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CHAPTER XLIII
A RETROSPECT

Mrs. Davenport's visit to the Black Rock that day had not been one of mere curiosity, although nothing of import to her life was likely to result from it. Her career was over, if, indeed, it might be said ever to have begun.

In her younger days she had been abandoned by the only man she had ever loved, and wed to a man whom she never loved, whom she could not even esteem. She had sworn to love her husband; she had fairly tried, and wholly failed. To her husband she had been a blameless wife, an admirable companion. He had signified his approval of her conduct by leaving her his fortune. All her lifetime she had been too proud to care for money, and now she could not take it. Her father had prevented her marrying the good-for-nothing, beggarly scamp, Tom Blake, and forced her into the arms of the elderly, rich, excellent Mr. Louis Davenport. In those days she had been torn by tempests of love and hate, of aspirations and despairs, which no mortal eye had seen, no mortal ear had heard. In the solitude of her own room, and of the woods about her father's home, she had wept and stormed, and pitied herself with the broken-hearted self-pity of youth. She had cast herself against the bars that confined her, and wished that the fury which shook her might end her. She had prayed in vain for death. In answer to her passionate appeals for a shroud, heaven sent her a bridal veil. When Blake gave her up, she did not care whether she walked into an open grave or up to the marriage altar. She took no interest in herself: why should she take interest in any one else?

If Blake had asked her to fly with him then, she would have rushed into his arms with unspeakable eagerness and joy. But he sold his claim to her for a sum of money, and walked off with the cash in his pocket!

She then knew she was beautiful-one of the most beautiful women in the country. Many men had sought her before Blake asked her for her love. But up to his coming she was heart-whole. She had never seriously considered any man. She thought little of the sex, of the race, herself included. She took but a weak interest in this world, and, up to the advent of her only sweetheart, would have stepped out of it any day without much reluctance. She was a dreamer, and told herself the hero of her dreams was not human. Then came Tom Blake, and forth went her whole heart to him. She gave him all the love she had to give. She told him her life had hitherto been dull, without expectation, hope, love, sunlight; but that, as he was now with her, and would, in spite of all opposition, be beside her all her life, her soul was filled with ineffable hope, with delicious love, and the dream-romance of her life had taken substantial form, which would be a thousand times sweeter than she had ever dared to figure in her thoughts.

Her lover had no money. He had lost his patrimony. Her father had nothing to give her, and-

And what?

How was it to be? How could they live on nothing? She had been brought up a lady, but her father was hopelessly in debt-over head and ears in debt-and if he were ever so willing to do so, he was powerless to help them now, and could leave them nothing later.

True-most sadly true. But what of that? Was Tom not her lover? – and was he going to die of hunger? Did he not think he could get enough money somehow to keep him from falling by the way?

No doubt. But she had been tenderly, luxuriously brought up. He had no means of keeping her in any such position as she had all along in life enjoyed.

But he could get bread? Not literally only bread, but as much as they paid a gamekeeper or a groom?

Oh, nonsense! Of course he could. But gentlefolk could not live on the wages of a gamekeeper or a groom.

Did he love her?

Very much. But a gamekeeper got no more-

Than a roof, and clothes, and food, and-love. How much did he love her?

Oh, better than anything else in the world.

Well, then, let him take time and look around him, and get house, and clothes, and food such as gamekeepers and grooms may have. Those would be his contributions to their lives. She would supply the love.

But lady and gentleman could not live in such a way.

Why not? He was a gentleman, and she was a lady, and poverty could take none of these poor possessions away, any more than riches could create them. Let him get a gamekeeper's wages, and she would share them with him, and give him all her love, every day renewed.

But-

Ah! Then all she had to give was not worth as much to him as a gamekeeper valued his own wife at. Good-bye. The air was damp, and this wood was chilly.

Yes, it looked as if it were going to rain. She would not leave him thus. She would say good-bye to him, and give him one kiss at parting.

