lovely face was indeliblyphotographed upon my memory. Through those dark years, after thatparoxysm of grief that had overtaken me when I discovered her false, Ihad, sleeping and waking, seen that smiling countenance as before myvision. Even in death Ella was still mine.
That smile! Ah! did it not mock me? Had not Avarice and Death cheatedme out of Happiness? A great darkness was over my mind, like the plagueof an unending night.
I set my teeth, swallowed the lump that arose in my throat, and with asigh replaced the photograph upon the table.
"A pretty face," remarked the man whose police record was in mypossession.
"Yes, very," I remarked casually.
Ah! what a storm of bitter recollections surged through my burningbrain.
Had she but lived and loved how different would my own wasted, aimlesslife have been!
Yes. She was, after all, my dear dead love--my Ella!
CHAPTER TEN.
MY OWN CONFESSION.
The "Lion" Inn was a pleasant, old-fashioned little hostelry overlookingthe bay, with Bournemouth beyond the distant haze. My room was smalland clean, with white dimity curtains and hangings, and framed religioustexts upon the walls. As I sat at the window in the hour before mydinner was ready, I reflected upon the strange incidents of those pastfew days--a chain of curious circumstances that seemed to enmesh and toentangle me.
Lucie Miller--the girl whose peril was such a mysterious and yet deadlyone--had actually known my Ella. That very fact seemed somehow as afurther link between us. What, I wondered, did she know of those laterdays of my dead love's life? To me they were shrouded in mystery.
That cold winter's night in damp, dismal London, when I had met her insecret at the corner of Queen's Gardens, would ever remain in my memory.She was staying with an aunt in Porchester Terrace, and we had alwayspreserved the secret of our affection. She came dressed in black,wearing a thick veil and carrying a muff in which was a bunch ofviolets. Her voice, when I greeted her, was, alas! not the same. Quickto recognise that something had occurred, I inquired the reason. Hadshe had any difference with her father or her aunt--as she sometimeshad? No, she said, shaking her head, it was not that.
And then, almost in silence, we strolled on side by side over those wetshining London pavements through the quieter streets and squares ofBayswater, while I glanced wonderingly at her face showing pale behindher spotted veil. At last her trembling hand suddenly rested upon mywrist, and halting she turned to me. In hoarse tones quite unusual toher she blurted forth the truth--the bitter truth that froze my heart.I remember even the spot where we stood, beside a red letter-box at thecorner of Chepstow Place. There the greatest blow of all my life fellupon me; and we parted.
I went straight along the Westbourne Grove, blinded by tears. She wasto wed the very last man she ought to have chosen. The coarse,fat-necked parvenu had bought her from her father with his gold won ingambles on the Stock Exchange. Yes, my Ella, my sweet-faced love, wasnot satisfied with the prospect of being the wife of a man comfortablyoff. Like so many other girls who are dazzled by the lights of life,she longed to shine as a hostess, to wear Paquin frocks and have herportraits in the papers. I was deeply disappointed with her, for, foolthat I was, I really believed that she honestly loved me. How often,alas! is a man deceived! I was but one of thousands, after all. Andyet I had adored her with all my heart and all my soul.
Away in the country the very song of the birds seemed to be in praise ofher--she whose beauty was sweet and delicate as the petals of theflowers; chaste and sweet as the rose itself. Love to the looker-on maybe blind, unwise, unworthily bestowed, a waste, a sacrifice, a crime;yet none the less is love the only thing that, come weal or woe, isworth the loss of every other thing; the one supreme and perfect gift ofearth in which all common things of daily life become transfigured anddivine.
I was crushed, benumbed, broken. At first my brain refused to accepther declaration that that meeting was to be our last, until she told methe truth in all its hideous detail, and that on the morrow herengagement was to be announced in the _Morning Post_. I opened my lipsto upbraid her, but my tongue refused to utter a syllable of reproach.I only bit my lips in silence. Ah! yes, I loved her!--I loved her!
