"I hope, Sir Thomas, you will not think me impatient if I suggest that there should not be a prolonged engagement," he began, taking the bull by the horns almost as soon as they had lighted up and their first gla.s.s of Mouton was still untasted before them. "But, to tell you the truth, I am not happy about my loved one's health, and I fancy that some yachting--say in or about Norway--might brace her a little."

"Great wits jump, they say! My dear boy, you have almost taken the very words out of my mouth!" replied Sir Thomas, confidentially. "Honestly, I have been uneasy about Joan for a long time. I told you months ago about the family tendency to phthisis! Well, I am not exactly anxious about her lungs, the medical men say they are perfectly sound, so far.

But tubercular disease has other ways of showing itself, and there is a feverishness, a tendency almost amounting to delirium about the dear girl, which at times makes me uneasy. I intended to suggest a speedy marriage, and a sea voyage, knowing of your delightful yacht. I repeat, you have taken the words out of my mouth!"

Joan was winding wool for Lady Thorne's work for her special _proteges_, the "deep sea fishermen"--winding it with an almost fiery energy, as the two conspirators entered the drawing-room. Her eyes met Vansittart's with the old hunted, desperate look--his heart sank as he felt how impotent and futile his efforts to balance the disturbing influence, whatever it was, had been.

Sir Thomas had determined to "strike the iron while it was hot." So, as soon as coffee had been served, he broached the subject of an almost immediate marriage.

"My dear, it is the only thing to be done!" exclaimed his wife emphatically. "It ought to be a function, Joan's marriage! And if it is not as soon as I can arrange matters, it will have to be postponed till next season, when every one will be sick and tired of the subject.

You are our only chick and child, Joan, and I will have you married properly, with _eclat_."

Joan made no objection. She gave her lover one tender, confiding glance, then resumed her wool-winding, and allowed her elders to settle her affairs for her. Perhaps, she thought, when she was left alone with the awful facts of her life in her own room--perhaps she might learn to live in something less akin to utter and complete despair than her present humour, when she was alone with Vansittart, skimming the ocean in his yacht.

The necessary shopping and dressmaker-interviewing, too, might distract her from the terrible, gnawing anxiety of the coming inquest.

Each morning and evening the papers had some little paragraph about the affair. They hinted at the ident.i.ty of "Victor a'Court" being a disputed one. But until the day fixed for the inquest there had been no definite allusion in print.

The night before the inquest was one of feverish anxiety for Joan. "If only I were not so strong--if only some dreadful illness would attack me!" she told herself, as the hours lagged and dragged. She could not face her world while that awful inquiry which might mean a shameful death to her was going forward; yet she dared not shut herself into her room to await the evening papers as she best could.

Her aunt was, fortunately for Joan, a "little out of sorts," as she herself termed it. So, her uncle being out--and having, indeed, almost entirely relaxed his barely-veiled supervision of her doings now that in three weeks time she would be Lady Vansittart and freed from his jurisdiction for always, she donned a hat and walking dress and wandered out, unseen--for the hall was empty.

Why she was attracted towards the scene of her "accidental crime"--that was her name for her administration of the drugged brandy to Victor Mercier--she could not imagine. But she was.

She had intended to stroll about in the leafy seclusion of Kensington Gardens, dodging her kind. But no sooner was she in the Park than she wandered almost unconsciously nearer and nearer to the place where she had done her former lover to death.

Oh, for some cool, dark refuge in which to grovel and hide during the awful hours of dreadful suspense! The light of day seemed too garish--every cheerful sound made her shrink and wince--every voice seemed to thrill each overstrung nerve in her aching body.

As she was pausing, miserably, under a tree, stopping her ears that she might not hear the glad voices and laughter of some children gaily at play, she happened to glance skyward where the towers of the great cathedral stood, solemn and n.o.ble, against the sky.

"I will go in there and wait!" she told herself. She felt unable to return home and face the evening papers in her uncle's house. She would wait for them there.

She almost fled along, across the road, into the cathedral, as a guilty, hunted creature seeking sanctuary. She halted when she had closed the door. There was a calm, a rest, in the sacred fane which was as the presence of the Creator Himself. She slunk into a corner, and crouching down, clung for support to the rail of the bench in front of her and waited.

