The Leaden Seal.
When Chudleigh Wilmot arose on the following morning, with the
semi-stupefied feeling of a man on whom a great calamity has just
fallen, not the least painful portion of the task, not the least
difficult part of the endurance that lay before him was the inevitable
interview with his dead wife's friend. Mrs. Prendergast had requested
that he would receive her early. This he learned from the servant who
answered his bell; and he had directed that she should be admitted as
soon as she arrived. He loitered about his room; he dallied with the
time; he dared not face the cold silent house, the servants, who
looked at him with natural curiosity, and, as he thought, avoidance.
If the case had not been his own, Wilmot would have remembered that
the spectacle of a new-made widow or widower always has attractions
for the curiosity of the vulgar: strong, if the grief in the case be
very violent; and stronger, if it be mild or non-existent. Wilmot was
awfully shocked by his wife's death, terribly remorseful for his own
absence, and perhaps for another reason--at which, however, he had not
yet had the hardihood to look--almost stunned by the terrible sense,
the conviction of the irrevocable ill of the past, the utterly
irreparable nature of the wrong that had been done. But all these
warring feelings did not constitute grief. Its supreme agony, its
utter sadness, its unspeakable weariness were wanting in the strife
which shook and rent him. The thought of the dead face had terror and
regret for him; but not the dreadful yearning of separation, not the
mysterious wrenching asunder of body and spirit, almost as powerful as
that of death itself, which comes with the sentence of parting, which
makes the possibility of living on so incomprehensible and so cruel to
the true mourner. Not the fact itself, so much as the attendant
circumstances, caused Wilmot to suffer, as he undoubtedly did suffer.
He knew in his heart that had there been no self-reproach involved in
this calamity, he would not have felt it as he felt it now; and in the
knowledge there was denial of the reality of grief.
No such thought as "How am I to live without her?" the natural
utterance of bereavement, arose in Wilmot's heart; though neither did
he profane his wife's memory or do dishonour to his own higher nature
by even the most passing reference to the object which had so fatally
engrossed him. The strong hand of death had curbed that passion for
the present, and his thoughts turned to Kilsyth only with remorse and
regret. But the wife who had had no absorbing share in his life could
not by her death make a blank in it of wide extent or long duration.
He was still lingering in his room, when he was told that Mrs.
Prendergast had arrived and was in the drawing-room. The closely-drawn
blinds rendered the room so dark that he could not distinguish
Henrietta's features, still further obscured by a heavy black veil.
She did not rise, and she made no attempt to take his hand, which he
extended to her in silence, the result of agitation. She bowed to him
formally, and was the first to speak. Her voice was low and her words
were hurried, though she tried hard to be calm.
"I was with your wife during her illness and at her death, Dr.
Wilmot," she said; "and I am here now not to offer you ill-timed
condolences, but to fulfil a trust."
Her tone surprised Wilmot, and affected him disagreeably. There had
never been any disagreement between himself and Mrs. Prendergast; he
was not a man likely to interfere or quarrel with his wife's friends;
and as he was wholly unconscious of the projects she had entertained
towards him, he had not any suspicion of hidden malice on her part.
Emotion he was prepared for--would indeed have welcomed; he was ready
also for blame and reproaches, in which he would have joined heartily,
against himself; but the calm, cold, rooted anger in this woman's
voice he was not prepared for. If such a thing had been possible--the
thought flashed lightning-like across his mind before she had
concluded her sentence--he might have had in her an enemy, biding her
time, and now at length finding it.
He did not speak, and she continued:
"I presume you have heard from Dr. Whittaker the particulars of
Mabel's illness, its cause, and the means used to avert--what has not
been averted?--"
"I have," briefly replied the listener.
"Then I need not enter into that--beyond this: a portion of my trust
is to tell you that Dr. Whittaker is not to blame."
"I have not blamed him, Mrs. Prendergast."
"That is well. When Mabel knew, or thought, I fear hoped, that her
life was in danger, her strongest desire was that you should be kept
in ignorance of the fact."
"Good God! why?" exclaimed Wilmot.
"I think you must know why better than I can tell you," replied
Henrietta pitilessly. "But, at all events, such was the case. Dr.
Whittaker wrote to you, but she suppressed the letter. She gave it to
me on the night she died. Here it is."
