CHAPTER IX.

AT THE VILLA PAMPHILI

The month of October had half run its course, the Continental Meccas were nearly deserted, the pilgrims were returning in shoals day by day, and the London club-houses were no longer the temples of desolation that they had been for the last two months.

In the smoke-room of his club, in the easiest of easy-chairs, sat Kester St. George, cigar in mouth, his hat tilted over his eyes, musing bitterly over the hopes, follies, and prospects of his broken life. And his life was, in truth, a broken one. With what fair prospects had he started from port, and now, at thirty-three years of age, to what a bankrupt ending he had come! One way or another he had contrived until now to surmount his difficulties, or, at least, to tide them over for the time being; but, at last, the net seemed to be finally closing around him. Of ready money he had next to none. His credit was at an end. Tailor, bootmaker, and glover had alike shut their doors in his face. A three months’ bill for two hundred and fifty pounds would fall due in about a week’s time, and he had absolutely no assets with which to meet it; nor was there the remotest possibility of his being able to obtain a renewal of it. He had made sure of winning heavily on certain races, but the horses he had backed had invariably come to grief; and it was only by making a desperate effort that he had been able to meet his engagements and save his credit on the turf. When he should have pawned or sold his watch and the few rings and trinkets that still remained to him, and should have spent the few pounds realized thereby, beggary, the most complete and absolute, would stare him in the face. But two courses were left open for him: flight and outlawry, or an appeal to the generosity of his uncle, General St. George. Bitter alternatives both. Besides which it was by no means certain that his uncle would respond to any such appeal, and he shrank unaccountably, he could hardly have told himself why, from the task of asking relief of the stern old soldier. He questioned himself again and again whether suicide would not be far preferable to the pauper’s life, which was all that he now saw before him—whether it would not be better, by one bold stroke, to cut at once and for ever through the tangled web of difficulties that bound him. Over his dead body the men to whom he owed money might wrangle as much as they chose: a comfortable nook in the family vault would doubtless be found for him, and beyond that he would need nothing more. Unspeakably bitter to-night were the musings of Kester St. George.

“A bullet through the brain, or a dose of prussic acid—which shall it be?” he asked himself. “It matters little which. They are both speedy, and both sure. Then the voice will whisper in my ear in vain: then I shall no longer feel the hand laid on my shoulder: then the black shadow that broods over my life will be swallowed up for ever in the blacker shadows of death!”

Suddenly a waiter glided up to him, salver in hand. On the salver lay a telegram. “If you please, sir,” said the man, in his most deferential voice. Mr. St. George started, looked up, and took the telegram mechanically.

For full two minutes he held it between his thumb and finger without opening it. “Why need I trouble myself with what it contains?” he muttered. “One more stroke of ill-fortune can matter nothing, and I’m past all hope of any good fortune. To a man who is being stoned to death one stone the more is not worth complaining about. Perhaps it’s to tell me that Aurora has fallen lame or dead. Serve the jade right! I backed her for two thousand at Doncaster, and lost. Perhaps it’s only one of Dimmock’s ‘straight tips,’ imploring me to invest a ‘little spare cash’ on some mysterious favourite that is sure to be scratched before the race comes off. Never again, O Mentor, shall thy fingers touch gold of mine! All the spare cash I have will be needed to pay for my winding-sheet.”

With a sneer, he flicked open the envelope that held the telegram, opened the paper, and read the one line that was written therein.

“_Lionel Dering is dead. Come here at once!_”

The telegram dropped from his fingers—the cigar fell from his lips. A strange, death-like pallor overspread his face. He pressed both his hands to his left side, and sank back in his chair like a man suddenly stricken by some invisible foe.

The waiter, who had been hovering near, was by his side in a moment. “Are you ill, sir?” he said. “What can I get you? Would you like a glass of water?”

Mr. St. George did not answer in words, but his eyes said Yes. With a deep gasp, that was half a sob, he seemed to recover himself. His hands dropped from his breast, and the colour began to come slowly back into his face. He drank the water, thanked the man, and was left alone to realize the intelligence he had just received.

Lionel Dering dead! Impossible! Such news could only be the lying invention of some juggling fiend whose object it was to give him, for one brief moment, a glimpse of Paradise, and then cast him headlong into still deeper caverns of despair than any in which his soul had ever lost itself before.

Lionel Dering dead! What did not such news mean to him—if only—if only it were true! It was like a reprieve at the last moment to some poor wretch condemned to die. The news is whispered in his ear, the cords are unloosened, he stares round like a man suddenly roused from some hideous nightmare, and cannot, for a little time, believe that the blissful words he has just heard are really true. So it was with St. George. His brain was in a maze—his mind in a whirl. Again and again he repeated to himself, “It cannot be true!”

