Chapter X: Part 10

“Not to-night,” he repeated. “Nor ever if we can help it. I am willing you should know that it is a matter of pride with me to get at the truth of this matter without subjecting you to further inquisition. Your position is a peculiar one and consideration should be shown you. But, mark me, the truth has got to be reached. Justice, morality, the future of your family and of the innocent girl who is its present representative all demand this. I shall leave no stone unturned. I can only say that, if possible, I shall leave your stone to be attended to last.”

“Inspector, you shall have this much from me. If you will wait two days, I think--I am almost certain--that a strand will be drawn from this tangle which will make the unravelling of the rest easy. It will be by another hand than mine; but you can trust that hand; it is an honest one.”

“I will wait two days, unless circumstances should arise demanding immediate action.”

And with no further talk we separated. But he understood me and I understood him and words would have added but little to our satisfaction.

LIV

The phone in my room rang early on the following morning. Haines had promised to let me know what kind of a night they had had, and he was promptly keeping his word.

All had gone well, so far as appeared. If he learned to the contrary later he would let me know. With this I had to be content for some three hours, then the phone rang again. It was Haines calling and this time to the effect that Nurse Wealthy was going out; that she had demanded an hour off, saying that she must have a breath of air or die. Miss Orpha had gladly given her the leave of absence she desired, and, to Haines’ own amazement, he had been put in charge of the sick room till her return, Mr. Edgar being much better this morning. No one knew where she was going but the moment she came back I should hear of it.

This was as I expected. But where was Wealthy going? Could she possibly be coming to see me in my hotel or was her destination Police Headquarters?

Strangely neither guess was correct. A third ring at the phone and I was notified that my presence was urgently desired at Mr. Jackson’s office, and upon hastening there I found her closeted with the lawyer in his private room. Her veil--a heavy mourning one,--was down and her attitude one of humility; but there was no mistaking her identity, and Mr. Jackson made no attempt at speaking her name, entering at once upon the momentous reason for which I had been summoned.

“I am sorry to have made you this trouble, Mr. Bartholomew,” said he, after having given orders that we were to be left undisturbed. “But this woman whom I am sure you recognize would not speak without your presence; and I judge that she has something important to tell.”

“Yes,” she insisted, moving a trifle in her restlessness. “I thought that nothing would ever make me talk; but we don’t know ourselves. I have not slept and do not think I shall ever sleep again unless I tell you--”

“Don’t you remember what I insisted upon in our talk last night, Wealthy? How it was not to me you must tell your story, but to--”

“I know whom you mean,” she interrupted breathlessly. “But it’s not for the police to hear what I have to say; only yourself and lawyer. I did you a wrong. You must know just what that wrong was. I have a conscience, sir. It’s troubled me all my life but never so much as now. Won’t you listen? Tell him to listen, Mr. Jackson, or I’ll leave this place and keep silence till I die.”

It was no idle threat. If she had been motherly and sweet in the old days, she was inflexible and determined in these. Under the kindliness of an affectionate nature there lay forces such as give constancy to the martyr. She would do what she said.

Looking away, I encountered the eye of Mr. Jackson. Its language was unmistakable. I felt myself in a trap.

But I would not yield without another effort. Smiling faintly, I said:

“You have never liked me, Nurse Wealthy; why, then, drag me into this? Let me go. Mr. Jackson will be a sympathetic listener, I know.”

“I cannot let you go; but I can go myself,” she retorted, rising slowly and turning her back upon me. She was trembling in sheer desperation as she took a step towards the door.

I could not see her go. I was not her sole auditor as on the night before. My duty seemed plain.

“Come back,” I called to her. “Speak, and I will listen.”

She drew a deep breath, loosened her veil, but did not lift it; then quietly reseated herself.

“I loved the Bartholomew family, all of them, till--You will excuse me, sir, I can hide nothing in telling my story--till you came to visit us and things began to go wrong.

“It was not liking I felt for them, but a passionate devotion, especially for Mr. Edgar, whose like I had never seen before. That he would marry Miss Orpha and that I should always live with them was as much a settled fact in my mind as the knowledge that I should some day die. And I was happy. But trouble came. The night which should have seen their engagement announced saw Mr. Bartholomew stricken with illness, and the beginning of changes, for which I blamed nobody but you.”

She was addressing me exclusively.

“I felt that you were working against us--against Mr. Edgar I mean,--and my soul turned bitter and my hatred grew till I no longer knew myself. That Mr. Edgar could do anything wrong--that he could deceive himself or Miss Orpha or the uncle who doted on him you could not have made me believe in those days. It was you, _you_ who did all the harm, and Mr. Bartholomew, weakened by illness, was your victim. So I reasoned as I saw how things went and how you were given an equal chance with Mr. Edgar to sit with him and care for him, nights as well as days.

