<SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></SPAN><h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
<h3>ONE WHO WAS NOT BIDDEN</h3>
<br/>
<p>Langholm went north next morning by the ten o'clock express from King's
Cross. He had been but four nights in town, and not four days, yet to
Langholm they might have been weeks, for he had never felt so much and
slept so little in all his life. He had also done a good deal; but it is
the moments of keen sensation that make up the really crowded hours, and
Langholm was to run the gamut of his emotions before this memorable week
was out. In psychological experience it was to be, for him, a little
lifetime in itself; indeed, the week seemed that already, while it was
still young, and comparatively poor in incident and surprise.</p>
<p>He had bought magazines and the literary papers for his journey, but he
could concentrate his mind on nothing, and only the exigencies of
railway travelling kept him off his legs. Luckily for Langholm, however,
sleep came to him when least expected, in his cool corner of the
corridor train, and he only awoke in time for luncheon before the
change at York. His tired brain was vastly refreshed, but so far he
could not concentrate it, even on the events of these eventful days. He
was still in the thick of them. A sense of proportion was as yet
impossible, and a consecutive review the most difficult of intellectual
feats. Langholm was too excited, and the situation too identical with
suspense, for a clear sight of all its bearings and potentialities; and
then there was the stern self-discipline, the determined bridling of the
imagination, in which he had not yet relaxed. Once in the night,
however, in the hopeless hours between darkness and broad day, he had
seen clearly for a while, and there and then pinned his vision down to
paper. It concerned only one aspect of the case, but this was how
Langholm found that he had stated it, on taking out his pocket-book
during the final stages of his journey—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<p>PROVISIONAL CASE AGAINST —— —— ——</p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>1. <i>Was in Sloane Street on the night of the
murder, at an hotel about a mile from the
house in which the murder was committed.
This can be proved</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>2. <i>Left hotel shortly after arrival towards midnight,
believed to have returned between
two and three, and would thus have been
absent at very time at which crime was
committed according to medical evidence
adduced at trial. But exact duration of
absence from hotel can he proved</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>3. <i>Knew M. in Australia, but was in England
unknown to M. till two mornings before
murder, when M. wrote letter on receipt
of which —— —— —— came up to town
(arriving near scene of murder as above
stated, about time of commission). All
this morally certain and probably capable
of legal proof</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>4. <i>"So then I asked why a man he hadn't seen
for so long should pay his debts; but M.
only laughed and swore, and said he'd
make him." C. could be subpoenaed to
confirm if not to amplify this statement to
me, with others to effect that it was for
money M. admitted having written to "a
millionaire</i>."</p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>5. <i>Attended Mrs. M.'s trial throughout, thereafter
making her acquaintance and offering
marriage without any previous private
knowledge whatsoever of her character or
antecedents</i>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<center>POSSIBLE MOTIVES</center>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<p><i> —— —— —— is a human mystery, his past
life a greater one. He elaborately pretends
that no part of that past was spent in
Australia</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><i>M. said he knew him there; also that "he'd
make him"—pay up!</i></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><i>Blackmail not inconsistent with M.'s character</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><i>Men have died as they deserved before to-day
for threatening blackmail</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><i>Possible Motive for Marriage</i></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><i>Atonement of the Guilty to the Innocent</i>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>As Langholm read and re-read these precise pronouncements, with
something of the detachment and the mild surprise with which he
occasionally dipped into his own earlier volumes, he congratulated
himself upon the evidently lucid interval which had produced so much
order from the chaos that had been his mind. Chaotic as its condition
still was, that orderly array of impression, discovery, and surmise,
bore the test of conscientious reconsideration. And there was nothing
that Langholm felt moved to strike out in the train; but, on the other
hand, he saw the weakness of his case as it stood at present, and was
helped to see it by the detective officer's remark to him at Scotland
Yard: "You find one [old Australian] who carries a revolver like this,
and prove that he was in Chelsea on the night of the murder, with a
motive for committing it, and we shall be glad of his name and address."
