CHAPTER X
GREY REMEMBERS
Grey sat in his breakfast-room turning over his letters. Suddenly his eyes fell on one and remained fixed on it.
"At last," he thought, "at last I am to hear something of her, of my poor old mother. Whatever this tells me is all I am likely ever to know of her until I die. To-night I cut off for ever my connection with the career of Wat Grey. To-day Wat Grey departs this life of Daneford."
He broke the envelope and found these unsigned, undated words:
"Through the kindness of some honest friends of your honest father I am now in a London almshouse, so I am fully provided for. I think it only right you should know this. I have seen by the papers that Sir William Midharst will, the morning you get this, marry Miss Midharst. I handed that lady all I had in the world to the last penny. I do not know how you have evaded discovery so long. But follow my example, and give back to the robbed all you have left in the world. These are my last words to you."
He put down the letter, sighed, and muttered:
"An ungracious final leave-taking, mother, an ungracious farewell. The giving back forms no part of my plan. Sir William would not touch a penny. You yourself will relent and be sorrowful when you hear of this day's events, for they will get into the papers as well as the marriage of Sir William. The newspapers will have the marriage paragraph, and then one headed, 'Shocking Death of Mr. Henry Walter Grey.'
"No, mother, I must save my name and save my reputation, and both can be best preserved by sacrificing Wat Grey. Wat Grey must go to keep his name good. There is no need he should really die. It will be quite enough if he change his habitation and his name.
"I am not strong enough to fight it out any longer. I cannot leave this house as it is, and this house is killing me. It is killing me slowly with its awful sights and sounds and memories. I must, I will fly. This very night I shall leave it for ever, and I shall leave it incapable of telling any tales.
"At one blow I shall destroy its sights, and its sounds, and its memories, and cut myself off from it, Daneford, and the past for ever. I shall get rid of all the burden I bear. I shall break away from all my old associations, all things to remind me of the past. With twenty thousand pounds in my pocket, and the whole breadth of sunny France between me and this place, I shall be at ease. They may charge my memory with the crime of theft, but I shall leave evidence of my innocence behind me. Farleg may come back and accuse my name of murder; but he will have neither Wat Grey nor evidence against Wat Grey, for Wat Grey and the evidence against him will disappear together, and I will live a quiet life beyond the Alps or the Pyrenees."
He leant back in his chair and reviewed his preparations with the deliberate complaisance of one whose plans were unassailable.
"Yes, everything so far is arranged. I have the money. I have the letter written to Aldridge, saying I enclose Sir William's acknowledgment for the amount of Consols converted into cash at his request, and handed to him on this the day of his wedding with Miss Midharst. I also tell Aldridge I send him this to put in the strong-room, as I shall not go into town to-morrow, but stay at home attending to some final business connected with the Midharst affairs. I have paid all the small legacies, and made investments to yield the annuities. For two months I have been sleeping in the tower-room, so that no one will expect me to sleep anywhere else. I have got that rope-ladder ready to hook on the bar of the back window, and the piece of twine rove through the hook to unship the ladder when I am down safe on the ground. Once I am on the ground I start on my way to France, and I walk to-night at the burial of the past. There can be no hitch. Things must run smooth. To-morrow I shall be free! Free!"
He stood up and looked around him triumphantly. Suddenly his face grew pale and expressionless. He pressed his hand to his forehead, his lips opened feebly, and he muttered:
"I have forgotten something! I have forgotten something!"
He dropped down in his chair, and for a few minutes his face did not alter. All at once the natural look came back. He rose again, shook himself briskly, and said:
"Another of those half-fainting fits I have been free from so long. They were worst when my mind was most tortured. Of late I have been almost free from them. They will disappear altogether when I get south, and to-morrow at this hour I shall be out of bondage."
It was now time to set out for the Castle. It had been arranged that he should attend and give away the bride. "If I am not present," said the banker to Sir William, "there will be no end of remarks made, and if I do attend it will be as Miss Midharst's guardian, in which capacity, there being no relative, I ought to give away the bride." And Sir William, seeing no harm in this, and wanting to avert comment as much as possible, consented.
A full year had not elapsed since the death of Sir Alexander, but several considerations beyond the impatience of the baronet made it desirable the wedding should take place at once.
Maud was alone in the world and had no protector but him. She was in mourning, and objected to go to London and be brought out so soon after her father's death. The Castle was lonely and dreary. They were engaged to be married, and it could make no difference to anyone, and could be no offence against the puny laws of society, if they got married within the year and lived quietly at the Castle until the time of mourning had passed. Then they could go to London. They should know very few people at first, but that would soon be altered.
