“Letting _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_.”
Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most
embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali,
in the “Arabian Nights.” With his glass, it will be remembered, he could
see whatever was happening on whatever part of the earth he chose, and,
though absent, was always able to behold the face of his beloved. How
often would one give Aladdin’s Lamp, and Fortunatus’ Purse, and the
invisible Cap which was made of “a darkness that might be _felt_” to
possess for one hour the Telescope of Fairyland!
Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep through the tube, while they
were pondering over the means of finding Margaret, their quest would
have been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have been reassured.
Yet there was nothing very awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they
might have expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what the vision would
have shown. Margaret was not in some foreign den of iniquity, nor,
indeed, in a den at all.
The tube enchanted would have revealed to them Margaret, not very far
off, not in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria Square,
Pimlico, S.W. There, in a bedroom, not more than commonly dingy, on the
drawing-room floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds drawn
down, Margaret would have been displayed. The testimony of a cloud of
witnesses, in the form of phials and medical vessels, proved that she
had for some time been an invalid. The pretty dusky red of health would
have been seen to have faded from her cheeks, and the fun and daring
had died out of her eyes. The cheeks were white and thin, the eyes were
half-closed from sickness and fatigue, and Margaret, a while ago so
ready of speech, did not even bestir herself to answer the question
which a gentleman, who stood almost like a doctor, in an attitude of
respectful inquiry, was putting as to her health.
He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe kind of face, and full, red,
sensitive, sensual lips, not without a trace of humor. Near the door,
in a protesting kind of attitude, as if there against her will, was a
remarkably handsome young person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or
upper-servant, The faces of some women appear to have been furnished by
Nature, or informed by habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair
members of the less educated classes), “I won’t put up with none of them
goings on.” Such an expression this woman wears.
“I hope you feel better, my dear?” the dark gentleman asks again.
“She’s going on well enough,” interrupted the woman with the beautiful
dissatisfied face. “What with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and
tonics as you might bathe in--”
“Heaven forbid!”
“She _ought_ to get well,” the dissatisfied woman continued, as if the
invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.
“I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling,” said the dark
gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, “but to the young lady whom I
have entrusted to your charge.”
“A pretty trust!” the woman replied, with a sniff
“Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret,
my dear--’--”
The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a
trembling lip, and eyes that saw nothing.
“Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?”
“You are very kind,” answered the girl at last. “I am sure I am better.
I am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon.”
“Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and
grapes; may I send you some oranges?”
“Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or
rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep,
just now.”
“Poor girl!” said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. “And what do
you dream?”
“There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place,” said the
girl, slowly, “where I am; and something I feel--something, I don’t know
what--drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find myself
on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness falling
in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till I feel
mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me, and
chasing me in the dark--some one I can’t see. Then I slide into the
smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel I _must_ get away from it.
Oh, I don’t know which is worst! And they go and come all the while I’m
asleep, I suppose.”
“I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but all _I_ can do is to
get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige me,
Mrs. Darling” (he turned to the housekeeper), “by placing them in Miss
Burnside’s room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when
she wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret.”
The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the
street, where a hansom cab waited for him. “Covent Garden,” he cried to
the cabman.
We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made
believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a
very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.
Mr. Cranley, “with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before
him” (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more
celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this
been, to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great
difficulty. When he had once learned, by the simplest and readiest
means, the nature of Maitland’s telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had
been dear. The telegram which followed Maitland’s, and in which Cranley
used Maitland’s name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlett, as we have
seen. By the most obvious ruses he had prevented Maitland from following
his track to London. His housekeeper had entered the “engaged” carriage
at Westbourne Park, and shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment
previously occupied by himself and Margaret alone. Between Westbourne
Park and Paddington he had packed the notable bearskin coat in his
portmanteau. The consequence was, that at Paddington no one noticed
a gentleman in a bearskin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A
gentleman in a light ulster, travelling with two ladies, by no means
answered to the description Maitland gave in his examination of the
porters. They, moreover, had paid but a divided attention to Maitland’s
inquiries.
