CHAPTER IV.
A DOOR OPENED TO WICKEDNESS.
Soon after daybreak, upon the morning following the occurrence of the incidents related in the preceding chapter, Lady Wynde’s gray companion departed from Hawkhurst for Canterbury in a dog-cart which, with its driver, the baronet’s wife had ordered to be always at Artress’ disposal. She took the early train up to London, her business a secret between her mistress and herself.
At the usual breakfast hour, eight o’clock, Lady Wynde descended to the breakfast room. Sir Harold was already there, and greeted her with his usual tender smile, although he looked somewhat careworn. Their greetings were scarcely over, and the couple had taken their places at the table, when the butler appeared, bringing in the morning mail bag.
Sir Harold produced his key and unlocked it. There were a few newspapers for himself, some packets of silk samples, and a letter from Madame Elise, her dressmaker, for Lady Wynde. There were two letters for the baronet, one quite unimportant, which he tossed aside. The other bore the Indian post-mark.
“A letter from George,” said Sir Harold, his eyes brightening. “No, it’s not from George. The address is not in his hand. Who can have written to me in his stead?”
He tore open the letter hastily, his countenance falling.
His first glance was at the date; his second at the signature. An exclamation broke from his lips as he read aloud the name appended to the letter: “Cooper Graham, Regimental Surgeon.”
“What can this mean?” he exclaimed, in sudden agitation. “Can George be ill? Octavia, read the letter to me. The words seem all blurred.”
Lady Wynde took the letter, reading it aloud.
It was long, too long to transcribe here, and its import was terrible to the baronet. It opened with the announcement that the writer was the surgeon of Captain Wynde’s regiment, and that Captain Wynde was a patient under his care. It went on to say that Captain Wynde was the victim of a terrible and incurable disease under which he had been suffering for months, and the surgeon had learned that the poor young man had not written home to his friends the fact of his peril. His disease was a cancer, which was preying upon his vitals. Captain Wynde had been relieved of his regimental duties, and sent up into the hill country, where he now was. The young man’s thoughts by day and night were of his home—his one longing was to see his father before he died. Surgeon Graham went on to say that Captain Wynde could not possibly survive a sea journey; that he could not bear the bracing sea air, nor the fatigues of the overland route, and he would assuredly die on his way home. But, he added, that in the cool and quiet seclusion of his upcountry bungalow, his life could probably be prolonged for some three months.
Surgeon Graham concluded his startling letter with a further reference to Captain Wynde’s anxiety to look once more on his father’s face before he died. He said that the poor young man had desired that the letter should not be written to Sir Harold, and that the baronet should be informed of his son’s illness only in the letter which should announce that son’s death.
This terrible news was a fearful shock to Sir Harold. His son George, the heir of his name and estates, was dying in a far, foreign land, with a frightful disease, with no relative nor friend about him to smooth his pillow in his last agony, or to wipe the death-damp from his brows. The father sobbed aloud in his agony.
“My boy! my poor boy!” he cried, in a broken voice. “My poor dying boy!”
“It is very sad,” said Lady Wynde, wondering in her own heart if George Wynde’s death could be made to benefit her pecuniarily. “The surgeon seems a very kind-hearted person, and he says that George has an excellent native nurse, George’s man-servant—”
Sir Harold interrupted his wife by a gesture of impatience.
“The man is a Hindoo,” he said. “What consolation can he offer George in the hour of his death, when his eyes should rest on a tender, loving face—when his dying hands should grasp the hands of a friend? My poor brave boy! How could I ever consent to his going out to India? All his bright, military genius, all his longings to distinguish himself in the army, must end in an early Indian grave! But he shall not die with not one of his kindred beside him. We must go to him, Octavia. We shall reach him in time.”
Sir Harold seized upon his unopened Times, and glanced over the advertisements.
“A steamer sails from Marseilles two days hence,” he announced. “We must be off to-day, immediately, to catch it. I will have a bag packed at once. Order your maid to pack your trunks, Octavia—”
He paused, not comprehending the surprised stare in her ladyship’s bold black eyes.
