Wyllard's Weird/Chapter 29
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE LAST LINK.
Heathcote returned to Paris on the morning after his interview with the Baronne, and found Miss Meyerstein's telegram, and with it Hilda's long and explanatory letter. The girl expressed herself so temperately, with such firm resolve, such generous feeling, that her brother could not find it in his heart to be angry with her for what she had done. He had never desired her marriage with Bothwell Grahame; he desired it least of all now. Wedding-bells would have been indeed out of tune with the dark purpose for which he was working. He had yielded at Dora Wyllard's entreaty; he had yielded because his sister's happiness had seemed to be at stake. But now that she had of her own accord relinquished her lover, he was not inclined to interfere with her decision.
Nor was he alarmed at Miss Meyerstein's telegram, informing him of Hilda's departure in the early morning. His faith in his sister's common sense and earnestness was of the strongest. The tone of her letter was not that of a girl who was bent upon any perilous course of action. He felt assured that she would do nothing to bring discredit upon her name or her family; and that if it pleased her to disappear for a little while, so as to give her lover the opportunity of jilting her in a gentleman-like manner, she might be safely intrusted with the management of her own life.
She was well provided with money, having the cheque which her brother had sent her a few days before her flight. There was therefore no ground for uneasiness at the idea of her helplessness among strangers. A girl of nineteen, sensibly brought up, with strong self-respect, and two hundred and fifty pounds in her possession, could hardly come to grief anywhere.
"I wish she had taken her maid with her," thought Heathcote, and this was almost his only regret in the matter.
For not a moment did he doubt that Bothwell would take advantage of his recovered liberty, and go back to his old love. Hilda had dwelt in her letter upon Lady Valeria's grace and distinction, her fortune, and the position to which she could raise her husband. Edward Heathcote did not give Bothwell credit for the strength of mind which could resist such temptations. A weak, yielding nature, a man open to the nearest influence. That was how he judged Bothwell Grahame.
He remembered the young man's conduct at the inquest, his resolute refusal to say what he had done with his time in Plymouth, rather than bring Lady Valeria's name before the public. That dogged loyalty had argued a guilty love; and could Heathcote doubt that when called upon to choose between the old love, and all its surrounding advantages, and the new love, with its very modest expectations, Bothwell would gladly return to his first allegiance?
Assured of this, Heathcote was content that his sister should live down her sorrow after her own fashion. Better, he thought, that she should take her own way of bearing her trouble; just as he himself had done in the days long gone, when the light of his life had been suddenly extinguished. It was not in sluggish repose that he had sought the cure for his grief, but in work, and in movement from place to place. He remembered Hilda's often-expressed desire to study at one of the great musical academies of the Continent; and he thought it very likely she had gone to Florence or Milan. He had seen Mdlle. Duprez and Hilda putting their heads together, had heard the little woman protest that such a voice as Hilda's ought to be trained under an Italian sky. He could read some such purpose as this between the lines of his sister's letter. This being so, he was content to let things take their course; more especially as his own mind was full of another subject, and his own life was devoted to another purpose than running after a fugitive sister. He wrote a reassuring letter to poor Miss Meyerstein, and he waited patiently for further tidings from Hilda.
His first business after his return to Paris was to find Eugène Tillet, the portrait-painter. He had noticed the signature of Tillet on some of the illustrations in the Petit Journal, and he inquired at the office of that paper for the artist's address, and for other information respecting him. He was told that M. Tillet lived in the Rue du Bac, with his father and mother, and that he was one of a numerous family, all artistic. His father was Eugène Tillet, who had once been a fashionable painter, but who had dropped out of the race, and was now almost entirely dependent on the industry of his sons and daughters.
This made things easy enough, it would seem: but Heathcote remembered his failure with Sigismond Trottier, and he feared that in Eugène Tillet he might perhaps encounter the same loyal regard for an unfortunate friend. Again, Tillet might have been warned by Trottier, and might be on his guard against any act which could betray the assassin whom he had once reckoned amongst his friends.
