Chapter IX: A Dancing Lesson and its Consequences 86 (10)

Yet her treatment at the hands of these simple people had lightened the heart of Elizabeth Ryan, and the terror of her awful dream had softened it. Her burning rage against her husband was quenched; she thought of it with shuddering shame. Her wild resolves were thrown to the winds; she must have been mad when she entertained them. She must have been blind as well as mad; but now her sight was restored. Yes, now she could see things in their true light. Now she could see who had caused her husband's cruelty; who had poisoned him against her--subtly, swiftly, surely, at their first meeting; who had drugged her, and then shown Ned his drunken wife at their second meeting; whom she had to thank for all her misery: the fiend, Jem Pound.

It was true that Ned had treated her heartlessly; but, believing what he believed of her, could she blame him? She blamed him for listening to the first whisper against her, from the lips of a monster; but his fault ended there. He had never heard her in her own defence. He had not so much as seen her alone. There lay the root of it all: she had been allowed no chance of explaining, of throwing herself on his compassion.

But now she was going to put an end to all this. She was going to him at once, and alone. She was going to tell him all: how she had waited patiently for him at Townsville until the news of his capture drove her almost frantic; how, in the impulse and madness of the moment, she had trusted herself to Jem Pound, and followed him, her husband, to England; how she had followed him for his own sake, in the blindness of her love, which separation and his life of crime had been powerless to lessen; how, ever since, she had been in the power of a ruffianly bully, who had threatened and cajoled her by turns.

And then she would throw herself at Ned's feet, and implore his mercy. And he, too, would see clearly, and understand, and pity her, and take her back into his life. Whether that life was bad or good, it alone was her heart's desire.

A soft smile stole over the haggard face, upon which the wind and the rain were beating more fiercely every minute. Wind and rain were nothing to her now; she could not feel them; she was back in Victoria, and the sky above was dark blue, and the trees on either side the flint-strewn track were gaunt, grey, and sombre. The scent of the eucalyptus filled her nostrils. The strokes of two galloping horses rang out loud and clear on the rough hard road. She was mounted on one of these horses, Ned on the other. They were riding neck and neck, she and her handsome Ned--riding to the township where the little iron church was. It was their marriage morn. She had fled from home for ever.

Surely he loved her then--a little? Yet he had left her, very soon, without a word or a cause; for weeks she could gather no tidings of him, until one day news came that rang through the countryside, and was echoed throughout the colony--news that stamped her new name with infamy. But had she changed her name, or sunk her identity, or disowned her husband, as some women might have done? No. She had employed her woman's wit to hunt her husband down--to watch over him--to warn him where danger lurked. One night--it stood out vividly in her memory--she had burst breathlessly into his bivouac, and warned him in the nick of time: half-an-hour later the armed force found the fires still burning, but the bushrangers flown. And he had been good to her then; for it was then that he had given her the money to go to his only relative--a sister at Townsville; and he had promised in fun to "work up" through Queensland, some day, and meet her there. Yes, with the hounds of justice on his heels he had made time to be kind to her then, after a fashion. It was not much, that amount of kindness, but it would be enough for her now. After all that she had gone through, she would be content with something short of love, say even tolerance. She would try to win the rest, in after years--years when Ned settled down in some distant country--when Ned reformed. Could he refuse her now so small a measure of what she gave him without stint? Surely not. It was impossible. Unless--unless--unless--

What made Elizabeth Ryan clench her drenched cold fingers and draw her breath so hard? What blotted out the visionary blue skies, tore hope and fancy to shreds, and roused her to the bleak reality of wind and rain and the sickening memory of her husband's heartlessness? What, indeed, but the suggestions of Jem Pound?

She loathed herself for listening to a single word from that polluted source; yet, as Pound's words came back to her, she listened again to them all. She thought of the pretty, delicate, pink-and-white woman her own eyes had seen by the waters of the Thames, with whom she had spoken, who had dared to offer her money. The thought became a globe of fire in her brain; and soon the poor woman had worked herself back into a frame of mind bordering upon that frenzy which had driven her hither and thither, like a derelict ship at the wind's mercy, through the long hours of the previous night. The appearance of watery lights through the storm came not before it was time. Even to Elizabeth Ryan, with hope and passion wrestling in her breast, there was a certain faint excitement and satisfaction in reaching a village after a six-mile tramp through wind, rain, and dusk deepening into night. Besides, if this was Melmerbridge, she must ask and find out the road to Gateby.

Guided by the lights, she presently reached the north end of the long, one-sided village street; the long straight stream, now running turbulently, was on her left as she advanced, and Melmerbridge Bank straight ahead, at the southern end of the village. An irregular line of lights marked the houses on the right; to the left, across the beck, there were no such lights; but a set of church windows--the church being lit up for evening service--hung gaudily against the black screen of night; the outline of the church itself was invisible. The deep notes of an organ rose and fell in the distance, then died away; then suddenly, as the wayfarer gazed, the stained-glass window disappeared, and Mrs. Ryan found herself in the midst of a little stream of people who were coming from the bridge in front of the church to the cottages on the opposite side of the road.

From one of these people she received the directions she required, but she noticed that most of them were talking eagerly and excitedly, in a way not usual among folks fresh from worship, or indeed in a quiet country village at any time. Little groups formed in the doorways and kept up an animated conversation. Clearly there was something of uncommon interest astir. Mrs. Ryan passed on, mildly interested herself.

