At the Villa Rose Part 29

His smile irritated Ricardo, who spoke impatiently.

"I should be very glad," he said, "if you would tell me how you discovered all these things. And what it was that the little salon on the first morning had to tell to you? And why Celia Harland ran from the gla.s.s doors across the gra.s.s to the motor-car and again from the carriage into the house on the lake? Why she did not resist yesterday evening? Why she did not cry for help? How much of Helene Vauquier's evidence was true and how much false? For what reason Wethermill concerned himself in this affair? Oh! and a thousand things which I don't understand."

"Ah, the cushions, and the sc.r.a.p of paper, and the aluminium flask,"

said Hanaud; and the triumph faded from his face. He spoke now to Ricardo with a genuine friendliness. "You must not be angry with me if I keep you in the dark for a little while. I, too, Mr. Ricardo, have artistic inclinations. I will not spoil the remarkable story which I think Mlle. Celie will be ready to tell us. Afterwards I will willingly explain to you what I read in the evidences of the room, and what so greatly puzzled me then. But it is not the puzzle or its solution," he said modestly, "which is most interesting here. Consider the people.

Mme. Dauvray, the old, rich, ignorant woman, with her superst.i.tions and her generosity, her desire to converse with Mme. de Montespan and the great ladies of the past, and her love of a young, fresh face about her; Helene Vauquier, the maid with her six years of confidential service, who finds herself suddenly supplanted and made to tend and dress in dainty frocks the girl who has supplanted her; the young girl herself, that poor child, with her love of fine clothes, the Bohemian who, brought up amidst trickeries and practising them as a profession, looking upon them and upon misery and starvation and despair as the commonplaces of life, keeps a simplicity and a delicacy and a freshness which would have withered in a day had she been brought up otherwise; Harry Wethermill, the courted and successful man of genius.

"Just imagine if you can what his feelings must have been, when in Mme.

Dauvray's bedroom, with the woman he had uselessly murdered lying rigid beneath the sheet, he saw me raise the block of wood from the inlaid floor and take out one by one those jewel cases for which less than twelve hours before he had been ransacking that very room. But what he must have felt! And to give no sign! Oh, these people are the interesting problems in this story. Let us hear what happened on that terrible night. The puzzle--that can wait." In Mr. Ricardo's view Hanaud was proved right. The extraordinary and appalling story which was gradually unrolled of what had happened on that night of Tuesday in the Villa Rose exceeded in its grim interest all the mystery of the puzzle. But it was not told at once.

The trouble at first with Mlle. Celie was a fear of sleep. She dared not sleep--even with a light in the room and a nurse at her bedside.

When her eyes were actually closing she would force herself desperately back into the living world. For when she slept she dreamed through again that dark and dreadful night of Tuesday and the two days which followed it, until at some moment endurance snapped and she woke up screaming. But youth, a good const.i.tution, and a healthy appet.i.te had their way with her in the end.

She told her share of the story--she told what happened. There was apparently one terrible scene when she was confronted with Harry Wethermill in the office of Monsieur Fleuriot, the Juge d'instruction, and on her knees, with the tears streaming down her face, besought him to confess the truth. For a long while he held out. And then there came a strange and human turn to the affair. Adele Rossignol--or, to give her real name, Adele Tace, the wife of Hippolyte--had conceived a veritable pa.s.sion for Harry Wethermill. He was of a not uncommon type, cold and callous in himself, yet with the power to provoke pa.s.sion in women. And Adele Tace, as the story was told of how Harry Wethermill had paid his court to Celia Harland, was seized with a vindictive jealousy. Hanaud was not surprised. He knew the woman-criminal of his country--brutal, pa.s.sionate, treacherous. The anonymous letters in a woman's handwriting which descend upon the Rue de Jerusalem, and betray the men who have committed thefts, had left him no illusions upon that figure in the history of crime. Adele Rossignol ran forward to confess, so that Harry Wethermill might suffer to the last possible point of suffering. Then at last Wethermill gave in and, broken down by the ceaseless interrogations of the magistrate, confessed in his turn too.

