And now the General knew the meaning of that hang-dog look, that reserved manner which had struck him as the outward sign of an inward deterioration in the man he had loved as a son. He could understand what agonies of shame and remorse Bothwell must have felt when their hands touched, what self-contempt was expressed in that cloudy brow and furtive glance.
What, then, was his surprise this morning to see Bothwell approach him with a beaming countenance, holding out the hand of friendship!
"My dear General, I am so glad to see you. It is such an age since we met," he exclaimed, in cheeriest tones.
Yes, there was the old ring in his voice, the old heartiness which had made Bothwell so different from the race of languid foplings—the haw-haw tribe.
"Yes, it is some time since we met," answered the General coldly; "but I daresay you and my wife have seen each other pretty frequently during that time. You are the kind of man our neighbours calll'ami de la maison. We English have a less honourable name for the species. We call them tame cats."
Bothwell reddened, and then grew pale. Never before had those kindly eyes of the veteran's looked at him as they looked to-day. Never before had General Harborough addressed him in a tone which sounded like deliberate insult.
"I have been proud to be Lady Valeria's guest," he said quietly, his heart beating furiously the while, "and have never considered myself degraded by any attention I was able to show to her. I hope she is well."
"She is very well. How long is it since you were at Fox Hill?"
"Nearly a fortnight."
"So long?"
"I have been very much occupied," said Bothwell, divining that something had occurred to excite the General's suspicions, and that it behoved him to speak frankly of his new hopes. "I have been working a good deal harder than I have ever worked since I passed my last examination. But we are just going to start. May I get into the same carriage with you?"
"If you like," said the General, which hardly sounded encouraging; but Bothwell, who was virtuously travelling third-class, got into a first-class compartment with the General.
"And, pray, what new trade are you working at?" asked the old man, fixing Bothwell with the clear keen gaze of honest gray eyes, eyes which had almost the brightness of youth.
Bothwell explained his new plans, the General listening with polite attention, but with none of the old friendliness, that cheery kindness which had so often been to Bothwell as a whip of scorpions, torturing him with the sense of his own meanness.
"And, pray, what may be the motive of this industrious spurt?" asked the General. "What has inspired this idea of a useful life?"
"A very old-fashioned and hackneyed motive, General. I am engaged to be married, and have to think of how I can best provide a home for my wife."
"Indeed! Is the engagement of long standing?"
"Not at all. I have been engaged within the last fortnight; but I have known and admired the lady for a long time."
General Harborough looked at him searchingly. Was this a lie—a ready lie invented on the spur of the moment, to dispel suspicion? Bothwell had doubtless perceived the alteration in his old friend's feelings towards him; and he might consider this notion of an engagement the readiest way of throwing dust in a husband's eyes.
"Do I know the young lady?" he asked quietly.
"I think not. She has not been much away from her home, but her brother is a well-known personage in Plymouth. The lady is Hilda Heathcote, sister of Mr. Heathcote, the coroner for Cornwall."
"Indeed! I have heard of Mr. Heathcote. So you are going to marry Miss Heathcote? Rather a good match, I suppose?"
"I have never considered it from a worldly point of view. Miss Heathcote is a most lovable girl, and has all the charms and accomplishments which the most exacting lover could desire in his betrothed. I am infinitely proud of having won her."
He met the General's eyes, and the steady light in his own was the light of truth. General Harborough doubted him no longer. If he had ever loved Valeria, that passion was extinct, dead as the flames of Dido's funeral pyre. The man who sat face to face with General Harborough to-day was a happy lover, his countenance radiant with the light of a pure and authorised love.
"When are you going to be married?" asked the General, after a longish pause.
"As soon as I can set my house in order and induce Hilda to name the day," answered Bothwell frankly. "My dear girl has to be submissive to her brother's will in this matter, and he is now in Paris. Nothing can be finally settled till he comes back. I am stealing a march upon him to-day in going to see the lady—who has been sent to Dawlish to be out of my way."
"O, she is at Dawlish, is she?"
"Yes; she is staying there with her nieces and their governess. I am going to consult her about our house."
"Our house!" What pride there was in the utterance! The General's doubts were gradually melting away. He could not believe that a man who was so obviously in love with his betrothed could have ever cared much for Valeria. To have loved her, and to have exchanged her love for that of any other woman living, seemed to the General an impossibility. He began to think that his wife had exaggerated the situation the other night, in the overwrought state of her nerves, stung to madness by Varney's insolent speech, excited by her husband's retaliation. He began to think that there had been only the mildest flirtation between Bothwell and his wife—the ordinary up-country sentimentality, meaningless, puerile.
He tried to comfort himself with this view of the case. His natural kindness of heart prompted him to help Bothwell if he could. He wanted to respect the wife he loved, to think well of the man who had saved his life.
"My dear Bothwell," he said, "you have come to a crisis in life which most men find as costly as it is delightful. If by any chance you happen to be what our young people call 'short,' I hope you will allow me to be your banker."
"You are too good," faltered Bothwell, strongly moved. "You have always been too good to me—ever so much better than I deserved. No, I am wonderfully well off. My cousin has advanced me a sum of money which she wishes me to take as a gift, but which I intend to treat as a loan."
"That is generally a distinction without a difference—when the transaction is between relations," said the General, smiling.
"O, but in this case I hope the loan will be repaid, for the repayment will hinge upon my prosperity. I have opened a banking-account at Bodmin, and feel myself a moneyed man."
General Harborough encouraged Bothwell to talk of his sweetheart and his prospects all the way to Dawlish; and then, when the train stopped at the little station beside the sea, Bothwell and his old friend shook hands cordially; and Bothwell felt that he could clasp that honest hand without a pang of conscience. Little did he think that it was the last time that hand would rest in his.
"Let me know the date of your wedding," cried the General, as the train moved off; and Bothwell went in high spirits to look for the temple, in the shape of a pretty little house in a garden by the sea, which enshrined his goddess.
Fortune seemed to be showering her gifts upon him with a bounteous hand. Nothing could have been more propitious than this meeting with General Harborough, who had promised all the help his influence could afford to the army coach.
The General went on to his destination. The gay white city of Bath had no attraction for him upon this particular afternoon. He called on the widow of his old friend, and comforted her as much as it was possible for any one to comfort her in her great sorrow. He dined alone and sadly at his hotel; and as he sat and pondered on the events of the last week, he began to speculate how much or how little griefhiswidow would feel when her day of mourning came. Would her eyelids be puffy and red as poor Mrs. Thornton's had been this afternoon, when he was talking to her? Would her swollen lips quiver, and her distorted features twitch convulsively? Would her whole frame be shaken with sobs when she talked of the departed? He could not imagine Lady Valeria with puffy eyelids or swollen lips. He pictured her mourning gracefully, clad in softest white draperies, reclining in a darkened room, in an atmosphere perfumed with tuberose and stephanotis. He pictured her with a sphinx-like countenance, calm, beautiful, an expression which might mean deepest grief or stoniest indifference, as the world chose to construe it.
No, honestly, after considering the question from every possible point of view, General Harborough did not believe that his wife would grieve for him.
