A RETROSPECT.
Mrs. Davenport's visit to the Black Rock that day had not been one of
mere curiosity, although nothing of import to her life was likely to
result from it. Her career was over, if, indeed, it might be said ever
to have begun.
In her younger days she had been abandoned by the only man she had
ever loved, and wed to a man whom she never loved, whom she could not
even esteem. She had sworn to love her husband; she had fairly tried,
and wholly failed. To her husband she had been a blameless wife, an
admirable companion. He had signified his approval of her conduct by
leaving her his fortune. All her lifetime she had been too proud to
care for money, and now she could not take it. Her father had
prevented her marrying the good-for-nothing, beggarly scamp, Tom
Blake, and forced her into the arms of the elderly, rich, excellent
Mr. Louis Davenport. In those days she had been torn by tempests of
love and hate, of aspirations and despairs, which no mortal eye had
seen, no mortal ear had heard. In the solitude of her own room, and of
the woods about her father's home, she had wept and stormed, and
pitied herself with the broken-hearted self-pity of youth. She had
cast herself against the bars that confined her, and wished that the
fury which shook her might end her. She had prayed in vain for death.
In answer to her passionate appeals for a shroud, heaven sent her a
bridal veil. When Blake gave her up, she did not care whether she
walked into an open grave or up to the marriage altar. She took no
interest in herself: why should she take interest in any one else?
If Blake had asked her to fly with him then, she would have rushed
into his arms with unspeakable eagerness and joy. But he sold his
claim to her for a sum of money, and walked off with the cash in his
pocket!
She then knew she was beautiful--one of the most beautiful women in
the country. Many men had sought her before Blake asked her for her
love. But up to his coming she was heart-whole. She had never
seriously considered any man. She thought little of the sex, of the
race, herself included. She took but a weak interest in this world,
and, up to the advent of her only sweetheart, would have stepped out
of it any day without much reluctance. She was a dreamer, and told
herself the hero of her dreams was not human. Then came Tom Blake, and
forth went her whole heart to him. She gave him all the love she had
to give. She told him her life had hitherto been dull, without
expectation, hope, love, sunlight; but that, as he was now with her,
and would, in spite of all opposition, be beside her all her life, her
soul was filled with ineffable hope, with delicious love, and the
dream-romance of her life had taken substantial form, which would be a
thousand times sweeter than she had ever dared to figure in her
thoughts.
Her lover had no money. He had lost his patrimony. Her father had
nothing to give her, and----
And what?
How was it to be? How could they live on nothing? She had been brought
up a lady, but her father was hopelessly in debt--over head and ears
in debt--and if he were ever so willing to do so, he was powerless to
help them now, and could leave them nothing later.
True--most sadly true. But what of that? Was Tom not her lover?--and
was he going to die of hunger? Did he not think he could get enough
money somehow to keep him from falling by the way?
No doubt. But she had been tenderly, luxuriously brought up. He had no
means of keeping her in any such position as she had all along in life
enjoyed.
But he could get bread? Not literally only bread, but as much as they
paid a gamekeeper or a groom?
Oh, nonsense! Of course he could. But gentlefolk could not live on the
wages of a gamekeeper or a groom.
Did he love her?
Very much. But a gamekeeper got no more----
Than a roof, and clothes, and food, and--love. How much did he love
her?
Oh, better than anything else in the world.
Well, then, let him take time and look around him, and get house, and
clothes, and food such as gamekeepers and grooms may have. Those would
be his contributions to their lives. She would supply the love.
But lady and gentleman could not live in such a way.
Why not? He was a gentleman, and she was a lady, and poverty could
take none of these poor possessions away, any more than riches could
create them. Let him get a gamekeeper's wages, and she would share
them with him, and give him all her love, every day renewed.
But----
Ah! Then all she had to give was not worth as much to him as a
gamekeeper valued his own wife at. Good-bye. The air was damp, and
this wood was chilly.
Yes, it looked as if it were going to rain. She would not leave him
thus. She would say good-bye to him, and give him one kiss at parting.
