by Grant Allen
‘Corona,’ Cyrus cried, ‘this is our man, of course. We must go back to Biskra, and telegraph to Miss Dumaresq. Will he ever get any better, Father? If possible, before he dies, I must manage to have a few words at least with him.’
The missionary shook his head slowly.
‘He may,’ he says, ‘or he may not. Who knows? Le bon Dieu disposes it. But in any case I think it would be dangerous to question him.’
Cyrus mounted his camel in silence once more. It was painful to remain in such suspense so long; but there was no help for it. They rode back solemnly with the caravan to the hotel at Biskra. There the invalid was lifted with care from his litter, and laid in comfort on a European bed — the first he had slept upon since he left Khartoum in fear and trembling a twelvemonth earlier.
Late that night, as Cyrus sat in the bare small salon, endeavouring to spell out with much difficulty a very dog-eared, paper-covered novel in a foreign tongue by a person bearing the name of Daudet, the White Brother came in with an anxious face, and laid his hand authoritatively on the young man’s shoulder.
‘Come, mon fils,’ he said; ‘the Englishman is conscious. He would like to speak with you for a few short minutes. He seems to be in a very critical state, and would perhaps wish before he dies to unburden his soul — to make some statement or entrust some commissions to the ear of a compatriot.’
Cyrus rose and followed the priest eagerly into the sick-room. He would now at least learn which of the two it was. In five minutes more poor Psyche’s fate would be sealed for ever. He would learn if it was the artist, or his soldier cousin.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
FORTUNE’S WHEEL.
At Algiers, meanwhile, things had been going from bad to worse with Psyche. Her sight grew daily dimmer and dimmer, and her general health feebler and feebler. Suspense was rapidly wearing her out. The shock, if it came, Sirena thought, would surely kill her.
And yet, at times, almost as if by magic, the poor broken girl recovered for many minutes together the use of her eyes as perfectly as ever. Of a sudden, as she stood or walked across the room, the misty blur that obscured her vision would now and again clear away with mysterious rapidity, and reveal, as in an electric flash, all the objects around with a vivid distinctness that fairly took her breath away. At such moments things came out not only as bright and clear as of old, but with a startling brilliancy of colour and outline that she had never known in her normal condition. The dormant nerves, recalled to intermittent activity for a few brief seconds by some internal stimulus, seemed to concentrate on a single perceptive effort all the hoarded energy of a week’s idleness.
It was on the day of Cyrus’s arrival at Biskra that Psyche sat in the pretty little salon at the Villa des Orangers, with Sirena’s hand entwined in her own, and her father watching her earnestly with those keen eyes of his from a seat on the central ottoman.
‘No telegram from your brother yet to-day, Sirena,’ she said with a sigh. ‘How slow the days go! A week on Saturday!’
‘The telegram will come soon, darling,’ Sirena answered, smoothing her hair and pressing her hand gently. ‘Would you like me to read to you — the end of that story?’
‘What story?’ Psyche asked, looking up vacantly with her sightless eyes in Sirena’s direction. ‘Oh yes; I remember. You were reading it this morning. No, dear; I don’t even remember what it was about. I don’t think I heard the words themselves at all; but the pleasant sound of your voice in my ears seemed to soothe me and ease me. You can’t think, Sirena, what a comfort it is, when you don’t see, to hear familiar voices humming around you; and yours is almost like a sister’s voice to me now already. But I don’t care even for reading this afternoon. Where’s papa? I thought he was here a minute ago.’ And she turned her head round by pure force of habit, as if to look for him.
‘Here I am, my child,’ Haviland Dumaresq answered in a low voice. ‘Don’t you feel me quite close? I’m sitting by your side. I won’t go away from you.’
‘Don’t,’ Psyche said simply. ‘I want you all now — as long as it lasts — everybody that loves me. I didn’t hear you, papa. I suppose I shall learn in time — if I live — to listen and hear you. One can’t accustom one’s self all at once to being blind. It’s so slow to learn. I turn my head still, and try to look, when I want to find any one. By-and-by I dare say, I shall remember to listen for them.’