"It will be a relief to her when I am gone," he said to himself. "How could I expect her to grieve as Thornton's wife grieves? Those two were boy and girl together, had been husband and wife for thirty years."
His dinner had been only a pretence of dining, a mockery which had made the head-waiter quite unhappy. Nothing so distresses a good waiter as a guest who won't eat. The waiter would have been still more troubled in mind had he known that this fine-looking old man, with the erect figure and broad shoulders, had eaten hardly anything for the last three days. The General had been suffering all that time from a fever of the brain which had brought about a feverish condition of the body. He could neither eat nor sleep. He lay broad awake in the unfamiliar room at the hotel, staring at the blank white blinds, faintly illuminated by the lamps in the street below—he lay and thought over his wedded life, which unrolled itself before him in a series of pictures, and he saw the bitter truth underlying his marriage with Lord Carlavarock's daughter.
He had been nothing but a convenience to Valeria, the provider of fine houses and fine gowns, horses and carriages. She had not even cared for him as friend and protector. She had lived her own life; paying him for all benefits with sweet false words, and sweeter falser kisses.
And now the spell was broken; the dream had come to an end all at once. He could never believe in sweet words or kisses again. He had looked into the heart of this woman he had loved so well, and he knew that it was false to the core.
The next day was wild and stormy—rain and wind, wind and rain—a gray sky, a heavy pall of cloud, through which the sun pierced not once in the long bleak day; one of those days which Nature keeps in stock for the funerals of our friends.
General Harborough stood in the dreary cemetery, and let the wind and rain beat upon him unflinchingly for about forty minutes. He paid every tribute of respect that could be paid to his old comrade and then he went off to the railway-station, to go back to Plymouth by the train which left Bath at five o'clock, and would arrive in Plymouth a little before eleven. He had given up the idea of going on to London to execute the codicil. That could be done at Fox Hill, if need were. He felt tired and ill and shivery. He thought he had taken a chill in the cemetery, and that the best thing he could do was to go home.
He had a bad night, disturbed by a short, hard cough, which was worse next morning. Lady Valeria sent for the doctor, who pronounced the indisposition an acute attack of bronchitis. The patient was very feverish, and the utmost care was needed. Happily, the valet was a good nurse, and Lady Valeria seemed devoted. She sat by her husband's bedside; she read to him, and ministered to him with the tenderest care.
"You could not be better off," said the medical man, who was of the cheery old school. "We shall make you all right in a day or two," knowing perfectly well that the patient was in for a fortnight's close confinement and severe regimen.
The General endured his poultices and blisters meekly, but chafed at the hot room and the hissing steam-kettle.
"It is worse than being wounded on the field of battle," he said.
And then, half asleep and half delirious, he began to talk about Sir George Varney's summons.
"The scoundrel wants to make a public scandal," he muttered; "he will bring my wife's name before the public. 'I thought by this time you must have been tired of Bothwell Grahame,'" he said, repeating the words which had stung him almost to madness.
Valeria knelt by her husband's pillow and laid her head against it, listening intently to those muttered speeches. She found out that Sir George Varney had sent the General a summons to a police-court; that the story of the blow in the verandah would be sifted in a public inquiry; that the insult offered to the wife, the prompt retaliation of the husband, would be reported in the newspapers, written about, commented upon everywhere. It was just the kind of thing to get into the society papers: and although Lady Valeria's relations had not unfrequently figured in those very papers, with various degrees of discredit to themselves and amusement to the general public, she shrank with an abhorrent feeling from the idea of seeing her own name there.
The day named in the summons was a week off; and, judging from General Harborough's condition, it did not seem likely that he would be in a fit state to answer to the summons in person. The idea of it evidently preyed upon his mind, and added fuel to the fire of the fever.
The day came, and General Harborough had obeyed a mightier summons, and had gone to appear before the bar of a greater court. Lady Valeria was a widow.
The codicil had not been executed: so Lady Valeria was a very rich widow.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard made their way slowly back to Penmorval. It was a melancholy journey for those two who had travelled so gaily in days gone by—the young wife so full of hope, so proud of her husband, who was her senior and superior, versed in the knowledge of that wide outer world of which the Cornish heiress knew so little. She had loved him with a reverent, admiring love, looking up to him, honouring him and deferring to him in all things, pleased to be dependent upon him: and now he was the dependent, looking to her for help and comfort.
He bore his calamity with an almost awful calmness, which at times was more painful to the tender, sympathetic wife than fretfulness and complaining would have been. The dull agony of neuralgic pain wrung no groan from him; he endured the anguish of racked nerves and aching limbs with stoical composure.
"It is not a surprise to me, Dora," he said quietly, when his wife praised his patience; "I have expected some such attack. There have been sensations—strange feelings at odd times—which, although slight enough, have not been without their meaning. Life was very smooth for me here at Penmorval. Very different from my life in the past; the struggles of my boyhood; the hard work and hard thinking of my manhood. Your love made existence full of sweetness. I had the world's esteem too, which must always count for something, let a man pretend to despise the world as he may. Yes; it was a full and perfect life, and I told myself that I had come off a winner in the lottery of Fate. And now all things are changed. There was this last lot waiting for me at the bottom of the urn."
"My dearest," murmured his wife, nestling closer to him among the heaped-up pillows of his sofa, "it would be too hard, too cruel that you should be thus smitten, if this life were all. But, praised be God, it is not all! There is a bright eternity waiting for us—a long day of rest in the land where there is neither sorrow nor pain."
Her husband answered with an impatient sigh.
"My dear Dora, I have neither your sweet simplicity nor your pious faith in the letter of an old book," he answered. "This life is so palpable and so painful just now, that I cannot comfort myself by looking beyond it towards a life of which I know nothing."
They were at Penmorval. Mrs. Wyllard had established her husband in her own particular sanctum, which was the prettiest room in the house—a spacious airy room on the first floor, with a large Tudor window facing southward, and an oriel in the south-western angle. Julian Wyllard had decorated and furnished this room for his young wife; and all things it contained had been chosen with reference to her tastes and pursuits. It opened into her dressing-room, and beyond the dressing-room there was the chief bedchamber of Penmorval, the chamber of the lord of the manor from time immemorial, the birth-chamber and the death-chamber. Its very spaciousness and grandeur gave to this state apartment an air of gloom, a gloom intensified by the prevailing tints of the tapestry, a series of hunting scenes, executed in a sombre gradation of bluish greens and grayish browns. The elaborately carved oak wardrobes were like monuments in a Gothic cathedral. The bed, with its embroidered velvet hangings, fluted columns, and plumed ornaments, suggested a royal catafalque: while the fireplace, with its sculptured pillars and heavy decoration in black and white marble, recalled the entrance to the Capulets' tomb. Not a room assuredly for the occupation of an invalid—not a room in which to suffer sleepless nights and long hours of dull, wearing pain.
This was what Dora thought; and at her order her dressing-room, which was airy and sufficiently spacious, was transformed into a bedroom for Mr. Wyllard, while her morning-room was arranged for his daily occupation. It would be easy to wheel his sofa from one room to the other. All her orders had been telegraphed beforehand, and everything was in its place when the sufferer arrived.
