Dawn by H. Rider Haggard (best detective novels of all time txt) 📕

"Is that all?"

"No, woman. I have your letters!"

She sprang up with a little scream and stood over him with dilated eyes. Sir John leaned back in his chair, rubbed his hands, and watched her tortured face with evident satisfaction.

"Yes, you may well scream," he said, "for I not only possess them, but I have read and re-read them. I know all your story, the name of the husband you deserted and of the child who died of your neglect. I have even sent an agent to identify the localities. Yes, you may well scream, for I have read them all, and really they are most instructive documents, and romantic enough for a novel; such fire, such passionate invective, such wild despair. But, since I learnt how and why you married me, I will tell you what I have made up my mind to do. I am going after the inquest to turn you out of this house, and give you a pittance to live on so long as you remain here. I wish you to become a visible moral, a walking monument of disgrace in the neighbourhood you ruled. Should you attempt to escape me, the payment will be stopped; should you obtain employment, your character shall be exposed. At every turn you shall be struck down till you learn to kiss the hand that strikes you and beg for pity on your knees. My revenge, Anne, shall be to break your spirit."

"And are you not perhaps afraid that I may turn upon you? You know me to be a woman of strong will and many resources, some of which you do not even understand."

"No, I am not afraid, because I still have a reserve force; I still hold the letters that I stole two days ago; and, even should you murder me, I have left directions that will ensure your exposure."

A pause ensued.

"Have you nothing more to say?" he said, at last.

"Nothing."

"Supposing, Anne, that I were to tell you that I have been trying to frighten you, and that if you were to go down on your knees before me now, and beg my forgiveness, I would forgive you--no, not forgive you, but let you off with easier terms--would you do it?"

"No, John, I would not. Once I went on my knees to a man, and I have not forgotten the lesson he taught me. Do your worst."

"Then you understand my terms, and accept them?"

"Understand them! yes. I understand that you are a little-minded man, and, like all little-minded men, cruel, and desirous of exacting the uttermost farthing in the way of revenge, forgetting that you owe everything to me. I do not wish to exculpate myself, mind you. Looking at the case from your point of view, and in your own petty way, I can almost sympathize with you. But as for accepting your terms--do you know me so little as to think that I could do so? Have you not learnt that I may break, but shall never bend? And, if I chose now to face the matter out, I should beat you, even now when you hold all the cards in your hand; but I am weary of it all, especially weary of you and your little ways, and I do not choose. You will injure me enough to make the great success I planned for us both impossible, and I am tired of everything except the success which crowns a struggle. Well, I have ways of escape you know nothing of. Do your worst; I am not afraid of you;" and she leaned back easily in her chair, and looked at him with wearied and indifferent eyes.

Little Sir John ground his teeth, and twisted his pippen-like face into a scowl that looked absurdly out of place on anything so jovial.

"Curse you," he said, "even now you dare to defy me. Do you know, you woman fiend, that at this moment I almost think I love you?"

"Of course I know it. If you did not love me, you would not take all this trouble to try to crush me. But this conversation is very long; shall we put an end to it?"

Sir John sat still a moment, thinking, and gazing at the splendid Sphinx-browed creature before him with a mixture of hatred and respect. Then he rose, and spoke.

"Anne, you are a wonderful woman! I cannot do it, I cannot utterly ruin you. You must be exposed--I could not help that, if I would--and we must separate, but I will be generous to you; I will allow you five hundred a year, and you shall live where you like. You shall not starve."

She laughed a little as she answered.

"I am starving now: it is long past luncheon time. As for your five hundred a year that you will give me out of the three or four thousand I have given you, I care nothing for it. I tell you I am tired of it all, and I never felt more superior to you than I do now in the moment of your triumph. It wants a stronger hand than yours to humble me. I may be a bad woman, I daresay I am, but you will find, too late, that there are few in the world like me. For years you have shone with a reflected light; when the light goes out, you will go out too. Get back into your native mud, the mental slime out of which I picked you, contemptible creature that you are! and, when you have lost me, learn to measure the loss by the depths to which you will sink. I reject your offers. I mock at your threats, for they will recoil on your own head. I despise you, and I have done with you. John Bellamy, good- bye;" and, with a proud curtsey, she swept from the room.

