MRS. LUTTRELL'S ROOM.
Kitty made her way to her own room, and was not surprised to find that
in a few moments Hugo followed her thither. She was sitting in a low
chair, striving to command her agitated thoughts, and school herself
into some semblance of tranquility, when he entered. She fully expected
that he would try again to force from her the history of her interview
with Vivian, but he did nothing of the kind. He threw himself into a
chair opposite to her, and looked at her in silence, while she tried her
best not to see his face at all. Those long, lustrous eyes, that low
brow and perfectly-modelled mouth and chin, had grown hideous in her
sight.
But when he spoke he took her completely by surprise.
"You had better begin to pack up your things," he said. "We shall go to
the South of France either this week or next."
"And leave Mrs. Luttrell?" breathed Kitty.
His lips stretched themselves into something meant for a smile, but it
was a very joyless smile.
"And leave Mrs. Luttrell," he repeated.
"But, Hugo, what will people say?"
"They won't find fault," he answered. "The matter will be simple enough
when the time comes. Pack your boxes, and leave the rest to me."
"She is much better, certainly," hesitated Kitty, "but I do not like
leaving her to servants."
"She is no better," said Hugo, rising, and turning a malevolent look
upon her. "She is worse. Don't let me hear you say again that she is
better. She is dying."
With these words he left the room. Kitty leaned back in her chair, for
she was seized with a fit of trembling that made her unable to rise or
speak. Something in the tone of Hugo's speech had frightened her. She
was unreasonably suspicious, perhaps, but she had developed a great fear
of Hugo's evil designs. He had shown her plainly enough that he had no
principle, no conscience, no sense of shame. And she feared for Mrs.
Luttrell.
Her fears did not go very far. She thought that Hugo was capable of
sending away the nurse, or of depriving Mrs. Luttrell of care and
comfort to such an extent as to shorten her life. She could not suspect
Hugo of an intention to commit actual, flagrant crime. Yet some
undefined terror of him had made her beg Vivian to tell Brian and his
wife to come home as soon as possible. She did not know what might
happen. She was afraid; and at any rate she wanted to secure her husband
against temptation. He might thank her for it afterwards, perhaps,
though Kitty did not think that he ever would.
She went upstairs after dinner to sit with Mrs. Luttrell, as she usually
did at that hour. The poor woman was perceptibly better. The look of
recognition in her eyes was not so painfully beseeching as it had been
hitherto; the hand which Kitty took in hers gently returned her
pressure. She muttered the only word that her lips seemed able to
speak:--"Brian! Brian!"
"He is coming," said Kitty, bending her head so that her lips almost
touched the withered cheek. "He is coming--coming soon."
A wonderful light of satisfaction stole into the melancholy eyes. Again
she pressed Kitty's hand. She was content.
The nurse generally returned to Mrs. Luttrell's room after her supper;
and Kitty waited for some time, wondering why she was so long in coming.
She rang the bell at last and enquired for her. The maid replied that
Mrs. Samson, the nurse, had been taken ill and had gone to bed. Kitty
then asked for the housekeeper, and the maid went away to summon her.
Again Kitty waited; but no housekeeper came.
She was about to ring the bell a second time, when her husband entered
the room. "What do you want with the housekeeper at this time of night?"
he asked, carelessly.
Kitty explained. Hugo raised his eyebrows. "Oh, is that all?" he said.
"Really, Kitty, you make too much fuss about my aunt. She will do well
enough. I won't have poor old Shairp called up from her bed to sit here
till morning."
"But somebody must stay," said Kitty, whom her husband had drawn into
the little dressing-room. "Mrs. Luttrell must not be left alone."
"She shall not be left alone, my dear; I'll take care of that. I have
seen Samson, hearing that she was ill, and find that it is only a fit of
sickness, which is passing off. She will be here in half-an-hour; or, if
not, Shairp can be called."
"Then I will stay here until one of them comes," said Kitty.
"You will do nothing of the kind. You will go to bed at once. It is ten
o'clock, and I don't want you to spoil that charming complexion of yours
by late hours." He spoke with a sort of sneer, but immediately passed
his finger down her delicate cheek with a tenderly caressing gesture, as
if to make up for the previous hardness of his tone. Kitty shrank away
from him, but he only smiled and continued softly: "Those pretty eyes
must not be dimmed by want of sleep. Go to bed, _ma belle_, and dream of
me."
