"Her money, her influence, my position as her husband! Are those the baits with which she tempts me to her net?" he said to himself. "How little she knows me! how little she knows the value of a true woman when weighed against a false one! My true love is more to me than an empress. Millions would not buy my allegiance to her."
He went to the inn stables where Glencoe was at livery, and saddled the powerful beast with his own hands, in his eagerness to be on the way to Bodmin. Glencoe had enjoyed a day of leisure and meditation in a very dark stable, and he left the little village of Trevena in a series of buck-jumps, arching his vigorous back and sniffing the ground with his quivering nostrils, shying ferociously at every stray pig, and standing up on end at the vision of a donkey, until the corrective influence of the spur brought him to a better state of mind, whereupon he collected himself, and settled into a grand rhythmical trot.
The hunter was white with dust and foam by the time Bothwell rode him into the stable-yard at The Spaniards, where nothing but disappointment awaited him. He heard that Miss Heathcote had left home early on the previous morning. One of the lads had taken her portmanteau to Bodmin Road, and she had walked there alone, in time for the eight-o'clock train for Plymouth. She had taken a ticket for Plymouth, the boy believed. Mr. Heathcote had not yet returned from France. There was nobody at home except Miss Meyerstein and the little girls.
Bothwell asked to see Miss Meyerstein, and was shown into the drawing-room, where that worthy woman soon came to him, full of trepidation. Her eyelids were swollen with weeping, and her cheeks were pallid with care.
"Mr. Heathcote may think it my fault," she said. "I have telegraphed to him; but there has been no answer yet."
"Do you know where Miss Heathcote was going when she left this house?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. All I know is what the boy told me. I have tried to make the best of things to the servants, for I don't want them to suppose that Hilda was running away; but they must have their own ideas about it, knowing as they do that she was going to be married next Tuesday."
"Never mind the servants," said Bothwell impatiently. "Let them think what they please. But have you no idea where she would be likely to go—to what friend, in what direction? She cannot have so many friends from whom to choose in such a crisis. She would go to the house where she was most sure of a welcome, where she would know that her secret would be kept. What friends has she in Plymouth?"
"None. She never went to Plymouth except for shopping, sight-seeing, concerts, or something in that way, with her brother, or with me. She knows no one in Plymouth except her old singing mistress."
"She may have gone to her," said Bothwell eagerly.
"Hardly likely. Mdlle. Duprez lives in two rooms. Hilda would scarcely ask for hospitality there."
"I don't know. She is very fond of Mdlle. Duprez. I have heard her say so. That is a clue, at any rate. I shall go to Mdlle. Duprez this afternoon. I must walk across to Penmorval and see my cousin first. She may know more of Hilda's plans than you do."
"That is very likely. Mrs. Wyllard is Hilda's most intimate friend."
"There was a lady came to call upon Miss Heathcote a few days ago," said Bothwell. "Did you happen to see that lady?"
"I did not," answered the Fräulein, looking at him curiously. "Yet I can but think that lady had something to do with Hilda's strange conduct. She is an old friend of yours, I believe—Lady Valeria Harborough."
"Yes, I have known her for some years. Was she long with Hilda?"
"She was closeted with her for at least an hour, and from that time to this I have not seen Hilda's face. She went to her room soon after Lady Valeria left. She excused herself from appearing at dinner on account of a headache, and when I went to her door later in the evening she refused to let me in, and I could hear from her voice that she had been crying. I went to her room again at seven o'clock next morning, for my mind had been uneasy about her all night; but she was gone. I found two letters, one for Mr. Heathcote, and one for me."
"Would you be kind enough to show me the letter she wrote to you?"
The Fräulein reflected for a few moments, being an eminently cautious person, and then produced Hilda's note from her pocket-book.
"I do not think there can be any harm in showing it to you," she said. "There is so little in it."
The letter ran thus:
"Dear Fräulein,—Do not be alarmed at my disappearance. I have good and sound reasons for cancelling my engagement with Mr. Grahame—not because of any wrong act upon his part, but for motives of my own; and I have decided upon leaving home for some time, as the best way of getting over the difficulty. Pray let no fuss be made about this sudden change in my plans. Very few of our neighbours knew anything about the intended marriage; so I hope there will be less talk than there usually is under such circumstances. You need have no uneasiness about me, as I am going to act under the advice of a clever and experienced friend, and I mean to be quite happy in my own way, amidst new surroundings, and to carry out an old desire of my heart. You shall hear of me directly I feel myself at liberty to tell you more.—Always lovingly yours,HILDA."
"Dear Fräulein,—Do not be alarmed at my disappearance. I have good and sound reasons for cancelling my engagement with Mr. Grahame—not because of any wrong act upon his part, but for motives of my own; and I have decided upon leaving home for some time, as the best way of getting over the difficulty. Pray let no fuss be made about this sudden change in my plans. Very few of our neighbours knew anything about the intended marriage; so I hope there will be less talk than there usually is under such circumstances. You need have no uneasiness about me, as I am going to act under the advice of a clever and experienced friend, and I mean to be quite happy in my own way, amidst new surroundings, and to carry out an old desire of my heart. You shall hear of me directly I feel myself at liberty to tell you more.—Always lovingly yours,HILDA."
"An old desire of her heart," said Bothwell slowly, staring at the letter, with the keenest mortification expressed in his countenance.
That cheerfulness which Hilda had assumed in her letter to the governess smote her lover to the heart. A man's mind is not subtle enough to cope with the subtleties of a woman's conduct. Hilda's chief aim in writing that letter had been to hoodwink the Fräulein, to satisfy her with the assurance that she, Hilda, was going away from home in tranquil spirits and with hopeful views of the future. Bothwell saw in this cheery letter the evidence of a stony heart, a heart that had never loved him.
"'An old desire of her heart,'" he repeated, with a helpless air. "What can that mean?"
"I haven't a notion," replied the Fräulein, reflecting his helplessness upon her own commonplace countenance, "unless it were that she has an idea of going on the stage. So many girls are mad about the stage nowadays. And Hilda is so pretty. I know when we had private theatricals here last Christmas for the twins' juvenile party, everybody was in raptures with Hilda's acting. People told her she would make a great sensation if she were to appear in London."
"People are a parcel of idiots!" cried Bothwell savagely. "Yes, I remember the theatricals. I was at the party, you know; and there was a cub who made love to Hilda. Yes, I remember."
The cub in question was the eldest son of a neighbouring landowner, and heir to a fine estate; but Bothwell had looked on the innocent lad with abhorrence, even in those early days when his own attachment to Hilda had been in its dawn.
"No, she would not think of going on the stage," said Bothwell, after a pause, during which he had paced up and down the room two or three times in an agitated way; "that is impossible. She would not be mad enough for that. There must be something else. The desire of her heart. What can it mean?"
The Fräulein could not offer any suggestion, except that idea of the stage. "She is so passionately fond of Shakespeare," she said. "I have heard her recite the whole of Juliet and Portia without faltering. She has such a memory. I shouldn't be surprised if she were to come out as Juliet at Covent Garden next week."
Miss Meyerstein's sole knowledge of the London stage was derived from biographies of the Kembles and their contemporaries. She believed in the two patent theatres as existing facts; and she thought that Shakespeareandébutanteswere appearing and taking the town by storm periodically all the year round.
