it came. They were the atonement for that life. It’s spirit seems to rise and beckon to me from the past. O, my God! and you ask me how you’ve earned my favour. Who was your mother, who were your parents?”
Her voice rose wildly. She held out her arms to me with a passionate gesture. And now I understood. The poor driven creature was insane—struck mad, perhaps, in some sudden consciousness of the true nature of her bondage to a devil. I must humour, not abuse her.
“You say you tell me all this for myself,” I said, standing quiet and unresponsive. “What, if for myself, I neither fear nor apprehend; can boast a will as strong, perhaps, as his; am resolved to go forward and expose him for the thing he is? I take the privilege of your confidence. I do not flatter.”
She appeared to listen again intently. When she answered, there seemed a note as of some under-triumph thrilling through her voice:
“You will go on? You will not be dissuaded?”
“I will not—no.”
She caught her hands together; her breath came quick; she took an eager step towards me, and spoke in broken sentences:
“I thought—I hoped, even, it might be so. Listen, then, I’ll help you to your end. So like, my God! it seems a Providence. Dead! Yes, but how? he was going to tell me when Mark came in.”
“Hush, madam! hush! Who was dead?”
“My baby—my darling. He might have been like you now—your age—his father’s son. It was twenty years ago. I had a nurse—Ellen Trimmer was her name—she was killed in a street accident; but before she died she made a confession to the man she had been going to marry, and he came on with it to me. I had heard just so much, and then Mark spoke. He had been hidden behind the curtains of my bed all the time; and he spoke quite softly to the man, and the man declared that he had asserted nothing, and believed nothing, and had only been a fool for attaching any value to the ravings of a delirious girl. And he promised for all his life was worth to say and think no more about it, and Mark saw to it that he would keep his promise. What had he been going to say—what? I never had the heart or will to ask. But you—you can still find out if you like, and if he is still living.”
Was she, herself, raving? Sometimes, as I listened to that disjointed outpouring, I was convinced of it; sometimes I seemed to gather from its incoherence the shadow of a truth, a purpose, the cry of a long-fettered despair struggling for articulation.
“Hush!” she said suddenly. “He may be back at any time—here, now, watching us and laughing in his sleeve. He is so terrible—so swift and secret. The souls he desires for his own must go to him. Look—here is the man’s address. I have never parted with it. Find him, if you can, and prove the stronger will. If I could repay him after all these years—remember, and repay him!”
She thrust a paper into my hand, and was gone. I stood stupidly, staring at her retreating figure. Repay him? repay whom and for what? Surely, if therewerea purpose in her ravings, it must turn on something ghastly and incredible. It was her husband, I could not doubt, whom she thus held her awful debtor. But for what deed, what crime, that could so move her at this last to take a stranger for her factor? There was something very fearful in the vision of this apostate from the faith of matrimony. Was it possible that there were others in the world, who, through twenty years of seeming apathy, could so be nursing horrible things in their bosoms—vipers—fattening for an opportunity?
I glanced down at the paper. It contained a name, and an address somewhere in Kennington—nothing more. The rest was for me to do. A baby! and dead!—Dalston, and Mother Carey, and a dead baby! There was a coincidence here, at least. What an unconsecrated plot in a graveyard was my mind become! And how the deadly branches twined and shut it in!
Well, I would go and see this man, if he existed. Somewhere and somehow light must be let into the tangle.
Aftertwenty years; and he was still in his old place of business. That was characteristic of the man. I found Mr Churton in his workshop, planing a board which seemed destined for a coffin. He had a paper cap on his head; his indeterminate eyes were pale blue; his whiskers were of the colour of the sawdust which powdered the bench at which he wrought. From time to time, as I talked to him, his wife, a great strenuous woman of an imposing person and virulence, put in her head at the door, sniffed, each time in crescendo, and departed. There was an air of dogged helplessness about the man himself.
“The question,” I said, “is of Ellen Trimmer. You walked out with her once, you know.”
He took up a lath of wood, squinted along its edge, and put it down.
“Did I, sir?” he said. “Dear me; how one forgets.”
“You haven’t forgotten, of course. I can quite understand you. Mrs Churton wouldn’t favour such reminiscences.”
“Well, no, she wouldn’t,” he said. “Why should she, now?”
“She might, you know,” I answered, “if your peace of mind were in question.”
“It never is,” he said.
“Say your safety, then.”
That obviously agitated him a little.
“You see,” I went on, “to keep to yourself a secret which touches on the question of a crime, is to make yourself an accessory after the fact.”
That was a shot in the dark; but I saw his hand shake on the plane, and knew that it had struck.
“There’s such a thing, isn’t there, sir,” he said feebly, “as a Statute of Limitations?”
“Not in criminal cases.”
He went, rather shakily, to fetch a tool from a rack on the wall. He was quite a long time coming back with it.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said slowly, and with difficulty, “that I wouldn’t rather face the risk of hanging than——” he paused.
“Than the risk of offending Mr Dalston,” I put in.
He started violently, and the tool dropped from his hand.
“You see?” I said quietly. “Now put this to yourself. What if Mr Dalston himself were to be hanged?”
