“VENGEANCE IS MINE.”
After the first wild confusion of that scene in the bank parlour
there was a pause, a brief silence, which Jacob Danielson was the
first to break.
“When you flung your victim to his dark hiding-place in the cellar
under the northern wing,” said the old clerk, addressing himself
slowly and deliberately to his employer, “you might as well have
taken the trouble to ascertain that he was really dead. It would have
been a more business-like mode of proceeding, and I am surprised
that you, a business man, should have failed to adopt it: but,
perhaps, your courage failed you at the last moment, and you had
not sufficient firmness to remain by the body of your victim, and
to listen for the last pulsation of the heart which you had done
your best to put to silence. However this may have been, you left
your work half undone. And when I returned to Wilmingdon Hall, after
contriving to miss my train, I returned in time to save at least the
life of your intended victim. I had suspected some sinister motive in
your desire to get rid of me, and I managed to lose the train, after
having dismissed your servant. I was thus free to hurry back to the
park, and to re-enter the grounds unobserved. I made my way rapidly
towards the house, and the nearest way took me past the north garden.
In one of the windows of the deserted wing I saw a light shining
through the chinks in the shutters. Heavy and ponderous though those
shutters are, they were not strong enough to conceal the secrets
which you would have hidden behind them. I crept softly towards the
window, and should have looked in through the chink, but the post of
spy was already occupied. An old man, a gardener, was standing with
his face flattened against the window, peeping into the room. When I
saw this I crept away as quietly as I had approached, and went round
to the occupied portion of the house. I went to the dining-room,
where I took the opportunity to secure that deposit-receipt which
has just proved so valuable to Mrs. Westford. Five minutes after I
had seated myself, you made your appearance. Your face, your manner,
both told me that something terrible had happened in that deserted
room, in spite of your wonderful self-command. When you left me, I
went straight to the window where I had seen the light. There the
old gardener was lying senseless on the ground. I stooped over him,
and found that he was in a kind of swoon. Then I felt convinced some
hideous crime had been committed in that room, and that the witness
of it had fallen senseless, horror-stricken with the awful sight he
had beheld. I peeped into the room, but I could see nothing. All
was dark. Then I remembered that during my earliest visits to the
Hall I had heard of an underground passage leading from the grotto
to the cellars of the northern wing, and communicating by means of
a staircase with the ground floor. I determined on groping my way
into this passage, and from thence to the room where I felt convinced
a horrible deed had been done. I returned to the house, and waited
in the dining-room till you had gone to your own apartments. I then
went to the servants’ hall, where I procured a dark lantern, under
pretence of searching for a purse I had lost in coming through the
grounds; and, armed with this, I reached the grotto unobserved,
entered the subterranean passage, followed its windings to the
cellars, and then groped along to the cellar staircase, intending to
penetrate to the room above. But I had no occasion to do so, for at
the foot of the cellar-stairs I stumbled upon the body of the captain
yonder.
“I tore open his waistcoat, which was soaked with blood; and when I
felt for the beating of the heart, a faint throb told me that the
murderer had not completed his work. I found the wound, and staunched
it with a woollen handkerchief from my neck; then of a heap of straw
and rubbish which I discovered in a corner I made a kind of bed, on
which I laid the unconscious victim of an intended assassination.
“Having done this, I hurried back to the gardens, returned to the
house, allowed one of the servants to conduct me to my room; and to
all appearance retired for the night. But no sooner was the household
wrapped in slumber, or at least in silence--for surely _one_ member
of that household could have slept little that night--no sooner was
all quiet, than I crept from my room, left the house, and went to
a little inn in the neighbourhood where I was known, and where I
hired a horse and gig on the plea of having lost the mail-train, and
wanting to drive to London in the dead of the night rather than miss
an early appointment on the following morning.
