Part 6

‘I should never regret it. I hate this life in England. We would have a beautiful home, and then we could come to your place at Old Windsor sometimes.’

‘That is not my house.’

‘Not your house! what do you mean?’

‘It belongs to a friend of mine; he asked me to take it.’ Travers stopped himself, and for once in his life, by a supreme effort, told the truth. ‘I mean he offered to lend it me because he was going away. You don’t know what a poor devil I am, Lady Geraldine.’

‘Don’t call me by that hateful title. And so you have been very, very poor. Why, my wretched little eight hundred pounds a year will seem quite a lot of money to you. I am so glad you know what it is to be poor.’

‘I can’t deny that poverty and I are old bed-fellows, Lady Geraldine; but all the same----’

‘Why are you hesitating?’

‘Well, it sounds rather ungrateful; but I think I ought to tell you that if my wife and I went to America to-morrow, the very smallest salary I would accept would be one hundred pounds a week between us.’

‘But your wife is not a great actress.’

‘No. If she were a great actress she would get that sum without having me thrown in; but during my last engagement at Mallock’s Theatre I had seventy pounds a week myself.’

‘I see; I cannot bribe you high enough. I am sorry to have troubled you to come here to-night.’

‘I am terribly distressed about the whole business; but I am sure you would be miserable living abroad like that yourself. Think of what it would mean. I have been disgraced publicly; you would be disgraced; we should both be shunned as if we were plague-stricken. I am sure you see things as I do.’

Lady Geraldine got up to walk away. Suddenly she turned and flung herself at Travers’s feet, saying: ‘Oh, don’t let us talk or think about the hateful money! Act if you like, if you find it so profitable, but don’t, don’t leave England. Cut yourself free from that woman. I will do anything you like. I love you wildly, desperately. I cannot, cannot leave you.’

He gently disengaged her fingers. She rose on her knees and looked him straight in the eyes. Then she cried out--

‘You don’t love me the least little bit in the world. Why is it? Am I not beautiful enough? Haven’t you told me a hundred times I was? O George, George, tell me what is the meaning of it all!’

‘It means I love you too well to wish to injure you.’

‘Then you do not love me at all. Is it that you love this other woman, this wife of yours?’

‘Perhaps; I can’t tell what it is.’

‘I will sit down quietly by your side now; I won’t rave at you any more, don’t be afraid. Tell me exactly what you feel.’ She stood for a moment, then put her hand in her pocket, took out her handkerchief, then sat down, holding it in her lap.

‘Now tell me, dear one,’ and she laid her hand on his arm. He shuddered a little. She noticed it and removed her hand. ‘What do you feel about her and me?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think it must be this. When I fell in love with her, I did so in the terrible blind, reckless way that only comes over one once in a lifetime. It is more a nightmare than anything else. I couldn’t understand myself at the time, and I can’t understand myself now.’

‘Oh, you have got over it, then?’ she said, leaning towards him.

‘Yes, I have got over it. I am sickened of love. But my wife is a clever woman. I believe I can do something with her. She has a most extraordinary talent for acting, and that interests me. I don’t suppose there is a man alive, take it all in all, who knows more about the tricks of the trade than I do. These are just what she wants to be taught, and it is interesting to me to see what she’ll turn out. This feeling has taken the place of love. She is about as tired of love-making as I am, and now we are going to set seriously to work together.’

‘But if you are so tired of love, why are you here to-night? Did you think you would get money out of me to go to America with her?’

He laughed a little. ‘Well, it does sound absurd now you put it like that, but I suppose I did.’

She was sitting to his right. Her fingers closed on something that had been hidden in her handkerchief; then came the loud report of a pistol, a puff of smoke, a groan from Travers as he fell sideways with a crash in a heap among the brackens.

Lady Geraldine sat perfectly motionless for a moment; then she saw the blood beginning ooze from the wound just over his heart, and she drew her dress carefully on one side. She did not look at his face for about five minutes. She turned round then, and saw his eyes fixed on her with a terrible stare.

‘No, I will not suffer for you,’ she whispered, as if replying to their silent menace, and she put the pistol into his hand and closed the fingers round it. They would not keep as she placed them. At last she left the thing on the ground by his side, then she walked rapidly away. Before she had got far she remembered the compromising letters she had written: she must go back and get them at any price. She found his pocket-book; she found her three letters in it; she took them, and replaced the pocket-book. Then she went. Just as she was leaving the wood, the fox-terrier, which had been off on a hunting expedition, ran up to her, smelling her dress. She put down her hand to pat its head. It licked off a little spot of blood that soiled her first finger. She tried to speak to it, to tell it to go to its master, but she found her mouth was parched and dry. She could not utter a word. But it went all the same, following the track of her footsteps into the wood.

