Olivia

That afternoon a policeman walked up to The Maples and inquired for Mr. Bradstone. That gentleman was standing at the window, his hands thrust in his pockets, his head sunk on his breast, and the sight of the constable sent the blood rushing through his head, and made him clutch at the window-sill with a gasp of dread.

“A letter, sir, from the prisoner,” said the man.

“Eh? Oh, yes, certainly,” stammered Bartley Bradstone; and he took the note to the other end of the room.

It was only one line.

Bartley Bradstone stared at it, and bit at his lips nervously.

“Just say all right, will you?” he said to the policeman. “You—you can get something to drink in the servants’ hall. Er—er—by the way, is Mr. McAndrew back yet?”

“No, sir,” replied the man. “Not yet, sir. Rather strange his keeping away so long; but I suppose he’s getting evidence in London. There’s never any knowing what these big detectives are after.”

When the policeman had gone, Bartley Bradstone dropped into a chair and bit his nails, glancing now and again at the peremptory summons.

“He—he orders me about like a dog,” he muttered, with an oath. “Just like a dog! But I’ve got to go. Yes, though I’d rather give a thousand pounds than face him, I’ve got to go. He’s got me, curse him! Got me tight! If there was any way out of it, any chance——”

He got up with a groan, and went to the sideboard for the familiar brandy, then put on his hat, and with as calm a countenance as he could command, walked down to the prison.

Faradeane was pacing to and fro with a steady, thoughtful stride; and, as he faced his visitor, Bartley Bradstone started at the change which the close confinement—and the ordeal of Olivia’s visit, though Bartley did not know that—had worked in the handsome face and stalwart figure.

“You—you sent for me,” he said, unsteadily, and carefully avoiding Faradeane’s stern, searching eyes.

“Yes; you were wise to come.”

“Of course I should come,” mumbled Bradstone. “If there is anything I can do—God knows I’m wretched and miserable enough,” he broke off with a whine. “I feel as if I could shoot myself.”

“I dare say,” said Faradeane, not contemptuously, but with simple assent more biting than the most polished scorn. “But you cannot do that; it would reveal the truth, and cover her with the shame from which I—and you—have resolved to shield her at all cost. At all cost, do you hear me?”

“I hear,” said Bartley Bradstone, leaning against the table and looking round the cell with a shudder. “I’ll do anything. I said I would when—when——”

“I agreed to take your crime upon my hands and suffer for you,” said Faradeane, grimly. “I have sent for you to tell you what you must do.”

He looked up almost eagerly.

“What is it?”

“You must leave England,” said Faradeane, slowly and deliberately, as if he were propounding a carefully considered scheme.

Bartley Bradstone’s eagerness increased.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “I—I’ve thought all along it would be better for me to get away. There’s no knowing what may turn up. This detective fellow from London, I don’t like the look of him,” and he covertly wiped the perspiration from his pallid forehead. “He might find out——”

“What can he find out?” asked Faradeane, sternly, and with a searching look. “What had this woman done to you that you should shoot her?”

“I didn’t mean to! I swear it!” exclaimed Bradstone, with a terrible oath. “I—I only meant to frighten her, and—and the cursed thing went off, and——”

He dashed his hands before his eyes and shuddered.

Faradeane turned away with a spasm of disgust.

“What hold had she on you?” he demanded.

Bartley Bradstone shot a suspicious, cunning glance at him.

“She—she wanted me to marry her,” he said, in a low voice.

Faradeane sighed.

“You—you cur!” he said, not angrily, but with infinite scorn.

“When—when she found I was married already she threatened to—to go then and there to the Grange and blare out a scandal before—before Olivia.”

Faradeane winced as the beloved name left the man’s lips.

“And I—I couldn’t stand it! It drove me mad! That’s it! I was mad—mad! But I didn’t mean to shoot her, only to frighten her.”

Faradeane got as far from him as the small cell would permit, and, looking down at him, said, slowly and sternly:

“Take that paper, and write as I tell you.”

Bartley Bradstone looked up fearfully.

“What are you going to get me to do?” he whined. “Don’t—don’t be hard on me for—for her sake.”

Faradeane pointed to the paper.

“Let there be as few words as possible between us, if you please. Write as I tell you. Refuse, and I give you up here and now.”

