A SCIENTIFIC MURDER.
On those occasions when Susan Riley obtained the usual forty-eight
hours' leave of absence from the hospital, it was her custom to pass
most of this time in the company of her lover the barrister.
Now, it happened on the night that Dr. Duncan had come across his old
friend at the Albion, the latter had made an appointment with his
mistress to take her to the theatre after a dinner at a restaurant.
He had given her the set of keys to his chambers, so that she might let
herself in at six o'clock, and there await his coming.
Susan arrived at the appointed hour. Hudson was generally punctual when
he had to meet her; but seven o'clock passed, then eight, and yet he did
not come, so that Susan, who had first felt only extremely angry at his
delay, began to be fearful of some disaster.
This is what had occurred. At three o'clock in the afternoon, for the
first time for three long years, the man had caught a glimpse of Mary
Grimm as she was walking down Oxford Street.
He recognised her at once. The sight brought back to him a host of
memories and regrets. His mind, weakened and excitable from habitual
alcoholism, was altogether unbalanced by this meeting.
A senseless passion--such as are the curse of such enfeebled brains, in
which all the emotions are exalted to the verge of madness--possessed
him. It was not that he had, through all these years, nursed any love
for the young girl whom he had only seen for a few hours altogether. He
had almost forgotten her. He had long since given up thinking about her.
But now, no sooner did he perceive her, than he felt as if she had been
all the world to him ever since that strange adventure in the Temple. He
really believed that this had been the case; and the mad delusion took
command of him and carried him away with it. He loved her--her only, he
thought--the dear little girl who had passed that evening with him in
his rooms--Oh! so long ago, it appeared now to him, not in years though,
but in change of nature. Yes, he was sunk now beyond redemption, he was
utterly lost--a degraded wretch--so he dared not go up to her and speak
to her; he was too foul a thing to approach _her_--and he almost burst
into hysterical tears, as he turned his back to her while she passed
him, that she might not see his face; and then he walked away in an
opposite direction--whither he cared not--in that condition when all
good has abandoned the soul of a man, and it is empty, and will only
open to devils.
He no longer thought of his mistress, his beloved Edith, or of his
engagement with her. He went into refreshment bar after refreshment bar,
asking at each for brandies, which he swallowed neat and at a gulp one
after the other; so that men looked askance at him, and the bar-maids
who served him pitied him, and begged him to drink no more.
He did not become drunk, he was beyond that stage; but a fierce
despairing sullenness seized him and was expressed in his features,
which were now as pale as death, with two large eyes blazing out from
darkened circles.
And so on and on, hour after hour, until the time when we left him
outside the Albion, running away from the one human being who wished to
befriend him.
All this while Susan Riley, in no contented mood, was waiting for him
in his chambers, which appeared cheerless enough, for no fire was
burning in the grate, and she could find but one candle to place on the
table, whose light only threw out in stronger gloom the dark
wainscotting and sombre-coloured furniture.
As the tedious hours went by, she paced up and down the rooms, and sat
down in turns. She took down book after book from his shelves but could
find nothing to interest her. Then she opened his drawers and desks, and
looked over some of Hudson's private papers. This was a favourite
amusement of hers when she was left alone in his chambers; and she had
contrived, by reading his letters whenever she had an opportunity, to
learn a good deal about his family, and pecuniary prospects.
She was examining the contents of a desk, turning over some manuscript,
poems, and articles in a cursory fashion, when her eye happened to fall
on the title of one of these, "La Fille de Marbre."
"Dear me!" she said to herself, "here is a poem addressed to me. He told
me the other day, when he was in bad a humour, that I reminded him of
the heroine of a French novel he had been reading--'La Fille de Marbre.'
I begin to think he almost sees through me sometimes now, and does not
consider me quite such a perfect being as he did. I will read this
'Fille de Marbre,' and see what nonsense he has been writing about me. I
may learn something about the true state of his sentiments."
There was an amused smile on her face as she read the barrister's latest
poetical production:--
"LA FILLE DE MARBRE."
I.
THEN.
"Children of pleasure are we: the whole of our life is a play;
With white breasts, music, and wine we while the hours away.
