'O mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps, levons l'ancre.
Le pays nous ennuie, O mort, apparaillons.'
BAUDELAIRE.
'J'ai vécu: c'est à dire j'ai travaillé, j'ai aimé, j'ai souffert.'
_Old French Epitaph._
I
The next morning Cecily Wake and her aunt left Monk's Eype. Strange,
unhappy morning! during which Mrs. Robinson alone preserved her usual
indifferent, haughty serenity of manner, though she also, when her face
was in repose, looked weary and sad.
Wantley had found Penelope and her two guests, all three cloaked and
hatted, sitting at the pretty breakfast-table laden with early September
fruit and flowers. His half-suggestion that he should drive the
travellers to the distant junction where they were to catch the fast
train to town was at once negatived by Penelope. 'I am going with them,'
she said shortly, 'and I shall have business at Burcombe which will keep
me till the afternoon.'
Wantley bit his lip. What sort of day would he, Lady Wantley, and
Downing, spend together? He felt angry with his cousin for having
exposed them to such an ordeal. Then the elder Miss Wake asked him some
insignificant question concerning the journey which lay before her, and
he began speaking, going on, as it seemed to himself, aimlessly and
endlessly, hardly waiting for the old lady's vague, nervous answers,
while intensely, agonizingly, conscious of Cecily's quiet figure
opposite, of her pale face and stricken eyes.
At last the meal which had seemed to him so interminably long came to
an end, and they all went into the hall, where Lady Wantley was walking
slowly up and down, waiting to bid farewell to her kinswomen, and
looking, as the young man saw with a certain resentment, quite
unconscious of the storms which had passed over the little company of
people now gathered about her.
As Mrs. Robinson placed herself in the carriage, by the side of her old
cousin, she turned to Wantley, and said deliberately, as if giving
challenge: 'Sir George Downing will lunch in the Beach Room. He leaves
to-night, and of course I shall be back before he starts.'
Wantley made no answer. He was engaged in drawing the rug across
Cecily's knees; as he did so he felt her hand quiver a moment under his,
and there came over him an eager impulse to go with her, to comfort
her--above all, to shut himself off with her from all this tragic
business, which apparently neither he nor she could affect or modify.
Penelope again spoke. 'You, Ludovic, will of course lunch with mamma?'
He answered: 'Yes, of course, of course!' Looking straight at his
cousin, he could not help adding: 'No one shall disturb Sir George
Downing till your return.' And then--not till then--a wave of colour
reddened Penelope's oval face from brow to chin.
II
And so they had gone, and Wantley, turning away, back into the hall,
felt a great depression--a feeling of utter weariness--come upon him. It
was with an unreasonable and unreasoning irritation that he saw Lady
Wantley walking slowly, with her peculiar leisurely grace of movement,
into the great Picture Room, there to take up her accustomed position by
the ivory inlaid table on which lay her books and blotting-pad.
'People when they reach that age,' he said to himself, 'have their
emotions, their feelings of love and pride, mercifully deadened.' But,
all the same, fearing what she might say to him, he did not follow her,
but instead, slipping his hands into his pockets, and pushing his straw
hat down over his eyes, made his way out of doors.
But there, in the clear September sunshine, cooled by the keen sea-wind,
he felt, if anything, even more ill at ease. Every flagstone of the
terrace, every bend of the path leading down to the pine-wood and to the
ilex-grove, reminded him of delicious moments spent with Cecily. He felt
a pang of sharp self-pity, blaming Penelope, even more blaming
Providence, for the spoiling of his idyl. 'After last night,' he said to
himself, 'Cecily will never again be quite the same, bless her!' And so,
walking very slowly, his eyes bent on the ground, he gave himself up
actively to dislike and condemnation of his cousin.
Wantley was an intensely proud man. Perhaps because he had nothing
personally to be proud of, he took the more intense, if not very
justifiable, pride in his unsullied name, in his respectable lineage,
even in the fine traditions left by his predecessor. From boyhood he had
acted according to the theory, 'If I do nothing good or worthy, I will
yet avoid what is evil and unworthy.' And to this not very exalted ideal
of conduct he had remained faithful.
