ALEXIS INVESTIGATES.
Before going to Lancaster Lodge, Alexis goes back to the jail, and
spends half an hour with his wife. He feels that it would be cruel
to leave her all through the long lonely day. He finds her curiously
patient and quiet, resigned to the horror of her position, and
touchingly grateful for his interest in her.
‘It is a strange end to all my dreams, Alexis,’ she says sadly. ‘I
fancied that when our reconciliation came life would be full of
brightness for us. I have comforted myself in many a lonely hour with
the thought of our reunion. We should be fabulously rich, free as
air, with all the world and its pleasures before us. The reality is
strikingly different from the day-dream, is it not? No freedom, no
wealth. Our reconciliation finds me a prisoner and a pauper.’
‘The prison will not be for long, dear, and I have fortune enough
for both of us. So you need not regret your day-dream about Stephen
Trenchard’s wealth, a factor which had no real existence in the sum
of our lives.’
‘Why did I not learn wisdom from my spelling-book, that dog’s-eared
old spelling-book, with fables for reading lessons?’ says Sibyl, with
her faint smile. ‘I am like the dog in the fable, who dropped the
substance to snatch the shadow.’
She asks no questions as to his morning’s occupation. She seems in
no manner to realize the peril of her situation, and the urgency of
prompt action. Perhaps she is more womanly in this hour of trial than
she has been at any other crisis of her life. Alexis has forgiven
her. That is the one fact she dwells upon most, and the danger and
horror of her position touch her lightly. That which she feels most
bitterly is to know herself the dupe of her own avarice, fooled to
the top of her bent by false appearances, mocked at perhaps in secret
by the insolvent Belial of her worship.
‘Love is better than gold or silver, Alexis,’ she says, resting her
languid head upon her husband’s shoulder.
‘Poets, philosophers, and sages have been singing that chorus ever
since the world began, Sibyl. Yet there are a good many people left
who set their affections on filthy lucre, and, however much we may
abuse it, that yellow ore which keeps the world moving has some good
uses as well as evil ones. And now I must leave you for an hour or
two. I have some more business to get through in your lively town.
You will not be alone all the afternoon, dear. Dr. Faunthorpe is
coming to see you.’
‘Dear uncle Robert! Oh, Alex! how I hate myself when I remember my
neglect of that dear good man, while I paid my court to an impostor!
And yet, perhaps, I have no right to say that. I have been thinking
over the past as I sat here this morning, and I see that I have been
self-deceived rather than the dupe of uncle Trenchard. He never told
me that he meant to make me his heiress. He never told me that he had
a great fortune to leave. It was other people who deceived me. Those
Stormonts and their set, always harping upon one string, courting me
and flattering me as the heiress elect. I have little right to blame
my uncle. He did not know how much I had sacrificed for his sake.
He did not know how false and wicked a part I was playing. He was
anxious that I should make a rich marriage, that I should profit by
the false appearances that surrounded me, and establish myself before
he died. He meant kindly by that at any rate.’
‘We will say no harm of the dead, my dear. And now good-bye for a few
hours.’
Alexis meets Dr. Faunthorpe on his way out. The good little man has
only stopped to perform some necessary duties in the dispensing line
before hastening to his niece.
From Redcastle Jail to Lancaster Lodge is only ten minutes’ walk.
Alexis has no difficulty in finding the mansion which he came to
six months ago in the winter dusk, for Lancaster Lodge has made
itself unusually conspicuous to-day, having put on a breastplate
of auctioneer’s bills, announcing that all the elegant furniture,
brass bedsteads, superior bedding, German spring mattresses, best
Brussels, Axminster, velvet pile, and other carpeting, glass, china,
pictures, electro-plated goods, valuable library of standard authors,
grand piano by Broadwood, patent lawn-mowing machine, knife-cleaning
apparatus, and other household effects, together with the valuable
lease of the mansion, at a moderate rent, are to be disposed of by
public auction on Monday next, July 3rd, and three following days,
the whole to be on view on the previous Saturday, admission by
catalogue, price one shilling.
This is Thursday, and Alexis resolves to ask for a private view of
the mansion. The request may be a little out of order perhaps, but
a judicious distribution of half-crowns will, in all probability,
remove difficulties. This man, Podmore, the late Mr. Trenchard’s
butler, is doubtless in charge of the house.
Alexis makes his application at the lodge gate, where the
lodgekeeper’s wife has taken prompt advantage of Mr. Trenchard’s
death to hang out her family linen on the laurels and conifers in the
shrubbery.
