A SACRIFICE.
It would be difficult to say whether Calabressa was altogether sincere
in claiming to become the substitute for Ferdinand Lind, or whether he
was not practising a little self-deception, and pacifying his wounded
pride and affection by this outburst of generosity, while secretly
conscious that his offer would not be accepted. However, what Calabressa
had declared himself ready to do, in a fit of wild sentimentalism,
another had already done, in terrible earnest. A useless life had
suddenly become ennobled by a tragic and self-sacrificing death.
Two days after Lord Evelyn left for Naples, Brand and Gathorne Edwards
were as usual in the chambers in Lisle Street, and, the business of the
morning being mostly over, they were chatting together. There was a
brighter look on George Brand's face than there had been there for many
a day.
"What an indefatigable fellow that Molyneux is!" Edwards was saying.
"It is a good thing some one can do something," Brand answered. "As for
me, I can't settle down to anything. I feel as if I had been living on
laughing-gas these last two days. I feel as if I had come alive again
into another world, and was a little bit bewildered just as yet.
However, I suppose we shall get shaken into our new positions by-and-by;
and the sooner they let us know their final arrangements the better."
"As for me," said Edwards, carelessly, "now that I have left the Museum
I don't care where I may have to go."
At this moment a note was brought in by the old German, and handed to
Edwards. He glanced at the straggling, almost illegible, address in
pencil on the dirty envelope.
"Well, this is too bad," he said, impatiently.
"What is it?"
"That fellow Kirski. He is off again. I can see by his writing. He never
was very good at it; but this is the handwriting of delirium tremens."
He opened the letter, and glanced at the first page.
"Oh yes," he said, in disgust, "he's off again, clearly."
"What does he say?"
"The usual rigmarole--only not quite so legible. The beautiful angel
who was so kind to him--he has taken her portrait from its
hiding-place--it is sacred now--no more public house--well, it looks
rather as if he had been to several."
At this point, however, Edwards's pale, high forehead flushed a little.
"I wish I had not told him; but he speaks of Miss Lind being in
trouble--and he says God never meant one so beautiful and kind as she to
be in trouble--and if her father--"
His face grew grave.
"What is this?"
He turned the leaf suddenly, and glanced at the remainder of the letter.
"Good God! what does the man mean? What has he done?" he exclaimed.
His face was quite pale. The letter dropped from his hands. Then he
jumped to his feet.
"Come, Brand--quick--quick!" he said, hurriedly. "You must come with
me--"
"But what is the matter?" Brand said, following him in amazement.
"I don't know," said Edwards, almost incoherently. "He may be raving--it
may only be drunkenness--but he says he is about to kill himself in
place of Lind: the young lady shall not be troubled--she was kind to
him, and he is grateful. I am to send her a message."
By this time the two friends were hurrying to the dingy little
thoroughfare in which Kirski had his lodgings.
"Don't alarm yourself, Edwards," said Brand; "he has broken out again,
that is all."
"I am not so sure. He was at his work yesterday, and sober enough."
"His brain may have given way, then; it was never very strong. But these
continual ravings about murder or suicide are dangerous; they will
develop into homicidal mania, most likely; and if he cannot get at his
enemy Michaieloff he may do a mischief to somebody else."
"I hope he has not done a mischief to himself already," said Edwards,
who had had more opportunities than his companion of studying the
workings of Kirski's disordered brain.
They reached the house and knocked at the door. The landlady made her
appearance.
"Is Kirski in the house?" Edwards asked, eagerly.
"No, he ain't," she said, with but scant courtesy.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed, in great relief. "You are sure? He went out
to his work as usual?"
"How should I know?" said the woman, who was evidently not on good terms
with her lodger.
"He had his breakfast as usual?"
"His breakfast!" she said scornfully. "No, he hadn't. He may pick up his
breakfast about the streets, like a cat; but he don't have any 'ere. And
a cat he is, sneaking up and down the stairs: how do I know whether he
is in the house or whether he ain't?"
At this Edwards turned pale again with a sudden fear. Brand interposed.
"You don't know? Then show us his room; we will see for ourselves."
He passed the woman, leaving her to shut the door, and went into the
small dark passage, waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. Grumbling
to herself, she came along to show them the way. It did not pay her to
waste her time like this, she said, for a lodger who took no food in the
house, and spent his earnings in the gin-shop. She should not be
surprised if they were to find him asleep at that time of the day. He
had ways like a cat.
The landing they reached was as dark as the staircase; so that when she
turned a handle and flung a door open there was a sudden glare of light.
At the same moment she uttered a shrill scream, and retreated backward.