True, Penelope, whatever his griefs against her, would give him and the
world no right to despise her. Condemn her wrong-headedness, her
selfishness, he was free to do; but he knew well enough how far heavier
would have been his condemnation had he discovered that his cousin had
become in secret Downing's mistress. But the knowledge that this would
never have been possible, brought to-day but scant consolation; indeed,
Wantley found it in his heart to wish that Penelope had been more akin
to some of the women whom he and she had known, and to whose frailties
she had always extended a haughty tolerance.
Yet he told himself that he understood her point of view. After all, she
was her own mistress, in the matter of herself owing none but that same
self a duty. But this was not so--ah no, indeed!--in the matter of her
name and of her good repute: those belonged not only to her own self,
but also to others, some dead, some living, and some--so Wantley now
reminded himself--to come.
In happier, more careless days, when he had been so discontented and
dissatisfied with the way his life had shaped itself, the young man had
lamented his small circle of friends and acquaintances, and he had
envied his contemporaries their school and college friends; but now,
to-day, it seemed to him that he knew and was known to all the
world--that is, to the world whose good opinion he naturally valued.
He looked into the future, and realized with shame and anger what would
be said by the kind and by the unkind, by the evil-mind and by the
prudish, in the boudoirs and in the smoking-rooms, when it became known
that Mrs. Robinson, Penelope Wantley--the Perdita of a younger, idler
hour--had 'gone off' with Persian Downing!
Then he thought, with bitter amusement, of how this same news would be
received by the good people--and, on the whole, he had to admit that
they were good people--who had circled round his uncle and aunt in the
days when he himself was a moody, neglected youth, and Penelope a lovely
and engaging, if wayward, child.
The motley crowd of pietists, some few eccentric, the majority intensely
commonplace, who had attended year after year the religious conferences
which had made the name of Marston Lydiate known to the whole religious
world, would doubtless think it their duty to address letters of
sympathy and of condolence to Penelope's mother, even--hateful
thought!--to himself.
Then his mind turned once more to his cousin. What sort of life would be
Penelope's after she had cut herself adrift from her own world? How
would this proud, spoilt woman, who had always kept herself singularly
apart from all that was unsavoury, endure the slights which would
inevitably be put on one who, however much the fact might be cloaked and
disguised, could never be the wife of her companion?
Penelope was not a child, to adapt herself to new conditions. Would
strange, self-centred Persian Downing compensate her for all she was
about to lose? Would this maker of great schemes, this seer of visions,
forget himself, in order to be everything to her? For a few moments
Wantley, leaning on the low wall which separated the ilex-grove from the
cliff overhanging the sea, thought only of Penelope, and of what her
life would be if this tragic affair shaped itself in the way that he
believed to be now inevitable.
The day he had accompanied her to town, during the long railway journey
back to Dorset, Lady Wantley had spoken to him mysteriously as to advice
proffered by Mr. Gumberg. She had seemed to think that if all else
failed he, Wantley, should speak to Sir George Downing, but to this he
had in no way assented.
He turned, and slowly made his way through the pine-trees. The day--nay,
even the morning--had to be lived through, and his thoughts were
intolerable company--so much so, indeed, that he felt he would prefer to
go and find Lady Wantley, and stay with her a while, although he was
aware that she would in all probability urge him to interfere. The
knowledge that he would have to tell her he could not and would not do
so smote him painfully.
Downing and Penelope were not children whose wayward steps could be
stayed, with whom at last force could replace argument. A braver than he
might well hesitate to face the contemptuous indignation of the
eccentric, powerful man, for whom Wantley even now felt kindliness and
respect, reserving, unjustly enough, his greatest blame for the woman.
No, no! If Lady Wantley besought his intervention, he must tell her that
in this matter he could not hope to succeed where Mr. Gumberg had
apparently failed.
III
As Wantley walked along the terrace in front of the villa, past the
opened windows of the Picture Room, he saw Lady Wantley sitting in her
usual place. But there was about her figure, especially about her hands,
which clasped and unclasped themselves across her knee, an unusual look
of tension and emotion.
