purposeless. I felt most painfully wide awake. I threw myself down upon
my bed, and worried myself by trying to imagine what secret there could
be between Maryon and Bludyer--for that a secret of some kind existed, I
felt certain. I tossed about till I heard the stroke of one. A dreadful
restlessness had come upon me. It seemed as if the solemn night-side of
life was busy waking now, but the silence and solitude of my antique
chamber became too much for me. I rose from my bed, and paced up and
down the room. I raked up the dying embers of the fire, and drew an
arm-chair to the hearth. I fell into a doze. By and by I woke up
suddenly, and I was conscious of stealthy footsteps in the passage. My
sense of hearing became painfully acute. I heard the footsteps
retreating down the corridor, until they were lost in the distance. I
cautiously opened the door, and, shading the candle with my hand, looked
out--there was nothing to be seen; but I felt that I could not remain
quietly in my room, and, closing the door behind me, I went out in
search of I knew not what.
The sitting-rooms and bedrooms in ordinary use at The Mere were in the
modern part of the house; but there was an old Elizabethan wing which I
had often longed to explore, and in this strange ramble of mine I soon
had reason to be satisfied that I was well within it. At the end of an
oak-panelled narrow passage a door stood open, and I entered a low,
sombre apartment fitted with furniture in the style of two hundred years
ago. There was something awfully ghostly about the look of this room. A
great four-post bedstead, with heavy hangings, stood in a deep recess; a
round oak table and two high-backed chairs were in the centre of the
room. Suddenly, as I gazed on these things, I heard stealthy footsteps
in the passage, and saw a dim light advancing. Acting on a sudden
impulse, I extinguished my candle and withdrew into the shadow of the
recess, watching eagerly. The footsteps came nearer. My heart seemed to
stand still with expectation. They paused outside the door, for a
moment really--for an age it seemed to me. Then, to my astonishment, I
saw Mr. Maryon enter. He carried a small night-lamp in his hand. Another
glance satisfied me that he was walking in his sleep. He came straight
to the round table, and set down the lamp. He seated himself in one of
the high-backed chairs, his vacant eyes staring at the chair opposite;
then his lips began to move quickly, as if he were addressing some one.
Then he rose, went to the bureau, and seemed to take something from it;
then he sat down again. What a strange action of his hands! At first I
could not understand it; then it flashed upon me that in this dream of
his he must be shuffling cards. Yes, he began to deal; then he was
playing with his adversary--his lips moving anxiously at times.
A look of terrible eagerness came over the sleepwalker's countenance.
With nimble fingers he dealt the cards, and played. Suddenly with a
sweep of his hand he seemed to fling the pack into the fireplace,
started from his seat, grappled with his unseen adversary, raised his
powerful right hand, and struck a tremendous blow. Hush! more footsteps
along the passage! Am I deceived? From my concealment I watch for what
is to follow. Colonel Bludyer comes in, half dressed, but wide awake.
"You maniac!" I hear him mutter: "I expected you were given to such
tricks as these. Lucky for you no eyes but mine have seen your abject
folly. Come back to your room."
Mr. Maryon is still gazing, his arms lifted wildly above his head, upon
the imagined foe whom he had felled to the ground. The Colonel touches
him on the shoulder, and leads him away, leaving the lamp. My reasoning
faculties had fully returned to me. I held a clue to the secret, and for
Agnes' sake it must be followed up. I took the lamp away, and placed it
on a table where the chamber candlesticks stood, relit my own candle,
and found my way back to my bedroom.
The next morning, when I came down to breakfast, I found Colonel Bludyer
warming himself satisfactorily at the blazing fire. I learned from him
that our host was far from well, and that Miss Maryon was in attendance
upon her father; that the Colonel was charged with all kinds of
apologies to me, and good wishes for my safe return home across the
snow. I thanked him for the delivery of the message, while I felt
perfectly convinced that he had never been charged with it. However that
might be, I never saw Mr. Maryon that morning; and I started back to The
Shallows through the snow.
For the next two or three days the weather was very wild, but I
contrived to get up to The Mere, and ask after Mr. Maryon. Better, I was
told, but unable to see any one. Miss Maryon, too, was fatigued with
nursing her father. So there was nothing to do but to trudge home again.
