"Yes."
"I'm so glad, because I shan't give you the chance. But dear, silly man--dearest, silliest man!--I do wish you would give me up that bottle.
I'll promise to give it back if ever I want to jilt you. Honour bright!"
"I dare say. With the good, efficacious poison emptied away; and tea, or rum, or Rowland's Macassar instead! I cannot conceive a more equivocal position than that of a suicide who has taken the wrong poison under the impression that he has launched himself into Eternity."
"Oh no--I could never do that! It would be such a cruel hoax. Now, dearest love, do let me have that bottle to take care of. Indeed, if ever I jilt you, you shall have it back. Engaged girls--honourable ones!--always give presents back on jilting. _Do_ let me have it!"
Adrian laughed at her earnestness. "_I'm_ not going to poison myself,"
said he. "Unless you jilt me! So it comes to exactly the same thing, either way. There--be easy now! I've promised. Besides, the Warroo or Guarano Indian who gave it me--out on the Essequibo; it was when I went to Demerara--told me it wouldn't keep. So I wouldn't trust it. Much better stick to nice, wholesome, old-fashioned Prussic Acid." He had quite dropped his serious tone, and resumed his incorrigible levity.
"Did you really have it from a wild Indian? Where did he get it? Did he make it?"
"No--that's the beauty of it. The Warroos of Guiana are great dabs at making poisons. They make the celebrated Wourali poison, the smallest quantity of which in a vein always kills. It has never disappointed its backers. But he didn't make this. He brought it from the World of Spirits, beyond the grave. It is intended for internal use only, being quite inoperative when injected into a vein. Irene unpacked my valise when I came back, and touched the bottle. And an hour afterwards she saw that her white cornelian had turned red."
"Nonsense! It was a coincidence. Stones do change."
"I grant you it was a coincidence. Sunrise and daybreak are coincidences. But one is because of t'other. Irene believed my poison turned her stone red, or she would never have refused to wear it a minute longer, from an unreasonable dislike of the Evil One, whose influence she discerned in this simple, natural phenomenon. I considered myself justified in boning the ring for my own use, so I had it enlarged to go on my finger, and there it is, on! I shall never see it again, unless Septimius Severus turns up trumps. What colour should you say it was now?"
Gwen took the hand with the mystic ring on it, turning it this way and that, to see the light reflected. "Pale pink," she said. "Yes--certainly pale pink." She appeared amused, and unconvinced. "I had no idea 'Re was superstitious. You are excusable, dearest, because, after all, you are only a man. One expects a woman to have a little commonsense. Now if...." She appeared to be wavering over something--disposed towards concessions.
"Now if what?"
"If the ring had had a character from its last place--if it had distinguished itself before...."
"Oh, I thought I told you about that. I forgot. It was a ring with a story, that came somehow to my great-great-grandfather, when he was in Paris. It had done itself great credit--gained quite a reputation--at the Court of Louis Quatorze, on the fingers I believe of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers and Louise de la Valliere.... Yes, I think both, but close particulars have always been wanting. 'Re only consented to wear it on condition she should be allowed to disbelieve in it, and then when this little stramash occurred through my bringing home the Warroo poison, her powers of belief at choice seem to have proved insufficient.... Isn't that her, coming back?"
It was; and when she came into the room a moment later, Gwen said:--"We've been talking about your ring, and a horrible little bottle of Red Indian poison this silly obstinate man has got hidden away and won't give me."
"I know," said Irene. "He's incorrigible. But don't you believe him, Gwen, when he justifies suicide. It's only his nonsense." Irene had come back quite sick and tired of housekeeping, and was provoked by the informal _status quo_ of the young lady and gentleman on the sofa into remarking to the latter:--"Now you're happy."
"Or ought to be," said Gwen.
"Now, go on exactly where you were," said Irene.
"I will," said Adrian. "I was just expressing a hope that Gwen had been regular in her attendance at church while in London." He did not seem vitally interested in this, for he changed almost immediately to another subject. "How about your old lady, Gwen? She's your old lady, I suppose, whose house tumbled down?"
