‘What!’ he said at last.
But hearing him articulate, Methodius recovered himself; and speaking in the same languorous tone of voice, he continued—
‘Your Majesty has no need to be angry with us. Nor,’ he said, elevating his voice somewhat, ‘has your Majesty any means of injuring us. We are well-known chiefs of the Police and our word is trusted. So if we revealed a certain little fact, which is not improbable in itself by any means, without special knowledge, that your Majesty found it convenient to cause your father to be assassinated, just at the time there was a popular reaction in your present Majesty's favour, it is not unlikely that the people would give credence to this. So perhaps we had better understand one another.’
The King said no word at all. In utter silence he passed them. They dare not lay a finger on him, but followed him stealthily. He passed through the Palace, out through the door.
The attendants and sentinels were struck with strange terror, and even forgot to salute him. He went straight on through the night, till he got to the shrine which he had erected in memory to his father on the spot where he was assassinated. What he intended to do none can say. But his heart broke, literally, and he fell dead before the shrine.
‘Better make sure of him,’ said Cyril, who took a dagger that he had with him and pierced the already broken heart once again, leaving the dagger there.
Methodius made a beautiful speech. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘oh people, what you have done. You preferred a wretched bastard to one chosen as the Lord's Anointed; and look what you have chosen. We could hardly imagine it at first. But in our capacity as Head of the Police we have ample means of investigation. This vile wretch, this veritable viper who the King nourished in his bosom, turned with almost more than loathsome ingratitude, against the father to whom he owed everything, and having by some means or other managed to procure the sympathies of a certain number—I trust a very few—of the populus, contrived a diabolical plot on the father, whose one fault was an excessive fondness for him, assassinated in that cowardly manner, of which we are all too well aware. But if this were not enough, with sickening hypocrisy the parricide comes to make sham lamentation over his murdered father; and—’ here Methodius broke out into tears ‘that father blesses him with his dying breath. At last found out he ends with cowardly suicide.’
The body of Valentine was cast onto a dust-heap, and covered with shop-rubbish.
Things are different now in Nicosia. Cyril and Methodius govern absolutely. Their figure-head, Baldwin, has lost his good nature, and has become brutal and suspicious. They frighten him sometimes with sham explosions, which keep him in a continual state of nervous terror. These they attribute to the anarchists. By that means they manage to arrest, banish or execute all those that stand in their way.
Cyril is Procurator of the State Church, which means persecuting everyone who does not fall in with his designs; and has the censorship of all books, so that it is practically impossible in Nicosia to read any book which goes against his policy. Methodius superintends the press, and edits the official journal, the statements in which are generally false, and no other journal may dare to gainsay it. He also has agents in all parts of the world, to give false impressions as to the state of things in Nicosia.
So, to conclude, I may say dear reader, that such news as you may hear from Nicosia is not very likely to be correct.
CHAPTER I
PROEM
The fact of the engagement of Lord Vandrake and Lady Viola Vargas being suddenly broken off, actually on the very eve of their wedding, caused of course considerable excitement in society circles. And to their more intimate acquaintances, it was a still greater puzzle; since no reason whatsoever was assigned: nor, torture their brains as they would, could they discover any possible or plausible reason. Seldom had a marriage been arranged under more auspicious conditions. They were both rich, both in the best social position, both independent, and no one raised the faintest objection. And furthermore, which was of more importance, they were obviously in love with one another. Vivian had never been interested in any other woman but Viola and au contraire Viola in no man save Vivian.
They were both orphans: and being related, though not very nearly, had for a great part of their lives been brought up in the same house. They were, or had become, remarkably like one another. So that people would rather take them for brother or sister than for a betrothed pair. I say become, for I think the latter is the more probable supposition. It has been frequently noticed that persons living constantly together, between whom there is much sympathy, gradually become like one another. Whereas the relationship of second cousin would hardly account for the similarity. Nevertheless there were points of difference.
His face might be called feminine rather than effeminate, I say feminine because of the somewhat indeterminate outline, and marvellous delicate skin and bloom of complexion. But there was none of the flaccidity and simper of the so-called effeminate face. The expression indeed was profoundly intellectual. The eyes denoted a considerable amount of will-power, but in general he looked delicate and fragile: but without any trace of sickliness.
No one would call him handsome: everyone would say he was very nice-looking, and some people would call his face beautiful. His real age was 25, but he did not look a day older than 19.
Her face, by way of contrast had a more clear-cut definite masculine outline than his, and if he showed greater will power in the eyes, there was much more determination about her mouth. Her eyes were very sweet and tender, of a vague lilac colour, veritably dove's eyes; whereas his eyes in certain lights were vivid green, almost startlingly so. (By vivid green I do not mean vert de mer.)
The only objection anyone could ever have thought of making, was that Vivian from his childhood had been occasionally subject to fainting-fits. But then an eminent doctor and brain specialist, Sir Joseph Randor, who was their mutual relation, and whom they both called Uncle Joseph had explained, physiologically to her Aunt, Lady Esilinda, with whom she lived that it would be the best thing possible for him to be married at once.
