Afterwards Helen looked back upon those few moments as the most uncomfortable of her life. She was caught in the very act of a most unwarrantable and even immodest intrusion, which in the eyes of these two men could only appear like the attempted gratification of a reprehensible and vulgar curiosity. She made one spasmodic attempt to kindle her suspicions into a definite accusation, to stand upon her dignity, and demand an explanation of what she had seen. But she failed utterly. Directly she tried to clothe the shreds of this idea of hers with words, and to express them, she seemed to vividly realize the almost ludicrous improbability of the whole thing. One glance into the pale, dignified face which was bent upon her full of unconcerned surprise—and hateful to her with a gentle shade of pity at her confusion already creeping into it—and her attempt collapsed. She felt her cheeks burn with shame, and her eyes drooped before his steady gaze. She began to long feverishly for something to dissolve the situation. The silence was dreadful to her, but she could think of nothing to say. It was Mr. Brown, at last, who spoke.
"I was afraid you would not be able to find your way, Miss Thurwell," he said quietly. "I must apologize for asking you to come into such a den. The small engraving on the wall is the proof 'Bartolozzi' I spoke to you about. The head is perfect, is it not? Some day I should like to show you my 'Guido.' I am afraid, just now, I could not expect you to appreciate them."
She murmured something—what, she scarcely knew, and he did not appear to hear. The cold surprise disappeared from Sir Allan's face. Evidently he believed in Mr. Brown's mercifully offered explanation of her presence here.
"What! are you an enthusiast, Miss Thurwell?" he exclaimed. "Well, well, I was worse myself once in my younger days, before my profession made a slave of me. Surely, that is a genuine 'Velasquez,' Mr. Brown. Upon my word! Fancy coming across such a treasure here!"
He picked his way across the disorderly chamber, and, adjusting his eyeglass, stood looking at the picture. Helen made a hasty movement towards the door, and Mr. Brown followed her into the adjoining room.
"If I had known that I was to be honored by a visit from a lady," he said, "I would have endeavored——"
She turned suddenly round upon him with flaming cheeks.
"Don't," she interrupted, almost beseechingly. "Mr. Brown, you were very good to me just then. Thank you! I was most abominably rude to go into that room without your permission."
Her eyes were fixed upon the floor, and her distress was evident. It was clear that she felt her position acutely.
"Pray say no more about it," he begged earnestly. "It isn't worth a second thought."
She stopped with her back to one of the great cases filled with books, and hesitated. Should she confess to him frankly why she had gone there, and ask his pardon for such a wild thought? She raised her eyes slowly, and looked at him. Of course it was absurd. She has been out of her mind, she knew that now; and yet——
She looked at him more closely still. He had not seemed in any way disturbed when they had found her in that room—only a little surprised and bewildered. And yet, after all, supposing his composed demeanor had been only assumed. He was certainly very pale, very pale indeed, and there was a slight twitching of his hands which was out of character with his absolute impassiveness. Supposing it should be a forced composure. He looked like a man capable of exercising a strong control over his feelings. Supposing it should be so. Was there not, after all, just a chance that her former suspicions were correct?
The action of the mind is instantaneous. All these thoughts and doubts merely flashed through it, and they left her very confused and undecided. Her sense of gratitude towards him for shielding her before Sir Allan Beaumerville, and the intuitive sympathy of her nature with the delicacy and tact which he had shown in his manner of doing so, were on the whole stronger than her shadowy suspicions. And yet these latter had just sufficient strength to check the impulse of generosity which prompted her to confess everything to him. She did not tell him why she had started on the quest which had come to such an ignominious conclusion. She offered him no explanation whatever.
"It was very good of you," she repeated. "I did not deserve it at all. And now I must go and look for my father."
Mr. Thurwell was waiting in the hall, somewhat surprised at her absence. But he asked no questions. His thoughts were too full of the terrible thing which had happened to his friend and neighbor—and withal his daughter's betrothed.
They walked back across the moor together, saying very little, for there was only one possible subject for conversation, and both of them shrank a little from speaking about it. But when they were more than half-way to their destination, she asked a question.
"Nothing has been discovered, I suppose, of the murderer?"
Her father shook his head.
"Nothing. The dagger is our only clue as yet—except this."
He drew a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and touched it lightly with his finger.
"What is it? May I see?"
He handed it to her at once.
"It was in his pocket," he said. "I am keeping it to hand over to the proper authorities. Mr. Brown offered to take care of it, but I felt that, as a magistrate, I was in a measure responsible for everything in the shape of a clue, so I brought it away with me. Read it."
She opened the half sheet of notepaper and glanced down it. It was written in a queer cramped handwriting—evidently disguised.
"Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, you are doing a very rash and foolish thing in coming back to your own country, and thereby publishing your whereabouts to the world. Have you forgotten what hangs over you—or can you be so mad as to think that he has forgiven? Read this as a warning; and if life is in any way dear to you, go back to that hiding which alone has kept you safe for so many years. Do not hesitate or delay for one half-hour—one minute may be too long. If, after reading this, you linger in England, and disregard my warning, take care that you look into your life and hold yourself prepared to die."
