BANKER AND BARONET.
Next noon, as appointed, Grey called at the "Warfinger Hotel" and saw Sir William. The interview was a brief one. Sir William informed the banker he had made up his mind to only one thing so far, namely, to keep the secret and do nothing for a month or two. "This looks very like compounding a felony," said the young man, "but I am prepared to take that risk."
Grey went away respited. It was a great relief nothing was to be done at once, but when something came to be done what would it be? That was the question which followed Grey day and night, waking and sleeping, through two long weary months. One qualifying fact operated greatly in his favour: day after day he lost susceptibility. Something was happening which dulled his sense of danger or exposure. He had begun to forget more and more, and it was only on rare occasions he had a clear and well-defined idea of his position. He had a weak conviction Sir William would not have him prosecuted, but what would the young man do?
But if the tyranny of the theft had lost its poignancy, he had two fiercer troubles left.
Every old broken-down woman he met in the street was his mother. By day he met his mother a thousand times; she crawled close to the wall, she had sold all her clothes for bread, she had worn out her boots, and her bare feet, her poor old bare feet, touched the cold wet streets. If he took up a paper his eye fell on some paragraph relating to the death in great misery of an old woman over seventy who had seen better days.
But it was when the twilight had died, and all the land lay in the dark trance of night, the prime actor in his mental disaster entered on the scene.
In order that he might marry Maud and so cover up his robbery, he had taken upon him the awful burden of blood. Now Maud had slipped through his grasp, and there was a chance his theft might still remain undisclosed. What was his position with regard to the deed of the seventeenth of August? If the warm-breathing body of his wife were by his side he should be in no worse position.
When the dusk came down upon the earth, when the fields lay under the shadow of the wings of ill angels, the warm and breathing body of his wife was not at his side, but there, no matter where he might sit, was the clammy cold thing he had left that night on the top of the Tower of Silence. It lay in passage and hall, and in the dining-room it was always stiff and stark behind his chair, where he could not see it, but whence the clammy chill radiating from it reached his back and froze his spirit.
That was not the worst, for it was vague; not the figure of his wife so much as that of the victim of murder. Over one shoulder, he knew not which, came that face, not now calm and passionless as before, but full of love and tender reproach, an expression in which the love out-measured the reproach ten thousand-fold. It was this new look of old love made him shut his fists, and grind his teeth, and sob and groan.
From the ghastly caverns of night's silence whispers of her voice came to him pleading for mercy.
"Do not, for God's sake, Wat, do not send me in my sin before my Maker!"
These awful whispers made him start and stare, and caused the cold sweat to start from all the pores of his body.
Then followed night and dreams. When he awoke after dreams he always thought the dreaming worse than waking. When he sought his bed at night he prayed for dreams as a relief. In the privacy of his own room, and in the still deeper privacy of dreams, he was always in her presence when the rustle of her dress made his pulses thicken with joy.
These dreams were his only resting-places. But, unfortunately, not only did they not last always, but towards the end of each it changed and died in an awful sense of unascertainable disaster. Something had happened to his love, something so hideous and unheard of, that not man or woman, beast or stone, would tell him the secret. With a great shout he awoke, sprang out of bed to seek for his love through all the world, tore open the door, and found his murdered wife lying across the threshold, and upon his hands her blood.
Day by day the influence of these terrors wrought on Grey until his eyes grew dim, his hands palsied, his gait feeble, and his mind dull. He forgot oftener now than formerly. In the midst of business transactions he would stop suddenly, put his hand to his head, mutter a few incoherent words, cease speaking for a while, and then exclaim piteously: "I have forgotten something! I have forgotten something!"
All who came in contact with him saw he was breaking down. They said:
"Poor Grey loved his wife so deeply, so tenderly, he is losing his reason for loss of her."
This popular verdict was not only a great cause of drawing sympathy towards the widower, but almost wholly washed away the stain which had smirched his dead wife's name. For those who had heard of her failing, and believed it fact, now asked themselves:
"How could any man care for a woman so afflicted? How could any man wear away his life in sorrow for the loss of an intemperate wife?"