“With this horse and gig I returned to the park, and drove to a
sheltered spot near the entrance of the grotto. Then the most
difficult part of my work had to be done. Alone and unaided I half
carried, half dragged the unconscious sea captain from the cellar
to the place where I had left the gig. I contrived to fasten him
securely in the vehicle, and then drove at a walking pace to a
house I had known in the past, and where I was sure of finding easy
admission for my almost lifeless charge.
“That house was the Retreat; a private lunatic asylum, kept by a man
whose life I knew to be one long career of charlatanism and villany.
There I knew that only one question would be asked: Was I prepared
to pay for the care of the patient? If my answer to that inquiry was
satisfactory, all would be settled.
“I drove slowly along the lonely road leading to the Retreat. I met
only one solitary horseman, and he asked me if my friend sitting in a
heap at the bottom of the gig was ill or drunk. I answered, ‘Drunk,’
and passed on without further question.
“Arrived at the Retreat I rang up the attendants, and was received by
Dr. Wilderson Snaffley, who rose from his comfortable bed to see me.
I told him that my charge was a relation who had stabbed himself in a
fit of lunacy, induced by delirium tremens; and that in order to keep
his infirmity a profound secret, I had brought him straight to the
Retreat, where I knew every effort would be made to save his life. I
said that I was prepared to pay liberally for his maintenance.
“That was quite enough. Dr. Wilderson Snaffley examined his still
unconscious patient; but he did not ask me any troublesome questions,
nor did he even remark that people do not usually stab themselves _in
the back_ when they endeavour to commit suicide.
“You will ask me, Clara Westford, why I acted thus--why I did not
denounce the would-be assassin, and restore Harley Westford to the
wife and children who loved him. I answer you, that one fatal passion
had warped my nature, and transformed me into something between a
madman and a drunkard. It pleased me to think that, by keeping the
secret of Mr. Godwin’s crime, I should be revenged upon you, Clara;
for I had loved you, and I believed that my presumptuous love had
been revenged by you with the cruel pride of a woman who thinks
it sport to trample on the heart of the plebeian wretch who dares
to adore her. I sought for power over Rupert Godwin--for since my
blighted youth had passed into premature old age, avarice had been
the ruling passion of my life; and, possessed of the secret of Harley
Westford’s supposed murder, I knew that I should have unlimited
command over the purse of my employer. Thus a double motive prompted
me to secrecy. And for more than a year I have kept my secret,
disturbed by no pang of remorse, moved by no contrition, until
destiny brought me once more face to face with the woman I had once
so fatally loved.
“Then all at once the ice melted, the hardened nature softened, and I
could no longer endure the thought of what I had done.
“I sought you out, Mrs. Westford, and from your own lips I
discovered how deeply I had wronged your noble nature. From that
moment my course lay clear before me: the only atonement in my power
was to undo what I had done. For that purpose I went to the madhouse
where your husband was hidden. A few words to Dr. Wilderson Snaffley,
informing him that circumstances were altered with me, and that I was
no longer able to pay for my patient, were quite sufficient.
“The learned and conscientious physician discovered immediately that
his charge was quite well, and perfectly able to enter the world
again. I was thus enabled to quit the Retreat with Captain Westford
as my companion. But we were obliged to leave behind us a patient
whom we should have been glad to bring with us. That patient, Mrs.
Westford, is no other than your son, to whom the finger of Providence
had indicated the secret of his father’s attempted murder, and whom
Mr. Godwin incarcerated in a prison which was intended to entomb him
until he was transferred from that living grave to a more comfortable
resting-place in some obscure churchyard. Had Lionel Westford been
placed in any other lunatic asylum than the Retreat, you might have
had some difficulty in discovering his prison house. Fortunately, he
was confided to the care of Dr. Wilderson Snaffley and father and son
met beneath that gentleman’s hospitable roof.--A strange meeting,
was it not, Rupert Godwin, between the son who believed his father
had been murdered, and the father who never thought to look upon a
familiar face again?