She gave it back to him. There was some one, then, whom he had injured very deeply. It was like an echo from that stormy past of which many people had spoken.
"He had an enemy," she murmured, passing her arm through her father's.
"It seems so," he answered. "A terrible enemy."
On a certain September day, about six weeks after the funeral of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, Mr. Brown was spending what appeared to be a very pleasant afternoon. He was lying stretched out at full length on a dry mossy bank, with a volume of Shelley in his hand, and a case of thick Egyptian cigarettes by his side. In his ears was the whispering of the faint breeze amongst the pines, and the soft murmuring of the sea, hundreds of feet below, seen like a brilliant piece of patchwork through the fluttering leaves and dark tree-trunks which surrounded him. There was nothing to disturb the sweet silence of the drowsy afternoon. It was a charming spot which he had chosen, and he was quite alone. People, amongst whom for the last few weeks his name had become a fruitful source of conversation, were already beginning to fancy him flying across the country in an express train, or loitering on the docks at Liverpool, waiting for an Atlantic liner, or sitting at home trembling and fearful, struggling to hide his guilt beneath a calm exterior. But, as a matter of fact, he was doing none of these things. The harsh excitement of the busy gossips, and their stern judgment, troubled him nothing, for he was unconscious of them. He was away in thoughtland, dreaming of a fair, proud young face seen first on the rude pavement of an old Italian town, where its sweet composed freshness, amongst a pile of magnificent ruins, had captivated his artist's sense almost before it had touched his man's heart. He thought of the narrow street shutting in the sky till, looking upwards, it seemed like one deep band of glorious blue—of the ruined grey palace, with still some traces left of its former stately grace, and of the fountain playing in the moss-encrusted courtyard, gleaming like silver in the sunlight as it rose and fell into the worn stone basin. Here, where the very air seemed full of the records of a magnificent decay, everything seemed to form a fitting framework in his memory for that one face. It had been an artist's dream—or had it been the man's? Never the latter; he told himself sadly. Such were not for him. It had been better far that he had never seen her again. Before, the memory had been a very sweet one, stored away in his mind amongst all the great and beautiful things he had seen in his wanderings, always with a dainty freshness clinging to it, as though it had lain carefully preserved in perfume and spices. Was this new joy, of having seen and spoken to her, a better thing? this vague unsettlement of his being, which played havoc with his thoughts, and stirred up a whole host of strange new feelings in his heart? Surely not! It seemed to him like the breathing of warm new life into what had been a crystallized emotion—the humanizing of something spiritual. Surely, for him, it had better have remained in that first stage.
There was the sound of a light footstep on the springy turf. He started to his feet. A girl, tall and slim, was coming swiftly along the winding path through the plantation towards him. He knew at once that it was Helen Thurwell.
They were both equally surprised. As she looked up and saw him standing upright in the narrow path, tall, thin, and unnaturally pale, with the cigarette still burning between his fingers, and his book in his other hand, she felt strangely stirred. Neither was he unmoved by her sudden appearance, for though not a feature twitched, not a single gleam of color relieved the still pallor of his face, there was a new light in his dry brilliant eyes. But there was a vast difference between the thoughts which flashed into his mind and those which filled hers. To him there had stolen a sweetness into the summer's day surpassing the soft sunlight, and a presence which moved every pulse in his being, and crept like maddening fire through every sense. And to her, the sight of him was simply a signal to brace up all her powers of perception; to watch with suspicion every change of his features, and every tone of his voice. Had he shown any emotion at the sight of her, she would have attributed it to a guilty conscience, and would have made note of it in her mind against him. And as he showed none—none, at least, that she could detect—she put it down to the exercise of a strong will, and was a little disappointed. For she had gone with the tide, and, womanlike, having embraced an idea, it had already become as truth to her. Mr. Brown was the man who had murdered Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. It was a murderer with whom she was standing side by side among the glancing shadows of the rustling pine groves. It must be so!
Yet she did not shrink from him. After her first hesitation at the sight of a man's figure standing up amongst the dark tree-trunks, she had walked steadily on until she had reached him. And he, without any change of countenance, had simply stood and watched her. God! how beautiful she was! The sunlight, gleaming through the tops of the trees in long slanting rays, played like fire upon her red-gold hair; and the plain black gown, which yielded easily to her graceful movements, seemed to show every line of her supple yet delicate figure. She came nearer still, so near that he could trace the faint blue veins in her forehead, and once more recall the peculiar color of her eyes. Then he spoke to her, raising his hand with a suddenly returning instinct of conventionality for his cap; but he had risen without it, and was standing before her bare-headed.
"I am a trespasser, I fear," he said hesitatingly.
She came to a standstill by his side, and shook her head slowly.
"No, this is common land. There is a footpath, you see, although it is seldom used. It leads nowhere but to the Court."
