"But, uncle, do you really believe?--Can the dead?--was she--did you----"
My uncle took out his pipe and filled it.
"It"s a long time ago," he said, "a many, many years. Old man"s tales, my dear! Old man"s tales! Don"t you take any notice of them."
He lighted the pipe, puffed silently a moment or two, and then added: "But I know what youth means, and happiness, though I was lame, and the girls used to laugh at me."
_THE MYSTERY OF THE SEMI-DETACHED._
He was waiting for her; he had been waiting an hour and a half in a dusty suburban lane, with a row of big elms on one side and some eligible building sites on the other--and far away to the south-west the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace. It was not quite like a country lane, for it had a pavement and lamp-posts, but it was not a bad place for a meeting all the same; and farther up, towards the cemetery, it was really quite rural, and almost pretty, especially in twilight.
But twilight had long deepened into night, and still he waited. He loved her, and he was engaged to be married to her, with the complete disapproval of every reasonable person who had been consulted. And this half-clandestine meeting was to-night to take the place of the grudgingly sanctioned weekly interview--because a certain rich uncle was visiting at her house, and her mother was not the woman to acknowledge to a moneyed uncle, who might "go off" any day, a match so deeply ineligible as hers with him.
So he waited for her, and the chill of an unusually severe May evening entered into his bones.
The policeman pa.s.sed him with but a surly response to his "Good night."
The bicyclists went by him like grey ghosts with fog-horns; and it was nearly ten o"clock, and she had not come.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned towards his lodgings. His road led him by her house--desirable, commodious, semi-detached--and he walked slowly as he neared it. She might, even now, be coming out. But she was not. There was no sign of movement about the house, no sign of life, no lights even in the windows. And her people were not early people.
He paused by the gate, wondering.
Then he noticed that the front door was open--wide open--and the street lamp shone a little way into the dark hall. There was something about all this that did not please him--that scared him a little, indeed. The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich uncle. The old man must have left early. In which case----
He walked up the path of patent-glazed tiles, and listened. No sign of life. He pa.s.sed into the hall. There was no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why was the front door open? There was no one in the drawing-room, the dining-room and the study (nine feet by seven) were equally blank. Every one was out, evidently. But the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went away and closed it after him. So he went upstairs, and at the door of the first bedroom he came to he struck a wax match, as he had done in the sitting-rooms. Even as he did so he felt that he was not alone. And he was prepared to see _something_; but for what he saw he was not prepared. For what he saw lay on the bed, in a white loose gown--and it was his sweetheart, and its throat was cut from ear to ear. He doesn"t know what happened then, nor how he got downstairs and into the street; but he got out somehow, and the policeman found him in a fit, under the lamp-post at the corner of the street. He couldn"t speak when they picked him up, and he pa.s.sed the night in the police-cells, because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before, but never one in a fit.
The next morning he was better, though still very white and shaky. But the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house.
There was no crowd about it as he had fancied there would be, and the blinds were not down.
As he stood, dazed, in front of the door, it opened, and she came out.
He held on to the door-post for support.
"_She"s_ all right, you see," said the constable, who had found him under the lamp. "I told you you was drunk, but you _would_ know best----"
When he was alone with her he told her--not all--for that would not bear telling--but how he had come into the commodious semi-detached, and how he had found the door open and the lights out, and that he had been into that long back room facing the stairs, and had seen something--in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have brandy given him.
"But, my dearest," she said, "I dare say the house was dark, for we were all at the Crystal Palace with my uncle, and no doubt the door was open, for the maids _will_ run out if they"re left. But you could not have been in that room, because I locked it when I came away, and the key was in my pocket. I dressed in a hurry and I left all my odds and ends lying about."
"I know," he said; "I saw a green scarf on a chair, and some long brown gloves, and a lot of hairpins and ribbons, and a prayer-book, and a lace handkerchief on the dressing-table. Why, I even noticed the almanack on the mantelpiece--October 21. At least it couldn"t be that, because this is May. And yet it was. Your almanac is at October 21, isn"t it?"
"No, of course it isn"t," she said, smiling rather anxiously; "but all the other things were just as you say. You must have had a dream, or a vision, or something."
He was a very ordinary, commonplace, City young man, and he didn"t believe in visions, but he never rested day or night till he got his sweetheart and her mother away from that commodious semi-detached, and settled them in a quite distant suburb. In the course of the removal he incidentally married her, and the mother went on living with them.
His nerves must have been a good bit shaken, because he was very queer for a long time, and was always inquiring if any one had taken the desirable semi-detached; and when an old stockbroker with a family took it, he went the length of calling on the old gentleman and imploring him by all that he held dear, not to live in that fatal house.
"Why?" said the stockbroker, not unnaturally.
And then he got so vague and confused, between trying to tell why and trying not to tell why, that the stockbroker showed him out, and thanked his G.o.d he was not such a fool as to allow a lunatic to stand in the way of his taking that really remarkably cheap and desirable semi-detached residence.
Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this story is that when she came down to breakfast on the morning of the 22nd of October she found him looking like death, with the morning paper in his hand. He caught hers--he couldn"t speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 21st a young lady, the stockbroker"s daughter, had been found, with her throat cut from ear to ear, on the bed in the long back bedroom facing the stairs of that desirable semi-detached.
_FROM THE DEAD._
I.
"But true or not true, your brother is a scoundrel. No man--no decent man--tells such things."
"He did not tell me. How dare you suppose it? I found the letter in his desk; and she being my friend and you being her lover, I never thought there could be any harm in my reading her letter to my brother. Give me back the letter. I was a fool to tell you."
Ida Helmont held out her hand for the letter.
"Not yet," I said, and I went to the window. The dull red of a London sunset burned on the paper, as I read in the quaint, dainty handwriting I knew so well and had kissed so often--
"Dear, I do--I do love you; but it"s impossible. I must marry Arthur. My honour is engaged. If he would only set me free--but he never will. He loves me so foolishly. But as for me, it is you I love--body, soul, and spirit. There is no one in my heart but you. I think of you all day, and dream of you all night. And we must part.
And that is the way of the world. Good-bye!--Yours, yours, yours,
ELVIRE."
I had seen the handwriting, indeed, often enough. But the pa.s.sion written there was new to me. That I had not seen.
I turned from the window wearily. My sitting-room looked strange to me.
There were my books, my reading-lamp, my untasted dinner still on the table, as I had left it when I rose to dissemble my surprise at Ida Helmont"s visit--Ida Helmont, who now sat in my easy-chair looking at me quietly.
"Well--do you give me no thanks?"
"You put a knife in my heart, and then ask for thanks?"
"Pardon me," she said, throwing up her chin. "I have done nothing but show you the truth. For that one should expect no grat.i.tude--may I ask, out of mere curiosity, what you intend to do?"
"Your brother will tell you----"
She rose suddenly, pale to the lips.
"You will not tell my brother?" she began.
"That you have read his private letters? Certainly not!"
She came towards me--her gold hair flaming in the sunset light.