The evening Grey first visited Sir William Midharst at the "Warfinger Hotel" the young man went to the Castle and had a long talk with Maud, in which she told him of Grey's extraordinary conduct on the occasion of the unknown old woman's visit. She did not tell him she suspected the banker had been trying to make himself more than agreeable to her. He did not say anything to her of the scene between the banker and himself at the "Warfinger." He heard all Maud had to say to him without comment beyond expressions of surprise.
"I know the whole secret," he thought, "but I must have time to think out the situation before I decide on a course of action. When I have considered all the points I shall not be slow to move."
As he was going down a corridor after saying good-night to Maud Mrs. Grant overtook him.
She said: "How can you account for Mr. Grey's conduct, Sir William? I cannot understand it at all. Of course Maud told you all. You do not think his manner of wooing likely to win?"
"His manner of wooing! I was told nothing of his wooing. Did he make love to Maud?"
"Ah, did she not tell you. I suppose the poor child felt it might not be delicate to mention the matter. He has been making downright love to her. She told me all about it. That's the extraordinary part of the thing; he has been making love to her, and then he breaks out into that violent manner all at once. Acting, indeed! I don't believe a word of it."
"So," thought Sir William to himself, as he went home to his hotel, "I did not know the whole secret, but I think I have it all now. Of course, if he married Maud he need say nothing about the money. It's all gone, no doubt. A man would not tell such a lie and offer to back it up with a bullet. Let me see now. My return has forced his hand. He saw he had no chance of winning Maud. What a preposterous idea to think of his making love to my angel Maud! What insolent presumption! Poor Maud a beggar through his means! It is well I am not. I suppose we can live on the old estate as the Midharsts have done for generations before us. I am full of hope. I am drunk with the belief Maud shall be mine. I think she is glad I am back, and will be glad to see me every day. Fancy seeing Maud every day from this out! Fancy being permitted to take her hand, and to feel that hand on my arm! Fancy being able to say 'Maud' a thousand times a day to herself and not to an image of her. Oh, Maud, my beautiful, be with me for ever as the flowers are with summer.
"What shall I do with this scoundrel Grey? He was very nearly too deep for me. He imposed on me, but that is all over now. What am I to do with him? If he is prosecuted there will be worry, and the past will be gone into, and the peculiarities of Sir Alexander, among other things his hatred of me and the, let me say, friendship between his daughter and me.
"They might call Maud, these lawyers have no taste, no sense of propriety. Think of putting Maud in the box and cross-examining her, and—yes, by Heavens, some of those legal bullies might be ungentle to my lily sweet Maud.
"What a wonderful thing Maud's hand is. It is like the moon, always the same, and yet you can't be in sight of it without looking at it often.
"But this scoundrel Grey. I wish I were done with him. I have given up all taste for affairs and difficulties. I am become bucolic. Suppose he is prosecuted we can't get the money back, for such a prosecution would shut up his Bank. We should have all the trouble and worry for nothing. Then what is the object of prosecuting the scoundrel?
"It is strange about Maud's hand. I thought as I looked at it this evening that if I were dying of wounds on a battle-field, parched with that last terrible thirst, and Maud came and put her hand on my forehead, the thirst would leave me. I know it would.
"But about Grey?
"Yes. Isn't it too bad that when I have Maud to think about this wretched Grey should thrust himself in between Maud and me. I wish the devil would take Grey. He'll want that bland burglar sometime, and he'd oblige me greatly by taking him now.
"What a beautiful thing Maud's ear is. While I was looking at it to-night I found out why when I speak to her I seem to pray; it is because I know my words must reach the spirit of a saint.
"But here is this Grey. I am to meet him to-morrow and let him know my decision. I wish the devil would take him now, or Heaven would inspire me what to do with him. If the money had been mine I should before going to bed to-night sign a receipt for the full amount, send the receipt to him, and beg of him never to allude to the matter again.
"If the money was mine!
"Ah! That is a thought worth considering twice.
"If I marry Maud the supposititious money will be mine. I don't want the money if I could get it, and I can't get it, or any of it, if I wanted it. The prosecution would involve nothing but trouble and worry.
"Come, on the day I marry Maud, I'll give him a clear receipt for it! But I'll put him off for a couple of months and then tell him.
"If all the rest of the world were mine on the day I marry Maud, and it would save her worry not to take it, I should pass it by.
"My gentle Maud, you are the infinite sum of all my earthly hopes to which nothing can be added, from which nothing can be taken away."