It was certain that the painter would remember his friend's face; it was probable that he had some likeness of the missing man in his sketch-book. He was out-at-elbows, idle, a man content to live luxuriously on the labour of others. Such a man would be especially open to pecuniary temptation. He had begun with brilliant successes, had ended in failure and obscurity. Such a man must have suffered all the acutest agonies of wounded vanity, and he would be therefore easily moved by praise.
Arguing thus with himself during his walk to the Rue du Bac, Heathcote arranged his course of action. He would approach M. Tillet as an amateur, a collector of modern art, and would offer to purchase some of his sketches. This would lead naturally to an inspection of old sketch-books, and to confidences of various kinds from the painter. As a lawyer and a man of the world, Edward Heathcote considered himself quite equal to the occasion.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when he rang the bell on the second floor of the house over the glover's. The neat-looking maid-servant who answered his summons informed him that M. Tillet père was at home. Everybody else was out. The ci-devant portrait-painter was smoking the pipe of peace by the family hearth, a human monument of departed ambitions, bright hopes that had melted into darkness, softly and slowly, like the red light of a fusee.
He yawned as he rose to receive his visitor. He stood in front of the hearth, tall, long-limbed, slouching, slovenly, but with a countenance that still showed traces of intellectual power, despite the evident decadence, physical and mental, of the man. His complexion had the unhealthy pallor which indicates a life spent within four walls; and already that pallor was assuming the sickly greenish hue of the absinthe-drinker.
"I have to apologise for intruding upon you without any introduction, M. Tillet," began Heathcote, taking the seat to which the painter motioned him; "but although I have neither card nor letter, I do not come to you entirely as a stranger. I was yesterday with the Baronne de Maucroix, a lady whom you must remember, as her son was once your friend."
"Mdme. de Maucroix, poor soul!" muttered the painter. "I am not likely to forget her. I believe that portrait of mine has been of more comfort to her than anything else in the world since her son's unhappy death."
"It is a remarkable portrait," said Heathcote, with enthusiasm.
He was careful to show neither interest nor curiosity about the circumstances of Maucroix's death. He was there in the character of an amateur, interested solely in art.
"It is one of the finest pictures I ever saw," he went on. "Neither Reynolds nor Gainsborough ever painted anything better."
"Monsieur is too good. Your English painters have produced some very fine portraits. There are heads by Gainsborough and Reynolds which leave very little to be desired; though the treatment of the arms and hands is sometimes deplorably flimsy. You others have not the realistic force of the Paris school. Your Millais has a Rubens-like brio, but he paints with a butter-knife. Your Leighton has grace, and a keen feeling for beauty, but he is cold and shadowy. So you saw my portrait of poor Maucroix? Yes, I think it was in my best manner. But it was in the portraiture of women that I was strongest. I have been told by too partial judges that the head over the escritoire yonder is worthy of Titian."
"It is an exquisite piece of colour," answered Heathcote, rising to scrutinise the unfinished Duchess.
"I was a genius when I painted that picture," said Tillet, with a moody look; "but it is all past and done with. I am glad to think you appreciated my portrait of the Baron de Maucroix, a splendid subject, a fine young fellow. May I ask the name of my gracious admirer?"
"My name is Heathcote," said the visitor, laying his card upon the table in front of M. Tillet.
The painter stared at him with a look of extreme surprise.
"Heathcote!" he repeated, and then examined the card.
"You seem surprised at the mention of my name," said Heathcote. "Have you ever heard it before to-day?"
The painter had recovered himself by this time. He told himself that his visitor was in all probability Hilda's brother, and that it was his duty to his fair young friend to conceal the fact of her residence under that roof.
He was capable of so much perspicuity as this, but he was quite incapable of prompt action. He was too listless to make an excuse for leaving his visitor, in order to put the servant upon her guard, and so prevent Hilda's appearance before Mr. Heathcote's departure. The chances were, thought Tillet, that the Englishman's visit would be brief; while, on the other hand, Hilda had gone to the Conservatoire, and was not likely to return for some time.
Having argued thus with himself, the painter was content to trust to the chapter of accidents, which had been of late years the principal chapter in the history of his life.
