The stars had not begun to pale in the morning twilight when Elizabeth
awakened. The dim outlines of houses and trees could be seen through the
window as she looked out against the sky. Within the room the furniture,
large and heavy, looked still larger in the darkness. She fixed her eyes
upon some point, and followed back the lines that flowed from it until
they were lost in the dimness, and this assured her that she was awake.
Her writing-table was in part sharply outlined against the window, and
part of it was lost in the shadow of the draperies. The bureau seemed
only a dark mass among the shadows in force in the corners of the room.
These and the tops of the heavy chairs, as she looked at one and another
of them, helped to calm her and give her a sense of reality. But they in
no way accounted for the startling suggestion, that whether dream or
waking thought had first filled her with fear and then set her heart
beating hard as she lay wide awake breathing unevenly and striving to
learn if she were still under the influence of a dream, or if the
unconscious conviction which had come upon her was the result of
dwelling upon what she knew. She could not recall her dreams, but they
seemed to her to have had no connection with the sudden sense of danger
that had startled her awake. She tried to throw it off, but it was like
the objects in the room that had seemed almost invisible at first, but
that grew every moment more distinct to her as she watched them. She
felt more and more sure that the danger was real, however the knowledge
of it had come; a terrible danger, but not to herself. It seemed strange
now that she had been blind so long, and yet, how could she have
suspected such a horror? Lord Bulchester felt it, too, only that he
would not allow himself to believe it. But it was he who had brought
conviction home; it would never have come, she thought, if she had not
seen him yesterday. But it had come, and it remained. It held her like a
vise, drawing her back toward it whenever she tried to escape, driving
off sleep forcibly when more than once that seemed about to seize her.
What was she to do with it? Plainly, something. It and rest could never
dwell together. But what? And how could she do it? A conviction which
pressed upon herself with the force of a certainty, and yet had no
proofs by which to establish itself, was not an easy thing to make felt
by another mind. And when it was a conviction of danger, and that other
had by nature and training a contempt of danger, the difficulties were
increased. Added to this were other difficulties which Elizabeth felt
keenly; but the fear was stronger than them all. The longer she studied
the matter the more she saw that the only thing for her to do was the
one thing that she shrank from most. All the freedom left her was to
find out the best way of doing it.
When the dimness of starlight began to grow into the dawn, she arose.
But she delayed at her toilet, standing so long in thought with her
brush in her hand, and her dark hair sweeping over her shoulders, that
it was six o'clock before she crossed the hall and knocked at her
father's door.
There was no answer. She knocked again, with the same result, and then
opening the door, found the room empty. Mr. Royal had gone down stairs.
But it was too early for Mrs. Eveleigh, and Elizabeth might still have
her talk with him without interruption. With a mixture of relief and
dread she went down the broad, low stairs and crossed the hall into the
library.
It had always been her favorite room. She had spent so many happy hours
here with the books, that the room with its handsome old furniture and
sunny windows was full of the memories and day dreams that her reading
had conjured up. But not only this; it was here that she had seen most
of her father; they had spent hours together here, while Mrs. Eveleigh
attended to her household duties, or amused herself with her friends,
or retired for her nap. And whether father and daughter talked, or
sat, he with his paper or his writing, she with her book, each felt a
companionship in the other. Elizabeth often spoke her thoughts freely to
any one who happened to be within hearing when the mood for speech came
over her; but as to her feelings, her father understood those best. This
was partly on account of his quickness of comprehension, which supplied
much that she did not utter, and partly because there came to her times
when her father seemed like a second self, and silence grew unnatural.
But that morning speech, evidently, was not easy to her. For, although
she had gone to him as a matter of course, her perplexity seemed to grow
greater as she sat down by the desk at which he was making up some
accounts. It seemed to her that her life was no longer free and simple;
a dreadful force had come into contact with it and, as she felt, made it
more unworthy. Had a mere jest ever before brought such a train of
miseries? Her fingers laid restless folds in a piece of paper she took
up, and her father after his greeting went on with the accounts. It was
his habit to give people time, and he had found that doing it gave him
the best opportunity to take his own bearings. His judgments were
usually so accurate, and his decisions so wise that a good many people
would have been thankful to find the scales by which he weighed the
anxiety or the satisfaction that came under his observation. On that
morning the rapid pen travelled several times up and down columns of
figures and noted down the results before Elizabeth began:
"Father." It was a small beginning, and followed by silence. But the
tone made Mr. Royal push his work aside, and look full into his
daughter's face. "Father," she repeated, "I want you to advise me."
