For some minutes Clement Austin lingered in the porch at Maudesley Abbey, utterly at a loss as to what he should do next.
Margaret had left the Abbey an hour ago, according to the footman’s statement; but, in that case, where had she gone? Clement had been walking up and down the road before the iron gates of the park, and they had not been opened once during the hours in which he had waited outside them. Margaret could not have left the park, therefore, by the principal entrance. If she had gone away at all, she must have gone out by one of the smaller gates — by the lodge-gate upon the Lisford Road, perhaps, and thus back to Shorncliffe.
“But then, why, in Heaven’s name, had Margaret set out to walk home when the fly was waiting for her at the gates; when her lover was also waiting for her, full of anxiety to know the result of the step she had taken?
“She forgot that I was waiting for her, perhaps,” Clement thought to himself. “She may have forgotten all about me, in the fearful excitement of this night’s work.”
The young man was by no means pleased by this idea.
“Margaret can love me very little, in that case,” he said to himself. “My first thought, in any great crisis of my life, would be to go to her, and tell her all that had happened to me.”
There were no less than four different means of exit from the park. Clement Austin knew this, and he knew that it would take him upwards of two hours to go to all four of them.
“I’ll make inquiries at the gate upon the Lisford Road,” he said to himself; “and if I find Margaret has left by that way, I can get the fly round there, and pick her up between this and Shorncliffe. Poor girl, in her ignorance of this neighbourhood, she has no idea of the distance she will have to walk!”
Mr. Austin could not help feeling vexed by Margaret’s conduct; but he did all he could to save the girl from the fatigue she was likely to entail upon herself through her own folly. He ran to the lodge upon the Lisford Road, and asked the woman who kept it, if a lady had gone out about an hour before.
The woman told him that a young lady had gone out an hour and a half before.
This was enough. Clement ran across the park to the western entrance, got into the fly, and told the man to drive back to Shorncliffe, by the Lisford Road, as fast as he could go, and to look out on the way for the young lady whom he had driven to Maudesley Abbey that afternoon.
“You watch the left side of the road, I’ll watch the right,” Clement said.
The driver was cold and cross, but he was anxious to get back to Shorncliffe, and he drove very fast.
Clement sat with the window down, and the frosty wind blowing full upon his face as he looted out for Margaret.
But he reached Shorncliffe without having overtaken her, and the fly crawled under the ponderous archway beneath which the dashing mail-coaches had rolled in the days that were for ever gone.
“She must have got home before me,” the cashier thought; “I shall find her up-stairs with my mother.”
He went up to the large room with the bow-window. The table in the centre of the room was laid for dinner, and Mrs. Austin was nodding in a great arm-chair near the fire, with the county newspaper in her lap. The wax-candles were lighted, the crimson curtains were drawn before the bow-window, and the room looked altogether very comfortable: but there was no Margaret.
The widow started up at the sound of the opening of the door and her son’s hurried footsteps.
“Why, Clement,” she cried, “how late you are! I seem to have been sitting dozing here for full two hours; and the fire has been replenished three times since the cloth was laid for dinner. What have you been doing, my dear boy?”
Clement looked about him before he answered.
“Yes, I am very late, mother, I know,” he said; “but where’s Margaret?”
Mrs. Austin stared aghast at her son’s question.
“Why, Margaret is with you, is she not?” she exclaimed.
“No, mother; I expected to find her here.”
“Did you leave her, then?”
“No, not exactly; that is to say, I——”
Clement did not finish the sentence. He walked slowly up and down the room thinking, whilst his mother watched him very anxiously.
“My dear Clement,” Mrs. Austin exclaimed at last, “you really quite alarm me. You set out this afternoon upon some mysterious expedition with Margaret; and though I ask you both where you are going, you both refuse to satisfy my very natural curiosity, and look as solemn as if you were about to attend a funeral. Then, after ordering dinner for seven o’clock, you keep it waiting nearly two hours; and you come in without Margaret, and seem alarmed at not seeing net here. What does it all mean, Clement?”
“I cannot tell you, mother.”
“What! is this business of to-day, then, a part of your secret?”
“It is,” answered the cashier. “I can only say again what I said before, mother — trust me!”
The widow sighed, and shrugged her shoulders with a deprecating gesture.
“I suppose I must be satisfied, Clem,” she said. “But this is the first time there’s ever been anything like a mystery between you and me.”
“It is, mother; and I hope it may be the last.”
The elderly waiter, who remembered the coaching days, and pretended to believe that the Reindeer was not an institution of the past, came in presently with the first course.
It happened to be one of those days on which fish was to be had in Shorncliffe; and the first course consisted of a pair of very small soles and a large cruet-stand. The waiter removed the cover with as lofty a flourish as if the small soles had been the noblest turbot that ever made the glory of an aldermannic feast.
Clement seated himself at the dinner-table, in deference to his mother, and went through the ceremony of dinner; but he scarcely ate half a dozen mouthfuls. His ears were strained to hear the sound of Margaret’s footstep in the corridor without; and he rejected the waiter’s fish-sauces in a manner that almost wounded the feelings of that functionary. His mind was racked by anxiety about the missing girl.
Had he passed her on the road? No, that was very improbable; for he had kept so sharp a watch upon the lonely highway that it was more than unlikely the familiar figure of her whom he looked for could have escaped his eager eyes. Had Mr. Dunbar detained her at Maudesley Abbey against her will? No, no, that was quite impossible; for the footman had distinctly declared that he had seen his master’s visitor leave the house; and the footman’s manner had been innocence itself.
The dinner-table was cleared by-and-by, and Mrs. Austin produced some coloured wools, and a pair of ivory knitting-needles, and set to work very quietly by the light of the tall wax-candles; but even she was beginning to be uneasy at the absence of hot son’s betrothed wife.
“My dear Clement,” she said at last, “I’m really growing quite uneasy about Madge. How is it that you left her?”
Clement did not answer this question; but he got up and took his hat from a side-table near the door.
“I’m uneasy about her absence too, mother,” he said, “I’ll go and look for her.”
He was leaving the room, but his mother called to him.
“Clement!” she cried, “you surely won’t go out without your greatcoat — upon such a bitter night as this, too!”
But Mr. Austin did not stop to listen to his mother’s remonstrance; he hurried out into the corridor, and shut the door of the room behind him. He wanted to run away and look for Margaret, though he did not know how or where to seek for her. Quiescence had become intolerable to him. It was utterly impossible that he should sit calmly by the fire, waiting for the coming of the girl he loved.
He was hurrying along the corridor, but he stopped abruptly, for a well-known figure appeared upon the broad landing at the top of the stairs. There was an archway at the end of the corridor, and a lamp hung under the archway. By the light of this lamp, Clement Austin saw Margaret Wilmot coming towards him slowly: as if she dragged herself along by a painful effort, and would have been well content to sink upon the carpeted floor and lie there helpless and inert.
Clement ran to meet her, with his face lighted up by that intense delight which a man feels when some intolerable fear is suddenly lifted off his mind.
“Margaret!” he cried; “thank God you have returned! Oh, my dear, if you only knew what misery your conduct has caused me!”
He held out his arms, but, to his unutterable surprise, the girl recoiled from him. She recoiled from him with a look of horror, and shrank against the wall, as if her chief desire was to avoid the slightest contact with her lover.
Clement was startled by the blank whiteness of her face, the fixed stare of her dilated eyes. The January wind had blown her hair about her forehead in loose disordered tresses; her shawl and dress were wet with melted snow; but the cashier scarcely looked at these. He only saw her face; his gaze was fascinated by the girl’s awful pallor, and the strange expression of her eyes.
“My darling,” he said, “come into the parlour. My mother has been almost as much alarmed as I have been. Come, Margaret; my poor girl, I can see that this interview has been too much for you. Come, dear.”
Once more he approached her, and again she shrank away from him, dragging herself along against the wall, and with her eyes still fixed in the same deathlike stare.
“Don’t speak to me, Clement Austin,” she cried; “don’t approach me. There is contamination in me. I am no fit associate for an honest man. Don’t come near me.”
He would have gone to her, to clasp her in his arms, and comfort her with soothing, tender words; but there was something in her eyes that held him at bay, as if he had been rooted to the spot on which he stood.
“Margaret!” he cried.
He followed her, but she still recoiled from him, and, as he held out his hand to grasp her wrist, she slipped by him suddenly, and rushed away towards the other end of the corridor.
Clement followed her; but she opened a door at the end of the passage, and went into Mrs. Austin’s room. The cashier heard the key turned hurriedly in the lock, and he knew that Margaret Wilmot had locked herself in. The room in which she slept was inside that occupied by Mrs. Austin.
Clement stood for some moments almost paralyzed by what had happened. Had he done wrong in seeking to bring about this interview between Margaret Wilmot and Henry Dunbar? He began to think that he had been most culpable. This impulsive and sensitive girl had seen her father’s assassin: and the horror of the meeting had been too much for her impressionable nature, and had produced, for the time at least, a fearful effect upon her over-wrought brain.
“I must appeal to my mother,” Clement thought; “she alone can give me any help in this business.”
He hurried back to the sitting-room, and found his mother still watching the rapid movements of her ivory knitting-needles. The Reindeer was a well-built house, solid and old-fashioned, and listeners lurking in the long passages had small chance of reaping much reward for their pains unless they found a friendly keyhole.
Mrs. Austin looked up with an expression of surprise as her son re-entered the room.
“I thought you had gone to look for Margaret,” she said.
“There was no occasion to do so, mother; she has returned.”
“Thank Heaven for that! I have been quite alarmed by her strange absence.”
“So have I, mother; but I am still more alarmed by her manner, now that she has returned. I asked you just now to trust me, mother,” said Clement, very gravely. “It is my turn now to confide in you. The business in which Margaret has been engaged this evening was of a most painful nature — so painful that I am scarcely surprised by the effect that it has produced on her sensitive mind. I want you to go to her, mother. I want you to comfort my poor girl. She has locked herself in her own room; but she will admit you, no doubt. Go to her, dear mother, and try and quiet her excitement, while I go for a medical man.”
“You think she is ill, then, Clement?”
“I don’t know that, mother; but such violent emotion as she has evidently endured might produce brain-fever. I’ll go and look for a doctor.”
Clement hurried down to the hall of the hotel, while his mother went to seek Margaret. He found the landlord, who directed him to the favourite Shorncliffe medical man.
Luckily, Mr. Vincent, the surgeon, was at home. He received Clement very cordially, put on his hat without five minutes delay, and accompanied Margaret’s lover back to the Reindeer.
“It is a case of mental excitement,” Clement said. “There may be no necessity for medical treatment; but I shall feel more comfortable when you have seen this poor girl.”
Clement conducted Mr. Vincent to the sitting-room, which was empty.
“I’ll go and see how Miss Wilmot is now,” the cashier said. The doctor gave a scarcely perceptible start as he heard that name of Wilmot. The murder of Joseph Wilmot had formed the subject of many a long discussion amongst the towns-people at Shorncliffe, and the familiar name struck the surgeon’s ear.
“But what of that?” thought Mr. Vincent. “The name is not such a very uncommon one.”
Clement went to his mother’s room and knocked softly at the door. The widow came out to him presently.
“How is she now?” Clement asked.
“I can scarcely tell you. Her manner frightens me. She is lying on her bed as motionless as if she were a corpse, and with her eyes fixed upon the blank wall opposite to her. When I speak to her, she does not answer me by so much as a look; but if I go near her she shivers, and gives a long shuddering sigh. What does it all mean, Clement?”
“Heaven knows, mother. I can only tell you that she has gone through a meeting which was certainly calculated to have considerable effect upon her mind. But I had no idea that the effect would be anything like this. Can the doctor come?”
“Yes; he had better come at once.”
Clement returned to the sitting-room, and remained there while Mr. Vincent went to see Margaret. To Poor Clement it seemed as if the surgeon was absent nearly an hour, so intolerable was the anguish of that interval of suspense.
At last, however, the creaking footstep of the medical man sounded in the corridor. Clement hurried to the door to meet him.
“Well!” he cried, eagerly.
Mr. Vincent shook his head.
“It is a case in which my services can be of very little avail,” he said; “the young lady is suffering from some mental uneasiness, which she refuses to communicate to her friends. If you could get her to talk to you, she would no doubt be very much benefited. If she were an ordinary person, she would cry, and the relief of tears would have a most advantageous effect upon her mind. Our patient is by no means an ordinary person She has a very strong will.”
“Margaret has a strong will!” exclaimed Clement, with a look of surprise; “why, she is gentleness itself.”
“Very likely; but she has a will of iron, nevertheless. I implored her to speak to me just now; the tone of her voice would have helped to some slight diagnosis of her state; but I might as well have implored a statue. She only shook her head slowly, and she never once looked at me. However, I will send her a sedative draught, which had better be taken immediately, and I’ll look round in the morning.”
Mr. Vincent left the Reindeer, and Clement went to his mother’s room. That loving mother was ready to sympathize with every trouble that affected her only son. She came out of Margaret’s room and went to meet Clement.
“Is she still the same, mother?” he asked.
“Yes, quite the same. Would you like to see her?”
“Very much.”
Mrs. Austin and her son went into the adjoining chamber. Margaret was lying, dressed in the damp, draggled gown which she had worn that afternoon, upon the outside of the bed. The dull stony look of her face filled Clement’s mind with an awful terror. He began to fear that she was going mad.
He sat down upon a chair close by the bed, and watched her for some moments in silence, while his mother stood by, scarcely less anxious than himself.
Margaret’s arm hung loosely by her side as lifeless in its attitude as if it had belonged to the dead. Clement took the slender hand in his. Lie had expected to find it dry and burning with feverish heat; but, to his surprise, it was cold as ice.
“Margaret,” he said, in a low earnest voice, “you know how dearly I have loved and do love you; you know how entirely my happiness depends upon yours; surely, my dear one, you will not refuse — you cannot be so cruel as to keep your sorrow a secret from him who has so good a right to share it? Speak to me, my darling. Remember what suffering you are inflicting upon me by this cruel silence.”
At last the hazel eyes lost their fixed look, and wandered for a moment to Clement Austin’s face.
“Have pity upon me,” the girl said, in a hoarse unnatural voice; “have compassion upon me, for I need man’s mercy as well as the mercy of God. Have some pity upon me, Clement Austin, and leave me; I will talk to you to-morrow.”
“You will tell me all that has happened?”
“I will talk to you to-morrow,” answered Margaret, looking at her lover with a white, inflexible face; “but leave me now; leave me, or I will run out of this room, and away from this house. I shall go mad if I am not left alone!”
Clement Austin rose from his seat near the bedside.
“I am going, Margaret,” he said, in a tone of wounded feeling; “but I leave you with a heavy heart. I did not think there would ever come a time in which you would reject my sympathy.”
“I will talk to you to-morrow,” Margaret said, for the second time.
She spoke in a strange mechanical way, as if this had been a set speech which she had arranged for herself.
Clement stood looking at her for some little time; but there was no change either in her face or attitude, and the young man went slowly and sorrowfully from the room.
“I leave her in your hands, mother,” he said. “I know how tender and true a friend she has in you; I leave her in your care, under Providence. May Heaven have pity upon her and me!”
Margaret submitted to take the sedative draught sent by the medical man. She submitted, at Mrs. Austin’s request; but it seemed as if she scarcely understood why the medicine was offered to her. She was like a sleep-walker, whose brain is peopled by the creatures of a dream, and who has no consciousness of the substantial realities that surround him.
The draught Mr. Vincent had spoken of as a sedative turned out to be a very powerful opiate, and Margaret sank into a profound slumber about a quarter of an hour after taking the medicine.
Mrs. Austin went to Clement to carry him these good tidings.
“I shall sit up two or three hours, and see how the poor girl goes on, Clement,” the widow said; “but I hope you’ll go to bed; I know all this excitement has worn you out.”
“No, mother; I feel no sense of fatigue.”
“But you will try to get some rest, to please me? See, dear boy, it’s already nearly twelve o’clock.”
“Yes, if you wish it, mother, I’ll go to my room,” Mr. Austin answered, quickly.
His room was near those occupied by his mother and Margaret, much nearer than the sitting-room. He bade Mrs. Austin good night and left her; but he had no thought of going to bed, or even trying to sleep. He went to his own room, and walked up and down; going out into the corridor every now and then, to listen at the door of his mother’s chamber.
He heard nothing. Some time between two and three o’clock Mrs. Austin opened the door of her room, and found her son lingering in the corridor.
“Is she still asleep, mother?” he asked.
“Yes, and she is sleeping very calmly. I am going to bed now; pray try to get some sleep yourself, Clem.”
“I will, mother.”
Clement returned to his room. He was thankful, as he thought that sleep would bring tranquillity and relief to Margaret’s overwrought brain. He went to bed and fell asleep, for he was exhausted by the fatigue of the day and the anxiety of the night. Poor Clement fell asleep, and dreamt that he met Margaret Wilmot by moonlight in the park around Maudesley Abbey, walking with a DEAD MAN, whose face was strange to him. This was the last of many dreams, all more or less grotesque or horrible, but none so vivid or distinct as this. The end of the vision woke Clement with a sudden shock, and he opened his eyes upon the cold morning light, which seemed especially cold in this chamber at the Reindeer, where the paper on the walls was of the palest grey, and every curtain or drapery of a spotless white.
Clement lost no time over his toilet. He looked at his watch while dressing, and found that it was between seven and eight. It wanted a quarter to eight when he left his room, and went to his mother’s door to inquire about Margaret. He knocked softly, but there was no answer; then he tried the door, and finding it unlocked, opened it a few inches with a cautious hand, and listened to his mother’s regular breathing.
“She is asleep, poor soul,” he thought. “I won’t disturb her, for she must want rest after sitting up half last night.”
Clement closed the door as noiselessly as he had opened it, and then went slowly to the sitting-room. There was a struggling fire in the shining grate; and the indefatigable waiter, who refused to believe in the extinction of mail-coaches, had laid the breakfast apparatus — frosty-looking white-and-blue cups and saucers on a snowy cloth, a cut-glass cream-jug that looked as if it had been made out of ice, and a brazen urn in the last stage of polish. The breakfast service was harmoniously adapted to the season, and eminently calculated to produce a fit of shivering in the sojourner at the Reindeer.
But Clement Austin did not bestow so much as one glance upon the breakfast-table. He hurried to the bow-window, where Margaret Wilmot was sitting, neatly dressed in her morning garments, with her shawl on, and her bonnet lying on a chair near her.
“Margaret!” exclaimed Clement, as he approached the place where Joseph Wilmot’s daughter was sitting; “my dear Margaret, why did you get up so early this morning, when you so much need rest?”