"If you don't mind smoke," he murmured, with a longing look at his cigarette-case.
"I am a smoker myself, and I delight in it."
On this, Monsieur Tillet offered his case to the Englishman, and lighted a cigarette for himself.
"Yes, I have heard your name before," he said slowly and reflectively. "I think it must have been from my friend Trottier, Sigismond Trottier, one of the contributors to the Taon. He has mentioned an English acquaintance called Heathcote. Perhaps you are that gentleman?"
"Yes, I know Trottier," answered Heathcote, far from pleased at finding that the painter and the paragraphist were intimate.
It was not unlikely that Trottier had warned his friend against answering any inquiries about Georges.
"Then I think you must have heard a good deal about me," said Eugène Tillet, with a satisfied smile. "Trottier knew me when I was in the zenith of my power—glorious days—glorious nights those. The days of Gautier and Gustave Planche, Villemessant, Roqueplan—the days when there were wits in Paris, Monsieur. Ah! you should have seen our after-midnight cénacle at the Café Riche. How the pale dawn used to creep in upon our talk! and how we defied the waiters, when, between two and three o'clock, they tried to put out the gas and get rid of us! I remember how, one night, we all came with candle-ends in our pockets, and when the waiters began to lower the gas, lit up our candles—a veritable illumination. They never tried to put out our lamps after that. Yes, those were glorious nights, and art was honoured in those days. There was a man called Georges, a French Canadian, I believe; a man of large fortune and splendid brains—he came to a bad end afterwards, I am sorry to say"—this with airiest indifference. "He used to give little suppers at the Café de Paris or the Maison d'Or, suppers of half a dozen at most—banquets for the gods. I was generally one of that select circle."
"You painted this friend of yours, no doubt," suggested Heathcote, "this Monsieur Georges."
"No; he had a curious antipathy to sitting for his portrait. I wanted to paint him. He had a fine head, highly paintable. A fine picturesque head, which was all the more picturesque on account of a particularly artistic wig."
"Do you mean to say that he wore a wig?"
"Habitually. He had lost his hair in South America after a severe attack of fever, and it had never grown again. He wore a light auburn wig, with hair that fell loosely and carelessly over his forehead, almost touching his eyebrows. The style suited him to perfection, and the wig was so perfect in its simulation of nature, that I doubt if any one but a painter or a woman would have detected that it was a wig. He dressed in a careless semi-picturesque style—turn-down collar, loose necktie, velvet coat—and with that long hair of his, he had altogether the air of a painter or a poet."
"And you never painted him?"
"Never. I have sketched his head many a time from memory, for my own amusement, both before and after his disappearance; but he never sat to me. I might have made money by giving the police one of my sketches, when they were trying to hunt Georges down as a suspected murderer: but I am not a Judas, to betray the friend at whose table I have eaten," said the painter, whose Scriptural knowledge was derived solely from the Old Masters, and who regarded the disciple's crime from a purely social point of view.
Heathcote was careful to show the least possible curiosity about the vanished Georges. He listened with the air of a man who is charmed by a delightful conversationalist, who admires the raconteur, but who has no personal interest in the subject of the discourse. And Eugène Tillet was accustomed so to talk and so to be heard. He was an egotist of the first water, and was not a close observer of other people.
Heathcote was now assured of the one fact which he wanted to know. The painter had made numerous sketches of his friend, and no doubt had some of those sketches still in his possession, as they could have had little value for the dealers. The question now was to get at his sketch-books as quickly as possible.
"The mention of your sketches recalls the object of my visit, which your very delightful conversation had made me almost forget," said Heathcote.
Eugène acknowledged the compliment with a smile.
"I am very anxious to become the possessor of a few of your sketches in black and white, colour, pencil, what you will. There is no kind of art that I love better than those first airy fancies of the painter's mind, those jottings of inspiration. I am the possessor of a few very nice things in that way"—this was strictly true—"sketches by Mulready, Leslie, Maclise, and many other of our English artists. I should much like to add yours to my collection."