She would say good-bye, and he might have as many kisses as he cared
for, provided she got soon away--for it was going to rain. No man had
ever kissed her but him. Kisses did not mean anything, or words
either. Why did he draw back? She told him he might kiss her if he
chose. Any man might kiss her now. Kisses or words did not mean
anything. Well, good-bye. Whither was he going? It would surely rain.
Whither, did he say?
"To hell!"
"No, not there. You are a gentleman, and gentlemen do not go there;
only gamekeepers and grooms--and women such as I."
She walked slowly away through the moist wood in the drizzling rain.
He felt sorely sorry and hurt, and ill-used by fate; but he had a gay
disposition, and was no dreamer. Besides, he was a man of the world,
and devilishly pressed for money just then; so he took Louis
Davenport's thousand pounds and went away.
After a while she married the odd, rich, old bachelor, Louis Davenport
(she did not care what man kissed her now), and he took her away to
Kilcash House, and although he never laid any restraint upon her, she
knew he did not care that she should go much abroad; so she lived
almost wholly in the house, and rarely went out alone, and never had
any guest at the place.
Mr. Davenport was at home most of the time. Now and then he went away
for a few days, and always came back alone. There were no callers at
the house, and she at first hoped she might die, and when she found
her bodily health unimpaired, looked forward with a sense of relief to
the time when she should go mad.
Still her mental health held out as well as her bodily health, and
weeks grew into months, and found no change in her or her manner of
life.
But there came a slight change in her home. During the first few weeks
of her married life no stranger ever crossed the threshold of Kilcash
House.
Now a tall, gaunt, humble-mannered man, of slow, soft speech and
unpretending ways, was often with Mr. Davenport for a long time in the
day, sometimes far into the night, The husband never took the wife
into his business confidence, and the wife had no curiosity whatever.
But from odd words she gathered that this young man, whose name was
Michael Fahey, depended on her husband, and was helped and received by
him because of some old ties between the families of both. She heard
Fahey was staying at the village of Kilcash for his health, which was
delicate, and that he was completely trustworthy and well-disposed
towards Mr. Davenport.
All this reached Mrs. Davenport without leaving any impression
whatever on her mind beyond the simplest value of the words. Her
husband introduced Fahey to her as a man in whom he took a sincere
interest, and whom he wished her to think well of. Whether he intended
his wife should or should not treat the stranger as an equal, she did
not know, she did not care.
For a time she took little heed of Fahey, but gradually it dawned upon
her that in him she had a new admirer. She was accustomed to
admiration, surfeited with it. Her love romance was at an end. She was
married to a man for whom she did not care, from whom she did not
shrink, to whom she owed no ill-will, who was in his poor, narrow,
selfish way good and kind to her. If she had now any commerce with
laughter, she would have laughed; but even the pathetically absurd
experience she had had of love could not provoke a smile, and she
simply took no heed, said no word, gave no sign. She did not feel
angry, flattered, amused, even bored. She was past any of these
emotions now. She would, she could be no more than indifferent.
Nothing could be more respectful than Fahey's manner. He did not
regard her as human. He worshipped her afar off. He ate his heart in
silence. He breathed no word, no sigh, gave wilfully no sign. But she
saw his downcast or averted face, and she read the homage in furtive
glances of his wondering eyes.
Then came the scene with the rose and her husband's absence abroad,
followed by his return, and a brief history of the marvellous escape
he had from that French bank, and his resolution that he would now
settle down in life and speculate no more. She then had but a dim idea
of what speculation meant, of what his business was.
Soon came a day of mystery and horror to her.
She was alone in the little sitting-room on the ground floor, purely
her own. It faced west. Broad daylight flooded the garden before her,
the rolling downs beyond.
Suddenly the light of the window by which she sat was obscured. The
window was opened by Fahey. She motioned him to enter. By way of reply
he made an impatient gesture.
"Is he in?" asked Fahey, breathlessly.
"No," she answered. "Can I do anything for you?"
She now saw he was in violent agitation, and physically distressed.
He continued:
"I have not a moment to spare. Say to him, 'All is well. All is safe
for him.' I have arranged that."
"Safe!" she answered. "Does any danger threaten my husband?"
"Yes, while I am here--while I live."
"You--you would not hurt him?"
She remembered the look of admiration she had seen in this man's eyes,
and rose and recoiled in horror.