"Let me stay for a little while," entreated Kitty. "If Mrs. Samson comes
in half-an-hour I shall not be tired. Just till then, Hugo."
"Not at all, my little darling." His tone was growing quite playful, and
he even imprinted a light kiss upon her cheek as he went on. "I will
wait here myself until Samson comes, and if she is not better I will
summon Mrs. Shairp. Will that not satisfy you?"
"Why should you stay?" said Kitty, in a whisper. A look of dread had
come into her eyes.
"Why should I not?" smiled Hugo. "Aunt Margaret likes to have me with
her, and she is not likely to want anything just now. Run away, my fair
Kitty. I will call you if I really need help."
What did Kitty suspect? She turned white and suddenly put her arms round
her husband's neck, bringing his beautiful dark face down to her own.
"Let me stay," she murmured in his ear. "I am afraid. I don't know
exactly what I am afraid of; but I want to stay. I can't leave her
to-night."
He put her away from him almost roughly. A sinister look crossed his
face.
"You are a little fool: you always were," he said; fiercely. Then he
tried to regain the old smoothness of tongue which so seldom failed him;
but this time he found it difficult. "You are nervous," he said. "You
have been sitting in a sick-room too long: I must not let you over-tire
yourself. You will be better when we leave Netherglen. Go and dream of
blue skies and sunny shores: we will see my native land together, Kitty,
and forget this desert of a place. There, go now. I will take care of
Aunt Margaret."
He put her out at the door, still with the silky, caressing manner that
she distrusted, still with the false smile stereotyped upon his face.
Then he went back into the dressing-room and closed the door.
Kitty went to her own room, and changed her evening dress for a
dressing-gown of soft, dark red cashmere which did not rustle as she
moved. She was resolved against going to bed, at any rate until Hugo had
left Mrs. Luttrell's room. She sat down and waited.
The clock struck eleven. She could bear the suspense no longer. She went
out into the passage and listened at the door of Mrs. Luttrell's room.
Not a sound: not a movement to be heard.
She stole away to the room which the nurse occupied. Mrs. Samson was
lying on her bed, breathing heavily: she seemed to be in a sound sleep.
Kitty shook her by the arm; but the woman only moaned and moved
uneasily, then snored more stertorously than before. The thought crossed
Kitty's mind that, perhaps, Hugo had not wanted Mrs. Samson to be awake.
She made up her mind to go to the housekeeper's room. It was situated in
that wing of the house which Kitty had once learnt to know only too
well. For some reason or other Hugo had insisted lately upon the
servants taking up their sleeping quarters in this wing; and although
Mrs. Shairp, who had returned to Netherglen upon his marriage, protested
that it was very inconvenient--"because no sound from the other side of
the house could reach their ears"--(how well Kitty remembered her saying
this!) yet even she had been obliged to give way to Hugo's will.
Kitty went to the door that communicated with the wing. She turned the
handle: it would not open. She shook it, and even knocked, but she dared
not make much noise. It was not a door that could be fastened or
unfastened from inside. Someone in the main part of the house,
therefore, must necessarily have turned the key and taken it away. One
thing was evident: the servants had been locked into their own rooms,
and it was quite impossible for Mrs. Shairp to come to her mistress's
room, unless the person who fastened the door came and unfastened it
again.
"I wonder that he did not lock me in," said Kitty to herself, wringing
her little hands as she came hopelessly down the great staircase into
the hall, and then up again to her own room. She had no doubt but that
it was Hugo who had done this thing for some end of his own. "What does
he mean? What is it that he does not want us to know?"
She reached her own room as she asked this question of herself. The door
resisted her hand as the door of the servants' wing had done. It was
locked, too. Hugo--or someone else--had turned the key, thinking that
she was safe in her own room, and wishing to keep her a prisoner until
morning.
Kitty's blood ran cold. Something was wrong: some dark intention must be
in Hugo's mind, or he would not have planned so carefully to keep the
household out of Mrs. Luttrell's room. She remembered that she had seen
a light in a bed-room near Hugo's own--the room where Stevens usually
slept. Should she rouse him and ask for his assistance? No: she knew
that this man was a mere tool of Hugo's; she could not trust him to help
her against her husband's will. There was nothing for it but to do what
she could, without help from anyone. She would be brave for Mrs.
Luttrell's sake, although she had not been brave for her own.
