ON THE TOP.
The top of the tower was flat. It was reached through a hooded doorway resembling a ship's companion. A parapet about two and a half feet high ran round the tower on all sides, and in the left-hand angle of the parapet, looking towards the grounds in front of the house, stood the tall, battered, dilapidated, rusted tank.
This tank had been of substantial make. Four upright bars of iron still stood showing where the four angles of the elevation of the tank had been. Binding the top of these four uprights together had been a substantial rail. The inner side of that rail had disappeared; the three other sides remained. Half-way down the uprights had been four girders binding the uprights together. Of these girders three were entire, the one on the outside having succumbed to violence of time. A few of the plates clung to the uprights in the upper section of the tank. In the lower section only one plate was missing, and that on the back of the tank. The base of the tank was eight feet square, the height of the uprights ten feet. Once in it had been stored the water-supply. More than fifty years ago it had been superseded by a tank put up in the main building. Since then not a dozen times had any one visited the top of the tower.
That night of the 17th of August was dark; there were neither stars nor moon. No wind had arisen to disturb the intense calm.
At length Grey rose from the ground somewhat refreshed and quieted. There was no use in being foolhardy, and although a person standing on the avenue below could not possibly see a human figure on the top of the tower, still all means caution could suggest ought to be employed. So he stepped into the dilapidated tank through the opening, and having, except on the inner side, a complete bulwark around him five feet high, there was no chance of any one seeing him. He did not care to face yet the descent through that stifling tower.
He would wait a while until he should be fully restored.
He had eaten nothing since luncheon, and the physical and mental ordeals through which he had since passed reduced the activity of his mind, and made his thoughts move slowly, and dimmed the ideas in his imagination. Still in a dull way he sought to review his position.
There to the right lay Daneford, his town, the city of which he was dictator, which would do anything, everything he asked. You could not see the city from this, but there it reposed under that red-yellow stain upon the sky.
The people of that town, if they had seen him take that old man's gold, would not have believed the evidence of their senses. They would have placed their opinion of him against the evidence of their eyes, and his reputation would turn the balance as though nothing was in the other scale. He was sure of that.
To the left was the Island. The old man probably still lived and would live for some time, but the will was now safe. Maud was still unmarried, and he—was free! Free in a double sense: free to marry again, and free from the clutches of the law—so far.
In front of him lay the Manor Park with its stifling groves and alleys, whose lush, rank vegetation and loathsome reptiles and insects kept curious boy and prying man at bay.
By his side stood the Manor House, upon which no green thing would grow, and which had an evil name.
Beneath him was that repulsive tower, up which no one would care to go except upon dire compulsion.
Behind him——
Yes, behind him lay—It.
The question was, Would his reputation in the town, the fact that by noon to-morrow everyone in Daneford would believe he had lost his wife in the Rodwell, the unpopular Park, the uncanny house, the foul tower, the parapet, the remains of this tank (perfect five feet from the roof, except for one eighteen-inch plate, which, owing to its position at the back, could not be even missed from any standpoint but the top of the tower itself), keep It from discovery? be an effectual and life-long barrier between detection and crime, so that he might marry and live once more in——? Well, never mind in what. Anyway, might live?
It was a long question. He put it to himself many times, and could arrive at no answer. His reason answered Yes. His imagination answered No; and according as his reason or his imagination dominated he hoped or he despaired.
The hours advanced. It would be well to get this all over and go down. He had locked the door on the passage, and there was no need for fear or hurry. But staying here did no good, and he had now sufficiently recovered to go down.
He stepped out of the tank and approached the burden.
He raised it, and bending low carried it to the tank. There was difficulty in getting it through the narrow opening, but at last all was accomplished.
He stepped out of the tank, and stood on the open part of the top of the tower for a few moments to recover his breath.
"Hah! I am all right now. I shall grope my way down very well; it will not take half so long to go down as it did to come up."
He placed his hand on the hood of the doorway and stooped to descend; he paused and drew back, thinking:
"If I have killed her, that is no reason why I should add brutality to crime. I did not cover her face, and the birds might——"
He crept back to the tank, leaving the thought unfinished.