‘It’s a comfort to do a bit of washing in freedom,’ this matron has
remarked to her liege lord, the head gardener. ‘Mr. Trenchard were so
partikeller.’
‘Partikeller,’ growls the husband. ‘He were a man that allus wanted
eighteenpennorth o’ work for a shillin’. I don’t call that there
partikeller. Seems to me that there breed’s rayther common.’
Mollified by half-a-crown, the guardians of the gate are of opinion
that Mr. Secretan can see the house.
‘It ain’t the day,’ says the gardener, scratching his head
doubtfully; ‘you’ll see wot’s wrote up on they bills--Saturday. But
if you’re only passin’ through and wanted to see if there’s anythink
you’d like to bid for, I dessay as they might strain a pint up at the
house. There’s old Podmore, the butler, a very pertikler old party,
but still he’s ameliable to reason.’
Alexis, having passed the outer gate of the citadel, goes straight
to the hall door, where he finds Mr. Podmore sunning himself on the
threshold, cadaverous and flaccid of aspect, as a man who has been
living for the last few days upon gin and water, and slovenly in his
apparel--as a man who, having retired from official life, feels that
he has no occasion to be punctilious in the use of soap and water. To
him Alexis makes his request.
‘There are some pictures that I want to see,’ he says, ‘and, as I am
only passing through the town, I shall be much obliged if you can let
me see them to-day.’
He accompanies the request with a dexterous passage of half a
sovereign from his fingers to Podmore’s palm--quite a delicate feat
in prestigiation.
Podmore turns his gin-and-watery eyes upon the applicant with a
puzzled air, dimly recalling that face and voice as in some wise
familiar to him on the blurred page of memory. But memory’s page is
so much blotted that he vainly strives to decipher the imperfect
record.
‘Ain’t I seen you before somewhere?’ he asks, feebly.
‘Very possibly,’ replies Alexis.
‘You ain’t been a visitor here in the old gentleman’s time?’
‘No.’
‘Then it must have been in some former situation. Yes, you can
see the pictures. There’s no harm in that. Not that the pictures
are good for much--reg’lar Wardour Street duffers supplied by the
upholsterer, old Kabriole, and now he’s served an attachment on the
goods as chief creditor. He’s been let in nicely, has old Kabriole.
The ’ousekeeper’ll show you round. There’s only me and her left
in the ’ouse now, and it’s very lonesome. In fack,’ adds Podmore,
confidentially, ‘it’s undermining my spirits. I feel that low, I
could shed tears by the pailful.’
‘Yes,’ replies Alexis, watchful of the butler’s countenance. ‘It
must be dreary work living in a house where a foul crime has been
committed--the foulest of crimes, secret murder.’
Podmore looks uncomfortable at this, but he hardly realizes Mr.
Secretan’s idea of a man stricken with the sense of guilt. But then
there are some criminals so callous, some men with whom crime is,
as it were, a natural development; and from these the agonies of
remorse, the throes and convulsions of a guilt-burdened soul, are not
to be looked for. Had not Nemesis overtaken William Palmer, in the
person of his latest victim’s stepfather, that practised plotter
against the lives of his friends and relatives would, doubtless, have
gone on driving his profitable trade, and gone down to the grave
jaunty and debonnaire, liked and trusted by his comrades, the jolly
good fellow of his jovial circle. Be sure no tell-tale muscle of
Mr. Palmer’s face assisted the task of detection, no quiver of that
iron lip betrayed the hand of the poisoner as he presented the fatal
draught to the lips of his friend. Phrenology has declared that in
that man’s brain the capacity for pity or remorse was wanting.
‘The ’ousekeeper’ll take you round,’ repeats Podmore, slipping the
half-sovereign into his pocket.
Podmore’s eyes are dull and watery, and his breath is flavoured with
juniper berries, or it may be turpentine; his limbs are heavy, and
he is averse from motion. He calls a thin and vinegar-faced female,
whose temper has been soured by a life-long devotion to the kitchen
stove, and an apparatus she describes as a ‘bang Mary’--a large metal
tray, containing a family of stew-pans of various sizes, in which
sauces, glazes, and divers savoury compositions simmer gently in a
perpetual warm bath. The bain Marie and the stove together have been
too much for Mrs. Skinner’s temper, which is disagreeably suggestive
of that fiery region she has so long inhabited.
‘This gentleman wants to have a look round the house,’ says Podmore,
in those thick and hazy tones which have become habitual to him.
‘Then he must come on the proper day,’ replies Mrs. Skinner,
snappishly.
