“The stars move still, Time runs, the clock will strike.”
Trains were favourable, and there was no necessity for a special
engine to carry Lord Cheriton and his wife to the house of mourning.
It was not yet noon when the closed landau drove in at the chief gate
of the park, not that side gate in the deep, rocky lane, of which
Mrs. Porter was custodian. One of the gardeners lived at the lodge,
and it was he who opened the gate this Sunday morning. Lord Cheriton
stopped the carriage to question him. He had heard a full account of
the murder already from the station-master at Wareham.
“Have they found the murderer?” he asked.
“No, my Lord; I’m afraid they’re not likely to—begging your
Lordship’s pardon for venturing an opinion.”
The man was an old servant, and altogether a superior person.
“Were the gates locked at the usual time on Friday night?”
“Yes, my Lord—the gates were locked, but that wouldn’t keep out a
foot-passenger. There’s the turnstile in the lane.”
“Of course. Yes, yes. A London detective has been at work, I hear.”
“Yes, my Lord; came yesterday before two o’clock, and has been about
with Barber ever since.”
“And have they discovered nothing?”
“Nothing, my Lord—or if they have it has been kept dark.”
Lord Cheriton asked no further questions. The man was right. A
detective from Scotland Yard was not likely to talk about any minor
discoveries that he might have made. Only the one grand discovery of
the guilty man would have been made known.
Five minutes later the carriage drew up in front of the hall door.
What a blank and melancholy look the fine old house had with all
the windows darkened. It did not look so dismal as a London house
with its level rows of windows and its flat façade would have looked
under similar conditions; for here there was variety of mullion and
moulding, bay-windows and oriel, dormer and lattice, and over all the
growth of lovely creeping plants, starry clematis and passion-flower,
clustering Banksia roses and waxen magnolia, an infinite beauty of
form and colour. Yet the blind windows were there, with their dull,
dead look and chilling suggestion of death. Lady Cheriton looked at
the house for a moment or so as she got out of the carriage, and then
burst into tears. It seemed to her as if she had scarcely realized
the stern reality till that moment.
She went straight to her daughter’s boudoir, a room with an oriel
window looking across the wide expanse of the park, where the
turf lay openest to the sunshine, and where the deer were wont to
congregate. The garden was at its narrowest point just below this
window, and consisted only of a broad gravel path, and a strip of
flowers at the top of a steep grass bank that sloped down to the
ha-ha which divided garden and park. The room was full of Juanita’s
girlish treasures—evidences of fancies that had passed like summer
clouds—accomplishments begun and abandoned—a zither in one corner—a
guitar and a mandolin against the wall—an easel in front of one
window—a gigantic rush work-basket lined with amber satin and crammed
with all manner of silks, wools, scraps, and unfinished undertakings
in another. The room remained just as she had left it when she went
to London at the beginning of May. She had not occupied it during her
honeymoon; and perhaps that was the reason she was here now in her
desolation, sitting silent, statue-like, with Lady Jane by her side,
on a sofa opposite the oriel. She lifted her eyelids when her mother
came into the room, and looked up at her in speechless despair. She
uttered no word of greeting, but sat dumbly. Lady Cheriton went over
to her, and knelt by her side, and then, feebly, automatically, the
widowed girl put her limp, cold hand into her mother’s and hid her
bloodless face upon her mother’s breast.
Lady Cheriton held her there with one hand while she stretched out
her other hand to Lady Jane.
“Dear Lady Jane, how good of you to be with her—to comfort her.”
“Where else should I be?—I want to be near him!”
The gentle blue eyes filled with tears, the gracious head trembled a
little. Then came a long shivering sigh and silence.
The mother knelt beside the sofa with her child’s head leaning
forward upon her matronly bosom. There may have been some comfort
perhaps in that contact, some recurrence of the thoughts and feelings
of earlier years, when the mother could console every grief and
soothe every pain. No words came to either of those mourners. What
could be said in mitigation of a sorrow that seemed to offer no point
of relief, no counter-balancing good. There was nothing to be done
but to sit still and suffer.
The silence lasted long, and then Juanita lifted her head suddenly
from its heavy repose and looked fixedly in her mother’s face.
“My father has come back with you?” she asked.
“Yes, dearest. We did not lose an hour. Had there been any quicker
way of travelling we would have been here sooner.”
“My father will be able to find the murderer,” said Juanita,
scarcely hearing her mother’s words, intent upon her own thought. “A
great lawyer as he was; a judge, too; he must be able to trace the
murderer—to bring him to justice—to take a life for a life. Oh, God!”
with a shrill agonizing cry, “could a thousand lives give me back one
hour of that one life? Yet it will be something—something—to know
that his murderer has been killed—killed shamefully, in cold blood,
in the broad light of day. Oh, God, thou Avenger of wrong, make his
last hours bitter to him, make his last moments hopeless; let him see
the gates of hell opening before him when he stands trembling with
the rope round his neck.”
There was an intensity of hatred in this vindictive appeal, which
thrilled the two listeners with an icy horror. It was like a blast
from a frozen region blowing suddenly in their faces, and they
shivered as they heard. Could it be the girl they knew, the loving,
lovable girl, who, in those deep, harsh tones, called upon her God
for vengeance and not for mercy?