You scorn and revile us and hate us, would put us to torture and shame,
You virtuous! Ah, well! We will not pause in the game,
To be bitter in our turn on you and wax hot. Not we! for we know
Life is too short for such folly. Away all pother and woe!
Think not of the After! Drink deep of the Present! This world's
good enough;
Has infinite sweets: fool he that follows the way that is rough!
"The maudlin sage drones out, 'All pleasure is vain.' Let him try!
He will weep and rend his clothes with regret that he did deny
These rapturous joys to himself through so many pitiful years.
What do we know of the After? Why brood upon it with fears?
The Now is enough for the wise. Come, ye daughters of joy!
Help me to live as one should. Let thy white feet glance in my hall:
Of all the gifts of the good gods, ye are the sweetest of all!
"Hark to the sour recluse! He says, 'Woman's a perilous toy,'
That 'the girl is selfish and false, and follows the luck of the dice,
Smells gold afar off as a vulture, with caresses feigned for the rich,
And when the gold is all gone will let her love die in a ditch.'
"A liar! a coward he! that fears what he does not know.
'Tis the cold, not the fierce Bacchante's blood, the red gold
mastereth so.
"For we too have died for each other--we 'selfish' children of vice,
Our passionate kisses are warm, yea warmer than virtue can tell.
Ho! ho! while I live, I will live, nor give thought to God or his hell!"
II.
NOW.
"Cold is the wind and the rain of the autumn night in the street.
My rags are so thin. Chill death ascends from my sodden feet.
Up to my heart. What care I? For I can laugh at the cold.
My head is hot; my blood boils. I have just met a friend of old.
I was proud, I was dying for food, yet dared not beg for a crust;
But he asked me to drink, and I drank--and now I feel as a god,
As a god who has something to give, and so can rule with a nod.
"I stand by a well-known house, a house of gambling and lust,
Where in the bright-lit rooms, men flushed with the fever of play
Win and lose. If they win, the she-devils rake it away.
Win and lose. If they lose, they must out in the cold and die;
Or if they be callous and tough, why, then become even as I.
"Ah, me! for yon beautiful woman. Ah, me! for the passionless mart
Ah, me! for the soft, warm flesh that covers the cold, hard heart.
_He_ was lucky to-night at play; look at her wanton grace:
The kisses, the toying hands, the flushed and amorous face,
The moist lips lying of love!--she will lead him up to the gate
Of Ruin and Death and Hell, and leave him there to his fate.
With a low and musical laugh, as of silver as hard and as cold,
At his folly to think _she_ could love--she has treated so many of old.
"For is it not true that every gem your round white limbs do bear,
And every star that shines in the night of your ebon hair,
Was bought with a good man's soul? Each is a trophy sweet
Of a noble life that was trampled under your delicate feet.
The wine of your mouth is poison unto the fool that sips;
Your fair white bosom is bruised, but not with a baby's lips,
Child never drew life from those breasts, no gentle mother thou art,
No, nor woman! warm blood of a woman ne'er fed such a pitiless heart.
"And now from the steps of the house I see her descending again,
Again after years, and there gnaws at my heart a twinge of an
ancient pain:
See!--still she is fair! nay, yet fairer! I gaze, as she pauses awhile
To draw a delicate glove on a hand that has toyed with mine.
Lo, from the perfect lip there dies the last shade of a smile,
A smile for the fool she has left, drunk with gaming and wine.
Alas! for that lip and that hand, and those heavy-fringed, amorous eyes.
Oh, the days of passion that were--the days I believed in thy sighs--
The days when I loved thee so--as now, I hate and despise.
And, lo! I seek in vain to trace on thy mouth, in thine eyes,
A _little_ remorse, a _little_ of woman. Thou knowest well to hide
All feeling; but when awake, and thy lover sleeps by thy side,
Does a serpent gnaw at thy bosom, a shade chill thy heart? Is thy brow,
When thou sittest alone, as unruffled, as coldly tranquil as now?
... Fool to ask! Heart she has not. Had she ever so little a one,
'Twould have seared and wrinkled her beauty with thought of the ill
she has done.
"She has gone! and I stand alone in the rainy, desolate street.
