by Mike Ashley
‘Hence came her great temptation, a temptation to which she yielded to the lasting trouble of us all. Of this I must now make confession though it kills me to do so and will soon kill her. The deeds of the past do not remain buried, however deep we dig their graves, but rise in an awful resurrection when we are old – old …’
Silence. Then a tremulous renewal of his painful speech.
Violet held her breath to listen. Possibly the doctor, hidden in the darkest corner of the room, did so also.
‘I never knew how she became acquainted with the terms of her brother-in-law’s will – he certainly never confided them to her, and as certainly the lawyer who drew up the document never did – but that she was well aware of its tenor is as positive a fact as that I am the most wretched man alive tonight. Otherwise, why the darksome deed into which she was betrayed when both the brothers lay dying among strangers of a dreadful accident?
‘I was witness to that deed. I had accompanied her on her hurried ride and was at her side when she entered the inn where the two Postlethwaites lay. I was always at her side in great joy or in great trouble, though she professed no affection for me and gave me but scanty thanks.
‘During our ride she had been silent, and I had not disturbed that silence. I had much to think of. Should we find him living, or should we find him dead? If dead, would it sever the relations between us two? Would I ever ride with her again?
‘When I was not dwelling on this theme I was thinking of the parting look she gave her boy, a look which had some strange promise in it. What had that look meant, and why did my flesh creep and my mind hover between dread and a fearsome curiosity when I recalled it? Alas! There was reason for all these sensations, as I was soon to learn.
‘We found the inn seething with terror and the facts worse than had been represented in the telegram. Her husband was dying. She had come just in time to witness the end. This they told her before she had taken off her veil. If they had waited – if I had been given a full glimpse of her face – but it was hidden, and I could only judge of the nature of her emotions by the stern way in which she held herself.
‘“Take me to him,” was the quiet command with which she met this disclosure. Then, before any of them could move, “And his brother, Mr Andrew Postlethwaite? Is he fatally injured too?”
‘The reply was unequivocal. The doctors were uncertain which of the two would pass away first.
‘You must remember that at this time I was ignorant of the rich man’s will and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had heard only one mention hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in the breathlessness which seized Mrs Postlethwaite at this sentence of double death I realized from my knowledge of her that something more than grief was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and I shuddered to the core of my being when she repeated in that voice which was so terrible because so expressionless, “Take me to them.”
‘They were lying in one room, her husband nearest the door, the other in a small alcove some ten feet away. Both were unconscious; both were surrounded by groups of frightened attendants who fell back as she approached. A doctor stood at the bed head of her husband, but as her eye met his he stepped aside with a shake of the head and left the place empty for her.
‘The action was significant. I saw that she understood what it meant and with constricted heart watched her as she bent over the dying man and gazed into his wide-open eyes, already sightless and staring. Calculation was in her look and calculation only; and calculation, or something equally unintelligible, sent her next glance in the direction of his brother. What was in her mind? I could understand her indifference to Frank, even at the crisis of his fate, but not the interest she showed in Andrew. It was an absorbing one, altering her whole expression. I no longer knew her for my dear young madam, and the jealousy I had never felt towards Frank rose to frantic resentment in my breast as I beheld what very likely might be a tardy recognition of the other’s well-known passion, forced into disclosure by the exigencies of the moment.
‘Alarmed by the strength of my feelings and fearing an equal disclosure on my own part I sought for a refuge from all eyes and found it in a little balcony opening out at my right. On to this balcony I stepped and found myself face to face with a starlit heaven. Had I only been content with my isolation and the splendour of the spectacle spread out before me! But no, I must look back upon that bed and the solitary woman standing beside it! I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity as a voice rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, “It is a matter of minutes now,” and then – and then – the slow creeping of her hand to her husband’s mouth, the outspreading of her palm across the livid lips, its steady clinging there, smothering the feeble gasps of one already moribund until the quivering form grew still and Frank Postlethwaite lay dead before my eyes!
‘I saw and made no outcry, but she did, bringing the doctor back to her side with the startled exclamation, “Dead? I thought he had an hour’s life left in him, and he has passed before his brother.”
‘I thought it hate, the murderous impulse of a woman who sees her enemy at her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of her long-cherished antagonism. And, while something within me rebelled at the act, I could not betray her, though silence made a murderer of me, too. I could not. Her spell was upon me as in another instant it was upon everyone else in the room. No suspicion of one so self-repressed in her sadness disturbed the universal sympathy, and, encouraged by this blindness of the crowd, I vowed within myself never to reveal her secret. The man was dead, or as good as dead, when she touched him, and now that her hate was expended she would grow gentle and good.
‘But I knew the worthlessness of this hope as well as my misconception of her motive when Frank’s child by another wife returned to my memory, and Bella’s sin stood exposed.