"It is a favorite walk of mine," he said.
"Yes, it is pleasant. You bring a companion with you," she remarked, pointing to his book.
He glanced down at it, and then up at her again.
"Yes; a faithful friend, too. We spend a good deal of time out of doors together."
She read the title, and glanced up at him with a shade of interest in her face.
"Shelley was a great poet, I suppose," she said; "but I do not understand him."
For the first time his expression changed. A sudden light swept across his face, and in a moment it was glowing with sensibility and enthusiasm. She looked at him astonished. He stood before her revealed in a new light, and, although unwillingly, she saw him with different eyes.
"Not understand Shelley! Ah! but that is because you have not tried, then. If you had, you would not only understand, but you would love him."
She shook her head. In reality she felt that he was right, that her languid attempts to read him by a drawing-room fire, with the Queen beside her, and her mind very full of very little things, had not been the spirit in which to approach a great poet. But, partly out of womanly perversity, and partly out of curiosity to hear what he would say, she chose to dissent from him.
"I find him too mystical," she said; "too incomprehensible."
He looked down at her from his superior height with kindling eyes. It was odd how greatly she was surprised in him. She had imagined him to be a cynic.
"Mystical!" he repeated. "Yes, in a certain sense, he is so; and it is his greatest charm. But incomprehensible!—no. The essence of all artistic poetry is in the perfect blending of matter and form, so that the meaning creeps in upon us, but with a certain vagueness, a certain indefiniteness, which reaches us more in the shade of a dreamy consciousness than through the understanding. May I give you an illustration? We stand upon a low plain and gaze upon a far-off range of hills, from the sides of which thick clouds of white mist are hanging. Gradually, as the sun rises higher in the heavens, they float away, and we begin dimly to see through a clearer atmosphere the yellow corn waving on the brown hillside, the smoke rising from the lonely farmhouse, and, if we have patience and wait still, by-and-by we can even distinguish the brilliant patches of wild flowers, the poppies and the cornflowers in the golden fields, and the marsh marigolds in the meadows at the foot of the hill. It is a question of waiting long enough. So it is with what people call mysticism in poetry."
For the first time for many months a faint color had found its way into his wan cheeks. His face was alight with interest, and his dark eyes shone from their deep hollows with a new, soft fire. From that moment he assumed a new place in her thoughts. She was loath to grant it to him, but she had no alternative. Guilty or innocent, this man had something in him which placed him high above other men in her estimation. She felt stirred in a manner peculiarly grateful to her. It was as though every chord of her being had been tuned into fresh harmony; as though the hand of a magician had lifted the curtain which had enclosed her too narrow life, and had shown her a new world glowing with beauty and promise. She, too, wanted to feel like that; to taste the pleasures which this man tasted, and to feel the enthusiasm which had lit up his pale scholarly face.
At that moment her mind was too full to harbor those dark suspicions. With a sudden effort she threw them overboard, trampled on them, scouted them. Was this the face and the tongue of a murderer? Surely not!
"Thank you," she said softly. "I shall like to think over what you have said. Now I must go."
Her words seemed to bring him back to his old self. He stooped down and picked up his cap.
"You are going back to the Court?" he asked. "Let me walk to the end of the plantation with you."
She assented silently, and they turned along the narrow path side by side. Below them a bracken-covered cliff, studded with dwarfed trees, ran down to the sea; and on their left hand the black firs, larger and growing more thickly together, shut out completely the open moorland beyond. He had walked there before beneath a sky of darker blue, and when there had been only stray gleams of moonlight shining through the cone-laden boughs to show him the rough path; and he had been there when the tree-tops had bent beneath the shrieking wind, when the black clouds had been flying over his head, and the roar of the angry sea had filled the air with thunder. And these things had stirred him—one of nature's sons—in many ways. Yet none of them had sent the warm blood coursing through his veins like quicksilver, or had stolen through his senses with such sweet heart-stirring impetuosity as did the presence of this tall, fair girl, walking serenely by his side in thoughtful silence. Once, when too near the edge of the cliff, she put her foot on a fir-cone and stumbled, and the touch of her hand, as he caught hold of it to steady her, sent a thrill of keen, exquisite pleasure through his whole frame. He held it perhaps a little longer than necessary, and she let him. For the moment she had lost the sense of physical touch, and the firm grasp of his fingers upon hers seemed to her, in a certain sense, only an analogy to the sudden sympathy which had sprung up between them. Even when realization came, she drew her hand away gently, without anger, without undue haste even. One glance into his face at that moment would have told her everything; the whole horror of the situation would have flashed in upon her, and she would have been overwhelmed. But she did not look, and long before they had come to the end of the path the passionate light had died out from his eyes, and had left no trace behind. Once more he was only a plain, sad-looking man, hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, with bent head and stooping frame.
At the extremity of the plantation they came to a small wicket-gate opening out on to the cliff top. From here there was a path inland to the Court, whilst Falcon's Nest was straight in front of them. At the parting of the ways they hesitated, for it seemed necessary that they should part.
