different from all the men of whom I had ever heard? Still, I loved you
so well--ah, Philip, I did love you so--that I would have come to you on
any terms, as indeed I did come on terms very injurious to myself. But
what matters now what I then thought? I see that I was wrong--you have
been faithful to me in word, thought, and deed----"
"Yes," said Dering fiercely, "by God, that is so! Go on!"
"I also have been faithful to you----" she hesitated. "Yes, I think I
may truly say it, in thought, word, and deed,----"
Dering drew a long breath, and she went slowly on: "But I have realised,
and that for some time past, that the day would come when I should no
longer wish to be so--when I should wish to be free. I have gradually
regained possession of myself, and, though I know I must fulfil all my
obligations to you for the time I promised, I long for the moment of
release, for the moment when I shall at last have the right to forget,
as much as such things can ever be forgotten, these ten years of my
life."
As she spoke, pronouncing each word clearly in the foreign fashion, her
voice gained a certain sombre confidence, and a flood of awful,
hopeless bitterness filled the heart of the man sitting opposite to her.
"And have you thought," he asked in a constrained voice, "what you are
going to do? I know you have sometimes regretted your work; do you
intend--or perhaps you have already applied to Mr. Farningham?"
"No," she answered, and, unobserved by him, for he was staring down at
the tablecloth with unseeing eyes, a deep pink flush made her look
suddenly girlish, "that will not be necessary. I have, as you know,
regretted my work, and of late I have sometimes thought that, things
being as they were, you acted with cruel thoughtlessness in compelling
me to give it all up. But in my new life there will be much for me to
do."
"I do not ask you," he said, suddenly, hoarsely; "I could not insult you
by asking...."
"I do not think," she spoke slowly, answering the look, the intonation,
rather than the words, "that I am going to do anything unworthy."
But Dering, with sharp suspicion, suddenly became aware that she had
changed colour, and that from pale she had become red. His mind glanced
quickly over their comparatively small circle of friends and
acquaintances--first one, then another familiar figure rose, hideously
vivid, before him. He felt helpless, bewildered, fettered.
"Do you contemplate leaving me for another man?" he asked quietly.
Again Louise hesitated for a moment.
"Yes," she said at length, "that is what I am going to do. I did not
mean to tell you now--though I admit that later, before the end, you
would have had a right to know. The man to whom I am going, and who is
not only willing, but anxious, to make me his wife, I mean his legal
wife,"--she gave Dering a quick, strange look--"has great need of me,
far more so than you ever had. My feeling for him is not in any way akin
to what was once my feeling for you; that does not come twice, at any
rate to such a woman as I feel myself to be; but my affection, my--my
regard, will be, in this case, I believe, more enduring; and, as you
know, I dearly love his children, and promised their mother to take care
of them."
While she spoke, Dering, looking fixedly at her, seemed to see a shadowy
group of shabby forlorn human beings form itself and take up its stand
by her side--Jack Hinton, with his weak, handsome face, and shifty,
pleading eyes; his two plain, neglected-looking girls; and then, cradled
as he had so often seen it in Louise's arms, the ugly and to him
repulsive-looking baby.
What chance had he, what memories had their common barren past, to fight
this intangible appealing vision?
He raised his hand and held it for a moment over his eyes, in a vain
attempt to shut out both that which he had evoked, and the sight of the
woman whose repudiation of himself only seemed to make more plainly
visible the bonds which linked them the one to the other. Then he turned
away, with a certain deliberation, and, having closed the door, walked
quickly through the little hall, flinging himself bare-headed into the
open air.
* * * * *
For the second time that day Philip Dering felt an urgent need of
solitude in which to hold communion with himself. And yet, when striding
along the dimly-lighted, solitary thoroughfares, the stillness about him
seemed oppressive, and the knowledge that he was encompassed by
commonplace, contented folk intolerable.
And so, scarcely knowing where his feet were leading him, he made his
way at last into the broad, brilliantly lighted High Road, now full of
glare, of sound, and of movement, for throngs of workers, passing to and
fro, were seeking the amusement and excitement of the street after their
long, dull day.