The one, and the only one, who stood firmly throughout and denied the crime was Helene Vauquier. Her thin lips were kept contemptuously closed, whatever the others might admit. With a white, hard face, quietly and respectfully she faced the magistrate week after week. She was the perfect picture of a servant who knew her place. And nothing was wrung from her. But without her help the story became complete. And Ricardo was at pains to write it out.

CHAPTER XV

CELIA'S STORY

The story begins with the explanation of that circ.u.mstance which had greatly puzzled Mr. Ricardo--Celia's entry into the household of Mme.

Dauvray.

Celia's father was a Captain Harland, of a marching regiment, who had little beyond good looks and excellent manners wherewith to support his position. He was extravagant in his tastes, and of an easy mind in the presence of embarra.s.sments. To his other disadvantages he added that of falling in love with a pretty girl no better off than himself. They married, and Celia was born. For nine years they managed, through the wife's constant devotion, to struggle along and to give their daughter an education. Then, however, Celia's mother broke down under the strain and died. Captain Harland, a couple of years later, went out of the service with discredit, pa.s.sed through the bankruptcy court, and turned showman. His line was thought-reading; he enlisted the services of his daughter, taught her the tricks of his trade, and became "The Great Fortinbras" of the music-halls. Captain Harland would move amongst the audience, asking the spectators in a whisper to think of a number or of an article in their pockets, after the usual fashion, while the child, in her short frock, with her long fair hair tied back with a ribbon, would stand blind-folded upon the platform and reel off the answers with astonishing rapidity. She was singularly quick, singularly receptive.

The undoubted cleverness of the performance, and the beauty of the child, brought to them a temporary prosperity. The Great Fortinbras rose from the music-halls to the a.s.sembly rooms of provincial towns.

The performance became genteel, and ladies flocked to the matinees.

The Great Fortinbras dropped his pseudonym and became once more Captain Harland.

As Celia grew up, he tried a yet higher flight--he became a spiritualist, with Celia for his medium. The thought-reading entertainments became thrilling seances, and the beautiful child, now grown into a beautiful girl of seventeen, created a greater sensation as a medium in a trance than she had done as a lightning thought-reader.

"I saw no harm in it," Celia explained to M. Fleuriot, without any attempt at extenuation. "I never understood that we might be doing any hurt to any one. People were interested. They were to find us out if they could, and they tried to and they couldn't. I looked upon it quite simply in that way. It was just my profession. I accepted it without any question. I was not troubled about it until I came to Aix."

A startling exposure, however, at Cambridge discredited the craze for spiritualism, and Captain Harland's fortunes declined. He crossed with his daughter to France and made a disastrous tour in that country, wasted the last of his resources in the Casino at Dieppe, and died in that town, leaving Celia just enough money to bury him and to pay her third-cla.s.s fare to Paris.

There she lived honestly but miserably. The slimness of her figure and a grace of movement which was particularly hers obtained her at last a situation as a mannequin in the show-rooms of a modiste. She took a room on the top floor of a house in the Rue St. Honore and settled down to a hard and penurious life.

"I was not happy or contented--no," said Celia frankly and decisively.

"The long hours in the close rooms gave me headaches and made me nervous. I had not the temperament. And I was very lonely--my life had been so different. I had had fresh air, good clothes, and freedom. Now all was changed. I used to cry myself to sleep up in my little room, wondering whether I would ever have friends. You see, I was quite young--only eighteen--and I wanted to live."

A change came in a few months, but a disastrous change. The modiste failed. Celia was thrown out of work, and could get nothing to do.

Gradually she p.a.w.ned what clothes she could spare; and then there came a morning when she had a single five-franc piece in the world and owed a month's rent for her room. She kept the five-franc piece all day and went hungry, seeking for work. In the evening she went to a provision shop to buy food, and the man behind the counter took the five-franc piece. He looked at it, rung it on the counter, and, with a laugh, bent it easily in half.