"Yes, only not quite. We got her out safe. The woman who lived with her, Mrs. Burr.... However, I wrote all that in my letter, didn't I?"
"Yes--you wrote about Mrs. Burr, and how she was a commonplace person.
We thought you unfeeling about Mrs. Burr."
"I was, quite! I can't tell you how it has been on our consciences, Clo's and mine, that we have been unable to take an interest in Mrs.
Burr. We tried to make up for it, by one of us going every day to see her in the hospital. I must say for her that she asked about Mrs.
Prichard as soon as she was able to speak--asked if she was being got out, and said she supposed it was the repairs. She is not an imaginative or demonstrative person, you see. When I suggested to her that she should come to look after Mrs. Prichard in the country, till the house was rebuilt, she only said she was going to her married niece's at Clapham. I don't know why, but her married niece at Clapham seemed to me indisputable, like an Act of Parliament. I said 'Oh yes!' in a convinced sort of way, as if I knew this niece, and acknowledged Clapham."
"Then you have got the old lady at the Towers?"
"Yes--yesterday. I don't know how it's going to answer."
Adrian said: "Why shouldn't it answer?"
Irene was sharper. "Because of the servants, I suppose," said she.
Gwen said:--"Ye-es, because of the household."
"I thought," said Adrian, "that she was such a charming old lady." This took plenty of omissions for granted.
"So she is," said Gwen. "At least, _I_ think her most sweet and fascinating. But really--the British servant!"
"_I_ know," said Irene.
"Especially the women," said Gwen. "I could manage the men, easily enough."
"You _could_," said Adrian, with expressive emphasis. And all three laughed. Indeed, it is difficult to describe the subserviency of her male retinue to "Gwen o' the Towers." To say that they were ready to kiss the hem of her garment is but a feeble expression of the truth.
Say, rather, that they were ready to fight for the privilege of doing so!
"I can't say," Gwen resumed, "precisely what I found my misgivings on.
Little things I can't lay hold of. I can't find any _fault_ with Lutwyche when she was attending on the dear old soul in Cavendish Square. But I couldn't help thinking...."
"What?"
"Well--I thought she showed a slightly fiendish readiness to defer to my minutest directions, and perhaps, I should say, a fell determination not to presume." Telegraphies of slight perceptive nods and raised eyebrows, in touch with shoulder shrugs not insisted on, expressed mutual understanding between the two young ladies. "Of course, I may be wrong,"
said Gwen. "But when I interviewed Mrs. Masham last thing last night, it was borne in upon me, Heaven knows how, that she had been in collision with Lutwyche about the old lady."
"What is it you call her?" said Irene. "Old Mrs. Picture? There's nothing against her, is there?"
Adrian had seemed to be considering a point. "Did you not say something--last letter but one, I think--about the old lady's husband having been convicted and transported?"
"Oh _yes_!--but that's not to be talked about, you know! Besides, it was her son, not her husband, that I wrote about. I only found out about the husband a day or two ago. Only you must be very careful, dearest, and remember it's a dead secret. I promise not to tell things, and then of course I forget, when it's you. Old Mrs. Picture would quite understand, though, if I told her."
Adrian said that he really must have some more of the secret to keep, or it would not be worth keeping.
So Gwen told them then and there all that old Mrs. Picture had told her of her terrible life-story. It may have contained things this present narrative has missed, or _vice versa_, but the essential points were the same in both.
"What a queer story!" said Adrian. "Did the old body cry when she told it?"
"Scarcely, if at all. She looked very beautiful--you've no idea how lovely she is sometimes--and told it all quite quietly, just as if she had been speaking of someone else."
"I have always had a theory," said Adrian, "that one gets less and less identical, as Time goes on...."
"What do you mean by that?" said Gwen.
"Haven't the slightest idea!" Adrian had been speaking seriously, but at this point his whimsical mood seized him. He went on:--"You don't mean to say, I hope, that you are going to make meaning a _sine qua non_ in theories? It would be the death-knell of speculation."
"You don't know what a goose you are engaged to, Gwen," said Irene parenthetically.
"Yes, I do. But he meant something this time. He _does_, you know, now and again, in spite of appearances to the contrary. What _did_ you mean, please?"