The Mysterious Mr. Miller

“She’ll, of course, at once deny that they are hers,” I said. “But in handing them to her you must contrive to slip this little bit of folded paper into her hand – so,” and I gave him a lesson in pressing the small note, folded until it was only the size of a sixpence, into her palm.

He quickly entered into the spirit of the adventure, and three-quarters of an hour later re-entered the low-ceilinged little sitting-room announcing triumphantly that he had been successful.

“At first, sir, their man said I could not see the lady, as she was at dinner, but on pressing him that I wished to see her particularly, he went an’ told her,” he explained. “My request seemed to create quite a hubbub among ’em, for as I stood in the ’all, I heard the conversation suddenly break off, and a chap with a clean-shaven face come to the door an’ had a good straight look at me. Seein’, however, that I was only a chauffeur, he went back, and a minute later the young lady herself appeared alone. I told ’er the story, slipped the bit o’ paper into her hand, and gave her the gloves. The instant she felt the paper in her palm she started and looked at me, surprised like. Then, carryin’ the gloves into the drawing-room, as if to examine them, she glanced at what you’d written, and when she returned a few seconds afterwards, she whispered: ‘Tell the gentleman all right’. Then, sayin’ aloud that the gloves wasn’t hers, she thanked me, an’ dismissed me.”

I congratulated him on his success. So far, so good. I had to wait in patience until six o’clock on the following morning.

That night I slept but little, but when daylight came a certain hope and gladness came with it. At half-past five I went out, and strolled along to the cross-roads I had noticed between the “Glen” and the village. The roads traversing the highway were merely green lanes leading to adjoining fields, and with high hedges on either side were admirably adapted for a secret meeting.

Not without fear of being noticed by some yokel on his way to work, I idled there until the clock from the old ivy-clad church tower below struck the hour. For the first ten minutes I saw no sign of her, and every moment increased my peril of being noticed and my presence commented upon. The villagers were certainly not used to seeing a gentleman wait at the cross-roads at six o’clock in the morning.

Presently, however, my heart leaped with sudden joy, for I saw her in a fresh pale blue cotton dress hurrying towards me, and in order not to be seen meeting her in the main road I withdrew into the lane.

Five minutes later we were standing side by side, in a spot where we could not be observed, she panting and breathless, and I full of eager questions as to the reason of her flight.

“So you actually followed me all the way here, Godfrey!” she exclaimed anxiously, turning those dear eyes upon me, those eyes the expression of which was always as wondering and innocent as a child’s.

“Because I am determined that you shall not again escape me, Ella,” was my answer, grasping her hand and raising it with reverence to my lips.

Are we ever truly read, I wonder, save by the one that loves us best? Love is blind, the phrase runs; yet, I would rather say Love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon.

What was it I felt? I hardly know. I acted without knowing – only stung into a bitter, burning, all-corroding jealousy that drove me like a whip of scorpions.

“You should never have done this,” she answered calmly, though her voice trembled just a little. “Have I not already told you that – that our meeting was unfortunate, and that we must again part?”

“But why?” I demanded fiercely.

“It is imperative,” she faltered. “I can never be yours.”

“But you shall – Ella!” I cried fiercely, “in this past twenty-four hours I have discovered a great deal. Unknown to me there was a man staying with Miller at Studland. The real object of your visit there was to speak with him in secret. You did so and left by motor car, while he travelled here by train. Your father has no idea that he and Miller are friends nor has he any idea of his true identity. He believes him to be Gordon-Wright, yet I know him under the name of Lieutenant Harold Shacklock.”

“You – you know him?” she gasped.

“Yes. After you left the Manor I called, and Lucie introduced me – as though I needed any introduction to him,” I laughed bitterly.

“Then where have you met him before?” she asked, deeply anxious.

“Abroad. I know who and what he is, Ella,” I said determinedly. “And you shall never be his wife.”

“But I must,” she declared. “It is all arranged. I cannot break my engagement. I dare not.”

“Then I shall simply go to the police and tell them what I know. I will never allow you to wreck your happiness because this fellow holds some mysterious power over you. You are mine, Ella – remember – mine!”