"It is a special privilege to be nursed by a good fairy," he said, smiling up at his wife, with that rare smile which had so peculiar a charm in her eyes—the smile of a man who has not the same set graciousness for all comers.
After this there came the dull monotony of suffering—the life of routine, that death-in-life from which all possibility of action is gone, all power of choice, all changes and chances of the outer world cut off for ever—a life in which a man feels that he has suddenly dropped back into infancy, and is as helpless as a child upon his mother's knee. The child has all the unexplored future before him, the infinitive potentialities of life. The man turns his sad eyes backward and reviews the past. All the things he has done and the things he has left undone pass in a shadowy procession before his mind's eye. He sees how much wiser he might have been. The faults and follies of those departed years are unrolled before him as on a magic scroll. His maturer judgment, his colder blood, condemn the sins of his passionate youth.
Dora was her husband's companion through many an hour of gloom and depression. There were times when he would talk to her with a kind of feverish animation—talk of the books he had read, or of the men he had known—recall the memories of his youth—his boyhood even.
"I can only live in the past," he said, "and in your love. You are my present and my future, Dora. Were it not for you and your love I should have anticipated annihilation. The grave could hardly reduce me to more complete nothingness than this death-in-life here."
He looked round the room with an impatient sigh. And then, touched by the pathetic look in his wife's face, he added,
"Were it not for you, Dora. I have infinite riches while I possess your love. If I were to lose that now——"
"You know that you can never lose it. My love is a part of my life."
"Yes, but there might come a crushing blow that would kill it. Or if I were to sink into feebleness and imbecility—if the mind were to decay like the body——"
"The only difference would be to make me love you more fondly, knowing that you stood in greater need of my love," answered his wife quietly.
"Yes, I believe you are noble enough for the extremity of self-sacrifice," he said, gazing at her with a searching look, a look of the deepest love and keenest pain, a look that told of anguish surpassing the common woes of humanity. "Yes, I believe it is within the compass of a woman's nature to love a human wreck like me, or even to love a creature stained with blackest sin. There is no limit to the sublimity of a woman's love."
His wife was kneeling by his couch, her head leaning against his pillow. There were times when she could find no words of comfort, when she could only comfort him with the light touch of her lips upon his brow, her sympathy, her presence, her hand laid gently upon his.
"I love to hear you talk of your youth," she said one day, when he had been talking of his boyhood at Marlborough, and at home—the dull old parsonage—the house-mother, always busy, and often scolding, troubled about many things; the father, chewing the cud of somebody else's sermon, in a shabby little den of a study, reeking of tobacco; a sermon to be dribbled out slowly next Sunday morning, in a style of elocution, or non-elocution, happily almost extinct.
"Tell me about your life in Paris," she went on, encouraging him to forget his present pains in those old memories. "That must have been full of interest."
"It was a life of grinding toil, and gnawing anxiety," he answered impatiently. "There is not a detail that could interest you."
"Everything in your past history interests me, Julian. I know how hard you worked in Paris. I saw your desk, the place where you sat night after night, the lamp that lighted you. Mr. Blümenlein has altered nothing in your rooms."
"Vastly civil of him," muttered Wyllard, as if revolting against patronage from a dealer in fancy goods.
"But however hard you worked, you must have had some associations with the outer world," pursued Dora. "You must have felt the fever and the excitement of that time. You must have been interested in the men who governed France."
"I was interested in the stocks that went up and down, and in the men who governed France, so far as their conduct influenced the Bourse. A man who is running a race, neck or nothing, a race that means life or death, has no time to think of anything outside the course. The external world has no existence for him."
"And you knew nothing of the master-spirits of the Empire, the men of science, the writers, the painters?"
"My child, how innocent you are! The men who write books and paint pictures have no more direct influence upon an epoch than the tailors who build coats and the milliners who make gowns. The master-spirits are the politicians and financiers. Those are the rulers of their age. All the rest are servants."
Bothwell had shown himself deeply moved by the affliction that had fallen on his cousin's husband. Every feeling of ill-will vanished in a breath before the face of that supreme misfortune—a life smitten to the dust. Bothwell was too generous-hearted to remember that the master of Penmorval had not been altogether kind in the past. His only thought was how he could help, were it by ever so little, to lighten Julian Wyllard's burden. He was all the more sympathetic when he found that the sufferer had thought of him and of his interests even in the hour of calamity, while the blow that crushed him was still a new thing.
"It was more than good of you to consider my happiness at such a time," said Bothwell, when Dora had told him of her husband's conversation with Heathcote.
"My dear Bothwell, my wife's interests are my own; and I knew that she was keenly interested in your happiness. Heathcote has not found out very much about the girl who was killed; but he has found out just enough to dispel his suspicions about you, and he withdraws all opposition to your marriage with Hilda. Now, it is my earnest desire to see you happily married before I am called away; and as life is always uncertain—trebly uncertain for a man in my condition—the sooner you are married the better."
"I shall not plead for delay," said Bothwell, "if I can win Hilda's consent to an early marriage. But I hope, my dear Wyllard, that you may live to see our children growing up."
"That is to hope for the indefinite prolongation of an incurable disease, and is hardly a kind wish on your part. All you have to do is to hurry on this marriage."
"Unfortunately the house I have pitched upon will want three or four months' work before it can be habitable."
"What does that matter? You can live at Penmorval till your house is ready. There is room for half a dozen families in this rambling old place. There will be no one here to interfere with your privacy. You may be almost as much alone as in your own home, and Hilda's presence in the house will help to cheer my poor wife. Hurry on your marriage, Bothwell, while Heathcote is in the humour to accept you. Don't be hindered by any absurd consideration about houses; secure your good fortune while you can."
He spoke with an almost feverish impatience, the fretfulness of a sick man who cannot bear the slightest opposition to his will.
"My dear Julian, you may be sure that Bothwell will be only too glad to act on your advice," said his wife soothingly.
"Let him do so, then, and don't let him talk about houses," retorted Wyllard.
Bothwell was to meet his betrothed the next day at Trevena, where she was to go with Fräulein Meyerstein to inspect the old-fashioned cottage which her lover wanted to turn into a commodious house. There could not be a better opportunity for pleading his cause.
He rode across country, and arrived in time to receive Hilda and her chaperon, who had posted from Launceston to Trevena. It was a delicious autumn day, and, after the cottage had been inspected and approved, the lovers wandered about the wild crest of Tintagel, utterly happy in each other's company; while that discreet spinster, Miss Meyerstein, sat on a grassy bank in the valley below, absorbed in a strip of honeycomb knitting, intended to form part and parcel of a counterpane, which great work had been in progress for the past ten years.
Bothwell was the bearer of a letter from Dora, entreating Hilda to go to her at the Manor, and stay there until Heathcote's return. Bothwell was to stay at Trevena meanwhile, and set the builders at work upon his improvements. The old cottage and the land about it had been secured on a lease for three lives, Bothwell being one, Hilda another, and one of the twins the third. Bothwell hoped to be able to buy the place long before any of these lives gave out.
