“Are you ill?” she asked; noticing, faint as the light now was,
something strangely altered in Hester’s manner.
Without looking up, Hester shook her head.
“Has any thing happened to vex you?”
The negative sign was repeated.
“Have I offended you?”
She suddenly advanced a step, suddenly looked at Anne; checked herself
with a dull moan, like a moan of pain; and hurried out of the room.
Concluding that she had inadvertently said, or done, something to offend
Hester Dethridge, Anne determined to return to the subject at the
first favorable opportunity. In the mean time, she descended to the
ground-floor. The dining-room door, standing wide open, showed her
Geoffrey sitting at the table, writing a letter--with the fatal
brandy-bottle at his side.
After what Mr. Speedwell had told her, it was her duty to interfere. She
performed her duty, without an instant’s hesitation.
“Pardon me for interrupting you,” she said. “I think you have forgotten
what Mr. Speedwell told you about that.”
She pointed to the bottle. Geoffrey looked at it; looked down again at
his letter; and impatiently shook his head. She made a second attempt at
remonstrance--again without effect. He only said, “All right!” in lower
tones than were customary with him, and continued his occupation. It was
useless to court a third repulse. Anne went into the drawing-room.
The letter on which he was engaged was an answer to Mrs. Glenarm, who
had written to tell him that she was leaving town. He had reached his
two concluding sentences when Anne spoke to him. They ran as follows: “I
may have news to bring you, before long, which you don’t look for. Stay
where you are through to-morrow, and wait to hear from me.”
After sealing the envelope, he emptied his glass of brandy and water;
and waited, looking through the open door. When Hester Dethridge crossed
the passage with the tea-tray, and entered the drawing-room, he gave the
sign which had been agreed on. He rang his bell. Hester came out again,
closing the drawing-room door behind her.
“Is she safe at her tea?” he asked, removing his heavy boots, and
putting on the slippers which were placed ready for him.
Hester bowed her head.
He pointed up the stairs. “You go first,” he whispered. “No nonsense!
and no noise!”
She ascended the stairs. He followed slowly. Although he had only drunk
one glass of brandy and water, his step was uncertain already. With one
hand on the wall, and one hand on the banister, he made his way to the
top; stopped, and listened for a moment; then joined Hester in his own
room, and softly locked the door.
“Well?” he said.
She was standing motionless in the middle of the room--not like a living
woman--like a machine waiting to be set in movement. Finding it useless
to speak to her, he touched her (with a strange sensation of shrinking
in him as he did it), and pointed to the partition wall.
The touch roused her. With slow step and vacant face--moving as if she
was walking in her sleep--she led the way to the papered wall; knelt
down at the skirting-board; and, taking out two small sharp nails,
lifted up a long strip of the paper which had been detached from the
plaster beneath. Mounting on a chair, she turned back the strip and
pinned it up, out of the way, using the two nails, which she had kept
ready in her hand.
By the last dim rays of twilight, Geoffrey looked at the wall.
A hollow space met his view. At a distance of some three feet from the
floor, the laths had been sawn away, and the plaster had been ripped
out, piecemeal, so as to leave a cavity, sufficient in height and width
to allow free power of working in any direction, to a man’s arms. The
cavity completely pierced the substance of the wall. Nothing but the
paper on the other side prevented eye or hand from penetrating into the
next room.
Hester Dethridge got down from the chair, and made signs for a light.
Geoffrey took a match from the box. The same strange uncertainty which
had already possessed his feet, appeared now to possess his hands. He
struck the match too heavily against the sandpaper, and broke it. He
tried another, and struck it too lightly to kindle the flame. Hester
took the box out of his hands. Having lit the candle, she hel d it low,
and pointed to the skirting-board.
Two little hooks were fixed into the floor, near the part of the wall
from which the paper had been removed. Two lengths of fine and strong
string were twisted once or twice round the hooks. The loose ends of the
string extending to some length beyond the twisted parts, were neatly
coiled away against the skirting-board. The other ends, drawn tight,
disappeared in two small holes drilled through the wall, at a height of
a foot from the floor.