"I must go to Plymouth by the five-o'clock train," said Bothwell hurriedly. "Will you kindly let my horse stay in your stables and be looked after till to-morrow morning, Miss Meyerstein? I rode him over here at a rather unmerciful rate, and he'll be all the better for a rest. I shall walk to Penmorval, and get myself driven from there to the station. Good-bye."
He had gone before the Fräulein could answer him; but that good-natured person rang the bell and requested that Mr. Grahame's horse might be taken care of for the night, and that anything he required might be given to him.
Bothwell found his cousin full of sympathy, but was unable to give him any advice or assistance, as Miss Meyerstein had been. To Dora he opened his heart fully, showing her Hilda's letter, and breaking out every now and then into angry denunciations of Lady Valeria.
"Hush, Bothwell, don't be so violent," pleaded Dora, putting her hand to his lips. "I agree with you that it was a wicked thing for Lady Valeria to do—to put forward her own weakness in the past and your wrong-doing as a claim upon you in the present. I can understand poor Hilda's conduct. She was only too ready to believe that you must naturally care more for Lady Valeria than for her."
"Help me to find her, Dora. That is all I want. I will soon teach her which it is I love best. But I don't believe she really cared for me. She had some other fancy—some other dream."
"No, Bothwell, no."
"I have seen it in her own handwriting," said Bothwell moodily; and then he told his cousin of that letter which Hilda had written to the Fräulein, and that curious phrase about an old desire of her heart.
"An old desire of her heart," repeated Dora wonderingly. "What could that be? I am sure she had but one wish in this world, and that was to make your life happy."
"If that had been so, if she had been single-hearted, she would not have been so easily frightened away from me," argued Bothwell. "She would have laughed Valeria to scorn, strong in the power of her own love. No, it was because she was half-hearted that she gave way. There was this old desire of her heart, which could only be gratified by throwing me over."
"Bothwell, you are unworthy of her when you talk like that."
"She has proved herself unworthy of me," retorted Bothwell savagely. "Perhaps, after all, it was that beardless cub, young St. John, she cared for—an Etonian of nineteen, with a pretty face and missish manners. Perhaps it was of him she was thinking when she wrote about an old desire of her heart."
"Bothwell, I am ashamed of you. Hilda's heart is one of the truest that ever beat in a woman's breast. This very foolishness in running away from her own happiness is only a new proof of her noble nature."
"An old desire of her heart," harped Bothwell; "read me that riddle if you can."
"I can only read it in one way," answered Dora, after a thoughtful silence. "Ever so long before your return from India, Hilda had an ambition to do something great in music. She had been told that her voice was of the finest quality, and only required severe training in order to become an exceptional voice. She wanted to go abroad—to Milan, Leipsic, Paris—she talked of different places in her castle-building—and to give herself up to the study of music and the cultivation of her voice. The only difficulty was, that as Mr. Heathcote's sister, and with an independence inherited from her mother, there was no excuse for her taking up music as a profession, while it would have seemed unreasonable to leave her friends and her home merely to improve herself as an amateur. We often discussed this question together, and I used to advise her to abandon the idea of leaving her brother, whose life would have been altogether lonely without her. I told her that if ever Mr. Heathcote married again, she would then be free to do what she liked with her life. But by and by you appeared upon the scene, and Hilda resumed her love for fox-hunting, and neglected her piano. After this I heard no more of her yearning for a higher school of music than she could find in England."
"Perhaps you are right," said Bothwell, with a penitent look. "There is only one person to whom Hilda would be likely to go in Plymouth, and that is her old singing mistress."
"Mdlle. Duprez; yes, that is a person whom she would naturally consult," answered Dora. "I know all about Mdlle. Duprez, a sweet little woman."
"Dora, will you let one of your people drive me to the station, in time for the next train?"
"With pleasure. But you must have something to eat before you go. You look as if you had not had any lunch."
"I daresay I look very miserable. No, I have not been in the humour for eating since I got Hilda's letter this morning. I walked half a mile to meet the postman, in my impatience for my true love's letter, and when it came it was a staggerer."
"And you have ridden all the way from Trevena, and have had nothing to eat?"
"I forgot all about it; but I will take a crust and a glass of wine before I start. Has Wyllard heard of Hilda's disappearance?"
"Yes, he has been very much troubled about it. He had set his heart upon this marriage, and on its celebration while he is well enough to be present. God knows how long he may have strength enough to bear even as much fatigue as that. He is very angry with Hilda."
"He must not be angry with her. It is my sin that has caused this misery. I have sown the wind, and I have reaped the whirlwind. You are very good to bear with me in my trouble, Dora."
She was infinitely patient with him, sitting by him while he took a sandwich and a tumbler of claret; soothing him in his indignation against Lady Valeria; listening to his remorseful confession of wrong-doing in the past; bearing with that most tedious of all human creatures, an unhappy lover. But she had a sense of relief when he was gone, and she heard the dog-cart wheels rolling along the avenue. Her thoughts of late had been so concentrated upon her husband and his suffering that it was painful to be obliged to think of anything outside that sick-room and its sadness.
Bothwell found only disappointment at Plymouth. The little maid-servant had been thoroughly coached by Mdlle. Duprez before she left, and had been warned against any mention of Miss Heathcote.
She faced Bothwell with a stolid countenance, prepared to commit any enormity in the way of false statements; for she was one of those faithful creatures who, although the soul of truthfulness upon their own account, will lie valiantly to serve those they love. She said that Mdlle. Duprez had gone away on business.
"Was she alone?" asked Bothwell.
"Yes, sir."
"You are sure of that?"
"Quite sure, sir."
"But she was to meet some one at the station, perhaps. There was some one going away from Plymouth with her."
"I think not, sir. I feel sure Mdlle. Duprez would have told me if there had been any one going with her."
"When was Miss Heathcote last here?" asked Bothwell abruptly. "You know Miss Heathcote—a pupil—a young lady from Bodmin?"
The girl put on a countenance of profound thought, as if she were calling upon her memory for a stupendous effort, looking back into the night of ages.
"I'm sure I can't say, sir; but it was a long time ago—quite early in the summer."
"You are sure she was not here yesterday?"
"O yes, sir. Mademoiselle left Plymouth a week ago, and nobody called yesterday."
"O, she left Plymouth a week ago, did she, and nobody called yesterday?" repeated Bothwell, with a despairing helplessness which smote the slavey's heart.
It seemed a cruel thing to deceive such a nice-looking, outspoken gentleman—about his young lady, too—for it was evident to Mary Jane that Miss Heathcote must have been keeping company with this gentleman, and that she had broken off with him. If Mary Jane's fidelity to the little Frenchwoman had not been firm as a rock, she would have given way at this point, and told Bothwell the truth.
"Kindly give me Mdlle. Duprez's address," he said. "I have very important business with her, and should like to telegraph immediately."
"Mademoiselle did not leave any address, sir."
"Not leave any address? A woman of business! But she would have her letters sent after her, surely," urged Bothwell.
"No, sir. She did not wish her letters to be sent. She would be on the move, she said; and she would rather risk leaving the letters here than having them follow her from place to place."
There was an air of reality about these particulars that convinced Bothwell, whereby he showed his inexperience; for liars always go into particulars, and prop up their falsehoods with a richness of detail that is rare in truthful statements.
"Then you really don't know where Mdlle. Duprez is to be found?"