‘But you’re not going to be blind for ever, Psyche,’ her father cried with the vehemence of despair. ‘Not for ever, my child. They all say so. The doctors declare you’ll get over it by-and-by. It’s purely functional, they tell me — purely functional.’
‘I don’t know,’ Psyche answered in a very slow but patient voice. ‘It doesn’t much matter. At times I see again quite distinctly — oh, so distinctly! though not by an effort of will, as they said, at all. It seems to come to me quite by accident. But the odd thing is, after each time that I see so clearly once more, I fancy it all grows darker and dimmer and blacker than ever. The minutes of clearness seem like the last flickers of a fire before it goes out. My sight is ebbing away from me piecemeal.’
At that moment there came a sharp knock at the door, and Antoine, the good-humoured Swiss waiter, entered briskly with a bundle of letters in his hand.
‘The post,’ he said, sorting them over hastily. ‘Meester Vanrenen; mademoiselle, you will keep that for him against his return. M. Waldeck — Madame Smit — Mees Vilson — Mees Dumaresq.’
The father rose and tried in his haste to secure the letter; but before he could snatch it from Antoine’s hands, Psyche, too, had risen and stepped boldly forward, with a firm tread, which showed Sirena at once, in the twinkling of an eye, that a momentary interval of vivid sight had once more been vouchsafed her. ‘Give it to me,’ she cried, holding her hand out eagerly. ‘I’ll read it myself. I can see now. I’m not afraid. Whatever it may be, I’d rather read it.’
‘Psyche,’ her father exclaimed, laying his hand on her arm with a warning gesture, ‘don’t try your eyes, if they can see for a minute. Spare them, my darling. Let me read it first, or give it to Sirena. Besides, I’m afraid of what it might contain for you. Let me look at it, there’s a good girl. I’ll see what it is for you.’
But Psyche answered ‘No’ with perfect firmness, clasping it hard in her small hand. ‘I can read now, and I’d rather read. Besides, it’s nothing. It isn’t from Biskra. It’s only from home. It has an English stamp on it.’ And she looked at the envelope with almost the unconcerned manner of the old days, when to see and to read was a matter of course with her.
The envelope bore an embossed seal on the gummed flap: ‘Burchell and Dobbs, Solicitors, Chancery Lane, London.’ So much Sirena took in at a glance, as she looked askance at the letter curiously in her friend’s hand.
Psyche broke the seal with trembling fingers: not that the letter could matter much to her now; but everything in these days seemed so fraught with latent and unspeakable terrors. She never knew what a day might bring forth in the present crisis.
As she gazed at it, the first words that met her eyes almost drove her blind again with horror and astonishment. What on earth could they mean? What on earth could they portend? For the letter was headed with lawyer-like precision, ‘In the matter of C. A. Linnell, deceased. Probate granted.’
‘In the matter of C. A. Linnell, deceased!’ Linnell, deceased! Linnell, deceased! Oh, horrible! horrible! Psyche laid down the letter for a moment, still clutched as by iron in her two white hands, but folded on her lap as though she could not even bear to look at it. Then he was dead, dead, really dead at last! The law itself had declared all hope was over. In the matter of C. A. Linnell, deceased! Probate granted! Probate granted!
How it rang in her ears! How it whirled through her brain! How it pictured itself visibly on her wearied eyeballs! She raised her eyes mechanically to the whitewashed ceiling. In letters of blood, half a yard long, she saw it written there: ‘In the matter of C. A. Linnell, dec
eased.’ It was printed as in marble on the very fabric of her failing retina.
She turned away in her horror, and looked down at the floor. On the yellow Persian rug she saw it still, a negative image in dark running script-hand. It came out deep purple. It would follow her to the grave, she firmly believed. Linnell, deceased! Linnell, deceased! No power on earth could remove it now from her burning eyeballs.
She closed her eyes, but it floated there still, a visible line of fire amid the thick darkness. ‘In the matter of C. A. Linnell, deceased. Dead! dead! dead! So he was dead indeed. The letter pursued her. It crushed her. It haunted her.