“Then the lawyers came, and though I am not over bright, it was plain enough to me that something very wrong was being done, and I got all wrought up and listened and watched to see if I could get hold of the truth; and I saw and heard enough to convince me that Mr. Edgar’s chance of fortune and happiness with Miss Orpha needed guarding and that if worst came to worst, I must be ready to do my part in saving him from losing the property destined for him since he was a little child.

“I said nothing of this to any one, but I hardly slept in my eagerness to know whether the two documents your uncle kept in the little drawer near his head were really two different wills. I had never heard of anybody keeping two wills ready to hand before. But Mr. Bartholomew was not like other men and you could not judge him by what other men do. That I was right in thinking that these two documents were really two wills I soon felt quite sure from his actions. There was not a day he did not handle them. I often found him poring over them, and he always seemed displeased if I approached him too closely at these times. Then again he would simply lie there holding them, one in each hand, as if weighing them one against the other,--his eyes on the great picture of Miss Orpha and a look of sore trouble on his face. It was the same look with which I saw him in the last few days glance from your cousin Edgar to yourself, and back again, when by any chance you were both in the room at the same time.

“I often wanted to have a good talk with Miss Orpha about these strange unnatural doings; but I didn’t dare. I knew she wouldn’t listen; and so with a heart eaten into by anxiety, I went on with my nursing, loving her and Mr. Edgar more than ever and hating you almost to the point of frenzy.

“You must pardon me for speaking so plainly, but it is necessary for you to know just how I felt or you would never understand what got into me on that last night of your uncle’s life. I could see long before any of the rest of you that something of great importance was going to happen in the house before we slept. I had watched him too long and too closely not to draw certain conclusions from his moods. When he ordered his evening meal to be set out near the fireplace and sent for Clarke to dress him, I felt confident that the great question which was driving him into his grave was on the eve of being settled. But how? This was what I was determined to find out, and was quite prepared if I found things going against Mr. Edgar to do whatever I could to help him.

“You will think this very presumptuous in a woman in my position; but those two motherless children were like my own so far as feeling went, and if there is any excuse for me it lies in this, that I honestly thought that your uncle was under an influence which might force him to do in his present condition what in his right mind he would never dream of doing, no, not if it were to save his life.”

Here she paused to catch her breath and gather strength to proceed. Her veil was still down, but her breast was heaving tumultuously with the fierce beating of her heart. We were watching her carefully, both Mr. Jackson and myself, but we made no move, nor did we speak. Nothing must check her at this point of her narrative.

We showed wisdom in this, for after a short interval in which nothing could be heard but her quick gasps for breath, she spoke again and in the same tone and with the same fervor as before.

“The supper cleared and everything made right in the room, he asked for Clarke, and when he came bade him go for Mr. Edgar. I could not stay after that. I knew his wishes. I knew this, too, that the prospect of doing something, after his many days of worriful thinking, had brought him strength;--that he was in one of those tense moods when to cross him meant danger; and that I must be careful what I said and did if I was to serve him, and that I must urge Mr. Edgar to be careful, too.

“But no opportunity was given me to speak to him. He came up, with Clarke following close behind, and went directly to your uncle’s room just as I stole away to the cozy corner. When he came out my eye was at the slit in my screen. From the way he walked I knew that things had gone wrong with him and later when you came out, I saw that they had gone well with you. Your head was high; his had been held low.

“I like Clarke, and perhaps you think, because we were sitting there together waiting for orders that I took him into my confidence. But I didn’t. I was too full of rage and fear for that. Nobody must know my heart, nobody, at least not during this uncertainty. For I was still determined to act; to say or do something if I got the chance. When after going to your uncle’s room, he came back and said that Mr. Bartholomew was not yet ready to go to bed,--that he wanted to be left alone for a half hour and that I was to see from the place where I was that no one came to disturb him, I felt that the chance I wanted was to be mine, and as soon as Clarke went on to his room, I got up and started to go down the hall.

“I am giving a full story, Mr. Quenton, for I want you to know it all; so I will not omit a little thing of which I ought to be ashamed, but of which I was rather proud at the time. When I had taken a few steps I remembered that a half hour was a long time, and that Clarke might find it so and be tempted to take a look to see if I was keeping watch as he had bid me. Not that he seemed to doubt me, but because he was always over particular in every matter where his master was concerned. So I came back and going to my room brought out a skirt like the one I had on and threw it over a chair behind the screen so that a little bit of the hem would show outside. Then I went to your uncle’s door and with a slow turn of the knob opened it without a sound and stepped into the passage-way. To my great satisfaction the portières which separated it from the room itself were down and pulled closely together. I could stand there and not be seen, same as in the cozy corner.

