"Taken with what Yox told us, I certainly do," was Sam's emphatic

reply.

The sigh which escaped me was involuntary. If this was Sam's opinion,

I must prepare myself for an interview with Hope. Alas! it was likely

to bring me sorrow in proportion to the joy it brought her.

XXIII

IN MY OFFICE

It was with strange reluctance I opened the paper next morning. Though

I had no reason for apprehending that my adventure of the day before

had been shared by anyone likely to give information in regard to it,

the consciousness of holding an important secret is so akin to the

consciousness of guilt, I could not help dreading some reference to

the same in the sheet I now unfolded. I wished to be the first to tell

Miss Meredith of the new direction in which suspicion was pointing,

and experienced great relief when, upon consulting the columns usually

devoted to the all-engrossing topic of the Gillespie poisoning case, I

came upon a direct intimation of the necessity, now universally felt,

of holding Alfred accountable for his father's death, as the only one

of the three who had shown himself unable to explain away the

circumstantial evidence raised against him.

This expression of opinion on the part of the press had been

anticipated too long by Miss Meredith for it to prove a shock to her.

I therefore did not commit myself to an early interview, but went at

once to my office, where important business awaited me.

I was in the midst of a law paper, when I was warned by a certain

nervous perturbation fast becoming too common with me, that someone

had been admitted to my inner office and now stood before me. Looking

up, I saw _her_.

She wore a thick veil, and was clad in a long cloak which completely

enveloped her. But there was no mistaking the outlines of the figure

which had dwelt in my mind and heart ever since the fateful night of

our first meeting, or the half-frightened, half-eager attitude with

which she awaited my invitation to enter. Agitated by her presence,

which was totally unexpected in that place, I rose, and, with all the

apparent calmness the situation demanded, I welcomed her in and shut

the door behind her.

When I turned back it was to meet her face to face. She had taken off

her veil and loosened her cloak at the neck; and as the latter fell

apart I saw that the left hand clutched a newspaper. I no longer

doubted the purpose of her visit. She had seen the article I have just

quoted, and was more moved by it than I had expected.

"You must pardon this intrusion," she began, ignoring the chair I had

set for her. "I have seen--learned something which grieves--alarms me.

You are my lawyer; more than that, my friend--I have no other--so I

have come--" Here she sank into a chair, first drooping her head, then

looking up piteously.

I tried to give her the support she asked for. Concealing the effect

of her emotion upon me, I told her that she could find no truer friend

or one who comprehended her more intuitively; then with a gesture

towards the paper, I remarked:

"You are frightened at the impatience of the public. You need not be,

Miss Meredith; there are always certain hot-headed people who advocate

rash methods and demand any bone to gnaw rather than not gnaw at all.

The police are more circumspect; they are not going to arrest any one

of your cousins without evidence strong enough to warrant such extreme

measures. Do not worry about Alfred Gillespie; to-morrow it will not

be his name, but----"

With a leap she was on her feet.

"Whose?" she cried, meeting my astonished gaze with such an agony of

appeal in her great tear-dry eyes, that I drew back appalled.

It was not Alfred, then, she loved. Was it the handsome George, after

all, or could it be--no, it could not be--that all this youth, all

this beauty, nay, this embodiment of truest passion and

self-forgetting devotion, had fixed itself upon the unhappy man whom I

had just decided to be unworthy of any woman's regard.

Aghast at the prospect, I plunged on wildly, desperately, but with a

certain restraint merciful to her, if no relief to me.

"George, too, seems innocent. Leighton only--" Yes, it was he. I saw

it as the name passed my lips, saw it even before she gave utterance

to the low cry with which she fell at my feet in an attitude of

entreaty.

"Oh!" she murmured, "don't say it! I cannot bear it yet. No schooling

has made me ready. It is unheard of--impossible! He is so good, so

kind, so full of lofty thoughts and generous impulses. I would sooner

suspect myself, and yet--oh, Mr. Outhwaite, pity me! Every support is

gone; everything in which I trusted or held to. If he is the base, the

despicable wretch they say, where shall I seek for goodness,

trustworthiness, and truth?"

I had no heart to answer. So it was upon the plainest, least

accomplished, and, to all appearance, least responsive as well as

least responsible, of Mr. Gillespie's three sons she had fixed her

affections and lavished the warm emotions of her passionate young

life. Why had I not guessed it? Why had I let George's handsome figure

and Alfred's lazy graces blind me to the fact that woman chooses

through her imagination; and that if out of a half-dozen suitors she

encounters one she does not thoroughly understand, he is sure to be

the one to strike her untutored fancy. Alas! for her when, as in this

case, this lack of mutual understanding is founded on the

impossibility of a pure mind comprehending the hidden life of one who

puts no restriction upon the worst side of his nature.

These thoughts were instantaneous, but they made a dividing line in my

life. Henceforth this woman, in all her alluring beauty, was in a way

sacred to me, like a child we find astray. Raising her from the

appealing posture into which she had sunk, I assured her with as much

gentleness as my own inner rebellion would allow:

"You have not trusted him yourself, or you would let no newspaper

report drive you here for solace."

She cringed; the blow had told. But she struggled on, with a feverish

desire to convince herself, if not me, of the worth of him she loved

so passionately.

"I know--it was my weakness--or his misfortune. He had given me no

cause--no real cause--his eccentricities--my uncle's impatience with

them--my own difficulty in understanding them--little things,

Mr. Outhwaite, nothing deep, nothing convincing--I cannot

explain--shadows--memories so slight they vanish while I seek them--I would

have given worlds not to have been shaken in my faith, not to have included

him for a minute in the accusation of that phrase, 'one of my sons'; but I

am over-conscientious, and because the one I trusted--lived by, had not

been exonerated by his father, I did not dare to separate him from the

rest, in the doubts his father's accusation had raised. It would have been

unjust to them, to the two who cared most for me--the two--" Here her voice

trailed off into silence, only to rise in the sudden demand: "What has

occasioned this change in public opinion? What have the police discovered,

what have you discovered, that he should now be singled out--he against

whom nothing was found at the inquest--who has a child----"

"Yet who allows himself to lead a double life."

I said this with a purpose. I knew what its effect must be upon so

pure a soul, and I was not surprised at the emotion she displayed. Yet

there was something in her manner as she pressed her two hands

together which suggested the presence of a different feeling from the

one I had expected to rouse in launching this poisoned arrow; and,

hesitating with new doubt, I went falteringly on:

"Some men show a very different face in their homes and before their

friends than in haunts where your pure imagination cannot follow them.

The life lived under your eye is not the one really led by the

melancholy being you have watched with such sympathetic interest."

She did not seem to follow me.

"What do you mean?" Her indignation was so strong that she leaped to

her feet and eyed me with a manifest sense of outrage. "You speak as

if you meant something I should not hear. _He!_ Claire's father----"

It was a difficult task. Surely my lines had fallen in untoward

places. But there was no doubt about my duty. If her fresh, unspoiled

heart had made its home in a nest of serpents, it was well she should

know her mistake before the shame of the discovery should overwhelm

her.

Turning aside, so that I should not seem to spy upon her agitation, I

answered her as such questions should be answered, with the truth.

"Miss Meredith," said I, "when I undertook to sift this matter, and if

possible bring to light some fact capable of settling the doubt that

is wearing away your life, I hoped to relieve your heart and restore

your faith in the one cousin most congenial to you. That I have failed

in this and find myself called upon to inflict suffering rather than

to bring peace to your agitated heart is a source of regret to myself

which you can never measure. But it cannot be helped. I dare not keep

back the truth. Leighton Gillespie is unworthy your regard, Miss

Meredith, not only because he lies under suspicion of having committed

the worst sin in the calendar, but because he has deceived you as to

the state of his own affections. He----"

"Wait!" Her voice was peremptory; her manner noble. "I wish to say

right here, Mr. Outhwaite, that Leighton Gillespie has never deceived

me in this regard. I have cared for him because--because I could not

help it. But he has never led me into doing so by any show of peculiar

interest in myself. George has courted me and Alfred nearly has, but

not Leighton; yet to him my whole heart went out, and if it is a shame

to own it I must endure that shame rather than injure his cause by

leaving you under the influence of a prejudice which has no foundation

in fact."

Before the generosity of this self-betrayal I bowed my head. Her

beauty, warm and glowing as it was at this moment of self-abandonment,

did not impress me so much as the mingled candour and pride with which

she exonerated this man from the one fault of which she knew him to be

innocent. It gave me a new respect for her and a shade more of

forbearance for him, so that my voice softened as I replied:

"Well, well, we will not charge him with deliberate falsehood towards

you, only with the madness which leads a man to sacrifice honour and

reputation to the fancied charms of an irresponsible woman. He is

under a spell, Miss Meredith, which I will not attempt to name. The

object of it I have myself seen, and it was from her hand (possibly

without her understanding the purpose for which he wanted it, as she

has no appearance of being a really wicked woman) that he obtained the

poison which did such deadly work in your uncle's house."

The worst was said; and the silence that followed was one never to be

forgotten by her or by me. When it was broken, it was by Hope, and in

words which came in such starts and with such pauses, I could only

guess their meaning through my own identification with her shame and

grief.

"Calumny!--it cannot be!--so good--so thoughtful in his bringing up of

Claire--that day he pulled her aside lest she should stumble against

the little boy with the broken arm. It is a dream! a horrible dream!

He depraved? he a buyer of poison?--no, no, no, not _he_, but the evil

spirit that sometimes possesses him. Leighton Gillespie in his true

hours is a man to confide in, to regard with honour, to--to--to----"

I no longer made an effort at listening. She was not addressing me,

but her own soul, with which for the moment she stood apart in the

great loneliness which an overwhelming catastrophe creates. She did

not even remember my presence, and I did not dare recall it to her. I

simply let her lose herself in her own grief, while I fought my own

battle, and, as I hope, won my own victory. But this could not last;

she suddenly awoke to the nearness of listening ears, and, flushing

deeply, ceased the broken flow of words which had so worn upon my

heart, and, regaining some of her lost composure, forcibly declared:

"You are an honest man, Mr. Outhwaite, and, I am told, a reliable

lawyer. You have too much feeling and judgment to malign a man already

labouring under the accusation which unites this whole family in one

cloud of suspicion. Tell me, then, do you positively know Leighton to

have done what you say?"

"Alas!" was my short but suggestive reply.

Instantly she ceased to struggle, and with a calmness hardly to be

expected from her after such a display of feeling, she surveyed me

earnestly for a moment, then said:

"Tell me the whole story. I have a reason for hearing it, a reason

which you would approve. Let me hear what you learned, what you saw.

It is not to be found in the papers. I have only found there a general

allusion to him calculated to prepare the mind for some great

disclosure to-morrow--" And her hand tightened upon the sheet which I

now discovered to be the one morning journal I had failed to see. "You

will pay no attention to my feelings--I have none--we are sitting in

court--let me hear."