She took up the fatal missive once more and tried to read it through; but she couldn’t, she couldn’t. Her eyesight was failing her again now. Those deadly words blurred and distorted the rest of the paper. She saw the whole as a transparency through those awful lines. Her strength gave way. She closed her eyes and cried. ‘Read it to me, Sirena,’ she sobbed aloud, letting it drop; and Sirena read it.
It was a long and formal statement by Linnell’s solicitor of the disposition made of the deceased’s property. Sirena hesitated whether she should read every word, in all its naked official bluntness, with its professional absence of emotion or feeling; but each time that she paused or faltered, Psyche laid a cold white hand on her wrist once more, and murmured resolutely: ‘Go on. I can bear it. I want to hear all. It’s better I should know.’ And Sirena read on, to the uttermost syllable.
‘Our late client,’ the lawyers’ letter remarked, with legal periphrasis, ‘had made a will before leaving England (copy of which is herewith annexed), whereby he devised the bulk of his real and personal estate to his sole legatee, Psyche, daughter of Haviland Dumaresq, Esquire, of the Wren’s Nest, Petherton Episcopi, in the county of Dorset, as a testimony to the profound respect he felt for her father’s distinguished literary and philosophical ability.’ Their late client, it appeared, had gone to Khartoum, and there, in all probability, had been killed in the general massacre of European defenders after the Mahdi’s troops entered the city — absolute legal proof of death being in this case difficult or indeed impossible. The firm had waited for a full year before attempting to take out probate. That was a longer time than had been allowed to elapse with regard to the estate of any other of the Khartoum victims. The late Mr. C. A. Linnell, however, had particularly arranged with their firm that in case of serious ground for apprehension arising, a reasonable period should be permitted to intervene before definite action was taken in the matter. Under these circumstances they had waited long; but probate had now at last been granted to the executor named therein; and it was the firm’s duty, as solicitors to that executor, to announce to Miss Dumaresq that the property devised was henceforward hers, and hers only. With reference, however, to the Linnell estates at large — that was to say, the estate of the late Sir Austen Linnell, Baronet, deceased at the same time with his cousin at Khartoum — it was their duty to inform her that a serious question might hereafter arise as to whether it had ever passed at all into Mr. C. A. Linnell’s possession. If Mr. C. A. Linnell, the testator, predeceased his cousin, the late baronet, then and in that case ——
But there Psyche, brave and resolute as she was, could stand it no longer. She clasped her hands tight on her lap and burst into tears. She could never inherit her dead lover’s fortune. She had murdered him! She had murdered him! She had sent him to his death. And now she knew how much he had loved her. In the very moment of that first great disappointment he had thought of her and loved her.
As for Haviland Dumaresq, bowed and bent with grief, he sat there still, listening and wondering over this strange news, with a horrible turmoil of conflicting emotions, and forming already in his whirling brain fresh plans and day-dreams for poor heart-broken Psyche. ‘Give me the will,’ he cried, turning quickly to Sirena. The girl handed him the attested copy. Haviland Dumaresq buried himself at once in that and the letter, while Sirena turned to lay poor sobbing Psyche’s weary little head on her comforting shoulder.
The old man read and re-read for some minutes in silence. Then he looked up amazed, and cried aloud in a voice full almost of awe and reverence: ‘Then Linnell had a fortune of something like seven thousand a year, it seems, Psyche.’
‘Papa!’ Psyche exclaimed, rising up before him in ineffable horror, ‘if you say another word about that unspeakable Thing, you will kill me, you will kill me!’
Haviland Dumaresq turned back with a reeling brain to those astonishing figures. The mad mood of greed was upon him once more, the unnatural mood brought about by those long years of continuous opium-eating. What a fool he had been! and how dearly he had paid for it! To turn away a man with seven thousand a year — a man that Psyche loved, a man who loved Psyche! But all had come out well in the end, for all that. The man had done as he ought to have done — made a just will in Psyche’s favour; and Psyche, who loved him, would now inherit everything. He was not without remorse, of course, for his own part in the drama. It would have been better, no doubt — in some ways better — if only the young fellow could have married Psyche, instead of dying and leaving her his fortune. The iron had sunk deep into Psyche’s soul: she had suffered much: it would be long before those scars could heal over entirely. But they would heal in time — they would heal in time: all human emotions weaken in effect with each mental repetition. And Psyche would now own the fortune herself. She would own it herself, and marry whom she liked. For in time, without a doubt, she would be wise and marry.