Wantley turned, and drew nearer to the window which seemed to frame the
still graceful figure. But she remained quite unconscious that she was
being watched. He saw that her lips were moving; he heard her speaking,
as she so often did, to herself; and there came to him the conviction
that she had been down to the Beach Room, that she had seen Downing,
that she had made to him an appeal foredoomed to failure.
A keen desire to know whether he guessed truly, and, if so, to know what
had actually taken place, warred for a moment with the young man's
horror of a scene, and especially of a scene with Lady Wantley in one of
her strange moods.
Suddenly she raised her voice, and he heard clearly the words, uttered
in low, intense tones, and as if in answer to an invisible questioner:
'But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour to slay him with
guile, thou shalt take him from My altar, that he may die.'
'It must have been horribly painful,' said the listener to himself. He
began to pity Downing.
Familiarity had bred in Wantley, not contempt, but a certain indulgent
pity not far removed from contempt, for what he and Mrs. Robinson,
seeing eye to eye in this one matter, regarded as Lady Wantley's
peculiar and slightly absurd religious vagaries. Dimly aware of this
attitude, of this lack of respect for what were to herself vital truths,
Lady Wantley, when in their presence, exercised greater self-control
than either of them ever guessed.
But now, for the moment, she was in no condition to restrain herself;
and though, as he opened the door of the Picture Room, she looked round
for a moment, she still continued talking aloud in apparently eager
argument with some unseen presence. 'Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath
triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the
sea.'
She spoke with increasing excitement, and with what seemed to the hearer
a strange exultation.
He stopped short, and, retracing his footsteps, closed the door. It had
always been tacitly agreed between himself and his cousin that
Penelope's household should hear as little as was possible of Lady
Wantley in these, her wilder moods.
Again he went towards her. As he did so, she stood up and advanced to
meet him. Her pale face was on a level with his own; her grey eyes were
dilated. Something had stirred her far more deeply than she was wont to
be stirred by material things. She looked, Wantley thought, inspired,
exhilarated, as one might look on emerging triumphantly from some awful
ordeal.
As he gazed at her there came to him the hope, the almost incredulous
hope, that she--the mother--had prevailed; that her words, even if
winged with what seemed madness, had been so eloquent as to convince
Downing that what he was about to do was an evil thing, one out of
which no good could come to the woman he loved.
'Then you have seen him?' he asked in a low voice, and, as he spoke, he
took Lady Wantley's hand in his own.
She made a scarcely perceptible movement of assent. 'Thy right hand, O
Lord, has become righteous in power. Thy right hand, O Lord, has dashed
in pieces the enemy.'
Her voice faltered, and her tall figure swayed forward.
'Sit down,' he said quickly, 'and tell me what happened. Were you able
to make any impression on his mind?'
But as she sank back into her chair she answered vaguely, and her head
fell forward on her breast. 'You ask me what happened?' She waited a
moment, and then added, with what seemed a cry: 'He said, "The woman
tempts me, and I shall eat!"'
'I do not think that he can have said that to you,' said Wantley gently.
'Think again. Try and remember exactly what he did say.'
'It was tantamount to that,' she answered, lifting her head and looking
at him fixedly. 'He--he admitted I spoke the truth, yet declared he owed
himself to her.' She hesitated, then whispered: 'I warned him of his
way, he took no heed, he died in his iniquity, and his blood will not be
required of mine hand.'
Even before she had uttered these last words an awful suspicion, a sick
dread, had forced itself on Wantley's mind. He passed his hand over his
face, afraid lest she should see written there his fear--indeed, his all
but knowledge--of what she had done.
There was but a moment to make up his mind what he should say and what
he should do. On his present action much might depend. In any case, he
must soothe her, restore her to calmness. And so, 'We must now think,'
he said authoritatively, 'of Penelope.' He waited a moment, and then
repeated again the one word, 'Penelope.'
Lady Wantley's mouth quivered for the first time, and her eyes
contracted with a look of suffering.
But he did not give her time to speak. 'No one knows--no one must know,
for the sake of Penelope.'
Slowly she bent her head in assent, and he went on, in a low, warning
voice. 'If you say a word--I mean of what has just taken place--the
truth concerning Penelope and Sir George Downing will become known to
all men.' Half unconsciously Wantley adapted the phraseology likely to
reach most bindingly the over-excited, distraught brain of the woman
over whose figure he was bending, into whose face he was gazing so
searchingly.
