DUEL OR MURDER?
All the household appeared at breakfast next morning; even poor Dopsy,
who felt that she could not nurse her grief in solitude any longer.
"It's behaving too much as if you were his widow," Mopsy had told her,
somewhat harshly; and then there was the task of packing, since they
were to leave Mount Royal at eleven, in order to be at Launceston in
time for the one o'clock train. This morning's breakfast was less silent
than the dinner of yesterday. Everybody felt as if Mr. Hamleigh had been
dead at least a week.
Captain Vandeleur and Mr. Montagu discussed the sad event openly, as if
the time for reticence were past; speculated and argued as to how the
accident could have happened; talked learnedly about guns; wondered
whether the country surgeon was equal to the difficulties of the case.
"I can't understand," said Mr. Montagu, "if he was found lying in the
hollow by the waterfall, how his gun came to go off. If he had been
going through a hedge, or among the brushwood on the slope of the hill,
it would be easy enough to see how the thing might have happened; but as
it is, I'm all in the dark."
"You had better go and watch the inquest, and make yourself useful to
the coroner," sneered Leonard, who had been drinking his coffee in moody
silence until now. "You seem to think yourself so uncommonly clever and
far seeing."
"Well, I flatter myself I know as much about sport as most men; and I've
handled a gun before to-day, and know that the worst gun that was ever
made won't go off and shoot a fellow through the heart without
provocation of some kind."
"Who said he was shot through the heart?"
"Somebody did--one of your people, I think."
Mrs. Tregonell sat at the other end of the table, half hidden by the
large old-fashioned silver urn, and next her sat Jessie Bridgeman, a
spare small figure in a close-fitting black gown, a pale drawn face
with a look of burnt-out fires--pale as the crater when the volcanic
forces have exhausted themselves. At a look from Christabel she rose,
and they two left the room together. Five minutes later they had left
the house, and were walking towards the cliff, by following which they
could reach the Kieve without going down into Boscastle. It was a wild
walk for a windy autumn day; but these two loved its wildness--had
walked here in many a happy hour, with souls full of careless glee. Now
they walked silently, swiftly, looking neither to the sea nor the land,
though both were at their loveliest in the shifting lights and shadows
of an exquisite October morning--sunshine enough to make one believe it
was summer--breezes enough to blow about the fleecy clouds in the blue
clear sky, to ripple the soft dun-coloured heather on the hillocky
common, and to give life and variety to the sea.
It was a long walk; but the length of the way seemed of little account
to these two. Christabel had only the sense of a dreary monotony of
grief. Time and space had lost their meaning. This dull aching sorrow
was to last for ever--till the grave--broken only by brief intervals of
gladness and forgetfulness with her boy.
To-day she could hardly keep this one source of consolation in her mind.
All her thoughts were centred upon him who lay yonder dead.
"Jessie," she said, suddenly laying her hand on her companion's wrist,
as they crossed the common above the slate-quarry, seaward of Trevalga
village, with its little old church and low square tower. "Jessie, I am
not going to see him."
"What weak stuff you are made of," muttered Jessie, contemptuously,
turning to look into the white frightened face. "No, you are not going
to look upon the dead. You would be afraid, and it might cause scandal.
No, you are only going to see the place where he died; and then perhaps
you, or I, will see a little further into the darkness that hides his
fate. You heard how those men were puzzling their dull brains about it
at breakfast. Even they can see that there is a mystery."
"What do you mean?"
"Only as much as I say. I know nothing--yet."
"But you suspect----?"
"Yes. My mind is full of suspicion; but it is all guess-work--no shred
of evidence to go upon."
They came out of a meadow into the high road presently--the pleasant
rustic road which so many happy holiday-making people tread in the sweet
summer time--the way to that wild spot where England's first hero was
born; the Englishman's Troy, cradle of that fair tradition out of which
grew the Englishman's Iliad.
Beside the gate through which they came lay that mighty slab of spar
which has been christened King Arthur's Quoit, but which the Rector of
Trevalga declared to be the covering stone of a Cromlech. Christabel
remembered how facetious they had all been about Arthur and his game of
quoits, five years ago, in the bright autumn weather, when the leaves
were blown about so lightly in the warm west wind. And now the leaves
fell with a mournful heaviness, and every falling leaf seemed an emblem
of death.