"Am I not always ready for that?" returned Mr. Royal, his smile fading
before the gravity of her expression.
"There is something so hard to be done," she answered.
"Then, must it be done?"
"Oh, yes, that's the only thing about it I am quite sure of. It must be
done, and directly, too. It may be too late now, but we must try. What
troubles me is how it can be done so that we may be certain."
"Certain of what?"
"Certain that it reaches him," answered Elizabeth. Then she looked at
her father, and remembered that he could not understand her. "I must
tell you," she said. "It is like a nightmare. It oppresses me to think
of it. I feel guilty to believe it, and yet I don't dare to deny it to
myself, for fear of the consequences. It's about Mr. Edmonson, father."
"Oh!" said her listener in a tone far from pleased.
"And Mr. Archdale, added Elizabeth. Not that who the people are makes
any difference. Our duties would be just the same knowing the,--knowing
what I do." Her father sat watching her in silence with his keenest
gaze. "There is no love lost between the two men, as you know," she went
on. "Mr. Archdale is lofty, and wouldn't condescend to anything more
than a dislike that he hasn't tried to conceal, since Mr. Edmonson
ceased being his guest. But with Mr. Edmonson it's different; when he
feels, he acts; and once in a while there is an unrestraint about him
which is frightful; it makes me think of lava breaking through the crust
of a volcano. I believe there is something volcanic in his nature; you
can't go deep into it without danger. And there is danger now. Father,
there is danger now." As Elizabeth repeated her statement she leaned
forward a little and looked at her father, her eyes full of earnestness
and dread.
"In what way, and to whom?" asked Mr. Royal.
"To Mr. Archdale," she answered.
It was not Mr. Royal's way to protest or deny; he liked to get in his
evidence first of all. "What makes you think so?" he asked.
"A good many little things that have come back to me in confirmation,
but especially a speech of Mr. Edmonson's that I overheard one day at
Seascape. Stray shots," he said, "have taken off more superfluous kings
and men than the world has any idea of. I did not know at the time whom
he had been speaking about, and I forgot the speech; it seemed to me to
have no object. But now it does, and now I remember a word or two
besides that showed me that he had turned the conversation upon Mr.
Archdale."
"When was this?"
"One morning when I was coming up from the beach, I didn't feel like
talking to anyone, and when I heard voices the other side of the great
boulder--you remember it?--I waited a moment, to see if they would pass
on, so that I need not go back to the house by the longest way; and it
was then that he said it. He was with Lord Bulchester. He was speaking
of other things first, and then I missed a few words, and then he said
this."
"So far as he was concerned," answered Mr. Royal, "that might be as
innocent a speech as ever was uttered. Indeed, don't you see that a man
who meditated mischief wouldn't make such a speech at all?"
"If the man were Mr. Edmonson he might, and to Lord Bulchester who, he
knows, never would do anything against him. But Lord Bulchester is
uncomfortable. I saw it yesterday; and perhaps wondering over that was
what made me put everything together. I don't know how it was, but I
awoke in the night and saw it all. And now they have gone where the will
and the opportunity are sure to meet. Mr. Archdale must be warned."
"But, Elizabeth," said her father, "why should he want to do it? He
succeeded in his designs upon the Archdale property. What malice can he
have?" As he spoke, he looked earnestly at his daughter. He had not been
blind to things going on about him, and especially things concerning his
daughter, but in a case like this no suppositions of his own were to
take the place of evidence.
Elizabeth met his eyes for a moment, then her own drooped and she grew
pale. It was not that her father's eyes told her his thoughts, it was at
the humiliation of her own position in being the object of mercenary
scheming. "He has not enough money," she said at last distinctly, "and
he wants more. That's what it means. And he dares to think--." She
stopped short, and for a moment it seemed as if it would be impossible
for her to go on; a hot flush came to her face and an angry light into
her eyes. Then her courage returned, and although she uttered the words
with visible effort she went resolutely on. "I know it," she said, "he
dares to think someone else,--Mr. Archdale,--is somewhat like himself,
and that he will come to want more money too. He cares for nobody, he
would stop at nothing, and he thinks that I refused him because,--he
does not understand how I feel towards him. Oh, don't you know that
sometimes you know all about a thing, know it perfectly, and cannot make
it seem so to another? Don't let it be so with you, father. Only listen
to me." Mr. Royal did listen attentively as she went over the points of
her story again. Had she been talking of some matter of business, her
inexperience and a something about her that people were apt to call
unpracticalness, might have decided him against giving any unusual
weight to a speech like Edmonson's. But here the weight of her
character, and of impressions stronger than she could put into words
told. He saw, too, that she was looking at the matter with the accuracy
and judgment that it usually takes years of training to learn. This,
added to her own intensity, gave a convincing force to her words. He
admitted to himself that the affair had an ugly look.
