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The Bag of Diamonds, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 14. Mark Heath In The Dark |
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_ CHAPTER FOURTEEN. MARK HEATH IN THE DARK. "No--no--no!" Always the same determined answer to the declarations of Janet that some steps should be taken to investigate the affairs of the night on which her brother had first reached London. "No," he said; "I will have nothing done. Let me get well, and away from here. I've escaped with my life." "And what will you do, Mark?" asked Janet, as she sat by his side. "Try again," he said. "But I must first get well." He had heard that the doctor was ill, but everything else had been kept from him, till one evening, as he was seated by the fire at Janet's neat little lodgings, and his sister was called down to see a visitor. She had a suspicion of who it was, and found Richmond waiting. "Come up and see him." Richmond hesitated. "I must not stay long," she said. "My father frets for me if I am away." "And I am situated almost the same. Mark does not like to be left. Come up, dear, and help me to persuade him that he ought to employ the police." "No, no! don't talk of them," said Richmond, with a shudder. "I want the horror at our house forgotten, and they keep reminding me that the law does not sleep." "Why, Rich, how strangely you talk!" "Strangely, dear! No. Only it comes back like a nightmare ever since that terrible affair, so soon as it is mentioned. I seem to be wandering about the house in misery, fever, and pain, trying to see through a mist that I cannot penetrate. I don't know how it is or what it means, but I have this horrible thought troubling me, that I came down that night to go to the surgery, and that I saw something." "Saw something! Saw what?" "Ah! that is what I cannot tell," said Rich with a shudder. "I was better this morning, and more hopeful. My poor father seemed a little clearer in his mind, but the past is all a blank to him." "He knew me, dear, when I came yesterday." "Oh, yes! and he knows me well enough. He talks sensibly about what is going on around him. But that night when he was struck down, the blows seemed to break away the connection between the present and the past. The physician, who has seen him, says very little, but I can see that he considers the case hopeless." "Oh, don't say that, dear! We must all hope. I hope to be something better some day than a poor teacher. Come up now, and help me to persuade Mark to have in the police." "No, no!" cried Rich hastily. "Why not, dear? Think what it means if it is true about the diamonds, and we could get them back." "But it cannot be true, Janet; and as to the police, they make me shudder. They were at our house this morning to see Hendon, and with him my father, to try whether they could revive his memory, and get hold of a clue to those men who came to our house that night, and they have found out nothing. They say they are straining every nerve now to find that poor boy. They think he must hold the clue." "I think I could find it all out if I tried," said Janet. "Had your father any enemies?" Richmond shook her head. "Any one to whom he owed money?" Richmond started, and her thoughts reverted to Poynter. "No, no, no--impossible! Let it rest, dear. I have thought over it, till it nearly drives me mad!" she cried excitedly. "It is very strange;" continued Janet musingly. "I don't like to let it rest, and there is our trouble, too. Rich dear, has it ever occurred to you that it must have been the same night when poor Mark was found wandering about?" "Yes, dear. I have calculated it out from what the hospital sister told me. It was the same night." Rich looked at her wonderingly. "It was, dear," continued Janet. "While you had that horror at home, I was sleeping here comfortably, and poor Mark was wandering about the cruel streets half wild." Rich made a gesture to her friend to be silent, and Janet passed her arm about her waist, to lead her up-stairs, but with the full determination to try and make some investigation. For though there were times when the thought of her brother having brought home a bag of diamonds seemed mythical, and the birth of his diseased imagination--especially as he never named them now--at other times visions of comparative wealth had come to her, in the midst of which she seemed to see herself with Hendon, and her old companion and her brother happily looking on. Mark was seated gazing moodily at the fire as Richmond entered with his sister, and he rose to take her hands, and lead her to a chair. But somehow both seemed constrained and troubled by thoughts which they kept from each other. "I know," said Janet to herself, "it's that dreadful money which is keeping them apart, and if I don't do something, Mark will be going off again to seek his fortune, and it is like condemning poor Rich and himself to a life of misery and waiting." She sat working, but furtively watching the others all the while. "This poverty is killing us all," she said to herself at last, "and I will speak. It may be true, and he shall do something to find out." "Mark dear," she said aloud, "I have something to say." "Indeed! Well, what is it?" "I've come to the conclusion that, now you are better, you ought to speak out like a man, and--" "Stop!" he said hoarsely. "No, Mark, I shall not stop," cried Janet decidedly. "You say that you went to a friend's house that night with all your money and--and treasure." "Girl! will you be silent?" he cried savagely. "No," said Janet, laughing. "I want you to see this matter as I do. Whoever this man is, he ought to be forced to give up what he must have stolen from you. If you will not stir, I shall." "You will?" "Yes, I shall take counsel with Hendon again." "Again?" almost yelled Mark. "Yes, sir, again. We have spoken over the matter together, and he agrees that the police ought to be seen, and that you must make this friend give up what he has taken." "You'll drive me mad, Janet. Hendon thinks this?" "Yes; and we are going to do it at once, for the sake of you and Rich." "You shall not stir!" cried Mark fiercely. "Why not?" interposed Rich, taking his hand. "I think with my brother and Janet now, much as I dislike these investigations." "You think so--you?" cried Mark wildly. "Yes. Why not?" said Rich. "Mark dear, why should you flinch from speaking out? You have no unworthy motive." "Unworthy motive? No," he said bitterly, "I give up everything to spare