After first untwisting the strings from the hooks, Hester rose, and held
the candle so as to light the cavity in the wall. Two more pieces of the
fine string were seen here, resting loose upon the uneven surface which
marked the lower boundary of the hollowed space. Lifting these higher
strings, Hester lifted the loosened paper in the next room--the lower
strings, which had previously held the strip firm and flat against the
sound portion of the wall, working in their holes, and allowing the
paper to move up freely. As it rose higher and higher, Geoffrey saw thin
strips of cotton wool lightly attached, at intervals, to the back of
the paper, so as effectually to prevent it from making a grating sound
against the wall. Up and up it came slowly, till it could be pulled
through the hollow space, and pinned up out of the way, as the strip
previously lifted had been pinned before it. Hester drew back, and made
way for Geoffrey to look through. There was Anne’s room, visible through
the wall! He softly parted the light curtains that hang over the bed.
There was the pillow, on which her head would rest at night, within
reach of his hands!
The deadly dexterity of it struck him cold. His nerves gave way. He drew
back with a start of guilty fear, and looked round the room. A pocket
flask of brandy lay on the table at his bedside. He snatched it up, and
emptied it at a draught--and felt like himself again.
He beckoned to Hester to approach him.
“Before we go any further,” he said, “there’s one thing I want to know.
How is it all to be put right again? Suppose this room is examined?
Those strings will show.”
Hester opened a cupboard and produced a jar. She took out the cork.
There was a mixture inside which looked like glue. Partly by signs, and
partly by help of the slate, she showed how the mixture could be applied
to the back of the loosened strip of paper in the next room--how the
paper could be glued to the sound lower part of the wall by tightening
the strings--how the strings, having served that purpose, could be
safely removed--how the same process could be followed in Geoffrey’s
room, after the hollowed place had been filled up again with the
materials waiting in the scullery, or even without filling up the
hollowed place if the time failed for doing it. In either case, the
refastened paper would hide every thing, and the wall would tell no
tales.
Geoffrey was satisfied. He pointed next to the towels in his room.
“Take one of them,” he said, “and show me how you did it, with your own
hands.”
As he said the words, Anne’s voice reached his ear from below, calling
for “Mrs. Dethridge.”
It was impossible to say what might happen next. In another minute, she
might go up to her room, and discover every thing. Geoffrey pointed to
the wall.
“Put it right again,” he said. “Instantly!”
It was soon done. All that was necessary was to let the two strips of
paper drop back into their places--to fasten the strip to the wall in
Anne’s room, by tightening the two lower strings--and then to replace
the nails which held the loose strip on Geoffrey’s side. In a minute,
the wall had reassumed its customary aspect.
They stole out, and looked over the stairs into the passage below. After
calling uselessly for the second time, Anne appeared, crossed over to
the kitchen; and, returning again with the kettle in her hand, closed
the drawing-room door.
Hester Dethridge waited impenetrably to receive her next directions.
There were no further directions to give. The hideous dramatic
representation of the woman’s crime for which Geoffrey had asked was
in no respect necessary: the means were all prepared, and the manner
of using them was self-evident. Nothing but the opportunity, and the
resolution to profit by it, were wanting to lead the way to the end.
Geoffrey signed to Hester to go down stairs.
“Get back into the kitchen,” he said, “before she comes out again. I
shall keep in the garden. When she goes up into her room for the night,
show yourself at the back-door--and I shall know.”
Hester set her foot on the first stair--stopped--turned round--and
looked slowly along the two walls of the passage, from end to
end--shuddered--shook her head--and went slowly on down the stairs.
“What were you looking for?” he whispered after her.
She neither answered, nor looked back--she went her way into the
kitchen.
He waited a minute, and then followed her.
On his way out to the garden, he went into the dining-room. The moon had
risen; and the window-shutters were not closed. It was easy to find the
brandy and the jug of water on the table. He mixed the two, and emptied
the tumbler at a draught. “My head’s queer,” he whispered to himself.