And whilst they looked around a little dazzled, having just emerged from the darkness of the plantation, they were conscious of a new glory in the heavens. Far away across the moorland the autumn sun had shot its last rays over the level plain and sea, and had sunk quietly to rest. It was not one of Turner's wild sunsets. There were no banks of angry clouds full of lurid coloring, flashing their glory all over the western sky. But in a different fashion it was equally beautiful. Long level streaks of transparent light, emerging from an ethereal green to a deep orange, lay stretched across the heavens, and a faint golden haze rising from the land seemed to mingle with them, and form one harmonious mass of coloring. And the air too was different—purer and rarer than the enervating atmosphere of the drowsy afternoon. Together they stood and became subject to the subtle charm of their environment. It seemed to Helen Thurwell then that a change was creeping into her life. Impersonal thought had attained a new strength and a new sweetness. But at that time she had no knowledge of what it meant.
"See!" he exclaimed softly, pointly westward, "there is what Coleridge made dear to us for ever, and Byron vainly scoffed at—the 'green light that lingers in the west.'"
He repeated the stanza absently, and half to himself, with a sudden oblivion of her presence—
She watched him as his voice sank lower and lower, and though his eyes were dry and bright, she saw a look of intense sadness sweep across his face. Almost she felt inclined to let her natural sympathy escape her—to let loose the kind and tender words which had leapt up from her heart, and even trembled upon her lips. But a rush of consciousness came, and she choked them back. Thus much she could do, but no more. She could not at that moment look upon him as the man already suspected in many quarters of a most brutal murder. For the instant, all was blotted out. Had she tried she could not at that moment have revived her own suspicions. They seemed to her like some grotesque fungi of the mind—poisonous weeds to be crushed and destroyed. But the seed was there.
"Those are the saddest lines I ever read," she said quietly. "It is a true ode to dejection."
"And therefore they are very precious," he answered. "It is always sweet to find your own emotions so exquisitely expressed. It is like a spiritual narcotic."
"And yet—yet such poems encourage sadness, and that is morbid."
He shook his head.
"To be sad is not necessarily to be unhappy," he answered. "That sounds like a paradox, but it isn't! You remember the 'gentle melancholy' which Milton loved. There is something sweet in that, is there not?"
"But it is not like that with you," she said quickly.
He threw his arms up into the air with a sudden wild gesture of absolute despair. She had touched a chord in his nature too roughly, and it had not stood the strain. For a moment he had thrown off his mask. His white face was ghastly, and his eyes were burning with a hopeless passion.
"My God! No!" he cried. "I am in the depths of hell, with never a gleam of hope to lead me on. And the sin—the sin——"
He stopped suddenly, and his hands fell to his side. Slowly he turned round and looked at her, half doubtfully, half fearfully. What had he said? What had she heard? What did that look in her face mean—that look of anguish, of fear, of horror? Why did she not speak, even though it were to accuse him? Anything rather than that awful silence.
Twice she moved her white lips, but no sound came. The power of articulation seemed gone. Then she caught him by the arm, and turned him slowly round so that he faced his cottage. Only a few yards below them was the spot where she and her sister-in-law that was to have been had lolled in their low chairs by the luncheon-table, and had begun to feel impatient for the coming of one who had never come. Further away still, across the moor, was that dark circular patch of plantation behind which Sir Geoffrey Kynaston had been found, and away upon the cliffs overlooking the scene of the murder was Falcon's Nest.
The grasp on his arm tightened. Then she stretched out her other hand, and with shaking fingers pointed downwards—pointed to the very spot where the deed had been done. The memory of it all came back to her, and hardened her set white face. She looked him straight in the eyes without a quiver, and clenched her teeth.
"Did you—do that?" she asked in a firm, hard tone.
A curious mind slumber seemed to have crept over him. His eyes followed her outstretched hand, and his lips idly repeated her words.
"Did you kill Sir Geoffrey Kynaston?"
Her words fell sharp and clear upon the still air. A tremor passed through his whole frame, and the light of a sudden understanding flashed across his face. He was his old self again, and more than his old self.
"You are joking, of course, Miss Thurwell?" he said quietly. "You do not mean that seriously?"
She caught her breath, and looked at him. After all, it is only a step from tragedy to commonplace. He was deathly pale, but calm and composed. He had conquered himself just in time. Another moment, and she felt assured that she would have known all. Never mind! it should come, she told herself. The end was not yet.
"No; of course I did not mean it seriously," she repeated slowly. "Who are those men coming up the hill? Can you see?"
He moved a little nearer to her, and looked downward. On the slope of the hill were three men. She had recognized them already, and she watched him steadily.
"Your father is one," he said quietly. "The other two are strangers to me."
"Perhaps I can tell you something about them," she said, still watching him intently. "One is the constable from Mallory, and the other is a detective."
