The heartless cruelty of Mr. Rayner in allowing his poor submissive
wife to live in a room such as he would not for the world have kept
horse, or dog, or even violin in shocked and repelled me, and wrung
from me the cry--
“The villain!”
“Hush!” said she. “He may be listening to us now.”
“I don’t care!” cried I passionately. “I am glad if he hears--if he
hears me say that this morning I hoped he would escape, but that now I
hope they will find him, for they cannot possibly punish him as he
deserves. Oh, Mrs. Rayner, and I--I sleeping up in the turret to be
out of the damp! How you must have hated me!”
“I did once, I own,” she whispered, sinking into a chair and taking
the hands I stretched out towards her. “But it was foolish of me, for
you did not know--how could you know?”
“But why did you stay? Why did you say nothing about it? And why were
you not glad to go upstairs, instead of begging as you did to remain
here?”
“Because,” she whispered, her nervous agitation coming back again, “I
knew that while I remained down here they would not kill me outright;
they could not let me die down here and introduce doctors and
strangers to examine into the cause of my death into this room. I knew
that a change of room was my death-warrant; and so it would have been,
but for the accident which happened to Sarah on the very night when,
but for you, I should have been sleeping upstairs ready to her hand.”
I staggered back, suddenly remembering the message Mr. Rayner had in
his letter told me to give to Sarah. It was this--“Tell Sarah not to
forget the work she has to do in my absence.” And I remembered also
the grim way in which she had received it. Could he have meant that?
Mrs. Rayner continued--
“He hates violence; all was to have been over by his return, and he
free to marry you.”
“But he couldn’t. I was engaged to Laurence, Mrs. Rayner.”
She gave a little bitter smile.
“And do you think that, with Laurence away and Mr. Rayner here, you
could have withstood him? In spite of his soft manners, he has a will
that acts like a spell. I tell you,” said she, twisting my fingers
nervously, “though you say he is in America, and Laurence Reade says I
shall never be in his power again, his influence is strong upon me
even now. There is no peace, no freedom for me as long as he lives.”
“Mrs. Rayner,” said I suddenly, “may I ask you if what Mr. Rayner told
me when I first came is true--that you were rich and he poor, and that
he lived on your money?”
“No, it is not true. I had a little money when he first married me,
which he ran through at once.”
“And is it true you once wrote books, and had a little boy whose death
made a great change in you?” said I slowly, watching her face.
“No; I never had any child but Mona and Haidee.”
“Then what did he--”
“What did he tell you so for? He delights in making up fantastic tales
of that sort, and often in making me bear witness to the truth of his
inventions; it is part of his wild humor. When he went away to carry
out a robbery, he would let me know what he was going to do--just to
torture me.”
The dead calmness with which she told me all this was maddening to me.
“Why did you bear it? Why didn’t you rebel, or run away, while he was
engaged in a robbery, and tell a policeman?”
“If Sarah had killed me, and you had married Mr. Rayner,” she answered
slowly, staring straight at me, “you would have understood why.”
And the power this man exercised over every one who came much in his
way became in a moment clear to me, when I saw by what different means
he had on the one hand cowed his gentle wife and the fiery Sarah, and
on the other gained a strong influence over such different women as
Mrs. Reade and myself. But the revelation was more than I could bear.
I said faintly--
“May I go to my room, Mrs. Rayner? I--I am not well.”
And she herself led me very slowly--for I was indeed weak and ill,
half with the pain of my arm and half with misery and disgust--up to
my bed in the turret-room.
Before the end of the day I heard that Mrs. Saunders had disappeared,
without any warning or any application for payment of her services, as
soon as Sarah had been taken off to the lunatic asylum. She had spared
us any pangs of self-reproach on her account, however, by taking with
her Mrs. Rayner’s watch, and also the cook’s, which had been left in
the rooms of their respective owners.
“She doesn’t expect to see Mr. Rayner again then,” I whispered to Mrs.
Rayner, who came to my bedside to tell me the news, “or she would
never dare to do that.”
And, persuaded by me, Mrs. Rayner, now relieved of any dread on
Sarah’s account, returned to the front spare-room, which, however
disagreeable the remembrance of Sarah’s mad attempt on her life might
be, was at any rate healthier than the dungeon in the left wing. There
was really nothing to keep the poor lady at the Alders now, as I told
Laurence by letter that evening all that Gordon had said to me in the
store-room, and the idea gained ground that Mr. Rayner had gone to
America. But she insisted upon remaining until I was well enough to be
moved, an event which I had myself retarded by rashly leaving my room
three times since I had been told to keep to my bed.
Next day, which was Saturday, Laurence wrote to say that he had
himself searched the store-room and Mr. Rayner’s study, but had found
no trace of Gordon beyond a pair of handcuffs placed neatly in the
middle of the store-room on the top of a pyramid of biscuit-tins and
pickle-jars, with a sheet of paper saying that the late wearer begged
to return them with thanks to the police, who might perhaps succeed in
making them stay longer on the wrists of a simpler rogue than their
obedient servant, F. Gordon.