“But Providence sometimes brings about very strange meetings. Lionel
Westford’s release from imprisonment under Dr. Snaffley’s tender
care will be easily managed, I daresay. The doctor will not be
particularly anxious to retain his patient when he discovers that
his wealthy patron is a bankrupt and a felon.--That is all I have
to tell, Captain Westford; it is for you to seek redress for the
wrongs that have been done to you and yours. An aggravated attempt
at assassination is a crime rather heavily punished even by our mild
legislature.”
“Stop!” cried Harley Westford, holding up his hand, with a warning
gesture; “‘Vengeance is mine’ saith the Lord. The law of the land
will have very little hold upon that man. Look at Rupert Godwin’s
face. Send for a doctor, some one.” There was sudden confusion and
alarm. The clerk loosened his employer’s cravat, while Captain
Westford opened the door of the outer office and despatched a
messenger post haste for the nearest surgeon.
Rupert Godwin had fallen back in his chair a lifeless, shapeless heap
of stricken mortality. The fevered, unresting brain, so long kept on
the rack, had succumbed at last to a paralytic shock of an aggravated
character. For weeks past the banker had been subject to convulsive
starts and unwonted nervous sensations; but these sensations had
affected him at long intervals, and had been very transient in their
nature. They had therefore caused no alarm in the breast of the
unhappy wretch who had so many other reasons for fear.
The shock of Danielson’s demand, of Harley Westford’s reappearance,
the overwhelming sense of failure and ruin, had been too much for
even that vigorous intellect. The chord, so long strained to its
utmost tension, snapped suddenly, and Rupert Godwin became a creature
whom his worst enemies could afford to pity.
A medical man came in hot haste to the bank parlor, and then another,
and another, till there was quite a bevy of solemn-looking gentlemen
hovering over the prostrate man. The tidings of Rupert Godwin’s
affliction had spread like wildfire; and before his attendants had
carried the heavy lifeless form to a sofa in an adjoining room,
the fact that the banker had been stricken by paralysis was common
talk on ’Change. Those who had prophesied the downfall of his house
shrugged their shoulders, and lowered the corners of their mouths
ominously.
“This will bring matters to a crisis,” said one.
“How do we know that he hasn’t made away with himself?” asked another.
The medical gentlemen announced that the spark called life was
not extinguished, although the other and more subtle flame called
consciousness had gone out, never again to illumine this earth for
Rupert Godwin.
There was very little hope of his recovery, the doctors said; but
their looks and tones implied that there was no hope. The stricken
wretch lay with his dim eyes half shut; and his medical attendants
said that he might lie thus for hours--or, indeed, for days.
It was even possible that he might continue to live in that miserable
state; and thus the Westfords left him to the care of his clerk
Danielson.
“He hasn’t a friend in the world, or a creature who ever loved him,
except his daughter,” said the clerk; “and even she has deserted him.
I’ll look after him somehow or other for the rest of his life. I’ve
nothing particular to do with myself or my money, so I may as well
take care of him. I must get him away from this place, by hook or by
crook; for there may be a run on the bank to-morrow, and when people
find out the state of the case they may want to tear Mr. Godwin to
pieces.”
In the course of that afternoon the clerk contrived to remove the
awful wreck of humanity which had once been his employer. He carried
Mr. Godwin to a place of safety. Not to Wilmingdon Hall; for that
splendid mansion, with all its treasures, would in all probability
fall very speedily into the hands of the officials of the Bankruptcy
Court, to be dealt with for the benefit of the banker’s creditors,
or to be mysteriously absorbed in the legal costs attendant on his
bankruptcy.
The shelter to which Jacob Danielson took his employer was a very
humble one. It was a second floor in a little square behind the
Borough, where Mr. Danielson had been for some years a lodger.
Here, upon a flock-bed, the banker lay for some dreary days and
nights, staring at the bare wall opposite him; and even the man who
watched him so closely failed to discover the precise moment in which
the vacant stare of idiocy changed to the blindness of death.