She had caught a glimpse of some horrible thing--she hardly knew what.
It was the body of the man Kirski lying prone upon the uncarpeted floor,
his hands clinched. There was a dark pool of blood beside him.
Edwards sunk shuddering into a chair, sick and faint. He could neither
move nor speak; he dared hardly look at the object lying there in the
wan light. But Brand went quickly forward, and took hold of one of these
clinched hands. It was quite cold. He tried to turn over the body, but
relinquished that effort. The cause of death was obvious enough. Kirski
had stabbed himself with one of the tools used in his trade; either he
had deliberately lain down on the floor to make sure of driving the
weapon home, or he had accidentally fallen so after dealing himself the
fatal blow. Apparently he had been dead for some hours.
Brand rose. The landlady at the door was alternately screaming and
sobbing; declaring that she was ruined; that not another lodger would
come to her house.
"Be quiet, woman, and send to the police-station at once," Brand said.
"Wait a moment: when did you last see this man?"
"This morning, sir--early this morning, sir," said she, in a profusion
of tears over her prospective loss. "He came down-stairs with a letter
in his hand, and there was twopence for my little boy to take it when he
came home from school. How should I know he had gone back, sir, to make
away with himself like that, and ruin a poor widow woman, sir?"
"Have you a servant in the house?"
"No sir; no one but myself--and me dependent--"
"Then go at once to the police-station, and tell the inspector on duty
what has happened. You can do that, can't you? You will do no good by
standing crying there, or getting the neighbors in. I will stop here
till you come back."
She went away, leaving Brand and his paralyzed companion with this
ghastly object lying prone on the floor.
"Poor devil!" Brand said; "his troubles are at an end now. I wonder
whether I should lift him on to the bed, or wait until they come."
Then another thought struck him: and he turned quickly to his companion,
who sat there horrified and helpless.
"Edwards," said he, "you must pull yourself together. The police will
ask you what you know about this affair. Then you will have to give
evidence before the coroner's inquest. There is nothing material for you
to conceal; but still, no mention must be made of Lisle Street, do you
understand?"
Edwards nodded. His face was of a ghastly white. Then he rose and said,
"Let us go somewhere else, Brand."
His companion took him down-stairs into the landlady's parlor, and got
him a glass of water. Apparently there was not a human being in the
house but themselves.
"Do you understand, Edwards? Give your private address--not Lisle
Street. Then you can tell the story simply enough: that unfortunate
fellow came all the way from Russia--virtually a maniac--you can tell
them his story if you like; or shall I?"
"Yes, yes. It has been too much for me, Brand. You see, I had no
business to tell him about Lind--"
"The poor wretch would have ended his days miserably anyhow, no doubt in
a mad-house, and probably after killing some quite innocent person.
By-the-way, they will ask you how you came to suspect. Where is that
letter?"
Edwards took it from his pocket.
"Tear it up."
He did so; but Brand took the fragments and put them in his own pocket.
"You can tell them he wrote to you, and from the madness of the letter
you thought something was wrong. You destroyed the letter. But where is
Natalie's portrait?--that must not fall into their hands."
He instantly went up-stairs again, leaving his companion alone. There
was something strange in his entering this room where the corpse lay; it
seemed necessary for him to walk on tiptoe: he uncovered his head. A
glance round the almost empty room speedily showed him what he wanted;
there was a small wooden casket in a dusky corner by the window, and
that, he made no doubt, was the box the unhappy Kirski had made to
contain Natalie's portrait, and that he had quite recently dug out from
its place of concealment. Brand was surprised, however, to find the
casket empty. Then he glanced at the fireplace; there was a little dust
there, as of burnt card-board. Then he made sure that Kirski himself had
taken steps to prevent the portrait falling into alien hands.
Beside the box, however, lay a piece of paper, written over in pencil.
He took it up and made out it was chiefly ill-spelled Italian:
"_Whatever punishment may be decreed against any Officer, Companion, or
Friend of the Society, may be vicariously borne by any other Officer,
Companion, or Friend, who, of his own full and free consent, acts as
substitute--the original offender becoming thereby redeemed, acquitted,
and released._" Then followed some words which he could not make out at
all.
He carried the paper down-stairs.
"He appears to have burnt the photograph, Edwards; but he has left
this--see."
Edwards glanced at the trembling scrawl with a slight shiver; the
handwriting was the same as that he had received half an hour before.
"It is only Article V.," he said. "The poor fellow used to keep
repeating that, after Calabressa and I taught him in Venice."
"But what is written below?"
Edwards forced himself to take the paper in his hands, and to scan more
carefully its contents.
