Kitabı oku: «The House of the White Shadows», sayfa 26

CHAPTER V
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT

"The impressions left upon me by the tragic occurrence I am about to narrate have, strangely enough, given me a confused idea as to the exact date upon which it took place, but I am correct in saying that it was within a month of the agreement entered into between my wife and myself that we should live separate lives under the same roof.

"I expected to receive a challenge from M. Gabriel, a challenge which for the reason I have given-that I would not afford the world an opportunity of discussing my private affairs-I firmly resolved not to accept. To my surprise no such challenge reached me, and I indulged the hope that M. Gabriel had removed himself forever from us. It was not so.

"The night was wild and dark. The wind was sweeping round the house; the rain was falling. I had resumed my old habits, and was awake in my study, in which I am now writing. I did no intelligent work during those sad days. If I forced myself to write, I invariably tore up the sheets when I read them with a clearer mind. My studies afforded me neither profit nor relief. The occupation which claimed me was that of brooding over the circumstances attendant upon my wooing and my marriage. For ever brooding. Walking to and fro, dwelling upon each little detail of my intimacy with my girl-wife, and revolving in my mind whether I could have prevented what had occurred-whether, if I had done this or that, I could have averted the misery in which our lives were wrapt. It was a profitless occupation, but I could not tear myself from it. There was a morbid fascination in it which held me fast. That it harrowed me, tortured me, made me smart and bleed, mattered not. It clung to me, and I to it. Thus do we hug our misery to our bosoms, and inflict upon ourselves the most intolerable sufferings.

"I strove to escape from it, to fix my mind upon some abstruse subject, upon some difficult study, but, like a demon to whom I had sold my soul, it would not be denied. There intruded always this one picture-the face of a baby-boy, mine, my dear son, lying asleep in his mother's arms. Let me say here that I never harboured the thought of depriving my wife of this precious consolation, that never by the slightest effort have I endeavoured to estrange him from her. The love he bore to me-and I thank Heaven that he grew to love me-sprang from his own heart, which also must have been sorely perplexed and have endured great pain in the estrangement that existed between his parents. Well, this pretty baby-face always intruded itself-this soul which I had brought into life lay ever before me, weighted with myriad mysterious and strange suggestions. It might live to accomplish great and noble deeds-it might live to inspire to worthy deeds-it might become a saviour of men, a patriot, an emancipator. And but for me, it would never have been. Even the supreme tribulation of his parents' lives might be productive of some great actions which would bring a blessing upon mankind. In that case it was good to suffer.

"After some time-not in those days, but later on-this thought became a consolation to me, although it troubled and perplexed me to think whether the birth of a soul which was destined to shine as a star among men was altogether a matter of chance.

"A dark, stormy night. I created voices in the sweeping of the wind. They spoke to me in groans, in whispers, in loud shrieks. Was it fancy that inspired the wail, 'To-night, to-night shall be your undoing!'

"Midnight struck. I paced to and fro, listening to the voices of the wind. Presently another sound-a sound not created by my imagination-came to my ears. It was as though something heavy had fallen in the grounds. Perhaps a tree had been blown down. Or did it proceed from another cause, which warned me of danger?

"I hastened immediately into the grounds. The sense of danger exhilarated me. I was in a mood which courted death as a boon. Willingly would I have gone out to meet it, as a certain cure for the anguish of my soul. Thus I believe it is sometimes with soldiers, and they become heroes by force of desperation.

"I could see nothing. I was about to return, when a moving object arrested my purpose. I sprang towards it-threw myself upon it. And in my arms I clasped the body of a man, just recovering consciousness from a physical hurt.

"I did not speak a word. I lifted the body in my arms-it had not yet sufficient strength to repel me-and carried it into my study. The moment the light of my lamps shone on the face of the man I recognised him. It was M. Gabriel.

"I laughed with savage delight as I placed him on a couch. 'You villain-you villain!' I muttered. 'Your last hour, or mine, has come. This night, one or both of us shall die!'

