For some time he sat in his bedroom, overwhelmed by horror and pity at Dolly’s death, and by the terrible menace of his own situation. Mrs. Darling would certainly denounce him to the police, for hardly could she think otherwise than that he was the murderer of her daughter, even though his open visit to her at her hotel would be difficult to reconcile with his guilt. Fate seemed to be playing with him, torturing him, hitting him from all sides. If only he had postponed his visit to Mrs. Darling he would now be free to slip away as unnoticed as he had come, resuming his life in the Near East as Jim Easton, and being in no way suspected of the crime, for the silence of Smiley-face could be relied on.
But now he was done for! True, he was to-day a widower, and was therefore in a position to marry the woman whom he loved with a passion which seemed only to grow stronger as the complications increased. But he would be obliged to lie to her daily, throughout his life: there would always be this pitiable barrier of deception between them. And, moreover, the tragedy of Dolly’s death so filled his mind that any advantage it might have to himself was hardly able to be realized. He was profoundly shocked at her pitiable end, and its consequences were enveloped in gloom.
[252]
Even though Mrs. Darling were to hold her tongue, the Eversfield estate would none the less be wholly lost to him now, nor would his son ever reign there as a Tundering-West; for were he to lay claim to the property, or reveal the fact that he, James Tundering-West, was alive, Monimé would think he had gone to England and had done Dolly to death so as to be free to marry again. How could she think otherwise?
And, again, though he were for the time being to escape from the arm of the law, he could only marry Monimé at the risk of dragging her into a possible scandal in the future.
He paced his bedroom in his despair, now cursing himself for his actions, now screwing up his eyes to shut out the pitiful picture of Dolly, now laughing aloud, like a madman, at the nightmare of his own position. One thing was certain: he must leave England this very morning and make his way back to Cyprus or Egypt, or somewhere. Already Mrs. Darling might have notified the police. Fortunately she did not know his address, nor had she ever heard the name “Easton,” but doubtless the ports would be watched, and were he to delay his departure he would be caught.
In sudden haste which bordered on frenzy he packed his portmanteau and rang for his bill; and soon he was driving to the station, a huddled figure with hat pulled down over his eyes. He was far too early for the train, and, during the long wait every pair of eyes which looked into his set his heart beating with apprehension.
He had always been an outlaw: he had never fully[253] understood the basis of society, nor were the habits of the community altogether intelligible to him. He had gone his own ways, and had left organized humanity to go theirs. They had not molested one another. But now the State had a grievance against him, and soon it would be feeling out for him with its millions of antenn?, searching over hill and dale, city and field, with waving, creeping tentacles. He would have to duck and dodge continuously to avoid being caught, and always there would be in his heart the terror of that cruel, relentless mouth waiting to suck the life out of him.
His relief was intense when at the end of the day he found himself, still unmolested, in Paris. But he did not here stay his flight. All through the night he journeyed southwards, sitting with lolling head in the corner of a third-class compartment in a slow train—a mode of travelling which he had deemed the least conspicuous.
At length, upon the following evening, he reached Marseilles, where he put up at a small hotel at which he had stayed more than once under the name of Easton. He told the proprietor he had just come from Italy, a remark which led him to a frenzied erasing of labels from his baggage in his bedroom.
The next morning he made inquiries as to the steamers sailing east, and was relieved to find that a French liner was leaving for Alexandria in a few hours. He obtained a berth without difficulty and, after a period of horrible anxiety at the docks, found himself once more upon the high seas, the menace of the western world fading into the distance behind him, and the greater chances of the Orient ahead.
[254]
Thus he arrived back one morning upon the soil of Egypt, a fugitive from the terror of the law, all his nerves strained to breaking-point, his face pallid, his dark eyes wild. With aching heart he yearned for the serenity which Monimé exuded like the perfume of incense around her; he longed to be able to go to her and to bare his soul of its secrets, and to lay his heavy head upon her complacent breast; he craved for the comfort of those caressing hands which seemed in their soothing touch to be endowed with the mother-craft of all the ages.