‘But only to myself. I alone knew that the fortune now wholly hers, and in consequence her boy’s, had been won by a crime. That if her hand had fallen in comfort on her husband’s forehead instead of in pressure on his mouth he would have outlived his brother long enough to have become owner of his millions – in which case a rightful portion would have been insured to his daughter, now left a penniless waif. The thought made my hair rise as, the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and last effort to rid my conscience of its new and intolerable burden.
‘But the woman I had known and loved was no longer before me. The crown had touched her brows, and her charm, which had been mainly sexual up to this hour, had merged into an intellectual force with which few men’s mentality could cope. Mine yielded at once to it. From the first instant I knew that a slavery of spirit, as well as of heart, was henceforth to be mine.
‘She did not wait for me to speak; she had assumed the dictator’s attitude at once.
‘“I know of what you are thinking,” said she, “and it is a subject you may dismiss at once from your mind. Mr Postlethwaite’s child by his first wife is coming to live with us. I have expressed my wishes in this regard to my lawyer, and there is nothing left to be said. You, with your close mouth and dependable nature, are to remain here as before and occupy the same position towards my boy that you did towards his father. We shall move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our duties will be changed and their scope greatly increased. But I know that you can be trusted to enlarge with them and meet every requirement I shall see fit to make. Do not try to express your thanks. I see them in your face.”
‘Did she – or just the last feeble struggle my conscience was making to break the bonds in which she held me and win back my own respect? I shall never know, for she left me on completion of this speech not to resume the subject then or ever.
‘But though I succumbed outwardly to her demands I had not passed the point where inner conflict ends and peace begins. Her recognition of Helena and her reception into the family calmed me for a while and gave me hope that all would yet be well. But I had never sounded the full bittern
ess of madam’s morbid heart, well as I thought I knew it. The hatred she had felt from the first for her husband’s child ripened into frenzied dislike when she found her a living image of the mother whose picture she had come across among Frank’s personal effects. To win a tear from those meek eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was her daily play. She seemed to exult in the joy of impressing upon the girl by how little she had missed a great fortune, and I have often thought, much as I tried to keep my mind free from all extravagant and unnecessary fancies, that half of the money she spent in beautifying this house and maintaining art industries and even great charitable institutions was spent with the base purpose of demonstrating to this child the power of immense wealth and in what ways she might expect to see her little brother expend the millions in which she had been denied all share.
‘I was so sure of this that one night, while I was winding up the clocks with which Mrs Postlethwaite in her fondness for old timepieces has filled the house, I stopped to look at the little figure toiling so wearily upstairs to bed without a mother’s kiss. There was an appeal in the small wistful face which smote my hard old heart, and possibly a tear welled up in my own eye when I turned back to my duty.
‘Was that why I felt the hand of Providence upon me, when in my halt before the one clock to which any superstitious interest was attached – the great one at the foot of the stairs – I saw that it had stopped and at the one minute of all minutes in our wretched lives, four minutes past two? The hour, the minute in which Frank Postlethwaite had gasped his last under the pressure of his wife’s hand! I knew it – the exact minute, I mean – because Providence meant that I should know it. There had been a clock on the mantelpiece of the hotel room where he and his brother had died, and I had seen her glance steal towards it at the instant she withdrew her palm from her husband’s lips. The stare of that dial and the position of its hands had lived still in my mind as I believed it did in hers.
‘Four minutes past two! How came our old timepiece here to stop at that exact moment on a day when duty was making its last demand upon me to remember Frank’s unhappy child? There was no one to answer, but as I looked and looked I felt the impulse of the moment strengthen into purpose to leave those hands undisturbed in their silent accusation. She might see and, moved by the coincidence, tremble at her treatment of Helena.
‘But if this happened – if she saw and trembled – she gave no sign. The works were started up by some other hand, and the incident passed. But it left me with an idea. That clock soon had a way of stopping and always at that one instant of time. She was forced at length to notice it, and I remember an occasion when she stood stock still with her eyes on those hands and failed to find the banister with her hand, though she groped for it in her frantic need for support.
‘But no command came from her to remove the worn-out piece, and soon its tricks and every lesser thing were forgotten in the crushing calamity which befell us in the sickness and death of little Richard.
‘Oh, those days and nights! And oh, the face of the mother when the doctors told her that the case was hopeless! I asked myself then, and I have asked myself a hundred times since, which of all the emotions I saw pictured there bit the deepest and made the most lasting impression on her guilty heart? Was it remorse? If so, she showed no change in her attitude towards Helena unless it was by an added bitterness. The sweet looks and gentle ways of Frank’s young daughter could not win against a hate sharpened by disappointment. Useless for me to hope for it. Release from the remorse of years was not to come in that way. As I realized this I grew desperate and resorted again to the old trick of stopping the clock at the fatal hour. This time her guilty heart responded. She acknowledged the stab and let all her miseries appear. But how? In a way to wring my heart almost to madness and not benefit the child at all. She had her first stroke that night. I had made her a helpless invalid.