“I know! I know!” she gasped, her face pale, her eyes terrified. “But you must not say a word. I beg you, if you really love me, not to say a word.”

“Why not?”

“Because he would revenge himself upon me. I know certain of his secrets – secrets that I discovered by the merest chance. Any information given to the police he would suspect of coming from me. Therefore, don’t you see that any such attempt to free me will only bring upon me disaster – even death!”

“You fear he may take your life!” I gasped. “Ah! I see! He might even kill you, in order to close your lips!”

And I recollected the fellow’s ominous words I had overheard on the previous night, when he had told her that upon her secrecy his very life depended.

He was as ingenious and unscrupulous a criminal as there was in the whole length and breadth of the kingdom.

I saw in what deadly peril was my sweet well-beloved. She was in fear of him. Perhaps he, on his part, held some secret of hers. From her attitude I suspected this. If so, then any word of mine to the police would bring to her only ruin and disgrace!

Chapter Twenty Three

Children of Circumstance

Was any man more pitiful, more foolish, more pathetically lonely, more grotesquely fooled by Fate than I?

Was all the world a lie?

Upon the face of my love was a trouble that for once clouded its wondrous beauty. I tried to touch her hair, but she avoided me by a gesture that made me shrink a little.

The years, the tranquil sorrow of my late life dropped from me; I became again only the fierce, fearless, thoughtless lover; the man who had walked with her and adored her beside that summer sea so long ago.

A madness of determination came to me. At all hazards she should be mine. Shacklock was a liar and a schemer, a thief and an adventurer. I would bear witness against him, even at risk of the vendetta which would inevitably fall upon me.

She saw my changed face, and for the first time clung to me.

“Godfrey!” she whispered hoarsely, “have pity upon me, and remain silent. Any word from you must reflect upon myself.”

“I will not allow you to make this self-sacrifice,” I cried fiercely. “Remember Blumenthal.”

“It was for my father’s sake,” she replied. “To save him.”

“And now?”

She did not answer for several moments. Then in a low voice broken by emotion she said: —

“To save myself.”

“But it is madness!” I cried. “In what manner can you be in the power of such a man? You surely know what he is?”

“Alas! I do – too well. If he had one grain of sympathy or feeling he would surely release me.”

“And your father approves of this shameful engagement?”

“He does, because he is ignorant of the truth.”

“Then I will tell him,” I said. “You shall never fall into that man’s hands. I love you, Ella – I love you with all the strength of my being – with all my soul. If you are beneath the thrall of this adventurer, it is my duty to extricate you.”

“Ah! you can’t – you can’t,” she cried. “If you only could, how gladly would I welcome freedom – freedom to love you, Godfrey!” and she clung to me tremblingly. “But it is all a vague dream of the unattainable,” she went on. “My whole life is on fire with shame, and my whole soul is sick with falsehood. Between your life and mine, Godfrey, there is a deep gulf fixed. I lied to you long ago – lied to save my dear father from ruin, and you have forgiven. And now – Oh! God! I shudder as I think – my life will be alone, all alone always.”

I held her trembling hand in silence, and saw the tears streaming down her white cheeks. I could utter no word. What she had said thrust home to me the bitter truth that she must bow to that man’s will, even though I stood firm and valiant as her champion. My defiance would only mean her ruin.

I had met my love again only to lose her in that unfathomable sea of plot and mystery.

All the dark past, those years of yearning and black bitterness, came back to me. I had thought her dead, and lived with her sweet tender remembrance ever with me. Yet in future I should know that she lived, the wife of an adventurer, suffering a good woman’s martyrdom.

My heart grew sick with dread and longing. Again I would mourn the dead indeed; dead days, dead love. It pressed upon my life like lead. What beauty now would the daybreak smile on me? What fragrance would the hillside bear for me as I roamed again the face of Europe?

I should see the sun for ever through my unshed tears. Around me on the summer earth of Italy or the wintry gloom of the Russian steppe there would be for ever silence. My love had passed beyond me.

Unconsciously we moved forward, I still holding her hand and looking into the tearful eyes of her whom I had believed dead. Was it not the perversity of life that snatched her again from me, even though we had met to find that we still loved one another? Yes, it was decreed that I should ever be a cosmopolitan, a wanderer, a mere wayfarer on the great highways of Europe, always filled with longing regrets of the might-have-been.