He felt every moment to be precious, to be big with hideous
possibilities, but he feared to leave her--feared to go before he felt
quite sure he had made her understand that her daughter's reputation was
bound to suffer, if she--Lady Wantley--in any way imperilled or
incriminated herself.
'You will wait here, will you not, till I come to you?' he said
anxiously. 'And if you see anyone, you will not speak? you will remain
absolutely silent, for the sake of your daughter, of poor Penelope?'
He waited until she had again bent her head in assent, and then turned
and left her, passing through the window on to the terrace, and so
swiftly on, down through the wood, to the rough track leading to the
shore.
As he jumped down on to the beach, both feet sinking deeply through the
soft dry sand above the water-line, he paused a moment, and, looking
round him, felt suddenly reassured, ashamed of the unreasoning dread
which had come over him when listening to Lady Wantley's strange,
wildly-uttered words.
The tide was only just beginning to turn, and the sea, in gentle mood,
came and went to within a few feet of the Beach Room, of which the blank
wall jutted out on to his right.
The absolute peace and quietude which lay about him soothed Wantley's
nerves, and he walked round, below the wide-open window, of which the
sill was just on a level with his head, with steady feet.
Then, taking up a stone, he knocked on the heavy wooden door, half
expecting, wholly hoping, to hear in immediate response a deep-toned
'Come in.' But there came no such answer, and once more he knocked more
loudly; he waited a few moments while vague fear again assailed him, and
then, turning the handle, he walked into the Beach Room.
At first he only saw that the chair, set before the broad table covered
with papers, was without an occupant. But gradually, and not quite at
once--or so it seemed to him looking back--he became aware that in the
shadow of the table, stretched angularly across the floor, lay Sir
George Downing, dead.
Standing there, with the horror of what he saw growing on him, Wantley
had not a moment of real doubt, of wild hope that this might not be
death. Still, as he knelt down and brought himself to touch, to move,
that which lay there, he suddenly became aware of a fact which would
have laid any such doubt, for above Downing's right ear was a wound----
With a quick sigh Wantley, trembling, rose from his knees. In spite of
himself, his mind vividly reconstituted the scene which must have taken
place. First, the sudden appearance of the unexpected, unwelcome
visitor; then the vision of Downing, with his old-fashioned courtesy,
giving up the more comfortable chair, while he himself took that in
which he, Wantley, had sat a short week ago; finally--the corner of the
wide table only separating the two adversaries--after the exchange of a
very few words, slow, decisive, on either side--the fatal shot.
The revolver which Wantley remembered having seen pinning the map of
Persia to the table, now lay as it had doubtless fallen from the
delicate, steady hand which had believed itself divinely guided to
accomplish its work of death.
Even now he found time to realize with poignant pain, and yet with a
certain relief, that such a man as had once been he now lying stretched
out at his feet could certainly, had he cared to do so, have stayed, or
at least deviated, the course of the weapon, and later on this knowledge
brought Wantley comfort.
But he had no leisure now to give to such reasoning and, slipping the
bolt in the door, he again stooped over the dead man.
What he was about to do was intolerably repugnant to him, and as, after
a moment's pause, he thrust his hand into the old-fashioned pockets,
turned back the coat, sought eagerly for what it was so essential he
should find, he felt the sweat break out all over his body. But, to his
dismay, there seemed to be no keys, either loose in the various pockets,
or attached to the heavy gold chain, which terminated with a bunch of
old seals and a repeater watch.
Wantley was turning away, half relieved to be spared the task he had set
himself, when something strange and enigmatical struck him in the ashen,
lined face, the wide-open, sightless eyes, from which he had till now
averted his glance.
During the performance of what had been to him a hateful task, and after
having so turned the head as to conceal the wound above the right ear,
he had been at some pains to leave the body exactly as it had fallen.
But in the course of his search he had been compelled to shift the
position of the dead man's arms, and he now saw that Downing's right
hand, lying across his breast, seemed to be pointing--to what was it
pointing? Again the seeker stooped--nay, this time he knelt down; and at
once he found what he had sought for so fruitlessly, for under the palm
of the dead hand, in an inner waistcoat pocket, which had before escaped
him, lay a small key.
