by Grant Allen
But how did the editor ever come to know about it? And what was this mysterious, awful message that he gave Dora about Harry Pallant?
“You need not fear that H. P. will any longer prove a trouble to you.” Why? Did Harry mean to leave London altogether? Was he afraid to trust himself there with Dora Ferrand? Did he fear that she would steal his heart in spite of him? Oh, Dora, Dora! the shameless creature! When Louie came to think it all over, her effrontery and her wickedness were absolutely appalling.
She sat there long, turning the paper over helplessly in her hand, reading its words every way but the right way, pondering over what Harry had said to her that morning, putting her own interpretation upon everything, and forgetting even to unpack her things and make herself ready for lunch in the coffee-room.
Presently, a crowd upon the beach below languidly attracted her passing attention. The coastguard from the look-out was gesticulating frantically, and a group of sailors were seizing in haste upon a boat on the foreshore. They launched it hurriedly and pulled with all their might outward, the people on the beach gathering thicker meanwhile, and all looking eagerly towards some invisible object far out to sea, in the direction of the Race with the dangerous current. Louie’s heart sank ominously within her. At that very moment the chambermaid of the hotel rushed in with a pale face, and cried out in merciless haste, “Oh, ma’am, Mrs. Pallant! quick! quick! — he’s drowning! he’s drowning! Mr. Pallant’s swum too far out, and’s got into the Race, and they’ve put the boat off to try and save him!”
In a second, half the truth flashed terribly upon Louie Pallant’s distracted intelligence. She saw that it was Harry himself who wrote the correspondence for the Young People’s Monitor, and that he had swum out to sea of his own accord to the end of his tether, on purpose to drown himself as if by accident. But she didn’t yet perceive, obvious as it seemed, that Harry thought she herself had written “Egeria’s” letter in her own person. She thought still he was in love with Dora, and had drowned himself because he couldn’t tear himself away from her for ever.
V.
They brought Harry Pallant ashore, cold and lifeless, and carried him up in haste to the hotel. There the village doctor saw him at once, and detected a faint tremor of the heart. At the end of an hour the lungs began to act faintly of themselves, and the heart beat a little in some feeble fashion.
With care Harry Pallant came round, but it took a week or two before he was himself again, and Louie nursed him meanwhile in fear and trembling, with breathless agony. She had one consolation — Harry loved her. In the long nights the whole truth dawned upon her, clear and certain. She saw how Harry had opened the letter, had jumped at once to the natural conclusion, and had tried to drown himself in order to release her. Oh, why had he not trusted her? Why had he not asked her? A woman naturally thinks like that; a man knows in his own soul that a man could never possibly do so.
She dared not tell him yet, for fear of a relapse. She could only wait and watch, and nurse him tenderly. And all the time she knew he distrusted her — knew he thought her a hypocrite and a traitor. For Harry’s sake she had to bear it.
At last, one day, when he was getting very much stronger, and could sit up in a chair and look bitterly out at the sea, she said to him in a gentle voice, very tentatively, “Harry, Dora Ferrand and her husband have gone to spend the summer in Norway.”
Harry groaned. “How do you know?” he asked. “Has Hugh written to you? What is it to us? Who told you about it?”
Louie bit her lip hard to keep back the tears. “Dora telegraphed to me herself,” she answered softly. “She telegraphed to me as soon as ever” — she hesitated a moment— “as soon as ever she saw your answer to her in the Monitor.”
Harry’s face grew white with horror. “My answer to her!” he cried in a ghastly voice, not caring to ask at the moment how Louie came to know it was he who wrote the answers in the Young People’s Monitor. “My answer to you, you mean, Louie. It was your letter — yours, not Dora’s. You can’t deceive me. I read it myself. My poor child, I saw your handwriting.”
It was an awful thing that, in spite of all, he must have it out with her against his will; but he would not flinch from it — he would settle it then and there, once and for ever. She had introduced it herself; she had brought it down upon her own head. He would not flinch from it. It was his duty to tell her.