The girl rose and looked at her lover with a grave and quiet earnestness of expression; but her face was quite as colourless as it had been upon the previous night, and her lips trembled a little as she spoke to Clement.
“I have had sufficient rest,” she said, in a low, tremulous voice; “I got up early because — because — I am going away.”
Her two hands had been hanging loosely amongst the fringes of her shawl; she lifted them now, and linked her fingers together with a convulsive motion; but she never withdrew her eyes from Clement’s face, and her glance never faltered as she looked at him.
“Going away, Margaret?” the cashier cried; “going away — to-day — this morning?”
“Yes, by the half-past nine o’clock train.”
“Margaret, you must be mad to talk of such a thing.”
“No,” the girl answered, slowly; “that is the strangest thing of all — I am not mad. I am going away, Clement — Mr. Austin. I wished to avoid seeing you. I meant to have written to you to tell you ——”
“To tell me what, Margaret?” asked Clement. “Is it I who am going mad; or am I dreaming all this?”
“It is no dream, Mr. Austin. My letter would have only told you the truth. I am going away from here because I can never be your wife.”
“You can never be my wife! Why not, Margaret?”
“I cannot tell you the reason.”
“But you shall tell me, Margaret!” cried Clement, passionately. “I will accept no sentence such as this until I know the reason for pronouncing it; I will suffer no imaginary barrier to stand between you and me. There is some mystery, some mystification in all this, Margaret; some woman’s fancy, which a few words of explanation would set at rest. Margaret, my pearl! do you think I will consent to lose you so lightly? My own dear love! do you know me so little as to think that I will part with you? My love is a stronger passion than you think, Madge; and the bondage you accepted when you promised to be my wife is a bondage that cannot so easily be shaken off!”
Margaret watched her lover’s face with melancholy, tearless eyes.
“Fate is stronger than love, Clement,” she said, mournfully, “I can never be your wife!”
“Why not?”
“For a reason which you can never know.”
“Margaret, I will not submit ——”
“You must submit,” the girl said, holding up her hand, as if to stop her lover’s passionate words. “You must submit, Clement. This world seems very hard sometimes, so hard that in a dreadful interval of dull despair the heavens are hidden from us, and we cannot recognize the Eternal wisdom guiding the hand that afflicts us. My life seems very hard to me to-day, Clement. Do not try to make it harder. I am a most unhappy woman; and in all the world there is only one favour you can grant me. Let me go away unquestioned; and blot my image from your heart for ever when I am gone.”
“I will never consent to let you go,” Clement Austin answered, resolutely. “You are mine by right of your own most sacred promise, Margaret. No womanish folly shall part us.”
“Heaven knows it is no woman’s folly that parts us, Clement,” the girl answered, in a plaintive, tremulous voice.
“What is it, then, Margaret?”
“I can never tell you.”
“You will change your mind.”
“Never.”
She looked at him with an air of quiet resolution stamped upon her colourless face.
Clement remembered what the doctor had said of his patient’s iron will. Was it possible that Mr. Vincent had been right? Was this gentle girl’s resolution to overrule a strong man’s passionate vehemence?
“What is it that can part us, Margaret?” Mr. Austin cried. “What is it? You saw Mr. Dunbar yesterday?”
The girl shuddered, and over her colourless face there came a livid shade, which was more deathlike than the marble whiteness that had preceded it.
“Yes,” Margaret Wilmot said, after a pause. “I was — very fortunate. I gained admission to — Mr. Dunbar’s rooms.”
“And you spoke to him?”
“Yes.”
“Did your interview with him confirm or dissipate your suspicions? Do you still believe that Henry Dunbar murdered your unhappy father?”
“No,” answered Margaret, resolutely; “I do not.”
“You do not? The banker’s manner convinced you of his innocence, then?”
“I do not believe that Henry Dunbar murdered my — my unhappy father.”
It is impossible to describe the tone of anguish with which Margaret spoke those last three words.
“But something transpired in that interview at Maudesley Abbey, Margaret? Henry Dunbar told you something — perhaps something about your dead father — some disgraceful secret which you never heard before; and you think that the shame of that secret is a burden which I would fear to carry? You mistake my nature, Margaret, and you commit a cruel treason against my love. Be my wife, dear one; and if malicious people should point to you, and say, ‘Clement Austin’s wife is the daughter of a thief and a forger,’ I would give them back scorn for scorn, and tell them that I honour my wife for virtues that have been sometimes missing in the consort of an emperor.”
For the first time that morning Margaret’s eyes grew dim, but she brushed away the gathering tears with a rapid movement of her trembling hand.
“You are a good man, Clement Austin,” she said; “and I— wish that I were better worthy of you. You are a good man; but you are very cruel to me to-day. Have pity upon me, and let me go.”
She drew a pretty little watch from her waist, and looked at the dial. Then, suddenly remembering that the watch had been Clement’s gift, she took the slender chain from her neck, and handed them both to him.
“You gave me these when I was your betrothed wife, Mr. Austin; I have no right to keep them now.”
She spoke very mournfully; but poor Clement was only mortal. He was a good man, as Margaret had just declared; but, unhappily, good men are apt to fly into passions as well as their inferiors in the scale of morality.
Clement Austin threw the pretty little Genevese toy upon the floor, and ground it to atoms under the heel of his boot.
“You are cruel and unjust, Mr. Austin,” Margaret said.
“I am a man, Miss Wilmot,” Clement answered, bitterly; “and I have the feelings of a man. When the woman I have loved and believed in turns upon me, and coolly tells me that she means to break my heart, without so much as deigning to give me a reason for her conduct, I am not so much a gentleman as to be able to smile politely, and request her to please herself.”
The cashier turned away from Margaret, and walked two at three times up and down the room. He was in a passion, but grief and indignation were so intermingled in his breast that he scarcely knew which was uppermost. But grief and love allied themselves presently, and together were much too strong for indignation.
Clement Austin went back to the window; Margaret was standing where he had left her, but she had put on her bonnet and gloves, and was quite ready to leave the house.
“Margaret,” said Mr. Austin, trying to take her hand; but she drew herself away from him, almost as she had shrunk from him in the corridor on the previous night; “Margaret, once for all, listen to me. I love you, and I believe you love me. If this is true, no obstacle on earth shall part us so long as we live. There is only one condition upon which I will let you go this day.”
“What is that condition?”
“Tell me that I have been fooled by my own egotism. I am twelve years older than you, Margaret, and there is nothing very romantic or interesting either in myself or my worldly position. Tell me that you do not love me. I am a proud man, I will not sue in forma pauperis. If you do not love me, Margaret, you are free to go.”
Margaret bowed her head, and moved slowly towards the door.
“You are going — Miss Wilmot!”
“Yes, I am going. Farewell, Mr. Austin.”
Clement caught the retreating girl by her wrist.
“You shall not go thus, Margaret Wilmot!” he cried, passionately —“not thus! You shall speak to me! You shall speak plainly! You shall speak the truth! You do not love me?”
“No; I do not love you.”
“It was all a farce, then — a delusion — it was all falsehood and trickery from first to last. When you smiled at me, your smile was a mockery; when you blushed, your blushes were the simulated blushes of a professed coquette. Every tender word you have ever spoken to me — every tremulous cadence in your low voice — every tearful look in the eyes that have seemed so truthful — all — it has altogether been false — altogether a delusion — a ——”
The strong man covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud. Margaret watched him with tearless eyes; her lips were convulsively contracted, but there was no other evidence of emotion in her face.
“Why did you do this, Margaret?” Clement asked at last, in a heart-rending voice; “why did you do this cruel thing?”
“I will tell you why,” the girl answered, slowly and deliberately; “I will tell you why, Mr. Austin; and then I shall seem utterly despicable in your eyes, and it will be a very easy thing for you to blot my image from your heart. I was a poor desolate girl; and I was worse than poor and desolate, for the stain of my father’s shameful history blackened my name. It was a fine thing for such as me to win the love of an honest man — a gentleman — who could shelter me from all the troubles of life, and give me a stainless name and an honourable place in society. I was the daughter of a returned convict, an outcast, and your love offered me a splendid chance of redemption from the black depths of disgrace and misery in which I lived. I was only mortal, Clement Austin; what was there in my blood that should make me noble, or good, or strong to stand against temptation? I seized upon the one chance of my miserable life; I plotted to win your love. Step by step I lured you on until you offered to make me your wife. That was my end and aim. I triumphed; and for a time enjoyed my success, and the advantages that it brought me. But I suppose the worst sinners have some kind of conscience. Mine was awakened last night, and I resolved to spare you the misery of being married to a woman who comes of such a race as that from which I spring.”
Nothing could be more callous than the manner with which Margaret Wilmot had made this speech. Her tones had never faltered. She had spoken slowly, pausing before every fresh sentence; but she had spoken like a wretched creature, whose withered heart was almost incapable of womanly emotion. Clement Austin looked at her with a blank wondering stare.
“Oh! great heavens!” he cried at last; “how could I think it possible that any man could be as cruelly deceived as I have been by this woman!”
“I may go now, Mr. Austin?” said Margaret.
“Yes, you may go now —you, who once were the woman I loved; you, who have thrown away the beautiful mask I believed in, and revealed to me the face of a skeleton; you, who have lifted the silver veil of imagination to show me the hideous ghastliness of reality. Go, Margaret Wilmot; and may Heaven forgive you!”
“Do you forgive me, Mr. Austin?”
“Not yet. I will pray God to make me strong enough to forgive you!”
“Farewell, Clement!”
If my readers have seen Manfred at Drury Lane, let them remember the tone in which Miss Rose Leclercq breathed her last farewell to Mr. Phelps, and they will know how Margaret Wilmot pronounced this mournful word — love’s funeral bell —
“Farewell, Clement!”
“One word, Miss Wilmot,” cried Mr. Austin. “I have loved you too much in the past ever to become indifferent to your fate. Where are you going?”
“To London.”
“To your old apartments at Clapham?”
“Oh, no, no!”
“Have you money — money enough to last you for some time?”
“Yes; I have saved money.”
“If you should be in want of help, will you let me help you?”
“Willingly, Mr. Austin. I am not too proud to accept your help in the hour of my need.”
“You will write to me, then, at my mother’s, or you will write to my mother herself, if ever you require assistance. I shall tell my mother nothing of what has passed between us this day, except that we have parted. You are going by the half-past nine o’clock train, you say, Miss Wilmot?”
Clement had only spoken the truth when he said that he was a proud man. He asked this question in the same business-like tone in which he might have addressed a lady who was quite indifferent to him.
“Yes, Mr. Austin.”
“I will order a fly for you, then. You have five minutes to spare. And I will send one of the waiters to the station, so that you may have no trouble about your luggage.”
Clement rang the bell, and gave the necessary orders. Then he bowed gravely to Margaret, and wished her good morning as she left the room.
And this is how Margaret Wilmot parted from Clement Austin.
While Henry Dunbar sat in his lonely room at Maudesley Abbey, held prisoner by his broken leg, and waiting anxiously for the hour in which he should be allowed the privilege of taking his first experimental promenade upon crutches, Sir Philip Jocelyn and his beautiful young wife drove together on the crowded boulevards of the French capital.
They had been southward, and had returned to the gayest capital in all the world at the time when that capital is at its best and brightest. They had returned to Paris for the early new year: and, as this year happened fortunately to be ushered into existence by a sharp frost and a bright sunny sky, the boulevards were not the black rivers of mud and slush that they are apt to be in the first days of the infantine year. Prince Louis Napoleon Buonaparte was only First President as yet; and Paris was by no means the wonderful city of endless boulevards and palatial edifices that it has since grown to be under the master hand which rules and beautifies it, as a lover adorns his mistress. But it was not the less the most charming city in the universe; and Philip Jocelyn and his wife were as happy as two children in this paradise of brick and mortar.
They suited each other so well; they were never tired of each other’s society, or at a stand-still for want of something to say to each other. They were rather frivolous, perhaps; but a little frivolity may be pardoned in two people who were so very young and so entirely happy. Sir Philip may have been a little too much devoted to horses and dogs, and Laura may have been a shade too enthusiastic upon the subject of new bonnets, and the jewellery in the Rue de la Paix. But if they idled a little just now, in this delicious honeymoon-time, when it was so sweet to be together always, from morning till night, driving in a sleigh with jingling bells upon the snowy roads in the Bois, sitting on the balcony at Meurice’s at night, looking down into the long lamp-lit street and the misty gardens, where the trees were leafless and black against the dark blue sky, they meant to do their duty, and be useful to their fellow-creatures, when they were settled at Jocelyn’s Rock. Sir Philip had half-a-dozen schemes for free schools, and model cottages with ovens that would bake everything in the world, and chimneys that would never smoke. And Laura had her own pet plans. Was she not an heiress, and therefore specially sent into the world to give happiness to people who had been born without that pleasant appendage of a silver spoon in their infantine mouths? She meant to be scrupulously conscientious in the administration of her talents; and sometimes at church on a Sunday, when the sermon was particularly awakening, she mentally debated the serious question as to whether new bonnets, and a pair of Jouvin’s gloves daily, were not sinful; but I think she decided that the new bonnets and gloves were, on the whole, a pardonable weakness, as being good for trade.
The Warwickshire baronet knew a good many people in Paris, and he and his bride received a very enthusiastic welcome from these old friends, who pronounced that Miladi Jocelyn was charmante and la belle des belles; and that Sir Jocelyn was the most fortunate of men in having discovered this gay, lighthearted girl amongst the prudish and pragmatical meess of the brumeuse Angleterre.
Laura made herself very much at home with her Parisian acquaintance; and in the grand house in the Rue Lepelletier many a glass was turned full upon the beautiful English bride with the chevelure doré and the violet blue eyes.
One morning Laura told her husband, with a gay laugh, that she was going to victimize him; but he was to promise to be patient and bear with her for once in a way.
“What is it you want me to do, my darling?”
“I want you to give me a long day in the Luxembourg. I want to see all the pictures — the modern pictures especially. I remember all the Rubenses at the Louvre, for I saw them three years ago, when I was staying in Paris with grandpapa. I like the modern pictures best, Philip: and I want you to tell me all about the artists, and what I ought to admire, and all that sort of thing.”
Sir Philip never refused his wife anything; so he said, yes: and Laura ran away to her dressing-room like a school-girl who has been pleading for a holiday and has won her cause. She returned in a little more than ten minutes, in the freshest toilette, all pale shimmering blue, like the spring sky, with pearl-grey gloves and boots and parasol, and a bonnet that seemed made of azure butterflies.
It was drawing towards the close of this delightful honeymoon tour, and it was a bright sunshiny morning early in February; but February in Paris is sometimes better than April in London.
Philip Jocelyn’s work that morning was by no means light, for Laura was fond of pictures, in a frivolous amateurish kind of way; and she ran from one canvas to another, like a fickle-minded bee that is bewildered by the myriad blossoms of a boundless parterre. But she fixed upon a picture which she said she preferred to anything she had seen in the gallery.
Philip Jocelyn was examining some pictures on the other side of the room when his wife made this discovery. She hurried to him immediately, and led him off to look at the picture. It was a peasant-girl’s head, very exquisitely painted by a modern artist, and the baronet approved his wife’s taste.
“How I wish you could get me a copy of that picture, Philip,” Laura said, entreatingly. “I should so like one to hang in my morning-room at Jocelyn’s Rock. I wonder who painted that lovely face?”
There was a young artist hard at work at his easel, copying a large devotional subject that hung near the picture Laura admired. Sir Philip asked this gentleman if he knew the name of the artist who had painted the peasant-girl.
“Ah, but yes, monsieur!” the painter answered, with animated politeness; “it is the work of one of my friends; a young Englishman, of a renown almost universal in Paris.”
“And his name, monsieur?”
“He calls himself Kerstall — Frederick Kerstall; he is the son of an old monsieur, who calls himself also Kerstall, and who had much of celebrity in England it is many years.”
“Kerstall!” exclaimed Laura, suddenly; “Mr. Kerstall! why, it was a Mr. Kerstall who painted papa’s portrait; I have heard grandpapa say so again and again; and he took it away to Italy with him, promising to bring it back to London when he returned, after a year or two of study. And, oh, Philip, I should so like to see this old Mr. Kerstall; because, you know, he may have kept papa’s portrait until this very day, and I should so like to have a picture of my father as he was when he was young, and before the troubles of a long life altered him,” Laura said, rather mournfully.
She turned to the French artist presently, and asked him where the elder Mr. Kerstall lived, and if there was any possibility of seeing him.
The painter shrugged up his shoulders, and pursed up his mouth, thoughtfully.
“But, madame,” he said, “this Monsieur Kerstall’s father is very old, and he has ceased to paint it is a long time. They have said that he is even a little imbecile, that he does not remember himself of the most common events of his life. But there are some others who say that his memory has not altogether failed, and that he is still enough harshly critical towards the works of others.”
The Frenchman might have run on much longer upon this subject, but Laura was too impatient to be polite. She interrupted him by asking for Mr. Kerstall’s address.
The artist took out one of his own cards, and wrote the required address in pencil.
“It is in the neighbourhood of Notre Dame, madame, in the Rue Cailoux, over the office of a Parisian journal,” he said, as he handed the card to Laura. “I don’t think you will have any difficulty in finding the house.”
Laura thanked the French artist and then took her husband’s arm and walked away with him.
“I don’t care about looking at any more pictures to-day, Philip,” she said; “but, oh, I do wish you would take me to this Mr. Kerstall’s studio at once! You will be doing me such a favour, Philip, if you’ll say yes.”
“When did I ever say no to anything you asked me, Laura? We’ll go to Mr. Kerstall immediately, if you like. But why are you so anxious to see this old portrait of your father, my dear?”
“Because I want to see what he was before he went to India. I want to see what he was when he was bright and young before the world had hardened him. Ah, Philip, since we have known and loved each other, it seems to me as if I had no thought or care for any one in all this wide world except yourself. But before that time I was very unhappy about my father. I had expected that he would be so fond of me. I had so built upon his return to England, thinking that we should be nearer and dearer to each other than any father and daughter ever were before. I had thought all this, Philip; night after night I had dreamt the same dream — the bright happy dream in which my father came home to me, the fond foolish dream in which I felt his strong arms folded round me, and his true heart beating against my own. But when he did come at last, it seemed to me as if this father was a man of stone; his white fixed face repelled me; his cold hard voice turned my blood to ice. I was frightened of him, Philip; I was frightened of my own father; and little by little we grew to shun each other, till at last we met like strangers, or something worse than strangers; for I have seen my father look at me with an expression of absolute horror in his stern cruel eyes. Can you wonder, then, that I want to see what he was in his youth? I shall learn to love him, perhaps, if I can see the smiling image of his lost youth.”
