"Do not let that disturb you. You may trust Atherton. Nothing will be done against your son. Die in peace."
"Robert, don't kill me! I have not got him here. He is safe. Little Robert, little baby! kiss me, kiss poor mother. It is very dark. I cannot see him;" and the poor hands wandered over the coverlet. We drew near, and the low solemn tones of the priest were heard saying the prayers for the dying. The red streaks of early morning shed their faint glow on the dying woman's face; her lips moved, and Wilmot passing his arm beneath her head, raised her a little on his shoulder; she stole her arm up round his neck, and we heard the words, "Forgive! Mercy!" There was a long struggling sigh, a gasp for breath; the blue-grey eyes opened once more and looked toward the eastern sky, then closed in death.
CHAPTER XIV.
EXEUNT OMNES.
This story which I have then telling, acted now long years ago, was wearing to an end. The unfortunate housekeeper's confession cleared up almost entirely what had mystified and baffled our inquiries for so many months; and, standing beside his mothers bier—the mother who had loved him all too well for her peace—Lister Wilmot, in the depth of his humiliation and the grief which the tide of natural affection, so recently aroused within him, had wakened, added what little was wanting to throw complete light upon the dark mystery of the past.
On the day before the remains of his unhappy parent were consigned to the grave, as he took his last farewell of the corpse, he told me his own story, his temptation and his fall. Alas! for him the sins of his parents had returned with double vengeance upon his head; the evil in them had reproduced itself in him. Deluded with the belief that [{241}] he was the heir to immense wealth, he had given full swing to his besetting vice—gambling. The billiard-table, the gaming-house, and that curse to young man, secret betting clubs and societies, had been his familiar though unknown resort. There, too, he had met with and fallen into the meshes of a creature but too familiar to the frequenters of such places—a man (if such can claim pretence to manhood) mature in years, even to gray hair; one of those who gain the substance which supports their infamous lives by sponging upon the young, by in tangling in their web young men destined to be the pride and hope of high-born families with stainless lineage; or the scions of noble houses; or the youth of houses not less noble, though perhaps more in the sense of present deeds than departed worth; or sadder and more shameful still, the young man who is the only son of his mother, and she a widow, her sole stay and support. Into such hands did Wilmot fall when he met the man Sullivan or De Vos. Through him he became mixed up in some disgraceful gaming affair; and De Vos used it to get him more thoroughly into his power, and upon the strength of it to extort money from him. Then came his real but misplaced attachment to Ada Leslie, and consequent jealousy of Hugh Atherton. An affection requited might have been his salvation; unreturned and hopeless, it became his moral ruin. Deeper and deeper he plunged into vice, faster and faster he gambled. None save those who haunted the same scenes as himself knew how far he was involved, how far lost; none even suspected a tithe of it, save one. But the mother's eye, the mother's heart could not be deceived. She whom he had been taught to look upon only as his uncle's housekeeper, who had nursed and tended and petted him as a child—she saw the care and trouble of his mind; she sought and won his confidence to a great extent. He told her he was overwhelmed with debt and difficulty, and she urged him to apply to Mr. Thorneley for a sufficient sum to free him at least from danger. That application was to be made on the very evening of the murder. She hinted to him darkly that she had the means of forcing Thorneley to give what he required, and that she would risk everything and hesitate at nothing for his (Wilmot's) sake. The first suspicion which entered his mind that she had indeed not scrupled even at the worst, was on the morning after Old Thorneley was found dead. This had strengthened more and more; but the temptation of his opening prospects, of the princely fortune which he found he alone was inheriting, dazzled, blinded him, and stupefied his conscience. A yet greater inducement to evil lay in the alluring thought that if the murder of Old Thorneley were saddled upon Hugh Atherton, and his disgrace, his banishment, if not his death secured, there might be a chance of winning in time Ada Leslie's affections for himself. To this end he had labored, ostensibly endeavoring to establish belief in Hugh's innocence, and acting as his best friend, but in reality undermining Mrs. Leslie's faith in him by the most subtle diplomacy, and shaking, by the most specious representations, Hugh's trust in and friendship for me. With Ada alone he had met entire defeat. Steadfast and unwavering had been her solemn, unqualified declaration that her affianced husband was guiltless; steady and unwavering likewise—God bless her for it!—had been her childlike trust in her old guardian. And this maddened him.
Then came Hugh's acquittal, accompanied by public censure and public disgrace. Here was a loophole through which a ray of hope gleamed upon Wilmot's dark soul. Atherton writhed beneath the shame that had fallen upon him with all the anguish of a keenly sensitive nature; and Wilmot played his game with this. He lost no opportunity of making Hugh feel his position; constantly, though skillfully, [{242}] he brought before him the shadow that was over him, and would artfully represent to him the magnanimity of Miss Leslie's conduct in wishing to share his blighted name and fortune. Hugh's first proposition of emigrating he had opposed outwardly, working in the dark to bring about its realization; and when Hugh was actually gone, he felt at last that the field was clear for him. Wilmot described his rage at finding that I had outwitted him as ungovernable, his desire for revenge burning and deadly. Then came the discovery of the will. Of its existence he had in truth been ignorant; and though suspecting some complicity in the matter on the part of Mrs Haag, once possessed of Old Thorneley's money, he had buried his suspicions in his own breast. Three days after the will was found by Inspector Keene, he received a letter from the housekeeper. In it she told him of their relationship in brief words, with no further explanation; she said that the discovery of the missing document involved her in serious trouble, and that she was hastening to Liverpool to catch the first vessel for America. Then he felt for the first time that his heyday was over, that the worst might shortly come; and he too began hasty preparations for leaving England secretly. In the midst of these came the telegram from Liverpool, and the subsequent tragic events.
This was the epitome of what Lister Wilmot (I keep his assumed name) told me the day before his mother's funeral. I said to him, "You have not explained one thing. Why, when I went down to the Grange, did you send De Vos to follow me and drug the coffee?"
"I did not," he said. "I knew absolutely nothing of it." And at such a moment I felt he was speaking the truth. He continued: "I have not seen De Vos for months; and I believe he has left the country."
I found afterward that another person was to clear up this remaining item of the mystery.
Of Wilmot I have little more to tell. In the abyss of his humiliation and degradation the message of divine mercy reached his soul; in the depths of his heart, chastened and and purified, he listened and responded to its whisper. So far as Hugh Atherton was concerned he went scatheless; and through the generosity of the man whom he had so deeply injured, he was enabled eventually to emigrate to the same land whither his unfortunate mother was flying for refuge when she met her death. But before that he had a duty to perform, a stern, hard duty of pain; and he set his face to the work resolutely, unshrinkingly.