We will go downstairs,” said Carpentaria, when a certain amount of order had been restored to the room. “We shall be more at ease there.”
“No,” cried Jetsam, and there was a note of passion in his voice. “This old woman shall hear my tale. I tell it in her presence, or I tell it not at all.” Carpentaria gazed at Mrs. Ilam’s eyes, which made no response. Her bed was now replaced in its proper position, and those strange burning eyes perused their old spot in the ceiling. After the brief and terrible return of activity to that stricken body, it seemed to have sunk back into a condition of helplessness more absolute even than before. The eyes burned, but not quite with their former disturbing brilliance.
“Very well,” Carpentaria agreed.
Ilam was already seated, apparently half-comatose. The other two men each seized a chair. And then there was a timid but insistent knocking.
“What is that?” demanded Carpentaria of Jetsam. “You ought to know; you have been master here for some hours.”
“It is Miss Rosie, I imagine,” Jetsam answered. “Your singular music has startled her.”
Carpentaria walked rapidly to the door, unlocked it, and opened it. Rosie it indeed was who stood there.
“Ah, my dear young lady,” he said lightly, without giving her an opportunity even to express her astonishment. “I would like you to go to your sister, who is in my house over the way. But I fear you cannot open any of the doors. Won’t you retire and rest a little, after your complicated labours?” He smiled a little grimly. “Everything is all right here, and should your aged relative need your ministrations you may rely on me to call you. In the meantime, your cousin and I, and your particular friend Mr. Jetsam, must have a chat on business matters.”
He bowed, covering the aperture of the door with his body so that Rosie could not see inside the room. As for Rosie, she hesitated.
“I entreat you,” he insisted, “go and rest, and don’t have anything more to do with boats; you might drown yourself. And believe me when I say that nothing further will be done in secret. The moment I am free I will endeavour to free the doors.”
Rosie moved reluctantly away down the landing. She had not spoken a word. Carpentaria closed the portal softly and retired to his chair.
“You have my attention,” he remarked significantly to Mr. Jetsam.
“Well,” said Jetsam, after a moment’s pause. “It goes back a very long time, this affair does, Mr. Carpentaria. It certainly began before you were born—down at Torquay. Torquay, according to what they tell me, was not the place then that it is now, not by a considerable distance; but it was fashionable. It had got a bit of a name as a good place to go and get fat in. Perhaps that was why a certain soda-water manufacturer went there to spend a year or so. He was a very wealthy man, and he rented a villa there. It’s one of those villas on the top of the hill between Union Street and the sea, and it still exists. His age was about fifty, and he was supposed to be worth half a million or so—all made out of gas and splutter, you see. Being supposed to be worth half a million or so, of course he soon had the entire population of Torquay knocking at his door and throwing cards into his card-basket. He made a wide circle of friends in rather less than no time, and being a simple, decent creature, though not faultless, he was pretty well pleased with himself. Now among the friends that he made was a certain widow, age uncertain—but in the neighbourhood of thirty, and her name was Kilmarnock.”
At this time Mr. Jetsam stood up, and bending over Mrs. Ham’s bed with his smile so ruthlessly cruel, he repeated, staring at the invalid:
“Her name was Kilmarnock, wasn’t it?”
Mrs. Ilam made no sign. Mr. Jetsam resumed his chair.
“A pretty woman, I believe she was, with magnificent black eyes; the most wonderful eyes in the West Country, people said,” Mr. Jetsam proceeded. “Husband dead some little time. Anyhow, she had gone out of mourning, and her dresses were the amazement of the town. They’d look pretty queer nowadays, I reckon, because that was before 1860. However, her dresses have got nothing to do with it, especially as the soda-water manufacturer—have I happened to mention that his name was Ilam?—especially as Mr. Ilam couldn’t see them very well. Mr. Ilam was beginning to suffer from a cataract; both his eyes were affected, and the disease was making progress rapidly. You must remember that oculists didn’t know as much about cataract then as they do now. Well, Mr. Ilam was himself a widower—a widower with one child, aged three years. He had been a widower for two years when he first met Mrs. Kilmarnock. He liked Mrs. Kilmarnock. She seemed to have in her the makings of a good nurse, and one of the things that Mr. Ilam wanted was a faithful, loving nurse. He was certainly in an awkward predicament. He also wanted a mother for his child; and Mrs. Kilmarnock took a tremendous fancy to the child—a simply tremendous fancy. He was a man who talked pretty freely and openly, Mr. Ilam was, and he made no secret of the fact that, though he preferred to marry a widow, he would never permit himself to marry a widow who had children of her own. And one day he said to Mrs. Kilmarnock that, since he had never heard her mention a child, he assumed that she had no children.