Respecting her emotion, respecting the attitude in which she had

placed me, I did as she requested. With all the succinctness possible,

I told her how I had been led to go to Mother Merry's and what I had

discovered there. Then I related what we had learned from Rosenthal.

The narrative was long, and gave me ample opportunity for studying its

effect upon her.

But she made no betrayal of her feelings; perhaps, as she had said,

she had none at this moment. With her hand clenched on her knee, she

sat listening so intently that all her other faculties seemed to have

been suspended for this purpose; only, as I approached the end, I

noticed that the grey shadow which had hung over her from the first

had deepened to a pall beneath which the last vestige of her abounding

youth had vanished.

My own heart grew heavy as the gladness left hers, and I was nearly as

desolate as she when I made this final remark:

"That is all, Miss Meredith. I as truly believe that Leighton

Gillespie bought the bottle of poison from the girl he called

Mille-fleurs as if I had seen him laying the money down before her.

But Rosenthal's admissions you must take at your own valuation. He

says he saw your uncle, with backward looks and signs of secret fear

and disturbance, pour out something from a glass on to the grass-plot

underneath his open window. Was it the wine which had been given him

by Leighton, and did he do this because of the drug he had detected in

it?--a drug, alas! so fatal, it was not necessary for him to drink the

full glass in order to succumb to it? That is a question you must

answer in your mind from the knowledge you have of your uncle and his

family."

There was a hope held out in this last phrase which I expected to see

her embrace. But she did not; on the contrary, her depression remained

unchanged and she said:

"I knew my uncle well. He was a just man, and, in times of great

danger, a cool one. He would never have written for my eyes those four

words--'one of my sons'--unless some new fact had added certainty to

his former conviction. The drug was in the wine handed him by

Leighton; we must accept that fact whatever it may cost us."

Her calmness amazed me. For the last few minutes she seemed upborne by

some secret thought I could neither fathom nor understand.

But suddenly her old horror returned with the recurrence of some old

memory. "Then it was his hand that stole towards my uncle's glass in

the dark!" she cried; "that murderous, creeping hand, the vision of

which has haunted me night and day since I heard of it. Oh, horrible!

horrible! What a curse to fall upon a man! It is the work of the

arch-fiend. Poor Leighton! poor Leighton!" she cried in her agony.

Bowing her head, she sobbed bitterly, while I surveyed her in

amazement. I did not understand her. She seemed to be weeping for

Leighton, not for herself; at all events she did not show the

repulsion I expected from her in face of such monstrous depravity. Was

the fascination he exerted over her so great that she could not weigh

at their proper value characteristics so entirely evil? It did not

seem possible. Yet there she sat mourning for him, instead of crushing

the very thought of him out of her heart.

"I think I comprehend it all now," she finally whispered, half to

herself and half to me. "I have had the thought before; it has come

when that bewildering look of mad uneasiness has crossed his face and

he has left us to be gone days, sometimes weeks, without notice or

explanation. It is a strange idea, a secret, almost an uncanny, one;

but it is the only one that can explain a crime for which one and all

of my cousins seem to lack the inherent baseness. Dare I breathe it to

you? It may be the saving of Leighton, if true; God knows it is my

only excuse for clinging to him still."

"And you do cling to him still?" I asked, knowing what her answer

would be, but hoping against hope.

The look she gave recalled all her old beauty. Would that I might have

been the cause of it! or that a woman would love where she was loved

and not where her heart must encounter disgrace and bitter suffering.

"I cannot help doing so," she murmured. "He will soon need my aid, if

not my comfort; for I know what these horrible contradictions mean. I

understand them, understand him, and even the revolting crime of which

he may have been guilty. Hypocrisy does not explain it; depravity does

not explain it; his good acts are too real, the nobility of his nature

too unmistakable. Disease alone can account for it. He is the victim

of double consciousness, and he leads two lives--your own

expression--because the two hemispheres of his brain do not act in

unison. Wickedness is not his normal condition. His normal condition

is a noble one. By nature he is a God-fearing man, devoted to good

works and high thoughts. When he goes astray it is because the balance

of his faculties has been disturbed. This is no new thing to the

psychologist. You yourself have heard of men so afflicted. Leighton

Gillespie is one."

Was her own brain turned by her terror, anxiety, and wonder? Surely

she was either mad or playing with my common sense. But the calm

dignity of her manner proved that she had advanced this astonishing,

this fantastic explanation of Leighton Gillespie's contradictory

actions in good faith. Despair seized me at this proof of his

tenacious hold upon her, and I could not quite restrain a touch of

irony.

"You would make him out a sort of Jekyll and Hyde," I ventured. "Alas!

I fear the courts do not take into account the theories of the

romancer in their judgment of criminals."

The sarcasm passed unheeded. Growing more and more beautiful as her

earnestness increased, she said with simple confidence:

"Talk to Dr. Bennett; he has known my cousin almost from his birth.

Ask what these sudden changes mean in a man whose primal instincts

have always been good. Ask why this devoted father, this kind son,

suddenly loses himself, it may be at table, it may be while sitting

with his own child by the fire, and, deaf to all remonstrance, blind

to the most touching appeals of those about him, goes suddenly out and

does not come back till he can be himself again in the presence of his

family and under the eye of his friends. Previous to that awful

morning when my uncle unsealed to my eyes the horrible secret that

rested like a cloud over the household, I used to give another

explanation to these varying moods, and see in them a promise of more

personal hopes and an augury of my own future happiness; so easy is it

for a woman to deceive herself when she worships a man without fully

comprehending him. I thought--" Here her calm candour grew almost

heroic in the effort she made to impress me with the reasons she

cherished for her belief, "I thought he was jealous of George or angry

with Alfred, and was driven away by his fears of self-betrayal or his

dread of being led into making unworthy reprisals. But now I see that

it was his abnormal nature which had come into play, a nature of which

he may be ignorant when in full health, and for the manifestations of

which he may be no more responsible than we are for the vagaries we

commit in dreams."

"You have not read the latest discoveries in hypnotism," I rejoined.

"A man can be driven into no act for which he lacks the natural

instinct. But I do not want to be cruel, Miss Meredith. I am too

sincere in my desire to save you unnecessary pain and heartache. Since

you wish it, I will see Dr. Bennett, but----"

My smile seemed to unnerve her.

"But you do not think he will agree with me in my interpretation of

this crime and Leighton's connection with it?"

"I do not, Miss Meredith."

"Then," she cried, with a high look and a gleam of quiet resolve that

made me realise how small was my influence in face of her overpowering

love for this man, "God's will be done! I shall believe in what I have

said till he whom I have trusted is proved the heinous malefactor you

consider him. When that hour comes, I perish, killed by the greatest

shame that can overwhelm a woman. To love one who has never sought

your affection may cause the cheek to burn and the heart to recoil

upon itself; but to have given all one's youth and the most cherished

impulses of the heart to a man who is no more than a whited sepulchre

of deceit and revolting crime--that would be to sap life at its spring

and tear up the heart by its roots. Oh, Mr. Outhwaite, forgetting all

womanly delicacy, forgetting everything but your forbearance and the

confidence with which you inspire me, I have poured out my soul before

you. Prove to me that this man is good--moral in his instincts, I

mean, except when the evil spirit has a grip upon him--and I will

bless you as the saviour of my self-respect. But if you cannot,--"

here she turned pale and tottered,--"then do not expect me to survive.

I--I--could not."

The alternative was a bitter one. I did not see at that moment how she

could expect, still less how I could perform, such a miracle. But I

could not see her depart without some gleam of encouragement, and so I

told her that if the tide turned so as to free Alfred from suspicion

and land Leighton in the courts, I would embrace the opportunity thus

offered to do all that lay in my power to prove her theory a true one.

And with this understanding between us she went away, leaving me to

take up, with what courage I could, my own broken and disjointed

life.

XXIV

AN OLD CATASTROPHE IS RECALLED

This idea as advanced by Hope was fantastical to a degree; yet it made

its impression upon me and was still in my mind when I opened the

evening paper for the latest news concerning the Gillespie murder. The

first paragraph I encountered proved that I had not warned her an hour

too soon of Leighton Gillespie's position.

"Fresh disclosures in the Gillespie Poisoning Case. Leighton

Gillespie, long regarded as the most respectable and

hitherto best-esteemed son of the murdered man, discovered

to have been for years the owner, and at times the occupant,

of a little house in one of the Oranges, where, unknown to

the world at large----"

Here followed some open allusions to Mille-fleurs.

Other statements were added to this, among them a _resume_ of the

facts advanced to me the evening before by Rosenthal. At the end were

these lines:

"The District Attorney has the whole matter in charge, and

the public is promised some decided action to-morrow."

I folded the paper, put it in my pocket, and went directly to Dr.

Bennett's office.

I had not seen the good physician since the inquest, and naturally the

sight of his face recalled the strange and moving incidents which had

first brought us together. But I made no allusion to these past

experiences, and his first remark was wholly professional.

"I hope it is not as a patient I see you, Mr. Outhwaite?"

With a shake of the head I took out the newspaper I had been careful

to bring with me, and pointed out the paragraph concerning Leighton

and Mille-fleurs.

"Is this news to you?" I asked. "I make the inquiry solely in the

interests of Miss Meredith, who has hitherto had unbounded confidence

in this cousin."

He glanced at the lines, frowned, and then with a pained look,

replied:

"I do not believe this of Leighton. He of all Mr. Gillespie's sons is

the furthest removed from the suspicion connecting them with the crime

which has wrecked their good name. He is incapable of any serious

wrong-doing; incapable even of what these lines suggest. I have known

him from his birth."

I would gladly have left this kind-hearted physician in undisturbed

possession of this confidence, but the situation was too serious to

trifle with.

"He enjoys a good name," I allowed, "and has even been known to exert

himself in many acts of benevolence towards the unfortunate and the

suffering. But some natures, and they are frequently those from which

most is to be expected, have a reverse side, which will not bear the

scrutiny either of their friends or the world at large. Leighton

Gillespie has one of these natures. This story of the little house is

true."

The doctor, who was evidently heart and soul with this family, showed

a distress at this avowal which spoke well for the hold which this

especial member of it had upon his affections.

Seeing that, while not ready to question my word, he was anxious to

know the sources of my information, I was about to enter upon the

necessary explanations, when he forestalled me by saying:

"There have always been unexplained traits in this man. He stands

alone among the other members of the family. He has neither the social

qualities of George nor the luxurious tastes of Alfred. Nor is he like

his father. I, who knew his mother well, have no difficulty in

attributing to their correct source the religious tendencies which

form so distinct a part of his character. But the melancholy which

pervades his life is not an inheritance, but the result of nervous

shock incident upon an extreme grief in early life, and while I do not

profess to understand him or the many peculiarities to which his

father rightfully raised objection, I am positive that he will never

be found guilty of a depraved act. I am ready to stake my reputation

on it."

