Wyllard's Weird

Heathcote lifted her from her knees, as he had done once before in his life, when she pleaded to him for pardon for her own falsehood.

"I would not hurt a snake if you loved it, Dora," he said. "Neither you nor your husband have anything to fear from me. Parisian juries are very merciful; but I will not submit Mr. Wyllard to the inconvenience of a trial. As for the episode upon the railway – we will try to think that an accident, an unlucky impulse, unpremeditated, falling considerably short of murder. No, Dora, I do not intend to deliver up your husband to the law. The one person who has the highest right to cry for vengeance has learnt the sublimity of submission to the Divine Will. I have seen the widowed mother of Maxime de Maucroix; and from her lips I have heard the reproof of my own revengeful feelings. But although I am content to be silent, it would be well for Julian Wyllard, when he shall feel the hand of death upon him, to write the admission of his guilt; since that alone can thoroughly clear your cousin Bothwell before his fellow-men. So dark a suspicion once engendered may hang over a man for a lifetime."

"I will bear in mind your thoughtful suggestion," said Wyllard. "I thank you, Heathcote, for your mercy to a fallen foe. A wretch so abject, so smitten by the hand of Fate, would be too mean a creature for your revenge. You are not like the noble Achilles, and would hardly care to drag a corpse at your chariot-wheel, and wreak your rage upon impotence. The play is played out, the lights are down. Let the curtain fall in decency and silence. For her sake be merciful."

"Make your peace with your offended God, if you can," answered Heathcote. "You have nothing to fear from me."

He moved slowly towards the door, and at the last turned and held out his hand to Dora. She hesitated for an instant, looking at her husband.

"Give him your hand, Dora," said Wyllard. "I can bear to see you clasp hands with the man who has read the riddle of Léonie Lemarque's death. I have come to a stage at which life and death make but little difference to me, and even shame is dead. Give him your hand. You may need his friendship and protection some day when I am under ground, and when people look at you with a morbid interest, as the murderer's widow. It will be wise to shuffle off my tainted name as soon as you decently can. Change it for a better name, Dora."

"Julian, how can you be so cruel?"

She was by his side again, with her hand in his, forgetful of all things except her love for him, her pity for his pain. All her natural horror at his guilt was not strong enough to extinguish her love, or to lessen her compassion. As she had pitied him for his physical infirmity, so she now pitied him for his mental infirmity – a mind swayed to crime by undisciplined passions.

Heathcote left the room without another word. He had come there as the messenger of Fate. He had no further business in that house.

He had heard from the butler that Sir William Spencer and the local physician had been in consultation together that afternoon, and that the man had gathered from their talk as they left the house that Mr. Wyllard's illness was likely to end fatally, sooner than Sir William had at first supposed.

"Give me my sleeping draught, and then go, Dora," said Wyllard, when he and his wife were alone.

She prepared to obey him. The nurse was taking her rest at this hour, and it was the wife's privilege to attend upon her husband. The morphia sleeping draughts had been administered with rigid care, Dora herself watching the allotment of every bottle, lest the unhappy sufferer should be tempted to take an overdose and end the tragedy of pain. Once, when she had betrayed her anxiety by a word spoken unawares, she had seen a curious smile upon her husband's pale lips, a smile that told her he had read her thoughts; and now she felt the peril of suicide was a much nearer dread. What had he to live for now – he who stood confessed a murderer, before the wife who had revered him?

The sleeping draughts had been sent in from the local doctor, half a dozen at a time, the patient taking two and sometimes three in the course of the day and night. Dora kept them under lock and key in the cabinet, where she kept her drawing materials, an old tulip-wood cabinet of Dutch inlaid work that stood in a corner of the room, at some distance from the sick man's sofa.

On the table by his side stood his dressing-case, with its glittering array of silver-gilt-topped bottles – eau de cologne, toilet vinegar, sal volatile. His medicine glass was on the same table.

