CHAPTER XIX
The summer began to wane, and as August drew to a close the world of London at large forgot the murder of Walter Cundall.
It forgot it because it had so many other things to think about, because it had its garden parties and fêtes, and Henley and Goodwood; and because, after that, the exodus set in, and the Continent, Scotland, and Cowes, as well as all the other seaside resorts, claimed its attention. It is true one incident had come to light which had given a fillip to the dying curiosity of the world and society, but even that had scarcely tended to rouse fresh interest in the crime. This incident was the discovery that Lord Penlyn was the heir to all of the dead man's vast wealth. The news had come out gradually through different channels, and it had set people talking; but even then-at this advanced state of the London season-it had scarcely aroused more than a passing flutter of excitement. And society explained even this fact to its own satisfaction-perhaps because it had, by now, found so many other things of more immediate, and of fresher, interest. Cundall had been, it said, a man of superbly generous impulses, one who seemed to delight in doing acts of munificence that other men would never dream of; what more natural a thing for him to do than to leave his great wealth to the very man who had won the woman he had sought for his wife? Was it not at once a splendid piece of magnanimity, a glorious example of how one might heap coals of fire on those who thwarted us-was it not a truly noble way of retaliating upon the woman he loved, but who had no love for him? She would, through his bequest to her husband that was to be, become enormously rich, but she could never enjoy the vastness of those riches without remembering whence they came; every incident in her life would serve to remind her of him.
So, instead of seeing any cause for suspicion in the will of Walter Cundall, the world only saw in it a magnificently generous action, a splendidly noble retaliation. For it never took the trouble to learn the date of the will, but supposed that it had been made on the day after he had discovered that Ida Raughton had promised herself to another.
To those more directly interested in the murder and in the discovery of the assassin, the passing summer seemed to bring but little promise of success. Lord Penlyn knew that Señor Guffanta had left London, but beyond that he did not know what had become of him, nor whether it was the business of Don Rodriguez, or pleasure, or the search for the murderer that had taken him away. Stuart, who still believed him innocent of the slightest participation or knowledge of the crime, yet did not feel inclined to give him the least information as to the Señor's movements, fearing that, if Smerdon was the man-of which, as yet, he by no means felt positive-he might learn that he was being pursued; and so contented himself with saying as little as possible. As to Dobson, he had now come to the conclusion that the "Signor," as he always called him, was an arrant humbug, and really knew no more about the murder than he did himself. And as the detective had already received a handsome sum of money from Lord Penlyn for his services, such as they were, and as he had at the present moment what he called "one or two other good little jobs on," he gradually devoted himself to these matters, and the murder of Mr. Cundall ceased to entirely occupy his efforts. Though, as he was a man who did his duty to the best of his ability, he still kept one of his subordinates looking about and making inquiries in various places where he thought information might be obtained. But the information, as he confessed, was very long in coming.
From Señor Guffanta Stuart had heard more than once during his absence, which had now extended to three weeks, but the letters he received contained nothing but accounts of his failure to come upon the suspected man. In Paris, the Señor wrote, he had been absolutely unable to find any person of the name of Smerdon, though he had tried everything in his power to do so. He had pored daily over Galignani and other papers that contained the lists of strangers who arrived in the French capital, he had personally inspected the visitors' books in every hotel likely to be patronised by English people of good social position; but all to no effect. Then, determined, if his man was there, not to miss him, he had applied to the particular bureau of police at the Préfecture, where are kept, according to French law, the lists furnished weekly by every hotel-keeper and lodging-house keeper of their guests and tenants, both old and new; and these, being shown him, he had carefully searched, and still he had failed. He was induced to think, he wrote Stuart, that Smerdon, either alone or with his family (if he really had them with him) must have changed his route, or his destination, at the last moment. Or, perhaps they had travelled by Brussels and the Rhine to Switzerland, or passed through Paris from one station to the other without stopping, or they might have gone by the way of Rheims and Delle from Calais to Basle. Could Mr. Stuart, he asked, obtain any further information from Lord Penlyn as to the whereabouts of the man whose face he wished to see, for if he could not, he did not know where to look for him.