‘Oh, but it’s all right; he’s got a horder. You’re to show him
everythink.’
Mrs. Skinner looks doubtful; but on a solemn wink from the hazy
Podmore, yields the point, expectant of largess.
‘You can come this way,’ she says to Alexis, with scant courtesy.
‘I should like to see the room in which Mr. Trenchard died,’ says
Alexis, when he has surveyed the drawing-room and dining-room, dismal
tabernacles of upholstery.
‘I hope you haven’t come out of curiosity,’ says Mrs. Skinner,
reproachfully. ‘It’s the first time _I_ ever lived in a house where
there was suspicion of murder, and it’s very trying to my feelings.
My father was a respectable tradesman. I wasn’t brought up to this
sort of thing.’
‘Curiosity has not brought me here,’ replies Alexis, ‘but I have a
particular desire to see the room in which Mr. Trenchard died.’
He is about to say, ‘and to hear all you can tell me about his
death,’ but it strikes him that Mrs. Skinner, despite her acid
countenance, will talk freely of her own accord presently, not for
his gratification, but for the relief of her own pent-up feelings. He
politely offers her half a sovereign, which she takes with a curtsey,
and as near an approach to a smile as her features can shape.
‘Thank you kindly, sir. I won’t deny that it is acceptable, finding
one’s self suddenly out of place, and disappointed of any little
legacy one had a right to expect. I’m sure the pains I took with
the old gentleman’s curries was quite wearing to my nerves--scraped
cocoa-nuts, and prawns, and chutnee, and oysters, and all manner of
fiddle-faddle, and his Bombay ducks, and his rubbish; but he’s gone
to his last account, and will have to answer for ’em all, I make no
doubt, and for his deception towards his servants.’
‘And his favourite niece,’ suggests Alexis. ‘The deception came
hardest upon her.’
‘Ah!’ sighs Mrs. Skinner, pursing up her lips. ‘When young folks hold
their heads too high, Providence is apt to lay snares and pitfalls
for them. We’ve king David’s word for that in the Psalms.’
Alexis remembers that ‘a favourite has no friends.’
The housekeeper, considerably mollified by the stranger’s liberality,
leads the way to Mr. Trenchard’s bedchamber, where the furniture
has a gloomy and even shabby look since the auctioneer’s men have
overhauled it--everything pushed out of its place and twisted
the wrong way, defaced with lot numbers, degraded from its pride
and pomp. The bedstead heaped with an untidy pile of bedding,
bundles of blankets, tumbled counterpane and sheeting. Things that
careful housewives think they ought to get very cheaply under such
conditions, but which generally cost the feminine bargain-hunter
more than if they came straight from a draper’s shop.
Alexis notices the door by the head of the bed.
‘There is a second door to Mr. Trenchard’s room, I see,’ he remarks.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Was that always unlocked?’
‘Yes, that was kept unlocked for Podmore to come down to give Mr.
Trenchard his medicine.’
Mrs. Skinner opens the door and shows Alexis the landing on the back
staircase, and the flight of stairs leading to Podmore’s room. There
are two more doors that open on to this landing. Alexis inquires
about these.
‘That one opens into Mr. Trenchard’s dressing-room,’ replies Mrs.
Skinner, ‘and this,’ indicating the further door, ‘into Mr. Pilgrim’s
room.’
Alexis opens this last door and looks into Mr. Pilgrim’s apartment,
a comfortable bachelor’s room, with another door opening into the
gallery at the top of the principal staircase. Lancaster Lodge
belongs to a period of domestic architecture in which architects
delighted in the multiplication of doors, and if prevented by
untoward conditions from putting in real doors consoled themselves
by filling in their blank corners with ornamental dummies leading to
nowhere.
‘Mr. Trenchard’s room was as easily accessible to Mr. Pilgrim as to
the butler,’ says Alexis. ‘And now show me Miss Faunthorpe’s rooms.’
Mrs. Skinner obeys, and Alexis finds that, taking into consideration
that Mr. Trenchard’s door of communication with the gallery was
locked on the inside on the night of his death, Sibyl could only have
entered his apartment by going down the principal staircase, opening
a door which Mrs. Skinner declares to have been always locked after
ten o’clock in the evening, and the key in her possession, crossing a
lobby, and ascending the servants’ staircase.
Stay, there is another way; if Stephen Trenchard’s dressing-room has
a door opening on the gallery.
He hastens to ascertain this. No, there are two doors to the
dressing-room, but neither communicates with the gallery. One opens
into the bedroom, the other on to the landing before mentioned.