“Hearing nothing, I drew the heavy hangings apart ever so slightly and peered through the slit thus made at his figure sitting close by the fireside. He was in his big chair with the wings on either side and placed as it was, only his head was visible. I trembled as I saw him, for he was too near the hearth. What if he should fall forward!

“But as I stood there hesitating, I saw one of his hands come into view from the side of his chair--the side nearest the fire. In it was one of the big envelopes and for an instant I held my breath, for he seemed about ready to toss it into the fire. But he soon drew it back again and I heard a moan, then the low cry, ‘My boy! my boy! I cannot.’ And I knew then what it all meant. That there were really two wills and that he was trying to summon up courage to destroy the one which would disinherit his favorite nephew. Rebelling against the act and determined to stop it if I could, I slipped into the room and without making any noise, for I had on my felt slippers, I crept across the floor nearer and nearer till I was almost at his back. His head was bent a little forward, but he gave no sign of being aware of my presence. I could hear the fire crackle and now and then the little moan which left his lips, but nothing else. The house was like the house of the dead; not a sound disturbed it.

“Taking another step, I looked over his shoulder. He was holding those two documents, just as I had frequently seen him in his bed, one in each hand. He seemed to be staring at them and now one hand would tremble and now the other, and I was so close that I could see a red cross scrawled on the envelope he held in his right--the one he had stretched out to the fire and drawn back again a few minutes before.

“Dared I speak? Dared I plead the cause of the boy I loved, that he loved? No, I didn’t dare do that; he was a terrible man when he was roused and this might rouse him, who could tell. Besides, words were leaving his lips, he was muttering aloud to himself and soon I could understand what he was saying and it was something like this:

“‘I’m too old--too weak--some one else must do it--Orpha, who will not know what she is doing, not I,--not I. There’s time yet--I asked the doctor--two weeks was what he said--Edgar! my boy, my boy.’ Every murmur ending thus, ‘My boy! my boy!’

“All was well then; I need not fear for to-night. To-morrow I would pray Edgar to exert himself to some purpose. Better for me to slide back to my place behind the portière; the half hour would soon be up--But just then I heard a different cry, his head had turned, he was looking up at his daughter’s picture and now a sob shook him, and then came the words:

“‘Your mother was a just woman; and she says this must be done. I have always heeded her voice. To-morrow you shall burn--’

“There he stopped. His head sank back against the chair top, and, frightened out of my senses, I was about to start forward, when I saw the one will--the one with the red mark on it slip from his hand and slide across the hearth close to the burning logs.

“That was all I needed to make me forget myself and rush to the rescue of Edgar’s inheritance. I was on my knees in front of the fire before I realized what I had done, and clutching at the paper, knelt there with it in my hand looking up at your uncle.

“He was staring straight at me but he saw nothing. One of the spells of brief unconsciousness which he sometimes had had come upon him. I could see his breast rise and fall but he took no note of me, and, thanking God in my heart, I reached up and drew the other will from his unresisting hand and finding both of the envelopes unsealed, I changed the will in the marked one for that in the other and laid them both in his lap.

“I was behind his chair again before I heard the deep sigh with which he woke from that momentary trance; and I was already behind the portière and watching as before when I heard a slight rattle of paper and knew that he had taken the two wills again into his hands.

“But he did nothing further; simply sat there and as soon as I reckoned that the half hour was nearly up and that Clarke would be coming from his room to attend him, I stole out of the door and into my cozy corner in time to greet Clarke when he showed himself. I was as tired as I had ever been in my life, and doubtful as to whether what I had done would be helpful to Edgar or the reverse. What might not happen before the morrow of which he spoke. I was afraid of my own shadow creeping ahead of me along the wall as I hurried to take my place at your uncle’s bedside.

“But I was more doubtful yet and much more frightened when upon asking him if I should not put away the documents I saw on the stand at his side (a pile such as I had often taken from his little drawer in the bed-head with the two I was most interested in on top) he said that he wanted me for another purpose and sent me in great haste downstairs on a foolish little errand to Miss Orpha’s room. He was again to be left alone and for a long while, too.

“I wanted to call Clarke, but while your uncle looked at me as he was looking then, I knew that it would be madness to interfere, so I sped away on my errand, conscious that he was listening for the opening and shutting of the door below as proof that I had obeyed him.

“Was it a whim? It could easily be that, for the object he wanted had belonged to his dead wife and men as sick as he have such whims. But it might just as well be that he wanted to be alone so as to look at the two wills again, and if that was his purpose, what would happen when I got back?