Laura said all this in a very low voice as she walked with her husband through the garden of the Luxembourg. She walked very fast; for she was as eager as a child who is intent upon some scheme of pleasure.
The Rue Cailoux was a very quiet little street — a narrow, winding street, with tall shabby-looking houses, and untidy-little greengrocers’ shops peeping out here and there.
The pavement suggested the idea that there had just been an outbreak of the populace, and that the stones had been ruthlessly torn up to serve in the construction of barricades, and only very carelessly put down again. It was a street which seemed to have been built with a view to achieving the largest amount of inconvenience out of a minimum of materials; and looked at in this light the Rue Cailoux was a triumph: it was a street in which Parisian drivers clacked their whips to a running accompaniment of imprecations: it was a street in which you met dirty porters carrying six feet of highly-baked bread, and shrill old women with wonderful bandanas bound about their grisly heads: but above all, it was a street in which you were so shaken and jostled, and bumped and startled, by the ups and downs of the pavement, that you had very little leisure to notice the distinctive features of the neighbourhood.
The house in which Mr. Kerstall, the English artist, lived was a gloomy-looking building with a dingy archway, beneath which Sir Philip Jocelyn and his wife alighted.
There was a door under this archway, and there was a yard beyond it, with the door of another house opening upon it, and ranges of black curtainless windows looking down upon it, and an air of dried herbs, green-stuff, chickens in the moulting stage, and old women, generally pervading it. The door which belonged to Mr. Kerstall’s house, or rather the house in which Mr. Kerstall lived in common with a colony of unknown number and various avocations, was open, and Sir Philip and his wife went into the hall.
There was no such thing as a porter or portress; but a stray old woman, hovering under the archway, informed Philip Jocelyn that Mr. Kerstall was to be found on the second story. So Laura and her husband ascended the stairs, which were bare of any covering except dirt, and went on mounting through comparative darkness, past the office of the Parisian journal, till they came to a very dingy black door.
Philip knocked, and, after a considerable interval, the door was opened by another old woman, tidier and cleaner than the old women who pervaded the yard, but looking very like a near relation to those ladies.
Philip inquired in French for the senior Mr. Kerstall; and the old woman told him, very much through her nose, that Mr. Kerstall father saw no one; but that Mr. Kerstall son was at his service.
Philip Jocelyn said that in that case he would be glad to see Mr. Kerstall junior; upon which the old woman ushered the baronet and his wife into a saloon, distinguished by an air of faded splendour, and in which the French clocks and ormolu candelabras were in the proportion of two to one to the chairs and tables.
Sir Philip gave his card to the old woman, and she carried it into the adjoining chamber, whence there issued a gush of tobacco-smoke, as the door between the two rooms was opened and then shut again.
In less than three minutes by the minute-hand of the only one of the ormolu clocks which made any pretence of going, the door was opened again, and a burly-looking, middle-aged gentleman, with a very black beard, and a dirty holland blouse all smeared with smudges of oil-colour, appeared upon the threshold of the adjoining chamber, surrounded by a cloud of tobacco-smoke — like a heathen deity, or a good-tempered-looking African genie newly escaped from his bottle.
This was Mr. Kerstall junior. He introduced himself to Sir Philip, and waited to hear what that gentleman required of him.
Philip Jocelyn explained his business, and told the painter how, more than five-and-thirty years before, the portrait of Henry Dunbar, only son of Percival Dunbar the great banker, had been painted by Mr. Michael Kerstall, at that time a fashionable artist.
“Five-and-thirty years ago!” said the painter, pulling thoughtfully at his beard; “five-and-thirty years ago! that’s a very long time, my lord, and I’m afraid it’s not likely my father will remember the circumstance; for I regret to say that he is slow to remember the events of a few days past. His memory has been failing a long time. You wish to know the fate of this portrait of Mr. Dunbar, I think you said?”
Laura answered this question, although it had been addressed to her husband.
“Yes, we want to see the picture, if possible,” she said; “Mr. Dunbar is my father, and there is no other portrait of him in existence. I do so want to see this one, and to obtain possession of it, if it is possible for me to do so.”
“And you are of opinion that my father took the picture to Italy with him when he left England more than five-and-thirty years ago?”
“Yes; I’ve heard my grandfather say so. He lost sight of Mr. Kerstall, and could never obtain any tidings of the picture. But I hope that, late as it is, we may be more fortunate now. You do not think the picture has been destroyed, do you?” Laura asked eagerly.
“Well,” the artist answered, doubtfully, “I should be inclined to fear that the portrait may have been painted out: and yet, by the bye, as the picture belonged by right to Mr. Percival Dunbar, and not to my father, that circumstance may have preserved it uninjured through all these years. My father has a heap of unframed canvases, inches thick in dust, and littering every corner of his room. Mr. Dunbar’s portrait may be amongst them.
“Oh, I should be so very much obliged if you would allow me to examine those pictures,” said Laura.
“You think you would recognize the portrait?”
“Yes, surely; I could not fail to do so. I know my father’s face so well as it is, that I must certainly have some knowledge of it as it was five-and-thirty years ago, however much he may have altered in the interval. Pray, Mr. Kerstall, oblige me by letting me see the pictures.”
“I should be very churlish were I to refuse to do so,” the painter answered, good-naturedly. “I will just go and see if my father is able to receive visitors. He has been a voluntary exile from England for the last five-and-thirty years, so I fear he will have forgotten the name of Dunbar; but he may by chance be able to give us some slight assistance.”
Mr. Kerstall left his visitors for about ten minutes, and at the end of that time he returned to say that his father was quite ready to receive Sir Philip and Lady Jocelyn.
“I mentioned the name of Dunbar to him,” the painter said; “but he remembers nothing. He has been painting a little this morning, and is in very high spirits about his work. It pleases him to handle the brushes, though his hand is terribly shaky, and he can scarcely hold the palette.”
The artist led the way to a large room, comfortably but plainly furnished, and heated to a pitch of suffocation by a stove. There was a bed in a curtained alcove at the end of the apartment; an easel stood near the large window; and the proprietor of the chamber sat in a cushioned arm-chair close to the suffocating stove.
Michael Kerstall was an old man, who looked even older than he was. He was a picturesque-looking old man, with long white hair dropping down over his coat-collar, and a black-velvet skull-cap upon his head. He was a cheerful old man, and life seemed very pleasant to him; for Frenchmen have a habit of honouring their fathers and mothers, and Mr. Frederick Kerstall was a naturalized citizen of the French republic.
The old man nodded and smiled and chuckled as Sir Philip and Laura were presented to him, and pointed with a courtly grace to the chairs which his son set for his guests.
“You want to see my pictures, sir? Ah, yes; to be sure, to be sure! The modern school of painting, sir, is something marvellous to an old man, sir; an old man who remembers Sir Thomas Lawrence — ay, sir, I had the honour to know him intimately. No pre-Raphaelite theories in those days, sir; no figures cut of coloured pasteboard and glued on to the canvas; no green trees and vermilion draperies, and chocolate-coloured streaks across an ultramarine background, sir; and I’m told the young people call that a sky. No pointed chins, and angular knees and elbows, and frizzy red hair — red, sir, and as frizzy as a blackamoor’s — and I’m told the young people call that female beauty. No, sir; nothing of that sort in my day. There was a French painter in my day, sir, called David, and there was an English painter in my day called Lawrence; and they painted ladies and gentlemen, sir; and they instituted a gentlemanly school, sir. And you put a crimson curtain behind your subject, and you put a bran-new hat, or a roll of paper, in his right hand, and you thrust his left hand in his waistcoat — the best black satin, sir, with strong light in the texture — and you made your subject look like a gentleman. Yes, sir, if he was a chimney-sweep when he went into your studio, he went out of it a gentleman.”
The old man would have gone on talking for any length of time, for pre-Raphaelitism was his favourite antipathy; and the black-bearded gentleman standing behind his chair was an enthusiastic member of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.
Mr. Kerstall senior seemed so thoroughly in possession of all his faculties while he held forth upon modern art, that Laura began to hope his memory could scarcely be so much impaired as his son had represented it to be.
“When you painted portraits in England, Mr. Kerstall,” she said, “before you went to Italy, you painted a likeness of my father, Henry Dunbar, who was then a young man. Do you remember that circumstance?”
Laura asked this question very hopefully; but to her surprise, Mr. Kerstall took no notice whatever of her inquiry, but went rambling on about the degeneracy of modern art.
“I am told there is a young man called Millais, sir, and another young man called Holman Hunt, sir — positive boys, sir; actually very little more than boys, sir; and I’m given to understand, sir, that when these young men’s works are exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, sir, people crowd round them, and go raving mad about them; while a gentlemanly portrait of a county member, with a Corinthian pillar and a crimson curtain, gets no more attention than if it was a bishop’s half-length of black canvas. I am told so, sir, and I am obliged to believe it, sir.”
Poor Laura listened very impatiently to all this talk about painters and their pictures. But Mr. Kerstall the younger perceived her anxiety, and came to her relief.
“Lady Jocelyn would very much like to see the pictures you have scattered about in this room, my dear father,” he said, “if you have no objection to our turning them over?”
The old man chuckled and nodded.
“You’ll find ’em gentlemanly,” he said; “you’ll find ’em all more or less gentlemanly.”
“You’re sure you don’t remember painting the portrait of a Mr. Dunbar?” Mr. Kerstall the younger said, bending over his father’s chair as he spoke. “Try again, father — try to remember — Henry Dunbar, the son of Percival Dunbar, the great banker.”
Mr. Kerstall senior, who never left off smiling, nodded and chuckled, and scratched his head, and seemed to plunge into a depth of profound thought.
Laura began to hope again.
“I remember painting Sir Jasper Rivington, who was Lord Mayor in the year — bless my heart how the dates do slip out of my mind, to be sure! — I remember painting him, in his robes too; yes, sir — by gad, sir, his official robes. He’d liked me to have painted him looking out of the window of his state-coach, sir, bowing to the populace on Ludgate Hill, with the dome of St. Paul’s in the background; but I told him the notion wasn’t practicable, sir; I told him it couldn’t be done, sir; I——”
Laura looked despairingly at Mr. Kerstall the younger.
“May we see the pictures?” she asked. “I am sure that I shall recognize my father’s portrait, if by any chance it should be amongst them.”
“We will set to work at once, then,” the artist said, briskly. “We’re going to look at your pictures, father.”
Unframed canvases, and unfinished sketches on millboard, were lying about the room in every direction, piled against the wall, heaped on side-tables, and stowed out of the way upon shelves, and everywhere the dust lay thick upon them.
“It was quite a chamber of horrors,” Mr. Kerstall the younger said, gaily: for it was here that he banished his own failures; his sketches for his pictures that were to be painted upon some future occasion; carelessly-drawn groups that he meant some day to improve upon; finished pictures that he had been unable to sell; and all the other useless litter of an artist’s studio.
There were a great many dingy performances of Mr. Kerstall senior; very classical, and extremely uninteresting; studies from the life, grey and chalky and muscular, with here and there a knotty-looking foot or a lumpy arm, in the most unpleasant phases of foreshortening. There were a good many portraits, gentlemanly to the last degree; but poor Laura looked in vain for the face she wanted to see — the hard cold face, as she fancied it must have been in youth.
There were portraits of elderly ladies with stately head-gear, and simpering young ladies with innocent short-waisted bodices and flowers held gracefully, in their white-muslin draperies; there were portraits of stern clerical grandees, and parliamentary non-celebrities, with popular bills rolled up in their hands, ready to be laid upon the speaker’s table, and with a tight look about the lips, that seemed to say the member was prepared to carry his motion, or perish on the floor of the House.
There were only a few portraits of young men of military aspect, looking fiercely over regulation stocks, and with forked lightning and little pyramids of cannon-balls in the background.
Laura sighed heavily at last, for amongst all these portraits there was not one which in the least possible degree recalled the hard handsome face with which she was familiar.
“I’m afraid my father’s picture has been lost or destroyed,” she said, mournfully.
But Mr. Kerstall would not allow this.
I have said that it was Laura’s peculiar privilege to bewitch everybody with whom she came in contact, and to transform them, for the nonce, into her willing slaves, eager to go through fire and water in the service of this beautiful creature, whose eyes and hair were like blue skies and golden sunshine, and carried light and summer wherever they went.
The black-bearded artist in the paint-smeared holland blouse was in no manner proof against Lady Jocelyn’s fascinations.
He had well-nigh suffocated himself with dust half-a-dozen times already in her service, and was ready to inhale as much more dust if she desired him so to do.
“We won’t give it up just yet, Lady Jocelyn,” he said, cheerfully; “there’s a couple of shelves still to examine. Suppose we try shelf number one, and see if we can find Mr. Henry Dunbar up there.”
Mr. Kerstall junior mounted upon a chair, and brought down another heap of canvases, dirtier than any previous collection. He brought these to a table by the side of his father’s easel, and one by one he wiped them clean with a large ragged silk handkerchief, and then placed them on the easel.
The easel stood in the full light of the broad window. The day was bright and clear, and there was no lack of light, therefore, upon the portraits.
Mr. Kerstall senior began to be quite interested in his son’s proceedings, and contemplated the younger man’s operations with a perpetual chuckling and nodding of the head, that were expressive of unmitigated satisfaction.
“Yes, they’re gentlemanly,” the old man mumbled; “nobody can deny that they’re gentlemanly. They may make a cabal against me in Trafalgar Square, and decline to hang ’em: but they can’t say my pictures are ungentlemanly. No, no. Take a basin of water and a sponge, Fred, and wash the dust off. It pleases me to see ’em again — yes, by gad, sir, it pleases me to see ’em again!”
Mr. Frederick Kerstall obeyed his father, and the pictures brightened wonderfully under the influence of a damp sponge. It was rather a slow operation; but Laura was bent upon seeing every picture, and Philip Jocelyn waited patiently enough until the inspection should be concluded.
The old man brightened up as much as his paintings, and began presently to call out the names of the subjects.
“The member for Slopton-on-the-Tees,” he said, as his son placed a portrait on the easel; “that was a presentation picture, but the subscriptions were never paid up, and the committee left the portrait upon my hands. I don’t remember the name of the member, because my memory isn’t quite so good as it used to be; but the borough was Slopton-on-the-Tees — Slopton — yes, yes, I remember that.”
The younger Kerstall took away the member for Slopton, and put another picture on the easel. But this was like the rest; the pictured face bore no trace of resemblance to that face for which Laura was looking.
“I remember him too,” the old man cried, with a triumphant chuckle. “He was an officer in the East-India Company’s service. I remember him; a dashing young fellow he was too. He had the picture painted for his mother: paid me a third of the money at the first sitting; never paid me a sixpence afterwards; and went off to India, promising to send me a bill of exchange for the balance by the next mail; but I never heard any more of him.”
Mr. Kerstall removed the Indian officer, and substituted another portrait.
Sir Philip, who was sitting near the window, looking on rather listlessly, cried —
“What a handsome face!”
It was a handsome face — a bright young face, which smiled haughty defiance at the world — a splendid face, with perhaps a shade of insolence in the curve of the upper lip, sharply denned under a thick auburn moustache, with pointed ends that curled fiercely upwards. It was such a face as might have belonged to the favourite of a powerful king; the face of the Cinq Mars, on the very summit of his giddy eminence, with a hundred pairs of boots in his dressing-room, and quiet Cardinal Richelieu watching silently for the day of his doom. English Buckingham may have worn the same insolent smile upon his lips, the same bright triumph in his glance, when he walked up to the throne of Louis the Just, with the pearls and diamonds dropping from his garments as he went along, and with forbidden love beaming on him out of Austrian Anne’s blue eyes. It was such a face as could only belong to some high favourite of fortune, defiant of all mankind in the consciousness of his own supreme advantages.
But Laura Jocelyn shook her head as she looked at the picture.
“I begin to despair of finding my father’s portrait,” she said; “I have seen nothing at all like it yet.”
The old man lifted up his bony hand, and pointed to the picture on the easel.
“That’s the best thing I ever did,” he said, “the very best thing I ever did. It was exhibited in the Academy six-and-thirty years ago — yes, by gad, sir, six-and-thirty years ago! and the papers mentioned it very favourably, sir; but the man who commissioned it, sent it back to me for alteration. The expression of the face didn’t please him; but he paid me two hundred guineas for the picture, so I had no reason to complain; and if I’d remained in England, the connection might have been advantageous to me; for they were rich city people, sir — enormously wealthy — something in the banking-line, and the name, the name — let me see — let me see!”
The old man tapped his forehead thoughtfully.
“I remember,” he added presently: “it was a great name in the City — it was a well-known name — Dun — Dunbar — Dunbar.”
“Why, father, that was the very name I was asking you about, half an hour ago!”
“I don’t remember your asking me any such thing,” the old man answered, rather snappishly; “but I do know that the picture on that easel is the portrait of Mr. Dunbar’s only son.”
Mr. Kerstall the younger looked at Laura Jocelyn, full; expecting to see her face beaming with satisfaction; but, to his own surprise, she looked more disappointed than ever.
“Your poor father’s memory deceives him,” she said, in a low voice; “that is not my father’s portrait.”
“No,” said Philip Jocelyn, “that was never the likeness of Henry Dunbar.”
Mr. Frederick Kerstall shrugged his shoulders.
“I told you as much,” he murmured, confidentially. “I told you my poor father’s memory was gone. Would you like to see the rest of the pictures?”
“Oh, yes, if you do not mind all this trouble.”
Mr. Kerstall brought down another heap of unframed canvases from shelf number two. Some of these were fancy heads, and some sketches for grand historical pictures. There were only about four portraits, and not one of them bore the faintest likeness to the face that Laura wanted to see.
The old man chuckled as his son exhibited the pictures, and every now and then volunteered some scrap of information about these various works of art, to which his son listened patiently and respectfully.
So at last the inspection was ended. The baronet and his wife thanked the artist very warmly for his politeness, and Philip gave him a commission for a replica of the picture which Laura had admired in the Luxembourg. Mr. Frederick Kerstall conducted his guests down the dingy staircase, and saw them to the hired carriage that was waiting under the archway.
And this was all that came of Laura Jocelyn’s search for her father’s portrait.
Life seemed very blank to Clement Austin when he returned to London a day or two after Margaret Wilmot’s departure from the Reindeer. He told his mother that he and his betrothed had parted; but he would tell no more.
“I have been cruelly disappointed, mother, and the subject is very bitter to me,” he said; and Mrs. Austin had not the courage to ask any further questions.