Eugène Tillet's sallow cheeks flushed faintly at the compliment. It was very long since any one had offered to buy the work of his brush or his pencil. It was very long since he had touched money of his own earning. And here was an English milord, an enthusiastic simpleton, ready to give him gold and silver for the sweepings of his studio. His pale cheeks flushed, his faded eyes kindled at the thought. His hands were tremulous as he unlocked a cupboard, and drew forth three or four dusty sketch-books from the place where they had lain for the last ten years, neglected, forgotten, counted as mere lumber.
His hand had long lost its cunning, and, in that slough of despond into which he had gone down, he had lost even the love of his art. It has been said that an artist may lose in a twelvemonth the manipulative power, which it has cost him many years to acquire; and it is a certainty that Eugène Tillet's hand could not, for the offer of thousands, have produced anything as good as the worst of the drawings in those half-forgotten sketch-books.
"If we can find anything in these books that you would care to possess," he said, laying the dusty volumes in front of Heathcote. "You had better wait till I get them dusted for you."
But Heathcote was too eager to endure delay. He wiped off some of the dust with his cambric handkerchief, and opened the uppermost volume.
The sketches were full of talent, intensely interesting to any lover of art. They were sketches over which Edward Heathcote would have lingered long, under other circumstances. As it was, he had considerable difficulty in concealing his impatience, and appearing interested in the book on artistic grounds. He remembered himself so far as to select two pencil sketches of girlish faces before he closed the first volume, which contained no drawing that bore upon the object of his search.
The second was also a blank; but from this Heathcote chose three or four clever caricatures, which the painter cut out at his request.
"You must kindly put down your own price for these things," he said, as he opened the third volume.
On the second page he saw the face he had been looking for, the face he had expected to see. But, although this thing did not come upon him as a surprise; although that pencilled likeness, the last link of the chain, served only to confirm the settled conviction which had gradually taken possession of his mind, the shock was sharp enough to drive the blood from his face, to set his heart beating like a sledgehammer.
It was so, then. It was as he had thought, ever since his conversation with Barbe Leroux. This was the man. This was Marie Prévol's lover, and her murderer. This was the cold-blooded assassin of Léonie Lemarque.
He sat silent, breathless, staring blankly at the face before him: a vigorous pencil-drawing of strongly marked features, eager eyes under drooping hair, a sensitive face, a face alive with passionate feeling. The eyes looked straight at the spectator; the lips seemed as if, in the next instant, they would move in speech. The attitude was careless, hands clasped on the back of a chair, chin resting on the clasped hands, the whole bust full of power and intention. Yes, just so might an ardent thinker, an eloquent speaker have looked at one of those midnight gatherings of wits and romancers. The sketch was evidently an immediate reminiscence, and must have been made when the subject was a vivid image in the artist's mind.
Happily for Heathcote's secret, his agitation entirely escaped Eugène Tillet's notice. The painter was dreamily contemplating the sketches he had just cut out of his book, and thinking what a great man he had been when he had made them.
"I should like to have this one," said Heathcote, when he had recovered himself, "and this, and this, and this," he added, turning the leaves hastily, and choosing at random, so as to make that first choice less particular.
Monsieur Tillet cut out all that were indicated to him.
"That is the man I was talking to you about," he said, as he laid the portrait of Georges with the rest of the sketches. "It is a wonderful likeness, too, an extraordinary likeness, dashed off at a white heat one morning, after I had been particularly impressed by the charm of his society. He was a man in a thousand, poor devil. A pity that he should have got himself into such a disagreeable scrape later. But he was a fool for running away. He ought to have given himself up and stood his trial."
"Why?"
"Because he would have inevitably been acquitted. You may murder anybody you like in France, if you can show a sentimental motive for the crime; and this business of poor Georges was entirely a sentimental murder. He would have had the press and the public with him. The verdict would have been 'Not Guilty.' The populace would have cheered him as he left the Palais de Justice, the press would have raved about him, and he would have been the rage in Parisian society for a month afterwards."
"But you who knew both the victims; you who had received kindnesses from Maxime de Maucroix—surely you cannot judge that double murder with so much leniency," expostulated Heathcote.
