CHAPTER XXXIII

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LEVALLION’S HEIR.

Adrian Gordon had ample reason for giving no address. He had wanted to sink like a stone in London, and he had done it.

Moving slowly away in the rain and darkness from that worse than useless visit to Hester Murray--which, now that his blood was cool, he saw had only served to warn her of his thoughts, and had not intimidated her in the least--a sudden thought came over him also. A mad one, perhaps, but irresistible. If Hester had not been able to profit by the live Levallion, it seemed out of question she should by the dead one. Yet, perfect actress as she was, he felt that the woman was triumphant, in spite of the marks of deadly grief on her face.

“I believe it was she, in spite of that pension at Boulogne!” he said to himself. “As for the man Tommy saw with her, if it were Hester he saw, I don’t think he counts. Goodness knows what her little amusements may have been at night, if she were cooped up all day, as that girl said Miss Brown was!”

He looked round the wet street. It was not two hundred yards from Paddington station. He could get a train at any hour for Levallion Castle if he needed to.

“I’ll try it, anyhow!” he thought, and, not being as shrewd as Levallion, it never occurred to him that the very nearness of Paddington station, where it was so easy to come and go from Levallion, had brought Hester Murray to Starr Street.

In the dull, rainy gaslight the new Lord Levallion--who had winced when some one called him by his title--retraced his steps, crossed the street. There, in number fourteen, diagonally opposite fifteen, was a transparent red-glass sign--“Lodgings.” And lodging-letting was Starr Street’s means of existence, as a stroll down it showed him.

He rang at number fourteen, and, when he came away after a short colloquy with a frowsy woman, he went no farther than the great thoroughfare round the corner, where a ready-made clothing shop swallowed him up. Ten minutes later a man with a new portmanteau, containing the toilet things he had not thought necessary to bring for a half-hour’s visit to London, and a cheap suit of dittoes, returned to fourteen Starr Street. The neglected door opened, closed on him. The red sign of lodgings still hung in the ground-floor window, because there was still a spare room in the house, and Hester Murray saw it as she went to bed, saw it without thinking of it, as she had seen it every night since she came.

“Fool!” she thought. “But he always was.” Yet her lips were white, even as she remembered she had had the best of her discomfited visitor. For five minutes that she would never forget till her dying day, she had thought he knew something, and was come to tell her so. But as she looked at him she knew he was talking by guesswork. And she was able to combat more than guesswork.

“Well, he’s gone, thank goodness!” she said, aloud--and if Hester Murray thanked goodness there was no one to see the awful insolence of it. “I don’t suppose he’s been reading the papers lately! And even if he had he might not have thought anything.”

She shaded her candle with her hand, and went into the next room. A boy lay there in bed, a handsome child of ten, with something in his sleeping face that made her quiver and turn ghastly in the candle-light.

“God, how like he is!” she muttered. “I didn’t--I didn’t do it. If the worst came to the worst I could swear that.” She swallowed something in her throat. “I was treated like a dog,” she gasped. “I was driven. But I can swear I never did it. Oh, I mustn’t think of it! I’d break down. I’ve got to fight--for Adrian.”

For that sleeping child’s name was Adrian, too. But the very thought of what she was going to fight seemed to paralyze her, the danger of it, the---- She put down the candle, knelt with passion beside the child.

“I’ll do it for you!” she said deliberately. And put away from her the thought that if she had been a driven, desperate woman a week ago, she was more so now by a hundredfold, and with a harder taskmaster behind her. When she got up her face was steady.

“It’s lucky I’d got back when he came!” she thought, harking back to Adrian Gordon. “Otherwise there might have been questions to the landlady. But all she knew was that for two or three nights I dined out, and came home in a hansom at half-past twelve. Even that she might not know, because of my latch-key. I’d better go to bed. I must look decent to-morrow. I wish I hadn’t had to let him write to Boulogne--but there--I’m safe through it.” And it was odd she did not remember that five minutes before she had assured herself that she was guiltless, and safe in any case.

The neighbor she knew nothing of had certainly not been reading the papers, and if he had, might very well have overlooked the small print, unimportant paragraph about a man named Murray having been run over in the street, while the worse for drinking, and taken to Guy’s Hospital. But from Guy’s Hospital Mrs. Murray had not long returned when he paid his foolish visit to her. It was long after visiting-hours, but Hester was a pretty woman still. The house surgeon had seen her, and told her that there was small chance for the man she asked for.

“He may linger one day, perhaps two,” he said. “But in all probability he’ll never be conscious, and he can’t recover. Was he,” marveling, “a relation?”

“Oh, no!” said the woman in the faultless widow’s weeds prettily. “Only a--a sort of protégé. He had come down in the world.”

The surgeon thought that was a mild way of describing the sodden, dying wretch up-stairs.

