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CHAPTER VIII
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT

Mr. Grey's drive to Castle Ferry had been an excursion to meet victory; his return to Daneford was a triumphant progress.

Now it seemed to him nothing short of a conspiracy between fate and accident could wreck him. The two chances which had threatened him with ruin had melted into thin air. Nothing adverse to him would be in the will, and not only that, but from the day of Sir Alexander's death until the coming of age of Miss Midharst he would have absolute control of affairs, and every chance of making good the sum he had abstracted. The gold was going to beat the lead at a walk.

The financial world was now in a state of deplorable despondency, but that condition of things could not last for ever. There was of course no prospect of his making a tenth part of the half a million profit during the twelve months; but the St. George's Bank was gone, and deposits would come flowing in, and having obliged his London agents in their need, they could not refuse him anything in reason by-and-by. After riding out the bad times his credit would be so firmly established that he could get money on the best terms to build up the horrible gap he had made. He could borrow to replace what he had stolen.

"I shall win now, and I shall win easily," he thought, as he drove through the bright fresh air towards Daneford; "and by the time there is another dissolution, who can tell but I may take one of the seats for the city, if it is offered to me."

He went straight to Mr. Shaw, and told that gentleman how Sir Alexander Midharst desired to see him with a view to making his will, and how the client, although in no immediate danger of death, was nevertheless in a state of health which made it highly desirable his worldly affairs should be put in order as quickly as possible.

Mr. Shaw visited the Castle that evening, wrote from the baronet's dictation, and on Monday, the 4th of June, 1866, the will was signed by Sir Alexander in the presence of two competent witnesses, who, in the presence of the testator and of one another, affixed their signatures.

A few days afterwards Mr. Gray met the lawyer.

"Well," said the banker, with one of his easiest smiles, "did you do what was required at the Castle?"

"Yes," answered the white-haired solicitor, who was tremulous, and had a disconcerting way of shutting his eyes and consulting imaginary internal Acts of Parliament when he spoke. He was not by nature communicative, and he held in rigid regard all professional etiquette; but Mr. Henry Walter Grey was a very exceptional man, and, moreover, the testator had told him Mr. Grey had consented to act as guardian and trustee; therefore he did not feel he committed any impropriety in adding: "Sir Alexander appears to share public feeling in your favour, and to place unlimited confidence in our most careful banker."

"You are very kind," returned Mr. Grey, with his most cordial smile. "As you know, our establishment has been a long time connected with the Castle, and when Sir Alexander asked me to act, it would look ungracious in me to refuse."

"It's a heavy responsibility."

"Oh, as far as the responsibility goes – " He did not finish the sentence in words, but with a shrug of his shoulders, as much as to say: "We bankers are accustomed to grave responsibilities." Then the two parted.

From this conversation Grey not only gathered that the will had been made, but also that under it he had been appointed executor and trustee to the document and the estate, and guardian to the heiress.

What more could he require to put his mind at rest?

And yet as the days went on he was far from easy. Many things caused him trouble and made him anxious. The gloom over the financial world deepened instead of lifting. The ordinary depositors grew shyer and shyer, as crash followed crash, and house followed house, in the awful ruin of the time.

No one breathed a word against the Daneford Bank; all who spoke of it acknowledged its position unassailable; still its business showed no vast increase, no such increase as would help Grey out of the whirlpool into which he had been drawn, although the Bank's borrowing power had been secured.

From bad, things went to worse. As the year wore on, some of his best customers began to feel the pressure of the times. Instead of finding funds flowing into the Bank in unexampled abundance, money ran out.

Old respectable firms now came to him and asked to be helped over the disastrous period. They brought this security and that, and begged for advances. If the name and fame of the Bank were to be magnified, this was the time to do it. He had still funds enough to make the Bank proof against contingency; over and above this he had a little margin, not much, but most useful.

