HELEN THURWELL'S SUSPICIONS
On a certain September day, about six weeks after the funeral of Sir
Geoffrey Kynaston, Mr. Brown was spending what appeared to be a very
pleasant afternoon. He was lying stretched out at full length on a dry
mossy bank, with a volume of Shelley in his hand, and a case of thick
Egyptian cigarettes by his side. In his ears was the whispering of the
faint breeze amongst the pines, and the soft murmuring of the sea,
hundreds of feet below, seen like a brilliant piece of patchwork through
the fluttering leaves and dark tree-trunks which surrounded him. There
was nothing to disturb the sweet silence of the drowsy afternoon. It was
a charming spot which he had chosen, and he was quite alone. People,
amongst whom for the last few weeks his name had become a fruitful
source of conversation, were already beginning to fancy him flying
across the country in an express train, or loitering on the docks at
Liverpool, waiting for an Atlantic liner, or sitting at home trembling
and fearful, struggling to hide his guilt beneath a calm exterior. But,
as a matter of fact, he was doing none of these things. The harsh
excitement of the busy gossips, and their stern judgment, troubled him
nothing, for he was unconscious of them. He was away in thoughtland,
dreaming of a fair, proud young face seen first on the rude pavement of
an old Italian town, where its sweet composed freshness, amongst a pile
of magnificent ruins, had captivated his artist's sense almost before it
had touched his man's heart. He thought of the narrow street shutting in
the sky till, looking upwards, it seemed like one deep band of glorious
blue--of the ruined grey palace, with still some traces left of its
former stately grace, and of the fountain playing in the moss-encrusted
courtyard, gleaming like silver in the sunlight as it rose and fell into
the worn stone basin. Here, where the very air seemed full of the
records of a magnificent decay, everything seemed to form a fitting
framework in his memory for that one face. It had been an artist's
dream--or had it been the man's? Never the latter; he told himself
sadly. Such were not for him. It had been better far that he had never
seen her again. Before, the memory had been a very sweet one, stored
away in his mind amongst all the great and beautiful things he had seen
in his wanderings, always with a dainty freshness clinging to it, as
though it had lain carefully preserved in perfume and spices. Was this
new joy, of having seen and spoken to her, a better thing? this vague
unsettlement of his being, which played havoc with his thoughts, and
stirred up a whole host of strange new feelings in his heart? Surely
not! It seemed to him like the breathing of warm new life into what had
been a crystallized emotion--the humanizing of something spiritual.
Surely, for him, it had better have remained in that first stage.
There was the sound of a light footstep on the springy turf. He started
to his feet. A girl, tall and slim, was coming swiftly along the winding
path through the plantation towards him. He knew at once that it was
Helen Thurwell.
They were both equally surprised. As she looked up and saw him standing
upright in the narrow path, tall, thin, and unnaturally pale, with the
cigarette still burning between his fingers, and his book in his other
hand, she felt strangely stirred. Neither was he unmoved by her sudden
appearance, for though not a feature twitched, not a single gleam of
color relieved the still pallor of his face, there was a new light in
his dry brilliant eyes. But there was a vast difference between the
thoughts which flashed into his mind and those which filled hers. To him
there had stolen a sweetness into the summer's day surpassing the soft
sunlight, and a presence which moved every pulse in his being, and crept
like maddening fire through every sense. And to her, the sight of him
was simply a signal to brace up all her powers of perception; to watch
with suspicion every change of his features, and every tone of his
voice. Had he shown any emotion at the sight of her, she would have
attributed it to a guilty conscience, and would have made note of it in
her mind against him. And as he showed none--none, at least, that she
could detect--she put it down to the exercise of a strong will, and was
a little disappointed. For she had gone with the tide, and, womanlike,
having embraced an idea, it had already become as truth to her. Mr.
Brown was the man who had murdered Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. It was a
murderer with whom she was standing side by side among the glancing
shadows of the rustling pine groves. It must be so!
Yet she did not shrink from him. After her first hesitation at the sight
of a man's figure standing up amongst the dark tree-trunks, she had
walked steadily on until she had reached him. And he, without any change
of countenance, had simply stood and watched her. God! how beautiful
she was! The sunlight, gleaming through the tops of the trees in long
slanting rays, played like fire upon her red-gold hair; and the plain
black gown, which yielded easily to her graceful movements, seemed to
show every line of her supple yet delicate figure. She came nearer
still, so near that he could trace the faint blue veins in her forehead,
and once more recall the peculiar color of her eyes. Then he spoke to
her, raising his hand with a suddenly returning instinct of
conventionality for his cap; but he had risen without it, and was
standing before her bare-headed.
"I am a trespasser, I fear," he said hesitatingly.
She came to a standstill by his side, and shook her head slowly.
"No, this is common land. There is a footpath, you see, although it is
seldom used. It leads nowhere but to the Court."
"It is a favorite walk of mine," he said.
