WHETHER I was so weakened by illness as to be incapable of giving my mind to more than one subject for reflection at a time (that subject being now the extraordinary recovery of my health)—or whether I was preoccupied by the effort, which I was in honor bound to make, to resist the growing attraction to me of Susan's society—I cannot presume to say. This only I know: when the discovery of the terrible position toward Rothsay in which I now stood suddenly overwhelmed me, an interval of some days had passed. I cannot account for it. I can only say—so it was.
Susan was in the room. I was wholly unable to hide from her the sudden change of color which betrayed the horror that had overpowered me. She said, anxiously: "What has frightened you?"
I don't think I heard her. The play was in my memory again—the fatal play, which had wound itself into the texture of Rothsay's life and mine. In vivid remembrance, I saw once more the dramatic situation of the first act, and shrank from the reflection of it in the disaster which had fallen on my friend and myself.
"What has frightened you?" Susan repeated.
I answered in one word—I whispered his name: "Rothsay!"
She looked at me in innocent surprise. "Has he met with some misfortune?" she asked, quietly.
"Misfortune"—did she call it? Had I not said enough to disturb her tranquillity in mentioning Rothsay's name? "I am living!" I said. "Living—and likely to live!"
Her answer expressed fervent gratitude. "Thank God for it!"
I looked at her, astonished as she had been astonished when she looked at me.
"Susan, Susan," I cried—"must I own it? I love you!"
She came nearer to me with timid pleasure in her eyes—with the first faint light of a smile playing round her lips.
"You say it very strangely," she murmured. "Surely, my dear one, you ought to love me? Since the first day when you gave me my French lesson—haven't I loved You?"
"You loveme?" I repeated. "Have you read—?" My voice failed me; I could say no more.
She turned pale. "Read what?" she asked.
"My letter."
"What letter?"
"The letter I wrote to you before we were married."
Am I a coward? The bare recollection of what followed that reply makes me tremble. Time has passed. I am a new man now; my health is restored; my happiness is assured: I ought to be able to write on. No: it is not to be done. How can I think coolly? how force myself to record the suffering that I innocently, most innocently, inflicted on the sweetest and truest of women? Nothing saved us from a parting as absolute as the parting that follows death but the confession that had been wrung from me at a time when my motive spoke for itself. The artless avowal of her affection had been justified, had been honored, by the words which laid my heart at her feet when I said "I love you."
She had risen to leave me. In a last look, we had silently resigned ourselves to wait, apart from each other, for the day of reckoning that must follow Rothsay's return, when we heard the sound of carriage-wheels on the drive that led to the house. In a minute more the man himself entered the room.
He looked first at Susan—then at me. In both of us he saw the traces that told of agitation endured, but not yet composed. Worn and weary he waited, hesitating, near the door.
"Am I intruding?" he asked.
"We were thinking of you, and speaking of you," I replied, "just before you came in."
"We?" he repeated, turning toward Susan once more. After a pause, he offered me his hand—and drew it back.
"You don't shake hands with me," he said.
"I am waiting, Rothsay, until I know that we are the same firm friends as ever."
For the third time he looked at Susan.
"Willyoushake hands?" he asked.
She gave him her hand cordially. "May I stay here?" she said, addressing herself to me.
In my situation at that moment, I understood the generous purpose that animated her. But she had suffered enough already—I led her gently to the door. "It will be better," I whispered, "if you will wait downstairs in the library." She hesitated. "What will they say in the house?" she objected, thinking of the servants and of the humble position which she was still supposed to occupy. "It matters nothing what they say, now." I told her. She left us.
"There seems to be some private understanding between you," Rothsay said, when we were alone.
"You shall hear what it is," I answered. "But I must beg you to excuse me if I speak first of myself."
"Are you alluding to your health?"
"Yes."
"Quite needless, Lepel. I met your doctor this morning. I know that a council of physicians decided you would die before the year was out."
