The Weird Sisters: A Romance. Volume 2 of 3
"You are right!" cried Grey eagerly, all his faculties suddenly starting into life, and his mind for the first time seizing upon the idea of getting certain knowledge speedily. The torpor which had fallen upon his intellectual faculties at the moment of the explosion left him, and he not only warmly seconded the old man's plan, but before the other could speak, had secured and was seated in one of the many flys which had already begun to arrive with helpers and friends at the scene of the wreck.
In a few seconds the fly was spinning along in the direction of Daneford. Both the men in the vehicle were too much occupied with their own concerns for conversation. Grey's thoughts ran on:
"She is dead. Beyond all doubt she is dead. Poor Bee! poor Bee! I wonder did she think of me with her last thought. I wonder was she glad or sorry to go. And now that she is gone, my poor Bee, I don't know how I feel.
"Poor Bee, I shall miss her. I have been unkind and unjust to her. I have treated her cruelly, cruelly. My being unkind and scornful to her did no one any good. It hurt her, and it hurt me. Poor thing!
"The house will be strange now. The rooms where she has been will feel so quiet, so useless. What is a house for but a woman? A man does not want a house of many rooms. Least of all does he want a house of many rooms haunted by a memory. A man wants only two rooms, one to eat in and one to sleep in. When a childless man's wife dies he ought to give up housekeeping. What is the use of hollow rooms all round a man's head? They are only chilling storehouses of recollection."
Here his mind halted a long time. When he resumed at the point where he had left off, he added but one more thought:
"I'll sell the Manor."
He paused much longer, said to himself, as though he were familiarising himself with the whole situation by repeating the words forming the key to it:
"I'll sell the Manor."
After going over the words so often that they began to lose their meaning, he started suddenly:
"No. I cannot sell the Manor. I cannot sell the Manor House. A man in my position must have a house. A man in my position —
"My position! My position! My position!
"Curse it, why can't I keep my head clear? I am not going mad, I should hope. What an amusing maniac I should make just now! The people would gather from all sides to hear honest Wat raving about stealing the property of the baronet. It would be town talk. Never was mad-mad so mad, they would say. But let me get on —
"Of course a man in my position ought to have a house. I must have a place to see my friends in. I must entertain a little and – "
His thoughts paused again a while, and then he abandoned thinking on the line he had been following with the mental exclamation: "No, no! I must not think of that now. I must not think of that – over the open grave of poor Bee!"
He shook himself and endeavoured to fix his mind on matters of the hour, and to keep it free of the future:
"How the purely business aspect of things has altered within these awful twenty-four hours! Sir Alexander has become powerless to alter that will, and still lives. The longer he lives now, the better for me. While he retained his faculties there was always great danger he might make some change. Now there is no longer any fear of that.
"What a terrible scene that was at the bedside! If I had known anything of the kind was about to occur, I don't think I should have had the courage to face it. I fear I would have gone the fatal length before I would have knowingly encountered it. It was so awful to hold her hand and swear such things in the face of the facts. But it is all over, and I am well out of it. Perhaps, after all, it is better the scene should have taken place.
"I suppose I shall be much at the Castle now. In fact, I don't know who is to give any orders now if I do not. It will be all thrown on me, I can plainly see that. Often at the Castle means meeting her often, and meeting her often means that we shall be good friends.
"How long did we stand hand-in-hand this evening? Not long. I did not note her beauty then, but now I can call back the face and change the surroundings —
"No, no! I must not sell the Manor. A man in my position must have a house for – I may marry again."
He set his teeth and clenched his hands, and drove the nails of his fingers into his palms. Then he faced the position resolutely:
"A while ago I shirked looking into the future across an open grave. But my own grave is open too. Can I fill it up? I think I can. Self-preservation is the first law. I cannot get back my five thousand pounds from the Rodwell. I cannot get back my wife from the Weeslade: can I get back my life? That is the question of questions, and it is idle out of feeble sentimentalism to defer looking at such grave business in a straightforward and candid way.