So the marriage had been fixed to take place on Wednesday the 8th of August, 1877.
The wedding was to be strictly private. No one was to be present but Mrs. Grant and Mr. Grey. The ceremony was to be performed by the rector, and the tenants were informed that the bride and bridegroom desired no demonstration of any kind.
After the ceremony Sir William and Lady Midharst were to return to the Castle, where no unusual preparation would be made to receive them.
This simple programme was carried out without let or accident. Grey and the baronet drove from Daneford, Maud and Mrs. Grant from the Castle, to the quiet country church, where the rector performed the short service by request. In the vestry Sir William handed Grey an envelope containing something. He said, "This is it, Grey." No more.
From the church the four drove back to Island Ferry. Here Grey bade the party good-bye. Sir William in saying good-bye added, under his breath, so that no one but Grey heard him, "for ever." Grey echoes the "for ever" in his heart, but took no further notice of the supplement to the farewell.
The banker then drove back to the Manor House.
"My last visit to the Castle," he thought, as he swept up the carriage-drive. "My last entry into the Manor House. To-day I bid a life-long adieu to the Weird Sisters. I am not sorry. I am over weary and want rest. I have allowed nothing to stand between me and ambition. I have lost the game and now I want only peace. What I have done cannot be undone. In a new climate, among new people, the past, the Weird Sisters, the Towers of Silence, and the story of my tower will fade into the background, and the things of the seventeenth of August will become as vague and shadowy to my mind as the story of the Spanish lady whose bones were found on the top of the tower in Warfinger Castle."
He had many things to arrange at the Manor that day, and had determined not to go to the Bank. He opened the envelope Sir William had given him, and found in it what he had been promised: a receipt in full for claims upon him in settlement of Miss Midharst's money. This receipt he put into the letter he had ready written for Aldridge and posted it. There had been trouble about the marriage settlement, but as Grey was guardian, and the baronet knew all about the money, things had gone smoothly in the end.
He spent most of the remainder of the day in the library looking through various books and accounts, but having slight interest in them. The day before a girl marries she cannot take a very lively interest in the gardener's work at her father's house. She is going to wear another name, break from old associations, and take up her residence in a new home. By to-morrow Grey would have changed his name, broken from old associations, and taken up his residence in a new home.
Day grew on and at last dinner-hour arrived. He was too much excited to eat; he played with a cutlet, and drank three glasses of marvellous brown sherry for which he was famous. After dinner, although he rarely touched spirits, he had a glass of brandy-and-water with his cigar.
At eight o'clock he rang for coffee. When James came with it he said: "I am going to bed soon. I shall not require you or any of the others again to-night. I shall want breakfast half an hour earlier than usual in the morning, at eight o'clock. Call me at five minutes to seven. I am not going to town to-morrow, but shall stay at home all day. Good-night."
Grey waited a few minutes to give James time to get out of hearing. Then he rose, and took his way to the room he had slept in of late, the first floor of the Tower of Silence.
It was now half-past eight.
"In half an hour I shall be free," he exclaimed rapturously to himself, as he turned up the gas.
He shook the thick shutters of the window to ascertain that they were secure. He lit a candle, went up those hideous stairs to the first floor, bolted the shutters on the front window there and the shutters on the landing window.
"I do not want the neighbours to see it too soon or they might come and rescue me." He chuckled at the idea of being rescued, and descended to the storey beneath. On the landing here the window stood open. He looked out. All was still below. None of his household had ever occasion to go to the rear of the house after nightfall. No stranger could approach the house at the rear unless by passing through that hideous grove.
The night was calm and dark and still. "Nothing could be better," thought Grey, as he fixed the hooks of a ladder of ropes to an iron bar of the small balcony, and ascertained that the twine by which these hooks were to be unshipped ran freely through the ring screwed into the window-frame.
"All's well," he thought. "Now be quick!"
Going back again into the first-floor room, he rapidly took off his black frock-coat, light trousers, and waistcoat, and put on a tight-fitting corduroy suit, a pair of false whiskers and moustaches, and a low round hat.
When this was done he looked in the glass, and started back with a shout. "By Jove!" cried he, after a moment; "I thought all was lost. I thought my own reflection was another man's! I am already another man. I feel it in every fibre. No one who knew me, and thinks I am dead, would recognise me. I might walk down the streets of Daneford to-morrow, and talk about my own sad end to my most intimate friend, and he would not recognise me. The Daneford Bank would open an account for me to-morrow in the name of Grey, and observe no likeness between their new customer and their old master. I am a new man already. I feel new blood in all my veins, new sinews in all my limbs; the nightmare of the past is vanishing; I shall sleep now of nights, and whistle once more while I dress of mornings. Ten thousand times better this feeling than all the pomp my ambition longed for with the canker and the care."
