"This is a dreadful affair, Penlyn!" the baronet said, when he received his future son-in-law in the pretty morning-room that Ida's own taste had decorated. "The shock has been bad enough to me, who looked upon Cundall as a dear friend, but it has perfectly crushed my poor girl. You know how much she liked him."
"Yes, I know," Penlyn answered, finding any reply difficult.
"Has she told you anything of what passed between them recently?" Sir Paul asked.
"No," Penlyn said, "nothing." But the question told him that Ida had informed her father of the dead man's proposal to her.
"She will tell you, perhaps, when you see her. She intends coming down to you shortly." Then changing the subject, Sir Paul said: "She tells me you met the poor fellow at Lady Chesterton's ball. I suppose you did not see him after that, until-before his death?"
Lord Penlyn hesitated. He did not know what answer to give, for, though he had no desire to tell an untruth, how could he tell his questioner of the dreadful scenes that had occurred between them after that meeting at the ball?
Then he said, weakly: "Yes; I did see him again, at 'Black's.'"
"At 'Black's!'" Sir Paul exclaimed. "I did not know he was a member."
"Nor was he. Only, one night-Friday night-he was passing and I was there, and he dropped in."
"Oh!" Sir Paul said, "I thought you were the merest acquaintances."
And then he went on to discuss the murder, and to ask if anything further was known than what had appeared in the papers? And Penlyn told him that he knew of nothing further.
"I cannot understand the object of it," the baronet said. He had had but little opportunity of talking over the miserable end that had befallen his dead friend, and he was not averse now to discuss it with one who had also known him.
"I cannot understand," he went on, "how any creature, however destitute or vile, would have murdered him for his watch and the money he might chance to have about him. There must have been some powerful motive for the crime-some hidden enemy in the background of whom no one-perhaps, not even he himself-ever knew. I wonder who will inherit his enormous wealth?"
"Why?" Penlyn asked, and as he did so it seemed as though, once again, his heart would stop beating.
"Because I should think that that man would be in a difficult position-unless he can prove his utter absence from London at the time."
To Penlyn it appeared that everything pointed in men's minds to the same conclusion, that the heir of Walter Cundall was the guilty man. Every one was of the same opinion, Sir Paul, and the man going to Ascot who seemed like a lawyer; and, as he remembered, he had himself said the same thing to Smerdon. "What would the world think of him," he had asked, "if it should come to know that they were brothers, and that, being brothers, he was the inheritor of that vast fortune?" Yes, all thought alike, even to himself.
As these reflections passed through his mind it occurred to him that, after all, it would not be well for him to disclose to Ida the fact that he and Cundall were brothers-would she not know then that he was the heir, and might she not also then look upon him as the murderer? If that idea should ever come to her mind, she was lost to him for ever. No! Philip Smerdon was right; she must never learn of the fatal relationship between them.
"By-the-way," Sir Paul said, after a pause, "what on earth ever made you go to that hotel in town? Occleve House is comfortable enough, surely!"
Again Penlyn had to hesitate before answering, and again he had to equivocate. He had gone out of the house-that he thought was no longer his-with rage in his heart against the man who had come forward, as he supposed, to deprive him of everything he possessed; and never meaning to return to it, but to openly give to those whom it concerned his reasons for not doing so. But Cundall's murder had opened the way for him to return; the letter written on the night of his death had bidden Penlyn be everything he had hitherto been; and so he had gone back, with as honest a desire in his heart to obey his brother's behest as to reinstate himself.
But those two or three days at the hotel had surprised everybody, even to his valet and the house servants; and now Sir Paul was also asking for an explanation. What a web of falsehood and deceit he was weaving around him!
"There were some slight repairs to be done," he said, "and some alterations afterwards, so I had to go out."
"Then I wonder you did not come down here. The business you had to do might have been postponed."
He could make no answer to this, and it came as a relief to him when a servant announced that Miss Raughton would see him in the drawing-room. Only, he reflected as he went to her, if she, too, should question him as her father had done, he must go mad!