Langholm had found the old Australian who could be proved to have been
in Chelsea, or thereabouts, on the night in question; but the pistol he
could not hope to find, and the motive was mere surmise.</p>
<p>And yet, to the walls of the mind that he was trying so hard to cleanse
from prejudice and prepossession—to school indeed to an inhuman
fairness—there clung small circumstances and smaller details which
could influence no one else, which would not constitute evidence before
any tribunal, but which weighed more with Langholm himself than all the
points arrayed in his note-book with so much primness and precision.</p>
<p>There was Rachel's vain appeal to her husband, "Find out who <i>is</i> guilty
if you want people to believe that I am not." Why should so natural a
petition have been made in vain, to a husband who after all had shown
some solicitude for his wife's honor, and who had the means to employ
the best detective talent in the world? Langholm could only conceive
one reason: there was nothing for the husband to find out, but
everything for him to hide.</p>
<p>Langholm remembered the wide-eyed way in which Steel had looked at his
wife before replying, and the man's embarrassment grew automatically in
his mind. His lips had indeed shut very tight, but unconscious
exaggeration made them tremble first.</p>
<p>And then the fellow's manner to himself, his defiant taunts, his final
challenge! Langholm was not sorry to remember the last; it relieved him
from the moral incubus of the clandestine and the underhand; it bid him
go on and do his worst; it set his eyes upon the issue as between
himself and Steel, and it shut them to the final possibilities as
touching the woman in the case.</p>
<p>So Langholm came back from sultry London to a world of smoke and rain,
with furnaces flaring through the blurred windows, and the soot laid
with the dust in one of the grimiest towns in the island; but he soon
shook both from his feet, and doubled back upon the local line to a
rural station within a mile and a half of his cottage. This distance he
walked by muddy ways, through the peculiarly humid atmosphere created by
a sky that has rained itself out and an earth that can hold no more,
and came finally to his dripping garden by the wicket at the back of the
cottage. There he stood to inhale the fine earthy fragrance which atoned
somewhat for a rather desolate scene. The roses were all washed away.
William Allen Richardson clung here and there, in the shelter of the
southern eaves, but he was far past his prime, and had better have
perished with the exposed beauties on the tiny trees. The soaking
foliage had a bluish tinge; the glimpse of wooded upland, across the
valley through the gap in the hedge of Penzance briers, lay colorless
and indistinct as a faded print from an imperfect negative. A footstep
crunched the wet gravel at Langholm's back.</p>
<p>"Thank God you've got back, sir!" cried a Yorkshire voice in devout
accents; and Langholm, turning, met the troubled face and tired eyes of
the woman next door, who kept house for him while living in her own.</p>
<p>"My dear Mrs. Brunton," he exclaimed, "what on earth has happened? You
didn't expect me earlier, did you? I wired you my train first thing this
morning."</p>
<p>"Oh, no, it isn't that, sir. It's—it's the poor young gentleman—"</p>
<p>And her apron went to her eyes.</p>
<p>"What young gentleman, Mrs. Brunton?"</p>
<p>"Him 'at you saw i' London an' sent all this way for change of air! He
wasn't fit to travel half the distance. I've been nursing of him all
night and all day too."</p>
<p>"A young gentleman, and sent by me?" Langholm's face was blank until a
harsh light broke over it. "What's his name, Mrs. Brunton?"</p>
<p>"I can't tell you, sir. He said he was a friend of yours, and that was
all before he took ill. He's been too bad to answer questions all day.
