Kitobni o'qish: «The Wiles of the Wicked»

Chapter One
Why This is Written

Wilford Heaton is not my real name, for why should I publish it to the world?

The reason I do not give it is, first, because I have no desire to be made the object of idle curiosity or speculation, and secondly, although the explanation herein given will clear the honour of one of the most powerful of the Imperial Houses in Europe, I have no wish that my true name should be associated with it.

I have, however, a reason for writing this narrative – a very strong reason.

The story is an enthralling one; the adventures stranger, perhaps, than ever happened to any other living person. I have resolved to relate the plain unvarnished facts in their sequence, just as they occurred, without seeking to suppress or embellish, but to recount the strange adventures just as they are registered in the small leather portfolio, or secret dossier, which still, at this moment, reposes in the archives of a certain Ministry in one of the European capitals.

There have recently been stories afloat – strange stories. At first I laughed at all the absurd rumours, but very quickly I saw how seriously distorted the real facts had become, for ingenious paragraphs of certain so-called Society papers, grasping the story eagerly, worked it up into a narrative which reflected very seriously upon the honour of one who is dearest in all the world to me.

Well, my tale – or exposure – is written here.

In order that those who read may clearly follow the curious chain of circumstances, it is necessary for me to go back some eight years or so – not a long period as far as time goes, but to me a veritable century. I was young, just turned twenty five. I was decently well-off, having come into an income of nearly a couple of thousand a year left me by my father, a sum which put me beyond the necessity of entering business, pursuing the daily grind, or troubling about the morrow. My career at Oxford had, I fear, been marked by a good many shortcomings and many youthful escapades, but I ended it by taking my degree of Bachelor of Medicine, shortly afterwards pursuing the fashionable habit of “going abroad.” Within two years, however, I returned to London world-weary – like so many other young men who, being left comfortably off, commence to taste the enjoyment of life too early – and settled down in a suite of smoke-begrimed rooms in Essex Street, Strand.

The place was horribly dingy, situated in that cul-de-sac which is quiet and almost deserted, even though only a stone’s throw from the busiest, noisiest, and muddiest thoroughfare in the world. The ground and first floors of the house were occupied by several firms of solicitors, whose doors were covered with ragged and sadly faded green baize, while the second floor I rented as my abode. The quaint, shabby, bizarre old place had been built at the end of the last century for family residence, in the days when Bloomsbury was an aristocratic quarter and great men lived in Leicester Square; but now, alas! smoke-stained and time-dimmed, it was given over to the dust which the law accumulates. From its exterior, like those of its neighbours, there protruded those great iron extinguishers used by the linkmen of days bygone, while the broad, thin-worn stairs, easy of ascent, the solid mahogany doors, the great carved handrail, and the fine Adams ceilings, like those in the older houses of the Adelphi, told mutely of the prosperity of its long-departed owners.

I had taken over the furniture, a frowsy lot of faded horsehair, which had perhaps done duty there for half a century, together with the rooms, and even though they were so dismal and out-of-date, I must confess that they had one attraction for me, namely, that above, in the low-pitched rooms on the top floor, there lived and worked my old college chum, Dick Doyle, who had, after a good deal of wild-oat sowing, developed into a rising journalist and littérateur.

Curious though it may appear, I had returned from the Sunny South and taken up my abode in that dingy, dispiriting place with one sole idea, namely, to be near the man who was practically my only friend in the whole world. I was in sore need of him, for I was utterly heedless of everything past, present, or future.

With the exception of old Mrs Parker, who had served my family for twenty years, I was absolutely alone and helpless as a child. At the age of twenty-five I had ceased to interest myself in anything, and plunged in eternal gloom, all desire for life having left me, for knowing that its joys could no longer be mine I was, even though in the full possession of all my youthful vigour, mental faculties, and bodily strength, actually looking forward to the grave.

