THE PRESENT AS IT WAS.
He put the candle on the dressing-table, and sat down in front of the glass. He placed one elbow on the table, bent his head low, and catching his hair, softly rested his head on the ball of his hand.
His brows were knit. His eyes, bent on the toilet-cover, were vacant, rayless; they carefully explored the pattern of the cloth. His mind was a blank. It showed nothing. It was as incapable of reflection as the waters of the middle sea battered by the winds beneath the tawny clouds. His reason was not with him, and the machinery of his mind had stopped. There were no ideas in his imagination. His mind floated free in unoccupied space.
For a while he sat thus. Then he raised his head and looked firmly into the glass.
"What has happened to me?" he thought, with his eyes fixed on the eyes in the glass. "A moment ago, when I discovered she still lived, I felt in despair; and now I am calm. What has happened to me?
"What has happened to me?
"Here is the situation:
"The servants think she went to that boat. She knew on such occasions I always took charge of whatever little luggage we required. They have not seen her since luncheon. They believe she was in the Rodwell. It is scarcely possible anyone can say she was not in the Rodwell; all the people and crew who were on the after-deck are dead. Any one who heard of my visit to Asherton's Quay, or met one of the servants, would regard me as a widower. I was a widower at Asherton's Quay. I was a widower while I drove up from Asherton's Quay to this. My servants assure me I am a widower.
"To-morrow all Daneford will regard me a widower.
"To-morrow morning Maud Midharst will think of me as a widower—Maud Midharst, who will one day own that chest, which, when opened, will be found to contain the bones of a thief and a suicide, not the fortune of a great heiress.
"To-morrow morning Maud Midharst will think of me as a widower; what will she think of me as—at night?"
Suddenly the fixed expression left his face. A thought that sent the blood tingling through his veins had rushed in upon him.
"Perhaps," he said, breathless, "I am a widower! She may be dead!"
He rose nimbly, and, taking up the candle, once more went into the passage leading to the first-floor room of the Tower of Silence.
He looked carefully round, and then going to the end of the passage further from the tower, closed the two doors and locked the inner one.
He proceeded cautiously back to the door leading into the tower. This was a single door. He held the candle in his left hand, knocked with his right, and bent his ear towards the door.
No reply.
He knocked again, this time more loudly.
Still no reply.
Holding the candle behind him, he bent low and looked into the keyhole.
Undoubtedly there was the end of the shaft of the key shining against his eye.
He paused a while in deep thought; then shaking himself up, knocked more loudly, battering with his clenched fist.
No answer.
He looked at the candle he carried. It was wax, and in his moving to and fro the wax had overflowed the flame-pan and run down the side, making a long thin ridge. He took a piece of pencil from his pocket, stripped off the ridge of wax, softened the wax at the flame, and stuck a lump the size of a pea on the end of the pencil.
Then he heated the free end of the wax, and when it had just begun to run thrust it cautiously into the keyhole, and pressed the wax against the shaft of the key in the lock. He held the pencil steadily thus for a few minutes. With great caution he tried it. All was well. The wax adhered firmly to the end of the pencil and the shaft of the key.
With elaborate care he twisted the pencil slightly one way, then the other. The key moved slowly in the lock. He tried it four or five times right and left, and holding the candle behind him and his eye on a level with the keyhole. At last the hole was completely blocked up by the body of the key. Forcing the pencil in firmly, the key slipped through the hole and fell on the floor within.
He straightened himself, leaned against the wall for a moment, and wiped his forehead. Then drawing his keys out of his pocket, he inserted one in the lock, turned the lock softly, and entered.
As he did so the head of a man disappeared below the window-sill. Grey did not see this head, nor did he at that time know of the man's presence.
The room was one of medium size, but it was dark in colour, and the one candle was almost lost in it, and revealed little or nothing.
Holding the light above his head Grey peered around.
He approached a couch, on which could be dimly seen the prostrate figure of a woman. The figure did not move as he drew near.
He stood over the couch and looked down upon his wife. She was lying on her back. Her mouth was slightly open, and her face very pale. Her eyes, too, were partly open.
He waved the candle across the eyes. No sign of consciousness. He called "Bee" softly two or three times. No answer.
Could it be she was really dead? Really dead after all?
He stooped down and put his ear over her mouth.
No, this was not death. This was—brandy.
He shook her slightly. He caught her by the shoulder and shook her more strongly, calling her name into her ear.
