The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Instinctively he averted his eyes from the slender bundle of letters on which the miniature had lain. But, as he lifted them out, together with his cousin's portrait, he saw that they had served to conceal a sheet of note-paper—a piece of old-fashioned, highly-glazed note-paper, deeply edged with black—lying open across the bottom of the jewel-case. As he glanced at the first few words, 'The Queen commands me to request that you——' ah, poor Downing! For a moment Wantley hesitated; he had meant only to withdraw what concerned Penelope, but finally he laid everything—the summons to Balmoral, the letters written in the bold, pointed handwriting Wantley knew so well, the little miniature—back in the jewel-case, which he then locked away in his own room next door.

IV

The hours that followed he remembered in later life as a man may do a period of delirium, or as a bad dream which he has dreamed innumerable times.

He became horribly familiar with the tale he had to tell.

Each person interested had to be informed of how he had gone down into the hall, whence, finding two letters for Sir George Downing, he had made his way across the terrace, down the steps leading to the shore, noticing as he went a little pleasure boat which had drifted fast out of sight.

Then had to follow the recital of his fruitless knocking at the Beach Room door, followed by his dreadful discovery—the sight of one who had been his honoured guest lying dead, the death-wound above the right ear having been obviously caused by a revolver which had been left on the table, close to where the body had fallen.

Wantley also had to describe his return to the villa, the breaking of the awful news to Lady Wantley, the sending for the doctor and for the police from Wyke Regis, followed by a time of long waiting—for, of course, he had allowed no one to touch the body—first for the police (his letter remained for a while unopened at the station), and then for his cousin, Mrs. Robinson, who was fortunately away when the first awful discovery was made.

Such had been the story Wantley had to tell innumerable times—first, to the various people who had a right to know all that could be known; secondly, to the numerous folk, whose interest, if idle, was eager and real, and whom he felt a nervous desire to conciliate, and to make believe his version of an affair which became more than a nine days' wonder.

After the bearing of the great mental strain, especially after the accomplishment of a prolonged mental task, the mind—ay, and even the body—refuse to be stilled, and call imperatively for something else to do, to go on doing. When at last the doctor had come and gone, when the first discussion with the local police had come to an end—in a word, when Wantley had repeated some five or six times the grim, simple facts to all those whom it concerned—there came to him the most painful ordeal of all, the hours spent by him in waiting for Penelope's return.

After he had taken Lady Wantley up to her room, and left her there in what he trusted would remain a strange state of bewildered coma, he had come down to wander restlessly through the large rooms on the ground-floor of the villa.