There was a slight hardening of his face, and she fancied that she saw his under lip quiver for a moment. Had he shown any guilty fear, had he shrunk back, or uttered a single moan, her sympathy would never have been aroused. But as it was, she was a woman, and her face softened, and the tears stood in her eyes. There was something almost grand in the composure with which he was waiting for what seemed inevitable—something of the magnificent resignation with which the noblemen of France one by one took their place at the block, and the simile was heightened by the slightly contemptuous, slightly defiant poise of his finely shaped head. She saw him cast one lingering glance around at the still sea, with its far-off motionless sails; at the clear sky, from which the brilliancy of coloring was fading away, and at the long sweep of moorland with its brilliant patches of heather and gorse, now slightly blurred by the mists rising from the earth. It was as though he were saying a last farewell to things which he had loved, and which he would see no more—and it had a strange effect upon her. The memory of that hideous crime left her. She could think only of the abstract pathos of the present situation, and she felt very miserable. It was wrong, unnatural of her; but at that moment, if she could have helped him to escape, she would have done her best in the face of them all.
They were almost at hand now, and she lifted her eyes, in which the tears were fast gathering. She thought nothing of her own situation—of their finding her alone with the murderer. With characteristic unselfishness she thought only of him.
She met her father's surprised gaze with indifference. She had a sort of feeling that nothing mattered much. What was going to happen eclipsed everything else.
And so it did. Her apathy changed in a moment to amazement, and her heart stood still. Her father had raised his hat to Mr. Brown with even more than the usual courtesy of his salute, and the two officials had saluted in the most correct fashion.
"Mr. Brown," he said, "we have all come in search of you to tender our most sincere apologies for an unfortunate mistake. Police Constable Chopping here is mostly to blame, and next to him, I am."
She glanced at the man by her side. His face was absolutely impenetrable. It showed no signs of the relief which was creeping into hers. His composure was simply wonderful.
"The fact is," her father continued, "Chopping came to see me with a long tale and a certain request which, under the circumstances—which I will explain to you afterwards—I could not as a magistrate refuse. I was compelled to sign a search warrant for him to go over Falcon's Nest. It was against my inclination, and a most unpleasant duty for me to perform. But I considered it my duty, and I attended there myself in order that it might not be abused. I hope to have your forgiveness for the liberty which we were compelled to take."
There was still no change in Mr. Brown's face, but, standing close to him, she heard him take a quick deep breath. Curiously enough, it was a relief to her to hear it. Such great self-restraint was almost unnatural.
"You only did your duty, Mr. Thurwell," he answered quietly. "You owe me no apology."
"I am very glad that you see it in that light," Mr. Thurwell said, "very glad indeed. But I have a further confession to make."
He drew Mr. Brown a little on one side, out of hearing of the others, but nearer to her than any of them, and commenced talking earnestly to him. This time she could tell that he was disturbed and uneasy, but she could not follow connectedly all her father said. Only a few stray words reached her.
"Very sorry indeed.... Quite accidental.... Will preserve ... discovery."
"Then I may rely upon you to keep this absolutely to yourself?" she heard Mr. Brown say earnestly.
"I give you my word, sir!" her father answered. Then they turned round, and she saw that Mr. Brown looked distinctly annoyed.
"However did you come here, Helen?" her father asked, suddenly remembering her presence.
"I came for a walk, and met Mr. Brown in the plantation," she explained.
"Well, since you are here," he remarked good humoredly, "you must help me to induce Mr. Brown to come back to the Court. So far, we have been wretched neighbors. We shall insist upon his dining with us, just to show that there's no ill-feeling," he added, smiling. "Now, no excuses."
"Thank you, but I never go out," Mr. Brown answered. "I have not even any clothes here. So——"
"Please come, Mr. Brown," she said softly.
He flashed a sudden glance at her from his dark eyes, which brought the color streaming into her cheeks. Fortunately, twilight was commencing to fall, and she was standing a little back in the shadow of the plantation.
"If Miss Thurwell wishes it," he said, in a tone of a man who offers himself to lead a forlorn hope, "it is settled. I will come."