For the first time Wantley bared his head, and a curious impulse came
over him. 'You will forgive me,' he said, not loudly, but in a whisper,
'you will pardon, for her sake, for your poor Penelope's sake, what I
have been compelled to do?'
And then heavy-hearted, full of fear and foreboding, he made his way
back, up the rough track, so through the pine-wood, to the villa,
mercifully spared on the way the ordeal of meeting, and having perchance
to speak with, another human being.
Quickly he passed by the window where Lady Wantley was still sitting, up
the shallow staircase leading from the hall to the upper stories of
Monk's Eype, and so on to the room, close to his own, where, with
pleasant anticipation of an agreeable friendship with his cousin's
famous guest, he had ushered Downing the first night of his stay, just a
month ago.
It was, as he now reminded himself, a month to a day, for that first
meeting had been on the seventh of August, the eve of his, Wantley's own
birthday, and this now was the seventh of September.
Wantley singled out at once a large red despatch-box as probably
containing what he sought. The key he held in his hand clicked in the
lock, and he saw, almost filling up the top compartment, a plain,
old-fashioned leather jewel-case which contained more than he expected
to find of moment to himself. There, smiling up at him, lay the baby
face of Penelope, a miniature which he recognized as one that had been
painted to be a surprise gift from Lady Wantley to her husband on their
child's second birthday, and which had always stood on Lord Wantley's
table. 'She should not have given him that!' was the young man's
involuntary thought.
Instinctively he averted his eyes from the slender bundle of letters on
which the miniature had lain. But, as he lifted them out, together with
his cousin's portrait, he saw that they had served to conceal a sheet of
note-paper--a piece of old-fashioned, highly-glazed note-paper, deeply
edged with black--lying open across the bottom of the jewel-case. As he
glanced at the first few words, 'The Queen commands me to request that
you----' ah, poor Downing! For a moment Wantley hesitated; he had meant
only to withdraw what concerned Penelope, but finally he laid
everything--the summons to Balmoral, the letters written in the bold,
pointed handwriting Wantley knew so well, the little miniature--back in
the jewel-case, which he then locked away in his own room next door.
IV
The hours that followed he remembered in later life as a man may do a
period of delirium, or as a bad dream which he has dreamed innumerable
times.
He became horribly familiar with the tale he had to tell.
Each person interested had to be informed of how he had gone down into
the hall, whence, finding two letters for Sir George Downing, he had
made his way across the terrace, down the steps leading to the shore,
noticing as he went a little pleasure boat which had drifted fast out of
sight.
Then had to follow the recital of his fruitless knocking at the Beach
Room door, followed by his dreadful discovery--the sight of one who had
been his honoured guest lying dead, the death-wound above the right ear
having been obviously caused by a revolver which had been left on the
table, close to where the body had fallen.
Wantley also had to describe his return to the villa, the breaking of
the awful news to Lady Wantley, the sending for the doctor and for the
police from Wyke Regis, followed by a time of long waiting--for, of
course, he had allowed no one to touch the body--first for the police
(his letter remained for a while unopened at the station), and then for
his cousin, Mrs. Robinson, who was fortunately away when the first awful
discovery was made.
Such had been the story Wantley had to tell innumerable times--first, to
the various people who had a right to know all that could be known;
secondly, to the numerous folk, whose interest, if idle, was eager and
real, and whom he felt a nervous desire to conciliate, and to make
believe his version of an affair which became more than a nine days'
wonder.
After the bearing of the great mental strain, especially after the
accomplishment of a prolonged mental task, the mind--ay, and even the
body--refuse to be stilled, and call imperatively for something else to
do, to go on doing. When at last the doctor had come and gone, when the
first discussion with the local police had come to an end--in a word,
when Wantley had repeated some five or six times the grim, simple facts
to all those whom it concerned--there came to him the most painful
ordeal of all, the hours spent by him in waiting for Penelope's return.
After he had taken Lady Wantley up to her room, and left her there in
what he trusted would remain a strange state of bewildered coma, he had
come down to wander restlessly through the large rooms on the
ground-floor of the villa.
