Chapter XVIII: A Faithful Servant

For Ralph, in the period of forced inactivity that followed, existence became a nightmare; the charge against him being one of murder, bail was not granted, and his innocence, instead of making his incarceration tolerable, added to its horror. He felt stifled, and raged at being shut up within the four walls of a cell in this glorious summer weather, when, but for the crass imbecility of some over-zealous detective, he might have been luxuriating in the sunshine with Gwendolen on the Thames. By degrees, too, a morbid nervousness took possession of him. When brought before the magistrates he was astounded at the weight of evidence that seemed to have been piled up against him in the interval; what a clever counsel for the Crown might make of it all he was afraid to think, and talking about it to Mr. Tracy afterwards, frankly admitted that he was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

"If I'm committed for trial," he said, when, instead of being discharged as he expected, he was remanded for a week, "I shall feel that I am half way to the gallows. These lawyers are the very devil, and I don't believe a saint would emerge from cross-examination with a rag of character left."

Mr. Tracy reassured him then, and Gwendolen cheered him up by her loving sympathy.

"Mother and I have seen Melville," she said, "and we will not leave a single thing undone to put an end to this horrible blunder with the enquiry before the magistrates. I can't believe that it will be possible to twist facts into evidence enough to justify your committal. It will be all right next time, and I shall insist upon being married to you by special licence directly you are discharged, as a sort of vote of confidence in you."

She would not allow him to guess how anxious she was, and spared him all knowledge of how strongly the tide of public opinion was running against him; but at the Manor House, when alone with her mother, she broke out into a storm of indignation against her neighbours.

"It shakes one's faith in human nature," she said passionately, "that anyone can be found to believe such a preposterous charge. Of course Ralph knew he would be Sir Geoffrey's heir, and to suggest that he would commit murder to antedate his possession by a few years is absurd. And then all this haggling about minutes! Of course any man would change his clothes before bothering to get himself a whiskey and soda. If there hadn't been such an awful storm, Ralph would not have discovered the murder at all; he would have gone straight up to The Grange without looking into Sir Geoffrey's room."

For it was upon the time spent by Ralph in the boathouse that the police were at present chiefly relying to substantiate the charge against him; they showed that the moment suggested by the doctor as that when the fatal shot took effect must have synchronised with Ralph's arrival in the boathouse, and there was absolutely no evidence to show that anyone else had been there at all. Mr. Tracy's suggestion that the murderer would scarcely be so foolish as to leave his blood-stained garments lying on the floor was heard politely, but not accepted as sufficient to warrant a discharge, and the request of the police for a remand, pending further investigation, was acceded to without dissent. So for another week they were obliged to possess their souls in patience.

But while upon Gwendolen Ralph's arrest had only the effect of increasing her love and developing her mental activity on his behalf, upon Lavender Sinclair its effect was very different.

When she reached home, after parting from Melville at Waterloo on the evening of the murder, she broke down physically. During the row from Fairbridge to St. Martin's Lock she contracted a bad chill, which compelled her to keep her bed. This, indeed, she was only too glad to do. In her darkened room she lay with her throbbing head buried in the pillows, as if to exclude from her sight the daylight that only served to remind her of the work going on in the world; it would be someone's work to trace the man who fired the shot, of which the sound still rang in her ears, and when he was found----. She fought against her illness, which was real enough. If she became delirious she might talk, and part of her penance for the future would be the guard that she must ever keep upon her tongue. She almost feared to sleep, lest an only partially unconscious brain should prompt her to babble of that which she had seen. Gently, but firmly, she insisted upon being left alone, and in her solitude she struggled to be well.

At first she kept aloof from all news of the world outside; would see no papers, and checked Lucille's inclination to chatter, but soon this mood was replaced by one of feverish desire to know what had happened at Fairbridge; at any rate, she must not be taken unawares, and every day's delay was a day's respite. In one of the weekly papers she read an account of the tragedy and of the inquest that followed, and derived some vague assurance from the frank admission of the police that they were absolutely without a clue.