Both to him and to her there was something strangely unreal in the little banquet to which they three—Mr. Thurwell, his daughter, and his tenant—sat down that evening. For many months afterwards, until, indeed, after the culmination of the tragedy in which she was the principal moving figure, Helen Thurwell looked back upon that night with strangely mingled feelings. It was the dawn of a new era in her existence, a fact which she never doubted, although she struggled vainly against it. And to him it was like a sudden transition into fairyland. The long years of lonely life and rigorous asceticism through which he had passed had been a period of no ordinary self-denial. Instinctively and with his whole nature the man was an artist. His homely fare, ill-cooked and ill-served among dreary surroundings, had for long been a horror to him. Whatever his reasons for such absolute isolation had been, they had sprung from no actual delight in rough living or non-appreciation of the refinements of civilized society. He realized to the full extent the sybaritic pleasures which now surrounded him. The white tablecloth flaming with daintily modeled plate and cut glass, the brilliant coloring of the scarlet and yellow flowers, the aromatic perfume of the chrysanthemums mingling with the faint scent of exotics, the luscious fruits, and the softly shaded table lights which threw a rich glow over the lovely face opposite to him—all these things had their own peculiar effect in the shape of a certain subtle exhilaration which was not slow to show itself. With scarcely an effort he threw off the old mask of reserve, with all the little awkwardnesses and gaucheries which it had entailed, and appeared as the shadow of the self of former days—a cultured, polished man of the world. Even Mr. Thurwell's good breeding was scarcely sufficient to conceal his surprise at the metamorphosis. Never before, at his table, had there been such a brilliant flow of conversation—conversation which had all the rare art of appearing general, whereas it was indeed nothing less than a monologue on the part of this strange guest. He had traveled far, he had seen great things in many countries, and he had known great men; and he talked lightly about them all, with the keen appreciation of the artist, and the graceful diction of the scholar. He was a man who had lived in the world—every little action and turn of speech denoted it. The French dishes—Mr. Thurwell was proud of his chef—were no secret to him, and he knew all about the vintages of the wines he was drinking. In the whole course of his experience, Mr. Thurwell had never entertained such a guest as this, and it was a sore trial to his good manners to abstain from any astonished comment on the lonely life his tenant had been lately leading.
And Helen sat listening to it all with a sort of dreamy content stealing over her, out of which she was stirred every now and then into enthusiasm by some brilliant criticism or fresh turn to the conversation. At such times her gray luminous eyes, with their strange dash of foreign color, would light up and flash their sympathetic approval across the few feet of tablecloth blazing with many-colored flowers and fruits and glittering silver. And he grew to look for this, and to receive it with an answering glance from his own dark eyes, full of a strange light and power. She, watching him more keenly than her father could, was conscious of something that altogether escaped him, a sort of undercurrent of suppressed excitement which never rose to the surface, and revealed itself in none of his mannerisms or his tone. But it was there, and she felt it—felt it more than ever when their eyes met, and hers were forced to droop before the steady fire in his, which more than once brought the faint color into her cheeks, and sent a new sensation quivering through her being.
Dinner came to an end at last, but when she rose to go her father protested. She generally sat with him while he smoked a cigarette and drank his coffee. Why should she go away now? They were making no stranger of Mr. Brown. And so she stayed.
Presently she found herself strolling round the room by his side, showing him the pictures which hung lightly upon the high oak panels, and the foreign bric-à-brac and Italian vases ranged along the wide black ledge a little below. Her father had been obliged to go out and speak to the head gamekeeper about some suspected poaching, and they were alone.
"This is where I like to sit after dinner, when we are alone," she said; and, lifting some heavy drooping curtains, she led him into a quaint recess, almost as large as an ordinary room. A shaded lamp was burning on a small Burmese table, and the faint fragrance of burning pine logs stole up from the open hearth and floated about on the air, already slightly perfumed with the odor of chrysanthemums clustered together in quaint blue china bowls, little patches of gold-and-white coloring, where everything else was somber and subdued. She sank into a low basket chair before the fire, and, obeying her gesture, he seated himself opposite to her.
"Now, talk to me, please," she said, half hiding her face with a feather screen to protect it from the fire. "No commonplacisms, mind! I have heard nothing else all my life, and I am weary of them. And, first, please to light a cigarette. You will find some in the silver box by your side. I like the perfume."
He did as he was bidden in silence. For a moment he watched the faint blue smoke curl upward, stole a glance around him, and drew a long breath as though he were drinking in to the full the artistic content of the exquisite harmony and coloring, of his surroundings. Then he threw a sudden, swift look upon the beautiful girl who was leaning back in her low chair, with her fair head resting upon a cushion of deep olive green, and her eyes fixed expectantly upon him. She was so near that, by stretching out his hand, he could have seized her small shapely fingers; so near, that he could even detect the delicate scent of lavender from the lace of her black dinner gown. He took in every detail of her dainty toilette from the single diamond which sparkled in the black velvet around her throat, to the exquisitely slippered feet resting lightly upon a tiny sage-green footstool, and just visible through the gossamerlike draperies which bordered her skirts. In the world of her sex she had become an era to him.
"I wonder whether you know that we have met before, Miss Thurwell?" he asked her suddenly.
She moved her screen and looked at him.
"Surely not! Where?"
In a few words he reminded her of that quaint street in the old Italian town, and of the half-ruined Palazzo di Vechi. He had seen her only for a few minutes, but her face had never been forgotten; the way in which he told her so, although he did not dwell upon it, told her also that it had been no ordinary memory—that it had held a separate place in his thoughts, as was indeed the case. Something in the manner of his allusion to it showed her too, as though he had laid his whole mind bare, with what interest, almost reverence, he had guarded it, and all that it had meant to him; and as she listened a faint color stole into her cheeks, with which the fire had nothing to do. She held her screen the closer, and bent her head lest he should see it.