In answer to this, Stuart wrote back that no letter had come from Smerdon since the day he left Occleve House, the day on which the Señor had seen the murderer in the cab, but that he had little doubt that the former was now in Switzerland. "Why," he wrote, "since you are determined to make yourself sure about Smerdon's identity with the man you saw kill our friend, do you not go on into Switzerland? There you could have but little difficulty in finding him, for printed lists of the visitors to almost every resort, small or large, are published daily or weekly. Any bookseller would procure you the Fremdenblatts and Listes des Étrangers, and if you could only find his name at one spot, you would be sure to catch him up at last. When a traveller leaves an hotel in Switzerland, the train, or boat, or diligence is a sure indication of what district he is changing to, and any intelligent porter or servant will in all probability be able to remember any person you can describe fairly accurately."
To this a letter came back from Guffanta, saying that he acknowledged the reason of Mr. Stuart's remarks, and that he would waste no more time in Paris but would at once set out for Switzerland. "Only," he wrote, in his usual grave and studied style, "you must pardon me for what I am now going to say, and for what I am going to ask. It is for money. I have exhausted my store, which was not great when I arrived in England, and which has only been increased by a small draft on Don Rodriguez's London banker. I have enough to take me to Switzerland I find, but not enough to carry me into the heart of the country. Will you please send me some to the Poste Restante, at Basle? I will repay it some day, and be sure that I shall eventually gain the object we both desire in our hearts."
For answer to this, Stuart put a fifty-pound note in a registered letter, and forwarded it to the address Guffanta had given him. Then, when it had been acknowledged by the latter, he heard no more from him for some time.
During this period Lord Penlyn had been absent from town. He had received from Sir Paul Raughton, at the time when the Señor was about to leave London, a letter telling him that Ida was much better, and that he thought that Penlyn might see her if he went down to Belmont. Sir Paul had faithfully delivered the message given him, and to Ida this, he said, had been the best medicine. At first she would scarcely believe it possible that her lover would ever again see her or speak of love to her; but, when she learnt that not only was he anxious to do this, but that it was he himself whom he considered in the wrong, and that, instead of extending his pardon to her, he was anxious to sue for hers, the colour came back to her cheek and the smile to her eyes and lips.
"Oh, papa!" she said, as she sat up one day in her boudoir and nestled close to him, "oh, papa, how could I ever think so ill of him, of him who is everything that is good and noble? How wicked I have been! How wicked and unjust!"
"Of course!" Sir Paul exclaimed, "that is just the kind of thing a woman always does say. She quarrels with the man she loves, and then, just because he wants to make up the quarrel as much as she does, she thinks she has been in the wrong. And after all, mind you, Ida, although I don't believe that Penlyn had any more to do with the murder than I had-"
"No, papa!" speaking firmly.
"Still he does not come out of the affair with flying colours. He never moved hand nor foot to find out who really had done it, and he kept the secret of poor Cundall being his brother from me. He oughtn't to have done that!"
Sir Paul did feel himself aggrieved at this. He thought that, as Ida's father, he should have been told everything bearing upon the connection between the two men, and he considered that there had been some intention to deceive him on the part of Penlyn. In his joy at the prospect of his daughter's renewed happiness he was very willing to forgive Penlyn, but still he could not help mentioning his errors, as he considered them.
"Remember the letter from his brother, papa! It contained his solemn injunctions-rendered doubly solemn by the awful fate that overtook him on the very night he wrote them! How could he confide the secret to any one after that?"
Her father made no answer to this question, not knowing what to say. After all, he acknowledged that had he been made the custodian of such a secret, had he had such solemn injunctions laid on him as Cundall had laid on his brother, he would have tried to keep them equally well. Honestly, he could not tell himself that Penlyn should have broken the solemn command imposed upon him; the command issued by a man who, as he gave it, was standing at the gate of the grave.