Chudleigh Wilmot took the letter from her hand silently. Astonishment
and distress overwhelmed him.
"She bade me tell you that she laid her life down gladly; that she had
nothing to leave, nothing to regret; that she was glad she had
succeeded in keeping you in ignorance of her danger--for she knew, for
the sake of your reputation, you would have left even Miss Kilsyth to
be here at her death. But she preferred your absence; she distinctly
bade me tell you so. She left no dying charge to you but this, that
you should allow me to see her coffin closed on the second day after
her death, and that you should wear her wedding-ring. I sent it to you
last night, Dr. Wilmot. I hope you got it safely."
"I did; it is here on my finger," answered Wilmot; "but, for God's
sake, Mrs. Prendergast, tell me what all this means. Why did my wife
charge you with such a message for me; how have I deserved it? Why did
she, how should she, so young, and to all appearance not unhappy, wish
to die, and to die in my absence? Did she persevere in that wish, or
was it only a whim of her illness, which, had there been any one to
remonstrate with her, would have yielded later?"
"It was no whim, Dr. Wilmot. A wretched truth, I grant you, but a
truth, and persisted in. So long as consciousness remained, she never
changed in that."
A dark and angry look came into Wilmot's face, and he raised his voice
as he asked the next question:
"Do you mean to explain this extraordinary circumstance, Mrs.
Prendergast? Are you going to give me the clue to this mystery? My
wife and I always lived on good terms; we parted on the same. No man
or woman living can say with truth that I ever was unkind to her, or
that she had cause given her _by me_ to wish her life at an end, to
welcome death. I believe the communication you have just made to me is
utterly without example. I never heard, I don't believe anyone ever
heard of such a thing. I ask you to explain it, if you can."
"You speak as though you asked, or desired me to _account_ for it
too," said Henrietta, in a cold and cutting tone, which rebuked the
vehemence of his manner, and revealed the intense, unsleeping egotism
of her disposition. "I could do so, I daresay; but I cannot see the
profitableness of such a discussion between you and me. It is too late
now; nothing can undo the wrong, no matter what it was, or how far it
extended. It is all over, and I have nothing more to do than to carry
out the last wishes of my dear friend. Have I your permission to do
so?" she asked, in the most formal possible tone, as she rose and
stood opposite him.
Wilmot put his hands up to his face, and walked hurriedly about the
room. Then he came suddenly towards Henrietta, and said with intense
feeling:
"I beg your pardon; I did not mean to speak roughly: but I am
bewildered by all this. I am sure you must feel for me; you must
understand how utterly I am unable to comprehend what has occurred. To
come home and receive such a shock as the news of my wife's death, was
surely enough in itself to try me severely. And now to hear what you
tell me, and tell me too so calmly, as if you did not understand what
it means, and what it must be to me to hear it! You were with her, her
chosen friend. I think you knew her better than anyone in the world."
"And if I did," said Henrietta,--all her assumed calm gone, and her
manner now as vehement as his own,--"if I did, is not that an answer
to all you ask me? If I am to explain her motives, to lay bare her
thoughts, to tell her sorrows, _to you_, her husband, is _that_ not
your answer? Surely you have it in that fact! They are not true
husband and true wife who have closer friends. You never loved her,
and you never knew or cared what her life was; and so, when she was
leaving it, she kept you aloof from her."
Wilmot made no sound in reply. He stood quite still, and looked at
her. His eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, and she had raised
her veil. He could see her face now. Her pale cheeks, paler than usual
in her grief and passion, her deep angry sorrowful eyes, and her
trembling lips, made her look almost terrible, as she stood there and
told him out the truth.
"No," she went on, "you did not know her, and you were satisfied not
to know her; you went complacently on your way, and never thought
whether hers was lonely and wearisome. You never were unkind to her,
you say; no, I daresay you never were. She had all the advantages to
which your wife was entitled, and she did you and them due honour.
Why, even I, who did, as you say, know her best, had suspected
only recently, and learned fully only since her illness began, all
she suffered; no, not all--_that_ one heart can never pour into
another--but I have only read the story of her life lately, and you
have never read it at all. You were a physician, and you did not see
that your own wife, a dweller under your own roof, whose life was lived
in your sight, had a mortal disease."
"What do you mean?" he said; "she had no such thing."
"_She had!_" Henrietta repeated impetuously; "she had a broken heart.
