§ 1
QUITE early in the afternoon old Mrs. Plethern had begun preparations
for an evening that should at once pander to her taste for macabre
cruelty and mark the achievement of her heart’s ambition. She had
interviewed the Morvane housekeeper before luncheon on the subject of
the Church Meldon fair (the week of its duration had at the outset
seemed an ideal week for Viola’s extinction), and by three o’clock was
free to consider the arrangement of her tower rooms. She explained her
programme carefully to Bathsheba.
“His lordship will be here at eight o’clock. We will dine in the room
below my sitting-room. After dinner we will come up to my room, and
Miss Marvell”--even thus early her tongue rolled unctuously those fated
syllables--“Miss Marvell will join us. She will be a little surprised
to find a visitor, but surprise is nothing to what she will feel later
on.... Nothing ... nothing at all....” The old woman rubbed gleeful
hands. “While we are taking our coffee you will remove dinner, push
the table to one side and arrange the couches as I will show you in
a moment. Also the mirrors--those from here and from my bedroom must
go down--will need careful placing. Mirrors are a great adjunct,
Bathsheba. They multiply, and one cannot have too much of a good thing!
Then you will see that the guest-bedroom is ready in the unlikely case
of his lordship needing it. Then you will go to bed. Do you understand?
To bed and to sleep. See nothing; hear nothing; come out of your
room on no pretext whatsoever. In the morning come to me at seven
o’clock. I will then give more instructions if any are needed, but I
think”--with a final chuckle--“that the love-birds will have flown.”
As the time wore on the old woman became feverish in her anxiety. Up
and down stairs lumberingly she went, carrying cushions, carrying
silks, hanging the walls with pictures suitable to the scene they
shortly must adorn. The mirrors were sloped and fixed and unfixed and
sloped again. Her strength was as the strength of a girl; she toiled
deliciously, mumbling to herself. At five o’clock she sent the maid
over to the house.
“I think the sacrificial lamb shall dine on the altar steps. Go and
find her, Bathsheba. It is far better to set free still more of the
servants yonder. Also I have a fancy to prolong the jest. She shall
sit through her dinner wondering--wondering and trembling. She shall
dine _here_, with the old woman who has planned her ruin, with the
old man who has bought her, as one buys three hours’ amusement at a
theatre. She shall sit between us and at her back the negro will stand,
and she will wonder and chatter bravely, but behind her gaiety will
be fear, and behind her fear--well, good cause for it! Go over. Tell
her I want her here to dinner. Make sure she comes. Tell her----” Mrs.
Plethern paused. “I know! Tell her that I have news from Mr. Plethern!
That will bring her, the scheming chit! She mopes and snivels for her
dearest Charles, and we will bait the trap with him! But remember,
Bathsheba,”--as the maid moved silently toward the door--“be polite! Be
humble to her, Bathsheba. I have a headache, say, or would have come
myself. Ask her to set the servants free. Be any kind of sentimentalist
you like, so that she comes. It will be the last time you need cringe
to her, Bathsheba. Maybe the last time you set eyes on her. In any
case, one does not stand on ceremony with things such as Miss Viola
will be to-morrow!”
Back from her errand, the woman found her mistress ardently at work
again. Excitement had earlier given place to fever; fever was now
giving place to madness. Upstairs and downstairs, heavily toiling, she
chuckled and muttered. Upstairs and downstairs, now laughing suddenly,
now hissing an incoherent hatred, the old woman bundled tirelessly.
Hers was a strange frenzy. Elaborations and precautions elbowed their
way about her brain.
“The lights!” she shouted suddenly. “Bathsheba, the lights!”
“What lights, ma’am?” asked the maid stolidly.
“Fool! _What_ lights! Don’t you know the legend, blockhead?”
Bathsheba glowered sullenly, but only growled:
“What legend, ma’am?”
“The woman’s raving!” screamed Mrs. Plethern. “Are you witless, girl?
The legend of my tower, the legend of the Morvane campanile, the legend
of the Devil’s Candle?” But before Bathsheba could answer, the other’s
anger sank into pulpy condescension. “How could she know, wretched
creature? They are not taught their letters even, the bastards of the
poor; how should they read history? I will tell you, girl. The dome----”
“If you mean the light in the dome, you spoke of it earlier, ma’am, and
it is ready when you want it.”
The sulky interruption seemed to sober Mrs. Plethern. She regained her
former mood of gloating quietness. Her smooth, white hands twisted
stealthily in her lap.
“It is ready, is it? Good girl, Bathsheba. Good girl! Beautifully it
will shine across the garden, safely it will guide a soul to hell! The
Devil’s Candle shall be lighted, Bathsheba, and I, Rowena Walsingham,
will light it!--and _I_ will light it, _I_ will light it....”