Waited, half-dazed and stupified, hardly knowing where she was, mind and brain confused as if too paralysed to think, to act. Hour after hour pa.s.sed. Afternoon service proceeded in the choir. Almost grovelling in her corner, she listened. She could not pray--she was past that.

Then, as there was a movement of the congregation to the doors, she forced herself to rise and pa.s.s out among them. For she knew the evening papers would be out.

She hurried from the Abbey into the street, bought one from the first urchin she met shouting "Special Edeetion!" fled across one street and along another, into the Park. There she found an empty bench, and, well hidden from pa.s.sers-by by a clump of shrubs, opened her paper with trembling fingers. Yes! There it was!

"INQUEST THIS DAY. STRANGE REVELATIONS."

CHAPTER XXIII

The paragraphs seemed to dance before her eyes. Joan's mind at first refused to understand. Then, as she read, she feared her brain was playing her false.

Victor a'Court was identified by several witnesses--one a detective, who had failed to track him when he was "wanted" four years ago for embezzling monies belonging to his firm--as Victor Mercier.

His old mother was called, but was in so pitiable a state that his ident.i.ty was finally established by the evidence of her step-daughter, Vera "Anerley."

She was described as pale, but perfectly self-possessed. She told the coroner's court how Victor Mercier's father died in obscurity some years before her own father, a widower, met Madame Mercier and married her.

She and Victor, who was ten years at least her senior, had called each other brother and sister, albeit not related. She knew nothing of the particulars of the charge brought against him some years ago, except that the firm were subsequently bankrupt. She knew he had "got on"

abroad, but how, or why, he had not exactly said.

Then two medical men--one the aged pract.i.tioner who attended the family, Dr. Thompson, the other the young doctor, his nephew--testified to the death, and gave an account of the _post-mortem_ examination they had made by the coroner's order. The sudden death, which at first had had the appearance of suicide, especially as some brandy in a tumbler had proved, on a.n.a.lysis, to contain a quant.i.ty of morphia--was actually due to failure of the heart.

Cross-examination elicited from both medical men that there was not much actual disease. The heart was not in good condition--it could never have acted strongly--and failure might have happened, they considered, at any time, after undue strain, or shock, or even indiscretion.

Was the dose found in the stomach sufficient to cause death? asked the foreman of the jury. The reply was--and Joan read it feverishly again and again--not, perhaps, in a healthy person who was addicted to narcotics. Those who were accustomed to other sedatives would possibly escape being poisoned by the amount of morphia Victor Mercier seemed likely to have swallowed. But with a heart like his death might certainly ensue were the person unaccustomed to narcotics and the like.

Then the medical student, who had returned from settling his dead mother's affairs to find his "diggings" the scene of a recent tragedy, testified to the amount and kind of morphia he had left in a bottle among the rest of his drugs. Probably two-thirds of the half-bottle had been accounted for by the drugged brandy left in a tumbler, and by the contents of the stomach. He identified the empty bottle.

Here a juror asked if the bottle from which the brandy had been taken were in court?

It was not. No bottle had been found in the cupboard or anywhere in the sitting-room, although several empty brandy bottles were in a corner of the adjoining bedroom, where Victor Mercier was temporarily sleeping.

The student lodger vigorously disowned these, upon which the coroner asked the aged doctor whether a man whose heart was in the condition of Victor Mercier's would be tempted to resort to alcohol, and having received a decided reply in the affirmative, the subject was dropped.

Mr. Dobbs, the student who had escorted Victor Mercier's mother to the hospital entertainment, testified to finding Victor Mercier dead, as far as he could judge; then Vera gave an account of how she found him, and asked to be allowed to make a statement.

She told the Court that to her knowledge Victor Mercier had secretly married a lady, his senior, wealthy, of good position, who had behaved shamefully when he was under a cloud some years previously: that he had intended and hoped to procure a divorce, and that a person was expected to call upon him that night--the night he died--whose evidence would go far to a.s.sist him in his desire. "I expected the person would be still with him," she added--"and--I found him--dead!"