"You should talk with Miss Meredith," I suggested. "She believes, or

endeavours to believe, in him also. But even she finds herself forced

to accept the truth of this report. The facts favouring it are too

unmistakable. I can myself supply evidence enough to make his guilt in

this regard quite sure."

And, without preamble, I entered upon a detailed account of the

discoveries made by me at Mother Merry's. They were, as you well know,

convincing in their nature, and allowed but two conclusions to be

drawn. Either Leighton Gillespie was a monster of hypocrisy or he was

the victim of the mental derangement so fondly suggested by Hope.

This last explanation I left to the perspicacity of the trained

physician. Would he seize upon it as she did? Or would he fail to see

in these results any symptoms of the strange mental malady alluded to

by Hope? I watched him anxiously. Evidently no such explanation was

likely to suggest itself to him unaided. Indeed, his next words proved

how far any such conclusion was from his mind.

"You overwhelm me," said he. "It was hard enough to look upon George

or Alfred as capable of a crime so despicable, but Leighton!--I shall

have to readjust all my memories and all my fancied relations with

this family if _he_ is to be looked upon with suspicion. Then there is

Claire!"

"Pardon me," I ventured, in vague apology for an interruption which

seemed out of place from a stranger. "Have you looked upon Leighton as

a well man? You speak of a great grief----"

"The loss of his wife."

"I supposed so. Now, could this grief have disturbed the even balance

of his mind so as to make these abnormal developments possible? Did he

show the inconsistencies you mention prior to the event you speak of?

It might be well to inquire."

"Insanity?" he intimated. "Will that be the plea?"

"Do you think it can be advanced? He has not yet been arrested or even

openly accused, but I am confident he will be, and soon, and it is

well for his friends to be prepared."

"That is a question I cannot answer without serious thought," rejoined

the doctor, restlessly pacing the room. "Intimately as I have been

associated with him I have never for a moment felt myself called upon

to doubt his perfect sanity. Does Miss Meredith regard his

eccentricities in this light?"

"Miss Meredith's inherent belief in the goodness of this favourite

cousin leads her to give him the benefit of her doubts. She regards

him as a man cursed by recurrent aberrations of mind; in other words,

a victim of double consciousness."

"Hope does? What does she know about the nice distinctions governing

this peculiar condition? She must have brought all her imagination to

bear on the subject, to find such an excuse for his contradictory

actions. This argues a great partiality for him on her part. She must

be in love with Leighton."

I was silent.

The doctor's amazement was very genuine.

"Well, I never suspected her of any such preference. I have had an

idea at times that she favoured Alfred rather than George, but I never

thought of her being caught by Leighton's melancholy countenance and

eccentric ways. Well! women are an incomprehensible lot! The only

widower amongst the three! The only one not likely to be affected by

her partiality. But that's neither here nor there. It's her theory we

are interested in. A strange one! A very strange one!"

Suddenly he grew thoughtful. "But not an impossible one," was his

final comment. "The shock he sustained might account for almost

anything. Such restrained natures have great depths and are subject to

great reactions! I must study the case; I can give no offhand opinion

upon it. The contradictions observable in his conduct are not normal

and certainly show disease. What was the question you asked me?" he

suddenly inquired. "Whether he showed his present peculiarities prior

to the death of his wife? I don't think he did; really, I don't think

he did. He was reserved in his ways, unhappy, out of tune with his

father because that father failed to appreciate the daughter-in-law he

had foisted upon him, but he showed these feelings naturally and not

at all as he showed them later. Have you heard the current gossip

concerning his marriage?"

"Not at all, save that it was an unfortunate one and created, as you

say, a certain barrier between him and his father."

"Yes, it was an unfortunate one; the whole thing was unfortunate. So

much so that his friends felt a decided relief when young Mrs.

Gillespie died. But her husband regarded this loss as an irreparable

one; he was wrapped up in her when she was alive, and, as you now call

to mind, has never been the same man since her death. Perhaps it was

because he had no outlet for his grief. His father would not hear her

name mentioned, and little Claire was too young to even remember her

mother. Fortunately, perhaps."

The last words were said in his throat, and opened up a wide abyss of

possibilities into which I had not the curiosity to penetrate. I only

felt impelled to ask:

"Was her death attended with any unusual circumstance that you speak

of his sorrow as a shock?"

For reply he went to his desk, and after some fumbling brought out

several slips of paper, from among which he chose one which he passed

over to me.

"I have kept this account of a very tragic occurrence, for reasons you

will appreciate on reading it."

I took the slip and perused it. With no apology for its length, I

introduce it here. As you will see, it is an engineer's account of the

extraordinary accident which took place on the B., F. and D. road some

half-dozen years ago. It begins abruptly, the extract having been

closely clipped from the columns of the paper containing it:

[Illustration]

Big Hill is only twelve miles long and has a grade averaging

140 feet to the mile, and the principal part of the grade is

in spots. Six loaded cars made a train up this hill, and the

train of six cars was hauled and pushed up the grade by two

engines. My engine was stationed permanently on the hill,

and its duty was to couple to the back end of one of these

trains and help it up the grade.

At the top of the hill was a side-track called Acton, but no

telegraph operator was stationed there. At the foot of the

grade was Buckley, a telegraph office in the centre of a big

side-track system used for breaking up trains before sending

them up the grade in sections. Eight miles below Buckley was

an abandoned mining town named Campton. Here was a set of

side-tracks and switches and a dozen unoccupied miners'

shanties, while the disused telegraph office was occupied by

a one-legged pensioner of the company--a flagman--and his

nineteen-year-old daughter. Twelve miles further down the

line was Mountain Springs, now one of the foremost summer

resorts in the mountains, and even twenty years ago much

frequented by Eastern health-seekers. I explain this so that

you will readily understand what happened.

We had run No. 17 up the hill and were ordered on to the

side-track at Acton to get out of the way of No. 11, the

through train from the South that was coming North as a

double-header, and with a third big engine pushing her. No.

11 was a regular, but was making this trip as an excursion

train, and was made up of eight coaches, crowded with people

from Mountain Springs.

As the freight we were shoving came to a stand-still, my

fireman leaped to the ground and uncoupled the engine from

the last car, and I backed down over the switch and then ran

ahead on the side-track. While this was being done, a

brakeman had cut the train in front of the last two cars,

and the regular engine in front had started ahead with the

other cars towards the north switch to back the four cars in

on the spur.

As I shut off steam and centred the reverse lever I saw that

the two cars were moving slowly down the hill, and I watched

them only long enough to see the rear brakeman clamber up

the side-ladder and seize the brake-wheel. Then I tried the

water in the boiler, started the injector, and again glanced

at the cars. Evidently the brake on the first car was out of

order, as the cars were moving more rapidly, and the

brakeman was hastening towards the brake on the second car.

He grasped it and swung around, and nearly fell to the

ground. The brake-chain was broken, and there was nothing to

hold the cars.

In an instant the picture of an awful horror flashed before

my eyes. No. 11, crowded with passengers, was coming, and

those cars, running at terrific speed, would crash into the

train, carrying death and destruction to scores, if not

hundreds. The scene at the moment the realisation of the

impending disaster came over me is before me now as plainly

as on that day, nearly five years ago,--the moving cars, the

brakeman stumbling towards the side-ladder to descend, the

fireman, who was more than a little deaf, walking away

without seeing or hearing what had occurred, and, in his

place, a man (I had almost said a gentleman) standing by the

switch-staff and gazing towards the cars with eyes that

reflected the horror in my own; while thirty miles below, on

the line of the twisted, winding track, a faint blur of

smoke that told me No. 11 had left Mountain Springs.

Before the moving cars crossed the switch we all knew what

must be done. The man, who for all his good clothes, must

have been some fireman off duty, had thrown the switch, and

then, seeing that my own man was too far off to meet this

emergency, had swung himself on to the foot-board back of

the tank; and old 105 was in pursuit of the runaways.

The brakeman remained to close the switch and the stranger

was bracing himself to couple the engine to the swift-moving

cars when we should approach them.

No steam is ever used going down that hill; at the top of

the incline the throttle-valve is closed and the speed of

the train is controlled by the air-brake. But, as the

stranger who had boarded the engine took his stand on the

foot-board, I opened the throttle wide to give her a start,

then put on the air until I had her under control, and then

away we went. The runaway cars were fully one hundred yards

ahead as we crossed the switch, and were moving apparently

at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour with rapidly

increasing momentum. In sixty seconds old 105 was running

fifty miles an hour, and in thirty seconds more we were

close to the cars. I heard the voice of the man in front

shouting something, and knowing that it was to slow down in

order to approach the cars without a crash, I applied the

air. A slight jolt told me that the engine and car had come

together, and after waiting an instant to give my unknown

assistant time to drop the pin in place, I pulled the

air-valve to lessen the speed. As the engine slowed under

the pressure of the brake, I saw the cars glide away from

us. He had missed the coupling. Again engine and cars came

together and again I applied the air, with the same result.

We were running now at a speed of sixty or seventy miles an

hour, and when you consider that the track on the hill is

the crookedest ever surveyed by an engineer, cut up by deep

ravines and canyons, and leading along high precipices, you

can appreciate the danger of the run. Down the hill we

thundered, swinging through deep cuts and around sharp

curves, the engine swaying and swinging on her springs as if

struggling in an effort to dash herself into one of the

gorges lining the track. The engine was surrounded by

rolling clouds of dust, through which at times I caught

glimpses of the cars pitching and tossing like some

dismantled vessel in a storm at sea. I knew the cars might

jump the track at any moment and ditch the locomotive,

sending the fireman and myself to quick death; but we must

take the chances so long as there was a possibility of

stopping the runaways.

Again and again we tried to make the coupling, but failed

each time. I did not know, until all was over, the

difficulties which the stranger was experiencing. The

drawhead in the car was the old-fashioned single-link

bumper,--a man-killer we call it now,--and was so loose in

its socket that it had to be raised six or eight inches and

held in position while the link was being put in place. This

required two hands, and as he could not maintain his

position on the swaying foot-board without using one hand to

cling to the handrail, he could not get the link in place

and drop the pin through it.

By this time we were within three miles of Buckley. As the

locomotive and fleeting cars dashed across a trestle one

hundred feet high, I caught a glimpse of the little

telegraph shanty down in the valley, surrounded by a network

of rails. I opened the whistle and kept it shrieking until

we were within two hundred yards of Buckley, but no one

appeared on the station platform; and as we flashed past the

telegraph office the white face of the operator, his eyes

wide open with alarm and horror, appeared at the window for

the fraction of an instant.

