She has wakened—she has looked round—she has seen the poisoned fruit—she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it—she has tasted the oranges—she has turned to sleep again—and the unrelenting venom is at its work!
Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning the tissues—each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty—that will spares them not. The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays, though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all things—mens agitat molem; and yet we can make that will a slave of our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the accomplishment of our desires.
It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed actually to be present in Margaret’s chamber, watching every movement and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection that he was musing.
“Now it’s done, it can’t be undone,” he said. “But is it so very safe, after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it’s much more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any other way. And then there’s all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there is not an inquest—as, of course, there won’t be—they’ll ask who the girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they’ll, some of them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries, perhaps.”
And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his thumb-nail, and yawned.
“By gad! I wish I had not risked it,” he said to himself; and his complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth. A long pull at the liquor restored him, and he began his round of reflections again.
“That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out,” he said; “and—” He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the “French fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still, it’s not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better. By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she hasn’t. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room, if she has taken it. I must go and see. I don’t like the job.”
He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel. With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl’s door he waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All was silent. His heart was sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump: he heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might wake the sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!
Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman’s hard knock at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could make out that much. He did not dare draw close enough to observe her face minutely, or bend down and listen for her breath. And the oranges! Eagerly he looked at them. There were only five of them. Surely—no! a sixth had fallen on the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of relief he picked up all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and, as shrinkingly as he had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and cursing his own cowardice under his breath—he stole down stairs, opened the dining-room door, and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.