About the middle of June the Weeslade Steamship Company quarrelled with their bankers, the Weeslade Valley Bank. The Steamship Company wanted an advance of five thousand pounds on the river steamboat Rodwell, which carried passengers between Daneford and Seacliff. The Weeslade Valley Bank refused. The Steamship Company withdrew their account from the Valley Bank, and offered their business to the Daneford Bank. The account was opened in the Daneford, and the advance was made by mortgage on the Rodwell, the Steamship Company paying interest on the advance, and depositing with the mortgage a policy of insurance against total loss by water or weather.

Towards the end of June the Daneford Bank's London agent failed, by which the Bank lost a clear twenty thousand pounds, besides losses by delay in getting a dividend. This was very serious. It caused a run on the Daneford Bank. In three days thirty thousand pounds were withdrawn in excess of average draughts.

On the morning of the third day the Daneford Bank issued a circular which took the town by storm. The circular was brief, and ran as follows:

"Thursday, 28th June, 1866.

"The Daneford Bank

"Take notice, owing to the fact that a run has begun on the Daneford Bank, the offices of that Bank will be opened every morning at eight instead of nine, and will be closed at seven instead of four p.m., until this run has ceased.

"Henry Walter Grey."

This circular was town talk the next day. The admirers of Wat were more enthusiastic than ever in their praises of his boldness and wisdom. This circular killed the panic, and on Saturday of the same week the drawings had shrunk back to an average. Yet for another week the Bank was kept open from eight in the morning till seven in the evening.

On Monday, the 9th of July, a second circular was issued from the Bank, saying that as the run had ceased for a week the office hours for the future would be as of old, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

But, although the run had ceased, upwards of thirty thousand pounds had been withdrawn, and only five thousand found its way back again, and that was decidedly bad. The Bank was not in the least jeopardy. Sir Alexander Midharst's half a million had saved it; but the baronet's money was not only not returning, but the balance of it in hand began to run low.

Notwithstanding all this business pressure and the perilous position in which Grey stood, no one could detect in his face or manner a clue to the anxiety which consumed him. Still he was the same joyous companion, the same jovial host, the same considerate employer, the same liberal patron.

To his mother he displayed the best view of his position. He showed her how the steamship business had fallen in to him because he was in funds and could give accommodation beyond the power of his local rival. He admitted the loss in London, but pointed out how the loss and the run, taken together, must end in great advantage to his Bank.

She heard not only his story, but, from all who spoke to her on the subject, congratulations upon the Bank's position and his great prudence and good sense. He told her the money from Boston had not only saved him, but had so improved his resources that the Bank was now in fully as good a position as at any time during his father's lifetime.

Hard as the business affairs of Mr. Grey pressed upon him, and difficult as he felt the burden, they were not all the troubles he had to endure.

In order to prevent bankruptcy he had committed fraud. Up to this time he had carried on that fraud without exciting a hint of suspicion. The man whose money he had appropriated to his own use not only felt no misgivings as to the safety of his vast hoard, but had recently lavished upon him, Grey, the last proofs of implicit confidence when placing practically all that fortune and the care of the heiress in his hands.

But, as well as the pressure of his business and the weight of his crime, he had other difficulties to endure. He still entertained his friends with his usual hospitality and good grace, but the condition of the inner circle of his domestic life grew daily harder and harder to bear.

The eccentricity of Mrs. Grey developed with time, and, still more unfortunately, the terrible infirmity to which she had given way increased upon her with the years.

She was childless; she was alone all day in that great strange house; few people called upon her, and she rarely went out. Her husband was always kind in manner towards her, and she could ask for nothing he would not get her. But she knew he and she were not one, that they never had been one, that they never could be one.

Mr. Grey did not lunch at home, so that Mrs. Grey usually had luncheon by herself, except upon the rare occasions when one of her few acquaintances called and stayed.

Seldom Mr. Grey dined out; often he had someone to dine with him, and often he gave parties. All this caused Mrs. Grey to be much by herself, and solitude was, for one of her disposition and tendency, fatal.

By little and little the disastrous habit grew. It was most carefully concealed from the servants. At first Grey had tried to effect a cure; then, despairing of that, he strove with all his skill to avoid a scandal.