He entered it and stooped.
All at once something happened in his mind. Just as he stooped to cover the face of his dead wife, he fell upon his knees beside her, and cried out:
"Almighty God, I have killed her. Almighty God, be merciful if Thou wilt, and let me die."
Burying his face in his hands he burst into hysterical sobs that shook him and would not be uttered without racking pains. They were too big for his chest, too big for his throat, too big for his mouth. While a sob was bursting from his labouring chest he felt the weight of ten thousand atmospheres pressing down his throat. When the sob burst forth, he shuddered and shivered and winced as if a scourge wielded by a powerful arm had fallen on his naked shoulders.
The violence of this outburst had one alleviating effect: while it racked the physical it annihilated the mental man. He was sobbing because he knew he had most excellent cause for inarticulable sorrow. But the sorrow itself made no image in his mind. It was with him as with the player of an instrument, who, coming upon a well-known passage of great mechanical difficulty, finds when the passage is passed small memory of the music and strong memory of each flexion of the fingers, but can, when he needs it, hear all the passage again note for note as it had flown from beneath his fingers.
The wife of his middle life had been murdered by some one long ago. He thought nothing of that. But now he was kneeling by the corpse of the wife of his youth, the bride-sweetheart of his stronger years.
All the trouble, all the cark, all the memory of her faults, of her odd ways, were gone. He was not the middle-aged husband penitent by the body of the middle-aged wife he had murdered. He was the young enthusiastic husband-lover by the side of his dead young wife.
He had not killed the Beatrice he had married long ago. But, O woe, woe, incommunicable agony, he had slain all the faults of his middle-aged wife, he had slain all the years of his life during which his indifference had sprouted and blossomed, and was now by the side of the woman dead whose existence had been to him the sunshine and the rapture of his life.
In a moment of madness he had sought to kill a faulty wife, but by terrible decrees of Heaven he had killed, instead, all the faults of his faulty wife and the sweetheart of his youth. Almighty Maker, did his crime deserve this!
Gradually the physical agony left him, only to be followed by the mental anguish.
"Bee," he moaned, "Bee, won't you get up and walk with me? We shall not go far, for it is late. I want to tell you what we shall do with the back drawing-room in the summer. Don't you remember how I told you once, love, and you were pleased and kissed me, Bee? It is about building the little conservatory for you. You will get up and walk with me a little way. Do, Bee. Let me lift you up."
He stretched out his hand and caught something.
"Cold!
"Cold!"
Then he shuddered and drew back. A third and final change came with the touch of that dead woman's hand. All illusion left him, and, covering the face of the dead, he crawled out of the tank—the murderer of his wife.
Still overhead hung the black sky, still abroad brooded the unbroken stillness.
He looked deliberately around him. What had been done could not be undone, and he had now only to make the best of the situation. Already he felt one good result from his greater crime; it had dwarfed the other to insignificant proportions. The theft now seemed a trifle.
But what had happened to Daneford and the country round, and the grounds about his house, and the tower upon which he stood? Some strange change had come over the relations between him and them. What was it? Daneford, and the country round, and the ground at his feet had receded, gone back from him. He was farther from them than he had been that day. What a strange sensation!
The sensation was very peculiar. He had never felt anything like it before. What had that morning seemed most important to him had now sunk into insignificance. Nothing was of consequence—save One; namely, the chance of a stranger coming to the top of that tower while It remained there.
The feeling was new to Grey, for he was new to the situation he had that night created. The solitude of a vast desert of sand under the pale stars, the solitude of the topmost frozen peaks of the Himalaya, the solitude of an ice-locked Arctic sea, the solitude for a hunted man of an unknown city, is profound and awful; but all combined and intensified a hundred-fold are nothing compared with the appalling solitude upon which man enters when over one shoulder, he knows not which, peers for ever the face of a murdered victim.
That face had not yet come to Grey, but as he descended the muffled stairs of the Tower of Silence he felt her cold lips touch his forehead once again; and once again he plunged forward on his way, caring little for life.