“She replied that his assumption was correct, and that she continually regretted being childless, as she adored children, and felt very severely the need of something to give her a real interest in life. A month later Mr. Ilam asked Mrs. Kilmarnock to marry him, and she consented like a bird. Three months later they were married. Everybody said kind things; for you must know that Mrs. Kilmarnock was not penniless herself. Oh, no! She lived in very good style in Torquay, and gave dinners that Torquay liked. And Torquay is a good judge of dinners. Her husband had been a Scottish writer to the Signet, she said. So the marriage was celebrated amid universal plaudits, and there was quite three-quarters of a column about it in the Western Morning News.”
At this juncture Carpentaria ventured to interrupt the speaker.
“You appear,” he said, “to be remarkably well informed about matters which occurred long before you were of an age to take an intelligent interest in them. At the time of this marriage you surely were not in the habit of reading newspapers?”
“I was not,” answered Jetsam drily. “I had attained the mature age of three years. If I am well informed it is because I have taken the trouble to inform myself. You see, I was interested, and I have spared no pains during this last year or two to acquire all the circumstantial details of the case.”
“I perceive,” said Carpentaria. “But how were you interested?”
“You will understand presently,” said Jetsam. “To continue. This Mrs. Kilmarnock, whom we must now call Mrs. Ilam, used, both before and after her second marriage, to pay visits to the town of Teignmouth, and these visits were, not to put too fine a point on it, of an extremely discreet nature; they were, in fact, strictly secret. Mrs. Ilam fell into the habit of telling her husband that she was going to Exeter to shop, but instead of going to Exeter she went only as far as Teignmouth. She was always dressed very simply indeed for these Teignmouth visits. She used to walk through the town from the station, and, having taken the ferry across the Teign, she walked up the right bank of the river till she came to a cottage that stood by itself in the marshy land thereabouts. At the cottage an old man and woman and a little boy would meet her. And the strange thing was that the old man spoke French; he could not speak English. You may possibly not be aware that onion-boats from the coast of Brittany are constantly arriving at the smaller Devonshire ports, such as Torquay and Teignmouth. The old man was a Breton peasant, with all the characteristics of a Breton peasant, who had arrived at Teignmouth once in an onion-boat, and forgotten to go back again because he fell in love with an Englishwoman—a Devonshire lass with a soft drawling accent. So Mrs. Ilam used to talk to the Breton peasant in French, and to his wife in English, and to the boy in baby language. She would cover the boy with kisses; she would call him by pet names, and she saw him at least once a week.”
“He was her son?” Carpentaria put in interrogatively.
“You have naturally guessed it,” Jetsam responded. “He was her son.”
“But if she was really a widow, and this was really her son, why did she——”
“Oh,” cried Jetsam, “I think she was really a widow, and there is not the slightest shadow of doubt that this was really her son. Perhaps she kept him a secret from Torquay because she felt that he might prove an obstacle to the achievement of her desires in Torquay. Anyhow, she loved him passionately. Her son was, beyond question, the greatest passion of her life.” He turned abruptly again to the old woman, “Wasn’t he?” he demanded.
And the aged creature’s burning eyes were filled with tears.
“I think perhaps it might be as well to leave Mrs. Ilam out of the conversation,” suggested Carpentaria.
“Impossible to leave her out of the conversation,” said Jetsam quickly, “because the conversation is almost exclusively about her. However, I will not trouble her any more for confirmation of what I say. Well, for nearly a year after her second marriage these clandestine visits of Mrs. Ilam to the cottage on the banks of the Teign continued with the most perfect regularity, and then something extremely remarkable happened.”