"I must marry, and I must marry this girl. Nothing else can save me, and I think nothing can prevent my doing it. I hold the winning cards in my hand at last, and I mean to win."
The old gentleman here broke in upon the banker's reverie with: "We are passing your house, Mr. Grey."
"Ah, so we are; thank you. Drop me here; I'll walk up, and you take the fly on. I hope you will find your son all safe."
"God grant it! I hope you will find your wife at the house."
"Thank you; good-night."
"Good-night."
Grey turned into the Park, and walked slowly in the direction of his house.
Twice he paused and faced round, as though the place were new to him, and he wished to fix indelibly on his memory what could be seen in the dim light. Or was it that he now looked at the Park in a new aspect, from a new standpoint? Or was it that he wanted to gain time and composure before reaching the house? He could not have told himself why he stopped, in fact he was perfectly unconscious of having ceased to move forward; and although his eyes passed deliberately from tree to tree, and seemed to be dissatisfied with the want of light, he was not aware his thought was occupied with the scene. The pause in his walk indicated merely a pause in his thought. While he moved towards the house he had but one idea.
"I must marry, and I must marry this girl. Nothing else can save me."
With this thought beating through his brain he shook himself, straightened his figure, and collected his faculties for meeting the servants and formally ascertaining his wife had left the house and taken passage in the ill-fated Rodwell.
With a steady stride, and head erect, he walked up to the front door and into the hall.
He looked round hastily, and then asked:
"James, where is your mistress?"
The man blinked in surprise at seeing his master and being asked such a question. Mrs. Grey had told the servants that morning she and Mr. Grey were going to Seacliff that evening, and now here was his master come back alone, and asking in a startling manner where the mistress was. He had better be guarded in his reply. "I don't know, sir," was his answer.
"Is she in the house, James?"
"No, sir."
"Are you quite sure?"
"Quite sure."
"When did she go out?"
"I did not see her go out, sir; but at luncheon she said she was going out, and I have not seen her since."
"Did she say where she was going?"
"Yes, sir. She said if anyone called I was to tell them she had gone to Seacliff with you this evening."
"Are you quite sure of all this?"
"Quite sure, sir. The cook was in the dining-room at the time, and heard the mistress tell me. Mistress had the cook up to give her orders about to-morrow."
"James, you will never see your poor mistress again. The Rodwell blew up, and she was not among the saved."
"Good God!" exclaimed the old soldier, starting back and involuntarily bringing his hand to his forehead, as though he found himself thrust into the presence of the general of the enemy. He fell back two paces, and, dropping his hand to his mouth, uttered a sob. "Good God!" exclaimed the near-sighted servant, whose heart was full of dumb gratitude and desolate sense of loss. "The last words she said to me were, 'Thank you for the flowers, James; I know it was you put them fresh in the vases. Thank you, James.' That's what she said to me as she went down the passage to her own room. When she was in the passage she turned back, and said so that I shouldn't forget it, 'Thank you, James; and recollect if anyone calls I'll be back to-morrow.' And now to think that she is dead!" He had forgotten the presence of his master, who stood irresolute a moment, and then with a heavy sigh walked into the inner hall and disappeared up the gloomy unlit staircase.
Neither master nor mistress having been expected home, there was no light in any of the rooms or passages on the first floor. With heavy slow step Mr. Grey proceeded to his own bedroom and lit the gas.
How cold and dreary and desolate it looked!
He poured out some water and bathed his face. This revived and invigorated him. Then he rang the bell. The chambermaid answered it.
"Jane, I suppose you have heard the awful news from James?"
"Yes, sir." The girl burst out crying.
"Do you know the exact time at which your poor mistress left the house for the boat?"
"No, sir. None of us saw her go; but none of us were in the front of the house after luncheon. We dined at three, just after the mistress had her luncheon; and we all think she must have gone out while we were sitting down."
"That will do, Jane, thank you."
"Thank you, sir; and if you please, sir, we're all very sorry for her and for you," crying. "She was a good kind mistress, and never took any of us up short, or refused us anything in reason."