She would say good-bye, and he might have as many kisses as he cared for, provided she got soon away-for it was going to rain. No man had ever kissed her but him. Kisses did not mean anything, or words either. Why did he draw back? She told him he might kiss her if he chose. Any man might kiss her now. Kisses or words did not mean anything. Well, good-bye. Whither was he going? It would surely rain. Whither, did he say?

"To hell!"

"No, not there. You are a gentleman, and gentlemen do not go there; only gamekeepers and grooms-and women such as I."

She walked slowly away through the moist wood in the drizzling rain.

He felt sorely sorry and hurt, and ill-used by fate; but he had a gay disposition, and was no dreamer. Besides, he was a man of the world, and devilishly pressed for money just then; so he took Louis Davenport's thousand pounds and went away.

After a while she married the odd, rich, old bachelor, Louis Davenport (she did not care what man kissed her now), and he took her away to Kilcash House, and although he never laid any restraint upon her, she knew he did not care that she should go much abroad; so she lived almost wholly in the house, and rarely went out alone, and never had any guest at the place.

Mr. Davenport was at home most of the time. Now and then he went away for a few days, and always came back alone. There were no callers at the house, and she at first hoped she might die, and when she found her bodily health unimpaired, looked forward with a sense of relief to the time when she should go mad.

Still her mental health held out as well as her bodily health, and weeks grew into months, and found no change in her or her manner of life.

But there came a slight change in her home. During the first few weeks of her married life no stranger ever crossed the threshold of Kilcash House.

Now a tall, gaunt, humble-mannered man, of slow, soft speech and unpretending ways, was often with Mr. Davenport for a long time in the day, sometimes far into the night, The husband never took the wife into his business confidence, and the wife had no curiosity whatever. But from odd words she gathered that this young man, whose name was Michael Fahey, depended on her husband, and was helped and received by him because of some old ties between the families of both. She heard Fahey was staying at the village of Kilcash for his health, which was delicate, and that he was completely trustworthy and well-disposed towards Mr. Davenport.

All this reached Mrs. Davenport without leaving any impression whatever on her mind beyond the simplest value of the words. Her husband introduced Fahey to her as a man in whom he took a sincere interest, and whom he wished her to think well of. Whether he intended his wife should or should not treat the stranger as an equal, she did not know, she did not care.

For a time she took little heed of Fahey, but gradually it dawned upon her that in him she had a new admirer. She was accustomed to admiration, surfeited with it. Her love romance was at an end. She was married to a man for whom she did not care, from whom she did not shrink, to whom she owed no ill-will, who was in his poor, narrow, selfish way good and kind to her. If she had now any commerce with laughter, she would have laughed; but even the pathetically absurd experience she had had of love could not provoke a smile, and she simply took no heed, said no word, gave no sign. She did not feel angry, flattered, amused, even bored. She was past any of these emotions now. She would, she could be no more than indifferent.

Nothing could be more respectful than Fahey's manner. He did not regard her as human. He worshipped her afar off. He ate his heart in silence. He breathed no word, no sigh, gave wilfully no sign. But she saw his downcast or averted face, and she read the homage in furtive glances of his wondering eyes.

Then came the scene with the rose and her husband's absence abroad, followed by his return, and a brief history of the marvellous escape he had from that French bank, and his resolution that he would now settle down in life and speculate no more. She then had but a dim idea of what speculation meant, of what his business was.

Soon came a day of mystery and horror to her.

She was alone in the little sitting-room on the ground floor, purely her own. It faced west. Broad daylight flooded the garden before her, the rolling downs beyond.

Suddenly the light of the window by which she sat was obscured. The window was opened by Fahey. She motioned him to enter. By way of reply he made an impatient gesture.

"Is he in?" asked Fahey, breathlessly.

"No," she answered. "Can I do anything for you?"

She now saw he was in violent agitation, and physically distressed.

He continued:

"I have not a moment to spare. Say to him, 'All is well. All is safe for him.' I have arranged that."

"Safe!" she answered. "Does any danger threaten my husband?"

"Yes, while I am here-while I live."

"You-you would not hurt him?"