As we dashed past the telegraph office the long arm of the

signal-board pointed down, and I thanked God that the next

block was still open, and that we had another chance for

life. We had eight miles of clear track and might yet

prevent a disaster. The only hope, however, was in catching

the runaway cars, as there was no telegraph office at

Campton and No. 11 had left Mountain Springs and was booming

towards us as fast as three big engines could send her, and

without a stop ahead.

We crossed the half-mile of side-tracks at Buckley so fast

that there was an unbroken rattle of clanking rails, and

swung around the point of the mountain and down the winding

track towards Campton. Over swaying bridges, through cuts,

old 105 jolted us along at the rate of seventy or eighty

miles an hour. In two minutes after crossing the yards at

Buckley we were within sight of Campton, nestling below us

in the valley. The man on the foot-board had been silent

seemingly for hours, and whether he was still at his post or

had fallen on the rails and been ground to pieces, I did not

know. I realised now that there was no longer a possibility

of stopping the cars by coupling to them, and what my hope

was, if I had any at all, I do not know; there was only a

mad determination to follow those runaway cars to the end

and die with the rest.

As the roofs of Campton came into view the whistle began to

sound again. Three miles below lay the half-deserted mining

camp; now I could see the rough board station, the red and

white switch targets, and the dark spots on the

mountain-side that marked the abandoned test-shafts. Then I

distinguished a form on the station platform, a slender form

in dark calico and wearing a sun-bonnet. The woman's back

was towards me, but I knew her to be Nettie Bascom, the

daughter of the one-legged flagman. It was ten seconds,

perhaps, before the girl heard the whistle; then she turned

slowly, looking an instant towards us, and, with a quick

spring, was at a switch-stand and had thrown the lever, and

the white of the target turned to red and we were safe. But

not so the passenger train. The cars had passed over the

switch before it could be turned, and in another moment the

sound of its bounding wheels, our own cries, and all the

other noises of the dreadful moment, were drowned by an

explosion that lifted old 105 off the rails and laid

everyone within sight insensible on the road. Those cars

which we had chased unavailingly for thirty miles or more

were laden with dynamite, and when they crashed into that

train----

Do you ask about the man who shared my peril, and all to so

little purpose? I can tell you nothing about him. Whether my

former conclusion was correct and he had been shaken from

his narrow hold into some ditch or gully, or whether he was

hurled to destruction at the time of the explosion, I cannot

say. I only know that I never saw him again alive or dead.

Below was added a line by the editor:

This is an offhand relation of the catastrophe in which Mrs.

Leighton Gillespie lost her life. She will be remembered by

New York aristocracy as the brilliant, if eccentric,

daughter-in-law of Archibald Gillespie, the

multi-millionaire.

I returned the slip to Dr. Bennett. The excitement of that wild ride

was upon me, and I seemed to have been present at the catastrophe it

was intended to avert.

"Mountain Springs is in the West, I judge. How came the Gillespies

there, and why was she the sole sufferer? Was he not on the train with

her?"

"That is one of the peculiar features of the affair. He was not on the

train, but he turned up at the wreck. Those who saw him there say that

he worked like a giant, nay, like a Titan, amongst those ghastly

ruins. Finally he found her. She was quite dead. After that he worked

no more. It is a story of unmitigated horror, and the agonies of that

awful finding might well leave an indelible impression on his brain."

"I am glad you recognise this possibility. The effect of such a scene,

even where no personal interests are involved, often leaves a man's

nerves in a shaken condition for years. Besides--forgive me if I press

my theory beyond all reason--another possibility has been suggested to

me by this engineer's tale. I will not broach it just yet, but inquire

first how Leighton Gillespie was able to reach the scene of the wreck

so quickly. Did he hasten down from the Springs, which seem to have

been some miles away, or was he in the vicinity of the accident when

it occurred?"

"That is a question I have never heard answered. But I long ago

concluded that he was not far from the place where the collision

occurred, for he was seen there as soon as the smoke lifted. Why, what

now? You seem moved--excited. Has any new idea been suggested to you?"

I exerted myself to speak calmly, but did not succeed.

"Yes," I cried, "a strange, a thrilling idea. What if the man who

shared this engineer's awful ride was Leighton Gillespie, and what if

he knew through all that headlong rush, that the wife he so much loved

was in the train he was risking his life to save from destruction?"

XXV

A SUMMONS

The doctor's emotion equalled mine.

"It may have been so," he admitted. "There was always some unexplained

mystery in connection with his presence at the wreck and the reticence

he maintained in regard to it. If what you suggest is true and he was

the man who shared the engineer's ride down those precipitous slopes

to the rescue of a train on which he knew his wife to be, it will be

easy enough for us to start a plea of mental derangement. No one could

go through such an adventure, with its overpowering excitement and

unspeakable suspense, without some injury to his mental or physical

health. But it is hard to conceive how Leighton Gillespie should have

been wandering on the mountain-side that day instead of taking the

excursion with his wife."

"I don't advance this explanation as a fact, only as a possibility," I

replied. "The shock of his wife's sudden death would be enough in

itself to change the man."

"Yes, and it did change him; to that I can swear."

"How long a time elapsed after this catastrophe before you saw him?"

"Just two days. He telegraphed for me, and I went West to assist him

in bringing home the remains of his young wife. I remember finding him

in a strained, nervous condition; this was natural enough; but his

worst symptoms disappeared after the funeral."

"Do you mind telling me where this funeral took place?"

"In a small place up the Hudson River, where the Gillespies have a

country home. Mr. Gillespie carried his feeling against his

daughter-in-law so far as not to wish to have her buried from his New

York house."

"I suppose so; another reason, perhaps, why Leighton has never

recovered from this blow. And little Claire? You have not mentioned

her. Was she with her parents when this disastrous event occurred?"

"She was but an infant, and from her very birth was given into the

charge of her grandfather. She never knew her mother."

It would have been a satisfaction to me to have learned the cause of

the determined hostility on the part of a man seemingly so just as Mr.

Gillespie; but the doctor gave me no encouragement in this direction,

and I merely said:

"We have made a start in case the necessity arises for proving him to

be no longer responsible for his actions. But only a start. The

direction taken by his mania is perilously like the excesses of a

discouraged and reckless man."

"I am not so sure of that. In his sane mind, Leighton Gillespie is a

great respecter of the rights of other people. I shall look into this

subject, Mr. Outhwaite; I shall look into it at once. A half-hour's

talk with him will satisfy me whether he is a victim of disease or the

prey of unbridled passions and murderous instincts."

The good doctor rose with every appearance of starting forth then and

there.

"But you have had no dinner," I suggested.

"I want none."

I accompanied the doctor out, but parted with him at the corner. I

would have given much for the privilege of going with him to the

Gillespie house, but as this was not to be thought of, I resolutely

turned towards my apartments, which were in quite a different

direction.

How was it, then, that by the time the lights began to be lit in the

streets I found myself circulating restlessly in the vicinity of the

very house I had determined to avoid? Had the exciting incidents of

the day been too much for me? It certainly looked so. Surely I had not

wandered hither through any act of my own volition or for any definite

purpose I could name. Yet now that I had been so led; now that I was

within sight of the house where so important an interview was going

on, I surely might be pardoned for taking advantage of this proximity

to note the doctor when he came out and see, if possible, from his

manner and bearing the result of a visit upon which such serious

issues hung.

It had threatened storm all day, and during the last few minutes the

atmosphere had become permeated with a drizzle which made further

tramping over wet pavements undesirable. I therefore looked about for

refuge, and perceiving a building in process of construction on the

opposite side of the way, I glided amid its shadows, happy both at the

protection it offered and the full view it gave me of the Gillespie

front door.

That this was the act of one bent on espionage I am ready to

acknowledge, but it was espionage undertaken in a good cause and for

justifiable reasons. At all events I was engaged in inwardly

persuading myself to this effect, when an event occurred which drew my

attention from myself and fixed it with renewed interest on the door I

was watching.

A boy of whose proximity I had had some previous intimation suddenly

darted out from the space behind me, and went flying across the street

to the Gillespie house. He had a missive in his hand, and seemed

anxious lest he should be caught and stopped.

This roused my curiosity, so that no detail of what followed escaped

me. I noted the furtive way in which he thrust the letter into the

unwilling hand of the old butler, who answered his frightened ring at

the bell. Also the misgiving shake of the head with which the latter

received it, and the doubtful looks they both cast at someone back in

the hall. Who was this someone, and what lay behind old Hewson's

agitated demeanour? The door closed on my curiosity, and I was left to

ponder this new event. But not for long; scarcely had my eyes returned

from following the escaping figure of the boy, when the door on the

opposite side of the street unclosed again and Dr. Bennett came out.

Now, as I have taken pains to say, I had posted myself there in order

to note how this gentleman looked on leaving Leighton Gillespie. But

now that this opportunity had come, I not only failed to avail myself

of it, but found my whole attention caught and my interest fully

absorbed by a glimpse I had received of the latter gentleman standing

back in the hall reading the letter I had just seen delivered in such

a surreptitious manner.

His attitude, the gestures he unconsciously made, argued sudden and

overwhelming emotion, an emotion so sudden and overwhelming that he

could not conceal it, though he evidently would have been glad to do

so, judging from the haste with which he thrust the letter in his

pocket and turned--But here the door closed, as frequently happens at

critical moments, and I found my eyes resting upon nothing more

exciting than the figure of the doctor feeling his way with due care

down the damp steps.

Had I not been witness both to the peculiar actions of the urchin who

brought this letter, and to the strange manner in which Leighton

received it, I might not have considered it decorous to make my

presence known to the doctor at a moment and in a place so suggestive

of a watch upon his movements. But as everything affecting Leighton

was as interesting to this, his best friend, as it was to me, I

crossed the street, and, with scant apology for the seeming intrusion,

told the good doctor what had just come under my observation.

He seemed surprised, if not affected, by what I had to say. He had

seen no letter and no evidences of disorder on the part of Leighton.

To be sure, he had left before any letter had been received.

"Indeed, you astonish me," he declared. "Seldom have I seen my young

friend in a more equable frame of mind. He talked evenly and with

discretion about the most exciting subjects; and, though I could wish

him to have been more open, he showed a self-control hardly to be

expected from a man placed in such a disturbing situation. The

detective, who appeared to have full range of the house, hardly looked

our way once. The letter which you say he received just as I left him

must have contained very agitating news. I wonder if we will ever know

what."

"Were you able to settle in your own mind the question just now raised

between us at your office?" I asked, after a momentary silence. "It

may not be in order for me to ask, and you may not feel at all ready

to answer me. If so, do not hesitate to rebuke my importunity, which

springs entirely from my excessive interest in the matter."