She went through what would probably occur. He would be found alone with a pistol. She thought of what would happen if the pistol was identified. She had taken it from the gun-room at home; she had thought it would add to the romance of the situation. Two of them had been hanging on the wall; she remembered them all her life. Sometimes her father had allowed her and her sisters to practise with them on Sunday afternoons, much to the scandal of the neighbourhood. Kirkdale would go to look at the body; he would be sure to recognise the pistol. She got into the house unobserved just as the clock struck eleven. First she went up to her bedroom and dusted her shoes; her feet were covered with dust. She took off her stockings and wiped them clean as well as she could without making a mess. Then she went downstairs. She had sent her maid to bed. Nobody seemed to be up except Kirkdale and Clausen, whom she could hear playing billiards as she passed the door. She went down the passage, entered the gun-room, and examined the window. She saw it was accessible from the outside. It was one of the old-fashioned hasp bolts, so she took a rusty pocket-knife she found lying in a forgotten heap of odds and ends and passed it between the crack of the window. She scratched the bolt as best she could to make it appear as if it had been opened from the outside; then she dropped the knife outside the window, closed the door, and went to bed. She lay awake wondering if there was any precaution she had forgotten to take; and when at last she slept, she dreamed that she was a child again, and that her father was alive. He was in one of his rarely affectionate moods, dancing her on his knee and calling her his own dear little girl. He called her mother and sisters and little Stephen to look at her as he stood her upon the table--Mr. Clausen was there too,--and then her father laughed and clapped his hands, and said, ‘She’s the flower of the flock, she’s my very own daughter,’ and he rushed at the others and chased them out of the room. Then it seemed to her they were afraid of her as they had been of him. She saw their faces peeping in at the window at her, as if she was a terror to them. She looked at her father for explanation, but he no longer spoke or moved; his face was cold and lifeless, as if formed from damp yellow clay; and she went and touched his fingers, which closed on hers, and she felt she was becoming clay too. The cold crept up her arm; she could not stir hand or foot. Just as the cold reached her heart she woke and tried to scream, but once again she could utter no sound, and lay there motionless. At last the morning came. The horror of the dream had taken all her attention: she thought of nothing else; she felt she must speak of it, yet feared that in some vague way it might betray her. She could not bear to stay in the house waiting. She ordered the pony-carriage, and drove herself over to Lyndhurst, where she found some friends at home. They got her to put up there, and she did not return to Ringwood until dinner-time. Driving home she went over in her mind every possible thing that could happen: they would know the pistol; they would find it was impossible for the gun-room to have been entered from the outside; he would have boasted that he was going to meet her; somebody had seen her in the wood with him. She had gone to her room with a headache at nine o’clock, and asked not to be disturbed; perhaps Elizabeth had brought her something just before going to bed, and had discovered her absence. She imagined herself being driven away handcuffed between two policemen. She went through all the horrors of the last scene of all, when she would go blindfold into eternity. She shuddered terribly, then suddenly remembered the groom was sitting behind her, and was probably taking notes of her behaviour, and that he would be able to give his evidence too. As she drove over the bridge a train was arriving at the station. She pulled up a moment and watched the passengers alight. She saw a girl get out of a carriage and a tall man meeting her, and, leading her tenderly through the station, put her into a closed carriage. She saw that it was Kirkdale. Then she understood everything had been found out, and they had sent for the wife.

She drove into the village, sending the groom into the draper’s to get her some riding gloves. The man came out to deliver them to her himself. He looked very serious, and said, ‘Terrible news, isn’t it, my lady?’

‘What is terrible?’ she asked. ‘I have been away all day.’

‘A gentleman found murdered in the woods close to Kirkdale Castle.’

‘Murdered!’ she cried.

‘Well, the police are very reticent; I can’t say how it was done, but I know he was shot through the heart.’

‘Dear, dear! I must try and find out as quickly as possible,’ and she drove off without noticing the man’s parting salutation.

‘Murdered,’ she said over and over to herself. ‘After all, they know, they know everything.’

Mr. Clausen met her as she drove up to the principal entrance, and solemnly led her into the library. ‘You have heard?’ he said.

‘Yes. Weyman told me that he had been found dead.’