His mind was clouded with grotesque and sinister images, and he welcomed
such interruptions as were caused by the futile, scared questions of
those among the upper servants who from time to time summoned up courage
to come and speak to him.
While trying to occupy himself by writing letters, which he almost
invariably at once destroyed after he had written them, Wantley was ever
asking himself with sick anxiety, if he had done all that was in his
power to protect and safeguard the two women to whom he had never felt
so closely linked as now. He was haunted by the fear that he himself
might unwittingly reveal what he believed to be the truth, but he would
have been comforted indeed had he known how his mere outward appearance,
his imperturbable face, his sleepy eyes, even his well-trimmed beard,
now served his purpose. Outwardly Wantley appeared to be that day the
calmest man at Monk's Eype, only so far discreetly perturbed as would
naturally be any kindly and good-hearted host, whose guest had met,
while under his roof, with so awful and mysterious a fate.
A curious interlude in his long waiting was the sudden irruption of
Penelope's old nurse. Motey found him sitting at the writing-table of
what had been his predecessor's study, attempting, for the tenth time,
to compose the letter which he knew must be written that night to Mr.
Julius Gumberg.
As the old woman came in, carefully closing the door behind her, he
looked up and saw that the streaky apple-red had faded from the firm
round cheeks, and yet--and yet her look was one of only half-concealed
triumph, not of distress or fear. For a moment they gazed at one another
fixedly, then 'Is it true,' she asked briefly; 'is it really true, Mr.
Ludovic? I was minded to go down and see for myself, but I'm told
there's the police people down there, and I thought maybe I'd better not
meddle.'
'Yes,' he said rather sternly, 'it is quite true. An awful thing, Motey,
to have happened here, in your mistress's house!' He felt impelled to
add these words, revolted by the look of relief, almost of joy, in the
woman's pale face.
Then into his mind there shot a sudden gleam of light, of escape. 'I
suppose,' he said, 'that you don't feel _you_ could tell her, Motey?' A
note of appeal, almost of anguish, thrilled in the young man's voice.
'No,' she answered decidedly. 'The telling of such things is men's work.
I couldn't bring myself to do it; you don't care for her as I do, and
she'll forgive you a sight quicker than she would me. I'll have to do
the best I can for her afterwards.'
The furtive joy died out of Mrs. Mote's old face, and, as she turned and
left the room, her dull eyes filled with reluctant tears.
V
At last the sound of wheels for which he had been listening so long fell
on his ear, and hurriedly he went to fetch that which he felt should be
given to his cousin without loss of time. He hoped, with a cowardly
hope, that bad news, which ever travels quickly, had already met Mrs.
Robinson on her way home.
Having given a brief order that they were not to be disturbed, Wantley
made his way to the studio with the jewel-case in his hand. For a moment
he waited just inside the door. Penelope was standing at the further end
of the long room, leaning over the marble top of the high mantelpiece,
writing out a telegram. She still wore a large straw hat, of which the
sides, flattened down over her ears by broad black ribbons tied under
the chin, framed her face, and gave a softened, old-fashioned grace to
her tall, rounded figure.
As Wantley finally advanced towards her, she looked up, and her glance,
her suspended writing--above all, her blue eyes full of questioning
anger at the intrusion of his presence--showed him that she knew
nothing, that the task he had so greatly dreaded lay before him.
Taking his stand by the other side of the mantelpiece, he put down the
case containing her letters, and pushed it towards her. Twice he opened
his lips but closed them again without speaking.
'Well,' she said shortly, as her eyes rested indifferently on the little
jewel-box, 'I suppose this is something else left by Theresa Wake. It
can be sent on to-morrow with the other thing, but I'll mention it in
the telegram.' And she paused, as if expecting him to leave her. Indeed,
her eyes, her mouth, set in stern lines, seemed to say: 'Cannot you go
away, and leave me in peace? Your very presence here, unasked, in my own
room, is an outrage after the way you behaved to me last night.' But she
remained silent, content to wait, pencil in hand, for him to be gone,
before concluding her slight task.
'Penelope,' he said at last, stung into courage by her manner and by her
contemptuous glance, 'this box was not left by Miss Wake--it once
belonged to Sir George Downing, and its contents are, I believe, yours.'