With that view he had a little cupboard fitted up in the only room furnished in the Tower. For this cupboard he got two keys – one for himself, and one for his wife. In giving her the key he had said quietly:

"In future you will find the wine for ordinary purposes in the new cupboard; so that you may not have the trouble of sending to the cellar for it, or in case I am out and you want more than is decanted, you can get it there. You will always have some there without sending to the cellar for it."

"But we don't want any more than is decanted – so few people call," said the wife tremulously.

"I know, I know. But someone may call, and as I keep the key of the cellar you might find yourself in a difficult position. Take this key of the cupboard, and here is the key of the room itself; there is only one other key, and I have that. The room is the quietest in the whole house. The door locks on either the in or the outside. The room is comfortably done up, and you can make any use you please of it. If you feel worried, or not very well, and wish to get away from the annoyance of the servants, you can go and lie down a while there."

These precautions were deplorable and degrading. All the love he had once borne this woman had died; and although he carefully concealed his feelings towards her, he had at last come to regard her with loathing.

She was in no way responsible for the disasters which had fallen on his business; she furnished no excuse for the crime he had committed, but she was one of the elements in his misfortune; and now that she had fallen into an odious fault, he resolved to put no impediment in her downward career, so long as her descent did not become apparent or public.

It was a sad development of the romantic and chivalric story of Wat Grey's wooing. But then, so long as Daneford knew nothing of the decay of that romance or the decline of that chivalry, the fact that both were going – gone, was of little moment to Wat Grey.

His embezzlement of the money had taught him that damaging facts had no injurious influence with the public – so long as the facts were carefully concealed. He found crime an easier burden than he had expected, and in place of his old dread of crime itself he had now a dread of disclosure only. If he had grown to hate his wife, what then – so long as no one knew of it.

Up to this point Fate seemed to have played deliberately into his hands. He had ruined himself in Southern expectations, Fate had put more than half a million of money into his power, and he had extricated his fortune. An unlucky turn of the die might have betrayed him, and given him up to worse destruction than the former, but all came round as though he had the ordering of events. Not only was there to be no immediate call for that money, no immediate investigation into accounts with a checking of documents and an examination of affairs, but he was appointed supreme custodian of the whole property, and, for upwards of a year from the old man's death, no enquiry disadvantageous to him could be set on foot.

Suppose the old man were to die soon, and business were to keep on the disastrous lines it had adopted of late? What then?

What then?

Many and many a day he put that question to himself in the morning before he broke his fast; and again at night before he went to bed he repeated this terrible question – unanswered.

And the more he pondered over this question the less he liked to look at the answer. Not that the simple and direct answer appalled him, for that had been familiar to his mind for some time; the simple answer was, Ruin – Self-imposed Death.

That was the positive answer to the question; but that did not affright him now, though it had terrified him at first.

He was still what might be called a young man, for he carried his five-and-forty years more easily than many another man carried thirty. He was not a whit insensible to the many physical and social personal advantages he possessed. He knew he was a favourite wherever he went. He knew he was good-looking. He knew he was clever.

He knew he was married.

His wife had brought him nothing worth speaking of – not position, happiness. He had been everything to her, and how poorly had she requited him! It was only by the utmost care he avoided a damning scandal alighting upon his name through her.

Fortune had favoured him up to this. Would Fortune be his friend still further? Was it too much to hope that another great piece of good luck might await him?

There was one sure way out of all his danger and difficulties, if he had only been a single man: there was Maud.

If, when Sir Alexander died, he were a bachelor, he might marry Maud. She knew nothing of the world, and he knew she liked him. There would be no need for his ruin if he were only a bachelor.

It was beyond the power of Fate to make him a bachelor; but suppose Fate should take away that unloved wife, that great danger to his name, that great stumbling-block in the way of his successful progress?

Then? What then? Answer: He should marry Maud, and so wipe out the history of his crime.

Would chance or accident, would Heaven or Hell, or whatever else he might call it, take away from him this woman who was a curse and burden, and give him that woman who would bring him deliverance?