"_Reginald Westcar, The Mere is yours. Compel John Maryon to pay the
debt of honor!_"
Again and again these words forced themselves upon me, as I listlessly
gazed out upon the white landscape. The strange scene that I had
witnessed on that memorable night I passed beneath Mr. Maryon's roof had
brought them back to my memory with redoubled force, and I began to
think that the apparition I had seen--or dreamed of--on my first night
at The Shallows had more of truth in it than I had been willing to
believe.
Three more days passed away, and a carter-boy from The Mere brought me a
note. It was Agnes' handwriting. It said:
"DEAR MR. WESTCAR: Pray come up here, if you possibly can. I cannot
understand what is the matter with papa; and he wishes me to do a
dreadful thing. Do come. I feel that I have no friend but you. I am
obliged to send this note privately."
I need scarcely say that five minutes afterward I was plunging through
the snow toward The Mere. It was already late on that dark February
evening as I gained the shrubbery; and as I was pondering upon the best
method of securing admittance, I became aware that the figure of a man
was hurrying on some yards in front of me. At first I thought it must be
one of the gardeners, but all of a sudden I stood still, and my blood
seemed to freeze with horror, as I remarked that the figure in front of
me _left no trace of footmarks on the snow_! My brain reeled for a
moment, and I thought I should have fallen; but I recovered my nerves,
and when I looked before me again, it had disappeared. I pressed on
eagerly. I arrived at the front door--it was wide open; and I passed
through the hall to the library. I heard Agnes' voice.
"No, no, papa. You must not force me to this! I cannot--will not--marry
Colonel Bludyer!"
"You _must_," answered Mr. Maryon, in a hoarse voice; "you _must_ marry
him, and save your father from something worse than disgrace!"
Not feeling disposed to play the eavesdropper, I entered the room. Mr.
Maryon was standing at the fireplace. Agnes was crouching on the ground
at his feet. I saw at once that it was no use for me to dissemble the
reason of my visit, and, without a word of greeting, I said:
"Miss Maryon, I have come, in obedience to your summons. If I can
prevent any misfortune from falling upon you I am ready to help you,
with my life. You have guessed that I love you. If my love is returned I
am prepared to dispute my claim with any man."
Agnes, with a cry of joy, rose from her knees, and rushed toward me. Ah!
how strong I felt as I held her in my arms!
"I have my answer," I continued. "Mr. Maryon, I have reason to believe
that your daughter is in fear of the future you have forecast for her. I
ask you to regard those fears, and to give her to me, to love and
cherish as my wife."
Mr. Maryon covered his face with his hands; and I could hear him murmur,
"Too late--too late!"
"No, not too late," I echoed. "What is this Bludyer to you, that you
should sacrifice your daughter to a man whose very look proclaims him a
villain? Nothing can compel you to such a deed--not even a _debt of
honor_!"
What it was impelled me to say these last words I know not, but they had
an extraordinary effect upon Mr. Maryon. He started toward me, then
checked himself; his face was livid, his eyeballs glaring, and he threw
up his arms in the strange manner I had already witnessed.
"What is all this?" exclaimed a harsh voice behind me. "Mr. Westcar
insulting Miss Maryon and her father! it is time for me to interfere."
And Colonel Bludyer approached me menacingly. All his jovial manner and
fulsome courtesy was gone; and in his flushed face and insolent look the
savage rascal was revealed.
"You will interfere at your peril," I replied. "I am a younger man than
you are, and my strength has not been weakened by drink and dissipation.
Take care."
The villain drew himself up to his full height; and, though he must have
been at least some sixty years of age, I felt assured that I should meet
no ordinary adversary if a personal struggle should ensue. Agnes
fainted, and I laid her on a sofa.
"Miss Maryon wants air," said the Colonel, in a calmer voice. "Excuse
me, Mr. Maryon, if I open a window." He tore open the shutters, and
threw up the sash. "And now, Mr. Westcar, unless you are prepared to be
sensible, and make your exit by the door, I shall be under the
unpleasant necessity of throwing you out of the window."
The ruffian advanced toward me as he spoke. Suddenly he paused. His jaw
dropped; his hair seemed literally to stand on end; his white lips
quivered; he shook, as with an ague; his whole form appeared to shrink.
I stared in amazement at the awful change. A strange thrill shot through
me, as I heard a quiet voice say:
"Richard Bludyer, your grave is waiting for you. Go."