Thus closed the existence of a man who had drained the cup of life’s
excitements and enjoyments to the very dregs, and who had tasted
to the uttermost the bitterness of the drops at the bottom of the
chalice. There was an inquest, very quietly conducted, and the usual
verdict of “Death from natural causes;” and this was all. The secret
of Rupert Godwin’s crimes was known only to his confidential clerk,
and those who had suffered so heavily at his hands.
But many knew and lost by his commercial disasters, his reckless
speculation, his unjustifiable extravagance, by which the foundations
of a once substantial house of business had been undermined, until
the whole fabric fell in one mass of ruin. Many an innocent victim
suffered--many an impoverished creditor cursed the name of Rupert
Godwin.
Let us turn to a brighter picture. Let us turn to that pleasant home
on the borders of the New Forest, that quaint old dwelling-place
surrounded by picturesque gardens, the beloved home in which Clara
Westford had passed all her happy married life.
Once more she could call that dear home her own. Once more she
wandered in the well-kept gardens, where the autumn flowers bloomed
gaily under a bright October sky--where the rustle of the forest
leaves fell upon her ear like a soothing murmur of loving voices,
as she walked on the smooth lawn, leaning--O how proudly!--on her
husband’s arm. Once more she occupied the pretty rooms, which bore
no evidence of a stranger’s occupation, for an old servant of the
Westfords had been left in charge of the Grange during Rupert
Godwin’s brief hold upon the estate, and the smallest trifles had
been held sacred for the love of an exiled house.
She did not return alone with her loved husband. Lionel went with
them, and Violet--happy in the society of the father and mother they
loved so tenderly.
But the brother and sister soon found another kind of happiness in
other society; for in one of their forest walks they came upon a
young man sketching, with a beautiful girl dressed in deep mourning
by his side.
The girl was Julia Godwin, and the artist was Edward Godwin, the
young man whom Violet had known under the name of George Stanmore.
It was to the protection of her brother that Julia had fled, when her
father’s presence had become unendurable. Edward Godwin had returned
to England after an artistic tour in Belgium, and had established
himself again in the little cottage in the New Forest, hoping to meet
his promised wife once more among the shadowy walks she had so dearly
loved.
His surprise on hearing that the Westfords had left the Grange, and
that the estate had become the property of a Mr. Godwin, a banker
in Lombard-street, was extreme. He wrote immediately to his sister
announcing his whereabouts, and asking her if she could throw any
light upon the circumstances under which his father had acquired this
new property.
The reply to that letter came in the person of Julia herself. She
told her brother that she had left home because that home had become
intolerable to her; but he could not extort from her any account of
the causes that had made it so. She was loyal to the father whom she
had once so dearly loved, whom she still thought of with a passionate
regret.
Here, in this quiet haven, the news of her father’s death reached
her. That event, which at one time would have been so bitter a
calamity for her, seemed now a kind of relief. He was dead--and
at rest. He could be called before no earthly tribunal to answer
for his crimes. He had gone to be judged by the All-just, and the
All-merciful.
If he had but repented--
That was a question which no earthly lips could answer. Julia fondly
hoped that repentance had come to the sinner before the closing-in of
that dark scene, which she contemplated with unutterable horror.
Strange explanations followed the first surprise of that meeting. The
presence of Julia Godwin compelled the revelation of a secret which
until this moment the painter had hidden from the woman he loved. He
was compelled to tell Violet that his name was not George Stanmore,
but Edward Godwin; and that he was the son of that unhappy man whose
bankruptcy and death had lately been recorded in all the newspapers.
Violet did not tell her lover that his father had been the cruel
enemy of her family--the sole cause of the sad interval of poverty
and suffering during which she had been absent from the Grange. The
generous girl had not the heart to tell Edward Godwin this; but she
received his explanations very coldly notwithstanding.