Oh, why had she not made her warning to Vivian a little stronger? Why
had Brian Luttrell not come home that night to Netherglen? It was too
late to expect him now.
Her heart beat fast and her hands trembled, but she went resolutely
enough to the dressing-room from which Hugo had done his best to exclude
her. The door was slightly ajar: oh wonderful good fortune! and the fire
was out. The room was in darkness; and the door leading into Mrs.
Luttrell's apartment stood open--she had a full view of its warmly
lighted space.
She remained motionless for a few minutes: then seeing her opportunity,
she glided behind the thick curtain that screened the window. Here she
could see the great white bed with its heavy hangings of crimson damask,
and the head of the sick woman in its frilled cap lying on the pillows:
she could see also her husband's face and figure, as he stood beside the
little table on which Mrs. Luttrell's medicine bottles were usually
kept, and she shivered at the sight.
His face wore its craftiest and most sinister expression. His eyes were
narrowed like those of a cat about to spring: the lines of his face were
set in a look of cruel malice, which Kitty had learned to know. What was
he doing? He had a tumbler in one hand, and a tiny phial in the other:
he was measuring out some drops of a fluid into the glass.
He set down the little bottle on the table, and held up the tumbler to
the light. Then he took a carafe and poured a tea-spoonful of water on
the liquid. Kitty could see the phial on the table very distinctly. It
bore in red letters the inscription: "Poison." And again she asked
herself: what was Hugo going to do?
Breathlessly she watched. He smiled a little to himself, smelt the
liquid, and held it once more towards the light, as if to judge with his
narrowed eyes of the quantity required. Then, with a noiseless foot and
watchful eye, he moved towards the bed, still holding the tumbler in his
hand. He looked down for a moment at the pale and wrinkled face upon the
pillow; then he spoke in a peculiarly smooth and ingratiating tone of
voice.
"Aunt Margaret," he said, "I have brought you something to make you
sleep."
He had placed the glass to her lips, when a movement in the next room
made him start and lift his eyes. In another moment his wife's hands
were on his arm, and her eyes were blazing into his own. The liquor in
the glass was spilt upon the bed. Hugo turned deadly pale.
"What do you mean? What do you want?" he said, with a look of mingled
rage and terror. "What are you doing here?"
"I have come to save her--from you." She was not afraid, now that the
words were said, now that she had seen the guilty look upon his face.
She confronted him steadily; she placed herself between him and the bed.
Hugo uttered a low but emphatic malediction on her "meddlesome folly."
"Why are you not in your room?" he said. "I locked you in."
"I was not there. Thank God that I was not."
"And why should you thank God?" said Hugo, who stood looking at her with
an ugly expression of baffled cunning on his face. "I was doing no harm.
I was giving her a sleeping-draught."
"Would she ever have waked?" asked Kitty, in a whisper.
She looked into her husband's eyes as she spoke, and she knew from that
moment that the accusation was based on no idle fancy of her own. In
heart, at least, he was a murderer.
But the question called forth his worst passions. He cursed her
again--bitterly, blasphemously--then raised his hand and struck her with
his closed fist between the eyes. He knew what he was doing: she fell to
the ground, stunned and bleeding. He thrust her out of his way; she lay
on the floor between the bed and the window, moaning a little, but for a
time utterly unconscious of all that went on around her.
Hugo's preparations had been spoilt. He was obliged to begin them over
again. But this time his nerve was shaken: he blundered a little once or
twice. Kitty's low moan was in his ears: the paralysed woman upon the
bed was regarding him with a look of frozen horror in her wide-open
eyes. She could not move: she could not speak, but she could understand.
He turned his back upon the two, and measured out the drops once more
into the glass. His hand shook as he did so. He was longer about his
work than he had been before. So long that Kitty came to herself a
little, and watched him with a horrible fascination. First the drops:
then the water; then the sleeping-draught, from which the sleeper was
not to awake, would be ready.
Kitty did not know how she found strength or courage to do at that
moment what she did. It seemed to her that fear, sickness, pain, all
passed away, and left her only the determination to make one desperate
effort to defeat her husband's ends.
She knew that the window by which she lay was unshuttered. She rose from
the ground, she reached the window-sill and threw up the sash, almost
before Hugo knew what she was doing. Then she sent forth that terrible,
agonised cry for help, which reached the ears of the four men who were
even at that moment waiting and listening at the garden door.