“The half hour during which I helped my poor, tired young lady to hunt through drawers and trunks for the little old-fashioned shawl he had sent for was one of great trial to me. But we found it at last and when I saw it in her hand and the sweetness of her face as she stooped to kiss it, I wanted to take her in my arms, but did not dare to, for something stood between us which I did not understand then but which I know now was my sin.

“There was a clock on her dresser and when I saw how late it was I left her very suddenly and started on my way back. What happened to me on my way up you’ve already heard me tell;--the Presence, which was foolishness, and afterwards, on reaching the stair-head, something which was not foolishness,--I mean the hearing of the two doors of your uncle’s room being unlocked, one after the other, in expectation of my coming. What had he been doing? Why had he locked himself in? The question agitated me so that it was quite a few minutes before I could summon up courage to enter the room. When I did, it was with a sinking heart. Should I find the two wills still lying where I had last seen them, huddled with the other papers on the little stand? If they were, I need not fret; but if they were in his hands or had been hidden away somewhere, the fear and anxiety would be insupportable.

“But my first glance towards the little stand reassured me. They were still there. There was no mistaking those stiff dark envelopes; and, greatly heartened, I stepped to the bedside and took my first look at him. He was lying with closed eyes, panting a little but otherwise peaceful. I spoke his name and held out the little shawl. As he took it he smiled. I shall never forget that smile, never. Had it been meant for me I would have fallen on my knees, and told him what I had done, but it was for that young wife of his, dead for some seventeen years now; and the delight I saw in it hardened rather than softened me and gave me courage to keep silent.

“He was ready now to have those papers put away, and drawing the key to the little drawer from under the pillow, he handed it to me and watched me while I lifted the whole pile of business documents and put them back in the place from which they had been taken; and as nothing in his manner showed that he felt the least suspicion that any of these papers had been tampered with, I was very glad to see them put away for the night. I remember thinking as I gave him back the key that nothing must hinder me from seeking an early opportunity to urge Mr. Edgar to exert himself to win his uncle’s favor back. I knew that he could if he tried; and, satisfied so far, I was almost happy.

“Now we know that your uncle himself had tampered with them while I was gone that good half hour after the little shawl. He had taken out one of the wills from its envelope and carried it--he who could hardly stand--down that concealed stairway to the box dangling from one of the walls below. But how could I dream of anything so inconceivable as that--I who had been in and out of that room and up and down the main staircase for fifteen years without a suspicion that the Presence which sometimes haunted that spot was actual and not imaginary. I thought that all was well for the night at least and was bustling about when he suddenly called me.

“Running to his bedside, I found him well enough but in a very earnest mood. ‘Wealthy,’ he said, ‘I am old and I am weak. I no longer trust myself. The doctor said when he left to-day that I had two full weeks before me; but who knows; a whiff of air may blow me away at any minute, and the thing I want done might go undone and infinite trouble ensue. I am resolved to act as though my span of life was that of a day instead of a fortnight. To-morrow morning we will have the children all in and I will wind up the business which will set everything right. And lest I should not feel as well then as I do now, I will tell you before I sleep just what I want you to do.’ And then he explained about the bowl and the candles which I was to put on the stand when the time came and made it all so clear that I was now thoroughly convinced that it was really his intention to have Miss Orpha burn the will he had not had the courage to burn himself, and this speedily,--probably in the early morning.

“I stared at him, stupefied. What if they looked at the will before they burned it. This, Mr. Edgar would be likely to do, and give himself away in his surprise and so spoil all. I must hinder that; and when Mr. Bartholomew fell into a doze I crept to Mr. Edgar’s room, putting out the lights as I went, and, finding him awake, I told him what I had done and said that he need not worry if we found his uncle in the same mind in the morning as now and ordered the will burned which was in the marked envelope, for that was the one which should be burned and which he would himself burn if he were the man he used to be and had not been influenced by a stranger. Meaning you, sir, of course. God forgive me.”

“So he _knew_!” I burst forth, leaping to my feet in my excitement. “That’s why he took it all so calmly. Why from that day to this he has found it so difficult to meet my eye. Why he has followed me, seeming to want to speak--to tell me something--”

I did not go on--a thousand questions were rising in my mind. I cast a quick glance at Mr. Jackson and saw that he was startled too and waited, with every confidence in his judgment, for him to say what was in his mind.

“At what time was this?” he asked, leaning forward and forcing her to meet his eye.

“I don’t know.” She tried to shun his gaze; her hands began to tremble. “I didn’t take any notice. I just ran to his room and back; I had enough to think of without looking at clocks.”

“Was it before you heard the glass set back on the shelf?”

