"I fear you have been reading too much Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. There
is something dreadfully esoteric in all you say."
She smiled contemptuously.
"I know people can't understand such matters," she replied, and was silent
for some time. But, through her quietness and silence, I felt, as it were,
the throb of a strange excitement in this woman, almost as if I had been
holding her pulse.
Still, I was in hopes that things might be beginning to go better in
consequence of my interference. Mrs. Oke had scarcely once alluded to
Lovelock in the last two or three days; and Oke had been much more cheerful
and natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed so worried; and
once or twice I had caught in him a look of great gentleness and
loving-kindness, almost of pity, as towards some young and very frail
thing, as he sat opposite his wife.
But the end had come. After that sitting Mrs. Oke had complained of fatigue
and retired to her room, and Oke had driven off on some business to the
nearest town. I felt all alone in the big house, and after having worked a
little at a sketch I was making in the park, I amused myself rambling about
the house.
It was a warm, enervating, autumn afternoon: the kind of weather that
brings the perfume out of everything, the damp ground and fallen leaves,
the flowers in the jars, the old woodwork and stuffs; that seems to bring
on to the surface of one's consciousness all manner of vague recollections
and expectations, a something half pleasurable, half painful, that makes it
impossible to do or to think. I was the prey of this particular, not at all
unpleasurable, restlessness. I wandered up and down the corridors, stopping
to look at the pictures, which I knew already in every detail, to follow
the pattern of the carvings and old stuffs, to stare at the autumn flowers,
arranged in magnificent masses of colour in the big china bowls and jars. I
took up one book after another and threw it aside; then I sat down to the
piano and began to play irrelevant fragments. I felt quite alone, although
I had heard the grind of the wheels on the gravel, which meant that my host
had returned. I was lazily turning over a book of verses--I remember it
perfectly well, it was Morris's "Love is Enough"--in a corner of the
drawing-room, when the door suddenly opened and William Oke showed himself.
He did not enter, but beckoned to me to come out to him. There was
something in his face that made me start up and follow him at once. He was
extremely quiet, even stiff, not a muscle of his face moving, but very
pale.
"I have something to show you," he said, leading me through the vaulted
hall, hung round with ancestral pictures, into the gravelled space that
looked like a filled-up moat, where stood the big blasted oak, with its
twisted, pointing branches. I followed him on to the lawn, or rather the
piece of park-land that ran up to the house. We walked quickly, he in
front, without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped, just where there
jutted out the bow-window of the yellow drawing-room, and I felt Oke's hand
tight upon my arm.
"I have brought you here to see something," he whispered hoarsely; and he
led me to the window.
I looked in. The room, compared with the out door, was rather dark; but
against the yellow wall I saw Mrs. Oke sitting alone on a couch in her
white dress, her head slightly thrown back, a large red rose in her hand.
"Do you believe now?" whispered Oke's voice hot at my ear. "Do you believe
now? Was it all my fancy? But I will have him this time. I have locked the
door inside, and, by God! he shan't escape."
The words were not out of Oke's mouth. I felt myself struggling with him
silently outside that window. But he broke loose, pulled open the window,
and leapt into the room, and I after him. As I crossed the threshold,
something flashed in my eyes; there was a loud report, a sharp cry, and the
thud of a body on the ground.
Oke was standing in the middle of the room, with a faint smoke about him;
and at his feet, sunk down from the sofa, with her blond head resting on
its seat, lay Mrs. Oke, a pool of red forming in her white dress. Her mouth
was convulsed, as if in that automatic shriek, but her wide-open white eyes
seemed to smile vaguely and distantly.
I know nothing of time. It all seemed to be one second, but a second that
lasted hours. Oke stared, then turned round and laughed.
"The damned rascal has given me the slip again!" he cried; and quickly
unlocking the door, rushed out of the house with dreadful cries.
That is the end of the story. Oke tried to shoot himself that evening, but
merely fractured his jaw, and died a few days later, raving. There were all
sorts of legal inquiries, through which I went as through a dream; and
whence it resulted that Mr. Oke had killed his wife in a fit of momentary
madness. That was the end of Alice Oke. By the way, her maid brought me a
locket which was found round her neck, all stained with blood. It contained
some very dark auburn hair, not at all the colour of William Oke's. I am
quite sure it was Lovelock's.