The Heart of a Woman

"I arrived in Brussels early one morning, having crossed over in the night. At once I drove to the mean hotel where he was lodging. He was sharing a room with a man with whom he had picked up a casual acquaintanceship on the sea voyage between the West Indies and Antwerp. The two men had come over together in the Belgian boat. They looked a pair of young blackguards, but it did not take me very long to be convinced that for some reason best known to himself my brother Arthur had deceived me and that his son Philip was indeed the legitimate and rightful heir to the title which I hold. The papers were authentic and undisputable. This much I knew and that Luke, whom I loved best in all the world, more than any father has ever loved his son, would never be Earl of Radclyffe so long as Philip de Mountford lived.

"Men will say that I am an abandoned criminal, and, indeed, it may be so. May God forgive me hereafter, for I killed my brother's son. I pretended to rejoice at his homecoming, and in half an hour had gained his confidence. In the afternoon we went out together and after a short walk we picked up a taxicab. Philip gave the driver the address of a restaurant at which I had asked him to dine with me. I kept carefully in the shadow, so that the man shouldn't see me. Then on the way in the cab, I killed him. When his head was turned away from me, I plunged an old Italian stiletto which I had carried about with me, ever since I had had letters from Philip, straight into his neck.

"He died instantly without a groan, and I was sick to death, but I managed to sit quietly beside him until the cab pulled up: then I jumped out and told the chauffeur to drive my friend on to some remote place on the boulevards.

"I watched the cab until it was out of sight, then I hailed another, and drove straight to the Gard du Nord, and crossed back to England that night. I threw the stiletto overboard into the sea. I had spent twelve hours in Brussels, and I had killed Philip de Mountford, and made sure that Luke would be Earl of Radclyffe after me.

"It was not likely that in their search for the missing criminal who had stabbed an unknown stranger in a cab, the Belgian police would suspect an English peer. The mystery of that crime has remained impenetrable, because nothing was ever known of the stranger who was murdered. At the mean hotel where he lodged no one knew anything about him. Only one person knew and he was silent for purposes of his own.

"Before the police searched the unknown stranger's room, the room which he shared with the chance friend whom he had picked up on the Belgian boat, the latter already had found and concealed the papers which would have revealed the identity of the murdered man, if not that of his murderer.

"I, at home in England, wondered how it was that the Belgian police had never discovered that the murdered man was named Philip de Mountford and that he claimed to be the heir to the earldom of Radclyffe. I expected paragraphs in the paper, some unpleasantness even, but none came.

"I could not understand it, for I had forgotten the existence of the chance friend.

"And then one day last April I understood. Once more I had letters from abroad, from a man who claimed to be my brother's son. At first I thought the whole thing a silly imposture, until the day when a man confronted me in my own house, armed with every proof that I had killed Philip de Mountford in Brussels. He had the latter's passports, his birth and marriage certificates, his letters of identification, all, all the papers that he had filched from among the dead man's things, and which he now flaunted before me, daring me to prove him an impostor. 'If I am not Philip de Mountford,' he said to me, 'then where is Philip de Mountford?' And from that hour, I was as wax in his hands. He held me and he knew it. I might have proved him an impostor, and he could prove me a murderer.

"Heaven alone knows how I did not lose my reason then. I floundered in a sea of wild conjectures, wild projects, wild hopes of escape. But my tyrant held me, and I dared not rebel.

"And once more I was obsessed with the awful certitude that Luke would never be Earl of Radclyffe after me, while this man lived.

"He had so taken upon himself the personality of Philip, the evidences which went to prove his identity with the late Arthur de Mountford's son were so strangely circumstantial, that, short of my proclaiming loudly that I had killed my brother's son with my own hand, nothing could prevent the impostor from succeeding in filching Luke's inheritance.

"And even if I had confessed then, it seemed to me that this man would still succeed in proving that I had murdered an unknown stranger – a chance friend, who was an English bricklayer's son – and that he and he only was Philip de Mountford, the late Arthur's son.

"When did I first dream of killing him, as I killed the other? I could not tell you that. But it was some time ago, and I watched my opportunity with patience and perseverance. Then at last the opportunity came, following on terrible provocation. That dark, foggy November night that you all remember so well! I was to meet my tyrant at the Veterans' Club at nine o'clock. I drove up there and as I stepped out of the cab I came face to face with Luke. Something in the boy's manner told me what had happened. He didn't tell me, but I guessed. The two men had quarrelled and Luke had had to endure the other's arrogance.

