Chapter XIII: Thou Canst Not Say I DID It

O! my fear interprets. What! is he dead?
—SHAKESPEARE (_Othello_).

Across a lively interchange of words between Mrs. Geary and Mr. Villars, across Lady Lochore’s shrill laughter and malicious intervention, there fell a silence. It was as if a shadow had suddenly eaten up the light. Lady Lochore became rigid, and the dice-box dropped from her hand.—All looked towards the door. There stood a broad and placid figure, white-capped and white-aproned, with folded hands; a figure surely the very sight of which should have brought comfort and confidence. But Lady Lochore stared at it with terror on her face.

“Please, my lady, could I speak with you a minute?”

Sir David’s sister rose slowly and moved like an automaton across the room. She lifted her hand to her contracted throat.

“I am sorry to tell you, my lady, there is something seriously amiss.”

Lady Lochore spread out her arms as if groping for support. Her dry tongue clicked.

“I knew there was no use going to Sir David,” continued the unctuous whisper.

Sir David! The blackness suddenly passed away from before Lady Lochore’s eyes.

“Sir David, woman!” She clutched the housekeeper’s wrist and pinched it sharply.

“Yes, my lady.” Margery looked mildly surprised. “Him being always lost in stars, so to speak, and locked up in his tower.”

“Then he’s not ill?” Lady Lochore flung the servant’s hand away from her. She drew a deep breath, then gave a little rasping laugh. What news she had hoped for? Relief and disappointment ran through her like cross currents.

“Ill, my lady? Sir David? Thank God, no! Not as I know, my lady.”

Margery did not often show emotion beyond a well fixed point. But she was surprised; she really was.

“Please, my lady,” began the whisper again, and Lady Lochore bent for a moment a scornful ear. Then her laughter rang out again, louder this time.

“Excellent Nutmeg! What a story! You have been having toasted cheese for supper, sure!—Listen, good people: some one has been trying to break into Margery’s sacred chamber. Oh, fie, Mrs. Nutmeg!”

Her pale lips seemed withered with her forced merriment as she turned upon the trio still sitting round the green cloth. The gamblers halted in their renewed wrangle to give her an impatient attention. Little Priscilla, arrested in a yawn, twisted a small weary face over her shoulder to stare.

“Not my chamber,” said Mrs. Nutmeg, raising her voice slightly, but otherwise quite unmoved.

“Not yours.”

“No, my lady—the chamber over mine.”

“Mrs. Marvel’s!”

And once more Maud Lochore’s hysterical mirth broke forth. The next instant it was suddenly hushed, and stillness fell again upon them. Priscilla rose from the table and came forward three steps impetuously, then halted, crimsoning to the roots of her hair, clasping and unclasping her hands. The Dishonourable Caroline looked at her daughter for a second with a pale, hard eye, then said in a repressive tone curiously at variance with the meaning of her words:

“Thieves and housebreakers; we shall all be murdered in our beds! Let the men be called! Let search be made! Come, Priscilla.” She slowly waddled round to the girl’s side. “You shall remain in my room till the miscreants are captured. No doubt some of the gentlemen would stay within call.”

“The gentlemen—where are they?” asked Lady Lochore. Then bending her brow darkly on Margery: “But why did you not call the men?” she asked.

Margery pleated her apron.

“Please, your ladyship,” she answered, in that sort of whisper that is more effectively heard than the natural voice, “it was no thief, whoever it was. He knocked at Mrs. Marvel’s window and the window was opened to him.”

Lady Lochore gave a cry, a cry charged with a curious triumph as well as a stabbing remorse. Was her enemy delivered into her hands after all! Then that secret minute in the laboratory, that dire deed of impulse and opportunity, it had all been useless! For a brief black space she fought the thought in her heart. Well, who could tell, after all? Old Rickart was mad, mad as a hatter; and his theories, his famous discoveries might well prove but moonshine spun from his own crazy brain, while she, poor fool, was wearing out her short remnant of life with leaps and bounds, with senseless terrors, with weak repentances for a deed that perhaps had never been done! And if it were done? Up sprang her indomitable spirit. If it were done, it was well done! And, done or no, the hour of personal vengeance was vouchsafed her at the moment she had ceased to hope for it, least expected it. She would not be Maud Lochore, with the strength of death upon her, did she not use it to the full.

