WHAT TO DO NEXT?
Not to every one among the children of men is given the power, the
faculty, to act as comforter to others. To listen to another’s sorrow,
to be told the history of another’s trouble, is one thing: to be able
to give back comfort is another. That delicate intuitive sympathy with
another’s woe which draws away the sting even while listening to it,
which makes that woe its own property as it were, which sheds balm
round the sufferer in every word and look and touch: this is surely as
much a special gift as the gift of song or the poet’s fine phrenzy, and
without it the world would be a much poorer place than it is.
This rare gift of sympathy was possessed by Edith Dering in a
pre-eminent degree. She was at once emotional and sympathetic. To
Lionel in his dire trouble she was a comforter in the truest sense of
the word. It was she who preserved his mental balance—the equipoise of
his mind. But for her sweet offices he would have become a monomaniac
or a misanthrope of the bitterest kind. Naturally she had him with her
as much as possible, but still his home was of necessity at Park
Newton. To the world he was simply Richard Dering, the unmarried nephew
of General St. George. It would not do for him to be seen going to Fern
Cottage sufficiently often to excite either scandal or suspicion. He
could only visit there as the intimate friend of Mrs. Garside and her
niece. Sometimes he took his uncle with him, sometimes Tom, in order to
divert suspicion. For him to enter the garden gate of Fern Cottage was
to cross the threshold of his earthly paradise. Edith and he had been
married in the depth of a great trouble—troubles and danger had beset
the path of their wedded life ever since. Owing, perhaps, to that very
cause week by week, and month by month, their love seemed only to grow
in depth and intensity. As yet it had lost nothing of its pristine
charm and freshness. The gold-dust of romance lingered about it still.
They were man and wife, they had been man and wife for months, but to
the world at large they seemed nothing more than ordinary friends.
But all Edith’s care and watchful love could not lift her husband,
except by fits and starts, out of those moods of gloom and depression
which seemed to be settling more closely down upon him day by day. As
link after link was added to the chain of evidence, each one tending to
incriminate his cousin still more deeply, his moods seemed to grow
darker and more difficult of removal. With his cousin Lionel associated
no more than was absolutely necessary. They rarely met each other till
dinner-time, and then they met with nothing more than a simple “How do
you do?” and in conversation they never got beyond some half-dozen of
the barest commonplaces. Lionel always left the table as soon as the
cloth was drawn.
On Kester’s side there was no love lost. That dark, stern-faced cousin
was a perpetual menace to him, and he hated him accordingly. He hated
him for his likeness to his dead and gone brother. He hated him because
of the look in his eyes—so coldly scrutinizing, so searching, so
immovable. He hated him because it was a look that he could in nowise
give back. Try as he might, he could not face Lionel’s steady gaze.
For some two or three weeks after his return from Bath with Janvard’s
written confession, Lionel was perfectly quiescent. He took no further
action whatever. He was, indeed, debating in his own mind what further
action it behoved him to take. There was no need to seek for any
further evidence, if, indeed, any more would have been forthcoming. All
that he wanted he had now got; it was simply a question as to what use
he should make of it. Day and night that was the question which
presented itself before his mind: what use should he make of the
knowledge in his possession? His mind was divided this way and that;
day passed after day, and still he could by no means decide as to the
course which it would be best for him to adopt. Of all this he said not
a word to Edith: he could not have borne to discuss the question even
with her; but it is possible that she surmised something of it. She
knew that she had only to wait and everything would be told her.
Perhaps to Bristow, who knew all the details of the case as well as he
did, he might have said something as to the difficulty by which he was
beset, but as it happened, Tom was not at home just then. Much of his
time was spent by Lionel in long solitary walks far and wide through
the country. He could think better when he was walking than when
sitting quietly at home, he used to say; and, indeed, the country folk
who encountered him often turned to look at him, as he stalked along,
with his eyes set straight before him, gazing on vacancy, and with lips
that moved rapidly as he whispered to himself of his dreadful secret.
But, little by little, the need of counsel, of sympathy, grew more
strongly upon him. He was still as much at a loss as ever as to the
step which he ought to take next.
“They shall decide for me,” he said at last; “I will put myself into
their hands: by their verdict I will abide.”