But there was no fear of that; indeed, he had no thought of the kind. Leaving the dangerous ground behind him, he glided easily and naturally into impersonal subjects. From Italy he began to talk of Florence, of Pico della Mirandola, and the painters of the Renaissance. He strove his utmost to interest her, and with his vast stock of acquired knowledge, and his wonderfully artistic felicity of expression, he talked on and on, wandering from country to country, and age to age, till it all seemed to her like a strangely beautiful poem, full of yellow light and gleaming shadow, sometimes passionate and intense, at others fantastic and almost ethereal. Now and then she half closed her eyes, and his words, and their meaning, the form and the substance, seemed to come to her like richly blended music, stirring all her senses and quickening all her dormant faculties. Then she opened them again, and looked steadily upon the dark, wan face, with its sharp thin outline and strange poetic abstraction. By chance he spoke for a moment of De Quincey, and a shudder passed through all her being. Could such a face as that be a murderer's face? The utter morbidness of such a thought oppressed her only for a moment. If to-morrow it was to be her duty to loathe this man, then it should be so; but those few minutes were too precious to be disturbed by such thoughts. A new life was stirring within her, and its first breath was too sweet to be crushed on the threshold. After to-night—anything! But to-night she would have for her own.
And so the time passed on, and the evening slipped away. Mr. Thurwell had looked in, but seeing them so engrossed he had quietly retreated and indulged in his usual nap. A dainty tea equipage had been brought in, and she had roused herself to prepare it with her own hands, and it seemed to him that this little touch of domesticity had been the one thing wanted to make the picture perfect. There had been a momentary silence then, and she had found herself asking him questions.
"Do you never feel that you would like to be back in the world again?" she asked. "Yours is a very lonely life!"
"I do not often find it so," he answered, with his eyes fixed upon the fire. "One's books, and the thoughts one gets from them, are sufficient companions."
"But they are not human ones, and man is human. Do you think a lonely life quite healthy—mentally healthy, I mean?"
"It should be the healthiest of all lives. It is only in theory that solitude is morbid. If you knew more of the world, Miss Thurwell, you would understand something of its cramping influence upon all independent thought. I am not a pessimist—at least, I try not to be. I do not wish to say that there is more badness than goodness in the world, but there is certainly more littleness than greatness. To live in any manner of society without imbibing a certain form of selfishness is difficult; to do so and to taste the full sweetness of the life that never dies is impossible!"
"But there must be some exceptions!" she said hesitatingly. "If people care for one another, and care for the same things——"
He shook his head.
"People never do care for one another. Life is so full nowadays, there are so many things to care about, that any concentration of the affections is impossible. Love is the derision of the modern world. It has not even the respect one pays to the antique."
For several minutes there was deep silence. A piece of burning wood tumbled off from the log and fell upon the tiles, where it lay with its delicate blue smoke curling upward into the room, laden with the pungent odor of the pine. She moved her feet, and there was the slight rustling of her skirts. No other sound broke the stillness which they both remembered for long afterwards—the stillness before the storm.
Suddenly it came to an end. There was a sound of doors being quickly opened and shut, voices in the hall, and then a light, firm tread, crossing the main portion of the room. They both glanced toward the curtains, and there was a second's expectancy. Then they were thrown on one side with a hasty movement, and a tall dark woman in a long traveling cloak swept through them.
She paused for a moment on the threshold, and her flashing black eyes seemed to take in every detail of the little scene. She saw Helen, fair and comely, with an added beauty in her soft, animated expression, and she saw her companion, his face alight with intelligence and sensibility, and with the glow of a new life in his brilliant eyes. The perfume of the Egyptian tobacco which hung about the room, the tea tray, their two chairs drawn up before the fire—nothing escaped her. It all seemed to increase her wrath.
For she was very angry. Her form was dilated with passion, and her voice, when she spoke, shook with it. But it was not her anger, nor her threatening gestures, before which they both shrank back for a moment, appalled. It was her awful likeness to the murdered Sir Geoffrey Kynaston.
"Helen!" she cried, "they told me of this; but if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it."
Helen rose to her feet, pale, but with a kindling light in her eyes, and a haughty poise of her fair shapely head.
"You speak in riddles, Rachel," she said quietly. "I do not understand you."
A very storm of hysterical passion seemed to shake the woman, who had approached a little further into the room.
"Not understand me! Listen, and I will make it plain. You were engaged to marry my brother. I come here, almost from his funeral, and I find you thus—with his murderer! Girl, I wonder that you do not die of shame!"
His murderer! For a moment the color fled from cheeks and lips, and the room seemed whirling around her. But one glance at him brought back her drooping courage. He was standing close to her side, erect and firm as a statue, with his head thrown back, and his eyes fixed upon Rachel Kynaston. Blanched and colorless as his face was, there was no flinching in it.
"It is false!" she said proudly. "Ask him yourself."