Very soon Dering's brain became abnormally active; his busy thoughts
took the shape of completed half-uttered sentences, and he argued with
himself, not so loudly that those about him could hear, but still with
moving lips, as to the outcome of what Louise had told him that evening.
He was annoyed to find that his thoughts refused to marshal themselves
in due sequence. Thus, when trying to concentrate his mind on the
question of the immediate future, memories of Gerda Hinton, of the dead
woman with whom he had never felt in sympathy, perhaps because Louise
had been so fond of her, persistently intervened, and refused to be
thrust away. His own present intolerable anguish made him, against his
will, retrospectively understand Gerda's long-drawn-out agony. He
remembered, with new sharp-edged concern and pity, her quiet endurance
of those times of ignoble poverty brought about by Hinton's fits of
idleness; he realised for the first time what must have meant, in
anguish of body and mind, the woman's perpetual child bearing, and the
deaths of two of her children, followed by her own within a fortnight of
her last baby's birth.
Then, with sudden irritation, he asked himself why he, Philip Dering,
should waste his short time for thought in sorrowing over this poor dead
woman? And, in swift answer, there came to him the knowledge why this
sad drab ghost had thus thrust herself upon him to-night--
A feeling of furious anger, of revolt against the very existence of Jack
Hinton, swept over him. So base, so treacherous, so selfish a creature
fulfilled no useful purpose in the universe. Men hung murderers; and was
Hinton, who had done his wife to death with refinement of cruelty, to go
free--free to murder, in the same slow way, another woman, and one who
actually belonged to Dering's own self?
He now recognised, with bewilderment, that had Louise become his legal
wife ten years ago, the thought of what she proposed to do would never
have even crossed her mind.
The conviction that Hinton was not fit to live soon formed itself into a
stable background to all Dering's subsequent thoughts, to his short
hesitations, and to his final determination.
After a while he looked at his watch, and found, with some surprise,
that he had been walking up and down for over an hour; he also became
aware, for the first time, that his bare, hatless head provoked now and
again good-natured comment from those among whom he was walking.
He turned into a side-street, and taking from his pocket a small
notebook, wrote the few lines which later played an important part in
determining, to the satisfaction of his friends, the fact that he was,
when writing them, most probably of unsound mind.
What Dering wrote down in his pocket-book ran as follows:
1. I buy a hat at Dunn's, if Dunn be still open (which is
probable).
2. I call on the doctor who was so kind to the Hintons last year
and settle his account. It is doubtful if Hinton ever paid him--in
fact, there can be no doubt that Hinton did _not_ pay him. I there
make my will and inform the doctor that he will certainly be wanted
shortly at Number 8, Lady Rich Road.
3. I buy that revolver (if guaranteed in perfect working order)
which I have so frequently noticed in the pawnbroker's window, and
I give him five shillings for showing me how to manage it. Mem.
Remember to make him load it, so that there may be no mistake.
4. I wire to Wingfield. This is important. It may save Louise a
shock.
5. I go to Hinton's place, and if the children are already in bed I
lock the door, and quietly kill him and then kill myself. If the
children are still up, I must, of course, wait a while. In any case
the business will be well over before the doctor can arrive.
Dering shut the notebook with a sigh of relief. The way now seemed clear
before him, for he had put down exactly what he meant to do, and in case
of doubt or forgetfulness he need only glance at his notes to be set
again in the right way.
He spent a few moments considering whether it was his duty to write a
letter to his employer. Finally he decided that there was no need to do
so. They knew of his legacy; they were aware that he was leaving them;
and everything, even now, was in perfect order for his successor.
As he walked slowly along the unlovely narrow streets which run parallel
to the High Road, his emotional memory brought his wife vividly before
him. He began wondering painfully if she would ever understand, if she
would realise, from what he had saved her by that which he was about to
do. His knowledge of her character made him feel sure--and there was
infinite comfort in the thought--that she would remain silent, that she
would never yield to any foolish impulse to tell Wingfield the truth. It
was good to feel so sure that his old friend would never know of his
failure, of his great and desolate humiliation.
* * * * *
Dering spent the next hour exactly as he had planned; in fact, at no
point of the programme did his good fortune desert him. Thus, even the
doctor, a man called Johnstone, who might so easily have been out, was
at home; and, though actually giving a little stag party, he
good-naturedly consented to leave his guests for a few moments, in spite
of the fact that the stranger waiting in the surgery had refused to
state his business.