“I suppose I must be satisfied, Clement,” she said. “It seems to me as if we had been living lately in an atmosphere of enigmas. But I can afford to be contented, Clement, so long as I have you with me.”
Clement went back to London. His life seemed to have altogether slipped away from him, and he felt like an old man who has lost all the bright chances of existence; the hope of domestic happiness and a pleasant home; the opportunity of a useful career and an honoured name; and who has nothing more to do but to wait patiently till the slow current of his empty life drops into the sea of death.
“I feel so old, mother,” he said, sometimes; “I feel so old.”
To a man who has been accustomed to be busy there is no affliction so intolerable as idleness.
Clement Austin felt this, and yet he had no heart to begin life again, though tempting offers came to him from great commercial houses, whose chiefs were eager to secure the well-known cashier of Messrs. Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby’s establishment.
Poor Clement could not go into the world yet. His disappointment had been too bitter, and he had no heart to go out amongst hard men of business, and begin life again. He wasted hour after hour, and day after day, in gloomy thoughts about the past. What a dupe he had been! what a shallow, miserable fool! for he had believed as firmly in Margaret Wilmot’s truth, as he had believed in the blue sky above his head.
One day a new idea flashed into Clement Austin’s mind; an idea which placed Margaret Wilmot’s character even in a worse light than that in which she had revealed herself in her own confession.
There could be only one reason for the sudden change in her sentiments about Henry Dunbar: the millionaire had bribed her to silence! This girl, who seemed the very incarnation of purity and candour, had her price, perhaps, as well as other people, and Henry Dunbar had bought the silence of his victim’s daughter.
“It was the knowledge of this business that made her shrink away from me that night when she told me that she was a contaminated creature, unfit to be the associate of an honest man Oh, Margaret, Margaret! poverty must indeed be a bitter school if it has prepared you for such degradation as this!”
The longer Clement thought of the subject, the more certainly he arrived at the conclusion that Margaret Wilmot had been, either bribed or frightened into silence by Henry Dunbar. It might be that the banker had terrified this unhappy girl by some awful threat that had preyed upon her mind, and driven her from the man who loved her, whom she loved perhaps, in spite of those heartless words which she had spoken in the bitter hour of their parting.
Clement could not thoroughly believe in the baseness of the woman he had trusted. Again and again he went over the same ground, trying to find some lurking circumstance, no matter how unlikely in its nature, which should explain and justify Margaret’s conduct.
Sometimes in his dreams he saw the familiar face looking at him with pensive, half-reproachful glances; and then a dark figure that was strange to him came between him and that gentle shadow, and thrust the vision away with a ruthless hand. At last, by dint of going over the ground again and again, always pleading Margaret’s cause against the stern witness of cruel facts, Clement came to look upon the girl’s innocence as a settled thing.
There was falsehood and treachery in the business, but Margaret Wilmot was neither false nor treacherous. There was a mystery, and Henry Dunbar was at the bottom of it.
“It seems as if the spirit of the murdered man troubled our lives, and cried to us for vengeance,” Clement thought. “There will be no peace for us until the secret of the deed done in the grove near Winchester has been brought to light.”
This thought, working night and day in Clement Austin’s brain, gave rise to a fixed resolve. Before he went back to the quiet routine of life, he set himself a task to accomplish, and that task was the solution of the Winchester mystery.
On the very day after this resolution took a definite form, Clement received a letter from Margaret Wilmot. The sight of the well-known writing gave him a shock of mingled surprise and hope, and his fingers were faintly tremulous as they tore open the envelope. The letter was carefully worded, and very brief.
“You are a good man, Mr. Austin,” Margaret wrote; “and though you have reason to despise me, I do not think you will refuse to receive my testimony in favour of another who has been falsely suspected of a terrible crime, and who has need of justification. Henry Dunbar was not the murderer of my father. As Heaven is my witness, this is the truth, and I know it to be the truth. Let this knowledge content you, and allow the secret of the murder to remain for ever a mystery upon earth, God knows the truth, and has doubtless punished the wretched sinner who was guilty of that crime, as He punishes every other sinner, sooner or later, in the course of His ineffable wisdom. Leave the sinner, wherever he may be hidden, to the judgment of God, which penetrates every hiding-place; and forget that you have ever known me, or my miserable story.
“MARGARET WILMOT.”
Even this letter did not shake Clement Austin’s resolution.
“No, Margaret,” he thought; “even your pleading shall not turn me from my purpose. Besides, how can I tell in what manner this letter may have been written? It may have been written at Henry Dunbar’s dictation, and under coercion. Be it as it may, the mystery of the Winchester murder shall be set at rest, if patience or intelligence can solve the enigma. No mystery shall separate me from the woman I love.”
Clement put Margaret’s letter in his pocket, and went straight to Scotland Yard, where he obtained an introduction to a businesslike-looking man, short and stoutly built, with close-cropped hair, very little shirt-collar, a shabby black satin stock, and a coat buttoned tightly across the chest. He was a man whose appearance was something between the aspect of a shabby-genteel half-pay captain and an unlucky stockbroker: but Clement liked the steady light of his small grey eyes, and the decided expression of his thin lips and prominent chin.
The detective business happened to be rather dull just now. There was nothing stirring but a Bank-of-England forgery case; and Mr. Carter informed Clement that there were more cats in Scotland Yard than could find mice to kill. Under these circumstances, Mr. Carter was able to enter into Clement’s views, and sequestrate himself for a short period for the more deliberate investigation of the Winchester business.
“I’ll look up a file of newspapers, and run my eye over the details of the case,” said the detective. “I was away in Glasgow, hunting up the particulars of the great Scotch-plaid robberies, all last summer, and I can’t say I remember much of what was done in the Wilmot business. Mr. Dunbar himself offered a reward for the apprehension of the guilty party, didn’t he?”
“Yes; but that might be a blind.”
“Oh, of course it might; but then, on the other hand, it mightn’t. You must always look at these sort of things from every point of view. Start with a conviction of the man’s guilt, and you’ll go hunting up evidence to bolster that conviction. My plan is to begin at the beginning; learn the alphabet of the case, and work up into the syntax and prosody.”
“I should like to help you in this business,” Clement Austin said, “for I have a vital interest in the issue of the case.”
“You’re rather more likely to hinder than help, sir,” Mr. Carter answered, with a smile; “but you’re welcome to have a finger in the pie if you like, as long as you’ll engage to hold your tongue when I tell you.”
Clement promised to be the very spirit of discretion. The detective called upon him two days after the interview at Scotland Yard.
“I’ve read-up the Wilmot case, sir,” Mr. Carter said; “and I think the next best thing I can do is to see the scene of the murder. I shall start for Winchester to-morrow morning.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” Clement said, promptly.
“So be it, Mr. Austin. You may as well bring your cheque-book while you’re about it, for this sort of thing is apt to come rather expensive.”
“If I had been a happy man, with no great trouble weighing upon my mind, and giving its own dull colour to every event of my life, I think I might have been considerably entertained by the society of Mr. Carter, the detective. The man had an enthusiastic love of his profession; and if there is anything degrading in the office, that degradation had in no way affected him. It may be that Mr. Carter’s knowledge of his own usefulness was sufficient to preserve his self-respect. If, in the course of his duty, he had unpleasant things to do; if he had to affect friendly acquaintanceship with the man whom he was hunting to the gallows; if he was called upon to worm-out chance clues to guilty secrets in the careless confidence that grows out of a friendly glass; if at times he had to stoop to acts which, in other men, would be branded as shameful and treacherous, he knew that he did his duty, and that society could not hold together unless some such men as himself — clear-headed, brave, resolute, and unscrupulous in the performance of unpleasant work — were willing to act as watch-dogs for the protection of the general fold, and to the terror of savage and marauding beasts.
“Mr. Carter told me a great deal of his experience during our journey down to Winchester. I listened to him, and understood what he said to me; but I could not take any interest in his conversation. I could not remember anything, or think of anything, except the mystery which separates me from the woman I love.
“The more I think of this, the stronger becomes my conviction that I have not been the dupe of a heartless or mercenary woman. Margaret has not acted as a free agent. She has paid the penalty of her determination to force herself into the presence of Henry Dunbar. By some inexplicable means, by some masterpiece of villany and cunning, this man has induced his victim’s daughter to become the champion of his innocence, instead of the denouncer of his guilt.
“There must be some hopeless entanglement, some cruel involvement, by reason of which Margaret is compelled to falsify her nature, and sacrifice her own happiness as well as mine. When she left me that day at Shorncliffe, she suffered as cruelly as I could suffer: I know now that it was so. But I was blinded then by pride and anger: I was conscious of nothing but my own wrongs.
“Three times in the course of my journey from London to Winchester I have taken Margaret’s strange letter from my pocket-book, and have read the familiar lines, with the idea of putting entire confidence in my companion, and placing the letter in his hands. But in order to do this I must tell him the story of my love and my disappointment; and I cannot bring myself to do that. It may be that this man could discover hidden meanings in Margaret’s words — meanings that are utterly dark to me. I suppose the science of detection includes the power to guess at thoughts that lurk behind expressions which are simple enough in themselves.
“We got into Winchester at twelve o’clock in the day; and Mr. Carter proposed that we should come straight to the George Hotel, at which house Henry Dunbar stayed after the murder in the grove.
“‘We can’t do better than put up at the hotel where the suspected party was stopping at the time of the event we’re looking up,’ Mr. Carter said to me, as we strolled away from the station, after giving our small amount of luggage into the care of a porter; ‘we shall pick up all manner of information in a promiscuous way, if we’re staying in the house; little bits that will seem nothing at all till you put them all together, and begin at the beginning, and read them off the right way. Now, Mr. Austin, there’s a few words I must say before we begin business; for you’re an amateur at this kind of work, and it’s just possible that, with the best intentions, you may go and spoil my game. Now, I’ve undertaken this affair, and I want to go through with it conscientiously; under which circumstances I’m obliged to be candid. Are you willing to act under orders?’
“I told Mr. Carter that I was perfectly willing to obey his orders in everything, so long as what I did helped the purposes of our journey.
“‘That’s all square and pleasant,’ he answered; ‘so now for it. First and foremost, you and me are two gentlemen that have got more time than we know what to do with, and more money than we know how to spend. We’ve heard a great deal about the fishing round Winchester; and we’ve come down to spend an idle week or so, and have a look about the place against next summer; and if we like the looks of the place, why, we shall come and spend the summer months at the George, where we find the accommodation in general, and say the fried soles, or the mock-turtle, in particular, better than at any hotel in the three kingdoms. That’s number one; and that places us at once on the footing of good customers, who are likely to be better customers. This will square the landlord and the waiters, and there’s nothing they can tell us that they won’t tell us willingly. So much for the first place. Now point number two is, that we know nothing whatever of the man that was murdered. We know Mr. Dunbar because he’s a great man, a public character, and all that sort of thing. We did see something about the murder in the papers, but didn’t take any interest in it. This will draw out the landlord or the waiters, as the case may be, and we shall get the history of the murder, with all that was said, and done, and thought, and suspected and hinted, and whispered about it. When the landlord and the waiters have talked about it a good deal, we begin to warm up, and take a kind of morbid interest in the business; and then, little by little, I put in my questions, and keep on putting ’em till every bit of information upon this particular subject is picked away as clean as the meat that’s torn off a bone by a hungry dog. Now you’d like to help me in this business, I dare say, Mr. Austin; and if you would, I think I can hit upon a plan by which you might make yourself uncommonly useful.’
“I told my companion that I was very anxious to give him any help I could afford, however insignificant that help might be.
“‘Then, I’ll tell you what you can do. I shan’t go at the subject we want to talk about at once; because, if I did, I should betray my interest in the business and spoil my game; not that anybody would try to thwart me, you understand, if they knew that I was detective officer Henry Carter, of Scotland Yard. They’d be all on the qui vive directly they found out who I was, and what I was after, and they’d try to help me. That’s what they’d do; and Tom would tell me this, and Dick would explain that, and Harry would remember the other; and among them they’d contrive to muddle the clearest head that ever worked a difficult problem in criminal Euclid. My game is to keep myself dark, and get all the light I can from other people. I shan’t ask any leading question, but I shall wait quietly till the murder of Joseph Wilmot crops up in the conversation; and I don’t suppose I shall have to wait long. Your business will be easy enough. You’ll have letters to write, you will; and as soon as ever you hear me and the landlord, or me and the waiter, as the case may be, working round to the murder, you’ll take out your desk and begin to write.’
“‘You want me to take notes of the conversation,’ I said.
“‘You’ve hit it. You won’t appear to take any interest in the talk about Henry Dunbar and the murder of his valet. You’ll be altogether wrapped up in those letters of yours, which must be written before the London post goes out; but you’ll contrive to write down every word that’s said by the people at the George bearing upon the business we’re hunting up. Never mind my questions; don’t write them down, for they’re of no account. Write down the answers as plain as you can. They’ll come all of a heap, or anyhow; but that’s no matter. It’ll be my business to sort ’em, and put ’em ship-shape afterwards. You just keep your mouth shut, and take notes, Mr. Austin; that’s all you’ve got to do.’
“I promised to do this to the best of my ability. We were close to the George by this time, and I could not help thinking of that bright summer’s day upon which Henry Dunbar and his victim had driven into Winchester on the first stage of a journey which one of them was never to finish. The conviction of the banker’s guilt had so grown upon me since that scene in St. Gundolph Lane, that I thought of the man now almost as if he had been fairly tried and deliberately found guilty. It surprised me when the detective talked of his guilt as open to question, and yet to be proved. In my mind Henry Dunbar stood self-condemned, by the evidence of his own conduct, as the murderer of his old servant Joseph Wilmot.
“The weather was bleak and windy, and there were very few wanderers in the hilly High Street of Winchester. We were received with very courteous welcome at the George, and were conducted to a comfortable sitting-room upon the first-floor, with windows looking out upon the street. Two bedrooms in the vicinity of the sitting-room were assigned to us. I ordered dinner for six o’clock, having ascertained that hour to be agreeable to Mr. Carter, who was slowly removing his wrappings, and looking deliberately at every separate article in the room; as if he fancied there might be some scrap of information to be picked up from a window-blind, or a coal-scuttle, or lurking mysteries hidden in a sideboard-drawer. I have no doubt the habit of observation was so strong upon this man that he observed the most insignificant things involuntarily.
“It was a very dull unpleasant day, and I was glad to draw my chair to the fire and make myself comfortable, while the waiter went to fetch a bottle of soda-water and sixpenn’orth of ‘best French’ for my companion, who was walking about the room with his hands in his pockets, and his grizzled eyebrows knotted together.
“The reward which Government had offered for the arrest of Joseph Wilmot’s murderer was the legitimate price usually bidden for the head of an assassin. The Government had offered to pay one hundred pounds to any person or persons who should give such information as would lead to the apprehension of the guilty party or parties. I had promised Mr. Carter that I would give him another hundred pounds on my own account if he succeeded in solving the mystery of Joseph Wilmot’s death. The reward at stake was therefore two hundred pounds; and this was a pretty high stake, Mr. Carter told me, as the detective business went. I had given him my written engagement to pay the hundred pounds upon the day of the murderer’s arrest, and I was very well able to do so without fear of being compelled to ask help of my mother; for I had saved upwards of a thousand pounds during my twelve years’ service in the house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby.
“I saw from Mr. Carter’s countenance that he was thinking, and thinking very earnestly. He drank the soda-water and brandy; but he said nothing to the waiter who brought him that popular beverage. When the man was gone, he came and planted himself opposite to me upon the hearth-rug.
“‘I’m going to talk to you very seriously, sir,’ he said.
“I assured him that I was quite ready to listen to anything he might have to say.
“‘When you employ a detective officer, sir,’ he began, ‘don’t employ a man you can’t put entire confidence in. If you can’t trust him don’t have anything to do with him; for if he isn’t to be trusted with the dearest family secret that ever was kept sacred by an honest man, why he’s a scoundrel, and you’re much better off without his help. But when you’ve got a man that has been recommended to you by those who know him, trust him, and don’t be afraid to trust him, don’t confide in him by halves; don’t tell him one part of your story, and keep the other half hidden from him; because, you see, working in the twilight isn’t much more profitable than working in the dark. Now, why do I say this to you, Mr. Austin? You know as well as I do. I say it because I know you haven’t trusted me.’
“‘I have told you all that was absolutely necessary for you to know,’ I said.
“‘Not a bit of it, sir. It’s absolutely necessary for me to know everything: that is, if you want me to succeed in the business I’m engaged upon. You’re afraid to give me your confidence out and out, without reserve. Lor’ bless your innocence, sir; in my profession a man learns the use of his eyes; and when once he’s learnt how to use them, it ain’t easy for him to keep them shut. I know as well as you do that you’re hiding something from me: you’re keeping something back, though you’ve half a mind to trust me. You took out a letter three times while we wore sitting opposite to each other in the railway carriage; and you read the letter; and every now and then, while you were reading it, you looked up at me with a hesitating you-would-and-you-wouldn’t sort of look. You thought I was looking out of the window all the time; and so I was, being uncommonly interested in the corn-fields we were passing just then, so flat and stumpy and picturesque they looked; but, lor’, Mr. Austin, if I couldn’t look out of the window and watch you at the same time, I shouldn’t be worth my salt to you or any one else. I saw plain enough that you had half a mind to show me that letter; and it wasn’t very difficult to guess that the letter had some bearing upon the business that has brought us to Winchester.’
“Mr. Carter paused, and settled himself comfortably against the corner of the chimney-piece. I was not surprised that he should have read my thoughts in the railway carriage. I pondered the matter seriously. He was right in the main, no doubt; but how could I tell a detective officer my dearest secret — the sad story of my only love?
“‘Trust me, Mr. Austin,’ my companion said; ‘if you want me to be of use to you, trust me thoroughly. The very thing you are hiding from me may be the clue I most want to get hold of.’
“‘I don’t think that,’ I said. ‘However, I have every reason to believe you to be an honest, conscientious fellow, and I will trust you. I dare say you wonder why I am so much interested in this business?’
“‘Well, to tell the honest truth, sir, it does seem rather out of the common to see an independent gentleman like you taking all this trouble to find out the rights and wrongs of a murder committed going on for a twelvemonth ago: unless you’re any relation of the murdered man: and even if you’re that, you’re very unlike the common run of relations, for they generally take such things quieter than anybody else,’ answered Mr. Carter.
“I told the detective that I had never seen the murdered man in the course of my life, and had never heard his name until after the murder.
“‘Well, sir, then all I can say is, I don’t understand your motive,’ returned, Mr. Carter.
“‘Well, Carter, I think you’re a good fellow, and I’ll trust you,’ I said; ‘but, in order to do that, I must tell you a long story, and what’s worse still, a love-story.’