The last houses of the village were darker. Elizabeth touched their outer walls with her skirts as she trudged along the narrow uneven pavement. From one of them came a sound which struck her as an odd sound for a Sabbath evening--the long, steady sweep and swish of a plane. This house was a shop; for six parallel threads of light issued from the chinks of the tall shutters. Through one of these chinks a small boy was gazing with rapt attention and one eye closed. Mrs. Ryan stopped, and out of mere curiosity peered through another.

A burly old man was energetically planing a long, wide, roughly-shaped, hexagonal plank. The shape of the plank was startling.

"What is it he is making?" inquired Mrs. Ryan of the small boy. Perhaps she could see for herself, and put the question mechanically.

The answer was prompt and short:

"A coffin!"

Mrs. Ryan shuddered and stood still. The urchin volunteered a comment.

"My! ain't it a long 'un! Did ye iver see sich a long 'un, missis?"

He was little Tom Rowntree, the sexton's son and heir, this boy, so he knew what he was talking about; one day, all being well, he would dig graves and bury folks himself; he took a profound premature interest in all branches of the hereditary avocation.

"Who is dead?" asked Mrs. Ryan, in a hard metallic voice.

"Haven't heard tell his name, but 'tis a sooincide, missis--a sooincide! A gent's been and shot hisself upon the bank there, this afternoon. He's a-lyin' ower yonder at t' Blue Bell."

"Where is that?"

"Yonder, look--t' last house on this side. It's nigh all dark, it is, an' no one there 'cept my mother an' Mr. Robisson hisself, an' customers turned away an' all. That's 'cause Mrs. Robisson she's took the high-strikes--some people is that weak!"

But there was no listener to these final words of scorn. With a ghastly face and starting eyes, Elizabeth Ryan was staggering to the Blue Bell inn.

A square of pale light dimly illumined a window close to the ground to the left of the door, otherwise the inn was in darkness. Elizabeth Ryan crouched down, and never took her eyes from that window till the light was extinguished. Then she heard the door within open and shut, and the outer door open. A man and a woman stood conversing in low tones on the steps, the woman's voice broken by sobs.

"'Tisn't that I'm growing old and nervous, Mr. Robisson, and thinkin' that me own time'll come some day; no, it's not that. But all these years--and never such a thing to happen in the village before--little did I think to live to be called in to the likes o' this. And such a good face as I never seed in living man, poor fellow! You never know where madness comes in, and that's what it's been, Mr. Robisson. And now I'm out o' t' room I'm that faint I don't know how to get home."

"Come, come, I'll give you my arm and umbrella across, Mistress Rowntree."

"But ye've left t' key in t' door?"

"Oh, I'll be back quick enough; it's only a step."

He gave her his arm, and the pair came out together and went slowly up the village street. In less than five minutes the landlord of the Blue Bell returned, locked all the doors, and went to bed, leaving the inn in total darkness.

A quarter of an hour later this total darkness was interrupted; a pale light glimmered in the window close to the ground to the left of the door. This light burned some ten or twenty minutes. Just before it was put out, the window-sash was moved up slowly. Then, when all was once more in darkness, a figure stepped out upon the sill, leapt lightly to the ground, and cautiously drew down the sash.

XXX

SWEET REVENGE

Whistling over the hilltops and thundering through the valleys, down came the wind upon the little lonely house by the roadside; and with the wind, driving rain; and they beat together upon the walls of that corner room wherein Alice Bristo lay trembling between life and death.

The surgeon from Melmerbridge pronounced it to be brain fever. He had found the patient wildly delirious. The case was grave, very grave. Dangerous? There was always danger with an abnormal temperature and delirium. Dr. Mowbray stayed until evening and ultimately left his patient sleeping quietly. He promised to return in the early morning.

The doctor stopped, as he was driving off, to shriek something through the storm:

"Have you any one who can nurse--among the servants?"

Inquiries were immediately made.

"No," was the answer.

"I'll send over a handy woman from Melmerbridge," said Dr. Mowbray; crack went his whip, and the gig-wheels splashed away through the mud.

A young man standing at the other side of the road, bareheaded and soaked to the skin, wondered whether the nurse would be sent at once that night. Then this young man continued his wild rapid walk up and down the country road, glancing up every moment at the feeble light that shone from the casement of that corner room on the upper floor.

Up and down, never pausing nor slackening his speed, fifty paces above the house and fifty below it, this unquiet spirit strode to and fro in the wind and the rain, like Vanderdecken on his storm-proof poop.

Once, when opposite the house, he touched the skirts of a woman crouching under the hedge; but he was not aware of it--he was gazing up at the window--and, before he passed that spot again the woman was gone.

The woman had crept stealthily across the road and through the open wicket. She was crouching behind the opposite hedge, on the rough grass-plot in front of the house. Once more the swinging steps passed the house and grew faint in the distance. The crouching woman sprang erect, darted noiselessly up the steps, and grasped the door-handle. She turned the handle and pushed gently, the door was neither locked nor bolted; it opened. The woman entered, and closed the door softly behind her. She stooped, listening. The footsteps passed the house without a pause or a hitch, as before. She had been neither seen nor heard--from without. A horrid smile disfigured the woman's livid face. She stood upright for an instant, her hand raised to her forehead, pausing in thought.