“Not through me,” he cried aghast. “I dursen’t risk the chance. He would get at and do for me somehow, even if it was from the condemned cell.”
I rose to my feet.
“You have said too much or too little, Mr Churton. There is nothing for me now but to consult the police.”
He made a sort of lost motion towards me with his hands. At that moment his wife burst in, and stood with arms akimbo.
“Get out of this,” she cried in an awful masculine voice. “What are you worritting him for with your questions? Who are you? What do you want?”
“It’s very simple,” I said. “I want to know what Ellen Trimmer confessed to him before she died.”
“Then you’ll just pack and go wanting it,” she vociferated. “What’s Ellen Trimmer to him, or him to her, or you to any of us? Get out, do you hear?”
“You’re blocking my way.”
“My dear,” said Mr Churton—“if it’s a question of conscience——”
“Conscience!” she bellowed: “a pretty conscience on my word. Who was it set you up in life, and give you the chance to marry, and something respectabler than your Ellen Trimmers, a baggage that could go dropping you for him, the slut, and no wonder to look at you!”
I fancied that I, for my part, could answer who. But Mr Churton only hung his head on its long neck, like a feeble tulip beaten down under a storm.
“Very well” I said, “if you’ll allow me to pass, I’ll go.”
“O,I’llallow you, my man!” said the virago, with an enormous mimicry which bore not the faintest resemblance to my voice; and, as I passed out, flounced at me with her apron as if I were a strayed chicken.
But I hadn’t walked a hundred yards down the street when I heard the sound of running footsteps behind me; and, turning round, there was Mr Churton labouring on my tracks. His breath was pumping in him, his weak eyes watered, the shavings in his whiskers shook like ringlets.
“I must say it, sir,” he gasped. “I had to break from her and follow you.” He smacked one ineffective fist into the palm of the other. “She’ll have to find out who’s master some time, and as well to begin now as later.”
He looked up piteously into my face.
“I were always a feckless creatur’. I know what I ought to ha’ done about that man arter I see him; but I couldn’t do it, sir, I couldn’t. It’s been on my conscience these years, dear God—my little Ellen that was so happy with me, and that he seduced from her plighted word!” He rubbed his bare wrist across his eyes.
“Was he the cause of her death?” I asked gravely.
“The cause, sir,” he said, “and not the cause. She told it me all in the hospital where she lay. She’d sent for me while she could speak. I was the only one left to her, and she owed it to me, she thought. She was frightened of him, sir—and why?—why was she frightened of him?”
“Well?”
“Because he’d just taken her mistress’s baby away to a woman called Carey, and had it killed.”
There—it was out. I was in possession of the secret which “Mark” had dared this invertebrate witness to reveal. The poor fellow entreated me not to turn his confession to his ruin.
“He didn’t killher, you know,” he said, in desperate extenuation. “She just jumped out of the cab, when she found it was dead, and was run over. There was a fog at the time.”
The fog, I thought, was lifting.
“Mr Churton,” I said, “so Luck favour us, you shall never see or hear from me again.”
Now, henceforth, I was to move on with a set and deadly purpose. Murder was in the air, and I was stalking it, a hooded falcon on my wrist. Though I knew only what the reader knows, I had the feeling that, were I once to loose the jess, some strange and unexpected quarry would be brought down from the skies. Mark is a significant name to the beasts of chase. In the meantime, awaiting the psychologic moment, I had reason to reflect that there is generally somewhere that flaw in the boldest criminal calculations which sooner or later will give the crime away. The wicked astute man thinks astuteness impossible to virtue—one of those mistakes of generalising which lead to accidents. He estimatesallgoodness at credulity,allvice at subtlety. Yet both Solomon and Sancho Panza were good men. Now, if for twenty years Mr Churton’s mouth had remained sealed from terror, why should that terror become suddenly inoperative in the twenty-first year? It is just the contempt for providing against such unforeseen contingencies which constitutes the flaws. But it would have been quite possible to close Mr Churton’s mouth at once and for ever at the beginning of things. Casual concessions to humanity are the weaknesses of all but Napoleonic criminals. Mr Dalston, then, it would appear, was not a Napoleonic criminal. He attached too much value, perhaps, to the mere terror of his personality.
I found, when I reached home, a very batch of telegrams awaiting me. They had arrived, it seemed, in pretty quick succession, and had been brought down from the house. The sight of them first astounded, then frightened me. I opened one with a shrinking, not to say a slinking, feeling about my backbone, and instantly collapsed into a chair. My sickest apprehensions were realised. It was from Johnny, and fatefully potential of entanglements. With a beating pulse I examined the rest of the batch, and gave a groan of despair. The wretched boy had got, it seemed, on the track of some preposterous chimera, and was off after his quarry with a whoop. It had been enough for him to gather (quite mistakenly) that Pugsley was an enemy to my (non-existent) pretensions. Henceforth every act of that dyspeptic cleric was open to suspicion. For what had I not in one reckless moment made myself responsible?
Suddenly, in the midst of my desperation, the picture of my friend, round and jocund, tiptoeing, tomahawk in hand, in the unconscious tracks of a poor evangelical missionary, rose before me and sent me off into a fit of helpless laughter. “Well,” I thought, when I had gasped myself sober, “the thing has started, and I’ve no means now of stopping it. I can only pray not to be included in its retributions.”