Those days that I spent in bed were a miserable time for all of us.
The suspense we were all in--never sure whether Mr. Rayner was in
America or whether he might not be really close to us all the time.
The bits of news brought us from hour to hour by the awe-stricken
Jane--first that there was a large reward offered for his capture;
then rumors, which always proved to be false, of his having been
caught; then complaints of the number of people who came just to look
at the outside of the house that the ugly stories were being told
about! For the facts fell far short of the accounts which were freely
circulated--of there being a cellar full of human bones, supposed to
be the remains of Mr. Rayner’s victims, under the Alders; that the
household consisted entirely of women whom he had married at one time
or another; and so forth.
Meanwhile the fog still hung about the place, and Nap, the retriever,
howled every night. When Monday came, I, anxious to be declared
convalescent as soon as possible, and to be able to avail myself of
Mrs. Manners’s invitation to stay at the Vicarage, persuaded Doctor
Lowe to let me go downstairs. It was about twelve o’clock when I left
my room, and I had made my way as far as the corridor below, when I
became aware of an unusual commotion on the ground-floor, doors being
opened and shut, the sobbing of a woman, excited whisperings between
Jane and the cook, and then a heavy tramp, tramp of men’s feet through
the hall and along the passage to Mr. Rayner’s study.
I went to the top of the back staircase, descended a few steps, and
looked over. The gardener and Sam were carrying between them a door,
on which something was lying covered by a sheet. The cook opened the
study-door, and they took it in. A horrible dread filled my mind and
kept me powerless for a few moments. Then I ran along the corridor,
down the front staircase, and met little Haidee with awe on her
childish face.
“Oh, Miss Christie,” she whispered, clutching my arm in terror,
“they’ve found papa!”
Jane ran forward and caught me as I tottered in the child’s clasp.
Before I had recovered sufficiently to go to Mrs. Rayner in the
drawing-room, Laurence and Mrs. Manners arrived, having heard the
ghastly news already. They took us over to the Vicarage at once, and I
never entered the Alders again.
In the evening Laurence told me all about the discovery. The gardener,
who had done little work for the last few days beyond keeping the gate
locked and driving away with a whip the boys who would swarm over when
they got a chance, “just to have a look at the place,” had been
attracted that morning by the shrill cries of Mona, who, now more
neglected than ever, spent all day in the garden in spite of the fog.
He ran to the pond, where she was nearly always to be found, and
whence her cries came, fearing she had fallen in. But he found her
standing in the mud on the edge of it, screaming, “Come out, come
out!” and clutching with a stick at an object in the water. It was the
body of her father, entangled among the reeds.
The down-trodden grasses and rushes at that corner of the pond nearest
to the stile which joined the path through the plantation to the path
through the field beyond told the story of how he must have missed his
way coming through the plantation in the dense fog of Wednesday night,
on his way back from the Hall to the Alders, slipped into the pond,
and been drowned out there in the fog and darkness, while his dog Nap,
hearing his cry for help, had tried in vain, by howling and barking,
to draw attention to his master’s need.
It was an awful thing that night to lie awake in my strange room at
the Vicarage, and picture to myself the dead Mr. Rayner lying at the
Alders, the sole occupant, with the exception of the woman hired to
watch by him, of the big dreary house where he, with his love of fun
and laughter, had seemed to me to be the one ray of brightness.
I heard next day that two passages, booked in the name of “Mr. and
Mrs. Norris,” had actually been taken by him on board a ship which
left Liverpool for New York on the very Thursday when we were to have
started on our journey “to Monaco.” The tickets were found upon him
and also the necklace, which proved to be a valuable ornament of
rubies that had belonged to Mrs. Cunningham, which he had clasped
round my neck on the night of his death, but which I had flung upon
the floor. These were the only ones, of all the stolen jewels, which
were ever recovered, with the exception of the diamond pendant, which
I sent back to its owner, Lord Dalston. Upon the house being searched,
the candle which had fallen from my hand when I first went into the
cellar under the store-room was found under the stagnant water there,
and also the brown portmanteau, which was identified as one belonging
to Sir Jonas Mills; but the jewels, with the exception of a stray drop
from an ear-ring, had disappeared.
I heard about Gordon, as he had told me I should, through Mr.
Carruthers, who, long before the impression these events made had died
away, received a letter dated from New York, in which Gordon, in a
very respectful manner, apologized for the inconvenience his sudden
disappearance might have caused his master, who had, he could not
doubt, by this time learned the reason of it through the London
papers. Mr. Carruthers would find that the bills he had commissioned
him to settle in Beaconsburgh on that unfortunate Wednesday afternoon
had been paid, and he begged to forward him the receipts; he had also
left the silver-mounted flask to be repaired at Bell’s, and the
hunting-stock at Marsden’s. He had given up service for the present
and taken to a different profession, as he felt, if he was not taking
a liberty in saying so, that it would be impossible for him to find in
America a master who gave him in all respects so much satisfaction as
Mr. Carruthers had done.