The success of Cranley’s device was secured by its elementary
simplicity. A gentleman who, for any reason, wishes to obliterate his
trail, does wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, unmistakable
garb at one point of his progress. He then becomes, in the minds of
most who see him, “the man in the bearskin coat,” or “the man in
the jack-boots,” or “the man with the white hat.” His identity is
practically merged in that of the coat, or the boots, or the hat; and
when he slips out of them, he seems to leave his personality behind, or
to pack it up in his portmanteau, or with his rugs. By acting on this
principle (which only requires to be stated to win the assent of pure
reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost himself and Margaret in
London.
With Margaret his task had been less difficult than it looked. She
recognized him as an acquaintance of her father’s, and he represented
to her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war in which her father
had served; that he had lately encountered her father, and pitied his
poverty--in poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The father, so he
declared, had spoken to him often and anxiously about Margaret, and with
dislike and distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. Cranley, Shield’s
chief desire in life had been to see Margaret entirely free from
Maitland’s guardianship. But he had been conscious that to take the girl
away from school would be harmful to her prospects. Finally, with his
latest breath, so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Margaret to his
old officer, and had implored him to abstract her from the charge of the
Fellow of St Gatien’s.
Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very lively kindness for
Maitland, nor had she ever heard her father speak of that unlucky young
man with the respect which his kindness, his academic rank, and his
position in society deserved. It must be remembered that, concerning the
manner of her father’s death, she had shrunk from asking questions. She
knew it had been sudden; she inferred that it had not been reputable.
Often had she dreaded for him one of the accidents against which
Providence does not invariably protect the drunkard. Now the accident
had arrived, she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. Her new
guardian, again, was obviously a gentleman; he treated her with perfect
politeness and respect, and, from the evening of the day when she left
school, she had been in the charge of that apparently correct chaperon,
the handsome housekeeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. Cranley
had even given up to her his own rooms in Victoria Square, and had
lodged elsewhere; his exact address Margaret did not know. The only
really delicate point--Cranley’s assumption of the name of “Mr.
Lithgow”--he frankly confessed to her as soon as they were well out of
the Dovecot. He represented that, for the fulfilment of her father’s
last wish, the ruse of the telegram and the assumed name had been
necessary, though highly repugnant to the feelings of an officer and a
gentleman. Poor Margaret had seen nothing of gentlemen, except as
philanthropists, and (as we know) philanthropists permit themselves a
license and discretion not customary in common society.
Finally, even had the girl’s suspicions been awakened, her illness
prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her
father’s friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable
guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father’s wish, and
hoped soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own
livelihood; and independence was Margaret’s ideal.
Her father’s friend, her own protector--in that light she regarded
Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be
no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do
undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a
perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct
of self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for
a week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the
rest of us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience.
Cran-ley’s temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first
human being who ever found himself and other human beings struggling
in a flood for a floating log that will only support one of them.
Everything must give way to his desire; he had literally never denied
himself anything that he dared taka As certainly as the stone, once
tossed up, obeys the only law it knows, and falls back to earth, so
surely Cranley would obtain what he desired (if it seemed safe), though
a human life, or a human soul, stood between him and his purpose.
Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which
his greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she
should vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley’s
original idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the
Continent, where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some
kind had been found for her, he would so arrange that England should
never see her more, and that her place among honest women should be lost
forever. But there were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan.
For instance, the girl knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting
fool; and then Margaret’s illness had occurred, and had caused delay,
and given time for reflection.
“After all,” he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache
in the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed
hansoms)--“after all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no
inconvenient claims.”
For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways
of “removing” an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed
across a not uninstructed intellect--a scheme which appeared open to the
smallest number of objections.
“She shall take a turn for the worse,” he thought; “and the doctor will
be an uncommonly clever man, and particularly well read in criminal
jurisprudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it.”
Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped at Covent Garden,
dismissed his cab, and purchased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges.
He then hailed another cab, and drove with his parcel to the shop of an
eminent firm of chemists, again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked
for a certain substance, which it may be as well not to name, and got
what he wanted in a small phial, marked _poison_. Mr. Cranley then
called a third cab, gave the direction of a surgical-instrument maker’s
(also eminent), and amused his leisure during the drive in removing the
label from the bottle. At the surgical-instrument maker’s he complained
of neuralgia, and purchased a hypodermic syringe for injecting morphine
or some such anodyne into his arm. À fourth cab took him back to the
house in Victoria Square, where he let himself in with a key, entered
the dining-room, and locked the door.
Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After aimlessly moving chairs
about for a few minutes, and prowling up and down the room, he paused
and listened. What he heard induced him to stuff his pocket-handkerchief
into the keyhole, and to lay the hearth-rug across the considerable
chink which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught under the bottom
of the door. Then the Honorable Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds,
and unpacked his various purchases. He set them out on the table in
order--the oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe.
Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the
best, and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room
cupboard. One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table,
in company with a biscuit or two.
When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another
orange, filled a wineglass with the liquid in the phial, and then
drew off a quantity in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and
carefully punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into
the fruit the contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately
completed in the case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then
tenderly polished their coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit
he had eaten. That portion of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire;
and, observing that a strong odor remained in the room, he deliberately
turned on the unlighted gas for a few minutes. After this he opened
the window, sealed his own seal in red wax on paper a great many times,
finally burning the collection, and lit a large cigar, which he smoked
through with every appearance of enjoyment. While engaged on this
portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to sherry from the
glass, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured the liquid from
the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his pocket with
the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in delicate paper,
within the basket, and closed the window.
Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet
voice:
“Now, Alice, you may come in!”
The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.
“How is Miss Burnside?” he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had
told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present
at least.)
“She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her?
Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil’s brew have you been
making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?”
“My dear girl,” replied Mr. Cranley, “you put too many questions at
once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care
of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my
housekeeper. As to the ‘devil’s brew’ which you indicate in a style
worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of
positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you
did not, that is one of the very few alcoholic combinations in which you
have never, to my knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any
other matter on which I can enlighten an intelligent and respectful
curiosity?”
The fair woman’s blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger,
like a baleful lightning.
“I don’t understand your chaff,” she said, with a few ornamental
epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to
decorate her conversation.
“I grieve to be obscure,” he answered; “_brevis esse laboro_, the old
story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she
wakens, she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and
leave them on a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer
fruit, Alice, my dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish
Square, and leave this note at the doctor’s.”
“Oh, nothing’s too good for _her!_” growled the jealous woman, thinking
of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the oranges
not used in his experiment.
Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the
door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret’s
door, come out again, and finally leave the house.
“Now, I’ll give her a quarter of an hour to waken,” said Mr. Cranley,
and he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the _Times_. He glanced
rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet “Still
advertising for him,” he said to himself; and he then turned to the
sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for
the reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not
yet come on. When he had read all that interested him in the _Times_, he
looked hastily at his watch.
“Just twenty minutes gone,” he said. “Time she wakened--and tried those
Jaffa oranges.”
Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite
Margaret’s door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not
find any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he
chose a large and heavy _fauteuil_, took it up in his arms, and began
to carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret’s chamber, he
stumbled so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was
dashed against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He
picked it up, and retired silently to the dining-room.
“That would have wakened the dead,” he whispered to himself, “and she is
not dead--yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of them,
and then--”
The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his
mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was
being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal
remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or
frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and
less perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind
of lucidity possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was
passing in the chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of
Death.
She has wakened--she has looked round--she has seen the poisoned
fruit--she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it--she has
tasted the oranges--she has turned to sleep again--and the unrelenting
venom is at its work!
Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his
hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the
right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the
star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the
grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning
the tissues--each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an
unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty--that will spares them not.
The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays,
though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all
things--_mens agitat molem_; and yet we can make that will a slave of
our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the
accomplishment of our desires.
It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that
the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed
actually to be present in Margaret’s chamber, watching every movement
and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips
and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not
therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection
that he was musing.
“Now it’s done, it can’t be undone,” he said. “But is it so very safe,
after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it’s much
more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any
other way. And then there’s all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there
is not an inquest--as, of course, there won’t be--they’ll ask who the
girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they’ll, some of
them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound
her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries,
perhaps.”
And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his
thumb-nail, and yawned.
“By gad! I wish I had not risked it,” he said to himself; and his
complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to
flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk
back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the
finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could
scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth.
