"Then a babbled of green fields."
And then there was silence. Which of them was to speak! Not the woman
who had wrought this mischief; not the man who knew of the wickedness
but had not spoken; not the innocent girl who only perceived that
something dreadful--something beyond the ordinary run of dreadful
events--had happened, and that Victoria Cassilis looked out of her
senses. Lawrence Colquhoun stood unmoved by her tears; his face was
hardened; it bore a look beneath which the guilty woman cowered. Yet
she looked at him and not at her husband.
Presently Colquhoun spoke. His voice was harsh, and his words were a
command.
"Go home!" he said to Victoria. "There is no more mischief for you to
do--go!"
She obeyed without a word. She threw the light wrapper which she
carried on her arm round her slender neck, and walked away, restored,
to outward seeming, to all her calm and stately coldness. The coachman
and the footman noticed nothing. If any of her acquaintances passed
her on the road, they saw no change in her. The woman was impassive
and impenetrable.
Did she love Colquhoun? No one knows. She loved to feel that she had
him in her power; she was driven to a mad jealousy when that power
slipped quite away; and although she had broken the vows which both
once swore to keep, she could not bear even to think that he should do
the same. And she did despise her husband, the man of shares,
companies, and stocks. But could she love Colquhoun? Such a woman may
feel the passion of jealousy; she may rejoice in the admiration which
gratifies her vanity; but she is far too cold and selfish for love. It
is an artful fable of the ancients which makes Narcissus pine away and
die for the loss of his own image, for thereby they teach the great
lesson that he who loves himself destroys himself.
The carriage wheels crunched over the gravel, and Gabriel Cassilis
raised a pale and trembling face--a face with so much desolation and
horror, such a piteous gaze of questioning reproach at Colquhoun, that
the man's heart melted within him. He seemed to have grown old
suddenly; his hair looked whiter; he trembled as one who has the
palsy; and his eyes mutely asked the question, "Is this thing true?"
Lawrence Colquhoun made answer. His voice was low and gentle; his eyes
were filled with tears.
"It is true, Mr. Cassilis. God knows I would have spared you the
knowledge. But it is true."
Gabriel Cassilis opened his lips as if to speak. But he refrained,
stopping suddenly, because he recollected that he could no longer
utter what he wished to say. Then he touched his mouth with his
fingers like a dumb man. He was worse than a dumb man, who cannot
speak at all, because his tongue, if he allowed it, uttered words
which had no connection with his thoughts. Men that have been called
possessed of the devil have knelt at altars, uttering blasphemous
impieties when their souls were full of prayer.
"Do you understand me, Mr. Cassilis? Do you comprehend what I am
saying?"
He nodded his head.
Colquhoun took a piece of notepaper from the writing-table, and laid
it before him with a pencil. Mr. Cassilis grasped the pencil eagerly,
and began to write. From his fingers, as from his tongue, came the
sentence which he did _not_ wish to write--
"A fine day, and seasonable weather for the time of year."
He looked at this result with sorrowful heart, and showed it to
Colquhoun, shaking his head.
"Good heavens?" cried Colquhoun, "his mind is gone."
Gabriel Cassilis touched him on the arm and shook his head.
"He understands you, Lawrence," said Phillis; "but he cannot explain
himself. Something has gone wrong with him which we do not know."
Gabriel Cassilis nodded gratefully to Phillis.
"Then Mr. Cassilis," Colquhoun began, "it is right that you should
know all. Six years ago I followed Victoria Pengelley into Scotland.
We were married privately at a registrar's office under assumed names.
If you ever want to know where and by what names, you have only to ask
me, and I will tell you. There were reasons, she said,--I never quite
understood what they were, but she chose to be a _fille romanesque_ at
the time,--why the marriage should be kept secret. After the wedding
ceremony--such as it was--she left the office with her maid, who was
the only witness, and returned to the friends with whom she was
staying. I met her every day; but always in that house and among other
people. A few days passed. She would not, for some whim of her own,
allow the marriage to be disclosed. We quarrelled for that, and other
reasons--my fault, possibly. Good God! what a honeymoon! To meet the
woman you love--your bride--in society; if for half an hour alone,
then in the solitude of open observation; to quarrel like people who
have been married for forty years---- Well, perhaps it was my fault.
On the fifth day we agreed to let things be as if they had never been.
