CHAPTER XXIV
HERRIARD’S CONFESSION
THE gossips for once were right about Herriard and Countess Alexia. They were going to be married almost immediately, and with a view to that event Herriard was preparing to interrupt his work at the Bar. Whither his position was drifting him he knew not: the developments directed by the inscrutable brain of a Gastineau were not to be forecasted. But, at least, if his career was checked, he would now be pecuniarily independent of briefs.
When, on the night of his terrible danger, he found with a great thrill of relief that his opportune visitor was Count Prosper, he invited him, in a half-dazed fashion, into his room, making what excuse of illness he could to account for his perturbed and disordered appearance. His explanations were suspiciously incoherent, for his mind was preoccupied with the problem as to what prompt action, if any, he ought to take with regard to Gastineau. But his visitor was an easy-going fellow; not given, at any rate outside his profession, to probing for recondite motives; and although he regarded Herriard’s confusion and disarray with a certain amount of wondering curiosity, he yet accepted the sight as a mere abnormality with which he did not happen to be familiar.
“I wondered what was the matter,” he laughed, “when I found you had opened the door and then disappeared.”
So Gastineau had not passed out. He was still in the chambers. Herriard could not, for his life, determine what he had best do.
“I had to go into the City to our Consulate,” Count Prosper proceeded chattily. “I was kept there late over some troublesome business, and one of the men took me to dine at some famous old eating-house. Strolling homewards, I passed the Temple and thought to see if you were to be still found in your den.”
“I am glad you did,” was Herriard’s fervent response.
“Are you hard at work?” the Count went on. “No. You cannot work with a bad headache. Let us take a hansom home and blow it away. Alexia is alone, and dull enough, I expect. Come!”
He rose with a smile, and laid his hand affectionately on the other’s shoulder.
“Yes,” answered Herriard, feeling that, though unseasonable, it was the only thing possible. “I shall be glad, if you will wait till I make myself tidy.”
He went out warily into the lobby. The outer door was ajar. He tried to recollect. “Prosper,” he said, returning to the room, “do you remember whether I shut the outside door when you came in?”
“No, my dear fellow,” he laughed. “I performed that office myself.”
“You are sure?”
“Quite positive.”
So Gastineau was gone. The open door showed that. Yet it was with an apprehensive watchfulness that Herriard entered the little dressing-room where his enemy must have waited. He was not there now. He had disappeared; gone out upon the world an impersonal force for evil, a living man with, for the time, no legal existence.
The relief from the close, baleful atmosphere of the chambers and the drive through the comparatively fresh air somewhat revived Herriard, and by the time they reached Green Street he had resolved upon the course he would take. Alexia was alone; how glad she was to see him the love-light in her eyes told him, and his heart sank, he felt bitterly resentful against fate at the thought of the evil of which he was the messenger. Count Prosper was not long in tactfully remembering some work he had to finish, and left the lovers together.
“Geoffrey,” Alexia said, looking into the face just raised from a kiss, “you are not yourself to-night, you are troubled: tell me.”
He took a few restless steps. “I am worried,” he answered, “and more, I have news which must trouble you.”
She rose to her feet and stood looking at him, her eyes full of a vague apprehension, yet scarcely fear. “Geoffrey,” she said in a low, steady voice, “tell me: tell me at once.”
He hesitated a moment as though calculating the danger of the shock. Then he spoke.
“Paul Gastineau——”
“Gastineau?” She almost gasped, and her face went white.
“Is alive.”
“Ah!” Her lips closed tightly. The effort was to steady herself and realize what the news portended. With characteristic delicacy Herriard waited in silence. In that moment he would not emphasize, he dared not soften, the import of the news.
“You have seen him?” she asked at length.
He nodded. Then came near, took her in his arms and kissed her. “My darling! Mine!” he murmured.
“Geoffrey, tell me,” she said.
“I hardly dare tell you,” he replied, as the possible consequence of his confession sent a shiver of fear through him.
“Ah, he is the same terribly hateful, determined man as ever.” She gave a slight shudder. “So the man who told Prosper he had seen him was right after all. But you, Geoffrey; how did you encounter him? You said you did not know him in the old days, before his supposed death. Tell me quickly. I cannot understand what has happened.”
He took her hand as they sat together. “I don’t know how I can tell you,” he said, in a troubled voice. “For my story involves a confession; a hateful confession which may rob me of the thing I hold dearest in the world. Yet I must tell you everything, everything, and trust to your nobleness, to your love to judge me fairly. Promise me you will not condemn me till you have heard the whole history. I swear to you I will keep back nothing, extenuate nothing: you shall know the story as I know it.”