"You and I have so much to arrange and to talk about," wrote Mrs. Wyllard—"your furniture, your linen, your trousseau. I venture to think I am your nearest friend, and the person you would be most likely to consult in these matters. Your presence will comfort me, dear, and hinder me from dwelling too exclusively on my great trouble. Julian, too, will be glad to have you in the house, and to hear your songs sometimes of an evening. He has his good days and his bad days; and there are times when he is cheerful and likes company. Do come to me at once, Hilda. I am sure you must be tired of Dawlish by this time. It is a very nice little place, but I can imagine a limit to its attractions, and the season is rather late for your favourite diversion of swimming. You shall be free to return to The Spaniards when your brother comes back to England; but in the mean time I am sure I want you more than Miss Meyerstein, who has those all-absorbing twins to occupy her cares and thoughts. I shall expect you the day after to-morrow, by the afternoon train. I shall send a carriage to meet you.—Yours lovingly,DORA WYLLARD."
What could Hilda say to such an invitation from one who had been to her as an elder sister, and whom she loved as fondly as ever sister was loved? She wrote to Dora at the hotel where they lunched and took tea, and gave her letter to Bothwell.
"You are going to Penmorval," he said.
"Yes, I am going there the day after to-morrow."
"And I am to be banished. I am to live here and see that my plans are carried out properly. I daresay my cousin thinks that if I were to stay at Penmorval while you are there I should forget all the serious business of life; lapse into a rapturous idiotcy of love. Well, I am too happy to complain. I shall be happy in the thought that I am building our nest. I shall watch every brick that is laid, every timber that is sawn. You shall not have a badly baked brick or a plank of green wood in your house. I shall think of the plans night and day, dream of them—leap out of my sleep in the dead of the night to make some improvement."
"If you chop and change too much you will have dear to pay," said Miss Meyerstein; and then she launched into a long story about a German Grand Duke, with an unpronounceable name, who built himself a summer palace which cost three times as much as he intended, because of his Serene Highness's artistic temperament, which had beguiled him into continual tampering with the plans.
Never in his life had Bothwell felt happier than on that breezy September day, pottering about the old cottage on the hillside, planning the house and gardens of the future—the study, the drawing-room, the ingle-nook in the dining-room, the little entrance-hall which would hardly be more than a lobby, the closets and clever contrivances, and shelves, and cosy nooks, which were to make this house different from all other houses—at least in the eye of its possessor—the quaint old lattices which were to be retained in all their primitive simplicity, and still quainter casements which were to be added—here an oriel and there a bow—an Early English chimney-stack on one side, and a distinctly Flemish weathercock on the other. Bothwell could draw well enough to show the builder what he wanted done. He had his pocket-book full of sketches for chimneys, pediments, doors and windows, and ornamental ventilators.
"One would think you were going to build a town," said the practical Fräulein.
Never had Bothwell been happier than as he rode across the moors in the fading daylight, thinking of the day that was over. What a simple domestic day it had been—so homely, so tranquil, so sweet; ending with the cosy tea-drinking in the parlour at the inn, Hilda presiding at the tea-tray, and as self-possessed as if she and Bothwell had been married for ten years. The time of tremors and agitations was past. They were secure in each other's love, secure in the consent and approval of those who loved them. Henceforward their lives were to sail calmly on a summer sea.
How different was this newer and purer love of his from the old passion, with its alternations of fever and remorse! How different his simple-minded sweetheart of to-day—gentle, unselfish, conscientious, religious—from the woman who had been all exaction and caprice; insatiable in her desire for admiration, self-indulgent, luxurious, caring not a jot how the world outside her own boudoir went on, who suffered or who was glad, provided her wishes were gratified and her vanity fed!
It was dinner-time when Bothwell arrived at Penmorval, and the dinner-hour was of all seasons the most melancholy, now that the master of the house was a helpless invalid on the upper floor, perhaps never again to enter that stately dining-hall, where the butler insisted upon serving Bothwell's dinner in just as slow and ceremonial a manner as if family and guests had been assembled in full force.
Vainly did Bothwell plead against this ceremony.
"I wish you would ask them to cook me a chop, Stodden," he said. "A chop and a potato would be ample. I hate a long dinner at any time, but most especially when I am to eat it alone. You need not take so much trouble as you do about me."
But Stodden ascribed all such speeches to overweening modesty on Mr. Grahame's part. The poor young man knew that he was in somewise an interloper; and he did not wish to give trouble. It was a very proper feeling on his part; and Stodden was resolved that he should not be a loser by his modesty. Stodden gave him an even handsomer dinner on the following day, and when remonstrated with smiled the smile of incredulity.
"Lor, sir, you know you like a good dinner," he said. "You mayn't wish to give trouble; but you must like a good dinner. We all like a good dinner. It's human nature."
After this Bothwell felt that remonstrance was useless.
Mrs. Wyllard dined with her invalid husband. She rarely left him except when he was sleeping under the influence of morphia, or when he asked to be alone. There were hours in his long and weary day in which even his wife's presence seemed a burden to him, and when he preferred to fight his battle in solitude.
Upon this particular evening of Bothwell's return from Trevena his cousin joined him at the dinner-table, an unexpected pleasure.
"I want to hear all your news, Bothwell," she said. "Julian is asleep, and I have half an hour free."
Bothwell told his news gladly, gaily.
"She is coming the day after to-morrow," he said, "and I am to be banished, like Romeo. But I am not afraid of Romeo's ill-luck. You won't give my Juliet a sleeping potion, and bury her alive while I am away, will you? I have taken two rooms in a cottage at Trevena, with an old goody who is to do for me. That will be ever so much cheaper than the inn; and you know that in my position I ought to be economical."
"You ought not to make yourself uncomfortable for the sake of a few pounds."
"Ah, that is your spendthrift's argument. He never can understand that he ought to save a few pounds; and so he dies a pauper; while the man who has a proper respect for pounds—and pence, even—blossoms into a millionaire. I shall be very comfortable with my goody. I shall be out all day, superintending the builder. I shall live upon chops and porter; and I shall sleep like a top every night, in a dear little bedroom smelling of lavender. My goody is clean to a fault. She cast an evil eye at my boots as I went up-stairs. All the articles of furniture in her rooms are veiled with crochet-work, as if the wood were too precious to be exposed to the light. But how grave you are looking, Dora! Has Wyllard been any worse to-day?"
"No; he has been much the same—a sad monotony of suffering. It was of you I was thinking, Bothwell. I saw some news in the county paper which I know will grieve you."
"There has been no accident between Launceston and Dawlish, has there?" gasped Bothwell, starting up from his chair; "the train got back all right——"
"You foolish boy! If there had been an accident, how do you suppose I could hear of it?" exclaimed his cousin, smiling at his vehemence. "How like a lover to imagine that any ill news must needs be about your betrothed, though you only left her three hours ago! No, Bothwell, my bad news concerns an old friend of yours, General Harborough."
"What of General Harborough?" asked Bothwell anxiously.