Its retributions, indeed! Not on that day alone, but through many days to follow, did those unconscionable telegrams come swooping upon me, in flights and swarms, a plague of devouring locusts, desecrating my green solitude, keeping me in a perpetual flurry between shame and hysterics. I thought I should never hear the end of them—of the tap of their arrival, of the story they unfolded, of the sort of inebriated phraseology in which they were couched. And when at last the visitation stopped suddenly, I could hardly credit my release. But it did come at length; and then, when I could breathe once more in self-confidence, I set to classifying the whole mad array, and to endeavouring to make a consistent tale out of it. Whether or not I have succeeded in my object, let the reader decide from the following:—
1. (Handed in at 12.10 P.M. Footover.) Watched house saw Tip emerge eleven small black handbag what containing thought suspicious followed tracked to station. The Eye.[1]2. (Handed in at 12.15 P.M. Footover.) Still at station expect arrival Dog Tip at bookstall examining County Blue Book letter S funny. The Eye.3. (Handed in at 2.2 P.M. Waterloo.) No Dog Tip took ticket Waterloo Eye also same compartment Tip opened bag took papers out and read manuscript convinced bearing on Button must get a look if possible Tip now at buffet cream buns and ginger-beer. The Eye.4. (Handed in at 2.15 P.M. Waterloo.) Tip still buffet macaroons forgot woman and child in carriage Tip took child asked if saved mother said narrow squeak just pulled through measles Tip returned child hastily what meant perhaps more imposition always watchful Button’s interests best respects Heaven. The Eye.5. (Handed in at 6.30 P.M. Waterloo Bridge Road.) Tip put up temperance hotel by bridge Eye also expect dine early cold beef and water watch lest creep out and drop bag in river no fear wine drugged no wine respects Point and Baa but perhaps better not how about duke and girl from Buffalo what price maple sugar hooty tooty. The Eye.6. (Handed in at 9 A.M. Waterloo Bridge Road.) Troubled night room next Tip heard groaning thought wrestle with guilt but found with cold beef and water not assimilating at breakfast asked by Tip if saved inquired from what explained redeemed answered was pledge of affection and didn’t want to be jocosity resented no further advances never mind. The Eye.7. (Handed in at 1 P.M. South Kensington.) Tip lunching bun shop cream crackers and lemonade kept in sight all day thought before starting slip up bedroom black bag but no good never parts with suspicion increasing what discount on Iagos. The Eye.8. (Handed in at 2 P.M. Gloucester Road.) Tip just gone Natural History Museum appointment with Dog or what no attraction clergyman more to follow in haste. The Eye.9. (Handed in at 2.30 P.M. Gloucester Road.) Rushed out for a moment Tip engaged fossil department giant tortoise making notes had to leave bag at door dynamite scare how to get it Tip eyeing the Eye suspicious fancies seen me before shouldn’t wonder but not certain. The Eye.10. (Handed in at 3.30 P.M. Brompton Road.) Triumph bag mine Tip fetching out pencil from pocket dropped voucher which went for and returned to him but mine not his own never knew and thanked me what joke went and released bag and bolted not examined yet let Button know soon. The Eye.11. (Handed in at 5 P.M. Charing Cross.) Afraid made mistake not Tip at all been following but strange clergyman must have been Tip’s guest name Drysalter papers in bag Locusts of Revelations considered in the light of prehistoric remains nothing else can’t fit to Button anyhow puzzled. The Eye.12. (Handed in at 10.15 A.M. Charing Cross.) Decided better return bag stick counter Museum plead absence of mind wire again soon. The Eye.13. (Handed in at 12 noon Gloucester Road.) Come at once detained pending arrival police Drysalter at counter when arrived mad about loss of notes listen no apology explained my voucher carried gold-mounted umbrella much more valuable didn’t mend things foamed threatens worst this by curator.
1. (Handed in at 12.10 P.M. Footover.) Watched house saw Tip emerge eleven small black handbag what containing thought suspicious followed tracked to station. The Eye.[1]
2. (Handed in at 12.15 P.M. Footover.) Still at station expect arrival Dog Tip at bookstall examining County Blue Book letter S funny. The Eye.
3. (Handed in at 2.2 P.M. Waterloo.) No Dog Tip took ticket Waterloo Eye also same compartment Tip opened bag took papers out and read manuscript convinced bearing on Button must get a look if possible Tip now at buffet cream buns and ginger-beer. The Eye.
4. (Handed in at 2.15 P.M. Waterloo.) Tip still buffet macaroons forgot woman and child in carriage Tip took child asked if saved mother said narrow squeak just pulled through measles Tip returned child hastily what meant perhaps more imposition always watchful Button’s interests best respects Heaven. The Eye.
5. (Handed in at 6.30 P.M. Waterloo Bridge Road.) Tip put up temperance hotel by bridge Eye also expect dine early cold beef and water watch lest creep out and drop bag in river no fear wine drugged no wine respects Point and Baa but perhaps better not how about duke and girl from Buffalo what price maple sugar hooty tooty. The Eye.