"No, sir; but I am expecting her home at any moment. She might walk in while we are standing here."
"I wish she would," said Bothwell. "I want much to see her."
He left his card, and went away, cruelly disappointed.
And now he set his teeth, like a man who is going to meet his foe, as he turned his face towards that white-walled villa on one of the hills above the town, that fair and pleasant place where he had dawdled away so many summer afternoons, all the while wishing himself anywhere rather than in that Armida garden, feeling himself a knave and a dastard for being there. He hated the place now with a deadly hatred. It seemed to him that those white walls had been built of dead men's bones, as if the house within and without savoured of the charnel.
The good old man, so fooled, so wronged by a false wife and false friend, was gone, lying at rest in the cemetery yonder, and Armida reigned alone in her enchanted garden.
Bothwell walked to Fox Hill at his fastest pace, hurrying on with bent brow, unobservant of anybody or anything that he passed on his way, as if he would walk down the angry devil within him. But the devil was not subjugated when Bothwell entered the classic portico. His livid countenance, his gloomy eyes scared the sleek young footman from his after-dinner listlessness.
Yes, Lady Valeria was at home. Bothwell was ushered into the shadowy drawing-room—a place of summer darkness, sea-green plush and tawny satin, an atmosphere of perfume. The verandah beyond the richly-curtained windows was filled with exotics; creamy-white blossoms were languishing in Venetian vases on tables and piano. A Japanese embroidered curtain draped the door of an inner room, and, as Bothwell entered, this curtain was lifted by those slender fingers he knew so well, and Valeria stood before him, very pale, seeming taller and slimmer than of old, in her black cashmere gown. She wore no crape to-day, only that plain cashmere, silkily soft, of densest, most funereal black, falling in straight folds from the graceful shoulders, clasped at the throat with a large jet cross, the thin white arms showing like marble under the long loose sleeves, which fell open from above the elbow. The flowing draperies had a conventual air, as of an abbess of some severe order; but the uncovered head, with its coils of soft brown hair, was like the head of a Greek statue.
Bothwell uttered no word of greeting. He took Hilda's letter from his breast-pocket, and handed it open to Lady Valeria.
"This is your work," he said.
She read the letter slowly, deliberately, and not a sign of emotion stirred the marble pallor of her face as she read. She seemed to weigh every syllable.
"A very sensible little letter," she said. "I did not think it was in Miss Heathcote to take so broad and generous a view of our position. She is a noble girl, and I shall honour her all the days of my life. She has cut the knot of a great difficulty."
Bothwell looked at her incredulously, as if he doubted his own ears.
"Do you suppose that I shall abide by this letter?" he asked, in harsh husky tones, which made his voice seem altogether unfamiliar to Valeria, as if a stranger were speaking to her in Bothwell's semblance.
"Naturally, my poor Bothwell," she answered, with her easiest air. "I cannot think that your engagement to this very good commonplace girl was anything more than apis aller. You were afraid of your position here, and it seemed to you that the only safety was in a respectable marriage. The young lady has a little money, I understand, just enough to keep the wolf from the door, but not enough for any of the delights of life. And you told yourself that you would do penance for those happy days up at the hills, that you—you, Bothwell Grahame—would would settle down into a grinder of mathematics. A curious fancy—like that of some knight of old who, after a youth of passion and storm, turns hermit, and vegetates in a cave. No, Bothwell, I do not for a moment believe that you ever seriously cared for this country-bred girl."
"Your estimate of my feelings in this matter can be of very little consequence to either of us," replied Bothwell, without relaxing a muscle of his moody countenance. "It is Miss Heathcote I mean to marry, and no other woman living. You have stooped so low as to come between me and my plighted wife. You have put off my marriage, hindered my happiness, frustrated the desire of my heart; but nothing that you or any one else can do will lessen my love for the girl I have chosen. If I cannot win her back, I shall go down to my grave a broken-hearted man. This is what you have done for me, Lady Valeria."
She was silent for some moments, while she stood looking at him with her pale fixed face, her large violet eyes full of reproachfulness.
"This is what I have done for you," she said slowly, after a long pause: "This is what I have done for you. I have tried to secure to you a life of independence, wealth, the respect of your fellow-men, who in these days have but one standard of merit—success. I have flung myself at your feet, with all the advantages of my birth and fortune—friends who could help you—an assured position; I have offered myself to you as humbly as an Indian dancing-girl, have debased myself as low, made as little of my merits and my position. And all I have asked of you is to keep the solemn vows you made to me in that sweet time when we were both so happy. I have asked you to be true to your word."
"After you had released me from its obligations, Lady Valeria, after you had flung away the old love-token. Was not that an end of all things between us?"
"It might have been. I accepted my doom. And then Fate changed all things. I was free, and there was nothing to hinder our happiness, except your falsehood—your double falsehood. You were false to your truest friend, my husband, when you loved me; and now that you could love me with honour you are false to me."
"I am as God made me," answered Bothwell gloomily, "weak and false in the days gone by, when my love for you was stronger with me than gratitude or honour, but loyal and true to the girl who won me away from that false love. Shall I go back to the old love now because it is my interest to do so? O Valeria, how you would despise me! how all good and true women would scorn me if I could be base enough to be false to that dear engagement which redeemed me from a false position, which set me right in my own esteem and before my fellow-men! Granted that I have been weak and inconstant, that I have proved myself unworthy of the regard with which you honoured me," he went on, with a touch of tenderness in the voice that had been so hard just now, moved to compassion perhaps by that pale, despairing look of hers, "granted that I am a poor creature, you can hardly wonder that my soul sickened at a tie which involved blackest treason against a good man, and my best friend; you can hardly wonder that I welcomed the dawning of a new love, a love which I could confess before the world, and on my knees to my God. That love meant redemption, blessing instead of cursing. And do you suppose that I am afraid of poverty, or hard work, or a life of obscurity, for the sake of my true love?"
"You have not changed your mind, then?" said Valeria, trying to be supremely cool, though the hectic spot upon that ashen cheek told of passionate anger. "You mean to marry Miss Heathcote, and teach dull lads in a Cornish village for the rest of your life?"
"With God's help I mean to win back the girl from whom you have parted me. I came here this afternoon to tell you that your work has been only half successful. You have hindered my marriage, but you have not changed the purpose of my life. Farewell, Valeria, and I pray God that word between you and me may mean for ever."
"Farewell," she answered mockingly. "Fare according to your deserts, truest, most generous of men."
She put her finger on the little ivory knob of the electric bell, and the sustained silvery sound vibrated in the silent house. Then, with a haughty inclination of her head, she disappeared through the curtained archway as Bothwell left the room by the opposite door.
Edward Heathcote had been away from Paris when Miss Meyerstein's telegram arrived at the Hôtel de Bade. He had gone on a journey of something over a hundred miles on the Western Railway, a journey undertaken with the idea of adding one more link to the chain which he had been slowly putting together; one more chapter in the history of Marie Prévol.
He had been disappointed in those who were to have helped him in his task; and it was to his own patience and resources that he was for the most part indebted for such progress as he had made. Drubarde, the ex-police-officer, had been able to do no more than to supply the formal record of the evidence before theJuge d'Instruction. He could throw no light upon the previous history of the supposed murderer: he could offer no clue to his subsequent fate.