They went to the door of the farmhouse to get the key of the gate which
leads to the Kieve. Christabel stood in the little quadrangular garden,
looking up at the house, while Jessie rang and asked for what she
wanted.
"Did no one except Mr. Hamleigh go to the Kieve yesterday until the men
went to look for him?" she asked of the young woman who brought her the
key.
"No one else, Miss. No one but him had the key. They found it in the
pocket of his shooting jacket when he was brought here."
Involuntarily, Jessie put the key to her lips. His hand was almost the
last that had touched it.
Just as they were leaving the garden, where the last of the yellow
dahlias were fading, Christabel took Jessie by the arm, and stopped her.
"In which room is he lying?" she asked. "Can we see the window from
here?"
"Yes, it is that one."
Jessie pointed to a low, latticed window in the old gray house--a
casement round which myrtle and honeysuckle clung lovingly. The lattice
stood open. The soft sweet air was blowing into the room, just faintly
stirring the white dimity curtain. And _he_ was lying there in that last
ineffable repose.
They went up the steep lane, between tall tangled hedges, where the
ragged robin still showed his pinky blossoms, and many a pale yellow
hawksweed enlivened the faded foliage, while the ferns upon the banks,
wet from yesterday's rain, still grew rankly green.
On the crest of the hill the breeze grew keener, and the dead leaves
were being ripped from the hedgerows, and whirled down into the hollow,
where the autumn wind seemed to follow Christabel and Jessie as they
descended, with a long plaintive minor cry, like the lament at an Irish
funeral. All was dark and desolate in the green valley, as Jessie
unlocked the gate, and they went slowly down the steep slippery path,
among moss-grown rock and drooping fern--down and down, by sharply
winding ways, so narrow that they could only go one by one, till they
came within the sound of the rushing water, and then down into the
narrow cleft, where the waterfall tumbles into a broad shallow bed, and
dribbles away among green slimy rocks.
Here there is a tiny bridge--a mere plank--that spans the water, with a
hand-rail on one side. They crossed this, and stood on the broad flat
stone on the other side. This is the very heart of St. Nectan's mystery.
Here, high in air, the water pierces the rock, and falls, a slender
silvery column, into the rocky bed below.
"Look!" said Jessie Bridgeman, pointing down at the stone.
There were marks of blood upon it--the traces of stains which had been
roughly wiped away by the men who found the body.
"This is where he stood," said Jessie, looking round, and then she ran
suddenly across to the narrow path on the other side. "And some one else
stood here--here--just at the end of the bridge. There are marks of
other feet here."
"Those of the men who came to look for him," said Christabel.
"Yes; that makes it difficult to tell. There are the traces of many
feet. Yet I know," she muttered, with clenched teeth, "that some one
stood here--just here--and shot him. They were standing face to face.
See!"--she stepped the bridge with light swift feet--"so! at ten paces.
Don't you see?"
Christabel looked at her with a white scared face, remembering her
husband's strange manner the night before last, and those parting words
at Mr. Hamleigh's bedroom door. "You understand my plan?" "Perfectly."
"It saves all trouble, don't you see." Those few words had impressed
themselves upon her memory--insignificant as they were--because of
something in the tone in which they were spoken--something in the manner
of the two men.
"You mean," she said slowly, with her hand clenching the rail of the
bridge, seeking unconsciously for support; "you mean that Angus and my
husband met here by appointment, and fought a duel?"
"That is my reading of the mystery."
"Here in this lonely place--without witnesses--my husband murdered him!"
"They would not count it murder. Fate might have been the other way.
Your husband might have been killed."
"No!" cried Christabel, passionately; "Angus would not have killed him.
That would have been too deep a dishonour!"
She stood silent for a few moments, white as death, looking round her
with wide, despairing eyes.
"He has been murdered!" she said, in hoarse, faint tones. "That
suspicion has been in my mind--dark--shapeless--horrible--from the
first. He has been murdered! And I am to spend the rest of my life with
his murderer!" Then, with a sudden hysterical cry, she turned angrily
upon Jessie.