6. (Handed in at 9 A.M. Waterloo Bridge Road.) Troubled night room next Tip heard groaning thought wrestle with guilt but found with cold beef and water not assimilating at breakfast asked by Tip if saved inquired from what explained redeemed answered was pledge of affection and didn’t want to be jocosity resented no further advances never mind. The Eye.
7. (Handed in at 1 P.M. South Kensington.) Tip lunching bun shop cream crackers and lemonade kept in sight all day thought before starting slip up bedroom black bag but no good never parts with suspicion increasing what discount on Iagos. The Eye.
8. (Handed in at 2 P.M. Gloucester Road.) Tip just gone Natural History Museum appointment with Dog or what no attraction clergyman more to follow in haste. The Eye.
9. (Handed in at 2.30 P.M. Gloucester Road.) Rushed out for a moment Tip engaged fossil department giant tortoise making notes had to leave bag at door dynamite scare how to get it Tip eyeing the Eye suspicious fancies seen me before shouldn’t wonder but not certain. The Eye.
10. (Handed in at 3.30 P.M. Brompton Road.) Triumph bag mine Tip fetching out pencil from pocket dropped voucher which went for and returned to him but mine not his own never knew and thanked me what joke went and released bag and bolted not examined yet let Button know soon. The Eye.
11. (Handed in at 5 P.M. Charing Cross.) Afraid made mistake not Tip at all been following but strange clergyman must have been Tip’s guest name Drysalter papers in bag Locusts of Revelations considered in the light of prehistoric remains nothing else can’t fit to Button anyhow puzzled. The Eye.
12. (Handed in at 10.15 A.M. Charing Cross.) Decided better return bag stick counter Museum plead absence of mind wire again soon. The Eye.
13. (Handed in at 12 noon Gloucester Road.) Come at once detained pending arrival police Drysalter at counter when arrived mad about loss of notes listen no apology explained my voucher carried gold-mounted umbrella much more valuable didn’t mend things foamed threatens worst this by curator.
I omit, at this point, my comments on the situation. They lacked nothing in vigour because I was in a measure responsible for it. But I could not on that or any account abandon my friend to the consequences of his insane act. However, almost before I had time to look out a train to London, a final telegram arrived, acquainting me of his, and my release, thus:—
Hasten inform free much difficulty tried impress with grafto only effect Drysalter said might prove useful Wormwood Scrubbs declared saved since reading Revelations considered giant tortoise somewhat softened compromised finally with gift of hundred pounds to Society for promoting abstemiousness among total abstainers coming back to-morrow.
Hasten inform free much difficulty tried impress with grafto only effect Drysalter said might prove useful Wormwood Scrubbs declared saved since reading Revelations considered giant tortoise somewhat softened compromised finally with gift of hundred pounds to Society for promoting abstemiousness among total abstainers coming back to-morrow.
Not if I could prevent it. There and then I sat down to indite him twenty reasons for his staying for the present where he was. They might convince, or only wound him. I could not help it. It was out of the question having him actively interesting himself any more in my affairs, and at this crisis of them. His answer, in fact, when it came, showed him a little hurt—poor Johnny. There was a consciousness, a reproach in it of exile from more than my company. Well, I couldn’t help that either.
Histhat is just written passes as anentr’acte, the fooling of a clown before the curtain, the merry jigging of the fiddles. It ends; and the lights are down once more, the dark curtains heave and lift, waste glooms and sorrows repossess the stage—and only now, always in their deep midmost, travels a little bloody star, the soul of a murdered child.
Winter has gripped the land in earnest, and, screaming upon the heavy dawns, come winds and ashy flights of snow. They are like tempests of defiance, hissing down and heaping at my feet to dispute my way. But I shout them back their blasphemies, and spurn them and drive on. I have a deadly purpose at my heart, and I am not to be deterred by bluster. The right shall be vindicated and the guilty soul stripped naked, whatever befall of frost or storm. On and on, to the relentless end!
Down in my damp holt that winter the cold became intense—not crisp and dry as in the open, but mortal chill, penetrating to one’s bones like the sodden embrace of a vampire. The ice underfoot there had always a spongy crackle, and the snow in the leafy hollows a cankered scar about its centre. I had hard ado to keep my resolution thawed at blazing fires; but I heaped the coal on lavishly, recklessly, drawing from a plentiful store which had been packed into a shed close by; and presently my lodge was like a charcoal-burner’s covert in a forest. Coming down to it at night, I could feel the radiations of its warmth a rod away. I sometimes wonder now it never leapt into roaring flame before my eyes.
This balmy southern climate had not known such a visitation in all my memory of it; nor, in all my memory of it, had I so rejoiced to cross its moods. If, as it appeared, it had rallied itself greatly to the cause of villainy, throttling, delaying, stultifying, so much greater, relatively, was the force of doggedness it evoked in me. A point gained was a gain triumphant, if won through buffeting winds and drifts of snow. And the most sinister gain of all was to be won from its deepest drift.
I had delayed going up to the house until the receipt of Johnny’s final telegram set my mind and conscience at rest. Then, having written to the dear boy, I turned at once to face the ordeal which awaited me.