This relaxed the tension of her nerves, and when the next morning dawned, she felt less ill and better able to resume her ordinary life. She drew up the blinds and threw open the window; presently she would go for a drive and let rapid motion through the fresh air banish the last traces of the headache that had tortured her since--then. If only she dared she would call at Jermyn Street, but her promise not to write to or call on Melville must be kept. If she had kept her former promise to remain in the boat how much agony she would have escaped!

She turned away from the window and looked round her room; she had means to gratify all reasonable desires, and she was cat-like in her fondness for warmth and soft rugs and cushions. All down one wall of her bedroom was a broad settee spread thickly with down pillows and covered with magnificent opossum rugs. Curtains, draped tent fashion from the ceiling, screened this divan from every draught, and Moorish lanterns, filled with scented oil, illumined it by night. An inlaid Syrian table stood near at hand, and there was a suggestion of Oriental luxury about the place that seemed to bar anything not conducive to repose. From a hanging wardrobe Lavender took a comfortable peignoir, a French creation of billowy chiffon and lace and ribbons, and leaving the windows open, stretched herself upon the divan and pulled up the rugs breast high; and while she lay there waiting for her maid to come to her, her thoughts wandered to what she stood to lose if any change occurred in her life other than the one she might voluntarily make by marrying Sir Ross Buchanan.

Except Melville, no one knew she had ever been Sir Geoffrey's wife, and she might rely upon his respecting her wish for the secret to be preserved now that she was in possession of this terrible secret of his. Sir Geoffrey had held his peace about the past in which she had figured, and it might be buried with him in his grave; the fear of prosecution for her bigamous marriage with Mr. Sinclair, which Melville had conjured up so vividly before her, was removed as well, and she could continue her indolent existence as his widow at The Vale, or burst forth into a period of splendour as the wife of the Scotch millionaire. No one knew of the picnic up the river, and the procrastination, in which she had acquiesced through terror and physical illness, had proved the safest and wisest policy after all. Of such an offence as being an accessory after the fact in any crime, Lavender, in her rather uneducated state, had no idea; if she had ever heard the phrase, it conveyed no meaning to her. She would acquiesce in a policy of absolute silence--forget her individuality as Lady Holt, and resume her ordinary life as the widow of the estimable Mr. Sinclair, who had provided for her maintenance on a scale that coincided so accurately with her desires.

Lucille tapped gently at the door and opened it softly in case her mistress should be still asleep, but when she saw the open window and the vacant bed she came in briskly, pleased to know that Lavender must be better.

"I am glad," she said with a smile, "you are better?"

"Much better," said Lavender; "well, and more than ready for some breakfast."

"That is good," the maid replied, and disappeared to return with an inviting tray, which she placed on the table by Lavender's side; and while Lavender, reclining on the divan, enjoyed her breakfast thoroughly, Lucille busied herself about the room and chatted pleasantly of trifles.

Presently Lucille removed the tray, and, sitting on a low chair by Lavender's side, began to brush out her mistress's hair, while Lavender leant on one arm with her face turned towards the wall.

"I didn't like to mention it to you while you were so ill," Lucille remarked, "but have you heard the sad news about Mr. Ashley's uncle? Shot in his own summer house!"

"Yes," Lavender replied; "I read about it yesterday." She spoke steadily; she had better get accustomed to hearing the crime talked about, but still she was glad her face was averted.

"There's some more about it in the papers to-day."

"Is there?" said Lavender sharply. "Have they found out who did it?"

"Oh, no," said Lucille; "there doesn't seem to be any clue at all."

Lavender drew a deep sigh of relief; she could not be sufficiently grateful for the extraordinary presence of mind which Melville had displayed throughout that awful journey from Fairbridge. If he had not seen the handkerchief which she dropped by the ha-ha they might both be under arrest already. But other thoughts were passing through Lucille's mind.