"I drew my chair before the couch, so that his eyes, when he opened them, should rest upon my face. He was recovering consciousness, but very slowly. 'I could kill you here,' I said aloud, 'and no man would be the wiser. But I will first have speech with you.' His eyelids quivered, opened, and we were gazing at each other face to face. The sight of me confounded him for a while, but presently he realised the position of affairs and he strove to rise. I thrust him back fiercely.

"'Stay you there,' I said, 'until I learn your purpose. You have entered my house as a thief, and you have given your life into my hands. I told you, if you ever intruded yourself within these walls, that you would do so at your peril. What brought you here? Are you a would-be thief or murderer? You foul betrayer and coward! So-you climb walls in the dark in pursuance of your villainous schemes! Answer me-do you come here by appointment, and are you devil enough to strive to make me believe that a pure and misguided girl would be weak enough to throw herself into your arms? Fill up the measure of your baseness, and declare as much.'

"'No,' he replied; 'I alone am culpable. No one knew of my coming-no one suspected it. I could not rest.'

"I interrupted him. 'After to-night,' I said gloomily, 'you will rest quietly. Men such as you must be removed from the earth. You steal into my house, you thief and coward, with no regard for the fair fame of the woman you profess to love-reckless what infamy you cast upon her and of the life-long shame you would deliberately fling upon one who has been doubly betrayed. You have not the courage to suffer in silence, but you would proclaim to all the world that you are a martyr to love, the very name of which becomes degraded when placed in association with natures like yours. You belong to the class of miserable sentimentalists who bring ruin upon the unhappy women whom they entangle with their maudlin theories. Mischief enough have you accomplished-this night will put an end to your power to work further ill.'

"'What do you intend to do with me?' he asked.

"'I intend to kill you,' I replied; 'not in cold blood-not as a murderer, but as an avenger. Stand up.'

"He obeyed me. His fall had stunned him for a time; he was not otherwise injured.

"'I will take no advantage of you,' I said. 'Here is wine to give you a false courage. Drink, and prepare yourself for what is to come. As surely as you have delivered yourself into my hands, so surely shall you die!"

CHAPTER VI
THE HIDDEN CRIME

"He drank the wine, not wisely or temperately as a cool-headed man whose life was at stake would have done, but hastily, feverishly, and with an air of desperation.

"'You are a good fencer,' I said, 'the best among all the friends who visited me during the days of your treachery. You were proud of showing your skill, as you were of exhibiting every admirable quality with which you are gifted. Something of the mountebank in this.'

"'At least,' he said, rallying his courage, 'do not insult me.'

"'Why not? Have you not outraged what is most honourable and sacred? Here are rapiers ready to our hands.'

"'A duel!' he cried. 'Here, and now?'

"'Yes,' I replied, 'a duel, here and now. There is no fear of interruption. The sound of clashing steel will not fall upon other ears than ours.'

"'It will not be a fair combat,' he said. 'You are no match for me with the rapier. Let me depart. Do not compel me to become your murderer.'

"'You will nevermore set foot outside these walls,' I said; 'here you will find your grave.'

"It was my firm belief. I saw him already lying dead at my feet.

"'If I should kill you,' he said, 'how shall I escape?'

"'As best you may,' I replied. 'You are an adept at climbing walls. If you kill me, what happens to you thereafter is scarcely likely to interest me. But do not allow that thought to trouble you. What will take place to-night is ordained!'

"I began to move the furniture from the centre of the room, so as to afford a clear space for the duel. The tone in which he next spoke convinced me that I had impressed him. Indeed, my words were uttered with the certainty of conviction, and a fear stole upon him that he had come to his death.

"'I will not fight with you,' he said; 'the duel you propose is barbarous, and I decline to meet you unless witnesses are present.'

"'So that we may openly involve the fair name of a lady in our quarrel,' I retorted quietly. 'No; that will not be. Before witnesses it is I who would decline to meet you. Are you a coward?'