“I wonder you remember me now, Mr. Godwin,” she said proudly, “for
when you saw me last, on the stage of the Circenses, you did not seek
to renew your acquaintanceship with me.”
And then Edward’s earnest protestations convinced her in a few
moments that he had not recognized her, and that he had only been
struck by what he imagined was a most wonderful accidental likeness.
After that all went smoothly between the reunited lovers, and they
began to talk of how the secret of their love was to be broken to the
merchant captain and his wife.
They were alone together under the arching trees; for, by the merest
accident of course, Julia and Lionel had strolled one way, while
Edward and Violet went the other.
“I can ask for your hand boldly now, Violet dearest,” said Edward
Godwin. “Fortune has been very good to me since last we met. My
pictures have been successful, both in English and Continental
Exhibitions, and I have received very liberal prices for my work.
I am growing rich, darling, and I have splendid prospects for the
future. I want nothing but a dear little wife to sit beside my
easel--a sweet household divinity, whose fair young face will inspire
me with all kinds of poetical ideas. My life has been a very hard
one, Violet; and when I was reticent as to my own history, it was
because the subject was a most painful one. There was bad blood
between my father and me. I cannot speak harshly of the dead, and
therefore I will say nothing as to the cause of our quarrel. But we
did quarrel, and we parted at once, and for ever. I went into the
world penniless, and I have lived by my pencil ever since, having
sworn to starve sooner than touch a sixpence of my father’s money.
There is no spur so sharp as poverty. I have worked hard, and I have
been amply rewarded for my work.”
It is needless to linger with these lovers. They walked long under
the shadow of those solemn forest trees, and they could have walked
there for hours with no sense of weariness, with no consciousness of
the monotony of their conversation, though it was very monotonous.
While they lingered in the red westering light, another pair of
lovers strolled near them, arm-in-arm. Lionel had declared his
affection for Julia, and had won from her the confession that he
had been loved almost from the first. But she did not tell him how
she had saved his life when he had so nearly fallen a victim to a
midnight assassin.
That night Lionel and Violet confessed all to their parents.
The communication was by no means a pleasant one to Harley Westford
and his wife. Imagine the countenances of Signor and Signora Capulet,
when informed that their sole daughter and heiress has set her
affections on the young scion of the Montagues!
It was difficult for Clara Westford to believe that the son of Rupert
Godwin could be worthy of any woman’s love, much less of the love of
that pearl amongst women, her own idolized daughter.
But idolized children generally have their own way, however
irrational their caprices may appear. And after considerable
pleading, Violet and Lionel won Clara and her husband to consent to
receive Rupert Godwin’s children.
When once this consent had been gained, all the rest was easy.
Edward Godwin was not a man to be misunderstood by his fellow-men;
and the acquaintance which Harley Westford had so reluctantly begun
speedily promised to ripen into friendship. “Is the young man to
suffer because his father was a scoundrel?” the sailor asked himself.
“That may be the letter of the old Jewish law, but I’m sure it isn’t
Christianity. The Teacher who refused to cast a stone at a guilty
woman would have been the last to punish her innocent children. Let
young Godwin stand upon his own merits; and if I find he’s a good
fellow, he shall marry my daughter, in spite of the scar under my
left shoulder which bears witness against his father.”
Mrs. Westford had been still less inclined than her husband to look
kindly on the children of her merciless enemy; but even she was not
inexorable. Julia’s grace and beauty--to say nothing of her evident
devotion to Lionel--were quite irresistible; and before long the
visitors from the forest cottage were as gladly welcomed at the
Grange as any guests who had ever crossed the hospitable threshold.
It was early in the following June, yet quite midsummer weather, when
the bells of the little village church pealed gaily for a double
wedding.
Two fairer brides have rarely stood before an altar; two nobler
bridegrooms seldom pledged the solemn vows which influence a lifetime.