Still muttering, she moved to the stairway leading to her bedroom.
“Not long to wait,” she said in a low voice. “I am going to rest a
little and get ready. Is all prepared below? You must go to your
cooking, Bathsheba. Nothing must fail me now.”
* * * * *
The clock on the mantlepiece struck eight. “He is a little late,”
the hostess told herself. “Cars are so unreliable.” The clock struck
eight-fifteen. “The girl is behind time. She dares to be unpunctual.
Dare while you may, my pretty maid. There is no daring where you are
bound for!” The clock struck half-past eight; another quarter; nine
o’clock. Ten minutes more and the maid tapped at the door.
“What shall I do, ma’am? The dinner is spoilt.”
“Let it spoil! You can cook another. Why is the girl not here? Go and
find her again, Bathsheba. No!--Stop!--Stay where you are!--The lights
are lighted? I must see my rooms all lighted.” Savagely she turned on
the waiting servant. “What are you gaping there for, idiot? Go to bed!
Go to bed, I say!”
The clock struck nine-fifteen. Mrs. Plethern rose and walked quickly
across the room. Bathsheba quailed before the pale fury in her eyes.
“You have tricked me, you----!” snarled the old woman. “You never asked
her to come! You warned her!”
“’Fore God ma’am,” gasped the frightened servant, “I asked her and she
said she’d come! They’ve gone, the servants yonder. I saw no light
there just now from the kitchen. I haven’t deceived you, ma’am; sacred
truth, I haven’t!”
Almost before the protests were completed, the old woman had switched
along a different pathway of hysterical foreboding.
“Maybe she guessed?” she muttered to herself. “She couldn’t have
guessed. Maybe he’s ratted? He wouldn’t dare! If he has, I’ll do for
him.”
Once more her eye fell on the unhappy Bathsheba, once more her fierce
anxiety flamed into rage against her serving woman.
“Get out, you vixen! Leave your dinner to burn itself to hell and go
after it! Get out before I murder you! Get out, I tell you. Go!”
While the old woman paced her room--bitterness, thwarted revenge and
the first tremblings of fear making a chaos of her darkly brooding
mind--Bathsheba hurried down spiral stairs to her own room, thrust a
few clothes into a bundle, and, quietly tiptoeing, let herself out into
the quiet night. Terror shook her. She had one thought--to escape the
evil maniac she had served. Across the garden and along the carriage
drive, over the park wall where no lodge-keeper should see, down lonely
roads sped Bathsheba and away. The rat had left. Time for the ship to
sink.
* * * * *
At ten o’clock Rowena Plethern had made a complete tour of her tower.
She had left lights to blaze in every room. They shone on the glitter
of the dinner-table, on glass and silver, on flowers and fruit and
bottle-laden sideboard, on the bleak taunt of three empty chairs. They
shone on the silk cushions of the divan ranged against the wall. They
shone on the hideous prints of her own sitting-room, on other cushions,
on more glasses and more wine. They shone on the white emptiness of the
guest-room bed in which (if he had need of it) the noble visitor might
have slept. Finally, from the bulbous crown of Mrs. Plethern’s tower
shone lights cunningly disposed, throwing a level ray through the one
circular window of the dome, a ray that cut the darkness, singed the
high fronds of a cedar, and then lost itself in the far blackness of
the night.
Old Mrs. Plethern stood and, listening desperately, held her breath.
She broke into a sluggish sweat. Her lips moved, but no sound came. Her
fingers twitched and caught each other jerkily. Monotonous questions
hammered at her brain. “What has happened? What can have happened?
Where is he? Where is she?” On Viola the crazed intelligence fastened
hungrily. She at least should come. She at least should know the power
and rancour of Rowena Walsingham. With her own hands to tear that fair
young face, with every fancy of her foul mind to smirch that innocence
became the sudden purpose of the maniac’s brain. At a stumbling run
she crossed the floor of her high parlour. Through the door she swayed
toward the tiny landing at the head of the stair and lift-shaft. A
cushion, dropped in her last demented rearrangement, lay gaudily askew
across the threshold of her room. Her foot tripped badly; she tottered;
then with her great bulk fell crashing into the open lift. The frayed
rope snapped. The lift fell like a stone.
§ 2
At half-past midnight, in the dark silence of the shattered lift,
Charles Plethern found the crumpled heap of satin, blood and hair that
was his mother. Still from the chinks between the blinds lights gleamed
above, still from the dome shone the long ray of the Devil’s Candle.