So, when Penlyn paid his next visit to Belmont, there was a very different meeting between him and its inmates from the meetings that had gone before. Sir Paul took him by the hand, and told him that he was sincerely happy in knowing that once more he and Ida were thoroughly united, and then he went into her. Not a moment elapsed before she was folded to his heart and he had kissed her again and again, not a moment before she was beseeching him to forgive her for the injurious thoughts and suspicions she had let come into her mind.
"Hush, Ida hush, my darling!" he said, as he tried to soothe her; "it is not you who should ask for forgiveness, but I. Not because I kept my brother's secret from you, but because of the brutal way in which I cast you off, simply for your doubting me for one moment. Oh, Ida, my own, say that you forgive me."
"I have nothing to forgive," she said; "the fault was mine. I should never have doubted you."
And so once more they were united, united never more to part. And since everything was now known to Ida, her future husband was able to talk freely to her, to tell her other things that had transpired of late, and especially of, what seemed to him, the strange behaviour of the Señor, and the accusation he had brought against him of shielding the murderer in his house.
"Oh, Gervase!" Ida exclaimed, "why is it that every one should be so unjust to you? Was it not enough that I should have suspected you-though only for a moment in my grief and delirium-without this man doing so in another manner. It is monstrous, monstrous!"
"Your suspicions," he answered, "were natural enough. You had had your mind disturbed by that strange dream, and, when you heard of my relationship to Cundall, it was natural that your thoughts should take the turn they did. But I cannot understand Guffanta, nor what he means."
He had recognised many times during the estrangement between him and Ida that her temporary suspicion of him was natural enough, and that-being no heroine of romance, but only a straightforward English girl, with a strange delusion as to having seen the assassin in her dream-it was not strange she should have doubted him; but for Guffanta's accusation he could find no reason. Over and over again he had asked himself whom it could be that he suspected? and again and again he had failed to find an answer. On that fatal night there had been no one sleeping in Occleve House but the servants, no one who could have gained admission to it; yet the Señor had charged him with sheltering the man who had done the deed, both on that night and afterwards.
"Can he not be made to speak out openly?" Ida asked. "Can he not be made to say who the person was whose face he saw? Why do you not force him to do so?"
"I have seen nothing of him since the night he accused me of protecting the murderer, and he has left the hotel he was staying at."
"Where is he gone?" Ida asked.
"No one seems to know, though Stuart says he fancies he is still looking for the murderer. I pray God he may find him."
"And I too!" Ida said.
After this meeting, Penlyn acceded to the request of Sir Paul and his future wife that he should stay at Belmont for some time, and he took up his abode there with them. His valet came down from town, bringing with him all things necessary for a stay in the country, and then Ida passed happier days in the society of her lover than she had ever yet enjoyed. They spent their mornings together sitting under the firs upon the lawn, they drove together-for she was still too weak to ride in the afternoons; and in the evenings Sir Paul would join them. Their marriage had been postponed for two months in consequence of Ida's ill health, but they knew that by the end of October they would be happy, and so they bore the delay without repining. One thing alone chastened their happiness-the memory of the dead man, and the knowledge that his murderer had not been brought to justice.
"I swore upon his grave to avenge him," Penlyn said, "and I have done nothing, can do nothing. If any one ever avenges him it will be Señor Guffanta, and I sometimes doubt if he will be able to do so. It seems a poor termination to the vows I took."
"Perhaps it is but a natural one," Ida answered. "It is only in romances, and in some few cases of real life, that a murder planned as this one must have been is punished. Yet, so long as we live, we will pray that some day his wicked assassin may be discovered."
"Do you still think," Penlyn asked, "that the figure which you saw in your dream was known to you in actual life? Do you think that if the murderer is ever found you will remember that you have known him?"
"It was a dream," she answered, "only a dream! Yet it made a strange impression on me. You know that I also said that, if once I could remember to what man in actual life that figure bore a resemblance, I would have his every action of the past and present closely scrutinised; yet I, too, can do nothing. Even though I could identify some living person with that figure, what could I, a woman, do?"
"Nothing, darling," her lover answered her, "we can neither of us do anything. If Guffanta cannot find him, we must be content to leave his punishment to heaven."