Then he did what, under ordinary circumstances, he would have done at first—he picked up the telegram in order to ascertain whence it came, and by whom it had been sent; two points which he had altogether overlooked up to now, his eyes having been first caught by the one significant line of message. The telegram trembled in his fingers like an aspen leaf, as he turned it to the light, and read these words—“From General St. George, Villa Pamphili, near Como, Italy, to Kester St. George, 34, Great Carrington Street, London, England.” And then once more his eyes took in the brief, pregnant message, “Lionel Dering is dead. Come here at once.”

It was all true, then—all blissfully true—and not a wild hallucination of his own disordered mind! Still he seemed as though he could not possibly realize it. He glanced round. No one was regarding him. He pressed the telegram to his lips twice, passionately. Then he folded it up carefully and accurately, and put it away in the breast-pocket of his frock-coat. Then, pulling his hat over his brow, and burying his hands deep in his pockets, he lounged slowly out of the club, greeting no one, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left; and so, going slowly through the streets with eyes fixed straight before him, he at length reached his rooms in Great Carrington Street.

Twenty minutes sufficed for the packing of his portmanteau. Kester St. George was his own valet now. He had been obliged to dispense with the services of Pierre Janvard months ago, having no longer the means of keeping him. When his portmanteau was locked and strapped, he scribbled on a piece of paper, “Shall not be back for a week,” affixed the paper outside his door, took a last glance round, pulled-to the door, carried his luggage downstairs, hailed the first empty hansom that passed him, and was driven to the terminus at London Bridge. But before reaching the station, he stopped the cab at a tavern kept by a sporting publican to whom he was well known. From this man he obtained a loan of thirty pounds on his watch and chain and diamond pin. After drinking one small cup of black coffee and cognac, he paced the flags of the station till the train was ready, smoking one strong cigar after another, and seeing and heeding nothing of the busy scene around him.

And so, still like a man in a dream, he started on his journey. He changed mechanically from railway to steamer, and from steamer to railway; he dozed, he smoked, he drank coffee and cognac; he waited for a train here and a conveyance there, but otherwise he did not break the continuity of his journey; and, at last, he found himself by the shore at Como, inquiring his way to the Villa Pamphili.

He was still like a man in a dream. That sense of unreality with which he had started on his journey still clung to him. Not even when he saw the white walls of the villa glimmering in the moonlight, not even when he stood for a moment with his uncle’s hand clasped in his, could he quite believe in the actuality of what he saw around him. But he was thoroughly worn out by this time, and by common consent all conversation was deferred till the morrow. Ten hours of unbroken sleep made Kester St. George feel like another man.

Rapidly as Kester had performed his journey, there were two individuals who had reached the scene before him. They were Mr. Drayton, the Duxley superintendent of police, and Mr. Whiffins, the detective officer from Scotland Yard. General St. George, acting under the advice of Tom Bristow, had telegraphed to the police authorities the fact of Lionel’s death at the same time that he had communicated with Kester. But there had been some delay in the transmission of the message to the latter; as a consequence of which the two officers had reached the villa some five or six hours before Kester’s arrival. The object of their journey was purely for the purpose of identification. They were there to satisfy themselves and their superiors that Lionel Dering, and no one but he, was really dead. Of the presence of Tom Bristow in the villa neither they nor Kester had any knowledge whatever, nor was he once seen by any of the three while they were there.

As Kester was dressing in the morning, his eye was caught by the figure of a man who was lounging slowly through the winding garden paths, plucking a flower here and there as he went. He gave a great start of surprise and his face blanched for a moment when his eyes first rested on the man. At that instant Hewitt, General St. George’s valet, came in with Kester’s hot water for shaving. “Who is that?” said Mr. St. George sharply, as he pointed to the figure in the garden.

“That gentleman, sir, is Mr. Richard Dering, a younger brother of the late Mr. Lionel,” answered Hewitt.

“And how long has he been here?”

“He arrived here from India eight days ago.”

“In time to see his brother alive?”

“Oh, yes, sir. It is only five days since Mr. Lionel died.”

“Was Mr. Richard with his brother when he died?”

“I believe so, sir. But not being there myself, I cannot say for certain. Mr. Richard has come from India for the benefit of his health. We had been expecting him nearly two months before he came.”

“I suppose this fellow will step into his brother’s shoes and inherit the few thousands my uncle will have to leave when he dies,” muttered Kester to himself when Hewitt had left the room. “But what does that matter to me now—to me, the owner of Park Newton and eleven thousand a year?”