“I felt that I blushed a little as I said this, and was ashamed of the false shame that brought that missish glow into my cheeks. Mr. Carter perceived my embarrassment, and was kind enough to encourage me.
“‘Don’t you be afraid of telling the story, because it’s a sentimental one,’ he said: ‘Lor’ bless you, I’ve heard plenty of love-stories. There ain’t many bits of business come our way but what, if you sift ’em to the bottom, you find a petticoat. You remember the Oriental bloke that always asked, ‘Who is she?’ when he heard of a fight, or a fire, or a mad bull broke loose, or any trifling calamity of that sort; because, according to his views, a female was at the bottom of everything bad that ever happened upon this earth. Well, sir, if that Oriental potentate had lived in our times, and been brought up to the detective line, I’m blest if he need have changed his opinions. So don’t you be ashamed of telling a love-story, sir. I was in love myself once, though I do seem such a dry old chip; and I married the woman I loved too; and she was a pretty little country girl, as fresh and innocent as the daisies in her father’s paddocks; and to this day she don’t know what my business really is. She thinks I’m something in the City, bless her dear little heart!’
“This touch of sentiment in Mr. Carter’s conversation was quite unaffected, and I felt all the more inclined to trust him after this little revelation of his domestic life. I told him the story of my acquaintance with Margaret, very briefly giving him only the necessary details. I told him of the girl’s several efforts to see Henry Dunbar, and the banker’s persistent avoidance of her. I told him then of our journey to Shorncliffe, and Margaret’s strange conduct after her interview with the man she had been so eager to see.
“The telling of this, though I told it briefly, occupied nearly an hour. Mr. Carter sat opposite me all the time, listening intently; staring at me with one fixed unvarying stare, and fingering musical passages upon his knees, with slow cautious motions of his fingers and thumbs. But I could see that he was not listening only: he was pondering and reasoning upon what I told him. When I had finished my story, he remained silent for some minutes: but he still stared at me with the same relentless and stony gaze, and he still fingered his knees, following up his right hand with his left, as slowly and deliberately as if he had been composing a fugue after the manner of Mendelssohn.
“‘And up to the time of that interview at Maudesley Abbey, Miss Wilmot had stuck to the idea that Henry Dunbar was the murderer of her father?’ he said, at last.
“‘Most resolutely.’
“‘And after that interview the young lady changed her opinion all of a sudden, and would have it that the banker was innocent?’ asked Mr. Carter.
“‘Yes; when Margaret returned from Maudesley Abbey she declared her conviction of Henry Dunbar’s innocence.’
“‘And she refused to fulfil her engagement with you?’
“‘She did.’
“The detective left off fingering fugues upon his knees, and began to scratch his head, slowly pushing his hand up and down amongst his iron-grey hair, and staring at me. I saw now that this stony glare was only the fixed expression of Mr. Carter’s face when he was thinking profoundly, and that the relentlessness of his gaze had very little relation to the object at which he gazed.
“I watched his face as he pondered, in the hope of seeing some sudden mental illumination light up his stolid countenance: but I watched in vain. I saw that he was at fault: I saw that Margaret Wilmot’s conduct was quite as inexplicable to him as it had been to me.
“‘Mr. Dunbar’s a very rich man,’ he said, at last; ‘and money generally goes a good way in these cases. There was a political party, Sir Robert somebody — but not Sir Robert Peel — who said, ‘Every man has his price.’ Now, do you think it possible that Miss Wilmot would take a bribe, and hold her tongue?’
“‘Do I think that she would take money from the man she suspected as the murderer of her father — the man she knew to have been the enemy of her father? No,’ I answered, resolutely; ‘I am certain that she is incapable of any such baseness. The idea that she had been bribed flashed across me in the first bitterness of my anger: but even then I dismissed it as incredible. Now that I can think coolly of the business, I know that such an alternative is impossible. If Margaret Wilmot has been influenced by Henry Dunbar, it is upon her terror that he has acted. Heaven knows how he may have threatened her! The man who could lure his old servant into a lonely wood and there murder him — the man who, neither early nor late, had one touch of pity for the tool and accomplice of his youthful crime — not one lingering spark of compassion for the humble friend who sacrificed an honest name in order to serve his master — would have little compunction in torturing a friendless girl who dared to come before him in the character of an accuser.’
“‘But you say that Miss Wilmot was resolute and high-spirited. Is she a likely person to be governed by her terror of Mr. Dunbar? What threat could he use to terrify her?’
“I shook my head hopelessly.
“‘I am as ignorant as you are,’ I said; ‘but I have strong reason to believe that Margaret Wilmot was under the influence of some great terror when she returned from Maudesley Abbey.’
“‘What reason?’ asked Mr. Carter.
“‘Her manner was sufficient evidence that she had been frightened. Her face was as white as a sheet of paper when I met her, and she trembled and shrank away from me, as if even my presence was horrible to her.’
“‘Could you manage to repeat what she said that night and the next morning?’
“It was not very pleasant to me to re-open my wounds for the benefit of Mr. Carter the detective; but it would have been absurd to thwart the man when he was working in my interests. I loved Margaret too well to forget anything she ever said to me, even in our happiest and most careless hours: and I had special reason to remember that cruel farewell interview, and the strange scene in the corridor at the Reindeer, on the night of her return from Maudesley Abbey. I went over all this ground again, therefore, for Mr. Carter’s edification, and told him, word for word, all that Margaret had said to me. When I had finished, he relapsed once more into a reverie, during which I sat listening to the ticking of an eight-day clock in the passage outside our sitting-room, and the occasional tramp of a passing footstep on the pavement below our windows.
“‘There’s only one thing strikes me very particular in all you’ve told me,’ the detective said, by-and-by, when I had grown tired of watching him, and had suffered my thoughts to wander back to the happy time in which Margaret and I had loved and trusted each other; ‘there’s only one thing strikes me in all the young lady said to you, and that is these words —‘There is contamination in my touch,’ Miss Wilmot says to you. ‘I am unfit to be the associate of an honest man,’ Miss Wilmot says to you. Now, that looks as if she had been bought over somehow or other by Mr. Dunbar. I’ve turned it over in my mind every way; and however I reckon it up, that’s about what it comes to. The young woman was bought over, and she was ashamed of herself for being bought over.’
“I told Mr. Carter that I could never bring myself to believe this.
“‘Perhaps not, sir, but it may be gospel truth for all that. There’s no other way I can account for the young woman’s carryings on. If Mr. Dunbar was innocent, and had contrived, somehow or other, to convince the young woman of his innocence, why, she’d have come to you free and open, and would have said, ‘My dear, I’ve made a mistake about Mr. Dunbar, and I’m very sorry for it; but we must look somewhere else for my poor pa’s murderer.’ But what does the young woman do? She goes and scrapes herself along the passage-wall, and shudders and shivers, and says, ‘I’m a wretch; don’t touch me — don’t come near me.’ It’s just like a woman, to take the bribe, and then be sorry for having taken it.’
“I said nothing in answer to this. It was inexpressibly obnoxious to me to hear my poor Margaret spoken of as ‘a young woman’ by my business-like companion. But there was no possibility of keeping any veil over the sacred mysteries of my heart. I wanted Mr. Carter’s help. For the present Margaret was lost to me; and my only hope of penetrating the hidden cause of her conduct lay in Mr. Carter’s power to solve the dark enigma of Joseph Wilmot’s death.
“‘Oh, by the bye,’ exclaimed the detective, ‘there was a letter, wasn’t there?’
“He held out his hand as I searched for the letter in my pocket-book. What a greedy, inquisitive-looking palm it seemed! and how I hated Mr. Henry Carter, detective officer, at that particular moment!
“I gave him the letter; and I did not groan aloud as I handed it to him. He read it slowly, once, twice, three times — half-a-dozen times, I think, in all — pushing the fingers of his left hand through his hair as he read, and frowning at the paper before him. It was while he was reading the letter for the last time that I saw a sudden glimmer of light in his hard eyes, and a half-smile playing round his thin lips.
“‘Well?’ I said, interrogatively, as he gave me back the letter.
“‘Well, sir, the young lady,’— Mr. Carter called Margaret a young lady this time, and I could not help thinking that her letter had revealed her to him as something different from the ordinary class of female popularly described as a young woman — ‘the young lady was in earnest when she wrote that letter, sir,’ he said; ‘it wasn’t written under dictation, and she wasn’t bribed to write it. There’s heart in it, sir, if I may be allowed the expression: there’s a woman’s heart in that letter: and when a woman’s heart is once allowed scope, a woman’s brains shrivel up like so much tinder. I put this letter to that speech in the corridor at the Reindeer, Mr. Austin; and out of those two twos I verily believe I can make the queerest four that was ever reckoned up by a first-class detective.’
“A faint flush, which looked like a glow of pleasure, kindled all over Mr. Carter’s sallow face as he spoke, and he got up and walked about the room; not slowly or thoughtfully, but with a brisk eager tread that was new to me. I could see that his spirits had risen a great many degrees since the reading of the letter.
“‘You have got some clue,’ I said; ‘you see your way ——’
“He turned round and checked my eager curiosity by a warning gesture of his uplifted hand.
“‘Don’t be in a hurry, sir,’ he said, gravely; ‘when you lose your way of a dark night, in a swampy country, and see a light ahead, don’t begin to clap your hands and cry hooray till you know what kind of light it is. It may be a Jack-o’-lantern; or it may be the identical lamp over the door of the house you’re bound for. You leave this business to me, Mr. Austin, and don’t you go jumping at conclusions. I’ll work it out quietly: and when I’ve worked it out I’ll tell you what I think of it. And now suppose we take a stroll through the cathedral-yard, and have a look at the place where the body was found.’
“‘How shall we find out the exact spot?’ I asked, while I was putting on my hat and overcoat.
“‘Any passer-by will point it out,’ Mr. Carter answered; ‘they don’t have a popular murder in the neighbourhood of Winchester every day; and when they do, I make not the least doubt they know how to appreciate the advantage. You may depend upon it, the place is pretty well known.’
“It was nearly five o’clock by this time. We went down the slippery oak-staircase, and out into the quiet street. A bleak wind was blowing down from the hills, and the rooks’ nests high up in the branches of the old trees about the cathedral were rocking like that legendary cradle in the tree-top. I had never been in Winchester before, and I was pleased with the quaint old houses, the towering cathedral, the flat meadows, and winding streams of water rippled by the wind. I was soothed, somehow or other, by the peculiar quiet of the scene; and I could not help thinking that, if a man’s life was destined to be miserable, Winchester would be a nice place for him to be miserable in. A dreamy, drowsy, forgotten city, where the only changes of the slow day would be the varying chimes of the cathedral clock, the different tones of the cathedral bells.
“Mr. Carter had studied every scrap of evidence connected with the murder of Joseph Wilmot. He pointed out the door at which Henry Dunbar had gone into the cathedral, the pathway which the two men had taken as they went towards the grove. We followed this pathway, and walked to the very place in which the murdered man had been found.
“A lad who was fishing in one of the meadows near the grove went with us to show us the exact spot. It was between an elm and a beech.
“‘There’s not many beeches in the grove,’ the lad said, ‘and this is the biggest of them. So that it’s easy enough for any one to pick out the spot. It was very dry weather last August at the time of the murder, and the water wasn’t above half as deep as it is now.’
“‘Is it the same depth every where?’ Mr. Carter asked.
“‘Oh, dear no,’ the boy said; ‘that’s what makes these streams so dangerous for bathing: they’re shallow enough in some places; but there’s all manner of holes about; and unless you’re a good swimmer, you’d better not try it on.’
“Mr. Carter gave the boy sixpence and dismissed him. We strolled a little farther on, and then turned and went back towards the cathedral. My companion was very silent, and I could see that he was still thinking. The change that had taken place in his manner after he had read Margaret’s letter had inspired me with new confidence in him, and I was better able to await the working out of events. Little by little the solemn nature of the business in which I was engaged grew and gathered force in my mind, and I felt that I had something more to do than to solve the mystery of Margaret’s conduct to myself: I had to perform a duty to society, by giving my uttermost help towards the discovery of Joseph Wilmot’s murderer.
“If the heartless assassin of this wretched man was suffered to live and prosper, to hold up his head as the master of Maudesley Abbey, the chief partner in a great City firm that had borne an honourable name for a century and a half, a kind of premium was offered to crime in high places. If Henry Dunbar had been some miserable starving creature, who, in a fit of mad fury against the inequalities of life, had lifted his gaunt arm to slay his prosperous brother for the sake of bread — detectives would have dogged his sneaking steps, and watched his guilty face, and hovered round and about him till they tracked him to his doom. But because in this case the man to whom suspicion pointed had the supreme virtues comprised in a million of money, Justice wore her thickest bandage, and the officials, who are so clever in tracking a low-born wretch to the gallows, held aloof, and said respectfully, ‘Henry Dunbar is too great a man to be guilty of a diabolical crime.’
“These thoughts filled my mind as I walked back to the George Hotel with Mr. Carter.
“It was half-past six when we entered the house, and we had kept dinner waiting half an hour, much to the regret of the most courteous of waiters, who expressed intense anxiety about the condition of the fish.
“As the man hovered about us at dinner, I expected every moment that Mr. Carter would lead up to the only topic which had any interest either for himself or me. But he was slow to do this; he talked of the town, the last assizes, the state of the country, the weather, the prosperity of the trout-fishing season — everything except the murder of Joseph Wilmot. It was only after dinner, when some petrified specimens of dessert, in the shape of almonds and raisins, figs and biscuits, had been arranged on the table, that any serious business began. The preliminary skirmishing had not been without its purpose, however; for the waiter had been warmed into a communicative and confidential mood, and was now ready to tell us anything he knew.
“I delegated all our arrangements to my companion; and it was something wonderful to see Mr. Carter lolling in his arm-chair with what he called the ‘wine-cart’ in his hand, deliberating between a forty-two port, ‘light and elegant,’ and a forty-five port, ‘tawny and rich bouquet.’
“‘I think we may as well try number fifteen,’ he said, handing the list of wines to the waiter after due consideration; ‘and decant it carefully, whatever you do. I hope your cellar isn’t cold.’
“‘Oh, no, sir; master’s very careful of his cellar, sir.’
“The waiter went away impressed with the idea that he had to deal with a couple of connoisseurs.
“‘You’ve got those letters to write before ten o’clock, eh, Mr. Austin?’ said the detective, as the waiter re-entered the room with a decanter on a silver salver.
“I understood the hint, and accordingly took my travelling-desk to a side-table near the fireplace. Mr. Carter handed me one of the wax-candles, and I sat down before the little table, unlocked my desk, and began to write a few lines to my mother; while the detective smacked his lips and knowingly deliberated over his first glass of port.
“‘Very decent quality of wine,’ he said, ‘very decent. Do you know where your master got it, eh? No, you don’t. Ah! bottled it himself, I suppose. I thought he might have got it at the Warren-Court sale the other day, at the other end of the county. Fill a glass for yourself, waiter, and put the decanter down by the fender; the wine’s rather cold. By the bye, I heard your wines very well spoken of the other day, by a person of some importance, too — of considerable importance, I may say.’
“‘Indeed, sir,’ murmured the waiter, who was standing at a respectful distance from the table, and was sipping his wine with deferential slowness.
“‘Yes; I heard your house spoken of by no less a person than Mr. Dunbar, the great banker.’
“The waiter pricked up his ears. I pushed aside the letter to my mother, and waited with a blank sheet of paper before me.
“‘That was a strange affair, by the bye,’ said Mr. Carter. ‘Fill yourself another glass of wine, waiter; my friend here doesn’t drink port; and if you don’t help me to put away that bottle, I shall take too much. Were you examined at the inquest on Joseph Wilmot?’
“No, sir,’ answered the waiter, eagerly. ‘I were not, sir; and they do say as we ought every one of us to have been examined; for you see there’s little facks as one person will notice and as another won’t notice, and it isn’t a man’s place to come forward with every little trivial thing, you see, sir; but if little trivial things was drawn out of one and another, they might help, you see, sir.’
“There could be no end gained by taking notes of this reply, so I amused myself by making a good nib to my pen while I waited for something better worth jotting down.
“‘Some of your people were examined, I suppose?’ said Mr. Carter.
“‘Oh, yes, sir,’ answered the waiter; ‘master, he were examined, to begin with; and then Brigmawl, the head-waiter, he give his evidence; but, lor’, sir, without unfriendliness to William Brigmawl, which me and Brigmawl have been fellow-servants these eleven year, our head-waiter is that wrapped up in hisself, and his own cravats, and shirt-fronts, and gold studs, and Albert chain, that he’d scarcely take notice of an earthquake swallering up half the world before his eyes, unless the muck and dirt of that earthquake was to spoil his clothes. William Brigmawl has been head-waiter in this house nigh upon thirty year; and beyond a stately way of banging-to a carriage-door, or showing visitors to their rooms, or poking a fire, and a kind of knack of leading on timid people to order expensive wines, I really don’t see Brigmawl’s great merit. But as to Brigmawl at an inquest, he’s about as much good as the Pope of Rome.’
“‘But why was Brigmawl examined in preference to any one else?’
“‘Because he was supposed to know more of the business than any of us, being as it was him that took the order for the dinner. But me and Eliza Jane, the under-chambermaid, was in the hall at the very moment when the two gentlemen came in.’
“‘You saw them both, then?’
“‘Yes, sir, as plain as I now see you. And you might have knocked me down with a feather when I was told afterwards that the one who was murdered was nothing more than a valet.’
“‘You’re not getting on very fast with your letters,’ said Mr. Carter, looking over his shoulder at me.
“‘I had written nothing yet, and I understood this as a hint to begin. I wrote down the waiter’s last remark.
“‘Why were you so surprised to find he was a valet?’ Mr. Carter asked of the waiter.
“‘Because, you see, sir, he had the look of a gentleman,’ the man answered; ‘an out-and-out gentleman. It wasn’t that he held his head higher than Mr. Dunbar, or that he was better dressed — for Mr. Dunbar’s clothes looked the newest and best; but he had a kind of languid don’t-careish way that seems to be peculiar to first-class gentlemen.’
“‘What sort of a looking man was he?’
“‘Paler than Mr. Dunbar, and thinner built, and fairer.’
“I jotted down the waiter’s remarks; but I could not help thinking that this talk about the murdered man’s manner and appearance was about as useless as anything could be.
“‘Paler and thinner than Mr. Dunbar,’ repeated the detective; ‘paler and thinner, eh? This was one thing you noticed; but what was it, now, that you could have said at the inquest if you had been called as a witness?’