“Oh, my love, my poor heart-broken love, pray to Him to have pity
upon us; ask Him to teach us how to bow to the rod, how to bear His
chastisement. That is the lesson we have to learn,” pleaded Lady
Jane, tearful and submissive, even in the depth of sorrow.
“Is it? _My_ lesson is to see justice done upon the wretch who killed
my husband—the malignant, the merciless devil. There was not one of
those slayers of women and children in the Indian mutiny worse than
the man who killed my love. What had _he_ done—he, the kindest and
best—generous, frank, pitiful to all who ever came in his way—what
had _he_ done to provoke any man’s enmity? Oh, God, when I remember
how good he was, and how much brighter and better the world was for
having him——”
She began to pace the room, as she had paced it again and again in
her slow hours of agony, her hands clasped above her dishevelled
head, her great dark eyes—so dovelike in their hours of love
and happiness—burning with an angry light, lurid almost, in the
excitement of her fevered brain. There had been times when Lady
Jane had feared that reason must give way altogether amidst this
wild delirium of grief. She had stayed to watch, and to console,
forgetting her own broken heart, putting aside all considerations of
her own sorrow as something that might have its way afterwards, in
order to comfort this passionate mourner.
Comfort, even from affection such as this, was unavailing. Now and
again the girl turned her burning eyes upon the mother’s pale,
resigned face, and for a moment a thought of that chastened, gentle
grief softened her.
“Dear, dear Lady Jane, God made you better than any other woman on
this earth, I believe,” she cried amidst her anguish. “The saints and
martyrs must have been like you, but I am not. I am not made like
that. I _cannot_ kiss the rod.”
The meeting between Juanita and her father was more painful to him
than to her. She hung upon his neck in feverish excitement, imploring
him to avenge her husband.
“You can do it,” she urged; “you who are so clever must know how to
bring the murderer’s guilt home to him. You will find him, will you
not, father? He cannot have gone very far. He cannot have got out
of the country yet. Think, it was only Friday. I was a happy woman
upon Friday; only think of that—happy—sitting by Godfrey’s side in
the phaeton, driving through the sunset, and thinking how beautiful
the world was and what a privilege it was to live. I had no more
foreboding than the skylark had singing above our heads. And in less
than an hour after midnight my darling was dead. Oh, God, how sudden!
I cannot even remember his last words. He kissed me as he left me at
my bedroom door—kissed me and said something. I cannot remember what
it was; but I can hear the sound of his voice still—I shall hear it
all my life.”
Lord Cheriton let her ramble on. He had, alas, so little to say
to her, such sorry comfort to offer. Only words, mere words—which
must needs sound idle and hollow in the ear of grief, frame his
consolatory speeches with what eloquence he might. He could do
nothing for her, since he could not give her back her dead. This
wild cry for vengeance shocked him from those young lips; yet it was
natural perhaps. He too would give much to see the assassin suffer;
he too felt that the deck and the gallows would be too trivial a
punishment for that accursed deed.
He had looked upon the marble face of him who was to have been the
second Baron Cheriton—looked upon it in its placid repose, and had
sworn within himself to do all that ingenuity could do to avenge that
cruel murder.
“He could not have had an enemy,” he told himself, “unless it was
some wretch who hated him for being happy and beloved.”
He had a long talk with Mr. Luke Churton, the London detective, who
had exhausted all his means without arriving at any satisfactory
result.
“I confess, my Lord, that I am altogether at a standstill,” said Mr.
Churton, when he had related all that he had done since his arrival
on the scene early on Saturday afternoon. “The utmost information I
have been able to obtain leaves me without one definite idea. There
is no one in the neighbourhood open to suspicion, so far as I can
make out; for I am sure your Lordship will agree with me that your
butler’s notion of a poacher resenting your treatment by the murder
of your son-in-law is much too thin. One cannot accept such a notion
as that for a moment,” said Mr. Churton, shaking his head.
“No, that is an untenable idea, no doubt.”
“The next suggestion is that some person was prowling about with
the intention of abstracting trinkets and other valuables from the
drawing-room—in an unguarded moment when the room might happen to be
empty—and I admit that the present fashion of covering drawing-room
tables and cabinets with valuables of every description is calculated
to suggest plunder; but that kind of thing would be probable enough
in London rather than in the country, and nothing is more unlikely
than that a prowler of that order would resort to murder. Again, the
manner in which the body was found, with the open book lying close
to the hand that had held it, goes far to prove that Sir Godfrey was
shot as he sat reading—and at a time when a burglar could have no
motive for shooting him.”
“Do you think it was the act of a lunatic?”
“No, my Lord, for in that event the murderer would have been heard
of or found before now. The gardens, park, and chase have been most
thoroughly searched under my superintendence. It is not possible
for a lap-dog to be hidden anywhere within this demesne. The
neighbouring villages—solitary cottages—commons and copses—have been
also submitted to a searching investigation—the police all over the
country are on the alert. Of course the crime is still of very recent
date. Time to us seems longer than it really is.”
“No doubt, no doubt! I can find no other hypothesis than that the
act was done by a madman—such a motiveless murder—a man sitting by a
window reading—shot by an unknown hand from a garden terrace—remote
from the outer world. Were we in Ireland the crime might seem
commonplace enough. Sir Godfrey was a landowner—and that alone is an
offence against the idle and the lawless in that unhappy country,—but
here, in the midst of an orderly, God-fearing population——”
“Had Sir Godfrey no enemy, do you think, my Lord?” asked the
detective, gravely. “The crime has the look of a vendetta.”
