INNOCENT
An hour or two before the _denouement_ of Sir Allan Beaumerville's
supper party, his brougham had driven up to Mr. Thurwell's town house,
and had set down a lady there. She had rung the bell and inquired for
Miss Thurwell.
The footman who answered the door looked dubious.
"Miss Thurwell was in, certainly, but she was unwell and saw no
visitors, and it was late. Could he take her name?"
The lady handed him a note.
"If you will take this to Miss Thurwell, and tell her that I am waiting,
I think that she will see me," she said quietly.
The man took it, and, somewhat impressed by the bearing and manner of
speech of the unknown lady, he showed her into the morning-room, and
ringing for Miss Thurwell's maid, handed her the note and awaited the
decision. It was speedily given. The lady was to be shown to her room at
once.
The agonizing suspense in which Helen had been living for the last few
days had laid a heavy hand upon her. Her cheeks were thin, and had been
woefully pale until the sudden excitement of this visit had called up a
faint hectic flush which had no kindred with the color of health. Her
form, too, seemed to have shrunken, and the loose tea-gown which she
wore enhanced the fragility of her appearance. She had been sitting in a
low chair before the fire, with her head buried in her hands, but when
her visitor was announced she was standing up with her dry, bright eyes
eagerly fixed upon the woman who stood on the threshold. The door was
closed, and they looked at one another for a moment in silence.
To an artist, the figures of these two women, each so intensely
interested in the other, and each possessed of a distinctive and
impressive personality, would have been full of striking suggestions.
Helen, in her loose gown of a soft dusky orange hue, and with no harsher
light thrown upon her features than the subdued glow of a shaded lamp,
and occasional flashes of the firelight which gleamed in her
too-brilliant eyes, seemed to have lost none of her beauty. All her
surroundings, too, went to enhance it: the delicately-toned richness of
the coloring around, the faintly perfumed air, the indefinable
suggestion of feminine daintiness, so apparent in all the appointments
of the little chamber. From the semi-darkness of her position near the
door Helen's visitor brought her eager scrutiny to an end. She advanced
a little into the room and spoke.
"You are Helen Thurwell?" she said softly. "Sir Allan Beaumerville has
bidden me come to you. You have read his note?"
"Yes, yes, I have read it," she answered quickly. "He tells me that you
have news--news that concerns Bernard Maddison. Is it anything that will
prove his innocence?"
"It is already proved."
Helen gave a great cry and sank into a low chair. She had no doubts;
her visitor's tone and manner forbade them. But the tension of her
feelings, strung to such a pitch of nervousness, gave way all at once.
Her whole frame was shaken with passionate sobs. The burning agony of
her grief was dissolved in melting tears.
And the woman whose glad tidings had brought this change stood all the
while patient and motionless. Once, when Helen had first yielded to her
emotion, she had made a sudden movement forward, and a sweet,
sympathetic light had flashed for a moment over her pale features. But
something had seemed to restrain her, some chilling memory which had
checked her first impulse, and made her resume her former attitude of
quiet reserve. She stood there and waited. By and by Helen looked up and
started to her feet.
"I had almost forgotten; I am so sorry," she said. "Do sit down, please,
and tell me everything, and who you are. You have brought me the best
news I ever had in my life," she added with a little burst of gratitude.
Her visitor remained standing--remained grave, silent, and unresponsive;
yet there was nothing forbidding about her appearance. Looking into her
soft gray eyes and face still beautiful, though wrinkled and colorless,
Helen was conscious of a strange feeling of attraction toward her, a
sort of unexplained affinity which women in trouble or distress often
feel for one another, but which the sterner fiber of man's nature rarely
admits of. She moved impulsively forward, and stretched out her hands in
mute invitation, but there was no response. If anything, indeed, her
visitor seemed to shrink a little away from her.
"You ask me who I am," she said softly. "I am Sir Allan Beaumerville's
wife; I am Bernard Maddison's mother."
Helen sank back upon her chair, perfectly helpless. This thing was too
much for her to grasp. She looked up at the woman who had spoken these
marvelous words, half frightened, altogether bewildered.
"You are Sir Allan Beaumerville's wife," she repeated slowly. "I do not
understand; I never knew that he was married. And Bernard Maddison his
son!"
Helen sat quite still for a moment. Then light began to stream in upon
her darkened understanding. Suddenly she sprang to her feet.
"Who was it? then, who killed--Oh, my God, I see it all now. It was----"
She ceased, and looked at her visitor with blanched cheeks. A low,
tremulous cry of horror broke from Lady Beaumerville's white lips. Her
calmness seemed gone. She was trembling from head to foot.
"God help him! it was my husband who killed Sir Geoffrey Kynaston," she
cried; "and the sin is on my head."