You never ill-treated her--true; you never neglected her--true,--until
she was dying, that is to say;--but did you ever love her, Dr. Wilmot?
Did you ever consider her as other or more than an appendage of your
position, an ornament in your house, a condition of your social
success and respectability? What were her thoughts, her hopes, her
disappointments to you? Did you ever make her your real companion, the
true sharer of your life? Did you ever return the love, the worship
which she gave you? Did you ever pity her jealous nature; did you ever
interpret it by any love or sensitiveness of your own, and abstain
from wounding it? Did you know, did you care, whether she suffered
when you shut yourself up in your devotion to a pursuit in which she
had no share? All women have to bear that, no doubt, and are fools if
they quarrel with the bread-winner's devotion to his work. Yes; but
all women have not her silent, brooding, jealous, sullen nature; all
women are not so little frivolous as she was; all women, Dr. Wilmot,
do not love their husbands as Mabel loved you."
She paused in the torrent of her words, and then he spoke.
"All this is new and terrible to me; as new as it is terrible. Mrs.
Prendergast, do me the justice to believe that."
"It is not for me to do you justice or injustice," she made answer;
"your punishment must come from your own heart, or you must go
unpunished."
"But"--he almost pleaded with her--"Mabel never blamed me, never tried
to keep me more with her; rarely indeed expressed a wish of any kind.
I declare, before God, I never dreamed, it never occurred to me to
suspect that she was unhappy."
"No," she said; "and Mabel knew that. She interested you so little,
you cared so little for her, that you never looked below the surface
of her life; and her pride kept that surface fair and smooth. She
would have died before she would have complained,--she has died, in
fact, and made no sign."
"Yes," said Wilmot suddenly and bitterly; "but she has left me this
legacy, brought me by your hands, of miserable regret and vain
repentance. She has insured the destruction of my peace of mind; she
has taken care that mine shall be no ordinary grief, sent by God and
to be dispelled by time; she has added bitterness to the bitter, and
put me utterly in the wrong by her unwarrantable concealment and
reticence."
"How truly manlike your feelings are, Dr. Wilmot! She has hurt your
pride, and you can't forgive her even in death! She has put _you_ in
the wrong,--and all her own wrongs, so silently borne, sink into
nothing in comparison!"
"I deny it!" Wilmot said vehemently; "she _had_ no wrongs,--no woman
of her acquaintance had a better husband. What did I ever deny her?"
"Only your love, only a wife's true place in your life, only all she
longed for, only all she died for lack of."
"All this is absurd," he said. "If she really had these romantic
notions, why did she conceal them? Have _I_ nothing to complain of in
this? Was she just to me, or candid with me?"
"What encouragement did you give her? Do you think a proud, shy,
silent woman like Mabel was likely to lay her heart open to so cold
and careless a glance as yours? No; she loved you as few women can
love; but if she had much love, so she had much pride and jealousy;
and all three had power with her."
"Jealousy!" said Wilmot in an angry tone; "in God's name, of whom did
she contrive to be jealous."
"Her jealousy was not of a mean kind," said Henrietta. "Ever since
your marriage it had nourished itself, so far as I understood the
matter, upon your devotion to your profession, upon the complacent
ease with which you set _her_ claims aside for those which so
thoroughly engrossed you, that you had no heart, no eyes, no attention
for her. Of late--" she paused.
"Well?" said Wilmot;--"of late?"
"Of late," repeated Henrietta, speaking now with some more reserve of
manner, "she believed you devoted--to a degree which conquered your
devotion to your profession and to the interests of your own
advancement--to the patient who detained you at Kilsyth."
"What madness! what utter folly!" said Wilmot; but his face turned
deeply red, and he felt in his heart that the arrow had struck home.
"Perhaps so," said Henrietta, and her voice resumed the cutting tone
from which all through this painful interview Wilmot had shrunk. "But
Mabel was not more reasonable or less so than other jealous women. You
had never neglected your business for _her_, remember, or been turned
aside by any sentimental attraction from your course of professional
duty. Friendship, gratitude, and interest alike required you to attend
to Mr. Foljambe's summons. You did not come, and people talked. Mr.
Foljambe himself spoke of the attractions of Kilsyth, and joked, after
his inconsiderate manner."
"In _her_ presence?" said Wilmot incautiously.