"'It matters little what you call me,' he said, 'as no other person is near. You cannot force me to fight you.'

"'I think I can,' I said, and I struck him in the face, and proceeded with my work.

"My back was towards him; a loaded gun was hanging on the wall; unperceived by me he unslung it, and fired at me.

"I did not know whether I was hit or not. Maddened by the cowardly act, I turned, and lifting him in the air, dashed him to the ground. His head struck against one of the legs of my writing-table; he groaned but once, and then lay perfectly still. It was the work of a moment, and the end had come. He lay dead before me.

"I had no feeling of pity for him, and I was neither startled nor deeply moved. His punishment was a just punishment, and my honour was safe from the babble of idle and malicious tongues. All that devolved upon me now was to keep the events of this night from the knowledge of men.

"There was, however, one danger. A gun had been fired. The sound might have aroused my wife or some of the servants, in which case an explanation would have to be given. At any moment they might appear. What lay on the floor must not be seen by other eyes than mine.

"I dragged a cloth from a table and threw it over the body, and with as little noise as possible swiftly replaced the furniture in its original position. Then I sat on my chair and waited. For a few minutes I was in a state of great agitation, but after I had sat for an hour without being disturbed I knew that my secret was safe.

"I removed the cloth from the face of the dead man and gazed at it. Strange to say, the features wore an expression of peacefulness. Death must have been instantaneous. Gradually, as I gazed upon the form of the man I had killed, the selfish contemplation in which I had been engaged during the last hour of suspense-a contemplation devoted solely to a consideration of the consequences of discovery, so far as I was concerned, and in which the fate of the dead man formed no part-became merged in the contemplation of the act itself apart from its earthly consequences.

"I had taken a human life. I, whose nature had been proverbially humane, was, in a direct sense of the word, a murderer. That the deed was done in a moment of passion was no excuse; a man is responsible for his acts. The blood I had shed shone in my eyes.

"What hopes, what yearnings, what ambitions, were here destroyed by me! For, setting aside the unhappy sentiment which had conducted events to this end, M. Gabriel was a man of genius, of whose career high expectations had been formed. I had not only destroyed a human being, I had destroyed art. Would it have been better had I allowed myself to be killed? Were death preferable to a life weighed down by a crime such as mine?

"For a short time these reflections had sway over me, but presently I steadily argued them down. I would not allow them to unman me. This coward and traitor had met a just doom.

"What remained for me now to do was to complete the concealment. The body must be hidden. After to-night-unless chance or the hand of Providence led to its discovery-the lifeless clay at my feet must never more be seen.

"There was a part of my grounds seldom, if ever, intruded upon by the servants-that portion in which, for the gratification of my wife, I had at the time of our marriage commenced improvements which had never been completed. There it was that my wife's mother had met with the accident which resulted in her death. I thought of a pit deep enough for the concealment of the bodies of fifty men. Into this pit I would throw the body of M. Gabriel, and would cover it with earth and stones. The task accomplished, there would be little fear of discovery.

"First satisfying myself that all was quiet and still in the villa, and that I was not being watched, I raised the body of M. Gabriel in my arms. As I did so, a horror and loathing of myself took possession of me; I shuddered in disgust; the work I was performing seemed to be the work of a butcher.

"However, what I resolved to do was done. In the dead of night, with darkness surrounding me, with the rain beating upon me, and the accusing wind shrieking in my ears, I consigned to its last resting-place the body of the man I had killed.

"Years have passed since that night. My name has not been dragged into the light for scandal-mongers to make sport of. Open shame and derision have been avoided-but at what a price! From the day following that upon which I forbade M. Gabriel my house, not a single word was exchanged between my wife and myself. She sent for me before she died, but she knew she would be dead before I arrived. A fearful gloom settled upon our lives, and will cover me to my last hour. This domestic estrangement, this mystery of silence between those whom he grew to love and honour, weighed heavily upon my son Christian. His child's soul must have suffered much, and at times I have fancied I see in him the germs of a combination of sweetness and weakness which may lead to suffering. But suffer as he may, if honour be his guide I am content. I shall not live to see him as a man; my days are numbered.