"I will the more readily excuse you," was his reply, "because my

answer must dash your client's hopes. Leighton Gillespie is not a

victim of double consciousness. If he were, he would not remember in

one state what passes in the other. Now, he does remember. Though he

gives no explanation of what allures him into haunts so out of keeping

with his usual associations, I caught the glint in his eye when I

mentioned certain names. Leighton cannot deceive me. Moreover, Mr.

Outhwaite, I cannot professionally state that in my opinion he is

otherwise than completely sane, notwithstanding the tragic experience

he once went through. I say tragic, because the surmise you indulged

in concerning him was true. He was the man who flung himself upon the

foot-rail of that plunging engine. He acknowledged it to me just now,

and acknowledged, also, that he knew that those cars contained

dynamite. A great and wonderful act for a man who had had no

experience outside the club-room and the gymnasium."

"I respect heroism wherever I meet it," said I, slightly lifting my

hat.

"And I," echoed the doctor; then as we turned down the street; "I do

not comprehend Leighton or what has led him into this course of

duplicity if not crime. A hero at one period of his life; a scamp, if

not worse, at another! What are we to think of the man whose nature

admits such contradictions! What are we to think of human nature

itself! I declare I am sometimes baffled by its operations, and

heartily wish that in this present instance I could ascribe them to an

unsound mental condition."

I had no answer for this ebullition of feeling, so walked on silently

till our ways divided. As he turned towards home, I took the shortest

route to my apartments. But before entering them I dined in the cafe

below, so that it was eight o'clock at least before I mounted to my

rooms.

A man was sitting on the stairs waiting for me. As I stooped to unlock

my door, he made known his errand. He was an officer in plain clothes,

and he came to tell me that I was wanted at the earliest possible

moment at the District Attorney's office.

XXVI

FERRY LIGHTS

There could be but one reason for this message from the District

Attorney. I had identified myself too closely with the Gillespie case

not to have attracted the notice of the police. I was about to be

called upon to explain; and, while I shrank from the task, I could not

but acknowledge to myself that the time for such explanations had

come; that the burden then weighing upon me was too heavy to be borne

any longer unassisted.

But the explanations I have thus alluded to would cost me Hope. Never

would she forget through whose instrumentality the man she loved had

been betrayed to his doom.

It was now raining hard, and the chill which this gave to the

atmosphere was sensibly felt by us both as we stepped out into the

air. At the suggestion of the officer accompanying me, I had provided

myself with a heavy overcoat. It stood me in good stead that night,

much more so than I had any reason for anticipating when I donned it.

The ride down-town was hurried and without incident. I entered the

District Attorney's office about nine o'clock, and found him in close

conversation with Mr. Gryce. Both showed relief at seeing me. This

did not add to my satisfaction, and when the detective rose and I

noticed his composed aspect and the somewhat startling fact that the

wrinkle which I had so long observed between his brows had entirely

disappeared, I experienced a strange sensation of dread only to be

accounted for by the delicate nature of the sympathy which bound me to

Hope Meredith. For the moment I was Leighton Gillespie, conscious of

guilt and quailing under the quiet eye of this old detective.

This sensation, odd and thrilling as it was, did not cease with the

first sight of this man. It followed me with more or less insistence

through the whole of this memorable night, occasioning me, I have no

doubt, a more poignant anguish and a more intolerable share in the

grief and suspense of the woman most affected than Leighton Gillespie

himself would have felt or did feel when the whole power of the law

was brought to bear upon him.

But these feelings, with all their sub-consciousness of another's

suffering, did not interfere with my outward composure; and I may here

remark in passing that I learned a lesson from this experience which

has proved of great use to me in my profession. However true it may be

that sudden shock reveals the hidden motions of the heart, it is also

true that a man, if he is a man, may be the victim of the keenest

internal struggle without abating a jot of his natural manner, or

showing by look or gesture the wild contention raging within him. This

I have learned, and I no longer gauge a man's internal sensations by

his outward appearance.

The District Attorney was not slow in making me understand what he

wanted of me.

After the necessary civilities had passed, he told me bluntly that he

had heard of my visit to Mother Merry's and of the conversation I had

held there with a young woman against whom a warrant of arrest had for

some time been made out. As by this interview I had been rendered

competent to identify her, would I be good enough to accompany the

officers who were about to attempt her arrest? A failure in seizing

the right girl would at this stage of the affair be fatal to the

successful progress of the important matter at present engaging them.

What could I say? My position at the best required explanation, and

any hesitation I might show towards aiding the police in their

legitimate task, might easily be construed not only to my own

disadvantage, but to that of the man in whose behalf I showed

resistance. Indeed, there was nothing left for me but acquiescence,

hard and uncongenial as I found it.

"I am at your service," I returned. "But, first, I should like to

explain----"

"Pardon me," interposed the District Attorney. "Explanations will come

later. Mr. Gryce says he has no time to lose, the woman being a very

restless one and liable at any moment to flit. Her name is

Mille-fleurs; or, rather, that is the name by which she is known on

the police books. You have seen her, and have only to follow Mr.

Gryce; he will explain the rest."

I bowed my acquiescence, and joined the old detective at the door.

"It will be a rough night," that venerable official remarked, with a

keen glance at my outfit. And with just this hint as to what was

before us, he stepped out into the street, where I hastily followed

him.

We did not carry umbrellas, Mr. Gryce looking upon them as a useless

encumbrance; and as I waited there in the wet while my companion

exchanged some words with a man who had stepped up to him, I marvelled

at the impassibility of this old man and the astonishing vigour he

showed in face of what most young and able-bodied men would consider

the disadvantages of the occasion. Short as was the whispered

conference, it seemed to infuse fresh life into the rheumatic limbs I

had frequently seen limping along in much more favourable weather, and

it was with a gesture of decided satisfaction he now led the way to a

cab I had already seen dimly outlined through the mist which now

enveloped everything in sight.

"We shall have to cross the city," he announced, as he followed me

inside. "It's a bad night and gives promise of being worse. But you

are young, and I--well, I have been younger, but, young or old, have

always managed so far to be in at the finish."

"It is the finish, then?" I ventured, with that sinking of the heart

Leighton might have felt had he heard his own doom thus foreshadowed.

The old detective smoothed out the lap-robe he had drawn over his

knees.

"There is reason to think so, unless some mistake or unforeseen

misfortune robs us of success at the moment of expected triumph. Is

your interest a friendly or a professional one? The affair is one

which warrants either."

It was a question I was surely entitled to evade. But I had already

decided to be frank in my explanations to the District Attorney, and

why not with the man most in his confidence?

"I am a friend of Miss Meredith," said I; "in other words, her lawyer.

She is more than a friend to the Gillespies, as her relationship

demands. To serve her interests I have meddled more in this matter

than was perhaps judicious. I was anxious to prove to her that her

cousins' lives would bear scrutiny."

"I see, and discovered that one of them, at least, would not. Poor

girl! she has my sympathy. You are without doubt a man we can rely on,

no matter into what complexities our errand takes us?"

"I don't know; I have never undergone any great test. I am willing to

assist you in the identification of this girl; but I would rather not

be present at her arrest."

We were crossing Broadway. He looked out, gave one rapid glance up and

down the busy street,--busy even at that hour and in the wet,--and

quietly remarked:

"Or at his, I suppose?"

The jolting of the cab over the car-tracks struck my nerves as his

question did my heart. To this day I never cross a street track in a

carriage, but the double anguish of that moment comes back; also the

mist of lights which dazzled down the long perspective as I cast a

glance through the dripping windows.

"His?" I repeated, as soon as I could trust my voice.

"Yes, Leighton Gillespie's. We expect to take him to-night in her

company," he added.

That last phrase startled me.

"You are going to take him in the presence of Mille-fleurs!" I

exclaimed. "Why, I saw him an hour ago standing in his own hall in

Fifth Avenue."

"No doubt, but if you have made a study of Mr. Gillespie's habits, you

have learned that he is given to sudden sallies from his home. He will

be found, I assure you, in the same house as Mille-fleurs. I hope we

may make no mistakes in locating this house correctly. I hardly think

we shall. The men I have chosen for the job are both keen and

reliable; besides, for a gentleman of his antecedents, Mr. Gillespie

shows a startling indifference to the result of his peculiar

escapades. A strange man, Mr. Outhwaite."

"Very," I ejaculated abstractedly enough. My thoughts were with a

possibility suggested by his words. Pursuing it, I said, "The letter I

saw Mr. Gillespie read was from her, then? I noticed that it caused

him great agitation, even from where I stood on the other side of the

street."

The old detective smiled instinctively at my reckless betrayal of the

part I had played in this scene, but made no reference to the fact

itself, possibly because he was as well acquainted with my movements

as I was myself. He only gave utterance to an easy-toned, "Exactly!"

which seemed not only to settle this matter, but some others then

inflaming my curiosity.

"We have been waiting a long time for some such communication to pass

between them," he presently resumed, with a benevolent condescension,

springing, perhaps, from our close contact in that jolting cab.

"Otherwise, we should have taken him to-day, and in his own house. We

have had great difficulty in holding the reporters back and even in

keeping our own men quiet. It was desirable, you see, to take them

together."

"And couldn't she be found? Wasn't she at Mother Merry's?"

"Not lately. No one answering to her description has shown up there

for days. She seems to have fled from that place, alarmed, no doubt,

by the interest shown in her by the young gentleman who got speech

with her at the cost of a couple of silver dollars."

I began to note the corners as we passed them.

"Then we are not going to Mother Merry's?" I observed.

"No, we are not going to Mother Merry's."

"Yet we are not far from the docks," I remarked, as I caught

transitory glimpses of the unmistakable green and red lights of the

ferry-boats shining mistily on the left.

"No, our errand takes us in the region of her old haunts. I hope you

feel no concern as to your safety?"

"Concern?"

"Oh, there's cause enough, or would be, if we were not in force. But

our preparations have been made very carefully, and you can trust us

to bring you out all right."

I signified my entire satisfaction. The prospect of physical struggle

or some open adventure was welcome to me. My inner excitement would

thus find vent.

"Do not bother about me," said I. "What I dread most is the

possibility of meeting that unhappy woman's eye. Seeing me with you,

she may think I have betrayed her. And perhaps I have; but it was done

without intention. She did not strike me as a wicked woman."

"So much the less excuse for the man who has made her his accomplice,"

came in quiet rejoinder.

This ended our conversation for the time.

We were now making our way up-town through upper West Street. As I

came to what I knew must be Canal Street from the cars that went

jingling across our path, the difficulties of advance became more

marked, and finally the cab stopped.

"What is going on here?" I asked, as carriage after carriage rolled

into our course, till the street was blocked and we found it

impossible to proceed.

"It's a Cunarder going out. The tide sets late to-night."