Is it famine or wine?--but never before did my heart so madly beat,
And this pain of my whirling brain: the keen, quick sense of my _Now_!
Unpitied--self-unpitying--I know my want is my guilt.
I feel no remorse for the past--the cup was wantonly spilt.
I do not want pity--I have _no_ contrition. Knowing all that I know,
Had I aught--why, then, that--and my life--and my soul--I'd stake
at a throw,
On the chance of winning once more sufficient to buy her kiss,
To buy the dear false smile--the sweet lies whispered low,
With the poisoned wine of her lips to drug the memories of this,
Till the lies seemed delicious truths....
"... I _will_ forget all that I know,
Oh, my love! and only remember how wondrously sweet thou art.
Ah, yes! Thou lovest me well; let me die in one long embrace.
Draw thee closer, yet closer. Let me feel thy breath on my face;
Let us forget all things save our love--yes, even till we die
In dreams of impossible joys, of more than human delight,
Each sweet, passionate secret wringing from love, you and I.
Through the mystical garden of Eros, hand in hand we will go,
Plucking the magical fruits that poison the human heart.
And what if they do? Why we care not! While we live let us live!
We have ate of the magical fruit; we are drunk, and can no more strive.
So hail, mad excesses of pleasure! In spite of cold virtue; in spite
Of Hell, let us know once again, _one_ hour as we used to know!
"... But why art thou gone in the darkness?... A dream!...
My brain swims to-night.
Hunger may be, or madness.... Ah, this pain at my heart.... Let me go!
It is death ... death in the streets.... Well, I care not--it is
better so."
"Very pretty indeed," said Susan to herself, when she had read this
poem; "very pretty, though I can't help thinking some of the ideas are
hardly original. I wonder if I am the heroine, if I am this lovely
'Fille de Marbre?' I'm afraid he's hit me off pretty well. Clever of
him; yet, after all, he must be the greater fool to stick to me if he
knows me so well. Yes, he is evidently beginning to understand me. I
must look out."
She took the manuscript up again and re-read some of it. "Yes, my man!
you were certainly thinking of yourself when you wrote this," she
reflected; "you are just the weak, passionate fool described here. You
are going to the dogs pretty fast. Who knows that you too will not die
like a rat in the streets?"
She glanced at the clock and started to see how late it was. "Where can
he be? I believe I am getting superstitious; sitting all alone in this
dark room is enough to give one the jumps; but somehow I can't help
feeling that there is something ominous in this ridiculous poem I have
been reading. 'Death, death in the streets.... Well, I care not; it is
better so.' Pooh! what nonsense! I am a fool," she shivered and looked
uneasily around the room; then she rose from her chair, and, drawing
aside the curtain, peered out of the window at the deserted court.
"Where can he be? He has never been late like this before. He has been
drinking like a madman for the last few days. Who knows?--perhaps he may
have foretold his own end in those verses. He may even now be dying....
But this is sheer folly; he can look after himself. But I must get rid
of these blues. Ah! here is his beloved brandy bottle."
With the aid of some spirits and water, she contrived to dispel her
nervousness. But still he did not come. She fidgeted about the rooms
vainly seeking something to amuse her. At intervals she would walk up to
the mirror, and contemplate the image of her face with a close scrutiny
to see how the wrinkles about her eyes were getting on--a common trick
of this unfortunate being, whose whole pleasure in life, whose every
interest hung on her youth and beauty, who was haunted by the perpetual
dread of age and ugliness.
For six hours she waited in the chambers, but she would not go--she
would see the end of this.
One o'clock boomed out in melancholy tones from the spire of St.
Clements, answered by Big Ben in the distance, and a dozen city
churches. A quarter of an hour afterwards there was a hurried rush of
someone up the stairs, then a long fumbling at the keyhole.
She went to the door and opened it, and the aspect of her lover, as he
stood there with the light of the passage lamp falling on his distorted
features was so terrible, that she shrunk back in fear.
"Don't be frightened, Edith, I won't hurt you--only drunk," and he
laughed discordantly as he pushed by her without further greeting,
without offering to kiss her, for which last omission she was thankful.