He passed his handkerchief over his face. “How infernally hot it is
to-night!” He made for the door. It was open, and plainly visible--and
yet, he failed to find his way to it. Twice, he found himself trying to
walk through the wall, on either side. The third time, he got out, and
reached the garden. A strange sensation possessed him, as he walked
round and round. He had not drunk enough, or nearly enough, to
intoxicate him. His mind, in a dull way, felt the same as usual; but his
body was like the body of a drunken man.
The night advanced; the clock of Putney Church struck ten.
Anne appeared again from the drawing room, with her bedroom candle in
her hand.
“Put out the lights,” she said to Hester, at the kitchen door; “I am
going up stairs.”
She entered her room. The insupportable sense of weariness, after the
sleepless night that she had passed, weighed more heavily on her than
ever. She locked her door, but forbore, on this occasion, to fasten the
bolts. The dread of danger was no longer present to her mind; and there
was this positive objection to losing the bolts, that the unfastening of
them would increase the difficulty of leaving the room noiselessly
later in the night. She loosened her dress, and lifted her hair from her
temples--and paced to and fro in the room wearily, thinking. Geoffrey’s
habits were irregular; Hester seldom went to bed early.
Two hours at least--more probably three--must pass, before it would
be safe to communicate with Sir Patrick by means of the signal in the
window. Her strength was fast failing her. If she persisted, for the
next three hours, in denying herself the repose which she sorely
needed, the chances were that her nerves might fail her, through sheer
exhaustion, when the time came for facing the risk and making the effort
to escape. Sleep was falling on her even now--and sleep she must have.
She had no fear of failing to wake at the needful time. Falling asleep,
with a special necessity for rising at a given hour present to her mind,
Anne (like most other sensitively organized people) could trust herself
to wake at that given hour, instinctively. She put her lighted candle
in a safe position, and laid down on the bed. In less than five minutes,
she was in a deep sleep.
* * * * *
The church clock struck the quarter to eleven. Hester Dethridge showed
herself at the back garden door. Geoffrey crossed the lawn, and joined
her. The light of the lamp in the passage fell on his face. She started
back from the sight of it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She shook her head; and pointed through the dining-room door to the
brandy-bottle on the table.
“I’m as sober as you are, you fool!” he said. “Whatever else it is, it’s
not that.”
Hester looked at him again. He was right. However unsteady his gait
might be, his speech was not the speech, his eyes were not the eyes, of
a drunken man.
“Is she in her room for the night?”
Hester made the affirmative sign.
Geoffrey ascended the st airs, swaying from side to side. He stopped at
the top, and beckoned to Hester to join him. He went on into his room;
and, signing to her to follow him, closed the door.
He looked at the partition wall--without approaching it. Hester waited,
behind him.
“Is she asleep?” he asked.
Hester went to the wall; listened at it; and made the affirmative reply.
He sat down. “My head’s queer,” he said. “Give me a drink of water.”
He drank part of the water, and poured the rest over his head. Hester
turned toward the door to leave him. He instantly stopped her. “_I_
can’t unwind the strings. _I_ can’t lift up the paper. Do it.”
She sternly made the sign of refusal: she resolutely opened the door to
leave him. “Do you want your Confession back?” he asked. She closed the
door, stolidly submissive in an instant; and crossed to the partition
wall.
She lifted the loose strips of paper on either side of the wall--pointed
through the hollowed place--and drew back again to the other end of the
room.
He rose and walked unsteadily from the chair to the foot of his bed.
Holding by the wood-work of the bed; he waited a little. While he
waited, he became conscious of a change in the strange sensations that
possessed him. A feeling as of a breath of cold air passed over the
right side of his head. He became steady again: he could calculate his
distances: he could put his hands through the hollowed place, and draw
aside the light curtains, hanging from the hook in the ceiling over the
head of her bed. He could look at his sleeping wife.
She was dimly visible, by the light of the candle placed at the other
end of her room. The worn and weary look had disappeared from her face.
All that had been purest and sweetest in it, in the by-gone time, seemed
to be renewed by the deep sleep that held her gently. She was young
again in the dim light: she was beautiful in her calm repose. Her head
lay back on the pillow. Her upturned face was in a position which
placed her completely at the mercy of the man under whose eyes she was
sleeping--the man who was looking at her, with the merciless resolution
in him to take her life.