CHAPTER X
When he saw the girl he loved so much rise wan and pale from the couch on which she had been seated waiting for his coming, his heart sank within him. How she must have suffered! he thought. What an awful blow Cundall's death must have been to her to make her look as she looked now, as she rose and stood before him!
"My darling Ida," he said, as he went towards her and took her in his arms and kissed her, "how ill and sad you look!"
She yielded to his embrace and returned his kiss, but it seemed to him as if her lips were cold and lifeless.
"Oh, Gervase!" she said, as she sank back to the couch wearily, "oh, Gervase! you do not know the horror that is upon me. And it is a double horror because at the time of his death, I knew of it."
"What!" he said, springing to his feet from the chair he had taken beside her. "What!"
"I saw it all," she said, looking at him with large distended eyes, eyes made doubly large by the hollows round them. "I saw it all, only-"
"Only what, Ida?"
"Only it was in a dream! A dream that I had, almost at the very hour he was treacherously stabbed to death."
As she spoke she leant forward a little towards him, with her eyes still distended; leant forward gazing into his face; and as she did so he felt the blood curdling in his veins!
"This," he said, trying to speak calmly, "is madness, a frenzy begotten of your state of mind at hearing-"
"It is no frenzy, no madness," she said, speaking in a strange, monotonous tone, and still with the intent gaze in her hazel eyes. "No, it is the fact. On that night-that night of death-he stood before me once again and bade me farewell for ever in this world, and then I saw-oh, my God! – his murderer spring upon him, and-"
"And that murderer was?" her lover interrupted, quivering with excitement.
"Unhappily, I do not know-not yet, at least, but I shall do so some day." She had risen now, and was standing before him pale and erect. The long white peignoir that she wore clung to her delicate, supple figure, making her look unusually tall; and she appeared to her lover like some ancient classic figure vowing vengeance on the guilty. As she stood thus, with a fixed look of certainty on her face, and prophesied that some day she should know the man who had done this deed, she might have been Cassandra come back to the world again.
"His face was shrouded," she went on, "as all murderers shroud their faces, I think; but his form I knew. I am thinking-I have thought and thought for hours by day and night-where I have seen that form before. And in some unexpected moment remembrance will come to me."
"Even though it does, I am afraid the remembrance will hardly bring the murderer to justice," Penlyn said. "A man can scarcely be convicted of a reality by a dream."
"No," she answered, "he cannot, I suppose. But it will tell me who that man is, and then-and then-"
"And then?" Penlyn interrupted.
"And then, if I can compass it, his life shall be subjected to such inspection, his every action of the past examined, every action of the present watched, that at last he shall stand discovered before the world!" She paused a moment, and again she looked fixedly at him, and then she said: "You are my future husband; do you know what I require of you before I become your wife?"
"Love and fidelity, Ida, is it not? And have you not that?"
"Yes," she answered, "but that fidelity must be tried by a strong test. You must go hand in hand with me in my search for his murderer, you must never falter in your determination to find him. Will you do this out of your love for me?"
"I will do it," Penlyn answered, "out of my love for you."
She held out her hand-cold as marble-to him, and he took it and kissed it. But as he did so, he muttered to himself: "If she could only know; if she could only know."
Again the impulse was on his lips to tell her of the strange relationship there was between him and the dead man, and again he let the impulse go. In the excitement of her mind would she not instantly conclude that he was the slayer of his dead brother, of the man who had suddenly come between him and everything he prized in the world? And, to support him in his weakness, was there not the letter of that dead brother enjoining secrecy? So he held his peace!
"I will do it," he said, "out of my love for you; but, forgive me, are you not taking an unusual interest in him, sad as his death was?"
"No," she answered. "No. He loved me; I was the only woman in the world he loved-he told me so on the first night he returned to England. Only I had no love to give him in return; it was given to you. But I liked and respected him, and, since he came to me in my dream on that night of his death, it seems that on me should fall the task of finding the man who killed him."
"But what can you do, my poor Ida; you a delicately-nurtured girl, unused to anything but comfort and ease? How can you find out the man who killed him?"
"Only in one way, through you and by your help. I look to you to leave no stone unturned in your endeavours to find that man, to make yourself acquainted with Mr. Cundall's past life, to find out who his enemies, who his friends were; to discover some clue that shall point at last to the murderer."