Hugo dropped the glass. It was shivered to pieces on the floor, and its
contents stained the rug on which it fell. He strode to the window and
stopped his wife's mouth with his hands, then dragged her away from it,
and spoke some bitter furious words.
"Do you want to hang me?" he said. "Keep quiet, or I'll make you repent
your night's work----"
And then he paused. He had heard the sound of opening doors, of heavy
steps and strange voices upon the stairs. He turned hastily to the
dressing-room, and he was confronted on the threshold by the determined
face and flashing eyes of his cousin, Brian Luttrell. He cast a hurried
glance beyond and around him; but he saw no help at hand. Kitty had sunk
fainting to the ground: there were other faces--severe and menacing
enough--behind Brian's: he felt that he was caught like a wild beast in
a trap. His only course was to brazen out the matter as best he could;
and this, in the face of Brian Luttrell, of Percival Heron, of old Mr.
Colquhoun, it was hard to do. In spite of himself his face turned pale,
and his knees shook as he spoke in a hoarse and grating tone.
"What does this disturbance mean?" he said. "Why do you come rushing
into Mrs. Luttrell's room at this hour of the night?"
"Because," said Brian, taking him by the shoulder, "your wife has called
for help, and we believe that she needs it. Because we know that you are
one of the greatest scoundrels that ever trod the face of the earth.
Because we are going to bring you to justice. That is why!"
"These are very fine accusations," said Hugo, with a pale sneer, "but I
think you will find a difficulty in proving them, Mr.--Vasari."
"I shall have at least no difficulty in proving that you stole money and
forged my brother's name three years ago," said Brian, in a voice that
was terrible in its icy scorn. "I shall have no difficulty in proving to
the world's satisfaction that you shamefully cheated Dino Vasari, and
that you twice--yes, twice--tried to murder him, in order to gain your
own ends. Hugo Luttrell, you are a coward, a thief, a would-be murderer;
and unless you can prove that you were in my mother's room with no evil
intent (which I believe to be impossible) you shall be branded with all
these names in the world's face."
"There is no proof--there is no legal proof," cried Hugo, boldly. But
his lips were white.
"But there is plenty of moral proof, young man," said Mr. Colquhoun's
dry voice. "Quite enough to blast your reputation. And what does this
empty bottle mean and this broken glass? Perhaps your wife can tell us
that."
There was a momentary silence. Mr. Colquhoun held up the little bottle,
and pointed with raised eyebrows to the label upon it. Heron was
supporting his sister in his arms and trying to revive her: Fane and the
impassive constable barred the way between Hugo and the door.
In that pause, a strange, choked sound came from the bed. For the first
time for many months Mrs. Luttrell had slightly raised her hand. She
said the name that had been upon her lips so many times during the last
few weeks, and her eyes were fixed upon the man whom for a lifetime she
had called her son.
"Brian!" she said, "Brian!"
And he, suddenly turning pale, relaxed his hold upon Hugo's arm and
walked to the bed-side. "Mother," he said, leaning over her, "did you
call me? Did you speak to me?"
She looked at him with wistful eyes: her nerveless fingers tried to
press his hand. "Brian," she murmured. Then, with a great spasmodic
effort: "My son!"
The attention of the others had been concentrated upon this little
scene; and for the moment both Fane and Mr. Colquhoun drew nearer to the
bed, leaving the door of Mrs. Luttrell's bed-room unguarded. The
constable was standing in the dressing-room. It was then that Hugo saw
his chance, although it was one which a sane man would scarcely have
thought of taking. He made a rush for the bed-room door.
Whither should he go? The front door was bolted and barred; but he
supposed that the back door would be open. He never thought of the
entrance to the garden by which Brian Luttrell had got into the house.
He dashed down the staircase; he was nimbler and lighter-footed than
Fane, who was immediately behind him, and he knew the tortuous ways and
winding passages of the house, as Fane did not. He gained on his
pursuer. Down the dark stone passages he fled: the door into the back
premises stood wide open. There was a flight of steep stone steps, which
led straight to a kitchen and thence into the yard. He would have time
to unbolt the kitchen door, even if it were not already open, for Fane
was far, far behind.
But there was no light, and there was a sudden turn in the steps which
he had forgotten. Fane reached the head of the staircase in time to hear
a cry, a heavy crashing fall, a groan. Then all was still.