Here a coach, with a sweet-faced girl, drew up along-side us. I could

see her happy smile, her air of busy interest, as she bent her head to

catch a glimpse of the steamer upon which she was perhaps about to

take her first voyage abroad. I could even hear her laugh. The

sensation was poignant. Wrapt up in the thought of Hope, whom I had

not forgotten for one moment during this wild ride, the sight of joy

which might never again be hers came like a glimpse into another

sphere, so far removed did I feel from everything bespeaking the

ordinary interests of life, much less its extraordinary pleasures and

anticipations.

Mr. Gryce in the meantime was fuming over the delay.

"We might better have come up ---- Street," he said. "Ah! that's

better. We will arrive at our destination now in less than ten

minutes."

We had passed the Cunarder's wharf, and were now rolling rapidly

northward.

Suddenly the cab stopped.

"Again?" I cried.

Mr. Gryce replied by stepping out upon the sidewalk.

"We alight here," said he.

I rapidly followed him.

The rain dashing in my face blinded me for a moment; then I perceived

that we were standing on a corner in front of a saloon, and that Mr.

Gryce was talking very earnestly to two men who seemed to have sprung

up from nowhere. When he had finished with what he had to say to them,

he turned to me.

"Sorry, sir, but we shall have to walk the rest of the way. There are

alleys to explore, and a cab attracts attention."

"It's all one to me," I muttered; and it was.

He turned east and I followed him. At the first crossing, a man glided

into our wake; at the second, another. Soon there were three men

sauntering behind us at a convenient distance apart. Each held a

policeman's club under his coat; and walked as if the rain had no

power to wet him. Suddenly I felt myself wheeled into an alley-way.

It was pouring now, and even the street lamps shone through a veil of

mist, which made them all look like stars. The alley was dark, for

there were no lamps there; only at the remote end a distant glimmer

shone. It came from the murky panes of some shop or saloon.

Towards this light we moved.

XXVII

RAIN

Suddenly the figure of a man stepped out before us. It was too dark to

see his face, but his voice had a familiar sound as he said:

"It's all right. He's there. I saw him go in a half-hour ago."

"Very good. My man, Sweetwater," explained Mr. Gryce, turning for an

instant towards me; then, in hurried tones to the other, "Do you know

on which floor he is to be found; and whether the man at the bar

suspects what's up?"

"If he does, he's pretty quiet about it. All looks natural inside. But

you can't tell what whispers have gone about. As for him, he's chosen

his place with his usual indifference to consequences. He's in one of

the attic rooms, sir, well back, and can be reached from the outside

by means of a shed that slopes up almost to the window-ledge. If he

wanted to escape, he could easily do so by a drop of only four feet.

But I have left a man on watch there and our young gentleman would

fall into arms that wouldn't let him go in a hurry. Will you come

around that way? There's a light in the window and there's neither

curtain nor shade to hinder a man's looking in. If you wish, I can

crawl up on the roof I spoke of and take a peep at our doves before

we venture upon disturbing them."

"It can do no harm," rejoined the older detective; "and if the girl is

where she can be seen, this gentleman can go up afterwards and

identify her. It will mean surer and quieter work than approaching

them by the stairway. The house is full, I suppose?"

"Chuck." And with this characteristic word Sweetwater melted from

before us as if he had been caught up in one of the swirls of wind and

rain that ever and anon swept through the alley, dashing our faces

with wet and making our feet unsteady on the slippery pavement.

I began to feel strange and unlike myself. The night, the storm, the

uncongenial place, our more than uncongenial errand, were having their

effect, lending to that dark entrance into one of the worst corners of

our great city a sense of mysterious awe which has caused it to remain

in my memory as something quite out of the ordinary experiences of

life. It was not a long alley, and we soon reached the light I have

mentioned. We could hear voices now, loud voices raised one moment in

contention, the next in drunken cheer; and, thrilling through it all,

a woman's tones singing some bewildering melody. It was not the voice

of Mille-fleurs. I could never have mistaken that--but it was a young

voice, and did not lack sweetness in the low notes. As I was listening

to it, something flew flapping into my face. It was a piece of damp

paper peeled from some billboard by a wandering gust and sent

scurrying through the air. I tore it away from my eyes, drawing a

deep breath like a person suddenly released from suffocation; but I

shall not soon forget the effect of that cold slap in the face at the

moment when my every nerve was on tension. Mr. Gryce, who had seen

nothing,--it was hardly possible to see in the deluge which now swept

down upon us,--gave me a pull which drew me from before the swinging

door I was unconsciously making for, into a corner where I found

myself more or less shielded from the wind if not from the rain. The

alley had an L, and leading down from this L was a narrow passage,

within which we now stood, surrounded by reeking walls and facing

(whenever the fury of the storm abated sufficiently for us to look up)

an opening into what might be called a labyrinth of back-yards. As I

was bracing myself to meet all alarms, real or imaginary, associated

with this noisome place, I beheld a sudden figure emerge from the

opening and hastily approach us. It was Sweetwater again. He had just

descended from his clamber over the roofs, where he seemed to be as

much at home as a cat.

"Lucky that it rains so," he panted; "keeps the kids in. Otherwise

some of us would have been spotted long ago. There are about fifty of

them in this one house." Then I heard him whisper in the ear that was

necessarily very near mine:

"It's all right up there. I can see his figure plainly. He's sitting

with his back to the window, but there's no mistaking Leighton

Gillespie. He's in dinner dress, just as he came from his own table in

Fifth Avenue. The girl----"

"Well, what of the girl?"

"Is in one of her heavy sleeps. I could not see her face, only her

hair, which hung all about her----"

"I would know her hair," I put in.

The two men drew a step aside and whispered together. Then Mr. Gryce

came back, and, putting his mouth to my ear, asked if I had enough

agility to mount the shed as Sweetwater had done. "He says the wood is

slippery, but the climb up quite practicable for an agile man. He had

no difficulty, and if you will catch hold of the window-casings as you

go along----"

"Let me see the place," said I.

Sweetwater at once drew me down the passage into the open place in the

rear. Here wind and storm had their will again, and for a moment I

could neither hear nor see anything but a vast expanse of hollow

darkness, lit here and there with misty lights, and reverberating with

all sorts of sounds, among which the shrieking wind wailed longest and

most furiously.

"Up there!" called a voice in my ear, and then I became aware of an

arm pointing over my shoulder towards a dark incline running up over a

flight of stairs, upon the lower step of which I had almost stumbled.

"That's your road. Can you take it?"

Jamming my hat over my head, I looked up. A lighted square met my eyes

in the blank side of the wall, against which this none too desirable

road, as he called it, ran up.

"The window is wide open," said I.

"As you see," said he.

"I shall make a noise; he will hear me----"

"He didn't hear _me_----"

"That's no proof he won't hear _me_. But I forget the gale, and that

sound--what is it?"

"Tin cans rattling; loose in some gutter, I suppose----"

"It is infernal." Then with sudden resolution--a resolution I hardly

understand, for I certainly did not feel called upon to risk either

self-respect or safety in this cause--I cried out: "I'll try for it;

though it's long since I put my agility to the proof. But how am I to

get onto the roof?"

For reply, Sweetwater uttered a low but peculiar call, and a shadow

near by became a man.

"Lend your back to this gentleman," said he; and as I took advantage

of the assistance thus afforded me and worked my way up onto the ledge

over his head, he softly added:

"Catch hold of everything that offers, and be careful your feet don't

slip. When you're up, give one look and come down. We will be on hand

to catch you when you get to the edge of the roof."

The rain was dripping from my hat to such an extent that it nearly

blinded me. I tore it off and flung it at their feet; then I started

on my perilous climb.

[Illustration: "IN TWO MINUTES I WAS UNDER THAT OPEN WINDOW"]

It was a difficult one, but not so difficult as I had expected; and in

two minutes I was under that open window. A tangle of ropes struck my

head--clothes-lines, I suppose. Laying hold of them, I steadied myself

before looking in. As I did so, a consciousness of my position made

the moment a bewildering one. I thought of Hope and what her

surprise would be could she see me in my present situation on the peak

of this sloping roof, thirty feet above the ground. Hope! the word

brought resolution also. I would look in upon this man with eyes

schooled to their duty, but unsharpened by hate. If there was

forbearance due him, I would try and exercise that forbearance,

remembering always that he was an object of affection to the woman I

loved.

Was this why I, for the first time, saw him as he may have looked to

her and probably did? He was seated in such a way that only his

profile was visible beyond the casing around which I peered. But that

profile struck me forcibly, and, forgetting my errand, I allowed

myself a moment's study of the face I had never rightly seen till

then.

I was astonished at the result; astonished at the effect it had upon

me. Leighton Gillespie seen with his brothers was not the Leighton

Gillespie I looked upon now. Beheld thus by himself he was an

impressive figure. Lacking George's height and Alfred's regularity of

feature he was apt to be regarded by superficial or prejudiced

observers as the one plain man in an exceptionally handsome family.

But I saw now that this was not so. He had attractions of his own

which could bear comparison with those of most other men; and,

relieved from too close comparison with these two conspicuous

personalities, the traits of his dark, melancholy countenance came

out, and in the regard of his sad and preoccupied eye was felt a charm

which might have ripened into fascination had no dark secret

beclouded their depths or interfered with the natural expression of

feelings that must once have been both natural and spontaneous. Had he

been more fortunate in his tastes or more able to put restraint upon

his passions, he might, with that eye and smile, have been one of

those men whose influence baffles the insight of the psychologist, and

from whose magnetic personality spring innumerable benefits to those

of his day and generation.

All this was forcibly impressed upon me as I knelt in the pouring

rain, looking in upon his face at this momentous crisis of his life,

and, had I known it, of my own also.

I had feared to advance my head too far lest he should be attracted by

the movement and so detect my presence at the window. Consequently I

had seen as yet nothing of Mille-fleurs, and but little of the room.

This would not do, and I was just preparing to extend my view further

when the face I was watching sank forward out of sight and a groan

came to my ears so thrilling and heartbroken that my own heart stopped

beating in my bewilderment and surprise. From whose lips had this

expression of anguish sprung? From hers? It had not sounded like a

woman's voice. Could it be----

Again! What could it--did it, mean? Had Leighton Gillespie received

some warning of the fate which at this moment hung over him, and was

it his voice I heard lifted in these heartbroken accents? I was

willing to risk everything to see. Thrusting my head forward, I looked

boldly into the room, and momentary as the glance was, or seemed to

be, I have never forgotten the dolorous and awe-compelling picture

upon which it fell.

By the light of a guttering candle, whose blowing flame threatened

every minute to go out, I saw a wretched pallet drawn up against a

dirty and mouldering wall. On this pallet lay a woman, with just a

ragged counterpane covering limbs I had so lately seen moving in

rhythmical measure. Her hair--those bewildering curls, the like of

which I had never before seen and would never see again, lay about her

wherever those faded rags failed to reach. It hid her arms, it framed

her temples, and, flowing away, coiled in great masses over the side

of that pallet and onto the floor it seemed to richen with its wealth.