Trembling and shaking, the wretched man clutched the paper.

“Sign it.”

Bradstone lifted his ashen face.

“Good God! You—you seem to mean to hang me, after all,” he gasped. “After all your fine talk of saving her from trouble——”

“Silence!” said Faradeane, sternly. “Do as I bid you. There is no time for hesitation; the warder will be here in a very few minutes. If that is not written and you have not solemnly pledged yourself to carry out my scheme for your safety—for your safety, do you hear?—-I send for Colonel Summerford and denounce you.”

With a groan, Bartley Bradstone wrote the short confession. It was so feeble a scrawl, so twisted and broken as to be almost illegible.

Faradeane took it—and as he did so the real criminal noticed that he touched it as one touches some noxious thing—then folded it and put it in an envelope.

“Address it to Miss Van—to your wife,” he said, grimly.

Bartley Bradstone started and clutched at the table.

“To Olivia! To her!” he gasped. “Is that your game? You—you know what she’d do. You know she’d hang me twice over, with joy, to save you.”

Faradeane raised his hand, but let it fall to his side.

“Do not try me too hard,” he said, hoarsely. “Address it.”

With another groan, Bartley Bradstone obeyed. Faradeane took a sheet of paper from his breast-pocket and placed it before him.

Bartley Bradstone read it and uttered an exclamation, and staggered to his feet; then sank down again, as if too weak to stand. This is what Faradeane had written:

He took the paper from Bartley Bradstone’s trembling hands, and, inclosing it, together with the confession, in an envelope, addressed it in firm, steady writing to Olivia.

Bartley Bradstone sat staring at the floor like a man dazed.

Faradeane waited in silence for a moment or two, then he said:

“You will leave England to-night.”

“To-night?” repeated Bartley Bradstone, dully.

“Yes, there is no time to lose. Strange as it may seem to you, there may be some who will not believe me guilty.”

“She—for one,” muttered Bradstone between his teeth.

“Let suspicion be once aroused, and the truth may be discovered. You are a business man; give business as an excuse for your sudden departure. Go on the Continent; there are still some remote spots where you will be safe from the English law. Find one—and stay there. Remember,” he spoke slowly and distinctly, “if you are in any rash moment tempted to break your word to me, and claim as your wife the woman upon whom you have fastened your name, that she holds your life in her hands! That is all I have to say to you,” he added, significantly.

Bartley Bradstone passed his hand across his lips.

“Well, I—I must do it. You’re right; I—I don’t feel safe. I’m better out of the way. As for Olivia; she—she never cared for me, and since this—this affair I’ve—I’ve wished I hadn’t married her. When are you going to give her that letter?” he asked, with a suspicious glance at it.

“Now,” said Faradeane. “Did you think it was a trap I had laid for you? Call the warder.”

Bartley Bradstone got up, but sank down again.

“I’m all to pieces,” he groaned.

Faradeane went to the door and knocked.

“Mr. Bradstone wishes this letter sent to Mrs. Bradstone,” he said.

“Very good, sir,” said the warder; and he took it.

Bradstone listened to his heavy step as it clanged along the stone corridor. Then he got up and shook himself like a man trying to recover from a bad dream.

“I’ll go now,” he said. “There’ll be just time to catch the up-train. Is—is there anything I can do for you?” he added, lifting his bloodshot, wavering eyes shamefacedly.

“Nothing, except keep your promise,” replied Faradeane, slowly and wearily. “As you say, there is no time to lose. Good-day, and remember.”

Bartley Bradstone, with lowered head, went to the door and knocked at it feebly.

It was opened after a moment or two by another warder, and Bartley Bradstone passed out. He went slowly down the corridor into the stone hall, trying to drive away the hangdog expression which he knew was eloquent in every feature, and was passing the colonel’s room with as firm a step as he could manage when his heart leaped within his bosom, for Colonel Summerford called him.

He turned and entered the office, and the blood rushed like a torrent through his veins, for there in the colonel’s hand was the letter!

“Oh, Mr. Bradstone,” he said, “sorry to stop you; but this letter——”

“Yes,” said Bartley Bradstone, trying to speak and look indifferently, though there was the sound of singing in his ears, and he could scarcely keep his eyes from the letter.