Helen was scarcely less agitated. She caught hold of the edge of the
table to steady herself. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance.
"Sir Allan! I do not understand. Why did he do that horrible thing?"
"Sir Geoffrey Kynaston and my husband were mortal enemies," answered
Lady Beaumerville, her voice scarcely raised above a whisper. "Mine was
the fault, mine the guilt. Alas! alas!"
The stately head with its wealth of silvery white hair was buried in her
hands. Her attitude, the agony which quivered in her tone dying away in
her final expression of despair like chords of wild, sad music, and
above all her likeness to the man she loved, appealed irresistibly to
Helen. A great pity filled her heart. She passed her arm round Lady
Beaumerville, and drew her on to the sofa.
There were no words between them then. Only, after a while, Helen asked
quietly:
"Sir Allan--must he confess?"
"It is already done," her visitor answered. "To-morrow the world will
know his guilt and my shame. Ah," she cried, her voice suddenly
changing, "I had forgotten. Turn your face away from me, Helen Thurwell,
and listen."
In the silence of the half-darkened chamber she told her story--told it
in the low, humbled tone of saintly penitence, rising sometimes into
passion and at others falling into an agonized whisper. She spoke of her
girlhood, of the falsehood by which she had been cheated into a loveless
marriage, and the utter misery which it had brought. Then she told her
of her sin, committed in a moment of madness after her husband's brutal
treatment, and so soon repented of. Lightly she touched upon her many
years of solitary penance, her whole lifetime dedicated willingly and
earnestly to the expiation of that dark stain, and of the coming to her
quiet home of the awful news of Sir Geoffrey's murder. In her old age
her sin had risen up against her, remorseless and unsatiated. Almost she
had counted herself forgiven. Almost she had dared to hope that she
might die in peace. But sin is everlasting, its punishment eternal.
Here her voice died away in a sudden fit of weakness, as though the
fierce consuming passion of her grief had eaten away all her strength.
But in a moment or two she continued.
"I thought my husband dead, and the sin my son's," she whispered. "They
sent to me to come to his trial, that they might hear from my lips what
they thought evidence against him. I would have died first. Then came a
young man who told me all, and I came with him to England. I have seen
and spoken with my husband. On his table he showed me signed papers. His
confession was ready. 'This night,' he said, 'I take my leave of the
world.' Thank God, he forgave me, and I him. We have stood hand-in-hand
together, and the past between us is no more. He bade me come here, and
I have come. I have seen the woman my son loves, and I am satisfied. Now
I will go."
Her eyes rested for a moment upon Helen, full of an inexpressible
yearning, and there had been a faint, sad wistfulness in her tone. But
when she had finished, she drew her cloak around her, and turned toward
the door.
Helen let her take a few steps, scarcely conscious of her intention.
Then she sprang up, and laid her hand upon Lady Beaumerville's shoulder.
"You are his mother," she said softly. "May I not be your daughter?"
* * * * *
"Helen, Helen, I have strange news for you!"
The room was in semi-darkness, for the fire had burnt low and the
heavily shaded lamp gave out but little light. Side by side on the low
sofa, two women, hand-in-hand, had been sobbing out their grief to one
another. On the threshold, peering with strained eyes through the gloom,
was Mr. Thurwell, his light overcoat, hastily thrown over his evening
clothes, still unremoved.
She rose to her feet, and he saw the dim outline of her graceful figure,
even a vision of her white, tear-stained face.
"The truth has come out," he said gravely. "To-morrow Bernard will be
free. The man who killed Sir Geoffrey Kynaston has confessed."
"Confessed!" Helen repeated. "Where? To whom?"
"To the Home Secretary, to a party of us as we sat at supper, his guests
at the club. Helen, be prepared for a great surprise. The murderer was
Sir Allan Beaumerville."
"I know it," Helen whispered hoarsely across the room. "Have they
arrested Sir Allan?"
Mr. Thurwell's surprise at his daughter's knowledge was forgotten in the
horror of the scene which her words had called up. Across the darkened
air of the little chamber it seemed to float again before his shuddering
memory, and he stretched out his hands for a moment before his face.
"Arrested him--no!" he answered in an agitated tone. "I have seen
nothing so awful in all my life. He made his confession at the head of
his table, the police were clamoring outside with a warrant, and while
we all sat dazed and stupefied, he fell backward--dead."
A cry rang through the little chamber, a sudden wail, half of relief,
half of anguish. Helen fell upon her knees by the side of the sofa. Mr.
Thurwell started, and moved forward.
"Who is that?" he asked quickly. "I thought you were alone."
"It is his wife," Helen answered, not without some fear. "See, she has
fainted."
Mr. Thurwell hesitated only for a moment. Then his face filled with
compassion.
"God help her;" he said solemnly. "I will send the women up to you, and
a doctor. God help her!"