The painter shrugged his shoulders with infinite expression.
"Maxime de Maucroix was a most estimable young man," he said, "but what the devil was he doing in that galley?"
"And now if you will kindly tell me the sum-total of my small purchases, I shall have great pleasure in giving you notes for the amount," said Heathcote, shocked at the Frenchman's cynicism.
Monsieur Tillet handed him his hastily jotted account. The prices he had put upon his sketches were extremely modest, considering the man's egotism.
The amount came in all to less than a thousand francs, but Heathcote insisted upon making the payment fifteen hundred, an insistence which was infinitely gratifying to fallen genius.
"I shall remember, Monsieur, on my death-bed, that there was an Englishman who appreciated my work when my countrymen had forgotten me," he said, with mingled pathos and dignity. "Allow me to put up the sketches for you. I do not think you will ever regret having bought them."
While Eugène Tillet was searching among the litter of papers, wood-blocks, and Bristol-board upon his son's table, in the hope of finding two stray pieces of cardboard within which to guard his sketches, the door was quickly opened, and two girls came into the room. The first was Mathilde Tillet, the second was Heathcote's sister.
"Hilda!" he exclaimed.
Hilda stood before him in silence, with drooping head, pale with surprise and embarrassment.
"Somebody told you I was here," she faltered at last.
"Nobody told me," he answered, smiling at her confusion. "I have not even been looking for you, or making inquiries as to your whereabouts. Your letter was so very self-assertive, you seemed so completely mistress of the situation, that I felt it would be folly to interfere with you. As I opposed you when you wanted to marry Bothwell Grahame, it would be very inconsistent of me to oppose your renunciation of him."
Hilda gave a faint sigh. This speech of her brother's was reassuring, but it implied discredit to Bothwell. She would fain have stood up for her true knight, would fain have praised him whom she had forsaken; but she felt it was safer to hold her peace. By and by, when her sacrifice was completed, and when Bothwell Grahame was Lady Valeria's husband, she could afford to defend his character.
"No, my dear child, our meeting is quite accidental. I came here to see Monsieur Tillet's drawings."
"Our young friend is known to you, Monsieur?" inquired Eugène Tillet, who had looked on with some appearance of interest at a conversation of which he did not understand a word.
This Mr. Heathcote was evidently Hilda's brother, of whom Mdlle. Duprez had spoken before she introduced her protégée to the family circle.
"Your young friend is my sister, Monsieur," answered Heathcote; "and since she was determined to run away from home, I am glad she fell into such good hands."
"And now you have found her you are going to carry her off, I suppose," said Tillet. "It will be a pity, for I hear that her talents have made a strong impression upon one of the cleverest professors at the Conservatoire, and that she may do great things with her voice if she pursue her studies there. My young people will be in despair at losing her."
"They shall not lose her quite immediately," replied Heathcote, "though if she is bent upon studying at the Conservatoire, I think it would be better for her to have her old governess to look after her in Paris."
"Fräulein Meyerstein!" exclaimed Hilda. "She would worry me out of my life. She would talk about—about—the past." She could not bring herself to mention Bothwell's name just yet. "My only chance of ever being happy again is to forget my old life. There is some possibility of that here, among new faces and new surroundings. And they are all so kind to me here—Madame Tillet is like a mother."
All this was said hurriedly in English, while Monsieur Tillet discreetly occupied himself putting away his sketch-books. Mathilde had withdrawn, and was telling her mother about the unpleasant surprise that had greeted her return.
"How did you come to know these people?" asked Heathcote.
"Mdlle. Duprez brought me here. She has known the Tillets all her life. She will answer to you for their respectability."
"Well, we will think about it. Let me look at you, Hilda. You are not very blooming, my poor child. It does not seem to me that Paris agrees with you over well."
"Paris agrees with me quite as well as any other place," she answered quietly.