The hand which lay in his gave a little pressure of confidence, and with that he released it. At least he would spare her—and himself—the pain of taking it away. Then he told her everything of his life since his first meeting with Gastineau: told his story shortly, succinctly, yet, as he had promised, omitting nothing of importance, nothing that an enemy or his own conscience would have bade him tell. Alexia listened with half-averted face. Now and again she broke in with an exclamation of wonder, for the tale was surely one of the strangest that ever woman heard from her lover’s lips; once or twice she asked a question for an explanation of Gastineau’s almost incredible procedure; that was all. She heard him without sign of impatience to the end, and he could not tell, dared not seek to anticipate his story’s effect upon her. Yet he feared. The account of the accident, their meeting, and the supposititious death of Gastineau was plain, though dramatic enough; the suggestion of the singular partnership did not seem greatly to exceed the relations of coach and pupil; but, viewed in the light of its effects, of the moral situation to which it had driven Herriard, of the vindictive use to which Gastineau had constantly put his pupil, of the fraud and falsehood that lay behind Herriard’s career, none the less dishonest in that their only bad effect was the injury to himself, all this when related plainly seemed horribly condemnatory. Still, he stuck unflinchingly to his task, feeling that nothing but truth must exist between him and his love; and, besides, this was the only, yet the least, atonement he could make.
It was only when he had come to an end of his unvarnished story that he let his tone change to pleading.
“If you knew, my love,” he said, passionately remorseful, “how I have hated myself for these years of falsehood, how I fought against the temptation to declare my love, knowing I was unworthy of yours, till at last it was too strong to resist, you would pity me. And you must know that with my love came the determination to end the situation regardless of consequences, to strip off the bonds of deception that bound me. The release has come, thank God, and I am a free man, and you are, if it must be, a free woman, whose path need never run with mine again.”
He paused, hanging on her answer. To his unspeakable joy her hand was laid on his, and, as he turned, he read nothing but love in her eyes.
“Alexia!” he cried, in the delicious release from a great fear; and next moment was on his knees by her side kissing her. “And you can still love me?” he murmured.
“Why not?” she replied. “What bar is it between us that you have been led into and caught in a false position by the most plausible, unprincipled brain in the world?”
“But the living lie that I have been,” he urged, resolved that nothing should be glossed over, and feeling a prompt forgiveness was more than he deserved.
She gave a smile of sweet protest. “That is hardly my judgment of you. It does not follow because Geoffrey Herriard is, happily, not the intellectual equal of Paul Gastineau he is not a clever man.”
“At least,” he said, allowing himself one favourable word, “my conduct of your case was all my own.”
“I gathered that,” she replied, “from your story, and was glad to think it.”
“If,” he continued, with a touch of bitterness, “it had been he who, through my mouth, had won the day for you, I don’t think I could ever have brought myself to ask you to be my wife. But at least I was honest there.”
“And clever, and brave, and chivalrous. And you thought, Geoffrey, that the woman who professed to love you would have repaid all that by rejecting you because she found you were enmeshed in the toils of our common enemy? You might have known me better, dear.”
Presently Herriard said, “I have at least one great piece of good news for you. The man who killed Martindale has been discovered.”
“Geoffrey!” Alexia’s face flushed with the joy of that relief. “Tell me; who——”
“Who but the one man in our thoughts, the man whose evil personality hangs like a thunder-cloud over our lives.”
“Not Gastineau?”
“Yes; Paul Gastineau.” Then he told her of Quickjohn’s discovery, and of Gastineau’s visit and attack; softening, however, the details of that terrible struggle, in order to spare her anxiety and fear for the future. As it was, she showed signs of a distress and a terror too strong to be kept under.
“But now,” she said, brightening a little, “with this man’s discovery, Gastineau’s power for evil is surely at an end? You have only to inform the authorities that he is alive, and they will arrest him.”
Herriard shook his head. “I doubt if they would have a case. My experience of the law, my working with Gastineau, have taught me that moral proof positive may fall very far short of the legal evidence necessary for a successful prosecution. No: it is quite convincing to us—to you, to me and Quickjohn; but, I fear, it is a noose that a less clever man than Paul Gastineau would have little difficulty in slipping out of. No one knows what happened in that room between the time of your leaving it and the discovery of Martindale’s death, except the one man whom we believed to have killed him.”
“And he would kill you, Geoffrey,” she said, in terror at the thought.
He shook his head reassuringly. “I think not,” he said. “For one thing, I am on my guard and can take care of myself, and, besides, I do not think he will attempt to attack me again. He knows I can, at least, invoke the aid of the law there, and he would scarcely care, in his present position, to run that risk.”
Alexia seemed to take comfort from his assumption of confidence. He knew, however, all the same, that nothing was more likely than that Gastineau was meditating another attack, and that his own life, except as far as he could protect it, might scarcely be worth a day’s purchase.
Herriard, feeling in little humour for his own company that night, was glad to sit and smoke with Count Prosper till a late hour. It had been arranged before Alexia had left them that the marriage should take place almost immediately and that a long honeymoon should be spent on the Count’s estate in Moravia. One thing intervened, and that was an engagement Herriard had made to give his annual address to his constituents at Bradbury. This was an annoying hindrance, but it was a binding obligation on Herriard, and, after all, it meant but a week’s extra delay, which would give little more time than was needed for him to make a temporary wind-up of his business, legal and parliamentary. With the deadly point hanging over him, however, every moment seemed to count now against the chance of finally securing his happiness: to his impatience already, even, the inevitable interval seemed a gulf that he could scarcely hope to cross.