At last Elizabeth paused. She drew a little nearer her father, and laid
her hand upon the table beside him. "I want you to advise me;" she said;
then, "What must I do?"
In the impossibility of any answer he felt a sudden rebound from the
force of her words. "I don't see that there is anything for you to do,
or for anybody," he said. "How can you act upon a thing that is purely
an assumption, and not only that, but a thing so wicked that it is a
cruelty to a man to imagine it about him? I can't believe that it's
necessary to do anything, for I can't bring myself to feel as you do.
Are you very sure that you have not fancied a part of this?"
"Father!" cried Elizabeth, "I wish I had, But look at it." And she went
again over the grounds of her suspicions, giving with a clearness that
he was proud of, the indications that she had seen of the bent of
Edmonson's will and the evidences of his headstrong character, linking
one trifling act or word to another, until she had welded a chain so
strong that Mr. Royal felt a thrill run through him as he listened, for
she awoke in him her own belief and something of her own anxiety to be
doing. So that when she had finished, instead of repeating that it was
not necessary to do anything, he asked whom she had thought of as the
person to give the warning to Archdale.
She was about to speak, then checked herself, hesitated, and at last
said, "I want you to advise me."
"Um!" said Mr. Royal, and was silent. He was somewhat disappointed that
she, so powerful in statement, should have no suggestion to offer in a
matter that puzzled him the more, the more he thought of it. Such a
warning would not be easy to give under the most favorable
circumstances. It would not be a pleasant task to tell a man that
another man had designs upon his life, and when such assertion had only
the proof of strong conviction and of evidence, trivial in its details,
strong only as a whole, it would be even hazardous to whisper a warning
to the person himself, liable to lead to complications and sure to be
met by incredulity and either ridicule or resentment. But here, where no
personal communication was to be had, the difficulties were a hundred
times greater. Circumstances made it especially awkward for either
Elizabeth or himself to put these suspicions into words. But to put them
upon paper with all the cumulative evidence needed to carry
conviction,--if conviction could indeed be conveyed without the
reiteration of words and the persuasiveness of the voice,--to do this
and send the paper adrift, to fall into Archdale's hands or not as the
fortunes of war should determine, perhaps to fall into other hands,--it
was impossible, for Elizabeth's sake it was impossible. "I don't see how
we can reach him," he said at last. "A letter wouldn't answer."
"No," she said, "he might never get it." Mr. Royal looked at her more
closely as she fixed her eyes upon him, flushing a little as she spoke
with the earnestness of her purpose.
"Well," he said musingly, "we certainly can't get at him in any other
way, and that one is uncertain and dangerous. Even the dispatches are
subject to the fortunes of war. I don't see what we can do, Elizabeth.
Do you?"
But even as he spoke, he refrained from what he was about to add,
turning his assertion into a question. For a change was coming over his
daughter; the power within her to rise to great occasions was in force
now. The conventionalities that were holding him in check were unfelt by
her; she had risen above them to that high ground where the intricacies
of life are resolved into absolute questions of right and wrong, and
where perfect simplicity of intention becomes a divine guide.
"Father, do you remember," she cried, "what I have cost him and Katie?
I must not be silent, and let them be separated more, a great deal, than
my foolish speech once seemed to do. He has gone where stray shots are
of everyday occurence, and nobody ever inquires into them. Apart from
this obligation, if we do nothing we shall be murderers." She locked her
fingers together as she spoke, not in nervous indecision, for her look
was full of resolution, but as if the necessity that she was facing
disturbed her. Mr. Royal suddenly perceived that his daughter had not
finished, that behind that expression there was, not a suggestion,
indeed, but a decision. She had come to him, not for advice, but for
approval; she knew what to do. Her plan would scarcely be one to meet
the approval of people like Mrs. Eveleigh. But he recognized that the
soul that was looking out from Elizabeth's fearless eyes had a high law
of its own. And when his daughter spoke in this mood, Mr. Royal was
reverent enough to listen.