But it did not hide her face. Either she had moved or her locks had

been drawn aside since Sweetwater crouched in my place, for now her

features were plainly visible and in those features I had no

difficulty in recognising--Mille-fleurs.

Beside her, and drawn up so close that the rich broadcloth of his

sleeve brushed the foul bed and lost itself among those overflowing

curls, sat Leighton Gillespie, with his head in his hands, weeping as

a man weeps but once in a lifetime.

There was no mistaking that grief. Real heart agony cannot be

simulated; and, touched with awe for what I could not understand, I

was about to slip away from my post, when he gave an impetuous start,

roused himself, and glanced in sudden anger towards a door set in the

wall directly opposite me. Another instant he was on his feet, with

his hands held out across the prostrate figure before him, in an

attitude of jealous love such as I have never seen equalled. What had

he seen or heard? The door was closed, yet he seemed to fear

intrusion. Whose? Not mine, for his eyes did not turn towards the

window, but remained fixed upon this door. Had the sound of steps

reached him from the hall? Probably, for, as I watched the door with

him, I beheld the knob turn, then the door itself open, slowly at

first, then more quickly, till it suddenly fell back, disclosing the

quiet form and composed countenance of the old detective I had left

behind me in the dark corner of the passage at the side of the house.

At the same instant a voice whispered from over my shoulder into my

ear:

"Lie still; or slip silently down to the officers stationed below. You

were so long that Mr. Gryce became impatient."

Up till then I had supposed that only a moment had elapsed since I

first looked in.

"I will stay," I whispered back. I saw that Leighton was about to

speak.

"Who are you?" I heard him demand of the intruder, in a passion so

great he failed to note the identity of the man he thus accosted. "I

have a right to this room. I have paid for it--Ah!" He had just

recognised the detective.

With a quick turn he drew the coverlet over the face he seemed to

guard so jealously, then with an air of command, which was at once

solemn and peremptory, he pointed to the hat which naturally rested on

Mr. Gryce's head, and said:

"Respect for the dead! You will uncover, Mr. Gryce."

"The dead?" repeated the astonished detective, striding hurriedly into

the room. "The dead? Is this girl dead?"

But his doubt, if doubt it were, disappeared before the look with

which Leighton Gillespie regarded him.

"Dead!" that gentleman declared. Then as Mr. Gryce instinctively bared

his head, this strange, this incomprehensible man advanced a step, and

in tones inconceivably touching and dignified, added this short

sentence:

"To respect her is to respect me; this woman is my wife."

XXVIII

BY THE LIGHT OF A GUTTERING CANDLE

My amazement was unaffected, and so overwhelming I hardly understood

myself. His wife, Mille-fleurs! Alas, then, for Hope, who, in her

unthinking if generous love for this man, was prepared for any other

grief than this! Yet why "alas"? Had she not told me that her greatest

wish, her supreme desire, was to see his character restored to its old

standing in her eyes, and had he not at this moment cleared himself of

the one sin her womanly heart would find it hardest to pardon? The cry

of "poor Hope!" with which my heart was charged changed to "happy

Hope," and my composure, which had been sadly shaken, was slowly

returning, when the insoluable mystery of the situation absorbed me

again, and I glanced at Mr. Gryce to see how he had been affected by

Mr. Gillespie's announcement.

This aged detective, who, when I last looked his way, was standing

alone in the doorway, now had Sweetwater at his side,--that agile

young man having bounded into the room before the words which had made

so great a change in the situation had fully left Mr. Gillespie's

lips; and the contrast of expression as seen in the two faces was

noticeable. Sweetwater, young in experience, young in feeling,

reflected in look and attitude the sensations of awakening sympathy

and interest with which I own my own breast was full, while the older

detective, with characteristic prudence, withheld his judgment, and,

consequently, his sympathy, for the explanations which such an avowal

from such a man certainly demanded.

Indeed, the situation might very naturally suggest to one so

accustomed to the seamy side of human nature, that this sudden demise

of an inconvenient witness chimed in too opportunely with the need of

the man he had come there to arrest, for it to be viewed without

suspicion.

There was, however, only a tinge of this feeling in his voice as he

quietly remarked:

"I thought you buried your _wife_ five years ago in Cornwall."

"And I thought so also," was Leighton Gillespie's quiet reply. "For

many, many wretched weeks and months I believed this in common with

all my friends. Then--but it is a long story, Mr. Gryce. Do you

require me to relate it now and _here_?"

The reverence with which he allowed his hand to touch rather than fall

on the breast he had so carefully covered from our curious gaze spoke

volumes. At the sight of this simple action, both men bent their

heads. I doubt if he noticed it. A stray lock which had escaped from

the coverlet and now hung curling and glittering over the straw which

protruded from the wretched pallet, had attracted his eye. Lifting it

with a lingering touch, he put it softly out of sight; then he quietly

said:

"I would like to have one fact made known to the public. My father was

ignorant to the last that it was a stranger and not my wife we buried

in Cornwall. There were reasons which made it difficult for me to tell

him that Mrs. Gillespie still lived; and while I make no excuses for

the silence I maintained towards him on this subject, I acknowledge

that to it are due my present position and the misery I am now under

of seeing the darling of my heart die in an attic where I would not

house a dog."

The accents of heartfelt sorrow are not to be mistaken. The air of

severity with which Mr. Gryce had hitherto surveyed this supposed

criminal softened into a look more in keeping with his native

benevolence, but he had no reply ready, and the silence became

painful. Indeed, the situation was not an easy one for even so

experienced a man as Mr. Gryce to handle, and, noting his

embarrassment, I bounded into the room and took my place at his side,

much as Sweetwater had done.

Mr. Gillespie scarcely remarked this new inroad upon his privacy. He

doubtless took me for another police-officer, and as such not to be

noted or counted. But the detectives showed some surprise at my

intrusion, which seeing, I turned to Mr. Gryce and said:

"If you will excuse my presumption I should like to speak to Mr.

Gillespie."

The latter started, possibly at my tone, and, wheeling about, gazed at

my bare head and drenched figure with sharp curiosity in which a

growing recognition soon became visible.

I at once bowed.

"You remember me," I suggested. "I am Mr. Outhwaite. If you will

pardon my method of entrance and the proof which it gives of my

connection with these men, I should like to offer you my assistance at

this crisis. Mr. Gryce evidently wishes some conversation with you,

which you rightly hesitate to accord him in a place made sacred by the

presence of your dead wife. If you will have confidence in me, I will

watch this room while you go below. No one shall approach the bed and

no one shall enter the room, if Mr. Gryce will leave a guard at the

door. Will you accept this service? It is sincerely tendered."

He stood perplexed, eyeing me with mingled doubt and astonishment;

then, turning with an inexpressible look of longing towards the one

object of his care, he cried:

"You do not understand or you would not ask me to leave her, not for a

moment. I have not had her so near me, so near my hand, so near my

heart, these many minutes in years. She cannot rise and run away from

me now. She does not even wish to. This is a happiness to me you

cannot appreciate, a happiness I cannot endure seeing cut short. Leave

me, then, I pray, and come again when she has been laid in her grave.

You will find me ready to receive you, ready to explain----"

"You ask the impossible," interrupted Mr. Gryce. "Some explanations

will not bide the convenience of even so recent a mourner as yourself.

If you do not wish to be taken immediately from this place, you will

make some few things clear to us. What has this woman had to do with

your father's death?"

"Nothing."

The fire with which Leighton Gillespie uttered this word made us both

start. Aghast at what struck me as a direct falsehood, I instinctively

opened my lips. But Mr. Gryce made me an imperceptible gesture, and I

refrained from carrying out my inconsiderate impulse.

"I see," continued the unhappy man, "that suspicions which I had

supposed confined to my brothers and myself have involved my innocent

wife. This is more than I can bear. I will at once make known to you

my miserable story."

Mr. Gryce drew up a chair and sat down. As there was no other in the

room we knew what that meant. The damp air was beginning to tell upon

the rheumatic old man. Attention being thus called to the open window,

Sweetwater moved over and closed it. Never shall I forget the look

which Leighton Gillespie cast towards the bed as that broken and

ill-fitting sash came rattling down.

"See if the hall is clear," said Mr. Gryce.

The young detective crossed to the door. As he opened it and looked

out, a gust of noisy laughter rose from below, mingled with the shrill

sound of a woman's singing, the same, doubtless, which we had

previously heard in front. These tones, heard amid brawl and shouting,

seemed to pierce Mr. Gillespie to the heart. Mr. Gryce, who saw

everything, motioned to Sweetwater to close the door as he had the

window. Sweetwater complied by shutting himself out. This was an act

of self-denial which I felt called upon to emulate.

"Shall I join Mr. Sweetwater?" I asked.

It was Mr. Gillespie who replied:

"No. I wish more than one listener; let the lawyer stay."

I was only too happy to remain. Wet as I was, I felt anxious to hear

what this man so singled out by Hope had to say in explanation of his

relations to the wretched woman he now acknowledged to be his wife.

He seemed in haste to make them.

"Seven years ago this fall," he began, "I met this woman, then a

girl."

"Wait!" put in Mr. Gryce; "there is a point which must first be

settled." And, advancing to the cot guarded so jealously by the man

before him, he laid his hand upon the coverlet. "You will allow me,"

he said firmly, as with a gentle enough touch he drew it softly aside.

"How came this woman--pardon me, how came Mrs. Gillespie to die thus

suddenly?"

The unhappy husband, after his first recoil of outraged feeling,

forced himself into a recognition of the detective's rights, and, with

apparent resignation, rejoined:

"I should have come to that in time. She died, as you can readily

perceive, from exposure. Driven from Mother Merry's miserable quarters

by some terror for which, perhaps, she had no name, she wandered in

and out among the docks for two wretched days and nights, often

dragging her feet through the ooze of the river, so that her garments

were never dry and are not so yet. At last she came here, where once

before she had found shelter in a biting storm. _Here!_ But it is a

better place than the wharves, and I am glad God guided her to even so

poor a refuge. She was raving with fever when she came straggling into

the room below. But after the warmth struck her and she had tasted

something, she came to herself again, and then--and then she sent for

me."

He paused. I did not yet understand him or the circumstances which

made this situation possible, but a strange reverence began to mingle

with my wonder,--not for the man--I could not feel that yet; but for a

love which could infuse such feeling into the lightest allusion he

made to this beloved, if wretched waif.

