"I am Vera Anerley," said the pale girl, speaking in clear tones of
deadly meaning. "I have come to tell your wife that the case against her
is complete; that she may be arrested at any moment for the murder of
Victor Mercier!"
Joan gave a faint cry, and buried her wet, dishevelled head in
Vansittart's coat-sleeve.
"Hush, darling, I am here!" he tenderly said. Then, supporting Joan's
fainting form, which was already a dead weight, he looked with cool
scorn, with stern defiance, at the slender, black-clad figure, at the
white, miserable face with those menacing eyes.
"Case, indeed," he exclaimed with scathing contempt. "A jealous woman's
vengeance, you should say! But your miserable plot to destroy my
injured wife, woman, will succeed in injuring no one but yourself. I
have this morning learnt every detail of the trumped-up charge, and
given my instructions for the defence. If, indeed, the affair will go
any further after my deposition on oath that on the night
that--man--died--my future wife was with me until she met her maid to
return home. And now, since you have succeeded in making Lady
Vansittart ill, I must ask you to quit the house--I will have you driven
to the station, if you like--"
Vera interrupted him with a groan.
"I forgot!" she wailed. "I forgot--a man will perjure himself to save
the woman he loves! But your lies will fail to save her, my lord!
Husbands and wives are nothing in law, in a murder case! If you want to
save her, you must take her away!"
With a sob she turned on her heel and went out. Vansittart gathered
Joan in his arms, and sinking into a chair tried to kiss her back to
life. "My darling, I know all! I will save you!" he repeated
passionately. What could she have been doing? She must have been
exposed to the whole fury of the storm. Had the vindictive creature
killed her? He had thought himself hopelessly crushed, body and soul,
when he arrived at his lawyers' to find the distracted Sir Thomas with
his awful tale of the charge to be brought against his niece, which Paul
Naz had in compassion forewarned him of. But the sight of his
darling--who looked dead or dying--who lay like a stone in his arms and
hardly seemed to breathe--brought back life and energy, if it augmented
his despair.
Her garments were wringing wet--what a frightful state she was in! With
a half-frantic wonder what he had best do, he lifted her in his arms, so
strong in his anguish that she seemed a mere featherweight, and carrying
her upstairs to her room by a side staircase that was little used, laid
her on the bed, and rang for Julie. While a man was despatched in hot
haste for the doctor, the two cut and dragged off Joan's soaking
garments, and vainly endeavoured to chafe some warmth into her icy
limbs. But at last insensibility had come to the rescue of Victor
Mercier's unfortunate dupe. Joan lay inert and senseless, and when the
old doctor who had attended a couple of generations of Vansittarts in
their Oxfordshire home came in, his wonted cheeriness changed to
gravity.
Nothing could be done but wait patiently for the return of
consciousness, and telegraph for nurses. He could make no prognosis
whatever at that stage, but that Lady Vansittart's health was in a
critical condition.
"Do you mean that she may not recover?" asked Vansittart. They had
adjourned to Joan's boudoir, leaving Julie and the housekeeper in
temporary charge of the patient.
Old Doctor Walters shrugged his shoulders and raised his shaggy
eyebrows. Vansittart was answered.
"When I tell you that I hope to God my wife will die, you will
understand there is something terrible in all this!" he exclaimed--and
the tone of his voice, as much as the meaning conveyed by such a speech,
made the old man sit up in his chair aghast.
But he was still more horrified when the unhappy man he had known and
tended since childhood told him the miserable story as he had gathered
it from Joan herself, and from the dreadful tale told to Sir Thomas in
its entirety by Paul Naz: the tale of a romantic schoolgirl secretly
wooed and married by a man who immediately afterwards absconded, as he
was "wanted" by the police on a charge of theft and fraud: her foolish
dream dispelled when she learnt that fact, hiding her secret from the
uncle and aunt who had adopted her; then, as the years went by and the
husband-in-name made no sign, hoping against hope, and giving way to her
great love for a man who adored her. Then, just as they were promised to
each other, the man's reappearance with threats of exposure, his
compelling her visits to his rooms, and her succumbing to the temptation
of mixing morphia in his brandy. The one item unknown was Joan's motive
for drugging Mercier. So the case looked terribly black to Vansittart
and his friend in need, his good old doctor.
Good--and tenderhearted, for at once he offered to see them through
their trouble--to the end.
"If the police appear with a warrant they cannot refuse to listen to
me," he said. "So I shall take up my abode here, and leave my patients
to my partner and our assistant."