Captain Westford and his wife looked on with eyes that were dimmed
by a mist of happy tears. Their own life lay before them, bright and
sunny as it had been when they too had stood side by side before the
altar of a sacred fane. Might these two young lives, now beginning,
be as happy! That was the prayer breathed silently from the heart of
husband and wife.
Two pretty little rustic villas arose in the neighbourhood of
the Grange. Not the builder’s ideal of Italian-Gothic, with a
rickety-looking campanello tower for the stowage of empty crates
and servants’ luggage, but trim little Tudor cottages, with broad
stone-mullioned windows and roomy porches--a happy blending of the
substantial and picturesque.
Edward Godwin’s pencil soon won for him a world-wide fame; but he was
known only to the world by the name he had assumed when he first met
Violet at the county-ball and in the forest glades.
Lionel, who had always been at heart a painter, followed the
profession of his brother-in-law, and in his own style was almost
equally successful.
If he had loved art for no other reason, he would have loved it very
dearly for the sake of that meeting in the printseller’s shop, when
he looked for the first time on the beautiful face of his wife.
And thus the curtain falls upon three happy homes--three united
households, in which the days glide smoothly by, across whose
threshold the demon Discord never passes; households on which the
angels may look with approving smiles--households wherein “Love is
lord of all.”
THE END
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
silently corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences
within the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed and some silently
added when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. Bold text
is surrounded by equal signs: =bold=.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text
and inconsistent or archaic usage have been retained.
Contents: ‘JULIA’S PROTEGE’ replaced by ‘JULIA’S PROTÉGÉ’.
Page 8: ‘the penniless hidalgoes’ replaced by ‘the penniless
hidalgos’.
Page 61: ‘doated with senile fondness’ replaced by ‘doted with
senile fondness’.
Page 74: ‘the nose, Anatasia’ replaced by ‘the nose, Anastasia’.
Page 94: ‘a doating father’ replaced by ‘a doting father’.
Page 110: ‘words in replp’ replaced by ‘words in reply’.
Page 141a: ‘horror took possesion’ replaced by ‘horror took
possession’.
Page 141b: ‘would be necesary’ replaced by ‘would be necessary’.
Page 149: ‘in the civiliszd world’ replaced by ‘in the civilized
world’.
Page 154: ‘for the first sime’ replaced by ‘for the first time’.
Page 157: ‘to the effect thal’ replaced by ‘to the effect that’.
Page 173: ‘the chief subects’ replaced by ‘the chief subjects’.
Page 176: ‘there’s an undergound’ replaced by ‘there’s an
underground’.
Page 178: ‘For sometime she’ replaced by ‘For some time she’.
Page 194: ‘had scrupuously avoided’ replaced by ‘had scrupulously
avoided’.
Page 203: ‘drawing-room as cooly’ replaced by ‘drawing-room as
coolly’.
Page 237a: ‘Good-morning, Mr. Grainger’ replaced by ‘Good morning,
Mr. Granger’.
Page 237b: ‘Stay, Mr. Grainger’ replaced by ‘Stay, Mr. Granger’.
Page 242: ‘swingeing canter’ replaced by ‘swinging canter’.
Page 244: ‘instrusted his beloved burden’ replaced by ‘intrusted his
beloved burden’.
Page 266: ‘a practical investigaton’ replaced by ‘a practical
investigation’.
Page 267: ‘prepared by Dr. Snaffle’ replaced by ‘prepared by Dr.
Snaffley’.
Page 274: ‘escape faom danger’ replaced by ‘escape from danger’.
Page 280: ‘duly set set forth’ replaced by ‘duly set forth’.
Page 305: ‘unable to struggel’ replaced by ‘unable to struggle’.
Page 311: ‘stare of idiotcy’ replaced by ‘stare of idiocy’.
Page 314: ‘reluctantly begun speedly’ replaced by ‘reluctantly begun
speedily’.