“You seem to be laboring under a mistake Sir Harold,” said Lady Wynde, coolly. “If you choose to go out to India, you can do so. George is your son and heir, and I suppose it would really look better if you were to go. But as to my hurrying by sea and land, by day and night, to witness the death of a young man I never saw, the idea is simply preposterous. My health could never endure the strain of such a fatigue. You would have two graves to make instead of one.”
The lines in Sir Harold’s face contracted as in a sudden spasm.
“I—I was selfish to think of your going, Octavia,” he said sorrowfully. “It is true that we should have to travel day and night to reach Marseilles in time to catch the steamer. The passage of the Red Sea would also be hard for you. But I was thinking of my poor brave boy dying there among strangers, with no woman beside him. If—if you could have gone to him, my wife, and let him feel that he was going from one mother here to another mother there—”
“I should like to go, if only my health would permit,” sighed Lady Wynde. “But why do you not take your daughter with you?”
The father shook his head.
“She is so young,” he said. “She is so fond of poor George. I cannot cast so heavy a shadow over her future life as that visit to her brother’s death-bed would be. No, Octavia, I will go alone.”
He arose and went out, leaving his breakfast untouched. Lady Wynde sipped her coffee leisurely, and ate her breakfast with untroubled appetite. Then she proceeded to her own private sitting-room and took her place at one of the windows, watching the whirling snow-flakes of the February storm.
Sir Harold found her here when he came in, dressed for his journey. He had ordered a carriage, which was ready. His travelling bag was packed, and had been taken below. He had come in to say good-bye to his wife.
“What a great change a single hour has wrought in our lives!” he said, as he came up to Lady Wynde and put his arms around her. “Octavia, my darling, it wrings my heart to leave you. Write to me by every post. I shall remain with my boy until all is over. Tell me all the home news. You will have Neva home at Easter, and love her for my sake! She will be our only child soon!”
He embraced his wife with passionate affection, and murmured words of anguished farewell. He tore himself from her, but at the door he turned back, and spoke to her with a solemnity she had never seen in him before.
“Octavia,” he said, “at this moment a strange presentiment comes over me—a sudden horror—a chill as of death! Perhaps I am to die out there in India! If—if anything happens to me, Octavia, promise me to be good to my Neva.”
“It is not necessary to promise,” said Lady Wynde, “but to please you, I promise!”
Sir Harold’s keen blue eyes, full of anguish, rested in a long steady gaze upon that false handsome face, and the solemnity of his countenance increased.
“You will be Neva’s guardian, if I die,” he said, in a broken voice. “I trust you absolutely. God do unto you, Octavia, as you do unto my orphan child!”
How those words rang in the ears of Lady Wynde long afterward!
Sir Harold gave her a last embrace, and dashed down the stairs and sprang into the carriage. Lady Wynde watched him with tearless eyes as he drove down the avenue.
When he had disappeared from her sight, she said to herself:
“Of course I could have done nothing to put an end to Sir Harold’s life this morning. I only hope he will die in India—to save me the trouble of—of doing anything when he gets back!”
Sir Harold proceeded to Canterbury with all speed. On arriving, he proceeded directly to his solicitor’s, had a new will drawn up, constituting Lady Wynde his daughter’s personal guardian, and making Neva his sole heiress in the event of her brother’s death, Lady Wynde having been sufficiently provided for by her marriage settlements. The will duly signed and witnessed, Sir Harold hastened to the station, catching the train for Dover.
He crossed to Calais by the first boat, and went on to Marseilles, by way of Paris, without stopping even to see his daughter. He was not only in time to get passage by the Messageries Imperiales steamer, but had an hour to spare. In this hour he wrote a long and very tender letter to his daughter, telling her of her brother’s illness, and hinting of the gloom that had settled down upon his own soul. He begged her if anything happened to him on this journey, to love her step-mother, and to obey her in all things, regarding Lady Wynde’s utterances as if they came from Sir Harold.
He also wrote a note to his wife, and sent the two ashore to be posted by one of the agents of the company, just as the vessel weighed anchor for Suez.
In thirty-five days after leaving home he was in the Indian hill country, and beside his dying son.