And now, while Dora stood with her face towards the cabinet, Wyllard's crippled hands were busied with one of those bottles in the dressing-case. With a wonderful swiftness and dexterity, taking into account the condition of his hands, he drew out one of the smallest bottles in the case, and unscrewed the stopper. The bottle contained about half an ounce of a clear white liquid.

Wyllard poured this liquid into a glass, which he held ready for Dora when she brought him the sleeping draught. The colourless liquid would have hardly showed in the bottom of the glass under any circumstances, but Wyllard was careful to screen it with his hand.

Dora poured out the sleeping draught, looking at him all the while in saddest silence. What could she say to him from whose familiar face the mask had fallen? The husband she had loved and honoured was lost to her for ever. The helpless wretch lying there was a stranger to her; a sinner so begrimed with sin that only the infinite compassion of woman could behold him without loathing.

"I drink this to your future happiness, Dora," he said solemnly, "and remember that at my last hour I blessed you for your goodness to a great sinner."

There was that in his tone which warned her of his purpose. She flung out her arms, trying to seize the hand that held the glass, before he could drink. But the table was between them, and the glass was at his lips when he finished speaking. He drained it to the last drop, gave one long sigh, and fell back upon his pillow – dead.

"Hydrocyanic acid," said the local practitioner when he came to look at the corpse, "and a happy release into the bargain. I should like to have given him an overdose of morphia myself, if the law of the land would have allowed me; or to have operated on the base of his brain and killed him tenderly in the interests of science, just to find out whether Cruveilhier or Virchow was right in his theorising as to the seat of the malady. I go for Virchow, backed by Gull."

CHAPTER XI.

"SWEET IS DEATH FOR EVERMORE."

Dismal hours, dreary days of monotonous melancholy, a hopeless lassitude of mind and body, followed for Julian Wyllard's widow after that awful sudden death. Every one was very kind; every one was considerate; even the law was more than usually indulgent. The horror of an inquest was spared to that desolate mourner. Things were made very easy by Sir William Spencer's recent visit, by the fact that he had been heard by the servants to pronounce Mr. Wyllard's condition hopeless. Mr. Nicholls, the local practitioner, registered the cause of death as muscular atrophy, and considered himself justified in so doing, as to his mind suicide had been only a symptom of the malady, a paroxysm of despair following quickly upon Sir William Spencer's admission that the end was inevitable.

"If ever a man had a right to take his own life, that man had," said Mr. Nicholls, when he argued the matter with his own conscience.

An inquest would have done good to nobody; but Mr. Nicholls was very anxious for a post-mortem. He wanted to see if the muscles were much wasted, if the medulla itself showed traces of disease – whether Cruveilhier or Virchow had the best of the argument. But he was not allowed this privilege.

Those early stages of bereavement, while the house was darkened – that sunless autumn day on which the funeral train wound slowly over the moor to the distant burial-ground, the reading of the will, the coming and going of friends and legal advisers, were as an evil dream to Dora Wyllard. She took no part in anything. She affected no interest in anything. Just at the last she was asked if she would not like to lay her offering upon the coffin – one of those costly wreaths, those snow-white crosses of fairest exotics, which had been sent in profusion to the wealthy dead – and she had shrunk from the questioner with a shudder.

"Flowers upon that coffin? No, no, no!"

Yet at the last moment, when the dismal procession was leaving the hall, she appeared suddenly in the midst of the mourners, pale as the dead, and broke through the crowd, and placed her tribute on the coffin-lid, a handful of wild violets gathered with her own hands in the melancholy autumn shrubberies. She bent down and laid her face upon the coffin. "I loved you once!" she moaned, "I loved you once!" And then kind hands drew her away, half-fainting, and led her back to her room.

The blow had quite unsettled poor Mrs. Wyllard's mind, people said afterwards, recounting this episode, at second, third, or fourth hand. No one was surprised when she left Penmorval within a week of the funeral, and went on the Continent with her two old servants, Priscilla and Stodden.

Heathcote and Bothwell had planned everything for her, both being agreed that she must be taken away from the scene of her sorrow as speedily as the thing could be done; and she had obeyed them implicitly, unquestioningly, like a little child.