"Yes, it is pleasant. You bring a companion with you," she remarked,
pointing to his book.
He glanced down at it, and then up at her again.
"Yes; a faithful friend, too. We spend a good deal of time out of doors
together."
She read the title, and glanced up at him with a shade of interest in
her face.
"Shelley was a great poet, I suppose," she said; "but I do not
understand him."
For the first time his expression changed. A sudden light swept across
his face, and in a moment it was glowing with sensibility and
enthusiasm. She looked at him astonished. He stood before her revealed
in a new light, and, although unwillingly, she saw him with different
eyes.
"Not understand Shelley! Ah! but that is because you have not tried,
then. If you had, you would not only understand, but you would love
him."
She shook her head. In reality she felt that he was right, that her
languid attempts to read him by a drawing-room fire, with the _Queen_
beside her, and her mind very full of very little things, had not been
the spirit in which to approach a great poet. But, partly out of womanly
perversity, and partly out of curiosity to hear what he would say, she
chose to dissent from him.
"I find him too mystical," she said; "too incomprehensible."
He looked down at her from his superior height with kindling eyes. It
was odd how greatly she was surprised in him. She had imagined him to be
a cynic.
"Mystical!" he repeated. "Yes, in a certain sense, he is so; and it is
his greatest charm. But incomprehensible!--no. The essence of all
artistic poetry is in the perfect blending of matter and form, so that
the meaning creeps in upon us, but with a certain vagueness, a certain
indefiniteness, which reaches us more in the shade of a dreamy
consciousness than through the understanding. May I give you an
illustration? We stand upon a low plain and gaze upon a far-off range of
hills, from the sides of which thick clouds of white mist are hanging.
Gradually, as the sun rises higher in the heavens, they float away, and
we begin dimly to see through a clearer atmosphere the yellow corn
waving on the brown hillside, the smoke rising from the lonely
farmhouse, and, if we have patience and wait still, by-and-by we can
even distinguish the brilliant patches of wild flowers, the poppies and
the cornflowers in the golden fields, and the marsh marigolds in the
meadows at the foot of the hill. It is a question of waiting long
enough. So it is with what people call mysticism in poetry."
For the first time for many months a faint color had found its way into
his wan cheeks. His face was alight with interest, and his dark eyes
shone from their deep hollows with a new, soft fire. From that moment he
assumed a new place in her thoughts. She was loath to grant it to him,
but she had no alternative. Guilty or innocent, this man had something
in him which placed him high above other men in her estimation. She felt
stirred in a manner peculiarly grateful to her. It was as though every
chord of her being had been tuned into fresh harmony; as though the hand
of a magician had lifted the curtain which had enclosed her too narrow
life, and had shown her a new world glowing with beauty and promise.
She, too, wanted to feel like that; to taste the pleasures which this
man tasted, and to feel the enthusiasm which had lit up his pale
scholarly face.
At that moment her mind was too full to harbor those dark suspicions.
With a sudden effort she threw them overboard, trampled on them, scouted
them. Was this the face and the tongue of a murderer? Surely not!
"Thank you," she said softly. "I shall like to think over what you have
said. Now I must go."
Her words seemed to bring him back to his old self. He stooped down and
picked up his cap.
"You are going back to the Court?" he asked. "Let me walk to the end of
the plantation with you."
She assented silently, and they turned along the narrow path side by
side. Below them a bracken-covered cliff, studded with dwarfed trees,
ran down to the sea; and on their left hand the black firs, larger and
growing more thickly together, shut out completely the open moorland
beyond. He had walked there before beneath a sky of darker blue, and
when there had been only stray gleams of moonlight shining through the
cone-laden boughs to show him the rough path; and he had been there when
the tree-tops had bent beneath the shrieking wind, when the black clouds
had been flying over his head, and the roar of the angry sea had filled
the air with thunder. And these things had stirred him--one of nature's
sons--in many ways. Yet none of them had sent the warm blood coursing
through his veins like quicksilver, or had stolen through his senses
with such sweet heart-stirring impetuosity as did the presence of this
tall, fair girl, walking serenely by his side in thoughtful silence.
Once, when too near the edge of the cliff, she put her foot on a
fir-cone and stumbled, and the touch of her hand, as he caught hold of
it to steady her, sent a thrill of keen, exquisite pleasure through his
whole frame. He held it perhaps a little longer than necessary, and she
let him. For the moment she had lost the sense of physical touch, and
the firm grasp of his fingers upon hers seemed to her, in a certain
sense, only an analogy to the sudden sympathy which had sprung up
between them. Even when realization came, she drew her hand away gently,
without anger, without undue haste even. One glance into his face at
that moment would have told her everything; the whole horror of the
situation would have flashed in upon her, and she would have been
overwhelmed. But she did not look, and long before they had come to the
end of the path the passionate light had died out from his eyes, and had
left no trace behind. Once more he was only a plain, sad-looking man,
hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, with bent head and stooping frame.