Never before in his independent life had he felt so profound a desire for sympathy and companionship, yet now more than ever must he lock up his troubles in his own heart. He would write to her at Mena House Hotel, near Cairo, where she was staying, and tell her ... tell her what? That he could not live without her, that he had come back to her after but a couple of days in England, that she held for him the keys of heaven, that away from her he was in outer darkness. He would await her answer here in Alexandria, and by the time it arrived perhaps he would have recovered in some degree his equilibrium.
Feeling that his safety lay in the unbroken continuity of his life as Jim Easton, he went to the little Hotel des Beaux-Esprits, vaguely telling the proprietress that he had travelled over from Cyprus. Some London papers had just arrived and these, having come by a faster route, carried the news to the second morning after his departure from England. His hand shook as he searched the columns for the “Eversfield Murder,” and his excitement and relief[255] were altogether beyond description when he read that George Merrivall’s housekeeper, Jane Potts, had been arrested and charged with the crime.
Eagerly he turned to the recent copies of the local newspaper in which the English telegrams were published daily, and here he read that the evidence against the woman was of such damning character that she had been committed for trial. He recalled how Smiley-face had spoken of this woman’s jealousy of Dolly, and it seemed evident that she had followed George Merrivall into the woods that day and had wreaked her vengeance on her rival.
Mrs. Darling, then, had not notified the police! Doubtless she had heard of the guilt of Jane Potts in time to prevent the further scandal in regard to himself. She must have realized at once that since he was not the murderer there was no good purpose to be served in revealing the fact that he was still alive. Possibly, indeed, she may have hoped to profit by Dolly’s death—she was the next-of-kin—and had no wish to resuscitate the rightful lord of the manor from his supposed grave beneath the waves of Pisa. He could quite imagine the pleasant, unscrupulous soul saying to him: “You remain dead, my lad, and make no claim to the estate, or I’ll force you also to stand your trial for the murder, whether you did it or not.”
He was free, then! He wanted to shout the tidings to the four corners of the world. He was free to go to Monimé, and to ask her to marry him. For a short time longer he would have to hide his identity: he must wait until Jane Potts had paid the penalty of her jealousy. Then he could pension off[256] Mrs. Darling, and, when all was settled and the estate once more in his possession, the opportune moment would have arrived for his clean breast to Monimé. She would understand; she would forgive! With him she would rejoice that by bequest their son would be made heir to a comfortable income and home, while they themselves would have the means to procure that house of their dreams, somewhere beside the blue Mediterranean, which should be their resting-place at desired intervals in their untrammelled wanderings over the face of the earth.
The sudden simplification of all his complexities, the disentangling of the web in which he had been struggling, had an immediate and palpable effect upon his appearance. His head was held high again, his eyes were no longer furtive, his step was buoyant. Not for another hour could he delay his reunion with Monimé, and to the astonished proprietress he announced a sudden change of plans, and was gone from the hotel within thirty minutes of his arrival.
He reached Cairo at mid-afternoon upon one of those warm and brilliant days which are the glory of early winter in Egypt, and was soon driving out in the Mena House motor-omnibus along the straight avenue of majestic acacia-trees leading from the city to the Pyramids, in the shadow of which the hotel stands at the foot of the glaring plateau of rock on the edge of the desert.
At the hotel he was told that Monimé was probably to be found at a point about half a mile to the north-west, where she had caused a tent to be erected, and was engaged upon the painting of a desert subject. He was in no mood to wait for her return at[257] sundown; and, without visiting the bedroom which was assigned to him, he set out at once on foot to find her.
Through the dusty palm-grove behind the hotel he hastened, and up the slope of the sandy hill beyond, from the summit of which he could see the tent standing in the distance amongst the rolling dunes. Thereat he broke into a run, and went leaping down into the little valleys and scrambling up the low hills beyond, like a captive freed from the toils.
A few minutes later, mounting another eminence, he found himself immediately at the back of the tent, and here a native boy, who had been lying drowsing upon the warm sand, rose to his feet, and, in answer to a rapid question, told him that the lady was at work at the doorway of the tent.
Jim hurried forward, his heart beating, and the next moment he was face to face with Monimé.
“Jim!” she exclaimed in astonishment, throwing down her palette and brushes. “My dear boy, I thou............