The library doors were shut, and I closed the secret one behind me
before opening the other and peering out through a wrack of bluish
smoke; and there lay Captain Harris, sure enough, breathing his last in
the arms of one constable, while another was seated on the table with a
very wry face, twisting a tourniquet round his arm, from which the blood
was dripping like raindrops from the eaves. A third officer stood in the
porch, issuing directions to his men without.
“He's over the wall, I tell you! I saw him run up our ladder. After him
every man of you--and spread!”
I looked in vain for Rattray and the rest; yet it seemed as if only
one of them had escaped. I was still looking when the man in the porch
wheeled back into the hall, and instantly caught sight of me at my door.
“Hillo! here's another of them,” cried he. “Out you come, young fellow!
Your mates are all dead men.”
“They're not my mates.”
“Never mind; come you out and let's have a look at you.”
I did so, and was confronted by a short, thickset man, who recognized me
with a smile, but whom I failed to recognize.
“I might have guessed it was Mr. Cole,” said he. “I knew you were here
somewhere, but I couldn't make head or tail of you through the smoke.”
“I'm surprised that you can make head or tail of me at all,” said I.
“Then you've quite forgotten the inquisitive parson you met out fishing?
You see I found out your name for myself!”
“So it was a detective!”
“It was and is,” said the little man, nodding. “Detective or Inspector
Royds, if you're any the wiser.
“What has happened? Who has escaped?” “Your friend Rattray; but he won't
get far.”
“What of the Portuguese and the nigger?”
I forgot that I had crippled José, but remembered with my words, and
wondered the more where he was.
“I'll show you,” said Royds. “It was the nigger let us in. We heard him
groaning round at the back--who smashed his leg? One of our men was at
that cellar grating; there was some of them down there; we wanted to
find our way down and corner them, but the fat got in the fire too soon.
Can you stand something strong? Then come this way.”
He led me out into the garden, and to a tangled heap lying in the
moonlight, on the edge of the long grass. The slave had fallen on top
of his master; one leg lay swathed and twisted; one black hand had but
partially relaxed upon the haft of a knife (the knife) that stood up
hilt-deep in a blacker heart. And in the hand of Santos was still the
revolver (my Deane and Adams) which had sent its last ball through the
nigger's body.
“They slipped out behind us, all but the one inside,” said Royds,
ruefully; “I'm hanged if I know yet how it happened--but we were on them
next second. Before that the nigger had made us hide him in the grass,
but the old devil ran straight into him, and the one fired as the other
struck. It's the worst bit of luck in the whole business, and I'm rather
disappointed on the whole. I've been nursing the job all this week; had
my last look round this very evening, with one of these officers, and
only rode back for more to make sure of taking our gentlemen alive. And
we've lost three out of four of 'em, and have still to lay hands on
the gold! I suppose you didn't know there was any aboard?” he asked
abruptly.
“Not before to-night.”
“Nor did we till the Devoren came in with letters last week, a hundred
and thirty days out. She should have been in a month before you, but she
got amongst the ice around the Horn. There was a letter of advice about
the gold, saying it would probably go in the _Lady Jermyn_; and another
about Rattray and his schooner, which had just sailed; the young
gentleman was known to the police out there.”
“Do you know where the schooner is?”
“Bless you, no, we've had no time to think about her; the man had been
seen about town, and we've done well to lay hands on him in the time.”
“You will do better still when you do lay hands on him,” said I,
wresting my eyes from the yellow dead face of the foreign scoundrel.
The moon shone full upon his high forehead, his shrivelled lips, dank in
their death agony, and on the bauble with the sacred device that he wore
always in his tie. I recovered my property from the shrunken fingers,
and so turned away with a harder heart than I ever had before or since
for any creature of Almighty God.
Harris had expired in our absence.
“Never spoke, sir,” said the constable in whose arms we had left him.
“More's the pity. Well, cut out at the back and help land the young
gent, or we'll have him giving us the slip too. He may double back,
but I'm watching out for that. Which way should you say he'd head, Mr.
Cole?”
“Inland,” said I, lying on the spur of the moment, I knew not why. “Try
at the cottage where I've been staying.”
“We have a man posted there already. That woman is one of the gang,
and we've got her safe. But I'll take your advice, and have that side
scoured whilst I hang about the place.”