“This letter for Mrs. Bradstone,” continued the colonel. “I was just sending some one with it; I don’t know whether you would like to take it.”

Danger makes a man, especially if he be a Bartley Bradstone, sharp. He was just on the point of holding out his hand for the letter, when there flashed upon him the thought that Faradeane would probably ask if it had been delivered, and, hearing that it had been consigned to Bradstone’s care, would make him account for it.

“I—I am going straight to The Maples, and from there on to London on important business, connected with my unfortunate friend, Mr. Faradeane,” he said, with a happy inspiration. “If you could kindly send it on by one of your men.”

“Certainly, certainly,” responded the colonel. “It was from no reluctance to do Mr. Faradeane a service, but in the desire to save time. I trust that you may be able to do some good for him, Mr. Bradstone. I don’t mind admitting that I’m deeply interested in the case, and more especially in him, prisoner as he is.”

“We all are, we all are,” said Bartley Bradstone, with a deep sigh. “My wife especially——”

“Yes, I judged that by her visit here this morning,” said the colonel.

Bartley Bradstone started, and his face went pale, one might almost say green.

“She—she was here this morning!” he exclaimed. “Oh, yes,” he added, hastily, as the colonel colored and looked as if he could have bitten his tongue out. “Yes, I’d forgotten for the moment. Oh, yes, we are all doing what we can. Of course, he is innocent, poor fellow!”

The colonel shook his head gravely.

“I hope you will be able to convince a jury of that,” he said; “but——”

Bartley Bradstone sighed again.

“We shall leave no stone unturned, not one,” he said. “And you will send the letter? Thank you.”

He walked out of the office briskly, and down the street in the direction any one going straight with the letter must take. He turned a corner sharply, then pulled up, and, with a wildly beating heart, waited. Two, three minutes passed, then a policeman came round the road.

Bartley Bradstone waited until the man had reached the corner, then hurriedly ran against him.

“Hallo!” he said. “I beg your pardon. I was going back to Colonel Summerford to tell him that I should have to go to the Grange, and that I would take Mrs. Bradstone’s letter myself.”

The man produced it instantly; he had overheard the conversation between the colonel and Bradstone.

Bradstone took the note, with a casual glance at it, gave the man a shilling, and walked on.

All the way to The Maples the letter—the words in his own handwriting which could, if they were allowed to escape from that envelope, hang him—seemed to be burning through his clothes and eating a fiery way into his heart.

“Curse him, curse him!” he muttered, as he dragged himself heavily and feverishly through the great gates and up the drive to the house which he had prepared for the woman he had entrapped. “Curse him! he’d separate us forever! He’d send me into a kind of transportation for life! I’d—I’d almost rather be hanged——” He shuddered. “No, no; anything’s better than that. But to lose Olivia; to lose her forever, forever! After all I’ve done, all I’ve spent, all I’ve risked!”

He drew a long breath, and, unlocking the door of the library, dropped, exhausted by his walk and the excitement, on to a sofa.

“If there was only some way out of it, some way of quieting him!”

The words rang in his brain until he found himself repeating them in a dull, mechanical fashion. Suddenly his face crimsoned.

“Why, he’ll be quiet enough presently!” he exclaimed, as a swift hope rushed into his craven heart. “If—if I can only wait, keep out of the way and wait, he’ll think the letter’s delivered, and I mean to keep my promise! It’s not for long. The trial will be here directly, and—and he’ll plead guilty——”

He stopped, and sprang to his feet, white and trembling.

An idea had struck him, one of those ideas which come to unscrupulous men in desperate straits.

“I’ll do it! By God, I’ll do it!” he exclaimed. And, going to the writing-table, he wrote:

But, in addition to the Hotel Meurice, which he wrote on the inclosed slip, were these lines:

It was a piece of diabolical cunning. He knew that Olivia would rather die than repeat what he had written, that it would account to her for his absence, and that it must—for he knew her, all unworthy of her as he was—estrange her heart from Faradeane.

