THE LAST HOPE
In the room that had once been Paula Rawson’s boudoir Sir Robert Rawson lay on his wheeled couch, drawn up near a blazing fire. Of late he had extended his daily visits to this room of poignant memories, spending many hours there, with Thomson or Perkins in attendance on him—usually Perkins, for since the evening of Boris Melikoff’s visit, when Sir Robert had detected and rebuked that “error of judgment” in his trusted old servant, he had not resumed the confidential relations that had existed between them for so many years. He never again referred, in words, to the incident, but an impalpable barrier had risen between master and man that in all probability would never be surmounted.
Over the mantelpiece hung the famous half-length portrait of Paula which, entitled “The Jade Necklace,” had been the picture of its year at the Academy, a masterpiece that showed her in all her imperious beauty, dressed in a robe of filmy black over which fell a superb chain of jade beads, the one startling note of vivid colour in the whole picture.
For hours Sir Robert would lie and gaze at the portrait that seemed to gaze back at him with proud, tragic, inscrutable dark eyes. He was gazing at it now, and might or might not have been listening as Perkins conscientiously read aloud column after column from “The Times.” Perkins read remarkably well—Sir Robert occasionally complimented him—but he often wondered whether his master really did listen!
He paused when the butler entered with a visiting card, on which a brief message was written in pencil below the name: “Entreating five minutes’ interview on a most urgent and private matter.”
“Mr. Austin Starr,” Sir Robert muttered, frowning meditatively over the card.
“There’s a lady too, Sir Robert,” said Jenkins. “I asked her name, but the gentleman said she would only give it to you.”
For a full minute Sir Robert pondered, holding the card in his thin fingers, before he answered slowly: “Very well. Bring them up, Jenkins.... You can wait in the next room, Perkins.”
In the interval he looked up again at the portrait, with a strange expression in his haggard eyes, as if he were mutely questioning it; but his stern old face was impassive as a mask as he turned it towards his visitors.
“I remember you, Mr. Starr; but who is this lady?”
Grace, for it was she, came forward and raised her veil.
“I am Roger Carling’s wife, Sir Robert.”
He looked at her intently. He had seen her once or twice, when she had been a guest at his wife’s receptions, and he never forgot a face he had once seen, but he could scarcely recognize in this pale, worn woman with appealing, pathetic, grey eyes, the radiant young girl of such a few months ago.
“I thought it might be you,” he said slowly. “I am very sorry for you, Mrs. Carling—and sorry that you have come here to-day. I fear you will only add to your own distress—and to mine. Why have you come?”
“To plead with you for my husband’s life,” she cried. “As our very last hope, Sir Robert! You know—you must know—that the appeal has failed, the petition to the Home Secretary has failed, and to-morrow—to-morrow——”
She faltered and Sir Robert said grimly:
“To-morrow Robert Carling will pay the just penalty for his crime.”
Austin clenched his hands in indignation, but dared not speak, dared do nothing to interrupt this terrible old man, who, if he could be prevailed upon to intervene, might yet save Roger Carling from the scaffold. If Grace could not move him, assuredly no one else could!
“No, no, Sir Robert—he is innocent; you, of all people, should have known that from the first.”
“I? I would give everything I possess in this world to be able to believe that, but I cannot. He has been tried and found guilty. There is no shadow of doubt that he is guilty, and that knowledge is the bitterest thing in the world to me, for I loved him, I trusted him as a son, and he murdered my dear wife!”
She fell on her knees beside his couch, stretching out piteous hands to him.
“Sir Robert, I implore you to hear me! Roger never raised his hand against Lady Rawson. God knows who did, but it was not he! The truth will be discovered some day, I don’t know how or when, but it will; and if it comes too late—and there are such a few hours, such a few short hours in which he may still be saved—his death will be at your door, on your conscience! For you can save him now if you will! Your influence is so great, if you will but say one word on his behalf the Home Secretary—the King himself—will listen to you, will respond to you as to no other man in the world. They will grant a reprieve, and then, whenever the truth does come out, his innocence will be established—he will be set free. Sir Robert, I implore you.”