A lamp was burning low on the table in the passage; its dull light flickered upon the dark, fierce, resolute face of Elizabeth Ryan.

The dark hair fell in sodden masses about a face livid and distorted with blind fury, the dark eyes burned like live coals in the dim light, the cast of the firm wide mouth was vindictive, pitiless; the fingers of the right hand twitched terribly; once they closed spasmodically upon a loose portion of the ragged dress, and wrung it so hard that the water trickled down in a stream upon the mat, and at that moment murder was written in the writhing face. The left hand was tightly clasped.

Elizabeth Ryan had crept into the chamber of death, in the Blue Bell at Melmerbridge, during the five minutes' absence of the innkeeper. It was she who had quitted that room by the window. She had fled wildly over the moor, maddened by a discovery that scorched up the grief in her heart, setting fire to her brain, changed in a flash from a bewildered, heartbroken, forlorn creature to a ruthless frantic vendetta. The substance of that discovery was hidden in her clasped left hand.

She stood for a brief interval on the mat, then stepped stealthily forward towards the stairs. A light issued from an open door on the left, near the foot of the stairs. She peeped in as she passed. Stretched on a couch lay an old white-haired man, dressed as though it were mid-day instead of mid-night, in a tweed suit. Though asleep, his face was full of trouble. Nothing in this circumstance, nor in the conduct of the man outside walking to and fro in the storm, nor in the dim lights all over the house at this hour, struck Elizabeth Ryan as extraordinary. Her power of perception was left her; her power of inference was gone, except in direct relation to the one hideous project that possessed her soul. She crept softly up the stairs. They did not creak. She appreciated their silence, since it furthered her design.

As below, a light issued from an open door. She approached this door on tip-toe. A pair of small light shoes, with the morning's dust still upon them, stood at one side of the mat; someone had mechanically placed them there. When Elizabeth Ryan saw them her burning eyes dilated, and her long nervous fingers closed with another convulsive grasp upon the folds of her skirt.

She crossed the threshold and entered the room. The first thing she saw, in the lowered light of a lamp, was an old, puckered, wrinkled face just appearing over a barrier of eiderdown and shawls, and deep-set in an easy-chair. The brown, wrinkled eyelids met the brown, furrowed cheeks. The watcher slumbered and slept.

As yet the room wore none of the common trappings of a sick-room: the illness was too young for that. The book the sick girl had been reading last night lay open, leaves downward, on the chest of drawers; the flowers that she had picked on the way to church, to fasten in her dress, had not yet lost their freshness; the very watch that she had wound with her own hand last night was still ticking noisily on the toilet-table. Thus, to one entering the room, there was no warning of sickness within, unless it was the sight of the queer old sleeping woman in the great chair by the fireside, where a small fire was burning.

The stealthy visitor took two soft, swift, bold steps forward--only to start back in awe and horror, and press her hand before her eyes. She, Elizabeth Ryan, might do her worst now. She could not undo what had been done before. She could not kill Death, and Death had forestalled her here.

A cold dew broke out upon the woman's forehead. She could not move. She could only stand still and stare. Her brain was dazed. She could not understand, though she saw plainly enough. After a few moments she did understand, and her heart sickened as it throbbed. Oh that it would beat its last beat there and then! Oh if only she too might die! Standing, as she thought, in the presence of death for the second time that night, Elizabeth Ryan lifted her two arms, and prayed that the gracious cold hand might be extended to her also. In the quenching of the fires that had raged in her brain, in the reawakening of her heart's anguish, this poor soul besought the Angel of Death not to pass her by, praying earnestly, pitifully, dumbly, with the gestures of a fanatic.

She lowered her eyes to face for the last time her whom death had snatched from vengeance. She started backwards, as she did so, in sudden terror. What was this? The dead girl moved--the dead girl breathed--the counterpane rose and fell evenly. Had she been mistaken in her first impression? Elizabeth Ryan asked herself with chattering teeth. No! More likely she was mistaken now. This must be an illusion, like the last; she had been terrified by a like movement in the room at the Blue Bell, and it had proved but a cruel trick of the sight and the imagination; and this was a repetition of the same cruel trick.

No, again! The longer she looked the more distinct grew this movement. It was regular, and it was gentle. Faint yet regular breathing became audible. The face on the pillows was flushed. Death had stopped short at Melmerbridge; Death had not travelled so far as this--at least, not yet: there was still a chance for vengeance!

But Elizabeth Ryan had undergone a swift psychological reaction. That minute in which she stood, as she believed, for the second time that night in the presence of Death--that minute in which her spirit yearned with a mighty longing to be stilled, too, for ever--that minute had done its work. In it the mists of passion had risen from the woman's mind; in it the venom had been extracted from her heart. Her eyes, now grown soft and dim, roved slowly round the room. They fell curiously upon something upon a chair on the far side of the bed--a heap of light hair; they glanced rapidly to the head on the pillows--it was all but shaved.

Elizabeth Ryan raised her clenched left hand; the hand trembled--the woman trembled from head to foot. She laid her arms upon the chest of drawers, and her face upon her arms, and stood there until her trembling ceased. When at last she raised her head, her eyes were swimming, but a bright determination shone out through the tears.