"In the time to come-in the light of a purer existence-I may learn whether the deed I have done is or is not a crime.

"But one thing is clear to me. Had it not been for my folly, shame would not have threatened me, misery would not have attended me, and I should not have taken a human life. The misery and the shame did not affect me alone; they waited upon a young life and blighted its promise. It is I who am culpable, I who am responsible for what has occurred. It is impossible, without courting unhappiness, to divert the currents of being from their natural channels: youth needs youth, is attracted to youth, seeks youth, as flowers seek the sun. Roses do not grow in ice.

"Mine, then, the sin-a sin too late to expiate.

"I would have my son marry when he is young, as in the course of nature he will love when he is young. It is the happier fate, because it is in accordance with natural laws.

"If he into whose hands these pages may fall can discern a lesson applicable to himself in the events I have recorded, let him profit by them. If the circumstances of his life in any way resemble mine, I warn him to bear with wisdom and patience the penalty he has brought upon himself, and not to add, in the person of another being to whom he is bound and who is bound to him, to an unhappiness-most probably a secret unhappiness-of his own creating.

"And I ask him to consider well whether any good purpose will be served by dragging into the open day the particulars of a crime, the publishing of which cannot injure the dead or benefit the living. It cannot afford him any consolation to think, if my son be alive, that needless suffering will be brought to the door of the innocent. Let him, then, be merciful and pitiful."

CHAPTER VII
FALSE WIFE, FALSE FRIEND

Thus abruptly the record closed. To the last written page there were several added, as though the writer had more to say, and intended to say it. But the pages were blank. The intention, if intention there were, had never been carried out.

The reading of the record occupied the Advocate over an hour, and when he had finished, he sat gazing upon the manuscript. For a quarter of an hour he did not move. Then he rose-not quickly, as one would rise who was stirred by a sudden impulse, but slowly, with the air of a man who found a difficulty in arranging his thoughts. With uneven steps he paced the study, to and fro, to and fro, pausing occasionally to handle in an aimless way a rare vase, which he turned about in his hands, and gazed at with vacant eyes. Occasionally, also, he paused before the manuscript and searched in its pages for words which his memory had not correctly retained. He did this with a consciousness which forced itself upon him, and which he vainly strove to ignore, that what he sought was applicable to himself.

It was not compassion, it was not tenderness, it was not horror, that moved him thus strangely, for he was a man who had been but rarely, if ever, moved as he was at the present time. It was the curious and disquieting associations between the dead man who had written and the living man who had read the record. And yet, although he could, if he had chosen, have reasoned this out, and have placed it mentally before him in parallel lines, his only distinct thought was to avoid the comparison. That he was unsuccessful in this did not tend to compose him.

Upon a bracket lay a bronze, the model of a woman's hand, from the life. A beautiful hand, slender but shapely. It reminded him of his wife.

He took it from the bracket and examined it, and after a little while thus passed, the words came involuntarily from his lips: "Perfect-but cold."

The spoken words annoyed him; they were the evidence of a lack of self-control. He replaced the bronze hastily, and when he passed it again would not look at it.

Suddenly he left the study, and went towards his wife's rooms. He had not proceeded more than half a dozen yards before his purpose, whatever it might have been, was relinquished as swiftly as it had been formed. He retraced his steps, and lingered irresolutely at the door of the study. With an impatient movement of his head-it was the action of a man who wrestled with thought as he would have done with a palpable being-he once more proceeded in the direction of his wife's apartments.

At the commencement of the passage which led to the study was a lobby, opening from the principal entrance. A noble staircase in the centre of the lobby led to the rooms occupied by Christian Almer and Pierre Lamont. On the same floor as the study, beyond the staircase, were his wife's boudoir and private rooms.