"Yes, in _her_ presence," said Henrietta, who perfectly appreciated
the slip he had made. "She knew some people who knew the Kilsyths, and
she heard the remarks that were made. I daresay she imagined more than
she heard. No matter. Nothing matters any more. She was not sorry to
die when her time came; she would not have you troubled,--that is all.
And now I will leave you. I am going to her."
The last sentence had a dreadful effect on Wilmot. In the agitation,
the surprise, the pain of this interview, he had almost forgotten
time; the present reality had nearly escaped him. He had been rapt
away into a world of feeling, of passion; he had been absorbed in the
sense of a discovery, and of something which seemed like an impossible
injustice. With Henrietta's words it all vanished, and he remembered,
with a start, that his wife lay dead upstairs. They were not talking
of a life long extinguished, which in former years might have been
made happier by him, but of one which had ended only a few hours ago;
a life whose forsaken tenement was still untouched by "decay's
effacing fingers." With all this new knowledge fresh upon him, with
all this bewildering conviction of irreparable wrong, he might look
upon the calm young face again. Not as he had looked upon it
yesterday; not with the deep sorrow and the irresistible though
unjustified compassion with which death in youth is always regarded,
but with an exceeding and heart-rending bitterness, in comparison with
which even that repentant grief was mild and merciful. The fixedness,
the blank, the silence, would be far more dreadful, far more
reproachful now, when he knew that he had never understood, never
appreciated her--had unwittingly tortured her; now when he knew that,
in all her youth and beauty, she had been glad to die. Glad to die!
The words had a tremendous, an unbearable meaning for him. If even the
last month could have been unlived! If only he had not had _that_ to
reproach himself with, to justify _her!_ In vain, in vain. In that one
moment of unspeakable suffering Wilmot felt that his punishment,
however grave his offence, was greater than he could bear.
He turned away from Henrietta with the air of a man to whom another
word would be intolerable, and sat down wearily. She stood still,
looking at him, as if awaiting an answer or a dismissal.
At length she said, "Have you forgotten, Dr. Wilmot, that I asked your
permission to carry out Mabel's wish?"
"No," he said drearily, "I remember. Of course do as you like; I
should say, as she directed. I suppose the object of her request was,
that I should see her no more, in death either. Well, well--it is
fortunate that did not succeed too." He spoke in a patient, broken
tone, which touched Henrietta's heart. But her perverted notion of
truth and loyalty to the dead held her back from showing any sign of
softening. Just as she was leaving the room he said:
"Such a course is very unusual, is it not?"
"I believe so," she replied; "but the servants know it was her
desire."
Then Henrietta Prendergast went away; and presently he heard a slight
sound in that awful room overhead, and he knew she had taken her place
beside the dead. He felt, as he sat for hours of that day quite alone,
like a banished man. His wife was doubly dead to him now. All his
married life had grown on a sudden unreal; and when he thought of the
still white face which he was to see once, and only once more, for
ever, it was with a strange sense of dread and avoidance, and not with
the tender sorrow which, even amid the shock and self-reproach of
yesterday, had come to his relief.
Somehow, he could not have told how, with the inevitable
interruptions, the wretched necessary business of such a time, the
hours of that day passed over Chudleigh Wilmot's head, and the night
came. He had looked his last upon his wife, had taken his solemn leave
of the death-chamber. She lay now in her coffin, sealed, hidden from
sight for evermore, and there was nothing now but the long dreary
waiting. In its turn that too passed, and in due time the funeral day;
and Chudleigh Wilmot was quite alone in his silent house, and had only
to look back into the past. Forward into the future he did not dare,
he had not heart to look. A kind of blank, the reaction from intense
excitement, had set in with him, and for the first time in his life
his physical strength flagged. The claims of his business began to
press upon him; people sent for him, respectfully and hesitatingly,
but with some confidence that he would come, nevertheless. And Wilmot
went; and was received with condoling looks, which he affected not to
see, and compassionating tones, of which he took no notice.
He had no more to do with the past--he had buried it; his sole desire
was that others should aid him in this apparent oblivion; how far from
real it was, he alone could have told. He had written to Kilsyth a few
indispensable lines, and had had a formal report of Madeleine's
health, which he had conscientiously tried to range with other
professional documents, and lay by with them. It was certainly a dark
and dreary time, endless in length, and so hopeless, so final, that it
seemed to have no outlet; a time than which Chudleigh Wilmot believed
life could never bring him a darker. But trouble was new to him. He
learned more about it later on in his day.
