Part 32

"It does not need the ladies of the music-hall to taint the already tainted!" I said.

"True!" and he looked at me with kindly commiseration--"Let us put the whole mischief down to the 'new' fiction!"

We rose then, having finished luncheon, and leaving the Savoy we went on to Arthur's. Here we sat down in a quiet corner and began to talk of our future plans. It took me very little time to make up my mind,--all quarters of the world were the same to me, and I was really indifferent as to where I went. Yet there is always something suggestive and fascinating about the idea of a first visit to Egypt, and I willingly agreed to accompany Lucio thither, and remain the winter.

"We will avoid society"--he said--"The well-bred, well-educated 'swagger' people who throw champagne-bottles at the Sphinx, and think a donkey-race 'ripping fun' shall not have the honour of our company. Cairo is full of such dancing dolls, so we will not stay there. Old Nile has many attractions; and lazy luxury on a dahabeah will soothe your overwrought nerves. I suggest our leaving England within a week."

I consented,--and while he went over to a table and wrote some letters in preparation for our journey, I looked through the day's papers. There was nothing to read in them,--for though all the world's news palpitates into Great Britain on obediently throbbing electric wires, each editor of each little pennyworth, being jealous of every other editor of every other pennyworth, only admits into his columns exactly what suits his politics or personally pleases his taste, and the interests of the public at large are scarcely considered. Poor, bamboozled, patient public!--no wonder it is beginning to think that a halfpenny spent on a newspaper which is only purchased to be thrown away, enough and more than enough. I was still glancing up and down the tedious columns of the Americanized Pall Mall Gazette, and Lucio was still writing, when a page-boy entered with a telegram.

"Mr Tempest?"

"Yes." And I snatched the yellow-covered missive and tore it open,--and read the few words it contained almost uncomprehendingly. They ran thus--

"Return at once. Something alarming has happened. Afraid to act without you. Mavis Clare."

A curious chill came over me,--the telegram fell from my hands on the table. Lucio took it up and glanced at it. Then, regarding me stedfastly, he said--

"Of course you must go. You can catch the four-forty train if you take a hansom."

"And you?" I muttered. My throat was dry and I could scarcely speak.

"I'll stay at the Grand, and wait for news. Don't delay a moment,--Miss Clare would not have taken it upon herself to send this message, unless there had been serious cause."

"What do you think--what do you suppose----" I began.

He stopped me by a slight imperative gesture.

"I think nothing--I suppose nothing. I only urge you to start immediately. Come!"

And almost before I realized it, he had taken me with him out into the hall of the club, where he helped me on with my coat, gave me my hat, and sent for a cab to take me to the railway station. We scarcely exchanged farewells,--stupefied with the suddenness of the unexpected summons back to the home I had left in the morning, as I thought, for ever, I hardly knew what I was doing or where I was going, till I found myself alone in the train, returning to Warwickshire as fast as steam would bear me, with the gloom of the deepening dusk around me, and such a fear and horror at my heart as I dared not think of or define. What was the 'something alarming' that had happened? How was it that Mavis Clare had telegraphed to me? These, and endless other questions tormented my brain,--and I was afraid to suggest answers to any of them. When I arrived at the familiar station, there was no one waiting to receive me, so I hired a fly, and was driven up to my own house just as the short evening deepened into night. A low autumnal wind was sighing restlessly among the trees like a wandering soul in torment; not a star shone in the black depths of the sky. Directly the carriage stopped, a slim figure in white came out under the porch to meet me,--it was Mavis, her angel's face grave and pale with emotion.

"It is you at last!" she said in a trembling voice----"Thank God you have come!"

[3] _Edmond Rostand._ '_La Princesse Lointaine._'

XXXIV

I grasped her hands hard.

"What is it?"--I began;--then, looking round I saw that the hall was full of panic-stricken servants, some of whom came forward, confusedly murmuring together about being 'afraid,' and 'not knowing what to do.' I motioned them back by a gesture and turned again to Mavis Clare.

"Tell me,--quick--what is wrong?"