What could it matter where she went, or what became of her? That was the thought in her own mind when she assented so meekly to every arrangement that was being made for her welfare. What grief that ever widowed heart had to bear could be equal to her agony? It was not the loss of a husband she had adored – that loss for this life which might have been balanced by gain in a better life. It was the extinction of a beloved image for ever. It was the knowledge that this man, to whom she had given the worship of her warm young heart, the enthusiastic regard of inexperienced girlhood, had never been worthy of her love; that he had come to her weary from the disappointment of a more passionate love than life could ever again offer to woman – the first deep love of a strong nature – a love that burns itself into heart and mind as aquafortis into steel. He had come to her stained with blood-guiltiness – an unconfessed assassin – holding his head high among his fellow-men, playing the good citizen, the generous landlord, the patron, the benefactor – he who had slain the widow's only son. He had lived a double life, hiding his pleasures, lest his gains should be lessened by men's knowledge of his lighter hours. He, who had seemed to her the very spirit of truth and honour, had been steeped to the lips in falsehood – a creature of masks and semblances. This it was which bowed her to the dust; this it was which weighed upon her spirits as no common loss could have done.

With her own hands she explored her husband's desk and despatch-boxes – the receptacles for all his more important papers – in search of any written confession which should attest the dead man's guilt, and for ever establish Bothwell's innocence. It would have been unutterable agony to her to have made such a confession public – to have let the curious eyes of the world peer in upon that story of guilt and shame; yet had any such document existed, she would have deemed it her duty to make it public – her duty to her kinsman, who had been made the scapegoat of another man's crimes. Happily for her peace there was no such paper to be found – not a line, not a word which hinted at the dead man's secret; and happily for Bothwell the cloud that had hung over him had by this time dispersed. The steadiness with which he had held his ground in the neighbourhood, the fact of his engagement to Miss Heathcote, had weighed with his Bodmin traducers; and those who had been the first to hint their suspicions were now the readiest to protest against the infamy of such an idea. Had Bothwell emigrated immediately after the inquest at the Vital Spark, these same people would have gone down to the grave convinced that he was the murderer.

But before the end of that year there occurred an event which was considered an all-sufficient proof of Bothwell's innocence, and an easy solution of the mystery of the unknown girl's death. A miner entered a solitary farmhouse between Bodmin and Lostwithiel, in the dim gray of a winter evening, and killed two harmless women-folk – an old woman and a young one – for the sake of a very small booty. He was caught red-handed, tried, convicted, and hanged in Bodmin Gaol: but although he confessed nothing, and died a hardened impenitent miner, it was believed by every one in the place that his was the pitiless hand which had sent the French girl to her doom.

"She had a little bit o'money about her, maybe, poor lass, and he took it from her, and when she screamed he pushed her out of the train. Such a man would think no more of doing it than of wringing the neck of a chicken," said an honest, townsman of Bodmin.

Thus having identified somebody as the murderer, Bodmin was content; and Bothwell Grahame was more popular than he had ever been in the neighbourhood. He gave the county town but little of his society, notwithstanding this restoration to local favour. He rarely played billiards at the inn, or loitered to gossip in the High Street. He could not forget that people had once looked coldly upon him, that he had suffered the shame of unjust suspicion. At Trevena he was happy, for there no one had ever so wronged him; there he was a favourite with everybody, from the rector to the humblest fisherman. At Trevalga, too, and at Boscastle he had friends. He could afford to turn his back upon the people who had been so ready to think evil of him.

One of Heathcote's first cares after the Penmorval funeral had been to write to the Baronne de Maucroix. His letter was to the following effect:

"It is my grave duty to inform you, Madame, that the murderer of your son has confessed his crime, and also that he has escaped from all earthly tribunals to answer for his sins before the Judge of all men. A painful malady, from which he had been for some time a sufferer, ended fatally on the evening of the 19th inst., within the hour in which he confessed his guilt. His case had been pronounced hopeless by a distinguished physician; but it is just possible the shock caused by the unexpected revelation of his crime may have hastened his end.