"Yes," he said, in a dull, heavy voice. "Yes. That is what I must do."
"And when," she asked, "when will you begin? For God's sake lose no time; every hour that goes by may help that man to escape."
"I will lose no time," he answered almost methodically, and speaking in a dazed, uncertain way. Had it not been for her own excitement, she must have noticed with what little enthusiasm he agreed to her behest.
This behest had indeed staggered him! She had bidden him do the very thing of all others that he would least wish done, bidden him throw a light upon the past of the dead man, and find out all his enemies and friends. She had told him to do this, while there, in his own heart, was the knowledge of the long-kept secret that the dead man was his brother-the secret that the dead man had enjoined on him never to divulge. What was he to do? he asked himself. Which should he obey, the orders of his murdered brother, or the orders of his future wife? And Philip, too, had told him on no account to say anything of the story that had lately been revealed. Then, suddenly, he again determined that he would say nothing to her. It was a task beyond his power to appear to endeavour to track the murderer, or to give any orders on the subject; for since he must kelp the secret of their brotherhood, what right had he to show any interest in the finding of the murderer? Silence would, in every way, be best.
He rose after these reflections and told her that he was going back to London. And she also rose, and said:
"Yes, yes; go back at once! Lose no time, not a moment. Remember, you have promised. You will keep your promise, I know."
He kissed her, and muttered something that she took for words of assent, and prepared to leave her.
"You will feel better soon, dearest, and happier, I hope. This shock will pass away in time."
"It will pass away," she answered, "when you bring me news that the murderer is discovered, or that you have found out some clue to him. It will begin to pass away when I hear that you have found out what enemies he had."
"It is not known that he ever had any enemies," Penlyn said, as he stood holding her cold hand in his. "He was not a man to make enemies, I should think."
"He must have had some," she said, "or one at least-the one who slew him." She paused, and gazed out of the open window by which they were standing, gazed out for some moments; and he wondered what she was thinking of now in connection with him. Then she turned to him again and said:
"Do you think you could find out if he had any relatives?" and he could not repress a slight start as she asked him this, though she did not perceive it. "I never heard him say that he had any, but he may have had. I should like to know."
"Why, Ida?"
"Because-because-oh, I do not know! – my brain is in a whirl. But-if-if you should find out that he had any relations, then I should like to know."
And again he asked: "Why, Ida?"
"I would stand face to face with them, if they were men," she answered, speaking in a low tone of voice that almost appalled him, "and look carefully at them to see if they, or one of those relations, bore any resemblance to the shrouded figure that sprang upon him in my dream."
"If there are any such they will, perhaps, be heard of," he said; but as he spoke he prayed inwardly that she might never know of his relationship to Cundall. If she ever learnt that, would she not look to see if he bore any resemblance to that dark figure of her dream? He was committed to silence-to silence not without shame, alas! – for ever now, and he shuddered as he acknowledged this to himself. Once more he bade her farewell, promising to come back soon, and then he left her.
"She looks dreadfully ill and overcome by this sad calamity," he said to Sir Paul before he also parted with him. "I hope she will not let it weigh too much upon her mind."
"She cannot help it doing so, poor girl," the baronet said. "Of course she told you that Cundall proposed to her on the night of his return, not knowing that she had become engaged to you."
"She told me that he loved her, and that she learnt of his love on that night for the first time," Penlyn answered.
"Yes, that was the case," Sir Paul said. "It was at Lady Chesterton's ball that he proposed to her."
They talked for some little time further on the desire she had expressed to see the murderer brought to justice, and Penlyn said he feared she was exciting herself too much over the idea.
"Yes, I am afraid so," Sir Paul said; "yet, I suppose, the wish is natural. She looks upon herself as, in some way, the person to whom his death was first made known, and seems to think it is her duty to try and aid in the discovery of the man who killed him. Of course, it is impossible; and she can do nothing, though she has begged me to try everything in my power to assist in finding his assassin. I would do so willingly, for I admired Cundall's character very much; but there is also nothing I could do that the police cannot do better."
