The Secret of Greylands (30 page)

Cynthia sprang up.

“What is it?” she cried. “Lady Duxworth, it is Mr Barsly bringing news! I am sure of it!”

Lady Duxworth rose hurriedly; her face paled.

Was it possible that that search at Greylands, of which Cynthia knew nothing, had resulted in something which had given the clue to Lady Hannah's fate? She laid her hand on the girl's shoulder.

“Don't excite yourself, child; it is probably nothing of any importance. Mr Barsly generally comes over to consult with Lord Duxworth when he is in the neighbourhood. He is our solicitor, too, you know.”

Cynthia's agitation did not subside; she still sat up, her breath quickened, her eyes watching the door with a look of eager, almost feverish expectancy. Presently there was a knock, the door opened, and Lord Duxworth himself stood on the outside.

“Can you spare me a minute, Félicité?” he inquired. “There is something we want to show you.”

Lady Duxworth rose, and Cynthia threw herself forward and clutched eagerly at her skirts.

“Ask him to come in—tell him I must know too!” she cried. “See, I will be quiet. Indeed, I can bear anything but suspense.”

Lady Duxworth hesitated; there was a curious look on her husband's face that warned her he had no good tidings to give them. She glanced at Cynthia's flushed cheeks and fever-bright eyes, and then beckoned to Lord Duxworth to enter. The girl was right—any certainty was better for her than suspense.

“I think you bring us news!” she said. “You can speak before Cynthia; she has promised to be very brave.”

Lord Duxworth cleared his throat and looked reproachfully at his wife. His manifest unwillingness to speak heightened Cynthia's anxiety. At length he said slowly:

“Barsly would have it that you were the only person we could come to, Félicité. It is most unfortunate that Farquhar should have gone up to town to-night. Barsly thinks you may have seen this—that you may recognize it.” He held out a small object in the palm of his hand.

Lady Duxworth went up to him quickly. Cynthia slipped back with a sigh of disappointment. After all, she had been mistaken, she thought. Lord Duxworth's errand could have no connexion with her cousin's fate.

Presently Lady Duxworth looked up.

“It is a miniature,” she said unsteadily, with trembling lips. “Though the glass is broken and stained with earth, I think, no, I am sure, that it is a portrait of Herbert Densham—Cynthia's father—one he gave Hannah Hammond when they were first engaged. Where did you find it?” a dawning horror in her eyes.

“Where I fear there can be little doubt we have found Lady Hannah herself,” Lord Duxworth replied. “In the belt of pines round the house, beneath the oak saplings that Gillman has been planting.”

Lady Duxworth interrupted her husband with a little cry as she caught at the nearest table for support.

“You do not mean—then it is true—and he murdered her!”

“Some one laid her in the earth, poor thing, and there can be little doubt the same hand sent her there before her time,” Lord Duxworth said. “It is a terrible affair. Poor thing!”

He sprang forward just as Cynthia's head fell back, a deadly pallor overspread her features and she fainted away.

When next she opened her eyes it seemed to her that the whole room was impregnated with a pungent odour of burnt feathers and brandy and water, while some one was holding a particularly evil-smelling bottle to her nostrils. She put up her hand to try to push it away as she began to cough feebly.

“That will do, Parkes. You can go now. I can manage quite well.”

At the sound of Lady Duxworth's voice Cynthia awoke to a fuller measure of consciousness and looked round, bewildered. It seemed to her that a horrible black cloud hung over her. She had a vague feeling that something intolerably painful had happened; then as she met Lady Duxworth's eyes she remembered.

“It—it can't be true!” she said hoarsely. “It was some mistake!”

Lady Duxworth drew her to her motherly arms.

“It is a terrible thing. We can only be glad she did not suffer much. My husband says the doctor told him that as far as he could judge death must have been instantaneous.”

Cynthia lay still for a minute; then she raised her white face.

“I—I cannot help thinking that it was done the day I got there—that if I had been earlier—”

“Don't think of it, child,” Lady Duxworth counselled amid her thickly-falling tears. “Poor Hannah! I shall always remember her as she was when we were girls together—when she loved your father, Cynthia.”