And then we knew you'd soon be here to tell us."</p>
<p>"A foreigner, I suppose?"</p>
<p>"I should say he was, sir."</p>
<p>"And did he really tell you I had sent him?"</p>
<p>"Well, I can't say he did, not in so many words, but that was what I
thought he meant. It was like this, sir," continued Mrs. Brunton, as
they stood face to face on the wet gravel: "just about this time
yesterday I was busy ironing, when my nephew, the lad you used to send
with letters, who's here again for his summer holidays, comes to me an'
says, 'You're wanted.' So I went, and there was a young gentleman
looking fit to drop. He'd a bag with him, and he'd walked all the way
from Upthorpe station, same as I suppose you have now; but yesterday was
the hottest day we've had, and I never did see living face so like the
dead. He had hardly life enough to ask if this was where you lived; and
when I said it was, but you were away, he nodded and said he'd just seen
you in London; and he was sure he might come in and rest a bit. Well,
sir, I not only let him do that, but you never will lock up anything, so
I gave him a good sup o' your whiskey too!"</p>
<p>"Quite right," said Langholm—"and then?"</p>
<p>"It seemed to pull him together a bit, and he began to talk. He wanted
to know about all the grand folks round about, where they lived and how
long they'd lived there. At last he made me tell him the way to
Normanthorpe House, after asking any amount of questions about Mr. and
Mrs. Steel; it was hard work not to tell him what had just come out, but
I remembered what you said before you went away, sir, and I left that to
others."</p>
<p>"Good!" said Langholm. "But did he go to Normanthorpe?"</p>
<p>"He started, though I begged him to sit still while we tried to get him
a trap from the village; and his self-will nearly cost him his life, if
it doesn't yet. He was hardly out of sight when we see him come
staggering back with his handkerchief up to his mouth, and the blood
dripping through his fingers into the road."</p>
<p>"A hemorrhage!"</p>
<p>"Yes, sir, yon was the very word the doctor used, and he says if he has
another it'll be all up. So you may think what a time I've had! If he's
a friend of yours, sir, I'm sure I don't mind. In any case, poor
gentleman—"</p>
<p>"He is a friend of mine," interrupted Langholm, "and we must do all we
can for him. I will help you, Mrs. Brunton. You shall have your sleep
to-night. Did you put him into my room?"</p>
<p>"No, sir, your bed wasn't ready, so we popped him straight into our own;
and now he has everything nice and clean and comfortable as I could make
it. If only we can pull him through, poor young gentleman, between us!"</p>
<p>"God bless you for a good woman," said Langholm, from his heart; "it
will be His will and not your fault if we fail. Yes, I should like to
see the poor fellow, if I may."</p>
<p>"He is expecting you, sir. He told Dr. Sedley he must see you the moment
you arrived, and the doctor said he might. No, he won't know you're here
yet, and he can't have heard a word, for our room is at t'front o'
t'house."</p>
<p>"Then I'll go up alone, Mrs. Brunton, if you won't mind."</p>
<p>Severino was lying in a high, square bed, his black locks tossed upon a
spotless pillow no whiter than his face; a transparent hand came from
under the bedclothes to meet Langholm's outstretched one, but it fell
back upon the sick man's breast instead.</p>
<p>"Do you forgive me?" he whispered, in a voice both hoarse and hollow.</p>
<p>"What for?" smiled Langholm. "You had a right to come where you liked;
it is a free country, Severino."</p>
<p>"But I went to your hotel—behind your back!"</p>
<p>"That was quite fair, my good fellow. Come, I mean to shake hands,
whether you like it or not."</p>
<p>And the sound man took the sick one's hand with womanly tenderness; and
so sat on the bed, looking far into the great dark sinks of fever that
were human eyes; but the fever was of the brain, for the poor fellow's
hand was cool.</p>
<p>"You do not ask me why I did it," came from the tremulous lips at last.</p>
<p>"Perhaps I know."</p>
<p>"I will tell you if you are right."</p>
<p>"It was to see her again—your kindest friend—and mine," said
Langholm, gently.</p>
<p>"Yes! It was to see her again—before I die!"</p>
<p>And the black eyes blazed again.</p>
<p>"You are not going to die," said Langholm, with the usual reassuring
scorn.</p>
<p>"I am. Quite soon. On your hands, I only fear. And I have not seen her
yet!"</p>
<p>"You shall see her," said Langholm, tenderly, gravely. He was rewarded
with a slight pressure of the emaciated hand; but for the first time he
suspected that all the scrutiny was not upon one side—that the sick
youth was trying to read him in his turn.</p>
<p>"I love her!" at last cried Severino, in rapt whispers. "Do you hear me?
I love her! I love her! What does it matter now?"</p>
<p>"It would matter to her if you told her," rejoined Langholm. "It would
make her very unhappy."</p>
<p>"Then I need not tell her."</p>
<p>"You must not, indeed."</p>
<p>"Very well, I will not. It is a promise, and I keep my promises; it is
only when I make none—"</p>
<p>"That's all right," said Langholm, smiling.</p>
<p>"Then you will bring her to me?"</p>
<p>"I shall have to see her first, and the doctor."</p>
<p>"But you will do your best? That is why I am here, remember! I shall
tell the doctor so myself."</p>
<p>"I will do my best," said Langholm, as he rose.</p>
<p>A last whisper followed him to the door.</p>
<p>"Because I worship her!" were the words.</p>
<br/>
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