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

"Kill me!" she whispered, hoarsely, "kill me!"

It was a dreadful scene.

As the doctors afterwards concluded, rightly or wrongly, a very curious thing had happened to Lady Bellamy. Either the poison she had taken--and they were never able to discover what its exact nature was, nor would she enlighten them--had grown less deadly during all the years that she had kept it, or she had partially defeated her object by taking an overdose, or, as seemed more probable, there was some acid in the wine in which it had been mixed that had had the strange effect of rendering it to a certain degree innocuous. Its result, however, was, as she guessed, to render her a hopeless paralytic for life.

At length the patient sank into the coma of exhaustion, and Dr. Williamson was able to leave her in the care of a brother practitioner whom he had sent for, and in that of his assistant. Sir John had been sent for, but had not arrived. It was then eleven o'clock, and at one the doctor was summoned as a witness to attend the inquest on George Caresfoot. He had, therefore, two hours at his disposal, and these he determined to utilise by driving round to see Angela, who was still lying at Mr. Fraser's vicarage.

Mr. Fraser heard him coming, and met him in the little drive. He briefly told him what he had just seen, and what, in his opinion, Lady Bellamy's fate must be--one of living death. The clergyman's remark was characteristic.

"And yet," he said, "there are people in the world who say that there is no God."

"How is Mrs. Caresfoot?" asked the doctor.

"She had a dreadful fit of raving this morning, and we had to tie her down in bed. She is quieter now, poor dear. There, listen!"

At that moment, through the open window of the bedroom, they heard a sweet though untrained voice beginning to sing. It was Angela's, and she was singing snatches of an old-fashioned sailor-song, one of several which Arthur had taught her:

"Fare ye well, and adieu to all you Spanish ladies, Fare ye well, and adieu to ye, ladies of Spain, For we've received orders to return to Old England, But we hope in a short time to see you again.

* * *

"We hove our ship to with the wind at sou'west, my boys; We hove our ship to for to strike soundings clear; It was forty-five fathom and a grey sandy bottom; Then we filled our main topsail, and up channel did steer.

* * *

"The signal was made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat's-topper, Hawl up your clew-garnets, let fly tack and sheet."

Without waiting to hear any more, they went up the stairs and entered the bedroom. The first person they saw was Pigott, who had been sent for to nurse Angela, standing by the side of the bed, and a trained nurse at a little table at the foot mixing some medicine. On the bed itself lay Angela, shorn of all her beautiful hair, her face flushed as with fever, except where a blue weal bore witness to the blow from her husband's cruel whip, her head thrown back, and a strange light in her wild eyes. She was tied down in the bed, with a broad horse-girth stretched across her breast, but she had wrenched one arm free, and with it was beating time to her song on the bed-clothes. She caught sight of Mr. Fraser at once, and seemed to recognize him, for she stopped her singing and laughed.

"That's a pretty old song, isn't it?" she said. "Somebody taught it me --who was it? Somebody--a long while ago. But I know another--I know another. You'll like it; you are a clergyman, you know." And she began again:

"Says the parson one day as I cursed a Jew, Now do you not know that that is a sin? Of you sailors I fear there are but a few That St. Peter to heaven will ever let in.

"Says I, Mr. Parson, to tell you my mind, Few sailors to knock were ever yet seen; Those who travel by land may steer against wind But we shape a course for Fiddler's Green."

Suddenly she stopped, and her mind wandered off to the scene of two days previous with Arthur by the lake, and she began to quote the words wrung from the bitterness of his heart.

"'You miserable woman, do you know what you are? Shame upon you! Were you not married yesterday?' It is quite true, Arthur--oh, yes, quite true! Say what you like of me, Arthur--I deserve it all; but oh! Arthur, I love you so. Don't be hard upon me--I love you so, dear! Kill me if you like, dear, but don't talk to me so. I shall go mad--I shall go mad!" and she broke into a flood of weeping.

"Poor dear, she has been going on like that, off and on, all night. It clean broke my heart to see it, and that's the holy truth," and Pigott looked very much as though she were going to cry herself.

By this time Angela had ceased weeping, and was brooding sullenly, with her face buried in the pillow.