another." "Then you shall not," said Janet firmly. "Your duty is to Richmond here; your promised wife." "Yes," said Mark moodily; "my duty is to Rich here, my promised wife." "And yet for the sake of some unworthy wretch, you make her suffer--yes, sir, and me too. Why, Rich, dear Rich, what is the matter?" She flew to her friend's side, and caught her hands; for Rich had started from her chair, looking wildly from one to the other, as, struggling as it were from out of a confused mist, how revived she could not tell, there came back to her, memory by memory, the scenes of that terrible night. Yes: she remembered now, though it still seemed like a dream--a fragmentary, misty dream. Yes, that was the clue! Janet had said it was upon that same night that Mark had returned--had been found senseless in the streets. "Don't, don't speak to me for a minute!" she cried, as she fought hard to recall everything--the maddening pain that night, the visit to the surgery, the chloral she had obtained and taken, and then that strange wild sleep. Yes; she recalled it now. She dreamed she had come down to fetch something else from the surgery to allay the agony she suffered, and that the door was locked, and that she had heard voices--her father's voice, Mark's voice--yes, it was Mark's voice; and she had stood there trembling till it died away; and that formed part of her dream. But now the voice was here in this room, and he caught her hand with a wildly suspicious look in his eye. "What are you thinking?" he said. She turned upon him sharply. "The name of your friend with whom you took refuge that night?" she said; and her eyes flashed as she gazed searchingly in his. He dropped her hand, and turned away, with his lips compressed and face contracted. "Mark," she cried, "why do you not speak? Where did you go that night when you returned?" He looked at her for a moment, and then turned away again. "I do not know," he said hoarsely. "It is not true," cried Rich. "You must speak now. It was to our house you came." "What!" "I remember now. I heard your voice. You were with my father--in the surgery." "Rich," he said, almost savagely, as he caught her wrist, "think of what you are saying!" "Rich dear, don't say that!" cried Janet piteously. "I know what I am saying," she said excitedly; and though her face was calm, it was evident that she was suffering terribly. "No, no," he cried; "no, dear, you are wrong." "No, Mark, I am right: you told us you took refuge with a friend--that friend was my father." "What! Rich, do you know what you are saying--do you know what this means if the police should hear?" "Yes," she cried; "the clearing up of a terrible mystery; perhaps the restoration of all that you have lost." "Janet, is she mad?" cried Mark. "Do you not see what all this means?" Janet shook her head with a helpless look on her face. "Then I will tell you," he thundered: "it means ruin--misery to us all. Girl, for pity's sake, be silent! Rich, dear Rich, I love you with a man's first strong love. Have I not slaved for you all these years, to win you for my own true wife? Don't--don't raise this up between us. What is poverty to such a shadow as this?" "I do not understand you," she cried; "but it is true. You did come to my father's house that night." He gazed at her in blank despair. "Why do you look at me like that? Do you not see the light?" "The light!" he cried, with a bitter laugh. "I see you--the woman I love--trying to force me into a position which I would sooner die than hold. Hush, for mercy's sake! No, no, no!" he muttered; and then aloud, "Call it a lie, or a desperate man's last cry for help. I did not come to your father's house that night." Rich gazed at him in blank astonishment for the moment, and then she flung her arms about his neck, and with her eyes close to his, she cried. "What are you thinking--that it was my father who drugged and robbed you, or my brother? Oh, Mark?" She seemed to throw him off as she stepped back, her pale face flushing, and a look of indignant anger in her eyes. "What does this mean?" cried Janet; but her words fell unheeded. "Shame on you! You are silent. How could you think this thing?" "Heaven help me!" groaned Mark. "And I fought so hard!" By a sudden revulsion of feeling, Rich turned to him again, and with her sweet rich voice, fall of the agony of her heart, she caught his hands. "How could you think it of him, Mark! My poor gentle-hearted father! Do you not see? Did you not tell us that you were hunted from place to place by those men?" "Rich, my darling," groaned Mark, as he strained her to his breast, "do you not see that you are digging a gulf between us, and that you will soon be standing on the other side, shrinking from me in abhorrence as the man who has brought this charge against your father? And God knows how I have striven to bear all in silence!" "But, Mark--" "Rich, it is your doing, not mine!" he cried wildly. "What are the diamonds to the loss of you?" "But, Mark," she cried impetuously, "this is madness. You suspect him. You shall speak now--you shall. You have thought my father did this thing?" "You drag it from me," he groaned. "I do." "Oh, shame!" cried Richmond, shrinking from him; "to suspect the poor old man, who nearly died in your defence." "What!" cried Mark. "Whom we found struck down bleeding, and whom I am neglecting now, when he is hovering almost between life and death--neglecting that I might come to him whom I thought the soul of chivalry and faith." "Stop!" cried Mark, in a harsh voice, as he released Rich, who straggled from him, and stood with his hands pressed to his eyes. "Janet, I have been off my head. I seem to think wildly now and then. Do I hear her aright, or am I still confused? What does she say?" "I--I don't quite know myself," faltered Janet, bursting into tears. "And yet I seem to understand," cried Mark excitedly. "Rich dearest, speak to me again. Your father found--struck down--in my defence?" "Yes, that is what I said," replied Rich coldly. "Struck down in my defence. I did not know of this." "You--you knew he was very ill," sobbed Janet. "Yes; but I knew no more." "How could we tell you when you were nearly dead?" sobbed Janet; "and the doctor said you were not to be troubled in any way." Mark Heath stood as if dazed for a few minutes, striving to think coherently, and master the delusion, under which he had been suffering. "Rich," he cried at last, "for God's sake, tell me all!" _ |
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