Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  He seemed satisfied, and taking out a note-case laid on the table a little pile of notes. “There is your money,” he said, counting them over with reluctant fingers. “Be good enough to put the will and envelope back into the cupboard. To-morrow you will oblige me by rediscovering it — you can manage that, no doubt — and giving information at once to Messrs. Duggan and Poole, or to Mrs. Wigram, as you please. Now,” he continued, when I had obeyed him, “will you be good enough to ask the servants to tell Mrs. Wigram that I am waiting?”

  There was a slight noise behind us. “I am here,” some one said. I am sure that we both jumped at the sound, for though I did not look that way, I knew that the voice was Mrs. Wigram’s, and that she was in the room. “I have come to tell you, Lord Wetherby,” she went on, “that I have an engagement at twelve. Do I understand that you are ready? If so, I will summon Mrs. Williams.”

  “The papers are ready for signature,” the peer answered, betraying some confusion, “and I am ready to sign. I shall be glad to have the matter settled as agreed.” Then he turned to me, where I had fallen back to the end of the room. “Be good enough to ring the bell if Mrs. Wigram permit it,” he said.

  As I moved to the fireplace to do so, I was conscious that the lady was regarding me with surprise. But when I had regained my position and looked towards her, she was standing near the window gazing steadily into the square, an expression of disdain rendered by face and figure. Shall I confess that it was a joy to me to see her head so high, and to read even in the outline of her form a contempt which I, and I only, knew to be so justly based? For myself, I leant against the edge of the screen by the door, and perhaps my hundred pounds lay heavily on my heart. As for him, he fidgeted with his papers, although they were all in order. He was visibly impatient to get his bit of knavery accomplished. Oh! he was a worthy man! And Welshman!

  “Perhaps,” he presently suggested, for the sake of saying something, “while your servant is coming, you will read the agreement, Mrs. Wigram. It is very short, and, as you know, your solicitors have seen it in the draft.”

  She bowed, and took the paper negligently. She read some way down the first sheet with a smile, half careless, half contemptuous. Then I saw her stop — she had turned her back to the window to obtain more light — and dwell on a particular sentence. I saw — God! I had forgotten the handwriting! I saw her eyes grow large, and fear leap into them, as she grasped the paper with her other hand, and stepped nearer to the peer’s side. “Who?” she cried. “Who wrote this? Tell me! Do you hear? Tell me quickly! Who wrote this?”

  He was nervous on his own account, wrapt in his own piece of scheming, and obtuse.

  “I wrote it,” he said, with maddening complacency. He put up his glasses and glanced at the top of the page she held out to him. “I wrote it myself, and I can assure you that it is quite right, and a faithful copy. You do not think — —”

  “Think! Think! no! no. This, I mean! Who wrote this?” she repeated, her voice hysterical with excitement. “This? This?”

  He was confounded by her vehemence, as well as hampered by his evil conscience.

  “The clerk, Mrs. Wigram, the clerk,” he said petulantly, still in his fog of selfishness. “The clerk from Messrs. Duggan and Poole’s.”

  “Where is he?” she cried breathlessly. I think she did not believe him.

  “Where is he?” he repeated in querulous surprise. “Why, here, of course; where should he be, madam? He will witness my signature.”

  It was little of signatures I recked at that moment. I was praying to Heaven that my folly might be forgiven me; and that my lightly planned vengeance might not fall on my own head. “Joy does not kill,” I said to myself, repeating it over and over again, and clinging to it desperately. “Joy does not kill!” But oh! was it true? in face of that white-lipped woman!

  “Here!” She did not say more, but she gazed at me with dazed eyes, she raised her hand and beckoned to me. And I had no choice but to obey; to go nearer to her, out into the light.

  “Mrs. Wigram,” I said hoarsely, my voice sounding to me as a whisper, “I have news of your late — of your husband. It is good news.”

  “Good news?” Did she faintly echo my words? or, as her face from which all colour had passed peered into mine, and searched it in infinite hope and infinite fear, did our two minds speak without need of physical lips? “Good news?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “He is alive. The Indians did not — —”

  “Alfred!” Her cry rang through the room, and with it I caught her in my arms as she fell. Beard and long hair, and scar and sunburn, and strange dress — these which had deceived others were no disguise to her — my wife. I bore her gently to the couch, and hung over her in a new paroxysm of fear. “A doctor! Quick! A doctor!” I cried to Mrs. Williams, who was already kneeling beside her. “Do not tell me,” I added piteously, “that I have killed her?”

  “No! no! no!” the good woman answered, the tears running down her face. “Joy does not kill!”

  An hour later this fear had been lifted from me, and I was walking up and down the library alone with my thankfulness; glad to be alone, yet more glad, more thankful still, when John came in with a beaming face. “You have come to tell me — —” I cried, pleased that the tidings had come by his lips— “to go to her? That she will see me?”

  “Her ladyship is sitting up,” he replied.