"See here, my little one," he said, tossing the coin back to her, "one does not buy good food with lead."

Celia dragged herself out of the shop in despair. She was starving. She dared not go back to her room. The thought of the concierge at the bottom of the stairs, insistent for the rent, frightened her. She stood on the pavement and burst into tears. A few people stopped and watched her curiously, and went on again. Finally a sergent-de-ville told her to go away.

The girl moved on with the tears running down her cheeks. She was desperate, she was lonely.

"I thought of throwing myself into the Seine," said Celia simply, in telling her story to the Juge d'Instruction. "Indeed, I went to the river. But the water looked so cold, so terrible, and I was young. I wanted so much to live. And then--the night came, and the lights made the city bright, and I was very tired and--and--"

And, in a word, the young girl went up to Montmartre in desperation, as quickly as her tired legs would carry her. She walked once or twice timidly past the restaurants, and, finally, entered one of them, hoping that some one would take pity on her and give her some supper. She stood just within the door of the supper-room. People pushed past her--men in evening dress, women in bright frocks and jewels. No one noticed her. She had shrunk into a corner, rather hoping not to be noticed, now that she had come. But the novelty of her surroundings wore off. She knew that for want of food she was almost fainting. There were two girls engaged by the management to dance amongst the tables while people had supper--one dressed as a page in blue satin, and the other as a Spanish dancer. Both girls were kind. They spoke to Celia between their dances. They let her waltz with them. Still no one noticed her. She had no jewels, no fine clothes, no CHIC--the three indispensable things. She had only youth and a pretty face.

"But," said Celia, "without jewels and fine clothes and CHIC these go for nothing in Paris. At last, however, Mme. Dauvray came in with a party of friends from a theatre, and saw how unhappy I was, and gave me some supper. She asked me about myself, and I told her. She was very kind, and took me home with her, and I cried all the way in the carriage. She kept me a few days, and then she told me that I was to live with her, for often she was lonely too, and that if I would she would some day find me a nice, comfortable husband and give me a marriage portion. So all my troubles seemed to be at an end," said Celia, with a smile.

Within a fortnight Mme. Dauvray confided to Celia that there was a new fortune-teller come to Paris, who, by looking into a crystal, could tell the most wonderful things about the future. The old woman's eyes kindled as she spoke. She took Celia to the fortune-teller's rooms next day, and the girl quickly understood the ruling pa.s.sion of the woman who had befriended her. It took very little time then for Celia to notice how easily Mme. Dauvray was duped, how perpetually she was robbed. Celia turned the problem over in her mind.

"Madame had been very good to me. She was kind and simple," said Celia, with a very genuine affection in her voice. "The people whom we knew laughed at her, and were ungenerous. But there are many women whom the world respects who are worse than ever was poor Mme. Dauvray. I was very fond of her, so I proposed to her that we should hold a seance, and I would bring people from the spirit world I knew that I could amuse her with something much more clever and more interesting than the fortune-tellers. And at the same time I could save her from being plundered. That was all I thought about."

That was all she thought about, yes. She left Helene Vauquier out of her calculations, and she did not foresee the effect of her stances upon Mme. Dauvray. Celia had no suspicions of Helene Vauquier. She would have laughed if any one had told her that this respectable and respectful middle-aged woman, who was so attentive, so neat, so grateful for any kindness, was really nursing a rancorous hatred against her. Celia had sprung from Montmartre suddenly; therefore Helene Vauquier despised her. Celia had taken her place in Mme.