The significant utterance of her statement appeared to have brought about a perfect storm of questioning. But, giving an absolute denial to any further knowledge of the affair, she adhered firmly to what she had said, and nothing further could be elicited from her, except the somewhat defiant reply to a suggestion of the foreman of the jury that Victor Mercier might have had some motive in wishing to have a divorce instead of claiming conjugal rights. "Yes. We--he and I--were engaged to be married, as soon as he could get rid of her!"

That speech, apparently, brought matters to a speedy conclusion. The Coroner placed the "ambiguous affair" before the jury somewhat diffidently. Their verdict was, perhaps in consequence, hardly a decisive one. They disagreed. While the majority wished to adopt the coroner's hint that "death by misadventure" might be a safe view to take, and that it would be easy for investigations to be proceeded with by other authorities, should those authorities feel inclined to dissatisfaction, there were some dissentients who suspected possible foul play.

These were, however, sufficiently in the minority for a verdict of "death by misadventure" to be returned, and when Joan understood that by this she was still unsuspected by man of that which G.o.d alone yet knew she had done, the sudden shock of joy was as bad to bear as her agony when she read that Victor Mercier was dead.

"I am not to be hanged, I am not to be shamed before the world--G.o.d is just--He is merciful--He has heard my prayer!" she frantically told herself, as in the folly of ecstasy she clasped and kissed the paper, and held it to her heart. Was the world all sunshine, all joy? What was the matter? she wondered. It was as if she had been groping through some dark, noisome tunnel, holding by the dark walls, expecting every moment that some horror would rush upon and destroy her miserable, hopeless being--and--without even a warning ray of light--she had suddenly emerged into a beautiful world--ancient, yet new--bathed in glorious sunshine, awake and alive with joy.

She heard, almost with wonder, that the birds were carolling, that gay voices and laughter, mingled with the ripple of the wavelets a few yards away, where little children were screaming as they fed the quacking ducks. Little children! Some day she might be a mother, and in tending innocent babes she might forget the horror of her life.

She had no pity for the cruel man whom she saw now, first, in his true light, as perjurer, liar, thief--who had stolen her young affections out of mere wantonness, so it seemed to her, when he really loved this "Vera Anerley," who was supposedly his sister. He had lied to her all through--he was a mere n.o.body--he meant to climb to a position by her wealth: he had lied about his legal tie to her, this Vera--this love of his. What had he meant to do? How could he divorce her?

The answer to her own question was as a blow, so sharp, so cruel. She closed her eyes faint and sick.

"He knew about _us_," she thought. "He said--'your lover, Lord Vansittart.' He meant to get a divorce--because of him. He would have sworn to lies, very likely. He would have got 'damages'--a decree--and after he had disgraced me for ever, would have made that girl his wife!

Oh--his death has been a mercy to every one--may G.o.d grant it has been a mercy to him!"

As soon as she was equal to the effort of walking--for she felt unsteady and giddy even then--she left the newspaper on the seat on which she had sat to read her fate, and making her way out of the Park, took a cab home, and entered without, she believed, being unduly observed. She found that her uncle had lunched at his club, and her aunt was in her room, so, joining Lady Thorne in her boudoir, where she was lying comfortably tucked up on a sofa, she excused her absence very casually.

She had been detained shopping, had lunched out, had attended service in the Abbey. Lady Thorne smiled indulgently. "Of course, of course, my dear!" she interrupted. "But I am glad you are in. Violette has sent home one of your _trousseau_ evening frocks. It is a poet's dream--pink embroidered roses, and a bouquet of pink roses has come from the d.u.c.h.ess with a little note--they decorate with roses to-night in your honour! I want you to wear that frock. It would make such a nice paragraph in the society papers, and encourage Violette to exert her utmost with the rest of the wedding order."

Joan went upstairs, wondering what it meant--this sudden flow of sunshine. As she inspected the dress--an exquisite _confection_ of pale pink and white shot tissue, embroidered with cl.u.s.ters of La France roses with so cunning a hand that the blossoms looked almost real--she wondered what she would have felt, arraying herself in that gala attire, yesterday.

"My dark, darkest of dark nights, seems over, thank Heaven!" she told herself as she went down later on, radiant, to the drawing-room to receive her lover. As she opened the door, she saw him standing as if lost in anxious thought. He sprang towards her with a puzzled, astounded gaze.