“There never was a young man, owner of a considerable estate, more
universally beloved. His tenants adore him—for as a landlord he has
been exceptionally indulgent.”
“He may have granted too much in some quarters, and too little in
others.”
“No, no. He has been judicious in his liberality, and he has a
capital bailiff, an old man who was a servant on this estate many
years ago.”
“But there are other influences,” said the detective, musingly.
“Whenever I meet with a crime of this kind—motiveless apparently—I
remember the Eastern Prince—I think he was one of those long-headed
Orientals, wasn’t he, my Lord, who used to ask, ‘Who is she?’ In a
thoroughly dark case I always suspect a woman behind the curtain. Sir
Godfrey had been independent of all control for a good many years—and
a young man of fortune, handsome, open-hearted, with only a mother
to look after him—well, my Lord, _you_ know the kind of thing that
generally happens in such cases.”
“You mean that my son-in-law may have been involved in some
disreputable intrigue?”
“I don’t say disreputable, my Lord; but I venture to suggest that
there may have been some—ahem—some awkward entanglement—with a
married woman, for instance,—and the husband—or another lover—may
have belonged to the criminal classes. There are men who think very
little of murder when they fancy themselves ill-used by a woman.
Half the midnight brawls, and nearly half the murders, in the
metropolis are caused by jealousy. I know what a large factor that
is in the sum-total of crime, and unless you are sure there was no
entanglement——”
“I am as sure as I can be of anything outside my own existence. I
don’t believe that Sir Godfrey ever cared for any woman in his life
except my daughter.”
“He might not have cared, my Lord, but he might have been drawn in,”
suggested Mr. Churton. “Young men are apt to be weak where women are
concerned; and women know that, unfortunately, and they don’t scruple
to use their power; not the best of ’em even.”
Young men are apt to be weak. Yes, Lord Cheriton had seen enough of
the world to know that this was true. It was just possible that in
that young life, which had seemed white as snow to the eye of kindred
and friends, there had been one dark secret, one corroding stain,
temptation yielded to, promises given—never to be fulfilled. Such
things have been in many lives, in most lives, perhaps, could we know
all, Lord Cheriton thought, as he sat silently meditating upon the
detective’s suggestions.
Lady Jane might know something about her son’s past, perhaps,
something that she might have kept locked in the beneficent maternal
heart. He determined to sound her delicately at the earliest
opportunity.
But on being sounded Lady Jane repudiated any such possibility.
No, again and again no. His youth had been spotless; no hint of an
intrigue had ever reached her from any quarter. He had chosen his
friends among the most honourable young men at the University—his
amusements had been such as became a young Englishman of exalted
position—he had never stooped to low associations or even doubtful
company; and from his boyhood upwards he had adored Juanita.
“That love alone would have kept him right,” said Lady Jane; “but I
do not believe that it was in his nature to go wrong.”
It would seem, therefore, that the detective’s suspicion was
groundless. Jealousy could not have been the motive of the crime.
“If any of us could be sure that we know each other I ought to accept
Lady Jane’s estimate of her son,” thought Lord Cheriton; “but there
is always the possibility of an unrevealed nature—one phase in a
character that has escaped discovery. I am almost inclined to think
the detective may have hit upon the truth. There _must_ have been a
motive for this devilish act—unless it were done by a maniac.”
The latter supposition seemed hardly probable. Lunacy wandering loose
about the country would have betrayed itself before now.
It was past five upon that summer afternoon, and Lord Cheriton,
having seen his daughter and interviewed the detective, was
sauntering idly about the gardens in the blank hours before dinner.
That meal would be served as usual, no doubt, at eight o’clock,
with all due state and ceremony. The cook and her maids were busied
about its preparation even now in this tranquil hour when afternoon
melts into evening, sliding so softly from day to night that only
those evening hymns of the birds—and on Sundays those melancholy
church bells thrilling across the woods—mark the transition. They
were scraping vegetables and whipping eggs while the birds were at
vespers, and they were talking of the murder as they went about their
work. When would they ever cease to gloat with ghoulish gusto on that
deadly theme, with endless iteration of “says he” and “says she”?
Lord Cheriton left the stately garden with its quadruple lines of
cypress and juniper, its marble balustrades, and clipped yew hedges
five feet thick, its statues and alcoves. He passed through a little
gate, and across a classic single-arched bridge to the park, where he
sauntered slowly beneath his immemorial elms, in a strange dreamlike
frame of mind, in which he allowed his senses to be beguiled by
the balmy afternoon atmosphere and the golden light, until the
all-pervading consciousness of a great grief, which had been with him
all day, slipped off him for the moment, leaving only a feeling of
luxurious repose, rest after labour.
Cheriton Chase was exercising its wonted influence upon him. He loved
the place with that deep love which is often felt by the hereditary
owner, the man born on the soil, but perhaps still oftener, and
to a greater degree by him who has conquered and won the land by
his own hard labour of head or hand, by that despicable personage,
the self-made man. In all his wanderings—those luxurious reposeful
journeyings of the man who has conquered fortune—James Dalbrook’s
heart yearned towards these ancient avenues and yonder grey walls.