“What was that?”
“First, I must tell you that soon after the marriage Mr. Ilam’s cataract got rapidly worse. In six months he could only distinguish objects vaguely. He could not read anything except shop signs. In Mrs. Ilam he found an admirable nurse and companion. Except for her shopping excursions to Exeter she never left his side. She was a model wife, and all Torquay admitted the fact. Even when Mr. Ilam’s impaired vision rendered him captious, querulous, and indeed unbearable, she remained sweetness itself; and Mr. Ilam would not admit anyone but her to his presence. He even took a dislike to his child, his only son, and the infant was left in the charge of servants and governesses, except that Mrs. Ilam saw him as frequently as she could.”
“But this is not very remarkable,” said Carpentaria, “such things are constantly happening.”
“I am coming to the remarkable part,” replied Jetsam, with a certain solemnity of manner. “One day the old Breton fisherman told Mrs. Ilam that a relative had left him property in his native district, and that he had persuaded his wife to go with him to France so that they might end their days there. Mrs. Ilam was extremely disturbed by this piece of news, because she did not know what to do with the boy. She asked the Frenchman how soon he proposed to leave, and the Frenchman said in about three weeks. She left and said she would come back again in a few days. It is at this point that the remarkable begins. Within a week all Torquay was made aware that Mr. Ilam, at the solicitation of his wife, had decided to go to Paris to consult a great specialist there.”
“I see,” breathed Carpentaria, while Ilam’s face wore at length a look of interest.
“I doubt if you do see,” said Jetsam. “You think that Mrs. Ilam was arranging to go to Paris in order to be nearer her son. Well, she was, but not at all in the way you imagine. They departed from Torquay almost at once, and in a somewhat remarkable manner, for Mrs. Ilam dismissed every servant, even her own maid and Mr. Ilam’s man, and the child’s nurse—all were dismissed in Torquay itself—and Mr. Ilam and his wife and child left Torquay railway station entirely unaided, except by porters and the domestics of a hotel. Mrs. Ilam would certainly have all her work cut out to conduct the expedition, for you must remember that at this period Mr. Ilam was practically blind. Well, they had to change at Exeter and catch the Plymouth express, and at Exeter the old French peasant was waiting on the platform, evidently by arrangement, and he held Mrs. Ilam’s own little boy by the hand, and Mrs. Ilam and the peasant had a long talk by themselves, and then the express came in, and the Ilams got into it, and the express started off again for London, and the French peasant was left standing on the platform holding the little boy by the hand. You see?”
“No,” said Carpentaria bluntly.
“Well,” proceeded Jetsam. “It was not the same little boy that the peasant held by the hand. Mrs. Ilam had taken her own child with her, and left behind her step-child.”
“Great heavens!” murmured Carpentaria. “Exactly,” said Jetsam. “Only the heavens didn’t happen to interfere. This was no common case of substitution at birth, it was a monstrously ingenious change which Mrs. Ilam, out of her passionate love for her own son, had planned and carried out in a manner suggested to her by the facts of the situation. Consider. The two boys were the same age—about three years—and they were dressed alike, Mrs. Ilam had seen to that. Mr. Ilam is nearly blind, certainly he could not distinguish one child of three from another child of three, even if they had been dressed differently. Moreover, Mr. Ilam is not interested in the child. He is wrapped up in his own complaint, a ferocious egotist, like most sufferers. Probably the child sleeps during the journey to London—probably Mrs. Ilam gives him something to make him sleep. The party arrive at Paddington, and are met by a new set of servants whom Mrs. Ilam has engaged. She left Torquay with a child; she arrived at Paddington with a child. Who, except the old French peasant, is to know that there has been a change en route? The new child is kept entirely out of Mr. Ilam’s presence. He is taught his new name; he is taught to forget his past on the banks of the Teign; and he readily succeeds in doing so. His new nurse is suitably discreet. During their brief stay in London the Ilams stop at a hotel. They do not visit friends, on the plea of Mr. Ilam’s complaint. Then they leave London for Paris.”
“The thing was perfect,” observed Carpentaria, astounded.