Sigismond Trottier, from whose keen wit Heathcote had hoped for such valuable aid, had broken down altogether. He had failed to furnish any further reminiscences of his old acquaintance Georges.
"I want to know what the man was like," said Heathcote, at their last interview. "If you could put me into communication with any artist friend of yours who knew Georges well, and can remember him well enough to give me his likeness from memory—were it the slightest sketch—I would pay your friend liberally for his work, and be very grateful to you for bringing the matter about."
"I know no such man," answered Trottier curtly.
"That is very strange. Surely there must be some such person among those who can remember Georges. You say that his only friends were of the literary and artistic world."
"Nom d'un nom", exclaimed Trottier impatiently, "I suppose I had better be frank with you. Yes, it is quite possible there may be some one who knew Georges, and who could give you such a sketch as you want. But I will not help you to find that person. I liked Georges—liked him well, mark you. I have profited by his generosity, have gone to him for help when I was in very low water. I am not going to turn and sting my benefactor. Granted that he was an assassin. I can find excuses even for that crime, for I know how he loved Marie Prévol. I am not going to help you to hunt him down. If he is alive and has repented his sin, let him alone, to be dealt with by his Creator and his Judge. What are we that we should pretend to condemn or to punish him?"
"I have sworn to myself to find the last link in the chain."
"Why should you want to hunt this man down?"
"That is my secret. I have a motive, and a very powerful one. It may be that I have no intention to betray the wretch to justice; that when the tangled skein shall be unravelled, and the mystery of that man's life made clear, that in the hour of success I may be merciful, may hold my hand, and keep the murderer's secret from the outside world. But I want to know that secret, I want to be able to stand face to face with that man and to say, 'You are the murderer of Marie Prévol and her lover; you are the murderer of the helpless girl who went alone to England, having in her possession certain papers which threw too strong a light upon your guilty past. You, who have held your head erect before the world, and have passed for a man of honour and probity, you are the remorseless villain whose life stands twice forfeited to the law.'"
Heathcote was pacing up and down the room, intensely agitated. He had abandoned himself wholly to the passion of the moment, forgetful of Trottier's presence, forgetful of all things except that one fixed purpose of his mind which had become almost monomania.
"What would you gain by this?" asked Trottier, wondering at this new aspect of his English friend.
"Revenge! There is enough of the old Adam left in the best of us to make revenge sweet. What must it be to a man who has lost the one delight that made life worth living?"
"I cannot help you to your revenge," answered Trottier. "I was fond of Georges. I hope you may never be able to look in his face and accuse him of the past. I hope he may be spared that shame. I cannot for the life of me understand why you should pursue a stranger with such deadly hatred."
"That is my secret, I say again. If you will not help me, so be it. I must go on working on my own account. But the face—the face—that is, perhaps, the only identification possible. The links of the chain fall into their places—the facts that I have slowly gathered all point to one conclusion; but absolute identification is impossible until I can find a portrait of the man who called himself Georges."
"You are not offended with me, I hope?"
"No, Trottier, I understand your refusal; I respect your loyalty to an old friend. But I must get the portrait I want, somehow, without your help."
Thus ended all hope of aid from Sigismond Trottier. Drubarde, on the other hand, had assured his client that he saw no new clue to the discovery of the missing murderer. If that murderer were indeed identical with the man who met Léonie Lemarque at Charing Cross, if he had surpassed himself in crime by the murder of that helpless girl, it was for the English police, to hunt him down. With such a man as Joseph Distin to inspire their movements, the English police—making due allowance for the dulness of arosbif-eating nation—ought to work wonders; and here was a case which offered the chances of distinction; here was an assassin going about red-handed, as it were, after a murder not three months old.
"You expect me to find the murderer of Marie Prévol, a man who escaped us ten years ago; and here are your pampered and over-paid English detectives who cannot find the man who threw Léonie Lemarque out of a railway-carriage last July. Is that common sense, do you think, Mr. Heathcote? No, sir; in Paris I am on my own ground. I know this great city from cellar to garret—her bridges, her suburbs, her quarries, her sewers, and caverns, and waste places, all the holes and crannies where crime and vice have hidden for the last forty years; but from the moment your criminal has got to the other side of the Channel, I wash my hands of him. My talents can serve you no further."
Mr. Heathcote recompensed the police-officer handsomely for the very little he had done; and so they parted, M. Drubarde vastly pleased with his client, but still better pleased with himself. He was a man whose benign consciousness of his own value in the social scale mellowed with advancing years.
Having been thus abandoned by both his gifted coadjutors, Edward Heathcote worked on by his own lights. There was one person, he told himself, who might be able to assist him—one person whose chief desire in life must be to see the murderer of Marie Prévol and her lover brought to his doom. Among the few scraps of information which Trottier had given to his friend there was the fact that the dowager Baronne de Maucroix, the widowed mother of the murdered man, was still living. She resided at her château in Normandy, where she led a life of strictest seclusion, devoting herself to acts of charity and to the severest religious exercises.
It was in the hope of obtaining an interview with this lady that Heathcote left Paris upon the very morning on which Miss Meyerstein telegraphed the news of Hilda's flight. He had no letter of introduction, no credentials to offer to Mdme. de Maucroix, except the one fact of his keen interest in the after-fate of her son's murderer. There was some audacity in the idea of so presenting himself before a venerable recluse of ancient family, a woman who, according to Sigismond Trottier, had been distinguished in her youth for pride and exclusiveness; a woman who had ranked herself with the Condés and the Mortemarts, who had ignored the house of Orleans, and loathed the Imperial rule.
The château of the Maucroix family was about five miles on the eastward side of Rouen. It was situate on low ground, a little way from the banks of the Seine—an imposing pile of Gothic architecture, guarded by a moat, and approached by an avenue of funereal yews. The surrounding landscape was flat and uninteresting. The broad bright river, winding in bold curves across the level meads, with here and there a willowy islet, gave a certain charm to scenery which would otherwise have been without a redeeming feature. Far off in the distance the chimney-shafts and spires of Rouen rose dark against the gray October sky.
Edward Heathcote felt the depressing influence of those level fields, the gloom of that dark avenue and sunless day. It seemed to him as if he were going into a grave, a place whence life and hope had fled for ever.
He crossed the low stone bridge which spanned the moat, and found himself in an old-fashioned garden of that stately period which gave grandeur to the fountains and parterres of Versailles. Here, too, there were large marble basins, Tritons and Nereids: but the fountains were not playing; there was no pleasant plashing of silvery water-drops to break the dreary stillness of that deserted garden. Everything was in perfect order, not a withered leaf upon the velvet lawns or the smooth gravel paths. But even amidst this neatness there was a neglected look. No flowers brightened the dark borders. There were only the gloomy evergreens of a century's growth, some of them pyramids of dark foliage, others cut into fantastic shapes, an artistic development of the gardeners of the past, which had been carefully preserved by the gardeners of the present.
A white-hairedmaître d'hôtelcame out into the echoing hall to answer the stranger's inquiries.
"Madame la Baronne is at home," he replied stiffly. "Madame rarely goes out of doors, except to her church, or, under peculiar circumstances, to her poor. Madame la Baronne receives no one except her priest."
"I hope that Madame will make another exception in my favour," said Heathcote quietly. "Be good enough to take her that letter."
He had written to Mdme. de Maucroix before leaving Paris, and he hoped that this letter would serve him as an "open sesame."