Old Villars rose from his seat, his face working with varied emotions: anger, greedy curiosity, low vindictive pleasure. The Dishonourable Caroline packed her daughter’s arm firmly under her own.

“It is time for bed,” she asserted.

But Priscilla wrenched herself from her mother’s grasp and stamped her foot.

“Where is Mr. Herrick?” she exclaimed, and burst into tears.

Meanwhile Lady Lochore was speaking in broken sentences of ejaculation and command: “Shame, disgrace upon the House of Bindon! How dared the creature bring her wanton ways under our roof? But it was well, order should be put to it all.”

“Take these candles, Margery,” she ordered, “and lead the way. My good friends, I crave your support. I am a daughter of this house. I have to defend its honour and expose those who would bring shame upon it. You see, you have all seen: I stand alone. My poor brother—” But her voice broke. Again the awful sickening qualm that she had been fighting against all the evening seized upon her. Of him she could not nerve herself to speak. Savagely rallying her strength, she took up her candle. “I must have some disinterested witnesses,” she went on. “Come and see me pluck the mask from a smooth hypocrite’s face. What’s the child sobbing for? Why doesn’t she go to bed as she is bid? Is she so very anxious to see Mrs. Marvel’s Romeo?”

With a cruel little laugh she passed on, disdaining Villars’ eagerly proffered arm.

“Thank you, but you had better follow behind, most faithful cavalier. How strange that both the other gentlemen should be missing! But we shall soon know which has the best excuse.”

Ellinor knelt brooding over her beloved, now cold to the heart again with the doubt how this might end, now reassured by the depth of his repose. There was nothing stertorous in the long easy breathing. A natural moisture had gathered on the sleeper’s brow. The fluttering irregularity of the pulse was settling down under her fingers into fuller, slower measure. That the “Good Woman’s” sleeping draught which she had herself prepared for David could produce so potent an effect was, she knew, impossible. But, however produced, it seemed, so far, beneficial.

It was for a space of time, almost happiness to see him sleep and in such peace, with the shadow of the smile her kiss had called up still upon his lips; to feel herself so necessary to him; to be alone with him and her secret in the night.

Not yet had she time to examine the wild conjectures flitting through her mind; not yet time to face the problem of saving her good name and his gentleman’s honour from the consequences of this most innocent love meeting. She wanted to taste this exquisite relief, to rest her soul upon the brown-gold wings of hope before taking up her burden again.

Suddenly an insolent knock on the panel of her door startled her from her contemplation. She had but the time to spring to her feet; and upon the flash of a single thought, to unfasten her cloak and fling it hastily over David’s body, before the knock was repeated louder and the door thrown open.

Lady Lochore stood on the threshold.

Behind her was a peering group. Ellinor, in the first moment of strained fancy, saw a thousand lights, a thousand staring eyes, a sea of faces. The next instant the tide of blood began slowly to ebb from her brain. She felt herself strong, cold, indifferent. She knew she stood in night-garb before them all, she knew that the covered figure lay in full line of sight, in full light. She did not care. All her energies were concentrated in one fierce resolve: she would save the honour of this helpless man, no matter at what cost. So long as she had life and could stand before him, no one should lift that cloak to see who lay beneath it.

She took her post and faced the intruders:—Lady Lochore, with harpy countenance, craning forward, greedy of vengeance; Mr. Villars, with goatish face, looking over her shoulder, greedy of scandal; Margery with stony eyes, holding the candelabra up aloft to shed more light upon her enemy’s shame; Mrs. Geary, staring with pallid orbs.... Ellinor clenched her arms over her heaving breast.

But they who had expected so different a scene, and thought to find a panting young Romeo behind a curtain or a suave experienced Don Juan ready with explanations, a languorous Juliet or a distraught Elvira, halted almost with fear before the strange spectacle:—the prone figure, quite still, covered away, more sinister in its suggestion than even the sight of death; the menacing woman nobly robed from the spring of her full throat to the arch of her bare foot in heavy white folds, who, in her strength and purity, might have been a model for the vestal virgin guarding her sacred fire.