“It was fatally perfect,” Jetsam agreed. “Even had Mr. Ilam been cured at once, the danger would have been but slight, because he had never seen his own child clearly. However, Mr. Ilam was not cured at once, for it happened that the famous oculist whom they meant to consult died on the very day they entered Paris. It was seven years before Mr. Ilam got himself cured; but in the end he was cured almost completely. The boy was then aged ten years. What possible chance was there of a discovery of the fraud? Even had Mr. Ilam ever seen his child clearly, what resemblance is there between an infant of three and a boy of ten? None; none whatever. Mrs. Ilam had triumphed: she had deposed the authentic heir of Mr. Ilam and had put her own son on the throne in his stead.”
“And the other boy?” Carpentaria queried.
Jetsam paused, his eyes bent downwards.
“Do you know the Breton peasantry?” he demanded suddenly, at length.
“Not in the least,” said Carpentaria.
“Ah, well; that doesn’t matter! When you hear the sequel of the story you will be able to imagine what a Breton peasant is capable of. He is the equal of the Norman peasant, and no French novelist has ever yet dared to write down the actual! truth about the Norman peasant. I told you that Mrs. Ilam and the old Frenchman had a chat on Exeter platform. She told him that she was giving him a new charge, preferring to take the other boy herself. It was arranged that the new charge should accompany the Breton to France, and live with him as his foster-child. Terms were fixed up, no doubt to the entire satisfaction of the peasant. Then Mrs. Ilam ventured to play her great card. She informed the Frenchman that his new charge was a very delicate plant, frequently ill, and not apparently destined to long life. This, by the way, was grossly untrue. ‘Of course, if he were to die,’ she said in effect to the peasant, ‘you would lose the income which I shall pay to you for looking after the child, and to compensate you for that loss I will promise to give you, if he dies, the sum of five hundred pounds.’ I expect she managed to put a peculiar and sinister emphasis on these words. Anyhow, the Frenchman understood. That was just the kind of thing that you might rely on a Breton peasant to comprehend without too much explanation. Five hundred pounds is five hundred pounds; it is over twelve thousand francs, and twelve thousand francs to a Breton peasant is worth anything—it is worth eternal torture.”
“And so, in due course, Mrs. Ilam received news of her stepson’s death?”
“In due course she received news of her stepson’s death,” said Jetsam. “It took a considerable time—six years, in fact—‘but it was accompanied by legal proof, and when she received it Mrs. Ilam must have been as happy as the day is long, especially as her own boy was growing up strong and well, and Mr. Ilam had taken quite a fancy to him. So all trace of the crime—would you call it a crime, or only a pleasing manifestation of a mother’s love?—all trace of the crime was lost, for the French peasant died; the English wife of the French peasant had expired a long time before.”
And Jetsam paused again.
“I am accepting all that you say as gospel,” said Carpentaria. “Because somehow it impresses me vividly as being true.” Here he looked at Josephus Ilam, who avoided his glance. “But how does this matter concern yourself, and in what way did you come upon the traces of the crime?”
“I’ll tell you,” Jetsam recommenced. “It was like this. The boy was not dead.”
“Not dead?”
“No. He had run away. He had had a pretty hard time before the death of the peasant’s wife. Afterwards, his existence was a trifle more exciting than he could bear. He was starved and he was beaten. But that was not all. On board fishing boats he was forced to accept dangers and risks of such a nature that the continuance of his life was nothing less than a daily miracle. So he ran away. He was aged nine, and he had a perfect knowledge of two languages as his stock-in-trade.”
“But the legal proof of his death?”
“Nothing simpler. The foster-father was a great friend of the village schoolmaster, and the schoolmaster, as you may know, is always the secretary of the mayor in a French village. He it is who makes out all certificates, and transacts every bit of the routine business of population-recording. The foster-father suggested to the schoolmaster that in exchange for a certificate of the boy’s death, the schoolmaster should receive a note of the Bank of France for a thousand francs. This was more than half a year’s salary to the schoolmaster, and the result was that the foster-father got the certificate. No fear of discovery! None knew of the issue of the certificate except these two men. And the lady for whose benefit the certificate was issued would be extremely unlikely to visit a remote French fishing village.”