The atmosphere of the dining-room that night seemed one of curious quiet and reserve. Lord Skene appeared to ruminate, rather than discuss the good fare with his usual honest relish; his lady only trifled with her food; Miss Christmas was not present. We talked desultorily of things, obviously the remotest from our mind hauntings. I put it all down to the glamour of the fatality which was obsessing my own brain. It seemed right, somehow, that I should exhale a spirit of omen and unrest. But there was a reason for it beyond my knowledge. Minister of retribution as I considered myself, I could hardly have had the heart to pursue my purpose at the moment, had I guessed. The child was ill, and the shadow of his trouble lay upon the household. All other shadows were become as nothing in it.
Why did they not tell me? Had he, my little brother as they thought him,noclaim upon my sympathy? Wasnoright mine to share the burden of their disquiet? As they denied me, so was I justified in my purpose—doubly, trebly justified. And yet I might have taken him into my arms, and wept to hold him so, and kissed and kissed some measure of my own exuberant strength into his little flower of a soul. But they held me, held me always as a thing apart; and on their heads lie the issue!
I had been apprehensive that Lord Skene, anxious to probe me further in the matter we had last discussed, would welcome our being left alone together; but, rather to my surprise, he made no effort to detain me when her ladyship withdrew, and appeared to sink at once absorbed in his own reflections. It gave me the opportunity I desired—that was enough for me—and I availed myself of it instantly.
She was standing at the foot of the stairs, preparing to ascend, when I accosted her.
“Lady Skene, may I have a word with you?”
She turned, with such a sudden terrified look as I could hope never to awaken on her face again.
“With me? Not now? O, Richard!” she whispered.
The name, the significance and agony of its utterance, pierced me to the heart. But I had put my hand to the plough, and must go forward.
“Yes, now,” I said. “There is nothing can be gained by temporising.”
She seemed to totter a moment; her white jewelled hand caught at the banisters. But almost with the act she had recovered herself.
“You cannot guess how cruel you are,” she said. “But come if you will.”
She led the way up the first flight and into her boudoir. I had never entered this room in all my life before, had never more than assayed in chance glimpses the wealth and costliness of its appointments. Now, as she shut us in together among the rich hangings, the velvet-lined cabinets and tables glistening with china, and old silver, and infinitebijouterie, I felt as if Fate had imposed on me a sacrilege which no pretext of duty could condone. There were lighted girandoles on the walls, a carpet soft as turf beneath my feet, a great fire leaping on the hearth. She drew a low chair to it, and sank down, resting her chin on her hand and frowning into the glow. I went and stood before her.
“Lady Skene,” I said, “this is a beautiful room. It seems to embody in itself all that of comfort, and rich possession, and happy security for which so many of us are ready to barter away our souls.”
She never moved or raised her eyes.
“Happy!” she muttered.
“Why, are you not?” I said. “Hardly worth while, then, to risk so much to gain so little. Neither happy nor secure, perhaps?”
She looked up suddenly.
“What have you found out? Have you been spying?”
“Yes, I have been spying.”
She rose to her feet, her hands clinched against her skirts. I had never seen her look so wretched or so lovely.
“You can own it?”
“Why not?”
“So vile an admission!”
“Who has there ever been to teach me it was vile? I have lived alone, Lady Skene,—untaught, unacknowledged, conforming to the pattern of my surroundings. If that moulded me to secrecy, who was to blame? If to be watchful and observant in the midst of enemies is a crime, I plead guilty to it with all my heart. There was always this much, this one unhappy riddle, to exercise my mind—why I, who longed for love so much, was denied my most natural claim to it; why my mother, of all the mothers in the world, could never bring herself to be a mother to the child who worshipped her. Well, my watching has borne fruit. I have discovered why, at last.”
Her head had drooped, lower, lower. It was terrible so to stand before that love which had been my dream, and betray to it the fulness of my renunciation. Yet I had no choice.
“Lady Skene,” I said, “I was in the Baby’s Garden that night you had your interview with Mr Dalston.”
She was down now, crushed at my feet, her pride, her beauty, her queenly jewels, all in ruin before me. Was I not satisfied at last? The fire tinkled; the wind came like a hand on the casement; I could see by the motion of her fair shoulders how heavily she breathed.
“Lady Skene,” I began again—and suddenly she caught at me like one going under in deep waters.
“Not that—Richard—say it once—once—let me hear it on your lips.”
“It is too late.”
She moaned and moaned; then seemed to listen.
“Too late?”
My arms were held down in anguish, to entreat this dimming phantom as it fell from me.
“O! if you had but said it a year, a month, a week ago! Useless now. Why have you hated me so?”
“Not hated—no.”
“What then? Was it love forbade that word to pass my lips, or shame? It is not like a woman to make her child the scapegoat of her sin. Or perhaps it was only that you hated to be reminded through that spoken word of a falsehood to which its utterance would have seemed a perpetual rebuke? I was the pledge to you of nothing but the lie on which you had bartered—yes, I use the term toyou—on which you had bartered away your soul?”
She shivered and sighed most miserably.
“Kill me with your scorn,” she muttered. “I have deserved it.”
