The Halo Part 52

She wrote to Joyselle long letters full of incoherent self-accusations, and made appeals for pity, but she knew that he would not answer her, and so burned the letters.

She could not eat; did not even try, and the little sleep she got from sheer exhaustion, after tramping up and down for hours, was heavy and unrestful. Lady Kingsmead came to her door once or twice, but was not allowed to enter, and went away unprotesting. And then, the third morning, Dr. Long insisted on seeing her.

"Humph! Tired, are you? You look it. Tommy is going to Margate to-morrow. You had better go too."

"Is my mother going?"

"No. Nurse is taking him. It will do him good--and you. Is anything specific the matter?"

She looked at him and shook her head. "I am tired," she repeated.

"Very well. I'll give you some phosphites--and you had better go for a walk. You need air."

The old man bustled away, and Brigit, after a few minutes' reflection, went to her mother's room.

"I am going to town, mother," she began, without preamble, "and in a day or so I shall join Tommy at Margate. Dr. Long says I had better go, but--I have some things to see to first."

Lady Kingsmead, who was blackening her eyebrows before her gla.s.s, turned, one eye made up, the other very undressed-looking in its natural condition.

"But--you'll come back, Brigit? You aren't angry any more?"

"I--I don't know, mother. I--am so tired, I can't think."

Lady Kingsmead took up a letter that lay beside her and handed it to her daughter. "Read this--dear," she said rather humbly. And Brigit read:

"Dear Tony," it ran, in a curious irregular, downward-trending hand, "I've been awfully bad again, or I should have written before. I was at the Joyselles' yesterday, and they told me that the danger is over. I am so glad, poor old girl. How are you? And how is Brigit? I hope she will believe you when you tell her about that day after I saw her in t.i.te Street. I told her that you did not believe me and went for me, but she wouldn't listen to me, and I don't blame her. I'm pretty bad. I shan't last long, I think. Heart's getting bad, too. May I come down and see you some time? Joyselle tells me the wedding is to be next month----"

Brigit crushed the letter violently in her hand and threw it down, her face distorted with anger.

"Poor old Gerald," commented her mother absently. After a pause she turned. "Brigit--I give you my sacred word of honour that I did not believe him that day. I never doubted you for a second. But he was so queer--so ill--that I was alarmed, and was trying to comfort him when you came in.

"Do you believe me?" she added, after a long pause.

Brigit, who stood by the window, nodded without turning.

"Oh, yes, I believe you," she said indifferently.

Then, before her mother could again speak, the girl left the room.

On her own table she found another letter, and to her surprise recognised Carron's writing in the address. With a sudden foreboding of evil, she sat down and opened the letter.

It was very long, written in pencil, and began:

"Before G.o.d, I swear you wronged your mother in thinking she believed what I said about you that day in Pont Street. Before G.o.d, I give you my word. Brigit, I am going to die; I cannot live. I don't like to live.

The world is abominable. I hate everybody. I hate you. I hate G.o.d. The only way I can forget is to take morphine, and it is beginning to go back on me. Sometimes I don't feel it at all. And it is only the last of many friends to desert me----"

There were four pages of this, growing more and more incoherent, and then at the last, the writer went on, his writing suddenly larger and more distinct, as if he had taken pains to render it legible:

"I am going to die, Brigit, so good-bye. If you would have married me I should not have done this. It is all your fault. "Gerald Carron."

For an instant her indignation at the incredible cowardice of the man crushed every other feeling. Then a thrill of horror came over her.

Looking again at the last page she saw below the signature:

"If you will come to see me at five o'clock to-morrow, and are kind to me, I won't do it."

Returning to her mother's room the girl handed her the letter. "Read the last page," she said briefly.

Lady Kingsmead shuddered. "We must wire him. We'll tell him to come down here--he must be mad--I--oh, Brigit!"

Brigit shook her head. "Of course he's mad. But we must go to him. We'll wire from the station."

Hurrying her distracted mother to the train, the girl settled into a corner and remained in unbroken silence until they reached town.

"It is odious, disgusting of him," she broke out in the hansom as they went up St. James Street. "When he is quieted down, mother, you must make him understand that I absolutely refuse to accept the responsibility of his deeds. I never could bear him."

Lady Kingsmead nodded. "It is the morphine he takes. He must go into one of these great cure places--or no, that is for drinking, I believe----"

They had reached the house and gone up the stairs before she spoke again. "I hope he won't be violent," she declared, "I wish you hadn't insisted on coming. A wire would have done every bit as well----"

No one answering the ring, Brigit tried the door on which a card bearing Carron's name was neatly tacked.

To her surprise the door was open, and crossing the little ante-chamber the two women went into the sitting-room.

Lying on his face by the fireplace, in which red ashes still glowed, Gerald Carron lay dead, a revolver near him, his face in a small pool of blood.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lady Kingsmead fainted dead away for once in her life, dropping in a huddled heap near the man she had loved and unloved.

Brigit stared at them for a moment, wondering vaguely which of them was dead, which only fainting. Then, just as she was kneeling to raise her mother to a better position, the door opened and two men, one of them Giacomo, Carron's valet, entered in great haste.

The second man was, he explained, a doctor, whom the valet had gone for on finding his master's body.

The next few minutes were minutes that Brigit never forgot. The Italian servant, chattering and weeping, the young doctor helping her to loosen Lady Kingsmead's tight clothes; his hurried explanations and questions; the very closeness of the air, with the smell of gunpowder still faintly perceptible.

Lady Kingsmead, laid upon Carron's bed, came to in a few minutes in violent hysterics, and the young doctor, when he had given her a soothing draught, insisted on the two women leaving.

"I must send for the coroner," he explained, "and it will be unpleasant.

Your cab is still at the door, I think? May I have your address?"

He was very civil and sympathetic, this young medico, but he was also rather too obviously impressed by his own importance and this gruesome occasion. Brigit gave him the address of her flat, and helping her mother into a four-wheeler, as more suitable than a hansom, the two women drove away towards Kensington.