She remembered the look of admiration she had seen in this man's eyes, and rose and recoiled in horror.

"Give him my message. Repeat all I have said, except this: 'I am not doing it for his sake, or my own sake, but for yours. Good-bye.' Tell no one else of my being here; no one but him-not a soul."

In a moment he was gone.

The next thing she heard of him was that he had drowned himself in the hideous Puffing Hole.

At first she had been inclined to think Fahey's words referred solely to his feelings towards her; but when she learned he had drowned himself she doubted this. Against what was her husband secure? To say he was secure against Fahey's admiration for her would be the height of gratuitous absurdity. She cared no more for the young man than for any misty figure in a fable. He must be mad; yes, that was it. That supposition made all simple-explained everything.

It was night when her husband returned. She, remembering Fahey's caution, and bearing in mind that walls have ears, went to the gate of the grounds, and there met Davenport. He had heard of Fahey's fate. It was dark-pitch dark-when she gave him the message with which she had been charged.

"Poor Michael!" her husband said-"poor Michael! Unfortunate fellow!"

He said no more then, and rarely spoke of the man afterwards. Davenport was not a communicative man, and there was nothing noteworthy in his silence.

After her husband's death she went through his papers, and found evidence of a much closer intimacy between Fahey and him than she had till then suspected. There was no clear evidence in these documents. They were partly in her husband's handwriting, partly in Fahey's. There was an air of mystery in them, and she was certain many passages of them were figurative. But one dreadful secret she learned from them beyond all doubt: Louis Davenport had not come by his money fairly, and Fahey was an accomplice in his schemes. When leaving London for the Continent, she had carried those papers with her unread. There she opened them, with a view to destroying them, and burned them in terrified haste. She had never suspected her husband of dishonest actions. Now she felt perfectly sure he had come by his money foully. How, she did not know. The man had been her husband, and she would shield his memory from shame; but she would touch none of his money, let who would have it, when she got back to London.

She was convinced Fahey had not thrown himself into the Puffing Hole for love of her, or because he was insane, but solely and simply because he and her husband were mixed up in crimes of some kind, and Fahey preferred death to discovery on his own part, and on her part too; for she would suffer from the exposure of her husband, and Fahey had nothing to expect from her. There was still a want of clearness and precision about the whole affair. But on her way back from France, she had no doubt her theory was right in the main.

Before the inquest she had been in horror of revealing in court the history of the treatment she had received at the hands of Blake, and the bare notion that she, being then a married woman, had driven this man Fahey in a frenzy of self-sacrifice or devotion to drown himself, filled her mind with thoughts of shame and anguish, the contemplation of which nearly took away her own reason. She had contemplated making away with herself rather than face the ordeal of the court. She had been a recluse for years, and haughty in her consciousness of unblameableness all her life.

On her return to London she heard the rumour of this apparition at the Puffing Hole. Phelan had told of the apparition to several people in Kilbarry. The news of it had got into the local papers, and London papers copied the account. No name was given but Fahey's, and attached to his name was a brief history of Fahey's disappearance years ago.

Upon these two discoveries she resolved to go to Ireland and renounce all claim to the fortune her husband had left her. There could no longer be in her mind any doubt that her husband's fortune, or a portion of it, had been obtained by fraud. At Paulton's she met O'Brien, who, on the way to Ireland, told her he himself had seen Fahey.

She was now quite sure Fahey was still alive. The horrible suspicion had taken hold of her mind that Fahey had, after keeping in hiding for years, poisoned her husband for her sake! In the light of her belief that Fahey still lived, the theory that her husband had poisoned himself while of unsound mind was absurd to her.

Before setting out this day for the Black Rock she opened a drawer of her late husband's, took out a revolver she knew to be loaded, and dropped it into her pocket.

When she left the edge of the Black Rock she walked carefully to the cliff and ascended by the path.

When she reached the level of the downs she gazed round.

She started. A loud explosion rose from beneath her feet. It was the gunfire of the boat and the tremendous reverberations from the caves and cliffs.