House and domain had all the charm of antiquity, and yet they were
in a measure his own creation. Everywhere had his hand improved and
beautified; and he might say with Augustus that where he found brick
he would leave marble. The dense green walls—those open-air courts
and quadrangles—those obelisks of cypress and juniper had been there
in the dominion of the Strangways, with here and there a mouldering
stone Syrinx or a moss-grown Pan; but it was he who brought choicest
marbles from Rome and Florence to adorn that stately pleasaunce; it
was he who erected yonder fountain, whose waters made a monotonous
music by day and night. The marble balustrades, the mosaic floors,
the artistic enrichment of terrace and mansion had been his work.
If the farms were perfect it was he who had made them so. If his
tenants were contented it was because he had shown himself a model
landlord—considerate and liberal, but severely exacting, satisfied
with nothing less than perfection.
Having thus in a manner created his estate James Dalbrook loved it,
as a proud, self-contained man is apt to love the work of his own
hands, and now in this quiet Sunday afternoon the very atmosphere
of the place soothed him, as if by a spell. A kind of sensuous
contentment stole into his heart, with temporary forgetfulness of
his daughter’s ruined life. But this did not last long. As he drew
near the drive by which strangers were allowed to cross the park by
immemorial right, he remembered that he had questioned one of the
lodge-keepers, but not the other. He struck across an open glade
where only old hawthorn trees cast their rugged shadows on the
close-cropped turf, and made for the gate opening into the lane.
Mrs. Porter’s cottage had its usual aspect, a cottage such as any
gentleman or lady of refined taste might have been pleased to
inhabit, quaint, mediæval, with heavy timbers across rough cast
walls, deep-set casements, picturesque dormers, and thatched roof,
with gable ends which were a source of rapture to every artist who
visited Cheriton—a cottage embowered in loveliest creeping plants,
odorous of jasmine and woodbine, and set in a garden where the
standard roses and carnations were rumoured to excel those in her
ladyship’s own particular flower-garden. Well might a lady who had
known better days rejoice in such a haven; more especially when those
better days appeared to have raised her no higher than the status of
a merchant-captain’s wife.
Very few people about Cheriton envied her ladyship. It was considered
that, if not born in the purple, she had at least brought her husband
a large fortune, and had a right to taste the sweets of wealth. But
there were many hard-driven wives and shabby genteel spinsters who
envied Mrs. Porter her sinecure at the gate of Cheriton Park, and who
looked grudgingly at the garden brimming over with flowers and the
lattices shining in the evening sun, and through the open casements
at prettily furnished rooms, rich in books and photographs, and other
trivial indications of a refined taste.
“It is well to be she,” said the curate’s wife, as she went home
from the village with two mutton chops in her little fancy basket,
a basket which suggested ferns, and in which she always carried a
trowel, to give the look of casual botany to her housewifely errands.
“I wonder whether Lord Cheriton allows her an income for doing
nothing, or is it only house, and coals, and candles that she gets?”
speculated the curate’s wife, who lived in a brand new villa on the
outskirts of Cheriton village—a villa that was shabby and dilapidated
after three years’ occupation, through whose thin walls all the
winds of winter blew, and whose slate roof made the upper floor like
a bakehouse under the summer sun.
Lord Cheriton, still sauntering in gloomy meditation, came to the
cottage garden outside his gates, and found Mrs. Porter standing
among her roses,—a tall, black figure, the very pink and pattern
of respectability, with her prayer-book in one hand and a grey
silk sunshade in the other. She turned at the sound of those
august footsteps, and came to the little garden gate to greet her
benefactor, with a grave countenance, as befitted the circumstances.
“Good afternoon,” he said briefly. “Have you just come from church?”
“Yes, I have been to the children’s service.”
“Not very interesting, I should imagine, for anybody past childhood?”
“It is something to do on a Sunday afternoon, and I like to hear Mr.
Kempster talk to the children.”
“Do you? Well, there is no accounting for tastes. Can you tell me
anything about my son-in-law’s murderer? Have you seen any suspicious
characters hanging about? Did you notice any one going into the park
on Friday night?”
“No, I have not seen a mortal out of the common way. The gate
was locked at the usual hour. Of course the gate would make no
difference—it would be easy for any one to get into the park.”
“And no one was seen about? It is extraordinary. Have you any idea,
Mrs. Porter, any theory about this horrible calamity that has come
upon us?”
“How should I have any theory? I am not skilled in finding out such
mysteries, like the man who came from London yesterday. Has he made
no discoveries?”
“Not one.”
“Then you can’t expect me to throw a light upon the subject.”
“You have an advantage over the London detective. You know the
neighbourhood—and you know what kind of man Sir Godfrey was.”
“Yes, I know that. How handsome he was, how frank and pleasant
looking, and how your daughter adored him. They were a beautiful
couple.”
Her wan cheeks flushed, and her eyes kindled as she spoke, as if with
a genuine enthusiasm.
“They were, and they adored each other. It will break my daughter’s
heart. You have known trouble—about a daughter. I think you can
understand what I feel for my girl.”
“I do—I do! Yes, I know what you must feel—what she must feel in her
desolation, with all she valued gone from her for ever. But she has
not to drink the cup that _my_ girl must drink, Lord Cheriton. _She_
has not fallen. _She_ is not a thing for men to trample under foot,
and women to shrink away from.”