“‘Well, sir, I’ll tell you. It’s a small matter, and I’ve mentioned it many a time, both to William Brigmawl and to others; but they talk me down, and say I was mistaken; and Eliza Jane being a silly giggling hussey, can’t bear me out in what I say. But I do most solemnly declare that I speak the truth, and am not deceived. When the two gentlemen — which gentlemen they both was to look at — came into our hall, the one that was murdered had his coat buttoned tight across his chest, except one button; and through the space left by that one button I saw the glitter of a gold chain.’
“‘Well, what then?’
“‘The other gentleman, Mr. Dunbar, had his coat open as he got out of the carriage, and I saw as plain as ever I saw anything, that he had no gold-chain. But two minutes after he had come into the hall, and while he was ordering dinner, he took and bottoned his coat. Well, sir, when he came in, after visiting the cathedral, his coat was partially unbuttoned and I saw that he wore a gold-chain, and, unless I am very much mistaken, the same gold-chain that I had seen peeping out of the breast of the murdered man. I could almost have sworn to that chain because of the colour of the gold, which was a particular deep yaller. It was only afterwards that these things came back to my mind, and I certainly thought them very strange.’
“‘Was there anything else?’
“‘Nothing; except what Brigmawl dropped out one night at supper, some weeks after the inquest, about his having noticed Mr. Dunbar opening his desk while he was waiting for Joseph Wilmot to come home to dinner; and Brigmawl do say, now that it ain’t a bit of use, that Mr. Dunbar, do what he would, couldn’t find the key of his own desk for ever so long.’
“‘He was confused, I suppose; and his hands trembled, eh?’ asked the detective.
“‘No, sir; according to what Brigmawl said, Mr. Dunbar seemed as cool and collected as if he was made of iron. But he kept trying first one key and then another, for ever so long, before he could find the right one.’
“‘Did he now? that was queer.’
“‘But I hope you won’t think anything of what I’ve let drop, sir,’ said the waiter, hastily. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t say any thing disrespectful against Mr. Dunbar; but you asked me what I saw, sir, and I have told you candid, and ——’
“‘My good fellow, you’re perfectly safe in talking to me,’ the detective answered, heartily. ‘Suppose you bring us a little strong tea, and clear away this dessert; and if you’ve anything more to tell us, you can say it while you’re pouring out the tea. There’s so much connected with these sort of things that never gets into the papers, that really it’s quite interesting to hear of ’em from an eye-witness.’
“The waiter went away, pleased and re-assured, after clearing the table very slowly. I was impatient to hear what Mr. Carter had gathered from the man’s talk.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘unless I’m very much mistaken, I think I’ve got my friend the master of Maudesley Abbey.’
“‘You do: but how so?’ I asked. ‘That talk about the gold-chain having changed hands must be utterly absurd. What should Henry Dunbar want with Joseph Wilmot’s watch and chain?’
“‘Ah, you’re right there,’ answered Mr. Carter. ‘What should Henry Dunbar want with Joseph Wilmot’s gold chain? That’s one question. Why should Joseph Wilmot’s daughter be so anxious to screen Henry Dunbar now that she has seen him for the first time since the murder? There’s another question for you. Find the answer for it, if you can.
“I told the detective that he seemed bent upon mystifying me, and that he certainly succeeded to his heart’s content.
“Mr. Carter laughed a triumphant little laugh.
“‘Never you mind, sir,’ he said; you leave it to me, and you watch it well, sir. It’ll work out very neatly, unless I’m altogether wrong. Wait for the end, Mr. Austin, and wait patiently. Do you know what I shall do to-morrow?’
“‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
“‘I shall waste no more time in asking questions. I shall have the water near the scene of the murder dragged. I shall try and find the clothes that were stripped off the man who was murdered last August!’”
“The rest of the evening passed quietly enough. Mr. Carter drank his strong tea, and then asked my permission to go out and smoke a couple of cigars in the High Street. He went, and I finished my letter to my mother. There was a full moon, but it was obscured every now and then by the black clouds that drifted across it. I went out myself to post the letter, and I was glad to feel the cool breeze blowing the hair away from my forehead, for the excitement of the day had given me a nervous headache.
“I posted my letter in a narrow street near the hotel. As I turned away from the post-office to go back to the High Street, I was startled by the apparition of a girlish figure upon the other side of the street — a figure so like Margaret’s that its presence in that street filled me with a vague sense of fear, as if the slender figure, with garments fluttering in the wind, had been a phantom.
“Of course I attributed this feeling to its right cause, which was doubtless neither more nor less than the over-excited state of my own brain. But I was determined to set the matter quite at rest, so I hurried across the way and went close up to the young lady, whose face was completely hidden by a thick veil.
“‘Miss Wilmot — Margaret,’ I said.
“I had thought it impossible that Margaret should be in Winchester, and I was only right, it seemed, for the young lady drew herself away from me abruptly and walked across the road, as if she mistook my error in addressing her for an intentional insult. I watched her as she walked rapidly along the narrow street, until she turned sharply away at a corner and disappeared. When I first saw her, as I stood by the post-office, the moonlight had shone full upon her. As she went away the moon was hidden by a fleecy grey cloud, and the street was wrapped in shadow. Thus it was only for a few moments that I distinctly saw the outline of her figure. Her face I did not see at all.
“I went back to the hotel and sat by the fire trying to read a newspaper, but unable to chain my thoughts to the page. Mr. Carter came in a little before eleven o’clock. He was in very high spirits, and drank a tumbler of steaming brandy-and-water with great gusto. But question him how I might, I could get nothing from him except that he meant to have a search made for the dead man’s clothes.
“I asked him why he wanted them, and what advantage would be gained by the finding of them, but he only nodded his head significantly, and told me to wait.
“To-day has been most wretched — a day of miserable discoveries; and yet not altogether miserable, for the one grand discovery of the day has justified my faith in the woman I love.
“The morning was cold and wet. There was not a ray of sunshine in the dense grey sky, and the flat landscape beyond the cathedral seemed almost blotted out by the drizzling rain; only the hills, grand and changeless, towered above the mists, and made the landmarks of the soddened country.
“We took an early and hasty breakfast. Quiet and business-like as the detective’s manner was even to-day, I could see that he was excited. He took nothing but a cup of strong tea and a few mouthfuls of dry toast, and then put on his coat and hat.
“‘I’m going down to the chief quarters of the county constabulary, he said. ‘I shall be obliged to tell the truth about my business down there, because I want every facility for what I’m going to do. If you’d like to see the water dragged, you can meet me at twelve o’clock in the grove. You’ll find me superintending the work.’
“It was about half-past eight when Mr. Carter left me. The time hung very heavily on my hands between that time and eleven o’clock. At eleven I put on my hat and overcoat and went out into the rain.
“I found my friend the detective standing in one of the smaller entrances of the cathedral, in very earnest conversation with an old man. As Mr. Carter gave me no token of recognition, I understood that he did not want me to interrupt his companion’s talk, so I walked slowly on by the same pathway along which we had gone on the previous afternoon; the same pathway by which the murdered man had gone to his death.
“I had not walked half a mile before I was joined by the detective.
“‘I gave you the office just now,’ he said, ‘because I thought if you spoke to me, that old chap would leave off talking, and I might miss something that was on the tip of his tongue.’
“‘Did he tell you much?’
“‘No; he’s the man who gave his evidence at the inquest. He gave me a minute description of Henry Dunbar’s watch and chain. The watch didn’t open quite in the usual manner, and the gentleman was rather awkward in opening it, my friend the verger tells me. He was awkward with the key of his desk. He seems to have had a fit of awkwardness that day.’
“‘You think that he was guilty, and that he was confused and agitated by the hideous business he had been concerned in?’
“Mr. Carter looked at me with a very queer smile on his face.
“‘You’re improving, Mr. Austin,’ he said; ‘you’d make a first-class detective in next to no time.’
“I felt rather doubtful as to the meaning of this compliment, for there was something very like irony in Mr. Carter’s tone.
“‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ he said, stopping presently, and taking me by the button-hole. ‘I think that I know why the murdered man’s coat, waistcoat, and shirt were stripped off him.’
“I begged the detective to tell me what he thought upon this subject; but he refused to do so.
“‘Wait and see,’ he said; ‘if I’m right, you’ll soon find out what I mean; if I’m wrong, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. I’m an old hand, and I don’t want to be found out in a mistake.’
“I said no more after this. The disappearance of the murdered man’s clothes had always appeared to me the only circumstance that was irreconcilable with the idea of Henry Dunbar’s guilt. That some brutal wretch, who stained his soul with blood for the sake of his victim’s poor possessions, should strip off the clothes of the dead, and make a market even out of them, was probable enough. But that Henry Dunbar, the wealthy, hyper-refined Anglo-Indian, should linger over the body of his valet and offer needless profanation to the dead, was something incredible, and not to be accounted for by any theory whatever.
“This was the one point which, from first to last, had completely baffled me.
“We found the man with the drags waiting for us under the dripping trees. Mr. Carter had revealed himself to the constabulary as one of the chief luminaries of Scotland Yard; and if he had wanted to dig up the foundations of the cathedral, they would scarcely have ventured to interfere with his design. One of the constables was lounging by the water’s edge, watching the men as they prepared for business.
“I have no need to write a minute record of that miserable day. I know that I walked up and down, up and down, backwards and forwards, upon the soddened grass, from noon till sundown, always thinking that I would go away presently, always lingering a little longer; hindered by the fancy that Mr. Carter’s search was on the point of being successful. I know that for hour after hour the grating sound of the iron drags grinding on the gravelly bed of the stream sounded in my tired ears, and yet there was no result. I know that rusty scraps of worn-out hardware, dead bodies of cats and dogs, old shoes laden with pebbles, rank entanglements of vegetable corruption, and all manner of likely and unlikely rubbish, were dragged out of the stream, and thrown aside upon the bank.
“The detective grew dirtier and slimier and wetter as the day wore on; but still he did not lose heart.
“‘I’ll have every inch of the bed of the stream, and every hidden hole in the bottom, dragged ten times over, before I’ll give it up,’ he said to me, when he came to me at dusk with some brandy that had been brought by a boy who had been fetching beer, more or less, all the afternoon.
“When it grew dark, the men lighted a couple of flaring resinous torches, which Mr. Carter had sent for towards dusk, and worked, by the patches of fitful light which these torches threw upon the water. I still walked up and down under the dripping trees, in the darkness, as I had walked in the light; and once when I was farthest from the red glare of the torches, a strange fancy took possession of me. In amongst the dim branches of the trees I thought I saw something moving, something that reminded me of the figure I had seen opposite the post-office on the previous night.
“I ran in amongst the trees; and as I did so, the figure seemed to me to recede, and disappear; a faint rustling of a woman’s dress sounded in my ears, or seemed so to sound, as the figure melted from my sight. But again I had good reason to attribute these fancies to the state of my own brain, after that long day of anxiety and suspense.
“At last, when I was completely worn out by my weary day, Mr. Carter came to me.
“‘They’re found!’ he cried. ‘We’ve found ’em! We’ve found the murdered man’s clothes! They’ve been drifted away into one of the deepest holes there is, and the rats have been gnawing at ’em. But, please Providence, we shall find what we want. I’m not much of a church-goer, but I do believe there’s a Providence that lies in wait for wicked men, and catches the very cleverest of them when they least expect it.’
“I had never seen Mr. Carter so much excited as he seemed now. His face was flushed, and his nostrils quivered nervously.
“I followed him to the spot where the constable and two men, who had been dragging the stream, were gathered round a bundle of wet rubbish lying on the ground.
“Mr. Carter knelt down before this bundle, which was covered with trailing weeds and moss and slime, and the constable stooped over him with a flaming torch in his hand.
“‘These are somebody’s clothes, sure enough,’ the detective said; ‘and, unless I’m very much mistaken, they’re what I want. Has anybody got a basket?’
“Yes. The boy who had fetched beer had a basket. Mr. Carter stuffed the slimy bundle into this basket, and put his arm through the handle.
“‘You’re not going to look ’em over here, then?’ said the local constable, with an air of disappointment.
“‘No, I’ll take them straight to my hotel; I shall have plenty of light there. You can come with me, if you like,’ Mr. Carter answered.
“He paid the men, who had been at work all day, and paid them liberally, I suppose, for they seemed very well satisfied. I had given him money for any expenses such as these; for I knew that, in a case of this kind, every insignificant step entailed the expenditure of money.
“We walked homewards as rapidly as the miserable state of the path, the increasing darkness, and the falling rain would allow us to walk. The constable walked with us. Mr. Carter whistled softly to himself as he went along, with the basket on his arm. The slimy green stuff and muddy water dripped from the bottom of the basket as he carried it.
“I was still at a loss to understand the reason of his high spirits; I was still at a loss to comprehend why he attached so much importance to the finding of the dead man’s clothes.
“It was past eight o’clock when we three men — the detecting the Winchester constable, and myself — entered our sitting-room at the George Hotel. The principal table was laid for dinner; and the waiter, our friend of the previous evening, was hovering about, eager to receive us. But Mr. Carter sent the waiter about his business.
“‘I’ve got a little matter to settle with this gentleman,’ he said, indicating the Winchester constable with a backward jerk of his thumb; ‘I’ll ring when I want dinner.’
“I saw the waiter’s eyes open to an abnormal extent, as he looked at the constable, and I saw a sudden blank apprehension creep over his face, as he retired very slowly from the room.
“‘Now,’ said Mr. Carter, ‘we’ll examine the bundle.’
“He pushed away the dinner-table, and drew forward a smaller table. Then he ran out of the room, and returned in about two minutes, carrying with him all the towels he had been able to find in my room and his own, which were close at hand. He spread the towels on the table, and then took the slimy bundle from the basket.
“‘Bring me the candles — both the candles,’ he said to the constable.
“The man held the two wax-candles on the right hand of the detective, as he sat before the table. I stood on his left hand, watching him intently.
“He touched the ragged and mud-stained bundle as carefully as if it had been some living thing. Foul river-insects crept out of the weeds, which were so intermingled with the tattered fabrics that it was difficult to distinguish one substance from the other.
“Mr. Carter was right: the rats had been at work. The outer part of the bundle was a coat — a cloth coat, knawed into tatters by the sharp teeth of water-rats.
“Inside the coat there was a waistcoat, a satin scarf that was little better than a pulp, and a shirt that had once been white. Inside the white shirt there was a flannel shirt, out of which there rolled half-a-dozen heavy stones. These had been used to sink the bundle, but were not so heavy as to prevent its drifting into the hole where it had been found.
“The bundle had been rolled up very tightly, and the outer garment was the only one which had been destroyed by the rats. The inner garment — the flannel shirt — was in a very tolerable state of preservation.
“The detective swept the coat and waistcoat and the pebbles back into the basket, and then rolled both of the shirts in a towel, and did his best to dry them. The constable watched him with open eyes, but with no ray of intelligence in his stolid face.
“‘Well,’ said Mr. Carter,’ there isn’t much here, is there? I don’t think I need detain you any longer. You’ll be wanting your tea, I dare say.’
“‘I did’nt think there would be much in them,’ the constable said, pointing contemptuously to the wet rags; his reverential awe of Scotland Yard had been considerably lessened during that long tiresome day. ‘I didn’t see your game from the first, and I don’t see it now. But you wanted the things found, and you’ve had ’em found.’
“Yes; and I’ve paid for the work being done,’ Mr. Carter answered briskly; ‘not but what I’m thankful to you for giving me your help, and I shall esteem it a favour if you’ll accept a trifle, to make up for your lost day. I’ve made a mistake, that’s all; the wisest of us are liable to be mistaken once in a way.’
“The constable grinned as he took the sovereign which Mr. Carter offered him. There was something like triumph in the grin of that Winchester constable — the triumph of a country official who was pleased to see a Londoner at fault.
“I confess that I groaned aloud when the door closed upon the man, and I found myself alone with the detective, who had seated himself at the little table, and was poring over one of the shirts outspread before him.
“‘All this day’s labour and weariness has been so much wasted trouble,’ I said; ‘for it seems to have brought us no step nearer to the point we wanted to reach.”
“‘Hasn’t it, Mr. Austin?” cried the detective, eagerly. ‘Do you think I am such a fool as to speak out before the man who has just left this room? Do you think I’m going to tell him my secret, or let him share my gains? The business of to-day has brought us to the very end we want to reach. It has brought about the discovery to which Margaret Wilmot’s letter was the first indication — the discovery pointed to by every word that man told us last night. Why did I want to find the clothes worn by the murdered man? Because I knew that those garments must contain a secret, or they never would have been stripped from the corpse. It ain’t often that a murderer cares to stop longer than he’s obliged by the side of his victim; and I knew all along that whoever stripped off those clothes must have had a very strong reason for doing it. I have worked this business out by my own lights, and I’ve been right. Look there, Mr. Austin.’
“He handed me the wet discoloured shirt, and pointed with his finger to one particular spot.
“There, amidst the stains of mud and moss, I saw something which was distinct and different from them. A name, neatly worked in dark crimson thread — a Christian and surname, in full.
“‘How do you make that out?’ Mr. Carter asked, looking We full in the face.
“Neither I nor any rational creature upon this earth able to read English characters could have well made out that name otherwise than I made it out.
“It was the name of Henry Dunbar.
“‘You see it all now, don’t you?’ said Mr. Carter; ‘that’s why the clothes were stripped off the body, and hidden at the bottom of the stream, where the water seemed deepest; that’s why the watch and chain changed hands; that’s why the man who came back to this house after the murder was slow to select the key of the desk. You understand now why it was so difficult for Margaret Wilmot to obtain access to the man at Maudesley Abbey; and why, when she had once seen that man, she tried to shield him from inquiry and pursuit. When she told you that Henry Dunbar was innocent of her father’s murder, she only told you the truth. The man who was murdered was Henry Dunbar; the man who murdered him was ——’
“I could hear no more. The blood surged up to my head, and I staggered back and dropped into a chair.
“When I came to myself, I found the detective splashing cold water in my face. When I came to myself, and was able to think steadily of what had happened, I had but one feeling in my mind; and that was pity, unutterable pity, for the woman I loved.
“Mr. Carter carried the bundle of clothes to his own room, and returned by-and-by, bringing his portmanteau with him. He put the portmanteau in a corner near the fireplace.
“‘I’ve locked the clothes safely in that,’ he said; ‘and I don’t mean to let it out of my sight till it’s lodged in very safe hands. That mark upon Henry Dunbar’s shirt will hang his murderer.’
“‘There may have been some mistake,’ I said; ‘the clothes marked with the name of Henry Dunbar may not have really belonged to Henry Dunbar. He may have given those clothes to his old valet.’