“Did you not hate me?” I cried, in great emotion. “Do you not hate me now?”
“I feared you,” she said low. “I always feared you from the first. I think you have shown me why. You seemed strange—a thing I had no part in. I never felt like a mother to you—God knows I could not help it. It seemed hard I should be denied redemption for one so strange to me.”
I listened with a stricken heart. Had she been so much to blame after all, since some subtle instinct in her, unconscious of itself, had fore-read the truth? God knew, indeed, she could not help it.
“And now,” she went on dully, “have you not revenge enough? Look at me—think of me; my position, my example, my—my motherhood—and all at his mercy! You have me at your feet at last, Richard. You have watched to some purpose, as you say.”
“Yes, to some purpose,” I answered, “if only I can save you from the consequences of that deceit.”
She seemed to listen in wonder; then shook her head, working her hands together feverishly.
“I don’t know what you mean. These are the wages of sin. Death is the only thing that can cure my shame and my disgrace. O, where is the atonement in long years of lip service, if while we speak the penitence we live the lie! I told you once your touch contaminated your little brother—Itold youthat! It was a wicked spite, and God has punished me for it. Butyouhaven’t forgiven me.”
I stooped and seized her hands fiercely into mine. She made no resistance, only hiding her face from me.
“If I have watched you through these long years,” I said, “what was it for but to study how to win your love? Did it never strike you how the little cold soul was shivering outside the window, crying for that warmth and comfort within? ‘Mother!’ Never to have spoken it—not once! Never to have the right to speak it now. Yes, it was a wicked, cruel word. I thought I should never forgive you for it—once I thought it; and now——”
Her tears ran hot over my hands. I felt a savage exultation in their flowing. Was she not melting to me at last? I clutched her still the fiercer.
“Now,” I said, “you are wretched and alone, and what you have refused to give to me I will give to you—love, and pity, and forgiveness most of all. You cannot claim them of me now, and now I will give them to you freely. Because you are in need, I will come to you; because in name you have had that right to my reverence and protection, I will honour that ghostly trust. I cannot put you from my heart so easily. Your shame is still my shame; your cause my cause. Be comforted. If, being bred to tenderness and recognition, I had not learned to watch, to spy, you would be without an arm well nerved to help you now. All things, I suppose, work to their appointed end. This man, at least—I say it—shall not have his damned way with you. Confide in me for once. Has he attempted to bleed you a second time?”
She made a very slight negative motion with her head.
“He will do it,” I said; “he will come again and again. Do you recognise that?”
“Yes.”
“How will you answer him?”
She did not speak, but I felt a little tremor run through the hands I held.
“Why,” I said, “do you not make a clean breast of it to your husband? If I know him, he would not judge that imposition hardly.”
“No,” she whispered. “It is not him I fear.”
“Who, then? Not me? Let him know me for what I am, for all I care.”
“Richard!”
“Why, I believe he’d think the better of us both for it.”
“Be as cruel to me as you will.”
“Insult you, you mean. But I know what is in your heart. Confess to him? How would that avert the greater catastrophe?—the scarlet letter—the ignominy of the moral exposure? And your persecutor knows it, no doubt, and builds his plans upon the ruin of your reputation, not as a wife, but saint.”
“O, my God!”
I must pause a little in the mad tumult of my emotions. To have her thus at my feet, broken, despairing, looking to me, the neglected and despised, for help and reassurance!—the madness beat like fire in my brain.
“Now listen,” I said at last. “This man—this reptile—he mines and mines, like the blind beast he is. He never thinks of his being undermined by another—his black burrow seems secure to him——” I felt her hands plucking at mine; but I held them tight. “He sets his snare, and never sees the noose awaiting his own neck. O! if I have spied—do you hear me?—I have spied to more effect thanyoumight dare to hope, orhe, perhaps, to fear. Mother!—there, I will speak it for the first and last time—I have that in my hand to save you, and send him to the gallows.”
She tore her hands away at last, and rose, tottering, to her feet.
“Not that!” she cried insanely—“not that! You must not. It cannot be. Do you not know? Have you never guessed? Must I be the one to tell you?”
“What?”
“He is your father, Richard.”
With the word, there came a swift step at the door, and Miss Christmas hurried into the room, pale and disturbed. Her eyes met mine in one startled glance, and turned to Lady Skene.
“Aunt Georgie,” she said in an agitated voice, “I’m sorry; I thought you were alone; but—but I think you’d better come at once.”
How could I have known, or guessed? I could not even then. Only I recognised the urgency of some tragic call, and stepped aside to let her pass. For one instant her wild haunted eyes were turned on mine.
“O! God forgive me!” she whispered; but I think it was I who ought to have uttered that broken prayer.
Soshe believed me to be her son and his! The deadlier mystery was none of her sharing. For that, at least, I could breathe one heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving. She was innocent of any but that one deceit, and that one, even, in the relief of my soul, I could have found trivial to insignificance.