This part of the house was but dimly lighted; one rose-lamp only was alight. On the landing above, where the staircase terminated, three lamps in a cluster were burning, and shed a soft and clear light around.

When he reached the lobby and was about to pass the staircase, the Advocate's progress was arrested by the sound of voices which fell upon his ears. These voices proceeded from the top of the staircase. He looked up, and saw, standing close together, his wife and Christian Almer. Instinctively he retreated into the deeper shadows, and stood there in silence with his eyes fixed upon the figures above him.

His wife's hand was resting on Almer's shoulder, and her fingers occasionally touched his hair. She was speaking almost in a whisper, and her face was bright and animated. Almer was replying to her in monosyllables, and even in the midst of the torture of this discovery, the Advocate observed that the face of his friend wore a troubled expression.

The Advocate remembered that his wife had wished him good-night before ten o'clock, and that when he made the observation that she was retiring early, she replied that she was so overpowered with fatigue that she could not keep her eyes open one minute longer. And here, nearly two hours after this statement, he found her conversing clandestinely with his friend in undisguised gaiety of spirits!

Never had he seen her look so happy. There was a tender expression in her eyes as she gazed upon Christian Almer which she had never bestowed upon him from the first days of their courtship.

A grave, dignified courtship, in which each was studiously kind and courteous to the other; a courtship without romance, in which there was no spring. A bitter smile rested upon his lips as this remembrance impressed itself significantly upon him.

He watched and waited, motionless as a statue. Midnight struck, and still the couple on the staircase lingered. Presently, however, and manifestly on Almer's urging, Adelaide consented to leave him. Smilingly she offered him her hand, and held his for a longer time than friendship warranted. They parted; he ascending to his room, she descending to hers. When she was at the foot of the staircase she looked up and threw a kiss to Almer, and her face, with the light of the rose-lamp upon it, was inexpressibly beautiful. The next minute the Advocate was alone.

He listened for the shutting of their chamber-doors. So softly was this done both by his friend and his wife that it was difficult to catch the faint sound. He smiled again-a bitter smile of confirmation. It was in his legal mind a fatal item of evidence against them.

Slowly he returned to his study, and the first act of which he was conscious was that of standing on a certain spot and saying audibly as he looked down:

"It was here M. Gabriel fell!"

He knelt upon the carpet, and thought that on the boards beneath, even at this distance of time, stains of blood might be discerned, the blood of a treacherous friend. It was impossible for him to control the working of his mind; impossible to dwell upon the train of thought it was necessary he should follow out before he could decide upon a line of action. One o'clock, two o'clock struck, and he was still in this condition. All he could think of was the fate of M. Gabriel, and over and over again he muttered:

"It was here he fell-it was here he fell!"

There was a harmony in the storm which raged without. The peals of thunder, the lightning flashing through the windows, were in consonance with his mood. He knew that he was standing on the brink of a fatal precipice.

"Which would be best," he asked mentally of himself, "that lightning should destroy three beings in this unhappy house, or that the routine of a nine-days' wonder should be allowed to take its course? All that is wanting to complete the wreck would be some evidence to damn me in connection with Gautran and the unhappy girl he foully murdered."

As if in answer to his thought, he heard a distinct tapping on one of his study windows. He hailed it with eagerness; anything in the shape of action was welcome to him. He stepped to the window, and drawing up the blind saw darkly the form of a man without.

"Whom do you seek?" he asked.

"You," was the answer.

"Your mission must be an urgent one," said the Advocate, throwing up the window. "Is it murder or robbery?"

"Neither. Something of far greater importance."

"Concerning me?"

"Most vitally concerning you."

"Indeed. Then I should welcome you."

With strange recklessness he held out his hand to assist his visitor into the room. The man accepted the assistance, and climbing over the window-sill sprang into the study. He was bloody, and splashed from head to foot with mud.

"Have you a name?" inquired the Advocate.

"Naturally."

"Favour me with it."

"John Vanbrugh."