  “And Lord Wetherby?” I asked, pausing at the door to put the question. “He left the house at once?’

  “Yes, my lord, Mr. Wigram has been gone some time.”

  THE END

  The Short Stories

  Weyman’s home, Plas Llanrhydd, in Ruthin, where he lived for 33 years, until his death in 1928

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  THE KING’S STRATAGEM.

  THE BODY-BIRDS OF COURT.

  IN CUPID’S TOILS.

  HER STORY.

  HIS STORY.

  THE DRIFT OF FATE.

  A BLORE MANOR EPISODE.

  THE FATAL LETTER.

  THE SNOWBALL.

  FLORE

  CRILLON’S STAKE.

  FOR THE CAUSE

  THE KING’S STRATAGEM

  THE HOUSE ON THE WALL

  HUNT, THE OWLER

  THE TWO PAGES

  THE DIARY OF A STATESMAN

  KING TERROR. A DAUGHTER OF THE GIRONDE

  IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!

  LADY BETTY’S INDISCRETION

  THE SURGEON’S GUEST

  THE COLONEL’S BOY

  A GOOD MAN’S DILEMMA

  BAB

  JOANNA’S BRACELET

  THE BODY-BIRDS OF COURT

  THE VICAR’S SECRET

  THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN

  KING PEPIN AND SWEET CLIVE.

  FAMILY PORTRAITS.

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  A BLORE MANOR EPISODE.

  A GOOD MAN’S DILEMMA

  BAB

  CRILLON’S STAKE.

  FAMILY PORTRAITS.

  FLORE

  FOR THE CAUSE

  HER STORY.

  HIS STORY.

  HUNT, THE OWLER

  IN CUPID’S TOILS.

  IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!

  JOANNA’S BRACELET

  KING PEPIN AND SWEET CLIVE.

  KING TERROR. A DAUGHTER OF THE GIRONDE

  LADY BETTY’S INDISCRETION

  THE BODY-BIRDS OF COURT

  THE BODY-BIRDS OF COURT.

  THE COLONEL’S BOY

  THE DIARY OF A STATESMAN

  THE DRIFT OF FATE.

  THE FATAL LETTER.

  THE HOUSE ON THE WALL

  THE KING’S STRATAGEM.

  THE KING’S STRATAGEM

  THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN

  THE SNOWBALL.

  THE SURGEON’S GUEST

  THE TWO PAGES

  THE VICAR’S SECRET

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  We are proud
to present a listing of our complete catalogue of English titles, with new titles being added every month. Buying direct from our website means you can make great savings and take advantage of our instant Updates service. You can even purchase an entire series (Super Set) at a special discounted price.

  Only from our website can readers purchase the special Parts Edition of our Complete Works titles. When you buy a Parts Edition, you will receive a folder of your chosen author’s works, with each novel, play, poetry collection, non-fiction book and more divided into its own special volume. This allows you to read individual novels etc. and to know precisely where you are in an eBook. For more information, please visit our Parts Edition page.

  Series One

  Anton Chekhov

  Charles Dickens

  D.H. Lawrence

  Dickensiana Volume I

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  George Eliot

  H. G. Wells

  Henry James

  Ivan Turgenev

  Jack London

  James Joyce

  Jane Austen

  Joseph Conrad

  Leo Tolstoy

  Louisa May Alcott

  Mark Twain

  Oscar Wilde

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sir Walter Scott

  The Brontës

  Thomas Hardy

  Virginia Woolf

  Wilkie Collins

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Series Two

  Alexander Pushkin

  Alexandre Dumas (English)

  Andrew Lang

  Anthony Trollope

  Bram Stoker

  Christopher Marlowe

  Daniel Defoe

  Edith Wharton

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  G. K. Chesterton

  Gustave Flaubert (English)

  H. Rider Haggard

  Herman Melville

  Honoré de Balzac (English)

  J. W. von Goethe (English)

  Jules Verne

  L. Frank Baum

  Lewis Carroll

  Marcel Proust (English)