Louie laid her hand upon his arm. He did not try to cast it off. “Harry,” she said, imploringly, persuasively, “there is a terrible mistake here — a terrible misunderstanding. It was unavoidable; you could not possibly have thought otherwise. But oh, Harry, if you knew the suffering you have brought upon me, you would not speak so, darling — you would not speak so.”
Harry turned towards her passionately and eagerly. “Then you didn’t want me to die, Louie?” he cried in a hoarse voice. “You didn’t really want to get rid of me?”
Louie withdrew her hand hastily as if she had been stung. “Harry,” she gasped, as well as she was able, “you misunderstood that letter altogether. It was not mine — it was Dora Ferrand’s. Dora wrote it, and I only copied it. If you will listen a minute I will tell you all, all about it.”
Harry flung himself back half incredulously on his chair, but with a new-born hope lighting up in part the gloom of his recovered existence.
“I went over to Dora Ferrand’s the day after the Ogilvies’ dance,” Louie began tremulously, “and I found Dora sitting in her boudoir writing a letter. I walked up without being announced, and when Dora saw me she screamed a little, and then she grew as red as fire, and burst out crying, and tried to hide the letter she was writing. So I went up to her and began to soothe her, and asked her what it was, and wanted to read it. And Dora cried for a long time, and wouldn’t tell me, and was dreadfully penitent, and said she was very, very miserable. So I said, ‘Dora, is there anything wrong between you and Mr. Ferrand?’ And she said, ‘Nothing, Louie; I give you my word of honour, nothing. Poor Wetherby’s as kind to me as anybody could be. But — —’ And then she began crying again as if her heart would burst, worse than ever. And I took her head on my shoulder, and said to her, ‘Dora, is it that you feel you don’t love him?’ And Dora was in a dreadfully penitent fit, and she flung herself away from me, and said to me, ‘Oh, Louie, don’t touch me! Don’t kiss me! Don’t come near me! I’m not fit to associate with a girl like you, dear.... Oh, Louie, I don’t love him; and — what’s worse — I love somebody else, darling.’ Well, then, of course, I was horribly shocked, and I said, ‘Dora, Dora, this is awfully wicked of you!’ And Dora cried worse than before, and sobbed away, and wouldn’t be comforted. And there was a copy of the Monitor lying on the table, and I saw it open at the correspondence, and I said, ‘Were you writing for advice to the Monitor, Dora?’ And she looked up and nodded ‘Yes.’ So I coaxed her and begged her to show me the letter, and at last she showed it to me; but she wouldn’t tell me who she was in love with, Harry; and, oh, Harry, my darling, my darling, I never so much as dreamt of its being you, dear — the thought never even crossed my mind. I ran over everybody I could imagine she’d taken a fancy to, but I never for a moment thought of you, darling. I suppose, Harry, I loved you too dearly even to suspect it. And then, I dare say, Dora saw I didn’t suspect it; but, anyhow, she went on and finished the letter — it was nearly done when I came in to her — and after that she said she couldn’t bear to send it in her own handwriting, for fear anybody should know her and recognize it. So I said if she liked I’d copy it out for her, for by that time I was crying just as hard as she was, and so sorry for her and for poor Mr. Ferrand; and it never struck me that anybody could ever possibly think that I wrote it about myself. And — and — and that’s all, Harry.”
Harry listened, conscience-smitten, to the artless recital, which bore its own truth on the very surface of it, as it fell from Louie’s trembling lips, and then he held her off at arm’s length when she tried to fall upon his neck and kiss him, whisper
ing in a loud undertone, “Oh, Louie, Louie, don’t, don’t! I don’t deserve it! I have been too wicked — too mistrustful!”
Louie drew forth a letter from her pocket and handed it to him silently. It was in Dora’s handwriting. He read it through in breathless anxiety.