"The announcement of his death is in the county paper."
"His death? Impossible! Why, I met him less than ten days ago. He seemed hale and hearty as ever."
"He caught a severe cold at the funeral of a friend, and died of bronchitis after a very short illness. Poor Bothwell! I can sympathise with your sorrow for so staunch a friend. I have often heard you say how good he was to you in India."
Dora had heard of General Harborough only as an Indian friend of her cousin's. She knew of Lady Valeria's existence, and that was all. No rumour of Bothwell's flirtation with that lady had ever reached her ears. She did not know that Bothwell's frequent journeys to Plymouth had been on Lady Valeria's account; that his mysterious journeys to London had been made in her interests—troublesome journeys to interview Jew money-lenders, to renew bills and tide over difficulties.
And now Valeria was a widow, and would have been able to exact the fulfilment of old vows—breathed under tropical stars, far away in that Eastern land which they both loved: she would have been able to claim him as her slave, if he had not boldly broken his fetters in that last interview at Fox Hill.
"Thank God I delayed no longer!" he said to himself; "thank God I got my release before this happened!"
And then he thought sadly, affectionately, of his old friend; and he remembered with thankfulness that last meeting, that farewell grasp of the good man's hand which he had been able to return as honestly as it was given.
"Why did I ever sin against him?" he asked himself. "What an arrant sneak I must have been!"
"You will go to General Harborough's funeral, I suppose?" said Dora presently.
"Yes, of course I must be at the funeral. When does it take place?"
"To-morrow."
"Yes, I shall go without doubt. I shall join the procession at the cemetery. As I am not invited, there will be no need for me to go to the house."
"I suppose not. The poor widow will feel the blow terribly, no doubt."
"Yes, I have no doubt she will be sorry."
This was not a lie. Bothwell thought that even Valeria could not fail to feel some touch of sorrow for the loss of that chivalrous friend and benefactor, the man who had given so much, and had received so poor a return for his gifts. There would be the anguish of a guilty conscience; even if there were no other form of sorrow.
"But, as I suppose she is elderly too, perhaps she will not survive him very long," pursued Dora, infinitely compassionate for the woes of a broken-hearted widow.
"Lady Valeria elderly!" exclaimed Bothwell. "She is not thirty."
"What, was your good General Harborough so foolish as to marry a girl?"
"Yes. It was the only foolishness of his life that I have ever heard of; and he was so kind to the woman he married that he might be pardoned for his folly."
"I hope she was fond of him, and worthy of him."
Bothwell did not enter upon the question, and his reticence about Lady Valeria Harborough struck Dora as altogether at variance with his natural frankness. And then she remembered that unexplained entanglement which he had confessed to her—an entanglement with a married woman—and it flashed upon her that Lady Valeria might be the heroine of that story. He had spoken of General Harborough, but never of General Harborough's wife. There had been a studied reserve upon that subject. And now Dora discovered that Valeria Harborough was a young woman.
The invitation to the funeral came by next morning's post—a formal invitation sent by a fashionable firm of undertakers—and Bothwell had no excuse for staying away from Fox Hill, where the mourners were to assemble at three o'clock in the afternoon. He had no fear that Lady Valeria would be present upon such an occasion; but there was just the possibility that she might send for him when she knew he was in the house. She had always been reckless of conventionalities, carrying matters with such a high hand as to defy slander.
His heart sank within him as he approached the classic portico of the villa. Deepest regret for his dead benefactor, deepest remorse for having wronged him, weighed down his heart as he entered the darkened house, where rooms built for brightness and gaiety looked all the more gloomy in the day of mourning. The hall was hung with black, and in the midst stood the plain oak coffin, draped with the colours which the General had fought for forty years before among the wild hills of Afghanistan. Crosses and wreaths of purest white were heaped upon the coffin, and the atmosphere of the darkened hall was heavy with the perfume of stephanotis and tuberose; those two flowers which the General had always associated with his wife, who rarely decorated herself or her rooms with any other exotics.
Bothwell stood amidst the mourning crowd, with heavily-beating heart. There was no summons from Lady Valeria, and he heard some one near him telling some one else that her grief was terrible—a stony, silent grief, which alarmed her people and her medical attendant. She would see no one. Lady Carlavarock had come all the way from Baden, where the poor dear Earl was doctoring his gout; but Lady Valeria had only consented to see her mother for half an hour, and poor Lady Carlavarock had not even been asked to stay at Fox Hill. She had been obliged to put up at an hotel, which was a cruelty, as everyone knew that the Carlavarocks were as poor as church mice.
"Perhaps Lady Valeria has not forgiven her family for having sold her," said the second speaker, in the same confidential voice.
"Sold her! Nothing of the kind. She adored the old General."
"You had better tell that to—another branch of the service," muttered his friend, as Bothwell moved away from the group.
It was past five before the funeral was over, and there was no train for Bodmin till seven; so Bothwell strolled into the coffee-room of the Duke of Cornwall and ordered a cup of tea.
While he was drinking it he was joined by a young officer who had been at the funeral, and whom Bothwell had often met at Fox Hill—quite a youth, beardless, and infantine of aspect, but with a keen desire to appear older than his years. He affected to have steeped himself in iniquity, to have dishonoured more husbands and fleeced more tradesmen than any man in the service. He hinted that his father had turned him out of doors, and that his mother had died of a broken heart on his account. He was a youth who loved gossip, and who went about among all the wives and spinsters of Plymouth, the dowagers and old ladies, disseminating tittle-tattle. Hardly anything he said was true, hardly anybody believed him; but people liked to hear him talk all the same. There was a piquancy in slander uttered by those coral lips, which had not long finished with the corals of babyhood.
"My dear Bothwell, what a tragedy!" he exclaimed, as he seated himself in front of a brandy-and-soda.
"It is a sad loss for every one," Bothwell answered tritely.
"Sad loss—but, my dear fellow, what a scandal! Everybody in Plymouth is talking about it. There has been hardly anything else spoken of at any of the dinners I have been at during the last ten days."
"I thought old maids' tea-parties were your usual form," retorted Bothwell, with a sneer. "What is your last mare's nest, Falconer? The General's death, or the General's funeral?"
"The circumstances that preceded the dear old man's death. That's the scandal. Surely you must have heard——"
"Consider that I have been buried among the Cornish moors, and have heard nothing."
"By Jove! Do you mean to say that you don't know there was a dreadful row one night at Fox Hill? Sir George Varney insulted Lady Valeria—called her some foul name, accused her of carrying on with a young man. The General came up at the moment and smashed his head. Sir George went all over the place next day, abusing my lady, sent the General a summons to the police-court, where the whole story must have come outin extenso, as those, newspaper fellows say. A very ugly story it is—betting transactions, borrowed money, and a lover in the background. An uncommonly queer story, my dear Grahame. Plymouth was on thequi-vivefor a tremendous scandal. You know what these garrison and dockyard towns are, and a man in the General's position is a mark for slander. The thing was altogether too awful, and the poor old General wouldn't face it. He wouldn't face it, old chap, and he died."