So, gradually, they came to think that never in this world would Walter Cundall's death be avenged, and gradually their thoughts turned to other things, to the happy life that seemed before them, and to the way in which that life should be spent. Under the fir trees they would sit and plan how the vast fortune that the dead man had left should best be laid out, how an almshouse bearing his name should be erected at Occleve Chase, and how a large charity, also in his name, should be endowed in London. And even then, they knew that but a drop of his wealth would be spent; it would necessitate unceasing thought upon their part to gradually get it all distributed in a manner that should do good to others.
"He was the essence of charity and generosity," Penlyn said, "it shall be by a charitable and generous disposal of his wealth that we will honour his memory."
They were seated on their usual bench one evening, still making their plans, when they saw one of Sir Paul's footmen coming towards them and bringing the usual batch of papers and letters. It was the time at which the post generally came in, and they had made a habit of having their correspondence brought to them there, and of passing the half-hour before dinner in reading their letters. The man handed several to Lord Penlyn and one to Ida, and they began to peruse them. Those to Penlyn were ordinary ones and did not take long in the reading, and he was about to turn round and ask Ida if hers were of any importance, when he was startled by a sound from her lips, – a sound that was half a gasp and half a moan. As he looked at her, he saw that she had sunk back against the wooden rail of the garden seat, and that she was deathly pale. The letter she had received, and the envelope bearing the green stamp of Switzerland, had fallen at her feet.
"Ida! my dearest! what is it?" he exclaimed, as he bent towards her and placed his arm round her. "Ida! have you had bad news, have you-?"
"The dream," she moaned, "the dream! Oh, God!"
"What dream?" he said, while a sweat of horror, of undefined, unknown horror broke out upon his forehead. "What dream?"
"The letter! Read the letter!" she answered, while in her eyes was a look he had once seen before-the far-away look that had been there when he first spoke to her of his brother's murder.
He stooped and picked up the letter-picked it up and read it hurriedly; and then he, too, let it fall again and leaned back against the seat.
"Philip Smerdon my brother's murderer!" he exclaimed. "Philip Smerdon, my friend, an assassin! The self-accused, the self-avowed murderer of Walter Cundall! Ida," he said, turning to her, "is his the figure in your dream?"
"Yes," she wailed. "Yes! I recognise it now."
CHAPTER XX
The Schwarzweiss Pass, leading from the south-east of Switzerland to Italy, is one well known to mountaineers, because of the rapid manner in which they can cross from one country to another, and also because of the magnificent views that it presents to the traveller. Moreover, it offers to them a choice either of making a passage over the snow-clad mountains that rise above it, and across the great Schwarzweiss glacier, or of keeping to the path that, while rising to the height at some places of 10,000 feet, is, except at the summit, perfectly passable in good weather. It is true that he who, even while on the path, should turn giddy, or walk carelessly, would risk his life, for though above him only are the vast white "horns" and "Piz," below him there are still the ravines through which run the boiling torrents known respectively as the "Schwarz" and the "Weiss" rivers-rivers that carry with them huge boulder stones and pine-trees wrenched from their roots; dry slopes that fall hundreds of feet down into the valley below; and also the Klein (or little) Schwarzweiss glacier, a name so given it, not because of its smallness-for it is two miles long, and in one place, half-a-mile across-but to distinguish it from the Gross-Schwarzweiss glacier that hangs above on the other side of the pass.
It is a lonely and grim road, a road in which no bird is heard or seen from the time that the village of St. Christoph is left behind on the Swiss side until the village of Santa Madre is reached on the Italian side; a road that winds at first, and at last, through fir-woods and pine-trees, but that in the middle is nothing but a path, cut in some parts and blasted in others, along the granite sides of the rocks, and hanging in many places above the valley far below. Patches of snow and pieces of rock that have fallen from above, alone relieve the view on the side of the path; on the opposite side of the ravine is nothing but a huge wall of granite that holds no snow, so slippery is it; but above which hangs, white and gray, like the face of a corpse, the glacier from which the pass derives its name.