"We fear something has happened to Lady Sibyl,"--she replied at once--"Her rooms are locked, and we cannot make her hear. Her maid got alarmed, and ran over to my house to ask me what was best to be done,--I came at once, and knocked and called, but could get no response. You know the windows are too high to reach from the ground,--there is no ladder on the premises long enough for the purpose,--and no one can climb up that side of the building. I begged some of the servants to break open the door by force,--but they would not,--they were all afraid; and I did not like to act on my own responsibility, so I telegraphed for you----"

I sprang away from her before she had finished speaking and hurried upstairs at once,--outside the door of the ante-room which led into my wife's luxurious 'suite' of apartments, I paused breathless.

"Sibyl!" I cried.

There was not a sound. Mavis had followed me, and stood by my side, trembling a little. Two or three of the servants had also crept up the stairs, and were clinging to the banisters, listening nervously.

"Sibyl!" I called again. Still absolute silence. I turned round upon the waiting and anxious domestics with an assumption of calmness.

"Lady Sibyl is probably not in her rooms at all;"--I said; "She may have gone out unobserved. This door of the ante-chamber has a spring-lock,--it can easily get fast shut by the merest accident. Bring a strong hammer,--or a crowbar,--anything that will break it open,--if you had had sense you would have obeyed Miss Clare, and done this a couple of hours ago."

And I waited with enforced composure, while my instructions were carried out as rapidly as possible. Two of the men-servants appeared with the necessary tools, and very soon the house resounded with clamour,--blow after blow was dealt upon the solid oaken door for some time without success,--the spring lock would not yield,--neither would the strong hinges give way. Presently however, after ten minutes' hard labour, one of the finely carved panels was smashed in,--then another,--and, springing over the débris I rushed through the ante-room into the boudoir,--then paused, listening, and calling again, "Sibyl!" No one followed me,--some indefinable instinct, some nameless dread, held the servants back, and Mavis Clare as well. I was alone, ... and in complete darkness. Groping about, with my heart beating furiously, I sought for the ivory button in the wall which would, at pressure, flood the rooms with electric light, but somehow I could not find it. My hand came in contact with various familiar things which I recognised by touch,--rare bits of china, bronzes, vases, pictures,--costly trifles that were heaped up as I knew, in this particular apartment with a lavish luxury and disregard of cost befitting a wanton eastern empress of old time,--cautiously feeling my way along, I started with terror to see, as I thought, a tall figure outline itself suddenly against the darkness,--white, spectral and luminous,--a figure that, as I stared at it aghast, raised a pallid hand and pointed me forward with a menacing air of scorn! In my dazed horror at this apparition, or delusion, I stumbled over the heavy trailing folds of a velvet _portiére_, and knew by this that I had passed from the boudoir into the adjoining bedroom. Again I stopped,--calling "Sibyl!" but my voice had scarcely strength enough to raise itself above a whisper. Giddy and confused as I was, I remembered that the electric light in this room was fixed at the side of the toilet-table, and I stepped hurriedly in that direction, when all at once in the thick gloom I touched something clammy and cold like dead flesh, and brushed against a garment that exhaled faint perfume, and rustled at my touch with a silken sound. This alarmed me more thoroughly than the spectre I fancied I had just seen,--I drew back shudderingly against the wall,--and in so doing, my fingers involuntarily closed on the polished ivory stud which, like a fairy talisman in modern civilization, emits radiance at the owner's will. I pressed it nervously,--the light blazed forth through the rose-tinted shells which shaded its dazzling clearness, and showed me where I stood, ... within an arm's length of a strange, stiff white creature that sat staring at itself in the silver-framed mirror with wide-open, fixed and glassy eyes!