The woman who had lived with poor Bob Murray for years drove away with a lightened spirit. That which she had to do was robbed of half its peril since he was dying, was practically dead. If he had been alive and well, it would have had to be done just the same, if she cared to live in this world at all; but the doing of it might have been all but impossible. Now her safety lay almost in her hand. She slept that night.

Mr. Atkinson--it was the name of the ready-made clothing shop, and had seemed less like an alias than Smith or Brown--the new lodger at number fourteen, informed his landlady that he was an invalid. His drawn face confirmed him, and his occupation of sitting all day by the window and never going out was accounted for.

Morning and evening he read the papers. The rest of the day he never took his eyes off Mrs. Murray’s house--and all he got for his pains was to see her go out and in quietly, sometimes alone, sometimes with that boy, whose face was so like another face. She never had a visitor, man or woman, and certainly if Miss Brown had been described as being given to drink, Mrs. Murray was not. Pale, dainty, mournful, she came and went; and if he had had a purpose in watching her he thought it a mad dream as the days flew by. A whole week and he saw nothing; a night when he slipped out to his own rooms, in Charles Street, and came back with a letter from Boulogne, that he had not dared sign Atkinson. And the letter gave him no shred of hope that Hester had lied to him. It was in a man’s hand, short and businesslike.

“Madam Murray, the friend after whom he asked, had certainly spent the summer at the Pension Bocaze, which she had left, indeed, not ten days ago. The writer was unable to supply her present address.”

It was signed Jean-Paul Berthier. And on inquiry it was no pleasure to Adrian Gordon to find that Jean-Paul Berthier and the pension were well, and reputably enough, known in Boulogne.

“Hester is out of it,” he said to himself. Yet he lingered another week in his sordid lodgings, among smells of bad cooking. It was madness, perhaps time wasted, when there was but a fortnight now to Valehampton Assizes, where the woman he loved would be tried for her life. Yet haggard-eyed, worn to a shadow, Adrian Gordon still sat peering through his half-closed shutters; still searched the papers for he knew not what. Perhaps a tramp dying in a workhouse, a swell mobman arrested and turning queen’s evidence. It began to enter his head that he might do that equally well at Levallion Castle; began to rend his soul from his body to stay away from Ravenel. But he knew, perhaps, it would be madness to go to see her, considering the part he must bear in the circumstantial evidence that lied and yet was true; for he stayed on.

And one wet, ghastly evening he flung down the _Star_, and then caught it up again. With blazing eyes he read a long article.

* * * * *

“A curious thing has come to light in connection with the late Lord Levallion, whose tragic and mysterious death lately horrified all Valeshire. It seems that the heir, Captain Gordon, of the ---- Hussars, who has so far taken no steps toward assuming the title, will have difficulty in making good his claim to it.

“A claimant has arisen in London, a lady formerly well and honorably known as Mrs. Murray, of Eaton Place, who curiously enough declares that she is the only person having any right to the title of Countess of Levallion, and that her son, formerly known as Adrian Gordon Murray, is the only child of the dead peer.

“The story is a sad, and also an involved one. It seems that Mrs. Murray, to give her the name by which the best society in London knew her, was married at the age of seventeen to a man of bad reputation, named John Davidge. He treated her cruelly, and then deserted her in Nice after two years of wretchedness. She had no children, and, being bitterly poor, became _dame du comptoir_ in a cheap restaurant, where Mr. Murray, her supposed husband, saw and fell madly in love with her. She had some reason to think Davidge dead, and decided that in any case he had no claim on her. She married Murray, he being under the impression she was a single woman, which her age and looks made likely. For a year the two lived on the Continent, apparently in perfect amity, till--and here comes the gist of the story--Mrs. Murray was obliged to go suddenly to England to see about a small legacy that had been left her.

“Between Paris and London she made the acquaintance of the late Lord Levallion, and from her own story seems to have fallen passionately in love with him, utterly forgetful of Mr. Murray, whom she had left at Pau, suffering from a bad attack of influenza. At all events, she never mentioned his existence to Lord Levallion, but gave him her true name of Davidge. The legacy which was left to her in that name bore her out, as none of her relatives had ever heard of her second marriage. And Davidge, Lord Levallion had seen stabbed in a scandalous quarrel in a house in Paris. _De Mortuis nil nisi bonum_, notwithstanding, it may be said that the late peer was catholic in his haunts and his acquaintances.

“At all events, in 1889, the marriage of Hester Davidge and Lord Levallion took place at the registrar’s office in Islington, but the bride, with excellent reasons, refused to have it made public, and went abroad with him under the name of Mrs. Gordon, by which surname he also called himself. Needless to say the bride was anxious to avoid France and Mr. Murray, although assured he could have no claim on her. And she also never allowed Lord Levallion to introduce or mention her to any friends whom he encountered, giving as an excuse that she was in delicate health and fanciful.