Again he touched the case, pushed it away from himself towards her. It
slid across the polished surface of the marble to within an inch of her
elbow; but, though he became aware that she stiffened into close
attention, his cousin still said no word.
Her silence became to him unbearable. He walked round, and, standing
close beside her, deliberately pressed the spring, and revealed what lay
within.
As if she had been physically struck, Penelope suddenly drew back. 'Ah!'
she said, and that was all. But in a moment her hand had closed on the
little case, and she held it clasped to her, shutting out the smiling
childish face which lay above the packet of her letters to Downing. So
quietly, so quickly had she done this that he wondered for a moment if
she had really seen and realized all that was lying there. 'She knows
the truth,' he said to himself. 'Thank God I was mistaken--someone else
has told her!'
He waited for a question, even for a cry. But none such came from the
rigid figure.
'Penelope,' he said at last, and there was a note of tenderness in
Wantley's voice she had never before heard in it, 'forgive me the pain I
have to inflict on you. I thought that--that these things ought to be
given you now, at once. I am sure you will destroy them immediately.'
At last, roughly interrupting him, she turned on him and spoke, while he
listened silently, filled with increasing amazement and distress.
'Listen!' she cried, and there was no horror, no anguish, only infinite
scorn and anger, in her voice. 'You ask me to forgive you. But
understand that I will never forgive you! You have done an utterly
unwarrantable thing. Is it possible that you really believed that any
interference or effort on your part could separate two such people as
Sir George Downing and myself? How little you know me! how little you
can understand what the effect of such conduct as yours must be!
Listen!'
She feared he was about to speak, and held up her hand. He was looking
fixedly at her, still full of concern and pity, but feeling more
collected and cooler before her growing excitement.
'No, listen! I am quite calm, quite reasonable; but I want you to
realize what you have done--what your interference will bring about.'
She paused, then continued, speaking in low, quick tones: 'I confess
there was a moment last night when I wavered, when I wondered whether,
after all, I was justified in only considering myself and--and--him. But
now? Shall I tell you what I have made up my mind to do during the last
few minutes? No--don't speak to me yet--I will listen with what
patience I can after you have heard what I have to say. I mean to go to
town to-night with Sir George Downing--I know he has not left; I know
you have not yet driven him away. If necessary, I shall thrust my
company upon him! Do you suppose it will be hard for me to undo with him
any evil you have done?'
Again she paused, again she held up her hand to stay his words. 'If he
is going to Mr. Gumberg I shall ask the old man to allow me to come
there, in the character of George's'--her voice dropped, but she did not
spare Wantley the word--'mistress.'
She added, with a bitter smile: 'Mr. Gumberg is a bachelor; the
situation will amuse him, and give him plenty to talk about all the
winter! I had meant to leave England as secretly, as quietly, as
possible, out of consideration for mamma, and even for you; though I am
not ashamed of what I am doing. But now, after this, I shall write and
tell certain people of my intention, or, rather, of what I shall have
done by the time I write; you will be sorry, you will repent then of
what you have done to-day!'
He saw that she was trembling violently, and a look that crossed his
face stung her afresh. 'Pray do not feel any concern for me. You will
need all your pity for mamma, even a little for yourself, after to-day.
But, oh!'--as her hand again closed convulsively over the case which
contained her letters, her portrait--'he should not have entrusted these
to you! But doubtless he could not help it--how do I know what you said
to him?'
'Penelope,' he said desperately, 'you must, and you shall, listen to me!
You wrong Sir George Downing, and most cruelly. How could you believe
that he, alive, would have let your letters to him go out of his
possession? Surely you knew him better than that!'
'I don't understand,' she said, bewildered. But even as she spoke he
saw the mortal fear, the beginning of knowledge, coming into her face.
He held out his hand, and she took it, groping her way close to him, as
a blind woman might have done. 'Tell me what you mean,' she said, 'tell
me quickly what you mean.'
But before he could answer there came he sound of tramping feet, of
subdued voices. 'Don't look!' he cried hoarsely. 'Penelope, I beg you
not to look!' But she pushed him aside, and, holding her head high, with
swift, steady feet, passed out through the window to meet the little
procession which was advancing slowly, painfully, across the terrace.
