One of My Sons Part 41

Mr. Gillespie, who at another time might have succ.u.mbed to the emotion of seeing himself singled out from his brothers on the charge which had hitherto involved them all, was already in a state of too much agitation to make much demonstration over this fresh humiliation.

Nevertheless it became evident, from the droop of his arms and the general air of discouragement which crept into his whole bearing, that the iron had entered his soul and the climax of his many woes had been reached.

"I hoped for other results when I entered upon my long and painful story," he remarked. "Certainly you have found me able to account for much that has seemed anomalous in my relations to my father and the att.i.tude I have been compelled to preserve towards society. I am surprised that anyone should continue to regard me as having had anything to do with my father's unhappy death. May I ask what special evidence you imagine yourselves to have against me? I may be able to refute it with a word."

This was more than Mr. Gryce could grant, and he said so, though with less imperturbability of manner than usual. "I am under orders to bring you into the presence of the District Attorney," he explained, "who will use his own discretion in the matter of having you detained.

Will you accompany me quietly, leaving the care of your wife to Mr.

Outhwaite, who, I am sure, will follow your wishes in the choice of such a.s.sistants as he may think necessary to employ?"

The look he received in return was eloquent in its appeal, but Mr.

Gryce knew no relenting where his duty was concerned, and, recognising this, Mr. Gillespie took a fresh resolve and boldly said:

"You have discovered that I carried a bottle of prussic acid into my father's house the day before he died. Shall I tell you where I procured it? From the hand of her who lies here. I found it tied about her neck, when, after months of fruitless search, I was led to investigate Mother Merry's lodging-house. She was asleep when I discovered it; asleep in a way I always found it impossible to break, and the shock of finding her in quiet possession of what I instinctively knew to be poison maddened me to such an extent that I tore the phial away from her and put in its place a roll of bank-notes. These were probably stolen from her, as no proof remains of her having used them; but the bottle I carried away, having impulsively thrust it into my trousers' pocket at the first intimation I received of a raid being made upon the place by the police."

The explanation was so natural, and the manner in which it was made so convincing, that the detective's look and mine crossed, and I became a.s.sured that he as well as myself was beginning to give credence to this man.

"I can give no information of the use which was made of this drug after its introduction into my father's home, nor can I designate the hand which took it from my bureau where I placed it on emptying my pockets. My connection with it ended at the moment I speak of. I did not even think of it again till I came in from the meeting where I had vainly sought distraction, and found my father lying low and heard the cry of poison raised in the house."

"This would have been a welcome explanation at the time," commented Mr. Gryce. "Your delay has compromised you."

"So be it," was the short but proud reply which came from this singular man. "When you reflect that by the time I was able to satisfy myself that this bottle was missing from the place where I had left it, any attempt to exonerate myself would have been a virtual accusation of one of my two brothers, you will realise why I hesitated to speak then, and only bring myself to speak now under the compelling force of an interest greater than family pride or affection. In my desire to share the last offices which can be paid to my wife, I possibly show myself for the second time a coward."

Did he? Mr. Gryce did not seem to think so. The forehead of this aged detective was clearing fast, and he actually looked younger by ten years than when he entered this house. Yet his exactions remained the same, and Mr. Gillespie prepared to accommodate himself to them.

Meanwhile the incessant hammering of the rain on the roof had become less noticeable, and the drip, drip, on the sill without, less wearily persistent. There seemed, too, a diminution in the turbulence of the wind; the doors and windows did not rattle so loudly, and the worst noises in the yards below had ceased. Anxious to see if the storm was abating, I raised the window and looked out. Rushing clouds with great torn edges met my eye, and, below, a chaos of towering walls surrounding an abyss in which the imagination could picture nothing save a collection of foul yards and reeking alleys. Recoiling from a prospect which the condition of my mind and heart made more than usually gloomy, I turned back from the possible tragedies hidden behind those great walls to the actual one in which I had myself been forced to take so ungracious a part. Mr. Gillespie was waiting to speak to me.

"I am allowed to give you the names of such people as can best a.s.sist you in the removal of my wife," he remarked. "Here they are, together with the address in New Jersey where I wish her ultimately carried.

Mr. Gryce will give you what further information you need----"

He placed a paper in my hand with a word of quiet thanks, to which I responded in the manner I felt would be most pleasing to Hope. Then he cast a glance at the detective.

"I have promised Mr. Gillespie the privilege of pa.s.sing a moment in this room unseen and alone," observed that official, stepping towards the door.

I bowed and withdrew, shutting Mr. Gillespie in and ourselves out.

Instantly all the noises in the house crowded clamorously to our ears.

Laughter, singing, brawling, the screaming of children and the scolding of their distracted mothers, made a sort of pandemonium, which little harmonised with the mood induced by the pathetic story we had just heard. But it was not for us to be particular at such a moment, and I was glad that I had given no sign of my inward disturbance, when Mr. Gryce suddenly remarked:

"I am getting old." (His alert eye and attentive ear turned towards the room we had just left did not seem to indicate it.) "I find that such scenes make a deeper impression upon me than formerly. I no longer dwell on the skill it takes to bring them about, but rather muse upon the mistakes and woes of poor humanity which make them possible."

I wished to ask him what he thought of Mr. Gillespie's prospects, but he gave me no encouragement to do so, and we remained silent till the door reopened and Mr. Gillespie came out.

"I am ready now," he quietly informed us. "Mr. Outhwaite, I can trust you; and if Hope--" He stopped and looked the entreaty he dared not utter.

"I will tell her the whole story just as it has fallen from your lips.

You wish me to?"

He signified his a.s.sent, but still looked wistful.