Such thoughts had long haunted his mind before he had heard on that 17th of August the voices which assailed and tempted him in tremendous tones; that day on which the fate of the steamboat Rodwell and of Beatrice his wife, of the Weird Sisters and the Towers of Silence, became sealed together for ever.

CHAPTER IX
A FLASK OF COGNAC

When the Weeslade Valley Bank declined to advance five thousand pounds on the Weeslade Steamship Company's river passenger-boat the Rodwell, they had two reasons for the refusal: first, they were not prepared to lock up money at the time; second, a report reached them that the Rodwell was in bad condition.

In the winter of the year 1865 the Rodwell had lain up, undergoing repairs, and then the discovery was made that her condition was far from satisfactory. Many of her plates were no thicker than brown-paper, and just at the bends aft the point of a scraper had absolutely gone through a plate.

The boilers, too, were found to be in an unsatisfactory condition, and the machinery needed thorough overhauling.

But they wanted the boat for the summer traffic, and had no time to get all she required done before the fine weather; so she was patched for the time, the intention being to lay her up the following autumn and put her in good repair; in the meantime one new boiler was to be made for her.

Towards the middle of April she began running as usual with passengers between Daneford and Seacliff.

On her third trip she broke down; something went wrong with her machinery, and she had to be towed into Seacliff by another steamer.

As this accident occurred early in the season there were few passengers, and little excitement arose from the circumstance.

Almost the whole trade of the Rodwell consisted of carrying seaside folk from Daneford to Seacliff and back again. She sailed every week-day of the season from Seacliff to Daneford at half-past seven in the morning, and from Daneford to Seacliff at half-past six in the afternoon. Many of the business men of the city kept their families all the season at Seacliff, they themselves coming and going between the little town and the city daily, and enjoying the advantages of sleeping in sea-freshened air and two bright pleasant sails of a couple of hours each in the day.

When, in overhauling the Rodwell in 1865, they found the boilers in not a satisfactory condition, they took off five pounds of steam. "Better to be sure than sorry," they said. This reduction of steam made the Rodwell slower in 1866 than in previous years.

On Tuesday, the 14th of August, 1866, the engineer of the Rodwell made a report to the owners, and was directed to work her at another five pounds' reduction of pressure.

When Grey advanced the five thousand pounds on the mortgage he made no enquiry into her condition. He knew the boat very well, had many times travelled by her between Daneford and Seacliff. He knew she was worth more than the money asked for, and as no mortgage existed upon her he felt he should be quite secure if the company ensured her, and handed him a policy for five thousand pounds. His position was that if the company did not pay the interest on his money and his money itself, ultimately he could seize the Rodwell; and if the steamboat were lost by any chance of wind or water he should get his money from the insurance company.

Mr. Grey was as familiar with the steamboat Rodwell as any man in Daneford. He had often spent the summer months with his wife at Seacliff, and had been a passenger in the boat hundreds of times. He knew all the men employed on her; he knew every exterior brass plate and hinge and bolt. He could go about her blindfold, and steer her up or down the river. He didn't understand machinery, but often said he could command, steer, and attend to the engines all by himself, and save the wages of the crew.

Daneford was proud of all its institutions, and after Wat there were few it felt more complaisant about than the pretty town and picturesque scenery of Seacliff and the faithful Rodwell, the town being regarded as the country sweetheart, the milkmaid lover of the city, and the steamboat as the Mercury of the love-making.

It was Grey's intention to spend the month of September, 1866, at Seacliff. He did not own a house there. It had been his custom to rent a small white cottage that hung half-way down a red cliff surrounding one of the blue bays clustering around the high headland on which the white town was built.

He did not regard his sojourn at Seacliff with any lively anticipations. It was pleasant to steam up and down the blue river between the sunlit green shores, through the sweet odours from the woods and hedges freshened and spiritualised by the full broad river. The morning swim in the strong sea-water brought the sense of health and vigour and power into his frame. The breakfast, ample, well cooked, appetising, with blithe company, full of inspiriting talk and resolute happiness, in the steamer's cabin, would cure a misanthrope and buoy the heart of a cynic. The joyous solemnity of that cigar on deck afterwards would reconcile an anchorite to comfort. Yet for all these advantages Henry Walter Grey did not like his season at Seacliff.