I remembered too well those gay Continental cities wherein I had spent the most recent years of my weary life; cities where feasts and flowers reign, where the golden louis jingle upon the green cloth, where the passionate dark faces of the women glow, where voices pour forth torrents of joyous words, where holiday dresses gleam gaily against the shadows; cities of frolic and brilliancy, of laughter and music, where vice runs riot hand in hand with wealth, and where God is, alas! forgotten. Ah! how nauseous was it all to me. I had lived that life, I had rubbed shoulders with those reckless multitudes, I had laughed amid that sorry masquerade, yet I had shut my eyes to shut out from me the frolic and brilliancy around, and stumbled on, sad, thoughtful, and yet purposeless.

The gladness made me colder and wearier as I went. The light and laughter would have driven me homeward in desolation, had I a home to shelter me.

But, alas! I was only a wanderer – and alone.

“Tell me, darling,” I whispered to my love, my heart bursting, “is there absolutely no hope? Can you never free yourself from this man?”

“Never,” was her despairing response.

And in that one single word was my future written upon my heart.

I spoke to her again. What I uttered I hardly knew. A flood of fierce, passionate words arose to my lips, and then bending I kissed her – kissed her with that same fierce passion of long ago, when we were both younger, and when we had wandered hand in hand beside the lapping waves at sunset.

She did not draw back, but, on the contrary, she kissed me fondly in return. Her thin white hand stroked my brow tenderly, as though she touched a child.

No words left her lips, but in her soft dear eyes I saw the truth – that truth that held me to her with a band that was indivisible, a bond that, though our lives lay apart, would still exist as strong as it had ever been.

“Ella,” I whispered at last, holding her slight, trembling form in my embrace, and kissing her again upon the lips, “will you not tell me the reason you dare not allow me to denounce this fellow? Is it not just that I should know?”

She shook her head sadly, and, sighing deeply, answered: —

“I cannot tell you.”

“You mean that you refuse?”

“I refuse because I am not permitted, and further, I – ”

“You what?”

“I should be revealing to you his secret.”

“And what of that?”

“If you knew everything, you would certainly go to the police and tell them the truth. They would arrest him, and I – I should die.”

“Die? What do you mean?” I asked quickly.

“I could not live to face the exposure and the shame. He would seek to revenge himself by making counter-charges against me – a terrible allegation – but – but before he could do so they would find me dead.”

“And I?”

“Ah! you, dear one! Yes, I know all that you must suffer. Your heart is torn like my own. You love just as fondly as I do, and you have mourned just as bitterly. To you, the parting is as hard as to myself. My life had been one of darkness and despair ever since that night in London when I was forced to lie to you. I wrecked your happiness because circumstances conspired against us – because it was my duty as a daughter to save my father from ruin and penury. Have you really in your heart forgiven me, Godfrey?”

“Yes, my darling. How can I blame you for what was, after all, the noblest sacrifice a woman could make?”

“Then let me go,” she urged, speaking in a low, distinct voice, pale almost to the lips. “We must part – therefore perhaps the sooner the better, and the sooner my life is ended the more swiftly will peace and happiness come to me. For me the grave holds no terrors. Only because I leave you alone shall I regret,” she sobbed.

“And yet I must in future be alone,” I said, swallowing the lump that arose in my throat. “No, Ella!” I cried, “I cannot bear it. I cannot again live without your presence.”

“Alas! you must,” was her hoarse reply. “You must – you must.”

Wandering full of grief and bitter thoughts, vivid and yet confused, the hours sped by uncounted.

To the cosmopolitan, like I had grown to be, green plains have a certain likeness, whether in Belgium, Germany or Britain. A row of poplars quivering in the sunshine looks much alike in Normandy or in Northamptonshire. A deep forest all aglow with red and gold in autumn tints is the same thing, after all, in Tuscany, as in Yorkshire.