When a fortnight had elapsed after Wilmot's return to London, and the
tumult of his mind had subsided, though the bitterness of his feelings
was not yet allayed, he chanced one morning to require a paper, which
he knew was to be found in a certain cabinet which filled a niche in
the wall of his consulting-room. The cabinet in question was one he
rarely opened; and the moment he attempted to turn the key, he felt
confident that the lock had been tampered with. The conviction was
singularly unpleasant; for the cabinet was a repository of private
papers, deeds, letters, and professional notes. It also contained
several poisons, which Wilmot kept there in what he supposed to be
inviolable security. Closer inspection confirmed his suspicions. The
lock had been opened by the simple process of breaking it; and the
doors, merely laid together, had caught on a jagged piece of metal,
and thus presented the slight obstacle they had offered. With a mere
shake they unclosed.
This circumstance puzzled Wilmot exceedingly. He made a careful
examination of the contents of the cabinet. All was precisely as he
had left it; not a paper missing or disturbed.
"Who can have been at the cabinet?" he thought, "and with what
motive?--Nothing has been taken; nothing, so far as I can discover,
has been touched. Mere curiosity would hardly tempt anyone to run such
a risk; and no one knew that there was anything of value here. Stay,"
he reflected; "one person knew it. _She_ knew it; she knew that I kept
private papers here. No doubt it was she who opened the cabinet. But
with what motive? What can she possibly have wanted which she could
have hoped to find here?"
No answer to this query presented itself to Wilmot's mind. He thought
and thought over it, painfully recurring to all Mrs. Prendergast had
told him, and trying to help himself to a solution of this mystery by
the aid of those which had preceded it. For some time he thought in
vain; at length the idea struck him that the jealous woman, restless
and miserable in her unhappy curiosity--he could understand _now_ what
she had felt, he could pity her _now_--had opened the cabinet to seek
for letters from some fancied rival in his affections. Nothing but his
belief in the perversion of mind which comes of the indulgence of such
a passion as jealousy could have led Wilmot to suspect his wife of
such an act for a moment. But he was a wise man, now that it was too
late, in that lore which he had never studied while he might have read
the book, and he recognised the transforming power of jealousy. Yes,
that was it doubtless; she had sought here for the material wherewith
to feed the flame that had tortured her.
Chudleigh Wilmot took the paper he wanted from the place where
it had lain, and was about to close the doors of the cabinet once
more--restoring them, until he could have the lock repaired, to their
deceptive appearance of security--when his attention was caught by a
dark-coloured spot, about the size of a shilling, upon the topmost
sheet of a packet of papers which lay beside a small mahogany case
containing the before-mentioned poisons. He took the packet out and
examined it. The spot was there, and extended to every paper in the
packet. A sudden flush and expression of vague alarm crossed Wilmot's
face. He took up the case and examined the exterior. A dark mark, the
stain of some glutinous fluid, ran down the side of the box next which
the papers had lain. For a moment he held the case in his hands, and
literally dared not open it. Then in sickening fear he did so, and
found its contents apparently undisturbed. The box was divided into
ten little compartments, in each of which stood a tiny bottle,
glass-stoppered and covered with a leaden capsule. To the neck of each
was appended a little leaden seal, the mark of the French chemist from
whom Wilmot had purchased the deadly drugs. He took the bottles out
one by one, examined their seals, and held them up to the light. All
safe for nine out of the number; but as he touched the tenth, the
capsule with the leaden seal attached to it fell off, and Wilmot
discovered, with ineffable horror, that the bottle, which had
contained one of the deadliest poisons known to science, was half
empty.
He set down the case, and reeled against the corner of the mantelshelf
near him, like a drunken man. He could not face the idea that had
taken possession of him; he could not collect his thoughts. He gasped
as though water were surging round him. Once more he took up the
bottle and looked at it. It was only too true; one half the contents
was missing. He closed the case, and pushed it back into its place. It
struck against something on the shelf of the cabinet. He felt for the
object, and drew out _his wife's seal-ring!_
And now Chudleigh Wilmot knew what was the terror that had seized him.
It was no longer vague; it stood before him clear, defined,
unconquerable; and he groaned:
"My God! she destroyed herself!"