“Louie, — I dare not call you anything else now. You know it all by this time. We have heard about Harry’s accident from your sister. Nobody but ourselves knows it was not an accident. And I have seen the answer in the Monitor. Of course Harry wrote it. I see it all now. You can never forgive me. It is I who have brought all this misery upon you. I am a wretched woman. Do not reproach me — I reproach myself more bitterly than anything you could say would ever reproach me. But don’t forgive me and pity me either. If you forgive me I shall have to kill myself. It’s all over now. I will do the only thing that remains for me — keep out of your way and his for ever. Poor Wetherby is going to take me for the summer to Norway, as I telegraphed to you. We are just starting. When we return we shall winter in Italy. I will leave London in future altogether. Nobody but our three selves need ever know or suspect the reason. Harry will recover, and you two will be happy yet. But I — I shall be as miserable for ever, as I truly deserve to be.
“Your wretched friend,
“D. F.”
Harry crumpled up the letter bitterly in his hand. “Poor soul,” he said. “Louie, I forgive her. Can I myself ever hope for forgiveness?”
Louie flung herself fiercely upon him. “My darling,” she cried, “we will always trust one another in future. You couldn’t help it, Harry. It was impossible for you to have judged otherwise. But oh, my darling, what I have suffered! Let us forgive her. Harry, and let us love one another better now.”
THE SEARCH PARTY’S FIND.
I can stand it no longer. I must put down my confession on paper, since there is no living creature left to whom I can confess it.
The snow is drifting fiercer than ever to-day against the cabin; the last biscuit is almost finished; my fingers are so pinched with cold I can hardly grasp the pen to write with. But I will write, I must write, and I am writing. I cannot die with the dreadful story unconfessed upon my conscience.
It was only an accident, most of you who read this confession perhaps will say; but in my own heart I know better than that — I know it was a murder, a wicked murder.
Still, though my hands are very numb, and my head swimming wildly with delirium, I will try to be coherent, and to tell my story clearly and collectedly.
I was appointed surgeon of the Cotopaxi in June, 1880. I had reasons of my own — sad reasons — for wishing to join an Arctic expedition. I didn’t join it, as most of the other men did, from pure love of danger and adventure. I am not a man to care for that sort of thing on its own account. I joined it because of a terrible disappointment.
For two years I had been engaged to Dora — I needn’t call her anything but Dora; my brother, to whom I wish this paper sent, but whom I daren’t address as “Dear Arthur” — how could I, a murderer? — will know well enough who I mean; and as to other people, it isn’t needful they should know anything about it. But whoever you are, whoever finds this paper, I beg of you, I implore you, I adjure you, do not tell a word of it to Dora. I cannot die unconfessed, but I cannot let the confession reach her; if it does, I know the double shock will kill her. Keep it from her. Tell her only he is dead — dead at his post, like a brave man, on the Cotopaxi exploring expedition. For mercy’s sake don’t tell her that he was murdered, and that I murdered him.
I had been engaged, I said, two years to Dora. She lived in Arthur’s parish, and I loved her — yes, in those days I loved her purely, devotedly, innocently. I was innocent then myself, and I really believe good and well-meaning. I should have been genuinely horrified and indignant if anybody had ventured to say that I should end by committing a murder.
It was a great grief to me when I had to leave Arthur’s parish, and my father’s parish before him, to go up to London and take a post as surgeon to a small hospital. I couldn’t bear being so far away from Dora. And at first Dora wrote to me almost every day with the greatest affection. (Heaven forgive me, if I still venture to call her Dora! her, so good and pure and beautiful, and I, a murderer.) But, after a while, I noticed slowly that Dora’s tone seemed to grow colder and colder, and her letters less and less frequent. Why she should have begun to cease loving me, I cannot imagine; perhaps she had a premonition of what possibility of wickedness was really in me. At any rate, her coldness grew at last so marked that I wrote and asked Arthur whether he could explain it. Arthur answered me, a little regretfully, and with brotherly affection (he is a good fellow, Arthur), that he thought he could. He feared — it was painful to say so — but he feared Dora was beginning to love a newer lover. A young man had lately come to the village of whom she had seen a great deal, and who was very handsome and brave and fascinating. Arthur was afraid he could not conceal from me his impression that Dora and the stranger were very much taken with one another.