"Of course not, but still her wish is natural," Penlyn said, and then he said "Good-bye" to Sir Paul also, and went back to London.
As he sat in the train on the return journey, he wondered what fresh trouble and sorrow there could possibly be in store for him over the miserable events of the past week, and he also wondered if he ever again would know peace upon this earth! It was impossible to help looking back to a short month ago, to the time before that discovery had been made at the inn at Le Vocq, and to remembering how happy he had been then, how everything in this world had seemed to smile upon him. He had been happy in his love for Ida, happy in the position he held in the eyes of men, happy without any alloy to his happiness. And then, from the moment when he had found that there was another son of his father in the world, how all the brightness of his life had changed! First had come the knowledge of that brother alive somewhere, whom, thinking he was poor and outcast, he had pitied; then the revelation that that brother, far from being the abject creature he imagined, was in actual fact the rightful owner of the position he usurped; and then the horror and the misery of the cruelly barbarous death that brother had been put to, directly after revealing himself in his true light. And, as horrible almost as all else were, the lies, and the secrecy, and the duplicities with which he had environed himself, in the hopes of shielding everything from the eyes of the world. Lies, and secrecies, and duplicities practised by him, who had once regarded truth and openness as the first attributes of a man!
And there was one other thing that struck deeply to his heart; the bitter wickedness of a man, with such nobility of nature as his brother had shown, being cruelly stabbed to death. His life had been one long abnegation of what should have been his, a resignation of the honour of his birthright, so that he, who had taken his place, should never be cast out of it; an abnegation that had been crowned by an almost sublime act, the act of forcing himself to witness the happiness of the one, who had taken so much from him, with the woman he had long loved. For, that he had determined to resign all hopes of her, there was, after the letter he had written, no doubt. And, as he thought of all the unselfishness of that brother's nature, and of his awful death, the tears flowed to his eyes, and, being alone, he buried his head in his hands and wept as he had wept once before. "If I could call him back again," he said to himself, "if I could once more see him stand before me alive and well, I would cheerfully go out a beggar into the world. But it cannot be, and I must bear the lot that has fallen on me as best I can."
He reached his house early in the evening, and the footman handed him a letter that had been left by a messenger but a short time before. It ran as follows.
"Grosvenor Place, June 12th, 188-
"My Lord,
"In searching through the papers of my late employer, Mr. Walter Cundall, I have come across a will made by him three years ago. By it, the whole of his fortune and estates are left to you, your names and title being carefully described. I have placed the will in the hands of Mr. Fordyce, Mr. Cundall's solicitor, from whom you will doubtless hear shortly.
"Your obedient Servant,"A. Stuart.
"The Rt. Hon. Viscount Penlyn."
That was all; without one word of explanation or of surprise at the manner in which Walter Cundall's vast wealth had been bequeathed.
Lord Penlyn crushed the letter in his hand when he had read it, and, as he threw himself into a chair, he moaned, "Everything must be known, everything discovered; there is no help for it! What will Ida think of me now? Why did I not tell her to-day? Why did I not tell her?"
CHAPTER XI
That night he did not go to bed at all, but paced his room or sat buried in his deep chair, wondering what the morrow would bring forth and how he should best meet the questions that would be put to him. Smerdon was gone again to Occleve Chase, so he could take no counsel from him; and, in a way, he was almost glad that he had gone, for he did not know that he should be inclined now to follow any advice his friend might give him. He thought he knew what that advice would be-that he should pretend utter ignorance as to the reasons Cundall might have had for making him the inheritor of all his vast wealth, and on no account to acknowledge the brotherhood between them. But he told himself that, even had Smerdon been there to give such advice, it would not have been acceptable; that he would not have followed it.
As hour after hour went by and the night became far advanced, the young man made up his mind determinately that, henceforth, all subterfuge and secrecy should be abandoned, that there should be no more holding back of the truth, and that, when he was asked if he could give any reason why he should have been made the heir to the stupendous fortune of a man who was almost a stranger to him, he would boldly announce that it had been so left to him because he and Cundall were the sons of one father.
