Too Late!
We had a stormy passage, and arrived at Southampton four-and-twenty
hours later than we should have done. It was Cunningham who bought a
paper as we got into the train. I was too completely preoccupied to have
absorbed a line of news, even had my eyes mechanically perused the
printed matter. Cunningham (who was always restless, and could not bear
to be left at the mercy of his own thoughts) read incessantly, however,
and at the end of half an hour or so handed over his paper to me.
"Look at this," he said, with some eagerness, pointing out a paragraph.
I glanced at it carelessly at first, but in an instant I was as keen as
Cunningham had been.
"Another Fortune for a Millionaire," the paragraph was headed, and
beneath was set forth the interesting fact that Mr. Carson Wildred, who
was shortly to marry Miss Cunningham, the celebrated beauty and heiress,
had just heard of a legacy of half a million pounds, left him by an
American friend, Mr. Harvey Farnham, lately burned to death in a San
Francisco hotel.
"So you see it wasn't only the mine, and the money he should have paid
for the mine, he wanted," said Cunningham. "Oh, he's a marvellous chap,
this Wildred!"
I acquiesced in this opinion, and recalled a remark made in the club by
a mutual acquaintance. "Carson Wildred is always inheriting fortunes
from chaps that die at the four corners of the globe," he had curiously
announced. I wondered grimly, as I remembered the speech, whether all
these benefactors had met their death after the manner of poor Harvey
Farnham.
Time was pressing now, and our idea was to go straight to Karine, I to
appear only as the supporter of her brother. A desire for the punishment
of Wildred might have held a prominent place both in Cunningham's mind
and mine, but our first thought was to save Karine from becoming the
murderer's wife.
She must be disabused of the belief that her brother was in any way in
Wildred's power. She must know that, as Cunningham expressed it, the
"shoe was on the other foot." She must be shown the black depths of
Carson Wildred's villainy, and be dragged back from the brink of the
precipice on which she had stood.
Ours was a quick train, and went straight through to London without
stopping. After arriving at Waterloo station, therefore, we were obliged
to wait for nearly an hour before we could get another which would take
us to Haslemere.
A curious feeling that I had passed through all this before came over
me, and as we stepped out of our carriage on the platform of the
Haslemere station it seemed but yesterday that I had arrived at the same
place, intent on bidding Karine that farewell which never had been
spoken.
The time of day gave me the only sense of difference. We had left the
ship early in the morning, had made our first journey in two hours, and
now it was only very little past noon.
I had wished (considering the reception I had met at Sir Walter
Tressidy's on my first and last visit at his country house) to remain at
an hotel in Haslemere, there to await such news as Cunningham might have
to bring. For Karine's sake, I thought, it would be better for me not to
appear openly in the matter, unless it proved that the influence of her
brother and his narrative were not as potent in their effect as I
anticipated. Should he require any attestations from me, I was only too
glad to be on the spot and to be called upon to give them.
Cunningham, however, had overruled this programme of mine. No one could
tell, he said, how he might be received. He might be sorely in need of
me to back him up--perhaps even to prove the truth of his otherwise
unsupported assertions.
The Tressidys, he alleged, were peculiar. Though his sister had not
confided in him, he knew that she was unhappy with them. They had very
little money of their own on which to keep up the appearance they wished
to make in the eyes of their world, and Cunningham did not believe that
Lady Tressidy would be above accepting a heavy bribe from Wildred for
furthering his suit, by almost any means, with poor Karine.
Half against my will, therefore, yet not wholly with reluctance, I must
confess, I entered the carriage which was to drive us both to the house
where a few weeks ago I had been so ruthlessly repulsed.
"Thank heaven!" I said, as we rattled up the hill (perhaps in the same
vehicle which had driven me before), "that the storm wasn't just a
degree more severe in crossing. It was touch and go with us one day, at
all events, I believe; but a fraction worse, and we shouldn't have been
here now to stand between Miss Cunningham and that villain. A week or
ten days more, perhaps, and even if we'd reached her we might have been
too late."
There was a certain tumultuous joy in my heart, far removed from
happiness, yet intoxicating as new wine. Karine might never be mine, but
she was saved, and it would be I who had saved her. I could never be
regarded by her quite with indifference after this day.
As we drove we made various hurried plans as to what we should do if we
were refused admittance. We were determined at least to see Karine, even
if we were obliged to force our way into her presence.
As we got out of the carriage and ran up the four or five broad stone
steps that led to the front door, something crackled under our feet like
exaggerated grains of sand. We were far enough, however, from guessing
the nature of the foreign substance that was thus crushed beneath our
disregarding boot-soles.
The door was opened by a smiling footman. He was not the man I had
previously seen, and evidently, judging from the genial flush on his
face and the twinkle in his eye, something agreeable or amusing had
recently taken place. He tried to draw his countenance into the
conventional lines of footman-like solemnity, but, his eyes lighting
upon Cunningham, the expression changed to one of surprise. Very
possibly he noted the similarity of colouring between the brother and
sister, and a certain vague haunting likeness that would show itself at
times.
"If Miss Cunningham is at home, tell her that her brother has come and
wishes to see her immediately on a matter of importance," said my
companion, valiantly taking the bull by the horns.
"Miss Cunningham is not at home, sir," replied the servant. "She--that
is--in fact, sir, she has just left us for good and all. She--she was
married, sir, at half-past ten o'clock this morning, and the wedding
breakfast's only been over since an hour ago."
The gritty substance under our feet had been the rice thrown, as though
in mockery, after Karine as she passed to her carriage on her husband's
arm.