The figure of a man passed between me and him. The wretched man shrank
back, and, with a wild cry, leaped from the window he had opened.
All this time Mr. Maryon was standing like a lifeless statue.
In helpless wonder I gazed at the figure before me. I saw clearly the
features in profile, and, swift as lightning, my memory was carried back
to the unforgotten scene in the churchyard upon the Lake of Lucerne, and
I recognized the white face of the young man with whom I there had
spoken.
"John Maryon," said the voice, "this is the night upon which, a quarter
of a century ago, you killed me. It is your last night on earth. You
must go through the tragedy again."
Mr. Maryon, still statue-like, beckoned to the figure, and opened a
half-concealed door which led into his study. The strange but opportune
visitant seemed to motion to me with a gesture of his hand, which I felt
I must obey, and I followed in this weird procession. From the study we
mounted by a private staircase to a large, well-furnished bed-chamber.
Here we paused. Mr. Maryon looked tremblingly at the stranger, and said,
in a low, stammering voice:
"This is my room. In this room, on this night, twenty-five years ago,
you told me that you were certain Sir Henry Benet's will was in
existence, and that you had made up your mind to dispute my possession
to this property. You had discovered letters from Sir Henry to your
father which gave you a clue to the spot where that will might be found.
You, Geoffrey Ringwood, of generous and extravagant nature, offered to
find the will in my presence. It was late at night, as now; all the
household slept. I accepted your invitation, and followed you."
Mr. Maryon ceased; he seemed physically unable to continue. The terrible
stranger, in his low, echoing voice, replied:
"Go on; confess all."
"You and I, Geoffrey, had been what the world calls friends. We had been
much in London together; we were both passionately fond of cards. We had
a common acquaintance, Richard Bludyer. He was present on the 2d of
February, when I lost a large sum of money to you at _ecarte_. He hinted
to me that you might possibly use these sums in instituting a lawsuit
against me for the recovery of this estate. Your intimation that you
knew of the existence of the will alarmed me, as it had become necessary
for me to remain owner of The Mere. As I have said, I accepted your
invitation, and followed you to Sir Henry Benet's room; and now I follow
you again."
As he said these words, Geoffrey Ringwood, or his ghost, passed silently
by Mr. Maryon, and led the way into the corridor. At the end of the
corridor all three paused outside an oak door which I remembered well. A
gesture from the leader made Mr. Maryon continue:
"On this threshold you told me suddenly that Bludyer was a villain, and
had betrayed your sister Aldina; that she had fled with him that night;
that he could never marry her, as you had reason to know he had a wife
alive. You made me swear to help you in your vengeance against him. We
entered the room, as we enter it now."
Our leader had opened the door of the room, and we were in the same
chamber I had wandered to when I had slept at The Mere. The figure of
Geoffrey Ringwood paused at the round table, and looked again at Mr.
Maryon, who proceeded:
"You went straight to the fifth panel from the fireplace, and then
touched a spring, and the panel opened. You said that the will giving
this property to your father and his heirs was to be found there. I was
convinced that you spoke the truth, but, suddenly remembering your love
of gambling, I suggested that we should play for it. You accepted at
once. We searched among the papers, and found the will. We placed the
will upon the table, and began to play. We agreed that we would play up
to ten thousand pounds. Your luck was marvellous. In two hours the limit
was reached. I owed you ten thousand pounds, and had lost The Mere. You
laughed, and said, 'Well, John, you have had a fair chance. At ten
o'clock this morning I shall expect you to pay me _your debt of honor_.'
I rose; the devil of despair strong upon me. With one hand I swept the
cards from the table into the fire, and with the other seized you by the
throat, and dealt you a blow upon the temple. You fell dead upon the
floor."
Need I say that as I heard this fearful narrative, I recognized the
actions of the sleep-walker, and understood them all?
"To the end!" said the hollow voice. "Confess to the end!"
"The doctor who examined your body gave his opinion, at the inquest,
that you had died of apoplexy, caused by strong cerebral excitement. My
evidence was to the effect that I believed you had lost a very large sum
of money to Captain Bludyer, and that you had told me you were utterly
unable to pay it. The jury found their verdict accordingly, and I was
left in undisturbed possession of The Mere. But the memory of my crime
haunted me as only such memories can haunt a criminal, and I became a
morose and miserable man. One thing bound me to life--my daughter. When
Reginald Westcar appeared upon the scene I thought that the debt of
honor would be satisfied if he married Agnes. Then Bludyer reappeared,
and he told me that he knew that I had killed you. He threatened to
revive the story, to exhume your body, and to say that Aldina Ringwood
had told him all about the will. I could purchase his silence only by
giving him my daughter, the heiress of The Mere. To this I consented."