“And what occurred to the boy?”
“The principal thing that occurred to the boy is that he is now sitting here and telling you his story,” said Jetsam, calmly.
“I guessed it,” said Carpentaria, with equal calmness, “as soon as you mentioned that the boy was not dead.”
Josephus Ilam maintained a stony silence.
“I knocked about for nine or ten years,” continued Jetsam, “both in England and France, chiefly fishing. Then I suddenly became respectable. I got a place in a house-agency in Cannes, chiefly on the strength of my knowledge of French and English. Of course, that only lasted during the winter season. But my employer had a similar agency in Ostend during the summer. It was in Ostend that I became gay. I joined a theatrical troupe. I travelled a great deal. I did everything except make money. And after ten years of that I settled down again as a house-agency clerk. I really was rather good at that, much better than as a music-hall performer with revolvers, for instance. And in various ‘pleasure cities’ of Europe I acted as a clerk for over twenty years. Think of it—twenty years! And me growing older and narrower and more gloomy every year in the service of ‘pleasure.’ I never saved any money to speak of, even though I remained single, perhaps because I remained single. And then one day, finding myself at St. Malo, I thought I would go and have a look at that fishing village which I had fled from over thirty years before. My delightful foster-father was, of course, dead; so was the schoolmaster; but one or two people remembered me, and among them was an old woman who had been a charming young girl when I left. It appeared that my old foster-father had fallen deeply in love with her in a senile way, and at her parents’ instigation she had married him for his money. He had confided to her, once when he thought he was dying, the secret of the substitution on Exeter platform. And now she told me. She had always liked me. You should have heard her pronounce ‘Exeter.’ It was the funniest thing.”
Mr. Jetsam laughed hardly.
“So that was how you got on the track?” said Carpentaria.
“Yes. I then pursued my inquiries in Torquay, and I found my old nurse. She told me that the real child of Mr. Ilam had a large crimson birthmark on the calf of his left leg. I had that mark. She also told me that there existed a photograph—one of the old daguerreotypes—of me as a child in the arms of my step-mother, my father standing close by, and that the mark on my leg was most clearly visible on this photograph. And that was the only real solid piece of information that I obtained, except that the photograph used to be kept in an old lacquered box. I had an instinct that the photograph had been preserved. And it was preserved—until to-night! I relied on the photograph. I could dimly recollect Torquay and Exeter platforms, but of what use would my assertions be without some proof, some tangible proof? When I thought of my wasted and spoiled and miserable life—and of what it might have been had I not been hated by a woman, I was filled with hatred and with—with such sorrow as you can’t understand.”
A sob escaped from Mr. Jetsam, and Carpentaria got up and took his hand.
“It is not too late for justice,” said Carpentaria.
“That woman has always hated me,” Jetsam murmured. “And even to-night her hatred still burned so fiercely that she tried to kill me. Even if she could speak, would she admit the truth? And she cannot speak.”
“I think I can cause her to communicate with us,” said Carpentaria. “You will see in a moment.”
Carpentaria bent over the old woman, as if to search ‘her eyes and find some kindness there.
And it seemed to him, indeed, that the character of her gaze had somewhat changed, though those brilliant orbs, famous in Torquay fifty years ago for their splendour, showed no trace of humidity.
Carpentaria himself was moved. It would have been impossible for anyone, least of all an artist of romantic instincts such as he, to listen to Jetsam’s recital without emotion. And now, when the narrative was finished, Jetsam sat silent and preoccupied, the figure of grief and of failure. One felt, in observing him, the immense tragedy of his life—a life which would not have been a tragedy, but merely a little slice of the commonplace, had he not by chance learned the sinister secret of his origin. One understood how the discovery of that secret had completely changed his view of existence, how it had filled him with ideas of frantic hope, frantic revenge, and frantic regret at the long drab irrecoverable years which the past had swallowed up. One penetrated, as it were, into his brain, and watched how he was continually contrasting what his career actually had been with what it might have been—with what it would have been but for the ruthless action of the woman on the bed.