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Nikolai Gogol

  O. Henry

  Rudyard Kipling

  Tobias Smollett

  Victor Hugo

  William Shakespeare

  Series Three

  Ambrose Bierce

  Ann Radcliffe

  Ben Jonson

  Charles Lever

  Émile Zola

  Ford Madox Ford

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  George Gissing

  George Orwell

  Guy de Maupassant

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Henrik Ibsen

  Henry David Thoreau

  Henry Fielding

  J. M. Barrie

  James Fenimore Cooper

  John Buchan

  John Galsworthy

  Jonathan Swift

  Kate Chopin

  Katherine Mansfield

  L. M. Montgomery

  Laurence Sterne

  Mary Shelley

  Sheridan Le Fanu

  Washington Irving

  Series Four

  Arnold Bennett

  Arthur Machen

  Beatrix Potter

  Bret Harte

  Captain Frederick Marryat

  Charles Kingsley

  Charles Reade

  G. A. Henty

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Edgar Wallace

  E. M. Forster

  E. Nesbit

  George Meredith

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Jerome K. Jerome

  John Ruskin

  Maria Edgeworth

  M. E. Braddon

  Miguel de Cervantes

  M. R. James

  R. M. Ballantyne

  Robert E. Howard

  Samuel Johnson

  Stendhal

  Stephen Crane

  Zane Grey

  Series Five

  Algernon Blackwood

  Anatole France

  Beaumont and Fletcher

  Charles Darwin

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  Edward Gibbon

  E. F. Benson

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  George Bernard Shaw

  George MacDonald

  Hilaire Belloc

  John Bunyan

  John Webster

  Margaret Oliphant

  Maxim Gorky

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Radclyffe Hall

  Robert W. Chambers

  Samuel Butler

  Samuel Richardson

  Sir Thomas Malory

  Thomas Carlyle

  William Harrison Ainsworth

  William Dean Howells

  William Morris

  Series Six

  Anthony Hope

  Aphra Behn

  Arthur Morrison

  Baroness Emma Orczy

  Captain Mayne Reid

  Charlotte M. Yonge

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  E. W. Hornung

  Ellen Wood

  Frances Burney

  Frank Norris

  Frank R. Stockton

  Hall Caine

  Horace Walpole

  One Thousand and One Nights

  R. Austin Freeman

  Rafael Sabatini

  Saki

  Samuel Pepys

  Sir Issac Newton

  Stanley J. Weyman

  Thomas De Quincey

  Thomas Middleton

  Voltaire

  William Hazlitt

  William Hope Hodgson

  Ancient Classics

  Aeschylus

  Ammianus Marcellinus

  Apollodorus

  Apuleius

  Apollonius of Rhodes

  Aristophanes

  Aristotle

  Arrian

  Bede

  Cassius Dio

  Catullus

  Cicero

  Demosthenes

  Diodorus Siculus

  Diogenes Laërtius

  Euripides

  Frontius

  Herodotus

  Hesiod

  Hippocrates

  Homer

  Horace

  Josephus

  Julius Caesar

  Juvenal

  Livy

  Longus

  Lucan

  Lucian

  Lucretius

  Marcus Aurelius

  Martial

  Nonnus

  Ovid

  Pausanias

  Petronius

  Pindar

  Plato

  Pliny the Elder

  Pliny the Younger

  Plotinus

  Plutarch

  Polybius

  Propertius

  Quintus Smyrnaeus

  Sallust

  Sappho

  Seneca the Younger

  Sophocles

  Statius

  Strabo

  Suetonius

  Tacitus

  Terence

  Theocritus

  Thucydides

  Tibullus

  Virgil

  Xenophon

  Delphi Poets Series

  A. E. Housman

  Alexander Pope

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Andrew Marvell

  Beowulf

  Charlotte Smith

  Christina Rossetti

  D. H Lawrence (poetry)

  Dante Alighieri (English)

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Delphi Poetry Anthology

  Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)

  Edmund Spenser

  Edward Lear

  Edward Thomas

  Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Emily Dickinson />
  Ezra Pound

  Friedrich Schiller (English)

  George Herbert

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Isaac Rosenberg

  Johan Ludvig Runeberg

  John Clare

  John Donne

  John Dryden

  John Keats

  John Milton

  John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

  Lord Byron

  Ludovico Ariosto

  Luís de Camões

  Matthew Arnold

  Michael Drayton

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Robert Browning

  Robert Burns

  Robert Frost

  Robert Southey

  Rumi

  Rupert Brooke

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Sir Philip Sidney

  Sir Thomas Wyatt

  Sir Walter Raleigh

  Thomas Chatterton

  Thomas Gray

  Thomas Hardy (poetry)

  Thomas Hood

  T. S. Eliot

  W. B. Yeats

  Walt Whitman

  Wilfred Owen

  William Blake

  William Cowper

  William Wordsworth

  Masters of Art

  Caravaggio

  Claude Monet

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Diego Velázquez

  Eugène Delacroix

  Gustav Klimt

  J. M. W. Turner

  Johannes Vermeer

  John Constable

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Michelangelo

  Paul Cézanne

  Paul Klee

  Peter Paul Rubens

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Sandro Botticelli

  Raphael

  Rembrandt van Rijn

  Titian

  Vincent van Gogh

  Wassily Kandinsky

  www.delphiclassics.com

  Is there an author or artist you would like to see in a series? Contact us at sales@delphiclassics.com (or via the social network links below) and let us know!

  Be the first to learn of new releases and special offers:

  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/delphiebooks

  Follow our Tweets: https://twitter.com/delphiclassics

  Explore our exciting boards at Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/delphiclassics/

  St. Meugans’ Cemetery, Ruthin — Weyman’s final resting place

  Weyman’s grave