THE BRIDE ELECT; OR, THE DOOM OF THE DOUBLE ROSES

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 55, 7 March 1899, Page 6

THE BRIDE ELECT; OR, THE DOOM OF THE DOUBLE ROSES

BY ANNIE ASHMOEE,

tlttthor of 'Beautiful Rienzi,' 'Corinne's Ransom,' 'Waiting for Him,' 'The Diamond Collar,' Etc.

CHAPTER XVII. THE DEAD WITNESS. 'And 'G.C. is dead!'

Captain Dnimmond felt a sudden , weight descend on his heart that j threatened to crush it; a strange , fluttering filled the ocean of black- , ened space that seemed to grow be- , fore his eyes; he clutched the lawyer's arm in momentary faintness. - : My lord stood petrified, gazing in , the lawyer's cold, downcast face, and I ( the Irish labourer, striding back to , Jiis bite in the golden sea, looked over ; Jiis shoulder at the ominous trio, and crossed himself In devout invocation, •Mother Howly, forfend us from all , lost pocket-books!' muttered he, pick- ; ing up his scythe again and sweeping i down the crisp waves. And Mr Philip Hazeldean took up his moral scythe, and swept down the eea of doubts which his first stroke had stirred to its angry bottom. 'There need be no mystery on the subject,' said Mr Hazeldean. 'I have found my brother's friend, and she is dead.' 'The captain interposed: 'She is not Glencora Calvert, you know; I do not believe she is.' 'That may be proved easily,' responded the lawyer, in measured accents. 'However," I have seen her.' 'Has your brother written to you?' quickly asked my lord. •No,'he has not,' said Mr Hazeldean, looking at him in surprise. 'Has Captain Drummond informed you of this 6ad affair?' 'Fullj r,'sir, and also Mr Buccleugh; there is no secrecy observed upon the subject among those whom it concerns. If your .brother has not written you, how are you assured that this dead lady is his friend?' Mr Hazeldean's sombre face grew white; he turned away with an involuntary shudder. 'Pray relieve our anxiety, Hazeldean,' prayed the captain. 'Relate the circumstance from end to end.' Captain Drummond was nursing that consoling doubt in his bosom, till he might look his own shocked surprise in the face. He trembled to eforesee where circumstances might drift them. If Mr Hazeldean really believed the identity of the two ladies, what then? They were walking up through the corn; they crossed the kitchen green; they passed round the left angle of the'mansion, and entered the library through a favourite door in the secluded passage before described. There, in convinced tones, Philip Hazeldean made the disclosures he had come to make. 'Three weeks ago, when Mr Buccleugh fell sick at Lady-Bank, a deteeHj^ r -■iM§6f, i of'the name of Wynde, paid!-me"a'-"visit; directed to me, he explained;- by liis'superintendent, Mr Spires, who was engaged in your interest, in the search of Glencora Calvert. Mr Wynde told me that he had been watching a certain object of suspicion before overlooked; had run him into temporary security, and waited my assistance to dispose of him. The gist of his arguments I shall not trouble you Math; sufficient to say that I was induced by my own strong convictions, and in the cause of justice, to relate Moray's story to Mr Wyhde exactly as I first related it ••to you. With which additional data Mr Wynde followed up the clue he held in his haids, and made out a case of most startling moment. I have hitherto shrunk from wounding you with a knowledge of that case, captain, and declined taking it up myself till this morning, when the motive power was suddenly given me. Mr Wynde came to me to announce that a dead body had been washed ashore at Leith. At his suggestion I went to see it, he wisely refraining from directing my suspicions in any way, and as We stood over it I saw these' things: . 'A tall, slender woman, long, black hair, -very thick and beautiful, small hands and feet, attired in a black m.lk dress, without pin or brooch of any kind, and only ornamented by a ruche of white lace; one hand clenched like a vice, and the mode of her death apparenc to all. A white pockethandkerchief, trimmed deeply with real lace of the new Mechlin pattern, folded transversely and twisted, was passed in a fatal noose around her Throat, and tied so tight that suffocation must have been inevitable, the knot, mark you, at the back of her head. She had been murdered and -then-carried to the sea.' Sick with the remembrance, Mr .Hazeldean wiped his pale face and hastily swallowed a glass of water. Lord Tresilyan, intently listening, put a question. 'Her "appearance, Mr Hazeldean—her face —describe it.'

