Helen Vardon's confession

He handed me the letter when he had finished reading, and I glanced through it quickly before returning it to him. “I think that ought to relieve him of all anxiety,” said he. “Yes,” I answered. “It will do admirably. And if you will kindly seal it and let me have it, I will go at once and drop it in the letter-box. It is most important that it should be in his hands as soon as possible.” “Quite so,” he agreed; “and I won’t detain you further excepting to point out that, by giving you this letter, I am putting myself entirely in your hands. You will observe that this amounts to a surrender of my claim on your father for the time being. He will, of course, keep the letter, and could produce it in answer to any sudden demand for the restitution of the money. So I am really carrying out my part of the agreement in advance.” “Yes, I see that,” I replied, “and I thank you most sincerely; but,” I added, rising and holding out my hand for the letter, “you have my solemn promise to carry out my part. If you were better acquainted with me, you would consider that enough.” “But I do, Miss Vardon,” he rejoined, hastily; “I do. If I did not trust you implicitly, I should not have written this letter. However, I mustn’t delay you. I will make all the necessary arrangements and let you know when everything is ready. Will next Thursday be too soon?” At the mention of an actual date, and one so near, too, something like a complete realisation of what I was doing flashed into my mind and set my heart thumping painfully. But it had to be, so why haggle for terms? Nor, indeed, since it must be, was there any use in trying to put off the evil day. The urgent need of the moment was to get this letter into my father’s hands, if it were not already too late. “I must leave the arrangement of the affair to you, Mr. Otway,” I murmured, shakily. “Do as you think best. And now I must really go.” He shook my hand in a drily courteous fashion and let me out, accompanying me down the drive to the outer gate, which he opened for me with a ceremonious bow. I wished him a hurried “good-night,” and, as soon as I was outside the gate, ran off in the direction of home, holding the precious letter in the little pocket of my cloak. Chapter IV. The Eleventh Hour As I drew near the neighbourhood of our house my fears grew so that I was compelled by sheer breathlessness and the trembling of my limbs to slacken my pace. I was sick with terror. In my mind, pictures, vague and nebulous but unspeakably dreadful, rose like the visions of a nightmare. I clutched the precious order of release in my pocket and set my teeth, trying not to think of what I might find at my journey’s end. At last I came in sight of the house. It was all dark save two of the upper windows--those of the servants’ bedrooms. The servants, then, were going to bed as usual, for ours was an early household. This seemed re-assuring, but only to a slight degree; for even if---- I opened the gate softly--I do not know why, but somehow I instinctively avoided noise of any kind--and running up the garden path, let myself in quietly with my latch-key. With one quick and fearful glance around the darkened hall, I stole up to the hat-stand. Apparently my father had not yet come home, for his stick was not in the stand, and one of his hats was missing. I looked at the tall clock and noted that it was not yet half-past ten; I peered out through the open doorway, down the dark road, and listened awhile for the sound of footsteps; then, slipping the letter into the letter-box--which I could see contained no other missives--I lit one of the candles from the hall table, and, having peeped into the study, the book-room and the workshop, stole silently up the stairs. First, I went to my father’s bedroom, and, by the glimmer of gas that the maid had left burning, and the light of my candle, inspected it narrowly. I looked over the trifles on the mantelpiece and on the dressing-table, and even opened the little medicine-cupboard to run my eye over the collection of bottles and boxes, pausing from time to time that I might listen for footsteps, strange or familiar, as Fate might decree. But pry as I would, there was nothing unusual, nothing on which the most eager suspicion might fasten. All the details of that room were familiar to me, for it had been my daily task since my girlhood to look them over and see that my father’s orderly arrangements were not disturbed by the servants; and everything was in its place, and nothing new or strange or sinister had made its appearance. When I had finished my inspection, I stole softly along the corridor to my own bedroom, which was at the head of the stairs, and, turning up the gas, but leaving the door ajar, began slowly to undress, listening intently the while for any sounds that might confirm or dispel my fears. The house was very quiet and still; so quiet that the tinkle of the water, as I poured it out from the ewer, struck with disturbing harshness on my ear, and even the ticking of the little clock and my own slippered footfalls seemed an impertinent intrusion into that expectant silence. It was a few minutes past eleven when the sound of a latch-key and the gentle closing of the hall door sent the blood tingling to my very finger-tips. No footsteps had been audible on the garden path, but this, in itself, was characteristic; for my father and I were alike in that we both disliked noise and habitually moved about softly, avoiding the slamming of doors or the production in any way of jarring sounds. I crept on tip-toe to the door and listened. A stick was carefully put down in the hall-stand, and then I thought--but was not quite sure--that I heard my father unlock the letter-box. A few seconds later I caught a faint creak, which I recognised as proceeding from the study door, and, after a short interval, the creak was repeated and the door closed. Then the hall gas was turned out and soft footfalls began to ascend the stairs. “Is that you, Pater, dear?” I asked. “Is it I, indeed, O! wicked and disobedient child and likewise minx!” was the welcome answer. “Didn’t I tell you to go to bed?” “Yes, you did; and I am going. But I thought I would like to see you safely home from your roysterings.” “_Mures ratti!