The Loudwater Tragedy

by T. W. Speight

AN UNLOOKED-FOR DEVELOPMENT.

That Robert Melray was infinitely distressed by the revelations of his kinsman's delinquencies we have had his own word for. He had been so much away from England that for a number of years he had seen scarcely anything of Dyson, but he knew that his brother had always had a high opinion of the young man's industry and business capacity, and that from the time of the elder Dyson's death he had stood in a sort of paternal relation to him. To James Melray, as Robert admitted, far more than to himself, must the discovery, thrust upon him by Dunning, have come as a shock--one, indeed, in his case from which he would never have wholly recovered had his life been prolonged for years.

Richard Dyson's wrongdoing was of a character so extreme that not to have taken some kind of notice of it would have seemed to Robert Melray not merely weak, but criminal. What if he were to carry out the programme as laid down by his brother to Dunning? What if he were to advance Dyson the three thousand pounds which would accrue to him presently under James Melray's will and dismiss him with ignominy? Nothing less than that did it seem possible for him to do. On the other hand, he could not afford to overlook the love borne by his mother for her dead niece's son--a love till now undarkened by the faintest shadow of a cloud. Mrs. Melray senior was seventy-six years old. The murder of her eldest son had been a blow which nothing but her indomitable spirit had enabled her to recover from. Should his be the hand, Robert Melray asked himself, to strike her another blow, which, to such a woman as she--one to whom the probity of every member of the house of Melray was as dear as her own virtue--would be only less terrible than the first? The more he thought of it the more he shrank from taking upon himself the onus of such a deed.

One other course was open to him. He had good hope of being able to dispose of the business of Melray Brothers before he was many weeks older. What if he were to go on till then and make no sign? With the turning over of the business to other hands his relations with Dyson, so far as the firm was concerned, would cease, and there would be no need ever to set eyes on him again were he minded not to do so. What if he were to keep his dark secret undivulged, unless it were to the criminal himself at their hour of parting, and allow his mother to live on for the rest of her days in happy ignorance of what, were it brought to her knowledge, might, perchance, prove well-nigh fatal to her? Yet it galled Robert Melray's strong sense of right and justice to think that a crime so flagrant should go wholly unpunished, even although the criminal were of his own flesh and blood. Willingly, then, did he accede to Dyson's written request for a ten-days' holiday on the plea of ill-health, which he found on his desk one morning shortly after his and Philip Winslade's interview with Mr. Dunning. For the time being he felt absolved from coming to a decision of any kind, and he breathed more freely in consequence.

Fanny Sudlow was another inmate of Loudwater House whose mind was beset by doubts which refused either to allow themselves to be treated as if they were of no consequence, or to furnish any ground from which they might be developed into certainties. It was Phil's last briefly-worded epistle which had served to upset Fanny's equanimity. The strange discrepancy between Evan Wildash, as described by those who had known him, and the same person as described in Mrs. Melray's statement, was one which it baffled her to reconcile, even as it had baffled her lover. When she looked at Denia and asked herself whether it were possible that the foul demon of deceit could find lodgment in so fair a frame, she could but shake her head and tell herself that such a thing was very hard to believe. And yet there was Phil's letter! In her own despite, Fanny began to feel something of that sentiment of vague distrust which the elder Mrs. Melray avowed that her daughter-in-law had inspired her with from the first.

Meanwhile Denia's smiles, as the spring days lengthened, began to come and go more frequently, and there were times when some quaint remark on Fanny's part would elicit a little burst of rippling laughter and a gay rejoinder. The cloud which had for so many months overshadowed her young life was beginning to melt and disappear. Soon the past, with all that it held of pleasure or of pain, would for her have become nothing more than a faint memory which, as time went on, would intrude itself less and less often upon her. Hers was one of those natures which no calamity can crush for long. Her heart was like one of those quiet tarns, deep-buried among the hills, high above which the tempests rave while they lie softly darkling below. She was happy as the birds are happy, because it was not in her to be otherwise: that, at least, was how Fanny Sudlow summed her up in her own thoughts.

But Denia's talk, however wide it might range, or however apparently careless it might be, was always strictly impersonal. Herself and her concerns were kept studiously in the background, and Fanny's hand was not the one to try to drag them to the front. One afternoon, however, either of set purpose or because for a moment her usual caution had deserted her, Denia said to Miss Sudlow: "Don't these sunny, sweet-breathing spring days, when everything seems bursting with life, often make you long to have wings that you might fly away somewhere--anywhere? They do me. Oh! I am not going to bury myself in this place for ever, let who will think it. I have ideas--intentions. As soon as my husband's affairs have been wound up and I know for certain what my portion of the estate will amount to, I shall leave here and for ever. I have friends in London, and to them I shall go first of all. Afterwards---- But that is no matter."

It was a hot close evening in mid May. There had scarcely been a breath of air all day and the night had brought no coolness. Fanny Sudlow sat in the dark at the open casement of her bedroom window, her hair unbound and a handkerchief soaked in vinegar laid across her forehead. She was suffering from one of those distressing headaches to which she had been more or less liable all her life. She heard the clock of St. Mary's strike eleven, and still she sat on, knowing of old that it was useless for her to go to bed till the pain should in some measure have abated. Her window looked into a corner of the old garden, in which, just then, the moon shone silvery bright. She had not been out of doors all day; her room felt so stifling and the garden looked so cool and inviting, that a strong desire came over her to get away from the close atmosphere of the house and pace its silent walks awhile in search of that nepenthe she was unable to find indoors. It was a desire which she let have its way.

Having tied back her hair, she flung a dark travelling cloak around her, the hood of which she could draw over her head were she so minded. Then she quitted her room and went lightly downstairs. Early hours were the rule at Loudwater House, and everybody had retired long ago. There were two exits from the house into the garden, one through the conservatory, the other by means of a glass door at the end of a side corridor. Fanny chose the latter. Having, with as little noise as possible, unlocked the door, she opened it and stepped out into the still moonlit night.

Making her way into the farther walks, she began to pace them slowly to and fro. Not a light shone anywhere in such windows of the house as were visible from the garden. The quietude was intense, but presently the silence was broken by the chiming of the quarter before twelve. The moonlight seemed to listen, and as the sound died away a low sigh breathed over the garden, and therewith half-opened leaves and bursting buds began to stir and whisper. They had awoke to the first kisses of the soft cool airs which had come as the avant-couriers of midnight.