"Accept, Madame, my respectful homage, and permit me also to express my admiration of that truly Christian spirit which you evinced at our late interview.

"EDWARD HEATHCOTE."

By return of post Heathcote received an answer to his letter; but the answer was not in the handwriting of the Baronne de Maucroix. That hand was at rest for ever. The letter was from the Baronne's friend and confessor, the curé of the village adjacent to her château.

"Monsieur, – Under the sad circumstances prevailing at the château, I have taken it upon myself, with the permission of the late Baronne's legal representative, to reply to your polite communication, which was never seen by the eyes of my lamented friend and benefactress, Madame de Maucroix. Upon that very evening which you name in your letter as the date of the murderer's death, I called at the château, soon after vespers, according to my daily custom; being permitted at that period of the day's decline to enjoy an hour's quiet conversation with that saintly woman who has now been taken from us. I was ushered as usual into the salon, where I quietly awaited Madame de Maucroix's appearance, having been told that she was in her son's room, that apartment which she used as her oratory.

"I knew that it was her custom to spend hours in that chamber of her beloved dead, absorbed in spiritual meditations; so I waited with patience, and without surprise, for more than an hour, musing by the fire. Then, wondering at this unusual forgetfulness in one always so considerate, I ventured to lift the portière and to pass through the intervening salon, which was in darkness, to the bedchamber, where, through the half-open door, I saw a lamp burning.

"I pushed the door a little further open, and went in. The Baronne was on her knees beside the bed, her clasped hands stretched out straight before her upon the satin coverlet, her face leaning forward. I should have withdrawn in respectful silence, but there was something stark and rigid in the dear lady's attitude which filled me with fear. I wondered that she had not been disturbed by the sound of my footsteps, for my heavy shoes had creaked as I walked across the floor. I drew nearer to her. Not a breath, not a movement.

"I bent over her and touched the clasped hands. They were still for ever in death. It was a peaceful, a blessed ending: such an end as they who best loved that noble creature would have chosen for her.

"Accept, Monsieur, the assurance of my high consideration.

"PIERRE DUPLESSI."

CHAPTER XII.

"WHO KNOWS NOT CIRCE?"

The Cornish tors, those wild brown hills upon whose dark foreheads time writes no wrinkles, were just one year older since Julian Wyllard's death, and Bothwell Grahame was established in his house at Trevena as an instructor of the embryo Engineer. Already two lads had gone forth from Bothwell's house, after six months' training, and had done well at Woolwich. Other lads were coming to him – sons of men he had known in Bengal. He was on the high road to reputation.

After that first passionate disgust with all things, during which he had stopped the builders, and prepared to quash that contract which he had signed with such delight, there had come a more tranquil spirit; and Bothwell Grahame had faced his last unexpected trouble with a resolute mind.

A conversation which he had with Edward Heathcote soon after Julian Wyllard's death had given him his first gleam of light. Heathcote spoke to him hopefully of the future, and urged him to wait quietly.

"Your marriage will be so much the wiser, so much the more likely to result in lasting happiness, for this delay," he said. "If you are as loyal and staunch as I believe you to be; if it is really my sister you would like to many, and not this fascinating widow, who woos you with fortune in one hand and social status in the other; if you are really bent upon sacrificing these good things for Hilda's sake, be sure she will ultimately accept your sacrifice. In the mean time be patient, and pursue your independent course. A woman always respects a man who can live without her."

"But I cannot," answered Bothwell. "Life will be less than life to me till Hilda and I are one."

"Don't let her know that, if you mean to be master of your fate in the future," said Heathcote. "Time can be the only test of your truth. If when a year is past you have not married Lady Valeria Harborough, the chances are that my sister will begin to have faith in you. I know that she loves you."

"Tell me where she is, that I may go to her – that I may convince her."

"I have promised to respect her secret," answered Heathcote firmly.

Bothwell accepted this friendly counsel with a good grace, went back to his old lodgings at Trevena, set the builders at work again, spent his days in the open air and his nights in hard study, ate little, slept less, and looked like the ghost of his former self.