General St. George at this time was away from Park Newton. As has been
already stated, he had been summoned to the sick-bed of a very old and
valued friend. The illness was a long and tedious one, and at the
request of his friend the General stayed on and kept him company. Truth
to tell, he was by no means sorry to get away from Park Newton for
awhile. Of late his position there had been anything but a pleasant
one. The silent, deadly feud between his two nephews troubled him not a
little. If Kester would only have gone away, then, so far, all would
have been well. But having pressed him so earnestly to visit Park
Newton, he could not, with any show of conscience, ask him to go till
he was ready to do so of his own accord. Knowing what he knew, that
Kester was all but proved to have been the murderer of Percy Osmond, he
might well not care to live under the same roof with him, hiding his
feelings under a mask, and, while pretending to know nothing, to be in
reality cognisant of the whole dreadful story. Knowing what he knew,
that Richard was none other than Lionel, and knowing the quest on which
he was engaged, and that, sooner or later, the climax must come, he
might well wish to be away from Park Newton when that most wretched day
should dawn—a day which would prove the innocence of one nephew at the
price of the other’s guilt. Therefore did General St. George accept his
old friend’s invitation to stay with him for an indefinite length of
time—till, in fact, Kester should have left Park Newton, or till the
tangled knot of events should, in some other way, have unravelled
itself.
When, at length, Lionel had decided that he would take the advice of
his friends as to what his future course should be, he was obliged to
await Tom Bristow’s return before it was possible to do anything. Then,
when Tom did get back home, the General had to be written to. When he
understood what he was wanted for, he agreed to come on certain
conditions. He was to come to Fern Cottage, spend one night there, and
go back to his friend’s house next day. No one, except those assembled
at the cottage, was to know anything of his journey. Above all, it was
to be kept a profound secret from Kester St George.
Thus it fell out that on a certain April evening there were assembled,
in the parlour of the cottage, Edith, Mrs. Garside, General St. George,
Tom Bristow, and Lionel. It was a very serious occasion, and they all
felt it to be such.
The General would sit close to Edith, whom he had not seen for a little
while; and several times during the evening he took possession of one
of her hands, and patted it affectionately between his own withered
palms.
“You are not looking quite so well, my dear, as when I saw you last,”
had been his first words after kissing her. Her cheeks were, indeed,
just beginning to look in the slightest degree hollow and worn, nor did
her eyes look quite so bright as of old. The wonder was, considering
all that she had gone through during the last twelve months, that she
looked as fair and fresh as she did. Of Mrs. Garside, whom we have not
seen for some little time, it may be said that she looked plumper and
more matronly than ever. But then nothing could have kept Mrs. Garside
from looking plump and matronly. She was one of those people off whom
the troubles and anxieties of life slip as easily as water slips off a
duck’s back. Although she had a copious supply of tears at command,
nothing ever troubled her deeply or for long, simply because there was
no depth to be troubled. She was always cheerful, because she was
shallow; and she was always kind-hearted so long as her kindness of
heart did not involve any self-sacrifice on her part. “What a very
pleasant person Mrs. Garside is,” was the general verdict of society.
And so she was—very pleasant. If her father had been hanged on a Monday
for sheepstealing, by Tuesday she would have been as pleasant and
cheerful as ever.
But we must not be unjust to Mrs. Garside. She had one affection, and
one only, her love for Edith. During all the days of Edith’s
tribulation, her aunt had never deserted her—had not even thought of
deserting her; and now, for Edith’s sake, she had buried herself alive
in Fern Cottage, where her only excitement was a little mild shopping,
now and then, in Duxley High Street, under the incognito of a thick
veil, or a welcome visit once and again from Miss Culpepper. Under
these depressing circumstances, it ought perhaps to be put down to the
credit of Mrs. Garside, rather than to her discredit, that her
cheerfulness was not one whit abated, and that her face was a picture
of health and content.
“I think you know why I have asked you to meet me here to-night,” began
Lionel. “I want your advice: I want you to tell me what step I must
take next. You know what the purpose of my life has been ever since the
night I escaped from prison. You know how persistently I have pursued
that purpose—that I have allowed nothing to deter me or turn me aside
from it. The result is that there has grown under my hands a fatal
array of evidence, all tending to implicate one man—all pointing with
deadly accuracy to one person, and to one only, as the murderer of
Percy Osmond. I have but to open my mouth, and the four walls of a
prison would shut him round as fast as ever they shut round me; I have
but to speak of half I know and that man would have to take his trial
for Wilful Murder even as I took mine. But shall I do this thing? That
is the question that I want you to help me to answer. So long as the
chain of evidence remained incomplete, so long as certain links were
wanting to it, I felt that my task was unfinished. But at last I have
all that I need. There is nothing more to search for. My task, so far,
is at an end. Knowing, then, what I know, and with such proofs in my
possession, am I to stop here? Am I to rest content with what I have
done, and go no step farther? Or am I to go through with it to the
bitter end? What that end would involve you know as well as I could
tell you.”