After waiting a while, he drew back. “She’s more like a child than a
woman to-night,” he muttered to himself under his breath. He glanced
across the room at Hester Dethridge. The lighted candle which she had
brought up stairs with her was burning near the place where she stood.
“Blow it out,” he whispered. She never moved. He repeated the direction.
There she stood, deaf to him.
What was she doing? She was looking fixedly into one of the corners of
the room.
He turned his head again toward the hollowed place in the wall. He
looked at the peaceful face on the pillow once more. He deliberately
revived his own vindictive sense of the debt that he owed her. “But for
you,” he whispered to himself, “I should have won the race: but for you,
I should have been friends with my father: but for you, I might marry
Mrs. Glenarm.” He turned back again into the room while the sense of it
was at its fiercest in him. He looked round and round him. He took up a
towel; considered for a moment; and threw it down again.
A new idea struck him. In two steps he was at the side of his bed. He
seized on one of the pillows, and looked suddenly at Hester. “It’s not a
drunken brute, this time,” he said to her. “It’s a woman who will fight
for her life. The pillow’s the safest of the two.” She never answered
him, and never looked toward him. He made once more for the place in
the wall; and stopped midway between it and his bed--stopped, and cast a
backward glance over his shoulder.
Hester Dethridge was stirring at last.
With no third person in the room, she was looking, and moving,
nevertheless, as if she was following a third person along the wall,
from the corner. Her lips were parted in horror; her eyes, opening wider
and wider, stared rigid and glittering at the empty wall. Step by step
she stole nearer and nearer to Geoffrey, still following some visionary
Thing, which was stealing nearer and nearer, too. He asked himself what
it meant. Was the terror of the deed that he was about to do more than
the woman’s brain could bear? Would she burst out screaming, and wake
his wife?
He hurried to the place in the wall--to seize the chance, while the
chance was his.
He steadied his strong hold on the pillow.
He stooped to pass it through the opening.
He poised it over Anne’s sleeping face.
At the same moment he felt Hester Dethridge’s hand laid on him from
behind. The touch ran through him, from head to foot, like a touch of
ice. He drew back with a start, and faced her. Her eyes were staring
straight over his shoulder at something behind him--looking as they had
looked in the garden at Windygates.
Before he could speak he felt the flash of her eyes in _his_ eyes. For
the third time, she had seen the Apparition behind him. The homicidal
frenzy possessed her. She flew at his throat like a wild beast. The
feeble old woman attacked the athlete!
He dropped the pillow, and lifted his terrible right arm to brush her
from him, as he might have brushed an insect from him.
Even as he raised the arm a frightful distortion seized on his face. As
if with an invisible hand, it dragged down the brow and the eyelid on
the right; it dragged down the mouth on the same side. His arm fell
helpless; his whole body, on the side under the arm, gave way. He
dropped on the floor, like a man shot dead.
Hester Dethridge pounced on his prostrate body--knelt on his broad
breast--and fastened her ten fingers on his throat.
* * * * *
The shock of the fall woke Anne on the instant. She started up--looked
round--and saw a gap in the wall at the head of her bed, and the
candle-light glimmering in the next room. Panic-stricken; doubting,
for the moment, if she were in her right mind, she drew back,
waiting--listening--looking. She saw nothing but the glimmering light
in the room; she heard nothing but a hoarse gasping, as of some person
laboring for breath. The sound ceased. There was an interval of silence.
Then the head of Hester Dethridge rose slowly into sight through the gap
in the wall--rose with the glittering light of madness in the eyes, and
looked at her.
She flew to the open window, and screamed for help.
Sir Patrick’s voice answered her, from the road in front of the cottage.
“Wait for me, for God’s sake!” she cried.
She fled from the room, and rushed down the stairs. In another moment,
she had opened the door, and was out in the front garden.