“Forgive me,” said Lord Cheriton, in a softened voice. “I ought not
to have spoken of—Mercy.”
“You ought never to speak of her—to me. I suppose you thought the
wound was so old that it might be touched with impunity, but you were
wrong. That wound will never heal.”
“I am sure you know that I have always been deeply sorry for you—for
that great affliction,” said Lord Cheriton gently.
“Sorry, yes, I suppose you were sorry. You would have been sorry if a
footman had knocked down one of your Sèvres vases and smashed it. One
is sorry for anything that can’t be replaced.”
“That is a harsh and unjust way of speaking, Mrs. Porter,” said Lord
Cheriton, drawing himself up suddenly with an air of wounded dignity.
“You can tell me nothing about our trouble, I see; and I am not in
the mood to talk of any older grief. Good night.”
He lifted his hat with grave respect and walked back to the park
gate, vanishing slowly from those grey eyes which followed him in
eager watchfulness.
“Is he really sorry?” she asked herself. “Can such a man as that be
sorry for any one, even his own flesh and blood? He has prospered;
all things have gone well with him. Can he be sorry? It is a check,
perhaps; a check to his ambitious hopes. It baulks him in his longing
to found a family. He looks pale and worn, as if he had suffered: and
at his age, after a prosperous life, it must be hard to suffer.”
So mused the woman who had seen better days—embittered doubtless by
her own decadence—embittered still more by her daughter’s fall.
It was nearly ten years since the daughter had eloped with a
middle-aged Colonel in a cavalry regiment, a visitor at the Chase—a
man of fortune and high family, with about as diabolical a reputation
as a man could enjoy and yet hold Her Majesty’s commission.
Mercy Porter’s fall had been a surprise to everybody. She was a girl
of shy and reserved manners, graver and sadder than youth should
be. She had been kept very close by her mother, allowed to make no
friendships among the girls in the village, to have no companions of
her own age. She had early shown a considerable talent for music, and
her piano had been her chief pleasure and occupation. Lady Cheriton
had taken a good deal of notice of her when she grew up, and she
might have done well, the gossips said, when they recalled the story
of her disgrace; but she chose to fall in love with a married man of
infamous character, a notorious profligate, and he had but to beckon
with his finger for her to go off with him. The circumstances of her
going off were discussed confidentially at feminine tea-drinkings,
and it was wondered that Mrs. Porter could hold her head so high, and
show herself at church three times on a Sunday, and entertain the
curate and his wife to afternoon tea, considering what had happened.
The curate and his wife were new arrivals comparatively, and only
knew that dismal common story from hearsay. They were both impressed
by Mrs. Porter’s regular attendance at the church services, and by
the excellence of that cup of tea with which she was always ready to
entertain them whenever they cared to drop in at her cottage between
four and five o’clock.
* * * * *
The inquest was opened early on the afternoon of Monday at the
humble little inn near the forge, with its rustic sign, “Live and
let live.” Juanita gave her evidence with a stony calmness which
impressed those who heard her more than the stormiest outburst of
grief would have done. Her mother and her husband’s mother had both
implored her not to break down, to bear herself heroically through
this terrible ordeal, and they were both in the room to support her
by their presence. Both were surprised at the firmness of her manner,
the clear tones of her voice as she made her statement, telling how
she had heard the shot in her dream, and how she had gone down to the
drawing-room to find Sir Godfrey lying face downward on the carpet,
in front of the chair where he had been sitting, his hand still upon
the open book, which had fallen as he fell.
“Did you think of going outside to see if any one was lurking about?”
“No, I thought of nothing but trying to save him. I did not believe
that he was dead.”
There was a look of agony in her large wide open eyes as she said
this—a piteous remembrance of the moment while she still hoped—which
thrilled the spectators.
“What course did you take?”
“I rang for the servants. They came after a time that seemed long—but
I believe they came quickly.”
“And after they had come——?”
“I remembered nothing more. They wanted me to believe that he was
dead—and I would not—I could not believe—and—I remember no more till
next day.”
“That will do, Lady Carmichael. I will not trouble you further.”
Lady Jane and Lady Cheriton wanted to take her away after this, but
she insisted upon remaining.
“I wish to hear every word,” she said.
They submitted, and the three women, robed in densest black, sat in a
little group behind the Coroner till the end of that day’s inquiry.
No new facts were elicited from any of the witnesses, and nothing
had resulted from the elaborate search made, not only throughout
Lord Cheriton’s domain, but in the neighbourhood. No suspicious
prowlers had been heard of. The gipsies who had contributed to the
gaiety of the wedding day had been ascertained to have left the
Isle of Purbeck a fortnight before the murder, and to be delighting
the larger world between Portsmouth and Havant. Nothing had been
discovered; no sale of revolver or gun to any questionable purchaser
at Dorchester; no indication, however slight, which might put a
keen-witted detective upon the trail. Mr. Churton confessed himself
completely at fault.
The jury drove to Cheriton House to view the body, and the inquest
was adjourned for a fortnight, in the expectation that some discovery
might be made in the interim. The funeral would take place at the
usual time; there was nothing now to hinder the victim being laid in
his last resting-place in the old Saxon church at Milbrook.