‘George Travers?’

‘Yes.’

‘He has not been publicly identified yet. How did Weyman know who he was?’

‘I don’t know, I suppose he heard it somehow.’ She looked up nervously. She met Mr. Clausen’s eyes looking steadily at hers, and she knew he guessed. After a pause she said, ‘Tell me what is known.’

‘I will. This morning the footman spoke to Kirkdale after breakfast, and informed him the gun-room had apparently been broken into.’ Mr. Clausen laid ever so slight a stress on the word ‘apparently.’ He continued, ‘A careful search was made and nothing was missing but one of a brace of pistols, that had been hanging together over the mantelpiece. I formed my own theory on the matter, and was just about to demonstrate to Kirkdale that it was impossible that the window should have been entered from the outside, when the news of the dead body being found reached us. I therefore refrained from making any remarks, and later in the day, when every one was agog over the conveyance of the body to the parish room, I went outside the gun-room window and tried myself to get into it from the outside. I found it was possible, but very difficult, and I knocked down some plaster, besides disturbing a good deal of dust which I had noticed was quite undisturbed in the morning. I may have done away with some circumstantial evidence, but it is always a satisfaction to try things for one’s-self.’ Again their eyes met, this time with a fuller understanding than before.

‘At the moment Kirkdale and I went at once to the scene of the tragedy, and found poor Travers dead, with his little terrier by his side, shivering and trembling, and refusing to stir; indeed, we had the greatest difficulty to coax it away. While the constable was taking notes, I saw the revolver lying among the ferns close to his hand, but the constable did not; I thought it better not to attract Kirkdale’s attention to it at the time, so I let them remove the body without saying a word. I then went back to the gun-room and did what I have told you; and having satisfied myself that the chain of evidence was complete, I went down to the village, and advised the constable to come up and search the scene of the fatality more thoroughly. Kirkdale came too, and it was not long before we found the revolver this time. The sight of the pistol at once reminded Kirkdale of the open window, and without a moment’s hesitation he told the constable all he knew. The constable came along, and having pointed out to him the marks of feet outside, the footman having given his evidence, and having wired for Mrs. Travers, whom by the way Lady Kirkdale has most kindly consented to put up, and who arrived about half an hour ago, I watched for you, so as to put you in full possession of the facts of the case.’ For the third time their eyes met.

‘How can I ever thank you?’

‘Good God, woman, don’t thank me! You owe me nothing. It is for your mother’s sake that I have become your accomplice, and that I have taken this burden on myself.’ She bent her head. He continued, ‘People who sin against human life in this way cannot expect sympathy. Your punishment is that you are cut off from fellowship with your race; the memory of that murdered man will rise between you and those who guess, and those who do not guess, your guilt.’

‘Supposing, after all, others discover that I did it?’ she whispered.

‘They shall not, they must not! I command you not to betray yourself; it is the least you can do.’

‘You needn’t be afraid. I dare say you think I am sorry that I did it, but I am not; I am glad. I should be miserable if it had not been done.’

‘He would never have done anything so criminal as this.’

‘No, he hadn’t the courage, but he would have sneaked and lied and shivered through life, taking men’s and women’s souls and bodies and tearing them to shreds, dragging them down until they could see nothing in life but a struggle for amusement, nothing beyond but a rest from torment. I know I did it from a horrible motive, just to gratify my mad injured pride, to revenge myself on the cur that had turned on me; but all the same it is a good deed done, and I am glad I did it.’

‘I do not understand you, Lady Geraldine.’

She got up and walked past him to the door; then she turned and said, ‘I am my father’s daughter. People like him and me belong to a race apart; we are only mortal clay, while you and mamma, and Maisy and all the rest of you have immortal souls.’

She came towards him once more. ‘Oh, don’t be afraid, I won’t touch you, I won’t contaminate you. Yes, I see it plainly now: you all of you have immortal souls, you show it in your lives, don’t you?’

* * * * *

It was the day of the funeral. ‘_Suicide while of unsound mind_’ was the verdict brought in by the jury. Lady Geraldine was alone with Mrs. Travers for the first time. They were sitting with books in their hands pretending to read. Both were dressed in black. Both were somewhat restless. Lady Kirkdale had left them in the drawing-room. The funeral had taken place in the little village churchyard early in the morning. There was nothing more to be done. Mrs. Travers was going to London the following day to commence rehearsing for a new piece at Horsham’s Theatre. Lady Kirkdale had suggested she must stay with them and rest, but she only thanked her very much, and said she should prefer to set to work at once.