She gave a start, and pressing the two arms of her chair with those trembling hands of hers tried to rise, but finding that her knees would not support her, fell back. In the desperation of the moment she turned towards me, putting up her veil as she did so. “Don’t ask me any more questions,” she pleaded. “I am all unstrung; I’ve had no sleep, no rest, no ease for days. When I found that Mr. Edgar--you know what I would say, sir--I don’t want to repeat it here--”

“Yes, we know,” Mr. Jackson broke in. “You cannot bridle the curiosity of servants. We know that he loves another woman than your young mistress with all her advantages. You may speak plainly.”

“Oh, but it hurts!” she moaned. Then, as if no break had occurred, “When I found that he was not the man I thought him--that nothing I could do would ever make good the dream of years, I hated myself and what I had done and above all my treatment of you, Mr. Quenton. I did not succeed in the wrong I planned,--something happened--God knows what--to upset all that, but the feeling was there and I am sorry; and now that I have said so, may I not go? I have heard that you are kind; that none of us knew how kind; let me go--”

She paused, her lips half closed, every sense on the alert. She was no longer looking at me but straight ahead of her though the danger was approaching from the rear. A door behind her was opening. I could see the face of the man who entered and felt my own heart sink. Next moment he was at her side, his finger pressing on her shoulder.

“Let us hear your answer to the question which Mr. Jackson has just put to you. Was your visit to Mr. Bartholomew’s room before or after you heard the setting down of the medicine glass on the shelf?”

“Before.”

She spoke like one in a dream. She seemed to know who her interlocutor was though she did not turn to look at him.

“You lied when you said that you saw this gentleman here hurrying down the hall immediately after you had heard some one carefully shutting the door next to the medicine cabinet?”

“Yes, I lied.”

Still like one in a dream.

“Did you see him or his shadow pass down the hall at any time that night?”

“No.”

“Why these stories then? Why these lies?”

She was silent.

“Was it not Edgar Bartholomew you heard or saw at that door; and did you not know it was he?”

Again silence; but now a horrified one.

“Are you sure that he did not come in at that door you heard shut? That the only mistake made that night was that the dose was not strong enough--that your patient did not die in time for the will in this gentleman’s favor to be abstracted and destroyed, leaving the other one as the final expression of Mr. Bartholomew’s wishes and testamentary intentions? You need not answer. It is a law of this country that no one can be compelled to incriminate himself. But that is how it looks to us, Mrs. Starr. That is how it looks.”

With this he lifted his finger; and the breath held back in all our throats broke from us in a simultaneous gasp. She only did not move, but sat gazing as before, cheek and brow and even lips growing whiter and whiter till we all shrank back appalled. As the silence grew longer and heavier and more threatening I covered my face with my hands. I could not look and listen too. A vision of Edgar in his most buoyant mood, with laughter in his eye and winsome _bonhomie_ in every feature flashed before me and passed. I could hardly bear it. Then I heard her voice, thin, toneless, and ringing like a wire which has been struck:

“Edgar is innocent. He never entered the room. No one entered it. That was another lie. I alone mixed the dose. I thought he would die at once and let me do what you said. It came to me as I sat there waiting for the morning--the morning I did not feel myself strong enough to face.”

LV

We believed her. I, because it lifted a great load from my heart; Lawyer Jackson and the Inspector because of their long experience with criminal humanity. Misery has its own voice! So has conscience; and conscience, despite the strain she had put upon it during these last few evil days was yet alive within her.

Notwithstanding this, the Inspector would not let the moment pass without a warning.

“Mrs. Starr,” said he, “it is my duty to tell you that you will be making a great mistake in taking upon yourself the full burden of this crime if you are simply its accessory before or after. The real culprit cannot escape by any such means as that, and you will neither help him or yourself by taking such a stand.”

The dullness which had crept into her eyes, the loose set of her lips, the dejection, with every purpose gone, which showed in the collapse of her hitherto firmly held body offered the best proof which had yet been given that she had not exaggerated her position. Even her voice had changed; all its ringing quality was gone; it sounded dead, utterly, without passion, almost without feeling:

“I did it myself when I was alone with--with my patient and this--this is why. If I must tell all, I will tell all, though the shame of it will kill me. When I got back from Mr. Edgar’s room, I took another look at Mr. Bartholomew. He was still sleeping and as much of his face as I could see for the little shawl, was calmer than before and his breath even more regular. I should have been happy, but I was not, and stood looking at him, asking myself again and again what he had been doing while I was below and if I were right in thinking that he had not looked into the envelopes. If he had and had changed the wills back where should we be? Mr. Edgar would lose his inheritance and all my wicked work would go for nothing. I could not bear the thought. If only I dared open that little drawer, and have a peep at those documents. I had not the least suspicion that one of them had been withdrawn from its envelope. The full one was on top and I was so nervous handling them under his eye that the emptiness of the under one had escaped me. So I had not that to worry about, only the uncertainty as to which was in the marked envelope--the envelope he had held over the fire and drew back saying that Orpha must do what he could not.