From that moment we never again met. Next day I saw the announcement inthe papers, and, disappointed and heart-broken, I went abroad, and itwas a year after when one of my intimate friends, Jack Davies, alieutenant on board the _Cornwall_, in a letter which I received at alonely post-house on the snow-bound road in the extreme north of Russia,wrote those words which caused my heart to burst within me:--
"You recollect little Ella Murray, who was, with her stepmother, up atthe Grainger's shoot two years ago? The poor little girl was engaged tosome City fellow, an entire outsider, I heard, but I hear she caughttyphoid at a hotel in Sheringham and died six months ago. A pity, isn'tit? I rather liked her--so did you, I remember."
I stood at the door of that filthy, log-built place with the letter inmy hand, gazing across the great snow-covered plain with its long row oftelegraph-wires and verst-posts stretching away from Pokrovskoi to thegrey horizon. My big bearded driver whispered to the post-house keeper,for both saw that I had received bad news. The man in sheepskins whokept the place went in without a word and returned with a glass ofvodka. I recognised his kindly thought, gulped down the spirit, andmounting into the sledge drove on--on, whither I did not care. Ella--myown dear Ella was dead!
All this came back vividly to me on that evening as I ate my dinneralone in the little inn at Studland, and then in the golden sunsetstrolled by the sea--that same wide, mysterious sea beside which I hadso long ago declared my love. She lived then, smiling, sighing, loving.But now, alas! she was no more. Of her memory there only remained thatshadowy picture that I had seen in Miller's drawing-room, the portraitof the dead that smiled upon me in such mocking happiness.
I threw myself upon a bank and watched the glorious crimson and purpleof the summer afterglow. Yes, the face of the world was for me nowchanged. The past had been full enough of bitterness, what, I wondered,did the future contain? Ah! if I could have but known at that moment!Yet perhaps after all the Divine power is merciful in keeping from usthe happiness and tragedy that lie before.
Till the summer twilight darkened into night I sat therefore before thesea, smoking and thinking. The dark vista of silent waters before meharmonised with my thoughts. Mine was, alas! a wasted, useless life, Ihad never known one moment's financial worry, and yet I had somehownever found happiness. In my life where I might be, at home or abroad,there was always something wanting--the love of a good woman.
Through the following day I idled, mostly in the Lion, for it was toohot for walking. But at half-past two I sauntered to the station and,unseen by Lucie, I saw her alight from the train from London, climb intothe smart dogcart that was awaiting her, and drive away in the directionof the Manor.
Then when I returned and had my tea I remarked casually to the stout,round-faced innkeeper:--
"I hear that Mr Miller is at the Manor House just now. I learnt soyesterday."
"An' so did I," was his reply. "Dear me! wonders 'ull never cease.Fancy Mr Miller coming back again! An' they say that Miss Lucie'sa-comin', too."
"Is she his daughter?" I inquired, as though in ignorance.
"Of course she is; an' a very good girl, too. When she's 'ere--whichain't very often, more's the pity--she does a great deal of good in thevillage--visits the old people, looks after the coal club, and givesaway quite a lot of money to the deserving people who are destitute. Ionly wish there were more like 'er in these 'ere parts."
"Does she often come here?"
"Oh! two or three times a year," answered the landlord. "Some say shelives up in London with 'er aunt, and others declare that she's mostlyabroad with 'er father. I believe the latter story. She 'as a foreignway about 'er, and I've 'eard the servants say as 'ow all 'er things aremade abroad."
"Then nobody k
nows her address?" I said.
"Seems not. But she's very fond of 'er father, and no doubt is alwayswith him."
"Do they have many friends at the Manor when Mr Miller and his daughterare at home?"
"Not many. Dr Haviland often dines with 'em."
"I don't mean local friends--visitors from London."
"Very few. I've known one or two, but they've all been forriners. MrMiller seems to like them forriners some'ow. But I don't," declared theold fellow. "They're too infernal polite and sleeky for me. I wouldn'ttrust any of 'em for a pint o' beer."
"They were gentlemen, I suppose?"
"Oh, dear, yes--full of fine graces and fine manners. They wore shoeslike women, and shirts pleated like