A lonely and grim road even in the daytime, when a few rays of sunshine manage to penetrate it at midday, when occasionally a party of tourists may be met with, and when sometimes the voice of a goatherd calling his flocks rises from the valley below; but lonelier and more grim, and more black and impenetrable at night, and rarely or ever then trod by human foot. For he who should attempt the passage of the Schwarzweiss Pass at night, unless there were a brilliant moon to light him through its most dangerous parts, would take his life in his own hands.
Yet, on an August night of the year in which this tale is told, and when there was a moon that, being near its full, consequently rose late and shone till nearly daylight, a man was making his way across this pass to Italy.
Midnight was close at hand as, with weary steps, he descended a rough-hewn path in the rock-a path which, for safety, had a rude handrail of iron attached to the side from which it was cut-and reached a small plateau, the size, perhaps, of an ordinary room, and from which again the path went on. From this plateau shelved down, for a hundred feet or more, an almost perpendicular moraine, or glacier bed, and at the foot of this lay the Klein-Schwarzweiss, with its crevasses glistening in the moonlight; for the moon had topped even the great mountains above by now, and lighted up the pass. It was evidently considered a dangerous part of the route, since between the edge of the plateau and the side of the moraine a wooden railing had been erected, consisting of two short upright posts and a long cross one. As the man reached this plateau, holding to the rail with one hand, while with the other he used his alpenstock as a walking-stick, he perceived a stone-it may have been placed there for the purpose-large enough for a seat; and taking off his knapsack wearily, he sat down upon it.
"Time presses," he muttered to himself, "yet I must rest. Otherwise I shall not be at Santa Madre by eight o'clock to-morrow. I can go no farther without a rest."
There is an indefinite feeling of awfulness in being alone at night amongst the mountains, in knowing and feeling that for miles around there is no other creature in these vast, cold solitudes but ourselves: and this man had that feeling now.
"How still-how awful this pass is!" he said to himself, "with no sound but the creaking of that glacier below-with no human being here but me. Yet, I should be glad I am alone."
At this moment a few stones in the moraine slipped and fell into the glacier, and the man started at the distinct sound they made in that wilderness of silence. Then, as he sat there gazing up at the moon and the snow above him, he continued his meditations.
"It is best," he thought, "that the poor old mother did not know when I said 'good-bye' to her this afternoon, and she bade me come back soon, that I should never come back, that I had a farther destination than Italy before me; best that my father did not know that we should never meet again. Never! never! Ah, God! it is a long word."
"Yet it must be done," he went on. "If I want to drag this miserable life out, I must do it elsewhere than in England. That sleuth-hound will surely find me there; it is possible that he will even track me to the antipodes. Yet, if I were sure that he is lying about-having seen my face before, I would go back and brave him. Where did he ever see it? – where? – where? To my knowledge I have never seen him."
He rose and walked to the railing above the moraine, and looked down at the glacier, and listened to the cracking made by the seracs. "I might make an end of it now," he thought. "If I threw myself down there, it would be looked upon as an ordinary Alpine accident. But, no! that is the coward's resource. I have blasted my life for ever by one foul deed; let me endure it as a reparation for my crime. But what is my future to be? Am I to live a miserable existence for years in some distant country, frightened at every strange face, dreading to read every newspaper that reaches me for fear that I shall see myself denounced in it, and never knowing a moment's peace or tranquillity? Ah, Gervase! I wonder what you would say if you knew that, for your sake, I have sacrificed every hope of happiness in this world and all my chances of salvation in the next." He went back to the big stone after uttering these thoughts and sat down wearily upon it. "If I could know that that Spaniard was baffled at last and had lost all track of me, I could make my arrangements more calmly for leaving Europe, might even look forward to returning to England some day, and spending my life there while expiating my crime. But, while I know nothing, I must go on and on till at last I reach some place where I may feel safe."
He looked at his watch as he spoke to himself, and saw that the night was passing. "Another five minutes' rest," he said, "and I will start again across the pass."