It was with a sense of dignity and importance such as he had never experienced before, that Kester St. George walked downstairs that morning to his uncle’s breakfast-room. He felt himself to be a very different individual, both in his own estimation and in that of the world, from the despairing, impecunious wretch who, but a few short hours before, was sitting in the smoke-room of his club, deliberating as to the easiest mode of bidding farewell to a world in whose economy there no longer seemed to be a place for him.

As he walked downstairs he could not help thinking that if his cousin’s death had not happened till a month later he himself would, almost certainly, have been dead before that time—in which case both life and eleven thousand a year would have been lost to him for the sake of one month more of patient waiting. What a surprise it would have been if in “that other place” his shade had suddenly encountered the shade of Lionel Dering! He dismissed the thought with an impatient shrug, but he could not help shivering, and for a moment or two an ice-cold air seemed to blow round him, that lifted his hair with its invisible fingers and touched his heart as with a death-cold hand.

Kester St. George and his uncle breakfasted tête-à-tête that morning. The meal was rather a late one. Messrs. Drayton and Whiffins had been up for hours, and were out exploring the beauties of the neighbourhood. “And as for Richard,” explained the General to Kester, “he’s one of the strangest fellows in existence. He takes his meals anyhow and at any time, and one never knows where to look for him, whether indoors or out. Still, I like the boy—yes, I can’t help liking him. By-the-by, I think he told me the other day that he had met you once or twice many years ago?”

“I never remember meeting Richard Dering but once,” answered Kester. “As you say, sir, that was many years ago.”

“Well, if you remember what he was like then, you won’t find him much altered now. But here he comes to speak for himself.”

As the General spoke, Richard Dering lounged slowly into the room through the open French window. He halted for a moment just inside the room, and the eyes of the two cousins met across the table, each one curious to see what the other was like.

Kester could not repress a start of surprise when Richard’s eyes met his. For the moment it seemed to him that in very truth they could be the eyes of none other than his dead cousin. They were the same in colour—dark gray—and the same in expression. But when he came to look more closely, he thought he saw in them something different; a something hard to define, but palpably there. Eyes, they were, cold, serious, stern, and vengeful almost; with nothing in them of that frank happy light which used to shine out of the eyes of Lionel Dering. And yet, with all this, Kester could not but feel that the similarity was startling. And then the voice, too! It might have been Lionel’s very self who spoke. It thrilled through Kester as though it were a voice speaking from the tomb.

Beyond the eyes and the voice, the points of dissimilarity between Richard and his dead brother were marked enough. Lionel had been fair-complexioned, with light flaxen beard and moustache, and wavy hair. Richard’s complexion, naturally very swarthy, had been still further browned by exposure to an Indian sun. He had short, straight, jet-black hair, parted carefully down the middle. He wore no beard or whiskers, but cultivated a thick drooping moustache of the darkest shade of brown. Running in a line from his left eyebrow down his cheek was the cicatrice or scar of an old wound, the result of an accident in boyhood.

Kester had a distinct recollection of this scar. It had struck him on the only previous occasion of his seeing Richard, as being a great disfigurement to an otherwise comely face. When you caught Richard’s profile, you said at once how like he was to his brother: in fact, both brothers had the St. George features—clear, bold, distinctly marked. Which, perhaps, was one reason why the General took to them more than he ever did to Kester, whose features were of a different type.

The two men eyed each other for a moment or two in silence. They might have been two gladiators about to engage in a deadly struggle, each of whom was measuring the other’s strength. “This man is my enemy,” was the thought that flashed through Kester’s brain; and for the moment his heart sank within him. The dark, stern, resolute-looking man before him would be a very different sort of person to cope with, from good-tempered, easy-going Lionel.

“Kester, this is my nephew, Richard, from India,” said the General. “Dick, this is your cousin, Kester St. George. You have met before, so I need not say another word.”

Kester rose from his chair, advanced a step or two, and held out his hand. “Yes, we have met before,” he said, “but that was many years ago; so many that I should hardly have recognized you had I seen you in the street. Allow me to welcome you back from India. I hope you won’t think of wandering so far away from home again.”

Kester spoke with that assumption of warm-hearted impulsiveness which he knew so well how to put on. Five men out of six would have been thoroughly deceived by it.

“I have not forgotten _you_,” said Richard, in reply. “Yours is a face that I could never forget. I shall not go back to India for some time to come—not till I have accomplished the task which has brought me here. You may take my word for that!”