‘That was eight years ago, and since then what? Stagnation. She lived with her memories and I with mine. Helena only had a right to hope, and hope perhaps she did until … Is that the great clock talking? Listen! They all talk, but I heed only the one. What does it say? Tell! tell! tell! Does it think I will be silent now when I come to my own guilt? That I will seek to hide my weakness when I could not hide her sin?’
‘Explain!’ It was Violet speaking, and her tone was stern in its command. ‘Of what guilt do you speak? Not of guilt towards Helena; you pitied her too much …’
‘But I pitied my dear madam more. It was that which affected me and drew me into crime against my will. Besides, I did not know – not at first – what was in the little bowl of curds and cream I carried to the girl each day. She had eaten them in her stepmother’s room and under her stepmother’s eye as long as she had strength to pass from room to room, and how was I to guess that it was not wholesome? Because she failed in health from day to day? Was not my dear madam failing in health also, and was there poison in her cup? Innocent at that time, why am I not innocent now? Because … Oh, I will tell it all, as though at the bar of God. I will tell all the secrets of that day.
‘She was sitting with her hand trembling on the tray from which I had just lifted the bowl she had bid me carry to Helena. I had seen her so a hundred times before, but not with just that look in her eyes or just that air of desolation in her stony figure. Something made me speak, something made me ask if she were not quite so well as usual, and something made her reply with the dreadful truth that the doctor had given her just two months more to live. My fright and mad anguish stupefied me – for I was not prepared for this, no, not at all – and unconsciously I stared down at the bowl I held, unable to breathe or move or even to meet her look.
‘As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
‘“Why do you stand like that?” I heard her say in a tone of great irritation. “And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I mean to leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them for ever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yardstick as that? I tell you that I would rot above ground rather than enter it before she did!”
‘I had believed I knew this woman, but what soul ever knows another’s? What soul ever knows itself?
‘“Bella!” I cried, the first time I had ever presumed to address her so intimately. “Would you poison the girl?” And from sheer weakness my fingers lost their clutch, and the bowl fell to the floor, breaking into a dozen pieces.
‘For a minute she stared down at these from over her tray, and then she remarked very low and very quietly, “Another bowl, Humphrey, and fresh curds from the kitchen. I will do the seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped. You won’t?” – I had shaken my head – “But you will! It will not be the first time you have gone down the hall with this mixture.”
‘“But that was before I knew …” I began.
“And now that you do, you will go just the same.” Then, as I stood hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an instant, she added in a voice to tear the heart, “Do not make me hate the only being left in this world who understands and loves me.”
‘She was a helpless invalid and I a broken man, but when that word “love” fell from her lips I felt the blood start burning in my veins and all the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my heart and make me young again. What if her thoughts were dark and her wishes murderous! She was born to rule and sway men to her will, even to their own undoing.
‘“I wish I might kiss your hand,” was what I murmured, gazing at her white fingers groping over her tray.
‘“You may,” she answered, and hell became Heaven to me for a brief instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my task.
‘But, puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy. When I entered Helena’s room and saw how her startled eyes fell shrinkingly on the bowl I set down before her my conscience leaped to life and I could not help saying, “Don’t you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them very much.”
‘“What, Helena?”
‘“What these are not,” she murmured.
‘I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew and yet did not seize the bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved slowly towards it and drew it into place before her.
‘“Yet I must eat,” she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of patient despair, which yet was without accusation.
‘But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.
‘“Why must you eat it?” I asked. “If – if you do not find it wholesome, why do you touch it?”
‘“Because my stepmother expects me to,” she cried, “and I have no other will than hers. When I was a little, little child my father made me promise that if I ever came to live with her I would obey her simplest wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint the trust he put in me.”
‘“Even if you die of it?”
‘I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought them. She answered as though I had spoken.
‘“I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some day to do something I feel to be wrong.”
‘When I fled down the hall that night I heard one of the small clocks speak to me. “Tell!” it cried, “Tell! tell! tell! tell!” I rushed away from it with beaded forehead and rising hair.
‘Then another’s note piped up. “No!” it droned. “No! no! no! no!” I stopped and took heart. Disgrace the woman I loved on the brink of the grave? I who asked no other boon from Heaven than to see her happy, gracious and good? Impossible. I would obey the great clock’s voice; the others were mere chatterboxes.
‘But it has at last changed its tune for some reason, quite changed its tune. Now it is “Yes! Yes!” instead of “No!” and in obeying it I save Helena. But what of Bella and, O God, what of myself?’