"Sibyl!" I gasped--"My wife ... ! ..." but the words died chokingly in my throat. Was it indeed my wife?--this frozen statue of a woman, watching her own impassive image thus intently? I looked upon her wonderingly,--doubtingly,--as if she were some stranger;--it took me time to recognize her features, and the bronze-gold darkness of her long hair which fell loosely about her in a lavish wealth of rippling waves, ... her left hand hung limply over the arm of the chair in which, like some carven ivory goddess, she sat enthroned,--and tremblingly, slowly, reluctantly, I advanced and took that hand. Cold as ice it lay in my palm much as though it were a waxen model of itself;--it glittered with jewels,--and I studied every ring upon it with a curious, dull pertinacity, like one who seeks a clue to identity. That large turquoise in a diamond setting was a marriage-gift from a duchess,--that opal her father gave her,--the lustrous circle of sapphires and brilliants surmounting her wedding-ring was my gift,--that ruby I seemed to know,----well, well! what a mass of sparkling value wasted on such fragile clay! I peered into her face,--then at the reflection of that face in the mirror,--and again I grew perplexed,--was it, could it be Sibyl after all? Sibyl was beautiful,--_this_ dead thing had a devilish smile on its blue, parted lips, and frenzied horror in its eyes! Suddenly something tense in my brain seemed to snap and give way,--dropping the chill fingers I held, I cried aloud--

"Mavis! Mavis Clare!"

In a moment she was with me,--in a glance she comprehended all. Falling on her knees by the dead woman she broke into a passion of weeping.

"Oh, poor girl!" she cried--"Oh, poor, unhappy, misguided girl!"

I stared at her gloomily. It seemed to me very strange that she should weep for sorrows not her own. There was a fire in my brain,--a confused trouble in my thoughts,--I looked at my dead wife with her fixed gaze and evil smile, sitting rigidly upright, and robed in the mocking sheen of her rose-silk peignoir, showered with old lace, after the costliest of Paris fashions,--then at the living, tender-souled, earnest creature, famed for her genius throughout the world, who knelt on the ground, sobbing over the stiffening hand on which so many rare gems glistened derisively,--and an impulse rose in me stronger than myself, moving me to wild and clamorous speech.

"Get up, Mavis!" I cried--"Do not kneel there! Go,--go out of this room,--out of my sight! You do not know what she was--this woman whom I married,--I deemed her an angel, but she was a fiend,--yes, Mavis, a fiend! Look at her, staring at her own image in the glass,--you cannot call her beautiful--_now_! She smiles, you see,--just as she smiled last night when, ... ah, you know nothing of last night! I tell you, go!" and I stamped my foot almost furiously,--"This air is contaminated,--it will poison you! The perfume of Paris and the effluvia of death intermingled are sufficient to breed a pestilence! Go quickly,--inform the household their mistress is dead,--have the blinds drawn down,--show all the exterior signs of decent and fashionable woe!"--and I began laughing deliriously--"Tell the servants they may count upon expensive mourning,--for all that money can do shall be done in homage to King Death! Let everyone in the place eat and drink as much as they can or will,--and sleep, or chatter as such menials love to do, of hearses, graves and sudden disasters;--but let _me_ be left alone,--alone with _her_;--we have much to say to one another!"

White and trembling, Mavis rose up and stood gazing at me in fear and pity.

"Alone? ..." she faltered--"You are not fit to be alone!"

"No, I am not fit to be, but I must be,"--I rejoined quickly and harshly--"This woman and I loved--after the manner of brutes, and were wedded or rather mated in a similar manner, though an archbishop blessed the pairing, and called upon Heaven to witness its sanctity! Yet we parted ill friends,--and dead though she is, I choose to pass the night with her,--I shall learn much knowledge from her silence! To-morrow the grave and the servants of the grave may claim her, but to-night she is mine!"

The girl's sweet eyes brimmed over with tears.

"Oh you are too distracted to know what you are saying," she murmured--"You do not even try to discover how she died!"

"That is easy enough to guess,"--I answered quickly, and I took up a small dark-coloured bottle labelled 'Poison' which I had already perceived on the toilet-table--"This is uncorked and empty. What it contained I do not know,--but there must be an inquest of course,--people must be allowed to make money for themselves out of her ladyship's rash act! And see there,--" here I pointed to some loose sheets of note-paper covered with writing, and partially concealed by a filmy lace handkerchief which had evidently been hastily thrown across them, and a pen and inkstand close by--"There is some admirable reading prepared for me doubtless!--the last message from the beloved dead is sacred, Mavis Clare; surely you, a writer of tender romances, can realize this!--and realizing it, you will do as I ask you,--leave me!"

She looked at me in deep compassion, and slowly turned to go.