The memory of our interview held me sleepless and agitated through most of the bitter night. I had denounced bravely, and promised bravely, and now through what new development of the situation was I purposing to redeem my promise? My course, I felt, would have been an easier if a darker one, had she betrayed her guilty partnership in that secret. Her ignorance there was but a new rock in my path. All doors seemed to open but to shut in my face; all jack-o’-lantern lights to lead me on but to plunge me in confusion. What impulse, interest, frenzy had so driven that mad woman to betray her husband to me? None, perhaps; but some inexplicable craft calculating to mislead me. Yet had I not proved the genuineness of her strange confidence? No, it was impossible not to believe that for some hidden reason he had earned her revengeful hatred. But for what reason? And how was it to be associated with the paramount mystery?
I had promised much, and I meant much—desperately, if cunning would not serve. Yet I doubt my performance might have fallen far short of my intention, had not circumstance, at this crisis, given into my hands the very witness I could most need. That mocking altar still stood to attest my confidence in my tutelary god; yet not of Luck, I think, was this fortuity, but rather of the relentless processes of Fate. There was even hardly a coincidence in it, when one came to examine.
I fell asleep at last, and woke to that sense of wan chill light on the ceiling which is the reflected ghastliness of snow. I rose shivering, and looked out of my window. The wood was all a whirling rush of flakes ground to powder between the teeth of a ravenous wind. It tore and spat them so, that the trees on their north sides were all glued with white foam a foot deep; and here and there ominous drifts were already forming.
It was a strange enough sight to a southerner, inured to winter fogs and dripping skies; and the uncommonness of it—the shriek and sting and the mad dance—awoke a responsive frenzy in my blood.Thiswas the right challenge to my mood—something that I could close and wrestle with and battle through to an end. I rejoiced, as if my formless visions of retribution had actually at last assumed a definite shape and substance.
It was Spartan work, nevertheless, dressing, and washing in a pool of slushy ice, and fetching wood and coal, and preparing the house generally against the siege of frost which threatened it. An advance picket of the enemy already occupied the lower rooms, and had to be driven out under a hot fire from the grate. I must keep an eye to my provisioning too, in case I should come to be cut off from my base—snowed up, and prevented from reaching the house, in short. Of ordinary fare I had always made a point of storing a plentiful supply, in order to avoid the worry of a daily commissariat, and of this supply I found to my relief there was ample remainder. Biscuits; jolly great potatoes for roasting in their winter jackets, and good to be eaten, crumbling hot, with salt and pepper and perhaps a little yellow flake of butter in their middles; rashers from a half-side of bacon, which hung, like an old rusty coat, in the chimney-corner of my tiny kitchen; eggs, when I could get them, and at whose endless manipulations in a chafing dish I had become expert; dates, figs, a canvas bag of chestnuts, and, for drink, coffee and hot whisky grog with sugar and lemon peel—these made the staple of my diet, and, with tobacco, were sufficient to the needs of any proper woodland hermit. But there were perishable goods in addition not to be despised—bread, milk, and butter, to wit; and for my daily supply of these I was accustomed to look to the good offices of my old friend Comely the steward, who had never yet failed me in his service of them. Well, I must, if needs must, come to drink my coffee black, and lard my toasted biscuits with pig’s fat. It would be no such terrible deprivation after all.
I spent the morning putting my fortress in order, for the wildness of the weather precluded any thought of outdoor exercise. But, after lunch, the fury of the storm having abated somewhat, I began to cast about for some means to discipline the restless spirit of adventure which was awake in me. The prospect, in my then state of excitement, of a long afternoon of enforced apathy and inaction in my lonely quarters was intolerable. I decided that I would take the road to Market Grazing, and pay a visit to the steward himself, with whom I would still occasionally foregather of an evening in his little band-box of a villa in the High Street. For Comely had married of late years, and had a house of his own and, incidentally, a smiling baggy little wife, who had sat for so long under Mr Pugsley that she had come to have no particular shape or opinions of her own.
Yes, Comely, genial and deferential and unsuspicious, would prove an excellent febrifuge in the fever of mind which consumed me.
But I was destined never to reach him—never to get beyond the fall of the bank where the little wicket gave upon the road. For there the wind had heaped the snow in a mighty drift, and in endeavouring to negotiate it, I slipped and plunged up to my neck.
That was little in itself, had not my feet in sinking encountered some body, soft, and of a texture indescribably different from what they had expected. It was elastic, and potentially human. Fighting for my balance, I groped down, and found a buried man.
He was dead, to all appearance—a dark, small, foreign-looking fellow, with closed eyes and a face like wax. His crop of hair and short beard were grey and stark like rime. He was cheaply dressed, but newly, in a suit of coarse tweed, and woollen gloves were on his hands.
I discovered this all when I had prized and tugged him out of his deadly burrow, and laid him on his back, and brushed the snow from his clothes and features. My great strength had served me well; but I thought to no profitable end. I was not to guess for a moment what wonderful fatality had guided my steps to this drifted cache, and set my foot on the key to all the mysteries—and at the fruitful moment, too. Another hour, half hour, perhaps, and it had been too late.
And in the meantime I thought him gone beyond recovery. Listening and feeling, I could detect no pulse in him nor any sign of life. His teeth, white and regular still, for all his grey hairs, showed in a set grin; his lips were pale violet. I believed him dead.