“My God, Wilkinson!”
The agent swayed and nearly fell, so fiercely did Charles swerve and
grip his arm.
They fetched a cloak and covered what remained of Mrs. Plethern. Then,
lights in hand, they climbed the stairs. A door yawned blackly open;
the lanterns showed a litter of tumbled clothes, shoes scattered and
a fallen chair; Bathsheba’s flight had left its panic mark upon her
bedroom. Higher they climbed, toward the light that crept round the
corner of the staircase newel. They saw the guest-room and its white
expectancy; they saw the dinner-table and the empty chairs and all the
promise of festivity; they saw the divans, and the sinister brilliance
of piled cushions; they saw the pictures on the walls; they saw,
hidden behind a screen, things that they hardly dared avow they saw.
One by one they quenched the lights. “Let us go down,” said Charles.
Back on the lawn (was it their hurried passage by the dark heap near
the door that left them breathless?) they stood uneasily. The agent,
respecting his employer’s agony, dropped his eyes and moved away. At
last Charles spoke:
“I want a drink. Lock that door. The place must be set straight before
morning, but I haven’t the nerve to go back just yet. Also, I want five
minutes with Rockarvon. We will leave the--the body. The authorities
will require evidence of the accident.”
“I will go back and do it,” said Wilkinson quietly. “You had best go to
bed, Mr. Plethern. Trust me to leave everything--as you would wish it
to be seen.”
“You’re a brick, Wilkinson! It’s damned good of you and I’m grateful. I
shan’t be in bed. You’ll find me in the library.”
The night was sweetly cool to their heads racked with tragedy. They
walked together slowly round the corner of the terrace and, almost
unconsciously, round a farther corner to the carriage-drive. The front
door was open and light streamed over the gravel.
“Hallo!” Then in a flash remembering, “Where’s the car? We left it
here----”
A figure loomed on the top step, dark against the lighted hall. It was
the butler, and he seemed to peer into the night.
“Hopton!” called Charles.
The man came running eagerly.
“Oh, Mr. Plethern! I was hunting for you, sir. The gentleman that was
in the library--the invalid gentleman, sir--he’s gone!”
“Gone?”
“Yes, sir. He must have come quietly downstairs and through the hall,
for I heard nothing till the car started up, and though I ran, I had
time only to see it a hundred yards off, down the drive.”
Charles glanced at Wilkinson.
“Nothing like funk for curing cripples,” he observed. “All right,
Hopton. You can go to bed now. I’ll lock up.”
Then, with a wry smile, he rubbed his head:
“He’s bested us. We shan’t see _him_ again.” With a shrug he
swung on his heel. “Well, well, perhaps it’s a lucky thing. I’d have
strangled the reptile, if he’d been within reach!----”
But when the agent had left him, Charles Plethern did not seek the
library nor mix his needed drink. He stood, frowningly, while around
him shone the cold emptiness of his exaggerated hall. The experiences
of the evening swayed bewilderingly about his brain. Slowly they
steadied; gradually from the vague mists of them emerged a faint
coherence of idea. Rockarvon had been on his way--whither? Not to
Wellborough, that at least was certain; whither, then? Old Mrs.
Plethern had expected guests. What guests? At all events they had not
come. One was to have been Viola. The other?
He scowled and his foot beat impatiently upon the squared paving of his
hall. The blackguard had tricked him nicely! As for the old lady--she
was dead. Thank God that she was dead! She was his mother, but he
thanked God that she was dead. And James? His turn would come. He had
had a share in this conspiracy. No matter how small the share, he
should pay a long price for it.
There remained for the distracted man one guilt to gauge, one guilt
(if expiable) to expiate. Almost he groaned aloud to know himself
dishonoured. “She trusted me.... I failed her.... Marvell trusted
me.... I betrayed his trust....”
He bit his lip and moved miserably toward the stairway. What now?
Behind the darkness of self-hatred glowed a strengthening light;
through the despair of his abasement struggled a faint, sweet memory.
He saw again, first dimly then with growing clarity, the eyes of the
girl he had so heedlessly abandoned; he saw her eyes as they had met
his in the library, not an hour ago. He stayed his feet upon the stairs
and, face in hands, fought down the rising tears. Charles Plethern not
because he had yet read in full the message of those weary eyes, but
because now he understood the longing of his own unhappy heart, paused
on his splendid staircase to choke back his tears.
A moment longer and, with the gravity of a sudden determination, he
was walking quickly upstairs to his ward’s rooms. The corridor was
shadowy and at the darker shadow of her bedroom door he paused, noting
a pencil line of light beneath the polished boarding and the door. At
last he knocked. The door was snatched open and the girl in her white
nightdress stood before him.