"She was a good kind mistress, Jane. I am very much obliged to you and to them. Tell all of them below that."
The girl withdrew, weeping bitterly.
Once more he was alone.
Until now there had lingered in his mind a haunting doubt. He could not believe the evidence before him. Now all was simple and intelligible.
He commenced to pace the room. At first his step was firm and slow. He was weighing mighty thoughts.
Gradually the past seemed to fall from him like a cope of lead. He folded his arms on his breast. He threw up his head into the air, as in fancy he stepped across the threshold of his new life. The colour came into his cheeks and the sparkle into his eye. He strode beneath triumphal arches, and heard the shouts of surging multitudes in his ears.
Yes, the past was now vanished into the darkness, which need never again be explored, be visited, be contemplated. Let the past bury its dead. Let him look at the future.
It was brighter now than ever. The position of the Bank was secure above all chances of assault. He should marry that girl, and by that marriage cover up for ever the crime he had committed. The reputation of her fortune would enormously increase the security and business of the Bank.
Then – long-deferred ambition – then he might enter Parliament. The best society would gradually open to him. He should be successful in the House; he should possibly rise to place; if this happened, considering he should have the reputation of great wealth, and for a wife the beautiful daughter of a baronet, of a race that went back to the Conquest, what more possible than that there should in a few years, in Debrett, be the name of Sir Henry Walter Grey, Bart.?
The prospect was not unreasonable. What intoxicating probabilities were these!
He would like a little brandy now. He did not care to go downstairs for it, or to ring again. There was some, no doubt, in the tower cupboard. Yes, that would do. Here was the key in his pocket.
With a radiant face and an elastic step he left the room, carrying a lighted candle in his hand.
He stalked back in a few minutes, holding the candle out at arm's length before him.
"The other key is at the other side of the door. The door is locked on the inner side, and my wife is there!"
CHAPTER XVI
THE PRESENT AS IT WAS
He put the candle on the dressing-table, and sat down in front of the glass. He placed one elbow on the table, bent his head low, and catching his hair, softly rested his head on the ball of his hand.
His brows were knit. His eyes, bent on the toilet-cover, were vacant, rayless; they carefully explored the pattern of the cloth. His mind was a blank. It showed nothing. It was as incapable of reflection as the waters of the middle sea battered by the winds beneath the tawny clouds. His reason was not with him, and the machinery of his mind had stopped. There were no ideas in his imagination. His mind floated free in unoccupied space.
For a while he sat thus. Then he raised his head and looked firmly into the glass.
"What has happened to me?" he thought, with his eyes fixed on the eyes in the glass. "A moment ago, when I discovered she still lived, I felt in despair; and now I am calm. What has happened to me?
"What has happened to me?
"Here is the situation:
"The servants think she went to that boat. She knew on such occasions I always took charge of whatever little luggage we required. They have not seen her since luncheon. They believe she was in the Rodwell. It is scarcely possible anyone can say she was not in the Rodwell; all the people and crew who were on the after-deck are dead. Any one who heard of my visit to Asherton's Quay, or met one of the servants, would regard me as a widower. I was a widower at Asherton's Quay. I was a widower while I drove up from Asherton's Quay to this. My servants assure me I am a widower.
"To-morrow all Daneford will regard me a widower.
"To-morrow morning Maud Midharst will think of me as a widower – Maud Midharst, who will one day own that chest, which, when opened, will be found to contain the bones of a thief and a suicide, not the fortune of a great heiress.
"To-morrow morning Maud Midharst will think of me as a widower; what will she think of me as – at night?"
Suddenly the fixed expression left his face. A thought that sent the blood tingling through his veins had rushed in upon him.
"Perhaps," he said, breathless, "I am a widower! She may be dead!"
He rose nimbly, and, taking up the candle, once more went into the passage leading to the first-floor room of the Tower of Silence.
He looked carefully round, and then going to the end of the passage further from the tower, closed the two doors and locked the inner one.
