Chapter XIX · THE PARTING OF THE CLOUDS

Very full of stress and excitement were the days that followed this tragic end of the Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s and of Ventris Blake the millionaire. The British police, being British no doubt, are very slow to move where it is a case of the proof of the innocence of a prisoner whom they have taken in charge, and not of his guilt—and for several days after the news of the murder and suicide had leaked out Arthur Hudson had to content himself with his lot in that tiny cell in Scarborough police-station.

Paul Renishaw, of course, stuck loyally to him, and visited him daily. Nor, as the reader may perhaps guess, was he the only visitor who braved those wild easterly gales that sweep over that Yorkshire coast in the early days of the year. Winifred quickly followed the officer sent down from Scotland Yard to confer with the local Chief Constable—and while these two wise heads were deep in the technicalities of criminal law and lunacy, and the discussion of how far they were justified in accepting an admitted madman’s confession as correct, these two young hearts found joy and brightness and solace in each other; and once again hope beat high within their breasts.

In the longest lane, too, comes the inevitable turning, and, perhaps, it was as well Arthur did not regain his liberty at once, for there was much of shame and scandal and intolerable suspicion to lift from his shoulders, which only Time—the greatest healer of all—could be trusted to do with any effect. Happily, just as the details of the murder at Scarborough and his arrest had been published broadcast, so the news of his innocence, his sufferings and his fortitude were now printed, with the result that public opinion swung round once again in his favour; and he was hailed as a man who had been the victim of one of the cruellest conspiracies known in fashionable London life. Indeed, it is a mistake to suppose that all this sensationalism of the Press makes for evil. It cleanses the hidden sewers of crime—and it is almost the only instrument we possess that sets the innocently-accused up securely on their public seats.

In the sunshine of Winifred’s love too, Arthur quickly forgot all the terrible hours of anguish that had been meted out to him. Young hearts like his are intensely recuperative, and to-day he often recalls with a merry laugh the conversation they had when he was finally released from the police-station one morning early, to avoid any popular demonstration, and they strolled almost at break of day through the Valley, down to the sea with its ceaseless message of high purpose and great endeavour, and of the undying dignity of breadth and freedom and resistless power.

“Do you grieve, dearest,” questioned Winnie suddenly, turning on him two eyes that shone with devotion and trust, “that we did not find the course of true love smooth? Is there any bitterness in your heart that all at once, through no apparent fault of our own, we were called on to suffer so much shame and hurt?”

For a full minute he paused, and thought deeply. Then, just as the yellow sun came steering out from behind a mass of billowy cloud, so did the eternal instinct of the creature towards the Creator, arise in him and call him, as it calls each one of us in our several fashions, to the great act of renunciation of self.

“I do not grieve, dearest,” he answered slowly, simply, reverently. “Nay, I am thankful that I have been tried as by fire in a furnace, and that neither you nor I have sunk down under it, but have arisen the better, the wiser, the stronger, may I say, the sweeter for our day of affliction.” Then slowly lifting his hat he looked far out across the sea, and there came floating into his mind the one triumphant prayer of the Catholic Church, when its greatest service and mystery have moved in all their majestic splendour to that crowning act on Calvary, so intensely symbolical of the Divine Life as well as the Human.

“Benedicamus Domino,” he said in his clear purposeful tones.

“Deo Gratias,” responded Winifred with a great sigh of thankfulness—and their eyes involuntarily filled with tears.

CONCLUSION

Now if you, my reader, go to Scarborough to-day and wander in and out amongst those quaintly designed mansions on the South Cliff that are the pride of the inhabitants, and the wonder of all the visitors, for in the most cunning fashion they recall all the beauty and strength of dead-and-gone masters, you will assuredly pause before St. Michael’s Mount, the most artistic and delightful of them all. Should you inquire of any passer-by who it is lives there, he will tell you it is owned by the famous Mr. Arthur Hudson and his charming wife—and he will be of a peculiarly garrulous type almost unknown to Yorkshire if he ever tells you anything further about the Filey Road murder, for Scarborough people feel as keenly the injustice of Arthur’s and Winifred’s sufferings as though they had been their own. Arthur, indeed, could never bear the idea of returning to London again, and so they made their home in this, one of the most beautiful spots on our coast, and no longer is he a partner in the firm of Palamountains, but one who frankly and freely spends his life and wealth simply in “doing good.”

As Vera had foreseen, the Eastern leprosy of the Abyssinian Ring ate quickly into her system—and, although her father, who suddenly became intolerably grey and broken, threw up his practice at the Bar and chartered a private yacht to take them out to Abyssinia in the hope of discovering some antidote from the natives, she never rallied. The hideous thing made its fearsome inroads quite unchecked, and as they journeyed home again she took advantage of one dark night and her attendant’s sleepiness in the tropics to throw herself from the side of the yacht, and was never seen again.

As for Ventris Blake’s wealth, that went to his gentle old aunt, Prudence Gordon. For a time it was feared the shock of the exposure of her nephew’s villainies would kill her outright, but she rallied, although frailer than ever, and after she had purchased an annuity for Mrs. Kilroy and her daughter, she found her main delight in appearing mysteriously at the offices of different charities like Dr. Barnado’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital, and in handing the secretary of each a Bank of England note for one thousand pounds, and then disappearing, unknowing and unknown. Long may she be spared to practise this unselfish form of good work!

The caretaker, Charlton, was killed the same week as Blake, in a drunken brawl in Seven Dials—and rumour whispers that the good wife Rebecca, who is now quite comfortably off, does not regret him quite as bitterly as one might have expected. I think, too, I know the reason. I called the other day on her in that bright little house which she has taken in Ravenscourt Park, and I was startled to find that she had one lodger with whom I, for one, had a certain amount of acquaintance—Josiah Sawdry, who blushed furiously when I was shewn in, and only his landlady and himself were present. Can it be that they have loved each other years longer than they care to remember? Does it portend an alliance between the one thousand pounds she got from Arthur, and the annuity of five pounds a week which Arthur purchased for him in full redemption of Paul’s promise? I wonder, yet I don’t wonder very much. Do you?

And the mention of Paul’s promise reminds me of Paul himself. I wish I could, as a last word, tell you something new and startling and strange of Paul himself. Only I can’t. As a matter of fact, Paul went quietly, and loyally, and simply back to his sub-editorial work on The Moon, his heart perhaps a little more sensitive to the sufferings of “a world bursting with sin and sorrow,” his brain perhaps, a little more eager to think the better of people and not the worse. Such men as he are the salt and sweetness of journalism. I tremble to think what might happen if my old craft were given over entirely to clever young men, and men who had never felt the pinch of want or known what it was to sit by the bedside of a dying child.

A little voice and a little bird, it is true, sometimes whispers to me that Paul did love once, and that the little locket which the sentimental fellow wears around his neck does not contain the portrait of his grandmother who found a mighty cure for rheumatism, as he pretends, at all: but of Winifred herself.

Only sometimes I am not quite sure little birds are so simple and innocent as they appear. I know for a fact Paul started a terribly fierce correspondence in The Moon, with a column-letter on “Do Journalists Really Love?” in which he made out nobody who cared for journalism in the big sense and had that great aching love of humanity which characterises all who pursue that craft, could content himself with the love of one simple silly girl when an entire people clamoured for sympathy and comprehension at the doors of his heart.

Only I must see inside that locket before I really decide. Perhaps though it only contains a duplicate of that Shield of Black which was published in The Moon and which gave a most startling presentiment of The Three Glass Eyes.

THE END