The terrible truth must here be told. The reader will, I feel confident, sympathise. While living abroad, travelling hither and thither through the old Italian towns, where I delighted to roam in the big white piazzas and through the crumbling palaces, every stone of which spoke of a brilliant and historic past, I had been suddenly seized by disease, and for three months lay tossing upon my bed in an English pension in Florence, tended by two calm, sweet-faced sisters of charity, with their grey-blue habits and great white linen head-dresses, which in my hours of fever and delirium seemed always so clean and cool. The two great Italian professors who were called to me shook their heads, believing that, even if they managed to save my life, it would be at a loss of one of my senses. In this, alas! they were not mistaken. My eyes became affected by sclerotitis, a severe inflammation of the sclerotic. Gradually my eyes, those most beautiful structures of the human body which manifest in such small compass the great, the unspeakable, the incomprehensible power of our Creator, grew dim. My sight was slowly but surely failing me. I was recovering from my bodily ailment to be attacked by the ophthalmic disease which the doctors had all along feared.

I implored of them to do something to preserve my sight, but they only dropped into my eye certain liquids from their little brown glass phials, and regarded the effect gravely. A great oculist from Rome came to give his opinion. I saw him but mistily, as though I were looking through a dense fog; and he, too, told me that all that could be done had already been done.

I arose from my bed a fortnight later stone blind.

With this terrible affliction upon me I returned to London with Dick Doyle, who came out to Florence to fetch me home. For me, life had no further charm. The beauties of the world which had given me so much pleasure and happiness were blotted out for me for ever. I lived now only in an eternal darkness which by day, when the sun shone upon my eyes, seemed to assume a dull dark red. At first it struck me that because my sight had been destroyed my personal appearance must have altered, but Dick assured me that it had not. No one, he declared, could tell by looking at my eyes that they were actually sightless.

And so I, Wilford Heaton, lived in those dull old chambers in Essex Street, in rooms that I had never seen.

You, who have sight to read these lines, can you imagine what it is to be suddenly struck blind? Close your eyes for a brief five minutes and see how utterly helpless you become, how entirely dependent you are upon others, how blank would be your life if you were always thus.

Dick gave to me all the time he could spare from his work, and would come and sit with me to chat, for conversation with him was all that was now left to me. He described my rooms and my surroundings with the same minuteness with which he wrote, and tried to interest me by relating scraps of the day’s news. Yet when he was absent, away or at work in his rooms above, I sat alone thinking for hours and hours, counting time by the chiming of the clock of St. Clement Danes.

So heavily did time hang upon my hands that at last I engaged a teacher from the Blind School over in Lambeth, and with his books of raised letters he used to visit me each day and teach me to read. I was an apt pupil, I suppose, yet there was something strangely grotesque about a man who had already graduated recommencing to learn his alphabet like a child. Still, it saved me from being driven mad by melancholy, and it was not long before I found that, by the exercise of pains, I could read slowly the various embossed books, standard works manufactured for the recreation of those unfortunates like myself, who would otherwise sit eternally idle with their hands before them. And not only did I learn to read, but also to make small fancy baskets, work very intricate at first, but which, on account of the highly developed sense of touch that I had acquired in reading, soon became quite easy.

The long months of winter darkness went by; but to me, who could not see the sun, what mattered whether the days were brilliant August or black December? Sometimes I went out, but not often. I had not become proficient in finding my way by aid of a stick. I had practised a good deal in my rooms; but for a blind man to go forth into the busy Strand he must have perfect confidence, and be able to guide himself among the bustling throng. Therefore, on my airings I usually went forth upon Dick’s arm, and the extent of our wanderings was the end of the Embankment at Westminster Bridge, or around those small ornamental gardens which extend from the Charing Cross station of the Underground Railway up to Waterloo Bridge. Sometimes, on rare occasions, he would take me to dine with him at the Savage Club, in Adelphi Terrace; and men, easy-going Bohemians, whom I could not see, would warmly shake my hand. I heard their voices – voices of artists and littérateurs whose names were as household words – sat charmed by their merry gossip of artistic “shop,” laughed at their droll stories, or listened to one or other of the members who would recite or sing for the benefit of his “brother Savages.” Those evenings, spent amid the tobacco-smoke and glass-jingling of the only Bohemia still existing in London, were the happiest in all that dull, colourless, dismal life of sound and touch.

They were the only recreations left to me. Truly mine was a tristful life.

In April, after I had lived in that dingy den six months or more, Dick came into my room one morning and made an announcement. It was that he had been commissioned by his paper to go as its correspondent with a British punitive expedition on the North-West Frontier of India.