He entered the sitting-room, threw himself into a chair by the table,
and buried his head in his hands, as he placed his elbows on the
wine-stained mahogany.
What a contrast between this scene and one three years before! The
chambers were the same, though not so tidy as of old; then it was
summer. It was now winter, with no fire in the grate, and a cheerless
look about the place. Then there were two, a man and a woman together--a
man young, in the prime of life, happy, hopeful, and a girl of noble
instincts, and lovely as the young Aphrodite. Now it was the same man
but how changed, how fallen! and the woman was another--the evil genius
of the man, just as the first woman might have been his good genius.
Susan stood by him for some minutes without speaking, too terrified to
bring out the nasty little speech she had meditated before he came in.
At last she touched him on the shoulder. "Tommy, dear, you are ill."
He raised his head and stared at her with a look in which there was no
recognition, and quite empty of its usual love, and said angrily,
"Ill--not at all--who the deuce are you?--where's the brandy?"
He rose and walked to the cupboard, took out the decanter of brandy and
a tumbler, which he half-filled and drank off.
"Oh, Tommy!" she cried, much alarmed and seizing him by the arm. "For
God's sake don't go on like this--go to bed--I will watch by you, love."
He flung her from him, and glaring at her savagely and sullenly, cried,
"Love! love! what do you mean by calling me that? Who are you to use
that word? I have only got one love and she is dead. Ha! ha! and I
killed her--yes, killed her, do you hear that?"
"No! no! darling," she exclaimed clasping him in her arms. "Look at me,
I am your love."
"You!--not you--I don't know you--she was nothing like you--you are not
Mary."
"Now dear, be quiet. Don't be so foolish; you are only putting on all
this to frighten me. You'll be sorry to-morrow that you have been so
unkind to your little sweetheart--when you come to your senses. Now
dear, do go to bed, and don't talk any more nonsense about your Mary."
"Don't mention _her_ name!" he almost screamed. "Mary! Mary! O God! if
she could see me now--Mary--a saint not anything like you--Mary. She
died three years ago, here in these rooms--and I saw her ghost this
afternoon--I killed her--the only thing I loved, and I killed her--Oh!
oh!"
"No dear, she is not dead--are you sure her name was Mary--was it not
Edith? Come think now--look at me, my poor old boy," and she pressed his
head to her bosom and stroked his hair softly with her hand, in the
hopes of soothing him somewhat.
"Edith be damned!" he shouted at the top of his voice, as he threw her
off once more. "No, it was Mary.--Her name was Mary Grimm, and she is
dead! dead! dead!"
"Mary Grimm!" said the woman in a low voice between her clenched
teeth--"did you say Mary Grimm?"
"Yes, Mary Grimm--an angel whose name your mouth should not pollute by
mentioning."
"Mr. Hudson, do you remember who I am?"
"I do, I do. Do you think I don't see through your wicked heartless
wiles. I never loved you really. I was mad for a moment--a drunken
affection--blind with drink. I have only made a beast of myself with
you--but Mary!--Oh, I loved her, as no man ever loved before."
The woman stood before him, very pale now, biting her lips to conceal
her malice and rage--she hated as well as despised this fool now.
"What do you mean by saying such things--are you mad, man?"
"I mean what I say."
"Very good. You know a woman can never forget or forgive such words as
you have spoken to me."
"I don't care a damn, if you don't!" cried Hudson.
She took up her cloak and hat, stood for a few moments looking fixedly
at him, the very picture of intense hate, and hissed through her teeth,
"I leave you--madman! Idiot! You will have the horrors soon, and perhaps
then you will see faces more pitiless and loathsome than even mine--I
leave you to enjoy yourself with them. Good-bye, dear, good-bye!" and
she left his rooms.
When she had got out of the gate at the top of Middle Temple Lane into
Fleet Street, she did not immediately leave the spot, but stood a few
moments considering her position. She knew the man she had left was on
the verge of a severe attack of delirium tremens. She thought it highly
probable that in his present condition he would not remain alone in his
chambers, but would soon be driven out by the fever within him once more
into the deserted streets. She would wait and watch his proceedings from
a safe distance. It would be amusing. So with this object in view she
crossed to the other side of the road and stood there.