As he sat there, taking those last five minutes of rest, it seemed to him that there was some other slight sound breaking the stillness of the night, something else besides the occasional cracking noise made by the glacier below and the subdued roar of the torrents in the valley. A light, regular sound, that nowhere else but in a solitude like this would, perhaps, be heard, but that here was perfectly distinct. It came nearer and nearer, and once, as it approached, some small stones were dislodged and rattled down from above, and fell with a plunge on to the glacier below: and then, as it came closer, he knew that it was made by the footsteps of a man. And, looking up, he saw a human figure descending the path to the plateau by which he had come, and standing out clearly defined against the moonlight.
"It is some guide going home," he said to himself, "or starting out upon an early ascent. How firmly he descends the path."
The man advanced, and he watched him curiously, noticing the easy way in which he came down the rough-hewn steps, scarcely touching the handrail or using the heavy-pointed stick he carried in place of the usual alpenstock. And he noticed that, besides his knapsack, he carried the heavy coil of rope that guides use in their ascents.
At last the new comer reached the plateau, and, as he took the last two or three steps that led on to it, he saw that there was another man upon it, and stopped. Stopped to gaze for one moment at the previous occupant, and then to advance towards him and to stand towering above him as he sat upon the boulder-stone.
"You are Philip Smerdon," he said in a voice that sounded deep and hollow in the other's ear.
Utterly astonished, and with another feeling that was not all astonishment, Smerdon rose and stood before him and said:
"I do not know of what importance my name can be to you."
"Your name is of no importance, but you are of the greatest to me. When I tell you my name you will understand why. It is Miguel Guffanta."
"Guffanta!" Smerdon exclaimed, "Guffanta!"
"Yes! the friend of Walter Cundall."
"What do you want with me?" the other asked, but as he asked he knew the answer that would come from the man before him.
"But one thing now, though ten minutes ago I wanted more. I wanted to see, then, if the man whom I sought for in London and at Occleve Chase, whom I have followed from place to place till I have found him here, was the same man I saw stab my friend to death in-"
"You saw it?"
"Yes, I saw it. And you are the man who did it!"
"It is false!"
"It is true! Do you dare to tell me I lie, you, a- Bah! Why should I cross words with a murderer-a thief!"
"I am no thief!" Smerdon said, his anger rising at this opprobrious term, even as he felt his guilt proclaimed.
"You are! You stole his watch and money because you thought to make his murder appear a common one. And so it was! You slew him because you feared he would dispossess your master of what he unrighteously held, because you thought that you would lose your place."
"Again I say it is false! I had no thought of self! I killed him-yes, I! – because I loved my friend, my master as you term him, because he threatened to come between him and the woman he loved. Had I known of Walter Cundall's noble nature, as I knew of it afterwards, no power on earth could have induced me to do such a deed."
"It is infamy for such as you to speak of his nobility-but enough! Are you armed to-night, as you were on that night?"
"I have no arms about me. Why do you ask?"
"To tell you that no arms can avail you now. You must come with me."
"To where?"
"To the village prison at St. Christoph. There I will leave you until you can be taken to England."
For the first time since he had seen the avenger of Walter Cundall standing before him, Smerdon smiled bitterly.
"Señor Guffanta," he said, "you are very big and strong-it may well be stronger than I am. But you overrate your strength strangely if you think that any power you possess can make me go with you. I am a murderer-God help and pardon me! It is probable I shall be a double one before this night is over."
"You threaten me-you! You defy me!" Guffanta exclaimed, while his dark eyes gleamed ominously.
"Yes, I defy you! If my sin is to be punished, it shall not be by you, at least. Here, in this lonely place where for miles no other human creature is near, I defy you to do your worst. We are man to man; do you think I fear you?"
In a moment Guffanta had sprung at him, had seized him by the throat, and with the other arm had encircled his body.
"So be it," he hissed in Smerdon's ear, "it suits me better than a prolonged punishment of your crime would do."
For a moment they struggled locked together, and in that moment Smerdon knew that he was doomed; that he was about to expiate his crime. The long, sinewy hand of the Spaniard that was round his throat was choking him; his own blows fell upon the other's body harmlessly. And he was being dragged towards the edge of the moraine, already his back was against the wooden railing that alone stood between the plateau and destruction. He could, even at this moment, hear it creaking with his weight; it would break in another instant!