And then there was the burly, smitten figure of Josephus Ilam, too, equally pathetic in its way. For love of this strong, heavy man, who once had been a little boy in a sailor suit standing on Exeter platform, the woman on the bed had committed a crime which was certainly worse than murder. She had made one life and she had marred another. And now she herself was stricken, withered, about to appear before the ultimate tribunal. It was incontrovertible that, if she had sinned, she had sinned magnificently, in the grand manner.
Carpentaria glanced at the two men, and then back again at the aged mother.
“I understand, Mrs. Ilam,” he began in a voice strangely soft and persuasive, “that you can indicate ‘yes’ or ‘no’ by a slight movement. Miss Dartmouth told me the other day. Is this so? I entreat you to answer me.”
With a sudden jerk Josephus Ilam rose from his chair and rushed to the bedside.
“Answer him, mother.”
Mother and son exchanged a long gaze, and then Mrs. Ilam’s eyelids blinked. It was the affirmative sign.
“Thank you,” said Carpentaria simply. “Now it seems to me, if you are not too tired, that we can quite easily carry on a conversation upon this basis. It will be slow, but it will be none the less sure. By successively choosing letters out of the alphabet you can make up words, and so form sentences. You can choose the letters thus: I will run through the alphabet, and when I come to the letter you want, you will blink. Do you comprehend my scheme?”
The eyes blinked.
“And are you willing to try it?”
There was a considerable pause, but in the end the eyes blinked.
“Very good,” said Carpentaria. “Now, quite probably you will want to begin with the letter ‘I,’ eh?”
The eyes blinked.
“Excellent! Your first word is ‘I.’ Let us go to the next word. A, B, C, D————”
At “D” the eyes blinked again.
With infinite patience, Carpentaria continued to help Mrs. Ilam to express herself, and though that mouth was incapable of speech and those hands would never write again, the woman transmitted her first thought to the outer world, and it went thus:
“I do not regret.”
There was something terrible, something majestic, in that unrepentant enunciation. It illustrated the remorseless character of the aged creature, whose spirit nothing apparently could conquer. Josephus Ilam moved away from the bed and hovered uncertainly between the dressing-table and the window. Jetsam got up from his chair and, taking Ilam’s place, examined the features of the woman who had ruined his life and cheated him out of all that was his. And even Jetsam could not forbear an admiring exclamation.
“You are tremendous,” he murmured. “I could almost like you.”
Carpentaria waved him aside.
“Has Mr. Jetsam told us the truth, dear madam?” he interrogated her.
And the eyes blinked. It was as though they blinked joyously, defiantly.
“Do you agree that restitution should be made, so far as restitution is possible?” Carpentaria asked.
There was no movement of the eyelids.
“You object to restitution, even now?”
Still there was no movement of the eyelids. But Josephus Ilam’s legs could be heard shuffling on the floor.
“You wish to speak, then? A, B, C, D—————”
Carpentaria went on to “W” before Mrs. Ilam signified that the sentence was to commence. The words ran:
“Why named Jetsam?”
The woman’s mind was evidently exploring, in a sort of indifferent curiosity, the side-issues, the minor scenes, of the terrific drama which she had started and of which she now witnessed the climax.
She appeared to have no sense at all of her own responsibility.
“It was a name I gave myself when I first found out who I was,” said Jetsam bitterly. “Something chucked overboard and forgotten, you see.”
A slight smile seemed to illuminate the woman’s face.
“Do you agree that restitution should be made?” Carpentaria repeated patiently.
The eyes of the paralytic made no sign until Carpentaria began again to go through the alphabet. Then, letter by letter, the message came:
“If my son wishes.”
“Mother,” Ilam murmured, averting his face from the bed, “of course I wish. I nearly killed him myself the other day. You thought I had been dreaming—till you saw him yourself, and, and——”
He stopped; he broke down.
And then Mrs. Ilam proceeded, with Carpentaria’s help:
“My son must tell me about that.”