Cynthia's thoughts could not be turned.

“He did it—her own husband—and Sybil—”

“She knew nothing of what had become of Lady Hannah, I believe, when Gillman persuaded her to help him with his impersonation scheme, but one cannot help fancying that of late she must have suspected.”

“How could she do it! How could she do it!” Cynthia moaned. “I was so fond of her at first, and in the end, you know, she saved my life!”

“Lord Duxworth says that so far as he can judge, and from what he can hear, she must have been a creature of infinite charm, but that her whole life has been warped by her love for Gillman. You know she was his wife, Cynthia?”

“No!” The girl sat up, her whole frame trembling. “Then Cousin Hannah—”

“He deceived her by a false marriage. Probably at that time he meant to get rid of Sybil. Later on he changed his mind, as we know, and it was poor Hannah who met her death. I cannot help thinking of the one to whom this will be a sore trouble—poor Donald Farquhar! She was like a mother to him for so many years, and I know he has blamed himself for the quarrel between them, and feared that the ensuing loneliness led up to that most unhappy marriage.”

“Ah, yes! It will be terrible for him now!” Cynthia sighed pitifully, her hand trembling in Lady Duxworth's. “Poor Donald! And, oh, poor, poor Cousin Hannah!”

I
T WAS
sunset at Sermoneta; not a breath of air was there to stir the cypresses on the hills. Slowly the sun, a great red ball of fire, was sinking to rest, his last rays streaking the horizon with a reflected glory of glowing amber, of flame-like scarlet melting into crimson that dashed the blue waters of the lake with blood, turned the grey-green of the olives round its shores to a warm russet-brown.

To Luigi, the old postman, trudging bare-legged up the hill beside his faithful mule, with its burden of letters and parcels, it seemed that the distance to the Villa Perponchi was even longer than usual.

He was for ever climbing up there, too, he grumbled to a couple of peasants who sat by the wayside tossing contentedly for their small silver scudi, since the English milord came to the villa. Before it had been but once a week or so. Now it was every day, and twice a day. Apparently they had nothing to do—these mad English—but to sit scribbling their foolishness to one another all day long.

Meanwhile, in the open veranda of the Villa Perponchi, Lord Duxworth was impatiently pacing backwards and forwards, growling discontentedly to the occupants of the two hammocks slung at the farther end on the iniquities of foreign countries in general and of their postal arrangements in particular. That a man could not get his newspaper until it was a day and a half old apparently more than counterbalanced the beauties of Sermoneta in his eyes.

The appearance of Luigi with his mule created a pleasant diversion, and Lord Duxworth hurried across the grass to meet him. Lady Duxworth turned over in her hammock with a sigh of relief.

“Now we shall have a little peace; it is astonishing what a nuisance a man becomes if he does not get his newspaper regularly every morning.”

Lord Duxworth's step was brisker as he came back, his face was glowing with satisfaction.

“Here's a letter from Barsly; it seems there is some fuss about Wilcher's lease. I'm not at all sure that I shall not have to run over for a day or two just to put matters straight, and leave you to look after Cynthia and Marion, eh, my lady? Here is your pile”—handing several letters to her—“and here, Cynthia, is one for you.”

Cynthia raised herself a little to receive it.

“From Sybil!” she cried with a flush of excitement.

Lady Duxworth looked interested.

“Is it over, my dear?”

“I think so,” Cynthia said as she began to read. “Yes, she entered upon her novitiate yesterday. Henceforth, she says, she will be known as Sister Dolores.”

“A very suitable name, poor thing!” Lady Duxworth said, with a sigh.

Cynthia did not reply; she was absorbed in her letter.

During the six months that had elapsed since the tragedy at Greylands she had been slowly creeping back to convalescence; the tinge of pink in her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes spoke of renewed health and strength.