He ceased, and for a little while they all sat in silence. General St.
George was the first to speak. “Lionel knows, and you all know, that
from the very first he has had my heartfelt sympathy in this unhappy
business. He has not had my sympathy only, he has had my help, although
I have seen for a long time the point to which we were all tending, and
the terrible consequences that must necessarily ensue. Me those
consequences affect with peculiar force. One nephew can only be saved
at the expense of the irretrievable ruin and disgrace of the other. It
is not as though we had been searching in the dark, and had there found
the bloodstained hand of a stranger. The hand we have so grasped is
that of one of our own kin—one of ourselves. And that makes the
dreadful part of the affair. Still, I would not have you misunderstand
me. I am as closely bound to Lionel—my sympathy and help are his as
much to-day as ever they were, and should he choose to go through with
this business in the same way as he would go through with it in the
case of an utter stranger, I shall be the last man in the world to
blame him. More: I will march with him side by side, whatever be the
goal to which his steps may lead him. Such unparalleled wrongs as his
demand unparalleled reparation. For all that, however, it is still a
most serious question whether there is not a possibility of effecting
some kind of a compromise: whether there is not somewhere a door of
escape open by means of which we may avert a catastrophe almost too
terrible even to bear thinking about.”
“What is your opinion, Bristow?” said Lionel, turning to Tom. “What say
you, my friend of friends?”
“I have a certain diffidence in offering any opinion,” said Tom,
“simply on account of the relationship of the two persons chiefly
involved. To tell the world all that you know, would, undoubtedly,
bring about a family catastrophe of a most painful nature. It therefore
seems to me that the members of that family, and they alone, should be
empowered to offer an opinion on a question so delicate as the one now
under consideration.”
“Not so,” said Lionel, emphatically. “No one could have a better right,
or even so great a right, to offer an opinion as you. But for you, I
should not have been here to-night to ask for that opinion.”
“Nor I here but for you,” interrupted Tom.
“I will put my question to you in a different form,” said Lionel; “and
so put to you, I shall expect you to answer it in your usual clear and
straightforward way. Bristow, if you were circumstanced exactly as I am
now circumstanced, what would you do in my place?”
“I would go through with the task I had taken in hand, let the
consequences be what they might,” said Tom, without a moment’s
hesitation. “Nothing should hold me back. I would clear my own name and
my own fame, and let punishment fall where punishment is due. You are
still young, Dering, and a fair career and a happy future may still be
yours if you like to claim them.”
Tom’s words were very emphatic, and for a little while no one spoke.
“We have yet to hear what Edith has to say,” said the General. “Her
interests in the matter are second only to those of Lionel.”
“Yes, it is my wife’s turn to speak next,” said Lionel.
“What my opinion is, you know well, dearest, and have known for a long
time.”
“My uncle and Bristow would like to hear it from your own lips.”
“Uncle,” began Edith, with a little blush, “whatever Lionel may
ultimately decide to do will doubtless be for the best. The last wish I
have in the world is to lead him or guide him in any way in opposition
to his own convictions. But I have thought this: that it would be very
terrible indeed to have to take part in a second tragedy—a tragedy
that, in some of its features, would be far more dreadful than that
first one, which none of us can ever forget. No one can know better
than I know how grievously my husband has been sinned against. But
nothing can altogether undo the wrong that has been done. Would it make
my husband a happy man if, instead of being the accused, he should
become the accuser? Let us for a few moments try to imagine that this
second tragedy has been worked out in all its frightful consequences.
That my husband has told everything. That he who is guilty has been
duly punished. That Lionel’s fair fame has been re-established, and
that he and I are living at Park Newton as if nothing had ever happened
to disturb the commonplace tenor of our lives. In such a case, would my
husband be a happy man? No. I know him too well to believe it possible
that he could ever be happy or contented. The image of that man—one of
his own kith and kin, we must remember—would be for ever in his mind.