“I thought you’d come,” she said.
“But, my dear, you should be sleeping----”
“Sleeping!--I can sleep any night. Are you coming to talk to me?”
“If you get into bed,” he stipulated.
She obeyed, and, propped against pillows, waited silently.
He stood beside her and looked down on her.
“Can you forgive, child?” he asked.
She started up:
“Forgive?”
“Yes, Viola,” he said gravely, “forgive. I should by rights go straight
from here and shoot myself. May you never learn all I have learnt
to-night, but this I want you to know, that the man whose duty it was
to guard you, failed.”
“What do you mean, Charles?” She took his hand and fondled it. “What
do you mean? Don’t say these dreadful things! I hate to hear them!”
Her wide eyes raised to his broke the frail crust of his control.
Dropping to his knees, he crouched against the bed. His face was
hidden, and she saw his shoulders quiver.
“What have I done?” he moaned. “What have I done?”
She was out of bed and beside him in a flash. Bending over him, she
gathered him in her arms.
“Charles!” she cried softly. “Dear, dear Charles! Look at me, Charles!
Whatever you think you have done wrong, is right for me. If you are
unhappy for my sake, Charles, be happy now, for you have come back, and
that is happiness.”
He stayed a moment in the warm fragrance of her tenderness, then,
gently untwining her embrace, rose and faced her.
“You are an angel,” he breathed, laid his hands softly on her shoulders
and kissed her forehead. “Good night, Viola. Go to sleep now. We will
talk to-morrow.”
§ 3
From the shadowy spaces of the garden the scent beat up from the roses.
Viola and her guardian talked of what had been.
“Have they--taken her away?” she asked.
He nodded.
“What now?”
(The question slipped so gently from her lips.)
“Nothing now,” he answered. “It is over now.”
She sighed, and the soft wind caught her sigh and, carrying it to
heaven, cherished it.
He gave her a sidelong glance. Embarrassment crimsoned his lean cheeks.
“It is over now,” he repeated a little sullenly. Then, with an effort:
“Save for one thing. There is one thing I have to say--not to reproach
you, child; I have forfeited all right to that--but so that this
miserable business may be done with----”
It seemed the words caught chokingly in his throat. How, guiltily
conscious of his own neglect, should he question her right to any
recklessness? And yet--_Rockarvon_! Why had she done what she
admitted to have done? From what strange, sudden greed had she thus
trifled with her honour? Last night his own shame had overwhelmed him;
but as another day (the day now drawing to its close) wore on, her
shame, her asked-for shame, ever more vilely tortured him.
“Come, Charles; say what you have to say.”
Her clear, low voice forced an end to his hesitation.
“Only,” he blurted out, “that you are free to go your way, if you
desire. The man is hateful; but, as I say, I have no right----Make your
bargain, child, as you wish----”
Almost without seeing her was he conscious of the flaming colour in her
face, of the sudden stiffening of her body, of the small hands fiercely
clenched. Then she began to sob, staring in front of her, motionless,
too miserable to feel abashed. He rose with panic swiftness, stood and
looked down on her, as she sat rigid, shaken by the dry, dreadful sobs
that brought no tears to soften them.
“Viola!----” he pleaded stupidly. “Viola--don’t cry like that!”
She fought down her wretchedness, won to a semblance of composure.
“You do not understand,” she said with an indifferent weariness that
frightened him. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“Understand? Understand what?”
“I shan’t trouble you much longer,” she went on, ignoring his
interruption. “I’ll go away--(her voice trembled)--in a day or two.”
He spoke with a sudden authority.
“Tell me, Viola, _why_ you made that proposal to--to that man!
What use is his cursed valley to _you_?”
She rose slowly to her feet.
“I could have found use for it,” she said.
Not her words nor the new softness in her voice, but a sudden uprush of
his own unavowed desire made clear the mystery. Her look of love ...
his starved, bewildered heart ... and now this sacrifice, this proud,
despairing sacrifice....
“Your eyes last night----,” he stammered. “Your eyes and the tale they
told last night----” His head dropped. Almost to himself he muttered,
“That was before they knew the creature that I am. They have forgotten
it now, the tale they told....”
“Ask them,” she murmured. “They may remember it.”
Slowly he turned and looked at her. She smiled and swayed and, as he
stretched astounded arms to greet the miracle, clung with a low cry of
happiness about his neck.
* * * * *
The little wind, heavy with fragrance stolen from the roses, hung for
a space compassionately above their heads. Then, after the restless
manner of its kind, it stirred, breathed softly, flickered beyond the
house-top and was gone.
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.