“‘That’s not likely, sir; for the old valet only met him at Southampton two or three hours before the murder was committed. No; I can see it all now. It’s the strangest case that ever came to my knowledge, but it’s simple enough when you’ve got the right clue to it. There was no probable motive which could induce Henry Dunbar, the very pink of respectability, and sole owner of a million of money, to run the risk of the gallows; there were very strong reasons why Joseph Wilmot, a vagabond and a returned criminal, should murder his late master, if by so doing he could take the dead man’s place, and slip from the position of an outcast and a penniless reprobate into that of chief partner in the house of Dunbar and Company. It was a bold game to hazard, and it must have been a fearfully perilous and difficult game to play, and the man has played it well, to have escaped suspicion so long. His daughter’s conscientious scruples have betrayed him.”
“Yes, Mr. Carter spoke the truth. Margaret’s refusal to fulfil her engagement had set in motion the machinery by means of which the secret of this foul murder had been discovered.
“I thought of the strange revelation, still so new to me, until my brain grew dazed. How had it been done? How had it been managed? The man whom I had seen and spoken with was not Henry Dunbar, then, but Joseph Wilmot, the murderer of his master — the treacherous and deliberate assassin of the man he had gone to meet and welcome after his five-and-thirty years’ absence from England!
“‘But surely such a conspiracy must be impossible,’ I said, by-and-by; ‘I have seen letters in St. Gundolph Lane, letters in Henry Dunbar’s hand, since last August.’
“‘That’s very likely, sir,’ the detective answered, coolly. ‘I turned up Joseph Wilmot’s own history while I was making myself acquainted with the details of this murder. He was transported thirty years ago for forgery: he made a bold attempt at escape, but he was caught in the act, and removed to Norfolk Island. He was one of the cleverest chaps at counterfeiting any man’s handwriting that was ever tried at the Old Bailey. He was known as one of the most daring scoundrels that ever stepped on board a convict-ship; a clever villain, and a bold one, but not without some touches of good in him, I’m told. At Norfolk Island he worked so hard and behaved so well that he got set free before he had served half his time. He came back to England, and was seen about London, and was suspected of being concerned in all manner of criminal offences, from card-sharping to coining, but nothing was ever brought home to him. I believe he tried to make an honest living, but couldn’t: the brand of the gaol-bird was upon him; and if he ever did get a chance, it was taken away from him before the sincerity of any apparent reformation had been tested. This is his history, and the history of many other men like him.’
“And Margaret was the daughter of this man. An inexpressible feeling of melancholy took possession of me as I thought of this. I understood everything now. This noble girl had heroically put away from her the one chance of bright and happy life, rather than bring upon her husband the foul taint of her father’s crime. I could understand all now. I looked back at the white face, rigid in its speechless agony; the fixed, dilated eyes; and I pictured to myself the horror of that scene at Maudesley Abbey, when the father and daughter stood opposite to each other, and Margaret Wilmot discovered why the murderer had persistently hidden himself from her.
“The mystery of my betrothed wife’s renunciation of my love had been solved; but the discovery was so hideous that I looked back now and regretted the time of my ignorance and uncertainty. Would it not have been better for me if I had let Margaret Wilmot go her own way, and carry out her sublime scheme of self-sacrifice? Would it not have been better to leave the dark secret of the murder for ever hidden from all but that one dread Avenger whose judgments reach the sinner in his remotest hiding-place, and follow him to the grave? Would it not have been better to do this?
“No! my own heart told me the argument was false and cowardly. So long as man deals with his fellow-man, so long as laws endure for the protection of the helpless and the punishment of the wicked, the course of justice must know no hindrance from any personal consideration.
“If Margaret Wilmot’s father had done this hateful deed, he must pay the penalty of his crime, though the broken heart of his innocent daughter was a sacrifice to his iniquity. If, by a strange fatality, I, who so dearly loved this girl, had urged on the coming of this fatal day, I had only been a blind instrument in the mighty hand of Providence, and I had no cause to regret the revelation of the truth.
“There was only one thing left me. The world would shrink away, perhaps, from the murderer’s daughter; but I, who had seen her nature proved in the fiery furnace of affliction, knew what a priceless pearl Heaven had given me in this woman, whose name must henceforward sound vile in the ears of honest men, and I did not recoil from the horror of my poor girl’s history.
“‘If it has been my destiny to bring this great sorrow upon her,’ I thought, ‘it shall be my duty to make her future safe and happy.”
“But would Margaret ever consent to be my wife, if she discovered that I had been the means of bringing about the discovery of her father’s crime?
“This was not a pleasant thought, and it was uppermost in my mind while I sat opposite to the detective, who ate a very hearty dinner, and whose air of suppressed high spirits was intolerable to me.
“Success is the very wine of life, and it was scarcely strange that Mr. Carter should feel pleased at having succeeded in finding a clue to the mystery that had so completely baffled his colleagues. So long as I had believed in Henry Dunbar’s guilt, I had felt no compunction as to the task I was engaged in. I had even caught something of the detective’s excitement in the chase. But now, now that I knew the shame and anguish which our discovery must inevitably entail upon the woman I loved, my heart sank within me, and I hated Mr. Carter for his ardent enjoyment of his triumph.
“‘You don’t mind travelling by the mail-train, do you, Mr. Austin?’ the detective said, presently.
“‘Not particularly; but why do you ask me?’
“‘Because I shall leave Winchester by the mail to-night.’
“‘What for?’
“‘To get as fast as I can to Maudesley Abbey, where I shall have the honour of arresting Mr. Joseph Wilmot.’
“So soon! I shuddered at the rapid course of justice when once a criminal mystery is revealed.
“‘But what if you should be mistaken! What if Joseph Wilmot was the victim and not the murderer?”
“‘In that case I shall soon discover my mistake. If the man at Maudesley Abbey is Henry Dunbar, there must be plenty of people able to identify him.’
“‘But Henry Dunbar has been away five-and-thirty years.’
“‘He has; but people don’t think much of the distance between England and Calcutta nowadays. There must be people in England now who knew the banker in India. I’m going down to the resident magistrate, Mr. Austin; the man who had Henry Dunbar, or the supposed Henry Dunbar, arrested last August. I shall leave the clothes in his care, for Joseph Wilmot will be tried at the Winchester assizes. The mail leaves Winchester at a quarter before eleven,’ added Mr. Carter, looking at his watch as he spoke; ‘so I haven’t much time to lose.’
“He took the bundle from the portmanteau, wrapped it in a sheet of brown paper which the waiter had brought him a few minutes before, and hurried away. I sat alone brooding over the fire, and trying to reason upon the events of the day.
“The waiter was moving softly about the room; but though I saw him look at me wistfully once or twice, he did not speak to me until he was about to leave the room, when he told me that there was a letter on the mantelpiece; a letter which had come by the evening post.
“The letter had been staring me in the face all the evening, but in my abstraction I had never noticed it.
“It was from my mother. I opened it when the waiter had left me, and read the following lines:
“‘MY DEAREST CLEM — I was very glad to get your letter this morning, announcing your safe arrival at Winchester. I dare say I am a foolish old woman, but I always begin to think of railway collisions, and all manner of possible and impossible calamities, directly you leave me on ever so short a journey.
“‘I was very much surprised yesterday morning by a visit from Margaret Wilmot. I was very cool to her at first; for though you never told me why your engagement to her was so abruptly broken off, I could not but think she was in some manner to blame, since I knew you too well, my darling boy, to believe you capable of inconstancy or unkindness. I thought, therefore, that her visit was very ill-timed, and I let her see that my feelings towards her were entirely changed.
“‘But, oh, Clement, when I saw the alteration in that unhappy girl, my heart melted all at once, and I could not speak to her coldly or unkindly. I never saw such a change in any one before. She is altered from a pretty girl into a pale haggard woman. Her manners are as much changed as her personal appearance. She had a feverish restlessness that fidgeted me out of my life; and her limbs trembled every now and then while she was speaking, and her words seemed to die away as she tried to utter them. She wanted to see you, she said; and when I told her that you were out of town, she seemed terribly distressed. But afterwards, when she had questioned me a good deal, and I told her that you had gone to Winchester, she started suddenly to her feet, and began to tremble from head to foot.
“‘I rang for wine, and made her take some. She did not refuse to take it; on the contrary, she drank the wine quite eagerly, and said, ‘I hope it will give me strength. I am so feeble, so miserably weak and feeble, and I want to be strong. I persuaded her to stop and rest; but she wouldn’t listen to me. She wanted to go back to London, she said; she wanted to be in London by a particular time. Do what I would, I could not detain her. She took my hands, and pressed them to her poor pale lips, and then hurried away, so changed from the bright Margaret of the past, that a dreadful thought took possession of my mind, and I began to fear that she was mad.‘
“The letter went on to speak of other things; but I could not think of anything but my mother’s description of Margaret’s visit. I understood her agitation at hearing of my journey to Winchester. She knew that only one motive could lead me to that place. I knew now that the familiar figure I had seen in the moonlit street and in the dusky grove was no phantasm of my over-excited brain. I knew now that it was the figure of the noble-hearted woman I loved — the figure of the heroic daughter, who had followed me to Winchester, and dogged my footsteps, in the vain effort to stand between her father and the penalty of his crime.
“As I had been watched in the street on the previous night, I had been watched to-night in the grove. The rustling dress, the shadowy figure melting in the obscurity of the rain-blotted landscape had belonged to Margaret Wilmot!
“Mr. Carter came in while I was still pondering over my mother’s letter.
“‘I’m off,’ he said, briskly. ‘Will you settle the bill, Mr. Austin? I suppose you’d like to be with me to the end of this business. You’ll go down to Maudesley Abbey with me, won’t you?’
“‘No,’ I said; ‘I will have no farther hand in this matter. Do your duty, Mr. Carter; and the reward I promised shall be faithfully paid to you. If Joseph Wilmot was the treacherous murderer of his old master, he must pay the penalty of his crime; I have neither the power nor the wish to shield him. But he is the father of the woman I love. It is not for me to help in hunting him to the gallows.’
“Mr. Carter looked very grave.
“‘To be sure, sir,’ he said; ‘I recollect now. I’ve been so wrapt up in this business that I forgot the difference it would make to you; but many a good girl has had a bad father, you know, sir, and ——’
“I put up my hand to stop him.
“‘Nothing that can possibly happen will lessen my esteem for Miss Wilmot,’ I said. ‘That point admits of no discussion.’
“I took out my pocket-book, gave the detective money for his expenses, and wished him good night.
“When he had left me, I went out into the High Street. The rain was over, and the moon was shining in a cloudless sky. Heaven knows how I should have met Margaret Wilmot had chance thrown her in my way to-night. But my mind was filled with her image; and I walked about the quiet town, expecting at every turn in the street, at every approaching footstep sounding on the pavement, to see the figure I had seen last night. But go where I would I saw no sign of her; so I came back to the hotel at last, to sit alone by the dull fire, and write this record of my day’s work.”
While Clement Austin sat in the lonely sitting-room at the George Inn, with his rapid pen scratching along the paper before him, a woman walked up and down the lamp-lit platform at Rugby, waiting for the branch train which was to take her on to Shorncliffe.
This woman was Margaret Wilmot — the haggard, trembling girl whose altered manner had so terrified simple-hearted Mrs. Austin.
But she did not tremble now. She had pushed her thick black veil away from her face, and though no vestige of healthy colour had come back to her cheeks or lips, her features had a set look of steadfast resolution, and her eyes looked straight before her, like the eyes of a person who has one special purpose in view, and will not swerve or falter until that purpose has been carried out.
There was only one elderly gentleman in the first-class carriage in which Margaret Wilmot took her seat when the branch train for Shorncliffe was ready; and as this one fellow-passenger slept throughout the journey, with his face covered by an expansive silk handkerchief, Margaret was left free to think her own thoughts.
The girl was scarcely less quiet than her slumbering companion; she sat in one changeless attitude, with her hands clasped together in her lap, and her eyes always looking straight forward, as they had looked when she walked upon the platform. Once she put her hand mechanically to the belt of her dress, and then shook her head with a sigh as she drew it away.
“How long the time seems!” she said; “how long! and I have no watch now, and I can’t tell how late it is. If they should be there before me. If they should be travelling by this train. No, that’s impossible. I know that neither Clement, nor the man that was with him, left Winchester by the train that took me to London. But if they should telegraph to London or Shorncliffe?”
She began to tremble at the thought of this possibility. If that grand wonder of science, the electric telegraph, should be made use of by the men she dreaded, she would be too late upon the errand she was going on.
The mail train stopped at Shorncliffe while she was thinking of this fatal possibility. She got out and asked one of the porters to get her a fly; but the man shook his head.
“There’s no flies to be had at this time of night, miss,” he said, civilly enough. “Where do you want to go?”
She dared not tell him her destination; secresy was essential to the fulfilment of her purpose.
“I can walk,” she said; “I am not going very far.” She left the station before the man could ask her any further questions, and went out into the moonlit country road on which the station abutted. She went through the town of Shorncliffe, where the diamond casements were all darkened for the night, and under the gloomy archway, past the dark shadows which the ponderous castle-towers flung across the rippling water. She left the town, and went out upon the lonely country road, through patches of moonlight and shadow, fearless in her self-abnegation, with only one thought in her mind: “Would she be in time?”
She was very tired when she came at last to the iron gates at the principal entrance of Maudesley Park. She had heard Clement Austin speak of a bridle-path through the park to Lisford, and he had told her that this bridle-path was approached by a gate in the park-fence upwards of a mile from the principal lodge.
She walked along by this fence, looking for the gate.
She found it at last; a little low wooden gate, painted white, and only fastened by a latch. Beyond the gate there was a pathway winding in and out among the trunks of the great elms, across the dry grass.
Margaret Wilmot followed this winding path, slowly and doubtfully, till she came to the margin of a vast open lawn. Upon the other side of this lawn she saw the dark frontage of Maudesley Abbey, and three tall lighted windows gleaming through the night.
The man who called himself Henry Dunbar was lying on the tapestried cushions of a carved oaken couch that stood before the fire in his spacious sitting-room. He lay there, listening to the March wind roaring in the broad chimney, and watching the blazing coals and the crackling logs of wood.
It was three o’clock in the morning now, and the servants had left the room at midnight; but the sick man had ordered a huge fire to be made up — a fire that promised to last for some hours.
The master of Maudesley Abbey was in no way improved by his long imprisonment. His complexion had faded to a dull leaden hue; his cheeks were sunken; his eyes looked unnaturally large and unnaturally bright. Long hours of loneliness, long sleepless nights, and thoughts that from every diverging point for ever narrowed inwards to one hideous centre, had done their work of him. The man lying opposite the fire to-night looked ten years older than the man who gave his evidence so boldly and clearly before the coroner’s jury at Winchester.
The crutches — they were made of some light, polished wood, and were triumphs of art in their way — leaned against a table close to the couch, and within reach to the man’s hand. He had learned to walk about the rooms and on the gravel-drive before the Abbey with these crutches, and had even learned to do without them, for he was now able to set the lamed foot upon the ground, and to walk a few paces pretty steadily, with no better support than that of his cane; but as yet he walked slowly and doubtfully, in spite of his impatience to be about once more.
Heaven knows how many different thoughts were busy in his restless brain that night. Strange memories came back to him, as he lay staring at the red chasms and craggy steeps in the fire — memories of a time so long gone by, that all the personages of that period seemed to him like the characters in a book, or the figures in a picture. He saw their faces, and he remembered how they had looked at him; and among these other faces he saw the many semblances which his own had worn.
O God, how that face had changed! The bright, frank, boyish countenance, looking eagerly out upon a world that seemed so pleasant; the young man’s hopeful smile; and then — and then, the hard face that grew harder with the lapse of years; the smile that took no radiance from a light within; the frown that blackened as the soul grew darker. He saw all these, and still for ever, amid a thousand distracting ideas, his thoughts, which were beyond his own volition, concentrated in the one plague-spot of his life, and held him there, fixed as a wretch bound hand and foot upon the rack.
“If I could only get away from this place,” he said to himself; “if I could get away, it would all be different. Change of scene, activity, hurrying from place to place in new countries and amongst strange people, would have the usual influence upon me. That memory would pass away then, as other memories have passed; only to be recalled, now and then, in a dream; or conjured up by some chance allusion dropped from the lips of strangers, some coincidence of resemblance in a scene, or face, or tone, or look. That memory cannot be so much worse than the rest that it should be ineffaceable, where they have been effaced. But while I stay here, here in this dismal room, where the dropping of the ashes on the hearth, the ticking of the clock upon the chimney-piece, are like that torture I have read of somewhere — the drop of water falling at intervals upon the victim’s forehead until the anguish of its monotony drives him raving mad — while I stay here there is no hope of forgetfulness, no possibility of peace. I saw him last night, and the night before last, and the night before that. I see him always when I go to sleep, smiling at me, as he smiled when we went into the grove. I can hear his voice, and the words he said, every syllable of those insignificant words, selfish murmurs about the probability of his being fatigued in that long walk, the possibility that it would have been better to hire a fly, and to have driven by the road — bah! What was he that I should be sorry for him? Am I sorry for him? No! I am sorry for myself, and for the torture which I have created for myself. O God! I can see him now as he looked up at me out of the water. The motion of the stream gave a look of life to his face, and I almost thought he was still alive, and I had never done that deed.”
These were the pleasant fireside thoughts with which the master of Maudesley Abbey beguiled the hours of his convalescence. Heaven keep our memories green! exclaims the poet novelist; and Heaven preserve us from such deeds as make our memories hideous to us!
From such a reverie as this the master of Maudesley Abbey was suddenly aroused by the sound of a light knocking against one of the windows of his room — the window nearest him as he lay on the couch.
He started, and lifted himself into a sitting posture.
“Who is there?” he cried, impatiently.
He was frightened, and clasped his two hands upon, his forehead, trying to think who the late visitant could be. Why should any one come to him at such an hour, unless — unless it was discovered? There could be no other justification for such an intrusion.
His breath came short and thick as he thought of this. Had it come at last, then, that awful moment which he had dreamed of so many times — that hideous crisis which he had imagined under so many different aspects? Had it come at last, like this? — quietly, in the dead of the night, without one moment’s warning? — before he had prepared himself to escape it, or hardened himself to meet it? Had it come now? The man thought all this while he listened, with his chest heaving, his breath coming in hoarse gasps, waiting for the reply to his question.
There was no reply except the knocking, which grew louder and more hurried.
If there can be expression in the tapping of a hand against a pane of glass, there was expression in that hand — the expression of entreaty rather than of demand, as it seemed to that white and terror-stricken listener.