“You’ll go, of course,” I said, reflecting that such an offer meant both advancement and profit. He had long ago told me that a commission as war correspondent was his greatest ambition.

“No, my dear old fellow,” his deep voice answered in a tone more grave than usual. “I can’t leave you alone.”

“Nonsense!” I ejaculated. “I’m not going to allow you to fling away such a good offer to remain with me. No, you must go, Dick. You’ll be back in three months at most, won’t you?”

“Perhaps before,” and his voice sounded low and strange. “But really, old fellow, I can’t go and leave you helpless, like this.”

“You’ll go,” I said decisively. “Mrs Parker will look after me, and three months will soon pass.”

“No,” he said. “It’s all very well, but you can’t sit here month after month, helpless as you are. It’s impossible.”

“I shall amuse myself with my books and my basket-making,” I answered. Truth to tell, this announcement of his had utterly crushed me. His society was the only bright spot in my life. If he left me I should be entirely alone, cheerless and melancholy. Nevertheless, when the sight is destroyed the mind is quickened, and I reflected all that this offer meant to him, and admired his self-denial and readiness to refuse it on my account.

Therefore I insisted that he should go. In the end he was persuaded, and three days later left Charing Cross for India.

When he had gone I became hopelessly depressed. In vain did I try to interest myself in the embossed books, but they were mostly works which I had read long ago, and in vain I toiled at basket-making until my finger-tips were sore and aching. Sometimes at evening Mrs Parker, herself a sad scholar, would try and read a few of what she considered the choicest morsels of the “extra special.” She read very slowly and inaccurately, poor old soul, and many were the words she was compelled to spell and leave me to solve their meaning. Indeed, in those long hours I spent by myself I sank lower and lower in dejection. No longer I heard Dick’s merry voice saying —

“Come, cheer up, old chap. Let me tell you all I heard to-day over at the club.”

No longer could I lean upon his arm as we descended that steep flight of steps leading from the end of Essex Street to the Embankment; no longer did I hear those playful words of his on such occasions —

“Take care, darling, or you’ll fall.”

Dear old Dick! Now, when I reflected upon it all, I saw how in my great affliction he treated me as tenderly as he could a woman. Forlorn, hypped, and heart-sick, I lived on from day to day, taking interest in nothing, moping doleful and unmanned.

A single letter came from him, posted at some outlandish place in the North-West. It was read to me by old Mrs Parker, but as Dick was a sad scribbler, its translation was not a very brilliant success. Nevertheless, from it I gathered how deep were his thoughts of me, and how eager he was to complete his work and return. Truly no man had a more devoted friend, and certainly no man was more in need of one.

As the days grew warmer, and I sat ever with the taedium vitae upon me, joyless and dispirited in that narrow world of darkness, I felt stifled, and longed for air. Essex Street is terribly close in July, therefore, finding the heat intolerable, I went forth at evening upon the Embankment with Mrs Parker, and, with my stick, practised walking alone upon that long, rather unfrequented stretch of pavement between the railings of the Temple Gardens and the corner of Savoy Street.

Try to walk a dozen paces as one blind. Close your eyes, and tap lightly with your stick before you as you walk, and see how utterly helpless you feel, and how erratic are your footsteps. Then you will know how extremely difficult I found my first essays alone. I walked full of fear, as a child walks, stumbling, colliding, halting, and afterwards waiting for my pitying old woman-servant to take my arm and guide me in safety.

Yet evening after evening I went forth and steadily persevered. I had, in the days before the world became shut out from my gaze, seen men who were blind guiding themselves fearlessly hither and thither among the London crowds, and I was determined, in Dick’s absence, to master the means of visionless locomotion, so that I might walk alone for health’s sake, if for nothing else. And so I continued, striving and striving. When Mrs Parker had served my dinner, cutting it up for me just as one places meat before a helpless infant, we went forth together, and for an hour each evening I went out upon that wide expanse of the Embankment pavement which formed my practice-ground.