As he said these last words, Mr. Maryon sunk heavily into the chair.
The figure of Geoffrey Ringwood placed one ghostly hand upon his left
temple, and then passed silently out of the room. I started up, and
followed the phantom along the corridor--down the staircase--out at the
front door, which still stood open--across the snow-covered lawn--into
the plantation; and then it disappeared as strangely as I first had seen
it; and, hardly knowing whether I was mad or dreaming, I found my way
back to The Shallows.
* * * * *
For some weeks I was ill with brain-fever. When I recovered I was told
that terrible things had happened at The Mere. Mr. Maryon had been
found dead in Sir Henry Benet's room--an effusion of blood upon the
brain, the doctors said--and the body of Colonel Bludyer had been
discovered in the snow in an old disused gravel-pit not far from the
house.
* * * * *
A year afterward I married Agnes Maryon; and, if all that I had seen and
heard upon that 3d of February was not merely the invention of a fevered
brain, the debt of honor was at last discharged, for I, the nephew of
the murdered Geoffrey Ringwood, became the owner of The Mere.
DEVEREUX'S DREAM.
I give you this story only at second-hand; but you have it in
substance--and he wasted few words over it--as Paul Devereux told it me.
It was not the only queer story he could have told about himself if he
had chosen, by a good many, I should say. Paul's life had been an
eminently unconventional one: the man's face certified to that--hard,
bronzed, war-worn, seamed and scarred with strange battle-marks--the
face of a man who had dared and done most things.
It was not his custom to speak much of what he had done, however.
Probably only because he and I were little likely to meet again that he
told me this I am free to tell you now.
We had come across one another for the first time for years that
afternoon on the Italian Boulevart. Paul had landed a couple of weeks
previously at Marseilles from a long yacht-cruise in southern waters,
the monotony of which we heard had been agreeably diversified by a
little pirate-hunting and slaver-chasing--the evil tongues called it
piracy and slave-running; and certainly Devereux was quite equal to
either _metier_; and he was about starting on a promising little
filibustering expedition across the Atlantic, where the chances were he
would be shot, and the certainty was that he would be starved. So
perhaps he felt inclined to be a trifle more communicative than usual,
as we sat late that night over a blazing pyre of logs and in a cloud of
Cavendish. At all events he was, and after this fashion.
I forget now exactly how the subject was led up to. Expression of some
philosophic incredulity on my part regarding certain matters, followed
by a ten-minutes' silence on his side pregnant with unwonted words to
come--that was it, perhaps. At last he said, more to himself, it seemed,
than to me:
"'Such stuff as dreams are made of.' Well, who knows? You're a Sadducee,
Bertie; you call this sort of thing, politely, indigestion. Perhaps
you're right. But yet I had a queer dream once."
"Not unlikely," I assented.
"You're wrong; I never dream, as a rule. But, as I say, I had a queer
dream once; and queer because it came literally true three years
afterward."
"Queer indeed, Paul."
"Happens to be true. What's queerer still, my dream was the means of my
finding a man I owed a long score, and a heavy one, and of my paying him
in full."
"Bad for the payee!" I thought.
Paul's face had grown terribly eloquent as he spoke those last words. On
a sudden the expression of it changed--another memory was stirring in
him. Wonderfully tender the fierce eyes grew; wonderfully tender the
faint, sad smile, that was like sunshine on storm-scathed granite. That
smile transfigured the man before me.
"Ah, poor child--poor Lucille!" I heard him mutter.
That was it, was it? So I let him be. Presently he lifted his head. If
he had let himself get the least thing out of hand for a moment, he had
got back his self-mastery the next.
"I'll tell you that queer story, Bertie, if you like," he said.
The proposition was flatteringly unusual, but the voice was quite his
own.
"Somehow I'd sooner talk than think about--_her_," he went on after a
pause.
I nodded. He might talk about this, you see, but _I_ couldn't. He began
with a question--an odd one:
"Did you ever hear I'd been married?"