She moved cautiously round the foot of the bed and dipped her left hand into the heap of light hair, and for the first time unclasped her hand. The hand was lifted empty, but the heap of Alice's hair remained a heap of her hair still; it had but received its own again.

This strange yet simple act seemed to afford the performer the deepest relief; she gazed kindly, even tenderly, on the young wan face before her, and sighed deeply. Then hastily she retraced her steps to the door. At the door she stopped to throw back a glance of forgiveness and farewell.

Now it happened that the head of the sleeping girl had slipped upon the pillow, so that its present position made the breathing laboured.

Quick as thought, Mrs. Ryan recrossed the room from the door, and, with her woman's clever light hand, rearranged the pillows beneath the burning head, and smoothed them gently. But in doing this the silent tears fell one after the other upon the coverlet; and when it was done some sudden impulse brought Elizabeth upon her knees by the bedside, and from that bleeding heart there went up a short and humble prayer, of which we have no knowing--at which we can make no guess, since it flew upward without the weight of words.

How cold, how bitter, how piercing were the blast and the driving rain outside! In the earlier part of the night their edge had not been half so keen; at all events, it did not cut so deep. Where was a woman to turn on such a night? A woman who had no longer any object in life, nor a single friend, nor--if it came to that--a single coin: what was such an one to do on a night like this?

The picture of the warm, dry bedroom came vividly back to Elizabeth Ryan; she felt that she would rather lie sick unto death in that room than face the wild night without an ailment more serious than a broken, bleeding heart. She looked once back at the dim light in the upper window, and then she set her face to Gateby. Before, however, she was many paces on her way, quick footsteps approached her--footsteps that she seemed to know--and a man's voice hailed her in rapid, excited tones:

"Are you from Melmerbridge?"

"Yes," she faltered. What else dared she say. It was true, too.

"Then you are the nurse! you are the nurse! I have been waiting for you, looking out for you, all the night, and now you have come; you have walked through the storm; God bless you for it!"

His voice was tremulous with thanks and joy; yet trouble must have clouded his mind, too, or he never could have believed in his words.

"I do not understand--" Mrs. Ryan was beginning, but he checked her impatiently:

"You are the nurse, are you not?" he cried, with sudden fear in his voice. "Oh don't--don't tell me I'm mistaken! Speak--yes, speak--for here we are at the house."

The pause that followed well-nigh drove him frantic. Then came the answer in a low, clear voice:

"You are not mistaken. I am waiting to be shown into the house."

XXXI

THE CHARITY OF SILENCE

Dr. Mowbray, coming first thing in the morning, declared that the patient had passed a better night than he had hoped for; but he told Colonel Bristo privately that he must count on nothing as yet, and be prepared for anything.

To his surprise and delight, the physician found his patient in the hands of a gentle, intelligent nurse. This was the more fortunate since he had failed to find in Melmerbridge a capable woman who was able to come. Whoever the dark, shabbily-dressed woman was, she must not be allowed to leave the bedside for the present. "She is a godsend," said Dr. Mowbray on coming downstairs. Colonel Bristo, for his part, knew nothing of the woman; he supposed she was from Gateby. Mrs. Parish, no doubt, knew all about her; and after the doctor's account of her services, the Colonel made no inquiries.

Edmonstone and Pinckney were to drive back to Melmerbridge with the doctor to attend the inquest on the body of the suicide. Before they started the Colonel called the two young men aside, and a brief, earnest colloquy took place.

During the drive Dr. Mowbray mentioned a strange report that had reached him before leaving Melmerbridge; it was noised in the village, at that early hour, that the dead man had moved one of his hands during the night.

"It will show you," the doctor said, "the lengths to which the rustic imagination can stretch. The fact is, they are terribly excited and primed with superstition, for there hasn't been a suicide in the parish in the memory of this generation. What is more," added the old gentleman, suddenly, "I'm not sure that there's been one now!"

There was some excuse, perhaps, for the string of excited questions reeled off on the spur of the moment by young Pinckney: "Why? How could it be anything else but suicide? Had they not got the pistol--Miles's own pistol? Had not Dr. Mowbray himself said that the bullet extracted fitted the one empty cartridge found in the revolver? Besides, Miles had not denied shooting himself when asked by Edmonstone what he had done."

"But did he admit that he had shot himself?" asked Dr. Mowbray, turning to Edmonstone.

"No, he did not."

"Was his manner, up to the last, that of a man who had deliberately shot himself?"

"No, it was not. It might have been an accident."

"Neither the one nor the other," said the doctor. "Now I'll tell you two something that I shall make public presently: a man cannot point a pistol at himself from a greater distance than two feet at the outside; but this shot was fired at three times that range!"

"How can you tell, sir?" asked Pinckney, with added awe and subtracted vehemence.

"The clothes are not singed; the hole might have been made by a drill, it was so clean."

The young man sat in silent wonder. Then Dick put a last question:

"You think it has been--murder?"

"Personally, I am convinced of it. We shall say all we know, and get an adjournment. At the adjourned inquest Colonel Bristo will attend, and tell us his relations with the dead man, who, it appears, had no other friend in the country; but to-day that is not absolutely necessary, and I shall explain his absence myself. Meanwhile, detectives will be sent down, and will find out nothing at all, and the affair will end in a verdict against some person or persons unknown, at best."