"When she has heard the true cause of the division which has taken place between you and other members of your family, she will act as her own kind heart will prompt her," I added.

He would have pressed my hand, but remembering his position as a prisoner, refrained.

"Let us go," he now said, in natural recoil from the noises which just then burst in renewed outcry from every quarter of the house.

Mr. Gryce gave a faint whistle. It was answered in the same guarded manner from below. At which the old detective turned to me with a few final directions, after which, with a promise to leave me well guarded, he made a gesture which Mr. Gillespie could not fail to understand. They began to descend. When Mr. Gillespie was half-way down, he gave one backward look at the door swaying between him and what he had loved best on earth; then he pa.s.sed on, and I was left standing on that dingy landing, alone.

There was some clamour and no little jeering in the rooms below as the detectives pa.s.sed through them with their well-dressed prisoner; but these tokens of cla.s.s animosity speedily weakened to a sullen growl, amidst which I thought I heard the rattling of departing wheels.

With a heart as heavy as the silence which now filled the house, I turned and went back into that room.

It was filled with moonlight. The candle from which the winding-sheet had long ago melted and run upon the table, had flickered out, but its fitful flame was not missed. The clouds which had seemed so impenetrable a short time before, had thinned out and parted till they flecked, rather than covered, the white disk of the moon, now revealed for the first time in days.

That storm and that clearing have never left my memory. As the last lingering shred of cloud drifted away, leaving the face of the moon quite clear, I found courage to look once more towards the bed.

There was a change there. She lay, not as before, with her features quite concealed, but with her face exposed save where the loose curls had forced their way across her cheeks and forehead. The coverlet, drawn close under her chin, hung smooth and decent to the floor, and across it lay stretched one white arm, upon the hand of which shone the wedding-ring which Leighton Gillespie had taken from her neck and placed there.

x.x.x

AN UNEXPECTED ALLY

That night was a busy one for me; nevertheless I found time to send a message to Hope, in which I begged her to read no papers till she saw me, and, if possible, to keep herself in her own room. To these hurried words I added the comforting a.s.surance that the news I had to bring her would repay her for this display of self-control, and that I would not keep her waiting any longer than was necessary. But it was fully ten o'clock before I was able to keep this promise, and I found her looking pale and worn.

"I have obeyed you," she said, with an attempt at smiling as pitiful as it was ineffectual. "What has happened? Why did you not want me to see the papers or talk with Mrs. Penrhyn?"

"Because I wished to be the first to tell you the secret of Leighton Gillespie's life. It was not what was suggested to you by the discrepancies you observed between his character and life. He is sane as any man, but--" it was hard to proceed, with those eyes of unspeakable longing looking straight into mine--"but he has had great sorrows to bear, great suspenses to endure, a deception to keep up, not altogether justifiable, perhaps, but yet one that was not without some excuse. His wife--Did you ever see his wife?"

"No," she faltered.

"--Did not perish in that disaster of five years ago, as everyone supposed; and it was she----"

"Oh!" came in a burst of sudden comprehension from Hope, as she sank down out of sight among the curtains by the window. But the next moment she was standing again, crying in low tones in which I caught a note of immeasurable relief, "I thank G.o.d! I thank G.o.d!" Then the sobs came.

I noticed that, once she had taken in this fact of his personal rect.i.tude, all fear left her as to the truth of the more serious charge against him. Even after I had explained to her how he came by the phial of poison, and how it was through his agency it came to be in his father's house, no doubt came to mar her restored confidence in this her most cherished relative. She even admitted that, now this one unexplainable point in his character had been made clear to her, she felt ready to meet any accusations which might be raised against him.

"Let them publish their suspicions!" she cried. "He can bear them and so can I; for now that he has been proven a true man, nothing else much matters. I may blush at hearing his name,--it will be years, I think, before I shall overcome that,--but it will be because I failed to see in his kindness to me the sympathetic interest of one whose heart has been made tender towards women by his wild longing after the wandering spirit whom he called his wife."

Then she asked where I had placed Mille-fleurs (a name so natural to Millicent Gillespie that no other was ever suggested by her friends); and, having been told where, said she would like to sit beside her until the time came to lay her in the garden of that little home from which all shadow was now cleared away save that of chastened sorrow.

As this was what Leighton Gillespie secretly wished, I promised to accompany her to New Jersey, and then, taking this pure-hearted girl by the hand, I asked:

"Have I performed my task well?"

Her answer was--but that is my secret. Small reason as it gave me for personal hope, I yet went from that house with my heart lightened of its heaviest load.

I did not read the papers myself that morning. I had little heart for a reporter's version of what had so thrilled me coming from Leighton's own lips. Merely satisfying myself that the latter was still in custody, I busied myself with what came up in my office, till the stroke of five released me to a free exercise of my own thoughts.

How much nearer were we to the solution of this mystery than we had been the morning following Mr. Gillespie's death? Not much; and while Hope and possibly myself felt that the band of suspicion had narrowed in its circle, and by the exclusion of Leighton, whom we could no longer look upon as guilty, left the question of culpability to be settled between the two remaining sons of the deceased stockbroker, to the world in general and to the readers of sensational journals which now flooded the city with accounts of the most sacred incidents of Leighton Gillespie's past life he was still the man through whose agency the poison had entered the Gillespie house. Nor could we fail to see that the feeling called out by these tales of his domestic infelicities and the wild search in which most of his life had been pa.s.sed had its reverse side for those people who read all stories of disinterested affection with doubt, and place no more faith in true religion than if the few bright spots made in the universal history of mankind by acts of unselfish devotion had no basis in fact, and were as imaginary as the dreams of poet or romancer.