“In 1890 her son was born, at Vevay, where he was christened and registered as Adrian Gordon, Lord Valehampton, Levallion’s second title, and described as the only son of Adrian Gordon, Lord Levallion, and his wife. And at Vevay the bubble burst. Murray, by some trick of fate, came face to face with the pair; claimed and denounced his wife, and, to her surprise, had discovered that she had been not only his wife, but Davidge’s.

“Lord Levallion was furiously angry. There is no doubt that he would have thrown her back on Murray’s hands if it had been possible. But at first it was not. Davidge had been undoubtedly alive at the time of Mrs. Gordon’s supposed marriage with Murray, and as undoubtedly dead when she secretly became Lady Levallion. But Murray, and witnesses far more reputable, swore that Davidge had not died, but recovered; was alive in New York at that present moment.

“Lord Levallion seems to have been utterly mortified at his position, for his shrewdness, pride, and acumen were well known. But, in spite of his just anger, it seems that he was still infatuated with his supposed wife, who was heart-broken at the wreck of her life and the illegitimacy of her boy. Those, at least, are the only grounds on which his subsequent and utterly unjustifiable conduct can be explained. He calmly relinquished his pseudo bride to Murray, whose right, if no better, was at least a prior one, and returned to England. Mrs. Murray, to give her the name by which she has since been known, persuaded Murray to forgive and take her back again. She also swore that her son was his child, which was possible, and informed Murray that Levallion had forced her to behave as she had. Also that her legacy, instead of hundreds of pounds, had been thousands, as she was residuary legatee of an aunt’s fortune.

“Murray, who seems to have been a weak and kindly man, and already a slave to the alcohol he had taken to in his abject misery at her desertion, took her back, with apparently no thought for the absent Davidge. They went to London, took a house in Eaton Place, and gradually entered society. Mrs. Murray’s legacy was apparently an ample one, for she lived in luxury, Murray never suspecting that Lord Levallion’s bank-account supplied the funds, or that Lord Levallion himself was a constant and utterly clandestine visitor.

“No hint of his connection with Mrs. Murray ever leaked out; he never was seen with her, or entering her house, the fact being that he never came in daylight, and that Murray at night was usually dead drunk. The servants knew nothing of his visits, as he used a small garden door leading directly into Mrs. Murray’s boudoir. And so things went for years till he had reason to be angry with Mrs. Murray on several counts--one her extravagance and imprudence, another her friendship with a man who openly boasted of her favors, and last the open hostility of Murray, who, one day on meeting Lord Levallion in the street, abused him with drunken eloquence.

“The late peer satisfied himself that Mrs. Murray was being no truer in the present than she had been in the past, and quietly threw her over. Her new lover had no money, and, being in great straits, she went to Captain Gordon--the present heir to the earldom--whom she knew slightly, and gave him an evidently erroneous idea of her position in regard to his cousin, with such success that he believed her and lent her money. Whether he found out about her from Levallion, it is impossible to say. Certainly he refused her any further assistance afterward, but it is equally certain that for some months he believed her to be the rightful Countess of Levallion and her son the future earl.

“By this time Mrs. Murray was determined to keep her footing in society. She dismissed her new lover, and appealed to Levallion, who was adamant. He held that she had no claim on him, but gave her a lump sum of money yielding a yearly income sufficient to keep up her house in Eaton Place.

“Three months after their final rupture came news like a thunderbolt. Lord Levallion had become engaged to be married to the only daughter of the late Sir Thomas Annesley, the same unfortunate lady who, justly or unjustly, now awaits her trial for his murder. Mrs. Murray was powerless, never having been his wife, as she thought. But no later than a fortnight ago fate’s kaleidoscope shifted. It turned out by a curious chain of events that the late Lord Levallion was right about the death of Davidge. It was he and no other who was killed in a scandalous brawl in Paris, but his death was hidden by a namesake, a cousin, Maurice Davidge, who quietly changed identities with the dead man, who was in receipt of an allowance from their family; buried himself, so to speak, and as John Davidge went to America, when quite casually the thing leaked out. Mrs. Murray, be she good or bad, is probably Lady Levallion, for Murray’s wife she never was. He had left her for months, having somehow discovered about Levallion, when the quondam John Davidge spoke out.

“Our readers will find the opening proceedings of the case against the present heirs of Lord Levallion on our first page.”

* * * * *

The reader dropped the paper. This was what had been up Hester Murray’s sleeve!

“She can have the whole show for all I care!” he said, after a moment of wonder that any woman could be so shamelessly outspoken, even for money.

“She must know no one will accept her after all that story,” he thought, though--except that Davidge was dead--he had known most of it.

His face grew very hopeless. This case of Hester’s disposed of all wish on her part for Levallion’s death. She would far rather have forced herself on him, and shamed him; it seemed to Gordon that his death had taken away the point of the woman’s revenge.

“No, she’s out of it,” he said. “It could not have been her whom Tommy saw.”

From sheer habit he stared once more at her house--and started to his feet in the dark, forlorn room.

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