"There's nothing about the murderer," she said, "but there is an advertisement saying that if Lady Holt will apply to some solicitors she will hear of something to her advantage. Did I pull your hair?"

For Lavender started perceptibly.

"Where is the advertisement? I should like to see it."

"I thought it would interest you," Lucille replied, "for the first time Mr. Ashley called here you told me he might ask for Lady Holt, and that if he did I was to come and let you know. Is Lady Holt a friend of yours?"

"Let me see the advertisement," said Lavender again, and Lucille went to fetch the morning paper. While she was gone, Lavender considered as rapidly as possible what she had better do. For ten years Lucille had been with her, a companion rather than a servant, the trusted and trustworthy recipient of all her confidences; and Lavender, on her part, had played the friend rather than the mistress to this otherwise friendless woman, had made her life bright and happy, and reaped the reward of being served with fidelity and devotion. Never once had Lucille presumed upon her relations with her employer, and in believing that she placed her mistress's interests above her own Lavender judged rightly. Lucille returned and gave the newspaper to Lavender, who read the paragraph with trembling eagerness; she must give some explanation to Lucille, and the true explanation was also the politic one to give. She turned round and looked the other woman in the eyes.

"It is for me, Lucille," she said in a low voice. "I was once Sir Geoffrey Holt's wife."

Lucille gasped.

"That is your husband that's been murdered? Oh, you poor dear! What an awful thing!" But her sympathy was not commensurate with her curiosity. "And you divorced him, I suppose, and he repented and left you some of his money, and now they want to know where you are so that they can hand it over to you. That's the something to your advantage, I suppose. Will you go and see about it to-day?"

The rapidity with which Lucille invented an entire story to fit in with her views of probabilities bewildered Lavender.

"Oh, no," she said; "that isn't it at all. They must never know where I am. They must think I am dead, as I always thought he was when I--married again."

A glimmer of comprehension dawned in Lucille's face.

"You thought him dead when you married Mr. Sinclair, and he wasn't?"

Lavender nodded assent.

"I ran away from him and heard nothing of him, and thought he must be dead or he would have found me out and compelled me to go back to him again. And after seven years I thought I was free to marry again, and I married Mr. Sinclair. It was only the other day I learned that I was not free and that my marriage with Mr. Sinclair wasn't really any marriage. And now if they find out that I am Lady Holt, I may be prosecuted for bigamy; in any case, there will be a frightful scandal, and as I was never legally Mr. Sinclair's wife I shall lose all the money he left me and be ruined as well."

"Oh!" said Lucille slowly. "Of course they must never know."

"You won't betray me, will you?" said Lavender piteously.

"Betray you, my poor dear?" cried Lucille. "Whatever are you thinking of to suppose that I would betray anything that could do you harm?" She stroked Lavender's hand with fond tenderness, and Lavender turned upon her face and cried; the womanly sympathy was just what she needed at this moment, and scarcely any sympathy is so generous and full as that bestowed upon us by faithful and loyal servants. "No," said Lucille, "it's only because you've been run down and ill that such a thought could get into your head. You are safe so far as I am concerned. Besides, now both your husbands are dead, what affair is it of anybody's who or what you are? They'll never find you out after all these years. They wouldn't advertise if there were any other way of getting at you, and as for the something to your advantage, if you don't choose to go after it I don't suppose this Mr. Tracy will raise any objections; at least, he'll be unlike most of the lawyers I've ever heard of if he does."

By degrees Lavender was comforted and reassured, and under Lucille's ministrations recovered much of her former health and cheerfulness. Attended by Lucille, she spent the next few days driving and idling in the little garden before her house, and reverted practically to her mode of life before she first asked Melville to call upon her at The Vale. The horror of the tragedy was even beginning to fade from her mind; she could never forget it, but she might hope to hear no more about it. She was almost beginning to think she never would, when one day, as her carriage was turning into Hyde Park she caught sight of the newspaper posters fastened against the railings, blazoning forth the sensational news of the arrest of Mr. Ashley.