But Mr Hazeldean averted a horrified countenance and shuddered.

'My lord, I cannot. Remember, she has been two months deceased. Remember the delicacy of those beautiful features, and judge how well you -would describe their awful ruin. Ah, she little resembles the magnificent ■woman whom my brother once sketched for me. But on that cambric handkerchief are embroidered the initials, 'G.C, and her clenched fingers being forced open we found this.' Mr Hazeldean. took carefully from Iris pocket-book a damp shred of white paper, of what texture it was impossible to determine, so rumpled had it been in the corpse's clasp and so stained by the brine. Its form was this: As if a letter, having been folded twice, one of the squares being blank, had been nurriedly torn off and made use of to •write some words upon. These words

were not easily deciphered, but when at last the captain contrived to do so, unassisted by Mr Hazeldean, who reiused all aid, he stared blankly in the lawyer's face. For the shred said, in a woman s agitated scrawl: 'Moray Hazeldean,—A has discovered' our love. My inconstancy seals my fate. Before yon come to me, oh! tardy one, I will be no more. Farew ell. —G.C Capiain Drummond clashed the fatal paper from his hand, and it fell, damp and clinging, at my lord's feet. 'VVl;nt does that mean?1 demanded the stern voice of the lawyer. 'it means that I trample on the sxispicion conveyed by thai woman's last ictter; and that I swear that A does not stand for Alexander!' ciied Captain Drummond. 'it means that A has a credulous friend; that "G.C." has no avenger jn her once fond guardian. Fie, man! will you not open your eyes and see?' returned Mr Hazeldean, warmly, moved to passing anger in spite of his even temper. 'But, Captain Drummond, go and see for yourself —go with Mrs Ellathorne, your sister, and claim your dead. Surely you will not disown her if your sister recognises her?' That, I won't, Hazeldean; I'm no rogue,' growled the Captain. 'If Hester it's Glencora, then I must believe so too; but Hester won't. No, no, it's a fearful mistake.' Mr Hazeldean lifted the scrap of paper from the carpet. 'My lord, read and judge if it is not Glencora who speaks,' said he, earnestly. And his lordship, mastering its brief contents at a glance, turned it over, examined its fibre attentively, and then picked up Glencora's note-book, which lay unheeded on the table. He turned the sodden leaves one by one, till he came to the pencilled memoranda which Mrs Ellathorne had been dictating to the bride-elect the afternoon before the wedding, when she stood at the parlour window watching for Alexander, with a smile oil her lips. 'July 25th, leave home; 26th, Liverpool; 26th, Dover; 30th, Paris; Aug-' and a long dash finished off the notes. Lord Tresilyan brought this page V) the light, and placed the other fugitive scrap beside it. 'Mr Hazeldean,' said my lord with knitted brow, 'do you believe the same hand traced both these writings?' Mr Hazeldean stooped to scrutinise them Captain Drummond came near, and eagerly waited. The pencilled memoranda in Glencora's note-book was jotted down in that cramped, careless, upright style one usually falls into with a short pencil, and the note - book held in one's hand, slanting rather to the left than to the right—readable, yet scarcely recognisable. The pencilled characters of 'G.C.s note were dashed off in a different style—bending, wavering letters, and long hair, strokes connecting each word with its follower, as if the writer had dashed them all off as one breathless exclamation; while the initials at the end, usually characteristic of the hand that traced them, were spread over at least an inch of space, without stereotyped curve, or mechanical elaboration of any kind. 'I see an incontestable proof,' uttered Mr Hazeldean, with quickened breath; 'not in the writing—there is nothing convincing in that—but in the paper. See! the shred that we find in the dead woman's hand after two months' immersion in the sea fits the private note-book of Glencora Calvert to a nicety. It appears to have been written there, and torn out afterwards.' My lord uneasily fitted the paper. It was as the lawyer said. My lord held'the edge of the shred between his careful eye and the lig-ht, and a gleam of triumph irradiated its doubtful depths. The leaves of the note-book were guilt, though tarnished; that is still apparent. - Yet this shred of paper, fitting so accurately, has not been gilt-edged, so far as I can detect.' 'The gilt would vanish in a long submersion in <salt water,' returned Mr Hazeldean. * 'The note-book has been soaking in two months nightly dews and occasional showers,' retorted my lord. 'But not in the ocean brine!' exclaimed the lawyer. Silenced, Lord Tresilyan turned over the remainder of the leaves, looking for the vacancy from which I the stray leaf might have been torn. He came to a vacancy .at last, where a leaf had been wrenched with evident haste from the book—in such haste, indeed, as to leave a minute angular portion still adhering to the binding; other vacancy there was none. My lord silently laid the damp shred in the vacant space, and it disproved the lawyer's hypothesis; the jagged corner of the vanished leaf "overlapped the perfect edge of the other. 'More leaves might easily have been . pulled from the book, which it would be impossible for us to discover if 1 they were taken out entire, as this leaf has been,' answered the lawyer. 'True,' responded my lord, keenly. . 'Many things might have been; but might proves nothing. This note--1 book has been a new one when dropped from Glencora's hand, in some little walk through the fields; therefore very page taken from it would : leave, a decided gap. We see no gap but one, and your leaf does not fit it.' Mr Hazeldean drew breath sharply. 'My lord,' entreated he, 'will you not admit what has been too ; evident to me ever since I witnessed the reaper pull yon note-book from the ripe corn? Must I stab nrf poor friend, then, to 'the heart by urging with my prejudiced lips what your unbiassed judgment should urge?' 'I confess I fail to apprehend,' said my lord, with anxiety. 'Captain Drummond,' breathed Mr Hazeldean,- with slow significance, 'yoti told me, in our first interview, that, the evening of her disappear- j ance, Glencora Calvert stood at your i parlour window, holding this new pocket-book in her hand; that, when1 she passed through the window with her betrothed, she had slipped it into her pocket; that, when she was found, it would probably be still in her possession, and would guide re- i cognition. Yet it was not so, because some other crafty hand had removed it, and all other. means of identification, from the lifeless remains of j 'G.C.,' after suffocating her. Alexander Buccleugh was the last person seen to walk with Glencora. She had the pocket-book in her posses- j sion when she left the house. He i came back by the canal alone, after | having parted with her, and we find her pocket-book in the corn by the . canal. i The captain's ashy lips were glued together, his clasped hands were