"You mean to say that he——"
"I mean to say nothing. There was no inquest. The poor old man kept his bed for a week, and the cause of death was called bronchitis; but there are people I know who have their own idea about the General's death, and a very ugly idea it is."
"Your friends have apenchantfor ugly ideas, Falconer," answered Bothwell coolly.
He did not believe a word of the subaltern's story, and yet the thought of it troubled him as he sat alone in his corner of the smoking-carriage, trying to solace himself with a pipe, trying to think only of the girl he loved, and of his brightening prospects.
That mention of a lover! How much or how little did it mean? Could it be true that General Harborough had knocked a man down in his own house? Such an act on the part of the most chivalrous of men must have been the result of extraordinary provocation. Only a deliberate insult to a woman could excuse such an outrage against the laws of hospitality. He remembered that Lady Valeria had talked of borrowing money from Sir George Varney; and what could she expect but insult if she placed herself under obligation to a notoriousroue?He had warned her of the folly of such a course. He had urged her to confide in her husband. And now that good and loyal friend and protector was gone; and this last act of his wife's had left her to face the world with a damaged reputation.
He told himself that there must be some grain of truth in the subaltern's story, some fire behind this smoke. The scandal too nearly touched actual facts to be altogether false.
"God help her if her good name is at the mercy of such a scoundrel as Varney!" thought Bothwell.
He left Penmorval in a dog-cart next morning, carrying his portmanteau and a box of books at the back. He was to have the use of the dog-cart and Glencoe while he stayed at Trevena, so that he should not feel himself altogether banished. He could ride over to Penmorval occasionally.
"You must not come too often, mind," said Dora, when she was bidding him good-bye. "Indeed; on reflection, I think you had better only come when you are invited. You may have no discretion otherwise. It will not do for you to be really living here, and only pretending to live at Trevena."
"It is unkind of you to suggest that a man must be an utter imbecile because he is in love, Dora," remonstrated Bothwell. "Of course I understand that I am sent away as a sacrifice to the proprieties. I am banished in order that Mrs. Grundy may be satisfied—that same Mrs. Grundy who was willing to suspect me of murder on the very smallest provocation. No, my dear Dora, I am not going to be troublesome. I will only come when I have your permission. I suppose I may come next Sunday?"
"O Bothwell, this is Wednesday; Sunday isverynear."
"It will seem ages off to me. Yes, I shall certainly come on Sunday. Even servants are allowed to go and see their friends on the Sabbath. Is your cousin less than a hireling that he should be denied? I shall ride over in time for breakfast on Sunday morning."
"You will have to get up at six o'clock."
"What of that? I have had to get up at four, and even at half-past three, for cub-hunting."
He arrived at Trevena early in the afternoon, settled himself comfortably in his cottage-lodgings, and arranged his books in a corner of the neat little parlour, with its superabundant crochet-work and crockery, which ornamentation he artfully persuaded his landlady to put away in a cupboard during his residence.
"Men are so clumsy," he pleaded. "They always spoil things."
Goody confessed that the male sex was inherently awkward, and had an innate incapacity to appreciate crochet antimacassars. She sighed as she denuded her best parlour of its beauties. "The place dew look so bare," she said.
Bothwell gave up his afternoon to a long interview with the builder, who was a smart young man, and as honest as he was smart. The old cottage was thoroughly overhauled and inspected, with a view to the carrying out of those extensions and improvements which Bothwell had planned for himself, and for which he had made drawings that were very creditable to an amateur architect. His experience as an Engineer stood him in good stead.
He modified his plans somewhat on the advice of the smart young builder; but the alterations were to be carried out very much upon his own original lines—the builder's modifications were chiefly in detail. And then they had to fight out the question of time. The builder asked for six months; Bothwell would only grant four. Finally, time and cost were settled; everything was agreed upon; Bothwell having given up his original idea of being his own builder and buying his own materials; and the contract was to be taken to Camelford next day, to be put into legal form. For four hundred and fifty pounds the old cottage was to be transformed into a comfortable house. The two little parlours and the kitchen were to be made into three little studies or bookrooms, communicating with each other. These were for Bothwell and his pupils to work in. A new drawing-room, dining-room, and kitchen were to be built, and over these three good bedrooms.
"I shall add a billiard-room with a large nursery over it later on, when I am beginning to make my fortune," thought Bothwell. "I know we shall want a billiard-room; and I hope we shall want a nursery."
The builder had gone home to his young wife and baby, in a cheerful red-brick cottage of his own construction; and Bothwell was pacing the old neglected garden alone, in the autumn sunset, when he looked up suddenly, and saw a dark figure standing in the narrow path between him and the rosy western sky.
It was the tall slender figure of a woman, robed in black and thickly veiled. That black figure seemed to shut out all the warmth and beauty of the glowing west. Bothwell's heart grew cold within him at sight of it.
He had not a moment's doubt or hesitation, though the woman's face was hardly visible under the thick crape veil.
"Valeria!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, it is Valeria."
"How, in the name of all that's reasonable, did you come here?"
"A pair of post-horses brought me; that was easy enough when I knew where to find you. I heard at Bodmin Road station that you were here. You had been seen to drive by, and you told the station-master where you were going."
They stood face to face in the evening light, Bothwell and Valeria; those two who had loved each other, who had once been wont to meet with smiles and gladness, hand clasped in hand—they stood pale and silent, each waiting for the other to speak.
"How could you do so mad a thing as to come here, Lady Valeria?" Bothwell asked, at last.
His heart was beating passionately, not with love, but with anger. He was indignant at the unfeminine feeling shown by this pursuit of him, this persecution of a man who had frankly owned a new and wiser attachment.
"It is not the first madness I have been guilty of for your sake," she answered. "There was the madness of loving you, in the first instance; and the still greater madness of being constant to you; even when I suspected that you had grown tired of me. But it was not weariness of me that influenced you, was it, Bothwell? It was the false position which grew irksome; the falsehood towards that good, brave man. It was that which made you desert me, was it not? That is all over now. My bondage is over. I am my own mistress, answerable to no one for my conduct; and I am here to remind you of old vows made three years ago beside the fountain at Simla."
"Those old vows have been cancelled, Lady Valeria," said Bothwell coldly. "Surely you have not forgotten our last parting, and the old love-token which you threw away."
"I was beside myself with anger," she answered hurriedly. "You could not have meant all you said that day, Bothwell. You wanted to escape from a false position; you could not guess that my release was to come so soon, that in less than a month I should be free, that in a year I might be your wife."
"Stop!" he cried; "for pity's sake not another word. I am engaged to marry another woman—bound heart and soul to another. I have no other purpose in life but to win her, and to be happy with her."
Lady Valeria looked at him in silence for some moments. She had thrown back her veil when she first addressed him. Her face was almost as white as the crape border of her widow's bonnet, but on each cheek there was one spot of hectic—a spot that looked like flame—and in her eyes, there was the light of anger.
"It is true, then! You are in love with another woman!"