But England, our own dear old England, has also a physiognomy that is all her own; that is like nothing else in all the world; pastures intensely green, high hawthorn hedges and muddy lanes, which to some minds is sad and strange and desolate and painful, and which to others is beautiful, but which, be it what else it may, is always wholly and solely English, can never be met with elsewhere, and has a smile of peace and prosperity upon it, and a sigh in it that make other lands beside it seem as though they were soulless and were dumb.

We had unconsciously taken a path that, skirting a wood, ran up over a low hill southward. To our left lay the beautiful Cornish country in the sweet misty grey of the morning light. The sun was shining and the tremulous wood smoke curled up in the rosy air from a cottage chimney.

Was that to be our last walk together, I wondered? I sighed when I recollected how utterly we were the children of circumstance.

Beside her I walked with a swelling heart. I consumed my soul in muteness and bitterness, my eyes set before me to the grey hills behind which the sun had risen.

Chapter Twenty Four

“I am not Fit!”

Of a sudden, she turned her head and glanced full in my eyes. Her thoughts were, like mine, of the past – of those glad and gracious days.

I stood still for a moment, and catching her hands kissed them; my own were burning.

We went on by the curving course outside the wood quite silent, for the gloom of the future had settled upon us.

The past! Those days when my Ella was altogether mine! I loved to linger on those blissful days, for they were lighted with the sweetest sunlight of my life. Never since, for me, had flowers blossomed, and fruits ripened, and waters murmured, and grasshoppers sung, and waves beat joyous music as in the spring and summer of that wondrous time.

To rise when all the world was flushed with the soft pink of the earliest dawn, and to go hand in hand with her through the breast-high corn with scarlet poppies clasping the gliding feet; to see the purple wraith of rain haunting the silvery fairness of the hills; to watch the shadows chase the sun rays over the wide-open mysterious sea; to feel the living light of the cloudless day beat us with a million pulses amid the hum of life all around; to go out into the lustre of the summer’s night; to breathe the air soft as the first kisses of our own new-found love, and rich as wine with the strong odours of a world of flowers. These had in those never-to-be-forgotten days been her joys and mine, joys at once of the senses and the soul.

I loved her so – God knows! and yet almost I hated her. She had, on that night in Bayswater, deceived me! She had deceived me!

This was the iron in my soul. It is an error so common. Women lie to men – and men to women for the matter of that – out of mistaken tenderness or ill-judged compassion, or that curious fear of recrimination from which the firmest courage is not exempt. A woman deceives a man with untruth, not because she is base, but because she fears to hurt him with the truth; fears his reproaches; fears a painful scene, and even when he is quite worthless she is reluctant to wound his weakness. It is an error so common in this everyday life of ours: an error that is fatal always.

Had she been quite frank with me on that night when we had parted we might not have found ourselves fettered as we now were – she held to a man who was clearly an adventurer and a blackguard to boot.

Yet how could I reproach her for what was a great and complete self-sacrifice. No. She had done what was, perhaps, strictly her duty, even though both our lives had been wrecked in consequence.

“My love!” I murmured passionately, as with a cry I caught her in my arms, and held her close to me, as a man will hold some dear dead thing. And was she not, alas! now dead to me?

Our lips met again, but she was still silent. How many moments went I do not know; as there are years in which a man does not live a moment, so there are moments in which one lives a lifetime.

Her soft blue eyes closed beneath my kisses, my sense grew faint, the world became dark, all light and life shut out from me – all dark. But it was the sweet warm darkness, as though of the balmy night in June; and even then I know I prayed, prayed to Him that she might still be mine.

The trance of passion passed. How long it lasted I cannot tell.

After a while, the cloud that had enveloped my senses seemed suddenly to lift; the sweet unconsciousness died away. I lifted my head and strained myself backward, still holding her, and yet I shivered as I stood.

I remembered.

She, with a quick vague fear awakening in her eyes, held herself from me.

“Why look at me like that?” she cried. “I – I cannot bear it. Let us part now – at once. I must return, or my absence will be known and I shall be questioned.”

I do not know what I said in answer. All madness of reproach that ever man’s tongue could frame left my lips in those blind cruel moments. All excuse for her; all goodness in her I forgot! Ah! God forgive me, I forgot! She had deceived me; that was all I knew, or cared to know.

In that mad moment all the pride in me, fanned by the wind of jealousy, flamed afresh, and burned up love. In that sudden passion of love and hate my brain had gone.