She looked round in alarm. A minute ago she had been alone. Now Michael Fahey stood by her side!

CHAPTER XLIV
A LAST APPEAL

"Michael Fahey! Michael Fahey!" cried Mrs. Davenport, slowly. "Am I awake and sane?"

"Both," answered he, gently. "You are awake and sane, and I am Fahey, and alive. Nothing can be more incredible; but it is as I say, Mrs. Davenport. You will not betray me? You will not be unmerciful to me? Remember, I never meant to do you harm."

She shrank back from him. Did this man, whose hands were reddened with her husband's blood, dare to plead to her for mercy. "Betray you! What do you mean? Do you call it betraying you to give you into the hands of justice? You will gain nothing by threats. I am not afraid of you; and I am not defenceless, even though I am alone." She moved further off, and pressed the revolver in her hand.

He seemed dejected rather than alarmed. "What good can it do you? When I disappeared years ago, it was for the good of your husband-" He held out his hands appealingly to her.

Her tone and attitude were firm, as she interrupted him. "You disappeared years ago for the good of my husband, and reappear for his death-for his murder! I can have no more words with you. I shall certainly not shield you from the consequences of your crime."

"If you only knew me as well as you might-if you could only understand how I felt that day I was hunted like a beast, you could not believe I would willingly do anything to annoy, much less to harm you… Mrs. Davenport," he burst out, vehemently, "I would have died then for you: I will die now if you bid me-die for that second rose."

She looked at him with a glance of loathing, and gathered herself together as though she felt contaminated by contact with the air he breathed.

"Go away at once. Your audacity is loathsome. Has it come to this with me, that I must bandy words with such a monster?"

"Mrs. Davenport," said he, in a tone of expostulation, "I am very far from saying I am blameless. I have committed crimes for which the punishment would be great, but I was not alone in my crimes. I did not invent them."

"And who invented the atrocious crime of last February? Who was in our house in Dulwich that night?"

"I read the case, and saw that Mr. Thomas Blake was at your house on that night."

"And where were you?"

"In Brussels. Good heavens! – you cannot imagine I had anything to do with that awful night! The idea is too monstrous to resent-to think of for a moment. I swear to you I was in Brussels at the time, and that I never did, or thought of doing, any injury to your husband. I loved him well; but I loved some one else better-better than all the world besides."

He did not look at her, but kept his eyes fixed on the sea.

She moved as if to go.

He heard the motion, and went to her and stood between her and the house.

"I will not say another word about myself; but hear me out. If I have nothing to hope for, let me go away in the belief I am not unjustly suspected by you of hurting your husband. I never cared much for my life. Let me feel that when I die I shall not be worse in your eyes than I deserve to be. Mrs. Davenport, hear me."

He entreated her with his voice, with his eyes, with his bent body, with his outstretched hands.

Without speaking, she gave him to understand he might go on.

"I knew Mr. Davenport years before I saw you. I had business connections with him which would not bear the light. You must have heard or guessed something of what we have been busy about?"

She made no sign-said nothing.

"I was a steel engraver. Now and then he wanted plates done. I did the plates for him."

"What kind of plates?"

She betrayed no emotion of any kind. Her voice was as calm as though she was asking an ordinary question.

"You had better not know. It would do you no good to know. But do you believe me that I was hundreds of miles away from London that awful night?"

"And what brought you back to this place now?"

"I came back-because you are free!"

She made a gesture of impatience and dissent.

"You do not mean to say you will continue your suspicion in the face of my denial, in the face of my horror at the mere thought?"

"But why should I take your unsupported word? If you are innocent, why were you so horrified at the mere thought of inquiry?"

"But, good heavens! Mrs. Davenport, you did not for a moment imagine I was afraid of inquiry into anything which occurred in February? I thought the inquiry to which you referred had reference to some old transactions between me and Mr. Davenport?"

"What were these transactions?"

"I beg of you not to ask. What good can it do to go into matters so far back? You would find my answers of no advantage to you."

"Were they of a business character?"

"Purely of a business character, I assure you."