The honeymoon was waning in the most dismal of fashions. The house was
wrapped in gloom. Joan had recovered consciousness to suffer agonies of
pain, and fall into the delirium of fever. The prolonged chill of being
the sport of the storm, with so terrible a shock to follow, had resulted
in pneumonia. A specialist was summoned from town. He gave no hope.
When his fiat was pronounced a look of relief came upon Vansittart's
worn, lined features. The specialist went away wondering, but old
Doctor Walters understood.
Then the stricken husband took up his position at his wife's pillow, and
banished every one. Whatever his life might contain in the future of
hideous retrospection, for those few short hours left he would watch his
erring darling yield up her soul to the great Judge who alone knew the
frail clay he had made, without any human soul witnessing his agony.
Joan had been raving, madly, incoherently of the past and present,
tossing and writhing, now and then clamouring and groaning. But a few
minutes after Vansittart had banished the nurses and taken up his
position by her side, she seemed to grow calmer.
Was it possible that at least she might die in peace, free from those
horrible fantasies, those cruel pains?
He watched her anxiously hour after hour. As the delirium abated the
restlessness ceased, and she seemed to fall asleep. He had come to her
at midnight. When the grey dawn crept into the room Joan was asleep,
and as he lay and gazed wearily at her, his head drooped until it rested
on the pillow.
After a succession of wild, tormenting dreams--a purgatory of horrible
physical sufferings--Joan slept. She was vaguely conscious of
Vansittart's nearness, vaguely sensible that relief had come. The sleep
was like heaven after hell.
Then at last another kind of dream was added to her sense of slumber.
She felt that something greater and nobler had been added to her life,
and that it was all around and about. In the tremendous vastness and
solidity of the new influence all seemed petty, small; she knew that
she, Vansittart, Mercier, Vera, all were but dancing specks in a
gorgeous sunlight.....
Vansittart awoke with a start, a feeling of guilt, fear, and a pain in
his arm from some heavy weight.
Then a horrible cry startled the nurse who was keeping vigil in the next
room. She rushed in and up to the bed.
* * * * *
The following day three stalwart men descended from the quick train from
London and chartered a fly to drive them to Lord Vansittart's.
"A fine place," said one, almost regretfully--he was young, with a fresh
colour, and his errand seemed ghastly to him--as they drove in at the
open gates, past a lodge which was to all appearance empty.
"Yes," said the eldest of the trio. "Dear me," he added, looking out as
the fly passed out of the lime avenue. "What a melancholy looking
house! All the blinds down, too!"
Arriving at the hall-door, the oldest and sternest-looking emerged and
asked to see Lord Vansittart. The porter looked impressed, but
unhesitatingly admitted him, and conducted him to the library, leaving
him with a grave "I will tell his lordship."
"Strange; he did not ask who I was or what I wanted," murmured the man
to himself. The silence in the great mansion was almost oppressive. He
heard the servant's footsteps, distant voices, the clang of a closing
door, then a slight pattering, which grew gradually more distinct, and
seemed to keep pace with the beats of his pulse. Advancing footsteps!
"They have heard, and they have all gone; the man is coming back with
some fine tale or another," he told himself, exasperatedly. As the door
opened he turned with ready resentment, which gave place to a startled,
uncomfortable sensation as in the ghastly man in deep black who entered
he recognised Lord Vansittart.
"I am very sorry, my Lord, but I have a most painful duty to perform,"
he began, taking the warrant from his pocket. "I am compelled to arrest
Lady Vansittart for the wilful murder of Victor Mercier on the --th of
June last."
Lord Vansittart bowed, asked to see the warrant, and then slowly said,
"If you will come this way, I will take you to her ladyship, who has a
complete answer to the charge."
The detective bowed, passing his hand across his lips to assure himself
that he was not smiling--he had no wish to wound the wretched husband of
a miserable murderess--and followed the proprietor of the
richly-furnished mansion across the hall, up the grand staircase, and
along the corridor. Vansittart paused at a door, opened it, and entered.
The detective followed, half suspicious, half uneasy. The room was hung
with white--everywhere were piles, masses of red flowers. On the
white-hung bed lay more blood-red blossoms. Lord Vansittart went up to
it with bowed head, and folding back the sheet that was scattered with
the crimson blooms, showed a beautiful waxen face surrounded by
close-woven gleaming hair: waxen hands folded meekly on the breast.
"Good God! Dead!" The detective recognized her--he had no doubt as to
the fact--but he felt it with a shock.
"No," said Lord Vansittart, grimly, turning to him with a look which he
afterwards confided to his wife was the worst experience of his
hard-working and disillusionary existence. "Alive! Men may torture and
kill our bodies, man, but who can kill the soul?"
THE END.
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
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