"God help you!" she said sobbingly--"God console you!"

At this, some demon in me broke loose, and springing to her side I caught her hands in mine.

"Do not dare to talk of God!" I said in passionate accents; "Not in this room,--not in _that_ presence! Why should you call curses down upon me? The help of God means punishment,--the consolations of God are terrible! For strength must acknowledge itself weak before He will help it,--and a heart must be broken before He will console it! But what do I say!--I believe in _no_ God--! I believe in an unknown Force that encompasses me and hunts me down to the grave, but nothing more. _She_ thought as I do,--and with reason,--for what has God done for her? She was made evil from the first,--a born snare of Satan...."

Something caught my breath here,--I stopped, unable to utter another word. Mavis stared at me affrighted, and I stared back again.

"What is it?" she whispered alarmedly. I struggled to speak,--finally, with difficulty I answered her--

"Nothing!"

And I motioned her away with a gesture of entreaty. The expression of my face must have startled or intimidated her I fancy, for she retreated hastily and I watched her disappearing as if she were the phantom of a dream,--then, as she passed out through the boudoir, I drew close the velvet portiére behind her and locked the intermediate door. This done I went slowly back to the side of my dead wife.

"Now Sibyl,"--I said aloud--"we are alone, you and I--alone with our own reflected images,--you dead, and I living! You have no terrors for me in your present condition,--your beauty has gone. Your smile, your eyes, your touch cannot stir me to a throb of the passion you craved, yet wearied of! What have you to say to me?--I have heard that the dead can speak at times,--and you owe me reparation,--reparation for the wrong you did me,--the lie on which you based our marriage,--the guilt you cherished in your heart! Shall I read your petition for forgiveness here?"

And I gathered up the written sheets of note-paper in one hand, feeling them rather than seeing them, for my eyes were fixed on the pallid corpse in its rose-silk 'negligée' and jewels, that gazed at itself so pertinaciously in the shining mirror. I drew a chair close to it, and sat down, observing likewise the reflection of my own haggard face in the glass beside that of the self-murdered woman. Turning presently, I began to scrutinize my immovable companion more closely--and perceived that she was very lightly clothed,--under the silk peignoir there was only a flowing white garment of soft fine material lavishly embroidered, through which the statuesque contour of her rigid limbs could be distinctly seen. Stooping, I felt her heart,--I knew it was pulseless; yet I half imagined I should feel its beat. As I withdrew my hand, something scaly and glistening caught my eye, and looking I perceived Lucio's marriage-gift circling her waist,--the flexible emerald snake with its diamond crest and ruby eyes. It fascinated me,----coiled round that dead body it seemed alive and sentient,--if it had lifted its glittering head and hissed at me I should scarcely have been surprised. I sat back for a moment in my chair, almost as rigid as the corpse beside me,--I stared again, as the corpse stared always, into the mirror which pictured us both, we 'twain in one,' as the sentimentalists aver of wedded folk, though in truth it often happens that there are no two creatures in the world more widely separated than husband and wife. I heard stealthy movements and suppressed whisperings in the passage outside, and guessed that some of the servants were there watching and waiting,--but I cared nothing for that. I was absorbed in the ghastly night interview I had planned for myself, and I so entered into the spirit of the thing, that I turned on all the electric lamps in the room, besides lighting two tall clusters of shaded candles on either side of the toilet-table. When all the surroundings were thus rendered as brilliant as possible, so that the corpse looked more livid and ghastly by comparison, I seated myself once more, and prepared to read the last message of the dead.

"Now Sibyl,"--I muttered, leaning forward a little, and noting with a morbid interest that the jaws of the corpse had relaxed a little within the last few minutes, and that the smile on the face was therefore more hideous--"Confess your sins!--for I am here to listen. Such dumb, impressive eloquence as yours deserves attention!"

A gust of wind fled round the house with a wailing cry,--the windows shook, and the candles flickered. I waited till every sound had died away, and then--with a glance at my dead wife, under the sudden impression that she had heard what I said, and knew what I was doing, I began to read.

XXXV

Thus ran the 'last document,' commencing abruptly and without prefix;--