The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

V

At last the sound of wheels for which he had been listening so long fell on his ear, and hurriedly he went to fetch that which he felt should be given to his cousin without loss of time. He hoped, with a cowardly hope, that bad news, which ever travels quickly, had already met Mrs. Robinson on her way home.

Having given a brief order that they were not to be disturbed, Wantley made his way to the studio with the jewel-case in his hand. For a moment he waited just inside the door. Penelope was standing at the further end of the long room, leaning over the marble top of the high mantelpiece, writing out a telegram. She still wore a large straw hat, of which the sides, flattened down over her ears by broad black ribbons tied under the chin, framed her face, and gave a softened, old-fashioned grace to her tall, rounded figure.

As Wantley finally advanced towards her, she looked up, and her glance, her suspended writing—above all, her blue eyes full of questioning anger at the intrusion of his presence—showed him that she knew nothing, that the task he had so greatly dreaded lay before him.

Taking his stand by the other side of the mantelpiece, he put down the case containing her letters, and pushed it towards her. Twice he opened his lips but closed them again without speaking.

'Well,' she said shortly, as her eyes rested indifferently on the little jewel-box, 'I suppose this is something else left by Theresa Wake. It can be sent on to-morrow with the other thing, but I'll mention it in the telegram.' And she paused, as if expecting him to leave her. Indeed, her eyes, her mouth, set in stern lines, seemed to say: 'Cannot you go away, and leave me in peace? Your very presence here, unasked, in my own room, is an outrage after the way you behaved to me last night.' But she remained silent, content to wait, pencil in hand, for him to be gone, before concluding her slight task.

'Penelope,' he said at last, stung into courage by her manner and by her contemptuous glance, 'this box was not left by Miss Wake—it once belonged to Sir George Downing, and its contents are, I believe, yours.'

Again he touched the case, pushed it away from himself towards her. It slid across the polished surface of the marble to within an inch of her elbow; but, though he became aware that she stiffened into close attention, his cousin still said no word.

Her silence became to him unbearable. He walked round, and, standing close beside her, deliberately pressed the spring, and revealed what lay within.

As if she had been physically struck, Penelope suddenly drew back. 'Ah!' she said, and that was all. But in a moment her hand had closed on the little case, and she held it clasped to her, shutting out the smiling childish face which lay above the packet of her letters to Downing. So quietly, so quickly had she done this that he wondered for a moment if she had really seen and realized all that was lying there. 'She knows the truth,' he said to himself. 'Thank God I was mistaken—someone else has told her!'

He waited for a question, even for a cry. But none such came from the rigid figure.

'Penelope,' he said at last, and there was a note of tenderness in Wantley's voice she had never before heard in it, 'forgive me the pain I have to inflict on you. I thought that—that these things ought to be given you now, at once. I am sure you will destroy them immediately.'

At last, roughly interrupting him, she turned on him and spoke, while he listened silently, filled with increasing amazement and distress.

'Listen!' she cried, and there was no horror, no anguish, only infinite scorn and anger, in her voice. 'You ask me to forgive you. But understand that I will never forgive you! You have done an utterly unwarrantable thing. Is it possible that you really believed that any interference or effort on your part could separate two such people as Sir George Downing and myself? How little you know me! how little you can understand what the effect of such conduct as yours must be! Listen!'

She feared he was about to speak, and held up her hand. He was looking fixedly at her, still full of concern and pity, but feeling more collected and cooler before her growing excitement.

'No, listen! I am quite calm, quite reasonable; but I want you to realize what you have done—what your interference will bring about.' She paused, then continued, speaking in low, quick tones: 'I confess there was a moment last night when I wavered, when I wondered whether, after all, I was justified in only considering myself and—and—him. But now? Shall I tell you what I have made up my mind to do during the last few minutes? No—don't speak to me yet—I will listen with what patience I can after you have heard what I have to say. I mean to go to town to-night with Sir George Downing—I know he has not left; I know you have not yet driven him away. If necessary, I shall thrust my company upon him! Do you suppose it will be hard for me to undo with him any evil you have done?'

Again she paused, again she held up her hand to stay his words. 'If he is going to Mr. Gumberg I shall ask the old man to allow me to come there, in the character of George's'—her voice dropped, but she did not spare Wantley the word—'mistress.'

She added, with a bitter smile: 'Mr. Gumberg is a bachelor; the situation will amuse him, and give him plenty to talk about all the winter! I had meant to leave England as secretly, as quietly, as possible, out of consideration for mamma, and even for you; though I am not ashamed of what I am doing. But now, after this, I shall write and tell certain people of my intention, or, rather, of what I shall have done by the time I write; you will be sorry, you will repent then of what you have done to-day!'

He saw that she was trembling violently, and a look that crossed his face stung her afresh. 'Pray do not feel any concern for me. You will need all your pity for mamma, even a little for yourself, after to-day. But, oh!'—as her hand again closed convulsively over the case which contained her letters, her portrait—'he should not have entrusted these to you! But doubtless he could not help it—how do I know what you said to him?'