"It is true. I am in love with her; and I am bound to her by all those feelings which are sweetest and most sacred in the mind of a man—by gratitude, by love, by respect, by admiration for her noble qualities. I am to be married to her almost immediately. You can understand, therefore, Lady Valeria, that as I hope always to be your friend—your champion and defender, if need of championship should ever arise—I am justified in remonstrating with you for your folly in coming here alone, upon the day after your husband's funeral."
"My champion, my friend!" she repeated mockingly. "What amazing generosity, what sublime chivalry! You offer me your friendship—you who swore to be my husband, to give me the devotion of your life, whenever it pleased God to set me free from an unnatural union. You who were bound to me by the most sacred vows."
"You released me from those vows when you threw away the love-token. I asked you for my freedom, and you told me that I was free. You cannot recall that release, Lady Valeria."
"I released you from a false position. That is over now: and your alleged motive—your compunction, your remorse of conscience—must be over too."
Bothwell was silent. He had said all that could be said. He stood before Lady Valeria motionless, dumb, ready to bear the brunt of her anger and submit meekly to her reproaches, were they never so ungenerous.
"Do you know what you have done for me?" she demanded passionately. "Do you know what you have cost me—you who pretended to be my slave, who pretended to worship me, and whose flimsy passion could not stand the wear and tear of three short years? You have blighted my life; you have ruined my good name."
"That last charge cannot be true, Lady Valeria. You were much too careful of your reputation—you knew much too well how to keep your slave at a proper distance," answered Bothwell, with a touch of scorn.
"But I did not know how to hide my love for you. There were eyes keen enough to read that. Do you know that my husband assaulted Sir George Varney in his own house on my account?"
"Ah, then the story was true," muttered Bothwell.
"You have heard about it, I see. Did you hear the nature of the insult which provoked that punishment?"
"No."
"It was the mention of your name—your name flung in my face like an accusation—cast at me as if my position were notorious—as if all society knew that I had been guilty of an intrigue."
"Sir George is a blackguard, and no act of his would surprise me; but Sir George is not society. You need not be unhappy about any speech of his. If you want me to call him out, I am quite willing to go over to Blankenberghe and ask him to meet me there."
"You know that such an act as that would intensify the scandal. No, Bothwell, there is only one way in which you can set me right, a year hence, when my year of widowhood is over, when I can marry again without disrespect to my husband's memory. That is the only way of setting me right with the world, Bothwell; and it is the only way of setting me right in my own self-esteem."
"My dear Lady Valeria, I wonder that you have not learnt to understand society better—you, who are essentially a woman of society. Do you think the world would applaud you or respect you for making a very poor marriage—for uniting yourself to a man without pursuit or means or position? You, who with beauty, rank, and wealth, might marry almost any one you pleased. The world does not smile on such marriages, Lady Valeria. The world worships the star which mounts higher in the social firmament, not the star which bends earthward. You have your future before you, free and unfettered. You have wealth, which in this age means power. You can have nothing to regret in a foolish love of the past, love that drooped and died for want of a congenial atmosphere."
"Is that your last word upon this subject?" asked Valeria, looking at him intently with those angry eyes.
They were beautiful even in anger, those violet-dark eyes; but the light in them was a diabolical light, as of an evil spirit.
"My very last."
"Then we will say no more; and we will enter upon a new phase of our existence—the period of friendship. Perhaps you will be kind enough to take me back to the inn where I left my carriage, and order some tea for me?"
"I shall be very happy," said Bothwell quietly; and they walked off towards the inn, which was less than half a mile from the cottage.
"May I ask what you were doing in that deserted garden?" inquired Lady Valeria.
"I have been planning the improvement of my future home."
"Indeed! You are going to live in that desolate spot, with nothing but the sea and the sky to look at?"
"The sea and the sky, and some of the finest coast-scenery in England—the sands and the rocks and the wild hills. Don't you think that ought to be enough for any man to look at?"
"For a hermit, no doubt, not for a man. A man should have the city and the Forum. Ah, Bothwell, if you were my husband, there would be no limit to my ambition for you! And you are going to vegetate in a place like this?"
"I am going to work here, and to be useful in my generation, I hope. I shall help to make the soldiers of the future;" and then he told Lady Valeria his plans.
"What a drudgery!" she exclaimed; "what a wearisome monotonous round, from year's end to year's end! I would as soon be a horse in a mill. O Bothwell, the very idea is an absurdity. You a schoolmaster! You!"
She measured him from head to foot with a scornful laugh; trying to humiliate him, to make him ashamed of his modest hopes. But she failed utterly in this endeavour. Bothwell was too happy to be easily put out of conceit with his prospects. Even that opprobrious name of "schoolmaster" had no terrors for him.
"Tell me about my friend's last illness," he said presently, gravely, gently, anxious to bring Lady Valeria to a more womanly frame of mind.
He thought that she must surely have some touch of tenderness, some regret for the husband who had been so good and loyal in his treatment of her; the man to whom she had been as an indulged and idolised daughter rather than as a wife; escaping all wifely servitude, seeking her own pleasure in all things, allowed to live her own life.
Lady Valeria told Bothwell about those last sad days: how the strong frame had been burnt up with fever, the broad chest racked with pain; how patiently weakness and suffering had been endured.
"He was a brave, good man," she said; "noble, unselfish to the last. His parting words were full of love and generosity. 'You will marry again,' he said. 'I have left no fetter upon your life. My latest prayer will be for your happiness.'"
"I wish we had both been worthier of his regard," said Bothwell gloomily.
He wondered at the supreme egotism of a nature which could be so little moved by this good man's death.
"That is past wishing now. Nothing that you or I can do will cancel the past. No, Bothwell," she said, looking at him steadily, "nothing will cancel the past."
They were at the hotel by this time. Bothwell ordered tea, then went out to the stables to order the carriage. He left Lady Valeria to take her tea in mournful solitude, while he walked up and down in front of the hotel, waiting to hand her into her carriage. He was indignant with her for the unwomanly step she had taken. He wondered that he could ever have cared for such a woman, a woman who could assume the dignity of an empress, and yet stoop to follies at which a dressmaker's apprentice might have hesitated; a creature of caprice and impulse, governed by no higher law than her own whim.
He walked up and down in the autumn darkness, listening to the murmur of the waves, seeing the stars shine out, pale and far apart in the calm gray, glancing now and then at the window of the sitting-room, where Lady Valeria was seated in the glow of the fire, a tall slim figure in densest black.
She came out after the carriage had been waiting some time.
"O, you are there, are you?" she exclaimed, seeing Bothwell by the hotel-door. "I thought you had gone."
"I waited to hand you to your carriage."
"You are vastly polite. I hardly expected so much attention."
"There is a train from Bodmin Road a few minutes after nine. You will be in time for it if your coachman drives pretty fast."
"The road is not the safest in the world for fast driving, but you can tell him to catch the train, if you please. Good-night."
Bothwell told the coachman not to waste his time when he had a level road; and as the habit of Cornish coachmen is to spring their horses up-hill and canter them gaily down-hill, there was every chance that Lady Valeria would be in time.
