Chapter XX · —CONCLUSION.

Turning into Holborn, he ran on blindly, never noticing another figure following in his footsteps. It was getting very late now, and as he hurried into the Strand, St Clement’s Danes struck midnight. Through the crowd there blindly, on to the water-side, the snaky figure close behind never off his track; on to the Embankment, and towards Waterloo Bridge. Then he stopped for one brief moment to regain his spent breath and think.

The following footsteps halted too; and then some instinct told him he was followed. Turning round again, full under the lamplight, he encountered Paulo Salvarini, determination in his face, murder in his eyes. In an agony of sudden fear, Le Gautier ran down the steps on to the Temple Pier, standing there close by the rushing water. A second later, with a clutch like iron, Salvarini was upon him.

‘Ah!’ he hissed, as they struggled to and fro, ‘you thought to escape me, you murderer of innocent women, the slayer of my wife! Now I have you. Back you go into the river, with a knife in your black heart!’

The doomed man never answered; breath was too precious for that. And so they struggled for a minute on the slimy pier, Salvarini’s grip never relaxing, till, suddenly reaching down, he drew a knife. One dazzling flash, a muttered scream, and Le Gautier’s lifeblood gushed out. Footsteps came down the stairs, a shrill shout from a woman’s voice. Salvarini started. In one moment, Le Gautier had him in a dying clasp, and with a dull splash, they fell backwards into the rushing flood. Down, down, they went, the tenacious grip never relaxing, the water singing and hissing in their ears, filling their throats as they sucked it down, turning them dizzy, till they floated down the stream—dead!

Some boatmen out late, attracted by the scream, rowed to the spot; and far down below Blackfriars, they picked up the dead bodies, both locked together in the last clasp of death. They rowed back to the pier, and carried the two corpses to a place for the night, never heeding the woman who was following them.

Next morning, they saw a strange sight. Lying across the murdered man, her head upon his breast, a woman rested. They lifted her; but she was quite dead and cold, a smile upon her face now, wiping out all trace of care and suffering—a smile of happiness and deep content. Valerie had crept there unnoticed to her husband’s side, and died of a broken heart.

For a few days people wondered and speculated over the strange tragedy, and then it was forgotten. A new singer, a noted poisoning case, something turned up, and distracted the frivolous public mind from the ‘mysterious occurrence,’ to use the jargon of the press.

Maxwell lost no time in getting to Grosvenor Square the following morning, where his greeting may be better imagined than described. He told Enid the whole story of his mission, omitting nothing that he thought might be of interest to her; and in his turn heard the story of Le Gautier’s perfidy, and the narrow escape both had had from his schemes.

‘I do not propose to stay any longer in London,’ Sir Geoffrey said. ‘After what we have all gone through, a little rest and quietness is absolutely necessary.—Enid, would you care to go down to Haversham?’

‘Indeed, I should. Let us go at once. I am absolutely pining for a little fresh air again. The place must be looking lovely now.’

‘All right, my dear,’ the baronet replied gaily; sooth to say, not sorry to get back to a part of the world where Sir Geoffrey Charteris was some one.

‘Then we will go to-morrow, and Maxwell shall join us.’

‘But Isodore? I have not seen her yet.’

‘Oh, she can come down there some time, directly we are settled.’

Later on in the same day, Maxwell heard the strange tale of Le Gautier’s death. He did not tell the news to Enid then, preferring to wait till a time when her nerves were more steady, and she had recovered from the shock of the past few days. So they went down to Haversham, and for three happy months remained there, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot;’ and at the end of that time, when the first warm flush of autumn touched the sloping woods, there was a quiet wedding at the little church under the hill.

Gradually, as time passed on, Sir Geoffrey recovered his usual flow of spirits, and was never known to have another ‘manifestation.’ He burned all his books touching on the supernatural, and gradually came to view his conduct in a humorous light. In the course of time, he settled down as a model country gentleman, learned on the subject of short-horns and top-dressing, and displaying a rooted aversion to spiritualism. It is whispered in the household—only it must not be mentioned—that he is getting stout, a state of things which, all things considered, is not to be regarded with incredulity.

Nearly two years later, and sitting about the lawn before the grand old house, were all our friends—Salvarini, mournful as usual, little altered since we saw him last; Maxwell, jolly and hearty, looking with an air of ill-disguised pride at Enid, who was sitting in a basket-chair, with a little wisp of humanity in her arms, a new Personage—to use the royal phrase—but by no means an unimportant one. Lucrece was there, happy and gay; and Isodore, glorious Isodore, unutterably lovely as she walked to and fro, followed by Salvarini’s dog-like eyes. The baronet made up the party, and alas! truth must out, looking—but we will be charitable, and say portly.

‘How long are you going to stay with us, Isodore?’ Enid asked. She would always be Isodore to them.

‘Really, I cannot say, Enid. How long will you have me?’

‘As long as you like to stay,’ Maxwell put in heartily.—‘By the way, I suppose I am still a member of the League?’

‘No, not now. Conditionally upon your promising never to reveal what you have seen and heard, you are free; Sir Geoffrey likewise.—Luigi here has resigned his membership.’

‘I am so glad!’ Enid cried. ‘I must come and kiss you.—Fred, come and hold baby for a moment.’

‘No, indeed’—with affected horror. ‘I should drop him down, and break him, or carry him upside down, or some awful tragedy.’

‘You are not fit to be the father of a beautiful boy; and everybody says he is the very image of you.’

‘I was considered a good-looking man once,’ said Maxwell with resignation. ‘No matter. But if that small animal there is a bit like me, may I’——

They all laughed at this, being light-hearted and in the mood to laugh at anything. Presently, they divided into little groups, Isodore and Luigi together. All her cold self-possession was gone now; she looked a very woman, as she stood there nervously plucking the leaves from the rose in her hand.

‘Isodore—Genevieve’——

At this word she trembled, knowing scarcely what. ‘Yes, Luigi.’

‘Five years ago, I stood by your side in the hour of your trouble, and you said some words to me. Do you remember what they were?’

‘Yes, Luigi.’ The words came like a fluttering sigh.

‘I claim that promise now. We are both free, heaven be praised! free as air, and no ties to bind us. Come!’ He held out his arms, and she came shyly, shrinkingly, towards them.

‘If you want me,’ she said.

With one bound he was by her side, and drew her head down upon his breast. ‘And you are happy now, Genevieve?’

‘Yes, I am happy. How can I be otherwise, with a good man’s honest love?—Carlo, my brother, would you could see me now!’

‘It is what he always wished.—Let us go and tell the others.’

So, taking her simply by the hand, they wandered out from the deepness of the wood, side by side, from darkness and despair, from the years of treachery and deceit, out into the light of a world filled with bright sunshine and peaceful, everlasting love.