He took from the pocket of the coat he had removed a small packet, thinking: "All I want is the money. Twenty thousand pounds will be a large fortune in either Spain or Italy."
He threw the clothes he had worn on the bed, opened the cupboard, and took out one after another four cans. Two of these he emptied over his own bed, one on the floor and furniture, and one on the landing and first flight of the stairs. Turpentine!
He then threw the four cans on the bed, wrenched off the gas-brackets and set fire to the gas at the ends of the broken pipes.
He cast one hasty glance round.
"All right!"
He struck a match and held it to the saturated bed.
A little spirt of flame shot out of the counterpane to the match. The spirt of flame then fell back and spread slowly until it formed a spire as large as a pine-cone.
Grey backed to the door and seized the handle.
From that cone flashed twenty javelins of light this way and that. The air of the room sobbed, and a solid mass of white flame stood up over that bed.
Swiftly opening the door Grey sprang out, and shut the door leading to the landing. A second he stood there, threw up his hands, and cried in a husky voice:
"Saved!"
He looked out of the window.
"All right."
He put his hand on the iron bar.
"Quite firm."
Suddenly he drew back. Had he seen anyone below?
No.
He put his hand on his breast.
"The money is here," he whispered to himself, "but I have forgotten something. What is it?" A few seconds passed and he yelled: "I know! I know! What I forgot is on the roof."
With furious speed he dashed up the noisome stairs.
As he did so there arose a soft flapping sound at the door on the landing, and a lazy serpent of white flame crawled across the landing and climbed up the stairs.
A sweetheart of one of the maid-servants, leaving the Manor House by the side door at half-past nine, saw fire issuing from the window on the first floor of the tower, ran back to the servants' hall, and gave the alarm.
By that time the fire raged madly, rioting on the parched woodwork of the staircase and the dry joists and planks of the floors. The staircase was a cavern of white flame. In front of the glare rushed a fierce column of black suffocating smoke. Twice already had a man tried to force his way down, and twice had he been driven back before the scalding vapour. Now he crouched on the roof in the corner furthest from the tank.
By ten a small crowd had assembled and he could hear men at work. The roof was getting hot; now and then the opening from the staircase panted forth a cloud of sparks.
"If they see me they will try to save me. They will come here, find out all, and save me – for the gallows. Better the fire."
He crouched closer and held his breath lest they should hear him breathe. He had no memory of how he came to that roof. He must have rushed there in one of those unconscious moments.
At half-past ten red tongues began to issue from the opening in the roof.
By a quarter to eleven the weight of the tank told on the sapped roof. That portion showed signs of subsidence.
Still the man crouched low, his eyes now fixed in agonised expectation on the tank.
The man on the roof heard the clocks of Daneford strike eleven. Just then the tank trembled, swayed a moment, then shot downward with a roar. Up the hole made by it danced a cloud of flame.
The man on the roof sprang to his feet, and with a shout leaped on the parapet crying:
"Help! Help! For God's sake, help!"
With that tank the evidence against him had vanished.
A groan came up from the people below, and then a cheer.
"The fire-escape is coming. Have courage!"
Shading his eyes with his hands he looked in the direction of the lodge, and saw approaching by the carriage-way the fire-escape.
"Help! Quick!"
"Courage, Wat! We will save you!"
Another crash. Something warm struck his back. He turned round. All the roof was gone now. He looked into a pool of flame.
A fiercer blow than the former. Sight gone. Head giddy. Ah!
They saw the flame touch him; they saw him thrust his arms before his face. They saw him sway, and fall into the crater.
They knew he had lost his life in the tower that night, but they never knew that tower was the tomb of husband and wife.
"Well, Maud, as we are not leaving home for our honeymoon, and there is only one place in the Castle where you have never been – the top of the Tower of Silence, suppose we take lanterns and go there for an hour. I am curious to see this historic tower, this Weird Sister dowered with a legend of blood. You are not afraid to go."
"I should like to go. There is nothing I would like better. It will be an adventure."
When they were there he said: "I am glad we came. We are promised a glorious view presently. There is the moon rising."
"The moon does not rise there. It rises here," pointing.
"Then there must be a fire."
"That is the direction of the Manor House – ."