Bills offering a reward of £500 for any information leading to the
discovery of the murderer were all over the village, and in every
village and town within a radius of forty miles. The stimulus of
cupidity was not wanting to sharpen the rural wit. Mr. Churton shook
his head despondently when he talked over the inquest with Lord
Cheriton later in the day, and owned himself “out of it.”
“I have been in many dark cases, my Lord,” he said, “and I’ve had
many hard nuts to crack, but this beats ’em all. I can’t see my
way to making anything of it; and unless you can furnish me with
any particulars of the poor young gentleman’s past life, of an
enlightening character, I don’t see much hope of getting ahead.”
“You stick to your idea of the murder being an act of revenge?”
“What other reason could there be for such a murder?”
That question seemed unanswerable, and Lord Cheriton let it pass.
Matthew Dalbrook and his elder son were to dine with him that
evening, in order to talk quietly and calmly over the terrible event
of last week, and the bearing which it must have upon his daughter’s
future life. Lady Cheriton and Lady Jane Carmichael had lived
entirely on the upper floor, taking such poor apologies for meals as
they could be induced to take in her ladyship’s morning-room. That
closed door at the eastern end of the corridor exercised its solemn
influence upon the whole house. Those mourning women never went in
or out without looking that way—and again and again through the long
still days they visited that chamber of death, carrying fairest
blooms of stephanotis or camellia, whitest rose-buds, waxen lilies;
kneeling in silent prayer beside that white bed.
During all those dismal days before the funeral Juanita lived
secluded in her own room, only leaving it to go to that silent room
where the white bed and the white flowers made an atmosphere of cold
purity, which chilled her heart as if she too were dead. She counted
the hours which remained before even this melancholy link between
life and death would be broken, and when she must stretch out her
hands blindly to find one whom the earth would hide from her for
evermore. In the brief snatches of troubled sleep that had visited
her since Friday night she had awakened with her husband’s name upon
her lips, with outstretched hands that yearned for the touch of his,
awakening slowly to consciousness of the horrible reality. In every
dream that she had dreamed he had been with her, and in some of those
dreams had appeared with a distinctness which involved the memory
of her sorrow. Yes, she had thought him dead—yes, she had seen him
stretched bleeding at her feet; but that had been dream and delusion.
Reality was here, here in his strong voice, here in the warm grasp of
his hand, here in the lying vision that was kinder than truth.
Mr. Dalbrook and his son arrived at a quarter to eight, and were
received by Lord Cheriton in the library. The drawing-room was now a
locked chamber, and it would be long doubtless before any one would
have the courage to occupy that room. The Dalbrooks were to stay
at Cheriton till after the funeral. Matthew Dalbrook had been Sir
Godfrey’s solicitor, and it would be his duty to read the will.
He was also one of the trustees to Juanita’s marriage settlement,
and the time had come—all too soon—when the terms of that settlement
would have to be discussed.
“How is my cousin?” asked Theodore, when he had shaken hands with
Lord Cheriton.
“Have you seen her since—Friday?”
“Yes, I saw her on Saturday morning. She was terribly changed.”
“A ghastly change, is it not?” said Lord Cheriton, with a sigh.
“I doubt if there is any improvement since then: but she behaved
splendidly at the inquest this afternoon. We were all prepared for
her breaking down. God knows whether she will ever get the better of
her grief, or whether she will go down to the grave a broken-hearted
woman. Oh! Matt,” turning to his kinsman and contemporary, “such a
trial as this teaches us how Providence can laugh at our best laid
plans. I thought I had made my daughter’s happiness as secure as the
foundations of this old house.”
“You did your best, James. No man can do more.”
Theodore was silent for the most part after his inquiry about his
cousin. He listened while the elder men talked, and gave his opinion
when it was asked for, and showed himself a clear-headed man of
business; but his depression was not the less evident. The thought of
Juanita’s grief—the contrast between her agony now and her joyousness
the day she was at Dorchester—was never absent from his mind; and the
talk of the two elder men, the discussion as to the extent of her
possessions, her power to do this and that, the house she was to live
in, the establishment she was to keep, jarred upon him horribly.
“By the conditions of the settlement, the Priory is to be hers for
her life, with everything it contains. By the conditions of Sir
Godfrey’s will, in the event of his leaving no issue, the Priory
estate is to go after his widow’s death to Mrs. Grenville’s eldest
son, or failing a son in that direction, then to Mrs. Morningside’s
eldest son. Should neither sister leave a son surviving at the time
of Lady Carmichael’s death the estate is to be sold, and the product
divided in equal portions among the surviving nieces; but at the
present rate at which the two ladies are filling their nurseries
there is very little doubt there will be a surviving son. Mrs.
Grenville was Sir Godfrey’s favourite, I know, and I can understand
his giving her boy the estate, and thus founding a family, rather
than dividing the property between the issue of the two sisters.”
“I do not think anybody can find fault with his will,” said Lord
Cheriton. “God knows that when I saw him sign it in my room in
Victoria Street, an hour after his marriage, nothing was further from
my thoughts than the idea that the will would come into force within
the next fifty years. It seemed almost an idle precaution for so
young a man to be in such a hurry to set his house in order.”
“Do you think Juanita will decide to live at the Priory?” asked Mr.
Dalbrook.
