“Before bedtime I went upstairs to prepare the remains of the deceased lady for the coffin. The room in which she lay was locked; the door leading into Mr. Macallan’s room being secured, as well as the door leading into the corridor. The keys had been taken away by Mr. Gale. Two of the menservants were posted outside the bedroom to keep watch. They were to be relieved at four in the morning—that was all they could tell me.”
There was my lost association with the corridor! There was what I ought to have remembered when Miserrimus Dexter was telling me of his visit to the dead!
How had he got into the bedroom—the doors being locked, and the keys being taken away by Mr. Gale? There was but one of the locked doors of which Mr. Gale had not got the key—the door of communication between the study and the bedroom. The key was missing from this. Had it been stolen? And was Dexter the thief? He might have passed by the men on the watch while they were asleep, or he might have crossed the corridor in an unguarded interval while the men were being relieved. But how could he have got into the bedchamber except by way of the locked study door? He must have had the key! And he must have secreted it weeks before Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s death! When the nurse first arrived at Gleninch, on the seventh of the month, her evidence declared the key of the door of communication to be then missing.
To what conclusion did these considerations and discoveries point? Had Miserrimus Dexter, in a moment of ungovernable agitation, unconsciously placed the clue in my hands? Was the pivot on which turned the whole mystery of the poisoning at Gleninch the missing key?
I went back for the third time to my desk. The one person who might be trusted to find the answer to those questions was Mr. Playmore. I wrote him a full and careful account of all that had happened; I begged him to forgive and forget my ungracious reception of the advice which he had so kindly offered to me; and I promised beforehand to do nothing without first consulting his opinion in the new emergency which now confronted me.
The day was fine for the time of year; and by way of getting a little wholesome exercise after the surprises and occupations of the morning, I took my letter to Mr. Playmore to the post.
Returning to the villa, I was informed that another visitor was waiting to see me: a civilized visitor this time, who had given her name. My mother-in-law—Mrs. Macallan.
XXXVII
At the Bedside
Before she had uttered a word, I saw in my mother-in-law’s face that she brought bad news.
“Eustace?” I said.
She answered me by a look.
“Let me hear it at once!” I cried. “I can bear anything but suspense.”
Mrs. Macallan lifted her hand, and showed me a telegraphic dispatch which she had hitherto kept concealed in the folds of her dress.
“I can trust your courage,” she said. “There is no need, my child, to prevaricate with you. Read that.”
I read the telegram. It was sent by the chief surgeon of a field-hospital; and it was dated from a village in the north of Spain.
“Mr. Eustace severely wounded in a skirmish by a stray shot. Not in danger, so far. Every care taken of him. Wait for another telegram.”
I turned away my face, and bore as best I might the pang that wrung me when I read those words. I thought I knew how dearly I loved him: I had never known it till that moment.
My mother-in-law put her arm round me, and held me to her tenderly. She knew me well enough not to speak to me at that moment.
I rallied my courage, and pointed to the last sentence in the telegram.
“Do you mean to wait?” I asked.
“Not a day!” she answered. “I am going to the Foreign Office about my passport—I have some interest there: they can give me letters; they can advise and assist me. I leave tonight by the mail train to Calais.”
“You leave?” I said. “Do you suppose I will let you go without me? Get my passport when you get yours. At seven this evening I will be at your house.”
She attempted to remonstrate; she spoke of the perils of the journey. At the first words I stopped her. “Don’t you know yet, mother, how obstinate I am? They may keep you waiting at the Foreign Office. Why do you waste the precious hours here?”
She yielded with a gentleness that was not in her everyday character. “Will my poor Eustace ever know what a wife he has got?” That was all she said. She kissed me, and went away in her carriage.
My remembrances of our journey are strangely vague and imperfect.
As I try to recall them, the memory of those more recent and more interesting events which occurred after my return to England gets between me and my adventures in Spain, and seems to force these last into a shadowy background, until they look like adventures that happened many years since. I confusedly recollect delays and alarms that tried our patience and our courage. I remember our finding friends (thanks to our letters of recommendation) in a Secretary to the Embassy and in a Queen’s Messenger, who assisted and protected us at a critical point in the journey. I recall to mind a long succession of men in our employment as travelers, all equally remarkable for their dirty cloaks and their clean linen, for their highly civilized courtesy to women and their utterly barbarous cruelty to horses. Last, and
