CHAPTER XLVI.
KENELM EYRLE’S ACCUSATION.
“Where did Ronald keep his private papers?” asked Kenelm, when he had finished dinner. “Do you think there is anything among them that he would not wish to have inspected?”
“I do not think so,” she replied. “Ronald holds no secrets, if that is what you mean. There is a large bureau in the library filled with papers of all kinds. Shall we look there?”
They went to the library, which was perhaps the noblest room in the Hall. The light came through windows of richly stained glass. The furniture was of dark polished oak; the walls were lined with books. Over the elaborately carved mantelpiece hung a masterpiece by Titian. There were two statues of exquisite beauty; cozy chairs and couches of every description. As Kenelm followed Lady Alden into the room, there flashed across him a memory of the time when Clarice lay dead, and he had gone there to meet Sir Ronald.
Lady Alden turned to him suddenly.
“Do you know, Kenelm,” she said, “this room recalls my husband to me more vividly than any other. Whenever I enter it, it seems to me that I shall see him there in his favorite chair. I never come here except I am quite obliged; it recalls him too forcibly.”
“You saw him here so often,” said Mr. Eyrle; “that is the reason. Shall we open the bureau?”
She unlocked it, and, sitting down together, they looked through the mass of papers that had accumulated, patiently opening each one and closing it again.
“There is no sign of anything of the kind,” said Kenelm, when they had finished the last bundle. “Of course, there are several other places for such documents as these.”
“There is a closet filled with them in one of the spare rooms,” she replied. They examined that, they looked through all the shelves, through the drawers and closets in Sir Ronald’s study, but there was no sign of the missing papers. Lady Alden’s face grew anxious.
“We shall have the lawsuit after all, I am afraid,” said Kenelm.
She looked at him.
“There was something in John Conyer’s manner that I did not much like,” she said. “He seemed to fancy that Ronald was compelled to let him have The Willows.”
“Men like him presume when they have a lady to deal with. Hand him over to me, Lady Alden. I will settle with him.”
“I should like to please my husband,” she said, plaintively.
“Is there any place we can search?” she asked. “I am anxious, too, that we should manage the matter so as to please Sir Ronald.”
In vain they searched every possible place, but there was no trace of any such writings.
“We must give it up as lost,” said Kenelm.
If they had but done so this story would never have been written. Suddenly Lady Alden looked at him with a smile.
“I am losing my memory,” she said.
She took a key from the golden chain she wore; it was of a quaint fashion and made of gold.
“On the morning Ronald went away he gave me this. He made me promise that it should never leave me, night or day, and it has never been out of my possession for one single moment.”
Kenelm took it carelessly from her hands, unconscious as he did so that he held the key to the mystery of his life.
“To what does it belong?” he asked.
“To a small oaken box with golden clasps. It used to stand in Ronald’s room, but when he was going away he placed it in my room under my especial charge. He told me never to open it for it contained papers that were strictly private. Of course, the documents we miss are there. I had better open it and see.”
She rang the bell and ordered the footman to carry the box into the drawing-room.
“We will go there and look it over,” she said.
Kenelm never forgot the fragrant, sunny room. The western sunbeams filled it with light and warmth; the flowers filled it with sweetest odors. Lady Alden sat down, for the search had fatigued her.
As he saw her then, he saw her until he died. Her fair head rested against the pink velvet of the chair; her beautiful face, with its half-wearied expression, was turned to the window, so that the sunshine fell on it and formed a kind of halo around it.
“How beautiful the fragrance of the flowers is to-night! And, Kenelm, listen—have you ever heard the birds sing so sweetly? I wish—oh, how I wish!—that Ronald was home to-night! I cannot help thinking some danger threatens him. He is so continually in my thoughts. Twice to-day my heart has almost ceased to beat, for I heard his voice crying to me, ‘Hermione!’ and the fancy was so strong that for a few minutes I believed he must be near.”
“My hands are quite dusty,” said Mr. Eyrle, with a smile as he took the key. Even so do children smile as they dance on the brink of a precipice hidden by flowers.
He opened it, and she left her seat at his expressed wish.
“You had better look through these yourself, Lady Alden, as Ronald considered them private.”
She took the papers and looked carefully.
“They seem to be certificates of a different kind. The papers are not here, Kenelm.”
He was about to close the box, when quite suddenly she touched a secret spring, and a drawer flew open.
Flew open—oh, Heaven!—and there in the midst of papers lay a long, slender dagger, rusted with human blood!
They looked at it with horror-stricken eyes, Kenelm’s face growing white and rigid.
“My God!” he cried at last, in a terrible voice. “What is this?”
She, bending over it, looked like one suddenly smitten with death. Her eyes dilated; they fell upon a small square packet, and she, unperceived by him, covered it with an open sheet of paper and drew it away so slowly and so carefully that he did not perceive it—slowly, steadily until, with cunning right hand, she had hidden it in the pocket of her dress; and then she gave a great cry that was a sort of despair.
“What is this?” he repeated, and the stern, passionate voice rang through the room.
He seized her hand and held it in his grasp.
“Hermione,” he whispered, in a strange, terrible voice, “do you know what this is—this hidden instrument of crime—this blood-stained dagger, once a toy for ladies’ fingers—this mute witness of an awful deed? Do you know what it is? It is the dagger that slew Clarice Alden!”
She sank on her knees with a low moan and covered her face with her hands.
“I was always sure,” he continued, “that the dagger would lead to the discovery of the crime. Here is the instrument. Who did the deed?”
His voice sank from its passionate earnestness to a tone of horror and dread. She only moaned aloud, and he heard the word, “Mercy!”
“No,” he said, sternly; “there is no mercy! Lady Alden, your husband murdered Clarice!”
She gave one little cry, more piteous in its agony than any words.
“Your husband, Sir Ronald Alden, who never loved her, murdered my darling, and he killed her that he might marry you!”
No answer, no sound to break the terrible silence, save the song of the birds and the murmur of the western wind; no sound save one, and that was the most pitiful of all—the sobbing of a strong man, for Kenelm Eyrle had bent his head over that mute witness of terrible murder and wept aloud.
“I may weep,” he said, at last. “My God, I may weep for the man I called friend! Weep for my murdered love, and for the man who slew her! Friend and brother I called him, and he killed her!”
“There may be some mistake,” she whispered. The white lips could scarcely frame the words.
“There is none,” he replied. “Ronald Alden slew his wife and has hidden the proof of his crime here.”
“It cannot be!” she repeated, in a hoarse whisper.
“It is so; my own instinct tells me I have tracked the murderer at last!”
She raised her white face to him in an agony of entreaty that knew no words.
“You will not, you cannot, betray him!” she said. “You cannot, Kenelm Eyrle! He is your friend. You could not be so false to friendship. He is your best-trusted, best-loved.”
“Hush!” he said, sternly. “If the child who slept in my bosom—if the brother who shared my life—had done this deed, I would denounce him. I would show him no more mercy than I would to the man who has deceived you and has deceived me.”