Not Cyrus Vanrenen. Not that empty young man. No, indeed, he was never good enough for Psyche. In a period of trouble, and under special conditions of fear for the future, Haviland Dumaresq had been willing for a moment to admit that vague and unsatisfactory young American — vulgar, vulgar, and bad tone too, though undoubtedly good-hearted — to the high privilege of paying court to Psyche. But now that Psyche’s future was otherwise secured — now that the load was lifted from his soul — now that all was coming straight by an unwonted miracle — he had other ambitions, other schemes for his Psyche. No American for her — an heiress in her own right, and Dumaresq’s daughter. She could command whom she would — she could choose her own fate — she was rich, rich, rich — and Dumaresq’s daughter.
Her eyes, he felt confident, would get well by-and-by. This fit of disappointed love was sharp and critical, to be sure; but she had youth on her side: at her age one can outlive and outgrow anything.
Except, perhaps, a broken heart; and Haviland Dumaresq did not even yet understand that Psyche’s heart was really broken.
CHAPTER XL.
WHICH LINNELL?
For the next two days, in spite of his fears for Psyche’s health, Haviland Dumaresq lived once more in one of his wild, old-fashioned opium-dreams — without the opium. An opium-dream actually come true at last! Psyche rich! Psyche provided for! Psyche her own mistress in life, after all! Psyche free to choose whom she would; to bestow herself with regal imperiousness where she willed; to carve out her own future, no man compelling her. His waking vision had worked itself out in a most unexpected and inconceivable way! Psyche was at last where he had always wished her to be, and never truly hoped or expected to see her.
It was grand! It was glorious! It was sublime! It was magnificent! What was Linnell’s life to Psyche’s happiness?
One nightmare alone intervened to mar his triumph. Not Psyche’s blindness. That would surely come all right now in the long-run. The mistress of so great a fortune as that had nothing to do but open her eyes and see straightway. His nightmare was the fear lest Sir Austen, if indeed it were really he who lay ill at Biskra, might manage to get the will set aside, and to claim his own share in the Linnell succession. That nightmare weighed upon his spirits not a little. He occupied himself for most of the intervening time, before Cyrus returned, with writing an interminable letter to Burchell and Dobbs about this alarming and distressful contingency.
There was another contingency, too, on the cards
, of course: the contingency that the man who lay ill at Biskra might prove to be, not Sir Austen at all, but his cousin the painter. That chance, however, Haviland Dumaresq could hardly fear, and dared hardly hope for. Did not even the man’s own lawyers give him up for lost? Had not probate been granted for the will by officialdom itself? Was it likely anything would ever again be heard of him?
Yet if, by any chance, it should really turn out to be Charles Linnell, Haviland Dumaresq felt sure in his own mind that all would be for the best, and Psyche in the end would be no loser by it. For if Linnell left her his heiress when rejected and refused, why, surely when he turned up again, safe and sound at last, he could hardly do anything else than marry her. The load of blood-guiltiness would then be lifted from his own soul, and from Psyche’s. Poor innocent Psyche! How much and how vainly had he made her suffer!
So he watched and waited, watched and waited, watched and waited for news from Biskra.
Away over there in the desert, meanwhile, Cyrus Vanrenen, the slave of duty, sat in the best bedroom of the bare little hotel, by the bedside of the unknown sick man from the South, who seemed at intervals delirious and dying. Time after time, reason would apparently return to the patient in a sudden flicker; but time after time, as fast as it flared up, the flicker died out again before Cyrus could make out exactly what it was the stranger so eagerly wished to tell him. For the wanderer’s mind seemed sadly terrified and ill at ease: sometimes, Cyrus fancied, he gave one the impression of being haunted by something very like remorse — or might it be only pure panic terror?
All that Cyrus could gather from his rambling talk was merely this: that somebody had been murdered. He recurred over and over again in his delirium to some mangled corpse, which he seemed to behold in his mind’s eye, lying unburied on the sand, away beyond Ouargla.