Dr. Mowbray's first prediction was forthwith fulfilled: the inquest was adjourned. The doctor at once drove back to Gateby with the two young men. As they drove slowly down the last hill they descried two strangers, in overcoats and hard hats, conversing with Colonel Bristo in the road. Philip Robson was standing by, talking to no one, and looking uncomfortable.

When the shorter of the two strangers turned his face to the gig, Dick ejaculated his surprise--for it was the rough, red, good-humoured face of the Honourable Stephen Biggs.

"What has brought you here?" Dick asked in a low voice when he had greeted the legislator.

By way of reply, Biggs introduced him to the tall, grave, black-bearded, sharp-featured gentleman--Sergeant Compton, late of the Victorian Mounted Police.

There was an embarrassed silence; then Philip Robson stepped forward.

"It was my doing," he said, awkwardly enough; and he motioned Dick to follow him out of hearing of the others. "I listened," he then confessed, "to a conversation between you and Miles. I heard you read a letter aloud. From what passed between you, I gathered that Miles was a blackleg of some kind, whom you were screening from the police. Miles found that I had overheard you, and swore to me that you were the victim of a delusion. When I reflected, I disbelieved him utterly. I copied the address of the letter you had written, and the next day I wrote myself to Mr. Biggs, describing Miles as well as I could, and saying where he was. I did not dream that Miles was a bushranger, even then--I thought he was merely a common swindler. However, that's the whole truth. Edmonstone, I'm sorry!"

Dick's first expression of contempt had vanished. Frank admissions turn away wrath more surely than soft answers. Besides, Robson had behaved well yesterday: without him, what might not have happened before Dr. Mowbray arrived?

"I believe," said Dick, "that you were justified in what you did, only--I'm sorry you did it."

Mr. Biggs was in close conversation with Colonel Bristo. Sergeant Compton stood aloof, silent and brooding; in the hour of triumph Death had baulked him of his quarry; his dark face presented a study in fierce melancholy.

"If only," the Colonel was saying piteously, "the tragedy could stop at the name of Miles! The scandal that will attach to us when the whole sensation comes to light is difficult to face. For my part, I would face it cheerfully if it were not--if it were not for my daughter Alice. And, after all, it may not annoy her. She may not live to hear it."

The last words were broken and hardly intelligible.

The rugged face of Stephen Biggs showed honest concern, and honest sympathy too. It did not take him long to see the case from the Colonel's point of view, and he declared very bluntly that, for his part, he would be glad enough to hush the thing up, so far as the dead man's past life was concerned (and here Mr. Biggs jingled handfuls of coins in his pockets), but that, unfortunately, it did not rest with him.

"You see, Colonel," he explained, "my mate here he's been on Ned Ryan's trail, off and on, these four years. Look at him now. He's just mad at being cheated in the end. But he's one of the warmest traps in this Colony--I mean out in Vic.; and, mark me, he'll take care to let the whole Colony know that, if he warn't in at Sundown's death, he was nearer it than any other blessed 'trap.' There's some personal feeling in it, Colonel," said Biggs, lowering his voice. "Frank Compton has sworn some mighty oath or other to take Ned Ryan alive or dead."

"Suppose," said the Colonel, "we induce your friend here to hold his tongue, do you think it would be possible for us to let this poor fellow pass out of the world as Miles, a squatter, or, at worst, an unknown adventurer?"

"How many are there of you, Colonel, up here who know?"

"Four."

"And there are two of us. Total six men in the world who know that Ned Ryan, the bushranger, died yesterday. The rest of the world believes that he was drowned in the Channel three months ago. Yes, I think it would be quite possible. Moreover, I don't see that it would do the least good to any one to undeceive the rest of the world; but Frank Compton--"

"Is he the only detective after Miles in this country?"

"The only one left. The others went back to Australia, satisfied that their man was drowned."

"But our police--"

"Oh, your police are all right, Colonel. They've never so much as heard of Sundown. They're easily pleased, are your police!"

It was at this point that Dr. Mowbray reappeared on the steps. Colonel Bristo went at once to learn his report, which must have been no worse than that of the early morning, for it was to speak of the inquest that the Colonel hurried back the moment the doctor drove away.

"Dick," said he, in a voice that all could hear (Edmonstone was still talking to Robson--Compton still standing aloof), "you never told me the result. The inquest is adjourned; but there is a strong impression it seems that it is not a case of suicide after all, gentlemen--but one of wilful murder."

The personal bias mentioned by Biggs had not altogether extinguished ordinary professional instincts in the breast of Sergeant Compton; for, at this, his black eyes glittered, and he pulled his patron aside.

Biggs, in his turn, sought a private word with the Colonel.

"Compton," he said, "is bent on at once seeing the spot where Ryan was shot. Will you send some one with us? I'll bring my man back this evening, and we'll try to talk him over between us; but I fear it's hopeless."

Between three and four that afternoon the body of Jem Pound was found at the bottom of the cliff, a mile from Melmerbridge, among the fir-trees.