And he walked through the house, and out the back way, at the officer's
heels; meanwhile the man with the wounded arm was swaying where he sat
from loss of blood, and I had to help him into the open air before at
last I was free to return to poor Eva in her place of loathsome safety.
I had been so long, however, that her patience was exhausted, and as I
returned to the library by one door, she entered by the other.
“I could bear it no longer. Tell me--the worst!”
“Three of them are dead.”
“Which three?”
She had crossed to the other door, and would not have me shut it. So
I stood between her and the hearth, on which lay the captain's corpse,
with the hearthrug turned up on either side to cover it.
“Harris for one,” said I. “Outside lie José and--”
“Quick! Quick!”
“Senhor Santos.”
Her face was as though the name meant nothing to her.
“And Mr. Rattray?” she cried. “And Mr. Rattray--”
“Has escaped for the present. He seems to have cut his way through the
police and got over the wall by a ladder they left behind them. They are
scouring the country--Miss Denison! Eva! My poor love!”
She had broken down utterly in a second fit of violent weeping; and a
second time I took her in my arms, and stood trying in my clumsy way to
comfort her, as though she were a little child. A lamp was burning in
the library, and I recognized the arm-chair which Rattray had drawn
thence for me on the night of our dinner--the very night before! I led
Eva back into the room, and I closed both doors. I supported my poor
girl to the chair, and once more I knelt before her and took her hands
in mine. My great hour was come at last: surely a happy omen that it was
also the hour before the dawn.
“Cry your fill, my darling,” I whispered, with the tears in my own
voice. “You shall never have anything more to cry for in this world! God
has been very good to us. He brought you to me, and me to you. He has
rescued us for each other. All our troubles are over; cry your fill; you
will never have another chance so long as I live, if only you will let
me live for you. Will you, Eva? Will you? Will you?”
She drew her hands from mine, and sat upright in the chair, looking at
me with round eyes; but mine were dim; astonishment was all that I
could read in her look, and on I went headlong, with growing impetus and
passion.
“I know I am not much, my darling; but you know I was not always what my
luck, good and bad, has left me now, and you will make a new man of
me so soon! Besides, God must mean it, or He would not have thrown us
together amid such horrors, and brought us through them together still.
And you have no one else to take care of you in the world! Won't you let
me try, Eva? Say that you will!”
“Then--you--owe me?” she said slowly, in a low, awe-struck voice that
might have told me my fate at once; but I was shaking all over in the
intensity of my passion, and for the moment it was joy enough to be able
at last to tell her all.
“Love you?” I echoed. “With every fibre of my being! With every atom of
my heart and soul and body! I love you well enough to live to a hundred
for you, or to die for you to-night!”
“Well enough to--give me up?” she whispered.
I felt as though a cold hand had checked my heart at its hottest, but
I mastered myself sufficiently to face her question and to answer it as
honestly as I might.
“Yes!” I cried; “well enough even to do that, if it was for your
happiness; but I might be rather difficult to convince about that.”
“You are very strong and true,” she murmured. “Yes, I can trust you as
I have never trusted anybody else! But--how long have you been so
foolish?” And she tried very hard to smile.
“Since I first saw you; but I only knew it on the night of the fire.
Till that night I resisted it like an idiot. Do you remember how we used
to argue? I rebelled so against my love! I imagined that I had loved
once already and once for all. But on the night of the fire I knew that
my love for you was different from all that had gone before or would
ever come again. I gave in to it at last, and oh! the joy of giving in!
I had fought against the greatest blessing of my life, and I never knew
it till I had given up fighting. What did I care about the fire? I
was never happier--until now! You sang through my heart like the wind
through the rigging; my one fear was that I might go to the bottom
without telling you my love. When I asked to say a few last words to you
on the poop, it was to tell you my love before we parted, that you might
know I loved you whatever came. I didn't do so, because you seemed
so frightened, poor darling! I hadn't it in my heart to add to your
distress. So I left you without a word. But I fought the sea for days
together simply to tell you what I couldn't die without telling you.
When they picked me up, it was your name that brought back my senses
after days of delirium. When I heard that you were dead, I longed to
die myself. And when I found you lived after all, the horror of your
surroundings was nothing to be compared with the mere fact that you
lived; that you were unhappy and in danger was my only grief, but it was
nothing to the thought of your death; and that I had to wait twenty-four
hours without coming to you drove me nearer to madness than ever I was
on the hen-coop. That's how I love you, Eva,” I concluded; “that's how I
love and will love you, for ever and ever, no matter what happens.”