However, their plans were, so far, settled satisfactorily, even happily. Count Prosper gave his guest a glowing account of his Austrian home, with the promise of much romantic scenery and good sport. At length Herriard bade him good-night and strolled off towards his rooms, his mind a vortex of doubt, of joy, of fear. What would be Gastineau’s next move? He had declared in his masterful fashion that he would not be robbed of that treasure which was never his, Alexia. Still, with a man of Gastineau’s resource and strength of will to covet was to possess. In the days of their partnership, now, it seemed, an age back, he had often declared that to a man of abnormal will-power, once in deadly earnest, to desire was to have; whatever the object to be attained might be, however high it might seem above his reach. And that force was working now against him; what could his own devoted love count in opposition to the tremendous energy of that tenacious, unconquerable will?
Depressed with these thoughts, he had reached his door, when a man suddenly emerging from the shadow of a portico confronted him. He was sure, before he recognized him, that it was the man in his thoughts, Paul Gastineau. Happily he had taken the precaution to borrow, on a plausible excuse, Count Prosper’s revolver, resolving to buy one for himself next day. At the sight of Gastineau he whipped it out and held it outstretched before him. Gastineau laughed. As the light of a street lamp fell on his face he seemed in quite a pleasant, even jocular, mood; no trace remained of the devilish countenance that had looked down at Herriard a few hours before with murder written plain upon it. Now the smile was not even cynical.
“My dear Geoffrey,” he exclaimed, “please don’t be so truculent. I hope we have both recovered from our late madness. I have been waiting for you here, having forfeited the right to expect you to receive me indoors.”
“You could hardly expect that,” replied Herriard, regarding with repugnant wonder the almost incredible assurance of the callous, insouciant incarnation of malignity who stood smiling before him. “I wish to have nothing more to say to you.”
“Naturally,” Gastineau laughed. “All the same I shall be obliged if you will listen to a word from me. A question. Are you going to mention our late unfortunate set-to to your friend Quickjohn? I ask merely for information.” He spoke quite casually, as though careless what the answer might be.
“I have not thought of it.”
“Ah!” Gastineau exclaimed, with a smile of patronizing doubt. “Or that I am in the land of the living?”
“Nor that, as yet.”
“Ah! Now, my dear Herriard,” he went on in his easy tone, with just a suspicion of restrained mockery behind it, “I don’t expect you to take advice from me any longer, and I am perfectly ready to meet any contingency; at the same time I am here to offer you—shall we say an armistice?—and to suggest that to make a fuss about my little explosion of temper would not be a wise thing to do.”
“I suppose that is a threat,” Herriard said sternly; “if so——”
“A threat?” Gastineau raised a deprecating hand. “My dear fellow! The idea of threatening an angry man who stands over you with a loaded—presumably loaded—revolver in his hand! It is nothing but a piece of common-sense advice, of which the most cocksure of us occasionally stand in need. Perhaps I ought to explain why mine is worth considering; the question, that is, of leaving well—or ill—alone.”
“I don’t want your advice, Gastineau, of all men’s,” Herriard said.
“And yet,” the other retorted, gently persuasive, “I am, so far, the only man capable of giving advice in the present crisis. You had better hear what I have to say. Please be careful of that revolver. If you mean to shoot, shoot; but I should hate to have an accidental bullet through me. Now, the world, my dear Herriard, is, putting aside for the moment our little difference, wide enough for both of us. It is not likely that I shall come back to that stuffy, crowded square mile on which I formerly and you lately have bustled and quibbled and sweated. I have lost nearly five working years of my life; I must make them up, and the great West, my dear Geoffrey, offers me the best chance of overtaking them. There is a fortune for me in five years over there. And the American intellect attracts me; I long to pit myself against it; I have never been fully extended here; was brought into the world for worthier competitors than your slow, stupid Englishmen; I’m sick of fighting rapier against bludgeon. So, as at present advised, I am off.”
Herriard bowed acceptance of the statement.
“I thought you might like to know,” Gastineau went on lightly. “No doubt you regard me as a dangerous element in your atmosphere; an active enemy, eh? Well, perhaps I might be if it were worth my while; but five minutes’ reflection will surely show you that it isn’t. That’s all. Good-night.”
To Herriard’s relief he turned to go; then stopped. “By the way, as we are not likely to meet again, you are still bent on marrying the lady?”
“Certainly,” Herriard answered curtly.
“H’m! A mistake, my dear friend, and a mistake that will probably make all the difference. Blind obstinacy has led many a better man than you or I over a precipice. The clever man is he who knows when to abandon an untenable or dangerous position. Well, may you be wise before wisdom has gone beyond recall. I shall say no more. For the last time, good-night and good-bye.”
He nodded, indifferent as to whether his bidding were returned, and so went off at a saunter down the street. Herriard lingered in the shadow of his doorway, watching him till he had disappeared into the night.