Very seldom now did she mention any of the actors in that terrible drama, but Lady Duxworth knew that immediately after Gillman had paid the penalty of his crime Sybil, whom it was difficult to think of as Delphine Meldrum, had entered a convent. The time of probation was now over, it appeared, and the novitiate, as to which there had been some doubt at the convent, had now been formally entered upon.

Lady Duxworth was inclined to think it the best thing that could possibly have happened; it put an end to a very awkward situation, for Cynthia, whose gratitude to Sybil she secretly considered to be somewhat excessive, had positively refused to give up her friendship for the girl.

So far the question of Cynthia's relations with her husband had remained in abeyance; Lord Letchingham had realized at the one brief interview which the doctors had permitted that the girl's health had been so shattered by the terrible experience she had undergone that a long period of rest and quiet would be necessary before the matter could be even discussed.

Lady Duxworth knew that his patience would not last much longer, and she was very anxious about the future of the girl, whom she had learnt to look upon as almost one of her own daughters. The passage of time had in nowise altered Cynthia's feelings towards her husband; her dread of him had, if possible, increased, and her shrinking from him when Lady Duxworth had persuaded her to: consent to the interview upon which he had insisted had been painful in the extreme.

She was independent of him now, for besides the house of Greylands, bestowed upon her by the deed of gift which Gillman had tried in vain to get revoked, Lady Hannah's latest will, drawn up by herself, had left an income of a thousand a year to her beloved cousin, Cynthia Frances Hannah, daughter of the late Herbert Densham. The rest of Lady Hannah's money went, as had been expected, to Farquhar, and her husband was not as much as mentioned among the list of legatees—a circumstance which proved that the poor woman before her death had become aware of something of the character of the man she had married.

Farquhar, after Gillman's trial, went to his estate in Scotland for a brief visit, and after setting his affairs in order betook himself to Central America on an expedition in search of big game. For the past three months they had heard nothing of him, and Lady Duxworth, knowing something of what had passed between him and Cynthia, and surmising more, was careful never to mention his name. Yet her thoughts were busy with him now as she went through her correspondence. An exclamation from her husband startled her.

“Bless my life! Poor old fellow! It is a bad job!”

“What is?” Lady Duxworth inquired, with some natural irritation. “Really, Duxworth, you forget that I do not know what you are talking about—I cannot read the paper from here.”

Somewhat to her surprise Lord Duxworth rose.

“I'll bring it over to you, then you can read it for yourself. Here it is!” pointing to a paragraph and at the same time making a curious grimace, intended to be expressive of the utmost caution.

Lady Duxworth put up her eyeglass and regarded him with amazement.

“Really, Duxworth—”

“Read it! Read it!” he urged, glancing at Cynthia in a stealthy, sidelong fashion which at once attracted that young lady's curiosity.

She watched Lady Duxworth's face and noted how it changed.

“Oh yes, I see—it is very sad!”

“Dear Lady Duxworth, what is it?” Cynthia asked.

Lord Duxworth pushed the paper back.

“No, no! Keep it! I will look at it again presently. There is something here that must be answered.” And gathering up his papers in his hand he hurriedly made his escape to the house.

In spite of her anxiety Cynthia could not forbear a smile.

“It must, indeed, be something important to make Lord Duxworth forgo his newspaper. Do tell me what it is!”

“It is important and it concerns one who is very near to you,” Lady Duxworth said. “Your husband is dangerously ill.” 

“Lord Letchingham!” With a curiously stunned feeling Cynthia sat up in her hammock. Such an eventuality as her husband's illness had never entered into her calculations. “How—what do you mean?”

“It is not very clear,” Lady Duxworth said helplessly. “Perhaps there is something before that we have missed.”

Cynthia sprang down, and, standing beside her, read it over her shoulder:

The hand that Cynthia laid on Lady Duxworth's shoulder tightened its clasp until it became absolutely painful; the girl's face looked white and strained.

“I—oh, what must I do? I must go to him!” she cried incoherently.

“Go to him now? My dear, there is no necessity,” Lady Duxworth said after a pause. “He is sure to have every care—and you—what is it now, Duxworth?”