Again he looked at the portrait, and her agonized eyes followed the direction of his.
For a few seconds there was a tense silence. The deathly fragrance of the masses of flowers in the room seemed to increase till it was overpowering, suffocating. Then Grace spoke softly, brokenly, not to the stern old man, but to the woman in the picture.
“Oh, if only you could speak; if you could but tell us the whole truth! Do you know—I wonder, I think you may do—how I wept and prayed for you when I learned of your terrible fate, that overshadowed those sacred hours of our happiness; how my beloved grieved for you and your stricken husband, whom he so loved and honoured? If you do know, then, as a woman, you will know what we suffer, in our great love and all our sorrow, with the shadow of doom upon us—you will strive to touch your husband’s heart, to soften it towards us!”
“Enough!” Sir Robert’s voice broke in harshly. “It is useless for you to invoke the dead, useless to ask me to intercede for your husband. I have no power to save him, and if I had I would not exert it; the law must take its course!”
Austin stepped forward impetuously.
“Sir Robert,” he began indignantly, but Grace checked him with a gesture.
In some uncanny way she seemed suddenly to regain her composure, and rose to her feet, standing erect just as she had done in court when the judge pronounced Roger’s doom. Slowly her glance travelled from the portrait round the beautiful room, as if she was noting each detail, and the two men watched her in silence.
“The room with green hangings and many flowers,” she said softly; “the room where the truth will be made known—at the ninth hour.”
“Come away, Grace,” said Austin huskily, moving to her side and taking her arm. He feared her mind had given way at last under the long strain.
She looked at him with that faint, inscrutable Mona Lisa smile on her white face.
“It is all right, Austin, good friend. I am not mad. Yes, we will go—to Roger. It was good of you to see me, Sir Robert. I will forget what you have said; you will know better soon—at the ninth hour. Good-bye. Come, Austin.”
She moved towards the door, scarcely seeming to need Austin’s support, and when it closed behind them Sir Robert covered his eyes with his hand and sank back on his pillows.
As they went down the wide staircase Thomson silently appeared on the landing, and, after a moment’s hesitation, followed them. Jenkins met them in the hall, ceremoniously ushered them out, and opened the door of the waiting taxi. Austin helped Grace into the cab and was about to follow her when Thomson crossed the pavement.
“Half a minute, Mr. Jenkins. Can I have a word with you, Mr. Starr?”
Jenkins retreated, imagining that Thomson had come with a message from his master, and Austin turned.
“Well, what is it?”
“This way, if you don’t mind, sir,” said Thomson, drawing him a little aside. “Am I right in thinking that you and Mrs. Carling have been to ask my master to use his influence on behalf of Mr. Carling?”
“You are, and he has refused,” said Austin curtly.
“I feared as much, sir. And there’s no hope that Mr. Lorimer, the Home Secretary, or the King himself, even now——”
“None that I can see.”
“I am very distressed, sir—very distressed indeed, but there’s still time—while there’s life there’s hope! Could you manage to come round here again to-night, sir—say at nine o’clock?”
“Here! What for?” asked Austin bluntly.
“I can’t explain, sir. I don’t quite know yet, but if you would come—ask for Sir Robert—I think there might be someone here—there might be a chance. Better not say anything to the poor lady, but perhaps you would give her my best respects, and try to cheer her up generally. Tell her not to despair.”
“I’ll come. And you’re a good chap, Thomson,” Austin said earnestly, though his own hopes were dead. He would have shaken hands with the little man, but Thomson evaded the proffered grasp and slipped back into the house.
Grace asked no question, but sat upright in her corner, with that strange, unnatural composure still possessing her.