"There was a doctor here when I came," he speedily continued. "You can

find him;--he will tell no different tale from mine--but no doctor

could help her after those nights of bitter cold and exposure, and I

paid him to leave me alone with her; and she died in my arms. May I

tell you why this was everything to me? Why, the happiness of having

received her last sigh is so great, that I have no room for resentment

against you for this intrusion, and hardly feel the shame of being

found in this place, with my dead darling lying in her miserable rags

on this hideous pallet!"

"You may tell us," assented Mr. Gryce, replacing the coverlet over the

face upon which was fast settling that look of peace which is Death's

last gift to the living.

Mr. Gillespie's tone grew deeper; it could hardly have grown more

tender or more solemn.

"I loved this woman. She was young when I first saw her. So was I.

There were no haggard lines about her dancing eyes and laughing lips

then. She was a vision of--well, I will not say beauty; she was never

beautiful--but of--I cannot tell you what; I can only say that my life

began on that day, not to end till she died, a half-hour ago.

"I married her. She was not a woman to take into my father's house;

perhaps not into any family circle. The stage was her home, the stage

from which I took her; but I did not know this; I simply knew that she

was wild in spirit, and unused to household ways and social

restrictions. But had I understood her then as I do now, I doubt if I

would have acted any differently. I was headstrong in those days and

quite reckless enough to grasp at what I felt to be my own, even if

aware it would fall to nothing in my frenzied clutch.

"I took her into my father's family. I took this wild bird out of its

native air, and shut it up behind the strict bars of a conventional

household. One promise only I exacted from her as the price of this

gracious act on my part. She was never under any pretext, not even in

the event of my death, to return to the stage. Poor child! she has

kept that promise. Perhaps it is all she has kept: kept it, though

hungry; kept it when the wild craving for morphine tore at her breast

and brain and she could have got the drug for one strain from her

marvellous voice; kept it, though her veins burned with longing for

the movement that was her life, and the weights on her tongue lay

heavy on her heart, which beat truly only while she was dancing or

singing. It was her dancing and singing which had won my heart; or,

rather, the woman when dancing and singing; yet I cut her off from

these natural expressions of the turbulent joy springing from her

exuberant nature, and expected her to be satisfied with my love and

the routine of a well-regulated household. This was my folly; a folly

born of the delight I took in her simple presence. I thought that she

loved me as I did her, and found in love's madness the recompense for

what she had laid aside. But I had not read her nature. No man could

fill her heart as she filled mine. She was a genius,--an untamable

one,--and the restiveness of her temperament made demands which could

only find relief in spontaneous song or rhythmic movement.

"My father, who loved quiet women--women like my mother, whose force

lay hidden in such sweetness that she shines with almost a saint's

glory in our memory--could not understand my wife's temperament; and,

consequently, could not show even common patience towards her. He was

not harsh in his treatment of her, but he failed to give her credit

for so much as wishing to conform to his ways and the habits of the

people she must meet in our house. When he came upon her, stealthily

posing before our long mirror in the drawing-room, or caught floating

down the stairs a faint echo of her magical voice in one of the tragic

strains she best loved to sing, he showed such open shrinking and

distaste that she flew for comfort to the one resource capable of

undermining for me all hope of a better future. I allude to her use of

morphine.

"She had taken it before our marriage, but the fact was kept from me.

When I awoke to a realisation of the horror menacing my happiness, I

devoted time, strength, and every means I then knew, to win her from

this practice. But I only partially succeeded. She did not realise the

harmfulness of this habit and could not be made to. Eluding my

vigilance, she resorted more and more to the drug I could never

succeed in keeping out of her grasp, and it fell to me to stand in the

breach thus made and keep the knowledge of this crowning humiliation

from my father and brothers.

"Meanwhile my father, who was strictness itself in all matters of

propriety, insisted upon her sitting opposite him at the table and

comporting herself in every way as the lady of the house. Just because

he so dreaded comment and had so much pride in his own social standing

and that of his sons, he kept her continually on view and carried her

to parties and balls, thinking that his prestige would cause

recognition to be given her by his friends. And it did--but

grudgingly! Admired for what she was not, she was scorned for what she

was. I have seen her petted by some would-be society fine lady till my

blood boiled, then marked the smile of supercilious sarcasm which

would be thrown back upon her when her beautiful shoulders were

turned. Yet I had hopes, strong hopes of better days after the first

strangeness of the new life should have worn away and her good

impulses had had time to develop into motive powers for kind actions.

But it was not to be; never was to be. The fiend whose power I had set

myself to combat was far stronger than any force I could bring against

him. She grew worse--appeared once in public as she never before had

appeared outside her own room, and my father, who was with her, never

attempted to hold up his head again in his former unmoved fashion.

Claire, who came to us later, had no power to hold her mother back,

and while she was still an infant, the inevitable occurred--my wife

ran away from us.

"It was the first overwhelming shock my hitherto unfailing faith had

had to sustain. She had slipped away at nightfall without money and

almost without farewell. The merest note left on the piano in our

little room on the third floor told me she had tried to be happy in a

domestic life, but had failed; and begged me not to seek her, for she

was stifling for air and freedom.

"And I have no doubt she was. Seeing, since, where she has found

pleasure, and under what conditions the old gay smile has revisited

her lips, I have no doubt that the very luxury we prized was

oppressive to her. But then I only thought of the dangers and

privations she must encounter away from my protection; and, confiding

to no one the calamity which had befallen me, I rushed from the house

and sought her in every place which suggested itself to me as a

possible refuge. It was a frenzied search, and ended in my coming upon

her, ten days after her disappearance, in a plain but decent

lodging-house. Her money was gone, and she lay in that heavy sleep

which has no such hallowing effect upon the beauty as this we look

upon now.

"Some men's love would have sickened and failed them at this degrading

sight. But though a change took place in the feeling which had held me

in an entranced state ever since my marriage, it was a change which

deepened, rather than deadened, the affection with which I regarded

her. From a creature whose untold charm bewitched and bewildered me,

she became to me a sacred charge for which I was responsible to God

and man; and while she still lay there and I stood in a maze of misery

before her, I vowed that, come what would, I would remain true to her

and by means of this faith and through the unfailing patience it would

call forth, make what effort I could to stay her on the brink of that

precipice she seemed doomed to perish by.

"But I was to be tried in ways I had little foreseen. She was glad to

see me when she woke, and readily consented to return to her home and

her child. But in two months she was off again, and this time I did

not find her so easily. When I did, she was in such a hopeless

condition of mental and moral degradation that I took her to a

sanitarium, where I had every reason to expect that a proper secrecy

would be maintained as to her real complaint and unhappy condition.

For my pride was still a torment to me, and an open rupture with my

father too undesirable for me to risk a revelation of the true extent

of the vagaries indulged in by his unwelcome daughter-in-law. Her

escapades, serious as they were, had affected him but little. For I

had so closely followed her in her sudden flittings that we were

looked upon as having left home together on some hurried tour or at

the call of some thoughtless impulse. He had believed us out of town,

while I was engaged in hunting the city through for her.

"But after a week spent in the sanitarium, I perceived by the looks I

encountered, on every side, that my secret was discovered; and was

thus in a measure prepared when the door of my room opened one day

upon the stern figure of my father. He had heard the true cause of my

wife's condition, and a stormy scene was before me.

"It was then that I regretted that my early opportunities had been

slighted, and that, instead of being independent of his bounty, I was

not considered capable of earning my own living. Had my home been one

of my own making, I might have stood up and faced him at that hour

with a resolution to hold by my wife, which in itself might have

ensured his respect. But I was tied hand and tongue by the realisation

of all I owed him, was owing him, and was likely to owe him to the end

of my days. I was not master of my own life; how, then, could I

propose to be the master of another's?

"My father, whose favourite I had never been, could not be expected to

know what was passing in my heart; but he was not without a

realisation of what he might find in the adjoining room, and, casting

a glance that way, he asked coldly:

"'Is she--Mrs. Gillespie--(he never called her by her given name)

_awake_?'

"No question could have pierced my heart more poignantly. It was not

the hour for sleep, and the use of the word had intention in it. But I

subdued all signs of distress, and, calling her by name, bade her come

out and greet father; after which I stood breathless, waiting for her

appearance, conscious that it might be a smiling one, and equally that

it might be--I dared not think what. She was not always to be depended

upon.

"She did not appear at once. 'Sit down, father,' I begged. 'She may be

dressing.'

"And she was. In a minute or two, as we stood watching, she threw open

the door, and in an instant I saw that whatever hope I may have

cherished of her creating a good impression in her partially recovered

state, was an ill-founded one. She was not in one of her depressed

moods, but, what was worse, perhaps, in one of her ecstatic ones. All

her genius, and she had much, had taken fire under some impulse of her

erratic brain, and she came into the room prepared to conquer in the

only way she knew how. Still young, still beautiful in her own way,

which was that of no other woman, she glided into our presence in one

rapturous whirl, a scarf floating from her neck, and a wreath of wild

vine about her head. I rushed to prevent her, but it was too late. She

_would_ dance, and she did, while my father, who had never seen her in

this glowing state, drew me aside and watched with hard eyes, while

she swayed and dipped and palpitated in what would have been a

glorious ebullition of pure delight, had she not been my wife, and the

man at my side as cold to her charm as the dew which stood out on my

wretched forehead. When I could bear no more, I flung my arms about

her and she stopped, panting and frightened, like a bird caught in

full flight. 'Sing,' I whispered to her; 'sing that air from _AEnone_'.

I thought the tragic pathos of her tones might make her dancing

forgotten. And they did in a way. My father had never listened to any

such dramatic rendering of a simple song before, and I saw that he was

subdued by the feelings it awakened. But I gathered no hope from this.

He had too little liking for public exhibitions of this kind on the

part of women, for him to be affected long by any singing which was

not that of the boudoir; and when, her first ebullition passed, she

began to droop under the heavy reaction which inevitably followed

these impulsive performances, I drew her into the other room, and shut

the door. Then I came back and faced him.

"He was standing in the window of the large but unlovely room,

drumming restlessly on the panes before him. As the light struck his

head it brought to view the silver rapidly making its way through the

dark locks he had been accustomed to pride himself upon, and a pang

struck me at this sight, which made me quite dumb for the instant. I

felt as if I, and not she, had been dancing over his heart. Then my

ever-present thought of the woman I had sworn to cherish returned and

held me steady while he said:

"'It is well that I have seen your wife once when the full spell was

upon her. Now I know what has come into the Gillespie family.

Leighton, do you love this woman?'

[Illustration: "SHE GLIDED INTO OUR PRESENCE IN ONE RAPTUROUS WHIRL"]

"'Enough to bear your condemnation if you choose to condemn us,' I

assured him.

"'Then take her away out of my sight and from the possible sight of my

growing grandchild. A dancing menad can be no mother to Claire.'

"'I will take her away,' I promised him. 'When this place has done all

for her it can, I will carry her where she can offend no one but

strangers.'