Lady Wynde went out very little after her husband’s departure. She gave no more dinner parties, and behaved with such admirable discretion that her neighbors were full of praises of her. Although young, handsome and admired, presiding over one of the finest places in the county, with no one to direct or thwart her movements, the most censorious tongue could find nothing to condemn in her.
The only recreation she allowed herself were her weekly visits to London, ostensibly to see Madame Elise, but as the ashen-eyed Artress always accompanied her, they excited no comment even in her own household.
Easter drew near, and Lady Wynde wrote to her step-daughter that it would not be convenient to have her at Hawkhurst during the holidays, and ordered her to remain at her school.
The spring months passed slowly. Lady Wynde wrote by every post to her husband, and received letters as frequently. George’s minutest symptoms were described to her by the anxious father, and George himself, looking at his step-mother through his father’s eyes, sent her loving and pathetic messages, to which she duly responded.
Thus the time wore on until the midsummer.
About the middle of July, Lady Wynde received a black-bordered letter from her husband stating that his son and heir was dead. He had died at his up-country bungalow, after an illness which had been protracted considerably beyond the anticipations of his surgeon. Sir Harold wrote that he was exhausted by long nursing, and that he should remain a fortnight longer at his son’s bungalow to recruit his own health, and that he should then start for home.
“I wish he would come,” said Lady Wynde discontentedly, to her gray companion. “I am tired of this dull existence. I am anxious to rid myself of the trammels of my present marriage, and to be free to marry again.”
“You can be free within a week after Sir Harold’s return,” said Artress. “And he will be here in September.”
“I shall be free in September,” mused Lady Wynde, with sparkling eyes. “A widow with four thousand a year! Ah, if only some good demon would bring about that happy fact, leaving my hands unstained with crime?”
It seemed as if her familiar demon had anticipated her prayer.
Some two weeks later, a second black-bordered letter was brought to Lady Wynde. It was in an unfamiliar handwriting, and proved to be from Surgeon Graham.
It announced the death of Sir Harold Wynde!
The surgeon stated that the baronet had made all arrangements for returning to England, and that he had gone for a last ride among the hills. He had taken a jungle path, but being well armed and attended by a Hindoo servant, had anticipated no trouble. Some hours after he had set out on his ride, about the time the surgeon looked for his return, the Hindoo servant, covered with dust, rode up alone in a very panic of terror. With difficulty he told his story. Sir Harold Wynde had been attacked by a tiger that had leaped upon him from the jungle, and before his terrified servant could come to his aid, he had been dragged from his saddle, with the life-blood welling from his torn throat and breast. The servant, appalled, had not dared to fire, knowing that no human power could help Sir Harold in his extremity, and the baronet had been killed before his eyes. The Hindoo had then fled homeward to tell the awful story.
The surgeon added, that a party had been made up to visit the scene of the tragedy. A pool of blood, fragments of Sir Harold’s garments, the bones of his horse, and the foot-prints of a tiger, all tended to the confirmation of the Hindoo’s story. A hunt was organized for the tiger, and he was found near the same spot on the following day and killed.
We have given a brief epitome of the letter that declared to Lady Wynde that her prayer was answered, and that she was a widow.
She was sitting in the drawing-room at Hawkhurst when the letter was brought in to her. She was still sitting there, the letter lying on her lap, twice read, when her gray companion stole into the room.
“A letter from Sir Harold, Octavia?” said Artress, glancing at the black-bordered missive.
“No, it is from that Surgeon Graham,” answered her ladyship, with an exultant thrill in her low, soft voice. “You cannot guess the news, Artress. Sir Harold is dead!”
“Dead?”
“Yes,” cried Lady Wynde, “and I am a widow. Is it not glorious? A widow, well-jointured and free to marry again! Ha, ha! Tell the household the sad news, Artress, and tell them all that I am too overcome with grief to speak to them. Let the bell at the village be set tolling. Send a notice of the death to the Times. I am a widow, and the guardian of the heiress of Hawkhurst! You must write to my step-daughter of her bereavement, and also drop a note to Craven. A widow, and without crime. The heiress of Hawkhurst in my hands to do with as I please! Your future is to be linked with mine, my young Neva, and a fate your father never destined for you shall be yours. I stand upon the pinnacle of success at last.”