A long pull at the liquor restored him, and he began his round of
reflections again.
“That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out,” he
said; “and--” He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the “French
fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then
he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still,
it’s not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better.
By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she
hasn’t. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are
the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room, if she
_has_ taken it. I _must_ go and see. I don’t like the job.”
He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a
sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel.
With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of
his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl’s door
he waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All
was silent. His heart was sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump:
he heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might
wake the sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!
Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it
with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the
door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful
husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman’s hard knock
at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful
visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound
asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could
make out that much. He did not dare draw close enough to observe her
face minutely, or bend down and listen for her breath. And the oranges!
Eagerly he looked at them. There were only five of them. Surely--no! a
sixth had fallen on the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of
relief he picked up all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and,
as shrinkingly as he had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and
cursing his own cowardice under his breath--he stole down stairs, opened
the dining-room door, and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.
“Now I’ll settle with you!” came a voice out of the dimness; and the
start wrought so wildly on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as
they were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm and despair. Was
he trapped, and by whom?
In a moment he saw whence the voice came. It was only Alice Darling,
in bonnet and cloak, and with a face flushed with something more than
anger, that stood before him.
Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed of his own alarm, and tried
to dissemble it. He sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely
observed:
“Now that you have returned, Alice, will you kindly bring lights? I want
to read.”
“What were you doing up-stairs just now?” she snarled. “Why did you send
me off to the doctor’s, out of the way?”
“My good girl, I have again and again advised you to turn that
invaluable curiosity of yours--curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew
Arnold so justly views with high esteem--into wider and nobler channels.
Disdain the merely personal; accept the calm facts of domestic life
as you find them; approach the broader and less irritating problems of
Sociology (pardon the term) or Metaphysics.”
It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an
ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too
far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion she lifted a knife that
lay on the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being
prepared, he was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take leasure in the
success of his plan of tormenting. The heavy escritoire at which he sat
was a breastwork between him and the angry woman. He coolly opened a
drawer; produced a revolver, and remarked:
“No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, Alice. I asked for lights; and
you will be good enough to bring them. I am your master, you know, in
every sense of the word; and you are aware that you had better both hold
your tongue and keep your hands off me--and off drink. Fetch the lamp!”
She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. She returned, set the lamp
silently on the table, and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which lay
on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. It was a rather peculiar
letter to look at, or rather the envelope was peculiar; for, though
bordered with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal should have
been, with a strange device in gold and colors--a brown bun, in a glory
of gilt rays.
“Mrs. St John Deloraine,” he said, taking it up. “How in the world did
_she_ find me out? Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer
than a brother--a deal closer than Surbiton, anyhow.”
Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. Cranley, and bore the second
title of the family.
“I don’t suppose there is another woman in London,” he thought to
himself, “that has not heard all about the row at the Cockpit, and that
would write to me.”
Then he tore the chromatic splendors of the device on the envelope, and
read the following epistle:
“Early English Bunhouse,
“Chelsea, Friday.
“My dear Mr. Cranley,
“Where are you hiding, or yachting, you wandering man? I can
hear nothing of you from anyone--nothing _good_, and you
know I never believe anything _else_. Do come and see me, at
the old Bunhouse here, and tell me about _yourself_”
--(“She _has_ heard,” he muttered)
--“and help me in a little difficulty. Our housekeeper (you
know we are strictly _blue ribbon--a cordon bleu_, I call
her) has become engaged to a _plumber_, and she is leaving
us. _Can_ you recommend me another? I know how interested
you are (in spite of your wicked jokes) in our little
enterprise. And we also want a girl, to be under the
housekeeper, and keep the accounts. Surely you will come to
see me, whether you can advise me or not.
“Yours very truly,
“Mary St. John Deloraine”
“Idiot!” murmured Mr. Cranley, as he finished reading this document; and
then he added, “By Jove! it’s lucky, too. I’ll put these two infernal
women off on _her_, and Alice will soon do for the girl, if she once
gets at the drink. She’s dangerous, by Jove, when she has been drinking.
Then the Law will do for Alice, and all will be plain sailing in smooth
waters.”