Her surmise was correct. She had not to wait many minutes. The gate
swung open, and the barrister staggered out. The porter looked out after
him for a few seconds, and then closed the door again.
Hudson did not perceive her. A new mood was on him. He walked slowly
along Fleet Street westwards, his eyes turned to the ground.
Suddenly a fantastic idea seized his ever-changing mind. He would go
down Devereux Court. He would look at the doorway in which he had first
found Mary Grimm.
Susan Riley followed him afar off, like a vulture waiting till its prey
fall.
At last he came to the dark doorway, and then followed a strange scene,
which the observer, not having the clue to it, merely set down to the
unreasoning frenzy of one mad with drink.
The poor wretch sobbed aloud. He threw out his arms towards the door,
and kissed the panels against which the young girl had crouched in that
summer evening long ago. Then with a cry he cast himself on the ground
and kissed the stones on which her feet had trod.
It often happens that when a mind is in the condition his was in then,
exalted by disease, it will for a moment become unnaturally clear and
acute, capable of suffering impossible to the sane. So there arose
suddenly to his crazed mind so vivid a vision of his past--of what might
have been--of what was, so terrible a contrast, that in his anguish and
despair he deliberately dashed his head violently three times against
the stone column of the house; then he rose up to his full height, the
blood streaming down his features, gazed wildly round for a few seconds,
and fell down on his face, insensible.
Susan Riley, pale, calm, with a bitter smile on her mouth, watched all
this. Then she went to him, turned his face upwards, and gazed at it
with the same unmoved expression; that once noble face, now distorted,
hideous, with the locks steeped with blood lying on the brow, and the
red stream trickling over it.
"Faugh!" she said to herself, "what a beast a man can make of himself!"
Then she deliberated for a short time what she should do next.
Of a sudden, a triumphant smile broke out on her face; she laughed low:
"Oh, it is too good," she thought, "what a capital idea--what a scene we
will have!"
She looked around her stealthily to see that no one was by; then she
drew a small hypodermic syringe from her pocket, and standing under the
lamp by the Temple gate carefully filled it from a bottle of
straw-coloured fluid. After another careful look up and down the two
streets, and at all the windows that commanded a view of the scene, she
approached the insensible man. She stooped down and bared his left arm,
then with one hand she took up a bit of the fleshy part of it, with the
other she pushed the fine tube under the skin, and slowly pressed down
the piston.
She held it there for a few seconds, then withdrew it, and placed it
again in her pocket.
"Number one!" she muttered to herself. "Ah, Mary! so quiet and yet so
sly; I shouldn't have thought it of you. You have robbed me of this
fool. I believe you are trying to rob me of that prig, Dr. Duncan. We
shall see, my girl, who wins in this game. I never liked you; now I hate
you, and that's bad for you. I flatter myself I'm a dangerous person to
make an enemy of--subtle and unscrupulous enough anyhow. Yes, Susie
dear, you are decidedly dangerous."
Then she walked up to Fleet Street and found a policeman. She informed
him that there was a man who had been seized by a fit at the bottom of
the court.
The policeman accompanied her to the spot, and examined the prostrate
form by the light of his bull's eye.
"He's only drunk," he said at last. "He's fallen down and cut his face a
bit; nothing serious. We'll take him to the lock up."
Susan stooped and pretended to feel the barrister's pulse. "Policeman,"
she cried, "you must do nothing of the kind. He is not drunk, but
seriously ill. I am an hospital nurse, and understand this case. He
must be removed to the hospital at once, and without delay; do you
hear? It is a question of life and death! Get a cab and drive him to
the ---- hospital; it is my hospital. There will be a doctor in
attendance there who will save him, if any one can."
The constable still hesitated; but when the sergeant came up her
earnestness overcame the doubts of both, and her advice was followed.
She saw her lover carried off, and then she walked away to a lodging
where she was known, and where they would put her up for the night. She
was too excited to feel any fear for the consequences of her act as yet.
"Yes, it will be too delightful," she said to herself as she went along.
"I will send Miss Mary her old sweetheart."
The barrister had not been so far from being the prophet of his own
fate, when he penned those verses to "La Fille de Marbre."