He spoke with a cold deliberation that made his words seem very impressive. Cold, too, and pulseless was the hand that he laid for a moment on Kester’s outstretched palm. But when he said, “You may take my word for that,” he gave his cousin’s hand a sudden sharp grip, and then dropped it. Kester shuddered and sat down.

“Won’t you come and have some breakfast with us?” asked General St. George.

“I breakfasted two hours ago, and have no appetite,” answered Richard. “Should you want me, you will find me under the big yew tree in the garden. I have put a volume of Dante in my pocket, and I am going to see whether I have quite forgotten my Italian.”

“Fine fellow that; very fine,” said the General admiringly, as Richard shut the door behind him. “So earnest about everything—so determined to go through with any matter that he sets his heart upon.”

“What can the particular task be which he has set himself to accomplish before going back to India?” asked Kester of himself. “I would give something to know. And yet, what can it matter to me? When once I get away from here I hope never to set eyes on him again. I shall travel for a couple of years; and by the time I get back home he will have returned to India. No; nothing can matter to me, now that Lionel Dering is dead, and that Park Newton is at last my own!”

Lionel’s name had hardly been mentioned between uncle and nephew on the previous night. There had been a mutual avoidance of all unpleasant topics during the hour that intervened between Kester’s arrival and his retirement for the night. But the object of his visit to the Villa Pamphili was one, the discussion of which this morning could not much longer be postponed; and he thought it best to plunge at once into the subject himself, rather than leave it for his uncle to introduce.

“How long was my cousin with you at this place before he died?” asked Kester.

“It will be a month to-morrow since he came here,” answered the General. “I never got from him how he found me out—indeed, he was not in a fit state to be troubled with questions of any kind. It did not take long to discover that his days in this world were very few in number. The first few days after he came he brightened up, and seemed to be stronger and better. But there soon came a morning when he did not get up as usual—and he never got up again. He sank slowly but surely, and five days ago he died. His end was as peaceful as that of any little child.”

The General paused for a moment: Kester sat listening like a man turned to stone. Once he essayed to speak, but the sound died away in his throat. Petrified and dumb sat he.

“It is all for the best, perhaps, that he has left us,” resumed the old man. “I try to console myself by thinking so. To live for ever the life of a hunted criminal; to go through the world with the brand of a murderer on his brow; to have every hope and feeling, and all that makes life sweet and dear to ordinary mortals, crushed out of him by the weight of a terrible accusation from which it seemed impossible that he could ever free himself, was more than he could bear. His heart broke, and he died.”

Petrified and dumb still sat Kester St. George.

“The circumstances of the case were so peculiar,” resumed the General, “that when I saw my poor boy was really gone, I hardly knew what steps would be the most proper to take. For me merely to have made an affidavit that on a certain day, and under my roof, Lionel Dering died, might not have seemed sufficient proof in point of law that such were really the facts. I had your interests to think of in the matter. Satisfactory proof of your cousin’s death must be forthcoming before Park Newton could become your property, or one penny of its revenue find its way into your pockets. The question, as it seemed to me, resolved itself into one of simple identification. I communicated with you, but at the same time I communicated with the police authorities in London. As you are already aware, Mr. Drayton and another officer reached here yesterday, a few hours before you. Pearce, the old butler from Park Newton, is also here, and will swear, if requisite, to the identity of the dead man with my poor nephew. In Pearce’s charge, the body will, in the course of a few days, be conveyed to Park Newton for interment in the family vault. Lionel died five days ago, and it became requisite to have the remains enclosed in a shell; but, in order that there should be no dispute as to identification, a glass plate has been let into the lid of the shell, so that the features underneath can be plainly seen. For the present, the remains have found a temporary resting-place in the little Church of San Michele, in the village close by. Thither, in an hour’s time, I am going with Mr. Drayton and his friend. If you would like to see your poor cousin’s face for the last time, you can go with us.”

The General had nothing more to say, and began to chip an egg. Kester came back to life at last. A ray of sunlight coming suddenly through an interstice of the venetians, smote him across the eyes. He turned impatiently in his chair. The pallor of his face deepened. He wiped his forehead and the corners of his mouth with his handkerchief. It was a little while before he spoke. “Yes, I will go with you,” he said at last in a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper.

An hour later General St. George, accompanied by his nephew, and followed by Mr. Drayton and Sergeant Whiffins, set out for the Church of San Michele. As they walked through the grounds of the villa, they passed the yew-tree under which sat Richard Dering in a basket chair, deep in his Italian studies.

The General halted for a moment. “I suppose you don’t care to go with us, Richard?” he said.

“No, thank you, uncle,” answered Richard. “I have been there once this morning already, and I shall go again, alone, before the day is over.”