Those sweet gray eyes of hers had been fixed very steadily upon me all
through this outburst; as I finished they filled with tears, and my poor
love sat wringing her slender fingers, and upbraiding herself as though
she were the most heartless coquette in the country.
“How wicked I am!” she moaned. “How ungrateful I must be! You offer me
the unselfish love of a strong, brave man. I cannot take it. I have no
love to give you in return.”
“But some day you may,” I urged, quite happily in my ignorance. “It
will come. Oh, surely it will come, after all that we have gone through
together!”
She looked at me very steadily and kindly through her tears.
“It has come, in a way,” said she; “but it is not your way, Mr. Cole. I
do love you for your bravery and your--love--but that will not quite do
for either of us.”
“Why not?” I cried in an ecstasy. “My darling, it will do for me! It
is more than I dared to hope for; thank God, thank God, that you should
care for me at all!”
She shook her head.
“You do not understand,” she whispered.
“I do. I do. You do not love me as you want to love.”
“As I could love--”
“And as you will! It will come. It will come. I'll bother you no more
about it now. God knows I can afford to leave well alone! I am only too
happy--too thankful--as it is!”
And indeed I rose to my feet every whit as joyful as though she had
accepted me on the spot. At least she had not rejected me; nay, she
confessed to loving me in a way. What more could a lover want? Yet there
was a dejection in her drooping attitude which disconcerted me in the
hour of my reward. And her eyes followed me with a kind of stony remorse
which struck a chill to my bleeding heart.
I went to the door; the hall was still empty, and I shut it again with a
shudder at what I saw before the hearth, at all that I had forgotten
in the little library. As I turned, another door opened--the door made
invisible by the multitude of books around and upon it--and young Squire
Rattray stood between my love and me.
His clear, smooth skin was almost as pale as Eva's own, but pale brown,
the tint of rich ivory. His eyes were preternaturally bright. And they
never glanced my way, but flew straight to Eva, and rested on her very
humbly and sadly, as her two hands gripped the arms of the chair, and
she leant forward in horror and alarm.
“How could you come back?” she cried. “I was told you had escaped!”
“Yes, I got away on one of their horses.”
“I pictured you safe on board!”
“I very nearly was.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To get your forgiveness before I go.”
He took a step forward; her eyes and mine were riveted upon him; and I
still wonder which of us admired him the more, as he stood there in his
pride and his humility, gallant and young, and yet shamefaced and sad.
“You risk your life--for my forgiveness?” whispered Eva at last. “Risk
it? I'll give myself up if you'll take back some of the things you said
to me--last night--and before.”
There was a short pause.
“Well, you are not a coward, at all events!”
“Nor a murderer, Eva!”
“God forbid.”
“Then forgive me for everything else that I have been--to you!”
And he was on his knees where I had knelt scarce a minute before; nor
could I bear to watch them any longer. I believed that he loved her in
his own way as sincerely as I did in mine. I believed that she detested
him for the detestable crime in which he had been concerned. I believed
that the opinion of him which she had expressed to his face, in my
hearing, was her true opinion, and I longed to hear her mitigate it ever
so little before he went. He won my sympathy as a gallant who valued
a kind word from his mistress more than life itself. I hoped earnestly
that that kind word would be spoken. But I had no desire to wait to hear
it. I felt an intruder. I would leave them alone together for the last
time. So I walked to the door, but, seeing a key in it, I changed
my mind, and locked it on the inside. In the hall I might become the
unintentional instrument of the squire's capture, though, so far as my
ears served me, it was still empty as we had left it. I preferred to run
no risks, and would have a look at the subterranean passage instead.
“I advise you to speak low,” I said, “and not to be long. The place is
alive with the police. If they hear you all will be up.”
Whether he heard me I do not know. I left him on his knees still, and
Eva with her face hidden in her hands.
The cellar was a strange scene to revisit within an hour of my
deliverance from that very torture-chamber. It had been something more
before I left it, but in it I could think only of the first occupant of
the camp-stool. The lantern still burned upon the floor. There was the
mattress, still depressed where I had lain face to face with insolent
death. The bullet was in the plaster; it could not have missed by the
breadth of many hairs. In the corner was the shallow grave, dug by
Harris for my elements. And Harris was dead. And Santos was dead. But
life and love were mine.