"My name is Dering. I think you must have often met my wife when you
were attending the late Mrs. Hinton. In fact I've come to-night to
settle the Hintons' account. I fancy it is still owing?"
Dering spoke with abrupt energy, looking straight, and almost with a
frown, as he spoke, into the other's kindly florid face. It seemed
strange, at that moment intolerably hard, that this man, who looked so
much less alive, so much less intellectually keen than himself, should
be destined to find him within a few hours lying dead, obliterated into
nothingness.
"Oh, yes, the account is still owing," Dr. Johnstone spoke with a
certain eagerness. "Then do I understand that you are acting for Mr.
Hinton in the matter? The amount is exactly ten pounds----"
He paused awkwardly, and not till the two bank-notes were actually lying
on his surgery table before him did he believe in his good fortune. The
Hintons' account had long since passed into that class of doctor's bills
which is only kept on the books with a view to the ultimate sale of the
practice, and this last quarter the young man had not even troubled to
send it in again.
Johnstone remembered poor Mrs. Hinton's friend very well; Mrs. Dering
had been splendid, perfectly splendid, as nurse and comforter to the
distracted household. And then such a pretty woman, too, the very
type--quiet, sensible, self-contained, and yet feminine--whom Dr.
Johnstone admired; he was always pleased when he met her walking about
the neighbourhood.
This, then, was her husband? The doctor stared across at Dering with
some curiosity. Well, he also, though, of course, in quite another way,
was uncommon and attractive-looking. What was it he had heard about
these people quite lately, in fact, that very day? Why, of course. One
of his old lady patients in Bedford Park had told him that her opposite
neighbours, this Mr. and Mrs. Dering, had come into a large
fortune--something like fifty thousand pounds!
Dr. Johnstone looked at his visitor with a sudden accession of respect.
If he could have foreseen this interview, he might have made his account
with Mr. Hinton bear rather more relation to the actual number of visits
he had been compelled to pay to that unfortunate household. Still, he
reminded himself that even ten pounds were very welcome just now, and
his heart warmed to Mr. Hinton's generous friend.
Suddenly Dering began speaking: "I forget if I told you that I am
starting this very night for a long journey, and before doing so I want
to ask you to do me a favour----"
His host became all pleased attention.
"Would you kindly witness my will? I have just come into a sum of money,
and--and, though my will is actually being drawn up by a friend, who is
also a lawyer, I have felt uneasy----"
"I quite understand. You have thought it wise to make a provisional
will? Well, that's a very sensible thing to do! We medical men see much
trouble caused by foolish postponement of such matters. Some men seem to
think that making a will is tantamount to signing their own
death-warrant!"
But no answering smile brightened Dering's fiercely set face; he did not
seem to have heard what the doctor had said. "If I might ask you for a
sheet of notepaper. I see a pen and blotting-pad over there----"
A sudden, instinctive misgiving crossed the other's mind.
"This is rather informal, isn't it? Of course, I have no call to
interfere, Mr. Dering; but if a large sum is involved might it not be
better to wait?"
Dering looked up. For the first time he smiled.
"I don't wish to make any mystery about it, Dr. Johnstone. I am leaving
everything to my wife, and after her to sundry young people in whom we
are both interested. If I die intestate, I understand that distant
relatives of my own--people whom I don't like, and who have never done
anything for me--are bound to benefit."
Even as he spoke he was busy writing the words, "To Louise Larsen
(commonly known as Mrs. Philip Dering), of 9, Lady Rich Road, Bedford
Park, and after her death to be divided equally between the children of
my esteemed friend, James Wingfield, solicitor, of 24, Abingdon Street,
Westminster, and the children of the late Mrs. John Hinton, of 8, Lady
Rich Road, Bedford Park."
Short as was Dering's will, the last portion of it was written on the
inner sheet of the piece of note paper bearing the doctor's address, and
the two witnesses, Johnstone himself, and a friend whom he fetched out
of his smoking-room for the purpose, could not help seeing what generous
provision the testator had made for the younger generation.