"The world," he said sadly to himself, "may look upon me as the man who killed him in the Park, and will look upon me as having for years occupied a false position; but it must do so if it chooses. I cannot go on living this life of deception any longer. No! Not even though Ida herself should cast me off." But he thought that though he might bear the world's condemnation, he did not know how he would sustain the loss of her love. Still, the truth should be told even though he should lose her by so telling it; even though the whole world should point to him as a fratricide!
He had wavered for many days now as to what course he should take, had had impulses to speak out and acknowledge the secret of his and his brother's life, had been swayed by Smerdon's arguments and by the letter he had received at the hotel, but now there was to be no more wavering; all was to be told. And, if there was any one who had the right to ask why he had not spoken earlier, that very letter would be sufficient justification of his silence. It was about midday that, as he was seated in his study writing a long letter to Smerdon explaining exactly what he had now taken the determination of doing, the footman entered with two cards on which were the names of "Mr. Fordyce, Paper Buildings," and "Mr. A. Stuart."
"The gentlemen wish to know if your lordship can receive them?" the man asked.
"Yes," Penlyn answered, "I have been expecting a visit from them. Show them in."
They came in together, Mr. Fordyce introducing himself as the solicitor of the late Mr. Cundall, and Mr. Stuart bowing gravely. Then Lord Penlyn motioned to them both to be seated.
"I received your letter last night," he said to the secretary, "and, although I may tell you at once that there were, perhaps, reasons why Mr. Cundall should have left me his property, I was still considerably astonished at hearing he had done so."
"Reasons, my lord!" Mr. Fordyce said, looking up from a bundle of papers which he had taken from his pocket and was beginning to untie. "Reasons! What reasons, may I ask?"
The lawyer, who from his accent was evidently a Scotch-man, was an elderly man, with a hard, unsympathetic face, and it became instantly apparent to Penlyn that, with this man, there must not be the slightest hesitation on his part in anything he said, nor must anything but the plainest truth be spoken. Well! that was what he had made up his mind should be done, and he was glad as he watched Mr. Fordyce's face that he had so decided.
"The reason," he answered, looking straight at both of them, "is that he and I were brothers."
"Brothers!" they both exclaimed together, while Stuart fixed his eyes upon him with an incredulous look, though in it there was something else besides incredulity, a look of suspicion and dislike.
"This is a strange story, Lord Penlyn," the lawyer said after a moment.
"Yes," the other answered. "And you will perhaps think it still more strange when I tell you that I myself did not know of it until a week ago."
"Not until a week ago!" Stuart said. "Then you could have learnt of your relationship only two or three days before he was murdered?"
"That is the case," Penlyn said.
"I think, Lord Penlyn," Mr. Fordyce said, "that, as the late Mr. Cundall's solicitor, and the person who will, by his will, have a great deal to do with the administration of his fortune, you should give me some particulars as to the relationship that you say he and you stood in to one another."
"If Lord Penlyn intends to do so, and wishes it, I will leave the house," Stuart said, still speaking in a cold, unsympathetic voice.
"By no means," Penlyn said. "It will be best that you both should hear all that I know."
Then he told them, very faithfully, everything that had passed between him and Walter Cundall, from the night on which he had come to Black's Club, and they had had their first interview in the Park, down to the letter that had been written on the night of the murder. Nor did he omit to tell them it was only a month previous to Cundall's disclosing himself, that he and Philip Smerdon had made the strange discovery at Le Vocq that his father, to all appearances, had had a previous wife, and had, also, to all appearances, left an elder son behind him. Only, he said, it had seemed a certainty to him and his friend that the lady was not actually his wife, and that the child was not his lawful son. If there was anything he did not think it necessary to tell them it was the violence of his behaviour to Cundall at the interview they had had in that very room, and the curse he had hurled after him when he was gone, and the wish that "he was dead." That curse and that wish, which had been fulfilled so terribly soon after their expression, had weighed heavily on his heart ever since the night of the murder; he could not repeat it now to these men.