"How dare you tell lies about my husband?" she exclaimed. "Don't you
know that nobody came here yesterday except Angus; no one else had the
key. The girl at the farm told us so."
"The key!" echoed Jessie, contemptuously. "Do you think a gate, breast
high, would keep out an athlete like your husband? Besides, there is
another way of getting here, without going near the gate, where he might
be seen, perhaps, by some farm labourer in the field. The men were
ploughing there yesterday, and heard a shot. They told me that last
night at the farm. Wait! wait!" cried Jessie, excitedly.
She rushed away, light as a lapwing, flying across the narrow
bridge--bounding from stone to stone--vanishing amidst dark autumn
foliage. Christabel heard her steps dying away in the distance. Then
there was an interval, of some minutes, during which Christabel, hardly
caring to wonder what had become of her companion, stood clinging to the
hand-rail, and staring down at stones and shingle, feathery ferns,
soddened logs, the water rippling and lapping round all things, crystal
clear.
Then, startled by a voice above her head, she looked up, and saw
Jessie's light figure just as she dropped herself over the sharp arch of
rock, and scrambled through the cleft, hanging on by her hands, finding
a foothold in the most perilous places--in danger of instant death.
"My God!" murmured Christabel, with clasped hands, not daring to cry
aloud lest she should increase Jessie's peril. "She will be killed."
With a nervous grip, and a muscular strength which no one could have
supposed possible in so slender a frame, Jessie Bridgeman made good her
descent, and stood on the shelf of slippery rock, below the waterfall,
unhurt save for a good many scratches and cuts upon the hands that had
clung so fiercely to root and bramble, crag and boulder.
"What I could do your husband could do," she said. "He did it often when
he was a boy--you must remember his boasting of it. He did it yesterday.
Look at this."
"This" was a ragged narrow shred of heather cloth, with a brick-dust red
tinge in its dark warp, which Leonard had much affected this year--"Mr.
Tregonell's colour, is it not?" asked Jessie.
"Yes--it is like his coat."
"Like? It is a part of his coat. I found it hanging on a bramble, at the
top of the cleft. Try if you can find the coat when you get home, and
see if it is not torn. But most likely he will have hidden the clothes
he wore yesterday. Murderers generally do."
"How dare you call him a murderer?" said Christabel, trembling, and cold
to the heart. It seemed to her as if the mild autumnal air--here in
this sheltered nook which was always warmer than the rest of the
world--had suddenly become an icy blast that blew straight from far away
arctic seas. "How dare you call my husband a murderer?"
"Oh, I forgot. It was a duel, I suppose: a fair fight, planned so
skilfully that the result should seem like an accident, and the survivor
should run no risk. Still, to my mind, it was murder all the same--for I
know who provoked the quarrel--yes--and you know--you, who are his
wife--and who, for respectability's sake, will try to shield him--you
know--for you must have seen hatred and murder in his face that night
when he came into the drawing-room--and asked Mr. Hamleigh for a few
words in private. It was then he planned this work," pointing to the
broad level stone against which the clear water was rippling with such a
pretty playful sound, while those two women stood looking at each other
with pale intent faces, fixed eyes, and tremulous lips; "and Angus
Hamleigh, who valued his brief remnant of earthly life so lightly,
consented--reluctantly perhaps--but too proud to refuse. And he fired in
the air--yes, I know he would not have injured your husband by so much
as a hair of his head--I know him well enough to be sure of that. He
came here like the victim to the altar. Leonard Tregonell must have
known that. And I say that though he, with his Mexican freebooter's
morality, may have called it a fair fight, it was murder, deliberate,
diabolical murder."
"If this is true," said Christabel in a low voice, "I will have no mercy
upon him."
"Oh, yes, you will. You will sacrifice feeling to propriety, you will
put a good face upon things, for the sake of your son. You were born and
swaddled in the purple of respectability. You will not stir a finger to
avenge the dead."
"I will have no mercy upon him," repeated Christabel, with a strange
look in her eyes.