She responded by neither sound nor motion.
Then putting the candle down on the floor he stood up, folded his arms, and reflected intently with his eyes fixed on her.
Not death but brandy, and yet how like death, and how near death! How near death! And still in the interval between this and death lay his ruin, his destruction. A blanket thrown on that face would bridge over the interval between this state and death, and give him a golden road to happiness and glorious prosperity.
His wife! This his wife here, degraded thus! This woman whom he had loved with all the love he had ever given woman! This woman, whom he had married in defiance of his father's wish and all worldly wisdom! Great God, was this to be borne?
She had brought herself nigh death. She was nigh death now. It might be she would never awake. It was quite possible she might never awake. But then the hideous scandal! The coroner's jury found that Mrs. Grey, wife of Henry Walter Grey, Esq., died of excessive drink! Intolerable!
And yet this wretched woman lying here had made such a thing not only possible but probable. Suppose she should never wake, what an unendurable position for him! He could not live through that odious inquest, never survive that degrading verdict. He should throw himself into the Weeslade, or blow out his brains first.
Any time she might get into such a condition and never awake! Great God! this was a view of the case he had never taken until now. He had always had the dread of disclosure before his mind, but now he should have the infinitely more appalling horrors of a coroner's jury and a coroner's verdict. This was insupportable. Abominable!
Any time in the future she might die as she was now. Then no doubt he should be a widower, but a widower under what a terrible shadow! Suppose she should die now, and by any means it should come out that he had deliberately placed the brandy in her way, he had better leave Daneford at once. They would look on him as a murderer.
As a murderer!
They would know he had put a fatal temptation in his wife's path. The discovery was what he dreaded.
Suppose she never woke again—ah!
Suppose she never got up alive off that couch!
Never got up from where she lay!
That was a royal thought? Now to make all right, all secure. Now! What a royal thought! A thought worthy of the prince regnant of the Nether Depths.
He stooped, took up his candle, and crossed the room with rapid steps. He locked the door of the tower-room, and, having reached his own room, rang the bell.
James answered the bell.
"James," he said, "I cannot rest. I cannot believe this dreadful thing. I wish you and the other servants to search the house thoroughly from garret to cellars. Mind, a room is not to be omitted. When every room has been examined let me know. I have been in the tower."
James left, and for an hour the banker sat alone in his bedroom. At the end of the hour James came back with the report that every room had been examined and no trace found.
"We can do no more, James. I shall want no one to-night. You may all go to bed as soon as you like. Good-night."
Again he was alone. Alone for the night. Alone save for the proximity of his wife in the next room. Alone with his royal idea and the easy means of carrying it out.
He braced himself, and began walking up and down the room firmly.
Yes, this was a golden opportunity, which would have been utterly worthless but that in the mid-centre and at the right moment his great thought had burst in upon him.
It was most likely his wife would never wake. In fact, the chances were in favour of her not waking. It would be almost a miracle if ever she returned to consciousness.
Why should there ever be an inquest?
Supposing she had died in her sleep, it would have done no one any good to hold an inquest.
Then, if she did die in this sleep, what would Maud Midharst regard him as to-morrow night?
As a widower, of course.
And what should he regard himself as?
As a man doubly delivered from a wife who was the slave of an odious vice, and from ruin, disgrace, and suicide.
She was sleeping still, he supposed. He would go and try.
He stole cautiously out into the passage, and, opening the door into the tower-room, crept towards the couch. He did not carry a candle this time. He stumbled over something hard and metallic which he had seen when last in the room. He recovered himself rapidly. He paused, balanced himself on the balls of his feet, leaned forward, and listened intently.
The sound had not roused her.
It was as dark as a vault. A faint blue square, like the bloom under trees in summer, showed the situation of the one window. All the rest was as much out of view as if the solid earth intervened.
He crossed the room and approached the couch, with his head thrust forward, and all the faculties of his mind bent on his hearing; he stooped over the couch and listened, as though he would pierce remotest silence to reach what he sought.
Yes, there was a low, faint sound of breathing, but so low it seemed to come from a long distance.
He knelt down beside the couch, and called softly in her ear, "Bee."
No answer.
"Bee."
No answer.
"Bee."
No answer.
A long pause followed, during which no sound stirred in the intense darkness. The husband still leant over the wife, the wife still breathed faintly.
Then——
In ten minutes from that strange sound Grey was back in his bedroom, standing before the glass with set resolute lips and a rigid white face.