"It is the strangest story I ever heard," Mr. Fordyce said. "The very strangest! And, as we have found no certificates of either his mother's marriage or his own birth, we must conclude that he destroyed them. But the letter that you have shown us, which he wrote to you, is sufficient proof of your relationship. Though, of course, as he has named you fully and perfectly in the will there would be no need of any proof of your relationship."
"The man," Stuart said quietly, "who murdered him, also stole his watch and pocket-book, probably with the idea of making it look like a common murder for robbery. The certificates were perhaps in that pocket-book!"
"Do you not think it was a common murder for robbery?" Lord Penlyn asked him.
"No, I do not," Stuart answered, looking him straight in the face. "There was a reason for it!
"What reason?"
"That, the murderer knows best."
It was impossible for Penlyn to disguise from himself the fact that this young man had formed the opinion in his mind that he was the murderer. His manner, his utter tone of contempt when speaking to him, were all enough to show in what light he stood in Stuart's eyes.
"I understand you," he said quietly.
Stuart took no notice of the remark, but he turned to Mr. Fordyce and said: "Did it not seem strange to you that Lord Penlyn should have been made the heir, when you drew the will?"
"I did not draw it," Mr. Fordyce said, "or I should in all probability have made some inquiries-though, as a matter of fact, it was no business of mine to whom he left his money. As I see there is one Spanish name as a witness, it was probably drawn by an English lawyer in Honduras, and executed there."
"Since it appears that I am his heir," Lord Penlyn said, "I should wish to see the will. Have you it with you?"
"Yes," Mr. Fordyce said, producing the will from his bundle of papers, and handing it to him, "it is here."
The young man took it from the lawyer, and spreading it out before him, read it carefully. The perusal did not take long, for it was of the shortest possible description, simply stating that the whole of everything he possessed was given and bequeathed by him to "Gervase, Courteney, St. John, Occleve, Viscount Penlyn, in the Peerage of Great Britain, of Occleve House, London, and Occleve Chase, Westshire." With the exception that the bequest was enveloped in the usual phraseology of lawyers, it might have been drawn up by his brother's own hand, so clear and simple was it. And it was perfectly regular, both in the signature of the testator and the witnesses.
The two men watched him as he bent over the will and read it, the lawyer looking at him from under his thick, bushy eyebrows, and Mr. Stuart with a fixed glance that he never took off his face; and as they so watched him they noticed that his eyes were filled with tears he could not repress. He passed his hand across them once to wipe the tears away, but they came again; and, when he folded up the document and gave it back to Mr. Fordyce, they were welling over from his eyelids.
"I saw him but once after I knew he was my brother," he said; "and I had very little acquaintance with him before then; but now that I have learnt how whole-souled and unselfish he was, and how he resigned everything that was dear to him for my sake, I cannot but lament his sad life and dreadful end. You must forgive my weakness."
"It does you honour, my lord," the lawyer said, speaking in a softer tone than he had yet used; "and he well deserved that you should mourn him. He had a very noble nature."
"If you really feel his loss, if you feel it as much as I do, who owed much to him," Stuart said, "you will join me in trying to track his murderer. That will be the most sincere mourning you can give him;" and he, too, spoke now in a less bitter tone.
"I promised, yesterday, the woman whom we both loved that I would leave no stone unturned to find that man; I need take no fresh vows now. But what clue is there to show us who it was that killed him?"
For a moment neither of the others answered. He had been dead now for four days, the inquest had been held yesterday, and he was to be buried on the following day; yet through all those proceedings this man who was his kinsman, this man for whom he had exhibited the tenderest love and unselfishness, had made no sign, had not even come forward to see to the disposal of his remains. Stuart asked himself what explanation could be given of this, and, finding no answer in his own mind, he plainly asked Lord Penlyn if he himself could give any.
"Yes," he answered; "yes, I can. He had charged me in that letter that I should never make known what our positions were; charged me when he could have had no idea of death overtaking him; and I thought that I should best be consulting his wishes by keeping silence when he was dead. And I tell you both frankly that, had it not been for this will-the existence of which I never dreamed of-I never should have spoken, never have proclaimed our relationship. For the sake of my future wife, as well as to obey him, I should not have done so. He was dead, and no good could have been done by speaking."