Dauvray's confidence, had deposed her unwittingly, had turned the confidential friend into a mere servant; therefore Helene Vauquier hated her. And her hatred reached out beyond the girl, and embraced the old, superst.i.tious, foolish woman, whom a young and pretty face could so easily beguile. Helene Vauquier despised them both, hated them both, and yet must nurse her rancour in silence and futility. Then came the seances, and at once, to add fuel to her hatred, she found herself stripped of those gifts and commissions which she had exacted from the herd of common tricksters who had been wont to make their harvest out of Mme. Dauvray. Helene Vauquier was avaricious and greedy, like so many of her cla.s.s. Her hatred of Celia, her contempt for Mme. Dauvray, grew into a very delirium. But it was a delirium she had the cunning to conceal. She lived at white heat, but to all the world she had lost nothing of her calm.

Celia did not foresee the hatred she was arousing; nor, on the other hand, did she foresee the overwhelming effect of these spiritualistic seances on Mme. Dauvray. Celia had never been brought quite close to the credulous before.

"There had always been the row of footlights," she said. "I was on the platform; the audience was in the hall; or, if it was at a house, my father made the arrangements. I only came in at the last moment, played my part, and went away. It was never brought home to me that some amongst these people really and truly believed. I did not think about it. Now, however, when I saw Mme. Dauvray so feverish, so excited, so firmly convinced that great ladies from the spirit world came and spoke to her, I became terrified. I had aroused a pa.s.sion which I had not suspected. I tried to stop the seances, but I was not allowed. I had aroused a pa.s.sion which I could not control. I was afraid that Mme.

Dauvray's whole life--it seems absurd to those who did not know her, but those who did will understand--yes, her whole life and happiness would be spoilt if she discovered that what she believed in was all a trick."

She spoke with a simplicity and a remorse which it was difficult to disbelieve. M. Fleuriot, the judge, now at last convinced that the Dreyfus affair was for nothing in the history of this crime, listened to her with sympathy.

"That is your explanation, mademoiselle," he said gently. "But I must tell you that we have another."

"Yes, monsieur?" Celia asked.

"Given by Helene Vauquier," said Fleuriot.

Even after these days Celia could not hear that woman's name without a shudder of fear and a flinching of her whole body. Her face grew white, her lips dry.

"I know, monsieur, that Helene Vauquier is not my friend," she said. "I was taught that very cruelly."

"Listen, mademoiselle, to what she says," said the judge, and he read out to Celia an extract or two from Hanaud's report of his first interview with Helene Vauquier in her bedroom at the Villa Rose.

"You hear what she says. 'Mme. Dauvray would have had seances all day, but Mlle. Celie pleaded that she was left exhausted at the end of them.

But Mlle. Celie was of an address.' And again, speaking of Mme.

Dauvray's queer craze that the spirit of Mme. de Montespan should be called up, Helene Vauquier says: 'She was never gratified. Always she hoped. Always Mlle. Celie tantalised her with the hope. She would not spoil her fine affairs by making these treats too common.' Thus she attributes your reluctance to multiply your experiments to a desire to make the most profit possible out of your wares, like a good business woman."

"It is not true, monsieur," cried Celia earnestly. "I tried to stop the seances because now for the first time I recognised that I had been playing with a dangerous thing. It was a revelation to me. I did not know what to do. Mme. Dauvray would promise me everything, give me everything, if only I would consent when I refused. I was terribly frightened of what would happen. I did not want power over people. I knew it was not good for her that she should suffer so much excitement.

No, I did not know what to do. And so we all moved to Aix."

And there she met Harry Wethermill on the second day after her arrival, and proceeded straightway for the first time to fall in love. To Celia it seemed that at last that had happened for which she had so longed.

She began really to live as she understood life at this time. The day, until she met Harry Wethermill, was one flash of joyous expectation; the hours when they were together a time of contentment which thrilled with some chance meeting of the hands into an exquisite happiness. Mme.

Dauvray understood quickly what was the matter, and laughed at her affectionately.

"Celie, my dear," she said, "your friend, M. Wethermill--'Arry, is it not? See, I p.r.o.nounce your tongue--will not be as comfortable as the nice, fat, bourgeois gentleman I meant to find for you. But, since you are young, naturally you want storms. And there will be storms, Celie,"