"And they would not bear the light?"

"Not with advantage to me."

"Or to my husband?"

"Or with advantage to your late husband."

"And to you, and to you alone the secret of these transactions is now known?"

"To me, and to me alone."

She paused in thought. She held up her hand to bespeak his silence. After a few moments' pause, she said:

"In the course of these transactions injury was done to some one? Was that not so?"

"You are asking too much. Neither your happiness nor your fortune could be served by my answering your questions. I refuse to answer."

With a gesture, she declined to be satisfied with this treatment.

"I have no fortune and no happiness. Once you told me you would do anything I requested of you if I gave you a rose. There are no roses now. In all likelihood there will be no more roses while I live-"

"While you live!"

"Let me go on. I have not much to say. You could not prize a rose for its intrinsic value?"

"No; but for two other considerations-for the fact that it had once been yours, and for what the gift of it from you to me might signify."

"If I gave you a rose now it could signify nothing-mind, absolutely nothing. But if the mere fact that it belonged to me would make anything valuable in your eyes, I will give you my glove, or my bracelet, or this for your secret;" and she drew from her pocket the revolver and pointed it at him.

He started towards her at the sight of the weapon, crying angrily:

"What do you mean by carrying that? Great heavens, it cannot be that you came out here with the intention of committing suicide!"

He looked at her in horror.

"No," she answered quietly-"but with the intention of defending myself against you. I thought if I should meet you, and you had murdered my husband, and knew from me I had guessed it, that I might need this. But I have no evidence you did murder him, and I see no sign of guilt in you. Will you take it, or the bracelet, or the glove, or all three, and tell me about those transactions in which my husband was engaged with you?"

"It is not enough for my secret," he said.

"What more do you want? My purse?"

She put those questions in a placid tone, and showed no impatience or scorn.

"No," he said, shaking with conflicting passions, "I do not want your purse. If I wanted money, I could have had as much as any man could care for out of your husband's purse. I have enough for myself. You cured me of the love of money, and put another love in its place. Give me your hand, or fire."

She raised her hand quickly, and flung the revolver from her over the cliff. It fell on the Black Rock beneath. The fall was followed by a long silence on both sides.

"I make one last appeal to you," she cried in soft, supplicating tones-"one last appeal. I do not purpose keeping a penny of the money-not one farthing. Some papers which fell accidentally into my hands after my husband's death convinced me he came by his money dishonestly. He himself told me you had been of great service to him, and that your actions would not bear the light. Give me, for pity's sake, a chance of restoring this money to those who ought to have it. I did think of dying and shielding his memory, for if I died no one could be surprised at my leaving the wretched money to charities. But it would be better still to give what remains of the money to the rightful owners. Will you tell me who they are?"

She caught his hand in hers and drew it towards her.

He seized hers eagerly, and held it.

"I will for this," he whispered. "We can give all his money back if you will."

She snatched her hand away.

"That is impossible, sir. I have told you so finally."

She essayed to pass by him once more.

"Only a minute. I cannot live openly in this country; I must go abroad. I have been concealed close to this place in the hope of meeting you. I may never see you again. Do not go for a minute. Your husband was always good and loyal to me, and I was always loyal to him. He dealt honourably with me in money matters. It was necessary for us to have a hiding-place near this, and I found it. Just before I disappeared he made up his mind to abandon business of all kinds. He had enough of money, and so had I-though of course he was a rich man compared with me. Well, as you know, I disappeared. I went, no matter where. I disappeared because I had no longer any business here, and because of another reason to which I will not again refer. That is all I have to say, except that I left documents which would be intelligible to your husband-they contained the clue to our hiding-place should I die or your husband want it-in Mr. John O'Hanlon's hands for Mr. Davenport and you. Nothing, I suppose, ever reached you about them?"

"No."

"That, then, is all I have to say."

"You will tell me no more? Give me no key?"

"Mr. Davenport left you his money. Why should I help you to get rid of it? Good-bye."

He turned eastward, went along the cliff, and she moved off slowly in the direction of Kilcash House.