Rupert Godwin

AN ALARMING DISCOVERY.

Rupert Godwin’s livid face was terrible to look upon, as he ascended the broad oak staircase that summer afternoon; but by a most powerful effort of his iron will he contrived to control his countenance and assume a perfectly placid expression by the time he reached the end of the long corridor, out of which Lionel Westford’s apartments opened.

He stopped for a few moments outside the door of the bedroom, with his hand upon his breast. He was trying to still the tumultuous throbbings of his heart.

“This man knows my secret,” he thought; “but how, how has he made the discovery? He—a stranger, utterly uninterested in ferreting out the truth? The fiends of hell must have meddled in the business. The doors were all locked and double-locked in the northern wing; it is impossible, therefore—quite impossible, that he can have penetrated to the cellar where—”

Rupert Godwin did not finish the thought. He shuddered faintly, as if the end of that unspoken sentence were too hideous to be endured, even by his stony nature.

“He cannot know,” thought the banker. “It must be some old story, which happens by a strange chance to be like the ghastly truth.”

His countenance was quite composed by this time. For many years, for the larger half of this man’s lifetime, his face had been seldom other than a mask, beneath which he concealed his real feelings.

He entered the sick-chamber. Thomas Morrison, the footman, was sitting near the window reading a newspaper; Mrs. Beckson was dozing in a comfortable arm-chair. The sick man was lying on a bed exactly opposite Rupert Godwin, as he entered the room.

Never before had the banker, to his knowledge, seen his daughter’s protégé. Yet that white face lying on the pillow seemed strangely familiar to him.

He tried in vain to think when and where he had seen a look which was now recalled to him by the expression of those pallid features.

There was something very ghastly in the young man’s appearance, for his head was bound with damp linen cloths, which entirely concealed his hair.

Every now and then that weary head rolled restlessly round upon the pillow, and the pale parched lips muttered some indistinct words.

Mrs. Beckson rose and curtsied respectfully to her employer. She offered him the easy-chair, from which she had risen, and the banker seated himself by the side of the bed.

“Is your patient still delirious?” he asked anxiously.

“O yes, sir; just as bad as ever, as far as that goes; but more quiet like. His raving and going on was quite dreadful a few hours ago, but he’s worn himself out at last, poor dear young gentleman, and now he’s been lying there for an hour and more, just as you see, rolling his poor head about and muttering to himself.”

“What is it that he says in his delirium?” asked the banker.

His face was almost as fixed as a mask carved out of granite while he waited for an answer to his question.

“Always the same thing—always the same thing, sir,” said the housekeeper. “Something about a murder, and blood-stains in the cellars under the northern wing.”

“Have the servants been telling him any foolish ghost-story?”

“O no, sir; that’s next to impossible; for there is no story of a murder, nor anything whatever, connected with the cellars. They do say the northern wing is haunted; but the story they tell is only about the ghost of a young lady who died of a broken heart, on account of her lover being killed in the civil wars; and they do say she walks in the passages of the northern wing every new-year’s eve at twelve o’clock precisely.”

“Humph!” muttered the banker; “there is no accounting for the queer ideas that get into the brain of a delirious man. I suppose this young man has been reading a novel, and has mixed up the story with his knowledge of this house. He’ll have some other fancy to-morrow, I daresay. You can leave him for the present, Mrs. Beckson; and you too, Morrison. I heard the bell ringing for tea in the servants’ hall just as I came upstairs. I’ll keep watch over your invalid.”

“You’re very kind, sir; but I’m afraid you’ll find it dreadfully wearing to hear him going on, always the same thing over and over again.”

Lionel Westford turned his head upon the pillow, and looked full at the banker, with bloodshot and dilated eyes.

“Rupert Godwin!” he said, in low, distinct tones,—“Rupert Godwin—the murderer of—”

He paused for a moment, and then, with a long moan of anguish, he cried:

“Oh, it is too hideous—too horrible! I cannot believe it!”

“Now, isn’t it dreadful to hear him, sir?” exclaimed the housekeeper. “He’s been going on in that foolish way for the last hour, mixing up your name with his mad fancies.”

“There is nothing strange in that,” answered the banker coolly. “Delirious people always have these absurd fancies. This is not the first case of fever that I have seen.”

“And it isn’t the first that I’ve seen either,” returned Mrs. Beckson. “There was my cousin, Caleb Wildred, who was taken ill last year—last June twelvemonth; just after that strange gentleman came to the Hall; the night that Mr. Danielson was with you, as you may remember, sir. Caleb was just for all the world like this young gentleman; and what’s the strangest part of the business is, that Caleb said exactly the same things. His talk was all about a murder, and a body thrown down the steps of one of the cellars in the northern wing.”

Once more, as in the drawing-room half an hour before, the banker was taken completely off his guard; once again that iron nature was shaken; the big drops of perspiration started to the livid brow; the strong limbs were seized with a sudden trembling.

“Caleb said that?” he gasped. “Caleb Wildred?”

“Yes, sir; he was always telling the same story; his talk was exactly like this gentleman’s talk—the same words, as far as I can remember.”

“Where is he?” cried Rupert Godwin. “Speak, woman!—where is he?”

He rose as if he would have rushed to find the old gardener that very moment; but in the next instant he recovered himself, and sat down again quietly by the side of the sick-bed.

“Bah!” he exclaimed; “I was almost beginning to think that there must be some meaning in these mad ravings, and that some dark deed had really been committed beneath my roof. But it is all nonsense. These two men must have heard the same story—some lying tradition of the past, no doubt. You may go, Mrs. Beckson; I will remain with the invalid for half an hour, while you take your tea.”

The man-servant had already departed. Mrs. Beckson curtsied, and retired; but there was a puzzled expression on her honest countenance. She was surprised and bewildered by the banker’s unusual conduct.

For some time after the housekeeper’s departure Rupert Godwin sat quite motionless, watching the pallid face of the sick man, and listening to those muttered words which were every now and then repeated in the same accents:

“Rupert Godwin—the murderer—blood-stains on the stairs—blood in the cellar—cruel—treacherous!”

Always the same words—the same broken sentences—again and again, again and again.

The bloodshot eyes gazed at vacancy; but there was a fixed look of horror in them, as if the eyeballs had been struck with sudden rigidity while beholding some hideous sight.

At last the banker rose from beside the bed, where he had seemed fixed as if by some unholy spell.

Lionel Westford’s clothes lay on a chair near the bed, and on the dressing-table were scattered a handkerchief, a bunch of keys, some letters and papers which had been taken from his pockets.

The banker went over to the dressing-table, and examined the different objects lying there.

His hand struck against a hard substance lying under a cambric handkerchief.

He removed the handkerchief, and saw a gold locket attached to a chain of soft auburn hair. He opened the locket, and a frank manly face looked out at him with a confiding smile.

It was the face of the brave, generous-hearted sea-captain, Harley Westford.

It was the face of the man whom Rupert Godwin had stabbed on the threshold of the cellar-steps.