That evening it was rumoured that Sir John Bellamy had separated from his wife, owing to circumstances which had come to his knowledge in connection with George Caresfoot's death.

That same afternoon, Lady Bellamy ordered out the victoria with the fast trotting horse, and drove to the Abbey House. She found Philip pacing up and down the gravel in front of the grey old place, which had that morning added one more to the long list of human tragedies its walls had witnessed. His face was pale, and contorted by mental suffering, and, as soon as he recognized Lady Bellamy, he made an effort to escape. She stopped him.

"I suppose it is here, Mr. Caresfoot?"

"It! What?"

"The body."

"Yes."

"I wish to see it."

Philip hesitated a minute, and then led the way to his study. The corpse had been laid upon the table just as it had been taken from the water; indeed, the wet still fell in heavy drops from the clothes on to the ground. It was to be removed to Roxham that evening, to await the inquest on the morrow. The shutters of the room had been closed, lest the light should strike too fiercely on the ghastly sight; but even in the twilight Lady Bellamy could discern every detail of its outline clearly marked by the wet patches on the sheet which was thrown loosely over it. On a chair, by the side of the table, above the level of which its head rose, giving it the appearance of being in the act of climbing on to it, lay the carcass of the dog, its teeth still firmly set in the dead man's arm. They had been unable to unlock the savage grip without hacking its jaws asunder, and this it was not thought advisable to do till after the inquest.

At the door Philip paused, as though he did not mean to enter.

"Come in," said Lady Bellamy; "surely you are not afraid of a dead man."

"I fear the dead a great deal more than I do the living," he muttered, but came in and shut the door.

As soon as her eyes had grown accustomed to the light, Lady Bellamy went up to the body, and, drawing off the sheet, gazed long and steadily at the mutilated face, on the lips of which the bloody froth still stood.

"I told him last night," she said presently to Philip, "that we should never meet again alive, but I did not think to see him so soon like this. Do you know that I once loved that thing, that shattered brain directed the only will to which I ever bowed? But the love went out for ever last night, the chain snapped, and now I can look upon this sight without a single sigh or a regret, with nothing but loathing and disgust. There lies the man who ruined me--did you know it? I do not care who knows it now--ruined me with his eyes open, not caring anything about me; there lies the hard task-master whom I served through so many years, the villain who drove me against my will into this last crime which has thus brought its reward. The dog gave him his just due; look, its teeth still hold him, as fast, perhaps, as the memories of his crimes will hold him where he has gone. Regret him! sorrow for him! no, oh no! I can curse him as he lies, villain, monster, devil that he was!"

She paused, and even in the dim light Philip could see her bosom heave and her great eyes flash with the fierceness of her excitement.

"You should not talk so of the dead," he said.

"You are right," she answered; "he has gone beyond the reach of my words, but the thought of all the misery I have suffered at his hands made me for a moment mad. Cover it up again, the vile frame which held a viler soul; to the earth with the one, to undreamed of sorrow with the other, each to its appointed place. How does it run?--'The wages of sin is death.' Yes, that is right. He is dead; the blow fell first on him, that was right, and I am about to die; and you--what will happen to you, the Judas of the plot, eh? You do not think that you will enjoy your blood-money in peace, do you?"

"What do you mean?" asked Philip, nervously; her wild way frightened him.

"Mean! why, that you are the sorriest knave of all. This man was at least led on to crime by passion; Bellamy entered into it to work out a secret revenge, poor fool; I acted because I couldn't help myself at first, and then for the sake of the game itself, for when I take a thing in my hand, I will succeed. But you, Philip Caresfoot, you sold your own flesh and blood for money or money's worth, and you are the worst of all--worse than George, for even a brutal love is a nobler thing than avarice like yours. Well, as the sin is, so will the punishment be."

"It is a lie! I