As the doctor opened the front door for his, as he hoped, new friend,
Dering suddenly pulled a notebook out of his breast pocket.
"I have forgotten a most important thing----" there was real dismay in
his fresh, still youthful voice--"and that is to ask you kindly to look
round at No. 8, Lady Rich Road, after your friends have left you
to-night. I should think about twelve o'clock would do very well. In
fact, Hinton won't be ready for you before. And, Dr. Johnstone--in view
of the trouble to which you may be put----" Dering thrust another
bank-note into the other man's hand. "I know you ought to have charged a
lot more than that ten pounds----" and then, before words of thanks
could be uttered, he had turned and gone down the steps, along the
little path, through the iron gate which swung under the red lamp, into
the darkness beyond.
* * * * *
Down the broad and now solitary High Road, filled with the strange
brooding stillness of a spring dawn, clattered discordantly a hansom
cab. There was promise of a bright warm day, such a day as yesterday had
been, but Wingfield, leaning forward, unconsciously willing the horse to
go faster, felt very cold.
At last, not for the first time during this interminable journey, he
took from his breast pocket the unsigned telegram which was the cause of
his being here, driving, oh! how slowly, along this fantastically empty
thoroughfare, through the chill morning air, instead of lying sound
asleep by Kate's side in his comfortable bed at home.
"_Philip Dering is dead please come at once at once at once to eight
Lady Rich Road._"
Wingfield, steadying the slip of paper as it fluttered in his hand,
looked down with frowning puzzled eyes at the pencilled words.
The message had been set off just before midnight, and had reached his
house, he supposed, an hour and a half later, for the persistent
knocking at his front door had gone on for some time before he or his
wife realised that the loud hammering sound concerned themselves. Even
then it had been Kate who had at last roused herself and gone
downstairs; Kate who had rushed up breathless, whispering as she thrust
the orange envelope into his hand:--"Oh, James, what can it be? Thank
God, all the children are safe at home!"
No time had been lost. While he was dressing, his wife had made him a
cup of tea, kind and solicitous for his comfort, but driving him nearly
distracted by her eager, excited talk and aimless conjectures. It had
seemed long before he found a derelict cab willing to drive him from
Regent's Terrace to Bedford Park, but now--well, thank God, he was at
last nearing the place where he would learn what had befallen the man
who had been, next to his own elder boy, the creature he had loved best
in his calm, phlegmatic life.
Wingfield went on staring down at the mysterious and yet explicit
message, of which the wording seemed to him so odd--in some ways
recalling Dering's familiar trick of reiteration. Then suddenly he
thought of Hinton, the artist for whom both he and his friend had had
reason to feel so deep if wordless a contempt, and yet whom they had
both tried, over and over again, to help and set on his feet.
With a sudden revulsion of feeling, the lawyer folded up the telegram
and put it back into his breast pocket--this mysterious, unsigned
request for his immediate presence had obviously been despatched by
Hinton, who might just as well have waited for morning. How stupid of
him not to have realised this at once, the more so that No. 8, Lady Rich
Road, was Hinton's address, not that of Dering. Quickly he raised his
hand to the trap-door above his head; "Pull up at No. 8, not as I told
you, at No. 9, Lady Rich Road," he shouted.
* * * * *
The radiance of an early spring morning, so kind to everything in
nature, is pitiless to that which owes its being to the ingenuity and
industry of human hands. Dr. Johnstone, standing opposite a police
inspector in what had been poor Mrs. Hinton's cherished, if untidy and
shabby, little sitting-room, felt his wretchedness and shame--for he
felt very deeply ashamed--perceptibly increased by the dust-laden
sunbeams dancing slantwise about him.
The inspector was really sorry for him, though a little contemptuous
perhaps of a medical man capable of showing such emotion and horror in
the face of death.
"Why, doctor, you mustn't take on so! How could you possibly have told
what was in the man's mind? You weren't upset like this last year over
that business in Angle Alley, and that was a sight worse than this, eh?"
But Johnstone had turned away, and was staring out of the bow window.
"It isn't that poor wretch Hinton that's upset me," he muttered, "I
don't mind death. It's--it's--Dering--Dering and Mrs. Dering."