Between eight and nine that evening, in the little gun-room at the shooting-box, Biggs--in the presence of Colonel Bristo--made a last effort to induce Sergeant Compton to join the conspiracy of silence regarding the identity of Miles, the Australian adventurer, now lying dead at Melmerbridge, with Sundown, the Australian bushranger, supposed to have been drowned in the Channel in the previous April. All to no purpose. The Sergeant remained obdurate.

"Mr. Biggs," said he, "and you, sir, I must declare to you firmly and finally that it is impossible for me to hold my tongue in a case like this. I will not speak of fairness and justice, for I agree that no one will be a bit the better off for knowing that Ned Ryan died yesterday instead of last spring. I will be perfectly candid. I will ask you to think for a moment what this means to me. It means this: when I get back to Melbourne I will be worth twice what I was before I sailed. The fact of having been the only man to disbelieve in Ryan's drowning, and the fact of having as near as a touch taken both Ryan and Pound alive, will make my fortune for me out there."

Honest Biggs rattled the coins in his pockets, and seemed about to speak.

"No, sir," said Compton, turning to his patron. "My silence won't be given--it cannot be bought. I have another reason for telling everything: my hatred for Ned Ryan--that death cannot cool!"

These words Compton hissed out in a voice of low, concentrated passion.

"I have not dogged him all these years for mere love of the work. No! He brought disgrace upon me and mine, and I swore to take him alive or dead. I keep my oath--I take him dead! All who know me shall know that I have kept my oath! As for Jem Pound, his mate and his murderer--"

The door opened, and the nurse stood panting on the threshold. Even in her intense excitement she remembered that she had left her charge sleeping lightly, and her words were low:

"What is it you say? Do you say that Jem Pound murdered my husband?" Colonel Bristo and the Sergeant started simultaneously. "Well, I might have known that--I might have told you that. But upstairs--I have been forgetting! I have been forgetting--forgetting! Yet when I heard you gentlemen come in here I remembered, and it was to tell you what I knew about Jem Pound that I came down."

Sergeant Compton had turned an ashen grey; his eyes never moved from the face of the woman from the moment she entered the room. Elizabeth Ryan crossed the room and stood in front of him. His face was in shadow.

"You, sir--I heard your voice as my hand was on the door-handle; and I seemed to know your voice; and, while I stood trying to remember whose voice it was, I heard what you said. So you will not let the dead man rest! So, since he escaped you by his death, you would bring all the world to hoot over his grave! Oh, sir, if the prayers of his wife--his widow--"

She stopped. The man had risen unsteadily from his chair. His face was close to hers. She sprang back as though shot.

Sergeant Compton whispered one word: "Liz!"

Biggs and the Colonel watched the pale dark woman and the dark pale man in silent wonder. There was a likeness between man and woman.

"Liz!" repeated the Sergeant in a low, hoarse voice.

"Who--who are you? Are you--are you--"

"I am Frank!"

"Frank!" she whispered to herself, unable to realise all at once who Frank had been--it was so long since there had been a Frank in her life. "What!" she exclaimed in a whisper; "not my brother Frank?"

"Yes, your brother Frank. But--but I thought you were out there, Liz. I thought he had long ago deserted you; and that made me thirst all the more--"

His sister flung herself at his feet.

"Oh, Frank! Frank!" she wailed. "Since the day I married I have spoken to none of my own kith and kin until this night. And this is how we meet! Frank!--Frank!"--her voice fell to a tremulous whisper--"do one thing for me, and then, if you are still so bitter against me, go away again. Only one thing I ask--a promise. Promise, for your part, to keep silence! Let the dead man--let the dead man sleep peacefully. If the whole truth will come out, come out it must; but don't let it be through you, Frank--never let it be through you! Speak. Do you promise?"

The low, tearful, plaintive tones ceased, and there was silence in the room. Then Francis Compton bent down, and lifted his sister Elizabeth in his arms.

"I promise," he whispered in a broken voice. "God knows you have suffered enough!"

XXXII

SUSPENSE: REACTION

Days of suspense followed, while Alice's life trembled in the balance. In what way these days were passed the watchers themselves scarcely knew: for it is among the offices of suspense to make word and deed mechanical, and life a dream. The senses are dulled; nothing is realised--not even death itself, when death comes. Afterwards you remember with horror your callousness: when all the time your senses have been dulled by the most merciful of Nature's laws. Afterwards you find that you received many an impression without knowing it. Thus Dick Edmonstone, for one, recalled a few things that he had quite forgotten, on his way south in the train afterwards.

He could feel again the wind lifting the hair from his head on the dark hilltop. He saw the crescent moon racing through foamy billows of clouds, like a dismasted ship before the wind. He felt the rushing air as he sped back to the post in the lonely road from which he watched all night that square of yellow light--the light through her window-blind. This faint yellow light shot beams of hope into his heart through the long nights; he watched it till dawn, and then crept wearily to his bed in the inn. When he roamed away from it, a superstitious dread seized him that he would return to find the light gone out for ever. The pale, faint light became to him an emblem of the faint, flickering life that had burnt so low. He would wildly hurry back, with death at his heart. Thank God! the light still burned.

In memory he could hear his own voice treating with a carter for a load of straw. He was again laying down with his own hands the narrow road with this straw; he was sitting half the day at his post in the gap of the hedge, watching her window; he was tasting again of the delight with which he watched the first vehicle crawl noiselessly across that straw.

These were among his most vivid recollections; but voices came back to him plainest of all.