The General passed on. Richard bowed to Mr. Drayton and Sergeant Whiffins, who eyed him curiously, and then went on with his reading.

The Church of San Michele proved to be a building of fine architectural proportions, dating from the end of the fifteenth century. Underneath it were row after row of spacious vaults: in one corner of which, on a slab of dark-blue slate, partly covered with a velvet pall, and with two tall wax tapers burning at its head, they found the object of their search.

General St. George went forward and stationed himself at the head of the coffin. Mr. Drayton took up a position on one side of it, and Mr. Whiffins on the other. But Kester lingered in the background among the shadows of the crypt. It seemed as if his feet refused to drag him any nearer.

Drayton and Whiffins had seen death often, and in various forms. They were men not easily impressed; but there was something in the circumstances and surroundings of the present case that appealed to them with more than ordinary force. There, before them, lay the lifeless body of the man who had escaped so strangely from their clutches; on whose head a price had been set; who had broken his heart in a vain struggle against the destiny which had crushed him down; and who had now escaped from them again, and this time for ever. Did the red right hand of a murderer lie in that coffin, or was it really as guiltless of the stain of blood as the dead man himself had asseverated; and as those who knew him best had been ready to swear? Could those white lips but have spoken now, could they have given utterance to but one word from beyond the confines of the grave, surely the truth would have been proclaimed. But not till the great day of all would their awful silence ever be broken.

Drayton and Whiffins, drawing nearer to the coffin, gazed down through the glass plate at the immovable features underneath. Kester, leaning against one of the cold stone pillars, shuddered, but drew no nearer. Beyond the faint circle of light which radiated from the tapers, all was obscurity and gloom the most profound. Far away among the black recesses of those far-reaching aisles, among those endless rows of time-stained pillars, he heard, or seemed to hear, faint chill whisperings as from lips long dead, and the all but inaudible rustle of ghostly garments sweeping slowly across the floor.

“This is really our man, I suppose?” whispered the Scotland Yard officer to Mr. Drayton.

“Yes, that’s him, sure enough,” answered Drayton, in the same tone. “He was close-shaved when he got out of prison, but his moustache and beard have had time to grow again since then. Yes, that’s him, sure enough. I could swear to him anywhere.”

There was nothing more to do or see, and they moved slowly away.

“Will you not take one look?” said General St. George to Kester.

“Yes, one look,” whispered Kester; and with that he dragged himself close up to the coffin, and stood gazing down for a moment at the marble face below.

His own cheeks had faded to the colour of those of the dead man. In the yellow candlelight his features looked cadaverous and shrunken, but his two burning eyes glowed with a strange light, eager yet terrified. He wanted to see—he would not have gone away satisfied unless he had seen—the face which lay there in all its awful beauty; and yet his whole soul sank within him at the sight. Fascinated—spellbound he stood.

“Yes, that is Lionel Dering,” he whispered to himself. “Park Newton is mine at last, and eleven thousand a-year. Why did he ever cross my path?”

General St. George threw a corner of the pall over the coffin, and the two men turned to go, leaving the candles still burning. The sacristan with his keys was waiting for them at the top of the stone staircase which led to the church above. General St. George went up the stairs first, slowly and painfully: Kester followed a step or two behind. As his foot rested on the lowest stair of the vault he felt once again the Hand laid for a moment heavily on his shoulder—he heard once again the Voice whisper in his ear,

“Come.”

He shivered involuntarily. Involuntarily he turned half round, as he always did at such times, although he knew quite well that there was nothing to be seen. No: the coffin lay there as they had left it a minute ago, untouched, unmoved. But it was not his voice—not the voice of him who lay sleeping so peacefully there—that haunted the ear of Kester St. George, and filled his life with a dread unspeakable. It was the voice of the man, who had been done to death so foully at Park Newton, that whispered to him thus often out of his untimely shroud.

Some hours later, as Richard Dering was crossing the entrance-hall of the villa, a low voice called his name from an upper floor. He looked up and saw Edith’s earnest face shining down upon him.

“Are they gone—the two officers of police?” she asked.

“They left the villa two hours ago.”

“Satisfied?”

“Perfectly satisfied.”

“Thank Heaven for that!” she said, fervently. “And Kester, what of him?”

“He will take his leave immediately after dinner. He has declined Uncle Lionel’s invitation to stay all night.”

“You will have to see him again before he goes?”

“Yes—just for a minute or two. I shall not dine with him.”

“Be careful.”

“There is not the slightest cause for fear. But here he comes.”

Edith’s eyes met his for a moment, and her lips broke into a smile. She disappeared just as Kester St. George opened the glass door that led from the garden into the villa.