“I knew that if he should wake and detect me fumbling under his pillow for his key that I should fall at his bedside in shame and terror; yet I was putting out my hand, when he moved and turned his head, disarranging the shawl, and I saw projecting from under the pillow not the key but his eye-glasses and started back and let the curtain fall and sank into the chair I always had near, overcome by a certainty which took away all my strength just when I needed it for fresh thought.

“For there was no mistaking now what he had been doing in my absence. He could not read without his glasses, though he could see other things quite well. He had risen to get them--for I remembered only too clearly that they had been lying on his desk when I left the room. I can see them now, just where they lay close against the inkstand; and having got them, and being on his feet, he had locked the doors so that he would not be interrupted while he satisfied himself that the will he had resolved to destroy was in the marked envelope. That he had done more than this--taken the will he wished kept and carried it out of the room, was not within the mind of a poor woman like me to conceive. I was in a bad enough case as it was. He knew in which envelope was the will which would give Edgar his inheritance and I did not. Should I go and consult Edgar as to what we should do now? No; whatever was to be done should be done by me alone; he should not be dragged into it. That is how I felt. But what to do? I did not know. For an hour I sat there, the curtain drawn between us, listening to his breathing. And I thought it all out. I would do just what you said here a little moment ago. Open the drawer and take out the will I hated and burn it to ashes in the fireplace, leaving only the one which would make everything right. But to be free to do this he--must--first--die. I loved Edgar; I was willing to do anything for him but meet his uncle’s accusing eye. That would take bravery I did not possess. So I rose at last, very determined now my mind was made up, and moving quietly around the foot of the bed, crept stealthily to the medicine cabinet, and lifting out the phial I wanted, set it on a lower shelf and then returning for the glass of soothing mixture already prepared, dropped into it what I thought was a heavy dose, and putting back the medicine phial, carried the glass to the bedside where I put it on a chair close to his hand; for he had turned over again by this time and lay with his face toward the windows.

“The light from the fire added to that of the lamp on the other side of the bed made the room bright enough for me to do all this; but when I got back and had seated myself again, the lamp-light seemed an offense and I put it out. The glow from the fire was enough! He could see to reach the glass--and I waited--waited--till I heard a sigh--then a movement--then a quietly whispered _Wealthy?_--and then, a slight tinkle as though the button at his wrist had touched the glass--and _then_--

“Oh, God! will I ever forget it? Or how I waited and waited for what must follow, watching the shadows gather on the ceiling, and creep slowly down the walls till they settled upon my head and about the bed where I still heard him moving and muttering now and then words which had no meaning. Why moving? Why muttering? I had expected silence long before this. And why such a chill and so heavy a darkness? Then I realized that the fire he so loved was out for the first time since his illness,--the fire that was to destroy the will I had not yet touched or even sought out, and I rose to rebuild it, when he suddenly cried out, ‘Light!’ and shaken by the tone, subdued in one instant to my old obedient self, I turned on the lamp and pulled back the curtain.

“He was looking at me, not unkindly, but in the imperious way of one who knows he has but to speak to have his least wish carried out.

“He was ill. I was to rouse the house--bring the bowl--the candles--no waiting,--I knew what I was to do; he had told me the night before.

“And I did each and every thing just as he commanded. Alive to seeming failure, to possible despair, I went about my task, hoping against hope that all would yet go right; that Fate would step in and make my sin of some avail at this terrible crisis. Though the hands I wrung together in my misery as I ran through the hall were like ice to the touch, I was all on fire within. Now there is no more fire left here”--her hand falling heavy on her breast--“than on the stones of the desolated hearth;--only ashes! ashes!”

The Inspector moved, and was about to speak, but ceased as her voice rose again in that same awful monotone.

“I loved my Mr. Edgar then.” She spoke as though years had intervened instead of a few flitting days. “I used to think that in return for one of his gay smiles I would put my hands under his feet. But to-day, I do not seem to care enough for him to be glad that he is not guilty. If he were, and had to face what I have to face--shame, when I have always prided myself on my good-name--isolation, when to help others has been my life--death, when--” She paused at that, her head falling forward, her eyes opening into a wide stare, as though she saw for the first time the abyss into which she was sinking,--“I should not now be so lonely.”

The Inspector drew back, Mr. Jackson turned away his head. I could not move feature or limb. I was beholding for the first time the awakening of a lost soul to the horror of its own sin.