He proceeded cautiously back to the door leading into the tower. This was a single door. He held the candle in his left hand, knocked with his right, and bent his ear towards the door.
No reply.
He knocked again, this time more loudly.
Still no reply.
Holding the candle behind him, he bent low and looked into the keyhole.
Undoubtedly there was the end of the shaft of the key shining against his eye.
He paused a while in deep thought; then shaking himself up, knocked more loudly, battering with his clenched fist.
No answer.
He looked at the candle he carried. It was wax, and in his moving to and fro the wax had overflowed the flame-pan and run down the side, making a long thin ridge. He took a piece of pencil from his pocket, stripped off the ridge of wax, softened the wax at the flame, and stuck a lump the size of a pea on the end of the pencil.
Then he heated the free end of the wax, and when it had just begun to run thrust it cautiously into the keyhole, and pressed the wax against the shaft of the key in the lock. He held the pencil steadily thus for a few minutes. With great caution he tried it. All was well. The wax adhered firmly to the end of the pencil and the shaft of the key.
With elaborate care he twisted the pencil slightly one way, then the other. The key moved slowly in the lock. He tried it four or five times right and left, and holding the candle behind him and his eye on a level with the keyhole. At last the hole was completely blocked up by the body of the key. Forcing the pencil in firmly, the key slipped through the hole and fell on the floor within.
He straightened himself, leaned against the wall for a moment, and wiped his forehead. Then drawing his keys out of his pocket, he inserted one in the lock, turned the lock softly, and entered.
As he did so the head of a man disappeared below the window-sill. Grey did not see this head, nor did he at that time know of the man's presence.
The room was one of medium size, but it was dark in colour, and the one candle was almost lost in it, and revealed little or nothing.
Holding the light above his head Grey peered around.
He approached a couch, on which could be dimly seen the prostrate figure of a woman. The figure did not move as he drew near.
He stood over the couch and looked down upon his wife. She was lying on her back. Her mouth was slightly open, and her face very pale. Her eyes, too, were partly open.
He waved the candle across the eyes. No sign of consciousness. He called "Bee" softly two or three times. No answer.
Could it be she was really dead? Really dead after all?
He stooped down and put his ear over her mouth.
No, this was not death. This was – brandy.
He shook her slightly. He caught her by the shoulder and shook her more strongly, calling her name into her ear.
She responded by neither sound nor motion.
Then putting the candle down on the floor he stood up, folded his arms, and reflected intently with his eyes fixed on her.
Not death but brandy, and yet how like death, and how near death! How near death! And still in the interval between this and death lay his ruin, his destruction. A blanket thrown on that face would bridge over the interval between this state and death, and give him a golden road to happiness and glorious prosperity.
His wife! This his wife here, degraded thus! This woman whom he had loved with all the love he had ever given woman! This woman, whom he had married in defiance of his father's wish and all worldly wisdom! Great God, was this to be borne?
She had brought herself nigh death. She was nigh death now. It might be she would never awake. It was quite possible she might never awake. But then the hideous scandal! The coroner's jury found that Mrs. Grey, wife of Henry Walter Grey, Esq., died of excessive drink! Intolerable!
And yet this wretched woman lying here had made such a thing not only possible but probable. Suppose she should never wake, what an unendurable position for him! He could not live through that odious inquest, never survive that degrading verdict. He should throw himself into the Weeslade, or blow out his brains first.
Any time she might get into such a condition and never awake! Great God! this was a view of the case he had never taken until now. He had always had the dread of disclosure before his mind, but now he should have the infinitely more appalling horrors of a coroner's jury and a coroner's verdict. This was insupportable. Abominable!
Any time in the future she might die as she was now. Then no doubt he should be a widower, but a widower under what a terrible shadow! Suppose she should die now, and by any means it should come out that he had deliberately placed the brandy in her way, he had better leave Daneford at once. They would look on him as a murderer.
As a murderer!
They would know he had put a fatal temptation in his wife's path. The discovery was what he dreaded.