'Penelope,' he said desperately, 'you must, and you shall, listen to me! You wrong Sir George Downing, and most cruelly. How could you believe that he, alive, would have let your letters to him go out of his possession? Surely you knew him better than that!'

'I don't understand,' she said, bewildered. But even as she spoke he saw the mortal fear, the beginning of knowledge, coming into her face. He held out his hand, and she took it, groping her way close to him, as a blind woman might have done. 'Tell me what you mean,' she said, 'tell me quickly what you mean.'

But before he could answer there came he sound of tramping feet, of subdued voices. 'Don't look!' he cried hoarsely. 'Penelope, I beg you not to look!' But she pushed him aside, and, holding her head high, with swift, steady feet, passed out through the window to meet the little procession which was advancing slowly, painfully, across the terrace.

The burden which had just been carried up the steep steps leading from the shore was almost beyond the bearers' strength, for the broad door of the Beach Room had been taken off its hinges, and large stones from the shore held down the sheet which covered that which lay on it.

An elderly man, well known both to Penelope and to Wantley as John Purcell, the head constable of Wyke Regis, came forward to meet Mrs. Robinson. 'A terrible affair, my lady,' he observed, subdued but eager, for such an event, so interesting from his professional point of view, had never before come his way. 'I wouldn't have anything moved till I'd telegraphed for instructions; but, of course, I didn't stop thinking, and we've sent word all down the coast about that boatload his lordship saw. It's a valuable clue, I should say.'

He addressed his words to Penelope, and both he and Wantley believed her to be listening attentively to what was being said. But, after the first moment of recognition of the old constable, she no longer saw him at all, and not to save the life she then held so cheap could she have repeated what he had just said; for she was saying to herself again and again, so possessed by the misery of the thought that it left room for nothing else: 'Why did I go away to-day and leave him? If I had been here, if I had stayed within call of him, he would not have done this thing—he would now have been with me!'

But when Purcell dropped his voice she began to hear what he was saying. 'Is there any place downstairs where your lordship could arrange for us to put the body? We had a hard job over those steps, and up to the poor gentleman's room I've a notion they're much worse. I've had to be there two or three times, sealing up everything.' He said it in almost a whisper, but for the first time Mrs. Robinson, hearing, spoke:

'You may take him to the Picture Room,' she said brusquely, 'and then you will not have to go through the hall, for the windows are very wide.'

When the signal was given for the men to move on, she first made as if she would have followed them; then, at a touch on her arm from her cousin's hand, she turned away slowly, walking past the studio windows into the garden paths beyond. Wantley followed her, amazed, relieved, bewildered by her self-command, fearing the explanation which must now follow, and yet nervously anxious to get it behind him, while, above all, conscious of a great physical lassitude which made him long to go away and forget everything in sleep.

At last, when they were some way from the villa, close to the open down, Penelope turned to him. 'Now tell me,' she said, 'tell me as quickly as you can, what I must know.' And she waited, oppressed, while Wantley once more told the tale he had taught himself to tell, and which had been made perfect by such frequent, such frightful repetition.

For a moment she remained silent. Then, slowly and searchingly, she asked what the other felt to be a singular question: 'Would it be better for him—I mean as to what people will say of him in the future—for it to be thought, as that foolish old man evidently thinks, that he was murdered, or for the truth to be known?'

'The truth?' said Wantley, looking at her, 'and what is the truth? Do you know it?'

'Yes; you and I know the truth.' Penelope's cheeks were burning; she spoke impatiently, as if angered by his dulness. 'When all that trouble came to him thirty years ago, he nearly did it; and later, another time, he thought it the only way out.'

Then Wantley understood her meaning, and the knowledge that she believed this simple, obvious explanation brought the one touch of comfort, of relief, which he had felt for many hours.

'I think,' he said at length, 'that such a thing as suicide always goes against a man's memory. Personally, I hope it will be put down to an accident. In any case, you must remember that there were many people interested in bringing about his death. I myself can testify that only recently he told me that he knew himself to be in perpetual danger.'

But Penelope was not listening. 'Now that you have told me what I wanted to know, I must ask you to do something for me.' And as he looked at her, startled, she added: 'Nothing of any great consequence. All I ask is, that you to-day, before I go back to the house, will tell Motey and my mother that I cannot, and that I will not, see them for a while. Mamma will not mind—she will understand. I know well enough that Motey betrayed me to her—I knew it the day it happened, and I felt very angry. But now nothing matters. You are to tell Motey from me that if she forces herself on me now it will be the end—I will never have her about me again!'

Penelope spoke angrily, excitedly. As she spoke she clutched her cousin's arm as if to emphasise her words. And Wantley, marvelling, turned to carry out her wish.

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