“I don’t know why it is,” she went on, still in that toneless voice more moving than any wail or even shriek. “It did not seem such a dreadful thing to do that night. It was but hastening his death by a few days, possibly by only a few hours. But now--now--” Suddenly to our amazement she was on her feet, her eyes roaming from one face to the other of us three, all signs of apathy gone, passion restored to her heart, feeling restored to her voice, as she cried out: “Will Miss Orpha have to know? I wish I could see her before she knows. I wish--I wish--”

It was my turn now. Leaping to her side, I held her while the sobs came in agony from her breast, shaking her and distorting her features till in mercy I pulled down her veil and seated her again in her chair.

As I withdrew my arm she managed to press my hand. And I heard very faintly from behind that veil:

“I am glad something happened to give you what you wanted.”

LVI

I thought I had only to go now, and leave her to the Inspector who I felt would deal with her as mercifully as he could. But Mr. Jackson shook his head as I was about to depart, and stepping up to the Inspector said a few earnest words to him after which the former sat down at his desk and wrote a few lines which he put in the official’s hands. Then he drew me apart.

“Wait,” he said; “we may want your signature.”

It was a written confession which the Inspector took upon himself to ask her to sign.

She was sitting back in her chair, very quiet now, her veil down, her figure immovable. The slow heaving of her chest bespoke life and that was all. The Inspector bent down as he reached her and after a minute’s scrutiny of her veiled features said to her not unkindly:

“It will save you much mental suffering if you will sign these words which I first ask you to listen to. Are you ready to hear them?”

She nodded, her hands which were clasped about a little bag she was carrying, twitching convulsively.

“Water, first,” she begged, turning up her eyes till they rested on his face.

He made me a motion, but did not stir from where he stood before her. Instead, he directed his full glance at her hands, and unclasping them gently from the bag she was clutching, opened them out and took away the bag which he laid aside. Then he raised her veil, and handed her the glass which I had brought and watched her while she drank. A few drops seemed to suffice to reinvigorate her, and giving back the glass, she waited for him to read.

The words were mercifully few but they told the full story. As she listened, she sank back into her old pose, only that her hands missing the little bag clutched the arms of the chair in which she sat, and seemed to grow rigid there. But they loosed their grasp readily enough as the Inspector brought a pad and a pen and laying the pad in her lap with the words she had listened to plainly before her, handed her the pen and asked her to sign them.

She roused herself to do this, and when he would draw her veil again she put up her hand in protest, after which she wrote somehow, almost without seeing what she did, the three words which formed her name. Then she sank back again and as he carried away the pad, and, laying the signed confession on the desk for Mr. Jackson and myself to affix our signatures to it as witnesses, she clutched again the arms of her chair and so sat as before, without further word or seeming interest in what was being done.

Should I go now without a word to her, without asking if she had any message to send to Edgar or to Orpha? While I was hesitating, whether or not to address her, I saw the Inspector start and laying his hand on Mr. Jackson’s arm point to her silent figure. A coldness, icy and penetrating struck my heart. I saw them hurriedly advance, I saw the Inspector for the second time slowly lift her veil, give one look and drop it again. And I saw nothing more for a minute, then as my senses cleared, I met the eyes of the two men fixed on me and not on her, and summoning up my strength I said:

“It is better so.”

They did not answer, but in each man’s eye I saw that had they spoken it would have been in repetition of my words:

“It is better so.”

LVII

My first duty, now as ever, was to Orpha. Before rumor reached her she must know, and from no other lips than mine, what had happened. Then,--I did not get much beyond that _then_, for mortal foresight is of all things most untrustworthy, and I had fought too long with facts to wish to renew my battle with delusive fancies.

To shut out every imagining which might get the better of my good sense, I forced myself to recall the foolish reasoning in which I had indulged when the possibility of Uncle having been the victim of Edgar’s cupidity was obsessing my brain. How I had attributed to him acts of which he had been entirely guiltless. How in order to explain our uncle’s death by poison I had imagined him going to the sick room upon seeing Wealthy leave it, and winning the old gentleman to his mind, had carried off the will whose existence threatened his rights, and burned it, with our uncle’s consent, in his own room. All this, while uncle was really behind locked doors making his painful journey down between the walls of his house, in order to place in safe keeping,--possibly from his own vacillation,--the will which endowed myself with what had previously been meant for Edgar alone.

That I had thus allowed my imagination to run so far away from facts was another lesson of the danger we incur in trusting to fanciful reasoning where our own interests are involved; and that I should have carried my futile deductions further, even to the point of supposing that after the question of poisoning was mooted he had taken Orpha and Wealthy upstairs in order to confuse his former finger-prints with fresh ones of his own and theirs, brought me a humiliation in my own eyes now that I knew the truth, which possibly was the best preparation I could have for the interview which now lay before me.