Gradually, by slow degrees, I became proficient in guiding myself with that constant tapping that marks a blind man’s progress through the black void which constitutes his own narrow joyless world. At last, after several weeks of constant practice, I found to my great delight that I could actually walk alone the whole length of the pavement, guiding myself by intuition when encountering passers-by, and continuing straight on without stumbling or colliding with any object, a fact which gave me the utmost satisfaction, for it seemed to place me beyond, the need of a constant guide. With this progress I intended to astound Dick upon his return, and so gradually persevered towards proficiency.

Chapter Two
The Bracelet and the Palm

August was dusty and blazing in London, and I felt it sorely in Essex Street. The frontier war dragged on its weary length, as frontier wars always drag, and Dick was still unable to return. His brilliant descriptions of the fighting had become a feature in the journal he represented. On one of my short walks from end to end of that long even strip of pavement a hand was suddenly placed upon my shoulder, and the voice told me that it was Shadrack Fennell, a charming old fellow, who had been a popular actor of a day long since past, and was now a prominent “Savage,” well known in that little circle of London Bohemia. He walked with me a little way, and next evening called and spent an hour over cigars and whisky. He was the only visitor I had had in all those months of Dick’s absence.

A blind man has, alas! very few friends.

Once or twice, when the heat became insufferable in my close stuffy rooms, I contemplated going to the country or to the sea. Yet, on reflection, I told myself bitterly that, being unable to see the beauties of God’s earth, I was just as well there moping in that gloomy street, and taking my evening airing beside the Thames.

Therefore with all desire for life or enjoyment crushed from my soul, I remained in London, going out each fine evening, sometimes with Mrs Parker, and at others, with a fearlessness acquired by practice, I carefully guided myself down the steep granite steps leading from Essex Street to the Embankment, and then paced my strip of pavement alone. But how tristful, dispiriting, and soul-sickening was that monotonous world of darkness in which I eternally existed, none can know, only those unfortunate ones who are blind themselves.

About half-past eight o’clock one breathless evening in mid-August, Mrs Parker being unwell, I went forth alone for my usual stroll. The atmosphere was close and oppressive, the pavement seemed to reflect the heat, and even along the Embankment there was not a breath of air. Alone, plunged in my own thoughts – for the blind think far more deeply than those whose minds are distracted by the sights around them – I went on with those short steps that I had acquired, ever tapping with my stick to discover the crossings. I was afraid of no street traffic; only of cycles, which, by reason of their silence, are veritable ogres to the blind.

Almost unconsciously I passed beyond the limit of my regular track, beneath a railway-bridge which I knew led from Charing Cross station, and then straight on, with only a single crossing, until I came to what seemed the junction of several roads, where I hesitated. It was an adventure to go so far, and I wondered where I was. The chiming of Big Ben, however, gave me a clue. I was at the corner of Bridge Street, for I felt the wall of the St. Stephen’s Club. The turning to the left would, I knew, take me over Westminster Bridge; to the right I could cross Palace Yard and Broad Sanctuary, and so gain Victoria Street. Before my affliction I knew well that portion of London around the Houses of Parliament. I decided, therefore, on keeping to the right, and some one whom I know not kindly piloted me over the dangerous crossing from the corner of Parliament Street, for such I judged it to be from the cries of men selling the evening papers. Again, three times in succession, did sympathetic persons, noticing my helplessness as I stood upon the kerb, take my arm and lead me across, but in these constant crossings I somehow entirely lost my bearings. I was, I knew, in a long straight thoroughfare and by the iron railings before the houses guessed it to be that road of flat-dom, Victoria Street.

Amused at my intrepidity, and congratulating myself upon having gone so far alone, I kept on, knowing that even if I lost myself I had only to call a passing hansom and be driven back to Essex Street. Thus for perhaps three-quarters of an hour I wandered on. From a lad who helped me over one of the crossings I learnt that I had passed Victoria Station, and now appeared to be traversing several large squares – at least, such was the impression conveyed upon my mind. It was useless to stop passers-by every moment to inquire where I was, therefore, laughing inwardly at my situation, lost in London, the great city I had known so well, I went on and on, down long straight thoroughfares that seemed endless, in enjoyment of the first real walk I had taken since my crushing affliction had fallen upon me.