The voices of the professional nurses, whispering where they little dreamt there was a listener; foreboding the worst; comparing notes with their last fatal cases; throwing into their tones a kind of pity worse than open indifference--perfunctory and cold. Or, again, these same voices telling how a certain name was always on the feverish lips upstairs.

"Ah, poor soul!" said they; "she thinks of nothing but him!"

Of whom? Whose name was for ever on her lips? The name of him to whom she had breathed her last conscious words?

Even so; for another voice had echoed through the silent house more than once, and could never be forgotten by those who heard it; the piercing, heart-rending, delirious voice of Alice herself, reiterating those last conscious words of hers:

"Hear what it was he said to me, and my answer--which is my answer still!"

What had Miles said? What had been Alice's answer? Who would ever know? Not Dick; and these words came back to him more often than any others, and they tortured him.

But there were other words--words that had been spoken but yesterday, and as yet seemed too good to be true; the words of the kind old country doctor:

"She is out of danger!"

* * * * *

And now Dick Edmonstone was being whirled back to London. Alice was declared out of danger, so he had come away. Alice was not going to die. Her young life was spared. Then why was Dick's heart not filled with joy and thanksgiving? Perhaps it was; but why did he not show it? He who had been frenzied by her peril, should have leapt or wept for joy at her safety. He did neither. He could show no joy. Why not?

Edmonstone arrived in town, and broke his fast at an hotel--he had travelled all night. After breakfast he drove, with his luggage, first to the offices of the P. and O. Company in Leadenhall Street. He stepped from that office with a brisker air; something was off his mind; something was definitely settled. On his way thence to Waterloo he whistled lively tunes in the cab. By the time he reached Teddington and Iris Lodge, the jauntiness of his manner was complete. In fact, his manner was so entirely different from what his mother and Fanny had been prepared for, that the good ladies were relieved and delighted beyond measure for the first few minutes, until a something in his tone pained them both.

"Oh yes," he said, carelessly, in answer to their hushed inquiry, "she is out of danger now, safe enough. It has been touch and go, though."

He might have been speaking of a horse or dog, and yet have given people the impression that he was a young man without much feeling.

"But--my boy," cried Mrs. Edmonstone, "what has been the matter with you? We never heard that you were ill; and you look like a ghost, my poor Dick!"

Dick was standing in rather a swaggering attitude on the hearthrug. He wheeled round, and looked at himself in the large glass over the chimneypiece. His face was haggard and lined, and his expression just then was not a nice one.

"Why," he owned, with a grating laugh, "I certainly don't look very fit, now you mention it, do I? But it's all on the surface. I'm all right, bless you! I'm not on speaking terms with the sexton yet, anyway!"

A tear stood in each of Mrs. Edmonstone's dark eyes. Fanny frowned, and beat her foot impatiently upon the carpet. What had come over Dick?

He must have known perfectly well the utter falsity of the mask he was wearing; if not, self-deception was one of his accomplishments. Or perhaps those tears in his mother's eyes caused a pang of shame to shoot through him. In any case, he made a hasty effort to change his tone.

"How are you two? That is the main point with me. Bother my seediness!"

"We are always well," sighed Mrs. Edmonstone.

"And Maurice?"

"Maurice was never brisker."

"Lucky dog!" said Dick, involuntarily; and the bitterness was back in his tone before he knew it.

"Your friend Mr. Flint," said Mrs. Edmonstone, "is Maurice's friend now, and Mr. Flint finds all his friends in good spirits."

"Do you mean to say old Jack is doing the absentee landlord altogether? Did he never go back?"

"Yes. But he is over again--he is in town just now," said Mrs. Edmonstone.

"He's fast qualifying for buckshot, that fellow," said Dick, with light irony.

"I rather fancy," observed Fanny, with much indifference, "that you will see him this evening. I half think he is coming back with Maurice." And Miss Fanny became profoundly interested in the world out of the window.

"Good!" cried Dick; and there was a ring of sincerity in that monosyllable which ought to have made it appreciated--as much as a diamond in a dustheap!

In a little while Dick went up to his room. He had letters to write, he said; but he was heard whistling and singing as he unpacked his portmanteau. Neither of the ladies saw much more of him that day. They sat together in wretched silence; there was some constraint between them; they felt hurt, but were too proud to express the feeling even to each other. The fact was, they did not quite know why they felt hurt. Dick had greeted them kindly enough--it was only that there was a something in his manner which they didn't like and could not understand. And so both these women longed heartily for evening, and the coming of Maurice and merry Mr. Flint--Fanny, however, the more heartily of the two.

Maurice and Flint did come--in excellent time, too; and it so happened that when the little table-gong rang out its silvery call, Mr. Flint and Miss Edmonstone were still perambulating the dewy, twilit tennis-court. It further happened, in spite of the last-mentioned fact, that Miss Fanny contrived to reach the drawing-room before her mother was finally disentangled from the wools and needles that beset her at most hours of the day; that mother and daughter were the last to enter the little dining-room, hand in hand; that Miss Fanny looked uncommonly radiant, and that the usual stupid tears were standing in gentle Mrs. Edmonstone's soft, loving eyes.