stretched in anguish toward Mr Ha- j zeldean, as they had once before I been stretched in anguish, when this awful chain of evidence was begun.! Lord Tresilyan, pushed from re-' fuge to refuge, answered, with a; flashing eye: 'This is an ungenerous manner in which to sustain your position, Mr Hazeldean. If you wishto prove that Glencora is dead, why should you try to prove that Alexander murder- . ed her? Do yoxi not see that he could have no motive, while other secret foes might have a motive, yet to ; be disclosed?' I Mr Hazeldean could not reply. He was bending in sorrow over the frenzied captain, whose agitation was j fearful; his chivalrous heart was aching at the gulf of treachery he must unveil to these friends of the suspected man. 'One thing we have forgotten,' exclaimed Lord Tresilyan, quickly. 'Your brother Moray recived a letter from his friend on Tuesday morning, the 25th of July? And Captain Drummond has proved that Glencora wrote a letter that morning—witnessed by her sister Florice. If that letter was produced, with its date, would you be satisfied whether it was the same note which your brother thrust into your hand to read, and which was signed "G.C." ?' 'The date would satisfy me,' said Mr Hazeldean, eagerly. 'Can you produce such a letter?' 'Alexander received a letter from Glencora that morning,, making up some little difference, the only letter she wrote that day. He has gone to ! his residence to find it. If, on his return, the letter answers in every particular to the letter you received from , the hand of Moray Hazeldean; with the long name at the close, then it was written by "G.C," who lies murdered at Leith; but if not, and Alexander can show the proper date, and prove Glencora's hand, then we shall know that Glencora never wrote to Moray Hazeldean, and that consequently she is yet to be found. Are you agreed?' Mr Hazeldean bowed; and they waited till the green baize door clanged after someone, and Alexander came in, flushed with hasty walking, B a trifle woi'ried in expression. (To be Continued.)