At last, one morning, a letter came to me from Dora. I can put it in here, because I carried it away with me when I went to Hammerfest to join the Cotopaxi, and ever since I have kept it sadly in my private pocket-book.
“Dear Ernest” (she had always called me Ernest since we had been children together, and she couldn’t leave it off even now when she was writing to let me know she no longer loved me), “Can you forgive me for what I am going to tell you? I thought I loved you till lately; but then I had never discovered what love really meant. I have discovered it now, and I find that, after all, I only liked you very sincerely. You will have guessed before this that I love somebody else, who loves me in return with all the strength of his whole nature. I have made a grievous mistake, which I know will render you terribly unhappy. But it is better so than to marry a man whom I do not really love with all my heart and soul and affection; better in the end, I am sure, for both of us. I am too much ashamed of myself to write more to you. Can you forgive me?
“Yours,
“Dora.”
I could not forgive her then, though I loved her too much to be angry; I was only broken-hearted — thoroughly stunned and broken-hearted. I can forgive her now, but she can never forgive me, Heaven help me!
I only wanted to get away, anywhere, anywhere, and forget all about it in a life of danger. So I asked for the post of surgeon to Sir Paxton Bateman’s Cotopaxi expedition a few weeks afterwards. They wanted a man who knew something about natural history and deep-sea dredging, and they took me on at once, on the recommendation of a well-known man of science!
The very day I joined the ship at Hammerfest, in August, I noticed immediately there was one man on board whose mere face and bearing and manner were at first sight excessively objectionable to me. He was a handsome young fellow enough — one Harry Lemarchant, who had been a planter in Queensland, and who, after being burned up with three years of tropical sunshine was anxious to cool himself apparently by a long winter of Arctic gloom. Handsome as he was, with his black moustache and big dark eyes rolling restlessly, I took an instantaneous dislike to his cruel thin lip and cold proud mouth the moment I looked upon him. If I had been wise, I would have drawn back from the expedition at once. It is a foolish thing to bind one’s self down to a voyage of that sort unless you are perfectly sure beforehand that you have at least no instinctive hatred of any one among your messmates in that long forced companionship. But I wasn’t wise, and I went on with him.
From the first moment, even before I had spoken to him, I disliked Lemarchant; very soon I grew to hate him. He seemed to me the most recklessly cruel and devilish creature (God forgive me that I should say it!) I had ever met with in my whole lifetime. On an Arctic expedition, a man’s true nature soon comes out — mine did certainly — and he lets his companions know more about his inner self in six weeks than they could possibly learn about him in years of intercourse under other circumstances. And the second night I was on board the Coto
paxi I learnt enough to make my blood run cold about Harry Lemarchant’s ideas and feelings.
We were all sitting on deck together, those of us who were not on duty, and listening to yarns from one another, as idle men will, when the conversation happened accidentally to turn on Queensland, and Lemarchant began to enlighten us about his own doings when he was in the colony. He boasted a great deal about his prowess as a disperser of the black fellows, which he seemed to consider a very noble sort of occupation. There was nobody in the colony, he said, who had ever dispersed so many blacks as he had; and he’d like to be back there, dispersing again, for, in the matter of sport, it beat kangaroo-hunting, or any other kind of shooting he had ever yet tried his hand at, all to pieces.
The second-lieutenant, Hepworth Paterson, a nice kind-hearted young Scotchman, looked up at him a little curiously, and said, “Why, what do you mean by dispersing, Lemarchant? Driving them off into the bush, I suppose: isn’t that it? Not much fun in that, that I can see, scattering a lot of poor helpless black naked savages.”