He paused there.
"And they proved to be wrong," I added.
"They might have proved to be right," Rothsay rejoined, "but for the accident which spilled your medicine and the despair of yourself which decided you on taking no more."
I could hardly believe that I understood him. "Do you assert," I said, "that my medicine would have killed me, if I had taken the rest of it?"
"I have no doubt that it would."
"Will you explain what you mean?"
"Let me have your explanation first. I was not prepared to find Susan in your room. I was surprised to see traces of tears in her face. Something has happened in my absence. Am I concerned in it?"
"You are."
I said it quietly—in full possession of myself. The trial of fortitude through which I had already passed seemed to have blunted my customary sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which I was now bound to make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen when the truth was known.
"Do you remember the time," I resumed, "when I was so eager to serve you that I proposed to make Susan your wife by making her rich?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember asking me if I was thinking of the play we saw together at Rome? Is the story as present to your mind now, as it was then?"
"Quite as present."
"You asked if I was performing the part of the Marquis—and if you were the Count. Rothsay! the devotion of that ideal character to his friend has been my devotion; his conviction that his death would justify what he had done for his friend's sake, has beenmyconviction; and as it ended with him, so it has ended with me—his terrible position ismyterrible position toward you, at this moment."
"Are you mad?" Rothsay asked, sternly.
I passed over that first outbreak of his anger in silence.
"Do you mean to tell me you have married Susan?" he went on.
"Bear this in mind," I said. "When I married her, I was doomed to death. Nay, more. In your interests—as God is my witness—I welcomed death."
He stepped up to me, in silence, and raised his hand with a threatening gesture.
That action at once deprived me of my self-possession. I spoke with the ungovernable rashness of a boy.
"Carry out your intention," I said. "Insult me."
His hand dropped.
"Insult me," I repeated; "it is one way out of the unendurable situation in which we are placed. You may trust me to challenge you. Duels are still fought on the Continent; I will follow you abr I will choose pistols; I will take care that we fight on the fatal foreign system; and I will purposely miss you. Make her what I intended her to be—my rich widow."
He looked at me attentively.
"Isthatyour refuge?" he asked, scornfully. "No! I won't help you to commit suicide."
God forgive me! I was possessed by a spirit of reckless despair; I did my best to provoke him.
"Reconsider your decision," I said; "and remember—you tried to commit suicide yourself."
He turned quickly to the door, as if he distrusted his own powers of self-control.
"I wish to speak to Susan," he said, keeping his back turned on me.
"You will find her in the library."
He left me.
I went to the window. I opened it and let the cold wintry air blow over my burning head. I don't know how long I sat at the window. There came a time when I saw Rothsay on the house steps. He walked rapidly toward the park gate. His head was down; he never once looked back at the room in which he had left me.
As he passed out of my sight, I felt a hand laid gently on my shoulder. Susan had returned to me.
"He will not come back," she said. "Try still to remember him as your old friend. He asks you to forgive and forget."
She had made the peace between us. I was deeply touched; my eyes filled with tears as I looked at her. She kissed me on the forehead and went out. I afterward asked what had passed between them when Rothsay spoke with her in the library. She never has told me what they said to each other; and she never will. She is right.
Later in the day I was told that Mrs. Rymer had called, and wished to "pay her respects."
I refused to see her. Whatever claim she might have otherwise had on my consideration had been forfeited by the infamy of her conduct, when she intercepted my letter to Susan. Her sense of injury on receiving my message was expressed in writing, and was sent to me the same evening. The last sentence in her letter was characteristic of the woman.
"However your pride may despise me," she wrote, "I am indebted to you for the rise in life that I have always desired. You may refuse to see me—but you can't prevent my being the mother-in-law of a gentleman."
Soon afterward, I received a visit which I had hardly ventured to expect. Busy as he was in London, my doctor came to see me. He was not in his usual good spirits.
"I hope you don't bring me any bad news?" I said.