This must surely make a strong point in Sibyl’s favour. While all
communication between her room and her uncle’s was cut off in the
night-time, Joel Pilgrim and Podmore had easy access to the dead
man’s bedchamber.
To this argument a counsel for the prosecution might reply that the
poison was possibly put ready for the patient’s own hand, on the eve
of the murder, mixed with his drink or his medicine.
Yet in the latter case, Podmore, who administered the poison, must
have seen its deadly effect; unless the man were, as Alexis supposes,
an habitual drunkard, and too far gone on this occasion to take
notice of his master’s condition. This seems too much to believe.
Even stupid drunkenness would have sense enough to perceive the
effect of a deadly and instantaneous poison.
Alexis sees Sibyl’s boudoir, where the prussic acid bottle was found
in the work-basket. Might it not, he asks himself, have been taken
from that basket full, and returned to it empty, by some other hand
than Sibyl’s? And yet how should any one else have known of her
possession of the poison?
The housekeeper has been obligingly communicative. She has entered
into all the details of Stephen Trenchard’s last illness and death,
dwelling on the gloomiest particulars with that ghoul-like relish
peculiar to women of her kind. She has described the finding of the
body--its awful appearance--Miss Faunthorpe’s mysterious flight,
‘which naturally set folks against her.’
‘You don’t surely believe her to have had anything to do with her
uncle’s death?’ cries Alexis.
Mrs. Skinner shakes her head solemnly, till the crape roses and jet
ornaments in her cap--she has brought out some dingy weeds laid by
from a previous time of mourning--tremble and shiver.
‘I don’t like to express an opinion as a Christian woman,’ she says,
‘but the opinion in Redcastle is that Miss Faunthorpe did it. She had
the poison--there’s no denying that--and she got it in an underhand
way, and then on the very morning of her uncle’s death she runs away,
secretly--and no one knows where she’s gone.’
‘A way to proclaim her guilt, which she would hardly have taken if
she were guilty. She would not be so short-sighted as that.’
‘Murderers generally are short-sighted,’ replies Mrs. Skinner,
sagely. ‘It’s a merciful dispensation of Providence by which they run
their necks into nooses. There’s not much good could be done by the
detective police if it wasn’t for the short-sightedness of criminals.’
‘That’s a very wise remark, Mrs. Skinner, and I’m surprised that so
sensible a woman as you can imagine that poor girl guilty of a crime
which only a hardened sinner could conceive.’
‘There’s no knowing where to look for hardened sinners,’ replies the
housekeeper. ‘Ministers wouldn’t tell us about original sin in the
pulpit if wickedness wasn’t born with some of us. And as to good
looks, they’re no criterion. Black thoughts may lie behind pretty
faces as well as ugly ones.’
And Alexis foresees that, with the female community in Redcastle,
Sibyl’s beauty will be no certificate of innocence. He pursues the
subject no further, seeing that loose conjectures of Mrs. Skinner’s
will in no wise help in the unravelling of this tangled skein.
‘I rather wonder,’ he says, thoughtfully, still moving about the
empty rooms, and making believe to examine the furniture, ‘that Mr.
Trenchard should have employed your fellow-servant as his attendant
in illness. I should have supposed from his manner to-day that he was
somewhat inclined to drinking.’
‘Ah,’ says Mrs. Skinner. ‘Well, you may think so, for of all the sots
that ever was, there never was a stupider sot than Joseph Podmore has
been since his master’s death.’
‘Since,’ cries Alexis. ‘Was he sober before then?’
‘Yes, sir. Joseph and me has been fellow-servants here since Mr.
Trenchard took this house, three and a half years ago, and I must say
that Joseph Podmore has never laid himself open to reproach in all
that time. Not but what he liked his beer at dinner and supper, and
his tumbler of grog after supper, and a glass of dry sherry wine with
his mouthful of bread and cheese between breakfast and dinner, but
was never the worse for anything he took.’
‘And since his master’s death----’
‘He has never been properly sober, muddling himself with gin and
beer--dog’s nose, he calls it, and the very lowness of the name is
enough to set any decent person against the stuff, let alone its
being cold and comfortless to the inside, all day long, and that low
in his spirits, that it’s a misery to be in his company.’
‘Low-spirited?’ asks Alexis.