Suddenly, in what seemed to be a quiet deserted street, I left the kerb to cross the road alone, but ere I became aware of impending danger a man’s voice shouted roughly, and I found myself thrown by violent concussion upon the roadway, struggling frantically beneath a horse’s hoofs. I clutched wildly at air to save myself, but next second received a violent kick on the left side of the head, which caused sparks to appear before my sightless eyes, stunned me, and rendered me almost instantly insensible.

How long I remained ignorant of things about me it is impossible to tell. I fancy it must have been a good many hours. On my first return to consciousness I heard strange confused sounds about me, low whispering, the words of which were utterly unintelligible to my unbalanced brain, and the quick rustling of silk. I remember wondering vaguely where I was. The blind quickly develop a habit of extreme caution, and with my senses dulled by the excruciating pain in my skull I lay reflecting without speaking. The throbbing in my head was frightful. When the recollections of my long walk which had ended so disastrously surged through my brain, it struck me that I must have been taken to a hospital after the accident, and that I had most probably remained there some days. Yet in hospitals there is no perfume of peau d’Espagne, nor do the nurses wear silken flounces.

I tried to catch the words uttered by those about me, but in vain. It may have been that they were spoken in some foreign tongue, or, what is much more likely, the terrible blow I had received from the horse’s hoof had utterly disarranged my sense of hearing. This single thought appalled me. If my hearing had really been injured, then I was rendered absolutely helpless. To the blind the acoustic organs become so sharpened that they can detect sounds where those in full possession of sight and hearing can distinguish nothing. It is the ear that acts for the sightless eye. Therefore the fear that even this had failed me held me appalled.

I stretched forth my hand, and to my surprise felt that I was not in a hospital bed, as I had at first believed, but upon a silken couch, with my head resting upon a soft satin pillow. The covering of the couch was of rich brocade in wide stripes, while the woodwork had a smoothness which caused me to believe that it was gilt. I raised my hand to my head, and found it bandaged with a handkerchief and some apparently improvised compresses.

Although I opened my eyes, all was, of course, an utter blank before me. Yet I felt instinctively, as every blind person does, the presence of some one in my immediate vicinity, and presently, after long reflection, I suddenly asked —

“Where am I? What has happened?”

“You have been run over, and your head is injured,” answered a strange harsh voice, hoarse and altogether curious. “But tell me. Your eyes have a curious look in them. Can’t you see?”

“No,” I responded. “Unfortunately I am totally blind.”

“Blind!” gasped the voice, in apparent amazement. “Then that accounts for your accident!”

“But where am I?” I inquired eagerly.

“You need not trouble, I assure you,” answered the voice, pleasantly. “You are with friends.”

“Then I am not in a hospital?”

“Certainly not. Having witnessed your accident, I am trying to do what little I can for you.”

The voice was low-pitched; and, further, it struck me as being disguised.

“May I not know the name of my good Samaritan?” I inquired.

“The name is entirely unnecessary,” the voice responded. “From your card-case I see that your name is Heaton, and that you live in Essex Street, Strand.”

“Yes,” I answered.

“How long have you been blind?” the voice inquired, hoarse and deep. I knew that it was disguised by certain of the syllables being pronounced differently in various words.

“For a year or more,” I answered.

“And does your head still pain you very much?” inquired the voice, while at the same moment I felt a cool hand placed upon my throbbing brow.

In an instant I seized it by the wrist. The hand tried to wrench itself free, but not before I had felt the slimness of the fingers, the rings upon them, and the softness of the palm.

It was a woman’s. She had cleverly disguised her voice to cause me to believe that it was a man’s. I placed my right hand upon her arm and felt it bare. Upon her wrist was a curious bracelet, thin but strangely pliable, evidently made of some ingeniously worked and twisted wire.

The arm was bare; her skirts were of silk. My nurse was evidently in an evening toilette.

“Although I cannot see you, madam, I thank you for your kind attention,” I said, a trifle piqued that she should have endeavoured to mislead me by her voice.

She drew her hand away quickly, with a slight cry, as though annoyed at my discovery.

“I witnessed your accident,” she explained simply, in a sweet, well-modulated voice, evidently her own. By her tone, she was no doubt young, and I wondered whether she were pretty.