He would be the prey of a remorse all the more bitter in that the world
would hold him as without blame. But would he so hold himself? I think
not—I am sure not. He would feel as if he had sought for and accepted
the price of blood.” Overcome by her emotion, she ceased.
“I think in a great measure as you think, my dear,” said the General.
“What course do you propose that your husband should adopt?”
“It is not for me to propose anything,” answered Edith. “I can only
suggest certain views of the question, and leave it for you and Lionel
to adopt them or reject them, as may seem best to you.”
“Holding the proofs of his innocence in his hands as he does,” said the
General, “is it your wish that Lionel should sit down contented with
what he has already achieved, and knowing that the real facts of his
story are in the keeping of you and me, and two or three trusted
friends, rest satisfied with that and ask for nothing more?”
“No, I hardly go so far as that,” said Edith, with a faint smile. “I
think that the man who committed the crime should know that Lionel
still lives, and that he holds in his hands the proof at once of his
own innocence and of the other’s guilt. Beyond that I say this: The
world believes my husband to be dead: rather than re-open so terrible a
wound, let the world continue so to believe. My husband and I can do
without the world, as well as it can do without us. We have our mutual
love, which nothing can deprive us of: against that the shafts of
Fortune beat as vainly as hailstones against a castle wall. On this
earth of ours are places sweet and fair without number. In one of
them—not altogether dissevered from those ties of friendship which have
already made our married life so beautiful—my husband and I could build
up a new home, with no sad memories of the past to cling around it; and
when this haunting shadow that now broods over his life shall have been
brushed away for ever, then I think—I know—I feel sure that I can make
him happy!” Her voice, her eyes, her whole manner were imbued with a
sweet fervour that it was impossible to resist.
Lionel crossed over and kissed her. “My darling!” he said. “But for
your love and care I should long ago have been a madman.”
“You, my dear, have put into words,” said the General, “the very ideas
that for a long time have been floating about, half formed, in my own
mind. Lionel, what have you to say to your wife’s suggestions?”
“Only this: that I have made up my mind to follow them. _He_ shall know
that I am alive, and that I hold the proofs of his guilt, ready to
produce them at a moment’s notice, should I ever be compelled to do so.
Beyond that, I will leave him in peace—to such peace as his own
conscience will give him. The world believes Lionel Dering to be dead
and buried. Dead and buried he shall still remain, and ‘requiescat in
pace’ be written under his name.”
The General got up with tears in his eyes and shook Lionel warmly by
the hand. “Good boy! good boy! You will not go without your reward,”
was all that he could say.
“The eighth of May will soon be here,” said Lionel—“the anniversary of
poor Osmond’s murder. On that day he shall be told. But I shall tell
him in my own fashion. On that day, uncle, you must promise to give me
your company; and you yours, Tom. After that I shall trouble you no
more.”
If Tom Bristow dissented from the conclusion thus come to, he said no
word to that effect. There was one point, however, that struck his
practical mind as having been altogether overlooked; and as soon as
Edith and Mrs. Garside had left the room he did not fail to mention it.
“What about the income of eleven thousand a year?” he said. “You are
surely not going to let the whole of that slip through your fingers?”
“Ah, by-the-by, that point never struck me,” said the General. “No, it
would be decidedly unjust both to yourself and your wife, Lionel, to
give up the income as well as the position.”
“Now you are importing a mercenary tone into the affair that is utterly
distasteful to me. It looks as if I were being bribed to keep silence.”
“That is sheer nonsense,” said the General. “You have but to hold out
your hand to take the whole.”
Lionel said no more, but went and sat down dejectedly on the sofa.
“You and I must settle this matter between us,” said the General to
Tom. “It is most important. It shall be my place to see that whatever
is agreed upon shall be duly carried out in the arrangement between the
two men. I should think that if the income were divided it would be
about as fair a thing as could be done. What say you?”
“I agree with you entirely,” said Tom. “The other one will have the
name and position to keep up, and that can’t be done for nothing.”
“Then it shall be so settled.”
“There is one other point that I think ought to be settled at the same
time. Who is to have Park Newton after _his_ death? Lionel may have
children. _He_ may marry and have children. But, in common justice, the
estate ought to be secured on Dering’s eldest child, whether the
present possessor die with or without an heir.”
“Certainly, certainly. Good gracious me! a most valuable suggestion.
Strange, now, that it never struck me. Yes, yes: Lionel’s eldest child
must have the estate. I will see that there is no possible mistake on
that score.”