The evening voyage was no less to be enjoyed. After the dust and worry of the city's day it was good to feel the moist winds blowing through your hair, against your forehead; to hear the cooling swirl of the water at the bow, and the far-off wash of the steamer's swells upon the shadowy shore; to watch the crimson sunset, and the coming of the pale-blue stars, and the red moon that, slowly rising from the hot earth to the limpid sky, grew mild and fair, while under it the white earth sailed silent down the ocean of the dark; to feel the hallowed peace of night ascending from earth to God.

But it ruined all to know in that cottage above the bay on the ledge of red cliff one waited who was no companion, yet bound to him for life; to know year by year the chasm between them widened; and that above that chasm hung a spirit of evil, the bad angel of a terrible weakness, which might at any moment become visible to all those standing by, and ruin her, and bring on him pity – pity, that boneless scorn more unendurable than contempt or loathing.

In the deep seclusion of the Manor, Grey felt the skeleton in his house was pretty safely hidden; here in Seacliff there were innumerable chances of discovery. It is more than likely he would not have gone to Seacliff in the summer if by any possibility he could safely avoid it. But all the well-off people of Daneford went every year to the little town, and to depart from the custom would be to attract a dangerous attention to himself and his household. It had been his custom of former years to stay at Seacliff for three months of summer; but in the year 1866 he resolved to limit his stay to one month – the month of September.

When he and she were at home in the Manor House, she was more directly under his control, immediately under his observation. But on leaving Seacliff in the morning he was always weighed down by the dread that in this little town of much gossip something might leak out while he was away. She might go into the town, and in some incautious way betray her fault, and destroy all the respect people felt for her – all the respect they felt for his wife.

What an awful millstone to carry about with one! Fancy the men at the street-corners chatting together, or groups standing at the Chamber of Commerce windows, or the members of the Club, or his own staff at the Bank, looking after him with compassionate eyes, and saying: "Poor Wat! How sad and worn and broken-down he looks! What a wretched thing! What a dreadful thing when a man's wife is a – drunkard!"

The last word was always haunting his ears, always booming in the hollow caverns through which his fears followed him during sleep; and although the habit of Mrs. Grey had not yet become so confirmed as to justify the application of such an odious epithet, her case was growing no better, growing rather worse with time.

All the Midharst money was gone. Her fault was at most a vice; but he had committed a crime. He lay between two fears; he was threatened by two discoveries. Someone might find out about her, and blast the fame of the Manor House; someone might find out about him, and blast the Daneford Bank, and lock him up in jail, and brand the name he bore with ignominy.

In such a state of mind was Grey when the 16th of August arrived and evening brought him home. The husband and wife sat down alone to dinner, sat down alone to the last dinner they were ever to eat together.

"Bee," said Grey to his wife, when the dessert had been brought in and the servants had gone, "do you think you could go down to Seacliff in the Rodwell to-morrow evening, and look up the cottage? I saw the estimable and penurious landlord of it to-day. It's not occupied this month, and he wanted me to take it from the 20th. I'm half inclined to accept his offer. He says we can have it from the 20th of this month to the end of September for a month's rent. It would be almost worth while to take him at his word, and hear how he'd whine if I gave him a cheque for the month's rent only. What are those two famous items out of last year's bill?"

"Brunswick varnish, for the kitchen coal-scuttle, 2d.; and a pair of brass stair-eyes, one lost and one damaged, 2d.," quoted Mrs. Grey seriously, as if the imposition was intolerable.

"Yes, yes. That's it. Brunswick varnish and stair-eyes," laughed Grey. "And at the end of all the items for damage was the general observation: 'The same being in excess of reasonable wear and tear.' Didn't he make us whiten all the ceilings, too, on the grounds that we stopped far into the season and blackened them with the lamps?"

"Yes, Wat."

"Is it three or four times we have paid, Bee, for cracking that soup-tureen? The old crack, you know."