"Madame,—For particular reasons of my own, I am keenly desirous to trace the murderer of your son; and, believing myself to be already on the right track, I venture to entreat the favour of an interview. I am an Englishman of good birth and education, and I shall know how to respect any confidence with which you may honour me. Accept, Madame, the assurance of my high consideration,EDWARD HEATHCOTE."To the Baroness de Maucroix."
"Madame,—For particular reasons of my own, I am keenly desirous to trace the murderer of your son; and, believing myself to be already on the right track, I venture to entreat the favour of an interview. I am an Englishman of good birth and education, and I shall know how to respect any confidence with which you may honour me. Accept, Madame, the assurance of my high consideration,
EDWARD HEATHCOTE.
"To the Baroness de Maucroix."
Heathcote was shown into a room leading out of the hall, the first of a suite of rooms opening one into another in a remote perspective. The doors were open, and the visitor could see to the end of the vista. The parquetted floors, with the cold light reflected on their polished surface from the high narrow windows, the sculptured pediments above the doors, the crystal girandoles, the sombre-looking pictures—all had an old-world air, and gave the idea of a house which strangers visited now and then as a monument of the past, but which had long been empty of domestic life and warmth and comfort. The far-off echo of his own footsteps startled Heathcote as he slowly paced the polished floor.
He had not long to wait. Themaître d'hôtelappeared after about ten minutes' interval, evidently astonished at the result of his mission, and informed Heathcote that the Baroness would see him.
"Mdme. la Baronne is old and in weak health, Monsieur," said the servant, who had grown gray in the service of his mistress, and who worshipped her. "I hope your business with her is not of an agitating kind. She seemed much troubled by your letter. A violent shock might kill her."
"There will be no violent shock, my friend," replied Heathcote kindly. "I shall be obliged to talk to Mdme. la Baronne of painful memories, but I shall be careful of her feelings."
"I hope Monsieur will pardon me for making the suggestion."
"With all my heart."
The old servant led the way up the wide semicircular staircase to a corridor above, and to a suite of rooms over those which Heathcote had seen below. They passed through an anteroom, and then entered by a curtained doorway which led into Mdme. de Maucroix's sitting-room, the only room which she had occupied for the last ten years. Thesalonsand music-rooms, the library and card-room on the lower floor, had remained empty and desolate since her son's death. Her bedchamber and dressing-room were situated behind this smallsalon, and another door opened into the suite of apartments which had been occupied by her son. These she visited and inspected daily. They were kept in the order in which he had left them, on his last journey to Paris. Not an object, however trifling, had been changed.
There were logs burning on the hearth, although the first chill winds of autumn had not yet been felt: but the Baroness kept a fire in her room all the year round. The cheery blaze and a large black poodle of almost super-canine intelligence were her only companions. On an exquisite little buhl table by her armchair lay her missal and herImitation of Christ. These two books were her only literature.
The poodle advanced slowly across the Persian carpet to meet the visitor, and made a deliberate inspection. The result was satisfactory, for he gave three or four solemn swings of his leonine tail, and then composed himself in a dignified position in front of the fire.
The Baroness, who was seated in a deep and spacious armchair, acknowledged Heathcote's entrance only by a dignified bend of her head. She was a woman of remarkable appearance even in the sixty-seventh year of her age. She possessed that classic beauty of feature which time cannot take away. No matter that the pale pure skin was faded from its youthful bloom, that the lines of care and thought were drawn deeply upon the broad brow and about the melancholy mouth: the outline of the face was such as a sculptor would have chosen for a Hecuba or a Dido.
She was above the average height of women, and sat erect in her high-backed chair with a majestic air which impressed Edward Heathcote. Her plainly fashioned black silk gown and India muslin fichu recalled Delaroche's famous picture of Marie Antoinette, and her cast of countenance in some wise resembled that of the martyred queen; but the features were more perfect in their harmony, the outline was more statuesque. In a word, the Baroness had been lovelier than the Queen.
She motioned Heathcote to a chair on the opposite side of the hearth.
"You are interested in tracing the murderer of my son," she said. "That is strange—after ten years—and you an Englishman! What concern can you have in the fate of that man?"
There was the faintest quiver in her voice as she spoke of her son, otherwise her tones were clear and self-possessed; her large dark eyes contemplated the stranger with calmest scrutiny.
"That is in some wise my secret, Madame," replied Heathcote. "I will be as frank with you as I can; but there are motives which I must keep to myself until this investigation of mine has come to an end—until I can tell you that I have found the murderer of Marie Prévol, that I have proof positive of his guilt."
"And then, Monsieur—what then?" asked the Baroness.
"Madame, it is perhaps you who should be the arbiter of the murderer's fate; in the event of such evidence as may be conclusive to you and me being also strong enough to insure his conviction by a French jury. French jurymen are so merciful, Madame, and your judges so full of sentiment. They would perhaps regard the death of those two young people—slain in the flower of their youth—as an outbreak of jealous feeling for which the murderer was to be pitied rather than punished. The law is always kind to the shedders of blood. It is the child who steals a loaf, or the journalist who by some carelessly edited paragraph wounds the fine feelings of our aristocracy—it is for such as these there is no mercy. But in the event of my being able to find the assassin, and to furnish conclusive evidence of his guilt, what would be your line of conduct, Madame?"
The Dowager was slow to reply. She waited with fixed brows, meditative, absorbed, for some moments.
"There was a time," she said at last, "when I should have been quick to reply to such a question—when I thirsted for the blood of my son's murderer. Yes, when my parched lips longed to drink that blood, as the savage laps the life-stream of his foe. But years have worked their chastening influence—years given up to religious exercises, mark you, Monsieur, not wasted upon the frivolities of this world. I have sought for consolation from no carnal sources. Pleasure has never crossed the threshold of my dwelling since my son's corpse was carried in at my door. Some people try to forget their griefs; they steep themselves in the banalities of this life; they stifle memory amidst the intoxications of a frivolous existence. I am not one of those. I have nursed my sorrow, lived with it, lived upon it, until looking back it seems to me that even in these long slow years of mourning I have not been actually separated from my dead son. In my prayers, in my thoughts, in my waking and sleeping, his image has been ever present, the most precious part of my existence. I believe that he is in heaven, that such prayers as have been breathed for him, together with the services of the Church, must have shortened his time of purgation, that his purified soul is at rest in the blessed home where I hope some day to rejoin him. Confession, penance, mortifications of all kinds have subjugated the natural evil in my character. My cry for vengeance has long been dumb. If that cruel murderer yet lives, I hope that he may be brought by suffering to repentance. I do not hunger for his death."
There was such an air of lofty feeling, such absolute truth in the tone and manner of Madame de Maucroix, that Heathcote could but admire and respect this cold serenity of grief.
"He has brought my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave," said the Baroness softly, "but I have been taught to pity all sinners, as our Saviour pitied the worst and vilest, with inexhaustible compassion."
"Madame, if you who so loved your son can be merciful, there is no one living who has a right to exact the murderer's blood. And now forgive me if I venture to question you about that sad story. For some time past I have devoted myself to this case. I have slowly put together the links of a chain of evidence, until there is but little wanting to complete the circle. Your knowledge may furnish me with those missing links. Tell me in the first place whether you believe—and have always believed—that the man called Georges was the murderer of your son."