The carriage drove off, and Bothwell went back to his lodgings, wondering whether he had seen the last of the lady. Her coming had introduced a new element of doubt and fear into his mind. A woman capable of such foolishness might stop at no desperate act. All the serenity of Bothwell's sky had become clouded over.
He turned his face in the direction of Penmorval, and looked across the hills, through the cool, dark night. O, what a different nature that was, the nature of the girl who was to be his wife! What rest, what comfort in the very thought of her love!
"God bless you, my darling," he said to himself. "I send my love and blessing to you, dearest, over the quiet hills, under the silent stars."
While Bothwell was watching the builder's men upon the green hill beside the Atlantic, Edward Heathcote was slowly, patiently, laboriously following the thin thread of circumstantial evidence which was to lead him to the solution of Léonie Lemarque's fate. He had taken this task upon himself in purest chivalry, an uncongenial duty, entered upon in unselfish devotion to the woman he loved. He pursued it now with a passionate zest, a morbid interest, which was a new phase in his character. Never had he followed the doublings of some cunning old dog-fox across the moors and heaths of his native land with such intensity as he followed that unknown murderer of Léonie Lemarque. That she had been murdered—deliberately sacrificed—as the one witness of a past crime, was now his conviction. He had ceased to halt between two opinions. Léonie had gone to meet the murderer of her aunt, and she had fallen a victim to the folly of the dying woman who had sent her to seek protection from such a source.
Who was that murderer, and for what reason had he carried his helpless prey to a remote Cornish valley? Why should he not have tried to get rid of her in the great wilderness of London, where the crime would have excited much less curiosity, and would have been less likely to be discovered?
Entering deliberately into the thoughts of the assassin, following out the working of his mind, his fears, his calculations, his artifices, it seemed to Heathcote that a man familiar with the line between Plymouth and Penzance might scheme out just such a murder as that which had been committed, might fix on the very spot at which the deed was to be done, knowing that at that particular point the palisades had been removed, and the viaduct left unprotected. He would speculate that the fall of a strange girl at such a spot would be accepted as purely accidental. He would trust to his own cleverness for finding the way to disconnect himself from the catastrophe; he would imagine that in the hurry and confusion following such an event it would be impossible for the murderer to be identified. Who was to select from all the travellers in a train that one traveller whose arm had thrust the girl to her doom? A little cleverness and watchfulness on his part would render such identification impossible. A man provided with a railway key could get from one carriage to another easily enough, in the surprise and horror of the moments following upon the girl's fall. Few men are quite masters of their senses during such moments, and all eyes would be turned towards the gorge at the bottom of which the girl was lying; everybody's thought would be as to whether she was living or dead. Very easy in such a moment for an active man to pass from one carriage to the other, unobserved by any creature in or about the train.
Mr. Blümenlein's remark about the hidden door in the alcove had impressed Heathcote strongly: the door opening into a dark and obscure court, a narrow passage piercing from one street to another, and with only a side door here and there leading into a yard, and here and there the grated windows of a warehouse or an office; an alley in which, after business hours, there were hardly any signs of human habitation. Heathcote inspected this passage after he left the merchant's office. He followed it to its outlet into a narrow street, which led him into another and busier street parallel with the Rue Lafitte. A curious fancy possessed him; and he made his way, by narrow and obscure streets, behind the Grand Opera and the Grand Hotel, into the Rue Lafitte. By this way, which was somewhat circuitous, and which led for the most part through shabby streets, he avoided the Boulevard altogether.
That speech of Mr. Blümenlein's haunted him, like the refrain of a song. The words repeated themselves over and over again in his mind, with maddening reiteration.
"Wyllard, the speculator, was one man; but there was another man of whom the world knew nothing, and who went out and came in between dusk and dawn by that side door in the court."
It was a bold speculation on the part of the German merchant, and might have very little foundation in reality: yet the fact that such a side door had been made at Julian Wyllard's expense implied a desire for independent egress and ingress, a wish to be free from the espionage of porters and porters' wives, to go out and come in unobserved, to have no comment made upon the hours he kept.
For such a man as Wyllard had appeared in the eyes of the world, for a hard-headed plodder, a moneymaking machine, this easy access to the Boulevard and the pleasures of a Parisian midnight would have been useless.
But for a man who led a double life, who was the hard calculating man of business by day, and who at night took his revenge for the toil and dulness of the money-grubber's career in the dissipations of the gayest city in the world—for such a man the facility afforded by the side door in the court would be invaluable.
Had Wyllard been such a man? Had Wyllard lived a double life during the ten years of his Parisian existence?
Such a thing seemed to the last degree unlikely. Difficult to suppose that he could have given his nights to pleasure and folly—he who had succeeded as a foreigner in a field where native talent had so often failed; he who had penetrated the innermost labyrinths of the financial world, and had always been a winner in the hazardous game where the reckless and the idle must inevitably end as losers; he who had theflairfor successful enterprises which had been spoken of to Heathcote as little short of inspiration; he who had been respected by the cleverest men on the Paris Bourse, looked up to as the hardest worker and keenest thinker among them all. No, such a man could not have given his nights to pleasure, could not have rioted among foolish revellers betwixt midnight and morning—to go back to his den in the early dawn, and to begin a new day, half rested, bemused by wine and folly.
No, such a man could not have habitually lived the Boulevard life, could not have been the associate of fools and light women. He could not so have lived without the fact of his folly being known to everybody in Paris. And Edward Heathcote had heard his rival praised for the sobriety and steadiness of his life, wondered at as a miracle of industry and good conduct, a man of one idea and one ambition. He had heard Julian Wyllard so spoken of by men who knew their Paris. He had heard his character discussed and sifted years ago, at the time of his marriage with Dora Dalmaine.
That Julian Wyllard could have lived a profligate life was impossible; but that theory of a double life did not necessarily imply dissipation or folly. What of a man who concealed from the world his inner life, the life of passion and emotion, who abandoned himself in secretness and obscurity to his all-absorbing love for a woman whom he dared not acknowledge before society? Such a man might verily be said to lead a double life—and Julian Wyllard might have been such a man.
Heathcote looked at his watch when he entered the Rue Lafitte. He had walked the distance in a quarter of an hour.
He had made a note of the number of the house in which Marie Prévol had lived. It was 117, about half-way between the Boulevard and the Rue Lafayette. It was to this house that he now directed his steps, impelled by the desire to see the rooms in which the beautiful young actress had lived—if it were possible to see them. In this dead season, when so many of the residents of Paris were absent, there was just the chance that some good-naturedconcierge—and theconciergeis always amenable to the gentle inducement of a five-franc piece—might consent to admit a respectable-looking stranger to a view of the third floor of No. 117.
The house was a quiet reputable-looking house enough—one of the older and smaller houses of the street, untouched by the hand of improvement, and of somewhat shabby appearance externally.
The person who opened the door, and who occupied a little den at the back of the entrance-hall, was a woman of about forty, cleaner and fresher looking than the generality of portresses and caretakers. She was decently attired in a smart cotton gown, which fitted her buxom figure to perfection. Her face was clean, and her cap spotless. She had a pleasant open countenance, and Heathcote felt that he might believe anything she told him.