"Ask him!" She turned upon him like a tigress, her eyes blazing with fury. "Let him hear what I have to say, and deny it. Is it not you who followed him from city to city all over the world, seeking always his life? Is it not you who kept him for many years from his native land for fear of blood-shed—yours or his? Is it not you who have fought with him and been worsted, and sworn to carry your enmity with you through life, and bury it only in his grave? Look at me, man, if you dare, look me in the face and tell me whether you did not seek his life in Vienna, and whether you did not fight with him on the sands at Boulogne. Oh, I know you! It is you! It is you! And then you come down here and live alone, waiting your chance. He is found foully murdered, and you are the only man who could have done it. Ask you whether you be guilty? There is no need, no need. Can anyone in their senses, knowing the story of your past hate, doubt it for one moment? And yet, answer me if you can. Look me in the face, and let me hear you lie, if you dare. Tell me that you know nothing of my brother's death!"
He had stood like marble, with never a change in his face, while she had poured out her passionate accusation. But when silence came, and she waited for him to speak, he could not. A seal seemed set upon his lips. He could not open them. He was silent.
A fearful glare of triumph blazed up in her eyes. She staggered back a little, and leaned upon the table, with her hand clasped to her side.
"See, Helen," she cried, "is that innocence? O God! give me strength to go on. I will see Mr. Thurwell. I will tell him everything. He shall sign a warrant. Ah!"
A terrible scream rang through the room, and echoed through the house. Mr. Thurwell and several of the servants came hurrying in. In the middle of the floor Rachel Kynaston lay prostrate, her fingers grasping convulsively at the empty air, and an awful look in her face. Helen was on her knees by her side, and Mr. Brown stood in the background, irresolute whether to stay or leave.
They crowded round her, but she waved them off, and grasping Helen's wrist, dragged her down till their heads nearly touched.
"Helen," she moaned, "I am dying. Swear to me that you will avenge Geoffrey's murder. That man did it. His name—his name——"
Suddenly her grasp relaxed, and Helen reeled back fainting into her father's arms.
"It is a fit," some one murmured.
But it was death.
"Anything in the letters, guv'nor?"
"Nothing so far, Ben, my boy," answered a little old gentleman, who was methodically opening a pile of envelopes, and carefully scrutinizing the contents of each before arranging them in separate heaps. "Nothing much yet. A letter from a despairing mother, entreating us to find her lost son. Description given, payment—tick! Won't do. Here's a note from Mr. Wallis about his wife's being at the theater the other night, and a line from Jack Simpson about that woman down St. John's Wood way. Seems he's found her, so that's off."
"Humph! business is slack," remarked a younger edition of the old gentleman, who was standing on the hearth rug, with his silk hat on the back of his head, in an attitude of unstudied grace.
"Say, guv'nor, you couldn't let me have a fiver, could you? Must keep up the credit of the firm, don't you know, and I'm awfully hard up. 'Pon my word, I am."
"I couldn't do anything of the sort!" exclaimed the old gentleman testily. "Certainly not. The way you spend money is grievous to me, Benjamin, positively grievous!"
He turned round in his chair, and with his spectacles on the top of his head surveyed his son and heir with a sorrowful interest.
"Oh, hang it all, some one must spend the money if we're to keep the business at all!" retorted Mr. Benjamin testily. "I can't live as I do without it, you know; and how are we to get the information we want? Look at the company I keep, too."
The old gentleman seemed mollified.
"There's something in that, Ben," he remarked, slowly wagging his head. "There's something in that, of course. Bless me, your mother was telling me you was with a lord the other day!"
Mr. Benjamin expanded a little with the recollection, and smiled gently.
"That was quite true, dad," he remarked with a grandiloquent air. "I was just going into the Cri—let me see, on Tuesday night it was—when whom should I run up against but little Tommy Soampton with a pal, and we all had drinks together. He was a quiet-looking chap, not dressed half so well as—er——"
"As you, Ben," interposed his father proudly.
"Well, I wasn't thinking of myself particularly," Mr. Benjamin continued, twirling an incipient mustache, and looking pleased. "But when Tommy introduced him as Lord Mossford, I was that surprised I nearly dropped my glass."
"What did you say to him, Ben?" asked the little old gentleman in an awed tone.
Ben drew himself up and smiled.
"I asked him how his lordship was, and whether his lordship'd take anything."
"And did he, Ben?" asked his father eagerly.
"Rather! He was just as affable as you like. I got on with him no end."
The little old gentleman turned away to his letters again to hide a gratified smile.
"Well, well, Ben, I suppose you must have it," he said leniently. "Young men will be young men. Only remember this, my boy—wherever you are, always keep an eye open for business. Never forget that."
Benjamin, junior, slapped his trousers pocket and grinned.
"No fear, dad. I don't forget the biz."
"Well, well; just wait till I've gone through the letters, and we'll see what we can do. We'll see. Ha! this reads well. I like this. Ben, we're in luck this morning. In luck, my boy!"
Mr. Benjamin abandoned his negligent attitude, and, drawing close to his father, peered over his shoulder. The letter which lay upon the desk was not a long one, but it was to the point.