“It would seem more natural for her to live here with her mother and
me, but I fear that this house will seem for ever accursed to her.
She will remember that it was her own whim to spend her honeymoon
here. It will seem to her as if she had brought her husband to his
death. Oh, God, when I remember how her mother and I suggested
other places—how we talked to her of the Tyrol and the Dolomites,
of Hungary, Norway—and with what a kind of childish infatuation she
clung to her fancy for this house, it seems as if a hideous fatality
guided her to her doom. It is her doom, as well as his. I do not
believe she will ever be a happy woman again.”
“It may seem so now to us all, to herself most of all, poor girl,”
answered Matthew Dalbrook. “But I never saw a sorrow yet that Time
could not heal, and the sorrow of a girl of nineteen leaves such a
margin for Time’s healing powers. God grant that you and I may both
live to see her bright and happy again—with a second husband. There
is something prosaic, I feel, in the very sound; but there may be
some touch of romance even in a second love.”
He did not see the painful change in his son’s face while he was
talking: the sudden crimson which faded slowly to a ghastly pallor.
It had never occurred to Matthew Dalbrook that his son Theodore
had felt anything more than a cousinly regard for Lord Cheriton’s
daughter.
* * * * *
The funeral took place on the following Wednesday—one of those
funerals about which people talk for a month, and in which grief
is almost lost sight of by the majority of the mourners in a
feverish excitement. The procession of carriages, very few of them
unoccupied, was nearly half a mile long—the little churchyard at
Milbrook could scarcely contain the mourners. The sisters’ husbands
were there, with hats hidden in crape, and solemn countenances;
honestly sorry for their brother-in-law’s death, but not uninterested
in his will. All the district, within a radius of thirty miles, had
been on the alert to pay this last mark of respect to a young man who
had been universally liked, and whose melancholy fate had moved every
heart.
The will was read in the library, and Juanita appeared for the first
time since her cousins had been at Cheriton. She came into the room
with her mother, and went to Matthew and his son quietly, and gave
a hand to each, and answered their grave inquiries about her health
without one tear or one faltering accent; and then she took her
seat beside her father’s chair, and waited for the reading of the
will. It seemed to her as if it contained her husband’s last words,
addressed to her from his grave. He knew when he wrote or dictated
those words that she would not hear them in his lifetime. The will
left her a life-interest in everything, except twenty thousand pounds
in consols to Lady Jane, a few legacies to old servants and local
charities, and a few souvenirs to college friends. Sir Godfrey had
held the estate in fee simple, and could deal with it as he pleased.
He expressed a hope that if his wife survived him she should continue
to live at the Priory, and that the household should remain, as far
as possible, unchanged, that no old horse should ever be sold, and no
dogs disposed of in any way off the premises. This last request was
to secure a continuance of old customs. His father had never allowed
a horse that he had kept over a twelvemonth to be sold; and had never
parted with a dog. His own hand shot the horse that was no longer fit
for service; his own hand poisoned the dog whose life had ceased to
be a blessing.
When the will was finished, and it was by no means a lengthy
document, Lady Jane kissed her daughter-in-law.
“You will do as he wished, won’t you, dearest?” she said, softly.
“Live at the Priory—yes, Lady Jane, unless you will live there
instead. It would be more natural for you to be mistress there.
When—when—my darling made that will he must have thought of me as
an old woman, likely to survive him by a few years at most, and it
would seem natural to him for me to go on living in his house—to
continue to live—those were his words, you know—to continue to live
in the home of my married life. But all is different now, and it
would be better for you to have the Priory. It has been your home so
long. It is full of associations and interests for you. I can live
anywhere—anywhere except in this detested house.”
She had spoken in a low voice all the time, so low as to be quite
inaudible to her father and Matthew Dalbrook, who were talking
confidentially upon the other side of the wide oak table.
“My love, it is your house. It will be full of associations for
you too—the memories of his youth. It may comfort you by-and-by to
live among the things he cared for. And I can be with you there now
and then. You will bear with a melancholy old woman now and then,”
pleaded Lady Jane, with tearful tenderness.
The only answer was a sob, and a clinging pressure of the hand; and
then the three women quietly left the room. Their interest in the
business was over. Blinds had been drawn up and Venetian shutters
opened. There was a flood of sunshine on the staircase and in the
corridors as Juanita went back to her room. The perfume of roses and
the breath of summer came in at the open windows.
“Oh, God, how the sun shines!” she cried, in a sudden agony of
remembrance.
Those odours from the garden, the blue sky, summer greenery and
dazzling summer light brought back the image of her vanished
happiness. Last week, less than a week ago, she had been one of the
joyous creatures in that glad, gay world—joyous as the thrush whose
song was thrilling upon the soft sweet air.
Lady Jane’s two sons-in-law had drawn near the oak table at which the
lawyer was seated with his papers before him.
Jessica’s husband, Mr. Grenville, was sporting. His thoughts were
centred in his stable, where he found an all-sufficient occupation
for his intellectual powers in an endless buying, exchanging,
selling, summering and wintering his stud; in the invention of
improved bits, and the development of new ideas in saddlery; in the
performance of operations that belong rather to the professional
veterinary than to the gentleman at large, and in the conversation
of his stud groom. These resources filled up all the margin that
was left for a man who hunted four days a week in his own district,
and who often got a fifth and even a sixth day in other counties
accessible by rail. It may have been a natural result of Mr.