‘Awful; and yet, according to his own account, things have prospered
with him, for he says he’s going to take a public-house, and begin
life as an independent gentleman directly he leaves here; though
how he can have saved money to go into business, seeing that he
has a wife and two children to keep out of his wages, and she an
extravagant drab into the bargain, flaunting about after dark with a
Paisley shawl down to her heels, and a black lace bonnet with roses
in it, and a baby in one arm and a market basket over the other,
which I call out of keeping,--how Podmore can have saved money with
such a drag upon him is more than I can account for.’
Again it flashes upon Alexis that this man is the murderer. Every
word of Mrs. Skinner’s tends to confirm him in that idea. He pushes
his inquiry a stage further.
‘By the way,’ he begins, ‘have you any idea whether Mr. Trenchard
had money about him at time of his death? May he not have had a
sum of money in his possession at that time--sufficient to offer a
temptation to an assassin? Murders have been inspired by very small
temptations of that kind.’
‘I know that, sir. But I don’t see how Mr. Trenchard can have had
much ready money about him. He had no call for it. He always paid
everything by cheque--even servants’ wages. And it wasn’t often that
he paid the tradesmen anything except at Christmas-time. I don’t see
what he could have wanted with ready money in the house.’
‘You never heard of his keeping money in his room, or saw him open a
box, desk, or drawer containing money?’
‘Never.’
‘Had he any valuable jewellery in his possession?’
‘I never saw him wear so much as a diamond ring. His watch was all
the jewellery he ever wore, and that was found under his pillow.’
This seems a kind of no thoroughfare. If Mr. Trenchard had no
valuables to tempt Podmore’s cupidity, why should the butler have
murdered him, and whence the talk about taking a public-house,
since it is clear from Mrs. Skinner’s account of Podmore’s domestic
responsibilities that he can hardly have saved money. A slatternly
wife in a flaunting Paisley shawl, marketing after dark, is as
exhaustive a drain upon a husband’s finances as the bottomless bucket
of the Danaides.
‘One thing about money I do remember,’ exclaims Mrs. Skinner after a
pause; ‘and I must say it struck me as singular after I’d heard about
that paper in which Mr. Trenchard declared he had only brought ten
thousand pounds from India.’
‘What was that?’ asks Alexis, eagerly.
‘Well, it was the last night but one before his death. I was going up
to bed, after locking my downstairs doors and seeing all the others
up before me--even to Podmore,--which was always my way, and as I
passed this door about ten minutes, or it might have been a quarter
of an hour after the others had gone to bed--for I’d been hunting
for our tabby cat, which is a troublesome animal to have prowling
about at night, though a good mouser and an affectionate disposition,
and I was coming up in the dark, the gas being turned off at the
main--when I saw master’s door ajar, the door opening on our
staircase, you understand. It was just the least bit ajar, leaving a
narrow streak of light, and I heard Mr. Pilgrim’s voice speaking as I
came upstairs, and then I heard master say, “Now understand clearly,
Joel, I must have that money--ten thousand in bank notes--before the
wedding. There must be no shilly-shallying. You don’t marry my niece
till that money is in my hands. No money, no marriage, remember;
and the telegram to wind up the business goes to my Calcutta agents
on Saturday unless the money is forthcoming.” He had a very sharp,
precise way of speaking, poor old gentleman, and I heard every
syllable.’
A new light flashes on Alexis. This Pilgrim, the odious persecutor of
his wife, may not he be the murderer? The idea has presented itself
to him before, but he has put it aside for want of any motive to
ascribe as the mainspring of the action. But there is motive strong
enough supplied in these words of Stephen Trenchard’s. This threat
to communicate with an agent in Calcutta might mean ruin to Joel
Pilgrim. He must have been in some way in Trenchard’s power. And to
murder Trenchard would be to cut the knot of the difficulty.
Alexis Secretan’s heart beats loud and fast. He feels as if he were
now on the right track. That there is something mysterious--nay,
guilty--in the butler’s conduct, he is assured; but the butler may be
an accessory before or after the fact, rather than a principal. There
is apparent, as yet, no sufficient motive for the butler’s guilt;
there is an obvious motive if this Pilgrim be the murderer.
‘The first thing now to be done is to find out all about this man,’
thinks Alexis.
‘Where is Mr. Pilgrim staying?’ he asks. ‘He has not left the town,
has he?’
‘No, sir. He is residing at the “Coach and Horses.” He was to have
sailed for India directly after his marriage. That’s why things were
arranged so sudden. But of course Mr. Trenchard’s death altered all
that.’
‘At the “Coach and Horses,”’ says Alexis. ‘That is where I mean to
put up myself.’
‘You couldn’t do better, sir. It’s the best hotel in Redcastle.’