Suppose she never woke again – ah!
Suppose she never got up alive off that couch!
Never got up from where she lay!
That was a royal thought? Now to make all right, all secure. Now! What a royal thought! A thought worthy of the prince regnant of the Nether Depths.
He stooped, took up his candle, and crossed the room with rapid steps. He locked the door of the tower-room, and, having reached his own room, rang the bell.
James answered the bell.
"James," he said, "I cannot rest. I cannot believe this dreadful thing. I wish you and the other servants to search the house thoroughly from garret to cellars. Mind, a room is not to be omitted. When every room has been examined let me know. I have been in the tower."
James left, and for an hour the banker sat alone in his bedroom. At the end of the hour James came back with the report that every room had been examined and no trace found.
"We can do no more, James. I shall want no one to-night. You may all go to bed as soon as you like. Good-night."
Again he was alone. Alone for the night. Alone save for the proximity of his wife in the next room. Alone with his royal idea and the easy means of carrying it out.
He braced himself, and began walking up and down the room firmly.
Yes, this was a golden opportunity, which would have been utterly worthless but that in the mid-centre and at the right moment his great thought had burst in upon him.
It was most likely his wife would never wake. In fact, the chances were in favour of her not waking. It would be almost a miracle if ever she returned to consciousness.
Why should there ever be an inquest?
Supposing she had died in her sleep, it would have done no one any good to hold an inquest.
Then, if she did die in this sleep, what would Maud Midharst regard him as to-morrow night?
As a widower, of course.
And what should he regard himself as?
As a man doubly delivered from a wife who was the slave of an odious vice, and from ruin, disgrace, and suicide.
She was sleeping still, he supposed. He would go and try.
He stole cautiously out into the passage, and, opening the door into the tower-room, crept towards the couch. He did not carry a candle this time. He stumbled over something hard and metallic which he had seen when last in the room. He recovered himself rapidly. He paused, balanced himself on the balls of his feet, leaned forward, and listened intently.
The sound had not roused her.
It was as dark as a vault. A faint blue square, like the bloom under trees in summer, showed the situation of the one window. All the rest was as much out of view as if the solid earth intervened.
He crossed the room and approached the couch, with his head thrust forward, and all the faculties of his mind bent on his hearing; he stooped over the couch and listened, as though he would pierce remotest silence to reach what he sought.
Yes, there was a low, faint sound of breathing, but so low it seemed to come from a long distance.
He knelt down beside the couch, and called softly in her ear, "Bee."
No answer.
"Bee."
No answer.
"Bee."
No answer.
A long pause followed, during which no sound stirred in the intense darkness. The husband still leant over the wife, the wife still breathed faintly.
Then —
In ten minutes from that strange sound Grey was back in his bedroom, standing before the glass with set resolute lips and a rigid white face.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ASCENT OF THE TOWER OF SILENCE
"There need be no inquest," he thought. "There need be no inquest now. To-morrow morning every one in Daneford will believe that she is dead, and every one will be – right. Her name will be included in the list of the dead, there will be a reference to my broken-hearted behaviour at Asherton's Quay, and there will be expressions of sympathy with me.
"I shall wear mourning.
"What o'clock is it?" He looked at his watch. "Too soon yet. I must wait until all are asleep.
"I shall wear mourning and receive the condolences of my friends. I shall pass through avenues of faces cast in sorrow for my grief. They will hush their voice when I enter the Daneford Bank. They will unanimously vote resolutions of sympathy at most of the public bodies to which I belong. And I – I – how shall I receive their greetings?
"How shall I receive them? Shall I quail and tremble and jabber of to-night's work? Shall I become hysterical or gloomy? No, no, no. I shall be as bold at least as the thief whom they crucified on the Left Hand.
"The oath I took by that bedside this evening was my swearing into the army of the everlasting damned, and no one shall ever say I quailed or I faltered.
"What o'clock is it? Yet too soon. This is all I need be careful about. Once it is there, I shall be free and blithe – free and blithe!