Dick was unusually brilliant in his old place at the head of the table--so brilliant that his friend Flint was taken by surprise, and, for his own part, silenced; though it is true that the latter had something on his mind which would have made him, in any case, worse company than usual. Dick rattled on incessantly, about the dales, and the moors, and the grouse, as though his stay in Yorkshire was associated with no tragedy, and no sickness nigh unto death. His mood, indeed, was not taken up by the others, but he did not seem to notice or to mind that; only when he was quiet, all were quiet, and the sudden silences were embarrassing to all save their prime author.

The longest and most awkward of these pauses occurred while the crumbs were being removed. When the maid had withdrawn, Dick drank of his wine, refilled his glass, held it daintily by the stem between finger and thumb, leant back in his chair, and proceeded deliberately to break the spell.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, speaking the trite words in the same disagreeable tone that had pained the ladies that morning, "I am going to make you a little speech; a very little one, mind, so don't look uncomfortable--you needn't even feel it."

He glanced from one to another of them. They did look uncomfortable; they felt that somehow Dick was not himself; they heartily wished he would be quiet. His manner was not the manner to carry off a sneer as so much pleasantry.

Dick continued:

"All good things must come to an end, you know--and, in fact, that's my very original text. Now look at me, please--mother, look at your sheep that was lost: thanks. You will, perhaps, agree with me that I'm hardly the fellow I was when I landed; the fact being that this beautiful British climate is playing old Harry with me, and--all good things come to an end. If I may class myself among the good things for a moment--for argument's sake--it seems to me that one good thing will come to an end pretty soon. Look at me--don't you think so?"

The wretched smile that crossed his lean, pale face was not at variance with his words. He was much altered. His cheeks were sunken and bloodless, dark only under the eyes. His eyes to-night were unnaturally bright. His lips too were bloodless; to-night they were quivering incessantly. His question was left unanswered, as he meant that it should be. Flint was trying mentally to compute the quantity of wine his friend might possibly have taken; the others could not have spoken at that moment even if they would.

"Now," continued Dick, still toying with his wine, "the country I left a few months ago never allows a man to fall into my unhappy plight. It puts a man in good health at the beginning, and keeps him in it to the end, somewhere in the nineties. Why, Maurice, if he went out there, would find that he has never known what health is! Fanny, we know, is a hardy plant, and would thrive anywhere; yet she was made for the life out there, if girl ever was. As for you, mother, it would clap twenty years on to your dear old life--no, it would make you twenty years younger. No one who has once lived there will live anywhere else. Even old Flint here is dying to go back; he confessed as much last month. Now what I say is this: all good things, etcetera--England among them. Therefore let us all go out there together, and live happily ever afterwards! Stop; hear me out, all of you: it's arranged already--I go out first, to stock the station, and all the rest of it. The fact is, I booked my passage this morning! Come, you have had good patience; my speech, like better 'good things,' has come to an end!"

His tone had changed from half-jest to whole earnest--from earnestness to ardour--from ardour to something bordering on defiance. But, with the last word scarcely out of his mouth, he checked himself, and ejaculated below his breath: "Good heavens!"

Mrs. Edmonstone had rushed sobbing from the room.

No one followed her. The others stared blankly, then indignantly, at Dick, in whose face concern began to show itself. Then young Maurice spoke up.

"If I were you," he said hotly to his brother, "I'd go after her, and tell her you have taken too much wine, and beg her pardon for making a fool of yourself!"

Dick darted an angry glance at him, but rose and stalked from the room. In point of fact, the wine had not had much to do with it--no more and no less than it has to do with anybody's after-dinner speech. At the same time, Dick had not been altogether in his right senses, either then or any time that day. He found his mother weeping as though her heart would break; whereat his own heart smote him so that he came to his senses there and then, and knelt in humility and shame at her feet.

"Dearest mother, forgive me!" he murmured again and again, and took her hand in his and kissed it.

"But are you--are you really going back--back over the seas?" she sobbed.

"Yes. I can't help it, mother! No one knows how miserable I have been over here. Forgive me--forgive me--but I can't stay! I can't indeed! But--but you shall come out too, and the others; and your life will be happier than it has been for years, once you are used to it."

Mrs. Edmonstone shook her head.

"No; it is impossible," she said with sudden decision.

"How so? Both Fanny and Maurice, once when I sounded them--"

"Fanny will never go, and I cannot leave her."

"Why? Mother dear, what do you mean?"

"I mean that your sister is going to be married."

Married! The mere word ought not to have cut him to the heart; yet, in the state that he was in then, it did. He rose uncertainly to his feet.

"You take my breath away, mother! I know of nothing. Whom is it to?"

"Can you ask?"

"I cannot guess."

"Then it is to your friend, Mr.--no, Jack--Jack Flint."

"God bless old Jack!"

That was what Dick said upon the instant. Then he stood silent. And then--Dick sank into a chair, and laid his face upon his hands.

"I can go out alone," he whispered. "And--and I wish them joy; from my heart I do! I will go and tell them so."

XXXIII

HOW DICK SAID GOOD-BYE

The month was October; the day Dick's last in England. Both the day and the month were far spent: in an hour or two it would be dark, in a week or so it would be November. This time to-morrow the R.M.S. Rome, with Dick on board, would be just clear of the Thames; this time next month she would be ploughing through the Indian Ocean, with nothing but Australia to stop her.