“How did it happen? Tell me,” I urged.

“You were crossing the road, and were knocked down by a cab. My doctor has already examined you, and says that you are not seriously hurt. It is a mere scalp-wound, therefore you may rest content, and congratulate yourself upon a very narrow escape.”

“I congratulate myself upon failing into the hands of a friend,” I said.

“Oh, it is really nothing!” exclaimed my unknown hostess. “In a few hours you will, no doubt, be all right. Rest, and in the morning the carriage shall take you home.”

“Then it is not yet morning?” I inquired, vaguely wondering what hour it might be.

“No, not yet.”

The response sounded afar off, and I felt somehow that my strength was suddenly failing me. A heavy, drowsy feeling crept over me, and my mind seemed filled with conflicting thoughts, until I fell asleep, the cool, soft, sympathetic hand still upon my brow.

When I awoke it was with a refreshed feeling. No one was, however, in my immediate vicinity. My kind protectress had left me, yet I heard voices in conversation in the adjoining room. The door communicating was closed, but there was the unmistakable pop of a champagne-cork and a jingling of thin glasses that told of festivity. In whose house, I wondered, was I a guest? Already I had inquired, but had been refused information.

Suddenly the voices were hushed, and I could distinguish a woman saying —

“I tell, you he’s blind – stone blind. If you doubt me, hold that before his face and see if he flinches.” A man’s voice sounded in a low growl in response, then all was silent again. Only the ticking of a clock somewhere near me broke the stillness.

Whispers, like low, suspicious exchanges of confidence, soon afterwards reached my ears. The door had opened silently, and a few seconds later I felt the soft hand of my protectress again upon my forehead. My sightless eyes were wide open, and by that she, of course, knew that I was awake.

“Are you better after your sleep?” the well-cultivated voice inquired concernedly.

“Very much,” I answered, raising myself upon my elbows. “But I have troubled you far too long, and will go, if you will kindly instruct your servant to call me a cab.”

“Oh dear no,” the voice answered pleasantly. “I couldn’t think of allowing you to go home at this hour, and in your weak state, too. It would be madness. Continue your rest, and you will be quite right again in the morning.”

“You are extremely kind,” I protested, “but I really couldn’t think of remaining longer.”

“Would you like to repay me for what you so very generously term my kindness?” she asked. “If so, I would only ask one little favour.”

“Certainly. I will grant it if it lies within my power,” I responded.

“Well, it is that you would scribble your name here, in this birthday book of mine. It will be a little souvenir of this evening.”

“But I cannot write well nowadays. I can’t see, you know,” I protested.

“But you can write your signature. If the handwriting is uneven I will forgive you, in the circumstances,” the voice said merrily; and a moment later she placed a pen with a handle of ivory or pearl within my hand.

“What day of the month?” inquired the sweet voice.

“The second of July,” I answered, laughing; and my unknown friend, having opened the book at that page, guided my hand to the paper, whereon I scrawled my name.

She took both pen and book, and by the departing swish of her skirts I knew that she had left me and had passed into the adjoining room.

A strange picture arose in my mind. Was she beautiful? At any rate her surroundings were elegant, and her low musical voice was that of a young and refined girl of twenty or so.

I listened, lying there helpless and sorely puzzled. Again curious whisperings in subdued tones sounded from beyond, but almost at that same moment some one commenced to play upon the piano Chopin’s “Andante-Spinato,” which prevented me from distinguishing either the words uttered or the trend of the discussion.

For several minutes the sound of the piano filled the room, the touch, light and delicate, seeming to be that of a woman, when, of a sudden, there was a loud smashing of glass, and a woman’s shrill, piercing scream rang out, accompanied by the sound of some heavy object falling to the floor.

In an instant the music ceased, and at the same moment I heard a man’s voice cry wildly —

“Good God! You’ve – why, you’ve killed her!”

Next second there sounded a rapid scuffling of feet, a chair was overturned and broken, and from the quick panting and muttered ejaculations it seemed as though two persons had closed in deadly embrace. In their frantic, desperate struggle they advanced into the room where I was, and I, still utterly helpless, with only a dark void about me, raised myself in horror and alarm. The man’s words held me appalled.