And now, having accomplished all he can for the time being, Alexis
takes leave of Mrs. Skinner.
‘I should like to have another look at the pictures before I leave
the town,’ he says. ‘Perhaps you would not object to my looking round
again to-morrow morning?’
‘You are freely welcome, sir, as often as you like. When I see that a
gentleman _is_ a gentleman, I’m very happy to oblige him.’
Alexis goes from Lancaster Lodge to the ‘Coach and Horses,’ whence
he has addressed his telegram to Messrs. Levison and Levison. He
is delighted to find a member of that firm waiting for him in the
coffee-room, an undersized gentleman, with a smooth sallow face and
keen black eyes, thin lips, compressed and horizontal.
‘A junior in the house,’ thinks Alexis, with a look of
disappointment. He would have desired age and experience to guide and
aid him in this desperate strait. ‘He looks a shrewd little fellow
though, and I dare say he knows his business.’
He takes Mr. Levison off to a private room, orders a bottle of dry
sherry, and then proceeds to state his case without delay or waste of
words.
Mr. Levison listens with quiet intentness, and makes no remark till
the story is finished. Even then he is provokingly slow to express
himself. He sits looking at Alexis like the head of Memnon, and
compels his client to ring his ideas out of him by the closest
questioning; and as he pauses for the space of a minute, looking his
stoniest, after each question, this process is rather slow.
‘Do you think Pilgrim is the man?’ asks Alexis.
A long pause. Alexis repeats his question, no gleam of light in Mr.
Levison’s countenance indicating that the inquiry has been heard.
‘If he were the man he could have got away by this time.’
Even when Mr. Levison does speak he drops out his words charily
through scarcely parted lips, as if they were pearls and diamonds,
and he did not like to waste them.
‘True. But he might wish to throw people off the scent by remaining.’
‘Dangerous that. He had ample excuse for going. His Indian voyage was
arranged before Mr. Trenchard’s death. He only had to carry out the
arrangement. There would have been nothing suspicious in that. He is
in this house, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s convenient. We can keep an eye upon him.’
‘I can’t see how we are to do that,’ grumbles Alexis, provoked by his
solicitor’s phlegmatic tone, ‘unless we could see through doors or
walls. He may leave Redcastle while we are sitting here.’
‘No, he won’t,’ replies Mr. Levison. ‘I brought a clerk of mine down
with me, and he has got the office to look after Pilgrim.’
‘But how could you know anything about him till I told you----’
‘Do you suppose I waited for you to tell me? That’s not our way in
Parchment Street. I had a chat with the landlord--heard all about
your wife’s arrest, and guessed what I was wanted for, heard all the
particulars of the murder, or supposed murder, the inquest held in
this house, and so on, and gave my man the office.’
‘And you think that Pilgrim----’
‘I never think, Mr. Secretan; I wait for facts. If I squandered my
brains upon thought I should have no brain power left to deal with
evidence. We shall hear what comes out at the inquest.’
Alexis has to take this vague comfort for what it is worth, and make
the best of it. He and Mr. Levison dine together, and then Alexis
goes back to the jail and spends another half-hour with Sibyl, who is
low-spirited, but not so anxious or fearful as she might naturally be
in so awful a position.
‘Uncle Robert has been here, dear good man,’ she tells Alexis, ‘and
has been feeling my pulse, and looking at my tongue, and prescribing
tonics, and port wine, and beef tea, and all manner of tiresome
things. He quite broke down when he saw me here, and burst into
tears--the first I ever saw him shed. It gave me more pain to see him
than anything that has happened since last night, when I thought you
had shut me out of your heart for ever.’
‘I thought so too, Sibyl; but sorrow has opened the door of my heart
and let you in again.’
‘Ah!’ she exclaims, with a little joyful cry, ‘I thought you could
not be long unkind. And you have not forgotten those foolish early
days when we walked in Kensington Gardens, and you told the children
fairy tales.’
‘No, love, I have forgotten nothing.’
‘I will show you something some day, Alex, if ever this dreadful
suspicion passes away, and I am free from the charge of murder.’
She shudders at the word, and clings to him for a moment like a
frightened child.
‘What will you show me, dear?’
‘A book--such a foolish old book--in which I kept a journal when I
first began to care for you. It is all written there, every stupid
thing I ever thought about you.’
‘The rise and fall, the ebb and flow, of love. That must be a
precious volume, Sibyl. I would give a great deal to see it.’
‘You will laugh----’
‘I am more likely to cry--remembering how Fate has parted us since
then.’