“No,” Jetsam put in authoritatively; “I will tell you about that. Ilam—or rather I should say Kilmarnock—is in no condition to make speeches. When I first came to this place to begin my struggle for what was mine, I really had not got much of a plan in my head. It was so difficult to make a start. It may seem to you quite a simple thing”—he turned away from Mrs. Ilam and addressed Carpentaria—“to go up to a person and say to him, ‘Look here, you are standing in my shoes, and your mother has committed an act foully criminal!’ But in practice it isn’t quite as easy as it seems. You want a gigantic nerve to make a statement like that as if you meant it—although you do mean it. It sounds rather wild, you see. And then I met my supplanter rather before I was ready for him. The truth is that he came into that little place where I was hiding in just the same way as you came in, Mr. Carpentaria. He caught me like you did—a trespasser; and, of course, I was at a disadvantage. He spoke to me very roughly, and then angered me——”
“How could I know who you were?” demanded Ilam.
“Exactly. You couldn’t know. But the effect on me was the same. Put yourself in my place, Mr. Kilmarnock. I had been cheated out of my whole career. You were in unlawful possession of it; and on the top of that you came along, and behaved to me as if I were a dog. Well”—here Jetsam addressed his stepmother again—“I told him who I was, and pretty quick too, and I could see from his manner that he knew the history of our origin, and the substitution on Exeter platform.”
“I knew,” Ilam admitted with a certain sadness. “My mother had once told me—I came across traces of a mystery, and she told me.”
“And you did nothing?” queried Jetsam. “It was not on your conscience?”
“You must recollect that we had the legal proof of your death. What was there to be done? I could not have made restitution to the dead, even had my mother permitted.”
“But when I told you who I was,” rejoined Mr. Jetsam, “unless I am much mistaken, you believed what I said.”
“I did,” Ilam agreed. “Moreover, you bear a most distinct likeness to a portrait of my stepfather, painted when he was about your age.”
“You believed me, and your answer was to try to kill me?” Jetsam sneered.
The two men, the son and the stepson, were now opposite to one another, on either side of the bed, while Carpentaria, intently listening, stood at the foot.
“I did not try to kill you,” answered Ilam.
“You pretty nearly succeeded,” said Jetsam.
“I thought I had killed you,” Ilam said gravely. “But I had no intention of doing so. You said something very scathing about my mother——”
“I said nothing that was not justified.”
“You insulted my mother. I lost my temper. I hated you. We always hate those whom we have wronged. I struck you. You fell, and you must have knocked your head against the pile of planks lying in the enclosure; you never moved. I examined you. I could have sworn you were dead—I was afraid—I thought of inquests. I knew the whole truth would come out. I had not meant to kill. So I took you and buried you temporarily, while I considered what I should do afterwards. I went back to the house and told my mother. She would not believe me. She thought I had been dreaming. I do frequently have bad nightmares. And certain things that occurred afterwards made even me suspect that after all I had been dreaming. It was not until you came again that I——”
“And even your mother believed then, eh?” said Jetsam. “Your mother believed too suddenly. She saw me and she believed! And the result was paralysis! I ought to have broken it to her more gently. That would have been perhaps better for all of us—perhaps better!”
There was a pause. And Jetsam added, as if communing with himself:
“How she hated me! How she hates me still! even to-night, if some one had not interfered in time——”
He could not get away from the amazing tenacity of Mrs. Ilam’s purpose.
“You wish to speak?” said Carpentaria, who had been observing the woman’s eyes; the eyes were blinking nervously.
He began the alphabet again, and her message ran thus:
“I do not hate him; but I love my son. To-night I thought Josephus was in danger. That was why—revolver. I always acted for my son. I love him!”
These sentiments, so unmistakably clear in their significance, took some time to transmit. Mrs. Ilam appeared to be exhausted. But after a few moments she continued:
“Where is Rosie? She helped him. I want to know why.”
The men exchanged glances.
“Why did she help you?” Carpentaria asked of Jetsam.
“Better ask her!” replied Jetsam curtly.
Carpentaria did not hesitate an instant. He went to the door, opened it, and called Rosie, and his voice resounded through the well of the staircase and the empty rooms. And then Rosie came from; downstairs, like an apparition. She had been crying.
“Mrs. Ilam wants you to explain why you have been helping Mr. Jetsam,” said Carpentaria, as she entered.