I would have gone through it all again!
And all at once I was on fire to be back in the library; so much so,
that half a minute at the manhole, lantern in hand, was enough for me;
and a mere funnel of moist brown earth--a terribly low arch propped with
beams--as much as I myself ever saw of the subterranean conduit between
Kirby House and the sea. But I understood that the curious may traverse
it for themselves to this day on payment of a very modest fee.
As for me, I returned as I had come after (say) five minutes' absence;
my head full once more of Eva, and of impatient anxiety for the wild
young squire's final flight; and my heart still singing with the joy of
which my beloved's kindness seemed a sufficient warranty. Poor egotist!
Am I to tell you what I found when I came up those steep stairs to the
chamber where I had left him on his knees to her? Or can you guess?
He was on his knees no more, but he held her in his arms, and as I
entered he was kissing the tears from her wet, flushed cheek. Her
eyelids drooped; she was pale as the dead without, so pale that her
eyebrows looked abnormally and dreadfully dark. She did not cling to
him. Neither did she resist his caresses, but lay passive in his arms as
though her proper paradise was there. And neither heard me enter; it was
as though they had forgotten all the world but one another.
“So this is it,” said I very calmly. I can hear my voice as I write.
They fell apart on the instant. Rattray glared at me, yet I saw that his
eyes were dim. Eva clasped her hands before her, and looked me steadily
in the face. But never a word.
“You love him?” I said sternly.
The silence of consent remained unbroken.
“Villain as he is?” I burst out.
And at last Eva spoke.
“I loved him before he was one,” said she. “We were engaged.”
She looked at him standing by, his head bowed, his arms folded; next
moment she was very close to me, and fresh tears were in her eyes. But I
stepped backward, for I had had enough.
“Can you not forgive me?”
“Oh, dear, yes.”
“Can't you understand?”
“Perfectly,” said I.
“You know you said--”
“I have said so many things!”
“But this was that you--you loved me well enough to--give me up.”
And the silly ego in me--the endless and incorrigible I--imagined her
pouting for a withdrawal of those brave words.
“I not only said it,” I declared, “but I meant every word of it.”
None the less had I to turn from her to hide my anguish. I leaned my
elbows on the narrow stone chimney-piece, which, with the grate below
and a small mirror above, formed an almost solitary oasis in the four
walls of books. In the mirror I saw my face; it was wizened, drawn, old
before its time, and merely ugly in its sore distress, merely repulsive
in its bloody bandages. And in the mirror also I saw Rattray, handsome,
romantic, audacious, all that I was not, nor ever would be, and I
“understood” more than ever, and loathed my rival in my heart.
I wheeled round on Eva. I was not going to give her up--to him. I would
tell her so before him--tell him so to his face. But she had turned
away; she was listening to some one else. Her white forehead glistened.
There were voices in the hall.
“Mr. Cole! Mr. Cole! Where are you, Mr. Cole?”
I moved over to the locked door. My hand found the key. I turned round
with evil triumph in my heart, and God knows what upon my face. Rattray
did not move. With lifted hands the girl was merely begging him to go by
the door that was open, down the stair. He shook his head grimly. With
an oath I was upon them.
“Go, both of you!” I whispered hoarsely. “Now--while you can--and I can
let you. Now! Now!”
Still Rattray hung back.
I saw him glancing wistfully at my great revolver lying on the table
under the lamp. I thrust it upon him, and pushed him towards the door.
“You go first. She shall follow. You will not grudge me one last word?
Yes, I will take your hand. If you escape--be good to her!”
He was gone. Without, there was a voice still calling me; but now it
sounded overhead.
“Good-by, Eva,” I said. “You have not a moment to lose.”
Yet those divine eyes lingered on my ugliness.
“You are in a very great hurry,” said she, in the sharp little voice of
her bitter moments.
“You love him; that is enough.”
“And you, too!” she cried. “And you, too!”
And her pure, warm arms were round my neck; another instant, and she
would have kissed me, she! I know it. I knew it then. But it was more
than I would bear. As a brother! I had heard that tale before. Back I
stepped again, all the man in me rebelling.
“That's impossible,” said I rudely.
“It isn't. It's true. I do love you--for this!”
God knows how I looked!
“And I mayn't say good-by to you,” she whispered. “And--and I love
you--for that!”
“Then you had better choose between us,” said I.