"The news upset me. I felt faint and choked with the fog. Luke didn't like to leave me, and seeing how I tottered he gave me his stick to lean upon. We walked together for a little while up and down, and I felt stronger and better. I begged Luke to leave me. Presently, as the impostor came out at the club door, Luke obeyed at last, and said 'good night' to me.

"Paul Baker – I knew that that was his name – wanted me to drive straight back to Grosvenor Square, but asked me to drop him first near the railings of Green Park. He often walked about there in the evenings. It was a curious fad which he had. We called a cab, and he told the driver where to pull up. When I was sitting next to him, I realized that I had a stick in my hand. I really had forgotten that it was Luke's. Whilst I toyed with it, I noticed that the top came out, and that a sharp dagger was concealed inside the body of the stick.

"Paul Baker was looking out of the window at the fog, and inside the cab it was very dark, so he did not know what I was doing. I killed him, just as I had killed Arthur's son, with a dagger thrust through the neck. This time I did not feel sick, because I hated this man so. When the driver pulled up near Green Park I jumped out quite coolly and told the man to take my friend to some distant address in Kensington.

"I threw the stick away behind the railings in the park. I had forgotten that the stick was Luke's: I knew that it was not mine, and that therefore they could not trace it to me.

"I did not imagine for a moment that Luke could be accused of a crime which he had not committed. I did not think that justice could be so blind.

"All I wanted was to be rid of my tyrant, and that Luke's inheritance should not be filched from him."

CHAPTER XLII

WHICH TELLS ONCE MORE OF COMMONPLACE INCIDENTS

The note-book fell out of Louisa's hands on to her lap. How simple the tragedy seemed, now that she knew. How understandable was the mystery of Luke's silence. He knew that "Uncle Rad" was guilty. There lay the awful difficulty!

"Uncle Rad has been father, mother, brother, sister to us all! Bless him!" that was Luke's feeling with regard to Uncle Rad.

The un-understandable was so simple after all!

Louisa went back to the sitting-room. The two men were sitting, smoking in silence. Colonel Harris, too, understood the mystery at last. His loyalty was crowned with the halo of justification.

The public never knew, I think, that Luke de Mountford had actually been arrested for the murder of the Clapham Road bricklayer. The police the next day applied for a remand and then Luke was brought quietly before the magistrate and equally quietly dismissed.

He was free to go and see Uncle Rad.

Louisa did not see him the whole of that day, for he sat by the bedside of the sick man whose strange and perturbed spirit was slowly sinking to rest. Uncle Rad was at peace, for he held the hand and looked into the face of the man on whom he had lavished the storehouse of an affection that had known no bounds.

The two men understood each other perfectly. He who had committed a crime, and he who was ready to bear its burden, both had done their share for the other's sake.

It was only after the magnificent obsequies of the Earl of Radclyffe that the truth about the murder of the bricklayer's son was made known to the public at large.

It had to be done for Luke's sake. Colonel Harris insisted upon it with all the weight of his fatherly authority. Sir Thomas Ryder did likewise.

For Louisa's sake, too, it had to be. But, twenty-four hours before the publication of the confession in the newspapers, Luke and Louisa had been quietly married by special license, and had gone abroad.

Once more we must think of them as the commonplace, conventional man and woman of the world, who outwardly behaved just like thousands of English men and women of their class behave.

When they came back from their honeymoon – which lasted one year abroad and all the rest of their lives after that – there was not a trace in them, in their appearance, their manner, their mode of life, of the terrible tragedy which had threatened to annihilate honour, life, and love.

"Ah! those English!" murmured the foreign excellencies who graced the English court, "they have no heart, no sentiment! Lord and Lady Radclyffe! They behave just as if he had never been accused of murder! As if his uncle had never been the awful criminal that he was! They are hypocrites, these English, and they have no heart!"

Convention was once more the master! Its giant hands held the strings which made the puppets dance.

But at times his grip would relax, when Luke and Louisa were all alone, no prying eyes to watch, no indifferent gaze to see the unburdening of their hearts. Then Luke would lie at Louisa's feet, for his love was worship, and his passion uncontrolled. His arms would encircle the perfect form that he loved with such intensity, that at times the happiness of loving had in it an exquisite sense of pain. The tragedy of the past was never quite absent from them then: the ghost of a great crime and the shadow of a still greater renunciation threw a mystic halo over their love for each other. And at those times – like Paolo and Francesca – they read no more.

But these English, they have no heart, you know!