I left my bride, who was not my wife, in anger. We used bitter
words--perhaps I the bitterest. And when we parted, I bade her go back
to her old life as if nothing had been promised on either side. I said
she should be free; that I would never claim the power and the rights
given me by a form of words; that she might marry again; that, to
leave her the more free, I would go away and never return till she was
married, or till she gave me leave. I was away for four years; and
then I saw the announcement of her marriage in the paper, and I
returned. That is the bare history, Mr. Cassilis. Since my return, on
my honour as a gentleman, you have had no cause for jealousy in my own
behaviour towards--your wife, not mine. Remember, Mr. Cassilis,
whatever else may be said, she never was my wife. And yet, in the eye
of the law, I suppose she is my wife still. And with all my heart I
pity you."
He stopped, and looked at the victim of the crime. Gabriel Cassilis
was staring helplessly from him to Phillis. Did he understand? Not
entirely, I think. Yet the words which he had heard fell upon his
heart softly, and soothed him in his trouble. At last his eyes rested
on Phillis, as if asking, as men do in times of trouble, for the quick
comprehension of a woman.
"What can I do, Mr. Cassilis?" asked the girl. "If you cannot speak,
will you make some sign? Any little sign that I can understand?"
She remembered that among her lesson-books was a dictionary. She put
that into his hand, and asked him to show her in the dictionary what
he wished to say.
He took the book in his trembling hands, turned over the leaves, and
presently, finding the page he wanted, ran his fingers down the lines
till they rested on a word.
Phillis read it, spelling it out in her pretty little school-girl
fashion.
"S, I, si; L, E, N, C, LAME DUCK, lence--silence. Is that what you
wish to say, Mr. Cassilis?"
He nodded.
"Silence," repeated Lawrence. "For all our sakes it is the best--the
only thing. Phillis, tell no one what you have heard; not even Agatha;
not even Jack Dunquerque. Or, if you tell Jack Dunquerque, send him to
me directly afterwards. Do you promise, child?"
"I promise, Lawrence. I will tell no one but Jack; and I shall ask him
first if he thinks I ought to tell him another person's secret."
"Thank you, Phillis. Mr. Cassilis, there are only we three and--and
one more. You may trust Phillis when she promises a thing; you may
trust me, for my own sake; you may, I hope, trust that other person.
And as for me, it is my intention to leave England in a week. I deeply
regret that I ever came back to this country."
A week was too far ahead for Mr. Cassilis to look forward to in his
agitation. Clearly the one thing in his mind at the moment--the one
possible thing--was concealment. He took the dictionary again, and
found the word "Home."
"Will you let me take you home, sir?" Lawrence asked.
He nodded again. There was no resentment in his face, and none in his
feeble confiding manner when he took Lawrence's arm and leaned upon it
as he crawled out to the carriage.
Only one sign of feeling. He took Phillis by the hand and kissed her.
When he had kissed her, he laid his finger on her lips. And she
understood his wish that no one should learn this thing.
"Not even Agatha, Phillis," said Lawrence. "Forget, if you can. And if
you cannot, keep silence."
They drove into town together, these men with a secret between them.
Lawrence made no further explanations. What was there to explain? The
one who suffered the most sat upright, looking straight before him in
mute suffering.
It is a long drive from Twickenham to Kensington Palace Gardens. When
they arrived, Mr. Cassilis was too weak to step out of the carriage.
They helped him--Lawrence Colquhoun and a footman--into the hall. He
was feeble with long fasting as much as from the effects of this
dreadful shock.
They carried him to his study. Among the servants who looked on was
Tomlinson, the middle-aged maid with the harsh face. She knew that her
bolt had fallen at last; and she saw, too, that it had fallen upon the
wrong person, for up-stairs sat her mistress, calm, cold and
collected. She came home looking pale and a little worn; fatigued,
perhaps, with the constant round of engagements, though the season was
little more than half over. She dressed in gentle silence, which
Tomlinson could not understand. She went down to dinner alone, and
presently went to her drawing-room, where she sat in a window, and
thought.
There Colquhoun found her.
"I have told him all," he said. "Your words told him only half, and
yet too much. You were never my wife, as you know, and never will be,
though the Law may make you take my name. Cruel and heartless woman!
to gratify an insensate jealousy you have destroyed your husband."
"Is he--is he--dead?" she cried, almost as if she wished he were.
"No; he is not dead; he is struck with some fit. He cannot speak.
Learn, now, that your jealousy was without foundation. Phillis will
marry Dunquerque. As for me, I can never marry, as you know."
"He is not dead!" she echoed, taking no notice of the last words.
Indeed, Phillis was quite out of her thoughts now. "Does he wish to
see me?"
"No; you must not, at present, attempt to see him."
"What will they do to me, Lawrence?" she asked again. "What can they
do? I did not mean him to hear. It was all to frighten you."
"To frighten me! What they can do, Mrs. Cassilis, is to put you in the
prisoner's box and me in the witness box. What he wants to do, so far
as we can yet understand, is to keep silence."