Lady Lochore’s indictment froze unspoken upon her lips; her face became set as in a mask of terror; the hand flung out in gesture of vindictive reprobation, finger ready pointed in scorn, shook as with palsy. Her eye quailed from the stern beauty of Ellinor’s face and dropped to the dark mask on the floor; there, clear of the folds, lay a slender hand, helpless and relaxed, with the gleam of a well-known signet-ring upon the third finger. Her mouth dropped open, her terrified eyes almost started from their sockets. She flung a bewildered look around, and met full the accusing glare of Barnaby’s gaze fixed upon her from the shadow of the window curtain. Barnaby, monstrous figure, as if her crime itself had taken shape, to call for retribution!

“Lady Lochore, what do you seek here? Have you not done evil enough already in this house!”

Ellinor’s voice pierced with direct accusation to Lady Lochore’s soul. For a second the guilty woman fairly struggled for breath. Margery saved her from self-betrayal:

“Her ladyship has surely seen enough!”

Their eyes met. These words, too, were capable of a terrible undermeaning. But the housekeeper contrived to convey through her expressionless gaze a sense of support. If this woman knew the secret, she knew it as an accomplice; there was help in the thought.

“You are right,” cried Lady Lochore shrilly, “we have seen enough! Forgive me, my friends, for having brought you to such a spectacle. Back, back, shut the door. I forbid—I forbid anyone to make a step forward. Leave the creature to her shame. Oh, it is horrible!”

She beat them back with her hands as she felt Villars’ eager pressure on one side and the slow, steady advance of Mrs. Geary on the other. She knew that their fingers itched to raise the veil of that cloak. If they had raised it, she must have gone mad!

Margery firmly closed the door.

“Really, my dear Lady Lochore,” complained Villars, “I think the matter should be further investigated. I can understand your delicate repugnance, but positively that figure on the floor—Deyvil take me—it looked like a corpse!”

“Fool, do you not see it was a ruse, a trick? Ah, it has made me sick—it is too disgusting——”

She wiped the sweat from her brow, and then in truth shuddered as from a deadly nausea.

Mrs. Geary, breathing hard and fanning herself with her handkerchief, had fixed her gaze on the speaker’s face. Her ideas moved very slowly, but they were sure.

“My dear, your whole behaviour is incomprehensible,” she said. “Mr. Villars is quite right. The matter should be investigated. Who, and in what condition, is the man under that woman’s cloak? It is our duty to elucidate the matter. Where is Mr. Herrick?”

“And for that matter, where is Colonel Harcourt?” sneered Mr. Villars.

“You shall not dare!” screamed Lady Lochore. She arrested a retrograde movement on either side with violently extended arms. “Out—back to your rooms, all of you! Are you devils, that you should want to gloat—”

Margery laid her left hand warningly on her elbow, and Lady Lochore broke off abruptly. What had she said? She had no idea herself. She could have flung herself on her face and shrieked aloud. The fearful deed was done! There could now be no more doubt. The brand of Cain was on her brow! Her death-sweat would not wash it off! It was burnt into the very bone!

She had thrust her guests into the passage with as little ceremony as Lady Macbeth dismissing the feasters. When the door of Ellinor’s outer room was closed between them and that something with Sir David’s signet-ring, the clutch at her heart relaxed a little and she could draw her breath with more ease. A sort of apathy began to creep over her. Margery was speaking and she could listen:

“Her ladyship being so delicate, it is quite natural she should be upset. It is her ladyship’s way to act on impulse. But to find such doings under her ladyship’s own roof, so to speak, and the person a close relation of the family! Mistress Marvel is a very clever lady, and whether the gentleman were drunk or asleep—” she looked up a second swiftly at Lady Lochore, and resumed the soothing trickle of speech, “her ladyship is quite right. So long as she knows how she stands with regard to Mrs. Marvel, there had better be no open scandal, such as leads,” said Margery piously, “to gentlemen’s duels and the like.”

There now came a patter of feet, a flutter of soft garments, a sobbing, uplifted voice—

“What was it? Which of them was it?”

“Priscilla!” Mrs. Geary caught her daughter’s wrist and the girl gave a cry of pain. “Disobedient child, back to your room!”