Nothing more has ever been heard of Gordon under that name; but some
time afterwards a representative of the United States Congress, who
was described as a rich West India merchant, made a great sensation by
a very impressive speech upon some financial question; a rough sketch
of him in a New York illustrated paper fell into the hands of Mr.
Carruthers, who sent it to Laurence, and under the trimly-cut mustache
and hair parted very much on one side we fancied we recognized
something like the clear-cut features and bland expression of our old
friend Gordon.
I was married to Laurence before the trial of poor Tom Parkes and of
the subordinate who had been caught removing the plate from the Hall.
I had to give evidence, and I was so much distressed at having to do
so that Tom, good-natured to the last, called out--
“Don’t take on so, miss. Lor’ bless you, you can’t say any worse than
they know! It’s only a matter of form.”
He took a stolid sort of glory in his iniquities, pleaded “Guilty” to
the charges brought against him of taking an active part in all three
robberies, and exulted especially in the neatness of the execution of
the robbery at Denham Court, where the various articles stolen were
being quietly abstracted one by one at different times by Gordon for
two or three days before the Tuesday, when they were finally carried
off by Mr. Rayner, and taken by him and Tom to the Alders, where Sarah
had received them, as I had seen.
As to what had become of the jewels afterwards, Tom professed himself
as innocent as a child; but, whether this was true or not, nobody
believed him. He was sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude, and
he did not hear the sentence with half so much concern as I.
Poor Mrs. Rayner never entirely shook off the gloomy reserve which had
grown round her during those long years of her miserable marriage.
Kind-hearted Sir Jonas Mills was among the very first to come forward
to help her; and, by his generous assistance and that of other
friends, she went to live abroad, taking Haidee with her, and Jane,
who proved a most devoted servant and friend.
Laurence and I, who were married before she left England, undertook
the care of poor little savage Mona, who has grown into almost as nice
a child as her sister. And now I have one of my own too.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
Florence Warden was the pseudonym of Florence Alice (Price) James.
The William Stevens edition (London, 1895?) was consulted for most of
the changes listed below and provided the cover image.
Alterations to the text:
Add TOC.
[Title Page]
Add author’s credit.
[Chapter I]
Change “and straggling briers, _nntil_, pushing aside” to _until_.
[Chapter II]
“too far for their ‘_yonng_ men’ in the town to come” to _young_.
“must have been _specialy_ hard to bear with patience” to _specially_.
[Chapter V]
(And why had the stranger spoken of Tom Parkes as “Jim”) add question
mark to sentence.
[Chapter VI]
“to bring out a volume of _poety_ or a novel” to _poetry_.
“another _laddder_ was placed against another window” to _ladder_.
(I always put down “Robin Hood” in _confessoin_-books as) to
_confession_.
[Chapter VIII]
“That was six months ago, before you _come_” to _came_.
[Chapter IX]
“with Mr. Rayner in the schoolroom soon after my _arival_” to
_arrival_.
“suggested by some half-forgotten experience Thus one day” add period
after _experience_.
[Chapter X]
“he came into the _school-room_ with Mrs. Rayner” to _schoolroom_.
[Chapter XIV]
“they did not seem to understand, The elder Miss Reade played” change
comma to period.
“and I ran quickly and _lighty_ down the path to the house” to
_lightly_.
[Chapter XV]
(“Mr. Rayner! Then he must have gone on there from…) delete left
double quotation mark.
[Chapter XVI]
(…curious coincidence, come into your possession.’) change right
single quotation mark to right double quotation mark.
[Chapter XVIII]
“I thought to myself _mournfnlly_; and I sat with my” to _mournfully_.
“Haidee’s chamber was a little _dresing_-room without” to _dressing_.
“been saving myself up for your description as a _litttle_ treat” to
_little_.
[Chapter XIX]
(“I think she is going to die, miss--I do indeed,” said…) add right
double quotation mark at end of paragraph.
“except the old _gardner_, who would certainly never reach” to
_gardener_.
[Chapter XX]
(“Mind, she mustn’t be moved yet,” said he. “She is very…) add right
double quotation mark at end of paragraph.
“up here, not like the ones I have _down-stairs_.” to _downstairs_.
“scrawled in pencil, in Laurence’s _hand-writing_” to _handwriting_.
[Chapter XXII]
“while I crept back to the _school-room_, and sobbed” to _schoolroom_.
(“That then would be my chance. But I reflected that I…) delete
quotation mark.
“She came and stood by me at the _fire placewhile_ Sarah was” to
_fireplace while_.
[Chapter XXIII]
“How came she to _he_ there at this time of night?” to _be_.
[Chapter XXIV]
“out of that dreadful cellar into the _stoor_-room above” to _store_.
[Chapter XXV]
“My mother is very anxious to make your _aquaintance_” to
_acquaintance_.
[Chapter XXVI]
(Ah! An honest hard-working fellow, I hope, who’ll make her…) add
left double quotation mark at beginning of paragraph.
[End of text]