Still, there was no telling; and here at least was material for my superfluous vigour, something external and challenging to my hunger for distraction in action. With a huge effort I lifted the body in my arms, and made with it for the lodge. The wind cut at me; the snow, still flying viciously, beat and stung my face. I joyed in the battle, and won triumphant through it into shelter, and laid my burden down by the fire. Then I fetched brandy, and forced a spoonful of it through the biting teeth, and stroked the hairy throat to irritate it to action, and waited and persisted, and persisted and waited. Sometimes, as the day sank, I thought I could detect a shadowy movement on the face; but it was only the illusion of dancing firelight. Sometimes a sound as of a tiny voice calling from a vast depth would startle me, until I identified it for the thin whine of wind in the keyhole. The stiff body never moved, never responded by one thrill to the persistence of my efforts. And presently I gave it up, and withdrew into the scullery to wash my hands, and ponder my unenviable position as the keeper of a mortuary, with no immediate or definite prospect of release.
It was while I was there, scrubbing, preoccupied and depressed, that the growth of a sound, unnoticed at first, or attributed to familiar causes, began to impress itself on my hearing. It was like a low continuous babbling at the outset; but, even while I listened, it rose all in a moment into a series of strained and gasping screams. Petrified for an instant, the next I had rushed back into the sitting-room. The pseudo-dead man was writhing and rolling on the hearthrug, and it was by him that those cries of suffering were emitted. His congested veins were recovering their circulation, and his torment was unspeakable.
I flung myself on my knees beside him, and caught and chafed his agonised limbs, and poured more brandy down his throat. And by-and-by the devil fled, and his cries sank into moans, and his moans to spasmodic gasps; and when those ceased, I got him by degrees into a chair, where he sat tottery and dribbling, and conning me speechlessly from bloodshot eyes dim with wonder and the spent tragedy of pain.
“Rest quiet now,” I said, “and don’t attempt to speak or move. You needn’t worry your brain either about what brought you here. It’s quite simple. I stumbled on you by chance, sleeping to your death in a snowdrift, and I fished you out of it and carried you to my house here, which happened to be close by. Don’t answer, but if you think you could stand more brandy, move your head, and I will get you a glass, stiff and hot.”
He nodded feebly once or twice. I disposed him to his safety, fetched a kettle, water, and the condiments, and in a little had brewed him a good stinging jorum.
“Now,” I said, “I am going to pull the sofa there to the fire, put you on it, and leave you to sleep.”
He smiled weakly as I lifted him in my arms, and whispered for the first time, very faintly: “Good, good—ver’ strong and good—grazia, signore!”
The medicine, I will admit, he took down lamblike, in three dutiful gulps. It had its effect on him almost instantly. He closed his eyes and sank back in a blissful stupor. Then I covered him warm with a rug; lit the candles; shut all in snug and dry, and set about making my preparations for a comfortable hot meal against the time when he should awake.
A strange glow was in my blood. I must have felt something, I think, of a mother’s feelings, when her conscious self first realises in the new life beside her the earnest of pains past and present reward—when she wakes from storm to see the rainbow glowing in her sky. Does that sound extravagant? I daresay; but remember the sort of social Crusoe I had been. This was my man Friday—the living salvage of my hands. I was jealous already of my proprietorship in him. He owed his life to me; and I felt a fierce joy in that debt, as in one that elevated me for the first time to the ranks of life’s creditors. All conventional disabilities vanished in that uplifting. What did a name matter to one who had saved a life? I had qualified for the great human brotherhood.
He slept very long and heavily, hardly stirring or seeming to breathe. When I had finished my preparations, I took a chair near him, and sat pondering his face. It was of a curious green-white, like the complexion of a plant starved in a cellar. The lines of emotion on it looked almost grotesquely exaggerated, as if he had been an actor, who had been made up to portray some tragic part, and who had forgotten to wash himself afterwards. The contrast between that anæmic skin and the grey furrows which channelled it was startling.
Who was he? and what could have brought him, a stranger and a foreigner, to wander to his destruction on these remote and wintry roads? I was greedy for his awakening to learn.
It came in the end quite suddenly. I had just made up the fire, and was returning to my post of observation, when I saw his eyes wide open and staring at me.
“Bully, old fellow!” I said. “Come sta, isn’t it? How do you find yourself?”
He threw off the rug with a quick movement, and, scrambling to his feet, precipitated himself on his knees before me, and caught and kissed my hands.
“O, come! that’ll do,” I said. “It’s all right, you know.”
He poured out a torrent of gratitude, part English, part Italian—wholly incoherent.
“Now,” I said, “if you don’t stop, I shall put you out in the snow again.”
He was crying, and gesticulating, and embracing me all in one.
“Ah, the snow!” he cried; “and the pain—merciful God, the pain!—and then the immenseness in the sleep. And you have save me—yes, signore, you; like a strong lion you com’ and lift me in your mouse; and I am yours—for ever and more I am yours according.”
He rose to his feet, and stood away, fingering his breast dramatically.
“Very well,” I said. “But what am I to do with the gift?”
I foresaw, on the instant, embarrassments. But, as to that, I did him less than justice. He lifted his head with dignity.