_” he exclaimed, as he came into the light from my open door. “It is poor old Queen Anne who has been keeping you out of your little nest. I know you.” Here he gave a gentle tug at one of the tails into which I had plaited my hair, and, having kissed me on the tip of my nose, continued: “And you look as tired as the proverbial dog--which is the only kind of dog that ever does get tired. Now go to bed and sleep like a young dormouse. Good-night, Jimmy, dear.” With the aid of the convenient tail, he drew my face to his and kissed me again; then he went off along the corridor singing very softly, but just audibly to me: “Her father he makes cabbage nets And in the streets does cry ’em; Her mother she sells laces long----” Here a rapid diminuendo indicated the closing of the door, and the silence that had been so agreeably broken once again settled down upon the house. Still, I stood at the open door, looking out into the darkness. Had my father seen the letter? He had seemed very cheerful. But then, he would have seemed very cheerful if he had been walking to the scaffold or the stake. That was his nature. Yet his gaiety had appeared to me more genuine than that which he had exhibited earlier in the evening. However, there was no need to speculate; the question could easily be set at rest. Taking the match-box from my candlestick, I stole silently down the stairs, steadying myself by the hand-rail, and groped my way across the hall until I reached the door. Then I struck a match, and by its light, peered through the wire grating into the letter-box. It was empty. The letter had been taken out. I blew out the match, and, having dropped it into the salver on the table, crept back up the stairs to my room. Closing the door silently, I made my final preparations, turned out the light and crept into bed, feeling in the sudden ecstasy of relief that I could now shake off all care and bury the anxieties and alarms of this dreadful day in slumber. My father was saved! No haunting fear of imminent tragedy, no dread of impending ruin and disgrace, remained to murder sleep or mingle it with frightful visions. My father was saved. At the eleventh hour I had made my bid for his life and liberty; and the eleventh hour had not been too late. But it was long--very long before sleep came to shut out for a time the realities of life. The blessed feeling of escape from this appalling peril, the sense of restored security, was presently followed by the chill of reaction. For the end was not yet. I had bid for my father’s life and had bought it in; but the price remained to be paid. And only now, when I could consider it undisturbed by terror for my father’s safety, did I begin to realise fully how bitter a price it was. Not that I would have gone back on my bargain, for I had made it with my eyes open; and would have made it over again if the need had been. But it was a terrible price. I had sold my birth-right--my precious woman’s birth-right to choose my own mate--for a mess of pottage. It was a price that I should have to pay, and go on paying as long as life lasted. Hour after hour did I lie, gazing wide-eyed into the darkness, letting my thoughts flit hither and thither, now into the quiet, untroubled past, now into the dim and desolate future, whence they would come hurrying back affrighted. But always, whithersoever they wandered, behind them rose, now vague and remote, now horribly distinct, that unwieldy figure with the impassive oriental face; even, as to the eyes of the fisherman in the Arabian tale, the smoke from the magic jar shaped itself into the menacing form of the gigantic Jinn. I tried to consider dispassionately the character of Mr. Otway. It was very difficult. For had he not come into our life like some malignant spirit, to dispel with a word and in the twinkling of an eye, all the peace and happiness of our quiet home? To snap off short my serene companionship with my father? To turn into dust and ashes all the vaguely-sweet dreams of my maidenhood? To shut out the warm and hazy sunshine from my future and fill the firmament with unrelieved, leaden greyness? Still, I tried to consider him fairly. Callously, cynically, he had driven his Juggernaut car over my father and me, his eyes fixed upon his own desires and seeing nothing else. He was an absolute egoist. That was undeniable. For some reason, he wished to marry me; and to achieve that wish he had been willing to put us both on the rack, and, with passionless composure, to turn the screw until we yielded. It was not a pleasant thing to think of. On the other hand, he seemed, in his way, to be a just man. By no hair’s breadth had he sought to modify the terms that he had first proposed; indeed, in his letter to me he had treated the loan to my father as an almost unconditional gift, and the other details of our agreement he had expressed in writing fully and fairly, with no attempt at evasion. Nor was he niggardly. Five thousand pounds is a large sum to pay for the privilege of marrying an unwilling bride. Under other circumstances I might have appreciated the implied compliment. Now, I could only admit that, according to his lights, he seemed not ungenerous. But when I considered him as the companion with whom I must share the remainder of my life--or, at least, that part of it which mattered--the thought was almost unendurable. To live, day after day