"What is the good of that? He will cry his wrongs all over the town,
and Phillis will tell everybody."
"Phillis will tell no one, no one--not even Agatha. It was lucky that
Agatha heard nothing; she was upstairs, lying down after her party.
Will you keep silence?"
"Of course I shall. What else is there for me to do?"
"For the sake of your husband; for the sake of your boy----"
"It is for my own sake, Lawrence," she interrupted coldly.
"I beg your pardon. I ought to have known by this time that you would
have acted for your own sake only. Victoria, it was an evil day for me
when I met you; it was a worse day when I consented to a secret
marriage, which was no marriage, when there was no reason for any
secrecy; it was the worst day of all when I answered your letter, and
came here to see you. Every day we have met has produced more
recrimination. That would not have mattered, but for the mischief our
meeting has wrought upon your husband. I pray that we may never in
this world meet again."
He was gone, and Victoria Cassilis has not met him since, nor do I
think now that she ever will meet him again.
The summer night closed in; the moonlight came up and shone upon the
Park before her, laying silvery patches of light in ten of thousands
upon the young leaves of the trees, and darkening the shadows a deeper
black by way of contrast. They brought her tea and lights; then they
came for orders. There were none; she would not go out that night. At
eleven Tomlinson came.
"I want nothing, Tomlinson. You need not wait up; I shall not want you
this evening."
"Yes, madam; no, madam. Mr. Cassilis is asleep, madam."
"Let some one sit up with him. See to that, Tomlinson; and don't let
him be disturbed."
"I will sit up with him myself, madam." Tomlinson was anxious to get
to the bottom of the thing. What mischief had been done, and how far
was it her own doing? To persons who want revenge these are very
important questions, when mischief has actually been perpetrated.
Then Victoria was left alone. In that great house, with its troop of
servants and nurses, with her husband and child, there was no one who
cared to know what she was doing. The master was not popular, because
he simply regarded every servant as a machine; but at least he was
just, and he paid well, and the house, from the point of view likely
to be taken by Mr. Plush and Miss Hairpin, was a comfortable one. The
mistress of the house was unpopular. Her temper at times was
intolerable, her treatment of servants showed no consideration; and
the women-folk regarded the neglect of her own child with the horror
of such neglect in which the Englishwoman of all ranks is trained. So
she was alone, and remained alone. The hands of the clock went round
and round; the moon went down, and over the garden lay the soft sepia
twilight of June; the lamp on the little table at her elbow went out;
but she sat still, hands crossed in her lap, looking out of window,
and thinking.
She saw, but she did not feel the wickedness of it, a cold and selfish
girl ripening into a cold and selfish woman--one to whom the outer
world was as a panorama of moving objects, meaning nothing, and having
no connection with herself. Like one blind, deaf, and dumb, she moved
among the mobs who danced and sang, or who grovelled and wept. She had
no tears to help the sufferers, and no smiles to encourage the happy;
she had never been able to sympathise with the acting of a theatre or
the puppets of a novel; she was so cold that she was not even
critical. It seems odd, but it is really true, that a critic may be
actually too cold. She saw a mind that, like the Indian devotee, was
occupied for ever in contemplating itself; she saw beauty which would
have been irresistible had there been one gleam, just one gleam of
womanly tenderness; she saw one man after the other first attracted
and then repelled; and then she came to the one man who was not
repelled. There was once an unfortunate creature who dared to make
love to Diana. His fate is recorded in Lempriére's Dictionary; also in
Dr. Smith's later and more expensive work. Lawrence Colquhoun
resembled that swain, and his fate was not unlike the classical
punishment. She went through the form of marriage with him, and then
she drove him from her by the cold wind of her own intense
selfishness--a very Mistral. When he was gone she began to regret a
slave of such uncomplaining slavishness. Well, no one knew except
Janet. Janet did not talk. It was rather a struggle, she remembered,
to take Gabriel Cassilis--rather a struggle, because Lawrence
Colquhoun might come home and tell the story, not because there was
anything morally wrong. She was most anxious to see him when he did
come home--out of curiosity, out of jealousy, out of a desire to know
whether her old power was gone; out of fear, out of that reason which
makes a criminal seek out from time to time the scene and accomplices
of his crime, and for the thousand reasons which make up a selfish
woman's code of conduct. It was three o'clock and daylight when she
discovered that she had really thought the whole thing over from the
beginning, and that there was nothing more to think about, except the
future--a distasteful subject to all sinners.
"After all," she summed up, as she rose to go to bed, "it is as well.
Lawrence and I should never have got along. He is too selfish, much
too selfish."