The burden which had just been carried up the steep steps leading from
the shore was almost beyond the bearers' strength, for the broad door of
the Beach Room had been taken off its hinges, and large stones from the
shore held down the sheet which covered that which lay on it.
An elderly man, well known both to Penelope and to Wantley as John
Purcell, the head constable of Wyke Regis, came forward to meet Mrs.
Robinson. 'A terrible affair, my lady,' he observed, subdued but eager,
for such an event, so interesting from his professional point of view,
had never before come his way. 'I wouldn't have anything moved till I'd
telegraphed for instructions; but, of course, I didn't stop thinking,
and we've sent word all down the coast about that boatload his lordship
saw. It's a valuable clue, I should say.'
He addressed his words to Penelope, and both he and Wantley believed her
to be listening attentively to what was being said. But, after the first
moment of recognition of the old constable, she no longer saw him at
all, and not to save the life she then held so cheap could she have
repeated what he had just said; for she was saying to herself again and
again, so possessed by the misery of the thought that it left room for
nothing else: 'Why did I go away to-day and leave him? If I had been
here, if I had stayed within call of him, he would not have done this
thing--he would now have been with me!'
But when Purcell dropped his voice she began to hear what he was saying.
'Is there any place downstairs where your lordship could arrange for us
to put the body? We had a hard job over those steps, and up to the poor
gentleman's room I've a notion they're much worse. I've had to be there
two or three times, sealing up everything.' He said it in almost a
whisper, but for the first time Mrs. Robinson, hearing, spoke:
'You may take him to the Picture Room,' she said brusquely, 'and then
you will not have to go through the hall, for the windows are very
wide.'
When the signal was given for the men to move on, she first made as if
she would have followed them; then, at a touch on her arm from her
cousin's hand, she turned away slowly, walking past the studio windows
into the garden paths beyond. Wantley followed her, amazed, relieved,
bewildered by her self-command, fearing the explanation which must now
follow, and yet nervously anxious to get it behind him, while, above
all, conscious of a great physical lassitude which made him long to go
away and forget everything in sleep.
At last, when they were some way from the villa, close to the open down,
Penelope turned to him. 'Now tell me,' she said, 'tell me as quickly as
you can, what I must know.' And she waited, oppressed, while Wantley
once more told the tale he had taught himself to tell, and which had
been made perfect by such frequent, such frightful repetition.
For a moment she remained silent. Then, slowly and searchingly, she
asked what the other felt to be a singular question: 'Would it be better
for him--I mean as to what people will say of him in the future--for it
to be thought, as that foolish old man evidently thinks, that he was
murdered, or for the truth to be known?'
'The truth?' said Wantley, looking at her, 'and what is the truth? Do
you know it?'
'Yes; you and I know the truth.' Penelope's cheeks were burning; she
spoke impatiently, as if angered by his dulness. 'When all that trouble
came to him thirty years ago, he nearly did it; and later, another time,
he thought it the only way out.'
Then Wantley understood her meaning, and the knowledge that she believed
this simple, obvious explanation brought the one touch of comfort, of
relief, which he had felt for many hours.
'I think,' he said at length, 'that such a thing as suicide always goes
against a man's memory. Personally, I hope it will be put down to an
accident. In any case, you must remember that there were many people
interested in bringing about his death. I myself can testify that only
recently he told me that he knew himself to be in perpetual danger.'
But Penelope was not listening. 'Now that you have told me what I wanted
to know, I must ask you to do something for me.' And as he looked at
her, startled, she added: 'Nothing of any great consequence. All I ask
is, that you to-day, before I go back to the house, will tell Motey and
my mother that I cannot, and that I will not, see them for a while.
Mamma will not mind--she will understand. I know well enough that Motey
betrayed me to her--I knew it the day it happened, and I felt very
angry. But now nothing matters. You are to tell Motey from me that if
she forces herself on me now it will be the end--I will never have her
about me again!'
Penelope spoke angrily, excitedly. As she spoke she clutched her
cousin's arm as if to emphasise her words. And Wantley, marvelling,
turned to carry out her wish.