As she ran to the gate, she heard the voice of a strange man on the
other side of it. Sir Patrick called to her encouragingly. “The police
man is with us,” he said. “He patrols the garden at night--he has a
key.” As he spoke the gate was opened from the outside. She saw Sir
Patrick, Arnold, and the policeman. She staggered toward them as they
came in--she was just able to say, “Up stairs!” before her senses failed
her. Sir Patrick saved her from falling. He placed her on the bench in
the garden, and waited by her, while Arnold and the policeman hurried
into the cottage.
“Where first?” asked Arnold.
“The room the lady called from,” said the policeman
They mounted the stairs, and entered Anne’s room. The gap in the wall
was instantly observed by both of them. They looked through it.
Geoffrey Delamayn’s dead body lay on the floor. Hester Dethridge was
kneeling at his head, praying.
EPILOGUE.
A MORNING CALL.
I.
THE newspapers have announced the return of Lord and Lady Holchester
to their residence in London, after an absence on the continent of more
than six months.
It is the height of the season. All day long, within the canonical
hours, the door of Holchester House is perpetually opening to receive
visitors. The vast majority leave their cards, and go away again.
Certain privileged individuals only, get out of their carriages, and
enter the house.
Among these last, arriving at an earlier hour than is customary, is a
person of distinction who is positively bent on seeing either the master
or the mistress of the house, and who will take no denial. While this
person is parleying with the chief of the servants, Lord Holchester,
passing from one room to another, happens to cross the inner end of
the hall. The person instantly darts at him with a cry of “Dear Lord
Holchester!” Julius turns, and sees--Lady Lundie!
He is fairly caught, and he gives way with his best grace. As he opens
the door of the nearest room for her ladyship, he furtively consults his
watch, and says in his inmost soul, “How am I to get rid of her before
the others come?”
Lady Lundie settles down on a sofa in a whirlwind of silk and lace, and
becomes, in her own majestic way, “perfectly charming.” She makes the
most affectionate inquiries about Lady Holchester, about the Dowager
Lady Holchester, about Julius himself. Where have they been? what have
they seen? have time and change helped them to recover the shock of that
dreadful event, to which Lady Lundie dare not more particularly allude?
Julius answers resignedly, and a little absently. He makes polite
inquiries, on his side, as to her ladyship’s plans and proceedings--with
a mind uneasily conscious of the inexorable lapse of time, and of
certain probabilities which that lapse may bring with it. Lady Lundie
has very little to say about herself. She is only in town for a few
weeks. Her life is a life of retirement. “My modest round of duties
at Windygates, Lord Holchester; occasionally relieved, when my mind
is overworked, by the society of a few earnest friends whose views
harmonize with my own--my existence passes (not quite uselessly, I hope)
in that way. I have no news; I see nothing--except, indeed, yesterday, a
sight of the saddest kind.” She pauses there. Julius observes that he is
expected to make inquiries, and makes them accordingly.
Lady Lundie hesitates; announces that her news refers to that painful
past event which she has already touched on; acknowledges that she could
not find herself in London without feeling an act of duty involved in
making inquiries at the asylum in which Hester Dethridge is confined for
life; announces that she has not only made the inquiries, but has seen
the unhappy woman herself; has spoken to her, has found her unconscious
of her dreadful position, incapable of the smallest exertion of memory,
resigned to the existence that she leads, and likely (in the opinion
of the medical superintendent) to live for some years to come. Having
stated these facts, her ladyship is about to make a few of those
“remarks appropriate to the occasion,” in which she excels, when the
door opens; and Lady Holchester, in search of her missing husband,
enters the room.
II.
There is a new outburst of affectionate interest on Lady Lundie’s
part--met civilly, but not cordially, by Lady Holchester. Julius’s wife
seems, like Julius, to be uneasily conscious of the lapse of time. Like
Julius again, she privately wonders how long Lady Lundie is going to
stay.
Lady Lundie shows no signs of leaving the sofa. She has evidently come
to Holchester House to say something--and she has not said it yet. Is
she going to say it? Yes. She is going to get, by a roundabout way, to
the object in view. She has another inquiry of the affectionate sort
to make. May she be permitted to resume the subject of Lord and Lady
Holchester’s travels? They have been at Rome. Can they confirm the
shocking intelligence which has reached her of the “apostasy” of Mrs.
Glenarm?