Lady Geraldine sat eyeing her surreptitiously. At last she said--

‘You are very fond of your profession, are you not, Mrs. Travers?’

‘Indeed I am. I don’t know how I should have lived during the last few months if it had not been for the thought of it.’

‘You were going to America, I heard?’

‘Yes; George spoke of doing so.’

‘Will you tell me what your real feeling about this is; you seem very calm, and yet----’

‘And yet I loved him, you mean.’ Lady Geraldine nodded. ‘Yes, I loved him; and I suppose if this had happened two months ago I should have gone nearly mad with grief. But a curious change has been taking place during that time. It used to seem as if great floods of emotion came over me, enfolded me, and took possession of me. I had no power to resist them. One day I suddenly found I could, as it were, swim through; I knew what I was doing; I could guide and control myself; I could use the emotion as I pleased.’

‘Yes, yes; I believe I know what you mean; go on telling me.’

‘Well, that is what it comes to. In real life you get an emotion which masters you; in art, in acting, in all works of genius, I suppose, you master an emotion. That is why artists are set apart from the rest of the world; they cannot enjoy the common emotion long, they demand too much from it.’

‘And do you not regret your loss at all?’

‘Oh, we are all human, of course. I loved him, but still I feared him. He made me see things in his way: I had no freedom of judgment. When he was with me I thought he was a splendidly clever person; even when I found out how bad he was, and what terrible things he had done, he only had to make some ridiculous excuse for me to believe every word he said.’

‘Don’t you think it is a good thing for you that he is dead? Don’t you feel that if you had seen much more of him you would have become a thoroughly bad woman?’

‘Yes, I do. I sometimes wonder even now if I can get away altogether from his influence. But how did you know this? What made you imagine it?’

‘I will tell you exactly why. You know we were quite ignorant that he had a wife until about a fortnight ago. I must confess to you that from the first day I saw him I would have married him at any moment if he had asked me, and given up everything in the world for him. I found out by degrees what he was, and I thought that if it were true, I could not bear that he should live. And now that he is dead I am glad. I feel a weight is off my soul.’

‘Yes,’ whispered Grace Travers, ‘that is just what I feel, a weight is off my soul: to live with him was to be morally contaminated. Almost the last time I talked to him, I remember feeling as if it would be a glorious thing to be a great criminal, and that if you could not rule by fair means, you should rule by foul. George had such a horror of mediocrity.’

‘He thought anything better than that, eh?’

‘Yes, I believe the only person who could really fascinate him would be some one who could make him suffer terribly.’

‘Was there anything that could make him suffer?’

‘No, I don’t think there was, he always took things so easily. But he didn’t want to die; he hated the thought of it. I can’t think how he ever came to kill himself.’

‘Well, it is unfortunate that the only person who could attempt to fascinate him in the way you suggest would be compelled, by the circumstances of the case, to prevent him from showing that he was fascinated.’

‘Poor George, what a pity he isn’t here! That would have amused him; it is just the sort of thing he would have said himself.’

THE END.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press

List of Books in Belles Lettres

[Illustration: _Elkin Mathews & John Lane:--Publishers and Vendors of Choice & Rare Editions in Belles Lettres._]

ALL BOOKS IN THIS CATALOGUE ARE PUBLISHED AT NET PRICES

_1894_

_Telegraphic Address_-- ‘BODLEIAN, LONDON’

‘A word must be said for the manner in which the publishers have produced the volume (_i.e._ “The Earth Fiend”), a sumptuous folio, printed by CONSTABLE, the etchings on Japanese paper by MR. GOULDING. The volume should add not only to MR. STRANG’S fame but to that of MESSRS. ELKIN MATHEWS AND JOHN LANE, who are rapidly gaining distinction for their beautiful editions of belles-lettres.’--_Daily Chronicle_, Sept. 24, 1892.

_Referring to_ MR. LE GALLIENNE’S ‘English Poems’ _and_ ‘Silhouettes’ by MR. ARTHUR SYMONS:--‘We only refer to them now to note a fact which they illustrate, and which we have been observing of late, namely, the recovery to a certain extent of good taste in the matter of printing and binding books. These two books, which are turned out by MESSRS. ELKIN MATHEWS AND JOHN LANE, are models of artistic publishing, and yet they are simplicity itself. The books with their excellent printing and their very simplicity make a harmony which is satisfying to the artistic sense.’--_Sunday Sun_, Oct. 2, 1892.