Grenville’s devotion to the stable that Mrs. Grenville was absorbed
by her nursery; or it may have been a natural bent on the lady’s
part. However this might be, the lady and the gentleman followed
parallel lines, in which their interests never clashed. He talked
of hardly anything but his horses; she rarely mentioned any other
subject than her children, or something bearing upon her children’s
well-being. He believed his horses to be the best in the county; she
considered her babies unsurpassed in creation. Both in their line
were supremely happy.
Mr. Morningside, married to Sir Godfrey’s youngest sister, Ruth, was
distinctly Parliamentary; and had no sympathies in common with such
men as Hugo Grenville. To him horses were animals with four legs who
dragged burdens; who were expensive to keep, and whose legs were
liable to “fill” or to develop superfluous bone on the slightest
provocation. His only idea of a saddle horse was a slow and stolid
cob, for whose virtuous disposition and powerful bone he had paid
nearly three hundred pounds, and on which he pounded round the park
three or four times every morning during the Parliamentary season, an
exercise of which he was about as fond as he was of Pullna water, but
which had been recommended him for the good of his liver.
Mr. Morningside had a castle in the north, too near Newcastle to
be altogether beautiful, and he had a small suite upon a fifth
floor in Queen Anne’s Mansion. He had taken this apartment as a
bachelor _pied à terre_ for the Parliamentary season; and he had
laid considerable emphasis upon the landowner’s necessity for stern
economy which had constrained him to take rooms so small as to be
altogether “impossible” for his wife. Mrs. Morningside was, however,
of a different opinion. No place was impossible for her which her
dear Stuart deigned to occupy. She did not mind small rooms, or a
fifth story. Was there not a lift, and were there not charming people
living ever so much nearer the skies? She did not mind even what she
gracefully described as “pigging it,” for her dear Stuart’s sake. She
was utterly unlike her elder sister, and she had no compunction at
placing over two hundred miles between her and her nursery.
“They’d wire for me if anything went wrong,” she said, “and the
express would take me home in a few hours.”
“That would depend upon what time you got the wire. The express
doesn’t go every quarter of an hour like a Royal Blue,” replied Mr.
Morningside, gloomily.
He was a dry-as-dust man; one of those self-satisfied persons who are
never less alone than when alone. He had married at five and thirty,
and the comfortable habits of a priggish bachelor still clove to him
after six years of married bliss. He was fond of his wife in her
place, and he thought her a very charming woman at the head of his
table, and receiving his guests at Morningside Castle. But it was
essential to his peace that he should have many solitary hours in
which to pore over Blue books and meditate upon an intended speech.
He fancied himself greatly as a speaker, and he was one of those
Parliamentary bores whose ornate periods are made mincemeat of by
the reporters. He looked to a day when he would take his place with
Burke and Walpole, and other giants, whose oratory had been received
coldly in the dawn of their senatorial career. He gave himself up
to much study of politics past and present, and was one of those
well-informed bores who are only useful as a store-house of hard
facts for the use of livelier speakers. When a man had to speak upon
a subject of which he knew nothing, he went to Mr. Morningside as to
a Parliamentary Encyclopædia.
To sustain these stores of knowledge Mr. Morningside required
much leisure for what is called heavy reading; and heavy reading
is not easy in that genial family life which means incessant talk
and incessant interruption. Mr. Morningside would have preferred,
therefore, to keep his den on the fifth floor to himself; but his
wife loved London, and he could not refuse her the privilege of
occasionally sharing his nest on a level with the spires and towers
of the great city. She made her presence agreeably felt by tables
covered with photograph easels, Vallauris vases, stray flowers in
specimen glasses, which were continually being knocked over, Japanese
screens, and every known variety of chair-back; and albeit he was
an essentially dutiful husband, Mr. Morningside never felt happier
than when he had seen his Ruth comfortably seated in the Bournemouth
express on her way to the home of her forefathers for one of those
protracted visits that no one but a near relation would venture to
make. He left her cheerily on such occasions, with a promise to run
down to the Priory on Saturday evenings whenever it was possible to
leave the helm.
Mr. Morningside had liked his brother-in-law as well as it was in him
to like any man, and had been horrified at that sudden inexplicable
doom; but Sir Godfrey being snatched off this earth in the flower
of his age, Mr. Morningside thought it only natural that the young
Morningsides should derive some benefit, immediate or contingent,
from their uncle’s estate. It was, therefore, with some disgust
that he heard that clause in the will which gave Jessica’s sons the
preference over all the sons of Ruth. True that, failing any son of
Jessica’s, the estate was to lapse to the eldest surviving son of
Ruth; but what earthly value was such a reversionary interest as this
in the case of a lady whose nursery was like a rabbit warren?
“I congratulate you on your eldest boy’s prospects, Grenville,” said
Mr. Morningside, sourly. “Your Tom,” a boy whom he hated, “will come
into a very fine thing one of these days.”
“Humph,” muttered Grenville, “Lady Carmichael’s is a good life, and
I should be very sorry to see it shortened. Besides, who can tell?
Before this time next year there may be a nearer claimant.”
“Lord have mercy upon us,” exclaimed Morningside, “I never thought of
_that_ contingency.”