Down-stairs they were watching over the stricken man. The doctor came
and felt his pulse; he also looked wise, and wrote things in Latin on
a paper, which he gave to a servant. Then he went away, and said he
would come in the morning again. He was a great doctor, with a title,
and quite believed to know everything; but he did not know what had
befallen this patient.
When Gabriel Cassilis awoke there was some confusion in his mind, and
his brain was wandering--at least it appeared so, because what he said
had nothing to do with any possible wish or thought. He rambled at
large and at length; and then he grew angry, and then he became
suddenly sorrowful, and sighed; then he became perfectly silent. The
confused babble of speech ceased as suddenly as it had come; and since
that morning Gabriel Cassilis has not spoken.
It was at half-past nine that his secretary called, simultaneously
with the doctor.
He heard something from the servants, and pushed into the room where
his chief was lying. The eyes of the sick man opened languidly and
fell upon his first officer, but they expressed no interest and asked
no question.
"Ah!" sighed Mr. Mowll, in the impatience of a sympathy which has but
little time to spare. "Will he recover, doctor?"
"No doubt, no doubt. This way, my dear sir." He led the secretary out
of the room. "Hush! he understands what is said. This is no ordinary
seizure. Has he received any shock?"
"Shock enough to kill thirty men," said the secretary. "Where was he
yesterday? Why did he not say something--do something--to avert the
disaster?"
"Oh! Then the shock has been of a financial kind? I gathered from Mr.
Colquhoun that it was of a family nature--something sudden and
distressing."
"Family nature!" echoed the secretary. "Who ever heard of Mr. Cassilis
worrying himself about family matters? No, sir; when a man is ruined
he has no time to bother about family matters."
"Ruined? The great Mr. Gabriel Cassilis ruined?"
"I should say so, and I ought to know. They say so in the City; they
will say so to-night in the papers. If he were well, and able to face
things, there might be--no, even then there could be no hope.
Settling-day this very morning; and a pretty settling it is."
"Whatever day it is," said the doctor, "I cannot have him disturbed.
You may return in three or four hours, if you like, and then perhaps
he may be able to speak to you. Just now, leave him in peace."
What had happened was this:
When Mr. Cassilis caused to be circulated a certain pamphlet which we
have heard of, impugning the resources of the Republic of Eldorado, he
wished the stock to go down. It did go down, and he bought in--bought
in so largely that he held two millions of the stock. Men in his
position do not buy large quantities of stock without affecting the
price--Stock Exchange transactions are not secret--and Eldorado Stock
went up. This was what Gabriel Cassilis naturally desired. Also the
letter of El Señor Don Bellaco de la Carambola to the _Times_,
showing the admirable way in which Eldorado loans were received and
administered, helped. The stock went up from 64, at which price
Gabriel Cassilis bought in, to 75, at which he should have sold. Had
he done so at the right moment, he would have realised the very
handsome sum of two hundred and sixty thousand pounds; but the trouble
of the letters came, and prevented him from acting.
While his mind was agitated by these--agitated, as we have seen, to
such an extent that he could no longer think or work, or attend to any
kind of business--there arrived for him telegram after telegram, in
his own cipher, from America. These lay unopened. It was disastrous,
because they announced beforehand the fact which only his
correspondent knew--the Eldorado bonds were no longer to be paid.
That fact was now public. It was made known by all the papers that
Eldorado, having paid the interest out of the money borrowed, had no
further resources whatever, and could pay no more. It was stated in
leading articles that England should have known all along what a
miserable country Eldorado is. The British public were warned too late
not to trust in Eldorado promises any more; and the unfortunates who
held Eldorado Stock were actuated by one common impulse to sell, and
no one would buy. It was absurd to quote Eldorado bonds at anything;
and the great financier had to meet his engagements by finding the
difference between stock at 64 and stock at next to nothing for two
millions.
Gabriel Cassilis was consequently ruined. When it became known that he
had some sort of stroke, people said that it was the shock of the
fatal news. He made the one mistake of an otherwise faultless career,
they said to each other, in trusting Eldorado, and his brain could not
stand the blow. When the secretary, who understood the cipher, came to
open the letters and telegrams, he left off talking about the fatal
shock of the news. It must have been something else--something he knew
nothing of, because he saw the blow might have been averted; and the
man's mind, clear enough when he went in for a great coup, had become
unhinged during the few days before the smash.
Ruined! Gabriel Cassilis knew nothing about the wreck of his life, as
he lay upon his bed afraid to speak because he would only babble
incoherently. All was gone from him--money, reputation, wife. He had
no longer anything. The anonymous correspondent had taken all away.