They were on their way to the prison for their last interview with Roger, whose execution was fixed for eight o’clock on the following morning, and Austin, who had fought valiantly in the American Army in that last year of the Great War, had there seen death in many dreadful forms—the death of comrades whom he loved—dreaded this interview as he had never dreaded anything in his life before. Possibly for the first time in his life he felt an arrant coward, and when the moment came he was speechless. He just wrung Roger’s hands, bent and kissed them, and hastily retreated, quite unconscious of the fact that the tears were rolling down his face.
It was quite otherwise with Grace. She spoke gently, with a gracious smile to the watchful warders, whose guard over the prisoner must now be ceaseless till the end, and then clung to Roger, raising her lips to his, her great, grey eyes shining, not with tears.
“It’s not good-bye, darling,” she said softly. “It’s only till to-morrow—such a little time—perhaps even sooner—to-night, at the ninth hour—and we shall be at home together—at last. The light is coming—the great protection is over us!”
He thought, as Austin did, that for the time being at least she had become insane. It was better so, for her sake; but, oh, it was hard! He had to summon all his fortitude. The iron will that had sustained him through all these terrible weeks must sustain him to the last.
“Good-bye, my own dear love. God guard you and bring you to me in His own good time,” were his last words.
She flashed a radiant smile at him.
“Till to-morrow!” she said, and with that she left him, passing like a wraith, quite oblivious of the deep interest and sympathy of the officials, and of the prison chaplain who accompanied her and Austin to the outer gates, but with tactful delicacy refrained from speaking to her. He too thought, “it was better so.”
Winnie and little Miss Culpepper, pale-faced and red-eyed, were waiting anxiously for her return. She smiled on them too, as they took off her outdoor wraps and lovingly tended her.
“Yes, I will have some tea—just a cup. And I’m so tired I’m going to lie down for an hour or two. You see it won’t do for me to be a wreck when Roger comes home. That’s nice. Thank you, darlings. You are good to me. If I don’t wake before nine will you wake me then?”
Like a child she submitted to be wrapped in a rest-gown and tucked up under the eiderdown on her bed. When Winnie stole in to look at her presently she was fast asleep.
“What does she mean about Roger coming home, and that we are to wake her at nine o’clock?” Winnie asked Austin when she rejoined the others.
“I don’t know. She’s been like that, poor girl, ever since we were with Sir Robert. He was brutal to her—brutal! I wish we had not gone, but you know how she insisted on doing so. She just stood and looked around the room, and I guess something snapped in her poor brain. She said something then about ‘the ninth hour,’ and it’s a queer coincidence, but directly after, old man Thomson, Sir Robert’s valet, followed us and asked me to go back there at nine o’clock—though why, he wouldn’t say, and I can’t surmise. But I’m going!”
“Did you tell her about that?”
“No. He asked me not to. And it didn’t seem any use to talk to her, poor girl; she was just insensible, as you saw her now, like an animated corpse.”
“How is Roger?”
“Well, I can’t quite say,” Austin acknowledged. “I think he was quite calm, but—well, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t! The padre—Mr. Iverson—has permission to stay the night with him. He’ll be there now, I guess.”
They spoke in hushed tones, as people do in the presence of death, and then lapsed into silence, sitting hand-in-hand, as unhappy a pair of lovers as could be found in London that night.
The evening dragged on. Time after time Winnie peeped into the bedroom, finding Grace still asleep, until just before nine, when Austin had departed to keep his appointment, she returned and whispered to Miss Culpepper that Grace had risen and was kneeling beside the bed.
“She is very still, but she’s breathing regularly and quietly. Look. I’ve left the door open. What ought we to do?”
“Don’t disturb her for a few minutes anyhow,” Miss Culpepper counselled; and again they waited, outside the door, whence they could just see the kneeling figure, watching and listening intently.
The grandfather clock in the hall chimed and struck nine. At the sound Grace raised her head, then bowed it again.
Slowly the minutes passed, each, to those distressed watchers, seeming like an hour. A quarter past nine—half-past nine!
“I think we ought to rouse her now,” Winnie whispered anxiously. “She will be quite numb and cramped—if she hasn’t fainted!”
As she spoke the telephone bell sounded—a startling summons in that hushed place.