Yet she stood motionless, pale as death, and trembling, her eyes filled with the light of unshed tears.

I do not know what she said in response to my cruel bitter reproaches.

All I know is that I next became suddenly filled with shame. I knelt then before her, asking forgiveness, kissing her hands, her dress, her feet, pouring out to her in all the eager impetuousness of my nature the rapture, the woe, the sorrow, the shame and the remorse that turn by turn had taken possession of my heart.

“I love you, Ella!” I cried. “I love you and as I love am I jealous. Mine is no soulless vagary or mindless folly. You are mine – mine though you may be bound to this blackguard whose victim you have fallen. I am jealous of you, jealous of the wind that touches you, of the sun that shines upon you, of the air you breathe, of the earth you tread, for they are with you while I am not.”

Her head was bowed. She shut her ears to the pleading of my heart. She wrenched her hands from me, crying: —

“No, no, Godfrey! Enough – enough! Spare me this!”

And she struggled from my arms.

“My darling!” I cried, “I know! I know! Yet you cannot realise all that I suffer now that we are to part again and for ever. I hate that man. Ah! light of my eyes, when I think that you are to be his I – I would rather a thousand times see you lying cold and dead at my feet, for I would then know that at least you would be spared unhappiness.”

It seemed that she dared not trust herself to look on me. She flung back her head and eluded my embrace.

“My love!” I cried, “all life in me is yearning for your life; for the softness of silent kisses; for the warmth of clasped hands; for the gladness of summer hours beside the sea. Do you remember them? Do you remember the passion and peace of our mutual love that smiled at the sun, and knew that heaven held no fairer joys than those which were its own, at the mere magic of a single touch?”

“Yes, dear,” she sighed, “I remember – I remember everything. And you have a right to reproach me as you will,” she added very gently.

She was still unyielding; her burning eyes were now tearless, and she stood motionless.

“But you have forgiven me, my love?” I cried humbly. “I was mad to have uttered those words.”

“I have forgiven, Godfrey,” she answered. A heavy sigh ran through the words and made them barely audible.

“And you still love me?”

All the glow and eagerness and fervour or passion had died off her face; it grew cold and colourless and still, with the impenetrable stillness of a desperate woman’s face that masks all pain.

“Do you doubt I loved you – I?”

That reproach cut me to the quick. I was passionate with man’s passion; I was cruel with children’s cruelty.

My face, I felt, flushed crimson, then grew pale again. I shrank a little, as though she had struck me a blow, a blow that I could not return.

“Then – then why should we part?” I asked, as all my love for her welled up in my faint heart. “Why should we not defy this man and let him do his worst? At least we should be united in one sweet, sacred and perfect faith – our love.”

For a few moments she made no reply, but looked at me very long – very wistfully, with no passion in those dear eyes, only a despair that was so great that it chilled me into speechless terror.

“No, no,” she cried at last, covering her face with her white hands, as though in shame, and bursting into a flood of tears. “You do not know all – I pray that you, the man I love so fondly, may never know! If you knew you would hate me and curse my memory. Therefore take back those words, and forget me – yes, forget – for I am not fit to be your wife!”

Chapter Twenty Five

By the Tyrrhenian Waters

Ella was all mine – all mine! Mine all the glad fearless freedom of her life; mine all the sweet kisses, the rapturous tenderness, the priceless passion of her love; mine all! And I had lost them.

The grave had given her back for those brief hours, but she was, alas! dead to me.

I stood there as a man in a dream.

I, athirst for the sound of her sweet voice as dying men in deserts for the fountains of lost lands.

But all was silence, save the lark trilling his song high above me in the morning air.

I turned upon my heel, and went forward a changed man.

At the inn I made further inquiries regarding the tenant of the “Glen.”

The stout yellow-haired maid-of-all-work who brought me in my breakfast was a native of the village and inclined to be talkative. From her I learned that Mr Gordon-Wright had had the place about four years. He spent only about three months or so each summer there, going abroad each year for the winter. To the poor he was always very good; he was chairman of the Flower Show Committee, chairman of the Parish Council, and one of the school managers as well as a church-warden.