Gwen Wynn: A Romance of the Wye

“She’s swooning – has fainted!” mutters the Major; which Ryecroft already knows, having stretched out his arms, and caught her as she is sinking to the earth.

“It’s the sudden change into the open air,” he says. “We must carry her, Major. You go ahead with the ladder, I can manage the girl myself.”

While speaking he lifts the unconscious form, and bears it away. No light weight either, but to strength as his, only a feather.

The Major going in advance with the ladder guides him through the mist; and in a few seconds they reach the outer wall, Mahon giving a low whistle as he approachs. It is almost instantly answered by another from the outside, telling them the coast is clear.

And in three minutes after they are also on the outside, the girl still resting in Ryecroft’s arms. The waterman wishes to relieve him, agonised by the thought that his sweetheart, who has passed unscathed, as it were, through the very gates of death, may after all be dead!

He urges it; but Mahon, knowing the danger of delay, forbids any sentimental interference, commanding Jack to re-shoulder the ladder and follow as before.

Then striking off in Indian file, the Major first, the Captain with his burden in the centre, the boatman bringing up behind, they retrace their steps towards the Rue Tintelleries.

If Ryecroft but knew who he is carrying, he would bear her, if not more tenderly, with far different emotions, and keener solicitude about her recovery from that swoon.

It is only after she is out of his arms; and lying upon a couch in Major Mahon’s house – the hood drawn back and the light shining on her face – that he experiences a thrill, strange and wild as ever felt by mortal man! No wonder – seeing it is Gwendoline Wynn!

“Gwen!” he exclaims, in a very ecstasy of joy, as her pulsing breast and opened eyes tell of returned consciousness.

“Vivian!” is the murmured rejoinder, their lips meeting in delirious contact. Poor Jack Wingate!

Volume Three – Chapter Twenty Four

Starting on a Continental Tour

Lewin Murdock is dead, and buried – has been for days. Not in the family vault of the Wynns, though he had the right of having his body there laid. But his widow, who had control of the interment, willed it otherwise. She has repugnance to opening that receptacle of the dead, holding a secret she may well dread disclosure of.

There was no very searching enquiry into the cause of the man’s death; none such seeming needed. A coroner’s inquest, true; but of the most perfunctory kind. Several habitués of the Welsh Harp; with its staff of waiters, testified to having seen him at that hostelry till a late hour of the night on which he was drowned, and far gone in drink. The landlord advanced the narrative a stage, by telling how he conveyed him to the boat, and delivered him to his boatman, Richard Dempsey – all true enough; while Coracle capped the story by a statement of circumstances, in part facts, but the major part fictitious: – how the inebriate gentleman, after lying a while quiet at the bottom of the skiff, suddenly sprung upon his feet, and staggering excitedly about, capsized the craft, spilling both into the water!

Some corroboration of this, in the boat having been found floating keel upwards, and the boatman arriving home at Llangorren soaking wet. To his having been in this condition several of the Court domestics, at the time called out of their beds, with purpose prepense, were able to bear witness. But Dempsey’s testimony is further strengthened, even to confirmation, by himself having since taken to bed, where he now lies dangerously ill of a fever, the result of a cold caught from that chilling douche.

In this latest inquest the finding of the jury is set forth in two simple words, “Drowned accidentally.” No suspicion attaches to any one; and his widow, now wearing the weeds of sombre hue, sorrows profoundly.

But her grief is great only in the eyes of the outside world, and the presence of the Llangorren domestics. Alone within her chamber she shows little signs of sorrow; and if possible less when Gregoire Rogier is her companion; which he almost constantly is. If more than half his time at the Court while Lewin Murdock was alive, he is now there nearly the whole of it. No longer as a guest, but as much its master as she is its mistress! For that, matter indeed more; if inference may be drawn from a dialogue occurring between them some time after her husband’s death.

They are in the library, where there is a strong chest, devoted to the safe keeping of legal documents, wills, leases, and the like – all the paraphernalia of papers relating to the administration of the estate.

Rogier is at a table upon which many of these lie, with writing materials besides. A sheet of foolscap is before him, on which he has just scribbled the rough copy of an advertisement intended to be sent to several newspapers.

“I think this will do,” he says to the widow, who, in an easy chair drawn up in front of the fire, is sipping Chartreuse, and smoking paper cigarettes. “Shall I read it to you?”

“No. I don’t want to be bothered with the thing in detail. Enough, if you let me hear its general purport.”

He gives her this in briefest epitome: —

“The Llangorren estates to be sold by public auction, with all the appurtenances, mansion, park, ornamental grounds, home and out farms, manorial rights, presentation to church living, etc, etc.”

“Très bien! Have you put down the date? It should be soon.”

“You’re right, chérie. Should, and must be. So soon, I fear we won’t realise three-fourths of the value. But there’s no help for it, with the ugly thing threatening – hanging over our necks like a very sword of Damocles.”

“You mean the tongue of le braconnier?”

She has reason to dread it.

“No I don’t; not in the slightest. There’s a sickle too near his own – in the hands of the reaper, Death.”

“He’s dying, then?”

She speaks with an earnestness in which there is no feeling of compassion, but the very reverse.

“He is,” the other answers, in like unpitying tone; “I’ve just come from his bedside.”

“From the cold he caught that night, I suppose?”

“Yes; that’s partly the cause. But,” he adds, with a diabolical grin, “more the medicine he has taken for it.”

“What mean you, Gregoire?”

“Only that Monsieur Dick has been delirious, and I saw danger in it. He was talking too wildly.”

“You’ve done something to keep him quiet?”

“I have.”

“What?”

“Given him a sleeping draught.”

“But he’ll wake up again; and then – ”

“Then I’ll administer another dose of the anodyne.”

“What sort of anodyne?”

“A hypodermic.”

“Hypodermic! I’ve never heard of the thing; not even the name!”

“A wonderful cure it is – for noisy tongues!”

“You excite one’s curiosity. Tell me something of its nature?”

“Oh, it’s very simple; exceedingly so. Only a drop of liquid introduced into the blood; not in the common roundabout way, by pouring down the throat, but direct injection into the veins. The process in itself is easy enough, as every medical practitioner knows. The skill consists in the kind of liquid to be injected. That’s one of the occult sciences I learnt in Italy, land of Lucrezia and Tophana; where such branches of knowledge still flourish. Elsewhere it’s not much known, and perhaps it’s well it isn’t; or there might be more widowers, with a still larger proportion of widows.”

“Poison!” she exclaims involuntarily, adding, in a timid whisper, “Was it, Gregoire?”

“Poison!” he echoes, protestingly. “That’s too plain a word, and the idea it conveys too vulgar, for such a delicate scientific operation as that I’ve performed. Possibly, in Monsieur Coracle’s case the effect will be somewhat similar; but not the after symptoms. If I haven’t made miscalculation as to quantity, ere three days are over it will send him to his eternal sleep; and I’ll defy all the medical experts in England to detect traces of poison in him. So don’t enquire further, chérie. Be satisfied to know the hypodermic will do you a service. And,” he adds, with sardonic smile, “grateful if it be never given to yourself.”