“Helping him in what?” Rosie parleyed timidly.
“In his plans——”
“Against me,” Ilam added.
“I only helped him in his plans for justice,” said Rosie.
“But why?”
“Because I was sorry for him. Because there is something in his tone—because—oh! if he has told you all, are you not all sorry for him? When I think of what his life has been——”
She stopped and burst into tears.
“But my hair is grey,” murmured Jetsam. “How can you possibly be interested in me? What does it matter what happens to me? My life is over.”
“No it isn’t!” Rosie protested. “It hasn’t yet begun. It is just beginning. Mrs. Ilam and Cousin Ilam will be just to you. You will not bear them ill-will. The wrong is too old for that. You will forget it. You will forget all the past. Your hair may be grey, but I’m sure your heart isn’t. And your voice can influence even the Soudanese. The way that man obeyed you! The way he got the better of his brother just to please you! It seems strange, but I can understand it, because I have——”
Again she stopped.
Jetsam went up to her and took her hand, which she seemed willingly to release to him. And he held it.
“How good you are!” he said steadily. “I am almost ashamed to have roused your sympathy so much.”
The other two men watched.
“I don’t know what Pauline will say,” Rosie stammered.
Suddenly there was the sound of music. The band, which everybody in the room had forgotten, had begun to play, apparently of its own accord. And the melody it had chosen was, “See the Conquering Hero Comes.”
Carpentaria rushed to the window. And then, as he drew the curtains, all noticed for the first time that the dawn had begun.
“What are you making that noise for?” he demanded angrily from the balcony. The music ceased abruptly.
“We’re saluting the sun, sir,” came the reply. “It’s morning. We imagined that possibly you had lost sight of the fact of our existence.”
“I had,” said Carpentaria. “However, you can go!”
“Mr. Carpentaria,” cried another voice—a woman’s, firm and imperious. “Open the front door immediately and let me in. I insist.”
It was Pauline.
“Certainly, Miss Dartmouth,” said Carpentaria obediently. “Kindly cut the rope which you will see tied to the handle. I will tell the Soudanese to admit you.”
And he did so.
And presently footsteps were heard on the stairs, and both Pauline and Juliette came in.
“Rosie!” exclaimed Pauline. The sisters were clasped in each other’s arms.
“Forgive me, dearest!” Rosie entreated; and they kissed.
“But what have you——?” Pauline began, naturally mystified to the utmost.
“Ah, Miss Dartmouth,” said Carpentaria, “I fear you must wait for enlightenment until you can hear the whole story.”
“But the servants?” cried Pauline.
“I sent them to sleep in the staff-dormitories. I said you wished it,” answered Rosie, smiling.
“But why should I wish it?”
“I don’t know,” said Rosie. “When they asked me that, I told them I didn’t know,” she smiled again faintly. “But Mr. Jetsam will explain it all to you. I—I tried to help him, and I have succeeded—I think.”
During this conversation, Juliette, with that direct candour which frequently distinguishes women in a crisis, had gone straight to Josephus Ilam and seized his hand. She was assuring herself that he was not hurt, when Mrs. Ilam once more gave a sign with her eyelids. Carpentaria resumed his position as helper.
“It was because I loved him,” Carpentaria spelt out for her, “that I tried to kill you—twice.”
Carpentaria fell back. Then he regained his self-command and, pushing his fingers through his red-gold hair, he asked monosyllabically, “Why?”
And then he interpreted for her the answer to his own question.
“You worried Josephus. He wanted to get rid of you.”
Josephus disengaged his hands from those of Juliette.
“Mother!” he moaned sadly, and then added, “She is mad!”
But through Carpentaria Mrs. Ilam said:
“I am not mad. But my love has always been too strong.”
“Did you know of this, Ilam?” Carpentaria asked his partner solemnly.
“Of course I did not,” was the answer—“not till it was too late.”
“Then, why did you warn me up in the wheel?”
“Because I suspected. I suspected my poor mother was beginning to hate you, and I feared that—— I can’t say any more.”
Carpentaria, powerfully moved, walked out of the room, and it was Pauline who followed him.
Mrs. Ilam’s eyes were now shut.