"We've paid, I think, Wat, only twice for that crack, but he has charged us with the ladle every year, although we never had one."

"Why, this old Parkinson is much more amusing than a state-jester of old, and not half so impudent or expensive." Mr. Grey smiled, and rubbed his smooth cheek with his white hand. After a moment's enjoyment of his recollections of Parkinson, he returned to the question. "Well, Bee, will you go down in the Rodwell with me to-morrow evening? We can have a breath of sea-air, a look at Parkinson and the cottage, and come back by the boat in the morning."

"Very well, Wat. Of course I'll go with you."

"Now let me see. The best plan will be for you to go from this to the boat. Be on board at a quarter-past six, and stay there until I come. You won't forget?"

"No, Wat."

"You're quite sure you won't forget?" Of late Mrs. Grey's memory had shown signs of giving way.

"I'll be there, certainly," she answered, a little hotly. "You don't think my memory is so bad I am likely to forget anything that gives me a chance of getting out of this dull house."

"Because," he said, holding up his finger to quiet her displeasure, "I may not be able to get away from the office until just half-past six. I shall be at the boat in time. You will go aboard and sit down aft, and wait for me."

Having thus arranged for the following evening, Grey lapsed into silence, and his wife withdrew.

Those after-dinner hours, which, to the prosperous man are the most placid and full of content, were now to Grey full of fears and subtle agonies when he had no company. The necessity all through the day for showing a fair front to the world and keeping up his reputation for cordial joviality no longer existed when he found himself alone in his own dining-room.

Then he exposed his imagination to all the dangers and difficulties in his path. Here, this 16th of August, was he safe over all the wreck of that awful month of May, but at what a cost? The commission of a disgraceful crime and the perpetual dread of a damning discovery.

The financial crisis had shattered trade, dispersed confidence, and ruined enterprise. The last penny of the baronet's money had been taken, and was gone; and yet no remarkable prosperity, nothing in the meanest way approaching what he had calculated upon, had set in towards him. Even in the recent days of over-trading, when money was dear, the deposits in the Daneford Bank had been more than during the past few months. Things were not likely to mend in time for him. At the present rate twenty years could not bring in half the sum he wanted, and he might be called to disgorge within eighteen months, within a much less time should the old baronet suddenly die and matters take a turn unfavourable to his interest with regard to the guardianship of the heiress – his care over her not reaching, he supposed, beyond her twenty-first birthday. Merciful Heavens! what could deliver him?

And then followed the invariable reply: There is nothing to save you from infamy but marriage with Maud Midharst.

Then the memory of his wife's faults came up before him like an indictment seeking her life. She was flighty, unwise, dull, uncompanionable – intemperate.

She was no pleasure to him. She seemed to be the source of no pleasure to herself. If the Powers of good would only take her, what a blessed relief to him!

If the Powers of any denomination whatever would only take her and leave him free!

He rose, and strode up and down the long room, his face puckered and pinched, his hands clutched, his eyebrows dragged down over his eyes until the eyes disappeared, those eyes wont to be so free and open.

If the Powers of any denomination whatever – His thoughts paused a while, his brows relaxed, his whole face changed character, put on holiday attire. With a light foot and a pleasant smile he approached the chimney-piece and pulled the bell.

"James," he said, when the man entered, "bring me a flask of cognac."

While the servant was going to the cellar he said to himself, with a gentle smile, "I have been very thoughtless about that press in the Tower of Silence. I have left claret and port and sherry there, but until now I never remembered brandy! How careless I have been."

In a few minutes James returned with the bottle, drew the cork, decanted the brandy, and left.

Grey took up the decanter with a cordial smile on his face, walked towards the tower-room, the first-floor room in the Tower of Silence upon the top of which the wasted skeleton of the huge tank stood out clear against the quiet summer stars.

It was now past eleven o'clock. No profounder silence reigned by night in deserted mine deep in the bowels of the earth, in Asian desert open to the glittering stars and the pale radiance of the moon, on the dark peaks of mighty alp that reaches upward into the thin windless air, than in the chambers and passages of the fearful Manor House.