Paul Devereux and a wife had always seemed and been to me a most
unheard-of conjunction. So I laconically said:
"No."
"Well, I was once, years ago. She was my wife--that child--for a week.
And then----"
I easily filled up the pause; but, as it happened, I filled it up
wrongly; for he added:
"And then she was murdered."
I was not unused to our Paul's stony style of talk; but this last
sentence was sufficiently startling.
"Eh?"
"Murdered--in her sleep. They never found the man who did it either,
though I had Durbec and all the Rue de Jerusalem at work. But I forgave
them that, for I found the man myself, and killed him."
He was filling his pipe again as he told me this, and he perhaps rammed
the Cavendish in a little tighter, but that was all. The thing was a
matter of course; I knew my Paul, well enough to know that. Of course he
killed him.
"Mind you," he continued, kindling the black _brule-gueule_ the
while--"mind you, I'd never seen this man before, never known of his
existence, except in a way that--however, it was this way."
He let his grizzled head drop back on the cushions of his chair, and his
eyes seemed to see the queer story he was telling enacted once more
before him in the red hollows of the fire.
"As I said, it was years ago. I was waiting here in Paris for some
fellows who were to join me in a campaign we'd arranged against the
African big game. I never was more fit for anything of that sort than I
was then. I only tell you this to show you that the thing can't be
accounted for by my nerves having been out of order at all.
"Well: I was dining alone that day, at the Cafe Anglais. It was late
when I sat down to my dinner in the little salon as usual. Only two
other men were still lingering over theirs. All the time they stayed
they bored me so persistently with some confounded story of a murder
they were discussing, that I was once or twice more than half-inclined
to tell them so. At last, though, they went away.
"But their talk kept buzzing abominably in my head. When the waiter
brought me the evening paper, the first thing that caught my eye was a
circumstantial account of the _probable_ way the fellow did his murder.
I say probable, for they never caught him; and, as you will see
directly, they could only suppose how it occurred.
"It seemed that a well-known Paris banker, who was ascertained beyond
doubt to have left one station alive and well, and with a couple of
hundred thousand francs in a leathern _sac_ under his seat, arrived at
the next station the train stopped at with his throat cut and _minus_
all his money, except a few bank-notes to no great amount, which the
assassin had been wise enough to leave behind him. The train was a night
express on one of the southern lines; the banker travelled quite alone,
in a first-class carriage; and the murder must have taken place between
midnight and 1 A.M. next morning. The newspapers supposed--rightly
enough, I think--that the murderer must have entered the carriage _from
without_, stabbed his victim in his sleep--there were no signs of any
struggle--opened the _sac_, taken what he wanted, and retreated, loot
and all, by the way he came. I fully indorsed my particular writer's
opinion that the murderer was an uncommonly cool and clever individual,
especially as I fancy he got clear off and was never afterward laid
hands on.
"When I had done that I thought I had done with the affair altogether.
Not at all. I was regularly ridden with this confounded murder. You see
the banker was rather a swell; everybody knew him: and that, of course,
made it so shocking. So everybody kept talking about him: they were
talking about him at the Opera, and over the _baccarat_ and _bouillotte_
at La Topaze's later. To escape him I went to bed and smoked myself to
sleep. And then a queer thing came to pass: I had a dream--I who never
dream; and this is what I dreamed:
"I saw a wide, rich country that I knew. A starless night hung over it
like a pall. I saw a narrow track running through it, straight, both
ways, for leagues. Something sped along this track with a hurtling rush
and roar. This something that at first had looked like a red-eyed devil,
with dark sides full of dim fire, resolved itself, as I watched it,
presently, into a more conventional night express-train. It flew along,
though, as no express-train ever travelled yet; for all that, I was able
to keep it quite easily in view. I could count the carriages as they
whirled by. One--two--three--four--five--six; but I could only see
distinctly into one. Into that one with perfect distinctness. Into that
one I seemed forced to look.
"It was the fourth carriage. Two people were in it. They sat in opposite
corners; both were sleeping. The one who sat facing forward was a
woman--a girl, rather. I could see that; but I couldn't see her face.
The blind was drawn across the lamp in the roof, and the light was very
dim; moreover, this girl lay back in the shadow. Yet I seemed to know
her, and I knew that her face was very fair. She wore a cloak that
shrouded her form completely, yet her form was familiar to me.