Priscilla whimpered and writhed; but the lady maintained her firm grasp and, with dignity accepting a candle from Margery’s candelabra, turned and marched the truant down the passage that led to her apartments.

Bowing and smirking, Mr. Villars, whose further advice and proffers of help were ruthlessly cut short by an impatient wave of Lady Lochore’s hand, had no resource but to betake himself with his triple light in the direction of his own quarters. He had no idea of letting matters rest there, but feigned nevertheless immediate submission.

They parted in the round gallery where three corridors met—two belonging to the modern house, the third leading to the tower-wing which had been the territory of their raid. Mrs. Nutmeg looked awhile after the bobbing lights; then, with a pensive smile upon her lips, laid down the candelabra, and after some effort, for it was not usually moved, closed the heavy oaken door which shut off the tower-wing from the newer parts of the Bindon House; locked it, and in silence placed the key in her apron pocket. Lady Lochore stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“It is as well, my lady, to know that no one can get in or out of the keep end—except through the window! The lower door I locked myself and Sir David of course has his key. But it is to be hoped that none of the disturbance reach him on his tower, poor gentleman!”

The horror returned to Lady Lochore’s eyes; how much did this secret, impassive woman really know of to-night’s deeds?

“Margery!” she cried.

“Yes, my lady, it is a grand night for the stars,” said Margery. And as the other groaned: “Will your ladyship come to bed?” she went on; “I humbly hope you have not let Master Rickart give you any of his queer drugs; you don’t look yourself. He has a kind of stuff, I have heard tell, that upsets people’s brains, fills them with queer fancies, like nightmare, so to speak. And there’s been madness in the village already. Master Rickart will have a deal to explain, I’m thinking. There, my lady, you’re shivering. Come to bed!”

Lady Lochore suffered herself to be led to her room; to be unclothed and assisted into the great four-post bed. Margery’s presence, her touch, was agony to her, and yet, when she left the room, Lady Lochore could have shrieked after her. But she closed her lips, closed her eyes.

At last she was shut in alone with her own conscience. She had never before been afraid, this woman who had been ready to take death as recklessly as she had taken life. After a while, she crawled out of bed and into the adjoining room. Above the throbbing of her pulses and her own gasping respiration she could hear the light breathing from the cot. Noiselessly she parted the curtains and let an opalescent ray of moon in upon the little sleeper.

Surely, surely, when she looked upon him for whom she had done it—her boy, whom a fool and a wanton would have conspired to keep out of his rights!—this horrible agony would leave her. She would be proud of her own courage, proud to have been strong enough to act. Crime! What was crime? The crime had been to try and defraud her child! “Ten drops madness!” How many drops could that phial have contained? Madness! Well, he had method enough in his madness to remember the way to his mistress’s arms!... “After that darkness”—the long, long Darkness! Her teeth chattered. What then? It was but retribution if his long sleep came upon him thus! Ah, they had caught the scheming widow red-handed. Red-handed was the word—oh, the hussy’s conscience was not so clear either! Why had she covered him up from their sight? Let her answer for it, she and her poisoning old father! But what was this fantastic water? Surely it was his hideous drug, little as she had had of it, that drove out this clammy sweat upon her, made her heart sink—sink with this awful sickness, filled her brain with those black fleeting shadows that even the child’s warm presence could not conjure away.

She closed her eyes, for it was almost as if the unconscious baby-visage added to her terror. But a glare swam before her inner vision, and out of it and in the midst of it, in some horrible fashion, Barnaby’s face with accusing eyes looked forth. What had brought Barnaby in Mrs. Marvel’s room—Barnaby who knew? She put her hands to her throat as if she still felt the clutch of his fingers upon it. The next instant, with a spasm of relief, she had almost called aloud with guilty Macbeth—“Thou canst not say I did it!” Let the deaf and dumb boy point and mouth and gibber, what he had seen he never could bear witness to.... Deaf and dumb—oh rare!

She stood beside the cot and gazed with a desperate tenderness upon it. There now slept the lord of Bindon! His fortune was secured, and by her deed. She bent her head to kiss the little chubby hand. But before her lips had reached it she shuddered back:—between her and her child’s hand rose the vision of another hand, pale, limp, with a signet-ring.