They had grown up together, and as it seemed, exchanged all confidences. Their marriage seemed to be a matter of course, and just where this story begins, Lady Esilinda was very busy in making the last preparations for the festivity of the morrow.
CHAPTER II
THE HALF-TOLD SECRET
‘Vivian, how pale, how strange you look! You can't think how you frightened me. Of course I am very nervous today, I had a dreadful dream last night: such a dreadful dream I can't tell you. Of course it was about you. All through the day I've had some shuddering presentiment that something would come between us to sunder us, between today and tomorrow. I am so glad you have come: at least you are really there. But come nearer! let me touch you, feel you! You look so—strange!’
‘Do not touch me!—Viola, dear, what you have just said makes it more easy for me to say what I was going to say. We are not going to be married tomorrow!’
This last he said with a hard dry guttural rasping voice, totally different to his usual way of speaking. She trembled, then turning her lovely eyes upon him said very tenderly, but with evident insincerity:
‘It was a little unkind of you to wait till now to tell me that you love someone else.’
Here a faint false smile, which she tried to effect collapsed utterly. He threw himself at her feet and kissed her hands passionately.
‘Viola!’ he cried, in a voice of agony, ‘kill me but do not torture me! I know you do not really think so. I never have loved, or could love anyone except you.’
By this time she had somewhat recovered herself, being for a delicate looking girl of an extraordinarily robust nature. She said with a sham smile and an affected sarcastic tone:
‘No, I'm not one of Bjørnsen's heroines, nor am I the heroine of the Heavenly Twins, and suchlike literature. So if you have any moral delinquency of your past life to confess, I do not wish to hear anything about it. You see
I have got all my frocks already, and all the rest of it: and I don't want because of your previous peccadilloes to be cheated out of the whole show.’
Here she broke into ghastly laughter. He gave one low moan.
‘Listen Viola,’ he said. ‘You are too unkind to me. You should not have said that.’ His voice was now suffused with tears. ‘At least let me try and explain matters although I can't. But you do love me, do you not? And you will pity me whatever I say?’ She had by this time thoroughly recovered her self-possession. She was pale and calm. For answer she laid her hand very tenderly on his head.
‘Of course you must despise me. Perhaps you at least will understand the rationale of my miserable cowardice. I simply did not dare say this before. It was only because tomorrow is a last morrow, that I have managed to muster the courage to say what I am going to say—But what is it that I am going to say? And how shall I say it?—The—fact—is—that—I—am—mad!’
‘Vivian’ she said, with a tender smile; but she was unable to continue her sentence.
‘Do you remember,’ he continued, in an almost hoarse whisper, ‘how we went, a long long time ago,—oh yes, a long long time ago—how we went to that room which is Uncle Joseph's—do you remember we called it Bluebeard's Chamber? And just because we were never allowed to go into it, it excited our curiosity so much; and you somehow managed to get the key and then when we went in how I fainted and you did not? And then when we were found we were both whipped?’
All this he said in the same dull monotone. There was silence between them for some time. She looked at him fixedly, then said in her soft sweet tender voice:
‘Vivian, surely you do not attach any importance to that? Uncle Joseph said it was not very remarkable that you should have fainted, and said I must have the robuster constitution of the two.’ Then gently and slowly: ‘Try and be a little more collected dear. What do you mean exactly by being mad? I know you're always called eccentric. But then we both are, so perhaps I am not an authority, but when the other day someone said something of that kind about you, Aunt Esilinda who is about as healthy and sane a person as one might find said, “In reality I have scarcely ever seen a more sane or lucid person than Vivian.”’
He went on in the same voice as before: ‘But my eccentricity is not my insanity. I am perfectly lucid—frightfully lucid when I am insane. My insanity is merely intermittent. What I have done then I do not know. No!’ he said, raising his voice agonisingly, ‘I do know!—only too well! Perhaps you will understand me if I say the whole thing seems to me much more like a story told of someone else: of someone totally and entirely different—more like a vivid dream that lingers in one's brain.’
She turned more than deadly pale. Caressing his hair, she said:
‘Vivian, dear, of course I know how excessively nervous you are. Do you remember when you had those nervous attacks it was only I who could soothe you, and how when you suffered from delirium, it was only me you could bear in the room with you.’ She bent down and kissed him on the hair: ‘Surely I—’
Then he said, very tenderly: ‘Yes dear, I know what you were going to say.’ Then with a note of frightful agony, ‘But you do not know!’ Then in monotone: ‘I might harm even you!’
For the first time he looked her straight in the face, straight into her eyes: with a look that expressed much more than all he said. Then they came together in one long passionate embrace. Neither spoke one word.
He went silently away.
When he was gone she did not betray any emotion, but went to the writing table, and took from a drawer a number of correspondence cards, on which she wrote.
‘On account of an unforeseen accident, the marriage between Lord Vandrake and Lady Viola Vargas has been unavoidably postponed, at the last moment. Guests will excuse—’
‘That's not quite right’ she murmured under her breath in rather a commonplace voice. ‘However it will do.’
And so she monotonously wrote one card after another.