He saw no more of Lady Valeria; but a society paper informed him early in November that she had taken a villa at Monaco. He could guess from what fount of consolation she was obtaining oblivion of her griefs. Her grace, her charm of manner, were dwelt upon fondly by the paragraphist. She was leading a life of absolute seclusion on account of her recent bereavement; but she was the admired and observed of all wherever she appeared.

The succeeding paragraph told of Sir George Varney's residence at one of the chief hotels. He was a distinguished figure at the tables, had broken the bank on more than one occasion.

Bothwell smiled a cynical smile at the juxtaposition of those two names.

"I suppose the gentleman has forgotten his beating," he said to himself.

It was an infinite relief to him to know that Lady Valeria was on the other side of the Channel, that her pale face could not rise before him ghostlike amidst the home which she had ruined. He worked on with all the better will at that embryo home of his for the knowledge that this dreaded siren was far away – worked with such energy that the builders were whipped out of their customary jog-trot, and laid bricks as bricks were never laid before. Bothwell watched every brick, with a three-foot rule in his hand, and pointed out every flaw in the setting. He paid his builder promptly, as the work progressed, and gave him every encouragement to be speedy.

The alterations and improvements in the old cottage were all completed by the end of November, and the builders had finished the brickwork of the new rooms. The old rooms were thoroughly dry and ready for occupation before Christmas; and Bothwell spent his Christmas in his own house, the first Christmas he had so spent, and a very dismal one. But he had his dog, a devoted collie, the gift of Dora Wyllard; he had his pipe and his books; and he made the best of his solitude. He had a couple of lads – his first pupils – coming to him early in January, and he wanted to air the house in his own person. He was a little proud of this first house of his own, even in the midst of his sadness, as every man is proud of the thing that he has created. He walked about the rooms, opening and shutting doors and window-sashes, to see how they worked. Needless to say that some of them did not work at all, and that he had various interviews with foremen and carpenters, by whom a good deal of tinkering had to be done before everything was ship-shape. That was Bothwell's favourite expression. He wanted things ship-shape. "He ought to call his house Ship-shape Hall," said the foreman.

Bothwell's chief delight was derived from his own little inventions and contrivances, his shelves in odd corners, his pegs and books, and ingenious little cupboards. These he gazed upon and examined daily in silent rapture. When his two boys came to him – long-legged brawny youths, with open countenances, grinning perpetually for very shyness – he took them to see all the shelves and books, and expounded his theories in relation to those conveniences. There was not to be a slovenly corner in the house; every article was to have its peg or book, or shelf or cupboard. Tennis-balls, rackets, foils, single-sticks, skates, whips, guns, boots, caps, and gloves. Everything was to be classified, departmented. Organisation was to be the leading note.

Before a week was over, the boys had begun to adore Bothwell. They were sporting, and could afford to keep horses; and Bothwell and they hunted with fox-hounds and harriers all through that long winter, far into the gladness of spring. The boys were always with their tutor. He had no leisure in which to abandon himself to sadness; except when he shut himself up in his study to write to his cousin Dora, who was living in Florence, attended by the faithful Priscilla, who hated Italy as the stronghold of the Scarlet Lady, and by Stodden, the old Penmorval butler. Julian Wyllard's widow was living in absolute retirement, broken-hearted, seeing no one, seen by no one. The society papers had nothing to say about her.

From Bothwell, Heathcote sometimes heard of her, heard of her with an aching heart. No message of friendship, no line of recognition had there ever been for him in any of those letters to Bothwell, of which he was generally told, some of which had been read to him.

Hilda had been quietly pursuing her studies at the Conservatoire all this time, seeing a good deal of Parisian life in a very modest way – that inner life of struggling artists and men of letters, and their homely industrious families, a life in which she found much that was intellectual, blended with a pleasant simplicity, an absence of all pretence. She liked the Tillet girls, and she liked her surroundings; while music, which had always been a passion with her, now became the sole object of her existence.

"I suppose you will come back to The Spaniards some day, and take care of the twins and me," her brother said to her when they met for an hour in the August after Wyllard's death.