"There is absolutely nothing to be done," said the doctor. "We can only trust to her fine constitution and youth to pull her through. She has received a series of dreadful mental shocks, and it is very doubtful if she will ever get over them. It is a pity to think that such a splendid creature may become permanently insane, is it not? You must be very careful, Pigott, that she does not do herself an injury; she is just in the state that she may throw herself out of the window or cut her throat. And now I must be going; I will call in again to-night."

Mr. Fraser accompanied him down to the gate, where he had left his trap. Before they got out of the front door, Angela had roused herself again, and they could hear her beginning to quote Homer, and then breaking out into snatches of her sailor-songs.

"'High aloft amongst the rigging Sings the loud exulting gale.'

"That's like me. I sing too," and then followed peal upon peal of mad laughter.

"A very sad case! She has a poor chance, I fear."

Mr. Fraser was too much affected to answer him.

Public feeling in Marlshire was much excited about the Caresfoot tragedy, and, when it became known that Lady Bellamy had attempted to commit suicide, the excitement was trebled. It is not often that the dullest and most highly respectable part of an eminently dull and respectable county gets such a chance of cheerful and interesting conversation as these two events gave rise to. We may be sure that the godsend was duly appreciated; indeed, the whole story is up to this hour a favourite subject of conversation in those parts.

Of course the members of the polite society of the neighbourhood of Roxham were divided into two camps. The men all thought that Angela had been shamefully treated, the elder and most intensely respectable ladies for the most part inclined to the other side of the question. It not being their habit to look at matters from the same point of view in which they present themselves to a man's nicer sense of honour, they could see no great harm in George Caresfoot's stratagems. A man so rich, they argued, was perfectly entitled to buy his wife. The marriage had been arranged, like their own, on the soundest property basis, and the woman who rose in rebellion against a husband merely because she loved another man, or some such romantic nonsense, deserved all she got. Gone mad, had she?--well, it was a warning! And these aristocratic matrons sniffed and turned up their noses. They felt that Angela, by going mad and creating a public excitement, had entered a mute protest against the recognized rules of marriage sale- and-barter as practised in this country--and Zululand. Having daughters to dispose of, they resented this, and poor Angela was for years afterwards spoken of among them as that "immoral girl."

But the lower and more human strata of society did not sympathize with this feeling. On the contrary, they were all for Angela and the dog Aleck who was supposed to have chocked that "carroty warmint," George.

The inquest on George's body was held at Roxham, and was the object of the greatest possible interest. Indeed, the public excitement was so great that the coroner was, perhaps insensibly, influenced by it, and allowed the inquiry to travel a little beyond its professed object of ascertaining the actual cause of death, with the result that many of the details of the wicked plot from which Angela had been the principal sufferer became public property. Needless to say that they did not soothe the feelings of an excited crowd. When Philip, after spending one of the worst half-hours of his life in the witness-box, at length escaped with such shreds of reputation as he had hitherto possessed altogether torn off his back, his greeting from the mob outside the court may fairly be described as a warm one. As the witnesses' door closed behind him, he found himself at one end of a long lane, that was hedged on both sides by faces not without a touch of ferocity about them, and with difficulty kept clear by the available force of the five Roxham policemen.

"Who sold his daughter?" shouted a great fellow in his ear.

"Let me come, there's a dear man, and have a look at Judas," said a skinny little woman with a squint, to an individual who blocked her view.

The crowd caught at the word. "Judas!" it shouted, "go and hang yourself! Judas! Judas!"

How Philip got out of that he never quite knew, but he did get out somehow.

Meanwhile, Sir John Bellamy was being examined in court, and, notwithstanding the almost aggressive innocence of his appearance, he was not having a very good time. It chanced that he had fallen into the hands of a rival lawyer, who hated him like poison, and had good reason to hate him. It is wonderful, by the way, how enemies do spring up round a man in trouble like dogs who bite a wounded companion to death, and on the same principle. He is defenceless. This gentleman would insist on conducting the witnesses' examination on the basis that he knew all about the fraud practised with reference to the supposed death of Arthur Heigham. Now, it will be remembered that Sir John, in his last interview with Lady Bellamy, had declared that there was no tittle of evidence against him, and that it would be impossible to implicate him in the exposure that must overtake her. To a certain extent he was right, but on one point he had overshot himself, for at that very inquest Mr. Fraser stated on oath that he (Mr. Fraser) had spoken