Then Lady Esilinda walked in. ‘My dear child’ she cried: ‘I knew that girls used to write letters on the eve of their marriage, but your correspondence appears to exceed the average.’
‘Look here,’ she said handing a card that she had not yet put into the envelope.
‘What does this mean?’
She stood erect, pale and terrible: and said simply in a most authoritative tone of voice, very slowly, ‘Do not ask!’ Then she said, ‘As you are back, perhaps you would not mind writing the rest, as I am a trifle tired.’
CHAPTER III
EXTRACTS FROM NEWSPAPERS
From a society journal:
‘We regret to say that Lord Vandrake's health has so broken down that he has been ordered abroad, either to Madeira or to Egypt.’
From The Morning News (leading article):
‘Another of those startling crimes which have amazed London for some time since has taken place. We are at a loss what to say on the subject. It will be remembered—only too well remembered how peculiarly atrocious and absolutely motiveless the crimes were: and no conceivable clue could be got as to the perpetrator. It will also be remembered that there was a long correspondence in this paper, as to who the perpetrator could possibly be: a Thug some people said: others gave other theories.
‘The theories were so numerous that we will not recapitulate them. But as we have said before the peculiar atrocity and absolute motivelessness of the crimes baffle all detection. Then again, the criminal seems easily to have escaped. It is possible the Police were not there. But then it seems again incredible, considering the circumstances, that he could have escaped so easily.
‘The account of the last crime which is, if one may use the comparison in such cases, more terrible than the others, will be found in another column. We only wish to make a few comments. It would seem, to justify the wildest suggestions of our superstitious correspondents. Let us look at the facts. Here a policeman, hearing a cry, comes to the spot, sees a figure running away. The figure leaps with one bound onto a wall, and when the policeman is trying to follow the figure leaps down upon him, and seizes him by the throat. The policeman has been taken to hospital, and is now in a hopeless state of, shall we call it, nervousness. He trembles continually, and is also continually talking of a flash of green fire that came from the eyes of the person who leapt upon him. But his evidence appears to be on the whole quite coherent. And indeed other policemen noticed the figure, as the district has been specially watched. And that is practically all. There seems really something almost rational in the letter of our last correspondent, who signs himself F.B., that there was something diabolical about the matter. We cannot say and do not pretend to judge; but here we find a rather particularly stalwart policeman frightened into fits by one glance from those terrible eyes: one who certainly does not look nervous: and who, in intervals between his attacks gives invariably the same evidence apparently coherent. But the hospital authorities say that—and in our opinion very rationally too—any conversation with him might bring on another attack, which might possibly be fateful, and then he would be wholly unable to give any evidence whatsoever. But when we come to think of it what more evidence is there to give. This at least perhaps is some clue to the identity of the monster, of whom we have lately heard, but not very much. All papers are teeming with the subject, and indeed we have no more to say; and if we had we might be inclined to be as superstitious as our correspondent F.B. on the subject.’
Evening Paper. Special Edition:
‘Yet another of the atrocious crimes, with which all London has been horrified, has been committed. This time the murderer has actually been caught red-handed.’
Evening Paper:
‘Truth is certainly stranger than fiction. Here is actually the perpetrator of the atrocious crimes, with which we have been lately horrified, we were almost going to say grown familiar with, captured at last in flagrante delicto. From the last instance we should have expected a furious resistance. This makes the
case so strange and incomprehensible. On the contrary there was no resistance whatsoever. The malefactor allows himself to be handcuffed, and led to the police station, without any resistance whatsoever, and for the curiosity of the Public it is well all this took place by night and in a remote place, otherwise he would of course have been lynched. In saying this, perhaps we are speaking somewhat besides the point. The crime was not likely to be committed in broad daylight. The greatest commendation is due to the Police, that they took him through bye-ways instead of main thoroughfares. Certainly, if the prisoner had made any violent resistance a large crowd might have collected.’
Extract from Account in Morning Paper:
‘The Prisoner was actually caught red-handed: and allowed himself to be conducted quite peacefully to the Police Station. But on being spoken to, he did not answer one single word: the theory of the Police is that he is a foreigner and wholly unacquainted with the English language. Interpreters of various nationalities are being looked for.
‘He was dressed as an ordinary artisan with corduroy trousers and a flannel shirt; but according to the statement of the Police, he is of refined gentlemanly appearance; far from repulsive-looking, as might have been expected.’
Further account—(in same):
‘In spite of all interpreters the prisoner refuses to say one single word. He also will not eat. He might be thought to be deaf and dumb, but that is not the case: he obviously can hear; and his dumbness is no doubt voluntary; and he is by no means idiotic. On reaching the Police Station and being placed in the cell he fell at once into a deep sleep which continued not only through the night but the entire day, and all efforts to rouse him were ineffectual. Not until this morning was he heard moving; then by gesticulations he managed to convey the notion that he wanted water. He drank a large draught, and also washed himself as far as he could with great care. One policeman appears to have given him a piece of soap. But all through today he has been absolutely silent. Sometimes sitting down and sometimes walking about. If any policeman comes to him he makes signs that he wants water which he takes in large draughts. Tomorrow he will be brought before the Police Court.’
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