“Now I think we’re quits, my friend!” he said, gloating over the two letters—Faradeane’s and the one he had himself written. “I’ve burned my boats behind me now. If she should tell them that I was there, and saw him do it—well”—he drew a long breath and shuddered—“I’ll go into the box and swear to it! Yes, Mr. Faradeane, you’ve put your head into the noose too far to draw back, I’m thinking! Too far, by a long way. Steady, Bartley, my boy; go steady, and play your game carefully, and you’ll pull through this.”

A drink of brandy increased his confidence still further, and he rang the bell for a servant, that he might send the note; then, with a sudden return of caution, called for his overcoat and hat, and went out.

“I’ll take it up to the Grange myself,” he said, “and I’ll give it to nobody but Olivia herself, or the girl Bessie. Perhaps she’ll see me—confound her, she was well enough to go to the prison! Well enough for that! But not well enough to see her husband! Wait, oh, only wait!” and he half-stopped and shook his fist in the air.

He was so absorbed in his reflections that he entered the Grange avenue without noticing it, and, suddenly looking up, he found himself by the rail over which he had leaped when he went to meet Bella-Bella. He stopped for a moment, and glared fearfully toward the shadows of the wood, then, with a shudder and a shake, as if a chill had fallen on him, hurried on.

The squire was out, the butler said, and Miss Olivia—he begged pardon, Mrs. Bradstone—was lying down, and not well enough to see any one. Would he come in and wait for the squire?

Bartley Bradstone shook his head, and turned aside that the man might not see the evil look that crossed his face. At that moment Bessie crossed the hall, and he called her.

“Here!” he said. “Just give this to Mrs. Bradstone, and tell her that I am so glad to hear she was able to go out to-day.”

In taking out the letter, he also pulled out Faradeane’s, which he thrust back again hurriedly into his breast-pocket. Then he went down the steps. At the bottom he paused and looked round, thinking he would go home by a road that avoided the awful spot; but he set his hat firmly on his head, and clinched his teeth, muttering:

“No, no; no use giving way like that! I shall have to pass the cursed place half-a-dozen times a day in the future.”

He walked down the avenue, but, though he had nerved himself to the utmost, as he approached the particular railing his heart began to thud and his cheeks to whiten. And suddenly, as he neared in the direction of the glade, his heart seemed to stop beating and his brain to whirl, for there, there on the very spot, was something, something in the shape and hue of a woman’s dress coming toward him. Was it a living woman or——

With a low cry of horror he staggered, and clutched at the railing with both hands to keep himself from falling, for his knees bent under him, still staring at the dimly-seen figure.

A second or two, that seemed like years, passed in that awful suspense; then the figure—living or dead—disappeared among the trees.

With a moan of terror he managed to stand upright, and, mopping his livid face with his handkerchief, struggled for courage to call out.

His voice came at last, and huskily and feebly he called: “Who’s there?”

No answer came. He waited for a minute, until the use of his legs came back to him, then set off, as fast as his trembling limbs would permit, down the avenue.

Almost before he had reached the lodge, the figure came out from among the trees, and, gliding from the shelter of one trunk to another, made for the railing and looked after him.

Then, if Bartley Bradstone could have summoned up courage to look back, he would have seen that what he had taken for the wraith of the woman he had shot was Seth the gypsy, clad in an ordinary carter’s frock and wearing a slouch hat that nearly concealed his face.

Seth got over the fence and stood looking up and down the avenue warily. The smock was torn with brambles, Seth’s face looked grimy and drink-worn, and there was a furtive, sinister gleam in his black, cunning eyes.

“Give you a fright, did I, Master Bradstone!” he muttered, huskily. “I’ll give you one or two more afore I’ve done with you.”

Then he was about to leap over the railing back into the wood again, when something white lying on the ground where Bartley Bradstone had been standing, caught his eye.

He pounced upon it as only a lurcher or a gypsy can, and turned it over with eager curiosity.

It was the letter containing Bartley Bradstone’s confession, which he had pulled out from his pocket with his handkerchief.

Seth shrugged his shoulders. “Only a letter. ’Tain’t no use to me; if it ’ud been his hankercher, now!” With a contemptuous grimace he tore it in half, and was about to fling it away, when he stopped his hand. “I dunno,” he muttered, “perhaps I’d better keep it; he might give me something for it. I’ll offer it him anyhow.” And he thrust it carelessly into his trousers-pocket.