"You shall judge for yourself," he replied. "I come from Mr. Rothsay, to say for him what he is not able to say for himself."
"Where is he?"
"He has left England."
"For any purpose that you know of?"
"Yes. He has sailed to join the expedition of rescue—I ought rather to call it the forlorn hope—which is to search for the lost explorers in Central Australia."
In other words, he had gone to seek death in the fatal footsteps of Burke and Wills. I could not trust myself to speak.
The doctor saw that there was a reason for my silence, and that he would do well not to notice it. He changed the subject.
"May I ask," he said, "if you have heard from the servants left in charge at your house in London?"
"Has anything happened?"
"Something has happened which they are evidently afraid to tell you, knowing the high opinion which you have of Mrs. Mozeen. She has suddenly quitted your service, and has gone, nobody knows where. I have taken charge of a letter which she left for you."
He handed me the letter. As soon as I had recovered myself, I looked at it.
There was this inscription on the address: "For my good master, to wait until he returns home." The few lines in the letter itself ran thus:
"Distressing circumstances oblige me to leave you, sir, and do not permit me to enter into particulars. In asking your pardon, I offer my sincere thanks for your kindness, and my fervent prayers for your welfare."
That was all. The date had a special interest for me. Mrs. Mozeen had written on the day when she must have received my letter—the letter which has already appeared in these pages.
"Is there really nothing known of the poor woman's motives?" I asked.
"There are two explanations suggested," the doctor informed me. "One of them, which is offered by your female servants, seems to me absurd. They declare that Mrs. Mozeen, at her mature age, was in love with the young man who is your footman! It is even asserted that she tried to recommend herself to him, by speaking of the money which she expected to bring to the man who would make her his wife. The footman's reply, informing her that he was already engaged to be married, is alleged to be the cause which has driven her from your house."
I begged that the doctor would not trouble himself to repeat more of what my women servants had said.
"If the other explanation," I added, "is equally unworthy of notice—"
"The other explanation," the doctor interposed, "comes from Mr. Rothsay, and is of a very serious kind."
Rothsay's opinion demanded my respect.
"What view does he take?" I inquired.
"A view that startles me," the doctor said. "You remember my telling you of the interest he took in your symptoms, and in the remedies I had employed? Well! Mr. Rothsay accounts for the incomprehensible recovery of your health by asserting that poison—probably administered in small quantities, and intermitted at intervals in fear of discovery—has been mixed with your medicine; and he asserts that the guilty person is Mrs. Mozeen."
It was impossible that I could openly express the indignation that I felt on hearing this. My position toward Rothsay forced me to restrain myself.
"May I ask," the doctor continued, "if Mrs. Mozeen was aware that she had a legacy to expect at your death?"
"Certainly."
"Has she a brother who is one of the dispensers employed by your chemists?"
"Yes."
"Did she know that I doubted if my prescriptions had been properly prepared, and that I intended to make inquiries?"
"I wrote to her myself on the subject."
"Do you think her brother told her that I was referred tohim, when I went to the chemists?"
"I have no means of knowing what her brother did."
"Can you at least tell me when she received your letter?"
"She must have received it on the day when she left my house."
The doctor rose with a grave face.
"These are rather extraordinary coincidences," he remarked.
I merely replied, "Mrs. Mozeen is as incapable of poisoning as I am."
The doctor wished me good-morning.
I repeat here my conviction of my housekeeper's innocence. I protest against the cruelty which accuses her. And, whatever may have been her motive in suddenly leaving my service, I declare that she still possesses my sympathy and esteem, and I invite her to return to me if she ever sees these lines.
I have only to add, by way of postscript, that we have heard of the safe return of the expedition of rescue. Time, as my wife and I both hope, may yet convince Rothsay that he will not be wrong in counting on Susan's love—the love of a sister.
In the meanwhile we possess a memorial of our absent friend. We have bought his picture.
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