"Give him my message. Repeat all I have said, except this: 'I am not
doing it for his sake, or my own sake, but for yours. Good-bye.' Tell
no one else of my being here; no one but him--not a soul."
In a moment he was gone.
The next thing she heard of him was that he had drowned himself in the
hideous Puffing Hole.
At first she had been inclined to think Fahey's words referred solely
to his feelings towards her; but when she learned he had drowned
himself she doubted this. Against what was her husband secure? To say
he was secure against Fahey's admiration for her would be the height
of gratuitous absurdity. She cared no more for the young man than for
any misty figure in a fable. He must be mad; yes, that was it. That
supposition made all simple--explained everything.
It was night when her husband returned. She, remembering Fahey's
caution, and bearing in mind that walls have ears, went to the gate of
the grounds, and there met Davenport. He had heard of Fahey's fate. It
was dark--pitch dark--when she gave him the message with which she had
been charged.
"Poor Michael!" her husband said--"poor Michael! Unfortunate fellow!"
He said no more then, and rarely spoke of the man afterwards.
Davenport was not a communicative man, and there was nothing
noteworthy in his silence.
After her husband's death she went through his papers, and found
evidence of a much closer intimacy between Fahey and him than she had
till then suspected. There was no clear evidence in these documents.
They were partly in her husband's handwriting, partly in Fahey's.
There was an air of mystery in them, and she was certain many passages
of them were figurative. But one dreadful secret she learned from them
beyond all doubt: Louis Davenport had not come by his money fairly,
and Fahey was an accomplice in his schemes. When leaving London for
the Continent, she had carried those papers with her unread. There she
opened them, with a view to destroying them, and burned them in
terrified haste. She had never suspected her husband of dishonest
actions. Now she felt perfectly sure he had come by his money foully.
How, she did not know. The man had been her husband, and she would
shield his memory from shame; but she would touch none of his money,
let who would have it, when she got back to London.
She was convinced Fahey had not thrown himself into the Puffing Hole
for love of her, or because he was insane, but solely and simply
because he and her husband were mixed up in crimes of some kind, and
Fahey preferred death to discovery on his own part, and on her part
too; for she would suffer from the exposure of her husband, and Fahey
had nothing to expect from her. There was still a want of clearness
and precision about the whole affair. But on her way back from France,
she had no doubt her theory was right in the main.
Before the inquest she had been in horror of revealing in court the
history of the treatment she had received at the hands of Blake, and
the bare notion that she, being then a married woman, had driven this
man Fahey in a frenzy of self-sacrifice or devotion to drown himself,
filled her mind with thoughts of shame and anguish, the contemplation
of which nearly took away her own reason. She had contemplated making
away with herself rather than face the ordeal of the court. She had
been a recluse for years, and haughty in her consciousness of
unblameableness all her life.
On her return to London she heard the rumour of this apparition at the
Puffing Hole. Phelan had told of the apparition to several people in
Kilbarry. The news of it had got into the local papers, and London
papers copied the account. No name was given but Fahey's, and attached
to his name was a brief history of Fahey's disappearance years ago.
Upon these two discoveries she resolved to go to Ireland and renounce
all claim to the fortune her husband had left her. There could no
longer be in her mind any doubt that her husband's fortune, or a
portion of it, had been obtained by fraud. At Paulton's she met
O'Brien, who, on the way to Ireland, told her he himself had seen
Fahey.
She was now quite sure Fahey was still alive. The horrible suspicion
had taken hold of her mind that Fahey had, after keeping in hiding for
years, poisoned her husband for her sake! In the light of her belief
that Fahey still lived, the theory that her husband had poisoned
himself while of unsound mind was absurd to her.
Before setting out this day for the Black Rock she opened a drawer of
her late husband's, took out a revolver she knew to be loaded, and
dropped it into her pocket.
When she left the edge of the Black Rock she walked carefully to the
cliff and ascended by the path.
When she reached the level of the downs she gazed round.
She started. A loud explosion rose from beneath her feet. It was the
gunfire of the boat and the tremendous reverberations from the caves
and cliffs.
She looked round in alarm. A minute ago she had been alone. Now
Michael Fahey stood by her side!