Reluctant tears filled his tired, red-rimmed eyes.
"I'm sorry, too. Very sorry for the lady, that is; as for the
other--well, I'm pretty sure he'll cheat Broadmoor, and that without
much delay, eh, doctor? Hullo! who's this coming now?"
The tone suddenly changed, became at once official and alert in quality,
as the sound of wheels stopped opposite the little gate. When the front
door bell pealed through the house he added, "You go to the door,
doctor; whoever it is had better not see me at first." And Johnstone
found himself suddenly pushed out of the room and into the little hall.
There he hesitated for a moment, looking furtively round at the
half-open door which led into the back room fitted up as a studio, where
still lay, in dreadful juxtaposition, the dead and the dying, Hinton and
his murderer, alone, save for the indifferent yet watchful presence of a
trained nurse.
From the kitchen beyond came the sound of eager, lowered voices, those
of the two young servants who had of late coped with the difficulties of
the Hinton household, and whose scanty wages had been paid, so
Johnstone had learned in the last hour, by Mrs. Dering herself.
Another impatient peal of sound echoed through the house, and the
doctor, walking slowly forward, opened the front door.
"Can I see Mr. Hinton? Or is he next door? I have driven down from town
in response to this telegram. I was Mr. Philip Dering's oldest friend
and solicitor----"
"Then--then it was _you_ who were making his will?"
The question struck Wingfield as unseemly. How had this young man, whom
he took to be one of Hinton's dissipated friends, learnt even this one
fact concerning poor Dering's affairs?
"Yes," he said shortly, as he walked through into the hall, "that was
the case. But, of course--well, perhaps, you will kindly inform me where
I can see Mr. Hinton?" he repeated impatiently. "I suppose he is with
Mrs. Dering, at No. 9?" and the other noticed that he left the door open
behind him, evidently intending to leave Hinton's house as soon as he
had obtained a reply to his question.
For a moment the two men looked at one another in exasperated silence.
Then, very suddenly, Johnstone did that of which he was afterward sorry
and self-reproachful. But his nerve was completely gone; for hours he
had been engaged in what had proved both a terrible and a futile task,
that of attempting to relieve the physical agony of a man for whose
state he partly held himself to be responsible. He wished to avoid, at
any rate for the present, the repetition to this stranger of what had
happened the night before.
And so, "Please come this way," he muttered hoarsely. "I ought perhaps
to warn you--to prepare you for something of a shock." And, turning
round, beckoning to the other to follow him, he opened the door of the
studio, stepping aside to allow Wingfield to pass in before him.
But once through the doorway the lawyer suddenly recoiled and stopped
short, so dreadful and so unexpected was the sight which met his eyes.
What Wingfield saw remained with him for weeks, and even for months, an
ever-present, torturing vision, full of mingled horror and mystery, a
mystery to which he was destined never to find the solution.
Focussed against a blurred background made up of distempered light green
walls, a curtainless, open window, and various plain deal studio
properties pushed back against the wall, lay, stretched out on some kind
of low couch brought forward into the middle of the room, a rigid,
motionless figure.
The lower half of the figure, including the feet, which rested on a
chair placed at the bottom of the couch, was entirely covered by a
blanket; but the chest and head, slightly raised by pillows, seemed
swathed and bound up in broad strips of white linen, which concealed
chin and forehead, hair and ears, while the head was oddly supported by
a broad band or sling fastened with safety-pins--Wingfield's eyes took
note of every detail--to the side of the couch. Under the blanket, which
was stretched tightly across the man's breast, could be seen the feeble
twitching of fingers, but even so, the only sense of life and feeling
seemed to the onlooker centred in the eyes, whose glance Wingfield found
himself fearing yet longing to meet.
To the right of the couch a large Japanese screen had been so placed as
to hide some object spread out on the floor. To the left, watching every
movement of the still, recumbent figure, stood a powerful-looking woman
in nursing dress. Wingfield's gaze, after wandering round the large,
bare room, returned and again clung to the sinister immobile form which
he longed to be told was that of Hinton, and as he gazed he forced
himself to feel a fierce gladness and relief in the knowledge that
Dering was dead,--that in his pocket lay the telegram which proved it.