"I have never doubted his guilt. There was no one else; no one whom my boy had ever offended. Remember, Monsieur, he was but three-and-twenty years of age, amiable, generous, accomplished, beloved by all who knew him. He had not an enemy, except the man whose jealousy he had aroused."
"Did he know the man Georges?"
"Unhappily, yes. Had he never known Georges he would never have fallen in love with Mdlle. Prévol. Georges was an intimate friend of an artist whom my son patronised; a remarkably clever painter, who twelve or thirteen years ago promised to become famous, but who never fulfilled that promise. Maxime sat to this M. Tillet for a half-length portrait—the man had a genius for portraits—and Tillet introduced him to the Bohemian circle in which Georges was living. It was a very small circle, consisting of about a dozen men in all, mostly journalists and painters. Georges appeared to have a liking for my son; Maxime's youth and freshness interested him; he said, in a world where everybody wasblasé. He invited him to little suppers of three or four intimates, at which Marie Prévol was present. From that hour my son's head was turned. He fell passionately in love with this actress. He thought of her by day and night, abandoned himself utterly to his idolatry, desired ardently to make her his wife."
"He did not believe that she was married to Georges?"
"That was his difficulty. In his love and reverence for her he could not endure to think of her as in a degraded position; yet if she were already a wife, Maxime could never hope to win her. In his mad, headstrong love he was ready to forgive her past career, to redeem her from her degraded position, and make her the Baroness de Maucroix. He, who had been educated in the pride of race as in the gospel, was willing to marry an actress with a tarnished character!"
"Did he make you the confidante of his passion, Madame?"
"For some time he kept his secret from me; but I knew that he was unhappy, and I knew that there was only one kind of grief possible in such a life as his, where nature and fortune had been alike lavish. He had been my companion and adviser from the day of my widowhood; and we were nearer and dearer to each other, and more in each other's confidence, than mothers and sons usually are. More than once I had entreated him to tell me the nature of his trouble, to let me help him, if that were possible; and he had told me that there was no one who could help him in the great crisis of his life. 'I must be either the happiest or the most miserable of men,' he said. One night I went into his room and found him ill, feverish, in a half-delirious state, raving about Marie Prévol. This broke the ice, and during the brief illness that followed—the effect of cold, fatigue, excitement, and late hours—I obtained his confidence. He told me the whole story of his love for this beautiful actress; how at their first meeting he had been enslaved by her exquisite loveliness, her indescribable charm of manner. He protested that her nature was purity itself, despite her false position. She was the victim of circumstances. And then he told me that Georges spoke of her as his wife, treated her with a respect rarely shown to women of light character; and this thought that his idol was another man's wife filled my unhappy son with despair."
"You warned him of the danger of his position, no doubt, Madame."
"Not once only, but again and again. With all the fervour of a mother's prayers did I implore him to escape from this fatal entanglement. I urged him to travel, to go to Spain, Italy, Africa—Algiers was at that time a favourite resort for men of fashion—anywhere so long as he withdrew himself from the fascination which could end only in ruin. But it was in vain that I pleaded. Passion was stronger than common sense, duty, or religion. He was caught on a wheel from which he would not even try to extricate himself."
"And your affection could do nothing."
"Nothing. From that time my son was lost to me. He shrank from confiding in me, not because I had been severe—never had I breathed one uncharitable word against the woman he loved. His love made her sacred to me; but I had spoken the words of common sense. I had tried to stand between him and his own folly. That was enough. He loved his madness better than he loved me—he who had been until that time almost an adoring son. When the time came for us to come here for the autumn he refused to leave Paris, and I was too anxious to allow him to remain there alone. I stayed at our house in the Rue de l'Université, where my son had his apartments, his private keys and private staircase, by which he could come in at any hour, without his movements being known to the household. I hardly know how he lived or what he did during those long days of July and August, while all our circle of acquaintance were away by the sea or in the mountains, and while we seemed to be alone in a deserted city. Several of the theatres were closed during those months; but the Porte-Saint-Martin had made a great success with a fairy piece, and kept open for the strangers who filled Paris.
"I believe that my son went every night to the theatre, that he saw Marie Prévol at every opportunity, and that his only motive in life was his love for her. For me the days went by in dull monotony. A presentiment of evil oppressed me, waking or sleeping. Long before the coming of calamity I felt the agony of an inevitable grief. I knew not what form my misery would take; but I knew that my boy was doomed. When they brought home his bleeding corpse in the summer evening, four-and-twenty hours after the murder, I met the messengers of evil as one prepared for the worst. I had lost him long before his death."
She spoke with infinite composure. She had familiarised herself with her sorrow, lived with it, cherished it, until grief had lost its power to agitate. Not a tone faltered as she spoke of that tragical past. Her countenance was as calm as marble. Every line in the noble face spoke of a settled sorrow, every line had become unalterable as the lines of a statue.
"You say, Madame, that the painter Tillet was upon intimate terms with Georges," said Heathcote. "Is this M. Tillet still living?"
"I believe so. I never heard of his death. He has clever sons whose names are before the public. I have heard people mention them, though I have never seen their works. My knowledge of secular art and literature ceased ten years ago."
"I should be glad to find M. Tillet," said Heathcote. "He is the very man I want to discover—a man whose pencil could recall for me the face of the missing Georges. You say, Madame, that he was an intimate friend of Georges, and that he was a clever portrait-painter. Such a man would not have forgotten his friend's face."
"If you knew what Georges was like, do you suppose you could find him?" asked the Baroness, without eagerness, but with a grave intensity, which accentuated the severe lines of her countenance.
"Yes," replied Heathcote. "I believe that in four-and-twenty hours I could lay my hand on the assassin's shoulder and say, 'Thou art the man.'"
"In four-and-twenty hours? There is a distance, then, between you. The man you suspect is not in Paris."
"No, he is not in Paris."
"And if, by means of M. Tillet's art, you are able to assure yourself of his identity, how will you deal with him? Would you deliver him up to justice?"
"Ah, Madame, who knows? Our great poet has said that there is a divinity which shapes our ends—not as we have planned them. If the assassin of your son is the person I believe him to be, he is already punished. He is a doomed man. Joy and hope and comfort are dead for him. The criminal court and the guillotine could be no harder ordeal than the suffering of his daily life. If he is guilty, Heaven has not been blind to his sin. The Eternal Doomsman has pronounced his sentence."
A faint flush illuminated the settled pallor of Mdme. de Maucroix's countenance, a light sparkled in her eyes.
"I knew that he would not escape," she said, in a low voice. "Heaven is just."
"If you will kindly give me M. Tillet's address, Madame, I shall be deeply obliged."
"I can only tell you an address of ten years ago. M. Tillet lived at that time in the Rue Saint-Guillaume. He was then in the flush of success, and I have heard my son say that he had a handsome apartment. Where he may live now in his decadence I know not. But his sons are known, and you will have no difficulty in getting information."
"I apprehend not, Madame. And now, if you will permit me, I would ask one more question."
"As many as you please, Monsieur."
"Have you in your possession any scrap of Georges' writing—any note, however brief?"
"No. There was no such thing found among my boy's effects. The police requested that such a letter or letters should be looked for. They, too, were anxious to procure a specimen of the suspected man's writing; but, although I looked most carefully through all my son's papers, I discovered no such letter. There were two or three notes from Tillet conveying invitations from Georges, but there was no direct communication from the man himself."