His heart gave a great throb, like a prisoner who leaps away from the fetters that have been newly loosened.
“What a fool I have been!” he thought. “If it was that, there would be knocking and ringing at the hall-door, instead of that cautious summons. I suppose that fellow Vallance has got into some kind of trouble, and has come in the dead of the night to hound me for money. It would be only like him to do it. He knows he must be admitted, let him come when he may.”
The invalid gave a groan as he thought this. He got up and walked to the window, leaning upon his cane as he went.
The knocking still sounded. He was close to the window, and he heard something besides the knocking — a woman’s voice, not loud, but peculiarly audible by reason of its earnestness.
“Let me in; for pity’s sake let me in!”
The man standing at the window knew that voice: only too well, only too well. It was the voice of the girl who had so persistently followed him, who had only lately succeeded in seeing him. He drew back the bolts that fastened the long French window, opened it, and admitted Margaret Wilmot.
“Margaret!” he cried; “what, in Heaven’s name, brings you here at such an hour as this?”
“Danger!” answered the girl, breathlessly. “Danger to you! I have been running, and the words seem to choke me as I speak. There’s not a moment to be lost, not one moment. They will be here directly; they cannot fail to be here directly. I felt as if they had been close behind me all the way — they may have been so. There is not a moment — not one moment!”
She stopped, with her hands clasped upon her breast. She was incoherent in her excitement, and knew that she was so, and struggled to express herself clearly.
“Oh, father!” she exclaimed, lifting her hands to her head, and pushing the loose tangled hair away from her face; “I have tried to save you — I have tried to save you! But sometimes I think that is not to be. It may be God’s mercy that you should be taken, and your wretched daughter can die with you!”
She fell upon her knees, suddenly, in a kind of delirium, and lifted up her clasped hands.
“O God, have mercy upon him!” she cried. “As I prayed in this room before — as I have prayed every hour since that dreadful time — I pray again to-night. Have mercy upon him, and give him a penitent heart, and wash away his sin. What is the penalty he may suffer here, compared to that Thou canst inflict hereafter? Let the chastisement of man fall upon him, so as Thou wilt accept his repentance!”
“Margaret,” said Joseph Wilmot, grasping the girl’s arm, “are you praying that I may be hung? Have you come here to do that? Get up, and tell me what is the matter!”
Margaret Wilmot rose from her knees shuddering, and looking straight before her, trying to be calm — trying to collect her thoughts.
“Father,” she said, “I have never known one hour’s peaceful sleep since the night I left this room. For the last three nights I have not slept at all. I have been travelling, walking from place to place, until I could drop on the floor at your feet. I want to tell you — but the words — the words — won’t come — somehow ——”
She pointed to her dry lips, which moved, but made no sound. There was a bottle of brandy and a glass on the table near the couch. Joseph Wilmot was seldom without that companion. He snatched up the bottle and glass, poured out some of the brandy, and placed it between his daughter’s lips. She drank the spirit eagerly. She would have drunk living fire, if, by so doing, she could have gained strength to complete her task.
“You must leave this house directly!” she gasped. “You must go abroad, anywhere, so long as you are safe out of the way. They will be here to look for you — Heaven only knows how soon!”
“They! Who?
“Clement Austin, and a man — a detective ——”
“Clement Austin — your lover — your confederate? You have betrayed me, Margaret!”
“I!” cried the girl, looking at her father.
There was something sublime in the tone of that one word — something superb in the girl’s face, as her eyes met the haggard gaze of the murderer.
“Forgive me, my girl! No, no, you wouldn’t do that, even to a loathsome wretch like me!”
“But you will go away — you will escape from them?”
“Why should I be afraid of them? Let them come when they please, they have no proof against me.”
“No proof? Oh, father, you don’t know — you don’t know. They have been to Winchester. I heard from Clement’s mother that he had gone there; and I went after him, and found out where he was — at the inn where you stayed, where you refused to see me — and that there was a man with him. I waited about the streets; and at night I saw them both, the man and Clement. Oh! father, I knew they could have only one purpose in coming to that place. I saw them at night; and the next day I watched again — waiting about the street, and hiding myself under porches or in shops, when there was any chance of my being seen. I saw Clement leave the George, and take the way towards the cathedral. I went to the cathedral-yard afterwards, and saw the strange man talking in a doorway with an old man. I loitered about the cathedral-yard, and saw the man that was with Clement go away, down by the meadows, towards the grove, to the place where ——”
She stopped, and trembled so violently that she was unable to speak.
Joseph Wilmot filled the glass with brandy for the second time, and put it to his daughter’s lips.
She drank about a teaspoonful, and then went on, speaking very rapidly, and in broken sentences —
“I followed the man, keeping a good way behind, so that he might not see that he was followed. He went straight down to the very place where — the murder was done. Clement was there, and three men. They were there under the trees, and they were dragging the water.”
“Dragging the water! Oh, my God, why were they doing that?” cried the man, dropping suddenly on the chair nearest to him, and with his face livid.
For the first time since Margaret had entered the room terror took possession of him. Until now he had listened attentively, anxiously; but the ghastly look of fear and horror was new upon his face. He had defied discovery. There was only one thing that could be used against him — the bundle of clothes, the marked garments of the murdered man — those fatal garments which he had been unable to destroy, which he had only been able to hide. These things alone could give evidence against him; but who should think of searching for these things? Again and again he had thought of the bundle at the bottom of the stream, only to laugh at the wondrous science of discovery which had slunk back baffled by so slight a mystery, only to fancy the water-rats gnawing the dead man’s garments, and all the oose and slime creeping in and out amongst the folds until the rotting rags became a very part of the rank river-weeds that crawled and tangled round them.
He had thought this, and the knowledge that strangers had been busy on that spot, dragging the water — the dreadful water that had so often flowed through his dreams — with, not one, but a thousand dead faces looking up and grinning at him through the stream — the tidings that a search had been made there, came upon him like a thunderbolt.
“Why did they drag the water?” he cried again.
His daughter was standing at a little distance from him. She had never gone close up to him, and she had receded a little — involuntarily, as a woman shrinks away from some animal she is frightened of — whenever he had approached her. He knew this — yes, amidst every other conflicting thought, this man was conscious that his daughter avoided him.
“They dragged the water,” Margaret said; “I walked about — that place — under the elms — all the day — only one day — but it seemed to last for ever and ever. I was obliged to hide myself — and to keep at a distance, for Clement was there all day; but as it grew dusk I ventured nearer, and found out what they were doing, and that they had not found what they were searching for; but I did not know yet what it was they wanted to find.”
“But they found it!” gasped the girl’s father; “did they find it? Come to that.”
“Yes, they found it by-and-by. A bundle of rags, a boy told me — a boy who had been about with the men all day —‘a bundle of rags, it looked like,’ he said; but he heard the constable say that those rags were the clothes that had belonged to the murdered man.”
“What then? What next?”
“I waited to hear no more, father; I ran all the way to Winchester to the station — I was in time for a train, which brought me to London — I came on by the mail to Rugby — and ——”
“Yes, yes; I know — and you are a brave girl, a noble girl. Ah! my poor Margaret, I don’t think I should have hated that man so much if it hadn’t been for the thought of you — your lonely girlhood — your hopeless, joyless existence — and all through him — all through the man who ruined me at the outset of my life. But I won’t talk — I daren’t talk: they have found the clothes; they know that the man who was murdered was Henry Dunbar — they will be here — let me think — let me think how I can get away!”
He clasped both his hands upon his head, as if by force of their iron grip he could steady his mind, and clear away the confusion of his brain.
From the first day on which he had taken possession of the dead man’s property until this moment he had lived in perpetual terror of the crisis which had now arrived. There was no possible form or manner in which he had not imagined the situation. There was no preparation in his power to make that he had left unmade. But he had hoped to anticipate the dreaded hour. He had planned his flight, and meant to have left Maudesley Abbey for ever, in the first hour that found him capable of travelling. He had planned his flight, and had started on that wintry afternoon, when the Sabbath bells had a muffled sound, as their solemn peals floated across the snow — he had started on his journey with the intention of never again returning to Maudesley Abbey. He had meant to leave England, and wander far away, through all manner of unfrequented districts, choosing places that were most difficult of approach, and least affected by English travellers.
He had meant to do this, and had calculated that his conduct would be, at the worst, considered eccentric; or perhaps it would be thought scarcely unnatural in a lonely man, whose only child had married into a higher sphere than his own. He had meant to do this, and by-and-by, when he had been lost sight of by the world, to hide himself under a new name and a new nationality, so that if ever, by some strange fatality, by some awful interposition of Providence, the secret of Henry Dunbar’s death should come to light, the murderer would be as entirely removed from human knowledge as if the grave had closed over him and hidden him for ever.
This is the course that Joseph Wilmot had planned for himself. There had been plenty of time for him to think and plot in the long nights that he had spent in those splendid rooms — those noble chambers, whose grandeur had been more hideous to him than the blank walls of a condemned cell; whose atmosphere had seemed more suffocating than the foetid vapours of a fever-tainted den in St. Giles’s. The passionate, revengeful yearning of a man who has been cruelly injured and betrayed, the common greed of wealth engendered out of poverty’s slow torture, had arisen rampant in this man’s breast at the sight of Henry Dunbar. By one hideous deed both passions were gratified; and Joseph Wilmot, the bank-messenger, the confidential valet, the forger, the convict, the ticket-of-leave man, the penniless reprobate, became master of a million of money.
Yes, he had done this. He had entered Winchester upon that August afternoon, with a few sovereigns and a handful of silver in his pocket, and with a life of poverty and degradation, before him. He had left the same town chief partner in the firm of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby, and sole owner of Maudesley Abbey, the Yorkshire estates, and the house in Portland Place.
Surely this was the very triumph of crime, a master-stroke of villany. But had the villain ever known one moment’s happiness since the commission of that deed — one moment’s peace — one moment’s freedom from a slow, torturing anguish that was like the gnawing of a ravenous beast for ever preying on his entrails? The author of the Opium-Eater suffered so cruelly from some internal agony that he grew at last to fancy there was indeed some living creature inside him, for ever torturing and tormenting him. This doubtless was only the fancy of an invalid: but what of that undying serpent called Remorse, which coils itself about the heart of the murderer and holds it for ever in a deadly grip — never to beat freely again, never to know a painless throb, or feel a sweet emotion?
In a few minutes — while the rooks were cawing in the elms, and the green leaves fluttering in the drowsy summer air, and the blue waters rippling in the sunshine and flecked by the shadows — Joseph Wilmot had done a deed which had given him the richest reward that a murderer ever hoped to win; and had so transformed his life, so changed the very current of his being, that he went away out of that wood, not alone, but dogged step by step by a gaunt, stalking creature, a hideous monster that echoed his every breath, and followed at his shoulder, and clung about him, and grappled his throat, and weighed him down; a horrid thing, which had neither shape nor name, and yet wore every shape, and took every name, and was the ghost of the deed that he had done.
Joseph Wilmot stood for a few moments with his hands clasped upon his head, and then the shadows faded from his face, which suddenly became fixed and resolute-looking. The first thrill of terror, the first shock of surprise, were over. This man never had been and never could be a coward. He was ready now for the worst. It may be that he was glad the worst had come. He had suffered such unutterable anguish, such indescribable tortures, during the time in which his guilt had been unsuspected, that it may have been a kind of relief to know that his secret was discovered, and that he was free to drop the mask.
While he paused, thinking what he was to do, some lucky thought came to him, for his face brightened suddenly with a triumphant smile.
“The horse!” he said. “I may ride, though I can’t walk.”
He took up his cane, and went to the next room, where there was a door that opened into the quadrangle, in which the master of the Abbey had caused a loose box to be built for his favourite horse. Margaret followed her father, not closely, but at a little distance, watching him with anxious, wondering eyes.
He unfastened the half-glass door, opened it, and went out into the quadrangular garden, the quaint old-fashioned garden, where the flower-beds were primly dotted on the smooth grass-plot, in the centre of which there was a marble basin, and the machinery of a little fountain that had never played within the memory of living man.
“Go back for the lamp, Margaret,” Joseph Wilmot whispered. “I must have light.”
The girl obeyed. She had left off trembling now, and carried the shaded lamp as steadily as if she had been bent on some simple womanly errand. She followed her father into the garden, and went with him to the loose box where the horse was to be found.
The animal knew his master, even in that uncertain light. There was gas laid on in the millionaire’s stables, and a low jet had been left burning by the groom.
The horse plunged his head about his master’s shoulders, and shook his mane, and reared, and disported himself in his delight at seeing his old friend once more, and it was only Joseph Wilmot’s soothing hand and voice that subdued the animal’s exuberant spirits.
“Steady, boy, steady! quiet, old fellow!” Joseph said, in a whisper.
Three or four saddles and bridles hung upon a rack in one corner of the small stable. Joseph Wilmot selected the things he wanted, and began to saddle the horse, supporting himself on his cane as he did so.
The groom slept in the house now, by his master’s orders, and there was no one within hearing.
The horse was saddled and bridled in five minutes, and Joseph Wilmot led him out of the stable, followed by Margaret, who still carried the lamp. There was a low iron gate leading out of the quadrangle into the grounds. Joseph led the horse to this gate.
“Go back and get me my coat,” he said to Margaret; “you’ll go faster than I can. You’ll find a coat lined with fur on a chair in the bedroom.”
His daughter obeyed, silently and quietly, as she had done before. The rooms all opened one into the other. She saw the bedroom with the tall, gloomy bedstead, the light of the fire flickering here and there. She set the lamp down upon a table in this room, and found the fur-lined coat her father had sent her to fetch. There was a purse lying on a dressing-table, with sovereigns glittering through the silken network, and the girl snatched it up as she hurried away, thinking, in her innocent simplicity, that her father might have nothing but those few sovereigns to help him in his flight. She went back to him, carrying the bulky overcoat, and helped him to put it on in place of the dressing-grown he had been wearing. He had taken his hat before going to the stable.
“Here is your purse, father,” she said, thrusting it into his hand; “there is something in it, but I’m afraid there’s not very much. How will you manage for money where you art going?”
“Oh, I shall manage very well.”
He had got into the saddle by this time, not without considerable difficulty; but though the fresh air made him feel faint and dizzy, he felt himself a new man now that the horse was under him — the brave horse, the creature that loved him, whose powerful stride could carry him almost to the other end of the world; as it seemed to Joseph Wilmot in the first triumph of being astride the animal once more. He put his hand involuntarily to the belt that was strapped round him, as Margaret asked that question about the money.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “I’ve money enough — I am all right.”
“But where are you going?” she asked, eagerly.
The horse was tearing up the wet gravel, and making furious champing noises in his impatience of all this delay.
“I don’t know,” Joseph Wilmot answered; “that will depend upon — I don’t know. Good night, Margaret. God bless you! I don’t suppose He listens to the prayers of such as me. If He did, it might have been all different long ago — when I tried to be honest!”
Yes, this was true; the murderer of Henry Dunbar had once tried to be honest, and had prayed God to prosper his honesty; but then he only tried to do right in a spasmodic, fitful kind of way, and expected his prayers to be granted as soon as they were asked, and was indignant with a Providence that seemed to be deaf to his entreaties. He had always lacked that sublime quality of patience, which endures the evil day, and calmly breasts the storm.
“Let me go with you, father,” Margaret said, in an entreating voice, “let me go with you. There is nothing in all the world for me, except the hope of God’s forgiveness for you. I want to be with you. I don’t want you to be amongst bad men, who will harden your heart. I want to be with you — far away — where ——”
“You with me?” said Joseph Wilmot, slowly; “you wish it?”
“With all my heart!”
“And you’re true,” he cried, bending down to grasp his daughter’s shoulder and look her in the face, “you’re true, Margaret, eh? — true as steel; ready for anything, no flinching, no quailing or trembling when the danger comes. You’ve stood a good deal, and stood it nobly. Can you stand still more, eh?”
“For your sake, father, for your sake! yes, yes, I will brave anything in the world, do anything to save you from ——”
She shuddered as she remembered what the danger was that assailed him, the horror from which flight alone could save him. No, no, no! that could never be endured at any cost; at any sacrifice he must be saved from that. No strength of womanly fortitude, no trust in the mercy of God, could even make her resigned as to that.
“I’ll trust you, Margaret,” said Joseph Wilmot, loosening his grasp upon the girl’s shoulder; “I’ll trust you. Haven’t I reason to trust you? Didn’t I see your mother, on the day when she found out what my history was; didn’t I see the colour fade out of her face till she was whiter than the linen collar round her neck, and in the next moment her arms were about me, and her honest eyes looking up in my face, as she cried, ‘I shall never love you less, dear; there’s nothing in this world can make me love you less!’”
He paused for a moment. His voice had grown thick and husky; but he broke out violently in the next instant.
“Great Heaven! why do I stop talking like this? Listen to me, Margaret; if you want to see the last of me, you must find your way, somehow or other, to Woodbine Cottage, near Lisford — on the Lisford Road, I think. Find your way there — I’m going there now, and shall be there long before you — you understand?”
“Yes; Woodbine Cottage, Lisford — I shan’t forget! God speed you, father! — God help you!”
“He is the God of sinners,” thought the wretched girl. “He gave Cain a long lifetime in which to repent of his sins.”
Margaret thought this as she stood at the gate, listening to the horse’s hoofs upon the gravel road that wound through the grounds away into the park.
She was very, very tired, but had little sense of her fatigue, and her journey was by no means finished yet. She did not once look back at Maudesley Abbey — that stately and splendid mansion, in which a miserable wretch had acted his part, and endured the penalty of his guilt, for many wearisome months She went away — hurrying along the lonely pathways, with the night breezes blowing her loose hair across her eyes, and half-blinding her as she went — to find the gate by which she had entered the park.
She went out at this gateway because it was the only point of egress by which she could leave the park without being seen by the keeper of a lodge. The dim morning light was grey in the sky before she met any one whom she could ask to direct her to Woodbine Cottage; but at last a man came out of a farmyard with a couple of milk-pails, and directed her to the Lisford Road.
It was broad daylight when she reached the little garden-gate before Major Vernon’s abode. It was broad daylight, and the door leading into the prim little hall was ajar. The girl pushed it open, and fell into the arms of a man, who caught her as she fainted.
“Poor girl, poor child!” said Joseph Wilmot; “to think what she has suffered. And I thought that she would profit by that crime; I thought that she would take the money, and be content to leave the mystery unravelled. My poor child! my poor, unhappy child!”
The man who had murdered Henry Dunbar wept aloud over the white face of his unconscious daughter.
“Don’t let’s have any of that fooling,” cried a harsh voice from the little parlour; “we’ve no time to waste on snivelling!”