That I was not yet out of the woods,--that I was still open to the attack of vituperative tongues I knew full well; but that could not be helped. What I wanted was to square myself with my own conscience before I faced Orpha and turned another leaf in our heavy book of troubles.

LVIII

Haines, for all his decorum, showed an anxious face when he opened the door to me. It changed, however, to one of satisfaction as he saw who had come.

“Oh, sir!” he cried, as I stepped in, “where is Wealthy? Mr. Edgar has been asking for her this half hour. The girl is no good and he will have none of the rest of us in his room.”

“I will go to him. Is Miss Bartholomew in?”

“Yes, sir; he won’t see her either.”

“Haines, I have something serious to say to Miss Bartholomew. You may tell her that I should be very glad to have a few words with her. But first I must quiet him; and while I am in the third story, whether it be for a few minutes or half an hour, I rely on you to see that Miss Bartholomew receives no callers and no message from any one. If the phone rings, choke it off. Cut the wire if necessary. I am in earnest, Haines. Will you do as I ask?”

“I will, sir.”

I could see how anxious he was to know what all this meant, but he did not ask and I should not have told him if he had. It was for Edgar first, and then for Orpha to hear what I had to relate.

LIX

When I entered Edgar’s room he was sitting propped up in bed, a woeful figure. He had just flung a book at the poor mute who had vainly tried to find for him the thing he wanted. When he saw me he whitened and slid down half out of sight under the bed-clothes.

“Where is Wealthy?” he shouted out. “I want her and nobody else.” But before I could answer, he spoke again and this time with a show of his old-time lightness. “Not but what it is good of you to come and see a poor devil like me.”

“Edgar,” I said, advancing straight to his bedside and sitting down on its edge, “I have come, not only to see what can be done for you to-day, but to ask if you will let me stay by you till you are well enough and strong enough to kick me out.”

“But where is Wealthy?” he cried, with a note of alarm in his voice. “She went out for an hour. She should be back. I--I must have Wealthy, glum as she is.”

Should I shock him with the truth? Would it prove to be too much for him in his present feverish state? For a moment I feared so, then as I noticed the restlessness which made his every member quiver, I decided that he would be less physically disturbed by a full knowledge of Wealthy’s guilt and the events of the last hour, than by a prolonged impatience at her absence and the vexation which any attempt at deception would occasion him.

“Won’t I possibly do for a substitute?” I smiled. “Wealthy cannot come. She will not come any more, Edgar. Though you may not have known it she was a great sufferer--a great sinner--a curse to this house during the last few weeks. It was she--”

“Ah!”

He had me by the arm. He had half raised himself again so that his eyes, hot with fever and the horror of this revelation burned close upon mine. His lips shook; his whole body trembled, but he understood me. I did not need to complete my unfinished sentence.

“You must take it calmly,” I urged. “Think what this uncertainty has done to the family. It has almost destroyed us in the eyes of the world. Now we can hold up our heads again; now _you_ can hold up your head again. It should comfort you.”

“You don’t know,” he muttered, turning his head away. Then quickly, violently, “I can never get away from the shame of it. She did it for me. I know that she did it for me and people will think--”

“No,” I said, “they will not think. She exonerates you completely. Edgar, I have to tell this news to Orpha. She must not hear it first from one of the servants or from some newspaper man. Let me go down to her. I will come back, but not to weary you, or allow you to weary yourself with talk. When you are better we will have it all out. What you have to do now is to get well, and I am going to help you.”

I started to rise but he drew me back again.

“There is something I must confess to you before you undertake that. I have not been fair--”

I took him by both hands.

“Let us forget that. It has come between us long enough. It must not do so any longer.”

“You know--”

“I had to listen to Wealthy’s story.”

Letting go of his hands, I again tried to rise; but for the second time he drew me back.

“You are going to tell Orpha. Are you going to tell Lucy, too?”

“Miss Colfax is not in the house; she left this noon for New York.”

He stiffened where he lay. I was glad I had let go of his hands. I could affect more easily a nonchalant manner. “She has an aunt there, I believe. Is there anything you want before I go down?”

Oh, the hunger in his stare! “Nothing now, nothing but to get well. You have promised to help me and you shall.” Then as I crossed to the door, “Where have they put her? Wealthy, I mean. I ought to do something.”

“No, Edgar, she is being cared for. She confessed, you know, and they will not be too harsh with her. I will tell you another time all that I have failed to say to-day. For two days we will not speak her name. After that you may ask me anything you will.”

With that I closed the door behind me. The greater trial was to come.

LX