"He was doubtless a man who had taken the old saying to heart," said Heathcote. "'Litera scripta manet.' I have to thank you, Madame, for your gracious reception, and, above all, for your candour."
"In a life like mine, Monsieur, there is no room for untruthfulness or hypocrisy. My existence moves in too narrow a circle. I have no interest outside my son's grave, and my own hope of salvation. Perhaps, before you leave this house, you would like to see the apartments in which Maxime lived. They have been kept just as he left them when he went back to Paris for the last time after the shooting-season."
"I should like much to see them," said Heathcote, standing hat in hand before the Baroness.
It seemed to him that she had a melancholy pleasure in dwelling on the image of her murdered son; that it would gratify her to show the rooms which he had inhabited, even to a stranger.
The Baroness rose, a tall erect figure, dignified and graceful in advancing age as she had been in the bloom of her beauty, when Louis Philippe was king. She moved with stately steps towards the door at the end of hersalon, and led the way into the adjoining room.
It was a large room, richly furnished, and full of such luxuries as a young man loves. Dwarf book-cases lined the four walls. On one side, above the array of richly-bound volumes, appeared a costly collection of arms, both modern and antique. The fireplace was a kind of alcove, furnished with luxurious seats, upholstered in copper-red velvet. Old tapestry, old miniatures, bronzes, curios of all kinds filled the room with endless varieties of form and colour. A tapestry curtain screened the door of the adjoining bedchamber. The Baroness drew aside the heavy tapestry with her wasted hand, and led the stranger into the room where her son had slept through so many peaceful nights in his happy youth.
A carved ivory crucifix of large size, achef-d'oeuvre, yellow with age, hung over the pillow on which that young head had so often slumbered. The attenuated form of the Redeemer showed in sharp relief against the olive-velvet draperies of the bed. Heathcote observed that the Persian rug beside the bed was worn in the centre, as if with much use, and he could guess whose knees had left the trace of prayerful hours upon the fabric, as he saw the eyes of the Dowager fixed upon that pallid figure of her martyred Saviour.
"I have lived half my days for the last ten years in this room," she said quietly. "I hope to die here. If I have sense and knowledge left me, I shall creep here when I feel that my end is near."
Over the mantelpiece hung Maxime de Maucroix's portrait, the picture of a bright young face, perfect in form and colouring, but most beautiful by reason of the hope and gladness that shone in the sunny eyes, the frank clear outlook of an untainted soul. Heathcote could understand the fascination exercised over a woman like Marie Prévol by such a man as this, with all the adjuncts of rank, talent, wealth, and fashion.
They went back to the Baroness'ssalon, and Heathcote took his leave, to return to Rouen, where he stayed the night.
Heathcote returned to Paris on the morning after his interview with the Baronne, and found Miss Meyerstein's telegram, and with it Hilda's long and explanatory letter. The girl expressed herself so temperately, with such firm resolve, such generous feeling, that her brother could not find it in his heart to be angry with her for what she had done. He had never desired her marriage with Bothwell Grahame; he desired it least of all now. Wedding-bells would have been indeed out of tune with the dark purpose for which he was working. He had yielded at Dora Wyllard's entreaty; he had yielded because his sister's happiness had seemed to be at stake. But now that she had of her own accord relinquished her lover, he was not inclined to interfere with her decision.
Nor was he alarmed at Miss Meyerstein's telegram, informing him of Hilda's departure in the early morning. His faith in his sister's common sense and earnestness was of the strongest. The tone of her letter was not that of a girl who was bent upon any perilous course of action. He felt assured that she would do nothing to bring discredit upon her name or her family; and that if it pleased her to disappear for a little while, so as to give her lover the opportunity of jilting her in a gentleman-like manner, she might be safely intrusted with the management of her own life.
She was well provided with money, having the cheque which her brother had sent her a few days before her flight. There was therefore no ground for uneasiness at the idea of her helplessness among strangers. A girl of nineteen, sensibly brought up, with strong self-respect, and two hundred and fifty pounds in her possession, could hardly come to grief anywhere.
"I wish she had taken her maid with her," thought Heathcote, and this was almost his only regret in the matter.
For not a moment did he doubt that Bothwell would take advantage of his recovered liberty, and go back to his old love. Hilda had dwelt in her letter upon Lady Valeria's grace and distinction, her fortune, and the position to which she could raise her husband. Edward Heathcote did not give Bothwell credit for the strength of mind which could resist such temptations. A weak, yielding nature, a man open to the nearest influence. That was how he judged Bothwell Grahame.
He remembered the young man's conduct at the inquest, his resolute refusal to say what he had done with his time in Plymouth, rather than bring Lady Valeria's name before the public. That dogged loyalty had argued a guilty love; and could Heathcote doubt that when called upon to choose between the old love, and all its surrounding advantages, and the new love, with its very modest expectations, Bothwell would gladly return to his first allegiance?
Assured of this, Heathcote was content that his sister should live down her sorrow after her own fashion. Better, he thought, that she should take her own way of bearing her trouble; just as he himself had done in the days long gone, when the light of his life had been suddenly extinguished. It was not in sluggish repose that he had sought the cure for his grief, but in work, and in movement from place to place. He remembered Hilda's often-expressed desire to study at one of the great musical academies of the Continent; and he thought it very likely she had gone to Florence or Milan. He had seen Mdlle. Duprez and Hilda putting their heads together, had heard the little woman protest that such a voice as Hilda's ought to be trained under an Italian sky. He could read some such purpose as this between the lines of his sister's letter. This being so, he was content to let things take their course; more especially as his own mind was full of another subject, and his own life was devoted to another purpose than running after a fugitive sister. He wrote a reassuring letter to poor Miss Meyerstein, and he waited patiently for further tidings from Hilda.
His first business after his return to Paris was to find Eugène Tillet, the portrait-painter. He had noticed the signature of Tillet on some of the illustrations in thePetit Journal, and he inquired at the office of that paper for the artist's address, and for other information respecting him. He was told that M. Tillet lived in the Rue du Bac, with his father and mother, and that he was one of a numerous family, all artistic. His father was Eugène Tillet, who had once been a fashionable painter, but who had dropped out of the race, and was now almost entirely dependent on the industry of his sons and daughters.
This made things easy enough, it would seem: but Heathcote remembered his failure with Sigismond Trottier, and he feared that in Eugène Tillet he might perhaps encounter the same loyal regard for an unfortunate friend. Again, Tillet might have been warned by Trottier, and might be on his guard against any act which could betray the assassin whom he had once reckoned amongst his friends.
It was certain that the painter would remember his friend's face; it was probable that he had some likeness of the missing man in his sketch-book. He was out-at-elbows, idle, a man content to live luxuriously on the labour of others. Such a man would be especially open to pecuniary temptation. He had begun with brilliant successes, had ended in failure and obscurity. Such a man must have suffered all the acutest agonies of wounded vanity, and he would be therefore easily moved by praise.
Arguing thus with himself during his walk to the Rue du Bac, Heathcote arranged his course of action. He would approach M. Tillet as an amateur, a collector of modern art, and would offer to purchase some of his sketches. This would lead naturally to an inspection of old sketch-books, and to confidences of various kinds from the painter.