He took her hand and led her to the window, and looked thoughtfully into the sad, pale face, with its expression of settled pain. Yes, he knew what that look meant; he had experienced that dull, slow agony of an aching heart. She had surrendered all that was dearest in life, and she must live through the aching sense of loss, live on to days of dull contentment with a sunless lot. He who himself had never learned the lesson of forgetfulness was not inclined to think lightly of his sister's trouble.
"You look very unhappy, Hilda," he said. "I begin to question the wisdom of your conduct. Do you believe that Bothwell really cared more for this audacious widow than for you?"
"He had been devoted to her for years," answered Hilda. "I saw his letters; I saw the evidence of his love under his own hand. He wrote to her as he never wrote to me."
"He was younger in those days," argued Heathcote. "Youngsters are fond of big words."
"Ah, but that first love must be the truest. I never cared for any one till I saw Bothwell; and I know that my first love will be my last."
"I hope not," said Heathcote. "I hope you have acted wisely in your prompt renunciation. There were reasons why I did not care for the match."
"You surely have left off suspecting him," said Hilda, with an indignant look. "You are not mad enough to think that he was concerned in that girl's death!"
"No, Hilda, that suspicion is a thing of the past. And now let us talk seriously. You have set your heart upon pursuing your studies at the Conservatoire?"
"It is my only object in life."
"And you would like to remain in this family?"
"Very much. They are the cleverest, nicest people I ever knew—with the exception of my nearest and dearest, you and Dora—and Bothwell. They are all as kind to me as if I were a daughter of the house. The life suits me exactly. I should like to stay here for a twelvemonth."
"That is a categorical answer," said Heathcote, "and leaves me no alternative. I will make a few inquiries about Monsieur Tillet and his surroundings, and if the replies are satisfactory you shall stay here. But I shall send Glossop over to look after you and your frocks. It is not right that my sister should be without a personal attendant of some kind."
"I don't want Glossop. If she comes here, she will write to her friends in Cornwall and tell them where I am."
"No, she won't. She will have my instructions before she leaves The Spaniards. She shall send all her Cornish letters through me. And now good-bye. It is just possible that I may not see you again before I leave Paris."
"You are going to leave Paris soon?"
"Very soon."
"Then I suppose you have found out all you want to know about that poor girl who was murdered?"
"Yes, I have found out all I want to know."
"Thank God! It was so terrible to think there were people living who could suspect Bothwell."
"It is horrible to think there was any man base enough to murder that helpless girl—a man so steeped in hypocrisy that he could defy suspicion."
"You know who committed the murder?" inquired Hilda.
"I can answer no more questions. You will learn all in time. The difficulty will be to forget the hideous story when you have once heard it. Good-bye."
They were alone in the Tillet salon, Monsieur Tillet having retired while they were talking. He reappeared on the landing outside to hand Mr. Heathcote the parcel of sketches, and to make his respectful adieux to that discerning amateur.
"Monsieur your brother is the most accomplished Englishman I ever met," said the painter to Hilda, when his visitor had disappeared in the obscurity of the staircase.
He patted his waistcoat-pocket as he spoke. The sensation of having bank-notes there was altogether new. He had been fed upon the fat of the land by his devoted wife; he had been provided with petty cash by his dutiful children; but to touch a lump sum, the price of his own work, seemed the renewal of youth.
"Do you remember the curious name of that picture of Landseer's, ma chatte?" he said, chucking his wife under the chin when she came bustling in from her housewifely errands. "'Zair is lif in ze all dogue yet.' Zair is lif in ze all dogue, que voici. See here, I have been earning money while you have been flânochant."
He showed her the corner of the little sheaf of notes, coquettishly. She held out her hand, expecting to be intrusted with the treasure; but he shook his head gently, smiling a tender smile.
"No, mon enfant, we will not trifle with this windfall," he said. "We will treat it seriously; it shall be the nucleus of our future fortune, j'achèterai des rentes."
The tears welled up to the wife's honest eyes, tears not of gratitude, but of mortification. She knew this husband of hers well enough to be very sure that every sous in those bank-notes would have dribbled out of the painter's pockets in a few weeks; and that no one, least of all the squanderer himself, would know how it had been spent, or in what respect he was the better for its expenditure.