"It is Russian," he said, "but so badly written. '_My life is not
endurable longer, but I shall die happy in being of service to the
beautiful angel who was kind to me. Tell her she need not be in trouble
any more. I forgive Pavel Michaieloff, as my masters desire. I do not
wish my wife or my neighbors to know what I have done._'"
"This we have no right to meddle with," Brand said, thoughtfully. "I
will put it back where I got it. But you see, Edwards, you will have to
admit that you were aware this poor wretch was in communication with
some secret society or other. Further than that you need say nothing.
The cause of his suicide is clear enough; the man was mad when he came
to England with that wild craving for revenge in his brain."
Brand carried the paper up-stairs again, and placed it where he had
found it. At the same moment there was a sound of footsteps below; and
presently the police-officers, accompanied by the landlady and by
Gathorne Edwards, who had somewhat recovered his composure, entered to
hold their preliminary investigation. The notes that the inspector took
down in his pocket-book were brief enough, and were mostly answers to
questions addressed to Brand, regarding what he knew of the deceased
man's circumstances. The police-surgeon had meanwhile had the body
placed on the bed; he also was of opinion that the man had been dead
some hours. Edwards translated for the inspector the writing on the
paper found lying there, and said he believed Kirski had some connection
with a secret society, but that it was obvious he had destroyed himself
from despair; and that, indeed, the unhappy man had never been properly
right in his mind since ever he had known him, though they had hoped, by
getting him to do steady work and sure wages, to wean him away from
brooding over the wrongs that had driven him from his native country.
Edwards gave the officer his address, Brand saying that he had to leave
England that same night, and would not be available for any further
inquiry, but that his friend knew precisely as much about the case as
himself. Then he and his companion left.
Edwards breathed more freely when he got out of the house, even into the
murky atmosphere of Soho.
"It is a tragic end," he said, "but perhaps it is the best that could
have befallen him. I called yesterday at the shop, and found he was
there, and sober, though I did not see him. I was surprised to find he
had gone back."
"I thought he had solemnly promised you not to drink any more," Brand
said.
"He had made the same promises before. He took to drink merely to
forget--to drown this thing that was working in his brain. If he had
lived, it would have been the old story over again. He would have buried
the portrait in St. James's Park, as he did before, gone back to the
gin-shop, and in course of time drank himself to death. This end is
terrible enough, but there is a touch of something fine about it--it
redeems much. What a worship the poor fellow had for Miss Lind, to be
sure; because she was kind to him when he was half mad with his wrongs.
I remember he used to go about the churches in Venice to see if any of
the saints in the pictures were like her, but none satisfied him. You
will send her a message of what he has done to repay her at last?"
"I will take it myself," said Brand, hastily. "I must go, Edwards. You
must get ---- or ---- to come to these chambers--any one you may think of.
I must go myself, and at once."
"To-night, then?"
"Yes, to-night. It is a pity I troubled Evelyn to go."
"He would stay a day, perhaps two days, in Genoa. It is just possible
you might overtake him by going straight through."
"Yes," said Brand, with a strange smile on his face, as if he were
looking at something far away, and it was scarcely to his companion that
he spoke, "I think I will go straight through. I should not like any one
but myself to take Natalie this news."
They walked back to the chambers, and Brand began to put things in order
for his going.
"It is rather a shame," he said, during this business, "for one to be
glad that this poor wretch has come to such an end; but what better
could have happened to him, as you say? You will see about a decent
funeral, Edwards; and I will leave you something to stop the mouth of
that caterwauling landlady. You can tell them at the inquest that he has
no relations in this country."
By-and-by he said,
"If there are any debts, I will pay them; and if no one has any
objection I should like to have that casket, to show to--to Miss Lind.
Did you see the carving on it?"
"I looked at it."
"He must have spent many a night working at that. Poor wretch, I wish I
had looked after him more, and done more for him. One always feels that
when people are dead, and it is too late."
"I don't see how you could have done more for him," Edwards said,
honestly enough: though indeed it was he himself who had been Kirski's
chief protector of late.
Before evening came Brand had put affairs in proper trim for his
departure, and he left London with a lighter heart than had been his for
a long time. But ever and anon, as he journeyed to the south, with a
wonderful picture of joy and happiness before him, his mind would wander
away back to the little room in Soho, and he could see the unhappy
Russian lying dead, with the message left behind for the beautiful angel
who had been kind to him; and he could not but think that Kirski would
have died happier if he had known that Natalie herself would come some
day and put flowers, tenderly and perhaps even with tears, on his grave.
Who that knew her could doubt but that that would be her first act on
returning to England? At least, Brand thought so.