As a lawyer and a man of the world, Edward Heathcote considered himself quite equal to the occasion.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when he rang the bell on the second floor of the house over the glover's. The neat-looking maid-servant who answered his summons informed him that M. Tilletpèrewas at home. Everybody else was out. Theci-devantportrait-painter was smoking the pipe of peace by the family hearth, a human monument of departed ambitions, bright hopes that had melted into darkness, softly and slowly, like the red light of a fusee.
He yawned as he rose to receive his visitor. He stood in front of the hearth, tall, long-limbed, slouching, slovenly, but with a countenance that still showed traces of intellectual power, despite the evident decadence, physical and mental, of the man. His complexion had the unhealthy pallor which indicates a life spent within four walls; and already that pallor was assuming the sickly greenish hue of the absinthe-drinker.
"I have to apologise for intruding upon you without any introduction, M. Tillet," began Heathcote, taking the seat to which the painter motioned him; "but although I have neither card nor letter, I do not come to you entirely as a stranger. I was yesterday with the Baronne de Maucroix, a lady whom you must remember, as her son was once your friend."
"Mdme. de Maucroix, poor soul!" muttered the painter. "I am not likely to forget her. I believe that portrait of mine has been of more comfort to her than anything else in the world since her son's unhappy death."
"It is a remarkable portrait," said Heathcote, with enthusiasm.
He was careful to show neither interest nor curiosity about the circumstances of Maucroix's death. He was there in the character of an amateur, interested solely in art.
"It is one of the finest pictures I ever saw," he went on. "Neither Reynolds nor Gainsborough ever painted anything better."
"Monsieur is too good. Your English painters have produced some very fine portraits. There are heads by Gainsborough and Reynolds which leave very little to be desired; though the treatment of the arms and hands is sometimes deplorably flimsy. You others have not the realistic force of the Paris school. Your Millais has a Rubens-likebrio, but he paints with a butter-knife. Your Leighton has grace, and a keen feeling for beauty, but he is cold and shadowy. So you saw my portrait of poor Maucroix? Yes, I think it was in my best manner. But it was in the portraiture of women that I was strongest. I have been told by too partial judges that the head over the escritoire yonder is worthy of Titian."
"It is an exquisite piece of colour," answered Heathcote, rising to scrutinise the unfinished Duchess.
"I was a genius when I painted that picture," said Tillet, with a moody look; "but it is all past and done with. I am glad to think you appreciated my portrait of the Baron de Maucroix, a splendid subject, a fine young fellow. May I ask the name of my gracious admirer?"
"My name is Heathcote," said the visitor, laying his card upon the table in front of M. Tillet.
The painter stared at him with a look of extreme surprise.
"Heathcote!" he repeated, and then examined the card.
"You seem surprised at the mention of my name," said Heathcote. "Have you ever heard it before to-day?"
The painter had recovered himself by this time. He told himself that his visitor was in all probability Hilda's brother, and that it was his duty to his fair young friend to conceal the fact of her residence under that roof.
He was capable of so much perspicuity as this, but he was quite incapable of prompt action. He was too listless to make an excuse for leaving his visitor, in order to put the servant upon her guard, and so prevent Hilda's appearance before Mr. Heathcote's departure. The chances were, thought Tillet, that the Englishman's visit would be brief; while, on the other hand, Hilda had gone to the Conservatoire, and was not likely to return for some time.
Having argued thus with himself, the painter was content to trust to the chapter of accidents, which had been of late years the principal chapter in the history of his life.
"If you don't mind smoke," he murmured, with a longing look at his cigarette-case.
"I am a smoker myself, and I delight in it."
On this, Monsieur Tillet offered his case to the Englishman, and lighted a cigarette for himself.
"Yes, I have heard your name before," he said slowly and reflectively. "I think it must have been from my friend Trottier, Sigismond Trottier, one of the contributors to theTaon. He has mentioned an English acquaintance called Heathcote. Perhaps you are that gentleman?"
"Yes, I know Trottier," answered Heathcote, far from pleased at finding that the painter and the paragraphist were intimate.
It was not unlikely that Trottier had warned his friend against answering any inquiries about Georges.
"Then I think you must have heard a good deal about me," said Eugène Tillet, with a satisfied smile. "Trottier knew me when I was in the zenith of my power—glorious days—glorious nights those. The days of Gautier and Gustave Planche, Villemessant, Roqueplan—the days when there were wits in Paris, Monsieur. Ah! you should have seen our after-midnightcénacleat the Café Riche. How the pale dawn used to creep in upon our talk! and how we defied the waiters, when, between two and three o'clock, they tried to put out the gas and get rid of us! I remember how, one night, we all came with candle-ends in our pockets, and when the waiters began to lower the gas, lit up our candles—a veritable illumination. They never tried to put out our lamps after that. Yes, those were glorious nights, and art was honoured in those days. There was a man called Georges, a French Canadian, I believe; a man of large fortune and splendid brains—he came to a bad end afterwards, I am sorry to say"—this with airiest indifference. "He used to give little suppers at the Café de Paris or the Maison d'Or, suppers of half a dozen at most—banquets for the gods. I was generally one of that select circle."
"You painted this friend of yours, no doubt," suggested Heathcote, "this Monsieur Georges."
"No; he had a curious antipathy to sitting for his portrait. I wanted to paint him. He had a fine head, highly paintable. A fine picturesque head, which was all the more picturesque on account of a particularly artistic wig."
"Do you mean to say that he wore a wig?"
"Habitually. He had lost his hair in South America after a severe attack of fever, and it had never grown again. He wore a light auburn wig, with hair that fell loosely and carelessly over his forehead, almost touching his eyebrows. The style suited him to perfection, and the wig was so perfect in its simulation of nature, that I doubt if any one but a painter or a woman would have detected that it was a wig. He dressed in a careless semi-picturesque style—turn-down collar, loose necktie, velvet coat—and with that long hair of his, he had altogether the air of a painter or a poet."
"And you never painted him?"
"Never. I have sketched his head many a time from memory, for my own amusement, both before and after his disappearance; but he never sat to me. I might have made money by giving the police one of my sketches, when they were trying to hunt Georges down as a suspected murderer: but I am not a Judas, to betray the friend at whose table I have eaten," said the painter, whose Scriptural knowledge was derived solely from the Old Masters, and who regarded the disciple's crime from a purely social point of view.
Heathcote was careful to show the least possible curiosity about the vanished Georges. He listened with the air of a man who is charmed by a delightful conversationalist, who admires theraconteur, but who has no personal interest in the subject of the discourse. And Eugène Tillet was accustomed so to talk and so to be heard. He was an egotist of the first water, and was not a close observer of other people.
Heathcote was now assured of the one fact which he wanted to know. The painter had made numerous sketches of his friend, and no doubt had some of those sketches still in his possession, as they could have had little value for the dealers. The question now was to get at his sketch-books as quickly as possible.
"The mention of your sketches recalls the object of my visit, which your very delightful conversation had made me almost forget," said Heathcote.
Eugène acknowledged the compliment with a smile.
"I am very anxious to become the possessor of a few of your sketches in black and white, colour, pencil, what you will. There is no kind of art that I love better than those first airy fancies of the painter's mind, those jottings of inspiration. I am the possessor of a few very nice things in that way"—this was strictly true—"sketches by Mulready, Leslie, Maclise, and many other of our English artists. I should much like to add yours to my collection."